mages in 5.0.4 -> MoP

[hermioneg]

after a long training session in PTR ive some consideration/question about mages in mop...

SPEC:

you must have fire, but for 2nd?? I have read thousands of forum, and the result is: arcane is better but you need 2 different gear (like cata)

so analyze FIRE..

TIER:

Tier 1 have been designed for mobility
• Scorch, which grants you an ability that you can spam while moving..i dont think to see tons of ultraxion.

Tier 2 have been designed for survivability
• Ice Barrier, which absorbs a quantity of damage (the absorption effect scales with Spell Power) and prevents spellcasting from being delayed, while active... -delay +dps

Tier 3 have been designed for crowd control
• Ring of Frost, according to taste

Tier 4 have been designed for survival
• Cauterize, which causes an attack that would otherwise kill you to instead bring you to 50% of your maximum health, after which you will burn for 40% of your maximum health over 6 seconds... always the best for mages

Tier 5 provide you with abilities that will become an integral part of your rotation.
• Living Bomb deals damage over time to a target. When it expires or the target dies, Living Bomb also deals damage to up to 3 other targets within 10 yards. Living Bomb cannot be applied on more than 3 enemies..... living bomb is in the hearts of all the mages!

Tier 6 are mana management talents.
• Rune of Power summons a rune which causes you, when standing in it, to regenerate 100% more mana and to deal 15% increased spell damage. This spell replaces  Evocation and the rune that it summons disappears after 1 minute..... i think this is the best choice.


GLYPHS:
major:

1)combustion  2) evocation 3) FFB (not sure, see rotation)

minor: useless

ROTATION:
single:
Rune of Power and stay above rune
Living Bomb and refresh it right before or right after the last tick (the expiring Living Bomb will explode in both cases)
Pyroblast when  Pyroblast! procs
Inferno Blast when  Heating Up procs
Cast  Fireball....or FFB  -> little analysis:

these spells are the same as the casting time and damage, FFB have the slow component too...but....i try both on dummy and I think that FB do more damage...but.... if you choose glyph of FFB cast time is reduced by 0.5....so..... i need more try to elect the best.

multi:
2-4 mob    = LB -> FB
5 or + mob = FS and spam AExpl

STATS:

The stat priority for a Fire Mage is:
-Intellect
-Hit Rating (until 15%)
-Critical Strike Rating
-Haste Rating
-Mastery Rating

I understand this ....
 correct me if there are any errors

[Milli]

Other little nice things that have been implemented

- The ability to refresh Living Bomb a tick before it set to detonate (Living Bomb Will still detonate but this enables us to get closer to 100% uptime on LB)
- Any spec (Arcane, Frost, Fire) can use any of the bomb spells (Tier 5) - Rule of thumb I've found - LB if around 1/2/3 targets(although Nether Tempest is close on dps also) - any more than that then Frost Bomb becomes a better option)


In regards to Stats

- Hit (15%)
- Haste (w/ 2pc T13) - 1949 [1949 haste rating + 500 T13 bonus * 5% Raid haste = 25%] For that Extra Tick of Damage (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AsDL8HE-bGDVdElxR3ZxeVgtUWFDcV9kMXU4ZC1KekE#gid=19)
- Crit , try and get in around 30% -> 35% if possible
- Mastery aound 20%

I realise this is with BiS or close to BiS but it's what i've been working with and works nicely

[Milli]

Another thing to note is that Combustion no longer uses Living Bomb as part of its cumulative damage - it is now only Ignite and Pyroblast dots that are taken into account.

So if you are waiting for that huge Combustion (if tracking with likes of Combustion helper) it will never come - better to set your threshold (in settings) to around 10 - 15k ish

[TeaLeaf]

Played with this briefly last night for the first time.  

One of the things I immediately noticed was that due to the travel time of the spell from caster to target:

-the Heating Up proc graphics often appear on screen so late that the the next cast is 90% complete already
-even with a /stopcasting Inferno macro I was over-writing & losing procs with the following cast (fireball) completing before the macro registered on the server
-this situation was unmanageable during a movement phase (i.e. scorching) as the cast time is just too quick for manage the procs unless you completely stop casting and wait between each scorch

The worrying thing for me was that the travel distance was from me to a training dummy (20yds or so).   I'm wondering what is going to happen when I am sitting at 40 yards and have the typical 'one cast in the the air travelling' and the following cast about to complete.   That seems to mean that mages will need to sit real close to the boss to avoid these proc over-writes.

Has anyone else noticed these problems?  I lost about one-third of all my Heating Up>Inferno procs in a 20 minute session on the dummies.

[TeaLeaf]

Just did a Google on this and apparently I am not alone in thinking this is a problem.

http://i-like-pancakes.tumblr.com/post/30933104381/a-more-precise-and-practical-guide-to-the-fire-mage


There's a lot of timings and math in that post, but the TLDR version is that you have 0.18 seconds or less to react to and hit the Inferno button.  

:blink: