Are mages still relevant for NH ?

[Grraou]

So, here is a little something I did based on yesterday's logs for the NightHold.
http://imgur.com/a/fHIuE

First thing first, don't bash me on the fact that the raid has only been out for one day. Of course people are going to try to figure out how to put a better dps, and logs might improve overtime, since it's still very early on the patch and on this raid to have a very precise idea of what things will end up being.
BUT, I did a similar thing with EN when it came out, and logs were very similar by the end of 7.1. So I know things aren't set in stone, but it does give us an overall idea of how things are going to be for mages in 7.1.5 in the NightHold.

And boy, am I scared.

Frost is trash tier. Ranking 24th (out of 24 dps spec) on most fights. Frost is only on the better half on Star Augur Atraeus, where it actually does better than all the other mage specs. Appart from that, it has an overall ranking of 22.2 out of 24. It's a dead spec as it is right now.

Arcane, even if performing better than frost, is still lagging way behind. It is barely making it to the better half on Scorpyron and Aluriel, and ranking 2nd on Tichondrius NM, where its cleave allows it to perform decently (Will talk about Tichondrius and Skorpyron fight later). On all the other fights, it's ranging from 17th to 24th, with an overall ranking of 17.9 out of 24. It's as close to a dead spec as you can get, without actually playing frost.

Fire. With an overall ranking of 12.3 (so, not making it to the better half), Fire is the spec you want to play at the moment, when considering the abysmal state of the other specs. But it doesn't look too pretty either.
I'm not going to consider Skorpyron and Tichondrius yet, so the next section is about the other 8 fights.

If we don't take into account Skorpyron and Tich, fire has an overall ranking of 15.1. It is well settled into the second half, with only 1 fight in normal where it's performing well with Aluriel (ranking 4th). For all the other fights, it's ranging from 15 to 21.
On Heroic, ranking 8th and 11th on aluriel and Star Augur. It's raking 10th and 6th on Elissande and Guldan, though there are only very few parses. Same goes with Star Augur. Based on our ranking on normal on Eliss and Guldan and Star augur (17th, 18th and 19th respectively), We can assume that with more people downing theses bosses, our ranking should decrease rapidely.

Point is, we are doing just average on a couple of fights (ranging from 4th to 11th on 5 fight, including guldan, star augur and elissande heroic) , and abysmal on the other (11 fight ranging from 15th to 21 out of the 16 fights considered). With more parses, we can expect it to go to 2 fights going ok (Aluriel nm and HC, around 4-6th), and 14 fights being abysmall (ranging from 15th to 21th). Although it's not as dead as the other specs, for those 16 fights, you definitely don't want to bring a fire mage.

Now let's talk about Scorpyron and Tichondrius. Firstly, even when considering this fight, our overall ranking is 12.3, so still below average.
On those fights, we are ranking 1st and 2nd, on both NM and Heroic.
Why is that ? it's because we can inflate our dps through "cheap tricks".

On Scorpyron, many people have been spawning extra scorpions through now knowning the strat / failing / greeding. It causes extra adds to spawn, so as a fire mage, you can Live Bomb and inflate your dps by a HUGE marging. Though, it the strat was being respected, that wouldn't happen. It is useless dmg in the sense that it doesn't help in any way on downing the boss. It's only purpose is to inflate your dps, through people's fail. If the fight was done right (like it will be on mythic), the parses would be very different.

Something a "bit" similar goes with Tichondrius. Fire mage have been parsing really high thanks to living bomb once again. On the "nightmare" phase, many bats spawn. Killing them only serves the purpose of putting some orbs on the ground that inflates your dps/hps, and are very helpful for the next phase. So you do want to kill those nasty bats as fast as you can, and in that sense, it's good to have great AoE with fire mages.
Though, the bats spawn slowly at first, then every rapidly. It gets to a point where, a couple of seconds before the phase ends, there are like 20 bats going around the room. A well timed living bomb placed there will definitely do millions of dommage, though won't achieve to kill any bats, and even if it were to kill them, people wouldn't have enough time to go and pick up the orb, because of the late stage of the phase you are in when the bats start swarming the area.
Although it is a bit useful to have such a nice AoE during this phase, most of the dommage that we do just go to waste entirely, since the millions of dmg we do with the last bats don't achieve anything ( no kill, or if we kill, no time to collet the orb). Once again, we get a top dps ranking on a fight where most of the dommage we deal doesn't do anything to contribute to the down.

