mage vs rogue for cata

It's not only that fights are short. I don't think fight length matters at all, actually. It's that mana pools are huge, and glyphed Mage Armor plus Improved Mana Gem plus Master of Elements means I never have to dip below 90%... which then means I'm always maximizing the return from Arcane Mastery.

I think (hope) that will level out by the time we're entering Cata raids, but we'll see.
 
Data said:
It's not only that fights are short. I don't think fight length matters at all, actually. It's that mana pools are huge, and glyphed Mage Armor plus Improved Mana Gem plus Master of Elements means I never have to dip below 90%... which then means I'm always maximizing the return from Arcane Mastery.

I think (hope) that will level out by the time we're entering Cata raids, but we'll see.
Click to expand...
The mana cost per cast goes up significantly by the time you are at 85, and the relative mana pools are nowhere near as inflated as they are now. A good arcane mage in cata will be extremely precise in burn phase and conserve phase transitions and maintenance. The timing and employment of something as simple as PoM+ABlast will be deciding factors in performance. Knowing where you stand not only in damage output, but in dpm and mps will become more necessary. Cata arcane is nothing like it exists in its current form. However, I think most people will gravitate towards fire simply because it is more straightforward and, at the moment, has higher potential.

Frost is more viable, especially when played right, but it still isn't where it should be; the upswing is that it has a ton more survivability and more utility, so that is something to keep in mind with this return to survival in raiding instead of heal through everything but really dumb.
 
I think the increase in mastery be a big factor as well. Hell EVERYTHING will be a big factor, we'll just have to see.

The only thing for certain is that a lot will change. :)
 
hunter vs druid

pve DPS only

what do you guys think? i find my particular server to be overwhelmed with druids so the thought of playing my hunter to farm some purps began to draw my interest.
 
Last edited:
Data said:
It's not only that fights are short. I don't think fight length matters at all, actually. It's that mana pools are huge, and glyphed Mage Armor plus Improved Mana Gem plus Master of Elements means I never have to dip below 90%... which then means I'm always maximizing the return from Arcane Mastery.

I think (hope) that will level out by the time we're entering Cata raids, but we'll see.
Click to expand...
Fight length and mana pools matter, they are not mutually exclusive. Like Dark Volcanic said, the cost per cast will be much higher at 85 than it is at 80.

I think the Devs' Arcane Design will come through in the Xpack in that Mana really will matter and in new tiers of raid content, when its not outgeared, you will clearly see who is good and who is bad at Mage with management of mana pools, CD's etc. At the end of a tier with larger mana pools the discrepency will be a lot closer.

It may not seem like it now but I believe you will see more skill coming out of a Arcane Mage than Fire or Frost. Fire I think will be the most fun and easy to be average to above average at and Arcane will be the hardest to master. Once scaling is more apparent Frost will fall off as it typically does.
 
It really could go either way. The fights are what will determine which will be powerful or average.

From what's being said on the Internet, the new fights aren't going to be like WotLK where you can heal through just about anything, so a mage can just sit in one spot (most) of the time and be unmolested. We're also going to have to CC and silence a good bit apparently.

It may not be possible to maintain high DPS as arcane if we'll be moving and CCing so much. I'm trying to compare the mastery bonuses for fire vs arcane. Fire it's DoT damage, so maybe they're expecting us to have DoT's tick hard while we're moving/CCing/etc and the arcane bonus of more mana = more damage will be bursty to allow arcane mages to catch up after the 0 DPS of moving/CCing/etc

No real way to know for sure till we get there :)
 
Whatever I'm leveling as Arcane until I can't two hit things anymore, then switching to Frost. At 85 it'll probably be easier to do heroics as arcane as most groups will be doing single target damage anyway, and you can use CC as a mana recovery period.
 
That should be right around the time you hit Deepholme, Fool... if the beta was any indication. :p:
 
Fool said:
Whatever I'm leveling as Arcane until I can't two hit things anymore, then switching to Frost. At 85 it'll probably be easier to do heroics as arcane as most groups will be doing single target damage anyway, and you can use CC as a mana recovery period.
Click to expand...
Level 81...
 
Fool said:
Whatever I'm leveling as Arcane until I can't two hit things anymore, then switching to Frost. At 85 it'll probably be easier to do heroics as arcane as most groups will be doing single target damage anyway, and you can use CC as a mana recovery period.
Click to expand...

The damage stepping and increased health of npcs is higher than it was from BC -> WotLK, and more in line with Vanilla -> BC. Arcane is great single target, but if you plan to grind multiple mobs at once, you will find yourself hitting walls very quickly. Frost is much more simple and quite capable of dishing out solid burst to drop 2-3 mobs with very little difficulty in very quick succession.
 
Back
Top