Struggling with dps

Hey guys, i have a problem and im not ashamed! iam a crap dps mage lmao. I dont really no why but the best dps ive managed is 1.5k, now i no this is shite but dnt no how i can really improve apart from gear. I am fire spec with some arcane (down to torment of he weak). I begin with scorch which has instant 5 stack glyph, thn i kick into fireball until i gt instant pyro which i follow up with fireblast n rinse and repeat lol i have ~1400sp atm so if anyone has any CONSTRUCTIVE comments lol i would be grateful for the advice.

Bennett

Cap spell hit, change specs to FFB spec, including precision ( extra 3% hit ). Cap spell hit.

Did I mention cap spell hit?

Ill help more in depth when I have time, hopefully tomorrow , but remember to work on spell hit/hit rating , ill get the numbers on here later...again when i have more time as its bed time here for me soon

If you take a look here, Paul has gone into some detail with mage builds etc from when I was struggling a bit with Teya:

http://fistofuther.wowwars.net/general-stuff-f4/some-mage-builds-t74.htm

And yet he didn't include arcane build, one of the better ones out there. Atleast playstyle wise.

Well anyways, do you scorch trash mobs too? Because that's a waste of time, rather time a pyroblast right as the tank is pulling, then spam fireball. It's pointless to have Torment of the Weak, since you don't slow mobs with fire. That is just on the top of my head, and as Death said Cap spell hit.

I havent included Arcane as back then Arcane was the least viable without having gear to support it, and I didnt have time to research a whole other tree and build, and tbh I forgot about going back and doing arcane on that thread. Lazy + Forgetfull = ME!

Anyhoo, Currently Bennett using fireball spam your stats look like this:

You will miss 10.6% of everything you cast against a raid boss level mob, thats 10% DPS youve lost out on by not being hit capped, plus youll loose 10% more mana casting those spells, 10% casting time wasted, 10% less chance to proc the instant Pyro from hotstreak...need I go on about spell hit and how important it is? lol

By you spamming Fireball, using the rotation of living bomb>fireball>pyro when procs, rinse repeat your dps will stand, ideally on a perfect day with no lag to be :
Living bomb > 344DPS Fireball > 1022DPS Pyro > 192DPS (ignite ticks from your crit chance will total somewhere around 300DPS)
Bringing your total perfect rotation, no lag theoretical DPS to around 1860 DPS

If you switch to a build that uses FFB as its main nuke your rotation will be almost the same, changing Fireball for FFB your approximate stats without changing a single item of gear or gems and excluding any enchants you may get will be :

Miss rate 7.6%, 3% better than your current build.
Rotation Living Bomb>FFB>Pyro when procs =
Living Bomb > 344 DPS Pyro > 196 DPS FFB > 1072 DPS (Ignite ticks provide 331DPS)
Total for this build = 1945DPS

If you can get your hit to 368 you will never miss against a raid boss (in FFB build), your DPS should jump unbuffed to over or much closer to 2k. At this point switching to gemming/enchanting purely for spellpower equates to 10 SP = just under 9 DPS overall increase.

Its not worth working on any other stat at this point other than SP...untill you reach over 2415 SP then Crit will become point for point more valuable than SP in relation to DPS increase (at this point SP and Crit are both worth basically 8.63DPS increase, for each point of SP you get over 2415 crit becomes more and more valuable).

Saz can provide you with 101 reasons to go Arcane Im sure, yes its more user intensive to pay and you have to actually use your brain to play it more so than with most other builds, but for a quick fix without changing gear I would still stand by my suggestion of switching to FFB build.

Im not sure if anyone has mentioned about capping hit though...you should aim for that

Attack power.



*cough*

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Yeah, some clever pala thought the best blessing for me was BoM and I just can't quite get over it.

thanks for all the help gus i can see a few places where im going wrong just from reading this. Im working on the hit chance, but it seems along way off lol wen gems only add 16 ah well must keep trying.

You can get gems up to about 20 I think. Although, if you're a JC yourself you can get a +34 hit gem

probably not worth spending that much gold on rare quality gems or higher though untill you get gear you'll be keeping a while ...but thats coming from me, Mr.broke...so what do i know about finances

Quick fact time!

