Fire Mage AQ40 BiS list

[Domzori 0]

Created this list in order to help my guild and am looking for some more input on it as well as any information on bosses spell resistances in AQ40.

Stats

This list is designed for bosses and targets level 63+ that have standard raid boss resistances(145 fire and frost resist) with the following things kept in mind.

• Fireball has a 100% spell power coefficient meaning there isn’t a diminishing return when stacking large amounts of spell power like with Frostbolt.
• 1% crit is worth approximately 14 Spell Power for fire as opposed to 10 spell power for frost.
• 59.5 int = 1% crit
• Spell hit cap is 16%, we get 6% from talents and 2% from ZG enchants so we need 8% on gear.
• 10 spell pen is worth approximately a 2.5% dps increase on average against targets whose resistances are not fully reduced to 0 by debuffs and talents.
• Spell pen cap should be 60 from gear with Arcane Subtlety and Curse of Elements applied however I am aware this may not be the case for AQ40 bosses on Anathema and some testing is required to determine if a spell pen heavy build is better suited towards AQ40 on Anathema.
• Basic spell pen conversion chart
• Stat priority for this list: Spell hit to cap > Spell power > Spell crit > Spell pen > Int

Gear

Head: Mish’undare, Circlet Of The Mind Flayer

Stats: 35 spell power, 2% spell crit

Dropped by Nefarian

 

Neck: Amulet of Vek'nilash

Stats: 27 spell power, 1% spell crit

Dropped by Emperor Vek’nilash

 

Shoulder: Enigma Shoulderpads(T2.5)

Stats: 30 spell power, 10 spell pen

Requires: Qiraji Bindings of Dominance(from Viscidus and Huhuran), 2 Idols of Death, 5 Stone and Bronze Scarabs, and neutral with the Brood of Nozdormu.

 

Back: Cloak of the Devoured

Stats: 30 spell power, 1% spell hit

Dropped by C’thun

 

Chest: Enigma Robes(T2.5)

Stats: 39 spell power, 1% spell crit, 20 spell pen

Requires: Husk of the Old God(from C’thun), 2 Idols of the Sun, 5 Gold and Clay Scarabs, and honored with the Brood of Nozdormu.

 

Wrist: Rockfury Bracer

Stats: 27 spell power, 1% spell hit

From the quest Stalwart’s Battlegear

 

Hands: Dark Storm Gauntlets

Stats: 37 spell power, 1% spell hit

Dropped by C’thun

 

Waist: Eyestalk Waist Cord

Stats: 41 spell power, 1% spell crit

Dropped by C’thun

 

Legs: Leggings of the Black Blizzard             

Stats: 41 spell power, 1% spell crit

Dropped by Ossirian the Unscarred(AQ20)

 

Feet: Enigma Boots(T2.5)

Stats: 28 spell power, 1% spell hit

Requires: Qiraji Bindings of Dominance(from Viscidus and Huhuran), 2 Idols of the Sun, 5 Silver and Crystal Scarabs, and neutral with the Brood of Nozdormu.

 

Ring 1: Ring of the Fallen God

Stats: 37 spell power, 1% spell hit

Quest reward from turning in Eye of C’thun

 

Ring 2: Ritssyn's Ring of Chaos

Stats: 25 spell power, 1% spell crit

Low drop chance from trash mobs in AQ40

 

Trinket 1: Neltharion's Tear

Stats: 44 spell power, 2% spell hit

Dropped By Nefarian

 

Trinket 2: This varies by fight but for the most part Mind Quickening Gem is by far the best most often.

Stats: 33% faster cast time for 20 seconds, 5 min CD

Dropped by Vaelastrasz the Corrupt(BWL)

Note this trinket puts other CD based trinkets such as Talisman of Ephemeral Power and Zandalarian Hero Charm on a mini CD of 30 seconds meaning you can not boost your cast speed whilst having the bonus spell power from such trinkets.

 

Main Hand: Sharpened Silithid Femur

Stats: 72 spell power, 1% spell crit

Dropped by Viscidus

 

Off Hand: Royal Scepter of Vek'lor

Stats: 20 spell power, 1% spell hit, 1% spell crit

Dropped by Emperor Vek’lor

 

Wand: Max fire damage Dragofinger is BiS but as far as raid drops go Wand of Qiraji Nobility is the next best thing.

