First, please use buff.tier13_2pc.react>=10 for a buff with proc chance < 100% ( which is the case for Fire, but not for Arcane here )

For Fire the this condition really is only important for the first Combustion, because later you should always have 10 stacks when your Combustion is off cooldown again. Or to put it into a question: Is it better to cast the first Combustion as early as possible ( and thus having a longer cooldown until the second Combustion ), or is it better to wait a bit longer, but have always the shortest possible CD for Combustion, and also more haste for the Combustion Dot itself?

Keep in mind that missing a opportunity of having all 3 necessary dot's before you have the stacks of Stolen Time ( and then not having the dot's ready when you'd have the buff stacks ), causes another loss for the waiting strategy. Depends on how often there is such a window of opportunity.

Other than that I can't think of any other improvements. I did the same simulations as you did ( with T13H BiS ) and can confirm the results, it just seems to be better to start combusting whenever you have all those dots available. I tested the usual 450s +-20%, and also 720s +-20%, and both show the same results.

Edit: Forget most of what I wrote, it's more simple for the T13H BiS profile: insignia_of_the_corrupted_mind is usually active for a non-conditional first combustion ( resulting in +6 ticks for combustion, instead of +3 ), but already lost when waiting until 6 or 10 stacks of Stolen Time.

The situation you describe can be obtain on the third Combustion.

With the 4T13, Combustion have a 70s/80s cooldown. Insignia have a 110s ICD and proc around 118s. We can conclude that the third Combustion can be aligned with the Insignia's proc with a little place for RNG. If we cast an early sub-optimal Combustion, we can obtain a very good one each 4 minutes.

I believe in BiS gear you cannot reforge out of enough haste to get down to 1505 anyway, you're sitting around 200 over that. So that's 4 stacks worth right there.

Some really great points in the last few postings here!

I have recalculated a few scenarios for combustion, and sadly there should be no way to realisticly get another application of it. The gain from 10-stacking AB would be around 15-20 seconds of cooldown time, and on a 6-minute patchwerk-style fight, the reduction needed would be at least 30 seconds. Less static fights make this calculation even less reliable. So there is little point in waiting for the 10th 2pc-stack before casting the first combustion for the sake of the CD-reduction.

There is still the issue of the haste-value on gear though, which could be important for mages on every gearlevel in different ways. I'll try to order my thoughts on this; I apologize for repetitions from other mages here, but I think some overview might be useful. I apologize for writing hastecap, its simply much shorter then threshold. For all of the following, I will assume a non-goblin mage without DI, using the 4pcT13 bonus in any version.

• Without [Insignia of the Corrupted Mind]:
  • The attainable hastecap is 2005. Getting this from your gear before the 2pc means wasting points on haste that could be crit instead. Not getting it means you lose one tick from the first combustion you cast every fight (~15.000 DMG average?). This is less relevant on longer fights.
  • During bloodlust, the attainable cap is 2212 haste, or 1712 with 10stack2pc. Only useful if you dont BL at the start of the fight. Note that with this cap, you can also gain the additional tick of the first combustion at 6 stacks of the 2pc, though its probably not worth waiting for that 6th stack to appear.

• With [Insignia of the Corrupted Mind]:
  • The trinket seems to have a 110 second ICD/15% chance to procc; rule of thumb would put it that you have it at the pull and then every 2 minutes. Combustion-use is even more random. I estimate it at about 15 seconds, then ~1:50, then every 90 seconds afterwards.
  • "Natural" overlaps of both could happen at the pull, then at arround 4:10. Next overlap would only be at the 10 minute mark. This is very random and changes greatly with every fight. Combining the trinket with the spell would be more easily achieved by delaying combustion for a while when the trinket is about to come off its ICD; obviously not worth it if this results in losing an entire use of combustion over the entire fight.
  • The attainable hastecap with the heroic trinket is at arround 5538 for the 6th additional combustion tick. Beware of rounding errors. The haste needed from gear during a procc would be 1760@10stacks, 2010@5, 2260@0. For the normal-mode trinket: 2134@10stacks, 2384@5, 2634@0.
  • With Bloodlust you could go for a higher value cap at 5878 for +11 ticks (again, wobbly math?). Add 340 to all values to reach the necessary haste: 2100@10stacks, 2350@5, 2600@0.

