This is simply not true. 46 spell damage isnt 'nearly always' going to be superior to 40 hit. When your more then 40 hit below the hit cap 40 hit rating food will benefit you way more then 46 spell power in almost any occasion. Same counts for 16hit vs 19 power gems.

Rawr rates hit rating about 30-40% better then spellpower for me. This ofcourse differs for different levels of gear and spec but hit will always stay better then spellpower by a large margin.

The amount that hit devalues as you get closer to the hit cap is way smaller as you make it sound. Just as you are argueing 'hit devalues as you get close to the cap' you could also argue 'spell power devalues as you get better gear and get more spellpower'. For example by dropping 3% hit from misery rawr's ratings for spell power and hit only changed by 2%

No need to link your armory, its on the left of your post.

Also the cookie cutter fireball spec is 18/53, which looks like this
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

The point in magic absorption can be omitted to either student of the mind or magic attunement depending on person choice.

Yes the rotation is the same just use FB instead of FFB. Glyphs are the same as FFB except you use FB glyph instead of FFB glyph.

Why is it that every mage specced into 18/53/0 goes for 2/2 Flame Throwing instead of Dragon's Breath and Blastwave? I wouldn't ask this question if I saw at least a few mages here and there speccing into BW and DB, but nope. The spec is already as weak as it gets for AoE, why are we skipping these two hallmark AoE talents? 36 yard on your main nukes are enough in most every scenario and 30 yards on Scorch is not a game-breaker.

Anyone care to elaborate?

Less time moving is more DPS. Sure, on patchwerk it doesn't matter, but on fights that matter, having range is always a good thing. Dropping Range is a tough call.

Dragons Breath and Blastwave just aren't major factors in AOE DPS anymore. Personally, I pick up Dragons Breath (primarily for ulility more than AOE damage) dropping a point from World in Flames, as a matter of preference.

Wouldn't a flamestrike/blizzard provide better AoE than blastwave and dragon's breath? At least I'd think that blastwaves won't be welcomed in any AoE situation because of the pushback. Unless you glyph for it, which sounds counterproductive.

I pulled out the Noth and Archavon fights, and it looks like Maelstorm is not keeping up Living Bomb. As Manly notes in the opening post of http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t37364-f...e_bolt_thread/, Living Bomb and Hot Streak is a large portion of FFB DPS. Not keeping up living bomb means your mage is cutting his damage output severely. Also, for both fights I don't see any usage of Combustion or Icy Veins. He should at least be synching Icy Veins with Heroism, or chaining both abilities to take advantage of Molten Fury.

And [Futuresight Rune]? Get rid of that and have him pick up [Sundial of the Exiled]. Or [Cannoneer's Fuselighter]. Or [Mark of the War Prisoner]. Or any other decent trinket that doesn't have a pointless use effect of spirit. Spirit is only marginally more useful for arcane than FFB, which is to say not very much at all. He's also missing a hat with a meta - that is huge, because CSD's multiplier effect.

Was the ignite munching fixed?

I was some testing, as per this threads explanation http://elitistjerks.com/1045195-post612.html


I crit for 2591 with scorch, which should yield 518 ignite ticks. This procd hot steak and I immediately used Pyro to test, which also crit for 7478, which should yield 1495 ignite ticks. According to that thread, this instant cast crit after a non-instant cast crit should munch the other ignite.

However, the result was 2013 ignite ticks, meaning both were added together. Was this post wrong, or am I misunderstanding it still? Thank you

You could try using Power Auras Classic. Just set "Activation by:" to debuff, check the "Casted by me" box, and set the stacks to =1 for when you have 1 stack (as in there are no numbers on the debuff icon ingame), =2 for when you have 2 stacks of the debuff, and =3 for when you have 3. The mod also has a feature to allow you to play a sound, so if, for instance you want to have it play a warning sound on a certain stack, you can do that.

You're not testing a case that would cause an ignite munch. You need an instant cast to crit after a non-instant cast spell with travel time that crits.

