Fire and You, Or How I Learned to Love the (Living) Bomb

[kryst]

(Not enough room in the title for the full Dr. Strangelove reference )

Another "exciting" day at work, so I felt like taking some time to do a primer for Fire PVE. I'll be covering both Fireball and Frostfire Bolt specs, as they are very similar.

I will not cover Rawr usage in this thread. Rawr is a very useful utility for optimizing gear, gemming, rotations, etc. For more information, check the Rawr.Mage thread at Elitist Jerks (http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t37825-rawr_mage/).

Table of Contents
*Upcoming Fire-relevant 3.2 changes
*Talents
*Stats/Gems
*Glyphs
*Rotation
*Improved Scorch
*Focus Magic
*DPS cooldowns/Molten Fury/Bloodlust
*Mirror Images/Invisibility/Ice Block
*Set Bonuses


Upcoming Fire-relevant 3.2 changes
* Invisibility: Can no longer be interrupted by a hostile action or damage done during the 3-second Fade time, however an invisible mage is still vulnerable to Stun and Silence effects.
* Empowered Fire: In addition to its existing effects, this talent now also grants a 33/67/100% chance to regain 2% of base mana each time the Ignite talent deals damage.
* Living Bomb can now be cast on more than 1 target at a time - EDIT: It did make live, and it makes AoE pulls a LOT more fun and exciting.
* Living Bomb: Periodic critical strikes from this ability can now trigger Ignite and Hot Streak. (may make Combustion useful again) - EDIT: They removed the ability for Living Bomb DoT crits to trigger Hot Streak less than 24 hours after the patch came out. Boourns.
* Healthstones and Mana Gems will no longer share a cooldown (woot!)




Talents

Fire:
(19/52/0) http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#of0icz0cZ0EcbRhIhVhbhct

This is Krystallos's current primary spec. There is some (not much) flexibility in talent points, primarily in the Arcane tree.

Going row by row for Arcane:

Arcane tier 1 - All three of these talents are basically useless for Fire PVE, so it's just a matter of choosing 5 points to get to tier 2. Common specs just take Arcane Subtlety and Arcane Focus.

Arcane tier 2 - Magic Absorption and Arcane Concentration are both worthwhile talents. 2 points in Magic Absorption reduces magic damage taken by roughly 15% and provides a non-trivial mana return on a full resist (note that it's harder to get full resists due to the revamp to the resist system in Wrath). Arcane Concentration is a nice talent to help with mana. A full 5 points isn't necessary here if you also put points in Magic Absorption. Some people even just put the minimum number of points there (3).

Arcane tier 3 - Spell Impact is an automatic 3 pointer, since it buffs your primary nuke (Fireball) by 6%. Focus Magic is an incredible talent, and I'll discuss it a little more in a bit. Student of the Mind gets better as you gain more Spirit. With more Spirit comes less mana problems, so if you end up putting only 3 points into Arcane Concentration, at least 1 point will go here to get to tier 4.

Arcane tier 4 - The reason you go Arcane for Fireball spec is to get Torment the Weak. 3 points in Torment the Weak is worth roughly an 8-9% increase in DPS (since Fireball + resulting ignites will make up 60-70% of your total damage). Arcane Meditation is not necessary anymore, but if you're still having dire mana problems, putting a point in here may help you if you can spare it.

Frostfire:
(0/52/19) http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#oZfVcbRhIhVhbhctbIcckcc

There is less flexibility in the Frost tree than Fire. Your only real choices are Frostbite vs. Improved Frostbolt in the first tier and Frost Warding vs. Improved Blizzard. Improved Blizzard is useful for fights that require snaring a large number of mobs (Iron Council medium mode and Freya Detonating Lashers phase come to mind), although you have to be careful because Frostbite procs can separate the mobs from each other, making things a bit awkward. Frost Warding is useful for fights with high incoming Frost (Hodir, Sapphiron) and Fire (Mimiron, Ignis) damage.



The fire talents basically write themselves, although I'd like to comment on some in particular:

Improved Fireball - This is useless for Frostfire Bolt spec, so Frostfire generally takes the other Tier 1 talents (Imp Fire Blast, Incineration) instead.

World in Flames - Mages who choose to put a 20th talent point into Frost or Arcane (0/51/20 or 21/50/0) generally take a point out of this since there aren't many options to do so and the other options are more beneficial.

Blast Wave - The knockback can cause problems on large AoE packs, and generally Fire/FFB Mages stay at range and use Flamestrike/Blizzard instead, so this isn't worth the talent point.

