I just logged on and it's still present and working.

I prefer using LB to avoid wasting hot streaks. On Loatheb when almost every spell is a crit, generally I run into a problem where I seem to be wasting crits. With 100% crit, what ends up happening if you don't cast anything but FFB and HSPyros, you will end up in a rotation of Pyro(first crit) --> FFB (2nd crit) --> FFB (have to wait for the 2nd crit to land) --> repeat. However, that 2nd FFB's crit gets wasted, because the counter on HS won't reset until you use the previous one, therefore the HSPyro is always the first crit. An easy way to counter this is to weave LB in after that first FFB, so you can do Pyro --> FFB --> LB --> Pyro. Obviously you can't do it every time, and you'll end up having to lose some crits, but there's no reason not to put that LB in there to at least save some crits (and it's a dps increase anyway).

This is incorrect, Pyros do not count towards Hot Streaks - the crit from you FFB IS rolling over. It would only reset if a second FFB (or scorch or any other spell that procs HS) landed before you cast the instant Pyro you earned.

In other words (assume all crit):

FFB (1), FFB (2), FFB (second crit lands while casting this FFB - this one counts as 3rd or 1st) Pyro (does not add to HS proc counter) FFB (2 - counter did not reset to zero because you released the HS Pyro before you landed a second crit that could proc it) FFB (3 or 1 again - this one is cast before last one lands) Pyro and so on now...

What Arantes is saying, I believe, is that with a HS proc waiting to be used, if you do crit once (before spending the buff) it will count towards your next HS. Critting twice, however, will over-write the previous HS. This has nothing to do with Loatheb, it functions normally. And thankfully so, otherwise HS would be much less of a DPS increase than it is currently. Particularly, it'd have even negative synergy with Combustion.

It's also been shown that you can crit twice in a row after gaining Hot Streak and still gain another Hot Streak, so long as the pyroblast from your first Hot Streak leaves your hands before your fourth spell crits. Naturally, there is little reason to ever cast Pyroblast after the fourth cast instead of the third cast. However, this will come up in the next patch, when Living Bomb counts toward Hot Streak. Only then, in odd cases, will you see instances of a Frostfire Bolt traveling, and at the same time, Scorch is reapplied. The Scorch crits, and Living Bomb crits at the same time.

Unfortunately, in that situation, because of the zero travel time of the Scorch and the Living Bomb, you would potentially lose a Hot Streak buff. That is, if a Frostfire Bolt had crit, and your next Frostfire Bolt will give you a Hot Streak buff, and at the same time you need to reapply Scorch, and Living Bomb is about to go off, you will potentially lose a Hot Streak proc. I had a time table of cast sequences detailing this in this post. It was basically showing that, under normal conditions, Hot Streak should never be overwritten, but it's entirely possible for it to happen if the stars align.

Manly, an interesting twist from the Mage forums... ( World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Why does my frostfire do 7.5% more damage? )

... FFB looks like it is gaining double benefit from Mind Mastery (meaning its grabbing both the MM fire and MM frost bonus spell power). Not that an arcane heavy FFB spec would really be competitive, but its an interesting hint, that begs some more documented testing of how it selects spellpower values when buffs / specific gear are present. Time to break out the 'of {fiery|frozen} wrath' stuff.

Last week

Extract of Necromatic Power
Binds when picked up
Unique
Trinket
Requires Level 80
Equip: Improves critical strike rating by 95 (2.07% @ L80).
Equip: Each time one of your spells deals periodic damage, there is a chance 788 to 1312 additional damage will be dealt.

droppt. Rawr doesn't seem to have it in. Anyone has an idea if it is superior to Sundial of the Exiled?

Similar to the trinket from Heroic MgT ([Timbal's Focusing Crystal]), it's pretty bad for a FFB spec mage, as our only DOTs that actually tick are Living Bomb and Ignite (FFB dot is mostly refreshed before even ticking once). It's in my Rawr (currently using 2.1.4), you may have just not looked far enough down? It's listed at 123 dps vs. 240 for [Sundial of the Exiled], in a near ideal gear set, worse even than [Cannoneer's Fuselighter].

