Should I go frost or stick to Fire?

[Misaki]

Armory: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/r ... %AE/simple" target="_blank

Logs: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/c ... bracket=-1" target="_blank

Wowprogress: https://www.wowprogress.com/character/e ... isak%C3%AE" target="_blank

Hello, I'm in quite the dilemma right now, I have 5 legendaries (Shard of Exodar - Scorch waist - Diadem - Chest - Prydaz) and I'm current running 11k crit and 10k haste. I still don't have my wrist legendaries and I received my scorch legendary not too long ago. Do you guys think that I should stick to fire (Artifact weapon is level 50) or rather respec into frost (Artifact level 17)? From what I understand frost has the stat-weights of Crit>Int>Haste, playing around a little with my gear I was able to come out with 13k crit and 8k haste (Using chest legendary and cloak tier piece as well as using a different neck)

So would you guys recommend I just abandon fire and go frost or should I stick with it and pray to RNG that the wrists drop? I don't care which is more fun.

Thank you for the advice.

I also just ran some sims, Fire ST is simming for 665k at weapon level 50.
Frost ST is simming for 657k at weapon level 35. Using WitD and Metronome instead of Fury/Arcano netted me 672k at weapon level 35.

I also want to ask, why is it that Frost is only top 5 when looking at the top of the logs (99 percentile on heroic trillax for example)? Is it really hard to play or really RNG based?

[Drozzy]

I also want to ask, why is it that Frost is only top 5 when looking at the top of the logs (99 percentile on heroic trillax for example)? Is it really hard to play or really RNG based?

Both. If playing to make use of the double ice lance glitch, frost is probably the hardest spec in the game to play optimally. Without, it's still a very difficult spec with constant meaningful choices that can sometimes heavily impact your dps. Frost with good/great RNG gets a pretty massive gain in dps, but bad RNG can also severely hurt your dps. Frost is also not helped in logs by the low representation it has. It has a growing playerbase, but it still has significantly less players than fire, and the amount of players who can play the spec at the highest level, with the best gear (legendaries+trinkets+tier), (and getting good RNG, b/c that's what high-ranking logs get) is incredibly small.

As to whether or not you should switch to frost, your legendaries are fine for it. You have shard(BiS lone legendary) and the chest is also quite strong. You would have the option of playing Glacial Spike (GS) rather or Thermal Void (TV) because you have shard. GS is significantly easier to play than TV, but tends to be a little bit behind sim-wise. A downside to GS is that it relies heavily on having a large amount of traits in your weapon, because it double dips (benefits twice) on the %dmg bonus that the traits give. both specs have the same RNG, but TV gets punished much more by bad RNG, and rewarded much more by good RNG. You logs seem good, so you may be capable of playing Frost (TV) at a high level. But to be blunt: Fire is an easy spec to play, so I can't say for certain from your logs whether or not you would play frost well.

I like playing frost because of the utility and the depth to the spec. There are always meaningful choices to make and new tips and tricks that people are discovering and using. Frost is a far more punishing spec, but that is exactly why I like it. If you decide to try out frost, prepare for lots and lots of time learning and reading up and analyzing logs to improve (especially with TV, but still to an extent with GS).
Fire is a lot less punishing (to both bad play and bad RNG), and diadem is an extremely powerful legendary that can make a fire mage well worth bringing to most fights.

Last note: If you do decide to go frost, aim for 33.4% crit chance, that is shatter cap. Crit is the best stat until that point, and the worst after it. Otherwise, trust the scalings that sims give you (the sims start devaluing crit early because of a flaw in how it calculates).

[Misaki]

Ok, wow, thanks for the breakdown. When you say fire is easy to play are you just sayibg it or are you actually proficient in both specs and able to consistently parse above 90%? (I know I don't but that is very much related to other things like me losing focus, joking with the guild and playing on 220 ping) with all that in mind (I think I won't struggle keeping focus since I auto pilot a lot but should I still consider frost with my 220 ping) I don't think any spec is hard nor do I have the knowledge to comment on any specs difficulty but I do have a friend that plays a max level mage (main) but plays a lotbof alts and get really good logs on them while being awful at mage and saying that fire is really hard (90+ on warrior). Are you implyibg frost nakes fire look like a joke? If it does I wonder if it wouldn't be a time waste to swap since my logs are bad on a spec that is easy relative to frost? Sorry for bad grammar, typing on a phone.

Thanks for the response I think playing frost would be fun but I just want to know how bad is the RNG element of it really? rng has a very minor effect on fire due to 2pc vor example. (FU streaking)

[Drozzy]

Fire has a quite consistent rotation. I played fire at the launch of the expansion. I got a prydaz and then a sephuz, and that is why I stopped playing fire, but while I was fire, I had some of the highest non-bracers parses for EN. I often outperformed our second mage, who had bracers, even while I did not. Fire no longer relies on frontloading all of its damage into combustion and RoP, but the rotation is still not very punishing. The fire mage rotation is fairly set in stone, You'll often know the exact order of spells you'll be casting (well you will with combustion, and outside of combustion, its hardly ever more than 2-3 fireballs to get heating up). The bracers (and I assume to an extent, the belt) add some significant depth/difficulty to the class. If I'm wrong about anything because of changes to the spec, I take full responsibility for my ignorance.

