Difference in specs?

Classes Mage
1

So, what’s the real winner here? I’m currently leveling as arcane and it’s alright. It’s very boring though. I’d like to play as fire but that seemed, and from what I’ve read when I looked into it, highly based on procs. Damage was low otherwise. Didn’t care for frost. This is my first time playing mage, so I’m curious to hear what the real mages have to input.

What’s the real damage difference in various situations, and why? What pulls ahead when ?

2

Arcane’s damage will basically be within a 10 second window of AP + RoP at 120.
Pretty much nearly all of your damage will be from that window on a 1.5 min CD.
In order to do an AoE build you have to sacrifice too much of your ST, and in order to do ST you have to sacrifice so much of your AoE potential.

Fire’s damage comes in the form of proper Combustion usage with RoP.
Not all but most of your damage will be within the Combustion RoP window on a 2 min CD. More damage can come through rng with lucky back to back heating ups / hotstreaks between Combustions. Decent spread cleave as long as targets are in range while you were building up Combustion ignite.

Frost’s damage has a few different builds that allows for actual different playstyles while Fire and Arcane’s is locked into just 1 build each.
You could run 2 versions of a TV build or run a GS build. Both are fine just depends if you like to see constant medium numbers or build up to super large big numbers but be much slower.
TV has 2 builds, one is super ez lazy mode just using whatever traits you want and use IF talent, the other is big brain mode where you triple stack Packed Ice traits and use RoP.
GS has you triple stack Flash Freeze traits for big glacial hits.
Frost is considered significantly more versatile than Fire or Arcane since it does not sacrifice AoE potential for ST and its Cleave requirements are quite minimal and easy to meet.

Basically this:
Arcane wins in PURE ST with no movement. Frost ties / wins (matter of opinion really) with Arcane if there is some movement in a pure ST fight.

Frost wins when 2+ targets are added into the mix.

Fire wins if you get lucky.

5 Likes
3

Eventually Fire turns into an AOE/Single target spec and its been the most fun for me for questing/pvp. I usually switch to frost in dungeons for the insane AOE dmg they can generate and slow/freezing abilities. I got too bored with arcance basically just buffing all the time and pressing one button

4

You really got to work to make fire work and arcane and frost just cast the same thing

5

Um… no they don’t?

6

What doesn’t?

7

It sounds like mage isn’t for you. Arcane will give you what you put into it, but it can get boring. I also don’t really like frost but play it from time to time. I like fire, its fast and it’s not as RNG as people make it out to be. Right now they’re all middle of the pack, but can get up higher at times.

8

Fire has two builds currently actually, its just the last row.

Pyroclasm vs Meteor.

Pyroclasm is mostly just High Risk / High Reward.

Meteor is more consistent dps, but you can pull a lot more with Pyroclasm.

I’m running Pyroclasm on Jaina, mind you I’m one of the busiest guys on my M Jaina team, besides our Rsham, as I get allllllll the bombs. :sweat_smile: Pyroclasm helps damage inside and outside of Combustion, where as Meteor doesn’t do as much by itself with a RoP.

9

Ive been playing Fire for 9 years, and I love it to death, through its worst and best days.

10

for leveling and dungeons arcane is best until you can get frozen orb and comet storm then frost becomes better for 5mans and aoe killing quest mobs

like kill 10 spiders or w/e just round them all up frost nova blizzard frozen orb comet storm ice nova next quest

1 Like