1) On the crit damage:
Basic crit is 150%. 3% CSD and 6% EO turn that into 150%*(109%) = 163.5%
That splits into 100% hit and 63.5% crit bonus. (Yeah, it doesn't make sense, but it's the way it works.)

Now with BurnOut, IceShards and Ignite, we get:
[100%hit + 63.5%crit*(100%base+50%BO+100%IS)]*140%Ignite = 362.25%
I used that in all calculations with the new Burnout.

Lhivera uses CSD/EO multiplicatively, I used it additively. Therefore we have a 1% difference in the end, but that shouldn't change numbers really.
Not sure what you mean when you say that my numbers should be different.


2) All spec calculations did assume Winter's Chill and Scorch to be up.
My basic assumption was that with a Moonkin or a Firelock in the raid, you want those two debuffs to be up.

Scorch can be reached by about any spec. You might lose some minor talent to get the points, but they are always worth it.
If no one in the raid has Scorch, you go and respec. Simple as that.

Winter's Chill is a bit more complicated. Let us ignore the "FB(FFB)-Sc-FiBl with 100% Hot Streak" first.


There are basically two specs that bring WC - 0/18/53 and 0/30/41 variants. Both are below "0/50/21 with WC up".
Checking "0/50/21 without WC", their DPS drops to ~5150 for both, FB and FFB variants.

*=> Even when you're the single mage, both WC specs are better personal DPS than 0/50/21 without WC.

Now let's look at Arcane specs. Barrage cycle heavy specs don't really have high DPS right now.
So, you're better off going for some Frost/Fire spec like above, and spec for WC as well.


What does stand on its own though are Blast spam heavy specs.
Without WC, 50/21/0 reaches 5950 DPS and 50/3/18 reaches 6120 DPS (Icy Veins) for Blast spam.
*=> Blast spam without WC is higher personal DPS than any WC spec.

If your 50/21/0 mage respecs to 0/30/41 for WC, his DPS drops to 5348.
So he loses 600 personal DPS while the raid gains 10% fire/frost/arcane crit.
*=> If there are 2 more heavy fire/frost/arcane users, that would end up as a DPS gain. For only one additional caster it's most likely a wash.

Now for the "100%-Hot-Streak" variants:
They do about 5450-6350 DPS, depending on buggedness and stlye.
The FFB variant with 50% bugging (generous I think) clocks at ~6050 DPS. Respeccing to 0/30/41 makes you lose 700 personal DPS.
*=> The gains from WC make up for it again when you have at least 2 more casters benefitting from it.

So, the conclusion would be:
1) Someone has to have Imp. Scorch.
2) With at least 3 Fire/Frost/Arcane users, one mage has to spec Winter's Chill (0/30/41 or 0/18/53).
If there is more than one mage, 50/3/18 would offer the highest DPS for them (IF it turns out sustainable).
The choice between 0/18/53 and 0/30/41 is whether you'd prefer 5% better DPS with better crit scaling, or Mana Tide Elemental.


3) A real AB spam spec is given via 50/3/18.

MoE only returns 30% of the base mana, while Frost Channeling reduces the cost by 10% of the total cost. So FC is vastly superior to MoE for Arcane Blast spam.

If you don't already have Scorch in the raid, you want a 50/21/0 spec.
You lose DPS from Icy Veins and lose efficiency from going from Frost Channeling to Master of Elements.

You don't really need Arcane Barrage or Missile Barrage there. Throw a Frostbolt/Fireball (depending on your off-tree) to drop the debuff and regulate mana. Or use MBAM for that if you have the points to spec it - I think 3/5 is obtainable.

Pray like hell hm? This could potentially be a great PvP talent too, since it's very much like Unstable Affliction now. I can only assume the knock-up effect probably won't work on bosses.

Something potentially amusing: Can anyone else see Living Bomb being chain casted by multiple mages to bounce targets up and letting them fall to their death? Because... that would be pretty awesome.

Ah ok, I missed the part where frost channelling works on non frost spells. When I said that could change the numbers I was referring to that 1% difference.

"[100%hit + 63.5%crit*(100%base+50%BO+100%IS)]*140%Ignite = 362.25%
I used that in all calculations with the new Burnout."

I get that, however, I was just pointing out that your big post prior to the last one mentions a different crit multiplier.
(With a high 3k spell power, 21% base crit (before molten armour), 10% gear haste and a 0/50/21 spec with CSD and EO, we get 326.25% crit damage.)

