Frostfire Bolt PvE Gemming

[DarkenedHue]

There is no such bug on LK as a fire mage who has no spirit items and is completely BiS(referring to faelarin's bis list) with proper SP gemming you're going to have ~75% give or take.So w/e you do STATISTICALLY you will have 3/4 crits on all fire spells,a crit stacked mage will have 4/5.And the reason why your guildie is doing more is probably because he knows how to play,Many BiS mages can pull dps but few can pull big dps.But really the only way to get an accurate notion of which is better crit vs sp is by playing each one and talking to people who have played them,go ask Faelarin,petkobika(ragnaros,aurora),myph(ragnaros, radiance),my gm Banebane(deathwing,encore),purl/leulz(ragnaros,aurora) if they still play,Xego(ragnaros,aurora),copper(i believe he's in ragnaros,radiance),there are other mages but i'm more aquainted with the ones on Ragnaros

The mages he's consistently beating also definitely know how to play. Lol.

When I mentioned the bug, I was referring only to transition phase crits. The end result is that overall, the crit rate for mages is markedly higher than what it ought to be. We've had at least 2 different mages confirm this so far. Keep a look out for how much the mages are critting on your next LOD.

[Beanlord]

It's more likely that they don't but i'm not gonna continue on that,since you persist to say there's some kind of bug and your guildies have confirm it do tell me how you confirmed it and if you can ss a recount/skada or sth,cuz in all the LoDs i've done,wheter carried or not,whether on mage or not, i have NOT seen any kind of bug that gives mages a lot of crit -.-

Edit:Referring to transition phases

[DarkenedHue]

It's more likely that they don't but i'm not gonna continue on that,since you persist to say there's some kind of bug and your guildies have confirm it do tell me how you confirmed it and if you can ss a recount/skada or sth,cuz in all the LoDs i've done,wheter carried or not,whether on mage or not, i have NOT seen any kind of bug that gives mages a lot of crit -.-

Edit:Referring to transition phases

Obviously it doesn't show up as a buff on the mages that goes "zomg 100% crit cuz awesome". My theory is that somehow his defense goes down during that phase, which dramatically increases crit chance against him. Most people don't notice every damn FFB crits, because mages enjoy a 80% or so crit chance anyways. If you have twitch recordings of a LK kill from a FFB mage point of view, you can go confirm it for yourself. In the mean time, I'll look into recording it too.

And yeah, I guess arguing over crit stacking is for now a moot point.

[Beanlord]

Having a mage pov video on how you crit a lot on transition doesn't really prove there's any kind of bug :D

[DarkenedHue]

Having a mage pov video on how you crit a lot on transition doesn't really prove there's any kind of bug :D

Critting a lot =/= uncannily critting every single time. The difference between 99% crit and 80% crit will be noticeable. Anyways there's not much else to say on the matter.

[DarkenedHue]

Just confirmed on LK 10n that the crit "bug" during transition definitely exists, as well as figured out the reason for its existence.

In the transition phase, the Lich King somehow counts as rooted, or frozen. This activates the frost talent Shatter, where your crit chance on him is increased by 17%/34%/50%, depending on how many talent points you have in it. I couldn't record the fight, but I actually got a 24k ignite tick (considering it was only a 10 man where I had no caster buffs other than Kings and Divine Spirit), and ended the fight with 94% of my FFB's having crit (I was on the boss during both transition phases). Not a single one of my LB's/Pyro's/FFB's during transition was a non-crit, while my friend who wasn't specced into Shatter reported that the correct number of his spells were not critting during the transition.

You guys are of course free to test and confirm this.

Conclusion:
- Spec into Shatter. 2 points easily gets you crit-capped at bis gear.
- Crit rating as a stat is less useful on LOD because of the virtually guaranteed crits on LK transition phase. Because LOD is the only fight that really matters, crit-stacking mages might want to tweak their gemming around a bit.

[Offbeat]

Just confirmed on LK 10n that the crit "bug" during transition definitely exists, as well as figured out the reason for its existence.

In the transition phase, the Lich King somehow counts as rooted, or frozen. This activates the frost talent Shatter, where your crit chance on him is increased by 17%/34%/50%, depending on how many talent points you have in it. I couldn't record the fight, but I actually got a 24k ignite tick (considering it was only a 10 man), and ended the fight with 94% of my FFB's having crit (I was on the boss during both transition phases). Not a single one of my LB's/Pyro's/FFB's during transition was a non-crit, while my friend who wasn't specced into Shatter reported that the correct number of his spells were not critting during the transition.

You guys are of course free to test and confirm this.

Conclusion:
- Spec into Shatter. 2 points easily gets you crit-capped at bis gear.
- Crit rating as a stat is less useful on LOD because of the virtually guaranteed crits on LK transition phase. Because LOD is the only fight that really matters, crit-stacking mages might want to tweak their gemming around a bit.

A more accurate way to test this (short of speccing frost and checking with Deep Freeze) would be with Ice Lance. If LK gets the Ice Lance bonus damage modifier during a transition phase, then he definitely counts as frozen, which is a bug to my knowledge.

