What differentiates high DPS players from low?

[ddk]

I've always been good at DPS in WoW. No matter what DPS class or role I play, I seem to excel at it. I know this because in every guild or raid I've been in since early vanilla, I tend to top DPS meters, even against people in much better gear than me. But I've never really put any thought into why I do good DPS and why other people don't. Give the same character on the same computer and same setup and location to two different people, and yet one of them could do awesome DPS and the other, mediocre or less. Why?

When all other things are equal, what separates high DPS players from low?

I key-board turn on one of my DPS toons and throughout the entirety of my raiding career in Wrath, I clicked on another. And I don't just top DPS meters in my guild, but in other people's guild runs and PUG's as well. So surely they can't be reasons? Do macros matter? I tend to run with a lot of those. Does UI make a big difference? I mod the hell out of mine. Is it skill? I don't know about that since I genuinely believe it's a low-skill game and the fact is, I screw up rotations all the time.

Believe it or not, this is not a brag post but rather comes from a place of genuine concern. I don't want to go into details so suffice to say that my high DPS is starting to turn into a problem for me and I don't want it to cost me friendships I've made in the game. If I can determine what it is that I'm doing/not doing, or what is they're doing/not doing, that accounts for this difference, then I think I can fix the problem I'm having.

[Greivence]

The difference imo is based basically around the core knowledge of A) Your class and B)Wats about to happen in a fight.

EXAMPLE: When fighting halfus, deciding if, when a drake is at 8%, it's better to hit it with another envenom or refresh that rupture. These small but seemingly simple decision being incorrectly made often attributes to a very large differential in DPS

I won't get into the "don't stand in shit" cuz thats obvious, but a lot of good players that are lower on meters A) Are tryign to hard or B) Are just not thinking while they play, they just hit the buttons in the right order and move, they don't worry about small decisions that do end up having a noticeable impact.

[Pontificate]

Low DPS'ers just don't radiate awesomeness like you do.

Can I touch you? Maybe I'll start radiating too.

Okay seriously, we'll need a lot more info than what you've posted to find out why you spew win from every orifice.

[Tyrill]

another factor is latency for sure

[Deleted]

The poor DPS don't grasp that DPS means Damage Per Second. If you lose a second you're losing damage. Always do stuff, rather than standing around. Anticipating high damage phases to use potions and cooldowns, anticipating when to move. Good DPS use a movement speed enchant because it is invaluable, poor DPS use stats because they can't comprehend why moving quickly is better.

[joshduarte6]

Rng for sure

[videogamerpat]

Proper macro usage! Sure, some people will be like: "You shouldn't need to macro cooldowns to your moves, you should use them strategically"... but that requires pressing more then 4 buttons...And I don't know about you... but that's too much work. They can't expect the world from us DPSers! What's next? Asking us to press SIX buttons!? Where will it end?

[Ashalah]

To give the exact opposite example, I was doing my daily one day, and this warlock was asked to fear CC a mob.
All he would do was sit there, casting Fear every 20 seconds. Not even throwing a dot on the other mobs. His dps was flat 0.

[melodramocracy]

Gemming, gearing, spec, glyphing, correct foods and flasks, knowing exactly what's going to happen next throughout the entire encounter, never dropping dots or missing a rotation, switching targets with little to no interruption, consistently low latency, using CDs at the right time, pre-potting (in some cases).

That sort of thing.

[OnlineSamantha]

Doing high dps while still helping the group in every way possible. Not standing in the fire, interrupt properly, all while doing high dps.

[Pyr]

Hmmm, top dps on all your toons. Do you by chance have all Hunters? >:] Just sayin, Hunterz r Imba.

<--- Hunter FYI.

[Kanadei]

Good DPS use a movement speed enchant because it is invaluable, poor DPS use stats because they can't comprehend why moving quickly is better.

Can anyone point to any place where this has been proven? It sounds like gibberish to me.

