Thaddius if I get good (i.e. normal, i.e. "not this week") crit rates, Malygos, and Sarth with 3 drakes (on Sarth right at engage, and on Tenebron) are the only places I have threat issues. And the start of 4H, since we burst down Thane -- but we do that in under 30 seconds, so MI covers it.

I haven't been using invisibility, our paladins are happy (and accustomed) to throw a hand of salv if we ask on vent. It's there in an emergency though.

The "surprise threat package" from MI has come close to being problems on Sarth 3 drakes, because our tanks don't have a lot of expertise gear yet so their threat is lower than it will be. Watching myself at 123% of the tank's threat when I pop out of MI (I just use MyThreat now, not omen) is excitement. I took to proactively asking for a Hand of Salv about 5 seconds before MI would fade if I saw my DPS had been exceptionally good (just based on damage meters.)

We also on occasion use vigilance -- although we can't on Sarth since it has other uses.

Just watch for the MI bugs if you're over the tank's threat -- I'm not sure if they get treated as if they're always in melee range or what, but mobs seem very happy to munch on them if you use them when you're over 110% of the tank's threat.


I don't know how many people here remember raiding before KTM, but back then you could use damage meters and experience to judge threat. That's basically what I do now with mirror image, rather than automatically invising.

I would say that happens after 8% for horde mages, and 7% for alliance mages. You still have to take into account Pyroblast which does a non negligible amount of damage for FFB specs, which will push it to about 30%-40% of its current effectiveness.

Well its quite easy to see why you should still be aiming to get hit cap at 11% as FFB spec if you look at WWS results for your damage done. For example last night on Patchwerk, my damage was broken down into the following abilities:

FFB: 49%
Ignite: 20%
Pyro: 13%
LB: 12%
Scorch: 4%
MI: 2%

So basically 51% of the damage that I caused doesn't benefit from the EP bug currently. If you don't cap at 11%, then you're becoming a little bit reliant on RNG for your hit chance (for at least 50% of your damage), so combined with the RNG factor of crit, you might start getting some bigger differences in dps between fights.

To be honest, once you start getting raid gear (and some of the badge/heroic dungeon loot), getting to 288 isn't all that hard anyway. You just have to be wise with the loot that you decide to take. Not to mention that if you're basing your gearing around having only 7 or 8% hit, once Blizzard fix the bug, you'll suddenly need 3% more.

The point is not whether it is to cap or not but rather is it better to invest the stats into crit/haste or hit alone. Its like if adding the 70 or so hit rating to your gear is worth maybe 200dps but adding the equal value of haste is worth 400, it is better to gear haste rather than hit.

Your analysis of 51% of your hit don't benefit from EP directly is also flawed. A large part of your ignite damage is from FFB crits.

Also not too sure about this, but most damage from LB is from the dot part and the explosion part. if the initial hit is resisted , you could just recast it and the dot duration is not affected by your hit. Not sure if MI is affected by your self hit but lets assume it is.

Just run it through Rawr will give you are rough gauge of how much dps each stat is worth relative to each other.

But I think its reckless to choose gear based on what is clearly a bug, a feature that is working better than it is intended to work. Once it gets fixed, you might be left wishing that you'd picked up that waist of 30 hit rating rather than the waist of 30 haste rating that you did take.

Gemming is a different story, as its easy (provided you have the gold) to simply re-gem your gear differently when the bug is fixed, its not so easy to get an item to drop and be the person your guild thinks deserves to get the waist of 30 +hit when you already have waist of 30 +haste.

I'm pretty sure someone mentioned earlier on in this thread or one of the other threads in this forum that MI only benefits from your geared hit, and not your talented hit. But its a fairly trivial part of your dps (2%) comparatively speaking that you're not going to over-hit cap just for it.

While this is true, that's still lost DPS. Perhaps not much lost DPS, but lost DPS none-the-less.

He likely says 8% because he assumes you have Misery (+3% hit) from a shadowpriest.

3% Misery hit + 6% Elemental Precision (bugged Frostfire Bolt version) + 8% hit from gear = 17% cap.

Whether it is a bug or a feature that make FFB be affected twice(since it is a frost and fire spell together) by elemental precision is yet to be determined. Even if we take it as a bug, there is no guarantee that it will ever be fixed. The same ghost hit bug happens for frostbolt for nearly 2 years of TBC and it not fixed.


Gearing in Wotlk is simple enough to just be getting what is best at the moment and replacing it with gear if mechanics changes.

Maybe our moonkin was just very shoddy last night with his improved fairy fire but after getting dying curse yesterday I changed some pieces of gear around and dropped to 260 hit and I got misses with FFB on patchwerk so I thought for a second the ghosthit was gone.

There is no point worrying about weather or not the ghost hit bug will ever be fixed or not. Gear for 8% for raids with a Spriest/Boomkin and 11% for raids w/o.

Mark of the War Prisoner will grant you nearly 3% hit and can be easily swapped out in the situation that 1. Ghost Hit is removed or 2. you don't have a Boomkin or Spriest in your group.

For me, Rawr calculations seem to show that my optimal dps floats around gearing for 11% hit. It seems to imply that whatever I "lose" in hit, what I gain in haste/crit/spellpower seems to be more favorable.

