I don’t understand the point of these spells even existing.
Frostfire Bolt does less base damage than Fireball, Spellfrost Bolt less than Frostbolt.
I haven’t checked the exact scaling numbers but so far stacking spellpower and talents also never make those spells do more damage than the old normal spells.
So what’s the point of slotting those, forgoing another rune on the same slot, to end up with a spell that does less damage than the ones you already have?
There is no point. When 20-man Molten Core is released they will change the raid so you can kill the Fire Lord with fireballs.
It’s just terrible.
I can understand one rune being more optimal over another… but when you’re slotting a rune to do even less damage than your BASIC spells it’s absolutely nonsensical.
Because there are phases after this one.
https://www.wowhead.com/classic/talent-calc/mage/-0552010023021-2035020310035105_116xn56jf66jc76jh86j596xqa6rb
I think the frostfire bolt spell has potential, not so much spellfrost bolt.
I had some ideas about it, but tested prior to the fix of frostfire and spellfrost bolt working with extra critical damage from boots rune.
Since it takes advantage of both effects/talents, I thought the idea of taking ignite, with ice shards, piercing ice, and shatter would be interesting to work with. It has the same cast time as fireball with talents - 3 seconds, it was critting for the same amount of damage (prior to the crit damage boot rune assisting), and you can get the hit chance talents for frost/fire with ease at 40.
Without critting, the frostfire bolt does less damage than a fireball, or even double scorch for sure; however, if it crits, it should now deal more damage than a fire ball or double scorch crit. The issue I think mainly comes into play here is that fingers of frost takes the place of blackout, which is a 15% chance to have 60%+ crit chance for the next 2 casts.
Depending on the upcoming phase rune releases and access to talents, this spell might have some decent use, maybe - hard maybe at 60, getting access to full fire tree damage increases, crit chance, + combustion, all the way up to shatter in frost tree with the 100% critical damage and frost spell damage increase, but I don’t see it at 40.
Because the sod dev team have no clue how to be creative so they copy pasted these spells from retail and called it a day.
Speculation about later phases with datamined runes that might or might not be there is kinda pointless.
If the spell was added now there should be a reason to use it now.
Right now you’re literally slotting a rune that does LESS damage than what you already do.
Yup. I was hyped for SOD until I saw so many P1 runes were just taken from late expansions. I always envisioned a Classic+ to be minor changes to enhance the existing tool kit.
Most meme specs were missing hit, MP, or MP5 so simple fixes that didn’t radically change the class identity, adding roles etc, would be:
Instead they made rogue tanks, warlock tanks, mage healers…this game doesn’t look like vanilla at all, this is conditioning all players to the upcoming convergence of classic-retail merger coming in the future.
I don’t think Frostfire Bolt is so crazy far out that it feels like retail. It’s just another bolt.
Imo, things like Hot Streak and the whole whack-a-mole proc gameplay are a LOT less “vanilla” than that.
But the point here was just the tuning of the spell.
The damage is clearly broken bad.
Because those sort of changes attract more players and are sexier to advertise then adding a Hit conversion to Spirit.
None of the speculated runes really impact the spec except for molten armor.
This has been simmed in many different variations on the mage disc, it doesn’t sim better than just playing fire.
If you want a niche role keeping up Winter’s Chill for the 0 frost mages in raid, have at it though.
Was literally in wotlk and removed from the game like 8 years ago
My guess is it will perform better in later phases
It was good when you were fighting things that were immune to fire or frost and you played either spec. That might end up being about it, who knows
The spec I posted is for level 60 which is impossible to sim right now because we don’t know what runes we’re getting at 50 and 60. But ggs.
My entire point is that we don’t know what we’re getting, and FFB/SFB being bad now doesn’t mean they’ll be bad later. Also we have no idea what resistances will look like in say… MC and BWL, where frost would obviously pull ahead but something like FFB could make fire still viable.
This entire sentence is untrue.
While the variable of “future runes not added yet” exists, you can absolutely still sim a full talent build with known runes. You’ll have to work harder to do it, but as I participate in the mage discord quite a lot, I can tell you those people are out there, and they share their work. It all checks out.
As for your point to counter resists, cool, except that still makes them useless now. So why are they P2 runes and not P4 runes? I think it’s fair to want something useable now when, barring warrior, no other class has 2 runes on one slot that are totally useless. But at least the warriors all unite and appeal this. Somehow we have mages out here justifying the pitiful state of two of our only new active ability DPS runes.
Since runes are the current HIGHEST variable in any spec… it absolutely matters. Literally nothing else matters.
I think those runes are fine, and FFB shatter isn’t the problem… FOF is the problem. It needs a higher proc rate and I’ve been saying that since P1. The spec I posted has an almost 80% crit rate during FOF, with 100% crit damage from the frost tree and 50% from runes… absolutely massive potential with FFB. Literally the only thing holding it back is FOF because otherwise you can’t shatter a boss.
We got 2 for 1 on that slot anyways, we average an extra rune than almost all other classes, because they doubled up on FFB and SFB, which is why it drops from the same mob. So really its “1” rune. Not that big of a deal.
Any useless runes, period, is a problem worth addressing.
Your clinging to coping mechanisms over the hope this rune pays out, and I get it, I played Elemental for TBC, I played FFB Fire for Wrath, aesthetically I love it.
But currently you have two rune options: Hot Streak or Missile Barrage.
By contrast, Shaman also have 19 runes, but while some are niche, none are useless.
So at the very least, we philosophically disagree. I don’t believe there’s any excuse to give useless runes right now for something that isn’t viable yet. If you do, whatever, but we’re never gonna agree no matter how badly you want FFB to work.
I’m not clinging to anything. I’m aware that in MC it will probably be bis. I’m also aware that any rune outside of meta is essentially “useless”. The majority of runes in the game are useless because the majority of people are meta slaves. Not everything is going to be equal or bis. QQing about one rune because you want to play it is nothing more than main character syndrome and you have the audacity so say I’m the one coping 
OMG 2/3 runes are good and the third one (I’m counting FFB/SFB as one because again, we got an extra rune in this slot compared to everyone else). Oh no! The audacity of blizzard!
I don’t care if it works or not. I’ve very happy playing pure fire. It’s still good enough to clear gnomer. Easily. Sure, you won’t be top dps, but you’ll easily do enough to clear the content. You’re arguing BIS vs VIABLE. Is it bis? No. Can you effectively clear content with it? Yes, easily. Which means its viable. Get over yourself, seriously.
Well, if they keep vanilla mechanics, those bolts will let us have an alternate (albiet less effective) main attack abilities in cases of enemies immune to our main damage type (fire mage in molten core, I’m looking at you) I was using FFB while farming whelps in dustwallow since they are highly resistant to fire and I’m a fire mage, for example.
I’ve def found some niche scenarios in the open world where throwing on one of those runes really makes a difference depending on a mobs resistances. I think they’re great additions that circumvent resistances extremely well, and were never meant to be direct competitors to pure damage spell like fireball and frostbolt. I think in MC/BWL they will be great additions, and in later phases they’ll go away again just like in Classic when fire started to take over Frost.