Understanding Ignite/Combustion

[sifarus 0]

Hello all,

 

I recently switched to Fire Mage and although it's a lot of fun, my dps still lacking. One of the bigger problems is that I have a hard time understanding how Ignite/Combustion really works. 

I'm at ilvl 674 right now and my highest ignite is around 8.4k, but I've read I should be doing 12-15k at least. 

 

I read that it's about chaining crits and pyroblasts, but this doesn't always seem to be the case. I've often had that I was at 8k ignite and directly followed it with another (instant) pyroblast, only for it to drop to 6k. So I don't really get why it goes up and down like it does. What's the logic/math behind it?

 

And for a more general question: What makes for a succesful combustion rotation? I have 2 set piece, if that matters.

 

Thanks for the help

[Berlinia 168]

The combustion sequence (when you start building up combustion) is kinda prone to RNG. To start it ou want to be at HU/HS and then you:
Cast 1 Fireball
When the fireball is in the air use pyro

if any of the two crit, you'll get another pyro  -> use it.

Then if there's a secondary target use inferno blast twice (assuming you use kindling).

The way ignite works:

Assuming you got 50% mastery. Fireball does 100 damage and Pyro 200.

If your fireball hits the target it's gonna take an additional 50 damage over 6 seconds (1 tick per second). Assuming you hit with Pyro 3 seconds later (at 3 seconds), then the total ignite is going to be 25 + 50% * 200 = 125 and it's going to deal this amount over 6 seconds. It's a bit more complicated than that ((what I just typed is not100% true) but it gives you an idea (the truth is too complicated). 

[Dutchmagoz 30]

From my fire mage guide over on altered-time:

 

 

- Whenever a spell lands, it takes your mastery % of that spell, and turns it into a total ignite pool. Ignite ticks every second over 5 seconds, so your ignite tick value becomes 1/5th of that. Whenever ignite ticks, the total value drops, but the tick value remains the same.

- If you already had ignite on the target when a new spell applies, ignite gets refreshed to 6 seconds, and a new total ignite pool gets calculated, and then redistributed over 6 ticks.

 

Example (let's assume 30% mastery, completely arbitrary number):

 

- a spell lands for 50k, 30% of the 50k, 15k, becomes the ignite pool. Ignite starts as 5 seconds, so total ignite = 15k, with 15/5 = 3k ticks.

- a new spell lands for 50k, 30% of the 50k, 15k, is added to the ignite pool. Ignite gets refreshed to 6 seconds, total pool = 30k over 6 seconds, so 30/6 = 5k ticks

- ignite ticks. The total pool now becomes 25k over 5 seconds, so still on 5k ticks

- a new spell lands for 30k, 30% of 30k, 9k, gets added to the ignite pool. Ignite pool now gets refreshed to 6 seconds with a 25k+9k ignite pool, for a total of 34k over 6 seconds, = 5.67k ignite ticks.

  Edited April 4, 2015 by Dutchmagoz