[Frost] - At a loss about my DPS. Help.

[Sikeli 1]

I need some help. I've been playing Arcane most of the xpac and recently switched to frost as I had more frost gear (haste) drop me and needed the movement in SoO. Three nights ago was the first guild raid I ran as Frost and I was pleased with the results. Overall I saw a large DPS gain as frost (in the same gear as I was in for Arcane, reforged/gemmed of course);

 

Here is a log for the dark shaman fight

http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/QkKAhCag1XbHmtR9/

 

and my overall log for the night;

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/3rx0237g0bhtc7j9/details/4/

 

Things I know i could do better are LB uptime and cooldown management, also cast more frostbombs and less ice lances off proc (what else?)

 

This tonight we had another raid night and my DPS was horrible, worst than running arcane. At first I thought I didn't have some gear on or something...I tried everything and nothing. I change no gear (infact Iupgraded my neck 3 slots, so I should hit a tiny bit harder) and focused much more tonight on casting FB and using my icicles/ice lance on proc. I see my LB uptime is horrible still and IE isn't much better. My pet was bugging out some, it wasn;t casting often, but that wouldn't explan why my DPS is so much worst tonight over the last raid.

 

Here are a few fights;

Nazgrim

http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/grZAwcxLhzfaCkMW/#fight=10

 

Malkorock (which seems to be my best of the night, but still very bad)

http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/grZAwcxLhzfaCkMW/#fight=20

 

And my overall;

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/1uxbc2zfypwv2nnc/details/6/

 

I first chalked tonights fights up to more movement, but the dark shamen fight was heavy movement and I did 50k more DPS on average. Also tonights bosses had alot of trash, which should give me a considerable uptick with all my AOE (icicles, LB, procs, etc).

 

What

[Berlinia 168]

Hello Sikeli,

Before I provide any more assistance, can I have a link to your armory?
Cheers

[Archimage 98]

I assume its this one: Based on the details of the logs

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/stormrage/Sikeli/advanced

[Sikeli 1]

I assume its this one: Based on the details of the logs

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/stormrage/Sikeli/advanced

Yup. That's me. What else can I provide you in order for you to help?

Edited July 26, 2014 by Sikeli

[Berlinia 168]

If you have time wrapped up in a box I would be eternally grateful :)
Ill be looking through these on the morrow!

Cheers!

[Sikeli 1]

If you have time wrapped up in a box I would be eternally grateful

Ill be looking through these on the morrow!

Cheers!

I appreciate the help. I look forward to the diagnosis.

[Kulia 39]

I'm no frost mage, but looking through your logs briefly and at your armoury, I can give you some *basic* advice.

Your invokers Energy uptime was at 82%ish on Malk. This seems low, needs to be at around 100%.

Again, I'm no mage, but I know that your 90 talent is a *BIG* deal to your DPS, and 82% seems low, I'd recommend tracking it with Tell Me When or Weak Auras, so you know when to refresh it, I'd say about a 95% uptime is something to aim for at the moment.

Second, you need to be using your Synapse Springs more, part of being an engineer and having those is actually use them, and if you don't use them on CD then you're not gonna gain the +320 int it provides over the course of a fight. I don't know what mages should couple it with, but I'd recommend just macroing it into your frostbolt with a macro like:
"#showtooltip Frostbolt

/cast Frostbolt

/use 10"
that way whenever you cast frostbolt you'll use synapse springs if they're off CD.

Also, your living bomb uptime was also low, 63% this needs to increase a LOT, again I'd recommend using Weak Auras or Tell Me When to track this so you can keep it up. Uptime needs to be somewhere above 95% (this is accounting for some error, 100% uptime on DoTs can be unachieveable, although it IS optimal, but we're all human and we all make some error)

I think I'll leave my gameplay advice at that though, since I'm not an experienced mage, mine isn't even 90 yet, this is just stuff I've picked up from reading about mages and whatnot.
Oh, and I noticed you don't have your legendary cloak yet. Get that ASAP both the cloak and the metagem is a significant damage increase.

