Fire or Frost? 5.3 & 5.4

[Copymark 2]

Hello everyone!

 

As mentioned in the title of this thread, I am currently unsure about what spec I should play with my Mage. Especially because patch 5.4 is only 2 weeks away from being released, I need some serious advice on what spec will be dominant in the beginning of 5.4. (I am currently playing Frost, since my equip always lacked some crit)

 

When 5.2 came out, we Mages were more or less forced to play Frost. But since Fire scales so ridiculously with your gear, it became the dominant spec as people started to farm the raid. Now here comes my question. I had a little WoW-Pause during 5.2 progression and have recently started to do some of the HCs in order to get some gear for 5.4 raiding. I used to play Fire always but in 5.2 until now, my gear lacked the amounts of crit I needed to play Fire successfully. With a gearscore of about 515 I usually ended up with something like 25% crit (unbuffed) which made the Fire rotation feel like playing a slotmachine. As a result, I switched to Frost and was very happy with the outcome. That is until now.

 

Frost seems to scale rather badly with gear, so I thought that with my new gearscore of 532, it would be a good idea to go back to Fire and have some great results this time. Now, I don't know whether my equip will offer enough crit for me to play Fire effectively, neither do I know if Fire will even be the dominant spec in the beginning of 5.4 (with a 532 itemlevel) or if Frost will be chosen by most mages once again. And since I don't want to go Fire for 2 weeks now and then go back to Frost as soon as the new Patch is released, I seek your mighty advice.

 

So I started this thread to get some help from you guys.

 

Here's my armory: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/eredar/Copymark/advanced

 

I hope to hear from you soon and I am excited to see what you guys think of my situation

Edited August 15, 2013 by Copymark

[Manuel 0]

Well i am currently 537 and i can perform very good in Arcane tbh.....Frost indeed does not scale up good with ilvl.

 

For me stay like this.....and see after release what you will do...even though as i have read Bombs are going higher in damage in 5.4 and due to mastery in arcane.......bombs will be the key.

 

On the other hand Frost is not dependent on the debuff applied on your target in 5.4 so that is something to consider.

 

You have probably understood that i just hate Fire :)

 

I personally will stick with arcane till the release of 5.4 and probably stay the first week too...to test it.

[Mariketa 8]

Have you tested out your character's dps on the PTR? I usually do but haven't yet this time due to RL busy-ness. I'd be very interested to see data / get opinions from someone who has.

 

My toon is in a similar situation: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/dark-iron/Mariketa/simple  Mostly ToT Normal gear valor-upgraded with a couple heroic pieces thrown in. (ilvl 537)

 

I love Frost and will accept some dps loss to avoid swapping. If the disparity is too high, I will take Fire. (Do not care for arcane. I will only play arcane if it is hands-down best.) I am pretty awesome at Frost *brushes off frost-tipped fingernails* but I could get good at fire again with some effort. I really did enjoy fire when I played that spec, but there's an adjustment period that I dislike.

 

Honestly I doubt anyone could give us a "definitive" best spec. And many people dislike the constant spec swapping (me) - so many people run to the FotM. Last week I did LFR ToT3 (for funsies and hoping for pets) and got ambushed by a mage on their healer alt telling me how I was all wrong to do frost I should go fire and i'd "get 15k+ more dps on that fight - at least!". Well, maybe but 1. we killed it no problem no wipes. What I can get now is more than good enough for the content i'm doing (first few heroics in ToT, much less that LFR), and 2. with the patch coming out change is in the air. I'm real skeptical of "experts" telling me what to do on the tail end of content. I think blizz has done a much better job balancing the specs lately. What is most important? I was slamming most of the other dps on the meters both near top of damage done and near bottom of damage taken, and I generally know how to execute mechanics so I'm an asset to my raid team. Play what you like!

