Pure PvE Frost - Page 3

♦ Praetorian · 06/24/06, 11:22 PM

On a separate note, good lord, a bunch of AQ-geared Frost/Arcane mages absolutely tear through Ouro in 1.11. Never seen the last 20% go so quickly.

Thrillho · 06/24/06, 11:42 PM

Originally Posted by CrazyGamer

Interesting build PapaShlapa. It does indeed seem excellent for heavy damage dealing but how do you feel about the sacrifices you make to achieve that damage? Personally, I find my damage with frost quite sufficient and I love the great survivability I gain by having iceblock and ice barrier. Also, I could be wrong, but wouldn't frost be superior from a mana endurance point of view, even if fire may be able to outperform the damage sufficiently to still come out in top of overall damage?

Oh and how useful do you find the new Combustion in a raid setting?

It's identical to the build I used when we were doing Naxx on test; and it's excellent. I've been taking a bit of a break from playing for the past week (and I'll be off another week) since I have a ton of RL shit to take care of. I found Combustion to be really solid in a raid setting. I still haven't decided what spec I'm going to be, although I believe I have a certain reputation of polymorphing people on Nef that needs to be upheld.

The big difference with the Mage review as I see it, is that the best Fire PvE mage build is now a pretty poor PvP build, whereas the best Frost PvE build is extremely good for PvP. That's part of what's making my decision tougher as well.

It's hard to beat the mana efficiency and survivability elements of Frost.

arch · 06/25/06, 7:00 AM

Combustion is awesome. Here's the build I use now when pwning damagemeters:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent/?Rf0EZxgMzfcut0h

THe only thing I feel that I'm missing is arcane meditation, but I might somehow include it at some point.

Btw, this is offtopic and probably old news but apparently our new threat reductions stack additively , according to the KLHTreatmeter developer. That's pretty damn imba, and I can't really see the reason for that change oO

PapaShlapa · 06/25/06, 12:49 PM

I'm alliance, so with JOW up, scorch spam gets better mana efficiency for me than frostbolt, I think. It's been a while since I've run the numbers, but it worked out to be scorch barely ahead if I remember correctly. Bottom line, as I see it, is that I trade frost's survivability for better dps and dpm.

Also, I've found this 17/31/3 spec to be more than sufficient in PvP. I'll admit, not having ice block sucks when you're being assisted, but half the time with ice block, it'd be down, or they'd just come right back to you anyways, and you were dead anyways. My fireball crits right now, after ignite, are in the range of 2700-3100, and 1800ish on fireblast, totally unbuffed. I've got 21% crit on fireball(25 on scorch/fireblast). In PvP, that's a fuckton of burst damage. All it takes to kill someone is a quick fireball/fireblast combo, very often.

On the issue of combustion, I love it. Stack up 5 imp scorches on a boss, with COE up, pop Combustion, wait a few fireballs, then ZHC, and watch the 4-5k crits roll in. I've seen 1500+ ignites in Naxx. The really nice thing about Combustion that many people may not know about too, is it's relatively easy to actually get 4 crits out of it instead of 3. When you've gone through 2 crits, you're usually at 5 or 6 charges on average. Then just fireball/fireblast at the same time, and they'll more often than not, both crit. Makes for some pretty dirty ignite ticks.

The build just has SO much more flexibility in its nukes for raiding. Trash packs with low hp? Fireball. Trash single pulls with high hp? Scorch till 5 then fireball. Bosses? Scorch spam. Extra mana left at the end of the boss? Start fireball/fireblasting to blow through that mana. Extra mana at the end of a pull is wasted dps. It requires more thinking, and more knowledge of when to use what, in order to get the most out of it, but when you put the effort in, the returns are so much better than frostbolt spamming with 28/23.

BeavisNuke · 06/25/06, 1:11 PM

I'm not sure how useful Magic Absorption is for raiding but for solo farming magic-casting mobs or 5 mans in strath or something it is unbelievable. I've seen mobs completely refill my mana bar by chain-casting on me.

Copernicus · 06/25/06, 2:52 PM

Originally Posted by Praetorian

On a separate note, good lord, a bunch of AQ-geared Frost/Arcane mages absolutely tear through Ouro in 1.11. Never seen the last 20% go so quickly.

