21 replies to this topic

[affix]

So it's looking more and more like the Imp CS nerf is going to go through, and I think that probably means the death of Frost in arenas in 5.2.  It's just too easy to shut down Frost Bomb mages without ICS, and NT without ICS can't put out enough pressure to get kills.  Our peels will be less potent without it as well, in addition to our CC rotations.

With all that in mind, I'm thinking Fire's probably the way to go moving forward.  Dragon's Breath is a great peel, great for CC rotations, and follows DF/Combustion for some good offensive CC during kills.  4-6 Pyroblasts in a row lets you solo healers even better than Frost Bomb frost mages.

With that in mind, I started practicing fire last night but I'm having trouble with some of the subtleties of damage dealing.  PoM fire with frostjaw seems like the way to go, I just don't feel at all comfortable doing damage, especially outside of our massive Alter Time burst every 1.5 minutes.

Gib burst:

build up instant pyro proc, and 'heating up'
Nova (or frost jaw)
trinket+pom+alter time+deep freeze
3-4 pyroblasts
alter time
3-4 pyroblasts (inferno blast any time you have heating up but no instapyro)

Right now you can imp cs after DF to keep bursting.  post patch we'll have to make clever use of blood elf silence & combustion stun.

My question, though, is how to do any kind of significant damage outside of  this rotation.  I don't have enough time played to fully understand exactly which spells clear 'heating up' when they don't crit and which ones do.  Is it only direct damage spells?  or direct fire spells?  how does it work exactly?

Obviously LB multiple targets, try to make it shatter when it explodes, inferno blast any time you get a heating up proc.  But when you can't cast fireballs, are you really limited to just ice lance, inferno blast, and living bomb to put out pressure?  procs feel inconsistent.  what nuances are there to help generate more procs?

In regards to gearing, how much crit do you think is ideal?  A mix of crit and haste feels right, not straight crit.

Basically seeking out any non-obvious mechanical help from a player that just doesn't know fire well enough to feel comfortable playing it.

[Sylvi]

http://blue.mmo-cham...t-bonus-issues/

- We are reverting the removal of Improved Counterspell.

[affix]

!!! rad.  i'd still love my questions answered if anybody's got some insight, fire seems like fun.

[Dizzeeyo]

affix, on 25 January 2013 - 06:29 PM, said:

In regards to gearing, how much crit do you think is ideal?  A mix of crit and haste feels right, not straight crit.

you dont need crit at all, since all damage is done into frozen targets or with inferno blast that auto crits, so gear the same way as you do for nether tempest, max haste for shortest possible globals and then the rest into mastery for a tiny increase in dot damage inbetween the 90k pyro crits

[Execx]

I have a lot of the same questions as you and I really don't understand how non-scorch is played, volkanyx is the only person i've seen play it. I believe this spec is generally played with NT aswell.

As far as what procs/clears heating I do know it's direct damage fire spells (not 100% sure whether or not a non-crit non-fire spell affects the chain though) if that helps.

With this spec I don't even get how to get to the gib rotation, how are you getting pyro + heating up if you're being trained into the ground and not casting fireball?

[Vya]

Execx, on 25 January 2013 - 07:36 PM, said:

With this spec I don't even get how to get to the gib rotation, how are you getting pyro + heating up if you're being trained into the ground and not casting fireball?

Inferno Blast

Edited by Vya, 25 January 2013 - 07:39 PM.

[Execx]

Vya, on 25 January 2013 - 07:38 PM, said:

Inferno Blast

Hmm I feel stupid, I could've sworn that earlier in the expac that they made it so that your heating up would fall off as inferno blast cd came up.

[affix]

Vya, on 25 January 2013 - 07:38 PM, said:

Inferno Blast

What do you do in the 8 seconds between cooldowns?  Again, it's not quite clear to me which spells reset heating up, and which spells don't.

[Execx]

affix, on 25 January 2013 - 07:44 PM, said:

What do you do in the 8 seconds between cooldowns?  Again, it's not quite clear to me which spells reset heating up, and which spells don't.

ok did some testing for you, here's what i got.

Spells that proc/reset heating up:
Frostfire Bolt
Fireball
Pyroblast
Scorch
Combustion
Inferno Blast (obv)

Spells that don't affect the heating up chain:
Flamestrike
Blizzard
Cone of cold
Arcane Explosion
Dragon's Breath
Any mage bomb
Ice Lance
Frost Nova
Frost Jaw

[Vya]

affix, on 25 January 2013 - 07:44 PM, said:

What do you do in the 8 seconds between cooldowns?  Again, it's not quite clear to me which spells reset heating up, and which spells don't.

