Honestly, I’m glad you can see archived posts. Does help my points.
Out of 24:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/10 17th place of dps specs.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/12 20th of dps specs.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/11 4th, hope this lasts.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/13 12th… damn, going down.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/17 Back to 19th place… hmm.
I mean, sure… it’s ranked higher than another mage spec a couple times, but let’s move on to BfA
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/21 21st place of pds specs.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/22 24th place, dead last.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/23 24th place again, wtf Blizzard?
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/24 16th place, whew, was scared the trend was going to continue. Anyway, let’s move onto DF since Shadowlands statistics don’t show.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/31#region=1 Cherry picked patch that landed them 16th place, following they go 23rd in 10.0.7 to 24th in 10.1.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/33#region=4 Good we’re 4th from the top again! Let’s see if this continues…
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/35 Darn, right back down to 24th place currently… weird, though to give Amirdrassil the benefit of the doubt, it’s still going on and even the best caster is near the middle. I don’t know about you, but being above the bottom 25th percentile only 25% of the time during and after the expansion that “viablized” Frost doesn’t scream middling to me. I mean sure, they weren’t the bottom Mage spec that whole time, but still…
Either way, Frost was above middle like twice; something must be up. Need to investigate. Hmm, looking through the sets it seems Frost was at its strongest when the tier set bonus’ gave flat proc chance increase. Noteably, Nighthold with Everburning Knowlege sets Frostbolt and FO’s +5% and Underlights IL frozen target 10%. Funny that.
Which begs a question why Blizzard is refusing to actually fix what’s wrong with frost, as you said, needing bosses to be frozen. Instead of leaning into Shatter via Combustion stat mechanics, they made it impossible to reach cap without changing any other frozen target interaction whether that be more damage or better proc chance. All, while keeping Frost’s RNG the same from pre-patch to pre-patch.
First, nice edit removing the Imgur. Second, it was a counterpoint to show that the pet has done more than 5% of the damage. However, if you’ld be so kind and show a Cata through WoD parse, even a legion parse that would be helpful. However, I did a pixel measurement of the Mage bar in the parse you posted. The whole bar was ~500 pixels, and the pet portion is ~50; that’s 10% son. Now, I’m not sitting here pulling a flex tape ad with those numbers. I’m just stating, that 5% you posted and promptly removed, was a rare occurrence. Showing that throughout history, the Elemental was doing more damage than you are trying to say it was. And that it’s only in the recent couple expansions has it been dropping since Frost has more about how much Ice Lance damage and Thermal Void duration can you pump out. Much like your complaint about why they used the Ele in BFA is same reason they used LW post Nighthold. When everything is buffing IL and causing you to cast more IL, of course you’re going to pick the option that buffs IL.
Time for some napkin math, while I prefer pen, those crayons you provided will do. Starters, each Water Jet provides minimum 2 FoFs; calculating on this number. With 12 Water Jet casts(funnily matching up given the fight is 6 minutes and it’s cd is 30s), the player got 24 FoF’s granting 24 IL casts. Given the player cast 135 of them total, we are to assume of them, 111 were pure proc while the rest were Water Jet. Mathing out to 58.46m damage of pure player and 12.64m pet provided damage. Now, if we use the formulae of 100(12.64m/71.11m), we end up seeing 17% of the Ice Lance damage is provided via pet. Next, we multiply the 209.9k by 17% and we find 35.5k of that dps is the pet provided dps. Guess what the next step is. We now use the percentage formula again of 100(35.5k/542.16k) and we come up with 6.05% of that total comes from Water Jet provided FoF IL’s. Adding that to the baseline pet’s 9.75% from pure damage and the pet is providing through both pure damage and forced procs: 15.8% of your dps. How much it’ll provide in Cata wont be known until Classic. Now, sure that’s not the “required” 40%, but that is still more than what you say it did.
I’m sure you’re going to say “we don’t count that” because it’s not damage from the pet and it’s damage from the player. But, without the Water Jet, at best they probably would have gotten maybe 115 Ice Lances, losing about >30k dps from player rng and having to cast more Frostbolts.
