Why are most posts on the Q&A board of AT.com about damage?

[zhengma]

Mod edit: Moved from Q&A forums to General Discussion since it's a meta discussion, and not a "About my character/performance" question

I post it here, because it's a question I'm curious about and am actively seeking a satisfactory answer, in contrast to exclaiming or complaining.

As I mentioned elsewhere, I've been telling my trainees that the basic duty of a DPS is two-fold:

To hurt the mobs while not hurting oneself

In my humble opinion, the two parts of the duty are equally important. A dead DPS = 0 DPS, regardless of how much he did when he was alive or how much he could potentially do if he were kept alive. Of course, in some fights, one part is more of a bottleneck than the other. However, "tank & spank" is extincting since Tier 14, and in Tier 16, even the fights designated to be "gear check" or "DPS race", such as Norushen or Spoils, have some elements that require every DPS to be accountable for his own survival. Although I haven't got a beta key, my educated guess is that the trend will continue and be pushed to a higher level in Tier 17.

I have posted my share of Recount capture and DPS analysis, but as a guild recruiter, instead of some numbers on Recount, what I cherish more is the survivability resulting from a combination of situational awareness, familiarity to mechanism and knowledge of one's defensive/mobility abilities that does not contribute to one's short-term DPS. The knowledge that maximizes one's DPS on a wooden dummy, such as rotation, DPCT of spells and gear selection can be learned from an abundance of online guides, and from my humble experience, familiarizing on a few sets of rotations is sufficient for a great variety of encounters. Surviving a boss fight, however, requires a case-by-case planning, and the alertness, the reflexes involved, needs a much longer time to accumulate.

The reason why I choose Mage as my main is not quite about the damage (in which case I would likely roll a lock), but the excellent survivability, mobility, CC capacity it provides. Every time I browse my WoL archive, what makes me smile the most is not how high I am on the damage ranking, but how low I am on the "# of death" ranking thanks to Tier 2 talent, Ice Block and Cauterize, how little damage I take from bad on the ground and AoE thanks to Ice Floes, G Inv and double Blink, and how much I contributed to adds control thanks to WE Freeze, Frost Nova, RoF and Deep Freeze.

Today, I took a bit of time browsing through the Q&A board of AT.com. Somewhat to my disappointment, almost every single post I read is either about rotation or about gear. Few people ask questions such as:

• When do I pop my Temporal Shield during Heroic Sha of Pride encounter?
• What do I do when I'm assigned to clear puddles on the other side of the Immerseus room?
• How should I arrange the Sha Bolt void zones inside my little RoP so that I don't have to move a lot?
• What do I do when I'm fixated by IJ laser/Siegecrafter laser/Thok?
• How do I optimally restrict the mobility of Nazgrim's soldiers if I sacrifice my damage dealing capacity?
• Can I hold Mark of Anguish for longer than the duration of my Ice Block if necessary?
• How do I tank the small add spawned from Empowered Whirling Corruption?
• Could you please check my log and see if I've taken damage that's avoidable or could've been mitigated better?

To name just a few. (Note: I'm just giving some examples and am NOT looking for answers to these questions myself.)

I've tried to come up with a few explanations to this phenomenon, only to reject each of them.

"Most questioners are at a level where DPS improving is of utmost importance." No, because I've read the Armory of some questioners, and many are already at a stage (judging from ilvl and progression) that individual survival is the bottle neck. Besides, users of AT.com consists of all kinds of levels, I doubt there's not a single one among them for whom survival and mobile is the major concern.

"CC is the job for other classes, and keeping the mage alive is (and should naturally be) taken care of by the healers. Our value for a raid lies in and only in our DPS, and the true jeopardization of the benefit of the team is to let us be distracted from maximizing DPS." I can't imagine what kind of a raid team that is, but I've seen countless pugs and guild groups, and I haven't enjoyed the luxury of treating the raid boss as a wooden dummy even once.

"Surviving is actually easier than doing maximal DPS." From my humble experience of weeks of Heroic T16 progression, I beg to differ.

"How a mage should survive boss mechanism has been recorded in great detail online." I haven't seen nearly as much survival guide as DPS guide online, except one on the IV.com forum. Feel free to provide further links, though.

Hence, I'm putting this question forward: Why are questioners on AT.com generally indifferent to the survival, CC and raid utility aspects of being a good mage?

EDIT: added other obligations of mage to the last question.

