I feel I should be doing more DPS

[arcasgear 0]

http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/qJfWRjPc4DY7XvyL#

(Example IJ fight, not with guild obviously, I am the top DPS warlock)

http://eu.battle.net/wow/de/character/defias-brotherhood/Arcanzs/simple Armory

(My trinkets are shit)

I am an iLvl 567 Destruction Warlock and I feel like I am dragging my Guild down because of my low DPS.

 

Please tell me how to improve. (Aside from Immolate uptime, that was a problem with my UI and it's usually ~95%)

Edited August 8, 2014 by arcasgear

[Niix 169]

The first thing I noticed, is that in your opener. You didn't cast Immolate until 12 seconds into the fight. The ideal opener would be as follows.

 

prepot

curse of the elements(if nobody is applying it for you)

immolate

conflag

conflag

incin til you get 2 embers.

chaos bolt

chaos bolt

rotation

 

The idea is to get two Chaos Bolt casts off in your opener, which you did well.

 

First and foremost I want to say that your cooldown usage was abysmal. You only used Blood Fury once, in a 4+ minute fight, you should've gotten 3. Same with your Dark soul, you only got two uses, out of a possible three. Make sure you're tracking this cooldown. It is more beneficial to use it on cooldown instead of waiting for things to proc. Just hit it whenever it's up.

 

The next thing I looked at was how your Chaos Bolt usage correlated with your trinket procs. Which was also not bad. You got 4 Chaos Bolts off in your second proc of Expanded Mind. This isn't that bad, but you could've probably squeezed 5 or 6 out if you were tracking the ICD of your trinket and were prepared for it to proc. Sometimes bad proc streaks occur and sitting at 4 embers in anticipation of a proc is never a good idea. You got 2 in your second proc of Toxic Power, and 3 in the one after that. This is perfect, getting 3 chaos bolts into a 10 second proc on a fight like IJ is no easy task, well done.

 

Another thing I looked at was your CPM (Casts per minute) The rank 1 destruction warlock on this fight, had 52CPM. You only managed to get 41. Try and hit more spells, this will increase your damage a lot. 

 

The last thing that I noticed was that you prepotted a few seconds into your second Expanded Mind proc. Looking over your buffs, if you had waited til the last time it procced, you could've potted then, and lined that up with Dark Soul, and a little bit of Toxic Power, also while under 20% during your execute, this cost you crucial damage.

 

This is all I feel comfortable reviewing as I don't main a lock, and very vaguely know what to look for, so take my overview with a grain of salt. I'm sure Zagam or Locky can elaborate more on what you can improve on but for know, this is just some food for thought.

 

I went ahead and ran your character through simcraft. Highest I got you was 331k. so you are a little under and I'm not entirely sure if the changes I mentioned are enough to give you that much damage. I'm sure it would definitely push you closer to 300k+.

Edited August 11, 2014 by Niix

[Elro 47]

First and foremost I want to say that your cooldown usage was abysmal. You only used Blood Fury once, in a 4+ minute fight, you should've gotten 3. Same with your Dark soul, you only got two uses, out of a possible three. Make sure you're tracking this cooldown. It is more beneficial to use it on cooldown instead of waiting for things to proc. Just hit it whenever it's up.

Definitely track your cds better, but to correct one point, it is NOT better to hit DS right on cd. Line it up with your Expanded Mind proc from PBI.

[Niix 169]

Definitely track your cds better, but to correct one point, it is NOT better to hit DS right on cd. Line it up with your Expanded Mind proc from PBI.

 

Awesome, thanks for the correction. 

[arcasgear 0]

OK, I got myself a tellmewhen setup for CDs. About that casts per minute stat, should I just mash my buttons more? I don't entirely understand how I am supposed to get more casts off, except having higher haste. I'll try doing what you told me and hope that that will bring me closer to doing 300k DPS.

