Unsatisfied with my damage output

Unsatisfied with my damage output

Post 31 Jul 2011 16:11

Avatar Fexx
 
Posts: 14
Hello everyone,

I have been unsatisfied with my DPS and Damage Done on Raid encounters ever since rerolling mage towards the end of Patch 4.1. I read a lot of posts on here and have seen quite a bunch of good arcane mage videos and I consider myself a pretty good player in world of warcraft generally, having roughly 5 years of experience.

Now I would not say my damage output is horrible, but being an arcane mage I guess I'm supposed to really top the charts most of the time. Unfortunately this has not been the case and while we're all 5 DDs (I'm raiding 10 man Firelands 7/7) pretty close together on the top with 20k+ depending on the fight, I still think I should be able to beat the hell out of an elemental shaman or a shadowpriest for example.

I'm currently using Rawr for optimization of my gear, using mostly default settings and optimizing with highest possible thouroughness for maximum DPS with Override Gem/Enchant/Reforge all ticked.

Anyways, I have no experience how to use or post logs, but our raidleader logs all of our raids and I am included in pretty much all of them. I hope with this link you can find what you're looking for (if you choose to help me that is):

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/9wer56ru75da7gw3/

This is a link of a recent firelands 10 man raid, killing 6/7 including Majordomo firstkill. I also recorded a 1,6gb video of our first ragnaros kill, which is uploaded on rapidshare. If anyone had the time to download that for further information and to give me even better advise on how to increase my damage output I would appreciate it a lot. Just PM me for a link I will check in regularly.

So this is the end of my very first post, I hope I did this correctly.

Thanks for your time.

Re: Unsatisfied with my damage output

Post 01 Aug 2011 08:31

User avatarGuromin
 
Posts: 190
Fexx,

I sent you a PM about linking me to that video, but I haven't gotten a response yet so I thought I would make a post. I can give you a some help without the video, but being able to see spell by spell what you cast and how you manage your mana will allow me to help you perfect your dps. I thought I would wait on responding until I was able to take a look at the video. If things have changed and the video isn't available or something that's fine, just let me know and I will start on a response from what I have to work with.

-Guromin

Re: Unsatisfied with my damage output

Post 01 Aug 2011 10:15

Avatar Fexx
 
Posts: 14
Oh I'm sorry I totally missed your PM. I will sent you a link to download that video right away.

Re: Unsatisfied with my damage output

Post 01 Aug 2011 23:39

User avatarGuromin
 
Posts: 190
I realize that I may be one of few people reading this who have seen his video. In that regard I will try to make sure that this isn't an inside conversation and keep my comments open to help others reading this as well as the author of this thread.

Fexx,

Your have two big problems. You move and do nothing. I started counting how many times you moved with Flame Orb off CD or Presence of Mind available to use and I lost track around 20 times. If you know undoubtedly that you will have to move within a reasonable amount of time save Flame Orb for movement because it's one of the strongest movement abilities Arcane Mages have. Additionally there were times outside of your burn phase where you could have easily use an Arcane Barrage while you were moving to add on a little more damage than just nothing.

This bring me to your next big issue, your use of the Burn Phase. Although I have no objections on your actual spell usage I will say there were times that you should really not have started your burn phase. When the boss (Ragnaros) was at 72% health you started your second burn phase with 13 seconds left on Evocation. The boss transitioned at 70% leaving you nothing to attack. Although your main buffs had fallen off (Arcane Power, Mana Gem) Evocation was not used and it sat there off CD for almost another 2 minutes before you used it. You really can't do this. The big problem was that you needed to start that burn phase a little closer to 30 seconds before Evocation comes off CD. If you had done this you would have been able to bring your mana down low enough to use evocation before the boss transitioned. This wasn't the one time you did this though. At the second transition on Ragnaros you used your CD's right before that and sure enough evocation was off CD so long that you went through 2 sets of 2 minute CD's before you used evocation again.

There's 2 things that make doing this bad. You get less burn phases. You could have squeezed in 2 more burn phases if you had used those evocations sooner. During the time Evocation was off CD you sat at half mana gaining low benefit from your mastery. Staying at 50% mana for 4 minutes of the fight is partially what killed your damage output.

Along with these bigger issues were a few smaller ones. During the second burn phase you Evocated to over 140k mana. After gaining 4 stacks of arcane blast you used Arcane Missiles and then lost all 30k of that overflow mana. It's bad enough to have overflow mana to begin with but to clear your stacks and loose 30k mana you could have used is painful to watch. Try to better plan out when to use your burn phases. There are some cases where it's better to wait a little bit before using you CD's and other times where you might want to push it a little early.

Arcane Mage AoE is strong but it takes 4 stacks of arcane blast to do significant amounts of damage. Any time you know heavy AoE is coming you should have 4 stacks of Arcane Blast up regardless of what your mana is at. The difference between having no stacks and 4 stacks is astronomical. It can be like an additional mini burn phase. Make sure to watch that better when the seeds are out on ragnaros. It's really important to have 4 stacks at all times. If the AoE portion is short I often use PoM to quickly refresh my stacks of Arcane Blast so I can keep spamming my Arcane Explosion.

You didn't use a potion before the pull! I saw you get the achievement at the end and I know it was a progression fight for you. You really should use a Volcanic Potion before the pull to increase your burst. It's especially important as an arcane mage that thrives on burst damage to sustain their position on the meters.

