So my fire mage needs help

[Drakile]

I am the raid leader of a rather casual raiding guild, my mage's DPS dropped off quite a bit after the fire nerf, while expected seeing as it is working as intended I was curious how much fire was actually hurt by the change, and if there were some tricks and tips to pull her DPS back up to par. She has gone from one of the top to barely beating the tanks and I need it fixed, she dosent like the way Arcane and Frost plays so she plans to stick it out with Fire I am hoping to help. So I turn to you Mage community, share your knowledge with me if you wouldnt mind, Thanks in advance. Also I dont have logs so I can really get specific with it as annoying as that is.

[Reolac]

I'm sorry but, you've already got an issue if someone is limiting themselves to 33% of their class.

[Drakile]

I understand that, but as I said rather casual guild so I cant -make- them play a spec they dont want to, nor do I want to lose them as a raider because mechanic wise they are quite good

[Deleted]

i mean this nicely.....

i know your a casual guild...however theres not much we can do to help if they refuse to play the other speccs which currently out perform fire.

now saying that fire isnt omg terrible 10k dps specc....for your needs (im guessing casual normal raiding) they should still be able to do sufficient damage as fire that wont cause you to never kill Boss A....i mean we are working on heroic TOES and our mage can still pull out sufficient damage as fire when hes testing it out.

However we cant tell you how they can improve without any logs.

so basically try to help them...making practise on the dummies together and get them used to playing arcane/frost as it is the best specc on average currently.....or get us some logs somehow if you can as even as fire there damage shouldnt be that low (assuming your not on a fight where tanks can gimmic veng and top meters....i.e stone guards, feng etc)

[Drakile]

Okay, let me try to rephrase this a bit differently, I am not entirely sure what blizz nerfed on fire mages, or really quite sure why they nerfed em. That is beyond the point, my question is, are there any tricks or tips or major changes to the rotation since then that would help.

[Deleted]

I understand that, but as I said rather casual guild so I cant -make- them play a spec they dont want to, nor do I want to lose them as a raider because mechanic wise they are quite good

Fire is not that weak. It still performs good, is behind all warlocks and arcane still the best ranged specc (ahead of all hunter speccs, shadows, druids and elementals anyway).

So if you don't post any logs, nobody can help you. There are some tipps for fire, but she should simply read the sticky thread. Like always, skill still matters a lot so i assume, she simply makes mistakes like not casting whíle moving, moving too much, not building up combustion properly and so on.

And finally: make her play arcane on some fights. Frost is currently not necessary, but talk to her, tell her arcane performs a lot better on some fights.

And if it doesn't work - well, as someone else told: a mage has three dps speccs, played to the maximum, a mage is still in the top 3 dps with rogues and warlocks. If she's that far behind the others, you as a raidleader have to look for a better mage.

I see that female players are treated a lot differently. Bad males are getting kicked and sorted out, for females you go to forums and ask for help.

[Drakile]

I see that female players are treated a lot differently. Bad males are getting kicked and sorted out, for females you go to forums and ask for help.

I thank you for the advice sir, but on a side note I am not doing this because she is a female, I am doing this because she works well with the raid, if one of my male raider's DPS was not up to snuff and they weren't improving I would do the same thing, given that I feel the male works well with the raid, it dosent help any if you have 10 amazing players and they all hate each other, nothing will ever get done, and if anything does get done it would entail a metric ton of drama along with it

[ShahinK]

after fire nerf, building huge combustions is a lot harder. first, make sure she is tracking trinket/tailoring procs. also make sure she is not using combustion randomly. she should track ignite dot ticks aswell.
u can check this link wowhead.com/forums&topic=201537#p3118630

[Drakile]

after fire nerf, building huge combustions is a lot harder. first, make sure she is tracking trinket/tailoring procs. also make sure she is not using combustion randomly. she should track ignite dot ticks aswell.
u can check this link wowhead.com/forums&topic=201537#p3118630

Thank you, I will show this to my mage

[Deleted]

Without any armory link or world of logs we can't determine if theres something wrong with her dps.

You should record some and post the armory link otherwise any advice would be out of the blue.

