The Help My DPS Thread

[spikeysquad 50]

I would seriously hate a 25 second pull timer (but perhaps if I played Aff that would change)

[Araleira 0]

Hi! 

I've been playing for a little over a month now and I'm really enjoying the Demonology Warlock, though I'm finding I'm rather bad at it. I've tried changing how I do things to match friends and a guildie and I just can't seem to figure out where I'm going wrong, it feels I'm buggering something fundamental and not realizing it.

 

Armory - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/zuljin/Araleira/simple

 

Logs - https://www.warcraftlogs.com/guilds/30300

Character: Araleira

Take your pick from Sun/Mon. I'm bad in pretty much every fight aside from Thogar..

If I had to choose a few bosses to focus on, it would be Blackhand, Furnace, Maidens and Gruul.

 

 

I'm letting my guild down and I would really like to optimize and improve overall, I'm just clueless as to where I should start

 

Any and all help is appreciated, no matter how little or big!

[Paracel 165]

Hi! 

I've been playing for a little over a month now and I'm really enjoying the Demonology Warlock, though I'm finding I'm rather bad at it. I've tried changing how I do things to match friends and a guildie and I just can't seem to figure out where I'm going wrong, it feels I'm buggering something fundamental and not realizing it.

 

Armory - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/zuljin/Araleira/simple

 

Logs - https://www.warcraftlogs.com/guilds/30300

Character: Araleira

Take your pick from Sun/Mon. I'm bad in pretty much every fight aside from Thogar..

If I had to choose a few bosses to focus on, it would be Blackhand, Furnace, Maidens and Gruul.

 

 

I'm letting my guild down and I would really like to optimize and improve overall, I'm just clueless as to where I should start

 

Any and all help is appreciated, no matter how little or big!

Darmac - Dark Souls after 3rd cast gone to nowhere.

Only one pot.

Crappy corruption uptime made you lose your hands down the best spell here - HoG - I can see only 3 procs from 4pc.

Check out this log of mine - namely Casts tab. I did a ton of CW more as well as my Cata aim was better - your Catas were hitting 4 targets on average. compared to mine 6.

 

Cata comes good with Glyph of DS for adds damage and without glyph for boss cleave(IM, H&F) I glyph it on Darmac because I'm on adds duty.

My rule of thumb is that Cata on Darmac makes little sense if you have a lot of AoE in your raid - it simply does not stack. IF you feel that or 2nd Warlock is taking Cata, switch to your singletarget build and tunnel boss.

 

Thogar - you've said It's ok but Corruption uptime needs some real love.

Iron Maidens - I'm totally puzzled because I can see neither big pet nor DB/Cata damages. Ridiculous fail either from you or WCL site.

Besides that, your SF count is even for Meta and for Caster and you shouldn't be really doing that. Minimize your SF casts outside of Meta. You have both BMC and GSR - two bleed procs - use them for your advantage.

Hans&Frans - same as Maidens, neither pet not Cata damage.

Corruption uptime is really bad and 4 CWs hitting 2 targets only twice.

SF count is once again disbalanced - more caster form that Meta.

I personally have issues with movement on H&F so I use a bit different gameplan - cast a lot of MCed SF outside of Meta and use ToC as my main damage source. That's pretty valid, especially if you use your other spells right.

 

Flamebender - neither pet nor Cata damage.

CW singletarget here is a loss compared to HoG - wolves, boss are pretty much single-targets and they seldom come close. Stack HoGs, use a HoG glyph for slow if you need one.

Kromog - hooray pet is on!

Yet your damage is very low still. No source did more that a 1m damage and I can think of no reason besides you getting lag or AFK or sth like that.

Opening is total, total crap. I'll talk it later when I focus on Gruul, as you've wanted.

Gruul.

You forgot Dark Soul.

F-o-r-g-o-t your best DPS cooldown.

I wouldn't even bash on something like random Hellfire popping, Corruption uptime and once again less SF it Meta that you'd want.

That was just ridiculous.

