Inoko

Yes, you'll get more pyroblasts. But you're going to be losing a metric fuckton of damage getting them. You're talking about (at 100% crit rating, for simplicity):

2 scorchs + 1 pyroblast every 3 GCDs (I'm using GCDs because they will vary with your haste) versus 2 FFBs and 1 pyroblast every 5 GCDs.

So, every 15 GCDs, you get 10 scorches, 5 pyros or 6 FFBs and 3 pyros. So, what we need to be able to tell is:

10 Sc + 2 Pyro = 6FFB (assuming everything crits)

Using data for myself from My KT kill last night, 8650 average FFB crit damage, 8370 average pyroblast crit damage and 2902 average scorch crit damage.

(10*2902) + (2*8370) = 29020 + 16740 = 45760

(6*8650) = 51900

FFB wins out.

This may or may not be a signature.
You may or may not be wrong.

 

morgulhir

Hmm, yes, true. FFB by maths is better.
Though, during 6FFB and 3 Pyro, you still have to scorch once also, to keep the buff up.
And i doubd scorch+pyro mage would be frostfire spec, seems fire/arcane most likely,
Anyway, i'd like a mage like that in my raid - the scorch buff is always up and i don't have to worry about anything

 

willem11

good mages keep the scorch debuff up always anyway..doesnt matter if you refresh it 20 times or once...

Also remember that scorch scales way worse with about every stat as frostfire bolt does (damage, crit and haste) so as you increase your stats more it will fall behind more.

 

Lysara

While not strictly Mage-news, after the patch you'll be able to buy the Flow of Knowledge trinket for only 25 [Wintergrasp Mark of Honor], which is identical to [Sundial of the Exiled]. So if you don't have much luck with drops start doing Wintergrasp a bit.

 

Roywyn

I expect that to be changed to 84 resilience instead of 84 crit.
Because it's a PvP item and the melee version has resilience.

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.

 

Faxmonkey

Under the category of "Tips and Tricks", It's been brought to my attention that combining and reforming Eternals (and presumably primals) is instant, has no global cooldown, and, most importantly, counts as a spell cast. This means it can be macroed as a way to instantly and quickly *Force* "on spell cast" trinkets like [Embrace of the Spider] to proc (assuming their not on GCD). Furthermore, I'm fairly sure (though I have no way to test) that this could also be used to *instantly* stack your [Illustration of the Dragon Soul] to 10 stacks.

The downside to this approach is that the macro must be spammed, because there's a momentary delay before the Eternal or component parts are "created" and thus you can't simply combine and recombine the same eternal all in one macro press.

The following macro works if spammed:
/use Eternal water
/use Crystallized Water

You can of course just do the whole Slowfall thing, but that costs mana and GCD's. This is something you can do as you're actually running in for the pull.

 

Wcshadow

Forgive me if im not asking the question the right way or whatever, but I was reading somewhere that in LK as a mage we shouldn't gem for spell damage past 1400, afterwards just let gear boost our SD.

After 1400 from gear we should gem for crit/haste till haste is 220 then solely for crit (assuming hit capped)

Can anyone help me with that and tell me if its correct or how incorrect it is.

 

Chira

If I'm not mistaken, this was fixed, as it no longer worked for me. It didn't add trinket charges, and it didn't proc my other trinket either. I tried it with Earth, Air, and Water, for what it's worth.

 

◊ manly

Unless it was fixed in the past 30 minutes, it works. And god it spams the logs like nothing else.

Log on with different model:
1- Create a character of the desired model. Log on/off.
2- At character selection screen, select your actual character; mouseover the new, desired model character, and hold down left click; hit enter and release left click at the same time.
bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

Lileith

You should'nt take your info from MMO Champion forum...

It takes ~4000 spell power before gemming for crit becomes better than spell power. You should use spellpower gem unless you are aiming for a socket bonus (and then you should use either hit/spell or crit/spell gems depending on your crit rating).

 

Faxmonkey

Yeah, like I said I can't speak for the IoDS trinket, but I can say for sure it'll force a proc on my [Embrace of the Spider]

Edit: Based on the fact that IoDS no longer stacks off slowfall and such, I'm going to assume that this *is* fixed on PTR, but not on live so far as I know.

In case people don't quite understand the significance, it means you can basically make the macro:

/use Eternal Water
/use Crystallized Water
/cast Frostfire Bolt

Replace your FFB hotkey with that macro, put an Eternal Water in your inventory, and *increase* your dps by *Increasing* your proc uptime on spelll-cast based trinkets (at least Embrace of the Spider and possibly others). For instance, if you spammed that hotkey more or less constantly, then you'd get very close to the near maximum theoretical uptime for your trinket.

I do *NOT* recommend doing this, however, because it will probably kill the servers if everyone does it. Is a little extra DPS worth breaking the servers? Probably not!

