Destro scholars! a question?Follow

Not really, no. In mid-T5 both 2/48/11 (Fireballx9 Scorch) and 40/0/21 (2pT5 with ABx3 Fboltx2) are sitting at about 2000dps, and without 2pT5 it's not even a competition, Fire wins. By the time you're in T6, Fire is a full 200dps ahead, and unlike Frost isn't completely messed over by any pushback that happens (and if any pushback happens for frost, it's a damage loss not only due to the pushback but the possibility of the AB debuff dropping off).

EDIT: And that's completely ignoring the *massive* synergy between trinkets, Bloodlust/IV, and Molten Fury. Molten Fury alone boosts a fire mage's damage by a huge amount, making it pull even farther ahead of any combination of frost.
EDIT2: Found a new, updated simulator for mages, it's putting Frost at about 200dps below Fire at mid-T5 content levels, with the margin growing rapidly until you can get 4pT6 with 2pT5 (AB/Frost rotations), at which point fire still pulls out ahead. Plus it appears AB rotations are completely ****** anywho on the PTR, which basically means Frost is ****** as a result.

Edited, Feb 22nd 2008 3:38pm by lsfreak

yea, sry Isfreak but you have that completely, entirely wrong. And please, show me any, any any any WWS where you have a mage in 2/5 T5 doing 2k dps, as any spec, on any boss (except akama).

Most/all mages swap to frost once they start getting T6. Its quite simple actually, you have 1 mage go deep frost simply for winters chill. The rest of your mages can go 40/0/21 to pick up all those lovely spell damage and crit boosting talents. Your chillbot should be sitting at around a 30-35% crit, while your other mages get to have a ball tossing 2.4k frostbolts that crit 45-50% of the time.

The downside to this is, that if your chillbot ever misses a raid, your other mages are kind of screwed.

And molten fury is a joke compared to Mind Mastery + Arcane power + Spell Power + Arcane Instability + Arcane Potency working the entire fight, not just the last 20%.

If you're going to tell me I'm wrong, please also go tell the mages over at EJ, who've had Illidan on farm for the last 5 months, some of the top mages and top theorycrafters in the world, that they're wrong as well.

Here is a simulation I used, using pretty much full Sunwell gear and 4pT6. You'll note that even with someone else stacking Winter's Chill, 2/48/11 is still 200dps ahead of 40/0/21. Now take a mage with the best-of-the-best T5 gear, including 2pT5. Here's the results - Fire wins out, even when you've got one Winter's Chill *****.


Mind mastery - Increase in +dmg, yes, but...
Arcane Power - less net damage gain than Molten Fury in most fights, due to lower total "uptime"
Spell Power - makes a crit Fbolt hit *almost* as hard as a crit Fireball
Arcane Instability - Identical to a Fire talent, moot point
Arcane Potency - net 3% crit gain, only comparable fire talent is twice as good
You forgot that Fbolt scales inferior (.3257dmg/csec/+dmg versus .3833dmg/csec/+dmg, before counting multipliers which Fire has a ton more of). Then add in that Fire gets more multipliers (13.3% bonus versus 6% bonus)...
EDIT: Edited the last bit a little, mixed up MM with a Disc priest talent for some reason O.o

Edited, Feb 22nd 2008 5:07pm by lsfreak

last i knew. beyond SSC/TK. arcane mages (arcane blastx2 arcane missiles rotation) was the largest dps output for mages (presuming you have a Spriest in the group). heck check alot of the top end raiding guilds and you'll find alot of their mages are arcane spec. it does work and the damage is sick as hell.

also when i say arcane. the spec i mean is 50/0/11. and for my guilds progression. 4/5 HJ, 4/9 BT currently, so endgame **** ;) our mages definately know their stuff and they're all arcane spec, so yeah. arcane > fire

Once again, all I'm asking for, is you to link me a WWS that proves this simple statement. Simply saying the same thing over and over, doesn't make it true.

First hand experience>reading about it on someone else's forums. Usually EJ is dead on the money, but if you ever listen in when their mages are on, they use arc/frost mages with 1 chillbot.

Except you just showed Arcane doing damage. There is no fire mage there to compare to. Later tonight or tomorrow I'll try and fish up some decent parses (which is the hard part and the thing that's nice about theorycrafting - it's always equal. No one accidentally gets 10% extra crit from being lucky with the RNG, no one gets left out of the spriest group, no one gets hits with the first Doom).

Edited, Feb 24th 2008 11:31am by lsfreak