If you're fire then pushback is hardly an issue, especially in Kara where there isn't much to cause it. Do you have WWS by any chance of the raids? That would be the most helpful for people to look at.

Sorry - no logs.

Ok - I know it's lame...

I just wondered if you guys went through the same - is it normal to fall off a cliff like that?

A sudden drop in DPS between two raids may be a bit odd, but it seems to me that two raids isn't really enough evidence to go soul searching. It can be a matter of luck, lag, random numbers, etc. If the problem persists, I'd recommend getting some WWS reports - it's pretty enlightening.

In my current armory gear, I've got 159 hit and 131 haste, wearing mostly ZA / badge / T5 gear (we made it to hyjal last night, but haven't got any loot from there yet). The badge pants would cause a large loss in hit, but I don't think they're really worth getting over spellstrike. Other than that, most of the slots I've got hit in aren't slots you can get haste in at the level suggested (head/gloves/belt/rings). You'd probably need to pick up the headpiece before trying to get most of the other parts, as the amount of hit on that is very useful if your trying to get capped off as few items as possible. It's certainly achievable to get a decent amount of haste pre-T6 without completly gimping yourself.

Got a quick question I can't seem to remember, does the 4pcT6 bonus increase just the hit portion of the spell dmg or weighed average hit + crit dmg? Thanks a bunch.

While I'm not a fan of the damage and stamina gems, nor do I see getting all of the socket bonuses on your gear as worthwhile, gear shouldn't be your problem.

A few things to consider are: as fire, the faster Trash dies, the worse your "DPS" will be on it. You can't ramp-up the scorch debuff on trash, I imagine. Your best bet is to get a "Trash" rotation going, and this is one of the things that will require knowing your raid's DPS pretty well. I saw the math a while back for when to scorch and when to fireball on short fights, and what I remember seeing was: if you can land 3 fireballs after X number of scorches, it's worthwhile. If you can't, try X-1, etc. For a lot of Kara trash, I find myself (similar stats, a bit more +fire damage when crusade is up, a bit less when it's not) doing "decent" DPS, but nothing great -- simply because I Don't have time to get scorches up. Two fireballs and a lot of stuff dies.

Now, if your actual DPS on Nightbane was quite low (I wasn't sure if you were counting total DPS for the whole night, or just NB) there are a couple factors which I would consider.

First: Cooldown Management. Are you using IV/Trinket/Combustion at <20% of Nightbane's health? Are you getting bloodlust then as well? If you are, and you find that you're killing NB before they fade, use them during the "air phase" at 25% -- but do your best to maximize cooldown uptime in the <20% zone.

Also, on the same subject, use them ASAP once your tank has threat. Nightbane's a long fight, and you should get two or more usages out of most of your cooldowns. (He takes us... five+ minutes? I can't remember... I've never timed it.)

Second: Is your mana an issue? If it is, are you chain-chugging pots for this fight? Do you have a shadow priest? Resto shaman? If you're going OOM on this guy, that'll be cutting in to your DPS time, obviously, but you shouldn't be. On our nightbane kills I'm fully able to flame-cap at 20% and not worry about mana, but I use supers to do this, and have a SPriest.

Third: Spell rotation. Are you getting scorch up there and keeping it up there with an optimal number of fireballs to scorches? You should be maintaining the 8:1 fireball to scorch ratio with ease on Nightbane. Sometimes I don't let scorch fall off between ground phases, other times I do, but it's obviously better for your total damage to keep it up through the air phase. It's just a matter of whether your tank is good at snap-aggroing him when he lands. Anyways, you should be able to easily do a good rotation on NB.

--

Hopefully that helps, but if not, ask more!

I need alittle bit of help. I'm in Hyjal and BT, and i feel my damage is low for the encounters. I've recently switched to fire but i've been noticing i have been only able to pull out about 1200 dps on bosses. I won't socket epic Gems to my gear yet. Could someone take a look at my gear, i have a feeling i'm Gemming wrong

BTW: I know i'm below hit capped, we usually run with a toon that has the Heroic caster hit bonus. I have a ring i swap in just incase.

