[Progression Journal] Zhengma's Tier 17 (7+2/17 H, 1+0/17 M)

[zhengma]

While I wait for the repeatedly delayed end of maintenance, I may as well start this thread.

Since the end of my SoO progression, I've move with a few key members of my former guild to US-Cenarius, joining force with many of the recurring names in the screen captures in that thread, to raid in Tier 17 (and hopefully future tiers).

The progression will start in a few hours, but honestly my morale is not particularly high. From what I have witnessed, mage is not a popular PvE class in this patch, at least comparing to Cata and earlier. I'm the only mage on the guild raiding roster, the only one that mains in a mage in the entire guild, the only level 100 mage in the guild until a few days ago, and pretty much the only mage in the many pugs I've run dungeon with. The only time I ever did PvE with other mage was in a re-made MC LFR run.

While other raiders discuss their rotations enthusiastically in the guild chat, I can't even find a guildie to stay awhile and listen about my knowledge on magecraft, say nothing of teaching me. Reading AT.com once in a while does not truly repel this sense of solitude. Without a reference, I can't even tell if I'm doing okay, if I have developed as much potential of my class as my skill allows me. What I can tell, however, is that I have to work super hard not to burden the raid with my 633 ilvl, ranked #14 in our 20-man roster, brought about by a combination of bad RNG in rolls, in-game poverty, lack of foresight in profession and garrison management (due to not having a chance to play Beta), and the general lack of popularity of CM in the guild.

Nevertheless, the raid must go on. Due to my lack of participation in beta testing and the scarce of class-specific guide, I have to improvise my own plan of build based on my experience in heroic dungeon. Some of the plans include:

1. Pick MI+TV. I know that PC gives somewhat better number in ideal situations, but I have such an awful and frustrating experience with PC in my dungeon runs. The tank, due to mechanism necessity or insidious malice, usually kite everything away from my PC within 3~5 seconds when it's put down (as a DPS I obviously can't blame the tank for hampering with my number-padding). What is much more SICK than this is: once in a while, there will be someone http://www.wowhead.com/spell=132469 or http://www.wowhead.com/spell=51490 everything away from my PC. All in all, my impression on PC is so utterly bad, and consequently my experience of using it is so limited, that I don't feel like using it in my progression. In practice, I find covering the entire duration of MI with IV is not that hard, without the necessity of throw many un-procced lances, and the combination gives excellent single target burst, which I can deliver either to the boss or to a dangerous add. I might use PC (especially F-bomb+PC) in the Butcher fight to see how much advantage it has, though.

2. Pick IN over F-bomb. F-bomb is a superior AoE ability on paper, but I find it not to my satisfaction in dungeons, because FoF, after all, is a proc that involves RNG, so that F-bomb can't truly deliver the burst AoE at precisely the moment I want them. In dungeons (more accurately, number-padding in dungeons), the time window of AoE is quite small, and the trash/minion swarm can die during the long cast bar of F-bomb. Of course, this may not be the case in raiding, and I may still test the damage of F-bomb in some fights. Furthermore, the CC effect of IN may have some tactical application.

3. Pick BS over IF. Using Blazing Speed is surely a "DPS loss", I fully reckon that. But during progression when I'm not familiar with mechanisms, one extra emergency speed boost is more practical for me. After all, a corpse does 0 DPS.

4. I'm a bit skeptical to the current AT. AT has similar effect as the old Temporal Shield, but there are two drawbacks: 1. the healer may heal me up, even pop a cooldown on me, when my AT is active. This will go to waste; 2. AT returns me to the original location when it's ended, which could mean back into a void zone. Still, Ice Barrier and Flameglow are lackluster, so I may think of a way to make better use of AT (maybe I need to coordinate with the healers for it).

