Poldra

Fire should be fine. We've downed normal Yogg 1 light yesterday, and I didn't had any problems as a fire mage.

 

Gofa

Well, my first kill was with a fire spec any yes, it works, but I wouldn't advise it for learing Yogg or for Yogg in gerenal. There are two major problems with fire in this fight:

You really don't have a good totw uptime on tentacles in p2. Even if you have a tank on the crusher tentacles to do the interrupts and keeping some kind of totw debuff up, constrictor and corruptor tentacles usually won't get a debuff and you lose dps. You even can't guarantee the debuff on the "big mobs" with a tank 100%. If you get unlucky, your tank gets brainlinked with one of your melee, who has to enter a portal on the other side of the room or he just gets feared/constricted by a tentacle just the moment the next crusher spawns, resulting in some totw-downtime aswell.

The second big problem (at least for me) is mana. Even using my evocation / mana gems wisely, I often ran into some serious mana problems when we were learning the fight. Rember that it's longer than any other fight in Ulduar. Sure, once you get used to the fight and you can kill him quicker, mana should be fine. But learning this fight mana will become a problem especially if the poison on you can tick 1-2 times.

That's why I would advise a ffb spec for Yogg-Saron. Phase 1 dps is mostly irrelevant so ffb is okay here. Granted you might lose some dps in p3, but if you can get into a clean p3, it should be a kill anyway. The most significant phase is p2 and here is where ffb shines in my opinion.

 

Zerstorung

Mana is tight, but manageable. My question is, does the FFB debuff activate ToW?

 

Shaewyn

Depends.

TtW is only activated for certain on bosses by attack slowing abilities: Slow, Icy Touch, Thunderclap, Infected Wounds and Judgments of the Just. FFB is a movement slow, not an attack slow. Most (all?) bosses are entirely immune to movement slows, so FFB would not activate TtW on bosses.

 

Zerstorung

It would at least activate it on P2 adds though? I realize the adds dont move, but they should still be considered snared, correct?

 

BeeLz

I'm pretty sure FFB doesn't activate ttw in phase2.
When we were learning the fight TTW was rarely up so I casted a few FFB in between and I didn't see a difference. They are also immune to roots like frostnova and frostbite which usually indicates they aren't affected by snares in general ( might be wrong here though? ).

Anyways, I do prefer FFB on yogg-saron because our tanks get annoyed when I ask for ttw every 12 seconds on ventrilo. Mana usually isn't an issue but I can see it becomming an issue once you're going with fewer keepers.

 

Mutak

Looking for advice on Hodir. How do you guys balance out survival and DPS?

To put it bluntly, i don't trust our healers to keep me alive if i take any unnecessary damage (i don't really trust them with the unavoidable damage either, but i have no say in that) so i end up using a lot of GCDs on movement, wards, etc. I know that Hodir should be a good fight for me, but it's not. How do you guys approach that fight? Got any tips?

 

Hotan

Mutak: (1) Stand near Toasty Fires so you don't have to move. (2) Go to a starlight if it is within range of a Toasty Fire. (3) Make sure Projected Textures are on and don't stand in Icicles.

If you follow those points the fight should go pretty well for you.

correlation =/= causation

 

Mutak

I'm doing all of the above, but i'm still getting smoked by the melee (tank always makes sure they have starlight) and the hunters. I tried abandoning the fires to make sure i got more starlight time but the extra movement required to avoid biting cold was killing my dps even more.

I keep hearing how awesome this fight should be for us, but i just haven't figured out how to make that happen.

 

◊ nathanbp

To a large degree it's just luck. The main thing you can control is Storm Power. Make sure everyone in your raid has DBM so they'll yell out when they get a Storm Cloud. If they are at range you should be able to blink over to them and get Storm Power. Beyond that, Starlight is a lot better than fires. You shouldn't have to move that often for Biting Cold (let it get to 2 stacks) and can frequently move into another Starlight beam as you go. Obviously Starlight beams near fires are the best for you, but you have to get lucky for those.

Edit: Also from your armory it seems you are doing 10 man Hodir. On 10 man there's just less of everything, which means a smaller chance for you to get lucky and have buffs line up. Also you probably don't have a hunter stacking Singed, and if that falls off it's a pretty big drop in magic dps.

