I was just hoping i might be able to get some advice from the more experienced mages about mana usage in some encounters.
My DPS has always been very high, but also my Mana use as well, and when it comes to some fights like Thorim HM, i end up running completely oom, with Evo, Mana pot, and gem/mana tap all on CD mid way thru P3. Same thing happens in alot of the other fights to the point im begging for a druids innervate, but the raid grpkeeps them for the Healers. Resto shaman totems, and other things like that are set for the healers as well.
Are there any tips/tricks that can be used in these fights to help with mana in these sorts of situations? Or do i just need to bite the bullet and look into a different spec for these fights?
Curently i run 20/51/0 with 2/3 Arc Med for fights that dont require mages to run special specs to aid in the encounter.
Many thanks in advance for any help
Try using mana cooldowns early and keeping your mana high as long as possible. Don't wait until you absolutely need mana to try and get some back. e.g., Mana gem at 75% mana instead of 25%. Just try and be aggressive about it. Hope that helps.
Use the Frostfire Bolt thread. The two specs have nearly identical play styles (Just substitute Fireball for Frostfire Bolt) so we didn't end up with separate threads.
Originally Posted by Crowl
If you have to control a robot dinosaur that fires lazers and there's a time when you shouldn't be shooting those lazers then the encounter is clearly flawed beyond hope of fixing.
Mana Concerns
Are there any tips/tricks that can be used in these fights to help with mana in these sorts of situations? Or do i just need to bite the bullet and look into a different spec for these fights?
To give a more precise answer we would need to know what you raid environment looks like. Link a combatlog report, WMO, WWS, WOL, or whatever hosting your guild uses. You could be running out of mana due to many things. Poor cool down usage, poor Replenishment uptime, poor rdps, poor crit rate(this hurts the worst), or something else.
Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.
How much DPS is Focus Magic worth and would it make much of a difference to remove it from the 19/52 FB build in favour of say 3 student of the mind?
Do not drop FM for Student of the Mind. Period.
Focus Magic is a 3% crit boost for you, active whenever your FM target is fighting (almost all classes crit enough for it to be up >95% of the time).
One additional point in Student of the Mind gives you 3% extra spirit. At 750 spirit, that would be 22.5 extra spirit. With Glyphed Molten Armor, that works out to 0.49% crit.
3% crit is better than 0.49% crit, if you were wondering.
How much DPS is Focus Magic worth and would it make much of a difference to remove it from the 19/52 FB build in favour of say 3 student of the mind?
Short answer, this is a terrible idea. If you look at any variation of fireball TTW, you'll notice it always has Focus Magic. The disagreement has always been where to spend those last points after reaching Torment the Weak, on Arcane Meditation or Student of the Mind.
Praetorian: I once pointed out that the proper Roman numeral for 500 was D, so they should really rename themselves <Clan DIX>. That didn't go over too well. Sebudai: Imagine a combination of Life Grip, Death Grip, Disengage, Typhoon, and Thunderstorm. It would be like the Large Hadron Collider of WoW.
Has anyone noticed strange behaviors with the threat on Mirror Images? I've noticed that, whether I'm solo or in a group, if I have aggro from mobs and I pop mirror images, sometimes the mobs will still come after me... it's as if my threat level isn't being changed at all. When I Ice Block or use invisibility, the mobs immediately turn to my mirror images, the next highest threat.
I'm not really sure what's going on then. My mirror images are obviously gaining some threat, but perhaps that's just from their own spells.
I could have sworn this happened to me 2 nights ago on Raz in Naxx25. I pulled aggro between tank transitions but despite immediately popping MI he ignored the images and killed me instead. That's the only time I've noticed this though, they seem to be working fine otherwise.
Damn, I thought I was going crazy. I've had this happen multiple times since patch. I save MI as a panic button sometimes, but when I've done this, I've been killed when I pull aggro, but MI is on cooldown afterwards. Thought maybe I was just too slow to do it, and the server was registering the mob hit at the same time as the -threat being applied.
