It gives your Pyroblast a cooldown though. I haven't done 25, but near the end of Anub we usually switch to single target the boss, so losing potential hot streak procs might not be worth it.

It also reduces the cast time of pyroblast by 3.5 sec, ie it's cast as fast as a GCD so unless you're getting hs proccs at a greater frequency than every 5 seconds it should be a dps gain.

I was wondering if anyone could suggest what point could be removed to get combustion? I have been trying find out what point people believe to be unnecessary enough to remove. I have taken note of everyone suggesting to take a point out of student of mind. I am no "expert" when it comes to the math of weather losing 3% spirit is worth gaining combustion. So I am asking the "experts" here if you could confirm weather taking a point out of student of mind is worth getting combustion? Is there a better point that can be removed and then put into combustion? Thanks in advance.

Hmm, I wasn't aware that it still applied the CD on pyroblast during Hot Streak but then I never tried it... That said it's probably not a big issue since most of the phase is still AOE.

An interesting bug I noticed in ToC heroic at least is when you spellsteal Nether Power and is afflicted by Legion Flame, the dot itself is increased by the spellpower buff provided by Nether Power.

For instance on 10 man heroic it was ticking on me for 7-8k with 5 stack, I also checked a couple other logs with mages and it seems to multiply with the number of stacks. Potentially a very nasty bug and also one that can cause people to go bananas at you as if you're standing in the fire, which you obviously aren't.

While its actual result could be called a bug, that particular behavior of Legion Flame is not unique. In many (if not most) cases where a player spawns a flame patch or triggers some other form of damage, the damage is displayed as theirs in the combat log (all the way from flame wreath to malady of the mind). Buffs on that player will affect the negative damage as well, it's just rare to have an "increases all damage dealt" buff of any significance.

By the way, Fiery Payback doesn't decrease damage taken from Leeching Swarm in Anub p3. Minimum tick still stands at 250 per (just as the spell tooltip states).

I did some TC on for a FFB spec for Anub 25m Heroic. The adds can be affected by Frostbite and therefore proc shatter. The spec I used was 0/51/20. Use the standard Fire talents, dropping Flame Throwing.

Pick up:
3/3 Frostbite
3/3 Ice Flows
3/3 Ice Shards
2/3 Precision
3/3 Piercing Ice
1/1 Icy Veins
1/3 Improved Blizzard (to allow it to proc Frostbite)
2/3 Shatter (Depending on your crit, 2/3 should give you near 100% on a frozen target)

The following talents you can play with depending on your strategy:

RED = BAD INFO

Arctic Reach (Last night I put 1 point in, since we use the 3 tank strategy. This allows me to hit the adds just that much sooner. No points are needed here in the 2 tank strategy since all 4 adds will be on 1 patch.)
Frost Channeling: (Not needed at all really, but I guess could make life a little easier)

After trying it out last night, I decided to go 2/2 Arctic Reach, 0/3 Frost Channeling, and 2/3 Shatter.

+EDIT: Arctic Reach DOES NOT increase the radius of Blizzard, just CoC and Nova. It is not useful for this fight.

I will be putting the 2 points from Arctic Reach back into Frost Channeling, to make life a little easier. Precision if you need the hit.

Threat was not an issue, but I did need to manage my mana a little more. By no means was I starved for mana with proper use of gems and evocation. I had another mage with me with the same spec doubling the Frostbite procs making this spec even more effective.

If the adds are going down as fast as they should be, 1 round of LB followed by chain blizzards worked best.

Edit: I also noticed that even though it is not worth reapplying Living Bomb to all the adds, it did seem slightly beneficial to spend a GCD to reapply it to Anub. Since I cast it on him first as the adds are coming out, it will expire on him first as well. 90% of the time the adds were still up to get hit by the explosion of the 2nd Anub application.

If your guild is having trouble getting to P3, we found it beneficial for everyone to focus on the boss just before he burrows, even the AoErs. Then take care of the adds during the burrow phase.

I really don't like the idea of Blizzard proccing Frostbite on Heroic Anub. Should it proc while one of the add tanks are trying to reposition the adds (ie. not in melee range), there's the off chance that someone else in melee range will get hit during the split second that the add is frozen. I know that both tanks and the adds will have their movement speed greatly slowed, but our add tanks are both Paladins, who use freedom on themselves when they need to move.

