Alright I went back through many pages and found a parse of from a patchwerk kill by sinless.

Things to note:
1) He wasn't using living bomb, which means he actually had less ffb dot ticks than he would if he were using living bomb.
2) He had 16 ffb dot ticks
3) He cast FFB 59 times
3) fight length 2:53 = 173s

Now lets do some napkin math:
Assumptions:
1) ffb1 is 200 less dmg than ffb2 (according to roywyn a couple pages back)
2) ffb2 dot ticks ~500 (rough estimate)
3) I'll be gracious and give rank switchers 100% uptime (very very unlikely)

For Rank switching:
173s / 9s = 19.22 * 3 (dot ticks per 10s) ~= 57.66 = 58 dot ticks with 100% uptime (rounded up)
58 * 500 = 29000
58 / 3 = 19.333 = 20 ffb2 casts for 100% dot uptime
59-20 = 39 ffb1 casts
39 * 200 = 7800 dmg lost from ffb1 casts

Total dmg gained: 29000-7800 = 21200

For FFB2 Spamming:
16 * 500 = 8000 dmg from dot ticks (without switching ranks)

Difference between the to:
21200 - 8000 = 13200

Percentage gain:
711273 (his total dmg) + 13200 = 724473
724473 / 711273 = 1.019 = 1.9% dmg increase



That seems significant enough, but the likely hood of 100% uptime is slim. I'd honestly say I'd be gracious giving 90% uptime (3 ticks per 10s) which brings the increase down to 1.3%. Plus, this parse doesn't included living bomb casts. Also, if you start to clip your dots, it will be even lower.

So yes, this is just rough math, but I think it proves the point I'm trying to make, which is that rank switching is a very minor dps increase, if you are good at it. My guess is it would be even less of an increase on movement fights. Anyone see anything incredibly inaccurate in any of my assumptions/math?

You could always LB more than one target in the 3.0 patch. It doesn't have a cooldown.

Nor did the page 1 post indicate any issues with multiple targets so I assumed you could.

I didn't notice that I the LB DOT vanishing when I dotted more than one target. The final explosions tend to be a confused environment and they don't explode anyway if the targeted mob dies early so it's possible the dots vanished and I didn't notice. Most of the AOE pulls were over in 12-15 seconds, some were over before even the first LB ticked off. The LB's are a safety measure...the disorient gets stragglers or you can even iceblock and let it soften up survivors before you pop out and finish the job with all your "firestarter" cooldowns refreshed.

(done properly I could probably solo aoe pull stuff up to about 25-30k health if I got the rotations right to maximize disorient time and had ice block up. I'm not there yet though, but it's now something I want to play with more deliberately. Frost nova and cone of cold can also be mixed in to ease the pressure on your health and give the LB time to tick off)

I'll go in tonight and double check that I didn't lose the DOT on the prior target. (there could be uses to being able to shut off the living bomb that way if you can't do it, your bomb is straying toward your sheep...) It's easy to check.

per the tooltip..

Living Bomb (Rank 1)
37% of Base Mana 35 yd range
Instant cast
The target becomes a Living Bomb, taking 612 Fire damage over 12 sec. After 12 sec or when the spell is dispelled, the target explodes dealing 306 Fire damage to all enemies within 10 yards. This spell can only affect one target at a time.

Ok then, amending the above rotation to not bother with the extra LB applications since clearly I've only been hurting myself applying them. Just apply it when you drop the first flamestrike. You can use the intervening time to drop an untalented blizzard between you and the other guys or just open the distance if you need to AOE pull or whatever.

At level 80 you can take the fire AOE spec and get a decently talented blizzard mixed in there as well. You're a few talent points shy of that at 70. Because you do want burnout and living bomb on this spec, you'll have decent single target damage as well. You just probably won't use a fireball rotation....scorch/hotstreak/flameblast at level 70, frostfire/scorch/hotstreak at level 80. Such a build would be a very good "trash spec", leaving the stripped down single target specs with hit talents and slow nuke talents/glyphs for "boss specs"

People will have cleared Naxx in about a month from now, they are running out of time. Also alot of these posts are about "why did so and so out dps me with the same spec/rotation/gear, omg it must be rng" or "well I am outdpsing all these fire mages as arcane but johnny is saying arcane is significantly worse". Alot of these questions can be answered by looking at wws to point out flaws or faulty assumptions.

Since the patch I've raided as 11/50/0 (wws link post patch) (wws link pre patch comparison) and wasn't overly pleased with the results, but i understand 'not balanced at 70' etc etc. I've also done a number of heroics with this spec and got destroyed by other classes, where i use to be (almost) unbeatable in 5 mans. i think this is partially due to the overall dps increase of all classes and the length of time the trash in heroics is alive.