Stats: 19 spell power

Dropped by killing Lord Kri last when fighting the Bug Family

 

Total Stats

 

552 spell power before enchants

656 spell power after all spell power enchants.

 

8% spell hit before enchants and talents

16%(cap) after all applicable enchants and talents.

 

9% spell crit from gear

 

30 spell pen or 7.5% more dps on average against appropriate targets

 

Final Note

The key to this build is the hit gear, other pieces can be replaced based on preference between spell power, pen, or crit but if you lack the high end hit gear you are better off sticking with bloodvine set. Especially if you are 300 tailoring and have the extra 2% crit from the set bonus.

[Ram 11]

Try full t2, cthun cloak, aq40 2h staff, bwl hit ring, cthun ring, tear, mind quickening gem. Do almost the same damage and be geared much faster.

515 spell dmg with enchants, 4% crit, 7% hit on gear which will leave you with 98% hit in the end. Plus for fire the proc equals at least a static 5% damage buff (50% cast time of a fireball saved at 10% proc rate = 5% dmg buff), increases ignite uptime chance and with the set bonus you always have more range on aoe spells and therefore hit more targets -> more dmg done. For frost the t2 proc is a 3,33% dmg buff. Overall your mana reg in full t2 is better.

Fireball 12 does 596 to 761 dmg, average 678 dmg. With 515 spell dmg you get an average non crit fb of 678+515=1193. The static 5% dmg buff does not only count for spell dmg, it also counts for the base dmg of fireball, so we get (678+515)*1,05=1252 dmg on average non crit. Now compare that to the full AQ bis fireball dmg: 678+656=1334 -> 82 non crit dmg difference between full t2 and aq bis but lots of more time until you get full aq bis.

On bosses with spell pen needed (heard it does not exist on elysium) use the trinket from warsong gulch, ring of swarming thought and/or ring from alterac valley.

[quasexort 4]

AQ40 bosses only have like 75 fire resists so you don’t need spell pen.  Since you don’t need spell pen I’d use rank 10 shoudlers/boots combo.  Also, I don’t agree with your stat priority would rather have crit than hit.  14 sp = 1% crit how did you come up with this?

I don’t agree with the T2 argument.  T2 might be easy to get because no one wants full T2 but you lose a lot of crit/sp.  Crit is so nice for fire mages it keeps the ignite rolling wearing full T2 you lose like 5% crit so on top of losing the 82 damage per fireball.  Also, it’s easy to gear even if you don’t have BIS gear.  Bloodvine is amazing and you can get that with just gold, rockfury takes like 1-2 weeks to farm, T2.5 is easier to get than T2 becasue it always drops and it's only good for warlocks/mages/rogues/warriors.  and you really want to get mana igniting or cthun belt heading into naxx.  There’s like no good belts in naxx, T3 belt sucks.

Budget setup for someone who can’t get all the godly items:

T2.5 helm

AQ20 neck

T2.5 shoudlers

Cloak of consumption

Bloodvine chest

Rockfury bracers

T2 gloves

Mana igniting cord (AB rep belt if you can’t get this)

Bloodvine pants

Bloodvine boots

AQ40 trashring / Ebonroc ring / Ring of spellpower (which ever you can get since they are all kind of rare)

AQ20 ring

MQG

ZHC / 2% crit trinket

Mageblade (drops all the time on Anathema)

AV offhand

This set of items is relatively easy to get and is very solid and you can pretty much upgrade whatever you want instead of forcing yourself into itemizing to wear full T2.

Assuming you get AQ40 trash ring you get 493 SP, 7% hit, 10% crit (8% without trinket)

[Domzori 0]

2 hours ago, quasexort said:

14 sp = 1% crit how did you come up with this?

Several mage guides I've read put forth that 14SP is approximately 1% crit for fire and the addon Theorycraft seems to agree with that number for me.

Quote

Also, I don’t agree with your stat priority would rather have crit than hit.

My reasoning for hit over crit is that hit makes crit more effective, to hit is calculated before to crit meaning if you miss you can't crit or in other words every missed spell is potentially a missed crit.

 

2 hours ago, quasexort said:

AQ40 bosses only have like 75 fire resists so you don’t need spell pen.  Since you don’t need spell pen I’d use rank 10 shoudlers/boots combo

In my experience and apparently in the experience of others(check this thread out) partial resists still occur on bosses that should have their spell resistances reduced to 0 by curse of elements. And even if you ignore spell pen entirely T2.5 has more SP anyways I don't see why you would want to use the PvP gear bearing in mind my only concern here is which gear is BiS not the ease of acquisition for said gear.

