Basic "Learn from Your Mistakes" guide.
Posted: Thu Oct 12, 2017 9:49 am
A lot of people ask the same questions to get the same answers. This topic is meant to teach how to analyze your logs by yourself on a general basis.
There are several common mistakes people do:
1. Opener.
2. Munching/overlapping procs.
3. Rotation.
4. Poor encounter experience/knowledge.
5. Radical lack of right items/stats.
Opener.
Since TV build is the strongest one atm, you need to play it if you want better dps outcome. Glacial Spike is viable but a) it was nerfed; b) you need to stack mastery which is useless for TV. In this case further things will be in the context of Thermal Voiding.
Until you get more experienced your opener should be like this:
1. Prepot prolonged potion at 4sec of pulltimer.
2. Precast ebonbolt at 4-3.8sec of pulltimer.
3. Flurry
4. Veins.
5. Ice lance
6. Orb...
The thing is you 100% shatter ebonbolt and ice lance no matter where you stand and what's your ping. When you are able to find your own key aspects of positioning and ping you can swap Veins with Flurry. ebonbolt > veins (+BL if it's on you + Berserker if you play as troll) > fluryy > ice lance. From my experience I failed to have critical ebonbolt with such opener but with the 1st example - never.
Why not precast frostbolt > veins > orb > ebonbolt and get 20% damage increase for the latter via 2t20? Or even "better" - cast the orb before anything else to get those 20% for every damaging spell? Let's do simple math. Ebonbolt hits for 2.3mil damage in average. 20% is approx 440k more damage. But in this case you will 100% overlap FoF procs with Winter's Chill debuff from BF'd Flurry. 1 shatter Ice lance is at least 1.3mil damage. Im pretty much positive that 1 missing shatter from Ice lance is bigger than 20% more damage for ebonbolt.
Munching/Overlapping.
There are 2 worst thing could dramatically influence on your dps. First is you don't get any procs at all and second is you munch those procs. Speaking shortly, when you can do 2 shattered lances but you cast 1 and the 2nd chance is gone - you munched proc and lost dps.
Brain Freeze and Fringers of Frost are the only procs you can munch. BF is easier to monitor and manage than FoF. That's why 1-5 overlapped FoF procs is not a big deal and even top players do it. But BF is a lot more important because it provides you not just with possibility to shatter ice lance or ebonbolt due to Winter's Chill debuff but also it let your frostbolt crit. And critical frostbolt also triggers Frozen Veins and Chain Reaction - Artefact talents. You have no excuse munching BFs that's why if you have it 22 times you must have 22 Flurry casts. That's it.
FoF part can be a bit more confusing. At first sight perfect situation is Ice Lance cast count = BF procs + FoF procs. For example, you have 20 BFs and 35 FoFs and 50 Ice Lance casts, 5 shattered lance were missed and here comes the problem to find out why. First it could be because BF and FoF proc at the same time and you consume BF first and FoF right after it into Winter's Chill debuff. As it was said earlier 2 possible lances turned into just 1 cast. It happens. But FoF can be munched too and you can figure it out in 2 ways: 1. Having WA or TMW addons with FoF proc icons; 2. You can check every second of your FoF buffs and compare it to cast time (still second by second) in log's Events view. But if you do have WA/TMW you will probably see it during the fight and don't have to tortue yourself with way#2.
Another common question is how to deal with overlapping procs when BF and FoF appears at the same time. The best way is get rid off FoFs first and BF second. But it works only if you don't have ongoing forstbolt. In this case it's better to continue fb and then cast flurry and then ice lances because as you already know BF > FoF and if you cast fb without Flurry right after you have a chance to munch BF.
Just stick to Buff tab and Cast tab to get basic information and remember BF=Flurry cast, BF+FoF somewhere around Lance casts. More lances means probably some where not shattered, less casts means some were munched/overlapped. Not too less - it's all good, pretty much less - you fail somewhere.
Rotation.
Even though the main part of failing throughout the fight was covered in a previous section, there are still some things which can have bad impact on your dps.
