Hailstormdps

I was wondering what the clear cut stats would be to effectively pull off the FFB spec in raiding? Say 25 man naxx and higher.
Crit Rating?
Hit Rating?
SP Unbuffed?
Also what is a good way to spend the talent points on this spec?

 

Dahkeus

This may be more of a practical question than one of straight theorycraft, but here goes:

I've noticed since switching from T7 into 4pT8 as a TTW Fire spec that mana is getting increasingly tighter. I've found that in a lot of fights, I've had to choose between using a mana potion over a haste potion or stopping dps during fights to at least cast part of an evocation to prevent going oom. Has anyone else felt that the mana restrictions from TTW Fire along with the upcoming changes to mana regen (particularly the decrease in replenishment) may be pushing the advantage of Fire (high single target dps) below that of FFB?

 

Solisa

The changes to ignite make it mostly a wash. The mana problems are not fun but they are generally not crippling to the point where you cannot dps at all with all cooldowns used, 10 mans and 25 mans without JoW aside.

 

Shadycasting

Since you brought it up, what exactly are the ignite mechanics now? I've had several people tell me several things, and I'm just trying to figure out if ignite is overwriting itself or what its doing up there on my targets debuffs....

 

Enthorn

The 40% ignite damage is split into two ticks, every 2 seconds, for 4 seconds. When a spell lands (and crits), the game determines when that first tick should take place, because it has to recalculate the ignite damage. For instance, if a spell crits for 10,000, and ignite damage is 4000, then each tick is 2000. If another spell lands and crits for 10,000 after the first tick, then the new ignite damage of 4000 is added in to the last tick, which was 2000. You now have 6000 ignite damage split amongst 2 new ignite ticks, resulting in two ticks of 3000 damage.

This is referred to as rolling ignite damage, because one tick gets skipped over as it calculates the new damage. That is, most often you'd see: 2000 skip 3000 3000 and not 2000 3000 3000, nor 2000 2000 2000 2000, unless the spell lands and crits after that ignite damage was dealt.

The combat log defines this as "ignite refreshed" when ignite is already present on the target and a new ignite is added; ignite refreshed can generally be viewed as rolling ignite damage. When you see "ignite removed" -- it means the ignite damage finished ticking completely, and obviously ignite applied means a new application of ignite. What you will never see is "ignite applied" when ignite is already on the target.

Things can go wrong with ignite damage, however, and this is where you lose ignite damage. As much as you may have heard, this isn't prominent, and the ignite damage loss is in the vicinity of 0-2% of total damage that you would have caused had you not lost any ignite damage. It should also be taken into account that some ignite loss is intentional, as mobs do phase out and adds/bosses die before ignites can finish ticking. Consider that if you had ignite ticking on every detonating lasher and they all died instantly before the last tick could go, you could be seeing a loss of 800 ignite damage per mob. So you may end up seeing a significant (over 10,000) ignite loss just from those.

Ignite loss happens in two ways...

The first is when an ignite DoT is supposed to tick and a spell crits. Occasionally, the ignite damage that was supposed to tick is completely disgarded and the next ignite tick only includes the ignite damage from the spell that just crit. Ignite loss here can be significantly high if the ignite discarded was rolling (particularly on a fight where rolling ignites can accrue to significant amounts).

The second is when two spells simultaneously crit. This happens far more often than the previous example but also is a more static amount of ignite damage lost, because the ignite damage lost can never excede the ignite damage of a single spell. The way this works is that when two spells land and crit at the same time, the first one that lands and crits has its ignite damage completely discarded (not calculated) because it is overwritten by the next spell that lands. Most often this happened to players using Fireball -> Fire Blast pre-wrath. Now it happens with Hot Streak Pyroblast and Fireball, since they are chained. Contrary to popular belief, Glyph of Living Bomb does not increase the amount of ignite loss.

If you want to see ignite damage in action, you can look at a spreadsheet of a log here...

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?k...03jbFnN6XAvRZw

In that log, you can actually see benevolent ignite damage occur. An extra 6093 ignite damage is dealt (scroll down till you see the two red-shaded cells).

 

Dahkeus

Well, here's the thing: For the most part, as fire, I have been able to avoid evocating in fights. However, as my gear has improved, mana has become tighter and I have had to evocate on some fights. If this trend continues, then the dps loss of having to stop dpsing to evocate vs. the dps loss of speccing FFB becomes a bit hard to judge.

