Hellfire Citadel Mage Tips

[Rinoa]

I agree, soaking stacks takes priority. However, I think that running Cold Snap and Glyph of Ice Block is superior regardless. What we do is Ice Block in the middle of the PC opener on Mannoroth, instantly cancel, Cold Snap, and resume burning. This means Ice Block is available for the Wrath of Gul'dan. If you have Hunters that can soak, let them soak instead of Mages as this means the Mages can spend their second Ice Block on attempting to immune yet another curse. Cold Snap on cooldown again (~3:25 or so) means you have Ice Block for phase 3 also.

It's great!

[Firemancer]

For those mages going cold snap on Mannoroth, are you guys not soaking gazes in the last phase? I take ginvis because I'm assigned to soak a gaze, along with another immunity class while the rest of the raid continues to DPS. Also with ginvis you still have a chance to immune the curse, and can also soak at least one wrath with it.

[Wilderness]

For those mages going cold snap on Mannoroth, are you guys not soaking gazes in the last phase? I take ginvis because I'm assigned to soak a gaze, along with another immunity class while the rest of the raid continues to DPS. Also with ginvis you still have a chance to immune the curse, and can also soak at least one wrath with it.

No, we never had our mages as soakers for the gazes. We had a lot of trouble with gazes in the last phase on progression so we went full retard and 4-tanked the fight so our 2 dps DKs who were blood soaked 2 and we had our hunters rotate doing the 3rd one. Even now we still 3 tank it just to have 1 done by the tank, but us mages aren't part of the other soakers and we sacrifice the 2nd gazes so its just that first set we have to worry about.

[Kirielle]

Generally you only soak the first set of Wrath so you only need Ice Block once for that. Taking Cold Snap to try to immune one of the curses is pretty valuable on progress; as Wilderness said the best one to try to immune is usually the last one before final transition. If you use Cold Snap right after soaking Wrath you should have it available again for final phase if needed. As far as soaking Gazes go, mages aren't a particularly good class for that, but anyone with a decent damage reduction defensive should be fine, doesn't need to be an immunity or anything too powerful.

[Curnivore]

I noticed the OP's text deals with Velhari's edict with Evanesce and Greater Invisibility both. You can also avoid two ticks with Ice Block and if you want to be more helpful you can take Cold Snap. It might be a more stable gameplay for certain game styles.

[Rabona]

I wouldn't take Evanesce on that fight. If you die through IB or FG then chances are that either you failed with too much movement or that there is a bigger problem such as too little aoe heal or lack of DPS, so others will die too.

And the the blink out of raid when I get a critical edict stuff is so situational and random that I wouldn't give up IF in every single fight for it, especially since DPS timings aren't trivial at all on this boss and Ice Block works there too.

I usually used GI on the first Gavel. After that maxHP goes up again anyway iirc, so if you make it that far the boss should be easy from then on, especially if you cheese the next edict.

[Searix]

musta missed it but Glyph of Ice Block is great for soaking Mannoroth

[Blutastic]

I'll just add some fire tips to close the gaps.

Reaver:
Cold snap; Blast Wave; Incanters Flow; Prismatic Crystal.
-stick to reinforced bombs, using DB and BW for burning/quickfuse

Kormrok:
Cold Snap; Blast Wave; Incanters; Meteor.
-you can Combust before he jumps with meteor. so that you dont have to place PC without proccs. beeing a short fight, maximising the opener seems worth it for me.
-use Cold snap for the double DB on the Hands. (instant 2M dmg)
-meteor lines up with the hands perfectly. with combustion up no hands, without combustion its hands. (burn dmg dot +Gaze, yummie)

Council:
Cold Snap; Blast Wave; Prismatic Crystal;
-I prefer Incanters over RoP here, since we have to move in for the DB, but i guess with good planning you can prolly bring in a very good RoP uptime
-basically useless for the mirror images, just hit something else and use BW/DB for Images

Killrogg:
Cold Snap; Blast Wave; RoP; Prismatic Crystal
-you are basically a melee on this fight. (you hit the same targets as melee and stand in melee camp behind boss)
-the +%dmg is REALLY good for fire, since combustion.

Gorefiend:
Cold Snap; Blast Wave; Incanters; PC
-dont play Fire on Gorefiend.

Iskar:
CS; LB; IF; Met
-LB cleaves back, giving you quite good dmg on the focustargets in the transitions.
-Met afterburn hits like a truck on so many adds
-double DB for the first and third transition.

Soc:
CS; LB; IF; Met; no comb glyph
-you can essentially solo the ghosts with this in 20m, with only the fire to support you

CS; BW; RoP; PC
-maximum Boss dps.
-Double DB at pull and third (?) Dominator

Xhul:
CS; LB; IF; Kind
-maximum dps throughout p1-3. quite low on 4 though. p4 no imps.
-swap out LB for BW or UM if you have problems finishing the last phase before raid cds run out.

