How can anyone honestly think that Frost can be toe-to-toe with Fire looking at TBC talents? Are you looking at the same talent trees as the rest of us?
I am specced fire right now in Exp and I am finding it anything but impressive. My statement might be slightly premature but from the talent in the frost tree (emp frostbolt) and the launch of ice lance its going to be an amazing source of damage. Now I am talking on mobs that can be frozen and what not having a crit rate in the high 70s low 80s is nothing to look down on in my book. In raid DPS on bosses and mobs that can not be frozen I just dont know how it will play out yet, the wounded talent in the fire tree adds tremendous damage.
The only amazing source of crit you have is Shatter. So sure, if it's non-elite, or not a raid boss, good for you. Otherwise, you're gonna get smoked by fire every day of the week, unless the Fire mage is asleep or stupid imo.
So if you want to level solo, sure, Frost gives you Shatter so great, run with that. But don't let that delude you that Frost means "better damage than fire"...Shatter is a purely situational mechanic.
The only amazing source of crit you have is Shatter. So sure, if it's non-elite, or not a raid boss, good for you. Otherwise, you're gonna get smoked by fire every day of the week, unless the Fire mage is asleep or stupid imo.
So if you want to level solo, sure, Frost gives you Shatter so great, run with that. But don't let that delude you that Frost means "better damage than fire"...Shatter is a purely situational mechanic.
Presently right now in retail (might not hold much water in BC) I can out dps the fire mages by 1 or 2 % (the ones that dont ninja the ignite that is). How does that measure up to you at all?
What instances are you running with said Fire Mages? Do you consider them competent? I out-DPS our Frostie by 2x in Naxx on every boss fight and every trash section.
I know I'm not the only one (btw, the Frost mage has great gear). Now, gear being equal, and skill being equal, there is absolutely no way in hell a Frost Mage will beat a Fire Mage in AQ/Naxx (this is not MC/BWL, where mobs have high resistance to fire or downright immunity).
So to answer your question "How does that measure up to my experience?"
It doesn't. And it is SO far the other way that it almost made me laugh. I haven't lost a single damage meter fight to a Frost Mage in over 6 months on any encounter where we both lived.
Presently right now in retail (might not hold much water in BC) I can out dps the fire mages by 1 or 2 % (the ones that dont ninja the ignite that is). How does that measure up to you at all?
Retail means nothing when talking about TBC talents. Likely you are playing with poor players and/or have a laggy connection. Amount of lag and not using proper mods (like Fastcast) make a huge difference.
The fact of the matter is given current TBC talents and players with equal skill/gear/lag, Fire out proforms Frost in a raid situation (which is what concerns most posters here, not the best leveling build).
Millions of words are written annually purporting to tell how to beat the races, whereas the best possible advice on the subject is found in the three monosyllables: 'Do not try.'
i) remember that the new enchants and tailoring specilisations don't favour an Arcane / Frost build. The combos' are Fire+Arcane, Frost+Shadow and General+Mana regen. Given that the intention is for tailoring to craft at least one epic item that is upgradeable and top tier gear, and the enchants for your bracers / weapon seem much better for specific spell schools, Arcane + Frost is losing out.
(Why on earth have they chosen to put Arcane + Fire on one enchant, and Frost + Shadow on the other? Seems a ridiculous combination, and driven by the need to have warlcoks chosing seperate enchants more than anything else).
Because current mage talents favor fire/arcane (33/28), but don't favor frost/arcane (instead they favor deep frost).
ERm Silya, that answer doesn't make sense - Arcane / Frost has always been a common build ever since MC, and in the expansion due to the placement of frost's DPS talents low in the tree and Fire's higher up, Arcane / Frost is naturally going to be the more common build. If anything, the current talent builds favour arcane / frost *too much* - arcane mages shouldn't be out damaging frost mages using frostbolt.
If I were in charge I would leave fire as it is, remove arctic winds and frozen core (I still think - err hope - that those are placeholders, like the original fire talents) and replace them with someting like this.
1) Reduce all spell damage taken by 4/8/12/16/20%. Frost currently is weak against casters, especially casters that can dispel freeze effects. For a 35 point talent that is not overpowered when you compare it with say shadow form.
Frost is stronger vs casters than fire due to ice block and ice barrier. Also the damage reduction talent you are suggestion would be completely out of line in comparison to other talents (the priest 5-pointer is 10%). Furthermore, you can't compare class features like shadow form directly, you have to take into account the overall class.
