Sweet Informational Thread - Page 80

♦ Seonid · 09/22/08, 8:57 AM

Mob threat is always somewhat tricky as combat is initiated - the threat tables of a pack are all linked until one is pulled, they then use their own, independent tables from then on, with whomever "pulled" having a nominal [small] amount of threat on all of the mobs. Any action you take will cause threat, not just damage/healing, which is why you see tanks Bloodrage after the pull to give them a small lead over any initial non-tank aggro.

Your CS is aggro, your Polymorph is aggro, and not just on the target - all it needs is another mob to notice the effect and in the absence of any other higher threat action, they will come for you.

Gofa · 09/22/08, 9:12 AM

Using sheep can proc several items like the hyjal ring, spellstrike set, sso-necklace etc.. Maybe you got unlucky and some effect did proc with your sheep or you used the special manaoil, it can also proc of sheep.

If you had a priest in your group, it's also possible that he buffed something, got aggro and faded. After this, the mobs will run to the nearest person.

solbergb · 09/22/08, 1:46 PM

The way it was described to me, using polymorph puts you on the aggro table with threat zero.

Doing nothing leaves you off the threat table.

If you're on the threat table you can get clobbered. I think it is similar to body-pulling.

Counterspell, btw, is a very high threat move. I've pulled stuff off the tank quite often with that spell even when the fight is well under way.

A common approach to get around this problem is to have the tank shoot/moonfire/throw shield at the sheep target (or include sheep target) and then focus his real attacks on somebody else.

This puts the tank higher than the mage if the sheep pops on the threat meter and anyone else included in the pull which is damaged will hate tank more than mage. But as a rule sheep pulling is like body pulling and you want a plan for that. (Moving through your tank is a good idea, especially if he's got a consecrate or something like challenging shout up)

solbergb · 09/22/08, 1:58 PM

Originally Posted by kentosani

hello,

Ive had a discussion about AoE-ing in MH. ive been looking on theocrafting on AoE but can;t seem to locate it.

The theorycrafting think tank has a good discussion on AOE caps, which go to the heart of what you seem to be concerned about. I recommend going to that forum and reading the article. Everything I say below breaks down if there are a lot of critters in the pack. At my gear level, it's about 8 mobs to cap the fire spells and 16 to cap arcane explosion. At T6 gear it would somewhat fewer.

If there are a lot of mobs and the instant fire spells are degrading, arcane explosion's better until it gets capped, then flame strike starts looking better, because the DOT isn't capped, nor are any crits you get (and crits are more likely with fire spells for a fire mage)

Originally Posted by kentosani

hello,

The discussion was about Whats the best rotation for AoE-ing the trash packs in MH. Ive been using Flamestrike , BW and then AE-ing to do dps the other person is of the opinion that using flamstrike and chain using that would get way better results. Im a standard spec fire mages in t6.

Chain flame strike is self-evidently bad. The DOT is a significant portion of the damage and it takes 8 seconds to burn out and will not stack with itself. The only situation where that would possibly make sense is two separate AOE packs, and you alternate. Even then, the instant spells will usually do more DPS at more sustainable DPM.

Leading with a flame strike is probably a good idea, for threat reasons. Gives the paladin time for his consecrate and passive threat talents to work before you spike your threat. The rotation you describe is pretty typical, although the deep fire mages I know would also toss in dragon breath before settling down to do arcane explosions. You want your fire spells frontloaded so any ignites also have time to burn down before mobs die.

Your threat spike in this rotation looks something like this ___/---- With the "/" being when all the fire spells
go off and the --- being the arcane explosions, which are much lower threat.

From a DPS/burst stanpoint your best spells are dragon breath/blast wave, then arcane explosion, then flame strike.

There is also the consideration that your DPS is zero if you go hard OOM. Flame strike is a mana hog. The instant fire spells usually come in more efficient than arcane explosion...a combination of the fact that together they do the damage of roughly 3 arcane explosions, and the fact that Master of Elements will almost certainly return you some mana if you use either fire spell on a large pack (something is going to crit).

