[VIDEO] HEROIC: Baleroc (10-man) - Arcane Mage PoV

[Zumzar]

Sup guys,

First of all, I'd like to say that I create a new thread for each fight on purpose. It isn't to increase my views on YouTube up or to spam the forums. My idea was that we could have a comprehensive discussion on how to improve as a Mage on each encounter. In the past, I've had very good experience with some threads giving valuable tips, advice and information on how to improve as a Mage - to both me, and other raiders.

This is our first kill of HEROIC Baleroc (10-man) as a guild.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWf_f...layer_embedded

Guild: The Machine of Sylvanas-EU (Alliance).

Kill date: 21st of August, 2011.

PoV: Zumzar - Arcane Mage.

So, obviously - this fight is a bit boring to watch, but tactically there's actually a bit more into it, than just tank and spank. I have included Ventrilo, to give a better idea of what's actually going on, as we're communicating a lot on this fight.

We 2-healed the fight (Druid + Priest) with 1 Tank (Paladin), and used 4 people for rotating Shards, whilst having 3 backups.

Personally, I had the role just standing still dps'ing, while being a backup for the Shards, if anybody got Tormented, when they were not supposed to (either due to bad play or link). Mages are quite good for this, seeing as we can quickly Blink into position. Twice in this video, I was called upon to take a Shard. See 01:42 and 05:10

My general idea was to have 3 burnphases, due to the fight length. On the 2nd burnphase, I'd wait for Mana Gem + a trinket proc + Volcanic Potion, before popping AP. Unfortunately for me, after Mana Gem came off cooldown, it took ~35 seconds for a Trinket to proc, and I therefore lost valuable dps, and was forced into Evocating with 20 seconds left of the fight, rather than Evocating with 50 seconds left of the fight. Bad decision on my part with the 2nd burnphase. This resulted in the boss dying during an AP, and with me still having ~60% mana left.

Also, if you're wondering why I'm not moving at one point, where I get linked, it's because I have AP popped, and therefore didn't want to loose a GCD.

Ventrilo: Yes, for the entire fight.

WoL from the kill: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/m...?s=5324&e=5675 I ranked ~#60 of Arcane Mages.

My UI: My UI is now available for download @ http://www.gamefront.com/files/20707776/ZumzarUI.rar

Songs: The songs are listed at the end credits, in order of appearance.

www.the-machine.wowstead.com

Feel free to comment
Zumzar

[Condoner]

1. The biggest thing I could see was you play with your mana showing as a percentage, and not as a number. You can never tell where you are actually at mana wise with int procs if you do this, and it seemed to greatly affect your play, as your conserve phase was mainly at 80%, and not 90%.(Though a lot of your conserve phase issues were based upon improper cd usage/burn phase.)

2. AFAIK, it's better to pair your CDs at all times, and on a sub 6 minute fight like this, it's especially important to do it, as using AP on CD won't even give you an extra AP in the fight.

A. Normal AP usage

9 sec - 2 min 9 sec - 4 min 9 sec - 5 min 39 sec

B. AP usage on CD

9 sec - 1 min 39 sec - 3 min 9 sec - 4 min 39 sec

3. Cooldowns need to be used on cooldown. The way arcanes cooldowns lineup, it's incredibly important that you are using things as soon as they come off of CD(Except for AP, which should be paired with mana gem). Because of the way you used yours, you ended up using a full evocation 20 seconds before the end of the fight, and ended with 50% mana. If you had used evocation properly, you would have used it closer to 40 seconds before the fight ended, and likely ended much closer to 0% mana. Also, if your CDs are used properly your flame orb will always come out just prior to a burn, which will greatly increase its damage.

4. Evocation doesn't give you 100% mana. I saw you burning down to 20% mana at times with no CDs up at all. With lust, it's whatever, I probably would have done something similar, but your second burn, you did it again and didn't even have a single CD up to warrant the use of a 4 stack ab at sub 30% mana.

5. You cast a mirror image when arcane power wasn't up. No sense in losing a CD if you don't have to.

[Zumzar]

1. The biggest thing I could see was you play with your mana showing as a percentage, and not as a number. You can never tell where you are actually at mana wise with int procs if you do this, and it seemed to greatly affect your play, as your conserve phase was mainly at 80%, and not 90%.(Though a lot of your conserve phase issues were based upon improper cd usage/burn phase.)

