Fire Mage: Haste over Crit?

[Vector]

Ok, So honestly I hate Fire's RNG (think we all do) but we love to play it because its much more fun than arcane is, but of course that is just an opinion. Anyways, regardless of how much I like fire I've been playing Arcane for the last 3 weeks and have had very nice numbers, more than I did with Fire. So, now I start realizing that either:

A. I'm specced wrong for fire
or
B. I'm just stupid and can't play it right

So, last night I decided to try fire again after changing all my gear to intel>hit>haste 1505 (I have 4 piece)>Crit>Mastery I was still getting crappy numbers. I'm doing everything as prescribed by EJ and our other Guru's on MMO-Champion. Yet I'm doing "ok". Nothing out of the ordinary. 38k on Madness compared to my 45k when I go Arcane.

So I go to Mr. Robot to reforge and optimize my stats since I'm thinking there must be something wrong with my stats. Mr. Robot Prioritized haste over crit it seemed. I'm over 2k haste now, getting a ton more pyroblast procs and doing more damage. So why do they say Crit>Haste (after 1505)? Or am I just a noob? Enlighten me or help me understand and excuse my ignorance.

Here is my armory BTW http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...nbourne/simple

[Sageofthe10paths]

For Fire Mages Crit >>>>>>>>>>>>> Haste. Mastery is nice too. If you get the haste staff, and the haste proc trinket and 4 set bonus, go crit and Mastery all the way lol.

[Thassadar]

Intellect > 17% hit > 2015 haste > Crit > Mastery

You want 2015 haste rating to reach the Combustion tick plateau. After that, reforge into crit. You're at almost 3000 haste rating, so you're essentially ~985 haste over what you need to be. Also, taking into account your 4-set bonus, you only need to be at 1515 haste when in raid situations.

[Makoblade]

2005 haste, talents, and 5% raid buff brings you to 25% haste, not 2015.

Regardless, you're not reforging to favor crit at all, which is probably one of your issues with not performing well as fire. 17% hit > Crit > haste for reforges will help quite a bit. Getting 35% haste without DI basically obliterates your crit and ends up not being worthwhile to pursue in DS.

[Deleted]

i'll say this , all the interwebz say " zomg 1505 haste ->crit , if you have 4 set " i say NO , i test a lot, i try all the setups , i have done 1505 haste , 17** 2005 , 3000+ etc etc

for my play style, 2005 ish is the best , best dmg output etc etc


personal flavour ? rocket science math ? ->> care-o-meter ¬.¬.............................................!

[NeerDeth]

Has panda addressed any of the fire's RNG?

[Deleted]

Yes my good man, you can now force pyro procs, PYROBLASTS FOR EVERYBODY! :3

[JohnnyQuest]

Regardless, you're not reforging to favor crit at all, which is probably one of your issues with not performing well as fire.

He said Mr Robot suggested he go Haste heavy, hence the reforged. And he has done and is getting results.

I'm over 2k haste now, getting a ton more pyroblast procs and doing more damage. So why do they say Crit>Haste (after 1505)? Or am I just a noob? Enlighten me or help me understand and excuse my ignorance.

They say Hastes to 1505 and then Crit because, overall, it is more DPS to do that.

However, from all the sims I've done, especially around the 394-398 ilvl, there isn't a huge amount of difference between going with a crit heavy build over a haste heavy build. A few thousand DPS at most. Yes, a crit heavy build does more DPS on avergae, but you are also more prone to get screwed by RNG. Going with a Haste heavy build tends to normalise your damage a lot, at the expense of crazy crit bursts and massive Combustions. Also, once you start getting nearer 400 average item level you have a lot of haste, and it's quite easy to get to some useful haste thresholds, especially with Lightning Rod and its huge amounts of Haste.

You're currently sitting at 2988 Haste. Whether that's luck, or Mr Robot is a lot smarter than I give it credit for, when you factor in 4T13 that puts you just over the threshold for 37.5% Haste (assuming no DI), which is needed for the next tick of Living Bomb and Pyro dot. It also gives you the 18th tick of Combstion while under Hero. Both of those are pretty decent damage boosts.

As for your claim of more Hot Streaks - well, that's not got a lot to do with reforging more for Haste. You mostly just got lucky. Or, from the sounds of it, less unlucky. The tier one Hot Streak talent may play a part, but there is some magical math associated with that that I have absolutely no clue about.

However, 38k on Madness makes me question how you're playing fire. That is low. Pretty super low. 38k is the kind of damage you'd want to be doing on Ultraxion, and that doesn't have ridiculous damage boosts and aoe and cleave opportunities. Granted, you don't have the Legendary, but that's still a low number for Fire. For a comparison, my average ilvl is 399 (including Dragonwrath) so pretty close to you, and I do 50k on Madness Normal 10.

