4.3 Brief Fire Guide

[Pocketonion]

Thanks Kerbaroth for the answer, I did get a few new pieces and saw my DPS go up by a pretty hefty amount both in game and via simcraft.

[Snakpack]

First of all I just wanted to say that your guide has been a huge help to me so far. I also am pretty sure your getting tired of everyone asking you to look at their logs and gear but I'm going to do it and ask for some input =p. Currently my raid comp is: Holy Priest, Disc Priest, Resto Sham, Lock, blood dk, druid tank, arms war, rogue (Sub/combat depending on fight), Hunter, and myself. Last week we finally got H Ultrax down but my dps was rather pathetic..ok really pathetic. I know that with my gear I should be doing a ton more dps than the avg 28k I was pulling. I do know that one of my problems is my LB uptime which i'm currently working on. Here is the log of the last attempt we did before I said heck with it and went arcane for the better DPS.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-6 ... 803&e=3094

Also here is my armory
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/u ... k/advanced

At the time of this post I am a bit over hit cap (by 1%) but i'm playing with reforges trying to get right at hit cap and still maintain the 1505 haste (since I have 4T13) as well as get more crit. Any thoughts would be greatly appriciated. Currently my "rotation" is pre-pot>pyroblast as tank pulls>LB>FB until i need to refresh LB or critical mass.

[Guromin]

Pocketonion,

You have an interesting name. Not much catches me off guard these days, but that did. I', dieing to know... what is a "pocket onion"?

I'm glad my guide was helpful for you and I will gladly assist you. I would agree with everything that Kerbaroth stated. Your damage is low because your gear is low. Fire does scale well with gear and as you acquire better gear you will notice an immediate improvement. I also want to note that you likely have many low item-level peieces such as trinkets that will hold you back tremendously from getting those ignite for combustion. This may just be a terrible guess, but considering you just hit 85 you likely chose not to enchant all of your items yet because you don't want to waste the money. I can't argue there. Why waste gold, but just know that every bit helps (especially power torrent) when determining dps.

Snackpack,

I also am pretty sure your getting tired of everyone asking you to look at their logs and gear but I'm going to do it and ask for some input =p

That's why I get payed the big bucks! :)


You went Arcane for the kill...

Your living bomb up time isn't terrible. Around 85% is where it should be. There is no way to keep it at 100% (especially on Ultraxion) with all of the realm shifting and the fact that refreshing living bomb early is a dps loss. It is certainly always worthwhile to improve in that area because more up time is more damage. On that attempt you asked me to look at you could have put Living Bomb up sooner on the boss.

Do not cast Frost-Fire bolt. Not sure if it was a misclick, but it's a dps loss.

There is a warlock in your raid and he is keeping up Critical Mass so don't worry about casting scorch to keep it up. Better to use Fireballs.

The number of times Fireball crit was a tad low which I'm not sure if it was RNG or gear, but certainly something to note and keep track of. Your new stacking intellect trinket may help with this and your damage overall. Hopefully you notice a difference next week.

Hope this helps,

-Guromin

[Snakpack]

We're actually raiding again tomorrow night, going for H yor'saj this week. I was wondering if it would be beneficial to drop a bit of haste for crit. I'm at 1526 now but my crit is only at 24% and I've noticed that I really don't crit all that much. It takes forever to get a HS proc (except on 1st platform of madness where i can burst 92k) I've been running simc and playing with reforges and spent the last hour on the dummy trying out your ignite stacking. But i'm lacking in crit so much I seem to not be able to get another crit before ignite falls off.

[WishIWasAWarlock]

24.32% crit isn't really that bad. 29 with armor, 34 with fireball/pyro glyph, 39 with critical mass.

Dropping crit for haste would be a DPS loss. There is a lot of math backing up the 1505 haste tier, i highly suggest you stick to it.

Guromin already went over your logs, so i'll skip that for now unless you have a more specific question.

[Fizziks]

Thanks so much for the quick answer, I had just enough time to look it over before our raid time :)

I had no idea my Critical Mass uptime was so bad. I always apply it on new mobs and the boss, but I never think about it after. We actually just got a warlock in our raid this week, so that shouldn't be a problem anymore, but it is something I'm gonna be conscientious about regardless.

