Koetjka: That's the now out-dated classic 33.28.0. This spec was designed to take TLC to the maximum of it's efficiency (and still will make a good value from it) and centers around massive crit%. It is a false economy to rotate fireballs into this spec, as the lack of Emp. Fireball makes the scorch/fireball difference small and gives the 4% crit from Ignite more value than it has in a pure fire spec.

33.28.0 arcane/fire hybrid was never designed to use Arcane Blast, but then again back then nobody had 2/5*T5. I would suspect that the optimal rotation would be 3xAB,5xSc. In my oppinion, it's all a waste of your time, however, because rotating arcane with fire will cause you to have problematic item selection: You know Hit is the best value till the cap, but you'll hit the cap 85ish hit rate earlier with arcane making further hit useless for half your rotation. The spec scales well with crit (though hit and damage still scale better) but suffers from simply being sub-par. It just won't scale well at all. To milk this spec you'll need a CSD, T5x2 and a TLC, but even then you'll be watching the 43fire fly off into the distance when Molten Fury gets in range.

If you insist on a hybrid, I'd re-juggle your talents: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft Firstly, I saw you spec Imp Fireblast. Don't do it. If you find Fblast is increasing your DPS significantly, you need to respec because your DPS is too low. Blastwave is of marginal value and you're stripped for points in hybrid builds, thus it's a luxury. The only reason you keep Pyro is because AP-POM-Pyro is substantially better than Fball (If you had a point to spare, it'd be in Elemental Mastery). As for Arcane Fortitude, let's all pretend you didn't spec that at all.

Seriously though, I had a look at your armory and you're mostly fine. If you re-tuned some gems out of the arcane-mentality (ie replace most of your +9 with +5dmg/+4hit and get gem bonus from pants & belt) you'll be a lot more successful as a full-fire spec than the old 33.28.0

Elemental precision is currently bugged and it gives an extra 3% spell hit to frost spells.

something worth noting on the ZA trinket, yes, it stacks, but at least with the scryer bloodgem (i didn't try it with the icon yet but i imagine it's the same) it bumps the cooldown for the first trinket you pop out for an extra 20 seconds. so at least from what I've seen, it's a burst every 140 seconds or so rather than 120. Also I've noticed that they only stacked if you pop the Head first. popping the scryer one put the hex into a 20ish sec cooldown.

Hm, how good is [Shroud of the Highborne] for a caster?

I'm very reluctant to accept that a healer cloak is better than a caster cloak ([Cloak of the Illidari Council])of the same tier ...

Edit:
Hm, [Signet of the Quiet Forest]. Pretty good for raw power, although the other ZA ring and the T6 zone rings beat it. And I'm not really happy about ger without stamina.
Thanks for mentioning it though

What's this? "Healing" itemized gear proving to be competition with "damage caster" gear because Blizzard's oddball itemization system, which has no concept of cost/benefit ratios, allowed it? I'm in shock.

(This is criticism only of Blizzard and their utter stupidity in this regard.)

What you're saying doesn't make sense: you start with "yes it stacks" then you point out it has block-out CD as all the other trinkets do. Then you finish off by quoting what we already know: you can in fact have both trinkets on at the same time, which is exactly what "stacks" means. Whether or not you have to activate one or the other first is irrelevent: They'll be on the same macro in the correct order and will have mere milliseconds appart.

The fact that activated trinkets have a block-out CD is well known and has been the case since pre-BC due to TOI/ZHC AP-POM-Pyro builds. The only known way to circumvent this is to use Serpent Coil Braid after a use-trink (because you don't in fact "use" the 'braid) and this new ZA trink which for reasons unknown it doesn't trigger the block.

Also, you are mistaken in assuming they burst "every 140 seconds". They are most assuredly on a 120sec affair, just one's trinket is 20sec delayed compared to another.

0:00 Trink 1 On
0:20 Trink 2 On
2:00 Trink 1 CD done
2:20 Trink 2 CD done

Same 120sec CD, just one transposed by 20sec.

Actually not true, Skull of Gul'dan activated first also stacks with other damage trinkets. The fact that another activated trinket has this issue(which is probably a bug, frankly, since it only works in one specific order) is likely just typical Blizzard failure at keeping their code consistent, and it'll be fixed within 8 or 12 months or so. You know.

