DPS Help

[upslash]

Hello all,

Please take a look at my character and let me know what I can do to increase my DPS. I realize I'm missing an enchant on my wrist; just got that piece and haven't had time to enchant it.

can't post links yet, so just paste this on battle.net
wow/en/character/drenden/Upslash/advanced

Rotation: Battle Shout > Rend > MS > CS > OP > MS > OP > Slam etc

We were raiding tonight on Spine and I was doing 16k or so DPS. I feel like I should be doing 25-30k. On HoT heroics I do much better, but that's obviously because of certain buffs and whatnot. What am I doing wrong and what should I fix? I need to get some logs up and that might make it easier... just getting frustrated with my low DPS. What should my DPS be with this gear?

Thanks,
upslash

[WoundedHeart]

Hello all,

Please take a look at my character and let me know what I can do to increase my DPS. I realize I'm missing an enchant on my wrist; just got that piece and haven't had time to enchant it.

can't post links yet, so just paste this on battle.net
wow/en/character/drenden/Upslash/advanced

Rotation: Battle Shout > Rend > MS > CS > OP > MS > OP > Slam etc

We were raiding tonight on Spine and I was doing 16k or so DPS. I feel like I should be doing 25-30k. On HoT heroics I do much better, but that's obviously because of certain buffs and whatnot. What am I doing wrong and what should I fix? I need to get some logs up and that might make it easier... just getting frustrated with my low DPS. What should my DPS be with this gear?

Thanks,
upslash

First off, Landslide on your weapon would be much more beneficial than avalanche. Then i'd say visit wowreforge.com and cap your expertise/get rid of as much of that ugly haste as you can since it does practically nothing for arms. or fury.

Second, I'd recommend some talent adjustments that include [Blood and Thunder] and [Tactical Mastery], personally I'd drop [Second Wind] and move a couple points from [Incite] into BnT. The Tactical Mastery investment is necessary to max arms dps due to the current annoying-ness of stances, i.e. Battle Stance gives you 5% damage increase and Berserker Stance gives 10% increase. Since the only frequently used Arms abilities that require Battle Stance right now are Rend, Overpower and Thunderclap, and Charge I guess, the only reason to BE in Battle Stance is to use those abilities - otherwise, you will see a good dps increase from being in Berserker the majority of the time. Tactical Mastery makes this stance dancing possible by keeping the majority of your rage, though you will also need to learn to bleed off that extra rage pre-stance dance with a quick Heroic Strike so it's not totally wasted.

Anyways, you'll need some simple macros to do this easily.
For example,

#showtooltip Mortal Strike
/cast Berserker Stance
/cast Mortal Strike

and......

#showtooltip Overpower
/cast Battle Stance
/cast Overpower

etc. etc. for the rest of the necessary abilities. Yes I'm sure there is some more complicated macro that could prevent MS from being cast before you switch stances, which can happen, but I'm not macro savvy enough to figure that out and I find this works well for me.

Remember also that Spine isn't the best fight for Arms as your Lambs to the Slaughter buff can potentially run out, which is a huge dps loss and quite a ramp-up, especially if you lost it in that little time it takes for the amalg to blow up and the tendon to come out. But yes, I'd say somewhere around 25-30k is reasonable for your gear. My warrior (Woundedheart, server Garona, worgen in guild Serious Business) is like 390 in mostly LFR gear with LFR Gurth and tends to pull 30-40 in raid and HoT stuff.

As far as your rotation, that's pretty much how arms goes. Your top 4 damage will be Mortal Strike>Overpower>Slam>Melee/Opportunity Strike the majority of the time, not considering AoE fights and stuff. It does take some playing with to realize when you can fit it a Slam or something before your Taste for Blood procs again and you waste an Overpower (the 6 second window between procs I mean). Otherwise make good use of Charge/Sweeping Strikes/Bladestorm/cooldowns and your dps should be pretty solid.

Hope that helps!

[upslash]

First off, Landslide on your weapon would be much more beneficial than avalanche. Then i'd say visit wowreforge.com and cap your expertise/get rid of as much of that ugly haste as you can since it does practically nothing for arms. or fury.

Second, I'd recommend some talent adjustments that include [Blood and Thunder] and [Tactical Mastery], personally I'd drop [Second Wind] and move a couple points from [Incite] into BnT. The Tactical Mastery investment is necessary to max arms dps due to the current annoying-ness of stances, i.e. Battle Stance gives you 5% damage increase and Berserker Stance gives 10% increase. Since the only frequently used Arms abilities that require Battle Stance right now are Rend, Overpower and Thunderclap, and Charge I guess, the only reason to BE in Battle Stance is to use those abilities - otherwise, you will see a good dps increase from being in Berserker the majority of the time. Tactical Mastery makes this stance dancing possible by keeping the majority of your rage, though you will also need to learn to bleed off that extra rage pre-stance dance with a quick Heroic Strike so it's not totally wasted.

