PLS help my DPS is horrible dont know what im doing wrong

[dimisrb]

Here are my Logs for first 3 bosses on HC can u pls give me some advice and check what im doing wrong https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/tGPhwnj1yJZa4CR6#

[Deleted]

Never cast more than 3 UA's before you start draining. By the time you've casted your fourth you've already lost a total of ~5 ticks from your previous UA's which could've been affected by Malefic Grasp. If you cast too many UA's your other dots will fall off during your drain cycle as well. Your rotation should be pretty simple:

Agony --> Siphon Life --> Corruption 2-3 UA's--> Reap Souls --> Drain the entire duration of those UA's
Then repeat. If you procc Gul'dan trinket or have BL while proccing alot of Soul Conduit at 4+ Shards you can cast 4-5 UA's depending on proccs.

[kaib]

https://www.youtube.com/user/Yipzarena

watch some of the stuff in that channel. the basic guides and the log reviews mostly.

[ehxy]

Another thing to keep in mind is fights do require spec changes in nighthold. There's simply no one spec for all. Yipz's logs show him changing at least 1 talent every fight where he has parsed over 80. Fights like botanist you could go sow the seeds but you would have to maintain a very steady uptime with it for it to be worth it.

[Deleted]

Never cast more than 3 UA's before you start draining. By the time you've casted your fourth you've already lost a total of ~5 ticks from your previous UA's which could've been affected by Malefic Grasp. If you cast too many UA's your other dots will fall off during your drain cycle as well. Your rotation should be pretty simple:

Agony --> Siphon Life --> Corruption 2-3 UA's--> Reap Souls --> Drain the entire duration of those UA's
Then repeat. If you procc Gul'dan trinket or have BL while proccing alot of Soul Conduit at 4+ Shards you can cast 4-5 UA's depending on proccs.

You contradict yourself in the same post.

There is no problem to casting more than 2-3 UA's if you have procs and you're swimming in shards like you suggest at the end of your post.

Also, you want to reap after 2 UA's, not after you have finished dumping. If you are dumping 3 UAs, it should be UA, UA, Reap, UA, Drain.

[Tikishock]

You contradict yourself in the same post.

There is no problem to casting more than 2-3 UA's if you have procs and you're swimming in shards like you suggest at the end of your post.

Also, you want to reap after 2 UA's, not after you have finished dumping. If you are dumping 3 UAs, it should be UA, UA, Reap, UA, Drain.

Really? I never considered this. I usually always Reap after all the UA dumps. I never considered Reaping after the standard UAx2 and then keep going with UA if swimming in shards.

[Deleted]

You are missing 3 ticks from casting 4 UA, not 5. The reason you shouldn't dump more than 2 (3 bl/guldan proc) it's to not get shard starved and get the most optimal amount of UA ticks under drains umbrella, but if the situation allows for it, there is absolutely nothing wrong with using 4 UAs.

[Deleted]

Really? I never considered this. I usually always Reap after all the UA dumps. I never considered Reaping after the standard UAx2 and then keep going with UA if swimming in shards.

Yep.

The whole point of reaping there (when at least having 2 souls) is so that all ticks of your 2-4 UA's happen under reap.
The first UA tick happens roughly around 1.6 seconds after it is applied. Inside those 1.6 seconds you have time to cast another UA, and then cast reap (as it is off the GCD) and then continue dumping until you are at 2 or 3 shards (so you won't overcap while draining). Doing this will mean as many ticks as possible will be under reap, and most importantly, the LAST tick of each of your UA's will happen while under reap, giving you double the chance to get a Fatal Echoes proc.

If you reap before dumping, your reap is doing fuck all for the 3 or so seconds that you spend casting and then waiting for that first UA to tick. If you reap after dumping, you've missed a shit load of ticks from being under reap.

After the 2nd UA is the sweet spot of no missed ticks, and UA's ending while still under reap.

[Tikishock]

Yep.

The whole point of reaping there (when at least having 2 souls) is so that all ticks of your 2-4 UA's happen under reap.
The first UA tick happens roughly around 1.6 seconds after it is applied. Inside those 1.6 seconds you have time to cast another UA, and then cast reap (as it is off the GCD) and then continue dumping until you are at 2 or 3 shards (so you won't overcap while draining). Doing this will mean as many ticks as possible will be under reap, and most importantly, the LAST tick of each of your UA's will happen while under reap, giving you double the chance to get a Fatal Echoes proc.

