What spec are you starting 5.4 with

[Solidpat]

Can you fit 2 AB's in 2 GCDs, I don't think AB has a 1 second cast? 1 GCD for applying NT to primary target.

Simply replace my word ''GCD'' by ''Abilities casted'' in my entire post. But it changes nothing it, was simply for a comparison purpose.

I understand that Arcane Blast is a 2 sec casting time, while NT has a base GCD of 1.5 secs. The more haste we have, the smaller the difference will be between the two. Given we are in 5.4 and the amount of gear we are running with in 5.4, it is safe to compare 3 x NT vs 1x NT + 2 AB. The difference in time per 3 abilities casted is practically irrelevant compared to the difference in effective damage gain provided by the latter. Like I previously said, 100%/400% of effective damage means that 3/4 of your damage is wasted by the multi dotting strat. So even casting 1 NT + 1 AB will be better than casting 3xNT

[Magemaer]

And it's the egos of the "top" mages that continue to be a problem. Vykina, you are where you are because you're willing to put in the time. That's all. I or thousands of others could play at or above your level with the same or better understanding of the class. You don't get some super aura of enlightenment because of your kill dates. See Blatty's frost guide.

Hubris is a disgusting thing, it doesn't matter where it comes from. There are top mages with ego issues, there are awful mages with ego issues (you). The problem is human, and independent of position in this game. If anything, it just reacts to position. Ego is easily fueled when you're in a good position. When you're in a bad, you may come up with a lot of delusion and nonsense to fuel it.

Either way it's a bad and pitful thing.

Talking about delusions, you took a bad route with "you're willing to put in the time. I or thousands of others could play at or above your level". A very bad route.

I'm perfectly fine with you playing a diehard NE Frost Mage that bought t3 to feel pretty. I am. You are enjoying the game your way and that's fine.
I'm however not fine with you
1.Thinking you're in a position suited to council mage changes that affect raiding
2.Assuming you're in the same level of dedicated raiders
3.Claiming that dedicated raiders lack merit, they just put time in

[Species]

Simply replace my word ''GCD'' by ''Abilities casted'' in my entire post. But it changes nothing it, was simply for a comparison purpose.

I understand that Arcane Blast is a 2 sec casting time, while NT has a base GCD of 1.5 secs. The more haste we have, the smaller the difference will be between the two. Given we are in 5.4 and the amount of gear we are running with in 5.4, it is safe to compare 3 x NT vs 1x NT + 2 AB. The difference in time per 3 abilities casted is practically irrelevant compared to the difference in effective damage gain provided by the latter. Like I previously said, 100%/400% of effective damage means that 3/4 of your damage is wasted by the multi dotting strat. So even casting 1 NT + 1 AB will be better than casting 3xNT

Ah. It will be hard to tell what spec is better for that fight. Once people kill it once they will start abusing spec mechanics. Also remember fire will have a lot of wasted DPS. Spreading combustion and ignite to other paragons will be wasted DPS. I know this really doesn't mean anything because you are not wasting globals while trying to damage the paragons but something to remember while looking at logs.

[Akraen]

Hubris is a disgusting thing, it doesn't matter where it comes from. There are top mages with ego issues, there are awful mages with ego issues (you). The problem is human, and independent of position in this game. If anything, it just reacts to position. Ego is easily fueled when you're in a good position. When you're in a bad, you may come up with a lot of delusion and nonsense to fuel it.

Either way it's a bad and pitful thing.

Talking about delusions, you took a bad route with "you're willing to put in the time. I or thousands of others could play at or above your level". A very bad route.

I'm perfectly fine with you playing a diehard NE Frost Mage that bought t3 to feel pretty. I am. You are enjoying the game your way and that's fine.
I'm however not fine with you
1.Thinking you're in a position suited to council mage changes that affect raiding
2.Assuming you're in the same level of dedicated raiders
3.Claiming that dedicated raiders lack merit, they just put time in

Then it's coming equally from you.

I don't know how you can look at how I play, at my parses, my uptimes, my execution, damage taken, and so forth and say I am in the bad category. My numbers are up there with the 550+ frost mages (though that should be secondary), given the fact that I'm making up for being a night elf I think that backs me up.

I don't think I am the best mage in the world. I think I and countless others are skilled enough to be in top guilds, because we are in a category of player who can execute our near theoretical maximum damage while surviving and executing a fight, learning quickly and adapting to situations. That is the quality of "skill" because the proc reaction, snapshotting-based rotation that we have is not difficult in its own right.

You're assigning me into the wrong category though and that makes you just as ridiculous as Vykina.

[Species]

Magemaer and Akraen can you take your lovers quarrel elsewhere? It is not helping the thread in anyway.

[Akraen]

Fair enough. I don't even get the point of this thread anyway. All it is doing is pinning arcane and fire against each other before the numbers passes are even finished.

I'll henceforth butt myself out and scamper back to the other thread to try to stop a vocal group of button bloat terrorists from burning my spellbooks.

[Deleted]

Fire, but I'm definitely more willing to give Arcane a go this tier. Frost still doesn't excite me.

[Advent]

The poo flinging is strong in this thread. Anyway, is it actually worth it to maintain a mage alt for progression? Serious question, I'm not trying to kick up a shitstorm here.

[Deleted]

Why wouldn't it be? . We aren't exactly in a horrible position at this moment and unlikely to be at any point in the near future. Are we thàt crucial that you'd need to maintain a Mage alt to swap in/out depending on the fight? Unlikely. It's however equally unlikely that you'd actually need to do this, unless, possibly, you would be raiding at the absolute highest level, and in that case you wouldn't be asking the question here in the first place.

