Interesting idea. I recall that you can swap out an int weapon after beginning an evocation to get more mana out of it, but does that work with casting as well as channeling? Can you begin a cast with the haste weapon and quickly switch to a +dmg weapon before it finishes to benefit from both? This of course would only work to increase DPS on the first cast since switching back to the haste weapon would activate the global cooldown between spells rather than during a spell. If it works it could be an option for getting that extra little bit of DPS on fights where you need to move around a bit and so an extra global cooldown once in a while between fireball spam isn't that big of a deal.

Swapping in +int weapons for evo works because each tick is calculated on the fly. Casting time is calculated when you start (hence the trick to starting an evo in the last second of IV). So unfortunately I believe this wouldn't work.

With the new Brutal Gladiator's Blade of Alacrity, I believe it will be possible to have enough passive haste in your gear to roll ignites without any haste-boosting CDs (ie: bloodlust, icy veins, skull, drums of battle, etc). In order to get rolling ignites, you need to get your fireballs down to between 2.00-2.10 seconds. A more detailed explanation of this is given in the rolling ignite thread. Consider the possible gear set up (Haste value of items are in parenthesis):

[Cowl of the Tempest] (5)
[Amulet of Unfettered Magics] (32)
[Amice of the Convoker] (45)
[Shroud of the Highborne] (32)
[Sunfire Robe] (55)
[Bracers of the Tempest] (35)
[Gloves of Tyri's Power] (51)
[Belt of the Tempest] (34)
[Leggings of Calamity] (52)
[Boots of the Tempest] (35)
[Loop of Forged Power] (30)
[Mana Attuned Band] (29)

Brutal Gladiator's Blade of Alacrity (227)
[Heart of the Pit] (32)
[Wand of the Demonsoul] (28)

All red sockets are gemmed with [Reckless Pyrestone] while the yellow sockets are gemmed with [Quick Lionseye] except for the cowl and belt. [Forceful Seaspray Emerald] are used for these sockets to preserve the metagem bonus. With this setup, you will have 718 passive haste, which is equivalent to 45.73% increase to spell cast speed or a 2.059second fireball cast. At this haste level, you will presumably have enough to roll ignites. The only downside with this gear setup is the lack of hit; you will only have 112 spell hit without trinkets. Having an elemental shaman will be extremely beneficial. Additionally, if you have multiple leather-workers in your party, you may be able to drop some spell haste in favor of hit. The extra 80 spell haste from chaining drums of battle should provide you with extra margin.

EDIT: Forgot to include trinkets in hit calculation. Having the [The Skull of Gul'dan] would push your hit up to 137 and subbing [Scryer's Bloodgem] for the hex head would push your hit to 169. Also, if the new caster trinket from M'uru has 54 passive spell-haste, you could probably afford to swap a few +haste gems to +hit.

Precisely what I'm saying. Cast time is calculated at the initial cast, and the final damage of the spell is calculated on completion. Having the haste dagger equipped when you begin the cast will reduce the cast time, swapping for a +dmg weapon before the cast is complete will increase its damage, double-dipping on weapons for one cast.

Actually it would work and potentially would be open to exploitation.

Casting time is determined at the start of cast but damage is calculated at the completion (easily seen when a +damage trinket proc completes before the cast actually fires).

So you would want to have the haste weapon equipped when you start the cast but then have a +damage weapon macroed into place during the cast. Real issue is that if you swap weapons without being in the middle of a cast you become subject to a GCD during combat which really would screw with your dps.

For a Fire build you could macro the haste weapon to be equipped when casting Scorch and the Damage weapon to be equipped when casting Fireball. That way you would lose the +damage on Scorch which has a shittastic coefficient but gain the haste on the next Fireball you cast (along with the +damage from the weapon swap).

Could do the same thing with Arc/Frost by having the haste one equipped on Arcane Blast and the damage one equipped on Frostbolt (since Frostbolt has a larger coefficient and would get a bigger boost from the additional haste).

For both of them you would also have to make it so the macro would be able to use ctrl/shift/alt to stop the swap to the haste weapon for when you are planning on spamming Arcane Blast or for when you are stacking/restacking the scorch debuff.


Edit: Beaten....

