I did some napkinmath on this once and it leaned slightly torwards popping whenever timer is up. However that was with only Arcane Power and Icon, enough cooldowns could shift the balance. Overall it's a trivial distinction, less than 1% of your total dps. My advice is to play it by ear. If boss timing requires you to wait 30 sec on Icon, wait another 30 and stack it with combustion. Wait if it looks like execute range is coming up soon. Just do whatever seems smart, basically.

So all theorycrafting put aside, I have a realistic question to ask. I've done all the math breakdowns, and have theorycrafted my butt off and have come up with the fact that pure fire is 'slightly' better than pure arcane, both in DPS and DPM. However, in realtime fights, Im not seeing anything close to what I was seeing when I was an arcane spec with lesser gear.

Heres the set up:

I've ran an ABx3, AM rotation in T4 since Gruul, prior to attaining a 2 piece T5 set. I had been on par with fire and ice mages back in those days, DPS wise. As soon as I got my second T5 piece, my DPS blew through the roof. I went from an avg 800 dps to a consistant 1k dps on almost every fight in SSC and TK. As soon as I recieved my 4th T5 gear set, I started looking for +spell hit gear so I could do the conversion to fire, for the crit aspect. I am now in T5 + some Hyjal and BT gear. However, my DPS has plummeted back to a sub 700 DPS on almost every fight where AEing isn't involved. I rank last of the mages, where I used to rank first.

With my current gear, I have 163 spell hit, 1383 spell dam, 40% spell crit when raid buffed. I get 70 spell dam on crits for 6 seconds, and a chance of 190 spell dam on crits (every 60 seconds or so). I use the 10/48/3 build. My spell rotation is scorchx5, then fireballx7-scorchx1 (latency will not allow me to get a refresh on scorch in time with 8 fireballs). I am the only fire mage out of 3, the other two are arcane ice.

So again, all theorycrafting aside, I cannot understand when I've taken a 400 dps dump changing from a 50/11/0 spec to a 10/48/3 spec, with better gear on. I've mapped out my gear choices based on this as a final spec for running through the rest of Hyjal and BT, but unless my DPS can improve back to where it was, I may be finding myself without a raid spot.

I understand that I've crapped out alot of spell damage gems to gem up spell hit, but it shouldn't be that significant of a dump. Not 400 DPS worth.

My armory: http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...emaul&n=Pyrous

Any insight on repairing my rep as a damage leader, while keeping this spec that I've heavily invested in, would be much, much appreciated.

This sounds like a significant problem. Curious how you were maintaining an AB cycle if your lag is so awful that you literally cannot cast 8 fireballs between a scorch.

I dont have lag. My lat is around 85 every night. My AB cycle was perfect everytime. When using a pure castsequence macro of FBx8, scorch, I miss the refresh 6 out of 10 times. Probably by milliseconds each time. Its considerably noticable, since Im thoe only fire mage of the group.

1. Are you getting CoE? (I'm assuming, not, if you are running with 3 mages, 2 of which I'm assuming, are arcane)
2. What method are you using to calculate your "DPS". It may be better to look at your overall damage numbers, as most damage meters count the fireball DoT as "DPS" time. This will make fire look a lot worse than it actually is, especially on fights where there are multiple breaks in the action.

I think the answer is within his initial point Vontre: He said he did an "3xAB, AM" rotation. Note how that either means 3x fully stacked AB and 1x AM, or it means AM + (start of cast of 1stAB) is slower than 6.5sec, otherwise he'd be ending casting on full-debuff.

Are you playing from Australia or from a particularly bad connection latency wise bro? Your stats seem perfectly fine but 7FB/1Sc not being feasible seems quite bizzare. 9/1 should be pushing your luck due to ball travel time but not being able to maintain 8/1 suggests monster lag as Vontre suggests.

As for losing such signifficant DPS, I can't help but think it's the 13% CoS versus 0% no CoE that's making a big chunk of difference. Your gear seems to be A-OK.

Edit: As for the Fireball DOT poluting your samples it is a known issue with certain DPS meters. Perhaps comparing total dmg done with other players who don't use Fireball and extrapolating DPS estimate via that, or better still using a better DPS meter would be optimal.

I should have clarified my previous arcane rotation. ABx3, AM, scorch to drop it back to 0 debuff is what I was casting. Like I said, my connection is fine. Im in Seattle on a major backbone. I also use quartz and my 'in the red' is only around 0.3-0.5 per fireball. It almost sounds as if I should be seeing a lengthy amount of time from the end of FB-8 to successfully cast the scorch. I dont think thats the case though. But, is dropping to 7 fireballs from 8, the factor is the huge difference in my current DPS?

To answer, where Im getting my theorycrafting numbers, Im using both Vontre's spreadsheet, and the MaxDPS firemage site.

Also, in regard to spell haste, does anyone know if there's a cap on it? I've been looking at attaining upwards of 125 spell haste in items. What affect would this have in my rotation also? 9 or 10 FB's to a scorch possibly?

