New Balance Druid Looking for Help

[Wumbology 0]

Greetings all,

 

I recently made the switch to Balance, and I'm finding my DPS really lacking. WrathCalcs has me at ~160k, which seems staggeringly low for my gear level. I'm getting a pretty solid handle on the playstyle after a couple hours on the dummies, but I haven't seen much improvement. 

 

I've included a log of a N SC kill I did earlier this week. I know, it's just one log. If need be I can pop into a Flex and record some more. This is just all I have for my druid at the moment. 

 

http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/9qjHD1YkCmZphA6Q

 

I've also included a link to my armory. My trinkets are my weakest pieces by a wide, wide, margin. I'm hoping they don't have that much of an influence.

 

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/malganis/Paparazzi/simple

 

If I'm doing anything wrong, please tell me. Thanks in advance for any helpful responses. 

 

 

[Kazistrasz 216]

Hi! Glad to have a new laser chicken around!

 

Trinkets are definitely going to hurt you. At the absolute least, I'd recommend working on the 50k timeless coins for the 535 Yulon's. It's not a great trinket, by any means, but it's a far cry better than what you've got to work with. 

 

Also, if you switch in some expertise gems, you can jump to the 10289 haste breakpoint while only dropping off about 900 crit. I'd go ahead and make the switch. Things will start feeling a lot nicer for you.

 

You need a real weapon enchant. We're on the same server. Sha crystals on Mal'Ganis are down to 75-85g depending on the day. There's no reason to still be using Windsong.

 

As far as your log goes, I'm basically going to go down the list and look at everything I wrote out here.

 

94.90% uptime on your DoTs - this is good, but there's room or improvement. You're down to 93.70% and 93.49% on the boss himself. You want to get this up to 98-99% as much as possible.

 

Starfire being your top damage source by so much concerns me. You only saw 45 Shooting Stars, procs, which is going to come from having low gear. But, you also only got 31 Starsurges out. Assuming at least one of them is hard-casted at the start, you missed a third of your Shooting Stars procs. This needs some work. Missing some is okay and happens. Missing that many is worrisome.

 

You missed using your trinket twice three times in that fight. Bad trinket is bad, but it's even worse when you're not using it. You should see it every minute and be using it every minute. You used it twice out of five possible times.

 

You're missing a Starfall. One at start + 6 Lunar Eclipses + 2 Celestial Alignments = 9; remember to use it on pre-pull.

 

I'd like to see better than 73% uptime on Nature's Grace for a single-target fight, but it seems reasonable given your lack of Shooting Stars procs and haste. It'll be easier to push higher when you have a little bit more gear and switch haste caps.

[Wumbology 0]

Thanks for the timely response!

 

DoT uptimes is something I'm working hard to improve. I've set up some WeakAuras to help me in that respect.

 

As for my trinkets, I had them all macro'd into Incarnation. Turns out they and my Synapse Springs share a 10s CD. I've bound them individually now.

 

I'll work on reforging to the 10k cap. I was unsure as to whether or not that would be beneficial at my gear level. Everything I've found regarding it (which really wasn't much) suggested around 550.

 

I've been delaying my Shooting Stars procs until I couldn't get an Eclipsed nuke off. Obviously I shouldn't be doing that. 

 

If anyone else has any other pointers, I'm open to criticism!

[Kazistrasz 216]

I love engineering, but it is a little :( using it with on-use trinkets.

 

It's not about a flat ilvl for when you change haste caps. It's about the gear you have being able to support that much haste without giving up too much crit. In my case, I went until 565 before I could actually get down to the haste cap because most of my gear was recycled resto gear. When I was at 550, I had 3% extra spirit when I was fully reforged out of it, and I even had a crit/stam gem in one socket to keep the socket bonus even though the hit would be wasted. I was missing about 1200 secondary stats that should be on my gear, not to mention the gains you can get from using expertise over int for orange gems. In your case, you'll barely lose any crit at all, it'll mostly come from your mastery and extra stats gained by switching in some crit/exp gems.

 

Don't save Shooting Stars procs. Starsurge is your top priority. If you don't use it immediately, you run the risk of getting another proc while it's already active, wasting an entire Starsurge you could have used. It's our highest DPET ability in our rotation (excepting Starfall, which I sort of consider a cooldown).