With Ice Barrier plus the new NR gear, I didn't take a single point of damage from Ouro the entire fight.

For Mage specs, Fire can have the mana effeciency of Frost, or it can scale up to do about 10-15% more damage at a much higher mana consumption. Lost in the adaptability is the survivability Frost gives with Ice Barrier/Ice Block.

Kobal · 06/25/06, 6:37 PM

Originally Posted by Copernicus

Originally Posted by Praetorian

On a separate note, good lord, a bunch of AQ-geared Frost/Arcane mages absolutely tear through Ouro in 1.11. Never seen the last 20% go so quickly.

With Ice Barrier plus the new NR gear, I didn't take a single point of damage from Ouro the entire fight.

For Mage specs, Fire can have the mana effeciency of Frost, or it can scale up to do about 10-15% more damage at a much higher mana consumption. Lost in the adaptability is the survivability Frost gives with Ice Barrier/Ice Block.

Am I right assuming that this assertion is only true once you start AQ40, and that before that in MC and BWL the fire mage would be at a rather severe disadvantage?

Goggles · 06/25/06, 7:28 PM

All the mobs in Molten Core seem to have high fire resistance but there are relatively few immune mobs. Blackwing Lair resists aren't a problem but Vael, Firemaw, Ebonroc, Flamegor and Nefarian are all immune to fire. Personally I didn't really have a problem in BWL but MC was a pain. I'm currently specced 10/33/8 although I'll probably move the 5 points in Imp. Frostbolt at some point to either Impact or Absoprtion.

Kobal · 06/26/06, 9:25 AM

One other thing I was wondering about, although it is only loosely related to the original topic: How valuable is +% spell hit gear now for mages?

With elemental precision theorycraft would imply that for fighting mobs of lvl 62 and below any +% spell hit is worthless, while for fighting lvl 63 mobs up to 10% are useful. Should mages change their wardrobe to fit the opponent, or rather disregard +% spell hit gear, if equivalent gear without it is available?

♦ Praetorian · 06/26/06, 10:26 AM

In theory, change wardrobe to fit opponent. In practice, there are 63s even among raid trash, and it's really raid-inefficient to gear up all your casters with +hit and also heavier +dam/crit stuff (well, until everyone who might want it has one, anyway). I certainly wouldn't go out of my way to get massive +hit (e.g., Angelista's), but don't avoid it on otherwise-good pieces (Bracers of Arcane Accuracy, Band of Forced Concentration, Acolyte Staff, etc.) either.

The other interesting issue is the Enigma 5-piece bonus. Really, between that and talents, you don't need +hit at all. Mages will break it up eventually, but in the interim, it pretty much gives you, by definition, all the +hit you need.

Maledict · 06/26/06, 10:48 AM

Enigma's bonus seems pretty worthless now to be honest with Elemental Precision. I'm not even fully BWL geared (still need 3 Nef items and 2 NW items), and I'm running at +12% to hit. So even I would never gt the full effect of Enigmas bonus. Only place I can see it being of use on is on a high FR encounter for a frost mage - as the resist roll for frostbolt is binary and takes into account both level difference and resists, Enigma's bonus would just keep proccing and proccing and stacking and stacking until you were able to cast as normal on the mob... :)

♦ Praetorian · 06/26/06, 10:55 AM

I'm not sure what the point is in evaluating the Enigma set bonus as an "almosy fully BWL geared" player. The point of the Enigma bonus is that it lets you ignore +hit entirely outside those five pieces. You can go for stuff like Ritssyn's and Fallen God over Forced Conc, Burrower's over Arcane Accuracy, etc., and end up with a really min/max'd set.

Brilliance · 06/26/06, 11:07 AM

Fire is amazing for dps.

With CoE and a scorch stat I have a 1900~ fireball. When I combust and ToEP, I drop 3k crits. The best part is the other fire mage in our guild (He is AP//Fire) plays off my scorches, and we jumped from being like 7-10 in dps to being able to hold #1 and 2 very easily. (I had a 2.2k ignite in nax and a 10k in bwl, crazy stuff o.o)

The only problem I current face with fire is mana. A "burn (kill it before it kills you) fight" really hurts me, even with evocation and have all 4 gems conjured. But fights where I can pace myself (Anub, Inscructor, Noth) I dont see any real problems

Kytrarewn · 06/26/06, 12:34 PM

Originally Posted by Praetorian

In theory, change wardrobe to fit opponent. In practice, there are 63s even among raid trash, and it's really raid-inefficient to gear up all your casters with +hit and also heavier +dam/crit stuff (well, until everyone who might want it has one, anyway). I certainly wouldn't go out of my way to get massive +hit (e.g., Angelista's), but don't avoid it on otherwise-good pieces (Bracers of Arcane Accuracy, Band of Forced Concentration, Acolyte Staff, etc.) either.

