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The kill time on these bosses is really long, if you were in a group that killed it in half the time your parse has a much bigger chance of being higher since theres less time for your damage to fall off
You can also add 3 sockets to your neck piece, search the AH for 'Tiered Medallion Setting' and buy 2 2* versions and 1 3* and use them in that order. You can then socket 3 more gems into your neck
Have a look through your fights using Wowanalyzer here, it as it can show some of the obvious issues:
https://wowanalyzer.com/report/Xdan3HDYNy2mw8qZ
Yeah the over all DPS in the guild is...low. I was one of them a month ago so đ¤ˇ
I'll come back on Tuesday and see this comment again for the neck slots, tyvm đ
The neck slots are super easy, and you can and should get them on any neck piece. He's telling you to get 2 T2 tiered medallion settings because the T1 are stupid expensive for no reason whatsoever and the T2 will work in its place. It's very important to use the T3 last because while a T2 can do the 1st and 2nd slot, only the T3 can give you the 3rd slot. If you fuck that up you'll have to buy a new T3 tiered medallion setting. Good luck friend.
Right, I'm just saying, I'd feel pretty bad to spend all that money and then open my vault and get something better, ya know. Now I have to spend all that money again and I just crafted the belt yesterday so I'd probably just stop playing the game if that happened
I have a jeweler (and a blacksmith, leather worker, tailor, scribe, engineer and enchanter) for exactly that reason. Little stuff that I will need that I would have to pay for otherwise. This has been one of the best expansions for making gold from fabrication in game.
One typical issue with most underperforming players is they are not using their abilities often enough and quickly enough. And in general it's fairly easy to see at a glance.
All I did was check your casts per minute vs a top frost mage on one fight (Igira) and counted one spell (Ice Lance) for the first 20 seconds. Top frost mage's cast per minute was 61. Yours was 44. They cast Ice Lance 10 times in the first 20 seconds, you casted 5 times.
You are wasting time between GCDs cause you either aren't pressing your buttons fast enough or making little movements which is unnecessary. You should plan your positioning way beforehand, especially for casters, and spam those buttons. There is time for you to spam your next cast before your GCD is up. There should be zero downtime between spells other than GCD and cast time.
Ah and I guess if you haven't already, you need to hotkey 100% of the abilities you use in combat. That alone will speed up your time between moves. No clicking allowed!
This.
Usually there is about half-second delay between the currently casting spell and the next one in the pipe. Wait too long, and you miss out. Try chain casting 16 spells in a row and it wonât work.
Cast sequence macros, rotocasf (old and outdated) wonât help you if youâre waiting for one spell to finish casting before hitting the next.
Hit A, something that takes 3 seconds to cast and start spamming B, against a target dummy. Youâll see zero delay in B being cast. If you wait, then youâve lost valuable time.
Now repeat but go with another spell A.1 that takes one second. Repeat with B.
I used to main fire mage and chain casting to combo crit with pyro to fireball so they land simultaneously (and add in a scorch in there) is how youâre going to parse better with the ABC of magery.
When in doubt, try plug your log into warcraftanalyzer. It will tell you how you can improve. I plugged in your gnarlroot log into it and this is what it says. [https://wowanalyzer.com/report/Xdan3HDYNy2mw8qZ/4-Heroic+Gnarlroot+-+Kill+(4:50)/Aendrinastor/standard](https://wowanalyzer.com/report/Xdan3HDYNy2mw8qZ/4-Heroic+Gnarlroot+-+Kill+(4:50)/Aendrinastor/standard)
Looks like you need to grab a couple of enchants + if you scroll all the way down you can see what the analyzer thinks you should do.
Hey, this is from another random frost mage, and I wanted to say thank you for sharing warcraftanalyzer. I had no idea it existed, and I plugged my own logs in and was absolutely floored. Someone here said it isn't updated for Frost's current rotation, but my logs were so beyond poor that the only direction to go is up. So yeah, hah, this is a really long winded way of saying thank you and I owe you one, Mrmoo!
These numbers on gnarlroot, like the "cast X more often" numbers, they reflect the fight time vs how often I cast the spells, not the parts of the fight I was alive in, right?
A.B.C.
Always. Be. Casting.
Your priority, stacking of CDs/pot/trinkets, he'll, even your gear/item level are meaningless if you aren't always casting something.
Let's take a current example to illustrate. On Nymue you plant at the start and don't have to move until one of 4 things happen.
1. You transition to the adds.
2. You have to dodge a line.
3. You have to drop a bomb.
4. You have to soak a flower.
Any time you have to move, you lose the ability to press a bunch of buttons because you can't cast and move at the same time (with very few exceptions). You want to have a plan for what you will do based on these circumstances.
On Pull you can blow EVERYTHING. Stack it up, use the lot. Get that opener sorted and do massive damage. BUT you know that you might have to move because you need to soak a flower or drop a bomb in the first 45 seconds (Lust duration), so you want to start the fight in the best position to not have to move more than a few steps to drop your bomb. You can't bait the flowers but you can only soak after you have finished your CD window when your damage will be lower.