Never said this, hence why I pointed out the time Frost didn’t meet the criteria.
I know you meant retail, but at least we agree that the parameters changed, and that by previous 15% Frost would have easily qualified through math above.
Mi may be a Mage tool, but it’s counted as pet damage on WL, and as you’ve stated, we’re looking at pet damage however temporary. Though I never denied Hunter and Demo pet count. Just partly that Hunter pets can more easily be condensed into categories since Legion and beyond removed their talent trees and made them either tank, pvp, or pve. Spirit beasts and family abilities are more tools anyway. Still, can’t deny the WE was multifunctional as a pet.
Not sure why you felt the need to post all that when it just says what I did. Demo was saved via their talents back then, hunter pets had their own talents etc, etc.
Please tell me which spells in the DK rotation other than Dark Transformation enhances your ghoul? Or are those enchancements provided through talents when they cast abilities? Same with Demo locks. Which spells, summoning spells not included, enhance their demons besides talented cooldown? Again, said Frost didn’t meet this criteria.
Well, way to put words in someone’s mouth. Never once was that uttered by me. I’ve said the fact it has a talent that effects a pet counts. Nice try.
This is one of 3 of the 5 Frost met up until BfA. Legion to Shadowlands was an odd time. They really wanted to make Frost a lame man’s Fire.
TBC was CD, WotLK was CD or glyphed permanent(I’ll prove something with this soon), then Cata, MoP, WoD it was “forced”.
Yeah, Legion introduced LW. However let me show you something:
Here are the WotLK Classic parses for Heroic 25M ICC. Right now players have the option of using the Elemental as a CD or a permanent pet. Yet, nearly every single one of them are using the permanent pet. Oh, right, they’re being “forced” to use it since it’s better dps huh? Weird how that’s been the complaint for LW too. Anyway, on to Legion where as you say after 1-tier they switched. Again, it’s still odd that it took till the second tier to happen if no-one wanted the pet in the first place. And much like happened in retail, everyone switched the moment LW started pulling ahead, both in encounter design and throwing a crap ton of damage onto Ice Lance and keeping TV up at all times.
What do you call viable? Whether or not it’s in the top 2/3s of all specs?
They do though. They show how many people were parsing that spec during that tier. MoP sadly was the first and last time there was equal representation of mage specs. Since then, most of the time the Mage playerbase went either Fire or Arcane, whichever is the best at the time. Further cementing the proof they would rather play that which is FoTM.
To even further show this point. I’ll start in Legion:
Emerald Nightmare(Fire Top Damage): 82k parses with Fire, 11k Frost, 7k Arcane.
Trial of Valor(Fire still on top): 8k Fire, 800 Frost, 400 Arcane.
Nighthold(When Frost shot to 4th): 65K Frost, 23k Fire, 8k Arcane.
Tomb(Fire blows ahead): 36k Frost, 26k Fire, 5k Arcane.
Antorus(Fire still superior): 13k Frost, 10k Fire, 2k Arcane.
What pattern do we see. Fire increases in parses when it’s the top spec, and Frost dwindles. Has nothing to do with LW, it’s just numbers chasers. Or, people were getting tired of the LW playstyle they were forced into.
On to BfA, the expansion that forced you to play with Water Elemental:
BoD(Note that Frost is dead last, though tying with Fire): 36k Frost, 4k Arcane, 4k Fire.
Palace(Fire is now significantly on top): 25k Fire, 7k Frost, 2k Arcane.
Ny’alotha(Fire is now the top): 15k Fire, 3k Frost, 500 Arcane.
BoD(Note that Frost is dead last, though tying with Fire): 36k Frost, 4k Arcane, 4k Fire.
This one right here is notable. In an expansion that forced you to use the Elemental over LW had the highest representation of Frost mages ever seen through all of these rankings. Even though they were near dead last in both all specs and last in Mage specs. Another oddity since as you keep saying: “Noone wanted to play with the Elemental”. Only when Fire started to significantly take off did they all switch, and once again, Frost and Arcane parse numbers dwindled.