Lately I've been curious of which of Ice Armor or Molten Armor to use in Arenas, and I'm mainly playing in the 5v5 bracket. Let's just sum the spells up before we go to my doubts;

- Ice Armor (http://www.thottbot.com/s27124)
Increases Armor by 645 and frost resistance by 18. If an enemy strikes the caster, they may have their movement slowed by 30% and the time between their attacks increased by 25% for 5 sec.

- Molten Armor (http://www.thottbot.com/s30482)
Causes 75 Fire damage when hit, increases your chance to critically hit with spells by 3%, and reduces the chance you are critically hit by 5%.

Ice Armor gives you a 100% chance to proc Chilled on the target who attacks you which slows them for 30% (untalented, I believe Permafrost increases this to 40%, correct me if I'm wrong) and reduces their attack haste rating by 25%. This buff may also proc Frostbite, which freezes the target in place for 5 secs. This buff will give you 645 armor and 18 FrR as well.

While Molten Armor causes 75 damage to the attacker, which can crit and proc impact if talented (10% chance for a 2 sec. stun - on DR I believe) but also reduces the chance of being struck by a critical strike by 5%. Its also a passive +3% crit on your spells.

So my doubt lies herein; According to Thottbot Molten Armor reduces the critical chance of all attacks on you by 5%. And if Thottbot is correct, it's equal to 197 resilience (this does not go for the reduced crit in terms of damage done) which for me sounds like a very good choice of armor. But then again, both has their pro's and con's.

So, when it all comes down - what is your opinion on the optimal armor-buff to be used? And if I may ask, which buff do you use?

Discuss!

Edit: I'm unsure if this is the right category for my thread, but I think it's in a weird blindzone. Feel free to move it to the appropriate section if needed.

Not to mention that Ice Armor procs Frostbite (which I probably would pick up for the points in Piercing Ice if I were you).

I don't think molten armor can proc enrage. I haven't tested it myself but there was a discussion about it on the mage forum.

According to the way people have said resillience works, any attack will have a chance to proc enrage if they have even 1 resillience point. Someone said that they have had enrage proc while standing on a fire, which normally cannot crit. Resillience gives you the % chance for enrage (or any other crit-related ability) to proc off any direct hit (I assume dot's won't count) regardless of if the ability itself can/can't normally proc enrage, related to your %reduction of crit% from resillience

At least, that's how I understand it.

I use Ice Armor, in 5v5 any smart team will immediately stick atleast a warrior on me to try to keep me from CCing their team, so this helps me kite them.

There's no reason not to use both. Switch armors once you see what you're up against just like you remove dampen when you see you're fighting a melee team (you do remove dampen, right?). With that said, as a fire mage the only time I use Ice Armor is when I'm up against a warrior. With Impact rogues get destroyed by Molten but warriors just don't hit me enough to make it worth it. If I had Frostbite and Permafrost it would be a harder choice, but right now Molten is the clear winner.

In my experience, Molten was annoying when trying to sheep melee because sometimes a tiny ignite would proc and break poly. I'm not sure if that was fixed because I've made it a habit to use Molten only in PvE now.

If you want to spend the mana on swapping armors during combat it should be obvious, based on spec, which armor is appropriate for which class.

For general purpose, personally I'm 17/0/44 and I use molten armor 100% of the time. 5% reduced crit works on both magic and physical damage, and 3% crit on your own attacks is just good. Extra damage is always good. If there's one thing I've never really felt I needed, it's more ways to kite melee. Frostbite procs are great in duels, but it's never going to proc on what you want when you need it to in 5v5. If that warrior I'm kiting gets frozen by hitting me, I sure as hell am not gonna turn around and ice lance him for a free enrage proc.

P.S. Molten Armor does not proc enrage, we've tested this.

Molten armor if it's not like a double warrior team you're facing. Also it's kinda important to not put talents into ignite. The -5% crit is just superior and the impact procs are nice. The thing with frostbite procs is that it can only proc every time you get a new debuff, so it's like once every 5sec while impact procs on every blow.

If you're doing 5s and are playing at (or trying to), gladiator level, on a non 4dps team you will screw yourself over by using molten armor unless you have impact and three rogues/druids on you. In which case you won anyway.

Remember, reapplying r1 frost armor costs nothing. -5% chance to be crit is worth a lot less mitigation in 5s with 300~+ resiliance over ice armor. Of course, exceptions are non melee teams (few).

I think he's saying you could swap it in during combat if you have a melee team. Reduced mana cost is the only reason you would use it over ice armor - needlessly burning mana is bad. Though with rank 1 you lose the armor component.. you still get freeze procs.