◊ Vontre

Ahoy there, magesires! On the behest of Lord Beef and his majesty King Gurgthock I bring you this compository of all things magely!

I:Talent Specs

Fire spec is currently the top dps spec. While frost may theoretically exceed fire in a small number of cases, frost spec also depends on taking full advantage of the water elemental and cold snap to deliver its damage. It is also the only tree with no pushback resistance on the primary nuke. Because of these downsides, fire builds are much more likely to deliver their full payload of damage than a frost build. On the plus side, frost builds have immensely better options for mass snaring, slowing, and bursting on frozen targets. As such, frost may be the preferred spec for certain raid encounters (Illidan might be a good example).

Arcane spec offers the highest short duration burst damage of any spec through timers like Arcane Power and Presence of Mind, and can burn mana quickly into damage through Arcane Blast. Arcane talents also provide the highest possible AoE damage. However arcane damage spells have poor mana efficiency, and the tree is highly dependent on outside mana regeneration and encounter duration to sustain good dps. Sustained dps with Arcane Missiles lags a good 10-15% behind fire or frost dps, while Arcane Blast requires a restrictive gear setup to work. Because of these factors, Arcane builds are only recommended for expert mages whose particular raid situations allow them to employ good use of this spec.

Specific Builds:
2/48/11: Fire with Icy Veins. Best possible dps.

0/40/21: If you really need two Ice Blocks. This build is actually competitive for dps as well because it allows for two Icy Veins during Bloodlust.

10/48/3: Standard fire but no Icy Veins, Clearcasting instead. Used for better mana efficiency, but generally a poor choice compared to the first two fire options.

10/0/51: (or other frost variant): Deep Frost with winter's chill and Water Elemental. Very strong for guilds working on Kharazan or specific encounters that benefit from mage kiting skills. Scales poorly.

40/18/3: Arcane Blast with Fireball/Scorch.

40/0/21: Arcane Blast with Frostbolt, strongest 'arcane build' due to Icy Veins and Cold Snap.

48/0/13: Heavy Arcane with Icy Veins. This build benefits from itemization synergies because all spells used are Arcane spells, effectively lowering the effective hit cap by 7%. Unfortunately Arcane Missiles is poor dps, and while theorycraft has hinted at possible use for this spec, for the moment it is considered universally inferior to Arcane/Frost.

33/28: Arcane/Fire 'huge crit' build. This is a poor build that should never be used in raids.

II: Fire Spell Choice and Rotation

Effective Spell Arsenal: Fireball, Scorch, and Fire Blast. Fireball is the primary nuke, providing the best dps all around. Scorch is extremely mana efficient, and critical for applying the fire vulnerability debuff, but much lower dps than fireball. Fire Blast is an inefficient use of mana, but is an instant attack, giving it special use at certain times.

For fire mages, keeping up the Improved Scorch debuff is key to maintaining good dps. It is advantageous to have every fire mage assist in applying and maintaining the debuff, as it is in everyone's interest to do maximum dps. If at any time the debuff drops it will have to be applied 5 times over again, cutting into fireball time and reducing every fire mage's damage. The scorch debuff is so powerful that it is advantageous to apply on almost every mob. As a rule of thumb, anything that's going to last at least 10 seconds should be scorched first. It's also a good idea to scorch down the tail end of a mob's life (when fireballs will not reach the target before it dies), ending with a fire blast, so that the most damage possible is affected by Molten Fury. For the rest of the time dpsing, spamming 8 fireballs for every 1 scorch gives the maximum number of fireball hits while still maintaining the debuff. However, use common sense: if a boss ability may prevent you from casting at certain times, increase the number of scorches you cast to avoid the risk of losing the stack. 5 fireballs for every 1 scorch is a good rule for encounters with interruptions.

In general, timers should be popped immediately as long as agro isn't a concern, and used again immediately whenever the cooldown is up. The effect of stacking timers is often negligible, however stacking a significant number of powerful timers can have a great effect, and be worth saving your cooldown. If you have a shaman in your group, Bloodlust/Heroism should be saved for the end of the fight so that it can stack against Molten Fury. It's advantageous to save other timers such as Combustion, trinkets and Icy Veins to stack against this powerful combo, but don't save them for so long that you miss an entire cooldown cycle.