Edited August 11, 2014 by arcasgear

[Orthios 271]

OK, I got myself a tellmewhen setup for CDs. About that casts per minute stat, should I just mash my buttons more? I don't entirely understand how I am supposed to get more casts off, except having higher haste. I'll try doing what you told me and hope that that will bring me closer to doing 300k DPS.

CPM is more important for melee dps and hunters, where most of our abilities are instant/small cast times and anything less means downtime where we're either dead or not pressing our buttons.  For casters just remember your ABC: Always Be Casting.

[Liquidsteel 279]

You should be queuing your spells into each other though.

Also in the opener you should still precast even if you have to apply CoE. Just cast immolate then CoE so both hit at 0 seconds.

[chrisdux 0]

Ultimately, if everything else fails, there's always a set of general dps-increasing rules you might wanna try that are valid for all of the classes. Thanks to Krip you don't even have to read anything, just watch this video ;-)

[Zagam 1,982]

Alright, my turn to critique. 

 

1. Immolate uptime = 84.8%.  Meh, decent, but bring this up.  Doesn't look like you ran away during Siege Mode, so there's really no excuse for sub 95%.

 

2. Multistrike did 3.25% of your damage.  This is why I prefer BBoY over KTT - KTT is only ever going to give its theoretical maximum if you're at your theoretical maximum.  Relatively minor point, but this is one example of why I argue BBoY > KTT.

 

3. Average Chaos Bolt is 1.09M.  This seems a little low, but I'll figure out why later in the analysis. 

 

4. Where is your Doomguard?  It actually shoulda been a Terrorguard, but you casted him 0 times for a total of 0 damage.  I know he's a little bit of a dirtbag, but you missed out on around 2,500,000 damage.  Terrorguard woulda been a 3.3% DPS gain and moved you from 270k DPS to 279k DPS.  One button for a 10k DPS gain - don't miss your Terrorguard ever again.

 

5. You cast Dark Soul at 0:00 in the fight and then not again until 4:20.  This is a critical gameplay issue - you always use your CDs on CD.  Always.  The only exception is when you know for sure that a fight calls for a CD during a certain phase.  This is not the case here.  Missing a Dark Soul probably cost you in the neighboorhood of 10-15k DPS.  Add that to your previous total and we're up to around 290-295k.

 

6. One use of Blood Fury.  Your Orc brethren cry at this note.  Macro it with Dark Soul.  As long as you remember to use Dark Soul, you'll get a bigger Dark Soul than most.  This isn't a trivial proc - it's north of 4,000 spell power.  This is very significant to stack with Dark Soul.  Let's say this cost you around 5-10k since you'd be using it with procs.  Now we're up to 295-305k. 

 

7. http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/qJfWRjPc4DY7XvyL#type=casts&source=8&pins=0%24Separate%24%23244F4B%24auras-gained%240%240.0.0.Any%240.0.0.Any%24true%2492387034.0.0.Warlock%24false%24146046%5E0%24Separate%24%23909049%24auras-gained%240%240.0.0.Any%240.0.0.Any%24true%2492387034.0.0.Warlock%24false%24113858%5E0%24Separate%24%23a04D8A%24auras-gained%240%240.0.0.Any%240.0.0.Any%24true%2492387034.0.0.Warlock%24false%24148906&ability=116858 this graph shows your Chaos Bolt uses with procs.  This is painful to see.  At the 2:15 mark, you cast 4 Chaos Bolts.  You had only Expanded Mind and your 2nd potion up.  Painful to think what coulda been.  Worse to see what it ACTUALLY could have been.  Here are the damage values for each Chaos Bolt in that window...

 

CB #1 - 1,193,798 + 15% from GoSac = 1,372,867.  With Dark Soul, woulda been 1,784,728.

CB #2 - 1,191,127 + 15% from GoSac = 1,369,796.  With Dark Soul, woulda been 1,780,735.

CB #3 - 1,142,872 + 15% from GoSac = 1,314,303.  With Dark Soul, woulda been 1,707,594.

CB #4 - 1,140,632 + 15% from GoSac = 1,311,727.  With Dark Soul, woulda been 1,705,245.