 

5 hours ago, Ram said:

Try full t2, cthun cloak, aq40 2h staff, bwl hit ring, cthun ring, tear, mind quickening gem. Do almost the same damage and be geared much faster.

I raid with someone who uses a full T2 build and it seems fairly inconsistent, sometimes he keeps up with the rest of us and sometimes he just falls off.

[quasexort 4]

You will always get partial resists on bosses because they are level 63 and they get level based resistance which I think is somewhere between 5-10 per level, so 15-30 resistance that you cannot penetrate which will cause the partial resists.  I'm sure someone could verify this by wearing as much spell pen as they can get and seeing that the frequency of partial resists remains the same.  There's also a macro that shows how much resist as mob has.

So, ignoring spell pen T2.5 shoudlers/boots give 1% hit and 58 sp, rank 10 shoulders/boots give 1% crit 53 sp and 1% hit, so you’re trading 5 sp for 1% crit if you use T2.5 shoulders/boots over rank 10 shoulders/boots.

For the 14SP = 1% crit I’ll post about that later the math is pretty involved when trying to approximate how much SP is equivalent to 1% crit.  You must consider the fact that a crit will potentially keep a 5 stack ignite rolling and guarantee another ignite tick.

[Undertanker 88]

1 hour ago, quasexort said:

5-10 per level, so 15-30 resistance that you cannot penetrate which will cause the partial resists.

It's 5 per level, which is why lvl 63 mobs / bosses should have 15 Holy Resist,  as only their base level resist is in game.

The base 140 fire/frost/shadow for bosses and base 70 nature resist, is this specific to Vanilla Gaming only and all 4 schools have a default of 75?

[Domzori 0]

From the thread I linked to earlier these are the values in the data base for various bosses spell resistances. To my knowledge standard boss resistances in vanilla should be fire, frost, and shadow 145, nature 75, and 15 holy.

[Kaben 0]

Replace the Enigma shoulders and boots with Rank 10 Pvp shoulders and the rank 7 PvP boots for the true bis list. You lose like 5 spellpower but get 1% crit from the shoulders so its clearly better.

[Undertanker 88]

Yeah, what the hell is up with those Nature Resist numbers?

[Domzori 0]

27 minutes ago, Kaben said:

Replace the Enigma shoulders and boots with Rank 10 Pvp shoulders and the rank 7 PvP boots for the true bis list. You lose like 5 spellpower but get 1% crit from the shoulders so its clearly better.

I disagree, you lose 28 spell power if you take that setup instead of T2.5 which I would take over 1% crit not to mention the spell pen you get from T2.5 which seems useful in AQ40. Even if you take rank 12 boots instead of 7 you are still losing 22 spell power which I would rather have then 1% crit.

[Kaben 0]

Just now, Domzori said:

I disagree, you lose 28 spell power if you take that setup instead of T2.5 which I would take over 1% crit not to mention the spell pen you get from T2.5 which seems useful in AQ40. Even if you take rank 12 boots instead of 7 you are still losing 22 spell power which I would rather have then 1% crit.

No you dont. You lose 5 spell power becuase you get 23 spellpower from the 2 set pvp setbonus. Therefor its better.

[Ram 11]

With full t2 you lose crit compared to full bis, that is true. However you increase your crit chance compared to full bis gear because statistically you can cast 5% more fireballs in the same time (10% proc rate and 1,5s cast time from global CD saved = half fireball = 0,5*10%). Further the assumption that crit is the most important factor to keep ignite running is also not true. More casts done per 4 seconds of the ignite buff has a much bigger impact. The formula for ignite uptime is: 1-(1-chance to hit and crit)^(number of casts done). One example: mage A does scorch with 20% crit. Scorch can hit 2,67 times per 4 seconds. With lags let's say 2,6 times. Now put that info the formula: 1-(1-0,2)^2,6=0,44 aka 44% Chance to crit in 4s. I am not using 2 casts per 4s here because all mages have a little offset during their casts so it can happen that you cast 3 scorches per 4s and even if you solo scorch this is that will happen.