It makes me feel like fire mage have become a very poor dps spec, where the only thing you can do is pull out crazy (although absolutely useless) dommage on some very niche fight. Definitely reminds me of Xavius, where you can pull out crazy dommage and Combustion on the tentacles... Which is pretty much useless.

I might look very salty, but it's mostly because I am. I Love playing fire mage, I loved how was combustion before the patch (now it seems like such a pointless cd. I used to love being able to time a good combustion right and spread some crazy ignite at very specific time, say Mythic Ursoc for instance. Now that required a bit of skill, and it looked good on the dps chart when you managed it properly).
Now, I feel like whatever I do, I'm going to compete very poorly, and changing spec isn't even an option, with the state of the other specs.
To add a cherry on top, I do have 4 legendaries. Prydaz, Norganon, Bel'ovir and Sephuz.

So, what do you guys think ? What are your expectations for the upcoming months of raiding as mage ? Maybe I'm just being really negative and it's not that bad, but I would really like to know what everyone's opinion is on the subject.

Thanks you for reading me !

[Katsumi]

http://www.darklegacycomics.com/comics/558.jpg

But in all seriousness - I'd say that frost probably needs to be looked at, but to be in the solid middle is alright. Someone always has to be.

[illwil]

I agree with all of your points. Especially on the tichondrius fight. I took a little bit of a less AOE spec on this fight knowing that its a dps race and the bats are stat padding, but if someone looked at my parse they would think I was absolute trash.

The only thing I will say is that I think they did a pretty good job of bringing the majority of the classes closer in damage. There are still outliers like pallys and spriests, but with a little tuning I think they can bring those in. I don't mind being middle of the pack...not one bit. But I also don't want the top 3 dps specs to be so far ahead that it's a clear issue.

Blizzard mentioned that they are most likely rolling out some more tuning next week. hopefully they try some smaller changes to bring everyone closer to the middle instead of just upsetting the balance again.

[CrazyCroque]

Hi,

I'd say:
At least 25% of mage's dps are coming from some "softskills" like correct positioning and timing, especially with fire bracers. If you fuck up, youre maybe forced to cancel casts etc. which is most likely to happen in unknown /Only GuidXp fights.Of Course melees may fuck up as well, but they usually have more possiblities to "keep on rollin" while repositioning.

So especially arcane mages will extremly improve on the meters.
fire specc seems to be ok to me. In fact, they should have a look on frosts performances

jm2c

[Xaximbo]

What i don't get is why hunters for example were sharing the bottom with us and got quick fixes, an 8% extra damage is noticeable and BM got more love. Fire looks nice, it is balanced doesn't need tweaks, top performing specs need nerfs. Arcane i think is an outlier can definitely do better but so far is unpromising, keep in mind not only arcane mages are learning rotations and fights, other specs will improve as they gain experience with the new rotation and the boss themselves.

Frost on the other hand..... why didn't they revert the frostbolt nerf??? Its the bread and butter of the spec, if you add 20% more damage to this spell, all the different talent builds will notice the improvement (specially GS tho but they can nerf the GS bonus damage a bit in return). The best frost build is the one that less FB needs to cast, is a 1,5 second spell that literally deals the lowest damage. Cone of cold is an AoE spell, its instant and i bet it deals more damage than FB on ST. If someone finds a build that doesn't need to proc something through FB i am sure that will be the best talent build and it is very sad.

I am parsing 60-70% logs without legendaries as frost averaging 350-400k with 877 gear people doing 30% parses surpass me on the meters, when i switch to fire (no dps legendaries) on AoE fights like Skorpyron or Tychondrius im top 1-2 with ease, again no dps legendaries, not even 35 points on the weapon. Maybe fire is a bit better on this kind of fights than the average but i see hunters,shadow priests, frost dks and boomkins doing great dps both in AoE and ST fights without switching specs, fire is only remarkable on this 2 fights, and as i said not by a huge margin. Bottom on the other bosses.

