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.
With current content in mind I have to disagree. In Naxx there is unavoidable damage in: Faerlina, Maexxna, Grobbulus, Thaddius, Loatheb and Gothik (Rider aura). Sure, for a couple of these you could spam GNPP or GFPP like mad and mitigate some of it, but the fact remains that Ice Barrier is a good chunk of absorption every 30 seconds. Every heal I don't need is a heal someone else in the raid can get. Also, what would you get instead of Ice Barrier in PVE? Your options are basically to throw the point somewhere else in Frost (stupid) or to get Presence of Mind. PoM is largely useless in PVE aside from a few parlor tricks with aoe or cc. Most PvE Frost specs are going to be either cut off around 23 points or deep enough to make the talent worthwhile. Unless you're raiding with a pvp spec I guess, in that case this entire frost vs fire argument is mostly moot.
Well, Frost has a bit different setup from Fire to be effective. I know a mage who blew about ~ 2/3 of his DKP he had just for the switch from Frost to Fire. (He had to replace his wand, his boots, an enchant and he was low on critgear.) I switched pretty easily, apart from a wand, I didn't have a lot of problems. (No glove enchant and had NW boots and Ringo's.) I lost about 30 damage in the switch, but quickly replaced the wand and finally got NW gloves, so I added some crit here and there.
I think, in a 8 Fire / 1 Frost situation you'd be contributing more than Firemage 6, 7 and 8, and possibly 5 too, provided all else is equal. Ofcourse, I'm calling perfect situations here, and mostly it will depend on gear, skill and luck of how the Ignites are gonna roll out. I switched as one of the first to Fire, apart from our two lifetime Fire guys and our resident Elementalist and the change was quite appearant. :) Then again, we usually run with 5/6 Magi, and most of the time, there is one Frostie along, out of 4 we have atm. (1 being a new recruit who's getting geared in BWL as soon as NW decides to drop again.)
And, ofcourse, faction still helps, as I'm alliance and can safely go and use Scorch 1 to regen mana, provided JoW is up. As horde, you cannot do so...
Deep Frost is very good for fights like Gothik where Frost Nova is used frequently and Ice Barrier mitigates a lot of damage. Deep Fire is better for fights like Thaddius or Loatheb where high sustained dps is king. That said, its easier to do survive Gothik with fire mages than meet the dps budget on Thaddius/Loatheb with frost mages.
As for ice block, the last time it played a significant value for us was when we had mages blink in and Ice Block/Coldsnap/Ice Block on Huhuran in pairs. I'd guess with the craftable NR available now, learning Huhuran without two ice block soaks wouldn't be too hard.
Willfully saccing two high dps casters during the <30% huhuran burndown seems like madness to me, but yeah, I've only really done Huhuran after the new NR was added.
I think deep frost is good for when you first are learning stuff so you have ice barrier for the extra health (and of course it rules in PvP), but the higher dps of fire is better overall currently.
This may change though, but I doubt it.
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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.
With current content in mind I have to disagree. In Naxx there is unavoidable damage in: Faerlina, Maexxna, Grobbulus, Thaddius, Loatheb and Gothik (Rider aura). Sure, for a couple of these you could spam GNPP or GFPP like mad and mitigate some of it, but the fact remains that Ice Barrier is a good chunk of absorption every 30 seconds. Every heal I don't need is a heal someone else in the raid can get. Also, what would you get instead of Ice Barrier in PVE? Your options are basically to throw the point somewhere else in Frost (stupid) or to get Presence of Mind. PoM is largely useless in PVE aside from a few parlor tricks with aoe or cc. Most PvE Frost specs are going to be either cut off around 23 points or deep enough to make the talent worthwhile. Unless you're raiding with a pvp spec I guess, in that case this entire frost vs fire argument is mostly moot.
Aye, you have some very vaild points. Ice Barrier does its job for damage mitigation, however I don't like it. Having to stop and activate it every minute takes away from your dps and mana pool. I also think it depends on the spec of the other mages in the raid. If you are the only frost mage, being a Winter's Chill spec isn't that great. If you're the Winter's Chill bitch, then it would probably be wise to get it for all around purposes. PoM adds a VERY small dps increase, but not enough to make it into a worthwhile arguement. I like having the bigger mana pool and dmg/crit that Arcane Instability offers. I was a 28/0/23 before patch 1.11 and its the build I have now. I tried 21/0/30 post patch 1.11 and never liked it. I've always had Iceblock and PoM and I've learned to play that build for what seems like forever.
A guildmate of mine asked me if he should spec IB the other day. He had just rerolled a mage and decided to make it his main. I told him "Its really preference above anything and you can either get by w/ or w/o it. I feel I've learned to survive well enough to not ever need it." Being that he was new to the class, he took it, out of preference.
