Need advice on how to fix my raid's DPS

[Tyrrandion]

Heya. This post is mainly aimed at raid leaders who have had simmilar problems, but any good advice is appreciated.

I'm one of our guilds raid leaders, and our guild wants to progress into ICC. We have the first 3 on farm, but have been stuck on saurfang for about a month. This is mostly because of DPS. We have some well geared people who's DPS fluctuates HUGELY from week to week. On Saurfang, the majority of our Ranged DPS are pulling less than 3k w/ the 10% warsong on Saurfang (highest was 4600, the rest of the 3 were sitting at 2800 or less). Understandably your DPS is going to drop a bit on a fight like saurfang, but not that much. Some of these same ranged DPS are pulling 5-6k a few weeks back on 5% warsong, and only 3k on a non movement fight ish (marrowgar or deathwhisper). I've seen all of these people pull way more, there are allot of consistency problems, and as a raid leader, I can't figure out how to fix them. What are some ways I can find out what they're doing wrong, and fix it? It's been driving me crazy. I've personally spent hours on EJ or the forums here looking on how to play a class that I don't even play to fix other people's gear, rotation, etc. I'm positive people have access to the right rotation, because I or another raid leader gave them that rotation from allot of research/personal experience. I can't tell if they're using that rotation though, how long they are waiting between shots, etc, etc.

Our melee are on point, pulling 4.5-5.5k on boss fights, btw. Healers are fine, Tanks are fine (with a few problems w/ blood rune, but minimal problems here). We know the strategies, but we've been banging our heads against a brick wall with this fight.

Obviously, I'm going to draw a whole bunch of trolls, unfortunately, all I can say is: If your response is drop your DPS. Don't Reply. It's not an option. If your response is wow, your raid's DPS suck, Don't respond. No one thinks you're funny.

For any helpful people, thanks in advance. I really need to figure this out or we're never going to get past plague wing. Also, as an added on thing, what DPS should I be asking people to do on a target dummy for ICC? We had a disagreement among some of our raid leaders as to weather 4k was a reasonable number to ask of people. I personally felt 4k was a generous number, none of these DPS are lower than 5k in games GS, 2500ish Wow-Heroes. We are a casual guild, and obviously we can't expect people to be pulling absolute perfection out of their gear, so please don't tell me some ridiculously large number. Please be realistic. About half of our raiders are family people who play this game for fun, some people in the raid, WoW is their first experience with a video game at all. I don't expect the whole raid to spend hours and hours researching/honing their DPS, but I don't expect to carry anyone either, I believe people should have to put in some work to be getting into ICC with their DPS. I would like a decent number for people to be pulling to walk in the door. Thanks again to all helpful posts in advance. To all the trolls who will post: get a life and stop stroking your epeen.

[Scort]

Could you post your raid composition, maybe a log of some attempts?

The basics, though: do they have low framerate or high latency? Are they not using quartz or a similar addon for the cast queueing feature?

Beyond that there's not much that can be said without knowing the classes involved.

[Qiw]

Regarding the target dummy thing : Don't use them to compare dps.. values fluctuate and some classes get "false" dps due to some talents not working with the dummies.. Necrosis for dks is a good example..

With 5k Gs etc, your dps should be pulling no less than 5k dps.. ever! Would be nice if you posted what classes / speccs were involved preferably your whole raid setup.. a log of some sort might also be useful

[Jester_Joker]

Well, if you are running with a lot of casters here is my advice: Tell them to move out of fire, but only to move out of fire! Don't let the casters run thirty feet before starting their cast again! And tell them that if they get hit by coldflame or are standing in Death and Decay that it's okay to get hit once or twice, because thats what healers are for! Don't let the casters move unless it is ABSOLUTELY necessary.
Example situation: Fire under warlock! Warlock is in the middle of an Incinerate cast. He stands until the cast is finished, taking 4k damage from the fire. Then he moves four steps to the right, out of the fire, and then starts casting again. Functional, the healers actually get to do something, and face it: Casting Incinerate whilst standing in a pool of fire looks crazy awesome.
I used to have a movement problem. 2.7k gearscore (Wowheroes - not that gearscore matters) Arcane mage. I was doing 3.5k DPS. After I realized my movement problem? 6.5k DPS. Trust me - not moving works.

[jpwkeeper]

I apologize in advance to all you Trolls out there. This is going to be a serious reply. You can heckle me later for this serious breach of protocol.