Velhari:
CS; BW; IF; PC
-hit boss for maximum profit
-wait second pc for second add, for maximum combustion dps. (also prolly ring and lust used there)

Mannoroth:
CS; BW; IF; PC
-unfortunately IB doesnt expand around Mannoroth. dont expect to spread dots from Mannoroth onto anything thats not directly underneath him.

Regarding fire on Gorefiend.
Dont play fire on gorefiend - is this because of the bad mechanics for fire to handle burst dps on adds? Does it help now that fire can burst very good now with higher itemlevels during feast?

We got Gorefiend to around 36% and closing in to the second feast. Both mages were playing fire and we were not that bad in dps on constructs/ essences compared to other classes like i thought we would be. Though maybe we could top those meters as frost or arcane. Perhaps so!

But - crit/mastery geared - should i aim for arcane or frost instead?

[Wilderness]

Regarding fire on Gorefiend.
Dont play fire on gorefiend - is this because of the bad mechanics for fire to handle burst dps on adds? Does it help now that fire can burst very good now with higher itemlevels during feast?

We got Gorefiend to around 36% and closing in to the second feast. Both mages were playing fire and we were not that bad in dps on constructs/ essences compared to other classes like i thought we would be. Though maybe we could top those meters as frost or arcane. Perhaps so!

But - crit/mastery geared - should i aim for arcane or frost instead?

I believe that list was more for progression, when the only damage that matters is adds so bursting well during the feast phase isn't relevant, and both other specs are better for Fire then. During farm it doesn't matter.

[Blutastic]

Regarding fire on Gorefiend.
Dont play fire on gorefiend - is this because of the bad mechanics for fire to handle burst dps on adds? Does it help now that fire can burst very good now with higher itemlevels during feast?

We got Gorefiend to around 36% and closing in to the second feast. Both mages were playing fire and we were not that bad in dps on constructs/ essences compared to other classes like i thought we would be. Though maybe we could top those meters as frost or arcane. Perhaps so!

But - crit/mastery geared - should i aim for arcane or frost instead?

I believe that list was more for progression, when the only damage that matters is adds so bursting well during the feast phase isn't relevant, and both other specs are better for Fire then. During farm it doesn't matter.

Our guild is progressing now:)

Not sure what spec is best - frost or arcane - with the current fire-oriented gear

[Wilderness]

Your secondaries don't matter as much as Arcane being better than Frost on this fight. Dealing with the long WJ while trying to switch to adds isn't all that easy, and you probably have to unglyph IL to minimize unintentional damage. Arcane easily switches targets, has no travel time on AB, and you can use AO to spend a lot of time at 4 stacks. And of course it will do well burning during feasts.

[Blutastic]

Thats approx what i thought aswell, thx for advice! Though - se killed him yesterday, so problem sorted automatically lol!:)

[Curnivore]

On Iskar, can you hit the boss when it is on air with the crystal?

[Rinoa]

Not to my knowledge.

[DeathDefier]

Highly doubtful since ring is 20 yards vs PCs 8 yards and you have to be pretty close to the edge for the ring to hit IIRC.

[Curnivore]

I wonder now if orb is better with the common strategy of hitting the boss on air on phase last.

[Zelendria]

For progression AO was always better than PC on Iskar. PC is horrific on the Phantasmal add which is the only concern in the fight.
But for ranks/progression PC will always trump AO IF you get PoF to proc onto it during any of the add phases.
Pushing AO onto Iskar at the 3rd air phase is hardly any DPS unless PoF has procced on him, and you can 180 and stick it through the adds.

[Curnivore]

But for ranks/progression PC will always trump AO IF you get PoF to proc onto it during any of the add phases.
Pushing AO onto Iskar at the 3rd air phase is hardly any DPS unless PoF has procced on him, and you can 180 and stick it through the adds.

I can ignore those two factors for my needs. The first violates the basic principle of "what's best on average" and I don't go for rare ranks. The second omits that even if both orb and pc do nothing in last phase, the orb would increase dps on add phases.

Current top logs are beyond all that of course. I believe they are on average better on PC. Not because of luck, but because they burn every single target within a few seconds.

We also have a big influx of logs the past few days of 18 arcane mages and a tank with a healer or so, which are useless to most guilds. I think a guild doing Zakuun started it.

[Pkm]

Is arcane orb really any better than PC though? Have yet to see any other mage use it.

[Rinoa]

AO was used heavily during progression by many players. Part of the reason why it's fallen out of favour is because of Prismatic Crystal's interaction with Nithramus as well as general gear levels being high enough to not need ideal talent combinations when progressing anymore.