Roywyn

Checking the log, Vulkaire and Jarlyn had similar average hit damage on all spells while Hobo's was 10% above.
The misses and pyros have been mentioned, what remains is the crit RNG.


Fire and RNG
What happens when someone goes from 0% to 100% crit?

For a frost mage (and pretty much every other caster class), it's a 100% DPS increase.
Or, well, Balance Druids scale a bit better too due to Nature's Grace.
For Fire Mages, it's roughly a 200% DPS increase.
For Frostfire Mages, it's roughly a 300% DPS increase.

So, yes, Fire and especially Frostfire Specs are very vulnerable to RNG.
You'll absolutely wreck meters if you're 20% above your actual crit rate like in Synless' Naxx-25 parse.
You'll also pretty much suck if you can't get a crit for the life of it. Seen some 2.4 Sunwell Destrolocks with 17% instead of 40%crit.
Imagine that happening to a Frostfire Mage. Painful.

The same happens for Axe spec Warriors with Deep Wounds and and perhaps Sudden Death on top.


Frostfire Bolt Weaving
Replying to some comments above.

If you have absolutely no haste, you just spam FFB Rank 2. But you're also doing something wrong with your gear or group.

Fireball is a waste of mana, time and DPS in an FFB build. FFB is always better to cast.

As for DoT uptime, you'll likely end up with a 2.5s FFB cast time early on, giving you 3 ticks over 10 seconds.

Also, FFB weaving isn't really hard. Play a Haunt lock for one day, then come back.


Ghetto DoT timer macros
When trying out a Haunt warlock, I found the following macros pretty helpful:
The button is UA, and when you press it, it becomes a question mark until 15 seconds later. Added that for the other DoTs as well.

It worked surprisingly well for me, it turned "DoT Timer watching" into "Whack-a-Mole".

It should work for FFB too. Make a button for a 9s timed rank 2, click it everytime it lights up and spam rank 1 on another button otherwise.

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.

 

Frostx

Shouldn't the reset time be 9s minus your FFB cast time? (not sure if the macro accepts decimals, so prob just round off to 7 or 8s ?)

 

Roywyn

That would depend on whether the 9s macro reset cooldown timer begins when your FFB casts starts or when the cast completes.
Would be 9s in the first case and 7-8s in the second case.

Someone should test it

[Edit]: Thanks Greyrest!
That means that a 9s reset timer works if you treat your buttons gently.

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.

 

grayrest

The reset is the time since button press.

 

Frostx

In that case i think running with an 8s timer would be better for button mashers like me? (to minimize delay between casts - a consequence of watching Otherguy videos and a habit i can't drop) I tend to mash for at least another 0.5 seconds after a cast starts.

 

Ploppy

Hey, thats actually a really good idea. I´ve recently been trying to make various cast sequense macros for ABar, (full mobility ABar,Fire Blast,lance spam is very fun), and this sounds like another brilliant example. Just one thing tho, in the case of FFB why not just make the macro cast a lower rank as long as the dot is ticking and swap back to max rank when the dot has run out? Is it cause the tooltip would remain the same and it would be tricky to tell where in the sequence you are?

Oh and yet another side note, anyone else also think downranking to maximise dot ticks isnt intended by blizz and when its time for lv 90 they will try to nerf it somehow? Not that it really matters, I mean I´m sure they will actually hit the intended DPS marks for all classes pretty well in the end. Its just that it sounds just like the kind of creative spell aplication blizz will not have thought about including in their balance calculations. Good for us tho, if you´re going to hope for some aspect of your class to be OP its best to be just a little bit OP. Retridins will get nerfed, something like this (if it turns out to take us over the intended DPS mark) will most likely be left as it is till next expansion.

 

Bereban

Assuming no pushbacks and no lag you need more than 12.5% haste (gear + Imp.Moonkin + Wrath of Air) to not loose the third tick of the old FFB2 DoT if running an 8s timer. Otherwise the second FFB1 leaves your hand after the 8s reset an the new FFB2 lands before the old FFB2 DoT can complete.
Finally the FFB2 DoT seems to be a bug and most likely will get fixed in the future.