Even if TTW remains roughly competitive with FFB in single target dps, not having to rely on TTW and evocate while still having the superior AoE dmg AND require less hit would make FFB the hands down choice for a raiding mage.

 

Raencloud

In 3.2 (currently) Ignite ticks will give 2% base mana back to the caster. You should come out positive in most fights, but it's probably not significant enough to cause you to be able to skip evocation on a fight where you are already needing to do so. From last night's parses it would have had the following effect on our fireball mage (Zifnab):

Fight	Mana Gained from EF	Mana Lost from Replenishment	Net Change
Ignis	+3398.72	-1854.4	+1544.32
Razorscale	+3137.28	-2704.0	+433.28
Heartbreaker	+9150.4	-5531.0	+3619.4
Kologarn	+6276.56	-2112.0	+4164.56
Auriaya	+4575.2	-2844.8	+1730.4
Hodir	+2679.76	-1584.2	+1095.56

 

Enthorn

This is a vast oversight, however, because you are completely basing your judgement on situations in which TTW may not reach its target (Yogg-Saron, Mimiron P3) and the off-chance that you may need to evocate when you don't know the full impact of the ignite change. The ignite damage returning mana is being based off one target's ignite. This completely discards being able to throw Living Bomb on a target and having it crit on 10 other targets, or laying down a Flamestrike and having a full mana return from it critting on every target. Kologarn, Freya, Auriaya, Deconstructor, Razorscale, Yogg-Saron all come to mind.

And, with the recent reversion to Living Bomb DoT causing ignite, this also means that targets you aren't actively on except for casting Living Bomb on (in 3.2, anyway), the first ignite tick could start from the first DoT crit, as opposed to just the explosion crit. That means having far more ignites returning mana, since you aren't waiting a full 12 seconds for 2 ignite ticks -- you could have ignite ticking all the way up to that point.

So, in that sense, mana could end up being entirely plentiful, especially if they further tweak mana costs of spells, or increase mana returned from ignite. Patch 3.2 is quite a few months off, changes are to be expected.

On a completely different note (the non-mana side), Frostfire is missing out on 80 resistance, ~10% magic damage resistance, and also is not providing 3% crit to another caster. The reduced healing needed on you is valuable, and obviously the increased DPS on the other player is valuable as well. Those things need to be equally taken into account.

 

Enthorn

Hailstorm, Arcane Subtlety is useless. And I'm really not sure how to interpret "still the 11%" -- are you saying still the 11% of Arcane? Arcane with Misery is 8%. But, yes, with Misery up, Frostfire needs 11% hit. Take the two points out of Arcane Subtlety and throw them into Flame Throwing. There's really no sense in having 20 yard Fire Blast, 30 yard Scorch, and 35 yard Living Bomb/Pyroblast with a 40 yard Frostfire Bolt. I'd also recommend just dropping Combustion entirely and putting the point into something useful, like Frost Warding.

You can play around with the build as well and put points from Frost Channeling (and that floating point) into things like Imp. Blizzard and Shatter (which actually results in the highest AoE DPS possible, save for Firestarter, even ahead of deep Frost w/Fingers of Frost).

As far as your "base" spellpower goes... well, spellpower is pretty straight down the line on equipment. It doesn't exactly vary from item to item except through ilevel. Naturally, in most every case possible (note that I say most), spell power is ahead of crit and certainly haste (for frostfire anyway), so, long answer short: your base spellpower should be whatever your base spellpower is with your current gear. And when you find an upgrade, well, then it's an upgrade.

And to "successfully" pull off Frostfire Bolt... again, I don't exactly understand this question. It's not like Frostfire Bolt fails if it's at 2100 spell power vs 2200 spell power. Similarly, against the vast majority of bosses, FB/TTW will out perform FFB. Notable exceptions can include Hodir, General Vezax, Yogg-Saron, and -possibly- Mimiron. However, on all of these encounters, 80 resistance from Magic Absorption is very much a benefit (well, for Yogg-Saron and Mimiron anyway... the others don't exactly matter if you have good healers or you avoid the entirely avoidable damage).