Also, no, Im not getting COE. The warlocks are doing COS mostly.
I have recount and SWS stats. Both do seem to have problems with the ignite polution. Especially in fights like Supremous where Im running around alot.

Even still though, looking at things from an overall damage view, Im ranking alot lower than I used to. Where I'd top at around 3rd in overall damage, Im hitting around 9-11 now.

My first instinct is to jump back to arcane and change out my gems again, then test the waters again when I hit 4 T6 pieces. But I honestly would like to try and make this work out. I do like the longer ranged aspect of Fireball spams in almost all of the Hyjal and BT fights.

Well if you aren't getting CoE, and scorch is dropping off repeatedly, you are losing 15% of your potential dps at a minimum, and probably more if you have an affliction lock with Malediction doing CoS. If you are the only fire mage in the raid then it's not really optimal for one of the other warlocks to use CoE instead of CoD/CoA, so your choices are really to either: 1) convince 1 or more of the other mages to spec fire and then convince a lock to give you CoE or 2) spec back to Arcane.

Also it's worth noting that the t5 gear is in many ways ideal for arcane and less so for fire: it has a heap of spirit, not much spell-hit, a very powerful arcane-only 2-piece set bonus and a 4-piece bonus that is more effective when using AM or stacked AB (giving anywhere from 2 - 6 chances to proc per 6 seconds, whereas with fire you will never have more than 2 per 6 unless you chain scorch).

We're talking stand and nuke if it's up it's up and can be used asap.


Also, skull/braid/veins/combustion(AP)/destruction pot are quite a bit of cooldowns, and should give quite a bit more than a non trivial amount

I think the source of your problem with fire is that 8 fireballs + 1 scorch, while should take 25.5 seconds, take you >30 seconds for some unknown reason. That *ALONE* is 15% DPS loss minimum due to your slower casting. Doing a scorch every 7 firebals instead of 8 is not too huge of a DPS loss (I remember calculating like 5% loss from maintaining your own scorches every 8 fireballs vs just fireball spamming and have someone else scorch, 7:1 vs 8:1 should be a lot lower DPS loss). IMO you need to figure out how you managed AB rotations yet you cannot seem to cast 8 fireballs and 1 scorch in something close to 25.5 seconds. Figure this out and you found why your DPS dropped so greatly. There is no way to do good DPS if something that should take you 25.5 seconds takes more than 30, no matter what class/spec you're playing or what gear you have.

Did you look at the wws?

Arcane was not on par with frost or fire in 2.2 it was better. Now? It's competive. I wouldn't rule out arcane just yet either. As for guilds not doing t6 content like yours, I would recommend arcane over frost and fire still. Arcane won't dominate like it did in 2.2 but arcane is still very viable.

Unless I'm missing something, and I might be:
You lost on Bloodboil, Mother, and Council. You tied for 2nd on the Essence wipe, died on the kill, and won on Illidan.

That hurts and while I recognize the importance experience with the encounters has, it doesn't mean one can't look at the math and compare the pros / cons of two given specs and see how one might be superior.

I wasn't trying to hurt you, I'm sorry if I offended you. My point is that you do a boss both fire and frost, 20% to AB is very competive to 10% to fireball and frostbolt. I believe arcane from the start has been misrepresented, however I'm not going to rule out that fire is better, I'm not trying to prove that it isn't.

EDIT: I died on mother too, the only gewd samples were bloodboil, council, and illidan. Fire has the advantage on both fights I lost on and I barely lost. Illidan I won, and apparently wws only counts damage to Illidan. If this is right then fire is not at a disadvantage then in the wws vs arcane. Also I managed to spend more mana and still keep ahead in p3/p4.

EDIT2: I was misinformed, it does count the adds etc.

Kitzz: Illidan Stormrage 392,263
Shilla: Illidan Stormrage 404,694

So I barely beat him. They are competive.

Another thing that might be worth pointing out is that several Hyjal and BT fight has elements that breakes your dps, and where positoning can ruin it even more.
Rage Death&decay - on the ther hand frostbolts are at a very high resit rate here.
Anatheron-we got casters on infernals=lots of moveing and I think they got high Fire Res.
Karz'goal- got no idea how far you as a guild is so depends if you can kill him with 25 alive or just with 5.
4th boss-very random in dps as some times you get zero fires, sometimes several. Also depends if you got ranged on domguards or not-fire ramp up time favours you to be on boss.
Archimonde-decurse bot only in most cases

Just to list MH bosses and what elements can shif DPS lower, BT bosses has similiar factors, at least a few of them. Where TK&SSC mainly is tank&spank for mages, unless we AoE.

To be practical, its worth taking the overall performance of various specs in different instances and see how they perform. Personally, I find deep arcane spec the overall best spec for SSC/TK due to bosses with special threat mechanics and aoe heavy bosses. It helps that there aren't a lot of pushback from raid damage and range isn't a factor in most of these fights.

