Smite versus Fireball

I had originally intended this as a reply to Mera's comment on raiding fire, but as I delved into the matter, I found that I had far too much information to divulge here.
The comment was thus:
"Actually, for base damage per second, smite is the base spell in the game."

Hmm... quite a claim you've made there, Mera.

In my old troll days, I most likely would have replied with "rofl, nub", but I am a respektible blooger now, and I should craft something intelligent to reply with.

So off I go to investigate this, comparing fireball to smite, to find out which of these spells is... I dunno, better I guess.

So. First off, untalented comparison.

SMITE
Rank 10
Smite an enemy for 549 to 616 damage. 2.5 second cast time. Costs 385 mana.

On average, Smite will hit for 582.5 damage every 2.5 seconds.
Therefore, per second, Smite will:
Deal 233 damage every second.
Cost 154 mana every second.
(1.512 damage per point of mana)

Pretty damn mana efficient, if you ask me. Looking at fireball now...

FIREBALL
Rank 13
Deals 633 to 805 damage, and an additional 84 damage over 8 seconds. 3.5 second cast time. Costs 425 mana.

On average, Fireball will hit for 803 (counting the DoT damage) every 3.5 seconds.
Therefore, per second, Fireball will:
Deal 229 damage every second.
Cost 121 mana every second.
(1.892 damage per point of mana)

Le gasp! Smite deals more damage than fireball!

Fireball is more mana efficient, but still...

Ok, let's talent up this biznatches, find out what happens when we "maximize" these two spells against each other.

(Please remember this principle. All talented increases to spell damage come AFTER the caster's bonus spell damage is applied to the spell.)

First, our test beds. We have a priest, specced to maximize his Smite damage. This priest has a spec like 33/28/0, or other some such madness, to get all the talents that make Smite more smitey.
Our mage here is specced the new classic 2/48/11 spec, to maximize his uber leet dee pee ess.
We are going to assume the following.
Both the mage and the priest have unlimited mana.
Both the mage and the priest have untalented 20% critical strike rate.
Both the mage and the priest have 1000 spell damage in their respective school.
Each has 300 spirit, but this is only really important for the priest, thanks to Divine Spirit.

For right now, we're only comparing Fireball versus Smite, and leaving Scorch out of the equation. Meaning the mage's fireballs will hit 15% softer than they would otherwise. We'll get to that later, I promise.

So. First off, let's improve our Smite.

Smite has a 2.5 second cast time (base), meaning it gains 71.42% of our bonus spell damage.
Which means Smite will get an extra 714 damage on top of its tooltip. Now, we're looking at 1263 to 1330 damage per Smite. One fifth of these will critically strike, meaning 150% damage. Smite can critically strike anywhere from 1895 to 1995.
Meaning that Smite, including critical strikes, will do, on average, 1685 damage per cast.

Now let's add in these handy little talents we have...

For Smite, the talents that make it awesome are split between two different trees. We have some in Discipline, some in Holy. We're going to assume that our Priest has talented to get all of them. Meaning, we have the following:

Self buff, Divine Spirit. Increases Spirit by 50 (this will come in handy later).

Force of Will. Increases Spell Damage by 5% and the critical strike chance of offensive spells by 5%. (Smite will now hit for 1299 - 1366 damage, and has a 25% critical strike chance)

Holy Specialization. Increases critical strike chance of Holy spells by 5%. (Smite now has a 30% critical strike chance)

Divine Fury. Reduces the cast time of Smite by 0.5 seconds, among other things, but we're only concerned with Smite. (Smite now has a cast time of 2 seconds)

Searing Light. Increases the damage of Smite by 10% (Smite will now hit for 1429 - 1503 damage)

Spiritual Guidance. Spell damage increased by 25% of the priest's spirit. Our priest, thanks to Divine Spirit, now has 350 spirit. 25% of that would be an extra 88 spell damage.

Surge of Light, just for kicks and giggles. 50% chance on spell critical that the next Smite will be free of cost, but be incapable of critting itself.

So. With all that, our new spell damage value is (1000 + 88)*1.05 = 1142.

Of that 1142, 71.42% of that will apply to Smite. Meaning Smite will gain 816 spell damage on top of the tooltip.
And then from there, Smite will get an extra 10% damage.
Right now, our damage will be 1502 - 1575 per cast.
We also now have a 30% critical strike chance, meaning Surging Light has a 15% chance to proc.
Let's factor these in, then...
Smite will crit for 2253 - 2363 damage. Averaging those in, Smite's relative damage will rise by 692 damage. Average in Surging Light as well, we get an additional 231 damage.

Meaning, fully talented, Smite will do, on average, 2425 - 2498 damage.

Therefore,

SMITE
Rank 10
Smite an enemy for 2425 to 2498 damage. 2.0 second cast time. Costs 385 mana.

On average, Smite will hit for 2462 damage every 2.0 seconds.
Therefore, per second, Smite will:
Deal 1231 damage every second.
Cost 193 mana every second.
(6.378 damage per point of mana)

Whew, that was long. But there ya go.

Now, let's get to fireball before my fingers fall off...


Fireball has a base cast time of 3.5 seconds, which means we gain the full benefit of our spell damage. Meaning our tooltip damage will be 1633 - 1805. Not including the DoT effect.

As to what we're going to do about the DoT effect. The fireball DoT does not stack, but it does "refresh" in the same way any other debuff would. Assuming we're chain casting these, means the DoT will be refreshed every 3 seconds. Meaning that we get 3 seconds of the 84 damage of 8 seconds, meaning we effectively get 32 damage of that in between fireballs. Bonus spell damage does not apply.

So let's look at our talents.

Improved Fireball, reduces cast time by 0.5 seconds (Fireball now has a cast time of 3 seconds)

Ignite. Critical strikes will now deal 40% of their damage as a DoT ability. (Fireball now, effectively, has 210% damage on any critical strike)

Master of Elements. Critical strikes will restore 30% of their base mana cost. (Mathematically, this means Fireball gets cheaper. We'll get to this soon)

Playing With Fire. 3% increase to spell damage caused. (NOTE THIS!! Spell damage CAUSED, not SPELL DAMAGE. This does not change our base spell damage, but changes what our spell actually hits for. Effectively, this means Fireball's damage is increased by 3%)

Critical Mass. Increases critical strike chance of fire spells by 6%. (Fireball now has a 26% chance to criticall strike)

Fire Power. Increases damage dealt by fire spells by 10%. (Another +10% damage for Fireball)

Pyromaniac. Reduces the mana cost of fire spells by 3%, and increases critical strike chance by 3%. (Fireball now has a 29% chance to critically strike, and is 3% cheaper)

Combustion. (Effectively means we get 3 guaranteed critical strikes with fireball every 3 minutes. We will mathematically add this in at the end)

Molten Fury. When the target is below 20% health, you deal 20% more damage. (Effectively meaning you deal 120% damage 20% of the time.)

