90+ percentile looking to push my fire mage parses.

[wullets]

Hi guys,

Currently am in a guild consisting of friends who are just farming heroic and don't have 20 to push into mythic. I don't have much in terms of competition at the moment and much of the reason I play wow is to be competitive. My %ilvl parses (I consider to be) are quite good - 94% avg for heroic. I'm wondering if there were any higher level mythic geared fire mages who could help me push closer to 100% ilvl percent.

An example of a fight that I generally don't do as well on is Dragons so I've linked the logs for an encounter from last night:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/Vt ... amage-done" target="_blank

The main reason I'm posting this is that I doubt I'm losing 10% ilvl in my bracket due to a) not having bracers/optimal trinkets and b) bad RNG. As a result I must be doing something wrong, if even slightly and I'm not able to directly pinpoint it. I know there are very good mages that lurk this subreddit and would greatly appreciate an opinion. This is a competitive wow subreddit so I hope this belongs here and I don't sound overly pretentious or elitist.

Thank you very much in advance.

[Glynny_]

Hi,

4/7 Mythic Mage here. I generally rank 95+ percentile on most fights that I fully try to get logs, other times I just derp around and nuke the boss. I've had a few 100th percentiles before but getting them and retaining them is quite hard as there is always someone with more optimal gear, better raid set up and luckier procs around the corner, but let do some comparisons. I'm comparing your log VS the rank 1 fire mage for your item level bracket, logs can be found here: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/Vd ... &source=28" target="_blank

What was different?

Firstly, lets point out the things that made his kill better out of your control.

For starters, the kill time. His guild killed it in 2:20 seconds, as opposed to your 4:18 kill. It's very likely they just stacked both bosses, used everything and nuked the boss

Secondly, gear selection. His gear is far more optimal than yours and he has the legendary bracers with two stacked bosses, that's some pretty high ignites on a lot of targets. One thing that in your control is that horrible Unstable Horrorslime trinket. You really want to get your hands on either Naraxas Spiked Tongue or Devilsaur Shockbaton.

Lastly, if the fight went on for 8 seconds more, you would have ranked higher. you last combustion only lasted 3 seconds.

What could you as a player improve on?

You combustions: One thing I noticed right away is the amount of pyroblasts you cast during your first opener. You only managed to get 5 off, which led me to my next thing: your gear. Correct me if I'm wrong but it looks to me as if you only have around 1600 haste? You need to get 1800 haste in order to get 6 pyros off for every combustion phase.

If you're unable to speed kill it like the aforementioned mages logs you should save your cooldowns for add phases. There are multiple points in this fight where there are plenty of adds to cleave. Getting a good ignite on all of these can boost your dps by a lot. I can't remember if they cast the shades on heroic(the ghostly looking dragons), if they do, saves your cooldowns for them. Delaying combustion is not a bad thing unless it means you're going to miss out on another combustion in the fight and as your last one only lasted three seconds, you could have delayed all of them to get it off on adds.

Rune of Power usage: It look to me as if you could be missing some runes. Every time you cast combustion you have a rune which is good, but then you cast one right after and never cast again until the next on is up. You should be using rune of power as much as possible but reserving one charge for combustion, using rune of power when you have a lot of charges and can cycle through them to generate more pyro's. Think about it, after a combustion phase you're left with 0 charges and you casting ROP right after combustion is just going to be filled with fireballs, much less DPS than pyro.

You could have probably used living bomb more too, but I'm not sure of the situation you was in at the time so i can't say for certain.

Just do a bit of comparison with other top mages and take all of the above in to consideration.

[lopstar]

Ring and bracer, faster kills and rng. Thats how u Push top ranks.

[wullets]

Thanks Glynny for the detailed response!

I have an 840 shock baton, and got rid of my 845 naraxas because the baton simmed better single target. I use the shock baton on ursoc and nyth, however the reason I've been using the horrorslime on the other four is that it sims like 20k higher on 4+ target fights and slightly higher on 2+ targets. I understand that it comes with a lack of control so I may stick with the shock baton for all fights.

This parse was a couple weeks ago so I'm not sure what my haste was exactly, however I should have been >1800 at that point as I've always been aware of the soft cap. Here is a heroic parse for ursoc where I used the shock baton and it looks like I got 6 Pyro's off during combust.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/Vt ... e&source=5" target="_blank

I'm assuming the main reason I didn't 100% this parse is kill time and my lack of legendary bracers.

Regarding kill times this is obviously out of my control, but I may be joining a mythic prog. guild for next tier. I've been told I'm good enough many times, just need to find one that adheres to my schedule.

On Dragons, I'll consider taking unstable magic next week as adds drop so quickly in heroic LB usually feels underwhelming.

I'm not completely apt at reading logs, so would you be able to do one more favor and check my rune of power usage on the ursoc log I linked? As long as I'm doing it correct there I know how to fix my mistake on Dragons.

Thanks again for your help!

[Glynny_]

Looking at the logs it doesn't look like you're using it as often as you could. Rule #1 never be at 2 stacks, you're wasting time and damage by sitting at 2 stacks. On those logs you cast your very first one at 1 second, meaning that charge came back 41 seconds, you cast your second charge at 13 seconds, and that charge would have come back at 53 seconds.

You only cast Rune of Power a third time at 1:22 meaning there was a 29 second period where you didn't cast a single charge, that's almost a full charged missed out. Just remember the following in this order:

- Never be at two stacks
- Use Rune of Power during combustion phases
- Use combustion when you have a few charges and are able to get a few pyros off without casting many fireballs.

One other thing that you should consider is when you cast it, as explained above you want to cast it when you have a few charges of FB/PF so you can get as many pyros off during RoP. Every time you cast it again right after combustion meaning you will have 0-1 charge(s) and will spend half the duration casting fireball - a huge DPS loss.

Tl;dr - Use RoP more, never be at two charges, save a charge for Combustion, chain pyros during RoP.

[Feuertorte]

On those logs you cast your very first one at 1 second, meaning that charge came back 41 seconds, you cast your second charge at 13 seconds, and that charge would have come back at 53 seconds.

You only cast Rune of Power a third time at 1:22 meaning there was a 29 second period where you didn't cast a single charge, that's almost a full charged missed out.

Sorry I have to correct you here - runes will never recharge at the same time, which means that he actually just lost 1 second, which is totally fine. (rune number 1 is recharged at 41 seconds and rune number 2 will be recharged after 40 more seconds at 1:21)

[Glynny_]

On those logs you cast your very first one at 1 second, meaning that charge came back 41 seconds, you cast your second charge at 13 seconds, and that charge would have come back at 53 seconds.

You only cast Rune of Power a third time at 1:22 meaning there was a 29 second period where you didn't cast a single charge, that's almost a full charged missed out.

Sorry I have to correct you here - runes will never recharge at the same time, which means that he actually just lost 1 second, which is totally fine. (rune number 1 is recharged at 41 seconds and rune number 2 will be recharged after 40 more seconds at 1:21)

Thanks for correcting me - you are correct. My bad! You can pretty much ignore everything I said.

[wullets]

Yeah, I recently watched both Rikh and Lexi's guides and they recommend to not use any charges between combustions (other than the one right after combustion ends.)

Again, I really appreciate your help! Thanks!