One of the downsides to playing a hybrid class is that you need two sets of gear. Prot/Ret or Resto/Bear etc...
You can't do both jobs in the same gear. While this is a problem gearing up - Once geared, this is very nice. You only need to press a few buttons and suddenly you move from Prot to Ret. No reforge - No ReGem - No Re'chant.
This isn't the case with most 'pure' classes. So - I guess my question is this - Which spec will do the most damage most of the time.
For Arcane vs Fire ~ You are basically saying Mastery vs Haste.
Both require INT. Both require Hit. So the big difference is Mastery vs Haste and my understanding is that both specs Love one of the stats and Hate the other.
I'm not going to going to (Nor would my guild permit me to waste their time) - Change my entire gear over every fight.
So which spec is going to be the better spec - most of the time?
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This may be untrue, but my impression is that blizzard would like you to use Fire as the best spec for damage. It seems that they want Fire to be what every mage uses. Arcane is for noobs, and Frost is for PVP.
I feel comfortable in this assessment as I never PVP, and do not use Frost. Also I am a noob.
I feel comfortable in this assessment as I never PVP, and do not use Frost. Also I am a noob.
It's fairly more complex than that, actually. Arcane loves haste up until a certain soft cap(1 sec AB cast time during TW, iirc). Come next patch, both should be viable, play whichever is more fun to you. If you're looking for something right now, though, Arcane is the way to go. Some folks hare having good results in frost PvE right now, though I think it's a "results not typical" kind of thing.
Edit: The second response wasn't there when I posted. I haven't read it yet and it's past my bedtime, so I'll read and respond to it later.
Edited, Nov 29th 2011 2:15pm by Poldaran
Edit: The second response wasn't there when I posted. I haven't read it yet and it's past my bedtime, so I'll read and respond to it later.
Edited, Nov 29th 2011 2:15pm by Poldaran
Poldy, don't respond, it isn't worth your time. That Moon guy is a jerk and a noob.
That Moon guy is a jerk! 
Please "talk up" if your comprehension white-shifts. I will use simple-happy language-words to help you understand.
Moonkissed wrote:
Poldy, don't respond, it isn't worth your time. That Moon guy is a jerk and a noob.
Your first post is actually a fairly common conception of magecraft, despite being a little off.
Apparently I didn't notice that the patch dropped yesterday. That said: Fire or Arcane are both good; Frost a bit less PvE viable, but still useable.
Yeah, Fire has gotten a very nice dmg boost, so it is now on par or better than Arcane depending on the fight. Naturally, Fire is going to rofl stomp Arcane on AoE fights, but from what I have read Fire has fairly competitive single target damage.
Frost, sadly was not touched at all for the patch, when we could have really used a boost to Blizzard damage. Frost's single target is fine, but Blizzard is just sad. One of the worst AoE specs in the game. I think I will continue to use it on my mage until I get the 2 set for T13 and then I'll go Fire. Once Frost loses our 4 set, I don't think we're going to be competitive with single target anymore, compared to how well Arcane scales with gear due to their mastery, and how much of a buff Fire got.
Frost, sadly was not touched at all for the patch, when we could have really used a boost to Blizzard damage. Frost's single target is fine, but Blizzard is just sad. One of the worst AoE specs in the game. I think I will continue to use it on my mage until I get the 2 set for T13 and then I'll go Fire. Once Frost loses our 4 set, I don't think we're going to be competitive with single target anymore, compared to how well Arcane scales with gear due to their mastery, and how much of a buff Fire got.
I love Arcane. I dunno why, but I really like the idea of hitting someone with a good damage ability that also causes them to walk slowly, talk slowly, and act slowly.
I used to love Arcane too. It was easy and it did great damage. But after a year and a half of hitting mostly two buttons, it got boring. Even now that the spec is a bit more interactive due to the mastery, I still can't handle it. I really recommend at least giving frost a try, so you can see how a fun mage spec is played. =x Having to pay attention to all the different procs, and making sure you use them properly is a lot of fun to me. The elemental can go die in a fire for all I care, as long as I get to keep his freeze ability.
I actually have Frost as my off spec. I am not sure why, but I love my little Teal Tagalong.
I find him more annoying than anything else. He doesn't like following me unless I tell him to, although that's partly because of the macro I have set up to have him attack when I cast frostbolt. It's just annoying having to make sure he's close enough to my target to cast freeze when I need it. Plus it also has the annoying side effect of clearly marking me as a frost mage. In PuGs, this can be a bad thing, although I haven't gotten kicked from a group yet. Probably because I'm a good frost mage. 
Still, it gets rather annoying having people ask "Are you a frost mage!? 
"
Still, it gets rather annoying having people ask "Are you a frost mage!? 
"Wonder Gem PigtailsOfDoom wrote:
Still, it gets rather annoying having people ask "Are you a frost mage!? "
"lol, I'm going to have to remember that one.
Did LFR with my mage last night. First boss I did as frost and did pretty poorly on, which is odd since it's a single target fight. We did the boss with the slimes second, and I tried fire for that since there's lots of AoE and I suuuuucked! I need to get in some more practice, because I only did like 16k lol. Third boss I went back to frost and did 30k or so, which I was quite pleased with. Fourth boss I died about half way through because I accidentally blinked inside her bubble. >.> But I got some nice upgrades, I got the haste trinket, a wand and tier gloves. Which is funny, because I didn't win a damn thing on my priest, which is my main.
Did LFR with my mage last night. First boss I did as frost and did pretty poorly on, which is odd since it's a single target fight. We did the boss with the slimes second, and I tried fire for that since there's lots of AoE and I suuuuucked! I need to get in some more practice, because I only did like 16k lol. Third boss I went back to frost and did 30k or so, which I was quite pleased with. Fourth boss I died about half way through because I accidentally blinked inside her bubble. >.> But I got some nice upgrades, I got the haste trinket, a wand and tier gloves. Which is funny, because I didn't win a damn thing on my priest, which is my main.
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