My guild is probably a victim of my own success. I started the game as frost and stuck with it, mostly because I liked the idea of it than because I had any great appreciaition for its benefits/deficits compared to fire.
When we first started 40 man raids, I was the only deep frost mage we had and for a while I trailed in the DPS charts. However, early on I started delving into some of the math behind the numbers and started focusing on maximizing my damage output. In a few months, I was the top DPS caster on our runs. By the time we got to BWL, I could give many of the rogues a run for their money.
Of course, seeing my name leading the damage charts wasn't lost on my fellow mages, particularly new recruits. So they started respeccing Frost as well. Consequently, our main raiders are virtually all Frost.
Now I suppose if I wanted to I could respec fire and bring along 2-3 other mages with me. However, I just can't quite give it up. First, I absolutely love Ice Block. Yeah, yeah, call it a crutch if you want, but that one spell keeps me alive 2-3 times a raid. I also find it handy as a debuff clear in PvP.
Second, we've always had healer issues in my guild. It seems like whenever a ton of priests show up to raid, two thirds of our druids can't make it. And seems like we're always short 1 paladin. As such, we end up having to go with high DPS, but not much in the way of heals.
Tack onto that lack of healers my general lack of hitpoints. For quite some time, I epitomized the glass cannon. My emphasis on high DPS gear let me top the damage charts in a full BWL run (via all the AoE in the Suppression Room), but it also gave me the lowest stamina in the entire raid. I've improved that a bit, but my margin for error is always fairly thin. As such, I can't rely on excellent healers to backstop my bad luck all the time. Smart playing and and consumables can mitigate it somewhat, but frost spec helps as well.
I did give some thought to respeccing once, but then we had Ringo's Blizzard Boots drop. Twice. First pair was sharded, but I just couldn't bear to see it go past a second time. *shrug*
At the end of the day, though, I just like the playstyle. Whether raiding, PvPing, or just solo farming/questing, I like how a Frost mage plays. As such, I'll stick with Frost.
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.
Hope this helps.
well, I would talk to the firemages in your guild because they should be outdamaging you by quite a lot so they must be doing something wrong. I'm quite sure I could outdamage a frostmage with 200 more +dmg on his gear.
Stories about how a much better geared frost mage trying to top out their dps out-damaging undergeared fire mages who may or may not be trying doesn't terribly help answer the question.
I think it's pretty much a given at this point that given equal gear, competence and desire, a fire mage will outdamage a frost mage in AQ40 and Naxx. As the number of fire mages increase, the overall gap will increase as well.
What's at issue here is whether ice block and ice barrier provide an indirect dps increase by allowing a frost mage to live when a fire mage would fall (dead mage does zero dps, etc. etc.).
As a former 28/0/23 frost mage, I definitely enjoyed the benefits (not necessarily a "crutch") of ice block - especially before we were given our lovely -threat reduction. In Naxx, I wouldn't mind having ice block, especially when cleanses come slower-than-expected or something else goes wrong. However, I feel that since I spec'ed fire, I've forced myself to become more aware of my surrounds without the "plan-B" of ice barrier / block. Sure I'll die on trash once in awhile when block would have saved me, but for boss fights, the mob is probably on me because a tank died or missed their add - not anything I could have done. The huge dps (and fun-factor) boost I've gotten from spec'ing fire is more than worth the extra level of awareness I need to maintain.
The real problem I have is with frost mages who don't expect to do well with this DPS *because* they are frost, and in turn defend their statements by saying that they have increased survivability in exchange. I get that quite a bit from frost mages I know and/or raid with, and it's terribly frustrating. Better survivability isn't a free pass for low dps. Just as fire mages are expected to mitigate their weaknesses through higher mana pot and limited invulnerability potion usage, can't frost mages use more consumables to make up for their lower DPS ceiling? Just a thought.
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.
When did I say go without Clearcasting? I never said that. 10/19/21 works fine, maybe a lil' less dmg than a full fire mage but it will work with the other fire mages and allow for a frost supplemental.
Originally Posted by krucifix85
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When did I say go without Clearcasting? I never said that. 10/19/21 works fine, maybe a lil' less dmg than a full fire mage but it will work with the other fire mages and allow for a frost supplemental.
Elemental in that respect would lose 6% crit and 10% damage, I consider that a fairly significant tradeoff just to get Ice Block when you're likely not going to utilize Shatter and other lower tier frost talents.
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.
