DPS rant

[Merideaun]

ive gotten some great tips on cast rotation from various peeps in the guild, and i appriciate it. im getting better gear just about every week, and now my shadow damage is 816 with my fel armor. maxdps sais i should be hitting 660 on boss. i am dissapointed because recount has been showing some low numbers (450-500 trash, 500-600 boss), and it makes me feel like i am not contributing. i have been trying my hardest to keep the gcd spinning, and i just cant seem to satisfy myself with my dps. i left group (with replacement) tonight because of it, and i apologize.
are the numbers from recount that important that i should be stressting over? it seems all im trying to do is hit 750 dps so i can move beond kara, and im trying too hard to get there when i cant with the gear i have. maby i just need to calm down and have fun, screw the numbers, and wait till im geared up and ready to move on.

just venting, thanks for your time.

[Sidiouss]

I can understand wanting to push out more pwn. Be patient though. You have a solid foundation for DPS. Be patient and work on filling the holes in your gear.

There is still many good upgrades in Kara that will help greatly with DPS, the badge vendor is a good source for upgrades too. Also is easy to be gimped in the dps department with a lower spell hit rating. To combat that you need to work on gear.

Just settle in a rhythm of signing up for kara's and running heroics. Farm them all for loot. If you don't have Atlas Loot Enhanced installed go pick it up, it's a great way to pick out heroics/rep to farm for upgrades. Save up your badges until you have 150, then upgrade what hasn't been upgraded during that grind.

Anyone and everyone loves badges now days so finding a group should be fairly easy.

IMO, stack DMG and then +Hit. get your damage up there towards 1k and then start working on maintaining that while raising your +hit towards the 202 cap.

:)

my 2 cents.

[Merideaun]

thanks for the +spirit. lol, its just hard to stay focused when im watching recount and worrying about how everyone else thinks im doing all the time. i hate being unproductive and not pulling my weight in a group. short term goals are a great idea sid, hunt down specific gear and badges sounds like a good plan. thanks bro

[Softadin]

i think sid gave you some great advice.

it is important to realize that MaxDPS is simply a spreadsheet. it gives you your theoretical maximum dps with everything held constant. real fights aren't perfect. there is mobility issues. curse duty, etc.

the most important thing is to always be moving forward. if you hit 350 this week. try to beat it next week, always try to move forward. work on perfecting your rotations, never wasting a GCD, don't refresh dots too early or too late. shadowbolt between dot refreshes. timing your curse of doom. its the little things that will make the difference. and those little things only come with experience.

anyways, good luck. and you got some great locks and players here to come to for advice.

[Sidiouss]

A good goal to shoot for is

10k health
9-10k mana
1k +shadow dmg
150 +hit (202 is the cap)

Warlocks are giving a large HP pool because we hurt ourselves for mana. Use LT. Try and work it into your rotation.

Example: spell rotation, spell rotation, LifeTap, spell rotation (somefin like that)

Try and not do a: spell rotation, spell rotation, spell rotation, spell rotation, spell rotation, spell rotation, LT, LT,LT, LT,LT, LT,LT, LT,LT, LT...

You will give healers a heart attack.

I only mention this because I if you toss a LT in every few rotations then you have almost a unlimited supply of pwn you can dish out.

I am guilty of the second example sometimes. :nervous:

[Acnele]

Try and not do a: spell rotation, spell rotation, spell rotation, spell rotation, spell rotation, spell rotation, LT, LT,LT, LT,LT, LT,LT, LT,LT, LT...
I'm guilty of it as well, especially on fights like hydross where I have a forced 5-10 second window of "OK STOP DOTS". Being affliction, you can get around this a little bit with tapping dark pact off of your imp. Especially in 5/10-mans if you have a paladin in your group, make sure you get blessing of wisdom on your imp. It's more or less not casting anything the entire time, so you'll just boost its mana regen. Anyway you see it's mana over whatever your tapping amount is (~1500-1700 for me), go ahead and weave in a dark pact or two, and possibly a life tap if you're very low on mana. Keep in mind to get buffs on your imp, you have to have it not phase shifted. Getting mark of the wild, blessing of kings, prayer of spirit and arcane intellect are also great ways to boost it's mana feeding capabilities. In terms of boosting damage, if curse of shadows isn't up on boss fights, that'll typically give you (and everyone else) more damage output than running curse of agony, plus you rarely have to refresh it.

