I just meant as an example, if FFB did prove to be superior only on one fight then it likely wouldn't be worth having, but I don't think that is the case, hence the discussion.

But you raise a good point, some fights you can't expect targets you switch to to be snared, I never really considered that.

There are also a lot of fights that I find myself quite mana starved on, especially since dropping alchemy for tailoring, no more mad alchemist potions. I'm sure this will be less of an issue as the raid gets more geared and experienced and bosses die faster, but I still get a nasty taste in my mouth every time I have to evocate. FFB would help there too.

I have always had Rawr set to a 300 second fight but making this 600 and 900s the gap between FFB and Fireball definitely diminishes.

Could you elaborate? We tank XT-002 a few yards in front of the stairs and sometimes we are getting 3 scrap bot packs from one pile, and if my frost nova is on cooldown I can't handle it very easily, especially when most of the ranged is focused on the heart. All the piles are spawning usually, but one attempt we had scrap bots from every pile and 2 bomb bots from the back left and one on the back right, is this just RNG or are we doing something wrong?

I think of frostfire spec as a utility spec. I don't swap gearsets between ffb and fireball so I can afford to drop elemental precision. I've also found that frost channeling tends to push me overboard as far as mana efficiency is concerned. The only fight where I find myself getting close to OOM is auriaya since I'm laying down blizzards every 30 seconds.

I've found it extremely useful in Ulduar to have imp blizzard and permafrost (not just XT.)

The only dps talent sacrifice I've had to make is combustion, but it's really a lackluster talent in 25man raids anyway.

If we need single target dps, I can always pull out TTW/Fireball.

Because if you tank him in the center, or near the stairs, then the adds can spawn from the 4 corners, and they will in fact get to the boss rather fast. If you tank him instead on the left/right well, the adds only spawn from the 2 opposite piles far away.

<Quick Question> I replaced my 7.5 Helm with Collar of the Wyrmhunter. Tonight I got my 8.5 chest. Would it be best to not use my new chest and retain my T7 bonus till I get 2 piece or does the 30 spell damage and 20 some crit outweigh the 5percent critical strike damage? Thanx in advance.

Thanks for the feedback on Deconstructor guys. We raided before I read this feedback and we tanked the crybaby dead center in the room. I did move overly aggresive to my pile (first spark) and it made a big difference. One time my heap did not spawn anything so I blinked over to the closest heap and helped out.

I am not sure this question belongs in this thread but I risk it anyways. My prime spec is cookie cutter Arcane. I have come to love the single target DPS and I got my gear and rotation together. After reading feedback on Ulduar I believe I should drop my secondary spec (deep frost) for FFB. The problem is that my gear is heavy on haste and probably do not have enough crit for FFB.

What do you recommend as secondary talent build with my gear? Fireball, FFB or something else?

I generally value the 4 item T7 bonus at under 1% DPS. 30 spell damage and 20 crit rating is highly likely to be better than the 4 item set bonus - the exact details depend on your spec. If you can run RAWR, I suppose can use it to crunch some numbers. I use a Mac and I kind of like doing my own theorycrafting, so I just use a spreadsheet that covers my talent spec.

The wording of the 4 item set bonus can be misleading. It's a 5% increase of the 50% bonus, which means it's 2.5% of non-crit damage.

Here's a quickly calculated table with crit modifiers in 25% increments and crit chance in 10% increments, showing the relative DPS increase from the 4 item T7 bonus:

So for a frost spec getting 209% crits without the set bonus and critting 50% of the time, it's an approximately 0.8% DPS increase.

Consider the following when choosing your second spec:
-Which will be the highest dps spec for ulduar (fb)
-Does your raid need a off-spec scorcher from time to time (fb or ffb)
-With which spec does arcane share more gear (fb)

Unless you have a good amount of crit gear or you are willing to spend dkp (or whatever system you are using) on crit gear your "best" secondary spec probably is FB.

...

dersleeper: Thanks a bunch. Your logic is sound. Still I get more DPS according to Rawr. Ill try ffb and fb. It is tricky with scorch as most of our mages run as arcane. I count on that I will be the one keeping scorch up.

I'll read up on glyphs and get starting on the dummies so I get the rotations down properly.

Roywyn updated "WotLK - Complete Mage Compendium (3.1 Updated)" thread but didnt delete "Frostfire/Focus Magic is still not dead!". Is it still working? It faded when buffed mage critted at our tries.

