Fire Mage Guide

[Deleted]

Hey Pretzul, would you say I could go fire if I get a BBoY from flex or normal?

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...n/Breia/simple

[Deleted]

8085 +2 pyro
13163 +2 LB
14846 +3 pyro
these are your haste breakpoints.
first of all, haste and mastery are very close.

imo 8085 haste + rest in mastery is the best option for most fights. ~500-600k ignite on pull is a huge dps gain on short fights or multitarget fights.
also mastery heavy builds have a bigger potential dps if you get your rppm trinket proc + meta proc during all other combustions.

i forgot to mention that if you play 10 man mastery gets even better because most fights tend to be shorter.

[Deleted]

I ended up swapping out some Haste for Mastery(just 2k rating or so) last night and saw a fairly substantial boost in DPS compared to what I normally do, which goes against everything I've been told.

[Pretzul]

@Pulkan your gear is not quite optimal for it. do you have other crit pieces that youre not wearing? BBoY alone would probably not make fire playable if you dont.

@Garrod Haste is going to dip down in value a bit until you can make 13163 haste for LB. But at that point I would definitely not sacrifice haste for mastery. This comes down to a playstyle issue I guess, but assuming you are properly utilizing your 2p bonus haste should start to be a little more attractive. Do you have a BBoY? If you are worried about your combustion/ignite damage, this is a huge culprit. PS: you have crit reforged off of your shoulders

[Deleted]

@Pulkan your gear is not quite optimal for it. do you have other crit pieces that youre not wearing? BBoY alone would probably not make fire playable if you dont.

@Garrod Haste is going to dip down in value a bit until you can make 13163 haste for LB. But at that point I would definitely not sacrifice haste for mastery. This comes down to a playstyle issue I guess, but assuming you are properly utilizing your 2p bonus haste should start to be a little more attractive. Do you have a BBoY? If you are worried about your combustion/ignite damage, this is a huge culprit. PS: you have crit reforged off of your shoulders

Didn't see that I'd accidentally reforged that crit off the shoulders, which will get fixed when I get off work. But yeah, I was at that breakpoint before I swapped some haste for mastery and still saw the DPS increase. As for BBoY, we've had 1 drop ever(which was 2 months ago) and I've been coining Garrosh every week in hopes of getting one with no luck.

[Rambutan]

Garrod, have you ever checked out Method's Fire Mage guide? It's written by Vykina, world first 25H raider, and he answers questions on a semi-daily basis there. I would have to dig through the ~250 pages of posts in his thread but at one point he mentioned that there is probably a breakpoint where you should start taking mastery. It's hard to define where it is because of Haste/2p synergy but considering how high your haste is I personally think it's completely fine to take some mastery.

[Pretzul]

Garrod, have you ever checked out Method's Fire Mage guide? It's written by Vykina, world first 25H raider, and he answers questions on a semi-daily basis there. I would have to dig through the ~250 pages of posts in his thread but at one point he mentioned that there is probably a breakpoint where you should start taking mastery. It's hard to define where it is because of Haste/2p synergy but considering how high your haste is I personally think it's completely fine to take some mastery.

nooooo vykina is a nooob
jk vykina dont ddos me

You may gain some damage out of some extra mastery, but this is situational, and much more RBG dependent. Link me some logs and Id like to take a look at your mechanics to see if i can get a little more context here.

[Rambutan]

nooooo vykina is a nooob
jk vykina dont ddos me

Looool US vs EU FIGHT!

[Deleted]

Garrod, have you ever checked out Method's Fire Mage guide? It's written by Vykina, world first 25H raider, and he answers questions on a semi-daily basis there. I would have to dig through the ~250 pages of posts in his thread but at one point he mentioned that there is probably a breakpoint where you should start taking mastery. It's hard to define where it is because of Haste/2p synergy but considering how high your haste is I personally think it's completely fine to take some mastery.

Yeah I keep up with the thread which is why I was putting everything to haste after crit in the first place.

nooooo vykina is a nooob
jk vykina dont ddos me

You may gain some damage out of some extra mastery, but this is situational, and much more RBG dependent. Link me some logs and Id like to take a look at your mechanics to see if i can get a little more context here.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=7048&e=7331
Those are from our clear up to H Thok, the next night has all of our H Siegecrafter attempts. I've still got a bad habit of casting scorch way too much which I'm trying to fix, but it seems like I have to move so damn much in 10-man that I don't really have a choice in the matter(which is why I ditched Arcane in the first place for Heroic Progression).

[slickk]

No, you should go full crit>haste>mastery. Haste breakpoints are important in fire and you should itemize for them by preferring crit/haste pieces, but you should never sacrifice crit for haste, unless its like a single gem to make a major haste BP. If you link your armory, I can tell you if youre close to something like that.

Dam can't post links yet to new of a log in... it's slickker of lightnings blade. if you could look that would be great.

