Need help with my arcane dps (WoL+Kill video)

Need help with my arcane dps (WoL+Kill video)

Post 27 Jul 2011 16:19

Avatar Manarama
 
Posts: 3
Hey. so I am really trying to improve my dps. I did about 21k dps on shannox. Which i feel, for my gear, is pretty low. I would like any input on where I can improve my dps in.

My armory -
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/n ... ama/simple

Log file -
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/3m0p ... 931&e=3298

Link to Shannox kill video -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS8LGJNNU0o (You should just turn your volume off, you can't really here vent and its just me breathing into my mic :P)

Any input would be helpful.


The reason why i think 21k is low for me, is because on the new boss of BH i did 23.5k dps. I know there is so AOE, but ussually our spriest and hunter did must of the aoe, and when i used arcane explosion i did not have ABx4 debuff, so it really didn't buff my dps at all.

Re: Need help with my arcane dps (WoL+Kill video)

Post 27 Jul 2011 18:04

Avatar Tyllis
 
Posts: 2
I haven't had a chance to watch the video, but the log shows that you used Evocation prior to your third burn phase, which was significantly delayed. If you had been able to perform your third burn phase on time (which shouldn't be a problem in this encounter), you could have ended the fight with a fourth mini-burn after the evocation.

The only obvious issue with your gear is the lack of the T11 4-set bonus. It's so strong that it isn't worth giving up even for the T12 2-piece and increased stats. Other than that, your weapon is holding you back a ton, but not much to do there except hope for the drops.

Incidentally, the gap between your Shannox dps and your BH dps is well within reason. A typical BH fight will have an Arcane mage spending a very low percentage of their time in the maintenance phase.

Re: Need help with my arcane dps (WoL+Kill video)

Post 27 Jul 2011 19:17

Avatar Manarama
 
Posts: 3
Tyllis wrote:I haven't had a chance to watch the video, but the log shows that you used Evocation prior to your third burn phase, which was significantly delayed. If you had been able to perform your third burn phase on time (which shouldn't be a problem in this encounter), you could have ended the fight with a fourth mini-burn after the evocation.

The only obvious issue with your gear is the lack of the T11 4-set bonus. It's so strong that it isn't worth giving up even for the T12 2-piece and increased stats. Other than that, your weapon is holding you back a ton, but not much to do there except hope for the drops.

Incidentally, the gap between your Shannox dps and your BH dps is well within reason. A typical BH fight will have an Arcane mage spending a very low percentage of their time in the maintenance phase.



Ok, I will try and get my evocations better so i can get a 3rd mini-burn phase.

I just picked up my t12 2p earlier today. During the log i had t11 4p. I changed to the t12 2p because Simcraft put me a full 800 dps ahead of my t11 4p dps.

Re: Need help with my arcane dps (WoL+Kill video)

Post 27 Jul 2011 19:44

Avatar Tyllis
 
Posts: 2
My apologies. With your gear sacrificing the 4-piece does sim to a DPS increase. I should know better than to make such assumptions with Arcane Mages, because the T11 4-set scales so well with gear it's easy to forget that it's not nearly as good without SoW and piles of Intellect.

Re: Need help with my arcane dps (WoL+Kill video)

Post 27 Jul 2011 19:47

Avatar Manarama
 
Posts: 3
It's alright :P. I thought the same thing.. until my friend told me to try it out, and sure enough, it simmed to a dps increase.

Re: Need help with my arcane dps (WoL+Kill video)

Post 27 Jul 2011 23:06

User avatarGuromin
 
Posts: 190
Manarama,

Intro
I first want to mention that I agree with everything Tyllis said. You should have t11 4 set and your weapon could be a lot better. Beth'tilac and Lord Rhyolith both drop a weapon usable for a mage. Should you get so far as Ragnaros, he also drops a weapon that is Best in Slot for t12 Normal.