 

By not using Dark Soul, you cost yourself 1,609,609 damage at a bare minumum.  This is about 2.5% of your DPS, so here's another 7k DPS I found lying around because of one missed button click.

 

You don't have your 4pc yet, so you don't have another proc to worry about yet.  When you get it, you'll need to pay attention to lots of short 5 second windows in order to get 15% more damage from Chaos Bolt or 15% more crit chance with Immolate.  Ignoring it will have you falling even further behind other Destruction Warlocks of similar item levels.  You have lots to work on.  Focus first on using CDs religiously on cooldown.  Some believe you should hold Dark Soul until PBI procs - I'm not a big believer in this as I've had PBI anti-rickroll me and let me down.  Use Dark Soul always on CD.  Use your Doom/Terrorguard.  Keep Immolate up.  Literally if you had pressed Dark Soul and your Terrorguard, you'd be damn close to 300k.  Keep Immolate up and you're certainly over it.

[arcasgear 0]

Thanks for the advice! I'll try to use my DS/BF/DG on CD and get a higher uptime on immolate. Got a couple new questions though: If I get a KTT proc and PBoI/DS is comming of CD very soon, should I conserve my embers or spend them?

And another thing that I always wanted to know: I have heroic legs/helmet/pants and the only way to get my 4 piece is with normal gear. Should I go for the four set and replace my heroic legs/helmet/pants with normal set pieces?

And about BBoY: That shit never drops and I am stuck with a flex PBoI and LFR KTT. RNG sucks, I guess. Even use all my bonus rolls on trinkets (gold, obv.) and on my last KK Dark Shamans kill, we got a heroic cloak :(

(Sorry for my English btw, not my first language)

Edited August 11, 2014 by arcasgear

[Zagam 1,982]

How many pieces are you replacing for your 4pc?  4pc is crucial, as long as you know how to apply it.  Rule of Thumb is to never drop more than one tier.  Since you're dropping from heroic to normal, it'd be fine.  Just upgrade normal to 569 and they become almost as good as heroic tier was before the 4/4 upgrade 'nerf.' 

 

You use Chaos Bolt with any major proc.  Stacking them is great, but PBI is relatively random with a bit of predictability while Dark Soul is within your control.  If KTT procs and Dark Soul is coming soon, great - but KTT's proc is only 10 seconds, so you don't have a lot of flexibility.

[Liquidsteel 279]

Dropping 3 items from heroic to normal might not be worth it. Your best answer is to sim yourself in Simcraft; the Destruction APL is pretty decent in the grand scheme of things.

 

Regarding using embers on procs, it depends how long is left before PBI and DS are ready. If it's more than 20 seconds I'll hapilly burn 2 embers, if it's only 10 then I'll burn one.

[Zagam 1,982]

I don't think the API pulls in utilizing the 4pc proc for Immolate or Chaos Bolt when other factors aren't in play such as PBI or Dark Soul being more than 20 seconds away.  I could be wrong - I think the 4pc Destruction bonus might as well read "increases Chaos Bolt damage by 15% as long as you do it right" which is very significant. 

[Liquidsteel 279]

Truth be told I haven't checked it in a while, though the sims are fairly accurate. Especially when compared to Affliction's hash of an APL (not that it would be easy to fix anyway, too many variables).

 

Having said that, I've always said to people that if the difference between 4pc and higher ilvl off pieces is close, they should go with the 4pc anyway because it's better to learn to manage the 4pc sooner rather than later. Your comment about it not being used effectively for Chaos Bolt just further reinforces this ideal in my mind.

[Niix 169]

I'm not a big believer in this as I've had PBI anti-rickroll me and let me down.  Use Dark Soul always on CD.  

 

This is what I was getting at in my post, you cant count on that trinket to proc. It's too inconsistent. I use it on CD and hope that  PBI procs soon after.

 

It is nice to see that I have a decent grasp on Destruction warlocks. Glad that some more skilled warlocks could come in and correct a few points I made with some more depth. @zagam

Edited August 12, 2014 by Niix