There have been many threads comparing firemages vs. frostmages in the category of DPS and DPM(damage per mana) in a Naxx/AQ raid setting, and those types of questions can always be answered with quantitative emperical data. My question is a little less measurable than that though and I would like input from other fellow mages, frost and fire alike. I am currently specced as a frostmage and I am consistently behind 2 equally geared firemages (17/31/3) in my guild by about 10% dps on the charts during our Naxx raids. Seeing myself lower on the damage chart tempts me to immediately go respec fire to take advantage of the extra DPS. I am not afraid to chain drink mana potions so the mana problems firemages run into would be minimal for me. But by respeccing fire, I would be losing some of the most luxurious talents that mages have at their disposal; ice barrier and iceblock specifically. Also, I have been gearing specifically as a frostmage and items like my Cold Snap wand will not be very useful if I respec fire. I also have very little crit gear which is useful for fire. Here is my profile... http://ctprofiles.net/1632051 . I am trying to weigh the advantages of the extra dps the firemages consistently output vs. the unmeasureable utility that frostmages have at their disposal and whether I should make the switch or not.
I want to be specced where I can benefit the raid the most in a typical Naxx raid, so is the argument that frostmages are just as viable in Naxx a valid one? A frost spec with its extra survivability talents (ice barrier, ice block) helps mitigate damage I would otherwise sustain as a firemage making me more self-sufficient. I have always assumed this was beneficial to our healers who do not have to waste as much mana healing me when I take damage and also by being one less person they have to worry about healing. But on the flipside, if the raid does more DPS, less mana will be required from everyone since the fight will be shorter. Not being a healer myself, I am not sure at how accurate the previous statements are and would like some input from actual healers saying whether or not having frostmages makes it easier for them or if they would rather just have a slightly shorter fight due to extra dps and they don't mind the extra healing they must give firemages.
Also, being frost comes in handy in many clutch situations as well. For example, on one Princess Huhuran kill a few members of the wall died early so when I became silenced at 8% I ran in and iceblocked becoming part of the wall. A silenced firemage in that situation can do nothing but helplessly stand there and watch the raid wipe. Also, in AoE situations, firemages do not come close to my dps since they have to be more cautious while I can iceblock as soon as I start getting hit. And any encounter where I take debuffs I am able to wipe them completely without the assistance of other players as a frostmage.
Am I helping the raid more by outputting extra dps as a firemage or is it equally/more/less important to have slightly lower dps but having many other useful skills available that frostmages can employ? I know as a dps class that the amount of damage mages do is very important for the raids. But it is also important for the mage to be able to survive to the end of the encounters to be able to maximize that dps. Another followup question I have is since most of our mages are already specced fire, is my frost spec detrimental to the raid or does having variety more beneficial (ex: getting winter's chill debuff on the boss while the firemages are trying to put their own debuffs on)? I have seen several of the boss fights in Naxx performed but my own personal experiences in Naxx are limited to Instructor Razuvious and Anub'Rekhan so I would like to hear how useful frostmages/firemages are in all encounters.
In almost every serious fight I found Ice Barrier to be worthless back in the timeframe that I had it. Sure, it helps survivability slightly but the manacost was a hit at exactly the time I couldn't really afford to be losing mana. It isn't always an issue of course but frankly, once your healers are up to speed then taking damage is not a big problem unless you are getting insta-gibbed. Ice Block on the other hand, I do miss some although mostly for the debuff clearing. I carry limited invulnerability pots to counter the other issues somewhat but I will freely admit that it is no replacement really. They are perfect for aggressive AEing however but once your healers are used to shielding/healing mages and locks, this too should not be an issue. Iceblock is a crutch here and in the long term, your healers will learn although it will cost you some repairs in the meantime. I do also sometimes miss iceblock pulling but that's long nerfed anyhow.