 

So what I did, and what I suggest you do, is - update your UI on your secondary fire spec and practice for 30 min. a couple times over the weekend on the target dummy. Try it out in a couple scenarios or something next week just to brush that skill off. (I did a couple brawler's bosses as fire too.) For the new raid I'm sticking with frost to start, but this way it won't be so painful to swap to fire if I feel like I'm losing too much dps.

Edited August 15, 2013 by Mariketa

[Belicosa 11]

Arcane is the only mage spec not getting nerfed in 5.4, so I will continue to do what I do.

[Oltier 471]

Arcane is the only mage spec not getting nerfed in 5.4, so I will continue to do what I do.

 

Frost doesn't get nerfed as well. It just scales so bad that it sucks basically..

[Widdicuss 0]

Most people agree that frost scales badly with gear, but I personally hate the rng nature of fire so have stuck with it till now.  Arcane suffered because you had to stand on your rune of power, but with the up coming change where you only have to be within 8 yards of the rune arcane may once again become viable.

[icyhott 6]

I to have been switching specs throughout these last couple of weeks before the release of 5.4. Mainly so that I can get a feel for all of them in case my core needs me to switch. I had tried fire around 515, and it just was not holding up at all. So I switched back to frost and my dps went up like 20k, which was great. Now that I have been farming normal and heroics for awhile, I have now reached 530 (no cloak or meta yet, started late). What I have noticed on my way from 515-530 was, I hardly increased my dps at all lol. Frost just does not scale well with gear at all, period. It is fun to play, but in its current state can not compete when you start doing some of the harder heroics where dps really counts.

 

I have now switched to fire and am excited to test it out tonight in my core as we clear the rest of tot tonight. I have about 8-10 percent more crit now than I did when I played it before. Just from testing in LFR and on dummies, I can see that I have increased all ready. I have always liked fire, but just didn't have the gear to sustain it this tier until now.

 

With the nerf coming to combustion in 5.4, I am not sure how well fire is going to do. Arcane is getting a nice buff with the rune of power being changed, frost is getting a great mastery change and no more having to keep frostbolt debuff up. I understand why fire is getting nerfed, but it is still a major nerf to the only CD it has lol. So the first couple of weeks will tell a lot about what spec is going to be the " go to " spec for the tier. I still feel fire will pull ahead at later levels, but frost/arcane might be the way to go at first. Our core has 2 mages, both of us are fire and are staying fire for the start of SoO. I have a strong feeling I will switch back to frost though a week or 2 into the tier, but am not 100% sure yet. It will all depend on how well frost scales with the new mastery and how the fights are designed.

[Akomagus 8]

I to have been switching specs throughout these last couple of weeks before the release of 5.4. Mainly so that I can get a feel for all of them in case my core needs me to switch. I had tried fire around 515, and it just was not holding up at all. So I switched back to frost and my dps went up like 20k, which was great. Now that I have been farming normal and heroics for awhile, I have now reached 530 (no cloak or meta yet, started late). What I have noticed on my way from 515-530 was, I hardly increased my dps at all lol. Frost just does not scale well with gear at all, period. It is fun to play, but in its current state can not compete when you start doing some of the harder heroics where dps really counts.

 

I have now switched to fire and am excited to test it out tonight in my core as we clear the rest of tot tonight. I have about 8-10 percent more crit now than I did when I played it before. Just from testing in LFR and on dummies, I can see that I have increased all ready. I have always liked fire, but just didn't have the gear to sustain it this tier until now.

 

With the nerf coming to combustion in 5.4, I am not sure how well fire is going to do. Arcane is getting a nice buff with the rune of power being changed, frost is getting a great mastery change and no more having to keep frostbolt debuff up. I understand why fire is getting nerfed, but it is still a major nerf to the only CD it has lol. So the first couple of weeks will tell a lot about what spec is going to be the " go to " spec for the tier. I still feel fire will pull ahead at later levels, but frost/arcane might be the way to go at first. Our core has 2 mages, both of us are fire and are staying fire for the start of SoO. I have a strong feeling I will switch back to frost though a week or 2 into the tier, but am not 100% sure yet. It will all depend on how well frost scales with the new mastery and how the fights are designed.