Now, your opening.

I'll give in in order just like in your Gruul log.

0)Precast Soulfire

1)HoG(00:01sec)

2)DS + GoServ

3)HoG(00:03sec)

4)Meta

5)Doom

6)Doom again

7)ToC

8)ToC

9)Doom third time

10)Begin casting SF, not finishing it and next stuff comes up only 8 sec later.

I don't remember Gruul getting spell resistance or dispel mechanics. You are spending your DF super-non-efficently and your first HoG stack was meh.

Read around and search topics opening. There is hell of a plenty of those.

Blast furnace is a little subject to pure log analysis. You gotta make sure your damages are there for primal elementalists and p3.

TLDR you have real issues. Revise your opener hard, revise your UI hard because you keep losing things to nothing, for God's sake pay a million times more attention(so your pet won't be on passive) and for use those MC procs in caster form, according to guide(I mean with your trinkets and DS).

You gotta get your legendary ring, btw.

[Paracel 165]

We really need a big sticky guide to log reading.

[spikeysquad 50]

But how many people would read and use it? There are guides around to post

[gabrieloceano 1]

Hello guys!

Im again having some issues with my demo spec...

Here is the link to my Mythic Oregorger fight

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/character/950587/latest/#boss=1696

 

Unfortunately those logs doesnt have some fight that went bad, but  I believe that fight by itself may give some good data for some tips =)

 

Thanks a lot guys!!!

[spikeysquad 50]

I haven't got to mythic so I may be missing something but usually I would suggest that DemServ/GoServ has much better and more consistent ST dps and especially for the rolling phase with a ranged and higher dps pet. Why did you choose Demonbolt? 

 

P.S I am confused now, You link to Shinfeli and all the mythic Oregorger logs for them are Affliction yet you are having issues with Demo? Which lock are you? Which fight did you want help on? 

 

I looked up a previous post where you said you were Shinfeli so ignore what I said about the demo lock there. Still though where do you think you are the weakest? Don't pay too much attention to rankings on fights with lots of AoE. Those are often boosted through their group and get high numbers by ignoring priority targets. 

Edited April 14, 2015 by spikeysquad

[Just1Number 0]

Hey! 

My group finally decided to go into heroic and we downed Gruul and Hanz & Franz (yea!).

I really dislike my performance on ST with demo and hope someone can give me some pointers on what I'm doing wrong.

I misspent some fury, because I was capping earlier then expected, propably because I got GSR in a cache that week.

 

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/mHpLq4wg8AGy1xBa#fight=23

 

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/teldrassil/Nosdros/simple

Edited April 14, 2015 by Just1Number

[spikeysquad 50]

Congrats on your kills Nosdros. Your Gruul damage is fantastic actually for your item level, lack of 2 and 4 set bonuses, ring proc and kill time. Until you have changed those things that you cannot really compare yourself to the rankings. 

 

As to GSR great trinky but that does not affect your fury generation. Fury is just something you get a feel for over time depending on the fight and how much you have to move etc. 

 

Ok looking at the Gruul log here are the main things I can see:

 

Firstly a lot of people will say change Sac Pact for Soul Link. If you're healers are poor though and you think you will die during the stone slam thing that is another matter.

 

Though you were stacking HoG sometimes there was only one other cast in between and hence I think that you are losing some uptime and hence also fury generation. However you also have 40% uptime which doesn't concur with this statement.

 

You have a LOT of ToC casts. Did you really have to move that much? Assuming you use a stack tactic then did you put your personal teleport down for when you had the petrify? It's possible you may have been dumping fury though. With the 4 set and on a non-ST fight you should have more MC procs to play with.

 

I would perhaps suggest that your haste trinket may be better as a fury generation tool rather than during DS when you are limited by your fury or your MC procs anyhow (though now I see you have DuT instead of Shards).

 

Meta SFs during DS and crit proc well done. DS+GoServ+potion during execute great. Go Serv pre-DS good stuff. Opener good. DoT uptimes good though very few Corruption casts as you were ToCCing so much.

