Galatia

I struggled with this on my first raid back (along with all the group wide buffs it was hard to keep track of procs).

I got Mik's Scrolling Battle Text which displays the procs across the centre of the screen by default and plays a sound (both configurable), so I would recommend that addon.

 

Marrock

I prefer "PowerAuras", which shows you an individual icon in the middle of the screen, if Hot streak is active.
Additionally you can add a countdown timer.

 

Soraxis

So, I've seen a lot of people talk about different fire specs trying to compare which does the most DPS. Has anyone looked at how crazy the DPS from frost can be? I got on Soraxis and tried a 0/10/51 build (Im considering going 0/9/52 for only 4 ignite and 5 chilled to the bone) and only self buffed I was able to put out 1250 DPS. Dont tell me, I know 1250 isnt anything at all, but I think considering my gear and only self-buffed its looking pretty sweet (940 spell damage, 17.62% crit and 25 haste rating).

A few things that I noticed with regards to the spec, first of all there was no hidden cooldown on the brain freeze fireball proc. I've seen free fireball, frostbolt and another free fireball right after again on the target dummy. Fingers of frost also didn't have a hidden cooldown it looked like or if it did, it was really negligible to the point where it would be over by the time you do your frostbolt/frostbolt/icelance(Fireball). Any thoughts?

"Time is like a monkey, you think its there and then its gone eating a banana."

 

Enthorn

It would appear that multiple water elementals' mana regen do stack. This can be seen from your WWS log. Notice that in your WWS log for the water elemental mana return ability, each shadowfiend received 4 and 6 ticks. Each tick represents 5 seconds. Shadowfiend is on a 5 minute cooldown. The fight was 3:41. Each shadowfiend could have only been summoned once, thus I would deduce that the mana regen would have had to stack for them to receive that many ticks.

 

solbergb

The default UI does a sound effect, which you can make more noticable by tuning your sound settings.

Also if you enable scrolling combat text on auras, you'll get a "HOT STREAK" in the middle of your screen every time the aura is up and an "expired" message when it goes down.

Once I figured that out, that was all I needed to notice. Implementing the hot streak pyroblast with smooth chaincasting is still somewhat of a challenge, especially if it procs on a fireblast while I'm moving. It will become a reflex at some point.

When working solo I find myself chainpulling when hot streak comes up at the end of the fight to not "waste' the instant pyroblast. I should at least glance at my health/mana bars before doing that...

 

Lenala

Like most other people here, I've been playing around with the new specs and skills available to us after 3.0. I'm planning to switch back to fire after this weeks raiding and since downloading and running my gear/spec for 0/50/11 through the most recent release of Rawr I've noticed two interesting things:

1) [Potent Pyrestone] under some fight conditions, can be just as good or even better than [Reckless Pyrestone].

2) [Ashtongue Talisman of Insight] is ranking pretty high for 0/50/11 with my currently attainable raid stats. Now, Darkmoon Card isn't showing up in the rankings presumably because it's bugged, but as I recall it was close to and slightly over Icon. However the Ashtongue trink is ranking a noticeable cut above Icon and with my Hex head equipped, it's only beaten out by Skull and the Naaru Sliver.

It seems odd to me, but I wouldn't rule these results out. Anyone have any thoughts?

 

Maje

[Ashtongue Talisman of Insight] is higher only under special conditions, for me it's when I have 5% haste and the crit buff + fully raid buffed. But it's understandable, the higher the crit chance the higher the proc rate, the more you cast the more chances of a proc. The trouble is that this trinket is very much RNG based. I mean, even discounting the RNG related to crit it's still 1/2 proc chance. I for one prefer trinkets that can somehow smoothen my dps which is already so spiky due to hot streak. For the same reason I'd take a reckless pyrestone over the potent one.

It's fun having hotstreak chainprocced but it's a lot less fun for it not to proc and doing sub par dps.

 

solbergb

If you want hot streak less streaky, you want more crit rating, not less. The more likely the hot streak proc is, the less likely you'll go a whole fight without getting your share of pyroblasts. That said, the amount I can shift my crit rating by regemming my orange gems is trivial. Most of my haste rating is not from gems, and if I regemmed, the vast majority of my crit rating would not be from gems. So I'm just leaving it alone now. Haste and crit are fairly close together for a L70 mage doing deep fire.

 

Maje

That's exactly my point, given that crit gems and haste ones are so close to each other (which means they yield about the same dps) and haste having a lower deviation I'd prefer haste. On the same note it would be interesting to see the standard deviation of the current dps inb rawr.