• Conclusions/tl;dr:
  • For the first application of combustion, you will very likely not have 10 stacks. You will very likely have trinket-uptime if you have it. You might have bloodlust. For every application after the first, you should have 10 stacks. You will probably have trinket-uptime once, not more. You might have bloodlust once (you should aim to have combustion ready during a BL).
  • Long story short: Every given scenario is only going to occur once in any given fight. Every haste value will only matter for one single application of combustion, and the variance on it will be in one single tick of combustion. For non-AoE-situations, this averages to a difference of ~15.000 damage.
  • I find only one convincing compromise for haste that could be beneficial in various situations: 1712 haste without the trinket or 1760 with it. Without the trinket, you will have a reliable additional tick during bloodlust, and you might gain one during the first combustion with some RNG. For all "regular" combustions, you will be easily over the 2005 cap. With the trinket, you will probably not get the additional tick for the first combustion, but will have one if both effects overlap again (probably once per fight, maybe even twice). You gain no benefit during proccs with bloodlust, except that you go completly insane with haste. You are still reliably over the 2005 cap for regular combustions.
  • Overall, one should not exagerate the importance of these thresholds; aiming for more reliable additional ticks or much higher hastevalues seems less advisable then simply stacking more crit once one has reached the "static" haste of 2005@10; gaining more haste is useful insofar as you can only reforge so much of it.

Sorry for the length of the post. I just thought I'd sum up all the applications/values for the different hastecaps in one list, and maybe someone will see something in that reasoning that helps him organize his thoughts on the matter. There is also the obvious implications of the Deathwing-staff, which might be most interessting to those without the legendary (the group-buff would be arguably way to random to be considered).

Also, in summing this up I would once again like to restate the first point from above: Don't use AB for anything but maintaining stacks if in peril of completly falling off. The CDR and the additional tick on combustion aren't worth it.

The latest version of Rawr always considers Stolen Time to be at 10 stacks for Combustion (even for the first one), if you're having problems with it please post your character xml in an issue so that we can investigate.

I read this forum often and i havent seen post about LB glyph. I tryed in our last raid to use it instead of pyro glyph and i didnt noticed loss or improvement of my dps, the only diference is that i got less pyro crits and more LB dmg. So what i am asking is numbers of dps loss of using it instead of pyro glyph. My theory here is that pyro dmg depends on hs procs on other hand LB glpyh is independent. Since none mentioned this earlier i think that 3% dmg increase by glyph is to low to compare to 5%crit of pyro glyph, but im interested in numbers.

Hello,
I'm a goblin fire mage and I've got a question concerning haste: if I look at your post, I can't really see how much haste to get for an additional combustion tick. But when I look here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...bFFTeVE#gid=19 It tells me I'd need 1858 haste (I'm on a 10 man raid). But if I tell Rawr to optimize my gear, it reforges to about 1600 haste. Used in simcraft, these values produce more DPS. Can that be correct?
Thanks!

Your goblin (just like me), your haste cap is 1858 without 2T13 and 1358 with it. There's a cap at 1564 for the seventh tick for Pyro/LB under Lust as a goblin. (1818 if not).

If you're on the Madness fight, you can go for 45%/55% haste cap for Combustion (with the 20% haste buff):

cap	non-goblin	goblin
45%	1006	864
55%	1981	1830
65%	2964	2803

(2T13 included)

Very circumstantial. I am running as fire with my guilds 10 man raids and have no trouble holding my own on the Globules. Hunter and Warrior being the only ones doing consistently more damage on them.

I have play all fight with the 3 spec already, I can confirm that Fire and Arcane can be choose without dps lost. The only exception is Spine of DW on the tendons.

Even Frost could have been interesting to choose on some fight (Blackhorne, Madness) if it wasn't for the dps lost.

Thank you very much for clearing that!