I'm gonna spend some time in LFR, practicing and maybe some time in dungeons as well. Anything to get more practice building better ignites.

[Ukey]

Hello there. I have finally worked up the time to post on the forum. I would say I check it at least once a day. After reading over the guide (which is beyond amazing) and checking others post. I still feel like I'm behind the curve when it comes to my dps.

My armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/s ... ABy/simple

I'm currently 4 weeks from my staff.

My most resent WOL: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-n ... etails/39/

Sorry its not a more specific fight.

My problem is that it seems on certain fights I feel I'm preforming at a good standard to where as other fights I'm just plain lacking. Warlord and Ultrax I know I should be doing way more dps. Rawr has me at 42k dps on Ultrax yet I can't seem to pull it off. One of my biggest concerns is i feel i hold onto combust to long...I feel if im not combusting over 20k ignites its just wasted, thus causing me to not use it sometimes until a min into the fight. Also in the guide it states... hit cap > haste-1505 with 4 set > crit > haste > mastery......yet with the wowreforge.com when i put in the values for what they need to be i get haste close to the cap 14 mastery and 25.6 crit yet my dps is lower than when i reforge all my mastery and have higher haste. Maybe someone can shine some light on that. I know mastery is our lowest ranked stat so why even get it? I have been working on my LB up time and trying not to combust when mirrors or orb is up. So any help, tips, suggestions, Ukey gtfo anything ha would be a GREAT HELP.

[Pocketonion]

@ Guromin

An onion you put in your pocket of course. I 'spose it is open to interpretation so you can make it whatever you want to be, but I am trending with the pocket___ deal so yeah...

Edit: Oh and thank you for the information, I haven't enchanted things since it's more an alt and I don't want to replace them almost immediatly.

[Snakpack]

Ok so, tonight we raided again and got some rather crap attempts at H yor'saj and hagara. I did notice though that since the reforges to the 1505 haste I seem to have taken about an 8k dps loss. I have more crit and i'm critting more often but the only thing i can attribute the dps loss too is the loss of haste. Here are the logs from tonight and any input would be greatly beneficial.

http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-dnneq ... details/9/

and again here is my armory

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/u ... k/advanced

[WishIWasAWarlock]

Howdy Ukey!

Looked over your log you linked and there is a few things you could brush up on.

1.) Looks like you you didn't have Molten Armor on for some fights. That 5% crit loss is pretty substantial. Always double check your buffs before a pull.

2.) Your combustion timing could be better. it appear you have a the insignia of the corrupted mind. ALWAYS aim to get your combustion off during that proc if possible. The haste really helps combustion and allows you to take smaller combustions and still get the results of a larger one.

3.) You're hanging onto your hot streak procs for way too long (sometimes more then 10 seconds). Make sure you use them right away. If you have a hot steak proc and you gain second proc before you use the first one, it's wasted.

4.) Use your flame orb on CD, it looks like you're not using your flame orb very frequently.

5.) On your normal madness kill, you use dragons breath quite a bit. Dragons breath should never be used as a DPS spell, use it as an interupt. You have stronger AoE/On the move spells that you could be using.

6.) you're not impact spreading your dots very often. Since you're in a 25 man setting. ALWAYS impact spread when you can. Black adds on Yorsahj, Ice tombs on Hagara, clumped up mobs on warmaster, Bolt/arm/terror/tenticles on madness are all great points to do this. This will make your DPS go up more then anything else.

7.) You're clipping your living bomb fairly often. 1/3 of the damage comes from the explosion so make sure you always let it expire before you apply a new one.

Your spec and forging looks pretty decent. You have a lot crit and you're reforging out of haste into crit where you can which is good, only thing i would suggest is perhaps changing you glove enchant to 65 mastery. Some mages like to use the Lavawalker enchant. I don't (because we have blink) but if it caters to your play style, consider it.


I'm also unsure what you're asking in regards to your reforging. Are you saying a higher haste build is giving you better DPS? Haste builds give you higher out of the gate DPS since you'll be getting an extra tick on your first combustion and more casts with stacked CD's, but over the course of a dragon soul boss, crit will pull out ahead.

there are situations where haste > Mastery and Mastery > Haste. You'll have to tailor it for each fight. Generally mastery is only better on AoE fights such as Heroic Yorsahj and Warmaster.