This also happened to me on Instructor a couple of days ago. I managed to pull aggro sometime into the fight so I immediately popped MI but died anyway. MI definitely went off since the spell was on CD, but Razuvious went after me instead of the next highest threat on Omen, as was normal. At the time I dismissed it as client-server lag, and I don't think it has happened since. But it hasn't been long since the patch either so I wouldn't be surprised if Mirror Images are indeed bugged, but just haven't been noticed very much yet.
Although I did notice that my images are still attacking random targets. Didn't they fix this?
there are 2 possible answers for the MI "problem".
1. U alrdy got agro. so spawning the MI after u got agro doesnt make the images get agro. What i do noticed that if the tank taunts, but u still have to much agro after the taunt wares off the mob will go for one of ur MI. at that moment the mob sees 4 of u and makes a choice wich to one shot first :P.
2. Afaik MI only splits ur threat off the damage u do while the images are up. it doesnt cut ur current threat in 25%.
So u have to use MI while ur doing ur burst dmg. like standing in blue shit at IC, in first shadowcrash at vezax, pull of auriya. when u get agro the mob wont know wich one is the real player and have 75% chance to avoid him.
I've noticed this behaviour: sometimes the mob will turn back to the tank, other times it will hit an image and then go back to the tank, and yet some other times it'll munch me up. I've not seen any mention of this anywhere but here. This might be caused by Mirror Images' behaviour of 'threat splitting'.
For this reason I wouldn't recommend using Mirror Images as an O Shit button. At best you should pop them when you are slowly gaining threat on the tank and know you're about to pull aggro, but if it's a quick burst of threat that causes you to gain aggro you're better off using Ice Block rather than risking this buggy behaviour.
Now that we can use LB on more than one target, how good it is to dot up off targets (like kologarn non dpsed arms - given you are not running around) or one of those worms at ToC?
Should I just dot off target if I have to move or even standing still it is a good dps increase to dot everything with LB?
I too saw strange things happening, when popping MI. My theory is, that if you use MI as a panic button, when the boss has you already targeted, then sometimes the boss won't return to the tank. This happened to me at Hodir, for example. I used MI after i had 13x% threat and the boss had me trageted at that time. I could see in my target's target frame, that Hodir switched targets between me and my MIs for 2-3 seconds seconds, until he killed me. Something like this never happened to me, when popping MI before 130% aggro and overnuking afterwards.
I had a similar experience before 3.2 went live at Vezax. I popped MI right after the boss targeted me and he ran around like crazy killing 1 or 2 MIs before he returned to the tank.
So my recommendation is: Always use MI before you actually pull aggro. Overnuking, once the MIs are popped, is no problem (at least if you use invis before MI runs out...)
I use MI before any of my cd's like Orona suggests, and it works as advertised. MI in PvE is not a agro reduction spell, but a temporary aggro distribution.
One question I do have for mages is regarding time to kill factor in your raids. I've noticed in Fire/ttw, the mobs die faster than the effects of Living Bomb and Hot Streak to be utilized leaving me behind on the dmg meters. I have always chalked it up to my own fails on reaction timing on the initial pull, and have steered towards Arcane with high haste. Most Fire based mages enter encounters with over 50% to crit, 17% to hit, but how much haste do you guys usually have?
Regarding MI, Enthorn, for me it usually works to have them targeted once they have cast a Frostbolt. I'll continue to be targeted until they have added themselves to the threat table it seems? Not sure. Usually for panic mode when I have aggro I use them, then use Blink to buy some time.. soon after the images start getting picked on and it always seems to coincide with them casting onto the target.
And I think some of you are confusing what Enthorn mentioned, he's saying even solo he wants the images targeted over him. (at least, I think)
The last time I looked into comparing mage glyphs for ttw/fire spec I found that at 673 raid buff spirit, glyph of molten armor surpasses glyph of fireball in terms of crit and overall damage. Is this still true or do I have the wrong information? The reason I ask is because I sometimes have a problem with letting scorch fall of so I am seriously thinking about just breaking down and replacing one of these glyphs with glyph of improved scorch.
Yes -- I'm speaking about all situations, since 3.2, and I could be imagining things, because I just found out polymorph has no facing requirement as well (awesome to know, but, apparently I never needed it). I think what may be happening is that I am pulling groups of mobs and I only have threat on some of them. For instance, if I put Living Bomb on one mob in a group of 10, and I use Mirror Images, my threat against that one mob is divvied up amongst my mirror images, but since I hadn't tagged any of the other mobs, my images have no threat on them. So one attacks my MI and the others attack me.