Shadow priest has been #1 for the whole expansion, million miles away from the other specs and they're still on top, frost mage on the other hand has sit on the bottom for the whole expansion and they do not seem willing to fix this, because only 10% of the people play frost. That sucks.

[Rabona]

I think it's not only a question of damage, but also of utility, Innervate especially seems ridiculously strong, while Block is very narrow (as a raid utility) and also provided by Hunters in a (mostly) better form.

[Katsumi]

I think it's not only a question of damage, but also of utility, Innervate especially seems ridiculously strong, while Block is very narrow (as a raid utility) and also provided by Hunters in a (mostly) better form.

I disagree. You can block away a ton of abilities that your raid would otherwise have to deal with. It also is the best personal "oh shit" button in the game. Together with Cauterize (as fire) you basically only die when the raid wipes.

By the way, there's a nice thread in the frost forum that discusses the current problems of the spec in detail.

[Falq]

I can find a lot of theorycrafting in this post, but usually Theory != Practice. So I'll try to share with you my experience. I'm raiding in top 40 guild, so we kinda know how to play and we did 7/10 HC split run as full raid with 10 main dpsers inside. Unfortunatelly I can't share logs with you because they are private but will list my recount place and classes before me. Also will try to give some tip what I did to get my place.

Ofc some bosses were 1 shotted, or killed quickly so it's not max dps people can push but still give some overlook.

Here is my armory, as you can see I got quite good gear and 2 good legendaries, used Bough on most bosses, switched to Sinew on Staur Augur:

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/b ... alq/simple" target="_blank

Skorpyron - 1 (lot of scoprions, fire mage heaven) - 1.4 mln dps
Anomaly - 5th (before me in order: demo lock - retri main - hunter - retri alt ) - 555k dps. Focused on add cleave and 4 smalls adds mainly
Trilliax - 4th (before me in order: arms war - demo lock - retri main) - 481k dps. Patchwek boss, cleaved 18mln on Scrubbers by accident
Spellblade Aluriel - 6th (before me in order: demo lock - bomkin - hunter - retri - arms war). 636k dps, here I fucked you cleaving adds, so could do much better, but missplayed cds, should have kept them for arms to cleave.
Krosus - 11th (before me a lot of mains, alts) - 455k dps. Raid was great at soaking adds (got like 0-1 every cleave) Overall very mobile fight, mage is decent but on Mythic we got way more adds so we will be more useful
Tichondrius - 4th (retri main - demo lock - retri alt) 737k dps. Focused mainly on blobes and and adds, great cleave there and ignite spread nicely. Retris blew cds for night phase to provide enough debuffs.
Star Augur - 3th (demo lock - arms war). 579k dps. Here I believed I got very lucky bracer procs. Nothing happens in this fight so you can easily focus on your cds distribution. Last phase cleave heaven. Could Cinderstorm from add to boss and DB whole room.

In addition as many say, mages provide great utility, novas, slows with flamestrike, blocks great mobility with shimmer and burst. We are very useful and in my opinion we still do damage, but if you have good legendaries for that. I also admit that without my legendaries I wouldn't been where I'm not. Both Diadem and Marquees provide huge dps boosts if played properly and are must for being top dps.

Global tip for fire mages:
People tend to sim their gear, looking blindly at results, or focus on single target dps. NO! If you do that you will always stick to bottom without any hope to upgrade. You are playing damn fire mage, always take cleave into count because that's what you are best at. Luckily there is aoe in every fight in NH so that's my reason I'll prob never drop RoP and will keep using CiS as much as possible. This 2 talents helps you abuse game mechanics, and give you more field to make dps and make use of your class. In my opinions it's like:

Get MI instead of RoP -> accept your fate as bad single target dpser stick to bottom of the matter because other classes are simply better and you can't use MI smartly because it's simple Fire-Forget skill

Get Meteor/Kindling over CiS -> in this case you also give yourself no chance to abuse you class. Meteor will always split damage so the only thing you can abuse is its burn damage (and it's shit), about kindling you can't abuse it anyways, simple stick to rotation just have cds more often (unless it makes you time ur combustion just for cleave phases, then ofc it's no brainer to take kindling because as stated later YOU WANT TO BLOW SHIT UP AS ASAP AS POSSIBLE). About CiS there is whole another story, if you are good at aiming you can use it for ur advantage and hit like half of the screen abusing your skill getting huge cleave (instead of omg CiS sims for 6 cinders and you can hardly never hit it it sux... yeah but 3 adds 2 cinders is also 6 cinders).

