- switch your gems: +5haste/+6dmg > +5crit/+6dmg
- use belt of blasting instead of anetheron's noose - the hit on it is definitely worth it
- if you have switched to BoB, use the darkmoon trinket over your ssc trinket
- smart cooldown usage: Assuming icon+darkmoon, it's fairly easy:
0:00 pull Brutallus (make sure all of your hunters chain misdirect your 1st tank - snap aggro is important). Start scorching as soon as Brutallus is in range, md aggro is sufficent
0:05 scorch should be up by now, switch to fireballs
0:20 aggro should be fine, make sure you are not in melee-range, do 1x scorch (so you don't have to scorch while using your cooldowns), use everything (destruction-pot/flamecap/icon/combustion/icy veins - please macro it) and start nuking
2:20 destruction potion + trinket again
~4:50-5:00 make sure all your cooldowns are up again once the boss reaches 19%. 1x scorch and use everything again + stack it with bloodlust (tell your shaman when to use it)
In additional, don't let scorch and coe drop, ever. As a sidenote, your locks don't have to use curse of weakness. Even if it is improved, it's just as good as improved demo-shout, which should already be kept up by your off warrior.
If you're running short on mana, try to get an innervate from your feral tank. Otherwise use a mana potion at 2:20 instead of a destruction potion. But if you have a decent shadow priest + resto shamy, you shouldn't have to worry about mana - at least untill you don't have much haste. If everthing goes wrong and you have to use evocation, use it before 20%.
Hello! I'm coming here to ask and see if my dps numbers are on par for my gear level. Plus a few other questions. But 1st.
Here is the WWS of our night in Hyjal. Wow Web Stats
And Armory link (in case i borked up my profile and its not posed to the right hehe)
I know my gear is a little awkward with too much pvp stuff and a laughable cloak. But that being said I am wondering if I am doing okay with my damage output? (I know my armory says frost spec atm. That's cause i was in a pvp mood today plus Al'ar tomorrow. I'm usually the cookie cutter 3/47/11 fire build.)
My second question is. From what I am reading im pretty sure ill be told to stop gemming for crit. But what im unsure about is should i go with pure spell damage? or haste/SPD gems? And should i replace some of my crit gems that i currently have with new ones?
And finally. If im lucky enough to ever have the shrunken head drop for me out of ZA. Witch of the two trinkets should i replace?
I know my gear is a little awkward with too much pvp stuff and a laughable cloak. But that being said I am wondering if I am doing okay with my damage output? (I know my armory says frost spec atm. That's cause i was in a pvp mood today plus Al'ar tomorrow. I'm usually the cookie cutter 3/47/11 fire build.)
Yea replace some of your more horrible parts like your belt get belt of blasting. Practically every poor piece of gear you have (cloak, gloves, boots etc) can be replaced by badgegear or craftables...
My second question is. From what I am reading im pretty sure ill be told to stop gemming for crit. But what im unsure about is should i go with pure spell damage? or haste/SPD gems? And should i replace some of my crit gems that i currently have with new ones?
Hit > haste > dmg > crit usually. If hitcapped then haste usually > dmg but not by a lot so I tend to go by the rule 12 spelldmg gems > all as long as a 5 haste + 6 spelldmg does not give a socketbonus granting me more dmg like +2spelldmg which would net at 5 haste +8spelldmg.
And finally. If im lucky enough to ever have the shrunken head drop for me out of ZA. Witch of the two trinkets should i replace?
Sextant, it's just not a good trinket.
Your overall dps could be higher, did you get COE btw? Also learn to cooldownstack as much as possible.
I'm an oldskool mage, back after a loooong break, and back then spellhaste never really was regarded as a really good stat, so I'm still a bit stuck with that mindset. There are a few things that bother me about spellhaste, the first one being that I somewhere have the fear that it's a wasted stat, since due to lag or whatever, the tiny itsybit of extra casting speed it'll give will be wasted anyway. Even though I feel like i've mastered chaining casts back to back with tools like the quartz latency indicator, I still am not very thrustworthy of the stat.
Secondly, I'd like to know why hasterating would be so good for firemages specifically? I've heard some mages telling me that the stat scales, meaning the more you have of it, the more extra new amount of spellhaste will increase your DPS. Is this true? Because I can't really see it myself when I'm theorycrafting, maybe I'm overlooking something.