Edit: Apparently it's not modeled correctly in Rawr yet, as per the Rawr topic on the main Class Mechanics page. The Wowhead page seems to suggest a 10% proc rate off a 15 second internal cooldown, which would seem to me to be pretty bad for a FFB mage (low proc rate benefits classes with more DOT ticks a lot more). Really seems like a far better warlock/shadow priest trinket.

Some quick math shows that with an average proc damage of 1050 (it's actually somewhat higher than this because it can crit), it would have to proc every 9 seconds (faster that its internal cooldown, and probably way faster than the expected proc rate with just LB and Ignite as DOTs) to make up the dps different between it and Sundial according to Rawr.

You are forgetting Pyroblasts Dot, and every scorch, LB or Pyro will give you a FFB tick.
Ich checkt last evenings trys at Sartharion, I picked a good try. It went 3min 3 sec, I had 133 ticks of various DoT-sources. If a regular Dot ticks all 3 seconds, this means I had constant 2,21 DoT on target constantly.

It doesn't matter how many DoTs you have up; if the trinket must proc faster than its internal CD (which is impossible) to match or exceed the Sundial, then the Sundial is strictly better.

Not to say the Extract is great or anything, but FFB mages have more dot ticks than one would think. Check any WWS and you'll see FFB and pyroblast to have a significant number of ticks relative to ignite and bomb. If you look at it in terms of total dot ticks over the course of a fight, sure, shadow and affliction people will have more, but the difference is not what it used to be when considering future trinkets like these.

I am having an issue with Hot Streak. I am guilded with a mage who has slightly less crit than I do yet he consistently has around twice as many hot streaks as I do. He has the shatter talent and I don't so I was wondering if this was the reason. I don't see how it can be the rng because it's a regular thing.

Also which two 7.5 tier pieces are considered to be the best for FFB?

Let me re-emphasize what has been said, repeatedly. The internal cooldown on [Extract of Necromantic Power] is 15 seconds. It has a 10% chance to proc each time a DoT ticks. It doesn't matter how many DoTs you have on your target, because what's in question is not the 10% proc rate, but the internal cooldown.

On a general note, these trinkets are always pretty sub-par with their counters. For an Affliction lock, though, I would imagine that this trinket would be fairly decent, as having Sundial proc does little in terms of the damage of the DoTs already on the target. Whereas this trinket would provide a constant amount of damage throughout the fight.

For a Frostfire mage and Fireball mage, the damage this trinkets puts out pales in comparison to the amount of damage possible when Sundial procs. Consider that when your spell power is increasing by 590 for let's say, 4 Frostfire Bolts, multiply that by the coefficient, then assume 3 of the 4 frostfire bolts crit, and you're looking at an extra 8.5k-10k damage over the course of the 10 second proc.

It's easy to see then why 9k damage every 45 seconds clearly surpasses 1100 damage every 20 seconds (15 second internal cooldown doesn't mean it procs every 15 seconds, remember, it's not 100% chance).

I'd say you'd do better to say 2 of 4 crit, and maybe assume a pyroblast in there half the time, but maybe you do have a 75% crit rate. Also it isn't proccing every 45 seconds any more than the Extract procs every 15. My uptime shows it's up about 1/6 of the time, consistent with modeling that says it procs "a little faster than once a minute".

Regardless though the numbers are big enough that the exact model doesn't matter. 6k every 60 seconds is still a bigger number than 1k every 20 seconds. The sundial has a much greater impact, it's an extremely good trinket.

More interesting is to compare the Extract to other marginal trinkets that you might have if it is your SECOND trinket option. I'm much more interested in how it compares to Cannoneer's Fuselighter. It provides significantly more crit which may cancel out some of the 1k damage/20 seconds inferiority to the on-use fuselighter spelldamage.

Given the value of crit to frostfire, it's still a better trinket than any leftover BC trinkets. It just probably isn't any better than the Fuselighter, which means you should really let the warlocks have it and only roll if it is unloved and your second trinket sucks.

How often are the enemies frozen? Cause if not, shatter does nothing. If a lot, then he'll get a somewhat more hotstreaks.