2) Get 4/8/12/16/20% of damage taken back as mana (this includes damage absorbed by ice barrier and mana shield). Frost with its survivability talents should rule fights were you take damage.
As things stand now, frost doesn't need mana.
3) Whenever you take damage, your spell damage is increased by 2/4/6/8/10% for 8 seconds. Stacks up to 3 times. Same logic as above.
This would make frost rule all fights were you take damage. Right now, frost survivability is only really useful on a small number of fights. On most others there is no real difference.
I see what you are trying to do, but you are pushing frost into the kind of survivability territory reserved for warlocks. The three changes taken together, coupled with soft controls of frost already present, and things like blink and ice block would make frost mages into absolute pvp beasts.
ERm Silya, that answer doesn't make sense - Arcane / Frost has always been a common build ever since MC, and in the expansion due to the placement of frost's DPS talents low in the tree and Fire's higher up, Arcane / Frost is naturally going to be the more common build. If anything, the current talent builds favour arcane / frost *too much* - arcane mages shouldn't be out damaging frost mages using frostbolt.
The only thing that would make a mage take 40 arc / 21 frost is inertia, the math doesn't support it. Consider, for instance how crappy emp. fireball is -- instead of having fireball scale as 1/3 = 0.333 dps per spell damage point, it makes it scale as 1.15/3 = 0.383. By comparison, arcane instability gives a flat 6% dps boost. It's easy to check that you would need _ridiculous_ spelldamage for emp. fireball to equal that kind of boost -- and it would only work on 1 spell.
By contrast, emp. frostbolt is much better -- it provides two things:
a better scaling coefficient: 1/2.5 = 0.343 -> 1.1/2.5 = 0.383
5% crit which is about 5% dps boost
This is already almost as good as arcane instability for frost, and you get an elemental to boot which seals the deal. The frost tree has historically lacked damage multipliers of fire, so in BC all the new multipliers are very much at the top of the tree, encouraging deep frost specs.
I question the math that has 40arc/21frost mages outdamaging deep frost mages with frostbolt spam. Why? Consider the differences between the specs:
40arc/21frost: arcane instability (+6% dps), spell power (50% bigger crits), mind mastery (about 100-150 spelldamage extra for reasonable gear values)
deep frost: winter's chill (+10% dps), emp. frostbolt (+5% dps, better damage scaling), water elemental (hard to quantify, but probably a substantial dps boost in a sustained setting)
I just don't see it, sorry. Even if both mages get Winter's Chill, the elemental should push deep frost ahead in overall dps if both use nothing but frost.
I fail to see the issue here, there will always be a primary raid build, since raids bring out the min-maxer in people, you will NEVER have equal damage from one build to another, combat daggers is the best for rogue dps currently, MM build is best for hunter damage, and fire is best for a mage.
I dont see why this trend shouldn't continue in beta, keeping in mind the additional focus which is being placed on pvp and 'utility' raids (ie: smaller raids, in zg for example, a frost mage has lots of chances for using nova/shatter, as opposed to BWL/aq40, where the chances are lower.)
I can't think of any class which would rather see a frost mage against them than a fire mage currently (stronger defence vs casters in the form of ice block/barrier, stronger vs hunters with oomph on shatter, stronger vs melee with additional snares) , add in the fact that frost tree gained ice lance (huge increase in mobility and spam damage, and increasing even more the potency of shatter combos), and a pvp centric pet vs fire gaining what..a close range disorient (which is certainly very good, but risky) and a run speed buff (which i have a feeling will be quite poor in practice)? , and we see the gap between frost and fire in pvp grow even larger.
If frost could equal the damage of fire..why be fire? Anyone who's played both builds will know the wholly different playstyle experienced by both (as frost i can run into a room full of enemies without fear, i have so many panic and defence buttons it's almost obscene, catch a fire mage with a scatter shot though, and he's gonna be focused down in a second.), and im hoping the difference is emphasised, rather than becoming a purely aesthetic choice as some here seem to be suggesting.
Finally, we havent had any hard numbers on the water elementals dps on a raid target, it depends on hit rate, but it is above all aggro free damage, and from what ive seen from blizzard's posts, aggro should once more be a limiter in fights for mages. Wait and see, personally im impressed with the tree's so far in general.
