Will we see fire in top arena?

[Steamboat]

I was thinking of 0/41/20 for 5v5 with my 5s team running 2x mages

Pros:
-Bloodlust + icy veins+ fireball spam= zomg
- If you are getting focused the extra frostbite pros due to icy veins and blazing speed should be pretty awesome.
- With shatter and the extra nova's from my teammate I should be critting very often when burning a target.
- dragonsbreath should help with survivability and CC

Cons
- No cold snap (1 block on a 4 DPS team not enough?)
- No pet damage and nova
- no poly protection
- no ice barrier (but does dragons breath mitigate more?)

[buena]

I think you'll be disappointed with fireball DPS to be honest. The things that make it really strong in raids - CoE, fully stacked scorch, and very high spellpower on gear - don't apply in PvP. 150% crits are like 110% crits against resilience and although they do proc ignite, it doesn't fully tick for at least 4 more seconds and so isn't as useful for spiking as up-front frost crits are. Finally, it wastes half the utility of Icy Veins because it can't proc frostbite.

There is one substantial advantage fireball has over frostbolt tho: burning soul. Icy Veins is making me unwisely consider putting 2pc t4 back on.

[Steamboat]

I have a another mage partner though that will stay frost so I will be taking advantage of his frostbite procs and his pet nova

[Final]

Well it could work. Your spec would be kind of wonky and you'd have to get good at timing his freeze with your fireball/icelance. You'd probably have to try it out, I don't think anyone on here could tell you how it would work until someone tries it.

[Buliar]

yeah like he said, you should try it.
i´ll try it too, but i think it´ll be so as Buena explained.
the dps won´t be very high and fireballs dont proc frostbite.

hm i think i´ll stay deep frost,cause cold snap is useful 2 in top arenas :)

[Cursiver]

also thats like holding a big sign over your head saying IM THE DPS TARGET..

[Steamboat]

Yeah I was playing around on the ptr and I will be staying 17/0/44...that spec is like communism...It looks great on paper. But as long as a priest finds his dispel button you are screwed. Taking off already gimped ignites and imp scorches cuts my DPS just too much. Also because they can see my buffs as soon as I get the whole combustion heroism icy veins thing going its all going to be instantly purged off of me if the team is smart.

Also ice armor with frostbite and permafrost with blazing speed looks great but 99% of the time a pally is there to JoJ me and then I'm just like a frost mage without barrier in terms of survivability.

Also dragons breath tends to miss alot due to latency and only 3 seconds isn't really much breathing room....although another interupt would be cool.

Then again stranger things have worked in arena's...we are 2200 with a four DPS team that consists of 3 mages A warrior and a resto shaman lol

[xjunky]

The main utility of frost (in 5s) is the situational shatter combination burst you can put out on a target (6k in 3 seconds). This allows for fast target switching with your elemental shaman and warrior, letting you gib targets when a weakness has opened in the team or positioning is perfect. Fire really wont allow for this straight up solid burst imo.

Also fire is just another way to oom faster. You'll notice mages really drop down out of the top 5v5 teams in s3, its already happening now. 2345 is really going to be nothing special, with pain supression and other things really hurting the "burst" of this combo. With 2345 you have to kill something before the mages cooldowns are up or hes oom (unless its a mirror match). In 2345 warlock variation, they just have to live through the mages cooldowns. Surviving is alot easier than killing, which is why all the top teams currently on bg9 in 5s have a lock instead of mage, or are drain teams. Pandemic has already ditched their mage and made a double lock 5v5.

Fire sux imo, GL tryin tho, im sure i will for some fun

Edit : to the response below me, mages aren't worse people are just learning, its just FOTM, tho PS did really hurt mages despite PI, wasting their cooldowns/shatter combos. I guess we will see how icy veins sorts itself out. But personally i see the survival 2 healer teams and drain teams becoming much more evident in s3.

[Steamboat]

The main utility of frost (in 5s) is the situational shatter combination burst you can put out on a target (6k in 3 seconds). This allows for fast target switching with your elemental shaman and warrior, letting you gib targets when a weakness has opened in the team or positioning is perfect. Fire really wont allow for this straight up solid burst imo.

Also fire is just another way to oom faster. You'll notice mages really drop down out of the top 5v5 teams in s3, its already happening now. 2345 is really going to be nothing special, with pain supression and other things really hurting the "burst" of this combo. With 2345 you have to kill something before the mages cooldowns are up or hes oom (unless its a mirror match). In 2345 warlock variation, they just have to live through the mages cooldowns. Surviving is alot easier than killing, which is why all the top teams currently on bg9 in 5s have a lock instead of mage, or are drain teams. Pandemic is following suit.

Fire sux imo, GL tryin tho, im sure i will for some fun

why should mages be any worse in season 3? we got a little more burst with icy veins now and the mana gem buff is huge...with pain supression you just have to switch targets pretty quickly, and with more priests going disc I think it is an actual buff to mages because a power infused mage with icy veins and bloodlust can put out ALOT of DPS.

[Iceweaver]

Look up Fireace on Gul'Dan.

Has always been specced fire and does quite well.
Glad 2x now.
He is 40/21 and thats about as close as you will get to a fire mage most likely.
You really can't lose that 2nd Ice Block.

[Roswend]

You can use improved scorch as poly protection; not as helpful as winter's chill, especially because you can crit and catch them on fire while stacking it, though.


The biggest problem is going to be reliable crits; a POM Pyro really doesn't do much more damage than a shatter crit on high resil, and you only get one of them.

Overall, I think most top mages will be frost specced so they can chain shatter crits with the new Icy Veins.