[Help Me!] The "Fix My DPS" Thread (Read first post before posting)

[gualdhar]

ok for the enchant and for the meta, but why i have to change this gems. for example changing the blues to brillian i'll lose the socket bonus, and now i'm hit capped (i have got 1723 no sense to get closer). i gemmed like these cos i read a post on elitist jerks, and all the TOP lock use this gems.

You don't use hit gems because you can reforge to hit from lesser stats like crit haste and mastery easily. you can't however reforge to Int - the only way to get more is with enchants or gems. So you basically add all brilliants except for the ones to activate the meta. It is of course entirely dependent on your stat weights whether you should gem to a bonus, but as a general rule you never gem hit (unless its a piece like cowl of pleasant gloom where you'd be losing a +30 Int bonus)

[Deleted]

thanks guys you opened my mind about socket!!!

[gherkin]

If you follow advice here and get slack for it from people on your realm, send them here. We have (last time I counted) 10 or so people who really know their shit, and another 4 regular posters who are currently working on heroic bosses. We're not EJ but we are nicer, and much better looking.

[Anonius]

I'm not too sure what my DPS problem is. I use demonology and affliction and I still can't seem to break over 11k. Here's a picture of recount after the Aragoloth encounter. I was currently in demo for this fight, but I mainly use affliction. If I can have any advice I'm not sure whats wrong.

http: //img688 .imageshack.us /i/wowscrnshot010711221008.jpg/

Any help please?

[gualdhar]

Any help please?

Lots of pvp gear, lots of empty sockets and enchants, and you're not hit capped. Also if you're raiding with affliction, its wrong, you need to check elitistjerks.com and fix it.

[Anonius]

I don't dungeon or raid in my PvP gear. Its just what I had on last.

[gualdhar]

I don't dungeon or raid in my PvP gear. Its just what I had on last.

well its hard to tell what you're doing wrong when you're in the wrong gear set. However, even your PvE gear is missing enchants. Thats a good first step.

[Deleted]

You answered the question yourself, improved Soulfire needs to be up 100% of the time.

[Grievance]

hey guys,

i feel like i'm not doing as much damage as i can be. i consider myself a relatively good all around player, but i feel like i'm lacking in raids.

here is the log for our nefarian kill - http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/b...?s=2964&e=3430
and my armory - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...th/synfiction/

i managed 14k (in addition to the mechanics of the fight, i was in charge of ccing an add in phase 1). there is a warlock on my server with slightly better gear and he managed 20k on that same fight.
his armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../naughtytouch/
his log: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/t...?s=7075&e=7516

my ISF uptime is really bad that fight, 52%. immo and corruption aren't TERRIBLE, 80%+.

what am i missing? :|

One small thing I noticed: on your belt I'd much rather have two 40 ints than going for the gem bonus. 80 int vs. 60int and 30 hit. You're trading 20 int for 30 hit. Not a big deal, and not your problem, I'll get back to lookin at yer logs.

---------- Post added 2011-01-14 at 10:40 PM ----------

he also has power torrent, decent chunk of dps over you

---------- Post added 2011-01-14 at 10:41 PM ----------

His darkmoon card and power torrent seem to have procced at the exact same rate, for about 1/4 of the fight. 1600+500 int = 2100 / 4 = 525 more int than you through the whole fight on average.

---------- Post added 2011-01-14 at 10:43 PM ----------

He had a good 10% on you with his Dark intent proc, maybe choose a better class to put it on?

---------- Post added 2011-01-14 at 10:46 PM ----------

Did your resto shaman lust? I see no lust! That would be a pretty large chunk as well.

---------- Post added 2011-01-14 at 10:47 PM ----------

Summary:
He has much more than 200 int over you with his trink/enchants.
He had 10% more uptime on the DI proc.
He had much more uptime on Imp SF
I see no lust on that attempt, even though you gots a shaman.

[Aristeides]

there was lust, around 18:38 in the graph.

naughtytouch had 70 something % ISF uptime, i don't understand how he's pulling 6k more dps. i'm almost always casting SOMETHING.

our shadowpriest and raid leader requested i give our spriest dark intent, can't do much about that :P

i looked at all his wipes and he was still managing 18-20k on each is power torrent/volcano/20% more isf uptime really that much dps gain?

