Mage from frost to fire

faust

faust

New Member
I have been going exclusively frost with my little mage from lvl 1-31, and whlie I certainly have enjoyed it, I think I am going to give fire a go as I think it fits my playstyle better (despite my expectations and prior experiences... go figure). So I am thinking of building towards a build like this one:

Effecient Fire Mage

The idea is to get a fair amount of crits on aoe, and to do a fair amount of damage overall, while maintaining a solid amount of mana effeciency. I think this build accomplishes that, any feedback?

In case any of you are curious, the problems I have had with the frost build I had is that while it's good solo (talents like frostbite and shatter help put up some big numbers), the reliance on frozen targets for increased dps doesn't work well in any group environment. Also the combination of frostbite and improved blizzard is a pain, as it breaks up groups of mobs, making it hard to aoe them all.

While I may return to a frost build sometime in the future, I think for now I will go with fire. Especially since I find that once I get to around lvl 38 or so, grouping becomes more and more common place, as there are just a lot more instances at the higher levels that get run more often.

Edit: While I like Impact, I couldn't find a place for it, perhaps if I dropped improved fireblast and scorch. I am also wondering if improved scorch is really worth it? Since Fireball has greater dps than scorch, and since mobs (outside of soloed elites, or bosses) tend to drop pretty quickly, I suspect I will use fireball far more often. Perhaps I am looking at this incorrectly?
 
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When it comes to fire mages, you are either a fireball mage or a scorch mage. Some can do both, but I'd say focus on one.

Fireball focuses on sustained DPS in a group setting, especially. Scorch is a crit-based build.

Impact is a scorch talent, for example, as it procs more. Since I'm elemental, I chose the scorch/fireblast route for my fire talents...and of course, blast wave.

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=RZVgrzc0zZVVGzRbth
 
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I had to laugh when I read this because Samage is a fire/arcane mage, and after fighting the princess in Mara, I've thought about going frost/arcane. I can't view your build from here at work, but I'll critique it when I get home (being an auditor, I excel at criticism). ;)

Some general things I've noticed about my fire build (which I'll post later). Imp Scorch is worth it. It's a fast cast; each successive one does more damage; it allows a "finishing move" without overkilling with a fireball. I'm level 52 (uh, or maybe 51) and my Pyroblast can crit for over 1100 damage, in part due to Imp Scorch. I usually only use it though when grouped or as a finisher when solo. When fighting elites, I'll stack at least 3 if not all 5 before spamming FBs (which will crit over 1k). I always pull aggro when I AoE with Improved Flamestrike (but those crits are lovely). Bottom line, fire mages do insane DPS but really only to one target at a time.

My considerations for frost (keep in mind I have not played a frost mage): I'm level 50+ and already running into fire resist mobs, which lowers DPS. Frost builds have better crowd control (refer to your ZG video); they are more mana efficient and can keep mobs slowed down. Slower mobs means better survival. Samage would've died a lot more than he has if it weren't for the fact that he keeps a holy priest in his back pocket. Generally, raid groups want a frost over fire for these reasons.

Shuranda has not respecc'd her 60 mage on Mal'Ganis since the patch. We're talking about making her frost/arcane so we can play around with her and compare the builds.

Edit: Forgot to link my build: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=of0VcZxg0ufMut0h
 
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That is funny... the grass is always greener in the other side of the mage tree. :D

Well I will switch over and give it a go for a while, see how I like the fire side. If I don't like it, it's only 5g to switch back. Even if I wasn't going fire, I am thinking I would respec out of frostbite anyway.
 
This is what I'm building toward (assuming I stay fire). I may replace Elemental precision with Arcane Meditation; it will take a respec to do it, though.

I find Imp Fireblast useless. And if you're spamming fireballs mostly, why take Incinerate?
 
So I created a new spreadsheet last night to study frostbolt, fireball, and scorch in greater detail. I added support for +dmg gear (of various types: frost, fire, or general), and calculated the % crit chance of all the spells, based on which talents you selected in the spreadsheet, etc...

The only key thing I have not added in, though would be more important comparing frost vs fire, is how miss and resistance rates decrease the damage. I will add that later. I am also thinking of adding extra support for other spells from other classes later on so it can be a more general purpose spreadsheet (one for all spell casting classes)... but that's again for another day.

So in the end what I determined is that scorch isn't really more mana effecient than fireball (when imp scorch is not considered).

