I can suggest when farming just throw Focus Magic to any nearby spell caster. He/she doesnt need to be in your party, in your guild just needs to be from the same faction (horde/alliance). I don't know the exact range but I am getting the proc from the buff I threw if we are in the same map (I mean in the same region, Borean Tundra, Dragonblight etc..) even there is hundreds of yards between us. Maybe someone can come up with some solid numbers for the range of the proc.

So while farming, but the buff on some spell caster around and get the proc. He is also getting 3% from the buff so he will be happy .

For focus magic is there a bug with it, or is the tooltip incorrect? When i was grouped with a warrior (only) doing some group quests, i gave him the buff as a joke. I was amazed when it seemed to proc off him quite a few times, so im assuming the proc can trigger of most abilities, caster or not. Whilst the tooltip states its buff to spell casting, has the change in spell crit to crit effected this also. Can anyone tell me definatively if this is so? I cannot think of any situation raiding where the buff WOULD be thrown to a non spell caster (altho ret pallys crit so often they seem to be a better choice than other standard 'spell casters'), however im new to raiding (esp compared with you guys) so there may be an application i dont know about.
Many thanks

Focus magic 30 min buff , increase chance to crit with spell by 3%, just spells no melee skills/auto attack.

But whenever the target affected score a critical hit with any spell skill or any kind of attack you are affected by the 10 sec buff which will increase your chance to crit with spells by 3%.

It means that even if there is no caster around you can put that buff on a rogue/war/ ect and you will get the 3% crit up almost all the time on you even if that player doesn't get any benefit from it.

It also has some use in arena : if you play with a rogue in 2v2, you will often be focused by purge/dispell from the other team (they won't bother dispell your rogue because they'll consider int/dampen as trash buffs).

The 10 sec buff can be dispelled but will immediatly be reapplied as soon as your rogue score a critical hit , so it can work like an extra dispell protection.

Against bad teams, yes.

Was Focus Magic recently changed? The above posters seem to indicate so, but on PTR, it was only proccing off of spells. I tried giving it to a ret paladin who hacked away at targetting dummies for quite some time to no avail. I know it procs off any spells (damage or healing), but I have not tried Focus Magic on a non-caster since PTR.

Naturally, with another mage in the raid, you'd be hard pressed to pass up the 6% crit possibility. And aside from that, Frostfire mages wouldn't be grabbing it anyway. However, even I pass up on it in my 20.0.53 PvP build, but perhaps I should take a point out of Clearcasting for it.

My wife and I leveled as a frost mage/rogue team. She put Focus Magic on me and she received the crit bonus whenever I crit with melee.

Is there any strange things going on with the frost spell hit cap? I know we used to get 6% instead of 3 for some reason. Just curious if that has popped up again or not. Seems like I am seeing very few misses at very low spell hit. Just curious if I should be stacking up heavily on the spell hit or what the cap may really be if we are getting any extra.

Poisons crit count as a spell crit as well. This might be the reason. I am unsure about the Warrior proccing it though, probably requires more testing.

I've tested this with a hunter -- it most assuredly never gave me the buff. The tooltip is quite clear that it increases the target's spell critical, and from that we can follow that only their spell crits would proc it. Other talents have the same wording, such as Arcane Focus, and although we can derive the intentions from the wording, there are cases where things aren't always as they are implied. Such is the case of Molten Armor. Although the tooltip, when read in the same way as Focus Magic and Arcane Focus, would imply that it only reduces the chance to be critically hit with spells, it does in fact affect melee and ranged criticals as well. This is undoubtedly what lends to the confusion of such spells, skills, and talents.

How are you testing this with a hunter? With his snake trap or Serpent sting?

I was in a group with a mage and when he gave me Focus Magic, he did gain benefit off my poison crits. Rogue poisons work off spell mechanics, I don't know if it is the same for hunters.

Sorry for the misunderstanding xvvx01. I meant I was testing it with a hunter to see if Focus Magic would proc off of his ranged criticals. It did not, not once. But yes, as others have said, it does proc off of rogue poison criticals, which I have also tested. Although, it did not proc nearly enough of the time to warrant keeping it on a rogue over a real caster.

I think I am most intrigued by some of the anecdotes and/or speculations surrounding Focus Magic, though. Namely, with Sinthar saying it was proccing when he put it on a warrior, Lileith saying it procs off any spell/skill crit, melee or otherwise, and a few others. And yet, we know why it procs off rogues, but I've tested it myself on paladins, hunters, and rogue melee, and it does not proc. Seems quite odd then that it would proc off a warrior. So yes, we need more testing.

I largely trust Wowhead to be accurate in its listings because the information is data mined. Thunder Clap, and Shockwave for that matter, both deal physical damage. Furthermore, they're both classified as physical skills.

Thunder Clap
School: Physical
School Damage (Physical)
Value: 300

Shockwave
School: Physical
School Damage (Physical)
(Value is listed as 0.75*AP)

Poison crits proc Focus Magic because they are considered Nature damage.

I do believe Thunderclap used to be a spell before Lich King, but now it's definitely physical and scales with the Warrior's AP.

Wizeowel,

the 40-debuff-slot cap has been removed from the game, so Brain Freeze adding a fireball dot (and Ignite dot, if specced) has no detrimental impact on raid dps.

This might have been covered elsewhere, but despite my best effort I did not find the answer.

My question is quite related to Rawr. I went to compare my spec with others at my gear level, and I am not sure if Rawr correctly recognizes following matter:

ATM I am using 0/10/61 spec (sure, it's probably more suitable for 5-mans and solo than just raid bosses, but going to 18/0/53 would be it's less than 3% dps increase, at least according to Rawr), and I use Frostfire bolt to fish for Ignite during second FoF proc (or even first one if it hits after Brain Freeze), which I am pretty certain is DPS upgrade over plain Frostbolt.