Edit: Sorry if this question has been asked before, but when I do a search for "spell haste" + "mage" a thousand results pop up that don't answer my questions at all.
the stat scales, meaning the more you have of it, the more extra new amount of spellhaste will increase your DPS. Is this true?
The way I'm reading that is: that you think haste somehow scales exponentially. This is not true.
Haste scales just like other spellcasting stats, in that there is a linear function which is applied to your dps. However, in WoW much scaling is dependent on the 'opportunity cost' of dropping some other stat. When you choose between wearing two items you are choosing between several stats which all scale relatively differently to each other.
Perhaps it helps to look at it like this. Say you have 16 gem slots, and for argument's sake there are no gem bonuses. So would it be better to add 160 haste (~10%) or 192 spelldamage? Well if you went with the haste, instead of doing 100 fireballs you'd do 110. However your fireballs would hit for maybe 350 damage less on average. So the question you have to ask when comparing the two stats is whether 100 x 4000 is more or less than 110 x 3650.
In the end, what you'll find is that this comparison is quite dependent on the rest of your gear. As Dustwhisper suggests in the post below (despite saying "hit > haste > dmg > crit") there isn't actually a hard rule of which stat is better, due to different needs in different fights, at different levels of gear. Generally for gems you'll want to go with reckless pyrestones and runed spinels depending on the socket bonus. On armor though, since most pieces have spelldamage anyway, you'll be chosing haste over crit, which is an easy choice because crit is very poor.
Secondly, I'd like to know why hasterating would be so good for firemages specifically?
Some reasons.
1. Your main nuke takes longer to cast, so you're unlikely to cap it against the 1.0s global cooldown limit. (this is also true of frost, except for ice lance, but arcane does a lot of 1.5s casting time spells)
2. Haste means you get more casts in during molten fury and helps with cooldowns stacking in general (trinkets last a fixed length of time, not modified by haste. Same with icy veins)
3. Fire is the most vulnerable to interrupts due to the slow casting time of main nuke and the need to scorch more if your ideal scorch time is going to come during an interrupt. Faster casting means less% chance of an interrupt botching a spell.
4. You get the scorch stack up faster, which benenefits any other fire user in the raid.
Seriously though, it is mostly just math. If you can do the math for spell damage and crit, you can put a parentheses around the whole thing and multiply in the haste rating formula. Then you can let your spreadsheet tell you the ratio of haste rating to spelldamage rating to crit rating to hit rating. (or you can install and use Rawr, which has done the math for you and includes raid buffs and such)
>better to add 160 haste (~10%) or 192 spelldamage?
Usually the answer comes out more like 80 haste and 96 spelldamage than stacking either up, but that depends on how the rest of your gear is itemized.
In BC, the way the math works, haste rating and spelldamage rating are very similar for a fire mage. If you have a lot of speldamage and not much haste, generally a bit more haste is a bit better. If you have a lot of haste and not much spelldamage, spelldamage is a bit better. But we're talking ratios in the range of .90 to 1.1 here (where crit usually hovers in the range of .6-.7 spelldamage for a fire mage)
If you can chaincast, you'll get full benefit of haste on anything with a casting time. Instants are a little trickier as timing the GCD changes slightly as you get more haste.
Another first time poster here, forgive me if this has been covered, but a search turned up nothing.
I've heard several people mention using /stopcasting macros for something involving scorch. I know what /stopcasting does, but I can't see how it could be used here. Is it just a macro to have ready in case you have to refresh your scorch debuff right away, or is there some other use to it?
He's a frost mage, so just in case he doesn't know, his cooldown stacking should be timed with his WE/Icy veins.
Actually i was a dummy and forgot to mention. When im frost i use the Sextant. But when im Fire i use Timbals Focusing Crystal from HMgT.
And as for Cooldown stacking I really cant do that to its full potential. We have One raiding shadow priest and he is always stuck with the healers. So i need to use my pot and gem CD every time they are up instead of a Destro pot or Flame Cap Or ill be doing 0 dps at 19% cause ill be out of mana lol. So im pretty much stuck with my IV/Combustion/Icon macro for stacking.
But right now im usually starting the fight with the 3 CD then use Icon when its up a 2nd time. then save all 3 for the last 19%. So i guess you can say i dont have the most favorable makeups to do max dps. Which is why im asking to see if i am doing well considering the circumstances.
There was a trinket hierarchy list around this forum somewhere. I forget where. The drive to find it goes down with the presence of Rawr. I highly recommend you trying that out. (Don't take it as absolute canon, although it enjoys a high degree of vetting, so it's pretty close.)