It takes a bit more micromanagement than I generally like, but since getting my ACL gloves, I've been swapping them, along with my mugger's belt, in and out between trash and bosses, so mage's really aren't the only class that have that issue.

As far as +Hit is concerned: Almost every mage is going to have 2 ZG enchants, and they are going to have E.Precision. That's 8% hit right there, and with the ZHC nerf, you'll be seeing a lot more Neltharion's Tears around, so that's 10%. That brings the spellhit chance against a 63 to 93, or 98 when the Enigma Bonus procs. Against a 62 it's the full 99% without wasting the Enigma Proc or any "weird" spellhit pieces (ie. Angelista's Shard), but if you pick up a Staff of the Ruins or Acolyte Staff, you're at the full 99% possible, without having to give up superior pieces like Gloves of Delusional Power, Eyestalk Waistband or (though this is debatable) allows you to use Shackles of the Unscarred instead of Arcane Accuracy (giving you a bit more flexibility against mobs resistant to your chosen spell school, and letting you pick up a "new" stat instead of getting more +Hit).

As far as fire mage sustainability, between Clearcasting and Master of Elements, my fire mage has been able to cast pretty close tio indefinitely while solo-grinding if I go with the Scorch (though that might be somewhat because of my scorch button having that damned "Clearcaster" macro) route, but if I get greedy and go for fireball, it's all gone within 4-ish 52 solo mobs. That said, even pre-1.11 in MC our fire/scorch mage was near the top of our Mage DMs. It's only going to be better in AQ/Naxx onward.

Papajan · 06/26/06, 2:14 PM

I specced all frost but Frost Warding, Arcane Subtlety for -10 resists, and 1 point into Impact (for fun). I haven't seen past Huhuran yet, but I haven't had too many mana problems between Evo, mana gems, Blessing and Judgement of Wisdom, demonic rune/bandage, and nightfin soup. I only use the last two on really long fights though.

It isn't really clear to me that you meant PvE raiding as opposed to PvE solo or 5-man. I like the nearly full-frost spec because it's good for raiding and really good for farming. If you're speccing frost entirely for raiding, then first figure out who in your raid has Winter's Chill and decide if you need Ice Barrier. It all revolves around those two decisions. If you want Ice Barrier to mitigate some damage or Winter's Chill to buff other frost mages, then you'll probably want 31 points in frost. A lot of the talents have little benefit in the raid fights I've been in (Frost Warding, Permafrost, Frostbite, Imp Blizz, Imp Frost Nova, Shatter, Imp Cone of Cold), so 31 points into frost is probably all you need for raiding. Cutting out talents like Frostbite also allows you to pick up some of the goodies in Arcane. Like others have said, Arcane Concentration (Clearcasting) is an incredible talent. Arcane Meditation is another wonderful talent to keep your mana up. Arcane Instability is an excellent talent for raiding as well, which is what the 28 arc 22 frost build is for. Magic Absorption... that's a tough call and I'd say it depends mostly on the resistance gear you have. If you're using the Runed Stygian set for shadow resist, it's probably not helpful - you already have a good source of mana. If you're using the Sylvan or Glacial set, it'll be helpful cause there's no source of mana on those pieces.

Originally Posted by Praetorian

In theory, change wardrobe to fit opponent. In practice, there are 63s even among raid trash, and it's really raid-inefficient to gear up all your casters with +hit and also heavier +dam/crit stuff (well, until everyone who might want it has one, anyway).

yeah, having sets per mob level in ItemRack or Wardrobe is a nice way to optimize your dps. My problem with varying to-hit based on mob level is that it requires more gear overall. For one, I've already got bag space problems between resist gear and conjured water. The second issue is that it requires taking more loot from 40-mans. This would have implications for my DKP as well as the gear of the rest of the raid.