III: Frost Spell Choice and Rotation

Effective Spell Arsenal: Frostbolt, Fire Blast, Ice Lance. Frostbolt is the primary nuke, providing the best dps all around. Fire Blast is a mana inefficient nuke, but is useful as an instant attack. Ice Lance is useless damage against anything that's not frozen, but will refresh the winter's chill debuff if it hits.

Frostbolt. Know it, love it. Cast fire blast during movement, but otherwise frostbolt constantly for best dps. Frostbolt will apply the winter's chill stack on its own, and maintain it, but keeping it up for an entire fight can be difficult due to its 15 second duration. An ice lance hit will immediately refresh the stack, and can be useful while moving or otherwise unable to deliver a full frostbolt. Do not use ice lance to put up the initial stack of winter's chill, the massive difference in damage makes it unwise to ever use ice lance when a frostbolt could be used in its place.

Timing the water elemental is crucial to maintaining good dps. As frost, the water elemental should account for upwards of 10-15% of your overall damage, possibly more. However, the water elemental has extremely low health, and no avoidance abilities, making it susceptible to almost any AoE. If possible, time water elemental summons to maximize the chance that it will stay alive for its full duration. Remember that water elemental bolts benefit from winter's chill, so it's a good idea to wait until winter's chill is applied before the first summon. Stacking timers against the water elemental is overall not important, with the major exception of bloodlust. Summon a water elemental right before Bloodlust is activated, it will not get the effect unless the pet is active while the spell is cast. If you have a shadow priest, the water elemental will not run out of mana. Be sure to use cold snap to summon an extra water elemental at some point during the fight and do even more damage.

IV: Arcane Spell Choice and Rotation

Effective Spell Arsenal: Arcane Missiles, Arcane Blast, Fire Blast, and (Fireball/Scorch or Frostbolt). Arcane Blast is the highest dps spell in the game when ramped fully, but has terrible mana efficiency. Conversely the first (and only the first) cast of Arcane Blast has the best mana efficiency of any spell. Arcane Missiles is a weak primary nuke with a high rate of fire. Scorch, Fireball and Frostbolt are filler nukes for rotations in order to give the Arcane Blast debuff enough time to reset. Fire Blast is a mana inefficient nuke, but is useful as an instant attack.

Arcane rotations have been depecrated due to their issues (for more infomation see below), while a simple Arcane Blast spam alternated with secondary nuke spam method is emerging in theorycraft as a possible contender for good dps. This follows the 2-cycle theorem of spell selection, alternating between a mana intensive burn mode and a mana efficient mode. Arcane Blast spam is the burn mode cycle, whereas alternating between Frostbolt (or other secondary nuke) and a single Arcane Blast is the mana efficient cycle. This works because the first cast of Arcane Blast is extremely mana efficient, but cannot be used more than once every 8 seconds. An overlap cycle (covered below) with 1 Arcane Blast per rotation is very effective as an efficiency cycle.

Recent changes in the 2.4 patch, particularly the buff to spell haste and complete reworking of the mana regeneration formula, have resulted in a significant boost in theoretical arcane damage output. However, overall Arcane is more dependent on outside factors and still provides slightly less single-target dps than fire builds. There are a few valid reasons to consider Arcane spec:

1) You are threat capped, unable to deliver your full damage as fire due to threat constraints.

2) You are working on an encounter which benefits from controlled throughput, or sustained AoE damage, significantly increasing your dps for one period of the encounter while decreasing dps during the other period.

3) Itemization issues, for example if you are unable to acquire enough hit rating for Fire spec.

4) Raid composition. For example if you benefit from a shadow priest and do not benefit from Curse of the Elements, but still benefit from Curse of Shadows.

5) Survivability. Two ice blocks via cold snap is a non-trivial advantage for several encounters. Dropping playing with fire is a small buff to survivability as well.

In all cases you should use a spreadsheet or other theorycrafting tool to compare spec for your gear level and particular raid setup. More theorycraft is still being done in this area.

Arcane rotations (now outdated) will be covered briefly in this section for informational purposes. Arcane Blast applies a debuff to the user that stacks up to 3 times and increases casting speed and mana cost with each stack. Simply spamming the spell will render the caster oom in an extremely short time. The goal of an arcane blast cycle is to constantly reset the debuff, taking advantage of both fast, mana inefficient blasts and long, mana efficient blasts. However, the arcane blast debuff lasts 8 seconds, meaning other spells are needed to fill in the time to allow the debuff to reset. There are several ways to accomplish this, however triple frostbolt, or a combination of fireballs and a scorch, are generally the best ways to use the debuff time (if you spec accordingly for those spells). Arcane Missiles and a Scorch can also be used, but is not recommended due to the poor dps scaling of Arcane Missiles. You can start casting arcane blast slightly before the debuff has run out; as long as the debuff is gone by the time the spell completes, the stack will start over and you will not be charged the additional mana cost.

