Baffled by My Frost Mage DPS

[killsophia 0]

I've been tweaken my frost mage since last week I found icyveins and askmrrobot. Yesterday I did three LFRs (the 1st, 3rd, 4th Zone of SoO) and when I was trying to find out how my mage damage developed, something really baffled me.

 

As for the three LFRs, my equipments were http://www.askmrrobot.com/wow/gear/d72ed1a0-179c-4f53-b7d9-fd7853c9e634

(the 15.07% hit is because I upgraded my waist and decided to finish this week's loot before another turn of tweaking advice by AskMrRobot)

 

My combat log analysis:

 

For the first three bosses,

The Fallen Protectors

http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/PDYvG1Z2NgQfbXCJ#type=damage-done&fight=27&source=1

Norushen

http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/PDYvG1Z2NgQfbXCJ#type=damage-done&fight=30&source=1

Sha of Pride

http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/PDYvG1Z2NgQfbXCJ#type=damage-done&fight=32&source=1

 

I was using these three glyphs Glyph of Evocation, Glyph of Water Elemental, and Glyph of Icy Veins during these battles.

 

Here comes the strange thing:

I was dealing 114306 DPS in The Fallen Protectors,

                       66379 DPS in Norushen,

              and 127364 DPS in Sha of Pride.

 

And then I replaced Glyph of Evocation with Glyph of Splitting Ice, and did other battles in this combat log, and the DPS are:

Immerseus                      61237

Malkorok                       115596

Spoils of Pandaria          81757

Thok the Bloodthirsty     92385

Siegecrafter Blackfuse   83327

Paragons of the Klaxxi  113929

Garrosh Hellscream      108314

 

I was not surprised by the DPS in Spoils of Pandaria since DPSs of everyone in that battle is quite low.

But for others, especially Norushen, I feel really curious in finding out what happened.

 

And the more strange thing here is, if you look into my combat log, the uptime of Invoker's Energy in those 60000s battles are actually higher than others.

 

The last time I did the 1st Zone of SoO is several months ago so 

I don't have anything to compare to. Could anyone give me a hint, please? Especially for Norushen.

 

P.S. I was confused by when to use Icy Vein, Mirror Image, and Alter Time.

I bind the Icy Vein and Mirror Image into one macro, and after using this macro, I try to have an eye on when the Trinket 2 is activated and using Alter Time in its last 6 seconds ( and not very successful ) . Could anyone give me some details about when to use these spells, please?

[AstanoVidatu 4]

The Norushen fight is not the best judge of dps since there is such a large damage reduction on the boss vs the players. Your dps is dependent on your corruption, If your corruption is not cleared off entirely, your dmg against him is going to suffer. Also, if you are running over the orbs that pop up because nobody else will, your dps is going to take a nose dive as well. 

 

Most people have their dps go from 150-200k or more, down to 50-100k or less.  But I am sure people will pick through the logs and give you a hand

[Berlinia 168]

Hello killsophia,

Let me split this in two parts.

 

Logs

 

Let's check sha of pride first. The prime problem I can see is you have 85% Living Bomb uptime. Disregarding the fact that your living bomb does the most damage than any of your spells over it's duration having a high uptime of it is essential for another reason. And that is that Living Bomb ticks proc Brain Freeze. From what I can see you let living bomb drop for a couple of seconds each time. Also you didn't have living bomb ticking for the first 8 seconds of the pull which is absolutely essential for your burst. Keep in mind you can refresh it anywhere before the last two ticks and it still does full damage.

 

Now something more essential than that.
Your Fingers of Frost procced 44 times yet you cast Ice Lance 52 times. Ice Lance does the lowest damage, even lower than Arcane Explosion on single target. If you have to move use Fireblast over Ice Lance at all times.
Also you had 45 procs of Brain Freeze and yet you only cast it 33 times. This means you either delayed Frostfire Bolt for long enough for the proc to be overwritten, or you let the buff fall off (which is pretty hard to do xD). You want to cast FFB the instant it procs. 

Another thing that stands out is your use of cooldowns. You seem to have missed 1 cast of Frozen Orb, and 1 cast of Icy Veins. 

 

Something minor is that on Sha you have no Cone of Cold damage showing. You want to have Glyphed CoC and use it on the sha that spawn under your feet. 

The most important thing I saw is your Invocation uptime. You want to have it as close to 95-100% possible. You lose quite some damage if you do not have that buff! Using an addon like weak auras to have a visual in the middle of your screen whenever you do not have the buff helps alot!

 

Glyphs and Other Stuff

 

You mentioned several Glyphs. As a Frost Mage i use the following:
Any Single Target only fight -> Glyph of Icy Veins, Glyph of Evocation, whatever you want.

Any fight with more than 1 target at any point -> Glyph of Icy Veins, Glyph of Splitting Ice, Glyph of Evocation

If at any instance you have more than 4 targets --> Glyph of IV, Glyph of SI, Glyph of Cone of Cold.

 

So as you can see The Fallen Protectors qualifies for scenario 3.

 

Also there is an excellent FAQ (written by Oltier and other mages before me), where you can see why using a macro for Icy Veins and Mirror Image is a loss. The quick answer is that you cover the GCD after the mirror image with icy veins effectively losing up to 1.5 seconds of the buff (more with latency). Also there is a big chance if you move at the same time that one of the two doesnt activate.

 

Regarding Alter Time, I would take a bigger margin. The best time to use Alter TIme is when you have 2 FoF, 1 BF, Icy Veins, Trinkets. If you are extremely unlucky then always remember the trinket AT priority:
ICD trinkets
RPPM trinkets
You do not want to proc ICD trinkets mid Alter Time, so make sure anything with an ICD that can proc has procced.

Hope this helps 
Cheers

Berlinia

[killsophia 0]

Hi Berlinia,

 

Thank you for your reply.

 

I've installed the WeakAuras and did a lot of tweaks following your advice except for the Glyphs. Usually there's no time to change glyphs in LFRs. And I don't really like have the Glyph of Evocation in LFR, especially combined with the Invocation talent.

 

I had to admit the Tier 6 talents always give me a headache. I still remember in the first several months of MOP when my guild had enough members to normal raid, how the rune of power almost ruined the rotation. Seems never got used to them.

Always got laughed even by friends of my really poor DPS in raid. It seems I never got used to the chaos of the raid, especially in LFRs, though I've been playing Wow since 2005 (but never did raid before MOP). What a struggling game life.

 

Now what I'm waiting for is another round of LFR. Time to try this new set of tweaks (and a trinket I forgot for a really long time).

 

Thank you!

 

Cheers,

Killsophia

[Berlinia 168]

Hey Sophia,

If you don't have time to switch around glyphs, I would recommend with a set in stone: icy Veins, Splitting Ice and Cone of Cold. 
For fights like IJ and Malkorok you won't have benefit from Splitting Ice nor Cone of Cold, but for the most of SoO they are a huge increase.

Cheers

[killsophia 0]

Hi Berlinia,

 

Just finished the 2nd Zone of SoO. What a chaos! I even felt how the healers were suffering.

DPS increase a bit. Not too much, I guess after I get more familiar with this rotation, things would be better. I think I'll change the glyphs before next cooldown.

 

Thank you for all the suggestions!

 

Cheers,

Sophia

Edited July 7, 2014 by killsophia

[killsophia 0]

Hi AstanoVidatu,

 

Thank you.

I've looked into others' logs and videos, and realised you were right. As far as I can remember, my corruption value was around 60 or what. Not very sure about what happened, but I feel a big relief.

 

Cheers,

Sophia