i tried /scorchio and /scorchio2 to no avail. I don't see any icon on my minimap or fubar. At this point I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do to set it up.

Works on Grandmaster Dummies. There's two distinct dot ticks (and two hits, of course). At 1449 SP, R9 tics for 421 and R8 tics for 356.

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Edit:

As far as efficiency goes, Rank 8 non-crit Flamestrike does about 3.2 damage per mana, while non-crit Blizzard is at 2.6 DPM. Unless you take Shatter, you're not likely to crit more with Blizzard than you are with Flamestrike (my paper doll is at 26.76 w/ Molten Armor glyphed for Fire, 17.79 for Frost). For the same amount of casting time (3s w/ no Haste), Rank 8 deals a bit more damage than 3 waves of Blizzard; this includes the dot.

For the record, Rank 7 stacks with 8 and 9, but doesn't seem to be worth casting. It only deals around 1700 or so for the same mana as 8 and 9, at 2.14 DPM. The extra crit from Fire might bump that a bit, but I'm not Math worthy enough to calc that.

Further Edit: Cast sequencing 7, 8, 9 lets me chain cast without losing dot tics, however.

Under the normal Interface Menu --> Addons, where most addons are nowadays, if they have no fubar configuration ).

Did someone actually check this rune? Based on the comments on wowhead it seems it is quite hard to stack with a two-hander, often even falling off. I'm going to try to convince a deathknight to check the procc rate.

I agree, and the Empowered issue seems senseless at the moment, especially since they're both 35 point talents [impossible to get both, in fact trying means you'll only have 1 point in one instead of a full Empowered]. But the other problem is Burnout vs Fingers of Frost/Shatter. As efficient as FFB is mana wise with both trees' mana reduction, the extra 1% for crits is crazy...especially since Master of Elements makes it more like 0.7% increase over time. So for the same amount of talent points [5, albeit spread differently in the tree], you get 10% flat over a theoretical maximum of 7.5%, which loses some due to occasional chain-procs.

Well, okay, but what if we take Chilled to the bone? For more talent points, we get +5% DAMAGE [not crit] and extra slow that means little in raids. So, even if they normalized Empowered Frostbolt by making it a 5 point talent to account for the additional +crit [or somesuch] or make it identical to EF, Frost still loses out even by using its best burst mechanic to increase critical percentage. But wait, Fire also has Pyromaniac and Combustion! The problem is that the breakdown remains very skewed to fire for FFB, adding up to [looking at it with just one tree]:
-Deep Frost benefits: +16% dmg, +~7.5% crit with extra crit dmg [+10 WC], +3%/6% hit, -10% mana and threat, Icy Viens, Water Elemental [mana return, DPS], Brainfreeze
-Deep Fire benefits: Ignite, +13% dmg [+5% spellpower on top], +9% crit [+10 IS] with extra crit dmg, Living Bomb, Molten Fury, crit refunds, Combustion, -3% mana and -10% threat, Pyroblasts instant/fast

On top of that, assuming 51 points in one tree [maximum of 20 points in the other], Frost gives more from low tiers than fire does. At that point, Deep Frost dipping fire can't compete for a Frostfire build right now...it would take a major overhaul of how both Fire and Frost benefits FFB DPS [Fire giving more in the first 20 points rather than having an uber-top, a fixed Empowered with a better Chilled would go a long way for Frost] to equalize things.

The problem I find with a Deep Frost Frostfire build is not even how it compares to a Deep Fire frostfire build. It's that once you've invested that many points into the frost tree, Frostbolt is superior DPS.

I mean I'd expect a Deep Fire Build to hit harder than a Deep frost, because Deep Frost has the WE popping in for 10 or 20% of your overall damage (or whatever it's calcualted to now) And the WE is key for Frost to even stand a chance to keeping up with Fire.

But even sacrificing the Frostbolt talents for Fire talents, you're just not going to get frostfire bolt to catch up with frostbolt. (I think this has a lot ot do with Improved frostbolt, Empowered Frostbolt and the fact that you're going to keep munching off the frostfire bolt DoT by chain casting it.)

I think the "easy" way to fix this would be to make Empowered Frostbolt, Empowered Frost (similar to what they did in the fire tree) and have the benefits extend to frostfire bolt. (if you're worried about people trying to take both talents umm.. can't they just make it not stack?) That would probably open the door for a Deep Frost Frsotfire build. Until then however, it's frostFIRE bolt.

I think its worth it a bit to sync them with trinkets if it doesn't affect your total # of cast times in the fight.