Empowered Fireball. Fireball gets an additional 15% of your bonus spell damage. (Hurrah!)

Elemental Precision. Reduces mana cost of frost and fire spells by 3% (Fireball now is 6% cheaper to cast.)

Icy Veins. (Mathematically speaking, 20% more fireballs for 20 seconds every 3 minutes)

Now, let's see what all this does to our precious little fireball.

Like the priest, we're going to assume that we are self buffed, meaning we have Arcane Intellect and Molten Armor up, thus increasing our critical strike chance by 3.5%. Meaning our fireball now has a 32.5% chance to criticall strike.

Fireball will gain 1150 spell damage on top of the base value, and then that amount will be increased by 13%.
Meaning, our new fireball will hit for 2015 - 2209 damage, not including crits or any of that juicy stuff.
So let's toss them in.

First off, how to deal with Combustion. Combustion has a cooldown of 3 minutes, meaning we can use it once every 180 seconds. In 180 seconds, we woul cast 60 fireballs. Of those 60, normally 32.5% of them would crit, working out to 19.5 fireballs crit every 3 minutes. Combustion essentiall guarantees 3 critical strikes, so we can safely assume that it would add 1.5 critical strikes where previously it would have been a regular hit.
Thus, effectively giving us 21/60 fireball crits per those 3 minutes, giving us, mathematically, a revised 35% critical strike chance to fireball. Again, this is mathematically speaking.

Fireball will crit for 4232 - 4639 damage (this is already including the ignite damage) 35% of the time thanks to Combustion.
Average that back in to our base spell damage, fireball will now deal, on average, 3567 - 3761 damage every 3 seconds.

Bear with me, we're almost done. We have but two loose ends left to tie, and these are Icy Veins and Molten Fury.

First, Icy Veins. It will boost our fireball's casting speed by 20% every 3 minutes, essentially meaning every 3 minutes we get to deal 20% more damage. So, for 160 seconds we'll be dealing damage normally, and for 20 of those we'll be doing more.
Therefore, .111% of the time, we'll be dealing 20% more damage, which mathematically works out to 0.0222% more damage.
Factor that in, and fireball will now deal, on average, 3646 - 3845 damage every 3 seconds.

And now we get to Molten Fury. 120% damage, 20% of the time. 1.2 * .2 = 0.24, meaning thanks to Molten Fury, fireball will deal 24% more damage.
Factor that in, and fireball will now deal, on average, 4521 - 4768 damage every 3 seconds.

One last thing relating to mana cost. 35% of the time, fireball will be 30% cheaper. Mathematically, thats a 10.5% reduction to the mana cost of fireball.

I hope you stayed with me all this way. Let's see what fireball looks like now.

FIREBALL
Rank 13
Deals 4521 to 4768 damage, and an additional 32 damage over 3 seconds. 3.0 second cast time. Costs 355 mana.

On average, Fireball will hit for 4677 (counting the DoT damage) every 3.0 seconds.
Therefore, per second, Fireball will:
Deal 1559 damage every second.
Cost 118 mana every second.
(13.2 damage per point of mana)


FOR EASY REFERENCE

SMITE : FIREBALL
2462 damage per cast : 4677 damage per cast
1231 damage per second : 1559 damage per second
193 mana per second : 118 mana per second
6.378 damage per point of mana : 13.2 damage per point of mana

In conclusion. Fireball has greater DPS than Smite, and over double the mana efficiency of Smite, when considering talents.

Anyone want to wonder what this looks like if we toss in the Scorch debuff? I know I do. Let's math!

SMITE : FIREBALL (with Scorch debuff)
2462 DPC : 5379 DPC
1231 DPS : 1793 DPS
193 MPS : 118 MPS
6.378 DppM : 15.152 DppM

I think its fairly clear which spell is the better one here.

Raiding as Fire

Quick Stats

Most Common Specs
10/47/3 - Clearcast raid fire
2/47/11 - Icy Veins raid fire
Gains 210% damage from critical hits.
Spell Hit Cap: 164 rating


Raiding as fire.

We're talking 47 points of awesome into the fire tree, and the others spent wherever you deem fit.

It's easy.

It's unoriginal.

And it works.

Fire is, and always has been, considered THE raiding spec for these reasons. It is easier to play than either arcane or frost, and is especially tailored towards a raid environment.

Let's break out ye old spec analogy again, shall we?

All three main mage specs for raiding (here we're discussing raid arcane, raid fire, and raid frost), play differently.

Arcane, essentially, specs the mage into a balls-to-the-wall Burst DPS spec, mana be damned. Going full bore Arcane Blast with cooldowns blown will put the mage OOM in a matter of seconds, but his DPS will be insane. Utterly insane. Until his mana bar goes limp.
Think of it like the spec designed to kill the trash in raids as fast as possible.
Picture it like a Drag Racer, designed to reach speeds of excess of 240 mph, but can only maintain this for a half mile.

Fire is the opposite. It specs the mage as far away from burst DPS as possible from mage, and essentially specializes the mage for boss fights. Thats why it's so popular, "the" raid spec if you will. Any fight thats under 10 seconds is a waste of a fire mages time. This spec is designed for the long haul.
Think of it like the spec designed to fight the boss mobs in raids efficiently.
Picture it like a massive trucking... truck... designed to reach speeds of no more than 80, 90 mph, but can maintain it for almost a thousand miles.

Frost is the middle ground here. It does not have the same amount of burst damage arcane is capable of, and it does not have the long haul power that fire does. It has better burst damage than fire, and has far greater longevity than arcane.
Think of it like the spec that tries to find a comfortable middle ground between boss fights and trash killing.
Think of it like a wee little Toyota sports car that can go 140 mph, and keep it up for a couple hundred miles.

So, in the effort of providing the information that will help you decide what car is best for you, I present: Raiding Fire.

Firstly, the spell rotation of a fire mage, ideally, will be endless amounts of fireball spamming. By itself, fireball produces some of the very best damage versus time versus mana spent of any spell in the game. A warlock's shadowbolt is the only competitor.
However, a fire mage has this nifty little trick up his sleeve, called "Fire Vulnerability" (the talent is called Improved Scorch). Essentially, every time you hit something with Scorch, they take an extra 3% damage from any and all fire spells and effects. This effect stacks up to 5, meaning if you hit a mob with Scorch five times in a row, that mob will take 15% more damage from any and all fire spells. This debuff lasts 30 seconds.
So, on any given raid boss, you want to build this debuff up to its full stack of five, and then simply refresh the debuff every 28, 29 seconds to keep it going.
Therefore, you will start each fight with Scorch x 5. Once the initial debuff is up, you'll be doing fireball x 9, Scorch once, then repeat.
Obviously, if you have enough spell haste to fit in 10 fireballs in that 28 second time frame, kudos to you.
Essentially, you want to get in as many fireballs as possible between the 30 second timer mark on the debuff, and about 2 seconds away from where the debuff would "fall off". You DO NOT want to lose your stack, so make sure you are casting Scorch by, at the very latest, the 28.5 second mark.

This is, however, depending on a fight where you do not have to move. On fights where you may be switching targets frequently, or moving around a lot, you'll probably want to refresh Scorch more often.
For example, say the Void Reaver fight. If he flings an Arcane thingy at you, cast Scorch one last time before turning and running. Again, losing the Scorch debuff stack is a horrible thing to happen, and will waste many seconds rebuilding it.
To put it bluntly, fireball has, and always will, provide greater DPS than Scorch could ever hope to achieve. Any time spent rebuilding the debuff is time spent not using fireball, which is time spent doing less than your optimal DPS.
You do not want to cast fireball while there is no Scorch debuff, by simple fact that you are losing 15% of your damage if you don't have it up.
If you take nothing else away from this blog, take this:

The Scorch debuff is KEY to maintaining DPS.

If you have other fire mages in the raid, great! All of you can contribute to building the stack as fast as possible, and then have one of them refresh it every 28 seconds while the others do only fireballs. However many mages are not casting Scorch will have higher DPS than if they were the only fire mage in the raid. The one on Scorch refresh duty will have his usual DPS, but the other mage(s) doing nothing but fireball will have higher DPS because of it.

Keep this in mind. The scorch debuff does not just benefit mages, but it also benefits other classes that use fire spells, namely Warlocks.
To be blunt, a full on Scorch debuff increases the damage a warlock deals with fire spells by 15% as well. So we can help out our soul-sucking children, even though they always use Curse of Not-Helpful.
Random Raiding Tip: there are a couple fights during raiding where a warlock must tank a boss. Leotheras comes to mind. Consider this: the warlock pretty much has to spam Searing Pain to get enough aggro to hold the boss. If a full Scorch debuff is present, aforementioned warlock will generate 15% more threat. Sound good? Of course it does.

But what about trash mobs? Attempting to build the scorch debuff, only to have the mob die at 4 stacks can be an issue. If you're guild already has very high DPS, then it might not even be possible to build the scorch stack before the mob dies.
Scorch is a precursor to actual strong DPS. It is not the DPS itself, but is foreplay to the real deal.

Unfortunately, you will have to use your brain about trash mobs. I know, what a cad I am for forcing you to think.

The general rule of thumb across the entire WoW universe is that anything that will be alive for 10 seconds or longer should be Scorched first.
You will have to get a feel for your guilds damage dealing strength to decide how much of a debuff you are going to place on the trash mobs, and it also depends a lot on how many other fire mages there are in the raid.

Let's use me, for example. Being the only fire mage in the raid, I'm the only one who can provide the Scorch debuffs. The DPS power of the raid is also very strong, so there is really little time to cast spells at a mob before it dies.
On the "weak" trash mobs, i.e. the relatively low health caster mobs, I bring scorch up to 3 or 4 stacks, then get off a couple fireballs before finishing with fireblast.
On the stronger trash mobs, the ones with high amounts of health, Scorch is brought up to the full 5 stack, the fireball spamming commences.
If there's two of you fire mages in the raid, there is no reason not to have the full scorch debuff up before hitting fireball.

Similar to frost, and any mage at that, cooldowns should be used the second they are avaliable to be used, with a couple caveats.

Fire produces more aggro than any of the other mage trees, and as such immediately using all your powerful cooldowns might cause too much aggro at the get go. As well, using Combustion at the opening of a fight will pretty much "waste" the cooldown, as most of your Combustion procs will occur on the initial Scorches, which 1) don't have a lot of damage and 2) will not have the full debuff up yet, so you will lose out on damage.

As fire, cooldowns should be used as soon as it is feasible for said cooldowns to be used for fireball spamming, once the Scorch debuff is fully stacked. Make sense?

I'd like to turn your attention to a fire tree talent called "Molten Fury". It increases the damage dealt to targets under 20% health by 20%. To put it bluntly, this ability can be incredibly powerful, but you have to take advantage of it.
Against most trash mobs, for instance, this won't really be noticed, as the mob will only be alive in that health range for a few seconds. On these types of mobs, at the end of a fight, try to time it so a fireball hits right when the mobs health drops under 20%, then finish it off with Scorch / Fireblast to get as much Molten Fury damage as you can.

On boss fights, whatever boss you are fighting is going to be under 20% health for a long, long time. To take full advantage of this, you are going to want to "save" your cooldowns for when said boss drops to 20%, for the sole purpose of stacking powerful cooldowns with Molten Armor.
The reason why "save" is in quotations is because you are not going to go the entire fight without using a single cooldown... right? You're going to be smart and use them about 3 minutes before the boss will hit 20%, right?
You don't want to not touch your cooldowns at all, you just want to make sure you have them avaliable when the boss hits 20%.

If you remember, at the top of the post, I linked the two most commonly used fire builds out there.
The fire tree is always the same, those 47 points there are pretty much solidified.
About the only one you could skip getting would be Dragon's Breath, since it has extremely situational raid usage, and really, its only there to look cool.

You should always have the two points into the Arcane tree for the threat reduction, for all those times where you have to Arcane Explosion spam. Talented, it is the most amount of AoE damage possible for the least amount of threat. All raiding mages should have it.
Also, at least 3 points in frost for Elemental Precision is mandatory. That increases your spell hit, which of course is absolutely necessary.

Choosing between the clearcast spec and the Icy Veins depends entirely on how deep your mana pool is.
Clearcast lets you cast for a longer duration, effectively 10% longer. Icy Veins gives you a boost to your damage dealt, a rather significant one, I might add. Stacked with other cooldowns and Molten Fury, the boost can be staggeringly high.
The downside is that each spell has the same mana cost, so your mana consumption will rise significantly.
As a general rule, if your mana pool is 8500 (unbuffed) or higher, go with the icy veins option
If you have less than 8500, stick with clearcast until your gear gets a little better.

The final, unused point can go wherever you want, it doesn't matter.

And that is how you raid as a fire mage.

Totally Forgot

Hydross down, btw. Guild dropped him on Wednesday. Totally forgot to mention that.

I Finally Did Karazhan

Yeah, I finally did Karazhan yesterday.

Now, I know what you're thinking... how does this mage go from regular instances, straight to Tier 5, then do Karazhan after?

Simple... I haz uber leet skillz.

Ok, no, seriously. I had the Tailored epic set, which means I have 3 extremely solid pieces that will last me a long, long time, and also a bunch of PvP epics that, while not optimal, are still light years beyond anything else you can start 70 with. So I didn't exactly hit 70 with crap all gear, I started with 7 epics ready to go, and quickly collected more. So there. Nyaah.

So, where was I... Oh, yes! Karazhan! We had damn fine group, so we one shotted all but two on our speedy four hour run.