Try your test with Fireball or FFB as the first cast instead.

(Reason is that the each spell updates the total ignite damage that should be on the target when it leaves your hands, but the ignite isn't applied until the projectile hits the target. So if you chain a projectile with an instant, and both crit, both spells independently calculate what they think the total ignite on the target should be. If there's no ignite already rolling on the target, both spells add their ignite damage to 0. The one that arrives second overwrites the first, and that's how you lose the damage.)

Personally I use Satrina's buff frames and I just have another buff bar that just shows AB debuff and I moved it near my unitframes in the middle of my screen, I also have Missile Barrage and Icyveins showing there so I know when to evocate on the last second. Normally I would have all of those up in my buff frame but in raids I can have 20+ buffs so its hard to find it quickly.

Yes but scorch is a non-instant cast spell with travel time. Then the hot streak pyro was the instant cast after that. I will try again as you suggested.

With the 3.0.8 changes and the hotfix to arcane (where we can no longer double dip on the 60% AB debuff), what is the highest single target DPS spec?

Full Arcane (with IV)
Frostfire
or Fire with TTW (21/50/0)

Certainly 21/50/0 is NOT anywhere near top of anything. Fire without Living Bomb is pretty pathetic.

I believe most simulations show Arcane still a bit in front of 18/53/0 Fire specs (with TtW and LB), but that assumes that someone else is applying Imp Scorch. FFB is then 3rd, behind those two specs, but has massive improvements in mana usage. So it really depends on your raid and how much mana and other mages you have.

Thanks, been trying to catch up on the arcane thread and piece everything together, Screwed up on the Fire build, I should have checked out a calculator first, I did imply fire with torment of the weak and living bomb.

I have been raiding a lot nowdays, with my guild we face 10 man raids and now i can say to have a good 10 man gear

When we raid, we usually have a retribution paladin wich provide replenishment and JoW

The fact is that, in most of the fights i face, i rarely need to use evocation

My spec is a standard FrostFire with Dragon's Breath and Blast Weave for farming

So, i am wondering if i do something wrong, i usually am in the top or close of the dps chart, i keep scorch debuff up and living bomb ticking, trying to fire hotstreak pyroblasts as soon as the talent procs, and for what i've read in this forum and for what rawr says my dps is good

My question is if there is any mana dump i can consider using, since i could use ALOT more mana in many fights

In TBC there was Arcane Blast spamming, but now i am kinda lost finding a good solution, someone have a good idea?

Maybe it's not just my problem, and blizzard could take off the hat a mana dump spell for fire

Thanks

Simply put, no, FFB spec simply don't have alot of mana issues. There's nothing you can really do to burn your mana outside of the proper rotation.

I just respecced from a 19/52 spec, which I actually found kinda annoying because of the mana issues, as well as weak aoe and dependance on debuffs etc.

My point is, about a low DPM high DPS nuke for fire, it's an interesting idea, but it would be annoying if it turned out something like the TTW fire spec. Basicly to try to get mana from every resource you can, so you can spam that high DPS lower DPM spell. One thing I actually like about the frostfire spec is that it's lighter on mana, and alot more usefull in 10 mans and 5 mans (we clear content in 2 days, so rest of the week is pretty much just that)

Arcane though has the same thing, except it works prefectly with rotations you can change based on available mana and random occurences in fights. Fire doesn't have much choice, either you have enough mana, or you don't.

So I'd rather not turn fire spec playstyle more towards arcane (adding a mana dump). I think it's nice that we simply have a few different specs with different playstyles, roles and specialities.

Remember replanishment will only be given to frost mages (instead of improved water elemental), so unless frost damage gets boosted allot you still wont see frost allot in raids, thus not the replanishment either.

... and because replenishment is already assumed for balancing Fire, FFB and Arcane, a further replenishment provider won't make the slightest bit of difference because it doesn't stack. It adds flexibility to your raid setup at the cost of some personal dps and nothing else.