In order to determine whether fireball or scorch was better (and how much better) at dps and dpm I did some calculations with the following talents selected (note that I left out imp scorch for this portion, more on that later):

(I assumed a lvl 60 mage with a pitiful 170 intelligence for the sake of number crunching): resulting crit rate of 7.86 + talents%

fire power (+10% dmg)
ignite (+60% dmg on crit)
improved fireball (-0.5sec cast on fireball)
critical mass (+6% crit)
Incinerate (+4% crit on scorch and fireblast)

Fireball DPS
rank 1: 25.35 (level 1)
rank 2: 34.65 (level 6)
rank 3: 43.73 (level 12)
rank 4: 56.79 (level 18)
rank 5: 77.33 (level 24)
rank 6: 109.86 (level 30)
rank 7: 138.18 (level 36)
rank 8: 171.56 (level 42)
rank 9: 211.70 (level 48)
rank 10: 254.38 (level 54)
rank 11: 300.2 (level 60)
rank 12: 318.61 (level 60)

Scorch DPS
rank 1: 51.77 (level 22)
rank 2: 74.58 (level 28)
rank 3: 96.51 (level 34)
rank 4: 128.10 (level 40)
rank 5: 155.30 (level 46)
rank 6: 192.59 (level 52)
rank 7: 222.85 (level 58)

Fireball DPM
rank 1: 0.85 (level 1)
rank 2: 1.15 (level 6)
rank 3: 1.35 (level 12)
rank 4: 1.49 (level 18)
rank 5: 1.66 (level 24)
rank 6: 1.78 (level 30)
rank 7: 1.88 (level 36)
rank 8: 1.98 (level 42)
rank 9: 2.08 (level 48)
rank 10: 2.18 (level 54)
rank 11: 2.28 (level 60)
rank 12: 2.33 (level 60)

Scorch DPM
rank 1: 1.55 (level 22)
rank 2: 1.72 (level 28)
rank 3: 1.81 (level 34)
rank 4: 1.92 (level 40)
rank 5: 2.03 (level 46)
rank 6: 2.14 (level 52)
rank 7: 2.23 (level 58)

One thing I found is that if you added +300 fire dmg gear, then the ratio between scorch and fireball started to favor scorch a bit more dps wise and dpm wise. In fact at +300 fire dmg gear scorch showed a superior dpm at lvl 60 (comparing rank 7 scroch vs rank 12 fireball). But the difference in mana effeciency was small.

So what does this mean, well for one the difference dpm wise between scorch and fireball is small. Another thing is that fireball's dps is greater than scorch's by a considerable margin. 25-36% I found depending on +dmg gear.

Crit gear appears to slightly favor scorch over fireball, though again the difference is small (as should be expected, since the same +crit gear applies to both spells).

Now to discuss the key omission: improved scorch! The key reason why this is not trivial to add, is because it ramps up over time. When you start fighting a mob, you have 0/5 imp scorch debuffs, if you spam scorch it will take you the time of casting 2.5 fireballs in order to get a full 5/5 scorch (assuming you didn't throw in a fireblast or two which slow down that process). If you happen to have a full 5/5 imp scorch debuff on a mob you get +15% fire dmg, which is great because this finally is what makes scorch get much more impressive from a dpm standpoint. It also gets interesting from dps standpoint because if the mob lasts long enough for you to cast 5 scorches you can then start using fireballs for even greater effect (or if you have POM: POM+Pyroblast).

When in an instance, all trash mobs will be dead long before you you manage to stack a full 5/5 imp scorch debuffs. While I haven't done the math here, I suspect you are better off using fireball against trash mobs (if you have imp fireball, which is in and of itself a +14.2% fireball dps improvement). Against bosses, where you're doing the maximum dps you can, scorch followed by fireball is the way to go (you will have to reapply the timer to the debuff by casting another scorch every now and then).

When solo, many mobs will be over half dead by the time you have cast 5 scroches on it, but at least at that time you can close the kill with a nice fireball for full effect.

So to close, I think that for maximal dps with fire you really need to get imp fireball and many of the scorch based talents. That is to say you need to use both in many situations to maximize your damage.

Based on that I am still leaning towards a build like I showed before, or perhaps a build like this one.

What do you think?
 
I finally got on Zenoir yesterday to reassign the talent points. I kept my 28/23/0 which is a crit build with imp arc exp/imp scorch. Details can be found here. Oh I have in excess of +350 spell/fire damage unbuffed (I think its 365 off hand).
 
I can't view your builds from work, but I can explain a little better how I use fire spells. If you don't want to read my long winded post, I'll give you the summary here: yes, you must use scorch and fireball, in some combination to get the most dps/dpm. Now for the longer version.

