Focus Magic

[Unpala]

Hey guys
so yeah i was thinking here today what class and spec combo you would like to give Focus magic the most

i would probably give it to an Elemental Shaman since they can put out some pretty good crits

[Valanna]

Fire mages > shadow priests > anything that's left. Giving it to an ele shaman isn't very smart, since their crit coeff is only 1.5, while priests have 2, and mages have somewhere around 2 as well, it depends on ignite math, and I'm not gonna dig that up. In addition, shamans have 100% crit already on a spell they cast every 8 seconds. A fire mage or shadow priest will make the best use of it, and they will keep the 10s buff up on you 100% of the time.

[Elge]

Frostfiremage
Firemage
Shadowpriest
Elementalshaman
Balancedruid
Afflictionwarlock
Arcanemage
Demonologywarlock
Destrowarlock
Frostmage
Thats the prio list.

Basically every spec crits often enough to give you 100% uptime, so don't overestimate classes, give it to one of the highest DPS. It's much more usefull when cast on them then on that 4k DPS shadowpriest or arcane mage or whatever pollutes your group.

[Deleted]

I always gave it to:

1. fellow mages
2. boomkin
3. ele shaman
4. w/e is left

ps. havent been raiding my mage since early wotlk, so things might have changed

[Elge]

Fire mages > shadow priests > anything that's left. Giving it to an ele shaman isn't very smart, since their crit coeff is only 1.5, while priests have 2, and mages have somewhere around 2 as well, it depends on ignite math, and I'm not gonna dig that up. In addition, shamans have 100% crit already on a spell they cast every 8 seconds. A fire mage or shadow priest will make the best use of it, and they will keep the 10s buff up on you 100% of the time.

It's quite usefull for ele shamans thanks to Elemental Oath. Everytime they crit, they gain 2 stacks of clearcasting, so the next two spells do 10% more damage. More crits -> more clearcasting -> more EO -> more damage

[Swizzle]

It's quite usefull for ele shamans thanks to Elemental Oath. Everytime they crit, they gain 2 stacks of clearcasting, so the next two spells do 10% more damage. More crits -> more clearcasting -> more EO -> more damage

Except ele shaman DPS on live isn't competitive enough to warrant FM, assuming there are no other mages or warlocks (non-destro of course) to give the buff to first.

But seriously though, these threads pop up 5 times per content cycle and every time they've been locked. Why? Because there is no real math judging the exact value of the gained crit in terms of DPS gained between equally geared/skilled classes and all these threads devolve down to is bitching from one class to another.

[Elge]

There are maths. I won't provide you these, you can find them on EJ and the simcraft homepage, but there are results I am going to show you:

Spec Crit Scaling DPS-neutral Scaling
Frostfire 1.8613 26.585
Fire 1.6858 22.873
Shadow 1.5419 21.995
Elemental 1.3957 19.033
Balance 1.2512 17.273
Affliction 1.2487 15.851
Arcane 1.1548 14.899
Demon 1.1272 14.856
Destro 1.0391 13.519
Frost 0.7932 12.113

The last number is the DPS neutral scaling. As you can see, a FFB mage gains 26.585 DPS per 1000 DPS through Focus Magic.
If you are bored enough you can use these numbers to calculate the ~DPS gain for each player in your raid. But, if you take a second look, the DPS gains are marginal. A well geared/skilled firemage gains ~350 DPS from Focus Magic? Sweet, but won't speed up your kill by a noticable amount.

And really, if I would be raiding content where 350 DPS do matter, I wouldn't be here on MMOC answering questions of people who are too lazy to hit the Search Button on EJ.

[Deleted]

@Elge
Just curious, but is there any math for putting it on an Enhancement Shaman?

[klaps_05]

if you are 1+ mages in raid never, ever give to any other class - keep it in the house!

[Swizzle]

@Elge
Just curious, but is there any math for putting it on an Enhancement Shaman?

It would be between Elemental and Arcane, assuming the enhance shaman is close to the haste soft cap.

[Stirge]

FM is for mages. Whoever asks first if there's no more sky blue in the Grid. Healers approximately 98% of the time in random 5's. Where oh where is all the caster dps? ...probably too smart to run randoms.

[Xorz]

I facepalm every time the mages decide to circle jerk FM (2 fire and 1 arcane), when there are 2-3 shadow priests doing more damage than them.

In most cases FM should just go to the highest caster dps.

[Stirge]

Except that if the mages swap then all the mages get 6% crit, rather than they and another random caster getting 3% each.

[cooespooh]

Frostfiremage
Firemage
Shadowpriest
Elementalshaman
Balancedruid
Afflictionwarlock
Arcanemage
Demonologywarlock
Destrowarlock
Frostmage
Thats the prio list.

Basically every spec crits often enough to give you 100% uptime, so don't overestimate classes, give it to one of the highest DPS. It's much more usefull when cast on them then on that 4k DPS shadowpriest or arcane mage or whatever pollutes your group.

Yes, this, except take Frostfire Mage off the top. Frostfire is very low on the priority list, lower than Frost mages. Frost mages crit more, and they have Focus as well so they can actually continue the Focus chain. Frostfire Mages are the most selfish of the mage specs... and they are kinda not that intelligent since Frostfire pales in comparison to the other specs since it lacks that freakishly needed Torment the Weak talent. I would also put Shadow priests below most of the others.

