For as long as I can remember, I have been a frost mage. Up until about a month ago my DPS was going up when I would get better gear...but that stopped (usually doing between 2.2k-2.6k dps). I started researching, and came to the conclusion that frost spec was not for raiding. Currently my armor is all epic, and ranges from 200-226 in level, and I have the recommended enchants (according to WOW Heroes)...minus two.

I have been trying FFB spec for about a week...and my DPS is lower than when I was frost, at least for overall data using Recount. I have been reading a lot of posts regarding spell rotations, and the spell rotation I am using is LB>Scortch>FFB>, i use pyro blast whenever hot streak procs, and i keep up my LB and Scotrch. For AOE I use LB>Flame Strke lvl 8>Flame Strike lvl 9>Blizzard. My glyphs are currently LB, FFB, & Scorch.

I am just about hit capped (w/o buffs from raid memebers), and am stacking Spell power. From what I read, until I am about 4k Spell Power and Hit capped, I should be stacking Spell Power and Hit.

I am wondering if maybe my gear isn't good enough yet for FFB spec? If not, what would you recommend?

Actually as Arcane, Rawr was recommending I change half of my [Reckless Ametrine] to [Luminous Ametrine], once I had picked up [Abyssal Rune] due to how much haste I had. Once 3.2.2 goes through, however, this probably won't ever happen.

This is a bit odd... can anyone confirm these results: Checking Recount in 10m heroic ToC, it appears Snobolds took 0 damage from:
- Living Bomb's explosion
- Blizzard
- Flamestrike
- Arcane explosion

I think no AOE works on them... possibly a bug. I'm certain they were within my targeting circles, and the fact that the living bomb dot was on them and damaging them should be enough to imply that the Living Bomb explosion should have hit them.

You're not supposed to AOE them anyway, really, but depending on your strat the Living Bomb explosion not hitting could affect playstyle in that encounter. If anyone runs this, I'd appreciate if they could confirm/deny these findings.

Your crit looks decent, spell power isn't too bad. Haste is kind of abysmal but not the end of the world. I'd recommend picking up molten armor glyph instead of frostfire, but double check in rawr against your gear to be sure it's a dps increase.

I'd drop the +hit gems and switch them out for SP/crit rating. It helps that I raid with shadow priests but I always aim for 11% hit in frostfire gear.

Your spec looks fine, playstyle-wise be sure you're hitting every hot streak and LB cooldown. If you're missing either use mods to help you spot them, Scorchio is good for this. Don't scorch too much, only when you need to refresh the cooldown (possibly if you're 100% sure the mob won't live through a full FFB cast as well). Since you choose to glyph scorch, letting the debuff fall off for a few seconds isn't the end of the world. Never break a cast to apply scorch, or lb, or pyroblast, this is murder for your DPS especially with so little haste. Try to stack icy veins with trinkets (and bloodlust/heroism if possible).

Your gear isn't too bad for FFB. I think in similar gear (except with a bit more haste) I was hitting between 4 and 5k on Patchwerk flasked. But once you get a bit more hit from gear you'll probably want to switch to torment fire and change the crit gems to haste.

And of course arcane may be the top spec next patch... I haven't looked at peoples' testing so far but they're on top of it I'm sure so the information is probably on these boards.

You certainly do take damage, it's more spikey than anything and healers need to be aware to keep you topped off, a bad stomp+kobold hit is gonna bring you low. That said, as a mage, I was able to survive it fine. I had to IB in a few close calls, but I never died.

Double check your settings on Rawr. Rawr will recommend spellpower/intellect gems over the others if it thinks you will run out of mana. Try changing the fight duration or turning on the unlimited mana option, and see what Rawr says then.

They are running out of mana because as their haste goes up, their mana consumption per second does as well. The solution is not to turn on unlimited mana in Rawr, but to actually improve dps by gemming for intellect. I'm not saying that's what Bendriana should do, but that Rawr is correct-- gemming for int would improve dps more over gemming for more haste at that point.

At supremely high levels of haste, you're going to hit a situation similar to that of 40/0/21 Arcane in 2.4-- where gemming and gearing for regen/mana stats like Spi and Int were actually the best course of action.