If you reap before dumping, your reap is doing fuck all for the 3 or so seconds that you spend casting and then waiting for that first UA to tick. If you reap after dumping, you've missed a shit load of ticks from being under reap.

After the 2nd UA is the sweet spot of no missed ticks, and UA's ending while still under reap.

Yeck yes! Thank you for the tip and hopefully I will see a bump in my dps and logs! I'm excited to raid this week as I now have this along with aligning buffs and using second potion with reap to work on to improve my dps.

Also, is there a way to track Fatal Echo procs on logs to see how many you UA you are getting from it?

[Deleted]

You are missing 3 ticks from casting 4 UA, not 5. The reason you shouldn't dump more than 2 (3 bl/guldan proc) it's to not get shard starved and get the most optimal amount of UA ticks under drains umbrella, but if the situation allows for it, there is absolutely nothing wrong with using 4 UAs.

Yep, if you drain immediately after the 4th UA lands you will only have missed 3 ticks of UA.

However, there is not a set in stone number of UA's you should cast, like "3 under BL/Whispers". It all depends on the attempt itself. SC or Effigy? If SC - good SC RNG? Lots of Agonies out? You were targetted by a mechanic which meant you had to move so pooled up to max shards? You have the legendary belt? You have haste procs? You have 4 set?

I cast 3 or 4 UA's far far far more often than I cast 2 UA's.

- - - Updated - - -

Yeck yes! Thank you for the tip and hopefully I will see a bump in my dps and logs! I'm excited to raid this week as I now have this along with aligning buffs and using second potion with reap to work on to improve my dps.

Also, is there a way to track Fatal Echo procs on logs to see how many you UA you are getting from it?

There is no specific tracker, but you can divide your number of UA ticks by 4 which will give you a fairly accurate estimation of how many UA's you had applied to the boss. You then subtract your number of UA casts and you're left with the number of free UA's you had. Obviously this doesn't take into account any UA's that expired before ticking fully, so it isn't 100% accurate, but it's accurate enough, probably within a 1 or 2 UA margin depending on the fight (how many UA's you dumped into adds that died before it expired).

[SpikeySquad]

Yeck yes! Thank you for the tip and hopefully I will see a bump in my dps and logs! I'm excited to raid this week as I now have this along with aligning buffs and using second potion with reap to work on to improve my dps.

Also, is there a way to track Fatal Echo procs on logs to see how many you UA you are getting from it?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...gid=1833529997 Slightly more complicated way to do it. Like Prawntage says there is an easier way.

[Deleted]

You contradict yourself in the same post.

There is no problem to casting more than 2-3 UA's if you have procs and you're swimming in shards like you suggest at the end of your post.

Also, you want to reap after 2 UA's, not after you have finished dumping. If you are dumping 3 UAs, it should be UA, UA, Reap, UA, Drain.

No, you're wrong for various reasons.
I didn't write in depth why you're casting more than 3 UA's during haste effects but I'll try to explain.
One of the main reasons is that casting more than 3 UA's without additional haste effects will cause your Corruption and SL to run out and sometimes even force you to refresh Agony midway during your UA dump if you cast more than 3, which will net huge dpslosses. Secondly' you might mess up your Shard balance. Why it's okay to cast more than 3 UA's during Bloodlust and Gul'dan trinket proccs is because the duration of UA is decreased by haste allowing your other dots to be maintained during the entire UA cycle.
Sure, if you have 80% haste up and procc Soul conduit like a mad man leaving you with 3+ shards after casting your fourth UA it could be fine but usually it's not. Keep your UA dumps balanced. Even if you're at 5 Shards after doing a 3 UA dump, starting to cast a fourth one without haste buffs will net you a dpsloss because your entire dump gets ruined due to low Drain soul uptime.

You're partially right about your reap soul usage. I was talking about reaping when you're at 1-2 souls, which we most often are when doing a UA dump.
If you got 4+ souls, reap after the second UA, always as it will grant your UA's 100% benefit from the reap effect.
However if you, theoretically, cast 2 UA's during BL into a reap --> Get mad proccs and cast 2 UA's more and then start draining you'll lose the majority of your reap uptime while you're using Drain Soul. This is the problem.
Your goal is to have as much Reap soul uptime during your Drain Soul, not your Unstable Affliction.
A second reason why you wan't to delay your Reap soul is because you wan't your UA's to benefit from Reap soul at the end of their duration right before they expire so you double your chanse of Fatal Echoes.