I'd actually have to disagree. Your two specs should complement one another, and Arcane and Fire don't do that: they're both high single target DPS, high mana consumption specs. If you're having to switch out of Arcane, it's probably for more better mana efficiency or more AoE DPS. Given that, FFB is the better option.

Personally, based on what I've seen, if you're going to be using 2 PvE specs for Ulduar, you're probably best off going (Arcane OR Fireball) AND Frostfire bolt. FFB just does a much better job of complementing the other two specs than they do of complementing one another.

"I generally value the 4 item T7 bonus at under 1% DPS. 30 spell damage and 20 crit rating is highly likely to be better than the 4 item set bonus - the exact details depend on your spec. If you can run RAWR, I suppose can use it to crunch some numbers. I use a Mac and I kind of like doing my own theorycrafting, so I just use a spreadsheet that covers my talent spec.

The wording of the 4 item set bonus can be misleading. It's a 5% increase of the 50% bonus, which means it's 2.5% of non-crit damage."

Thanx for your reply TigaFin.
I am currently specd FB/TTW. I ran some numbers in Rawr and this is what I'm looking at.
W/Valorous FrostFire Robe 4piece bonus
FBLBPYRO-5640.88
DPS- 6188.84
SCORE- 6190.86

W/Conqueror's Tunic no T7 4 piece bonus
FBLBPYRO-5635.78
DPS- 6181.74
SCORE- 6183.75

As you can see Rawr is showing a small Dps dip and I'm still debating as to whether to raid with it tonight. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Assuming your buff/debuff and fight setting are correct in Rawr, why would you not go with what Rawr tells you? What more advice can you expect? The gear comparison you ran tells you which one is better, although with an expected DPS difference of 7 DPS, they may as well be equivalent.
What more insight could someone possibly offer?

"Assuming your buff/debuff and fight setting are correct in Rawr, why would you not go with what Rawr tells you? What more advice can you expect? The gear comparison you ran tells you which one is better, although with an expected DPS difference of 7 DPS, they may as well be equivalent.
What more insight could someone possibly offer?"

Pheroz your right, the main reason I asked is I have seen little numbers in Rawr make big changes in a raid setting. But yeah your right, just gonna drop the bonus. Thanx for the help.

The extra spirit on the frostfire robe & the pretty decent socket bonus (assuming you are below hit cap) help out the frostfire robe, which might explain what you are seeing.

There are basically two considerations I make when deciding an upgrade path:

1) What my optimal gear set will look like. Using Rawr I've already figured out what pieces are in the optimal gear set for me given what I expect to has access to (in my case, Ulduar 10 and 25 man gear, no hard modes). Pieces that are in this optimal set are more important to me than pieces which my e upgrades but which will eventually be replaced.

2) If both or neither of the pieces are part of my optimal set, I look at which is the bigger upgrade given my current gear. This can easily be done in Rawr by right-clicking the item in question and selecting "calculate upgrade" (or something to that effect).

That's the best advice I can give.....if you're not familiar with Rawr, download and start playing around with it, it's well worth and initial time to get to learn it.

I find rawr to always be the best judge, but to generalize it's all a game of hit. You want to get your hit from the best possible items (high ilvl and well itemized) that also have hit on them since the item budget on hit is very low for the dps returns it gives you. This makes items like [Collar of the Wyrmhunter], [Sash of Ancient Power], [Drape of Mortal Downfall], and [Leggings of the Enslaved Idol] such excellent ways to get hit. You can use gems to make up a small difference in the end but optimally you don't want to have to use your gems for hit. Since the tier items are not as high ilvl as the hard-mode items it is better to get hit from the ilvl 239s than your t8 (once again this is in general, your exact situation will vary and rawr is the best judge).

Rebes of the Umbral Brute has 82 more haste than the t8.5 for only 9 less SP and 24 less crit rating. Even with the extra socket the tier piece isn't really any better. The tier helm and your current helm are indeed quite similar, but the socket bonus on the helm pushes it slightly above Cowl of Icy Breaths though. This is especially since the socket on the tier helm is red.

For me I have my eye on the Chest as Collar Of The Wyrmhunter is better than the 8.5 helm for me. But as has already been mentioned, Rawr will let you know which item will offer you more when the time comes that you have the 58 badges.

It is important to think about what gear you will eventually want to have, and what you will have access to.

Please Delete.

While discussion of hardmode encounters is supposed to be limited at the current times on these boards, I think you'll have to figure out which hardmode encounter would favor the most ridiculously mana efficient spec mages can come up with.