Basic "Learn from Your Mistakes" guide.

[Jezrien]

A lot of people ask the same questions to get the same answers. This topic is meant to teach how to analyze your logs by yourself on a general basis.

There are several common mistakes people do:
1. Opener.
2. Munching/overlapping procs.
3. Rotation.
4. Poor encounter experience/knowledge.
5. Radical lack of right items/stats.


Opener.
Since TV build is the strongest one atm, you need to play it if you want better dps outcome. Glacial Spike is viable but a) it was nerfed; b) you need to stack mastery which is useless for TV. In this case further things will be in the context of Thermal Voiding.
Until you get more experienced your opener should be like this:
1. Prepot prolonged potion at 4sec of pulltimer.
2. Precast ebonbolt at 4-3.8sec of pulltimer.
3. Flurry
4. Veins.
5. Ice lance
6. Orb...
The thing is you 100% shatter ebonbolt and ice lance no matter where you stand and what's your ping. When you are able to find your own key aspects of positioning and ping you can swap Veins with Flurry. ebonbolt > veins (+BL if it's on you + Berserker if you play as troll) > fluryy > ice lance. From my experience I failed to have critical ebonbolt with such opener but with the 1st example - never.
Why not precast frostbolt > veins > orb > ebonbolt and get 20% damage increase for the latter via 2t20? Or even "better" - cast the orb before anything else to get those 20% for every damaging spell? Let's do simple math. Ebonbolt hits for 2.3mil damage in average. 20% is approx 440k more damage. But in this case you will 100% overlap FoF procs with Winter's Chill debuff from BF'd Flurry. 1 shatter Ice lance is at least 1.3mil damage. Im pretty much positive that 1 missing shatter from Ice lance is bigger than 20% more damage for ebonbolt.

Munching/Overlapping.
There are 2 worst thing could dramatically influence on your dps. First is you don't get any procs at all and second is you munch those procs. Speaking shortly, when you can do 2 shattered lances but you cast 1 and the 2nd chance is gone - you munched proc and lost dps.
Brain Freeze and Fringers of Frost are the only procs you can munch. BF is easier to monitor and manage than FoF. That's why 1-5 overlapped FoF procs is not a big deal and even top players do it. But BF is a lot more important because it provides you not just with possibility to shatter ice lance or ebonbolt due to Winter's Chill debuff but also it let your frostbolt crit. And critical frostbolt also triggers Frozen Veins and Chain Reaction - Artefact talents. You have no excuse munching BFs that's why if you have it 22 times you must have 22 Flurry casts. That's it.
FoF part can be a bit more confusing. At first sight perfect situation is Ice Lance cast count = BF procs + FoF procs. For example, you have 20 BFs and 35 FoFs and 50 Ice Lance casts, 5 shattered lance were missed and here comes the problem to find out why. First it could be because BF and FoF proc at the same time and you consume BF first and FoF right after it into Winter's Chill debuff. As it was said earlier 2 possible lances turned into just 1 cast. It happens. But FoF can be munched too and you can figure it out in 2 ways: 1. Having WA or TMW addons with FoF proc icons; 2. You can check every second of your FoF buffs and compare it to cast time (still second by second) in log's Events view. But if you do have WA/TMW you will probably see it during the fight and don't have to tortue yourself with way#2.
Another common question is how to deal with overlapping procs when BF and FoF appears at the same time. The best way is get rid off FoFs first and BF second. But it works only if you don't have ongoing forstbolt. In this case it's better to continue fb and then cast flurry and then ice lances because as you already know BF > FoF and if you cast fb without Flurry right after you have a chance to munch BF.
Just stick to Buff tab and Cast tab to get basic information and remember BF=Flurry cast, BF+FoF somewhere around Lance casts. More lances means probably some where not shattered, less casts means some were munched/overlapped. Not too less - it's all good, pretty much less - you fail somewhere.