However, as I recall, Mirror Image used to have some sort of periodic taunt attached to it. At least it certainly acted like this. Perhaps that was back when it was 133%, I'm not really sure. I'll have to do some testing; perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself and assuming Blizzard tried to tweak Mirror Images (GC did bring them up...) and turned a wrong screw somewhere.
I haven't had problems using Mirror Images on General Vezax or Hodir though. It just seems to me that if my mirror images are active, and if I'm really at negative 4 million threat, my mirror images should be getting targetted regardless of my initial threat. It shouldn't be that since I had 0 threat, my mirror images gain none. That kind of defeats the purpose of having a 30 second fade mechanic of that magnitude in the first place.
I am just getting back from a long 6month hiatus from WOW and am trying to reconfigure my spec as always for top DPS. The problem is that all the current theory crafting is based on much better gear than I currently have. So I am wondering at what stat breaks people would recommend swapping from Arcane to FFB/FB spec.
The last time I looked into comparing mage glyphs for ttw/fire spec I found that at 673 raid buff spirit, glyph of molten armor surpasses glyph of fireball in terms of crit and overall damage. Is this still true or do I have the wrong information? The reason I ask is because I sometimes have a problem with letting scorch fall of so I am seriously thinking about just breaking down and replacing one of these glyphs with glyph of improved scorch.
For Fire mages in Ulduar gear glyphs are prioritized as LB > MA > FFB/FB. In pre-ulduar gear (which had much lower spirit on it) FFB/FB was a little bit above MA, but at current gear levels, MA is certainly more DPS than FFB/FB. However, if in doubt, check RAWR.
MI is bugged. Even if you pop them when you are #1 on the threat table, there will be more people on the table than yourself.
It always worked that you were -4mill (+whatever you were at). If you are the sole person on the table, yes you will be aggroed. We are getting one-shot in a raid environment, any number of people have healing / tanking threat. This is a bug.
The situation with Hodir, etc, when you pull and pop MI, the boss travels within the "melee threat range" which is 110% for pulling aggro, not 130%. The hunter or whomever who was riding the 110% bubble and still 20% away from pulling just got one-timed because you drew the boss too close to him.
Ive tried to look and ask around but I cant seem to get a straight answer: What is the icd of the t8 2pc set bonus? Most people are saying its 45 sec, some people say that it has no cooldown, and others say other numbers (14 sec, 60 sec, etc). Thank you very much!
MI is bugged. Even if you pop them when you are #1 on the threat table, there will be more people on the table than yourself.
It always worked that you were -4mill (+whatever you were at). If you are the sole person on the table, yes you will be aggroed. We are getting one-shot in a raid environment, any number of people have healing / tanking threat. This is a bug.
The situation with Hodir, etc, when you pull and pop MI, the boss travels within the "melee threat range" which is 110% for pulling aggro, not 130%. The hunter or whomever who was riding the 110% bubble and still 20% away from pulling just got one-timed because you drew the boss too close to him.
Please provide some proof. MI does not appear to be functioning any differently than normal. Popping MI *after* you've already pulled aggro has always been a very risky move, just like hunter's feigning death. If the boss is already in the process of casting/attacking you, it will finish it's move and you will die. You should be watching your threat more closely. If Invis fails, ask for some Pally help.
Ive tried to look and ask around but I cant seem to get a straight answer: What is the icd of the t8 2pc set bonus? Most people are saying its 45 sec, some people say that it has no cooldown, and others say other numbers (14 sec, 60 sec, etc). Thank you very much!
From a quick log browse I see no differences in proc time of less than ~45 seconds. Item - Mage T8 2P Bonus - Spell - World of Warcraft shows a proc rate of only 25% though, and it only triggers off our main nukes, so the average time between procs is somewhat longer.
Originally Posted by Crowl
If you have to control a robot dinosaur that fires lazers and there's a time when you shouldn't be shooting those lazers then the encounter is clearly flawed beyond hope of fixing.
08/07/09, 1:23 PM
Similar Threads