Benign Ignite Damage

11124+12766+4482+12566 = 40938*0.4 = 16375/2 = 8188
11124+12766+4482+12566+9870 = 50808*0.4 = 20323/2 = 10162

My calculated ignite damage is 20323. My actual ignite damage is 28511. Even though is this is the opposite of ignite munching in the sense that you're talking about, it is still a result of the same underlying issue. This is one of the reasons that it's simply that big of an issue to address. It usually weighs itself out in the end.

I'd beg to differ. After a two week love affair with Arcane, I had to switch back to Frostfire or Fireball spec to provide the raid with the 10% crit debuff since we run with only 2 mages. My choices were either our old friend Frostfire (0/53/18) or the new, second FOTM (besides Arcane) Fireball (18/53/0) specs. Rawr showed the Fireball spec leaps and bounds ahead of Frostfire and I decided to give it a shot.

And voila, Fireball spec does outdamage Frostfire spec by a significant amount. My fireballs crit as hard as frostfire bolts and non-crit much, much harder. The dps difference is around 6-7% from my experience but when you are in the range of 6k dps, this accounts for about 400 dps which, in my book, does not justify the better AoE dps with Frostfire spec.

Mana issues? 3D Sartharion, yes, I had to evocate (which some might think a non-issue). Anything else? No. As long as you have 2 replenishment classes in your raid (or 1 for 10 mans) you will not run into any mana issues.

The next obvious question of how it compares to arcane is more difficult to answer. Our other mage plays the arcane spec close to flawlessly however there are slight gear differences to make a comparison 100% accurate. I have yet to try the Fireball spec in Naxx (with Patch for example), but for example, for 3d Sarth, he was doing more damage on the first drake (ridiculous burst), and I was doing more on the second drake, etc. Losing IV definitely hurts your burst potential, but when your fireballs start hitting for 5.5k-6k non-crit, you don't ask for much more.

To sum up, after having played Frostfire since beta, Arcane the last 2 weeks and Fireball the last 2 days, I can say that Fireball and Arcane are both very viable and close to each other in terms of DPS, while Frostfire lacks behind. Being a huge fan of Frost when TBC first launched, I won't even go into to the heartache called Frost raid dps.

Going to try to answer this question.

Given last night's 25man Naxx, we had 3 mages in the raid. I was 18/53/0, while the other 2 were playing 57/3/11 I believe. From the choice of specs from 3 mages, you can easily see I went fire for scorch debuff (and the fact that my gear isn't really too good for arcane), and the other 2 mages went arcane just because from our experiences, it is higher single target DPS. I seem to somehow pull ahead on fights that last longer, fights where the arcane mages may have had to evocate around 35%, letting me dps during MF for a few seconds longer.

Another debate betweeen arcane and fire appears to be about having a mana dump. From what I recall, arcane can do a ABx?? till MBAM rotation if they have mana to spare or something of that sort? It seemed to prove worthwhile on fights such like...Malycos where they can dump their mana from p1 -> p2 transitions and evocate after or during the end of p2. Maly also is a fight where it hurts a fire mage alot because of the limited dps time you have for MF.

To sum it up:

1. Arcane
2. FB
3. FFB

but depends on the fight, your gear and possibly even skill level. So I would experiment on your own and see which spec fits your playstyle.

*sidenote*: I also haven't noticed any serious mana issues while playing 18/53/0, it may use more mana than FFB, but the only fight I recall using evocate on is Thaddius right before he becomes active as a "just in case I need more mana". Every other fight ended quite fast so I never encountered the need for an evocate.

A mage in optimal gear for 18/53/0 vs. a mage in optimal gear for 0/53/18 will be very close, the 18/53/0 should win by 1-2% on the average. If you are finding yourself 6-7% ahead with 18/53/0 it is one of two things, 1) the increased RNG in FFB specs which sometimes works for you and sometimes against, or 2) gear issue, your gear for fire spec is closer to optimal than your gear for FFB spec.

edit: judging by your gear which is excellent and contains most of the BiS items for EITHER spec it is probably issue 1 rather than 2 in your case.