Please note that arcane spell cycles are of questionable value for sustained dps and are subject to many factors which can negatively influence dps. For example, Bloodlust or other haste procs can interfere with cycle timing. Boss abilities can interfere heavily with cycle timing. Latency may cause Arcane Blast to not update it's increased casting speed before the next cast. Arcane cycles are no longer recommended over simpler, more predictable nuke spamming.

V: Gear and Stat Choices

Spell hit rating is the best stat you can get, by a large margin. All spell casts use a 2 roll system, which means they must hit before they can crit or partial resist. Additionally, only 12.6 hit rating is required to add 1% hit chance with spells. Because of this, spell hit rating is, point for point, almost 3 times better than spell crit rating. The base chance for any spell to resist, before talents, is 83% against a boss level mob (+3 levels). Any talent that describes itself as "reducing the opponents chance to resist" increases your chance to hit. Beyond that, gear can be used to improve your hit chance to a maximum of 99%. Once you reach the 99% hit mark, further hit rating is completely useless and you considered "capped". For arcane mages, the cap is 76 rating. For fire and frost mages, that number is 164 rating. With rare exceptions, gearing below the hit cap will almost assuredly result in a loss of potential dps.

The following is a list of all mage stats in order of effectiveness (for fire spec):

spell hit rating (to cap) > spell haste rating > spell damage > spell crit rating > spell penetration

Arcane mages follow a slightly different scale:

spell hit rating (to cap) > spell damage > intellect > spell crit rating > spell haste > spell penetration

Arcane mages gain little from spell haste because they are already using up their entire mana pool, therefore gain much more benefit from stats that increase dpm. Every stat increases dpm except for spell haste. The new mana regeneration formula released in 2.4 greatly increases the value of intellect, making it a viable secondary stat for Arcane specs only.

Spell penetration is of almost no value at all, it's primarily a pvp stat. Spell crit rating tends to come prepackaged on a lot of gear, but is generally not a desirable stat because it takes a monstrous 22.1 points of it to give a 1% increase to crit rate. In all cases, check the gear against a spreadsheet or other theorycrafting tool to see how effective it is, as varying stat values can often make the differences between gear exceedingly difficult to eyeball.

Meta gems: Chaotic Skyfire Diamond is far and away the best meta gem for mages. Mystical Skyfire Diamond used to be a good contender, but was nerfed heavily in the 2.4 patch.

VI: AoE

It's recommended for all mages to invest 2 points in Arcane Subtlety, reducing arcane spell threat by 40%. This makes arcane explosion the lowest threat per damage of any aoe spell in the game. Spamming arcane explosion is typically the most effective way of doing aoe dps because of its low threat generation; you can often start AoE much sooner than other classes and gain a massive damage lead. Avoid using frontal cone spells like Dragon's Breath and Cone of Cold for straight damage, as their limited frontal range arc will often his less targets than a circular area effect like Arcane Explosion or Blast Wave.

Not all AoE is done by tanking, however. In the case of shorter burst AoE phases, it may be best to focus on mass snaring with Cone of Cold and Frost Nova. Warlocks can potentially hold agro from range with Seed of Corruption, while mages snare the mobs and spam low threat Arcane Explosions, resulting in a quick and clean AoE clear.

VII: Partial Resists and Binary Spells

For every level above the caster, a mob gains an effective 8 magic resistance against all magic schools. This means a level 73 mob will have an effective 24 magic resistance against any player. It's important to note that this level based magic resist cannot be overcome or removed in any way, not even by spell penetration. It's estimated that partial resists caused by level based magic resistance account for a 6% loss in overall damage for fire spells.

Frostbolt, however, is a binary spell, meaning it has special rules regarding magic resist. A binary spell can only hit or miss; it will not ever partially resist. Because of this, frostbolt is completely unaffected by level based magic resist. We're not exactly sure why this occurs, but frost mages almost always see a 99% hit rate on frostbolt (assuming they are hit capped like they should be). Therefore the 6% damage reduction can be completely ignored. This does not mean that frostbolt does more damage than fireball; it is only another consideration that has been made when comparing specs and theorycrafting.

