◊ manly

First, I highly recommend you go have a look at the first post of this thread. Theres a spreadsheet on the first post. Download it, then open it. It points out the DPSC of all 0/53/18 spells for a near optimum gearset using most common raid buffs. It doesn't models any cooldowns, but regardless it should give you a strong idea why its a bad idea. Check FFB dps, then LB, then hot streak pyro. I'm going by memory here (no excel at work...), but its roughly 4300 dpsc for ffb, 6500 dpsc for LB and 8500 dpsc for hot streak pyro. It should be glaringly obvious from that alone that not casting LB is rather a bad idea.

Just think of it this way:
Currently you cast FFB, and hot streak pyro when it procs. That means ideally you would exclusively cast hot streak pyroblasts non-stop as your sole spell. But unfortunately you can't. As a result, your filler is FFB. Now comes the kicker. Theres absolutely no difference between casting a living bomb and a hot streak pyro. If I could spam living bomb, I would do it. But I can't so I try and cast it as often as possible, exactly in the same way that you do with hot streak pyro.

For as long as living bomb dpsc beats ffb dpsc, your assertion makes no sense whatsoever.

Log on with different model:
1- Create a character of the desired model. Log on/off.
2- At character selection screen, select your actual character; mouseover the new, desired model character, and hold down left click; hit enter and release left click at the same time.
bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

galzohar

Just the fact that living bomb dpsc beats ffb dpsc isn't enough for living bomb to be worth casting. What you need is that the ffb+hs rotation to do less dps than living bomb. Of course this condition is true, so living bomb is worth casting, it's just that it's not worth casting just because it beats ffb, it's worth casting because it beats the combined dps of ffb and hs pyro.

 

◊ manly

Well, I'm working under the assumptions of HS proccing off LB explosion (as it does on PTR). Other than that I don't think you could truly compare ffb/hs-pyro dps vs LB dps given that you always LB where a ffb would take place, meaning you would be more competing directly versus ffb alone. But again, I know that you work off under the assumption that ffb can give a HS proc, and that LB doesn't.

Log on with different model:
1- Create a character of the desired model. Log on/off.
2- At character selection screen, select your actual character; mouseover the new, desired model character, and hold down left click; hit enter and release left click at the same time.
bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

galzohar

Obviously, if LB crit can give HS, then you're only replacing FFB with LB, and not replacing a GCD in a FFB-pyro rotation, in which case only FFB vs LB dpsc matters.

Then again there's the tiny chance of quardrople crits, but that should be quite negligible.

 

regolith

Which all sounds good, except that you're talking about playing excel and while I was playing world of warcraft I didn't see the results you got while playing excel. And since the simulation didn't give the results as the game, I'm wondering which one is off?

Maybe it has something to do with my gear. Maybe it has something to do with my latency (90-120ms usually). Regardless, I'm seeing better dps in recount from FFB>HS than from LB>FFB>HS>LB whenever its available.

Also note that I never need to scorch since we run with a frost mage.

This wasn't a single fight either, this was a whole night of raiding.

I'll go run a few hundred against a target dummy with both specs and see if I can figure out why my actual game experience doesn't line up with your spreadsheet theorycrafting.

 

Anasztaizia

It might be worth checking you've trained / are casting LB rank 3.

 

Kaiyoko

I'll believe you, but we need a WWS report of some sort to see what's going on. Without it, anyone claim x spec or x setup is better than the current agreed spec. Trust me, no evidence equal no argument power. I have a couple of spec ideas that don't involve LB, but with 3.0.8's changes, I'm betting we'll see Hot Streaks procing a lot more with Living Bomb up. I still think Blizzard could of done much better with a 51 point talent, but that's for another day...

 

◊ manly

...I hope you realize that Living Bomb, of all the mage talents, is the best dps increasing talent point for point over any other competing talent. That's only for single target dps.

Log on with different model:
1- Create a character of the desired model. Log on/off.
2- At character selection screen, select your actual character; mouseover the new, desired model character, and hold down left click; hit enter and release left click at the same time.
bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

regolith

I think I figured out what's going on. When I specced out of LB I picked up cold snap, which gave me an icy veins during the early bloodlust and a 2nd icy veins at 35%, possibly a 3rd with 2 during 35%, which gives me a lot of extra killing juice during molten fury time. I think that has been whats putting me so far over the top, since the mana gem + the very high crit chance I run is giving me a lot of really brutal HS procs off the fast casting FFBs I throw.

