◊ manly

Well, for reference, I'm not specifically gearing for crit. It just happens that the stuff that drops is mostly all crit gear. I'd much rather get a bunch of spell damage. Also I'm still constantly juggling between icewalker boots and non-icewalker boots, not to mention my gear somewhat assuming a shadow priest present, which needs a do-over when one isn't available (10mans).

Also I'm still not sold on the whole 'spell damage before hit'. In any case, gear is changing fast theses days. A new robe and a dying curse would pretty much have me set.

edit: its 330.75%
edit: added point of contention: flamecap vs mana gem w/ 2pct7

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bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

Bulgarth

In regards to opening with LB vs. Scorch. . . . Obviously, LB is optimal to open up with if you are moving into position, but your run into the problem of it possibly eating a Combustion unintentionally once you open up. So you either wait the 2 seconds to put up LB after scorch (losing the *maybe* 2 ticks of LB) or risk it eating a Combustion stack. I prefer the former. That wasted crit on LB just greatly reduced the possibility of receiving a free extra 7000 damage via the free crit of FFB; so I instead received an extra 3000 crit.

I'd personally wait after scorch to put up LB, and even wait till I've casted Mirror Image as well since it uses GCD. This way I should have used my combustion stacks on a much more useful spell (FFB) and the LB explosion should go off just as Combustion has ended, granted friendly RNG.

 

drowsy

One of the things that seems missing in all this is considering the procrate of hot streak and how that relates to weighting which spells are cast how often. While certainly streaky, it's not unpredictable: to get a streak proc to you need to crit "this" spell and the one before it, so the chance of a hot streak proc on a given FFB or scorch is the square of your critrate. That hot streak counts are preserved between fights means that this applies to even the first cast unless you manipulate it from the fight before. You have to keep in mind that part of the value of crit is parabolic and not completely a linear DPS scalar the way haste, hit, and spell damage are.

Before considering rotation changes regarding bomb and ignite, you could consider the average damage of FFB, scorch, and fireblast to be the sum of three segments.


Frostfire Bolt
1: Non-crit FFB * (1 - critrate)
2: Crit FFB * (crit - (crit squared))

like before, plus the DPS value of the Pyro

3: (Crit FFB + average Pyro) / 1.5 * (crit squared)


The divide by 1.5 is to account for the additional cast time for the instant Pyro relative to a FFB. For scorch or fireblast you would divide by 2 instead.

 

Papajan

Here's a fun thought: critters in instances now boost our dps slightly by helping us start fights with a charge of Hot Streak.

 

Ivorthemage

As for hit rating, since half Manly's dps seems to be coming from frostfire, once that is capped the value of hit takes a 50% hit. It still adds value as a stat, but not nearly as much. You would now get more value out of crit gems, for instance. Looks to me like your best bet is to gear and gem to cap at 8%, and regem if Blizz changes the EP double dip.

 

• Xenophon

In cases where the mage is mana limited (e.g. in 10-mans with no pally), it would be interesting to look at the optimal amount of LB casts to sacrifice per minute before the switch from molten armor to mage armor is justified.

 

Catiff

I guess on this topic, what is the stat comparison between hit, spellpower, crit, and haste with regards to FFB? It feels like FFB is the new "Shadow Destruction-warlock-but-for-a-mage" spec due to its desire to crit often due to its boosted CSD. So the weights for the stats are different than the usual "hit > damage > haste > crit".

I did check TCoM to try to figure out this comparison, but I used my character with less than ideal numbers. I also noticed that SP was much more valued than hit.

 

Massael

In general it seems like cooldown prioritization is even more important with this spec than previous raiding builds - but I find it hard to get any hard data on trinket values for stacking these cooldowns, for example: Sundial of the Exiled vs another spell damage trinket (ie Hex Shrunken Head).

Obviously one cannot control when SotE will proc - though the proc is impressive, while with another trinket one can control on use when the damage is there. With such an RNG based spec I have to wonder whether these trinket trade-offs can be mathematically modelled - I don't quite trust the numbers TCoM and Rawr are giving at the moment with the sheer randomness of crit - I'm more concerned with consistency vs min/maxing.

 

Jonny_Monroe

I'm still not sold on the choices of AoE for a frostfire build. I've been noticing impressive results from instant flamestrikes when stacked across the top 2 ranks. On a similar note, a lot of trash AoE simply doesn't live long enough for LB to be worth casting.

