Flamestrike spam

Ran a Heroic VH last night (couldn’t sleep, thought I’d do dailies but the call came out from a guild). It all went well, at least I beat the tank on the scoreboard, I even lived through all the fights. I think I understand the encounters well enough now.

Anyway, right at the end, while I was DEing the drops, my Magely Guildy tells me something I did know.

The dots on Flamestrike don’t stack (ok, I knew that bit, or at least assumed).

However, the dots on Flamestrike(8) & Flamestrike(9) do stack.

So he was suggesting for max AoE damage a rotation like this:

Living Bomb + Flamestrike(8) + Flamestrike(9) + Blizzard it on down.

This is generally what I do anyway, with the exception of the rank 8 Flamestrike.

Tank pulls, LB, I guestimate tanking position, cast Flamestrike and hope I got position right, then spam Blizzard.

Apart from anything else I love seeing the Flamestrike dots mixed in with the Blizzard damage in the scrolling combat text.

red, blue, red, red, red, blue, blue, blue, red etc…

Now being a Fire Mage at heart (did I ever cast Blizzard pre-WoLK?), I love to see this red text interspersed in all that yucky Frost damage.

So what’s the difference…?

OK, remember I am not a theorycrafter.. I couldn’t theorycraft my way out of grade 3 maths, but here I got having a punt at it…

Starting with the basic raw stats as shown on tooltips.

Fooltipping

What you need to know about this table.

• BlizSpam = Living Bomb and Blizzard only
• FSx1 = Living Bomb, Flamestrike(9) and Blizzard
• FSx2 =Living Bomb, Flamestrike(8) then Flamestrike(9) and Blizzard
• Calc columns are just the addition of the numbers.
• I used the max damage numbers from the tooltips.. maybe you are having a good day…

So in theory, you will get a:

• 36% increase in damage if you include a Flamestrike(9) in your AoE rotation vs. Blizzard alone.
• 61% increase in damage if you include a Flamestrike(8) and Flamestrike(9)  in your AoE rotation vs. Blizzard alone.
• 19% increase using both Flamestrikes vs. just using one.

An Average night out

On a more practical basis, I used my average numbers for each of the skills from my run last night (with a little fudging to make up the Flamestrike(8) numbers), and came up with this.  I haven’t taken Critical strikes into account, these are just plain average hits.

Numbers I used:

• Flamestrike Hit: (9) 1578, (8) 1245 (based on .789 damage of rank(9)
• Flamestrike Tick: (9) 578, (8) 459 (based on .795 damage of rank(9)
• Living Bomb Hit: 1552, Tick: 454
• Blizzard Tick: 751

So in theory, you will get a:

• 11% increase in damage if you include a Flamestrike(9) in your AoE rotation vs. Blizzard alone.
• 16% increase in damage if you include a Flamestrike(8) and Flamestrike(9)  in your AoE rotation vs. Blizzard alone.
• 5% increase using both Flamestrikes vs. just using one.

OK, so remembering I didn’t do anything smart like throw this through a real calculator, or pass it by Elitist Jerks (for all I know there is an entire thread there debunking this concept), but I think I might give it a go come Friday, and just see what happens.

Even based on the lore of averages a 16% increase is better than the lazy man’s blizzard till dead, and still a5% margin is better than just throwing down a Flamestrike(9) to start the whole AoE session.

Do you have time for all this?

My 1st thought was that I wouldn’t have enough time to get off the casts, but I would normally get 3 blizzards off in a trash combat even in a 25 man raid, and the above example is based on only 2 blizzards.

So it looks good for a bit of AoE spell rotation beyond pure Blizzard spam.

Assuming of course that all the mobs are sitting in the small Flamestrike radius, for both Flamestrikes.

So how would you cast it?

I figure a macro would be the best, one with a cast sequence.

This is for keyboard binders.

Basically:

• Normal clicking will cycle through the spells, and reset the macro after 16 seconds.
• Shift clicking will just cast Blizzard

#Show Blizzard

/castsequence reset=16 Living Bomb(3), Flamestrike(8) , Flamestrike(9), Blizzard

/cast [modifier:shift] Blizzard

Or if you are a mouse clicker:

• Normal clicking will cycle through the spells, and reset the macro after 16 seconds.
• Right clicking will just cast Blizzard

#Show Blizzard

/castsequence reset=16Living Bomb(3), Flamestrike(8) , Flamestrike(9), Blizzard

/cast [button:2] Blizzard

Anyway, enough of me creating misinformation to be spread around the web.

What do you think (or more importantly know)?

Gnomer and Out!

PS: thanks to Cynge for giving me the heads up on this.

PPS: Thanks to Lancealittle for appreciating my character name, and the way it magically sits with my new title. No matter how much Arioch thinks it’s a mouthful!

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http://gnomeaggedon.net/2009/05/05/flamestrike-spam/