I was able to try a 51/10/0 build in heroics and have had much more fun and since this spec is able to burst dps much more effectively i was able to do significantly more damage. (Arcane Barrage -> Fireball, Arcane missiles on missile barrage proc). some people have suggested a 58/3/0 build and using arcane blast instead of fireball. what is the real benefit of this? I find the fireball solution removes the 33% soft haste cap and from my limited tc is more dps.

Does anyone have any arcane spec parses on brut with dps >~2700? I can only believe the tc so far, i'm curious how the arcane spec can hold out in raid situation.

TLDR:
11/50/0 mediocre dps in raids and very poor in 5 mans.
51/10/0 unknown effectiveness in a raid, great in 5 mans. what is the benefit of this vice 58/3/0?

I won't comment on the DPS as it isn't finalised but I've found the spec to be brutally effective in 5-mans. The ability to quickly snap agro and very effectively kite is a powerful tool. The ability to tank casters in nothing but ordinary gear and a resistance buff is also handy. As with most specs, theres no real advantage in the perfect setup - all you're really comparing is which one works better when the shit hits the fan. I must say that both arcane and frost are superior for said event but I very much prefer the arcane playstyle for all-round performance.

You have to realize that 10/50/0+1 variants are not burst builds. They are strictly meant for sustained dps, which isn't what you will face in sunwell anymore. If aim for burst builds, the best choice has always been deep frost (*since WE exists). For 3min fights I'm fairly sure you would be far better served with deep frost rather than fire builds, but again its not like anyone cares anymore about tbc.

Hello all
I've read the last 6 or 7 pages and can't seem to grasp a consensus on what's the optimal spec and rotation for frostfire bolt spamming. Prepatch I was arcane spec'd going nuts with arcane blast and ae, but that's not viable anymore post patch because of mana issues and the nerfs. I did a ZA run using the same rotation and put out 1300/1400 dps but I was drinking far too often.

If someone can clarify this for me or even just point me to a page if this has been covered I'd greatly appreciate it.

It appears that on Rawr at least setting the fight duration at 3 or even 2 minutes is not enough for a frost spec to beat out the sustained ones. It does indeed close the gap but is still finishing behind in the models. On a different note I found this kind of interesting:


I know its at level 70, but it seems like a step in the right direction that the value of crit for its ilvl value has been brought in line with spell dmg and spell haste , or at least can be brought in line with proper gear, before 3.0 crit was valued well below haste and dmg regardless of spec.

Even if, just like other ones, I've seen rawr 2.0.X saying that frost is not as good as fire, All I've seen since the 3.0.2 patch is that if I spec for frost, I'll be, at level70, T6+Gear :

1. 90% time in Top3 Dps from BT to Sunwell. (Especially on Static Dps bosses, as always, but frost here alors show real efficiency for Illidan, whereas Arc-Frost used to be better at 2.4)
2. 80% time Top1 Dps From BT to Sunwell.
3. At least as good as Fire specs, and at all, better than Fire Specs.

The fights are so shorts that Fire is completely RNG-Based and Unable to burst Anything. Fire Specs will only show a dps as good as Frost (0/9+1/51+1) with an enormous RNG-Luck.

The fact is that if RNG is a real matter for the both spec according to the short lenghts of the fights, with the same RNG luck, Frost will be better, for sure, and crits RNG affects Frost spec less than Fire specs.

I'm really interested in pumping up Hot Streak procs since it has no internal cooldown. I wanted to make a build that tries to proc Hot streak as much as possible.

I've been using a 0/50/11 Scorch/Fire Blast Build: Drop Improved Fireball, taking Incineration and Improved Fire Blast, and putting Empowered Fire points elsewhere. The problem has been mana during training dummy tests, but in group the active mana regen has kept me topped up. (Usually a pally/priest)

Opening rotation has been Scorchx2, Fireblast (For crit debuff stack) then Scorchx3, Fireblast, Pyro on Hot Streak proc.
I've really been impressed with how well this build has been performing, even with my poor gear and crit rating. I like how if you crit during a Hot Streak buff, and then Pyro, that first crit will still count towards your 2 crits in a row.

Unfortunately it doesn't appear like Hot Streak can stack, and ignite munching might make this build look unfeasible on paper, due to fireballs cast time allowing ignites to tick for longer. Interesting sidenote: Shattered Sun Pendant procs on Ignite ticks! (You guys probably already know)

Is it possible for someone to run some rough numbers or tell me if the build is decent? I've ran some rough tests on the training dummy and I think I'm around Arcane Spec in terms of DPS with my poor Spellpower and crit rate.

