6 Steps to Improve your Raid Performance

[Xzilend]

Hey guys, I just wanted to let everyone know that I have a warlock-focused guide up on felfire on how to improve your performance in raids. The first chapter has been published, featuring an introduction and abstract, and a case study where I provide detailed log analysis on an anonymous warlock to clearly demonstrate what I am preaching. If you have ever posted a "help me with my DPS" thread or question, this guide should illuminate the process players use to help you.

The first post of the guide can be found at: http://bit.ly/fZ4ojx
The in-depth World of Logs analysis can be found at: http://bit.ly/dVlO1M

I am currently writing the rest of the guide, and the rest should be published by the end of the weekend, with each chapter coming out when I am done.

The guide is primarily focused on those who have already implemented the fundamentals of raiding on a warlock - proper gems, enchants, gear, talents, glyphs, etc - but who seem to still be lagging behind equally (or less) geared players. I cover many aspects of raiding that can be overlooked by the average player, the small details that really seperate the top ranked warlocks from the lower ranked ones. One simple example, which I discuss in further chapters, is absolute minimal movement. This may seem intuitive to (hopefully) everyone, yet when I watch raid videos something I always see are players running much further from fire than they need to, reducing the amount of time they have available within the fight to nuke the boss. If each movement is even 1 second longer than it should, if there are numerous times that call for movement, this wasted time can stack up very quickly, and next thing you know you lost a lot of potential damage.

I hope you enjoy and learn something from the guide, and if anyone has any comments or concerns (especially if one of my equations is incorrect) I would love to hear from you either in the comments at felfire or within this thread.

Good raiding,
Xzilend

[mkivtt]

Wow, that's a lot of text. I'll need to read it in more detail but thanks for posting.

[Nightstormer]

Would love to see this for some other classes, nice idea.

[SLhyphy]

I like that guide so far. It seems like it will be great for old and new players. Older raiders who might need refreshers or just to realize things, and for new raiders. For the new era of wow players, it really seems like the mentality is "My gear and stats are fine, so if there's a problem there's no way its me." This will have people paying attention again and actually PLAYING as opposed to mindlessly pushing buttons. Looking forward to the rest of it, first part was great.

[Khadjid]

Would love to see this for some other classes, nice idea.

If you take a closer look at it, it's applicable for any class. There are no warlock specific tips other than a warlock being used as an example.

[Xzilend]

Wow, that's a lot of text. I'll need to read it in more detail but thanks for posting.

Yeah, it's a bit of a read but it has a lot of information! I tried to have the Math boxes collapsed by default, but for some reason the code just isn't working! :/

I like that guide so far. It seems like it will be great for old and new players. Older raiders who might need refreshers or just to realize things, and for new raiders. For the new era of wow players, it really seems like the mentality is "My gear and stats are fine, so if there's a problem there's no way its me." This will have people paying attention again and actually PLAYING as opposed to mindlessly pushing buttons. Looking forward to the rest of it, first part was great.

Yeah, mediocre play seems to be the normal now. One of the largest problems I think faces raiders right now is people thinking that because they are #1 in their raids, they don't need to improve. Hopefully if my guide can illuminate some details they are missing, everyone can improve Thanks for the feedback!

If you take a closer look at it, it's applicable for any class. There are no warlock specific tips other than a warlock being used as an example.

This was one of my intentions when figuring out what I wanted to say, glad you caught that! While a warlock was used as an example, the methods used can certainly be abstracted and used for any class. While healers and tanks is much more difficult as their performance is not necessarily tied to quantifiable data (ie. healing is more about timing and efficiency, than pure numbers), you can however analyze which heals you were using, whether they were efficient and who they were healing. Were you ever caught in a fire because you were tunnel-visioning? Things like that.

Glad you guys enjoy the guide so far!

[Deleted]

bump as this stuff is interesting.

[Jenerena]

Very good read, thanks for this. I've shown this to a lock in my guild and I'll most certainly use it for my own performance.

I find the poll results interesting by the way, good idea.

[Deleted]

I also think you should add a section to your site with tips on each fight ... Different fights will call for different kind of play ...

Halfus (effective) Multidotting,

Atramedes FelFlame spam during air phase (don't have time to SB in air phase, but you can keep dots up, and spam the hell out of fel flame... really good dps boost.

These are the "little" tips people are always looking for .... I mean, I even had to teach of of my warlocks recently that shadowflame was actually OP on aoe .... people stick to what they are used to do, so offering them proof is always good.

Keep up the good work, i'll keep reading your site until I start my own )

[vision2]

nice, I actually have to admit, when I first saw the title of your post, I expected something like:

1. Reroll mage
2. Reroll death knight
3. Reroll druid
4. Reroll paladin
5. Reroll shaman
6. reroll warrior

(yeh suck that hunter / rogue / priest >:>)

[angelise01]

Thank you for the guide! I was planning a how to improve your dps guide with useful addons/resources for guildies and your guide neatly summarizes the feelings I have about raiders and that people need to do to be awesome.

[rethea]

Great guide so far! As someone who reads EVERYTHING warlock related and puts plenty of time into theorycrafting myself, I still got some good ideas from it. I'd been really stuck trying to figure out an easy way to analyze and learn from logs and wow, what a great one! It's a really quick, easy, and accurate way to get practical ways for improvement. This is definitely top 1% kind of advice and exactly what people need to get from good to great. Can't wait for the next one. (Don't let me down!!)

[Deleted]

Great guide, I hope a lot of people read it, it is very helpful to find out reason for low dps and improvements to do.

[Spynner]

I would love to see/read more of this. Any idea when it will be finished?

[Xzilend]

I would love to see/read more of this. Any idea when it will be finished?

I'm currently in the middle of Midterm examinations in University so I may have to release new chapters sporadically

[Icenine]

I've never played a lock (ele4life), but this guide should be a must-read for every dps class/spec who cares about analyzing their raid performances. Nice work on it so far, man.

[harky]

Very nice so far. It looks to be more of a beginners guide so far, but hopefully the latter chapters will cover more interesting aspects of raiding. Things like maximizing DPS are pretty unimportant compared to things like planning abilities around boss abilities. Most guilds (and players) who are struggling are having problems primarily due to early deaths. Ultimately your best evaluation tool is not successful kills, but unsuccessful ones. Successful is of course a player-by-player call. For example someone who died at 50% didn't succeed even if the boss died too. Now in this case 'Jim' is performing so poorly that DPS analysis may be in order (the DPS is low enough that if it were the raid average you could not afford to lose a single gong). Either way it's a nice read. Looking forward to Chapter 5, which will hopefully be the most comprehensive section.

[lukerocks]

nice post.

[grimdok]

The easiest way to improve your raid performance is to add more drives to your array

hth



('s a joke! TY for thread)

[Moriah]

thanks for you hardwork.it is very instructional and some pretty good advices for every player. thanks ^^