Player's Guide to What's OP in 7.1.5

[CaliFireMage]

Thank you VERY MUCH. Really appreciate the insight.

I will no longer join in the collective panic that" Spec X is dead and gone" before actually seeing the data.

[Rikx]

Hey all- looking for a little insight into my situation. Currently have Fire bracers, Prydaz, Belo'vir, and norgannon's foresight. I have 36 points in fire and 35 in arcane and 880-885 equipped for both specs. My question is weather i will be better off continuing to go for a second fire legendary, or going for 2 arcane legendaries? I enjoy both specs and eventually want to play both, but my concern in progression in the meantime, already being behind with utility legendaries

I already attempted to answer this in the FAQ. If the FAQ isn't clear enough, let me know.

[Rikx]

I have 54 traits and I've been running multiple M+ and did a few raids. DG > PP for me. Curious as to how you came to the conclusion that at 14.5% additional damage, that PP suddenly overtakes PP. Talking about fire in this case.

Good catch. When I was running sims with MI instead of RoP, PP overtakes DG. However after testing, having RoP as Fire makes DG edge out PP. Set pieces didn't seem to change that much either.



Of course, when adds come into play PP overtakes DG.



Frost gave PP a slight lead even for ST, meanwhile, Arcane gives DG something like a 3k lead. I blame the Arcane% damage. I'll update the topic to include this information when I'm not so blastedly tired.

Also, while combing through this, I realized that the Arcane APL wasn't even using the second potion because it'd force it to wait for orc or troll racial, and if there were no racial it'd just never use it. How biased.

So yeah, that pops up Arcane's ST numbers by at least another 6k.

[mlvnk]

I did a lot of sim based on latest sim nightly build recently. It is very interesting that cinderstorm / mirror image talent combination sim result show me int > haste=crit=versa > mastery on single target while simming with 2 target show mastery ahead of int while maintaining same weightage for crit, haste, versa (relative to each other).
I tried play around with the secondary stats by swapping different pieces with different secondary stat shows that the haste, versa, crit are really balanced and whenever one of the stats is higher, the sim result will show lower weight for that particular stat.

Sim result with Meteor / RoP combination show me a favour to crit rating altho int still dominate.

I think this lead to observation that if you somehow end up with a lot crit, meteor / rop might be good for you. Well at least thats what i found based on my profile. Anyone out there with different opinion and result?

[JayDee]

Could you please do a sim for ST with Alextrazas Fury + Legendary Helmet? Im interested in whether this might be an ST increase or not and i'm not enough into simming to do it my self.

[Rikx]

Everytime I simmed Darckli, I used AF.

If I recall correctly, there wasn't that much of a difference between AF and FO on ST with Darckli's. I'll doublecheck later.

[Hansger]

So I've been very unlucky with Legendary items, with only getting 2 so far and they are the Chest and the Ring (Sephuz's). I've been Fire for most of the expansion so far, but have been keeping up with Frost lately and thinking about making the switch. With my "awesome" legendary choices, would it be a wiser choice at this time to focus more on Frost, or keep hoping that I actually get a decent Fire legendary? I'm 35 traits into Fire and 34 into Frost (so will get that 35th within a day or two). Thanks for any guidance!

[Chill666]

Im kind of in the same spot as Hansger. I dont have a DPS legendary so my question is, would it be possible to get a "no legendary comparison"?

[Rikx]

So I've been very unlucky with Legendary items (...)

I covered this type of question already in the FAQ.

Im kind of in the same spot as Hansger. I dont have a DPS legendary so my question is, would it be possible to get a "no legendary comparison"?

They're already in there. You can already compare them to each other.

[Venno]

Created an account (finally) to say thanks for this valuable post.

[Quetesh]

Do you agree with this?

[Kintoun]

Do you agree with this?

The video makes the exact same points this post does. Soo... sure?

[Haruichi]

Do you agree with this?

The video makes the exact same points this post does. Soo... sure?