So, basically the molten fury + icy veins + gem was helping me pick up where LB left off. I also do have a tendency to get really lucky with trinket procs, though thats obviously not something you can treat as given.

I'll have to play around with the target dummy some more and see if I can get some more concrete data.

Sigh. More gold down the respec hole.

 

Pintofbrew

No, it's even better than that. When you cast a FFB, you gain two benefits:

1) FFB DPS

2) A chance to process part of a HS proc. This is proc-per-cast, not per-second as the DPS is.

Hence, LB is even better than FFB (from 3.08 onwards) as you're dropping 1/2 of an FFB worth of damage, but getting the same chance to proc a HS as an FFB. Even more, in fact, because WiF will mean that LB has 4% more crit than FFB+glyph. So even if FFB and LB DPS was a dead heat, it'd still be a benefit.

Now something I've been wondering: If LB crits count towards HS, what if on a multi-mob pull, your LB goes off and crits two mobs. Do you gain a HS even if you had zero charges? What if you had one, it crits two. Do you gain HS and still have one charge? And finally, what if it crits three mobs and you had nill?

It's just a shame trash lives so little, otherwise this LB-HS synergy could offer us so much more potential.

"Do not offend the chair leg of truth. It is wise and terrible. Continue."
-Spider Jerusalem

 

Isambard

It seems so:

21:45'53.621 Juravieal Fireball hits Heroic Training Dummy for 3708 Fire. (927 Resisted)
21:45'54.189 Heroic Training Dummy suffers 905 Fire damage from Juravieal Living Bomb.
21:45'54.752 Juravieal Living Bomb hits Grandmaster’s Training Dummy for 3030 Fire. (Critical)
21:45'54.752 Juravieal Living Bomb hits Heroic Training Dummy for 3394 Fire. (Critical)
21:45'55.307 Juravieal gains Hot Streak.

 

Swindley

That is very cool, and interesting, but raises even more questions!

What if it crits on one mob but not on the 2nd? Does it then count towards hotstreak? What if you hit 3 mobs at the same time with the explosion? 2 crits and 1 noncrit?

 

Sancus

This has been covered before; when Living Bomb goes off, the order of crits in your combat log determines the result of Hot Streak.

So if you start from 0 crits, and get crit,hit,crit,hit it won't proc, but crit,crit,hit,hit will proc.

<Vontre> I removed the cooldown on evo
<sancus> and what happened?
<Vontre> DPS went down rofl

 

Hobart-AJ

Which, of course, only becomes an issue on boss fights with multiple mobs. So on, say, Faerlina... if you were placing LB (which, I don't recommend anyway!) on her... the issue of crit order would come into effect as to whether or not your counter hits HS status.

But on Patchwerk or Thaddius (etc.) this really in a non-issue.

 

Toshimo

You should still be using LB on Grand Widow. Your OT should be keeping the adds >10 yards away from her.

 

solbergb

Yeah. The only time I remove LB from rotation if i think the critter will live through it long enough to explode is because my mana bar is very low or if for whatever reason I don't think the tank will handle the collateral damage well. This could be because there are random adds that might get involved and not get tanked or because we need to kill something in order and for some reason the "don't kill yet" stuff is in 10' of the skull.

 

Medusa

We just nuke Grand Widow without enrage controll, the damage on the Maintank ist even without sacrificing Adds not so hard. Maybe Instructor is dangerous because you can do damage to the Controlled Mobs (in Heroic, a few will be Offtanked), but even here, there is no big deal with LB.

But irather I have another question: on fights like Thaddius for example, or malygos with Sparks where damage skales up, hov does LB damage is calculated? Are the stats at the start of the cast representative or at each tick/end exlosion? I often use LB on Thaddius when he cast Polarity switch so there are no charges stack up.

 

Carnivean

LB has two parts, the DoT which ndamage is calculated whenever you apply it and the explosion, which damage is calculated when it goes off. It's easily seen on Thaddius, just use LB during Shifft when you have no buff and the ticks will be "normal" (not multiplied by whatever) but the explosion will go off, after you gained the buff and will be pretty big .

 

Pintofbrew

You can also verify this by casting LB on the middle target dummy, then casting Combustion, scorching until you've wasted 2 combustion charges, and waiting for the LB to explode. You'll note that the LB explosion will consume the last Combustion, which was cast after it.

Or, I suppose, though I'm not entirely sure it'll work, you could strip, cast LB, invisibility, wear all your gear and switch on trinkets just before it explodes to see what happens.

