Frostfire Bolt WotLK

[Buzzooms]

Ok, this spell looks potentially interesting.

http://www.wowwiki.com/Frostfire_Bolt

Up until recently i have been a bit sceptical about what its purpose is. A damaging spell that decides whether its going to apply frost or fire damage based on what a target is most vulnerable to? Why does it hit for less damage than fireball or frostbolt? If you came across a fire/frost immune mob would you not just cast the correct bolt type spell and hit harder and/or faster with that? I was confused. It seemed to me that it was going to be a waste of time - unless Blizz decided that they would let all your frost AND fire talents effect it all the time.

It seems though that the zealous info gatherers over at Elitist Jerks have got confirmation about the way it interacts with your fire and frost talents. This post (http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t25976-mage_wotlk_talent_preview_discussion/p92/#post822506) points towards it being affected by all the frost and fire talents all the time (save the range increasing talents, but it already has a 40yd range so meh).

This means that the following talents are going to apply to it:

Frost...
Elemental Precision (mana cost -3% hit +3%)
Ice Shards (crit dmg bonus up by 100%)*
Piercing Ice (6% dmg increase)
Frost Channeling (mana cost -15%, threat -10%)
Arctic Winds (5% dmg increase)
Winter's Chill (2% inc crit chance - stacks 5 times)*
Winter's Grasp (10% chance to apply 2% hit and freeze target - which means shatter!!)*

Fire...
Impact (10% stun chance)
Ignite (crits do another 40% dmg as a DoT)*
Burning Soul (70% anti-pushback and -10% threat)
Improved Scorch (target becomes fire vulnerable - up to +15% dmg)
Master of Elements (crits return 30% of their mana cost)*
Playing with Fire (dmg +3%)
Firepower (dmg +10%)
Combustion (each cast increases crit chance by 10% until 3 crits)*
Pyromaniac (+3% crit chance, -3% mana cost)*
Burnout (crit dmg bonus +25% +1% mana cost on crits)*

If you were to cast a frostfire bolt against a fire immune mob, it would still hit the mob for full damage as though all the fire talents apply, but the mob will resist the ignite from any crits you were to do. I also though it worth putting a * against the talents that have something to do with crits. My gut feeling now is that this one spell could be a pointer to how we are going to play in the new expansion. Scorch up the debuff, then frostfire bolts critting like crazy... Zewee, you are going to have to learn how to use improved scorch my friend... :)

[Buzzooms]

And because im nice like that, heres a link to what i think a frostfire bolt spec would look like in WotLK...

Balanced fire and frost - stacks winters grasp
Link (http://www.mmo-champion.com/talent/?mage=05500201230313005301000000020350203100350100 50502000000000000000000000000000000000)


Mainly fire - leech spec
Link (http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent=oZVxMzfcIoeRbzAZbAMco0x)

[Buzzooms]

hmm.. they have just added to the Elitist Jerks thread saying that frostfire bolt also double dips into a warlocks CoE... Thats nice.

[Bokeh]

hmm.. they have just added to the Elitist Jerks thread saying that frostfire bolt also double dips into a warlocks CoE... Thats nice.
That sounds like a bug tbh if it scaled with both frost and fire debuffs because in the expansion with death knights you'd be able to stack up death knight 10% frost dmg buff + 10% CoE buff + 10% CoS buff + 15% scorch buff + 5% misery = 160% damage from just mob debuffs. Talents yes, buffs sounds a bit too insane to be true.

[Buzzooms]

I totally agree that it sounds insane - i would go as far as to call it overpowered. I would suspect that they would have to look very carefully at this spell and how to tone it down. If they decide that it is going to choose which spell school it uses and just apply things that effect that school, then its a waste of time - it would be more beneficial to use frostbolt or fireball appropriately. I can see them not letting it double dip into the warlocks curse, but tbh i think its going to be hard to not let it be effected by other mob debuffs... I guess we just need to wait and see how this is going to get tuned.

[Dirkdiggler]

NERF MAGES TBH....... ahhh the sweet song of the pessamist.... I am adding to the discussion ...... right?

[Buzzooms]

Done a little bit of maths on FfB this morning. Thought it was interesting so decided i would share the info with you all.

Based on the 0/34/37 spec i posted above, it looks like the following should be true - until they nerf this which tbh they have to do in some fashion i am sure you will agree...

If a frostfire bolt on a mage with no talents or stats were to hit for 2500 dmg - which is pretty conservative i reckon.

