Combustion Rotation

Classes Mage
1

Can someone post the Combustion Rotation please, both in the cases of having and not having a Heating Up proc to begin with? I’ve looked at Icy veins but I just want to be sure I understand it. I’d also like to know this for 1 and 2 active trinkets as I have only 1 at the moment (Balefire Branch), but may have 2 at some point and am interested to know even if I don’t ever have 2.

I mean at the moment I guess that without a Heating Up it would be Lucid > Balefire > Combustion > Scorch - fb spam, right?

What about with a Heating Up proc though? I’ve got a proc off a Fireball cast, so what now? First question is whether or not I convert the proc to a Hot Streak before the Fireball cast finishes. Second question is what to do after that.

2

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/524387813060247553/606533890080899083/bm_combustion.png Here you go. Remember that you won’t do it that way every single time, lucid procs do change how many times you fire blast in a combustion and whether or not you need to scorch at all. This picture still gives you a baseline to work from.

Other questions: if you have two active trinkets, you need to activate the other one about 18 seconds before the fight starts because there is a 20 second cooldown between active trinket uses. Make sure that you have good active trinkets such as font and the pvp one, and not stuff like balefire.

I am confused about your last part. If you’re talking about a precast fireball into a combustion, why are you even mentioning a second fireball? You never do that. Precast fireball -> lucid -> font (fb during lucid/font) -> meteor -> comb -> continue normally. The picture explains this for different setups.

Ask if you have more questions. Try to be very precise about what you’re talking about, because this post did manage to confuse me a little bit. Hope it’s still helpful.

3

Thanks for your answer. Looks very helpful.

Maybe the confusion arose by my abbreviating Fire Blast to fb, which you thought meant Fireball. I didn’t say anything about a second Fireball.

When you say ‘fb during lucid/font’, could you elaborate please? Are Lucid and Font not both instant casts? If so, how can I fb ‘during’ them? I could macro fb to cast at the same time as one of them. Is that what you mean?

On the trinkets front, Minniji said I could use Balefire as a backup if I didn’t have Badge which I don’t. I get very little time to play the game so not sure if I’ll be able to get a Badge, so Balefire is my only active atm. Otherwise it would be 460 Music Box and 430 Leviathan’s Lure or 435 Voodoo Doll. The Balefire is 440.

I’m not saying I definitely couldn’t put some time to grinding conquest at some point, but not guaranteed that I will be able to put much, if any, in.

4

There are some mistakes in my post that I noticed too. Setting the record straight:

First of all, I might’ve gotten that wrong, I answered you in a state of sleep deprivation due to having a bad nights sleep. As long as you don’t double fireball it’s fine. Anyway, when I say that you fireblast during lucid/font (I meant rune of power by the way, not font) it means that you do this during the gcd or during rune of power cast. As you might know, fire blast does not trigger gcd so you can cast it whenever you want, regardless of what else is happening. This is what I meant. So just cast it right after pressing lucid.

Your current trinket setup with what you have is the best. But don’t get two active trinkets unless the other one is font. The problem is this: because there is a 20 second cooldown between active trinket uses, if you trigger one 18 seconds before the fight, it needs to be an effect that lasts for over 18 seconds, preferably for 30. Font of power gives you a 30 second buff, which is why 2 active trinket build is viable. It would not be viable if you had two active trinkets that both had 20 second or shorter buffs.

Furthermore, you should sim yourself. Use raidbots.com. It can either get the data from your armory, or from an addon called Simulationcraft. A very simple addon, just type /simc in-game and copy paste what you get into raidbots. This is beneficial because for some sims you might want the sim to know what’s in your bags, for example if you want to sim your top gear you need to be able to get the simc data in order to do it (otherwise, the sim doesn’t know what you have in your bags, armory API doesn’t give that information!). Sim every item and upgrade you get. That’s how you know what’s the best for you, so definitely get in the habit of using it.

Some extra resources. Here is the link to the mage discord: https://discord.gg/makGfZA. From there you can find the newest information and all the top mages for each spec around the world are there. You can ask questions and find resources pinned on channels.

Wowanalyzer and warcraftlogs. Here is a warcraftlogs link to your profile: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/character/eu/defias-brotherhood/yeshuagave#partition=1. Seems like you only have a couple pre-echoing void nerf logs, new ones would be informative. https://wowanalyzer.com/ <— wowanalyzer, paste a warcraftlogs link to it and analyze the fights and it’ll tell you approximately what you did wrong. It’s not always accurate, but it is very efficient at pointing out basic rotational mistakes. If possible, compare your wowanalyzer results to a top firemages from warcraftlogs and see if it points out any of their “mistakes” (sometimes during a fight it is beneficial to make plays that would be “mistakes” but result in higher dps). Try to only look at single target fights, they tend to be more accurate.

