The "Fix my DPS" Thread!

[Asrialol]

Shamelessly stolen from the Warlock and Warrior forum. Thanks to Gherkin of the Warlock forum for the idea, and to Mest from the Warrior forum for the extra juicy text. Hugs to all of you.

Purpose of this thread:

- To assist people who have made a considered effort into their damage yet are struggling to meet their expected numbers. If you have exhausted other avenues and don't know what to do for further improvement this is the thread for you.
- To allow experienced players to share their oozing nuggets of wisdom with those eager to learn. Everyone who has a solution to share is welcome to contribute.
- To discuss alternate approaches to ability usage or gearing, just make sure you have good sources of information before making claims.

Before Posting:

- Make sure you've read the relevant sticky guide( Survival, Beast Mastery and Marksmanship) and understand the basics of preparing your spec. This thread isn't for teaching you how to gem, glyph, enchant correctly or of the basics of stat priority and rotation usage.

What to Post:

- Your spec, general gear level and expectations in raids. Don't have people trawl armorys and parses for these details when they can be given up front.
- Your problem in as much detail as is possible. Is it specific to an individual boss? in particular phases or situations? (AoE, Careful Aim, Kill Shot Phase, movement, etc.) or just a general patchwerk style low dps problem? The more detail you can give the more helpful answers we can provide.
- Any resources you have which can detail the problem are useful. World of Logs parses and armory links are especially helpful.

Please post this template at the top of your post, and fill in the details you have. Make sure you post behind the [/B] tags.

[B]Spec[/B]
[B]Item Level[/B]
[B]Expectations:[/B]
[B]Armory Link:[/B]
[B]Worldoflogs Link:[/B]
[B]Femaledwarf Link:[/B]

What Not to Post:

- A question thats blatantly answered in your specs stickied guide.
- Stealth bragging damage logs.
- "How to reforge" questions. Use Femaledwarf instead, or the appropriate stickies found in this forum.
- "Is Gear A > Gear B?" queries those are best simulated using Femaledwarf on your own character to find a personal solution. Situational gearing such as trinkets for specific bosses or the merits of tier bonuses are fine to ask.


Simple guide to using Femaledwarf

- Click the "Armory Import" button and enter your Character name and realm. Make sure you choose "Secondary talents" if your second spec is the one you wish to sim.
- Go to the Buffs/Debuffs section and add the buffs and debuffs that were/are present in your raid situation.
- Go to "Shot Priority" and input whatever suits you best.
- Go to "Settings" and input whatever suits your situation such as fight length, your latency, etc.
- Click the "Update DPS" button and wait for it to calculate. After that you will see the DPS it calculated for you.
- Optional: Click the "Save Settings" button and login/create an account. Then save your settings with any name. After that you can click the "Load Settings" button, and your saved settings will pop up. There is an "Options" collumn, where you can see a Trash can and a little symbol. If you click that symbol a box popups, with an URL to your setting. You can then copy this link and post it in this thread together with the rest of your post.


You can read about the recommended Femaledwarf settings for Marksmanship in the Elitistjerks guide here. The same settings would work for BM / Survival as well as long as you edit the "Shot Priority" tab.


Example post

Spec Marksmanship
Item Level 382
Expectations: Above 32k on Baleroc
Armory Link: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...zrialol/simple
Worldoflogs Link: http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-1ns3r7l06h3r3
Femaledwarf Link: http://www.femaledwarf.com/?setting_id=1337

Hey, I'm having some issues with my DPS. I've seen people with my gear do at least 32k on Baleroc, but I'm only managing 29k. Whats wrong? I've included some recent logs so you can see my performance etc. Thanks!

Note: I'll make this thread look prettier later, but for now it should serve it's purpose.

If you see some flaws with this post feel free to PM me about it!

[Vox]

Alright lemme get this thread going~

Spec Marksmanship
Item Level 383
Expectations: Around 30k@P4 for H ragnaros
Armory Link: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...l/Haute/simple
Worldoflogs Link: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/li8uswfar6tu407j/
Femaledwarf Link: http://www.femaledwarf.com/?setting_id=56477

So I'm having major problems keeping up my dps for the whole duration of the fight.

For P1 it isn't much of an issue, if i pot correctly and with some luck with no wraths, I can easily par the other hunters' dps.

It starts dropping as i hit P2, where the dps between me and other hunters starts increasing by about 4k. Right now there's 3 MM hunters and 1 Surv for Hunting party(wtb dks). I can beat the surv hunter most of the time, probably cause of spec issues, but I'm falling short by a huge margin compared to the other 2 MM hunters.