**Wall of fucking text**

I wouldn't say Arcane is challeging to play, not more so than frost or fire. But thats oppinion i suppose

1. Stacking 3 AB then unload with Arcane Barrage or Arcane missiles if Missle barrage procced.
2. Keep slow up unless the mob is either almost dead or you have a frost mage in your group.
3. If you're fighting a boss and you have 3 stacks of AB up AND Missle Barage pop arcane power and whateer spell power increasing trinket you have and unload with Arcane Missle.
4. Fit in Arcane barages after an Arcane Missle.

Conclustion: You use 3 buttons, in your rotation and the occasional 5 now and then, when you use CD's
Difficult? No. Unless buttoning your shirt is tough, but then it's a miracle you're even reading this.

The end.

Arcane tree throws this at you:
You gain SP from Intel, this means you can stack more Hit items and gems and still not lose to much SP
you gain 6% haste
20% mana regen while casting
Clear cast
Increased crit chance when Clear cast procs.
Presence of mind - instant cast a spell
Arcane power - increases damage and mana cost by 20%
20% less thread
3% increased chance to hit with arcane spells and reduces mana cost by 3% aswell
Focus Magic - 3% crit buff to a friendly target, and when the target crits YOU get 3% crit chance.
Increased intellect by 15% further increasing your mana pool and sp and crit.
an 3% Damage and Crit chance increase.
50% extra crit damage.
10% spirit witch increases crit buff from Molten armor.

And with those bare minimum points in arcane theres still more than enough points to get the extra hit from Frost tree.

This is what you're telling me was'nt viable? It has right there 6% increase to hit and that means you only need 289 hit rating instead of the normal 446 hit rating, witch leaves room for even MORE spell power.

Yeah that was totally not viable, and wasn't you reason for not listing an arcane build, that you couldn't find a top guild mage that use it?

Fire have NO talents that increases chance to hit.
and wasn't that the major problem?

Frost have a 3% hit increase but it lies at the top of the tree and is easely accesable for a arcane mage

So if Bennet was arcane he would have 4% miss chance according to your mathematics Death, and thats a 3% more from FFB.



They are all god damn viable, pick a theme you like and play accordingly, Fire and frost needs more hit rating than arcane does, but fire is big critz when it hitz and frost are mana conserving bastards.

But if you really want to get more hit chance without throwing gems at your gear then I (not surprisingly) recommend arcane, if just for the extra hit you get out of it.

And you should if anything rise in DPS above 2k

**Wall of fucking text**

Anything else?

wow saz you really seam quite abrupt in your replies lmao, agreed i did consider the arcane tree as a viable option, after all its advice not guidance i need. Upon reading the whole wow-eurpe forums aswell as the advice on hear tho i see ffb as the best option available to myself as i look towards tier 8 and 9 gear. I have a shoping list of armour i got from the wow-europe site that according to deathsknights calcs i shud b hitting nearly 6k dps granted is ALOT of tokens and emblems but its target to aim for. As we become a more serious raiding guild this will then become my main target to reach 6k. Thanks for all the advice by the way i have learnt more in the last week about the mage class than i have i the past 4 yrs.

Well the calculations should be from your current gear, if you gear differently you may disregard whatever I've said.

Just a note:

This is never going to be a serious, hardcore raiding guild.

Heh I did type out a nice detailed response Saz, but then I thought, why bother. If you wanna go do research into why FFB offers more than Arcane then you will, which I highly doubt. Go do the number crunching on 3-4 of the dps orientated sites (as I did) with regards to the gear Bennett had at the time and then come back and provide some evidence that would make me think the numbers I came up with were lower than any arcane mix I put in (and yes im sad and sat there for 1.5-2 hours going through about every cookie cutter build for all trees, FFB was still most viable for him).
With the gear he had he would of been running, raid buffed a decent crit chance which falls into the lap of FFB, heck I didnt even take into account TTW being used on him for yet another 3% crit which would of pushed FFB further ahead of anything else.

If all your going to do is try to flame my posts on this subject then I suggest you go and flame the theory crafters who come up with this crazy idea of certain builds having different DPS output than other builds, as its their work I am using to give advice from, next time maybe ill just post links to theory crafting websites so people can go work it out for themselves and save myself several hours each week aswell as the stupid responses I get on here.

Arcane is still less viable than Fire, go check out the top mages in WoW and see what the vast majority are using.

