[Help Me!] The "Fix My DPS" Thread (Read first post before posting)

[Edust]

Thanks for taking the time to review logs and respond on here, @gracefuldeath, even when you're helping other people, it helps the rest of us just by reading your take. Well done, sir

[vortextk]

I am fairly happy where I am at on my warlock. I think I'm better at my dk and since that is always melee, fumble a bit less with sometimes terrible targeting on encounters, but overall happy with numbers. 10H ultraxion earlier this week at like 35-36k felt low though. No I don't have a log off that, I was always too lazy until now. Everyone in that group topped out around that and a few less so maybe the fight ran a bit long and doomguard/bl accounted for too little, I don't know. The only important buff I was missing was damage %, arcane/ret/whatever buff.

I have a macro to start with meta, soulburn, felguard attack, felstorm and curse of elements on my target; one gcd. I realize in lfr I had boomkins and such but in the 10man no one else puts up that debuff. Do I want to go straight into immo, or incinerate for the crit debuff? I casted incin this time. It's annoying that the crit debuff doesn't update on ticking dots and on a lot of fights, even regular raid not lfr ones, I normally don't get a nice window to cast it a tad bit early for the pull. I then fat fingered a freaking soul stone right after that because that new pull macro I just mentioned I have to click since I haven't decided where I want to put it at, so all those dots got delayed by incin and soulstone and would otherwise be up just a tiny bit more of the fight. Entire opener felt off which I always feel is killer on my lock but it is what it is, I don't feel like spamming lfr for more logs and would rather get more from my 10H group next week.

I have haste/int gems because I offspec affliction and until just this week have been running a haste demo spec as well, I plan on actually reforging when I need to respec between the two, mostly because I want to be more mastery heavy for spine as demo but that's not going to help my affliction play of course.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...uriia/advanced
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=1545&e=1832


No idea what I could try different or what I am doing wrong overall so just, be gentle, an overview of what anyone sees would be helpful. I don't think I'm awful but there's always room for improvement.

[gracfuldeath]

Just quick comments.

Your macro actually uses 2 GCDs. 1 GCD to activate meta, 1 GCD to cast CoE. Only Soulburn, feltsorm are off GCD. It's a small techincal issue, but felt like pointing it out. It actually does matter for spine, since every GCD counts.

The general opener for demo is pre-pot> pre-cast Shadow Bolt or Incinerate (based on demo spec) > combat > CoE (if needed) > Meta/DS:Felguard + Felstorm when pet in range > Activate Soulburn > Immolate > BoD > Corruption > HoG > Shadowflame (if in melee range) > Filler (shadow bolt or Incinerate based on spec). And the moment feltsorm ends (38s left on the CD, or when he stops spinning), use the activated soulburn to summon the felhunter. Pop Immolation Aura/Doomguard at the optimal time.

If you're not getting the opening room to precast before pulls, yell at your tank. All good tanks/guilds for every fight have a countdown for precasting and prepotting. For your regular guild runs that is, not lfr.

You're probably overclipping BoD. BoD is only clipped when Buffs present > Previous buffs when cast. Simply put, if you put BoD up with Meta, don't clip it when you don't have meta. Never clip your first BoD since it is amazin (lots of procs and DS:Felguard),When in doubt, don't clip.

You missed the best time to pop doomguard by ~3s. Yea, bad rng gave you only a few second window for the best time to pop it, but you popped it after PT faded, which was up with Lightweave and pre-pot for a short time. The optimal time to pop the doom guard for most fights is during the opener, when you have as many procs proccing (power torrent, lightweave, WoU stacks) while your pre-pot is still active. Only ~750k dmg from the doomguard as demo is a bit low.

Shadowflaming on CD was good. Other dots not mentioned were good. soulburn on CD was good. Your DI spriest could have been better.

For spine as demo, yea you'll want to have mastery over crit. But you still want a heavy amount of haste. 1) to actually get dmg on the tendons 2) to get out more filler to hopefully have meta for the majority of the lifts. Tons of spine help threads here. But you'll want a lot of haste, and you'll want the SB spec, but incin spec glyphs and filler, and glyph of corruption instead of meta.