Rotation.
Even though the main part of failing throughout the fight was covered in a previous section, there are still some things which can have bad impact on your dps.
First of all, check your Ice Lance damage. I haven't seen 100% crit rate for Ice Lance. But there is one postulate - empty (non shattered) lance is a pure dps loss. Frequent question is it worth to refresh legendary bracers buff with empty lance. No, it's not. But those who don't know the simple answer have a lot non crit lance damage in their logs. It's allowed to have some but you should know where it comes from. You need to open your Damage Done tab and move your cursor over Ice Lance damage in Amount column. You will see you min, max and average crit damage and min, max and average non crit damage. If your non crit numbers are notably high then you cast lots of empy lances. Switch to "Events" and pick Ice Lance from the "All abilities" menu. Numbers covered in ** refer to critical damage. Pay attention only at your main target and ignore cleave as you can't manipulate it. If you have a lot of non crit lances at main target then you fail hard. Don't maintain legendary bracers stacks with empty lances. Don't spam lances if you need to perform hard movement.
Another common mistake is ignoring frostbolt>flurry (with BF) combo. As a result you have low chain reaction uptime and that's how to learn about that combo mistake. Mostly chain reaction is a random thing since it appears only with critical frost bolts but to be in a charge you need to follow fb with flurry to get a guaranteed crit and chain reaction stack. To make it more easire, if you have less than 50-55% uptime - fail; around 65% can be a sign you are not that lucky with BF procs and fight is pretty fast; good uptime is 70%+. No need to sacrifice anything for the chain reaction though. Just do not ignore fb>flurry (!BFd).
Also you can get some info from the "Buff" tab. If you have legendary bracers its uptime should be more than 90%. Other important things to look at:
1. Your potion of prolonged power must have 2 usages.
2. If the fight is pretty long (4+ mins) your Veins and BLs should be sync'd (if you have exodar ring). Example, first BL right at the pull, your own BL you cast when Veins are rdy and top it with the 2nd potion.
3. Awsome to have possibility to sync orb with all those cds too but you shouldn't delay the orb too much. Only if Vein's cd is about to run off.
4. If the fight is pretty short so your Veins barely come off the cd in the end of the fight. Do not delay BL and potion for it.

Poor encounter experience/knowledge.
It goes closely with the previous section as knowing the fight it essential thing when you can slow down a bit or vice versa. Anyway, each boss has some nasty abilities which you can and have to avoid because in other case your efficiency becomes much lower. You can learn if you suffer from such abilities in Damage Taken tab. For example, there are concealed murk in the Mistress fight, standing in it reduces your chance to hit by 75%. If you have it in your logs, then you probably lost some dps with it. Same goes for Goroth's Infernal Spikes. If you became a victim of its damage then you probably lost a gcd everytime the spike hit you. And so on...
The best thing is more pulls you do more familiar with boss abilities and your own cd rotations you become.

Radical lack of right items/stats.
The most important thing for frost mage is to have crit at 33%. It's a shatter cap which allows you to crit every time you have procs. For TV build also it's important to get rid off mastery as much as possible for better haste and vers values. Basic stat weight looks like this: crit till the 33% cap > haste somwhere 25-28% => vers > mastery > crit after 33%. I don't include int here since you just have it almost everywhere and don't need to emphasize it.
Luckily frost mages don't rely on legendaries (for example, like fire on bracers in ST fights). There is one best set: bracers+shard but everything else won't prevent you from doing reasonable dps.
About "2t19 musthave". 2t19 is a nice thing to have and with all else being equal it provides you with 50k more dps (with 2t19) against other item sets. But if you don't have TFd t19 legs and shoulders the difference will be like 0.6-1%.
With all that said frost mage remains viable in mythic raiding even without t19 and bracers+shard combo.

