Hermi - performance management

[TeaLeaf]

Figured I would post this in here as I could not remember whether or not I added you Switch to the BCC for the PM I sent to her.

Hermi

I did a quick shuffle through the logs from last night, it was a useful exercise seeing as we were both in the instance together for the first few fights as fire mages, so we can compare directly.   The figures in brackets are what my mage did in the same fight.  For the record, your mage is i395 and mine is i390.

Some of the differences in the numbers below are small, but if you add them all up then that's why my i390 mage can compete and beat your i395 mage regularly in combat situations.  At the training dummy with less movement required we were much more evenly matched.

Your dps was better as fire than you have done in previous raids as Arcane, so it's clear to me that you need to get used to handling your fire rotation better during combat and this will give you another lift in dps.   Practice your fire rotation so that it becomes second nature to keep dots up, to use Mirror/Orb on CD and to get used to selecting good ignites to trigger Combustion.  This will take your dps ahead of mine and you'll then realise the potential of your better gear.

Combat Comments:
Activity - the % of 'in combat' time during which you were actually casting something (we want this to be as close to 100% as possible, anything lower is lost dps)

DPSe - DPSe is a better measure of your contribution to the fight so I have quoted DPSe not DPS here.   For info: DPS is calculated by Total Damage divided by your personal Total Time Spent using abilities, whilst DPSe is Total Damage you did divided by the total length of the raid combat time. In general, you should see slightly higher DPS values than DPSe because of this.  For example, a hunter could do 300k damage in the first 5 seconds at the start of a boss fight and then die.  His DPS would show as 300/5 = 60k DPS, but his DPSe assuming a 60 second fight would be 300k/60 = 5k DPSe.

Format: Statistic: your_number (my_number)

Morchok:
DPSe 21.6k (23.4k)
Not a lot to say here as it is such a short fight and we out-gear it by a way.  

Zon'ozz:
DPSe 38.1k (38.1k)
Activity 97.8% (98.8%)
Living Bomb uptime 82.3% (90.6%)
Mana Gem 0 (2) - get into the habit of using a mana gem early in the fight so that the CD is running and it will be available later in the fight.  Mana gems are all about planning ahead for when you might need the extra mana.
Mirror Images 1 (2)

Yor'shaj:
DPSe 20.4k (23.7k)
Activity 94.5% (98.0%) - lost dps here when you are not casting anything
Living Bomb uptime 68.1% (79.6%) - big loss of dps here
Flame Orb 22 (38) - you forgot to use it again after the CD expired
Combustion 0 (2)  - you forgot to use it alll
Mirror Image 1 (2) - use it every time CD expires!

Hagara:
DPSe 18.4k (16.6k)
Activity 70.7% (75.7%) - I died during this fight and was rezzed but was still more active!
Living Bomb uptime 56.4% (68.0%)
Mana Gem 0 (1)
Combustion 1 (2)
Mirror Image 2 (2)

Ultraxion:
DPSe 23.9k (26.2k)
Activity 97.0% (99.0%)
Living Bomb uptime 67.4% (90.1%)
Mana Gem 0 (2)
Combustion 2 (2)
Mirror Image 2 (2)

You seem to lose a chunk of dps by not quickly getting back to casting on something after you have had to move, use Heroic Will etc.  Having looked at your UI this is largely down to you 'click casting'.   Try using some of the buttons on your N52 to assign all of your fire spells to them.  One hand manages the rotation and your eyes no longers have to leave your spell timers to then check to see if you have moused-over the right spell so that you can click it.  It's the same principle as my 12 button mouse, my entire fire rotation is on my mouse buttons.  I use WASD keys to move and use keys close by to have hot key abilities (e.g. F - my Heroic Will button, T - my target macro button, G - my blink button etc, all of these keys are right next to where my hand is already for the WASD keys.

Cooldowns - you lose a lot of dps by not using your abilities again as soon as they are off cooldown.  Keep an eye on them, it's free dps!

Mana Gem - get into the habit of using a mana gem early in the fight so that the CD is running and it will be available later in the fight.  Mana gems are all about planning ahead for when you might need the extra mana.  It might not be needed now, but on heroics it is essential and if you do not practice making sure you use them early & regularly then you will be in trouble on harder fights.

Ice Block - I noticed you stayed in your ice block for the full duration when you soaked.  Here's a macro I use that let's you cast the ice block on first click, but then on second click it cancels the ice bliock so you can do start doing dps again quickly:

Code Select Expand

#showtooltip Ice Block
/stopcasting
/cancelaura Ice Block
/cast Ice Block

As I said at the start, there's lots of little bits of info here, but if you add them all up your DPS will increase very significantly.  I believe the starting place for this is to reorganise your key bindings to make your N52 handle your fire spells.  Talk to me about it if you need some help here.  Making the casting easier then allows you to concentrate on being more active (casting more often) and spares up brain time to watch cooldowns etc.

I hope this helps Hermi, but feel free to jump on TS and talk to me about it any time.

Regards.

[JonnyAppleSeed]

Thanks TL for the efforts you are putting in here ..... its being logged for my mage too