Our group makeup was as follows:
Protection Paladin, an alt of the Guild master. Has the best gear possible outside of Tier 5 for Prot Pallies.
Two rogues, one of which was an alt. Both definitely on the high end gear wise, relative to Kara.
A healer Paladin, who had horrible connection issues, and as such we ended up 9-manning amost the entire run
Myself, setting things on fire and pulling aggro on everything. JOKING, never once pulled aggro.
A Resto shammy, also in overwhelmingly good gear. Except his mace, which is an embarrasment. He keeps running Kara in the hopes of getting ANY healing mace. 3 weeks of nothing. Poor guy.
Holy Priest, overgeared for Kara. Needs him some badges!
Feral Druid, off tank. Doesn't need anything from Kara besides badges.
A brand new 70 warlock, definitely in entry Kara gear. Sporting mostly quest blues at the moment, but has a couple nice epics. Like the Frozen Shadoweave Shoulders, for instance.
A brand new 70 hunter, mostly Kara entry blues, with a couple epics. Heh, guy had a rough night. Being a newbie at all.

We eventually replaced the Holy Paladin with another hunter (you might well know him as Ghostkid, one of my loyal readers), and went on our merry way through Karazhan.

Attumen got owned in short order

Moroes down even faster. The new hunter had some fun here, seeing as how it was like "K, you need to chain trap the one marked with a Blue Square. The whole encounter. If you fail, we all die." We didn't die, so mega props to him.

We cleared to Maiden, downed her no problem.

On we go to Opera. The Prot pally heads out on stage to see what it is, we get Romulo and Julianne. Bubble, run out, restart.
Down they go. Had some DPS issues, meaning me and the warlock were assigned to Romulo and seriously out DPS'ing the two rogues on Julianne.
They had some troubles keeping the heals interrupted, I think they kept kicking Blinding Passion by accident.
Or maybe it was the Devotion buff I got to spellsteal. I only got to do it once, damn priest kept dispelling it. Oh well.
Down they go, badges were had, off we go to Curator.

And here's our first wipe. Resto shammy's mana went kersplat, and the rest of us were basically... yeah, can't DPS Evocates when we're dead.
I had some serious issues with pushback on fireball that encounter. Gah. Like, took over 5 seconds a few times to get the damn spell of. The Flares lurved me, and they didn't die fast enough.
Oh, well, respawn, keep going, utterly destroyed Curator the second time.

Skipped Illhoof (we ain't doing that crap with a new warlock) and on to Shade of Aran.
Downed with few problems.
I got caught in Blizzard once, thanks to the chains, which held me up a bit. Frost Ward, then blink. Had to Ice Block once, I went the wrong way and ran into a Blizzard rather than out of it. lawlz.
Oh! And nobody moved during Flamewreath. Zero damage from that ability.
And the elemental adds were handled nicely by aforementioned new warlock. Kept on banished, and another chain feared the whole fight. Bravo, you don't suck!

Cleared out chess, I tried out being a healer. Healing is stressful when its on a 20 second cooldown. Eep. Was the most stressful moment of the night.

So, we were about ready to call it a night at this point. Meh, went after Prince, almost all of us needed something from him. Me included, I've desired that tier 4 hat for a long time. Just haven't bothered to go get it.
The mindblade would also be sexy. Oh, well, neither dropped.
Our second wipe was here. Off tank got nailed by enfeeble early, then got hit by an Infernal almost instantly upon trying to flee. Dead druid.
Next one dropped right onto the ranged.
So did the next one.
Wipe.
Second time, nobody dies, Infernals were almost a non issue (one did land directly on top of the melee), and the hunter picks up a Decapitator because it looks cool.

So, portal to Shatt, with plans to finish up Sunday night. I immediately take all my hard earned badges and go buy myself some new bracers.

Runed Spell-Cuffs

Snazzy? I like to think so. I've been coveting spell haste for a while now, and this is just the start. Scoring the Pantaloons next, and from there, grab some stuff from ZA if I ever manage to be on during ZA nights, and hopefully will get a speedy little fireball.
Or, at the very least, get Scorch to the point where it will be under the GCD enough so that it always throws my timing off when I get the whole "Can't do that yet" errors.

Won't that be FUN?!

On a related note, anyone have about 5 primal fires I can have? I need me some enchants.

Why Polymorph Is So Damn Good

1) Able to be used on both Beasts and Humanoids, it is an extremely effective crowd control spell, used everywhere from Wailing Caverns to Serpentshrine Cavern to Sunken Temple to Black Temple. So many mobs are susceptible to Polymorph, it is almost a universally good crowd control device.

2) It is spammable. Some crowd control abilities, like a hunter's freezing trap, come with cooldowns attached. Polymorph does not have a cooldown.

3) Polymorph is a crowd control spell that is brought to the mob in question. Again comparing to a hunter's freezing trap, polymorph has a 30 yard range, and as such can be casted at a mob that is still yards away. Freezing trap requires the mob to come to the trap, which requires a lot more precision and skill to use properly. Any dumbass can use Polymorph correctly.

4) The mob barely moves once controlled. A warlock's fear "controls" the mob, but it is still running about like an idiot. There is serious danger that other mobs will be pulled. A sheep doesn't leave the same 4 yard zone, and most importantly, if other mobs path over it, they do not aggro. Apparently, there is nothing suspicious about a cute piggy named "Incredibly Powerful Naga".

5) It lasts a very long time. Max ranked Polymorph lasts a hefty 50 seconds, which means in your average instance, you can sheep it, and then forget about it for almost a minute.

Raiding as Frost

Quick Stats

Most Common Spec
10/0/49 - Clearcast deep frost
Gains 200% damage from critical hits.
Spell Hit Cap: 164 (126 for Frostbolt)



So. Raiding as frost. Can it be done?

Yes, yes it can. And well, I might add.

All three main mage specs for raiding (here we're discussing raid arcane, raid fire, and raid frost), play differently.

Arcane, essentially, specs the mage into a balls-to-the-wall Burst DPS spec, mana be damned. Going full bore Arcane Blast with cooldowns blown will put the mage OOM in a matter of seconds, but his DPS will be insane. Utterly insane. Until his mana bar goes limp.
Think of it like the spec designed to kill the trash in raids as fast as possible.
Picture it like a Drag Racer, designed to reach speeds of excess of 240 mph, but can only maintain this for a half mile.

Fire is the opposite. It specs the mage as far away from burst DPS as possible from mage, and essentially specializes the mage for boss fights. Thats why it's so popular, "the" raid spec if you will. Any fight thats under 10 seconds is a waste of a fire mages time. This spec is designed for the long haul.
Think of it like the spec designed to fight the boss mobs in raids efficiently.
Picture it like a massive trucking... truck... designed to reach speeds of no more than 80, 90 mph, but can maintain it for almost a thousand miles.

Frost is the middle ground here. It does not have the same amount of burst damage arcane is capable of, and it does not have the long haul power that fire does. It has better burst damage than fire, and has far greater longevity than arcane.
Think of it like the spec that tries to find a comfortable middle ground between boss fights and trash killing.
Think of it like a wee little Toyota sports car that can go 140 mph, and keep it up for a couple hundred miles.