AB hits within less than 1.5 sec can obviously happen when (for example) a 2-stacked AB gets followed up by a 3-stacked AB and minor haste is involved, that lowers the latter ABs casting time under 1.5 sec. Same is true when the followed up AB is cast upon a Focus proc. In this case there is no GCD limitation b/c the first (and lower stacked) of the two ABs is a > 1.5 sec cast.

I'm trying to solve a mystery: why is Fire doing more DPS than Arcane in theory, but not (for me at least) in practice.

I've been reading about Mage Theorycraft in 2.3 on the EJ forums: [Mage] TC after 2.3

The general concensus is that with the changes to MSD and TLC, combined with the removal of the Imp. Fireball damage tax, Fire is now better DPS than Arcane again in raids.

I've been a Fire Mage for a long time. When we started in Serpentshrine cavern somewhere in June, our Mages were all Fire, but usually not in the top 8 DPS on SWStats/WWS. At some point I saw Fusion's "SSC Clear in 2 hours" vid, which was filmed by an Arcane Mage, and inspired by that, I respecced Arcane and saw my damage skyrocket. The other Mages followed soon. We did not follow Mage Theorycraft very well at that time, so we stuck with our AB rotations, instead of abusing MSD.

Now, to 2.3. We have just started in Black Temple and Hyjal Summit a few weeks ago. Theory says that the reign of Arcane is over, and that Fire - even without CoE - should be doing more DPS now.

To test this, I specced back to Fire for a raid. I ended back somewhere in the bottom of the DPS. I have been trying to find out why there seems to be such a difference between theory and practice for this situation, and I was hoping that maybe you could help. I'm afraid I don't have any WWS parses of that raid, but I'll try to create some of future raids anyway.

I've done some testing: emptying a full mana bar on Dr. Boom, wearing "raid boss gear" (i.e. hit capped for raid bosses), a few times in Arcane spec, and a few times in Fire spec.

You can find the combatlogs and WWS parses of these tests here: Index of /mage_dpstest

These are the trinkets I have available:

Darkmoon Card: Crusade
Icon of the Silver Crescent
Serpent-Coil Braid
The Lightning Capacitor
Sextant of Unstable Currents
Quagmirran's Eye

In both cases I chose to wear Icon and Braid, and did not activate the Icon. Maybe I should have used different trinkets, though I doubt it would have made a significant difference.

---------------------------------------------

First, Arcane. Spec is 48/13/0: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

555 int (with AI; unbuffed, it is 509 int) 220 spi
1009 damage, 222 fire damage, 222 arcane damage
371 crit rating, 101 hit rating

Arcane Intellect, Mage Armor, 2/5 tier 5, No Chaotic Skyfire Diamond (don't have t5+ head).
Trinkets equipped: Braid and Icon. Not used AP or Icon. 27.65% crit chance.

DPS Tests (48/13/0, AB AB AB AM Sc): 1054, 1112, 959, 1027, 1008, 1114, 1091, 983
Average DPS with Arcane spec: 1043 DPS

---------------------------------------------

Fire Spec is Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

451 int (with AI; unbuffed it's 411 int), 233 spi
817 damage, 273 fire damage, 222 arcane damage
299 crit rating, 163 hit rating

Arcane Intellect, Mage Armor, No Chaotic Skyfire Diamond (don't have t5+ head).
Trinkets equipped: Braid and Icon. Not used Combustion or Icon. 29.09% Fire crit chance.
Dr. Boom was above 20% health on all these logs.

DPS Tests (10/48/3, 8x FB 1x Sc): 1002, 865, 865, 853, 945, 952, 994, 925
Average DPS in Fire spec: 925 DPS

---------------------------------------------

Fire has 20% more damage below 20% mob health, so I should probably add about 1/5 * 20% = 4% to the Fire DPS there, resulting in about 960 DPS.

As you can see, the 8x Fireball / 1x Scorch "rotation" (960 DPS) is doing about 100 DPS less than the 3x AB rotation (1043 DPS). And if you have plenty of mana to spare, you can increase the amount of ABs you do per rotation to increase your DPS ever further.