First things first. If someone is unwilling to even try to improve their DPS, you're SOL. However those people tend to be the exception, not the rule.

1: Keep combat logs and post them to World of Logs. This will allow people to analyze their DPS rotations. Encourage them to do so.

2: Find the list of top DPSers on World of Logs (I can't remember how to get to it off the top of my head) for each class represented in your raid and post links to them in your guild's forums (note: If you don't have forums, go get some forums, there are many free ones out there, and get your people on them so you can discuss things). Have the people look at the distribution of spells in their log and compare it to how someone in a top position distributes their damage. NOTE: Be careful here, there is one pitfall. Sometimes as gear goes through the stratosphere, people change their rotations. Marks hunters, for example, drop Arcane shot when they hit a certain level of Armor Penetration, and apparently Shadow Priests drop Mind Blast at some point as well, so just be aware. Also have them look at their specs to see how they differ.

3: For those still struggling, there is a very nifty query tool in World of Logs that will help you break down exactly what a certain toon is doing during a fight. Some things like clipping DOTs or having a choppy rotation aren't readily apparent in the summary view. I worked with an Arcane mage on his DPS and while the summaries looked good, the query showed that he wasn't stacking Arcane Blast to 3 every time, in fact he was often only doing it to 1 stack, and he never had to use anything for Mana (no pots, gems, evocation). He went to keeping it at 3 stacks and his DPS went up considerably.

4: Have your top DPSers mentor anyone whose class they know very well. Mentoring can go a long way.

5: For casters, have them download Quartz. Quartz has one thing for casters that is truly amazing: It shows your latency as a red bar on your cast bar. Here's the rub: due to the way the game mechanics work, you can start casting your next spell when you hit the red portion of the bar. You don't have to wait until the cast is compeltely done on your screen. I tried this with my holy priest, who was bored, in VH with smite spamming. It felt like I was blood-lusted. It can increase your casting frequency by 20% if you have 300ms latency, which is not unheard of. That's 20% more dps in most cases.

6: Point your DPSers to articles on how to optimize DPS for their class and spec. Elitist Jerks is a popular one, but it can be obscure and math-heavy at times depending on the class. Many classes have websites dedicated to just their class (shaowpriest.com is an example).

7: This one will take bravery. Post a link to one of your combat logs here. Yes, you'll get trolled but you'll also get some people who are very good at DPSing on some classes that will point out deficiencies in someone's rotations. This can be a HUGE help.

Hopefully this helps.

[Twoflower]

With 5k Gs etc, your dps should be pulling no less than 5k dps.. ever!

this.

I know this is not constructive, sorry for that. But how can a icc geared DD do 3k dps ? that's ridiculous.

[Lenea]

Well, there's some things we'd need to know before we can really help:

I assume you are raiding 10 man? Is it ALL your ranged doing wildly different dps or just some? How are you assigning people to kite and kill the blood beasts? Is it really dps that's the problem or are you failing to kill him for another reason (e.g. people dying to marks, people getting hit by beasts and generating too much blood power). Are you hitting the enrage timer (is there even one?), or just becoming overwhelmed with people dying?

It could be a dps problem, but it also could be a kiting problem. It could be a healing problem (you should be able to 1 heal this really and focus on dpsing him down very quickly but 2 healing can work too if dps is ok).

I would say that 2600 IS a little low to be honest, even for a 10 man. Maybe lots of your ranged are stopping to try and kite and slow where it really only needs 2. Maybe your kiters aren't doing a good job so the other ranged/healers need to stop and leg it away from wayward beasts? Those things could drop dps a lot.

I suppose it could just be poor performance from your dps, but inconsistency is hard to fix - jpwkeepers's advice would probably help you there.

[Asur]

this.

I know this is not constructive, sorry for that. But how can a icc geared DD do 3k dps ? that's ridiculous.

Bad rotation, spec, gem/enchants etc.

[Azreial]

I used to lead raids in a previous guild to the one I'm in now, and had a lot of the same issues. while pugs were clearing the first wing, the guild was face-raped by Marrowgar for 2 months. i learned a lot about this....if people don't want to fix themselves, all the learning in the world by you and other raid leaders won't do shit for them. you need to push them to want to get better...not bang your own head against the wall because they dont.

