The Weakest Thing

Andro has been my main for most of my time playing WOW and has generally done okay in instances and raids. However, in ICC I've steadily been falling behind the DPS curve. Her gear is okay (room for improvement, but all in all not bad) and I'm (in most cases) familiar with the fights yet the gap between her DPS and that of our other Arcane mage (not to mention other DPS) seems to be steadily growing. There's only one conclusion to draw from that - the weak link in the process is me.

Looking at a recent log for Andro and my fellow Arcane Mage (it's a Deathwhisper fight), the difference in damage output is pretty clear cut - I'm doing 60% of the damage of my colleague despite near-identical builds and similar gear (he's marginally better, but not enough to account for this difference). Some of it is crit rating, but again only to a small degree, but the most obvious difference is casting time; Mage X casts 50% more Arcane Blasts than Andro does, which adds up (particularly with the Missile Barrage procs).

I'll freely admit I'm not as aggressive as some others, but even when pushing my hardest (and using Quartz and the like to judge latency issues) I'm not getting the results I'd hope for (which has lead to the odd friendly insults from the tanks ...). So, I'm not sure quite how I'm failing (though I have some suspicions) but I'm fairly sure I am. 

So, what to do? I think the best option is to use this as an opportunity to revamp how I play and try to narrow down where the issues are - it's just another mob to slay, albeit a very personal one.

I think hand-eye coordination and reaction time is a factor - the latter for both for me (as an "older" player, though to be honest almost none of us in the ravens are spring chickens) and my gaming rig.

A "back to basics" is in order, most likely starting with a clean UI (so I can judge if the software or my PC plays a role - I know the box struggles with some graphics effects like the Marrowgar fire-fog) and then working on rotations and play style to maximize my casting speed and aggression - if I'm dropping ABs in the rotations that could add up.

I'm debating whether de-macroing all my cooldowns and trinkets is a worthwhile part of this process - on the one hand it could be useful as a learning exercise, but on the other hand selecting and triggering trinkets and multiple sets of cooldowns is more likely to be more of a distraction from the core magery.