There's also a possibility that its intent is to be a PvP nuke that replaces fireball and frostbolt by only double-dipping impact and frostbite, making it a control nuke instead of a top-damage one. PvP nukes with a casting time are, of course, a touchy subject in themselves. So much of this spell hinges on so many specifics...

Having gone through the video from Filefront, here's what I see:

The dude casts only one Frostfire bolt (thanks for being so bloody useful, jumping around like a monkey discussing your RAM, casting Scorch and Arc. Barrage rather than, perhaps, a non-crit Frostfire), which crits for 2547, then proccing the expected ignites for 501*2.

There's clearly a Frostfire bolt debuff (which would combine the DoT and the Snare, I suspect) an Ignite debuff, and a WC debuff.

What's not clear, is whether this is an Ice-Shards crit frontload, or not. He does cast many 1740ish Barrages, and seems to be in T6ish (I see Zhar'Doom and T6 pads/head)

If the Frostfire Bolt's crit was double damaged (thus giving 200% crits and 80% Ignites for 280% total) it means the base damage + spellpower gave 1273 damage non-crit. If it was not affected by Ice Shards (or he didn't spec it) it'd be 1698. Call it circa +1150 spellpower he must have from his (presumaby no enchants/glyphs/patches) and given the 3s cast gains the same coef. as FrBolt (for being a 3s base with a snare) for a total of 81.4%*1150=+936.

Hence, presumably, his noncrit FFB base spell was for either 337 or 768. As an indication, his Barrage seems quite solidly around 1750, though which rank is unknown.

EDIT: He seems to not be running Spell Power, as his Barrage crits are ~1.5*. Rather alarmingly, his Lance is critting (non-frozen) for 1250ish and non for 530ish. A single Fireblast crit for 3250.

Possible Deductions:

1) He didn't spec Ice Shards
2) The spell can not be affected by both effects
3) The spell decides whether being affected as frost or fire would result in more damage, and proceeds to ignore one damage type. This may include behavior like displaying WC, but not acting on it unless "pretending" to be Frost, and when doing so using Ice Shards but not Ignite.
4) Caster -seemed- like he was wearing a lot of good gear, but in fact was missing much +damage
5) Any combination of the above.

Here are the things I've been thinking about lately with regards to all the talk about Frostfire bolt.

First lets assume that no matter what type of damage the spell will deal it will always count as a frost and fire spell.

Now lets look at Ice shards and then the Ignite talents. "Increase the critical strike damage bonus of all frost spells by 100%". So what that hopefully means is that regardless of weather it did frost or fire damage, it will get the bonus from this talent because it is a frost spell. Now moving on to Ignite, "Your critical strikes from fire damage spells cause the target to burn for an additional 40% of your spell's damage over 4 sec." Now the wording on Ignite can be a little tricky at first, but the distinction I believe it is making is any damage spell in the fire school, not any fire damage. That particular wording is what prevents Molten Armor from proccing Ignite, but should not prevent Ignite from working with Frostfire bolt if we are still under the assumption that Frostfire bolt will count as both schools of magic. Furthermore, Ignite does not specify that the burn damage is fire, so technically it is possible that burn could still come out as frost damage (granted that is certainly a long shot).

Also, since Ice Shards grants more damage to the critical strike bonus, and Ignite comes in after and adds 40% more damage to the spell after the crit, there should be no reason not to get the affect from both talents.

Now going even further with the assumption that Frostfire bolt will always count as a frost and fire spell, this opens up a slew of other talents that always apply to the spell. Frost Channeling and Burning Soul for great threat reduction and improved efficiency, Combustion would still work since like Ignite it only needs a fire spell that does damage, and of course Molten Fury, and Shatter work for any spell. Lastly Winters Grasp should still proc just fine under any circumstances from casting Frostfire bolt since it is "...frost damage spells...", unlike another talent, for example Arctic Winds, which specifically says "...frost damage..."