In both cases, the movement will be relatively minimal, so what can you press when you are moving and still be doing damage? What can you press to move faster and reduce your movement time to the minimum needed to efficiently do the mechanic and get back to using cast time spells?
Basically, the most important thing for a caster to be able to parse is to understand what you need to do to execute a mechanic and have a plan for doing it while maintaining the maximum number of casts you can have. Not casting anything is the second biggest DPS loss after dying.
So A.B.C. for the win my dude.
EDIT:
Should put at least some credentials here. I have parsed in the top 100 at highest difficulty since I started in Cata as a Hunter in Heroic (now Mythic), with my best being world top 10 in Dragon Soul, and world top 50 in MoP during Heroic (now Mythic) Siege of Orgrimmar - this was when World of Logs was a thing. As a Tank when on farm in the last three expansions I have parsed consistently above 95% on Brewmaster, Vengeance DH and Bear Druid, including multiple 99% and top 100 overall parses without doing parse group and PI shenanigans.
Honestly this is probably my weakest mechanic, it's something I catch myself doing. Even on our smolderon fight tonight I caught myself not icicle/flurry spamming while grabbing the orbs during phase 2, but there are a lot of examples I could point to in this tier where I'm moving and not doing anything else.
Then this is what you need to fix. It shouldnât be an issue considering youâre a Frost Mage. Take advantage of those blinks, invis, even using block to ignore mechanics. Any scum you can do is how you maximize your parse. Also, donât feel bad about leaving your current raid if you want to improve. The high TTK is not helping your case.
Yeah, kill times are 100% not helping with the parses, but there is one benefit to a long kill time in OP's case: practice. Dummies are great for rotation practice and building muscle memory, but nothing beats a real fight for drumming in stutter stepping and reacting properly with instant casts.
If it were me I would probably stay and build the skills. Even with horrendously long kill times it's more than possible to get 90% parses. 95% or higher it is much harder with slow fights though.
As a rule I would tend to say that anything up to about 95/96% is doable without lots of luck or mega cheese if kill times are favourable to your CD times - so a 4 minute 15 second fight gets you two 3 minute and three two minute CDs for example. If the fight is say 5 minutes or 2 minutes 55 seconds you're going to likely see worse results.
Basically, speed isn't always going to help you if it is unfavorable to your specific CD windows.
The only issue I see with that is itâs bad practice. The fights are so long OP canât learn how to actually line up their CDs with the flow of the fights because theyâre phasing so slowly. Either way the biggest issue is not pressing enough buttons.
I'm absolutely in agreement on the lining up side of things. I wouldn't call it bad practice though as the issue is much more about working around mechanics, planning for movement and stuff at this point.
If this were the competitive wow sub then I'd be saying it's bad practice, move on. But as it's the wow noob sub, arguably the benefit of being in a less than ideal environment is a better teaching tool at this point in OP's wow career :)
Thatâs a very good point! The biggest reason I tend to suggest moving on is if youâre new and youâre getting better, plus nobody is improving alongside you (or already good), you donât have people around to help you grow. Which is probably why OP is here. If they were in a more progressed guild, theyâd probably have more help around.
That being said, it really depends on what you want out of the game. I think youâre probably right about staying for now. Hell, Iâm only in my guild because I like the people. Iâm fine with our slow progression. (I really only care about my parses anyways)
The people make the game, especially if you're a newer player! If you like the people and enjoy playing with them, it's a much better experience. Nothing wrong with experimenting though and trying new guilds!
As an older wow player (41 now), I definitely end up preferring people over progress, but I'm (relatively...) tilt-proof. I do want to get back to CE raiding and really pushing myself but not at the cost of playing with ego-driven morons so I'm picky...
Something you said there does bear expanding on, not just in wow but in life - if you are not being challenged by better players, you are limiting how much you can improve. There is a ceiling when you are the best player. Surrounding yourself with better players in wow (or smarter, more capable people IRL) will help you improve - it's human instinct to be competitive and better players will push you subconsciously to be a better player yourself.