In addition we have something great for raids -> Burst

Let's say affli lock have great aoe! He got passive which blows up, corruption on adds, SoC explosions great! But it all takes time! You gotta be ass if you want to do dps (because other dpsers are asses). Unless tactic require you to do something else, always make sure you blow up all your cds for AoE adds! He cast 3 sec SoC on target + long travel time, and instead you precast RoP, pop LB -> CiS -> DB -> FS WHATEVER just blow everything up before this SoC land on target. Someone have to kill this adds, and Raid Leader can't complain about something what deals dmg dying too quickly. If people tell you yeah but boss dps matters most so why you blow cds on useless adds?! Answer is simply, because you sux at ST and everyone in the raid should focus on adds, so you help them deal with adds asap so classes which actually do ST dps can focus boss earlier and do more dmg on boss because you did their part of dps on adds which had to die. So don't try to do ST dps you won't do, instead utilize your class in best way to help raid and other classes, by doing damage in most efficient way!

[Quorgyle]

Great post Falq.

I have 2 questions for you.

First, does Cinderstorm pull scorpions on the Scorpyron fight? I mean the ones that are not yet active because cinders have quite the travel distance.

And second, can you explain what exact simulation options do you use for your character in order to get right stat distribution and for trinket comparison? Is it hectic add cleave or beastlord or some other combination?

[Xenost]

Here are my logs on NH NM for 5 first bosses, I have similar results than Falq on his HM one. (note that I'm quite lacking on gear and traits because I stopped playing during holidays last month)

I did switch talents for every fight to try and get the best possible outcome. All in all our ST is pretty bad but I'd still advise going MI/Meteor for these fight if possible (or MI/CiS), if you can afford changing talents for every fight (now that tomes are 200-300 g it's kinda easy).

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/2N ... amage-done" target="_blank

I think I could get even more, on Krosus I soaked the adds that were in the far back meaning I couldn't dps for a few time, on Trilliax I soaked robots which means getting bumped.

Fire mages aren't in a bad place at the moment, but SP/Ret/balancedruid seem a bit OP. I'll wait to see what the set pieces will do in that regards, but ours don't seem really strong; there will probably be some tuning done for the 3 mage specs (arcane may be fine but pretty much nobody has everything right to play it on the fire level, legendaries, traits and the like)

[Stauros]

Agree. Seems fine with good legendaries. Ran with Diadem/Koralons and swapped talents between RoP/Kindling and MI/meteor and it helped a lot.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/jV ... y#fight=42" target="_blank

[Mage]

I didn't think this time would ever come, but mages are the worst DPS class in the game atm.
Every single other class have a spec that beats them. I outplay a lot of people in my guild, so do most of you, but the truth is out there and it is brutal:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/11#dataset=90" target="_blank

[Falq]

Great post Falq.

I have 2 questions for you.

First, does Cinderstorm pull scorpions on the Scorpyron fight? I mean the ones that are not yet active because cinders have quite the travel distance.

Not sure, I think it does but when I looked at it they never pulled. But even if they do it wasn't huge deal at least for my guild About DD breath I stood as back as possible without pulling other packs and casted it and nothing pulled aswell.

And second, can you explain what exact simulation options do you use for your character in order to get right stat distribution and for trinket comparison? Is it hectic add cleave or beastlord or some other combination?

I sim both 4 targets stacked and ST for stats. About trinkets unless they are really ahead (like aran's) I test them myself during progress. For example sometimes sinew is not good choice because moment you want to pop it you have many adds which dies quickly so you loose stacks. Or bough is not good choice because add window is short and it may not proc there and become irrelevant.


Also I'd like to point out heroic week does not matter that much tbh, there is a lot of cds delaying to efficient do damage in NH and since most good guilds one shots bosses and don't give much attention to dps they do, mages will come low on metters. Nighthold HC is way easier than HoV was so many "not top guilds" kills bosses there. We should really wait for Mythic Statisticks to check in what spot we are on, because there people will have to min max damage to achieve kill.

