Actually no, both ranks have DoTs that do not scale with your spell power now.

Edit: oh, ok now I get the flamestrike thing. Missed that change when anounced.

Because it was officially changed to a 2 sec cast. Build 8962

Most core nukes and heals work that way, but they ramp up steadily. So, rank 1 starts at 1.5s cast time, and every new rank is around 0.3-0.5s slower until they reach 3.0s or whatever around level 20-30.

For Flamestrike, the pre-BC ranks have a 3.0s cast time, while the BC and Wrath ranks have 3.0s cast time.
There's no steady progression or anything. And they announced that it was changed to 2.0s like Threep said.


Judgement of Wisdom
Lowered to 1% of maximum mana now.
Can anyone check whether its cooldown is removed/playerbased/raidwide?


Living Bomb and Mana
Tweaking my sheets with the new LB mana changes.

For a Fire spec, Living Bomb is a 6 DPM conversion while Molten Armour is only a 3.5 DPM conversion.
For a Frostfire spec, Living Bomb is a 5.5 DPM conversion while Molten Armour is only a 4 DPM conversion.

So, if mana is a concern using Living Bomb is better than using Molten Armour.
And if mana is a concern, Frostfire specs blow pure Fire away so hared, it's not even remotely funny.


Full Frostfire Bolt/Pyroblast/Living Bomb rotations cost only as much mana as simple Fireball spam.
So, if Fireball spam is not sustainable, you might as well delete the spell. If it is, Frostfire can sustain full rotations.

And Fireball spam is only better DPS than Frostfire Bolt spam when you have Torment.
That means "Not happening until they change Torment and Bosses, either for the better (FFB DoT counts as Slow) or for the worse (nothing counts)".


Specs'n'Stuff

It's currently "FFB or Bust". Better DPS, less mana cost.
The hardest part is getting a FFB Glyph which isn't trained, but discovery-only.

This may come off as a stupid quiestion, possibly you can clarify this for me.

Would a rotation be something of keeping the LB DoT up while using FFB as your main nuke then Pyro on hot streaks?

Yes, exactly. Don't forget about Imp. Scorch debuff, too, unless you have a frost mage in raid.

Read the tooltip: "Increases your chance to hit and reduces the mana cost of your Arcane spells by 3%."

To clarify, it works only for Arcane spells.

Wouldn't it be the reverse, with low latency players unable to pull off the combo consistently? My latency never drops below 250 and my success rate with combo Ice Lances is near perfect thus far.

Yeah, I was actually pretty stupid about this in the past when we had frost Mages in the raid and I'd still fight with scorchio to keep that buff up. After a while I was noticing how my spells were hitting as hard when I forgot to re-scorch once and immediately did a /facepalm.

Saw my DPS go up about 80 points.

EDIT: On another note, are mages finding LB specs to be viable pre-Wrath or is this something we should hold out for? Currently I'm raiding 50/11 and spec'd for haste/crit. I'm finding this to be my best build. So far I'm competing with other Mages but, not many of them are LB and it's seeming to be a rare spec right now.

I am currently 0/53/8 LB spec and find the spec to be not only fun, but very good on DPS. Just recently on Bruttalus, I ended the fight at 2900 dps keeping LB up 100% of the time and not missing any Hot Streaks (of course I let the final tick of LB go off, but that should be a given).

Gives me multiple things to do as oppose to what we were all used to doing pre-3.0.

Interesting. I specced for both TtW and Molten Fury at level 75 and I was getting the bonus to fireball from the ffb dot on beta on the test dummies (current beta patch). So either it's fixed on beta and broken again on the ptr or it's something other than molten fury causing the mess-up. For reference my build was Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft and I was using the max rank spells for level 75.

I was just looking at the latest simulationcraft data, and had a couple questions:

First, in the frostfire mage (Mage_0_53_18), it has these lines in the config file (raid_80.txt)

First off, the spec listed is using Elemental Precision, so is elemental precision not working for FFB? or are these lines supposed to be -hit and +haste?
I was under the impression that Elemental Precision was giving 6% hit to FFB, so I don't understand this change for the FFB spec.



Secondly, is Torment the Weak being triggered by anything other than slow now?