5. Glyph of IV looks great for sure, but I'm a little bit uncertain. Glyphed IV will allow my Frostbolt to proc Brain Freeze much more frequently, which is the major advantage of it (and of all the Multi I stacked on my gear). However, since I picked TV, I'll have to spend almost half the GCDs when my IV is up on spamming lances, and not many Frostbolts will benefit from IV. I may have missed the discussion on AT.com, but has anyone proven or disproved that Glyphed IV works better with PC than with TV?

If anyone wish to give me further advices regarding the plans above, regarding general tips on refining the details of my rotation, or just wanna say something nice to boost my morale, I'll be grateful. I'll post logs and screen captures when they're out.

[zhengma]

Full WCL entry

Only raided for 1 hour before the server started to mess up

Assigned to arena duty, so it's purely single target. I think IN is viable, so I'm currently not planning to switch to F-bomb just yet.

Thrown 15 lances without FoF. Even though some of them are fired to extend IV, I definitely fired a few by mistake. Consumed 188/189 of my Brain Freeze proc, acceptable but flawed still.

Can anyone teach me how to count the number of Frostbolts benefited from Water Jet?

Anyway, even my raw DPS, without taking activity into account, is ~1k below what SimCraft predicted from my armory profile. There are still many details to refine.

EDIT: With Thermal Void, my 14 IVs that expired naturally during the night lasted between 28~44 seconds, with an average of 34.7 seconds. I'm not sure if it can be called as making ample use of Thermal Void, but I'm still instinctively uncomfortable with throwing FoF-less lances just for it. Even with all my IVs popped together with MIs, I still suspect it's a DPS loss.

[zhengma]

Kargathkill.jpg (48.87 KiB) Viewed 17407 times

It seems that with 536ish ilvl and low (comparing to most on AT.com) player skill, H Butcher is outta of reach. So we killed the Butcher on Normal (where I got a shoulder) and did a few pulls on Normal Tectus.

Will continue tomorrow.

[Veox]

Isn't there a hidden buff to the proc chance why glyphed IV?

[zhengma]

Isn't there a hidden buff to the proc chance why glyphed IV?

Um...what "hidden buff" other than the extra proc chance of Brain Freeze brought by extra multi?

Can you please link something for me to read?

[Ilmatar]

Thank you for sharing your experience. I too am under the impression, that Mage is currently not the preferred class, on the other hand we are still a welcome addition to raids with our Bloodlust, Crit Buff, Amplify Magic.

*sigh* even at sameish item level, you have the much better items (ample multistrike, much more int) and it shows in your dps too. But that gives me hope, that my dps will increase noticeably with better fitting items.

I had the luck to do first 5 bosses in normal mode. My performance was even worse in the beginning, but after I changed talent from Ice Barrier / Alter Time to Flameglow I spent less GCD and or thinking time on my def-cooldowns and was able to raise my dps quite a bit, while still executing those encounter mechanics.
Maybe I go back to Alter Time, as soon as I am comfortable with the fight executions.

Love to hear more of your progress.

[zhengma]

Thank you for sharing your experience. I too am under the impression, that Mage is currently not the preferred class, on the other hand we are still a welcome addition to raids with our Bloodlust, Crit Buff, Amplify Magic.

*sigh* even at sameish item level, you have the much better items (ample multistrike, much more int) and it shows in your dps too. But that gives me hope, that my dps will increase noticeably with better fitting items.

I had the luck to do first 5 bosses in normal mode. My performance was even worse in the beginning, but after I changed talent from Ice Barrier / Alter Time to Flameglow I spent less GCD and or thinking time on my def-cooldowns and was able to raise my dps quite a bit, while still executing those encounter mechanics.
Maybe I go back to Alter Time, as soon as I am comfortable with the fight executions.

Love to hear more of your progress.

Thank you for your interest!

I admit that "Bloodlust, Crit Buff, Amplify Magic" are great additions per se, but that doesn't make us indispensable. I'm in charge of popping the Time Warp of each pull, but if I ever decide not to, there are 3 shamans in the queue. We have one beast master, one marksman and one survivalist in the raid that'll fill in any and all holes on the buff list. Amplify Magic is a reactive ability that relies on others hard working to take effect, in contrast to, say Tranquility which is reactive but direct and say, Smoke Bomb which is proactive. I'm still struggling to find a task that I'm irreplaceable in.

