Enthorn

You already have [Azure Cloth Bindings], and you don't need to sacrifice its high crit for spirit and low hit. Your chest piece can be replaced as well with hit gear: [Gown of the Spell-Weaver], [Heigan's Putrid Vestments], [Gown of Blaumeux]. The Mp5 on your second ring is going to waste. And last, [Signet of the Kirin Tor] would be a great investment for hit. And I'm not too sure about your weapon choice... you're gaining a lot of hit/haste from it, but you're sacrificing substantial amounts of spell power. For now, I'm sure it works, but definitely replace the trinket, and look for a main hand, offhand combination.

Edit: Now with proper ID codes!

 

Sojik

I hope this is a good place to post this problem. I'm the mage class leader for my guild and I have a mage who consistently does bad dps. She's less geared than the other magi but does much less damage than I'd expect regardless. She does bad dps in T7 and she did bad dps in Black Temple and Sunwell. I have to help her get her damage up and I'm not quite sure what to tell her. I've given her macros and addons and I've talked rotations and helped her with her spec and gear and gems, but still, she's always at the bottom of the meter above the tanks (sometimes not by much).

She's told me she's not a competitive person but if she doesn't start pulling her weight I may have to replace her permanently.

What can I do? How can I tell where she's going wrong? I'm at a loss.

Here's her Armory: https://www.wowarmory.com/character-...aul&n=Magiclor

She got an off-hand last night in Naxx and is really close to Kirin Tor exalted so she'll get the dagger soon. I really don't think it's a gear issue, though.

Here's the WWS from last night if interested: Wow Web Stats

 

Pheroz

She's wearing 6 peices of tier 6 and the majority of her upgraded gear is quest rewards. It's absolutely a gear issue.

 

cbags

Hot Streak 165 procs over the night, but only 41 hits. The other mages have at least twice as many, and they also have almost twice as many procs for Hot Streak available to cast with. assuming not actually casting pyroblast without using the Hot Streak proc.

 

Pheroz

cbags, You do realize your not counting over 40 pyroblasts she cast that crit, right?

 

cbags

So I might have been confused on the read there. It shows 41 landed...does it break out landed and ones that landed and crit?

 

Hoffski

She's just bad. Look at patchwerk fight. Almost a 4 minute fight and she only cast living bomb 4 times. Also only casted pyro 4 times though she had 8 hot streak procs.

 

cbags

When looking at the other mages to compare with, they have a higher % of Hot Streaks that appear to have been used.

Sojik had 266 HS procs, casted 230
JBreezy has 310, casted 221
Magiclor has 165 casted 89

That's what I was typing as you you were as well. She just might not be picking up the proc on her screen as well. I mean it's fairly obvious to me at least, but some people get tunnel vision.

 

Pheroz

Your seeing 41 landed that does not include crit. The number crit is not shown by defualt, but if you enable it, she had 48 crit.

None of that is particularly relevant when comparing a mage wearing primarily level 70 gear and weilding a [Chilly Slobberknocker] to mages with 4 peices of tier 7 and weapons like [Life and Death]

Majiclors average FFB hit for 3486. The other two mages in the parse had FFBs that hit for ~4500.

 

Sinless

Even though we commonly see two people from the same class, in equal gear, in the same raid, with the same spec doing ridiculously different DPS, in this case most of the problem seems to be gear.

I didn't look at her gear/enchants/gems one by one, but a quick look at her armory shows that she has 1247 spell dmg, 22% crit and 115 haste rating. This is way less than what people had even before WotLK hit and is not even comparable to what a modestly Naxx 10/25/heroics geared mage would have. When I compare it to my gear, and the fact that she said she is not "competitive" I wouldn't expect her to be doing more than half my dps which seems to be roughly the case.

Give her better gear and see how her scores improve. There are no guarantees that will help though and you may end up replacing her for good.