[Pretzul]

Sorry for the late reply.

@Garrod: I was going to look at your potent flames uptimes but they look acceptable, I was thinking less 2p uptime was putting a lot more value on your combustion. Im having a hard time explaining this quantitatively, as simming fire mages is useless. But i can say the more haste that becomes available, the more of it you should prefer. 15k+ haste will allow you to weave a crazy amount of spells (evocation, LB, FB) into your 2p window. So you'll basically be just spitting out pyros every couple of seconds. One thing WoL does NOT show, however, is your uptime at high stacks of 2p. Do you spend more time at 1-4 stacks than at 5?

@Slickk: You are very close to a BP for LB and glyphed combustion, but theres not really anything you cant do about it atm. You should never sacrifice crit to try to make a haste breakpoint. Specificallly, what you need is spoils offpiece chest and tier helm and you should have a good amount of haste.

[Deleted]

I usually hang out at 5 stacks until a bad string of RNG. I could see the haste being important for getting the stacks back up to 5 after that at least, but as far as holding the stacks I haven't been having much of an issue. My real question is this: Would the value of Haste and Mastery vary greatly between 10-man and 25-man? The amount of individual movement required for an individual caster seems to be completely different between the two raid sizes, or at least that's the assumption I've been under as Arcane supposedly performs much better in a 25-man environment due to having an easier time just turreting than it does in 10-man. So would the same thing have an effect on the weights for Haste and Mastery for Fire? Especially if I'm doing a lot of control type mechanics that require lots of movement on fights like the Ironstars and Weapon Placement on Garrosh and belts on Siegecrafter?

[Skyefire]

One thing WoL does NOT show, however, is your uptime at high stacks of 2p. Do you spend more time at 1-4 stacks than at 5?

Do you mean quantitatively? I suppose you could do it if you zoomed in on the graph a little but it is possible to see it on WoL via a color-type spectrum which does enable you to get a pretty good idea on how often their 5 stacks is up. But I assume you already know how to do that. :3

[Pretzul]

Do you mean quantitatively? I suppose you could do it if you zoomed in on the graph a little but it is possible to see it on WoL via a color-type spectrum which does enable you to get a pretty good idea on how often their 5 stacks is up. But I assume you already know how to do that. :3

Thanks for the hint Skye, im not exactly a WoL wizard.

http://worldoflogs.com/reports/6j8wb...?s=1973&e=2231
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=3280&e=3647

IJ kills from two of us (btw Im aware youre using stack in back strat and obviously ignoring that part). Correct me if im wrong, but I see you actually hitting 5 stacks only twice. Compare to mine, I have several large chunks where I sustain 5 stacks for awhile. Maybe this was a bad week or something (cough, mastery), but the objective of that haste is to smooth the uptime out as much as possible. I have enough haste to cast 2 or even 3 fireballs (with meta up) comfortably within the window for 2p. So in reality, I actually have 2-3 chances on each stack to refresh/gain another stack. At 5 stacks, I have enough haste to squeeze in an extra gcd (LB refresh, IB). Or, if I have HS/HU, I can even weave invocation refresh into 5 stacks without losing them. Perhaps in the end it comes down to a playstyle thing, but i am not sure you're executing your rotation properly.

Edit: ok wtf, I cant link you to the graphs I was looking at. What you want to do is go to buffs cast or buffs gained, find potent flames in the list, and click the little pound sign in the far right column. Youll get a timeline where bright green represents the time you spent at *five* stacks

[Deleted]

The clear up to Thok was with haste, the Thok kill and Siegecrafter attempts were with the little bit of extra mastery. Which brings me back to the movement thing. How bad would heavy movement affect being able to maintain stack uptime? Even on a stand and turret fight like IJ, I find myself having to move often due to mechanics targeting me constantly(I also get most of the mines). When I'm able to stand and turret it's easy to keep up the stack, but toss some movement in the mix and it becomes incredibly difficult for me personally despite swapping scorch with Fireball and continuing with the heating up camping during the movement. Like I said earlier, I went Fire in the first place because the amount of movement required in 10H was destroying my DPS as Arcane.

[Pretzul]

Movement is not negligible, but its not going to tank your damage either. While sitting at HS+HU, you've got 3-4 gcds to move (3 pyros and LB refresh).

I also rely HEAVILY on blink for movement. If I have to move farther than my stockpile of instacasts allows, Ill just blink rather than scorch which is almost always a sufficient amount of distance. I can then go back to turreting fireballs.

