Frostfire Bolt
From WoWWiki
| Frostfire Bolt | |
|---|---|
| |
| Usable by | |
| Class | Mage |
| Properties | |
| Type | Offensive |
| School | Frost & Fire |
| Cooldown | N/A |
| Other information | |
| Ranks | 2 |
| Related debuff | |
| |
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 | 12 75
|
| 2 | 14% base mana | 722 - 838 | 90 over 9 sec. | 80 | 15
|
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
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