I’ve asked about this before but I want to clarify my question as it’s still not clear to me.
On the Icy Veins rotation page, the first point in the list says this:
Cast Meteor if Combustion is not coming off cooldown within the next 45 seconds, or Combustion is currently active. If Rune of Power is talented, only cast Meteor during Rune of Power.
This appears to say that I should cast RoP then meteor then Combustion, but if I do this, less of my Combustion will be during RoP, right? If so, isn’t that bad?
Lucid > RoP > Meteor > combustion before it lands, that way you lose around 1 second of RoP for combust, but you gain meteor which is a much bigget gain.
Ok thanks. One thing though: someone else told me to use Lucid when I run out of Fire Blast Charges, immediately after my last Fire Blast. Now I don’t know who to believe.
Im spec’d to frost atm because the loot gods have decided so. Simming 8k higher as frost! This is why I haven’t got the bracers on, as fire they are always on.
You haven’t got to have hot streak or even heating up, its just nice if you have. Using combustion on cooldown is more important.
This question is a bit more complex than it seems and there are some different cases.
I am by no means a top fire mage when it comes to progress, i am 3/12M, but i do have a log average of 85 on mythic and 94 on heroic, so i do know how to do some damage.
The reason most guides will tell you to do 1 precast fireball and immediately go into combust is partly to get combust on CD immediately, but also because they are running double active, and if you fish for too long you will miss the trinket overlaps. I have experimented a lot with both, and fishing until crit, then turn it to hot streak, then do lucid into rune into meteor into combust has given me the most consistent and fluent openers, but it also has some annoying variance, where very few times you will use 6 fireballs before crit, which feels horrible.
Now if you don’t wanna fish even if you’re not using double active and just wanna go straight in, there are still some cases where you want to fish.
I would argue that you always wanna fish on wrathion and hivemind. Wrathion because he is active for 2 minutes, then inactive for 1, so you don’t gain anything from getting combust on CD, so you should focus on having the biggest combust you can, which means fishing.
For hivemind it’s because you wanna combust around 10-12 seconds into the fight to get your huge ignite on the small adds that spawn, therefore you have time to fish so you can get the biggest combust and biggest ignite on them.
Okay so my guess is that you don’t know what double active is.
Currently the meta fire mage build involves using 2 active trinkets, Font of power and gladiator’s badge. What you do is that you activate font and then 20 seconds later you activate badge with combustion and you essentially have 6k worth of intellect from active trinkets, in your combust window.
Not until shredder is fixed. It sims really high, but it doesn’t work in game due to a bug in it’s effect making it way less effective.
And even then double active is really good, but you should sim it for yourself.
I have 430 font and 460 shredder and font sims much better, we’ll see once the 475 shredder decides to finally drop if i am gonna use it, but if you have 445 font, it’s probably always gonna beat it.
So yea sim it for yourself or just check top logs, everyone is double active.
The discorders said the sim was fixed, although I was still seeing differing results sims v dummy comparing it with my 455 lure. I’m running font and shredder atm, gotta jump in arena to get a good badge soon, time will tell I suppose.
I am not sure if it helps, but this is the opener I tend to use on my mage:
If you have two on-use and the raid lead does a 20 second pull:
-I use Font at 16 seconds left to pull, wait until the counter gets down to 3, use a pre-pot and cast a fireball.
-Wait until fireball lands to see if it crits or not. Regardless if it crits or not you should use Memory and a Fire Blast right after (this is why you should wait until fireball hits. If you use Fire Blast and Fireball does not crit then you use the Heating Up proc.)
-Use RoP, your second on-use trinket and meteor combined with Combustion. Fire off the instant pyro and use Fire Blast. When you are getting low of Fire Blast stacks make sure to go Fire Blast>Pyro>Fire Blast before you use the mechagon wrists.
-When combustion ends use your second RoP and continue casting fireballs (or Scorch if the target is below 30% and you use the execute talent) mixed in with Fire blasts if Fireball crits. You will have your third RoP up when Meteor is coming off of CD.
If your raid lead gives you a 10 second pull timer:
-Use Font right when the pull timer starts. At 3 seconds pre-pot and cast a fireball. Do not be afraid to use one or two Fire Blasts since you have a 10 second grace period before you can burst.
Use Memory and a Fire blast at around the 3-4 second second trinket mark, throw down RoP.
By the time you finish RoP cast the trinket should be off CD. Use it, drop your meteor and pop combustion (If you have heating up use a fire blast to get a Hot Streak.)
Continue with the rotation as I wrote in the 20 second pull timer method.
If you only have one on use trinket then you can just use Font at around the 8 second mark and perform the rotation of the 20 second pull timer.
Hope this helps a bit on how to handle combustion.