By the way here’s a “short” segment for understanding what warcraftlog numbers/colors mean on your profile. If you have the number 20 in your profile, it means you did as well as 80% of the mages on that fight, so you’re among the bottom 20%. If you have a 95, it means you did better than 95% of the mages, as you are in the top 5 percent. The colors represent this. Gray is 0-25, meaning you either died/are severely undergeared/don’t know your rotation, green is 25-50 meaning bad gear/bad knowledge of rotation, blue 50-75 means average gear/average spec knowledge, purple 75-95 means good gear/you know your rotations basics well, orange 95-98 means you have good gear/very good knowledge of the fight + your rotation, pink which is 99 means you have very good gear + all of the above, and gold which is 100 means you’re the best player for that fight on that difficulty for your spec. Aim for at least purple logs, orange preferred. Pink and golden is bonus if you can do that well.

Finally, regarding the last part, you should log your own raids so you can keep track of your performance. You can do this yourself: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/help/start. Download the software and enable the correct settings, that page covers it. Then the next time you do a raid, make sure to turn combatlogging on (/combatlog in-game) and start live logging from the software. There’s probably a youtube tutorial for it if it sounds too confusing. After that, you can use wowanalyzer and warcraftlogs to analyze what you did wrong and right. Compare your performance to a fire mage that has the best log in the world for that difficulty on that boss fight, and see what you did differently. Master this, and you have a tool that you can use to get all the way to the top 1%, or even further.

As always, feel free to ask questions. I know this was a longer post, but the resources that I gave you here are good enough to get you ahead of almost every other fire mage. You just need the patience to go through them.

5

During combustion you want to use as many instant casts as you can or low cast time spells.

Which means in practice scorch or fire blast.

Basically you start combustion optimally by having instant pyro blast, launch with fireball and before it hits the target you use combustion so you instantly get a proc, then pyro, and blast, pyro and blast, and if you do not have fire blast you use scorch or better phoenix flames if you have it talented, which you probably shouldn’t, and it pisses me off that artifact abilities are not baseline.

6

Ok well thanks for all the info. I was aware of some of it, but you’ve given me some more knowledge: for example, with respect to how to use warcraftlogs and reminded me about wowanalyzer (I think I used that before anyway).

The graphic you posted in your first reply is useful. It actually seems to me from the graphic like you actually Fire Blast before RoP, rather than during it, which I suppose is so that you have as many charges as possible for Combustion.

Well anyway, at this rate I might have learnt my rotation before the next expansion hits ha!

7

Either one is fine. Generally you don’t want to stay at 3 fire blasts, so as soon as you can is fine, but doing it during RoP isn’t the end of the world either. I generally cast it between lucid and RoP so during the gcd.

Good to know I was of some help. Here’s some extra advice for combustion: get a weak aura for blaster master. If you don’t have weak auras 2, get it and learn how to use it, because it’s really useful. I have a blaster master WA myself and with it I’m able to refresh the buff at 0.1 seconds remaining, which would otherwise be impossible. Really useful. With it I never have blaster master fall off because I can time my fire blasts better.

8

Just some quick abbreviations so there is no confusion.
FB = fireblast
RoP = Rune of Power
Combust = Combustion + Balefire (you can just macro them together)

So essentially with the combust there is a setup and then the rotation, and the setup depends on some things, but generally opener is always the same setup.

You always precast fireball, and as you mention it can either crit or not, meaning that your setup begins with heating up or without, so we will cover both.

Setup is just everything you do up until you combust, and you always wanna go into combust with 1 hot streak, and at least 2 FB stacks.

Setup Without heating up:
Lucid > FB > RoP > FB > Meteor > Combust

Setup with heating up:
Lucid > RoP > FB > Meteor > Combust

Now these aren’t ironclad, where you use the FB is not majorly important, but i prefer them like this so you always maintain BM, but the difference is small, some prefer to do combust and then 2nd fireblast into pyro, and it’s more or less the same damage, just preference.

Now you’re in combustion, you did your setup and you’re ready to blast, what do you do? Combustion is not consistent as procs influence how you play it, and reacting and playing around those procs is a good way to tell a good fire mage from bad fire mage. For the sake of explaining this and give a good understanding i will break combustion into 4 stages (which is pretty crazy for a 10 sec CD lul), but keep in mind these are just stages i am making up names for, for explaining this, you won’t see it in guides or anything.

So the 4 stages are:
Burn 1
Recharge
Burn 2
Sustain

So let’s explain each of them 1 by one.

Burn 1:
This is the first phase. You just came into combustion. You will have 2-3 FB and a hot streak ready. Here you just wanna go
Pyro > FB > Pyro > FB > Pyro > FB > Pyro > FB
Now how long you can maintain this depends on lucid procs and if you got heating up on your fireball.
There isn’t really much to this phase, just keep dumping pyros, like there’s no tomorrow.