[vortextk]

I never clip the first bod anymore, after that its kind of hit and miss of if I remember what I had when I cast it before though I will usually always clip if I have meta and any other kind of proc at the same time. I will be switching glyphs, I'm not bothering now because spine isn't until tomorrow night and I do 5mans and easy crap just to play the character for fun. Doomguard might've been better if I wasn't fumbling after casting a damn soulstone, lining him up with cooldowns was actually fun when I started to get more serious on warlock but what is good doomguard damage then? Like slightly more, or does it look hundreds of thousands too low?

My haste is as is + a bit more since I switch cunning for valor trinket, reforged to mastery. It'll be like 2250 on spine, 2k~ right over the corruption extra tick with cunning on instead. My DI target was just a random lfr dude and the two boomkins were both in mostly pvp gear so I wasn't very interested in them. For lfr I'd just prefer a resto druid lol but none of those either.

And for pre casting, I guess I can try, but my warlock has been pugging almost every run since I started playing it, couple of mostly friend runs. I only just joined a pug and got asked to stay with them last week and they were good on their own, but even then they were kind of fixing tanks, so it was all in flux.

I had 3k~ haste before but it's so impossible trying to get meta up everytime on 25% now. I think the first time I ever tried spine it was like 15%, and even then I couldn't guarantee it. If it was 0(or I guess 5% with that huge tendon nerf) I would probably stick with pure haste and try for a meta every lift. I'd probably cut off my own arm than want to play warlock on spine before the big nerf hit.

I guess some of those top logs(heroic) are with faster killing groups, legendary and maybe a PI or something; it just doesn't seem like I can compete at all.

Oh and here for that macro.

I didn't know the recording wouldn't pick up my cursor so it makes it a little funny to watch(clicked the meta icon on the top row left side) and I didn't realize CoE was still up, but you see it refresh and me use meta all in one go. Even if I just cast meta and then curse of elements manually while everything looks like it's on cooldown, little spinning colorization thing, it does go off. Though until you said so I didn't know this seemed weird, it does now. Oh and yes I only press the macro once for both spells.

[gracfuldeath]

For demo, I've seen numbers from 900k-1.2mil ish for doomguard. So, 150k off might not sound like a lot, but for one gcd spell, it is.

Imo, from my personal experience and the wrath of the rng gods. 2250 is still way too low for spine (later reading, you do make a point with the nerf at 25% and how that alone makes it hard for several metas regardless of haste) . I used to run with 2.6kish, and still had 4/6 metas per lift at best. Right now since it's on farm and we kill one tendon in one go, I just stick with my afflic reforge of 3k+ haste. That's a bit overkill though. Here's how you should look at it. If on the first lift of each plate, your group is consistently getting it to <40%, more comfortably in the 20-30% range, then having a meta the second lift doesn't matter as much since they probably kill it as you finish dotting up. This means you can stack a bit more mastery, and even use the MWC trinket over the VP trinket (for the trinket swap, I'd definitely consider it only if you get it to the 20-30% range). What that train of thought is: if the group can kill the tendons the second time each time without your meta, then you can stack more mastery for more umph into the first lift. If you can't and you need meta for the second lift, drop mastery for more haste. But either way, still have a decent amount of haste for actual tendon dmg.

Dont just switch glyphs for spine. Also respec back into Bane. Still use incinerate as a filler, but Bane is a must.

And I did try to cut off my own arm on spine. And that was only the at 5% nerf. :x

As for precasting, you should try. Especially if you're looking to get into a harder progressing group. With a proper countdown, you can finish your precast, pop a potion, and start casting your first dot, and the tank pulls just before the precast hits. Just imo, if a group doesn't care enough to do a proper countdown, they aren't going to go far. I'm not saying every countdown has to be perfect, but it's not hard to just go 3 2 1.

As for the macro, I understood what you meant. I was just wanting to point out that it uses up 2 GCDs. For spine tendons, that's something that matters. Because you have 30s of meta (since you unglyph it for spine), but only 18s on tendon dmg window, you pop meta and CDs before the tendon appears. This way every since move you make goes directly into a dmging affect. With CoE, on spine that's something to definitely make sure you know if someone else auto puts it up. But like I said, there's been several in depth threads here about spine itself.

I guess some of those top logs(heroic) are with faster killing groups, legendary and maybe a PI or something; it just doesn't seem like I can compete at all.

If by compete you mean not able to rank. Then yea. With the 25% nerf, time length becomes a much larger determining factor in ranking. And as always, some people do tricks or special buffs to a specific person to get them to rank. For example, want to try to rank on Yor? Be the only one to aoe on the Yor adds, and have several black phases. For many classes, that's a guarunteed rank. But most people just have everyone aoe them down to make things easier.

