Me too. I'm actually stockpiling spellcloth/primal fire against the if-come of them adding tailoring respecs. It's absurd that I'm more or less locked into my spec unless I want to make my respect cost 425g rather than 25g..

If tailoring works anything like Engineering used to, you can't even drop/relevel it, you're stuck with that spec. Same goes for Alchemy. Gogo Transmute Master!! I've gotten ONE proc in the last 30 days of transmutes.

You can drop/relevel and pay a 20g respec fee once you've releveled to 350. People have confirmed they've done so.

Kinda overkill, though.

I searched on this, and there hasn't been much discussion lately (though earlier there was, and it was kind of dismissive).

Assuming I'm deep arcane (something approaching 40+x/18+y where x+y=3), and I'm going to stay so because I'm enjoying it and I don't have the +dmg (alt) to really maximize deep fire's advantages over arcane, exactly how wasted is a point in Slow? I have it while leveling, and I like it, but none of the mages I raid with on my main have it, so I don't know if/how much it helps for 70 content. Opinions?

If you care about pvp at all, or if you're doing heroics, slow is well worth the point.

I agree its overkill, I just don't understand it because they JUST implemented BS/LW, giving them the ability to change specs without losing all their learned/trained recipes in the same patch. Anyway I think I'm just going to suck it up and ditch Herbalism, theres no perks to having it on a main (without an epic), if it had some passive bonus etc maybe. Even Ancient Litchen can be solo farmed 5 instances an hour (grab the first herb -> run out reset) if I really need it, which I don't.

Regarding slow, I'd say it's more use in 5 mans/heroics (and pvp if you're fire) for pvp I'd prefer a 40/0/21, but slow can do some neat kiting on unsheepable mobs.

Personally I couldn't live without Blastwave if I was fire, but I've been screwed a few 1v1 by slow so I can see how good it could be. I can almost see where Slow>Blastwave in 2v2 arena because you're less likelly to come up against a cleanser than in a 5v5. For me if I'm going deep arcane it's going to be 40/0/21, or shallow arcane 33/28/0 and slow doesn't have a spot in there (granted I'm pve biased but I've done alot of pvp in the past)

Yeah, I loved Slow. It's amazing how good it can be in Heroics, as well as against people in PvP who just aren't used to seeing it used, or don't have the means to remove it.

I respecced frost to do some Primal Fire farming. I miss Slow alot more than I'm missing Pom+Pyro right now.

As Acustar said, i think slow is better in duels and 2v2 than blastwave; 3v3 debatable; 5v5 blastwave is probably better.

In Heroics, slow is awesome. Time for an anecdote: Running Heroic Blood Furnace last week, 3 mob pull. One sheeped, one sapped, other one shot cleaves the tank/rogue/cat. Using slow and fear, the priest and i kite kill all 3 mobs, rez the mele...and hearth. (hehe..j/k about the hearth )

I think those posts settle it -- if I ever wind up raiding with my mage, I might get rid of slow, but given that his endgame will likely be heroics, Slow is going to stay. Thanks a lot for the advice!

Yea, as far as pvp is concerned, blast wave is irreplaceable for me as an escape mechanism. It is invaluable being able to aoe daze people in melee range without having to switch targets.

I could see the benefit for heroics, but I don't do enough of those anymore to warrant it.

One thing that strikes me as strange is how bad crit rating is, especially considering its cost in the itemization formula.

According to the spread sheet for me (11/48/3), these stats are roughly equal:
9 dam = 10 hit = 16 crit

And yet looking at gems as an idea of how blizzard is itemizing these things:
9 dam should equal 8 crit
Hit rating seems to be very cheap in the itemization formula, probably because it is really only useful for fighting level 73 boss mobs and it eventually caps out.

Deep arcane users get a little more out of crit because of spell power, but its definitely not enough to make up that kind of difference.

Using two items as examples:
http://www.wowhead.com/?search=Brooc...uenchable+Fury
and
http://www.wowhead.com/?search=Adorn...f+Stolen+Souls

"Upgrading" to the nice prince loot has me loosing DPS, loosing int and loosing stamina?

Btw, I also set the spreadsheet not to use the "two roll" system since I'm not convinced of that and it makes the value of +hit gear even higher than it already is.