If it isn't, having mages use TtW is a DPS LOSS for the raid overall...

Going Fire and Torment the Weak over Frostfire specs gives about 231 DPS for the firemage, but forcing the arcane mage to Slow the target every 15 secs costs the Arcane mage 513 DPS.

If there are only two mages in the raid, one fire, one arcane/slow, then you lose 282 Raid dps.
If there are three mages, (two fire, one arcane/slow), then you gain 52 Raid dps over two fire and one arcane.

By comparison, three frostfire mages would do 248 more raid dps overall.

Personally, I think Torment the Weak is a horrible talent - if it works on, say, frostbolt chill effects and other slows, it still forces fire specced mages to take 18 points in arcane to stay competitive. On the other hand, if it only works on Slow, it really can only hurt your raid in the big picture. I'm aware that only min/maxing guilds would likely gimp one mage's dps to boost two others, but even in this case they wouldn't because it would hurt their performance overall.

Not to mention that TtW adds to blizzard impression that arcane mages are a bit to bursty in pvp right now. If they want to nerf arcane burst without punishing PvE (also asuming that TtW is not intended to work on bosses) this is a really good talent to have a swing at. Why not simply remove the talent all together when they decide its time to reduce Mind mastery and Arcane mind to 3 pointers. Thats a good 7 points of arcane bloat shaved off and all affected tiers remain above 5 points each so theres still the element of choise and not just a streamlined arcane tree up to ABar

These numbers you're talking about here are what frighten me at 80. Already looking at the potential builds for a level 80 mage, I still feel we're lacking some valuable points where it seems other classes will find it much easier to obtain multiple optimum DPS specs. If we chose to take up a couple of defensive abilities to withstand "raid damage", our entire build is hosed, where Pre 3.0.2, we could take a couple talents into some defensive abilities without sacrificing anything. There's also still a lot of inter-mage synergy which is required for us to work together in order for us to be optimal. With Blizzard taking the stance on not wanting a specific spec or class in a raid, they're certainly not proving this to Mages.

Currently for PvE it seems we're looking at a lack luster FFB Elementalist spec or a Deep Fire. Any of these still require another mage in the raid for some form of asistance. For instance, having one in with a 11/55 build for focus magic. It also seems that either you're a single target mage and master of killing bosses, or your second spec will fall into a trash AoE spec. Either one still seems like we're going to continue to spend gold on re-specing between two to three pve (two? boss specs and a trash) specs and our weekend arena spec.

EDIT: I think Blizzard could easily fix this by moving Elemental Precision back up a Tier.

RNG equals skill

I just ran sum numbers on the reliance of different specs on good or bad luck.

I simplified things a lot, and was looking at the "standard deviation : expected value" ratio.
That's pretty much the "expected percentage that you're off by".

For Fire, tha percentage is roughly twice and for Frostfire it's roughly three times as high as for Frost specs.
That means if you expect Frost to be 5% off in a 3-minute fight (roughly), you can expect Fire to be 120% and Frostfire 15% off of your expected DPS.

The exact percentages depend on fight length. If a fight is 4 times as long, you'll be off by half that percentage.
Reasons are the higher crit modifiers of Fire/Frostfire, and that Frostbolt casts faster, meaning that you get more casts and average out a bit more.


The solution to less RNG is more crit

The concern that many players have is that (Frost)Fire specs depend too much on RNG.
The results are much more volatile than Frost specs, like listed above.

The solution to it is, as has been mentioned before, more crit. It's counterintuitive, but that's what helps.

Let us look at that "expected percentage you're off by".
At 0% you never crit. At 100% you always crit. That's where your performance is reliable. The highest volatility is somewhere in between.

For Frost, its maximum is between 40-45%.
For Fire, its maximum is between 35-40%.
For Frostfire, its maximum is between 30-35%.

Once you get past these points - and you should get there even naked when raid-buffed, crit reduces your volatility.
Crit - the stat that makes you more random - is the stat that helps you make your performance more reliable.


Admittedly, you cannot influence the volatility by much.
Fire needs 86% crit and Frostfire needs 94% crit to became as stable/volatile as Frost is at its volatilty peak of 40-45%.
So, you'll simply have to accept that those specs are much more RNG dependant than anything you used to play before.