I wouldn't say that ice mages don't have some extra tricks and that some of those tricks are not really quite nice. Still though, I find that I enjoy the playstyle of fire considerably more and if I can justify that through higher personal and raid damage output, all the better. For what it is worth, I rarely die prematurely in any serious encounters or at least when I do die, I wouldn't have lived as a frost mage excepting perhaps because I might lie lower on aggro through lowered damage output. I was a rogue in EQ though for many years and certainly subscribe to the "a dead rogue (mage in this case) deals no damage" philosophy. I just don't think that it's particularily applicable to WoW mages and the frost versus fire debate.
it's an interesting question, as in naxx (and some of AQ40) i found that for the first time i was beginning to get hit by stuff and i no longer had my frost tricks to back me up, but i was expected to be fire simply because of the level of dps we need to down most bosses within their timeframes.
however, i've gotten used to looking for gear that may be useful in situations where i might take something to the face. currently my gear looks like this
but i have whipped up an AoE profile as well to show the kind of thing i wear while AoEing
as far as your debuffs are concerned, i'm pretty sure they fixed the problems with some debuffs knocking others off by adding debuff slots, but i could be mistaken there.
but basically, i think you're probably going to be far more help to your raids by having increased dps, and helping fuel rolling ignites
I recently respecced to 10/38/3 from 2/0/49. After doing the math I saw that in a raid setting, with my gear (+530ish damage, +8 crit, +4 hit before talents), scorch is actually both higher dps and higher dpm than frostbolt, with mana usage per second approximately the same. Fireball is of course higher dps still but much bigger mana usage. So on stuff like Noth's adds you can spam scorch all day long with good enough results, then switch to fireball for Noth himself. I haven't had any mana problems really. With fire at least you have a choice to drink more mana pots in order to do more dps, if you're feeling cheap you can spam scorch and still do more damage than with frostbolt.
In PvE I almost never _really_ need ice block or ice barrier. The lack of these two only means that on Loatheb I can only survive until 5:40 instead of 6:10, and even that is quite moot as he dies before 5:40 anyway. :P
In PvP however I'm not yet sure if I like it. Super imba dps isn't gonna help you much when you're gouged on low health with no ice block. Matter of getting used to it most likely... and I'm not an expert PvPer by any means. ;)
When gauging your spec in terms of damage done, how do you quantify how much damage does survivability skills adds?
I'm sure that most people have considered that at some level -- we all know how much Combustion adds to the damage, but how much does damage Ice Block add? Firstly, Ice Block clearly does not contribute to your damage in any empirical manner. Instead it extends your survivability, thus allowing you to continue to pump out those Frostbolts where a Firemage would have bitten the aggro bullet.
Since this was not exactly calculable, I decided to jump into it and try out a Fire spec. The main replacement I used for Ice Block was Potions of Limited Invulnerability. Where in the past if the tank died and I happened to be next on the aggro list, I could have Ice Blocked, I now pop the Potion. It saves me, and it gives another tank a chance to pick up the mob. However, I'm pretty fortunate that the tanks in my guild are quite good so I'm usually NOT the next on the aggro list.
Since I specced into an ignite build, I have accidently pulled aggro once or twice because my fellow mages were all crit happy. But the Potion also saved me there ;)
So, go Fire and see if you like it, but bring your Potions of Limited Invulnerability.
The only thing I want to bring to attention is that Mages are commonly VERY quick to bring up Warlocks' 'survivability' in a raid environment when the two are being compared.
Now, I'm not bringing that up out of spite of anything, but more that they seem to feel as though they are very easy to kill, at least compared to a Warlock. I dunno about most Warlocks, but I would trade 1000hp for Blink and Frost Nova any day of the week, let alone Ice Block and Ice Barrier.
Toughness and survivability is a very useful quality, even in raiding where you're typically not getting pelted with any damage. A lot of fights are tank n spank disguised by perculiar mechanics and the only thing you need to be careful of is simply not pulling aggro. But, there are also some fights where collateral damage is the name of the game and if you're not careful, you're a red smear on the floor/wall. Just like you reminisced (sp?) in your own post, OP, having the defensive ability to survive where others would have surely died definately adds an element of pride.
There's always free cheese in the mouse traps, but the mice there ain't happy.
The frost survivability talents are vastly overrated. When I respecced fire I died all the time (mainly from pulling aggro - but I was smart enough to do the learning MC where you pulling aggro doesnt matter, and it was also before the mage review when mages had massive threat problems). But after a week or so I had it figured out and now I actually die less than all the frost mages in my guild. I don't pull aggro any more, and in cases where Ice Block would have saved me (say Nef zerg) it it is typically not a good idea to use it anyway because it would just hit an equally or more important target (another mage or a healer). The only fight where I really miss Ice Block is Huhuran.
