The Help My DPS Thread

[Curinir 4]

For Affliction I use DSI and Class Trinket. But since Class Trinket is unavailable to you, I'd suggest using Iron Reaver Piston or Darmac's Mythic from last tier. If you have neither of those, then Unblinking Gaze of Sethe isn't terrible, but just mind your positioning.

[Twinkielock 15]

With ilevel updated trinkets is Goren still the way to go?  I finally have my class trinket (heroic version).  I still don't have Iron Piston but I do have DSI.   Seems like the way to go for both Destro and Aff is DSI/Class.   Is this correct?

[Curinir 4]

For Aff run DSI/Class trinket. The new heirloom trinket may be good in fights vs. demons, I plan to test that Sunday.

 

For Destro, always keep DSI equipped. Your second trinket will change depending on the fight. I use the Class trinket for Reaver, Kormrok, Kilrogg, Socrethar (if tunneling boss), and Iskar. The heirloom trinket for Gorefiend, Velhari, Zakuun, Xhul'horac (Akkelion and the imps are demons), Mannoroth, and Archimonde. The final trinket I use is Sandman's Pouch. It is used on Assault, Council, and Socrethar (if soloing adds).

 

For Demo (in case you ever want to play it) the combo I am sticking with is DSI/Class trinket.

[Twinkielock 15]

Thanks for all the help!  One more question.  I know it's just a tool, but why does AMR love Unblinking Gaze of Sethe It is practically yelling at me to upgrade that and use it.   I know everyone says not to use it but just wondering why?

[Curinir 4]

AMR is really bad for gear optimization. Especially for trinkets. With UGoS, it sees all the passive Intellect and values it above all trinkets except for the class trinket-- which is automatically set to BiS, which is definitely not true for many specs in the game. I would stay away from AMR and just use Simcraft for gear comparison.

[Thesixthman 0]

Hello all,

 

     I have a few questions regarding my DPS.  I feel like I am doing something terribly wrong; mostly while playing as destruction.  When I use havoc, should I be exclusively using it with Shadowburn?  Or is it acceptable to use it for Chaosbolt?  In affliction fights I feel I am doing quite well.  However, as I am attempting to finish up mythic HFC, most fights are destruction and I am falling far behind.  Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!  If there are any question I will answer them to the best of my ability.  Below are the links to the logs of my most recent HFC run; we went 11/13 Mythic.  Also worth pointing out is the fact that some of my gear has been changed out and upgraded so I will also post a link to my armory page.

 

ARMORY LINK:     http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/stormscale/Thesixthman/simple

 

LOGS:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/FbG4fzJ9NVpLWPwa

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/q46XvAHJa9CVKFN3

 

Thank you all so much!

 

-SIXTH

[Lockybalboa 618]

Hello all,

 

     I have a few questions regarding my DPS....

 

-SIXTH

 

 

If you can use Havoc with SB, do so. If there isn't anything to use it on with SB, use it with CB. It is better to keep it on cooldown and use it with CB then to have it just sitting there being wasted.

 

 

ARMORY LINK:     http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/stormscale/Thesixthman/simple

 

Destro class trinket is fairly shite for mythic, to much movement to much target changing for it to stack, stay stacked, and be useful for a high enough uptime. Mythic GSR from BRF is better if you can get it/have it. 

 

 

LOGS:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/FbG4fzJ9NVpLWPwa

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/q46XvAHJa9CVKFN3

 

 

I just went through it in the order I saw stuff, I didn't go super deep because I don't have time to do so - this is my quick pass:

 

Fel Lord:

• UA uptime is low, 84% is bad bad. Corruption is low also at 91%.
• Rest looks fine

Iron Reaver

• SB:H buff is very low, 59% is bad bad.
• UA is again low at 90%, other two are fine.

Kromrok

• SB:H is again low, 84%.
• UA low at 93%, rest aren't bad.

Gorefiend

• 18 SBs, that is about half of what you should have had.
• 9 Havocs is low
• Immolate is low, not a huge deal but still - free damage.

[Curinir 4]

Just a side note to what Locky is saying about Havoc. You don't have to spend your Havoc charges right away. It lasts ~12 seconds. This means you can wait for something to hit SB range after you apply Havoc. If time is about to run out, shoot off a Chaos Bolt. And even if no adds are going to hit 20%, you can still wait for a trinket to proc so you can abuse the boosted damage from that. The only time I ever advise immediately dumping Havoc charges is on priority adds, such as the Source of Chaos on Archimonde, or the Doom Lords on Mannoroth.

