If a boss is at 30% your obviously not going to be able to use ur IV/comb/trinkets again therefore the 20% interval would be hte superior choice

When 2.4 hits, I would recomend checking to see if the Drums global cooldown is affected by its own haste. Also, while I expect Icy Veins should still wait til after said GCD it's worth double-checking to make sure that the GCD reduction on drums is not worth the lost IV nuke time.

Nice catch but I can't think of a way to be able to reliably tell apart a 5% spell haste difference on a GCD.

I use the exact macro I posted in this thread. As such, combustion is the first activated cooldown on my macro, and yet it fails to register at times.

Problem is, its not a consistent problem. More often than not the combustion is properly tracked, but sometimes, it doesn't gets tracked. It seems to happen most when theres lots of stuff going on (ex: aoe).

It could be the actionbar mod that you guys are using then?

I use NurfedActionBars and have never experienced a problem with such a case, but I also have each spell on my actionbars somewhere else for precise cooldown tracking.

Had this problem too with combustion cooldown not showing. I'm using Bartender at the moment, might be that has to do with it. But I also checked the spellbook and the cooldown wasn't showing there either although I definitely used it.

It's a basic issue, it's not tied to any mods/add-ons. Just like the Blizzard castbar is broken and always displays an 8s bar, no matter what mods are used or not used.

I'm frost specced now, so I can't test it, but I got the error consistently on the PTR (2.3.2 or 2.3.3) on Dr. Boom.
If I used a "#showtooltip combustion /cast IV /cast combustion /use trinket /cast fireball" macro, the visual cooldown for combustion didn't register. Combustion worked fine, clicking it again gave a "spell not ready" error message, and clicking it 3:30 later, it activated just fine.

Just the visual cooldown never appeared. The icon was lit up all the time, as if it's ready. The was no hint on a remaining cooldown, the button looked like an ability ready to use. Just clicking gave the error message, and there was no way to see if/when the cooldown would be up.


This was without any bar mods. It was on the button for the macro, on a separate button for Combustion, and even on Combustion in the spellbook.


I did get the visual cooldown fine when using Combustion from a single button, but not from using it with that macro.

One thing that *might* work is changing the macro a bit. Maybe have combustion as first ability on it, or maybe as last.
Try to experiment a bit with the order/amount of abilities in the macro, it might work.

/stopcasting
/cast Combustion
/stopcasting
/cast Icy Veins
/stopcasting
/cast Berserking
/stopcasting
/use 14
/stopcasting
/use 13
/stopcasting


That is the exact macro I use, and I've never had the issue you guys are describing.

Unless you're also pairing it with a trinket, pairing icy veins and combustions is of no practical benefit if you have to wait at all.

This thread seems to be very informative and I think it is something that all mages need to pay attention to.

I'm pretty guilty of being lazy and just popping my cooldowns as they come up, so keep the helpful information coming.

I have a question regarding a normal 3 minute fight and cooldowns.

Would the proper rotation be:
-Pull-
*pop skull + icon + destro pot

-20%-

*pop IV + combustion + flame cap + destro pot + icon + skull + heroism

?

As Roywyn mentioned, the timer also fails to display in the spellbook, not just on the hotbar mods. I'm almost certain it's not a mod problem.

Hate Monkey, the differences I see between your macro and most of the others listed here are:
1) /stopcasting between each cooldown
2) No consumables used (destruction pot, flame cap)

For what it's worth, I used to use a cooldown macro exactly like yours, and I never got the timer error with it, either. But I switched to macros like Manly's because they lend themselves to spamming and faster chaincasting, and that's when the error began popping up. You might be able to reproduce it if you take out the /stopcasting lines and/or add lines for consumables. If you normally click your macro, you might also get the error if you trigger it with a hotkey instead. Those have been my methods for reproduction of the error, anyway.

This seems to be a bug that needs more investigation.

Interesting point. I never quite internalized the implications of the ignite mechanic change till I thought about your argument.

15s actually.

I stand corrected then, but still, since the timers don't match, not worth it to macro them in.

Actually, I see no good reason not to macro them. As I posted in my list of used macros, I have them macroed individually, and it is what I usually use. However, if I forget to activate them for any reason, then my '2min'/'3min' macro will catch them. If I really intended to not use destruction potion, for example, then I have a nomodifier: clause which allows proper control. The only thing I have not individually macroed is destruction potion becuase I believe they are not worth using unless you couple it with at least trinkets or icy veins, all of which cases are handled by 'automated' macros.

If you can actually fuck up the ignite mechanics in your favor than yeah you could gain something by pairing combustion with icy veins. With any non-bugged situation though icy veins and combustion will each add the same amount of damage wether used together or not. Icy veins will make combustion just do its damage earlier and start the cooldown earlier, but it's not worth waiting on combustion just for that. Again this is assuming no bugs, if combustion+veins lets you take advantage of bugs to your own good it may be different.

I see how you all are popping cooldowns as early as possible but I don't see how you can do this without holding back due to threat. Do you wait untill the tank has at least 10k to start the fight or do you hover at his level untill you can use invisibility. If you use invisibility, do you let it tick for a few seconds or let it go for the full duration?

I just give the tank a few seconds and it's never a problem. You don't act this way on Bloodboil for obvious reasons, but it's fine for every other fight I can think of.

At the start of the fight, the tank is putting his heart into gathering threat onto himself and will often have his highest threat generation at the start. Also, with a hunter in your raid, who applies Misdirect on the pull, there is no way you are going to catch up to the tank on threat. Later in the fight, the tank has been dealing with adds, proper positioning, etc, his TPS (threat per second) will have dropped a lot.

There is no benefit to being invisible more than 0 seconds for threat reduction purposes. Since you aren't doing any damage for the last 5 seconds, you have lost 5 seconds of damage; don't lose any more.

When do you guys use scorch before popping trinkets/cds? I usually refresh scorch immediately before popping one. For combustion, I find it extremely valuable to the traveling fireball doesn't use up a crit and so I don't waste a crit in the middle on using scorch. For things like trinkets and IV, though, does it really matter that much if I refresh scorch before popping them, even though there's, say, 15 seconds left on scorch? Or should I just continue using fireball and refresh scorch in the middle?

I'll try and give a proper picture of how things usually goes:

-tank hits the boss
-2-3s later I begin stacking scorch
-as soon as 5 scorch are up I generally follow up with an 'extra' scorch. (this is necessary threat management as I learned the hard way)
-pop drums of battle (threat management again since this eats a GCD)
-blow all cooldowns. Cooldowns must absolutely not include icy veins or destruction potion or combustion, as it garantees an aggro pull.

On some very rare cases you can blow more cooldowns. Ex: teron. But for most fights this is how it goes. For threat sensitive fights like gurtogg you simply cannot blow cooldowns at all on the pull.

Individually there is no benefit other than possible rolling of ignite. However they both benefit from stacking with other effects such as trinkets, destro pots, and molten fury. It's a fine line on if/when to wait on them to match up, but usually it is only ~20 sec difference. Most fights in current content only allow 2 uses of IV and combustion, so it is really a no brainer to save the second use for under 20% and stack them with all you can.