Frostfire unorthodoxy - elementalism and how to spam it

[algol]

Was looking at a few things about the new skills, and I noticed that for an Unholy DK tank you can (should) have Desecration up constantly. Among other things, it is a snare aura (a la earthbind totem, but on a tank). This made me think of the Mage's Torment the Weak talent - 12% dmg vs snared targets. Add Ebon Plague's 13% to that, and you have a more or less given 25% damage for mages for 18 points in Arcane. For 18 points in Fire, we get the 10% crit Imp Scorch debuff (which, with the Glyph, 3 mages could apply on a single cast each with room for error since that would give 9 of 5 stacks).

This would be megalulz for some AoE spamming right there, or really anything with points in Arcane & Fire, but I wanted to also see how I can abuse the new double-dipping Frostfire Bolt. Here is what I came up with at a preliminary run (room for a few tweaks, and enough frostbolt / firebolt centered talents that some choices are nice but tangental to the primary intent - megadoom frostfire spam).

Basic team concept is Unholy DK + 3x Frostfire Mage + non-MB healer (or insert healer of your choice, haven't thought of anything majorly synergistic yet but Resto Shamans are great for the usual reasons).

Frostfire Mage - 18/35/18

This gives the following goodies:

6% +hit
9% +crit, 19% after imp scorch debuff (use glyph, multiple mages --> 19% always)
80 resist
clearcasting
combustion
20% refund on crit
blast wave for KB lulz
icy veins
10% spirit
10% stun chance for no apparent reason (sorry, lots of filler if you're not speccing for fireball / frostbolt)

It also gives a grand total of 42% +dmg (some school-specific), with an extra 6% on targets below 35% health. Also, and the part many of us were probably thinking of immediately - it gives igniting, 200% dmg criticals (i.e. 280% of a normal hit).

Do I get a cookie?

[algol]

Revised to 18/38/15 after noticing that Empowered Fire does affect frostfire after all:

http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=of0i0...ohduVuohZMIcco

Also note that the bonus 42% functions after spell damage etc is applied, so you could look at it as 42% more of your spell damage + an average 327.6 from the base damage at rank 2.

I'm not sure how this interacts with Empowered Fire, but I believe damage multipliers act on the final calculated value, so it would also be amplified. This means Empowered Fire contributes 21.3% of your spell damage instead, and is absolutely worth taking. This does leave the build with no -threat beyond popping invisibility, so the DKs ability to tank comes into question.

If you prefer, it makes Frostfire Bolt receive 143% of your +dmg with Empowered Fire (1.42 * (3/3.5 + .15)), as well as the average 327.6 from base (at that coefficient, equal to another 229.1 +dmg).

Since Frostfire Bolt itself snares, the original DK tank isn't precisely necessary (FFB being single-target), but you still get the +25% damage for IAE spam.

[algol]

And probably the last part of my analysis, barring significant talent revisions. This is an extremely straightforward computation mostly designed to demonstrate Frostfire's usefulness as a "spam" nuke in comparison to the more traditional options. Here is some data:



Key:

min - minimum of base damage range
max - maximum of base damage range
avg - average of min & max base damage
cast (tal) - talented cast time
mana % - percent of base mana to cast
mana # - numeric mana cost at 80
coeff (tal) - talented damage coefficient
build - talent spec used
*dmg - damage multiplier from talent spec
*crit - critical damage multiplier
crit% - additional % crit from talents
<cast> - expectation value of damage for normal cast
<crit> - expectation value of damage for critical cast
<dmg> - expectation value of damage for average cast
<dps> - expectation value for dps IGNORING GCD / HASTE / ETC!!!

Again, this is an extremely naive computation that neglects many aspects of a build. No DPS-increasing rotations are used, no "damage before OOM" is calculated, binary vs. non-binary spells are ignored, and arcane is by far the most inaccurate since it has lots of "tricks" beyond just spamming missiles (and the GCD is by far the lowest % of an AM spam rotation too). Here are the (quick and dirty) talent builds used for FB/FB/AM:

Fireballer
Frostbolter
Arcane Missile...person

I believe that at a basic level, this shows that Frostfire is an interesting alternative for the single-target mage. Particularly, it is roughly comparable to Fireball (slightly more average damage, bigger crits) when used as a spam spell. A little gotcha, though - Torment the Weak was rolled into all four builds, and only Frostbolt & Frostfire Bolt apply snares without resorting to other spells or other players, e.g. the Death Knight's Desecration. (Yeah...you can't usually snare bosses, but that does affect all four spells equally since all benefited from it as a constant multiplier.) Looking at the more self-sufficient nukes, Frostfire Bolt as calculated shows a gain of over 200 DPS above Frostbolt. Yes, that depends on your assumed values representing gear, on haste, on what the weather's like that day...but it's interesting.