[Thesixthman 0]

Thanks for the help guys! I have just a few lingering question.  Im going to use Kilrogg for an example.  Would it be best to throw Havoc on Kilrogg and continue dps on him until an add drops to SB range?  Also is one Havoc/SB better than one Havoc/CB?  One final question:  When playing as affliction and I get to a point where i have one Soulshard left and Haunt is about to expire, should I wait until I get another shard to SB:Haunt or should I go ahead and throw up an un-buffed haunt?

[Thesixthman 0]

Also, would the Goren Soul Repository be better than a fully upgraded Sandman's Pouch?  I want to run the SimCraft but do not want to upgrade my Pouch just to find out it is not better.

[Drkdragon 9]

I will try to help with a couple of your questions.

 

If you have 3+ shards and 20+ seconds left on SB: Haunt buff then feel free to shoot a unbuffed haunt out to keep up the haunt on the target. If you have two shards save it for 10 seconds left on SB: Haunt then refresh that. If only 1 shard wait til you have two and use it for SB: Haunt.

 

SB:Haunt buff > than reg Haunt

 

I feel that Mythic GSR is better than sandmans I think there are too often times where the buff from sandmans does not line up with anything you need it to. GSR is a bit more random but with more procs there are higher chances to take advantage of it at better times.

 

You can manual edit items in simcraft to test out what they will do. Simcraft is only a tool though and does not really represent any current fights in HFC.

[Curinir 4]

As far as the Kilrogg example goes, it's just something you have to feel out. When working on fights like that, it is important that you learn timings. i.e. If you apply havoc at time X then you need to know when the add hits 20%- or time Y. Seeing as you are 11/13, you are going to have lots of pulls on Mannoroth and Archi to learn such timings. If you can, apply havoc 9 seconds before an add spawns, cast Chaos Bolt on said add, reapply havoc, and wait for it to hit SB range. You get the most out of Havoc when you plan your fights out.

 

As far as trinkets go, GSR is what I'd use for progression. GSR provides a decently steady stream of procs throughout fights to boost your add damage. This helps on Gorefiend and Kilrogg where you need to always be damaging adds. On farm fights I'd go Sandman's. It lines up with your Dark Soul and Legendary Ring. Your boss damage will be significantly higher if you get it to line up. 20 seconds of that plus DS plus Ring and possibly DSI is damn near unbeatable. Also, if you have the heirloom trinket, it's good to use on demon fights.

[Axxym 2]

@Thesixthman

 

As you're heading into Mannoroth and Archimode, the Orb of Voidsight (heirloom) is also a good option as your 2nd trinket.  

 

Regarding Havoc, there's something you should be careful about, which you brought up yourself, which is:  Casting Havoc on Kilrogg, then continuing to DPS Kilrogg until adds are in execute range so that you can Havoc + SB.  This is generally not good practice:  Specifically on Kilrogg, most of the adds have low health (with the exception of the Hulking Terror) and you may miss the SB, so then you've done no damage to the add and wasted your Havoc.  At most you're going to get 1 SB on a dying add, which means you'll still have 2 charges of Havoc to drain (but yeah, there are other adds).  

 

What you should be doing on Kilrogg (just as a crude example), is timing your Havocs based off the Hulking Terror.  The timing you should be practicing is to get your Havoc on Kilrogg ~10s before the Hulking Terror spawns.  This lets you get a CB copied right when it spawns, then Havoc comes off cooldown and you can use it again on Kilrogg when the Hulking Terror gets to execute, and hopefully copy 2 or 3 SB as well.  Focus on that timing and then use Havoc elsewhere however you need.  There are lots of other examples in HFC where this comes into play - but it's not about casting Havoc and ignoring the add until execute.  It's about the timing of PRE-CASTING Havoc to maximize its use on adds.     

 

Edit.:  And... maybe I should have read the whole thread before I replied.  Pretty much exactly what Curinir said. 

Edited January 24, 2016 by Axxym

[Thesixthman 0]

Thanks for the info guys!  It is greatly appreciated.  I'm gonna work on some WA strings for trinket procs and hop into a Heroic HFC run just to practice what I've learned here.  If I have any questions, I will surely be in contact.  Thanks again!

[Nelthane 0]

Hello everyone. I've been running a (mostly) destruction warlock in my heroic progression guild and quite frankly, my DPS sucks. I'm one of the raid leads, so my attention is mostly on making sure that we get the fight mechanics correct, but I still want to be able to do big numbers and keep up with everyone else.

 

Here's a link to my character:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/dalaran/Nelthane/advanced

 

Here's also a link to the logs of a couple LFR bosses I did, just to get something for people to look at. I can get the data from an actual raid by tomorrow, since that's our raid time:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/tyZYqfz7pT6A8KH9

 

I would appreciate any help that I can get. This site has proven very helpful so far and I hope that this venture pays off. Thank you very much!

