Just doing some tests on dummies:

- My average LB seemed to do from 35 - 45k damage including dot ignites
- My average Combustion was like 150k

This means that for every second LB isn't up your combustion needs to be ~2% - ~2.5% stronger. If you need 10 seconds to get a big enough ignite your combustion will need be 20-25% more beneficial. That is a pretty steep curve and in my experience it doesn't give enough benefit and you're just trading ignite munching RNG for getting quick successive crits RNG.

The initial impact does though. I removed the ignite text though because its pretty negligible compared to the overall damage anyway.

No one has asked this yet. How will the changes to ignite effect our AoE? I fear that it will go down more than the 0.5% we are seeing on single target. I doubt we had as many ignite munching problems in an AoE scenario.

Sure, we will have higher igntes on the average, but there will be less of them and it may take too long to even get one to spread before we lose the impact proc. Our pyro dots, which spread to all targets, will no longer cause ignites. Living bomb dots will not give us ignites on the 2nd and 3rd targets.

Yes, we will have larger combustions on the average too, but that just lends to more consistency with expected combustion damage, it is not really a buff of sorts. It would seem that we have already seen the largest AoE potential of our class. Also, this will probably lead to reduced uptime of pyromaniac. I am glad that they are trying to fix ignite munching, but they really aren't. If the core mechanic of ignite simply can't be done, then it needs to be revisited completely.

The fire spec has always been the most appealing to me because of the AoE we can do. This really sets us apart from the other two specs, especially in cata. I'm sure that our AoE will still be pretty decent, but this change is hurting our spec more than helping it I'm afraid.

Depends on the raid damage, there is a big dps gap between being able to do 2 electrocutes and 3 in p1.
We find when ony gets killed nef is already at 71% so a blink and a evo is all I'm able to do.

We don't need to bother Angayelle for this, you can use TimeToDie and TimeToOom addons to estimate mana consumption.

And Recount's detail window will give you your number of fireballs/scorches if you want to figure out what ratio you used (albeit after the fight).

warlock dark intent: better for a shadow priest or a fire mage? i'm guessing sp but maybe I'm wrong which would be fine with me.

52% seems awfully low. It should be more in the 85% region. Don't forget to count Mindflay as DoT.

The Guide to Dark Intent can be found over at MMO.

The two most recent patch changes that may effect Fire mages:

Which saves us 2-3 global cooldowns per fight. And:

I'm more interested in the latter. Is this buff enough to bring Blizzard back into our AoE rotation? 70% damage increase more than counters the specialisation bonuses each spec receives.

Think about it the other way around as well. If it's off the GCD, you can cast it anytime you want. Imagine you just saw/predicted a huge Ignite/DoT stack to spread but also cast another instant spell or started a Fireball/Scorch. You can now cast it immediately without risking a change to your DoT.

Of course, you should avoid cancelling casts and your DoT stack usually doesn't change within 1 GCD, especially when Ignite from DoT crits is removed. It still seems situally useful when you want to spread your DoT right now.

For me, this change will shine in some of the encounters requiring a decent amount of AOE. I've had plenty of occasions where i'm fishing for that great crit so I can pop combustion and spread via impact - only to have the impact proc expire after combustion is cast.