[Wumbology 0]

One last question: when is it ideal to refresh dots? I do not have a Legendary meta yet, so currently I refresh them before the end of each eclipse and lust/trinket procs. I feel like I may be doing it to too much.

[Kazistrasz 216]

Whenever they're running out. They don't do THAT much damage to really worry about snapshotting for damage, it's more about getting more Starsurge Procs.

[Wumbology 0]

Here are some more recent logs. I still feel SUPER underwhelmed by my damage (not even 200k on Sha @ 555?). If some kind soul wouldn't mind taking a look at them, I would again be very grateful.

 

http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/3Y7qAFXt2mMg8zQT#fight=1&type=damage-done&source=6

 

Note: I finally replaced my 496 trinket with a 553 Toxic Totem. Still no sign of the Amp trinket.

Edited June 5, 2014 by Wumbology

[Pinkis 12]

Well, first of all your stats should be optimized. You lack a couple % of haste till cap, and I bet you could afford to put Jade spirind instead of Windsong on your staff... Also you need to work on legendary Q line, as meta gem will give you a decent dps increase, not to talk about legendary cloak.

Looking at your juggernaut log you should work to get better nature's grace uptime, as you did quite good at the start but then after you casted Tranq you had ~20 sec window without nature's grace - that is way too much... Also as I'm not very good with logs I cant tell you why, but you have a huge dps drop after your opener. Well, everyone does, but yours actually goes up after a while, what looks weird to me. Dps drop usualy means movement, so if you need to move - use ss proc, if you don't have one - recast your dot's or spam one - doing some damage is better than doing none.

[Wumbology 0]

Is the haste cap not 10289? I have 10360 haste currently.

I'm in the process of finishing up Secrets for the legendary... Just having some bad RNG.

I also notice that my DPS dips extremely hard after my cooldowns, which I'm unsure about. I can't tell if it's me or balance in general. When I look at other Druid's logs I don't see the same pattern.

With regards to storing SS procs, I've always been told to spend them ASAP. How long would you recommend banking them to aid with movement?

[Kazistrasz 216]

Reforging is fine; there's nothing wrong there. Fixing and adjusting secondary stats are at moast 10% of where you can improve your DPS. The other 90% are you and how you play your toon, so always focus there. Legendary quests take a while, so you just have to do that as you can. The meta is a bigger deal than the cloak, IMO.

 

All boomkins open huge and drop off after. It's how we work. On our Siegecrafter pull this week, I was on top in the opener, then dropped down to sadville later (first time doing the fight as a laser chicken). On one of our Shamans pulls I even opened above our shaman (but I think he screwed up somewhere in there IIRC). Open big, drop off later. The unfortunate truth of current boomkin is we can't react and burst with trinket procs with any amount of reliability, so we're basically hum-drum between CDs.

 

As for your logs...

 

Looking at Jug first.

 

97% and 93% uptimes on DoTs. 97% is good, 93% could be a little better.

 

Nature's Grace uptime at 82%. This is good. It could be a little bit better for single target, but it's not critically low to the point that you're wasting time not cycling.

 

80 Shooting Stars procs but 58 Starsurges. It'd be good to get some more of those, but you can't always help it. Just try to work on reacting quickly to hitting it. I use Weak Auras with an audio alert (the sonar blip) whenever SS procs. I'd recommend doing similar if you're not already and training yourself to mash your Starsurge button when you hear the sound.

 

CD usage looks good, and your opener looks fine if you're spiking that big.

 

A lot of your improvement will come with the meta gem, cloak, a PBI, and the same general upgrading that'll come from having more crit on your gear. Keep doing what you're doing and fine tuning the small things. Make sure you can clearly see your Nature's Grace duration and really start pushing yourself through to the next Eclipse if you're starting to run out.

[Wumbology 0]

Thanks for (yet another) detailed reply!

The meta seems like a huge deal given its uptime coefficient for Balance. I only need one more secret, so I should have it next week!

With regards to maximising shooting stars, would you recommend cancelling my current cast to Starsurge? Possibly via a /stopcasting macro? If i'm not mistaken, better SS usage=improved NG uptime. Kind of a two-birds-one-stone thing

[Dolson 19]

Thanks for (yet another) detailed reply!

