Shurik

FB is fine on Mimiron HM. You simply need the damage. Depending on your setup (6 or 7 healers; 1 or 2 tanks; ...) the self destruction timer is going to be really tough. 10 minutes seems to be a random number but the encounter is very well balanced around it. Your most important spell for Mimiron is probably Blink because you don't run into trouble with fire spawns, Water Bombs or Laser Barrage. Playing with Fire should never be an issue. Those 3% are very unlikely to kill you and can be up to 100k damage here and a 100k wipe is nothing unrealistic at all... -.-

Success isn't a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.
- Arnold H. Glasow

 

vahu

I didnt mention anything about FB on mimiron HM, FB has magic absorption aswell.. i said FFB is a problem and if you have done it, you would knew. Playing with fire isnt a problem i just stated that there is such thing, magic aborsption talent really helps a lot there. You didnt complete neither 10man or 25man mimiron HD(gogo FFB spec there), you will see what i mean.

 

Wyrmbergg

What do you reckon is the best mage specc atm. I checled out Manly on the Armoury and he changed to 0/53/18 from Arcane. I have went duel specc with 57/3/11 and 0/53/18 to try out but they both seem roughly the same. I use molten armour, living bomb and frostfire bolt glyphs (for 0/53/18). I am quite decent geared but my dps is not as good as it should be. I use the Flask of frost wyrm and Firecracker salmon in raids but there are mages with not nearly as good gear as I have but they always beat me in the dps charts what am I doing wrong.

 

deadion

Why don't you try reading any part of any of the threads.

 

Saruk

Has anybody tested the dps gain/loss of having a glyphed LB on a target and using combustion? As the LB crit uses a combustion charge, I am thinking it's a net dps loss compared to no LB up and just spamming your main nuke when combustion is used.

 

Kelfar

Combustion is a very small dps increase since our crit is already so high. You can see Enthorn's post here about the dps gain from speccing for combustion.

Optimal Sets / Item Discussion

 

Saruk

Yes, I know combustion is a small dps increase. I was actually not asking whether or not the talent is useful, just whether or not it is good to use with a glyphed LB on the target.

The LB ticks of a glyphed LB affect combustion as far as I can tell. And the crits use a charge. It seems that if you are FFB specced, have combustion and have a glyphed LB, you are better off not having LB up when combustion is used, otherwise you are using combustion charges for a 2k LB crit versus a 9k FFB crit.

So if I pop trinks and IV at the start of a fight, my rotation should be:
LB
scorch to 5
FFB (until LB wears off)
trinks/IV/combustion
FFB until combustion wears off
LB

Has anyone else tested this?

 

Umberger

Generally speaking, not having Living Bomb on a target is considered a DPS loss. I can't imagine keeping it off the target for any amount of time (even in the case provided) would be worth the extra critical hits from Frostfire Bolt.

 

◊ Kyth

This is correct, even though the writing is poor.

We had 3 mages in a week ago or so, 2 of us with MA 1 without, unbeknownst to our healer.

After a few hours, and noticing the other mage died a lot more often, I asked the healer why he said "Darned if I know, but he just gets hit *harder* by everything. I've checked your HP and it's not that, you guys are almost identical."

I said "hmmm.... let me inspect him." Sure enough, he didn't have MA.


We all now run with MA on Mimi HM regardless of whether we're arcane or fire. If our healers say it makes a difference (when they don't even know our specs are different) then I believe them.

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Omnia

Doing some napkin math on this, the extra 80 resists should translate into an average 14.5% magic damage reduction against a lvl83 target (ofc additive to motw+aura/totem). Well worth it.

 

Saruk

I did some testing last night and this gets somewhat complicated.

The best case scenario is that you have LB up and it ticks away but doesn't crit at all with combustion up. In this case, you use the combustion charges on FFBs and HS pyros only. This way you get the full value of the LB dot as well as the dmg of the combusted main nukes.

The worst case scenario is that your first tick of LB crits, your FFB doesn't, then the next two ticks of LB crit. Total crit dmg being about 9k versus 33k if you have 3 FFBs crit (not counting HS procs in either case).

Both of these scenarios happend as I was playing around with it. The question is which one, on average, is more likely?

It's also a matter of timing in a boss fight. When you start, if you are scorching to 5 and have LB up you can get in the five scorches and a main nuke before LB falls off. As soon as it falls off, if you cast IV and combustion together you can make sure you consume combustion with your main nukes in 6-7 secs (maybe less on a HS proc, which usually happens). That way you are giving up only 4-5k LB dmg but making sure you always max out combustion dmg.

At the end of the day, your upside is high and your downside is low for this tactic. The issue rests on how often the downside is likely to be experienced (LB consuming all combustion charges).

 

radikal

Ideally you should have ffb and pyro dot up for combustion -- if not only for the extra stacks, but for gauranteed ffb x 3 -> pyro

radikalnoise.com :: Dicks, Strats, Drama, eFame, and More Dicks
FH - LF 1 Baller PvE Mage
All noncrit DoTs (not Ignite) generate Combustion charges (Bug?)

