Well for the build I posted, the talents work out that way:

1/3 world in flames
0/2 burning soul
0/2 flame throwing

you have 4 talent points to spend amongst the talents listed above. Personally I would never play a fire build without burning soul ever, so that was a no brainer. Then I have the choice between world in flames and flame throwing. If you like the range then you can get it at the cost of 2pt world in flames.

Yep - I realized after posting that WIF was another option. That is probably the way I will go with it.

Burning soul threat reduction is just for pyro's and scorches right... since frost channeling affects FFB?

So I know it seems mostly ridiculous, but I can't seem to get the idea of having all three of Spell Power, Ignite, and Ice Shards for my FFB's. Has anyone played with 51/10/8 (+2 misc)? If you get to sponge improved scorch or winters chill off another mage, and you skip the arcane missiles talents, it seems you can get some truly brutal burst with 225% crits and 92.5% ignite damage, along with Arcane Power, crits on clearcast, slow, and Torment of the Weak. I know I miss out on Hot Streak pyro's, and a number of great talents deep in the fire tree, but spell power still makes it tempting for me.

I've seen discussion on deep fire FFB (commonly accepted) and deep frost FFB (commonly dismissed), but I didn't see anyone considering a 51pt Arcane FFB spec. Is it just so terrible that no one even considered it?

Jeroen there is no point to that due to Burnout being the same as Spell Power. This has been explained in the thread before. Please lurk more.


GnomerTerp:

Burning Soul's threat reduction is also great for Living Bomb (particularly the AoE aspect.)

Just so I am clear on this.

Does Burning Soul stack with Frost Channeling?

Also if you choose not to specc into both I assume BS is the better to drop?

Are we as a class using something other then sub enchant on our cloaks, or does the talents give us enough buffer?

Just some things I am batting around in my head. I was under the impression with the reworking (with tanks) in 3.0 that threat reduction talents were less effective. I do not want to leave points in talents that may not work as intended when they rolled out.

I believe the maths have shown the haste enchant to be better for everyone than the tailoring enchant, I'm guessing due to the internal CD.

Thinking about doing a build like this:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

0/51/20

Giving up BS completely for flame throwing (although could do 1 in each if desired).

For the frost side I think that the 1pt in imp blizzard should be enough for allowing the frostbite procs (2 pts). Also picking up frost channeling for the threat and mana cost reduction (2pts) and 2pts in Shatter for the AoE with Blizzard (to give about 34% additional chance to crit with Blizzard when frostbite procs or I nova).

Right, it can't be done. However I've taken a suggestion in a prior thread to put "/stopcasting" after my pyro macro to reduce the chance that I get caught in a full 5 second pyroblast if I miss the hot streak timing. It is not 100% reliable in stopping this, but it has reduced the instance of it quite a bit.

You have to place it after the /cast Pyroblast. It won't do anything if you put it before. Even placed properly, sometimes pyroblast will ignore the stopcasting. Probably this is some kind of latency thing, where the stopcasting goes off before the client realizes it's casting a non-instant spell. Moving a little or jumping can abort it in that case, although noticing and reacting will cost you a little time and it might turn out better to just let the spell finish casting.

I don't know about other people, but my right hand is pretty much always on the mouse. As such, I prefer using left+right click if I need to interrupt my casts (that causes you to move forward for those unaware). I like it a lot more than having a dedicated stopcasting/pyro macro taking yet more keybind space.

If you are missing the HS timing that means you are waiting for the HS timer to count down to almost zero before letting the Pyro go? Shouldn't you be trying to get the HS off faster than that anyway? I don't really see a use for this other than it renders a valuable spell spot of your cast bar useless for all but a few situations.

I always go ahead and use the Hotstreak. There's still a decent chance to get another proc, and it's bad to lose it.

Yeah, good point. Your pyro is going to crit for less than your FFB so there is an argument to hold it back until combustion has gone. But if it is at the cost of losing the HS, isn't that worse as you are giving up a 1.5sec cast pyro for a 3sec FFB? I would have thought the insta cast nature of the Pyro makes it a higher dps spell regardless of the different crit modifiers?

The tailoring enchant can be better due to gear levels. The tailoring enchant doesn't scale due to the internal cooldown. There's also trash (where the cooldown has had a chance to expire in between packs) and boss fights.

The main thing is that any other crafting profession (except Engineering) AND the haste enchant will give a better bonus than the Tailoring enchant.

I'm somewhat confused by all the 'holding agro is so easy for tanks so don't look after agro at all' comments.

Especially at the start of the fight where we at most bosses use heroism (together with me using mirror image+all other cooldowns/potion of speed etc) I am somewhat forced to count down to 25 and then use invisibility because of the risk I'm above the tanks on threat after mirror image fades. And if you get a bit lucky at the start of the fight all these 14k frostfire crits+12k pyroblast crits will really push your threat.

