Player's Guide to What's OP in 7.1.5

[Mage]

It seems that everybody's supporting Arcane as the non-Fire spec right now. Any particular reason for this?

Reason is that is has ST, cleave and (burst) AOE damage. It also has burst which has 0 meaning in sims but is actually invaluable during progress. Frost does not have all those things.

[Haruichi]

Below is a chart representing my own findings.

Huge disclaimers:

1) Consider/sim/test your own specific situation.

2) This is very, VERY roughly put together. The below brackets don’t represent a hard “=” between the 3 specs. For example: In Bracket 7, there’s a notable difference between Marquee + Shard and Koralon + Shard. So, this is to be understood as a rough estimation of: IF you’re in X situation, THEN it’s comparable to Y or Z. For Brackets 0, 1 and 2, Arcane and Frost come across better.

3) I’m not great with sims and compared to many others, not least contributors on this forum, my SIM knowledge is rudimentary.

4) Some legendaries are omitted.

5) These are findings based on a few sims of my own, reading and considering other people’s sims, my own testing and to little extent, reading about other people’s experiences from PTR. As such, this represents the opinion I’ve formed on that basis. You might, rightfully so, disagree and it may not be at all relevant or applicable to your situation.

6) These evaluations are made for my own benefit and with Fire as a focal point; meaning, what’s been of interest to me has been to reach some understanding of when Frost and Arcane were comparable to various Fire set-ups.

7) This is strictly ST.

8) Read 1).

9) Read 8).

Non-numerical issues I, personally, conclude and consider particularly significant when evaluating the above situations and making decisions:

-Removal of Ice Floes makes life particularly difficult for Fire, even more so for Marquee Fire.
-Arcane can, if so talented, cast AE, AM, Evo, NT, AB and PoM ABs while moving.
-Frost SIM values are probably harder for me to get close to than Arcane and Fire SIM values.
-Arcane should, from what I gather, perform slightly better than what most sims show.
-Arcane come across more versatile than Frost.
-Many NH encounters involve priority adds.

On this basis, this is my understanding:

If you have legendaries for either Arcane and Frost, and you like that spec, and you’re concerned with ST, stay with that spec.
In the long run, Frost and Arcane will arguably be roughly on par in terms of ST damage.
If you have 2 Fire BIS, it can be competitive.
If you have less than 1 BIS, 1 non-BIS for Fire, and you’re very concerned with ST, you can be competitive with properly itemized Arcane or Frost without legendaries.

[Falq]

I really wonder if Kora and Marquee are BiS for fire. One of those sure, but at once? Not sure if you should cast Marquee pyro sub 30%, and if you don't legendary loose like 30% of it's power and another one is better.

Also what about new trinket ? Kil'jaeden's Burninh Wish? Why not including it into chart?

[Haruichi]

Kil'jaeden's Burninh Wish?

Appeared buggy in sims.

[Haruichi]

Not sure if you should cast Marquee pyro sub 30%, and if you don't legendary loose like 30% of it's power and another one is better.

Perhaps you're right. As said, from what I could gather this is the case. I might be wrong. At any rate, the brackets where, as mentioned, pretty rough. For example, it seems Shard is also strong for Fire.

[Norrinir]

Kil'jaeden's Burninh Wish?

Appeared buggy in sims.

KJ was fixed some time ago. Did you notice any other problems?

[Haruichi]

Kil'jaeden's Burninh Wish?

Appeared buggy in sims.

KJ was fixed some time ago. Did you notice any other problems?

Great, I'll redo my own. And no.

[Iceshatter]

Why do we take legendaries into consideration at all? It's so individual, even more so than skill or the quality of internet connection.

Legendaries will affect playstyle (to an extent), and dps, but are terrible for comparing anything right now. Perhaps this will change in a few months when everyone will have all legendaries to choose from.

What we need is to focus on the achievable damage and acquirable gear and see what's what.

EDIT: Also, a 70k DPS difference between "no legendary" Fire and Frost is ridiculous. Is this counting in the 27% boost on "most fire spells" multipliers?

P.s. I do have fire bracers, chest and boots. I'm worried about being pigeonholed into playing fire just because of legendaries.

[pleblius]

Why do we take legendaries into consideration at all? It's so individual, even more so than skill or the quality of internet connection.

P.s. I do have fire bracers, chest and boots. I'm worried about being pigeonholed into playing fire just because of legendaries.

That's kind of why we're considering them.

I have the Arcane belt (changed loot spec on a random H boss to get a frost relic, rip), boots, and Sephuz's. Is it worth my effort to get two more fire legendaries? What we're seeing suggests it's not, because even if I got both of them, I'd still barely be competitive with the other specs, and until then I'm just massively behind.

I don't think you can really be pigeonholed into Fire, tbh. Pigeonholed out of it, maybe.