I'd expect on trash, if both of you are single target DPSing same target, he'd get a more procs because frostfirebolt is going to trigger frostbite for both of you and if it's still up when his next hit lands, he'll get benefit of essentially 100% crit rate. On bosses and similarly immune critters though, should be about the same barring some deep frost guy around making the bosses "the equivalent of frozen".

Twice as many seems awfully high though. Do you have WWS parses to back this up? To me the obvious way to get twice as many is to scorch 100% of the time, instead of a scorch/frostfire rotation. This is lower DPS but you get more pyroblasts because you're casting more often, and also scorch has higher crit rate than frostfire bolt by a little, due to the tier 1 talent.

Last night for example we did multiple attempts of Sarth 3 drakes up before we downed it. According to the wws the other two mages had 54 and 51 pyro's and I had 22. They had 107 and 71 scorches to my 40. The other two mages tend to throw scorch first and I tend to throw LB first so most of my scorches are for refreshing. The mage with 107 scorches before almost every pyro to avoid munching.

My last tests on that were a loooong while ago.

I got the same damage increase from "+50 fire power", "+50 frost power", "+50 fire and frost power", by having belt with fire power and gloves with frost power, and wearing them separate or conbined.
That was long ago though, when Spellfire et al. were school specific.

Also, there are no more "Fiery Wrath" greens either, there are 5 different kinds of same "of Spell Power" greens now.
Like the distribution of [Coldwraith Robe] for example.


FFB doubledipping from Mind Mastery is odd and makes sense at the same time.
MM used to be only +fire/frost/arcane power, now it's +all damage. Not healing though.
FFB also doubledips from Amplify/Dampen Magic. (Be careful when testing because 2/2 talented Dampen causes FFB of a naked mage to drop below the "50% damage reduction limit" and cap it at 50% instead, so you get odd numbers.)

So there might be a connection with different between offensive and generic spell power.

Offensive spell power items?
Are there any items left with only offensive SP procs? FFB might double-dip on that too, for interesting results.

Adding MM+FFB to the TC list.

Spellfire doesn't screw it up now (as is obvious since I'm still wearing it. Bloody set bonus.), and neither do flasks (documentation to be posted soonish, when I get time). I'm going to do the 'of x wrath' stuff next week sometime and post it all up together. It probably wont amount to much other than gee wiz.

Their are a few things I wanted to come on here to ask, to clarify for myself cuz I heard it's pro mages here. I've seen so many different theories about this FFB rotation and Ignite Munching with Hotstreak. And can someone thoroughly explain the mechanics to me

Rotation

1st I heard: Imp Scorch X2 -> LB -> FFB
Then LB -> Imp Scorch X2 -> FB
Also, if your mana can stand it, every 12 secs LB.

Also, with Ignite munching & Hotstreak procs. After 2 FFB Crits I heard to Cast scorch then Pyro.

Then I also read somewhere that : LB-> 2X Imp Scorch -> Combustion -> FB was wrong.:p
Also, is there a particular time to use Mirror Image? I use it every time the CD is up. Don't really have to worry about aggro to much. Only 1551 spell damage atm.

Also with 5 man hero's. On Trash scorch is a waste right? Mobs die to fast, just LB a mob and FFB spam? This is what I usually do, but just wanna see if that's most effective. You guys seem to have tested everything.

My instinct is that a significant number of their extra pyros are simply because they're scorching 2-2.5x as often as you are. Add up the total number of scorches, frostfirebolts and living bomb explosion and compare them.

You need to normalize the extra pyroblasts by the number of actual casts before you can say whether or not they're really getting "more" hotstreaks. Also you need to look at the crit rate of the fight, not of their gear, to filter out the effect of the RNG.