[Pandacally]

Nice delusion, on that basis all top 10 guilds who spend 2 weeks on progress should finish at the same time, I mean there is nothing hard right? Anyone can play at high level. Blatty doesn't have a frost guide, I bet said site didn't pay a single euro to put that text in the header

Definetly not anyone can play at the highest level, but still quite a fair share of people. However, dedication (especially time), teamwork and communication skills are also very important. You don't need to be a rank 1 gladiator level player (considering "skill", "movement", "keybindings/reaction etc") to be in a Top10 guild, but you need to be dedicated and a teamplayer. And also the skill level in the top25m are still quite unequal, you always have those guys who can do everything while pushing max dps, and than you have those who can only push max dps if they have no "duties" in a raid. And even some who don't push max dps.

My casual 13/13 HC 10m is now playing 25 man with a 2/13 HC 10m guild and we give them all the gear except for TF to optimise our gear for the next content. In the first raid (4h), we cleared 7/13 HC just because you can easily carry people in 25m, as long as you have like 15 good players.
I would consider any advice from a player of a top10 guild worthy to think about, however, it does not mean that everything you for yourself found valid/consider worthy is trash just because its counter-dictating what someone else is saying. Some players in our guilds are and were permanently approached by top5 guilds because they did what they thought is best, and not what some guides/simcraft/top player was telling. And some of our players went back to us and said, that the time commitment was too much, and that the players in those top5 guilds are not by any means better or cleverer, just more commited. Some players who where in our guild and never made it through trial/were on the list for kick left for a top10 guilds and fittet in perfectly.

TL;DR more skilled players are found in better guilds, however not every player in a good guild is better than every player in lower guilds. And some lower/middle guilds still have crazy skilled players (which are approached by top-guild recruiters on a daily basis), but are not in for the commitment to leave for the top.

[Polarthief]

The poo flinging is strong in this thread. Anyway, is it actually worth it to maintain a mage alt for progression? Serious question, I'm not trying to kick up a shitstorm here.

Unless you're okay with Arcane/Being 'eh' until you get super geared to go Fire, not really.

I'm staying Mage for the sake of its the only class I know inside and out and he's geared. If I could swap all my knowledge and gear to another character, it'd be any other ranged (Except SPriest; just don't like how they play)

[Kholdstare]

What about ele shaman?

[Kiry]

2 more weeks to figure it out. and....get outa here with other classes. The be da mage thread mon.

[Saegno]

I'm kind of torn between fire and arcane. Due to work and time restraints I haven't been able to get on the PTR to test out the content. I know at first people were saying arcane wouldn't be viable due to the amount of movement but that was before the RoP change.

I've done both specs for this heroic tier and would easily be able to play one or the other next tier for heroic progression.
I would LOVE to play arcane again as fire is getting old and the nerfs to it for 5.4 make me hesitant.
If arcane is not just viable but competitive/better with/than fire for at least 80% of SoO then I will swap to arcane.
Any mages who have actually tested on the PTR want to chime in? Pref ones without sand in their vaginas.

[Rhaelan]

Pref ones without sand in their vaginas.

Sadly I doubt you will get much of that. I will play Fire because it is my favorite spec and I will be going into the next tier with a good ilvl and ALL fire crit gear. I'm hoping that heroic gear will get that "Fire insane scaling" so that arcane will not overtake it too much(if at all). I will spec Arcane if I have to, same as 5.1. It seems that every mage has his/her favorite spec and they either defend them to death or they go progression(will play whatever does the best numbers). It doesn't look like there is much middle ground. But I guess that is what happens when you have played mage for years/RP a certain character.

From the rest of this post it looks like mages will be using all 3 specs, which is good for mage in general. I don't know if the mastery is a big deal but I won't be playing Frost as I don't think the scaling will ever get close to Fire/Arcane even if the spec is more "fun" than Arcane.

[Polarthief]

I'm kind of torn between fire and arcane. Due to work and time restraints I haven't been able to get on the PTR to test out the content. I know at first people were saying arcane wouldn't be viable due to the amount of movement but that was before the RoP change.

The only thing that really changed is now a tiny, bad RNG, flame landing in your rune won't make it worthless. For fights where you need to constantly move (not shift), the change did nothing.

[onemanaleft]

back to an old discussion, as arcane ill be running frost armor

as said earlier being multiplicative, in my gear its about 3000 mastery vs 4000+ haste, which the gap will only increase

and seeing as i can swap between mastery and haste at will, what ive been most sucessful as is going for a haste point with frost armor, and stacking mastery

currently for me thats around 9500 haste + frost armor for 37.5% haste (lots of caps), then about 15500 mastery (abuot 21500 raid buffed) results are amazing, id say i can just straight turret about 250k on live, but more realistically 220-230 with some movement or pooling resources for ads like ra-den (which is my standard of arcane dps currently with minor movement and sub optimal dmg from pooling missles)

summary: frost armor ftw, still stacking mastery

[Turkeyburger]

Fire or arcane, will depend on the fight. Most likely fire for all of normals just for the sake of clearing quickly.

[TheoriesLA]

I'll go arcane unless I find problems with too much movement.

[Yizu]

I hope they make at least 2 of our specs share same stat prio. Frost and arcane at least. Or make arcane hastevocation viable so we can switch to frost. So unfair warlocks can switch any spec without changing anything on their gearing.