 

Like I said before you actually played very very well, I wish I did! Perhaps someone else might see something that I have missed. 

Edited April 15, 2015 by spikeysquad

[Sneyk 0]

Hello everyone.

 

First I would like to comment that my English is not good, forgive, and I hope that I may understand.

 

My armory is http://eu.battle.net/wow/character/cthun/Sneyk/

 

And I have some doubts, problems, (serious) with damage to unitarget (Gruul / Oregorger). The talents that I have are the ones I used for these 2 boss (= to Blackhand), my question is ... as can be, that throughout the fight is in the top 5, and starting in the 30% I leave very down ..

 

I understand how to do the "execute" are not doing anything right.

 

My way of opening the opener, is to use everything (Logic), when I stackeado 2 hand of Guldan I transform, I throw a wave chaos and soulfire taking into Moltencore. Continuing my rotation with shadows, filling the fury, as you have a good stack of molten core, DS / Meta and Soulfire, but .... here comes my problem, when the 30% comes, I see how other classes outweigh me a impressively not know how to do this correctly.

 

The pet Grimoire of Service threw it to CD (always try to cd's up) and begin to fill fury (no target) with soulfire, full fury and threw transformed ...

 

Sorry for my "bible" is that it might be easier any current video after the nerf to demonbolt, to see exactly what to do.

 

Thank you very much, and sorry for my bad english

 

PD: My log with Gruul.

 

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/TVBG8fbDqrmv43K7#fight=28

 

and today....  https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/kwVZGhrH9FMg6N3y#fight=5

Edited April 17, 2015 by Sneyk

[spikeysquad 50]

I only had a brief look but taking https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/7#boss=1691into account and that your item level is 7-10 lower than everyone else I think that you are doing ok. We have silly burst on the opener but it is not sustainable and you will drop over the course of fight. Our execute after the DS/GoServ is from casted spells and hence if you have to move you will fall behind say the hunters and the like. 

 

I will have a better look later and hopefully others will too as only a few very minor points were obvious to me. Well at least on the first. On the second you did not have a DS and GoServ during execute and your potion was at a random time. Will write more later.

Edited April 17, 2015 by spikeysquad

[mvilera 0]

Hello fellas,

 

I would like to take a little bit of your time and request for some insight or tips to help me improve my dps overall, I have recently started to play warlock and I don't really have many logs to analyse, just started to log my raids.

 

Overall I'm having a lot of troubles regarding my AoE DPS, on fights like operator, furnace, maidens, where i think i should be pushing good numbers i'm only getting slight over my single target dps, have tried many talent combinations, following this website guidelines and have improved a lot, but i'm not happy still with my performance on AoE stuff.

 

I'm working on adquiring tier set, only have 1 piece.

 

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/KRhG6DV9f4ajpXZm#fight=5

 

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/Ragnaros/Tuyukita/advanced

 

for this fight during primal elementalist time I forgot about 'refreshing' dots and focused only on getting the target down since we were tight on that dps check, but besides that small windows i have been trying to keep everything with dots, always try to burn resources when I have any kind of procs, try to save HoG for buffed CW if i'm not having troubles with fury regeneration.

 

Other than that I don't really know what i'm doing wrong and would really appreciate if any of you could help me out.

 

Thanks in advance.

[spikeysquad 50]

Ok, here we go Sneyk, First parse first.

 

2 single HoGs without stacking them. 

 

Meta SFs during DS good on the whole however on your 3rd DS you pretty much wasted the first 9 seconds of your potion and DS.  

 

You had a few (from what I can see) unbuffed Meta SFs. Sometimes you will need to dump apart from in DS but then look at all your buffs and decide what should then be your 2nd and 3rd proc priority to cast them on. I think 3 caster SFs pre-execute

 

DS+GoServ+potion during execute (I think) great. Go Serv as many times as you could and pre-DS good stuff.

