[TC] Living Bomb and Everything About It

[Komma]

This is an information post for details on Living Bomb mechanics. It is meant to clarify all the details on how this spell works.

Last updated: February 19, 2015.

Living Bomb has two components: the DOT (spell ID 44457), and the explosion (spell ID 44461). It is an instant cast with base 1.5 second GCD, which can be reduced by haste.

Living Bomb DOT does a total of 100% spellpower in 4 ticks over 12 seconds, each tick being 25% spellpower. The ticks can crit and multistrike. The number of ticks can be increased by haste, while the duration is unaffected, resulting in a final partial tick. Living Bomb DOT does not benefit from mastery. Living Bomb DOT has no target limit, and can be applied to as many targets as desired.

Living Bomb DOT obeys all standard DOT pandemic-extension rules. When directly applied to a target with X seconds remaining, the new duration is:

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(12 + min(X, 3.6)) seconds

For this reason, a directly refreshed Living Bomb can only have a maximum duration of 15.6 seconds.

The explosion does 80% spellpower to all targets within 10 yards. Explosion impacts can crit and can multistrike. The explosion is not affected by haste or mastery. There is no target number cap on the explosion, but the total explosion damage of each Living Bomb is affected by the 20 target AOE damage cap. Multiple Living Bombs exploding at the same time will have separate caps.

An explosion is triggered when any of the following 3 conditions are met:
1. Living Bomb DOT expires on the target.
2. The target has an active Living Bomb DOT when it dies.
3. Living Bomb DOT has a remaining duration of less than 3.6 seconds, and the player directly applies a new Living Bomb on the target. (Reference)

An explosion is NOT triggered when the target has an active Living Bomb DOT, and the player refreshes it by spreading Living Bomb DOT onto it, regardless of the remaining duration.

Living Bomb DOT is spreadable by Inferno Blast. The standard Inferno Blast spreading rules apply - the number of targets is limited by the perk/glyph, appears to prioritize closest targets, and cannot be spread onto Prismatic Crystal.

Spreading onto targets with active Living Bomb DOTs also follows standard DOT spreading rules. For a spread source with X seconds remaining and target with Y seconds remaining, the result duration on the target is:

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(X + min(X * 30%, Y * 30%)) seconds

For this reason, spread LBs can have durations higher than the 15.6 second "limit" for direct applications.

There is a known bug with DOT spreading causing tick time resets, most notably with Bloodboil for Death Knights. This same bug affects Living Bomb with Inferno Blast spreading. A fix is anticipated for this with Patch 6.1.

Due to how Haste only affects the DOT portion of LB, and how Incineration increases crit rating gained by Fire Mages by 15%, Living Bomb itself's secondary scaling strength follows this order:

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Crit > Multistrike > Versatility > Haste >> Mastery (Zero gain)

Compared to core rotation spells which benefit from Critical Mass, Ignite and having long cast durations to take advantage of haste, it has relatively weak scaling. This is why it becomes less desirable to cast as players improve their gear.

[Chev]

Another great post from you Komma.

[yeahyeahyeahhh]

Great post, lots of questions about this subject has risen lately (from myself included!).

Going over the point on when an explosion is NOT triggered, would it be a DPS loss to ignore turning a HU to a HS + HU via IB if the target has LB on it and you're trying to avoid spreading that LB on secondary targets that already have a LB DOT on them? Or is it best to just continue on with normal rotation? Perhaps it depends on the number of targets an explosion would trigger on.

I guess I'm just asking should my Fire rotation/playstyle or what you will change when using LB (other than making sure LB is spread to targets if they don't have LB DOT on them).

[Jebbage]

Great post, lots of questions about this subject has risen lately (from myself included!).

Going over the point on when an explosion is NOT triggered, would it be a DPS loss to ignore turning a HU to a HS + HU via IB if the target has LB on it and you're trying to avoid spreading that LB on secondary targets that already have a LB DOT on them? Or is it best to just continue on with normal rotation? Perhaps it depends on the number of targets an explosion would trigger on.

I guess I'm just asking should my Fire rotation/playstyle or what you will change when using LB (other than making sure LB is spread to targets if they don't have LB DOT on them).

That can be avoided if you refresh living bomb under 1.5s (or your GCD). Doing this will make your main target's LB be the same or less than that of the other targets. Say you have 2.5s left on LB and you get a heating up proc and you've already spread to other targets (therefore they're also at 2.5s), you can use IB to get Pyro!, leaving 1s left on LB. You can then refresh it, IB next GCD, then you will have spread the new LB while still getting the explosions and Pyro!.

There's not much reason to reapply LB over 3s remaining unless you're moving and have nothing else to cast. Even then, you'll likely have gotten the heating up from the fireball before moving, so you should have time to cast another fireball before IB to convert HU and spread the new LB.

