Why is my DPS fail? Frost mage needs some advice badly.

[xproj2501x 0]

I currently have an iLevel of 498 with a gear score of 153849 on Mr Robot and I can't seem to figure out why my DPS is completely god awful. My guild is currently working on HoF and for the later portions of the raid I am averaging around 75k. There other members of the group have an average iLvl of 505 but a much lower calculated gear score yet they are pushing anywhere from 110 - 140k. Additionally, we did a quick Stone Guard kill this week for extra gold and I only managed to come in around 58k.

My opening is as follows:

• Invocation at countdown
• Nether Tempest at pull
• Frozen Orb
• Mirror Image
• Frostbolt until Brain Freeze and Fingers of Frost proc
• Pop Icy Veins, a trinket, Presence of Mind, and Alter Time
• Use procs, refresh Nether Tempest, Frostbolt until Alter Time completes
• Use second trinket, use procs

After the opening I spam frost bolt, refresh nether tempest as needed, pop trinkets, frozen orb, and PoM with Frostfire Bolt as they become available, and use my procs when I have them.

Feel free to ask me for any additional needed info. Advice is greatly appreciated.

Armory: http://us.battle.net...Dunstona/simple

Logs: http://www.worldoflo...s/8/?s=35&e=482

Edited May 17, 2013 by xproj2501x

[solacespecs 14]

I did Wing Lord recently on 25 Man and I had about 170k DPS as a 501 ilvl mage. Obviously there's going to be some differences, but in looking at your logs, there are some things to consider:

1) You have a fairly low uptime on Invoker's Energy, meaning you are letting that buff fall off. You need to have the awareness of when you have 3 seconds left to Evocate again to regain the buff. On all my logs I keep an uptime of 95% and above (usually closer to 97 and 98).

2) Your number of Brain Freezes are astoundingly low at 14 (compared to my 56).

3) Your Nether Tempest damage is low (around 2 million) compared to mine (around 6 million). What this tells me is that you are letting Nether Tempest fall off, which also explains the low BF procs. You have a low BF count because you aren't getting any procs, because NT is falling off.

Hope this helps. It seems like you are mostly doing things right, but you are not keeping track of buffs/NT on the target. Do you have an addon to help you with that? TellMeWhen works great for this exact thing.

Also I would replace both your trinkets. The SPA one should have been your first priority over the ring.

Best of luck to you!

Edited May 17, 2013 by solacespecs

[Horcored 17]

Well, i am not a master on mages, but from what i can see on ur logs, u only had 66% uptime on ur Invocation which should be much higher. Second u only had 25% uptime on ur nether tempest, which is really bad. That alone should make up for alot of ur dps loss, the might be some other stuffs u can do to improve, but as i mentioned i am not that good on mages to tell u everything, but what i mentioned here is something i know u should try to improve on.

- Horcored

[Tarazet 144]

Don't use Ice Lance unless you have a proc from Fingers of Frost. If you have to do damage on the move, get used to multi-dotting with Nether Tempest instead (without breaking CC of course), and use Ice Lance only if you're completely out of better options. As things stand, you wasted a tremendous number of GCD's on using uncharged Ice Lances when anything else would have been a better choice.

[xproj2501x 0]

Thanks for the tips so far. I have been waiting for Invocation to die down and recasting as soon as it hits 0. I will try casting with 3 seconds and see how much that improves things. I am also going to install TellMeWhen and tweak my UI when I get home so I can get a better idea of when things are expiring.

I do have another question about casting while moving. I have been getting a lot warnings about renewing my bomb before it expired which led me to switch to ice lance. Is this message a problem with the mod that's reporting it and something that does not apply to NT since it does not have a damage bonus at expiration?

[Tarazet 144]

Thanks for the tips so far. I have been waiting for Invocation to die down and recasting as soon as it hits 0. I will try casting with 3 seconds and see how much that improves things. I am also going to install TellMeWhen and tweak my UI when I get home so I can get a better idea of when things are expiring.

I do have another question about casting while moving. I have been getting a lot warnings about renewing my bomb before it expired which led me to switch to ice lance. Is this message a problem with the mod that's reporting it and something that does not apply to NT since it does not have a damage bonus at expiration?

NT doesn't have a damage bonus at expiration, and you'll definitely find cases where you want to refresh it early (with trinket procs etc). But if only one target is up, then you don't have much of a choice. Ice Lance it is, and consider changing your T1 talent to Blazing Speed if you find yourself having to move a lot.

[solacespecs 14]

Thanks for the tips so far. I have been waiting for Invocation to die down and recasting as soon as it hits 0. I will try casting with 3 seconds and see how much that improves things. I am also going to install TellMeWhen and tweak my UI when I get home so I can get a better idea of when things are expiring.

I do have another question about casting while moving. I have been getting a lot warnings about renewing my bomb before it expired which led me to switch to ice lance. Is this message a problem with the mod that's reporting it and something that does not apply to NT since it does not have a damage bonus at expiration?

I'm not sure what you mean exactly. In heavy movement fights, you still won't find yourself spamming Ice lance to use your GCDs. Take Lei Shen for example. When moving from pillar to pillar, I use Blink and Blazing Speed and only suffer a few seconds without the usual priority.

Furthermore, on many fights you can move while using an insta-cast (not Ice Lance). For example, on Tsulong, I may use my Brain Freeze proc while I'm jumping in and out of the light beam, or maybe I am refreshing my Nether Tempest. Speaking of NT, a good rule of thumb is to refresh in the final second before it falls off.

Lastly, I know you SAY you are refreshing Invoker's Energy when it falls to zero, but your 66% uptime shows that you don't even have it up for 1/3rd of the fight.

This, coupled with letting NT fall off and not getting your BF procs, means that what you THINK is happening is very different from what is ACTUALLY happening. You believe that there is only a spare second between refreshing things, when in actuality your perception of 1 or 2 seconds is more than likely closer to 5-10 seconds. In a five minute fight, this of course adds up.

Best of luck to you.

[areanu 16]

What is your add-on setup?

I would suggest ElvUI (there are 2 choices here: either 10+ different addons for each component of UI, or a pack of addons like ElvUI + just a couple of others) + TellMeWhen + MSBT.

You can make a GREAT use of TMW. i have made about 4-5 groups of diff icon notifications.

1) FB + NT on the target, so i can easily track it, FoF+BF to ensure they won't fade off unused, but be able to save them for movement, if needed

2) small icons for all the boost stuff: jade serpent pot, alter time expiration bonus (t15 2-piece), time warp,invocation, ice barrier, icy veins etc

3) 5 seconds BEFORE FB debuff is about to wear off, and EVEREYTIME it's not applied on the target, a big icons pops up on my screen, so i can fix it

2.5 seconds BEFORE, and every time it's not applied, big NT icon pops up on my screen, so i can re-apply it.

4 seconds BEFORE, and everytime it's not up, big INVOCATION icons pops up on my screen, so i fix that.

for this group, option "only show in combat" is clicked.

4) group of icons to track your trink / cloak / legendary meta procs is pre-made and comes as is.

On a side note: make a macro for NT so you can apply it on a mouse-over target without changing selected target