Looking for advice on Darmac

[Shinzou]

So my dps sucks on Darmac. I have a pretty good idea why and would like some advice.

I have been running as fire as most people do. At ilevel 680 I am constantly less than 25k dps on the fight. I am usually at the bottom. This is the only fight I have issues with. In other fights I usually sit in the 70-80th percentile. I have even been in the 95th percentile a couple times.

Currently my group is severely low on ranged dps. We have four ranged and four melee. Currently the way our group does it is all ranged switches to kill the spears whenever they are up. Priority is Spears > Boss. Often times 30% of my damage goes to spears.

I am fairly certain the above is why my dps is lacking so much. I see most fire mages with less than 5% of their damage on the spears. Changing the strat is a non-starter. The raid leader doesn't want me to focus the boss and have other ranged pick up the slack on the spears.

So my question is this. Taking the above into account should I switch to Arcane for Darmac, or is there a way to be successful as Fire in this situation? If Fire, should I change from mastery (AoE) items to crit (single target) just for this one fight?

[Polarthief]

If you're forced to go on Spears, you might find Arcane to be better overall, especially if they aren't grouped up, though I don't really see the need to be on spears the entire fight when the only time they're a threat is after the third aspect (assuming you guys are doing the right order).

Otherwise, stick a Boomkin or SPriest on them and let your other ranged (ESPECIALLY Fire Mages) worry about boss+adds instead. Your DPS is lacking because you're on a role that Fire is bad at: Multiple targets not close enough for IB Cleave. Fire is exceptionally bad at long-range AoE, but amazing at close-range.

[Shinzou]

Thanks for the info. I am going to explain to the raid leader the benefits me me concentrating on the boss. If they still won't budge then I will go arcane.

[Polarthief]

Thanks for the info. I am going to explain to the raid leader the benefits me me concentrating on the boss. If they still won't budge then I will go arcane.

It's more or less that you REALLY don't need 4 ranged on the spears the entire time if you're only running with ~15(?). Before my guild got him down on Heroic with our main team, we went and 10-manned it and almost killed it. We had TWO ranged (Hunter and myself, Fire Mage), and tried to have all the heals+us pick a spot around our Druid Healer's mushroom circle, so all the spears would be fairly close enough to the point where I could occasionally cleave them down. I wouldn't do this the entire fight though, just when we had "a few too many" spears.

[Zelendria]

Fire mages are pretty poor at constantly target switching. Especially spears out of cleave range to other spears.

And I bet this happens everytime a pack is called...
All the AOE (Of which I'm pretty much 100% sure there is too much of it) is sat ready for the gate to drop, and as soon as it does the pack dies within a few seconds from everybody trying to pad meters and then it's back to teh boss who is stood 10yds+ away.
I've seen the warriors with high dps on a meter but abysmal dps on the boss which is the target that actually matters.

This is where you step in. Packs on boss = Proper use of Living Bomb = high DPS and high boss dmg. You will get two spreads of LB per pack which is a tonne of dmg to the boss and DPS on a meter when it all explodes on his ass.

[trystero]

Linking logs will help more than soliciting general advice.

[Deleted]

Linking logs will help more than soliciting general advice.

The issue is abundantly clear. He is a fire mage that has to swap to spears.
If this is required, go arcane. If not, and he's often in the 80+ percentile, he'll know what to do with the boss/adds.

[trystero]

The issue is abundantly clear. He is a fire mage that has to swap to spears.
If this is required, go arcane. If not, and he's often in the 80+ percentile, he'll know what to do with the boss/adds.

It's only clear if you accept information at face value. Logs will confirm if he's telling the truth, exaggerating, misremembering, whatever. I don't trust what posters report here. Too often does someone exaggerate his raid's events (not necessarily consciously) or flat out not understand what's happening.

I'll say there's an inconsistency in a guy telling me he parses 80%+ on every fight (and 95th percentile at 680 ilvl?) and manages criminally low damage on Darmac. Again, logs tell the story in a way that posters cannot or will not. Until you have them, it's nothing more than guesswork.

[Imnick]

If the solution seems obvious there's no need to go into full investigative mode immediately. If the guesswork doesn't work he can link logs, but sometimes the answer is literally as simple as it appears.

[Shinzou]

Trystero, I said I pars 70-80 and sometimes (rarely) 95. I did forget to mention though that it is for my ilevel bracket. For overall I am usually around 50.

Anyhow, here are my logs if you really don't believe me regarding this. You will see that for all attempts 11-25% of my damage is on spears.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...5&type=summary

[trystero]

If the solution seems obvious there's no need to go into full investigative mode immediately. If the guesswork doesn't work he can link logs, but sometimes the answer is literally as simple as it appears.

You're acting like these are mutually exclusive. Someone comes here and says, I need help, and outlines the situation for you. How hard is it to link logs when they are objectively the superior way for an analyst to diagnose a problem? Especially when we have to take an OP at his word that what's happening is exactly what he says is happening.

Shinzou I am not saying I don't believe you; I am agnostic about what you said in the OP. I was saying that logs allow me, and others, to offer you the best possible advice.

[gallamann]

If the boss happens to be near a spear, then my LB hits it, otherwise they are never hit by me. We have one Boomkin and that is all you need to control spears.

To get really nice numbers, ask your tanks to keep the boss next to the adds, LB spread is nice and all of them exploding on boss is nicer. If you happen to have combust running when they come out... just smile.

[Deleted]

I always played arcane for this fight (mythic that is). Originally it was because we needed the burst for the last 10% of the fight, but tbh. it's better than fire even now. The adds doesn't always get to the boss so there will not be optimal boss explosions, which makes using fire meaningless.

Arcane with arcane orb is the way to go. You will have it for every pack and you can use it on spears in between. It will basically always be on CD an generally give you 4 AB stacks and 3 missile stacks. If you wanna cheese a bit you save your supernova for when the adds come and use it there.
ABarr on adds (or spears), then AO on adds, then supernova.

Your single target dps will be a lot higher. In my grp i'm pretty much top dmg on all the beasts and the boss, then again we have a boomkin doing 70% of the spear dmg so I don't have to touch them.

In the end none of it matters though if you have no issues killing the boss.

[Invrlose]

Arcane for spears.

If raid dps is low enough you can whore living bomb on ads and cheese the meter, but it will also give higher darmac damage if he's stacked on the ads so it's not completely wasted. Before ads come out get a fresh living bomb on darmac, so thst once ads get to him there's like 5 seconds left on bomb. Spread it, get a new bomb up and spread it again. You basically get to cheese an extra set of bomb explosions in there, and when ads die it'll pop.again for 3 Explosion cycles vs 2. Combustion is RNG on this fight, I've had fights where Combust is my top damage and also fights where it's my lowest
I've had a few top 5 parses on this fight cheesing the shit out of living bomb

[Deleted]

I have no idea why you have your rogue sit on adds 100% instead of killing the boss like should be... With your raidsetup, which is again very weird with 2 tanks 3 healers and 5 dps (normal for that size would be 2/2/6 or 2/3/9 for that number of healers) you should have the lock and the spriest handle spears as the priest gains damage on the boss from doing it and the lock is quite excellent for doting spread targets. You being a firemage should be on the boss pretty much all the time as you have excellent damage to gain on the boss from aoeing the adds and the boss dying is all that really matters.