Recharge:
This one as you could probably guess is about the mechagon bracers. You could argue that this is not a phase, but i put it in to put a few comments on the bracer use.
You enter this phase when you start to get low on FB, and you wanna start considering when you wanna use bracers.
The most important part here is that you always keep in mind that you wanna bracer after FB > Pyro > FB, the is like the most important part.
Another important thing here to make note of is, when you use FB and you’re at 0 stacks, but the next stack is close to recharge, when should you wait and when should you just pop bracers?
This is always gonna be a judgement call, but imo it really depends on burn 1. If you got a long burn 1 (say you go in with 3 FB stacks and get a lucid proc, so around 6+ pyros) then i would never wait unless we’re talking like 0.2s left or less, cause otherwise you might overcap (meaning going out of combust with more than 1 FB stack) which means you missed a pyro.
If you however got a bad burn 1 (going in with 2 stacks and no procs, meaning you get 4 pyros) i would wait if it is less than 1 sec probably, might depend on other things.
As for if you get a 5 pyro burn 1, i would say less than 0.5s

Burn 2
This is just exactly like burn 1, except 1 thing. In this phase you want to use your interupt when you’re running low on FB. Counterspell can trigger lucid and it’s off GCD, so it’s good to use. It won’t always be impactful, but it’s a good habit.
Note: only do this if you’re sure you won’t need counterspell for the next 24 sec, and in M+, be very careful with this.

Sustain
This is when you start to run low on FB again, then you enter sustain phase. You won’t always have this phase, but it happens, but it is usually very short. This is when you start scorching. Now how you do the scorch weaving depends on distance to the target, and when you scorch depends on your stacks and how exactly it lines up with the recharge.
Most important thing here is to not overcap crits and don’t lose BM.
If you’re a good medium distance from the target, then i usually go for Pyro > Scorch FB > Pyro > Pyro > FB
That’s my go to more or less, but in other situations you might have to go
Pyro > Scorch > FB > Pyro
It all depends on the recharge of FB.
Other notable things about this phase is that when you get your FB back, and you essentially have 4 sec recharge time, don’t use that FB, cause you don’t wanna sit with 0 stacks, 3-4 sec recharge on FB and cast a scorch, cause then you lose BM. This is a rare case, but it doesn happen, use FB if you have more than 1.5 stacks, any less and it’s time to scorch.
To practice this phase if you want to, go on a target dummy and do a combustion without bracers.

After notes i am too lazy to go back and edit in:
The distance doesn’t really affect the sustain rotation, just keep in mind pyro will be really slow to land if you’re far away, so you can in some siutations cast pyro and then while in the air go FB and another pyro before it lands. Only in really long range and BL.

Another really important thing that is the reason you have the 2 sustain rotations is depending on your spellqueuewindow, haste and internet.
If you do Pyro > Scorch FB > Pyro > Pyro > FB And you have low spellqueuewindow + high haste + bad internet, then sometimes the game won’t register you casting pyro before scorch, and therefore you miss a crit, this is really annoying, but it happens sometimes during BL, and if you’re prone to this happening i recommend the Pyro > Scorch > Pyro > FB > Pyro > FB.

That should just about cover everything, might have missed something idk, hope this helps.

9

Ok thanks. I have Weak auras 2 and use it, but haven’t been racking Blaster Master. I’m not quite sure how this affects my Combustion rotation though. I mean how would the rotation be different if I didn’t have to keep an eye on Blaster Master? The only thing I can change is to use Fire Blast less often than otherwise, since normally I’m using Fire Blast as often as possible, right? Oh by the way, could you tell me where you got the Combustion graphic please? Was it from wowanalyzer?

Ok thanks. A lot to take in right now, especially with neighbours little kid making lots of noise, but looks useful.

10

There are situations where you might run out of fire blasts, and you need to know exactly how much there is left on your blaster master to think about if you can refresh it with this play or not. I find it tremendously useful, and before it I had a lot of problems relating to blaster master during the combustion. Remember, it cannot at any point drop from 3 stacks.

I don’t know if you’ve ran into this problem: maybe you have but haven’t realized it. I’d still recommend it, even outside of combustion since sometimes you can get a 3 stack and prolong it. It’s difficult to explain, but I would definitely lose dps without that weak aura. You don’t know how good it is until you get it.

11

Fair enough: thanks for the info. Where did you get the Combustion graphic though: wowanalyzer?

12

It was provided by the mage discord. Like I said, those guys create a lot of stuff by themselves and have tons of good resources.

13

Oh yeah it says in the link. Thanks. I think I did see a similar one on wowanalzyer though, which is why I mentioned it.

14

The guys who do the research on the discords are heros. Always happy to answer questions on there too.

15

Yeah I’d like to know exactly how to keep up to date with the best rotation moving forward, so that if I’m still playing next patch/expansion, I don’t have to ask on the forums about it and I know the rotation straight away rather than finding out a patch or more late ha i.e. how would I have found this graphic on discord if I hadn’t asked on the forum? How do I get to the relevant place/places on discord or better, is there a web page where I would find it? Ideally I’ wanting one particular page I can go to to find this in the future (and also right now), rather than having to scour through altered time posts (in case that’s how this is done: I don’t know). I may have been told this before at some point but if so, it hasn’t sunk in.

16

Two important places to look at in the discord: pins for each channel and the information channels (there are three of them). They do also give you pretty in-depth class guides on their website that are kept updated. That and a lot of other stuff can be found at the #welcome-read-first channel.

But yeah, just check the pins and information channels.

17

Ok thanks. I’d still like to know exactly how you navigated to the Combustion graphic, if possible.

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