This isn’t about the class, it’s ME. I’m just sad that I suck.
This expansion has really opened my eyes. I play a frost mage, I have since vanilla. I have never had a problem with playing a mage, I was at one time, pretty good.
Now for a class that plays whack a mole I am garbage, I have watched videos, I have recorded logs, analyzed logs and had logs analyzed for me. I can’t get my dps to an acceptable level. One person who looked at my logs actually found a similar geared mage and made the comparison and my dps was significantly lower than his/hers.
I made recommended adjustments and yes my dps went up, but still isn’t on par.
Now my guild is not bleeding edge or hardcore, we have a buttload of fun and they have never been a guild of “you need to up your dps for the sake of the content” in other words no pressure from them about dps and no hesitation to invite me to raids. It’s all fun.
But if I can’t pull my weight, well that does slow progression and I don’t want to be that guy.
I guess I am just getting to damn old to play a class needing good reflexes.
But I am parking my mage in search of a easier class to play, but I will miss my mage for sure.
It’s definitely a twitchy spec. Maybe try playing with incanter’s instead of rune? One less thing to keep track of and it doesn’t sim particularly well in single target or at least it didn’t when I was playing frost.
Well, allow me to at least give you a few parting things based on looking at your logs, and take what you will with what someone like me can see:
(1) Your guild in general sucks, so I wouldn’t exactly be beating myself up. If anyone in your guild is mocking your dps, their borderline green parses aren’t anything to be bragging about.
(2) You didn’t make the recommended adjustments. You “think” you did, but your parses tell otherwise. You need to effectively do the following really:
Shatter appropriately with ice lances. On your last hungering destroyer wipe, you cast ice lance 34 times without shattering. That’s just a wasted gcd basically. You shouldn’t be casting ice lance unless it has a FoF proc or a winter’s chill.
You don’t use rop enough. It sits there collecting dust - you can use it every time it’s up - when you use icy veins, it will put down a rop for you. So cast it more
You don’t stand in your rop enough when you do use it. You are likely timing it when you have a mechanic requiring you to move, so you need to plan this more accordingly.
You hold onto brain freeze procs too long. Those need to be burned asap, including if it requires eating a FoF proc. Which is why a lot of people complain about “proc munching” - especially when you use the venthyr ability.
You are moving too much. You need to be spamming those frostbolts like a madman. So you are moving, figuring out what to do, and not casting. You need to practice blink casting and stutter stepping (this is where you step in between gcds to realign your positioning).
#5 is the most harmful thing casters do, because you gotta be casting. It’s basically just not being comfortable with the class, so yea, a melee may perhaps be more comfortable for you to play. Nothing wrong with it, but I assume you made this post hoping that somebody could show you something to keep playing mage because you like mage (I do too).
My recommendation - you need to actually study fight mechanics. It’s one thing to “watch” a video, or look at a log - it’s another to actually understand what you are looking for. You need to know the timing of your cds vs fight mechanics, when to use rop, manage your timers, etc. You should be using bigwigs or dbm to track abilities, and watch in those videos how a high parsing frost mage does that.
Get a notebook and actually write notes down. I always do, especially at the start of a raiding tier - I take notes on progression wipes especially. I make a note of when I’ve been messing up my cds, how to adjust, and what to look for. I’m no 99 parser either, but I do well enough to contribute and you gotta put that work in if you want to improve.
Wow… just wow. I will take your word that you’re trying to be helpful but boy is this the wrong way to go about it. OP made a point of emphasizing that his guild is “chill” and doesn’t make any bones about being “bleeding edge” and instead focus on having fun and never bully each other about their DPS or lack there of. Just because these aren’t the standards you seem to value does not give you the right to tear down others who do and who frankly make up the majority of people playing the game.
The OP also goes on to say that it was his choice to bench his mage for this raid tier because he felt that he wasn’t pulling his weight not because he was asked to. That’s a decision that many mages have had to contend with in this expansion and I for one happen to have come to the same conclusion as the OP even though my guild is currently progressing on mythic SLG.