VIII: Tools, Utilities, and other Information
Vontre's Mage DPS Spreadsheet by Vontre
Full-featured spreadsheet primarly for gear and stat comparison.
http://www.magegraf.com/mage_dps.zip
Vontre's Mage DPS Spreadsheet

MageGraf.com by Vontre
Pseudo-simulation tool with extremely detailed output and advanced logic used for spec and rotation comparison.
http://www.magegraf.com

Rawr.mage by Kavan
Gear and stat comparison tool written in C#
Rawr - Release: Rawr.Mage b2

www.magegraf.com
www.magegraf.com/mage_dps.zip

Raiding is full of challenge. Sometimes there is fire. You have to not be in the fire.

 

◊ Vontre

IX: Tables and Values

Base spell damage for max ranks at 70:

Rating conversion formulas:

Misc calculations:

-Spell Haste: To determine the new cast time of a spell after haste rating is applied, take the percentage of haste, as a decimal, and 1. Divide the cast time by that number. For example, 10% haste against on a second Fireball would be 3 / 1.10, giving a new cast time of 2.72~.

X: Currently Observed Bugs
(Last updated 06/18/08)

- Frostbolt gains an additional 1% hit per a point in Elemental Precision.
- Fireball and Fire Blast may sometimes stack their ignites incorrectly if the Fire Blast is cast while the fireball is still in mid-air. In all cases this glitch results in a loss of ignite damage.

www.magegraf.com
www.magegraf.com/mage_dps.zip

Raiding is full of challenge. Sometimes there is fire. You have to not be in the fire.

 

Inoko

Thanks for doing this, by the way. I'll have some actual content later, once I've had time to digest what you've posted.

For now, use: (size=+2)(/size) and replace the () with [], around the text you want to be big-ness, it's what Malan uses.

 

galzohar

Meta gems: MSD's additional disadvantage would be DPM (and slightly scaling down with haste).


Fire spec: something I noticed many people do is just refresh scorch way too often. Sometimes even before 1/2 its duration is over. I think it needs to be over-stressed that this is a DPS loss and shouldn't be done when not nescessary due to fight mechanics.
On trash I also often end a mob with a fireblast but don't scorch, because TBH if I think a mob will live for 1.5s, it might live for 3 as well. However I think it's simply best when you think a mob will not survive long enough for another fireball is to move to the next mob. Granted you lose some molten fury but you save yourself and the raid wasted DPS by overkilling the target (either actively having abilities hit a dead target or simply have spells fail because "target is dead" when they complete casting). Of course trash doesn't matter, but then again many bosses have adds where this can be applied to (first example that pops to mind - hydross with a non-aoe strat).

Arcane:
I'd rephrase "will not refresh" to "will start over at 1" or something like that.

Stats: Remember the only place where I see people actually putting spell penetration intentionally is on a cloak. I think the 2% threat reduction enchant should be mentioned as much more useful, correct me if I'm wrong here.

You probably know all of these but I figured it's best to add them in so stuff that have been discussed to death don't come up again (as often...).
For the same reason I would include some basic spec or spec templates, which for us should be obvious but for others that come here it might not, so stupid questions that can be answered before they're asked should probably be.

 

Copernicus

Bugs:

Frostbolt gains an additional 1% hit per a point in Elemental Precision.
Frostbolt does not proc Judgement of Wisdom.


Additional subjects:

*Quick comparisons of hit vs haste vs crit vs damage at a reasonable gear level for each of the specs
*An explanation of what stats Water Elemental gains bonuses from.
*Possibly a chart showing how Frost's DPS vs time, to show how important the Water Elemental and Cold Snap are.
*The AoE cap for each spell.
*Non-binary spells and the 6% resist rate for +3 level mobs (boss mobs).

 

Inoko

Here are the AoE caps, I've only personally tested Arcane Explosion and Flamestrike, but given that they're both correct, I trust the other three to be as well. I found them in this thread, originally, and removed some of the extra information.

The writer of that post had "Number of mobs required to cap damage" on each spell, but it was calculated at the base (+0 spell damage) rate, which isn't very useful, honestly.

Information that should be included with this is that +% damage from talents and +spell damage is counted BEFORE the cap, so the better your gear is, the fewer mobs that are required to cap out. This is especially important for frost mages who plan to cone-of-cold AE, and take the talent, because that +35% damage just caps them out faster, then becomes a waste.

