Another Mage and I respecced into Improved Flamestrike several weeks ago and we regularly lead in AoE DPS in Hyjal depending on how aggressive the Warlocks are being, by simply standing far back and chain casting Flamestrikes. We're both trolls and pop berserking for this, which helps too. Your mileage may vary, I do miss Blastwave and DB sometimes.

I see you still have a MSD socketed, manly. Is it superior to the new meta? I got one cut last night but since I haven't regemmed for fire spec, I haven't socketed it. What's your opinion?

I follow the same except I do think that DB is a very nice AOE and if it's tanked right you can easily hit 10 targets in hyjal trash with it. I do though often save it for saving people including myself from lose crap. I dont have skull either.

I haven't done the math but conceptually...

You get a 1/3 mana return if you crit so I would imagine that as a fire mage, molten armor would give you a degree of mana return. Although the effect of the return would vary depending on your crit vs your spirit (mage armor equivalent)

I disagree about not using Dragon's Breath in a fire AE rotation. Even if you only get half of the mobs you'd hit with AE, the damage difference, with Ignite, and with the very probable mana return from Master of Elements, still makes it better.

Supposing 1250 + damage, 26% base crit, and not counting the CSD:

DB -> 735 base + (1250 * 1,5/3,5 * 0,5 * ,95) * 1,13 * (1 + 0,35 * 1,1) = 1548 average hit

AE -> 392 base + (1250 * 1,5/3,5 * 0,5) *1,03 * (1 + 0,26 * 0,5) = 768 average hit

AE costs 545 mana; DB costs (700 *0,94) = 658 mana without MoE, 461 when you get at least one crit.

My own rotation:

0- Initial Flamestrike

1- If Blast Wave is up, BW
2- If Dragon's Breath is up, DB
3- If the Flamestrike DoT is about to finish, Flamestrike. Else AE. Repeat.

While we're talking about rotations, I've always assumed the ideal fire spec rotation is keeping up scorch, fireballs and then inserting fireblasts when they're off cooldown. Has anything significantly changed to make another rotation more viable?

Yes, the ideal rotation is keeping up scorch. An 8 Fireball/1 Scorch would suffice considering max hit and no spell haste. Fireblast shouldn't be in the rotation, because of the global cooldown. I only fireblast when repositioning.

As far as AoE rotations are concerned. I use the same rotation as Setia and find it quite beneficial. Since moving into close range for Blastwave can easily be followed by a Dragon's Breath.

With a small amount of haste (with the break point around 30 haste rating in top-end gear) and 4/5 T6, you're better off, even from a pure DPS standpoint, simply spamming Fireball. With lesser gear, less haste and no T6, Fire Blast still gives a small DPS boost if you have mana to spare.

Well, I'm waiting to see if I get a cowl of the high lord tonight, which would greatly simplify gemming. Otherwise I'll put a clutch blue gem somewhere and go for CSD.

I've had a bunch of lost focus procs on scorch, its very frustrating.
I avoid flamestrike not because its the most efficient aoe, but rather due to range issues. Yes flamestrike is better dps than AE but also a much smaller radius.

I could care less about mana concerns. Firespec can't go oom. It's just mind boggling.

If I were given the choice, I'd much rather MSD proc/focus into blizzard than flamestrike, due to the larger radius. But then theres aggro issues. I guess you can't have it perfect.

Pre 2.3 I was arcane (and not an ideally geared arcane mage) and I felt I could pull similiar numbers with MORE effort. I didn't need chain chugging pots or quartz.

I would fight lag by trying to time my next AM the second the 5th bolt went out. It was extremely inefficient with my 200 ping compared to this simple fireball spam.

This cast system is amazing. I just spam the button, and even if I lag a bit, it all seems to get out as efficient as auto-attacking fireballs would be. In pure theory, we're able to say X was better than Y all day, but the results for myself show that being able to spam a button and not lose half a second to lag each cast drastically improved fire. Haste is not only a viable stat now but it's far superior to crit.

Also, yeah, the MSD pretty much blows. I could never use it for evocate, and it's increased proc chance would lead to it being used on the first 5 scorches (I'm the only fire mage.) Looking forward to the new gem once I get my pants.

I'm always getting 100-150 odd more DPS using Fireblast in my rotation. Although it's worse DPM, I rarely run out of mana for it to be an issue. Is there something I'm missing?

That's how it felt to me... In the last days of the PTR I ran a short test, I was getting something along the lines of 100 ms between spells, regardless of whether I was pushing the button once about 0.4 seconds before the spell ends or if I was spamming the spell with the mousewheel.

