You are absolutely correct, I had my math wrong there. Still even with that adjustment 3300 mana is alot of damage so I still think that the extra mana has the edge in the comparison.

Now just to make another example and try to isolate the effect a bit more.

Fully ramped AB spam, 1.5 sec cast time.
Average AB hit 2300 damage.
30% crit.

Now I know people may have very different values but this is what I use for my example.

IED 5% procc rate gives a procc every 20 spells which means every 30 seconds.
300 mana every 30 seconds = 50 MP5 (while casting).

CSD at 30% crit is more tricky to isolate but over a sequence of 10 casts we will have 3 crits.
Damage done witout CSD:
2300*7 + 3*2300*1.75 = 28175 = 1878 DPS

Damage done with CSD:
2300*7 + 3*2300*1.8025 = 28537,25 = 1902 DPS

So we can say that in this case the CSD gives 24 DPS.

I guess it all comes down to preference and the situation. Given enough mana-support the CSD obviously has the edge since it directly increases DPS. But in longer fights, or situations were you might not have enough mana-support, I'd say 50 MP5 while casting would deffinitely hold the edge.

Not quite, actually. The CSD works like so with crit-increasing talents:
(1.5 * 1.03 - 1) * (1 + crit modifier) + 1 = total crit size

Thus, Frost: (1.5 * 1.03 - 1) * (1 + 1.0) + 1 = 2.09 = 209%
Arcane: (1.5 * 1.03 - 1) * (1 + 0.5) + 1 = 1.8175 = 181.75%

Any simulation will bring CSD well ahead of the next-best meta, which is MSD, and miles ahead of anything else in a meta-socket. Firstly, it's more than 3% tacked on to the end of the crit, as Lhiv points out, and secondly any piddly mana-return from the Insightful is quite overrated.

Let alone the E-peen factor of getting 7k AB crits at 0.96sec with SCB, Hex, AP, IV, BL and WoA up.

In the context of the main post "stacking cooldowns might have a great effect".
I'd like to know, which trinket that is most profitable to pop with what exact cooldown?
With a 2/47/11+1 talent specc and a [Hex Shrunken Head] + [The Skull of Gul'dan] (cookie cutter) trinket setup.

I mean, if your wearing a +Spell Damage increasing trinket and a +spellhaste trinket.

Which should you pop with what cooldown to obtain the most DPS ?

Combustion + Icy Veins + Spell Haste trinket, followed by a standalone +Spell Damage seems like the best option in my opinion, due to spell haste being multiplicative.
Can anyone confirm/suggest other rotations?

Reading a few pages of this thread and finding other information on mages in random bits here and there, I've read that there is little difference between gemming for 12 damage or for 10 haste, and that 1 haste is worth 1.18 damage. I don't have the time to sift through all the pages of this thread, and I'm more or less looking for confirmation of this information. I presently gem mostly for haste, waiting for a few items to drop before I switch some 5 haste 6 damage gems over to 10 haste. Is this difference between 10 haste and 12 damage gems negligible where it's just user preference or am I really gimping myself by going for haste over damage?

I'm also debating the usefulness of the 2 points in Arcane Subtlety that I see most mages use - I've seen the general fire dps spec of x/47/11 with 3 extra points - are these 2 points negligible? Personally I've got other places I'd put them for when I'm doing battlegrounds as raid spec, because I don't respec each time I want to do a few BGs, but I don't want to give up anything useful in a raid situation for pvp in my raid spec.

I apologize if these have been answered elsewhere in this thread, there are just a few too many pages for me to sit and sift through.

The 2 points in Arcane are basically so you can spam Arcane Explosion without regard for threat. They aren't exactly core to the spec; if you wanted to put them in Blazing Speed or something it wouldn't be the end of the world. You would need to watch your threat in AoE situations more closely, though.

Spell Haste

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

Okay well I have been playing around with stuff and this is what I have come up with.

