Noobynoobynoobnoob What's up with my dps? :C

[Aeleas 3]

Okay, so, months ago, I switched from a tank to an elemental shaman as a main, and I'm kind of in the dark as to why my dps is so low. According to Noxxic.com, elementals are currently #23 out of 26 dps specs, so I know we're not exactly gonna give frost/arcane mages a run for their money, but I'm low even according to the Noxxic ilvl 502 elemental shaman standards.

My ilvl is 507. I'm averaging 82k dps, where Noxxic says I should be at 112k. I based my 82k off of the most standstill, single-target fight I had of the night, on our Council of Elders 10m normal kill. On this fight, according to World of Logs (which I'm only just now bothering to learn, go me), I am at a 99.4% activity rate. Also, according to the logs, I'm using my cooldowns as often as I can be using them, and my totems and such are as they should be. For this fight, my uptime was an abysmal 88.7% on Flame Shock, which I don't know why I missed it that much, but I can't see that accounting for being a whopping 30k lower on DPS than I supposedly should be.

Here is a link to my WoL damage for our Elder Council kill, for any who wish to help a struggling elemental shaman:

http://www.worldoflo.../?s=5615&e=6124

Other details that may or may not matter: I'm lolraidleading for our lolraid group, so I know that my attentiveness will probably be lower than if I weren't watching the whole raid group as often as I am, yet a 99.4% activity percentage, among other things my just-now WoL-learning eyes are seeing, seem to suggest that I wasn't really being as innattentive as I thought I might be. Also, we're somewhat new as a raid group, and we only decided to get a bit more serious for raiding about halfway through Dragon Soul, so we're still sort of learning and growing together. Another thing, I was the turtlekicker in our awful Tortos pulls, which we've been working on for roughly one week now, so I already know my dps is gonna be low for those.

I'm completely at a loss as to why my dps is 30k lower than what I supposedly should be doing. Am I doing anything wrong that anyone can see? Or is Noxxic grossly overstating what elemental shaman sustained dps should be? AMGHHHHAAAAALPPPP!! Thanks.

Edit: This is my armory link. Maybe someone can catch a horrible talent choice, or bad stat priorities, but according to guides, my build isn't horrible... I think.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/icecrown/Aeleas/simple

Edited May 9, 2013 by Aeleas

[Stoove 347]

For this fight, my uptime was an abysmal 88.7% on Flame Shock, which I don't know why I missed it that much, but I can't see that accounting for being a whopping 30k lower on DPS than I supposedly should be.

Don't FS ticks proc Lava Surge? Surely that makes up a huge proportion of your DPS, so missing any FS uptime has a big impact?

Just guessing, I'm not really into Elemental.

[Aeleas 3]

Hmm yes, and that's possible, but I'm not sure I missed so many Lava Bursts as a result, that I consistently finish a fight 30k dps lower than what Noxxic says I should be at. But yeah, with your post in mind, I'll be watching my Flame Shock on the targets all the more.

[Tarazet 144]

Okay, so, months ago, I switched from a tank to an elemental shaman as a main, and I'm kind of in the dark as to why my dps is so low. According to Noxxic.com, elementals are currently #23 out of 26 dps specs, so I know we're not exactly gonna give frost/arcane mages a run for their money, but I'm low even according to the Noxxic ilvl 502 elemental shaman standards.

My ilvl is 507. I'm averaging 82k dps, where Noxxic says I should be at 112k. I based my 82k off of the most standstill, single-target fight I had of the night, on our Council of Elders 10m normal kill. On this fight, according to World of Logs (which I'm only just now bothering to learn, go me), I am at a 99.4% activity rate. Also, according to the logs, I'm using my cooldowns as often as I can be using them, and my totems and such are as they should be. For this fight, my uptime was an abysmal 88.7% on Flame Shock, which I don't know why I missed it that much, but I can't see that accounting for being a whopping 30k lower on DPS than I supposedly should be.

Here is a link to my WoL damage for our Elder Council kill, for any who wish to help a struggling elemental shaman:

http://www.worldoflo.../?s=5615&e=6124

Other details that may or may not matter: I'm lolraidleading for our lolraid group, so I know that my attentiveness will probably be lower than if I weren't watching the whole raid group as often as I am, yet a 99.4% activity percentage, among other things my just-now WoL-learning eyes are seeing, seem to suggest that I wasn't really being as innattentive as I thought I might be. Also, we're somewhat new as a raid group, and we only decided to get a bit more serious for raiding about halfway through Dragon Soul, so we're still sort of learning and growing together. Another thing, I was the turtlekicker in our awful Tortos pulls, which we've been working on for roughly one week now, so I already know my dps is gonna be low for those.

