Maxing dps (Frost)

[Yllasera]

Hey folks,

You're probably sick of questions like these by now... but I was hoping to find someone here who'd bear with me for some dps questions

I played Fire until now but I feel the lack of bracers kinda limits my character on single target fights. Also, got a few good drops for Frost, so I decided to respec. I like it a lot so far, I feel it allows me to focus on the fight and positioning more than Fire did, as procs are easier to manage.

However, I'm looking to improve my dps, as it's just above 1m on actual fights, even though I can easily do 1.5m on the bulwark. We are currently doing HC Antorus with the guild. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of meaningful logs yet, as I mostly used this spec in pugs so far.

Here's one from normal Varimathras: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/c ... &boss=2069

I've read all the guides here (and everywhere else) and believe that I got the rotation down. I'm trying to practice the fights as much as possible to improve the part that depends on gameplay. However, if you guys see anything in the logs that I'm doing incorrectly, I'd appreciate any insight on that.

I'm also looking for help with gear/stats - here's an Armory link, it's up to date: https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-gb/chara ... n/yllasera
Crit 32% (I kept some crit gems from my Fire gear to keep at 32% crit)
Haste 38%
Mastery 52%
Versa 7%

Any thoughts/comments on gear and logs would be welcome. Thanks!

[Sageless]

Not to much help, but a couple of things that will help at least:

1. Use potion of prolonged power twice (pre-pull and during second icy-veins+TW)
2. Stack Timewarp/Bloodlust with Icy-Veins whenever possible
3. Don't munch procs - you have 35 brainfreeze procs, but only 27 flurries cast
4. Don't delay ebonbolt, you could have cast 6 easily in your provided log instead of the 5 you did

Gear wise ideally you would get the bracers, but guess you don't have many legendaries yet. The insignia of the grand army isn't the best, but at least better than the chest you used in your log. Trinket wise I think there are better ones (for single target) available that you might already have (check the trinket list).

[tSweezay]

Your intellect looks a bit lower than most mages your ilvl too by quite a few thousand. I noticed when I started getting good relics for my weapon and my intellect jumped about 5k my output was drastically different.

[Stre]

Try wearing the 4 pc 2pc for tier 20-21 it's a huge dps increase. Im simming around 1.9ish millions with it on verse other gear

[Yllasera]

Hm... I have 2 pieces of the Arcane Tempest set, but they are lvl 915... I'm not sure it'd worth ditching the higher level items for the 2pc set bonus...?

Yes, Int is sth i noticed, some mages have 70k and I only have around 62k - huge difference! One problem is that all of my leggos are rings so I'm missing out on a nice Int bonus there. The only other leggo I have is the Bolvir chest, but putting that on would mess with the set bonus (4 rings and a chest... I guess I was a bit unlucky with the leggo drops.)

Yep, relics make a huge difference in dps output - I notice about 200k diff between my 953 and 970 artifact (Part of that might be attributed to practice, though).

As for sims, I'm a bit confused. If I sim my gear for stat weights, it tells me that versa is my best stat, then haste etc., with mastery at the very bottom of the list. Yet if I sim for top gear, it's giving me the Norgannon trinket and the Owl trinket as best choices - giving me a 72% mastery total, losing out on other stats Doesn't seem to make too much sense to me, and my tests on the bulwark give me worse results if I use the 2x mastery trinkets instead of Norgannon+Prototype thingy (haste), too.

[Jezrien]

Owl has a nice damage itself especially. No one gives a shit about that mastery. About Norgannon it depends on how many Panteon trinkets you have in your raid for the 2nd effect, though Norgannon's 1st proc has pretty decent uptime.

[Fonzey]

Norgannon is much better than it first looks. I finally got mine last night, and now our mythic team all have the trinket so we have fairly good uptime (about 18ppl wearing it).

The "group proc" looks really lacklusture, but 25% uptime on 15k intellect is really nice - so the baseline mastery can be pretty much ignored, yeah would be great if it was haste/vers - but the trinket makes up for it in other areas.

Still, 72% mastery is so, so high - so you certainly need to work on your itemisation in general. Not sure whether 915 T20 is worth it, but raidbots.com will know.

[Yllasera]

In the meantime I got the Frost bracers (yay), and treat the 4pc Runebound set as the basis of my gear, so I'm trying to experiment with the rest of the pieces to arrive at an optimal stat distribution.

I still have a lot of mastery, 57% iirc, whereas my versa is still very low, 8-10%. Sticking to the Norgannon trinket really messes up my stats. I'd much rather use the versa trinket (whatsitcalled, vitality resonator I think?), but funnily enough no amount of trinket swapping seems to make a difference anyway. I'm still stuck around 1m on movement fights and 1.24m on less hectic encounters. So I'm guessing it's more about what I'm doing.

