Hello guys. I just hit 80 and changed my spec to fire. I just want to know whether ffb is better or fireball spec is better for a beginner geared Mage. And which will be better for a decent geared Mage.
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Hello guys. I just hit 80 and changed my spec to fire. I just want to know whether ffb is better or fireball spec is better for a beginner geared Mage. And which will be better for a decent geared Mage.
Hai,
Sorry to give you yet another "a or b? C." answer, but as a fresh 80, you'd be better with arcane.
Fire specs are very reliant on crit rating, something low-geared mages are short on.
Arcane will yield better results, despite you having low amounts of haste. It will be more consistent as well, being less reliant on crit than fire specs.
Now as you obtain gear and your crit reaches ~50% self buffed, fire specs become more consistent. At this point you will have good results playing fire specs. (Keep in mind that as fire, RNG will always strongly influence your dps)
That doesn't mean arcane is worse after 50% crit. Arcane is still very competitive, even in end-game content. It's less forgiving when it comes to movement, so often people (mistakenly) think arcane sucks if you have to move.
So, to answer your second question:
•At ~630 haste and 50% self buffed crit, I personally think you will have good results as a fire mage.
•TTW fire will outperform FFB at every stage of gear, because it is slightly less affected by crit (you still need it)
•At later stages of gear/content, both arcane/ttw will be great. TTW fire has an edge on arcane because of its playstyle, but experience can compensate for that. That said, on fights like LK and Halion you're better off going fire.
I've always preferred FFB because it's more fun than TTW, more crits, more hot streaks, and an extra CD with Icy Veins -but TTW Fire is better in the end.
There's not a massive delta in dps between a TTW and FFB mage both in bis gear, so if you prefer to play FFB then by all means play it.
You gem differently for both specs, but gearing is essentially the same for both. The biggest downside to being FFB is that if you're running an arcane offspec, your arcane dps will suffer quite a bit gemmed for FFB (lots of crit) vs Gemmed for TTW (Almost exclusively spellpower), and as FFB you don't benefit from the extended range for fire spells the same way that TTW does, and you essentially lose out on being able to do some nice damage to LK during transition phases.
FFB is obsolete and has no real edge over TTW outside of harder Blizzard crits. TTW has around a 8-10% lead in single target damage, as well as access to the incredibly powerful Magic Absorption talent.