Would love any tips from logs!

[DrJ105 3]

Hey!  I've been reading the Boomkin posts in here for some time and trying to apply the tips to my gameplay.  I feel like I've made some good progress but am really driven to continue to improve and be the best I can possibly be!  I'd be really grateful if you would glance over a few logs and see if you can help me get better! 

 

Toon: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/senjin/Drj/advanced

 

Logs: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/character/4583383/8/#boss=1799 

 

Any help would be appreciated!  Thanks.

DrJ

Edited March 22, 2016 by DrJ105

[tbh 5]

Hey!  I've been reading the Boomkin posts in here for some time and trying to apply the tips to my gameplay.  I feel like I've made some good progress but am really driven to continue to improve and be the best I can possibly be!  I'd be really grateful if you would glance over a few logs and see if you can help me get better! 

 

Toon: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/senjin/Drj/advanced

 

Logs: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/character/4583383/8/#boss=1799 

 

Any help would be appreciated!  Thanks.

DrJ

Hey how's it going. It seems like you've got a good feel of boomkin and a lot of getting better is just mistake-proofing your play. I noticed that sometimes you have 5-6 second periods where you are out of boomkin form. This can hurt your dps tremendously for obvious reasons. The way I mistake-proof this from happening is by macro'ing boomkin form to my damage spells. It takes away an extra bind and really makes it easy. I can link you my macros once the servers are back up because I can't find any examples on the web.

 

Other than that you really need to be using DSI and Seed all the time. You can use DSI and Voidsight on Tyrant and Zakuun only. Other than that. DSI and Seed.

 

You might be aware of this but boomkin logs are all super high right now because of the way gear scales with damage and shorter fight times from top guilds. Your fight times are quite long and this will lead to lower dps.

 

Just a simple check over with the opener because it is the most important thing about our dps.

 

~5 seconds on pull timer cast Incarnation and then potion

pre-cast starfire so it hits on 0 seconds

CA+Dot

Starsurge into rotation and make sure to reapply dots.

 

A simple trick that I always go by is that it takes 20 seconds to get out of lunar phase. If your sunfire is going to be less than 20 seconds going out then reapply. Peaks are not super important to dot if you have buffed procs to shoot off.

 

Also dotting is not always the best thing to do. If there is an add that is going to be up for a long time then go ahead and put a moonfire on it. But if you want to get the most dps out of your class do not sunfire it. Instead wait until it is on top of the boss and it will catch a sunfire on its own.

 

UI is one of the most important parts about boomkin. Could you please link it? I have a set up with tidy plates and tmw that will show me pretty much everything I need to know. I can link it after the servers are up.

 

Cheers!

[tbh 5]

#showtooltip Moonfire

/cast [stance:0/1/2/3] !Moonkin Form; 

/cast Moonfire

/cast Sunfire

/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

 

This is the macro I use for my moonfire and sunfire. You have to have both in there or else you won't be able to cast sunfire in solar.

 

For all the others just change the tooltip and put in the spell.

 

It really makes staying in boomkin form gg ezpz

Edited March 22, 2016 by tbh

[DrJ105 3]

tbh,

 

Thanks!  I'll work on incorporating those tips into my play.  I love the moonkin form macro!  I know I should use the class trinket more, but I only have the heroic one, and honestly I really hate it. >.>  I made that one concession to give up a bit of DPS to enjoy it more.  I mostly only use it on assault and Xhul.  I know that's bad. :-(

 

That's pretty much the opener I use except I don't start 5 sec prior.  I start 2-3 depending on how far I am from the boss.

 

Here's my UI: http://imgur.com/anmLYqw

 

Thank you for the advice! 

Edited March 22, 2016 by DrJ105

[Pinkis 12]

Most of what tbh said is true, however I'd like to disagree with his suggested opener. First of all most obvious mistake - do not use potion together with Incarnation. It will not make your form stroger ^.^ Prepot just before your precast and you will have your potion up 1sec longer. It is a tiny advantage, but still - advantage. Secondly, I'd suggest to precast starsurge. I've seen top boomkins doing that, multiple posts encourage'ing starsurge over starfire precast, but I'm not entirely sure. There's probably 2 reasons - ring and shooting stars. Because of how ring works you want to deal as much damage within 15secs as possible. Most of your damage will be done by empowered starfire - so why not start casting it right away, without having to waste a GCD for starsurge? But what seems to be more important is shooting stars procs. Sometimes i found myself running out of starsurge stacks during my opener, and that's kind of sad. But imagine if I dont precast starsurge, dot up the boss and shooting stars procs right away (looking at my logs i can find SS proc 2 secs into the fight) - i'm losing one stack of starsurge. And if it will not proc second time during my opener - that's a huge dps loss. So I prefer to buff my starfire and start praying to RNGJesus for procs right away. As you said you've been reading threads - you should know how my suggested opener looks like. 