I'm completely at a loss as to why my dps is 30k lower than what I supposedly should be doing. Am I doing anything wrong that anyone can see? Or is Noxxic grossly overstating what elemental shaman sustained dps should be? AMGHHHHAAAAALPPPP!! Thanks.

Don't cast Lava Burst unless Flame Shock is up on the target first.

You can, and should, keep Flame Shock up on multiple targets on fights like Council.

Don't use Earth Shock if you don't have 6-7 charges of Lightning Shield.

Use Chain Lightning instead of Lightning Bolt whenever you can hit more than one target.

Keep your Searing Totem up. Maybe it's a problem with the log, but it doesn't look like it was ever up.

Pretty simple things that I think would help you close the gap.

Edited May 9, 2013 by Tarazet

[Aeleas 3]

Tarazet, all these things, I am doing, with the possible exception of an occasional slip in Searing totem or Flame Shock uptime. As I said, I'm doing all this, close enough to what guides are saying, that I can't see where I should really be losing 30k dps.

Edit: I haven't been multidotting as I should, either. I should get into this habit, but my main concern is single-target DPS. Even on a single-target Patchwerk fight, I'm appearing to lose this 30k on average, every time.

Edited May 9, 2013 by Aeleas

[Tarazet 144]

Tarazet, all these things, I am doing, with the possible exception of an occasional slip in Searing totem or Flame Shock uptime. As I said, I'm doing all this, close enough to what guides are saying, that I can't see where I should really be losing 30k dps.

The log is handy that way; it splits up Lava Bursts by whether they benefitted from the damage increase from Flame Shock. 25% of the Lava Bursts you cast didn't benefit from the 50% extra damage, which adds up.

Edited May 9, 2013 by Tarazet

[Aeleas 3]

Geez...I knew that Flame Shock downtime was a terrible thing, but was it really 25%? Really causing me much of that 30k loss?

Like I said, I only just started learning WoL today, so I need to go in and find that Lava Burst split up log you mentioned.

Moaredit: I just found out how to check pets. It seems all the times I didn't immediately refresh my Searing Totem (oops, I boinked it up and forgot to refresh it before popping Ascendance, oh well, I'll be a baddie and not refresh it til Ascendance wears off, oops, I meant to check it in another few seconds, then forgot about it for a couple seconds after it expired before putting it out again, etc) brought it down to a 75% uptime. I never realized I stacked up that much downtime for any time it was down for just a few seconds. Another thing found to fix! I am gonna love this whole WoL thing.

Edited May 9, 2013 by Aeleas

[Tarazet 144]

By napkin math it reduced your overall damage by about 5%, before considering the loss from the missing Flame Shock ticks themselves.

On Council, you can just keep applying Flame Shock whenever it comes off cooldown on a different target, and don't use Lava Burst unless it's already up on your current target. You could do the same with turtles on Tortos as well. It's a good kind of number-padding and you might even find yourself going over the sims number, given your excellent uptime rate.

Edited May 9, 2013 by Tarazet

[Aeleas 3]

Okay, so my current major malfunction is uptime. I'll make this my focus, and go whack on a target dummy for a while, until I've made it more of a habit.

Thanks Tarazet, for all the help! I'll keep checking this for other tips, too.

Next out-of-game task is to teach myself Dat SimulationCraft...

Edited May 9, 2013 by Aeleas

[Stoove 347]

Major props to Tarazet there, I think ^_^

[Aeleas 3]

Indeed, Stoove. He's been awesome.

Just whaled away on a target dummy for a while. Best uptime "pull" on it left me at roughly 90k dps. That's up 8k from my aforementioned 82k. So 8k down, 22k left to go. x.x

Another incentive I thought of for keeping up my Flame Shock more, is Flames of Life, a healing tick I get from my FS. The more I keep that up, the better I live through damage, too, however small any ticks from it might be.

The Searing Totem downtime thing is partially unavoidable, I realized. There's gonna be a couple minutes total in most fights where it will not be up, and that's due to Fire Elemental totem being out in its stead. As such, I can't look for Searing to be up as much as 95% of the time, or more, but that's fine, because Fire Elemental is a honey badger.