[Lockybalboa 618]

Hello everyone. I've been running a (mostly) destruction warlock in my heroic progression guild and quite frankly, my DPS sucks. I'm one of the raid leads, so my attention is mostly on making sure that we get the fight mechanics correct, but I still want to be able to do big numbers and keep up with everyone else.

 

Here's a link to my character:

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/dalaran/Nelthane/advanced

 

Here's also a link to the logs of a couple LFR bosses I did, just to get something for people to look at. I can get the data from an actual raid by tomorrow, since that's our raid time:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/tyZYqfz7pT6A8KH9

 

I would appreciate any help that I can get. This site has proven very helpful so far and I hope that this venture pays off. Thank you very much!

 

Armor:

 

Class trinket sucks as destro, to much movement and issues that prevent getting the full stack and keeping it - this problem is made even worse if you're the raid leader. Sandman's isn't awesome either, but it'll do till better. Try to get a DSI ASAP, if you have a Mythic GSR from BRF use that along with the DSI. On demon bosses the BoA trinket is solid also.

 

LFR logs are basically useless, post again with your raid logs and I'll take a look and see what I can find.

[TheJudge 0]

Hey all!

 

So I'm looking at Warcraft Logs, studying the HECK out of Lock parses at my similar ilvl and I'm just getting destroyed and struggling to meet the 50th percentile on most Mythic fights.

 

I feel like I understand the mechanics of the class, just recently I realized I wasn't even TRYING to keep Haunting Spirits up (LoL right??) so last parse I paid more mind to trying to maintain the 3 main dots AS WELL as Haunting Spirits up 90% or more of the time on aff fights.  However this week during mythics I was STILL struggling and wasn't parsing so well.

 

I have an awesome weak aura set up, recently added a bar for Haunting Spirits that goes with my other dots to maintain, apparently I need to add a Haunt bar too as I haven't given that too much priority but after reading different guides seems like Haunt needs a high up time as well.

 

I'm struggling with Destruction as well on the fights that are ideal for that spec...perhaps I don't havoc/SB enough...I'm guesing that's the issue but if you could tell me that'd be great! I know with my gear I should be doing a lot MORE DPS than I am.

 

Enough of my gibberish, here is my Armory and Logs:

 

Armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/kiljaeden/Judgedotz/simple

 

Logs: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/dkT7vZz1HJqXRDBF#fight=7

[Nelthane 0]

Just as a follow up, I just finished my raid night. We did normal Manny/Archi and everything up to Kilrogg on heroic. Other than forgetting to switch to Aff for Council, my numbers weren't as bad as they have been. I still lose pretty bad to some of our DPS, so it could still use some work. Here's the link to my logs:

 

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/aF9Md8VDncbzTH3W/

 

And here's another link to my armory:

 

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/dalaran/Nelthane/advanced

[Axxym 2]

@TheJudge

 

The main issues I see with Aff is low DoT and HS uptimes.  You need to strive for 99%+ and 100%, respectively.  I think if you get that in order you'll see some good improvement.  Strive for ~40% on Haunt and Drain Soul until your encounter lengths start to decrease substantially.

 

As for percentile - and even iLvl bracket - it's largely useless for you - I wouldn't worry about it as long as the bosses are dying.  Especially with your kill times (which are on the long side).  If one person with your iLvl gets boosted by a group of 740+ and kills Iron Reaver in 1:30 (as an example), then the bracket is skewed for good.  And it happens.  The shortest kill times on Iron Reaver in your iLvl bracket are 52s (~160k DPS).   

 

Destruction is generally OK but you're right, more Havocs (you didn't use it at all on Iskar) and Shadowburns will help.

 

All in all, it seems you understand the theory you just have to execute it.

 

@Nelthane

 

As previously noted, the class trinket is not optimal for Destruction - especially for a fight like Kilrogg where add damage is important.  You only managed to keep up the Debuff on the boss for 57%.

 

More concerning though, is the fact you only cast 1 Havoc on that encounter when it can pretty much be used on Cooldown.  In a 4:30 encounter I'd expect it to be used ~15 times so you're losing a lot of damage there that could be copied.  I count 23 adds that died outside which means you could have done slightly better than 12 casts and 13 hits of Shadowburn.  You'd see huge improvements if you can get to 20+ casts/hits.  

