I was wondering if anyone would be able to take a look at this log and help me out at all. I'm pretty new to playing mage, so any hints or tips would be great.

Log: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis
Armory: Wortortle @ Blackhand - Game - World of Warcraft

Thanks for any replies.

No, it is almost never worth cancelling a spell for another once you have started casting. Just starting to cast is going to cost you at least a global cooldown which ends up being completely wasted time that deals no damage if you cancel the cast before it finishes. You could think of that time being added to the spell you are switching to and suddenly you are casting a 3 second 'instant' pyroblast. You are better off waiting until the end of the cast and then using hot streak while the fireball is in flight.

I'm a strong advocate that crit should be our best stat overall....


its the stat that is consistent in providing us high dps.

I understand haste caps - additional ticks on combustion/living bomb and pyro - I don't think it should be value as high as some make it out to be. Yes, if the stars align it should present you with amazing results - but more than often it falls short along with you DPS.


Crit never lets you down - the more the better - when you get a string of crits to build a powerful ignite... pure bliss.

Crit actually lets you down more often than any other stat. The stars need to align for crit, not haste or mastery. haste provides you with extra ticks regardless of procs, unless you count your t13 2pc and thats not rng off your own stats it's rng off the 2pc.

Crit has the widest range of RNG compared to any other stat for fire mages. Yes I agree it is generally our best stat, but it is far from consistant. If you look at the bell curve distribution for fire mages you can see how wide the gap is, 30ish-70ish. That gap is so wide because of our crit distribution. The higher your crit rating and the more other stats you give up for it, the more you're exposed to RNG. The last statement in your post is a perfect example, you need to be extremely RNG dependent to string together a powerful ignite.

This is the bell curve for fire. Obviously RNG is causing the wide gap between min (37558) and max (54437), but what is more interesting, and unforunate, is how wide the range is towards the center of bell curve. You can't really expect any given value 95-99% of the time. With 95% confidence, your range is still something like 40k-50k, thats a pretty wide range, which is caused by the RNG inherent in Fire Mage play. The bell curve is also slightly skewed to the left, meaning you're probably going to see numbers like 40-45 more often than 46-50.

OK, let's ignore, for the moment, the possibility of ignite munching. I've got a couple of examples I'd like explained to see if I can understand how ignites add to each other, well, I THINK I know how it works, so I'm going to see if the examples I give are correct. Please feel free to correct me wherever I'm wrong. (Though remember, I'm not worried about munching yet.)


EXAMPLE 1:

0:00.0 Crit for 100k, applies a 40k ignite (ignite bank = 40k)
0:01.0 Crit for 100k, applies a 40k ignite (ignite bank = 80k)
0:02.0 Nothing happens (Timer reset)
0:03.0 Ignite ticks for 40k (ignite bank = 40k)
0:05.0 Ignite ticks for 40k (ignite bank = 0)


EXAMPLE 2:

0:00.0 Crit for 100k, applies a 40k ignite (ignite Bank = 40k)
0:02.0 Ignite ticks for 20k (Ignite bank = 20k)
0:03.0 Crit for 100k, applies a 40k ignite (ignite Bank = 60k)
0:04.0 Nothing happens (Timer reset)
0:05.0 Ignite ticks for 30k (ignite bank = 30k)
0:07.0 Ignite ticks for 30k (ignite bank = 0)


EXAMPLE 3: (Deliberate Alysrazor Degenerate Case)

0:00.0 (Scorch) Crit for 50k, applies a 20k ignite
0:01.0 (Scorch) Crit for 50k, applies a 20k ignite
0:02.0 (Scorch) Crit for 50k, applies a 20k ignite
0:03.0 (Scorch) Crit for 50k, applies a 20k ignite
0:04.0 (Scorch) Crit for 50k, applies a 20k ignite
Keep scorching forever, ignite never actually ticks.


Are these examples correct? And now that I think about it, doesn't that mean you could, if you got your haste high enough, just keep casting < 1 second Pryoblasts, critting every single time, during the down phase on Alysrazor, until your bank had gotten so comically high, and then Combustion right before she comes back up for a retarded amount of damage? Is that how the ridiculous Alysrazor numbers happen?

You can't delay ignite ticks, you can only spread out ignite damage. Also delay between crit and application of ignite also plays a role. What would happen is as follows (based on my understanding of it). You're also ignoring flashburn, which I will also, but just wanted to point it out.