Arcane spec is competitive with Deep fire in Hyjal, mainly due to its superior performance on thrash. Arcane spec falls slightly behind on boss fights, with the exception of Rage Winterchill. Frost spec is superior on Archimonde only, due to ice block, which is about to become a base skill soon. Deep fire spec still puts out better overall DPS on the bosses in hyjal.

In Black Temple, I find Deep Fire to be the best of the available specs, due to its 70% spell pushback protection. There are just too much raid damage being thrown around, which severely hampers the ability of other spec to be competitive. The only 2 fights where deep fire falls behind is on Illidan & Supremus, but deep fire performs better on the other bosses.

It's not competitive. Stop pretending that it is. I mean no offense here, really, but I'm getting sick of this nonsensical argument in this thread. Your WWS posts are terrible. Like, really, honestly, absolutely bad. The fact that you are "competitive" with other Mages in your guild just means they're geared poorly for Fire/aren't as good at playing as you/whatever, it doesn't mean the spec is good.

Here is an Illidan WWS. Note that I am *fire spec here* and thus I am Arcane Missiling with no talents throughout the elemental phase. My dps is 964. Your dps as Arcane in your Illidan was 987. This should tell you something. Now, Illidan is a horrible dps test due to the length of the fight and the amount of moving and non-dps(parasite) responsibilities that Mages have. Teron is a much better one.

Here's your Teron WWS: Wow Web Stats
Here's mine: Wow Web Stats

Your highest mage is Arcane, and has 1327 dps. I have 1821 dps. Keep in mind that WWS under reports the dps of Fire due to the Fireball dot.

This is why I said earlier, until you can post some WWS with at least 1600 dps on a non-rage/anetheron fight, saying that Arcane is competitive is not a reasonable conclusion based on any available evidence.

Honestly, if I were going to try to sell Arcane, I would at least be posting 1800dps Rage Winterchill and Anetheron.

What I think you ment to say was, it was better when stacked with every possible gain and gimmick possible with arcane, namely MSD, TLC and probably an ATOI aswell :P Arcane is only competetive now on a certain gearlevel where most things cater to arcane and firemages get smacked in the face. I'll give arcane the fact that it's awesome on trash =)

It's not random at all, stand at 36 yards and you will never get hit by rain of fire. Last Azgalor I wasn't hit with a single ROF since I was standing at max scorch-range.

In most fights you can minimize your downtime substantialy by awareness, movement and thinking a head like having people on anetheron run to infernal tank when they are targeted and swapping onto boss if you got time etc.

Do you live in a parallel universe? As fire I definitely need SP preferably on every single fight, especially when I do fireblast rotations. Frost is another story, now there you don't need any SP :P

Maybe cut out the Fireblast rotations?

Looking at the theorycraft scripts Deep Frost and Deep Fire are, for all intensive purposes, identical dpm. This will change a bit when Deep Fire has a reason to not spec the 10 points into Arcane (2.3.2 where the hell are you).

I was the low roller last night for our raid so I suffered with no shadowpriest for most of the raid, including Kazrogal (+300 SR), and I was able to make it through every fight without wanding. I'm currently running with a Deep Frost build with NO points in clearcasting so 10/48/3 is actually way more mana efficient, so if you can't make it as Fire without a spriest you may need to rethink your consumable usage.

Do I prefer being in the shadowpriest group? Does a bear defecate in a arborous areas. Is it absolutely required for Deep Fire/Frost, no. We can make it without the shadowpriest we just have to use a lot more consumables to make it work and avoid mana blowing stragedies like Fireblast rotations (which was still being argued as to whether it is actually a dps increase with current game casting mechanics last time I checked). Save the Fireblasts for when the boss is under 20% and you have a lot of mana left or for when you get a shadowpriest in your group.

Saying Deep Fire requires a shadowpriest when you do Fireblast rotations is the equivalent of saying "Gohei27 needs 2 shadowpriests, a shaman and a Ret pally for JoW for his Deep Arcane AB spam"

(no offense intended Gohei27 - I loved Arcane Spec and I do think it is somewhat viable in a raid with CoS and no CoE but if you can get CoE then Deep Frost and Deep Fire are far more viable with fewer conditionals on their dps).

Before Kara or before 25-man raids?

Certainly 2pc Spellstrike and 3pc Spellfire. That's five slots of fire and forget.

Before Kara:

Neck: [Brooch of Heightened Potential]
Back: [Sethekk Oracle Cloak]
Wrists: [Runed Spell-cuffs]
Feet: If you can't find the pattern for [Boots of Blasting] in your AH, then [Shattrath Jumpers] are as good as anything, and basically free.
Rings: [Ashyen's Gift] and [Seal of the Exorcist]
Trinkets: [Icon of the Silver Crescent] and [Quagmirran's Eye]
Weapon: [Eternium Runed Blade] or [Blade of the Archmage]
Offhand: [Flametongue Seal] or other school equivalent
Wand: [Carved Witch Doctor's Stick]

Kara has upgrades to neck, back, feet, one ring and weapon.

All this is assuming no PvP - there are many pieces of arena gear that are significant upgrades over this list.