I've updated the main page with what I have from the 3.2 changes and some of the discussion in this thread (Ice Lance glyph vs Water Elemental and values for SotM vs Spell Impact along with some of the Brain Freeze discussion).

I couldn't find many of the updates for professions in 3.2. I did update the values for Tailoring, Enchanting, Jewelcrafting and Engineering. If anyone knows some updated values for how the other professions changed in 3.2 please let me know.

Once we have a good feel for BiS T9/T9.5 I'd like to update the numbers again. For now most of the numbers are for 3.2 talents with T8/8.5 (3.1.3) gear.

If you see anything else that I missed, please let me know. I know they were looking to make some more changes with how pets scaled in 3.2. I'm not sure if that alters the discussion on the Water Elemental glyph vs Ice Lance glyph. But I don't see any big change in my WE DPS so far.

I'm curious about a particular kind of Frost spec that I haven't yet seen addressed here in this forum. Currently it looks like the discussion is mostly about the TTW/FrB spec which certainly has its interesting uses. But, I've been messing around on my mage and considering other possibilities, and it dawned on me that I might want to try and work with certain fire talents.

Right now, I have a nice spec that's getting me some pretty good damage in raids, but I was wondering what input people might have on this since Rawr isn't set up for this spec. It uses 0/23/48 [see Ozmagos - Cenarion Circle]. I know that sounds all crazy, but it does seem to get some interesting results for me.

The important part about this particular spec is that it uses FoF + FFB to get an ignite proc. The other thing is that fireball in this spec could also proc ignites with the right crit. Basically, I use frostbolt until I see a FoF, then I cast a FFB for the Ignite. After that it's more frostbolts, unless the BF procs where I fire off a fireball. Understandably one might ask, why not just go fire then if you're going to spec that far? But I honestly like the speed and play of frost. I'm just 'borrowing' some things from fire to use with my frost.

Another interesting part is that I only have 3 points in Chilled to the Bone, because I have 3 points in Playing with Fire. This makes a total damage increase of 6% instead of 5%, so I figure the extra percent couldnt hurt.

I'm interested in knowing if someone could set this up in a simulation, since I'm not as good with programming, and I can't input a different spec into Rawr (or just don't know how).

The idea, I suppose, is to grab stuff that will scale better with my gear, since Frost alone does not scale as nicely. Thanks!

Really, making your own talent spec in Rawr is so easy you don't have to consult any FAQ, help file or otherwise, just click on the "talents" tab, make your own talent spec, save it if you want and go back and check the results.

I'm also interested in people's thoughts about such a spec, because I'm able to get my spec and gear into Rawr, but I cant give it my rotation. It seems more a gear itemizer for specs and rotations already programmed.

Apart from everything being "garbage"... Does the 'taking 30% longer to cast mean longer than a frostbolt? At the moment my Frostbolt is 2sec and my Frostfirebolt is 2.6sec, so I'm guessing you're saying that the extra .6sec is the 30%. But, in a raid setting, it's pretty much guaranteed to crit with FoF giving me the extra DoT. According to the damage calculator I have in-game, my Frostbolt has an average damage of 4052 and my Frostfirebolt averages to 4544with just Intellect and Molten Armor. I have noticed though that I am not getting as high crits with it as Frostbolt, but that it does leave (on average) an Ignite DoT of 2354. It's a little boost in damage, but it's there while also being able to cast my Frostbolts.

I am curious about the loss in 11% of damage and 8% crit, since I dont see what talents are being lost from this. If you could let me know and give me a few more numbers I'd be greatful.

I don't understand what you would be doing with that spec. If you're casting frostfire bolt as your main nuke, I can give you an idea of why the cookie cutter FFB spec would be better.

You're missing:
5/5 Firepower which is (-10%)
3/3 Molten fury - assuming a linear fight, that's 12%*35% = (-4.2%)
3/3 Empowered fire - 722-838 is FFB base damage + 3/3.5 spellpower for the base spell. With your spellpower (1852), it would go from 2309-2425 (2367 avg) to 2574-2690 (2632 avg) ignoring other talents, so it's a minimum of about a 10% dps loss, probably more due to the way the spell is being multiplied, and it's going to get worse as you get better gear. (-10%)

But you are gaining:
5/5 arctic winds (+5%)
3/5 chilled to the bone (+3%)

so net is about a 24% straight dmg buff lost on frostfire bolt while you gain approximately 8% in damage from deeper frost talents - net of 16% straight damage loss.