I also disagree that frost has the better AoE. Yes Ice Block lets you become immune briefly but as soon as you pop out the mobs are back on you. And Flamestrike has the huge advantage over Blizzard that it is backloaded. You get no threat for 3 seconds. It also stacks with MQG. My Flamestrike with MQG does 420 DPS before combustion (according to theorycraft and assuming the mobs dont move out of the burn area). Combine that with Blastwave and you have unrivaled AoE DPS, even if the frost mage uses FN, CoC, cold snap, FN, CoC. Frost is of course vastly superior for AoE kiting but in a raid setting (again using the Nef zerg as the canonical example), fire AoE > frost AoE if you are AoE specced and have a MQG.
The one thing that Ice Block gives you is that you can now learn your aggro limits without dying or endangering the raid. It is also an awesome PvP ability (as is Ice Barrier). But in regular raids it is not needed and I doubt it will ever be needed because designing an encounter where a mage gets one-shot if he doesnt have Ice Barrier would be stupid. And if you dont get one shot, heals are more mana efficient than Ice Barrier.
Thanks for the replies so far. I am definately taking everything you guys say into consideration.
The general consensus so far it seems is that there are more benefits to going fire than staying frost because you can generally live without iceblock/ice barrier but the extra damage from fire really benefits the raid a lot. Only firemages have responded so far, I would really like to hear from a few frostmages who currently do Naxx as well and hear their rationale for staying frost. I know that there are many frostmages in Naxx guilds out their, do they stay frost in Naxx because of PvP reasons or do they find some reason that it is a good PvE spec for Naxx?
I also like the warlock's toughness as well Bibdy, mainly the reason I have been frost since I started this game. I really love living a lot, and have always envied warlocks because of all their extra stamina. Ice barrier and Iceblock have really been a big part of my playstyle, and I am really trying to see whether it is really necessary that I respec for the good of the raid (dps-wise) or if I am just being stubborn and using icebarrier/iceblock as a crutch to much.
I think the descision is about pesonal preference really. Our guild currently in a similar progress status to yourself and have 3 fire and 5 frost mages. Tho fire can be amazing damage - with the right gear and spec frost isn't exactly gimping raid dps by any means. All our mages were frost at one point but mysef and another specced fire because we nolonger needed frost to make BWL easier and i found i loved playing a fire mage much more (more then one button to spam! ^^)
I think its about communicating with the other mages in your guild, which tbh ours isnt that great at :P and choosing your spec which complements the other mages aswell as your own play style.
For example some of our mages are very heavy frost and have winters chill & ice barrior, but gimping the survivability aspect only a little and prosuming other mages in the guild have the winters chill talent, your can easily spec upto arcane instabilty increasing your crit and spell damage that bit more for bolt spammage. Slovenka is our highest dpsing frost mage and can often is seen above firemage damage - especially on trash. This is partly becasue his gear is sick, but mainly because he has a build that complements the other mage's specs, and maximises his own frostbolt spamming dps - while still keeping iceblock :)
Fire from my point of view, can be as almost as mana efficient as frost if you are using only scorch and your crit is quite high and also has more burst damage potential then frost for when needed eg. Huhu 30% and gargoles (not terrably important but nice :)) The only thing i miss in frost is ice block on those occasions when you might just have saved yourself but you ran out of cooldows and pots to use :(
I suggest you spec in which tree you prefer to play until you hit a wall where the only thing that is in your way is that dps is just too low - like Patchwerk perhapse.
Goodluck in your quest to find the best spec for you! :)
Our guild is has all fire mages pretty much, we love it because of the ignites we can stack up. The downside is that it pulls a ton of aggro if the ignite keeps ticking and some mage doesn't pay attention to stop casting. I've been fire for the most part anyways. Most of our healers
have good gear and can sustain healing for a very long time. Yes, I agree with Ikini that scorch is really mana efficient and can build up a ignite from other mages if you got some plus crit. Most of the time that I get hit for about 4000+ in Naxx I usually die. Ice barrier is just a waste of a talent in Naxx, sorry to say it, but so is Ice Block. I mean, In BWL, good for cromag and some breaths. Heigan isn't the place to use ice block, I doubt you would survive till the wave came back. It was in style for MC/BWL, but fire is the way to go now... You can try to use a elemental spec if your guild is in the transition from BWL/AQ to Naxx. You can have the benefit of Ignite and have the dmg of frost.