 

solbergb

I think you missed my point. Gemming for haste instead of crit makes your crits more random, not less random (at 100% crit rating you crit every shot, zero randomness beyond the base damage variance on the spell. At 1% crit rating you have to be wildly lucky to get a crit, and two in a row is a highly memorable event that will greatly skew your average for that period). It also hurts your DPM if their DPS gain is similar, as crit gems are dps and dpm, haste is only dps.

If you don't like the randomness of crit talents, you should be stacking crit where it won't hurt your overall DPS. The more crit you have, the less random the effect.

If you eschew the crit talents and take a spec less dependent on them, then crit isn't going to be valuable enough anyway compared to crit to do anything but gem for haste (see BC mechanics)

All that said, if your outfit is already gemmed reckless, don't bother switching to potent. All the gems will be obsolete in a few weeks anyway as will much of the current gear. In 3.0, all changing gems will do is cost you money, with very little chance of a measurable change in your effectiveness. If you're gemming something new though, and your calculation say haste and crit DPS is similar, go with crit if you want it to be slightly less random.

 

Maje

Well, not to turn it into an argument, but, crit chance is still a chance untill it's 100% so you're dependant on RNG, haste on the other hand isn't dependant on RNG you always benefit from it in the same way. Crit chance itself is also a given however your actual number of crits is RNG dependant and your actual DPS will flactuate a lot more espessially since we only cast a very low number of spells per combat.

I'm a bit rusty on my uni. courses on math and probability but I'm sure I there was a method to calculate the chance (C) of your actual crit rate (A) to be lower/higher then the listed one (L) by X% if you cast Z times. If Z was infinite then L=A but the lower Z gets the higher C is.

 

Anobix

I just noticed that as well that Ashtongue Talisman was actually rated above my Icon (have been going between Icon, SCB, and DMC:C lately).

You mention that Darkmoon Card: Crusade is bugged... how so? Should I go ahead and unequip it if it isn't working properly or what is going on with it?

 

solbergb

Yes. But unless you take zero crit-based talents or cast only spells that don't crit, you are going to have randomness that will only be reduced by adding more crit rating. Obviously the value of crit rating is decreased if your crits don't crit for as much, or if you don't get free DPS boosts when you crit (instant pyroblast...)

In 3.0, I think what you may want is a frost build. Fire had its crit talents buffed a lot. Frost not only has less of its DPS tied into crit, you can get to the 100% rate by catching your enemies in a freeze and its talents include a haste buff.

 

Lenala

No, it works perfectly fine in game. It's just not in Rawr (and when I did import the data from wowhead, it gave nothing so I had to manually input a spellpower value to make it work).

I spent some time playing around with different gear and fire specs and the best conclusion I could derive is that while you may not want to rush out and regem all your haste gems, socketing for crit isn't the terrible idea it might have been before the patch.

 

eltigeron

Just to throw it in there.

I used Rawr recently, setting:
the fight to 3 minutes,
no automatic armor,
not pots aside from mana pots,
no flame caps,
0 targets for AOE
fully raid buffed down to food and weapon buffs

I currently have HSH and Icon. Before regemming, I had 1167 spellpower with 95 haste and 25.81% crit. I switched to roughly 217 haste, 1069 dmg and 207 haste. According to Rawr, haste outvalues dmg and crit still for some reason.

I think that it's best to depend on something that ensures a DPS increase rather than depend on crits. Granted, one gets high crit chance regardless if they gem for it raid buffed if you upkeep Imp Scorch.

 

Agarober123

Ever since 3.0 was released i have specced Frost and i have been averaging about 1800-2000 dps per boss fight. I really do enjoy frost but fire is my favorite spec so i was just wondering, what would be a good rotation / spec for fire that can maintain High dps until wrath comes out? From what i heard its still the basic Scorch and Fireball rotation and whenever Hot Streak Proc's to use it.

 

house211

Pretty much yeah and if you got mana to throw around try keep living bomb up on boss. But if there is another deep fire mage in the grp you need to co-ordinate your LB as they dont stack. (blame Bliz.) Also if there is a Frost mage in the grp you can skip the scorchs as Whinters Chill does the same.



My question is with frost talents (Elemental Precision) and the 3% from SPriests what is the frost hit cap?

 

Remitroll

3.0.2 Hit Cap = 17% = 214 Hit rating

Elemental Precision = 3% = 38 Hit Rating
SPriest/Druid Buff = 3% = 38 Hit Rating

Assuming the Buff and EP Hit Cap = 11% = ~139 Hit Rating

 

◊ manly

For what its worth, I've been running a really barebone spec, with not a single utility

11/50/0, no blastwave, no dragon's breath, 1/3 MOE
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...00000000000000

no mana problems.

