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Comment by 8010

Great in Pvp. Not only does this skill have shorter casting time than Fireball or Frostbolt, Scorch does not have travel time so you can hide behind a tree or something and keep yourself in disguise. -Scorch Spammer-

Comment by starkill

Scorch is great for pvp because if you spec fire you can get fire vunerbility on your target then cast fireball and do crazy damage not to mention its short cast time and good amount of damage it does on its own.

Comment by 9250

Most fire mages open up on a polymorphed target with pyroblast followed by fire blast, but you can actually do more damage by adding a scorch before the fire blast. Since pyroblast takes a little while to travel to the target, scorch ends up hitting around the same time as the pyro, and then also the fire blast. This is just a handy little trick to get a little more frontload damage that I never even thought about until a mage friend of mine told me about it.

Comment by 49114

When you have attained the full Imp Scorch talent damage buff, do you only have to cast one Scorch every 15 sec to maintain the full buff?

Comment by Karis

Scorch is a very useful spell and is wonderful especially at upper levels when mages start adding lots of +damage gear to their character. It becomes extremely efficent and wonderful dps for mana used.

Comment by 68185

Scorch is a much better spell than fireball as your main repeat spell, in raids, stacking 5 fire vunerabilities from scorch and then POM pyro'ing can result in an amazing amount of damage.

The best thing about Scorch is it's low casting time, it allows you much more freedom than if you were to use fireball, Most spells cast by mobs are 2 seconds long, meaning with scorch, you don't have to cancel your current spell before you counter them, whereas with fireball, you could have wasted a load of time casting half a fireball, not only that, but it gives you a much quicker response time to react to the what the enemy is doing, in PVP it also gives the enemy less chance to react to you! Counterspelling, kicking or reflecting a 1.5 second cast is much harder than a 3 second cast and with scorch, you can keep your distance by throwing in a blink or frost nova between casts, where if you had been using fireball, they would have reached you by that time.

Also, 'officially' 2 Scorch casts do not equal the same damage as 1 fireball but as these are two seperate spells you're practically DOUBLING your crit chance, aswell as Scorch's 3 point talent affecting ALL fire spells, increasing the damage from the PoM Pyro's and fire blasts you'll be throwing in there, where as spending 7 more talent points into fireball just to increase it's own damage.

Aswell as doubling your crit chance it's also less risky, if a scorch gets resisted, you've lost 1.5 seconds, if a fireball gets resisted, you've lost 3. if a scorch crits when you've got high aggro, you should be okay, if a fireball crits, you're screwed, also with spell reflection from warriors or bosses/mobs, if you have a scorch thrown in your face, you're okay, where a fireball would have done more damage to you.

All in all, Fireball only appears better if you're not a very good mage and just compare the dps, but closer inspection shows that scorch is a much better spell, aswell as scorch costing a lot less mana.

Comment by Cross88

Does the added fire damage granted by scorch carry over into wand fire damage?

Comment by 33644

would like to add as arcane blast scorch is great sniper spell whers you enemy has to find you first

many times in bgs ive jused this an invisabilaty to pop op some where im un seen an sstart nuking people you be amased howe fun it is cuss your enemy really is like... HUH? before he is dead

Comment by 171419

Scorch is an overlooked but useful tool while soloing, especially in the early/mid levels.

You'll often end up using Frost Nova during most solo leveling fights to give yourself a chance to gain distance and nuke some more. However, Frost Nova is extremely susceptible to being broken by direct damage attacks, so you usually won't see the full root duration once you start to renuke.

I have found that if I skip Fireball/Pyroblast/etc. and use Scorch instead, the tiny amounts of damage seem to be much less likely to break Frost Nova. In fact, it usually runs the full 8 seconds. This allows you to to Frost Nova, step just outside melee range, and spam Scorch with almost no fear.

If you're quick with your fingers & lucky with lag, you can get 5 Scorches in before the root expires. Alternatively, you can usually fire off 1 Fireball and break it immediately (sometimes I've gotten 2 Fireballs in, but very rarely).

Assume 700 spell damage (hey, we're still leveling), and let's just assume max ranks and some random talent points because, eh, I'm already looking at them in another tab:

Fireball: 889 + (1.15 * 700) = 1694 *ice shatters*, 425 mana
Scorch: * 5 = 3310, 900 mana, enemy is now taking +15% fire damage

So you do about twice the damage, and use about twice the mana, with Scorch. But it's all spent without being beaten on or having to take evasive manoeuvres. Note that this simple calculation doesn't take resistances into account, nor the fact that you're casting more spells and so increase the chance of a crit occurring, which triggers Ignite (if you're specced) and Ignite ticks have been know to have issues instabreaking Frost Nova. I probably also forgot a bunch of talents that could tweak the numbers.

Perhaps someone will come along and blow this apart with a set of charts and graphs soon, but in my experience, this works really well! :]

Comment by 163899

Much like warlocks searing pain, only with a not so misleading name.

Comment by 431814

a BK ability. Wastes time, terrible damage, why would you even consider using this?

Comment by 464789

Scorch is insane for Fire/Shatter PVP mages.

This deals both alot of damage, and has a chance of triggering Hot Streak

Comment by elitearthas

GC: (and yes it's a temporary aberration that scorch is better than fireball).

