Altered Time - your #1 World of Warcraft Mage resource!

Hey guys.. To start with, I am fairly new at playing mage. Not long ago it became my main toon, and now I just want to master it 100% therefore I am here now!

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/auchindoun/lian" target="_blanká/advanced - that's my armory, getting alot of gear at the moment, so its only a few things thats actually upgraded. My mainspec is fire, and I wanna stick with fire, as I don't switch for the lame reason that I've finally found a transmog that fits! + my mount kinda fits aswell!

And my rotation is normally something like this....:at 6 seconds on the pull timer I use invocation, at 4 seconds I use mirror image + pre-pot and at 3 seconds I start hardcasting my Pyroblast. And then I use my Alter time whenever it's off CD, and my trinkets have proced. I always get the Pyroblast! and Heating up buffs, before I use my Pyroblast! proc.. (or.. I forgot it sometimes).

I'll post some logs from last wedensday.. Might be a bad example as I had alot going on real life at that moment, but you'll get a feeling..

And I'll post a log on our Thok kill and Siegecrafter progression. (no personal problems at that time, just first time on those bosses.)

Immerseus-Spoils.. http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/w3L ... source=226" target="_blank

Thok-Siegecrafter.. http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/gMT ... &source=11" target="_blank

Siegecrafter-Garrosh.. http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/JvL ... &source=17" target="_blank - After we "gave up" on Siegecrafter, we kinda trolled, so don't take the logs after Siegecrafter serious..

The reason I am asking for help to improve here, is because I am the only mage in my guild at the moment, and I really do like it here.. I'll do anything I can, to pass this trial

I really do hope you guys can give me some tips to improvement!

- Lianá.

Hey Liana, grats on trying to find help!

Tough to look for help, but you're at a good spot with some decent gear.
Just at a quick glance through your logs, your LB uptime is quite low across almost all fights. Sometimes you average a ~60% uptime on various fights.

You seem to try and maintain invoker's energy often enough but make sure you utilize Fire's true strong point - movement. Throughout the first 10 kills, scorch is used 3 times total. This is effective damage you're losing out on.
Additionally, you seem to be near the bottom on 'survivability', dying on quite a few pulls. Utilizing scorch and avoiding unnecessary damage will result in less deaths and more dmg to the boss WHILE assist in damage during the movement periods.

I'm sure some more experienced warcraftlog mages will be able to pull out better information from those logs. But you're obviously on the right track by seeking advice from fellow mages while logging - definitely the route to improvement!

Living Bomb
Living bomb uptime! Your living bomb uptime needs to be higher. 75% LB uptime on malkorok for example is way too low. You're losing a lot of damage with this from living bomb, but more importantly: you're losing pyromania uptime. So your fireball/pyroblast are doing 10% less damage during that time.

Mobility DPS
You seem to practically never cast scorch, and end up just having downtime while moving instead. ALWAYS do something while moving. Either refreshing living bomb if it's about to run out, casting inferno blast if you got a HU proc, or else scorch. Scorching to a new position is better DPS than blinking there, so only blink if absolutely neccesarry.

Alter Time
Your alter time usage is not optimal. First of: on a 5 minute malkorok pull, you only used alter time once. You could've easily used it twice in 5 minutes.

Secondly: The spells you're using during alter time are wrong. What you want to do is this:
- Make sure you have pyroblast! proc up
- Make sure you have heating up proc up.
- Make sure your 4pc bonus is up. (By having cast inferno blast)
- Cast a fireball, and right at the end of fireball, use the following macro: - During alter time, keep spamming pyroblasts until you're out of pyroblast procs and presence of mind is gone.
- Re-cast alter time. This will reset your procs again to pyro!+HU+POM+4PC
- Keep spamming pyros until you're out of pyroblast procs and POM again
- Use combustion while your last pyroblast (POM pyro) is travelling in the air.

Bloodlust/Heroism/Time Warp
Time Warp 2 minutes into a malkorok pull is bad for the entire raid. It should be used 1 second into the fight on bosses where there's not a certain phase where you need more DPS.


These are the biggest things I found with a quick look at your logs. Your armory seems fine, though a bit over the hitcap.

If you want a more indepth reply or got more questions feel free to ask!

Hello Liana
I am really happy you took my advice and came here for help.
As you can see really knowledgable people can help you no matter your spec.
Cheers
Alnira/Berlinia

First of, thanks guys for taking a look at my logs! As I said in the top, I had some personal issues at the time being, I'll be raiding tonight agian. And will be better than ever

Living Bomb
Living bomb uptime! Your living bomb uptime needs to be higher. 75% LB uptime on malkorok for example is way too low. You're losing a lot of damage with this from living bomb, but more importantly: you're losing pyromania uptime. So your fireball/pyroblast are doing 10% less damage during that time.