[Kintoun]

Ran sims using my char and gear but T_19M profile for artifact relics and talents. I have Fire bracers, Arcane belt, and sephuz. For ST everything is about the same. Fire is only competitive because I have bracers. For 3 target AE Fire >= Frost > Arcane. The more targets you add the better Fire gets.

What was most interesting was that my gear didn't change at all (other than Aran's mega-nerf). I expected to equip all that higher ilevel gear. Gnawed Thumb Ring, 2 piece haste set, crafted neck are all BiS for me even against 20-30 higher ilevel items.

[Rikx]

What we need is to focus on the achievable damage and acquirable gear and see what's what.

The sim damage is achievable. Unfortunately with the way Legion handles things, RNG plays a noticeable part in determining if you achieve said average sim damage on a given pull or not.
Focusing on "acquirable" gear is kind of a misnomer however -- with mythic+, you can acquire almost any balance of secondaries you want, given enough time spent grinding your face off. It's completely within the realm of being acquired.

EDIT: Also, a 70k DPS difference between "no legendary" Fire and Frost is ridiculous. Is this counting in the 27% boost on "most fire spells" multipliers?

Yes. But it's on a Patchwerk fight with no movement, no adds, and no target switching. When was the last time you had a fight that worked out like that?

I believe I said this on the topic post, too.

Anyhow, over at MMO Champion I saw this chart taken from Mage Discord:
Is this inaccurate?

Yes, and whoever ran that sim should be flogged.

...oh wait, that was me. And it came from the very first post of this topic. Oh.

Read the entirety of the topic post. You will be enlightened.

(All the sims were ran with max level artifacts already, by the way. That's 54 levels in the weapon, in other words.)

Rikx is playing frost himself so that's why frost is performing the best in his sims, because he knows this best.
Frost will sim top because it's very stationary and hard to play spec

Ahaha, no. I'm flattered. I played fire, and then I swapped to GS meme spec when we found out about it a couple of months ago. Norrinir is the one who did almost all of the work on the frost APL I used, and most of the other spec's APLs came from here on AT, in the various 7.1.5 threads.

You're correct that frost will sim very high in comparison to how often people will rank, but it's more because it's very vulnerable to disruption. You can move quite a bit as frost, it's not exactly stationary, but if you get stunned for 3-4 seconds or have to do mechanics that take you out of range of the boss, you might have lost your TV reaaaally early and your dps gets hit pretty hard. In comparison, Arcane only has that brief window slightly before and during Arcane Power, and Fire w/ Combustion, that you need to worry about. It's a span of maybe 15 seconds of vulnerability versus 60+ seconds.

[Aeonsil]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/10#" target="_blank

is showing, at

Mythic difficulty, 95th percentile:
Nythendra: Fire >> Frost > Arcane
Ursoc: Fire > Frost >> Arcane
Elerethe: Fire > Arcane >> Frost
Dragons: Fire >> Arcane >= Frost
Ilgy'noth: Fire >> Arcane > Frost
Cenarius: Fire >= Frost >> Arcane [Notably, this is where all mages are performing terribly]
Xavius: Fire > Frost > Arcane

Mythic difficulty, 75th percentile:
Nythendra: Fire >> Arcane >= Frost
Ursoc: Fire >> Frost > Arcane
Elerethe: Fire >> Arcane >> Frost
Dragons: Fire >> Arcane >= Frost
Ilgy'noth: Fire > Arcane > Frost [Frost worst performing spec]
Cenarius: Fire >= Frost >> Arcane [Notably, this is where all mages are performing terribly]
Xavius: Fire > Arcane >Frost

So on Nightmare, fire is still crushing the other two specs.

Admittedly, there are 4000+ parses for fire and about 800-1000 for the other two specs at Ursoc, and about half those numbers for Cenarius. The gap between the specs is still pretty clear.

In ToV we see, across maybe 1600 mage parses on Odyn, 1400 on Guarm and 150 on Helya

Mythic difficulty, 95th Percentile:
Odyn: Fire > Frost > Arcane
Guarm: Fire > Arcane >= Frost
Helya: Fire >> Frost > Arcane

Mythic difficulty, 75th Percentile:
Odyn: Fire > Frost > Arcane [all three specs struggling to perform]
Guarm: Fire > Frost > Arcane [all three specs struggling to perform]
Helya: Fire >> Frost > Arcane [Fire barely being above average here]

So looking at heroic ToV instead for statistically significant numbers, with about 7000 total parses (5000 on Helya)

Heroic difficulty, 95th Percentile:
Odyn: Fire > Arcane > Frost
Guarm: Fire > Arcane > Frost
Helya: Fire >> Arcane >> Frost [Frost performs horribly here, worst parsing spec]

Heroic difficulty, 75th Percentile:
Odyn: Fire > Arcane > Frost
Guarm: Fire > Arcane > Frost
Helya: Fire >> Arcane >> Frost [Frost performs horribly here, worst parsing spec]

So... we can see that Fire is still the best spec with released content. Looking at Nighthold, we have:

Skorpyron: Add heavy fight
Chronomatic Anomaly: Mostly ST but with fair add count
Trilliax: ST, Mythic has cleave
Spellblade Aluriel: Many adds
Tichondrius: ST phase (with adds) and AOE phase
Krosus: ST with sporadic adds
Tel'arn: ST => Cleave [Cleave => ST on Mythic]
Star Augur Etraeus: Mostly ST, add swap on last phase
Elisande: Mostly ST
Gul'dan: So many adds

Stay in Fire people. This coming from someone who has done their best to promote Arcane.