[ziggler]

From a non legendary pov:
A couple of weeks I went for the 2347 haste mark (goblin, +5%haste, DI, tier bonus for the second breakpoint in LB/Pyro), currently ilvl399.
According to my sims, im losing 1045dps doing this, but overall the results have been better. As expected, im having more constant results instead of lucky/unlucky streaks and thats what my raid group needs tbh.

[Groblje]

Yes my good man, you can now force pyro procs, PYROBLASTS FOR EVERYBODY! :3

\o/ happy mages everywhere!

[rokk]

Funny I've been going through the exact same thing... And honestly it doesn't seem to make a huge difference, in actual dps or in my simms. 396 average ilvl, no legendary. Here's 2 logs, one reforged for haste priority (put me around 2900 haste) and one for crit priroity:

Haste: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/4.../?s=847&e=1090
Crit: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/3...=10990&e=11209

The haste logs are a little higher than the crit ones, but don't read too much into that. I got a really lucky streak for my first combust on that log and it was a monster. I've been switching back and forth for a while and to be honest, I see almost no difference in actual DPS. I run Simms every time as well and the variance is very small.

With the haste build I can line up the first 2 combusts almost every time with my trink haste proc for a massive number of ticks.

[Glurp]

> Complain about fire RNG
> Say full haste is better because it did more damage one time.

You're not making sense.

Easy answer: Crit will do bad if you have bad RNG. Haste will make up slightly for bad crit RNG.

[announced]

crit helps much more.. most people just dont get how fire isnt as rNg as you might think.. if you play it right and use hotstreak pyroblast crits on your combustions instead of a lucky fireball crit you will do much better. mastery and crit are the way to go.. self buffed my mage has around.. 31 or 32% crit i think? once u enter raids and have nearly 40% crit chance you'll wonder why haste is even partially relevant lol.

arcane may be burst on demand dmg but for overall dmg nothing can beat a lucky combustion streak.

[Xuvial]

I had a completely haste-powered build on my mage and yesterday's DS showered me with such INSANELY BAD LUCK ON EVERY FUCKING FIGHT. Seriously, I'm talking popping trinket+hero at the start and going a full 30 seconds with zero pyroblasts, and this happened multiple times. At that point I just said "fuck you Blizzard" and just before Madness I went back to SW and reforged everything to crit in pure desperation.

As expected, it didn't help too much because I only gained ~5-6% crit and that is still in the realm of total RNG.

But I think I will stay crit-based for now. I don't know what I did to anger the RNG gods before that raid but it must've been something terrible.

[Darnassian]

If crit had any reliability as a stat it'd be worth not concerning yourself with haste plateaus but it simply doesn't. Make the haste plateau then put the rest in crit. Will you have better odds with a critically hitting with a 4 sided die or a 6 sided one? Sure, will you be rolling that critical hit face with precision? No, you won't. Don't sacrifice the guaranteed dps gain of extra LB/combustion ticks for a 2% increase in crit.

crit helps much more.. most people just dont get how fire isnt as rNg as you might think.. if you play it right and use hotstreak pyroblast crits on your combustions instead of a lucky fireball crit you will do much better

You do realise you are contradicting yourself here. It's a given that you want to use a hot streak pyro crit for your combustion but you assume that anything beyond luck will account for such proper alignments. I've had good luck on fights and end up with a combustion thats critting 60k a tick, and on the very same fight very same make up, I don't get a good series of 4-5 criticals in a row and have to settle for taking a 32k critting combustion because not using combustion at all waiting for that perfect opportunity is a dps loss. Still having a lot of ignite uptime is purely RNG based and that is where the majority of your dot damage will be coming from on single target fights.

The RNG isn't going away in Panda, fortunately Arcane is a priority system and a lot more fun to play than it currently is. I'll be specing back to Arcane and leave fire behind for good when the systems go live.

[Deleted]

seems most people forget many important things when doing their "but after that x last week everything went better"

fire is extremely rng-dependant. claims like more dps after reforging to whatever when only looking on a few raid ids is irrelevant.
another thing, encounters in dragonsoul, especially the "important" ones, add lots of gimmick into the fights (more haste, adds, etc).

most theory-crafting though is solely based on ... theory. rarely on the encounters themselves.
so even though it does help to find some important numbers, it is still only the theory in a (mostly) perfect world and setting.


overall, just go with what feels better for yourself but remember neither haste nor crit stacking will fix the randomness of fire. it all comes down to lucky procs.
min/maxing only really matters when pushing for "harder" hardmodes(who mostly require specific specs for mages anyways for different reasons)

[Worganizers]

I keep crit above 15 % and then all haste

[Vector]

He said Mr Robot suggested he go Haste heavy, hence the reforged. And he has done and is getting results.



