Miralos' 51 Pyromancer

[Miralos]

This isn't recommended by any cookie cutter sites for top mage dps, but I enjoy it and it works for me.

Damage Meter:

Spellpower – 1771 unbuffed
Crit – 40.68%
Target – Boss Practice Dummy
Number of tests – 3
Duration – 5 minutes each
DPS – 2000+

Gear:

Nyx’s Pyromancer Crystal + 4 piece set bonus.

Build:

51 points in Pyromancer

15 points in Warlock;
5 points in Magical Affinity – increases charge gained – this is great because when you have full charge you can chuck out a fulminate, and when that’s on cooldown you can use withering flames from around 70-75% charge.
5 points in opportunity – mostly used for a quick fireball, but at the beginning of the fight it’s ideal for building charges of Pillaging stone without sacrificing too much early dps.

3 points in Neddra’s influence – 15% increase in dot damage PLUS 1.5% in dot fire damage for each point spent in the warlock soul. This makes you last 2 points more valuable if spent in the warlock soul (3% spell power) than if spent on soul fire in the archon tree (2% spell power). Doesn’t make sense, right?

The 2 points above neddra’s influence give 3% bonus to DOTS only. While archon gives 2% to all spells. Still I get about 100 extra dps from the 2 points in warlock.

Why? I think it’s because dots represent a steady stream of reliable dps, so that the 1% dot damage represents more than one might think. When you are moving, when you have to stop and turn around for mechanics, and when you are waiting for procs and GCD’s the dots keep ticking. So;

2 points in Vitality - because a teensy bit more survivability is always nice when raiding and it's worth it to have the 3% increase in Dot dps.


0 Points in Archon;
Pillaging stone = 40 spellpower


Macro’s:

I only use one macro in pyromancer.

#show Fireball
suppressmacrofailures
cast Countdown
cast Flame bolt
cast Fireball

DO NOT MACRO: Inferno.
Why? Each time it comes up in your macro it checks with the server to see if your target is under 30% health, and so slows down your overall rotation incrementally.

The order of the abilities in the above macro is important. It ensure that Flame bolt is prioritised whenever it's instacast and that countdown is always kept up for the set bonus.

Key Abilities:

Keep in mind; Neddra’s influence boosts your DOT dps 15%. With the crystal heatwave boosts your fire dps by 20%. On very long fights it can be worthwhile to throw up the occasional Dark touch.

Fireball triggers combust (another dot) and can trigger wildfire, which makes your flamebolts instant, and through improved fireball it will increase your overall fire damage by a further 10%.

The purpose of Fireball becomes to add dots and keep your procs going.


Rotation:

(throughout the below process when opportunity procs put up pillaging stone until you have 5 stacks.)

Due to so many abilities being dependent upon procs and triggers the rotation should be considered fluid.

1. I open with a stack of pillaging stone, then searing vitality, then the macro 3x. By which point I usually have an instant cinderburst proc. Hitting that puts me up to full charge. It also puts fulminate on a relatively short cooldown. Hit the macro. Then hit withering flame. This only uses 60% of your charge, spam the macro up to full charge again. Then hit Fulminate.

If wildfire triggers spam your macro until it’s over.

2. Hit Heatwave. This reduces the cast time of your fire spells by 50% for 20 seconds and resets the cool down of your firespells. Spam your macro to build up your charge. Wack out Fulminate as soon as you can. If cinderburst triggers still put fulminate out first, the gcd will go in plenty of time for you to put out your instant cinderburst. Spam your macro while you’re waiting for that.

3. Now; heatwave is on cooldown, Fulminate should be on cooldown. When you reach full charge and these are still on cooldown use internalize charge and spam the macro. wildfire may still proc. By the time internalize charge burns down, and you build up to full charge again, withering flames should be off cooldown. Use it.
Repeat this, alternating between using internalize charge or withering flames as cooldowns allow when you’re at full charge. Until heatwave is off cooldown.

4. Throughout step 3 Fulminate will come off cooldown 2-3 times and cinderburst will will trigger 2-3 times. Hit them when they do. As before if the cinderburst triggers at the same time that fulminate is ready hit fulminate first, then spam macro while waiting to cast cinderburst. Refresh searing vitality.