[vortextk]

Well I mean true ranking, not padding(aoe and multi-dotting with others not), like ultraxion or something. Even then a rogue was offering thousands of gold for my unholy frenzy on dk once lol but unless all 200 top warlocks for ultraxion are getting outside buffs their damage just seems so high, guess I would need to look.

Is losing power torrent the only problem with doomguard? I'm usually watching my WoU stacks with an eye on the int proc that will drop the soonest, soon as I get to like 2s I summon which again is usually 7-9 int stacks. That opener was just fubar'd but I wouldn't be sure what else to do to up its damage.

Let's see..Yeah, I just can't see myself getting double meta anymore. It was difficult before and the amalgams go so fast now. Tendon damage seems like it'll be fine, we got to like 10% on the one try we did do in 2 lifts with the rogue literally falling asleep and being kind of new to that character. I had a few mistakes and I'm sure overall we would get it in 2 easy, and that was with only 1 meta anyway in a haste build. It was late and people were complaining about going longer. I can't use mwc because this character was made in like december and I would start from scratch in molten front dailies lol, though I thought about it(until I read where I would get it from). Honestly I don't even think I have to try much harder for it to not be a problem, but I want to beat people a warlock "shouldn't" be beating on tendons, heh.

I had to look up that talent because I honestly forgot what it was called but yes, I do need to get bane back again before I go tomorrow thanks. As for count down, sure they do and I usually pre-pot, but they were swapping tanks a lot with one terrible pug(can't face zonozz the right way literally 7 times) and people filling in, but it's more stable now.

That macro is just my opener I'm tinkering with since I don't have hotkeys for felstorm and having a shift # and ctrl # as opener spells suck and I'm already used to them there when I just need them one at a time, it's not a spine macro. Spine I manually use meta earlier but I'm pretty sure I forget to keep fel flaming the amalgam for int stacks as it blows up.


Overall I can't tell if going down to the corruption haste point and stacking more mastery helps on a long boss as demo. Sure in a 5man I do more since I'm never going to see two metas even if everyone else pulls 10k, I just couldn't pull off 2 metas on spine and I was going to try a full run next week to see if it felt stronger or weaker for me.

[gracfuldeath]

As for just ranking on Ultrax. Time is still a large factor. Many guild are killing it within 4 HoT's and less. But if you're killing it relatively fast to other ranking guilds, and still not ranking, it comes down to a couple possibilities. 1) You're missing an important buff, like lust or 5% haste. 2) You're spending too much time faded out, meaning you're hitting your button and staying faded out for almost the full duration instead of waiting until the last moment to hit it in order to maximize your dps time. 3) For that particular run, you had a vast majority of the Fading Lights, further decreasing your dps uptime. 4) You're actually not performing/gearing the way you think you are. In that case you should review the logs, run simulations to better gear/reforge, use places like this, etc.

I haven't done demo in a while, but I pass rank limit each week on Ultrax for destro/afflic without any special buffs (like PI). Not top 10 ranks or anything, but top 100 level. So it's doable, you just have to figure out what you're missing. However with demo, and rng with Impending Doom, being able to rank is a bit more volatile and based on number of metas you can get. In some ways, more haste builds for more total metas

Is losing power torrent the only problem with doomguard? I'm usually watching my WoU stacks with an eye on the int proc that will drop the soonest, soon as I get to like 2s I summon which again is usually 7-9 int stacks. That opener was just fubar'd but I wouldn't be sure what else to do to up its damage.

Overall I can't tell if going down to the corruption haste point and stacking more mastery helps on a long boss as demo. Sure in a 5man I do more since I'm never going to see two metas even if everyone else pulls 10k, I just couldn't pull off 2 metas on spine and I was going to try a full run next week to see if it felt stronger or weaker for me.

That was your problem on that log with doomguard. PT and LW far outweigh an extra stack or two of WoU. It would take 5-7 stacks of WoU to equal just PT OR LW. Might have just been the fubar'ed opener to missed the perfect window, but just wanted to make sure you knew when the perfect window to pop it was. It's when PT/LW/Pre-pot are all rolling w/ as many stacks of WoU you can get before one falls off. Assuming you can't get both LW and PT to proc at once, LW/Prepot is better than PT/Pre-pot by 80 int. And Prepot alone >>> LW/PT in case neither proc before prepot falls.


