This was brought up a few times in the various mage threads and I believe it deserves a topic of it's own.

The topic is cooldown management and how to maximize their impact on your dps.

To be honest, I don't really have many answers. I'm more looking for them. I tend to pop my cooldowns as they become available as long as I know I can chain-cast during them. I don't really know if this is optimal or even suggested.

A few other thoughts...

If the boss is at 30%ish, would it be worth it to save your cooldowns for molten fury range? Is stacking combustion with IV+trinket+flame cap make sense, or does it even matter, other than to get the cooldown on combustion started again?

Thoughts?

I know I'm a dub at cool down management. However, I have developed (read "stolen") some techniques that have helped me.

1) Pitbull (unit frames) has an option to display your power shortfall on your mana bar. I use this to determine when to pop my first gem.

2) Mana Jade gives me about 600 mana +/- 20. With Serpent Coil Braid, that is worth 750 mana +/- 25. I pop it first if I have the SCB to get my first power boost of the fight.

3) When you create a combo macro and put it on a button, the button only shows the cool down on the first item mentioned in the macro. I use Bongos 2 to show each of my cool down items, even though two or three macros are used to trigger them.

4) There is a mod called ReadySpells that shows a list of capabilities that are currently available. I would put the frame beside my target and as each ability became ready, the icon for it would appear. The icon was not clickable, but did show you what was current. There were also options for showing cool downs. I stopped using it as it was not very reliable. However, somebody might be able to tweak it into reliability, or make it more customized for the mage class.

5) SCT Cooldowns is an enhancement to Scrolling Combat Text that shows your abilities when they become ready. Mik's Scrolling Battle Text and Parrot also show spells and trinkets when they are ready.

I'm trying to imagine a UI that shows me all my cool downs in a sensible fashion. Something that is compact enough to fit just under my character on the screen but not large enough to obscure anything. Having to continually check a dozen places on the UI to find out what is available next feels a lot like flying an airplane during an emergency landing.

There's also an ace addon timetodie World of Warcraft Addons - WowAce.com that could help out when it comes time to make the decisions.

Others are doing more advanced theorycrafting, but it pretty much comes down to
1. Blow all the cooldowns at once early on.
2. Hit the cooldown if it will refresh before you hit sub-20% (or 10% or whatever - max duration of cooldown while in Execute range).
3. Blow all the cooldowns at once sub-20%.

It's part 2 that's tricky.

Also sometimes a fight will desync cooldowns, which can sometimes cause a situation where it's worth it to wait for another cooldown to stack with the current. Say if for some reason my icy veins will be up 10 seconds after my icon is up, it'll probably increase my dps to pop them together rather than only have 10s of overlapping, as increasing 20% to 1/2 of the icon's effect (10% increase) is worth delaying by 10s (8.33% cooldown increase). When it's the other way around though it depends what actual %dps increase the icon is, to see if the 10% increase to icon's effect is worth 5.55% increase to icy vein's cooldown (which depends on your spell dmg). For me icon's dps increase is 1.21% on average (7.28% when active) and icy veins is naturally a 2.77%. (1.21% * 0.1) - (2.77% * 0.0555) = -0.033% which means waiting on icy veins for me would be a dps loss.

For the last 20%, if you have to wait more than 48 seconds for icy veins (assuming you're not waiting on any other cooldowns as well), it's better to just use it. This is because molten fury is 20% increase and 48 seconds is a 20% increase to the cooldown. Have any additional cooldowns that are going to be used at execute range and that number goes up. For example if you saved bloodlust and the icon with my gear, the effect will be increased by 1.2*1.3*1.0728=1.67 or 67% increase, so it's worth waiting up to 180*0.67=120 seconds. Of course if waiting will mean you get 1 less use of icy veins in the fight don't wait no matter what, as no cooldown stacking will ever double your dps (which means you don't wait 120s if 20%->0% takes ~1min).

Isn't this more of a probability issue? If icy veins comes up and you think 20-0% will be within the next two minutes, you should save it. Waiting 48s doesn't really matter, you'll only get to use it once anyway. The issue is judging what to do if the boss is at 60% 2 minutes into Teron.

One thing you should consider is how much extra damage you get by synchronizing procs with activated cooldowns, and how long you would have to wait on an internal cooldown before it's more worthwhile to pop the activated cooldown instead of synchronizing. Unfortunately I can't give much of a guide here, since it's very specific to your various cooldowns and procs you have available. Note however that because procs are independent events, if your proc is off cooldown you either wait for it or you don't; saying "I'll wait up to 15 seconds for it to proc and then use it anyways if it hasn't" is erroneous unless there's something else for it to sync with. If the proc is worth waiting for, it's worth waiting more for, because its chance of procing is constant over a time period.