I don't want to go back to the basics because 1.) I'm sure you're all tired explaining FoF vs BF prio and 2.) I've read everything there is to read about this subject on the internet.
However some advanced tips would be welcome, and if any log expert could point out any critical mistakes I'd appreciate it. E.g. I got pretty low rating on Kin'garoth https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/c ... &boss=2088 and feel that in my current gear I should do around 200-300k more dps. (Unfortunaltey I don't have logs with the bracers yet).

Things I pay attention to:
- Frostbolt+BF to get the Frostbolt crit
- Using FoFs before BFs in order to not waste an IL crit (if possible)
- Using everything on cooldown

What I don't worry about:
- Chain Reaction stacks
- Bracer stacks

I tried tracking Chain Reaction but found that I don't gain much by worrying about it. It takes a lot of attention to save ILs for 3 stacks and most of the time it doesn't work out anyway, because the buff is too occasional and expires so fast. Same with the bracer stacks, but I haven't tried tracking that yet.

[icetea666]

If you do your "rotation" correctly your Chain Reaction uptime will be high by itself.

There is no need to track it at all.

Treat bracers stack as a bonus as well.Don't try to manage it's uptime or hold up your procs for max stacks.Don't cast empty lances to mantain buffs either.It's a dps loss.

[Jezrien]

I see a few major issues:
1. You don't shatter EB.
2. You munch a lot of BF procs.
3. You don't know the encounter.
4. You made your Shard useless.

Solution.
1. Always follow your EB with Flurry and then Lance. EB must be at 100% crit rate.
2. I stopped watching replay at the end of 1st construction phase, so I have no clue how you managed to much 8 BF procs (43 prcos agains 35 Flurry casts). Seems some came from delaying BF after EB for FB and some maybe just from FB spam or trying to give priority to Lances first and Flurry second when FB and FoF proc at the same time.
3. Kingaroth is a fight where you have to kill adds as fast as possible, which means you save your CDs for that, for every spawn. Your CD management had no idea behind that. And that's why you had IV out of sync with BL.
4. Since you are the only class with BL - use Drumms for the ring benefit.

[icetea666]

I see a few major issues:
1. You don't shatter EB.
2. You munch a lot of BF procs.
3. You don't know the encounter.
4. You made your Shard useless.

Solution.
1. Always follow your EB with Flurry and then Lance. EB must be at 100% crit rate.
2. I stopped watching replay at the end of 1st construction phase, so I have no clue how you managed to much 8 BF procs (43 prcos agains 35 Flurry casts). Seems some came from delaying BF after EB for FB and some maybe just from FB spam or trying to give priority to Lances first and Flurry second when FB and FoF proc at the same time.
3. Kingaroth is a fight where you have to kill adds as fast as possible, which means you save your CDs for that, for every spawn. Your CD management had no idea behind that. And that's why you had IV out of sync with BL.
4. Since you are the only class with BL - use Drumms for the ring benefit.

Are you sure that saving cd's for adds on Kingaroth is a good idea?I mean you need to delay your very first IV for like 50 seconds.
Postpone your cd's for something like that is ok but 40-50 seconds seems way too much.
Other than that,as people get better and better gear,add phase lasts very short.Yesterday i was in HC run where we killed all 3 adds before initialize cast ended (without BL ofc)
That means that you are risking wasting half the duration of your IV to be spent on almost immune boss.

[Jezrien]

Are you sure that saving cd's for adds on Kingaroth is a good idea?I mean you need to delay your very first IV for like 50 seconds.
Postpone your cd's for something like that is ok but 40-50 seconds seems way too much.
Other than that,as people get better and better gear,add phase lasts very short.Yesterday i was in HC run where we killed all 3 adds before initialize cast ended (without BL ofc)
That means that you are risking wasting half the duration of your IV to be spent on almost immune boss.

Of course, I am. This is how you kill the boss. First adds at 0:35, next after 2 mins and so on. Your should have your CDs rdy.

[kalsii]

Piling on, remember that on Kingaroth each add kill drops the boss by 6%. So yeah, using your cooldowns on the adds are like a damage multiplier compared to a ST dummy. Additionally, while the adds are charging they take extra damage, so stacking CDs then makes the most sense.

[icetea666]

Piling on, remember that on Kingaroth each add kill drops the boss by 6%. So yeah, using your cooldowns on the adds are like a damage multiplier compared to a ST dummy. Additionally, while the adds are charging they take extra damage, so stacking CDs then makes the most sense.

Yes but do you guys take into account your overall lower IV uptime?
As i said...people have started burning all adds without a BL way before boss ends his cast.And you sit with IV up doing nothing.

I'm talking strictly about HC here.I really can't say much about Mythic but due to mechanics it would make much more sense.

