Constant Disappointment

[Cataylst 0]

Hello,

 

I am here seeking some advice and constructive criticism.

 

I am recently new to warlock raiding, and even more so new to a ranged class. I grew up playing wow as a melee character. I have had to competely revamp my entire play style to play this new class. I leveled my warlock is hopes to play on it in the next expansion after MoP. I never expected my old raiding buddy to beg me to come raid warlocks with him before I even hit level 90.

 

I jumped straight into a mid heroic progression guild towards the closing times of ToT. I was utterly worthless buying any items with a ilvl over 500.

 

I have come along way since the beginning and learned the hardway the macros for ranged spell casters do work the same way as melee macros.

 

After doing dismale dps in ToT, I had a pretty good start in Seige. I got my bindings right off the bat but I am still stuck with a terrrible UVLS, which for the life of me I cant seem to replace.

 

Without my meta gem, playing affliction this teir just seems underpar especially since I don't know it that well. Luck for me Destro is a real killer this teir. All things being considered: no cloak, no meta, bad trinket, I think i do just a little below average. I do "OK."

 

I just really need to know if I am doing something really wrong or if I can still just tell myself it's ok and chalk it up to being a bit undergeared and without legendaries and one of the worest trinkets for destro.

 

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/stonemaul/Cataylst/advanced

 

Last nights logs:

 

Iron Juggernaut (best boss to compare dps I think?)

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-i45n72pwqkiyga2u/details/21/?s=8504&e=8812

 

I really thought I was doing good in the fight until I check the meters after the kill and thought to myself, I did better in the flex just 2 hours before with less buffs. I really only had one time that I had downtime.

 

Sha of Pride:

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-i45n72pwqkiyga2u/details/21/?s=6723&e=7020

 

This fight I took the angle of not dpsing the adds directly but rather cast a couple RoF and contiuned to burn boss with the idea of getting a couple more CB off with the embers generating from RoF.

 

The whole night I just felt I really underpreformed and knew I was better then this.

 

Shamans was a nightmare for me

Edited October 23, 2013 by Cataylst

[Eddie 16]

On IJ, it looks like you missed a pre fight potion, since you only used Potion of the Jade Spirit once. That can be a big help. Also, I only see two Terrorguards and no Doomguards, which means that one of the three warlocks did not use their 10 minute cooldown. If that was you, I would recommend running it on the pull, so it benefits from all of your buffs. Shadowburn and Chaos Bolt casts seem low. If you are reaching 3.5 embers, you should be casting one or the other to keep from capping on embers. If you are just leaving your embers capped, waiting for a proc from your gear, you are losing DPS.

[Cataylst 0]

Iron J was pulled on accident so we just went with it. I am usually good with using Terrorguard, thought I may have missed it due to the bad pull. I would typically prepot.

 

I did find myself casting some CB to prevent capping while waiting for DS and or Bindings to proc. I would like to think that if I had a second trinket like KTT, that would be a good way to dump one or two CB while waiting for DS to get of CD. More often then not, I am forced to cast CB without any proc or buff to prevent ember capping.

 

On a side note, has anyone had any luck with track a ICD of a trinket such as bindings with WeakAuras? I have research many places and tried many different triggers but nothing seems to work.

[Brown 14]

Pretty sure mmochamp thread has a weakaura for PBoI that if you set to combat only you can track ICD just fine.

[Kazistrasz 216]

First: https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/3496-zagams-fixing-your-dps-faq/

Second: not having your meta gem or cloak and using a garbage trinket like UVLS is really going to kill you. Getting the legendary stuff and KTT would easily jump you 40k or more.

[Cataylst 0]

First: https://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/3496-zagams-fixing-your-dps-faq/

Second: not having your meta gem or cloak and using a garbage trinket like UVLS is really going to kill you. Getting the legendary stuff and KTT would easily jump you 40k or more.

This is what I was hoping to hear, trying to compete in a guild with good dps is brutal for me. It doesnt help when your buddy is topping the meters and ranking every now and then. He never fails to mention how badly he beat me on the meters or when he ranks.

 

I shall have me rengeve when blizzard deicdes to take mercy and drops a damn trinket.

[Omaric 246]

While UVLS isn't very great for Destruction specifically, there are still worse trinkets to have.  You can use it to refresh Immolate (which you appear to be doing) and the static INT is always there for you.

 

The main thing for Iron Juggernaut is that you are using AD, but I don't see any uses of Fel Flame.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't imagine you never moved that entire fight.  You're losing a lot of DPS by running and not casting.

 

For the most part you lined your CD's up pretty well, but a little bit before the 2nd time PBI proc'd that lined up with your 3rd DS (due to AD) you have a few spikes in damage.  This tells me shortly before your DS came off CD you fired off a few CB's and weren't able to really put them to use about 5-10 seconds later.  Really, really watch your DS CD so that you know when to expect PBI to proc.  This is the *most* ideal time to fire off CB's.  Don't miss the window. 