However, nowhere in Rawr I could find evidence, that it actually takes into account FFB-FoF, which would mean my actual DPS is downplayed by the simulation. I can support this fact by DPS difference between full spec and removing FoF is the same with and without Ignite. Can I anywhere find an evidence, that FFB is used on FoF proc? Or is it just plain bad idea to use FFB/Ignite on FoF?

Thanks for reminding, I have updated the OP to reflect this.

Rawr is indeed missing some options for frost builds. The only frost rotation currently supported is 'FrBFB' which presumes you are only casting Frostbolt with Fireball on brain freeze procs. It doesn't bother with the Ice Lance shatter combo, nor with Frostfire bolt during FoF procs. This may mean your dps is 'downplayed' by Rawr, but as far as I remember from Lhivera's calculations during the beta: at epic iLevel 200+ gear, the highest dps 'rotation' was FrBFB anyway. His whole argument was that he'd been over all the other options and not found anything better.

However, you can sort of calculate this yourself in Rawr. On the Stats tab, scroll down and put your mouse over Frostfire Bolt and note the cast time and expected crit damage. Then do the same for Frostbolt. Calculate the dps of both spells' crits to get an indication of whether it's worth casting FFB during FoF. With a 'max gear' setup in Rawr, using 11-8-52 spec, I saw that Frostbolt crits were some 380 dps higher than FFB.

You understand me correctly.

I unfortunately could not find the math behind "Frostbolt spam all the way" (it could be more connected with the fact that at the end of day, Focus magic 3%+3% may be better), but Frostfire bolt generally hits for roughly 10% less than Frostbolt (w/ Frost spec), but has attached Ignite.

This results in ~27% higher crit damage at my gear level (~ilvl 200 blues). Fine, FFB is probably going to scale a bit worse with spelldamage (due to Empowered Frostbolt), but better with crit as it closes to 50%. To check this out, I just chose highest dps available pieces in Rawr, and FFB crit for 12,326 while FrB for 9,675 -> FFB crit is 27% damage increase over FrB. I guess this is something worth looking into.

I suppose the possible drawback would be missed FoF proc due to FFB, which could generate 2 more crits (but those could happen anyway due standard chance to crit or FoF on the first following FrB). (Edit: FFB does trigger FoF - I could not verify it at the time of writing, but there's one other problem - see below) At the end it could end up like a wash. So to determine if it's worth it, I have to make empirical test, on whether FFB can trigger FoF as I have seen it trigger Frostbite and look more into math when I have more time to think about it and come back later.

What kind of mathematical model would you like to see? (link to example?)

You have to look at cast time also. Possibly we differ on choice raid buffs so I saw 11,913 max crit for FFB at 2.35s casting time, and 9449 max crit for FrB at 1.96s casting time. Respectively, that's 5069 dps for FFB and 4820 dps for FrB - giving about a 5% increase off a 15% proc. So indeed, for your 0/10/61 spec, you've seen a way to squeeze out a little extra personal dps - at the cost of raid dps, since you are losing focus magic of course. For a 11/8/52 spec, frostbolt is higher dps as I wrote previously.

If Kavan adds this spell-combo to Rawr we could do some further analysis about how well this FrB-FB-FFB rotation is affected by trinkets and how it compares at different levels of gear, not just top-end. I had already made a ticket in Rawr about adding a combo with ice lance, it would be nice to see more options even if they end up being useless for standard specs.

Excuse my potentially stupid question. You mention possible drawback due to missed FoF proc because of FFB. Doesn't FFB proc FoF as well? I thought its snare counts as a chill effect.

Craaaaap. Okay, I apologize. I was all the time under impression (which I did not verify, even though I should have) that FFB is 2.5s cast time . So there goes my theory ... welll, not really, but it's not as good as I thought. So thanks for pointing it out.

Anyways, since FFB triggers FoF (I had to double-check on this), it is at least some personal DPS upgrade. Looking at Rawr, the 10/0/61 is very close to 18/0/53 (less than 1%), so adding FFB to the mix would probably put it about even (5% once in 6-7 casts is less than 1% - tbh not worth the effort of changing the model, but then many talent specs are very very close to each other there, except for Frostfire), obviously sacrificing 3% DPS increase to someone else, in exchange for solo/small group talents.

I can't speak to the exact math, but from experience in PvP and farming [stupid water elementals]:

1) Frostfirebolt triggers Frostbite, Fingers of Frost, AND Brainfreeze, and seems to do so at the proper rates. Obviously this would have to be tested empirically to be sure, but the design and method of procs seems to be 'FFB's chill/DoT combo is treated just like Frostbolt/CoC chills for Frost talent procs'.

2) I've thought about this similarly, but haven't tested it. Assuming a Master of Elements build (although you could just go for Ignite, I suppose), this would be entirely feasible if the math works out. Considering the above, IF that math works out, the best response to Fingers of Frost would be FFB - FFB [+tagged Brain Freeze Fireball on the second, assuming overlapping procs].

What would you say is the variance in dps for these types of builds (generally speaking) with/without brain freeze?

Apart from saving a bit of mana, which deep frost really doesn't require, I'd like to know what exactly I am gaining in terms of dps advantage by putting three points in that talent.


(Having found the answer hidden in a couple deep posts): 2%


2% for three talent points in a build that already has little/no mana issues... Seems like those three points would be better put to use elsewhere imho.