Combustion - This used to be a staple of Fire raiding specs, but it is now almost worthless. Fire Mage crit chances are already ridiculously high in raiding situations (fully raid buffed, we're talking 50-60%), resulting in the talent negatively scaling as the Mage's gear gets better. Furthermore, Living Bomb DoT crits (if you're glyphed for it, which you should be) can consume charges.

Dragon's Breath - The cone is small and awkward to position, and once again you have to be in melee range to use it.




Stats/Gems

The stat priorities are slightly different for Fire and Frostfire:

Fire: Hit (until capped) > Spellpower > Haste > Crit > Spirit

The spell hit cap for all casters is 17% (446 hit rating) before talents. Fire has no room to take Precision from the Frost tree, so it has to get its hit from gear. With a Shadow Priest providing Misery or a Balance Druid providing Improved Faerie Fire (3% spell hit), you will only need 14% (367 rating) from gear. The general advice is to gear for 14%, and have 1-2 gear swaps ready in case you don't have a Shadow Priest/Balance Druid. Getting a +hit trinket like Mark of the War Prisoner, Dying Curse or Elemental Focus Stone is an easy way to do this. Haste is better than Crit because Fireball has a lower crit multipler (~255%) than Frostfire and Fireball (taking into account talents and glyphs) already has more crit chance than Frostfire.

Frostfire: Hit (until capped) > Spellpower > Crit > Haste > Spirit

Frostfire gets 3% hit from Precision, so you only need 14% (367 rating) from gear. If you have a Shadow Priest/Balance Druid, you only need 11% (289 rating) from gear. Crit is slightly better for Frostfire than haste because Frostfire Bolt has a very high crit multiplier (~330%) and slightly less innate crit chance than Fireball.

For both specs, Spirit isn't quite the anathema it was before 3.1 and the Molten Armor redesign. Molten Armor now converts 35% of your Spirit into crit rating, and the glyph was redesigned to convert an additional 20%. Remember to take this into account when swapping gear pieces. Spirit still isn't as good as straight Crit or Haste rating, but it's actually a useful stat now.

In terms of gems, the only meta choice is Chaotic Skyflare Diamond. The 3% increased crit damage actually applies to the FULL damage done by the spell, not just the increased damage from a critical strike, so it's worth far more than it appears at first glance and makes any other metagem choice irrelevant. It's worth SO much that it makes any helm without a meta socket basically worthless.

Generally, you want to gem straight Runed (red gem) except for fulfilling your meta requirement (2 blue gems) or if the piece has an exceptional socket bonus. If you want to follow sockets, do so as such:

Red socket - Runed (red gem) (spellpower)
Yellow socket - Veiled (orange gem) (spellpower/hit) if you need hit, Reckless (orange gem) (spellpower/haste)/Potent (orange gem) (spellpower/crit) otherwise depending on your spec
Blue socket - Purified (purple gem) (spellpower/spirit)


Glyphs

The minor glyphs are generally irrelevant, although Glyph of Fire Ward and Glyph of Frost Ward are pretty good for fights with their respective types of damage. Glyph of Slow Fall is nice if you don't want to carry around Light Feathers. Glyph of the Penguin is fun if you don't like any of the other sheep varieties, and Glyph of Arcane Intellect is a very minor mana saver.

For major glyphs, you will be choosing 3 out of the following 4:
Glyph of Living Bomb
Glyph of Frostfire/Fireball (depending on which spec you are)
Glyph of Molten Armor
Glyph of Improved Scorch

Glyph of Living Bomb is mandatory, since it is by far the highest DPS increase of the 4 (it's worth roughly 300-400 DPS).

I discuss Glyph of Improved Scorch below. To use Glyph of Improved Scorch, you will be dropping Glyph of Frostfire/Fireball or Glyph of Molten Armor.

Which glyph you drop depends on your gear. Generally, in Naxx gear, you drop Glyph of Molten Armor since you won't have enough Spirit to make it worthwhile. When you start getting more and more Ulduar gear with Spirit on it, you probably want to drop Glyph of Fireball/Frostfire instead. The tipping point is sooner for Frostfire than Fireball.

(I'm going to try to dig through the Elitist Jerks threads to find the exact Spirit values, and they'll go here when I find them.)




Rotation

Fireball and Frostfire both share the same general rotation. Blizzard has been moving away from static rotations since TBC by adding random spell procs and priority queues, among other things. Fire has a bit of both compared to the rotation from TBC.