 

Baruk

Hi,
I'm not sure if that the correct thread but I can't find the rawr thread anymore.
I'm getting a strange bg in rawr.mage: For some reasons it doesn't take elemental precission correctly into account, meaning that my hit is displayed as 17% (176rating) whether I skill EP or not (should be 14% without, shouldn't it?). Anyone have a clue what I'm doing wrong here?

Per Aspera ad Astra

 

arch

What about casting FFB for the dot as a fireball spec, 19/52/0ish?

 

Roywyn

FFB with 3 DoT ticks is then 12 DPCT more than FB.
You lose a Glyph slot and Hot Streak uptime (3% less crit).

Could be a viable sidegrade unglyphed due to mana if FFB was added to spell impact.
Saying unglyphed, because I consider the Scorch Glyph mandatory for maximum performance.


It's not very useful now to cast across specs.
FB specs are FB specs and FFB specs are FFB specs.

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.

 

Vand1

The Rawr display you are referring to lists your hit rate for all spells. Since EP only affects frost and fire spells, it is not factored into the hit rate display. It is taken into account for the spells which it affects. Simply mouse over the various spells and you will see a hit rate for frost and fire spells that takes EP into account. Arcane Focus would work the same way, since it only affects arcane spells.

I found myself running unknowingly over the hit cap and wondering why Rawr was assigning 0 value to additional hit before Kavan helped me figure this out.

 

Luc

I'm fairly fresh to theorycrafting mage talents and DPS numbers, my mage has generally been about my 4th in line, so up until the patch, I didn't put much time into reading the 3.0.2 talent adjustments.

I'm playing and interested in Fire right now, his gear level is a muddle of Kara and Lesser PvP piece's as well as a few Badge items.
The World of Warcraft Armory

There have been a few posts within this thread already about situations where scorch spam, living bomb and hot streak pyro's may have a chance of being at least as effective as using fireball as the primary nuke.

Right now I'm using the standard rotation with fireball as the mainstay, but I only raid 10's and I don't usually get the same complete set of mana regen options as I might in 25's. Our DPS on these runs isn't top notch either, so they are not all 2 minute Kara boss's. I am forced to use Improved Mage armor over Molten armor as well as using Improved Mana gem.

What I'm thinking is that the mana efficiency gain of going pure scorch should let me swap to Molten armor. This is effectively adding 11% crit to my Hot Streak trigger (5% Molten, 6% scorch talent) With the way Hot streak proc chance scales up faster as crit rises I'm wondering if there is any value into me giving the spec a serious consideration.

I was thinking I could push it further towards its strength by re gemming to crit. (Do spells have a single table based miss/hit/crit roll like melee white hits, or is it like the rogue specials where your hits are rolled before your crit). Due to chaining scorch, the uncertainty and risk of letting the scorch stack roll off with large miss chances isn't a factor either.

If the fight is faster, or I realise partway in that I'll have ample mana, I figure that I can change to a scorch, scorch, fire blast (6 sec talented, also improved crit from talent) rotation to bump the DPS some more.

--
On the same topic, would someone mind clarifying the formula for working out the chance of a Hot Streak? I'm working on the assumption of simply crit*crit (so 50% -> .5 x .5 = 0.25 -> 25%) which would be 12.5% chance after each given spell cast as an average, but then something in the back of my mind has me thinking it's more involved that than, with the way crits can pair up with their neighbour anywhere in the log (ie. 1 and 2 might not might not pair up, then 3 and 4 might not pair, but 2 and 3 might have both been crits)
I'm sure there is a good mathematical expression for the answer, would love to know it :-). My gut tells me that I've oversimplified something.

 

Baruk

Have they changed hit mechanics? 176 hitrating should be 14% (12,6 rating per percent). Why it's displaying 17% then?
Also it shows me 100% hitrate on fire spells (when I mouseover).

Per Aspera ad Astra

 

Akston

My guess would be the 3% hit from misery if you have that selected under buffs and debuffs.

 

Baruk

Damn that it.. Thanks mate that really confused me....