Indeed, the first thing I thought about when I saw that weapon was its immediate application to rolling ignites. Losing some hit rating really is nothing if you can sustain a chain of rolling ignites. The rolling ignites alone, assuming your number is good enough to consistently reproduce it, should outdo multiple times the loss from the hit rating.

Yeap, and not critting would also lose the ignote roll

Not critting or having a miss has no impact on rolling ignite (or rather, ignite). I had someone go over the math and basically, assuming a 2s fireball cast, with 40% crit, and 1% miss, the rolling ignites alone should give a 20-25% dps increase. This already takes into account misses and non-crits.

Would that increase take into account the dps loss of losing that much +damage? That weapon isn't that great other than the possible ignite roll. Converted into +dmg, it's worse than the Tempest.

You would have to lose a shitload of spelldmg and stats to equate the 20-25% dps boost of rolling ignites. Of course such a gearset would be in the lowballer 1100-1200 spell dmg and possibly 33% crit, but 650-700~ haste. Unfortunately I won't have the chance to test it myself because I ardently refuse to pvp. A steep price to be paid.

RAWR shows the change in weapon being about 150 dps loss which is still less than 20-25% dps increase from rolling ignites

You're going from 292 damage 23 haste and 30 crit I think it was to 227 haste and 18 spell hit. The loss in switching from 12 dmg crimson spinels to reckless pyrestones isn't too bad

Edit: Sorry meant to type 227 but have a bit of dyslexia and forgot to count the passive haste and crit on Sunflare

Sorry, I read your post completely backwards. Yes it would work. In fact you could probably macro it such that it would alternate every other cast. So odd-numbered casts would be at full dmg with +227 haste, even numbered would be -250ish dmg. Hmm....as others have said you'd have to be rolling ignites to make that worth it past the first cast.

Carnivean, I can definitely appreciate the merits of building a set with gear available earlier in Sunwell progression, but doesn't your listed set (including the helm enchant) come out to 183 spell hit? (I'm going to assume you meant to list [Gloves of Tyri's Power] instead of the Amulet twice.) There doesn't appear to be a way to shed some of that spell hit without taking at least one significant hit in gear quality (unless you're a jewelcrafter--[Pendant of Sunfire] would bring that number down to 168, and efficiently replace spell hit with other DPS stats).

To be fair, I should add that if new "best-in-slot" gear choices without spell hit are discovered from the last two bosses in Sunwell, replacing spell hit gear currently on the list, that would change things in favor of [Grand Magister's Staff of Torrents].

First things first, I ment [Sunfire Handwraps] (it comes ahead by like 3 or 4 DPS, and its propably easier to get) instead of 2 x Amulet of Unfetted Magic.

And no, I am at exactly 165 Spellhit (including Headenchant):
Head 13 + 1 4 (Enchant)
Amulet 15
Belt 14
Boots 15
Ring 19
Trinket 25
Staff 50
---
165

I know that the setup is a little inferior to yours, but my guild hasn't even killed Kalec and we will need a lot of time to progress through SWP, so I try to make the best of the gear avaible early in the instance, because we will kill Kalec a few times, before we kill Brut and Felmyst.. ..it is another way of progress than most guilds have here on this forum.

Another important fact, why I favor my selection, is that the Staff can drop pretty early and so you KNOW if it drops or not before you choose a great deal of the other gear.
If you optimize your gear towards Sunflare and your guild has bad drop luck (like we did on Archimonde, not a single Tempest in 6 months of farming him), than you have a serious problem, but if you try to get the Staff as soon as it drops, you can gear in both ways.
But ultimately it's a choice of personal preference, in theory your setup is a bit better, but for me, to be able to pull my weight during the SWP progress raids, and the knowledge that you have your weapon until WotL (or atleast a Weapon that is good enough even if not the optimal choice for the expansion) is more important.

Assuming this mu'ru trinket indeed has haste on it You would still be able to reach passive rolling without the weapon (with drums up) I believe (although suboptimally - all quick lionseye)

The question I would pose is this: Will icey veins be worth it as it breaks the "roll zone". From a pure dps standpoint I guess it depends on what kind of group buffs you have. More crit = higher consecutive crit streak chance (moonkin + ele shaman). Apart from pure dps, 2s fireballs might get quite mana intensive depending on how good shadow priest scaling turns out - and if the dps gain (if there is one) from icey veins is trivial I might suggest clearcasting if you are having to mana pot with that much haste anyhow.

