Trouble with Fire DPS

[Chareoss]

I've read in particular the fire mage compendium on this forum and tried to follow it in terms of gearing and maximizing my dps as fire, I just feel like something is wrong.

The last raid boss I did was Theralion and Valiona in BoT and I was constantly 5th or 6th on DPS, with my dps spiking at most 14k for a short time at the start, and dropping down to from about 9-10k by the end of the fight...

I feel like im working the rotation properly and using combustion helper etc..

I just recently reforged what mastery I could to haste/crit because of the Ignite Munching issue.. but I still just feel way behind other classes in DPS. I could only manage no more then 13k on Ozruk just today..

Any tips? http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...irage/advanced

And also.. how is frost/arcane looking in comparison to fire since 4.0.6? I find I spike up alot higher with frost but is not consistent dps over a long fight.

[Alphamage]

Doing an average of 11-12K dps with your stats/gear in a fight with a lot of movement like Valiona-Theralion is pretty good i might say.
When you get an item lvl of 355-359 you will be doing 15-18K in same encounter.
Get the speed+stamina enchant for boots, remove the +crit gem from head and get a 20 int+20 haste gem, update your green quality gems to blue ones.
You no longer need the 2 points in Arcane Concentration, so you can put it in Pyromaniac.
Frost and Arcane are still much lower than fire.

[Deleted]

Mm, why aren't you hit capped?

[Beardaheat]

1st - for a caster you definitely need to be hit capped
2nd - pyromaniac over arcane concentration is stupid - considering how much you can benefit from that talen on boss fights
3rd - take those points out of cauterize and put 1 in pyromaniac and max out arcane concentration! a free cast with molten armor most definitely helps

After this patch buffing mastery by 12%, i have done so much more dps, pre-patch! I stack in this order Int > Hit (until capped) > Crit > Mastery > haste (soft cap) and when you feel comfortable with your crit and mastery, I than reforge or stack the haste!, which alot of people may disagree, but dots add alot of dps! Espically maxmizing the use of Combustion, makin sure LB is up all the time. I can usually start a boss fight (mind you blowing all CDs, besides heroism) with anywhere at least 24k -32k DPS and ending a fight with 18-20k dps. Take into consideration that, that I do not have any responibilities throughout the fight

Beatdaheat is my armory

PS - 1st post ever so feed back would be great from anywhere to improve my own character

[Valanna]

1st - for a caster you definitely need to be hit capped
2nd - pyromaniac over arcane concentration is stupid - considering how much you can benefit from that talen on boss fights
3rd - take those points out of cauterize and put 1 in pyromaniac and max out arcane concentration! a free cast with molten armor most definitely helps

After this patch buffing mastery by 12%, i have done so much more dps, pre-patch! I stack in this order Int > Hit (until capped) > Crit > Mastery > haste (soft cap) and when you feel comfortable with your crit and mastery, I than reforge or stack the haste!, which alot of people may disagree, but dots add alot of dps! Espically maxmizing the use of Combustion, makin sure LB is up all the time. I can usually start a boss fight (mind you blowing all CDs, besides heroism) with anywhere at least 24k -32k DPS and ending a fight with 18-20k dps. Take into consideration that, that I do not have any responibilities throughout the fight

Beatdaheat is my armory

PS - 1st post ever so feed back would be great from anywhere to improve my own character

Arcane Concentration is worthless since the patch, there are no mana issues whatsoever for fire mages, save very heavy aoe fights. And even there, spamming flamestrike is worse than working impact well.

Pyromaniac is a great talent on Magmaw, Maloriak, Halfus and Cho'gall. Cauterize is definitely worthwhile as well.

Your stat priorities are wrong both for before and after the patch. It's int > sp > hit > haste > crit > mastery. Crit has been simulated to pass haste on very high gear levels.

Please for the future, don't give advice without sources that back your statements. If you have simulations or calculations that disagree with the mainstream math from EJ, Rawr and SimC please present them, but don't simply state things that don't agree with what's been calculated without any proof at all.