 

Opener could be changed a little and be careful that you do manage always to stack your HoGs with GoServ and 2X SBs but you did burst to 125k.

 

DoT uptimes both 96% so good but watch.

 

Log 2:

 

Were you not getting MC procs? 

 

3 single HoGs without stacking them.

 

Meta SFs during DS good on the second. On the 3rd you had SFX2, then pushed DS where you did 4 SFs, DS ended and then you did another 2 SFs. It was rather random.     

 

Caster SFs one during the fight then you burnt 3 near the end (assuming you were dumping pre-25% so good) so good.

 

I actually see now you died during execute so you probably could have gotten another DS+GoServ in and hence missed quite a bit of damage. Your potion use seemed random and not linked with DS+GoServ.

 

Dot uptime 95+94%. 

 

Let me know if you do not understand what I have said as sometimes I use silly big words. Though there's a few minor issues on the whole like I said before you are doing ok for this fight. Get some more gear and show them

 

 

Edited April 18, 2015 by spikeysquad

[spikeysquad 50]

Until you have the 4 set you will not be able to compete with other locks Mvilera. On multi-target fights the bonus is huge. 

 

Saying all this though you linked Blast which if played properly all the focus should pretty much be on ST unless it's that easy you can now pad your way for high deeps/ranks. It it possible though your guild may designate you an AoEer though. 

 

I don't really know where to start on Blast so I had a quick glance. Only thing I really noticed was the lack of Felstorm and I think that you may have forgotten your Doomguard. You also seem to have a lot of ToC casts instead of Shadowbolts, perhaps you were just drowning in fury though without MC procs. If so just watch when you dump.

 

Some of your DS casts seemed random. You were glyphed DS which is fine but then you need to line Cata with it more. You casted the correct number of Catas but many seemed unbuffed. Sometimes you had a tonne of meta SFs during your DS and then others you had none. A couple of times you went into DS with under 300 fury and I wonder if that was enough. However, saying all this without the 4 set and at lower gear levels perhaps there was not much else you could have done. I do wonder though if favoured HoG a little more then you would have a lot more MC procs to play with instead of spamming ToC during DS. Buffed CW does have its place though on this fight but SF>ToC. 

 

If you get some more logs I could probably help more on Maidens and maybe Thogar but like I said you need the 4 set. Thogar again an argument could be made it is a single target fight.

[spikeysquad 50]

Not sure how many people read this thread but I would like some advice please. I mostly know how I should play Demo but that never seems to translate to a boss fight. So normally people would say well it needs to be automatic/second nature but I don't know how to do that more than I am now. If anything I suupose I am doing things robotically without actually thinking so how do I like stop more to think? I have been playing Demo for months and months but I am still doing silly things. My dps is better than ever but I am still making such basic errors that I know way better. It's not worrying about tactics because this is even happening on say Gruul (heroic) which is easy, no stress at all, and I can just dps and move a bit when needed. So where do I go now? What else can I do? I'm starting mythic tomorrow so I really need to improve more. Thanks in advance.

[Liquidsteel 279]

You need to give me more to go on than "I do silly things".

 

What silly things are those? If you type them out I'm sure you will see for yourself the mistakes you are making.

 

For example, if you are casting Soul Fire in Caster Form and having nothing left for Meta, well then stop casting Soul Fire in caster! 

 

Link me some logs and post me a screenshot of your UI. This should help.

[spikeysquad 50]

Thanks for the reply Liquidsteel. Like today I did a Gruul pug (still need the staff!) and I looked back over the log and I can see so much I did wrong. Yes like casting SFs in caster, I still have no clue why I did. I even started DS at one point with 600 fury and 5 MC procs!!! I mean seriously I know the magic 800 and 6-8 number and yet I do such a stupid mistake. Then it seems like even though I still had fury and I must of had at least 1 MC proc as I threw out a CW I spent the last 7 seconds of the said DS Shadowbolting!!! I know how important DS is so why did I derp so hard?

