Careful now, WotLK Classic has just shown how much it was loved, and Cataclysm is right around the corner. Just need to see how represented the specs are to really get an idea.
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Youâd have to elaborate on what you mean by this for me to have any context on what you mean by it.
Okay, so youâre telling me the representation of a spec in a classic version of the game reflects on something about the spec in retail⌠How, exactly?
Thatâd be like telling me that people loved Affliction Warlock and Unholy DK in classic, so people must love these specs and they must be great in retail. Youâre basically telling me that the apples are red because oranges exist.
Retail Frost is a vast improvement over almost every other iteration of Frost Mage that I have seen or played.
Not sure where heâs going with that either. Take this for what itâs worth, but when I check archon.gg popularity rankings for both normal and heroic ICC in Wrath Classic the only spec thatâs S-Tier is Fire Mage.
Of all DPS specs Frost Mage is second from the bottom in popularity. The only spec less popular is Blood DK.
Anyway, just based on what I can see, evidence suggests that Frost Mage in general isnât that popular in Wrath Classic, at least not for raiding. Maybe thereâs a robust Frost Mage RP community that doesnât raid all running around with the permanent pet but not sure how weâd know that. And I kinda doubt it.
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This is the data youâre having to sift through. By all metrics, popularity is a significant variable. Though the trick is in understanding why. Fact: Not many people raided as Frost in ICC. Reasons: Fire had a significant leg up in DPS even compared to Arcane. What we have to determine is what weâre talking about. Are we saying a spec in and of itself was popular? Or are we saying how a spec was played was popular? If itâs the former, Frost has never been overtly popular except MC, Battle of Dazaralor(which is an interesting two-fold example itself), and now. The coloration and causation between DPS and popularity is prevalent. Fire is most popular in ICC, because dps; Eternal Winter is also most popular amongst the die-hard raiding Frost Mages. If it was as always stated: âThat no one liked the Welly.â why then, was there a darn near 100% usage in Classic? Why was BFD Frostâs greatest time of popularity when they were literally bottom class and spec?
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The question you need to ask before jumping to conclusions is whether or not frost is capable of S tier dps. If itâs not, what the frost mages are doing is represtative of what people committed to the spec actually want, you can assume the tryhards will bloat the numbers for the higher performing specs. Specs should not be designed around tryhards. The tryhards can learn what they have to to prove theyâre s tier players and theyâll play a different flavor of the month tomorrow.
None of that to say that if frost gets perma welly everything should be exactly the same as it was. Demo became popular due to significant reworks. It was by far the cludgiest and least effective lock dps specs in vanilla. At least thatâs my memory.
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I didnât bring DPS into the conversation, although of course that is the principle reason Fire Mage is the most popular DPS spec in Wrath Classic.
My point is that there is no evidence to support Icyâs assertion that Wrath Classic shows how âlovedâ the pet was. The data are at best inconclusive, and if anything could just as easily be said to show the opposite.
That is the intricacy of the conversation. You have to ask why a spec is popular. When Arcane was in pace with Fire, Fire was still more popular because it was probably more fun, and easier to pull off given playstyle. Frost was very unpopular because at best it was pulling maybe 66% what Fire was. Of course itâs going to have lesser representation. Would you pick a car that had two-thirds the horsepower all else being equal? That is why we canât just go by tier lists on archon.gg or parse numbers on warcraftlogs. We have to delve into the spec itself, see how many of the 200 Frost Mages chose which particular play style. Using ICC as an example, sure Frost only has 213 parses making it 0% popularity, but of those 213, 99% of them are using Glyph of Eternal Water. So, we can infer, the general die-hard fans liked the permanent Welly(or dps was better, which was the whole argument about LW). Please try to understand that raiding popularity isnât generally about how fun a spec/build is, but how much damage it can produce. NoIL was top dog for a time, everyone played it, it was popular, but the consensus was people missed casting IL and a subset disliked having to use Welly. While there was just as many, if not barely less, that loved it because they got to use Glacial Spike over Thermal Void finally, and it let them have their Welly.
Which is why the Welly a good example of the discussion about the Arcane Familiar. People are posting it should be removed and baked in since all it is is a little bit of extra uninteractable damage. But would also have a hissy fit and say Arcane isnât a pet spec if Blizzard made it more in line to what the Welly was pre-âfixâ. The Familiar is just that, fun. If itâs the go-to for dps great. Otherwise, the fairweather Arcane Mages donât have to take it. But leave it there for those of us who like it.
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I completely understand why Fire was more popular. Once again thatâs not my point.
My point is that because there are so few Frost players, there are no valid inferences to be made. Itâs subset of a subset of a population.
As you yourself said, the small percentage of Frost Mages could very well be taking Glyph of EW because itâs the best DPS for their chosen spec. Maybe they just dislike Fire and Arcane and want to do the best DPS possible even if itâs meager in comparison to other specs. And yes, maybe some of them just like the pet.
But again, neither of these are definitive conclusions. They are at best speculative. My point remains: there is not enough data from Wrath Classic to definitively conclude that the permanent pet was âloved.â
Then we cannot infer that anything is popular amongst anything using any set of data points. And by that logic, saying something wasnât popular because you didnât like it, youâre only giving speculative opinion based on the data. Youâre speculating that Fire was more popular. The data shows Fire was more popular, but you canât infer that it was popular because people loved it if thereâs the chance the majority of the majority only picked Fire because it was the top performing spec.
