I thought I’d post a recap of my journey to track down why my Arcane parses have been struggling when compared to a few of the elite parsers (namely Deltoramasta & Naustis…great sources of input for us Arcane mages on these forums). After pouring over logs and Naustis’ 7.2.5 Arcane Rotation video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTQJko8OPhw), I think I figured my issue out. I assume there are others out there who are looking to get more out of their rotations, so hopefully this gives you some pointers on where to start.
TLDR: I discovered that I was not delaying my ROP casts enough to ensure they stacked with my AP/Burn phases consistently.
Part 1 – Let’s Study Some Logs:
I assume you are already logging and uploading to https://www.warcraftlogs.com/. If not, go the site and read up, it is an easy process and only one person in the raid needs to do it. I specifically look for a parse of similar timed kills on the same difficulty, and in this case, I was looking at my Heroic Fallen Avatar kill’s horrible parse (6:59 kill) vs. Naustis’ Heroic Avatar kill (6:19).
If you’re a complete novice to Warcraftlogs, they can be a little confusing to navigate. Here’s how you would find Naustis’ log and dig in, as an example:
1. Search for Naustis in the search box at the top
2. Make sure you click on “Heroic” Rankings and confirm you’re looking at Arcane parses (you can click the other specs to filter by them as well). In this case, I’m looking for Fallen Avatar, so I’ll click on that next.
3. After clicking on the boss you’re interested in, it will show you all the captured parses. At the time of my research there were two, and I picked the highest DPS one (903K from Jul 5).
4. This will bring you to the Raid’s parse for this Fallen Avatar kill, and we are looking for just Naustis’s parse, so find that row and click on his name.
5. We’re now looking at Naustis’ parse for this Fallen Avatar kill. We default to the “Damage Done” tab (look at top menu), but you should become familiar with these various Tabs at the top on Warcraft logs so you can check out the gear used (Summary tab), timing of casts/buffs (Buffs tab), etc.
6. I usually start by looking at the number of casts of AM/AB/etc. to see how close they are to my parse. In this case, they are at least in the ballpark. The key to finding my specific issue comes from using the FILTERS for Source Auras (look right between the graph and the table on the left side). Knowing that Arcane mages do most of their damage in big bursts in our Burn phase, I started by clicking on the “Arcane Power Filter” and see the graph (below).
7. I followed the exact same steps above to pull up MY OWN Fallen Avatar parse and filter to just the AP phase of my fight to compare. (Here is what mine looks like).
8. My opener looked pretty similar, and there are clearly 4 distinct phases of AP/burn, but there was seriously something wrong with my output here as the “spikes” (aka damage) are much lower...especially in my 3rd and 4th window. After playing around with the filters and looking into this, it was pretty clear to see the ROP was the main culprit. Let’s add the ROP filter to both mine and Naustis’ graphs now and compare (note: this is filtered by AP active and ROP active at the same time).
9. Here is Naustis’ parse (AP + ROP)
10. And here is my parse (AP + ROP). Yup…that’ll do it.
11. So, it’s obvious I did not have ROP running during my AP phases outside of my opener and contributed to a huge DPS loss. It was time to dig into the Video Evidence to figure out WTH I was doing wrong.
Part 2: Let’s Go to the Video:
I specifically used Naustis’ logs for comparison, because he has a great video on YouTube where he shows his Arcane rotation.
Give it a View and a Like if you haven’t done so already. I spent a little too much time digging into this video, but I eventually found my issue. I broke the video down into the basic BURN/CONSERVE phases and kept track of the timing/CDR of key buffs (MOA, POM, AP, ROP). Comparing this to my own playstyle and captured videos, I realized I was being way too aggressive with my ROP casts and not delaying them to stack with AP. Confirmation of what the logs were showing us. Hopefully this detailed table/analysis helps others who are looking for a bit more than the standard write-ups of “Burn/Conserve”. I won’t claim it’s 100% accurate to the second, but if you watch the video, you should be able to follow along with this table and see what is happening and where the KEY DELAY POINTS are in the rotation.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing
Hope this helps! Now...off to retrain my muscle memory and practice some patience.
-Signet
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