There is large amount of assuming going on here I know, but unless they change the wording around it looks like we could really see this happen. If so, I would expect to see a build along the likes of this War Pirate :: Talent tree Mage

The fact that FfB applies the WC debuff is interesting since I had assumed that it wouldn't unless it dealt frost damage.

One other thing that I haven't seen touched on yet is how the spell is affected by the EP talent. If the talent is still bugged (which I believe it is currently, but unsure how it behaves in WotLK) it grants 6% spell hit to frost spells. Of course this would mean that FfB apparently gets 6% hit since it's a frost spell (i.e. it's applying WC so unless the wording is incorrect, I'm assuming it also counts as a frost spell.) Of course it's also a fire spell since it's igniting on crit. EP also gives fire spells a 3% chance to hit. So will FfB take the higher of the two, either of the two, or add them together for a total of 9% hit? I know it's impossible to say for sure without testing this extensively or taking a peak at the code, but it is something interesting to think about.

Just for your information, the last patch gave :

Name: Burnout
Description: Increases your spell critical damage bonus with all Fire spells by 25% but every time you critical with a Fire spell you lose an additional $44450s1% of your total mana.

Its 8% mana and 1.5 sec casttime on deep freeze.

I haven't seen this
mentioned here yet (change in the latest patch, apparently). The debuff now stacks up to 18% increased Arcane damage; if this stacks with CoS, how will it affect Arcane vs. Fire/Frost?

Well, it'll improve Arcane relative to Fire/Frost, of course. Then we also have the question of how this will work:

Frozen Rune Weapon: Imbue your rune weapon with frost, causing 4.2 to 13.0 additional frost damage, based on the speed of the weapon. Also has a chance to cause your target to be vulnerable to Frost damage. Lasts 10 minutes.

What exactly does that mean? Is it like the giants in SSC, where you have an increased chance to crit and higher crit damage when the target is vulnerable to your school? How much?

ETA: That nature's fury change can't be right. It's 5 points (20/40/60/80/100% chance) but the +damage effect has three levels (2/4/6%)? Doesn't scan. It must still be a flat +2%.

It also looks as if Winter's Grasp is a flat +2% hit regardless of rank (granting that the text file I'm reading these from is bugged in some ways):

5/31 15:46:11.266 44543: Winter's Grasp (Rank 1)
5/31 15:46:11.317 Gives your Frost damage spells a 5% chance to apply the Winter's Grasp effect, which increases the chance all attacks will hit the target by 2% and the target is considered Frozen for 5 sec.
5/31 15:46:11.467 44545: Winter's Grasp (Rank 2)
5/31 15:46:11.518 Gives your Frost damage spells a 10% chance to apply the Winter's Grasp effect, which increases the chance all attacks will hit the target by 2% and the target is considered Frozen for 5 sec.

EDIT: Beaten to the punch by Lhiv.

What is the cast time of FFB? Could we ever hope for it being affected by both improved Frostbolt anf Fireball?

Wishing aside, it doesnt seem to be affected by Ice Shards, the damage is too low. It can be backed up since FFB deals fire damage primarily, is in fire school etc. It would be interesting if it gets affected by Ice Shards vs fire resistant/immune mobs since then the dmg counts as frost. But WC applying seems confusing at least. The guy has ice shards, we can see his lances critting for double the damage. Weird, if a spell is affected by the utility talents across the fire/frost trees, it should as well be affected by the damage ones.

Perhaps the video is indeed from the F&F beta and as such his spec is a legit 51/10/10 that cannot include WC, and that WC-like icon is -oh the drudgery- the snare portion of the bolt, having its separate icon. But then again isn't the beta only up to 75 lvl?

----

Striking is the talent Burnout. The only two-sided talents we had so far are Imp AM and Playing with fire, and their negative aspects were more of a small nuisance than anything serious. But 5% mana lost on every crit? It seems to me a poorly rendered idea, since it far too binding for being just a passive talent. I bet it's gonna get changed. An aspect/armor/aura-like rendition would make more sense: when you have mana to spare you activate it, when not you forget it.