 

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/character/2465671/latest#Today's Gruul is the log in question if you want a look but I can read it well enough to know where my issues are. I did have some problems though with the ring not proccing in the middle of the fight when I wanted to dump SF and the only other thing I have at the moment is the rather weak weapon enchant.

 

I think though you may have a point about writing it down. Though I look at my logs a lot I haven't actually put my mistakes in writing so now everything is on a pad and ready for the raid to keep reminding me before each pull what I need to focus on. 

 

I have added a screenshot. I feel my Ui is a bit messy (cluttered) and I have just switched over to Elvui about 2 weeks ago so that is a work in progress and I have just noticed that my focus target debuffs need moving and making smaller. 

 

So basically yes I do think I know what to do (at least on non-AoE fights) but I'm just not and I don't know how to get better.

 

Edited April 18, 2015 by spikeysquad

[Liquidsteel 279]

Quick question, why is your character frame in the top left corner? Do you often find yourself looking up there to check on your HP? If so it's dragging your eyes away from the important information in the centre of your screen. I can see you have some weakauras or something with HP and mana but they're pretty small and why have both?

 

Also do you find yourself still staring at your action bars even though all the information you need is elsewhere? I used to do this and then I hit my action bars. Best decision ever!

 

I think you need to approach the fights from an "I am going to do this" approach rather than "the boss requires me to do this". It's farm and ultimately the boss will die, so be a bit selfish and focus on improving your own play when the pressure is off. Set yourself a goal of improvement. If you just do your rotation on autopilot then ofcourse your play isn't going to improve. 

[spikeysquad 50]

mmm actually no I can't say I ever look to the top left corner for my character at least in a raid. As to why 2? Well I guess the top left one is the proper me, it has my pic and everything! Do I need it? Not at all but I like it to be honest. The bars I got for lifetapping purposes. They turn red at 40% but yeah being honest I am not used to checking them and all of a sudden I find myself OOM and unable to cast. I have been having the same issue with not watching the boss HP either but now you can see that random number just above my fury bar and I also now have a "Time to Die" weak aura there as well but I guess it didn't work on the dummy. I need to make myself check those things more often or at least make a WA warning that screams at me etc. 

 

I can't say I've seen many Ui setups like mine but I have always done most fights with a target and focus target and hence why they are in the middle of my screen. Above the those unit frames I have their current targets (because sometimes that changes quicker than the DBM warnings) and their cast bars. If anyone does have any ideas though to reduce some stuff on my UI please say.    

 

I actually read your Progression of your UI thread Shizwix and actually started hiding more of my buttons but it just felt way too cluttered so I gave up/reverted most of the changes. I do still look at my action bars too much though. I also made a lot of my WAs smaller as well hence why you may think my HP/MP bars are small. Anyhow, my UI is still a work in progress. I think it is relatively fit for purpose but I will see about making some changes based on my recurring short comings.

 

I can actually pad with the best of them but yes I think what you said makes sense I need to be slightly more "aggressive" with getting better. Rather than just hoping that this will be the week I do it right I actually have this stuff written down and a clear plan for the boss fight. We are back to proper progress (mythic Oregorger) tomorrow so if I take notice more then I can sort out the best timings for dumping and make sure I see the 30% mark to prepare for execute.

 

I have just realised something with this forward planning thing... I always thought I should watch for 30% of target HP and then dump MC stacks but that's silly. If at say 50% I know I am not having another DS pre-execute then I need no stacks at all and should burn straight away on procs though yes I still need full fury for the execute DS burn. 

 

Thanks Liquidsteel for the advice and being a sounding board. I am less frustrated now and hopefully will see some better results. 

Edited April 18, 2015 by spikeysquad

[Liquidsteel 279]

On Oregorger position your Doomguard in the middle prior to engaging the boss. This keeps him central and provides a higher uptime on the boss when he's rolling.

