Is 0/53/18 FFB dead?

[davesurfer]

I haven't raided my mage since Naxx 25 (January last year). At that time 0/53/18 FFB was the way to go. Well since I have geared my pally tank to the point where he is only raiding ICC (and one random a day), and have my alt prot pally doing ToC for fun/ToC gear (have all badge gear). I wanted to dust off my Mage to run randoms (sick of tanking for noobs, my turn to be one).

I really liked FFB spec, but as I gear him, I will use him as a free agent/filler DPS for other guild 10 mans that may be missing someone.

Can I still be competitive? All the mages in our guild have gome arcane.

[Evee]

You may be somewhat competative...but it's next to a 0% chance that you will surpass the dps being put out by arcane. Per Rawr, the ffb spec seems to be a good 300-600 dps loss for most mages compared to arcane

[Luigie1]

I use a modified FFB speck for Trash. Its really, really good for trash. Living bomb 5 targets and Blizzard, repeat, then blizzard the rest of the way.

Also, the 2 points in imp blizz really helps on trash movements. check my armory for the speck

[Loklar]

FFBolt isn't crazy popular, but it is still useful for raiding.

Heroic Anub saw a lot of Frostfire mages, and if you're a desfinated kiter for Blood Beasts then I suggest FF for the slow effect (and blastwave!)

It's a good second pve spec. I don't use it much, just here and there. Def less damage though.

[davesurfer]

Thanks all. Since I have to relearn the toon (a year since raiding with him), sounds like I should just go arcane

[Glaid]

i disagree that FFB is a bad spec even for single targeting. it scales really really good with gear, but to be abel to play the spec high crit is nessary. many mages are playing FFB, im ofc like all other mages are arcane atm but im going back to FFB now. FFB is harder to play compared to arcane and with the upcoming 2/5 t10 bonus you will keep it up more often than a arcane mage would do, if you got the right crit for it.

[Loklar]

i disagree that FFB is a bad spec even for single targeting. it scales really really good with gear, but to be abel to play the spec high crit is nessary. many mages are playing FFB, im ofc like all other mages are arcane atm but im going back to FFB now. FFB is harder to play compared to arcane and with the upcoming 2/5 t10 bonus you will keep it up more often than a arcane mage would do, if you got the right crit for it.

Don't kid yourself. No spec is "hard" to play.

Arcane is really easy to to do ridiculous damage in heroics (just spam AB and nothing else) or on short fights. On hard raids, the only challenge is not running out of mana before evocate is back up.

Fire and Frostfire are also very easy. It's just a priority system.

If no scorch, scorch
If no Living Bomb, Living bomb
If yes Instant Pyro, Instant Pyro
Else, Fireball.

That's the perfect rotation in 4 lines of code. The rest just has to do with staying out of the fire and raid awareness that ever spec needs.

[Shadowhaxor]

FFB isn't dead, it's extremely useful in pulls with tons of mobs (ICC). Your dps meter will light up like a christmas tree. As far for single target dmg, it's simply not going to surpass arcane, unless the mage that is arcane is playing badly.

[Darksheepy]

i disagree that FFB is a bad spec even for single targeting. it scales really really good with gear, but to be abel to play the spec high crit is nessary. many mages are playing FFB, im ofc like all other mages are arcane atm but im going back to FFB now. FFB is harder to play compared to arcane and with the upcoming 2/5 t10 bonus you will keep it up more often than a arcane mage would do, if you got the right crit for it.

Thats a complete lie, sorry... arcane keeps that 2piece of so fucking much, with any one haste cd popped (berserk, IV, black magic) i can get 4 blasts off with that buff, so its roughly 80% uptime.

Everyone knows haste simply isn't nearly good enough for ffb as it is arcane, that being said i hate arcane so im tempted to gear and gem for sp/crit and try ffb for fun, just no way with our new bonuses it will be competetive single target.

[Skarrd]

Thats a complete lie, sorry... arcane keeps that 2piece of so fucking much, with any one haste cd popped (berserk, IV, black magic) i can get 4 blasts off with that buff, so its roughly 80% uptime.

Everyone knows haste simply isn't nearly good enough for ffb as it is arcane, that being said i hate arcane so im tempted to gear and gem for sp/crit and try ffb for fun, just no way with out new bonuses it will be competetive single target.

With enough crit you could probably have nearly 100% uptime on the haste buff as FFB as well. I'd really like to go back fire just because I like switching it up, but I don't have the gear for it anymore and I'm not about to downgrade my dps "for fun."