 

As for your toon... Dude... don't be such a scraper, use decent gems for your gear... Atm you have 3x50 = 150 mastery. With 75 gems you'd have 225 mastery. Thats +75 of stat you're just not using... :) 

 

Other than that - I can't find what to pick on :D Getting better thank you currenly are only takes a lot of practice and convenient UI. I can't tell you how to do your UI, you should find it yourself. I've linked my setup in one of the threads, but you'd probably hate having to play with it. 

I'm not sure if you know this, but another step for improvement is learning how to minimize casting downtime moving while you're on GCD. The idea is that after you use an instacast spell that puts you on GCD - your movement doesnt lose you any dps. I use quartz for my castbar and GCD tracking. Learning how to do that and planning ahead, where you need to be and when helps a lot. However if you're standing in fire - run asap ^^

[Krazyito 521]

 

#showtooltip Moonfire

/cast [stance:0/1/2/3] !Moonkin Form; 

/cast Moonfire

/cast Sunfire

/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

 

 

o.O

 

first thing is that if you do #showtooltip moonfire it will only ever show moonfire, and not sunfire.  (just use #showtooltip)

Next, (I'm assuming) the first line tried to shift you to moonkin form if you're not? Guess thats ok

You don't need the /cast sunfire because it tries to cast moonfire first (and if you're in solar will still work it will just use sunfire).  So you don't need that line

the script line theres a check box in the game that you can remove ALL of that without having to use it in a macro.

 

TBH you really only need something like this

#showtooltip
/use[@mouseover,harm][] moonfire

This will let you use moonfire on your mouseover target if you have one (i.e. boss raid frames so you can multidot without having to actually switch targets) and then use moonfire if you don't have a mouseover (i.e. your target). Don't need sunfire cause moonfire = sunfire

 

 

As for the rest of the post, I'll try to do a write up tomorrow if I have time during work... I've been a little bit busy recently and haven't look at forums. Just wanted to chime in cause I'm a code freak and like to try to make things smaller, lol.

 

 

edit: this is my current 'moonfire' macro.  Its a little bit convoluted becasue I use the same macro for reso and boomkin

#showtooltip
/use [spec:1,mod:alt, @player] Genesis; [spec:1,@mouseover,mod:ctrl]lifebloom;[spec:1,@mouseover,help]Rejuvenation;[spec:1,harm]moonfire;[spec:1]Rejuvenation
/use [spec:2, mod:ctrl]Displacer Beast; [spec:2,@mouseover,harm][spec:2]moonfire

Basically the only line you need to worry about is the last one, which is the one I use for boomkin. (basically I can hit control and then my moonfire button and it uses displacer beast)

 

Here is also my most recent video of my UI (last month sometime).  I haven't been playing wow at all recently becasue I just don't care for raiding anymore until Legion comes out.  I'll be happy to answer any questions about my ui

[tbh 5]

 

 

#showtooltip Moonfire

/cast [stance:0/1/2/3] !Moonkin Form; 

/cast Moonfire

/cast Sunfire

/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()

 

 

o.O

 

first thing is that if you do #showtooltip moonfire it will only ever show moonfire, and not sunfire.  (just use #showtooltip)

Next, (I'm assuming) the first line tried to shift you to moonkin form if you're not? Guess thats ok

You don't need the /cast sunfire because it tries to cast moonfire first (and if you're in solar will still work it will just use sunfire).  So you don't need that line

the script line theres a check box in the game that you can remove ALL of that without having to use it in a macro.

 

TBH you really only need something like this

#showtooltip
/use[@mouseover,harm][] moonfire

This will let you use moonfire on your mouseover target if you have one (i.e. boss raid frames so you can multidot without having to actually switch targets) and then use moonfire if you don't have a mouseover (i.e. your target). Don't need sunfire cause moonfire = sunfire

 

 

As for the rest of the post, I'll try to do a write up tomorrow if I have time during work... I've been a little bit busy recently and haven't look at forums. Just wanted to chime in cause I'm a code freak and like to try to make things smaller, lol.

 

 

edit: this is my current 'moonfire' macro.  Its a little bit convoluted becasue I use the same macro for reso and boomkin

#showtooltip
/use [spec:1,mod:alt, @player] Genesis; [spec:1,@mouseover,mod:ctrl]lifebloom;[spec:1,@mouseover,help]Rejuvenation;[spec:1,harm]moonfire;[spec:1]Rejuvenation
/use [spec:2, mod:ctrl]Displacer Beast; [spec:2,@mouseover,harm][spec:2]moonfire

Basically the only line you need to worry about is the last one, which is the one I use for boomkin. (basically I can hit control and then my moonfire button and it uses displacer beast)

 

Here is also my most recent video of my UI (last month sometime).  I haven't been playing wow at all recently becasue I just don't care for raiding anymore until Legion comes out.  I'll be happy to answer any questions about my ui

 

idk man it shows both moonfire and sunfire for me. my macro has been battle tested through all of hfc and hasn't let me down. I tried to initially put moonfire only and it wouldn't cast sunfire. It may be convoluted as well but it works for me.