Your priority queue will look something like this:

Refresh Scorch (if it's your job)
Refresh Living Bomb
Use Hot Streak procs on Pyroblast
Fireball/Frostfire Bolt

If someone else is taking care of the 5% crit debuff, ignore the Scorch part.

If you are providing the 5% crit debuff and have the Improved Scorch glyph, you can probably afford to drop Scorch below Hot Streak Pyroblasts in priority, since you can potentially overwrite the Hot Streak proc with a crit Scorch and letting Scorch run out isn't the end of the world since you can easily refresh it.

Living Bomb is your highest DPSC (damage per second casting) spell, so you want to maintain as high of an uptime as you can.

You want to use Hot Streak as soon as possible so you won't lose procs due to expiration and/or overwrites. You can readjust the cycle to use a Hot Streak proc before refreshing Living Bomb if you're afraid you're going to proc Hot Streak again. As an example:

* You proc Hot Streak off a Fireball
* Living Bomb explodes and crits while you're casting another Fireball.
* If this second Fireball crits, you'll get a second Hot Streak proc, overwriting/wasting the first one. In this situation, you'll probably want to cast Pyroblast before refreshing Living Bomb. If that second Fireball doesn't crit, it's not a big deal and you can just continue as normal, but if it does crit, you'll be glad you didn't waste a Hot Streak proc.




Improved Scorch

Both varieties of Fire can provide the 5% spell crit debuff via Improved Scorch. This is the same debuff provided by Improved Shadow Bolt (Warlock Destruction tree) and Winter's Chill (Mage Frost tree). If you have a Frost Mage in your raid and you're not doing Freya hard mode (Snaplasher/Detonating Lasher control) or Vezax hard mode (insanely good mana efficiency), they're doing it wrong.

Most Warlocks are Fire Destruction since it's the highest DPS spec, so they won't have Improved Shadow Bolt talented. Affliction Warlocks have Shadow Bolt as part of their normal rotation and thus have it talented, but sub-25% won't be casting Shadow Bolt except for Nightfall procs, since they will be chain-channeling Drain Soul as their filler (Drain Soul is basically like an Execute since it deals 4x as much damage below 25%). Demo are a mixed bag...some go Shadow, but most go Fire.

Therefore, Fire Mages will often end up with the responsiblity of providing the debuff.

Normally, you have to stack Scorch up to 5 by casting it 5 times. All Fire Mages with Improved Scorch can contribute to this stack, so having 2-3 Fire Mages casting Scorch at the beginning will stack it quickly. Then, it's just a matter of having one Mages refresh the stack every 26-28 seconds or so (it expires after 30).

However, with the Glyph of Improved Scorch, one cast of Scorch will instantly stack it to 5. However, this provides a trade-off, since then you will have to choose whether to get rid of Glyph of Fireball/Frostfire or Glyph of Molten Armor (see Glyph section above). If the Mages in your raid are having problems keeping the stack up, it's not the end of the world to have one of them take the Glyph of Improved Scorch and just be responsible for maintaining it.

Glyph of Improved Scorch is also useful for fights that require a large amount of target switching, or for cases like the heart phase of XT-002 Deconstructor, where you won't have time to cast Scorch more than once, but having the 5% crit debuff could be the difference between triggering hard mode or not.

It's really a judgment call.




Focus Magic

Focus Magic is a very powerful spell that grants another player 3% spell crit and when they crit, you gain 3% spell crit for 10 seconds.

The best configuration for Focus Magic is to have all of your Mages with Focus Magic set up a Focus Magic chain (or, if you will, a circlejerk). This maximizes the effect of Focus Magic, as each Mage will have a 3% additional chance to crit, increasing the likelihood they will proc Focus Magic for the next Mage in the chain, and so on.

If you only have 1 Mage with Focus Magic, give it to whatever caster in the raid you think will benefit most from it. This will likely be a Frostfire Mage (highest crit multipler), Balance Druid (crits reduce their casting time), Elemental Shaman (higher uptime for Elemental Oath/more Clearcasting procs) or Holy Paladin (more Illumination procs).




DPS cooldowns/Molten Fury/Bloodlust

One of the key aspects of the Mage is timing your cooldowns to maximize damage.