How to pick and properly use my Tier 2 talent and Tier 4 talent is quite crucial for my Butcher fight. In normal mode I don't have to think about them, but in heroic progression, with the healer's ilvl between 635 and 640, you can imagine. In some pulls, we die not because they lack the raw thruput, we die when they're OOM. I have to use my Tier 2 and 4 talents to help them reserving at least a bit of mana to use on others. To make things worse, DBM apparently don't warn me of http://www.wowhead.com/spell=156157, so I have to count the seconds myself to time my Evanesce, AT and GI.

I'll probably be killing Normal Tectus tonight, but you have already killed it. Any experience to share?

[zhengma]

SimCraft shows that: with MI+TV, Glyph of IV is apparently more harm than good. It's clearly better for PC (especially combined with F-bomb), though.

I'm still struggling whether I should switch to PC or not. But if I stick with TV, I'll remove my IV glyph.

[zhengma]

Normal, but hey, a kill IS a kill.

Missed the staff to a Holy Priest and the ring to a Holy Pally. so I'm still 635.

[zhengma]

And we cleared the 1st wing.

[zhengma]

WCL entries:

Dec. 3
Dec. 4

At this moment, my ilvl ranks #17 in our progression group. Wowprogress shows that some guildies outside the core progression group have higher ilvl than I do. Just imagine the pressure

[zhengma]

To determine what I should use in the H Butcher progression next week, I put my current gear into SimCraft and tested. (Format: Tier4-Tier6-Glyph; Use Mirror Image, Splitting Ice, Rapid Displacement)

FB-PC-IV: 19633
IN-PC-IV: 19405
FB-PC-WE: 19056
IN-PC-WE: 18942
IN-TV-WE: 18387
FB-TV-WE: 18145
*IN-TV-IV: 17788
FB-TV-IV: 17565

* What I've been using during this week

The pattern is very clear, and is consistent with the general impression among the community:

1. PC rules, by a hefty margin.
2. PC works better with Glyph of IV and TV works better without it. This is likely because, in order to make full use of TV, a lot of time will be spent on spamming lances, so that the increased chance of Brain Freeze proc is not made full use of.
3. FB works better with PC, since the secondary lance will hit the main target with FB on, and the burst from FB will hit the nearby PC, making it feedback more damage. (CORRECT ME IF I'M WRONG)
4. FB doesn't work well with with TV. I will figure out why, though hints will be welcomed.
5. I've been using an inferior build during this week. It seems that there's a lot of room of improvement.
6. IN-PC-IV ranks #2 here, but is much easier to use than FB-PC-IV. I may choose this for the progression next week.

[zhengma]

To my surprise, with 635 item level, I got a few parses with higher percentile than I expected with my gear:

84%, N Brackenspore, Dec. 4
80%, N Kargath, Dec. 3

However, I'm in the blue percentile range for the Butcher, which indicates I'm still having some issues with the fine details of my rotation.

[zhengma]

A little catch-up before the progression tonight:

Since last update, I've been working on managing my choice of talents: IN-MI-PC. I have yet to find a satisfactory, comfortable sequence of action, though, as there are these things competing for the precious GCDs:

1. PC (macroed with http://www.wowhead.com/item=110003&bonus=518 for the identical CD);
2. FO itself;
3. the overflowing amount of FoF brought by FO.
4. IN (consume at least one charge to let the recharge rolling)
5. MI (yes you're seeing it right, there is a chance that the tank abort the pull and resume it within 2 minutes before MI is usable again.)
*. non-GCD cooldowns, including IV and potion

From the APL script, it looks like I should go MI->FO->cooldowns->PC->consuming FoF charges like mad until I only see one charge of FoF->spending a charge on IN to let it roll. I'm slightly uncomfortable with this, because IN has significantly higher DPET than lance w/ FoF.

