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Mod edit: Moved to Q&A

I rerolled to mage so, I'm starting at square one again with all things mage.

When I checked some sim craft spec comparisons a few weeks ago, I saw frost at #1 single and aoe. But, most the mages I encounter are fire, which make me wonder if...I'm missing something.

What truly is #1 mage spec right now? does it more have to do with what legendaries you have, etc.? Or, is it simply most have invested too much AP into fire, since that was #1 at start.


*Also bonus random question...do I ice lance after brainfreeze/flurry WITHOUT FoF? I was reading some material that was saying, ideally dump all FoF, then brain freze/flurry, then hit an ice lance right after even without FoF proc, because of the winter chill buff.

Thanks ya'll.

As you said most people started this expansion playing fire, so they've just stuck with the spec they know.
Also they will have 35+ traits in fire and the fire legendaries, thus optimising their spec.

Another thing I will say is fire is a lot more forgiving for the average player.
You CAN do more damage as frost but pulling it off requires being a skilled player.

You wanna be using Ice Lance after Brain Freeze as it acts as a FoF proc and thus you will crit and also it increases the duration of IV just as FoF procs do.

We must admit that Blizzard has had some progress with equalizing different specs at least for mages.

I played frost for few months and now rerolled to arcane (both 35+ traits). I can compare both specs to fire mages as well as it is plenty of them around. Skilled and experienced frost mages can do nearly same digits as average and above average fire mages and are ahead in ST fights.

Arcane seems to be most balanced spec right now (again as mage) across AOE and ST fights, it pulls nice digits on most NH fights, scales with better gear, doesn't require legendaries as other specs, though can be quite bad on lower ilvls.