Decently geared fire mage.

[kaskadereno]

Well I thought that replacing my current belt with the dreamless one was a waste of money because its the same amount of intellect and stamina, same amount of mastery and just a different amount of hit.. So yeah..?

As for the gems I went under the assumption that on my gloves 40 int gem > 10 int bonus?
and 80 int > 10 int on belt?

/facepalm
If you only got the hit from the belt and reforged your stump of time from hit to crit and lost the useless spirit you would have alot more crit which is an obvious problem.

[Deleted]

Oh right, I missed that sorry.
The gems I dont quite understand though.

[Eggimannd]

Oh right, I missed that sorry.
The gems I dont quite understand though.

It's quite simple. If for example your gloves have a +10 int socket bonus and you put a 20 int and 20 hit gem in it, that will give you a total of +30 int and + 20 hit (including the socket bonus).

+30 int and +20 hit > + 40 int

Same logic applies to the belt.

edit: I realized the flamebloom gloves have a blue socket so I switched the crit to hit. My bad. Same logic applies though.

[Garil]

So, you've got a few gearing/spec things, as others have pointed out, that you can work on. Honestly though, it sounds like you just don't do well with movement/target switching, etc. 12k on Argolath vs. 9k on Trons tells the story. Work on target switching faster, put more thought into your positioning and movement. You should always know ahead of time when you want to move, and where you want to move to. Likewise for target switching.

When Arcanotron puts his puddle down, are you instantly there? Do you take a while to recognize it's down and to get there? Do you stand in it at all? When you need to switch targets, do you know ahead of time when it's going to happen and are you already prepared to switch? Do you wait for the RL to call for a switch, then take several seconds to locate the next tron, then a few more to target, start casting?

Put simply, if you ever find yourself not casting, or if you are not taking advantage of damage buffs immediately, or if you're moving a lot because your positioning was poor or you weren't ready to react to something, you've got room to improve your general raiding skills.

[Deleted]

Well I am assistant 9 times out of 10 so i always know when to move and where etc no problem. So thats not the issue. But maybe I just need more practice now that my gear is in order i think?

[graagh]

this would be ineffective for him since he doesn't pick up imp scorch or firestarter in his fire build, which is very very stupid. those 2 talents make fire amazing for high movement fights like atramedes, val n thal, and ascendant council. so unless you made a fire spec for a sit and nuke fight, and one for any other encounter, i find that build to be lacking quite a bit.

Though you are correct about when to gem, once you're down about 2-3k mana from the mana your gem will replenish (to avoid wasted gem replenishes), pop it, pop your gems early, then use them on cooldown, this will usually keep you from having to evocate until the final strech of the fight, which you can more then likely line up the last second of time warp

http://wowtal.com/#k=Wwl9jUHo.aei.mage.RXXsxu this is my fire spec, the points in arcane concentration can be switched in to any other talent, but i find it more useful than cauterize since cauterize is very situational, and the clearcasting procs keep my mana going a bit longer, giving me more fireballs over scorches without having to evocate as early. it also picks up full points in impact and pyromaniac for those aoe heavy fights like maloriak and cho'gall.

also, figuring out your crit will help a lot, if you dont have 25%+ self buffed (I.E. with molten armor on), then you should not be fire, you don't have the gear to support the spec fully. you need to pick up the soft cap for haste to add another tick to your living bomb, which is 519 (once you have 519 you will not gain the extra tick without the 5% increase from boomkin/SP/wrath of air totem)

also a huge part of your dps will be when and how you use your combustion, people say combustion tracker is all that PLUS the bag of chips, where in truth it is not, it just tells you to combust when you have all of your dots up, meaning ignite, pyro, and LB. truthfully, you want to watch for any other procs, spell power trinket procs, mastery trinket procs, engi gloves, power torrent, etc. before you pop combust, you still want the same lineup, but pulling up a HUGE ignite from a double trinket proc + power torrent crit fireball/pyro THEN combusting, is going to net you more dps than busting it early once you get your pyroblast dot on

if you have any other concerns check my mages armory in my signature, all the gear that i have is obtainable pre-raid, even though i've cleared bastion and am almost finished with BWD (too many clothies in mah raids, jackin all mah lewts :< )

hope this helps you some!