Vontre's Mage DPS Spreadsheet

The last few pages of that thread are almost entirely devoted to that question you asked.

There's math in there, WWS parsings, Fight breakdowns.....

The general consensus was, much as Copernicus said CSD is better, you suffer a small DPS loss, yada yada all the stuff he said. Also in addition it seems you scale better, you gain more DPM, the gem requirements are much easier to hit, and (my personal contribution) bigger numbers fly out of monster heads.

Here's my comprehension of the way the current casting system works. More advanced tests to be done this week to clarify some details.

0.00 - you cast fireball
0.00 - the 'cast fireball' is sent to the server whether or not you're currently casting (as opposed to 2.2 where it wouldn't let you)
0.00 - a client-side GCD is triggered (this is where the details are a bit hazy)
0.20 - the server receives the message 'cast fireball'
0.20 - the server responds to the client saying 'spell is not ready' because you were already casting a fireball previous to this
0.40 - the client receives the answer from the server
0.40 - the client side GCD is removed as a result of receiving the message

In other words, to avoid players spamming the server with casts, as long as you don't get an answer from the server you can't cast other spells (lets call it a temporary GCD).

Also, it seems that consecutive casts of the same spell can be chain-casted server-side. Here's my best understanding of it:

- If the server receives a cast message 250 ms prior to the end of the ongoing cast, and that both spells are the same (ie: consecutive casts of fireball), then once the current casts completes on the server, it will begin to cast the next one immediately.



The parts that needs extended testing is the following questions:

1- Make sure the 'temporary GCD' does exists.
2- Is it possible to cast 200 fireballs in a row and that it would take precisely 600 seconds to execute with no haste gear ? (ie: that the '1 spell deep' queue does exists) (also ie: no latency penalty)
3- If yes, does it apply only to consecutive casts ? This is easy to test, alternate between fireball/frostbolt.
4- And for good measures, try with a G15/N52 spamming fireball to see the results.

From what I know and tested focus doesn't work with the blizzard spell but with any other spell.

1- It does, and I guess it is affecting Rogues, Warriors, etc. too and they're pretty upset about it because you can hit a Hamstring or something on someone who turns out to be out of range and you get locked out of being able to hit it again before the temporary GCD is removed. At least that's my understanding of how it's affecting them I haven't played my Rogue or Warrior yet in 2.3.

2- The problem with pulling this off is it seems the "queue window" (the time frame in which you can hit your next spell and the server will automatically begin casting it when the current spell ends) is fairly small, and may even be adjusting with your latency (more testing required here.)

3- I rotated in Scorches and had no problem hitting them somewhat before the red area on Quartz (with obviously no /stopcasting macro), which was usually a good amount before my Fireball finished. So I don't think it has to be the same spell.

4- Gonna have to wait for someone else here I don't have one.

I have a G15, but I don't know how to test it :P

at the moment I made this macro and it works very well I think:

(button "2" down)
0,001 sec
(button "2" up)

repeat while pressing the key

How recently did you test this? I know before 2.3 (I haven't tested this patch yet, as I'm waiting for the usual post patch server flakiness to subside), blizzard did work with focus procs. For some reason, the cast bar would show the normal 8 second channel instead of 4 seconds, but after 4 seconds elapsed the cast bar would drop off. It's an odd UI bug, but the spell itself definitely had the haste applied.

That may well be an artifact of how long you're pounding on him. Boom tests really don't last that many casts, so the less you're casting obviously fireblast could appear to have a larger affect. Over hundreds of fireballs you may well see a decrease in DPS, it's not something you could test without being raid buffed on a purely tank and spank boss.

That really depends on your current gear. After a specific point, fireblast actually lowers your dps.

IE at 950dmg and 35% crit, fireballx2, 1xFireblast is equal to fireball spam. However if you go to 1000dmg, fireball spam is higher. This does not include the 4t6 bonus.

Fully geared fire mages are rocking out closer to 1300 fire damage with 4t6. Throwing in fireblast would lower their dps by 75 in theory.

Basically fireblast is only usefull for dps when you have to move. Other than that, you should be trying to use fireball only. Setting up 1 mage to do all the scorching also increases the dps as having multiple mages scorch = lower raid dps.

And also increases the likelihood that scorch will drop from the target. Skimping out on throwing a scorch every 6-7 casts is a great way to screw your dps.

You might be right. I tried this out just before 2.3 and I couldn't tell the difference. I don't recall the focus buff ever consuming the blizzard channel at all. All I remember is my quartz bar saying 8 sec... it could of been 4 seconds but it didn't seem like it.