I hope my limited amount of knowledge helps :)

[Sikeli 1]

Thank you for that. I know my uptime on LB and IE is poor... I'm working on it. I had weak auras set up for both, but recently moved to Elviui for raiding to have even more vision on this stuff.

As for the cape... I'm working on it. I only recently, less than 2 months ago, decided to main my Mage (actually I started it at 0 and leveled it, only had it at 90 for less than a month. I mained a Mage in early cata, deleted it for a hunter and quit wow right before ToT. When I came back with SoO I deleted all my old toons and mained a Orc Warrior all through SoO. But I missed Alliance and mages and switched to this toon with the intention of maining this Mage in WoD.

So ya, I'm at Secrets for the cape quest line as of Friday. Going to knock out ToT and SoO LFRs tomorrow to gather secrets and work on my rotation.

Edited July 27, 2014 by Sikeli

[Galatea 2]

I see a couple problems from your Malkarok parse.

1) You are casting too many ice lances. 1 in 5 of them is not critting meaning you're losing a lot of dps - those should all be frost bolts. You should not be casting ice lances without fingers of frost. You lost about 2 million damage from that (so about 7k-ish dps?).

2) Your uptime on your living bomb is too low. Get an addon like MageBombTracker to help you with this. You lost over 3 million damage on the boss due to this (about 10k dps).

and most importantly:

3) I don't see your water elemental... where is it? You did summon it right? It does a large chunk of your overall dps. Consider an addon like IdiotCheck to warn you when you're about to do something stupid like start a fight without it (I recommend turn off the annoying sounds). Remember - you have to re-summon it when you rez. You probably lost about 40k+ if you didn't have it.

[Sikeli 1]

So, back again. A bit happier with my DPS but it is still very low and I'm still clueless as to why.

 

Tonight I focused on

-LB uptime (was 81%)

-IE uptime (65%+)

-Only casting icelance when I have two procs (except in a few heavy movement fights and trash)

-spamming FB as much as I can, as fast as it will cast often.

 

All that, I'm still about 100k off where simecraft says i should be for an average player/heavy movement fight ilvl 550.

 

So what do I need to work on now?

 

http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/nZr8wKA3zaQv1kVL/#boss=-2

 

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/n8ba5s5wt1e8so1n/details/14/

 

Armory (alot of gear dropped for me tonight, but my stats didn't go up much post reforging, so this is close to where I was in the fights)

 

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/stormrage/Sikeli/simple

[Galatea 2]

I'm looking at your Malkarok parse... It all comes back to the ABCs of being a mage - *A*lways *B*e *C*asting.

 

Look at your parse yourself.  Go to casts, and turn on only those abilities you are actually casting to do damage - i.e. Frostbolt, FFB, Icelance, & Frozen Orb.  You have several stretches of 10-20 seconds or more where you're not doing anything.  You cannot expect to have good dps until the bars on that graph have almost no spaces between them.  You could have cast another dozen or so frost bolts in that time.

 

Plan your movements.  Get to a spot, plant your butt there and start chain casting your rotation (same rotation you practiced on the target dummy *hint* *hint*).  Don't move till you're done casting, and above all, don't move at all unless there is a *very* compelling reason for you to do so.  When you do move, move the minimal amount necessary in the quickest way possible (blink/blazing speed/etc) and get back to casting straight away.  Save your instant cast spells (FFB and Icelances when brain freeze and fingers of frost are proced) for casting while moving (for optional movements - like moving into healing rings, etc).  If you use ice block like you did, cancel it after you no longer need it - some macros for help for that.

 

I recommend you work on that before trying to perfect your uptimes.  The uptimes will help a bit, but maintaining a 10% damage buff is useless to you if you're not going to cast anything.  The boss is not going to damage himself.

 

As for comparing yourself with the sims, keep in mind you have neither the legendary cloak, nor even the meta gem, and those are both large boosts to your dps.  Aim for a 50k improvement to keep you sane.