Edit for clarity: it's pretty obvious that Frostbite doesn't work against bosses; I'm not particularly sure which boss anyone would try to use Blizzard on anyway. The entire point of picking up Shatter is that there is a floating point to sink into Imp Blizzard, FFB is already picking up Frostbite, and Frostchanneling isn't a necessity for everyone (various conditions can impact this, such as fight length, uptime of replenishment/judgement of wisdom, number of mana tides, possible power infusions, etc.)

Because of these factors, there are situations in which mobs will be affected by Frostbite (namely adds on Freya, Deconstructor, and Razorscale, and possibly Kologarn), and Shatter will increase the crit chance against any frozen mobs, and not just from Blizzard, but for Frostfire Bolt as well.

For the record as well, I wouldn't actually ever spec into Shatter, because the AoE DPS increase is only ~2000 against 10 mobs, and Frost Channeling will go much further everywhere else.

 

◊ Kyth

They changed the tick of a healer's hot (paladins I think) to 1 second in 3.2 to avoid them overwriting each other as enthusiastically.

Makes me wonder why, especially in light of the problems ignite has with the new mana mechanic, a similar thing hasn't been done with ignite.

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odyz

Shatter is a worthless talent in a raiding FFB build as bosses can't be frozen.

A more standard 53/18 or 52/19 like below would do better for you.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

There is a floater point in improved blizzard for adds like on xt and freya, but that can be moved around to frost warding instead.

TTW/FB's main requirement is the hit. If you can get the 14% required as horde, it will out dps FFB as Enthorn has originally stated.

 

Sancus

You also can't spec into Frostbite for any build that you plan on doing Freya with, because it will cause several mobs but more particularly the Snaplasher to instantly one shot any nearby melee if Frostbite procs.

This side effect of roots is particularly bad and Freya is definitely not the first encounter where it's been an issue, generally speaking trying to use Frostbite+Shatter in any aoe situation where melee are going to be helping with aoe is a bad idea.

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

 

Dahkeus

I'm really not sure how this is an oversight, since it's a hypothetical question (in this case, if mana regen doesn't increase). If it does increase and we do get more mana returns from ignite mechanics, then great, but in the mean time, I'm referring to a trend I've noticed coming into T8 gear.

The ability to throw living bomb is great and all, but not every fight has lots of adds to gain ignite crits from. I know some people run with two PvE specs, but as a casual PvPer on the side, I want one PvE spec that works well on all fights. If I'm stacked with mana on Freya, but stuck wanding on Ignis (or some other new single target boss fight in 3.2), then this may not be the best choice.

I fully understand that this is the PTR we're talking about and that there is plenty of room for change, which is why I pose the question. If anything, I would be a bit surprised if Blizzard wants us to have an overabundance of mana on AoE fights compared to single target ones, but stranger things have happened I guess.

 

Enthorn

Frostbite causes rooted mobs to attack the closest person with the highest threat. I really can't know the makeup of your raid, but we have ranged on the snaplasher and melee on water spirit and storm lasher. I guess it's theoretically possible that the Snaplasher could be frozen and a melee could be running nearby with the tank not in range, but I've never seen it happen.

Anecdotally, I'm not Frostfire Bolt at the moment, but I have used my PvE Frost build for the encounter, and another mage in my raid is Frostfire Bolt, and Frostbite has never been a problem. One of the obvious reasons for this is that the damage needed to break the frost nova is nearly instantaneous.

Regardless though, as long as the tank is in melee range, frostbite won't cause mobs to switch to random targets. They only do that when they can't hit the person with the highest threat.

 

Enthorn

Right. Your assertion was that Frostfire will be better than FB/TTW due to "not having to rely on TTW," not having to rely on evocate, having "superior AoE damage," and requiring less hit.

There's only two encounters I can think of where TTW is a potential issue, and those are Mimiron phase 3 and Yogg-Saron P3, both of which it is possible to maintain TTW, it's just not very likely to happen by a warrior/druid tank. Both DK and paladin tanks can easily hit with their judgements/diseases though, but on yogg-saron in particular, most likely that tank isn't on Yogg-Saron and is offtanking immortals instead.

As for the 3% hit -- that's ~98.37 hit; I'm nowhere near best in slot, and I'm already having a hard time getting rid of hit when I need to. As we move into T9 and T10, hit will be even more prevalent. Suffice to say, the 3% crit from Focus Magic (and the 3% on the other person) far outweighs the 3% hit from Precision. It's basically 275.4 crit (137.7 per person) versus 98.4 hit. Crit isn't likely to cap -- hit will.

