Shadow dps on Cho'gall

[Tractorbeam]

So normally I'm top 1-3 on dps for nearly every fight. Im not a horrible s-priest who's lost with the class. I consider myself quite good. I rank among the top 200 dps on WoL on a given fight usually every raid...but I cannot seem to get Cho'gall down. It wouldn't be too far off to say I'm terrible at the fight. I see the WoL top 200 and their dps is far far greater than mine. Usually I can evaluate a fight and see where I'm missing dps...for instance when we first started BoT I didn't know you could dps both dargons at the same time on V&T. It was new :P Im still totally lost on Cho'gall.

So here's what I do.I obviously keep dots on Cho at all times. When the portal add is up I switch to full dps on that target with full priority and keep VT and SW:P on Cho at all times. When the slimes spawn during the 1-2 pool (we are still on normal mode Cho'gall) I do MSpike>MB on those pools(due to staggered slime spawn we usually have the first wave dead by the time the second spawns and I've found MSear to be a waste on the first/second pools). On the 3-4 pools I MSear. In P3(2?) I Spike>Blast the tentacles.

Does this seem consistent with others priorities on this fight? Like I said I can attribute low dps on almost all other fights to personal mistakes / being lazy on farm kills. But I truly am trying on Cho'gall and just cant seem to get above 20k.

Some Cho'gall logs.Can't post URL's so the WWW has been removed.

worldoflogs.com/reports/x28xroc6a7qrz0qe/sum/damageDone/?s=8083&e=8527
worldoflogs.com/reports/qhxg0ugicwf998qr/sum/damageDone/?s=3871&e=4313
worldoflogs.com/reports/c6zajieok210ryf2/sum/damageDone/?s=7082&e=7538


Annnnnd my armory
us.battle.net/wow/en/character/dragonmaw/tinkertrash/advanced

[Deleted]

The reason why other shadow priests most likely are doing higher DPS than you on this fight is because:
They have better gear than you (obviously).
They don't get mind controled for the whole fight.
They only DoT the big add when it spawns, but probably sit on Cho'gall for the remaining duration and don't lose dps on movement.
They don't attack the small adds because they have specific people assigned for it and therefore wont lose dps on it.
They mind sear the tentacles down in p2 because Cho'gall is tanked at his throne.
The fight is in general shorter because of higher total dps output. Less mind controls, less adds, lucky on little movement, higher uptime on hero/volcanic pot. Lucky on Procs and cooldown synergy. You also have to take into account that people did this when our mastery gave us 25 % shadow damage.

I haven't made it to top 200 on this encounter either, while I've made it to top 150 on many others, and top 60-20 on almost all of the 6 heroic modes I have done. Honestly I think it is because this encounter offers a relatively lower shadow priest skill cap, because you are hardly able to multidot anything (except for the big adds which has little uptime), which leads to people being carried by gear.

[bypass]

I actually do this one slightly differently to you. I was a few weeks agowith a little over 20k dps with similar gear to yourself. I go full out on cho'gall to start then switch to the add while keeping up sw like you do. Then when the add gets to 25% I'll pull off a couple of sw:d to get some quick mana back and extra damage then I'm straight back on cho'gall. I don't switch to the adds as the cost of multidotting them is too high at this point and mind sear is crap. Our decent aoe classes (warr, dk, rogue etc) deal with those, only calling on the casters for support when needed.

This carries on until p2 at which point I try to identify small clusters of tentacles that aren't obvious cleave/aoe targets and I VT as many as I can. The reason I do it this way is that despite the wasted dot time as they die, you'll get a lot of damage out of it whilst at the same time keeping mana through lots of massochism procs. Usually I'll get about 5-6 tentacles dotted before I switch back to the boss. Comparing myself with our other shadowpriests that have been spike/blasting the adds I've found the damage to be better overall. Other than that, the only thing I try to do is to save an archangel for heroism in the final phase combined with a volcanic potion, standard stuff.

[Tractorbeam]

Thanks for the fast responses guys.
Funk, I have taken all those things into account and the are all working against me. Not getting MC'd the whole time is for sure a +. A lot of the top dps spots are by chance. Good Omno order, getting engulfing magic more than once on V&T(or once even) and so on, are all situations that will produce higher dps. Also I have been try to convince my guild to tank CHo at the throne. Is this considered a common strat now? It just seems more logical to tank him in such a way that would bunch together the tentacles.
bypass, We have been killing Cho cleanly for a month or so now, so I think I'm going to try and keep more time on him exclusively. May help out my dps.

