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Raid rotation help
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Post by
Kellis
My guild does content from Kara to Eye, and I'm included on most of the runs. Unfortunately, I feel like it's more and more based on the fact that I'm Affliction specced, and have 3/3 Malediction, as my DPS isn't that good.
Namely, I can't seem to break 640 DPS. 638, to be precise.
First: The gear:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Earthen+Ring&n=Kellis
Fully raid-buffed, I generally have 1400-1500 shadow damage.
Second: The spec, so you don't have to deal with the laggy crap that is Armory:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=IAMrVRfkVtfo0xZxx
Yes, I know I have a few points I could shuffle around to really min/max my build, but I don't want to spend the gold right now. I'm in debt enough as it is.
Now then, my rotation. I'm not worried about trash DPS, but boss DPS. If I'm on Curse of Shadows/Elements duty, I'll throw that up first, followed by Corruption, UA, and SL. I then SB spam, trying to time my casts right to get DoTs back up with minimum downtime. If I'm not on curse duty, I throw up Agony, and then the usual rotation.
What am I doing wrong, or what can I do better? Also, if there's any missing information, let me know and I'll fill in what gaps I can.
Post by
Dunsinane
Alrighty, lets see what there is to see. Your armory looks like a boss hit set of sorts, with base numbers of:
181 spell hit
1011 shadow damage
12.9% crit
Very reasonable numbers for an affliction warlock. You should be doing much better than mid-600 dps. Especially raid buffed.
Spec-wise, you're completely wasting those points in Suppression. I suspect you already know this.
Warcrafter says you should be doing well over 700 dps just by spamming shadow bolt on a non-debuffed target (with the usual monster raid buffs), so there's something wrong somewhere.
Things that leap to mind at this hour of a Saturday night-
1) Are you looking at the raw damage output as well as the dps numbers? Affliction often does better on the former than the latter.
2) Are you running OOM at any point? Make sure to Dark Pact early to allow your imp to begin regenerating mana at the start of the fight, and Life Tap early to take advantage of the Siphon Life ticks.
3) Run CoDoom on bosses, not CoA - but as you're malediction, you aren't likely to be doing either. Remember - this is 120 dps you're leaving out to help the raid's overall performance. That's significant, and something a utility warlock should be aware of.
4) Work Immolate into your rotation. Allowed to run full length, it does only slightly less damage than one of your max crit shadow bolts and casts a full second faster.
5) Are there other warlocks maintaining the ISB buff? Shadow Priests? Are you in a raid group that gives you other bonuses (moonkin, elemental shaman) or are you giving the tanks blood pact?
Post by
Kellis
I do know those points are wasted, but I haven't fixed it with a respec yet. In all honesty, so are the points in iHoT, but I like to dabble in PvP.
Anyway, point by point!
1) No, I'm not. I'm just looking at Recount, and looking at DPS. However, if I look at raw damage output, generally the only people I outdamage are people in starter blues, and the tanks/healers. Which is bad.
2) I don't run oom, thankfully. Yay for Dark Pact.
3) Like you said, a moot point.
4) Would it really? Even with my fire damage so much lower than my shadow?
5) I'm generally shoehorned into a group wherever they can fit me. Usually with the tanks, but I'm lucky to get a totem. We have approximately no spriests, so no buff there. Mages get the boomkin. So, for all intents and purposes, I get no synergy buffs.
Post by
Kaitain
Duns is right, you should/could be doing WAY over 700 DPS. More like 1100 in all honesty.
I have a couple of questions and a comment,
the questions:
A) is 640 DPS the damage you do for a boss fight or for the entire raid? Entire raid will always be way lower, for everyone.
B) How many other locks do you raid with? (this can greatly affect
ISB
uptime, and also determines what curse you should be casting. 3 or less locks and no damage curse for anyone)
C) Do you life tap/dark pact a lot? and when do you do it? Generally the best approach is to nuke like hell, non-stop no pauses no taps just nuke, and then when there is a phase change, a "DPS off" moment, a moment where you have to move, or any other DPSing gap (almost ALL bosses have gaps like this),
that
is when you regain mana. Never ever tap/pact when you could be casting nukes. If the DPS phases are so long that you are running low on mana before any tapping moment arrives, take a mana pot.
the comment:
We have approximately no spriests, so no buff there.
O.. M.. G... Get one. Just get one. Through adding 15% more damage to all locks, 5% more damage to all casters, and the option of greatly reducing mid-combat mana regain downtime for DPS classes (depending on grp setup ofc) a good sPriest will probably add thousand+ DPS to your raid on top of his own DPS. Also can be a huge help for healers on mana intensive healing fights. Raiding at your level without one is slightly insane tbh.
Post by
Kellis
You're right, and I know you are. It's either a problem with what I'm doing, or the way I'm looking at it.
A) That is a good point. It wasn't through the entire instance, but 640 DPS is what I averaged after clearing up to and downing Nalorakk in ZA. I never remember to reset the meters for boss battles. Would Dr. Boom suffice for a check, or should I just wait until the next raid, and remember to clear my meters?
B) In 25-mans, we generally have three or four, including me. In ten-mans, it's usually just me, maaaaybe one other.
C) I do my best to avoid Life Tapping, just because of the healer reaction. "omgwtf dps is hurt" *overheal 900000* I will if I'm low and my imp is low, but I try not to overall. And the way it usually goes is that I'll SB until about a second is left on Corruption, if I can wrangle it, Pact, reapply Corruption and then UA, then spam again.
And it's not that we have 0 spriests, it's that we have only one or two, and about six different raid teams over the course of a week.
Also, thank you so much to everyone who helps.