[Choda]

I must say I am somewhat skeptical about the haste>crit thing. I understand that crit loses a lot of rating due to ignite munching, but the whole spec is based mainly around criting. Am I missing something here?

[Methusula]

Arcane Concentration is worthless since the patch, there are no mana issues whatsoever for fire mages, save very heavy aoe fights. And even there, spamming flamestrike is worse than working impact well.

Pyromaniac is a great talent on Magmaw, Maloriak, Halfus and Cho'gall. Cauterize is definitely worthwhile as well.

Your stat priorities are wrong both for before and after the patch. It's int > sp > hit > haste > crit > mastery. Crit has been simulated to pass haste on very high gear levels.

Please for the future, don't give advice without sources that back your statements. If you have simulations or calculations that disagree with the mainstream math from EJ, Rawr and SimC please present them, but don't simply state things that don't agree with what's been calculated without any proof at all.

To be fair, you are not exactly correct on stat weights either. Stat weights are dynamic and will change as such with every point that another stat changes. I.E. stacking haste will cause crit to actually have a higher stat weight than haste or stacking crit will have the reverse effect. Sim YOUR toon to see accurate stat weights and balance the secondary stats accordingly. It really is the most accurate way we currently have to maximize our potential.

[Valanna]

I must say I am somewhat skeptical about the haste>crit thing. I understand that crit loses a lot of rating due to ignite munching, but the whole spec is based mainly around criting. Am I missing something here?

There are a lot of people skeptical about it, myself included. But SimC removes a very accurate portion of ignite damage in its munching tool, and that's the tools we have right now. It's unfortunate none of the simulators have developed and actual simulation for lost ignites, instead of just discarding a set % of ignite damage. But I would still trust it when Rawr and SimC give the same results.

---------- Post added 2011-02-12 at 05:21 PM ----------

To be fair, you are not exactly correct on stat weights either. Stat weights are dynamic and will change as such with every point that another stat changes. I.E. stacking haste will cause crit to actually have a higher stat weight than haste or stacking crit will have the reverse effect. Sim YOUR toon to see accurate stat weights and balance the secondary stats accordingly. It really is the most accurate way we currently have to maximize our potential.

I covered that with "Crit has been simulated to pass haste on very high gear levels", maybe I should be so clear nobody can misinterpret what I write with everything. When your haste passes a certain threshold, the stat weighs will change, but it's no risk until higher gear levels.

[Methusula]

My gear is 358 average item level. Is that what you consider "very high gear levels"? Because I am unable to comprehend anything that isn't explicitly defined. I am getting crit>haste at my gear level so as I said sim YOUR toon and make adjustments accordingly.

[Choda]

There are a lot of people skeptical about it, myself included. But SimC removes a very accurate portion of ignite damage in its munching tool, and that's the tools we have right now. It's unfortunate none of the simulators have developed and actual simulation for lost ignites, instead of just discarding a set % of ignite damage. But I would still trust it when Rawr and SimC give the same results.

---------- Post added 2011-02-12 at 05:21 PM ----------



I covered that with "Crit has been simulated to pass haste on very high gear levels", maybe I should be so clear nobody can misinterpret what I write with everything. When your haste passes a certain threshold, the stat weighs will change, but it's no risk until higher gear levels.

Well, I think this has to be looked at more dynamically, if say you have X amount of crit, and you have the same amount of haste, then you'd take a haste trinket over a crit trinket, but I wouldn't really do so if you have 2x more haste than crit.

It's a stupidly oversimplified example, but I think that if anything a rough guess would be that to maximize effectiveness, one should improve both haste and crit at a, say 6/4 ratio. Obviously once you reach a certain crit value (Roughly, let's say 35% unbuffed), haste becomes much more valuable as you have more than enough crit. Crit overtakes haste once again in the 70%+ range, but I frankly do not think it'll ever be possible to reach that realistically.