Additionally, while this may not apply in this particular case, virtually everything that you said in your bullet points comes down to one thing and it has very little to do with player skill or lack there of. It has to do with the design of that entire raid tier and the fact that it is simply obnoxious towards casters in general with it’s ridiculous demands on mobility and movement. CN is so bad in fact that certain fights, like Sire, have so much movement that it rivals and even surpasses that of other games where, unlike in WoW, all spells can be cast on the move and content is designed specifically with that in mind. So yes, while player skill matters design is equally important when it comes to performance.
Just some things to consider before passing judgment so harshly.
While I understand this, sometimes you just need a little help understanding things.
I use an addon called ConRo that helps enormously.
It’s not perfect, naturally, and sometimes you can’t listen to what it is telling you, but it actually helps a lot to guide you in what you should be pressing and when.
My DPS has improved on every class and that’s not even following it to the letter.
While there are some “tough love” suggestions in here and you should be mindful of them, don’t try to do too much when you’re learning and especially when you’re struggling. If rune of power isn’t optimized, dump it. Frost is a sustained dps kind of class. Optimal usage is going to be better, but I’d surprised if you lost even 50 dps on a sim by going with incanter’s…and that sim is assuming optimal play.
Keep it simple. Like the other guy said, don’t hold on to your brain freeze procs. Spend them before they overlap. It’s ok to cast an unbuffed ice lance if you’re moving and there’s nothing else to cast, but that’s the only time you should be casting them without a proc. I suspect you’re just getting overwhelmed and it’s impacting your ability to keep it all together.
Put some time in on the training dummy. You don’t exactly have a rotation per se, but proc usage needs to be practiced and utilized in a way that isn’t wasteful. Set realistic goals. Get your parses into the blue range and then you can start thinking about ways to push.
I get that but still, telling him not to worry about dragging his guildmates down because “they all suck anyway” and berating him for “moving too much” when the entire theme of CN is literally “dance or die” isn’t exactly helpful. It goes to the broader problem of everyone being reduced down to a statistic or a parse which is contributing to the pervasive toxicity in this game. I am not even suggesting he’s being intentionally rude or uncaring but rather that this kind of mentality has lead to that unfortunate behavior and the only way to address it is to call it out and hopefully bring attention to it that way.
As to this raid tier in particular, the fact that it is intentionally designed to feature excessive movement in virtually every fight needs to be a focus of every discussion on the topic of caster performance in CN because it is a huge factor. There is a reason why only DoT specs and Fire mages (which has virtually unrestricted movement not only during the entire length of its major DPS CD but also during the execute phase of every fight) are the only casters performing well.
So at the end of the day regardless of how good you are on an individual level unless you are playing one of those specs there is only so much you can do to improve and studying your logs like it’s finals time at school will only give you a headache. Telling someone who has expressed that they’ve always played a caster to “switch to a melee spec” because “you seem to move too much” when the main reason for that is the intentional design of the raid in question is wholly missing the point.
The bottom line is that this is just a raid tier that doesn’t favor casters just like there have been raid tiers in the past that haven’t favored melee. There is no reason to put people down or make them feel less than when a big reason for their lack of performance has nothing to do with them at all but rather Blizzard’s shenanigans and inability to properly balance.
While I think there’s a lot of truth to that, parses are ranking you against other frost mages in this case. They’re dealing with the same movement issues. I’ve gotten a few ugly parses during prog this week and while I felt like I held my own on the meter, if other players can do it…I should be able to.
But I do agree that it wasn’t very nice to call out the guy’s guild. Whether he didn’t mean it to sound that way or not, it certainly reads that way.
No. Sorry, you have no clue what you are talking about, so please don’t give any advice. I get you wanted to come in here and play a pretentious white knight role or something, but you attempt to be contrary for the sake of being contrary and frankly it’s a bit embarrassing that you think low dps parses can just be chalked up to the fact this raid tier is just “bad for casters” (it isn’t either, that’s a really stupid thing to say).
Also, if you bothered to actually read the context of what I wrote (you didn’t, and this isn’t twitter - nobody cares that you are crying about something being mean here), it was obvious that I’m trying to tell him not to quit mage (especially if he likes mage, and the title of his post is literally “I miss my mage”) if he plays with a guild that isn’t very good.
So, feel free to stop giving terrible advice to mages. Stick to the general forum and you can go point fingers at people there talking politics or something, it seems like something you are more interested in, because mage content clearly isn’t your thing. Sorry buddy.