EDIT: Actually... I'mma redo it.

The priority list should be...

Arcane Mage
Fire Mage
Frost Mage
Frostfire Mage
Balance Druid
ELemental Shaman
Destruction Warlock
Demo Warlock
Affliction Warlock
Shadow Priest
Healers
Enhancement Shamans
Retribution Paladins
Death Knights

[Beetlejuice]

Frostfire has a hell of a crit modifier. So assuming everyone on that list does same dps (not assuming that would make any kind of class priority list pointless anyway) it very well belongs to the top of that list. Of course in reality you wont slap it on a 5k dps ffb mage the same way you wont slap it on a 5k dps fire mage. But that is not the point of a class priority list.

[cooespooh]

Frostfire has a hell of a crit modifier. So assuming everyone on that list does same dps (not assuming that would make any kind of class priority list pointless anyway) it very well belongs to the top of that list. Of course in reality you wont slap it on a 5k dps ffb mage the same way you wont slap it on a 5k dps fire mage. But that is not the point of a class priority list.

It's not because of Frostfire's crit chance that they are lower on the priority list. It's because they are the only mage DPS spec without Focus Magic to provide to other mages to continue the chain.

[Swizzle]

It's not because of Frostfire's crit chance that they are lower on the priority list. It's because they are the only mage DPS spec without Focus Magic to provide to other mages to continue the chain.

You don't understand how priority lists work, do you?

[takolin]

Yes, this, except take Frostfire Mage off the top. Frostfire is very low on the priority list, lower than Frost mages. Frost mages crit more, and they have Focus as well so they can actually continue the Focus chain. Frostfire Mages are the most selfish of the mage specs... and they are kinda not that intelligent since Frostfire pales in comparison to the other specs since it lacks that freakishly needed Torment the Weak talent. I would also put Shadow priests below most of the others.

EDIT: Actually... I'mma redo it.

The priority list should be...

Arcane Mage
Fire Mage
Frost Mage
Frostfire Mage
Balance Druid
ELemental Shaman
Destruction Warlock
Demo Warlock
Affliction Warlock
Shadow Priest
Healers
Enhancement Shamans
Retribution Paladins
Death Knights

/sigh

FFB scales the best of all casters with crit and therefor should get FM, though I haven't seen one since Heroic Anub'arak on 25 man.

Also arcane doesn't scale that well with crit (only 50% crit damage increase via talents) and really shouldn't be so high on the list.

And balance druids who're soft critcapped will drop lower on the list.

I facepalm every time the mages decide to circle jerk FM (2 fire and 1 arcane), when there are 2-3 shadow priests doing more damage than them.

In most cases FM should just go to the highest caster dps.

Well me and the other fire mage are usually top dps closely followed by a lock or 2 so there's no real issue.

Also people care more for their own e-peen rather than the greater good for the raid, specially when you're pugging. Now if you have a guild, you can try to make a decent argument about it, but don't get your hopes up in a pug.

[Seikilos]

/sigh

FFB scales the best of all casters with crit and therefor should get FM, though I haven't seen one since Heroic Anub'arak on 25 man.

Also arcane doesn't scale that well with crit (only 50% crit damage increase via talents) and really shouldn't be so high on the list.

And balance druids who're soft critcapped will drop lower on the list.




Well me and the other fire mage are usually top dps closely followed by a lock or 2 so there's no real issue.

Also people care more for their own e-peen rather than the greater good for the raid, specially when you're pugging. Now if you have a guild, you can try to make a decent argument about it, but don't get your hopes up in a pug.

Arcane and Fire both have the same crit damage bonus. +50% which means they're both critting for 200%. frost goes up to 250%, and frostfire build get i believe 300% on frostfire bolt.

the way i personally think about who to give FM to is how OFTEN they're going to crit, not how much they're going to crit for, so i can get 100% uptime. i used to always trade it with other mages but i recently started sharing the love with other classes since i stopped caring about crit as much. arcane is the only mage spec that doesn't care about crit. frostbolt will only do competitive damage if it crits and fire needs hot streaks. crit for arcane is nice, but not necessary.

in the case of how often they'll crit, i do like to put it on an elemental shaman since they're guaranteed to crit every 8 seconds. that guarantees 100% uptime if they're using lava burst on cooldown (which they normally remember to do), and even then, RNG isn't mean enough that they wont get at least one lightning bolt crit in between. also keep in mind that lava burst gets a pretty big crit damage bonus as well at 274% if i remember correctly, which is more than anything but frostfire.

so i like to put it on elemental shaman and then moonkin. in raids i never seem to be without one of those two so it never goes past that. in five-mans i dont really care. buffs are pretty much useless nowadays in heroics and 3% crit wont make a difference.

IMO, focus magic needs to be buffed anyway. the new spell that locks get that functions a similar way (where they get buffed when something happens to their linked friend) is way better and isn't spec-specific. i'm not asking for the exact same buff, but i do think that something we have to talent into should be better than +3% crit only if we're not soloing, and for a spec that doesn't rely on crit anyway (which is also why i don't understand arcane potency being an arcane spell, and icy veins being a frost spell. seems backwards).

[Patrickstarr]

What's a "Frostfire" mage?