Frostfire Bolt

Template:Wotlk

Frostfire Bolt
Frostfire Bolt Mage ability 30 yd range 16% of base mana n/a cooldown 3 sec cast 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.
Properties
Class	Mage
School	Frost & Fire
Cooldown	N/A
Related debuff
Magic Frostfire Bolt Movement slowed by 40%. X Fire damage every 3 sec. Duration: 9 seconds

[[Category:mage abilities]][[Category:mage abilities]]

Frostfire Bolt is a new mage ability coming with Wrath of the Lich King. Its primary purpose is to make an Elementalist spec (one with a balance of points between Frost and Fire) 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	16% base mana	629 - 731	60 over 9 sec.	75	12 75
2	16% base mana	722 - 838	90 over 9 sec.	80	?

Impact

Elementalist 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, 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 Elemental viable in raids.

It has, in fact, matched Elemental with Fire in terms of single-target DPS, and far outstrips Fire in terms of mana-efficiency when both specs are optimized for the role.