Blastwave is a minor glyph so you aren't losing anything important. As far as scorching, can you convince your lock to spec Meta? It's quite good for the Anub fight.

Hmm that's interesting. I volunteered to go FFB for an Anub 25 kill the other night and was unhappy with my DPS. I was comfortable using a mouseover macro to apply LB but the adds never seemed to be grouped enough to get big Flamestrikes or Blizzards. I wonder if having Blastwave and Dragon's Breath would help?

Is there some trick my Raid is missing to keep the adds more clustered?

At the risk of being Captain Obvious and gaining a warning/infraction, keep in mind that 3.3 changes to Scorch make it put up a 5-stack for one cast, with the glyph being changed to increase Scorch's damage by 20% instead.

What Anub'arak strat are you using? If you're using a 3 tank strat, your OT's must keep the adds 12 yards apart. This is bigger than the radius of Living Bomb. Therefore, by definition of the strat, your LB should not hit every add in a 3 tank strat, unless your tanks are positioning incorrectly. The only LB which will hit all adds, is the one placed on Anub'arak himself. In a 2 tank strat, all adds are grouped up completely, and every LB will always hit all targets.

A 2 tank strat lends itself to better AOE for FFB specs, as LB becomes more valuable. This doesn't mean that it won't work in 3 tank strats, just that it has a better opportunity to shine. For this reason, you should always consider whether a guild uses a 2 or 3 tank strat when reviewing any WWS/WOL parses.

There is no real 'trick' to keep the adds clustered up. Either you're using a strat that calls for adds all to be grouped up, or a strat which needs to separate them 12 yards. The only other option is your 2 OT's are positioning the adds way too far apart, say 15+ yards - and even Blizzard can't reach them all. However I think this would be unlikely, as guilds know all adds must be relatively close enough for AOE such as Blizzard to hit them all.

From my personal experience, using Flame Strike is a significant DPS loss over straight up Blizzarding. The same goes for re-applying Living Bomb post initial application to the adds.

Blast Wave on the other hand I find very useful during the burrow phases while trying to put as much pressure on the scarabs as possible. You can also toss it in right after a Blizzard channel to get some Ignites rolling whilst you continue Blizzarding.

As for add positioning, our general rule of thumb for the 3 tank method is to keep the 2 add tanks on the back legs of Anub. From there, adjustments can be made accordingly.

I disagree with this general conclusion. If you go practice on training dummies and compare flamestrike rank9>8>blizzard rotation vs straight blizzard rotation, you'll notice the FS dps (which you can obtain from recount and a little math) is higher than the blizzard dps (for both rotations). This is obviously assuming your adds are alive long enough for the full flamestrike ground aoe dot.

I don't have the exact numbers since I did this testing a few weeks ago, but I did the tests until I ran out of mana and did quite a few of them, results were similar every time (with fs dps > blizz dps). Spec was also standard FFB spec.


Edit: @poster below. If there's talk of FS being used for anub, it's obviously gonna be for 2 tank strategy, not 3 tank.

Checked all the threads but haven't seen a discussion on this for 3.3, so with the recent changes to some of the AoE spells, does it make sense to cast LB on a target who will die before the final tick in an AoE situation?

3 ticks of Living Bomb deal 60% Spell Power for 1 GCD. 1 Fireball deals 115% Spell Power for 2 GCD. Blizzard/Arcane Explosion deal 21% Spell Power per target for 1 GCD. That's just for the rough idea, there are of course base damage and talents.

So, a non-exploding Living Bomb is comparable (worse with talents) to Fireballing. It's worse than spamming your AoE when you hit at least 3 targets. It may be worth it to cast Living Bomb with 3-5 targets when there is a chance for it to last 12 seconds and explode.

I understand. So, roughly of course, if you are using Blizzard for AoE, there are at least 3 targets and you know the LB won't go beyond 3 ticks, it will end up being a dps loss.

This no longer stacks with any "Well fed" buff as of 3.3. I believe that effectively kills Kreeg's as a useful raid buff.