This is based on the empirical research I have been able to put together in game. My gear is about kara/t4 level in my oppinion. I have 2/2 Spellstrike and 3/3 Spellfire. I go against the grain and actually socket for bonusses in all my gear. I am hit capped at 165, and have 1044 unbuffed fire spell damage. My remaining gear is SSO rep rewards/badges with a one ZA drop. I am specced currently at 4/46/11.

I re-gemmed all of my gear for spell haste. By doing this I got 118 haste rating, and my dps went down by 20. ( I had been averaging 640 dps in raids, and after the haste rating I was averaging 620 dps per raid these numbers are completely unbuffed ( I did not want to skew the results). This fits with the math I have done based on the spreadsheet. (ie 1 spell damage = .6 dps).

Based up the finding that 110 spell haste rating = 7% Spell haste I have come up with these numbers:

330 SPH Rating = 21%
440 SPH Rating = 28%

and the magic number is 530 Haste rating (this gives about 34% haste). At 34% haste your GCD is 1 second and your fireball is a 2 second cast. here is the math:

The global cool down is 1.5 seconds. to make the math easier I multiply the GCD by 100 to get 150 "points" these are abitriary just helps me to visualize the math. So if my target is a 1 second global cool down that would be 100 points out 150 points or 2/3. Therefore we need to shave off 1/3 of the GCD so we need 33% haste ( 1/3 = 33.3333%)
Thus the "cap" for spell haste is 530 in my opinion. I mention this becuase somewhere somebody had estimated 780 or something for the haste needed to reduce the GCD to 1 second.

Also, I read in the posts that spell haste is really only effective at a certain threshold of spell damage. I dont know that to be the case. I have not raided past Magtheridon so i dont know what the fights are like in SSC/Eye/TK/Hyjal and what not.

I do know this my average dps went down; but the dps curve was flatter. If you look at my dps from a standard kara raid (or ZA) on the bosses where I can stand still and spam scorch/fireball my dps peeks at ~850 and on fights where I have to run like nitebane, prince, and netherspite my dps can bottom out at 450 dps. However, with the haste rating I was peaking at 750 dps and bottoming out at 500 dps.

I am totally of the opinion that dps is not the best measure of damage output/performance. But with the above model you can see that with haste the minimum amount of damage done was increased, not only was it easier to keep the scorch debuff up but it was alot easier to be mobile. and if you increase your minimum damage you increase the overall output of damage.

I know thier is some magical place where x amount of spell damage with x amoount of crit rating will provide the best damage out by minimizing the sporadic bursts of crits but maintaining a solid baseline of damage. I do not know what that is but i think haste can be used (at any level) to make our dps more consistent.

I do have some questions though please anyone answer these becuase i can not get a strait answer on my server (even from mages in the top raiding guilds.)

First, I was told that a mage with only kara gear nothing from badges/rep/pvp/ or za/gruul or later can produce 1000dps on boss fights. I can not believe this I have better gear then kara and i do not come near that number on my best days. So is this true?

Second, I thought the best damage cycle was scorch x 5, firebal x8, scorch rinse and repeat... But when I look at the spreadsheet I see scorchx3 fireball x6 scorch rinse and repeat... Please help me with spell rotations i find that my dps on trash blows and it is really messing with my average dps.

I hope this helps. I feel completely at a loss most days as a mage. Please any feedback would be greatly apreciated.

You need to look at DPS over the entire fight, not just DPS over a short period. Also you need to look at fights were it's mostly tank and spank. In Kara a fight like Prince or Attumen are excellent fights as measuring sticks for DPS.

Since you're a fire mage, generally Recount will calculates your DPS to be lower due to the DOT effect of fireballs. A better source would be something like a WWS report.

Also it's entirely possible for a Kara geared mage to be pushing 1000 DPS if not surpass it when playing right. And that's certainly skipping over set bonuses when the trade off is stam vs spell dmg, using an Icon of the Silvercresent (one of the best trinket in the game for mages not in SSC/TK/ZA), getting best enchants for the slot (Runic Spell Thread, +20 spell dmg to gloves, +15 spell dmg to bracers), using proper CD stackings, raid with consumables (elixirs, food, wizard oil, flamecaps), and getting the proper raid support.