 

Sojik

Thanks for the fast replies. I didn't mean to compare her to us or sound as though I think she should be keeping up with us by any means. Also, (I'm Sojik btw) I just got my legs, helm and those boots last night. I had 70 epics or 80 blues before that with alot less spell damage and haste. She had decent gear in Black Temple and a T5 mage would smoke her. I'm just frustrated.

So we think she needs some way to see Hot Streak procs better? I had her on Scorch for half the instance when I got annoyed she was on the bottom of the meter and I still had to keep the buff on the boss. Also, I told her to keep reapplying Living Bomb but she obviously didn't do that on Patchwerk. =.=

 

cbags

I know this sounds a little contrary, but I would put a better mage on scorch rotation, or make alternate...give her the opportunity to just nuke, stay alive, catch procs...for a few fights. See if the issue is just overload of things to do. If the other 2 can pump out the heat, the value of them always having scorch, and living bomb is going to outweigh those NOT being in place. Once you relegate her to just the minimal for a little bit, you can see if there is a bigger problem, ie being lazy.

Just a thought.

 

Unleash

I'm having this same issue. The only problem I can come up with is the lack of player skill/awareness. I can explain things very well and I know the mechanics of a mage in great detail. I've been trying hard to improve a lot of mages in the past years playing this game and I have come to the conclusion either I am terrible at explaining how to do things or the people are just not up to standard. I have met less then a handful of mages in this game who I consider at a standard I would approve. Maybe I just expect to much.

 

Footspeedy

Alternatively, take her to a target dummy and ask her to use a very basic rotation without cooldowns a couple times. Pay attention to what she does, not her dps . Keep scorch up> Keep living bomb up> Don't waste hot streaks> spam FFB. Assuming she has some sort of way to visibly see the buff/debuff timers (and if she doesn't she should) it should be very easy to see where she is messing up.

Seeing what she does on a target dummy in a very controlled scenario should give you a better opportunity to figure out were the problem is, and then correct it.

 

Actovision

If she doesn't already have a mod to track Hot Sreak Procs, Scorch timers, and Living Bomb, I'd suggest she get one. I'm using MSBT and Scorchio2 together and it works fine. I've got a deafeningly loud "Hot Streak!" sound that plays as well (MSBT), which helps immensely.

 

Kelfar

Thanks for all the feedback.

@Seonid, I am using Classtimers right now, it shows a little bar under my unitframes with HS proc timer, I think the main reason I didn't use all of my HS procs was because of 2 reasons. First being that during the bloodlust/icyveins/combustion I was just spamming FFB, if I had used a HS pyro I would have had to cast a scorch first so I wouldn't ignite munch, but if that scorch crit it would waste one of the combustion stacks. Second reason being sometimes I could accidentally refresh the HS buff.

An example would be as such

00:00 Cast FFB1
03:00 Cast FFB2
04:50 FFB1 Crits
06:00 Cast FFB3
07:50 FFB2 Crits, Gain Hotstreak Buff
09:00 Cast FFB4, 1.5 seconds left until LB explodes
10:50 FFB3 Crits
12:00 Refresh LB
13:50 FFB4 Crits, Gain Hotstreak Buff
13:60 Cast HS pyro

So I am losing out on a HS pyro because the FFB4 crits before I can get the pyro off. Should I not wait for LB to run out then and just cast scorch before the HS pyro?

@Inoko
Isn't icy veins a 2.4 minute cooldown with ice floes? So there is no way I could use it twice in a 4 minute fight, thats why I saved it for 35% when we popped bloodlust so I would get that extra damage.

@Enthorn
Thanks for the gear suggestions. Yeah after looking over those badge bracers they really give up a lot for the hit, and give me useless spirit. So getting the shoulders is probably the best thing to buy then. Thanks.

Also I do have a mh/oh combo, but its [Flameheart Spell Scalpel] and [Ward of the Violet Citadel], which I don't think is better than the staff I have. We have been very unlucky with drops so far, every week its plate gear after plate gear, mostly holy pally plate which our 1 holy pally already has, our pally tank has a full healing set from naxx already just because no one needs it. We have only had 2 [Grieving Spellblade] drop, one went to our holy pally and one went to one of the warlocks. We also have been very unlucky with caster trinkets, the only caster trinket so far is the one that dropped last night which was dying curse, but I wasn't in the raid when it dropped. We have had 3 of those dodge use trinkets drop so far, all of which have been /rolled on by the raid to vendor.

