Hm, I feel constrained to add that the first 3 points to remove from a generic frostfire build for whatever your pet utility talents are (for me, the firestarter chain, with blastwave taken from the +1 point left over in the basic build) are not world in flames, but rather frost channeling.

At least if you don't find yourself running out of mana on current content. World in flames isn't a big single target damabe booster but it is a significant AOE damage booster, and these days we use AOE more than anything else when clearing trash and dealing with adds. Frost channeling is only more useful if you find yourself mana constrained.

I'm not saying 10% less mana is a bad thing, but it doesn't add to DPS in most fights, where WIF adds at least a little bit in every fight, and is a pretty good buy in any AOE fight.

Long time follower of the thread and Mage section on EJ. Just some props to all of those that spend time on refining their class (in this case Mages)... your work does NOT go unnoticed... at least not from my guild. It's been a pleasure following and testing what many of you discuss on these forums.

Mages;

I've been mulling over the benefits of 4T7. I can look on maxdps all day and play with the numbers... but... I'm really looking for some of you who have tested their Mages with the set bonus... and without. Should I really be looking for merely a 2T7 Bonus and then getting the best overall DPS for the rest of the items (as many of the web site seem to suggest re: "Best Gear")... or are the DPS gains just THAT GOOD from 4T7 that it is impossible to miss?

So I don't know about you, but my spreadsheets show that any four of the 5 nax25 T7 set pieces are either best in class or near best in class WITHOUT the set bonus.

So for me, I'm going to be looking at getting 4T7, because 5% crit is a very big deal. It's the equivalent of getting an extra 248 crit ratiing, or ~62 crit per piece. Crit rating is good enough that adding that much crit on every piece kicks it into best in class category. It's mostly a matter of figuring out which of the 5 pieces to replace with non-set gear. The best alternatives drop from the Eye.

If mixing and matching Nax10 pieces with 25 man drops, that might not be true on every piece, but for me, 62 crit rating pushes those over the top of pretty much every competitor. The main exception being that the Eye pieces (gown of spell weaver, legs of wanton spellcaster) come in a little ahead of the Nax10 pieces rather than being sidegrades, but they're not good enough to break the set and lose all 248 crit rating. (as those are the two pieces purchasable with badges of heroism, even a 25 man raider might be getting his set bonus with those 2 nax10 pieces so it's worth considering)

I don't think we'll have serious competition for the set pieces till the next tier upgrade

The 4 piece bonus is not 5% crit, it's If you look at the first post of this thread, you can see that this brings your crit multiplier from 330.75% to 334.565% (with CSD). This is not particularly impressive, but according to Rawr/Optimal gearsets people have set up, it's enough to pull one of the T7 pieces with spirit above the other possibilities for that slot (Usually [Gothik's Cowl] + 4T7 is used).

Arg. Reading comprehension failure. /me goes to sit in the bad theorycrafting corner.

5% extra damage is good for the same reason CSF gem is good, but it's not as huge an impact no. Still, as I said, the tier items are near best in class anyway so breaking the set needs a bigger incentive than we've got now.

The 4 piece bonus isn't 5% crit, its 5% increased critical damage. I think you've confused the two.

[e] Gotta be quick around here!

If you plan to change to the FB build in 3.0.8 than [Heigan's Putrid Vestments] are part of the ideal setup according to Rawr (with all buffs and stuff ). It uses the T7.5 head instead of Gothiks Cowl.

http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t30655-w..._0_8_part_two/

To quote Roywin:

". . . and not worth giving up upgrades for" and yet every optimal gear set I see posted has 4-piece T7.

"Upgrades" doesn't necessarily mean "currently available itemisation". I.e. 3.1 loot.

If the result is minimal... it may just come down to which drops first for me. I'm not a GM and we use a DKP system... so it really may only come down to which falls... or which I can spend more cheaply on. Seriously... I don't need to pull my hair over minimal DPS gains when we're farming all content currently. I can worry about gaining small DPS if/when Ulduar becomes a true test.

Unless someone feels strongly otherwise? that I *need* to have 4T7? Along the same lines of LiquidHAL, I, too, have seen a lot of 4T7 choices remaining on top gear sets. Is it because we're afraid to try something else? My only concern is that I drop a LOT of DPS in shying away from 4T7 (and... it would be 7.5... mind you). But, again, if it's a small loss of DPS... I'm not gonna go grey over it.

Basically, the problem with current gear is that there is no ilvl 213 chest without spirit or hit. Spirit does nothing for frostfire mages, and using the best gear in every other slot will get you to the hit cap. Therefore the best of the sucky chests is the T7.5 one for the set bonus. According to Rawr, if [Gown of the Spell-Weaver] had haste instead of hit, it would be better than T7.5 chest + 4T7 bonus.

On a side note this may be helping fire in 3.0.8 sims, as in a fire spec you can make use of the hit from [Gown of the Spell-Weaver] and the T7.5 helm is itemized slightly better than the T7.5 chest (or at least, Rawr seems to think this is the case).

