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.