So, in the effort of providing the information that will help you decide what car is best for you, I present: Raiding Frost.

Firstly, your spell rotation will look something like: Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt.... you get the idea.
Frostbolt is your spell. Use it, love it, bind it to every key on your number pad and mash your fist against it.

Secondly, USE YOUR FUCKING COOLDOWNS!! I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH!!
Get a giant USB "Big Red Button", bind "Summon Water Elemental" to it, and every time that cooldown is up, YOU PUSH DA BIG RED BUTTON.
Get some spell damage trinkets, and spam the HELL out of those things. When Icy Veins gets released, HIT THAT MUTHER TRUCKER EVERY FRIGGIN CHANCE YOU GET.

The power of Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt, Frostbolt is rather limited.
A lot of the true power of Frost's raid DPS is getting the absolute most out of your cooldowns.
The Water Elemental is a significant source of DPS, about 350 DPS when you, the frost mage, have around 750 spell damage.
If you don't take advantage of it, you are a magnificent moron. USE IT. LOVE IT. Trash pull going down and you need to spam sheep? Summon Elemental, send it after one of the other targets, sheep your mob. You get some nice DPS.
Standard trash pull, expected to go for a minute and a half? Summon your Elemental, sick it on something. When it expires, Cold Snap and get it right back out again.
350 DPS is a lot to lose out on, simply because you're too lazy to push a button.
Quite bluntly, a water elemental will account for a good 10-15% of your total DPS when you actually use it. Did you do 200k damage in a boss fight? That coulda been 220k if you had used the water elemental.
Timing the water elemental will be the hardest skill to raiding frost. It has low health, and no ways to protect itself. Therefore, literally any AoE effect will pretty much kill it outright.

Similar to fire, frost also has its own debuff. Whereas the Scorch debuff increases all fire damage by 15%, the frost one increases the critical strike chance of frost spells by 10%.
Just like the fire version of the debuff, you want to have it up as much as possible (yes, the water elemental gains the 10% improved crit as well).
However, you don't need to cast something besides your standard nuke for this debuff. Keep right on frostbolting away, it will build on its own.
However, due to the lower duration of this debuff (15 seconds) it will be harder to keep it up and running at all times during movement fights.
Keep in mind that Ice Lance does refresh the debuff, so use that whenever movement is required. Never, ever use an Ice Lance when a Frostbolt could be used instead. The damage difference is so huge, that spending a GCD on an Ice Lance when you could be casting a Frostbolt is a serious waste of time.
Only use it when movement is required, and you simply do not have the time for a frostbolt.


There is an interesting thing to note about frostbolt. It is, mathematically speaking, one of the oddest spells a mage has. It has two unique quirks that no other spell has. First, it receives what the mage community has dubbed a "ghost hit" from elemental precision. Namely, frostbolt receives a total of 6% spell hit from the talent rather than the 3% everything else gets. This is most likely due to the second quirk.
Most spells can do one of three things when they are casted at a mob. They can "miss" (which will show up on screen as "resist), be resisted in the technical sense (do partial damage), or hit, doing full damage.
Frostbolt is, mathematically, a binary spell. This means it can only do one of two things. It can either hit, or it can miss.
Non-binary spells can kind of hit, landing what is caused a "partial resist", whereby some of the damage is shrugged off the mob you casted at.
Like, if fireball is partially resisted, instead of doing the 2200 damage its supposed to do, it will do a measly 1100 damage. You get the picture?
Frostbolt CANNOT do that. It can only hit and miss, and cannot be partially resisted. Which means that when you cast frostbolt, it is unaffected by level based magic resistances.

(Level based magic resistance is thus: when mobs have a higher level than you, they have an innate spell resist to anything you cast. Mathematically, a level 73 mob (like a boss mob) will have a resist value of 24. This works out to about a 6% resist rate. This level based spell resist cannot be overcome by any means. GG, spell penetration.)

While both arcane and fire magic will see ~6% of their spells be resisted or partially resisted because of this level based magical resistance, frostbolts will never see that. They will always, mathematically speaking, hit 99% of the time.

Frostbolt, oddly enough, does NOT proc Judgment of Wisdom, that handy Paladin buff that some paladins toss on mobs so the casters can snag some more mana.


Anyways, there ya go. Raiding Frost. Make sure you have the Frozen Shadoweave set, and go kick some ass.

Cast Times

What is a cast time?

Cast time is the time needed to cast a spell before it takes effect. Essentially, it is time that you "spend" devoted entirely and utterly to whatever ability it is that you are using.
Let's take, for example, fireball. It comes with a base cast time of 3.5 seconds. This means that you "spend" 3.5 seconds standing there, doing absolutely nothing except fireball. If you want to do something, like run so you don't die, you have to stop the fireball. You have to stop casting, which means you wasted time, and move, which spends more time on moving, thus taking away from time that could be better spent casting a spell, and therefore being useful.
Every time you are forced to move, and do nothing, that is time spent where you are useless.

Having instant cast abilities/spells counteracts this, by letting you do stuff while moving.

Let's look at this from a PvE point of view first off. We're going to deal with a fire mage for this.

Big Angry Boss Mob is engaged. Every 20 seconds, he hits every ranged DPS with a ground-targeted spell. Therefore, every 20 seconds, the ranged DPS needs to move, or get killed. At each of these intervals, our mage will be moving for 3 seconds to escape painful death.
Let's say it takes 5 minutes to kill Big Angry Boss Mob.

If our fire mage was allowed to do non-stop DPS for that entire time, our mage would put out 1449 DPS, giving us a total damage dealt of ~434700.

But now let's consider the movement thing. We have the first 20 seconds unfettered, but after that we need to move. After the first 20, we're going to be moving for 3 seconds, and only able to cast for 17 of those seconds.

This gives us 4 minutes 40 seconds of interrupted casting. Working out to 14 cycles of movement, this means that we are not casting for 42 seconds.

Before, we had 5 solid minutes of DPS time. Now, we don't. Now, we have 4 minutes and 18 seconds of DPS time.
In this amount of time, we only deal out ~373800, working out to be 1246 DPS.

So you see what happened? Our damage and DPS gets slammed because we have to move, therefore spending time moving rather than hurting. We lost just over sixty thousand damage because we were moving.

This is one of the things that is considered a "challenge" feature of raiding. Many, in fact most, raid/instance bosses require us mages to move. Everything from Prince in Karazhan to Mother Whatserface in Black Temple. Tier 5 is the worst, with every single boss requiring movement of some sort.

And that hurts mages a lot. Let's go with the classic mage versus warlock.
When a movement is required, a mage runs. He is spending this time moving, and not on doing damage. His time budget is totally used up by movement. A warlock, comparitively, is still fairly gimped DPS wise, but actually has useful (and not mana-intensive) DoTs/abilities that can be used.
Thus, the warlock can refresh corruption (or whatever), while moving. Thus, only part of their time budget is used by movement, and part is used by damage. Put bluntly, classes that can still deal damage while moving (rogues are an excellent example, as long as they stay in melee range) severely outclass those who cannot. Like mages.

