I don't understand why my DPS is so low

[Guest]

Greetings warlocks

After looking over some logs of my raid group's most recent kills, I noticed that my DPS is significantly lower than the rest of my group and I have no idea why. I have tried asking some other lock friends and guildies for advice, but my DPS just hasn't improved and now I feel like I am holding back my group from progressing.

Here is my armory: http://us.battle.net...eillquei/simple

Here are some recent logs from my guild: http://www.worldoflo...5u8errq9kaqcpi/ http://www.worldoflo...jkaivxx8aa8gxr/ http://www.worldoflo...3g7bp7bb020h8i/

For my rotation, I start off by pre-potting, then COE, then I use DS, then soulburn/soulswap, then pop Doomguard when most of my cooldowns come up then MG and recast dots as necessary, then rinse and repeat.

Well, I hope this is enough information. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Edited July 17, 2013 by Guest

[Brown 14]

Hmmmm, I only looked at first logs linked, but are you sure you're prepotting everything? I only saw prepot on one fight. I also think you may be missing a Dark Soul here and there since you should be getting one off the bat then every 2 minutes hence.

On the first log linked, on Primordius you should have had enough time to be buffed twice if someone was killing adds (second would have been clipped though by fight ending). I really only gave it like a quick perusal since it's late on the East coast though. And why were you on add duty if you were going aff (or were you on add duty or just down for a nest to grab a feather to buff)?

I haven't played aff in ages, so I really can't give any specific advice. How much proc watching are you doing? I'd at least think with Wush you'd want to be ensuring Haunt is up for 6-7+ stacks so you can keep high damage up when stacks get to peak. Other than that you probably want to ask someone who plays aff more than me (I detest playing aff -- it made me happier than a game should when aff was no longer king). On a side note of that, I'm not sure if stacking more haste (maybe go for the 12.4k breakpoint) would also be beneficial -- again, I don't like playing aff, so I'm not as familiar with the breakpoints and when to trade off mastery v. haste.

Edited July 17, 2013 by Brown

[Jenaye 9]

I'm looking at your durumu kill. Your dot uptime is only 85-89%. That's gotta be higher. Unless you were dead, that should be 97%+, as mistakes or random shit happens (having to pop defensive cooldowns, etc). your MG time is only 27%, and I feel that can be higher. I've been playing a lot of demo recently, but i feel like your haunt time can be up a bit more too. I have a suspicion that you're using SB:SW to reapply your dots a lot. You should be manually doing that unless you're getting serious trinket procs, to save those shards for more haunt time.

As previously mentioned, DS can be used more. Your starting rotation can be tweaked to get more out of it as well. Try single casting your 3 dots just to get them going, THEN pop DS, and SB:SS to refresh them to max duration. that gives you more time to channel the hell out of some MG and feed off of those empowered dots you should have up.

I'm sure i'll think of more while I sit here, bored at work.

[Nerghal 1]

<snip> up then MG and recast dots as necessary,

With 'recast DoTs as necessary', do you mean you recast depending on when they are about to run out, or based on proc value? Great Affliction DPS is all based around refreshing the DoTs as empowered as possible. If you haven't done this already, make sure you install the affdot addon. This will tell you how much % 'empowerment' due to procs you have. Once you get the hang of it, you will start to see patterns, allowing you to predict when the optimal time for refreshing your DoTs is. For your opener you'd typically get 2 MG drains off after it before the first full refresh.

Hope this helps!

[Guest]

With 'recast DoTs as necessary', do you mean you recast depending on when they are about to run out, or based on proc value?

I just recently got the affdots addon. Still trying to make sense of it, but it has helped a lot.

What I meant when I said that was that I recast my dots when empowered (when affdots turns green), or when it is about to fall off and am unable to cast it while empowered.

I'm looking at your durumu kill. Your dot uptime is only 85-89%. That's gotta be higher. Unless you were dead, that should be 97%+, as mistakes or random shit happens (having to pop defensive cooldowns, etc). your MG time is only 27%, and I feel that can be higher. I've been playing a lot of demo recently, but i feel like your haunt time can be up a bit more too. I have a suspicion that you're using SB:SW to reapply your dots a lot. You should be manually doing that unless you're getting serious trinket procs, to save those shards for more haunt time.

As previously mentioned, DS can be used more. Your starting rotation can be tweaked to get more out of it as well. Try single casting your 3 dots just to get them going, THEN pop DS, and SB:SS to refresh them to max duration. that gives you more time to channel the hell out of some MG and feed off of those empowered dots you should have up.

I'm sure i'll think of more while I sit here, bored at work.

Good info. Thanks!

Thanks for all your replies so far everyone :)

[Guest]

Have something else I wanted to ask but forgot to put in my first post...

From what I can tell, Affdots sometimes tells me that I should be spamming haunt. Is this correct? This doesn't seem right.

[Brown 14]

Mmmm, not telling you to spam Haunt. Think it's mostly just a reminder that you're capped or close to cap on soul shards so you should dump one on a Haunt. Similar thing happens with embers for Chaos Bolt/Shadowburn in destro.

[Guest]

Mmmm, not telling you to spam Haunt. Think it's mostly just a reminder that you're capped or close to cap on soul shards so you should dump one on a Haunt. Similar thing happens with embers for Chaos Bolt/Shadowburn in destro.

Ah ok that makes sense. Thanks.

One last question...

When DS is up, should I use it right away, or should I wait until some cooldowns pop up before using it (even if this means waiting for a while for them to do so)?