Is It Gear, or Is He Doing It Wrong?

[Skarrd]

The fight where the tank out dps'd him was Heroic Halfus.

And ignite+LB is fairly low on damage relative to fireball, so it seems like he didn't spread hit dots often/at all. That could either be a good or bad thing, tbh. Either he felt like killing focus targets a little faster was worth it (and it can be, since the fight gets ridiculously easy to heal after a while). Then again, he did abysmally low damage to the whelps for a fight mage, so perhaps he could use some multi-target fight practice.

His Living Bomb uptime is very low in a lot of those fights. Anything below 80% is pretty bad, and I'm being generous. Not coming first on omnotron as a mage is embarassing unless your shaman are douchenozzles and like to purge omgloldps buffs like mine did on jaraxxus.

It seems like he just needs to focus a bit more on solidifying his rotation, perhaps getting better at positioning and maintaining high uptime while moving as such. A good player avoids fire, a great player does high dps while he avoids it.

I just dont feel like going that detailed into the log analysis, but if he stays out of bad shit you're in good shape. That's the hard part to fix in a player. Honestly, you should just send him to these forums and tell him to read the stickies or some of the better discussion threads we've had about mechanics/rotations and whatnot. Learning a rotation is easy, maybe he just hasn't done much research.


edit- He scorches for what seems to be no reason on cho'gall, but it's possible he runs oom before P3 so he needs the mana (I've had that problem in some 10 man pugs). Also, he uses fireblast on both cho and the adherent which is bad. Fireblast isn't a dps spell. It's for spreading dots and occasionally the stun (like for breaking worshipping). Other than that, LB uptime LB uptime LB uptime!

[cncrules45]

Gearwise and talentwise he is as he should be. Now, from what I can see off the combat log you linked, I guess you have to do with a slacker, mostly guessing from the DoT uptimes and the number of spells cast. That's also combined with some reeeaaally bad luck I guess, since the number of Pyros casted is waaaaaaay too low for the time of your fights - 5mins+. But then again, he could easily gain the Pyros but never use them. The number of Scorches is relatively high for each fight and also the number of Fireballs is low.

Let's say he casts his Fireball in 2 sec. Your Cho'Gall fight lasted for 6.40 mins. That translates in more than 23-24 Fireballs in a minute, with movement and CC breaking spells taken into consideration. That equals to roughly 150 Fireballs in the whole fight. He had 49.

Now these are some "on-the-go" calculations and the results may vary from a little to a lot. Anyway, my guess is that you have to do with a slacker being carried by the rest of your raid. Consider replacing him.

PS: I really love coming across the awesomeness of a combat log again and again :P

I'm not so sure... Here is the top parse for Cho'gall regular on WoL: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r.../7/?s=16&e=270

Fire mages make up the top 10 parses for Cho'gall, so your fire mage should be owning that fight. Have him take a look at various logs and if he still fails, boot him. BTW, he fails at Impact.

[ProBubble]

To be honest if he is good with mechaincs thats more than half the battle.. Halfus is nto a good benchmark to take tank dps from ESPECIALLY heroic. hell.. Prot warriors can out dps everyone on that :P.

Work with him on dummies.. it does look like he has his rotation wrong and maybe needs to perfect his gemming.. Elitist jerks can help but he should spend some time on the dummies working on his rotation and talk about where he can improve.

If he stood in fire and did crap dps it would be a no brainer but if he is actually decent on mechanics then he is worth keeping imo.

[Deleted]

excuse me what!!!!!!!!

Fire mages are kings on that fight... spread your dots to all targets = win?

but tank damage is high on that fight tho.

@ my post is directed at the page 1 post, where the OP states he lost to the tank on Halfus hc.

[gathanasiou]

I'm not so sure... Here is the top parse for Cho'gall regular on WoL: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r.../7/?s=16&e=270

Fire mages make up the top 10 parses for Cho'gall, so your fire mage should be owning that fight. Have him take a look at various logs and if he still fails, boot him. BTW, he fails at Impact.

This Mage uses the tactic of getting 100 Corruption right away so that he can insta-cast Pyro all the time. I'm not that sure that the OPs's mage is aware of that actually.

[Raztalin]

Do we know if he suffers from poor latency? Just my 2p worth

As someone else said if he does the mechanics right i'd swap him for half my raid group, whom after 6 weeks still fail hard on certain mechanics!!!

[Deleted]

There is a huge difference between having learned a fight and having mastered it.
This said your mage's DPS is awfully low on several fights.

Right now your mage is supposedly watching boss mechanics really hard while doing his rotation. As he gets more comfortable with fights his damage will certainly improve as his rotation will be more on spot.