As to the above question on threat -- I use invisibility a fair amount. Really depends on the RNG and when/how often I crit, but it's definitely on my bar, easily and readily accessible.... especially if a shaman decided to bloodlust right at the beginning, haha. I do find myself having more issues w/ DK tanks though. I don't pretend to understand their class mechanics yet, but they seem to generate threat a lot slower than warrior/paly tanks... that or I have yet to find a "good" DK tank

It is again discussed smw in this forum, Fireblast is not a very mana efficient spell. You also trigger GCD which is unwanted. So, it is settled as "LB -> Scorch -> Scorch -> FFB -> FFB -> LB (Renew)" is the best cycle.

Remark: It is again discussed but not settled yet that using "Scorch -> Scorch -> LB .... " instead of the above one, cycle can improve Raid DPS considering there are others starting to do spell damage at the beginning.

How many fights allow you to not move and simultaneous begin casting the exact moment a tank gets aggro? Even in situations where you do not have to move into position, you will have to wait until the tank has established aggro to cast scorch. Living Bomb has no initial damage so there is no reason not to cast it the moment after the tank's ranged ability hits the target. Even in the event of a miss, we will have nearly zero threat that will easily be gained back by the tank's instant abilities.

Living Bomb is safer and in most situations faster to put on the boss than Scorch since you can do it while running. Even situations where you summon a boss or start an event, you can spam Living Bomb on the target until you are able to cast it where as this could pull if you were doing the same with Scorch.

Given the need for positioning and initial tank aggro build-up at the pull, by the time the caster group is set to start nuking, you should already have a LB and at least one scorch up anyhow, so I wouldn't think it'd be a net raid-dps loss by starting with LB.

I see the stuff about how high to put your hit as pointless. Yes it might up your dps by a small amount on paper but in reality you risk things like scorch falling off, missed spell steals, missed counterspells, more aoe misses (not all mobs will have +3% hit on them from debuffs) and other things.

Hmm, I'm seeing alot of posts about EP being bugged for frostfire bolt, but I'm not noticing it this patch at least, it seems to be giving me 3%, I mean I could have been really unlucky on my hit rolls, but it does seem to be 3% for me now. I admit there will be more testing needed though.

First of all, 51% is a big overestimate. You are including all of your ignites, which were 20% of your damage. Some of that (probably more than half) was ignites from FFB.

Second, hit that applies to 51% of your damage is not as valuable as spellpower per item point, probably not even per stat point, at normal levels of gear. It's probably no more valuable than crit. At 38-39% of your damage (which is what's actually happening given your stats), I'd guess hit is noticeably less valuable than crit or haste, and won't ever be better than spellpower.

The reason you normally cap hit is not because of some need to never miss, it's because it is by *far* the most effective dps increase for the item cost. That's simply not true once your main nuke (responsible for 60%+ of your damage) is capped.

The only good reason to stack hit past capping FFB is for utility, if you have a lot of critical polymorph or spellsteal assignments.

In which case the mob in question likely will not be level 83. That said I am still aiming for 11% to cap for a few reasons, bug fix being chief among them. I also prefer that my scorches, pyros, and LBs don't miss. However I am not sweating being at 280 as opposed to 289 right now.

Does anyone think that this spec would be any good?
Mage - Talents - Thottbot: World of Warcraft
I would think it would be a large increase in raid dps if there were 3 or more mages (with one willing to cast Slow), and a fire mage for improved scorch.
It would have fairly powerful burn phases with trinkets due to Arcane Power and could possibly force crits with PoM.
I don't want to be a deep fire mage because I was hoping that Blizzard would balance the trees, so if someone could test this or give an opinion on it, that would help a lot.
I love arcane, so I would jump at the chance to still use FFB without being fire and still maintain good dps

The primary value of knowing crit/haste/hit damage values is for swapping. Let's be clear. Almost any mage that can even think about making reasonable decisions about the hit cap is going to have flexibility in the gear. A hit trinket from a quest reward. Hit boots that would otherwise have been sharded. Socketed items that can have a different gem thrown in.

Hell, its often good to have such options even if you are hit capped. Do you want to be at exactly the right cap, and get some fantastic upgrade (+50 spellpower, +20 crit, -10 hit) that causes you to lose a bit of hit, and say "no thanks"?

As such, you don't have to make irrevocable gearing choices. Gem and gear for what maxes your dps now, and keep a few hit heavy items around for when you need them. I kept the Scryers trinket for two years just for that reason. It was an easy and cheap way to substantially boost Hit any time a spec or gear choice resulted in a need for Hit Rating.

That said, new gear that is heavy in hit still should be looked at. If you rely on Rawr, or shift your thinking about Hit rating, you are in jeopardy of igoring dynamic gear choices. Say you are at the hit cap for frostfire, and a new belt drops that has 20 more hit and 15 less crit. Based on Rawr values, you might say, "not worth it, crit is better for me know". But wearing that new belt might let you swap out hit gems for crit gems, resulting in an overall dps increase.

A way I've looked at this is to plug in all my gear that I have available at any given time, along w/ all gems/enchant choices I might reasonable make.

Then when that new belt drops, I'll select it in Rawr and let Rawr optimize it for me. Rawr then could very well show me that w/ the new belt and some gem changes, my overall dps does increase.

Anecdote is not the singular form of data. Post a WWS as proof, or some other sort of log. Humans are good at seeing patterns where patterns don't exist or are unsupported by data (see: Onyxia deep breaths.)
To reiterate Maledict, this is the FFB theorycrafting thread, not "I like Arcane Power". And frankly, your 50/10/11 spec suggestion isn't good for FFB at all, you're missing too many percentage modifiers in deep fire, not to mention Icy Veins. If you like arcane that much, just raid as arcane until your guild forces you to change instead of trying to contort frostfire to fit in the arcane tree.