Found out the following :

59.68% Haste = 6 ticks + boom
59.77% Haste = 7 ticks + boom

So, Living Bombs gets a 7th tick between those two results. Couldn't get the numbers any closer than that.

I'm not sure why you reforged to crit, although I guess we don't have any combat rating data yet, but on live, I doubt that would be a dps increase. Although the depressing thing is that, to a degree, haste and mastery's values require crits to happen (for all the reasons that fire requires crits, listed in Tyrian's excellent post.) So maybe they aren't better. But I would've been curious to see how bad it was without reforging.

Burning every mana cooldown and barely making it over three minutes is just terrifying, and supports my fear of multiple minutes of straight scorching during cata raids.

As for scorch, It's not so much resenting as that we're already spending so many points on mana conservation, among other things, that you can't actually get all DPS talents even without needing improved scorch.

Requiring improved scorch on top of everything else really eviscerates the tree. There are just far too many DPS (or required mana conservation) talents in the tree for anything reasonable.



I spent a long time on the dummies yesterday working out some UI changes and I can confirm this.

I also can confirm that impacting LB is oddly high dps sometimes, I'm not sure if I posted it earlier, but impacting LB on HLK will sometimes give incredibly high LB damage relative to everything else (like, on one P1 it was 25% of his damage and the top contributor) -- I presume because whatever spreads and then removes it lags sometimes and a tick happens, or explosions might even go off.

The removing of LB on your target after you impact is really is infuriating though.


I also had some 30+ second periods, even on live, where i had to manually refresh scorch.

It's clear we'll be back to maintaining scorch come cataclysm and if we happen to get lucky and get a hotstreak, then we can save one refresh.

I have noticed this for a while (only two LB left instead of three), and it can be quite annoying.

This seems to only occur when there are more than three targets. For example, using the dummies in Stormwind where Impact can only reach two dummies, the LB munching does not occur. All three dummies have LB after an Impact. But on Exodar dummies (or on LK when 3+ ghouls or valks are near), you will be left with only two LB up.

Furthermore, I have noticed that when this happens, if you attempt to re-apply the LB to your original target right away, it will cancel the two Impact'd LBs (or at least one of them). You have to wait for those two Impact'd ones to detonate.

Basically, with exactly 3 targets you will get LB on all after using Impact. With 4 or more targets in range, you cannot end up with more than two LB'd and any attempts to get a third one will simply remove one of the ones that you created through Impact.

That "other mage you've never heard of" would be me. Though I am quite certain my popularity (or lack thereof in this case) would have little bearing on whether my arguments are valid, or my logic sound.

With that being said. Let me try and explain my position (as well as, I think, what Vontre is trying to get at, which, as a point to note, I am in complete agreement with).

N.B. This post may end up being rather long, since the core idea of what is driving us is a bit nuanced. Pray patience, and please, accept my humblest apologies on my verbosity. That being said, I give you my word that it is worth the read.
(side-point: stop me at any point where you do not agree with what I am saying, Vontre).

So let us begin.

The core driving factor of why we "like" Scorch, as a viable mana free DPS option for the Fire spec is because it adds what we believe to be, "depth" to the spec. This is a rather ambiguous statement, so let me explain.


Assume for a minute, that spamming fireball (as well as keeping up your FFB stacks, LBs, etc) and using mana gem/evocation on cooldown, was all you needed to do to get through any average fight as fire. This should not be a hard mental picture to visualize, since it is, with some flavor here and there, what Fire has been doing for a long time now.

What do we know about this kind of playstyle, i.e. a playstyle where outside of long mana gain cooldowns, we really aren't too worried about our mana bar.

We know that this kind of playstyle rewards:

• Accurate management of timers (dots)

• Proper use of cooldowns (combustion where it has most effect etc)

• Good reaction times to procs (Hot streaks)

As well as all the other "basic" things that are rewarded in raids (moving out of the fire, knowing the fights, not being a douche etc).
Basically, this playstyle rewards execution (with a little bit of planning in knowing when its safe to evocate, which all mage specs do), i.e. it rewards you for pushing the your buttons properly.

However, what this playstyle does not reward (since it has no opportunity to) is planning and management of resources on a fight by fight basis (since, by its very definition, you don't really care much for your mana bar).