Back to OP (please ignore what that Kerathras dude is saying, it’s terrible advice) - you can improve on mage if you really want to. It’s actually a good thing to play with a guild with other bad players, as it reduces a lot of the stress and expectations to perform.
Also, “good” and “bad” is relative to a mechanical understanding of the game. I’ve seen some of the worst players transform into amazing players because that understanding just sorta lightswitched on. If you make excuses like that Kerathras dude, then you just go about your days at best green parsing and pretending like you can’t do better due to systemic limitations. So it’s up to you - if you want it, go get it and work at it.
I’m not saying there’s no toxicity around parses, but if you want to improve your dps, looking at parses is a good way to go about it. The OP isn’t asking “make me a pink parse overnight”. But going from a low-green to a higher-blue is very possible and is done through practice and yes, skill. Beyond that it might have more to do with fight length, cd timing, what your guild allows you to get away with, RNG etc.
Again you’re not wrong, but if like me the OP would prefer to play a fun spec over a top spec there are ways to contribute more to a run. That way is to increase skill and try to maximise what your preferred spec can do. By doing that, you’re going to see higher parses. Regardless of the amount of movement and punishment (and other than sludge and denathrius I don’t feel this raid tier has any more movement than some previous raids) a green parse is a green parse, and doing things like increasing casting uptime and decreasing unnecessary movement will result in more dps. If for example OP spends 62 seconds moving in a Hungering fight, while other blue parsers spend 35s, that is something to improve upon.
There’s noting inherently wrong with telling a player how to get better, and there’s nothing to state that player cannot. OP, I’m with you on the ‘twitchy’ nature however I don’t seem to mind Frost compared to Fire.
On the other hand if you’re really struggling with Frost, and your guild is only doing casual Heroic progression you can always try Arcane. Yes, it isn’t theoretically as strong as Frost but you might find that you pull better numbers because you ‘get’ the spec more. Some players just gel better with some specs.
Okay I realize I am in the minority here (though I fully believe that the vast majority of players couldn’t care less for parses it’s just they also don’t care about the forums lmao) but while parses can be a tool, it’s one with very limited uses and frankly I think people assign way to much value to them than is warranted. Sure, they enable you to see that an average caster on that fight moved for around 30 seconds whereas for example you moved for almost a minute but how does that help you get better exactly? Chances are you already knew you were moving too much, it’s basically impossible not to notice it when you’re a caster. Knowing the exact amount of movement time you need to shave off isn’t going to do a whole lot when you already knew going in that you have to keep movement to an absolute minimum. The only way to improve there is through experience and no amount of parse peruse is going to change that.
Oh, I can’t agree there. The Bat: constant movement, of course everyone else is also moving (and hiding) but that doesn’t change the fact; the Hunter: that one is actually ok (which is why it’s about the only one Arcane mages can do decent on); Hungering: average movement for this particular raid tier but WAY more than past raids; Darkvein: constant movement, virtually every mechanic requires it; Xymox: same as Darkvein; Sunking: there is still quite a bit of movement involved but it’s not too bad; Council: literally “dance or die” enough said, lol; Sludgefist: ugh, just ugh, it’s not even the movement that’s bad the whole fight is just stupid. SLG again quite a bit of movement due to mechanics especially if you are a mage and have to solo soak with your IB; Sire: no comment…
I absolutely agree but there is a way to dispense advice without being a jerk, and frankly all practical ways of giving advice involve learning how to do so in a respectful manner… that is if you actually want people to listen to you. But civility aside, let’s look at the actual advice that was given and judge it on the merits while ignoring the acerbic delivery.
Right off the bat I can see that all of these basically say “you need to learn how to quiet your movement” just in half a dozen different ways and approaching it from different angles. But let’s take them one at a time:
(1) casting too many ice lances w/o shattering them, well let’s think about why that is. I am going to give OP the benefit of the doubt here and assume he knows shattering ice lances is optimal which then means that the only logical explanation on why he cast so many without shattering them is because he was forced to move and when you have to do that it’s better to throw in an ice lance even if you are not going to shatter it than just waste that gcd. Movement.
(2) not using RoP enough. Only reason why RoP casts are delayed is because of movement or a boss mechanic that you know will hit during the duration of RoP and will cause you to have to move not get the full benefit. Movement.
