Question!!

Question!!

Post 29 Jul 2011 05:57

Avatar Faro
 
Posts: 3
I had a question about doing stuff during fights. I feel like as a player in the guild I'm doing most of the jobs soloing the adds on al'akir and doing traps and kiting the meteors on Rag. soloing rageface for the most part, ext. Is this something that I should be more focused on and at what cost of dps. we are a 10 man guild so I know someone has to do it. Our comp. is feral and dk tank, rogue reg dk, mage, sp, boomkin holy pally resto shaman and a holy/disc priest. I avg about 22k or so depending on the fight and what i am doing. Also this is my armory link http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/m ... B3h/simple . If you would be so kind as to look it over and check out my reforging and stats and see if i can change anything that may be helpful. I have my 4 set t11 still but only one piece is heroic so I was not sure if that is better to use still or if the t12 was. Also when using mana gem do you pop that when you use your arcane power or do you save it to boost you mana back up for another round of burst. Last question is when you are bursting how low do you let your mana get?

Re: Question!!

Post 29 Jul 2011 06:56

Avatar MyCelarAD
 
Posts: 57
kiting the meteors on Rag? Doesen't that apply to everyone? :P

Re: Question!!

Post 29 Jul 2011 08:22

User avatarGuromin
 
Posts: 190
Faro,

Whatever it takes to kill the boss. I have a frost spec for Heroic Shannox and all I do the entire fight is sit on that dog ready with Deep Freeze for when he uses FaceRage and then I kite him into a Crystal Prison Trap. My dps record on that fight was 11k dps which was less than our tanks. Shannox isn't about dps at all. It's about resetting the stacks on the dogs and for us having me do that so others could sit and damage the boss hurt my dps but was made up for by others damage. Damage is not the only important thing in a fight and I will tell you I feel way cooler doing that 11k dps knowing every else in the raid is thankful that I do then when I am beating everyone on the meters by miles. In a 10m raid I can see where this is a little more difficult because you have less dps and loosing one has a bigger impact on the entire raid, either way you do whatever it takes to get a kill.

Soloing the adds on Al'akir isn't a bad idea. It allows you to control when they die a lot easier on 10m. When I do Al'Akir in 10m it almost always ends up being my job to solo the adds. If it isn't me than we still have someone else soloing them down. As for Ragnaros, there aren't a lot of classes that can do the traps and in a 10m Mages are really the best candidates to do it because we can potentially take one every 15 seconds. I know there's other classes that can do it, but think of it like an honor that you got chosen to do a special job.

Now, lets look at the flip side of this coin. If you simply can't solo adds on your own or kite meteors and no one is giving you any help that's an issue with them. They should really be willing to help when called for. Now I do want to mention this because this is the paragon forums. Part of what makes Paragon players so good is not that they play so many hours a week or have so much gear, but that they are aware of their surrounding and take action. They do what is needed to kill the boss. Don't get me wrong, they do spend a lot of time raiding and have some really amazing gear, but that's not why they are 1st. There are plently of other guilds with people that were equally as geared going into Firelands and play almost as much. Paragon takes the gold, because they know what it takes to get the boss down.

Now as far as looking over your armory. I will do pretty much the same thing I just did for Firebug. I'll post about Ask Mr Robot and how amazing that site is. I'll tell you there's a link to it at the bottom of this post. I'll tell you something cheesy like 'give a man a correctly geared item set and give it good dps for a raid. Teach a man to gear and give him good dps a lifetime'. That sounded better in my head, but anyways there's a cool website called http://www.AskMrRobot.com that you can upload your character to and it will tell you the best way to Gem, Reforge, and Enchant. I've found it to be exceptionally accurate for Arcane Mage dps, but you need to adjust it for Fire Mage dps. It works based on linear stat weights which you can calculate on your own using SimulationCraft (link in the references) or you can use the default which is generally pretty accurate. The default is:

Intellect > Hit Rating > Spell Power > Haste (to soft haste cap) > Mastery > Critical Strike > Haste (past the soft haste cap)

Your main goal in gearing an arcane mage is essentially to get as much intellect as possible. Intellect is 3.6 times better than Mastery and Critical Strike and even far surpasses the value of Hit Rating. Getting more intellect increases the damage our spells deal, our mana pool, and the amount of mana we regenerate from Mage Armor. That part is generally pretty easy, because you can't reforge to intellect. The other stats make it a little trickier, so like I said before you should check out Ask Mr Robot to calculate that for you. There is one other program that I use to optimize my gear and thats Rawr. Ironically I posted just a few days ago about how much I hate rawr and it just over-values haste. I went back to verify it was still horrendously out of date and was happily surprised to find it up to date. Before I go into talking about rawr I want to mention that Ask Mr Robot is a lot simpler than rawr especially if you don't have a lot of time to figure out how to use it. If you are interested (or someone else reading this post) I will explain what makes rawr better than Ask Mr Robot.

Ask Mr Robot calculates your optimal gear configuration using linear values. They don't change and they don't scale. Rawr calculates the best way to gear your character by using a dynamic method of calculating your stat weights at each gear level. It also has the ability for you to select all of the gear you have currently obtained (multiple items for the same slot) and tell you what the best way to gear it. Ask Mr Robot cannot do this. As someone who will greed on any gear that would otherwise be disenchanted so that I have flexibility to switch my set bonus's around I find this feature to be incredibly helpful. It was a good day when I realized they updated Rawr. If your wondering, I take the gear and spend tons of gold to enchant it and donate a Maelstrom to the guild bank so it's never missed.