Can that have to something to do with my % being dead?

Mobility DPS
You seem to practically never cast scorch, and end up just having downtime while moving instead. ALWAYS do something while moving. Either refreshing living bomb if it's about to run out, casting inferno blast if you got a HU proc, or else scorch. Scorching to a new position is better DPS than blinking there, so only blink if absolutely neccesarry.

Alter Time
Your alter time usage is not optimal. First of: on a 5 minute malkorok pull, you only used alter time once. You could've easily used it twice in 5 minutes.

I should be better than that, indeed

Secondly: The spells you're using during alter time are wrong. What you want to do is this:
- Make sure you have pyroblast! proc up
- Make sure you have heating up proc up.
- Make sure your 4pc bonus is up. (By having cast inferno blast)
- Cast a fireball, and right at the end of fireball, use the following macro:

Spoiler:

Code: Select all

#showtooltip Alter Time /use 10 /cast Presence of Mind /cast Alter Time /cast Pyroblast

- During alter time, keep spamming pyroblasts until you're out of pyroblast procs and presence of mind is gone.
- Re-cast alter time. This will reset your procs again to pyro!+HU+POM+4PC
- Keep spamming pyros until you're out of pyroblast procs and POM again
- Use combustion while your last pyroblast (POM pyro) is travelling in the air.

Aww! Someone is actually giving me tips I can use! Thanks alot man!

Bloodlust/Heroism/Time Warp
Time Warp 2 minutes into a malkorok pull is bad for the entire raid. It should be used 1 second into the fight on bosses where there's not a certain phase where you need more DPS.

I died, and poped timewrap agian, because we use it on our pull.. So I just thought why not use it agian?


Thanks alot for your time mate! I promise you I won't be wasting your time! - We'll have a new raid tonight and I will post my logs for tonight in this thread aswell! Cheers!

- Lianá.

Hey Liana, grats on trying to find help!

Tough to look for help, but you're at a good spot with some decent gear.
Just at a quick glance through your logs, your LB uptime is quite low across almost all fights. Sometimes you average a ~60% uptime on various fights.

You seem to try and maintain invoker's energy often enough but make sure you utilize Fire's true strong point - movement. Throughout the first 10 kills, scorch is used 3 times total. This is effective damage you're losing out on.
Additionally, you seem to be near the bottom on 'survivability', dying on quite a few pulls. Utilizing scorch and avoiding unnecessary damage will result in less deaths and more dmg to the boss WHILE assist in damage during the movement periods.

I'm sure some more experienced warcraftlog mages will be able to pull out better information from those logs. But you're obviously on the right track by seeking advice from fellow mages while logging - definitely the route to improvement!

Thanks alot for the tips man! I'll keep those in mind tonight! Thanks for the time you took, taking a look at my logs!

Hello Liana
I am really happy you took my advice and came here for help.
As you can see really knowledgable people can help you no matter your spec.
Cheers
Alnira/Berlinia

Yeah, I am really glad I made this account now! I've never gotten this much help before! Can't wait till I test it!

About the being dead thing, I only checked on pulls you were alive on the entire time, like the malkorok pull I checked, 75% uptime, 99.3% active time.

About the being dead thing, I only checked on pulls you were alive on the entire time, like the malkorok pull I checked, 75% uptime, 99.3% active time.

Aww, that's quite bad of me.. Sorry that you had to see that!

BTW, got any other cool macros I could get use out of? I really like the once you did sent.

Sure:

- Stops casting and casts combustion: - This will cast your mage bomb on the target your mouse is over if it's an enemy. If it's not an enemy or you don't mouseover anything, it will cast it on your current target. - This will cancel anything you may ever want to cancel in a raid. Lets you cancel alter time if you used it in a position where something landed that will kill you if you get teleported back, also cancel iceblock if you want to quickly get out of it, same for slowfall and invisibility. - This focuses the target your mouse is over. - This interrupts your focus target if you have one, else it interrupts your current target. Feel free to replace it for spellsteal and polymorph as well for PVP.

Thanks alot mate.. I really appreciate it!

As promised, we raided last night.. And I'll throw up some logs.. I've looked over my LB uptime, and it have improved at some point, and I found myself using Scorch more aswell! Even though I find it wierd my uptime on LB is that low, since I got a WA for it and I do my best to refresh it everytime. But here is my logs from yesterday, got swapped out for some bosses tho!

http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/tfz ... e&source=5" target="_blank

- Lianá

Your TFP log is either bugged, or you started logging mid fight.

