[Rough Draft Guide] FrostFire Mage

Forum Ninja Joined: Mar 09, 2008 Posts: 1062

Intro >
Description of FrostFire Spec. This is your starter raid spec for mages. It’s very simple and can produce really good numbers in raids. It also provides the raid with 10% crit for spells.
Who Am I? Well I'm Farad. I've been playing this mage for 4 years so I know the ins and outs of the class. I also try to explain specs in a way that anybody can understand. Not some complex algorithm to show the damage coefficient of an extra talent point in some obscure place.
Why I wrote this guide? As just mentioned, layman’s terms for how to play frostfire.

Role>
SPARTANS! What is your profession? Any combination of JC, Inscription, Alchy, or Enchanting. JC/Chanting/Scribe all provide good stat boosts.
How much DPS should I be doing? A Naxx 25 geared arc mage should pull 4.5k +,.
Role in Groups - Lay down dps and Sheep stuff
Role in Raids - Make water, Give Intel buff, DPS. Possibly mage tank or Sheep.

Talents>
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/mage/talents.html?tal=000000000000000000000000000000230503001230333105312030135120330303100300000000000000000000
Required Talents:
Ice Shards – Adds 100% more dmg to your crits, this is part of what gives FFB those huge crits.
Piercing Ice – Adds 6% more dmg to your ffb, stacks with fire talents.
Icy Veins – It’s like a mage only bloodlust every 3 min, stacks with bloodlust too.
Frost Channeling – You gain the mana reduction from this talent, but not the threat reduction.
Precision – Duh, 3% more hit for you.
Ignite - 40% more crit dmg in the form of a DOT.
Burning Soul – Your only threat reduction.
Master of Elements – Refunds 30% of the spell cost when you crit.
Improved Scorch – 10% more crit for casters in the raid.
Hot Streak – This is an instant pyro you get from 2 consecutive crits, a huge piece of DPS here.
Burnout – Another 50% crit dmg that stacks with other talents.
Molten Fury – 12% more dmg against mobs below 35% health. The mage version of execute.
The other talents are all self explanatory.
Other Talents include ones I'm using, but not listed because the benefit is obvious.
The Future Of Talents - There are no listed fire talent buffs announced right now, but frost getting a buff so you may be able to go deep frost/shallow fire and do some dmg.

Glyphs>
No Argument Glyphs:
Glyph of Frostfire (2% crit and 2% more damage is huge for this spec), Glyph of Improved Scorch (2 scorches apply all 5 debuffs, less time scorching, more time pwning), Glyph of Molten Armor(2% more crit again).
Garbage Glyphs
No other glyph will benefit this spec.
Everything else.

Professions>
Professions breakdown
I prefer JC and Inscription. Both are very easy and cheap to level, and both provide a good source of income. Both require gathered mats, but the mats are very cheap.
Alternatives are Enchanting and Alchemy. Enchanting is pricey to level and the SP boost from Chanter only chants is the same as JC and Scribe. Alchy gives you the ability to chain potion, and buffs the effects of potions.

Gearing Up>
The thing about gear: You're going to want to stack crit and haste with more focus on crit. 650 crit and 350 haste is a good bet. Buffed 65% crit is optimal.
Slot By Slot Gear Chat: You want 4/5 Valorous if possible. 5/5 is good as well. There are lots of combinations of gear in 25's so it's hard to say 1 item is the best aside from: Turning Tide from heroic KT, and the ring from KT, and the Cloak from either KT - or - 2 drake Sarth.
Stats
Hit Rating - 288 is cap with spriest.
Spell Power - The more the merrier.
Crit - 600+
Haste - 300+
Spirit – Not very important for FFB mages, but start getting some anyways for the eventually switch to arcane.

Gems>
Runed Scarlet Ruby(+19 dmg, can't go wrong dropping it into red slots), Quick Autumn's Glow(+16 haste, makes up for low haste from gear), Smooth Autumn's Glow(+16 crit, crit being one of your most important stats you'll stack alot of these), Potent Noble Topaz (Spell Dmg/Crit).
Chaotic Skyflare. So you got to put two blues somewhere. It gives 21 crit rating and 3% more crit dmg which puts your FFB crits to 330% more dmg.

Enchants>

If spell power can go there, spell power will go there.
Icewalker on boots.
Korin Tor helm.
Hodir Shoulder Chant or Scribe Shoulder Chant.

Rotation>
Standard DPS rotation:
scorch, scorch, living bomb, ffb, ffb, ffb,(refresh scorch, bomb, and shoot insta pyro's when needed)
Trash versus Boss:
Most trash comes in packs and it's save to AE. So just Flamestrike, Blizzard, repeat.
Cool downs:
Icy Veins and Combustion are you main cool downs. Macro them together.
The problem with global cool downs:
If counterspell is required it's very easy to miss it.

Consumables>
Potions choices: Mana and Wild Magic/Potion of Speed
Food Chart: Either Feast, or Haste/Crit depending on what you want.
Flasks and Elixir Choices: Frost Wyrm Flask

Macros>
This is my bread and butter macro, it pops all cool downs at all possible times. 9/10 before a boss you pause so your CD's will be back up then. This macro will boost your dps like crazy.

#showtooltip frostfire bolt
/run SetCVar("Sound_EnableSFX","0")
/cast icy veins
/cast combustion
/cast berserker
/use (insert trinket if needed)
/run SetCVar("Sound_EnableSFX","1")
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/cast frostfire bolt

Polymorph Macro

#showtooltip polymorph
/focus
/castrandom [harm] polymorph(Rank 4), polymorph(Pig), polymorph(Turtle), polymorph(Black Cat)
/stopmacro [noharm]

/run SetCVar and /script UIErrorsFrame just get rid of the messages saying your trinket/ability isn’t ready.

PVP >
This specific spec is decent in PVP. You don’t get to run around as much as arcane, but if you’re not being focus on you can always drop a few people before people find you.
There really is no rotation for this spec in pvp. Keep track of your last crit when running around. If you know your last attack was a crit start the next guy with a fireblast and maybe you’ll get an insta pyro out of it. If somebody is running from me I normally tag them with a living bomb to keep them in combat longer so I can catch up. If they’re stupid they’ll dispel it. On a few occasions they’ll take out a buddy when they dispel it.
SpellSteal the shit out of other mages. Take their POM, Arc Power, Ice Barrier, etc In fact, most classes have some sort of buff that's worth stealing.

Raid Tips >
Don't be a bitch about making a table and buffing the group.
Be prepared for bad nights. One week you’ll top the meters, the next week hang around 7-8 due to the proccy nature of the spec. This spec is high agro so be prepared to invisi and ask for salvation. Most boss fights are longer than 3 minutes. So pop that macro at the start and it should be up again for the <35>
Why did my dps suck this week? The spec is proccy. Next week you’ll likely do way better than you ever thought.
Is living bomb worth it? Yes, it’s instant cast and can be 5-6k more dmg just ticking away.
Why do I need to be this spec if arcane is better? You’re the scorch bitch, the buff you provide for the raid is better than the extra 500 dps you’re going to do.

Closing>
The future of frostfire mages is up in the air. Arcane is better dps. Word on blue post is that another class may get a 10% crit buff. If that happens, then FFB spec will be useless.
Frostfire really has no real PVP future. It’s not good at all for arena, and it’s ok in bg’s.