[Fire] Why is my DPS so Bad?

[Victel]

Mod Edit: Moved to Q&A/Help

I keep getting kicked from raids because my DPS is said to be below 300k. I have some questions.

I feel like I'm doing everything I need to do, I eat my food, take my potions and everything I need to before fights. I have all my gear gemmed for crit and I've prioritized my gear for crit. I'm specced perfectly fine according to the expert guides and as other top mages. My gear is enchanted properly, I am doing as the guides say to do, as the mage section of the forum says to. My item level is 890. I feel like I should be able to raid heroic NH no problem but I'm the lowest in DPS every single raid.

I've researched my rotation and I simply do not get what I'm doing wrong.
Here are my logs:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/c ... 37/latest/" target="_blank

My rotation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D86zQsxAElU" target="_blank


thanks

[ikx]

you've linked a discord channel instead of your logs >.>

[Fairytale]

How much weapon traits do you have?

[Saróx]

Crit is not equal to happiness this patch as fire. I my self run around 37-40% crit on single target i run 34% haste, 15% mastery and 9% vers, with ilvl 900. I do have 4 set, legendary bracers, helm and sepuzh. i only just got bracers 4 days ago, but even without the bracers and 4 set, pulling around 500k dps is quite easy with 890 ilvl and enough haste.

On AOE you need mastery after reaching a comftable amount of crit, then vers>haste. if you dont have the 2 set bonus either get it, or aim for a bit higher crit, since you will only have 10% instead of the 20% buffer every time you dont crit.

Talents also affect alot, if you struggle on dps, you need to optimize your build on every single boss, instead of just running 1 static build. I always have a couple of 100 tomes in the bag, so i can swap build on the run, cus even tho i dont struggle on dps, i still like to be in the top 90% if posible, and running the same build does not allow that.

Having alot of tempo in your fire rotation also means alot, if you have to move in 2 sec you wanna make sure the next ability you use it usable on the move so you dont have to either get hit by an ability, or having to cancel a cast. Knowing the fight inside and out, and having DBM/Big Wiggs and some TMW or WA to help you keep track of timers, is also cruisial.

Drinking, potting, gemming and enchanting is a good start, but looking at other mages, and trusting "expert guides" is not always a good thing. First of many of the so called "expert guides" introduces you to the entry lvl gameplay, and not the optimal gameplay. Looking at Icyveins etc, tells what to aim for after hitting 110, it does not tell you what stats you need with your exact itemlvl and stat weights, they might recommend crit, while your gear values crit at 2 and haste at 20, which exponentially makes haste alot more valuable than crit.

Last but not least, if you really wanna improve then sim, sim, sim yourself, test your gear, trinkets and everything up against an optimal APL so that you actually get a stat priority you can use with your gear. If you dont know what simcraft is, there is alot of easy "how to" guides on youtube allowing you to learn the basics of it pretty fast. Once you nail the basics of it, tools like pawn and Askmrrobot, can help you a bit further optimizing, but still not as well as if you learn to master simcraft yourself, and not rely on second party programs.

[kaNEt]

Crit is not equal to happiness this patch as fire. I my self run around 37-40% crit on single target i run 34% haste, 15% mastery and 9% vers, with ilvl 900..

i did that once at 7,1,5 patch and you will struggle to get over 600k if u wana pull 600 to 700k to dps, go back to your crit and you will realize u hit harder than with the shit of haste that simc tells u to run

[Victel]

Thanks for the help everyone, here are my logs. Perhaps people can provide some insight into what I may be doing wrong. If I should be pulling 500k I am clearly doing something wrong.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/c ... 37/latest/" target="_blank

[Trig]

I'm still learning as well, we both have similar problems in that we have too much downtime (cancelled casts, trying not to die, etc) that essentially comes from not knowing the fights and/or being new to mage/game. Think I saw 90 seconds of downtime on your Trilliax log for example.

Only way to fix that is to do your homework via guides/video's for each boss and come up with a plan -- where am I going to start, at XX seconds this is going to happen and what/where do I need to do/be etc etc. I think if you can figure all of that out the downtime gets taken care of and so does the DPS as a result. Go do that and then spam LFR/Normal pugs to just get the time in. That's my personal goal for this week anyway and I hope to see an improvement come this weekend's raid.

You're also running the same talents regardless of the boss -- what you ran is OK for AoE (Skorp/Chron kind of) but not Trilliax. Maybe consider the following to simplify things until you're more comfortable:

Skorp/Chrono/Spell/Tich/Bot = Con/Shim/RoP OR IF/FO/FS/LB or FP/Met or CiS

IF isn't ever recommended, just an extreme band aid in case you can't stay in the area of ROP because you don't know the fights yet. I run AF as opposed to FO on some of these fights because I have the helm, doesn't look like you do so I believe the math says stay with FO. LB if a lot of adds that will die quickly (Skorp is obvious example), FP is 3-4 adds that don't die quickly -- maybe Chrono, Bot, Spell etc but it depends on your group's DPS. Don't forget Flamestrike on the 4-6 and bigger groups especially with FP talented.