I can't say much about P3 cause dps is usually stable here. During the transition to P4, my dps plummets and i lose around 2k dps, the top hunter will be around 32k and myself at 26-ish.

All the hunters are geared quite evenly, so this is not a gear issue. I've tried copying the other 2 MM hunters glyphs and reforging, but sims don't show that huge a difference so I can only conclude it to be CD management/overall hunter-ing skill.

Run through of my CD usage is usally this:

Pull - Prepot with RF and CotW, Readiness and RF again
-
-
Cooldowns back up when P2 Starts - After first World in Flames, just RF, readiness after.
After 3rd World in Flames, RF with CotW, no pot.
-
-
As adds are spawning for 2nd transition, dismiss pet for another ferocity one.
-
-
Time Warp at the beginning of P3, no pot. Near the end of P3, RF with CotW and potion.
-
-
P4 is a bit iffy, I'm quite sure i have RF up during the 2nd breadth of frost.

That's it for me, hope I'm doing it right~ I'll take any help i can get..

[Gunba]

Alright lemme get this thread going~.

Going over your logs you are a little bit behind in pretty much every aspect of the fight bar damage done to sons of flame.

- You use synapse springs quite late in CA phase for some unknown reason (either macro it or remember to use it)
- From what I can see you don't precast Aimed Shot in P1 which is a notable DPS increase
- I know from personal experience the other hunter in your raid casts COTW before combat and swaps pets, consider this yourself
- You are playing Kill Shot glyph, which, aside from being terrible on high latency, will also lower your overall DPS (since it is not useful until p3 attempts)
- You don't multishot sons of flame - this could be a dps increase in many situations when they are stacked correctly
- You apply Serpent Sting before Chimera Shot - this should be the other way around
- You are not getting a lot of multishots on the first set of elementals, are you pooling focus, waiting for bombardment and targetting them before the explosion?
- You apply Serpent Sting to sons of Flame, unless you are going to refresh it is probably not worth the GCD (only ~8k damage?)
- You only get one Rapid Fire in P3, I think you are using your 4th rapid fire too late in P2? Perhaps don't use RF at all in P2 if it is an issue
- It's not terrible to stack RF with Lust in P3 if it means you spend less time hasted during engulfings and stack Springs, COTW, Pots, etc.
- Are you manually using COTW and swapping pets during intermissions/downtime?
- You are also a human which is several hundred DPS behind worgen, in addition to not having darkflight

These are just the issues I have identified most obviously, there are probably other areas for improvement. As you said it will likely come down to player skill more than anything and ability to use up GCDs and manage cooldowns more efficiently. Also note that your logs are private and thus no one else will really be able to help you.

[Vox]

Going over your logs you are a little bit behind in pretty much every aspect of the fight bar damage done to sons of flame.

- You use synapse springs quite late in CA phase for some unknown reason (either macro it or remember to use it)
- From what I can see you don't precast Aimed Shot in P1 which is a notable DPS increase
- I know from personal experience the other hunter in your raid casts COTW before combat and swaps pets, consider this yourself
- You are playing Kill Shot glyph, which, aside from being terrible on high latency, will also lower your overall DPS (since it is not useful until p3 attempts)
- You don't multishot sons of flame - this could be a dps increase in many situations when they are stacked correctly
- You apply Serpent Sting before Chimera Shot - this should be the other way around
- You are not getting a lot of multishots on the first set of elementals, are you pooling focus, waiting for bombardment and targetting them before the explosion?
- You apply Serpent Sting to sons of Flame, unless you are going to refresh it is probably not worth the GCD (only ~8k damage?)
- You only get one Rapid Fire in P3, I think you are using your 4th rapid fire too late in P2? Perhaps don't use RF at all in P2 if it is an issue
- It's not terrible to stack RF with Lust in P3 if it means you spend less time hasted during engulfings and stack Springs, COTW, Pots, etc.
- Are you manually using COTW and swapping pets during intermissions/downtime?
- You are also a human which is several hundred DPS behind worgen, in addition to not having darkflight

These are just the issues I have identified most obviously, there are probably other areas for improvement. As you said it will likely come down to player skill more than anything and ability to use up GCDs and manage cooldowns more efficiently. Also note that your logs are private and thus no one else will really be able to help you.

