Note that I was completely ignoring the T6 bonus, and assumed SSC level gear, which is probably what's accounting for the differences. T6 has bonus to fireball damage as well as more integrated +hit/crit that work better for fireball than AB.

With the gear that gives me 1500 fireball DPS and 1580 AB/fireball DPS i'm getting 2060 AB spam DPS, so the only reasons I would give for not speccing AB/fireball is extremely more mana intensive, less range, and every time you have to cast a 2.5s AB due to messing your rotation for whatever reason your DPS will drop down to significantly lower than fireball spamming. Not to mention getting little benefit from bloodlust/heroism.

Also since 3XAB-AM-scorch spec didn't have any changes either, it should still come close to AB/fireball and better if speccing it means a warlock will cast CoD/CoR instead of CoE. Of course it still has the same disadvantages as AB/fireball, with even worse mana consumption (or roughly equal with JoW 100% uptime).

Since with T5 level gear the specs are close in optimal conditions with the ab/fireball spec dropping in performance when just about anything isn't optimal for it, I can see how there is no point speccing anything other than fire with T6 gear levels with the bonus to fireball and loss/cost of the 2p T5 bonus.

What was changed that made people consider frost all of a sudden? I thought the DPS difference between frost and fire would remain the same after the removal of the damage coefficient tax...

I got the same results with Vontre's spreadsheet for my equip (T5, working on Kael). Then I tried the AB-ramp up on test today (see here) and it simply doesn't work the way it is theorycrafted (for me at least, 10/48/3 was about 1100dps on my first try on test and AB-rotations were always <900dps - edit: no molten fury, no buffs, no pots and arcane-equip!).
Let's face it: less dmg, a lot more difficult rotation, less mana, less advantages from heroism/bloodlust or haste rating, bugged AB-ramp up... arcane is dead.

Galzohar:

Firstly you quote "Also since 3XAB-AM-scorch spec didn't have any changes either, it should still come close to AB/fireball" while in the same post you refference Coeff. removal. How exactly will a spec that is highly dependent on TLC (which is getting nerfed) stay competitive with a spec which has 93% of it's damage (fireball) buffed by ~6%?

Secondly, while frost will remain below fire there has recently been the discovery of a bug in Elemental Precision causing it to give 3% additional to (at least) frostbolt. While not hugely signifficant in its self, this is further reason for people who like frost to spec. It also makes a good case for ex-arcane mages who are low on hit rate as a stop-gap: Spec frost for shits'n'giggles, see what it's like, get some more hit in the mean time and spec fire when you've had enough of interrupts and your elemental dying.

Lastly, running tests on a biased gear-setup (namely 2*T5) and then turning up on EJ posting simply "getting the 40/18/3 ABX3-fireballX2 doing slightly (1580 VS 1500) more DPS than pure fireball spamming" is missleading and impolite. When you present evidence it is your obligation to specify what testing conditions are. Clearly, for a spec who'se majority of damage is caused by AB, gear wich increases it by 20% will give a signifficant skew in results.

It has been proven time and time again.

There. Is. No. Arcane. In. 2.3.

I am not ready to completely give up on Arcane yet. Will try out arcane/fire with a rotation of ABx3, FBx2 and see how it goes. Yes, my gear is also biased because I have the two piece T5. But in my mind, two piece T5 is a lot more achievable than 4 piece T6. If you already have four piece T6, you have probably conquered all content including Illidan. In which case, it probably won't matter so much which spec you are in.

You're right, I missed it here.

As for the assumed 2/5 T5, many times in this thread it was repeated that AB simply sucks without 2/5 T5, so I assumed that everyone know that AB spec is not a good idea without 2/5 T5.

Note I've never meant to claim that arcane is worth speccing, the opposite, I was showing that even in perfect conditions it could be not useless, it's just not good enough, especially when you take into account the "messed up rotation", "ab debuff bug" and that a lot of guilds are now in T6 and have to downgrade to T5 to use AB, it's just not worth it.

As for frost, I'd redo the numbers to see the actual differences but unfortunately I don't have time for it ATM. 3% more hit plus the no DPS reduction due to level difference (which was never represented in my spreadsheets) could buff frost by quite a bit, just not sure if it would be enough or not after I fix the numbers.

Edit: Oops, thought this was in the general Mage 2.3 TC thread. Not much to do with arcane, but still some valid points/thoughts. Might move it over if it's worth it.


The -5% partial resists that frost does not have are a really nice boost.

The 3% hit is good at the beginning, but wanes when you get close to the hit cap without actively stacking for hit. And we don't even know if those 6% hit are intended. (Or, well, I think we do know, but we don't know if those with the power to change it know about it.)
I guess you could drop Belt of Blasting for Anetheron's Noose for some minimal damage gains and some stamina/intellect, same with Wand of the Forgotten Star to Carved Witch Doctor's Stick.
Even switchng from Tempest/Chronicle to Zhar'doom is just a very small gain for the loss of 34 hit rating.

Having run as frost for a week and a half now (Illidan, parasite duty and -75% slowing blizzard), my major concern about the Water Elemental is its low health.
I ran Molten Core with 1940 HP unbuffed ("frozen wrath" greens over T1/2, yay!) dieing every other minute to something, but the Water Elemental easily beats that.
Maybe it's because there is far more raid damage going around in HS/BT, but it gets one-or two-shot by about everything out there. I know you can't just simply double its health without breaking it more in PvP, but I think some AoE/DoT damage reduction might be a start.


I don't think that I can see Frost PvE going anywhere really from what I saw raiding as frost the last couple of days. The elemental dies too often, you're 100% vulnerable to interrupts (Teron/RoL, and some more to a lesser extent), and a major selling point Ice Block becomes trainable. (Don't start a new discussion on the value of it, it's been talked to death already!)
I see a potential in double Ice Block and Ice Barrier for survival fights, but your Elemental would die even more often.

I'll just wait and see what Frost21/Sunwell Plateau will bring us

I didn't go full arcane on my mage. I went 30/0/31 with mine frost/arc and i have to say the mana vs damage ratio is awesome!.

Your dps, however, is not. What made you choose that spec? Any sort of Frost spec is going to be mana efficient, and you managed to not get Arcane Power despite being so deep in the tree.