All heroic 25m raiding mages, question about Lei shen HC 25m [FIRE]

[Reforge]

How are you guys maximizing your ball lightning damage as fire? are you throwing down flame strike and using arcane explosion or are you continuing dps on lei shen and just spreading ignite / pyro dot off lei shen to the ball lightning?

Also any other tips overall to boost damage in the fight other than the obvious spell stealing the big adds for the damage increase should you get any during the encounter?

any tips appreciated, thanks!

[Deleted]

Glyphed CoC > AE assuming they get mass gripped.

[Valanna]

What Vykina said, if it's even necessary. We kill the balls before they get the chance to leap without mages even batting an eye to DPSing them.

[Magemaer]

Same here, balls die in 2 gcds. If you want to help CoC and AE.
Tips? For dps do the same fire does, work on getting good combustions, specially opening on last phase.
Focus on staying alive, executing what's asked of you and always position where you should be.

[Kiry]

Honestly I dont bother focusing. We do the 3 out, all others in strat. There are only 3 out at any given time. I dot. Our warlock and monk rotate stuns. Cleave damage finishes them off.

[Kenbud]

Tips? For dps do the same fire does, work on getting good combustions, specially opening on last phase. Focus on staying alive, executing what's asked of you and always position where you should be.

So like every other fight? Good tips bud.

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How are you guys maximizing your ball lightning damage as fire? are you throwing down flame strike and using arcane explosion or are you continuing dps on lei shen and just spreading ignite / pyro dot off lei shen to the ball lightning?

Also any other tips overall to boost damage in the fight other than the obvious spell stealing the big adds for the damage increase should you get any during the encounter?

any tips appreciated, thanks!

Not sure about your raid comp but Locks and Monks all be doing the large majority of ball damage, Arcane dose decent but as far as fire goes you might just be better off burning boss or and unharnessed that might spawn.

[Polarthief]

Not sure about your raid comp but Locks and Monks all be doing the large majority of ball damage, Arcane dose decent but as far as fire goes you might just be better off burning boss or and unharnessed that might spawn.

I was actually going to say the same thing. I was told by the RLs not to bother touching them as boss DPS was more important and the Warlocks (and I think SPriests?) were going to handle them. Sure, if my Combustion lines up with the balls (which happens on the first and third), I'll use one global for IB to spread them, but I never put my focus into them.

Every guild does every boss differently. *shrug*

[Sephurik]

My guild is still working on this fight (unfortunately) and I am wondering if using mage armor for opening or any other time in the fight might be worth it. I've tried it on the pull but it seems to make my opener less reliable. Additionally, PoM or Blazing Speed? I can get through most of the fight just fine with PoM, but the last phase makes blazing speed seem really attractive. Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

[Valanna]

Blink suffices on its own, it's not worth it to drop PoM. Your crit should work fine with Mage armor, sometimes you just get boned on RNG, with or without molten.

[Kiry]

I use blazing speed. Saved my life several times during Helm of Command, and lightening whip and etc.....while Blink is great, but sometimes stuff goes to hell and you need another way out.

Live dps = good dps.

[Deleted]

I use blazing speed. Saved my life several times during Helm of Command, and lightening whip and etc.....while Blink is great, but sometimes stuff goes to hell and you need another way out.

Live dps = good dps.

Glyph of blink and knowledge of the fight is all you need for helm.. glyph might even not be needed, but helps a lot. As soon as overcharge explode just run towards lei shen in the middle, and blink is more than enough, dont strafe/sidestep(I have been without portal the last 4 progress nights) if you dont get helm, just use blink to soak if your covering close to pilar/edge.

And really lightning whip? you can get like 2x scorch off and move out of it before it hits, it's that slow, besides you should be aiming the whip somewhere with raid stack and then move through boss immediately, I know people can screw up, but as i said scorch and move out, you might even get hs/hu, and not loose dps. Use blink for "oh fuck moments" as blink is also a dps loss compared to scorch(and the following HS/hu procs)
On top of that, PoM is pretty essential for fire mages dps specially on non AT combusts, without PoM you can max get 3x !pyro the 4th pyro(pom) can increase ignite from ~60-90k->~70-150k*. And it protects you against unlucky streaks during your AT, and at least salvage some of the lost dps.