Sup Gunba. Thanks for the help Hope you're doing fine in Khazgoroth

I'll try to get the logs working, and test out as much as i can tonight^^

[CedricDur]

[B]Spec: MM[/B]
[B]Item Level: 382[/B]
[B]Expectations: FD says 34k.[/B]
[B]Armory Link: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/argent-dawn/Leandrea/simple[/B]
[B]Worldoflogs Link: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/7txxcq7xfcf50gxc/sum/damageDone/?s=1447&e=1643[/B]
[B]Femaledwarf Link: http://www.femaledwarf.com/?setting_id=50700[/B]

I'm a bit at a loss on how to increase my DPS. Femaledwarf says I should do 34k, my personal best was 30k. I have a hunter guildie that picked his hunter from scratch and I had to teach everything since he did not like EJ and nowadays he is consistently slightly ahead of me. At first I thought it was because I used a AS build and he preferred AI, but I tweaked my build, got the Hungered and Matrix and now I use AI whenever hasted, which is a fair bit of the time.

Whenever we do a movement intensive fight I come out easily ahead but in the stand still and shoot fights I seem to have room for improvement.

I have this night's log of Baleroc in normal (last day before reset so we just blazed through) and I'm at my usual 29.5k something. The fight was a mere 3:15 seconds so I didn't get to use RF/Readiness a second time.

Any tips would be welcome.

P.S. I'm aware my build is not optimal. I use a generic catch-all build at the expense of a couple points in Pathing which I make up by reforging.

[Joyful]

There is possible to get 3/3 pathing if you take out one point from frenzy (should just be 2/3 anyway) and one from Marked for death as more then one point wont make that big of a deal, especialy not on a singletarget fight.

Fight lasted 195 seconds, you did 11 Chimera shot casts and on normal mode the boss will not be in 90%+ health for more then your first RF so as soon as the boss goes under 90% hp apply serpent sting and keep chimera shot on cooldown while using AI during high haste parts and AS during low haste parts if you are moving.

So my guess as i couldnt find anything majorly off is that you are just not pressing your buttons every GCD, allways press either a focus gain or focus dump and keep Chimera shot on cooldown all the time.

[CedricDur]

I'm pretty sure that I am though. I'm constantly fighting (and grumbling about) my GCDs by repeatedly pressing the keys until it goes off. Not a bad idea about Frenzy, I'm so used to the build that I didn't remember it, but only one point in Marked for Death would make it unreliable and thus remove the whole point out of having it.

[Gunba]

[HTML]I'm a bit at a loss on how to increase my DPS. Femaledwarf says I should do 34k, my personal best was 30k. I have a hunter guildie that picked his hunter from scratch and I had to teach everything since he did not like EJ and nowadays he is consistently slightly ahead of me. At first I thought it was because I used a AS build and he preferred AI, but I tweaked my build, got the Hungered and Matrix and now I use AI whenever hasted, which is a fair bit of the time.

Be careful when trying to achieve FD numbers. Seems to terribly overvalue pet damage. More importantly, the default setup is really awful.

P.S. I'm aware my build is not optimal. I use a generic catch-all build at the expense of a couple points in Pathing which I make up by reforging.

This attitude is why you are having trouble. You are not making up for anything. Those 4 points in the second tier of BM are virtually completely wasted. For every one effective HPS you contribute to the raid by speccing into Spirit Bond, you lose two effective DPS. It really is not a good talent this tier at all. You also don't have termination for some reason (despite the fact that there are far more useless talents in the MM tree) and 1/3 pathing is a huge gimp on your DPS.

I have this night's log of Baleroc in normal (last day before reset so we just blazed through) and I'm at my usual 29.5k something. The fight was a mere 3:15 seconds so I didn't get to use RF/Readiness a second time.

Going over more specific stuff:
-Kill Shot glyph is probably not ideal unless your raid has comparatively slow execute phases compared to the rest of the fight or you are trying to do Heroic Rag progression, change it to Chimera or Kill Shot
-You have no Raptor Strike glyph, which strikes me as odd considering all of the ridiculous lengths you seem to want to go to to improve your survivability
-That point you have in Trueshot Aura is completely useless in a raid, and Marked for Death is inferior to Termination for sure
-Your reforging is a bit terrible, especially for playing AS. Having sub 2000 crit and so much excess hit is just ridiculous. There are addons and websites to help you out with this!
-Gemming for the socket bonus in your helm might not be such a bad idea
-Your pets all have different specs for some reason, and I can also see that you are using a cunning pet in this baleroc parse. This is a significant DPS loss (unless that 4% physical is actually missing, which I doubt). Use a ferocity pet. Raptor/Hyena is usually ideal for applying a rare debuff to an add that won't be targetted by the majority of the raid. Stun pets also have situational use. Make sure you are manually casting (or macroing) Call of the Wild! (and macro Rabid as well)
-As stated earlier, get a real spec. There is a reason there is a 'cookie cutter' spec. Obviously there are points where you should deviate from this spec, but I don't feel that you know enough about the class yet to make that call.
-I know you aren't asking about survival, but you probably want KS glyph instead of AS, Raptor Strike Glyph and put entrapment points into Hunter Vs. Wild (however I suspect this may be a beth spec - you should be playing MM on this fight anyway)

