So I’m planning to play frostfire built in wotlk, something like 0/53/18 for shatter in frost.
As i look around in comment sections on videos i keep seeing people say the idea got nerfed back in OG wrath and frostfire isnt worth anything after that, but i cant find any notes about it ever being nerfed or changed.
Anybody know something i cant find?
I remember Frostfire being a thing for a minute and quickly fizzling out.
I ended up having to play Fire all through ICC just to keep my raid spot. Frostfire just wasn’t cutting it.
i left OG wrath just after argent tournament launched, so its possible it got nerfed after i left but i believe i was frostfire 'til ulduar. Frostfire did get nerfed once in early wrath, but as i recall that was a nerf to a heavy frost frostfire build that was amazing for leveling.
Okay. I appreciate the replies. Was never really about bis dmg. I just really like the concept of frostfire, but posts made it sound like it got over-nerfed.
A good fire mage keeps up fireball, frostfire, pyro and living bomb. The dots scale off spell power very well
Frost in PVE is ok in T7 but not after that. People won’t really want you in raids though because the DPS is low.
Definitely after T7 it is the worst spec.
Frostfire was the best caster spec from 3.0 to 3.1, so the big changes were in 3.1.0. Crawled a lot of archived elitist jerk posts several months ago detailing it cause I was also curious a while back about why Frostfire fizzled out. Here’s a shortlist on why tho:
Imp. Scorch was nerfed from 10% to 5% crit. FFB relied almost entirely on high crit levels because of its crit modifier making up for its inferior non-crit dmg, which just wasn’t there after the nerf.
To further that, Molten Armor was changed from 5% crit (w/ glyph) to 55% crit from spirit (w/ glyph). This was a buff in the long-term, but during Naxx, no mage was interested in spirit at all and shunned the stat, so most geared FFB mages saw a loss in crit levels, most saying that Molten Armor gave them <2.8% even with the glyph.
TTW got buffed to include Fireball and also counted cast speed slows on bosses, instead of just snares. FFB did not benefit, nor could it take this talent. Every Fire spec prior was LB/IV, but TTW being buffed was big enough to not only cause every pure fire mage to respec, but also outDPS Frostfire mages in every scenario.
Elemental Precision got renamed and moved to tier 2, but on top of that, Blizzard finally fixed the bug that gave frost spells the hidden additional 3% hit, which was also benefiting FFB.
Deathknights also got massive changes in 3.1.0, and though one big change was a buff to them, it was a nerf to everyone else: their runeweapon enchant Rune of Razorice. Previously, this debuff increased all frost damage taken by 5% from all players. It was changed to 10% from the attacking deathknight only.
And finally, Arcane got several buffs, which put it (along with TTW/Fire) way ahead of FFB. The only thing FFB going for it was that it had 3% hit from talents (Fire has 0%), and Frost was still dumpster in pve. But newly geared players could now play Arcane instead, which has 6% hit from talents and doesn’t rely on crit at all.
With all those changes summed up: significantly less crit, -3% less hit, -5% less dmg. These are cascading nerfs, and both competing specs got massive buffs. FFB just died out.
Some later changes happened too, like Glyph of Fireball reducing cast time. Fireball has much higher base damage than FFB, and a much higher spellpower ratio, so it scales better than FFB, and the glyph just made it even stronger since FFB only had its base cast time going for it. Frostfire Bolt never got buffed after any of these changes.
and
are where you can see all the dirt.
Frostfire Bolt (lb/ffb) is still a decent spec and crits hard. You can stack crit and pray rng is in your favor. It’s also a fun spec cause it’s essentially Fire with better visuals and lower mana costs. The glyph is great too. But it’s not going to compete well in 3.3.5.
I plan on being FFB from 75 to 80 just because having Fireball with a snare is wonderful for leveling (and it’s hella fun).
Wow.
Okay so first off, thank you so much.
Ive tried to dig around and find where and what happened and was coming up empty handed.
That makes alot of sense. So theres always a better build regardless of phase.
I can honestly live with that if i’m still doing decent dmg, but i dont intend to raid at this time. Mostly just be a 5 man hero lol.
Thematically I’m really excited to play a spec that uses both elements. Really hated how much retail slowly moved away from it. Hell FFB disappeared…
Again, Thank you so much!
You always level as frost anyway. Leveling as fire or arcane is bad.
This isn’t true. Frost is better for undergeared/regular leveling toons, but anyone in raid gear would be better off as Fire or Arcane. Frost just scales so poorly with stats, and the stats from 70-80 don’t drop off much at all, so you may as well put that raid gear to work.
Nope people tried leveling as Fire and Arcane with BIS SWP gear. Frost is still better.
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