[Komma]

It's pretty much as you said in your "counterpoint" section though - surviving really isn't a primary concern on most fights for us. There are very few situations where we require a specific rotation with defensive abilities to survive. Heroic fights are no different - right now, the raid design philosophy still puts the burden of player survival in the hands of healers, because most lethal boss attacks that hit a mage are unavoidable damage.

Another thing is that suvivability is much harder to quantify than DPS throughput, which is easy to judge from damage meters or parsed combat logs. It's easy for people to look at a bar chart and feel uneasy about numbers. It's much more difficult for a player to evaluate their own survivability relative to other players. If a player cannot recognize survival is a primary problem, why would he post a thread?

[zhengma]

Thank you very much for you timely reply, Komma.

surviving really isn't a primary concern on most fights for us

In Tier 16, we have Erupting Sha, Corrupted Brew, Blind Hatred, Swelling Pride(and all its secondaries), Skull Cracker, Cutter Laser, Iron Prison, Backstab, Displaced Energy, Set to Blow, crush under feet after being fixated and caught up, Shockwave missile, Aim, to name a few that naturally jumps into my mind. Every one I enumerated here is evidently fatal beyond the capacity of any healer (or at least uneconomic to heal through), and can be largely dodged and mitigated if a DPS concern about his own survival.

Same goes for Tier 15, where we, as DPS, have lightning balls and invisible dinosaurs to kite, turtles to kick, maze to run, robots to tank, and an excrement-load of thunder to dance in.

The reason why Komma would say that, I guess, might have something to do with him being severely overgeared for longer than I do. If Komma argue that "surviving is not a primary concern when I progressed on H SoO in 550 Thunderforged gear last autumn", I'm really interested to learn more.

There are very few situations where we require a specific rotation with defensive abilities to survive.

The beauty and difficulty of survival is that there isn't a "rotation". Parts of it is proactive and can be planned in accordance to encounter mechanics, but it's still largely reactive. The reason is simple: We can neither trust that the other 24 people, half of which I've never met and will unlikely to meet again, will not make mistakes, nor can we afford to wipe if a single event goes south. Proactive or reactive, there isn't no such thing as a "rotation".

In fact, the word "rotation" originates from, and is basically restricted to, PvE. This is why some people has been arguing that PvE is the more "pussy" one of the two major playstyle of WoW. This has led to another question I have: Why is AT.com, a forum dedicated to a class that doesn't only shine in PvE by any means, currently dominated by PvE discussion? But that's off-topic and I may open a new thread if necessary.

...suvivability is much harder to quantify than DPS throughput, which is easy to judge from damage meters or parsed combat logs.

I think survivability is much more noticable, as you don't even need to rely on Recount or WoL to see an issue-- a popup that asks if you wish to release is all it takes to alert one of the flaw in his qualification as a raider, unless, of course, he believe the popup is either a natural part of raiding or someone else's fault.

With Recount, DeathNote and WoL, more quantified analysis can be done by simply change the tab from "Damage Done" to "Damage Taken". Some items, such as Corrupted Brew from Rook Stonetoe or Flash/Whirling from Ka'roz the Locust, shouldn't be in there. 0 hit. Ever. Period. Some other items could be in there, but too many hits/ticks is an issue. Yet some other items should be in there, but if not always accompanied by a Tier 2 talent every time, there's some room for improvement.

...evaluate their own survivability relative to other players...

Both DPS and survivability are about doing better than one's older self. "Many died alongside me, and it's a wipe anyway" is not a good excuse for failing mechanisms when one have something in his arsenal to live through it. Upon browsing the Q&A board of AT.com, I'm glad to see that many questioners actually did higher DPS than their teammates, but are still looking for improvement. It's just about treating survivability with the same attitude.

[Komma]

In Tier 16, we have Erupting Sha, Corrupted Brew, Blind Hatred, Swelling Pride(and all its secondaries), Skull Cracker, Cutter Laser, Iron Prison, Backstab, Displaced Energy, Set to Blow, crush under feet after being fixated and caught up, Shockwave missile, Aim, to name a few that naturally jumps into my mind. Every one I enumerated here is evidently fatal beyond the capacity of any healer (or at least uneconomic to heal through), and can be largely dodged and mitigated if a DPS concern about his own survival.

Just over half of those are avoidable. 25% of those are generic "use a cooldown" mechanics, and there is no need for detailed theory to discuss optimums. The last 25% are simply healer-dependent - there's nothing you can do on your own regarding them.