 

Enthorn

Okay, first... your DPS isn't coming from Starlight buff. It's 50% haste. Imagine if you were doing 6000 DPS. Add 50%. That's 9000 DPS. Since you don't have 100% uptime of starlight (or anywhere near that) the actual contribution is significantly lower. However, there is near 100% (probably more like 85-90%) uptime of 50% increased magic damage. It's very important to apply this as fast as possible. It's a 25 stack debuff, 2% per application. There is a 33% chance on each spell to apply it. The class applying it the fastest is most likely a surv hunter with explosive shot. With that in mind, sometimes it can take up to a minute to get the full 25 stacks. So it's very important to stand by the fires and DPS all out (as opposed to pacing yourself) so you are contributing in full to applying it.

Second, as Hotan said, it's very important to not move. Yes, Hodir is a movement fight, but for every 2.5 seconds you move, you could have cast another Fireball. That Fireball could have crit for 50k damage with Storm Power buff. See how that can add up?

Third, Storm Power is given to you by someone with the Storm Cloud buff. If that person is in melee range, run in, get it, and get out. If your threat isn't allowing you to, watch for a ranged with the buff. Ranged with Storm Cloud buff should be standing by you anyway, so you shouldn't have to move.

Fourth, threat can be a huge problem on this fight. I haven't really had problems with threat in 10-man, but on 25-man it can be very limiting. It helps if your tank is picking up the Storm Power buff as well, but another thing that can help is constant misdirects and tricks of the trade.

Fifth, I know there's a lot of people who are claiming Hodir is the fight for casters. While this is arguably true, and it's arguably true that mages can perform better than any other class on it (specifically frostfire, all because of Storm Power and how multiplying crit damage works), it doesn't mean that melee aren't going to perform well either. A rogue with near 100% uptime of 50% haste is going to perform quite well, especially with the occasional Storm Power buff. Hunters will perform well on the fight... warriors and ret paladins not so much, though I imagine ret paladins will perform better than warriors. Regardless, there's no reason you can't be ahead of, well, all of them. But I also wouldn't sweat it if a rogue or hunter is slightly close to you, or slightly ahead of you as you learn to take advantage of things.

Sixth, ensuring that you are picking up the Storm Power buff (once you get it, you'll have it for 30 seconds), ensuring that you are moving as seldomly as possible, and ensuring that your raid is getting Singed up as quickly as possible, is much more important than Starlight -- so don't go out of your way to stand in Starlight. Things were different I suppose back when it was 100% haste, but it's been nerfed, so I wouldn't really sweat trying to grab it. However, with that said, Starlight is quite important for one spell in particular: evocation. Hodir can be a mana intensive fight due to increased haste, and the lost DPS time due to evocation can be particularly brutal (while your average DPS for the fight may be 9k, which would be 72k damage over 8 seconds, it's not quite that simple, as the potential damage during those 8 seconds is far, far higher... you could have three fireball crits and a pyroblast for nearly 200k damage in those 8 seconds).

And last but not least, when you do use evocate, be sure to time it around things (frozen blows in particular). If you're not evocating in starlight buff, you risk having an icicle drop on you half way through your evocation as well.

Hope that helps.

 

odyz

One question as well, are the melee helping dps out the adds after frozen blows or is that specifically a ranged role? Keep that in mind as well when you try to figure out where you should be.

If I don't dps the adds out, I can easily pull 10k+ dps, but without great salv rotations and invisi I'm going to pull threat or be threat capped regardless.

FFB also helps with your threat a bit and you will see bigger numbers due to the huge crit multipliers.

If you're worried about your healers though, switching to mage armor, tweaking your spec for magic absorption (if you're TTW/Fireball) and using frost wards will help. But just don't expect to be very high on the meters when you go for survivability.

 

Duravi

We always run the first two storm power buffs into melee. Well this generally lowers casters dps it also makes threat not a problem since the MT has storm power for much of the fight and Hodir is one of the few fights in Ulduar where pulling threat as a caster is very easy to do. Sometimes it is not about who gets the highest benefit from a buff but who gives the best chance for a successful kill. Also frost DK's are very very high dmg on this fight as well since they benefit from singed.

 

thedudeabides

This is my third toon to level, after my paladin (main) and DK. With both my paladin and DK, killing mobs was non-stop pull, thrash kill, even if they were 2-3 levels higher or elites, with almost no down time.

