WoD Fire Mage Guide for 6.2

[LocNess]

Do you not agree with Frosted's sims over on Altered Time? You call MI the best single target L90 talent when RoP beats it on Frosted's list. And according to those, the difference between UM and BW on single target is negligible. 22 dps on over 33k. 0.066% different. Possibly entirely within the margin of error of the sim (not sure how many iterations he runs), and requires an extra element of perfect play to maximize. I'd argue that since Euroguy finds Blast Wave uncomfortable to use, he'd probably see a dps loss using it compared to UM. Similarly, on two targets UM is only 0.096% behind LB.

For a large part of the target audience, I think UM is the best choice for anything with less than 3 targets (where LB pulls out significantly ahead) since as a passive it removes a potential for human error and sims functionally equal damage to either of the active options. You get less out of swapping out that passive for an active talent than race switching to troll, which you even admit in your guide is minute and not particularly worth worrying about.

RoP is better. On Patchwerk fights. As soon as any movement is added, MI pulls ahead. So use it on Butcher? No, still use MI because RoP only wins on long fights, and Butcher is extremely short.

BW is better than UM, and is extremely easy to use. You bank a charge waiting for trinket procs, and then dump it and another when you get a proc. There is no thought besides that. And as soon as ANY AoE is added, such as all the adds on almost every single fight, BW pulls extremely ahead in utility and damage. Also BW can be used on the move. If you want to be very casual for your Mage, go for it and use UM, but I want my audience to know what is correct, not what is lazy.

[Xentropy]

My argument is that the best mage in the entire world should choose the passive option over the active one when damage between the two is statistically identical. I guess I haven't seen your data that BW is better than UM. I'll run my own Sims instead of blindly trusting AT. Thanks!

[LocNess]

My argument is that the best mage in the entire world should choose the passive option over the active one when damage between the two is statistically identical. I guess I haven't seen your data that BW is better than UM. I'll run my own Sims instead of blindly trusting AT. Thanks!

In a perfect fight and raid environment, a lot of things change in relation of power, and that is exactly what AT's sims show. It isn't that they are incorrect, it is just that it is more correctly used as knowing what talents are viable, and what isn't. Same thing as DPS Ranking sims. If you expect them to be reality, that is completely false. Some classes do better on movement, and will generally be higher, and things like that. UM expects you to be casting Fireball. Well if you run out of Ice Floes during movement heavy parts, you are not casting anything and getting zero benefit. BW will give you something to do on the move that is literally 20x more powerful than Scorch. Plus AoE burst which is helpful on Koragh, Imperator, Tectus (though you technically should be using LB), switching targets is easier with BW, as currently Fire is very sluggish in that regards. Plus so much damage. I was getting 100k+ BWs on M Kargath last night.

[Wilderness]

I was getting 100k+ BWs on M Kargath last night.

Take LB on M Kargath. Beg, plead, or pay off your RL to be in the group that goes into the stands. Enjoy!

[Deleted]

My argument is that the best mage in the entire world should choose the passive option over the active one when damage between the two is statistically identical. I guess I haven't seen your data that BW is better than UM. I'll run my own Sims instead of blindly trusting AT. Thanks!

The best mage in the world (and really, any good mage) would choose the option that allows him to a) squeeze every little bit he can out of his character with his superior skill (waiting for procs/IF stacks/movement/adds spawning to use BW charges vs having a passive and hoping it procs at the right time for example) b) give more utility and control over his dps.

[Xentropy]

I agree completely. If the active is better when squeezing out every little bit, any good mage shouldn't hesitate to go with it over the passive.

[Deleted]

UM is perfectly fine if your mage is an alt and you don't feel like it's worth it to min/max, or if in general you are playing really casually.

[Komman]

My argument is that the best mage in the entire world should choose the passive option over the active one when damage between the two is statistically identical.

???

I have not seen any arguments made for the best mage in the world choosing the passive option over the active one.

As LocNess said, UM is deceptively hard to maximize. It isn't a simple "take talent, add X DPS" option, because it is tied to Fireball. It is fairly easy to use the maximum number of Blast Waves possible in a fight. With a bit of practice, it is also possible to achieve near perfect uptime on Living Bomb throughout a fight. It is absolutely, completely, both practically and theoretically impossible to cast as many Fireballs as you do on a target dummy, when you are in a raid encounter with challenging mechanics. UM's value drops sharply as encounter mechanic difficulty increases, while Blast Wave usage is still easily maximized. When burst AOE is needed for short living adds, Blast Wave pulls ahead even further.

No, the "best mage in the entire world" would not choose the passive option over the active one if the damage between the two is identical.

