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Frostfire Bolt

From WoWWiki

Frostfire Bolt
  • Frostfire Bolt
  • 3 sec cast
  • 40 yd range
  • 14% of base mana
  • Launches a bolt of frostfire at the enemy, causing X to Y Fire damage, slowing movement speed by 40% and causing an additional Z Fire damage over 9 sec. If the target is more vulnerable to Frost damage, this spell will cause Frost instead of Fire damage.
Usable by
ClassMage
Properties
TypeOffensive
SchoolFrost & Fire
CooldownN/A
Other information
Ranks2
Related debuff
  • Magic
  • Frostfire Bolt
  • Movement slowed by 40%. X Fire damage every 3 sec.
  • Duration: 9 seconds

Frostfire Bolt is a Mage ability that came with Wrath of the Lich King. Its primary purpose is to make an Elementalist specialization (one with a balance of points between the Frost and Fire Mage trees) viable for PvE content (see Mage builds). To serve that purpose, it gains benefits from talents that affect both Frost and Fire damage.

Rank table

Rank Mana Cost Damage Damage over time Level Cost
1 14% base mana 629 - 731 60 over 9 sec. 75 12g 75s
2 14% base mana 722 - 838 90 over 9 sec. 80 15g

Impact

Elementalist talent builds had never quite achieved a position of PvE competitiveness in terms of damage dealing when compared to either the Frost or Fire trees. Previously, Elementalist Mages would use Fireball in raid situations due to its naturally higher damage, seeing half of all their talent investment (that in Frost) go down the drain and being unable to compete with fully specced Fire Mages. That changed with the introduction of Frostfire Bolt in Patch 3.0.2.

The Bolt, in essence, gains the benefits of both Frost and Fire damage talents (with the exception of restricted ones like Improved Fireball or Empowered Frostbolt). Now, Elementalist Mages can benefit from Ice Shards and Ignite simultaneously, for instance, which is a massive increase to their DPS. Frostfire Bolt's stated goal from Blizzard was to make Elementalist builds viable in raids.

It closely tags Fireball-based specs, but not beating them, in terms of single-target DPS when in an optimised specialisation (see Mage builds), and far outstrips Fireball in terms of mana-efficiency when both specs are optimized for the role. Due to its powerful scaling, it was referred to as the Jesusbolt in early beta testing.

External links