As for superior AoE damage... Blizzard for Frostfire is ~22k DPS against 10 targets (in my gear, anyway). Flamestrike for FB/TTW is at ~18k DPS, and that's straight Rank 9. It should be slightly higher when Rank 8 is factored in. However, it should be noted that Flamestrike has significantly less mana cost after all things are factored in, as it will work with Empowered Fire's ignite mana return... whereas Blizzard will not.

Blizzard is 74% of base mana, which is 2418, or 2176 after Frost Channeling, which works out to 272 MPS without haste. Flamestrike is 30%, which works out to 980 mana, or 326 MPS. However, Flamestrike has 9% higher crit (Critical Mass and Focus Magic), affecting Master of Elements, and affecting the future mana return of ignite ticks.

I'm not saying Blizzard is worse AoE, because it clearly isn't -- it is substantially better, especially in its range of effect. But it just won't be able to compete in the mana department with the change, as Flamestrike will practically pay for itself if it crits on enough targets.

 

◊ Kyth

The tank can't be in melee range on Snaplasher though.

I'll counter your anecdote with one of my own: we now spec out of frostbite to avoid the rare gibs that, while rare, *did* happen when snap aggro'd on someone else, went through the melee clump, and the melee didn't happen to move, we got a frostbite proc, and he instantly munched a melee.

We went for a long time without seeing it, sure, but it's happened more than once.

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Enthorn

I know the tank isn't in melee range on Snaplasher -- or least our tank moves out when it hits 20 stacks, at which point he just starts kiting (trying to, anyway...) -- but that was more of a point for the general mechanics of roots on mobs, not the snaplasher in particular.

I've had bad situations with roots too -- unfortunately, it wasn't from Frostbite, but from Frost Nova on Gluth's adds. A mistimed Frost Nova ended up one-shotting a hunter. Frostbite is generally just a PvP talent and is better suited for single targets (as rooting half the mobs with Frostbite procs on Blizzard isn't exactly effective). It was more of a point that the option to increase AoE DPS is there. Whether it's the right option is certainly up for consideration.

I'm not trying to advocate killing your raid through careless, albeit unintentional, frostbite procs, nor is it imperative to have the absolute highest AoE DPS possible, but it is undeniably a very situational talent in both PvP and PvE, for better or worse.

Frostbite was probably never a problem for me when I did play Frostfire (all throughout Naxx) because I simply didn't have any points in Improved Blizzard. The synergy, or lack thereof, between those talents is actually quite comical, as one without the other (Shatter and Imp Blizzard) is useless, and both rely on Frostbite (and anymore than 1 point in Imp Blizzard goes to waste as well, as you're capped at 50% snare, due to missing Chilled to the Bone and Permafrost).

One thing I always did like about Frostfire though was that it has the easiest access to Firestarter (if you give up Flame Throwing and spec 1/3 Frost Channeling). I would never actually use it, but at least it's there. Oddly enough, although it would be a significant AoE DPS increase, it wouldn't help mana return through Empowered Fire at all. I suppose it would help ensure that every mob has an ignite DoT.

It will be interesting to see how much AoE is necessary in the upcoming Coliseum dungeon, if any. I would still love to see Blast Wave and Dragon's Breath actually used in PvE settings, but both are quite useless because of talents that need to be given up in order to take them, and only Frostfire has the means to drop points (Frost Channeling is clearly not as impacting as Torment the Weak).

 

Neuroth

Been away for a few weeks, I thought that ISB was common for locks to take and with SB in their rotation mages were in general not needing to roll scorch into their rotations for the crit buff. Reading these forums from the last few days it seems that mages are now back to inserting scorch. Did warlocks start to spec out of ISB, did the mechanics of stacking of ISB, scorch change or are the comments from a guild with few locks in the group? Or perhaps i have just lost my mind and was confused to begin with

 

Hotan

There was a short period post-3.1 where warlocks were speccing Affliction, and taking ISB. Now that Fire Destro is their best spec, they are not taking ISB anymore and mages are back to scorching.

correlation =/= causation

 

Sancus

Not sure why you randomly inserted an explanation of how threat on frozen mobs works, when I know exactly how it works and my warning about Frostbite on the Snaplasher(or on other aoe'd mobs for that matter) on Freya does not contradict the mechanics. It's a much bigger issue if you are doing the fight on hardmode since many comps do not have sufficient ranged dps to kill a hp-buffed Snaplasher without melee assistance, which raises the risk of this happening significantly(or even worse, a stupid healer could be standing nearby).