Valor Points and Set Bonus
Don't get upset at this or anything, but the valor points you've been spending on t12 set items should have gone to your Ring and Neck because you won't replace your t11 4 set until you get some heroic tier items. Here is a link to why the t12 mage 4 set is so bad. http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/927789-Tier-12-Mage-4-Piece-Problem-(Arcane)?p=12028655#post12028655
I'm going to assume that your chest isn't enchanted or reforged yet, because you just got it. If it's not too late for you to get your valors back, you should return it for the valor Ring. Getting the Valor ring will help your hit ranting a lot and you need that help because your hit rating is only ~15%.

Reforging
Your reforging is litterally perfect except for your chest which I will assume you just haven't reforged yet.

Gear

Theralions Mirror is a great trinket for arcane, but Soul Castek it really terrible. I strongly recommend either getting Darkmoon Card: Volcano or Variable Pulse Lightning Conductor. Already mentioned that you should get the t11 set bonus instead of t12.

Enchanting

Your boots should have +35 Mastery and Run Speed on them. 8% run speed will decrease the time it takes to get places, which as arcane is especially good, because the less time you spend moving the better. Also your gloves have +50 mastery and there is a +65 mastery version available. Pretty self explanatory there.

Interface

First thing I want to discuss is your user interface. I'm not looking for pretty and I wouldn't criticize for it, but there's several things you interface is really lacking. You don't have anything that shows an actual number for how long exactly until a spell comes off CD. It may seem like you don't need it, but when i say things like start your burn phase about 30 seconds before evocation comes off CD it's a little hard to know immediately. You could certainly argue that when 3/4 of the bar is highlighted you know there's 30 seconds left, but when your in a fight or in combat you want to take your eyes off your bars and be watching whats going on around you. The more quickly you can intemperate information the better.

Your interface has no way of at all of telling you exactly how much mana you have. You should be able to look and know you have 80k mana or 93% mana in a glance. The blue mana bar by your character pane is nice, but it's misleading. Whenever you get an intellect proc (like Power Torrent or a trinket) your max mana increases, but your current mana does not. This will make it look like you have less mana than you actually have. Problematically, you might adjust your rotation to bring your mana back up and not realize your actually getting overflow. Overflow is when your current mana is greater then your normal mana (buffed, without procs). When those procs fall off you end up loosing that mana. In arcane mana is dps and you can't afford to loose either.

I use Mage Mana Bar to mana my mana along with Pitbull raid and party frames for my character pane. There are hundreds of addons that can do this for you so find one you like. You don't necessarily have to use the same addons I use.

Your enemy target frame doesn't how health percentages. Seems like something you can live without, but when when your raid leader says "dps stop at 22%!" or "bloodlust at 30%" you would need someone to call it out for you. It's important to be self sufficient and not need someone to call it out. You should never need to rely on someone calling something like that out. Again, there's a lot of addons that will do this for you, just find one you like. If you end up going with one of the addons I use and have a question about customizing it feel free to ask me in a post or private message. I would be happy to help.

Key Bindings

I noticed several times during the fight you were clicking on abilities: Time Warp, Evocation, Mana Gem, Cooldown macro, and several others. Like I mentioned earlier, it's very very important that you minimize the time you spend looking at your bars and maximize the time you spend being aware of your surroundings. Thats not the only issue with clicking on spells though. If you have to turn while your clicking on an ability the only way to do it is by keyboard turning. Keyboard turning is bad because when you can't control how quickly you turn. This all leads back to keybind your buttons so you don't have to click on them!