Notice a lot of those things does not happen due to the fact that most players capable of doing such a thing simply will have vastly superior gear by now, and the people who are still kara geared don't care about squeezing out top end DPS.

I have read through this thread but have not seen the break down to the coefficient between +damage to all and +damage to fire. Can some enlighten me to the numbers of this.

Vontre, you need to update your Magegraf site to include the [Forceful Seaspray Emerald] in there so i can TC with out ending up with hours of BS ending in a headache...

anyway, i have here some results for my current gear set up... now i just need to know if replacing my [Glowing Shadowsong Amethyst] with the [Forceful Seaspray Emerald] will increase my DPS or not... because no amount of theory i can do on my own will help me with this... i'm just not that good at math...





Ok, so i just used what numbers i could on there and using the "Manual Entry" option instead of Gear selection i came up with a pretty definitive answer to my question... answers in this thread were too wishy-washy and hard to locate.

sooooo here's what i got, 2/48/11 specced and using int, crit and hit as a constant. only varying haste and dmg based on the 4 gems i would socket as blue. (also, my [Leggings of Channeled Elements] showed a decrease in about 6 dps when i TC'd putting socket-bonus-friendly (2 [Reckless Pyrestone] and 1 [Glowing Shadowsong Amethyst]) gems in there instead of 3 Runed Crimson Spinels. EVEN with the 5dmg socket bonus...)

EDIT -- I decided to do math with 3 Runed in the legs due to the greater dps in that... so this is stats for 3 [Glowing Shadowsong Amethyst] vs 3 [Forceful Seaspray Emerald]. decided to leave my bit on the legs in the paragraph above in here because it is a decent bit of information to have. sound good?

so...

1205 dmg and 65 haste, yielding a dps output of 2000 on a Brutalis-ish fight.
http://www.magegraf.com/index.php?hash=639b7a338fa48944a8dcdd4147bf7e3d

VS

1187 dmg and 80 haste, yielding a dps output of 1999 on the same fight.
http://www.magegraf.com/index.php?hash=dec9a5b7c0c0049050485d7d2582d051

that is a close close close comparison... Imho i can't really decide... It seems a smart decision would be based on whether or not your guild is low on shadowsong amethyst because all the healers take them... i suggest you either buy them from the gem vendor on QD or just use guild Seaspray Emeralds because they're far easier to come across...

It appears that the more times you factor in haste in replacement for dmg however, the more haste will increase your dps. More posts will follow when i effectively have time to compare the [Reckless Pyrestone] vs the [Quick Lionseye] for yellow sockets... that should be a good close race too tho.

We'll see (no smiley faces because they're politically incorrect)

EDIT EDIT -- ok so i did the TC adding in the [Quick Lionseye] in all the yellow sockets in my gear instead of [Reckless Pyrestone] and the results weren't exactly what i expected lol.

1152 dmg and 95 haste, yielding a dps output of 1981 for the Brutalis-like fight.
http://www.magegraf.com/index.php?ha...2ab8abdeeeb96b

AND then i guess just for sh*ts and giggles... here's the stuff for the 3 [Forceful Seaspray Emerald] AND the [Quick Lionseye].

1134 dmg and 110 haste, yielding a dps output of 1981 for that same fight lol... so it's essentially the same thing...
http://www.magegraf.com/index.php?ha...48fede10d1f50e


AND on going with this sort of thing... i did some goofing around with this, throwing in items like [Zhar'doom, Greatstaff of the Devourer], [Shadowcaster's Drape], [Ring of Ancient Knowledge] and [Vindicator's Pendant of Subjugation] w/ [Quick Lionseye]... giving me interesting numbers again...

1124 dmg and 220 haste, yielding a dps output of 2097 on the same 6 min long fight...
http://www.magegraf.com/index.php?ha...3db5653c3a2999

soooo it appears that after a certain point, haste does become a lot more beneficial and appears to finally pass dmg... as one would expect...

There is absolutely no difference between normal +damage and +fire damage as long as you are casting fire spells. The only difference between the two is that +fire damage only applies to fire spells, where as +damage applies to all spells.