Riddle Me This (Fire)

[Babylonia]

So, all I have been hearing is that fire scales very well with SoO gear. I have also repeated read that SoO gear will not significantly increase crit. So what stat(s) are contributing to the enhanced scaling for SoO gear?

[voltaa]

So, all I have been hearing is that fire scales very well with SoO gear. I have also repeated read that SoO gear will not significantly increase crit. So what stat(s) are contributing to the enhanced scaling for SoO gear?

Spell power, haste, mastery...the point fire is at critwise devalues crit, the more you have, the less it matters

[TacTican]

Spell power, haste, mastery...the point fire is at critwise devalues crit, the more you have, the less it matters

So Ghostcrawler turned out to be correct after all when he claimed that Fire wouldn't scale out of control with yet more crit? Hmm ...

Let's try some theory. Model Fire DPS as the following:

DPS = ((1 - crit chance)(Base damage + spellpower) + 2*crit chance*(Base damage + spellpower))/cast time(H) + Dot damage (calculated below)

For ignite:
(1 + crit chance)(.12 + Mastery bonus)*(base damage + spellpower)/cast time(H)

For all other DoTs:
(1 + crit chance)*number of DoT ticks(H)*(dot base damage + spellpower)

Basically, this function works your cast spells doing the damage of Base damage + spellpower bonus, multiplied by 1 - your crit chance and twice your crit chance to account for the probability of scoring a critical hit, divided by the cast time (which is a function of haste - more haste > less cast time > more DPS). For instant casts, set the cast time to a global CD (also dependent on haste). DoT damage is somewhat awkwardly calculated separately; all spells that can proc Ignite (so all direct damage Fire spells - Scorch, Fireball, Pyro, Inferno Blast and Frostfire) have a mastery component but no haste component and use the base damage and spellpower bonus of their base spell, while all other DoTs have a haste component but no mastery component and use a different base damage and spellpower bonus. Note that the number of DoT ticks is a step function which relies on haste.

What this model doesn't account for: the different spellpower scaling of each spell (although this would be relatively simple to add as a multiplier to the spellpower for each individual spell), Hot Streak procs, cleave damage, Combustion, or Ignite rolls. I might add these later to the model.

Nevertheless, after simplifying the above equation, we get:

DPS = ((1 + C)(Bd + S))/cast(H) + (1 + C)(.12 + M)(Bd + S)/cast(H) + (1 + C)nDoT(H)(dBd + S)
= (1 + C)[(Bd + S)(1.12 + M)/cast(H) + nDoT(H)(dBd + S)]

so that there are three distinct components to our damage: the cast spell (the first term), the Ignite DoT (the second term), and the cast DoT (the third term). (Note: Combustion would use a mixture of the Ignite term and the cast DoT term, that is, it would be .2*nDoT(H)(1 + C)(.12 + M)(Bd + S), or "20% multiplied by the number of ticks with crit accounted for, scaling off Ignite mastery procced from the contributing spells"). In mathematical terms, we end up having a linear equation with three parts.

Right away we see that Mastery affects only Ignite and Combustion (the only reason it was so good last tier being that Combustion was just that damn powerful), spellpower and crit affect everything, and haste affects everything (but in a different way from spellpower or crit). Partial differentiation of the function by crit, haste, mastery, and spellpower (left as an exercise to the interested reader) shows that changes in crit and spellpower thus make everything else scale better, whereas a change in haste generally affects mastery's value slightly and a change in mastery also only has a slight effect on haste. Again, the exception here is Combustion, where ALL of the secondary stats are present (and perhaps explains why it scales so crazily that it's been nerfed from a coefficient of 1 to a coefficient of .2 over the expansion).

[Solidpat]

It is true that the change in crit rating has a limited effect on our DPS at this point. At 50% crit raid buffed + 4P either T15 or T16 is plenty to run the spec at its full potential.

However, do not forget to consider the trinket. 7% increase on crit damage has a HUGE impact for Fire mages for many reasons. The first and the most obvious one is because we are the casters that crit the most, so in other words, we make the most out of our 7% increase in damage.

Second, a 7% Crit damage increase translate in a direct damage increase (like any other caster) but more importantly in an indirect damage incrase such as: a higher Ignite, Pyroblast DOT (which is significant) and Combustion. This is where our true scaling comes from now, relatively to other classes and specs.