Here are some ideas on buttons you can key bind abilities to:

  • R
  • T
  • X
  • F
  • Shift-1
  • Shift-2
  • Shift-3
  • Shift-4
  • Shift-W
  • Shift-Q
  • Shift-E
  • Shift-S
  • Shift-D
  • Shift-A
  • Shift-R
  • Button 3(Mouse Wheel Button)
  • Button 4(If your mouse has one)
  • Button 5(if your mouse has one)
I personally use the Razor Naga (a 17 button mouse) so most of my key binds are on that, but what I mentioned above should be enough for all the abilities you use in combat. There could definatly be more that others use and I missed in the list, but hopefully you get the idea. (There's probably a few I use that I didn't put on there too)

Last big thing about your interface is that your not really making effective use of Power Auras. I see that you have the addon, but there's several things you can do with it that your not. I use it to track my buffs and debuffs; things like stacks of Arcane Blast so you don't have to keep looking at it and how long before you can blink or go invisible again.


Those are my major comments about your interface, now here are some more minor ones. The right side of your screen has some information you really don't need. I'm guessing you don't need to know where to go for quests while fighting Shannox. This might just be something I personally like, but your raid frames don't show class colors! I know I said I wouldn't go into the aesthetics or pretty-ness of your UI, but your raid frames don't show class colors. Blizzard has some cool options in the interface window for customizing their raid frames. You really don't have to, but it's something you should check out if you get extra time.

Execution

Overall I think you play arcane pretty well. There's few times in the video that you were moving and not casting a spell, but on this fight when your responsible for FaceRage, I think it's easily forgivable. That being said, your using Presence of Mind right when it comes off CD instead of when your moving. Arcane Blasts cast time is reduced to nothing so you can move and use it, but if you use it while standing still it still has a GCD on it. You can't do anything for a full 1 second which means that a 1.2 second cast really only gets cut down to 1 second. Not much gain compared to when your moving and would otherwise be doing nothing or breaking your stacks. Having it key bound will help you to use it and move. Just a tip on key binding it: I key bind it to Shift-3 because Arcane Blast is 3 on my key board. Doing this allows for me to easily use the spell and keep casting. (I also have it macro'd to use the spell and cast arcane blast)

Just to show you what your loosing from movement time. If you look at your logs, check out Activity Time. Specifically your activity time was only 346 seconds; 20 seconds lower than GutterHussy, who had the highest activity time. You lost 20 seconds of damage in the fight from not doing anything while moving (and possibly a little bit of latency, but that hurts everyone a tad). Also, another bit of time you could be casting is lost with mouse clicking. Takes more time to move a mouse than to press a key.

You didn't pre-pot!!!! Pre-potting is when you use a Volcanic Potion a second before the pull so it goes on CD and you keep the buff in combat. It allows you to use the potions effect twice instead of just once. If you were worried about pulling threat on that fight, just use your mirror images. Mirror Images prevent you from being able to pull threat even if your threat is above the tanks.

Lastly, your BH dps should be way higher, because in that fight there is almost no movement and heavy bursty aoe. Arcane mages AoE is pretty strong. I generally do about 33k on him, which is significantly higher than my damage on other bosses like Shannox. If you ever stalk my shannox logs, I play Frost on it and cover FaceRage during the fight so my damage is pretty bad. Gotta keep main nuke abilities off CD and ready. By bad dps, I mean my record was like 12k, but dps isn't that important in that fight and it free's up a lot of other people to attack the boss. This is one instance where my doing the job right is just a lot more important than doing good damage.


Again, if you have questions make a post or send me a private message!

Best of Luck,

-Guromin


Re: Need help with my arcane dps (WoL+Kill video)

Post 28 Jul 2011 16:57

Avatar Baltha
 
Posts: 100
Perhaps we should promote Guromin to mage-forum administrator. Keep up the good work, so we can continue slacking! :D

Re: Need help with my arcane dps (WoL+Kill video)

Post 29 Jul 2011 08:39

User avatarGuromin
 
Posts: 190
Baltha,

It's really is an honor to hear you say that. I've been a Paragon supporter for along time and recently I decided to join the community and help out. I know you guys are really busy with interviews, raids and life. I'm happy to help ease the stress in any way I can.

Enjoy your time to slack and relax,

-Guromin
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