I think the text of improved blink begs the question, 'doesn't it seem like this should apply to raid-wide boss abilities?' and now I'm really curious. Obviously there are some 'attacks and spells' that its worth the interruption gain a 25% chance of avoiding. Kazrogal mark? Soul charge? Certainly bloodboil's melee, if you could blink in any direction without wiping your raid. I'd be disappointed if it didn't provide the bonus to boss abilities that can be resisted normally. For certain fights this cute little 'pvp' talent seems more worth it than 2 points in arcane potency (which is what, 1.5% more dps?), especially for progression raiding.

Some fights you're not at liberty to just blink from side to side to mitigate damage or a debuff. Others, like perhaps Sharaz, have you always reaching for the blink key when you're about to take damage.

Fire Blast has a very high base damage, Fireball has better scaling.
On paper, Fire Blast is more DPS until you have 2.3k++ fire damage.

However, Fire Blast is more affected by cast delay (1 lag per 1.5s instead of 1 lag per 3s), is pretty expensive (mana issues come into play, having to drop a destro for a mana pot, etc.), has a 20 yard range and bears the risk if overwriting your ignites.
Which makes it not advisable to use for normal fights.

I'll check the best case and add it to the mana compendium.

Due to the way WWS and other tools measure DPS, firespec DPS will look worse on any fight with downtime since it counts your 20ish damage fireball DoT ticks as part of your DPS. Total damage went up. Focus on that.

Also, knock out fireblast from the rotation unless you can seriously sustain it for the entire fight. Your gear has many issues as well, but you seem aware that you have them.

Hello. I came here looking for a specific answer to a gear question and have been unable to find it.

I am wondering if my currently equipped Lightning Capacitor is worth ditching for the new Sorcerer's Alchemist Stone. I don't know how to make the mouse over information blocks for these items, my apologies. Here is a link to my armory page The World of Warcraft Armory

The Lightning Capacitor currently accounts for 3% of my total raid damage output according to WWS reports. I do not have mana issues for any fights and would be looking for the benefit of helping the healers keep me alive with the mana being an added bonus. Is the overall dps increase worth it? I can't find any information on the comparative dps equivalent of the Lightning Capacitor to make an informed decision.

I also would like to know if it's even worth have the measly +5 haste gem on my shoulders or should I just go with +crit or straight + spell dam. I don't want to go over on hit and waste the points.

I am aware my head slot needs upgrading but I have yet to be able to get to a ZA guild run due to the times it's run on off nights and we no longer do TK so the cowl is out of reach. Saving badges at the moment to upgrade the boots.

Any other advice is appreciated.

Here is a quick and dirty calculation about how much TLC is worth since it's direct damage:

(694 + 806) /2 = 750 on average it does 750 dmg when you reaches 3 crits

Since your fire cirt is around 28.7% (with Molten Armor it should be 31.7%)

So (31.7%)^3 = around 3%

3% * 750 = 23.9 spell dmg

Of course that's without other crit buffs, note that you'd have to reach some where around 44% crit on average for TLC to better than straight up 60 spell dmg. That is in ideal situations. Some times you might not be able to get set of three crits on one mob or boss. So the alchemist stone is definitely worth a lot more than TLC

Yes, 3% is including full clear with trash. On individual bosses it varies from 1-3% mostly being 1% or 2%.

I am heavily scorching (it is 8-10% of my damage) as I am often the one in charge of that. We often only take 2 mages to raid and of the 4 in the guild 2 are frost and I am not always paired with the other fire mage during a raid. I may be able to cut back on it a bit but I often use it when there isn't enough time left on a mob to cast a fireball or I am reapplying the scorch to keep the buff up early due to movement requirements.

I have stacked hit, then spell damage and then crit in that order as long as hit is as close to max as possible (currently at 162) without going over and crit is at 30% or higher with molten armor for my fire tree (currently at 32.22% with molten armor and 28.70% without any buffs at all). From what I have read here and other places this is what I should be doing.

My guild requires me to have over 10k hp during raids which is why you see the sta gemming in certain areas and on the boots.

I have only recently considered changing my spec to 2/47/11 but with a new boss encounter every week right now as we go thru BT I have been staying with tried and true for security.

You mention I need regemming. I don't see where, other than the 5 haste/6 spell dam that may have been a bad choice. Could you please be more specific? The meta in my helm I chose to have the sta enchant for my boots and still have the run increase as well as reading that spell damage is > spell crit. Am I wrong in this thinking in this case?