Also, Arctic Reach doesn't increase the radius of Blizzard, only the 'range'.

Not to be rude but do you have a log to back this up please?

I specifically specced for full blizzard for this fight (for aoe-winterchill) and frostbite caused death only once due to my error.

You don't need a log of someone spec'd into this talent to verify. Every 25 man raid will have the "you take 3% less damage" buff from either a Dpriest or Blessing. Just check out one of your logs and notice that no one will ever take less than 250 damage.

You are correct about the radius. It's been a while since I looked at the tool tip for imp blizzard and mistakenly read it wrong. Only the radius of CoC and Nova are increased not Blizzard.

Ill edit the previous post to reflect the correct information.

As far as Frostbite causing melee to get whacked, I cannot rule it out. We did not have any issues with that particular problem. (25m HM Anub down last night woot!) I guess it depends on how good the tanks are at positioning. It is a noticeable increase in DPS though with 2 mages speced into it.

The damage floor being 250 regardless of damage reduction talents and abilities does NOT mean that those abilities don't have any effect on the damage. It just means the floor is applied after all other calculations. If you have high enough current health to take more than 250 damage from a tick due to those abilities and they properly reduce that damage, they're still having an effect above the damage floor. The original post said Fiery Payback was never having an effect, which still needs documentation for cases above the minimum.

Ok I phrased it wrong. When I said it doesn't reduce the damage from leeching swarm, I was referring to the minimum ticks, since save while being afflicted by penetrating cold, the entire raid sans tanks stays at low enough hp to be taking minimum ticks.

What build are you using that allows you to spec into Shatter and Imp Blizzard?

I believe the problem however is that it isn't necessarily needed. After I apply LB to adds, the explosions usually always give me a hotstreak proc, and I can also usually use the proc before it runs out. Since there isn't too much dps time on Anub inbetween adds, and because of the very likely chance of an HS proc from explosions, the advantage of a fast pyroblast every 5 seconds will get you one , MAYBE two extra pyro's inbetween add waves, at most.

At what cost though?

Due to how Fiery Payback is currently bugged, the entire fight up to P3 your pyroblast could very well still have the 5s cooldown, and you won't have a faster cast of pyroblast. Also during P3 if you get a Penetrating Cold that you aren't able to block off because you already blocked, you will be healed and fiery payback will go out of use. Furthermore you may not even notice in the midst of things and try to cast a fast pyroblast, only realizing too late that fiery payback isn't active and therefore costing your self a lot of dps. And finally, it costs you two talent points (not a big deal, but still a cost to consider).


Overall to me, the small amount of dps you could get from fiery payback simply for P3 is way too costly to make it worth it.

Edit: I realize you were just pointing that out to people, I'm just posting my own observations. Also I just realized Fiery Payback can be tracked by addons so the problem of being healed and accidentally casting pyroblast could be avoided through addons, however in the middle of the fight when a heal quickly pops up on you, the problem I described could still happen.

This is not how the cooldown penelty from Fiery Payback works. Pyroblast will not get a cooldown until you actually cast one while below 35% hp. If my memory serves me right, it should however not matter how you cast Pyroblast (cast or hot streak instant) when under 35%, you will get a cooldown regardless.

edit: I was not aware of the current bug with Fiery Payback where the cooldown on Pyroblast stays regardless of hp once falling under 35% once.

Although theoretically true, in practice see The Frostfire Bolt thread (updated 3.2.2).

Removed

I guess I was assuming people knew that Fiery Payback is horribly bugged right now so that the cooldown on pyroblast will stay up even if you go back up above 35% hp. I'm guessing this was never fixed or brought to blizzard's attention since the talent has hardly been used.

Editing old post to clarify.

Some changes in the latest PTR build.

Fire

• Burning Determination: The duration of interrupt immunity granted by this talent is now 20 seconds.
• Dragon's Breath: The mana cost of this talent has been significantly reduced.
• Firestarter: When this talent is triggered, it makes the next Flamestrike cost no mana in addition to being instant.

Frost

• Frozen Core: This talent now also causes Ice Lance critical strikes to reduce the cast time of the mage’s next Frostbolt or Frostfire Bolt by 0.4/0.7/1 seconds.

Pets

• Water Elemental: Waterbolt mana cost reduced by 80%.

And the model for Mage T10:
http://static.mmo-champion.com/mmoc/...tier10mage.jpg