Like every single mage in the world, I initially felt that Blizzard was politely trying to rip off my limbs and sell them to a seedy looking Vietnamese chef with the new expansion.
“Living Bomb” sounded awesome, but turned out be used dishwater, frostfire bolt was kinda cool, but confusing with really no explanation of how it worked, and Deep Freeze was kinda cool.
What? Why don’t you like our cool spells?
No offence, Mr. Blue Text, but Living Bomb is only cool in theory. That spell needs some serious help before I’ll even consider speccing it. And Burnout? What the hell kinda crap is that?
Fine. Be that way. Look, we’ll add a mana burn to Living Bomb, and buff Burnout a bit. How’s that?
Gah, so now Living Bomb and Burnout only mostly suck? Good job guys.
What about Deep Freeze? That’s cool, innit?
Well, maybe, for an instant cast…
OH FINE. FINE. BLAH DE BLAH. Now it deals over a thousand damage too. HAPPY? Them warriors are going to rip your procreative organs off.
That’s fine. They’ve been trying to do that for years. So about them fire talents…? They still suck.
Ok… maybe… we can buff Burnout a bit. How’s this. It effects base mana cost, not your total mana.
NOW you’re speaking sense. That’s awesome. And Living Bomb?
…
LIVING BOMB?!
Maybe, just maybe, we could be talked into increasing it’s damage?
You don’t get it, do you? I’m a MAGE. You know, a squishy caster? Standing at the back? Not running into a group of mobs and shouting “KILL ME”?
*sigh* Ok, you can cast it on a friendly player, so they do the splodey rather than you.
*Arm Pump* And frostfire? Care to explain how that works?
Well, you see, it can deal fire damage, and frost damage, and it has a small DoT, and… it has a cast time… and… uhh… mages can use it… LOOK OVER THERE WE BUFFED BURNOUT TO 50%!!
Hah, like I’m fa- OMFG DID YOU JUST DOUBLE THAT?!?
Bwehehe.
Seriously though.
Frostfire has been one helluva confusing spell to try and figure out. Time to look at the small print.
Technically, frostfire is neither a frost spell or a fire spell, and yet it is at the exact same time.
Pew Pew Lazers provides the following little summary:
Frostfire Bolt is neither a Fire nor a Frost spell, but it can deal either Fire OR Frost damage, and gets all the bonuses associated with BOTH your Fire and Frost talents that affect Fire or Frost damage.
Anything that affects Fire or Frost SPELLS isn’t going to affect Frostfire bolt. Anything that affects Fire or Frost DAMAGE, will affect Frostfire bolt.
This is the confusing part, because sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn’t. Allow me to explain.
Critical Mass quite clearly states that it increases the critical strike chance of your fire spells by 6%. It affects frostfire bolt.
Winter’s Chill says that it will increase the critical strike chance of any frost spell by 2% (per stack). It, too, affects frostfire bolt.
Frost Channeling says that it decreases the mana cost of frost spells by 15%. This also affects frostfire bolt.
Flame Throwing states that it increases the range of your fire spells by 6 yards. This DOES NOT affect frostfire bolt.
See what I mean?
But I digress. Time to release the fanboy.
Frostfire bolt is my new homeboy. I am going to marry this spell, and together we will explore all the world (of warcraft) and destroy anything and everything in our path. Why?
BECAUSE!!! AAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! HAAA HA! HAHAHA!
Check this out. Put 50 points into fire, and then 21 into frost. The important talents are as follows:
- Ignite: critical strikes deal an extra 40% damage over 4 seconds
- Improved Scorch: increases damage dealt by 10%
- Master of Elements: 30% mana cost refund on critical strike
- Critical Mass: 6% increased crit chance
- Playing With Fire: 3% more damage
- Fire Power: 10% more damage
- Combustion: sexy
- Molten Fury: an old standby, 20% more damage to those under 20% health
- Pyromaniac: 3% mana cost reduction, 3% more crit chance
- Burnout: 50% more critical strike damage bonus (meaning frostfire bolt will critically strike for 175%)
- Ice Shards: 100% more critical strike damage bonus (meaning frostfire bolt will critically strike for 200%)
- Ice Floes: 20% reduction in Icy Veins cooldown. Icy Veins is sexy
- Piercing Ice: 6% more damage
- Frost Channeling: a further 10% mana reduction
Meaning the total gains you get are: 225% critical strikes, plus Ignite, 29% damage modifier, and an increase of 9% to critically strike. Note that if another mage in the raid has Winter’s Chill stacked, thats an increase of 19% to critically strike.
*Ahem* Quick note. Critical strike damage bonus add together, not multiply. The percent is a multiplier on the base critical damage bonus, and then they add together for the new critical strike damage.
A base critical strike will deal 150% normal damage. Ice Shards, with a 100% increase, increases that 50% by 100%, so the final critical strike damage would be 200%.