I'm starting to use CiS more over Met on the high add fights - if you're not good about lining up Met with combustion and whatnot you may consider it

Trill/Kros/Star -- Con/Shim/MI/FO/FS/UM/Met

Pretty standard single target build -- just gotta make sure to line up Combust with Met and ensure you have the proper charges of FB and PF. I screw it up as well -- opener goes ok but the 2nd one just isn't there sometimes because of inexperience.

As far as gear it's hard to say -- I'm still not sure what's going on with the high haste the sims like and how it works in practice. As you can see in this thread there's disagreement. In game for me the higher crit builds are easier to play for me anyway, high haste just makes everything too fast at times maybe. Not sure if that's how it was intended to be, especially once you add in the set bonuses, the two haste trinkets etc.

Anyway, Mr Robot is an easy way to get into simming and SimC has been mentioned -- I use both. If you have the AMR add on installed I'd be happy to take a look at your entire gear set and see if you could equip better. That assumes you're not already doing that!

Good luck!

[Saróx]

Crit is not equal to happiness this patch as fire. I my self run around 37-40% crit on single target i run 34% haste, 15% mastery and 9% vers, with ilvl 900..

i did that once at 7,1,5 patch and you will struggle to get over 600k if u wana pull 600 to 700k to dps, go back to your crit and you will realize u hit harder than with the shit of haste that simc tells u to run

Please do show logs to backup that statement... even if i get 60% crit and crit twice as much it does not make up for the loss in pyro casts, the ticks of ignite, and the MI dps gain. Further more 2 set bonus heavily devaluates the usefullness of Crit, so i dont get why youd wanna waste crit if you could get Haste, Mastery or Vers which in any scenarios would be a better trade?

So backup with logs please

[Syana]

Please do show logs to backup that statement... even if i get 60% crit and crit twice as much it does not make up for the loss in pyro casts, the ticks of ignite, and the MI dps gain. Further more 2 set bonus heavily devaluates the usefullness of Crit, so i dont get why youd wanna waste crit if you could get Haste, Mastery or Vers which in any scenarios would be a better trade?

So backup with logs please

I feel like you are overvaluing the 2 set, probably because you are forgetting that you still want pyro to crit more often than not. With bracers this want to crit grows even larger. Also Haste does not affect how often ignite ticks.

Then on top of this NH essentially just gives haste procs, both from the set and the items within it. Just running with 4 set and WitD already creates issues with our rotation during combustion because of the travel time of our spells, essentially causing a dps loss because we have to wait for longer than what our GCD is. And this issue can still be seen outside of combustion but to a lesser degree.

As for logs, just look at essentially any of the top fire mages from NH. I doubt you will find any who are running less than 13k (roughly 53%).

For me currently secondary stats is a balancing act where one overtakes the other as soon as I change an item out. So I am quite interested in how you came to the conclusion that you should be getting that amount of haste.

[Saróx]

Please do show logs to backup that statement... even if i get 60% crit and crit twice as much it does not make up for the loss in pyro casts, the ticks of ignite, and the MI dps gain. Further more 2 set bonus heavily devaluates the usefullness of Crit, so i dont get why youd wanna waste crit if you could get Haste, Mastery or Vers which in any scenarios would be a better trade?

So backup with logs please

I feel like you are overvaluing the 2 set, probably because you are forgetting that you still want pyro to crit more often than not. With bracers this want to crit grows even larger. Also Haste does not affect how often ignite ticks.

Then on top of this NH essentially just gives haste procs, both from the set and the items within it. Just running with 4 set and WitD already creates issues with our rotation during combustion because of the travel time of our spells, essentially causing a dps loss because we have to wait for longer than what our GCD is. And this issue can still be seen outside of combustion but to a lesser degree.

As for logs, just look at essentially any of the top fire mages from NH. I doubt you will find any who are running less than 13k (roughly 53%).

For me currently secondary stats is a balancing act where one overtakes the other as soon as I change an item out. So I am quite interested in how you came to the conclusion that you should be getting that amount of haste.

Well it's fairly straight forward, i got almost all pieces of gear from NH HC, and some gear from the first 4 bosses on mythic. I've tried simming pretty much all the combinations im capable of making, and for ST that results in 37-40% crit, 34% haste, 15% mastery and some variation in Vers. On ST this puts me at around 600-650k consistent dps, without any cleave what so ever. If i go onto cleave i most often go glacial spike build, since its just a beast on 2 target fights, tho its not that many in NH and i find that 3T fights favour fire. On Aoe i go very low on haste 17%ish, 26% mastery 45% crit and 10% vers, which is again the stats i find optimal with my gear. The only piece i have not been lucky enough to obtain is the erratic trinket from chronomatic, but once i get that i believe it's gonna push my ST dmg further, and perhaps put haste less valuable and mastery/crit more valuable, but i dont have it so i cant speak on behalf of it yet.