Therefore, I exchanged two lines in the default script, in consistent with my current habit, into:

Code: Select all

actions.crystal_sequence+=/ice_nova,if=charges=2 actions.crystal_sequence+=/ice_lance,if=buff.fingers_of_frost.react=2|(buff.fingers_of_frost.react&active_dot.frozen_orb>=1) # actions.crystal_sequence+=/ice_nova,if=charges=2

And ran with my current gear, and the result is very slightly better. I might stay with my habit a bit longer and see how it works.

If you have any thoughts, please, do, advice, before my raid tonight. Anything except the tank's punctuality, which is out of my control.

[zhengma]

Watch us at: http://www.twitch.tv/holyholli" target="_blank

Not my PoV, but you can still spot my loyal Welly channeling the Jet.

[zhengma]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/DFnZCHdf6BgkhWyp" target="_blank

14 wipes on H Butcher and 4 wipes on H Brakenspore.

Any analysis and suggestions are welcomed.

[Manny]

I'll be taking a look at home when I am not stopped by work firewall. Congrats on pushing through!

[zhengma]

IN + MI + TV + Rapid Displacement + Welly + Splitting Ice

Piss poor damage but still survived to the end (which is still not trivial for this encounter).

EDIT: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/kJGmhrVNDBfAjg4R" target="_blank Judging from the replay, it's pretty much a total cluster f.

[zhengma]

Just tested another habit of mine:

Code: Select all

# actions.single_target+=/frozen_orb,if=!talent.prismatic_crystal.enabled&buff.fingers_of_frost.stack<2&cooldown.icy_veins.remains>45 actions.single_target+=/frozen_orb,if=buff.fingers_of_frost.stack<2&cooldown.icy_veins.remains>45

(The line in the original profile is commented out.)

It turns out to be very detrimental. I'll restrain myself from doing this from now on.

However, something like:

Code: Select all

actions.single_target+=/frozen_orb,if=(cooldown.prismatic_crystal.remains>time_to_die)&buff.fingers_of_frost.stack<2&cooldown.icy_veins.remains>45

is a (rather) slight DPS gain statistically. This is something we all do instinctively, though.

I also tested another habit of mine:

Code: Select all

# actions.crystal_sequence+=/frozen_orb actions.crystal_sequence+=/call_action_list,name=cooldowns actions.crystal_sequence+=/frozen_orb

It turns out to be a very slight (~40) DPS loss. I'm perplexed, as most actions in action.cooldowns are not on GCD. It's not like I can't change my habit, but still it's queer.

And then, I tested yet another habit of mine:

Code: Select all

# actions.crystal_sequence+=/frostbolt actions.crystal_sequence+=/frostbolt,if=pet.prismatic_crystal.remains>action.frostbolt.execute_time

It turns out to be a slight (~30) DPS loss. This is even more perplexing. We surely know that, if I'm targeting the PC and the cast bar is running, and the PC expires before the cast is finished, that cast is completely wasted in contrast to being re-directed onto a nearby target, isn't it?

All the "tests" are done on the latest version of SimC, all the simulations are done based on my current gear.

EDIT: how to avoid the automatic wrap of a line in the code block?

EDIT2: Chevchelious just told me that, the target switching to and from the PC is automatic. I can only assume that part of the "automatic" is: if there's nothing but Frostbolt to cast onto the PC, and pet.prismatic_crystal.remains>action.frostbolt.execute_time, the PC will be simply ignored and target will switch back to the main target even though the PC will stand for another 0.x second. At least I'll keep doing it since this is the only logical option.

[zhengma]

I DC'ed during the last few seconds of the fight, so part of the screen capture is blocked by my TMW bar (and yes, I do put a TMW bar at the center of my screen, don't you mock that.)

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/hmyWPjG7dVMKfr1R" target="_blank