The guild i am currently in raids 2 nites a week, and we are clearing blood wing on 25....on LK in 10's. yes...the people that are in the guild are awesomely geared (Lights Out of Thunderhorn)....a lotta 3000+ wow heroes rated players. 5800+ or so on GS mod for those that understand that number better. We are having issues with people showing up for a second night so half the time icc25 is only 1 nite a week, as well as needing casters like a fat kid needs Jenny Craig lol. The only reason we get as far as we do and do the DPS we do as a "casual" type guild is because people want to get better. players are constantly "arguing" class mechanics in guild chat or raid chat or tells. Most times to be assholes, but others to learn from people. many of us have alts of all classes, or are constantly respeccing to test each other and our own DPS.

60% of raid progression in my opinion is desire really. if you want it, you will strive to top DPS charts in a fight like saurfang where all DPS should be above 7k (even at your gear levels with 10% buff) and you will get it. If your guild doesnt accept this type of ideal, you might have to find new people to raid, or a new guild sir, as much as you dont want to hear it =/

[krasgoth]

I'm one of our guilds raid leaders, and our guild wants to progress into ICC. We have the first 3 on farm, but have been stuck on saurfang for about a month. This is mostly because of DPS. We have some well geared people who's DPS fluctuates HUGELY from week to week. On Saurfang, the majority of our Ranged DPS are pulling less than 3k w/ the 10% warsong on Saurfang (highest was 4600, the rest of the 3 were sitting at 2800 or less). Understandably your DPS is going to drop a bit on a fight like saurfang, but not that much. Some of these same ranged DPS are pulling 5-6k a few weeks back on 5% warsong, and only 3k on a non movement fight ish (marrowgar or deathwhisper). I've seen all of these people pull way more, there are allot of consistency problems, and as a raid leader, I can't figure out how to fix them. What are some ways I can find out what they're doing wrong, and fix it? It's been driving me crazy. I've personally spent hours on EJ or the forums here looking on how to play a class that I don't even play to fix other people's gear, rotation, etc. I'm positive people have access to the right rotation, because I or another raid leader gave them that rotation from allot of research/personal experience. I can't tell if they're using that rotation though, how long they are waiting between shots, etc, etc.

Our melee are on point, pulling 4.5-5.5k on boss fights, btw. Healers are fine, Tanks are fine (with a few problems w/ blood rune, but minimal problems here). We know the strategies, but we've been banging our heads against a brick wall with this fight.

For any helpful people, thanks in advance. I really need to figure this out or we're never going to get past plague wing. Also, as an added on thing, what DPS should I be asking people to do on a target dummy for ICC? We had a disagreement among some of our raid leaders as to weather 4k was a reasonable number to ask of people. I personally felt 4k was a generous number, none of these DPS are lower than 5k in games GS, 2500ish Wow-Heroes. We are a casual guild, and obviously we can't expect people to be pulling absolute perfection out of their gear, so please don't tell me some ridiculously large number. Please be realistic. About half of our raiders are family people who play this game for fun, some people in the raid, WoW is their first experience with a video game at all. I don't expect the whole raid to spend hours and hours researching/honing their DPS, but I don't expect to carry anyone either, I believe people should have to put in some work to be getting into ICC with their DPS. I would like a decent number for people to be pulling to walk in the door. Thanks again to all helpful posts in advance. To all the trolls who will post: get a life and stop stroking your epeen.

I'm going to put it as succintly as possible: I hope you don't take offense, and honestly, I hope you learn from what I type out for you and apply it to your raid.

1) Your ranged, no matter how bad they are, or what they are doing, should not be doing sub 3k. If they are doing sub3k, you shouldn't even be doing Toc10, let alone trying to step into ICC. However, before anyone here can give you advice, we need at the very least a wws parse or something that shows what your dps is doing. It is impossible to critique something as vague as "My dps aren't doing good, but sometimes they do good" with any sort of actual helpful information.

2) You need actual information before people can help you out. jpw posted some stuff that might help you, but it's very generic and impossible to apply without posting what your problems are. Stuff such as "The dps die to blood beasts because they're not being kited properly" or "We get 5 marks and die before we hit 30%" or "The tanks miss taunts sometimes so his blood power stacks too high too fast" are examples of helpful information that actually lets us know things about what you're trying to do. Statements like "Our melee is on point, our healers are fine, our ranged dps isn't high enough on recount" is useless jibjab that's actually detracting from your problems.