[Makz]

Please dont hate me, but I figured I will share some info as someone with Helm, Bracers, Shard, 4/6 Heroic Tier, Guldan trinket, BiS ring/neck, shitty relics tho!

This week I managed to successfully pug 10/10 hc, min raid size of 2/4/12. Please note the information below is based on my experience in a pug(not a carry), so based on your own guild's strategy results may vary.

I used to raid for a top20 guild, but that was years ago, so there is a lot of rust, especially when they change mages after they have compeltely changed mages that I havent played, still ranks/numbers from this week(started around 882 ilevel, currently 895/897):

Normal and Heroic logs are available in my signature!

Numbers above are just for an idea, not to attest to where mages should be. I did all these fights with reading the journal for like 5min before the fights and without even doing normal. So this is more a quality of life post than anything!

All bosses
Talents: I keep Pyro/Shimmer/MI/Frantic Speed on all bosses, other talents/leges vary.
Kindling has potential on Elisande and Guldan due to being very low CD with the extra button. The problem will be actually simming something like that.

2pc bonus feels very weak, yes you may net more crits, but the problem is you need 2 in a row and once you crit, you start at the begining. So every second fireball has 80% crit for me, but I still need 2 in a row to get a pyro, if you dont play Flame On you will still beg for crits. 4 pc is good only when you have a bracers proc up. I would rather have perfectly items(offset or m+) rather than this type of set bonus. Sustained matters, but to not get anything in return for 4pc is bad design.

Dont look at your damage meter at the start of the fight - gone are the days when we opened with millions of DPS. Fire mage is now about SUSTAINED(also known as "Damage Done"), which is where an Int heavy Mirror images build fits - on fights like Guldan or Elisande your mirror images are dumping incredible damage.

Scorpion
Talents: LB/AF/CiS
Leges: Helm, Bracer
Aran ruby/NB chest(only if 900 ilevel both)
- Standard strategy pulls only about 10 adds total at once
- Helm works great, Bracers will force you to shimmer a lot out of SHockwave and the AE stun, however once you get the rocks down, you can hide behind all the time, which means you only need to shimmer away from AE stun
- Ring feels like it has potential because the Exposed phases are very short and far apart, which means you will have Hero for both
- Feel free to do CIS/LB/DB everywhere, it will not pull any additional scorpions!

Chromatic Anomaly
Talents: AF(for adds) or FO(if you have add group), UM/Meteor
Leges: Belt, Bracer
- Depending on how crazy your raid AE burst is, I would go for Flame on as the little adds get vaporized
- (Helm) AF provides a nice combo with Flame patch for adds if the raid AE burst is lacking(so if adds will live at least 8 sec I would go for AF/FP, otherwise FO/UM
- Even though your bars will be on CD during Time slow phase, you can still queue instant Pyros and they will fly off before your bars are off CD, just dont look too much at your bars during slow phase, it only causes confusion.

Trilliax
Talents: FO/UM/Meteor
Leges: Ring, Bracer. Helm if you want to pad like a boss!
- On heroic the boss can change the beam direction, if you stay at his left/right side, just shimmer exactly across, you will rarely have to shimmer more than once. I like to add a bit of angle too, but it is risky and based on when you get in position and when exactly does the start channeling
- I just dont like CiS, but the boss is very easy to hit with all cinders due to hitbox.

Spellblade Alu
Talents: AF/LB/CiS
Leges: Helm+Ring if lust on pull, Helm+Bracer otherwise, Belt+bracer if you get only 1 arcane phase.
Aran ruby/NB chest(only 900ilevel)/Grimoir, dont fail timing
- Adds are prio, AF, LB and CiS combos will completely wreck them. Even tho adds live a long time, LB spread is better than FP as the fire adds are always a bit spread
- With the amount of AE going out bracers have little value IMO, AF+Helm will completely destroy meters for you, lucky Ruby procs secure your first place(coin flip)
- Ice blocks usually line up perfectly for CiS as they are always at the edge of the frozen zone, watch your angle
- The best strategy I have seen so far is to tank her in the corridor instead of where the trash is - you should be getting very high parses that way as LB, CiS and Ruby/Grimoire hitting everything