To a large extent, I agree. First off, though, they're a bit hard to compare, the video and the initial post of this thread. Rikx's work is so much more elaborate than the video. However, if you were to roughly compare, I'd say the two pretty much reaches the same conclusion regarding Frost and Arcane. In terms of Fire, I guess it's how you subjectively read the sims, but that's where I see the biggest discrepancy between video and text. Qooning talks about Fire as if it doesn't really fall behind Frost and Arcane, and as I read them, Rikx's sims puts Fire roughly 10% below Frost and Arcane, both with and without legendaries (there are variances, of course, but give and take). That, to me, is not on par in terms of single target.

There's the slight caveat regarding the sims, in that Fire bracers are now back at 300% increased damage, but with a 15% proc chance which, I guess, puts Fire even further behind on ST although I've not done any math as to what kind of impact this'll have on overall dps.

[Boning]

Qooning talks about Fire as if it doesn't really fall behind Frost and Arcane

I never made numerical claims, and the purpose of my video was informative, not suggestive. I'm aware of the fact that in full Nighthold gear, if you put the specs on equal footing in terms of gear, arcane will most likely be the top dog.

For now though, as long as you have fire oriented gear (especially good trait and ilvl relics compared to your arcane) and good fire legendaries compared to your arcane legendaries, you are best off staying fire until you are able to fix that. And that goes for any spec - that's why I explicitly said that you should play whatever you have legendaries for at the beginning of the video.

[Streakybacon]

What about those of us that do not have any legendaries yet, and are behind on gear progession (i.e. no real sacrifice going any spec), what spec is recommended going forward? I have no legendaries, and sitting around 810, and have been saving all my AP for 7.1.5.

I played hardcore back in Vanilla and TBC, and just came back to the game. I don't really have any preference on spec or playstyle as so much as changed since I played. I plan to do some Mythic+ and join a casual raiding guild at some point over the next month.

[Haruichi]

@Boning:

Your post inspires a number of comments; the most important of which: I hope I didn't give the impression that I thought ill of the video. It found it very well put together, decidedly helpful and worthwhile to view.

That said:

Qooning talks about Fire as if it doesn't really fall behind Frost and Arcane

I never made numerical claims, and the purpose of my video was informative, not suggestive.

Firstly, I have to say, and it's very much meant as forthcoming and complimentary: To say that the video isn't suggestive is slightly naive. When the top mage of what is arguably the best guild in the World makes remarks about the state of mages, I think it's safe to assume that what you have to say will, by many, be considered words to play by if in any way possible.

Also:

that's why I explicitly said that you should play whatever you have legendaries for at the beginning of the video.

So, the video *was* suggestive? ;-D

Again, I thought the video was very good; I'm just teasing you and being a bit of an ass here, no offense intended.

On a serious note and getting back to the first quote about numerical claims, it's incidently also the point I made: That text and video aren't overly comparable since one presents elaborate numerical and statistical data where the other presents thoughts and ideas. This is also why I used the phrase "Qooning talks about". As such, the video is subjective, of course. To that end, you used remarks as the following:

- "I know many mages out there have been afraid of the changes coming in 7.1.5, but I honestly think they will make Fire much better than it is now" - 02.05.

- "Overall, most Fire mages should see a slight buff to single target damage" - 06.13.

- "I get a ton of whispers every week asking if Fire is dead, and I really don't think it is" - 06.23.

Saying that no numerical claims are made is true if you by that mean that you don't mention a specific number, however, the following remark can be considered in that department:

"As for actual numbers, Frost is hard to judge because of the debatable use of Thermal Void this looks very nice in simulations, but it ends up being very hard to play or outright useless when applied to actual encounters. Even without it, though, Frost will continue to be great on two-target cleave and decent on single target" - 08.28.

At the very least, such a remark is suggestive as to the state of Frost mage single target dps.

Now, given the nature of the video, one's take-aways will be based on analyzing semantics which will always be subjective. But considering the above remarks collectively is why I found it reasonable to comment that: "Qooning talks about Fire as if it doesn't really fall behind Frost and Arcane". If I was being presumptuous, I apologize.