On to the log itself:
-You apply Chimera Shot and Serpent sting very late - they both should be applied at 90%, even if you are stacking RF and Lust. It takes a considerable amount of haste to change this fact (but you are speccing out of pathing so obviously this does not apply to you).
-Using Readiness straight after Rapid Fire in this case is less than ideal as you are not going to get a second set of Rapid Fires anyway, effectively just wasting a GCD of RF
-You are arbitrarily casting Aimed and Arcane shot randomly. If you want to play Arcane, use AiS during Hero/Rapid Fire and Arcane Shot otherwise. Swapping every second cycle is retarded.
-You are losing time on instant cast abilities, make sure ability queueing is turned on in the options and set it to your latency + 50 or so. You are clearly not queueing abilities as effectively as you believe. Mash your keys harder as well I suppose.
-You are often not casting Chimera Shot on cooldown, whether this is because of focus issues or casting Aimed Shot too often. In my most recent Baleroc parse (with CS glyph) I cast CS an average of once every 9.3 seconds. I'm often seeing delays of up to 3-5 seconds in your parse. This is a huge DPS loss.
-You only have a 93.8% ISS uptime, I feel that you must sometimes be losing ISS. Track SS cast times and make sure every cast is subject to ISS.
-I also notice that you seem to do everything in set rotational cycles. This is fine but you have to be prepared to wing it a little bit when RNG makes following a set rotation a DPS loss. This will often happen when you get multiple 4set procs, too many AiS stacks, etc. I refuse to believe that you kept that consistent of a rotation without sacrificing some focus or abilities unnecessarily. This might also help explain why your CS usage is so poor!
--------------

There are most likely other issues with your play but these can be discovered and worked on at a later date, try to get these obvious things out of the way first.

[CedricDur]

I apologize, but you picked my solo spec My secondary spec is my raid spec and of course it does not have Spirit Bond nor Kill Shot glyphed. It was also a MM spec at the time but a desire to change a bit coupled with a non-hardcore guild has made me spec SV to give it a try for my next raid night (today).

Regarding the rest. Chimera Shot is delayed in favor of Aimed Shot when I am hasted from one of my trinkets. When I am under no haste effect I cast Arcane Shot as per Whytefist's advice regarding the dynamic haste build. I suppose this is something I should look at and delay my Aimed shot for CS.

Regarding Pathing, each point is worth 120-ish haste rating (Whytefist has a table specifying this) so I took two points from Pathing and added 200-ish reforged Haste rating. It's not min maxed, I know, those 200 points could be extra Crit.

I do not have excess Hit. Unless we consider the 20-ish points I cannot seem to get rid of. You probably meant Haste. The lower crit is because I reforged Haste to be a hair (20 points) above Crit so the Hungerer will proc Haste. It does diminish my Crit a fair bit but hey, it is one extra Haste proc under which I cast Aimed Shot and I'm still at 38-ish Crit%.

To be more clear regarding my catch-all spec it was/is http://www.wowhead.com/talent#ccbMZfRGMGoMuroM

Since I'm trying SV atm this is all moot, I am not using SV for serious raiding, only to change the air a bit.

P.S. Back to MM (though SV pulled surprisingly nice numbers) and took heed of Joyful's advice, FemaleDwarf was not against one point off Frenzy and one more in Pathing.

[dragtch9]

Spec: MM
Item Level: 376
Expectations: 25,000 DPS for most relatively stand and nuke fights, I.E. Baleroc, Heroic Shannox
Armory Link: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ecles/advanced
Worldoflogs Link: N/A
Femaledwarf Link: N/A

Last night I was pugging Firelands and was getting called out for my low DPS. We had almost all the buffs I would need to be able to do my max DPS except 10% attack speed. With all my cooldowns, I would peak at about 27k, but couldn't maintain more than 20k or 21k, and a lot of fights it would be lower than that. Femaledwarf has me simming at about 28k.

