Am I doing everything right?

[Humpo]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ebfZ_-COMs
just posting this to see if theres anyway to inc my dps (other than gear upgrades)
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...flight&n=Humpo

[Retired@3.2]

sure?
4.2k seems decent on a dummy even though i dont think that was the heroic dummy so numbers are a bit inflated

[ElAmigo]

i havent played since 3.1 so i dont know whats the dps your expected to pull of now but 4.2k dps seems very good for unbuffed. and im assuming that your not on the heroic training dummy so you can be hit capped for your poisons. btw i dont play a rogue but i dont know if armor pen is that big a deal for mut spec so id try replacing grim toll with pyrite infuser.

[Humpo]

yeah ive been trying to replace grim toll for a while but i cant seem to get any good trinket drops , and yes that was the normal test dummy because people kept testing on the heroic one

[cupholder]

If you really want to know where your DPS is, why attack a level 80 dummy? Attack the boss one.

In addition, anything above ~3.8k is good to it. Ignore most classes' claims that "hey I do 5k to the boss dummy^_^" because many of them provide self buffs, or in the case of casters, do not have to deal with glancing(partial resists aren't so bad), nor misses(if they have any clue how to gear themselves). 3.8k as combat without using KS ends up being 6.5k++ when raid buffed/mob debuffed.

Why not just get a spreadsheet to tell you where you should be at with the gear you have? Assume ~85-90% margin of error for fight mechanics, and that'll be where you should be. Example: For me, it says right at 8k. A Sarth pug ended up with ~7.8k with BF damage, so probably on the line of 7.2k DTB. To the boss dummy? Meh, only 3.6k.

[Soulbender]

I agree totally. Use rawr for a "perfect" estimation (ie, theorical max). Using the dummy doesnt factor the debuffs and the raid synergy, that's like comparing 5 man damage and 25 man damage.

For the record, i'm also 85-90% of rawr on fight favoring melee. Ofc there are plenty of fights where i'm over because you have access to mad buffs (XT heart, Hodir, Twins...). And a lot where i'm lower because of switching, moving, etc.

The only reliable (and fun) way to compare dps is a race against someone of the same class and the same gear level in your raid.

[DarkLynx]

Except for the fact that rawr is useless for rogues, so that doesn't really help. Get a spreadsheet from elitist jerks instead. Test your damage on a boss to really know, as a dummy is only good for testing cycles, not theoretical dps.

[tlitd]

Test your damage on a boss to really know (...)

the damage output on any real encounter is rather irrelevant for tweaking your gearing/dps strategy; you'll be facing two critical issues, lack of reproducibility and low sample size

(...) a dummy is only good for testing cycles, not theoretical dps.

dummies aren't (and historically weren't) good for gauging output-related variables, from finisher/poison/cycle strategy to overall output estimates; they tend to be reasonable only when you're interested in procs