With current content in mind I have to disagree. In Naxx there is unavoidable damage in: Faerlina, Maexxna, Grobbulus, Thaddius, Loatheb and Gothik (Rider aura). Sure, for a couple of these you could spam GNPP or GFPP like mad and mitigate some of it, but the fact remains that Ice Barrier is a good chunk of absorption every 30 seconds. Every heal I don't need is a heal someone else in the raid can get. Also, what would you get instead of Ice Barrier in PVE? Your options are basically to throw the point somewhere else in Frost (stupid) or to get Presence of Mind. PoM is largely useless in PVE aside from a few parlor tricks with aoe or cc. Most PvE Frost specs are going to be either cut off around 23 points or deep enough to make the talent worthwhile. Unless you're raiding with a pvp spec I guess, in that case this entire frost vs fire argument is mostly moot.
The problem is that while Ice Barrier does mitigate damage, it mitigates it less efficiently than a heal. The only times when Ice Barrier is superior is when you are one shot (which should not happen unless you make a mistake) or when healing is constraint by encounter design (having mages spec Ice Barrier to reduce the number of healers in your raid is counterproductive).
Yes, Ice Barrier might allow me to survive when I pull aggro since it buys me that extra second the tank needs to regain aggro, but on many endgame fights these days, the aggro-puller dying is the least of your worries since the boss using <nasty AoE> inside the raid can be enough for a wipe.
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.
Hope this helps.
well, I would talk to the firemages in your guild because they should be outdamaging you by quite a lot so they must be doing something wrong. I'm quite sure I could outdamage a frostmage with 200 more +dmg on his gear.
The way I see it in pve, mages are around only for dps. And since fireball is the highest dps possible, firespec is the way to go! But it really boils downs to personal preference.
As a firemage, I don't see heavy damage or aggro pulling when everything goes right. If I do pull aggro, or i've suddenly been hit with a 3k cleave, I wouldn’t be wishing for a different spec but rather questioning the rest of the raid as to why this happened. The OP gave an example of Princess Huhuran with a few members of the wall dying early. Under such a situation, yeah Iceblock helps. But ideally you want to avoid such mistakes completely. Another example is on Lothab last week. We had 1 mage an elementalist spec. Near the end of the fight, people were dying from the dooms because the fight was beyond the 5min mark. The iceblocking mage, along with a few high HP dudes finished off Lothab with everyone dead. Sure he bragged a little about not dying but he had done much less damage overall. I believe the first none ignite bitch firemage had a nice 100K damage lead over the 1 frostmage. Anyway if all the mages were fire, the fight may have been shorter and the end may have been less dramatic.
Iceblock/Icebarrier and good spells to have, but ultimately not needed to help with doing dips. Frost is by no means a lackluster spec, but the survivability options the tree gives, rarely come into play and used in raids.
The problem is that while Ice Barrier does mitigate damage, it mitigates it less efficiently than a heal. The only times when Ice Barrier is superior is when you are one shot (which should not happen unless you make a mistake) or when healing is constraint by encounter design (having mages spec Ice Barrier to reduce the number of healers in your raid is counterproductive).
Yes, Ice Barrier might allow me to survive when I pull aggro since it buys me that extra second the tank needs to regain aggro, but on many endgame fights these days, the aggro-puller dying is the least of your worries since the boss using <nasty AoE> inside the raid can be enough for a wipe.
I don't mean to sound like a dick or anything, but damage in Naxx is much different than the "You take aggro, you take damage" affairs of other content. On Thaddius I'm not taking damage because of pulling aggro. The same applies to Loatheb, Maexxna, Grand Widow Faerlina and a few other encounters in Naxxramas. I'll agree with you regarding content Eclipsed is on, but damage is taken all over the place in Naxx.
Originally Posted by Joink
. Near the end of the fight, people were dying from the dooms because the fight was beyond the 5min mark. The iceblocking mage, along with a few high HP dudes finished off Lothab with everyone dead. Sure he bragged a little about not dying but he had done much less damage overall. I believe the first none ignite bitch firemage had a nice 100K damage lead over the 1 frostmage. Anyway if all the mages were fire, the fight may have been shorter and the end may have been less dramatic.
Your frost mage should be higher than a fire mage who isn't getting ignites unless there's a notable gear gap between them. Loatheb is a fight where Ignite starvation is particularly easy to see, as well as being a fight where both specs are best for your dps if you bring a lot of mages.
I never said that you dont take damage. Please reread the first sentence of my post, quoted for your convenience. Ice Barrier is an inefficient way to mitigate damage unless the healers cannot heal or you would be one shot without it.
Originally Posted by Nurru
Originally Posted by Aphyrax
The problem is that while Ice Barrier does mitigate damage, it mitigates it less efficiently than a heal. The only times when Ice Barrier is superior is when you are one shot (which should not happen unless you make a mistake) or when healing is constraint by encounter design (having mages spec Ice Barrier to reduce the number of healers in your raid is counterproductive).
Yes, Ice Barrier might allow me to survive when I pull aggro since it buys me that extra second the tank needs to regain aggro, but on many endgame fights these days, the aggro-puller dying is the least of your worries since the boss using <nasty AoE> inside the raid can be enough for a wipe.
