Up until recently, I've been mostly using a frost build with my mage with pretty good success. However, after a raid last night, some guildmates suggested I should use an arcane build, or even fire, as the dps is higher. However, after trying it for a while last night, I didn't really notice any difference in damage.

My observations were as follows:
1. Frostbolt under a frost build and arcane blast under an arcane build seem to do the same amount of damage per shot to individual targets.
2. Frostbolt crits more often, especially with frozen targets
3. Cast time of Frostbolt is lower that Arcane blast, although arcane blast procs missile barrage more or less evening out the damage.
4. Arcane blast can crit for much greater damage than frostbolt
5. Arcane has no survivability. It's easy to survive a boss fight with frost but not with arcane unless the healer is really good at healing more than just the tank.
6. Blizzard does more damage with frost spec
7. According to recount, I do more dps with frost than arcane

Therefore, I'm not quite sure why arcane is considered to be the better spec to choose? Does anyone know why people seem to suggest arcane or even fire over frost for DPS?

Arcane does more dps because of the high crit damage of arcane blast and arcane missels. Although its a very simple 3 button rotation u need to play it for a while do make it higher dps then frost.

Personal i play arcane and frost i dont like fire and i have similar experience then u both make similar dps. But other mages with ver similar gear and arcane spec will overtake most of the times my total damage and dps.

Survivebility is not needed on boss fights its more aggro management and a good healer, but thats also required as frost or fire build.

Just compare lvl experience with frost i need longer to take down enemys compare to arcane.

I think you ll do good in overall dmg because of aoe damage which high on frost mage. But on Boss (where dps counts) I believe you ll pull better numbers as arcane mage. Fire is said to be the highest dps build in ICC once you get the best gear possible.

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Survivebility is not needed on boss fights its more aggro management and a good healer, but thats also required as frost or fire build.

Perhaps its just my low HP or something, but even without attracting aggro, I still manage to die relatively easily on Arcane due to the AoE attacks from the Bosses. Perhaps I need a better healer as well.

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I think you ll do good in overall dmg because of aoe damage which high on frost mage. But on Boss (where dps counts) I believe you ll pull better numbers as arcane mage. Fire is said to be the highest dps build in ICC once you get the best gear possible.

That actually makes a lot of sense. Less blizzard=less dps. I guess its back to more experimentation with the arcane build and trying to remember to press those three buttons in the right order at the right times.

Thanks for the advice. I'll keep plugging on until I manage to not die so easily.

Well...i Played all three styles at one point or another when i was in the UK but always preferred to play fire. Firstly it's how i levelled and then during vanilla wow and TBC it seemed to work beautifully, secondly, it's fire!! (so many 'cool' spells) haha
However at the start of WOTLK i started playing druid and rogue so neglected my little fire mage....but with decent gear at the end of TBC im pretty sure that the dps count at the end of boss fights was in my favour....

/Ralli

"Perhaps its just my low HP or something, but even without attracting aggro, I still manage to die relatively easily on Arcane due to the AoE attacks from the Bosses. Perhaps I need a better healer as well."

If you're HP is that low that you die from an AOE and the healer isn't dying- then I think you should rethink your gear or your positioning. Priests usually have the lowest HP. Not to mention that if your DPS is also low, then you're considered 'expendable' to the priest- (as a priest) we have to consider more than just one person and if we're wasting too much mana healing you because you're under geared and making bad position choices then we'll let you die so that we can down a boss. Depending on your healer (priest vs paladin vs druid)- this should also affect your game play style as priests and I believe paladins are direct healers so if 4 out of 5 people take damage we have to heal one by one, druids have better instant heals so they heal more people quicker.

Well, it really depends on the AoE and the boss for both how easily I die playing arcane and what my DPS is.

My particular troubles with dying come from bosses like Loken in the Halls of Lightning and Anub-arak in Azjol-nerub and for those, I simply use frost now. I suppose that, if I'm not paying enough attention, then the final boss of the Nexus with Intense Cold can sometimes also be troublesome.

As far as DPS goes, where mobs are in ones or twos, such as Violet hold, I can usually end up at the top of the damage charts with arcane, but if the mobs are in larger groups, then I'm not even close to the top.

Gearing wise, I acknowledge I'm still not in the best gear, but I can safely say that I don't tend to stand in the fires unless there is no choice (as with Loken).

Anyway, it was great to hear from a healers perspective on this. I try to never blame the healers for my deaths because I know their main focus is on the tanks. After all, they are keeping me alive all the time simply by keeping the tank alive.

I've actually found that with Loken- having the the whole group come into aoe range and just spamming holy nova works the best since it's the ONLY way that a disc priest can heal all players at once quickly (and if someone's got low hp just shield them if I need to). After we figured that one out Loken was never a problem again unless someone stood outside my holy nova range.