 

Edit:  Took another look, and I'm trying to determine why you used your second DS when you did.  You had no other procs up at all.  Just remember that when using AD it gives you freedom to use DS when you have other stuff going.  That's the beauty in it.  I don't recommend firing it off just because.

 

Edit2:  Consider taking KJC.  When playing Destruction I have been for most fights.

[Lockybalboa 618]

As someone who ranks top 10-20 on every fight, in all three specs by the end of a tier let me tell you; ranks don't mean much.

 

The RNG, the strats, the bitch jobs, the crapy RNG inside of the RNG inside of the RNG's RNG, the few asshats on WoL who pay their guild/raid team to help them get ranks, all make it so that the top ranks are really iffy and are for the most part a poor reflection of a players ability.

 

Best example I can think of, true story, one of my best friends use to play a fire mage back in MSV. He sucked. Bad. He was just a crapy fire mage, he can tank like a boss but his fire mage sucked. More over we were 9 heroics in to T14 and he was still at a ilvl of 485. First 11 weeks of T11 he never did more than an 85% of a rank.

 

Then randomly one week he pulls out a rank #5 for Spirit Binder. Why? Perfect fuckn RNG. The stars aligned and he won the WoW lottery. Never ranked again as a fire mage.

 

Tell your friend to take off his cloak and meta and see what happens.

[Cataylst 0]

Edit2:  Consider taking KJC.  When playing Destruction I have been for most fights.

I do feel bogged down without it

 

Tell your friend to take off his cloak and meta and see what happens.

 

It not that threatening, its more like he knows I will be better when things even out.

 

Thank you everyone for the input and info. I feel better about my dps, there is always room for improvement but I now know I am not doing something completely wrong.

 

Again, I love how great the warlock community is here. Rather then the murderous back stabbing rogues.

[Brown 14]

Practice practice practice, I can still hear a former raid leader yelling at me for doing terrible DPS (this was right about when I switched over from Rift and was remembering what DPS was).

 

And now I pray for rogues to join to give me tricks and curse GC because he is the source of all bad RNG.

[Perrydtf 0]

As everyone said, to put it blunt - your gear at the moment is fairly mediocre, and until you actually get your cloak / meta you are always going to be trailing quite a fair distance behind on DPS. Even when you catch up ilvl wise before you get your cloak you will still be quite stretch behind everyone else because the stats alone from the cloak are just nuts along side the proc as well. So best advice is to not get down on yourself and keep practicing your rotation etc until you can get Cloak/Meta.

[Zagam 1,982]

He never fails to mention how badly he beat me on the meters or when he ranks.

You need better friends.  Tell this dick to take off his imaginary crown and remember he's playing a game, not validating why he's breathing.  His inability to understand your DPS won't catch up without the cloak says enough about him.

 

The main thing for Iron Juggernaut is that you are using AD, but I don't see any uses of Fel Flame.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't imagine you never moved that entire fight.  You're losing a lot of DPS by running and not casting.

This is solid advice.  The little rule for casters is ABC, Always Be Casting.  If you're moving and not casting, your net worth plummets.  Every global is valuable if you spend them.

 

As someone who ranks top 10-20 on every fight, in all three specs by the end of a tier let me tell you; ranks don't mean much.

 

The RNG, the strats, the bitch jobs, the crapy RNG inside of the RNG inside of the RNG's RNG, the few asshats on WoL who pay their guild/raid team to help them get ranks, all make it so that the top ranks are really iffy and are for the most part a poor reflection of a players ability.

This is essentially the essence of why I don't trust ranks to a point.  Most people will just go to a fight to see what is doing best and then assume that is the best spec for the fight.  If you could do 400k DPS as Affliction to Heroic Dark Shamans tunneling the bosses or do 350k DPS as Destruction and completely remove the slimes from your raid's strategy, what's the best spec in this case? 

 

RNG has gotten out of hand, and there are always situations where someone has to do a job because he's trustworthy.  My Galakras logs are like 60th percentile because I'm the guy who runs up Tower 1 to nuke the mini boss.  I then shoot Dragons from the cannon.  Then I run down and nuke the guys trying to kill the guys opening the towers.  Then I run up Tower 2, kill that mini boss, run all the way across the battlefield back into Tower 1 and shoot Galakras down.  Know what the parsers are doing?  Fire and Brimstone spamming AoE.  Who's more valuable to their raid team?

 

There's also the situation where you outperform your guildies so much that you just stick out like a sore thumb.  Warlocks who had crappy teammates had much better showings on Horridon because they were allowed to Shadowburn everything.  I didn't have time to because all my teammates switched to adds and killed them with ruthless efficiency.  I didn't whine and ask them to leave them alone for me to pad DPS. 

 

Rankings are anomolies, and SOMETIMES they show how good someone is.  More often than not, they show when someone got great RNG and their raid team didn't wipe.  I can promise you one thing: your guild will ALWAYS appreciate a guy more who volunteers to do the shit jobs to get the kill.  No one cares about your DPS when you're coming back from a wipe, and most of the time, no one gives a shit what your DPS was when you killed a farm boss.

[Muoric 3]

No one cares about your DPS when you're coming back from a wipe, and most of the time, no one gives a shit what your DPS was when you killed a farm boss.

