Arcane vs Fire - Not much DifferentFollow

I'm speaking from the mid level (End Game) - Not progression, not trapped in quest greens. So - I'm in mostly "Badge" Gear and 346 Heroics. I have Blue Gems, one or two Greens. Everything is enchanted - even if it's an Old Wrath Enchant. (Blackmagic is still easy for me with a 'chanter alt)

I'm not seeing this massive difference in DPS that people at high levels are seeing. If the RNG smile on me as a Fire - I can stack about 10k for my combustion. IF I'm super super lucky I can Spread combustion. But most time the RNG treats me like normal. I get about a 6-7k combustion and spreading it either doesn't happen or happens, but the other mobs die so quickly it doesn't matter.

In arcane I can /oom on trash pulls or the various "BIG" Trash mobs.... But if I just common sense and a little mana management - I'm usually easily doing 10k DPS.

So my findings:

Fire (Lucky with RNG) - 16 to 18k (Roughly 10% of the time)
Fire (Normal RNG) - 8-10k (Roughly 90% of the time)
Arcane (RNG is not an issue) - 10-11k (Roughly 100% of the time)

Frost is horribly lagging, but I have no idea how to FROST DPS - I'm Pulling 4.5k atm.


From a Damage perspective. On every fight my DPS rank is > my Damage Rank. But my damage rank is not terrbly lagging the others... It's usually about 120k maybe to 200k on most boss fights. (As I'm crit'ing for 40-55k - that's really not much more than a few shots...)

4.5k....
Frost is mostly the same as it used to be. Ice lance is more important, and timing is a little more important.
Frostbolt most of the time. You base your rotation around procs.
IF you have Brainfreeze but no Fingers of Frost, wait until you have 1 FoF or BF is getting close to expiring.
If you have BF and 2 FoF, pop one more FB, and at the VERY end of that cast, pop FFB, Ice Lance, and another IL if you get a BF proc off the FB.
What happens, is that you fire the FFB at the exact same time as the FB. FFB moves faster than frostbolt, and strikes the target, consuming your BF and the first FoF. By the time FB hits, the ICD on both BF and FoF is reset, and the frostbolt can trigger either or both.
These 'combos' are the key to high DPS numbers.
Burning your FoF IL at one FoF charge is going to kill your DPS. Burning a BF FFB without a FoF to crit the FFB is going to kill your DPS.
Use cooldowns all at once instead of spacing them out. This means IV, Trinkets, Mirrors, Racials, Herbalism, all at once. If you CAN'T pop them all at once, don't pop them. The exception is trinkets with short cooldowns that can pop more than once per MI.
You have time to Cold Snap and get another IV in before your images are dead, if you like.
In the last second or so of Images, if the tank doesn't have a TON of threat yet pop invis. Dead DPS does 0 DPS, and a full burn at the beginning of the fight as a frost mage will net you TONS of threat. You're OK while the MI are up because they soak threat for you.

This is all from beta memory as well as lower level and level 80 heroic post Cata experience. I don't have Cata so I can't comment on the latest and greatest end game frost mage changes, but from patch notes, none of the changes swap up the rotation since it went live.

I should mention that on a boss, the spell I forgot, Deep Freeze, should be used ASAP when it's available, ignoring all other priorities.

Also, I was playing around with FrostFire Orb a little when it went instant cast, but have no clue how it affects the live rotation. I assume it's like beta and fun, but mostly useless on a boss.

I don't know about Frost endgame, all of my data for 85 is from Beta. So, as I said, grain of salt.