If you're dumping 3 UA's you should reap at the third UA if you got 1 stack, after the second UA if you got 2 stacks.
If you got 3 stacks you wan't to delay your reap til you get 4 stacks instead.
This is because it allows you to get 2 Drain cycles during 4 reap souls as opposed to only 1 cycle if you reap at 1-3 stacks.

In general you always wan't your rotation to be about drain cycles. It's all about allowing your UA to as much benefit from Drain soul as possible and reap to be up during the time you drain soul. You also wan't to have maximum uptime of Corruption, Agony and SL during your Drains.

The rotation follows: Agony -> SL -> Corruption -> UA + UA -> Reap(If at =/<3 Shards) -> Full drain soul cycle. When your UA's run out, repeat the cycle, even if you're refreshing your dots too early.

If you got 4 shards or more, cast 3 UA's and reap after the second UA at 2+ stacks or third at 1 stack of souls.
As said, your dps is based around Drain soul uptime. If you're spending too much of your time casting UA's instead of Draining your dps will be lower.

In a complete standstill Patchwerk fight you should be having close to 50% drain soul uptime. If you're spending your time casting 4+ UA's in a row consistently(even due to proccs) your drain uptime will be crap.

[Deleted]

Never cast more than 3 UA's before you start draining. By the time you've casted your fourth you've already lost a total of ~5 ticks from your previous UA's which could've been affected by Malefic Grasp. If you cast too many UA's your other dots will fall off during your drain cycle as well. Your rotation should be pretty simple:

Agony --> Siphon Life --> Corruption 2-3 UA's--> Reap Souls --> Drain the entire duration of those UA's
Then repeat. If you procc Gul'dan trinket or have BL while proccing alot of Soul Conduit at 4+ Shards you can cast 4-5 UA's depending on proccs.

Some mayor mistakes there. The ammount of UA ticks when the guldan trinket procs is the same as without the trinket, but everything ticks way more faster. So just continue going for the 2x UA reap and drain cycles.

And to OP try to keep your dots up >90% and only cast more than 2x UA when you're shardcapped or SC procs alot. Try to keep your shards lower than 4.

Dont use reap randomly. Only use it at 2/4 stacks.

[Deleted]

No, you're wrong for various reasons.
I didn't write in depth why you're casting more than 3 UA's during haste effects but I'll try to explain.
One of the main reasons is that casting more than 3 UA's without additional haste effects will cause your Corruption and SL to run out and sometimes even force you to refresh Agony midway during your UA dump if you cast more than 3, which will net huge dpslosses.
No it won't. Letting Corr/SL fall off is fine, not an issue.
Secondly' you might mess up your Shard balance. Why it's okay to cast more than 3 UA's during Bloodlust and Gul'dan trinket proccs is because the duration of UA is decreased by haste allowing your other dots to be maintained during the entire UA cycle.
No, you cast more under haste buffs because you are generating more shards and need to dump more to not overcap. You are losing just as many UA ticks under haste buffs by casting >2 as you are when doing it ouside of haste buffs. It is the same either way. The important point is just to not waste shards.
Sure, if you have 80% haste up and procc Soul conduit like a mad man leaving you with 3+ shards after casting your fourth UA it could be fine but usually it's not. Keep your UA dumps balanced. Even if you're at 5 Shards after doing a 3 UA dump, starting to cast a fourth one without haste buffs will net you a dpsloss because your entire dump gets ruined due to low Drain soul uptime.
But losing shards means you lose a UA (and 4 ticks) from being potentially drained. You miss a Fatal Echo proc potentially. You are reducing the Contagion up time. All to drain a few extra ticks that otherwise would have been lost due to casting a couple more UA's?

You're partially right about your reap soul usage. I was talking about reaping when you're at 1-2 souls, which we most often are when doing a UA dump.
If you got 4+ souls, reap after the second UA, always as it will grant your UA's 100% benefit from the reap effect.
However if you, theoretically, cast 2 UA's during BL into a reap --> Get mad proccs and cast 2 UA's more and then start draining you'll lose the majority of your reap uptime while you're using Drain Soul. This is the problem.
Your goal is to have as much Reap soul uptime during your Drain Soul, not your Unstable Affliction.
Why on earth is reap up time during DS more important than UA? Reap Soul uptime is important for UA as >50% of our damage comes from the periods UA is applied, and we want every tick and the final tick to be covered by Reap so that we get more damage and increased fatal echoes chance.
A second reason why you wan't to delay your Reap soul is because you wan't your UA's to benefit from Reap soul at the end of their duration right before they expire so you double your chanse of Fatal Echoes.