For single target, haste breakpoints mean little. The value of haste belongs more in the amount of movement for a fight. More movement, higher the value of haste. And on the part I bolded, I'm assuming you 2 metas per tendons. It's rare, even at the much lower nerfs to get 6/6 metas per lift was near impossible, but due the the length of the fight, you should get a minimum of 3 metas (1 for each first tendon lift of each plate).

[vortextk]

I know when to use it with everything, but using that soulstone did screw me. I hit hour of twilight with very little time on it, 1.5ish usually. Yes, 2 metas per tendon I think is impossible now, I didn't mean to say spine. 36k just feels incredibly low for ultrax at that ilevel, we had lust, obviously coe and magic crit debuff, a decent DI target and magical haste. I think I was just missing 3% damage.

Couldn't actually do spine or madness this week since we couldn't fill in a third healer, so we just took who we had on and pugged the rest for gems. I afk'd half of both fights in a spec without meta glyph, left my bottled wishes on instead of cunning kind of accidentally kind of not caring and just stayed in demo on madness since I had like 1k less haste, didn't feel like going affliction and multi-dotting(especially cross platform) on normal madness only wipes you anyway now at 25% debuff. Lol I really hate how boring and pointless those fights are on normal, wasn't any good reason to actually switch from super burst spine mode to anything else to beat them.

[vortextk]

I don't know if I still care, I don't know if anyone else cares to look, but full logs from last week. When super great play really matters again, I don't think warlock play will resemble much of what it is now(I have beta but haven't played it, not keen on leveling temp characters).

Logs and epeenbot, for one specific reason, ultraxion(lol, again)
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/f...?s=3583&e=3831
http://raidbots.com/epeenbot/us/kil%27jaeden/yuriia/

Happy with the first 3 bosses, hagara is whatever, spine I did 4.4mil on tendons pulling third barely behind second so I'm happy there and didn't really bother attacking much else on it and madness I was playing affliction a bit poorly(been forever since I multi-dotted madness!) and people were going way too crazy on the bloods early so I didn't spellweave pad at all. I had like 200k damage on bloods. And then ultraxion. All these 80+ percentiles on the fights I cared about this week, and then a 50? I feel like I'm really doing something wrong if I do so much worse comparatively on a complete stand still and dps fight than all of the movement related fights earlier(I don't stay on boss on zonozz or yorsahj and am obviously running to crystals on morchok), but I don't feel as if I play any different, so are the best people just THAT much better when they don't have to focus on moving or swapping targets?

[gracfuldeath]

For Ultraxion, ranking becomes a lot more than just how well you play. Time length is a crucial factor, so is lust and 3% dmg, and number of fading lights. For example. Top demo rank fight length was 2:25min, and 200th rank was 3:08min. Your fight was 4:07. It's a significant enough difference to drop you behind in overall dps. Longer the fight, less uptime on things like meta, which means more times that you're not doing your highest possible dmg, which means less average dps.

You didn't lust at the start. The best time to lust on a fight, dps wise and barring any mechanics like Warlord who takes more damage later on in the fight, is at the start. If it's because your healers want lust for when "the healing gets hard" then you should have been having the healers fade out at the start, lust, their faded so they don't get lust/sated, and then they can lust again when they want to. Or you can tell them to suck it up because you don't get to the heavy healing part with a 4min kill anymore.

You're two healing it. All 10ms solo heal Ultraxion since like the 5% nerf or less. Your shammy should be more than capable of doing it, and your pally has to be really really really bad to not be able to do it (top 35+ world 10m heroic ranks are all pallies). The fact you're two healing it is hurting your time length. And because you're two healing it, they shouldn't need lust at all.

You were shadowbolt spec. These days to rank (or at least rank well) you have to be incinerate spec for this fight and get really lucky ID procs. You will get more dmg out of incinerate at this point for you as well. Looking at the top ranked lock. Only 46 incinerate casts (2:25m length), 1.7mil dmg. You had 51 Shadow bolt casts, 1.3mil dmg. Pretty big difference. Looking at the 200th ranked locked, he was SB spec, 1.9mil dmg, 62 casts.