 

Gregory

I know that theorycrafting says that Living Bomb is good. But I just checked random Patchwerk WWS logs and noticed that Living Bomb does about 7-10% damage (not counting ignite, but that's shouldn't be a lot) while you wasting to recast it every 12s let's say 1.3s gcd so almost 11% of time. Did I calculated something wrong or just all mages fail with LB ?

 

Pyrates

You're most certainly not recasting it every 12s. Check the WWS carefully, add up all your casting times to see how much time you really spent casting (you'll have to know your real casting time including haste), then see how large a portion of LB you took (know your Gcd for that), that's the number you need to look at.

 

Chira

Perhaps the Eternal bug only works on [Embrace of the Spider] because it would not proc [Forge Ember], [Sundial of the Exiled] (obviously), and did not stack [Illustration of the Dragon Soul]. I will speak to my friend in game about trying it since he has an Embrace, unless someone else could confirm this as well.

Edit: It only worked for his Embrace, too.

 

Gregory

That wasn't my WWS. I just checked like 50 random WWS reports from top (~2m kill time) and some from bottom (~5 kill time). Didn't found even 1 with more than 10% LB damage. Average is 9%.

 

pocketmage

Living Bomb is worth casting so long as you are not hasted below the 1sec GCD cap. Though, I would prioritize HS pyros over LB for now b/c the latter's crits do not proc HS. That will change in the next patch.

 

Gregory

And you can show that on practice not in theory ? Would like to see some Patch WWS with at least 12% LB damage.

 

◊ nathanbp

(Note: the below assumes that Living Bomb is worth casting at all, which I leave to the more math-inclined theorycrafters to debate.)

If you have a Hot Streak proc and Living Bomb has exploded, you are almost always better off casting Living Bomb, then Pyroblast. This is because (1) Living Bomb is a DOT so you want to apply it as quickly as possible, your Pyroblast will wait and (2) Since presumably the last thing you cast was Frostfire Bolt, firing off an instant Pyroblast right afterwards risks Ignite bugging out, where as if you wait out for a GCD by casting Living Bomb, you can avoid this.

 

Dustwhisper

From my parses I've seen to be getting higher DPS output on Loatheb without using LB, though it's rather anecdotal I suppose but running with 95+% FFB crit-rating and getting hot streaks chained for whole fight seems to offset using LB due to timing getting messed.

 

Footspeedy

The eternal trick is also working with enchanting essences.

 

◊ manly

Well yeah. Basically the problem is anything that procs from non-offensive spells basically is fundamentally flawed. Nothing should ever proc if it is unable to put you in combat or generate threat.

Log on with different model:
1- Create a character of the desired model. Log on/off.
2- At character selection screen, select your actual character; mouseover the new, desired model character, and hold down left click; hit enter and release left click at the same time.
bug Arcane Potency only applies to the first Arcane Missile bolt.

 

Wizeowel

Your math is wrong. You made the assumption that LB is 11% of your total casting and then looked at WWS parses where it isn't 11%. Here is some data from a top 5 fight.

Wow Web Stats

This mage cast 8 LB in 2 mins 6 seconds, that's just less than once every 16 seconds. From his armory he has unbuffed 390 haste which means his GCD in raid is going to be approximately 1.25 seconds. So he is casting LB less than 8% of the time, and the raw contribution from LB is just under 9%.

Furthermore you say we should ignore ignite because it's not very much, but if you look again at the WWS, this mage critted his LB 5 of the 8 times. Average LB crit damage was just over 4k which means he had 5 x 1600 = 8000 extra damage from LB which is counted under the ignites. Since his total damage is under 800k, the ignite damage from LB is over 1% of his total.

TDLR: LB total time = 7.9% LB total damage = 9.8%.

 

Enthorn

I think it's safe to say that the argument of cast time of living bomb versus the damage output of living bomb is rather irrelevant, in the larger scheme of things to come. With Living Bomb triggering Hot Streak, it is without question whether or not to keep it up at all times (with an exception being Loatheb; you may inadvertently end up with more Hot Streaks then you can use if every frostfire bolt is critting, on top of living bomb).

 

Gregory

Isn't it 1.25/12 = 10.5% ?

Yea, ignite about 1%, I did same approx myself. It doesn't make LB worth casting with 11% time wasted and 9% damage done on average.

But I don't see how you got 7.9% LB time ?

 

◊ nathanbp

Gregory: You are attempting to compare cast time percents from the ideal case (once every 12 seconds) with damage percents from the real case (in Wizeowel's linked parse, where LB is cast on average once every 16 seconds). The mage in the linked parse spent 1.25/16 ~= 7.8% of the time casting Living Bomb, and it accounted for 9.8% of his damage, therefore it was worth casting.