What's interesting is the rotation given a 0.51.20 build. It seems highly complex to actually memorize such a rotation and make it practical in a real fight. It's certainly different from the norm of spamming arcane explosion. I didn't put Imp. Blizzard in the build because it would affect Blast Wave (and the instant Flamestrike that follows). If everything is slowed, the chances of your flamestrike hitting anything would be minimal. Although, given the mechanics of Blast Wave, you could end up hitting nothing if you were to flamestrike exactly in the same spot every time. You'd probably be better off using the flamestrike on a cluster of mobs in the general vicinity or just leaving it out entirely.

0:00 Living Bomb (explodes at 12)
1:30 Blast Wave (CD at 31:30)
3:00 Instant Flamestrike
4:30 Dragon's Breath (CD at 24:30)
6:00 Instant Flamestrike
7:30 Blizzard
15:30 Living Bomb (explodes at 27:30)
17:00 Cast Flamestrike
18:30 Blizzard
26:30 Dragon's Breath (CD at 46:30)
28:00 Living Bomb (explodes at 40)
29:30 Instant Flamestrike
31:00 Nothing
31:30 Blast Wave (CD at 61:30)
33:00 Instant Flamestrike
34:30 Blizzard

The problem with using blizzard as a fire build is that talents like burnout, ignite & firepower don't support it. I personally would love to see some kind of frostfire AoE but that's probably asking a lot.

No, my post was referring to arcane AoE. Most arcane talents that buff AoE at all, equally effect all AoE spells (with the exception of spell impact, which is less than 4% to arcane explosion). So for an arcane mage its not an obvious 'USE THE ARCANE ONE!'; and the base functionality of both Blizzard and Flamestrike seem to be better (geif Flamestrike radius glyph). Flamestrike, when left to tick, has very nice scaling with spell power. Blizzard is nothing to write home about without talents but if you're at range anyway its the clear choice.

Glyph of Frostfire - Causes your Flamestrike and Blizzard spells to cause Frostfire damage.


Going along with what you have said, a Glyph could make this a reality. It could produce some very powerful AoE with a Frostfire build and ultimately only affect a few situations where AoE is paramount to single-target direct damage.

Here's an odd thought. After raiding BT these last 2 weeks, I've seen a massive amount of partial resists on Supremus. I know that he has a high innate Fire Resist, but here's a possible problem; we raid with a Moonkin, therefore we haven't been using CoE on the bosses.

With Warlocks no longer using CoE since it's less of an increase over EaM and Ebon Plague, unless talented, will partial resists become a problem, and will we need to have the Warlocks still using CoE for the -resist mechanics?

Here is the link to my WWS from last night:

Wow Web Stats

I'm running a 0-53-8 build at the moment.

Here are the resists, as you can see they're very significant:

Fireball
17 hits - avg 1535, max 2172
10 crits - avg 2697, max 3393

Total Fireball damage - 53,415
Total Fireball partial resist - 49,069, or 47.9% partial resist

Ghostcrawler has (finally) responded in more detail on frost raiding concerns.

WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> GC: Please Answer Frost PvE concerns.

I'm going to take him at face value here and assume that the numbers showing frost 15-20% behind fire are from an older build. He also shows he doesn't understand shatter combos, which is...surprising:

More questions answered in the link.

Currently, FoF is basically like you said - a passive crit bonus. But that's fine, right? I'm not a competitive PvPer by any means, but isn't the general benefit of shatter combos the ability to [usually] do a reasonable amount of burst damage with a Frostbolt/Ice Lance string on a frozen target? Beyond the passive crit chance from FoF, how else would you expect that to benefit bosses? It's not like you're going to "surprise" the boss by hitting him twice with one pseudo-shatter (FoF) and kill him before his healer can react or anything.

Edit: Just re-read your reply. I guess some would prefer Frostbolt/Ice Lance on FoF procs to make the cast rotation more "interesting" than a pure Frostbolt spam. Is that the only benefit?

For pvp FoF is great. Perfect. Wonderful, etc. The whole point is that (we assume) fingers of frost was originally introduced with the intention of giving players a reason to cast something other than frostbolt in raids. Just like they are trying to introduce rotations and interactive play to all classes and all specs. However, since casting ice lance at any point during a FoF proc, even exploiting latency for a "third" charge, is a net DPS loss, it has kind of failed. Fire mages get to rotate scorches and watch for hot streak procs, arcanes get to work an ArBarr rotation and watch for missile procs. Other classes get even more ways to make for more interesting playstyle and a chance for the *good* players to play their class well and benefit from it.

Meanwhile, frost is still spamming the 2 button, with only a pet keeping us from being on the level of pre 3.0 destro locks.

The issue with a shatter combo is that you get two shatter-enhanced hits only because they cast/land so close to one another, if you cast two frostbolts on a frozen target the first would break the freeze & the second would land on an unfrozen target - so by changing your rotation you gain an advantage.

With FoF it's guaranteed to be your next two spells, so using two big spells (Frostbolt + Frostbolt) wins, rendering the ability "uninteresting" because you don't get better by being reactive/aware.