EDIT: Looking more at the 200th ranked lock...what are you doing half the time? He had a full minute less of a fight, and 10 more shadow bolt casts than you. He's either running a full haste set, and I mean a really full haste set, or...when you fade out, you're fading out way too early and 3-4s of if just sitting there waiting for whatever you faded out for to happen. The closer you can push it to pressing that button at the last moment, the better damage. Or you're not hitting something on GCD, every GCD. Or you're spending too many GCDs doing other things, such as overclipping dots. Or you're not casting a filler and waiting 1-2s for a CD like HoG or shadowflame to come off cooldown and hit that instead. That's a no no. Every GCD must be used. And that 1s of waiting is 75%ish of a incinerate cast. Meaning it hurts you more to do nothing and wait than to fill in and hit HoG/SF .5s after it's off CD.

You're still probably overclipping BoD. At first I thought it was just because of lucky meta timing, but no, it's overclipping. There's a chance that whoever logged the fight faded out during the time it fell off and you refreshed it, so it wasn't recorded. Or you're just overclipping.

You're sometimes overclipping Corruption. You're either spot on right before it falls off, or you're clipping 3s too early. For 15 casts, about 5 of them were a bit early. So work on that timing some more. Incinerate spec with a faster filler will help a bit on that too. /ENDEDIT

Your doomguard was still very weak as demo. If it were afflic/destro, I'd say it was ok. 760k dmg for demo? Kinda low. Both the 1st ranked and 200th ranked locks have over 1mil dmg from their doomguard. You popped it at the best time you could. PT/LW/Prepot all up and 9 stacks of WoU. Which means the problem lies within your gear. You're not stacking enough int or mastery somewhere, and you're not in your demo reforge so I can't tell. With the concern of gems, and costs of regemming when changing specs. The only gear with yellow sockets that you will keep are your chest and your legs (both tier). You should work on getting two of each, one for MS and one for OS. One set with int/haste, one with int/mastery. Your boots, by now you should have well over enough VP to buy a second set for the same reasoning. For your gloves, you want greater mastery for demo, enchants are much cheaper to change, especially since the 50 haste is so cheap.

Also, because of the extended length of the doomguard for demo, HCoC/HICM can be the better combo, if ICM is used right. Above all procs, Doomguard is popped while ICM is up. You still wait to see what other procs you can get rolling at once, but ICM is the key. But again I believe the main source of the loss of damage is within the gear. #1 ranked lock just used WoU/CoC. But it doesn't hurt to pick up ICM instead of DEing it, it is BiS for destro.

You did have 5 fading lights, which meant they were spread out amongst people kinda evenly. But that's not good for you, you want it all on others and none on you.


Oh........Your DI target died. And you didn't re DI him. You did want to try to rank, right? :P

[vortextk]

Did I want to rank? No, never, but 50th percentile? Bah. I was shadowbolt because I had kept it from earlier and didn't want to go back and forth for boss kills. I've done it in incin and did worse or the same before anyway.

This isn't about ranking, this is about just looking really low overall. Like I said, 80th+ on like 4 boss fights, and then 50 on ultraxion.

This IS my demo refoge, I'm haste build. I'm not reforging after every fight because it's just not needed at this debuff, time spent, and 80th~+ on 3 fights as haste spec demo, it was just ultraxion I don't understand. I have a lfr insignia, I haven't used it in like 6 months. If it's gear or spec or rotation it feels like I should be very middle of the pack on all the fights. Some of those people MADLY complain about the time every single raid, even though we did an entire heroic clear(the first most of those have ever seen on any character, my dk is already done) in much less than 3 hours for the first time doing spine/madness so I just don't want to leave every fight and come back reforged or in a new spec.

I think lust was down at the start and we just waited for it, but I've had it at the start before and never do the numbers I assume I would do anyway.

I definitely have the maximum allowable int in my build. Pure epics in all heroic pieces, every int enchant, double profession.

If it's just bad lust time, slow kill from other people, some randomness with my meta, then I guess I have to live with it. However that damage is higher than what I did the past few kills I believe, and it just makes me feel like I'm playing wrong.

[gracfuldeath]

Sigh. You mistake my "want to rank" for "want to do good." Feel better now?

Haste demo build wit that long of a fight? You won't do well compared to others then on Ultrax. In a sense, yes. You are playing demo wrong. Haste demo builds are only considered on high movement fights, and/or very short fights, or spine.

Dont use LFR ICM.

Lust at the start is BiS because every single enchant/trinket/buff that can proc that could proc will proc all at once. Combine that with faster attack/casting speed. And win.