So. Raid bosses force us to move, which makes the encounter harder. This reduces our damage output, which makes the encounter harder.

Genius? Or just arbitrary difficulty generated because thats just how the mechanics work?

More Math!

Today I am going to compare the DPS capacity of an arcane mage with Tier 5 compared to one without.

First off, the set bonus from having two pieces of the Tier 5 magey gear increases the damage dealt by Arcane Blast by 20%.

So let's have a looksie at some math, kk? We're going to do 50/0/11 arcane/IV spec.

(Assuming 550 base Intellect, hit capped, crit rating of 200, and + damage of 1k for each school. Essentially rough approximations of where mages would be at given average Tier 5 content)
For this DPS test, we will use this spell rotation: Arcane Blastx3, Arcane Missiles, and then a frostbolt. Starting the next Arcane Blast timed just so to get the minimum cast time, and ending the spell at the end of the rotation to get minimum mana cost at well.

DPS without Tier 5 set bonus : 919.56.
(If we blow all cooldowns and simply spam Arcane Blast, and mana be damned, we achieve a maximum DPS of 1631.35. We can only keep it up for about 15 seconds, but there ya go)

Now, if we get two pieces of Tier 5

DPS with Tier 5 set bonus: 1008.70
(Again, if we blow all cooldowns and simply spam Arcane Blast, and mana be damned, we can achieve a max DPS of 1957.62. Again, we can only do that for about 15 seconds)

So. If we get two pieces of Tier 5, thats a DPS increase of 9%.

9 Bloody percent. That is incredibly huge.

If the number doesn't seem that big, consider that if you simply spam Arcane Blast, you're looking at a DPS increase of, in essence, 20%. (Math shows 17%, but that is still huge).

Consider that with icy Veins in the game, that a ton of mages will be dumping eleven points into Frost for, essentially, a 3% DPS increase.

Jumping that number by 9% is just absolutely incredible. You simply cannot say no to that.

Or can you?

Comparing Arcane/IV DPS to Fire/IV DPS, considering Tier 5. Let's see what happens.
And for shits and giggles, lets assume you have The Lightning Capacitor.

Arcane/IV DPS: 1068.97

Fire/IV DPS: 1130.15

Wait.... what?

Why is fire still ahead of the game by 5.5%?

Simple. Fire mages have Molten Fury.

/smug

There's Someone From Texas Reading My Blog...

WAS IT YOU, GHOSTKID? WAS IT YOU?!@?!?111


Euripedes' Shopping List:

28 Spellcloth
10 Primal Might
Far Too Much Primal Fire

Essentially, I am looking to complete the Spellfire set and, perhaps, get the Spellstrike set.

Before I go any further, let me say this...

If you are playing a mage, and you intend to do serious Raiding of any sort, you MUST have tailoring!

No ifs. No buts. Just shut up and get the damn profession.

The Spellfire set you get from tailoring is just that bloody awesome. To put it bluntly, you are GIMPING yourself if you don't have it. Same goes if you're raiding frost, get the Frozen Shadoweave set.

Nothing in any heroic or 10-man instance holds a candle to the crafted sets.

You will not see a single drop from Tier 4 that will come close to your crafted set. If I ever catch a mage wearing the Chest Piece from Tier 4 or 5, I will slap them.

And in Tier 5, any and all "upgrades" are questionable. Generally, anything in Tier 5 content that drops will be, at best, a decent side-grade. And also keep in mind that anything you do replace means that the set bonus is broken. Not too bad for Frozen Shadoweave, but it is extremely painful for Spellfire users.

Keep your set together. Only drop Spellfire/Shadoweave when you have a solid upgrade for each piece, that is worth losing the incredible damage and set bonuses for.

Most likely, you will still be wearing these crafted sets right into Tier 6 content, where you will finally be able to find stuff that is actually, clearly, an upgrade.

And if at all possible, search high and low for someone who can make spellstrike. It, too, is an incredibly useful set, and also has an extremely useful set bonus.

You will be farming primals for a long time. Get used to it, the gear from tailoring is spectacular on a million and one levels.

Also, Anathema dropped Void Reaver again. Some more Tier 5 tokens went out (obviously we didn't get any), and yours truly really shined, for once.

For a mage wearing primarily PvP gear, without even a complete spellfire set, being on spam sheep duty, and spending most of the first 2 minutes of the Void Reaver running around, I think I did pretty damn well.

WWS STATS

8th overall in the whole raid for damage done.

My DPS isn't as great as the other mages, but I attribute that solely to Void Reaver forcing me to do pretty much nothing for the first few minutes of the encounter.

It was basically "/cast Arcane Blast. Run away. Run back. Start casting Arcane Blast. Run away. Run back. Run away again. Be forced to run in a circle because he targeted me again while I was running away. Run back. Start casting Arcane Blast. Run away."
And so on.

There was about a good 130 seconds where my DPS was about 8.

Ahh, well.

Arcane is working for now, but when 2.3.2 hits, and most importantly, whenn spellfire/spellstrike sets are achieved, I'll be bidding arcane fare well.
Need to get me some action with the Fires of... Fire. /cough

$15 A Month

It comes with raiding guilds. It just does.
It's called drama.
Where people freak out, yell things on Vent, and TYPE THINGS IN CAPITAL LETTERS.

There is no avoiding it.

Anathema downed Lurker last night. Again. It took several tries before it went well, and on the second last attempt there were some pretty big freakouts.
A couple people flipped about people not getting their asses in gear, blah blah blah, and just generally getting mad at other people in the raid for not holding up their end.
Then there was the following response:
"GUYS ITS JUST A GAME"

This is a typical response to many of the people who complain about people not doing their job.

It is just a game. It is meant to be played. Have fun, enjoy what you're doing, don't flip out because a mage forgot to polymorph so and so, or a rogue pressed the Envenom button too early and ate a stormstrike that the elemental shaman was supposed to have.

And so on.

You have some valid points there. It really is a game. You really are supposed to have fun here. You're paying $15 or so per month to play, so enjoy every minute of it, amiright?

But you're forgetting something.

This is WoW. World of Warcraft. It is not an RPG, it is an MMO. A Massive. Multiplayer. Online. RPG.

You know what that means?

That you are not the only person here paying $15 a month. There are at least 24 other people around you paying the same thing.