Arcane is still lacking at mid level (attunement/mana shield/arcane explosion etc, and now with the CS 'fix' and less emphasis on spirit [at least for levelling], imp CS and meditation are less appealing...all filler talents), the other trees all seem to have too much to put points into, rather than too little, which is always good :). Finally, i do NOT agree on frozen core/arctic winds being incredibly poor, since they are merely additional defence..would i like the talents to be added together or made less costly? Sure, but they are still solid, and for a full frost build, they're still more appealing than anything from the lower parts of the other trees.
I'll echo what Falcon was saying in that Molten Fury should be a Frost talent. Rename it and switch it with Arctic Winds which would fit nicely into the Fire tree considering the Blazing Speed talent plus Frost Mages already having Ice Barrier. Changing Pyromaniac to have a 3% cost instead of 3% reduction would make more sense as well.
As far as the Arcane tree, I'd change Spell Power to just affect Arcane Spells and buff Arcane Instability to 4% damage and 4% crit while adding a mana cost component similar to Pyromaniac.
In the end, you'd have fire and frost being closer in DPS with Frost still winning out on DPM while Arcane is huge in DPS but horrible in DPM. Arcane/Frost also wouldn't be better than Frost/Arcane.
Why do you want to nerf fire into the ground? Pyromaniac +3% cost/+3% damage is utter crap for a talent that deep down the tree. Might as well not have it. Same goes for arcane instability affecting arcane only. And taking synergies out of the trees? Mages already suffer from a lack of options when it comes to specs. Taking out synergies between arcane and other trees means even less viable specs since nothing but ultra deep one tree will be useless.
I am utterly amazed by the shortsigted "my epeen is threatened" reaction by some frost mages here. Your solution to fix frost is to nerf fire into the ground? So that we have 3 trees with crap raid DPS instead of 2? Yeah, great idea. And the only place arctic winds and frozen core should go is the trash. Not the fire tree.
Nobody disputes that frost needs another good talent. But I am amazed by the proposals of some mages because "their" tree does not have the highest DPS right now.
If they nerf the deep fire talents, every fire mage will go 28/33 or some similar build. And frost dps will still suck. So why not focus on how you can make frost better instead of nerfing the only tree that has good sustained dps right now?
It almost appears as if there is some hatred between the fire and frost mages. We need to work together to help improve the class, not get the other tree nerfed until they are all equal - equally crappy. A spec can be changed in 30 seconds. A crappy class is forever.
I'm currently a fire mage and have been for quite sometime. Even as a fire mage though you have to admit that as things currently stand you really have no reason to ever spec anything than Fire from a PvE perspective. If all you do is Buff the Frost tree to have more viable DPS then instead of Fire being the only choice it will be Frost as the only choice because if you can have the same DPS plus more survivability then it's just a no-brainer.
What would make the most sense is that different PvE encounters make different mage specs shine, whereas now Fire wins everytime. What if in really short fights Arcane mages will shine as their horrible DPM doesn't matter, otherwise Fire wins out unless the fight gets past a certain point where Frost DPM takes over. Considering the lower amount of raid slots in TBC and the probability that raid leaders will require a wider variety of specs it's a decent probability that someone will be required to spec something other than Fire. Without changes that non-fire person will end up being the "Arcane Bitch" or "Frost bitch" and as other classes can attest that have that situation that's not fun at all.
(Why on earth have they chosen to put Arcane + Fire on one enchant, and Frost + Shadow on the other? Seems a ridiculous combination, and driven by the need to have warlcoks chosing seperate enchants more than anything else).
I couldn't agree more -- this is beyond stupid. There are plenty of classes with dual elemental damage: warlocks (shadow/fire), druids (arcane/nature), mages (fire/arc or fire/frost or arc/frost). Personally I think they should provide dual element spellpower enchants for EVERY possible pair.
The only amazing source of crit you have is Shatter. So sure, if it's non-elite, or not a raid boss, good for you. Otherwise, you're gonna get smoked by fire every day of the week, unless the Fire mage is asleep or stupid imo.
So if you want to level solo, sure, Frost gives you Shatter so great, run with that. But don't let that delude you that Frost means "better damage than fire"...Shatter is a purely situational mechanic.
Presently right now in retail (might not hold much water in BC) I can out dps the fire mages by 1 or 2 % (the ones that dont ninja the ignite that is). How does that measure up to you at all?