The way to check how many monsters you need to reach the cap is to take your spell's average damage (BEFORE CRITS) and divide the "Capped" value for a given rank by that. (99% of the time you'll be max ranking, anyways)

Crits are applied after the damage cap, so don't use average crit damage.

Flamestrike

Blastwave

Dragon's Breath

Arcane Explosion

Cone of Cold

 

kycan

One topic that may be considered (and that still confuses me on occasion) is when to stick with a meta socket helm, at the expense of an otherwise upgrade (Tier 4 to Grand Engineer/Hood of Hexing come to mind).

 

Copernicus

Metagems suck. They offer in the range of 1-2.5% increased damage. You can check it with some quick math (think about a CSD with a 100% crit rate) or use Vontre's spreadsheet. [Cowl of the Grand Engineer]'s hit rating plus crit rating is 1.77% better than [Cowl of Tirisfal], and that's without counting the two extra sockets given. For the ease of math, stick two +8 hit rating gems in there and that's another 1.27% better, making the Cowl a better item than the Tier 5 helm (ignoring the 8 stam, 9 int, and 24 spirit). Spellstrike -> Grand Engineer/Hexing -> Tier 6/Illidari is the progression path now that we don't need Tier 5 set bonuses or the metagem's proc anymore.

 

ReignConfused

I'm not disagreeing with you, but stamina and intellect, as well as spirit (although god knows why now) all cost in item budget. If you factor this in I believe Cowl comes out with a much higher item budget. And I'm not 100% sure that Hood of Hexing isn't better than T6 if you're looking at pure dmg/hit/crit [Hood of Hexing] [Cowl of the Tempest] Yeah it definitely comes out ahead, way way ahead if you're figuring 2 12dmg sockets > CSD

 

Kir

I knew it was powerful, but I was surprised it's 10 seconds. Is scorch with just a stack or two of the debuff higher dps then a non-debuffed fireball? I had always figured you had to get off at least two fireballs after fully debuffing for it be worthwhile. I didn't run very conclusive tests, just my dps was higher on trash that died in ~10 seconds by just fireballing. There could have been quite a few variables that I didn't take into consideration, of course. But, if they lived 12 or more seconds constantly, I always scorched. Hard to factor the few seconds difference on those mobs, as a few warrior execute crits can drop them quicker then you anticipate.

Glad to see you confirm my hunch about scorch/fireblast on the tail end of a mob's health is a good practice, though. I've always done it to minimize dps loss from a fireball not hitting the mob in time (both from the longer cast time and fireball travel time). I never ran a test, it just made sense.

If there is a simple rule of thumb, agreed. I think the long answer is, plug it into a spreadsheet and compare for your specific equipment. Would be nice if there is a general way to figure out if a meta helm (T6 for example) is better then a similar ilvl a 3 gem helm (such as Hood of Hexing).
I believe someone did a comparison on these specific items that showed Hood of Hexing to be roughly equal if you are not hit capped already, and you aren't breaking the 4pcT6 set bonus. But, for future reference, it would be nice to have an easy way to make that decision.

 

clairecakes

There's no mention of it so what about arcane/frost? I'm about equally geared with our resident fire mage and in most encounters our damage is nearly identical (though I have to hit my trinkets at every cooldown). It also has the benefit of PoM which is absolutely wonderful when trying out a new instance and needing an emergency sheep (or sheeping ZA flamecasters) and I'm pretty sure it will work great with 2piece T5. In fact looking at Lhivera's script the damage is better then deep fire with 2 pc T5...and it also stacks pretty well with haste without hurting your rotation (3 frostbolts instead of 2).

 

◊ Vontre

Arcane/frost is basically the same as arcane/fire. They're pretty specialized builds that supposedly can work with specific gearing, but have issues with scaling, haste, and are generally more trouble than it's worth.

www.magegraf.com
www.magegraf.com/mage_dps.zip

Raiding is full of challenge. Sometimes there is fire. You have to not be in the fire.

 

Beska

A deeper explanation of when to choose haste over crit/damage would be excellent. Also, as Copernicus suggested a comparison between these stats would be great too.