Also, not LB or Pyro should get the crit modifier from Shatter, since they're purely fire spells, as an FFB mage the only spell that should benefit from this is FFB.

[DarkenedHue]

Also, not LB or Pyro should get the crit modifier from Shatter, since they're purely fire spells, as an FFB mage the only spell that should benefit from this is FFB.

This is what the talent says, word for word: "Increases the critical strike chance of all your spells against frozen targets by 50%". Doesn't sound like frost spell exclusivity to me.

As for testing it with Ice Lance, it could very well be that he counts as frozen for the purpose of one mechanic, but not the other. It wouldn't be the first time a bug on Molten wasn't consistent. In any case, that's definitely worth testing as well. In the mean time, however, it would be awesome if other mages could confirm this. Every mage in my guild (and now a couple of pugs) have confirmed that, at least on Ragnaros, Shatter ensures 100% crits on LK during phases 1.5 and 2.5.

Edit: Also just confirmed that Shatter definitely applies to fire spells as well.



35 scorches cast on the Heroic Training Dummy in Thunder Bluff while it was rooted by frost nova, and sure enough, every single one crit.

[Offbeat]

Sorry, you're right, I misread the talent completely. Whether this is a bug I don't know, I can't find any record of this happening on retail so i assume it is.

On a different note, I wonder how this would affect Frost on this fight. If LK indeed counts as frozen you would basically be able to permanently Shatter-combo him during transition phases.

[Mahourai]

This is most certainly not retail-like behavior, and likely results from using a root in order to implement Remorseless Winter - i.e., Lich King's AI has him go to the center, root himself, then begin channeling it so he won't accidentally move around.

[DarkenedHue]

Raiding with a pretty much full crit build for over a month and a half now and I'm noticing noticing no significant difference other than that I'm ahead more often than I used to be. At this point I'm more sold to crit-stacking than ever.

It's not hard to see why a crit-heavy build works so well. Crit has a direct effect on two of the major driving forces of a fire mage's rotation - Ignite and Hot Streak. The design of Hot streak has it so that an increase in crit rate in fact exponentially increases the number of hot streak procs. There is nothing that kills your DPS like an unlucky streak of constant non-crits that leave you with little mana returned, no 15% haste buff from 2pt10, no ignite running, and no pyro procs. An increased crit chance directly mitigates all of that.

[Nidoxii]

Raiding with a pretty much full crit build for over a month and a half now and I'm noticing noticing no significant difference other than that I'm ahead more often than I used to be. At this point I'm more sold to crit-stacking than ever.

It's not hard to see why a crit-heavy build works so well. Crit has a direct effect on two of the major driving forces of a fire mage's rotation - Ignite and Hot Streak. The design of Hot streak has it so that an increase in crit rate in fact exponentially increases the number of hot streak procs. There is nothing that kills your DPS like an unlucky streak of constant non-crits that leave you with little mana returned, no 15% haste buff from 2pt10, no ignite running, and no pyro procs. An increased crit chance directly mitigates all of that.

Could you tell us what gear you used, what gems, and if you achieved 100% crit or just went for some more crit and not 100%.

[DarkenedHue]

Could you tell us what gear you used, what gems, and if you achieved 100% crit or just went for some more crit and not 100%.

No, the only thing that changed was my gems. My gear was still the regular 6557 gearscore BiS set. What I did was alter my gemming to heavily favor crit.

My gemming was as follows:
Red Sockets: 12 sp 10 crit
Yellow/Prismatic Sockets: 20 crit
Blue Sockets: 10 crit 10 spirit

The spellpower vs crit chance trade-off for this different gemming build (as opposed to the spellpower heavy build most mages run with) is roughly 200 spellpower (worth around 4.0-4.5% damage at bis gear, as anyone should be able to empirically test) in exchange for 4% more critical strike chance.

[michaelfloyd3]

No, the only thing that changed was my gems. My gear was still the regular 6557 gearscore BiS set. What I did was alter my gemming to heavily favor crit.

My gemming was as follows:
Red Sockets: 12 sp 10 crit
Yellow/Prismatic Sockets: 20 crit
Blue Sockets: 10 crit 10 spirit

The spellpower vs crit chance trade-off for this different gemming build (as opposed to the spellpower heavy build most mages run with) is roughly 200 spellpower (worth around 4.0-4.5% damage at bis gear, as anyone should be able to empirically test) in exchange for 4% more critical strike chance.

OP's 2nd account here, just wondering how the crit gemming compares to the sp gemming dps wise. Big difference worth knowing about or not a huge deal?

[taralej]

Shatter is not Frost-exclusive, it never was, even on vanilla. But wtf is with LK counting as "frozen"? Can anyone pls go and Ice Lance him during transition then come back here and let us know?

Here is the usual FFB spec. No points spent in Burning Soul but in Flame Throwing instead since I don't know if AoEs still cause pushback on Molten. If yes, then 1 TP (because of Conc Aura) from FT goes into BS. Anyway, to the point - if this bug is real, then the two points from Arctic Reach (which are only put for Blizzard) go into Shatter.