The same happens with RoP. It is possible to achieve near perfect uptime on say, Normal or Heroic Butcher. This is when the sims suggest that MI and RoP are almost equal. Add in any amount of movement and recasting of Rune of Power, and you have a scenario where MI is superior.

[Frost1129]

Do you not agree with Frosted's sims over on Altered Time? You call MI the best single target L90 talent when RoP beats it on Frosted's list. And according to those, the difference between UM and BW on single target is negligible. 22 dps on over 33k. 0.066% different. Possibly entirely within the margin of error of the sim (not sure how many iterations he runs),

I typically run 10k iterations for the talent sims. Error is normally +/- ~20 DPS.

[Xentropy]

I guess the way I was looking at it (and I'm clearly alone in this, so likely wrong), the simmed mage should be better than the best mage in the world, and if it isn't then the priority list needs to be updated to make it so. It already "squeezes every little bit" out of each talent. Seeing Frost's list showing both to be equal within the margin of error said to me personally that the passive option "just works" and does X damage, and the active option for the absolutely best mage in the entire world 99.99% of the time also does X damage, but for the 50th percentile mage who 1% of the time screws up during a fight does X-Y instead (Y being some penalty for not being as good as the sim).

Komman makes a good point, though, that actually it's easier to screw up UM than BW, which is counter-intuitive (the passive "just works", how do you screw that up?) but now that I see it put like that makes perfect sense. UM's penalty for imperfect play is actually *larger* than BW's (or, more accurately, you have a lot more chances for smaller penalties throughout a fight that add up faster), even if they are both equivalent if you're an android with instant and perfect reactions. BW is, somewhat ironically, the correct option for casuals and experts alike, easier *and* higher dps.

[LocNess]

Take LB on M Kargath. Beg, plead, or pay off your RL to be in the group that goes into the stands. Enjoy!

I have. It failed.

[Deleted]

I have. It failed.

I'm pretty much forced to go up there now. I still have the #1 Fire parse on that fight!

/wtb holidays not ruining our progression

[LocNess]

In regards to BiS and Addons. Addon section will be done soon I have the text just need to format and such. BiS I am just kind of waiting for BRF to get closer. I was expecting January and....it is February soooo yeah it will come eventually. Highmaul BiS is kind of meh since we don't have choice anyway. I guess I could post trinket charts but again, lazy.

[Deleted]

I have a question about AOE cleaving.

As it follows, spread LB when you have LB and Pyro dot running. But I find it so long to spread all of the dots. It's like you wait for heating up! -> IB -> Pyro! and then wait 6 seconds to spread everything via IB. It takes a LOT of time. What about hardcasting Pyro LB and spread everything. It's only like 5 seconds and you can start with better burst. Maybe I don't see something obvious. Tell me then (please)

[Invrlose]

As someone who's pretty new to mage I find this guide difficult to really grasp.. I've only got about 15 days on my mage, on askmrrobot logs I've been ~95 percentile on most single target fights as frost. I'm trying to learn fire for tectus but I'm having a really rough go at it.

[Deleted]

This is thread for people who want to min/max mostly. There are infos for total newcommers but it's not perfect for them. It looks as it looks, imo, it's very hard to do good fire mage guide for new and old players. That's why I was searching for alternative for icy-veins, since it's very chaotic this time

[Deleted]

Do you not agree with Frosted's sims over on Altered Time? You call MI the best single target L90 talent when RoP beats it on Frosted's list. And according to those, the difference between UM and BW on single target is negligible. 22 dps on over 33k. 0.066% different. Possibly entirely within the margin of error of the sim (not sure how many iterations he runs), and requires an extra element of perfect play to maximize. I'd argue that since Euroguy finds Blast Wave uncomfortable to use, he'd probably see a dps loss using it compared to UM. Similarly, on two targets UM is only 0.096% behind LB.

For a large part of the target audience, I think UM is the best choice for anything with less than 3 targets (where LB pulls out significantly ahead) since as a passive it removes a potential for human error and sims functionally equal damage to either of the active options. You get less out of swapping out that passive for an active talent than race switching to troll, which you even admit in your guide is minute and not particularly worth worrying about.

I think some of you follow sims a bit too blindly. Sims are good for stat weights. For all the other crap it is not.

RoP might be better on paper, but IF and MI will beat it on pretty much any fight, if you handle those talents properly.

[LocNess]

I have a question about AOE cleaving.

As it follows, spread LB when you have LB and Pyro dot running. But I find it so long to spread all of the dots. It's like you wait for heating up! -> IB -> Pyro! and then wait 6 seconds to spread everything via IB. It takes a LOT of time. What about hardcasting Pyro LB and spread everything. It's only like 5 seconds and you can start with better burst. Maybe I don't see something obvious. Tell me then (please)

I would just spread the LB first if you have lower amounts of crit, than do your normal rotation. Or get your HU proc before spreading if you have higher crit. Casting a pyro by itself is a bad habit to get into, as that is 3 seconds of possible casting time you lose if you have to move which is a huge loss.

