The Enigma Order

Totalbiscuit rocks

So I've had some time to play with fire and frost. I must admit, frost has become pretty insane to play The dps isn't all that great, compared to fire. But it's a crap load of fun. They've really managed to bring the spec back to life.

Single target DPS: Good
Mana efficiency: Excellent
AOE DPS: Good
Rotation: Very fun
Utility/Control: High


Single target rotation/priority:
Spam FrB to FoF proc. (remember you can force 2 charges FoF with Water Elemental freeze, while casting a FrB)

With FoF up:
Deep Freeze if ready (and target is a boss)
FFB if Brain Freeze is ready
icelance.

Remember Brain Freeze FFB consumes ALL FoF charges - So i'd advise using an icelance first, and then follow up with FFB, if you have 2 FoF charges.

It may not look all that complicated. But believe me, it's pretty stressfull to play, as everything is happening pretty fast, and you're constantly making snap decisions.


Fire is great as well. You can't argue with the absolutely mad dps. But for single target dps, the rotation and feel hasn't really changed all that much. You'll need some adds before you can really open up the spec - but if you got adds, you can go absolutely nuts on everything in the room.

Single target DPS: Very Good
Mana efficiency: OK
AOE DPS: Insane
Rotation: fun
Utility/Control: Low


Single target rotation/priority:
Same as before. However you want to make sure you have a good ignite rolling, and a new LB on the target, before popping combustion. (normally right after a hotstreak). Allso remember Pyro applies scorch effect now, so scorch should probably only be used when opening on a new target.


A couple of things to note. Spirit is completely worthless to mages now, so you can safely reforge all the spirit you can get away with. Allso, I found by regemming all my blue sockets to int/hit (hit is blue now) - I could close the gap to 17% hit without having to put on extra hit items.

I'll be playing around with arcane a bit today, and post results later. But fire and frost simply seems lightyears ahead, in terms of tree design and play style. Arcane dps is probably still good - but you'll most likely fall asleep playing it


Word of caution: It seems caster dps in general, and fire dps in particular, will get hit by the nerf stick very soon.

Last edited by Busm (2010-10-18 02:21:05)

Was planning the same

I might try fire/arcane though - to see if arcane still holds up.

I did get som testing time in on arcane. The dps was quite good, was able to maintain about the same as fire on dummies, and you basically have infinite mana (and this was with gear reforged for fire). Ofcourse the big downsides of arcane are, that the playstyle is much the same as before (somewhat boring), and movement is penalized hard (Not alot of fights left where you can just stand still and nuke). Also, fire tends to scale better with raid buffs.

So I'd say fire will probably win out, on the account of movement. Other than that, it seems like a perfectly viable spec.

Single target DPS: Very Good (when stationary)
Mana efficiency: infinite
AOE DPS: low
Rotation: Somewhat stale
Utility/Control: Good


The playstyle that seemed to yield the best results for me was, start with molten armor up, pop everything and burn to 30-40% mana. Then evocate and switch to mage armor for a low burn rotation (3-4xAB MBAM). You can do some semi burns while waiting for evo, but try to keep your mana high as possible with gems, and lower rotations. When evo is about ready, switch to molten armor, pop everything and burn to 30-40% mana again - rinse repeat.


I would say that, for first time in mage history - all three specs are perfectly viable for raiding.

Last edited by Busm (2010-10-18 02:20:24)

So, had a go with arcane...

As predicted, the spec is quite boring. But the single target numbers are nothing to sneeze at - definately competative with fire. However, the spec still suffers from the same flaws it has throughout wotlk. Heavily reliant on evocation (which can easily go wrong), and movement is very costly for dps.

Still, works great for fights where you can stand still for reasonable amounts of time. And the short term burst is off the charts.



I posted some stat priorities earlier. After reading a bit on EJ's and what not, I'll try to update them, as some of my assumption seems to have been a little of.

Assuming hit cap is reached...

Frost:
Crit to 33%
Mastery
Haste

There's a soft cap on crit in frost, as shatter gives you 3x crit chance. So anything above 33.3...% is somewhat wasted. Only frostbolt will benefit from it, which is only about 40-50% of our damage. Remember to include molten armor, and raid buffs. I believe you can still get 10% from raid, and 5% from molten. So you can go as low as 18-20% if you're only using it for 25 man raiding (25% if you want to play it safe).

Additional crit should be reforged to mastery then haste. And haste to mastery where possible.


Fire:
Crit
Haste
Mastery

Crit is obviously good, but haste allso has its advantages, as you can get more dot ticks in, with a high haste. I still believe crit is on top, but at very high levels of crit, you might want to considder dumping a bit into haste, and vice versa. Mastery does not seem to be high on the list for fire.



Arcane:
?

It's a bit hard to say. Mastery is definately good for arcane in the low burn phases. But for full burn, it quickly loses it's value as mana drops. Haste still seems important to some extend, but not as much as before. Crit is allso valueble, as it has no mana cost attached (unlike haste). Until some actual numbers gets produced, I think you should simply try to keep haste untill you drop below the threshold for sustaining an 4xAB/Abr rotation, with raid buffs and mage armor. Then put the rest in crit or mastery.

Last edited by Busm (2010-10-18 02:31:53)