Now to figure out the other 22k. Argh.

[Tarazet 144]

Indeed, Stoove. He's been awesome.

Just whaled away on a target dummy for a while. Best uptime "pull" on it left me at roughly 90k dps. That's up 8k from my aforementioned 82k. So 8k down, 22k left to go. x.x

Another incentive I thought of for keeping up my Flame Shock more, is Flames of Life, a healing tick I get from my FS. The more I keep that up, the better I live through damage, too, however small any ticks from it might be.

The Searing Totem downtime thing is partially unavoidable, I realized. There's gonna be a couple minutes total in most fights where it will not be up, and that's due to Fire Elemental totem being out in its stead. As such, I can't look for Searing to be up as much as 95% of the time, or more, but that's fine, because Fire Elemental is a honey badger.

Now to figure out the other 22k. Argh.

On the dummy, you don't have all the raid buffs (crit, spell power come to mind), so you probably improved more than that. :)

[Aeleas 3]

Oh, snap, that's obvious enough that I kick myself for not considering it. x.x Lol, encouraging though, thank you. :]

I saw from the elemental guide here that Elementarist is a recommended add-on. I picked it up to use it as I use dr00dfocus and AffDots, so that I don't have to look from Bartender, up to totems underneath my portrait, to the buff bar, to the debuff bar on the boss, because that's nigh impossible for peripheral vision, and that means I'm taking my eyes off things a lot. Now I've got this Elementarist, and my dps sits at about 94k unbuffed.

So my next question would be, with this new add-on, it seems to be impossible to work extra trackers into it. I'd love to put my Synapse Springs (engineering), and other Shaman spells somewhere into it, and have all my tracking done in one box. Is there an add-on that will do all this for me?

[Fennalie 1]

I don't play ele much but thought I'd throw in my 2 cents.

For your totem and spell tracking there are 2 addons which are really cool for my sham called Totemtimers and Shaman's Friend. They're easy to configure hopefully you'll find them useful. For your synapse springs I recommend Weakauras or Tellmewhen.

Just a few thoughts for your council fight if you are using searing totem I think Totemic Projection is a better talent for you. Also have you played around with Elemental Blast and Echo of the elements? I think sims are showing these talents provide better dps than Primal Elementalist and Elemental Mastery.

[Stoove 347]

I have all my totems and everything run through Power Auras 5. I'd recommend it, but it's no longer publicly available = Try weakauras?

[Damien 1,514]

I think you should stop taking Noxxic's DPS rankings into account. They don't mean anything and are misleading. This is merely a way for them to get traffic from Google.

First, it's all taken from SimC and there is no consistency between the various SimC class modules. Some modules are mostly bug-free, others still have bugs. Some rotations are more optimized than others, etc.. So, while the tool is great for providing you with numbers about your spec, you shouldn't use it to compare specs. There's a write-up on that on SimC's website: http://code.google.c...tedProvocation. The only reason SimC publish DPS rankings is to get feedback from people, not so much to rank specs, because they know it makes no sense.

Second, Noxxic uses what they call "Realistic DPS" simulations. That means nothing. They added a few raid events to a Patchwerk fight and ran all their simulations on that model. Of course, some classes handle these specific raid events a lot better than others, so they rank higher (not to mention that some SimC rotations are not at all optimized for movement or the raid events used in that "Realistic DPS" model). In WoW, every fight is different so the only way to see how your spec is supposed to behaved in a given fight is to go on World of Logs or Raidbot and check out how it performs compared to the other spec. Even there, you won't have any gear-specific indication.

And I know what I'm talking about, I'm one of the SimC contributors.

[Aeleas 3]

I had always kind of heard, as well as seen for myself, that Noxxic was notoriously inaccurate on a few of the class guides that they did (ie telling my old muti rogue back in Cata not to use mutilate, that one was pretty funny). I didn't know that their DPS rankings were off by so much, though. Where can I find a more accurate ranking list?

I'm going to try WeakAuras for my Synapse Springs.