[skarsgård]

it diead a year ago. sry dude :-\

[Herrbrun]

it diead a year ago. sry dude :-\

It's not dead when it deals 90% damage of what arcane does. sry dude :-\

[Darksheepy]

With enough crit you could probably have nearly 100% uptime on the haste buff as FFB as well. I'd really like to go back fire just because I like switching it up, but I don't have the gear for it anymore and I'm not about to downgrade my dps "for fun."

Myself and someone in my guild used wowhead to put together the ultimate crit geared FFB mage, and while i lost the link and am too lazy to do it again (you can do it for yourself on wowhead) we concluded that going PURE CRIT, gems enchants and everything, you could push 80% in a 25man raid. That being said, if you were actually going to do this, you would have to change your gems and enchants slightly to be viable.

After all the adjustments, we found you can have a mage in full 264 gear with approx 70% crit raid buffed and around 3k spell dmg unbuffed, you would also have approx 700 haste.

Keep in mind, with full 264 gear, an arcane mage is running around with between 1200 and 1400 haste, 3500 dmg, and 35% crit, all approximates, all unbuffed and depending on what trinkets you are using of course.

It would be interesting to see how these two specs played out, it depends on fight mechanics as always and skill. (rotations =/= skill, helping your raid while using every GCD does)

Edit: I was borred so i amde it again, heres Critmage:
http://www.wowhead.com/?profile=20674438

[hellxhellx2000]

Myself and someone in my guild used wowhead to put together the ultimate crit geared FFB mage, and while i lost the link and am too lazy to do it again (you can do it for yourself on wowhead) we concluded that going PURE CRIT, gems enchants and everything, you could push 80% in a 25man raid. That being said, if you were actually going to do this, you would have to change your gems and enchants slightly to be viable.

After all the adjustments, we found you can have a mage in full 264 gear with approx 70% crit raid buffed and around 3k spell dmg unbuffed, you would also have approx 700 haste.

Keep in mind, with full 264 gear, an arcane mage is running around with between 1200 and 1400 haste, 3500 dmg, and 35% crit, all approximates, all unbuffed and depending on what trinkets you are using of course.

It would be interesting to see how these two specs played out, it depends on fight mechanics as always and skill. (rotations =/= skill, helping your raid while using every GCD does)

Edit: I was borred so i amde it again, heres Critmage:
http://www.wowhead.com/?profile=20674438

your gemming is horrible. 20 spirit and 20 crit gems lol

[Unicornjuice]

your gemming is horrible. 20 spirit and 20 crit gems lol

Did you even read his post in order to find out why the gems are like that?

[brettizzle]

It's not dead when it deals 90% damage of what arcane does. sry dude :-\

Something that deals less dmg as another spec theoretically is dead other than for maybe having fun or for a specific boss. As also stated in this post a lot of people dont have the right gear set to go from Arcane to FFB to even get to that 90% that it could potentially be. Nobody has two sets of 264 tier gemmed differently etc.

I liked the crit set lol.

[jontaxe]

i disagree that FFB is a bad spec even for single targeting. it scales really really good with gear, but to be abel to play the spec high crit is nessary.

Believe it or not, despite the fact that FFB has a higher crit multiplier than fireball, fireball winds up with higher average non crits and (depending on your gear) either on par or actually higher average crits than FFB. It's a result of the fireball's higher spell power coefficient, because fireball has a cast time reduction talent and FFB does not.

So, sad to say, FFB is DOA. Spec fire if you happen to like cast times long enough to enable a smoke break between spells, else just go arcane.

[Juggernautt]

I haven't raided my mage since Naxx 25 (January last year). At that time 0/53/18 FFB was the way to go. Well since I have geared my pally tank to the point where he is only raiding ICC (and one random a day), and have my alt prot pally doing ToC for fun/ToC gear (have all badge gear). I wanted to dust off my Mage to run randoms (sick of tanking for noobs, my turn to be one).

I really liked FFB spec, but as I gear him, I will use him as a free agent/filler DPS for other guild 10 mans that may be missing someone.

Can I still be competitive? All the mages in our guild have gome arcane.

For anub arak herioc (guild dependent on how you do it) yes, minus this fight. Arcane is just to good, but....they said about buffing fire but I have the feeling it wont come near arcane.

[Jademist]

For anub arak herioc (guild dependent on how you do it) yes, minus this fight. Arcane is just to good, but....they said about buffing fire but I have the feeling it wont come near arcane.

They did talk about buffing fire but just a little bit and won't be at par with with Arcane, sadly.

I love Arcane. Been an Arcane mage since level 10 (it sucked levelling up but I was a nub lol)

[PvE_Mage]

when Blizzard announced FFB as our new level 80 spell I was SOOO disappointed; it was a complete let-down and Blizzard hasn't done anything to make it attractive to raiding.

for example, it should provide the 5% crit debuff automatically without anyone having to cast scorch.