Almost forgot to add an armory link to my profile just incase; I really don't want to go back to arcane to pull out big numbers again.

The World of Warcraft Armory

Cool. It looks like you can still go higher and grab the [Footpads of Madness] and [Mana Attuned Band]. Assuming I can get t5 level stuff, but not get into SSC/TK (my current casual guild wants to avoid DKP instances, so our "end-game" is essentially ZA), would you also recommend [Robe of Departed Spirits]?

I'd like to gem straight spell hit or spell hit/dmg with good socketed items like the gloves off attunemen and see if I can get away with grabbing the [Pantaloons of Arcane Annihilation].

Thanks for the comments chaps.

I think that the Mana feeders definitely are a factor; thanks for pointing that out.

WRT. Nightbane, it's a long fight, I think we clocked 10 minutes on it! There is a lot of time for mana regen, and I found that the new Mana Gem * 3 was a great boon, so mana was not an issue. Threat was however, because this was the first time that our guild has come across a fight where the agro resets are so sharp and significant.

OK : I think that the message is that it's about Skillz and not gearz (I'm trying to talk the talk, but failing); that's good, because at least I'm not missing something obvious.

Thanks guys.

I’m currently sitting at 3/5 T4 (Just got my legs the other night, waiting on spell thread for them), I’m currently 2/48/11, 857 +dmg, 30% crit and 103 hit sans the gear I keep around to switch out for boss fights. I currently use Chaotic Skyfire Diamond (+12 Spell Critical & 3% Increased Critical Damage
) in my helm, and Veiled Noble Topaz (+4 Spell Hit Rating and +5 Spell Damage) in every socket, except for the two blues needed. I know I am not hit capped in my normal dps gear at the moment, but I always run with draenei shaman.

What I’m looking for is what I may be doing wrong. I used to be top dps always, be it Gruuls or Kara. But as my elemental shaman friend got some better gear, along with his experiments with spell haste, I've been drooping behind. I know that elemental spec'ed shamans are supposedly "top raid dps", but I know my class and rotations, got my buffs and pay attention to what is going on... only to be easily out dpsed by him.

I first noticed the drop when I socketed for more hit, but that was expected till we hit higher raids. I tried out an arcane spec for ZA and Kara the other night, but I don't think I have quite the gear to support it (No 2xT5 to boot), and it seemed to be a little less than my current build. If there are any suggestions I’m completely open to them, any questions are welcome.

Thanks ahead of time.

Nyalar
<DOME>

Does ice lance (or can it) benefit its trippled dmg + shatter bonus on a "not-yet-frozen target", if it's casted directly after a skilled frostbolt?

Or does the target NEED TO BE already frozen?

Leading me to the main-question: At which time are the side-spell-effects of a skilled frostbolt assumted and calculated?

Is there any official note on concering this topic?

Didn't come cross any thread via search funkcion ;(

Theres also [Shadowcaster's Drape] from the first chest in ZA. I missed the only drop of the boots, and haven't seen the cloak / chest drop yet. We've not really tried for the 3rd chest yet, we tend to move slowly / spend ages looting.

The chest seems slightly worse than what I have due to the lack of sockets, but it'll be better than anything else that'd drop in the instances your doing. I keep looking at buying the [Pattern: Bracers of Nimble Thought], but can't bring myself to spend such a large amount at the moment, especially as its getting closer to having a guild tailor who can do them.

Damage (including critical hits) and random procs are calculated when the spell LEAVES the caster's hands. I believe that debuffs aren't applied until a spell actually hits, but I haven't tested that with Frostbite/Ice Lance (especially with Frostbolt recently being fixed to apply Frostbite again).

I've recently switched to 11/47/3 from 11/0/50 since we've started doing SSC. I've traded in my Shadoweave for Spellfire, and even bought the pattern for [Boots of Blasting]. I use the [Scryer's Bloodgem] and [Ashyen's Gift] for boss fights, and my +Spell Hit is ~155. Raid buffed, I'm close to +1200 spell damage.