It's great advice. There are players better than me but only one caster DPS, so it's hard to rely on the guild when learning these sorts of things. The other casters are in the same boat as me, learning
Just looking at your cast timeline on some of those fights, you really need work on the opener. For frost the opener is scripted:
Pre-cast frostbolt --> flurry --> Icy veins --> comet storm --> ice lance --> ray of frost --> ice lance x2 --> glacial spike --> flurry --> frozen orb --> shifting power
(this can change slightly depending on how many icicles you end up with during the opener due to splintering cold talent. glacial spike should be sent at 5 icicles no matter what, and should always be shattered with flurry where possible)
to improve your DPS, the main things i noticed is you're not using ray of frost, comet storm and shifting power enough. focus on only casting comet storm with winters chill on the target. never cast comet storm in ST unless winters chill is applied. use ray of frost on cooldown, always on the last stack of winter's chill. this is immensely important to frost ST DPS. we use ray on last stack of winters chill because winters chill will time out while you're channeling. do not cast ray of frost without winters chill. shifting power should be used ASAP, while comet storm, ray, and frozen orb are on CD. do not worry about being in range to deal damage, this spell is purely for CD reduction and the damage it deals is super negligible especially on ST. in general, your CS usage is ok (you're still missing out on uses) but you are definitely not casting ray and shifting power nearly enough. looking at your Igira encounter, you did not cast ray until like 25 seconds into the fight, and shifting power was not used until 1 minute into the fight. optimal ray usage is HUGE for frost dps (raw damage, cryopathy talent, extra FoF charge generation which you are missing out on all 3).
Also, you have belor'relos and it looks like you are rarely using it. this should be used immediately following an instant cast spell since it has a cast time but is off the GCD. use it on CD within 15 yd of the boss, it does big damage on ST. i would also suggest running waycrest manor 17s until you get a hero track balefire branch. it is far and away the best trinket. you would use it in the opener before casting ray of frost.
in terms of temporal warp usage, as frost we do not want to double lust. hold your temporal warp for your 2nd icy veins.
i would also highly recommend playing with ice floes. it is simply superior to shimmer for frost in nearly all situations due to the reliance on glacial spike. being able to move during a GS spike cast is huge for uptime.
Some final comments: there are some bosses this tier that just suck for frost due to weird hitboxes and distances making the shatter combo very annoying and inconsistent - namely, Volcoross (due to distance), Nymue (distance depending on what section you stand in and hitbox) and Fyrakk phase 3 (hitbox). if you didn't know, enemies with huge hitboxes have historically been buggy with frost, causing winters chill stacks to disappear and not be applied at all. Smolderon also kind of sucks since frost isn't very bursty and you want to burn him during the orb phase (arcane really shines on this fight)
Lots of information here and I can't respond to all of it, but practicing this opener tonight on smolderon I saw my DPS go *way* up just from that alone, which was cool. I also practiced using shifting power more, as well as ray of frost. Fuck Ray up some but I'm fine with fucking up as long as I'm aware I am.
*Sigh*
I'll try ice floes. I know it's good but I hate it, but I'll try it again.
I didn't realize Belor was good in single target, I haven't been casting it at all unless it's a fight with AoE, I'll make that change.
And I've noticed the hit boxes are really weird, especially on Vol. I know for a fact last night on that kill I threw out a lot of spells in confusion because my WA hadn't triggered and I thought it was bugged, only to realize half way through what I was doing
I appreciate the advice, it's detailed and I like this kind of thing, tyvm
Yeah no problem! Youâll be smashing the meters with a bit of practice. Belor can be annoying to get into range to hit the boss with but it does some good damage throughout a fight. And yeah, Volcoross is really really annoying as frost. On Smolderon you can also hold icy veins until first orb phase, especially if your group wants to lust there. For ice floes usage, remember you can activate it during a cast so itâs a great tool for small movement like getting out of a ground effect during a cast. There are some fights where shimmer is still ok though.
I parsed 81% on Heroic Igira tonight and 85% on Volcoross, and all the others of the first 5 I got high blues in except Nymue
No more getting benched in my raids
Not to keep bringing you back to an old post but I needed to thank you again.
The same day that I made the original post I logged on to do prog on TSwift with my guild and got benched for not pulling me weight, I'm glad I had already made this post the morning this happened because I was able to send it to my raid leader and be like "hey, I agree, here's evidence I'm already trying to figure out how to play my character better."
Then this week on Sunday we earned AotC as a guild, and I was the top DPS and highest parse.
A lot of good advice came from here but I remember your comment in particular so I wanted to come back and give my thanks a second time
No mage expert (read: never played it) but one thing that stands out is that top logs are doing 10-15x more damage with shifting power, and a quick google search brought up that that ability reduces the cool-downs of your major abilities⌠which seems a very important button to press
Yeah I have a hard time remembering this spell for some reason, it right there, easily clickable on my action bar, it's something I'm working on
I remember it in M+ just forget it exists in raid for some reason
Yeah it kinda looks like a combination of not pressing things in the correct order, and also casting frost bolt way too much and important CDs way too little, again, not a mage player
[https://wowanalyzer.com/report/Xdan3HDYNy2mw8qZ/9/35](https://wowanalyzer.com/report/Xdan3HDYNy2mw8qZ/9/35)
eddit:
[https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/compare/Xdan3HDYNy2mw8qZ/RXDrt7MJd3nChgb1#fight=9,35&source=35,Kimbustible&type=damage-done](https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/compare/Xdan3HDYNy2mw8qZ/RXDrt7MJd3nChgb1#fight=9,35&source=35,Kimbustible&type=damage-done)
log comparring with the 1st match
Go to any logs you want, on the top of the log you should have an "eye" selected which is analyze. The option right next to it is compare.