5. When heatwave is off cooldown repeat steps 2-4.

*In long fights keep an eye on pillaging stone and refresh as needed.

[Tarien]

Flame Bolt should be before Countdown so that Countdown benefits, Searing Vitality should be cast before Pillaging Stone and should be one of your DoTs, you should also move those two points from Vitality into Soul Fire (Archon) for 2% more fire damage.

51pt Pyro is simple clean fun for sure, I make good use of it in PvP

[doobism]

Miralos was going for the extra 3% to dots damage over the 2% fire damage by going into vitality.

I haven't looked at 51 pyro in a fair while, so I'm not gonna say which is better. the math would be interesting given how much damage dots contribute to pyro specs.

I'd just note, it doesn't seem like it's simpler than a 1.8 36/30 pyrolock w/o LL, or a substantially different feel. I'm a tad bored with pyrolock, but isn't this really just another nuke+dots hybrid.
Same dots, more complicated charge management, and overall significant loss in power on all spells (10% less avg damage by missing out on SL: D/IC rotation, and on top of that 40% less dots damage), just to gain fulminate every 45 seconds. Does fulminate hit hard enough to make it worth it?

Also, haven't tested this obviously, but shouldn't heatwave reset fulminate's cd? You could smack fulminate, go into heatwave, build charge by about halfway through and hit fulminate again with the heatwave bonus.

[Miralos]

Hai Doobi, thank you for replying to the thread. I am rather new to theory crafting so I am happy to have feedback and discussion to help me sort my thoughts and test new ideas. Thank you too Tarien. I'll try opening with Countdown.

The reason I don't smack fulminate, do heatwave, build charge and then hit fulminate again immediately, if I understand you correctly, is because I want to be sure I use the heatwave cooldown to reset the cooldown of fulminate, cinderburst, and withering flame all together. I hit withering flame to give a short boost to spell power, then almost immediately I have enough charge to hit fulminate.

As to whether it's worth it, I guess it's down to individual play style. I really enjoy it! It's just immensely satisfying to go BOOM your FACE IS ON FIRE! every now and then. =o). I tried to find a log from last week and failed. *sadface* I'll see what I can do about posting damage and percentages from abilities the next time I log an encounter. Probably this Sunday.

I would love to see some solid numbers for Pyro/Lock too - including the spell power and crit rating of the player.

[Miralos]

Here we go, Dps Distribution according to ACT;

Fireball - 19-22%
Combust - 15-17%
Flamebolt - 12-13%
Cinderburst - 12%
Countdown - 12%
Searing Vitality -7-10%
Fulminate - 6-9%
Dark Touch - 2-3%

[EternalBrown]

Miralos was going for the extra 3% to dots damage over the 2% fire damage by going into vitality.

I haven't looked at 51 pyro in a fair while, so I'm not gonna say which is better. the math would be interesting given how much damage dots contribute to pyro specs.

I'd just note, it doesn't seem like it's simpler than a 1.8 36/30 pyrolock w/o LL, or a substantially different feel. I'm a tad bored with pyrolock, but isn't this really just another nuke+dots hybrid.
Same dots, more complicated charge management, and overall significant loss in power on all spells (10% less avg damage by missing out on SL: D/IC rotation, and on top of that 40% less dots damage), just to gain fulminate every 45 seconds. Does fulminate hit hard enough to make it worth it?

Also, haven't tested this obviously, but shouldn't heatwave reset fulminate's cd? You could smack fulminate, go into heatwave, build charge by about halfway through and hit fulminate again with the heatwave bonus.

Fulminate has and continues to be terrible since they nerfed it after PvPers QQ'd about mages being able to hit them so hard every 45 seconds (while taking repeated 1k hits from a warrior and dying in 4 seconds wasn't an issue -- the old roflstomp parachamp).

[Miralos]

Is a near 10% boost in dps from the occasional instacast really so terrible? How much did it used to be?

[EternalBrown]

Is a near 10% boost in dps from the occasional instacast really so terrible? How much did it used to be?

It changed when spell damage modifiers became multiplicative instead of additive. Moreover, with 15 lock, the value of Flame Bolt is twofold: 1) damage done increased and 2) maintain Combust stacks (the latter scales with the 15 lock and 3/3 Neddra's Influence).