In raids, I'd be combining Combustion with Flame Cap, Destruction Potion, and an activated trinket. But I'd also be combining AP with the Icon, and with PoM/Pyro, so I don't think there will be a huge difference in DPS between these two talents.

I also put these numbers in Vontre's spreadsheet, version 2.7.3.1 (not sure if that includes the 2.3 changes yet, though). I chose to put the whole bunch of raid buffs in it, including all consumables and a Shadowpriest.

Dr. Boom, only self-buffed with AI and MA:
1042 DPS - AB Cycle (AB x3, AM, Scorch)
925 DPS - Fire Cycle (FB x8, Sc x1)

Vontre's Sheet, fully raid buffed:
1256 DPS - AB Cycle (AB x2, AM, Scorch; I don't see a cycle with 3x AB in it, and I haven't taken the time to write one).
1474 DPS - Fire Cycle (Fireball x8, Scorch x1).

I hope I did that all right; I entered the stats manually, because the Gear Selector seems to be bugged in OpenOffice (every gear slot pulldown is identical, containing items like "Spirit:" and "Girlfriend" (huh?)).

Now, my big question is: why does theory and practice seem so different? What's going on in raids that increases Fire damage so much compared to the Dr. Boom testing?

Is my gear perhaps not good enough - specifically, do I need more Crit Rating for the Fire Spec to surpass Arcane? Does it make any significant different if I use different trinkets, or CSD? Vontre's sheet suggests "no" for the answers to these questions, but you never know.

I've always been a Fire Mage, and I'd really like to spec back to fire, but until this mystery has been solved, I feel forced to stay Arcane because somehow I deal much more damage with it.

Any help in solving this mystery is greatly appreciated

So, im pretty sure this should be the right thread for this question.

My question is wether i should use the Serpent coil braid or the icon of the silver crescent. My current specc i frost but i am gearing towards speccing fire when 2.3.2 hits, and therefor my gear is aimed at doing so. Im currently low on hit and would be able to take full advantage of the hit on the Serpent coil braid in both fire and frost specc. Wether or not i get a shadow priest in raids are very random. One of my goals as it is, is to get the Leggings of channeled elements which would set me back another 4 hit rating.

Hope somebody has an answer for this.

P.s. I tried using Lhiveras Theorycraft site for figuring out this, but a note on top of the site claims that the trinket calculations atm are wrong.

thanks in advance.

Liandra: Where these tests conducted on PTR? If so, latency might have a lot to do with sample dilution.

Also, what kind of sizes are we talking about? You note separate parsings and their dps, and theres a fair few of them, but you don't note how long the nuke lasted. Doing solo damage-till-oom on Dr. Boom with fire is a bad practice because the 5 scorches at the start badly dilute your sample. On a boss fight, you'll only do perhaps 3 scorches (as there will be other fire-mages most likely) and it'll be a case of perhaps 140 fireballs and 20 scorches in total. On Dr. Boom you'll be closer to 40 fireballs and 9 scorches. You can see how the ratio of scorch-to-fireball is diluting your samples badly: Practically 7:1 becomes 4.4:1.

Were you sure there wasn't a lock in the vicinity? They have a tendency of parking CoS on him to boost themselves and making your arcane 10% (or 13%) out of whack.

Finally, because fire's crit multiplier is substantially higher than arcane's, fire parsings are especially prone to statistical inaccuracy. I've sat many a time at Dr Boom and done test after test where the bastard would refuse to budge from 10% below what my crit should have been, only then to go nuts and give me a result of 65% crit for 3m spam which wouldn't budge. You need a much much bigger sample than plain'ol Boom to get accuracy.

RSmage: Braid is perfectly fine if you're lacking Hit. Also, given Braid and Icon stack (provided you pop the icon first) I see no reason why you shouldn't have both. What's the other trink you're wearing? I'd say with 2.3 go icon/braid and pop elemental, click it's water bolt, once GCD is down, click your (icon, managem, destro pot, icy veins, frostbolt) macro and make the dual-trink work hugely in your favour by stacking IV and WE on +500 spellpower! Not to mention the extra mana return from Braid is signifficantly more in 2.3...