[myumsa]

Glancing quickly at your parse I noticed a couple things (some of which have already been mentioned)
* precast ebonbolt on pull
* make sure you always cast flurry IMMEDIATELY after you cast ebonbolt -- there were multiple times when you cast frost bolt right after ebonbolt
* your icy veins uptime is average -- try to line it up with frozen orb (not that important, but anything helps)

[Jezrien]

Glancing quickly at your parse I noticed a couple things (some of which have already been mentioned)
* precast ebonbolt on pull
* make sure you always cast flurry IMMEDIATELY after you cast ebonbolt -- there were multiple times when you cast frost bolt right after ebonbolt
* your icy veins uptime is average -- try to line it up with frozen orb (not that important, but anything helps)

1. Precast Ebonbolt is not very important over9000 SimC runs by different people showed that there is a tiny difference between FB and EB opener. The essential part is to always shatter EB.
2. -
3. Pretty much important if you play with TV talent.

[Yllasera]

Glancing quickly at your parse I noticed a couple things (some of which have already been mentioned)
* precast ebonbolt on pull
* make sure you always cast flurry IMMEDIATELY after you cast ebonbolt -- there were multiple times when you cast frost bolt right after ebonbolt
* your icy veins uptime is average -- try to line it up with frozen orb (not that important, but anything helps)

Thanks, these are good tips, #2 makes me wonder though - isn't it best practice to cast Frostbolt and then Flurry (making them both land at the same time), to make Frosbolt benefit from the Winter's Chill effect, and thus reduce the cd on IV? .

I'm also suspicious about latency/Quartz. For Frostbolts, for example, I notice that I can start casting them well before my cast ends according to Quartz... Without correct info on this I don't know how to be more precise with my casts. I think many Flurries and Winter's Chill ILs night be victims of this. Can you guys recommend a better castbar addon?

Shard: To the person who says I'm wasting my Shard - it's not my call, hero is on RL's orders. It's often not on pull, unfortunately, so in practice I don't always benefit from full 2 TWs, which is a shame. I have considered wearing some other ring instead, but neither Insignia nor Sephuz would be better, imo, than even half a TW.

I'm kinda stuck at digging up more info from the logs. Now we have a new mage in the raid team, which is very helpful, as I finally have someone to compare myself to in the logs. Here's Imonar, for example:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/co ... ource=4,27

Compared to the other mage, my gear is far superior - over 10 ilvl diff, I have bis leggos, etc. so gear cannot be a problem. Without the bracers, in 943, he's doing as much dmg as me in 956 + bracers. So I must be doing sth terribly wrong. But what is it...?

[Andrestes]

I took a quick look at your logs and aside from not being great at shattering ebonbolt (like 50-75% of the time) and not using a second potion (you don't seem to pre-pot), nothing glaring sticks out. you might want to throw all your fights into wow analyzer to check out your casting downtime, though.

Shard: To the person who says I'm wasting my Shard - it's not my call, hero is on RL's orders. It's often not on pull, unfortunately, so in practice I don't always benefit from full 2 TWs, which is a shame. I have considered wearing some other ring instead, but neither Insignia nor Sephuz would be better, imo, than even half a TW.

I'm guessing the above is your main issue. I'd guess that half a TW without major CDs is probably not that impressive. Seems like it'd be pretty hard to sim though, so maybe equip Sephuz and go 3 min w/o lust vs 3 min with lust with shard (no icy veins for either) on a training dummy a few times?

pure speculation, but shard w/o lust vs. the stat sticks your fellow mage is equipping is probably helping that person overcome the ilvl gap.

[Yllasera]

you might want to throw all your fights into wow analyzer to check out your casting downtime, though.

Thanks!!! I didn't even know there was such a thing... I always read the logs and tried to make sense of them myself.
You are right - this is an issue on almost every fight, including low movement encounters like Garothi. For example:

Downtime
27.07%
Cancelled Casts
6.35%

What does that mean? I don't cancel casts unless I have to (like when the green strips come) and I cast continuously. So how is my downtime nearly third of the fight? O.o

[Caladia]

Why are you cancelling the cast for green beam? That's what Ice Floes talent is for, pop a charge and strafe out of it while you continue your cast. Maybe use 2 charges to cast 2 Frostbolts as you run out if you don't proc anything. Since you can strafe and cast into a BF proc with Flurry -> Ice Lance on the run.

Edit: I went and did an analyzer for myself. 6-7% cancelled casts isn't that bad, that's roughly where I'm at too. Sometimes you just gotta cancel and Blink to handle a mechanic. My downtime is at 7% with 5% cancelled casts. What was your distance moved and time spent moving? This could be an indicator that you were moving a lot and not taking advantage of instant casts or the ability to cast on the move.

Distance moved: ≈277 yards
Time spent moving: ≈26.57%