• Wizeowel · 09/23/08, 5:41 AM

Originally Posted by solbergb

Leading with a flame strike is probably a good idea, for threat reasons.

Nonsense. You should have 2 points in arcane subtlety, therefore arcane explosion is not only more dps (due to higher AoE cap) but also less tps. If you are threat capped, casting any fire spell is to be avoided; while if you are not threat capped AE does more damage anyway. Save dragon's breath for if the tank dies.

What's mentioned briefly in the think tank is that, since there is a damage cap, haste becomes a hugely important stat when maximising AoE. If casting any spell has a fixed damage, casting more frequently increases dps. So wear the BT exalted trinket (it procs constantly) and use skull of guldan if you have those. If you have enough spirit on your gear, using mage armor will help against excessive drinking downtime.

Ilyawen · 09/23/08, 6:34 AM

It's actually no nonsense at all. Leading with Flamestrike on a group tanked especially by a Paladin (though any half-decent tanking paladin won't let you think about threat for even a split second) will give you a 130% aggro limit. This limit is of course reduced once you move in for a kill, but generally, starting off with Flamestrike reduces your risk of being killed by a stray ghoul or whatever a LOT, since whoever is tanking will have a few seconds time to wait for his concecrate to tick, to pull out another TC, whatever. So whilst fire puts out more threat, it also allows you to stay out of melee-range.
This is benefitial not only for the threat-question (which will be neglectable a few seconds into the fight anyway), but especially for your survival. Think Hyjal, think a pack of 10-12 melee-mobs. Time is quite a pressing issue there sometimes, so you don't have time to stand arround forever. So you start quite early. Starting off with a Flamestrike might occasionally pull 1 or 2 mobs, but you have comfortably much time to avoid it, Iceblock, let your tank get it, or at least take off your weapon before you die. Whatever. Starting off with Arcane Explosion might produce a few crits. If you get unlucky, you put out a crit on a melee-mob who had just had a few resists against tank-skills, and is on low threat. You crit that mob, it turns arround, you are dead meat, no matter how much more aggro-reduce AE provides.

Apart from these threat- and survival-issues, Flamestrike is actually nice for DPS too. You WILL have to wait for a few seconds to start bombing, so using Flamestrike is one thing that, if timed properly, gives you a 3 second headstart on the damage, and saves a GCD in the process, all whilst ticking a nice little DOT all the time.

To finally agree with Wizeowel on one point: I don't advice using DB except to finish a group off or in really dire situations. It probably won't hit the whole pack anyway, and you will be in trouble if something unexpected happens.

kentosani · 09/23/08, 10:00 AM

thanks solbergb , your answer comes down to the point my discussion was about.

If there are a lot of mobs and the instant fire spells are degrading, arcane explosion's better until it gets capped, then flame strike starts looking better, because the DOT isn't capped, nor are any crits you get (and crits are more likely with fire spells for a fire mage)

i'll explain what i mean by chaincasting fs. Flamstrike has a 3 sec cast. takes about 1 sec to aim nicely. Flamestrike ticks for 8 secs. So chaincasting would be reapplying FS 4 secs into the old one restarting the new cast when the old ones ends.

that leaves 3-4 secs in the FS rotation for "other" AoE

Could that way op dps-ing kickout more dps then doinging the "normal way" FS >> BW>> DB >> AE-ing

in this discussion threat is not really an issue since we use pally tanks

Laekoth · 09/23/08, 11:59 AM

I am not sure if this is the best place to post this, but i have some recent wws data taken during M'uru attempts that clearly shows an ignite bug (and this time in my favor). I'm hoping someone will find this interesting/useful to some degree.

first, the wws: Wow Web Stats

TLDR: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...gnitesver2.jpg

notes: 263 haste

I'm slightly curious how high people have gotten ignites in this fashion, and if this can actually be used effectively (read consistantly) to increase dps?