Quoted for truth.

Are ranks nice, yes. But unless you're in the about 25 guilds (and then you know this already) that have killed hc garrosh, you have a boss you're trying to get to that week and spending time changing anything isn't usually worth it.

[Cataylst 0]

Again, thank you all for your comments and advice. I didn't mean to portray my buddy as such a dbag. It's really more of a competitive thing. I'm pretty sure he knows that his cloak is only part of the damage, its more then just the proc that shows on the meter, but the stats that follow.

 

In all honesty, if he didn't talk me into playing and raiding with him, I would not even be here posting. Not many players have friends that are willing to tell their guild leaders: "Hey, I've played with this dude back in Cata on his rogue. He was a pretty good player, he will do good in this guild. He isn't  level 90 yet and has never played a warlock before, but I give you my word, he will hold his own here if we can get him geared."

 

I was able to replace my UVLS last night with a LFR verison of Wush, so that will help a bit. Until blizzard decides to be generous and drop a KTT or maybe i can get my hands on BBoy Sunday. The drop rates on the legendary items have not been very kind to me.

[Kazistrasz 216]

 

RNG has gotten out of hand, and there are always situations where someone has to do a job because he's trustworthy.  My Galakras logs are like 60th percentile because I'm the guy who runs up Tower 1 to nuke the mini boss.  I then shoot Dragons from the cannon.  Then I run down and nuke the guys trying to kill the guys opening the towers.  Then I run up Tower 2, kill that mini boss, run all the way across the battlefield back into Tower 1 and shoot Galakras down.  Know what the parsers are doing?  Fire and Brimstone spamming AoE.  Who's more valuable to their raid team?

 

There's also the situation where you outperform your guildies so much that you just stick out like a sore thumb.  Warlocks who had crappy teammates had much better showings on Horridon because they were allowed to Shadowburn everything.  I didn't have time to because all my teammates switched to adds and killed them with ruthless efficiency.  I didn't whine and ask them to leave them alone for me to pad DPS. 

 

Rankings are anomolies, and SOMETIMES they show how good someone is.  More often than not, they show when someone got great RNG and their raid team didn't wipe.  I can promise you one thing: your guild will ALWAYS appreciate a guy more who volunteers to do the shit jobs to get the kill.  No one cares about your DPS when you're coming back from a wipe, and most of the time, no one gives a shit what your DPS was when you killed a farm boss.

 

This. All of this. In ToT, I was always our top DPS by substantial margins. I was the most geared of our DPS for most of it, but also simply because I was a warlock with UVLS and I had gotten pretty good at Demo. Yet, I always sacrified my DPS to chase turtles around the room and kick the shells on Tortos. Why? I could be counted on to do it and not miss, whereas the others we tried having do it would zone out or kick them sideways into the wall. If I didn't give up the DPS to focus on chasing shells, we wouldn't kill the boss.

 

Now that those jobs aren't mostly ranged specific, my officer (warrior) specifically wants all of those bitch jobs like towers and conveyor belts, and we love him for it. No one else wants to do it, which makes them happy to not have to be assigned to doing it. When he does them, they get done without issue, which means we don't wipe 30 times because the tower DPS got knocked off. As a GM and RL, nothing makes me happier with a raider than when they're stepping up to do something for the guild. We've got a trial resto druid we were very happy with Monday when we were doing Garrosh, because he was stepping up and calling out his efflorescence as a marker to help keep track of where to go in phase 3. It may not be necessary, but even that bit makes your guild happy with you.

 

Also, as Zagam just said, and as he said at our weekly mumble this past Sunday, if someone wants to say something about your DPS, point out the facts to them. Point out how much meaningful damage you have versus other people. If a mob has 400k HP and you drop a 1mil SB on it, only 400k of that damage is meaningful. The only way you get any meaning out of that 600k is the extra ember you'll net for doing it to let you throw out another CB on the next mob or if you're using havoc to cleave it onto another target. Point out that you're doing less DPS on Galakras because you're pumping CBs to down the priority target fast instead of spamming F&B at everything. Anyone worth their salt will understand that. When we were progressing on that fight, I was frequently on people if another add was at 60% before the tidal shaman went down (excluding Grunts because they have no HP to begin with and splash/tank damage kills them). Phase one Garrosh. If you're planning on killing the adds using the Iron Star (and I don't see why you wouldn't), a warlock mashing F&B on all the adds for 600k DPS on the pull isn't worth as much as the warlock doing 400k DPS because they're only keeping Immo and RoF on the adds to pump more CBs into Garrosh. Most that F&B damage to put the adds at 30% will have gone to waste when the Iron Star is going to do 60% of their HP anyway.

 

DPS is like hooking up with your girlfriend: you want something to actually be there, not just a lot of padding.

[Zagam 1,982]

DPS is like hooking up with your girlfriend: you want something to actually be there, not just a lot of padding.

Personally, I like to know whether my girl is padding or real before she becomes my girlfriend.  The curiousity comes before the first time she gets nekkid.