Well, this is a theorycrafting thread, and it's about throwing out some numbers to prove what you want to say. WWS doesn't really count, especially not a "look at my relative position, frost is fine" sort of assertion.

You could probably get a more complete explanation in the WWS thread, but even a cursory analysis shows that your numbers are basically high because everyone else is mediocre (or bad). Bupu, the other mage in the parse, is Arcane, not fire, and theorycraft predicts that Arcane is awful this patch. Unsurprisingly, Bupu is awful. Your demo and destro locks wandered around with an imp and sacced a fel hunter, respectively; also, your affliction locks are channeling Drain Life as a main nuke instead of Shadow Bolt, plus one of them was kiting striders. Your Vashj strat puts your rogue and hunters on elementals which entails waiting around for stuff to spawn, and therefore not doing dps, and so on. There are other reasons beyond "frost is strangely competitive" - and even if it is, this parse doesn't show it.

This is most definitely not true. It's easy passing the crit % that makes arc/frost higher dps than deep frost as a tier6 mage. With moonkin, retadin and sometimes WC I peak out at 50%+ crit. I posted some decent numbers by arcane frost a page back.

Well actually my spreadsheet will frequently claim that frost does slightly more dps than fire on a shortish fight. The difference as explained is in the soft factors, lack of a short-cast nuke, lack of pushback protection, lack of pet protection. Fire is just way more reliable.

There are some parts of what you're saying that I agree with. Yes, theoretical mathcraft doesn't really take into account all scenarios, and the rebuttal that vashj or kael are 'bad examples' because they don't involve sitting still and nuking for 5 minutes is bull. I'm sorry, but practically every fight that actually provides some measure of challenge has some sort of interruption to the ideal scenario, and different specs do react to those interruptions in different ways. Fights with long, forced pauses essentially increase the total uptime/frequency of temporary effects like AP or a water elemental for example, and this is frequently never taken into consideration.

That said, at T6 gear level, and in T6 encounters, fire will perform better, and with greater ease, in the largest number of situations. For every WWS parse of a frostie doing great dps on fight X by perfectly protecting their elemental, timing their cooldowns etc., you can find ten more of fire mages defeating them by doing nothing but mashing one button. There's just too much stacked against frost to make it succeed even when trying to arbitrarily weigh specific encounter mechanics - spell pushback alone will ruin your day in black temple.

My point was that Kael and Vashj are atypical encounters, and this is definitely the case when you compare them with the rest of the bosses that follow in Hyjal and BT. Yes there's no more Golemaggs, but Naj'entus, Supremus, Rage, Teron, Anetheron, etc. etc. are far more "tank and spank" than Vashj and Kael, and thus provide "better" DPS figures.

Well, again this is very atypical as you mention two hybrids which are certainly not the standard in high-end PvE. Shadow Priests and Feral Druids are essential while an Enhancement Shaman is very common. The rest, especially the two you mention, are much rarer. It's already been already tested that under high crit conditions, which can occur but are not the standard, Arcane-based specs can do very good damage.

There is no such thing as an atypical encounter.

Real specs should ideally be designed for real encounters. Hence why specs for ten minute encounters are laughed at when other specs (+spriest and an injected shaman) are more than enough. There do not exist encounters that make regen better than "sustained burst" whatever the fuck that is. All classes live at that level, save the 2-T5 mage, which is damned close.

Why is clearcasting shit? Because it is obviated by better mana regen. It is not in an of itself shit, it only shit because it serves a purpose that doesn't need to be filled. Mana is damage. If it is mana is counterspell or whatever... that encounter is so dumbed down, you can spell-steal or CS asleep.

Prove me wrong in sunwelll because there sure as hell is nothing in 2.3 to change my mind.

I think there is no one that doesn't believe a destrolock will out do a firemage very fine. I've had one bosskill lately where I don't have to move much where I beat our destrolock and that was teron but lo and behold he didnt have concaura, I did: Wow Web Stats

With the iceblock change etc I see no reason at all to ever try frost again except on Herr Illidan. If the iceveins was and something else was made trainable and iceblock kept in frost I'd probably go frost more due to the added survivability and support and extra DPS from coldsnap etc.

He apparently also had his Imp out, which is 15% less dmg for him. He also wasn't in a SPriest group which means more Lifetapping.

And now for something new that hasn't been brought up:

This past week i reprofessioned Tailoring->Leatherworking (wasn't using tailoring anymore), powered up leatherworking in a day with 700g (to 365 skill). Made a few drums of battle, and gave it a roll this week in PvE.

Been very pleasantly suprised, shadow priest/ele sham were much more accepting at having me in the group, and i noticed a personal dps increase as well (not as much as the rest of the group due to drums triggering a global cool though). It buffed my pet when it was out though, and i paired it with my other 2 minute timers (skull, destro pot, braid, etc.) for maximum effect.

