Handling specific spell priority situations as a Frost Mage.

[Cam 5]

Ok, I have got a few advanced questions. Hopefully together we can work these out.

 

Situation 1:

 

You have 2 Fingers of Frost procs and a BrainFreeze. Your Mage Bomb has just expired.

 

It takes one global to apply your bomb. However if you get another brain freeze or FoF proc in the global you have just lost 300k dmg. 

 

However if you shoot of a Frostfire + Icelance combo before your bomb you have lost 2 globals of your bomb being on the target which is obviously a small DPS loss.

 

Which is the correct answer?

 

Situation 2

 

Alter time is 0.5 seconds away from expiring and you are casting a frostbolt then you get a Brainfreeze or FoF proc. You will lose that proc in 0.5 seconds. Do you stopcasting to fire off the Ice Lance?

 

Situation 3

 

PboI or KTT proc is about to expire. You have 1 single Ice Lance proc. Do you fire off that Ice Lance with a trinket proc or wait for a Brainfreeze for a %15 damage bonus to it without Trinket procs.

 

Situation 4

 

You are on a multidot fight. You Have FoF x2 & BrainFreeze. You have 3 Globals left on Potion + Pboi proc. Do you use those Globals on a Brain Freeze and 2 Ice Lance cleaves or use the globals to refresh your Dots which are about to expire.

 

Basically which is the most DPE. 3 Mage Bombs with procs or a brainfreeze + 2 lances.

 

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These are some situations I have come into whist raiding and don;t know the answer to.

 

 

[Oltier 471]

Ok, I have got a few advanced questions. Hopefully together we can work these out.

 

Situation 1:

 

You have 2 Fingers of Frost procs and a BrainFreeze. Your Mage Bomb has just expired.

 

It takes one global to apply your bomb. However if you get another brain freeze or FoF proc in the global you have just lost 300k dmg. 

 

However if you shoot of a Frostfire + Icelance combo before your bomb you have lost 2 globals of your bomb being on the target which is obviously a small DPS loss.

 

Which is the correct answer?

 

Situation 2

 

Alter time is 0.5 seconds away from expiring and you are casting a frostbolt then you get a Brainfreeze or FoF proc. You will lose that proc in 0.5 seconds. Do you stopcasting to fire off the Ice Lance?

 

Situation 3

 

PboI or KTT proc is about to expire. You have 1 single Ice Lance proc. Do you fire off that Ice Lance with a trinket proc or wait for a Brainfreeze for a %15 damage bonus to it without Trinket procs.

 

Situation 4

 

You are on a multidot fight. You Have FoF x2 & BrainFreeze. You have 3 Globals left on Potion + Pboi proc. Do you use those Globals on a Brain Freeze and 2 Ice Lance cleaves or use the globals to refresh your Dots which are about to expire.

 

Basically which is the most DPE. 3 Mage Bombs with procs or a brainfreeze + 2 lances.

 

-------

 

These are some situations I have come into whist raiding and don;t know the answer to.

I am not certain in any of these to be honest, but I will share my thoughts and the community will be able to prove/disprove me.

 

Situation 1:

1. Refresh Bomb
2. Use 1 Ice Lance
3. Use FFB
4. Use 2nd Ice Lance

Reasoning: Assuming that you have chosen LB for single target, the first proc will need a few seconds to happen giving you ample time to spend other procs. 2nd is Ice Lance, because of the previous one AND FFB would have a chance to proc another FoF which would be a waste.

The rest is obvious I assume.

 

Situation 2:

Realistically thinking, you won't be able to react to this situation. 0.5 is just.. too much in my opinion. I would stick to my no. 1 rule: NEVER interrupt a spell cast.

 

Situation 3:

I would fire it off, yes. No reasoning.. I have a huge chance to get another FoF in the next few seconds for my BF+FoF combo, so why not?

 

Situation 4:

This is Akraen's field but I would say that reapplying your dots will be the best.

 

Thank you for asking these questions. :) Finally not something that I read everyday. I'm sure Akraen will drop in for this as well.

[Narsha 12]

Ahh, interesting! I think these are on the verge of min-min-min-min-maxing but nonetheless cool points! 