Anyways, my crit rating is suffering horribly lately and I've always heard that crit is very important for fire mages. I hear people swear by stacking crit to ridiculous levels via gems and what not, but I'm not seeing it - am I missing something? I suppose that crit scales better and as you gain more damage and hit caps out, it starts to get better, but maybe I'm just not to that point yet. It also seems like the more +hit you get, the more valuable +damage is in comparison to +crit, so that may be part of what is skewing things as well as I'm currently at +12% hit which seems higher than normal (but still quite a ways from being capped).

Astrik - Rolling ignites is the reason for stacking on crit gear for a fire mage.

Also, I thought that items with just one stat on them, get higher itemlevel compared to their stats total, than items with lower numbers but higher total. Me, I go for a blend of crit and spelldmg on gems. I want my rolling ignites to be big!

Ignites don't roll anymore.

--

I think with my 40/21 spec, a point in crit rating was equal to a point in +dmg, with hit rating being more valuable than both (but capping quickly in non-raid situations). There are various other aspects with crit that make it valuable, such as Master of Elements procs or PvP burst damage. Also, gem-wise, the crit/dmg gem is the best out of the lousy yellow gems if the mage wants a socket bonus. With a deep fire spec though, +dmg is much more valuable than crit rating. Also, as far as crit rating goes, it's just itemized much more heavily on gear than hit is. Gems being an unfortunate example of this.

Oh, I thought that you have to keep them rolling yourself? So even if you keep getting crits the ignite will tick out ?

They will keep rolling, but the dmg they do will no longer multiply by itself anymore.

For example:

Your fireball crits X for 1000 dmg.
Your ignite ticks for 200 dmg.
Your fireball hits for 600 dmg.
Your ignite ticks for 200 dmg.
(Then ignite is gone.)

Now, with 2 crits in a row:
Your fireball crits X for 1000 dmg.
Your ignite ticks for 200 dmg.
Your fireball crits X for 1000 dmg.
Your ignite ticks for 400 dmg.
Your ignite ticks for 200 dmg.
(Ignite fades.)

So yeah, they roll. But there is really no advantage between 5 consecutive crits and 5 crits spread across 20 casts. That "Your ignite ticks for 400 dmg." is just 200 dmg from the first ignite + 200 dmg from the second ignite. Then the first ignite runs out...and the second Ignite tick for 200 dmg is from the remainder of the second crit.

I hope that made sense.

So successive crits just further delay your damage... ick. It seems like this wouldn't really apply to chaincasting fireballs though since 3 sec cast + 2 sec ignite ticks would allow for the previous ignite to finish before coming into effect.

Crit has some value in that it dilutes the itemization formula, aka by stacking multiple stats you get more total stat.

I would also hypothesize that crit has inherent value as being unpredictable damage, yes I do mean value. We already know the value it has in pvp because it makes healing more difficult. Spike can also make things easier on your own team, but this only applies to encounters with low hp adds where a spike of damage makes a noticeable difference in the kill rate. I would postulate that spike damage from crit has less chance of overkilling a mob than extra damage, due to the fact that all extra damage ends up being overkill from those hits, but the damage from a spike due to a critical strike is always useful unless it occurs on the last shot. You can see this pretty evidently when farming. If your average overkill is 300 points of damage, and it takes 3 spells to kill the mob, ~100 points of your spell damage is essentially "wasted". However a critical strike on the first or second hit will reduce the number of bolts to kill that particular mob to 2, saving a ton of time and mana.

Now I realize what it comes down to is that I'm saying critting is better than not critting, which is obvious. The question is by how much, how much does increasing that chance outweigh the effect of more direct, predictable damage? (if it outweighs it at all). It'd be interesting to see an actual mathematical study on this.

The unfortunate part is that, to my knowledge, none of this applies to "sustained boss dps" mode, since damage is averaged over a long period of time and thus a spike has no noticeable effect on the outcome.

Whoops, thanks for the correction. Yeah, I was AB/Scorch since TBC dropped until a recent respec, so I never really got to see my ignite numbers since the simultaneous Scorch crits always fudged it all up.

Simultaneous scorch crits? How does one bend space and time to perform such a feat?

Scorch+PoM+Scorch.

Easy if you use a macro.

Why waste a pom on a scorch though? Pointless when it could be a fireball or pyro.

Fireball/fireblast can get simultaneous crits, since one has travel time, but I can't see it really happening with scorch.