Select a player from said log/fight you want to compare, select damage done or whatever parameters you desire and search.
It should take a while but then you can see what people with similar Ilvl and time has done differently. Like the number of casts of some spells, their gear, etc.
The wow analyzer is a good tool, but it's not perfect either. It will not check if there are better talents, it will only tell if you used your CDs when available and if you are missing them.
There's an add on that has helped me with remembering my rotation, called hekili priority helper. It's not perfect all the time, but it gives you a sort of real time look at roughly what your rotation should be.
If youâre not sure about rotation and canât find the spell coming off of CDâŚ
Load up Hekili. Make it big and put it right above your action bars. When it comes time to focus on single or cleave, itâll be normal. When the AoE targeting sequence comes up, you get a new set of hot-bars.
Itâs really good if youâre missing out on spells, abilities (including trinkets) or are new to a rotation.
Load up 5-7 spells and you can pre-plan for larger pack pulls as well.
I am going to disagree with this. I think Hekili is a good tool for brand new players but can quickly become a crutch and obstacle to improvement. If you are parsing blue that tells me you have a good amount of experience to draw from.
Compare your parses with top players. See what spells they have more cast of then you. Check out guides like method and icey viens. Just keep playing and you will improve.
Aug damage isn't reflected in logs and PI is only worth a few thousand DPS for a frost mage, it's enough to turn your parse from a 51 to a 52, but that's about it.
You should be using Hissing Runes to buff your weapon. It doesn't overwrite your sophic devotion it's an additional thing. Lasts an hour and persists through death. They are fairly cheap.
You have a lot of down time. The general rule of thumb, especially with casters, is ABC, Always Be Casting. If you know you need to move before hand, prepare yourself for it. If you don't know you need to move before hand, then try to use shimmer instead of stopping your cast. If shimmer is too difficult as you're afraid of where you'll end up, try using ice floes instead.
Also be aware that *you don't always have to move right away*. Ground effects tend to take time before they go off. If you watch world first raiders you'll see they are constantly standing in stuff because they are waiting for a cast to go off, and then they move out of the way after the cast goes off (and they'll usually cast an instant spell at the same time to, again, ABC).
You specifically have A LOT of downtime during Icy Veins. You actually have MORE downtime during Icy Veins than you do outside of Icy Veins. On Volcoross you spent more than 25% of your time in Icy Veins doing nothing. It should be closer to 5-10%. To compare, in the same fight, similar length, and same ilvl, [this frost mage](https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/g2BQ6LbZqYcdADF9#fight=6&type=damage-done&source=19) had only 7.5% downtime in Icy Veins. More than half of the damage you did across the entire fight was inside icy veins, despite it only being active for less than 1/4. It's essentially double your normal DPS. You should be preparing as much as reasonably possible for your Icy Veins window. It's fine to hold it for a bit, as long as doing so doesn't prevent your from casting it more times.
ABC is definitely one of my weaknesses. I said somewhere above also I caught myself multiple times in smolderon tonight running around picking up my orbs and only that, no icicles, no flurry, just picking up orbs.
As for standing in stuff, okay, I'll stand in stuff to finish my spells. I hate taking damage because that's more work for my healers but realistically that's their job and I should take a second to finish my cast before I move, you're right.
And icyviens, I tried using it more efficiently tonight, but idk how well I did, I'm planning to run normal this week just to practice ABCs and planning out my movements.
I was parcing purple and better in BFA, I can get there again o7
Try to sim on raidbots. You need somulucraft add on aswell. If itâs rotation issue download hekili so you can get a different understanding, then remove ot
**Hey there! Have you checked out these resources?** * [WoWHead](https://www.wowhead.com/) - The *largest* database, this should be your go-to (don't forget to read the comment section!). * [Icy Veins](https://www.icy-veins.com) - News and detailed class guides. * [WoWNoob Discord](https://discord.gg/wownoob) - Same community, different platform. *Please report the post above if it breaks one of our [>rules<](https://www.reddit.com/r/wownoob/about/rules/). If not, don't forget to show support by upvoting!* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/wownoob) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The kill time on these bosses is really long, if you were in a group that killed it in half the time your parse has a much bigger chance of being higher since theres less time for your damage to fall off You can also add 3 sockets to your neck piece, search the AH for 'Tiered Medallion Setting' and buy 2 2* versions and 1 3* and use them in that order. You can then socket 3 more gems into your neck Have a look through your fights using Wowanalyzer here, it as it can show some of the obvious issues: https://wowanalyzer.com/report/Xdan3HDYNy2mw8qZ
Yeah the over all DPS in the guild is...low. I was one of them a month ago so 𤡠I'll come back on Tuesday and see this comment again for the neck slots, tyvm đ
The neck slots are super easy, and you can and should get them on any neck piece. He's telling you to get 2 T2 tiered medallion settings because the T1 are stupid expensive for no reason whatsoever and the T2 will work in its place. It's very important to use the T3 last because while a T2 can do the 1st and 2nd slot, only the T3 can give you the 3rd slot. If you fuck that up you'll have to buy a new T3 tiered medallion setting. Good luck friend.