I am lvl 49 The World of Warcraft Armory

atm, and don't have trouble killing mobs, even those a few levels higher, but i have a lot of downtime replenishing my mana and health. Is there a non-stop killing spec that i am missing or is this just how it is with leveling a mage?

I am not have leveling problems, i just want to do it faster, as my guild is in need of ranged dps.

 

Toabo

If using too much mana taking too much damage is your problem, then speccing Frost should alleviate a chunk of that. It's easily the most mana efficient for leveling and the stronger snares and shields help reduce the damage you take as well.

If you've got some high level toons with some Emblems to spare, get some of the Heirloom items. The Discerning Eye of the Beast trinket provides 2% mana return per kill (if you get exp) and my understanding is that you can stack 2 of them for double the effect, so that could really ease your need to regen mana.

 

Roywyn

You won't be a non-stop facerolling mob blender, like a Ret Paladin or a Death Knight. You're squishier, and you have to nova and run away when mobs get close to you - while the other classes you mentioned want the mobs to get close to you.

That being said - spec frost. Full frost while leveling all the way to 0/0/71, the only off-spec talents are 15+ Arcane which you can only get when you're close to 80 anyway. Grab talents that improve Frostbolt and slowing (you probably won't need Precision if you find/have/craft some +hit gear), and try to get all Blizzard slowing talents.

Frost means that mobs die before they reach you, so you rarely ever lose health. You can chain single target mobs for quite some time if you have decent gear, run the leveling instances once en passant for a shot at drops and the quest rewards. A fully talented Blizzard is borderline broken for AoE killing, I don't like AoE grinding however. If you get adds while fighting, either use your pet's Nova or your own. Finish of the first target, then start with a Shatter Combo on the second target for some steady, speedy killing.

Focus on spell power, like you already do from your armoury. If mobs often reach and hit you, you need more damage, kill them faster. Mana is a caster problem, but Frost is much more efficient than fire, especially with personal Replemishement. Also, Evocation Glyph is a nice emergency heal.


That's the closest thing to a non-stop killing spec you can get.

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.

 

Blazingmage

Quick question on haste breakpoints, At what specific number of haste, can you fit one additional fireball in between your living bomb refreshments?
If any one has the numbers, could you list at least the first, second, and third additional fireball's haste values so I can figure out at which point more haste is *wasted*.

 

Enthorn

And in the event you don't have a ret paladin or a boomkin along for 3% haste... ? Or 5% haste from a shaman? Or hot streak pyroblasts start proccing more often, and then T8 4P set bonus kicks in...

Gearing haste around Living Bomb just doesn't work. I know what you're thinking -- you want to finish the cast of your last fireball immediately before you refresh living bomb so that when living bomb has 0.5 seconds left you aren't starting a new fireball cast. But it simply doesn't work out that way in game. Suffice to say, the answer is, run Rawr and react accordingly in the game. Fire is priority and reaction based. There is no rotation outside of hitting Pyroblast when Hot Streak procs, hitting Pyroblast when you don't lose Hot Streak, refreshing Living Bomb when it isn't up, refreshing Scorch when it's about to drop, and if you're not doing any of the above, don't move and chain fireballs.

 

Blazingmage

Oh yeah, I know all of which you wrote about hs->lb->fb, i'm consistently in the 7k ballpark and know how2play, I was just looking for the exact numbers to when you can fit in an extra fireball in a world of LB->FB->FB->FB->FB-FB->(FB)-> Refresh LB.

Account for full raid buffs, 3% ret/boomkin and 5% from a shaman if you could dig up the numbers.

 

kzn

Assuming no changes to the Living Bomb/Ignite change, would it make Combustion worth speccing over Student of the Mind again?

 

Inoko

I don't see why. It doesn't do anything to change the interaction of combustion and living bomb. It's just that crits on living bomb DoT ticks are worth even less.

This may or may not be a signature.
You may or may not be wrong.

 

ash2ash

Haste starts getting "wasted" as soon as you reach 50% haste through any combination of buffs or rating due to it no longer affecting global cooldown. This happens quite frequently especially during bloodlust, but since most mage spells have casttimes, it isn't something that you need to be too worried about.