• Wizeowel · 09/23/08, 1:03 PM

Not for nothing is it written in the first page of this thread by a premier EJ theorycrafter that AE is the optimal spell for mage AoE.

Ilyawen, you are effectively saying that FS is better because it has a cast time and that gives your prot pally more time to get aggro. Did you not consider the possibility to wait 3 seconds and then cast AE? Same effect, higher damage, lower threat (even compared to 130% range). You also talked about "a 3 second headstart on the damage, and saves a GCD in the process" but this doesn't actually work. It's no 3 second headstart because due to lower AE threat I can start nuking sooner. Of course if you are at 130% range for the same reason, you'll lose the time running in after that. Sure you have "all whilst ticking a nice little DOT all the time" but the damage from that is lower than the 2nd AE which I've already cast. And if you didn't run in but instead spam FS from range... then you are cutting off the remaining pulses of the dot and I must again repeat that this is lower dps and higher tps. Anyway, check Rawr, fill in 10 mobs for AoE like the first wave is in MH and scroll down on stats page to arcane explosion and flamestrike. In my gear I see there 5600dps for AE and 4800dps for FS. Threat on each mob is about 330 tps for AE and 425 tps for FS.

Kentosani, it's a nice idea the FS-AE-AE-AE rotation to preserve the dot but still very unlikely to be superior to just AE spam; not just in terms of damage but especially in terms of the 1 second you are talking about "aiming [FS] nicely". The trick to AE is to just be spamming your AE button and catching all 10+ mobs without possibly even getting close to the threat of any half-decent pally. If threat really isn't an issue then the better thing to increase dps further is the occassional blastwave (which also doesn't require aiming nicely).

Laekoth: there is a whole thread about this [Mage] Rolling Ignites: are they back?

solbergb · 09/23/08, 2:41 PM

Originally Posted by Wizeowel

Not for nothing is it written in the first page of this thread by a premier EJ theorycrafter that AE is the optimal spell for mage AoE.

Ilyawen, you are effectively saying that FS is better because it has a cast time and that gives your prot pally more time to get aggro. Did you not consider the possibility to wait 3 seconds and then cast AE? Same effect, higher damage, lower threat (even compared to 130% range). You also talked about "a 3 second headstart on the damage, and saves a GCD in the process" but this doesn't actually work. It's no 3 second headstart because due to lower AE threat I can start nuking sooner.

Unless of course blowing all your fire spells doesn't pull aggro, and the 3 second windup after the consecrate drops is sufficient to let the pally build threat and/or the monsters are nearly dead when you do pull aggro and they just die in another arcane explosion.

Your analysis is correct for 10 critter Hyjal waves, I can't argue with RAWR. But it is still useful to see the numbers behind RAWR and what happens when there are NOT 10 creatures in the wave. In WOLK, the raising of damage caps is going to totally transform AOE rotations. Even in BC, the right rotation is sensitive to number of monsters.

What you are suggesting is that you can start 1.5 seconds earlier than the flamestrike with arcane explosion because it both does less damage and has a bigger threat reduction from talents. (I don't think you are suggesting starting right as the consecrate drops).

Here's how that plays out with my fire mage, in damage, mana and threat, side by side with flamestrike. YMMV based on gear, but AOE's have low spell damage coeffiicients as a rule. We'll assume that we're shooting at 7 or fewer enemies. If it is 10+ there is no question arcane explosion is better.

I'm going to ignore haste and cooldowns for this, assuming you'd use them the same way on both, although for a fire mage, popping combustion before doing several fire AOE's is good from both a damage and mana perspective. This comparison also ignores crits, which again favores arcane explosion over reality because the fire spells will crit 9% more often at least than arcane explosion will on a fire build, and crits will give mana back. This is pretty much a worst case comparison using strictly average damage, a 2/47/11+1 build and 1240 +spell damage and no raid buffs.

