[M] Archimonde - Mages are doing bad for their gear?

[Rinoa]

Consistent, efficient and reliable damage to priority targets through its strong 2-target damage.

[Pkm]

So, its only better when there is a cleave target?

[Rinoa]

Well, it's not *quite* as cut and dry as that, but in principle yes. That is where it shines.

[Chiv]

You can kill it with any mage spec, but Arcane or Frost are better suited for progression.

what does frost excel at for progression?

Doom fire and death caller cleave

[skiz]

Frost is also decent on P3. Reliable damage on priority targets as Rinoa said it. I would guess that it is hard to play frost during that Phase3, because you probably need to adjust waterjet to adds. Honestly, I've never seen P3 as frostmage, because there is an issue with frost: Scaling. The more gear you do have the less likely it is that you're going to play frost for Archimonde. Especially legendary ring helps devaluing frost - every other mage specc has more burst damage.

Another scaling Issue is between Fire and Arcane: Arcane does not scale well with targets, but combustion does. Arcane scales well with gear, but on progressing Archimonde you do miss the Arcane bis trinket. Fire scales even better with gear and you do have acces to every fire bis gear up to archimonde. (Except the belt, but that is not really an Issue). If you do need damage on Phase1 - and you do have decent fire gear. Fire is probably your best choice.

Fire sucks without PC on that fight. Arcane can go SN and AO if you do have enough damage during Phase1 and you do lack damage during Phase 3. Fire relies on a decently griped inferno into its Prismatic crystal during that Phase and even then your damage is random and not really reliable. Sadly, with our current itemlevel this boss gets cheesed by : get destruction warlocks / Hunter for Phase3 and burst down Phase1 with mages.

[Curnivore]

Fire is not Arcane. It can not as reliably control its burns. Let alone the trinket itself is unreliable since it has a big 85% chance to not proc per hit making it very logical to not proc sometimes when needed.