I believe that's the complaint - if the ability doesn't change the way you play, it might as well just be another passive "do more damage" talent, rather than providing a skill component (akin to fire mages watching for Hot Streak procs to cast pyroblast)

A spell with no travel time always has a use. Moreso, its under a 1.5s cast time. I'd still cast scorch quite a lot without improved scorch as a fire spec, both for farming (no reason to cast a full fireball at a low hp mob), any time I know the mob will die before a bolt travels there (which happens a lot on trash and on bosses).

This is what I was addressing. With the build I posted, Flamestrike is given time for the DoT to tick (no overlapping except for the DB and BW followup to use Firestarter), and inbetween them Blizzard is being used. It is receiving Shatter, Ice Shards, and Piercing Ice. It would definitely be interesting to see how this rotation would stack up against straight Flamestrike spam (with DB and LB interweaved of course).

Scorch does have incredible use outside of Imp. Scorch. Though its pushback benefit was slightly downgraded with 3.0. Under Hex Lord's spirit volley, for instance, I found it trivial to attempt to cast a fireball. It seemed much more practical to cast fireblasts and scorches. This was on top of the fact that by the time my fireball actually launched, I may not have had time to refresh scorch.

Those mechanics have slightly changed, and with Burning Soul, Fireball will never take more than 3.3 seconds (unhasted) to cast.

Nevertheless, there was a time I never used Scorch except for its talented purpose. That changed after I read of its uses. Namely, in PvP it is highly efficient to string together with fire blast. It's quick and gives little time for an opponent to LoS you (if they run through you as you're casting fireball, for instance).

Against trash, there may not be 4 seconds to cast a fireball and see it land. But there are 1.5 seconds to cast a scorch and a fire blast (and at the very least, another scorch).

Anyone have information on whether haste or crit is more valuable at 70 using 11/50? I currently have mostly Reckless Pyrestones in my gear, but I'm considering switching them to Potent Pyrestones to take advantage of increased hot streak procs.


Also, what is more valuable at 80 for 18/53 fire and 51/20 frostfire? (Aka is it really worth the money to regem to crit now, assuming I'll still be using my sunwell gear for leveling / Naxx?)

No reason to use firestarter right away. I mean none, at all. Heres what I would do, which to me seem a whole lot more logical

aoe priorities:
1- instant flamestrike if prev flamestrike is gone
2- dragon's breath / blastwave
3- living bomb
4- flamestrike if prev flamestrike is gone
5- arcane explosion / blizzard


0:00 dragon's breath
1:30 instant flamestrike
3:00 blast wave (hold up on firestarter buff, lasts 10s)
4:30 living bomb
6:00 arcane explosion
7:30 arcane explosion
9:00 arcane explosion
10:30 instant flamestrike (from prev firestarter)
12:00 arcane explosion
13:30 arcane explosion
15:00 arcane explosion
16:30 living bomb
18:00 flamestrike
21:00 dragon's breath (hold up on firestarter buff, lasts 10s)
22:30 arcane explosion
24:00 arcane explosion
25:50 arcane explosion
27:00 arcane explosion
28:30 living bomb
30:00 instant flamestrike (from prev firestarter)
31:30 arcane explosion
33:00 blastwave (hold up on firestarter buff, lasts 10s)
.... repeat of priority list

Both Imp.Scorch and Winter's Chill should be removed. They shoould be replaced by a SPELL available to all mages.

That would make all specs equal on the utility they provide. It would also solve the problem with having two different debuffs in raid that do the same thing. And it would make happy those mages who believe that imp.scorch is just an annoying spell in its current form.

The only problem that would arise is that we woould probably have something similar to other classes. On the other hand why do pay so every month to Bliz ? They should use their imagination for a change There must be a unique way for a new spell-debuff-applier, I am sure...

On a slightly off-topic note I'm still completely startled by the fact there hasn't been any reduction in the number of talent points required for arcane. Fire can pop 20 points in the other trees at 80 to boost dps. Even at 80 arcane barely has enough points to go around.

I can free 10 points easy enough, 15 if I push it (Arcane mind isn't as essential as some might think, but mana isn't quite balanced yet so that may change).

Once I'm going past 15 in a tree I'm way too stretched to ever think of myself as a 'pure' arcane build. The anoying thing is that if I was going 18 fire purely for my own benefit I'd take Master of Elements rather than scorch, but theres always that looming feeling of obligation.

I think this is indirectly the biggest problem with the Arcane tree. It is too inflated to support point in another tree but simultaneously requires a non-arcane filler spell.

1) Arcane Spells

The whole problem is that the Arcane Tree design is terrible from a DPS point of view.
You have lot of fillers, and very few of the DPS talents compare to to 2%ers like Fire Power.

Arcane Missiles has the highest Empowerment talent of +45% and is garbage outside of procs.
Arcane Barrage is only useful because its coeffcient has been artificially doubles.
Arcane Blast used to live by its damage enhancing debuff only. And died with it.

The fact that Arcane spells only have +75% crit scaling also holds them back in our 50%+ crit chance world.