The difference? You did 1,085,765 Incinerate damage versus his 1,887,418. Your Incinerate cadence was 11 hits per minute versus his 16 per minute. Every other difference - enchants, gear, DoT uptimes, the fact you were Tricks'd twice - is a rounding error next to that. The reason behind the discrepancy is probably both his higher ISF uptime (15% haste = faster cast times) and being better than you at "i'm almost always casting SOMETHING".

[SchwartzAN]

Hi All -

I'm a recently returned Warlock from Vanilla/TBC, and I came back to find the whole class has changed dramatically. I found a great 10-man raid group that I've been able to latch onto, and while my gear lags a little compared to theirs, I still feel like I should be putting up better numbers than I am currently. I used to play affliction back in the day, but due to increased raid utility, I was asked to spec destruction this time around.

I am not allowed to post links yet, so I can just guide you to some useful pages:

Armory: Morto on Maiev server

Wipes on Nefarion from last night: World of Logs --> Maiev --> Power Word Bacon --> Attempts from 1/17
Cho'gall Kill: World of Logs --> Maiev --> Power Word Bacon --> Attempts from 1/13
Al'Akir Kill: World of Logs --> Maiev --> Power Word Bacon --> Attempts from 1/13

I'll update these with actual links once I get permissioned to do so. In the meantime, I apologize for the additional effort it takes to access my information.

What I know:
1) ISF needs more uptime - this is something I'm working on a lot. I find that when I get pushed out of my rotation, I tend to lose focus and get a little flustered.
2) I do not think I am using Conflag and Chaos Bolt on cooldown all the time. I always cast them close to cooldown, but I likely can squeeze out extra DPS by making sure that these are top priority after ISF/Dots if they're off-cooldown
3) I am really bad keeping my rotation when I have to move. I imagine this is an issue with lots of warlocks, and I'm trying to use our teleport more often to increase uptime, but this is tough for me.

What I don't know:
1) The best I can pull on the lower of the two dummies is about 12.6-13k self-buffed. This seems very low to me. I aim to always have hasted Immolate/Corruption/BoD up on a target at all times, with Conflags, Incinerates, and Chaos bolts providing the filler. A shadowbolt every 30 seconds comes into play too, although not once the next patch hits.
2) Is my rotation totally optimized? When does ISF need to be on my character in the casting process in order for a spell to have it? Can I cast immolate right after I hardcast Soul Fire, or do I need to wait a GCD for the Soul Fire to land?
3) How do better warlocks deal with maintaining a solid DPS rotation while trying to keep fear up on a target every 20 seconds? This was an issue I was running into a lot on our Nefarion attempts last night, and I don't think I did a very good job of it.
4) I macro all my cooldowns into my casts - I feel this is better for overall DPS, and it was a net DPS benefit to me when I started doing it. Is there a chance I should revert back to using them at specified times?

I appreciate the candid and clear responses in the posts above, and I look forward to listening and interacting with this forum to improve my overall performance. Thanks for being such a great resource to the WoW community!

[gualdhar]

You're right that your ISF is low, but from looking at your log (cho'gall kill 01-13) you're also suffering from low Immolate (65%) corruption (69%) and bane of doom (75%) uptimes as well. Part of this may be due to the mechanic, having dots drop as you switch targets. If they're close to dropping when an add spawns, try refreshing one quickly (especially immolate) while you switch targets.

Another thing you may want to look at is your low haste. It looked like you might have an ele shaman in there, but I didn't see wrath of air in your buff list. If you are indeed going without a spell haste buff, get your haste to 12% as soon as you can.

Also, your imp damage seems to be low. Did he die during the fight? 125 firebolts is awfully low for an almost 10 minute fight. This is making your burning embers drop a lot. If your imp stays alive, burning embers should be 100% unless he's switching targets with you. Usually I'll leave mine on the boss and personally dps adds, just so he can keep that dot up.

I don't usually deal with WoL, so I may just be finding things that aren't there. However, if you were able to fix these your dps should go up significantly.