The +dmg talents are additive so 15% from improved scorch plus 6% from piercing ice should be 21% increase.

If you have fire talents, the hit will be 3200 (Improved scorch, playing with fire and firepower).
If you have frost talents, the hit will be 2775 (piercing ice and arctic winds).
If you have both fire and frost talents the hit will be 3475, a 39% base increase.

The crits are where it becomes more interesting. Frost crit talent changes spell crits from being +50% to +100% damage. Fire crit talent adds 40% to your damage, so its (1.5*1.4) or 210%. If you have both talents, its double damage up front, then another 40%, so thats (2*1.4) or 280% crits...

So... if you have just the frost talents, your 2775 damage crits for 5550. Just fire is 6720 after crit and ignite. If you have both (and this is the interesting bit) your total damage is 9730 after all the base damage modifiers and all the crit modifiers. Its worth noting that there is another new talent in the fire tree which adds some to the crit, but i cant find a nice way of including that and all the frost talents needed (burnout is just too deep in the tree). So a FfB crit if you have the 0/34/37 spec will be normal hit damage * 3.892, or a 289.2% increase.

I know what you are thinking. Thats alot, but maybe you wont be critting so often. Unfortunately winters grasp is a talent in the frost tree which is also included in that spec. This has a 10% chance on a spell cast that deals frost damage (which frostfire bolt does) to put up a debuff on a target (including any bosses) that causes the target to be treated as frozen for 5secs. Another frost talent (shatter) increases the crit chance on a frozen target by 50%. So when winters grasp procs, a mage will have something like a 75% crit chance for 5secs. In these 5secs you should be able to get 2 frostfire bolts and an ice lance (the travel time on your original proccing bolt means you will be well into the next cast when it registers the proc). The more winters grasp specced mages you have in a raid, the higher the uptime of winters grasp will be (obv), so for example if you have 2 mages, you will have fired 6 frost spells during the proc, meaning there should be something like a 60% chance for another proc to have occured, 3 mages = 90%... You seeing the OP problem that this is going to give? Near permanant WG uptime, giving easily 75% crit chance for a spell that crits for such a high amount.

So why am i whinging? Well they will have to either a) nerf it back in line - meaning it will be pointless as i have said before or b) balance mages around the fact that they have this in their arsenal. I dont like either of these alternatives. Heres hoping they go for c) ignore its OP factor and let us keep it.

===================
NB - this was originally an email to DD and Wharf. I was requested to post it here just to see how much Bokeh and Silverlight would explode... How does it go again? Light the blue touch paper and retire to a safe distance?

[Bokeh]

On top of that something completely else, outside of pure damage, if frostfire bolt keeps working as it does now it'll gain
6% spell hit from talents (elemental precision) which means you'd only need to get another 10% from gear as opposed to 13%.
Double master of elements procs? Will this mana return proc for both fire and frost? I hope not.Also, it seems this setup als doesn't take the following into account:
Death knight frost debuffs (10% more frost damage)
Misery (5% spell dmg)
Curse of Elements (10% frost damage AND 10% fire damage.Which both make it slightly more insane.

There has to be something here we don't know, this thing only proccing the talents of the school that would do the most damage, otherwise the scaling is just batshit loco. I just don't believe this spell scaling with both fire and frost talents because the scaling would become so much more crazy (1 spell dmg would suddenly become worth 1.21 spelldmg instead of 1.15 effective spell dmg for a non-raid buffed mage on a non-raid debuffed mob. For raid debuffed mobs you'd be talking around 1 spell dmg being worth an effective 1.80-2.20 spell dmg as opposed to something around 1.40. It means that for every bit of spell damage you damage scales close to 200% faster with talents than a classic fire build.

Also something very important to take into consideration: Blizzard does not like overpowered hybrid specs (Why they haven't done anything to nerf SL/SL into oblivion and make warriors want to spec into their 41 resp. 51pts talents is beyond me, but well) and as such i'm not sure if weird elemental hybrid frost/fire specs will live very long after the release.

But what i was thinking... you say that if it only applies the debuffs from one school, then it's a worthless spell.

But the concept of frostfire bolts how blizzard presented it is to make mages of a specific spec more viable against mobs that are immune to that damage (Al'Ar, Hydross, Supremus, Adds on illidan, Adds on vashj).

So could the whole frostfire bolt work in a way like this:

You cast frostfire bolt. The game mechanics will check which talents and/or debuffs (depending on presence of CoR/Scorch/Frost debuff/etc) will yield the most percentual damage increase, so either all fire or all frost.