AE spam
time dmg threat mana
0 0 0 0
1.5 676 270 545 arcane explosion
3 1352 541 1090 arcane explosion
4.5 2028 811 1635 arcane explosion
6 2704 1082 2180 arcane explosion
7.5 3380 1352 2725 arcane explosion
9 4056 1622 3270 arcane explosion
10.5 4732 1893 3815 arcane explosion
12 5408 2163 4360 arcane explosion

Fire spells then Arcane explosion (target fs as pally is pulling)
108.45
0 0 0 0 97.605
1.5 0 0 0
3 1795 1616 1606 flamestrike/dr breath
4.5 2850 2565 2232 blast wave
6 3635 2933 2777 arcane explosion
7.5 4419 3301 3322 arcane explosion
9 5204 3668 3867 arcane explosion
10.5 5988 4036 4412 arcane explosion
12 6700 4338 4957 arcane explosion

In this mode you just cast flamestrike/dr br whenever they come
off cooldown and don't recast flamestrike. It retains a DPS edge
at about same DPM if MOE is figured in. The primary cost is threat,
which rises faster than the DPS does.

Flamestrike "spam" as described, first one target as pally pulls

0 0 0 0
1.5 0 0 0
3 1795 1616 1606 flamestrike/dr breath
4.5 2850 2565 2232 blast wave
6 3635 2933 2777 arcane explosion
7.5 4419 3301 3322 arcane explosion
12 6066 4445 4808 flamestrike+targeting+arc expl

In this mode you just cast flamestrike/dr br whenever they come
off cooldown, otherwise arcane explosion. The 12 second DPS
can't be sustained, so it should be compared to a cycle that
is all arcane explosion filler to get a more balanced view. In 12 sec, you
spend 8 sec winding up flame strikes and can fit in 3 arcane explosions
while wating for the DOT to tick. At my gear levels you get:
12 seconds of 4986.6 4792.14 3864

Or lower DPS than straight arcane exposion but better DPM,
especially with MOE figured in. Threat though is over twice AE spam.

The three rotations have different strengths. The all arcane
explosion spam is best threat and best for if fire gets capped
by number of enemies.

The "lead with fire, then spam AE with fire as cooldowns
come up" is highest DPS, but has a threat spike with
each fire cooldown. Mostly though it is using the AE threat
curve, so if the pally generates more threat than AE over time,
he'll have enough left for the spikes. This model is most effective
if you stack cooldowns before the fire bursts, especially the
first one, which will generate ignite ticks, MOE paybacks etc.

The third rotation is very high threat, lower DPS but has
the best DPM, especially if MOE is considered. The reason
this may be popular on Hyjal for fire mages might be DPM.
Not all raids can provide enough mana to sustain AOE.

For an arcane mage, things are different. He gets more crits
on arcane explosion, he doens't get mana back on flamestrikes,
he doesn't have a bunch of talents that crank fire damage and
crits and he does have talents that improve arcane explosion
a bit. So for him, AE spam is probably always right.

At higher gear levels, your extra fire damage might get capped
by the number of mobs, improving the AE spam relative to
others. But the spell damage coefficient is pretty small, so
it's less sensitive to gear than fireball spam is.

^^ to summarize that for the original poster.

If your paladin can handle the threat from your current flamestrike rotations, you can handle the "lead with fire, then AE, with blast wave/dragon breath as they come up" rotation easily. If you can sustain the mana burn, that's the most DPS rotation, but it probably is not a lot better than AE spam unless the # of mobs drops closer to 7-8, so it might not be worth the threat on the Hyjal mobs.

If he can't handle the initial burst, AE spam with blast wave/dragon breath as his threat curve gets ahead is likely better, although again if there are a lot of mobs alive, BW/DB may not do much more than Arcane Explosion. It's
easy to tell...just look at the numbers you get when you pop them.

The only reason to use the flamestrike rotation you described is mana and even then you need to consider total
damage done vs mana used. It might just make the fight last longer without doing any more total damage
(or worse, do less damage)

Ilyawen · 09/23/08, 9:36 PM

Originally Posted by Wizeowel

Not for nothing is it written in the first page of this thread by a premier EJ theorycrafter that AE is the optimal spell for mage AoE.

