This entire thread proves you wrong. The theoretical best for rotation mages is around 20-40k higher than fireball spam.
Not to mention the only reason people like bucky hit those numbers is because of rotation mages. With only tiles bucky does around 80-90k dps which almost all rotation mages of a similar skill level hit higher.
Without a rotation mage like @Delceri or myself fireball spam is nowhere near as good considering when running optimal affixes a fireball spam mage would be losing 15% extra damage they get for free from rotation mages.
Lets say bucky is hitting good numbers; say 105k on gorgon (which he has done before) The only way he hit that was with full weakness (2 from mage and 1 from musky), and frost for iceheart. That already is a 20% damage boost give or take.
Bleed according to that post on mage is around a 4.8% damage boost.
Then on top of that the tilesets bucky uses are the fireball spam tilesets in that post which have an average of 25.41% damage boost
If you take away only the tilesets bucky would have done under 100k. Take away all of the other damage boosts he has and he is suddenly crippled.
The thing with it is rotation mage is much harder but has higher damage potential both solo and in groups. The reason fireball spam is seen to be the way to play mage is because of mages like bucky who hit 110k on a lot of bosses. People never stop to consider what damage boosts where nececary for him to hit those numbers.
Scott’s thread shows the max dps possible by a human with only pots and perfect tile procs. No mage weakness or iceheart for fireball spammers