 

The other concerning thing I see is that you cast 35 CB but only 29 hit.  That means that you lost the ember and lost the cast time for no damage.  You have to be careful about casting CB at a target that is going to die before the CB is casted and travels to it.  In that case you're better to hold off and use the ember to snipe it with a SB.

 

Try to line up your DS exactly with the ring use.

Edited January 27, 2016 by Axxym

[Nelthane 0]

@Axxym

 

Alright, so more Havocs and don't waste my CB casts. I'll work on it. It gets tough sometimes, since my raid group has pretty good DPS, most stuff tends to die before I even have a chance to cast something. I do tend to get distracted too since I'm one of the raid leads.

No excuses though. I have something to focus on now at least.

I do have a couple other questions. I've been using Ovale to help me keep track of when I should be casting stuff. I mostly use it for a guideline now, but is it still an addon that is useful or should I ditch it?

Also, when should I be changing my spec or talents? I've been experimenting a little and I've found that while going Affliction can really keep my numbers up on some fights, changing my talents in Destro doesn't seem to really help much.

(I've been mostly getting Kiljadens Cunning for high movement fights, and I've also been trying Demonic Servitude with Grimoire of Supremacy and the Terrorguard summoned.)

[Drkdragon 9]

Nelthane - Just some ideas for you.

 

Use DBM timers to identify when adds are on the way. As you get more accustomed to a fight you will be able to know when they are coming without the timers or in reference to other timers but these are good to fall back to. That will help you be ready for havoc and getting your CB to land before the adds die.

 

I have never used ovale but I cannot see it being a good tool. All fights are different and there is no set "rotation" that you can just cycle to win.

 

Delegation. If you are a raid lead assign people to call out mechanics that need them. Having other people take care of one thing here and there is that much less that you have to worry about and more that you can focus on your own play. 

 

Spec and Talents

 

At your ilvl for destruction you are going to want GoSac/Arch Darkness/Charred Remains. Proper planning and use of teleport/gateway will get you though the major movement parts of most fights. 

 

Affliction Arch Darkness/SB Haunt always. On fights where you will have low drain soul uptimes GoSuprem can out perform GoSac main case being HHC. Otherwise your best bet is to probably go destruction.

[Nelthane 0]

Ok, I'll practice that stuff and work on replacing my trinkets. Thank you all for your assistance.

[Spaztom 0]

Howdy folks

 

Took off for a couple of years and started playing fairly hardcore again about 3 months ago.  Played demo/destro way back and now destro/afflic.  Managed to get in a great guild and my dps is lacking I'm thinking.  I've always preferred destro but a lock in our guild is afflic for EVERY fight and does very well.  I figured that's the way to go (not so after reading several things).  Anyway, we knocked out 11 heroic bosses last night and I compared my dps to this locks dps.  Aside from the ring, which I got later btw , the only thing I see differently is that he has a DSI while I do not.  I should mention that we killed him before he went up and dropped bombs.

 

So, please have a look here:  https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/yVbwgaAptYqC2HL4#fight=1.  Check out the Iron Reaver fight.  My uptime is good, I'm thinking, but he just does more damage.  Is it really just the gear at this point?  What am I missing?  Any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

I'm Ody, other lock is above me

 

For shits and giggles, have a look at the Kilrogg fight.  Everyone says go destro, but other lock nailed it in affliction.  What is he doing?

 

Cheers.

 

Oh...one other thing.  I currently have:

 

Chipped Prism

Heroic Iron Piston

Sandman's Pouch

Class trinket (fragment)

Orb of Voidstrike.

 

This is what I run:  

Destro - Sandman, Heroic Iron Piston

Aff - Class, Heroic Iron Piston

 

If demons, then I get rid of Piston and put in Orb.

 

Is this correct?  Don't see much info on the orb but everyone swears by it. 

 

Thanks so much!!

Edited January 27, 2016 by Spaztom

[Drkdragon 9]

Spaztom - For killing her before her going up your DOT uptimes are a little low. Should be aiming for 99% or as close as you can get. UA at 91% is hurting you here. The other big difference is the ring. His ring did 1million damage just from the explosion. That helped him ride that dps down to the end. I personally agree with your trinket choices. Try to get that DSI as soon as you can.

[Xarlock 0]

HI All,

I play Affliction and feel my dps is low for my 726 ilvl. The Achimonde fight is of particular concern to me. I have the following log for review:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/MmVAabzdhvwP2rD9#fight=20&type=summary

Armoury

us.battle.net/wow/en/character/sargeras/Xarl%C3%B6ck/advanced

I realized later I did not switch out to the voidsight trinket so I suspect that is an issue. I am wondering if there are rotational issues relating to shard use? Any help would be appreciated.

Thank you

Xarlöck