Balance druid - DPS too low?

[Prokmi 0]

Hi there, 

I'm trying to help my friend, that even with his ilvl, still has reaaally low dps. He said that he uses the rotations based on this page (or noxxic). 

Armory link: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/drakthul/Nibbly/simple

Logs: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-xnhrmofzyyzgyl7u/

I'm not sure what exactly to post @ world of logs, so i'll just post the whole thing. 

Thanks for help!

[Bonita 8]

Hello Prokmi,

the reasons why your friend Nibbly is having lowdps are simple:

- No Meta-legendary gem (greeeeeat DPS increase)

- No Legendary cloak (great DPS increase)

- No 4pc Bonus of t16 (great DPS increase)

- only ilvl 526 equipped

  -> thus having only 10% haste and low crit/mastery ratings

- low uptime of both DOTs (e.g. about 70% @ fallen protectors // 79% @ sha)

- and last but no least: no max professions.

Edited April 11, 2014 by Bonita

[Prokmi 0]

Hello Bonita and thanks for the response!

Thank you for the advices, you are absolutely right about these things. Yet I still think there have to be something more, because I don't think that with his ilvl he could have dps that low. Does anything other come to your mind, what he could be doing wrong?

[Paloro 39]

On any fight, Moonfire/Sunfire should be in the upper 90's percentile for uptime.  He had 68 and 72% respectively.  He also used Astral Storm quite a bit.  Instead of that, he could have been multidotting even more to fish for Starsurge proc's.

[Krosys 3]

Took a glance at your armory and here's what I noticed:

 

1. Over the hit cap (needs to be as close to 15.00% as possible)

2. Under first haste cap (needs to be over 5273 haste to get 10 DoT ticks if applied during Nature's Grace)

3. You're missing 5 enchants and put a strength enchant on your bracers

 

Go to ask mr robot (link for it is at the bottom right of every page on this site). It will help you optimize your reforging, gemming and enchanting.

 

You're DoT uptime is too low. Your DoTs are a great source of damage but they are also your SS feeders, which is a huge part of your DPS as a boomkin. The higher your DoT uptime (especially if applied under haste or crit buffs), the more instant starsurges you get. The more you get to cast instant SS, the faster you move between eclipses and the higher your NG uptime is which leads to making it easier to keep hasted DoTs up, which means more instant SS. It all starts with DoT uptimes and DoT strength.

 

If you concentrate on keeping those DoTs up and fix your gear, you will see a big increase in DPS. 

 

*Sorry just realized this was for your friend not you*

Edited April 11, 2014 by Krosys

[Kazistrasz 216]

Hi Prokmi!

 

I don't know the most about boomkin, but I do know a bit and I know what good logs look like.

 

Your friend has gear limitations, it's true. But, gear is not as important to DPS as how well you play. Warlocks come to us all the time and say things like "I'm doing this much damage will I get more if I do this with my gems" or "here's a log and here's my armory do I need to be reforging differently" and we tell them the same thing: 90% of the increase you will see in your DPS will come from fixing how you play, 10% will come from fixing your stats.

 

Raw int from higher item level will clearly be more than 10%, but I'm speaking relatively. Please do not go back to your friend and tell him that gear is his biggest problem.

 

Because the fights are relatively similar on normal and heroic, I'm going to compare what your friend is doing on Fallen Protectors to Snigelen, one of Method's balance druids, in their kill last week.

 

BEFORE WE BEGIN: Your friend has several critical gameplay errors that will not be fixed by having someone come here to play middle man with us. He needs to come here himself, re-read all of the guides out there, and begin learning how to examine his own logs.

 

 

Zagam even has a wonderful guide posted on reading logs. I recommend switching to Warcraft Logs from World of Logs, as WCL offers more detailed information in an easier-to-read format. Almost all of the top guilds have made this transition, and you should, too!

 

Edit:

 

 

We've already said DoT uptime is not good, but it's not just that. You can have 100% uptime and still not be doing great - in the logs that just means you had it on some target the entire time. You want to have it on all the targets.

 

In a 5:23 fight, Snigelen had 109 casts of Sunfire and Moonfire combined. Your friend had 53 in a 7:41 fight. Obviously, the lower haste amounts means you can't extrapolate a completely proportional number, but his haste is not so low by comparison as to merit less than half the number of casts in a fight that's 40% longer.

 

Looking closer at the log shows that he almost never had Sunfire and Moonfire on more than one target in a 3-target fight. The only time in the entire fight Snigelen did not keep both DoTs on all three bosses was when they had their Desperate Measures phases (which, being Method, were all pushed at pretty much the same time). The only time your friend ever had either DoT on more than one target at a time was very brieftly during Sun's phases, even more briefly during one of Rook's phases, and more briefly still for one tiny second or two at most during the end of the fight.

 

Another humongous issue your friend is having is not using Starfall as much as he should. Starfall should be cast once for every Celestial Alignment and once for every Eclipse (Lunar) in addition to already being up on the pull from a pre-cast. Snigelen had CA 3 times and Eclipse 8 times; accordingly, he had 11 casts of Starfall plus the original from before the pull. Your friend had CA 3 times and Eclipse 5 times, but only 7 Starfall casts. He's also missing the pre-cast Starfall at the beginning. His second Starfall cast also clipped his first with almost 5 seconds left to go. That's another big no-no.

 

Now, let's compare Sha of Pride. Heroic has extra movement that normal does not, so we should see more Moonfire/Sunfire casts from Snigelen than we should from your friend. Comparing your normal kill at 5:57 to a 5:40 kill on heroic, the rest should be relatively similar.

 

Your friend is looking a little bit better here. Starsurge is an appropriately large amount of is damage. But, his DoTs are still leaving much to be desired with 78% and 79% uptimes.

 

I think he's also trying too hard to get AoE in with Astral Storm and Hurricane as well as channeling longer than he should. For the first time Sha casts Self-Reflection, when there's hardly any adds, I honestly wouldn't even bother and let other classes cleave and passively AoE them. In either case, most of the time he's channeling the spell he's not hitting a whole lot of anything it looks like until the last set of Reflections when he had Astral Storm instead of Hurricane. This is mostly because the priest, monk, and hunter are also annihilating them when they spawn. Once the adds are dying off, he needs to stop channeling.

 

His Starfall usage is still suffering - 2 Celestial Alignments and 5 Lunar Eclipses should give 7 casts plus the pre-cast, and he has 6 cast without the pre-cast. This is a big loss of damage.

 

His opener should also include Incarnation with Celestial Alignment, yet he held it for 30 seconds into the fight. Looking back, he did the same thing with Fallen Protectors. They were never used at the same time in either fight. Proper usage after the opener is to use Incarnation as you enter Eclipse, then hit Celestial Alignment as you exit it to go back into the double-eclipse. 

[Prokmi 0]

Thanks everyone! And especially thank you, Kazistrasz, that you have put so much effort into helping him! I've sent him a link on this forum page, so surely he will thank you himself.