In terms of boosting stats, just keep running kara/instances/heroics when you're able, farm badges and pvp/arena if you have a taste for it. If you hit revered with the sha'tar (heroic mech runs are EASY to find), they have a great head enchant with spell damage and spell hit. Check and see if you've done all the quests for the sha'tar, you're only about 400 rep from honored. http://www.wowwiki.com/Sha%27tar - Also, I'd just farm up scryer rep first, since every 10 scryer rep gives you 5 sha'tar rep until 5999 friendly with the sha'tar, then go focus on the quests.

Also realize that a fair amount of your pwn factor in your spec entails throwing all your dots up and making sure they stay up before anything else.

And if you haven't done it yet, for the love of evil write a macro that pops your +damage trinkets every time they're up. Even if they proc with time to cast one shadow bolt before the end of a fight, I guarantee they'll get used 10 times more than they would without. You can just write something like

/use 13
/use 14
/cast Shadow Bolt

And it will try and pop both of your trinkets every time you click this macro - google "WoW trinket macros" or something and you can fancy them up from there to turn off stuff like the red notices that the trinkets aren't ready yet. Then you just replace your standard shadow bolt (or whatever spell you thinks makes sense to use it with - the second dot in your cast rotation is probably also a good choice) button with this thing, and watch your dps go up!

Lastly, keep in mind that we all did ~ 400 dps in kara when we started. Once upon a time, we wiped on curator and moroes a lot. As you get used to how the mechanics of an instance work, you'll find you get better at knowing when to dps, when to aoe, and when to work tapping up for mana into your rotation.

[Reed]

I disagree with Sid over +hit...
I would shoot for +hit first, you need to cap that as soon as you can. If your hit is capped you will hit with your bolts, no matter how much dps they do, if your hit is low then you will get resisted alot and that doesnt help no matter how high that dps number is. Every chance you can get the +hit gear and get spell hit enchant to your gloves. (later you can replace that with spell damage when you get higher spell hit items).
But that is what helped me so take it how you will...

[Myrcaus]

Mer - I'm sorry to hear you left the group last night because of that. I suspected as much, and I apologizing for not taking steps to make sure you didn't feel that way. =(

Here are a few things you should know -

I do 5mans. It's my favorite thing, especially Heroics. My spec and gear are built around it. It's what you might call my specialty. For example, I only have 4.99% to hit because I don't need any more in that environment - the rest is +dmg and +crit (when I can't avoid it). My pet does 25% of my total damage; he's good for 150-200 dps in a heroic, and there's just nothing in the Affliction tree that can make up for that, especially in short fights.

With your gear level right now, it's just not realistic to compare yourself to me on a run in Shattered Halls or Ramparts. I've been there a million times, I know my tanks and I know the zone. Don't fret about how much damage you're doing. Watch other aspects of the warlocks you group with; crowd control, healer protection, etc. If you're not sure how they're doing what they're doing, ask after the run. I use about a zillion macros.

I don't look at how much damage you're doing; I watch to see if your tactics are sound and you're not wasting globals. I don't think you are, and I think your damage output is fine for where your gear level is and your experience. Keep in mind what I mean by experience isn't just how long you've been playing, it's how long you've been playing with which tank and in what zone; it all matters if you're going to ride the aggro line.

For your gear right now: just shoot for more +dmg while keeping your stats up. Talk to Abessmot about how to do more damage on the short fights you'll find in heroics and Karazhan; he paces me well in those environments.

You only need more than 4% to hit on raid bosses (skull in the level indicator). If you can stack 20 damage rather than 12.6 hit, do it - it's worth the same as far as equivalent total damage output even on raid bosses.

Your contribution is being present and helping us get through the instance and have a good time with it, imo. Hang around next time, and if you see something another warlock is doing you want to know more about, ask.

[Acnele]

I would agree that +hit is important, but with your current set of talents, your bolts will only crit 1/6 of the time, and they're not as beefed up as they would be for a 0/21/40. I'd look at some WWS of my dps and see how much of my damage comes from shadow bolts, if you're going to keep running your current spec, you'll have fairly similar results.

If you want to switch out of affliction, shoot to get close to the hit cap, but keep in mind to have a set of gear for trash with less +hit more +damage if you really want to maximize the amount of damage you do. With the 4% you get from supression, you only need ~151 hit to be completely capped for those spells on raid bosses (202 otherwise).