[Falq]

Problem could be that most, best mages play fire because they have gear / legendaries for it, but yeah fire is still good to go spec

[pleblius]

I played Frost this week on Mythic and Heroic. We have four mages, and the other three stayed Fire. On every fight, I was generally at the bottom of the four but still remained within 5% or so. (Some fights I actually did manage to beat one or two of them.) That said, all three of them have at least one BiS Fire legendary--one has Koralons/Marquee, one has Marquee/Shard, and one has Darckli's/Koralons--have a fully geared weapon, have optimized stats and trinkets, and are above 45 traits. My weapon had H Dungeon relics, was at 35 traits, I had sub-optimal trinkets, and I still have 0 throughput legendaries. I did more damage on these fights as Frost than I ever did as Fire, which had more traits and a 35 ilvl higher weapon.

In addition, our DH's and Ret's were bursting so high we were killing mythic bosses almost twice as fast as we ever have.
I feel like it's inconclusive. EN fights are dying too fast. The highest parses are all going to be people with legendaries, and more people are going to have more fire legendaries because more people play fire, so the highest percentiles are going to be more selected towards BiS than the other two specs. And people are still more optimized for Fire.

[Kintoun]

Stay in Fire people. This coming from someone who has done their best to promote Arcane.

Your data is accurate. But I believe there is still hope for the following reasons.

1) Arcane/Frost APLs still suck. Sims are low and it is turning people away from these specs
2) Even though sims are low, they're pretty close to Fire. Considering the APLs still need love there is a good chance numbers will go up
3) Arcane/Frost population is still too low. We have to wait for top notch players to get BiS Fire legos THEN switch loot spec to Arcane/Frost THEN get BiS Arcane/Frost legos and start showing good numbers in logs (maybe lol)
4) There were SOME people who converted to Arcane/Frost and need time to show up on logs. It's only been a few days, give it some more time for the data to do it's job.
5) It takes time to regear properly for the stats required for Arcane/Frost. And because of incomplete APLs, we don't even know what the stat priorities are yet.

[visc]

For frost

1) frost APL's are notoriously high compared to what's achievable in real boss fights. Because people only sim patchwork fight style, when real raids aren't like that. Sim some other fight styles and you'll see how far fire pulls away. Like it does in real boss encounters,

2) Why? I can't see any reason.

3) Top frost parses hvae bis legs

4) They won't change anything without bis legs. They won't change anything with them.

5) Stats are similar between specs now, Sims are accurate enough. So regearing isn't much of an issue. Unless you are talking about getting BIS legs and full traits.

Go fire.

[Namo]

...

Logs are skewed, if you are not smart enough to use log, it's not other fault.

That's not a big news, that the majority of player, is playing Fire since Legion launch (we are speaking for more than 90% fire "main").
What this mean? Coming into 7.1.5, a lot of player have almost maxed fire artifact and a lot of player have bis fire leg while a little less have bis arcane/frost leg and and their artifact good enough.
A lot of top parsing Arcane/Frost don't have bis legs.

Coming into 7.1.5, you need to take account, than on log, a lot of player is playing Arcane/frost Whitout having the leg/artifact weapon/relic(gear) to pull good number, but are still appearing on log.
The data is fresh, so you need to take into account the variance.

The first fire whitout at least one bis leg is 87, 116k after the first, and his top 95 (so like 99.9% of the 95% fire mage have at least one bis leg, and a lot have 2).

While arcane, the top 3 don't have bis leg, the first and second only have one.

The kill time play a major role too, Guarm for exemple, is for a majority a kill time between 2mn30 and 3mn, that screw Arcane a lot, for exemple.


And more, all this log are farming log, like Arcane was wrecking meters during HfC farm, but was not that "godlike" during progress.
Don't forget that burst/burn on demand of Arcane is invaluable on progress, and that's finnaly possible whitout Quickening who fuck you up..

Short story: whatever if you don't see that log are skewed.

TLDR: Play what you want, but there is a good chance that double speccing Fire/Arcane for NH will wield the better result if you want my advice

[Magnorian]

"'I'd go arcane until at least 4 piece NH set and set my loot spec on fire unless I found out I really enjoyed playing Arcane."

Am I getting it right that he would set the loot spec on fire, while he is playing arcane? Or does he mean that he would change his loot spec to fire, after getting 4 piece nh set on arcane?

Cheers

[Rikx]

The former. Why would it be the latter, anyway?