3) Dps charts mean nothing, execution everything. If your ranged are getting hit by blood beasts, not standing spread out for blood novas, it doesn't matter if they do 2k dps or 6k dps, because you're not going to beat the boss. Stress to them that doing things right is how you're going to beat the encounter and not look at Saurfang until it's summer time.

Please, post a chart on here of your raid, or at least a recount summary of the people you're trying to fix and improve with, and we can help you out. Giving you advice for proper gemming and rotation is useless if people aren't pushing the right buttons in the first place or have the wrong specs. Your post, while obviously trying to fix and iron out the kinks in your raid, is kind of like people posting on a tech support forum:

"Help, my computer doesn't work, I don't know what to do "

These same questions plague forumgoers everywhere who *want* to help, but can't because there's no information provided to help with. I want to say "Maybe your warlocks aren't casting enough, or doing the right rotation" but for all I know, your warlocks are wearing Tier 8 from Naxx and specced 71 points into demo, casting searing pain. Or maybe they're decked out and completely ignoring the blood beasts. Heck, maybe you're all grouped up on saurfang himself and every member of your raid is getting hit by blood nova. Who knows?

If you can, link a couple raid members so we can look at what they're doing. Just give us something

[Garil]

Honestly, they just sound like they're not very good, and don't really care that they're not very good. Inconsistency and struggling whenever you can't tunnel vision a boss are two signs of a player who isn't focused/putting in much effort/very knowledgeable about their class. They're casual players so that's what you should expect from them. It's not something that can be analyzed and solved.

I know that's not the kind of answer you want to hear, but frankly it doesn't sound like there's anything to fix. You can fix a spec, gear setups, gemming strategies. You can't fix desire or lack thereof. Your best bet is to point out that their performance is not adequate for ICC. Some people may start to put in more effort, some may not. If they do, great! If they don't, you can replace them or be content downing 3 bosses every week.

[jpwkeeper]

Honestly, they just sound like they're not very good, and don't really care that they're not very good. Inconsistency and struggling whenever you can't tunnel vision a boss are two signs of a player who isn't focused/putting in much effort/very knowledgeable about their class. They're casual players so that's what you should expect from them. It's not something that can be analyzed and solved.

I know that's not the kind of answer you want to hear, but frankly it doesn't sound like there's anything to fix. You can fix a spec, gear setups, gemming strategies. You can't fix desire or lack thereof. Your best bet is to point out that their performance is not adequate for ICC. Some people may start to put in more effort, some may not. If they do, great! If they don't, you can replace them or be content downing 3 bosses every week.

This is a fundamental breakdown in the perception between the elitist players and the casual players.

The elitist players assume that if someone isn't doing as much DPS as they should, the OBVIOUSLY aren't trying and don't want to get better.

I can tell you from experience that this could not be farther from the truth in most cases. Yes, you'll get the occasional slacker, but most people who suck at DPS know they suck and it bothers the crap out of them.

Because you put 2 hours into researching your DPS spec and got 5K DPS out of it doesn't mean that someone else puts the same 2 hours in and gets 5K. Gaming is not a natural activity; it comes easier to some people than it does to others, and you have to realize that WOW is drawing people in that weren't into gaming previously. These things are going to come slower to them than it does to you.

I actually know one person who was so bothered by her DPS and her inability to fix it, she actually rolled a level 1 toon on a server with a known DPS god of her class and spec and tried her hardest to pump him for information. The guy was helpful but she still struggles to this day with lower than expected DPS.

I'd love to see some of you chest thumpers try something like ballroom dancing and see how you react when you can't get the steps and someone tells you "just stop moving like a pregnant yak and you'll do much better, dancing is easy!" then walk away. I don't imagine you'd like having your sweat and effort belittled.

I know you're not trying to be a douchebag here, but you do lack perspective.

And before you all start to troll me, I am a pretty damn good DPSer. I'm not elite, but I regularly bury people with better gear then me. But I also know what those people are going through to get better as I play with a lot of people whose DPS is just not up where it should be.

[dangerteeth]

You say that your guild wants to progress through ICC, but if they aren't pulling the numbers or executing like they are supposed to, they obviously don't really care about progression.
The bottom line is, if people can't take the 10 min to research their class, learn the fight mechanics and figure out an optimal gear setup, there will be no progression.

