Why am I stagnating? (T21 vs T20 -- with numbers!)

[Locumire]

Hello Mage Friends --

I've been having a lot of luck in Antorus! I managed to get the 4-piece pretty quickly, I got the Nornaggon trinket last night, and I got the char hound mount. All should be going well for me, but I'm having some issues.

My problem seems to be that T21 isn't really scaling well for me in practice. My ilvl has jumped about 10 and sims show what should be a not insignificant boost but I'm not seeing my DPS go up and in fact I sometimes see it go down.

Here is an Imonar fight running T21, plus a sim of what I had eqipped for that fight (I picked Imonar just because I had a decent pull in both sets to compare, you can look at other fights in these runs if you need more data in how I play):
SIM --> https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/ ... sNwEunEzwQ
FIGHT --> https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/VC ... rt=0&end=0

And here is Imonar in T20, plus a sim of what I was wearing for that fight:
SIM --> https://www.raidbots.com/simbot/report/ ... DjcSuA5qi6
FIGHT --> https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/QV ... amage-done

The only other big change I made for those fights is swapping my much beloved Meteor(with T20) for Kindling(with T21) because it simmed better and seems to make more sense with T21. Last night I also tried Pyromaniac over Firestarter on Aggramar and Argus despite it simming slightly worse (it seemed to me T21 might be better with a 'combust early, combust often' attitude) and I saw a small DPS uptick. I can't try with the gloves yet because one of my set pieces is gloves. Am I just from opposite land, where sim boosts are actually drops?

Does anyone see what mistakes I am making that would cause my DPS to stagnate like this? I don't really feel like I'm playing significantly worse at the time but the numbers say otherwise.

I am also in the Discord if people prefer to discuss this there -- I just had a bunch of data to share and find chatting in #questions hectic between all the ice lances and arcane barrages.

Thanks!

[Shinn]

Hi, my name is Shînn, I raid with the guild <Zero Percent Wipes> US-Zul'Jin Horde. Currently 5/11M as of 20th december, before reclearing.
Here are my logs: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/character/id/15556334
I am not a rank 1 mage since I've only gotten rank 2 (shortly dethroned to rank 3) on Heroic Kin'garoth.
I've been playing Fire since the beginning of Legion, also played Frost during NH/Double Ice Lance Glory. Both are 75 traits ( auck frcane )

This is my first post on Altered-Time

From quickly checking your logs:
- You said you just looted the pantheon trinket, start by equiping that, your 2 current trinkets are good but too low ilvl compared to whats available currently. For my mage (I main Fire), a mythic 960 socketed bombardment trinket (from Antoran High Command) is my top ST and AoE trinket compared to 940 Infernal Writ, 925 Mastery stick, 930 socketed owl and 945 Eonar trinket. Pantheon trinket is BiS by far!!! Right now, BiS trinkets are Aman'Thul (Legendary Arcano), Arcanocrystal, Injector from Kin'garoth and the Pantheon trinket from argus. Get those and you will do more dps. My 2 current ST trinkets are Terminus Signaling Beacon 960 socketed and a 935 Astral Alch Stone
Use this website to rank your trinket and find whats better for you! https://bloodmallet.github.io/
A good tip I could give you for trinkets, start farming Argus WQ and get as much Argunite as possible and only buy trinket with those since your biggest upgrade atm are trinkets. it still is for me too since I don't have arcanocrystal

-On raidbots, do some Stat Weights and find what stat do you currently need for what you have equipped. For me its Haste>Mastery>=Vers>Crit>Intel. My Fire stats looks like so: 30-40% Crit, 25% Haste, 6% Vers, 35% Mastery
On Single Target fights, Vers and Mastery are pretty much the same but you still need a base mastery otherwise you just loose all of you Ignite damage. As soon as theres even a slight of AoE or anyway you can spread ignite, the value of mastery will increase and it will easely outdps Vers by far.
TL;DR: Haste>Mastery>Crit>Vers>intel
SIM YOURSELF!!!!

- Put up some enchants on your gear, neck should be Hidden Satyr not 200 crit. Same deal for gems. I do Mastery gems, Haste Enchants.

- If possible for you like it was for me, I was using 2p T20 and 4p T21. Since my 2 T20 items were only 930, I switched them for 960 and 975 legs which sims higher for me. But all of that will depend on sims.

- Try to maximise the amount of spell usage you get during a fight. Phoenix's Flame, Fire Blast and Combustion (RoP if talented). In the first log you sent, you missed out on 2 casts of PF and 6 FB. Now these are minor issues as it prob resulted in a 2-3mil dmg lost. Starting with a hardcast, precast Pyroblast followed by a PF for free crits and start your rotation. Saving PF stacks for Combustion is GOOD, dont get me wrong, but sitting at 3 stacks is not. As long as you have 2 for each combustion, you're good. Fire Blast is the same but with a shorter cooldown. Make the most out of all of that and I garantee you will see a big difference.

TL;DR
You are still quite low item level and you could have better optimised gear. Start with enchants and gems. Get consumables when you do raids/m+. Prolonged Power, Mastery food and Augment Runes. Run more sims and do "Top Gear", this way you'll find whats best for you out of what you already have. Sim what gear is best for you. Drop some Crit for Mastery. Better uptime on boss and more casts!

You are on the best website to learn how to play your mage! Use it!
Also a good guide: https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/fire-mage-pve-dps-guide