[Stoove 347]

You could try looking at Raidbots (linked for 10N):

http://www.raidbots.com/dpsbot/Overall_DPS/10N/100/14/60/default/#1111111111110000000000000000000000

This gives a ROUGH idea for what's achievable for your spec. =]

[Thaldrad 0]

Just have to say, Noxxic is a terrible site. They use simcraft, they get alot of the rotation of classes wrong, and their "Relistic Dps" is a load of crap. Don't take it to heart, really. However I do agree with the flame shock/lava burst thing

[rjparker1 7]

Oh, snap, that's obvious enough that I kick myself for not considering it. x.x Lol, encouraging though, thank you. :]

So my next question would be, with this new add-on, it seems to be impossible to work extra trackers into it. I'd love to put my Synapse Springs (engineering), and other Shaman spells somewhere into it, and have all my tracking done in one box. Is there an add-on that will do all this for me?

The problem I see is too much haste, it's tempting I know.. don't do it! Follow Askmrrobot.com. Your gems are giving you haste, you are OVER the hit cap.. yeah it's not much but it's a waste, you can be UNDER if it means you will be missing once in every 100 attempts.. still your DPS is low, if you REALLY want to improve on that, follow Askmrrobot suggestions and they will explain the hit cap better.

Haste doesn't scale like mastery ESPECIALLY given your iLVL. haste is great.. for casting spells really fast, not much help if your damage isn't high... doing MORE DPS at a slower rate vs FASTER hits will give your more damage in a fight, which is what you want...

Trust me :)

even given your iLVL vs mine, I bet my DPS is higher...

[rjparker1 7]

Just have to say, Noxxic is a terrible site. They use simcraft, they get alot of the rotation of classes wrong, and their "Relistic Dps" is a load of crap. Don't take it to heart, really. However I do agree with the flame shock/lava burst thing

Agree 100%, great for stats.. on PAPER, not real world AT ALL

[Fat4ss 1]

i actually made an account just to make a reply to this post.

had a quick look at your armory and the first thing that poped in to my mind was your gemming..

your gemming shoud be as follows:

Blue socket= int/spirit gem.

red socket= pure int. (unless you know how to use simcraft then you can play around with int/haste or int/mastery or even pure haste/mastery gems depending on statweights)

yellow socket: int/mastery ( int/haste or pure haste if you got meta and both RPPM BIS trinkets from ToT)

as someone mentioned above you could try and use Mr.Robot and play with it if you aren't really sure about how the gemming and reforging works. otherwhise i would recommend getting familiar with SimCraft since it will get you by far the best results.

how i use Mr.Robot if i wasn't sure about the haste/mastery reforging and what i would get the most out of

i would go in to the statwaigs tab, put in custom weights. ( for example i would make int->spellpower->hit/spirit->haste/mastery(at the same stat value) and then crit at the rock buttom... that is as a general point of view..

but as i can see you got the meta gem and both the BIS lfr trinkets, haste is the way to go. it will rock your socks off if you just gets as mutch haste as humanly possible! and then learn to time your CD for the right moments

at last but not least i will now link you the armory of Leeds, the elemental shaman from the leading raiding guild Method. where you can see my idea's in work http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/twisting-nether/Leeds/advanced

hope you find this wall of text to any help and the best of luck to you! :)

[Adhemar 3]

i actually made an account just to make a reply to this post.

I'm sorry, but no. Please refer to Binkenstein's blog post here: http://www.totemspot.com/vb/entry.php?b=95

Then re-examine Leeds's gemming and you will notice that he's actually gemming mastery more than haste.

[Ronebean 6]

Thanks to all contributors this is really interesting thread and a real eye opener about how unrelaible noxxic is a website i usually look at a lot...

[Fat4ss 1]

I'm sorry, but no. Please refer to Binkenstein's blog post here: http://www.totemspot.../entry.php?b=95

Then re-examine Leeds's gemming and you will notice that he's actually gemming mastery more than haste.

if you had taken the time to read the whole post i made you would see i made an advise on using both haste/mastery gemming for the red sockets. so the comment you made is invalid. everything comes down to statweights. what bink is giving is a general idea of how to gem without taking specific gear in to account. if you gem pure mastery you might not get as much out of it as if you try to balance it. and again if you read the post you would see i reffered to using simcraft to see weather you should gem for the mastery or haste hell i have seen bink time and time again say that you really should simcraft for your own weights.

and the reason Bink and leeds gem for mastery (on the red sockets only) is because with the gear that they have its better to gem mastery as haste isn't as valuble after the 30-35% threshold when you have the legendary meta gem :)

Edited June 20, 2013 by Fat4ss