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Wow.com posted this article today to argue why it is ok to raid in frost spec. While I enjoy a good intelligent debate, this was not quite the case. In my option his reasoning for raiding in frost is either not relevant to the current raid or was just simply not a sound reason.

Reason the first: The DPS gap is closing.
Key word here is “closing” until it is closed why would you take less DPS? Once Blizzard changes all four specs to be equal you need to pick the best for each job. In raids our job is to DPS so you take the highest DPS spec. In PvP it is about survivability so you take the one with the most survivability, simple choices and reasoning. Plus the having Arcane Empowerment helps the entire raids DPS.

“It’s still there, certainly, but it’s much, much smaller than it has been. The above-mentioned changes have made the gap small enough that now the choice to bring a frost mage no longer hampers your raid’s DPS. Arcane and fire still rank higher, but frost is now, for the first time since the end of vanilla WoW, in the mix. The most recent PTR changes promise to make the situation even better.
A straight-up damage buff to frost’s primary nuke, Frostbolt, is a fantastic place to start. And by incorporating the occasional Brain Freeze-triggered Frostfire Bolt into the rotation (a vast improvement over Fireball for frost mages), the situation becomes even better. Now if only we could find a way to get Ice Lance involved somehow…
I realize that saying frost isn’t as bad it used to be isn’t much of an argument, but I’ve never been a big fan of the whole min-max mentality. From a hard numbers perspective, arcane is currently the DPS king. Frost is not. This is true. But we’re at the point now, where frost has drawn close enough that the choice is simply no longer black-and-white. The bottom line is this: Given the choice between a decent arcane mage and an excellent frost mage, I’d now take the excellent frost mage without hesitation. Previously, the conversation had to go something like this:

Raid organizer #1: Well, we have a mage spot open. We can bring Jim, or Dave.
Raid organizer #2: Let’s see…Jim has threat management problems. He tends to stand in things that kill him. Also, he’s a racist.
Raid organizer #1: Yeah, but Dave’s a frost mage!

Now, you take Dave. It isn’t even a question. The gap is too small to worry over numbers. There are a lot of quality frost mages out there. They know their class. They understand their roles. And now, your guild can use them. You can bring the best mages you have, not just the ones who went to Elitist Jerks and copy-pasted whatever the “optimal” spec happened to be that day.”

Reason the second: Survivability
Most of the time if you are taking damage as DPS or heals it’s your fault and you are doing something wrong. Any other raid wide type damage should be kept up by the raid healer(s).

“The very thing that makes frost such an attractive PvP choice is also of underrated value in a raiding environment. Frost’s ability to throw up a quick Ice Barrier in between themselves and a massive incoming blast of splash damage often spells the difference between a live DPS and a dead one. Or how about the ability to throw up two consecutive Ice Blocks, removing debuffs and avoiding death twice in a short amount of time? Which would you rather have in your raid group? The arcane mage who bites it 20 seconds into an encounter, or the frost mage who has the tools to survive?
There are a great number of encounters where the simple ability to keep the DPS alive for a few more seconds can spell the difference between a wipe and victory. It’s always a good thing when your DPS can find ways to keep themselves alive. It takes a bit of pressure off your healers, and allows your DPS to stay higher, longer.”

Reason the third: AOE
In most cases AOE is for trash not bosses and as far as I have been in ICC the bosses do not need AOE. Also AOE snares are not awesome in a raid; it will make the mob attack someone other than the tank. If a mob is snared it will attack the closest player to it, that’s means it could be DPS or heals. There was an article about this on WoW.com and how it is annoying to tanks, I agree.

“It isn’t going to be useful in every encounter, but an AOE snare is going to be fairly awesome in some of them. Frost mages have excellent AOE capabilities, making them fantastic to have around for trash pulls, and the CC/AOE potential of Improved Blizzard could prove very, very valuable in certain boss encounters.”

Reason the fourth: Kiting
I have not cleared ICC, but so far I have not seen any fights that DPS needs to kite mobs. Deathbringer Saurfang would be the only close exception, but being arcane a simple frost bolt will slow them down enough to be killed. Whenever I have done the Deprogramming weekly raid quest a tank picks up Daravan. If the player tanking him is not defense capped they will die too quickly for the healers to save them.

“Frost mages might be the best dedicated kiters in the game, pound for pound (with Glyph of Frostbolt removed, of course). Put a frost mage on Darnavan during the Lady Deathwhisper encounter and watch him complete the quest for you. Any melee class that’s ever been led around by the nose in PvP by a frost mage can attest to the fact that when it comes to kiting, frost is unparalleled. Any encounter that calls for a dedicated kiter is made tremendously easier when a skilled frost mage is involved.”