I'd be interesting in hearing how fire went for you.  My raid asked me to move back to Frost because they weren't happy with my fire output.  I think it's basically because it's tough getting off good combustions in some situations.  Also I probably just wasn't the best at it, but I still think the RNG completely kills it.  I can have a 160k ignite or a 30k ignite at any given time doing exactly the same thing and I just couldn't stand that.  I hope frost is fixed for 5.4.  Not many mages have chimed in to say how they are doing on the ptr....

[Vladamyr 169]

Frost is worse on ptr than it is live.  If you are in a normal raiding group then play what you like. Heroic progression groups may require you to play fire or arcane (much better damage at those ilvl's).  You'll never set dps records as frost but it doesn't matter for most groups because it's dps is still fine (but significantly behind the other two).  Arcane will pull ahead in multidot fights but fire is better single target currently.

[icyhott 6]

I'd be interesting in hearing how fire went for you.  My raid asked me to move back to Frost because they weren't happy with my fire output.  I think it's basically because it's tough getting off good combustions in some situations.  Also I probably just wasn't the best at it, but I still think the RNG completely kills it.  I can have a 160k ignite or a 30k ignite at any given time doing exactly the same thing and I just couldn't stand that.  I hope frost is fixed for 5.4.  Not many mages have chimed in to say how they are doing on the ptr....

First raid again as fire from my last experience. It actually went really well. H qon wasnt so good but I kept getting shafted by the shield dog during his phase and during the last phase when all 3 comes down. Had a 150k ignite that I was getting ready to combust off of and rng happened with the shields on my side. So my output was not very good on that one. But on consorts and lei shen I was in the top 3, which I never was when I played frost. I actually kept up with the other fire mage for most of consorts but he pulled away at the end, I couldn't get a trinket proc during lust to save my life lol. But I really did enjoy playing fire again and am probably gonna stay fire with arcane OS. I only keep frost currently for H horridon because I just hate dealing with the stupid dino.

[Scook999 8]

I don't have the time to do real raiding, so I will only raid using LFR, and the good side for me is I can stick with Frost :) Everything I see and read, get used to Fire and keep it. Frost just won't keep up at any time.

[Akomagus 8]

First raid again as fire from my last experience. It actually went really well. H qon wasnt so good but I kept getting shafted by the shield dog during his phase and during the last phase when all 3 comes down. Had a 150k ignite that I was getting ready to combust off of and rng happened with the shields on my side. So my output was not very good on that one. But on consorts and lei shen I was in the top 3, which I never was when I played frost. I actually kept up with the other fire mage for most of consorts but he pulled away at the end, I couldn't get a trinket proc during lust to save my life lol. But I really did enjoy playing fire again and am probably gonna stay fire with arcane OS. I only keep frost currently for H horridon because I just hate dealing with the stupid dino.

Well, i guess eventually i'll just have to go back and suck it up.  Hopefully in 5.4 getting screwed on a combustion won't kill your output like it does now....

[icyhott 6]

Well, i guess eventually i'll just have to go back and suck it up.  Hopefully in 5.4 getting screwed on a combustion won't kill your output like it does now....

 

For start of 5.4 I decided to do arcane. Only because of the combustion nerf. I had been trying to keep up with the other fire mage in our group for awhile until I recently found out he was one of the best ones on server, so I stopped trying lol. But the combustion nerf is what I am worried about. I always had trouble getting a decent ignite off unless its the begining of the fight, and with the nerf it's gonna make it harder for me. So I went arcane and have been doing well in my testing situations and things. So I will be raiding as arcane atleast for the first couple of weeks unless it turns out that fire still becomes dominant then I will switch back. Actually looking to raid on my boomkin as soon as I get him caught up on legendary =) lol.

[Belicosa 11]

The range buff that Blizzard implemented in 5.4 has turned out to be essential for the Immersius fight. In fact, the sha splashes almost make Incanter's ward worth it just for the mobility and instant cast.