Now the same with a fireball  and 20% crit (3s cast time at least 1s fly time, so only one per 4s): 1-(1-0,2)^1=0,2 aka 20% chance. You can play around with crit and you will find out you would need 24% additional crit chance to have the same chance to crit within 4s as if you cast 2,6x scorch.

 

[quasexort 4]

Ok let’s say one mage has 8/8 T2 and another mage doesn’t.  Over 60 seconds the mage without 8/8 T2 will cast 20 fireballs.  The mage with 8/8 T2 will cast 21 fireballs since with 8/8 T2 your cast speed is effectively 0.9*3 + 0.1*1.5 = 2.85, and 60/2.85 = 21.  So, let’s say the mage without 8/8 T2 has 25% chance to crit and the 8/8 T2 mage has 20% chance to crit.  Then on average the mage without 8/8 T2 will crit 5 times on those 20 casts and the 8/8 T2 mage will crit 4.2 times on those 21 casts.  So the mage with 8/8 T2 gets an extra cast that has an 80% chance of not criting, even if the extra cast does crit they still match the mage without 8/8 T2.  I don’t see how giving up 5% crit to use 8/8 T2 would make the ignite uptime better.

[Ram 11]

1 hour ago, quasexort said:

Ok let’s say one mage has 8/8 T2 and another mage doesn’t.  Over 60 seconds the mage without 8/8 T2 will cast 20 fireballs.  The mage with 8/8 T2 will cast 21 fireballs since with 8/8 T2 your cast speed is effectively 0.9*3 + 0.1*1.5 = 2.85, and 60/2.85 = 21.  So, let’s say the mage without 8/8 T2 has 25% chance to crit and the 8/8 T2 mage has 20% chance to crit.  Then on average the mage without 8/8 T2 will crit 5 times on those 20 casts and the 8/8 T2 mage will crit 4.2 times on those 21 casts.  So the mage with 8/8 T2 gets an extra cast that has an 80% chance of not criting, even if the extra cast does crit they still match the mage without 8/8 T2.  I don’t see how giving up 5% crit to use 8/8 T2 would make the ignite uptime better.

My comment about ignite uptime was mainly about the concept of "having more casts > having more crit" for ignite uptime. In your example the t2 bonus OFC does not offer as much uptime as full aq bis (I never said t2 was better, I only said it was almost as good). In your example the crit per 4s chance in full bis would be 25%, with t2 only 20,7%. Having only one mage in the raid to do the ignite is, of course, ridiculous. In a more realistic environment with some world buffs (let's say only Ony/nef buff 10% crit) and 6 mages in the raid it would look like this: t2 guys have 30% crit, full bis 35%. Two of the mages in each squad scorch (2,67 casts per 4s for both teams) and the other 4 fireball (1 cast per 4s for aq bis and 4/(1+2,85)=1,04 casts for t2). For the aq bis guys you get 98% Chance for a crit and for the t2 guys you get 97% chance to crit in 4s (equation: 1-(1-critchance)^(4*fireball casts per 4s + 2*2,6). Combustion is not taken into account here and the 4% extra crit from talented scorch are bring ignored.

Let's go back to the example you picked up. Full aq bis mages will do 20*(1+0.5*0.25) = 22.5 times normal fireball damage (ignoring ignite here) in the given time ans full t2 mages will do 21*(1+0.5*0.20) = 23.1 times normal fireball damage. 0,6 times normal fireball difference. In my very first post you can see that the t2 fireball should hit for around 1193 non crit and the full bis one should be 1334 non crit average. That is a 22.5*1 334-23.1*1 193 = 2456.7 damage difference, which equals 41 dps over those 60s (but do not forget that you will insta pyro as soon as you get the t2 proc). Ignoring insta pyro after t2 proc and multiple procs you see why I wrote t2 was only almost as good as full aq bis, but again it is not like full t2 was super bad compared to full aq bis. 

[Ram 11]

I see your argument that giving up 5% crit for 8/8 was not worth it, however you ignore the chance of more than one proc in a given fight. Statistically speaking my argument is not weak because you would notice the flat 10% proc chance only if you count the fireballs cast and procs for several raids (>1000 fireballs). In reality what happens is either you have proc luck, you have the average proc rate or you have no procs at all. And this can happen any time on any mob. Did you ever ask yourself why e.g. melees use proc based weapons/Hand of justice?