The meta seems like a huge deal given its uptime coefficient for Balance. I only need one more secret, so I should have it next week!

With regards to maximising shooting stars, would you recommend cancelling my current cast to Starsurge? Possibly via a /stopcasting macro? If i'm not mistaken, better SS usage=improved NG uptime. Kind of a two-birds-one-stone thing

 

Do not cancel. Try to react to/use the proc as soon as possible.

[Kazistrasz 216]

It's tricky to do, and most of the time it's not worth it, but it's something you can try if you want. We don't recommend it for anyone that's learning the spec, but since you seem to generally have it down you can try it.

 

If you're going to, don't use that macro. when you need to hard cast it, it'll interfere with spell queuing and you'll cancel a cast right at the end and start casting that rather than following one after the other. If you're going to stop your cast, just tap your strafe or keybind stopcasting to something convenient (mine's in the middle of my mouse).

 

Only do it if you can quickly catch it at the beginning of a cast. If you're halfway through your Starfire, don't do it. If you can get it within the first couple tenths-of-a-second you can try it.

 

Right now, your top priorities should be getting that last secret, getting a PBI, and getting yourself a 569 weapon instead of that flex staff. PBI is OP as can be - makes our many, many crits hit harder, makes our haste count for more so we can reforge more into crit, and does the same for our mastery so our eclipses (and opener/CDs) are that much stronger.

[Pinkis 12]

Wumbology, when I mentioned SS procs and movement I did not have in mind saving procs. Saving procs is never worth it afaik. Basically what i've learnt as soon as I've started playing boomkin is that our damage output while moving is a ton of crap. Only thing we can do is try to make that crap do some damage. So there are generally 3 rules for dps while moving:

1. Use SS procs

2. Use starfall if you got into lunar

3. mash your dots. 

Thanks to that stacking buff our initial dot damage gets buffed and we can do at least some dps.

Maybe this is not correct or up to date, but that's what I usually do if I'm forced to move for more than gcd. If i'm wrong - correct me please :)

 

Also there's a thing I'd like to ask you guys. Currently I've got garrosh normal trinket +2. Yesterday I've got (finally..) normal trinket from shamans. As valor got "nerfed" or it's value for long term usage increased, i'm not planing to waste my valor on upgrading normal trinket. The question would be - which is better? Garrosh or Shamans? I know that shamans trinket is BiS, but I do not have a clear idea why. 

Also switching trinkets means I'd lose quite huge amount of haste, but that is not a problem since my gear is good enough to get that haste from other items. 

[Kazistrasz 216]

The value of BBoY is in snapshotting that 9 or 10 stack. For us warlocks, we can throw up two-minute long DoTs at that super int level or get two or three Chaos Bolts off at 6-10 stacks. As boomkins, we don't have that control over our damage, and our DoTs are weak enough that we care more about the frequency of tick than the damage per tick. The static haste and mastery are nice, but not that great.

 

Consider just a 561 KTT - the passive is about a flat 5% increase to your DPS. Because Boomkin is a lot of smaller hits, there's less swing in how much that Multistrike will provide us. It's really nice. Also, having that constant int buff, while weaker, makes all of our spells in there matter. Imagine getting SS procs 1 and 3 seconds in, but then not getting another while the proc is up. For BBoY, that'd be awful. For KTT, it'd be okay.

 

Personally, I didn't like the BBoY as much when I was using my heroic one. If yours is only double-upgraded to 561, I'd use KTT (and consider upgrading it even though there's a chance you'll get one once you guys start killing Shamans). If your BBoY is 4/4 upgraded, I'd try both and see what you think. BBoY takes a little bit more focus and skill to use well, so KTT is probably better while you're still dealing with progression.

[Wumbology 0]

I too just picked up a BBoY (before my mage, somehow). It's a real pain in my ass, tbh. Unless CA is up it's tricky to optimally refresh dots. What level of PBoI would be considered superior? Should I be working on getting the LFR version? WrathCalcs doesn't seem to know.

Additionally, how do y'all decide whether to open Lunar/Solar? With my 2 RPPM trinkets, solar seems superior 90% of the time. Is this actually the case?