Anyways, you'll need some simple macros to do this easily.
For example,

#showtooltip Mortal Strike
/cast Berserker Stance
/cast Mortal Strike

and......

#showtooltip Overpower
/cast Battle Stance
/cast Overpower

etc. etc. for the rest of the necessary abilities. Yes I'm sure there is some more complicated macro that could prevent MS from being cast before you switch stances, which can happen, but I'm not macro savvy enough to figure that out and I find this works well for me.

Remember also that Spine isn't the best fight for Arms as your Lambs to the Slaughter buff can potentially run out, which is a huge dps loss and quite a ramp-up, especially if you lost it in that little time it takes for the amalg to blow up and the tendon to come out. But yes, I'd say somewhere around 25-30k is reasonable for your gear. My warrior (Woundedheart, server Garona, worgen in guild Serious Business) is like 390 in mostly LFR gear with LFR Gurth and tends to pull 30-40 in raid and HoT stuff.

As far as your rotation, that's pretty much how arms goes. Your top 4 damage will be Mortal Strike>Overpower>Slam>Melee/Opportunity Strike the majority of the time, not considering AoE fights and stuff. It does take some playing with to realize when you can fit it a Slam or something before your Taste for Blood procs again and you waste an Overpower (the 6 second window between procs I mean). Otherwise make good use of Charge/Sweeping Strikes/Bladestorm/cooldowns and your dps should be pretty solid.

Hope that helps!

Thanks for the advice, WoundedHeart. I know ‘Landslide’ is the better enchant, although I was trying to wait until I got a better weapon to use it (it’s kind of expensive). About reforging – I will look tomorrow and see what I can do. I used wowreforge a few days ago and got my hit up to 8%; I guess that I didn’t pay close enough attention to the useless haste.

Would you still recommend the talent adjustments if I didn’t want to stance dance? I have tried it, but it was kind of annoying. I should probably try it again, but it annoying simply because I couldn’t see when certain things proc’d… although I think there are addons for that. I might give it a go later this week.

Spine is not a good fight for DPS – you’re right. It just kind of frustrated me that even on the tendon I couldn’t do more than 19k or so.
I will work on the things you mentioned. Thanks for the help.

[asharia]

I would not recommend dancing, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, its a very small gain, if done 100% correctly, and a loss if executed poorly. You will see a far bigger DPS gain from simply focusing on perfecting your basic rotation, and figuring out the ideal timing and usage of CDs for each fight. And secondly, its going away in MoP, so its not like you're going to be 'better off in the long run' or anything like that. But if you want to, go ahead, it is a gain. At the very least, i would be making sure you're in berserker for execute phase and bladestorm.

Your gems and enchants and reforges could be better. Strength on gloves, landslide, that green gem in your shoulders, etc. Tidy all that up.

Spine is a terrible fight to do any sort of comparison on. Its not a typical dps fight by any means. Its not worth looking at the overall dps meters at all. I would look at your meters from Ultraxion, if you want to get an idea of what you're at compared to your guildies or other warriors or whatever.

Move the points from second wind into tactical mastery. Even if you don't dance, its still more useful than second wind (which will almost never proc in a raid environment).
2 pts from incite to blood and thunder for heavy aoe fights like Yorsahj. Or spine, if you're assigned to cleave down bloods, otherwise you're not helping (which is why that fight is no good for meters, because some people are aoeing, some are not, some people are switching to break grips, everyone is saving CDs for the tendon, etc).

Go here.
http://wowreforge.com/US/Drenden/Upslash
Hit 'optimize'. The default weightings are not perfect, but close enough. Reforge how it tells you to. You should gain a tiny bit of crit and cap expertise at the cost of a little bit of mastery.

[upslash]

Thanks for all who suggested changes. Check my page to see what I've done to my talent spec:

can't post links yet, so just paste this on battle.net
wow/en/character/drenden/Upslash/advanced

I can see a noticeable DPS increase for AoE for sure. Good suggestions. I will be reforging soon after I finish LFR. But I have a question: what gear should I buy next with VP points? (I have 2300+ points right now) Is there any order that I should buy the gear in?

Thanks,
upslash

EDIT: Just got LFR hands and legs and shoulders. So I may not be gem'ed, enchanted, and reforged when you look. And I decided to buy the VP helm.