[General] Arcane/Frost swapping

[Belicosa 11]

I've seen a lot of references saying that switching from frost to arcane and back requires very little adjustment in gear/stats.

 

My question is how little? Is it viable to swap specs between bosses?

 

This has probably been flogged to death by now, but I could not find it. It seems to me that the aoe and instant cast features of frost would be better for some of the fights in SoO while stand and cast fights favor arcane.

 

Apologies for the font color issue; this is the first time I have seen it. If a mod would fix it I would be very grateful.

Edited July 26, 2014 by Belicosa

[penance 0]

alright.. next time fix the color of your font. lol. there is a preview button by submit. when i switch between arcane and frost. i use the EXACT same gear and gems i use for arcane. i use frost for garrosh, IJ, and thok. the rest i use arcane. it really depends on the fight. both have great AOE. IT is very viable depending on what gear you have as well, my arcane gear ( main spec) alraedy has enough haste on it to soft cap my frost spec, so its very easy for me. 

 

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/stormrage/Temeria/advanced here is my arcane mage, ( armory is broken atm so its not totally accurate with my current gear) but with that gear that the armory shows, i could go back and forth with no gear change. Anything else?

[penance 0]

alright.. next time fix the color of your font. lol. there is a preview button by submit. when i switch between arcane and frost. i use the EXACT same gear and gems i use for arcane. i use frost for garrosh, IJ, and thok. the rest i use arcane. it really depends on the fight. both have great AOE. IT is very viable depending on what gear you have as well, my arcane gear ( main spec) alraedy has enough haste on it to soft cap my frost spec, so its very easy for me. 

 

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/stormrage/Temeria/advanced here is my arcane mage, ( armory is broken atm so its not totally accurate with my current gear) but with that gear that the armory shows, i could go back and forth with no gear change. Anything else?

btw, ignore my post about ur color. my browser screwed it up. sry..

[durrtygoodz 60]

If you want to play arcane mostly and swap to frost for some fights such as Blackfuse etc you should just go flat out mastery and then haste.

 

If, however, you want to be playing a good mix of the two, anywhere from 12k-14242 would be a solid area to aim for. 

 

Your arcane dps probably tanks a bit more from losing mastery than your frost dps will by losing haste so bare that in mind also.

[Berlinia 168]

The prime difference of Frost vs Arcane for me, is that I use the 4set for Arcane but not for Frost. 
If you wanted to create a set that would be a mix of the two I would go with the 4set, Garrosh head offpiece, and then Haste to 14242, Mastery, Haste post 14242 and completely ignore crit.

[Belicosa 11]

Thanks for all the suggestions!

[Eschotaeus 0]

I switched to arcane from frost a few days ago, so I have some recent experience with this.

 

I'm not sure how viable it'll be to switch between the two from boss to boss. The biggest difference is that frost wants haste to 14,242 rating and then mastery (or full haste, if you go that route; see Akraen's guide for details), where arcane only wants ~9450 haste before going full mastery.

 

If you get frost's 14242 haste rating, that's a whole lot of mastery your arcane spec won't have. Since mastery is great for arcane and good for frost, and frost will lose less from mastery than arcane will from haste, I would gear and reforge for arcane and try to arrange it so you can get your haste up to 14242 with a few gear swaps for when you go frost. E.g. get haste boots/neck/rings/BBOY if necessary.

 

And, as another poster said, the 4p is much better for arcane than frost. So if you get a bunch of off-tier pieces with haste, that makes your job easier.

[Berlinia 168]

Actually I play Arcane with 14242 Haste as well! And Frost Armor. The same is done by our other Arcane mage and we both feel that the difference between Frost Armor and Mage Armor is miniscule and the fact that you are simply not punished extremely hard for moving is just splendid. Additionally I would argue that if you want to go with kind of a mixture setup you can go for haste to 14242 rest to mastery even though Frost benefits more by getting more haste.