 

As for myself I'm not a math guy at all but will give my thoughts: 

 

1: I think this has been addressed earlier somewhere and I seem to remember what Oltier describes is correct, but personally I seem to go by

- Brain Freeze FFB

- Refresh bomb

- ice lance

 

My reasoning is that by refreshing a bomb I can proc another brain freeze (which I potentially don't want to overwrite), and by using the BF i get the 2-piece buff which lasts through the refreshing of the bomb and then gets used by ice lance. I will then probably save the second ice lance for next brain freeze-proc. Don't have anything to back this up with but made sense to me. 

 

Situation 2: 

Never interrupt spell casting always makes sense but in this case I would most likely use the BF-proc. When AT kicks in I'll probably have a lot of procs up ready for use that I can cast right away. I couldn't fire those off if I were still casting a frostbolt but I can't imagine this is a big difference. 

 

Situation 3 and 4: Agree with Oltier^^ 

[Stormy 11]

Ha, now that's good questions, since none of us seem to answer the same. I'd love maths on that, though in the end it all depends on RNG, as well as on your gear and other situations as well.

 

What I'd do. I use 2P T16

 

1 : Refresh bomb, FFB, ice lance, Frostbolt assuming no brain freeze proc, else FFB + ice lance.I find the chance of getting another brain freeze proc before I use the previous one quite low, but it's worth noting that it'd be higher if I went over the 14242 haste cap, or if I had a meta proc/bloodlust. However, those things augmenting the damage of LB regardless, I'm interested in how they'd change the decision, math-wise.

Worth noting that if you want to use FFB first I would indeed to FFB -> bomb -> ice lance and not ice lance before bomb.

 

2 : It comes down to experience I think, and of your ping/reaction time : Do you have time to finish your FB cast then use the proc ? In this case obviously finish cast then use proc. Do you not have time to finish your FB ? Then cancel it to use your proc. Honestly I think it comes down to how much time left is on your FB cast and your ping/reaction time. Personally I would cancel cast.

 

3 : The int proc from both those trinkets (especially if you have their heroic or HWF versions) is so ridiculously high, about half your int each, that it's certainly stronger than the brain freeze bonus. And as was said, you're likely to get another FoF proc anyway. So fire the ice lance for sure. (tl;dr : agree with Oltier & Narsha)

 

4 : That's a math question that should have an objective answer, assuming the adds have enough health so that the full LB duration will matter and assuming that they don't have to be burst asap. Very few situations are like that tbh.

Math-wise I pass, it feels to me that refreshing the 3 bombs would be the way to go, since your icelance procs should stay around anyway and at worst you miss on a brain freeze proc. Tough one anyway, depends on a lot of factors (the higher your haste the higher your bomb value, esp with other haste procs).

[Narsha 12]

I just recieved information that it is not possible to proc another BF from just refreshing the bomb! That makes me most probably agree on point number 1 with Microchaton.

[Oltier 471]

I just recieved information that it is not possible to proc another BF from just refreshing the bomb! That makes me most probably agree on point number 1 with Microchaton.

I also said this!!!!! :D

[Narsha 12]

Is that what you meant by "the first proc will need a few seconds to happen giving you ample time to spend other procs."? I didn't get that at all^^ That being said I and others often refresh bomb, use BF and almost keep the animation cause the next proc is literally instantly replaced by another, but guess it becomes a bigger issue with more haste.

 

​I would then probe go refresh bomb - BF - ice lance.

 

Edit: Sorry, post got messy, fixed.

Edited February 24, 2014 by Narsha

[Stormy 11]

Did you just copypaste what I said on irc ? :p

[Narsha 12]

Didn't I mention it on there? If no sorry, meant to say I stole your lines! /bow

[Akraen 230]

No need to drop in you two handled it well.

 

Though I can't say I've ever been in the position of 2 FoF, a BF, and LB running out. Start of the fight gets hairy sometimes depending on when PBoI procs and you do AT. Sometimes second AT is weird, but I burn through procs quickly so that I avoid those situations.