[spikeysquad 50]

Thanks for the tip. So put Doomy in the middle and on passive still and send in as per norm on the pull? So basically he just starts from a better position? Cuz otherwise he will stay put the whole fight and perhaps the boss will be out of range? Yeah I realise these are probably dumb questions but never used move to really apart from to get the big lump out of the way. 

[Liquidsteel 279]

Yeah it just keeps him more central during the fight which helps a bit.

[mvilera 0]

Until you have the 4 set you will not be able to compete with other locks Mvilera. On multi-target fights the bonus is huge. 

 

Saying all this though you linked Blast which if played properly all the focus should pretty much be on ST unless it's that easy you can now pad your way for high deeps/ranks. It it possible though your guild may designate you an AoEer though. 

 

I don't really know where to start on Blast so I had a quick glance. Only thing I really noticed was the lack of Felstorm and I think that you may have forgotten your Doomguard. You also seem to have a lot of ToC casts instead of Shadowbolts, perhaps you were just drowning in fury though without MC procs. If so just watch when you dump.

 

Some of your DS casts seemed random. You were glyphed DS which is fine but then you need to line Cata with it more. You casted the correct number of Catas but many seemed unbuffed. Sometimes you had a tonne of meta SFs during your DS and then others you had none. A couple of times you went into DS with under 300 fury and I wonder if that was enough. However, saying all this without the 4 set and at lower gear levels perhaps there was not much else you could have done. I do wonder though if favoured HoG a little more then you would have a lot more MC procs to play with instead of spamming ToC during DS. Buffed CW does have its place though on this fight but SF>ToC. 

 

If you get some more logs I could probably help more on Maidens and maybe Thogar but like I said you need the 4 set. Thogar again an argument could be made it is a single target fight.

Thanks a lot for your analysis, to explain a bit I was a bit confused about DS usage and since this fight revolves around bursting down targets I decided to give it priority for meta st damage on elementals rather than cataclysm, which was being used on cd and they didn't coincide with elementals burst windows rather than on cataclysm which was being used on cd and wasn't on sync with elementalist window.

Totally forgot about felguard bladestorm I'll add it to my weakauras setup to keep track, and saved doomguard for last phase but forgot about it. I thought that was the best approach since it's a single target fight camouflaged into an aoe one. Thanks for your insight I'll try to take that approach the next week and post logs hehe

[spikeysquad 50]

Ah actually Mvilera if you did not have Cata up for each Primal then you are right you do not pair it with DS. I was thinking more personally for my heroic kill and at least then with a little clean up in between each Primal Cata was always ready. It is a good spell for the Primals as well because basically you are taking a minutes worth of dps (of one talent anyhow) and squeezing it into those 3 seconds so do be using it for that burst (if it is ready). In addition all the dotting really helps your nuking power. Regardless though you are correct in saving DS for the primals which is the part that usually breaks or makes the fight.

 

Of course if your raid is really struggling on adds then Cata can be used as an AoE tool but that was never an issue for our group with just Dotting them during "down time". Anyhow apologies for coming across wrong. Yeah in an ideal world it's good to save Doomy for the nuke but it's something that you need to train yourself to check for once you hit execute and hit DS etc. Most of the time to be honest I send him on in the pull when all trinkys are up.  

 

https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/10616-brf-and-cataclysm/End of the second page starts talking about Blast Furnace in more detail. 

 

Good luck! 

Edited April 19, 2015 by spikeysquad

[Liarparadox 5]

Of course if your raid is really struggling on adds then Cata can be used as an AoE tool

I don't really understand this comment. Isn't the reason groups struggle with adds specifically because they aren't taking down the elementalists and other key single targets fast enough? So isn't the solution to taking care of the adds to ensure they don't keep spawning by getting through the phases asap by doing ST as opposed to aoe? Not that you can't spread a dot around here or there especially with cleaving cata, but that happens when used on elementalist as well, which is going to boost ST.

What situation is there with a raid group that is great at ST burns but having issues with adds on this fight? I'm no expert on this fight; I don't even like it and I'm still learning the fight. But everything I've read is that adds overwhelm only because ST fails.