Some of my numbers:

Some weeks ago (about 4, my gear then was about comparable to your mages):
Halfus HM ~ 30k
Chim HM ~ 16k
Cho Gal ~ 11.5k
Conclave of Wind ~ 12k
Argaloth ~ 18k
V&T ~ 13k


In comparison my latestet DPS:
Halfus HM ~ 52k
Chim HM ~ 20k
Cho Gal ~ 13k
Conclave of Wind ~ 15k
Argaloth ~ 22k
V&T ~ 22k

You may take Chim HM and Argaloth as benchmarks for how much improvement came from gear (especially 4T11), this is roughly 20%. However I still suck on Cho Gal. The fight still puts great pressure on me, having to counter adherents if tank misses, counter Tentacles with all means (Counterspell, Impact), dragonsbreathing mc'ed allies, slowing slimes with Blast Nova, Frost Nova. My improved gear doesn't do a lot to help me here, I still run about like a mad chicken.

On the other hand I grew extremely confident with Halfus (multi-target handling) and V&T (keeping LB up on both drakes, moving only as much as really necessary, holding back combustion on theralion in case I get debuff for additional damage, then popping volcanic potion as well...). In both fights I managed to add 75% damage. While I feel I'm about skillcapped on V&T I estimate I could go as high as 70k on Halfus with better timing and our warlock getting home from work early (would get his DI on this fight only).

I suppose your mage will be much better when he not only learned the mechanics, but mastered them.

[Tatiana]

Make sure he thorougly understands the mechanics of his spec so he knows what he's casting, when and WHY. I assume the glowing "use this spell now!" effect crops up on all types of bar and UI addons? That should give him enough prompts on what to use and when.

You shouldn't need to cast scorch at all except at the start of the fight because pyroblast applies the same debuff (unless you get an unlucky no-crit streak and no pyro procs so it drops off).

Other than that it's just constant fireballs, LB up all the time (on at least 1 target if not 3), and impact when your target has as many DoTs as possible to spread them all.

[Deleted]

Make sure he thorougly understands the mechanics of his spec so he knows what he's casting, when and WHY. I assume the glowing "use this spell now!" effect crops up on all types of bar and UI addons? That should give him enough prompts on what to use and when. .

Well, no. Don't cast Fireblast on Impact-Procc if there is nothing to spread or nothing to spread it to.

You shouldn't need to cast scorch at all except at the start of the fight because pyroblast applies the same debuff (unless you get an unlucky no-crit streak and no pyro procs so it drops off).

Again no. Pre-pull start out with MI, prepot, Pyro. Cast scorch when you are moving and there is no Hotstreak procc and LB doesn't need to be refreshed. Or when LB is about to expire. Pyro opening does not work on Nef and Atramedes encounters (don't know about Sinestra), but on all others.

[Deleted]

He's doing it wrong. On your Al'Akir kill, he had 45% uptime on living bomb (which is REALLY bad) and he appears to have used combustion twice in a 7 minute fight which means he wasted a whole combustion CD. He only used Mirror Images once and it wasn't at the start. He had 7 hot streak procs (which seems low) and only used 6 of them (although this could be due to bad luck). He also cast 24 scorches which seems pretty high, we don't really cast scorch very much anymore. In fact, from looking at your log it appears he either got knocked off the platform or hit by tornadoes which is not good. In 10 man, you have plenty of room to move side to side. Additionally, mages have BLINK. Blink can completely negate either tornadoes or windburst, getting hit by either is not a good thing for a mage.

I wont pretend to have looked at the logs for this, but Al'akir is a very hard fight to measure. Especially since this is a fight with very high mobility, i'd be amazed i'd cast fewer than 24 scorches on our last kill. His dps on this fight also depends on what his target is. For example, i'm always bottom on the meters on al'akir because i solo the adds.

Also, scorch and move > Blink as blink is a wasted GCD

But, from what comments people seem to be making, he seems to have both low active time, and low living bomb time. Perhaps, take a look at him whilst you're raiding and see if he's actually casting a spell all the time. There is no excuse for a fire mage since scorch costs no mana and can be used whilst moving.

[Seeinred]

My 10 man guild picked up a fire mage a couple of weeks ago. He seems to be very good at mechanics. He doesn't stand in things, he kites the adds well for Nefarian and he handles the gongs for heroic Atramedes. His dps was low, but we invited him to the guild because he had low gear and was learning many of these fights for the first time.

Since, he's gotten 4 -5 gear upgrades. And, he has learned all of these fights at this point. Still, his dps is low. Last night our tank out dps'd him on one fight. So, is it the blue weapon? Is it the rotation? Is it the gemming and enchants? Is he just not hitting buttons fast enough? What gives?

Logs: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/id3m81cwdrhyju15/

Armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...andra/advanced

Well from reading its definatly his rotation or play BUT I gotta say WTF is he doing reforging shitloads of his crit?... CRIT = fire mage cmon.

[Fojos]

He also cast 24 scorches which seems pretty high, we don't really cast scorch very much anymore. .

I don't see what you're saying about not doing scorch on Al'akir of all fights, you have to move a lot in the fight.

[brabal]

ìf that fight was halfus your being to hard on him.
as a prot warrior i never been outdpsed by anything (just demo locks)
hihi..

[Rezkin]

Get that man a MH/4pc...

---------- Post added 2011-04-02 at 11:10 AM ----------

ìf that fight was halfus your being to hard on him.
as a prot warrior i never been outdpsed by anything (just demo locks)
hihi..

Not after it changed lol... been awhile now...