While trying to learn the new fire spec on PTR, it felt like a lot of mental management to try and squeeze out every last bit of dps possible from Hot Streak and LB, so I wouldn't be at all surprised if they intended for us to try and use Hot Streak to exploit Ignite. The update to World in Flames seems to suggest that as well. Or it could just be coincidence. Personally I'd prefer not to have to fuss about it.

The real thing I meant to post about is that they changed it so that you can't re-glyph in raids anymore; you have to be near a Lexicon of Power by an Inscription trainer. So it'll be a bummer for swapping between the glyph for Molten Armor and Mage Armor depending on the fight (which again, it's mostly a hunch, but I think they're designing us to use both depending on the fight)

To be fair, spell damage doesn't scale poorly on short cast-time spells because of their short cast time. A spell with a 3.0 second BASE casting time (ie: not Fireball, its base cast time is 3.5 sec) has exactly double the coeffiecient for spellpower that a 1.5 second cast has, we all know this. Their coefficient per cast time is the same.

The real reasons that Fireball scales better than Scorch is because of talents. Improved Fireball is a big one. So is Empowered Fireball. No talent exists that reduces Scorch cast time (thus increasing coefficient per cast time) or increases the coefficient directly like Improved Fireball (also increasing the coefficient per cast time).

/quibble

Working currently on PTR. I have exactly 50% of my OOC regen as 14/47/0 fire with mage armor up. Will be better at 80 at 18/52/0+1 and 5% molten, but 14/47/0 is performing quite well for 3.0.2.

Molten Armour: Yes (at least the tooltip adds 5% instead of 3%)
Mana Gem: works (and stacks with 2/5 frostfire set)

I maxed inscription and discovered 7 major glyphes, but only for DK, Paladin and Warrior.

Glyphs:

Ice Armor: works
Invisibility: works
Blink: works
Mana Gem: works, stacks with SCB--both together on an emerald at 71 gave a 3251 usewhile the base is 2400. Glyph updates the tooltip to the proper 2600 range.
Arcane Explosion: works, updates tooltip correctly and I did check the actual cost
Polymorph: works on fireball dot

That's all the glyphs on the northrend AH not previously mentioned.

Edit: Anybody have 2/5 frostfire and a SCB? I'm curious.

WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> Interaction of frostbite + fingers of frost

This is puzzling to me. If they intended the 2 to proc at the same time, why not just merge them into one talent and provide some other raid viable talent for 3 pts to a frost mage either in FoF's place or Frostbites.

I think moving the merged talent to FoF's place and putting a new talent in Frostbite's place might work the best.

Well some people might not want both. In my experience for PvE frost I generally find that frostbite is a liability especially on pulls but FoF is really nice in PvE.

That quote is very ambigous. At first, I thought he meant that they were going to make it so FoF charges aren't consumed when the target is already frozen. But, after some testing I see there is a bug currently that Frostbite is consuming a charge when it is "cast." At least that's what I think is happening.

That is all.

Given that the Molten Armor tooltip changes with the glyph, it doesn't seem like the Fireball one is working, since the tooltip for it still includes the DOT language. Not sure if this is an accurate test, though.

Indeed. With this now confirmed many PvE frost mages will drop frostbite and take other talents to min/max DPS. Not that the frost tree needed more points freeing up, mind.

Another solution would have been a Glyph of Frostbite. Drops the freeze effect but increases the proc-rate and applies the "counts as frozen" effect. I just hate having talents that have a specific anti-synergy.

Another good idea and good use of inscription. But I agree anti-synergy in talents is bad.

While it may not help frost specs, there are non-frost specs that do take advantage of frostbite's position in the tree.

How is it anti-synergy? Having one does not make another one worse. Critical Mass has anti-synergy with combustion; a higher crit chance reduces the returns for combustion. THAT is anti-synergy. Having FoF and frostbite both proc means that when someone in an arena breaks FoF early you can still get frozen bonuses on them (including deep freeze). Neither talent reduces the functionality of the other. Having them overlap makes both of them harder to counter than if you only had one or the other.

Area of Effect spells as of Build 8970

The gear is the Naxx-10 kit used before. 2200 spell damage buffed, 13% crit and 15% haste unbuffed. Full buffs are assumed.

Winter's Chill is assumed up only for Blizzarding in Frost specs.
Improved Cone of Cold is not taken because Frost is point-hungry enough. If you take it. add 35% to the appropriate values.

Flamestrike is assumed with the current scaling and a 2.0s cast time.


Specs are a bit vague. The exact off-spec choices will remain blurry until we know how Torment the Weak will work.
You can't really use Blizzard to its full potential and non-frost spec. You'd need Ice Shards, Piercing Ice, Frostbite, Shatter and 1/3 Improved Blizzard, forcing you into 19 points in frost.
You then can't pickup Elemental Precision if you are fire specced, or Incineration of you are Arcane Specced.

You can surely stitch together some very odd specs for that, but your overall performance would take a sharp drop.
Leaving out Cone of Col

Damage is given as DPS/target. Assuming 10 target for the purpose of MoE proc rate and for Living Bomb (the DoT is single target, so DoT damage is divided by 10 to virtually spread it over the AoE crowd).
Assuming Molten Armour. That shouldn't matter, Mage Armour only increases your total mana, and only Arcane spec improves its mana gain.