Hi everyone, I'm looking for some help in the easiest/most efficient way to use FFB in ICC (only for trash and gunship). My guild never has not gotten to ToGC Anub so I do not have any prior experience with using an FFB spec. As the top AoE spec I feel like it should really do well for trash and gunship but I'm not seeing great results and I know that's because of my inexperience with it. What I'm having trouble with is keeping track of my LB's on the mobs and applying them. Reading and searching through this thread I've seen mouseover macros and someone mentioned using a tooltip addon (tiptac, which I have anyway) to only show debuffs cast by me to tell if LB in on a mob. That seemed like a good idea but I'm still having trouble with it when I tried it last night. With overlapping nameplates it was hard to tell what was what (I know that's something that can be turned off, and I will be trying it without that to see how that goes as well). I am fully cognizant that at least some of my difficulties are my not being comfortable with the spec yet and simply playing with it more will help. But I wanted to ask if there were any other tips or tricks that more experienced FFB mages had that might help me along. Thanks.

Edit: I don't think I was as clear in my post above. What I'm having trouble with is quickly and efficiently applying LB to all the mobs initially, and then re-applying (for those mobs that won't die before it goes off). Scorchio has definitely helped me track the LBs as they tick, but I'm just not very good at finding the mobs that need it re-applied (or applied in the first place) and so I spend a lot of time either tabbing through all the mobs or trying to mouseover them. I didn't know if its merely my inexperience with the spec that is the problem or if there's a better way of doing it as well.

Why would you spec for trash and gunship. It's not as if the extra aoe oomph you get from FFB is going to matter that much. Gunship is the equivalent of chess in Kara, you only fail if you do something dumb. And trash is trash. It's not difficult once you figure out how to avoid or trigger the traps appropriately.

ttw/fire will give you most of FFB's aoe power but will still have competitive single target dps.

scorchio2 is great for handling LB dots.

The key to good dps with LB is that the LB needs to explode and hit other mobs. The axe throwers and the boarding party are good candidates for LB application.

The adds during Deathwhisper are also good candidates for LB, particularly since the add tank should have plenty of time to get a good threat lead before LBs explode.

If you are really concerned about trash pulls, then my advice to to not bother about reapplying LB after the initial application, unless you have some casting downtime where you have to move. The more you worry about tabbing through targets and applying LB to half-dead mobs, the less time you have to Bliz.

Try and apply LB to each target you can on a big pull when the tank initially pulls. Tab-targeting tends to work fine here. Mouse-over macros can be cumbersome if all the mobs are tightly packed.

As soon as you have applied LB, FS r9/r8 and Bliz. Just keep Bliz going after that. That's usually going to be the highest dps you will do.

It should be noted that, with its new "fixed" 2-seconds casting time, Flamestrike r9 spam (without counting a single dot tick) is now more DPS than Blizzard for either fb/ttw or ffb, provided the mobs are tanked in a small enough radius. Flamestrike9, with dot, is double the DPS of FFB-Blizzard (that's what Rawr tells me, anyway).

As such, other than mana efficiency, there's no reason anymore to spec ffb, as fb/ttw will provide better single-target DPS, a equivalent AE DPS (a bit better, even, as you gain the crit from Focus Magic). And the AE rotation becomes LB * x, FS9, FS8, then FS9 as filler until it's time to renew either LBs or the FS8 dot.

From what I've seen on target dummies, unlike other dots, the ground dot of Flamestrike also doesn't reset its tick timer on each new Flamestrike, so you don't lose ticks when you spam it.

I don't know if I'll keep doing it, but so far I'm speccing Fire for the first three bosses of ICC - for the instant casts on Marrowgar, multiple Living Bombs on Deathwhisper, and LB + Flamestrike (which is really good on the portals) on the Gunship.

At first I was skeptical that FS would now beat blizzard as FFB spec, but when I tested it on the dummies (single target) my results concurred with this.

From the testing I did these were my results:

[Blizzard]: ~1990 dps
[FSR9 -> FSR8 -> Blizzard]: ~ 2420dps
[FSR9 -> FSR8 -> [R9FS]]: ~ 2630dps
(Firestarter) DB -> FSR9 -> BW -> FSR8 -> [Blizzard -> (DB/DW) FSR9 -> FSR8]: ~ 2570dps

I tested these on a single dummy, self buffed each rotation consisting of about 100 casts (broken up to regen mana).