That's it. I've tried to cover most common things analyzing which you can improve your dps. If you want to push everything to the limit then you need to be patient in dissecting every second of your log, you must be good with Simc to get benefit from every shred of different stat. Also you should understand that all that players from top list with impossible logs are there just because they know when to do unnecessary damage which results in 200k-400k more dps. And longer the fight lower your dps. Some people can fail hard in your raid and that can affect your performance as well. Anyway, I hope I could help you at least a bit to improve. And sorry for my mad English skills.

[Méó]

Thanks for the guide, it must have taken quite some time!! However, GS doesn't stack mastery anymore due to the exact reason you mentioned... its terrible.

I mostly run M+ and heroic raids therefore GS is perfect for me due to small burst windows and on demand damage. My stat weights look more like 32%crit(capped with food) 30%haste 37%mastery and 15/19% vers(depending on trinkets I use and gear set up AoE/ST)

Still get the odd 10mill+ shatter GS which makes me happy and average between 1.6/2mill dmg overall in M+.

o/

[Burnthemall]

Thank you for your guide and effort. Nevertheless, I do not agree with your calculation on your opener. Your opener is dps loss and it was proven a lot of time from top mages and sims. You should always precast frost bolt =>forb=>ebonbolt =>BF=>IL.

Not only ebonbolt wíl miss buff from frozen orb as you stated but BF and IL and erosion as well. Further if you precast enonbolt you will lose reduced cd on next frozen orb and your ebonbolt wont hit boss with 5 stacsk of Iflow.

So i would not recommend your opener.

Best regards

[Abscond]

Also even if t19 isn't titanforged it's still going to be a damage increase over most 945-950 gear.

Probably something else that's relevant, it doesn't matter how well you know the fight frost mage parses are who got the most procs with the best fight duration. Can literally look at a rank 1 in comparison to a rank 300 and the only difference is 100 il procs to 30.
#skill

[Xinder]

Thank you for your guide and effort. Nevertheless, I do not agree with your calculation on your opener. Your opener is dps loss and it was proven a lot of time from top mages and sims. You should always precast frost bolt =>forb=>ebonbolt =>BF=>IL.

Not only ebonbolt wíl miss buff from frozen orb as you stated but BF and IL and erosion as well. Further if you precast enonbolt you will lose reduced cd on next frozen orb and your ebonbolt wont hit boss with 5 stacsk of Iflow.

So i would not recommend your opener.

Best regards

This statement is not true at all. It was proven that the difference between the standard opener of precast ebon versus the precast frostbolt into orb was negligible. Given that you should play whichever you find more comfortable to consistently pull off. Personally I still use the standard opener because it's what I'm used to doing.

[Burnthemall]

You are right. The difference is small but still your opener is dps loss even that the difference will be 1000 dps. If you are good analysis and math expert you can prove that your opener is dps gain compare to my opener.

[Norrinir]

You are wrong, the Ebonbolt opener is slightly ahead.

precast.png (3.01 KiB) Viewed 21935 times

[Xinder]

You are right. The difference is small but still your opener is dps loss even that the difference will be 1000 dps. If you are good analysis and math expert you can prove that your opener is dps gain compare to my opener.

Norrinir proved it for you. Also 1000dps is negligible when we're doing over 1 million dps. We're talking about .1% dps difference. Moving too much or missing a cast is going to cause you more than .1% dps loss.

[Jezrien]

Thank you for your guide and effort. Nevertheless, I do not agree with your calculation on your opener. Your opener is dps loss and it was proven a lot of time from top mages and sims. You should always precast frost bolt =>forb=>ebonbolt =>BF=>IL.

Not only ebonbolt wíl miss buff from frozen orb as you stated but BF and IL and erosion as well. Further if you precast enonbolt you will lose reduced cd on next frozen orb and your ebonbolt wont hit boss with 5 stacsk of Iflow.

So i would not recommend your opener.

