This is the only way to get changs to frost.
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Or go Arcane and live happily ever after
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I haven’t been having a great time in shadowlands - thought I’d level a few toons to max and see if I liked playing something new in shadowlands more than my main…
So far I’ve leveled a ret pally to 54 and a UH DK to 33…I made these 2 b/c those specs are doing well in this xpac so far…they are not too bad / pretty fun but i prefer range so I made a mage.
(I have played mage before at max level but that toon was purged during a drunken “I’ll never play these toons again culling session”…so i started over.)
Was so pleased when I was able to get Kold as my name.
But now I’m an ahole if I stay frost and I’ll be an ahole fire mage named Kold if I switch HAHAHAHA
Lesson learned = I’m an ahole 
That said - I’m sticking with frost until I’m done leveling (currently 43 or so)…maybe we’ll get a buff by then?
Frost isnt bad. I’m simming equal for fire/frost atm, and all specs are inline with each other per simcraft. Stick with frost if you enjoy it, you’d be best off playing what you want and getting good at it.
Arena:
- Fire excels because of so much of their damage being tied to combustion/burst leading to funny 1-shots in the current burst meta
- Arcane is meh, its good at surviving and can work but lining up its burst is harder
- Frost does well in a less bursty meta, they have better constant pressure than fire does
M+
- Fire is A teir ONLY with a highly coordinated group that can maximize combust. For your average player you’re not going to see the benefits of a perfectly planned run.
- Arcane is strong
- Frost is strong
Torghast:
- Arcane is OP because of seekers scroll/Runecloth Wrappings combo
- Frost cant compete with arcane’s 1 shotting bosses, frost outperforms fire solo because of kiting.
- Fire its kinda fun, but not comparable to the top two.
Raid:
- They are all simming with 100 dps of each other - all are viable.
- Fire is only a typical go to for high tier raiders because combust can line up well with specific boss phases that need to get burned asap.
I appreciate the input / advice.
That said - you’re saying frost / fire are very close…other folks on the forums are saying frost is behind by 15 - 20%???
Frost is definitely sucking hind teat on the logs I’ve seen posted where they are last / 2nd to last DPS every week so far.
Regardless - I’m going to try it out for myself and see. Having fun leveling so far.
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Logs are bait, you need to sift through to understand why.
The mythic logs everyone is referring to have no frost mages above 220 ilvl. Meanwhile first has people with ilvl’s above that.
What does this say? Well people less dedicated to the class are playing frost. What does that mean? Well they will probably be less good than the people that are playing fire.
Simcraft has them within 100 dps of each other. That’s a measure of actual possible performance, while warcraft logs is just a players ability to tap into that possible performance.
There might be reasons why: excessive mobility, downtime, burst/AOE window timing, quality of players, etc…
TLDR It shouldn’t be written off, play what you have fun with.
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I totally disagree, SimCraft is with perfect conditions / rotation patchwerk fight with no movement, and I believe the simulation you are referring to is at ilvl 226…
Logs are REAL world content.
And no, Frost is not competitive in the SL raid.
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SimCraft is perfect conditions, yes. Thus a classes potential under very mundane conditions. It is at ilvl 226.
Logs have more than enough of their own bias. Eg - Frost has literally 0 parses over the 220 ilvl in mythic because everyone is gearing for fire leaving frost with a smaller pool of less geared players to represent it.
If people race with fire - because it has the edge for the tier, then gear for fire. Frost has different stat weights, they can’t suddenly flip to frost and be optimized. So what happens? Frost lags behind more than it would’ve because everybody jumped the fire hype train and are not geared for frost. This is the same cycle every expansion and tier.
Only specs that are “competitive” are the top 5-7. There are over 30. Viability is very different, and what should be determining balance.
You haven’t even stepped foot into Nathria as a mage. Let alone a frost mage. You are building up this strawman chicken and egg scenario like people didn’t try making frost work for two entire raid tiers. you know why there are no 220 frost mages? Because anyone who is serious enough to gear that far know that frost just isn’t cutting it at that item level. Folks pushing 220 right now are very serious players. I get it, you like frost, we all like frost, but you cant make frost a thing right now. If you are okay performing in the top 10 percentile and still sitting at the bottom of the meters against players who are performing much much worse be my guest. I can say that my green fire parses are better than my blue/purple frost parses now. I am comfortably in the middle, and I am the wrong covenant.
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LOL this guy is in every thread telling everyone how frost mage is so good. Meanwhile he hasn’t even raided.