Which spells I use depends on which of the following situations I find myself in (all assume a single mob): 1) Solo, mob is "yellow" or higher, 2) Solo, mob is "green," 3) Grouped don't want aggro, 4) Grouped don't care about aggro. The one thing that they all have in common, is that I don't want to overkill; that wastes mana. My last spell should cost the least mana, yet still kill the mob.

1. I play the kite game, and never worry about pre-scorching the target. I'll open w/ frostbolt>fireball>fireblast>frost nova>fireball. I then alternate CoC and Blink with Frost Nova while Fireballing in between.

2. When the mob is green (lower level), I don't mind taking a few hits. I'll generally open w/ pryroblast>scorch>fireblast>frost nova>fireball. Uh, probably not much to finish after that. Fireball or Scorch as needed.

3. Here is where I use scorch the most. If its a yellow mob, I usually have time for 2 scorches, 2-3 fireballs and maybe wand or scorch at the end. If it is a big elite, then I slowly build to 5 scorches then spam fireballs; at the end, I may use Pyroblast just because it's so much fun. I definately will once I have 31 pts in the fire tree. :)

4. If I don't care about aggro, I pull w/ Pyroblast>1-2 Scorches>spam fireball.

In all but elite fights, I usually end with a scorch simply because it is little mana and fast. I may not be doing this by the book, but it works for me.
 
Keep in mind, that in raids, even trash mobs will last longer, AND you'll have 4-ish other mages with you. 2 or more mages loading a mob up with imp scorch can be really really speed things up!

Best-case theory-craft scenario: 5 mages pop imp scorch on a target and then switch to imp fireball. Only one needs to reapply a scorch every 25-29 seconds.

In my case (being elementalist), I start out spamming imp frostbolt. My DPS crossover point is when there are 4 imp scorches on the target, at which point I switch over to scorch. (I don't have imp fireball). This does not take into account winter's chill.

I have +360 spells and +50 frost.
 
Edit: This was calculated based on Zenoir's numbers. :)

Well looking over your equipment (I clicked on your mage's link), and factored in your +crit gear (though again I have nothing in there to deal with resists and misses), but according to my spreadsheet your scorch and fireball perform as follows (without scorch debuffs):

scorch rank 7: 359.59 dps 3.94 dpm.
fireball rank 11: 455.31 dps 3.74 dpm.
fireball rank 12: 474.10 dps 3.75 dpm.

Your scorch deals 21% less dmg than rank 11 fireball and 24.15% less dmg than rank 12 fireball.

Obviously scorch is the effeciency choice here. Bear in mind these numbers don't account for clearcasting, but they do account for MOE (Master of Elements). Clearcasting should be a constant, as should resistance and miss rates anyway... so the numbers still accurately describe the relationships between the spells.

Just as a checkpoint your rank 7 scorch does 383.23 dmg on average and an average crit is 804.79.

Your fireball (rank 11) does 1097.98 on average and 2305.76 on an average crit.

Your fireball (rank 12) does 1143.30 on average and 2400.93 on an average crit.

Does that sound about right?

To sum up: scorch is a slightly better dpm wise (4.8% more efficient), and fireball is definitely superior dps wise (by 21-24%).

Again I think a mixture of scorch and fireball is incredible: using scorch to setup the improved fireball dps when against a boss mob.
 
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Oh as a follow up Adam, I reran the numbers for your current gear if you respecced out of arcane instability, and instead took firepower, I think your scorch/fireball dps would actually go up. With the talent changes I see the following numbers:

Rank 7 scorch: 374 dps and 4.02 dpm (was 359.59 dps and 3.94 dpm)
Rank 11 fireball: 473.35 dps and 3.81 dpm (was 455.31 dps and 3.74 dpm)
Rank 12 fireball: 492.89 dps and 3.83 dpm (was 474.10 dps and 3.75 dpm)

Just food for thought.
 
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It took me about a week to get this little mage to 31, so I guess it's not too late to start a new mage (basically rename the mage with a name that isn't so frost spell centric). So what do you think about Gwnomage? A bit of a tribute to the mighty Rueage. :)
 
lol gnowned rocks! as for dropping out of arcane instability, not going to happen. In MC, arcane explosion is used a great deal plus arcane missiles on certain mobs. I can't imagine giving up that crit chance on my aoe.
 
I like it! Gnowned, very funny! Yeah no doubt more frequent crits on ae are awesome. That's why I am definitely going to get iae (the new one). AI definitely helps there, nice for aoe grinding in general.
 
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