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/t/26859187949/cataclysm-s-frost-fire-mages/

rofl another reason to use scorch while pvp'ing as fire

Comment by Oakenshadow

Combine this spell with the 2 talents from 4.0.1: Improved Scorch, then Firestarter, these talents make this spell incredibly powerful and very vital.

Comment by 645062

Competitive dps to Fireball for fire mages.

Will replace the fireball spell for Fire mages at 85 before tier 11 gear obtained..

and will be used almost as much as Fireball with tier 11..as spamming Fireball will get you oom very fast.

Plus: less cast time= more spells = more crits = more Hot Streak procs = more dps

Comment by tarthur1

I'm Arcane so I will compare this to Arcane Blast.

Arcane Blast (based on the toolip from Wowhead) does 416 DPS at 100 spell power (I'm just making things as simple as possible). Scorch, on the other hand, does 733 DPS at the same spellpower.

With this information alone, for Arcane, this would be a better spell than Arcane Blast and the like. However, what you're missing out on for this spell is the Arcane Charges, which leads to less AoE potential (Arcane Barrage) and less burst damage (Arcane Missiles; it does 1053 DPS at 100 spellpower. Yes, you will still proc it with this spell, you just won't ever get the power boost).

In my opinion, this spell is best in the few circumstances where it's best for the mage to move constantly (The Nexus' final boss comes to mind first, but I'm sure there are others: the DPS lost from the casting speed reduction and/or jumping contantly during the fight to avoid it just seem easily outweighed by the simplicity of running around while spamming this). Because of this, and the fact that usually when I feel the need to only cast a few spells during small bursts of movement, I find Ice Floes to be a better choice from this tier. It allows the mage to continue to build Arcane Charges and use Arcane Missiles for that few moments of mevement, assuming those moments are about a minute apart. Plus, Ice Floes applies to Polymorph, etc. so there is just a tad more utility to it. Presence of Mind is generally more just a DPS boost, but also, in itself, applies to a wider range of spells.

In the end, as many of the talents are designed to be, this is more of a preference thing instead of a "which is better" sort of deal. Scorch is great, and I sometimes just switch to it if I'm not in the mood to think, since Ice Floes does take just a moment of my mental capacity (which at times, I'm just not up for). Other times, I find Ice Floes to be better when I need to cast more than one spell (which is usually the case), and in these cases, PoM leaves me dead in the water for that other couple seconds while I move. Sure, I could Arcane Barrage, but I'm likely wanting to save the Charges if I only have one or two stored up; maybe Fire Blast is on cooldown. The situations are really broad; suffice to say I'm not the biggest PoM fan compared to Ice Floes.

Regardless, to reiterate, this is definitely a spell to take into consideration. I'm not a fire mage, but I feel like this would have more synergy with that spec over arcane and frost mages, but I would have to hear it from a fire mage because when I try to roll fire, it ends up looking like troll running around and whacking things with a broom that's been set aflame...it's just embarrasing: I've had better luck herding cats with a pitchfork. I personally suggest carrying some Vanishing Powder (or Dust of Disappearance if you're >level 80) and just playing with your talents to figure out which ones suit you and your playstyle best.

Comment by 319936

question:
since Fire's Heating Up,
and Frost's Fingers of Frost works for Scorch,
what Arcane get if need move? Arcane Missiles proc?

Comment by Pipkins

scorch is now a fire specc only spell again, after being a level 15 talent choice since the the new talent system. where scorch was is now blazing speed, which used to be a level 30 talent choice, which in it's place is now flameglow so that there is a shield/absorb route based on each element.

Comment by Skullhawk13

Still usable while moving, despite the changes in other classes. However it's damage is now somewhere between wet-noodle, and diseased declawed kitten. Still useful for providing hotstreak, but no longer allows fire-mages to move around as much as they please while still doing roughly the same amount of damage. It does however provide a speedboost. Scorch is the perfect spell to cast when moving between areas to dps. It gives a chance to crit and deal damage that otherwise would've only had your dots doing anything.

It's not as powerful as it's glory days, but a talented firemage will still hold it near and dear to her/his heart.

Comment by amzraptor

This spell should be renamed to

Comment by deepspace8

Unborn Val'kyr (x, 2, 2)
Ikky (x, 1, 1)
Darkmoon Tonk (x, 1, 2)

Curse of Doom, Unholy Ascention
Black Claw, Flock
Shock and Awe, Ion Cannon

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Scorch

Scorch

Talent

1% of base mana	40 yd range

1.5 sec cast

Scorches an enemy for (24.4% of Spell power) Fire damage.

Scorch is a guaranteed critical strike and increases your movement speed by 30% for 3 sec when cast on a target below 30% health.

Castable while moving.

Spell Details

Duration

n/a

School

Fire

Mechanic

n/a

Dispel type

n/a

GCD category

Normal

Cost

1% of base mana

Range

40 yards (Long)

Cast time

1.5 seconds

Cooldown

n/a

GCD

1.5 seconds

Effect #1

School Damage (Fire) (SP mod: 0.244)
PVP Multiplier: 3

Effect #2

Dummy
Value: 30
PVP Multiplier: 1
Server-side script

Flags

Cannot be used while shapeshifted
Allow Class Ability Procs

Guides

Fire Mage Best Covenant Fire Mage Talent Tree Build Fire Best in Slot Guide Legion Mage Class Changes Night Fae Fire Mage Guide

Scorch

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