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Iâd be willing to bet that Water Elemental being removed as a permanent pet and being baked into Icy Veins as a temporary summon happened as a result of data analysis. Unfortunately, itâs analysis of data that none of us really have access to, which means anybody for or against it is going to be coming up dry for actual evidence supporting their claims.
Any mage spec besides frost with a petâŚew
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These statements are contradictory.
Youâre debating semantics now, applying a very narrow definition to the word âpopularâ and completely sidestepping the point.
Use whatever term you want. Popular, most common, most utilized, highest frequency, blah blah blah. For the purposes of this conversation, I will use âpopularâ to mean widely chosen. Fair?
Fire is âpopularâ in Wrath. Frost is not. And because itâs not, you can draw no conclusions about the âpopularityâ of the permanent Frost pet.
Show me where I said I didnât like it. The pro-WE crowd keeps attacking that straw man, but thatâs all it is. I merely understand (and agree with) why the WE was removed.
The data shows what the data shows. Wrath Frost is objectively âunpopular.â My personal preferences (and yours) are irrelevant.
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The sad reality.
That is objectively not true. And I fully understood your use of âpopularâ for Fire, and supplementing it for my use of the WE. Just because itâs the least popular spec, doesnât mean thereâs no data scour. Of the uses, the grand majority of the lesser popular spec shows that the perma WE was the popular choice. Youâre purposefully separating the use to what fancies your point the most. If you can say Fire was more popular because it has 95% representation, then I can safely say that perma WE is more popular because it has 95% representation as well.
Using the Familiar: It has a 100% selection rate, but Arcane Mages are only 1.4% on the popularity chart. So, one can infer the Familiar is the popular choice; if we were going by my usage. Otherwise, there isnât enough population using Arcane Mage to infer how popular it is.
And if you must, can use a different time in Frostâs history. Battle for Dazarâalor.
Letâs back up a second. This is the assertion of yours that started this conversation.
The data do not support this statement, unless you selectively interpret it as you have done. Basing a conclusion on 99% of 2% is absolutely meaningless. I am not âseparatingâ anything, I am taking the data for what it is. I have drawn zero conclusions about how well âlovedâ the pet was. All Iâve said is the data donât support yours. And in this, I am correct.
Itâs only as meaningless as you wish the data to be. Plus, Iâm not saying it was âlovedâ, just that it was popular. Going through the history of build choices, we can see patterns. A spec become so prominent, it pushes the other two out of popularity. As well as, a talent or combination there-of becomes so prominent, it pushes the rest out of popularity. And if going by the idea that 99% of the lower percent is meaningless, we canât infer whether or not any particular talent choice for Arcane Mages was any more popular than any other as Arcane was never the popular spec. It was always either Frost or Fire. Because, if we go by the reason of somethings removal or inclusion(ala Shifting Power after I remember countless posts saying people hated it), we can come to the conclusion Cata introduced the perma-pet because of its popularity in the 99% of the 2%.
Yes, in Cata, Fire is once again going to be the popular spec, maybe given a teensy run for itâs money with Arcane. There are inferable reasons for this, but they would be subjective all the same. Though, if the representation of Frost increases, there must be a reason as well.
Just look at the Familiar since inception. It had 100% use in the first tier, with instant plummet to 0% the tiers after, all the way into DF where suddenly it has, and continues to have 100% use. Will you conclude it is a popular choice, or argue that itâs only chosen because of extraneous circumstances?
Post Edit: Itâs one of the things Iâm afraid is going to happen if once again the Familiar drops to 0% usage. The Data showing zero popularity, thus the reasoning for itâs removal, and now player choice and fun is once again stifled because Devâs canât balance talents to save their life.
It was a lame excuse of them saying: Rarely someone picked it.
OFC bec. it was super weak and there was no rly benefit (except some rare PVP situations) no tank-pet for open-world or something like this or some benefits in grps.
If it had been atleast +ok+ more people had picked it.
Oh damn, I never knew it did that! Like I said Iâve ever once used it because it isnât an arcane elemental and I hate how ineffectual and puny both it and its attacks look. Knowing this makes me feel better about opting out, lol.
Here is whatâs really standing out to me from the conversation that was sparked by this thread: there simply isnât enough build diversity or talent variety in the game.
There are clearly both a majority that dislike pets (some because they just donât like the fantasy and others because they canât stand the gameâs jank pet AI) and a vocal minority which really, really seem to like them. Both opinions are equally valid, imo, and since conjuration magic has always been a cornerstone of the fantasy mage archetype I donât see why it couldnât be integrated into the class as a viable alternative (emphasis on the alternative).
The fact is, the overwhelming majority of talents are flat damage increases or otherwise passive buffs that can very easily be made baseline with their talent nodes then freed up to be used to facilitate and enable multiple different playstyles even within the same spec. But the devs are pointedly choosing not to do that whether because they think itâs too much work or would be too difficult to balance (likely a combination of both).
Whether you agree or disagree with that reasoning I think itâs important to understand where it comes from and to accept that asking for a change to the status quo isnât unreasonable or that unrealistic to achieve if there was a desire and a genuine effort to do it. It is one of the main purposes of these forums after all. And at the end of the day if the discussion isnât popular it will eventually die down, even if the few people really passionate about it keep stubbornly trying to bring it back.
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Another reason i hate pets is that it requires tons of keybinds to manage. Summon pet, dismiss pet, pet follow pet attack and pet move to. Its annoying if you want to use it optimally in pvp not only janky ai wise but keybind wise, i would rather have fun spells that pet micromanagement spells. At least the arcane pet doesnt need to be managed with keybinds