I only took a quick look at it, but it looks like you still need work on uptimes on some fights (Malk specifically). You might also want to doublecheck your opener combustion routine, since your combustions on IJ and Malk look a little bit on the low side for a single target fight. When I checked logs, it seems like you were still throwing fireballs up until you combusted. You want to make sure you're done with landing enough Pyroblasts before using Combustion.

When I checked logs, it seems like you were still throwing fireballs up until you combusted. You want to make sure you're done with landing enough Pyroblasts before using Combustion.

Maybe be a dumb question, but how would you have my opener to look like mate?

When I checked logs, it seems like you were still throwing fireballs up until you combusted. You want to make sure you're done with landing enough Pyroblasts before using Combustion.

Maybe be a dumb question, but how would you have my opener to look like mate?

I believe the standard opener now is to have PBoI proc, gather a HS+HU+4T16 if possible and use POM-AT-Pyro, and then spam pyro until you run out of instant pyros, AT and repeat pyro spam, for a maximum sized ignite. There shouldn't ever be a case where less than 4-5 pyros are sandwiched between your last fireball and the combustion cast. In your case, using the event log (http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/tfz ... iew=events" target="_blank) I saw combustion casted without a single pyroblast landed before it. The only pyroblast damage that occurred was due to the DOT tick.

- Make sure you have pyroblast! proc up
- Make sure you have heating up proc up.
- Make sure your 4pc bonus is up. (By having cast inferno blast)
- Cast a fireball, and right at the end of fireball, use the following macro: - During alter time, keep spamming pyroblasts until you're out of pyroblast procs and presence of mind is gone.
- Re-cast alter time. This will reset your procs again to pyro!+HU+POM+4PC
- Keep spamming pyros until you're out of pyroblast procs and POM again
- Use combustion while your last pyroblast (POM pyro) is travelling in the air.

Is the opener you'll want to use, as I've posted above.

- Make sure you have pyroblast! proc up
- Make sure you have heating up proc up.
- Make sure your 4pc bonus is up. (By having cast inferno blast)
- Cast a fireball, and right at the end of fireball, use the following macro:

Spoiler:

Code: Select all

#showtooltip Alter Time /use 10 /cast Presence of Mind /cast Alter Time /cast Pyroblast

- During alter time, keep spamming pyroblasts until you're out of pyroblast procs and presence of mind is gone.
- Re-cast alter time. This will reset your procs again to pyro!+HU+POM+4PC
- Keep spamming pyros until you're out of pyroblast procs and POM again
- Use combustion while your last pyroblast (POM pyro) is travelling in the air.

Is the opener you'll want to use, as I've posted above.

Hey, I just switched to fire for the first time in years and I'm currently practicing and setting the theory up. This help a lot, thank you.
I have two questions however. When you say "spam pyros", do you mean mash the button until the PoM is used or do u mean fire an instant pyro, wait for it to land to see if you get another one and then press the pyro button again, repeat until PoM is used.?

Also, the instant pyros from the proc gets 25% extra dmg, which the PoM Pyro doesn't, right? I assume this is the reason combustion should be used before that last pom pyro lands. Now, why is the PoM Pyro in there at all then? Wouldn't for example 2 pyros during alter time (without PoM), reset AT, fire 2 again -> Combustion be better than 2 pyros + PoM pyro during AT, reset AT, fire 2 (without PoM) and combust? That PoM Pyro in the middle has negative effect on the combustion doesn't it?

The maths behind how ignite works exactly is very complicated. A lower pyro hit from POM pyro doesn't guarantee ignite will lower. What you're saying though is something we've been discussing a fair bit, leaving the POM pyro out, but that one single POM pyro can cause an extra pyro as well, which means in most cases you're missing out on the damage of 2 pyroblast, one POM pyro and one pyro! proc, for a potential higher ignite. However, from personal tested (and frosted did maths on this too) actually having the POM pyro in seems to increase your ignite.

Hey, I just switched to fire for the first time in years and I'm currently practicing and setting the theory up. This help a lot, thank you.
I have two questions however. When you say "spam pyros", do you mean mash the button until the PoM is used or do u mean fire an instant pyro, wait for it to land to see if you get another one and then press the pyro button again, repeat until PoM is used.

Spam pyro during the opener literally means spam the hell out of pyro, yes ( I actually jump constantly while doing this to prevent any accidentally hard-casting ).

this might help as well....

this is zoomed in on your opener on the malk log linked.
http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/tfz ... nd=9559448" target="_blank

if they dont show up already, toggle on the spells at the top of the graph.

here is an opener with pyro spam
http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/Fmb ... nd=6094351" target="_blank

again, make sure to toggle the spells on at the top of the graph if they dont come up with the link