Also keep in mind which abilities actually work in concert. Combustion and Icy Veins don't really work together--the number of crits, and therefore extra damage, you get from combustion is independent of the casting time of the spells. However, the two of them both tend to work better in concert with the same effects (+dmg) so in practice they generally work better synchronized anyways. Similarly, rogue Blade Flurry and Adrenaline Rush don't do anything to interact with each other, unless your Blade Flurry is hitting additional targets, but they both get synchronized to +AP effects and therefore to each other in the presence of +AP effects.

My question is this: what is the opportunity cost of saving your cooldowns to the perfect moment? Lets consider the case of the lazy mage who simply links all of their cooldowns to their main nuke, so as to cast them whenever they are up. If the length of the fight is unknown (or unable to be precisely estimated), its certainly possible that a mage using cooldowns as soon as possible would get a full extra use of cooldowns compared to a mage attempting to strategically stack them.

Has anyone modeled the benefits of combined cooldowns vs discrete cooldown use? And what is the optimal amount of cooldown use to forgo to retain the option of stacking?

It seems like it would be useful to have a mod that estimated the time of the fight (like the Ace mod timetodie) with little red dots showing the optimal cooldown time use. This might be rather difficult to implement in practice, given the numerous factors involved in determining what is truly optimal, but it may be worth an attempt.

Finally, there are a number of additional questions that need to be answered:
- How should trinket cooldowns (which tend to be on two minute timers) be managed to sync up with three minute cooldowns when necessary without losing too much dps?
- Should cooldowns always be blown at the start of the fight (after scorches are stacked, and assuming threat is not an issue) to maximize the potential number of times they can be used?

It all depends on the length of the fight if you consider which cooldowns the mage has avaible

Icy Veins at 3 minutes
Combustion at 3 minutes
Flame cap at 3 min
Trinkets at 2 minutes
Drums at 2 min
Destruction pot at 2 min

Using that Math basically you want to utilizes as many of those as often as you can and in combination with as many of the above as you can in a 7+ minute fight obviously you want to use the 2 min cooldown as fast as possible to sync them for that final minute in which you can pop all the cooldowns at once.

The tricky part is if it's a 6 minute fight often times i would save the cool downs till sub 20 to pop them all at once and forego the 3rd cool down usage to take full advantage of molten fury range.

Realistically how you utilize your cooldowns depends on how fast of a kill you do and also when you get bloodlust what i like to do is if i know a Bloodlust is incoming at a certain percentage i would hold off on using them to stack them with bloodlust as well.

I know that of the fights that really matter for dps numbers, Teron, Rage, Kaz'Rogal, and slightly HW Naj'entus, if you guild is good, no matter what goes on, you can safely hit your 2-minute cooldowns at the start of the fight 90-95% and they'll be back up arund 20%.

Bri: Flame Cap is a 3 minute cooldown.

It's been a while since I've done a lot of the SSC fights on my mage, but I know that between all the fights in SSC/TK, Solarian is the only fight in which cooldowns get de-sync'd with her disappearing.

The biggest problem I foresee coming up in this thread is the fact that the combustion cooldown doesn't start till 3 crits happen, up to 30 seconds after popping it (worst case), and 9 seconds after popping it (best case). But you think that just hit combustion 1 cast before your other cooldowns and you'll be good, but if that one cast crits, you just lost damage.

The best choice of modeling cooldown usage is over a 3minute 10 second time frame to account for the difference on combustion cooldown starting.

I've always considered Combustion to basically have a 4 minute cooldown for the purposes of linking them to other cooldowns so that it'll always line up with 2 minute cooldowns.

I have Flame Cap right next to all the mana gems in my UI. I have never noticed them to be on a different cooldown on the mana gems, ever, but I haven't bothered to actually read to see how long that cooldown is. Does it put your mana gem on a 3 minute cooldown as well? That seems like odd behavior given how activated effects of trinkets have their shared cooldowns. Also, in all the time I've been using Flame Caps I find it exceedingly odd I've never noticed the longer cooldown. I suppose I only use them in fights we have a chance at losing and thus don't have as much of an opportunity to mess around.

Yes, Flame Cap puts mana gems, healthstones, and everything else on that timer on a 3 minute cooldown.

No, just popped one now to make sure I wasn't insane, it's definitely a 3 minute cooldown all around.

Bloodlust usage time is really key for Frost though Making sure the Elemental is out before Bloodlust and having bloodlust on for the full duration will increase frost's dps quite a bit ,but it does take a bit of coordination with your shaman to make it work.

Well I've been toying around with numerous strategies to using the cooldowns but there is so many to deal with I am having this same issue.

1 - za trinket
2 - skull of gul'dan
3 - drums of battle
4 - icy veins
5 - combustion
6 - bloodlust/heroism
7 - flame cap
8 - destro pot


And I guess those trolls have berzerking to deal with... I've just been usually getting my za trink/skull/drums in the beginngin of fights and using the series of cds at 20% with bloodlust. Depending on the length of the fight (assuming u cant use combust/veins twice)

Coordinating BL to coincide with WE while good is nowhere near as powerful as coordinating it to be in Molten Fury range. Icon/Serpentcoil-Braid/Combustion/Icy Veins on Bloodlust and Drums while >20% makes frost cry. Compared to this poor old WE/Lust is but a tear in the ocean.