One gray area, in my opinion, is concerning the legendaries: The only advice that pretty much anyone can agree on is: Play your legendaries. However, as an example: Rikx's sims indicate, that Fire with one legendary - even bracers - will be outperformed by legendaryless Aracane or Frost.

In fact, even with the two BIS legendaries, sims say Fire will almost be outperformed by legendaryless Arcane or Frost: Fire (Kora/Marquee): 504,109; Arcane (No Legendaries): 486,952 and Frost (No Legendaries): 503,082. (Again, as you point out yourself, Frost sims are to be taken with a grain of salt, but Rikx commented that Arcane's sims was actually lower because of an APL flaw and would arguably be roughly 6000 dps higher than these numbers).

So, and this is subjective, of course, but I'd argue that if you have just one Fire Legendary - even the bracers - you could probably achieve better ST numbers with, for example, legendaryless Arcane. If you're in that situation, I believe you have a choice to make even if you already have a legendary.

[Boning]

So, and this is subjective, of course, but I'd argue that if you have just one Fire Legendary - even the bracers - you could probably achieve better ST numbers with, for example, legendaryless Arcane. If you're in that situation, I believe you have a choice to make even if you already have a legendary.

I agree that I said some things that could have been understood as suggestions, and with that said, I stand by that, as my own findings do not match what Rikx posted. As an example, I threw together the fire, frost and arcane gearsets that I own on live, and gave them 4 pieces of NH set + on top of that gave them BiS NH trinkets. And I gave them 54/54 traits just to make arcane/frost more appealing in my case, because I'm probably not gonna have that.


That had obvious results, given that my fire weapon is 914 and arcane/frost are 905.
So I went and gave them all 927 weapons just to see how much of an effect that had


Now even with that, the arcane gearset was about 3 ilevels higher, but I guess that the stats werent fully optimized. So eventhough they all had shard, fire is winning purely due to having 4+ months of 100% optimized gear and bracers instead of belovir for arcane/frost.

As I said, when you can fix all of that, arcane will be on top. And of course, given another character, these numbers may differ. But I doubt it would be by much, you can see that Arcane gets an insane boost from those 2 trinkets, so it's possible that the naraxas / arcanocrystal I gave it previously were just shit for it. But that's what I would have.

[Mage]

Not sure what the point of Haruichis post is, but sims are going to be pretty far from reality due to NH fights not being stationary patchwerks or X stacked targets.
An opinion of a guy who actually tested them is much more valuable than sim number alone.

[Haruichi]

So, and this is subjective, of course, but I'd argue that if you have just one Fire Legendary - even the bracers - you could probably achieve better ST numbers with, for example, legendaryless Arcane. If you're in that situation, I believe you have a choice to make even if you already have a legendary.

I agree that I said some things that could have been understood as suggestions, and with that said, I stand by that, as my own findings do not match what Rikx posted. [Snip]

Nevertheless, those findings are interesting. Obviously, you sim gear sets that aren't feasible to general mage populace, but with - for lack of a better term - Best In All Slots, Fire is doing well in comparison. A few questions, just to better my understanding:

It's a Patchwerk sim?
Did you ignore the FS rotation?
Which legendaries do you own on live for each of the sim'ed sets?

Thanks in advance.

[Boning]

It's a Patchwerk sim?
Did you ignore the FS rotation?
Which legendaries do you own on live for each of the sim'ed sets?

Thanks in advance.

Yes, this is pure single target, as anything else is nice to see on paper, but actual situations are far too complex to evaluate like this. Flamestrike spam is not included, it will be fixed sooner or later (even if it isn't, its no harm no foul for me). Fire has shard + bracers, frost and arcane have shard + belovir. I could give them sephuz, but that has its own problems.

My point is - it's stupid to look at a chart comparing something disconnected from your reality. Ideally, you should sim yourself, but for majority of people, the advice of 'go with what your legendaries support' is sound and logical.