Reason the fifth: Threat management
If you cannot manage your threat you need to learn to play your class or it is a tank issue. The only times I have threat issues is on trash if there are a lot of mobs that are being single targeted or when I use my burn macro. Even then, mirror image will make you threat neutral and if I pass the tank I will hit invisibility to be reset.

“Frost mages have low threat for one reason: a significant percentage of their threat is being generated by their pet. Their ability to manage threat is significantly better than that of fire or arcane mages, who must rely upon talents to lower all-around threat. This means more time spent putting out DPS, and less spent doing things like casting Invisibility or Ice Block.”

Reason the sixth: Shut up.
Any class that has more than one DPS spec knows one is better then another for something. It has been this way from vanilla wow and will probably remain till WoW is no more. Until the balance is perfect we will have to deal with it.

The choice comes down to whether you are raiding, leveling, or PvPing. If you want to do any of those in a spec that isn’t best suited for it that’s fine, it might be harder, but no one is stopping you. However anyone who is “hardcore” in to raiding or PvP probably won’t want you bringing something subpar to their event. As a DPS and a tank I want to bring my very best to the raid and will use whatever happens to be best during that patch.

This was a tactless way to express his opinion and will not be quoted.

The entire time I have worked in the business world computers have been in the environment. So I have not had to deal with memorandums reminding me to put cover sheets on my TPS reports. The new memo has been remade into emails and can probably be more annoying. Adding unrelated images, unreadable fonts, and distracting backgrounds is always a fun way to brighten up an email.

Most mass email I get at work I do not read, they are about things I don’t really care about. Things like company events I won’t be attending or a wellness comity reminding me that I eat fatty foods. However there is still a lot of email that is worth reading. With me being in a support position I receive a lot of email asking for help troubleshooting a problem. Being in this position I also see many of my co-workers inboxes and some of them are awful. My inbox is not the cleanest, I tend to get lazy and not move anything into folders, but with the new search tool in Outlook 2007 it’s very easy to find any information I need. The other thing about my inbox is EVERYTHING is read; even the mass emails I do not care about get a quick scan. Some of my co-workers on the other hand have 2000+ unread email that are a combination of spam they have allowed in, junk, adds, and actual email from other co-workers. This presents a problem for me on two fronts;
1) their inbox gets shut down because they have too much crap in it and I have to clean it up. Because after a week of not getting new emails they finally realize the last email was received a week ago.
2) When I am working on an issue with them they never check the 5 emails I sent them for the last two months seeing if their issue is resolved.

I know I could walk to their classroom or call them, but they are busy teaching during school hours and I have 2000 other people to support. My point to this being email is a tool for mass instance communication and collaboration with a low initial cost and a low over head. Any kind of email sever completely eliminates the classic “Mail Room”. So let step up and use this technology that has been out sense the early 1980s. Because I don’t want to call you and I really don’t want to get up.

Its been sometime from my last post, but I have still been playing WoW. I took a a few months and moved my Pally over to Dark Iron. My cousin and some other high school friends were on that server. We spend that time running heroics for badged tier gear and pugging 10 mans. Due to scheduling conflicts and a few other things we never made it past that point. I have since moved my pally back over to Burning Legion to tank for Minor Threat. Now my main focus has been on my Mage who still raids with Minor Threat. I am getting my Mage geared up to do better DPS in ICC 10, but its a slow process. I am extremely displeased with having to spend badges to get my tier pieces. Normally I would use badges for non-tier items, but now I have to save up 100s of them to get my sets. The other part I do not like about this is the fact that now there is very little difference between a 5 man pugger and a 10 man raider. Its cheap and feels like a rip off for the people who actually have to know how to play the game and raid. I digress, we do run a 25 man ICC with a few other guilds, I suppose that is how I must get my “real” tier gear.

As some of you know I singed up for Verizon DSL. This is the third time I had singed up for their DSL. The first two times we set our billing cycle, got our modem and filters, then got a service activation date. Then finally they ran a line check and they sent us an email saying we couldn’t get it. This time the same thing happen, but they never ran a line check. So I was on the line with support for about 40 minutes last night and didn’t get it fixed. So they scheduled a technician to come out to my house to check the lines. The technician told me what I already knew that we are too far out to get DSL. Our lines will support DSL 4 miles out, but we are 6 miles out. Over all I wasted a bit of time, but cost Verizon a far amount of money.