Krosus
Talents: FO/UM/Meteor
Leges: Belt(if your kill times are between 5 and 6 min, otherwise Ring), Bracer
- Fight felt very lackluster for Fire, prepare yourself for disappointment
- You cant pad on little adds even with helm/AF, stick to ST
- Taking UM gives you the "biggest" edge, but its a pretty small edge
- 1 shimmer per Beam/every 3rd bridge hit/Orb of destr, dont worry even this efficiency wont help you top meters
- Stay max range and dont be scared of orb target people - you got cauterize
- Once you get your krosus items, just give away your spot to an alt

Tichondrius
Talents: AF/LB/Meteor or CiS
Leges: Belt, Bracer
- On bloods I would only LB once(2 sec before spawn) and Meteor/CiS, with CiS being quite difficult as tanks start moving after 1st intermission and big adds come
- Tich channel AE seems undertuned on heroic, you can tank at least half of it without a pillar
- Living bomb doesnt work if shit dies instantly - bloods died instantly, bats died instantly, the biggest clump you can have is a big add and bloods, but even then bloods die quickly and add needs to be focused

Star Augur
Talents: FO/UM/Meteor
Leges: Belt, Bracer
- I did the fighs with Helm/AF instead of ring, but I think a second hero is better justified as the difficulty goes up - currently on heroic you kill 1st add in last phase and ignore the 2nd. I doubt it will work for mythic
- Assuming you do the 3 camps - start exactly at the wall, then shimmer into your mark. That way when you get Icy Eruption you can do exactly 1 shimmer do the edge and 1 shimmer back, 0 downtime.
- If you are running helm/AF, make sure you have boss and add in front of you to clip both with DB
- If you get bracer proc and Fel eruption dont try to cast it, just wait for debuff to expire, I tried a million times, it just doesnt work(too much dmg from fel void zone)
- you can block it off, but I would do that only if all haste procs align making my pyro 1.66s cast and pump Pyros

Botanist
Talents: AF/FP/CiS(Rune will get you better results instead of MI, IF<---- nothing targets you, IF is good for quick kills)
Leges: Helm, Bracer(on progress take bracer/belt and focus on keeping high ignites too)
- You will be doing around middle of the pack dmg until 3rd add comes, then Flame patch dmg will kick in. Combined with AF and Bracer procs, you only need to land proper CiS to go over 1 million DPS.
- Whatever you have to do, save Combust(and RoP) for hero, flame patch gets out of control.
- try to keep DB ready for when Sun orbs are up or adds, but be careful not to kill 2 orbs(watch out for angle). Props if you manage to hit all bosses, flowers and 2 orbs at once(usually range issue due to flowers being in China)
- Make sure you use @cursor macro for Flamestrike, always place it on the tanks, not on the boss, beware of bosses moving a lot
- Sun orbs are always cleaved, so if you see the timer coming you will know where the bosses are about to go
- one key Frost nova can be the difference between Gold and eating new food.

Elisande, also known as What-the-fuck-is-going-on-with-my-fireblast
Talents: FO/UM/Meteor(Firestarter could be great here with multiple 90% phases)
Leges: Belt, Bracer
- Your tanks should have the adds and boss within Flame patch range
- Go into the pink bubble AGAIN once your debuff runs out - if you just sit in it, it does not keep refreshing, you need to re-enter after it expires(watch your CDs, you should have a 3-5 sec gap between getting it 2nd time to maximize dmg)
- Fireblast will make you mad and you will lag like crazy sometimes, I think its part of the encounter
- Shimmer over rings
- once the Orbs are about 5-7 yards in the air you can jump trigger them
- Pink buff plus Frantic Speed makes you really fast, you should always be first on adds/orb and absolutely never take ring dmg with shimmer

Guldan
Talents: FO/LB/Meteor(but should be CiS)
If you are really amazing and have tons of luck, go CiS and Rune of Power, but I find it really difficult to play those with all that is going on. CiS is definetely better than Meteor, but since it was week 1 I wanted something easier to play in order to let me up my DPS on my basic rotation.
Leges: Belt, Bracer. I tried Ring when we had hero on pull but the extra hero 5 min into the fight doesnt really contribute. You can have it for one Empowered eye and dreadlord, but will not have a real impact like DB/bracers dmg

Extra button
Guldan is my second favorite encounter due to how the extra button works - you get haste, but there is a huge tradeoff in CDs running out 30% faster(so your combustion lasts 7 seconds not 10).

