This do-able, and probably the intended way of "preventing" stacking.

The reason I say this with some confidence is because this is how elixirs worked before the Alchemy changes (the same changes that made "Battle" and "Guardian" elixirs). When you used Arcane Intellect and Elixir of Sages, the Arcane Intellect's stronger Intellect buff worked, but you received no additional Intellect from the Elixir--you did, however, receive the Spirit from Elixir of Sages.

Lhivera said:

1) You have long argued that Blizzard should make respeccing harder. While I disagree with it, that isn't the issue here. Instead, its that Blizzard itself disagrees with you. Locking people into one spec is directly at odds with everything else they have done in the game to date. You might like it if they changed, but I am highly skeptical that this is something they are going to change lightly, given their track record and lack of statements saying they want to hurt respeccing.

2) Avoiding a respec for small performance changes is one thing, but if they continue to have talents which are great for pve but suck for pvp (elemental precision, playing with fire) or are great for pvp but inferior for pve (magic absorption, improved blink, shattered barrier, blazing speed), people will want to respec, and are likely to have significant pvp or pve performance issues if they don't. For instance, a frost mage who wants to go 18 deep in fire for improved scorch can only do so at the expense of a lot of solid pvp frost or arcane talents, or keep the pvp frost talents at the expense of pve mana efficiency. That hasn't changed.

I would agree that it would be ideal if you could spec however you wanted and your pvp and pve performance would be identical, but I think that is a very unrealistic goal, if those spec differences are supposed to be meaningful in any way.

Given that, I don't see how Blizzard can square the circle of:

A) Giving people flexibility for different aspects of game play (raiding, pvp, solo pve)
B) Disallowing that flexibility for glyphs.

Either respeccing becomes useless (great, I can respec frost for pvp, but my glypyhs are all for fire pve so I am owned by pvp glyphed players), or glyphs have to be flexible. Since Blizzard has gone out of its way to allow flexibility, I am betting on glyphs being flexible. Again, you can do that while still disallowing hot swapping. Just make the glyphs cheap.

If Blizzard locks people into one spec by either forcing suboptimal play in another spec or the outpouring of huge amounts of gold to change, Lhivera might be happy, but Blizzard would have a widespread player revolt on its hands.

So...the windup time on the first bolt doesn't matter much, so frostfirebolt should be ok as it is only .5s longer and the mob isn't even aware of you yet. It isn't like we're talking pyroblast-level time increases.

Frostfirebolt is longer range, so that's good for an opener too. If it's too long range for chaincasting, choke up to frostbolt range.

Frostfirebolt will also proc frostbite as often as frostbolt.

Your additional frostbolts will hit harder, including shatter combos.

Assuming permafrost, the chill effect from frostfirebolt will last till the monster is dead when soloing. So it doesn't matter that frostbolts don't extend it. Worst case you do a point blank cone of cold to re-establish the chill (because if it has worn off, the mob is in melee with you).

I'm sorry, I just don't see the issue here. I've done enough frost to know that it takes a number of frostbolts to kill level appropriate stuff solo, and that will mean the extra glyph damage from the several bolts will overcome the damage loss by using frostfirebolt as the opener. You're no worse off than you were before in solo kills, and you're doing more damage on everything that can't be snared (which is most group content).

Lets say it takes you four frostbolts to kill a typical mob. That means it takes 10 seconds of real time, 7.5 seconds in combat. Using your numbers, with a frostfire bolt and three frostbolts it is taking 10.5 seconds of real time, 7.5 seconds in combat. .86+1.05+1.05+1.05 = 4.01*frostbolt damage - same damage exactly, except shatter combos do more, same amount of time in combat. If it takes more than 4 frostbolts, the glyph+frostfire is strictly superior.

(iirc, chill from frostfirebolt lasts 9s, 12s with permafrost. There is no need to refresh the chill with bolts, the mob will be dead, or it will be in melee and cone of cold will refresh for whatever time you need)

The numbers don't match your argument.

If frostfirebolt did not exist, you might have a point, but it does exist.

Does Mage Armor double channeled spell dps (3 Mind Flay ticks in 1.5s) or not affect it at all? I'm guessing the latter but it doesn't hurt to double check.