[Jeleh]

I've always been good at DPS in WoW. No matter what DPS class or role I play, I seem to excel at it. I know this because in every guild or raid I've been in since early vanilla, I tend to top DPS meters, even against people in much better gear than me. But I've never really put any thought into why I do good DPS and why other people don't. Give the same character on the same computer and same setup and location to two different people, and yet one of them could do awesome DPS and the other, mediocre or less. Why?

When all other things are equal, what separates high DPS players from low?

I key-board turn on one of my DPS toons and throughout the entirety of my raiding career in Wrath, I clicked on another. And I don't just top DPS meters in my guild, but in other people's guild runs and PUG's as well. So surely they can't be reasons? Do macros matter? I tend to run with a lot of those. Does UI make a big difference? I mod the hell out of mine. Is it skill? I don't know about that since I genuinely believe it's a low-skill game and the fact is, I screw up rotations all the time.

Believe it or not, this is not a brag post but rather comes from a place of genuine concern. I don't want to go into details so suffice to say that my high DPS is starting to turn into a problem for me and I don't want it to cost me friendships I've made in the game. If I can determine what it is that I'm doing/not doing, or what is they're doing/not doing, that accounts for this difference, then I think I can fix the problem I'm having.

I am part of this group of players and the reasons behind it are usually very simple. Despite what class i am playing on i will take the time to read up on the core elements of the class, best rotations, best stats ect. However you need to go beyond this to become a better calibre of player, you need to read into WHY these stats are better, why the rotations are better. When you do this you understand the class far better, you understand the mechanics of the class better. This allows for you to excel in areas where other people just dont take the time.

Then there are issues like the other posters here have said, fight mechanics, deciding if to switch early or refresh a dot/stacking buff, might seem small and insignificant but it adds up very fast.

I have two guilds on two servers, my original guild of 3 and a half years or so when i first started playing, consists of irl friends and people i have known for this period of time, very casual. The people in this guild have no idea of their class mechanics, they know the rotations, they know the stats, but they dont know why. They cant make judgement decisions because they dont understand why certain spells are more damage or why changing target a few seconds early will net you a large dps increase. I can reroll and out dps pretty much every single one of them bar my gf (who actually theorycrafts her char and knows what she is doing) with at least 10-20 lower ilevel.

Now my other guild is regular raiding, the level of players is far superior, i couldnt just turn up on my spriest alt and expect to top the guilds regular spriests, why? because they know the class, the have learned it they know when to switch how to manage dots how to maximise dps.

My point, behind this wall of text is that what usually makes someone top dps and regular dps is their attitude towards their chars, learn all there is to know you wil excel, slack, and someone will beat you.

Im the type of person who when im on my raid chars i will use food buffs and depending on the fight flasks, in just a pug to see if i can get better numbers than i did previously, things like double potting. It's that drive to always push my numbers harder and further that keep me at the top of metres.

I would put good money on the people here who regularly come top 1/2/3 will be the ones who do the same as i do, dont slack on consumables and know the class well.

[Confessor Kahlan]

I've often wondered how some of the people I get in random heroic at 85 can be doing 3k dps. Whenever I dps I always try to do more than the last time, idk if the other people don't care about contributing to the group, dont know how all of that. I also try to do other things like, taunt stuff off the healer, or at least slow it down. Making sure we don't wipe has always been important when I pve. But doing 40% of the damage in most random groups I get is quite frustrating.

Edit: I think the post above me pretty much hit the nail on the head.

[malibuchick]

I have the same "problem". Thing is that people now days dont bother to learn their class and rotations.
I'v seen people doing 3k dps in heroics as 85.. thats almost the same top pve'rs did in tbc.

[Meowse]

I have had the same experience. Doing MC during vanilla, my warlock was doing literally four times the DPS of the lowest-DPS warlock in our guild. The difference(s)?

1) I geared entirely in spell power greens, and relied on Not Standing In The Fire[tm] for survivability. He geared entirely in Tier 1 Warlock gear (rich in int and stamina, pathetically poor in spell power).