When you spec into an off-tree, you get a spammable spell that gets a 0.5s cast time reduction, a large crit multiplier bonus and some more extras depending on your choice.
That spell also benefits from most of the talents that benefit Arcane Spells as well.


The problem isn't that there are too many Arcane talents.
The problem is that too many of them are junk for DPS purposes.


2) AoE spells

Arcane Explosion - good for things that die in one hit or two, or when casting on the run.
Low threat melee AoE.
Bad for sustained DPS and mana.

Flamestrike - the damage with the DoT is good sustained DPS, and cheap.
The cast time is reduced to 2 seconds only for lower ranks currently.
Downsides are targeting issues. It works with Hyjal spam. But I can't get it to work at all when your chain-pulling trash in instances. Mobs are moving, tanks are moving all the time, I miss more often than I hit with a 3s cast time and the small targeting circle.

Blizzard - damage is at least as good as Arcane Explosion. Significantly better with Frost subspecs like Arc/Frost or Frostfire.
Efficient ranged AoE with good throughput, instantly channeled makes it much better to aim than Flamestrike.
But it can't be cast on the run, and gets less efficient when you have to interrupt it to move or to cast something else.

Dragon's Breath/Cone of Cold - good AoE, but cone shape requires good positioning. Good burst, but with a cooldown.

Blastwave - good burst, but bad if mob knockback is an issue.
Check reports of raid banning Blastwave, Thunderstorm and Typhoon because it hurts clearing speed.

Living Bomb - very good damage, but on a 12 second timer.
There are a lot of things that don't last 12 seconds.


Personally, I have a bias towards ranged AoE. Just saying, before get accused of being biased.
When you use a lot of melee range AoE spells, you always have to chase your tanks very closely. Otherwise, you'll simply lose time to ranged AoEers.
That also makes cone spells harder to target when your raid and the mobs are moving. And if you aggro in melee range, it's usually a swift death.

Those aren't huge downsides, but they can make melee ranges AoE more difficult.


3) Improved Divine Spirit

According to Inana (thank you!), Improved Divine Spirit currently stacks with Flametongue Totem and other buffs.
It however doesn't seem to stack with the spirit bonus on a Warlock's Fel Armour.


4) Mana

We have no idea what mana will look like without knowing where Judgement of Wisdom is going.

Before having low number of dps talents was compensated with having a large number of mana talents since mana to damage conversion was meaningful. Right now with no meaningful mana dump spell (and by this I mean a spell with dpm conversion that's better than mage->molten armor conversion) all the mana talents essentially become fillers. We'll have to wait and see what is their next iteration of Arcane Blast.

Was reading a lot of fingers of frost post about it being pointless because you just continue to spam frostbolt when you get the proc.

I may have missed it but the following scenario is how I use my fingers of frost procs:

• Gain Fingers of Frost
• Frostbolt
• Frostbolt
• Icelance

That third spell, the instant cast one, is still treated as though fingers of frost is active if you spam it right as your second frostbolt casts. Again, someone may have pointed this out already, or people might just be missing it.

It's been pointed out. Dozens of times. There are two major issues with FoF combos:

1) It's based on latency, not travel time of the spell. This means some people, especially those with higher overall or highly variable latencies, are NOT able to pull off the third charge as consistently as those with low, steady latencies. Any mechanic so dependent on someone's connection is inherently flawed.

2) It's not worth doing (and in fact becomes detrimental to do so) once you have above 1800 spellpower. Ice lance scales so poorly (and is unable to proc more Fingers of Frost or Brain Freezes) that past 1800 spellpower (which occurs in EARLY T7 content at level 80) you are better off casting 60% of a non-shatter frostbolt in that GCD rather than a shatter ice lance.

Changes from MMO-Champion for build 9138
Things I've Tested:
Frostfire Bolt(Rank 2) - DoT is no longer receiving +15% coef per tick when spec'd into Empowered Fire.
Molten Fury/TtW - Still bugging each other out.
Frostfire Bolt - Both rank's DoTs no longer scale with spellpower.
Imp Blizzard/Ice Armor - Will not proc FoF without at least 1 point in Frostbite.
Molten Armor - Still munching FoF charges and proc'ing ignite.
Flamestrike - Ranks 1-6 still 2s cast, with 7-9 being 3s cast.
Icy Veins - Frostfire Bolt is not gaining any pushback protection from Icy Veins. Other spells unaffected.
Living Bomb -The explosion still doesn't go off if you're stunned/incapacitated/dead/silenced/ice blocked or otherwise prevented from casting spells.

Things to Test:
Burning Determination - Is it still activating whenever any silence/interrupt ability is used against you, even if the ability didn't land.
Frostfire Bolt - Is it still gaining ~7% +hit from elemental precision.

Something interesting for when the dual spec system goes in. Currently Focus Magic isn't removed from a player you cast it on when you spec out of it, and you gain the benefit when they crit.

I'm going to bed, so you guys have fun with the new build.

In other words the r1 is still 'pretty damn good' ?