I can confirm that it scales perfectly linearly, you can get from anywhere to 10-30% zerking, no fixed points. *However* I seem to recall from the last time I did the testing (which has been a while) that it scaled with 40% of your hp, as in, from 60% to 100%.

My memory, and it's been about a year and a half since I did these tests, is that it scaled linearly from 10-30% based on your hp with 60% = 30% and 100% being 10%.

It shouldn't be that difficult to quickly figure out if its 60 or 40 though, I'd just try it a few times at different percentages.

Also, the missile travel time for frostbolt/fireball (definiately varies with different missiles) is *roughly* 35-40 yards per second. Meaning that at max range, they take almost exactly 1 second to get where they are going.

That's not what I'm seeing there. Your scorch crit delayed you from getting any ignite ticks for a full 2 seconds. It kept your ignite going, so that you could try to roll it again with fireball -- but the key to actually "Rolling" it is to get 1 tick, and still have "2 more coming at the full value" so that the one tick you get is "bonus". You never got your one tick with the scorch, so it was "rolling over" but not really "rolling" if you get what I'm saying. Yes you can make ignite show you big numbers with a series of chain crits from scorch, but none of this damage will be bonus damage. Your two ticks will just keep getting delayed and bigger until you stop critting for long enough for it to tick.

But isn't that whats happening there? Isn't the "fireball tick" the bonus one? How else would he get two 4.6k ticks from a 1.5k scorch? If you could explain the math a little more it would be appreciated, because I don't understand where all the damage is coming from.

[edit] Nevermind, I didn't as Manly put it "pay attention to the timing". The first ignite is obviously not from the first visible crit.

The ignite timer and if it will roll can be judged by your fireball DoT. At least that is what I have always used. Also, there has *always* been a delay on ignites *ticking* if you crit again under 2 seconds. While my mage was slightly undergeared, I was able to keep decent damage by stacking crit for awhile. Ignites and careful timing gave the possibility to create an ignite that would never end and continue to grow. I always kept my mouth shut about it and hoped that it wouldn't be nerfed. When I would take advantage of this and executed correctly I would get 1500~ DPS with fairly sub par gear.
I really had no clue that most of the old mage community didn't know this. *glares at Manly*
I guess that is what I get for spending my recent life on a game. :-(

P.S. Manly, what ever happened to Fenris?

Well, first thing first, as far as I know the behavior of Ignites changed in TBC. Here is how a normal Ignite behaves. Take particular attention at the timing

T+0: scorch crit 1000
T+2: ignite 200
T+3: fireball crit lands 1000
T+5: ignite 300
T+7: ignite 300

In short, each time you crit you further delay the next ignite tick. Pre-TBC it used to always tick at 2 seconds intervals. This means that if you were to crit every 1.5 seconds then yes you could legitimately end up with something like this:

T+0: scorch crit 1000
T+1.5: scorch crit 1000
T+3: scorch crit 1000
T+4.5: scorch crit 1000
T+6.5: ignite 800
T+8.5: ignite 800

But what you describe isn't a real 'rolling' ignite, its a stacking ignite. A stacking ignite gives 40% of the crit damage, as expected, whereas a true rolling ignite gives more than 40%. If you just keep delaying your ignite damage by getting sub 2 second crits then this is what happens.

Fenris quit the game 2 months ago. He logged back yesterday. I think he ebayed.

Whatever the mechanics are, they are no where near as distorting as the old rolling ignite mechanic and not very noticeable in practical settings.

I checked WWS for last night and for 3 minutes after 370k damage, not a single error in ignite damage was recorded not to mention the end result total ignite damage was exactly 40% of total crit damage done. This is was including 2 uses of IV and one bloodlust.

Clearly theres something goofy going on, but I can't say it is nearly as big of a deal as the old rolling ignites were. I'm just glad that blizzard is still trying to get the mechanics right. I've been disappointed with how the mechanic change for TBC really backloaded damage during crit streaks, not to mention the overlapping crits losing ignite damage. I think theyd save a lot of headaches by simply changing it to a 2 second, 1 tick mechanic ... the interwoven crits are what is driving this entire debacle.