But you can help it a little bit by increasing your crit when you can.
I've got some graph somewhere, I'll try to upload it.

[Disclaimer: I simplified a lot there, just to get an easy grip on things.]

You seem to be doing a lot of number crunching.

Since haste will up the amount of spells you cast per minute. Has any TC been done to see how much DPS you gain from RNG procs based on haste? I'm not so keen with math, but logic thinking would tell you if you're casting more spells in a minute your increasing your chance for a random proc to occur.

Right now we've got a frost mage who plans on stacking somwehere along the lines of 25% haste and coming to a raid to see if it'll up her DPS. Since none of us are into advanced calc, the numbers will just have to show in real time =D.

The reason I like having Focus Magic in a raid for mage synergy is that if one mage puts it on another, they buff each other. The DPS per buff was calculated somewhere as to how Molten Armor vs. Mage Armor vs. Focus Magic. Basically, the three balance each other out by .5% where with one you lose crit but gain overall DPS and the other you gain overall DPM. With one, you last the long haul and the other you're capable of burst.

Now, if you put a mage in the raid with Focus Magic and Mage Armor, this mage would do more damage over the long run of the fight where the other mage would burst more but be balanced out by mana. They both increase each other's damage IIRC the numbers were around 4-5% increased overall with both keeping the LB buff up.

The post may be in this thread. I don't remember where I read it, but it was an eye opener as to how synergy can work with mages provided they work together on specs and show up to every raid.

Thanks Roywyn,

Can you post some of your calculations, espesially the ones related to finding out the highest volatility points. Also from the top of my head, your calculations explain why crit isn't *bad* it doesn't however say that past the max volatility point every crit point is worth more, am I right?

1) I did my calculations in 5% steps for crit. That means the equivalent ratings would be 7% steps for haste.

Looking at the numbers, once you're 5-10% beyond the peak, crit is better at making your DPS reliable than haste.
Your primary choice between stats and item should be the one that gives you better DPS. That's where you ask Rawr


Be careful though, not to mix up the two different things you're handling at once.
Your first choice between 2 items is the one leading to the highest average DPS.
Your second choice is deciding between 2 items with similar DPS values but different DPS volatilities.

There are situations where it might be better to gamble on a volatile gearset.
Think of it like 7 healers on Brutallus vs. 8. You increase your chance to wipe to tank death, but you also increase your chance to succeed if you like through 6 minutes.
It's not a good example for DPS volatility, but a good example for volatility at least.


2) Haste is likely slightly worse than Spell Power, but vastly better than Crit for Frost specs. See how it goes!


3) Focus Magic is pretty neat. It's a 2-for-1 deal. The problem is that they only come with Fries, and Rice is much healthier than Fries.

Meaning that it likely isn't strong enough to dethrone Frostfire specs.
The proper comparison would be "3 Frostfire Mages" vs. "2 Torment Fire Mages + 1 Slow Mage with 3% crit + 3% crit to 3 other raid members".

With the recent nerf of JoW to 1%, I really can't see Fire pull ahead there. But someone should sim it for safety.


I hope that helps a clear things up a bit. And as friendly advice, try to shorten quotes if you quote texts that are a lot longer than your additions.
Doesn't hurt and makes it easier to read


There isn't really much to it. It's just a simple cast that hits or crits. Frost crits for x2, Fire for x3, Frostfire for x4.
That's rough but decent estimates including Hot Streak. Frost has 1.2 casts due to its cast speed.
I then calculated expected value E=(1+1/2/3*C), variance sigma² = 1/4/9*C*(1-C), and the expected percentage off is then sigma/E.

Draw and excel chart on it, 20 data points, one for every 5% crit and watch what they look like.
It's a really really rough framework, just to see how it looks.

And no, it doesn't say anything whether crit is worth more or less or anything.
It's just a look at how random your DPS is different crit levels.

The question about your best average DPS is something for Simcraft/Rawr.

Peak of? Sorry in advance. Just needed some clarification.

My theory on this, and I'm just gonna ramble some typing out here on the fly and see where it takes me.