This is all good advice. There is a combustion tracker that approximates the size of the dot, but generally speaking it's not quite accurate always. Lag is an issue, etc.

Also someone mentioned opening scorch->lb->flame orb. This is not the best idea (again this comes back to combustion use). Better to use flame orb after scorch (or ideally the tank is counting down and you can use a pyro, not all fights this is reasonable though). Its on CD faster and you dont waste a global after living bomb goes up meaning more time to cast fireball and react to large crits for proper combustion use. Combustion is almost entirely about the ignite.

Ideally you get a big fireball crit after an initial pyro crit and you get another big pyro after that because your trinkets procced. Any mage will tell you though that this simply doesn't happen all the time so there does come a point where you need to make the best of a bad situation (or less than ideal situation).

Living bomb can screw with your ignite which can result in a much smaller than intended combustion so watch for your crits and when ignite is refreshed. Takes practice and a good UI to know what's up. Might I suggest to the OP that he posts some screens of UI as well.

Props to the OP for asking for help, a lot of people don't bother.

http://www.elitistjerks.com is your friend.

This forum and the stickies above are your friend. Keep in mind though that a lot of models that weigh stats do not take into account our buggy ignite so mastery is overvalued a lot of the time. Unsure if this is still the case, but I tend to favor haste regardless as mana is becoming less an issue for me at this time.

Also, create an account -> create a guild -> download the world of logs client (small java app), run it if you want to do a live reporting session (you can also upload direct to the website logs you have taken). Click on start live reporting session if you're using the client. But not until you've /combatlog in game to generate your first log file (I assume you have not logged anything). Otherwise it will give you an error about there not being a combatlog file. Then go do your thing in raid and upload with client or just use the website at a later time.

Also, make some macros.

Simple macros work wonders.

Ie:

/use Mana gem
/cast Fireball

or
/use Mana Gem
/cast Pyroblast!

(situational macros)

You need a lot of buttons to min/max properly. I never really thought I'd need 16 buttons on my mouse but it turns out it helps a lot.

[Deleted]

Allright guys, thank you for all the information. I have taken alot of it into account and will post up some logs when I get some.

Thanks again!

[Deleted]

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-12aef6t1nbuhbwu8/
Log of valiona.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-12aef6t1nbuhbwu8/
some attempts on council.

[Eggimannd]

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-12aef6t1nbuhbwu8/
Log of valiona.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-12aef6t1nbuhbwu8/
some attempts on council.

11k on Valiona sounds a little bit low. Pretty sure I was around 14-15k last time I did it and I'm around the same gear level as you.

[Deleted]

Here is a log of last nights raid
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-mvzqdkygz4x146pn

[Max Rebo]

also, figuring out your crit will help a lot, if you dont have 25%+ self buffed (I.E. with molten armor on), then you should not be fire, you don't have the gear to support the spec fully.

There's nothing wrong with playing fire if you have low crit. Tier 3 Hot Streak works in conjunction with low crit. As your crit rises, T3 HS becomes less effective and T4 HS starts to provide more benefit.

[Ooby]

I think you're missing the point of hard casting pyroblast as your first spell on the pull. You're hoping for a crit to get a big ignite so you can slap LB on before a combustion. The point is that hopefully by the time you get that LB on that your trinkets will have procced and you can use combustion with a ton of additional spell power on you.