I have to assume the problem is my shot priority.

During CA phase: SS to keep ISS up > Hard Cast Aimed Shot
After CA but before Execute: Get SrS then Chim > Instant AiS > ArS > SS to maintain ISS and be able to use Chim on CD.
Execute: Chim > Instant AiS > Kill Shot > ArS > SS to maintain ISS and be able to use Chim on CD.

I use Rapid Fire and Readiness more or less on CD, saving them if a burn phase is coming up within the time they'd be on CD. Call of the Wild and Agi pot are generally saved for Heroism or burn phase Rapid Fire.

[Gunba]

I apologize, but you picked my solo spec My secondary spec is my raid spec and of course it does not have Spirit Bond nor Kill Shot glyphed. It was also a MM spec at the time but a desire to change a bit coupled with a non-hardcore guild has made me spec SV to give it a try for my next raid night (today).

The spec you linked is still gimping your pathing for no reason. If you intentionally detract from your maximum potential DPS through spec and gearing choices then you can expect to pull less than ideal numbers. Pretty self explanatory really. As previously stated Trueshot Aura is a completely useless talent in most raids.

Regarding the rest. Chimera Shot is delayed in favor of Aimed Shot when I am hasted from one of my trinkets. When I am under no haste effect I cast Arcane Shot as per Whytefist's advice regarding the dynamic haste build. I suppose this is something I should look at and delay my Aimed shot for CS.

Yeah, I wouldn't honestly follow this advice. Aimed Shot tends to hit for less damage than Chimera anyway, cost more focus and take longer to cast. Using Aimed Shot because of a trinket proc is even more excessive to be honest. It honestly isn't worth the effort. Focus more on things that will have a significant impact on your DPS like maximizing GCDs.

Regarding Pathing, each point is worth 120-ish haste rating (Whytefist has a table specifying this) so I took two points from Pathing and added 200-ish reforged Haste rating. It's not min maxed, I know, those 200 points could be extra Crit.

That's 300dps you are literally throwing away.

I do not have excess Hit. Unless we consider the 20-ish points I cannot seem to get rid of. You probably meant Haste. The lower crit is because I reforged Haste to be a hair (20 points) above Crit so the Hungerer will proc Haste. It does diminish my Crit a fair bit but hey, it is one extra Haste proc under which I cast Aimed Shot and I'm still at 38-ish Crit%.

Like I said, using a decent reforging calculator (ReforgeLite addon or www.reforgecalc.de) I find it hard to believe you can't get closer to 8% hit. Again, being okay with throwing away free DPS is what will put you behind when you take this attitude to multiple facets of the class.

Since I'm trying SV atm this is all moot, I am not using SV for serious raiding, only to change the air a bit.

Keep in mind SV is expected to remain almost completely useless for the entirety of Tier 13 due to poor scaling, particularly with the new tier set bonuses. I wouldn't invest too much of your time becoming skilled at it.

P.S. Back to MM (though SV pulled surprisingly nice numbers) and took heed of Joyful's advice, FemaleDwarf was not against one point off Frenzy and one more in Pathing.

This is probably a result of setting up FD incorrectly, but more importantly on the majority of fights your pet will have worse uptime than you (and FD significantly overvalues pet damage by at least 20%)

Make sure you pay attention to some of the other points listed in my original reply.

---------- Post added 2011-10-30 at 04:09 AM ----------

Spec: MM
Item Level: 376
Expectations: 25,000 DPS for most relatively stand and nuke fights, I.E. Baleroc, Heroic Shannox
Armory Link: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ecles/advanced
Worldoflogs Link: N/A
Femaledwarf Link: N/A

Not having any sort of logs makes it particularly difficult to investigate what is holding you back.

Last night I was pugging Firelands and was getting called out for my low DPS. We had almost all the buffs I would need to be able to do my max DPS except 10% attack speed. With all my cooldowns, I would peak at about 27k, but couldn't maintain more than 20k or 21k, and a lot of fights it would be lower than that. Femaledwarf has me simming at about 28k.

In your gear I believe 28k would be more than achievable.

During CA phase: SS to keep ISS up > Hard Cast Aimed Shot

It's worth putting up Chim/SrS when you haven't got RF up during CA, not that this should be an issue on the fights you are talking about.