I don't mean to sound like a dick or anything, but damage in Naxx is much different than the "You take aggro, you take damage" affairs of other content. On Thaddius I'm not taking damage because of pulling aggro. The same applies to Loatheb, Maexxna, Grand Widow Faerlina and a few other encounters in Naxxramas.
Originally Posted by Joink
. Near the end of the fight, people were dying from the dooms because the fight was beyond the 5min mark. The iceblocking mage, along with a few high HP dudes finished off Lothab with everyone dead. Sure he bragged a little about not dying but he had done much less damage overall. I believe the first none ignite bitch firemage had a nice 100K damage lead over the 1 frostmage. Anyway if all the mages were fire, the fight may have been shorter and the end may have been less dramatic.
Your frost mage should be higher than a fire mage who isn't getting ignites unless there's a notable gear gap between them. Loatheb is a fight where Ignite starvation is particularly easy to see, as well as being a fight where both specs are best for your dps if you bring a lot of mages.
I never said that you dont take damage. Please reread the first sentence of my post, quoted for your convenience. Ice Barrier is an inefficient way to mitigate damage unless the healers cannot heal or you would be one shot without it.
Both of these situations can exist in Naxx, but the main point I'm trying to make is that if the entire raid is taking aoe damage then you can't scoff at mitigation. Yes, the healers eventually can heal everyone to full, but what's wrong with lowering the damage taken to the point where a HoT is all you need? I'm not arguing Fire vs Frost, it's more "Why wouldn't you get Ice Barrier if you're deep Frost". Fire mages can survive, yes, but if Frost mages can mitigate damage to less the burden on the healers I don't see the problem with it.
That and Ice Barrier / Ice Block save me a significant amount of SM farming for Loatheb. For that alone I treasure them.
-edit- I should note that I'm not saying damage mitigation is a good reason alone to spec Frost vs Fire, before that comes up.
Both of these situations can exist in Naxx, but the main point I'm trying to make is that if the entire raid is taking aoe damage then you can't scoff at mitigation. Yes, the healers eventually can heal everyone to full, but what's wrong with lowering the damage taken to the point where a HoT is all you need? I'm not arguing Fire vs Frost, it's more "Why wouldn't you get Ice Barrier if you're deep Frost". Fire mages can survive, yes, but if Frost mages can mitigate damage to less the burden on the healers I don't see the problem with it.
That and Ice Barrier / Ice Block save me a significant amount of SM farming for Loatheb. For that alone I treasure them.
I agree that if you are deep frost there is absolutely no reason not to get frost barrier. If you are not arguing fire vs frost then there is no disagreement since all I am saying is that Ice Barrier is not a selling point for frost when it comes to raiding. If you are already sold then good for you.
Gothik is seriously a poster-child for ice barrier on mages. The mobs that spawn do two shot a mage if one gets loose, and losing one mage can almost doom an attempt on Gothik. Besides, as mentioned before, where else would you spend that one point when you go deep frost?
I think the math works out also that after the 6th fire mage, the 7th mage gains more dps by being deep frost.
Gothik is seriously a poster-child for ice barrier on mages. The mobs that spawn do two shot a mage if one gets loose, and losing one mage can almost doom an attempt on Gothik. Besides, as mentioned before, where else would you spend that one point when you go deep frost?
I think the math works out also that after the 6th fire mage, the 7th mage gains more dps by being deep frost.
Not to mention if a mage's job is to nova Deathknight spawns he has no room for error. If he misses his nova timer he's unable to nova the next one as well, and so on until he waits for a spawn to pass and lets another take over.
I think the math works out also that after the 6th fire mage, the 7th mage gains more dps by being deep frost.
I would appreciate some solid numbers on this, if possible with a few different gear levels. Like I said I respecced fire after doing the math and seeing that with my gear scorch spam uses about as much mana per second as frostbolt spam (with a fire and frost spec respectively, of course), but scorch spam will do more damage per second and thus also more damage per mana. This calculation was without any rolling ignites so how many fire mages you have doesn't affect the result. (It is quite possible that someone else gets the credit for your crits all the time, but that doesn't make your _raid_ dps any lower; it just makes your damage meter mod think your personal dps is lower.)
Originally Posted by Nurru
Not to mention if a mage's job is to nova Deathknight spawns he has no room for error.
We killed Gothik for the first time tonight using zero frost novas, so yeah, "if". ;)
Going ice barrier is kind of a waste of point beyond one frost mage. Going 28/0/23 is a better raid dps spec if you have one ice barrier mage with winter's chill. The only fight where it is semi-useful is on Thaddius as you can use it as a reactive PW:S on yourself when you get an unlucky 3-4 chain lightnings on yourself.
10/03/06, 12:25 PM
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