 

Kir

I've seen it before somewhere, but a chart showing the relative value of hit/haste/dmg/crit as your stats scale would be nice.
Like, until 164 hit, under 1000 dmg, 1 point of hit is worth 1.5 dmg, 1.3 haste etc.. (made those numbers up just now)

I saw it somewhere before, no idea where. If anyone has it, or wants to make another, that would be an awesome addition to the original post. It'd be nice to have as a reference, both for people not good at working it out themselves, and the people like me who are too lazy to redo it too often

 

Muphrid

Such a table would be fraught with caveats. These equivalences vary greatly based on spec and gear. I find tools to be much handier in this regard than any sort of table. That said, people are lazy; they'd much rather a table, I'm sure, than to have to use a tool unless they're genuinely interested and not just genuinely confused.

The problem, then, would be how to present tables for each spec, as well as varying +damage, +haste, +crit, and +hit. 5-dimensional table, anyone?

 

Kir

Just as a rule of thumb, not to be taken as gospel. Just like Vontre made a note that +hit is worth almost 3x +crit until capped. Clearly, that is not quite as accurate for arcanofrost or arcanofire specs, who value crit higher (of course +hit would still be worth more until capped, but it changes the relative value slightly).

In any case, just make one for the 10/48/3 and 10/0/51 cookie cutter builds. This thread is meant as a reference for all players. The TC thread is for the advanced TCing about other potential specs and new tricks that pop up.

Do a table for <900 damage, with and without hit cap. Another for 900-1000, another for 1000-1100 and one for 1100-1200. If someone with less then 900 dmg uses that table, they are probably a relatively new player (or a new mage in any case) and it will point them on the right track at least (if left to their own devices, they might stack +crit over dmg or hit, for example). If they are not not min/maxed perfectly, that's not such a big deal at that level. If someone has more than 1200 dmg, they are probably at a high enough skill level to already know this info.

You can have relative values listed without a 5 dimensional table. You use one of the stats, +dmg or dps is probably best, as a baseline, and just show the others as relative values to that. Like, at XX dmg, non-hit capped, 1 haste rating will be .4 dps, 1 dmg will be .3, 1hit will be .8 etc..

It would take a little bit of effort, so I was mostly posting to see if anyone else had seen the tables that already existed, and we could just add it.

 

Kewangeder

Regarding whether to scorch a trash mob, here's quick, very sloppy math:

Each stack of improved scorch = 3% more fire damage
fireball = about 815 damage average, not counting the dot
scorch = about 330 damage average

Suppose you have 1000 fire +damage, 30% crit, and about double damage on a crit.
Your fireball now does 1815 * 1.3 = about 2360
Your scorch now does (330 + 1000 * 3/7) * 1.3 = about 988.

Would 2 scorches beat a fireball?
2 scorch = 988*2.03 ~= 2005 ...no, by about 355

However, fireballs would now do about 140 more damage apiece. Three of them would close the gap - 9 seconds. Add in the previous two scorches and you have 12 seconds that mob needs to last.

With two fire mages scorching twice apiece, you close the gap in 9 seconds total.
Empowered Fireball narrows that gap by around 15%.
Incineration widens it by around 5%.

 

◊ Vontre

Right, I did the actual theorycraft a while back and was pretty much assuming at least 2 fire mages in my statement. However what you didn't consider is that the tail end of your damage is stronger and more powerful than your initial hits due to molten fury and fire blast. In practice pre-scorching is multiplying your execute finisher, which is considerably more powerful than an initial fireball in non-execute range.

www.magegraf.com
www.magegraf.com/mage_dps.zip

Raiding is full of challenge. Sometimes there is fire. You have to not be in the fire.

 

Kewangeder

Correct; I deliberately fudged a lot of factors. Basically it comes down to how much you'd fall behind by scorching, vs. how quickly you'll then catch up when you start the fireballs. If you're the only fire mage, stop if another scorch would keep you from casting 3 fireballs; if there are two, stop if you can't cast 2; in either case, stop on a full stack, naturally.

One of the things I find noteworthy is that it's really hard to notice the difference, if your raid isn't exactly pushing. Take the Lurker trash, for example - several identical large packs of trash. The big mobs seem to last right about at the 10-second cusp for us, but sometimes it's 9, sometimes 11. A two-second difference is hard to notice when we're chasing down techs, watching our sheep, handling occasional loot, and setting up for the next pull. And scorching first is saving us much less than that, per mob. Any time we gain from that is likely lost from bathroom breaks, not to mention the time drain that is a wipe.

It could make a difference in ZA timed runs, of course.