In other news, I was playing around with trying to shove a fourth cooldown period into my Brutallus plan.
0:15 trinket*
1:45 trinket + pot + cap + IV + combust
3:45 trinket + pot
5:45 trinket + pot + cap + IV + combust
(Our latest night of attempts had this thwarted, however, by something we're probably doing wrong with the healing, meaning I never got past 2:00 most times, and we had no shadow priest either, but those are other stories.)
I obviously could tweak this a fair bit. The biggest drawback is 45 sec of wasted cap at the end, easily fixed by using caps at 1:00, 3:00, and 5:00. I could also edge the first trinket closer to 0:00 to pull that 5:45 period back from the enrage point, and of course pull IV up a bit earlier to get the full 20 sec. And in all cases, if it's wasted because Brutallus died early, then my primary mission is complete anyway, and I can go back to a 3-burst plan I had from before. It's all about eking everything out, as I'm seeing it. Did any other mages do this?
(I think I'm in my Brut gear at the moment - just missing SoGuldan, Tempest, and Kalecgos pants)
*This assumes my trinket was actually on a 90-second cooldown, not 120 second as the tooltip implies.
[Edited: cap, trinket are toying with my brainnnn]
Your way off Kewangeder. Flame Cap is on a 3 minute cooldown, it is impossible to do it more then twice per 6 minute fight. Likewise, you cannot use trinket with a 2 minute cooldown more then 3 times in 6 minutes, its not possible. If you trinket at 0:15, its not up for the 1:45 time frame.
Another first time poster here, forgive me if this has been covered, but a search turned up nothing.
I've heard several people mention using /stopcasting macros for something involving scorch. I know what /stopcasting does, but I can't see how it could be used here. Is it just a macro to have ready in case you have to refresh your scorch debuff right away, or is there some other use to it?
Stopcasting macros for fireball used to exist, before Blizzard's revamp of the spellcasting system. I've never heard of stopcasting macros for scorch though.
Praetorian: I once pointed out that the proper Roman numeral for 500 was D, so they should really rename themselves <Clan DIX>. That didn't go over too well. Sebudai: Imagine a combination of Life Grip, Death Grip, Disengage, Typhoon, and Thunderstorm. It would be like the Large Hadron Collider of WoW.
Your way off Kewangeder. Flame Cap is on a 3 minute cooldown, it is impossible to do it more then twice per 6 minute fight. Likewise, you cannot use trinket with a 2 minute cooldown more then 3 times in 6 minutes, its not possible. If you trinket at 0:15, its not up for the 1:45 time frame.
Bah. How could I have missed the tooltip - I was so used to it sharing a cooldown with the mana gem (true) that I mistakenly assumed it shared its cooldown period. Well, in that case, you're obviously correct; I would simply fire it whenever I blew the rest of my 3-min cooldowns, or somewhat before. (If I'd done it last night, it would've fired at 1:45 and 5:45 only, actually. And that wasn't going to happen anyway.)
Meanwhile, I could have sworn I saw my ZA trinket ready every 90 seconds, not 120, and the tooltip was rounding this up on display only. (Just like the ToEP did.) I'll have to double-check that. If you're right, then it's a simple 3-burst sequence.
Edit: Yeah, you're right. I don't know how I went this far astray; maybe I got too used to the rounding. So, 3 bursts. At least it's simpler.
Last night we had our 1st Brut kill, but what seemed to work out for us was:
~0:15 pop IV, combustion, hex, destro + flamecap (1st drums are going on -- I had 2nd drums and would hit them as soon as my non-flamecap buffs fell off. we only had 2 in our group)
~2:15 mana gem
followed by hex + destro pot (or mana pot depending on mana situation -- we had SP but no shammy)
at 20% pop IV, combustion, hex, destro and flamecap again
Obviously follow drums rotation whenever they are up.
There is some room to tighten things up (like using flamecap when I should have ~1 minute left of nuking)
Stopcasting macros for fireball used to exist, before Blizzard's revamp of the spellcasting system. I've never heard of stopcasting macros for scorch though.
The reason to use stopcasting in the current system is to cast something important enough to interrupt a longer casting spell like fireball. Typical examples are decurse, counterspell, spellsteal, ice block, even polymorph.