Ilyawen, you are effectively saying that FS is better because it has a cast time and that gives your prot pally more time to get aggro. Did you not consider the possibility to wait 3 seconds and then cast AE? Same effect, higher damage, lower threat (even compared to 130% range). You also talked about "a 3 second headstart on the damage, and saves a GCD in the process" but this doesn't actually work. It's no 3 second headstart because due to lower AE threat I can start nuking sooner. Of course if you are at 130% range for the same reason, you'll lose the time running in after that. Sure you have "all whilst ticking a nice little DOT all the time" but the damage from that is lower than the 2nd AE which I've already cast. And if you didn't run in but instead spam FS from range... then you are cutting off the remaining pulses of the dot and I must again repeat that this is lower dps and higher tps. Anyway, check Rawr, fill in 10 mobs for AoE like the first wave is in MH and scroll down on stats page to arcane explosion and flamestrike. In my gear I see there 5600dps for AE and 4800dps for FS. Threat on each mob is about 330 tps for AE and 425 tps for FS.

I am not saying that Flamestrike is generally better. I'm saying it provides a usefull opener in Hyjal-like situations for various reasons. This does not work on a pure theorycrafted scenario within Rawr, but anyone who has had to deal with giant spiders mashing his brains out might find my point to be somewhat valid. Even apart from situations where you might want to stay out of melee-range for totally different reasons than only threat (where you will probably use FS + Blizzard).

The thing is, when bombing, you generally don't check the aggro of every single mob, instead, you try to guess (or let your tank tell you) when its safe to start bombing. This is point A, 0 seconds into the fight. Now, we have 2 approaches.

With the AE-spam, two things can happen: He starts casting at exactly point A, spams AE and kills the mobs with the highest possible AoE-DPS available ingame for a mage right now. Hooray for that!
The other possibility is that he starts at point A, aggros a mob and dies immedeatly, and does no DPS whatsoever. I know this sounds like a moot point, much like "a dead DPS-caster doesn't do DMG, so don't push too much threat". But it happens in Hyjal, so I would really be careful.

With opening Flamestrike, point A is actually the time where the Flamestrike lands. This makes you pull aggro at about the same time as the AE-spamming mage would, but gives you time to react to your threat-warning. If your monitor starts to flash, your Flamestrike came to early, and you should wait a bit until your tanks regained threat on the mobs in question. It's a DPS-waste if you have to wait, but at least you ain't dead. Since FS at range is about (VERY roughly, I know) the same threat as a AE at melee, its quite comparable, only with FS you have the time to react.

If that alone wasn't enough, we can still get back to comparing DPS. One Flamestrike is still better then one single AE, even if not 2x, but it is better (including leaving the DoT tick fully). If everything works fine for the FS-mage, you just checked your threat-level at point A, then you are free to move in, which should take about 1,5 seconds (you could blink, for example). Your second Explosions goes off at about the same time as the one from the AE-spamming mage. AND you still have the DOT

Its not a clear calculation, but its my personal experience from bombing in Hyjal, with various sets of tanks, various degrees of epic fail in my group and everything you can imagine. If you think about it, there is rarely a time when everything goes exactly as planned.

• Wizeowel · 09/23/08, 11:15 PM

To Solbergb:

The original question was fundamentally: is AE spam better than FS spam on Hyjal trash? Given that you state "If it is 10+ there is no question arcane explosion is better" then forgive me if I wonder why you make a calculation with "We'll assume that we're shooting at 7 or fewer enemies." The first wave in MH has 10, later waves can have more. "This is pretty much a worst case comparison ... no raid buffs." It's a raid, in MH, what's the point of these assumptions exactly?

Forgive me also that I noticed you excluded blastwave in the "AE rotation" just to prove your point about flamestrike. If you are using blastwave in one rotation, you can use it in another. Or better yet, ignore it entirely in the calculation. Furthermore, "favores arcane explosion over reality" nice bit of spin - if you want to talk about reality, look at the fact that flamestrike needs an extra, targetted click of your mouse. Please include click-lag in your calculations.