After CA but before Execute: Get SrS then Chim > Instant AiS > ArS > SS to maintain ISS and be able to use Chim on CD.

Chim > SrS. Also, trying to line up your Chimera shots is important. To make it more simple (and maximize 4set proc usage on Chimera Shots) you could try following a hill shaped focus cycle of build focus -> drop all focus (and AiS procs), repeat. This might look something like SS > SS > SS > SS > CS > AS > AS. Keep in mind that you will have to increase the amount of SS or AS depending on if you need to gain or drop focus. Having the Chimera Shot be the first focus dropping shot is paramount to ensuring the majority of 4set procs are utilized correctly. This is not the only option around but it is definitely competitive.

Execute: Chim > Instant AiS > Kill Shot > ArS > SS to maintain ISS and be able to use Chim on CD.

More or less, make sure you are accounting for 2/2 termination. It is easy to waste focus unnecessarily in this phase.

I use Rapid Fire and Readiness more or less on CD, saving them if a burn phase is coming up within the time they'd be on CD. Call of the Wild and Agi pot are generally saved for Heroism or burn phase Rapid Fire.

Make sure you are not losing potential casts by delaying them. I doubt that this is an issue on Baleroc or Shannox though.

Moving on to your armory:
-Skinning is a significant DPS loss over a crafting profession (preferably engineering)
-You are not reforged to any notable amount of haste, if you want to play an AS build a haste value of 1096 will be ideal for a goblin. This is to minimize dead time in your rotation.
-RF glyph, a lot of good players use this but the whole hill shaped focus idea is much easier to execute with Chimera Shot glyph
-Greater Crit to cloak.
-No Raptor Strike glyph?


Pretty much the best I can do for you without logs. I also feel that it is more than likely your raid is missing some debuffs on the boss which are just as important as most buffs. Missing 10% melee haste is also ridiculous and you might as well be playing survival. Even attempting to reach FD numbers without every single buff in play is just a waste of time.

[CedricDur]

A bit more aggressive than needed in the reply but thanks anyway. One point in Pathing = 128 haste rating. I think I can live without if it means having Trueshot Aura for normal instances. I already use Reforgenator for my reforging needs too though I suppose I could aim at having a bit less than the cap instead of being capped but I severely doubt 20 points would be noticeable.

I'm more interested in the advice regarding the rotation. I'll be more careful about my Chimera CDs and ISS, and yes, I do let my Serpent Sting until I'm done with RF as to not waste my haste while it lasts. I'll be more careful to cast it straight at 89% too.

I end up being unsure about Aimed Shot. It's basically always cast it even when un-hasted? Some say yes, some say no, yuck. I really dislike those long cast times, especially un-hasted.

I've increased my latency thingy by another 50 points, can't say I notice a difference yet though. Not sure how much harder I should be mashing my keys either, since I'm always fighting my GCD. I must be delaying my shots when I see I'm 0.2 or 0.3 from a big shot and its adding up. Then again some advice is to never stop casting, some advice is not to delay the big shots, so it's one of these things.

[Gunba]

A bit more aggressive than needed in the reply but thanks anyway. One point in Pathing = 128 haste rating. I think I can live without if it means having Trueshot Aura for normal instances. I already use Reforgenator for my reforging needs too though I suppose I could aim at having a bit less than the cap instead of being capped but I severely doubt 20 points would be noticeable.

Like I said, what it means is having 200-300 less DPS. If you are willing to sacrifice this much dps to have TSA in a 5man (that is most likely going to have TSA anyway, or would be fine clearing it without the AP buff) then that it up to you. Ultimately it will just be one of many reasons you are behind the other hunter in your raid. It might not seem like a lot but if you take this approach to every mechanic (reforging, spec choices, glyphs, rotation, etc.) then it will all add up. I don't mean to be aggressive but posting in a DPS thread asking for help with your DPS and then ignoring the most obvious ways to improve is a bit of a waste of time.

I end up being unsure about Aimed Shot. It's basically always cast it even when un-hasted? Some say yes, some say no, yuck. I really dislike those long cast times, especially un-hasted.

No real need to do this. AiS only really pulls ahead if you spend a lot of time tunneling and not moving at all. It is still possible to pull 35-39k DPS on Baleroc playing Arcane. I don't personally feel that the mobility loss is worth it but this is up to you and what your guild needs. I personally only use AiS during CA, RF or BL.