(and enchant your wrists and gloves! )

[SchwartzAN]

I hadn't really considered the low uptime of the DoTs themselves - in general, any DoT downtime is coming from when I actually switch off a target...I should really start refreshing DoTs at that point for the extra damage, even if it's not going to be a hasted cast.

We do run with an elemental shaman, I'm not sure why I wasn't receiving the buff in the Cho'gall fight. That is troublesome.

I definitely feel as if my relative recent inexperience with the class is hurting me in terms of DPS and rotation - when I'm taken out of my rotation, I think it takes me 5-10 seconds to start getting into a comfortable groove. This wouldn't be so terrible except it seems that the majority of Cata encounters are designed to force you out of a standard rotation and make optimal DPS sacrifices while moving.

As far as haste, there is very little I can do unless i'm willing to drop my hit below 17%, which just seems like a bad idea. This might just be a gear issue, which I hope will change as I am around for more dungeon clears. I did add haste to both gloves and wrist, which gave me close to an additional percent in haste.

As far as the pet stuff is concerned, I macro both my pet firebolt and cooldowns into my offensive spells. Has this been known to cause issues with other players?

Also, if my pet is near death and not getting heals due to overall high raid damage, is it worth it to use a few GCDs on healing him? I never do, but it seems like it might be a good idea to either heal or use a soul shard on an instant cast imp. I haven't seen analysis on this though.

The initial feedback is wonderful, and I'm always open to more suggestions if other people get a chance to look at the logs. Thanks for the quick response, gualdhar!

[gualdhar]

If you're having imp death issues, definitely use a shard to recast. The cast time for imp is so long I'd even wait a bit to recast it if you're close to soul burn being up again. Healing it isn't usually advisable.

Yeah I can't really help you on haste, its simply a matter of not enough of your gear having haste on it to start, which isn't really your fault. I definitely wouldn't drop a 359 piece to get something with haste on it, and switching around 346s won't get you far. Getting the dragonmaw and TB epic rep rewards may help a bit though. But, if you're running with an ele shaman, and he is putting up wrath of air, you have enough haste to hit the second extra immo dot, which is really all you need at this point.

Macroing firebolt to spells really doesn't do anything. Most of the time when you're hitting macros you're not synched to your imp such that it 1) isn't already casting and 2) its not about to start casting sooner than your macro will get through your lag. It is a dps increase, but its so minor that its not worth the effort, except if you leave your imp on passive and have 1-2 spells with /petattack in it (so you don't have it accidentally hit cc targets).

If you start moving, remember the priority is to get a soul burned or Emp Imp Soul Fire off to refresh ISF, refresh your dots if they're close to up (with fel flame, corr and BoD), then hit conflag or shadowburn if they're up, then spam the hell out of fel flame. I usually start movement phases with fel flame just to make sure immolate doesn't drop any time soon.

Also, practice makes perfect. Try some dummy time to get the hang of it if you need to, I certainly do.

[SchwartzAN]

So, last night was a Blackwing Descent run culminating in 20+ more attempts on Nefarion. In general, in 1 mob encounters I'm still pretty low on DPS, but in an encounter like Nefarion in the Nef/Onyxia phase, I can Bane of Havoc my way to a top 2 spot in the DPS rankings. I tried to focus harder on keeping dots up at all times, but between CC duty and heavy movement, I still found myself losing some uptime.

In general, I am not a big Fel Flame user (primarily because of it's location on my bar), which brings me to another question: how do you keybind in a way to make the separate rotations of static vs. moving phases of fights both accessible? I currently just use 0-9, and CTRL + 0-9 for a lot of my spells, but I can't help but think there's a more effective way to ensure maximum DPS uptime.

I'm still not entirely sure I understand the ISF mechanic --> Does ISF need to be up before you cast a spell for it to be effected by haste, or does it need to be up as the spell is hitting the target? AKA, if I hard cast a Soul Fire followed by an Immolate, will the Immolate be hasted assuming the Soul Fire lands prior to the Immolate cast time ending? I can't help but think I can squeeze some extra DPS out if I understand this mechanic a little better.

Some positives: I started using Power Auras (and it's timers) for my core rotation w/ countdowns for Conflag and Chaos Bolt usage, and found it allowed me to maintain focus on my character (as opposed to bars) while going through spell rotations. This is a nice improvement for a ton of boss encounters. Overall, with the changes you suggested, my DPS was consistently higher across the board.