The cooldowns at your disposal are:
- Icy Veins (Frostfire only)
- Combustion (if you have it, which you shouldn't)
- Mage 2 piece T7 Mana Gem
- DPS potion (Potion of Speed or Potion of Wild Magic)
- Clickable trinkets (Mark of the War Prisoner, Scale of Fates, etc.)
- Mirror Images

You deal 12% more damage to targets below 35% thanks to Molten Fury. This is the "Mage-ecute" period. This is going to be when you want to pop any DPS cooldowns you have, hopefully with Bloodlust as well. (Some raid leaders choose to pop Bloodlust before execute range. I would check with your raid leader to determine when they pop Bloodlust so you know to save your cooldowns for then, because you'll get the most benefit from your cooldowns under Bloodlust.)

Ideally, you want to time your cooldowns so you'll have them available to you during the Molten Fury period. A decent rule of thumb is to use any available cooldowns (except for DPS potions, save them for Molten Fury range or a specific high-burst period like XT-002's exposed heart) as soon as the tank has stable threat, then use them again when they are up and synced with each other unless doing so would prevent you from using them during Molten Fury range.




Mirror Images/Invisibility/Ice Block

Mages have three "threat dumps", although only one of them actually permanently reduces your threat.

Mirror Images are on a 3 minute cooldown, and do negligible DPS. However, the important part of the spell is that it temporarily reduces your threat by roughly 4 million, in a similar way to a Priest's Fade. Popping Mirror Images then blowing all your DPS cooldowns is an effective strategy. Be warned that you'll still be generating your normal amount of threat during this time, and once the 4 million threat reduction is gone, you may find yourself on top of Omen and about to get one-shot by the raid boss.

Ice Block will temporarily remove the raid boss's focus from you if you pull aggro, but your current threat level will not go away.

Invisibility is your actual threat dump. Untalented, Invisibility has a three second fade time. Your threat is reduced roughly 10% or so every second until you fade out, which completely removes your threat. Casting any spell or being affected by any damage or almost any hostile debuff will cancel the effect, so you have to be careful to time your Invisibility such that you don't break the effect until you fully fade away. Patch 3.2 will make it a little easier to get the full fade effect, but you still have to be careful.


Set Bonuses

Frostfire 2 piece - You gain 40% more mana when you use a mana gem. In addition, using a mana gem grants you 225 spell power for 15 sec.

This is the same bonus as the Serpent-Coil Braid from Morogrim Tidewalker in Serpentshrine Cavern. This is a very nice bonus in that it provides you with another "clickable" cooldown and roughly 10-12mp5. I highly recommend not breaking this bonus until you get 4 piece T8 at the minimum.

Frostfire 4 piece - Your offensive spells gain an additional 5% increased critical strike bonus damage.

A decent set bonus. Unlike Chaotic Skyflare Diamond, this only applies to the extra damage from the critical strike instead of the full damage of the spell. It's worth breaking this for 2 piece T8 or T9.

Kirin Tor 2 piece - Your Arcane Blast, Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt, and Fireball spells have a chance to grant you 350 spell power for 15 sec.

This procs 25% of the time with a 45 second internal cooldown, which works out to roughly 80-100 average spellpower depending on your luck. A very nice bonus.

Kirin Tor 4 piece - You have a chance for the effect of your Missile Barrage, Hot Streak, or Brain Freeze talent not to be consumed when you cast the spells which benefit.

This gives your Hot Streak roughly a 20-30% chance (I don't have the exact number) to not be consumed when you cast Pyroblast. It has no internal cooldown, so it's possible to chain-proc this. There is no special proc buff display when this occurs, you just keep your Hot Streak proc. My current record is 5 Pyroblasts in a row.

You're going to want some sort of mod (like Power Auras) to keep easy track of Hot Streak so you don't lose any extra procs.

Sunstrider 2 piece - Increases the armor you gain from Ice Armor by 20%, the mana regeneration you gain from Mage Armor by 10%, and converts an additional 15% of your spirit into critical strike rating when Molten Armor is active.

A very nice bonus. I believe this is worth breaking your 4 piece T8 for.

Sunstrider 4 piece - Increases the critical strike chance of your Fireball, Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt, Arcane Missiles, and Arcane Blast spells by 5%.

A kind of bland bonus, but still worth getting over 2 piece T8 (if anything because of the stat increase you'd get from upgrading anyway)


EDIT: Added Focus Magic section and Table of Contents
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80s: Krystallos (Mage), Zumasa (Shaman), Kimbal (Druid), Alryia (Paladin), Cliché (DK), Sinicole (Priest)
Others: Latyaf (77 Rogue), Tamen (71 Hunter)

[Duskflower]

This is a very helpful guide! My mage hit 80 a few days ago and is Frostfire spec. I am glad to see that what I have been doing has not been totally off in la-la land.