 

Enthorn

It's a bit more complicated than that though, Saruk. Let's say you drop Combustion so you can pick up Magic Absorption for Fireball, or Frost Warding for Frostfire. Both of these result in damage mitigation or damage absorption (and both can lead to more mana, although mana return is more likely for Frost/Fire wards).

This damage reduction results in less healing needed for you. Someone did some quick math in another post and said that 80 resistance should translate to about 15% magic mitigation. This is somewhat consistent in what I see in my WWS logs compared to other players who don't have any resistance (aside from appropriate auras in specific fights).

Similarly, you could drop Combustion for something like Student of the Mind, which is a small DPS increase over Combustion. So then you need to look at how much DPS you're losing from not taking Student of the Mind, then look at how much DPS you're gaining (on average) by applying your method.

I suppose the best case scenario would be popping Combustion immediately at the start of a fight after applying Scorch, but not applying Living Bomb (unless you don't have Scorch Glyph, in which case you should cast Living Bomb, then 5x scorch). In the latter case, you'd wait till Living Bomb ticks, then you'd use Combustion (and Icy Veins if you're Frostfire).

It all seems like such a huge hassle just to get some use out of Combustion. While I understand the premise you are presenting (it makes sense -- you don't want Living Bomb DoT to crit, so you just don't cast Living Bomb with Combustion up), there's more at play. You know this, as you've indicated, but I think the answer is quite obvious. Think of it this way: if you did drop Living Bomb, and you popped Combustion, and you got your three guaranteed criticals... how many of those would have been critical hits anyway? When you look at it that way, it seems that Combustion possibly wasn't worth it at all. All Combustion really gains you in that case is an increased chance for back to back criticals for Hot Streak. But then, at the same time, you're giving up a possible Living Bomb critical as well, which could have scored towards a Hot Streak.

Additionally, think of a case like Kologarn or Mimiron P4 (or Freya, or Auriaya, etc.) in which Living Bomb explosion is hitting multiple targets. That's a lot more damage you are giving up in that case.

 

Saruk

Yes, I agree combustion is a pretty useless talent but I would probably take it over Frost Warding - which has situational value but is very limited (especially as the mana return requires you to have a ward up).

As for the other options, they don't really pertain to a FFB Thread as there is no way you are speccing into arcane and using FFB's as your main nuke (but for TTW point well taken)

You point about LB hitting multiple targets makes a lot of sense. The combustion/LB/trink rotation should be situational.

As for the 'crits being crits anyway' argument, over the long run, some of those have to be attributable to combustion, not all will but some will be. Which makes the argument still valid.

It's not that much hassle to either, just hit your cds without LB up and put it up when combustion wears off. I admit it's not a dps game changer, but every bit helps right?

 

• Reignman

What about the argument about not getting a HS proc from Combustion? Then you've lost out on DoT damage from LB and also the explosion in return for (possibly) one or two FFB crits. I say possibly because at 50%+ crit rate, you're likely going to crit anyway as Enthorn noted.

If you're popping it with all of your cooldowns, you're likely using it with Icy Veins & a potion of Wild Magic on one burn phase, which negates some of the crit benefit from combustion even more.

Check out rawr and how much DPS living bomb is by itself. For me, LB is 8,632.07 DPS. Thats a lot of DPS to give up. Spell cycles show Combustion+FFBLBPyro at 6416.50 dps and Combustion+FFBPyro at 5841.09 dps for my current setup.

All this tells me that its going to be situational, at best, that you could get consistent DPS gain from the method you're mentioning, and could quite very well end up as a DPS loss on some occasions to give up LB. As you noted, its not a dps game changer either way and boils down to personal preference, rng & the encounter.

My personal preference is no combustion at all, and either MA or SotM as TtW Fireball, or Blastwave as FFB since I use that for AOE type encounters. To each their own, however.

 

◊ Kyth

Maybe I view the world differently because even with dual spec I'm respec'ing 5-6 times a week but.... nothin' wrong with situational!

Here's frost warding's mana return on a night of Mimiron's (most ending in P3/P4 wipes):

Replenishment: 384k
Evocation: 358k (used on every phase change)
Frost Warding: 244k
Mana gems: 122k

source

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Kir

While he may not have, I HAVE read most of the threads so far. I just resubbed a couple weeks ago, and just getting into raiding again. I havent played since BT/hyjal, so I'm trying to catch up on all the new mechanics. The problem is, these threads were started close to the end of beta/release of Wotlk and haven't been fully updated. For example: FM bug is listed as 'Frostfire/Focus Magic is still not dead! Confirmed to be working May 11." on the compendium thread, and that's incorrect. There are no links to the actual specs for arcane/fb/ffb/etc.. So a new mage has no starting point to understanding wtf anyone is talking about in the threads. You can't just read the thread from start to finish, because a lot of the information is old and no longer accurate, and there's no way to tell exactly when the posts in the thread are up to date.

That said, I've gotten a general understanding of what's going on from reading everything within the last couple months in each thread, but really wish someone would update the compendium or create a new thread to include more mage 101 level stuff to lower the learning curve on comprehending the more current posts from everyone.