Lastly, you did analysis for opening casts. Later on you call them rotations. However, they are not rotations for 2 reasons: the AE spam is missing it's first cast, and BW has a 30 second cooldown. Please update your analysis to also show full 30 second rotations.

To Ilyawen:

"Since FS at range is about ... the same threat as a AE at melee" - no, AE is still less tps.

Either we are talking about maximising damage in the case where the tank can hold all, in which case AE wins. Or we are talking about maximising damage in the case where you are threat capped, in which case AE wins. You talk about AE as "a pure theorycrafted scenario within Rawr" but actually AE is closer to the real situation than FS because it can be spammed without an extra click. Rawr has a lag option, but not a click-lag option.

The guy's original question was about maximising damage, he even said explicitly that threat is no problem. So your vague references about your personal experience in Hyjal where tanks failed their jobs does not really lend itself to arguing that a higher tps spell is superior. Trying to argue that a higher tps spell will do more damage when you are threat capped just doesn't make sense. Either you can cast safely or you can't. If you are waiting for tank aggro, a lower tps spell will mean you can resume casting earlier and cast more before being threat capped again. The dot from FS (which you seem to be presuming is extra damage) will actually only push the safe moment to later. With FS you have to predict 3 seconds in advance whether your damage will be safe. With AE you can know for sure that you're okay and do the damage right now.

Sure it's reassuring to be at range if you can't count on your own skill at watching omen and if that's what you feel comfortable with by all means stick with it. But when someone asks on a theorycrafting forum "what does more damage" and you start to talk about "a dead DPS-caster doesn't do DMG" then I think you have missed the point.

willem11 · 09/24/08, 4:55 AM

I believe I have found out a bug with invisibility similar to the rogue vanish bug. I avoided maidens repentance when my invisibility popped at the exact second she casted it. I did not get affected by the repentance at all (even tho I was still in combat and close to her).

Do you think mages are immume to any effect 0.5 sec after their invisibility popped like rogue's vanish?

Ilyawen · 09/24/08, 6:35 AM

Before I even begin: Chaincasting FS does not lose much of a "click-lag". Its of course silly to do it, but you can chain the spell about as good as anything, without any noticeable lag in your casting, since you can bring up the targeting-circle arround midcast again. With a good internet-connection, you might not even lose any time until the chaining-command reaches the server, if you're slow or lagging, it might cost you a bit more, but thats true for pretty much everything and hence irrelevant.

But now: As much as I enjoy the style and subtle tone of your reply, Wizeowel, I can't help but feel a bit fed up over arguing the same point again. But first, for a small explication:

Topics in a forum tend to change. If you had read my post in its context, you would have found that I was in fact referring to a post by you which quoted solberg on the question wether or not flamestrike to lead an AoE-pull was viable. It wasn't for the threat-reasons, as solberg stated, but you covered that. Now, I was taking that statement of yours and provided some arguments on why flamestrike to start off wasn't an entirely bad idea.

Quoting me by hand (and leaving out a certain parenthesis which stressed how inaccurate the quoted statement, admittedly, was) is a nice way to be right on the internet, but does nothing to discuss my point. Some other points of you do, so I will deal with them.

The central issue that is left in my eyes is the question on wether or not you always KNOW when your tank is ready. Some tanks call out a warning or a signal, others don't. But I fail to posess an addon (the Omen-aoe-part never worked for me, is it functional by now?) which accurately provides threat-data on 8+ mobs, so I can not always guarantee that my first AoE-crit might not (unluckily) get me over the thread-limit, be it ranged or melee.

This is not even a matter of tank failure. There are times in Hyjal when people die for various reasons, or your setup is mainly melees, or whatever. These times will put a lot of stress on the few mages/warlocks shoulders to kill stuff before the next wave arrives. So generally, the idea is to start of early.