Note - My build has shatter and firestarter, misses frost channeling (I'll spec it just as soon as mana becomes an issue).

I normally cycle something like:
(LB if its a long enough fight)
Flamestrike (9)
Flamestrike (8)
AE
DB
(AE or frostnova - I have shatter in my build and in 5 mans frostnova lasts long enough to follow with an instant FS)
Flamestrike (9)

Things rarely live long enough for another FS after that, and it cuts off 1 tick of FS (9), but I'm still tweaking around the cycle. I don't want to throw more AE in. I'm thinking maybe of a cycle of FS(9) - DB - FS(8) - Blizzard. That cycle would need a bit more haste though.

OMNOMNOM.

 

Mynak

Regarding Living Bomb and Haste, I have noticed that if timed properly you can re-apply the Living Bomb dot AFTER the last dot tick of your previous Living Bomb and BEFORE the explosion to have the LB dot at 100% uptime. In raids I generally have ~230 haste plus Wrath of Air totem.

 

Sinthesys

Now, I understand the principles behind a frostfire spec, and I found it to be quite enjoyable. But, with my current crit rating, it seemed to fall significantly behind a deep fire build. We did Naxx last week over two nights, so I had a chance to try out both back to back in a raid environment.

Naturally FFB is pretty dependent upon crits, and you need a reasonable critical rating for it to be effective. I'm still sitting on quite a bit of level 70 gear, which can't possibly help either. Unfortunately the dice-gods have not been smiling on me since I hit 80.

Anyway, my complaints about that aside, what I'm most curious about, is what point did you guys start to see FFB out-do a non-FFB fire build? I notice Manly has a relatively high crit rating compared to others, but even so, I would imagine you'd need at least 25% or even higher for it to really reach it's full potential.

And how about in different environments. In a 25 man, it's safe to assume you'll have all of the needed buffs. In a 10 man though, you may very well not have the moonkin, or elemental shaman, or any number of other buffs. Once you lose the extra crit there, does it impact you in a significantly noticeable manner, or do those extra buffs just help out?

In short, how much crit is needed to really make it an effective choice for a spec?

 

BeeLz

Obviously you don't want to miss your pyro, scorch or living bomb but in the end, they only count as 30-35% of your dmg done. I would think that gearing up for that 80 extra hit rating instead of spelldmg would result in a dps loss in general unless you're very unlucky with your resists. I can't back this up with empirical evidence though.

 

Enthorn

By the same token, you may not have a shadow priest, ret paladin, or resto druid in a 10-man either. In that situation, mana could be very tight with a Fire build, and that's something Frostfire excels at (due to a significantly lower mana cost, and frost channeling/elemental precision).

I would reach 30-35% crit rate in your gear (minus molten armor), but also run Rawr to find out what is going to work the best (remove certain mana return options, etc.) After that point, you'll be gaining 5% from molten armor (glyphed) and 10% from scorch, leaving you with at least a 45-50% crit rate. This seemed to be the desirable range in Rawr for a frostfire build (0.53.18).

 

Gnomecuddler

And may I add the Frostfire glyph (+2% crit)

Seems that in a decent made up 25men raid you will get

5% crit from Moonkin/Elemental Oath
3% from totem of wrath
10% from WC/Scorch debuff

5% from your Molten Armor incl Glyph
2% from Frostfire Glyph

25% Total added critchance

So to reach 50% crit in such a raidsetup is fairly easy. Only thing I am not sure of is if the Elemental Shaman +crit buffs stack with Moonkin, but can't imagine they don't (just started to doubt because of the enormous amount of +crit% you can get through this).

I don't take Focus Magic into account since I assume the mages will all be Frostfire.

Edit*

Adjusted it due to Moonkin aura not stacking with Ele oath

 

elfhelm

Elemental Oath and Moonkin aura do not stack. Note, Oath is actually 5% at the second rank and is the same buff as Moonkin aura.

 

Gnomecuddler

Okey so that would mean Elemental shaman>Oomkin (if you got a Spriest for misery)?

 

Flamingcloud

What kind of a % dps loss are we looking at by not using living bomb, and not using pyroblast? My guild is having real debuff problems and I am looking to ban the weakest debuffs(and possibly debuff heavy specs).

 

Massael

It's a pretty significant DPS loss for 51/XX mages - for myself not using it is about 200DPS lost - YMMV.

