Yogg-saron is probably an exception to this but your warlocks should be affliction anyways for this fight.

1) It saves you from casting a terrible spell 4 times.
2) Your raid doesn't lose 1-4% crit while you're stacking it up.

3) Think Mimiron or Iron Council. Just when you're about to refresh Scorch, you have to run out of an AoE. That's a new stack right there. Honestly, just try it out. If it works out for you, great. It was pretty annoying and irritating for me when I was on Scorch duty without the glyoh.

No, I know, it sucked for me last week since our affliction lock decided to try out destro (and probably is sticking with it). I'm still not sure if it is worth a 180 dps loss from FFB glyph (which btw, I would never replace if it wasn't for Rawr saying it's the least dps glyph) but either way I have now made 20 glyphs each for scorch and FFB to swap back and forth as needed based on the raid setup ! And I still hope Blizzard will merge the glyph into spell and change the Improved Scorch tooltip to read as follow:

Increases your chance to critically hit with Scorch, Fireball and Frostfire Bolt by an additional 3% and your damaging Scorch spells have a 100% chance to cause your target to be vulnerable to spell damage, increasing spell critical strike chance against that target by 5% and lasts 30 sec.

See? A very, very simple change that has absolutely no effect on any aspect of the game

Razorscale - Due to adds being handled by 2-4 groups (10-man and 25-man), there is less DPS on them (meaning they die slower, though still relatively fast), and sentinels especially have enough hitpoints to warrant scorch (with glyph, they all will). Furthermore, Razorscale herself will land twice (hopefully). Both landings require immediate scorch debuff application.

Ignis - This is especially true if you're the only mage, but being taken into the slag pot can easily mess with the scorch debuff, requiring it to be applied again. You're in there for 10 seconds, plus travel time to get up there, get back down, recast, etc.

Deconstructor - Heart phases are one of the most defining examples of scorch glyph's power. It's also an example of something that is completely trivialized by one shadow bolt (although a shadow bolt takes longer to cast and travel then scorch). However, with that aside, you'll need to apply scorch to the heart, and then reapply it to deconstructor. You'd have to really be on the ball in applying scorch to have it not drop off inbetween heart phases (since I believe heart phase lasts approximately 25 seconds).

Iron Council was already mentioned by Roywyn. Kologarn has obvious reasons -- even if you aren't killing the arms (which would just give more credence to Scorch glyph), there are eyebeams and arm grips that can screw with keeping up the scorch debuff.

Auriaya - if you're killing the feral defender, scorch should be applied. I even scorch the sentry adds that come with her. There's no reason not to, especially when you have Living Bomb and other AoE hitting them. Fears and repositioning can also add to scorch debuff being lost. More important, Feral Defender's seemingly random feral rush can be particularly troublesome (school lockout).

Mimiron was already mentioned. The AoE is entirely random here on different phases. Phase 1 is never much of a problem -- straight DPS. Phase 2 does require moving out of the nuke's targetted area. This is a small amount of time though. There are times in which he will never do his Spinning Up/Laser Barrage, but that is probably the most hampering. Although, you should be able to just blink and recast scorch as necessary (much like Heigan, there is more than enough time to DPS inbetween movements).

Phase 3 I'm on the Aerial unit itself, and I only Fire Blast the bomb bots that drop (no scorch required). Also, nifty macro for that (no spaces in the last command):

/target bomb bot
/cast fire blast
/targetlasttarget

I've heard you can just let the bomb bots be taunted by an off tank who takes the blow. Our off tank dual specs ret and switches for this fight, thus we don't have an offtank -- and having an offtank solely for that would just be a waste of DPS. The bomb bots only have 20,000 hitpoints, so it's not imperitive that you do anything more than a Fire Blast.

You may want to throw scorch on each of the three units in phase 4 though, which would mean 6 targets altogether (first three phases 1 target, last phase 3 targets). Withouth glyph of scorch, that's 30 applications, excluding refreshes. With glyph, it's 6 applications. We'll say every scorch takes 1.25 seconds to cast, and thus, 24*1.25 = 30 seconds of scorching saved.

Freya has obvious reasons for scorch glyph. The sheer number of adds practically necessitates scorch glyph. Even the detonating lashers may warrant scorch debuff -- obviously not every one of them, but if you're targetting them one by one, it's clearly worthwhile. The other two waves easily require scorch, and it's helpful of course to apply scorch to targets you aren't on (if you're on snaplasher, you should apply it to storm lasher and ancient water spirit beforehand as well).

Thorim - I've only been in the gauntlet, so I can't speak about targets in the arena. On 10-man, the gauntlet is a joke and scorch isn't necessary anywhere (perhaps on the mini-bosses though, just for good measure). On 25-man, the opposite is true, depending on how many people you have in the gauntlet of course. The adds and mini-bosses have considerably more hitpoints and scorch debuff isn't useless. Thorim himself is just a move out of the fire fight (well, lightning anyway) -- nothing really preventing scorch from being recast.

Hodir is a bit more hectic. While it's not necessary to scorch the flash freezes on the adds (in 10-man anyway), there are several things that can go wrong in the fight itself that can prevent a scorch from being refreshed. While all of these things can be avoided (especially flash freeze), sometimes it doesn't always work out that way. There are just too many things to be looking for to always be on the dime with scorch: where the campfires are, where the starlights are, who has a storm cloud buff on them... where iciles are dropping, my threat level, mana levels (due to 50% haste, mana for FB/TTW can require a bit more planning), etc.