This is because the fire mages who don't get the ignite credits are only getting 150% crits attributed to them. This is the same reason why on Loatheb sometimes you'll see a few fire mages in the top 10, then another one or two below your frost mages.
What instances are you running with said Fire Mages? Do you consider them competent? I out-DPS our Frostie by 2x in Naxx on every boss fight and every trash section.
I know I'm not the only one (btw, the Frost mage has great gear). Now, gear being equal, and skill being equal, there is absolutely no way in hell a Frost Mage will beat a Fire Mage in AQ/Naxx (this is not MC/BWL, where mobs have high resistance to fire or downright immunity).
So to answer your question "How does that measure up to my experience?"
It doesn't. And it is SO far the other way that it almost made me laugh. I haven't lost a single damage meter fight to a Frost Mage in over 6 months on any encounter where we both lived.
One thing you have to take into account when factoring in damage is the specs of all the other mages. When you group 5 fire mages into a raid all combustion spec and one frost mages... yeah the frost mage is going to have trouble keeping up with the damage output, keeping the winters chill debuff on the boss mob is a challenge for one frost mage. Now take a step back throw 3 fire mages and 3 frost mages in a raid step back and look at the damage output. The amazing DPS of fire all of the sudden isnt so amazing when you take those 2 other mages out of the picture for ignites. This is something that fire mages are going to have to come to terms with they are changing how ignite debuffs so you wont be hijacking damage off other fire mages. In a situation like this with 3 frost mages I can have VERY competitive damage in AQ40.
When patch 1.11 hit, there were only 2 Fire Mages (me and one other). We still won, even against 4 Frost Mages.
The damage output of 6 Fire Mages far outstrips 6 Frost Mages.
And actually, as for my personal damage in comparison to other mages, it will only increase with the end of rolling Ignites as my crit rate is far higher.
If I were in charge I would leave fire as it is, remove arctic winds and frozen core (I still think - err hope - that those are placeholders, like the original fire talents) and replace them with someting like this.
1) Reduce all spell damage taken by 4/8/12/16/20%. Frost currently is weak against casters, especially casters that can dispel freeze effects. For a 35 point talent that is not overpowered when you compare it with say shadow form.
Frost is stronger vs casters than fire due to ice block and ice barrier. Also the damage reduction talent you are suggestion would be completely out of line in comparison to other talents (the priest 5-pointer is 10%). Furthermore, you can't compare class features like shadow form directly, you have to take into account the overall class.
That's simply not true. Frost is weak against casters unless they are other mages. Ice Barrier gets purged/devoured pretty quickly these days and, although Ice Block is a nice get out of jail free on a five minute timer, it doesn't make up for Improved Counterspell or the lack of burst you can get to blow through healing that you'd get from PoM+Pyros or a Fireball/scorch/fireblast alpha strike. One must also consider that fire mages have Impact and Dragon's breath as decent anti-caster tools... those are additional interrupts. Frost lacks these thing, so when you've burned Counterspell and you see a heal going off... time to toss a grenade or invoke your 15 minute cooldown stun trinket.
I mean, really, the biggest tool in the box mages have against casters is not defensive, it's Improved Counterspell and, after that, a healthy supply of grenades. Because Ice barrier simply cannot make up for the availability of interrupts every 5-6 seconds nor is it sufficient to counter heals and dispels.
Don't get me wrong here... mages in general are weak against casters and your average fire mage is toast even faster than a frostie when he meets a warlock of any spec in the world. But a fire mage will do better against a priest or shaman than a frost mage... frost as it stands caters almost exclusively to the removal of melee classes from a battle and near-paladin levels of stalling power every 5-10 minutes. This doesn't amount to much when your counterspell is down and you're dealing with a class with more than double the hps of your dps on a good day.
And therein lies the gripe about Frozen Core and Arctic Winds. These talents don't do anything to augment the Frost tree's current weaknesses, nor do they bolster Frost's strengths. They are a nothingth, they serve no purpose.
3) Whenever you take damage, your spell damage is increased by 2/4/6/8/10% for 8 seconds. Stacks up to 3 times. Same logic as above.
This would make frost rule all fights were you take damage. Right now, frost survivability is only really useful on a small number of fights. On most others there is no real difference.
