What differentiates high DPS players from low?

[Deleted]

would be nice if you guys could teach some enhancement shamans, i've only met 2 that are any decent other than myself from about 100+ in the 2.5 years i've been playing.......

I've spent years trying that as any visitor to the Shaman forums on MMO Champ will know. Sadly still see clueless ones, the ones using daggers etc, even ones who try to improve and practice on target dummies. Lost count of number of times I've had to point out that standing BEHIND the target dummy is very important as it works the same as a boss (dodges/parries etc).

[Tuvok]

Anyone can reach 95% of Max potential DPS, what separates people is how far they are in the learning process, and motivation. People who have a powerful drive to be #1, will work towards it and achieve much higher numbers than someone who doesn't care so much about pushing it to the limit.

I'm speaking purely in terms of DPS here, disregarding all other aspects of being a good player.

[Coldkil]

dps depends a lot on:
- situation awareness: predicitng what happens next and reactiong properly is the major thing about dps. choosing the right spell can make a huge difference. is known also as "skill".

- latency: it plays a very big role too, and here i put also the fps. when i changed my computer and i got a better connection, i gained something like 3-4k dps. really. majority of players don't have a comp that runs wow at 100fps on ultra, more like 20fps on medium and even 2fps on low.

- RNG: this is another factor, if you are really lucky you will see your dps skyrocket but also if you're unlucky you can see it drop a lot. anyway some classes like fire mage or frost dk depend a lot more from rng procs than rogues or warlocks.

there are many other reasons (concentration, keybindings, etc) but i think these 3 are the most important.

[Deleted]

Pushing the correct buttons at the correct time.

[Darkdruidelf]

Well, as a feral dps, a large bit of it is getting the roation right

[Pieterman]

Knowing and executing your rotation / priority system properly.
Knowing the fight and using this to maximize dps
Gear + Spec

Knowing is 2/3th of the battle.

[noteworthynerd]

I'm sure it has been mentioned, but I didn't bother reading through the posts: skill.

I'm in somewhat of a similar boat, albeit with healing more so than DPS. Through my WoW career (on and off since release), I've played through all 4 healing classes and fulfilled all of the raid roles (Tank, Healer, Melee and Ranged DPS). It seems like I tend to be near the top of the meters more often than not, regardless of gear or class. I'm not trying to toot my own horn or sound like a bad ass, I'm just relating to the OP.

I truly chalk it up to skill and awareness. I'm aware of the fights, I'm aware of how my class works, and I'm aware of the game as a whole. I read up on boss fights so I know how they work and I'm constantly reading up on class mechanics, BiS gear, best rotation, best gems and enchants, etc. It also helps that I've been gaming since I was a toddler (NES: Super Mario!), so I just have a natural grasp on gaming I guess.

I'm willing to bet that you, and most of the others in this thread that tend to top meters, are in the same boat.

I've also been the recruitment officer of a couple of guilds, and I find that, more often than not, those who are performing poorly have never heard of sites like Elitist Jerks, have never read a blog, and/or have never bothered reading into their class mechanics. They don't understand why that weapon with agility isn't as good as the one with strength for their DK. I'll usually help them out as best I can, point them in the right direction, answer questions, but sometimes the old adage is true: you can't always fix stupid.

[Deleted]

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

Moving faster is good. Take Atramedes, you gotta dodge soundwaves and fire all the time so moving faster away from that = you have more time to DPS.

[Eskodas]

Quick movement, decision making (as been said), and the ability to run a fully optimal rotation all the time, while doing what you can while moving. I still have problems of having to refresh dots soon as I hit an eclipse, clipping eclipsed dots with other eclipsed dots (while standing still), that translates in to a dps loss, and I am trying to break that habit. There are many little things that can hurt your dps, the trick is not putting yourself in a position to be affected by them, so you run top dps.

Also for cooldowns, for stuff like short cooldowns, its always best to macro them to an ability for me. Like on my warrior, I macroed shield block to shield slam, and I am sure a few other things could be done.

Huh? you want to reaplly your dots asap when you ecplise, if lunar, just reapply moonfire, just cause hiting those dots once ecplised gives you a fresh Natures Grace buff.