I've increased my latency thingy by another 50 points, can't say I notice a difference yet though. Not sure how much harder I should be mashing my keys either, since I'm always fighting my GCD. I must be delaying my shots when I see I'm 0.2 or 0.3 from a big shot and its adding up. Then again some advice is to never stop casting, some advice is not to delay the big shots, so it's one of these things.

It is very rarely a good idea to wait for Chimera Shot unless it has a significant rotational advantage (i.e. keeping things better lined up). Waiting for 0.2-0.3s for Chimera to come off cooldown is only really gaining you 2-3% of a chimera in the future. You are most likely losing more than that in Steady Shot damage a lot of the time (not to mention focus gain, etc). The best advice I can give you is try to line up your Chimera Shot better so there isn't deadtime.

[ChodeHunter]

Spec Marksmanship Character Name: ChodË
Item Level 382
Expectations: Above 33k On Baleroc
Armory Link: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...d%C3%AB/simple
Worldoflogs Link: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/v...?s=2691&e=2858
Femaledwarf Link: http://www.femaledwarf.com/?setting_id=57549

Hi, Made an account just so I could get other hunters opinions. I'm an officer of a guild that Has recently started pushing heroic content. (5/7 as of this post). I've always been a really self conscious player, I do my job, I make sure others do there's, we kill bosses. However, for the past month i've noticed from our logs that my DPS is absolutely horrid. Our first Heroic Domo kill I was saving my Readiness to double Deterrence the orbs and ended up on the bottom of the charts. Now we're working on heroic Baleroc, and my dps seems to just be lacking. I linked our normal kill just so you could look over a full fight, but feel free to look over the other logs. Any help would be vastly appreciated. FIX MY DPS.

[Gunba]

Spec Marksmanship Character Name: ChodË
Item Level 382
Expectations: Above 33k On Baleroc
Armory Link: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...d%C3%AB/simple
Worldoflogs Link: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/v...?s=2691&e=2858
Femaledwarf Link: http://www.femaledwarf.com/?setting_id=57549

Hi, Made an account just so I could get other hunters opinions. I'm an officer of a guild that Has recently started pushing heroic content. (5/7 as of this post). I've always been a really self conscious player, I do my job, I make sure others do there's, we kill bosses. However, for the past month i've noticed from our logs that my DPS is absolutely horrid. Our first Heroic Domo kill I was saving my Readiness to double Deterrence the orbs and ended up on the bottom of the charts. Now we're working on heroic Baleroc, and my dps seems to just be lacking. I linked our normal kill just so you could look over a full fight, but feel free to look over the other logs. Any help would be vastly appreciated. FIX MY DPS.

I looked over your character setup and it seems fine.

The obvious issue is how you are playing the game:
-You have a ravager pet out for some reason (seriously missing 4% in a 25m?)
-You don't use Chimera until over a minute in to the fight (it should be used at 90%, ON CD)
-You apply Serpent Sting at 43 seconds and let it drop off for no reason (again, 90%, don't let it fall off)
-You lose a considerable amount of time between GCDs (turn on spell queue, mash your keys)
-You delay your second Rapid Fire in heroic mode - don't (maximize your RF uptime during CA)
-You let Serpent Sting fall off about 5 times in heroic mode (see: using Chimera on CD)
-You spend a lot of time casting Steady Shot in heroic mode, you must be focus capping


I'm sure there are some other issues but these are the key issues that will get you to your goal. Your ISS uptime could be a little bit higher

[Joyful]

Spec MM
Item Level 383 equipped
Expectations: 31.5k according to female dwarf
Armory Link: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...tcrit/advanced
Worldoflogs Link: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=7714&e=8057
Femaledwarf Link: http://www.femaledwarf.com/?setting_id=57640

The link is for baleroc 10 hc but if it would be easier to analyze another fight please do. First off i know my dps will be lower then the expectation on bale due to my raids tactic and setup, and what we do is, spread the debuff as much as possible, have the hunter on first backup, the melee stand close to the crystal when said hunter take the crystal witch results in that the hunter cant do anything but melee the boss for a few seconds.

Any help is much apriciated.

[Gunba]

Spec MM
Item Level 383 equipped
Expectations: 31.5k according to female dwarf
Armory Link: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...tcrit/advanced
Worldoflogs Link: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=7714&e=8057
Femaledwarf Link: http://www.femaledwarf.com/?setting_id=57640

The link is for baleroc 10 hc but if it would be easier to analyze another fight please do. First off i know my dps will be lower then the expectation on bale due to my raids tactic and setup, and what we do is, spread the debuff as much as possible, have the hunter on first backup, the melee stand close to the crystal when said hunter take the crystal witch results in that the hunter cant do anything but melee the boss for a few seconds.