There have been other situations in previous raids(hyjal trash, for example) where tanks are moving mobs around and you could cause gibs with Nova and Frostbite. Whenever a tank is moving, a root on any mob that the tank is moving can cause a healer or melee gib if they are standing within melee range, since the root can cause the tank to briefly move out of range. I know because of how reliably you could grief people by novaing when you pulled aggro in Hyjal, heh.

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

 

Hate Monkey

This is one thing that I've always done differently in my specs, ever since Blast Wave got the knock back added to it, I've always seen it was a more useful tool than Flame Throwing.

There is plenty of trash in all instances that are susceptible to knock backs, so I really don't see it as an issue. Plus its a great way to interrupt any healer mobs, specially in the Thorim tunnel.

And why not drop Flame Throwing since its the lowest talent of all talent options in terms of dps gains, and in most situations, not a dps gain at all.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft for FFB.
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft for Fire.

Both have 2 floater talent points left over, in which can be used to access down to Dragons Breath or used in other talents.

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.

 

Enthorn

There's already been far too much written about Flame Throwing, but in short, just because a talent doesn't directly increase your DPS doesn't mean it isn't indirectly increasing your DPS. The time it takes to run an additional 6 yards; the buff on the ground you can't get to (Rune of Power, Starlight while staying in range of Toasty Fire, DPSing from safe zones on Sarth 3D); having 6 more yards to spread out from other players on range check fights, are all situations in which Flame Throwing is adding DPS.

Dragon's Breath and Blast Wave may be high DPS for their instant cast time, but they also suffer three things. The first is that they have side-effects (knock back and disorient), so their damage is obviously lower to compensate. Second, you need to be in melee range to use them. Third, while they are high DPS, they are on significant cooldowns (20 and 30 seconds).

In Thorim gauntlet, you can simply counterspell healers if your tank already isn't.

 

Yresa

There's only one fight, where these two spells might be useful: Freya hard mode. (But only glyphed Blast Weave) On other fights getting close to adds is foolish (dangerous or waste of time) or there's nothing to use these spells on. Even if Flame Throwing wasn't as great as Enthorn stated above, choosing BW and DB instead would hardly be a gain.

 

Hate Monkey

I know that Flame Throwing doesn't directly increase dps, but also at the same time planning ahead for movements can negate the indirect dps gain.

And as for the knock back on Blast Wave, how often have you really ran into a situation where its knock back effect been a hampering effect? I know Dragon Breath's disorient is mostly useless in a raid. But for example on Freya for the tiny adds that you aoe and group up for, when you need to run away, just blast wave then and it solves the problem of potential explodes in bad places.

And the reason I used the Thorim gauntlet as an example is that when you are doing the hard mode, staying still is bad, moving is best, and Blast Wave interrupts and moves the mob, so if you use it correctly it will prevent the healer from healing, and potentially kill it(the best part).

But I see a bigger benefit of Blast Wave on trash. And plus when you are doing other things outside raids it has its benefits, like tossing players to their death!

Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.

 

Enthorn

Right, but, the adds on Auriaya (Guardian Swarm) aren't always going to target someone near you. They could target someone in melee. Your blast wave is useless on them and you'd be better off just letting Living Bomb occasionally hit them and keep single target DPS going. On Freya, the same thing happens. There's no fixed point where your blast wave is going to hit a pre-determined number of targets. Living Bomb is going to hit enough of them that you should just single target them. I'm not speaking from what I think Blast Wave would be like. I actually ran a couple weeks with Blast Wave, back when I was floating points around.

I had originally put 1 point into Student of the Mind and another into Combustion. I then picked up Blast Wave instead of SotM (or Combustion, I can't remember). I finally settled on Magic Absorption and dropped points in Student/Combustion/Blast Wave.

I would say that Dragon's Breath and Blast Wave would both be pretty awesome if FB/TTW could easily pick up Firestarter, but they can't. Frostfire mages can, but they need to give up Frost Channeling to do so. Even then, moving in and out of melee range to use abilities on 20 and 30 second cooldowns is a bit hindering.