Mage specs in TOS

[Workingbob]

Mod edit: Moved to General

So many mages out there are fretting of which spec will be the best for TOS, as such I thought I would list my opinions and ask for feedback on them. This will also be with the current set bonuses and proposed changes in 7.2.5 on the ptr as of 5/9/2017. With that in mind lets start with the tier bonuses.

T20 Frost 2pc: Frozen Orb increases your Critical Strike damage by 30% for 10 seconds.
T20 Frost 4pc: The cooldown of Frozen Orb is reduced by 5 sec whenever you gain Brain Freeze.

So this means that our frozen orb becomes not only a fof generator but also a large increase so our damage overall. Think about a frozen orb into a shattered ebonbolt into Ice-lances off the fof procs of the orb and or shattered into winters chill. This means that the large sources of our damage ice lance and all other crit damage will be greatly increased. Past that if you also look into the fact that brain freeze will lower the cd of frozen orb by 5 seconds every time you gain a brain freeze proc(even if you do not use the proc). So lets take information off of a high parsing frost mages pull on Krosus. Brokenshun of Illidan on his rank 1 parse had 41 brain freeze procs on Krosus on a 4:28 long fight. This would equate to a 205 sec decrease of the cooldown of frozen orb. That being said you would lose the 10% proc rate of Brain freeze so it could be estimated to be ~36.9 procs wich would still lead to a 184.5 sec decrease to the time you have frozen orb on cd. This would mean you would get 3 more frozen orbs per fight of a length of 4:28.This means more fof procs more 30% crit damage increase, and more damage overall. The extra frozen orb casts would also lead to more fof procs leading to longer IV with Thermal Void.

All around this seems like a very strong set bonus to me.

T20 Arcane 2pc: Presence of Mind instantly grants you 4 arcane charges and increases your damage done by 10% for 15 sec.
T20 Arcane 4pc: Casting Arcane Missles reduces the remaining cooldown on Presence of Mind by 4 sec.

The 2 pc and 4 pc look to be strong. Flat damage increases are nice, making POM a even better cooldown, on top of that lowering the cd of POM with the 4 pc is also strong. This is a more general/more consistent increase to damage, where the 2/4 pc with frost has a little more rng involved. That being said the increased drain on your mana for using POM might make not having the legendary legs that much more impactful.

T20 Fire 2pc: Fireball has a 15% chance to cause your next Pyroblast of Flamestrinke to be garenteed to crit.
T20 Fire 4pc: Pyroblast and Flamestrike increases the damage of your next Pyroblast of Flamestrike by 10% for 8 sec.

These tier pieces look to be good The 2 pc can make your normal rotation more smooth and give you more consistent damage and pyroblast casts. The 4 pc makes the bracers even more powerful and even more so if the two modifiers are multiplicative and not additive. That being said the 2 pc dose not increase your damage in combustion, but the 4 piece dose. All and all not a bad tier bonus.

Then if you look at the class changes/balances with the current ptr build.

Frost:

Thermal Void redesigned: Increases Icy Veins' duration by 10 seconds. Your Ice Lances against frozen targets extend your Icy Veins by an additional 1 second.

Comparison:

From this I would like to make a few statements about my opinion on where each spec will be as far as relative power compared to each other. Frost in my mind looks to still be the strongest spec by a good bit if double Ice Lancing remains in the game. The nerf to Thermal Void looks really impactful but when you look into it and look into the changes that the new set bonus brings I believe that you will have many more fof procs off the decrease to frozen orbs cooldown with brain freeze procs and the stacking of clarity of thought relics. This is partially in due to the fact that you receive the benefit from the 4 piece without casting flurry to consume the proc this greatly lowers the threshold you have to meet to have 2 frozen orbs in one IV. I will also bring up the fact that TOS will be mostly single target fights and 1-2 target cleave(from what I have heard) meaning that TOS will be mostly fights that frost already excels at. Arcane looks like it will be second partially in due to where they have been preforming now at about the 75% performance range. In my mind they will still be held back by needing the legendary legs to preform and with the increased mana draw from POM will lead to making arcane even harder to preform well without the legendary legs. They also suffer from the fact that they have to cast arcane missiles to gain the cd reduction that frost gets without having to cast the proc. That being said arcane will be a consistent spec that with the correct legendaries will lead to a lower variance of dps compared to the other specs. Fire looks like it will be in last place for the 75% performance range. There 4pc looks to increase there burst by a decently large factor, and there 2 piece will bring them close to arcane in this skill bracket. I also think that if you look at the 95%+ skill bracket fire will preform very well in this skill bracket and will likely overtake arcane and might rival frost. Fire mages do very well with some rng, and performance. That being said the bracers will be even more powerful in 7.2.5 with these current changes.

These have been my thoughts on the power levels of each spec and how they will change. I would Love to see how you feel that the specs will line up and how things might change or if I have missed anything in my analysis.

[Frostienips]

All 3 do look extremely good. I dont think there is any denying that.

However, the stats on gear within ToS seems very odd.
I see alot of Haste/Mastery and Crit/Mastery with some Haste/Vers but very little Crit/Haste (Tier chest being like the only one i seen at quick glance).

Will this not cause problems with TV build for frost if there is not enough crit on gear to maintain shatter cap while having a decent amount of haste?

[Makz]

My guess is gearing will be the same process - you want to lock in your leggos(if they make a ring that gives you passive Frozen touch or Splitting ice I would consider dropping gloves), lock in your highest stat values on the tier and use M+ for perfect stat weighted items(which will go higher too due to +15 scaling).

We had Fire shine in EN/TOV, Frost killing it in NH and TOS, my guess is arcane will get some major buffs or redisgn to make it the best on Argus, but that is far away. I would be interested in relics comparison with the T20 bonuses as they focus a lot on crit dmg.

[Arandomperson]

Clarity of thought relics will probably be the best by a huge margin in tos considering they already are on top and the TOS setbonus gives a lot of incentive to stack brainfreeze chance.