I notice you are saying I gain a lot of haste/hit from my staff but lose too much spell power, would the kirin tor dagger with 50spell power enchant and the badge offhand be better than the staff?

Should I keep running HoS to get the trinket, [Forge Ember] until I can hopefully get [Embrace of the Spider] to drop? I stupidly vendored all of the crit trinkets I got from questing, like the blue one from a quest chain in icecrown, the reason being I hadn't researched FFB spec totally until I dinged 80, I didn't realize how big of a spec crit was, I was still thinking of pre-wotlk fire spec where you didn't gear for crit.

 

Toonie

Once at 10/20s or something in the fight, and a second time at 35% (or lower, depending on when exactly the cooldown runs out)

 

Kelfar

EDIT: Sorry I was very confused, don't know what I was thinking of but of course you can use icy veins twice. Sorry for the useless post.

One at the beginning and then 2.4 minutes later you can use it again, for some reason I was just thinking if you would be using the cooldown 2.4 minutes into the fight or something. Really confused there for a sec.

 

Toonie

Well, as I said:
Bossfight starts, 10 or 20s later you use Icy Veins, cooldown starts running. 2 and a half minutes later: Icy Veins is up again. In a 4min fight that leaves you with more then enough time to use IV a 2nd time within molten fury range.

The cooldown only needs to run once during the fight, unless you start the fight with IV on cooldown already.

 

morgulhir

Hey-hey!

I'm a bit late with the answer, but i know that issue quite well.
First of all, if You want to help her, go to the target dummy with her. As already told before - see what she does. Don't mind the DPS, just the playstyle. Before checking if she keeps up scorch, LB, HSprocs check if she can spam. Have her doing a round of Scorch + FFB and see if she's wasting time or not. Surprisingly many like to watch the old bolt flying and landing before starting casting a new one. Also, she doesn't have to wait 2 seconds after casting FFB to cast instant Pyro or LB. Also, after castin BL, she has 1.5 seconds (or less due to haste) to do whatever she needs to do in raid - move a bit, use stuff that doesn't require GCD like potions.
Back in TBC I went to Dr. Boom with a rather good mage - an hour of "tending" raised his DPS by 250. Just how to nuke, how to not waste time.
So, first see if she can spam and get her Quartz to see the castbar lag. She CAN start casting new FFB before the previous one is fully cast.
Second, make sure she understands the neccesity of Scorch and LB and tell her to renew scorch as late as possible before it ends. Don't push it too far, after 3/4 done it's ok to be renewed.
Third, make her macro (Combustion, IV, Trinket, Gem, Mirrors) and teach her to use the button FAST, in 0.1 seconds between two FFBs.
Fourth, get her Mick's Scrolling Combat Text addon and help her set the preferences (it's really annoying if you don't ignore stuff like Ferocious Inspirations and have some hunters in raid - it's a blody spammfest and you still miss the thing you need). It shows the HS procs and you can't miss them. Specially if you turn off everything else and have only that working. It also shows when your cooldowns come out of CD, but set the timer so that it will be over 1 minute, otherwise you'll have blinks, Frost Novas and stuff popping up and you "get used to the sound" and don't actually see when IV comes out of CD.)

Also, give her gear

That should do it.