Burnout would certainly make more sense as a toggle ability, as 5% mana is way too much and at higher gear levels basically completely negates master of elements.

The frostfire bold video shows the mage on 2 different specs. 1 with winters chill (that clearly shows FFb proccin'g WC and frostbite - its deffinately WC since it stacks), and 1 with arcane blast and ignite (which clearly shows FFb proccing ignite - unless he fireblasted without me noticing, but its not on his hotkeys and I saw no extra GCD to imply an instant spell was used - look at the 1m - 1m10 place on YouTube - WoW WotLK new mage skills (Frostfire bolt / Arcane Barrage) .)

this will deffinately need a lot of beta testing.

Edit - to clarify, at the 1minute point on that video several frostfire bolts are seen clearly proccing impact, frostbite, WC, ignite and their own debuff. The 'arcane barrage' section of the video is clearly a different spec.

Someone posted earlier in the thread that it is only 1% mana not 5%, ie the mana penalty portion of the talent doesn't increase with more points.

On the wiki post it shows as The "total" is the real question. Does that mean how much mana you have when you cast the spell or the max mana have at full.

There is another post in the BB thread that shows a Deathknight ability changed to Since we can assume that there is no way that "total" would refer to a characters max hit points (since then it would instantly kill anything that is under 20% with less then 15,000hps at full (basically execute on crack), it pretty much has to refer to the hps the target has when the strike is made.

Postulate that back to Burnout and you have a talent that takes 1% of your current mana on every critical strike, which would be 150 mana at 15000 but only 30 mana when your mana level is at 3000.

Rounced, I personally think that Heart Strike will work much like a stamina decrease, in that it will ONLY affect your maximum. Current health won't be touched unless it's above the new max, and when the effect fades there will be 3000 points standing between their current health and max (assuming no more damage comes in, of course)

Look at the wording of

[Battlemaster's Alacrity]

Increases Maximum Health by xxx

Perhaps they are trying to differentiate the 2 effects, Total and Maximum.

Guess we'll find out when we get to actually test the thing.

-removed-

If you notice ABar is on his bar for the Frostfire portion of the video as well. In fact it looks like ABar is sitting right next to Ice Barrier on his bar. That makes me think this is a private server and that he is spec'd with full points in every talent as he clearly has both ABar and Winters Chill at the same time. It was the same conclusion I came to with the filefront video as well where his ice lances are hitting for 500-600 and criting for 1200-1500. He clearly has spell power and ice shards and considering his frostfire bolt crits for 2547 can we assume that it isn't dipping into both/either or that the spell has a lower coefficient than it should based on cast time/snare effect?

Edit: Another possibility regarding his 2547 crit. What if Frostfire Bolt isn't a binary spell despite the snare effect and we are actually seeing a partial resist? I consider this to be pretty unlikely but what if?

From what I can make out, the player is wearing Voidreaver hood, Badge cloak, Tidewalker shoulders, and Hydross chest.
I find it odd that someone with access to all loot would still be in SSC / TK gear on a private server. However, if the level 75 requirement is correct, I'm stumped.

The spell is 100% unobtainable on the alpha servers presently, so consider the gear an oddity. That or more skin reuse.

i don't know if you saw it, but at 1min26 of Frostfire/Arcane barrage video, you can see 209 white damage after the mage did arcane barrage.
what is it?

White damage almost guaranteed to be melee attack. Perhaps he R-clicked his target instead of Tab or L-click, so when he closed into 7y range as soon as the spell went off he bopped him on the Schnozz.

it would be melee attack only if mage's melee attack is 25y

look in the video, he's far

Wikidot is claiming that Evocation has been increased from 60%/8 seconds to 75%/10 seconds. This could be some confusion related to 4xT6 set bonus, though.