On the Jan 2nd V&T fight your first combustion looks like it was cast right as Battle Magic faded. It's hard to tell if you caught the end of it or not. If you did not, then you lost quite a bit of damage as you had Pyroblast, Ignite and LB all ticking on the boss while BM was running. It also might have been situational where you were waiting for a bigger ignite from Firebolt if the first Pyroblast you cast didn't crit. Only you know that one. You also let LB fall off the boss quite a bit. LB only has an 83.1% uptime on the boss when it should have between 95-99% uptime on the boss. Your second combustion was cast right before Battle Magic procced, and the Pyroblast dot was not ticking on the boss. Obviously you couldn't know it would proc right after you cast it, but Elitest Jerks have determined that it's better to wait to cast Combustion for big ignite and to line it up with trinket procs. If you'd have waitied 10 more seconds you'd have added the Pyroblast dot to Combustion and cast it with 1926 more spell power. 3rd and 4th Combustion cast also missed the Battle Magic proc but did have the Pyroblast, Ignite and LB dots compiled. I compared your damage log with a fire mage from my guild on the same fight but in 25 man. I only compared activity, not damage as that wouldn't be realistic, but your fight lasted 7min and 30sec. You casted 48 Fireballs, 104 Scorch, and 142 LB ticks. The fire mage in my guild on a fight that lasted a FULL minute less, at 6min and 23sec cast 46 Fireballs, 82 Scorch, and 125 ticks of LB. My math is not the best but it does seem like you need to be doing more. And spamming Scorch a bit more than is reasonable I think. In that additional minute you cast 2 more fireballs, 22 scorch's , and 17 tickets of LB.

I'm sure this sounds like massive nit picking, but if you want to min/max, this is what you have to do. Set up PowerAura's for your trinket proccs. Learn to double pot so that you can use two spell power potions durring the fight. Double potting is when you click a pot a couple seconds before you enter combat. Potion cool downs will not start until you're out of combat, so the idea is to click the pot 1-2 seconds before the fight starts, thus the 1min cooldown starts counting and you can then click the potion again while you're actually in combat, mid-fight. The Volcanic Potion gives 1200 sp for 25 seconds, so presuming it takes 5 seconds to click the pot, fight to start and you to finish casting your first spell, you have 20 additional seconds of +1200 sp to use to hopefully fish for a big ignite, trinket proc and combustion. It may not happen every time, or very often, but being prepared for it when they do all line up is what's required for big numbers. With a 1 min cooldown on the potion, you have plenty of wiggle room to time the second use of it for your second combustion.

I'd suggest making at the very least a Power Aura for Battle Magic and Crescendo of Suffering. Perhaps even one for Clear Casting, though I'm not sure if Clear Casting procs are used for Scorch, but it would suck to waste on on a Scorch when you can use it for a mana free cast of Fireball. Compare your logs to those of other firemages in 10 man raids and then compare armories. The idea that "Their gear is better than mine" should be the LAST thing on your list to consider.

One last trick which is a bit risky. Presuming you have your T10 4 piece set (if not use justice points to buy it again) ask for the tank to count down the pull. The countdown is handy for double potting as well. Make an equipment manager profile for your normal raiding gear, and then another one for your normal raiding gear but with the T10 4piece items in their respective places. Put these both on a bar in game with Mirror images in between them. When your tank says "5" hit the T10 4piece profile, immediately hit Mirror Images, and then your normal raiding gear profile right afterwords. Equipment manager profiles are not on GCD. This MUST be done while you're out of combat, if you get combat flagged with your T10 4piece on, you'll have to do the whole fight in that, and you might as well just stand back and watch. When done right though, the Quad Core buff which gives +18% additional damage across the board will stay on you once you switch back to your normal gear. Throw in the first of your double pots, sit and eat (should only require 2 seconds to get your mana back to full,) and you'll start the fight with +18% damage, and +1200 sp that will last a minimum of 20 seconds.

Dunno if any of this will help, or if you want to do this much to improve your damage, they're just a few tricks I've learned or figured out that have helped me. Logs are HUGELY important, and comparing your damage with people who have the record for damage on a certain boss will almost always show you something they're doing differently that you should be doing. It's very rare that the only thing you find is that they have better gear. They usually have better gear and play better too.

Good Luck

[Deleted]

uhm darksoul, are you sure you have the right armory? I have firelords robes etc... I think you have the wrong armory

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ofzor/advanced
is my armory

[DarkSoul]

For some reason I checked your armory a couple days apart and it was still showing pvp gear the second time I checked. Sorry about that. Same name, guild and server as the one I was seeing.

[Deleted]

For some reason I checked your armory a couple days apart and it was still showing pvp gear the second time I checked. Sorry about that. Same name, guild and server as the one I was seeing.

I must have logged out with my pvp gear on then.
But anyways, i still seem to be having problems according too the logs..

??