The int and mastery comment was more reference to getting better gear. Otherwise I would have noted not having the right gems. My bad for not specifying that.

Make sure you reread the middle of my wall of text for my edited section. There's more to it than just bad lust time, meta, and slower kill.

You don't want to change spec or reforge between fights, especially since most of them have trash beforehand and time to kill, and the reason is because you don't want to waste time. Then why are you trying to compare yourself to anyone? The time it takes to change these things is <<<<<<<<<< time to kill trash before bosses. If you're group complains about your damage if you're not allowed to, then you have the right to tell them to butt suck it for and QQs on your dmg.

You're not doing your best to perform your best. You knowingly do this. And then you go back and question why you are doing poorly.

[vortextk]

I give up, I don't give a fuck then ok.

[Xandy]

Hiya, I've been raiding as Demonology for a few months now so I'm still new. I keep getting rather low (comparatively) DPS on Heroic Madness and I'm just not sure if it's because of the nerfs and my higher geared raid comp downing adds too quickly for my CD's/DoT's to be fully effective or if it's a straight up spell priority issue.

Here is my latest Madness log:

worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-6jnmhvyiog5ihrcw/details/1/

And my armory:

battle.net/wow/en/character/cenarius/Mestra/simple

[Keren]

I give up, I don't give a fuck then ok.

5 - Yuriia Demonology 902 9395566 1497336 244143 False 37914.9 - 47528.5 79.8%
That 80% of the one who logged 200. All over it are crazy crit streaks, no fades, magic intent, mastery-pre-pull set, faster kill timer and whatever. If all that would be in your luck you would have reached even greater numbers. But be sure there is also things you can improve yourself as already mentioned..

[gracfuldeath]

I don't know which was funnier, the pulling random numbers out of no where (which you edited out), or the fact that his rank limit was actually the 80% he wanted and not 50%.

---------- Post added 2012-07-13 at 07:56 AM ----------

Hiya, I've been raiding as Demonology for a few months now so I'm still new. I keep getting rather low (comparatively) DPS on Heroic Madness and I'm just not sure if it's because of the nerfs and my higher geared raid comp downing adds too quickly for my CD's/DoT's to be fully effective or if it's a straight up spell priority issue.

Here is my latest Madness log:

worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-6jnmhvyiog5ihrcw/details/1/

And my armory:

battle.net/wow/en/character/cenarius/Mestra/simple

Armory wise, you're over hit cap by almost a full percent. And you're reforged into too much haste. For demo we stack mastery. I recommend using a site like wowreforge.com, it can get pretty precise in it's calculations and iterations.

Madness is a pretty difficult fight to inspect, but I'll do my best. Generally, the nerfing does hurt your damage. Bloods die faster, so less cleaving/dotting/spellweave whoring you're allowed to do otherwise you'll accidentally kill them at the wrong time (assuming you don't kill them immediately). The faster you push each platform, the less cataclysm uptime you have, which is a big damage boost (although this wasn't an extremely fast kill, so this might not have happened).

There's some hellfire using going on, not sure if it's by accident or not since it's for very small lengths, but we don't use hellfire on Madness because it doesn't proc spellweave. Rain of Fire is the aoe we use for bloods. You are saving meta/Demon Soul for each mutated corruption, which is a good thing. You didn't use meta on the fourth platform, not sure why, but it should have been off CD for it. If you were concerned about it not being up for phase 2, you shouldn't be. It should be up, and most strats don't call for the zerg on the head until after the first or second add wave.

You need to make sure you're casting Hand of Gul'dan on CD. Sometimes it was on CD, but most of the time it was between 20s, 30s, or even a minute after it was off CD. This includes Shadowflame as well if in melee range (if you aren't, you should ask if you can be in since it is a damage gain). Personally I have weakauras to help remind me of them.

Your corruption uptime could use a bit of improvement, especially on the third and fourth platforms. Because we don't have quick short bursty moves, your goal on the blistering tendons is to get out as many dots as you can quickly, and then settle on the ones that are usually gotten to last by others. Multi dot them with corruption, this will also give you the chance for some instant SB procs to help kill them faster.

For when it comes to zerging the head, make sure you still keep up all your dots. You didn't ahve a BoD or BoA on the head at the end, which is a loss because any dots up buff your felhunter.