They say Hastes to 1505 and then Crit because, overall, it is more DPS to do that.

However, from all the sims I've done, especially around the 394-398 ilvl, there isn't a huge amount of difference between going with a crit heavy build over a haste heavy build. A few thousand DPS at most. Yes, a crit heavy build does more DPS on avergae, but you are also more prone to get screwed by RNG. Going with a Haste heavy build tends to normalise your damage a lot, at the expense of crazy crit bursts and massive Combustions. Also, once you start getting nearer 400 average item level you have a lot of haste, and it's quite easy to get to some useful haste thresholds, especially with Lightning Rod and its huge amounts of Haste.

You're currently sitting at 2988 Haste. Whether that's luck, or Mr Robot is a lot smarter than I give it credit for, when you factor in 4T13 that puts you just over the threshold for 37.5% Haste (assuming no DI), which is needed for the next tick of Living Bomb and Pyro dot. It also gives you the 18th tick of Combstion while under Hero. Both of those are pretty decent damage boosts.

As for your claim of more Hot Streaks - well, that's not got a lot to do with reforging more for Haste. You mostly just got lucky. Or, from the sounds of it, less unlucky. The tier one Hot Streak talent may play a part, but there is some magical math associated with that that I have absolutely no clue about.

However, 38k on Madness makes me question how you're playing fire. That is low. Pretty super low. 38k is the kind of damage you'd want to be doing on Ultraxion, and that doesn't have ridiculous damage boosts and aoe and cleave opportunities. Granted, you don't have the Legendary, but that's still a low number for Fire. For a comparison, my average ilvl is 399 (including Dragonwrath) so pretty close to you, and I do 50k on Madness Normal 10.

Thanks, this actually helped a lot. I'm going to stick with the haste build for a week or so, probably log my next raid and get some opinions. Maybe I'm having a bad LB up time. I know the crit build hasn't worked for me. Fishing for procs blows but, I just might be doing something wrong. Next week I will post. I appreciate the response. Thank you.

[Blink Makes Cakes]

Ok, some good opinions in this thread but i have yet to see the correct answer for you friend!

World of Warcraft works in some odd ways. There are certain haste breakpoint not really calculatable therefore unknown. These breakpoints will cause your ignite to roll over due to a crit hitting the boss and then another crit hitting before the previous ignite has fallen off. This makes it possible for you to roll your ignite over not Only causing a higher ignite for your combustion but providing much more ignite damage in general over the course oF the fight.

Some people say ohhhh wel this only works if your super close to the boss. This is also not the case. This effect happens no matter your distance from the boss. The only time you would run into a problem here is if your more than 6 sec travel time from the boss(impossible) or you move farther away from the boss over the course of a fight.

[Glurp]

Ok, some good opinions in this thread but i have yet to see the correct answer for you friend!

World of Warcraft works in some odd ways. There are certain haste breakpoint not really calculatable therefore unknown. These breakpoints will cause your ignite to roll over due to a crit hitting the boss and then another crit hitting before the previous ignite has fallen off. This makes it possible for you to roll your ignite over not Only causing a higher ignite for your combustion but providing much more ignite damage in general over the course oF the fight.

Some people say ohhhh wel this only works if your super close to the boss. This is also not the case. This effect happens no matter your distance from the boss. The only time you would run into a problem here is if your more than 6 sec travel time from the boss(impossible) or you move farther away from the boss over the course of a fight.

You really shouldn't say "everyone in this thread is wrong" then post a pile of bullshit claiming your correct.

"Haste breakpoint that isn't calculatable therefore unknown." Are you kidding me do you even know what a haste breakpoint is or are you just trying to sound smart? "These breakpoints will cause your ignite to roll over due to a crit hitting the boss and another crit before the previous ignite falls off." No, just no, while getting lots of crits in a row will make your ignite stack higher, there is no "secret unknown breakpoint" that causes it. Sure faster fireballs will cause you to possibly get more casts in (therefore more chances at having another crit before ignite drops) but there is no way that stacking haste just for extra chances at stacking ignites is a valid theory.

Here is a haste spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...r=false&gid=19

The only reason where more than 1505 haste could be valuable (in my opinion) is at:
- 1712, where you can get a few extra ticks of combustion with Stolen Time(10) and Bloodlust activated.
- 2978 (2817 Goblin), where you can get an extra tick on FFB, Living Bomb and Ignite (also extra combustion tick achieved at 2685 (2527 Goblin)) with Stolen Time(10) activated.

The 2978 (2817 Goblin) is something I would like to try out myself but I am a bit off due to still using a 391 FL Trash staff because Lightning Rod hasn't dropped for me. It would give a much more sustainable DPS due to your total DoT damage increasing and not having to rely on crits as much.