Two things come to mind right off the hop: You have good gear, and a good spec for FFB. You will absolutely want to get the glyph of living bomb (far and away the best glyph for FB or FFB specs right now). Check Rawr to see whether you should replace the Molten Armor or Frostfire glyph.

The other thing that I found is to ensure you select the correct buffs present in your raid - my raid frequently runs without a shadow priest or elemental shaman, so I have to deselect their buffs to get a better reading on my potential DPS. Even still, Rawr tells you your optimal DPS, something which I, at least, attain less than I would like. Unless you configure Rawr exactly to the particular conditions of the fight, it will still be off somewhat (a totally unavoidable limitation).

i'd also consider casting LB before any other spell. to me, it's 'no contest' if you need cast multiple scorches (don't have glyph or multiple mages keeping scorch up), but even for a mage with the scorch glyph, LB can be thrown while moving into position. this usually/often results in a few seconds of extra tick time.

Well. Thaddius and Hodir are pretty bad fights to do a comparison with. Thaddius will buff all out damage, while Hodir has a damage and a haste modifier. If you are only doing 4k on Hodir though, there is an issue.

For Hodir:
-Make sure you get Storm Cloud buff
-Make sure you stand in the haste things
-Make sure your guild is making hunters and other ranged classes put up singed, and not mages.

The biggest consistent source of DPS on Hodir will come from Starbeams/Moonbeams whatever you want to call them. Storm Cloud's obviously nice to get, but your main priority should be haste. If you do that and nothing else you should still be able to do up to 10k easily, depending on how often you have to dodge icicles/etc... Your raid needs to make sure Singed stays fully stacked and refreshed, but that should not be a job given to mages.

If your DPSing outside a beam you're doing it wrong. That time is better spent making your way to a beam.

The starlight buff is 50% haste and every time one goes down a glacier is going to fall soon after. You also aren't guaranteed to have starlight within range of a fire. Saying your raid needs to keep the stack up and then saying it isn't your job is just asinine. Whose job is it? The debuff has a 30% chance to be applied per spell. If you're DPSing outside of Toasty Fire, you are doing it wrong. I've seen logs where it's taken up to a minute to get Singed up to its full 25 stacks (for 50% increased magic damage). You can also do quite a bit of damage from Singed itself.

The real damage on Hodir comes from the crit bonus damage multiplier from Storm Power. I'm not sure why you think 50% haste is better than 135% increased critical strike damage, but in a common sense scenario, would you rather cast 1 1/2 fireballs that will hit for 12k each, or one fireball that will hit for 60k?

High DPS on Hodir comes from three things:

1) Fight length. Shorter fight time means a higher percentage of time spent in bloodlust and a higher percent of time under the effects of Storm Power. If the fight lasted only 45 seconds, you'd have 100% time spent with 30% increased casting speed and if you picked up Storm Power, you'd have 66% of the fight with it.

2) Storm Power. The more storm power applications you have, the higher your DPS will be, generally speaking anyway. Obviously there is some RNG going on here, as having Storm Power clearly does not mean you're going to be critically hitting left and right during those 30 seconds. Nonetheless, there is noticeable difference between two fights of the same length with one having maybe 33% uptime of Storm Power and one having 66%.

3) Singed -- it should have a very high uptime (although it's not going to be 100%). It's clearly easier to benefit from 50% increased damage the majority of the fight versus 50% haste occasionally. If everyone was running around looking for Starlights to stand in, it will take that much longer for Singed to hit 25 stacks, and that much worse if it falls off. You spend a lot of time running between Starlights, moving out of the icicles that fall and so forth.

I agree with you.

But the fight is about managing/stacking buffs. Your highest DPS will come from having all 3 buffs as close to 100% uptime as possible. But starlight is the most accessible and consistent source of DPS. Standing in a campfire will not result in as big a DPS gain as standing in a beam. Having Storm Power 100% of the time will, but it's a lot harder to manage that especially when your guild doesn't do the fight "correctly".

You can really make the argument "if you're not in a beam and you don't have Storm Power with Singed stacked to full your raid is doing it wrong". Which is the more accurate assessment. But, at least for me, it's always been best to prioritize getting haste and it's the easiest buff to get since you're not relying on anyone else. And Singed is a debuff that needs to be stacked and maintained. You don't need to be in the campfire to benefit from it once it's up. It should naturally be maintained throughout the encounter, but we usually put warlocks and hunters as "toasty fire duty" since they just cast faster and hence will stack it faster.

Bottom line, the dude said he's only pushing 4k DPS on hodir. He can almost double that just from haste alone, which is the easiest buff to maintain - at least in my opinion. He'd probably do better with 100% Storm uptime rather than Haste, but that will be harder to do depending on his raid.

The reason for standing in the campfire, buff stacking aside, is also so you don't have to move to stop Biting Cold from stacking. It's all very well pitching up in a starlight across the room but you're going to have to move pretty consistently to prevent the debuff stacking.

Personally speaking I only nip in the Starlights if they're within range of a fire, or very close to one so I know I can nip back in range. Being able to stand still and nuke without having to worry about Biting Cold shouldn't be underestimated.

Haste does not have a cap nor diminishing returns as far as I know. The closest thing to a dr would be going beyond 50% haste as your hs-pyros, scorches and lbs don't benefit from more haste at that point, at 400% haste you don't benefit at all from more haste.

Your question is sort of weird and more fitting in the general mage discussion thread to be honest.

Thanks for the input everyone. I'd not realized all the buffs were so important. My guild brought the lightning to the tank and I just stood near the campfire as much as possible. That being said, I DID take what had been suggested to practice and ended up topping dps on several fights in ToC 25, so I'm happy about that. We'll see how I do on Hodir this week.

Well, while chasing starlights is pretty good for your personal dps it's terrible when you're trying the fight on hardmode. Stacking near campfires is the best thing to do because it keeps the singed buff up at all times and it makes distributing the storm buff a lot easier. Starlights should really be your lowest priority on a hodir kill, in addition it will require a lot more healing if everyone is doing the same because of the biting cold debuff.

Personally I usually find myself by the fire for the first ~20 seconds anyway as we only free the mages first, by which point I have contributed to the Singed debuff and by now hopefully acquired Storm Power. Then I rush off to a Starlight and DPS with Mirror Image up. I've found that standing in the Starlight and waiting for instant casts was the most optimum approach from experience, firing Pyroblasts, reapplying Living Bomb and if neccessary Fire Blasting while moving, sometimes from Starlight to Starlight to avoid the falling Iciciles, or actually just tapping my strafe keys ever so slighty to remove debuff stacks while still within the Starlight.