[gualdhar]

So, last night was a Blackwing Descent run culminating in 20+ more attempts on Nefarion. In general, in 1 mob encounters I'm still pretty low on DPS, but in an encounter like Nefarion in the Nef/Onyxia phase, I can Bane of Havoc my way to a top 2 spot in the DPS rankings. I tried to focus harder on keeping dots up at all times, but between CC duty and heavy movement, I still found myself losing some uptime.

In general, I am not a big Fel Flame user (primarily because of it's location on my bar), which brings me to another question: how do you keybind in a way to make the separate rotations of static vs. moving phases of fights both accessible? I currently just use 0-9, and CTRL + 0-9 for a lot of my spells, but I can't help but think there's a more effective way to ensure maximum DPS uptime.

I'm still not entirely sure I understand the ISF mechanic --> Does ISF need to be up before you cast a spell for it to be effected by haste, or does it need to be up as the spell is hitting the target? AKA, if I hard cast a Soul Fire followed by an Immolate, will the Immolate be hasted assuming the Soul Fire lands prior to the Immolate cast time ending? I can't help but think I can squeeze some extra DPS out if I understand this mechanic a little better.

Some positives: I started using Power Auras (and it's timers) for my core rotation w/ countdowns for Conflag and Chaos Bolt usage, and found it allowed me to maintain focus on my character (as opposed to bars) while going through spell rotations. This is a nice improvement for a ton of boss encounters. Overall, with the changes you suggested, my DPS was consistently higher across the board.

I actually use mouse clicks to cast most of my spells during run phases, so I keep my hands free to strafe as needed. I stick an extra set of spells I use during run phase on one side of my bars.

For ISF, using a spell like Immolate is actually easiest to explain.

If ISF is up before immolate is cast, then the initial cast and the dot is affected by the 15%, even if ISF falls while immolate is still up.

If ISF is down before immolate is cast and hits, the inital cast and dot is not affected by 15% haste, even if ISF goes up while the dot effect is up.

If ISF is down before immolate is cast but is up before it hits (as when Soul Fire is travelling to the boss), the cast time for immolate is not effected, but the dot is.

[clyne]

Instead of making another 1 question thread im asking it here.. Is warlocks suppose to be number one in DPS these days or are there compeditive classes that challenge the DPS meters?? Im asking cuz i've been DPS spanked by a hunter with similar gearscore/ilvl now for a while and I cant seem to make any more DPS than I do..

[SchwartzAN]

Appreciate the ISF explanation - I guess this will change a little when ISF augments damage instead of haste.

I like the idea of having a "mobile" part of my bar. I may steal that from you. I'm also going to start experimenting a lot more with either Fel Flame or staggering my run/cast to try to continue trying to keep my GCDs filled.

One thing that's concerning to me is that my single target DPS still seems a little low, but the inclusion of a second target (and my ability to use Bane of Havoc / DoTs) immediately vaults me into the upper echelon of my 10man. I'm guessing I'll need to hit the haste soft-cap before I start seeing real incremental gains in overall DPS, but I just wanted to make sure that this was standard for destruction as an overall class.

[gualdhar]

Instead of making another 1 question thread im asking it here.. Is warlocks suppose to be number one in DPS these days or are there compeditive classes that challenge the DPS meters?? Im asking cuz i've been DPS spanked by a hunter with similar gearscore/ilvl now for a while and I cant seem to make any more DPS than I do..

We're up there, but we're not strictly top. Assassination Rogues, Survival Hunters, Unholy DKs, Destro and Affliction are all in the top 5 overall, and they're pretty close. Of course, different fight mechanics favor different specs.

You should probably post your info... Non-demo warlocks shouldn't be "spanked" by anyone in similar gear.

[Grievance]

different fight mechanics favor different specs.

One thing you could do to get a feel on which fights should favor you or not, is go to worldoflogs.com, click rankings -> DPS/healing -> then find the fight you want to check out. Just keep in mind there are definitely outliers in this data, and it's the top top top in the world when it comes to gear. Different gear levels always means different classes on top, different classes on bottom because we all scale at a different rate.