LB usually accounts for between 10 and 15% of my dmg. That is a significant amount of dps to be lazy about.

Using a regular FFB spec, is there ever a time where a potion of wild magic will yield higher dps than potion of speed?

In my opinion, fireball is coming back as soon as torment the weak is fixed and it begins to work with thunderclap.

Without seeing the gear of other mage it is hard to say why you are outdpsed, but you must keep living bomb "always" up. You should recast it, if it is expired during casting something else, as soon as your current cast finiyshes. In addition to that, you said the balance druid isnt there all the time, so maybe the other mage has 14% hit rating from gear. You rely on raid buffs a lot by stacking 11% hit, if balance druid doesnt show up or die in combat, you will lose a lot of dps.

Fireball may make a comeback, but it would be interesting to see what the dps spread between Fireball and FFB are if TtW and MF continue to be incompatible.

actually Fireball is coming back.. but apparently only with really top-notch gear.
With my current gear (1825spellpower, 673critrating, 254hasterating, 291hitrating unbuffed),
I just can't get FB > FFB even if I swap [Embrace of the Spider] for [Dying Curse] to reach hitcap again...

edit to avoid misunderstanding: I gave the unbuffed values but ofc enabled every raidbuff in the rawr settings...

Baruk:
Go to Rawr > Options > Spells & Buffs > Snared Time set it to 1 or something higher then 0.

I did set it to 1... focus magic rate was set to 0.2

edit: If anyone would like to check I uploaded my rawr file to
edit2: fixed it..

What use would Frostfire bolt have for a Mage with the following spec?:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...h=000000000000

(PTR talent tree)

I can only assume Fireball is still the king with such a spec? (For PvE raiding)
Anything else would be really weird, since that would make the core spell of Fire useless.

Well, FfB still gets the benefit from the fire talents so it should do more dps than frostbolt on possible fire-immune bosses. Using FfB as your main nuke with this spec would be stupid, that's right.

18 arcane with no TTW.

FFB is also a better "generalist" spec for doing dailies, 5 mans, stuff away from raid buffs. It's not great at pvp but it has better tools because of better burst than arc/fire does.

Frankly I welcome Arc/Fire as a sufficiently different emphasis spec to allow another viable raiding spec.

Boss fights come down to several factors of which raw single target dps is only one. It's the main one, but not the only game in town. Survivability is usually just a combination of situational awareness+healers doing their job, so it's usually not considered...mages have enough tools untalented to stay alive and dps. What I look at for secondary talents in a build are as follows.

1. mana efficiency. This depends heavily on your raid replenishment or lack of it, but for every mage there is a fight duration where evocate happens and another fight duration where you go hard oom. For frostfire, this is a longer duration than arc/fire, but whether you need that duration in the current raids depends on the combination of raid damage output (thus speed of kills) and raid replenishment.

2. mobile DPS. In BC we had fire blast, ice lance and arcane explosion for mobile damage, and scorch for situations where long casts would get interrupted. Deep fire had blast wave and dragon breath too but they usually weren't used that way. In Wrath we've got hot streaks (which make a scorch-fireblast based rotation much more attractive) and living bomb (which doens't even require facing to refresh). Also frost nova isn't horrible damage anymore, weirdly, although usuing it has similar issues to using blast wave. Deep arcane has arcane barrage, deep frost doesn't have much of anything. I'd rate frostfire and arc/fire similar on this front, although frostfire can usually fit in dragon breath and blast wave, arc/fire usually can not. Fights where this matters include things like Thaddeus (a dps check with movement) and Malygos (where you have to move a lot, or get interrupted a lot but is also a dps check to beat enrage timer)

3. burst DPS. This is usually code for burst AOE actually, but can also be used in single target for efficiency of stacking cooldowns. Al frostfire have a slight edge in single target cooldown stacking because of the on demand icy veins. Both fire and frostfire have some ability to do crits on demand with combustion. For fights like Glauth though, or the boss in AK where you have to kill the add before it reaches boss to avoid 2x damage...the whole dragon breath/firestarter/blast wave/firestarter sequence does a lot more aoe damage than anything else a mage can do in a very short time. If you sacrifice some mana efficiency from frostfire you can have aoe burst in a frostfire build. There really isn't any way to get those aoe talent points together in an arc/fire build