Now, before you reach to unholster your gun, let me explain what I mean by "planning and management of resources".

This is a scale. Lets call it a scale from 1 to 10. On one end of the scale (10) you could be in a constant state of worry about your resources (something like how the Cataclysm healer mana model is turning out to be. One where you are, at almost every cast, doing a quick mental calculation of the DPM of your cast and adjusting accordingly). On the other end of the spectrum (1), your response is "what mana bar?" i.e. you can pretty much, outside of long cooldowns, totally ignore that shiny blue bar that makes you the mage you are.

In ancient times, Fire mages were closer to the (1) end of this spectrum. In fact, the hypothetical playstyle outlined a few paragraphs ago reflects this.

Being near the (1) end of the spectrum, by its very nature, means that a greater emphasis has to be put on the execution of the playstyle (pushing the buttons properly) in order to keep a playstyle challenging. Unfortunately, for playstyles that are at or near (1), this means the execution part needs to start going into John Madden territory. This is something Blizzard has stated that they want to avoid for Cataclysm.

So now we need a way to ensure that we can keep a playstyle challenging and interesting without going into "John Madden territory".


This brings us to our next hypothetical.


Assume for a minute, that spamming fireball throughout the fight is, in fact, not viable. You would go OOM in ~175 seconds if you did so. In this scenario, you are given another spell you can cast, which doesn't cost mana, but doesn't do as much DPS as fireball. What would be your solution?

This is where "depth" comes into play.

A good firemage, would be cognizant of the fact that he can't cast at max potential for the entire fight.
Hence, what he would be forced to do, is to look at the entire fight (and every subsequent fight) in a way that the firemages of old never had to before. He would have to sit and think, before the fight even started, about what moments in the fight would he benefit the most from "DPSing at max potential".
He would have to do this for every fight.

He would have to rethink all of this as his gear increases. He would have to spend some 'mental' time as he learns new fights, figuring this out.

All this extra "mental time" is something firemages have never had to do before. What is much more important though, is that this "mental time" is something, apart from just execution and 'having the right gear', that will separate good firemages from great ones. In essence, it is a way to distinguish that all important quality that we all are chasing after. Skill.

The firemage who identifies when his best moments are to DPS at max potential in a fight will be the one, naturally, who produces the best numbers. Now, sometimes these moments will be rather obvious (boss gains buff X which makes him take more damage). But even here, skill is required. Since, not only would the firemage need to know how much mana he needs to fireball the boss during the entirety of his 'vulnerable phase', but also, how much time he needs to spend before this phase scorching, to save up the required amount of mana.


The key takeaways from all this is:

The "goodness of scorch" forces firemages to spend some "mental time" thinking about every fight, identifying where fireballing is most useful. This will be a situation where there is no real clearcut answer, since even some of the very best simulation tools are incapable of modeling optimal situations for every fight in the game (so its not like they can just press a button on some program and it will give them a global by global printout of what they should be casting for boss X).

What we have here, with this rather simple change but a rather large shift in existing firemage paradigm, is a true opportunity to reward players who put in some extra effort in thinking about how to maximize their potential. This is something new and alien to the firespec. It is also, a breath of fresh air.



Before I end, I would like to make a quick point on an issue that seems to be getting mixed with this particular topic. The issue of "well we can't spend time scorching since our DPS would be too low if we did". This is something I will comment on more deeply in the beta thread (where I am, it seems, an unknown). But the key jist of this issue is in something Vontre already stated in that beta thread:

The idea is that your DPS performance is an orthogonal issue to the core idea behind a playstyle. Blizzard can very easily buff the damage of fireball to ensure that if you spend some X to Y ratio fireballing vs scorching that your DPS will remain competitive.

It is important not to mix competitive DPS arguments with playstyle ones. Since with all the new knobs Blizzard has for tweaking damage in Cataclysm, the two really aren't as linked as they were before.


There are many things I am leaving out here (things like how almost all other casters in Cataclysm are nowhere near the (1) end of the scale anymore either, or how even if Fire does get this new "mental mana game with scorch" that it really does not compare to what arcane has to think about concerning mana), but even still, I think this is a good place to start conversation on this topic and,

I hope this helps.



Edit: Because there was no way I would nail this post on the very first try.