As a side note, ToW benefits the WE hugely, as his pathetic waterbolt gains not only 3%crit but a much more needed 3% hit, lifting it's rather pathetic 17% miss from the floor.

Edit: Also take into account, without SP bloodlust or not, the WE will probably run out of mana before it's due. With ele shaman vanilla mana spring it's usualy enough regen to keep it pewing out of bloodlust till it's out, but with BL I can't say if it'll be enough. Usually when I get BL and ol'bukkit-hed is out it's kinda hectic and I'm rather busy at not dying on leotheras/dying on vashj/dying on <insert mediocre panic-fest boss> etc etc.

Remember all your cooldown planning also gets messed up by simple movement elements. If you move when the trinket just comes up, or know you'll move before your trinket is used fully but will have time to make better use of it later, you're usually better off just not using it *right now*. This can greatly change your theoretical cooldown usage and why I'd rather look at how much actual time a cooldown is worth delaying to stack with another. After all, in many fights you're likely to run into any amount of time where you have to decide if to save+stack the cooldown or use it. It's not always "wait 1 minute to stack icon with veins?" as sometimes it'll just be 10-20s for one reason or another...

Idealy, you use them together during bloodlust <20%.

As the raid leader, I tell my shaman when I want them to bloodlust...so that's not really an issue for us. I'd suggest that you explain to them why it's benefitial to raid dps for them to wait until 20% in a fire mage group.

When combustion is used while a fireball is mid flight it counts that fireball so best case would be 6 seconds 17 worst

To optimize syncing your CDs use macro put combustion first seeing as it will be the one thats off set.

/cast combustion
/cast icy veins
/cast Hex Shrunken Head
/cast The Skull of Gul'dan

careful using the skull and IV when hero is up u might go over the 1.5 GCD given ur respective passive haste

Dont put your consumables on the same macro seeing as u could mess up and use a flame cap and desto pot mid fight and go oom

/use destruction potion
/use flame cap
/use drums of battle

I have these both bound to to primary quick access buttons like Q and E.

Few other notes pop flame cap early before 20% if u think you will drop the boss before 1 min is up.

Id like to see the math for that one too.

I hardly - if at all - agree with your macros.
1- Always activate Skull first, then hex shrunken head, unless you like skull not activating.
2- drums of battle incur a GCD to activate. you lose 1.5s of destro pot/flame cap using the above macro.

Also you may want to use drums but not destro pot/flame cap in the firstplace, I would just have drums bound seperately somewhere and have a seperate macro for pot+cap+cooldowns+fireball in addition to your cooldowns+fireball macro (and obvoiusly have a button for just fireball when you don't want to use cooldowns).

Yes that's a lot of extra keybindings but most of those will not really slow you down when done with mouse clicking, and besides, those things are really better left to human judgement than automization.

Here's the macros I use, with some extra G15 tweaking:

(macros with 'spam' means the macro will be spammed 50 times/sec by the G15 on key-down)

G1- fireblast (spam)
G2- scorch (spam)
G3- fireball (spam)

G4-
^ /use [The Skull of Gul'dan]
^ /use [Hex Shrunken Head]
G5- /cast combustion
G6- /cast icy veins

G7-
^ /use [nomodifier] [Pattern: Drums of Battle]
^ /use [modifier] [Pattern: Drums of Restoration]
G9- /use [Flowing Flamewrath Cape]

(then comes my more complex macros, one being a '2min' macro then a '3min' macro)
G8- (spam)
^ /use [The Skull of Gul'dan]
^ /use [Hex Shrunken Head]
^ /use [nomodifier, combat] [Recipe: Destruction Potion]
^ /cast fireball

G11- (spam)
^ /cast [nomodifier:alt] combustion
^ /use [nomodifier:ctrl, combat] [Flowing Flamewrath Cape]
^ /use [The Skull of Gul'dan]
^ /use [Hex Shrunken Head]
^ /cast icy veins
^ /use [nomodifier:shift, combat] [Recipe: Destruction Potion]
^ /cast fireball

The disposition is made in a way that I can 'easily' pop all my non-consumable cooldowns for trash (ie: G4/G5/G6), and have some flexibility for more precise control on boss fight using G7+ macros.

However, you can't fully rely on those macros for everything -- for instance, drums are always 'off' the 'pop-all' macros due to GCD concerns. You need to pop drums, try and wait 1.5s, then use 'pop-all' macros (since pressing a pop-all macro during drum activation will activate all non-GCD abilities, and not cast fireball, which is very sub-optimal). Then flame cap is listed on the 3min-macro but realistically it isn't used at the same time due to unmatching duration.