The coefficient doesn't really need to be very good, either. Compare with Fireball, assuming a 40% crit rate and 2000 damage (which is probably lowballing). Ignoring all damage increases that would affect both spells equally, and ignoring the Fireball DOT:

Fireball
Crit multiplier: 1 + 0.4 * 1.45 = 1.58
Base dmg: (888 + 1132) / 2 = 1010
Gear dmg: Gear dmg: round(1.15 * 2000) = 2300
Avg dmg: (1010 + 2300) * 1.58 = 5229.8
DPCT: 5229.8 / 3 = 1743.27

The standard coefficient for a 12-second DOT is 80%. The explosion effect would normally be expected to reduce that, but SoC doesn't play by the normal rules -- it gets the full 120% for an 18 second DOT. So it wouldn't be a surprise if Living Bomb got the full 80%. On that assumption:

Living Bomb
Base dmg: 1390
Gear dmg: Gear dmg: round(0.8 * 2000) = 1600
Avg dmg: 1390 + 1600 = 2990
DPCT: 2990 / 1.5 = 1993.33

So, yeah, it'd be a DPS gain even if the explosion doesn't damage the primary target. The mana cost may be a problem, and at much higher gear levels (such as Ronwyn is using for his numbers), it may fall behind.


Out of curiosity, what are you leaving out of Frost in 0/18/53? Including only DPS talents, Arctic Reach and Frost Channeling, I'm already at 58 points in Frost. You're obviously sacrificing 5 of those points to reach Improved Scorch; which are they?

(Note that this doesn't include Deep Freeze which is looking likely to be a DPS talent as well, and would increase that total to 59 points. My rough math last night had the addition of a second FoF charge, with Frostbolt used on 75% of charges and Deep Freeze on 25%, producing 4% higher DPS than single-charge FoF with just a Frostbolt.)


Ah, yeah, I see what you mean. I suspect he just fat-fingered it; digits transposed.

(Dammit, sorry, double post.)

A slightly different model that still fits with CSD + IceShards/Ruin:

Assuming crits always start out at 50%, any talent/item/buff that effects the entire pre-crit value by X% could be modeled as:

1.0 + 0.5 * (1.0 + TalentModifier ) * ( 1.0 + 3 * X )

Essentially, leave the existing 1.0 alone, and do all calculations on the crit portion that starts at 50%.

The IceShards + CSD example would read: 1.0 + 0.5 * ( 1.0 + 1.0 ) * ( 1.0 + 3 * 0.03 ) = 2.09

I believe SpellPower + IceShards have been shown to be additive, so that would become: 1.0 + 0.5 * ( 1.0 + 1.0 + 0.5 ) = 2.25

Assuming Elemental Oath behaves similar to CSD, and
Assuming the mix of talent-based crit modifiers remains additive, then:

( 1.0 + 0.5 * ( 1.0 + IceShards + Burnout ) * ( 1.0 + 3 * CSD ) * ( 1.0 + 3 * EO ) ) * ( 1.0 + Ignite ) =
( 1.0 + 0.5 * ( 1.0 + 1.0 + 0.5 ) * ( 1.0 + 3 * 0.03 ) * ( 1.0 + 3 * 0.06 ) ) * ( 1.0 + 0.4 ) = 3.65085

If you go that route, do you know if something like 0/50/21 would be better ? to get cold snap allowing two IV ?

Heh, you know, earlier I was talking about how Living Bomb's knock-up effect would be OK for AOE as long as it only knocked things up 10 yards or less, so they were still within PBAOE radius. Now it occurs to me...it could knock them up much farther, and add fall damage to the spell's effects. Probably not effective, but funny, at least.

I have to say living bomb is really going places. From what I understand, it's close to single handedly bringing us up to AoE superiority while at the same time being brilliant for PvP AND viable to use in our normal oh so boring 8:1 rotations.

I am impressed.

Agreed, it may tempt me away from frost in bgs just for the fun factor of knock ups and knocbacks now loaded in fire. Whatever you enjoy doing in wow, its almost universal that tossing players/mobs will be fun.

Kind of funny to think about it... but would NPCs have the same percentage based fall damage that players have? If they do and LB does add falling damage it could be doing a LOT more damage than just from the spell. I would think mechanics would have to behave in one of two ways; 1) the knock-up causes some fall damage but NPCs are immune to either fall damage or the knock-up, or 2) targets that are 'knocked-up' (that will never get old) will maintain a constant Z-axis for range purposes and the effect will be nothing more than an animated stun.