Looking at one example in particular http://wowwebstats.com/kebdijuwkwc4s?s=3632-4091&a=29 I was #2 on the fight for damage, and from the looks of it, I forgot to put all my +hit gear on beforehand, since I have a 10% resist rate on shadow bolt. That being said, shadow bolt is a larger %age of my damage than I realized before I looked at this. Part of that might be related to the fact that I have to stop dotting early to avoid yanking aggro when leo comes out of whirlwinds.

If it were me, I'd get my hit up to about 150 as fast as possible - getting it up to 202 is nice, but I know if takes a lot of gear sacrificing to get it that high. One thing that helps a lot is the scryer's bloodgem trinket that you get from them at revered. It has 32 hit, and and on-use of +150 spell damage for 15/20 seconds.

A perfect example of "yes it's great for hit, but take it off the minute you're not fighting a boss". It should be pretty easy to farm up scryer signets/arcane tomes doing the SSO dailies and running sha'tar instances / magister's terrace.

I guess there's one last thing to add, which I think is apparent from this thread. Warlocks have nothing better to do at work, so ask us lots of theorycrafting questions! (or, alternatively, we really like to answer questions and help other warlocks out. You decide.)

[Beagle]

Honestly shouldn't beat yourself up man. You did just fine for one thing, and you're obviously open to advice and suggestion which is huge imo.
I had a really rough night last night, and was starting to get down about it too, but you just have to remember that as long as you're improving and aren't a jerk, then just have confidence in yourself and your teamates and have fun with it.
In my experience, as long as you don't intentionally screw the group, hls is a very understanding bunch, and i can speak from loads of personal experience that when you do make a mistake, people are way more interested in helping you to avoid it in the future than they are about beating you up for it.
Thanks again for signing up man, i really was close to cancelling this run so you signing up literally helped to keep it alive.
-be

[Myrcaus]

This probably isn't the best place for this, but I'm at work and wanted to just get it recorded.

Note that you cannot eliminate the last 1% chance to miss, so +Hit% is the amount that will bring you to 99; rating is the required +hit total needed to get there. Note: This table is only valid in PvE! The PvP table is different (4% is what you want to hit a level 70 player).


Level Base% +Hit% Rating

70 96 3 38
71 95 4 50
72 94 5 63
73 83 16 202Between 63 and 202, every 1% of hit rating equivalent means an extra 1% damage done overall on raid bosses. You have to measure this against your current +dmg and current +hit (and +crit for some builds) to see which piece of gear you just got is really the better one to wear.

If you have to drop 40 +dmg to gain 13 +hit, it's a bad deal; you'll end up doing less damage overall. So, get out the spreadsheet if you really want to min/max. =)

[Raban]

First, set your recount to Current Fight and look at DPS not Damage Done. Don't worry about what other people's numbers are, compete with yourself.

Worry about +hit later. If you run affliction then most of your dmg types already have a reduced resist rate. Stack your damage as high as you can. I don't even know why people talk about +hit all the time. Yeah, you need it (some specs more than others), but the bottom line is that you can't go down to the street corner to pick it up. As +spell hit items come available then get them. Until then stack damage. Not hp. Damage. The way itemization is in game there's really only so many viable options anyway despite how some people like to endlessly theorize.

It's simple, if you're a new lock and you want to fast track down the DPS lane then do the following. Run affliction for raids and start collecting as much damage as you can. Keep your eye out for available +spell hit pieces, but get your damage up there. As your +hit and +spl dmg starts peaking out then destruction specs become an option.

I don't recommend cruising warlock boards and letting a bunch of bad information cloud things up for you. The warlock writeup on elitestjerks specifically is shite.

PVP is an easy way to get some quality damage pieces.

[Unka]

Sabs is basically correct. Grab whichever stat you can - + hit or + damage. Before you're done with Karazhan, Gruul, or any of the heroics, you'll be over 1k + damage with a smattering of + hit. At that point, start looking for + hit gear or gems. Sacrifice + damage for + hit on about a 2-1 ratio as a good ballpark number, but don't let your + damage drop too low. This, combined with a good talent spec and some practise with the rest of the raid will get you up in the ballpark with the rest of us.

The zones we're currently flirting with are fairly loaded with + hit gear, so don't kill yourself looking for it in the earlier zones we're currently farming. The hit gear will be coming to all of us fairly soon.