Going from a "I don't know exactly how much threat I can produce safely"-perspective, Flamestrike IS a good idea for the survival-reasons mentioned above, and also because the necessary taunt might just get your tank some threat on the sole mob that so far had resisted every consecrate-tick.

You see, the argument is not about wether or not we are threatcapped in general, its about knowing when to safely start to AoE. And THAT is something that FS can test out quite nicely. You don't really know three seconds in advance what will happen within the melee-pack, which tank-skills will be on cooldown, which will be resisted. You will NEVER know that, but the nice part is, with FS you don't have too.
If I can cast 1 second earlier with FS because its more threat, but the tanks have time enough to react and taunt, its a 1 second gain. Even if I don't gain time, its utility and safety. It ain't DPS, it ain't less threat, its still usefull.

solbergb · 09/24/08, 1:29 PM

Originally Posted by Wizeowel

To Solbergb:

The original question was fundamentally: is AE spam better than FS spam on Hyjal trash? Given that you state "If it is 10+ there is no question arcane explosion is better" then forgive me if I wonder why you make a calculation with "We'll assume that we're shooting at 7 or fewer enemies."

The first wave in MH has 10, later waves can have more. "This is pretty much a worst case comparison ... no raid buffs." It's a raid, in MH, what's the point of these assumptions exactly?

.

Because not every aoe situation in the game is Hyjal trash (eg, bear runs, ZA gauntlet with the 8 birds). Not every AOE situation in the game has full raid buffs (10 and 5 man situations, or even solo or PVP)

The fire rotations are very good there, both DPS and DPM. Your assertion was that Arcane Explosin is the king of AOE, assertion by authority (early post in the thread). What I demonstrated is that while it is good on Hyjal trash it is not the whole story.

He asked about AOE theorycrafting in general, not just "what do I do on Hyjal trash".

Originally Posted by Wizeowel

Forgive me also that I noticed you excluded blastwave in the "AE rotation" just to prove your point about flamestrike. If you are using blastwave in one rotation, you can use it in another. Or better yet, ignore it entirely in the calculation. F
....
urthermore, "favores arcane explosion over reality" nice bit of spin - if you want to talk about reality, look at the fact
that flamestrike needs an extra, targetted click of your mouse. Please include click-lag in your calculations.

Blast wave has a 30s cooldown. It quite obviously can't be used between every flamestrike. Same is true of dragon breath (20s cooldown). It's appropriate in the "lead with fire, then AE until cooldowns come up" rotation because that's the way that rotation goes. Big spike of threat and DPS at the beginning, then a flatter curve, then little spikes as fire spells come up.

I did the flamestrike rotation the way the OP said he did it, to illustrate the behavior. If I was using that rotation, I would mix in dragon breath and blast wave whenever they came up, but I'd have to do a full minute extrapolation to get the average of the cooldowns and the post was already getting long.

I did include click lag in the calculations. Cast time for flamesstrike+3 arcane explosions is 6 seconds+1gcd, and we assumed an 8 second rotation, two 1 second targeting lags. (given that you have a whole GCD to get your targeting right after the last arcane explosion before casting flamestrike, this seems like plenty. If your bound key is left hand and your right hand is positioning mouse during gcd, ready to click, most of us can hit a key and click mouse in less than .5 seconds)

Finally...nothing started at zero. To me zero is when the consecrate drops, and you don't AE then. You wait at least a tic...so 1.5 sec seemed reasonable. Whereas a cast time spell can be started as soon as you see it. It might be a dumb idea for threat reasons but in actual play it's worked pretty well for me in a number of situations....having the flamestrike targeting circle following the pally as he moves, and clicking when the consecrate goes off. He gets 3 tics of consecrate plus the passive aggro for monsters beating on him before I inject a threat spike...and if I cast the spell from just out of 10' away, I get a 30% threat reduction for range, letting me then decide whether or not to move in with bigger spells, move in with lower threat arcane explosion or keep my distance and do something less risky like blizzard (or ice block if I really botched the timing and they're all headed for me).