I track my power-ups (trinkets, AP, mana gem etc.) though, and I know which of my power-ups give intellect, i.e. I don't know exactly where I am mana-wise, but I have a very good idea. The reason my conserve phase sometimes goes lower than 90% mana is due to power-ups. I believe, entering a mini burn phase, meaning Arcane Blast spamming for the duration of a power-up-proc is higher dps than ignoring the proc completely, and just hovering at 90% mana.

2. AFAIK, it's better to pair your CDs at all times, and on a sub 6 minute fight like this, it's especially important to do it, as using AP on CD won't even give you an extra AP in the fight.

On a sub 6-minute fight, I can only agree with you 100% that it would've been best to pair my CDs. But like I mentioned in the OP, it was bad play by me, letting that gem+AP sit off cooldown for ~35 secs, waiting for a trinket proc. Getting into 3 burnphases on this fight seems to be optimal. But again, on this fight I agree - on a fight like H: Majordomo, I'd use AP off cooldown, not synced with Managem. Especially after obtaining 4p T12 set bonus.

3. Cooldowns need to be used on cooldown. The way arcanes cooldowns lineup, it's incredibly important that you are using things as soon as they come off of CD(Except for AP, which should be paired with mana gem). Because of the way you used yours, you ended up using a full evocation 20 seconds before the end of the fight, and ended with 50% mana. If you had used evocation properly, you would have used it closer to 40 seconds before the fight ended, and likely ended much closer to 0% mana. Also, if your CDs are used properly your flame orb will always come out just prior to a burn, which will greatly increase its damage.

Again, I can only agree, but I am using my stuff as soon as they come off off CD (excluding AP). My general idea is to use Flame Orb/Mirror Image whenever it's off CD, except for the first burn-phase of the fight, where I obviously use MI during AP. I'd, personally, rather have Flame Orb up in the conserve phase, for AM procs (to allow me to hover @ ~90% mana), rather than not using it off cd, and saving it for extra dps in the burn phases.

In regards to my Evocation 20 seconds before the fight ended: Yes, obviously it was not optimal, but again like I mentioned in the OP - it's only due to me postponing my 2nd burnphase an unnecessary ~35 secs, waiting for trinket procs, and thus the timing of the 3rd burn phase got screwed. It had nothing to do with improper Evocation usage. It was improper AP usage.

4. Evocation doesn't give you 100% mana. I saw you burning down to 20% mana at times with no CDs up at all. With lust, it's whatever, I probably would have done something similar, but your second burn, you did it again and didn't even have a single CD up to warrant the use of a 4 stack ab at sub 30% mana.

I am very well aware of the fact that Evocation doesn't give me 100% mana. Come on, dude! Usually, I will use Evoc @ ~30%, rather than ~40%, as my goal is to go back to 90% mana, and thus not getting a Mage Armor tick that gets me over 100%, which at the end of the day is a dps loss. Going down to 20% mana, with no power-ups was probably just me watching other stuff than my own rotation, as I am the raidleader of my guild. But yeah, if I get a power-up I'd usually extend my burnphase a little bit, since I think I'd be stupid to use Evocation during a non-intellect power-up like Heroism. Using Evocation on the last second of an intellect power-up actually increases the amount of mana you get in return from Evocation.

5. You cast a mirror image when arcane power wasn't up. No sense in losing a CD if you don't have to.

If there's +30 seconds untill I go into the next burnphase, wouldn't you agree that it's a dps increase to just get MI on CD - as MI obviously is a dps increase in itself - rather than waiting +30 seconds to use it w/o using a GCD?

Thank you for your reply
Zumz

[Deleted]

You should have kept the intro music through entire video
Nice kill tho.

[Condoner]

If there's +30 seconds untill I go into the next burnphase, wouldn't you agree that it's a dps increase to just get MI on CD - as MI obviously is a dps increase in itself - rather than waiting +30 seconds to use it w/o using a GCD?