They gain a percentage of your +damage at cast time, not rescaling as it changes (that is, if your trinket wears off) as Water Elementals do. Each image's Frostbolt will increase by about 10% of your +damage gains.

So if, for instance, dying curse proc and you use a mana gem with 2pt7, then you're going to have them doing 100 extra damage per frostbolt. Keep in mind 3 of them are casting each frostbolt, so thats a gain of like 300 damage every couple seconds . . . I wouldn't really pass that up.

Anyways, a couple of questions for people to ponder:

1) If I have a hotstreak proc, is it worth it to hold on to that proc until its time to refresh Living Bomb, and then do Frostfire Bolt --> Living Bomb --> Hotstreak Pyro (in order to avoid potential ignite munching) or should I just use it right away (in order to avoid a possible second hot streak proc before you use the first one thus wasting the proc)? This is, in essence, a question of "WHich is greater" between "The percent chance of proccing hotstreak while hotstreak is already up before Living bomb, at a random point in its remaining duration, ends -- multiplied by the difference between a Pyroblast and half of a Frostfire bolt". Compared to "The percent chance of both an instant pyroblast and the Frostfire bolt cast directly before it both critting -- multiplied by the ignite damage lost as a consequence of only the Pyroblast's ignite actuallly occurring.

And then, for bonus points, figuring out if there's a duration at which when Hot Streak procs it becomes a better idea to save it vs use it right away and what that remaining duration on living bomb might be. For instance, perhaps at 10 seconds left it's a better idea to use it right away but at 3 seconds left it makes more sense to save it.

I know that's a confusing way of putting it, but hopefully someone understands what I'm saying.

2) What is the potential value of Molten Shields as a raid talent? Many Frostfire builds seem to have spare points that people tend to place into talents of questionable value such as impact and Frostbite -- is it possible that Molten Shields could be a significant source of dps in *some* encounters? Will it, for instance, deal its damage EVERY time I take damage from Sapphiron's Auara or does it not respond to aura dps?

Edited - note to self, check you're posting in the right thread before you hit the post button

Thanks to to the poster below for the help.

You should probably check out Rawr, it might answer some (or all) of your questions, I find it very neat for comparing gear. Stat values are, after all, relative to your other stats.
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And the frostfire bolt thread is probably not the best place for questions about arcane in the first place..

Can anyone test if 1/3 and 2/3 ranks of EP double dip FFB?

If they do, then a 11/51/9 build might be viable.

Instead of cookie cutter 0/53/18, you gain 80 resist all/6% clearcasting/6% crit if 2 mages do this. However you lose 6% dmg to FFB, 2% less mana via EP and icy veins.

Let me be clear, 6% more crit to everything is better than 6% damage to FFB, especially with hotstreak.

I'm at 11% hit from gear right now, if I get 12% then 1 point in EP if it double dips caps me. The choice is an extra cast via icy veins vs 80 resist all.

Mechanics problem or all the dot timers suck, it's one of the two.

I had issues (on my lock) on beta as well. It was exceedingly frustrating and is probably making the issues with some of the complexity of the lock specs even worse.

I just do what Jarlyn does: assume 1s = 0s. Worst case it's not hard to restack anymore though, especially with two mages. Both of us are refreshing it most of the time anyways. Even if it falls off, we restack it naturally because both of us are casting.



Double-dipping only applies to FFB however, not LB/Pyro/Scorch.

Well this is just flat out incorrect. You'll notice that with a fireball cast, the first time you hit cast time will be pushed back by 0.15s, then 0.3s the second time (as opposed to 0.5, 1.0s without talents, ie. a 70% pushback reduction). The same applies to FFB... Very easy to test.

Just had a quick question on threat management as frostfire. I've been a frost mage for most of my time, and have decided to try out frostfire. Did some testing/practice on dummies in Org, then headed off to Wintergrasp to do that 10-man raid boss. Unfortunately, I didn't track anything, so I have no actual number... but I remember my dps being around 2000 for the raid boss.

The problem I had though was my threat. I constantly remained right up there in threat, even above the tank before I popped invisibility for a threat wipe. But ideally, I can keep casting, maintain my dps, and not have to take the time for something like invisibility.

Is this a common problem? Or just something I'm doing? My tanks want me to go back to my frost spec cause I was still doing 1800-1900 dps and wasn't ever a threat risk. The other dps in the raid also out dps'd me but was never close to threat ceiling. But I do want to be able to maximize my own dps, so I would prefer to stay frostfire and just understand the mechanics better.