Edited March 23, 2016 by tbh

[tbh 5]

Another important thing you could do is to add in a tmw or notification for when you are at 3 stacks of starsurge. I have my tmw set up to flash my screen blue whenever I reach max stacks. It really helps me make sure I never waste procs.

[DrJ105 3]

Wow, thanks for all the posts! :-)  I'll digest through them and see what I can apply. 

 

I think I follow a pretty typical opener for Boomkins.  2-3 secs b/f pull (depending on distance from boss) I hit Inc.  As I'm coming out of that GCD I prepot and starsurge.  As I'm coming out of the starsurge GCD I hit CA.  Then I moonfire (If done correctly it will hit as my starsurge hits right on pull).  Then I fire the 2 starfires that were empowered from the precast starsurge.  Then I starsurge again, then 2 starfires, etc.  The only thing I don't do is refresh the dots as I leave CA.  I find that with that opener sunfire is going off right as I'm going into solar so I wait til then to reapply it.  I've seen some pretty intense arguments between mythic level Boomkins over whether to precast starsurge or starfire.  I'll probably stick with starsurge since it's very ingrained in my muscle memory at this point. 

 

I know I should get the 75 gems.  I even have a jewel crafter who has been spitting them out to sell on the AH.  [ashamed face]. 

 

It didn't show up on my UI pic, but my bars have starsurge in a direct line below the dot times on the enemy plate and my TMW notifiers, so that's always in my peripheral vision. 

Edited March 23, 2016 by DrJ105

[Krazyito 521]

There is a very small/marginal difference between pre-casting starfire vs starsurge.  When you're not already playing the whole spec well and without need for help, its not worth thinking about.  I always recommend starsurge for newer players becasue its simpler to execute and doesn't require your raid to be amazing at their pull timers.
 
 
 

It may be convoluted as well but it works for me.

 
I was talking about my own macro, not yours.  I mean, what works works I guess, but I usually mention things like this because, as a programmer, I usually try to make small changes to code to make it look nicer

[Krazyito 521]

Quick runthrough on logs, I'm just looking at your best Iron Reaver parse cause its mosly single target:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/3tJRP8LdVbCBxrY9#fight=11&type=casts&source=4&pins=0%24Separate%24%23244F4B%24auras-gained%240%240.0.0.Any%240.0.0.Any%24true%24139212651.0.0.Druid%24false%24102560%5E0%24Separate%24%23909049%24auras-gained%240%240.0.0.Any%240.0.0.Any%24true%24139212651.0.0.Druid%24false%24112071%5E2%24Off%24%23a04D8A%24expression%24type+%3D+%22cast%22&view=events

 

 

It looks like you're doing your opener correctly.  Only thing is that random starfall, but I guess you wanted to hit bombs.  Just try to avoid doing that during CA.. Edit: also make sure you try to have your CA+ moonfire hit at the same time as your starsurge on the boss.  IF i can see it at the start of the log like that, its becasue you're a little slow on it.

 

Looking further down, when you did your 2nd set of cooldowns, you used your potion before incarnation.  You should use it before you cast CA after Incarnation...

 

oh... you macroed CA and incarnation together in the middle... You shouldn't do that either.  Precast Incarnation then cast CA+ moonfire so you dont waste much uptime on your CA becasue of Incarnations GCD

 

On your 2nd set of cooldowns, you aslo casted starsurge after CA, when before that you had barely any starfires at all ,so I'm pretty sure you overwrote some buffs.  Use your starfire empowerment first.

 

 

Lastly, this is the advice I give everyone:  Make the most out of your lunar and solar phase.  What I mean by that is, stand still and turret as much as you can in lunar, make sure starfire hits, but use solar as your 'positioning' eclipse. Of course standing still in solar will do more dps, but you can afford to re position yourself during solar more than lunar. (obv don't die cause dead dps = 0 dps)

[tbh 5]

Also something I really want to touch on is your UI. For most classes I would say UI is totally preference except for a couple things. For boomkin, I personally think that having to look down and to the left in order to track your buffs and look at your eclipse bar is making things harder than it needs to be. I also would recommend taking off your set buff because it almost always is up and isn't something you need to track. I'll link my ui just to give another example. My most important things to watch for is my sunfire being >20 seconds when leaving solar phase. Making sure I get the most out of my CA, and my starfall. Of course tracking empowerments is really important and I would recommend tracking nothing less than everything related to the core dps of boomkin abilities. But whatever you're comfortable with just needs to be at the point to where you don't lose dps or take extra damage because you have to spend extra time looking down to check your buffs and eclipse bar.

http://imgur.com/WmtHMad

 

Edit: yes I know that I have starsurge procs and am casting an unbuffed starsurge :)

Edited March 23, 2016 by tbh

[DrJ105 3]

Thank you so much guys!  These are very helpful!!