If you're dumping 3 UA's you should reap at the third UA if you got 1 stack, after the second UA if you got 2 stacks.
No, if you are intending to reap with 1 stack, you simply reap when your most recent UA is at 4s remaining in its duration, that way all 3 UA's expire under reap.
If you got 3 stacks you wan't to delay your reap til you get 4 stacks instead.
This is because it allows you to get 2 Drain cycles during 4 reap souls as opposed to only 1 cycle if you reap at 1-3 stacks.

In general you always wan't your rotation to be about drain cycles. It's all about allowing your UA to as much benefit from Drain soul as possible and reap to be up during the time you drain soul. You also wan't to have maximum uptime of Corruption, Agony and SL during your Drains.
Agreed, but Corr/SL uptime is about 100x less important. Agony is the only one we actively care about having up during drain cycles.

The rotation follows: Agony -> SL -> Corruption -> UA + UA -> Reap(If at =/<3 Shards) -> Full drain soul cycle. When your UA's run out, repeat the cycle, even if you're refreshing your dots too early.


If you got 4 shards or more, cast 3 UA's and reap after the second UA at 2+ stacks or third at 1 stack of souls.
As said, your dps is based around Drain soul uptime. If you're spending too much of your time casting UA's instead of Draining your dps will be lower.

In a complete standstill Patchwerk fight you should be having close to 50% drain soul uptime. If you're spending your time casting 4+ UA's in a row consistently(even due to proccs) your drain uptime will be crap.

My comments are in red.


EDIT:

Ok so I've just mathed this out and discussed it on the warlock discord as it intrigued me. And it's still a dps gain to dump if you get good SC RNG or whatever until you've dumped 5. After the 5th dump you fuck the RNG and just drain. But if you have dumped 4, and you're at 4 or 5 shards, it still should be a dps gain overall to dump a 5th.

[Deleted]

Letting your Corruption or SL fall off isn't the entire world, that's true but it the malefic grasp build is all about consistency and moreso shardmanagement.
In general you're rarely allowed to dump more than 3-4 UA's as you always wan't to have atleast 2 shards ready when a drain cycle ends. If you're swimming in proccs, by all means, cast a fourth Unstable Affliction. Anything more will severely cripple the flow of your rotation, especially if you play with Soul Effigy which should net a higher dps overall than Soul Conduit.

The shards generated during haste effects are pure rng. I'll maintain my position that you can cast more UA's during haste effects because your Drain Soul uptime is still being close to optimal and your Drain soul effect benefiting all of your damage abilities. You might scoof at Corruption and Siphon Life damage but it's still close to 15-20% of your total damage. You're losing as many UA ticks when casting a fourth UA under haste influence as you would've without but you'll still keep the rotation clean. Another main reason why it's fine to cast higher amounts of Unstable Affliction is because you generally only reap at 1-2 stacks and you want as many UAs as possible to be affected by reap souls because of huge Soul generation variance. Doing so will also greatly increase your fatal echoes chances.

At extreme haste levels, say Bloodlust + Gul'dan trinket procc you'll also lose far more than 4 ticks of UA's when casting a fourth UA. Your GCD can't go below 1 second and by the time you've casted 4 UA's your first one's usually down to 1-2 seconds left depending on your haste levels. This causes you to lose alot more ticks in total. This might generate dps boosts though if you're extremely lucky and get 2-4 Fatal Echoes proccs while draining but generally you don't.