[Quilm]

This biggest hit came with the CM nerf from 1.5 to 1.25 which resulted in roughly a 7% crit loss it was then buffed back to 1.3 making it only a 6% loss which still sucks, pre nerf if ur crit unbuffed was 30% against a raid boss or lv93 doing the math with -3% ur crit would have been 40.5% now it's about 34.5 ish..... Unless u start getting better gear to offset the crit loss fire dps just sucks, reroll frost and the gear ur stacking for fire is usually crit haste anyway, if not u gotta farm better gear for arcane......... I went through all 3 specs testing on dummies and during raid and in the end I just went back to fire because I enjoy it the most, 388ivl and I can still pull 70k+ on single target with 32%crit unbuffed

[Deleted]

They can stay fire, if you play fire well you can still pull out nice dps. Dont let the game force you which spec to play mainly when you are casual players. Master your fire rotation

[PPN]

Hey, i also still stick to fire and yes it went down a lot. I still find myself in the upper half of the dpsers. Yesetrday i even once topped dps on Feng, yeah i was quiet happy.

Only tip i can give you that helped some fellows who played mage and wondered why my dps is so much better:

Change talents depending on the fight!
Know what awaits you and chose your talents according to the encounter or to your role/playstyle you gona take in that fight.
For example in MSV i change my talents for every single boss (We do 2/6 hc atm)

GL^^

[Agzarah]

While it may seem like an abvious thing, make sure they are keeping their mage bombs up as much as humanly possible.
pre nerf i was rubbish at it and only refreshed as and when i remembered, but because our dps was so high it didnt really seem to affect our meters too much and topping charts was easier than going afk.
Since the nerf ive set up a bunch of weak auras to keep track of my bombs and T6 talents as well as a few other things and my dps shot right back up again. While mage bombs are only 1 spell, they can acount for a huge chunk of the dps if done correctly, so keeping them up all the time really can make a huge difference.

[Raggamasta]

It's difficult to say without logs what your mage is doing wrong, but there are couple of important things to keep in mind. First, stack as much crit as possible, use askmrrobot to find the best reforge and gemming options. 2nd - use pom/pyro macro lined up with trinket/potions/other procs to get a high ignite and after that use combustion. A good addon to track your current ignite is combustionhelper for example.

Also it's important to:
- have high living bomb/nether tempest uptime
- always pre pot and use 2nd potion with other cooldowns and bloodlust
- minimize your movement (scorch is quite bad)
- have best food and flasks

These are some of the main things that affect your dps the most. But it would be much easier to pinpoint the exact issues with your mage, if you could give us logs and an armory link.

[Lothrik]

Digging through your post history, I found your character and guild.

There are only two mages in your guild that have done any raiding at all. I'm going to assume the mage you're talking about is the 488 iLvl Orc, and not the 471 iLvl Troll.

I checked everything, there's literally nothing your mage (assuming we're talking about the 488 iLvl Orc) is doing wrong. They're gemming, gearing, reforging and enchanting correctly. They're using their cooldowns properly, not getting hit by mechanics and doing respectable DPS (#3 Overall DPS on Boss Kills for the parse I found and reviewed.)

Frankly I don't see what you're complaining about with this mage. They seem like an excellent player in every sense of the word. To be honest they're probably a better player than some of the people I raid with. I suspect you just got used to pre-nerf overpowered Fire Mage, in which case the nerf was deserved, they were doing more DPS than was appropriate for their gear.

Though, if we're talking about the other mage (471 iLvl Troll).. I don't know where to begin. Missing enchants, cheap gems, Elemental Force on their weapon, 1.2% below hit cap, the list goes on.

[Deleted]

however theres not much we can do to help if they refuse to play the other speccs which currently out perform fire.

This is wrong. Fire is just more RNG now and requires more work and timing to keep up with a good amount of DPS. It isn't as easy as before with high crits and giant combustions etc It can still perform better than Frost & Arcane, it just requires good timing and ofcourse luck

Drakile, Would you mind posting your guildies rotation as this could be the problem. Even with the nerf I haven't really dropped that low in DPS myself.

Using Rune of Power/Evocation correctly is important depending on what kind of fight it is (Standing or Moving). Pre-potting and using your AlterTime-PoM of D00m correctly with Potions & Trinkets (if you have any 'Use' trinkets ofcourse) is also very important.

Scorch used to be awesome for moving fights but with the nerfs to critical mass and ofcourse the next patch is increasing the mana use, it may not be a good idea anymore.. mana drainer ftw.

Think everyone else prettie much summed it all up.

Klatar, LoL at that comment, It is completely unture.

[Gronors]

This is wrong. Fire is just more RNG now and requires more work and timing to keep up with a good amount of DPS. It isn't as easy as before with high crits and giant combustions etc It can still perform better than Frost & Arcane, it just requires good timing and ofcourse luck

Fire is indeed more RNG now which is why it is at this point worse than arcane, if you are lucky you CAN be on par with arcane if youre not youre below arcane in terms of dps by quite a bit. Fire was already really easy before the nerf and nothing has changed about the 'rotation' if anything its easier as you dont get as many hot streaks.