"Do not offend the chair leg of truth. It is wise and terrible. Continue."
-Spider Jerusalem

 

Magelove

On the subject of LB, i recently met a mage who had taken cold snap instead of LB and insisted that it was better for dps. Being curious i respecced to give it a try and found that it did increase my dps, if only by 150-200, however it was still an increase having 2 IV availible. I was wondering is this because of my gear perhaps, or is my origional cycle wrong. With LB i use the cycle Scorch x2, LB, FFB spam until HS, and then reapply scorch/LB when required. I usually save my cd's until 35% health unless its a long fight and i can get 2 IV/Gem into the fight. My gear is somewhat in the improvement stage, 2pc T7, Embrace of Spider, Sundial of Exiled, Grieving Spellblade being some of my best items. Any help here would be great as i have recently seen a lot of improvement in my dps, often coming minimum 3rd in recount.

On a side note this isnt actually related to FFB but i dont know where to ask, and i cant find a specific forum here. I find that my dps in 10 man raids is always 2500+ however in 25man it seems to shrink to barely 2000, i use quartz to eliminate some of the lag problem i have but i still seem to have a threshold. Could this be a graphic card problem? I use a laptop by the way. Also could anyone tell me what they use pc spec wise as im considering an upgrade and would like to know what works best.

Thanks

 

Pintofbrew

That is clearly mistaken. If one more IV is providing you with more damage increase than LB, you were not doing LB correctly or are comparing non-similar samples. Like comparing a 1:30 fight versus a target dummy, one time with LB and one time with 2*IV.

IV versus LB has been analysed to death and been found to be severely lacking. You will note in a correctly applied mage WWS that LB accounts for around 10% of the output damage, with a percentage of the Ignite damage incurred from LB as well. IV has been proven to be at most a 1.8-2.1% damage increase as a talent, and Cold Snap can at most double that, as it only gives "plus one IV", effectively.

There is a guide on how to play FFB correctly at the 1st page of this thread, please use that instead of asking how to cycle.

"Do not offend the chair leg of truth. It is wise and terrible. Continue."
-Spider Jerusalem

 

Saphya

Magelove, I find it most likely that your DPS increase with 2 IV instead of LB is because of 3 things: firstly, short test fight duration (maybe you even had more luck with your crits on the test(s) with 2x IV); if your fight duration is short, uptime of IV will be a lot higher thus increasing the relative value of Coldsnap quite a bit. Using Rawr, I get almost the same DPS for 0/50/21 and 0/53/18 (the latter still about 50 DPS higher, though) in a fight with 110 seconds length. Secondly, your uptime of LB might be short, that means you aren't re-applying LB soon enough. And thirdly, using instant casts with high latency are going to cost some extra time (Simulationcraft modelling is "New latency model: lag=0.150, gcd_penalty=0.100, channel_penalty=0.300" for example).

Your second problem seems to be performance (CPU and/or graphics) related. I would advice you to turn your graphics setttings down as much as possible while you are raiding 25-mans. Leave spell details at about the "d" though, otherwise you won't see important things like fire to move out of it. Also switch off every addon you don't need (Questhelper has proven to be exceptionally bad with standard settings), by either deactivating them in the character selection screen, or check out "addon control panel" which lets you switch on/off addons ingame (needs reloadui though).

 

Thegoodman

There are many fights that have an AoE element as well as a single target boss. Living Bomb is good for a single target but great when AoE is involved. Fights like Sartharion with multiple Drakes require a lot of AoE damage as well as focused fire to be successful and, even in your particular case, a thing like 2xIV is going to be a minimal single target increase but the damage from AoE will not be over taken. On fights where multiple mobs are always running around, Living Bomb can account for as much as 25% of my damage. Also, do not underestimate the value of an instant ability you can cast while moving. There are maybe 2 fights in all of WotLK so far where a mage doesn't have to move around, the more damage we are capable of doing while moving the more valuable we are to such encounters. If LB isn't doing much for you, get a mod like Scorchio and make sure you never miss a tick on your primary target.

 

Magelove

My thanks to Goodman and Saphya. I intend to download rawr tonight, i was also wondering what programs you use to record your ingame testing, not the raid reports however, just something simple that records spell cycles and hot streaks used/missed etc. I think my increase in dps was because all my tests are on training dummies, therefore no interupts, no moving and only single target. I apologise for my lack of experience, i have been playing for less than a year so im dont fully understand the game mechanics as some of you do. Lastly, pintofbrew, i believe that you could be so much more help if you wrote a constructive reply, you obviously have a good knowledge of the game so why not use it to help others. Patronising me isnt going to help really.

 

swiss

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