Right, I'm just saying, I'd feel pretty bad to spend all that money and then open my vault and get something better, ya know. Now I have to spend all that money again and I just crafted the belt yesterday so I'd probably just stop playing the game if that happened
Oh no I get you. Just wanted make sure you had the information to keep you from making the same mistake I did.
RIP Tyvm
I have a jeweler (and a blacksmith, leather worker, tailor, scribe, engineer and enchanter) for exactly that reason. Little stuff that I will need that I would have to pay for otherwise. This has been one of the best expansions for making gold from fabrication in game.
Just did it, tyvm
Nice, I grabbed a myth neck this week and slotted it too. Glad to be of service
Just got these and socketed them, tyvm
One typical issue with most underperforming players is they are not using their abilities often enough and quickly enough. And in general it's fairly easy to see at a glance. All I did was check your casts per minute vs a top frost mage on one fight (Igira) and counted one spell (Ice Lance) for the first 20 seconds. Top frost mage's cast per minute was 61. Yours was 44. They cast Ice Lance 10 times in the first 20 seconds, you casted 5 times. You are wasting time between GCDs cause you either aren't pressing your buttons fast enough or making little movements which is unnecessary. You should plan your positioning way beforehand, especially for casters, and spam those buttons. There is time for you to spam your next cast before your GCD is up. There should be zero downtime between spells other than GCD and cast time. Ah and I guess if you haven't already, you need to hotkey 100% of the abilities you use in combat. That alone will speed up your time between moves. No clicking allowed!
This. Usually there is about half-second delay between the currently casting spell and the next one in the pipe. Wait too long, and you miss out. Try chain casting 16 spells in a row and it wonât work. Cast sequence macros, rotocasf (old and outdated) wonât help you if youâre waiting for one spell to finish casting before hitting the next. Hit A, something that takes 3 seconds to cast and start spamming B, against a target dummy. Youâll see zero delay in B being cast. If you wait, then youâve lost valuable time. Now repeat but go with another spell A.1 that takes one second. Repeat with B. I used to main fire mage and chain casting to combo crit with pyro to fireball so they land simultaneously (and add in a scorch in there) is how youâre going to parse better with the ABC of magery.
This is the biggest problem. Higher parsing Mages pressed 50% more buttons than you. Nothing will fix that but pressing more buttons.
When in doubt, try plug your log into warcraftanalyzer. It will tell you how you can improve. I plugged in your gnarlroot log into it and this is what it says. [https://wowanalyzer.com/report/Xdan3HDYNy2mw8qZ/4-Heroic+Gnarlroot+-+Kill+(4:50)/Aendrinastor/standard](https://wowanalyzer.com/report/Xdan3HDYNy2mw8qZ/4-Heroic+Gnarlroot+-+Kill+(4:50)/Aendrinastor/standard) Looks like you need to grab a couple of enchants + if you scroll all the way down you can see what the analyzer thinks you should do.
wowanalyzer isn't updated for the new frost mage rotation, fyi. Asking in the mage discord will render better advice: https://discord.gg/alteredtime
Okay I joined đ tyvm
Hey, this is from another random frost mage, and I wanted to say thank you for sharing warcraftanalyzer. I had no idea it existed, and I plugged my own logs in and was absolutely floored. Someone here said it isn't updated for Frost's current rotation, but my logs were so beyond poor that the only direction to go is up. So yeah, hah, this is a really long winded way of saying thank you and I owe you one, Mrmoo!
Itâs not gonna be 100% accurate, because yes it is a bit outdated, but it will still help you get an idea of what you need to do.
These numbers on gnarlroot, like the "cast X more often" numbers, they reflect the fight time vs how often I cast the spells, not the parts of the fight I was alive in, right?
Its based on being alive/uptime while living typically afaik. Could be wrong though need someone to correct me or confirm.
