What kind of numbers are you getting in raid? And are you going Noil or orb?
I’ve been frost the whole expansion…i’ve done great every tier as glacial spike but am trying the orb build today to see how it goes in raid because i’m not seeing the numbers that I want to see or am used to as glacial spike…could be me fumbling because i’m learning fights but orb build seems less aggravating than glacial spike…will see how it goes
Still sticking with Frost and will until the end of the expansion. I’m doing perfectly fine in raid with the good ol’ Glacial Spike build.
I want to get into Fire, but the requirement of correct azerite traits + bracers + using RoP (which I hate with a burning passion) is just too much for me right now
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Sticking with Frost. Or is frost sticking to or with me? Glacial Spike build seems good and the emphasis on AoE has helped in this final raid. Years ago used to be Arcane but wasn’t a fan of mana conservation. I think Fire might be fun but I’m stuck in my ways and don’t want them darn kids in me yard!
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Parses are solid, and single target is pretty great for no IL…but I still suspect fire is better overall.
LOL.
You suspect fire is better overall ?
Frost is dead last in the current raid on both Heroic and Mythic…
Frost is also in the bottom 5 of Mythic +.
Not sure what you are talking about.
Frost is the new LAME spec of the game in 8.3
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That would make my suspicion accurate then. You’re confusing the rankings with the viability of the spec.
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Been Frost since they fixed it in ToT. Admittedly though I was Arc/Fire in BrF after they broke Frost for a bit and had a 4pc tier bonus that was a 0.5% dps increase.
FOrb build is working well though this raid. I’m putting out competitive numbers against my raid group (we’re a Heroic guild and happy with 1 night a week) aside from the Demon Huntderps, but honestly who can compete against a braindead class with insane mobility and top notch ST, cleave, aoe, burst etc?
I wish the IL buff had made the standard rotation viable. I find no-IL so boring I said screw it and went back to arcane. One button spam in a spec I enjoy thematically is better than nothing.
When you say working well, what kind of numbers would you say you’re putting up? Or in mythic +? I know everyone’s situation, comp, etc varies but curious.
I’ve been Noil for a long time but am semi interested in switching.
I have stuck it out with Frost and Im putting up decent numbers in the current tier. Every now and then I can out dps a boss ST against a fire mage in our guild. I will probably just stick it out with frost once I hit the IL that I want and then wait it out until the next xpansion.
The frost mages in my raid do quite well. Though once I can spread ignite, I overtake them significantly. Anything with 2 target cleave or ST and they definitely gives me a run for my money.
I’m rank 150 frost mage for heroic NL (whatever that means), and here are my unsorted thoughts:
- noIL is ahead of orb spec for raiding still, as posted on Altered Time
- Even RoP aside, noIL is easier to play than fire because there are literally 2 less buttons to press in the rotation. That helps free brain space for other things, if you’re lazy / old like me.
- Frost has a very underrated perk: you can pet freeze the Thing From Beyond off GCD and feel just fine raiding with 80+ corruption.
- A 95% parse in frost (noIL) gets you about the same DPS as a 75-85% parse in fire. At roughly the same skill and gear optimization level.
- That implies fire has a higher skillcap (duh). And if you are fire and already parsing 85%+, frost is probably not for you; but if you’re parsing lower, you should consider noIL because you might do just as well with it (and without ROP hassles).
- Fire pulls further ahead on any fight that has downtime or damage multipliers, like Wrathion / Carapace / N’zoth, simply because that increases ROP/Combustion uptime. Frost damage is flatter and does best when active time is near 100%.
- NoIL is pretty easy to gear: 3xFF (more important than ilvl), and preferably Heart of Darkness. And as much mastery as possible, with socketed pieces being worth a lot. Fire has more fine tuning about which Azerite you need after BM. That and farming for bracers and good on-use trinkets.
- NoIL is pretty solid in M+ too, especially if it’s a week where only 2-4 adds are pulled at a time. And if the tank is good (chain pulls), which reduces ROP/Combustion uptime for fire.
- Good Fire parses really call for using pots with Combustion. If you’re too cheap for that, that might be another sign you’re settling already
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I thought you were enjoying the numbers of fire? Hows arcane treating you in this raid tier? Running single target or aoe
I’m still using it. It really depends on the traits you get on your gear. I hate azerite traits on gear. It forces you to play a spec. Anyway, I picked up some 460s from the mythic plus vendor and simmed each spec. Fire wasn’t much higher for the random gear the game gave me than a lonely winter frost spec so I’m using that for now.
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Some sorted responses to your unsorted thoughts, relating to FOrb:
noIL is ahead of orb spec for raiding still, as posted on Altered Time
FOrb build is currently ahead of NoIL. Those initial sims on Altered Time did not include corruptions, and NoIL was only 3% over FOrb at the time for ST. Corruptions account for a disproportionate amount of a geared player’s damage at the moment, which is likely causing the difference. Many of the better corruptions are proc-based and FOrb gets many more procs than the NoIL build due to more severe haste-stacking and the sheer number of damage ticks going out at any given time.
Fire pulls further ahead on any fight that has downtime or damage multipliers, like Wrathion / Carapace / N’zoth, simply because that increases ROP/Combustion uptime. Frost damage is flatter and does best when active time is near 100%.
Still true for FOrb, though less pronounced. It’s important for overall damage to get a full 50-60 seconds of damage in on the lust, to make the most use of thermal void, but the big 3 min bursts still make up a significantly smaller portion of frost’s damage.
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M+ I rarely do, but I sit around the same as the non-DH/DKs that are in our group.
As for raids, when my guild doesn’t have me doing specific mechanics (despite having 2 DH, monk, druid, shaman I’m the one they trust to get the mechanics right) I seem to sit about mid-pack with mostly blue parses.
Specific numbers I couldn’t really say, but if you’re not Mythic raiding or running 15+ keys I would highly recommend the Orb build. Even if the numbers aren’t there, it is just fun to play (especially without RoP, but running RoF). As long as we’re getting kills and I’m not last on the meters I’d rather play the spec that is fun and has more than 2 buttons.
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I’ve always only played frost.
The gearing reqs for fire get rather silly when it wants you to get a high arena rating for a trinket, the bracers from mech, and then a ton of haste versa gear from m+ for a raid where the gear doesnt give you that. combine that with w/e my issue is with dmg consistency with fire, ( i find it depends on the number of fireblast charges i get from lucid dreams during the combustion window, with a high number resulting in good dmg and a low number resulting in alright dmg and no idea how people are saying there isnt EXTREME rng in the build despite doing the rotation in the correct order). Arcane is in a diff boat, as you can totally gear out in nyalotha for the most part, but the spec is… how should i put this… not fun in the slightest to me? I also hate mana management. Frost doesnt have either of these problems, its just a shame seeing it lag so far behind. I’m also the same guy that spent many expansions as a destro lock despite it often being way worse than afflic cause i could not for the life of me play afflic to even a passable degree, so stubborn refusal to conform to what’s best is kind of in my gaming DNA i suppose.
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If anything, Corruption is the reason NoIL is pushing ahead of FOrb. FOrb was ahead when the buff dropped, but the corruption effects made NoIL better, simply because NoIL scaled so much better than FOrb.
Source:
Altered Time website has the 8.3 mage dps comparison in the general section if you wanna look it up. Forum still won’t allow me to post links.