 

Zalath

Did a quick check in RAWR, basically re-distributed the talents. Went from 3.4k to 3k dps. If you're going to cut back on mage debuffs it's probably better to move your mages in the direction of arcane or frost.

 

Roywyn

According to Rawr in epic gear, you lose 250 DPS from not using Living Bomb, 450 DPS from not using Pyroblast.
That's around 5% from LB, 10% from Pyroblast. In a common cycle, they make up 10% and 20% of your damage at roughly twice the DPCT of your filler spell.

I listed that in the debuff thread a while ago as well.
You lose about 1400 DPS or 25% by going full frost instead of fire, without Brain Freeze (wasted debuff).

Arcane is a bit hard to judge if you can't use fillers with DoTs or Ignite.
With Barrage/Frostbolt/Slow cycles, you'll end up losing 800 DPS or 15%, use another debuff slot (Slow) but cannot bring Scorch/Chill.
So you'd have to spec Arcane/Fire without Ignite, which is pretty bad.


[Edit]:
By winning in the crit lottery.

With 20% crit on the armoury, that's 22% with AI/MotW/BoK, +9% talents, +18% raid (de)buffs, +5% molten, +2% glyph, that's 56% crit baseline.
-3% crit depression vs. bosses, +2% crit from combustion (being generous) and you have an expected crit rate of ~55%.

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.

 

Hoffski

How are you averaging as high as 75% crit on certain bosses? My unbuffed crit isn't far from yours and I get nowhere near that much... Granted I am missing some raid buffs like moonkin aura, but still, I'm nowhere near 75% on any fights except for Loatheb, obviously.

 

M0d1

I thought it was 21% crit raid (de)buffs?

10% Imp scorch
5% boomkin aura
3% Totem
3% Paladin judgement
21% crit

Correct me if i am wrong. (I am not to sure about the paladin judgement and have only seen it while reading through the forums)

Even so it would only be around ~58%.

 

◊ manly

Wait, what cooldown exactly are we talking about here ? This is destro-spec spec. You have almost no relevant cooldown to speak of.

You have

bloodlust, molten fury, flame caps (which really isn't 100% guaranteed particularly with 2pct7) / gems (2pct7), icy veins, combustion. Theres also potions of speed, but that also is unclear whether its affordable. Theres also trinkets but the better your gear the more you should be aiming towards proc-based trinkets (ie: [Dying Curse][Embrace of the Spider][Sundial of the Exiled]).

Out of those, combustion is shittier than before, icy veins is worse than it used to be (due to molten fury change mostly). Then theres Mirror Image, but thats unaffected by every single other cooldown, so as such, since it works independantly of everything else, for all intent and purpose, its not a cooldown. The only case where they do become a cooldown is when you stand on the +50% damage zone on malygos, which is the only case I am aware of where the images gets a dps boost.

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bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

Hoffski

That's pretty damn lucky. On our 10 man nax clear last night I averaged between 45% and 50% crit on bosses. That's pretty much only with +10% from improved scorch though since we have a pretty melee heavy raid.


[Embrace of the Spider] dropped for us last night, though I lost the roll. Would you consider this a better trinket to use with [Sundial of the Exiled] then the [Forge Ember] that I'm using right now?

 

◊ manly

Boss	ffb crit % (this week)	ffb crit % (last week)	url (this week)	url (last week)
All bosses (incl. loatheb)	67% (240/495)	62% (455/755)	Wow Web Stats	Wow Web Stats
Anub'rekhan	-	65% (14/26)
Faerlina	-	49% (20/19)
Noth	77% (3/10)	71% (5/12)
Heigan	71% (11/27)	72% (12/31)	Wow Web Stats	Wow Web Stats
Loatheb	-	-
Patchwerk	54% (28/33)	68% (22/46)		Wow Web Stats
Grobbulus	63% (19/32)	49% (28/27)
Gluth	78% (7/25)	64% (16/28)	Wow Web Stats
Thaddius	73% (18/49)	62% (29/47)	Wow Web Stats
Razuvious	60% (21/32)	75% (13/39)		Wow Web Stats
4 horsemen	-	-
Gothik	82% (2/9)	58% (5/7)
Sapphiron	62% (18/29)	48% (27/25)
Kel'Thuzad	70% (22/51)	63% (32/55)	Wow Web Stats

values are shown as (#non-crit/#crit) and thus will not match the percentage. If you want the percentage then do #crit/(#non-crit+#crit)

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bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.