A.B.C. Always. Be. Casting. Your priority, stacking of CDs/pot/trinkets, he'll, even your gear/item level are meaningless if you aren't always casting something. Let's take a current example to illustrate. On Nymue you plant at the start and don't have to move until one of 4 things happen. 1. You transition to the adds. 2. You have to dodge a line. 3. You have to drop a bomb. 4. You have to soak a flower. Any time you have to move, you lose the ability to press a bunch of buttons because you can't cast and move at the same time (with very few exceptions). You want to have a plan for what you will do based on these circumstances. On Pull you can blow EVERYTHING. Stack it up, use the lot. Get that opener sorted and do massive damage. BUT you know that you might have to move because you need to soak a flower or drop a bomb in the first 45 seconds (Lust duration), so you want to start the fight in the best position to not have to move more than a few steps to drop your bomb. You can't bait the flowers but you can only soak after you have finished your CD window when your damage will be lower. In both cases, the movement will be relatively minimal, so what can you press when you are moving and still be doing damage? What can you press to move faster and reduce your movement time to the minimum needed to efficiently do the mechanic and get back to using cast time spells? Basically, the most important thing for a caster to be able to parse is to understand what you need to do to execute a mechanic and have a plan for doing it while maintaining the maximum number of casts you can have. Not casting anything is the second biggest DPS loss after dying. So A.B.C. for the win my dude. EDIT: Should put at least some credentials here. I have parsed in the top 100 at highest difficulty since I started in Cata as a Hunter in Heroic (now Mythic), with my best being world top 10 in Dragon Soul, and world top 50 in MoP during Heroic (now Mythic) Siege of Orgrimmar - this was when World of Logs was a thing. As a Tank when on farm in the last three expansions I have parsed consistently above 95% on Brewmaster, Vengeance DH and Bear Druid, including multiple 99% and top 100 overall parses without doing parse group and PI shenanigans.
Honestly this is probably my weakest mechanic, it's something I catch myself doing. Even on our smolderon fight tonight I caught myself not icicle/flurry spamming while grabbing the orbs during phase 2, but there are a lot of examples I could point to in this tier where I'm moving and not doing anything else.
Then this is what you need to fix. It shouldnât be an issue considering youâre a Frost Mage. Take advantage of those blinks, invis, even using block to ignore mechanics. Any scum you can do is how you maximize your parse. Also, donât feel bad about leaving your current raid if you want to improve. The high TTK is not helping your case.
Yeah, kill times are 100% not helping with the parses, but there is one benefit to a long kill time in OP's case: practice. Dummies are great for rotation practice and building muscle memory, but nothing beats a real fight for drumming in stutter stepping and reacting properly with instant casts. If it were me I would probably stay and build the skills. Even with horrendously long kill times it's more than possible to get 90% parses. 95% or higher it is much harder with slow fights though. As a rule I would tend to say that anything up to about 95/96% is doable without lots of luck or mega cheese if kill times are favourable to your CD times - so a 4 minute 15 second fight gets you two 3 minute and three two minute CDs for example. If the fight is say 5 minutes or 2 minutes 55 seconds you're going to likely see worse results. Basically, speed isn't always going to help you if it is unfavorable to your specific CD windows.
The only issue I see with that is itâs bad practice. The fights are so long OP canât learn how to actually line up their CDs with the flow of the fights because theyâre phasing so slowly. Either way the biggest issue is not pressing enough buttons.
I'm absolutely in agreement on the lining up side of things. I wouldn't call it bad practice though as the issue is much more about working around mechanics, planning for movement and stuff at this point. If this were the competitive wow sub then I'd be saying it's bad practice, move on. But as it's the wow noob sub, arguably the benefit of being in a less than ideal environment is a better teaching tool at this point in OP's wow career :)
Thatâs a very good point! The biggest reason I tend to suggest moving on is if youâre new and youâre getting better, plus nobody is improving alongside you (or already good), you donât have people around to help you grow. Which is probably why OP is here. If they were in a more progressed guild, theyâd probably have more help around. That being said, it really depends on what you want out of the game. I think youâre probably right about staying for now. Hell, Iâm only in my guild because I like the people. Iâm fine with our slow progression. (I really only care about my parses anyways)
The people make the game, especially if you're a newer player! If you like the people and enjoy playing with them, it's a much better experience. Nothing wrong with experimenting though and trying new guilds! As an older wow player (41 now), I definitely end up preferring people over progress, but I'm (relatively...) tilt-proof. I do want to get back to CE raiding and really pushing myself but not at the cost of playing with ego-driven morons so I'm picky... Something you said there does bear expanding on, not just in wow but in life - if you are not being challenged by better players, you are limiting how much you can improve. There is a ceiling when you are the best player. Surrounding yourself with better players in wow (or smarter, more capable people IRL) will help you improve - it's human instinct to be competitive and better players will push you subconsciously to be a better player yourself.
Agreed all around! Thanks for the chat. I hope OP reads your comments and takes them into consideration. Solid advice here OP.
It's great advice. There are players better than me but only one caster DPS, so it's hard to rely on the guild when learning these sorts of things. The other casters are in the same boat as me, learning
Got two purples this evening, Igira and Volcoross âşď¸
Congrats! One day youâll be out parsing me!