Arcane
Arcane Explosion - 1407 DPS, 3.5 DPM, 349 MPS (with MoE)
Blizzard - 1703 DPS, 4.9 DPM, 299 DPM (51/3/14+3 spec)

Frost
Blizzard - 1601 DPS, 4.9 DPM, 329 DPM (without Frostbite/Finger procs)
Cone of Cold - 1624 DPS, 2.4 DPM, 665 DPM (without Frostbite/Finger procs)
Frost Nova - 1136 DPS, 6.2 DPM, 183 DPM (without Frostbite/Finger procs)
Blizzard - 1969 DPS, 6.0 DPM, 329 DPM (with 30% more crit like in my log)

Fire
Arcane Explosion - 1195 DPS, 2.7 DPM, 441 MPS (with MoE)
Blizzard - 1450 DPS, 4.4 DPM, 328 DPM (no Frostbite/Shatter)
Blizzard - 1617 DPS, 4.4 DPM, 365DPM (0/51/19+1 with 28% Frostbite uptime and Shatter)

Living Bomb - 2795 DPS, 4.1 DPM, 690 DPM (lack of MoE hurts mana)
Blast Wave - 2510 DPS, 5.7 DPM, 441 DPM (positioning issues are likely)
Dragon's Breath - 2590 DPS, 5.3 DPM, 488 DPM (frontal cone only)

Flamestrike - 1783 DPS, 5.0 DPM, 358 DPM (spammed, no DoT ticks)
Flamestrike - 1709 DPS, 6.0 DPM, 286 DPM (spammed at 2.0s, 1 DoT tick)
Flamestrike - 3182 DPS, 8.9 DPM, 358 DPM (DPCT as DoT, all DoT ticks)


Conclusions
So, what does that all mean?

* Arcane only was strong due to its higher AoE cap. It's mostly useless now.

* Fire has the highest burst DPS spells, Flamestrike has become the best filler if it can be aimed and used.

* Blizzard with a slowing effect is very powerful and applies Winter's Chill.
* It's likely the highest RDPS AoE spell for sustained DPS, and is better than Fire's spammable filler spells if Shatter triggers continues to apply like they currently do.

* Master of Elements mechanics hurt Living Bomb efficiency mostly. Blizzard effieciency as well, but that spell compensates with its low mana cost compared to others.

Mind running the numbers for 51/0/20? AB being currently useless makes Incinerate useless and if they do make AB into a mana dump then those three points may or may not be a significant dps contribution. The linked spec is what I'd be inclined to use in a Hyjal-like instance. Tradeoff is Frost Channeling and Incinerate for much bigger aoe dps, though the Frost Channeling for shatter probably wouldn't be worth it without FoF.

Not entirely true -- Fingers of Frost still gives you the option to use the proc on a different target than the one you procced Frostbite against. How useful that is, I dunno.

Ballpark Guesstimate 1950 DPS. Plus/minus a few hundred.
The problem is that most relevant mechanics are simply not known or too variable.

One big variable is how long it takes for Frostbite to break.
That depends on the amount of damage it takes for Frostbite to break (which may depend on mob health).
It depends on when Frostbite procs and when the crit chance of the next wave is calculated.
It depends on your and your raid's DPS.


Also, currently Frostbite and Fingers act mostly independent on AoE:
They proc simultaneously, but Frostbite affects crit rate of the next spells against that target (see above), while Fingers affect the next spells that are calculated. It might affect the whole next wave even, we don't really know. We only know that it fades after a split second and that the crit rates on target summies get pretty high.

And most specs have a lot of strong points. Probably 34/0/37 would be the strongest spec with 2 minute AP (and you don't need more above 37 frost), but be generally worthless for anything else.
It's just too much variables and too much unknowns really.

Hey, did the average damage lost to partial resists on a skull-level target ever get toned down? Any estimates on average damage lost and/or amount of "hard" resistance?

Thanks!

It's not really an anti-synergy though. Think of it this way, if you're PvP'ing, and you proc frostbite on a rogue, you might have a dilemma between: Run away and get more distance for safety or "start casting ice lances asap to maximize damage". Now you can do *both*. Heck, the rogue might even think "well if he's not gonna break this frostbite with ice lance, I should use CloS -- then soon as clos is up you can still hit him with deep freeze and he's helpless.

I gotta tell you, I really enjoyed knowing that I always had FoF when I procced frostbite. It worked out pretty well for me. It was like a giant middle finger to druids, for one thing. So you shapeshifted did you? Well, how nice for you!

Yes, you might technically have more frozen dps opportunities overall if the two weren't tied together, but there's something to be said about reliability -- about KNOWING you always have X number of seconds to run, and Y number of seconds to get off your 2 spells. It lets you plan, it lets you strategize. It's less RNG and more carefully considered actions.

You know lots of times you'll be dueling a warrior and he'll do spell reflect the second he's caught in Frostbite. So what do you do? You Fire off two ice lances, one to eat the reflect (which you end up taking as a damage) and one to actually get through and do damage. Now you can just /yawn and wait for it to be over, spend the full 4 seconds of frostbite running away, then get off your two ice lances at your leisure.

Seems just like the old 6% average loss. Thaddius
About 40-45% of all casts are partials, losing 10-15% damage on average. The amount resisted shown is still not affected by debuffs, so we can't track the exact amount that has actually been resisted.

So, the good thing is that your CombustionMoltenFuryTrinketPotionFlameCapHeroism Fireball crits can at most be 30% resists and not 75%.