@gidget
[Chaotic Skyfire Diamond] with a boars speed is better than [Item not found!] and fortitude.

you shouldn't be gemming for crit at all (CSD aside). use spinels for dmg instead. if you want to make socket bonuses, like on your robe, use two [Item not found!].

I have a question thats been bugging me for the mage theorycrafters out there. What percent dps increase should a hit-capped fire mage expect to see from a 3% increase in crit chance (ie, totem of wrath)? Based on just reading talents, I was expecting 3.3% overall dps increase, but every calculator (rawr, vontre's, lhivera's) I've tested puts the value at 2.2-2.3%. What am I missing?

When you have 30% crit already, increasing crit by 3% brings you up to 33%.

30% crit leads to dealing 1+0.3*1.1=1.33 of non-crit damage. 33% crit leads to dealing 1+0.33*1.1=1.363 of non-crit damage. 1.363/1.33=1.0248 or 2.48% DPS increase (and very slightly cheaper spells which is almost neglicible).

The reason you get less is that the increase is added up to an already existing increase, so when you look at newDPS/oldDPS you get a smaller relative increase than if your oldDPS would've had 0 crit chance.

Another way to look at it is that (aside from mana returns) 1% crit adds the same amount of DPS regardless of your chance to crit (but depending on all your other stats), so the more crit you have the more DPS you have and thus the % DPS increase of 1% crit will be smaller (same DPS increase is divided by higher oldDPS).


On a side note on top of all the good comments that have already been made, 10% of your DPS coming from scorches is pretty bad. Even as the only fire mage you should still try to keep scorches to a minimum while not risking the debuff to fall off. Generally doing a scorch when there are 6 secods left (plus whatever time you may lose in the process due to casts not chaining perfectly). That way you cast a fireball immidiately after the scorch and don't have to wait to see if it got resisted, and if it did get resisted you still have time for another scorch after the fireball. An alternative is to just scorch so that it hits right before it wears off, risking 1% chance of it falling off and having to restack. I should do the math sometime to figure out which way is better but either way would give far lower than 10% scorch DPS, and higher overall DPS than what you're getting while never losing the scorch debuff (1/100 times (or once per 300 seconds) with the 2nd method and 1/10000 times (or once per 30000 seconds) with the first).

Also keeping 1 mage in charge of scorching can be nice for a 100% tank&spank fight, but in real fights it's generally not a good idea unless you have amazing communication. If you get ice tombed, silenced, flamestriked, airbursted or had the mob moved out of your range, some other mage will need to scorch, which he probably won't if he's assuming you're his "scorch-bitch". Again you could get around it and have only 1 mage scorching with great communication but I've yet to hear of someone who actually manages to do it (as in, use a "scorch bitch") properly on a one of the many fights where you could lose your ability to refresh scorch at a critical time. It's possible but hard to do and having each mage refresh scorch himself right as it's about to wear off generally gives better results when you raid with real people.

Hey Galzohar,

Thanks for the response. I see what you're saying, but using the same calculators to add 3% crit to a warlock instead of a mage gave a flat 3% increase to personal dps (plus an additional 0.4-0.6% in increased ISB uptime). This leads me to think the discrepancy lies in basic mage mechanics, rather than semantics in the output number, since the same calculator is returning 2.3% for the mage and 3% for the warlock using identical input numbers. The only thing that I could come up with would be something to do with overwriting ignites giving diminishing returns at high crit rates, but I haven't been able to find any calculations describing this. Anyways, it's bugging me because I know its probably something very obvious that I'm missing.

ISB is skewing the results in crit's favor. It is also a very valid reason why simulators largely display bullshit when simming locks. You get a huge variance from including other locks/SP and varying SP playstyle (MF doesn't consume charges, while SW and Mild Blast do) to ISB behaviour.

The main benefit from having a ToW in your group is you can change your gear around to make use of the surplus 3% hit. Dropping hit gear, particularly below T6 level, is a very effective way of gaining surpluss damage. Once 4/8 T6 it becomes hard to drop much hit so unless you're stuffed with 2.4 gear you'll end up using 1-2% of the hit buff at most. 3%crit, sadly is never anywhere near 3%dmg increase. I suspect it isn't for a warlock that high either, not unless it's him and an affli, with only 1 SP in the raid.