 

Sancus

If you use Combustion with Icy Veins while lusted(speed pot, scale of fates helps too), it's possible to get quite a few more than 3 crits out of your charges, because you can easily FFB(procs Hot Streak)(1 crit), FFB(2 crit), FFB -> Pyro, Pyro(5 crits, with 4T8) or Pyro, Fire Blast, as well as proccing Hot Streak again. If you are standing reasonably far away from the boss and lusted+IV, it's almost always possible to FFB and then cast two instants before all your spells land, especially since many bosses in Ulduar have large hitboxes, meaning you can be standing quite further away than your spell ranges indicate, giving you a lot of travel time.

I realize this risks Ignite munching, but frankly I haven't noticed it having a major impact very often, and the above is a LOT of burst damage, and is particularly handy on a few things such as Steelbreaker last.

Not really a huge game-changer, but then again, I can't see why you would take Frost Warding with FFB as usually when I play FFB I don't even Evocate, let alone actually look at mana pool. The survivability of extra absorption might be handy, I guess, but um I can't think of any Fire/Frost survivability fight where I would play FFB over Fire/TTW for Magic Absorption.

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

 

Saruk

Yeah, there is no doubt given the Mini fight it's useful. But again, you wouldn't be FFB for this fight anyway if I understand correctly - you are either Fire or Arcane for MA right?

If there was a useful dmg absorbing talent actually low in the frost tree, I think you might see more FFB mages take it over combustion.

Here's hoping they just change the talent. I saw a lot of questions about it over on the mage q/a thread on the wow site. Everyone seems to agree it is pretty bad.

 

Apokalypz

Actually, you would be FFB over Arcane or Fire for Mimiron for the simple reason that Phase 3 and 4 may not have a slowing effect on the head unit.

 

Solisa

Death knights generally will pestilence to the other two, and that should keep it up in most instances. I'm not sure about the upper range on thunderclap, that may reach as well given its aoe status. Probably not, but pestilence definitely activates it.

 

jula

Vezax 25 hard mode - today I did this fight using a 'normal' FFB spec and glyphs. Here are my impressions:

* Setup - we had 2 frost mages and 2 FFB mages in the raid. Frost mages gave FM to FFB mages.
* Overall damage done - FFB mage was top. Overall damage done to animus - a FFB was top.
* Mana - run out only 5 seconds before the fight ended and I used several (around 5-10) pyroblasts during the fight (using them while running out of shadow crash zone, when the pyro dot is not up already).
* Damage taken - obviously as FFB (with playing with fire) you take more. we used a total of 5 healers, they still managed to keep the raid up.
* Cast time - a thing to keep in mind is sub 1.0 sec cast time with the shadow crash buff, especially when heroism and/or icy veins is used. Since FFB has longer cast it does not drop below 1.0 as much (and the gearing is already more crit oriented over haste anyway). For nuking Animus down with heroism and all, this can make a big difference. Obviously faster Animus killing helps a lot.
* Molten fury bonus damage - you "double dip" it since we bring vezax to ~5% hp before animus, and later he heals up while we kill animus but he stays in the execute range. If in a "normal" fight you spend say 30% of the fight in molten fury range, here a larger portion (say 45%) of the fight is under the molten fury effect (the numbers are for illustrative purpose only, they are not accurate!).

I am not saying FFB is better than frost. I am saying it is competitive in my experience, and is a spec you can use and perform well with. If your guild has already done it before, you can save the respec costs and effort if you want. The specs has several advantages over frost, but comes with several disadvantages as well.

 

chuckey

K I have a quick question... Is there such thing as crit cap for fire spec mages? Today, i was doing 25man uld and i was stacking FM with another mage. I had around 42% crit chance if you include FM proc (3%) , scorch (5%), boomkin (5%), Ele shaman (3%). That makes it around 58% crit chance n through out ignis fight my actual crit was only 50%, razorscale 45% and XT it was below 50% too. Once i stopped stacking FM i saw a drastic chnage in dps and i was critting alot more this leads me to believe that there might have been a crit cap but i do not have any hard evidence to prove it. So, my question again.. can you be crit capped? and if you can what is FB crit cap?

 

Enthorn

Have you killed Loatheb? If so, there is your answer. If you haven't... well, I question why you're in Ulduar then.

Edit: To elaborate, your achievements page on your armory profile would indicate that, yes, you have been to Naxxramas. Surely then you've experienced the 50% increased critical strike chance. Your post indicates you have ways of seeing your crit rates. It follows then that you'd be able to see your crit rates on Loatheb. If this is the case, then 50% + your base crit chance (which you indicate to be 40-45%) effectively answers your question as to whether there is a crit cap or not.

 

◊ Kyth

Arcane picks up Frost Warding though. My point merely was, it has pve use. Particularly for arcane which is hungry for extra mana. (not so for frostfire or frost, obviously.)

(although for our kill we ended up going fire with just MA, as arcane and frost warding didn't end up worth it.)

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