Thanks for your time.

I've run some rough numbers. 0/50/11 doesn't do this as well as 0/61/0 (with living bomb when you can afford it and free talent points spent wherever). Icy veins costs you living bomb, and LB (while mana lasts) adds a lot more to your overall damage in this spec than IV does (or for that matter, focus magic or spell impact), and the other 10 points frost (or arcane) don't add much of anything useful to compensate. You can go 5/5 clearcasting if you want instead of taking more fire talents and that's ok (10/51/0 is better than 11/50/0 or 0/50/11 in a nonfireball build, and is better than 0/61/0 for sustained DPS. It just won't have room for other talents like impact that also benefit from a rapid casting main nuke).

There are some weird rampup issues...it's less likely to have a wasted cast than a fireball spec on trash, but a significant portion of its damage is various dots (ignites, pyroblast and living bomb+explosion) that will be clipped if the mob dies too soon. So while I'm happy with my kill rate in regular play, damage meters on trash wasn't as good as I'd hoped until I started using a lot more AOEs than I dared to in BC. Against bosses, my only sample long enough to trust was a Mags fight where I was on clicker duty and very new to the rotation so it's hard to say.

Basically this spec does better relative to a fireball build with more crit and more spellpower tends to favor the fireball build over the scorch build. They scale about the same with haste, except that lag and player twitch mistakes become more of an issue with the faster casting approach. Don't regem for crit though...spellpower is still cheaper than crit in itemization for both approaches. The spec without fireball will be less RNG dependent as the hot streaks come twice as fast and a "cold spell" or "hot spell" of them is more likely to even out in these 3 minute bossfights we've been having since 3.0.

At this point I think it is a wash. Play whatever will be most fun for you. The differences in DPS between specs aren't as large as the RNG standard deviation and player skill variance until WOLK comes out. If you load up on DPS talents and don't screw up whatever rotation uses them, your numbers should be ok in team play.

Not entirely related but I've been to AQ40 and it seems none of the new 3.0 changes work there, that's improved scorch glyph doesn't, the totems being raid wide don't and neither is the Draenei aura.

Kinda wierd, not sure how it was implemented, hot streak and new talents work, imp. scorch glyph doesn't couldn't really check if scorch was adding crit or damage.

Deleted - Answered below

Deleted because now - The answer is below

Solbergb,

0/53/8 is currently the highest dps LB build. It allows for 3 points in World in Flames for the 6% crit bonus to Pyroblast, Living Bomb, Arcane Explosion, and Flame Strike (among others that are insignificant to the build), and lets you get EP as well.

It also allows a smooth transition into the 0/53/18 FFB spec at 80. No respec necessary!

Does anyone here know if spending just 1 point in Frostbite would let Blizzard benefit from FoF? Or do you have to go 3/3 to have the full 15% chance benefit?

Edit: WOW Meter Online - More logs!!!!!! Our first ever Brut kill parse from tonight. Almost feels like cheating seeing as how we one shotted Kalecgos and two shotted Brutallus after being stuck on Kalecgos for months on end. Bosses are nerfed beyond being fun? 3 minute kill is FTW for Frost, too.

1/3 Imp Blizz will allow you full use of FoF with it. I have 1/3 specced right now and it works like a charm.

On that subject, Blizzard AOE dps is fairly over the top right now, it blows anything else out of the water when taking mana consumption into consideration.

Talking of Blizzard, it now works with DMC:Crusade (which it did not before), but does not appear to work with AToI.

Firstly, on a purely semantic basis, I believe the order is Alpha->Beta. Not only based on which comes first in the alphabet but also circumstancial evidence: The Friends and Family Alpha came before the Beta, and after Beta it's Live. I am however, unlike you, not a developer so I'll take your word for it.

The reason I refered to the build we are using on live as a Beta, is because when it came out it was identical to the one available on Beta, as another poster mentioned. I didn't mean to imply it was functionally a Beta as it clearly can't be once it reaches the customer. It's state of development, however is.

Secondly, you may draw any line in any sand you like, but I see an utter futility in commenting/arguing/crying out, waving fists in the air about patch 3.x purely because we know absolutely nothing will be done to address anything that isn't totally overboard. They jumped in to quick-fix one or two Retadin PvP imballances, but that was it; Any one can tell the only people working on the "is 3.x totally unbalanced" seems to be a skeleton crew charged with the job of holding the floodgates of whine until Nov 13, when it'll all disappear in a flurry of leveling and redirection from "WWS Shows me below when I was above!!!!111!!!!" into "Class n has 0 downtime!!!!11!!!". edit: and "Who itemizes my gear? What is wrong with you people!!!1 I don't want (mp5/spi/int/sta/str/AP/haste/hit/agi/choclate)!!!".