Above all, give it time. You're on a faster track than most of the rest of us are simply because you're not competing with us for gear (up to SSC and Hyjal drops of course.) Still, it'll take a while before everything falls into place. Be patient, ask for advice, be situationally aware, and you'll do just fine.

Unk

[Shizma]

The thing about HLS that always impressed me was the quality of the warlock class. Absolutely outstanding.

How you gear will depend on how you spec. If you're specced afflic and like that build, then you need to make sure you have at least 3 if not 4 points in suppression. For newer locks with a little lower gear, the affliction spec is probably the most functional and effective.

A GREAT source of warlock mojo is here :

http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t17008-warlock_pve_raiding_compendium/

they're keeping it pretty up to date as new gear is added.

Something nobody mentioned is that there are plateau's in the game, 1000 SP, 1200 SP, and 1400 SP. You will see significantly more damage output at 1005 SP than you will at 990 SP. The first time you cross one of these you will "zomg where'd that come from". But don't be dissappointed if you're just under one and things seem blah. Be patient.

The most important consideration after not getting frustrated is to spec to your gear. If you have good shadow damage, but aren't at the 1000 SP plateau, a good balance of afflic/demo/destro works really nice, for instance.

Another thing to consider is that without doubt the highest DPS warlocks in the game are destro warlocks, but you just can't do functional high-level dps as a destro lock without (unbuffed) 25+% to crit, 1000-1200 SP and 190-202 hit. And sadly, MOST of the +hit gear is either badge loot or 25-man raid content. So you have to spec to what your gear will support.

It sounds like this would work with the level of gear you have, adjusting for your play style:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/warlock/talents.html

You want the imp SB and reduced cast time. Take +5 points in cataclysm. No mana = no damage so anything you can do to improve mana efficiency is a plus.

And all of the above are correct. Don't get frustrated. Build a good set, spec around itand have fun.

And never forget that a worlock is a multi-tasking SOB. You will find yourself being asked to fear kite, banish and charm and may find yourself cc'ing 3-4 mobs at a time. That bites into your DPS a lot. This is a skill no other class has. It's one of the class strengths.

And learn from these guys. They are the best. Period.

[Raban]

Poor guy. No doubt you're thoroughly confused now. Sadly the locks in our guild rarely agree on anything, lmao. :twak:

[Merideaun]

Poor guy. No doubt you're thoroughly confused now. Sadly the locks in our guild rarely agree on anything, lmao. :twak:


my thoughts exactly. i truely appriciate the time and effort spent in every reply. i cant thank you guys enough. :hail: however, if i understood everything in this thread i wouldnt be asking questions...lol. but im not stupid, just confused. i do realize that there are various ponts of view, and everyone wants to help. i love hls for that.
sometimes i get frustrated because i am verry impaitent, and i cant wait for things to happen. im a "i want it now damit" kind of guy. anyway, im gonna read all this a few times and try to soak it in and recon some gear. well thanks again everyone, see you in-game.

[Acnele]

It sounds like this would work with the level of gear you have, adjusting for your play style:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/warlock/talents.html

You want the imp SB and reduced cast time. Take +5 points in cataclysm. No mana = no damage so anything you can do to improve mana efficiency is a plus.
I've run this spec a couple of times after major patches, and from a personal standpoint, what it has in simple elegance is outweighted by the lack of variety (click the link above to see what I mean). :)

[Shizma]

This better not be a rickroll.

[Shizma]

Well, the least controversial spec would be one with no points assigned, eh?

DOH.

Here it is. The focus is on mana efficiency and damage suppression. It stops short of UA. Because UA is a timed DoT cast you have to measure the amount of damage yielded by UA to the average value of the shadow bolts that could be cast in the same amount of time to measure the effectiveness. Remember to add cast time to DoT uptime.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/warlock/talents.html?tal=3502222212232105010302030030000000000000000545000010000000000000

[Sidiouss]

Sadly the locks in our guild rarely agree on anything, lmao. :twak:

I disagree with you on this sabs.

[Acnele]

Poor guy. No doubt you're thoroughly confused now. Sadly the locks in our guild rarely agree on anything, lmao. :twak:


I disagree with you on this sabs.
You're both wrong :bigeyes:

[Sidiouss]

:argue:
You're both wrong :bigeyes:

whatever, what do you know.

[Merideaun]

settle this in nagrand, thunderdome style "two man enter, one man leave"
:boxing: