The Fix-My-DPS thread (Warlords Edition) [READ FIRST POST]

[Styxxa]

I'm still seeing a few good recent Destruction parses on add-heavy encounters (Iskar, Socrethar, Xhul) that are choosing GSR as the 2nd trinket. So I'm not quite ready to rule it out completely yet. In comparison to your UgoS, you'll really have to see the results for yourself on an encounter by encounter basis. I'm not seeing a whole lot of UgoS use lately, it's being passed up even for the Class Trinket in fairly non-traditional scenarios (i.e Xhul and Socrethar). But I would use OoV instead of GSR on a (Destruction) Demon encounter (i.e. Mannoroth & Archimonde).

Regarding the cloak, the Kilrogg cloak (2/2) is +250 int, +138 mastery, +195 multistrike. So I'd say your Dungeon cloak is actually not too bad a replacement for it as Destruction. The Fel Lord cloak is BiS for Affliction.

[darqnes]

Hey Guys! New to the forums. I was looking for some help in general about my affl lock. For some reason, I'm not putting out the DPS I think I should be with my item level. I obviously can't post a link here until I have a certain amount of post. if you can look me up on warcrraft logs (darqness-mug'thol) and look at the heroic Gorfiend for 1-12/16 and let me know if there is something I'm doing wrong or can do better? If you need a link, just PM me and maybe I can get it to you that way. I appreciate the help in advance.

[zvvl]

Use Voidsight on Zakuun.

[darqnes]

That's it? Nothing else you see?

[Deleted]

Hey Guys! New to the forums. I was looking for some help in general about my affl lock. For some reason, I'm not putting out the DPS I think I should be with my item level. I obviously can't post a link here until I have a certain amount of post. if you can look me up on warcrraft logs (darqness-mug'thol) and look at the heroic Gorfiend for 1-12/16 and let me know if there is something I'm doing wrong or can do better? If you need a link, just PM me and maybe I can get it to you that way. I appreciate the help in advance.

I'm not the best or most experienced Warlock, and I don't enjoy Affliction, so keep that in mind.

You Life Tapped after the burn phase started, so after casting DS, using pot and having BL up. It's a GCD of not dealing damage with all of your controllable damage buffs up, which can be avoided by Tapping before Feast.

You let your DoT's drop off twice on Gorefiend without any interaction from the fight (nothing prevented you from not refreshing in Pandemic range)

When you got marked to go into the stomach at 3:02, you didn't cast/do anything until you were in the stomach. You should refresh your DoTs on the boss so that the last cast goes off about a second before you're pulled in; you can make a very simple weakaura to give you the exact timer on this. (It might just be me misreading that part of the log though, because I'm not sure if the movement of going in is shown on the replay or not. In this case, you're running out of melee range while casting nothing without the digested debuff on you yet, which could either be the movement of being thrown into the air or just not casting anything and waiting for it to trigger) - It is actually just you moving and not refreshing/casting anything, the movement of being pulled in happens straight after. Perhaps you confused it with Doomwell?

You can, on the pull, use SB:SS on Gorefiend. First round is targeted at 2-3sec, but whether you're inside is irrelevant on Heroic. Inside, you'll regain the shards from sniping adds, and outside you have your usual opener.

Lastly you're not using your Gateway or Circle to place Doomwells with minimal downtime, if you don't want to accidentally port yourself onto another Doomwell just choose a spot that's awkward for people to get to, or use it to get back to the middle of the room.

I know the advice is not really worth much, but it's something at least?

[Tegri]

Hi guys!
I feel my dps is pretty bad for my ilvl on mythic tyrant(though we didn't killed it yet), and i'm asking for help in general, what should i change in my rotation, priority, trinket using, etc.? I'll link the logs from our last attempts i used OoV at the start, then changed to hc wf Fragment and i changed again on OoV, my other trinket is DSI all the time. So what do you guys suggest, should i focus on 100% debuff uptime on the add(s) too, or keep focusing on 100%haunt uptime? i feel i cant do both, i always lacks on shards in the start of ring+tw+combatpot "phase". Thanks in advance.
Edit: can any of the mods give me permission to post a wlog link? btw my character is Tegri - Equinsu Ocha from Arathor and the attempts i mentioned was on the 18th of January.

[CairoOvercoat]

So I played Affliction for the majority of WoD and enjoyed it without much issue, the spec is fairly straightforward. I decided to pick up Destro as its basically needed for further progression. I was confident in my understanding and basics, and was confident i could use it in our Xhul kill. Things did not go well. I was only pulling about 37k which is freakin laughable. I switched back to Affliction after getting my ass served on a plate and we did eventually get him. But I really want to know what I was doing wrong.

From what I understand my gear should be more then viable:

us(DOT)battle(DOT)net/wow/en/character/korgath/Moustaches/advanced


Ideally I want the neck replaced and swap the helm and shoulders out with Demon Crown and Deathrattle Shoulders respectively.

www(DOT)warcraftlogs(DOT)com/reports/mXDdfLHTKhbqFt2j

This is our log for Xhul. Attemps 1 - 11 are my attempts at Destro. What am I not grasping here? I tried to have Havoc sticking to something as close to on CD as I could (I know it isnt perfect because of my inexperience, but I digress.)

Are there any macros that are crucial/very useful? Or am I making a misstep somewhere else?

[Styxxa]

@Moustaches:

You're missing the critical aspect of Destro on Xhul: FnB + CB. The last several pages in this thread have Xhul specific advice you can read (pg 22, #853). Your Dark Soul use is horrendous. It's just at completely random times and barely used. For kill times 6min+ you should use it at 0:00, 2:00, 4:00, 6:00 + extra charge.

@Tegri:

You're having trouble keeping Haunting Spirits at 100%, which is totally achievable. I would recommend to play Class Trinket with DSI. For progression, you can keep your DoTs up on Tyrant + 1st add; but where you cast lust to bring Tyrant to 40% you should focus on Tyrant 100% (DoTs + Haunt + Drain Soul). You should also use Doomguard there, you never seem to. When the 3rd add spawns in the final phase, focus it 100%.

When you feel like you have no trouble keeping 100% uptime on Haunting Spirits you can start playing around with Soul Swap+Glyph to maximize the efficiency in transferring your DoTs, but until then, just focus on killing the boss.

[CairoOvercoat]

Fair enough, I never actually read anything that instructed me on Dark Soul usage for Destro. Should one use the same train of thought on Affliction?

Also I repeat my concern of any necessary macros etc.

[Styxxa]

Dark Soul is like... the main DPS cooldown for all warlock specs. It has a different name and effect for each spec but the point is the same: You use it on cooldown. I would suggest reading the guides for Affliction and Destruction that are stickied to the warlock forum here. There's no guide I've ever read that DOESN'T mention the importance of Dark Soul.

No, there are no necessary macros. Some players find mouseover macros for Havoc and Shadowburn useful. But if you don't know about Dark Soul then a macro isn't really going to help.

[cainito]

@Moustaches:

You are capped on embers A LOT. From 0:21-1:01 on the third wipe you used CB once... Need to use it more. You gain embers quickly, dumping them with CB at like 28-30 embers is good. Keep in mind add health. Is add about to be sub-20%? Save CB, use havoc + SB x3.

You used havoc once. Why? Havoc and CB = profit. Havoc and SB = profit. Back to the capping embers, you had the embers for them, you were just capped.. a lot.

Uptime on immolate was good.

[alfred725]

Hi, so I'm new to end game raiding, and I don't fully understand how to figure out what I'm doing wrong.

I have the heroic best in slot pieces for destro and aff reccomended by the two guides stickied on the warlock page as well as a few pieces upgraded to mythic. The only pieces I have equipped that are not on the best in slot list are a mythic Glowing Firestone neckpiece with socket (for destro) and a mythic warforged Demon Prince's Ascendant Crown (for aff. Thank you naval missions )

So my main concern is should I be enchant/gemming for haste in my affliction set. I've been using mastery although haste is supposed to be better. When I switched to haste, I saw ~10k drop in dps on training dummy.

my guild has provided me with some logs, but seeing as I've never looked at logs before, I have no idea how to decipher what I'm doing wrong.

My character is Ahknadin on Illidan guild Bloodknight Redemption

warcraftlogs.com/reports/8dpHA1rytPFhm6gn

warcraftlogs.com/rankings/character/3335036/latest

[Styxxa]

Hey alfred725,

To answer your question: I would really just stick to gemming and enchanting Mastery on all your gear. Also, I believe the Demon Prince's helm is BiS for Destro so feel free to use that in both specs - just as a result of the crazy iLvl and Mastery. The BiS off-piece for Affliction is the shoulders from Archi.

Regarding your logs, pretty tough to analyze wipes so I can't say much about Kormrok. You died on Iron Reaver so pretty tough to analyze that one.

I look at your HC Archimonde parse where you topped the DPS in your guild. Your DoT uptimes were 98%, 88% (quite low), and 95% and your Haunting Spirits uptime was 97% (pretty good!). You lined up your cooldowns somewhat (not perfect, but 2nd potion with TW and Doomguard and some DS). Anyway, pretty good result for you I gather especially considering you didn't even play it perfectly.

Then I look at Socrethar where you were middle-of-the-pack and your DoT uptimes were 97%, 86%, and 92% with Haunting Spirits at only 87%. Your Doomguard was cast outside of Bloodlust and you didn't have DS for either.

I think you can probably see most improvement by simply getting your DoTs to 99% - especially work on Unstable Affliction - and your Haunting Spirits to 100%. Then, line up your cooldowns better: Use your Doomguard with BL and 2nd potion and ALWAYS have a DS ready for that, which will hopefully line up with the ring as well. Try to always have DS up for the ring, which shouldn't be an issue since they both have a 2-min cooldown. You seem to be just a little bit late casting DS when the ring is up. Make sure your UI is alerting you of all of these things so that its easy for you to keep track of while dealing with raid mechanics.

To read these logs, I click on the Damage Done tab then click your name. That gives me your DoT uptimes. Then I click on the Buffs tab which tells me your Haunting Spirits uptime and how you lined your cooldowns up.

Get that under your belt and it should lead to substantial improvement. Feel free to return with any more specific questions after that.

[Deleted]

Don't really need help with my DPS specifically, however i'd like to know, how important is the 2p and 4p for Destro? Currently gearing up my Destro Warlock alt and I had crafted 6/6 shoulders and legs ages ago, which ofcourse interferes with the tier items, stupid, I know. However looking at the tier bonuses, they seem rather meh? So I wanted to know, is it worth replacing my 725 crafted items for 705 Normal mode Tier items to get the bonuses? Or should I wait untill I get the Heroic versions and lose less intellect?

Thanks in advance.

[Djriff]

2pc is huge, 4pc is meh IMO. It's good when it works, but unreliable.

[ThePhantombox]

Hey everyone, finally got back on board the late raider train and have started working through heroic with my guild. Anyways, I've noticed whenever I play affliction I seem to score kinda low in the percentile range for my ilvl, though I'm really not sure what I'm doing wrong, I'm trying to manage my shards properly and line dark soul up with procs, but my scores still stay pretty low. If anyone could give me an idea of what I need to be improving on that would be great.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...pe=damage-done

These were on tyrant from Monday night, so it's the most up to date in terms of my gear, although if it's better to look at a log of a kill I have zakuun here (https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...pe=damage-done), though at the time it was taken I didn't have my 4-set.

Here's my armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...lvinick/simple

Also just a general question, on fights like tyrant with an add that stays up for a while with the boss, is it more of a dps increase to keep full dots on both, or just focus one and get more drain time?

Thanks all in advance.

[Zerach8]

Don't really need help with my DPS specifically, however i'd like to know, how important is the 2p and 4p for Destro? Currently gearing up my Destro Warlock alt and I had crafted 6/6 shoulders and legs ages ago, which ofcourse interferes with the tier items, stupid, I know. However looking at the tier bonuses, they seem rather meh? So I wanted to know, is it worth replacing my 725 crafted items for 705 Normal mode Tier items to get the bonuses? Or should I wait untill I get the Heroic versions and lose less intellect?

Thanks in advance.

Few procs during burn phases or procs can mean a big difference, but as mentioned its quite unreliable...as a side note, who came up with those awful stats on the shoulders token? Should get fired

[Styxxa]

Hey everyone, finally got back on board the late raider train and have started working through heroic with my guild. Anyways, I've noticed whenever I play affliction I seem to score kinda low in the percentile range for my ilvl, though I'm really not sure what I'm doing wrong, I'm trying to manage my shards properly and line dark soul up with procs, but my scores still stay pretty low. If anyone could give me an idea of what I need to be improving on that would be great.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...pe=damage-done

These were on tyrant from Monday night, so it's the most up to date in terms of my gear, although if it's better to look at a log of a kill I have zakuun here (https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...pe=damage-done), though at the time it was taken I didn't have my 4-set.

Here's my armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...lvinick/simple

Also just a general question, on fights like tyrant with an add that stays up for a while with the boss, is it more of a dps increase to keep full dots on both, or just focus one and get more drain time?

Thanks all in advance.