Best regards

I've seen some mages doing frostbolt opener. But it was kind of 1 mage on 10 with ebonbolt. And 1 of the reasons they take ebonbolt over fb is that first let them do 1 free shimmerlance at the beginning. Frost bolt opener gives you less than 1 not munched/overlapped lance damage which was shown in the picter above. But the thing is to learn how to monitor your procs and not letting them munch or overlap by yourself.

[Norrinir]

I've cleaned up the conversation a bit, there's no point arguing like that without backing up your statements.

To settle the debate, I simmed the differences. The T19 profile is using 905 shoulders and 905 legs, SFoS+Shard profiles are using leg offpiece (starting at 930) and Mag+Shard profiles are using leg+shoulder offpiece (starting at 930). There's a clear benefit to using T19, even when you have access to higher ilvl offpieces, but the difference is nowhere near 100-200k DPS. T19 is good to have, but by no means required.

compare.png (15.71 KiB) Viewed 21416 times

[Burnthemall]

You just posted blind overview of the difference of your sims. I just shared my hintsif you do not agree I do not care. But for your information the sims does not work perfectly and accurately it is just some estimation and sims is depended on the inpug data and information. For example my sims shows different result. Sims is only good helper but not good boss. If you want deeper information about the opener and calculation you can send me private message or we can talk on skype / TS.

Sims is only IT tool and everyone knows that sims is not perfect and shows sometimes incorrect results. The game has so many variables.

Have a nice day

[Norrinir]

If you do not want to share your research publicly, there's no point.

Also, saying simc is wrong when it suits you is at best strange. If you think there's something wrong with the sim, go ahead and share so that we can correct the implemention and then everyone benefits. Dismissing any result that's contrary to your personal belief as "simc is known to be incorrect from time to time" would get us absolutely nowhere.

[Slymon]

Don't spam lances if you need to perform hard movement.

This is great. I hope to see more people posting stuff like this.
Could you explain the reasoning for not spamming ice lance during movement? I don't see the harm if it doesn't cost you a GCD.

[Noname81]

Don't spam lances if you need to perform hard movement.

This is great. I hope to see more people posting stuff like this.
Could you explain the reasoning for not spamming ice lance during movement? I don't see the harm if it doesn't cost you a GCD.

If you know you are heading into I high mobility part of a boss, save your FoF procs for then. Do not use them all just because they are available. I do this on Avatar During Unbound Chaos.

[Jezrien]

Don't spam lances if you need to perform hard movement.

This is great. I hope to see more people posting stuff like this.
Could you explain the reasoning for not spamming ice lance during movement? I don't see the harm if it doesn't cost you a GCD.

Casting "empty" lance is considered as a pure dps lost by default. Mage class has mechanics to deal with movement at a lower cost: Shimmer and Ice Flows. However, it's not that helpful during such encounters like Avatar as it was already mentioned. Unbound Chaos is one of the main reasons all mages swapped to fire on the early stage of Avatar attempts - too many hard movement outside of competence of Shimmer and/or Ice Flows. So you are either losing overall uptime or losing dps because of lance spam without procs.
There can be 1 exception. You can cast lance without any proc when you are about to pop all your CDs (BL, Veins, Orb etc.) and you are losing your 6th bracers stacks. Then you can cast 1 lance to keep 6 stacks up. But if you spam "empty" lances on a regular basis then don't be surprised with green logs.

PS. the reason why we have a lot of frost mages killing Avatar now is that they have experience + ilvl to compensate Unbound Chaos moments and lack of cleave.

[nickseng]

There can be 1 exception. You can cast lance without any proc when you are about to pop all your CDs (BL, Veins, Orb etc.) and you are losing your 6th bracers stacks. Then you can cast 1 lance to keep 6 stacks up.

Are you basing this off of anything, or is it just pure feeling?

[Jezrien]

If you need SimC data for such thing then I doubt anyone can do it. It's pure experience though + logic.

[Frosted]

Honestly, I don't know why this thread is still open. Unless you want to provide a real argument besides "agree with the obvious, it's so obvious" than you may as well say nothing.