He’s a troll. Or he actually hates frost mage and doesn’t want to see it buffed? I’m not entirely sure what his goal is, but it’s not helping people based on actual evidence.
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Oh please tell me how Logs are bait? I am pretty sure you got logs and sims confused. Before you answer that please tell me a time where a pug group leader said “I’m taking this spec because the sims data shows higher DPS than this spec.”
Logs are the realistic metric that should be used, while sims 100% should be taken into consideration as to what the potential is for the spec (or individual for individual sims)—however, this is assuming perfect play and not one mistake.
Moreover, unless you customize the APL heavily, sims do not account fully for specific boss encounters (they can, but it requires custom editing—and of course you can get it somewhat relative without that—but if you’re using default Patch 5 min then you likely aren’t accounting for actual mechanics and issues that can severely alter that number your sim is showing).
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When i play serious, i get CE - I understand logs. I was playing with an Hpal back in BFA before Classic dropped. Crustyudder - Illidan if you really care that much. I hate playing the “i’ve played at a higher level than you card” but you just started it so w/e.
Folks pushing 220 as frost right now are nowhere near as serious as the people pushing w/ fire. Otherwise they’d be at a similar ilvl and at a similar level of progression. But community perception is you have to do what WF raiders are doing to get a kill.
I don’t like frost, i think the spec is slow and bland with cooldowns that feel mediocre. I’m just pointing out that perception =/= reality.
Fight length. ilvl. Strategy. Talent pool. -> This has a bigger impact on logs than people give it credit for.
The only successful pugs i’ve been in only ever asked for an achievement proving I’ve done the content. Viability =/= competitive and the two concepts are very different, better players gravitate towards what’s competitive because the more competitive raiders get the more they care, leaving what’s viable to look worse than it is.
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Ha, I sim my frost mage, (ilvl 213) and i get 4282 DPS right now. I switch to fire, I don’t change my legendary (still frost legendary) i am using the less popular venthyr covenant, yet my fire mage still sims at 4821 DPS, almost 600 dps higher, without a legendary for the class, and without Night Fae that is incredible for fire.
Frost is dead right now. I have to switch. Blizzard won’t fix frost, it’s been bad since the release nerf. I am only saddened that it took me this long to accept that fact.
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All the serious mages went fire yes because it can do much more damage, not just because they woke up and felt like it one day. Please get the argument the right way around. Stop quoting simcraft because it’s been proven time and again not to have any baring on the parses in real life logs. Simcraft needs to up its game with the legendaries etc. it’s way off kilter at the moment.
There are still good players playing frost mage, trying to make it work, in fact I should imagine all the bad frost mages have given up raiding by now so only the best frost mages are submitting parses.
I’m just not playing mage anymore, meanwhile I’m leveling inferior classes that dont have the style mages have. I feel like a trumpist in DC… We got stolen man!!!
The two sentences above contradict themselves.
- Simcraft isn’t perfect, its an indicator of potential.
- Logs arn’t perfect, they’re a glimpse of 5-10 variables without a control sample.
What simcraft does is standardize the rotation, standardize the gear, standardize the fight. You get a clean comparison. Is it perfect? No. Does it mean you’ll ever be able to get that performance out of it? Not necessarily.
What WCL logs does, is show you how many people are playing a spec & at what ilvl, and how the people playing that spec @ that ilvl have been doing given a wide range of strategies.
What simcraft does do is provide a basis to cross compare logs with. Fire is performing at roughly where it sims. Frost is not. Why? Either, people are playing worse, or the fights don’t suit frosts playstyle (excessive movement) and require extra effort.
So let’s say we buff frost by 10-20% to bring it up to fire in logs. What happens? People realize frost can outperform fire and everyone swaps over to frost, fire net damage drops as the skill pool is depleted leaving only the fire players that enjoy the playstyle. Fire is now in frost/arcanes position. All of a sudden this forum is filled with people QQing that fire is underperforming and needs to be buffed.
Viability =/= competitive.
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If that were true then purple Frost parses wouldn’t be almost 20% lower than the other specs and classes.
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If simcraft standardises everything no wonder it isn’t coming close to real raid logs in accurately predicting performance.
Your argument for not buffing frost is inane. Frost is so far behind fire at the moment, 30% in most cases, you could buff it 20% and it would still be behind fire. Arguing to do nothing because fire mages might get upset is just ridiculous.
Frost is not viable, in one mythic fight it is 70% behind the top dps specs. That is not viable. The evidence is that no one is taking frost mages mythic raiding.
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It is if those people are 4/5th as good as the people playing others specs or classes. Even if they are just 10%-15% worse, it’s still not that far out.