See that orc up front in the heavy armor? He's paying $15 a month to get the stuffing knocked out of him by everything from giant ogres to oversized jellyfish who shoot lasers from their eyes. Why does he do this? Why does he pay $15 a month to get shitkicked repeatedly? So everyone can have fun and enjoy awesome loots.
See that little troll at the back? The sexy one in the tight fitting dress? She's paying $15 a month to keep everyone else alive. When the orc in heavy armor gets hit, she's there to save his life. When something goes wrong, when some crazy ass naga goes around bitchslapping warlocks, she's there. Why does she do this? Why does she pay $15 a month to live a high stress job of any wipe being initially blamed on her? So everyone can have fun and enjoy awesome loots.
See that Tauren at the back there? the big guy with the giant tiger named "Fluffles"? He's paying $15 a month to shoot arrows into the bad guys. When the bad guys die, the tank stops getting bashed. When the bad guys die, the healers don't have to heal anymore. He's paying $15 a month because its damn fun to kill stuff.
To quote Shatha: "When I'm having fun, I want to kill stuff. When I kill stuff, I'm having fun."
That Tauren, he's here for murder.

So explain to me the logic that this is a game and you can do whatever. Explain that.

If you're a tank, and you bust out a 2H weapon, and die, and then everyone else dies, you just wasted everyone else's time. Everyone else does't think its hilarious to watch a tank get one-shotted. You may have enjoyed your $15, but everyone else did not enjoy their $360.

If you're a healer, and you start trying to DPS, then everyone else dies. The tank dies, the other healers die, and you die. Again, you just wasted everyone else's time and money. Their $360 a month, wasted because you wanted to have fun with your $15.

If you're a damage dealer, do the job right. Don't pull aggro. Do your job, and hurt the enemy. Do your crowd control properly. Everyone goes home happier, and you don't waste anyones time. Pulling aggro at the beginning of a fight with a 4k crit is NOT your job! Do it near the end, where you don't put everyone at risk by pulling aggro from the tank.

Learn your job. Do it well. Don't be an asshole. There is at least $375 a month at stake here, play it like you mean it.
And everyone, not just you, can have fun. And there will be phat lewtz for all.

SRSLY!

Ok, so this is a serious post again.

I would like to talk about trainable Ice Block, and the possible repurcussions that would entail, if any.
For those not in the "know", the following forums are in an uproar about mages getting trainable Ice Block:
-Mage forums (duh)
-Warrior forums
-Warlock forums
-Hunter forums

The other forums don't really seem to care. The rogues are bust theorycrafting in thread after thread about the new Hemorrhage, the Shamans are awash in utter disappointment, Paladins are still yelling and screaming at each other about retribution, and the priests seem strangely occupied about racials.

The warriors are anywhere for entirely outraged from a PvP standpoint, the warlocks are QQ'ing endlessly about the might of the mages (this made me laugh, long and bitterly), and the hunters somehow think we'll be incredibly overpowered if we all have Ice Block.

Which leaves the mages rejoicing about PvE, and really not caring about the PvP.

"LOL WUT?" you say. Yes. Thats right. For the majority of mages, having Ice Block as a trainable ability will impact basically... nothing for us PvP mages.

Yes, I've said it before, I'll say it again. Ice Block is a game breaking talent. Without it, you are guaranteed to fail on a competitive level.
But if you do have Ice Block, that does not guarantee that you will not fail.

To be successful in an arena, you need to be able to outlast your opponent. You need to counter their specials, and have the durability to survive the ones you cannot avoid.
Every mage having Ice Block will not impact the other specs a great deal in the arena.

Even with Ice Block, you lack the control frost mages have. You do not have the ability to kite, you do not have multiple and rapid sources of frost novas.
You do not have Ice Barrier, and the mana-chugging protection that gives you.
You do not have the water elemental, a sickeningly effective killing tool when used effectively.
You do not have ridiculously powerful Ice Lances, one of the best burst damage spells a mage has. Specced for it, Ice Lance IS the best burst damage spell a mage has.
You do not have Cold Snap, allowing you to Ice Block twice in a match, and have a water elemental out for a full minute and a half.

Put bluntly, frost is a dozen-trick pony. And with Ice Block, you get one small trick to surviving.

"But Euri!" you whine, "If a PoM + Pyro mage can get Ice Block, then he can nuke my ass to hell and back and live right through it!"

Let me ask you something. When was that last time you got hit with a PoM + Pyro. Did it hurt? Of course it did. You know why? Because your resilience was shit.
Sorry. That was uncalled for.
Let's be realistic here.
Mages are essentially a glass cannon. Little survivability, lotsa damage being fired out. We die fast a slug that gets dropped in a bucket of salt, but damn, we'll hurt you just as bad as that poor slug.
We are the definition of squishy. Pretty much anything can kill us, if they gain the upper hand for even a few seconds.
A fire mage dies very fast in a tense situation. An arcane mage even faster. Simply put, a mage cannot take the hits. This is part of the foundation of the class. worldofwarcraft.com outright says so on their Mage Description page.
Challenge: Staying Alive.

So. Unless we're frost specced, we're easy to kill. Ice Block will hardly change that. Will it add to the survivability of non-frost mages? Most certainly. Will it mark the dawn of a whole new era in PvP combat? Not even close.
All it means is that the super-squishy mage will live 10 seconds longer. Thats all.
Once Ice Block is gone, the mage is just as squishy as before. Just as easy to kill. And now his survival trick is gone.

And to you people complaining about how this will effect the arenas, ask yourself.
Search your memory. Do it.
When was the last time you saw a Mage in the arena that did not have Ice Block?

Think about. Any and every moderately successful mage in any arena has Ice Block. Making it trainable will train nothing.
Every mage that PvP'd had Ice Block before... now we'll all... still have Ice Block. In competitive arenas, this change will do little besides let the arcane and fire mages move up about 50 points in rating. Some might even be able to crack 1600 now.

So, please, for those of you QQing about how this will completely change the Arena dynamics, please be quiet. This will change nothing.


Trainable Ice Block, however, will provide some major changes in a completely different part of WoW.
Yes, I'm talking about PvE. Ice Block is an immunity to everything, and a way to temporarily dump aggro.

You accidentally pull aggro on Quagmirran? Ice Block.
You get hit by Watery Tomb while fighting Hydross? Ice Block.
You get turned in a wee little girl with a Red Hood while fighting ol'granny? Ice Block 10 seconds from the debuff.
Moroes Garrote you? Ice Block. Its gone.
Get caught in the open when Ikiss blows that massive Explosion thingy? Ice Block, and you'll live happily ever after.

The uses for Ice Block in a PvE environment are many. Used correctly, it will save your healers a lot of aggravation, save your ass, and the collective ass of everyone around you.

Hydross Kicked My Ass

And all I got was this lousy repair bill.

Ok, it was only 17 gold. But I digress.

The jump has been made. Lost Cause has been ditched in favor of Anathema. Poetic, as Lymesub said.

Anyway, typed in the whole /gquit thing, was promptly invited into Anathema, and within seconds, got the fateful message "SSC summon inc"

To which I replied with a great deal of maturity and pride, as I am entitled to at my age.

I said "Sweet Jesus" and proceeded to both cry in fear and cheer in joy.