A good chunk of where you can gain damage is by using certain spells on CD, HoG really helps with immolate because you'll only need to cast it once on your primary target. After that, it's really where you can pump out more spellweave damage. A kill is a kill, and besides working on keeping those spells on CD, buffing up spellweave damage leads more into meter padding which isn't always productive. Based on what you're doing with the bloods, it can be productive, but only to a point.

For aoeing the bloods in general, always start out with a good shadowflame on all of them, and drop a rain of fire on them.

[Xandy]

thanks for the response gracfuldeath

Armory wise, you're over hit cap by almost a full percent. And you're reforged into too much haste. For demo we stack mastery. I recommend using a site like wowreforge.com, it can get pretty precise in it's calculations and iterations.

That's actually my alternate gear set, I have a mastery gear set (18.25 mastery) which was what I used for that fight. I use reforgenator add-on right now but maybe I'll try wowreforge again and see if I can get closer to hit cap.

There's some hellfire using going on, not sure if it's by accident or not since it's for very small lengths, but we don't use hellfire on Madness because it doesn't proc spellweave. Rain of Fire is the aoe we use for bloods. You are saving meta/Demon Soul for each mutated corruption, which is a good thing. You didn't use meta on the fourth platform, not sure why, but it should have been off CD for it.

Yes the Hellfire was used for the moving bloods in phase 2 and I was asked to save Immolation Aura for the phase 2 bloods as well by not using Meta on the fourth platform. I will raise this issue to my RL next run.

You need to make sure you're casting Hand of Gul'dan on CD. Sometimes it was on CD, but most of the time it was between 20s, 30s, or even a minute after it was off CD. This includes Shadowflame as well if in melee range (if you aren't, you should ask if you can be in since it is a damage gain). Personally I have weakauras to help remind me of them.

Your corruption uptime could use a bit of improvement, especially on the third and fourth platforms. Because we don't have quick short bursty moves, your goal on the blistering tendons is to get out as many dots as you can quickly, and then settle on the ones that are usually gotten to last by others. Multi dot them with corruption, this will also give you the chance for some instant SB procs to help kill them faster.

For when it comes to zerging the head, make sure you still keep up all your dots. You didn't ahve a BoD or BoA on the head at the end, which is a loss because any dots up buff your felhunter.

Yea that's definitely bad, I will focus on those CD's and keeping my DoT's up on all adds and on the Head during phase 2, though I think I recall having to stop DPS on the Head at some points.

This was my first or second Madness Kill and I'm still learning, I'm also pretty new to Warlock and I only started learning Demo when I got into a heroic progression guild a few months back for the SP buff. Anyway I'll try to do better thanks again for the reply.

[gracfuldeath]

That's actually my alternate gear set, I have a mastery gear set (18.25 mastery) which was what I used for that fight. I use reforgenator add-on right now but maybe I'll try wowreforge again and see if I can get closer to hit cap.

Definitely use a site over reforgenator or reforge lite addons. Those don't do as many iterations as the website does (due to addon memory use) and find a quick result rather than a more accurate result. That site I listed also give you the option to set in your stat weights, as well as adjusting stat weights after certain stat ratings. Such as if you wanted to decrease the value of haste after 2681, you can set it to put haste at a minimum of 2681, and then have a new stat weight of something lower than mastery but higher than crit. This way it'll look for more mastery after that point, but still prioritize haste over crit.

Yes the Hellfire was used for the moving bloods in phase 2 and I was asked to save Immolation Aura for the phase 2 bloods as well by not using Meta on the fourth platform. I will raise this issue to my RL next run.

If killing the bloods is a problem and they're solving it by having you save and use meta for them, then that's their call (although personally I would suggest the issue lies with everyone else providing more damage themselves, since meta is a strong damage CD and should be use more for the zerging the head. But again, RL's decision in the end). But regardless, still use Rain of Fire instead of Hellfire. What actually kills the bloods is not the aoe, it's the aoe spellweave proc from your attacks. With or without meta, your blood aoe should always include shadow flame which gives a initial burst to proc spellweave plus a fast ticking dot on multiple targets to proc spellweave on each tick, followed by dropping rain of fire in a way that the bloods will be moving through it as long as possible, meaning drop it a little ahead and let them travel through it. Rain of Fire is chosen as the aoe spell because of again, how fast it procs spellweave. The ticks between each hit are faster than casting SoC + travel distance + detonation, and hellfire unfortunately doesn't proc spellweave.