I hope you understand that my theory also explains why overlapping crits cause a dps loss. I did not say this directly, but should I be right it would explain the 4th combustion crit behavior amongst other things. And also overlapped ignites (ie: fireball/fireblast).

Maybe they aren't a big deal right now, but the true goal of this thread is to gear and play specifically in a way that you take advantage of them. It could lead to something of much greater interest.

So basically, in order to roll them they have to be consecutive crits of <2s casting time?

Pre-BC you could still miss with one crit and as long as the next one crit you could keep the stack going.

But even at 40% crit rate raid buffed, its hard to expect this to be a significant DPS boost unless used with Combustion.

At 2s cast speed with Bloodlust/Icy Veins (Actually 1.92s) you are going to get 10 casts w/in your Icy Veins duration.

So we are talking about a 20 second window of rolling ignites per fight.. unless you can get more than one Bloodlust, which, judging by my damage with 1 Bloodlust per boss last night vs. 3 Bloodlusts for the melee group, mages may be better off with the stacked Bloodlusts now!

I'm 0/45/16 (Illidan friendly spec) and I had no mana issues at all lastnight lacking Arcane Concentration. Obviously did have a shadow priest.

I didn't even need to mana gem or pot, so I believe Fireball spam with multiple Bloodlusts is definitely sustainable.

But anyways, getting back on topic..

If this is all true, it would be better to extend that window of possible rolling ignites.

So in what ways do we have to do this?:
Bloodlust
Icy Veins
Passive Haste
[The Skull of Gul'dan]
[Drums of Battle]
Berserking (Troll Only)
[Ashtongue Talisman of Insight] (Not very reliable)

So to make the most use out of these things, we want to find the best combination for them all. For instance, lets calculate the amount of passive haste needed to achieve 2s fireballs with Bloodlust alone.

3/1.3 = 2.3s Fireballs w/ Bloodlust
2.3 / (1 + x/100) = 2 solving for x, x = 15.7% haste
15.7% haste = 245 haste rating

Same calculation with Icy Veins:
3/1.2 = 2.5s Fireballs w/ Icy Veins
2.5 / (1 + x/100) = 2 solving for x, x = 25% haste
25% haste = 390 haste rating

Meaning, to make Icy Veins the same as Bloodlust, you need an extra 145 haste rating.

This is where [The Skull of Gul'dan] comes into play.

Therefore, to optimize this window of possible rolling ignites by making your fireballs 2s or less, Icy Veins should be popped outside of Bloodlust, and with Skull, and with a passive 245 haste rating.

So.. is 65 seconds of possible rolling ignite worth what you give up by popping all your cooldowns in the same window?

EDIT: And is it worth it by stacking 245 passive haste?

You would be fairly surprised. And regardless, haste point for point is a better dps stat than crit. And BTW, if I take my gear for reference and swap like footpads of madness I still have 40% raid-buffed and potted crit rate, which is plenty. I should probably also swap in shroud of the highborne come to look at it.

[Zhar'doom, Greatstaff of the Devourer]
[Waistwrap of Infinity]
[Mana Attuned Band]
[Ring of Ancient Knowledge]
[Shroud of the Highborne]
[Pattern: Bracers of Nimble Thought]
[Footpads of Madness]
[Loop of Cursed Bones]
[Pattern: Mantle of Nimble Thought] (assuming no hyjal pants or illidan crown)
and the badge offhand.

I pretty much said the exact same numbers on the first post...

I think the problem is the combat log, or at least mine, maybe there are others out there... only shows data to the nearest second... not milliseconds which is what we need.

So thats really not going to tell you anything... otherwise you could do the same thing just by nuking Dr. Boom.

I would guess that at 41 yards the travel time is 0.5s just based on my experience casting rank 1 frostbolts in PvP.. seems the same.