First of all, check your Ice Lance damage. I haven't seen 100% crit rate for Ice Lance. But there is one postulate - empty (non shattered) lance is a pure dps loss. Frequent question is it worth to refresh legendary bracers buff with empty lance. No, it's not. But those who don't know the simple answer have a lot non crit lance damage in their logs. It's allowed to have some but you should know where it comes from. You need to open your Damage Done tab and move your cursor over Ice Lance damage in Amount column. You will see you min, max and average crit damage and min, max and average non crit damage. If your non crit numbers are notably high then you cast lots of empy lances. Switch to "Events" and pick Ice Lance from the "All abilities" menu. Numbers covered in ** refer to critical damage. Pay attention only at your main target and ignore cleave as you can't manipulate it. If you have a lot of non crit lances at main target then you fail hard. Don't maintain legendary bracers stacks with empty lances. Don't spam lances if you need to perform hard movement.
Another common mistake is ignoring frostbolt>flurry (with BF) combo. As a result you have low chain reaction uptime and that's how to learn about that combo mistake. Mostly chain reaction is a random thing since it appears only with critical frost bolts but to be in a charge you need to follow fb with flurry to get a guaranteed crit and chain reaction stack. To make it more easire, if you have less than 50-55% uptime - fail; around 65% can be a sign you are not that lucky with BF procs and fight is pretty fast; good uptime is 70%+. No need to sacrifice anything for the chain reaction though. Just do not ignore fb>flurry (!BFd).
Also you can get some info from the "Buff" tab. If you have legendary bracers its uptime should be more than 90%. Other important things to look at:
1. Your potion of prolonged power must have 2 usages.
2. If the fight is pretty long (4+ mins) your Veins and BLs should be sync'd (if you have exodar ring). Example, first BL right at the pull, your own BL you cast when Veins are rdy and top it with the 2nd potion.
3. Awsome to have possibility to sync orb with all those cds too but you shouldn't delay the orb too much. Only if Vein's cd is about to run off.
4. If the fight is pretty short so your Veins barely come off the cd in the end of the fight. Do not delay BL and potion for it.
Poor encounter experience/knowledge.
It goes closely with the previous section as knowing the fight it essential thing when you can slow down a bit or vice versa. Anyway, each boss has some nasty abilities which you can and have to avoid because in other case your efficiency becomes much lower. You can learn if you suffer from such abilities in Damage Taken tab. For example, there are concealed murk in the Mistress fight, standing in it reduces your chance to hit by 75%. If you have it in your logs, then you probably lost some dps with it. Same goes for Goroth's Infernal Spikes. If you became a victim of its damage then you probably lost a gcd everytime the spike hit you. And so on...
The best thing is more pulls you do more familiar with boss abilities and your own cd rotations you become.
Radical lack of right items/stats.
The most important thing for frost mage is to have crit at 33%. It's a shatter cap which allows you to crit every time you have procs. For TV build also it's important to get rid off mastery as much as possible for better haste and vers values. Basic stat weight looks like this: crit till the 33% cap > haste somwhere 25-28% => vers > mastery > crit after 33%. I don't include int here since you just have it almost everywhere and don't need to emphasize it.
Luckily frost mages don't rely on legendaries (for example, like fire on bracers in ST fights). There is one best set: bracers+shard but everything else won't prevent you from doing reasonable dps.
About "2t19 musthave". 2t19 is a nice thing to have and with all else being equal it provides you with 50k more dps (with 2t19) against other item sets. But if you don't have TFd t19 legs and shoulders the difference will be like 0.6-1%.
With all that said frost mage remains viable in mythic raiding even without t19 and bracers+shard combo.
That's it. I've tried to cover most common things analyzing which you can improve your dps. If you want to push everything to the limit then you need to be patient in dissecting every second of your log, you must be good with Simc to get benefit from every shred of different stat. Also you should understand that all that players from top list with impossible logs are there just because they know when to do unnecessary damage which results in 200k-400k more dps. And longer the fight lower your dps. Some people can fail hard in your raid and that can affect your performance as well. Anyway, I hope I could help you at least a bit to improve. And sorry for my mad English skills.