Just my little two cents...
Benassi
You can try to use a elemental spec if your guild is in the transition from BWL/AQ to Naxx. You can have the benefit of Ignite and have the dmg of frost.
PVE without Clearcasting is borderline crazytalk.
Anyhow, our guild's core has 3 Fire mages and 2 Frost mages. Personally, I like how our gear goals don't always overlap. All the Fire mages have Ring of the Eternal Flame, the frost mages all have Ringo's Blizzard Boots and Frostfire Pants (Just examples). The other frost mage and I sport 15-16% hit and in turn let the fire mages get first dibs on some of the crit items because of it. It's a good balance for us at least.
Meh,for Naxx you need both specs IMO. Frost gives better survivability and sustainability and fire gives mass dps. All three are very important,simply encourage your faster reacting (or simply better skilled) mages towards fire and the rest towards ice. Obviously,Gear is the great equalizer and makes the specs about even in the end (Although its fun to laugh at the mages with +800 spell dmg but are barely squeaking by 4khp and constantly die)
As for Warlocks versus Mages,mages have more " Oh shit im gonna die" tricks to save them but warlocks will routinely take hits that would oneshot a mage. That goes for AQ40 aswell (Ouro & C'thun specially). Even a decent geared SM/Ruin warlock will have 6k+hp with imp and raid buffs,and can easily stay in for a sandblast/impale/screwed-up-los-webwrap/rupture etc. If the warlock is smart and cautious,he will never die unless the raid is in the process of wiping/near-wiping. The mage will somtimes simply be oneshot no matter what he does.
Money is not happiness. Yachts are not happiness. Hot women are not Happiness.
Being stinking rich on a yacht with hot women sure as hell is though.
first of all its hard to tell in general, whether to spec frost or fire. it pretty much depends on ur individual situation: if u and ur guild are stuck at patchwerk b/c u lack dps, then a respec to fire (by more than a single mage ofc) would be indeed helpful, as it should be general consensus that firemages dps is superior for various reasons. same counts for loatheb. if on the other hand u and ur guild rather have survivability issues, when healing isnt good enough (lets say on thaddius for example) or lack the ability to cc their designated mobs (e.g. on gothik), adding iceblock/barrier might be reasonable.
given ur personal situation (being on anub and razu), there isnt imo an urgent reason for a respec atm, as both fights arent really dps dependant. u will prolly also want to have icebarrier on faerlina, which would be ur next boss fight. and as long as ur current spec is "good enough", u prolly shouldnt take the "respec risk" too: it seems that ppl actually perform best when they feel comfortable and familiar with their spec, and giving up a familiar spec rather harms ur performance, at least until u get used to it. also note, that playing a firespec is a bit more pretentious, with having 2-3 single target dmg-spells instead of 1, and having to deal with ignites, so u prolly need a while until u optimized ur performance. although u can also argue, that respeccing early, before u actually "need" the new spec would make sense too having this in mind ;)
one last thing id like to add:
u wrote a lot about survivability from frost talents, but on the other hand completely ignored the talent, that give firemages an extra secureness: impact. now im well aware, that most (if not all) bosses are stun-immune, but esp. naxxramas has enough boss fights with (stunnable!) adds or spawns. and proccing impact on noth adds (esp those ae mages) as well as on pesky deathknights at gothik is quite helpful, although its hard to figure, how much dmg-mitigation an impact proc is worth. but note that an impact proc might not only prevent dmg to u, but also to others in the raid. proccing impact on blastwave in AE situations helps too btw, although i cant say for sure if anub and maexxna spawns are stunnable tbh ... gonna pay attention next time ;)
From a non-mage, raidleader perspective: Stay frost.
Tho my guild doesn't rly have a DPS problem (PW 1st down in 6.20 with 16 healers, GWF down with 1 pre-blown add and last add sacced before final enrage, Maexxna 10% pre first enrage stun... Just for measures) so i might be a bit biased.
I LOVE my mages in Frost... On fights like Faerlina, Anub (yes.. i hate him), Noth and alike they kept getting killed... A well timed iceblock, and a barrier to help in most cases, is immense.