So. Anyways. I fire up Vent, hop on the guild server, double-check to make sure I'm on push-to-talk, yelled "WET TOMATO" just to make sure.
No, I did not die on the elevator. Stop asking me.
I whipped out the Dungeon Companion, and quickly browsed through the SSC section. What would we do? They took down Lurker last week. Maybe Leotheras?

To my utter horror and undying shame, Anathema went after Hydross.
Hydross the Unstable.
Hydross the "I'm immune to frost damage".

The battle went out over Vent. The plan. The abilities. I already knew all of this, so I stayed patient and wet my pants in anticipation.

The pull began. I used fireball. I gazed sadly at the damage meters as my DPS went nowhere.
Moved away from water-tombed people, blew Evocate when the tank announced a transition.
And when those adds spawned, we showed them the frozen fury that is frost spec. Cone of Colds critted the bejesus out of them adds. And I finally got to actually do some DPS to Hydross, because now he takes frost damage! /cheer!
And then the next transition, and hell broke loose. No CoC for me, just AE. Say goodbye mana pool! /wave

Although water-tomb was really easy to fix. Ice Block, done. It was just that easy. I reveled in my own awesome at that.

Well, anyways, we wiped. We wiped a lot. Yours truly even got punched in the face by Hydross!
"Hydross hits you for 44077"
I think part of me cried.

Anathema is going after TK tomorrow. Loot... er, Voidreaver I hope. Maybe redeem myself for the abomination that was my DPS on Hydross. 14th in the raid? /cry
Frost needs some PvE luvvin'. If my DPS stays this low, I'm probably going to have to respec out into fire again. 10/48/3, don'tcha know.
Which will kinda work out, I guess. I'm already going to ditch the Frozen set in favor of Gladiator welfare epix anyways.

If I pick up some blues to replace the robe/boots/shoulders, we're going fire, baby!
Stack some + spell hit gems, and show these raid bosses what mage DPS is all about.

In other news, Sequel, "the" mage for Anathema has expressed interest in writing here. Definitely going to have to let him, after all, filler posts like this one just suck.
And besides, this blog is very PvP-oriented, so some PvE stuff will do it good.
And even more besides, it will give me more time to work on the World of Magecraft. Volume II is almost done.

A Couple of Things

Ran Shattered Halls with the guild today.

Some things to mention.

Vox generally kicked my ass with damage dealt, beating me by over 200k damage.

We had a paladin tank running the first part. While not in the guild, myles is an alt of someone who is.
And we were brilliant. The ridiculously hard pulls generally went good, for what was essentially a PuG. 2 mages, paladin tank, enhance shaman, and holy priest on heals.
We wiped twice. Once in a pull where we accidentally pulled 4 additional mobs, and once on the last boss.

Now, I'm going to go into detail over arcane versus frost here, instance wise.

Arcane had more damage. Substantially more.
At the end of the instance, I had done 800k damage, and foxy voxy had just broke the 1 million mark. This shouldn't come as a surprise.

Frost doesn't take a lot of hurt. On Nethekurse, when he does that impressive spinny thing, the deathcoil bolts dug in a lot more on Vox. I thanked the frozen gods and continued casting, grinning behind my Ice Barrier. Meanwhile, over voice-chat, Vox sat their cursing. *evil grin*

When AoEs were called for, frost nova + cone of cold unleashed a world of hurt on some orcs.
There is a great deal of satisfaction to be gained from watching 6 orcs take 1500+ damage each from a single spell. Even better if you can instruct your arcane-missile-happy friend to blow frost nova eight seconds later. *evil grin*

Random tip: you must MUST must be able to get a shatter combo on any single target in an instance. Any time you see a frozen target that you can ice lance, DO IT! 124 mana for 2k damage? Yes please! It's a huge source of damage for a frost mage in an instance. This is why you should always get "Add" duty.

As a good example, take Bladefist. Adds show up in this fight, in the form of silly non-elite orcs.
These can be a real hassle for the healers, even more so if you only have one. Like we did.

Enter me, the frost mage. The first time we hit Bladefist, it went horribly wrong from the beginning. Three (3!) assassins patrolled right into our group as soon as the fight started.
So, here I was. On add duty. I thought I had to deal with these uber-powered, incredibly hard hitting orcs in waves of three. Our group bit the dust. HARD.

Second try, no pats. Just the regular, non-elite, non-70 adds. And they come one at a time.
I almost cried, my job was so easy. Frostbolt kite, root, shatter kill. NEXT.
Of course, when Fistblade went into "ZOMG" mode, things got a little more hectic. The combination of losing frostbolt time and Vox screaming "HOLY SHIT!" led to a few accidents.
(Vox doesn't like being smacked around, you see. Seeing multiple hits of 1k on his screen scared him. /cheer for Ice Barrier.)
One add got on the healer, and she took a couple of hits before I snagged aggro.
A couple adds ran into the paladin's consecrate... that was harder to get aggro back for, but a fireblast did it.
And other than that, most of the adds were flawlessly slaughtered.

So, in answer to the question, "Is frost viable in end-game PvE" the answer is definitely yes.
But taken in moderation. If you're doing, say, Karazhan, only one mage need be frost. Any more and the party starts getting a little gimped.
Our jobs are easy. Incredible crowd control, strong dps (and more sustained than other mage specs, I might add), add duty, and kiting. We can root mobs, kite mobs, sheep mobs, and unload incredible burst on frozen targets.
As mages, we also have access to powerful AoE spells, and as frost, we add CONTROL to that high volume of damage. For example:
Arcane Explosion = AoE damage
Cone of Cold = AoE damage, can be aimed more accurately than AE, crits very hard, adds a slow to all targets, and has a 15% chance of rooting all targets. And cheaper, too.

On top of that, we have far better mana efficiency than the other specs, having mana to use long after the other specs have gone OOM.
Oh, and Ice Barrier, which makes the healers job that much easier.
And Ice Block, basically an instant aggro dump.

Sounds a lot like a hunter, don't it?
If you want to look at it that way, Frost mages are the hunters of spell-casters. Played right, we offer a lot to a group. Played wrong, and you get a Blood Elf casting Ice Lance because it looks cool.

Remember, my children, the creed of frost mages, as laid down by the prophet Faxmonkey:
"If you can chill it, you can kill it."

To all you PvE whinos : Shut your trap. Frost is great for Instances.

Random fun story:

Mylesmason, the pally tank, had to go to a birthday party with his kid (Aww.... <3) so we had to PuG a new tank. Snagged another pally tank and... well, lemme put it this way. Myles was miles beyond this guy in the tanking department. Please don't slap me.
It was laughably easy to pull aggro.
On the second boss, Lost Cause's GM (the enhance shaman) pulled aggro... and kept it. Enhance shaman with spirit weapons, Blessing of Salvation, versus paladin tank with Righteous Fury up.
Enhance shaman kept the aggro the whole fight.
Now, what's awesome is that Oli had a shield, (a good one, actually) and busted it out.

And tanked.

You heard me, a shaman tanked Warbringer O'mrogg.

Sadly, no-one got a screenshot...