[Mordockk]

Well I'll help you improve your DPS for saurfang. not sure what ur strat it but try this.

Do you have a range that has a slow or knockback?(ele sham thunderstorm or druid tidal wave)
etc..
this willl help more with ur questoin.

but what I suggest if you are not doing it already is, assign 2 of ur range dps to either side of saurfang.....when the blood beasts spawn each group of 2 will attack the beast that spawns on their corresponding side immediately(do you best to get some type of slow on the beasts or theyre gonna come flying right at you, maybe a slow trap from a hunter or a DK can chain them-- i chain beasts on my DK while im tankin boss).

If you just focus burn the beasts when they come out and switch back to the boss then ur range will have littlle to no DPS down time since they are just clicking on beasts and continue their rotations(I assume they are clicking and not using keybinds for their rotation, for that makes target switching and kiting down right impossible)

maybe if ICC is the first place you started raiding you shuold go back and do naxx for practice, to work as a team and gain some raid awareness.

[Tyrrandion]

I'm amazed at the general good advice, fewer trolls than I expected. I've went to world of logs and signed up to thier site, but I can't actually figure out how to put our guild's combat log in it. I've downloaded the client, but it want's me to upload my combat log from my wow files and I can't figure out how to find it (was looking in the log's section). Any help with how to fix this would be hot. If i could get a fast response that'd be awesome, we have our continuation going on in around 20 mins, so I could upload the log after that. Thanks.

[Herecius]

We need to know what your raid comp is. A hunter that only pulls 3k dps is going to need very different advice from a boomkin who only pulls 3k dps or a mage who only pulls 3k dps. That'll help people give more specific advice that you can pass on to these players, though the BEST advice to just blanket-pass to them is 'go to elitest jerks (or similar website), and read about your rotation for ten minutes.' That's really all it takes, not trolling or anything, but even a simple crash-course in 'what is my rotation' can make a dramatic difference in the dps of almost any class.

[jpwkeeper]

I'm amazed at the general good advice, fewer trolls than I expected. I've went to world of logs and signed up to thier site, but I can't actually figure out how to put our guild's combat log in it. I've downloaded the client, but it want's me to upload my combat log from my wow files and I can't figure out how to find it (was looking in the log's section). Any help with how to fix this would be hot. If i could get a fast response that'd be awesome, we have our continuation going on in around 20 mins, so I could upload the log after that. Thanks.

You probably don't have a combat log saved. By default WOW doesn't save them off.

Before your next raid, type /combatlog. This will start/stop logging. There is also an addon called Loggerhead (reference please) that can help with this.

I can't remember which directory exactly it will be found in, but it's not hard to find once you have one recorded.

[Cpttrips]

you say you know the srat for the fight but i wonder what strat your using a guild with 7-8k avg dps uses an entirely diff strat for saurfang this is where we are now with saurfang on a one shot farm, but when we first started saurfang we had to do things a little different.

before the dps was as high our setup was 2 ranged on either side one healer 2 melee on saurfang a hunter or shaman with knockback in the middle and two tanks we popped BL at the beginning of the fight and we ignored adds when saurfang was at 25% and just burnt him down.

now we talk in vent and laugh while we basically wing it and we have switched to two healers as we no longer need the extra dps.

[hoot80]

Example situation: Fire under warlock! Warlock is in the middle of an Incinerate cast. He stands until the cast is finished, taking 4k damage from the fire. Then he moves four steps to the right, out of the fire, and then starts casting again. Functional, the healers actually get to do something, and face it: Casting Incinerate whilst standing in a pool of fire looks crazy awesome.
I used to have a movement problem. 2.7k gearscore (Wowheroes - not that gearscore matters) Arcane mage. I was doing 3.5k DPS. After I realized my movement problem? 6.5k DPS. Trust me - not moving works.

Am I actually seeing this? You are telling him that the key to getting better dps is by standing in fire? This is obviously a troll. Either that or you have never raided or done an instance or even soloed. Do you play WoW?

[Herecius]

Am I actually seeing this? You are telling him that the key to getting better dps is by standing in fire? This is obviously a troll. Either that or you have never raided or done an instance or even soloed. Do you play WoW?

I was wondering about this too... our mages are perfectly capable of instantly moving out of fires and death and decays and such while maintaining imba dps. Breaking a single cast is far less important than moving the hell out of the giant glowing circle of why-the-fuck-are-you-standing-on-me.