What is Reliable Damage and Predictable Damage?

[cpclima 0]

Hi guys,

I'm learning to play WoW. I was reading the Frost Mage DPS Guide and I didn't understand the meaning of the following sentence:

"The Frost specialization has always excelled at limiting enemy movement while dealing reliable and predictable damage output."

What's reliable and predictable damage? 

Thanks!

[Lockybalboa 618]

Damage that is not effected by RNG in a large manner, so the delta between top and bottom is much smaller than a spec that relies on procs and RNG - such as fire. Fire often has had a 10-30% DPS swing based on RNG from pull-to-pull. That swing is much lower in legion than it has been in the past, but it still has a fairly large delta.

 

Frost on the other had is very smooth, very reliable from pull-to-pull.

[cpclima 0]

Thank you!

May I ask how do you know that? I googled a lot and found no satisfactory anwser.

[Orthios 271]

It's more or less just knowing what means what and how things work.  Knowing that a class/spec relies on RNG for procs and such means that there will inherently be a higher amount of variance than one that doesn't, simply because there are more outcomes that can occur after a given time frame for the spec that relies more on RNG.