I am probably biased because I am in a progression guild, but when we're learning a boss, raid members are simply expected to not take damage from avoidable sources. You should not be getting hit by Corrupted Brew. You're not supposed to get Backstabbed. Set to Blow should be dealt with properly. I'm not saying we deal with it perfectly, but if a player is consistently making these mistakes, they simply will not be part of the raid.

When I say it is hard to 'evaluate' survivability, I mean it in a very scientific context. I mean that very few people are going to make graphs of "average % of boss learning attempts survived" and "average dodge rate of <avoidable source of damage>". On a guild/raid management level, the rule is simple: "Fail too often and you're out." To them, survivability is noticeable, but it is not as quantifiable, and there is seldom a need to do so anyway.

Why do I say a "rotation" is needed for suvivability to be a concern? Because if a fight does not present a strict requirement for survival, then there is much room to work with to do what you want - and we will end up ignoring survivability again. The only case we are forced to consider survival seriously is if the raid is confronted with repeated, predictable sources of unavoidable damage, to the point where every single member must preplan their defensive capabilities. This is the case on the final 3 bosses of the tier, in the form of ridiculous group-wide AOE damage such as high stack shredder overloads, aims, fire lines, reaves, empowered whirls, annihilates and iron star explosions. But there is very little discussion here - once again, these challenges are not to the point where we are forced to use specific talents/specs/abilities, perform very optimized routines to counter these challenges. The main point here is that if a survival challenge is not difficult to the point where you require a "rotation" and preplanning, then it is not threatening enough to divert our focus from throughput.

The reason why Komma would say that, I guess, might have something to do with him being severely overgeared for longer than I do. If Komma argue that "surviving is not a primary concern when I progressed on H SoO in 550 Thunderforged gear last autumn", I'm really interested to learn more.

Essentially, I am saying exactly this. We were not overgeared when we first killed these encounters - if anything, we are severely undergeared when judged with today's standards. When I participated as part of my guild's first Heroic Paragons and/or Garrosh kill, everything that SHOULD kill you, WOULD kill you. Got hit by rapid fire? You're dead. Missed a buff in the intermission? Temporal Shield/Greater Invis/Ice Block/External help through Smoke Bomb, Barrier, Demo Banenrs, Vigilance, Hand of Sacrifice...list goes on. When I was part of Heroic Dark Shamans at itemlevel ~560, it was the same case - Iron Tomb? Mess up and you're dead. Missed a Tornado? Dead. Didn't notice a storm on you? Dead.

But the fact is, none of the above have the depth for any detailed discussion. It's all "play better and do not get hit" or "react better with abilities". There is nothing to quantify or calculate or look in-depth into.

This is the same reason why nobody suggests gemming stamina nowadays - the game is designed in a way that without going extraordinary lengths towards increasing survivability, nothing that you should get hit by is going to kill you.

Why is AT.com, a forum dedicated to a class that doesn't only shine in PvE by any means, currently dominated by PvE discussion?

That is not our goal or how we would like it. However, the current general atmosphere of the game is such that challenges exist in 2 main aspects: PVE (mostly raiding) and PVP. As such, most discussion is centered on these two aspects. Most of the staff on AT come from PVE backgrounds (me included), so we haven't had too much luck developing the PVP aspect of things. We hope that will change.


Why is there so little priority given to survival, and why isn't "minimizing damage taken" as highly regarded as "doing maximum damage"? The key reason is because "taking no damage" on its own does not contribute to defeating a boss on progression. To paraphrase the famous Gurgthock (GM of <Elitist Jerks>), survivability is a "minimum requirement". Damage is a "linear improvement". For most encounter, you only need a sufficient healers and tanks such that the raid can survive. Bonus damage on the other hand, will always make a fight faster, and easier. It is very hard to design a fight where extra damage capacity does not make an encounter easier. This has shown true with most progression guilds - as gear gets better and survivability requirements are getting easier to meet, the number of healers used for each fight can be reduced, in favor of killing the boss faster.

Is this the right mentality outside of progression guilds though? No. I do not believe that this mentality is right for most of the world's players, whose focus should be making survival their top priority before thinking as much about throughput. But as with most effects that trickle down from top raiding guilds, there is very little that can be done about that.

[Komma]

In other news: I feel that this discussion is more suitable for the General Discussion forum, and should probably be moved there. My rule of thumb is that if a question contains "me", "I", "my DPS/performance", it should be in the question forum. Meta questions of this kind are less personal.

