State of Mages in 3.3.3?Follow

Well, I'm pretty sure that fire with its four AOE talents is the best heroic spec you can get as a mage (you make up for a loss of DPS on bosses by *SICK* amounts of AOE damage on all trash, and its not like heroics desperately need you to provide top-notch DPS on bosses anyway), but past that, I'm mostly clueless. I've heard people say that pure fire > frostfire bolt but I've also had a mage in my main's guild off-spec FFB because it was 'not that far behind Arcane' and he just liked to try it again. I'm not sure whether FFB or pure Fire is actually better now, and am also quite interested in some numbers to show how far behind arcane both specs still are.

Fire puts out good numbers on fights like the Lich King and Dreamwalker, where you have a lot of adds and can living-bomb the place up. (Though on LK, you shouldn't put LB on the little adds in P1.)

No, the problem is that it is far behind in all but niche cases (Anub'arak in ToGC being one of them), and fireball may only be 1% behind arcane (depending on the fight, some fights are not that close) FFB will lag a decent amount behind fireball. Any spec is "viable" but not optimal for really any boss fight. And using the argument that doing significantly less dps isn't as important on a farmed fight may be true, but I try to push for top numbers on every fight that I am faced with and find it dumb to pick a sub-optimal spec when I could be competing for #1 instead of trying to hit #10.

Perhaps, but that's one of the ideas of 'covering' for eachother, isn't it? I'd consider myself a ****-poor officer if I'd force people to ALWAYS play to their UTMOST best on EVERY fight. That said, if everybody in our raid lost 1 or even 2K DPS, we'd still be downing the first four bosses (if not Fester, Rotface and Belf Council as well). If people want to try out a different spec for playstyle for a couple of bosses, I can live with that. If you can't... Good luck keeping your guild together.

I'm sorry, but that seems a bit of a selfish attitude.
Granted, my Frost spec is only around 300-400 DPS behind my Arcane, but on EXTREMELY important DPS fights (Put Put 25), I still switch to Arcane for that extra 300 DPS. In a situation where your group is wiping at 1.2 million HP, you need to squeeze every extra tiny bit of performance out.

It's hard to know what you're saying if what you actually say is the opposite...

I say: I don't mind someone picking another spec for some fights, as long as they do their best where it actually matters (which in this case is on progression bosses).
--->If you've got everything up to Sindragosa on farm, then a mage pulling 7K DPS instead of 8K DPS isn't going to be much of a hinderance for a non-progression evening.
--->I'd consider myself a ****-poor officer if I'd force people to ALWAYS play to their UTMOST best on EVERY fight.

Jay says: I play frost for most fights because I like playing it, but I will switch to arcane for fights where it actually matters.
--->Granted, my Frost spec is only around 300-400 DPS behind my Arcane, but on EXTREMELY important DPS fights (Put Put 25), I still switch to Arcane for that extra 300 DPS.

How is that the opposite? The only part I could even remotely imagine as being 'the opposite' of what Jay is saying is where I said "That said, if everybody in our raid lost 1 or even 2K DPS, we'd still be downing the first four bosses (if not Fester, Rotface and Belf Council as well)", which is an extreme situation in the first place.


Alright, let me turn it around. Imagine Lana'thel 10-man (which is an even harder fight than the ones I'm talking about and where I would have everyone use their best spec - but as an example); I did a bit of simple math and came to the conclusion that in our raids as we currently have them, a mage losing 2K DPS means we kill her 15 seconds before the enrage instead of 30. And that's in a worst case scenario where the mage actually loses an entire 2K DPS on a boss that is even harder than the content where I'm actually ok with spec-swapping. On stuff like Deathwhisper or Marrowgar we are literally talking about downing the boss 3 minutes before the enrage rather than 3 minutes and 20 seconds. If those 20 seconds are enough difference for you to prohibit anyone from ever trying something sub-optimal, you must have one HECK of a busy live.

The problem here is that you can't turn "need to try something else for a change" or "need to experiment" into maths, but if you could I can assure you that a mage speccing FFB for IcC's lower spire would be more beneficial than forcing him into arcane and diminishing his fun. Especially if that mage is one of your top DPSers on content that matters.

I have noticed my Frost spec doing significantly more damage... not sure about the exact percent increase though. It's to the point where I can now do more damage in Frost than the less-good mages in my 25 group do in arcane. Maybe jay has real numbers on the increase?

Oh, certainly, but I was never insinuating that people should go FFB all the way - merely defending my guildie who instantly got called dumb for just wanting to try something different for a change. I thought it was, even from my original post, quite clear that Arcane was still on top and should be the first choice if you're pushing for any sort of progression.

What I don't mind is clarification or rectifying any false assumptions I've made as you're obviously the better mage here - what I do mind is people going flat out "that is stupid" and ignoring the entire argument I am trying to make. No offense meant to you specifically, but that is the 'elitist attitude' I see surface on Alla more often and it's one I'll argue against at every turn.

That said... Like a wise allakhazam-mum once said: "I've had my say now, so I'll let it go - people reading the thread will see the discussion anyway and that is good enough for me".

May not help y'all out 100%, but here's a log from our weekly + Blood Queen. We didn't down here, but we got her to enrage a few times (three people missing from raid, yeah).
I have the logs posted under my old 10 man guild, the credit actually goes to Felony of SoE. You can look back on my logs if you'd like.
I am the THIRD WORST geared person in the raid normally. I am consistently in top 10 DPS, and within top 5 usually this week.

I don't have any hard numbers on the DPS increase Frost received lately. I have 'seat of the pants' numbers, and the increase is insane. It's good enough that other guildies in this 25 man guild I JUST joined are trying out frost on some fights. I am NOT brazen enough to say that Frost is equal with Arcane yet. I AM brazen enough to say I won't be keeping my Arcane spec. I'll be switching it to a fire spec.

Edit: I should mention that I wouldn't DARE use FFB in any raid atm. The DPS loss is HUGE.

Edited, Apr 2nd 2010 12:49am by jaysgsl

Ah ha ha ha, late night posting ftl.
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/d5clnzs7usimajif/sum/damageDone/?s=7311&e=7639
Remember, for frost you have to tick the "Show Creatures" checkbox and manually add Water Elemental to the persons' DPS.

Not to downplay jay's achievement for getting ranked (props to you!), but remember that the ranking is based on spec as well, so jay is ranking in the top frost mages ;)

After last night trying to play fire spec I immediately switched back to Arcane. I really hated the long casts, having to constantly watch my LB timer, etc. I only did like 6k dps on marrowgar when I normally do closer to 10k, so I happily switched back.

OUCH.

WoL rankings:

Lord Marrowgar H25:

Top Arcane- 13,524
Top Fire- 14,792
Top Frost- 7,988

OUCH.

Lady Deathwhisper H25:

Top Arcane- 12,229
Top Fire- 10,163
Top Frost- 8,759

Saurfang H25:

Top Arcane- 13,298
Top Fire- 13,965
Top Frost- 9,371

On the one hand, we can credit some of those numbers (perhaps) to people not trying Frost. But still, OUCH.

But the good news is that Fire is competitive at the cutting edge, at least (I'm assuming fights where it passes Arcane there is AoE involved? I know nothing about the encounters).

Maybe I'll try out Fire on my Mage. He just got his 2pc 210 (and a Merlin's Robe), but I'm kinda bored of Arcane. And getting a free 7-9K DpS on bosses in Heroics just doesn't have the same thrill anymore. And I have never tried Fire (literally, I still have ALL those spells at the trainer).