Assumed: (Capped hit... duh) 1100 spell damage, 22% crit (Before WC) and 25% haste. These just seem like reasonable numbers @70 to me.

While crit would up your damage per spell for frost, with abilities like FoF and BF, they're all % based on your individual spells. So, lets say at 0% haste you're capable of casting 24 frost bolts (this is optimal) in a minute, you have 3.6 frostbolts which have a chance of procing FoF (Higher DPS than BF) and BF. I'm speaking purely of procs, I'm not counting the time of GCD's on the procs themselves and this may be a flaw in my theory.

Now, lets say you go in with 25% haste which lowers your FB cast time to ~1.875 seconds. You now have 32 (if you sat spamming frost bolts) chances to proc a minute with a total of 4.8 procs.

That's an extra proc a minute. Not too shabby. Where I fail is understanding the damage difference if you were to sacrifice the SD for Haste.

EDIT: I'm also not accounting the lost time for the procs. It's what 2 GCD's (3secs) per FoF and 1.5 for the GCD on BF. I can't imagine Rawr in it's current build being able to account for these types of numbers.

This is of course the RNG gods favor you and stick to their 15% proc based on talents =).

The number differences between how much damage output for a FoF proc gives you about a damn near 90% chance to crit on a target fully WC debuffed. This is the part where I think that haste would win spell power. I just wish I had the haste gear on this mage that the other mage in my guild has and still maintain 4xT6.

I need more data... =*( and more gold for gems and re-specs.


This just sounds sexy and I look forward to testing this at 80. We're currently lacking a FFB and ab00t 10 talent points. On another note, we've been running with two ret pallys and Replenishing mages... omg win.

This better ?


EDIT2: Not to mention, your GCD will be 1 second. It's also not accounting the raid buffs, oh man.. I'm starting to dig a hole in sand here.

I seriously doubt that is accurate.

TheGoodMan's example would require HS buffs to stack/gain additional 'charges', which it clearly cannot. What is possible (and IMHO likely) is that given his example, Pyro A was cast prior to Fireball 2.B. landing. Otherwise, my observations simply do not jive with his.

I often manage Pyro double-taps when at max range, and they go something like this:

Cast FB 1
Cast FB 2
FB1 Crits
Cast FB 3
FB2 Crits, Hot Streak Procs
Cast Pyro 1
FB 3 Crits, Hot Streak Procs
Pyro 1 lands (irrelevant)
Cast Pyro 2
Pyro 2 lands (irrelevant)



Basically, 3 FB crits followed by two Instant Pyros. Again, this can only occur at or near max range. This is evidence that the mechanics of Hot Streak check (1.) at the start of a cast, whether the previous FB/Scorch/Blast did indeed crit, and thus qualify this cast to proc HS, and check (2.) at the landing of a cast, whether that cast crit, and if so, whether the caster will receive a new HS proc buff, or simply refresh the current HS proc buff.




*edited for grammar

No, the situation that TheGoodMan portrayed definitely happens, regardless of range, as long as you mash your Pyroblast button as your Fireball cast finishes (There may be situations where you have a high ping that your distance may come into account, but with 300 ms on the beta I have been right next to mobs and able to pull this off).

What happens is you got the Hot streak proc and it resets the internal Hot Streak counter to 0. The next crit you increment the Hot Streak counter to 1, while still having the Hot Streak proc. Then the next cast you cast your Fireball + HS Pyroblast, with the Fireball critting, incrementing the Hot Streak counter to 2, but the other Hot Streak was already used, and gives you a new Hot Streak buff. The key to it is that the Hot Streak buff isn't applied until the Fireball hits the mob and shows it's a crit, even though the crit is calculated when it leaves your hand. So you can use up the Hot Streak proc as the Fireball leaves your hand, but before it hits. The Hot Streak counter and the Hot Streak buff are completely separated from each other.

Edit: I should say that I wouldn't sit there waiting on the next GCD for the 2nd Hot Streak, since you won't know if you got that 2nd Hot Streak until after you start casting your next Fireball in most cases anyway. So his situation would occur, but probably with an extra Fireball or Scorch or Frostfire bolt in between the 2 Hot Streaks, at least in a real raid situation.