There are several common mistakes people do:
1. Opener.
2. Munching/overlapping procs.
3. Rotation.
4. Poor encounter experience/knowledge.
5. Radical lack of right items/stats.
Opener.
Since TV build is the strongest one atm, you need to play it if you want better dps outcome. Glacial Spike is viable but a) it was nerfed; b) you need to stack mastery which is useless for TV. In this case further things will be in the context of Thermal Voiding.
Until you get more experienced your opener should be like this:
1. Prepot prolonged potion at 4sec of pulltimer.
2. Precast ebonbolt at 4-3.8sec of pulltimer.
3. Flurry
4. Veins.
5. Ice lance
6. Orb...
The thing is you 100% shatter ebonbolt and ice lance no matter where you stand and what's your ping. When you are able to find your own key aspects of positioning and ping you can swap Veins with Flurry. ebonbolt > veins (+BL if it's on you + Berserker if you play as troll) > fluryy > ice lance. From my experience I failed to have critical ebonbolt with such opener but with the 1st example - never.
Why not precast frostbolt > veins > orb > ebonbolt and get 20% damage increase for the latter via 2t20? Or even "better" - cast the orb before anything else to get those 20% for every damaging spell? Let's do simple math. Ebonbolt hits for 2.3mil damage in average. 20% is approx 440k more damage. But in this case you will 100% overlap FoF procs with Winter's Chill debuff from BF'd Flurry. 1 shatter Ice lance is at least 1.3mil damage. Im pretty much positive that 1 missing shatter from Ice lance is bigger than 20% more damage for ebonbolt.
Munching/Overlapping.
There are 2 worst thing could dramatically influence on your dps. First is you don't get any procs at all and second is you munch those procs. Speaking shortly, when you can do 2 shattered lances but you cast 1 and the 2nd chance is gone - you munched proc and lost dps.
Brain Freeze and Fringers of Frost are the only procs you can munch. BF is easier to monitor and manage than FoF. That's why 1-5 overlapped FoF procs is not a big deal and even top players do it. But BF is a lot more important because it provides you not just with possibility to shatter ice lance or ebonbolt due to Winter's Chill debuff but also it let your frostbolt crit. And critical frostbolt also triggers Frozen Veins and Chain Reaction - Artefact talents. You have no excuse munching BFs that's why if you have it 22 times you must have 22 Flurry casts. That's it.
FoF part can be a bit more confusing. At first sight perfect situation is Ice Lance cast count = BF procs + FoF procs. For example, you have 20 BFs and 35 FoFs and 50 Ice Lance casts, 5 shattered lance were missed and here comes the problem to find out why. First it could be because BF and FoF proc at the same time and you consume BF first and FoF right after it into Winter's Chill debuff. As it was said earlier 2 possible lances turned into just 1 cast. It happens. But FoF can be munched too and you can figure it out in 2 ways: 1. Having WA or TMW addons with FoF proc icons; 2. You can check every second of your FoF buffs and compare it to cast time (still second by second) in log's Events view. But if you do have WA/TMW you will probably see it during the fight and don't have to tortue yourself with way#2.
Another common question is how to deal with overlapping procs when BF and FoF appears at the same time. The best way is get rid off FoFs first and BF second. But it works only if you don't have ongoing forstbolt. In this case it's better to continue fb and then cast flurry and then ice lances because as you already know BF > FoF and if you cast fb without Flurry right after you have a chance to munch BF.
Just stick to Buff tab and Cast tab to get basic information and remember BF=Flurry cast, BF+FoF somewhere around Lance casts. More lances means probably some where not shattered, less casts means some were munched/overlapped. Not too less - it's all good, pretty much less - you fail somewhere.
Rotation.
Even though the main part of failing throughout the fight was covered in a previous section, there are still some things which can have bad impact on your dps.
