11-28-2007, 12:14 AM
Quote:Misdirection is the next 3 sources of hunter damage are moved to the tank. I play the odds here and race with the hunter+tank on damage using AB even as the tank is running in to engage the boss. The -40% to threat means I should never win this race. I would never dare to try this with fire or frost because of misses on their part and crits on mine. This move/trick is one of the few mage advantages in TBC.
Frankly, I'm not sure that the 1500 or so damage you get from an Arcane Blast matters at all in terms of DPS on a boss with 4 million HP. Or rather, that it outweighs the half a fireball you gain from starting your scorch stack earlier. Misdirection is...pretty strong, I really don't see how it's possible for a salv'ed mage to pull aggro from a MD'ed tank with just scorch. Even assuming your hunter doesn't crit anything, that's 3000 to 4500 threat depending on gear level, and scorch simply isn't going to overcome that even after stacking Fire Vulnerability to full.
Obviously this is different in 5-mans, as I said, where you may not have salv, and where the hunter may not be hit-capped, and so on, but in a raid all of the elements are present, including most probably another hunter with Misdirection, and so threat on a single target basically stops being an issue for bosses that don't deaggro regularly.
Quote:As I said, all junk points. I PvP a lot and utility to me is PvP. Lots of frost mages here and enhancement shaman that have frost shock not on diminishing return. 20% reflect is huge fun. 5pts in improved frostbolt is also utility and has some limited raiding use as you point out. All I wanted to do in my post was point out more choices with the junk points since it will be the only differences between us new cookie cutter PvE fire mages. As we both agree, the differences here are very small and how much utility is in the eye of the individual mage's play style.
Oh, I completely agree that it's pretty much up to individual choice in how you want to build your fire/IV spec. Frost Warding is great in PvP, and so is Improved Frost Nova. That said, the question you and I are responding to is, "what is the optimal raid dps spec post 2.3.2?" and I would argue that Al'ar and Illidan phase 2 strongly back the case that a spec with 5/5 Improved Frostbolt is clearly optimal for raiding.