If you think you might need to bring up an emergency scorch to keep stack dropping after you've started casting a fireball absentmindedly, stopcasting before scorching might be ok, but you would want a normal scorch button as well in order to chaincast scorch properly. My opinion is you should try to just pay attention to scorch or in worst case do some other interrupt (like moving a tiny bit).
So i guess you can say i dont have the most favorable makeups to do max dps. Which is why im asking to see if i am doing well considering the circumstances.
The nice thing about RAWR or Magegraf is that they let you enter the equipment and buffs you do have and see what they think your max DPS should be, and compare it to your actual results.
I almost never raid in 25 mans and warlocks are fairly common in my group, so about the only buff I assume I'm going to get is curse of elements. When I do actually get in a nicely stacked group for 10 or 25 man I get a sharp jump in my DPS and I have to remind myself that it wasn't me being awesome, but actually getting a shaman, a boomkin and a shadow priest in the ranged dps group.
- switch your gems: +5haste/+6dmg > +5crit/+6dmg
- use belt of blasting instead of anetheron's noose - the hit on it is definitely worth it
- if you have switched to BoB, use the darkmoon trinket over your ssc trinket
- smart cooldown usage: Assuming icon+darkmoon, it's fairly easy:
0:00 pull Brutallus (make sure all of your hunters chain misdirect your 1st tank - snap aggro is important). Start scorching as soon as Brutallus is in range, md aggro is sufficent
0:05 scorch should be up by now, switch to fireballs
0:20 aggro should be fine, make sure you are not in melee-range, do 1x scorch (so you don't have to scorch while using your cooldowns), use everything (destruction-pot/flamecap/icon/combustion/icy veins - please macro it) and start nuking
2:20 destruction potion + trinket again
~4:50-5:00 make sure all your cooldowns are up again once the boss reaches 19%. 1x scorch and use everything again + stack it with bloodlust (tell your shaman when to use it)
In additional, don't let scorch and coe drop, ever. As a sidenote, your locks don't have to use curse of weakness. Even if it is improved, it's just as good as improved demo-shout, which should already be kept up by your off warrior.
If you're running short on mana, try to get an innervate from your feral tank. Otherwise use a mana potion at 2:20 instead of a destruction potion. But if you have a decent shadow priest + resto shamy, you shouldn't have to worry about mana - at least untill you don't have much haste. If everthing goes wrong and you have to use evocation, use it before 20%.
Good luck on Brutallus!
We downed Brutallus. I didn't change my trinkets or anything, I just changed a few pieces of gear (I'm pretty sure its on armory) and I was barley touching 2100 dps (No bloodlust, 1 person using drums, resto shammy in group. Then he went berzerk, killed the 2 tanks, then me... lost 200 dps from fireball ticks (Oh blizzard fix that please :[)). I've become attached to my SCB (until skull drops ). I use it more as a stacking effect then a mana gem bonus (except on felmyst @_@!!!!).
Our feral tank picks up brutallus, and turns him. Once he's in position me and crit start to do our scorches and plow away with fireballs, and such. I suggested 2% threat on his gloves, but he insists 15 agi is better.
On a side note... we're starting our first Felmyst attempts tonight. Any mage tips? (Don't say don't frost nova -.-' I'm not bad ;p haha)
Edit: I use the 5 crit 6sd gems to keep my 33% self-buffed crit. I never know what group I'll be in (our guild loves to beef up the warlocks and boomkin in 1 group, even though I out dps 2 outa 3 of them)
Felmyst is an easy fight for a mage. Iceblock out of encapsulate and blink away, if nearby people get it. If you don't get the beam in phase 2 go all out on Felmyst and make sure you don't ae too early. Personally, I wait till the first deep breath is done before I start spamming ae. Use blink to get "up" or "down" - you really shouldn't have problems getting mindcontrolled.
Oh, and don't forget you use invisible once the 3rd breath is done and the aura faded. It's 99.99%ish reliable (well, once a hunter got mindcontrolled and attacked me, so my invisible didn't work).
Feel free to buff the entire raid with amplify magic, it won't increase any damage in this fight. Mana might be an issue aswell, I suggest using magic armor over molten - even if you get a shadow priest in your group.
Blink is really awesome here and you don't have to worry about threat here. Great and easy fight for a mage.
Why are you so insistent on 33% crit? Crit rating is a terrible thing to stack for a mage - damage, hit and haste are all superior stats. If you're willing to regem, put a [Glowing Shadowsong Amethyst] in your wand and legs, a [Reckless Pyrestone] or [Veiled Pyrestone] in your gloves, and a [Runed Crimson Spinel] in all of your shoulder and chest sockets.