Yea that's definitely bad, I will focus on those CD's and keeping my DoT's up on all adds and on the Head during phase 2, though I think I recall having to stop DPS on the Head at some points.

Yea, most strats call for stopping dps at certain health percents. I didn't mean to say keep dots rolling during one of the stop DPS points, that is a definite no no. I apologize for that confusion. What I meant was that at the point that it appeared it was "dps it until the kill," you were missing BoA/BoD. Sometimes people think "Oh it's a burst time, so more filler and I don't have to put up a rarely ticking dot like BoD," but you're losing damage since Shadow Bite isn't hitting as hard as it could.

I am assuming you're doing a strat that's along the lines of:
-dps to 16-17% and stop, wait for tentacle adds
-kill tentacle adds, kill two tanked adds, push past 15% hp
-kill bloods, continue pushing to 11-12% and stop, wait for adds
-kill tentacle adds, kill tanked adds, push 10% hp, kill bloods, continue pushing until the kill, ignoring all adds but the bloods at 5%

That bolded part of the strat is what I mean by "dps until the kill."

[rap87]

Hey guys below is our guilds Ultraxion Log from last week. We ran out of time on heroics for the week and had to switch it down to normal. That said this was the week of our DPS competition and we were all preparing heavily for it. I'm asking if you guys could check out what I did and offer any suggestions and also I wanted to ask a few things about Warlord.

But first, I wanted to perhaps say that I've always done very well on the meters, usually 1 or 2, and 1-4 in 25m (casual hardcore) but my prefered spec has been Affliction for the past few tiers and I've only used Demo in the past for an AoE gimic fights such as Maloriak adds...I got very good with Affliction double dotting and making sure my Bane of Doom always had the highest spellpower, coupled with Demon Soul when possible. As long as you didn't f up your execute you were golden, I loved it. I'm finding Demo more challenging, very roller coaster style on the meters, and weaker on overall strengths. I much preferred the steady but good dmg off aff with you coming in for the lead sub 25%, amazing 2 target dmg, and passable AoE dmg. Demo you can be riding way low on the meters to come up to the top it seems just on a Meta/Doomguard, only to sail back down heavily...The only reason I'm playing atm is I'm the only person providing our raid with any spellpower buff at all...

On Ultra I went ahead and got a Mastery gear swap set and I had about 1400 extra mastery pre pull. I was riding top of the meters until I feel like the last 1min or so when our hunter over took me and then finally within maybe 15 secs of the fight ending the rogue overtook. I believe I'm correctly follow my rotations, any advice would be great. We're all very close on dps I think he edged me as he got 1 fading light and I got 2 but I'm not sure. However I simmed higher than him so...maybe it should have been a wash?

As to my Warlord Questions. I'm wondering when I should be popping Doomguard? The last black phase? or the begin with a mastery gear swap? I would think during one of the higher dmg phase fights but I'm finding our guild is struggling to kill the adds and I'm getting almost no time on the boss. I'm assuming MWC might be the best trinket here for the on demand mastery for demo in the black phases? Here I very much I was affliction so I can just, apply my dots to one add, soul swap my dots and keep them all rolling on Warlord pretty easily...I don't try to keep up dots on the boss as Demo atm, as we've been trying to down the 3 adds we're assigned to in the black and Demos not as strong on dots anyway but more single target, but I do multi dot both and focus on 1 until dead.

Much appreciated!

http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-09...?s=7808&e=8015

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...Rannoch/simple

[wisredz]

Hello, after a long break I decided to activate my account again and thought I'd drop by here to ask for a little help. For a long time I only played as an affliction warlock unless asked specifically to play as another spec. So after about a one year break, I'm back to the game and apparently demo is the best spec out there followed closely by affliction. However try as I might I can break the 25k barrier. Perhaps that's because I'm not used to demo just yet but still, I would have expected better. I've read past posts in this thread and it appears to me that I'm not doing so bad with dots and all. I'm not actively raiding so I've done a single ultraxion kill earlier today and I thought I'd post it here of reference.

WoL: worldoflogs.com/reports/qdsoau7xpty1g568
Armory: eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/earthen-ring/Cracks/simple

PS: I think I should mention my reforges since mastery is better than haste for demo. I've been demo specced for a couple of days only so all my reforges are to get as much haste as possible (for affliction). Enchants aren't the best either but that's only because the items are very prone to be replaced right now.

Thank you very much in advance.