As someone who's pretty new to mage I find this guide difficult to really grasp.. I've only got about 15 days on my mage, on askmrrobot logs I've been ~95 percentile on most single target fights as frost. I'm trying to learn fire for tectus but I'm having a really rough go at it.

What questions do you have? Post any.

This is thread for people who want to min/max mostly. There are infos for total newcommers but it's not perfect for them. It looks as it looks, imo, it's very hard to do good fire mage guide for new and old players. That's why I was searching for alternative for icy-veins, since it's very chaotic this time

What issues are there with the guide that new players cannot follow? I made it specifically so a person could read it, and play the spec, and have had many players tell me that is what they did and it was fine. If there is something that doesn't translate well, say it so it can be improved.

I think some of you follow sims a bit too blindly. Sims are good for stat weights. For all the other crap it is not.

RoP might be better on paper, but IF and MI will beat it on pretty much any fight, if you handle those talents properly.

Indeed. Sims are not the complete kings of everything. They are extremely helpful if you apply the knowledge correctly, but tons of people just take them for gospel which is very incorrect.

[karkooshy]

Hey LocNess, thanks for the guide. I had a question about the pre-Combustion rotation. I feel I'm fairly geared as Fire, yet I am only able to get my Combustions to tick for around 3k per tick. Sometimes it's as low as 1.6k .

You want your opener to look like this:

Prepot/Mirror Image
Precast Pyroblast
Fireball/Inferno Blast to get Heating Up and Pyro! proc up at the same time
Meteor
Pyro *crit*
Pyro *crit*

In the third step of your rotation, where you're trying to proc Heating-Up and Pyroclast! simultaneously, you will inevitably be casting a Fireball before things proc because of the delay Blizzard has given Fire. I'm often in the following situation:

Both Combustion and Meteor are available to use. I have a Heating Up proc. I have a Pyroblast! proc. I'm half way into casting a Fireball. What should I do? Should I cancel my Fireball cast, drop down a Meteor, shoot a Fireball + Pyro as Meteor falls, fire any extra Pyros then Combust? From personal experience I often receive bigger ignites by just casting a chain of 2-3 Pyroblasts instead of using Metoer. So I figured that I must be misusing Meteor :P.

I also had a question about on-use Trinkets, specifically Shards of Nothing. When should I be using this (considering it has a 2 min CD and doesn't align very well with any of our Cooldowns).


Thanks in advance!

Here's my armory:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...rkooshy/simple

[LocNess]

Hey LocNess, thanks for the guide. I had a question about the pre-Combustion rotation. I feel I'm fairly geared as Fire, yet I am only able to get my Combustions to tick for around 3k per tick. Sometimes it's as low as 1.6k .



In the third step of your rotation, where you're trying to proc Heating-Up and Pyroclast! simultaneously, you will inevitably be casting a Fireball before things proc because of the delay Blizzard has given Fire. I'm often in the following situation:

Both Combustion and Meteor are available to use. I have a Heating Up proc. I have a Pyroblast! proc. I'm half way into casting a Fireball. What should I do? Should I cancel my Fireball cast, drop down a Meteor, shoot a Fireball + Pyro as Meteor falls, fire any extra Pyros then Combust? From personal experience I often receive bigger ignites by just casting a chain of 2-3 Pyroblasts instead of using Metoer. So I figured that I must be misusing Meteor :P.

I also had a question about on-use Trinkets, specifically Shards of Nothing. When should I be using this (considering it has a 2 min CD and doesn't align very well with any of our Cooldowns).


Thanks in advance!

Here's my armory:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...rkooshy/simple

You would want to cancel your cast, the lost damage on Fireball is made up for the Ignite boost you get if you nail everything correctly. It is a lot easier to do with crit trinkets (DMF, Copeland's) to make everything go well, and I have about the same mastery as you but my Combustions are usually 5k-7k on pull now. The reason why you can see consistent Ignites with a Pyro chain is because Pyro hits hard as well, and has a higher chance to crit than Meteor due to Critical Mass. However Meteor will give you higher overall damage on average. I do sometimes forego using Meteor during a fight if the boss is about to move (Kargath Fixate) and I might not get a better opportunity (trinkets are up).

Trinkets align with Mirror Image, which is the optimal talent. The only fight so far PC seems possibly decent at is Butcher, and that is short enough I think pushing for 3 Combustions/3 PCs is better than 2 with a haste buff, so just use trinket with Mirror Image.