I see what you are trying to do, but you are pushing frost into the kind of survivability territory reserved for warlocks. The three changes taken together, coupled with soft controls of frost already present, and things like blink and ice block would make frost mages into absolute pvp beasts.
Not really. One of the things frost lacks that fire and warlocks have is a certain resistance to spell interruption. Affliction 'locks toss mostly instants and short casts, while Destrolocks get Intensity in the same way that Fire Mages get Burning Soul. Frost Mages get Ice barrier, which protects against 1k damage worth of interrupts. That's one gouge+backstab... maybe 6 seconds of triple DoTs... 6 seconds of Vael-level AoE with 150 FR. Out of 30 seconds, that's a controllable 20% resistance to interrupts? Damn right I want some compensation for not being able to resist spell interruption.
And why should there be a concern about a mage spec intruding on a warlock's surviveabilty territory? Not like 'locks aren't intruding on mages' damage-dealing "territory", as that ass pointed out earlier in the thread.
When patch 1.11 hit, there were only 2 Fire Mages (me and one other). We still won, even against 4 Frost Mages.
The damage output of 6 Fire Mages far outstrips 6 Frost Mages.
And actually, as for my personal damage in comparison to other mages, it will only increase with the end of rolling Ignites as my crit rate is far higher.
Winters chill wasnt added into the game until 1.11 so... yeah 10% extra crit is huge on raid bosses plus the mana efficiency. As for your second comment about 6 fire mages owning 6 frost mages you bet you are right but my question to you is how many raids have you been on with 12 mages? How do you think fire mages will do when the ignite mechanics change?
Finally, i do NOT agree on frozen core/arctic winds being incredibly poor, since they are merely additional defence..would i like the talents to be added together or made less costly? Sure, but they are still solid, and for a full frost build, they're still more appealing than anything from the lower parts of the other trees.
Frozen Core and Arctic Winds are incredibly terrible talents. I understand the idea of making Frost the so called "survivability" tree, however I do not think this justifies these particular talents. I find Frost to already be fine on survivability, it has Ice Block and Ice Barrier, both of which are amazing in boosting the Frost Mages survival in both PvE and PvP. In essence, I find Frozen Core and Arctic Winds to be extremely redundant and, for the point cost and limited use of the two talents, extremely dissapointing talents for the high-tier Frost talents. I also disagree in your idea of the above mentioned talents being "more appealing than anything from the lower parts of the other trees;" I, and I'm sure many others, would most definetly prefer talents such as Arcane Concentration or Impact over Arctic Winds and Frozen Core, especially in a raid setting.
I want deep Frost to be a viable end-game PvE build and I do not see that happening with the current Beta talents. Frost is a tree for DPS and while it shouldn't be higher than Fire for DPS it should still be able to compete or, at the very least, bring something new to the table that Fire does not offer. Currently, it is looking like the gap between Fire and Frost for PvE damage is too large to consider anything but Fire in a raid setting.
When patch 1.11 hit, there were only 2 Fire Mages (me and one other). We still won, even against 4 Frost Mages.
The damage output of 6 Fire Mages far outstrips 6 Frost Mages.
And actually, as for my personal damage in comparison to other mages, it will only increase with the end of rolling Ignites as my crit rate is far higher.
Winters chill wasnt added into the game until 1.11 so... yeah 10% extra crit is huge on raid bosses plus the mana efficiency. As for your second comment about 6 fire mages owning 6 frost mages you bet you are right but my question to you is how many raids have you been on with 12 mages? How do you think fire mages will do when the ignite mechanics change?
I am saying that AFTER 1.11 hit (the Mage patch), I had raids with 4 Frost Mages and 2 Fire Mages consistently. The 2 Fire Mages were far and away over the Frost Mages. We were far and away above <everyone>. Yes, they had Winter's Chill helping them. Did it matter in the end? Nope. (btw, Imp Scorch is actually equivalent (or better) than Winter's Chill, is lower in the talent tree, and is far easier to keep up, as it lasts 30 seconds).
No, I do not ever have 12 Mages in a raid. But I do run 6-7 normally. But as said above, I would think that 4 Frost Mages vs. 2 Fire Mages is enough to illustrate the point that 6 Fire > 6 Frost.
I also mentioned in an earlier post how the Ignite change would affect me.
And why should there be a concern about a mage spec intruding on a warlock's surviveabilty territory? Not like 'locks aren't intruding on mages' damage-dealing "territory", as that ass pointed out earlier in the thread.