Originally Posted by Ghostcrawler
If everything else is truly equal (gear, skill, etc.) then the pure dps class should beat the hybrid. If a raid chooses to run without rogues, mages, warlock or hunters, they should expect their overall dps to be lower. You can quote me on that.
What is the best time to pop invisibility vs twins? I usually do it after a shadow nova hits me but its still so unreliable.
We are using the strategy in which all range is up top while all melee + both twins are down in the middle.
I'm a long time reader of this thread (and other) and figure I would submit you guys my issue of the day: I'm currently specced fire and our R25 si currently raiding Hyjal (4/5) and BT (4/9). I used to be specced arcane even though I only had 1/5 T5 (gloves) and I was doing pretty well (ranked #1/2 of the DPS meter on both bosses and trashs)
Since my guild is not raiding T5 content and since I was unlucky (you wouldn't believe) on the drops/rolls on T5 shoulders/legs/helm I figured I could try to respec fire and leverage the haste drops from ZA/BT I got. Currently I have 10% haste (168 rating), ~30% crit (fully buffed) and ~1400 fire dmg (fully buffed) and my fire stuff is a mix of badge rewards / ZA / Hyjal / early BT plus a couple of tailoring sets parts leftover that Rawr advised me to use (hands and legs) (link to armory)
As expected, on trashs my dps is lower than before (i.e. when specced arcane) due to aggro mainly, although on bosses I performed OK but lower than what Rawr forecasted / what I expected as it is somewhat lower than what I used to do as arcane (I appologize for not having any WWS parses to link; I'm usually grouped with other mages -1 fire, 1 arcane-, a SP and a chamheal; CoE on boss and scorch debuff kept on the boss; ~6min bosses fights) I rarely use flamecaps and seldom a destruction popo while in execute range
So I was wondering whether you guys think moving to fire "that early" was right and whether I should remain specced arcane a bit and wait for 4T6 parts to spec fire ... and pray for a 2nd T5 drop in the meantime Any other advice on stuff / gemming / etc is more than welcome. In advance thanks for your help
@spaace
Gem ike Dryssa said for a dps benefit (especially the socket bonus in your t6 gloves is worth taking it). Other than that I would still use Belt of Blasting and switch SCB for darkmoon card or even Quagmirran's Eye. I think the other item upgrades still haven't drop for you: skull, mh offhand, tempest of chaos, illidan cowl. Try to pick up any of these items as soon as possible (preferable skull first, it's damn rare and really awesome).
@jula
Ask your shamys to put down tranquil air, if they don't do it. It really comes down to popping invis just after a shadownova (just like you do) and pray that you don't get any damage for 5 seconds. There's nothing much you can do about it.
@Bakou
I think your gear is good enough for deep fire spec. A WWS-log would be really helpful. How much dps do you do and what does Rawr expect you to do on a static fight? Naj'entus and Rage Winterchill aren't too bad to look at your dps numbers.
@Gofa: Thanks for the tips. I'll do a WWS-log next time we do Naj'entus / Rage and shall upload it here (probably not before Wednesday unless we raid Hyjal tonight)
As for Rawr, it says I should do 1806dps with flask / buffs (incl. 1 bloodlust) / flamecaps and no destru popo and 1626dps for pure fireball spam which seems high compared to what recount is calculating.
@Gofa: Thanks for the tips. I'll do a WWS-log next time we do Naj'entus / Rage and shall upload it here (probably not before Wednesday unless we raid Hyjal tonight)
As for Rawr, it says I should do 1806dps with flask / buffs (incl. 1 bloodlust) / flamecaps and no destru popo and 1626dps for pure fireball spam which seems high compared to what recount is calculating.
Again, thanks !
If you want recount to be 100% accurate you have to reset data right before you start attacking because I'm pretty sure (unverified, someone correct me if wrong) the DPS counter starts whenever _someone_ in your raid does an attack so it starts usually when tank/hunter attacks the boss which might be say 5 seconds before you start which is 5 seconds counted towards your DPS.
I would think RAWR also tries to maximize usage potential (stacking) of cooldowns.
09/02/08, 2:22 AM
). I use it more as a stacking effect then a mana gem bonus (except on felmyst @_@!!!!).
Any other advice on stuff / gemming / etc is more than welcome. In advance thanks for your help