(3) not standing in RoP for the full duration. That’s what happens when you decide not to delay casting RoP and are then forced to move out of it. Movement.
(4) holding onto BF procs for too long. Now that one doesn’t seem like it’s movement related at a first glance and it could just be an oversight on part of the OP but there is also another very likely explanation here and it’s that on Hungering is very possible to inadvertently end up out of range of the boss because you took out the laser too far or you happen to get a huge circle which caused you to move way back to the edge of the platform so as not to clip anyone. The problem here is parses can’t tell you that and therein lies their limitation.
(5) moving too much… yeah no poop (apparently you can’t say the other word on here because Blizzard’s algorithm thinks we’re all 5 ). That’s what it all boils down to. Movement.
While all of these statements are true, just because a statement is true does not necessarily make it useful advice. I don’t take a dim view of players trying to help one another, just the opposite in fact, but this was neither overly helpful nor polite so it did irk me, ngl.
Bottom line is that telling someone who has played a caster for years that their DPS isn’t great because they moved too much is just stating the obvious and not helpful in the least. Not only was the rudeness not justified or warranted in any way but even the advice wasn’t that good. So yeah, it could be just me but frankly I don’t see that value in posts like that.
Again, there’s some truth to that, but you’re being measured against your same class and spec on the same fight. There are even ilvl considerations although I’m not sure how accurate those are. There is some value there.
There are definitely ways to cheese that parse and the absolute best parsers got some help there or got lucky or both. Group DPS matters too. If your group isn’t one-phasing something like shriekwing, you’ll parse lower because the fight lasted so much longer. How many mechanics did you happen to get targeted with? Given enough pulls, you should hopefully get one where you didn’t have to do too much stuff but I think they’re fairly accurate for the most part…and I say that as someone with a couple of bad parses. Hopefully my reclears are better but who knows.
Sure, I am not saying there is no value in parses at all, very few things in life are totally useless, but I personally happen to think it’s very minimal. I would almost go as far as saying that it is unnecessary just because there are plenty of games out there that, unlike WoW, do not allow the kind of data needed to generate parses to be used by third parties nor do they provide an in game version of it to their players and these folks are able to clear top end content in those games just fine. Games, btw that have a much higher skill level than WoW.
Lastly, it’s worth pointing out causation here. Just because top performing players rely on parses does not necessarily mean parses in themselves are the reason for their success. Rather it’s just the opposite. Players who are really determined to do well will use any means at their disposal to gain an edge, however minimal an impact they may have. Just something to think about.
Is it minimal in that only the clear really matters? Sure, but if you want to play better, logs are very useful and it doesn’t matter which level of content you’re playing. For most of us, the dps number is probably the most important thing. I have a terrible Inerva parse but I was competitive on the meter. Could I have padded on the adds a bit? Maybe I should have lol but that’s not the most important thing in prog…or at least it isn’t for me.
So yeah, I see where you’re coming from and while I agree that some people put too much emphasis on them, I think the value is more than just very minimal. There’s just so much you can learn from it. Rotation, buff uptime, movement…it goes on and on. No online guide is going to break all that stuff down.
You really need a lot more crit. I don’t think mastery is all that good for frost. If you want to get regular 5k dps +, you need at least 25% crit.
Your spec seems fine from what i’m seeing. You’re using the single target legendary which is cool. On my end, I picked the Icebringer for better aoe. It’s not uncommon for me to end a dungeon with like 6-7k dps. And I barely ever pve, other than when i’m helping my buds.
What you can do to make certain things easier when it comes to being fast is create cast sequence macros.
Other than this, you just got to practice more. You need to try your best to not waste fingers of frost. But often you’ll waste some with brain freeze, because I think it can proc with each little flurry hits.
Anyway, don’t be too hard on yourself, and try to enjoy the game. I’m sure you’ll eventually be able to do those big dps numbers. Just don’t focus on them, just try to improve a little more each day, and eventually you’ll notice significant improvements in your game.
The items you need to replace asap are : Shoulders, cloak, belt, second ring.
Shoulders should be easy to replace. Just look for one of those world quest that rewards you with an ilvl 194 shoulder that gives haste + crit.
At some point, all your items should have haste and crit until you reach the 33% treshold
). That’s what it all boils down to. Movement.