As far as crit, you're losing:
3/3 Critical mass (-6%)
3/3 Pyromaniac (-3%)

and gaining:
2/2 Fingers of frost. 15% chance to proc a +50% crit buffx2. Assuming you're using it on FFB, lets call that (+15%)

Net gain of +6% crit.

You could argue that water elemental and cold snap add some dps, but I'm leaning towards the assumption that the damage from living bomb, burnout, and hot streak would rape it and the 6% crit gain with a rusty pipe. Your build suffers from taking too many points which do absolutely nothing to prop up your main nuke (3/3 winter's chill, 2/2 empowered frostbolt, 2/2 cold as ice, 3/3 brain freeze) while not picking up essential talents which passively and actively synergize with frostfire.

The only advantage I can see is that you have fairly predictable crits due to fingers of frost and WE nova / frost nova shatters (which disappear in raids).

Actually, I apologize if anyone thought I was just trying to push my spec as being really awesome. I'm not at all. I was really just stating that it is possible to go for Ignite over Torment the Weak by using a FoF + FFB combo (and consequently not simply spam Frostbolt), but that I was unsure about the Theorycraft calculations and how the two would compare. Rawr does not have such a setup in the program (that I know of), and the idea is to snag some fire talents to gain at least some scaling with gear.

At the moment it looks very interesting, and I had put alot of these calculations on a simple spreadsheet, although I didn't post it here. I'm not trying to waste anyone's time, just offering another possibility for using Frost in raids. If it isn't worthwhile, I'd just like to see the calculations from another point of view and how they stack up.

Right now, it looks like getting an Ignite proc from a typical 6k FFB crit from FoF could give me a total dmg output for the spell of about 8400, which is about what one of my Frostbolts crits for. But, there's a possible added bonus from the Brainfreeze, where the fireball would crit to proc Ignite as well; more still from movement intensive fights where a Fireblast crit would also have the added damage.

You can put your own spec into Rawr, as you said you've done before, so I really don't see what your problem is. Rawr also tells you what spell cycle to use for a given spec, so if Rawr is telling you to cast differently to what you want, I think the implication is that you are wrong. I mean, I'm no great theorycrafter by any means, but I'm not so sure that your logic holds up. You said that your FFB crits would give you a damage output to Frostbolt's crit. But Frostbolt casts are much shorter than FFB, so what's the point of using FFB at all?

He is suggesting a non-standard rotation; FrB-FrB [FFB on FoF], that's not going to be in the standard rotations. I don't think it's quite right to say "if you want to use a rotation that's not in Rawr, you are by definition wrong", seeing as the rotations there were themselves determined empirically at some point. I'm sure there's a way to fiddle with rotations in the program but this thread isn't quite the place to have a Rawr tutorial.

On the other hand, what I can say is that if your FFB crits (including ignite damage) are only hitting equally hard as your FrB crits, then you've probably pretty much got your answer without running a simulation. By giving up Torment the Weak you're taking a large damage hit, and as mentioned earlier the damage increase to BF-FBs isn't going to make up for it. You could theoretically take a build like this (18/10/43) that would get you ignite and TTW, but you lose Chilled to the Bone entirely (5%) and Enduring Winter (a few percent lost from WE damage, plus no replenish if that matters) and can only get 2 points into BF. Also, if you glyph for FFB then you lose some damage from reduced WE uptime.

Ultimately, you're probably looking at at least a few percent DPS loss from the standard 18/0/53 frost build. Which, depending on what you're doing is probably fine and hey, if it's more fun that's great... but it's not going to be Frost's salvation.

Part of what makes FFB builds scale so well with crit is the quadruple dip on crit bonuses from Ignite, Ice Shards, Burnout, and Hot Streak procs. There's no way to fit Burnout and Hot Streak into a deep frost build and so FFB just can't shine the way it does in its own build.

It'd be easy enough to build a simcraft file for his build and rotation, given a link to his build; his armory info is not currently available for some reason.

Yeah, but that's just because Arcane is so much more DPS than Frost is. I can get frost just over 8050dps with BiS gear with RAWR 2.2.12 Fire and Frostfire are over 9500dps. So if 0/53/18 is 9500 and 18/0/53 is 8000 - I can probably find a point somewhere around 0/36/35 where I get more DPS too. But that isn't exactly a "deep frost" build.