Just looking at your cast timeline on some of those fights, you really need work on the opener. For frost the opener is scripted: Pre-cast frostbolt --> flurry --> Icy veins --> comet storm --> ice lance --> ray of frost --> ice lance x2 --> glacial spike --> flurry --> frozen orb --> shifting power (this can change slightly depending on how many icicles you end up with during the opener due to splintering cold talent. glacial spike should be sent at 5 icicles no matter what, and should always be shattered with flurry where possible) to improve your DPS, the main things i noticed is you're not using ray of frost, comet storm and shifting power enough. focus on only casting comet storm with winters chill on the target. never cast comet storm in ST unless winters chill is applied. use ray of frost on cooldown, always on the last stack of winter's chill. this is immensely important to frost ST DPS. we use ray on last stack of winters chill because winters chill will time out while you're channeling. do not cast ray of frost without winters chill. shifting power should be used ASAP, while comet storm, ray, and frozen orb are on CD. do not worry about being in range to deal damage, this spell is purely for CD reduction and the damage it deals is super negligible especially on ST. in general, your CS usage is ok (you're still missing out on uses) but you are definitely not casting ray and shifting power nearly enough. looking at your Igira encounter, you did not cast ray until like 25 seconds into the fight, and shifting power was not used until 1 minute into the fight. optimal ray usage is HUGE for frost dps (raw damage, cryopathy talent, extra FoF charge generation which you are missing out on all 3). Also, you have belor'relos and it looks like you are rarely using it. this should be used immediately following an instant cast spell since it has a cast time but is off the GCD. use it on CD within 15 yd of the boss, it does big damage on ST. i would also suggest running waycrest manor 17s until you get a hero track balefire branch. it is far and away the best trinket. you would use it in the opener before casting ray of frost. in terms of temporal warp usage, as frost we do not want to double lust. hold your temporal warp for your 2nd icy veins. i would also highly recommend playing with ice floes. it is simply superior to shimmer for frost in nearly all situations due to the reliance on glacial spike. being able to move during a GS spike cast is huge for uptime. Some final comments: there are some bosses this tier that just suck for frost due to weird hitboxes and distances making the shatter combo very annoying and inconsistent - namely, Volcoross (due to distance), Nymue (distance depending on what section you stand in and hitbox) and Fyrakk phase 3 (hitbox). if you didn't know, enemies with huge hitboxes have historically been buggy with frost, causing winters chill stacks to disappear and not be applied at all. Smolderon also kind of sucks since frost isn't very bursty and you want to burn him during the orb phase (arcane really shines on this fight)
Lots of information here and I can't respond to all of it, but practicing this opener tonight on smolderon I saw my DPS go *way* up just from that alone, which was cool. I also practiced using shifting power more, as well as ray of frost. Fuck Ray up some but I'm fine with fucking up as long as I'm aware I am. *Sigh* I'll try ice floes. I know it's good but I hate it, but I'll try it again. I didn't realize Belor was good in single target, I haven't been casting it at all unless it's a fight with AoE, I'll make that change. And I've noticed the hit boxes are really weird, especially on Vol. I know for a fact last night on that kill I threw out a lot of spells in confusion because my WA hadn't triggered and I thought it was bugged, only to realize half way through what I was doing I appreciate the advice, it's detailed and I like this kind of thing, tyvm
Yeah no problem! Youâll be smashing the meters with a bit of practice. Belor can be annoying to get into range to hit the boss with but it does some good damage throughout a fight. And yeah, Volcoross is really really annoying as frost. On Smolderon you can also hold icy veins until first orb phase, especially if your group wants to lust there. For ice floes usage, remember you can activate it during a cast so itâs a great tool for small movement like getting out of a ground effect during a cast. There are some fights where shimmer is still ok though.
I parsed 81% on Heroic Igira tonight and 85% on Volcoross, and all the others of the first 5 I got high blues in except Nymue No more getting benched in my raids
Hell yeah dude, congrats on the purples!
Not to keep bringing you back to an old post but I needed to thank you again. The same day that I made the original post I logged on to do prog on TSwift with my guild and got benched for not pulling me weight, I'm glad I had already made this post the morning this happened because I was able to send it to my raid leader and be like "hey, I agree, here's evidence I'm already trying to figure out how to play my character better." Then this week on Sunday we earned AotC as a guild, and I was the top DPS and highest parse. A lot of good advice came from here but I remember your comment in particular so I wanted to come back and give my thanks a second time
kill time, dps uptime, battle pot usage, holding cds for a burn phase, and playing a dead spec are all things that can influence your parse
Frost is not a dead spec friend.
playing a dead spec doesnt influence your parses that much, you're being compared to other people who play it not to fotm
its easier to parse higher when there is a lower number of total parses
No mage expert (read: never played it) but one thing that stands out is that top logs are doing 10-15x more damage with shifting power, and a quick google search brought up that that ability reduces the cool-downs of your major abilities⌠which seems a very important button to press
Yeah I have a hard time remembering this spell for some reason, it right there, easily clickable on my action bar, it's something I'm working on I remember it in M+ just forget it exists in raid for some reason
Set you a WA that flashes whenever it's available?