To put it shortly, fire is not punishing because lost dps is only just that. Losing dps at X time doesn't significantly affect your dps later on. Lost dps as frost, or improper play as frost, impacts your future dps by huge amounts. For example, while playing TV, fitting an extra frozen orb inside of icy veins can prolong your icy veins by 20+ extra seconds(I've had it be up to 60+s extra before). So the difference between a 58s icy veins and a 62s icy veins is really like the difference between a 58s icy veins and an 80s icy veins. 4s of icy veins (2 ice lance casts), can be the difference between 25% uptime on your cooldowns. That doesn't even mention how easy it is to munch procs as frost (whereas with fire, you want to gain a heating up while you have hot streak. Frost plays like that with brain freeze, with less wiggle room (you can only store a second extra charge for like 1/10 of a second, based on a hotfix they made.) Frost also includes a second set of procs with FoF, which you can't munch, and also need to make sure to expend all of them before using your other proc (or risking munching the BF proc). It's an extremely punishing, but rewarding, spec to play.

I've had many high ranking parses as frost throughout my time playing it. At times I've grabbed rank 1 parses early on in the content. I still often get a 97+% parse on some fights, but it's difficult to be consistent. I'm only at 48 traits, and my guild has been extremely unlucky with trinkets. We have cleared both normal and heroic every week, and we have seen literally 0 metronome and 0 whispers drop. And I haven't successfully bonus rolled any. I'm currently using an 895 star gate and an 880 vers brinewater. I am also still only 899 (once again, just bad Brolls and drops), so I'm falling significantly behind the top parses in gear. In the first 2 weeks of NH, I did some calculations with my logs, determining what my dps would have been with 54 traits, and many of my calculations put me in the top 3 rankings. It's up to you to decide if you feel I am playing at a high enough level to value my input. (honestly TV frost is so hard that I genuinely do make mistakes and with recent hotfixes and changes to the spec, I'm still remastering it).

Hilariously, your high ping could actually help you get higher dps with frost if you get enough haste/haste trinkets/lust to be able to double ice lance (it works more often+reliably at high ms/input lag). Assuming you were able to adjust to the high ms and still play well.
If you have some lag problems, (with my heavy bias towards frost mind you) I would recommend playing GS (glacial spike) if you went frost, at least for now. It's much, much, much less punishing, and can give you practice with the rotation in a less punishing environment. As you feel more comfortable, you can try out different builds. The only significant gearing difference between the different builds of frost mage is mastery. Mastery is a viable (good but not the best) stat for GS mages, but mastery is very bad for TV mages. If you gear to prioritize crit until 33.4%, and aim to keep a balance of the other stats, you'll stay decently itemized for either.

Lastly, don't cut yourself short. Your parses aren't bad. They might not be outstanding, but we need to remember, you don't have pyro bracers. You're being compared with many people who do. Other people may also have more optimal itemization, item level, relic traits, or even just fight lengths/favorable boss strategies. And yeah, no-one gets high parses every fight. Gotta remember that with a big enough sample size, logs show the best of the best RNG with the best of the best gear, on the shortest fights. No-one can realistically expect to maintain high parses all of the time (unless you freakishly outgear everyone). Being able to achieve a high ranking a few times is a good indicator of player skill, but no-one parses 90+% every fight. That's just not how RNG works.

If you're looking to go frost just because of dps, odds are unless you put a ton of time in to it, you won't see much gain in your dps. But I find it to be an extremely fun, viable, variable, competitive, and challenging spec, and that's why I like it. Frost isn't constant thought and effort, but it's a lot of work to get everything down to muscle memory. I love that there are still choices to be made once you build that muscle memory. I didn't enjoy fire as much because most of the rotation is just executing muscle memory. The biggest decisions that felt rewarding when you made good choices were things like: living bomb timing and aiming your cinderstorm. I like not being optimal, it means I can get even better. With fire mage, I felt like I had hit the peak, and nothing I did could actually raise my dps by much, if any.
Don't make the choice to switch just because of dps. Try out both and see what you like playing more. Odds are you'll care more when you play the spec you like, and do more damage because you're trying harder.

[Misaki]

Thanks a lot, I think you're right, I should just play both specs and see which one is more enjoyable and ignore the DPS meters. You seem extremely passionate in the spec you love, I'll gladly give it a try if it brought you so much pride and enjoyment. Stay awesome and thank you a lot of the advice.

I think relearning a spec would be extremely fun, I started to do PvP on my mage simple because I didn't feel like doing any PvE content.

As for what you were saying about fire, it does feel very cookie cutter, I don't have the gear yet to where it starts to get depth again like high haste bracer play.