Per Aspera ad Astra

 

grayrest

You'd do a macro like:
For any button you're continuously hitting, you have to do all the spells in the sequence because the reset condition will refresh every time you hit the button to cast anything. For these macros I like to have a short reset so that it resets if I stop spamming the button.

 

Shaewyn

Unless /castsequence has changed (or my understanding of it is wrong) this will never cast Rank 2 FFB, as the reset timer is less than the cast time for FFB. Also, does Rank 2 FFB's dot override Rank 1's dot?

I'd recommend
to get to the next rank FFB cast.

 

Akston

I wonder if you could make something like If that works it would be incredibly convenient although really with a 50% critrate you would end up refreshing the DoT too soon a lot i would think.

 

Massael

I don't think any sort of macro functionality at the moment can include procs from hot streak. I had thought about a /cast Pyroblast
/stopcasting

that would be inserted into a FFB macro - assuming it didn't bug out the GCD but I suspect it would cancel too many casts inadvertently to be of real use.

 

Gnomecuddler

Well currently im running a 0/50/11 spec. I used to be top 4 on most pure dps fights like Brutallus. Now post patch I get outdmgd by hunters, rogues and warriors by quite a large margin (our dual glaive warrior had 4600dps on Brutallus).

Now I usually am pretty convinced about my PvE mage skills, but im really curious wether I am doing something wrong or it is a balance issue.

Its not really hard, I just stack scorch (with glyph). Spam fireball and use Instant Pyro at every Hot Streak proc (ofc not breaking fireball cast for it). Stack CD's at <35%.

I have almost perfect gear (m'uru trinket, twins shoulders etc) so I really could use some serious advice about my situation.

First post here so I hope im living up to the standards here, this site has been very helpfull sofar.

BTW I gemmed mainly haste, currently at 360 haste. 37% crit selfbuffed

 

Blazemost

If what your saying is true, our job would then be to get as much haste as we can, 360 seems like a very high number. This is not raid buffed. If our class is based on RNG and crit, then we might as well go the safest path and spec for damage/haste. Hot Streak just comes and goes, there is an internal cooldown in their somewhere.

 

Akston

First off the consensus seems to be that 11/50 is better than 0/50/11 at 70 although the difference is really quite minor. Second, it seems rather odd that you are having a harder time competing now than pre-3.0. Most mages that i have seen WWS reports of are doing far more damage than was possible before although RNG is probably a much bigger factor with hotstreak than it ever was before. I think top physical dps are coming out slightly ahead at 70 but before 3.0 they were already ahead in most cases so it doesn't seem that much has really changed at all. Warriors sort of got a huge buff with deep wounds actually stacking now and working the way our ignite does and hunters have been kinda nuts for a while. I am not really up on rogues but it seems they got some nice dps from new talents and they weren't exactly hurting pre-3.0 either. All in all it is most likely just poor rng for you and/or good rng for the physical classes in your raids causing the big differences.

Edit: Do you have a parse that we could possibly look at it? It really is hard to say why you were behind without being able to see what happened.

There is? From everything I have read it procs every time you get to consecutive crits and even on the ptr when I was playing around i get many back to back procs both on test dummies and in 10-mans.. The fact that you can randomly go for long periods of time without getting a proc is simply that, randomness. When I was raiding on my mage I would often have fluctuations of 200-400 dps depending on whether or not I was critting and I can only see that circumstance getting worse with crits not only being more powerful but the order of your crits being important as well.

 

threep*

Their? And there is no internal cooldown for Hot Streak.

 

Alayne

There definately is not an ICD on Hot Streak. RNG loved me on Brut this week and I had an 85% crit rate on fireball. I was casting Pyroblast just about every 3rd spell.

 

Dhaalamar

I'm in a very similar situation. I have most of the best sunwell gear (haste 280) and crit 31% self buffed. I used to be #3 in our sunwell runs. Since the patch, I'm lucky to get #9. I consider myself a pretty good mage and I'm hitting things like hotstreak the moment they proc. I've even tried mixing living bomb in there although it's starting to look more like lolbomb.

From the wws stuff I'm hearing it seems like lower geared mages are doing better but the very top end geared mages are just dying. Brutalis is the best example and our rogues are starting to do in the order of 300k more dmg than me on this fight.