25H boss discussion is still off limits. It's only been 4 days.

http://elitistjerks.com/f15/t68901-c...ng_guidelines/

Hey guys,

I'm a bit confused about hit rating with Rawr.

I'm 389 atm (upgraded different pieces of gear that made me lose the cap), but rawr tells me it's fine, i've the 17% needed, although I do know that without any bonuses and special buffs (even though there is a spriest with us) the cap is 446.

So what's happening with Rawr? I've always used this tool for my mage dps and gear optimisation, but it's kind of confusing me at the moment.

PS: yeah, i got the latest version of Rawr (2.2.1.4).

Do you have Misery or Improved Faerie Fire ticked on the buffs page?

*facepalms*

Indeed i had...

Now i feel stupid

yet, makes me feel better about running more Razorscale to get [Living Flame] now i'm positively sure i need the +hit

Cheers mate!

hi...
Im looking everywhere for the best combination of talents (fire) for someone with the bonus of 2 t9...
should I put 1/3 on student of the mind or 3/3 taking off the 2 points of flame throwing...
any help on what should I go with?

thats more a personal question that varies by your playstyle and how your raid does the fights. Yes it is a small dps gain to have those points in sotm but you are giving up range to do it. If you find yourself having to reposition on moving mobs and are actually losing dps uptime then those points are totally not worth it. This is especially true if you putting and keeping up scorch as it has a short range already.

I personally removed points from clearcasting to put into magic absorbtion and student of the mind and I haven't really found any mana problems in our current raids.

Most of the locks in the guild are now speccing out of Improved SB, most of the mages are either arcane or FB with the LB glyph and therefore not stacking scorch. We all love frost but none of us raid with it for DPS reasons.

What, if anything, is replacing this scorch/winter's chill/improved SB crit buff in raids? Is it worth one of the mages dedicating a glyph spot to Scorch for the sake of all raid casters?

if you have more more than 1 fire mage then it's probably easier that 1 does 3 scorches and the other does 2 and you can choose who gets scorch duty during the fight. if you have only 1 fire mage then yes. Have him switch out his fireball glyph and switch in the scorch glyph.

Is it really better to drop the Glyph of FB rather than Molten Armour? Does the same hold true for a FFB spec (dropping the Glyph of FFB)? I'm generally the one one Scorch duty and I dropped Molten Armour for the Scorch glyph, thinking that it was the lowest drop in DPS that I could take.

Glyph of Molten Armor gains no additional potency from 2T9, other than the fact that with 2T9 spirit is more potent, which means you don't mind collecting more of it (which in turn increases Glyph of MA)

MA vs Fireball is purely depending on your buffed spirit amount.
Personally, at 714 raidbuffed spirit MA is 216.34 dps vs. Fireball at 208.36. If I drop spirit to 669 raidbuffed, MA drops to 203.66 dps, and Fireball changes very slightly to 208.66. So I would say the break-even point is somewhere around 675-680.

These dps values are from my personal Rawr.

Does the blood elf racial Magic Resistance stack with the Magic Absorption talent? Does this racial mitigate any of the damage (fire/nature) dished out by the Northrend Beasts?

It is not hard nor does it take much time to keep scorch up by yourself, the only fights I would even think about using the glyph for are ones with alot of target switching, you should never be using glyph of scorch for single target, or single target + lower health adds fights.

I would like to ask about priority of haste and crit for a 20/51/0 Firemage.
i got different answeres the last days and hope to get a clear one here in this Thread

is it: hitcap>spell>haste>crit
or : hitcap>spell>crit>haste

or is it even something different?

For the most part it goes: Hit Cap > Spower > Haste > Crit

but you want to have a good balance in your gear. it is usually a good idea to download rawr and see for yourself as the values can vary between gear setups.

Most Trash isn't worth scorching (only do it when you are gonna be single targeting instead of Aoeing). but it is worth it to LB EVERYTHING. When it comes to children getting Excited about naxx trash meters just blow your trinkets and blizzard spam, its on par with Fok.