4. AOE in general. These days this mostly means blizzard or flamestrike/blizzard rotations, although if you go the firestarter route you may use arcane explosion rather than blizzard as a finisher for mana efficiency or "I don't want to be rooted for 8 seconds" reasons. Frostfire has some frost damage talent in the mix so it is a bit better at this than arc/fire, and significantly better at burst aoe if they spend the points to get the firestarter talents instead of going for even more mana efficiency

So in my mind, there is a gear level where arc/fire is a bit better in single target dps while I'm raiding (but not at other times), it's a little worse at mobile dps, and is strictly worse at coping with adds or trash (torment of the weak won't apply to anything but the main target most of the time, and you're worse on area burst dps and a tiny bit worse on single target burst dps).

I would like arc/fire if dual spec existed, as my "tank and spank boss spec", with something more like what I'm using now for frostfire as my "trash or fight with adds" spec.

Did you also changed the glyphs for your new spec?

sure.. changed frostfire to fireball

For fire/arc, I'd actually prefer a build like this: (19/52/0)
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?mage...h=000000000000

Arcane absorption is a usefull talent imo, because it helps your healers, and in resist fights it's actually a dps gain since you can drop 1 piece of resistance gear. The only thing I'm dropping to get it is 1 point in WiF which is a very very minor dps increase (I read it's somewhere around 0.3% each point).

I also think actually speccing student of the mind is utterly retarted. You'll get a miniscule ammount of spirit from the gear you already have. It would probably be about 40 extra spirit raidbuffed for 3 points, and you get 30% of that in regen. One of the worst talents we have.

I also had the thought of dropping 1 more point from WiF and put it into arcane meditation is mana is a concern in some fights. (actually 1 point in Arcane meditation is 3 times better than 3 in student of the mind)

When you do the frostfire vs fire/arc comparison you could then put magic absorbtion and more survivabilty as a pro and it would still be higher dps than frostfire.


I know people want to max raid dps, but dont underestimate survivability too much. For farm fights it doesnt matter, but neither does your dps. Though for hard fights you're actually helping the raid by being easier to heal. Especially at the cost of only 0.6% dps.

I found that using combustion after scroch cost me 1 charge if the scroch crits. Is that an old bug or it is server latency?

You will find very little support on these forums if you are not looking to maximize your DPS in just about every raid situation. In order for survivability to matter, you have to first get hit by some sort of damage, and that can often be very unpredictable. Gearing for the "maybe" rather then the "all the time" is a pretty poor practice in my mind. In order for your very specific raid talent (arcane absorption) to be useful, you even state it has to be a resist fight in some fashion. Currently, there are no such resist fights in the game that require any resist gear at all. So your point is fairly bunk in that regard. Lastly, you mention helping the healers, but I would suggest that the amount of overheal done whenever you take damage is likely enough healing to have covered whatever small amount of damage you may have resisted as well. You're talking about what is regularly little hundreds or maybe low thousands of mitigated damage on yourself when healers are often critting for over 10,000 and tossing around significant amounts of overlapping AoE healing. You aren't doing them any sort of benevolent service in this regard in my mind.

Similarly, I find it hard to support the fact that you sacrifice a point in Clearcasting, and also feel that both Dragon's Breath and Blast Wave are necessary enough to give up 4% crit on all your Hot Streak pyro's. Relating to my point above, you seem to be talenting largely for situational, non-predictable, and rare occurrences rather then maximizing your DPS to its highest potential for the vast majority of the time (ie. Single Target fights).

You realize that any sane fire spec also includes Playing with Fire, which Magic Absorption is usually just canceling out, some of the time? Even looking at MA very optimistically and saying it's a 10% reduction in incoming spell damage (actually 7% after PWF), saving your healers 7% of raid damage healing on one person is beyond trivial.