First of all, check your Ice Lance damage. I haven't seen 100% crit rate for Ice Lance. But there is one postulate - empty (non shattered) lance is a pure dps loss. Frequent question is it worth to refresh legendary bracers buff with empty lance. No, it's not. But those who don't know the simple answer have a lot non crit lance damage in their logs. It's allowed to have some but you should know where it comes from. You need to open your Damage Done tab and move your cursor over Ice Lance damage in Amount column. You will see you min, max and average crit damage and min, max and average non crit damage. If your non crit numbers are notably high then you cast lots of empy lances. Switch to "Events" and pick Ice Lance from the "All abilities" menu. Numbers covered in ** refer to critical damage. Pay attention only at your main target and ignore cleave as you can't manipulate it. If you have a lot of non crit lances at main target then you fail hard. Don't maintain legendary bracers stacks with empty lances. Don't spam lances if you need to perform hard movement.
Another common mistake is ignoring frostbolt>flurry (with BF) combo. As a result you have low chain reaction uptime and that's how to learn about that combo mistake. Mostly chain reaction is a random thing since it appears only with critical frost bolts but to be in a charge you need to follow fb with flurry to get a guaranteed crit and chain reaction stack. To make it more easire, if you have less than 50-55% uptime - fail; around 65% can be a sign you are not that lucky with BF procs and fight is pretty fast; good uptime is 70%+. No need to sacrifice anything for the chain reaction though. Just do not ignore fb>flurry (!BFd).
Also you can get some info from the "Buff" tab. If you have legendary bracers its uptime should be more than 90%. Other important things to look at:
1. Your potion of prolonged power must have 2 usages.
2. If the fight is pretty long (4+ mins) your Veins and BLs should be sync'd (if you have exodar ring). Example, first BL right at the pull, your own BL you cast when Veins are rdy and top it with the 2nd potion.
3. Awsome to have possibility to sync orb with all those cds too but you shouldn't delay the orb too much. Only if Vein's cd is about to run off.
4. If the fight is pretty short so your Veins barely come off the cd in the end of the fight. Do not delay BL and potion for it.
Poor encounter experience/knowledge.
It goes closely with the previous section as knowing the fight it essential thing when you can slow down a bit or vice versa. Anyway, each boss has some nasty abilities which you can and have to avoid because in other case your efficiency becomes much lower. You can learn if you suffer from such abilities in Damage Taken tab. For example, there are concealed murk in the Mistress fight, standing in it reduces your chance to hit by 75%. If you have it in your logs, then you probably lost some dps with it. Same goes for Goroth's Infernal Spikes. If you became a victim of its damage then you probably lost a gcd everytime the spike hit you. And so on...
The best thing is more pulls you do more familiar with boss abilities and your own cd rotations you become.
Radical lack of right items/stats.
The most important thing for frost mage is to have crit at 33%. It's a shatter cap which allows you to crit every time you have procs. For TV build also it's important to get rid off mastery as much as possible for better haste and vers values. Basic stat weight looks like this: crit till the 33% cap > haste somwhere 25-28% => vers > mastery > crit after 33%. I don't include int here since you just have it almost everywhere and don't need to emphasize it.
Luckily frost mages don't rely on legendaries (for example, like fire on bracers in ST fights). There is one best set: bracers+shard but everything else won't prevent you from doing reasonable dps.
About "2t19 musthave". 2t19 is a nice thing to have and with all else being equal it provides you with 50k more dps (with 2t19) against other item sets. But if you don't have TFd t19 legs and shoulders the difference will be like 0.6-1%.
With all that said frost mage remains viable in mythic raiding even without t19 and bracers+shard combo.
That's it. I've tried to cover most common things analyzing which you can improve your dps. If you want to push everything to the limit then you need to be patient in dissecting every second of your log, you must be good with Simc to get benefit from every shred of different stat. Also you should understand that all that players from top list with impossible logs are there just because they know when to do unnecessary damage which results in 200k-400k more dps. And longer the fight lower your dps. Some people can fail hard in your raid and that can affect your performance as well. Anyway, I hope I could help you at least a bit to improve. And sorry for my mad English skills.