If you have to move continuously, this still shouldnt have that much of an effect on your damage, because like you said, you can simply substitute scorch for fireball in your HS+HU combo'ing, 2p uptime should be even easier in this case. Even if I get targeted by laser on siegecrafter, for example, I usually wont lose stacks.

http://worldoflogs.com/reports/6j8wb...=10214&e=10634
here's my most recent thok kill. Still managed 71% uptime with 6x fixates and AE spamming the bats at one point o.o Engineering helps immensely on Thok though. Double blinks to stay in range of the boss until 6th fixate, then rocket boot and chase him across the spamming scorch/pyro. Basically no downtime on boss damage

[brownies123]

Can you guys upload to warcraftlogs.com too? You can click on a buff and it can plot the stacks for you. I don't see it tracking uptime by stacks but the chart does give you a good idea.

For example

http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/...4&spell=145254

I can see I got no 5 stacks at all.

Honestly I haven't been making conscious efforts to boost potent flames up time. I am not even sure how I can do it without crimping the rotation so much that it's not worth it. Tips are greatly appreciated.

[Pretzul]

Can you guys upload to warcraftlogs.com too? You can click on a buff and it can plot the stacks for you. I don't see it tracking uptime by stacks but the chart does give you a good idea.

For example

http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/...4&spell=145254

I can see I got no 5 stacks at all.

Honestly I haven't been making conscious efforts to boost potent flames up time. I am not even sure how I can do it without crimping the rotation so much that it's not worth it. Tips are greatly appreciated.

Say youre at zero stacks and you just got a HS. You want to keep FB'ing until you get heating up. Then, with both the HS+HU buffs, cast fireball again and combo it with pyro. If one crits, you get a HS back. Then just rinse and repeat what you just did, unless your stacks will fall, in which case pyro. If both crit, it will completely return your HS+HU combo. At which point you start another FB and combo it with pyro again. This will maximize your HS generation as you only need one crit to return a HS, and will therefore also boost your 2p uptime. Essentially the only time you want to chain pyros is to set up combustion or if you have a trinket proc falling off, or the boss is about to die.

The moral of the story is you MUST use something to track the stacks of your 2p and the remaining duration also.

Here's my PF weakaura for reference:
dCdWdaGlr41kHzIsyUGy2I6Mqs52kPDsYEP2nu7xr4NIKHHIFRYqvKAWksgoaheL0LjogIohkrlurzPqsSyLQLl1dv e9uHLjIEoPMiKKMketgutxYfHepwvEMs01vvBur1wHKQnRGTlsDyK2gc9zf67aXPr14auJgLY4bQtci3cLQRHGZdst ds9nG0FvkBsJ4G7aiCj9a9jqa6Dyne6opZlOBGq789wSnWBHIH3B(QUoS4q7izcMelDS6a2bSrC81sVb1kghFT0BGT IXb4uddAPSI9Kjr7aAQHbTuEo7atsmjOexsayqjzjdOat0dSJMOdyrtRFtlzg9TySVpg27oQMpokTrCGPRI2iwr6y6 ReCnXuZZ0vr7YXbcofod1ZC5OVIw8dBfJJ3Dz4deSN5GnHpYwzfrgh9v0s8mhV(aSb1kMeOjDmCTm23hdJiGRFloqe W1VfnKaGKZS(kEAAXpCQ0sNPq1qq5L5a0Yw8XoW)vKMpokT2kshR8UV27oAzKFyeOaeh83HDalAA9BAjZVwg77JH9U J9SGHrTdwCmJfOOqvhVlFTrScTNtKeycejamdOmeyjOexU0dStaTlh5JcBeh9LfJ4y9NlUrC5YLdyU(1sjB9v0IFyR yCuc463IdebC9Brdjai5mRVINMw8dNkT0zkuneuEzoaTSfFSJ3TcOfT27o4WoM(kbxtm18mDv0o2PVfJ99XWic463I debC9Brdjai5mRVINMw8dNkT0zkuneuEzoaTSfFSdAgaBuRiDachUyZkImo2PVfJ99XWtE5RnIvKwXKGGvjTIjbbRw AftccwH2kMeeC5y4AzSVpgEYlFTrSI0ksRsAfPvlTI0k0wr6YHMUkic463IN54AUGlAXpSduhfubbOjzLfoE9bydSv mjqt6yN(wm23hdNAyqlLvjD5GAehtFLGRjMAEMUkAhaHlPhOpbcqVdRHq35zEbDdeANV3ITbElum8EZx11HfxosBfj Asgx2a

[brownies123]

I am going to have to try that. I remember when I tried in early SOO with ~540 ilvl I thought it was wasting too many heating ups but with my current gear level, with haste and crit much higher, it's probably worth it.

Preliminary results on dummies seem to confirm.

[Skyefire]

Thanks for the hint Skye, im not exactly a WoL wizard.

http://worldoflogs.com/reports/6j8wb...?s=1973&e=2231
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=3280&e=3647

^_^

Personally I find it really useful to use that function you described (the # on Potent Flames) and have it displaying with the Pyroblast! aura simultaneously. That way you can also see where you screwed up by letting your stacks drop even though you had a Pyro proc up, and where it was unavoidable that you dropped stacks because you got unlucky.