But 1% dmg talents are more than 3 times stronger than 0.3% dmg talents. WiF is the worst of our dmg talents point for point. I know I've occasionally died from random dmg that wasnt my fault. I guess either my healers were slacking or not optimally specced. Like that shadowdmg feedback from leaving drake up at Sartharon, or dying from vortex dmg.

But you can't really say it's 7% after PwF, because you'd have PwF anyway. Magic absorption could then be modelled as simply 10% less spelldmg dmg taken. Reducing incoming dmg by 10% for 0.3% loss in DPS? A decent tradeoff in my opinion. Note that I'm not even mentioning the potential mana return from Magic Absorption, allthough I suspect it will be minor (could be wrong).

And you're missing the point. This is comparing Frostfire with Fire/Arc spec. Fire/Arc with MA is more DPS than Frostfire, but with 10% added spell aoe dmg survivabilty.

This is the same as gemming for stamina instead of spellpower, one gem would acount for around 0.3% so you might as well gem stamina, since it's such a low increase in dps and adds a bit to survivability.

As a dps it's not your responsibility to survive (apart from not standing in the proverbial 'fire', pulling agro or doing something stupid) that's what healers are for; and tanks. The only survivability I consciously take is gemming [Glowing Twilight Opal] vs. [Royal Twilight Opal] or [Purified Twilight Opal] but even that might stop when 3.0.8 hits.

This is not comparable at all. Seriously, a stam gem instead of a spellpower gem is just stupid, except 2 for the meta.
Now let's calc this abit. Say it is a 0.3% dps decrease to put a stam gem instead of a spellpower gem for sake or argument, and you'll gain 12 stam. That's 120 health. You probably already have somewhere around 20.000 Hp raidbuffed at least. That gives a 0.6% increase in health. And increase in health isnt the same as survivability, because you take concistent raid aoe dmg throughout fights and stam won't really help that.

With the talent, we're talking a 0.3% total dps decrease for maybe 10% less dmg taken.

Let's amplify this for the sake of argument. Say you could do 3% less dps for 100% less dmg taken. Would this be worth it? Imagine the whole raid doing 3% less dmg, but not taking any dmg? I know this isnt very realistic, but I'm amplifying the benefits here, to prove a point.

0.3% dps isnt even measurable in a raid, but 10% total incoming dmg sure is.

But anyway, if fire/arc is supposedly 6-7% above the old frostfire, then you could take MA and still be 5.7-6.7% above with added survivability as well, over the ones sticking to old frostfire. Maybe you'd even resist something fully for some extra mana as well occasionally to sustain the spec, but this isnt very relevant.

I'll also repeat, that in the current hardest raidencounters, you DO take a steady ammount of raid aoe spelldmg.

No it is clearly not the same. That's a dishonest comparison. Unless you are talking about deciding between a +5 spell damage gem and a +150 stamina gem.

Obviously, as dps we generally don't sacrifice damage for survivability, but that does not mean that we don't value survivability at all. Would you really pick WiF (which really is a very measly dps talent according to Rawr) over a fictitious talent that provided you with 100% damage reduction for non-locational aoe-damage? Most certainly not.

The question really is what is the appropriate ratio between damage loss and survivability gain. As evidenced by most fire mages picking PwF, it is not 1:1. Swindley thinks 1:30 is a reasonable tradeoff (MA over WiF). I tend to agree. You might disagree with this particular value, but it is silly to claim that you would not be willing to sacrifice damage for survivability, regardless the ratio of the two.

Anyway, this discussion of the value of MA is getting a little off-topic in the frostfire thread.


EDIT: Swindley, beat me to the punch. Should have refreshed the page before replying.

There is a thread discussing Magic Absorption already. On World in Flames and Magic Absorption, I made a post a while back in that thread. The Frostfire Bolt thread is hardly the place to discuss Magic Absorption, since you would never place any points in the arcane tree and still use Frostfire Bolt. You'd either be missing 2% damage from Piercing Ice, or 1% hit from Elemental Precision. Fireball builds can pick up Magic Absorption without sacrificing DPS talents. Hence, the discussion is entirely better suited for the Magic Absorption thread, and perhaps a new Fireball thread altogether.