Again, it comes down to fight length. In that fight, it's impossible for you to get off a third mirror image, so there's absolutely no sense in you using a GCD to cast it. It's simply wasted DPS.

[Wilderness]

Didn't a moderator ask you not to create individual video threads just a day or two ago?

[Zumzar]

Again, it comes down to fight length. In that fight, it's impossible for you to get off a third mirror image, so there's absolutely no sense in you using a GCD to cast it. It's simply wasted DPS.

On this fight, you're absolutely right. On other fights, I wouldn't always use MI during AP, for the reasons stated above.

---------- Post added 2011-08-23 at 05:12 PM ----------

Didn't a moderator ask you not to create individual video threads just a day or two ago?

Yes, he did. But what you obviously can't see is that I had a private conversation with Nemex (the moderator you're referring to), where we discussed exactly it. My point being, as written in the OP, "[...] I'd like to say that I create a new thread for each fight on purpose. It isn't to increase my views on YouTube up or to spam the forums. My idea was that we could have a comprehensive discussion on how to improve as a Mage on each encounter. In the past, I've had very good experience with some threads giving valuable tips, advice and information on how to improve as a Mage - to both me, and other raiders."

He basically accepted that I, in the future, made individual threads for each video, as long as I didn't post new videos each day. But like I also told him, I upload my videos 1 day after we've killed the boss, meaning - as we're obviously not flying through Heroic content - the chance of me spamming the forums with several threads within a couple of days is very minor.

[Deleted]

amagad mage is hard

Please post more constructive things.

[Deleted]

We will be trying this shortly, so got a question, since I figured you did quite a lot of tries on it.

1. How do you handle shard of tourment throughout the fight? Do you use 2 groups of 2 that alternates each shard? It looked like the mage and hunter at least were primarily backups, so I'm pretty interested in knowing how you handlede this particular aspect.

2. How do you handle healers building up stacks in the beginning? How long does the same healer stay on shard duty?

3. Were you lucky with healers not getting countdown on this attempt, because to me it looked like they got it 3 or 4 times in total, and never with a tourmented person.

[Trixzy]

Nice vid, keep them coming (:.

[Zumzar]

We will be trying this shortly, so got a question, since I figured you did quite a lot of tries on it.

1. How do you handle shard of tourment throughout the fight? Do you use 2 groups of 2 that alternates each shard? It looked like the mage and hunter at least were primarily backups, so I'm pretty interested in knowing how you handlede this particular aspect.

2. How do you handle healers building up stacks in the beginning? How long does the same healer stay on shard duty?

3. Were you lucky with healers not getting countdown on this attempt, because to me it looked like they got it 3 or 4 times in total, and never with a tourmented person.

1. We have 4 people rotating shards, and yes - they are in groups of two. Classes doesn't really matter to be quite honest. The first Shard will be taken FULLY by our Shadow Priest, by using Dispersion. And yes, we had a Mage, Hunter and a Boomkin as backups, in that order, meaning Mage would be first in line to take a Shard if called upon, seeing as we can Blink close to a Shard really quickly.

2. As we have our Shadow Priest taking a full Shard in the beginning, it allows one of our healers, in this case our Resto druid, to build a really high amount of stacks (~120+). Our Disc Priest will then use cooldowns, to keep up our Tank in the meantime. When the Druid had 150 stacks, he'd go on Tank, and Disc Priest would start building stacks. This way, they didn't need to switch again before ~40%. Whenever you have someone able to take a full shard (by cooldowns or w/e), it should be done, so the healers can build stacks quickly. I think a Feral Druid can take a full shard as well. Perhaps other classes can as well. Raid cooldowns, such as Barrier work quite nicely, and should really be used off cooldown every time.

3. Yes, our healers were lucky not to get Countown with a "tormented" person. If that would've happened, judging from previous attempts, with only 2 healers, it makes it really tough. We had also agreed that if you got Countdown with a healer, the healer should just stand still, and the other person would run, so the Healer wouldn't loose a GCD or two by running a few yards.

Hope I was able to help
Zumz

[PhilCosby]

As I enjoyed the Rhyolith video you made I will watch this one.

Also thank you for the tip about having dps run to the healer with countdown (I am a healer).