Log on with different model:
1- Create a character of the desired model. Log on/off.
2- At character selection screen, select your actual character; mouseover the new, desired model character, and hold down left click; hit enter and release left click at the same time.
bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

solbergb

Heh, I'm running the opposite of Manley, a 0/61/0 with all the fire utility and AOE talents, but eschewing fireball.

I also am not having mana problems except when doing extreme, extended burst AOE...and even then I can burn away 30-35k of health before running down my mana bar and needing to tap a gem or potion. In most situations where I'm doing that my health bar matters more than my mana bar, as I have been able to defeat the new tank AOE mechanics sometimes and pull aggro.

No mana issues on single target either....the scorch/fireblast/hotstreak/living bomb rotation isn't really much worse DPM than a normal scorch/fireball rotation. But the fight lengths aren't very long, and the only one that was long I was responsible for other activities than DPS enough of the time that I got some extra mana back.

 

norcaljason

Was it einsten that said everything was relative?

I have a well geared Combat Sword/Fist Rogue, and HAD a fire/IV mage.

After 3.0, I first played the Rogue. My dps in heroics moved from 900dps to 1100 dps. So... He got ~20% buff with the new talents, no gear changes. Similar spec.

The Fire Mage is a different story. I specc'd the same 50/11 IV fire spec that had worked so well for me. I noticed in 5 mans my dps inititally didn't change at all. I was still ~900dps in heroics. After some glyphs, and adjusting my playstyle for hot streak, I saw my dps climb to 1040 or so. So... minor buff. Then, at the encouragement of a guildy, I gave arcane a try. Without changing a single piece of gear, I put out 1060 dps. Getting better at the rotation, and swapping in/out some gear changes, I was able to pull off nearly 1200dps as an arcane spec.

So...

I've found that fire, played like you're used to, is a dps loss. With some adjustment to hot streak, it's a minor dps increase. Swapping to an arcane spec, is worth more dps than either.

 

• Seonid

With the patch everyone has had their dps increase, which means your dps in any 5 man, heroic or not, is purely dependant on how well your class/spec can burst, as nothing is alive long enough to really see the figures as they stand with respect to a raid environment. And even then, with the HP reduction as well as Blizzard balancing things for 80 far more than they are for 70, even TBC raids are currently only giving a vague approximation of any meaningful figures.

 

sym

im having trouble with my trinket macros when i use it sometimes it doesn't trigger the trinket and just cast fireball, the macro im using is

#showtooltip
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/use 14
/cast Icy Viens
/Cast Combustion
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/script UIErrorsFrame:Show()
/cast Fireball

and

#showtooltip
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/use 13
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/script UIErrorsFrame:Show()
/cast Fireball

do i need to add stop casting in there so it would trigger the trinket, icy veins and combustion then cast fireball ?

 

Duravi

I assume your talking about at level 70 right? Also I don't think you said what spec you were, that is going to contribute more than anything else to the ratings. For a 0/50/11 spec at level 70 I recieved these weightings:



At level 80 deep fire (20/51/0 most likely) will be in similar ratios; frostfire spec (0/53/18) will actually weigh crit even higher relative to deep fire spec. Remember these ratings change relative their initial conditions (the value of them on the current gear you are wearing) as well; they are not constant for a set spec, if your telling me you only had like after full raid buffs and the self buffs you mentioned your stats are so low compared to "optimal geared 70 mage" that your scaling may be significantly different. A very important fundamental thing to understand is that even with the exact same cast rotation and spec the ratios of hit:haste:crit:dmg all change any time you alter one of those (yes even putting a +12 dmg gem in over a +10 dmg gem all the ratios change), its just that for one or two item swaps its not going to change by that much i.e. you will hear people give some ratios out for "a sunwell geared mage of a certain spec" or a "KZ mage of a certain spec".

 

eltigeron

Yeah, sorry for forgetting to add the spec. At the time, believe I was 11/50. Currently, though, I'm 50/11.


The 1167 sp, 25.81% crit and 95 haste is before raid buffs. However, I know I'm not even close to sunwell geared. I'm more Hyjal, BTed out but am still missing ToC, CoDS, SoG, and Slippers of the Seacaller nor even have a SWP t6 piece.

I'm a bit confused now on what to go after the patch hit. Rawr has not been updated for the new mana values, has the wrong version of JotW also.

Considering going 53/8 where I'd have to lose the 200 haste I have right now by reducing it in half and gemming more for dmg and crit a bit. However, I keep running into an SMP calc loop bug. Also, a couple of times lately, it has given me gearing options that are less optimal than what I have.

Even wanted to see how I should gear for deep frost but I'm still getting the same SMP calc loop bug. Kinda annoying :/

Hope it gets fixed soon.