I would also be wary of deliberately gearing in an otherwise inferior way to capitalize on the glitchy rolling ignite mechanics. Its one thing to spend 1000g regemming when Blizzard decides a game mechanic is overpowered when exploited. Its another to drop 3k arena points and gazillion dkp getting the perfect rolling ignite set only to have a quick fix thrown in on the next patch.

Have you had a chance to confirm the rolling damage bug actually exists as of 2.4? I know with 2.4 the timing on damage registering has changed a bit, but whether that's simply a display issue client side or a server side recognition issue I don't know. I'll run up to Dr. Boom tonight, but I haven't been tracking this closely since 2.2-2.3. Anyone have confirmation that the bug is indeed still on live?

Its easy to test. Spam your AB. If you get 2x 2.5s AB in a row, the rolling ignite bug is still in full effect.

Ah, I see what's going on--the [Mana Attuned Band] has an additional 18 spell hit you're not accounting for. You're getting a total of 37 spell hit from the rings, pushing the total to 183. If you keep the [Grand Magister's Staff of Torrents], you'd want to replace the ZA ring with [Ring of Ancient Knowledge] to shed the excess hit (unless you're a JC).

As an aside, using stat equations and gemming for the bonuses on both gloves, [Gloves of Tyri's Power] (127.12) come out ahead of [Sunfire Handwraps] (118.47). Judging from the item level of the former, though, you likely need to kill Kil'jaeden for the gloves to turn in, so choosing the [Sunfire Handwraps] (at least for the early going) would make sense using your gear strategy.

Yop posted it wrongly, will go back and edit it, so that it reflects the actual choices and not my mistakes .


Rawr actually gives me 134,25 DPS for [Sunfire Handwraps] and only 115,73 DPS for [Gloves of Tyri's Power] but it depends heavily on the entered buffs. For example if I deactivate JoW [Gloves of Tyri's Power] become atleast equal if not superior. If I aslo deactivate BoW Tyri's Power are clearly superior, so I really does depend a lot on your actual raid setup, and can heavily change from night to night.
But the one thing that's quite clear is, that it will be easier to get [Sunfire Handwraps] than the other one, especially if you have random/t5 guilds doing Sunwell trash farming, which my realm sadly does not have...

The gear lineup I had proposed isn't a pure haste set; most of the pieces are the best-in-slot items you can obtain. You're probably going to get those pieces anyway for your normal fire set. It's just a matter of getting to 2050 arena rating and regemming. With BT gems purchasable after the alch lab is completed, you can easily regem most of your gear for haste.

Disregarding that question momentarily, wouldn't the Blade of Alacrity be outright better for PvE than a weapon like Sunflare? That's like a fixed 15% haste right there, that's fairly huge. I doubt a traditional weapon can add the same level of dps increase. Throw in a Heart of the Pit and you're in business.


Same here. But I actually played around with it with a fire spec a bit more. Rawr puts Sunfire Handwraps ahead *IF* there's no Imp DS -- but go activate Imp DS and suddenly Glove's of Tyri's Power pulls ahead provided your gear is similar to mine. It has them that close together. Of course, I tend to think that Rawr is either overvaluing crit or undervaluing haste -- that just doesn't seem right to me. Sure Tyri's power has some wasted stats on spirit, but it has a higher ilvl to start with. It's got quite a bit of haste to Sunfire's 0. Regardless, Sunfire Handwraps are far easier to get (provided someone on your server can actaully make them, Blackrock *finally* had someone get the pattern only a week ago -- still no one can make any of the new rings).

By the way, regarding Glitchy rolling ignite mechanics, I don't believe that still applies in 2.4. There seems to be a small delay from the time you crit a mob to the time the ignite debuff is applied. If your Fireballs are sub 2.0 seconds, you will NEVER get the first tick of ignite before your next Fireball hits no matter how far back you stand. It's just not possible anymore. You're fireballs need to be longer than 2.0 seconds, like around 2.5 seconds -- and I've tried many fireballs at that speed and still not seen any evidence of ignites rolling post 2.4. Of course, I can't go test it now since I'm currently back on my frost spec.