I have 4*T7.10/25 yet i use only 3 pieces - instead of T7.25(213lvl) robe i'm forced to wear [Gown of Blaumeux],a 200lvl piece. All that because of both hit and much needed haste it provides. Rawr, dummy testing and Patchwerk prooved that for me.

What type of macros do you guys use? The only ones I use are to "Use" a trinket while casting a spell.
ie:

#showtooltip Frostfire Bolt
/use 13
/use 14
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/cast Frostfire Bolt

Also, would you suggest a macro for Combustion/Icy Veins?

So... you'd rather have haste and hit over the 4T7 bonus. Is that for merely Patchwerk? are you using different gear for different encounters? or are you just saying, fuck it -- I like my haste and hit over SP (via crit) ... I don't wanna lose it over a (IMO) shitty chest piece (T7.5)?

I wouldn't specifically always have your trinkets get used whenever they are up as I like to stack my cooldowns which I put together all in one:

/use 13 (or 14)
/cast combustion
/cast icy veins
/use mana gem (or whatever it is called) -- for 2pc T7

You can add mirror image to that if you want to, but I choose to save it.

My mage is Hellshero on the Windrunner realm.

I've been collecting crit gear, and my self buffed crit is something like 36.5. With raid buffs and and full debuffs on the target I'm often over 50% easily. I do 100% crits on loatheb.

So, the point of this post is, I recently decided to take living bomb out of my spec and move some points around, and by just using FFB and dropping hot streak pyros when they're up, I've increased my DPS by a LOT.

My thinking is that since the dot component of LB doesn't benefit from crit, I'm better off spending the global cooldown time on casting a FFB, which can proc ignites and can crit for the big crit bonus.

Also note that I use a macro for damage cooldowns, and trigger it during the first bloodlust of a fight. My macro is currently:

Icy veins
Combustion
Mana gem
Mirror image

Depending on the fight I'll either cold snap to continue icy veins during the first bloodlust (often the only bloodlust these days), or I'll wait for icy veins to recycle and then hit the macro again to blow whatever is off cooldown, then cold snap and icy veins again to finish out what is often the "molten fury" part of the fight.

Before, with living bomb in my rotation, I was barely keeping ahead of our resident frost mage (who can squeeze amazing dps out of a frost build). Once I took it out, I'm topping the damage meters in almost every fight (even against hunters and death knights).

I think maybe the numbers in the OP might need some tweaking in light of this, as I still see LB touted as something you should keep up at all times.

Except for fights with ridiculous high crit rates (Loatheb) not casting LB is a dps loss as proven time and time again by cold hard math and all avaiable spreadsheets/tools.
EVen on Loatheb th difference between casting LB and not casting LB is something like <1% and that in my gear in favor for LB, but LB is an instant cast, so for Loatheb I would advisxe to use straight FFBPyro spam as soon as got the first spore buff.

As long as you only have your own anecdotal evidence the math will always be favored by the people here.

As many others have pointed out before, the "but I'm trying this spec and I'm doing beter!!" stuff isn't usefull at all. You provide no evidence, or logs or anything and just goes with "I seem to do better DPS"

On Loatheb you'll do more dps with an icy veins build, but LB is a dps increase even with 100% crit, allthough a very very small one.
It's been theorycrafted to death, and LB is superior to Icy veins with any realistic ammount of crit. If you want to challenge the statement, then provide some proof or at least a WWS report.

If it works better for you, that's cool and you should spec whatever suits you best, but claiming the theorycraft in this thread needs an entire reworking because you feel it does isnt helping..

edit: Carnivean beat me to it:>

The living bomb burst does crit, and by itself it isn't a bad use of a GCD, especially if there is anything else around. At most gear levels it's in the DPS ballpark of what frostfirebolt does, and then any tics of dot you get on top of that is pure bonus. That's why it should raise dps as a general rule, and it certainly will if anything else is near enough to catch the blast.

Just don't use LB when it won't tick all the way or let it distract you from smooth chaincasting. Either of those could lower your DPS.

Without knowing your exact spec and gear it's hard to provide hard proof. There could be other things influencing you in the field too....if you spent points on shatter the deep frost guy might be helping your critrate even more on some targets.

Still, one GCD every 12-15 seconds is a pretty small price to pay for what living bomb delivers. It's often usable when frostfire bolt is not even if it doesn't bring a big dps advantage, eg movement and/or facing and/or interrupts precludes slow casting of frostfirebolt.

Theory Craft-o-Matic

My numbers disagree. Especially given that in 3.0.8 LB can generate hotstreak procs and has a potential to have a 4% higher crit rate than FFB for that purpose. While Living Bomb is not an insane increase in DPS, it is an increase, and an increase in mobile DPS.

Can you quantify "A Lot" for your DPS increase? Do you have data to back up your statement?

living bomb is still worth casting on loatheb to prevent an ignite munching every 12 secs~.