 

morgulhir

Hmm, I think i'll have to re-do my macro, taking out the managem from it and shooting the nuke ASAP. Using gem within a minute after using the macro i'll have full gain of the managem and will have the gem AND the macro up for the last 35% where I can pwn

So it would be:
Fight starts, with tank pull shoot out LB. Move to your place and have scorches up, nuke FFB until you have 4-5 seconds LB left. then renew scorch (an early one this time), cast 1 FFB and press macro+FFB (Combustion, IV, Trinket, Mirrors). Nuke the hell out of the boss and within 1 minute after pressing the macro use the mana-gem. While nuking you can also get LB back to your rotation, just make sure it doesn't "eat up" the crit from Combustion. If boss dies before your cooldowns are used once again, you've failed and don't use that on this boss with that group of DPS any more :P ....prio is to have the cooldowns on the last 35% of boss. If it takes long enough to use them twice, shoot it away before also.

 

Shoein

I'm going to be way out of context here for a bunch of reasons:
1) ninja quoting from a long time ago
2) different gear situation

Anyways, here's something from rawr with heroics gear and 2t7 on.

2294.61 base
2308.67 with 23 haste = 14.06 dps... 1 haste = 0.611 dps

2295.56 base
2308.67 with 15 spell power = 13.11 dps... 1 dam = 0.874 dps

2264.96 base
2274.59 with 28 hit rating = 9.63 dps... 1 hit = 0.344 dps

2284.19 base
2293.77 with 16 crit rating = 9.58 dps... 1 crit = 0.59875 dps

Fight options:
duration 300, nukefest, single target, very minimal buffs (self buff, no consumables).

Spell stats:
33% crit (this is weird because I think they may be counting molten armor and glyphs or something... I think this number is somewhat inflated but it's probably accurate - I just don't know why)
hit 10.9% (getting 2pc T7 screwwed my hit rating)
haste 7.8%
1580 dam

mana: 16503
int 901
spirit 246

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

Is this accurate? Is hit effectively worth half of a crit/haste to me right now? I suspect the answer is yes but I'm not sure.

I'm going to do this again with full 25-man buffs/debuffs and see how that affects things. Well, just for testing I'll leave out the hit debuffs so that hit will be worth at least something.

Also, I seem to be getting about 2100 dps on the dummy -- about 200 below what it says I should be. I'm not perfect in my rotation by any means, but I'm kind of upset that I'm off by ~10% here. That seems a bit too high to be acceptable.

edit: Grammar, punctuation.

edit: follow-up:

Same gear with full raid buffs (really full) one exception: no imp faerie fire / misery.

3628.36 base
3646.06 with 15 spell power... 1 dam = 1.18 dps

3587.07 base
3602.36 with 28 hit rating = 1 hit = 0.546 dps

3623.41 base
3646.06 with 23 haste = 1 haste = 0.985 dps

3628.36 base
3641.67 with 15 crit rating... 1 crit = 0.887 dps

 

swiss

Ok Am I to understand this correctly:

If your MI are dead you still have your full duration (30 duration) of a threat buffer?

Does not seem to be the case. Just making sure I understand the spell and not confusing it with the bug.

 

Shoein

Something's been bothering me about AOE - particularly 3-pulls in heroics. Other fire mages will use LB during the pull which causes me to get out of aoe and into single target sooner (when one mob dies quickly). If both mages use LB and then have to switch to single target is this better or worse? If one mage does it will group be harmed or benefited?

Finally, assuming that it's like a 5+ pull in some raid setup, would you suggest that mages should be just rotating around their LB's on high health targets in order to get their DPCT up (and probably dps)?

Also, a bug report (I think I posted this to bliz forums but I'd appreciate it if you guys would push this a little harder):

If you're channeling bliz, and you click bliz again and get your target circle up, you can no longer tab through targets. I really like being able to click bliz early to start my targetting early and get my quartz reaction time down... I also really like being able to tab through all my targets in AOE so that I can monitor my threat on all targets in omen. Therefore not being able to tab through targets hurts my comfort/performance. I would view this UI aspect as a bug.

Finally, I'm curious about how effective bliz is if you accidentally cut off the last tick. In a sense I'm interested in comparing full ticks to non-full ticks when you're losing a lot of the tail end of the channel, so I want to know how risky it is to try to time it perfectly.

 

Incindia

I’ve seen it stated on these forums, but what exactly is ignite munching?