[glacier 0]

Microchatin's response led me to the following questions:  

 

(1) Using tier 16 2-pc, if you had 1 FoF proc, 1 BF proc, no other procs, and no need to refresh bomb, would it be better in general to cast  BF, Frostbolt, Ice Lance or BF, Ice Lance,  Frostbolt (would the BF bonus damage to Frostbolt and the resulting icicle plus the possible additional proc of FoF from Frostbolt (if BF didn't proc FOF) and reproc of BF outweigh  the BF bonus damage to Ice Lance)?    

 

(2) Would the answer to question (1) be different if instead of no other procs you had either fresh PBOI and/or KTT procs  or a meta proc (decreasing cast time of Frostbolt) (but still no immediate need to refresh bomb)?

Edited March 6, 2014 by glacier

[NickSeng 0]

Microchatin's response led me to the following questions:  

 

(1) Using tier 16 2-pc, if you had 1 FoF proc, 1 BF proc, no other procs, and no need to refresh bomb, would it be better in general to cast  BF, Frostbolt, Ice Lance or BF, Ice Lance,  Frostbolt (would the BF bonus damage to Frostbolt and the resulting icicle plus the possible additional proc of FoF from Frostbolt (if BF didn't proc FOF) and reproc of BF outweigh  the BF bonus damage to Ice Lance)?    

 

(2) Would the answer to question (1) be different if instead of no other procs you had either fresh PBOI and/or KTT procs  or a meta proc (decreasing cast time of Frostbolt) (but still no immediate need to refresh bomb)?

 

1)Until very high levels of haste and mastery (or possibly under haste procs), Frostbolt will never be better than Ice Lance for consuming Frozen Thought.

 

2) Since Int affects both Ice Lance and Frostbolt, the differentiator usually comes down to haste&mastery. So no, PBOI and KTT procs won't affect it, but a meta proc might.

 

I used this tool (http://lhiveras-library.com/wow-spells) to find out when Frostbolt surpasses Ice Lance for me specifically.

Edited March 7, 2014 by NickSeng

[Kver 65]

Microchatin's response led me to the following questions:  

 

(1) Using tier 16 2-pc, if you had 1 FoF proc, 1 BF proc, no other procs, and no need to refresh bomb, would it be better in general to cast  BF, Frostbolt, Ice Lance or BF, Ice Lance,  Frostbolt (would the BF bonus damage to Frostbolt and the resulting icicle plus the possible additional proc of FoF from Frostbolt (if BF didn't proc FOF) and reproc of BF outweigh  the BF bonus damage to Ice Lance)?    

 

(2) Would the answer to question (1) be different if instead of no other procs you had either fresh PBOI and/or KTT procs  or a meta proc (decreasing cast time of Frostbolt) (but still no immediate need to refresh bomb)?

General rule of thumb for the 2 piece is: use Frozen Thoughts on: Frostfire Bolt with BF > Ice Lance with FoF > Frostbolt. All 3 of these spells increase their damage with int, so that shouldn't matter. After 50% haste your instant casts stop scaling, so Frostbolt gets closer to the other spells, but you need to have an absolutely ridiculous amount of mastery(I'm not sure if this is even possible to get) for it to overtake the others.

 

Also keep in mind that if you can get back to back BFs then obviously go with that.

[lynx 19]

General rule of thumb for the 2 piece is: use Frozen Thoughts on: Frostfire Bolt with BF > Ice Lance with FoF > Frostbolt. All 3 of these spells increase their damage with int, so that shouldn't matter. After 50% haste your instant casts stop scaling, so Frostbolt gets closer to the other spells, but you need to have an absolutely ridiculous amount of mastery(I'm not sure if this is even possible to get) for it to overtake the others.

 

Also keep in mind that if you can get back to back BFs then obviously go with that.

 

Doesn't really need to be ridiculous. At about 80% mastery and 50% haste, when meta procs your frostbolts have higher dpet on single target. Leads to a strange playstyle, as you want to overwrite FoF procs (!) until the meta runs out and use them only then.

You can even use this strategy at about 70% mastery (not exact number, might be even lower), because even though FoF-IL dpet is still higher, the one of FrB is close enough to warrant its usage and save FoF procs for after meta to get higher overall damage.

 

FFB is still, of course, takes priority over everything else.