The following is how to pewpew effectively with fire/frostfire raiding.
Step 1: HIT CAP. If you have to gem to achieve it, gem for hit cap FIRST. If 3-10% of your damage isn't even landing... fix it. This will increase your overall damage.
Step 2: AE only when it's 3 or more mobs you will be hitting. It's not efficient to AE 2 or fewer mobs. Best AE rotation is pick a mob that is NOT the skull and pop a Living Bomb on it then wait for a couple of seconds to let the tanks get threat on all the mobs and open up with Blizzard. If you get aggro and one breaks toward you, ice block to send it back to the tank and wait. Once ice block fades continue blizzard. A second Living Bomb usually won't have time to 'splode.
Step 3: Rotation. Always keep living bomb up. Use a mod to let you know when it's on and isn't on. On boss fights follow up with a 5 stack of scorches and keep scorch up at all times. Lay in with fireballs/frostfire. When Hot Streak procs stop everything you are doing and fire off a Pyroblast. A good macro to ensure the pyroblast goes off when it's supposed to is simple.
/stopcasting
/cast Pyroblast
I map this macro to scrolling down my mousewheel.
Step 4: Profit! Remember, if your scorch is running low on time (use a mod to see how long you have left) reapply it.
Side note but no less important: Several boss/trash encounters require you to stop casting during a certain phase for a couple of seconds. STOP CASTING IN THESE PHASES except to fire off an instant Living Bomb or instant Pyroblast. On Ignis for instance when you are blown up into the air you CAN while in the air reapply Living Bomb and fire off an instant Pyroblast.
Hope this helps.
Dave!
BTW I will be writing an Arcane version of this once I figure the damn thing out. Jalor is a BEAST at arcane spec. *hint hint*
What is the hit cap for a frostfire mage? Just wondering
#1 and #2 also apply to warlocks. Just saying ;)
Thanks for this Dave - that's very useful! I implemented the macro you mentioned and I also got a timer for my living bomb. I find that both work really well! I wasn't stacking 5 scorches on the boss fights so I shall start trying that.
Sherri - I know that 17% hit = 446 hit rating, 14% is 368 and 11% is 289. Dunno if that is much help =p.
Quote from: Frosti on Thu, 2009-07-23 : 22:18
Thanks for this Dave - that's very useful! I implemented the macro you mentioned and I also got a timer for my living bomb. I find that both work really well! I wasn't stacking 5 scorches on the boss fights so I shall start trying that.
Sherri - I know that 17% hit = 446 hit rating, 14% is 368 and 11% is 289. Dunno if that is much help =p.
We found that through a bit of testing (we will still need to do more), that she does better with glyph of fireball (instead of glyph of scorch) once she gets rolling with 5 stacks of scorch.
I use power aura's myself, so I setup some nice little notifications for her like a scorch icon appears by her feet with a timer when she has a 5x scorch on the mob (and only a 5x stack). I did have it pop a giant fireball by her head when she had a Hot streak proc, but I've since put MSBT in her addon collection and set it to display a very large font when Hot Streak procs. She has been using her stopcasting macro for Pyroblast as well. She's been improving quite well in her playstyle from only a month ago!
I seriously think that her computer performance plays a factor when she runs 25mans as she tends to get "pauses" when there is a lot going on. I think we will have to look at our budget and either upgrade her machine (or I upgrade mine and she gets my old parts - I'm running a Q6600, 4gb Ram, 8800GTS) which is miles beyond what she has right now.
I use an addon called Scorchio it has similar functionality
I did a little blurb on Power Aura's over here:
http://hordedefenseleague.org/index.php/topic,1419.0.html (http://hordedefenseleague.org/index.php/topic,1419.0.html)