Which is the best raiding spec?

[AdrianCC100]

I know some spec shine on fights more than others.. But which spec does decently well on all boss fights?

[Deleted]

Arcane I would say. You can go frost tho when you get class trinket, the difference is minimal but Arcane is pretty strong on most fights. Frost wins on cleave fights only.

[Deleted]

Frost and Arcane. Play whatever u like more. And if u like Fire play fire.

[Deleted]

Arcane and frost are pretty equal, so choose the one you like more. Arcane have great burst and is little bit better on single target, Frost is great on cleave, but still really good on single target as well.

I personally go Frost, mostly because i wanted change from Arcane/fire after few months in HM and BRF.

[Zelendria]

As a single spec to cover all raiding it would have to be Arcane.
However, the problem to that is how well you play it. To beat Frost with Arcane, even in ST, you have to be able to execute the rotation extremely well.

[Whinewhisper]

Depends on your gear and fights tbh.

But arcane is pretty much the go-to spec, though it has some tricks and stuff you want to get it to really shine in certain situations (Prophecy of fear....).

You should run arcane/frost dualspec tbh.

[Imnick]

Frost is the most versatile, it is very competitive with Arcane on a single target and beats it on 2 or more, so if you only want to run one spec make it that.
If you are ok with learning two specs, then go Arcane/Frost and pick Arcane for encounters where you don't move much and don't get to do much cleaving.

[Deleted]

Frost is the most versatile, it is very competitive with Arcane on a single target and beats it on 2 or more

Time for a sizable buff to Arcane then.

[Imnick]

I thought Lei Shi would approve of more water elementals in raids

[Dragore]

I have the most fun with Frost, so thats what I play. Although I casually raid so it doesn't really matter. Play what you want. Your raiding experience will be 10x better by doing so even if it is a minimal DPS loss.

[Soul Reaper909]

Not sure why people are saying Frost beats arcane on 2 or more target cleave fights. The only fight frost will outdo arcane is Tyrant Velhari without fail. Arcane (although its become 100% RnG if you do well on arcane) even with half decent RnG will out perform frost any day of the week. The current raiding situation favours arcane over frost especially in Mythic Content. If you want best DPS go Arcane, if you want best add burn go arcane, if your fighting Tyrant Velhari go frost. Of course this means you have 4 set and PoF trinket and can understand arcane well enough.

[Frost1129]

Probably Arcane at the moment.

[Rinoa]

Hellfire High Council also, Soul Reaper909. Frost > Arcane there if you stack Gurtogg and Jubei'thos together, which most guilds appear to do.

[Soul Reaper909]

Hellfire High Council also, Soul Reaper909. Frost > Arcane there if you stack Gurtogg and Jubei'thos together, which most guilds appear to do.

Not really. https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/8#class=Mage
Current top rank is Arcane on the fight. 2/3rds of the fight is single target so sure at the start you will do great as frost but then from there depends on how fast you kill it.

[Zelendria]

He's got 10.7m dmg with PoF... That is about as normal as fire beating Arcane ST
We're progressing M Council at the minute and all of my Frost pulls are only slightly behind Arcane on ST to Bloodboil

[Rinoa]

Yes really. You can't just look at the top parses and conclude that Arcane is better. You have to keep in mind that Arcane has a huge variance in DPS due to RNG, and as such will produce some unreal parses. I'm talking about what's best on average here. If we're just going to go by what's the top 10, then Arcane would also be better than Fire on AoE fights, because PoF RNG is ridiculous. That's not how it works in practice.

If you look at the fight statistics, 95th percentile and down, Frost is outperforming Arcane. Why? Because you have removed the godlike RNG outliers that are responsible for the very top parses. That RNG is in no way making Arcane better, it just means it has higher peaks.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/8/#boss=1798

[Zulandia]

If you look at the fight statistics, 95th percentile and down, Frost is outperforming Arcane. Why? Because you have removed the godlike RNG outliers that are responsible for the very top parses. That RNG is in no way making Arcane better, it just means it has higher peaks.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/8/#boss=1798

Frost and arcane are so close together on that fight that it's really going to come down to ability/preference/what your group needs. In general for council I would suggest arcane as it has better on demand burst and a large portion of M Council is the sub 30% bursts even if frost might do more overall damage on average. That said this thread is not only about Council so not really sure why it's diverging to that regardless.

OT for OP: Both Arc and frost are doing exceptionally well this tier and you can easily get by playing either one. The more ideal choice would be to dual spec both and play the one that suits the fight/you are more comfortable with on a given fight. It should also be noted that for progression if you were insisting on picking one spec you could make a case for frost being a better choice due to it having a much smaller dps range on average and consistency is far more important during progression then max potential dps.

[Makarena]

Mythic difficulty
hfa: arcane, orb
reaver: arcane, crystall
hfc: frost
kormrok: arcane, crystall
killrog: arcane, crystall
gorefiend: arcane, crystall
sockrethar: arcane, orb
iskar: arcane, orb
fel lord: arcane, crystall
xul'horac: arcane, orb
tyrant: frost
mannaroth: frost
archimonde: equal although I've yet to try arcane+orb due to lack of trinkets but I assume it works just fine.

[Zuul]

I found it interesting that when I clicked on the link, that Fire, not Arcane or Frost was on top for Mythic all Bosses. Fire was actually above Arcane and Frost on quite a few Mythic fights..

[Rinoa]

Fire is great at padding AoE and just doing a ton of damage in general where damage is not needed. Also quite few people play it so the 95th percentile are amazingly lucky parses, unlike Frost and Arcane where you have to go a bit higher for that to be true.