Then, after the mob gets hit by the frostfire bolt, it decides which type of damage would yield the most damage against this mob. Whichever school does the most damage gets applied to the mob, with whichever talents give the biggest buff on this mob. So you could have frostfire bolt as a frost mage stacking up all the frost damage talents, BUT it will deal fire damage.

This way, it means that frost mages won't have such an insane amount of trouble with frost immune bosses/adds anymore and fire mages won't have such an insane amount of trouble with fire immune bosses/mages anymore.

This doesn't just apply to raids though, just look at grinding elementals. Good luck farming fire elementals as fire. I think the intention of frostfire bolt is basically to make sure that the 2 usual trees that run into immunity problems now can keep playing their class without having to respec for specific fights.

Doesn't that explanation sound a lot more logical? It's make the spell situational, yes, but it would most definetely not be pointless because it gives you more options of which spec you want to play and not which spec you are forced to take.

[Dirkdiggler]

*cough*

NERF MAGES !!!

[Buzzooms]

That actually makes alot of sense Bokeh - but would be deeply disappointing. The initial thoughts i had about it being garbage unless they do both was based on you firing a frostfire bolt on a frost elemental as a frost mage and it dealing fire damage - the difference between what i was thinking and what you are suggesting is it applying frost talents and dealing fire damage. That could indeed make it an interesting farming tool. So we go from a spell that was claimed by a blizzard rep (Kalgan i think so i wouldnt discount it from being shite) at the WWI to be something to make elemental specs viable, to one that is there to help deep fire or deep frost mages farm... That makes gnome children cry.

Also you are right that i didnt include buffs other than self buffs. Stuff like that may or may not be relied upon - particularly in 10-man raids.

PS - Elitist jerks are reporting Master of Elements not proccing twice... :(

[Bokeh]

Well, if you look at 25 mans you will stack up raids to have at least 1 warlock 1 spriest 1 fire mage etc. so you can assume all those debuffs are present.

I think the main reason they might add it is to prevent mages from having to respec for different fights (And rightfully so, which fscking brainless moron considered it a good idea to put a frost immune mob at the start of SSC and a fire immune mob at the start of TK. Go go respec tiem.

[Buzzooms]

Yeah, the ubar comman buffs will likely be there in a 25man, less likely in a 10man, and unlikely in a 5man, i just left everything out as a blanket rule.

I think also that tbh it wont be used against bosses in the way you describe. Ultimately, if its a boss we are struggling on, then its going to be more beneficial to respec - frostbolt and fireballs base versions are inherently better than frostfire bolt, so in the situation you describe, respeccing fire would be better than staying frost and using FfB. In WotLK when we have something (?) that means we can respec a little easier - though i appreciate we dont know what this rumoured multi-spec type situation is going to look like yet - then why would a mage not just respec for a progression boss? So that brings it down to 'farm boss when you havent already got a saved second talent spec' territory. Not that useful imo :S

So i have to agree that what you suggest could be true but, I still kind of maintain then, that its got to be pretty similar to what it is now, or its gonna be a waste of all that time and effort Blizz have put in designing it at all.

The fine balance between OP OMGWTFBBQ and piss poor is a tricky thing to get right...

[zewe]

http://youtube.com/watch?v=HN3nr4-AY1w


Yummeh!

[Buzzooms]

Interesting vid... A few things to notice in that.

Firstly, his crits are slightly bigger than i would expect. Normal hits are around 2300, which means i would expect a total crit of ~6440 (which would be ~4600 before ignite). Instead we see him critting for ~5000 upfront, which would mean a total after ignite of 7000. Theres a little something coming from somewhere there...

Then theres the debuffs that appear on Dr Boom. You can see scorch first of all, then something (?), winters chill, ignite when he crits and finally winters grasp. Not sure what the second debuff is, i would have guessed that its the frostfire slow effect, but i wouldnt expect Dr Boom to proc that (in the same way that he doesnt proc impact or frostbite, hence the 'immune' message that keeps appearing). Also, winters grasp procs alot doesnt it!!

Finally look at how good his mana efficiency is. Raid buffed it looks like he would never run out of mana!

[Reconor]

Crit damage bonus meta could do the trick assuming 2300 hits may just be a low roll. Specially considering he makes some 4800 crits as well, maybe other gems/gear/glyphs that increase crit strike damag (didn't see a talent for that appart from the obvious frost one, in any case, but maybe I'm blind)