Burnout and Ice Shards combined will add, respectively, 25% and 50% to the total critical strike damage. Get both of them, and frostfire bolt will deal 225% normal damage when it crits. Use a Chaotic Skyfire Diamond which, as you should know, increases your critical strike damage (NOT bonus, total damage) by 3%, and frostfire will crit for 231% damage.
And then Ignite will start ticking for 40% of that. And yes, if the mob is fire immune, Ignite will tick for frost damage instead. At least, it does now.
( ( (Q * 1.5) + (.5Q * 1) + (.5Q * .5) ) * 1.03 ) * 1.4
…where Q is the value of what frostfire would normally hit for. Make sense?
So let’s say that you’re completely naked and you cast Frostfire bolt and for some reason we completely ignore all the plus damage modifiers (Just for reference, frostfire bolt will have the same spell coefficient as frostbolt currently does).
Frostfire Bolt rank 2 currently hits for 722 to 838 damage. Meaning that if it crits, the total damage you deal will be 2,341 to 2,718.
Pretty damn impressive for the base damage numbers.
So let’s get some more realistic numbers, shall we?
Assuming a level 80 mage with 1000 damage (a very conservative number), let’s figure out what this feller’s putting out with Frostfire.
As mentioned before, frostfire shares a coefficient with frostbolt, meaning 81.43%, or, in this case, an additional 814 damage (remember that Blizzard’s math always always always rounds down).
So that base damage of 722 to 838 damage goes up to 1,536 to 1,642.
Remember we have an increase in damage of 29% from talents.
Base damage is now 1,981 to 2,118.
That’s all very well to do, but what does it crit for?
*Huge grin*
Frostfire Bolt will crit for 4,590 to 4,908 damage; 6,427 to 6,871 damage including Ignite.
It’s ok to let your jaw drop, I know I let mine. Undead mages, feel free to find it and then drop it. It’s alright, I can wait.
And it is also okay to be skeptical; after all, I haven’t done the math for raw Fireball/Frostbolt yet, assuming deep fire/frost, respectively.
And no. I will not do the math for deep Arcane. You can’t make me.
Can’t follow your calculations (25 years since I attended a math lesson at school) but you seem to know what you’re doing.
But there there really must be SOME way I can convice you to do some counting on the arcane tree as well. I just have to figure out where your weak spot is…
If I just put up my sweetist gnomish smile, tossing my pigtails and ask you nicely, will that help?
Cookies. I am vulnerable to cookies.
Oh.
My.
God.
🙂
Oh if I was on your server I’d send you a fresh Delicious Chocolate Cake. Can you feel the taste of it? I’ve baked it myself. And beautiful fireworks come with it.
Please…?
I think I’ve been crit by your math.
O.O
WTB dental plan :- 0
unfortunately with 3+ months left of beta for Blizz to decide to nerf this …. lets all not jump for too much joy until we see this work on a regular server down the road….
Ahh might as well do a bit of jumping for joy… enjoy the highs and survive the lows… great analysis thank you!
… I, for one, welcome our new frostfirebolt overlords …
[…] CriticalQQ: Frostfire, Just This Once […]
You’re wrong. It will crit for more. Lookie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Err6bnI1Dr0
I myself am playing the beta. And although it is true that Frostfire bolt will do incredible in instances… In pvp it would be rendered unsusuable unless with PoM. A countered frostfire bolt will silence both fire and frost. So don’t QQ that its OP in pvp. I prefer Deep Freeze in pvp. Its absolutely killer since its stops them from casting/shooting too.
You’ve done a good job explaining, but I’ll see if I can throw a couple of kinks into it.
1. Frostfire is both a fire and a frost spell, but at the same time, its not, I get that much. But where does the line draw? If I have the Sunfire enchant (increase fire damage by 50) will that increase the frostfire bolt damage?
2. Remember, the ignite does not stack. So if you are constantly casting, like in a raid, your hits will not end up being 6,427 to 6,871, because you’ll cast a new spell, I’m assuming, every 3 seconds. Since its a 4 second burn, I usually just figure it at 30% being 5967 to 6380 while constantly casting. Still very impressive.
I’m not picking at your post, I just enjoy crunching numbers and debating specs. It was very informative, so thank you for it.
Занимаюсь дизайном и хочу попросить автора criticalqq.wordpress.com отправить шаьлончик на мой мыил) Готов заплатить…
im loving this spell.
Goratrix, it’s out of beta, i have about 1000 damage, and its doing about that much. so our dreams have been fulfilled. :^)
this came up in a google search for ‘frostfire bolt coefficient’, and i thank you for an interesting article and
As mentioned before, frostfire shares a coefficient with frostbolt, meaning 81.43%, or, in this case, an additional 814 damage (remember that Blizzard’s math always always always rounds down).
that paragraph. I got what i needed.
well not just the dmg allso that it benifit evrything!!
Reduce threat from both frost and fire tree and less mana using and the hit increase