If you're getting similar numbers of spells out, crits and damage/spell (ie your gear is actually approximately the same) then the key is damage inflicted, not how many pyros they got. If in fact your tendency to cast many frostfire bolts is resulting in less DPS than the "scorch before every pyroblast to avoid ignite munching with side effect of more pyros" then that is interesting, because it's not a rotation that has received a lot of analysis. (I've done a standard frostfire rotation with scorch maintenance vs pure scorch+hot streak on proc and the frostfire rot comes out better once you get out of level 70 gear levels, but I've not considered a rotation that weaves in extra scorches on every hot streak proc...that affects both the overall crit rate for the rotation and provides more chances for the proc that may or may not compensate for lower damage on scorch, especially if ignite munching is more than the trivial problem I usually model it to be)

Opinions vary - it isn't always a dps tool. The most common use for me is to pop when AOEing the first trash pack and a second pack wanders into the blizzard before the tank has control of it. This means I may not have it off cooldown for the boss fight until 30s to a minute in anyway. It doesn't matter what your spell damage is compared to the tank's potential threat generation...he has not yet had a chance to react to the situation and he'll need a couple ticks to get control. (this is less likely to happen with a death knight and especially a paladin tank, but not impossible)

I tend to preserve mirror image for aggro unless I know there is zero chance of pulling aggro (eg, Patchwerk, Heigan) as it isn't a very big DPS increase, but when it is a simple tank and spank, yeah, pop it early and when you think there won't be raidwide damage for its duration, use on cooldowns under same circumstances.

If there's any doubt of the outcome though, I tend to save images. I've had a few bosses go down in heroics because I saved it and the tank died but I was able to dps for a bit longer while the critter worked through the images and I've survived some badly timed living bomb explosions right after threat wipes by having it on cooldown, saving ice block for more serious emergencies. Likewise it sometimes let me DPS when aggro for whatever reason went into the orange zone rather than backing off and invising. Being able to do that is probably worth a lot more DPS than whatever the images do.

There are also rather a lot of fights in Wrath that have adds harassing the DPS or healers, and I like using the cooldowns for those phases so I can aoe or zap the adds with impunity not worrying about personal injury.

So I guess for me, the key is how confident am I in the fight mechanics. If I think there is any chance at all they'll be needed in the aggro-mode, I preserve the cooldown. If the raid instead succeeds or fails purely on DPS and whatever the healers/tanks are up to I'll treat them as a dps cooldown and use whenever I think they'll survive long their whole duration and are not on cooldown.

Regarding rotation...I tend to open with living bomb while running to my DPS location. Our tanks have a tendency to pull while everyone is running around (which is fine on farm, it speeds things up). If it really is a standing fight I'll open with scorch to get the raidwide crit buff out there. I don't rescorch on pyro procs unless it's getting near time to scorch anyway, what I do instead is try to smoothly chaincast whatever I was casting before and finish it with the pyro proc. The studies of ingite muching I've seen so far seem to show that sometimes the error is in your favor, sometimes against, and absolute numbers are small so I figure interrupting my smooth casting is a bigger sin. I assume my mana can always stand living bomb, but I don't cast it unless I think the mob will live for 12 seconds.

One thing I do is abandon the frostfire rotation in movement fights or fights with a lot of interrupts unless I'm 100% certain I can cast the whole spell. Partially cast spells hammer your dps, and a pure scorch/pyroblast/living bomb rotation is a heck of a lot closer to a scorch/pyro/lb/frostfire rotation in DPS than pure scorch was compared to a scorch/fireball rotation in burning crusade. Likewise when not AOEing trash, I tend to use a lot less frostfire bolts as I treat "creature death" as an interrupt and prefer faster casting spells. I use frostfire bolts on trash after I drop a living bomb, mainly, when the mob still has most of its health, then switch to faster spells for the last third..or move on to another target with LB+scorch+frostfire.

I've been following this thread since it started. I am just started to raid Naxx10, but have only gotten 1 item so far. I have stuck as Deep Frost since hitting 80, but my gear and stats are starting to get good enough that I keep thinking that I should switch to FFB, since really my only purpose is to DPS on bosses anymore.

I have done the standard FFB spec, and I go and try it on the Boss training dummy in Orgrimmar. My DPS is never even close to my deep frost DPS on the same target, but I realize that buffs and raid buffs might make the difference. Or, do I simply not have enough Crit rating to make FFB vialbe yet?

My armory is below, but the basic stats as Deep Frost are:
Spellpower: 1694
Crit%: 14.86% unbuffed (19.86% w molten armor)

I have gear to hit cap myself in combination with hit food and such. Is it just pointless to try FFB until I have an unbuffed crit rating closer to 30% BEFORE switching to Fire and getting its +crit talents?




The World of Warcraft Armory