My 'rotation' was the basic LB > Scorch x2 > FFB x3 > LB ... cutting back on FFB if I had to move, keeping LB and Scorch up, and using icy veins, trinket, mirror image at the start. Of course there were some missed casts cause it was my first time in this spec, haha. I hit 110% of tank threat about 20 seconds into the fight, at which point I invis'd for a threat wipe.

[edit]
Similarly, after the raid, I did a 5-man heroic w/ a warrior tank, and on trash pulls, he asked that I just use blizzard or something. Whenever I single targeted a burn target, my threat kept skyrocketing. Essentially, I seem to have observed a very large threat:damage ratio that's becoming an issue. And it isn't really that much damage either =/ (my gear is nothing to really brag about).

Your tanks should seek the ways of improving their tps'. I can't get aggro from our tanks who have t6 gears in naxx. I even also can't generate threat half as our prot pally.

Enthrop; I don't know what to say except this: your tanks need to get their gear (or threat) in gear. I did both the 10 and 25 man versions of the Wintergrasp boss today, pulling about 2.2K and 2.8K respectively, and I can say that the only time threat was an issue was during an opening bloodlust/icy/combustion/trinket explosion at the beginning of the flight.

I was very high on threat the rest of the fight, but I was also top/2nd DPS thanks to it being mostly a PUG, and the tanks were not amazingly geared. But they held aggro fine.

In short: your tanks are doing something wrong, FFB is pretty heavy threat, but not *that* heavy.

Indeed, if you're catching up to your tanks, they need to be doing something different. I run most often with a prot pally and I can only catch him early with a lucky crit/hotstreak chain. In fact, because his dps is way up (way, way up), his TPS is through the roof.

Another interesting point about frostfire specs is how entertaining they are for leveling. With shatter and hotstreak, I can shatter-combo a FFB and Fireblast, forcing a hotstreak proc... FFB crit + Fireblast crit + instant pyroblast makes most mobs very, very dead...

It does. This is most apparent when a frost mage attempts to blizzard, you get a stack of winter's chill timers for each target.

Back to Mirror Image for a sec...

Has anyone else noticed that your threat seems to jump back HIGHER than it should be after the last image is dead? It's almost as if my threat is being banked while MI is up. As soon as they are gone all that banked threat pops back up.

Here's an example-

Let's say the Tank has a 50K threat lead as I pop MI. My threat pretty much disappears and I go to town. Since MI is NOT an aggro dump I would assume that once the Mirrors are down my Threat would return to where I left it and the Tank would now have more than a 50 K lead in Threat (since he has been adding to his threat while MI was up while I supposedly wasn't). This doesn't seem to be the case.

You have... X threat when you start MI. It all gets shunted to your images. You generate Y threat while MI is up. It all gets shunted to your images.

When MI fades (not when the images die), you get X+Y threat back.

That has always been my understanding of the ability, and is reinforced by multiple posts in this thread.

I think you're missing off [Forge Ember]

Sure, its about prioritising a flat spellpower trinket first, but haste really isn't all that for mages, given that everyone really should be frostfire. Essentially one could gather enough haste (note: not tested yet as im constantly changing gear) to get in an extra cast before another living bomb or their scorch renewal it could result in a dps loss by the trinket proccing- extra time before the living bomb is back on or having scorch drop off. For most/all mages the latter will not matter so much as it should never happen, but the living bomb application is feasible, even if it is a minor dps loss.

A very crude calculation, and forgive me if I'm wrong here, could be to say that:

[Embrace of the Spider]

[top] 98 + ((.7*505)/5)

168.7

compared to

[Forge Ember]

[top] (.8*73) + (512/5)

160.8


given that they have a 45 second internal cooldown and I'm allowing 5 seconds before the next proc (even though i'm finding it to be pretty much immediate)

This is extremely rough and shows [Embrace of the Spider] on top, but only by a very small margin, while also allowing potential for dps loss through haste (which could be more than the actual difference between the trinkets?) I just think that if embrace is the top trinket of your choosing, then maybe the haste issue needs to be looked at a little deeper as it could make the heroic halls of stone one actually work out better for you.


I could be way off base here, and it would be fitting for my first post to be so- however i passed embrace of the spider on my guilds first second kill this week as i really wasn't that fussed with it even though it is a large chunk of raw spellpower to pass up. Massive error?


edit: ouch at massive calculation text :/

Seems my fears about Rune of Razorice were premature - asked a DK to use it today just to see how it worked with debuff stacking and so, and it wasn't a problem to stack it up. The vulnerability lasts for 20 seconds.

Ok this might be a void question and I cannot calculate this out myself since advanced equations makes me want to strangle kittens but is it worth using a GCD for fireblast to fill void after a FFB until LB has exploded instead of starting on a new FFB.