Cráb People

Icecrown Citadel 10 today, will be posting up the log of the fight after so you got some numbers to look at, opposed to just words. Also finishing up my UI and I'll be sure to show it off (as promised).

Hey Mancubus,

My gear is indeed the biggest problem in this case, and I've never been a fan of being geared up either. Unfortunately, Argent Dawn is a horrible realm, and actually obtaining gear here in a reasonable timescale is pretty challenging, I've been working my ass off getting whatever upgrades I can this week, most of the gear I've accumulated is from last week, in fact.

I do indeed severely lack raiding experience, but none of this out of a lack of effort. As Relien described in his application, Argent Dawn is a backwater realm where it's considered high skill to down trivial normal mode fights. As said, back in the Burning Crusade, I've been highly active as a raider on proper realms and downed everything in the right timescale as well as the start of the Wrath of the Lich King. Undoubtably a big set back though is the lack of Icecrown Experience, seeing I still have to master most of the fights. I probably would have to gear up in alt raids or 10-mans alike. I feel I can pull my weight at least to not be a burden to the raid too much.

As for my experience. It changed a little due to a few raids, it's now the 8/12 ICC25 and 7/12 ICC10, normal unfortunately. Actually, on this realm, that's considered to be quite good. Feel my pain :x

As for the DPS part, I might have phrased that a little badly. I meant I can pull off good DPS, but what matters is things like how dedicated people are, showing up after 100 wipes and only feeling more motivated to go on. People that are aware of the environment and do not die. While I still got quite a few things to learn as a mage, my DPS is nowhere near bad. What I am good at though is doing the fight's right.

Thank you at least for considering me, that's beyond my expectations.
--Saeliel

Just a small update that I forgot. I've specced fire now, as opposed to Arcane as my thread suggests. Since a major part of the application is dedicated to gear choices and how I play my spec I figured I should update this a little. Sadly, I couldn't find an edit button so I will just do it here.

Initial Thoughts

A friend on Argent Dawn who's not half bad suggested me to have a look at fire after some changes to the Fireball glyph and other little changes here and there. As such I've taken up a fire spec of my liking and see how the DPS is with it. What I particularly dislike about Fire is how it's very random. You can have a lot of luck on double critting and see tons of Pyroblasts fly out, hitting for crazy amounts summed up. Or you are just so unlucky that you keep critting every 2nd spell only. On the other hand, Arcane can have the same issue with Missile Barrage procs.

Regardless, so far the DPS output has been surprisingly high (even single target) compared to Arcane. I'd say they are on about equal grounds, but with fire having just a slight lead. I've come to believe that the heavy inflation on crit on ICC gear is partially the cause of that, I've come to a good 60%-65% raid buffed crit (fire crit, but that's all that matters anyway) now and most of my spells do crit now. As well as LB keeping Ignite rolling nicely. I'm yet to test it properly in a raid, but I'm assuming I can press my DPS further.

Rotation/Priority/Spell Usage

Also, fire should probably heavily favor fights with multiple targets such as the Lich King, Princes, Valthira and Professor. I'm really curious on how it'll all end up like, will probably be surprisingly good.

As for my rotation, there isn't really one. I suppose it's more of a priority based thing. I feel that Fire in itself is a bit more challenging to play correctly then Arcane. Sometimes you can have a rather tricky situation where you got Hot Streak up, 2 secs left on Scorch debuff and LB running out. I prioritize my spells as following.
fireball > pyroblast (only after casting fireball though, unless moving) > scorch debuff > living bomb > fire blast (for moving) > ice lance (ditto)

This works well as a general rule of thumb. Ideally you want to have Living Bomb up almost all the time as well as scorch. But in situations where you get a Hot Streak and Living Bomb just runs out, I tend to have a slightly different approach. The following being that:
continue casting the fireball I'm obviously casting at this point --> cast living bomb -> cast fireball -> cast hot streak

The reasoning behind this being that the 1st Fireball normally shouldn't proc Hot Streak if it crits. Then refreshing Living Bomb, which will keep (hopefully) the ignite rolling which is a lot more important than actually casting Pyroblast, keeping ignite up should result in a higher sum of damage in total. Then 2nd fireball has a good chance at critting too, which is followed immediately with pyroblast. If succesful, fireball has a chance to crit, immediately granting another pyroblast to be cast right after the next fireball.

In the case of the scorch debuff also falling. This would work well, in my opinion:
scorch -> living bomb -> fireball -> pyroblast

As I'm still experimenting with this spec I'm not exactly sure on things yet. I'll be sure to try out multiple things in Icecrown Citadel now I still got the chance. At any rate, the results so far are looking promising.

Gemming
Mostly the same old as Arcane, except that I now dump a spirit/sp gem in every blue socket, this because Spirit is a lot more valuable to fire since it increases crit. Having a high amount of spirit is nice and it scales well with buffs.

Talent Considerations
One thing that bugs me with fire is the obscene amounts of threat it seems to be producing thus far. Perhaps I've just had really bad tanks, but Fire really seems to love it's crit. I've been considering to drop 1 point from Student of the Mind in trade for -10% threat reduction, but I would first like to see how it works in a raid with Vigilance on or without, with a proper tank. I have plenty of threat dumps otherwise, in case of emergency.

Another thing to consider is getting a little more range on scorch and other spells in trade for again 1 point in the Student of the Mind talent. This being one of Fire's biggest flaws in my opinion, the range on Scorch is 5 yards lower than Fireball's, thus making the talent almost a must have. On the other hand, I could just as well stand closer to the boss instead of an arcane mage with longer range.

Benefits
Fire is probably the Mage's highest AOE damage, which is really handy on fights like the Lich King. Also, fire brings Focus Magic like most other mage specs, and although it's mandatory to have, it still provides a good buff.

On top of that, Fire has the Scorch debuff, and although warlocks got 'Empowered Shadowbolt' doing the exact same debuff, it could guarantee higher uptime on other mobs if for some reason the Warlock is fighting something else.




Just replace the same part on my application with this. Or add it, since I'll be getting Dual Spec soon and going for Fire Main Spec and Arcane Off Spec or vica versa.

-Saeliel

There's no edit button on the app forums so that every mistake you make is set in stone

What Mihir said. We are evil and sadistic in that way..

That wasn't in the TOS I accepted when I registered an account! *QQ*

... or WAS it?

You actually read that ?