[Mordaren]

it's the love for big yellow numbers

YEAH! =D You really know what all this is about... ;D

[Holyspartann]

Like society, the majority of wow players are average to sub-average, and are carried by those who are better. Even geared players (rich people) have underlings who are better/smarter/stronger (better dps) than them...

The problem is that most people don't have time or care to look up theorycrafts/rotations before they play...and even if they are told they suck, they still don't look it up...

Yes, I like most people on these forums have que'd random dungeon finder only to be joined by either 3 dps who do less than me on my tank, or 2 who do significantly less than my mage dps...

Sometimes the average asshat, if you mock him long enough, will blow all his cd's when you tell him to do more dps on a trash pack, and then continue sucking after that...its funny

All classes have a "rotation", and a good "gamer" can learn to play an 85 spec within a week or so of getting used to it...

Example: I play frost on my mage generally, and switched to fire. I do more dmg as frost as of right now because I'm not used to fire yet but my dps is slowly getting better as I get used to Living Bomb refreshing and prioritizing...

Bad Kids don't use meters...if you don't know how to play a class do 1 thing look at your dps, then if its low try something different, see if that increases it...

Also, if bosses are getting downed they don't see why doing 10% of the damage is not okay when you/me/gooddps is doing 40% or higher...

It's sad, but it will always be this way...

[Culexus]

Oh, I remember when I was mage, totally nub player clearing AQ40. Other mages did almost x2 my damage so I tryed to change for better, but that change required to get gear wich was nearly a crap system to upgrade stuff, regem, etc. So I quit playing mage and started a new rogue, from 0 to 60 reading all the best stuff possible and testing my own.

Are you talking about aq40 in vanilla times? There was no gemming in vanilla.

[Oneleg]

another factor is latency for sure

False...

I normally sit at 230+ latency all the freaking time, DAMN YOU AT&T router in LA....

Anyway, we just ran TB and I was #2 at 15k elemental shaman, but I have played many DPS class's and always run what I have theorycrafted to be my max DPS, or dang close to it.


The biggest things for max DPS is.

1) Know your class inside and out, hit rating, expertise, spellpower over haste over mastery or whatever it is for your class

2) Be able to change depending on the fight refer to 1

3) Position yourself to max out your DPS uptime, get out of the fire before its even there, so you never have to stop DPS.


Combine awareness with knowledge and your a top DPS player.

[rated]

The difference between good DPS & bad DPS

1) Knowledge of class.

2) Knowledge of fight and/or instance.

3) Computer.

I blame a lot of bad DPS on #3. You would be surprised how many people just suck because they're raiding in a 1 FPS environment.

[Meera]

Are you talking about aq40 in vanilla times? There was no gemming in vanilla.

No, I meant that back in the days, the stats equilibrium wasn't so open like now. It existed enchants and gear, that's it. The few gear was really lucky based to get so as someone else posted in this thread, arguin' that locks who wanted to change from spec A to spec B needed to do a stats change to get the best of their characters.

Nowadays, things are a bit easy. Maybe you can't make a full respec, mean gear with all the gems, enchants, but you can take it nearly to a fast 90% respec, loosing some bits of dps, but quiet engrossing it when you get those bits of gear you need. This remembers me back in ToTGC days where I switch from combat to combat ArP build. I had to do 100 runs in ToTC for getting one single trinket, but the rest more or less was crafting ArP gear, re-gem and re-enchant stuff. Wich was less painful than vainilla days.

[;-)-~~]

lots of good answers but it all boils down to a persons multifunctional capacity

the ability to keep track of more than one thing at the same time or performing more than one action at a time eg. moving and dps'ing

it can be trained but some people are predisposed for high multifunctional capacity and find it easier

[Graki]

From what ive seen, the difference is the amount of effort someone is willing to put into researching their class or experimenting. I am in the same position you are since i can pull average dps with any class you throw at me.

[Strossus]

It is all about KNOWLEDGE and about how much you want to invest the game...

[bigjenk]

LOL at all the people claiming latency is this huge thing that keeps them from having great dps. I travel quite a bit for work and on the road on my laptop i often get 300-400 latency and it affects my dps somewhat but during wrath on my hunter it would only knock my parses from ranking top 50 orto top 150 on most fights. With the new spell que system if you know your rotation very well anything under 400ms should technically not affect dps. The only bad latency ive seen really hurt dps bad is the aus or eu to us kind.