Post by
asakawa
a couple of points about accurately assessing your damage.
you say you're using recount already. i really like recount, one of the nice things it does is it keeps the specific meters for the last 5 fights. so while the usual meter will show your damage over the entire raid, after a boss fight you can choose to just show that boss fight.
as others have said, with your gear, 640dps is quite low but affliction locks shine in boss fights so it's really worth getting a good idea of the damage you do there rather than the whole raid.
also, if your boss fight rotation is good (maintain al dots and spam SBs in between - sounds like exactly what you're doing) then it could well be that it's your trash damage which is dragging your overall DPS down.
on trash, and anything which will die before corruption runs it's full course, it's better to just SB spam.
good luck improving things.
Post by
Kaitain
A good way to use recount is just to set it to show damage for Current Fight only and leave it like that. That way when you are on a boss, it's showing you the info for that boss only, and even on trash it shows you your performance on a pack by pack basis, which can help you to try new methods of getting as much damage output as you can on the variety of mob packs you face.
Try to really not Dark Pact when actively nuking bosses unless you are actually going out of mana. This is not farming efficiency, it's max damage nuking, so you don't need your mana topped up all the time. And don't worry about Siphon Life overhealing. If you tap to give it some HP room to tick, a healer will just heal you full anyways. Every time you dark pact or life tap when you could have cast another SB is two thirds of a SB's damage down the drain. If you Pact like that every rotation then the damage loss will be quite severe.
Also, to ever take 3 or 4 locks but no sPriest to a raid is outright bad group setup and needs to be fixed asap.
Post by
99026
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
asakawa
to amend the above post, recast DoTs but make sure they do run right to the end. DoTs tick their last bit of damage at the very end of their time, as the debuff goes off the mob. ideally the next DoT will land right as that last tick hits but it's better to get that tick than to recast too early and lose it.
for instants it's easy, just only press the button when the timer runs out. for immo and UA it requires a bit more thought but once in the habit it's not so tricky.
Post by
Kellis
I know all about the DoTs, and all that, and I use NECB.
I'll change Recount like you said, to only show the most recent fight. I didn't know it could do that.
So, are we of the opinion that it's the way I'm looking at the data that is bringing me down, not anything I'm actually doing?
Post by
99026
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Celdhyrean
Even with 300-400 fire->shadow damage difference, immolate is still worth it.
Regarding Dr Boom, yes it will allwo you to test things realistically. The only thing that changes is that you'll get less resists but since you're mostly capped, this isn't the factor that's dragging you down anyway.
Honestly the only reason i can see would be that you're not casting enough compared to what you should be doing (i do more dps in 10 man raids with less gear and no consumables or sp and no potting, ie lazy alt Kara runs).
I don't know how that can be tracked, but basically you should always have 5 debuff/dots running and always be on GCD or casting against bosses.
Debuffs (they all help, none is optionnal) :
CoS, CoE, CoR or CoD (never use CoA as damage curse unless the boss has agro resets)
UA
Corruption
Immolate
Siphon Life
Find the right order to cast them so that they expire one after the other and you can always cast them in a chain (resists will complicate things, but get a basic order so that you don't have to intersperse dots and SBs too much)
Never wait for a dot to finish to recast it.
Even if you are in a situation where you have to refresh it 1s after the last SB, either SB, dark pact or connexion, but don't wait.
Edit for misleading sentence : what i meant was "don't wait twiddling your tumbs while a dots finishes. Cast something else in the meantime"
Post by
110919
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Celdhyrean
don't use immolate if your +fire is bad the cast time would lower your dps when you could be instead casting shadow bolt
you're using CoS anyway so immolate won't get the benefit
DO USE IMMOLATE
When deciding those things, look at the damage done per cast time.
Using a warlock with 800 normal damage, 10% crit, CoS and permanent ISB (i neglected hit, scorch and CoE because i think the demonstration is good enough without), you'd need 800 additional +shadow spell damage to make an SB equivalent to Immolate (+570 with a shadow priest). It won't ever happen.
Please don't say things as facts based on "this debuff and that debuff" when you haven't done the maths behind it. Even giving a lot of advantages to SB, it will never be better for an affliction lock to not cast immolate (considering realistic gear).
Post by
Kellis
Here's the Web Stats:
http://wowwebstats.com/oataqd3hth54w?a=x139a662
I don't know why I'm sucking so bad, but I'm obviously terribad. :/
Post by
irharry
Just one comment - DO let the dots expire before reapplying. Obviuolsy having the reapplication land a split second after the final tick is what you are aiming for, but given that it will almost never happen, err on the side of letting them fall off.
With your +hit being so close to capped, your SB damage is actually very reasonable, and not as far behind your dot damage as you'll think. behind certainly, but not THAT far behind.
Because dots tick every three seconds, if you have a dot that you cut off .5 of a sec before its last tick, you lose the entire tick. Anotherwords, if you recast corruption .5 of a sec before its final tick you lose 1/6 of its total damage. If you see corruption is about to expire, and have the choice of either waiting a second for it to expire and recasting, recasting now, or casting a shadowbolt while it expires, for petes sake cast the shadowbolt. Yes you will have a small period of downtime on the dot, but its time you spend casting and doing damage. The alternative is wiping damage you've already paid the mana for, and the TIME
if you reapply a dot a second early, then you have FIVE second of no damage from that dot. 2 seconds waiting for its next tick, then you reapply, and it has to wait ANOTHER 3 secs.
Don't even get me started on reapplying CoA early, coz that ones backloaded, and by wiping one of the final ticks you lose not just the ordinary 1/8 of its damage, but somewhere around 1/5.
Post by
Celdhyrean
DO let the dots expire before reapplyingMy bad, wrong formulation made me say the opposite of what i meant to. Edited my post for more clarity.
Post by
Kellis
Is it at all apparent what I'm doing wrong in that log? Or is it not a problem with me?
Post by
99026
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
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