It's entirely too easy then to miss refreshing scorch by a second and having to reapply the full 5 stacks.

General Vezax - There is the obvious mana cost of 5 scorches versus 1 scorch without the reduced mana cost of Shadow Crash, since it won't necessarily happen immediately. One could argue that caster DPS need not even start until the first shadow crash debuff is up, but even then, less casts means more mana for other casts. I'd say that's merely icing on the cake. For more specific purposes, scorch glyph allows you to get out of shadow crash without having to worry about scorch falling off, as well as situations in which you're out of range (saronite vapors on non-hard mode). Allowing it to fall off ends up costing the same to reapply the 5 stacks.

Yogg-Saron - From what everyone has said, glyph of scorch is monumentally more useful here than any other fight.

for mimiron we have our headtank in p3 also taking the bomb bots

If you think the glyph is necessary for the fights you listed above, then the glyph is 110% necessary for both those fights. You have to move quite a lot during the General fight trying to catch crash zones and moving away when you get the debuff. Yogg-Saron, you have to dps down tentacles on phase 2 and have to turn away from Yogg at a moment's notice on phase 3, both of which would immensely benefit from the glyph.

Pardon my lack of knowledge on warlocks, but is the reason behind affliction being the better spec for Yogg is because they can dot multiple targets (tentacles in this case) more efficiently with that spec?

Pretty much, yes. Being able to dot up all the Corruptor Tentacles helps greatly in phase two. It also surpasses destruction in phase three as your dots keep ticking when you have to face away from the boss.

I cant help but feeling they should make the scorch glypth a minor glypth.

No, this is not the solution. Why? Because that would be pretty unbalanced in PvP where you can put up 5 mask debuffs on the target in about a second to prevent dispels on your more important spells like polymorph.

The solution is very simple. Remove the glyph. Change the improved scorch talent to apply 5% crit in one application, no stacking. In fact, I made a post on damage dealing forums about it, you can go read more and bump as you see fit.

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> A simple solution for Improved Scorch

Speaking of scorch, is it still better to throw in scorches right before using a hot streak proc (to avoid ignite munching) vs. throwing the pyro out immediately? There was some discussion on this earlier, but I seem to have missed the conclusion.

Just returning to the game after quitting last december, with Fire/Arcane now being the optimal raid spec and the new Living Bomb glyph, which is the best glyph setup? Sorry I'm sure this has been discussed ad nauseum but I can't find a clear cut answer even browsing back through the last few pages of the relevant threads.

Indeeed, i never pvp myself so i actually dident see the ""minor glypth"" as any problem.

I will go support your post and hopefully many many more.

Thx.

Fireball, Molten Armor and Living Bomb.

And if a lock isn't available which one of those do you ditch for scorch?

You plug yourself into RAWR and see which is worth the least amount of dps.

Hello everyone. I would like to know please if we have on these forums any list for the best classes and specs to use Focus Magic on. I failed to find such information with the Search option.

I knew I could find what you were looking for.

The Arcane thread

Roywyn's explanation of where to put the Focus Magic buff.

Thank you I seem to have missed that.

Here's a question I have been pondering over the last few days. I am trying to improve my play by finally getting away from keyboard movement and using my mouse instead giving me faster turning around times.

With that in mind I plan to remap my asdw keys to give me some extra keybindings (Specially for stuff like my frost/fire ward for certain fights and such). Is there any situation in game that warrants keeping my asdw keybindings for movement?

For example, running back and simply jumping and turning around mid-air to cast instant spell, is there any situation where simply backing up while still facing the boss is prefered?

How are people playing these days?

How about running sideways (strafing)? Running away from something while still shooting at it sounds like a good idea in many situations. Stick to your wasd keys and simply turn with your mouse (holding the right mouse button) which is a LOT faster than "key-turning".

Keyboard = fastest way to run
Mouse = fastest way to turn
Use both!

My haste is very low. I do not see many other mages gemming for haste and I can't bring myself to swap my lightweave embroidery for 23 haste, yet its really begining to annoy me how often I lose dps simply because my cast time is so much slower than others.

With my rings, I currently use Band of Guile and Titanium Spellshock ring. I have considered swapping the latter for Annhylde's Ring, which I also have but then I lose crit. Is my crit and spell power enough to justify gemming or enchanting for haste? The items I have are the best drops I've been able to get. And how much spell power/crit can I afford to lose to gain haste?

The World of Warcraft Armory


From what I've seen over the last few pages, it seems to be popular opinion that a fire mage should have the imp-scorch glyph. But what could I swap this for? My current majors are glyph of living bomb, glyph of molten armor and glyph of frostfire.

The one I'd consider most is the glyph of living bomb since I am unsure about how the periodic tick-crits seem to consume ignite from much greater crits.

Is the glyph of living bomb actually bad and or best left for pvp or is there another glyph I should change?


That reminds me: people tell me imp-scorch stacks with the new destro-lock crit debuff but somehow I just don't seem to see my imp scorch being applied when we have a lock in the raid with the talent. Or will it only stack if I have the glyph of imp-scorch?