I don't play fire that often so I'm probably not the best example, but in between the 8 seconds I usually just find myself setting up for the nova/deep (I don't use Frost Jaw) and protecting my hot streak so neither of them get dispelled/purged.

[affix]

Execx, on 25 January 2013 - 07:51 PM, said:

ok did some testing for you, here's what i got.

Spells that proc/reset heating up:
Frostfire Bolt
Fireball
Pyroblast
Scorch
Combustion
Inferno Blast (obv)

Spells that don't affect the heating up chain:
Flamestrike
Blizzard
Cone of cold
Arcane Explosion
Dragon's Breath
Any mage bomb
Ice Lance
Frost Nova
Frost Jaw

Hey thanks man, I appreciate it.  Looks like only direct damage fire/frostfire spells affect hot streak.

[Leeston]

affix, on 25 January 2013 - 06:29 PM, said:

My question, though, is how to do any kind of significant damage outside of  this rotation.  I don't have enough time played to fully understand exactly which spells clear 'heating up' when they don't crit and which ones do.  Is it only direct damage spells?  or direct fire spells?  how does it work exactly?

Obviously LB multiple targets, try to make it shatter when it explodes, inferno blast any time you get a heating up proc.  But when you can't cast fireballs, are you really limited to just ice lance, inferno blast, and living bomb to put out pressure?  procs feel inconsistent.  what nuances are there to help generate more procs?

In regards to gearing, how much crit do you think is ideal?  A mix of crit and haste feels right, not straight crit.

Basically seeking out any non-obvious mechanical help from a player that just doesn't know fire well enough to feel comfortable playing it.

The lack of damage outside of big bursts is the reason that I choose not to use POM.  Against teams that don't train you and against wizard cleaves, you can use it just fine.  You can also generate a heating up proc with a combustion crit, although I would not recommend this.  If you can not cast a lot of fireballs, the best way to generate procs would be the fireblast, and then fireblast again when it comes off cooldown.  The problem with this is that you have a 2 second window to use that fireblast and get the proc.  I choose to use scorch because I can fish for procs after I use nova/iceward/frostjaw or after getting a scorch crit by using fireblast.

As far as gearing is concerned, I stack crit.  If I am playing with a shadowpriest or moonkin, I gear myself to 7.5% haste so that I get the extra tick on living bomb or nether tempest.  If you are playing without scorch, more haste would not be a bad idea although I would not ignore crit.

If you play with POM, any of the level 45 talents become useful.  As fire, I use frostjaw against wizards and iceward against melee/anything with a warrior.

[Toxile]

I dont get whats hard to understand, you just put dots up use inferno blast on cd and dance around spamming poly spellsteal and dots until inferno blast is up again, then you make things happen when you get pyro procs.

[Daisyduke]

There are little nuances you can do, but basically you run around doing 2x Fireblast and then some kind of burst.

Little things:

I do not recommend putting POM in your burst rotation most of the time since it does reduced damage compared to heating-up-Pyro (25%). (Edit: Have different macros for different situations, I personally have 3-4 macros for AT (plain, with pom, with pom&trinkets, with trinket)

You can "carry over" alter time heating-up proccs. Gather 2 Proccs, AT - deep - pyro (instantly proccing AT) -  pyro, pyro (the heating up from your 2stack AT will carry over to the next, making it 3 - using another one into deep puts you to 2 and you can use another one. You can use it with 3 at the beginning making it a total of 5ish if you use combustion.

Combustion is  off-global, so if you Fireblast, wait for the global and then Combustion-Blast you get an instant procc. If you're desperate to get one. Also try to aim for 13% haste which gives you another global into a deep (with 0 lag and perfect global usage). Whenever you can setup burst with a nova-silence-fireball-pyro-deep try to use the pyro before the deep (it has traveltime, will autocrit on the nova and will give you enough miliseconds so you can put 4 pyros+comb into one deep - you're critcapped on frozen anyway so get some haste)

Obviously try landing combustion at the end of your deep since it does ~40k unglyphed and 80k with glyph and gives you another heating up.

I personally play ring in 2v2 (went 50-0 with a druid), for 3's I think frost is superior for most comps but I'd play fire with frostjaws (have played it at ~2400)

p.s: If you spellsteal a brainfreeze from a frostmage it will autocrit your instant FFB giving you a hotsreak (since its their talent what makes it count as frozen)

p.p.s: When Shamans frostshock something into place it also counts as frozen. Hardest thing for firemages is actually deeping something in 3v3 since you dont have Fingers.

p.p.p.s: Most of your pressure is rng, frost probably does roughly the same 6-8second kill-damage (dont forget you have 20% more haste with IV and your orb is passively hitting them pretty hard) and superior total damage while fire definetly has the lolgibs.