EXAMPLE 1:

0:00.0 Crit for 100k (ignite bank = 40k, 2 ticks)
0:00.5 Ignite applied (ignite bank = 40k, 2 ticks)
0:01.0 Crit for 100k (ignite bank = 80k, 3 ticks)
0:01.5 Ignite refreshed (ignite bank = 80k, 3 ticks)
0:02.5 Ignite ticks for 26667 (ignite bank = 53333, 2 ticks)
0:04.5 Ignite ticks for 26667 (ignite bank = 26666, 1 tick)
0:06.5 Ignite ticks for 26666 (ignite bank = 0)

EXAMPLE 2:

0:00.0 Crit for 100k (ignite Bank = 40k, 2 ticks)
0:00.5 Ignite applied (ignite Bank = 40k, 2 ticks)
0:02.5 Ignite ticks for 20k (ignite bank = 20k, 1 tick)
0:03.0 Crit for 100k (ignite Bank = 60k, 3 ticks)
0:03.5 Ignite refreshed (ignite Bank = 60k, 3 ticks)
0:04.5 Ignite ticks for 20k (ignite bank = 40k, 2 ticks)
0:06.5 Ignite ticks for 20k (ignite bank = 20k, 1 tick)
0:08.5 Ignite ticks for 20k (ignite bank = 0)

EXAMPLE 3:

0:00.0 Crit for 50k (ignite bank = 20k, 2 ticks)
0:00.5 Ignite applied (ignite bank = 20k, 2 ticks)
0:01.0 Crit for 50k (ignite bank = 40k, 3 ticks)
0:01.5 Ignite refreshed (ignite bank = 40k, 3 ticks)
0:02.0 Crit for 50k (ignite bank = 60k, 3 ticks)
0:02.5 Ignite refreshed (ignite bank = 60k, 3 ticks)
0:02.5 Ignite ticks for 20k (ignite bank = 40k, 2 ticks)
0:03.0 Crit for 50k (ignite bank = 60k, 3 ticks)
0:03.5 Ignite refreshed (ignite bank = 60k, 3 ticks)
0:04.0 Crit for 50k (ignite bank = 80k, 3 ticks)
0:04.5 Ignite refreshed (ignite bank = 80k, 3 ticks)
0:04.5 Ignite ticks for 26667 (ignite bank = 53333, 2 ticks)

Depending on exact timing the last example could also result in free ticks as follows (ignite bank comments here are a bit different because there's actually several different banks):

0:00.0 Crit for 50k
0:00.5 Ignite applied (ignite bank = 20k, 2 ticks)
0:01.0 Crit for 50k (ignite bank = 20k, 2 ticks)
0:01.5 Ignite refreshed (ignite bank = 40k, 3 ticks)
0:02.0 Crit for 50k (ignite bank = 40k, 3 ticks)
0:02.5 Ignite ticks for 13333 (ignite bank = 26667, 2 ticks)
0:02.5 Ignite refreshed (ignite bank = 60k, 3 ticks)
0:03.0 Crit for 50k (ignite bank = 60k, 3 ticks)
0:03.5 Ignite refreshed (ignite bank = 80k, 3 ticks)
0:04.0 Crit for 50k (ignite bank = 80k, 3 ticks)
0:04.5 Ignite ticks for 26667 (ignite bank = 53333k, 2 ticks)
0:04.5 Ignite refreshed (ignite bank = 100k, 3 ticks)

I don't think that is possible. If there's any refreshes then the last 3 ticks should always be the same unless the target died. If you have an actual log example that would really help.

I have a question about Combustion. Lets say I have Living Bomb up, I have just procced Pyroblast! from two Fireball crits, and landed said Pyroblast!. I look at Combustion Helper and its predicting a sizable ignite. So I spam my Combustion to toss it up for big damage.

Now, does Combustion compute its damage from all dots applied to my target even if I haven't given any of them time to tick or does it only compute damage for dots that have ticked at least once?

Combustion computes it's total damage from all your DoTs currently applied to the target, regardless of whether they've had an opportunity to tick yet.

Of course, it will not add in the DoT from a Pyroblast! that has not yet landed on the target. You do need to wait for the Pyroblast! to land before you activate your Combustion to get all three DoTs counted.

Since a lot of players are keeping fire for AOE fights, is it a benefit to optimize for Arcane and keep fire on a high Mastery setup?