It all comes down to the individual mage and the raid... Do you seldomly die to adds on anub, bolts on faerlina, noth tele-aggro or alike? Go Fire.... If you have a problem staying alive, go frost.
My guild is in the same state of progression as you guys (Anub/Razuvious down, working on C'Thun), so I have no experience with any of the later encounters in Naxx, but I did switched from a frost heavy build (9/0/42 if I recall correctly), to my current 15/33/3 build about 3 months ago, and have had to change a few things about my playstyle.
The lack of ice barrier and ice block has made me "work with what I got" more, which means that I have mana shield up on fights where I know I'll be taking random physical damage, I swap in some stamina gear for splash heavy fights (ZG robes and bracers with sta/hp enchants), switch to ice armour on stuff like DK wing trash, use NR pots/elixir of poison resistance/healing/invulnv pots more. Things that I didn't really think about before, but now can often mean that I survive some burst I was dying to when I switched to fire.
Unrelated to gear, but I also like the idea of having a 31 point talent that you actually want to use every time it's up, instead of more situational talents like ice block/barrier.
One thing that should be mentioned here is that stacking fire mages becomes counterproductive past a certain point -- because of the way ignite works. I have not personally worked out the math for the point at which this happens, but I heard a figure of 5 fire mages tossed around.
Personally I share Praetorian's philosophy where an even spec split (among specs that aren't obviously bad for raids) is best for long term progression, even if this makes certain fights slightly less than ideal.
In my guild we have 6 combustion specced mages and 2 frostmages and overall firemages perform a lot better.
The actual use of iceblock is very limited, 90% of it's use is on trashmobs and on bossfights a good mage should avoid getting a lot of damage.
People saying a living frostmage > a dead firemage is only partially true. If I die on a fight I probably wouldn't be saved by iceblock or I did more damage than the frostmage anyways.
In my opinion ice barrier is a pvp spell, it's mana cost is huge and it's a waste of keeping it up all the time.
AND fire is more fun in my opinions, more spells to use, you need more focus and stealing ignites is awesome :p
Meh, I jumped the bandwagon of speccing Fire about 2 months ago now, and though I have had times where I wished I had Ice Block and Barrier. (Sartura, Anub come to mind mostly.), one can live without. Just bring Limited Invul pots. It is annoying in the start, but I can still do what I did just fine in solo PvE terms. (Still kiting stuff around.), and my damage in PvP and PvE raiding has gone up a lot, even though survivability is down. Though I tend to be number x+1 on the aggro list a lot, if x is the number of tanks you use on a certain fight. ;) But hey, that's life. Most magi are Fire now, with some Frosties still there. I think that the switching point was 5 Fire magi, but I'm not that sure.
Oh, and the Combustion cooldown coincided lovely with that of Power Infusion, if you got priests specced for it.
One thing that should be mentioned here is that stacking fire mages becomes counterproductive past a certain point -- because of the way ignite works. I have not personally worked out the math for the point at which this happens, but I heard a figure of 5 fire mages tossed around.
Here is a link to the math posted on the european mage forums.
I'm going to agree with the raid leader perspective above even though I am a mage. If you don't seem to have the micro required to stand in the right spots to not take damage or you don't know what you are going to live through DPSing a bunch of adds that might not be tanked well, go/stay Frost. For guilds behind where ya'll are at, entry mages with < +350 spell damage should completely be Frost, it isn't really till the +400-650 range that you really start to see the 1.0 coefficent for Fireball vs. the 0.86 modifier that Frost gets (oh how I wish FB11 was a 3.5s cast base :D, sorry for the tangent).
I've been every possible spec under the sun and they all have some strengths/weaknesses. If you don't have 3-4 other Fire mages to roll ignites with (and a good system for avoiding death, quickly soulstoning, or having a BR available for lucky Mr. Ignite) and you have some deep frost spec mage in your raid with Winter's Chill I've found the best raid build for me is 28/0/23 ( http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=RbxEb0fohZVA0cofz ). You don't have Ice Barrier but you do have 20s worth of Ice Block available. I generally stand "in the right spot" so stamina/splash damage hasn't been too big of a concern. My second choice for raid build is the "Patchwerk" build of 17/31/3. In that build you've got to be very cautious on everything except boss fights where solid controlled agro will be in place because your only "oh shit" button is to blink to the tank and die.