Learning a new program can be difficult so in order to help you out I am going to calculate the best way for you to gem, enchant and reforge and I will post it as an image bellow. If you use Ask Mr Robot correctly you should come up with the same result. Treat this like an answer key, if you just copy the answers on your character you haven't really learned anything and you would be reliant on someone else to keep optimizing your gear, so please treat it like an answer key.


This quote is from myself. I posted it about 30 minutes ago on another person's question. It's completly relevent to you so I thought I would post it here also. I didn't want to look cheap and pretend like I typed it specifically for you like the rest of this so I quoted it. here is your key (not the same as his):

Image

Things not highlighted in green were correct on your armory page. Things in green have been changed to increase your damage. In the bottom right you will see the stat weights I listed earlier. You have the ability to change them with the editor should you choose to or need to. If you get a different result check to make sure that the gear from the image above is identical to the gear you are loading and optimizing.

Spec


Your arcane spec looks a little bit weird. I don't really understand why you put 2 points in Fire Power. It's really not going to help your damage in arcane very much. It's much better to put points into Incanter's Absorption. It will increase your survival and give you a dps gain at the same time. Defiantly worth getting. Now you also put 2 points into making Arcane Blast slow your targer, but just think about how few fights you actually need to slow things. It's so situation that your better off putting the points into Prismatic Cloak so you take less damage and can go invisible to drop threat more quickly.

Your fire spec is looking a little chaotic too. You only want 2 points in helping your mana. So either pick Arcane Concentration or Improved Scorch. There's no wrong answer. Piercing Ice (in the frost tree) gives you crit rating!!! You really don't want to miss out on putting 3 points into that. The third point should come from that point in Improved Blink.

All glyps in all specs look good.

Also when using mana gem do you pop that when you use your arcane power or do you save it to boost you mana back up for another round of burst.


Don't pop your CD's until you already have 4 stacks of Arcane Blast. It will help to use a little mana for the mana gem and additionally increase the amount of damage you do during your burn phase and while Arcane Power is up. Hopefully you will get an intellect proc while your using your CoolDowns so that your mana gem isn't wasted, but if you don't then spam arcane blast at 4 stacks until you can benefit from the full amount of mana gain. Then use the mana gem in addition to all your other CD's.

Last question is when you are bursting how low do you let your mana get?


I let my mana get low enough that when I use Evocation I will be about 10k mana lower than my maximum mana. Since Evocation returns 60% of our mana you want to use it when your mana is about 30%. Keep in mind that when you use Evocation you will get 65% of your mana because there will be a tick of Mage Armor returning 5% also. Going to 30% or a little lower gives you a buffer so you don't go all the way to full mana. Defiantly don't want to go completely out of mana because your spells do very little damage without any mastery benefit.

Resources:

Great place to start: http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t118084-cataclysm_arcane_mage_compendium/
Reforging and Gemming: http://www.askmrrobot.com
Why t12 set bonus is so bad: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/927789-Tier-12-Mage-4-Piece-Problem-(Arcane)?p=12028655#post12028655
Simulation Craft: http://code.google.com/p/simulationcraft/
Rwar: http://rawr.codeplex.com/

If you have any questions feel free to send me a private message or make a post on this thread.

-Guromin

P.S. Most fun question to respond to. Fresh, new and I got to be philosophical.

Re: Question!!

Post 29 Jul 2011 21:54

Avatar Faro
 
Posts: 3
Again thanks for the help but i now have a few more questions. lol. I'm sitting at 16.69 hit ratting now is it ok for me to be below that? Also I have (Wings of flame) but that puts my hit down to 16.00. Should I be going all the way for hit cap. And would putting my 4set on t11 be better than using the few fireland upgrades that i have in those slots!

Also my fire spec is for soloing a few trash mobs to make money in firelands scorpions and turtles LOL. :) I change it for boss fights before raid days.

Last again it is true have the jobs can be fun and if it gets the content down! lol Again thanks for the help!

Re: Question!!

Post 30 Jul 2011 09:03

User avatarGuromin
 
Posts: 190
Faro,

Ideally you should be at hit cap, but if that isn't possible like in t11 Heroic Best in Slot gear, then don't worry about it. Your goal isn't hit cap, it's maximum damage. If you find that the stat's on Wings of Flame outweigh the loss of hit rating then use it. If it's only a minor upgrade in intellect and other stats then stick with more hit.

You should be using your t11 4 set for the best damage. I wasn't able to check any of this for sure because you are logged out in your PvP gear, but chances are it will should be correct. I don't specifically remember what you had on before.

If this doesn't fully answer your question let me know.

-Guromin

Re: Question!!

Post 31 Jul 2011 01:43

Avatar Faro
 
Posts: 3
Yea with my old 4set on with some of the new upgrades that I've gotten i will go down to 15.89 hit. I lost 200+ spell power and 1% mastery or so. that being said I will more than likely keep the t12 on for now at least. Thank you so much for the help it has been very informative.
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