You usually wan't to reap(at 1 stack) close to your Drain soul because that's the last time you cast an Unstable Affliction. Isn't it obvious? If you cast 2 UA's, Reap, cast 2 more UA's and start draining your Reap souls will almost have ended when you start draining. Remember that the biggest damage contributor to your entire specc is Malefic Grasp granting 70% extra DoT damage. You want to stack these multipliers as effectively as possible meaning Reap Souls should always have a full uptime while you're draining. Besides, if you reap at the last UA casted your Reap Soul will usually have as much uptime as if you'd casted it on the second.
If you cast reap after a second UA(At 1 stack) your third and potentially fourth Unstable Afflictions won't be benefiting fully from the reap usage and you'll lose Drain Soul + Reap multipliers affecting your Unstable Affliction at the same time.
As you've said it's fine to delay the reap usage by 1-2 second after your last UA has been cast for increased fatal Echoes procc chance if it's being cast at 1 stack. This require alot of tinkering with your playstyle and can punish you alot of your timing is off as you potentially lose damage from unstable being unaffected by reap while not getting any Fatal Echoes at all. In general, if you're new to Affliction it's easier to just reap after your last UA and start draining.

Maybe casting a fifth Unstable Affliction if you're rnjesus will net you a dps boost, I'm not sure since this rarely happens. I rarely play with Soul Conduit so I'm rarely swimming in proccs so I'm not too sure about this. I still got top 100 on majority of fights in Nighthold so I'm no stranger to how this class works.

[vaeevictiss]

I usually do 2-3 but i find on mythic chrom im just capping on shards instantly unless i dump 5 UAs.

Tho i have been confused on dot application. The general idea is to drain as long as reap and UA are up, even if you let corr and SL fall off. But say i do my "rotation", UA is gone my other dots are about halfway...should i just recast them for the hell of it even though they are only halfway, or do another UA/drain cycle which would let them fall off way too soon it would seem which is also bad.

[Deleted]

I usually do 2-3 but i find on mythic chrom im just capping on shards instantly unless i dump 5 UAs.

Tho i have been confused on dot application. The general idea is to drain as long as reap and UA are up, even if you let corr and SL fall off. But say i do my "rotation", UA is gone my other dots are about halfway...should i just recast them for the hell of it even though they are only halfway, or do another UA/drain cycle which would let them fall off way too soon it would seem which is also bad.

Capping isn't the entire world if you constantly stay above 4 Shards. If you're at 4-5 shards when you've casted your third UA it's fine to cast a fourth one on, especially if you're playing Soul Conduit in the opener. Usually 3 UA's is enough though. You could try casting a fifth but I personally wouldn't do that. Doing maximum damage isn't so much about getting every single shard to be spent but more about always having Shards ready for your Drain cycles since all your damage occours during Drain Soul. Not while you're casting Unstable Affliction.
What I'd do instead is probably to fit two fast Drain Cycles of 2-3 during one set of Agony + SL + Corruption since the duration of those UA's so low assuming you don't get more than 1 Fatal Echoes.

DoT application is pretty simple. You wan't every ~15 sec to consist of a drain cycle with every DoT up. Continuing to Drain without refreshing dots when they've already fallen off is only worth it if you get +2 Fatal Echoes proccs imo. If SL and Corruption are off and you got 1 UA procc and you're at full shards. Just refresh the duration of everything on the spot and start from scratch.

If you cast your instant dots into 2 UA's, get no proccs and the UA's run out while the dots have ~6-7 seconds left. Look at your Shard count. If you're at 2-3 shards, cast a single UA and keep draining until you have to refresh dots again.
If you're at 4+ Shards, start a new Drain cycle and refresh all instant dots on the spot, even if you're overlapping(Due to pandemic you won't lose much out on it anyway and be will be able to fit 2 UA dumps in one set of maintenance dots).
If you're at 0-1 shard, just keep Draining the single maintenance dot's until you need to refresh them and do the cycle over again praying for atleast 1 more Soul Shard during this duration. Chances are, if you're at 0-1 shards after a drain cycle that you've overcomitted with your UA casts and done too big dumps before or your RNG is complete crap. If you keep yourself to dumps of 2-3 your Shard regen should be fairly consistent.

Always try to save Reap souls for when you've started a completely new Drain Cycle. If you get 2 Fatal Echoes when your Corruption and SL is about to expire and you're holding 1-2 souls, don't use them here. Save them until you've completely refreshed your duration when everything's up. If you got +6 souls it's fine to use them as you'll be able to fit 2 entire Drain Cycles in the duration after the fatal echoes proccs.

Always refresh agony, no matter your amount of proccs. If you theoretically have Agony about to expire with 3 Fatal Echoes proccs up, refresh Agony at the last second and keep draining. When there's one UA's left, refresh Agony again, even if you're overlapping and restart your rotation from scratch.