All in all, patch 3.x is only a stop-gap. An intermediate solution that clearly only has to be (and barely manages) to be only "good enough" for a few weeks. I was protesting against the futility and idiocy of going totally hay-wire and overboard on it's ballance and "what this means for my class" posts. It's like your new car is late to arrive and in the mean-time the dealership give you a temporary replacement, better than your old shitty car, worse than your new not-yet-arrived car but temporary nonetheless. How balanced is it? It doesn't matter.

In a recent 25-man, mana was a non-issue, although believing it was going to be, I specced 11.50.0. The 3% crit from Focus Magic was consistently up, but the mana saved from Clearcasting was irrelevant and easily could have been used on Living Bomb, had I taken it over Focus Magic. Being that that was under the current live build, I have no doubt that mana regen mechanics have changed. Notably to shadow priests and ret paladins, from whom I was receiving significant mana returns.

Getting the extra 3% hit from gear was easy, and I suspect will be easy. Elemental Precision then means very little to me, and I've stood by that for quite a while. I gave up EP when they moved it to tier 2. Spending 5 points for 3 points didn't make any sense to me. When they added Fireball to Spell Impact, the case was closed. I'm planning for a transition from 10.51.0 / 11.50.0 to 14.52.0, with 5 floating points, depending on mana.

It may be argued that 2 points should go into World in Flames instead of Blast Wave/Dragon's Breath, but I found that both of these spells were especially useful, as Manly has pointed out countless times (at least in favor of Blast Wave). And Dragon's Breath can interrupt a number of NPC's castings/abilities that are otherwise uninterruptable.

If I really knew I wasn't going to be stressed for mana, I would spec 14.57.0. It uses World in Flames and Fiery Payback over Arcane Meditation. Otherwise, I will go with the classic 18.53.0.

As someone on the board here pointed out in the last few days, Mage Armor is used preemptively, not reactively. Once you're out of mana, switching to Mage Armor from Molten Armor isn't going to help. It's essentially the same argument against Evocation. When the boss hits 20% and you're out of mana, you want to use as few ticks of Evocation as possible. If you spend the next 8 seconds evocating, the boss could very well die by the time you finish. Similarly, using Mage Armor from the very beginning of the fight and reaching the end with a full mana pool is one of those, "I should have done something different" moments.

Dropping 6% crit to Pyroblast then for 30% regen is a nice way to offset this. Sure, you aren't truly max DPS, but then, I've generally never really planned my fights around every setup for each raid. It would just become too costly. Thus, Arcane Meditation seems very lucrative to me. It's a very versatile talent, where as World in Flames becomes only more beneficial as long as your hot streaks are proccing madly. Not everyone is going to get lucky and see a 70% crit rate on fireball spam. With dual specs, it's entirely possible to switch on the fly before a boss. And actually, I may do just that. I don't see a reason to use dual specs for PvE/PvP, as I'm favoring both Fire and Frost for PvP and would greatly love to be able to switch between the two when I'm doing PvP.

On the note of situational talents though, Fiery Payback is way up there. I don't believe that survivability is the mage's responsibility, and I could look at it and say that 20% less damage when I hit 35% health could in fact save me, but it's not my responsibility to manage my health. It's like a frost mage stopping to keep ice barrier up whenever possible. That's just silly, yet I've seen players do it on bosses. The only benefit then is the 1.5 second Pyroblast.

Now, can anyone clarify the exact mechanics behind the increased cooldown though? The cooldown is increased by 5 seconds, but am I right in thinking that these 5 seconds are added on to the cast time itself? It would then be:

5 (base cast time) - 3.5 (talent) + 5 (added cooldown) - 1.5 (new cast time) = 5 second cooldown between pyroblasts when under Fiery Payback? Off the top of my head, I do believe this is how it's working, but the tooltip is worded very strangely, and I can't test it at the moment. However, if it's 10 seconds, it's the shortest 10 seconds of my life.

I specced frost a bit last night and used 3.0 Blizzard for the first time. Every wave was critting for 1k on each mob, and they were crawling. It was fantastic. I haven't had a chance to use Flamestrike much to compare it, but unless they fix Flamestrike's cast time to the proper 2 seconds (just like all the lower ranks are), I can't see Flamestrike being on remotely the same level as Blizzard. Though, I'll have to look at the numbers in Rawr later to compare them fairly, since I can't take ignite and Flamestrike's DoT into consideration off the top of my head.