Fire on Xhul'Horac Mythic progress - help appreciated! :)

[Hasufer]

Mod edit: Moved to Q&A
Yo fellow mages!
Havn't played fire for a while, and as we struggle with some aoe in my guild, on Xhul in particular, I thought I wanted to give it a go!
I have played fire a dozens of times since tbc, but always something new so I got a few questions, primarily regarding gear and talents for Xhul mythic!

What are the go to talents in the last rows I read that:
LB (seems natural with the constant ungoing cleave/aoe)
IF (gonna be a lot of movement, so also seems quite natural)
Kind (to have combust for like each second set of imps or so)
Is blast wave better than LB? and PMC over kind? or is that more for a single target fight?

What crit% and haste% does one want to aim for?
I read that 45.73crit is optimal? I have been playing arcane lately and therefore crit havn't been my go-to stat, so laggin' a bit - does +40% crit seems enough for a fight like Xhul' Horac?
I got a decent amount of mastery on the other hand (almost 50% selfbuff) and also 30% MS buffed, so I guess that's a good thing for an all out aoe/cleave minded fight like Xhul right?
For the haste part I read that both 9 and 13% selfbuffed is enough - anyone got a certain threshold to aim for exactly? (I know there are no caps or such, but just an estimate would be nice)

Regarding trinkets: Which are the go-to fire trinkets for a fight like Xhul?
I have these available:

Classtrinket Heroic WF (casts FS on IB seems crazy for a fight like Xhul or?)
Iron reaver piston Mythic (static int/crit/haste)
Dessecrated Shadowmoon Insignia Mythic WF (mastery which is nice for AOE + huge int proc)
Unblinking Gaze of Seethe Mythic WF (seems nice for aoe fight?)
Sandmans pouch 725 I read that u need 1 crit trink, is that crucial or just optional for start combust and therefore mostly crucial on single target fights?
Prophecy of fear Mythic (Guess only for arcane?^^)

Any help on any of the above-mentioned questions is very much appreciated - especially help that comes before tomorrow night, where we once again venture out for the "head" of Xhul!
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/s ... fer/simple" target="_blank <- if anyone has anything else to add that might be good to change for fire?

[Astaine]

Most of these questions have been answered in the fire subset of the forum, with regards to the crit% and trinkets, but il give you a tl;dr

for fire you need sandmans to reach the crit cap for your combustion rotation, other than that you need a combustion buffer, your two options are DSI or an on use mastery trinket from mythic 5 mans,
(class trinket etc is just shite)
you need to take crystal, like arcane it's just to good, you can spread combustion from the crystal to other mobs, effecticvly boosting combustions dmg by 30%.

LB or BW are both good choises, however lb is harder to keep up, if you find you cant do it, just go with BW its up for every imps so its still a good one.
go with flow, rune is only good if you speed kill it in like 1 min, so just go flow.

if you have any other questions, i can help answer them or look on the fire forum.

Astaine

[Curnivore]

What kind of AOE is the problem? If it's only the imps I doubt a fire mage is going to make a big difference unless you run multiples in which case extra blast waves could be extra moderate help. If it's the sustained AOE on the adds it's a more complex matter that depends on the setup (in general terms though, various classes - or specs of classes - are usually strong there).

Furthermore if it is the imps, all the specs can do very high damage for the first 3 seconds after a mass grip with the nova spells.

PS. I personally find fire hectic in progress but you may have hit a rare exception if you are talking about the sustained AOE.

[Wilderness]

For trinkets you'd want to use DSI and Sandman's. I agree with Astaine that most of the questions you've asked can be found in the the fire forum.

Fire's cleave can be valuable but you're not going to be a huge help on imps in general. When you happen to have combustion up you'll wreck them, but outside of that the nova from any spec is not bad, and Dragon's Breath as Fire is also strong. The problem is not having double blink glyphed makes its a tough spec to play on progress as it's much more difficult to get in and out of melee range for imps along with being positioned well for dropping fire, dealing with black holes/void adds and later in the fight for chains (assuming you are doing chains, which most mages are).

The other problem with Fire on progress is that it may be better for your raid to hold one of the later rings in the fight to line up with the burn in the last phase and anytime you de-sync the ring and Sandman's ICD your damage as Fire drops off fast.

[Hasufer]

Thx a lot for the help mages!
Turns out just fine after first raid, so think I'll just stay fire for this encounter then bk to the favorite<3

The other problem with Fire on progress is that it may be better for your raid to hold one of the later rings in the fight to line up with the burn in the last phase and anytime you de-sync the ring and Sandman's ICD your damage as Fire drops off fast.

Amen! And we don't use bl in the start either, so ontop of that I suffer a bit but we do get a lot more dmg on minibosses/xhul(imps partly, when combust rd) cleave, which it seems we need so sticking with it unless the RL wants something else ^^
Thx again for the hints/tips/help!

[Curnivore]

I can't think of a strategy that should use BL at start. The boss is designed to be harder at the very end and gradually easier towards the start. 90% of the difficulty (or "difficulty") of the fight is people understanding how the mechanics work, it's not so much a numbers fight, but it is a fight that requires all 20 to not do major mistakes.

Exception on BL: Guilds that faceroll it in a few seconds but those are irrelevant to practically everyone in progress.

[Wilderness]

I can't think of a strategy that should use BL at start. The boss is designed to be harder at the very end and gradually easier towards the start. 90% of the difficulty (or "difficulty") of the fight is people understanding how the mechanics work, it's not so much a numbers fight, but it is a fight that requires all 20 to not do major mistakes.

Exception on BL: Guilds that faceroll it in a few seconds but those are irrelevant to practically everyone in progress.

Post-upgrades I think you can make a good argument for BL at the start during progression. Even pre-upgrades the last burn was never the hardest part of the fight - I think most guilds got their kill within the first handful of times they reached the last phase. 10 more ilvls really makes the last phase shorter and less of an issue so using BL at the start helps push through the hardest part of the fight.

If you have a comp that can't cheese empowered chains with a couple of mages or other immunities, then the last phase becomes much more difficult and BL would help shorten it as much as you can, but for many guilds I think BL at the start for progression now is not a bad idea at all.

[Curnivore]

I don't see how using BL on the pull pushes through the hardest part of the fight for a current guild progressing. I believe you are mixing it with very overgeared current guilds because there are still guilds that do it relatively slowly, or at least with lower skill. Those guilds will use BL, then be still into the hard parts of the middle part of the encounter and that doesn't seem like a very good idea.

Concerning the very last phase, it's not that easy to a run of the mill guild that reaches it now. The healers might be weaker, the people might be generally into a panic. As in every boss, even if the end of a boss is similar in difficulty - I don't think it's easy compared to the pull but let's assume it's similar difficulty - the very fact that you reach it rarely means that it might be best to use a CD there because you'll be perfecting the first part every pull anyway.

[Rabona]

This might be a bit late now, but personally I'd go Arcane for this boss. SN actually interrupts the imps which can be very valuable if you time it right and with AO you just eat through Voidfiends like candy.
Fire's cleave is nice to have, but since the encounter doesn't have a tight clock before the final phase it likely won't matter if it lasts a couple of seconds longer and depending on your raid's timing there is a big chance that the second/final ring won't line up with your Sandman's which means your damage for the final phase could easily suffer a lot.

I agree with Wilderness, that as long as you have three people to cheese the chains and maybe one or two rogues for emp black holes then sub 20% is really trivial and you might as well cut the stuff before that a little shorter since that is the part where you can mess up the most.