Originally Posted by Antiphonal

In the interest of the Help Me thread - a long reply...

The reason to follow a cast spell with an instant as a healer is so you can get more time outside the 5SR, so I can see why - moving from priest to mage - the habit came over with you.

But for a mage it's a really bad idea. Here's why:

Think of it this way. Ice Lance flies off your hands instantly, but for the sake of standing there and nuking, it actually isn't instant at all. It triggers the global cooldown which means you have to wait 1.5 seconds after the icelance cast before you can start casting your Frostbolt. Don't think of it as a 600 damage instant. But think of it as a 600 damage 1.5 second cast spell. That makes the icelance worth about 450 dps if your average is correct - which means it is REALLY dragging your overall dps way down. Compare with Frostbolt which, by your estimation, is doing 1700 per cast. That's 680 dps. Therefore, the more Icelances you do, the lower your dps goes until it hits 450. The more frostbolts you cast raises your dps until it hits 680. In other words, even if you never used your water elemental again, just switching to frostbolt and cutting Icelance improved your overall dps by a large margin.