[zhengma]

Thank you, Komma, for your detailed and sincere explanation, including the details that explained why there seems to be some differences with our standings when I mostly agree with what you say.

To begin with, I'd like to tell a story of mine in relate to...

...not threatening enough to divert our focus from throughput...

which, to some extent, motivated me to write the original post in the first place.

It was some time ago when I was trying to kill Fallen Protectors in a PuG. (As a side note, I've only done PvE in 2 forms so far: solo and PuG. My current guild farms Normal SoO 18:30 EST every Saturday, usually 7-8 of the active raiders will be able to come online at this scheduled time and we have to pug for the remaining 2-3 spots. And in the 25H progression I do and report in a post on AT.com, we roughly have 15 regulars and 10 puggers, as shown in my WoL archive.) When the trio of Embodiments came out, I clicked on Gloom and Counterspelled the first shock the instant his cast bar appeared. Then the second cast bar started to run, and it ran on. I hit Temporal Shield only 0.2 second before the cast bar finished, and 5-6 of those who didn't hit a similar ability fell. Then the third cast bar started to run, and it ran on. I hit Ice Block when I was sure the bar would finish, and another 5-6 fell. Then the fourth cast bar started to run, and it ran on. I hit G-Inv and took a bite on my warlock cookie. Then the fifth cast bar started to run, and it ran on, and we wiped.

Frustrated, I asked a fellow pugger by my side:

Me: Did you cast your Counterspell?
Him: You do know that CS is on GCD, right?
Me: So?
Him: With a GCD I can cast one more Arcane Blast. Do you know how much damage at 4 charges it does?
Me: How much damage do you do when you die?
Him: Lol idc. I just maximize my DPS, so that I can enter the test realm earlier in the next fight and rank even higher on Recount.
Me: K then why are you ranking below me on Recount?
Him: Lol I'll do way more with your gear!

In the end, there were no "test realm" involved, because the PuG disbanded before the Protectors could be killed.

If I'm asked: "Do you agree with what Komma said, that we should focus on DPS throughput?" I'd say "yes".

If I'm asked: "Do you wish to raid with this guy again, who actively seek to maximize his DPS throughput?" I'd say "no".

And if I'm asked: "Why not kick those who could interrupt and didn't?" I'd say: "You have any idea how long it takes to find new puggers on Oqueue, and how unlikely the new puggers will perform any better?"

That might be the key to explain the differences between Komma's view and mine. I've paid a routine visit to the WoWprogress page and guild website of Alone@US-Aerie Peak. I didn't learn much, but I can infer that Alone, as most guilds of its level, hardly ever rely on external puggers to put together a 10-man guild run, or even a 25-man one. In that case, people raid with familiar faces, they don't have to rely on meter to earn privileges, and they'll be replaced and penalized if repeatedly fail the survival requirement, and there will be replacement readily available if they are to be replaced.

I've never truly had the luxury of that, but I don't think it invalidates or diminishes my question per se. My story above indicates that for many DPS-- not restricted to mages-- issues like survival and CC is still a larger bottleneck comparing to dealing damage. I believe Komma agrees on it, as shown in his last paragraph. It's by no means restricted to magi, but magi do have a particular (and arguably larger) arsenal to perform duties other than dealing damage, and I personally advocate those who haven't mastered the arsenal yet to start learning.

Of course, if I'm told that: "Most of the users of AT.com don't pug that extensively as you do, Zheng, and those with survival issues in my guild will get a DKP minus", I think Komma's replies has already provided some satisfactory answer to my original question.

[zhengma]

In other news: I feel that this discussion is more suitable for the General Discussion forum, and should probably be moved there. My rule of thumb is that if a question contains "me", "I", "my DPS/performance", it should be in the question forum. Meta questions of this kind are less personal.

Sure. Feel free to move it.

[Aowyn]

Hence, I'm putting this question forward: Why are questioners on AT.com generally indifferent to the survival, CC and raid utility aspects of being a good mage?

There's a reason why you see so many questions about DPS theorycrafting here than survivability questions: every encounter has many good guides about its mechanics available on the internet, like those you find in Icy Veins, Fatboss and Tankspot. They explain well what you should be aware of to survive and are informative regardless of your class, spec and role.

In contrast, you don't find that many PvE guides about a specific spec that is either updated or that you can trust its quality. You can see in some AT posts the many warnings about trusting guides and simulation profiles blindly.