• I found that although Flamestrike spam did the most dps it was always really mana inefficient
• The Firestarter rotation was very mana efficient yet awkward to play and spikey depending on when DB/BW came off CD
• The blizzard spam with FS weaving was simple and mana efficient yet lacks a little in dps compared to the others

In all they all have their own pro's and cons so I'd imagine the 'best AoE rotation' is purely situational and depends on your playstyle/mana.

Not really true, since Blizzard has an 8 yard radius and Flamestrike only 5. For example the hardest fights in the game right now are Yogg0 25 and Anub 25H, if you're using an AE strat on Yogg0 you will most likely want 8-yard radius, and if you are using the 2 OT strat on Anub 25H, you most definitely need 8 yards there.

Hmm, that makes sense. Its not that I'm concerned about trash pulls, but since this was my first chance to learn and use FFB I wanted to make the most of it and try to become as good with it as I can for when we get to H Anub (which should be soon) and for any future cases where an FB or FFB spec might be best. Changing my overlapping nameplates helped a lot, as has the practice I've had recently. I think part of my problem is that having never had LB before I was too concerned with making sure it was up on every mob as much as I could, which was causing me to lose time where I could have been casting FS or Blizz. The last few posts on this thread about RS spam being better than Blizz for this kind of spec is pretty interesting as well, I'll have to run some tests myself.

Hi,

since your first post, alot of users has given you the answer already so you can AOE properly like a good FB/FFB mage should do. The only thing I can add that may help you is a feat on scorchio2 that allows you to keep track on NON-TARGETED mobs (search on options). I keep my TARGET-MOB debuffs on my bottom left side of UI and my NON-TARGET MOB debuffs on the bottom right side. When tank pulls, I spam LB tab LB tab to get all the mobs with LB, FS9, FS8, Blizzard x2 (haven't tried the FS9, FS8, [FS9] rotation tho) and then if mobs are above 50% (which they shouldn't if u have a nice raid) I start the AOE rotation all over again. If not, and they are bellow 50%, I just FS9, FS8, Blizzard until the end.

greeting from a fellow mage.

Copied from arenajunkies(original is /cast !shadowfury)

/cast !blizzard
/cast !flame strike(rank 8)

I think these macros are very helpful with AE, you can now spam the button without losing the target circle.

Does anybody else find the FFB spec for Anub25HM to be obsolete now if you're using a 1 add tank tactic?
Using WoL my top FFB log for Anub25HM has been 11169 effective DPS using a FS9->FS8(->BW->DB)->Blizzard rotation.
Last week I tried a standard Fire/Arcane single target spec and even though I forgot to equip my two hit pieces (resulting in me being under the hitcap) and went OOM ~15 seconds before the boss died I still had an effective DPS of 11437.6 using a FS9->FS8->FS9x5(->FS9 with Heroism up) rotation.

While one log obviously can't tell you if Fire/Arcane is now the stronger Anub25HM spec, I think it's safe to say that the spec is a viable alternative while also being a stronger single target spec.

I've also switched my offspec from an Anub specific FFB spec to the standard Fireball build. It seems to perform about as well as FFB on Anub and is more useful on other bosses my guild is currently working on (Yogg 0 for example).

One interesting strat another mage suggested on Anub for 2piece T10 is that if the MBAM proc is up early in your AOE cycle, they you should release your Arcane Missles for the haste buff and then go into your AOE cycle.

I guess I have incorrectly been using Blizzard after putting down the 2 Flamestrike ranks as Fireball spec.

On the topic of ignite being double penalized from partial resists, it seems there is a similar issue in PvP with DK's scourge strike which GC said they will fix. I was wondering if someone with a US account could post a reminder of the bug.

To summarize, partial resists are currently affecting Ignite damage and are infact double penalizing fire damage (it won't change the fact that Arcane is stronger on most fights, but that's beside the point), for example a DD spell crits a boss gets partial resist -> Ignite damage is .4 of the actual damage done (i.e, already penalized due to partial resist) and when it ticks the game yet again applies the partial resist rule it, thus double dipping from it.

A snap of the log: But you can check any public log to get the same results.