2) I specced Demonology, because it was really good at adding spell power (multiple stacking SP buffs), and offered a big boost to shadow damage on no-demon fights via Demonic Sacrifice. He specced Affliction, because it was the "top DPS spec" at the time.

3) I built spreadsheets of the various Warlock abilities, determined exactly which ones were the highest damage-per-casting-time, and cast them whenever they were available in priority order (basically, what Elitist Jerks does for everyone these days).

4) I played the guild DKP system intelligently, allowing the other players to bid obscene amounts of DKP on the first few SP weapons to drop, and then cleaning up on every single non-set piece of SP gear that dropped for the next couple of months.

5) I lifetapped between fights rather than sitting and drinking. Since I could turn healer mana into damage at something obscene like a 30-to-1 ratio, I was a lot more effective help to the raid than if I'd been 20 seconds late to each fight due to drinking.

Any one of those would have put me 50% or so ahead of him. But they're all multiplicative factors. Putting them all together, I was 400% ahead of him.

I didn't keep any of this a secret. In fact, I posted multiple, detailed guides to the guild forums about how any warlock could maximize DPS like I was. But neither of the other warlocks in the guild changed their play style at all. They told me, in fact, to STFU and stop telling them how to play their class, because I was in greens and they were in purples and they had been playing longer than I had and...

The difference between high DPS and low DPS?

High DPS *learn*. High DPS *research*. High DPS observe what works for them and what doesn't work for them.

It's all about the empirical approach. Once you start observing yourself and others, and learning from both your successes and your failures, it's hard *not* to be top DPS.

Oh, and the other warlock in the guild? He specced Destruction, got really good gear, and did 75% of my damage instead of 25% of my damage. Why did he only do 75% of my damage?

6) I specced Demonology, which offloaded roughly 25% of my threat onto my pet in threat-sensitive fights. Affliction and Destruction-specced warlocks consistently ran into the tank's threat cap and had to back off for ten or fifteen seconds. I was never threat-limited on any fight, because I could do 133% of their DPS while pulling the same personal threat.

Inspect and adapt. Learn from your mistakes. Learn from your successes.

That's the consistent difference between high and low DPS.

[Keilith]

I know of 3 types of dpsers. Type one guesses what button to push and doesn't understand what they are doing. Ummm oo searing pain talent and fast cast SPAM. Type two reads a cookieecutter build, learns priority but doesnt understand WHY it works. They are usually in the middle of the charts. Type 3 understands all his or her talents knows WHY they work and is fluid in situational changes.

[henern]

I do believe the biggest difference between a low and high dps is the amount of time they spend actually doing stuff, aside from the occasional fire mage spamming frostbolt happy with his 1k dps or something.
ABC => Always Be Casting
Almost no matter what you cast it's better than doing nothing while running etc. And queue up spells/abilites in the end of the previous used spell, don't just sit there and wait for the fireball to hit the target before you start casting a new one. Played with an affliction warlock one time in heroic who just put his dots up there, and then refreshed them when the time was running out. He did nothing else.

[Meowse]

Can anyone point to any place where this has been proven? It sounds like gibberish to me.

Elitist Jerks. Time spent moving is (in general) time spent not DPSing. Time spent running within range of a target is (always) time spent not DPSing. Movement speed enchants consistently beat higher-stat enchants that don't offer enhanced movement speed.

[Exaltednun]

Can anyone point to any place where this has been proven? It sounds like gibberish to me.

If something as completely obvious as movement speed is "gibberish" to you, you clearly have never pushed any content. This isn't just some random thought or opinion, its par for the course on pushing content. As far back as TBC even tree's needed run speed to compensate. <points to the distance, covers eye's and ponders>

EVERY second you are moving as a ranged dps you should find a way to cast an instant cast. This is so important that you should even time refresh of dots or CD's based on when you'll need to move. Invariably there will be times where you can not. The goal then is to minimize the time spent moving.

If you can't understand this, it is literally equal to your healer not understanding when to cast an efficent spell or when to cast a critical spell that saves a death.