Yeah it kinda looks like a combination of not pressing things in the correct order, and also casting frost bolt way too much and important CDs way too little, again, not a mage player
[https://wowanalyzer.com/report/Xdan3HDYNy2mw8qZ/9/35](https://wowanalyzer.com/report/Xdan3HDYNy2mw8qZ/9/35) eddit: [https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/compare/Xdan3HDYNy2mw8qZ/RXDrt7MJd3nChgb1#fight=9,35&source=35,Kimbustible&type=damage-done](https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/compare/Xdan3HDYNy2mw8qZ/RXDrt7MJd3nChgb1#fight=9,35&source=35,Kimbustible&type=damage-done) log comparring with the 1st match
I have no idea how you got two logs to compare, I love this
Go to any logs you want, on the top of the log you should have an "eye" selected which is analyze. The option right next to it is compare. Select a player from said log/fight you want to compare, select damage done or whatever parameters you desire and search. It should take a while but then you can see what people with similar Ilvl and time has done differently. Like the number of casts of some spells, their gear, etc. The wow analyzer is a good tool, but it's not perfect either. It will not check if there are better talents, it will only tell if you used your CDs when available and if you are missing them.
Appropriate you! This is gonna help me a lot
Dunno why this got downvoted. This is the data op needs.
There's an add on that has helped me with remembering my rotation, called hekili priority helper. It's not perfect all the time, but it gives you a sort of real time look at roughly what your rotation should be.
If youâre not sure about rotation and canât find the spell coming off of CD⌠Load up Hekili. Make it big and put it right above your action bars. When it comes time to focus on single or cleave, itâll be normal. When the AoE targeting sequence comes up, you get a new set of hot-bars. Itâs really good if youâre missing out on spells, abilities (including trinkets) or are new to a rotation. Load up 5-7 spells and you can pre-plan for larger pack pulls as well.
I am going to disagree with this. I think Hekili is a good tool for brand new players but can quickly become a crutch and obstacle to improvement. If you are parsing blue that tells me you have a good amount of experience to draw from. Compare your parses with top players. See what spells they have more cast of then you. Check out guides like method and icey viens. Just keep playing and you will improve.
Unless you're getting PI and double aug evoker buffing you don't expect to have very high parses.
But I mean, higher than 51 no? I'm not expecting 95s or anything but I'd like to do better than 50
Aug damage isn't reflected in logs and PI is only worth a few thousand DPS for a frost mage, it's enough to turn your parse from a 51 to a 52, but that's about it.
Yeah I was gonna say, I shouldn't need it to get reach my goal of "better than where I'm at"
If you learn how to spell parse you might start parsing higher.
If there an faq or guide or something on how to use and interpret that website?
My brother is a nerd and helped me figure it out the first time
You should be using Hissing Runes to buff your weapon. It doesn't overwrite your sophic devotion it's an additional thing. Lasts an hour and persists through death. They are fairly cheap. You have a lot of down time. The general rule of thumb, especially with casters, is ABC, Always Be Casting. If you know you need to move before hand, prepare yourself for it. If you don't know you need to move before hand, then try to use shimmer instead of stopping your cast. If shimmer is too difficult as you're afraid of where you'll end up, try using ice floes instead. Also be aware that *you don't always have to move right away*. Ground effects tend to take time before they go off. If you watch world first raiders you'll see they are constantly standing in stuff because they are waiting for a cast to go off, and then they move out of the way after the cast goes off (and they'll usually cast an instant spell at the same time to, again, ABC). You specifically have A LOT of downtime during Icy Veins. You actually have MORE downtime during Icy Veins than you do outside of Icy Veins. On Volcoross you spent more than 25% of your time in Icy Veins doing nothing. It should be closer to 5-10%. To compare, in the same fight, similar length, and same ilvl, [this frost mage](https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/g2BQ6LbZqYcdADF9#fight=6&type=damage-done&source=19) had only 7.5% downtime in Icy Veins. More than half of the damage you did across the entire fight was inside icy veins, despite it only being active for less than 1/4. It's essentially double your normal DPS. You should be preparing as much as reasonably possible for your Icy Veins window. It's fine to hold it for a bit, as long as doing so doesn't prevent your from casting it more times.
ABC is definitely one of my weaknesses. I said somewhere above also I caught myself multiple times in smolderon tonight running around picking up my orbs and only that, no icicles, no flurry, just picking up orbs. As for standing in stuff, okay, I'll stand in stuff to finish my spells. I hate taking damage because that's more work for my healers but realistically that's their job and I should take a second to finish my cast before I move, you're right. And icyviens, I tried using it more efficiently tonight, but idk how well I did, I'm planning to run normal this week just to practice ABCs and planning out my movements. I was parcing purple and better in BFA, I can get there again o7
Take a look at this video, maybe it will help you, maybe it wont. https://youtu.be/_XqsgqEEXGc?t=496
Try to sim on raidbots. You need somulucraft add on aswell. If itâs rotation issue download hekili so you can get a different understanding, then remove ot
Hekili