Below is the link to our most recent ZA attempt. I like the Nalorakk fight, because it's an all-out DPS battle, but I was disappointed with my DPS there.

Wow Web Stats

I was at 731 DPS for that fight; when I was deep Frost, I would be over 1000 DPS.

Now, I did get knocked down and silenced a bit more than usual on this go, but I'm wondering if Scorch isn't a factor as well.

Even though the other Mage is "Fire", I'm the only Mage in my guild with Improved Scorch. So, I'm the only one applying it. Ideally, you'd want all your mages to apply the debuff and make sure it stays 5-stacked, but if I'm the only one doing it, is it worth it?

Am I overlooking something else I'm doing wrong?

5 scorches initially, plus 1 scorch every 7-8 fireballs should put you at around 10-12 Scorches for the fight. You did 14, so that doesn't seem to be a major reason for the dps you did. Your crit seems low in the parse though.

You're wearing pvp gear at the moment so I can't really comment on gear.

fake edit: The fight was over 5 minutes long, 44 Fireballs at 3 seconds a piece (no icy veins or drums) should put you at about 2:12 dps time . That's pretty abysmal unless the silences were really that bad.

I've switched her out to her PvE raiding gear -- hopefully the Armory will refresh soon.

Yes, on bosses it's still worth it if you're the only mage that has improved scorch. There's some calculations Vontre did awhile back that show how long the mob has to be alive for it to be worth it for 1/2/3 mages to scorch first, but for bosses the answer is always going to be yes. The real question is why don't the other mages have the talent? The notion of "scorch bitch" is stupid and flawed, every mage should be scorching.

Keep in mind that on shorter fights in smaller groups frost has the potential to seem better than fire. In ZA as my weekend PVP frost spec I can pull 1100 DPS on short bosses where the elemental uptime is almost 100%. Where fire shines is long fights where you can take advantage of cooldown stacking and raid synergy.

As for that particular parse, as Nurru pointed out you had 44 fireballs and 16 scorches, a ratio of 2.75:1. You want to try and get as close to 7-8:1 as you can. Also you should try and avoid evocating if at all possible (sometimes it's not, obviously).

The short answer to number of Improved Scorches: However many IS to allow you to do 2 Fireballs. Any Tier 5 trash will allow you to lay down 5 IS by yourself, and still benefit in both damage and DPS. By yourself, 12 seconds is the cut over point, and with 2 other IS mages, it is 8 seconds.

Nag the other mages to stop being leeches. If even one of them brags about their DPS or their spec, step on their toes clearly.

yeah, of that i know - but i'm really interessted in when debuff are applied

I'm pretty sure all effects are calculated when the spell leaves the hand. When I used to play frost spec, one of the most common thing I would do while grinding mobs is to cast Frost nova, then charge up a Frostbolt + Ice lance combo. I'm usually like 10+ yards away from the mob, so my frostbolt always hit 1st. What happens was, my Ice lance will always get the 300% bonus, without fail. It doesn't matter if frostbolt removed the freeze effect from the mob. As long as I managed to cast Ice lance before my frostbolt hits, I always get the benefit.

I believe the same logic applies to Molten Fury, which I've observed many times to be dependent on the mob's HP when my fireball leaves my hand.

Hey guys a little bit off-topic but I need some help.
Now if you can check my armory you will see that I have 168hit rating. Should i swap Ring Of Captured Storms with Rind Of Ancient Knowledge (trusting the +3% ghost hit from talents) and generaly any ideas about how I can improve myself gear-wise. And 1 more big question : Is Ashtongue Talisman Of Insight worth it considering my gear//build?

Is there something like "Best Gear Avaible For Frost Mage" and should I make some general changes in my gear or I got the idea right?

Here is my armory link because avatar seems to be broken : http://armory.wow-europe.com/charact...Legion&n=Ainav

There's no harm in trying right? Spend a night with 10% hit from gear and check your frostbolt stats as you go. I've played frostspec with just above 10% from gear for a long time now and I have no more resist than those who are officially hitcapped.