I dont know why but the "at sign" is triggering that I cannot post pic/vids/links for now.

[Worshaka]

I actually do this one slightly differently to you. I was a few weeks agowith a little over 20k dps with similar gear to yourself. I go full out on cho'gall to start then switch to the add while keeping up sw like you do. Then when the add gets to 25% I'll pull off a couple of sw:d to get some quick mana back and extra damage then I'm straight back on cho'gall. I don't switch to the adds as the cost of multidotting them is too high at this point and mind sear is crap. Our decent aoe classes (warr, dk, rogue etc) deal with those, only calling on the casters for support when needed.

This carries on until p2 at which point I try to identify small clusters of tentacles that aren't obvious cleave/aoe targets and I VT as many as I can. The reason I do it this way is that despite the wasted dot time as they die, you'll get a lot of damage out of it whilst at the same time keeping mana through lots of massochism procs. Usually I'll get about 5-6 tentacles dotted before I switch back to the boss. Comparing myself with our other shadowpriests that have been spike/blasting the adds I've found the damage to be better overall. Other than that, the only thing I try to do is to save an archangel for heroism in the final phase combined with a volcanic potion, standard stuff.

Obviously multi VT is far greater than spike/MB spam... for starters every VT (if reaching full duration) is adding 60K damage opposed to spike (20k or so) and MB (25k or so). The question is whether the DPS VT is providing is good enough for your group. VT while great DPET is poor DPS when evaluated over the short term. So if your group has high enough raid DPS that it doesn't require you to maximise burst this is fine... but you could be putting more pressure on other peoples burst if the tentacles are staying up too long.

Sometimes maximising DPS isn't actually maximising your raids chances of clearing encounters.

---------- Post added 2011-02-28 at 10:32 AM ----------

If you're clearing the encounter consistently, it would appear to me that what you're doing is helping your raid be successful just fine. If for some reason you're wiping you need to evaluate whether that wipe is being caused by poor dps and while that can be the case at times it's not always the reason for difficulties.

As I pointed out before with tentacles, sometimes maximising your DPS isn't to the raids benefit, burst may be more useful in certain situations. Multi VT will do a lot of damage but it also means a tentacle or 2 are up longer than if you concentrated with burst.

To be a truely great player you need to evaluate what is best for your raid to increase success and perform that role. Worrying about where you fit in WoL ranks is the wrong way to go about it. I'd take a team player over an individual star any day of the week.

[Tractorbeam]

I agree that it's raid>individual as far as performance. The only reason I bring these things up once we are clearing reg content is because I think it's time to re-evaluate my play style on certain fights now that experimenting won't mean a wipe. People are for the most part comfortable with the fights, and I'd like to play around to see if I can actually be doing things much cleaner for personal dps increase.

[the9tail]

Obviously multi VT is far greater than spike/MB spam... for starters every VT (if reaching full duration) is adding 60K damage opposed to spike (20k or so) and MB (25k or so). The question is whether the DPS VT is providing is good enough for your group. VT while great DPET is poor DPS when evaluated over the short term. So if your group has high enough raid DPS that it doesn't require you to maximise burst this is fine... but you could be putting more pressure on other peoples burst if the tentacles are staying up too long.

Sometimes maximising DPS isn't actually maximising your raids chances of clearing encounters.

---------- Post added 2011-02-28 at 10:32 AM ----------

If you're clearing the encounter consistently, it would appear to me that what you're doing is helping your raid be successful just fine. If for some reason you're wiping you need to evaluate whether that wipe is being caused by poor dps and while that can be the case at times it's not always the reason for difficulties.

As I pointed out before with tentacles, sometimes maximising your DPS isn't to the raids benefit, burst may be more useful in certain situations. Multi VT will do a lot of damage but it also means a tentacle or 2 are up longer than if you concentrated with burst.

To be a truely great player you need to evaluate what is best for your raid to increase success and perform that role. Worrying about where you fit in WoL ranks is the wrong way to go about it. I'd take a team player over an individual star any day of the week.

High horse much?
He started this thread because he wants to increase his DPS. His self value as "a raider doing the right thing" is not what this is about and is in all honesty cop out to the real issue at hand and the purpose of this thread.

As far as my addition to this post, I have always found the whole spike/blast thing a decrease in DPS in almost every situation I try and use it. If I was you, I would definitely consider cutting it.