I have not been looking much at other fire mages, but ive found this to be pretty stabile, and defonatly a build path to go down, im not saying its the only path to walk, but im saying without 100% optimal gear/legendaries it's very strong and consistent even on very high movement bosses. If i did not blindly trust Simc atm i could perhaps pull more dps, but i feel like i've tried out all i got avaliable and this being the best option for me.

[Lahrast]

just saying, running 53% crit, ~23% haste, 14% mastery, 2,5% vers or so with RoP- pretty consistent 650k-700k ST dps (sim 700k) (belt/bracer or bracer/ring)
forgo some crit for mastery on heavy cleave fights in combination with the helmet possibly
i personally completely dislike those haste-builds for fire and as you can see "standard" works pretty well (there's a haste-breakpoint at 20,7%, some 1-2% as buffer is a nice thing but haste really starts to fall off after that for me in simc as well as ingame-value)

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/42 ... amage-done" target="_blank some logs for proof

[Quorgyle]

Yeah but you have all the BIS legendaries which help you a lot. Bracer, belt for single target. Helm for aoe. Just the bracers add ~100k dps.

[Lahrast]

Yeah but you have all the BIS legendaries which help you a lot. Bracer, belt for single target. Helm for aoe. Just the bracers add ~100k dps.

i'm serious with this one, if you really do need the ST dps and have shit to no legendaries go frost - it's the sad reality right now. you can only be really competitive to other strong classes in ST with bracer+belt/ring

but if you're not necessarily bound to make the dps check on krosus mythic i suppose it won't matter much, sooner or later you'll get the good ones and then all this funny haste gear that is much better suited for frost is wasted

[Victel]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D86zQsxAElU" target="_blank

Here is my rotation. I uploaded this so people can help me. Very informative advice so far and it's well receieved.

Yeah but you have all the BIS legendaries which help you a lot. Bracer, belt for single target. Helm for aoe. Just the bracers add ~100k dps.

i'm serious with this one, if you really do need the ST dps and have shit to no legendaries go frost - it's the sad reality right now. you can only be really competitive to other strong classes in ST with bracer+belt/ring

but if you're not necessarily bound to make the dps check on krosus mythic i suppose it won't matter much, sooner or later you'll get the good ones and then all this funny haste gear that is much better suited for frost is wasted

I do believe this to be the case. I see other mages with around the same item level as me and they do just as bad.

[Imaskar]

Can't look at the logs/video now, but 300k means something is fundamentally wrong. Be sure to check Rinoa's dps guide, always be casting, not die, not munch procs (use Fire Blast only to convert single crit to double while casting the next fireball and pyro immediately after).

[Imaskar]

Took a quick look. 8k crit is very low in my opinion (Sarox may argue). I had 10k in ~860.
You have 43 traits, improving that might help, but it isn't the problem.
Take "easier" talents - Conf, MI, Meteor, Flame Patch. With easier rotation you will perform better. Later, when you'll get "the flow", you can experiment, but for now decrease the number of buttons to press.
You had 10 pyros per 2 combustions on anomaly, thats really low. Improve your combustion rotation, be sure to ssave FB and PF. (Check Rinoa's guide on that).
Tou had 26 pyros total in 4:05, thats really low too. The other mage got 35 and that's not a good result too. 2pc bonus will help you with it greatly (especially when your crit is so low).
You had 13 casts of LB for some reason, while you only need like 3 or 4, once per small adds spawn. Also, FP is better for Anomaly.

And finally, here is the lowest gear log I have, compare it with yours, maybe you'll see more differences. (just press "translate" button )
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/c1 ... amage-done" target="_blank
(note, that it has 55 pyros in the first 4:05, this is the main difference)

[Saróx]

Tried out your build last night in raid Lahrast, and i find it suprisingly viable. It did not turn into a straight up Dps increase, but on Chronomatic anomaly mythic it is much easier to play with. I wanna say thanks for the option to no have another spec, even tho i favor haste build on most movement fights, i think im gonna be able to push ST fights alot more comftably with this heavier crit build.

I also tried out both builds on our krosus progress last night, and the burst the haste heavy build offers is higher, but the burst phase of the crit build is longer, i dont know what build ill consistently use there yet, but even tho i only have the bracers i am able to meet the dps req, on the fight so i feel like both builds have a nice pro/con to it.

For people without the bracers tho, i really like running the haste heavy build over the crit heavy build, since the haste offers alot more consistent dps through MI, and the dps of MI is not to be underestimated its really strong on alot of fights that offers ST heavy phases. Also if your able to track the procs go with the pyromaniac on ST fights, if you dont munch the proc, and know how to react to it, it gives you Higher dps ST than conflag, even if you only get 1 proc during the entier fight.

Like i said in my past post tho, the haste build do rely on you having the 2 set bonus otherwise you wont be able to drop crit as much as you need to.

And to the rest of you, sorry for questioning the viability of the crit build, it defonatly is viable if not better than the haste build with propper gearing.