Making the move from Fireball Spec to Frostfire Bolt specFollow

Hi all,

I've been playing my mage for a while at 80 now and am involved in raiding both 10 and 25 man versions of Naxxramas.

Here's a link to my character : http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Dragonblight&n=Gniblitz

Up until the day before yesterday, I specced Fire and used Fireball as my main nuke. My Talent spec was this : http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=of0V0zZ0EcbRhfhVubhctbhc

Yesterday I respeced to a Frostfire build as you can see on my character profile. I know that Blast Wave and Dragon's breath are not always part of the "standard" FFB spec, but I like what they can do for me while soloing and grinding, so I decided to go with them.

I did only 1 heroic (Violet Hold) yesterday and didn't see all that much difference in my DPS compared to my "old" Fireball build. I talked this over with a few people and decided to bring this here too.

During raids, we'll normally have a Draenei or other +Hit boosting people present and I also have a few other pieces of equipment with +Hit (Mark of the War Prisoner http://www.wowhead.com/?item=37873, Ebonweave Robe http://www.wowhead.com/?item=42101 and 2 rings I don't remember the names of at this moment most notably) that I can switch in to make sure I get to the needed amount of +Hit to take misses out of the equasion.

Self-buffed, I'm just short of 31% crit chance and my spellpower is at or around 1578 (depending on how much +Hit gear I need to switch in).

I know the spell rotations I need to be using and have all appropriate glyphs (Molten Armor, Improved Scorch, Fireball or Frostfire bolt depending on spec)

I keep hearing that FFB specs really need a certain amount of +Crit and SP to shine, so I'm wondering whether you guys could comment on these questions. I've tried TCoM and Rawr, but I'm either stupid or missing things because I fail to correctly interpret what they're telling me and don't find my answers there.

* How much +Crit and + Spellpower would one need before a FFB spec would be considered vastly better than a Fireball spec ?
* Is my current gear situation already good enough to make the switch over to FFB or should I stick with my old Fireball spec a while longer ?

And another (somewhat unrelated) question I've been puzzled with and struggling to find an answer to :

* Providing I don't need the hit from Mark of the War Prisoner, should I keep my Mendicant's Charm equipped for the fixed +56 SP and an on-use +145 SP or would the on-use +345 SP on the Mark be better, keeping in mind that I have the usage of the trinkets macroed to my main nuke, so they're used whenever they're up.

Any comments to these questions and any guidelines concerning gear would be greatly appreciated.

Oh, and I know that not all my gems and enchants are "the best" for their slots, but having a busy job and a family next to 3 day / week raid schedule doesn't leave me with a lot of time to gather the gold needed to always get the best gems and enchants, so I try to make do with what I can afford.

I'll be raiding in a few minutes (unless I get to reserve tonight) ... I'll let you know how it went ;-))

As to Rawr, I imported my character too now and when I activate all relevant buffs it shows me "only" 3800 DPS ... I'll be glad if I reach that already.

I had indeed forgotten my Glyphs :(( Thank you for pointing that out to me !!!

As to yesterday's raid, it was somewhat hampered by the fact that we were experiencing extreme lag during most of it (instant casts taking up to and over 8 seconds just isn't the best thing for anyone's DPS).

During the few lag-free fights we did, I did notice a considerable improvement in my DPS. Taking into account that for most bosses this was my first or second time in 25 man raiding, I consider the fact that I went from being bottom DPS to being in top 4-5 most of the time a very good achievement ... guess I will be sticking with this FFB spec ;-)