Overall i'm definately pleased at the results, and would advise anyone who was considering it to try it out, if they have the money and time. The drums themselves are cheap too, giving 50 charges for ~10-11g AH

The other neat thing about Drums is the fact that they do not share a cooldown with any of our other DPS consumables (Gems, Flame cap, Destruction Pot).

This question has been answered already in this thread several times, and Lhivera's theorycraft site shows the results. No, Cold snap is not worth sacrificing molten fury and playing with fire for, nevermind the other talent of flame throwing.

Even if the numbers came out to be similar, I would still recommend going with passive increases over activated abilities, due to the large amount of Ae's and random effects that can disrupt your ability cycle and ruin the effects, but in this case there's a very clear theorycrafted advantage to sticking with deep fire.

Numbers posted in this thread show coldsnap will not yield 4% extra dps. Click back four or five pages. It's a pain to read these monster threads, but it's worth it.

As to only putting 40 into fire:

All mages *should* care about their range: it allows them to spend more of their time dpsing, rather than moving to a closer position on a number of fights.

All mages *should* use fireblast, any time they are moving.

All fire mages *should* assist in keeping fire vulnerability up, which means incinerate will boost their dps on fireball/scorch rotations.

All fire mages *should* be using AE or flamestrike when dealing area of effect damage, and so points into either imp flamestrike or arcane sub would be beneficial to them.


EDIT: Very good point about Drums of Battle. Simplistic calculation (no cooldown stacking, no pet, all 5 party members do equal damage), shows the global cooldown to be worth a net of 6.15 seconds of dps (5.1% increase * 5 party member * 30 seconds - 1.5 second global), or a 5.1% increase in "your" damage if used every 2 minutes. Pretty nifty how it works out so perfectly.

Other info: Drums require 365 LW to create, but are not BoP and only require LW 350 to use.


EDIT2: I think almost everyone will agree that the latest patch notes changes are a good thing.

A smaller band on mana gems is incredibly useful, since you can use the first charge earlier and since going oom is so dramatically worse than being able to have excess mana to spend (i.e., the low end is the key).

A lower chance to freeze was probably inevitable. Better to have it now than in a month, when the mage community would be up in arms about the "nerf". Pity though... I was looking forward to the absolutely insane damage output that hefty freeze chance would have given if left alone to cast for even a few seconds.

Some small changes in the newest patchnotes. Managem: It's now 2340 to 2460 not 1800-3000. A bit more consistent but still a slight nerf on the top side. Secondly, Icy veins chance to freeze the target reduced from 25% to 10%.

New 2.3.2 patchnotes (not live on PTR yet it seems)

The new updated 2.3.2 PTR patch notes:


Mage

* Cold Snap (Frost) cooldown reduced. It is now in the Ice Block position in the talent tree. This ability will no longer reset the cooldown on Fire Ward.
* Conjure Mana Gem mana restore variance substantially reduced,(Rank 5 – Emerald) now restores 2340 to 2460 mana and has three charges.
* Ice Block (Frost) is now available on the trainer to all mages at level 30.
* Icy Veins (NEW Frost Talent) decreases casting time of all spells by 20% and increases the chance your chilling effects will freeze the target by 10%. Lasts 20 sec. 3 min cooldown. It is now in the Cold Snap position in the talent tree.

Atypical might not be the best word but I think we can agree that Vashj/Kael are not good barometers for dps. I think a better word for Vashj/Kael would be assignment based encounters. I frequently am no. 1 on Vashj for my guild and it's all because of our strat. I'm assigned to dps the middle (striders/naga) and I can basically nuke nonstop. For those assigned to tainted elementals, they can spend a huge portion of stage 2 not doing anything at all, and that would reduce their dps.

I'm a little sad at the metagem thing but maybe they didn't want those few of us who use Serpent-Coil Braid getting 3750 back sometimes. That's most likely the reason for reducing the variance down. It seems silly but it's the only thing that makes sense.

I agree.

The average mana returned is still the exact same. (1800+3000)/2 == (2340+2460)/2. Now you know you can use it when you're 2500 mana down instead of waiting till 3000 so you don't waste anything. Even more-so with the [Serpent-Coil Braid], which would require you to wait till you were down 3750 before popping it to avoid any wasted mana.

No one has mentioned this, but there is a change to the Hex Shrunken Head on the PTRs

I was looking forward to stacking the effects of Icon and Hex. Oh well.

Has anyone done an updated DPS value of trinkets sine the 2.3 changes?

Spell damage for fire and frost has become more valuable per point so the Shadow priest list that showed me dps value by spec isn't accurate as it used to allegedly be.

We had one mage go from 10/48/3 to 40/0/21 and his dps has gone up a considerable amount. Before he was in the middle of the mages, now he consistently tops the mages. I have to believe a big part of this is that we have a deep frost mage who is his winter's chill bitch. Thus once you get the superior dmg and crit scaling of arcane/ice, and you have someone keeping the spell crit bonus up, you can do some pretty nice things.

I wonder if the Skull and Hex Shrunken Head stack like the Skull and Icon stacked pre-2.3?