That's a perfect definition for why I plan to spec fire as well. I respec out of my 17/0/44 PvP spec occasionally just to do BGs as fire, because it is a lot more fun.

The Thunderstorm Shaman ability sure looks like fun. Particularly if you can knock enemies off ledges. Fall damage wins.

What I really want to know is if Arcane Explosion can proc Impact... because that would rock my socks off (not a lot of practical PvP application, but a hell of a lot of fun).

Whoops, fat fingers indeed. That was meant to be 362.25%, I didn't even see the mistake when looking at it.

I did the same as with the 53/10/11 spec with Arcane Barrage and Frostfire Bolt! *cough*

I just took all we could get and hope that we can squeeze that in that into the spec somehow.
It is possible to get there with 3 points total in Precision/Reach/FrostChanneling. It's pretty ugly to pick though, yes.

If our gear is drowning in hit rating like in BT/Hyjal, then you could probably pull off 2/2 Reach and 1/3 Precision.
Maybe that gives us 2% hit from talents already!
Otherwise, we probably have to drop points from Ice Floes, that should be the smallest loss per point.


You could do that, of course.

But you can also have your fire mage spec for 50/3/18 as total Blast-spam-and-leech spec, which can provide even higher numbers IF it is sustainable, and 50/21/0 might not be an option due to mana.

It will all depend on how our gear turns out, how our mana turns our, how your raid composition is, etc.
As soon as you get pushback or have to run out of fires, Blast spam in it's current form will simply suck.
There's just too many uncertainties right now for us.

Until flamestrike's DoT stacks I don't think Fire will ever be a ranged AoE spec, however a 0/51/20 spec would certainly get most of the Blizzard damage increasing talents.

So now I'm even more confused about LB. It's going to be a great single-target DoT, but how is it going to bring us above Warlocks in the AoE department (which Blizzard keeps insisting is the target)?

If I do actually spec into LB for an AoE-like fight, I can see myself running Living Bomb, Flame Strike, Blizzard x 2 rotation. That will do a absolute ton of damage, but with all that damage comes even more SoC procs (pretty much instant on cast). So why would a raid bring more than one mage to such a fight when only one mage is enough damage to auto-proc SoC, and fill the DPS needs of the raid with locks spamming SoC?

And yeah, as said above, what about the knock-up? How high is it? Will it disrupt other AoEers? Will the mobs take fall damage (of which I've never seen happen)?

This also brings up, again, the "we need this spec for this specific fight" problem. The more I see AoE talk from Blizzard, the more I'm afraid of more gimmicky AoE boss fights, and the more I don't want to play my Mage.

Back to testables for moment, has the new iteration of living bomb been implemented on the beta yet? And if so, can someone test it out?

For as long as you don't see a new wotlk patch announced, that means no.

If you're getting the Blizzard talents then you're dropping a lot of talents that make FFB what it is. Try actually speccing a 51/20 with the majority of the Blizzard talents and you'll understand.

To be fair, a lot of the fire tallents are more supportive of blizzard now. Assuming they're fixed to actually work, MoE and world in flames are both good buffs to blizzard DPS and sustainability, and we may end up seeing some better synergy with hot streak and blizzard if thet gets fixed to work as its meant to.

So how about a rotation of LB --> flamestrike --> blizzard. You stack the FS DoT on the blizzard and LB pops at the end of the whole thing to really salt the wound.

Who needs Imp Blizzard's frostbite procs when you can proc a Hot Streak and target a multiple of 3 mobs for perma crits! Kidding aside, a 0/51/20 or 0/50/21 doesn't have to be a FFB spec. You can easily pick up ice shards, frostbite, imp blizz, IV, and frost channeling with a fire spec and have only 5% less than max potential blizzard damage.

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I was under the impression that a Frostbolt-spam spec would be better off dropping the Shatter/FoF combination in favor of Precision, Reach, etc. That may change after Blizzard takes a wrench to Fingers of Frost, or if it turns out that Frostbolt is efficient enough by itself. Assuming Shatter and FoF on the other hand, I don't think dropping 1-2 points from Shatter would kill you either (worth about 1% crit per point on a boss I believe).

Not sure about your conclusion on Ice Floes. Why would it be better to drop something you can't gear for (reduced cooldown) for something you can (more mana/efficiency and spell hit)?
Here's an example 53 points:
0/18/53
Let's say Ice Barrier and/or Deep Freeze become desirable. Which talent points would you move around to get it?