I hope that makes sense... It's kind of hard to explain, and I'm sure there's a situation that I didn't think of.

[Bashlow]

Is there any addon which Shows how many mobs are in range for spreading Dots/ bomb with blast?
For example at darmak i sometimes try to spread my bomb in the very last moment because adds are coming, realisi they werent yet in range, causing a dps loss

[Mirialis]

Alas, it's looks hopelessness to use it at a single target in a high gear especially. In case of many different bosses (with many adds and without them) in a single dungeon, the talenl respec from boss to boss it's starts annoying me .

[coldim]

An explosion is NOT triggered when the target has an active Living Bomb DOT, and the player refreshes it by spreading Living Bomb DOT onto it, regardless of the remaining duration.

Do I understand correctly that f/x on Darmac I should aim to have LB duration at ~3-4s when adds spawn and I should spread it to the Pack but if I recast LB on main target and spread on f/x 1/2s left then adds LB will not explode at all?

[TLTeo]

Yeah, you need to let the explosions go off on the adds before spreading again. If you don't do it, the dot will be refreshed on the adds but LB will only explode on the boss.

[oomy]

Not sure if this has been answered but 1 thing. On fights such as flamebender/thogar when adds spawn at certain points so you ideally want to take living bomb.

It's a DPS loss to keep living bomb up on a single target vs fireball/pyroblast spam when there are no adds up but should you still take living bomb or swap to blast wave.

[TLTeo]

Yes, it's dps neutral or a loss. I wouldn't take LB for Flamebender because the adds aren't alive for very long and they aren't that close to each other. Maybe Mythic is different (i haven't run it yet), but i doubt it.

[Komma]

Mythic is definitely different, due to having 4 dogs instead of 2. Like Teo said though, you don't want to use it outside of cleaving.

[Deac]

I have a follow up question, about refreshing Living Bomb. If 5 or so adds ( Thogar) and have greater than 5 secs remaining before they explode on the boss, do I sit on the Heating Up or use the Inferno Blast to get my Pyro at the expense of the LB explosions because they are extended/refreshed. Is there a time amount or threshold most people will wait out for these LB explosions? Similarly if 2-3 targets (Maidens), being fewer targets are you more willing to go ahead and use the Inferno Blast to convert your Heating Up into Pyro regardless of time left? Still learning Fire.
Thank You.

[Wilderness]

Using IB isn't going to refresh the durations prior to explosions unless you've cast LB on the mob you are going to use IB and it has a higher duration than the ones that are at 5 seconds left. If its all the same duration LB ticking on all the mobs using IB won't matter.

If you have somehow cast LB onto your current target and its at 10 seconds while all the ones on the other adds are at 5 seconds, then I would hold off until it explodes, but that's really a case where you should have avoided putting yourself into that situation and not cast LB onto a new mob until the other ones were about to explode.

[Deac]

Thank you for the fast reply. I was confused because my mage bomb tracker bars (Mage Nuggets) were "refreshing" the duration on the adds when i used IB. But watching the dummies up close for the explosions, i could see that you are correct.

[matchbox]

There is a weird behaviour with LB spreading I notice sometimes. After first spreading the high duration bomb I sometimes have to IB again or to IB one of the targets that received the bomb. However after the second spread for some reason durations on bombs differ: usually there is one that gets about 2-3s longer bomb duration. Do you notice it too or is it just my addons showing the wrong durations? If that actually happens, what causes it and is there any way to avoid it?

And no, cases I talk about do not involve recasting LB, it's purely spreading.

[Wilderness]

I've seen that as well matchbox. I wasn't sure if it was just my frames being odd or something, but it happens regularly on trash where I spread bombs but then there are some that are 2-3 seconds behind the others for some reason. No double spread or anything else involved.

[Komma]

That sounds perfectly normal to me.

Spreading onto targets with active Living Bomb DOTs also follows standard DOT spreading rules. For a spread source with X seconds remaining and target with Y seconds remaining, the result duration on the target is:

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(X + min(X * 30%, Y * 30%)) seconds

Whenever you use IB on a target with an active LB, you affect the duration of surrounding ones.

[matchbox]

Actually, what I've been speaking about was not normal and not following that rule (duration on one target affected but not on the others), but after you said this I've just thought about it again and found the problem: it seems those addons can't actually track dots on arbitrary targets, so they just guess the duration of a spread LB, however they don't use the spreading rules for guessing and don't display the prolonged duration. But if one of secondary targets is in the focus or you cycle through targets, then it takes the actual prolonged LB duration for that target and displays it, while keeping the original shorter one on other targets.

Sorry for being so slow and thanks for the help.