Anyway, thanks for posting this. :3
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Duskflower - Raid Officer, Chaotic Onslaught

SPOCK: However, if crew morale is better served by my roaming the halls weeping, I will gladly defer to your medical expertise. Excuse me.
MCCOY: (muttering) Green-blooded hobgoblin!

[Spey]

Great - thanks so much Krsyt - Niesse is working it little by little. I am doing the Frost/fire thing to start since I have always been a bit of a crit fiend. I will most likely add an arcane off spec once I feel like I really know my way around.

A couple of questions - and if Kryst is no longer following this, perhaps someone else can respond.

If I am reading this correctly, until hit capped, I gem for hit? Even if not raiding - just heroics? Right now I am at 335, but still have a few gems that are sp/hit or hit/stam (for the meta). Maybe I should go hit/spirit with the greens (ie blues?). And omit all the sp until hit capped? Does it really matter that much when it is that close for instances?

Is it still true that combustion is a waste? I had not known that and picked it up, but is easy to dump.

And I have a macro to stop casting to do pyro when hot streak procs - do you advise any other macros (like one to stop casting for LB as well?). I have just been letting my casts complete on LB or scorch, and then refresh, but think perhaps that is mistaken?

Next - I have been using scorchio2 to watch my cd's and procs. Unfortunately, the way I am set up, the words they announce with pop right in front of where my bars are.( My bars are not set at the bottom where many folks have them because I feel like I need to have them closer to my los - i use mouse and not keyboard which should be obvious to anyone who knows me). Is there a way to move this text block up and out of my way? Or turn it off? I can just watch the timers.

Finally, do any mages use clique? I am thinking it is not so useful for them as you do not target in grid, but 'out in the open', so might be a little more awkwar, but I was thinking maybe like a clique on self for invis or something might be useful. If anyone does use this, please let me know and how you set it up.

Thanks!
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Spey

[Malqueso]

I'm really rather a poor person to respond, since I've always been arcane specced on Narrissa and have never taken the time to try out other specs, plus she's not exactly a DPS chart-topper. I THINK I'm doing things right, based on doubling my DPS output in the past month or two, but I'm not sure there's any way to know for certain whether I'm right in my opinions or not.

[Duskflower]

The hit cap for heroics is also lower than for raid bosses. So, if you are planning on just sticking to heroics and not raiding, you have a much lower target to shoot for: without ANY boosts from talents, other players, etc. the cap is 158 against level 82 bosses (79 with Precision).

If you *are* interested in raiding, since Frostfire has a lower hit rating to aim for (14%/367), you can probably take Kryst's advice and shoot for for 11%/289, with pieces to swap in if there are no shadow priests/boomkin.

I try not gem for +hit at all, and go for straight spellpower anytime I can. That is what Kryst is getting at as well, I believe. The only time I could see it being acceptable is in the blue slots, where two blue gems are needed for the meta. So, if you feel that regemming is going to knock your hit rating down too low, those are the slots to use +hit/whatever gems in.

Combustion recently got a change, so I would not say it's a completely useless talent now. I have not checked with any raiding mages to see what they think of it, but I don't think it's a waste of a point.
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Duskflower - Raid Officer, Chaotic Onslaught

SPOCK: However, if crew morale is better served by my roaming the halls weeping, I will gladly defer to your medical expertise. Excuse me.
MCCOY: (muttering) Green-blooded hobgoblin!

[Spey]

Thanks, guys. I am still confused about gems however. I would like to have the raiding hit cap, as I would like to at least entertain the idea of raiding with Niesse. So maybe 289 is my target - and I would need to gem to get there - or not?

Cheers!
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Spey

[Spey]

K - nother question. For multiples - it has been hard for me to get any real dps going on trash. Is there a rule of thumb for that? For example, if there are only 2, do I scorch and LB on both, then dps? Or just LB? If 3 or more, LB everything and then go for Flamestrike/FS8, blizz? So far that has produced about 1700 dps (at most) for me whereas on bosses I have gotten as high as 2700.

Any suggestions?

Thanks
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Spey

[Mondalow]

[Spey]

It does, thanks Man. With my new arcane spec, I do a ton more damage - but it is very boring! So I will keep ff in the hopes that one day it will compete with arcane for damage.


Cheers
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Spey