This site attracted the dedication of PvE theorycrafters, so mages with any interest in PvE are naturally bound to ask related questions here; it's one of the places you can expect to find information that is both up-to-date and properly modeled/tested. For those interested in survivability, they search for encounter guides instead.

Similarly for PvP questions, there is a much better source of information in Skillcapped, which gathers multi-season Gladiators of every class to produce guides and answer questions ("Ask a Gladiator"). PvP information is also prone to not be updated or of reliable quality.

It is also harder to model because it is about strategy/tactic effectiveness rather than function optimization. These strategies and tactics vary based on the team composition, both from your team and your opponent's. And, even if one strategy/tactic is proved to be the best, the simple fact that it is known brings a lot of effort to counter it. Therefore, PvPers naturally seek players with the highest ratings to confirm the effectiveness of these tactics; they are the living proof of what works.

And, by the way, Counterspell isn't on the GCD, just requires you to stop casting any current cast if not glyphed.

[zhengma]

There's a reason why you see so many (more) questions about DPS theorycrafting here than survivability questions.

Many more questions on DPS than on survivability is understandable, as explained by you and by others in this thread. What actually happened on the Q&A board of AT.com, however, is a devoid of survivability question threads. I used the word "most" just in case I missed any.

What I have proven in my thread, at least, is that such questions are valid and will received useful answers on AT.com.

every encounter has many good guides about its mechanics available on the internet, like those you find in Icy Veins, Fatboss and Tankspot.

If there is one thing I've learned during my H SoO progression, it is: there is a huge distance from knowing how to deal with mechanisms *in theory* to having the alertness, reflexes and dexterity of fingers to actually deal with them, and yet another huge distance from being able to deal with mechanisms to dealing with them while doing 75%+ of the DPS one does on a training dummy.

Therefore, if someone in this thread words his reply in this way: "Survivability can't be achieved by posting on a forum like AT.com, it can only be achieved by wiping hundreds of times", I'll find it satisfactory and close the thread.

They explain well what you should be aware of to survive and are informative regardless of your class, spec and role.

Another thing I've learned during my H SoO progression is: knowing the mechanism of a boss encounter is completely different from, and uncorrelated with, knowing one's own arsenal to deal with them. As an example, this is a paraphrase of a conversation I had a few weeks ago:

"The splash (at the end of Phase 2 of Immerseus) is impossible! It does way more burst than my Ice Barrier!"
"Why not use Temporal Shield instead? It also relieves the healing pressure a bit."
"Ah, never tried that since Noxxic didn't recommend that. It'll cost me a Tome of Clear Mind, but I'll try."
(One pull later...)
"Temporal Shield is too hard to use! It only has a 4 second duration and by using it on cooldown I missed the splash."

One who has cleared LFR for 20+ times by the time this conversation took place is evidently "interested in PvE".

PvP information is also prone to not be updated or of reliable quality.

It is also harder to model because it is about strategy/tactic effectiveness rather than function optimization. These strategies and tactics vary based on the team composition, both from your team and your opponent's. And, even if one strategy/tactic is proved to be the best, the simple fact that it is known brings a lot of effort to counter it. Therefore, PvPers naturally seek players with the highest ratings to confirm the effectiveness of these tactics; they are the living proof of what works.

That's why asking questions real-time is more likely to get up-to-date answer, although as you mentioned, there are better website for this. That sidenote is just about my surprise that AT.com, as a forum that dedicates to (PvE) theorycrafting but generally welcome magi of all sorts, haven't attracted ANY attention from gladiators like Hansol.

Nevertheless, I've attempted to initiate it on the Q&A board of AT.com in here, and I have received helpful replies to almost all of my concerns so far that helped improving my performance, with the possible exception of the (off-topic) question in post #5 of the thread.

And, by the way, Counterspell isn't on the GCD, just requires you to stop casting any current cast if not glyphed.

I think this will serve as another example to illustrate my point. In theory, the game engine doesn't prohibit me from casting another spell immediately after I interrupt someone. However, every time I cast Counterspell, I'll instinctively confirm whether it took effect, make one deep exhale if I succeed, and then cast the next spell. The exhale alone usually take one GCD at my current haste level. Same goes for Temporal Shield, which isn't on GCD per se, but I always inhale and exhale heavily a few times as instinctive reaction to witnessing an incoming damage spike, unable to use other abilities in the process. That is why for a WoW player (regardless of class) at the "hard-core-ness" level of me and my raid-mates, an ability that doesn't take GCD as per in-game description usually take a GCD in reality. I won't bring it up on AT.com, though, because it's something I have to overcome myself.