The only things I consider when looking at a piece of gear is +damage (this is either raw damage, crit, or hit, scale the crit or hit based off your build/gear to get matmatical approximation of what each is worth for you) followed way behind by Mana/5 and Spirit. Stamina and Intellect don't even enter into consideration as our horrid 59.5 Int/1% crit ratio doesn't even really make calculating that in worth it on almost all gear. Seriously if you're taking enough damage to die from 3.5k raid buffed health but you're living with 5k raid buffed health figure out how to avoid 1.5k of that damage (I have about 4-4.2k depending on imp/no imp and if the fort/mark are trained, yeah I'm horde). I don't ever expect to get a heal from the raid except in specific AoE/kiting situations so having more health gives you an extra starting buffer but not any added sustainability (same view I have on max mana).
In summary if you haven't tried 28/0/23 yet, give it a run and you might close that gap versus the fire guys a bit more. Based on your gear (the OP) you may want to look into some Ringo's, a Mana Igniting Cord (not Firemaw's Crap, can be discussed elsewhere but its actually a downgrade in the higher +damage ranges), Rockfury Bracers. This would still leave you with 3P NW for threat reduction and up your damage more. Go back to 5/8 for anything you need the large radius AoE on but the rest of the FB spamming time you're leaving DPS on the table.
We bring four to six fire mages and have cleared everything up to Loatheb. There are a few fights where Ice Barrier would be useful (Loatheb, Maex, Gothik, and GWF) but those can be overcome with consumables. There are fights where Frost control would be useful as well (Gluth). But all that stuff can be overcome, and after it's learned and solved, what the mages are left with is just less DPS than fire.
There's nothing really where Frost makes the fight due to survivability, while there are plenty of fights where just more DPS can be the fight winner.
One thing that should be mentioned here is that stacking fire mages becomes counterproductive past a certain point -- because of the way ignite works. I have not personally worked out the math for the point at which this happens, but I heard a figure of 5 fire mages tossed around.
Here is a link to the math posted on the european mage forums.
Thanks for this link. I am trying to apply it to my particular situation though. At the end of Summer, when our raid attendance was highest, we actually had a few Naxx raids where we had 8 firemages and me, the lonely frostmage. In this kind of situation, would my switching to fire actually output lower dps for the raid than I am currently contributing, or would I just be doing less dps than my potential as a firemage but still more than my current frost spec?
Edit: Also, with my current spec, I am usually 3rd on trash pulls in Naxx behind the 2 firemages equally geared as me, and on boss kills I am usually 7th or 8th overall, still behind the same two firemages. Is my current dps still "good enough," or am I still stunting my dps potential?
Hi Gilgilad, I read most of your post, good thoughts.
IMO, it depends on the other mages in the raid. Are they all specced fire? If so, I think you need to respec. Try a 28/0/23 build for a few weeks, especially if you're the only frost mage in the raid. Winter Chill is pretty crappy on trash if you're the only frost mage, and specced w/ it. I was 21/0/30 when 1.11 hit, and respecced a few weeks later. Also, it sounds like you put a lot of emphasis on the damage meters, are you keeping track of damage done during each boss fight? Thats where it really counts to me. Trash damage is kind of worthless.
As for which you should spec fire or frost overall, it really depends on your gear. I'm still frost b/c I can't get a high enough crit rate for my liking w/ my current gear for fire spec. Also, Ringo's Blizzard Boots own.
Ice Barrier is a noobie talent imo. Its good for when you first start raiding and are having trouble surviving, but once you learn how to live all the time, its useless. From what you said about chugging mana pots, it sounds like you farm a lot. You should try using Limited Invuln Pots, they rock. Its like a 2 minute Iceblock(Most of the stuff that kills me is physical melee damage). The mats are easy to farm. I'm amazed more fire mages in my guild don't have a stock of these. They have saved me countless times when Iceblock and Cold Snap have been down.
In my guild, we usually bring 6 mages to any AQ40 or Naxx raid. One is specced identical to me(I'm pretty sure) and the rest are 17/31/3. I'm top on damage 99% of the time, but it could change on any given night. Most, if not all, people in my guild would say my gear is significantly better. Http://www.ctprofiles.net/201674 is my profile. In short, I have 619 +dmg, 6 crit, 8 hit.
10/02/06, 7:31 PM
Similar Threads