I saw a couple of really good things in the video. Your ice block save was great. Well coordinated, quickly executed and well planned. If more mages out there had that kind of reaction speed they might stop calling us Glass Cannons. Also, you have an amazing connections speed. I wish my internet was as fast as yours is right now (had my cable guy come out 3 times and they can't seem to fix it. Warning to anyone with a choice of internet provider; don't pick Time Warner Cable unless you like unsatisfactory latency.)

Overall I think you have a really good handle on playing an arcane mage and it's fine adjustments from this point on. Keep up the good work and I wish you the best of luck with your progression!

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

-Guromin

Re: Unsatisfied with my damage output

Post 02 Aug 2011 01:53

Avatar Fexx
 
Posts: 14
Hello Guromin,

thank you very very much for putting the time and effort into helping me by downloading this rather big video and studying it for mistakes I've done. Your post really opened my eyes on how much there's still to improve on and hopefully I will perform a lot better next time.

From what I can tell the my main problem at the ragnaros enounter were poorly timed burn phases and use of cooldowns due to phase transitions, movement or AoE usage. Today my guild cleared 6/7 normal mode and I was able to record all of those kills. Now I know it is a lot too much to ask you to download and watch all those as well to give me even more tips on specific enounters or situations other than Ragnaros but I would like to ask if there was any chance you would find the time to view my baleroc kill for example, since it is basically just simple single target maximum dps fight without too much movement/phases/whatever making it pretty much the opposite of the ragnaros encounter. I think this would help me a great deal if you could point out some errors I made in that "tank n spank" fight.

Really appreciate your work, thank you so far!

Looking forward to hearing from you! :)

Re: Unsatisfied with my damage output

Post 02 Aug 2011 03:47

User avatarGuromin
 
Posts: 190
Fexx,

Send me the link!

Is there any way you could upload these videos to a website like Youtube so I can watch it without the hour long download? This would allow others to watch it as well.

-Guromin

Re: Unsatisfied with my damage output

Post 02 Aug 2011 12:30

Avatar Fexx
 
Posts: 14
Hello Guromin,

I'm uploading the video on youtube right now, if the quality is good enough I will send you a link through PM as soon as it's done.

Re: Unsatisfied with my damage output

Post 03 Aug 2011 09:14

User avatarGuromin
 
Posts: 190
Fexx,

My comments on the Baleroc video you linked are virtually the same.

You didn't pre-pot.
Evocations bring you too close to full mana sometimes and you cap out.
Movement still needs some work.
Using Arcane missiles when your mana is at 99% and then you essentially loose mana to the cap.

New comments:

At the start when you pulled and got to 4 stacks of Arcane Blast you had lots of proc buffs like Power Torrent and you waited to pop your CD's. If you use them as you get 4 stacks you will get more benefit from intellect procs in the burn phase.

While taking the Shard you didn't bother to help your healers out by using a shield. It drains your mana a little, but it gives you an amazing spell power bonus as compensations. Not all of being a good player is just damage output. Although if it's a farm status fight that you easily breeze through it's not so big a deal, but I thought I would put this out there.


-Guromin

Re: Unsatisfied with my damage output

Post 03 Aug 2011 12:44

Avatar Fexx
 
Posts: 14
Hello Guromin,

thank you very much for watching yet another video of mine. Some of the errors you spotted in my play are pretty clear to me how to correct them, however, I am not sure what you mean or what I could do about the two problems you pointed out on the baleroc fight.

Movement still needs some work.


At this fight there's regular movement to the shard and away, I tried to blink most of the distance for minimum running time and I tried to already position myself near the shard for easier switches. How can I optimize my travelling here to maximize my damage output? Or did you just mean to point out I should have casted more instants while moving (just like ragnaros)?

Evocations bring you too close to full mana sometimes and you cap out.


I'm trying to use my evocations at 35% of my mana which should generally be fine. I think my main problem here is how to use evocation if I happen to have intellect proccs up for a few seconds. I mean, depending on the duration of those intellect buffs I could either continue to spam AB and be left with zero mana when those buffs end, I could use another 1-2 ABs until I reach 35% of my base mana (without proccs) then start my conservation phase until proccs run off and I can evocate to 100% or I could spam AB until the last 3-4 seconds of my intellect buffs and then evocate from almost no mana to roughly 100k with higher ticks due to the intellect proccs.

It's pretty hard to describe this situation to you on paper, but I hope you understand my problem here. I'd be thankful if you could explain quickly what exactly you meant I should do about the above quoted errors.

Thanks and greetings!

Re: Unsatisfied with my damage output

Post 03 Aug 2011 18:25

User avatarGuromin
 
Posts: 190
Fexx,

I won't go through and list out every time in the video that I saw these things as an issue but here is an example for each


2:12 Moved with GCD up and didn't use anything while at 0 stacks of Arcane Blast.
3:09 You lost a tick of evocation from casting Arcane Blast too soon.
5:21 Evocation makes you cap out on mana.

Try to use your evocation at closer to 30% mana because Evocation actually restores 65% of your mana. Evocating at 35% doesn't leave any buffer room (60% from the spell and 5% from a Mage Armor tick). Using Evocation while intellect procs are up is okay, but just know that your mana will go up much higher. It's better to be a tad lower for that because you will both benefit from some extra Arcane Blast's while your intellect procs are up and you will Evocate to closer to your actual full mana percentage.

In any given fight you have to know there will be movement. I would look over your video and try to see for yourself when you could have done something a little different :)

-Guromin
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