You may then ask: "Do you, then, waste time 'inhale and exhale heavily' every time an FoF proc or a chance to pop Alter Time emerge?" The answer is NO, because I've got used to dealing with that during my hours on that training dummy in Stormwind, and is the least of my bottleneck at this moment.

Similar things goes with my trinket. This is taken from a screen capture of me in arena:

keybinding2.png (78 KiB) Viewed 8404 times

As you can see, my trinket is bound to F12. Every time I was CCed, I'd move my eyes from the screen down to the keyboard, and then move my finger from the ASDF position to F12 across 20 centimeters, and by the time I press it, the CC is either over, or I've been bursted down. This hasn't accounted for the mental panic and resulting muscle spasm upon being CCed either, which I'm gradually overcoming.

Of course, you can recommend a different keybinding for the trinket or anything else you see or not see on the picture, and that will make another legit and fruitful AT.com discussion in itself.

[Aowyn]

Therefore, if someone in this thread words his reply in this way: "Survivability can't be achieved by posting on a forum like AT.com, it can only be achieved by wiping hundreds of times", I'll find it satisfactory and close the thread.

I actually think it sums it well. Survivability is as much of a skill as maintaining DPS while restricting movement, from the PvE experience I had, and in line with survivability in PvP. You can have a lot of tips to survive a warrior:

• - Save Ice Block for Bladestorm and Recklessness
  - Don't break your freezes too fast, let them buy you time to recharge your cds, as they are shorter, but less numerous, than those of the warrior
  - Don't overlap your freezes, spread them
  - Heroic Leap and Safeguard into a banner can be countered with Deep freeze, just as he uses it
  - Maintain a snare on him always, warriors suffer greatly from snares
  - Maintain Living Bomb, as the Brain Freeze procs are a good source of instant snares
  - Shout skills can't be used while silenced, you can prevent Piercing Howl and Intimidating Roar by silencing him
  - Alter Time is a useful counter-burst tool, one against which warriors don't have a satisfactory answer.
  - You can bait Reflective Shield with Freeze->Frostbolt, cancel the FB cast and follow with RoF on him. This can force more mobility tools than he should use, maybe even his trinket.

, but, when faced with an experient one, none of them will matter if you don't match his experience. Warriors too have many tips to survive mages, and if he uses them better than you use yours, that can be all he needs to win. Moreover, some of the tips you know only work if your reaction time is apropriate; without experience, you may not be able to pull them off in time, or not even remember them in the heat of the battle.

[Aowyn]

That's why asking questions real-time is more likely to get up-to-date answer, although as you mentioned, there are better website for this. That sidenote is just about my surprise that AT.com, as a forum that dedicates to (PvE) theorycrafting but generally welcome magi of all sorts, haven't attracted ANY attention from gladiators like Hansol.

It could have been different if AT were created during BC or Wrath, as PvE gear was often the best itens for PvP. Either because it just offered more damage on a class that was good at surviving and, thus, didn't need the extra resilience from PvP gear, or because it was an overpowered trinket. The best PvPers were often also heroic raiders, if just out of gearing necessity.

Of course, you can recommend a different keybinding for the trinket or anything else you see or not see on the picture, and that will make another legit and fruitful AT.com discussion in itself.

It's better to start with consolidated keybinds: one key used for more than one spell. For example:

(macro for Instant spells)

• #showtooltip
  /cast [nomod] Ice Lance
  /cast [mod:shift] Frostfire Bolt
  /cast [mod:ctrl] Fire Blast

This will free you many keybinds and have these three spells on an easily reached keybind. It's also rather easy to get used to, since they share a theme in common. You can, them, add your cooldowns to it, like:

(macro for instant spells with burst cooldowns; 13 is the slot of the first trinket, should you use the on-use int one)

• #showtooltip
  /cast [mod:alt] Icy Veins
  /use [mod:alt] 13
  /castsequence [mod:alt] reset=1 Alter Time
  /cast [nomod] [mod:alt] Ice Lance
  /cast [mod:shift] Frostfire Bolt
  /cast [mod:ctrl] Fire Blast

Feel free to consolidate them as you want. WoD promises to make it simpler as well...