In order for cast time spells to start getting clipped, your haste will have no affect past (cast time-1)*100% haste (ie (3-1)*100% = 200% haste for fireball) due to the spell being limited by a global cooldown. In my experience, the only time you even remotely begin to approach cast time spell caps are during Hodir or Vezax, but I mainly raid with fire/FFB so YMMV with frostbolt/arcane spec.

Keep in mind these numbers have absolutely no practical value. It doesn't account for latency, hotstreak, or other intangibles such as movement.

LB = 12 seconds.

Initial cast followed by 1.5sec GCD = 10.5 seconds of non-gcd limited casttime or 3 fireballs non-hasted.

I'll save you the math. In order to reach the first breakpoint of four fireballs, you need about 132 personal haste with a ret pally + GoA totem - easily attainable in blues. The second breakpoint of five fireballs is about 890 haste rating. There's really no point going further since current gear won't really support any extra fireballs unless you are under the effect of bloodlust.

I made a simple spreadsheet for this (Please check my math, I whipped this up pretty hastily)

Ghostcrawler - "I'm the asshole that nerfed your class" - Blizzcon 2009

 

Extrudedcow

For hodir, I'm a big fan of arcane. If you have frost warding and incanter's absorption integrated into your spec this is one of the fights where these talents shine. With 40% threat reduction (arcane produces 33% less threat than fire specs) and powerful cooldowns, you can pump out an immense amount of damage while under the effect of storm power.

Arcane will likely be beaten by frostfire when threat isn't a concern, but with the massive damage spikes it's going to be a problem with many groups.


As far as yogg goes, the only times I've run into mana issues is when replenishment is inconsistent (due to the person providing it heading into the brain, typically) or when the draining poison isn't being removed promptly.
For phase 3 I'm often stuck beating on the guardians. Since the guardians don't always live long enough for living bomb to go off, I use a focus macro to cast living bomb on yogg. Living bomb doesn't require you to be facing your target to cast it. The only problem with doing this is when a newly spawned guardian happens to pass through yogg right as the bomb goes off, otherwise it's a fair bit of damage that can be done to yogg without taking the bulk of your damage off the guardians.

 

Ilyawen

Now, maybe we are being spoiled as casters in my guild, but Hodir threatwise hasn't been a problem. simple reason: He is tauntable. We just nuke the hell out of him, and when he changes targets to one of the casters, that person might want to chill for a few seconds to not pull threat again before the taunt-CD is up. Other then that, its really not too much of an issue.

Apart from that, Arcane might be fun, yeah, but I don't see it beating the regular fire-variants in a raid reasonably well catered to their needs.

 

Ehooee

I couldn't find a place to ask this, I am hoping I got the write spot.

I want to Thank all the people who take the time to share information etc, I think it makes us all better. I have been following all the theory I can, choosing some of the best gear, use Rawr, lurk on boards like Fusion (thanks guys) however I am concerned about my performance. In Raids there is usually 2 mages, 1 Arcane and 1 Fire (me). I usually do not have Focus Magic - I think it is traded for an Innervate.

The theory says I should be doing better in comparison to the other mage, but the Arcane mage is often much farther ahead. I have last night's WWS - unfortunatly we were missing some main raiders and the Arcane Mage was not there. I don't think I am doing anythign wrong - hit capped, rotation is Pryo Proc>LB>Fireball and Pyro>LB>Fireblast and Icelance on movement. I have made all the tweaks I can find for lowering ping -- sit around 120ms and 60fps - This includes the cache size change. Trained myself to use blink instead of run during fights.

Only things I can think of is some sort of lag thing....don't know if anyone has this but when flying on a normal epic mount people often don't appear until I am right on them. Or mining nodes take a while to appear.

Other thing is switching targets is not the smoothist and occasionally in a fight I find myself suddenly targeting a teammate.

I looked at keybinding to make sure they are easily used (ie Fireball isn't on something like 8).

I use quartz but still spam fireball anyways. Use Elkbuff bars so I can anticipate LB expireing. I use TellMeWhen to tell me when HotStreak has procced (or when my trinket is available).

I usually manage my mana on gems, an occasionally a Evoc.

I am wondering if there is just something I am missing....

With fire not really stacking anything, macro are pretty much not used (except for stacking trinkit and MI).

I don't really go hunting for AOE damage if we are on single target instructions.

anyways thanks for any suggestions in advance:
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