As for mage armour it's personal preference tbh. Even the "top dogs" cant decide if its worth using. Personally I only use it on pull at council and durumu, and even then(hero pull) it's unreliable, when 4x pyro's crits it's fun to see 330k* ignites, when they don't it is sad to see ~120k* ignites, and you will see the 120k more than the 330k. whereas with molten you get a more reliable ignite, that can still go upwards of 280-90k* when trinkets proc and you get 4x crit.

As for ball lightning I don't even bother they die too fast, might use some HS procs if 1 or 2 is running loose. And also glyphed CoC and AE on 2end ball @ overcharge platform before going towards bouncing as the window between ball whip and moving boss is "kind of" tight, so just to be sure.

*all ignite numbers are personal experience, and may vary depending on gear..

[Makarena]

for balls: already mentiomned cone of cold glyph which is pretty damn sick coz it yields almost 1million dmg followed by AE spam. Dont bother flamestriking. Also you can time ur combustions to spread to several balls (but thats really just for the personal dps gains lol)

for overal dps: you can normally use 6 combustions on the fight: 1 - pull, 2 - before 65%, 3 - as soon as p2 starts, 4 - mid of p2, 5 - start of p3, 6 - end of p3. 2nd and 4th combustions can be delayed to as long as 70% and 35% respectively because transition lasts for quite awhile so u can fish for trinket procs and try get a good combustion off. Mage armor is pretty sick aswell actually when you start p2 (pop it during transition) and p3 (same here). Scored an amazimg 517k ignite yesterday on lei shen in last phase. To bad the attempt wasn't that amazing overall so nothing special rankwise.

Also, last phase tactic is pretty important for dps. I do hope that your guild does the "middle" tactic because the "forever-1-side" tactic is very shit for ranged dps (tons of pointless thunderstruck-bait-running of the whole ranged team including healers)

[Deleted]

Honestly I dont bother focusing. We do the 3 out, all others in strat. There are only 3 out at any given time. I dot. Our warlock and monk rotate stuns. Cleave damage finishes them off.

On 25 man they have to die more urgently.

[Phair]

How are you guys maximizing your ball lightning damage as fire? are you throwing down flame strike and using arcane explosion or are you continuing dps on lei shen and just spreading ignite / pyro dot off lei shen to the ball lightning?

Refresh Living bomb at 10 seconds before balls come out. Glyphed cone of cold(Great damage for one global), Arcane explosion until they die.

Combustion spreading/flamestrike won't tick enough to do any real meaningful damage until P3 when dps start dropping. On your very last combustion cooldown in P3 I'd spread it otherwise spend the inferno blast global on AE.

[Kiry]

On 25 man they have to die more urgently.

Fair point. As I'm one of the ranged 3 standing out (10 man), I flamestrike & dot as they come out, but our other dps have more AoE/Cleave to finish them off. Regarding PoM, I guess it depends on what works for your group.
For us because we are 2 healing, survival is more important - our dps is fine. So I still stand by Blazing speed as my talent.

[Bopcommander]

I use blazing speed. Saved my life several times during Helm of Command, and lightening whip and etc.....while Blink is great, but sometimes stuff goes to hell and you need another way out.

Live dps = good dps.

I'm in a 25 man guild. So positioning is a bit different then 10 man. But I use Glyph of Blink and I stand near the back right next to where the stick meets the lollipop but to the right a little bit, and I've never had an issue being pulled off the edge. If you're fire, PoM is the way to go. IMO no way around it.

[Deleted]

Kiry, my point is you should never get in a position where blazing speed is needed. I did not see you were 10m so i guess if you have to run from 1 tile to another for some of the transition stuff it can be good, but other than that, there should be no need for blazing speed at all.

[Sephurik]

Kiry, my point is you should never get in a position where blazing speed is needed. I did not see you were 10m so i guess if you have to run from 1 tile to another for some of the transition stuff it can be good, but other than that, there should be no need for blazing speed at all.

Even in phase 3? I ask once more simply because phase 3 was the only spot where I felt blazing speed would be regularly useful, specifically for when we have to move against wind to get to the thunderstruck bait spot.

[onemanaleft]

You're a fire mage, you don't aoe

keep pumping the lei shen dmg

[Deleted]

Even in phase 3? I ask once more simply because phase 3 was the only spot where I felt blazing speed would be regularly useful, specifically for when we have to move against wind to get to the thunderstruck bait spot.

Granted my guild have only been in phase 3, 4-5 so times its hard for me to say, but my guild dont use TS bait, we move boss from side to side(OC<->bouncing) just before TS goes out and then range take portals to ball position at TS start.