Edited by Daisyduke, 05 February 2013 - 10:11 AM.

[Razghul]

affix, on 25 January 2013 - 06:42 PM, said:

!!! rad.  i'd still love my questions answered if anybody's got some insight, fire seems like fun.

Might seem like fun, but I suggest you try playing fire with scorch if you wish to play it on a little higher skillcap and make it harder for yourself.

Pom pyro firemages can't even be called firemages anymore, just plain ol' pom pyro mages to me, relying heavily on a big pyro turret wich you can get off spamming 1 macro including; altertime, pyroblast, alter time, pom etc all in 1. You'll get bored very easily and tunnelvisioning might occur!

Should watch some pom firemages stream for fun and watch on how much they miss out on whats happening around them when they're targetting a healer, walking towards them slowed by every single spell in the game yet they're still going and going to get theire nova -> DF pyro turret macro off - if there was a facepalm emote this would be the time for it.


Edit:

Toxile, on 02 February 2013 - 02:15 PM, said:

I dont get whats hard to understand, you just put dots up use inferno blast on cd and dance around spamming poly spellsteal and dots until inferno blast is up again, then you make things happen when you get pyro procs.

Scrolled a little to fast, didn't see that excellent post describing all there is to know about pom firemages.

Edited by Razghul, 05 February 2013 - 11:35 AM.

[Dizzeeyo]

Razghul, on 05 February 2013 - 11:33 AM, said:

Should watch some pom firemages stream for fun and watch on how much they miss out on whats happening around them when they're targetting a healer, walking towards them slowed by every single spell in the game yet they're still going and going to get theire nova -> DF pyro turret macro off - if there was a facepalm emote this would be the time

Not referring to a certain Orc Mage who plays double healer and is one of the most tunnel vision players I've ever seen by any chance?

[affix]

Daisyduke, on 05 February 2013 - 10:02 AM, said:

There are little nuances you can do, but basically you run around doing 2x Fireblast and then some kind of burst.

Little things:

I do not recommend putting POM in your burst rotation most of the time since it does reduced damage compared to heating-up-Pyro (25%). (Edit: Have different macros for different situations, I personally have 3-4 macros for AT (plain, with pom, with pom&trinkets, with trinket)

You can "carry over" alter time heating-up proccs. Gather 2 Proccs, AT - deep - pyro (instantly proccing AT) -  pyro, pyro (the heating up from your 2stack AT will carry over to the next, making it 3 - using another one into deep puts you to 2 and you can use another one. You can use it with 3 at the beginning making it a total of 5ish if you use combustion.

Combustion is  off-global, so if you Fireblast, wait for the global and then Combustion-Blast you get an instant procc. If you're desperate to get one. Also try to aim for 13% haste which gives you another global into a deep (with 0 lag and perfect global usage). Whenever you can setup burst with a nova-silence-fireball-pyro-deep try to use the pyro before the deep (it has traveltime, will autocrit on the nova and will give you enough miliseconds so you can put 4 pyros+comb into one deep - you're critcapped on frozen anyway so get some haste)

Obviously try landing combustion at the end of your deep since it does ~40k unglyphed and 80k with glyph and gives you another heating up.

I personally play ring in 2v2 (went 50-0 with a druid), for 3's I think frost is superior for most comps but I'd play fire with frostjaws (have played it at ~2400)

p.s: If you spellsteal a brainfreeze from a frostmage it will autocrit your instant FFB giving you a hotsreak (since its their talent what makes it count as frozen)

p.p.s: When Shamans frostshock something into place it also counts as frozen. Hardest thing for firemages is actually deeping something in 3v3 since you dont have Fingers.

p.p.p.s: Most of your pressure is rng, frost probably does roughly the same 6-8second kill-damage (dont forget you have 20% more haste with IV and your orb is passively hitting them pretty hard) and superior total damage while fire definetly has the lolgibs.

Great post, thanks!  Knew some of that, didn't know some of the Combustion timing subtlelties and things like waiting till fb+pyro are about to hit nova to save a little part of a GCD.  Seems like it's just a bunch of little things to min/max GCDs.

[affix]

5.2 fire is sounding like it might be amazing, pom+scorch, and flameglow might be great.

[Razghul]

Dizzeeyo, on 05 February 2013 - 12:45 PM, said:

Not referring to a certain Orc Mage who plays double healer and is one of the most tunnel vision players I've ever seen by any chance?

Sadly I can't say anything about that cause my stream literally got copy-pasted by that guy and I don't bash on other players!

[affix]

Razghul, on 06 February 2013 - 07:27 PM, said:

Sadly I can't say anything about that cause my stream literally got copy-pasted by that guy and I don't bash on other players!

I dig your stream by the way, you seem like a chill guy.