My tip: You want to use the button as many times as possible, WHILE things are on CD, WHILE there are other targets than Guldan. Phase 1 pop your CDs on inquisitor, do your regular rotation(combust, MI, etc). Then pop your button to start shaving off CD time. During Phase 2 you want to make sure to use it all the time, unless you have combustion active. The goal of the fight is to use the button as many times as possible to get extra Mirror images/combustions/DBs/meteors/CiS. For example, if you use MI and use extra button right away, it takes off 30 seconds off the CD.

Phase 1
- Once the Inquisitor comes up, wait for the beam then blow all your cds
- Stay out of the grouped ppl, will make your life much easier
- Delay first DB until all 3 adds spawn, if you have belt focus lowest add and ignite will keep your dmg up on other bosses too
- Hellfire meteor does miniscule dmg on heroic, barely 2mil-ish, you can straight up not give a fuck about it

Phase 2
- Until Empowered Eye time use extra button only after meteors and preferably after MI use
- Dont save it for eyes - they are supposed to die instantly, the extra haste wont help you
- Boss timers totally suck at the moment - you want to cast LB 1-2 sec on Guldan right before he casts Eyes, combine that with DB and a good CiS and you are good(you can net about 25-40 mil dmg per pull on eyes in total with CiS alone)
- Backup interrupt on Dreadlord, but low prio unless you have Sephuz
- When Guldan gets empowered meteor make sure you Scorch and move out of group if necessary, makes the raids life much easier, but you pay with your DPS for it
- I have noticed if you have MI up when Bonds/Emp bonds are coming you probably wont get targeted. So far I have had about 120 tries on Guldan with half going to 10-15%, MI up = low chances to be targeted by bonds and Eye(notice only valid for Empowered Eye). This is the old way the spell worked, maybe there is some code still left in there that helps you not exist on the threat ranking
- CiS tip - hard to pull off but nets great dmg on eyes - stand right behind the tank on Eye spawn - they are actually all grouped for about half a second before they split, you can hit all of them. This comes with additional risk of killing your tank ofc
- dont break Bonds/Emp bonds alone, cauterize wont save you

Phase 3
- After the 2nd storm, he will stay far away and cast Empowered Eye - make sure you drop MI before the first cast of the storm while you are close, that way the images(which cant die from aoe) start to nuke it immediately
- Shimmer away with Flames to sides and a Scorch to garnish
- If you need space, block and drop flames in one spot, you will need healthstone to get out or cauterize
- If you use 2camp strategy at Guldan, dont chase the Eye if it goes past the boss, just do boss and your ignite will jump to eye(it has a huge hitbox)
- Your class is great for soaking Souls, get at least 3-4 per harvest by the end of the fight
- Blink at least once during black harvest, full blink heal heals about 1/3 of black harvest damage with no souls inside

Summary: I personally LOVE Fire when its not all about combustion - I dropped all the way down to 52% crit with the above gear and have a lot more intellect, mirror images do about 750k per cast and there is no more RoP bullshitery. You can sim ST you can sim 4 targets but the fights in NH are hectic so I would say your best results at least for now, will come from what you can play comfortably as dead people make no dps.

Thats off the top of my head, if something else come to me i will edit. I am sorry if I have mentioned some info which is basic for everyone

edit: added some more stuff for Guldan. Numbers/rankings. Tried to make it readible.

[Katsumi]

Thank you Falq and Makz, one of the best threads I read in a while. I'm probably going to print out the last post. I think you should actually put it into a new thread and rename it to "A comprehensive guide to The Nighthold" or something so that more people find it right away, that others can add to it and that you can update the first post to improve it continuously. Great work.

Regarding what was discussed before here I think that we're in a very good spot right now (fire) and hope that it stays that way for some time.

