[Help] Another please help my dps thread

[Mazbat]

I've recently switched to Mage this expansion and whilst i'm near the top on dps there is definitely room to improve.

Profile is here EU
/wow/en/character/bloodhoof/Mazbat/advanced

Gear wise i'm still working on neck, have DMC deck ready for Darkmoon come Sunday, switching to Jade Spirit later whilst also upgrading either the dagger, legs or hands

Recent LFR run post 5.1 on WoL

/reports/jory7xobsbqmehj6/sum/damageDone/

The main thing i can see is that Combustion's and Ignites are not very high.
In comparison to other peoples parses i have seen i'm not critting very much either. Poor RNG? Currrently at 26% crit.

Thanks

[houndstooth]

I'm no expert, but here are some things I see on your Zor'Lok fight (which I picked because I'm most familiar with it):

1. Living Bomb Uptime is less than 50%. Living bomb applies pyromaniac, which increases Fireball, Pyro, Blast dmg by 10%. Top 2 mage LFR parses have 75%(NT) and 87%.

2. My mage gear is about 463 and I feel comfortable saying my average combustion is about 25k in an LFR with some good ones up to 30k. By comparison and by what I'm reading on forums, your seems a bit low. What is your plan for getting big Ignites?

3. 6 minute fight, only one alter time. You probably could've snuck another one in there.

4. 70% uptime on invokers' energy. To compare, top 5 LFR mage parses on WOL have 87%, 78%, 88%, 80%, and 80%.

Overall, it seems you need to work on keeping up your buffs and debuffs, maybe be a little more proactive in when you refresh things like Invoker's Energy and LB.

[azzgunther]

My suspicion is that you aren't using Inferno Blast often enough. On Imperial Vizier you've got 23 Fireball crits and 5 Scorch crits but only 15 Inferno Blasts. Fight circumstances dictate the need for this spell to varying degrees but you should make sure that, if you're heating up, you finish off whatever you're casting and immediately tie in an Inferno Blast.

I went and compared total spell counts between your attempt here and one of my first (normal mode) kills:

(Time -- Pyro -- Fireball -- Scorch -- Living Bomb uptime)
Mazbat 6:02 17 -- 76 -- 13 -- 47.4%
Gurv 6:45 29 -- 95 -- 25 -- 75.1%

It looks like your general activity is low and that you aren't playing very intensely. This class is not like other DPS classes in that you simply sit back and spam out a rotation. The paradigm we use is sort of like gambling. You'll generally be spamming Fireballs and watching for a crit, at which point you need to immediately Inferno Blast that into a Hot Streak. Once you have that you have a few different options: 1.) Cooldowns are up and Combustion is up - keep casting Fireballs until you get another crit and then do the whole Alter time 4-6 Pyroblasts in a row thing or 2.) Combustion is down. Does the boss currently have a Pyroblast DoT on him? If yes then hold on to the Pyroblast until the DoT is about to fall off or you get a Heating Up. If no then use that Pyroblast now.

[houndstooth]

Very insightful comment gunther. How do you take Pyro crits into account?

And wouldn't a better way to gauge this to be check buffs gained for "heating up?"

On that fight for him:
heating up gains - 32
Pyro! - 15
Inferno blast - 15

[azzgunther]

You're right that a better way would be to analyze how many Heating Ups were turned into Hot Streaks. This is a new concept for me in analyzing Mage performance so I'm glad you brought that up. One thing I'm noticing is that some of my logs imply that I don't Inferno Blast enough Heating Ups but I'm extremely aggressive and am thinking it's due to regular spells critting or due to Inferno Blast being on CD.

It's important also to take into account how many total spells were cast to analyze activity and frequency of spell casting to ascertain how proactively the player is playing.

[Mazbat]

Thanks for the input guys

I hadn't noticed my Mage bomb uptime was so low, i'll work on improving the uptime.
Interesting holding onto Pyro for the DOT.

I'll also check my activity i don't think WoL has a count but i certainly used to be at the top for activity in recount.

Thanks again