Any help is much apriciated.

The most obvious standout things in your character build is only having 1 point in Termination, and having virtually random reforging. Should probably reforge to 1235 haste if possible. 65 Mastery to gloves would also be a minor DPS increase. As usual the issue lies with you as a player and not your character:

-You macro Aspect of the Hawk, this is a DPS loss as it can often interrupt ability queueing, you can see this here (I assume your latency is ~50-100):
[20:29:36.956] Critcrit casts Arcane Shot on Baleroc
[20:29:37.071] Critcrit casts Aspect of the Hawk
[20:29:38.102] Critcrit casts Chimera Shot on Baleroc

When you successfully queued an ability it looks more like this:
[20:30:22.287] Critcrit casts Arcane Shot on Baleroc
[20:30:23.288] Critcrit casts Arcane Shot on Baleroc

-You use Readiness very late for some reason, this is minimizing the amount of your Rapid Fire that is used during CA phase, stack it with Bloodlust
-You lose a significant amount of damage every time you disengage as you seem to fail to cast abilities during this time
-You spend a very large portion of the fight randomly using Arcane Shot and Aimed shot simultaneously, and then don't use Aimed Shot during Rapid Fire later on? This is a mistake, always AiS during haste effects
-Often when you focus dump you are using Arcane shot before CS. This is likely for focus management reasons but in any case it is a mistake. You are simply forcing 4set procs onto the wrong ability. You do this very often and I have no doubt it hurts your DPS.
-As you have noticed, tanking shards significantly gimps your DPS and honestly should not be necessary. Get melee to give you more room so you can stand just out of the deadzone, or have them stand further from the boss so crystals don't spawn in Zambia
-You are not honestly doing a very good job of getting Chimera Shot on cooldown, make this more of a priority in your rotation. Every other ability is shit compared to Chimera Shot anyway
-Don't cast Readiness during RF unless it is going to net you an additional RF during the fight (which it very rarely will, if ever)
-Your ISS uptime is really terrible. It should be about 97%, whereas yours is at 76%. Make sure you are tracking the ISS buff, make an aura for it or something. You cannot afford to let it constantly fall off, ideally never.
-Are you using your first RF and berserking before the fight even starts? Generally it should be done after your pre-cast AIS has hit the boss. Similar story with manually using Call of the Wild (which you should be doing by the way!).
-Are you using pots? I don't see them in your log. Free couple of hundred dps right here (pots are like 3g, seriously)
-Do you use Aspect of the Fox at all? With 3 countdowns and 0 Aspect of the Fox usage this seems a bit awkward, unless you're absolutely amazing at pooling focus and casting instants the whole time. Then again you lose ISS so often that this probably isn't the case.
-It'd be nice to see a log where you didn't have 3 countdowns and have to take shards every 5 seconds
-Get some logs where you don't cast a new aspect every 5 seconds (you cast it 44 times during the fight). It will make your logs significantly easier to read.

[Joyful]

Thanks for the amazing feedback and i will remove my aspect part of my macros, i will try and get a good log of baleroc with all these things in mind.

[ChodeHunter]

I looked over your character setup and it seems fine.

The obvious issue is how you are playing the game:
-You have a ravager pet out for some reason (seriously missing 4% in a 25m?)
-You don't use Chimera until over a minute in to the fight (it should be used at 90%, ON CD)
-You apply Serpent Sting at 43 seconds and let it drop off for no reason (again, 90%, don't let it fall off)
-You lose a considerable amount of time between GCDs (turn on spell queue, mash your keys)
-You delay your second Rapid Fire in heroic mode - don't (maximize your RF uptime during CA)
-You let Serpent Sting fall off about 5 times in heroic mode (see: using Chimera on CD)
-You spend a lot of time casting Steady Shot in heroic mode, you must be focus capping


I'm sure there are some other issues but these are the key issues that will get you to your goal. Your ISS uptime could be a little bit higher

Thank you very much

[Joyful]

Just did a bh 25 and i got 32.2k dps and i forgot to log it ofc but i did change the things you pointed out and i could stand still for the whole fight with feign death on the eyes, i noticed my rotation being a lot smother without the aspect macros because as you said sometimes it took a bit longer for the shot to go off.

I will record logs of both our next FL and my next BH just to see how im doing.
Thanks again for taking the time and look thru my logs and that.