So are you sure that you can always blame the tank in almost any bossfight if you overagro 30 seconds into the fight when mirror image fades? Especially on bosses where tanks are kiting, 'dancing' and moving around all the time, threat really remains an issue for me and I trully believe im raiding with proper tanks.

Is using mirror images at the start the best strategy? It appears to me it is because you can go 100% fullout without even hesitating on a single cast at the start, and drop a decent amount of threat 25 sec into the fight with invisbility incase your tanks cant catch up to you 30 seconds into the fight (wich is a bit of gambling ofcourse, sometimes you choose to invisibility when it woudnt have been needed, sometimes you dont but overagro).

A small question, would it be possible to force omen to ignore mirror image fade, so I can still closely watch the total threat I made vs the main tank threat. Or would there be any addon/sollution to sort this threat 'gambling' during fade.

I have a quick question about getting the most out of a 2-mage set up in a 10 man.

I currently spec 0/53/18 and generally run Glyph of Frostfire, Imp. Scorch and Molten Armor. Now that my guild has started raiding again I've realized I don't need the Imp. Scorch in most cases since there's always a mage stacking scorch other than me.

Is there a glyph that would be useful to me as a replacement to Imp. Scorch? In particular I'm wondering if I overlooked something that would contribute to DPS. I don't think I have and my current thought is to put glyph of evocation back in since it can help reduce the stress on healing whenever we're learning a fight. Glyph of Mana Gem would be another consideration but I haven't had mana issues yet.

In addition, I could respec and remove the improved scorch talent in favor of 1 more point in World in Flames (thereby maxing it) but I don't see a single-target DPS increase available to me with the last two points. Instead I would likely go 2/2 Firestarter to help with trash and AoE. I might also play around with fiery payback.

Is there any single-target DPS option I'm overlooking for the glyph and respeccing considerations?

As for when to use Hot Streak on Combustion. . . . You generally can get your first 2 free crits without having to use your Hot Streak even if it was triggered by the first crit with Combustion, that's a given at this point. However, you won't lose a potential Hot Streak because it seems that if you crit three times in a row and then use your Hot Streak from the first 2 crits, it still remembers that third Fireball crit and will henceforth trigger another Hot Streak if you were to crit right after (4th Fireball crit).

That should clear up any confusion about withholding your Hot Streaks during Combustion or not. That information should be accurate as I have noticed back-to-back Hot Streak procs if I delayed my Hot Streak by one cast (just for testing purposes).

This is discussed many times in this thread. Keep your LB up always and always. It is an instant DoT with huge dps..

You should'nt have to invis so fast, overall your tank should generate more threat that you (the only fight I have faced threat issue is Malygos). The only agro problem you may face is early in the fight : your tank may miss a couple skill and you may crit a bit too much. Mirror Image is perfect because it will give you enough time for the RNG on crit / miss to be averaged. There should be no need to invis before the end of Mirror Image if you use it early in the fight.

If your tank isn't very good or you are very well geared you may eventually catch back during a Molten Fury + Blood Lust, if you wasted your MI + invis 25 sec after the beginning of the fight you will have no option left.

Are they back up for 35%? If not, your raid and/or you are doing it sub-optimally... also: wrong.

Or, just take those points out of molten fury.

Using stopcasting-macros to cast Pyros on crit-streaks will seriously hurt your DPS.

By the time, you know that HS procced, you're already 1 second or even more into the next FFB (aussuming, you cast your FFB's as fast as you can). If you hit your /stopcasting-Macro now, you effectively lose 1 or more seconds of dps.

There is nothing wrong about finishing the cast and casting the instant pyro one cast later. Even if the finished cast crits, it will already be counted for the next HS.

Well being as Mirror Image is a 30 second reprieve from aggro worries, I cannot see anything wrong with using it right at the beginning of the fight (which is where most of the agro troubles that I have experienced arise anwyay); especially since it is also a minor DPS cooldown (and I prefer using those early into the fight so as to be able to use them again once I'm in the molten fury range).

As far as the threat jump that you see once the 30 second window closes... I generally ask for a Hand of Salvation from one of our paladins. The significant drop in threat (over 10 seconds) is generally enough to sufficiently establish the tanks' agro lead; provided of course that this wasn't substantial already in the first 30 seconds, what with chained misdirects and all. If that is not an option, vigilance from a protection warrior also helps.

I think there are a lot more raid abilities for managing threat reactively now than pre-3.0.2 in addition to increased passive reduction for dps (and increase for tanking specs); and therein is the crux of the kind of comments you referred to in the first line of your post.