Hey,

Wipes are tough to analyze so I'll focus on Zakuun. I've said it lots of times before in all different places, but I'll say it again here: don't beat yourself up about rankings and especially iLvl%. Take a look at the rankings on heroic Zakuun for your iLvl. You have to go a really, really, really long way down that list to find a parse in which the duration was more than 4-minutes (ie. Your kill time was 4-min+). All of the top parses are sub-3-minutes and even a few less than 2-minutes. If you take a look at the top parse for your iLvl (Kevwl ~94K) - they cast lust on the pull and he even had a few 740 players in the group providing a bit of a boost. That's going to inflate his DPS immensely because he's able to provide a good opening burst and doesn't have as long to sustain it until the boss is dead. Long story short, there's examples like this everywhere in the rankings so don't even worry about them.

Looking specifically at your kill, there's a few things you can improve:

1. Haunting Spirits to 100%. It dropped off very shortly two times. The class trinket really helps smooth out shard regeneration so this will become easier with some better gear. You did pretty well but getting this to 100% makes a difference.

2. Lining up your cooldowns. You chose to use your Doomguard on pull, which would have been good if you guys used Lust on pull, but I would have saved it for when you actually used BL, which also would have dealt more damage since the boss was in execute for the Doomguard. Further, you should have saved a charge of Dark Soul for that Bloodlust+Doomguard combo and also used your 2nd potion there. You could have done much more DPS in that final phase if you lined up all those cooldowns.

To answer your question, on a fight like Tyrant, in order to maximize your DPS, you want to have both targets with full DoTs + Haunt and fill with Drain Soul when you have no DoTs to refresh. A further efficiency is to use the Glyph of Soul Swap and time that properly for the new add spawns, and all of this is going to be highly dependent on Shards because most of all you want to maintain Haunting Spirits so you have to have your 2 Shards every ~30s (and I personally don't feel your gear supports this play). A compromise would be to just hardcast your DoTs on the new target and Drain Soul whichever target needs extra damage. Save your Shards for SB:Haunt. Point being, you want both targets DoTted ~100%.

[Poppin]

SO after my guild broke up due to the ban hammer a few months back I decided to join a Mythic Guild and do some progression with them. All went well the 1st few nights as we were doing mostly heroics, and my DPS was fine then. We get to Mythics last week and I was told the strats and what to focus on ect... However my DPS tanked. I know I can be doing WAY more DPS I think I just need a few pointers, more so with Destro. Affliction im usually pretty good at except on Mythic I forget to recast UA a lot and I know that's my main issue with that. I did DL Affdots to make me more aware. Anyways if you guys can please take a look over my logs and let me know what could be done I would greatly appreciate it.

warcraftlogs.com/reports/cT7PYVj8HntMmJ3G#fight=4&type=damage-done&source=47

us.battle.net/wow/en/character/whisperwind/Benched/simple

[ThePhantombox]

Hey,

Wipes are tough to analyze so I'll focus on Zakuun. I've said it lots of times before in all different places, but I'll say it again here: don't beat yourself up about rankings and especially iLvl%. Take a look at the rankings on heroic Zakuun for your iLvl. You have to go a really, really, really long way down that list to find a parse in which the duration was more than 4-minutes (ie. Your kill time was 4-min+). All of the top parses are sub-3-minutes and even a few less than 2-minutes. If you take a look at the top parse for your iLvl (Kevwl ~94K) - they cast lust on the pull and he even had a few 740 players in the group providing a bit of a boost. That's going to inflate his DPS immensely because he's able to provide a good opening burst and doesn't have as long to sustain it until the boss is dead. Long story short, there's examples like this everywhere in the rankings so don't even worry about them.

Looking specifically at your kill, there's a few things you can improve:

1. Haunting Spirits to 100%. It dropped off very shortly two times. The class trinket really helps smooth out shard regeneration so this will become easier with some better gear. You did pretty well but getting this to 100% makes a difference.

2. Lining up your cooldowns. You chose to use your Doomguard on pull, which would have been good if you guys used Lust on pull, but I would have saved it for when you actually used BL, which also would have dealt more damage since the boss was in execute for the Doomguard. Further, you should have saved a charge of Dark Soul for that Bloodlust+Doomguard combo and also used your 2nd potion there. You could have done much more DPS in that final phase if you lined up all those cooldowns.

To answer your question, on a fight like Tyrant, in order to maximize your DPS, you want to have both targets with full DoTs + Haunt and fill with Drain Soul when you have no DoTs to refresh. A further efficiency is to use the Glyph of Soul Swap and time that properly for the new add spawns, and all of this is going to be highly dependent on Shards because most of all you want to maintain Haunting Spirits so you have to have your 2 Shards every ~30s (and I personally don't feel your gear supports this play). A compromise would be to just hardcast your DoTs on the new target and Drain Soul whichever target needs extra damage. Save your Shards for SB:Haunt. Point being, you want both targets DoTted ~100%.

Thank you very much, this really helped .