Exactly. My whole argument is about making mages specs more different from each other. Of course that means that we will intrude other classes territory. But as long as priests have a shadow tree (which clearly intrudes mage and warlock land) that is perfectly fine with me.
About making frost mages PvP beasts. Again, exactly what I want. Making all 3 trees do the exact raid DPS will mean identical trees in the long run to beat the min maxers. Might as well only have one tree in that case, with 3 talents.
1. Blue bolt: Colors your bolt blue.
2. Red bolt: Colors your bolt red.
3. White bolt: Colors your bolt white.
That is what mage talent options will look like if they design the class around every tree providing the same utility in every situation.
And about frost mages not needing mana. Wasnt the primary complaint here that fire mages are the king of DPS and DPM? If frost mages do not run out of mana why do they need more DPM?
I would prefer a tree with ok raid DPS and awesome PvP power and a tree with great raid DPS and ok PvP power over 2 trees that each do good raid DPS and have good PvP use. Because, really, what is the point of having identical trees?
When patch 1.11 hit, there were only 2 Fire Mages (me and one other). We still won, even against 4 Frost Mages.
The damage output of 6 Fire Mages far outstrips 6 Frost Mages.
And actually, as for my personal damage in comparison to other mages, it will only increase with the end of rolling Ignites as my crit rate is far higher.
Winters chill wasnt added into the game until 1.11 so... yeah 10% extra crit is huge on raid bosses plus the mana efficiency. As for your second comment about 6 fire mages owning 6 frost mages you bet you are right but my question to you is how many raids have you been on with 12 mages? How do you think fire mages will do when the ignite mechanics change?
I am saying that AFTER 1.11 hit (the Mage patch), I had raids with 4 Frost Mages and 2 Fire Mages consistently. The 2 Fire Mages were far and away over the Frost Mages. We were far and away above <everyone>. Yes, they had Winter's Chill helping them. Did it matter in the end? Nope. (btw, Imp Scorch is actually equivalent (or better) than Winter's Chill, is lower in the talent tree, and is far easier to keep up, as it lasts 30 seconds).
No, I do not ever have 12 Mages in a raid. But I do run 6-7 normally. But as said above, I would think that 4 Frost Mages vs. 2 Fire Mages is enough to illustrate the point that 6 Fire > 6 Frost.
I also mentioned in an earlier post how the Ignite change would affect me.
I cant be 100% certain but once they change the mechanics of ignite I can almost guarentee that if I have 2 other frost mages in the raid I can out DPS the fire mages. Seath can probably back me up on that CANT YOU!.
Presently right now in retail (might not hold much water in BC) I can out dps the fire mages by 1 or 2 % (the ones that dont ninja the ignite that is). How does that measure up to you at all?
Presently in retail, I'm shocked if my fellow frost mages come within 1-2% of me in terms of overall raid damage (me being somewhere around 7-8, and they being typically between 4-5). This is even when I'm the only fire mage in the raid. If I get a "lucky ignite" run when the other fire mage shows up, I can even double up sometimes...
Presently right now in retail (might not hold much water in BC) I can out dps the fire mages by 1 or 2 % (the ones that dont ninja the ignite that is). How does that measure up to you at all?
Presently in retail, I'm shocked if my fellow frost mages come within 1-2% of me in terms of overall raid damage (me being somewhere around 7-8, and they being typically between 4-5). This is even when I'm the only fire mage in the raid. If I get a "lucky ignite" run when the other fire mage shows up, I can even double up sometimes...
Hmm, our Mages must be doing something wrong then. Maybe we are not taking full advantage of Ignite? I've always found that my 28/23 Arcane/Frost build (assuming another mage is specced for Winters Chill) was able to keep up in DPS to my 17/31/3 build. I was also able to compete with the other Fire mages during AQ40 as 28/23. Do you think a raid consisting of 28/23 Frost Mages and a couple of Winter's Chill mages could compete with a team of Fire mages? How would the added survivability in Frost play out in comparison?
To relate this to the expansion (this is a TBC theorycraft thread afterall) I was wondering the same thing, will a team of 2 Arcane/Frost mages with a Deep Frost Mage (winters chill) be a better choice than, let's say, a team of 3 Fire Mages? Of course, this is assuming that in a 25-man raid there will only be 3 Mages.