Raiding as frostFollow

Hey there

I'm onto start raiding Karazhan now however I have to admit I really hate the fire tree. Due to the fact that I'm in shadoweave and love frost I was trying to find an alternative to my "cookie cutter" build of 17/0/44 that could enable more damage but at the same keep clearcasting as this is perhaps my favourite talent in the arcane tree. I'd consider raiding as arcane but kinda want the gear from Kara first. So just wanted to work out if this new build was a good one.

this is my current armory: http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=The+Maelstrom&n=Narcissica

Generally I like this build but want more fire power... or frost power really. So my thoughts were to trade improved counter spell (I'm not pvp'ing a lot right now) and magic absorption for elemental precision to make capping spell hit rate easier, maxing out arctic winds and putting the rest into winter's chill. Like this; http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/mage/talents.html?2300050000000000000000000000000000000000000000535320310235010241551

Its probably not going to do as much fire damage I know that; but I want to do as much damage with frost as possible until I can gear up to get say a 40/0/21 build, plus use my set still. Any thoughts?

N

Edited, Oct 11th 2007 3:34am by Narcissica

Your 10/0/51 looked fine to me. Probably how I'd build it if I didn't want to go 17/0/44 as a frostie. Another thing to note: You will find a 10/0/51 scales better than a 40/0/21. If you want to go with the build that gets better faster with better gear, stick with the 10/0/51, or go 40/0/21 and respec when you have something like 850 frost damage.





As I understand it, the Illidan fight is unfriendly to fire.

I have a 70 mage in full purples/blues

I have no lock (i object to playing an overpowered class)

I am not giving out lock propaganda, I have just become so demoralized at the fact that warlocks beat mages at everything.

I offer no apologies. He's whining.

I know, being a mage is a state of mind. I always try to consider the consequences of my actions and act as efficiently as possible. This works well until a lock shows up:

- Fears me
- I trinket out, assuming my rather long-cooldown trinket of off cooldown.
- Fears me
- Oh dear, no trinket left (im firemage).
- Stacks me up with many dots.
- Waits, usually mocks me by spamming 'kek', recasts fear as necessary although it usually isnt.
- I die.

My meticulous and attentive state of mind did not help me. Like I said in another thread, I wish a warlock just had a 3 second cast 'kill mage' ability since the conclusion is inevitable anyway, and that would make the whole process much less painful.

You can stay frost and raid just fine. In fact, there are ways in which you'll raid better as frost, despite the "fire is the best dps and that's all that matters" orthodoxy.

For one thing, how long will it take you do replace your shadoweave gear if you respec? Do you have the spellfire set sitting around along with comparable quality shoulder and boot pieces? If you gain a little dps in changing spec and lose a huge amount of dps in changing gear, you're not helping anybody.

Further, mages almost never simply stand still and chain cast spells. Raids involve moving around for almost everybody on almost every boss fight, and they usually involve everybody, not just the tank(s), taking some damage or having to deal with distractions.

Aside from the unavoidable theoretical limitations imposed, this means that awareness and reaction speed in each encounter will make a much bigger difference than talent spec. So, for that matter, will compensating for latency, e.g. by using the Quartz mod and "/stopcasting" macros (the latter no longer being necessary when 2.3 comes). These factors don't make frost better; the point is simply that before you worry about your spec there are more significant things you might be able to improve.

There are many fights where being able to ice block (out of garrote, holy fire, demon chains, randomly dropped aggro, etc.) helps the raid a great deal, as everybody saves considerable time that might have been wasted on cleansing you, keeping your health up, pulling targets off you, or killing extra things. And, of course, dead dps is no dps.

For small scattered damage in some fights (both to save healers' focus and to avoid pushback), Ice Barrier can be worth keeping up, and it's more mana-efficient than Mana Shield, espeicially as the first one is free if you pop it and immediately drink right before the pull.

Frost also does better in damage / threat. While that shouldn't usually be the limiting factor, it can sometimes be an important consideration.

Moreover, you have to be realistic about how you'll be spending the whole of your time. Even somebody whose sole interest in the game is raiding does not spend all game time in raids, as farming gold for consumables, at the least, is necessary. If you have the cash to spec back and forth all the time, go ahead. If not, keep in mind that frost can make solo world farming and 5-person instances easier.

If you are smart and alert, minimize computer issues holding you back, and use your elemental, trinket, and cold snap cooldowns properly, you may well clear Karazhan on top in dps with a frost mage.

If you're curious how different options compare numerically, http://tc.awenet.com/index.php is a handy page.

This is a raiding thread, not PvP. Because you get beat by locks in pvp does not make them better raiders. The only saving grace that I have for locks is the lovely instance when the raid wipes but their DoTs tick to kill the boss. It happened on our second Gruul downing some time ago, was clasic.

A well played, or equally geared mage, will do equal or outdps a lock, and this will become even more evident after the 2.3 patch when our main nukes get some of our power back.


[edit] for some strange reason my sig doesn't show up all of my spellhit... only 95 of my 174 (I need to drop a +8 hit gem...)

Edited, Oct 12th 2007 11:38am by Anobix

Ah, alrighty. I see what you're saying. Yes, the damage done by the elemental does not count towards the mage's threat. I misunderstood you. You wouldn't believe how many times people have tried to push the nonsense that the damage done by the frost mage themselves does less threat than that done by a fire mage, even before the elemental entered the game.

The reason mages respec to frost post-TK/SSC is twofold: Frost gives much higher control during the Hyjal waves, and the second BT boss has significant Fire resist. Fire is still superior for pure damage output (with the single exception of Supremus), however, and on top of it has stronger AoE for the Hyjal waves.

Deep Fire scales significantly better once you get a number of SSC/TK/ZA items, but until that point deep frost with WE remains competitive (as long as your WE stays alive >.>). Beyond that point, frost simply can't keep up in terms of raw damage output, especially when JoW and spriests are available to counter Fire's inferior dmg/mana.
It's worth noting that by the time you get that ZA/SSC/TK gear, it isn't frost or fire specific, so you can respec to deep fire if you feel you need to without regearing.

Supremus is a total joke (as in "We one-shot him losing 15 people figuring out that Volcanos = Bad and then just dragging the fight out"), so he's not a factor. Mages as a general rule don't ever spec _Frost_ post-Kael; they may spec it when they're just starting TK due to Al'ar (Immune to fire ftw!) but after that there's not much of a reason to.

Up until the next patch, and especially when you have 2/5 T5, Arcane is king. Insane threat reduction, huge DPS possibilities and... well, a lot of main lost, but that's what Shadow Priests and potions are for. After the Metagem nerf (and the removal of the damage tax) Arcane will still probably be the preferred spec through TK/SSC with 2-piece Tier 5, but look to Mages to be going deep Fire once they hit BT and Hyjal.