[Aggrokalle]

hmmm 10/10 hc here with pretty good results so far. but i kinda struggled on botanist (650k dps). didnt think about FP tho. How do you do it? Normal ST rotation until he splits up into three and then Flamestrike rota?

[Makz]

hmmm 10/10 hc here with pretty good results so far. but i kinda struggled on botanist (650k dps). didnt think about FP tho. How do you do it? Normal ST rotation until he splits up into three and then Flamestrike rota?

There are 4 boss units in total, plus occasional Sun orb. 3rd add comes out at 50% and you simply swap out Pyro for Flamestrike. I would always aim to land the flamestrike on the tank instead of on the bosses as they have to keep moving in the last half of the fight. I would switch to Pyro only if I have to pull some clutch moves so I dont die, otherwise FS.

Make sure you have @cursor macro for Flamestrike. With 1-2 boss units I maintain around 500-550k DPS, with 3rd and 4th add you will gain about at least 200k more. In my kills on both normal and heroic(posted numbers) our tanks moved a lot and some of the FPs didnt get full uptime(8 seconds).

[Ulfin]

does Cinderstorm pull scorpions on the Scorpyron fight?

It doesn't. The description of adds indicates they are immune to aoe before they are actually engaged, either by body pull (that of course absolutely no mage ever did or will do ) or by being called by the boss.

[Merlinuz]

Glad to hear positive feedback from mage forum, I think mage is still fun to play though it will never reach dps ceiling anymore in nighthold (as of 1/28,7.1.5 3%buff).

For current discussion(no matter discord or forum) mainly talking about 90% performance are not "competable" with other class - Yes I think we are much worry about the top performance VS utility. TBH we still have shimmer and block to handle special mechanics but back to reality, what is the meaning of dps class? If 90% performance of mages are still out-dps by other class which are also performing 90% out of their own class by,100Kdps, then whats the point to bring in a class which can shimmer and block? Yes it may be exaggerated to reveal current mage performance, but pure dps class cannot provide reliable damage is such a joke(please dont forget you also require decent legendaries for such performance, which costs time investment and heavy opportunity cost but still you are behind 100K dps).

I am not complaining about cannot do a decent job in my raid team (you can check out my logs, my ID in AT is as same as wow) but what I want to express is the fun(playstyle) is real. But I am frustrated to see I am out-performed by other class even I reached 95% and handling mechanics.

To show my respect to Falq and Makz and little contribution to this forum, here are some notes you may want in heroic:
Trilliax:
You can blink/shimmer right after scrubbing's cleansing destruction.

Krosus:
DO NOT MI AT THE FRONT OF THE BRIDGE. MI will fall if you put them into that broken bridge.
Do care about spread out for 2nd orb of destruction, there will be also burning pitch right after orb(for sure you can block).
Pick DB helm if your team need cleaving adds - they are fragile. If not go belt if running ROP or shard for MI.

Tichondrius
Casting LB 2 sec before every DBM reminds spawning blood and save your hot streak as possible for flamestriking blood.
Intermission phrase you should put your ROP and LB after the first 3 bats spawn to maximize your AOE efficiency.
You may want to adjust your gear to higher mastery for better cleaving adds. Like Urn or brinewater slime.
Personally I will prefer flame on for better management for hot streak, you can pick AF if adds are dying too fast.

Guldan:
If your raid team had this fight over 10 mins and you got shard, please talk to your raid leader to see whether lust in opening - you can extra lust 2-3 times in this fight if you use your extra button correctly.
In 2nd phrase you can manage to click extra button with rop - do not wait for combustion it will be a waste. Also if eye of Guldan is not empowered it deals shadow damage - which means you can click extra button without afraid breaking the buff if you need to cleave eyes efficiently.
Try to predict where your mates break bonds and shimmer to exact place- espeically you need to hardcast a 4 sec pyro.

[Makz]

Coins

Elisande drops Fire and Arcane relic and 3 other items. Which means you have a 20% chance to get the arcane relic. If you switch your spec to arcane/frost, that goes to 25%. DISCLAIMER: You risk getting a wrong spec legendary tho!

Same applies to botanist - switch off Fire so you dont get the shitty Fire blast relic, or off-Fire for Krosus to avoid Fire crit dmg if you dont need it.