If you do wanna spec Arcane though, just throw all your points into it and have fun playing it, then go figure out a real spec and have fun with that too. Im sure Saz can tell you what the best arcane build is seeing he has a hard on for that tree

wow this topic is getting quite heated lmao at the end of the day there are positives and negatives in all builds, heck thats what dual talents is for. Now lets all shake hands and go sing songs round the campfire

**Wall of Fucking Text pt.2**

Well you know how I love to flame but what really bugs me, is how you say Arcane isn't a viable build. I mean I can get it to work just fine like any other build and it's not like I'm a WoW hardcore player.

Well the numbers I used were based off yours death.
Also I thought getting hit capped was a problem and arcane solves that a little bit

And all the "top mages" can quite possibly go fuck themselves for all I care, there is a saying you know
"If everyone is jumping off the bridge to die, would you do it too?"
in this case "if every 'top mage' is frostfire, should you be frostfire too?"

Sure he might have better crit chance but what would that help him when he missed his spells?

I'm not a theory guy but I did put 15 minutes into looking at the trees and Arcane just have more chance to hit than Frostfire or Fire or Frost. It could be used until youre hit capped, and then go Frostfire or whatever.
But don't just cross Arcane off because none of the top mages uses it, that is just stupid.

I don't love arcane stupidly, I mean I hated DW on Deathknights and look what Saz is now. What I do hate is theory crafting estimated dps from different builds saying Spec A or Spec B is the better for that person, there is still different playstyles to all people and he, like me, might not feel the frostfire playstyle and cock it up. All I did was counter pointing some of your own points and present another viable option to him, but instead I'm labeled as a flamer.

I mean if I was flaming then this post and everything else in this threads would contain a bit harsher tone and someh hidden personal insults. It's only insulting if you want it to be and then it's not really my fault since you wanted to be insulted
**Wall of Fucking Text pt.2 end**
TL;DR
Not flaming, just playing the devil's advocate.

lol saz you remind me so much of one my rl friends its uncanny. Well just t let you all no i got hit cap last nyt so shud make things easier from now on.

Enough said I guess. Seems as though I have been put into my place here in these forums. Next time I profess to know something Ill just keep it to myself, even after many years of playing a particular class and trying every variation of each build, after raiding with said class at each level cap in each expansion, even when trying to help someone make some kind of informed decision on how they COULD proceed and progress.
Arcane IS a viable tree if you want to play Arcane, if you want to achieve other things it may well not be viable...from now on everyone can choose their own build and succeed or fail at their own choosing.

So much more I could say, but I'll leave it as, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Bennett, after working out thing in accordance to what you asked for, and after you running recount and my numbers being off by virtually nothing, I'm glad you've now understood a little better your chosen class and I'm sure you will continue to improve your numbers from here on in .

I would suggest links to sites to use to help predict DPs and rotations as well as enchant suggestions and what gems to use to eek out that last little bit of DPS, but really I cant be bothered to when as previously mentioned, some people who use this forum HATE theory crafters (regardless of whether they are right or wrong...More often than not right however in my experience), I don't want to offend those people.

p.s
Not every top mage is FFB, actually virtually none of them are, almost everyone is ToW/FB build as thats been proven o be best dps build for mages, firstly by theory crafters, and secondly by people raiding high end content running WWS so their figures are open for all to see. None of that means anything though I guess.

And it's not like I havn't experimetented on my mage either.

Sure I don't number crush, and I sure as hell don't like theory crafting on how much dps I get from that +16 hit gem
because it just seems like a needless task.

And I'm not providing an informed decisition? Hell my post is based on your very own numbers. But you keep saying FFB is better, but you sure as hell don't say why.

I'm saying Arcane is better since it gets +6% hit from talents alone, and you can then stack other stats than +hit and
potetially be more powerful. But maybe thats misinformed?

But one of your keypoints to Arcane not being viable was because, the ever so lovingly top mages didn't use it but that dosn't stop the unstopable FFB!

p.s I don't suffer from multiple personality disorder, unless I'm so great I count as multiple people. And I sure as hell can't remember that, whenever I speak against something it should be banned from the forums.

I'll argue against it if I don't like it, and so far you havn't really proved your point to me since all you've seem to say is "it's better because other people use it" and "you should crunch the numbers yourself". And it seems like your little theory craft crumbles from under a small bit of critique.