On leveling and killing mobs: if you're ice spec, opening with nukes kinda silly now. Freezes have been changed to a reliable break-after-x-damage model, so you can abuse this fact to maximum killing potential. Here is how it works (and I'm doing this in leveling greens, btw):

Step 1: Frost Nova
Step 2: Ice lance. If it does not crit, throw another ice lance.
Step 3: You should've dealt around 2000 damage to your frozen target by now. Deep Freeze it.
Step 4: Ice lance, 3 of them. All on the deep freeze. If you've had any luck at all with crits, this should kill it.
Step 5: If it's still alive, fire blast. If you're really unlucky, frostbolt.

Now that deep freeze is on cooldown for another 25 seconds, you need a new plan for the next mob. Try this:

Step 1: Summon Water Elemental
Step 2: Freeze the mob. DO NOT SHATTER COMBO. Ice lance instead.
Step 3: Now do your shatter combo. This always works, because the ice lance + waterbolt will never be enough to break the freeze.
Step 4: Seriously it should be very dead. Frostbolt/fireblast to finish the job if you have to.

Now you can DF the next mob, pet nova the next one, DF again. Eventually you'll have to do some good old frostbolt nuking, but the water elemental comes back before too long anyway.

Oh and if you really want to hammer on the damage (almost never necessary), frost nova, frostbolt, then frostbolt into a DF and spam lance. Though it'll probably be dead by the time the first ice lance hits.

^^^----why we should not cry too much about stuff until we've really tried it in WOLK.

I approached the argument using the poster's own numbers and strategy depicted as the "frost mage playstyle". He can keep his old playstyle with glyph, and get identical results.

Vontre approached the argument by saying "Why would you want to do that at all? There is a new playstyle that is more efficient for deep frost."

I do think it is useful to look at old rotations in the new model, as expecting people to change what they're comfortable with may not be their route to fun, and the old style may be better suited for some pulls.

This is speculation, but it seems to me that there has been a consistent tendency for effects altering the behavior of all schools of magic to interact differently than effects altering the behavior of specific schools. Since Arcane Intellect is a +int modifier, and Elixir of Sages is one +spi modifier and one +int modifier, it's relatively easy to make them work out correctly (the +spi modifier from the Elixir of Sages applies, but the +int modifier collides with the pre-existing stronger one from the AI, and doesn't apply).

However, it's historically been trickier with effects that apply to specific schools of magic vs. effects that apply to all schools of magic. For a possible indication that the same trend will continue in WotLK, see, for example, the earlier discussion in this thread (~pg. 9) about FFB's original double-dipping behavior on Imp Scorch, Winter's Chill and CoE vs. on Shatter. To recap, if you have multiple mods all affecting the same specific value (+%fire crit, +int, +%frost damage) it's relatively simple to prevent them from stacking - you just take the stronger one. But it gets trickier when you have a global mod and a specific mod (e.g., +%spell dmg and +%fire dmg). I'm not saying it would be impossible for Blizzard to make them not stack, but it seems that they haven't done the work necessary to define which stat mods should be considered subsets of other stat mods. Please correct me if I've misunderstood anything!

Every spell in that rotation is instant, so you can move however you want during a pull to set up for the next once. Or just pull the next mob to you with ice lance.

I think what should be taken to heart most about Vontre's rotations there is that, due to the nature of the new Frost Nova mechanics, one can get a lot of extra effective crit chance by setting up spells properly. Using an Ice Lance, rather than a Frostbolt, to lead off on a Frostbite proc or a Frost Nova essentially gets you 1 frozen Ice Lance with +50% crit, compared to .6 Frostbolts with 0% extra crit. The new mechanics change the most optimal spell sequence.

That said, I think it's an open question whether we should view this as a counter-balance to not having a Frostbolt chill with the glyph (as a way to compensate), or merely the consequence of the new freeze mechanics. It would strike me as somewhat ironic if, to make up for not having a Frostbolt chill, we simply didn't use Frostbolt or used it much less in a non-raid situation.

The frostbolt glyph is phenomenally stupid. Whereas the fire one is a straight out buff in every conceivable way, frostbolt suffers a huge disadvantage for the same benefit. Parity?

Unless I am wrong, the fireball glyph is a nerf to some pvp tactics (like using the dot to keep rogues in the open) and it won't work with trinkets and such that triggers off DoT effects anymore. Saying that however, this pales to the disadvantage that the frostbolt one gives.