Struggling as dps on single target pve (fury or arms)?

[Alex 0]

Hello guys
I am new here and I wanted to ask what is the best spec for pve dps for warrior. I am strugling to do dmg on sigle target in heroics and cm dungeons as fury warr with 636 ilvl, when multiple mobs like 3+ Im doing great, I go with ravager and bladestorm and within seconds I go to the top on the dmg metter, but after that while these 2 are on cd I feel so useless, I am trying to do some aoe with whritwind, raging blow and dragon roar but its not going well, but that is not the real problem at all, it gets even worse when boss fight is coming, when I need to attack a signle target for a longer time, then Im not even in the top 3 dpsers on the current dmg metter. Once in cm, my dmg sucked so bad because mobs are killed 1 by 1, you know cc and stuff. I even think that I will do more dmg on sigle target as tank (most of the time as tank I am first at dps) isnt that weird to be first at dps as tank but not in the top 3 as dps in the same instance multiple times? same ilvl btw. I have read all the talents, rotations, glyphs and addons here on icy veins and Ive managed to improve my tanking skills but still nothing with the dps I am considering changing to arms spec, but I am afraid I will have the same problem. Am I doing something wrong or should try change to arms? Sorry for my bad english, its like my third language

 

Mortall - lvl 100 Warrior on Kazzak

Edited December 2, 2014 by Alex

[Sajakain 104]

Right now Fury is at the bottom of all warrior DPS specs. It's unfortunate but true. Gladiator stance is at the top followed by Arms, SMF, and then TG bottoming out the list.

 

I didn't delve too deep into your rotation practices from what you've posted but I figured, in the least, I'd inform you of where you stand among the other specs.

 

I would definitely consider Gladiator Stance considering you're already used to the spec as a whole. While I prefer my Arms Spec, if the numbers stay as they are I will end up going Glad Stance in Mythic progression for single target fights. It's just the nature of the beast right now.

 

Best of luck.

[Fari 0]

First of all you should play SMF. At actual encounters i do between 13k to 20k dps its depends on enemy mobility. Fury is not bad but as Sajakain said Glad is a liitle better, but i can't see that much improvement becouse in fury gear im doing like 21k - 22k on single target witch is 10% better than fury but i guess with tank gear(bonus armory) it will be much more improvement. And btw if you have low dps on single target its becouse you chose wrong talents. For single target you shall change:

Dragon Roar -> Storm Bold

Bladestorm -> Bloodbath

 

GL in testing.

[ragebarr 153]

The difference between Storm Bolt and Dragon Roar is laughable. It's not what's going to make or break your damage. Want it or not, Warriors are not in a good spot right now. In the current tier, Fury (both SMF and TG) is at the very bottom of ALL DPS specs on single target.

 

It's sad to say, but you're probably better off with Gladiator and/or Arms (If you can stand the joke Blizzard calls a "rotation" for it) depending on the situation, though either way, none of the warrior specs are doing great on single target right now.

 

I don't want to sound too pessimistic, even though I know I do, since (hopefully) balance changes will come out soon with raids starting tonight, and either way great players will always do good no matter what spec they play.

[buMf00d 9]

Had my first raid yesterday and my single target DPS is just very very very very bad. I have no idea what I'm doing wrong either (arms). I use Colossus Smash whenever I can, spam Mortal strike and Execute when it procs and just use all my cooldowns all the time. One thing I wasn't doing was pre-potting, does this really make such a big difference? To give you an example, on Kargath or Butcher I was doing 12k-14k DPS which was way below par.

[Grakzul 1]

Hi guys,

what do you think about the DPS of the Prot warriors, during single target events, such as The Butcher?

 

We killed him yesterday and my DPS was very low, around 9k. The other tank, a Death Knight with roughly the same level of gear (around 635), was much higher, something like 12 or 13k.

Here is the log of the kill (my toon is Grakzul and the other tank is Slogor) http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/nwv7knceu6ja2kez/analyze/dd/source/?s=2224&e=2469

 

I know I could do slightly better :

- I used the wrong talents (kept Bladestorm instead of Bloodbath), 

- I was playing safely, not throwing too much Heroic Strikes so that I could spare my Rage and cast SB on cooldown.

 

So maybe it can explain this lack of DPS, but I don't think that throwing more HS and using Storm Bolt or BloodBath would have brought me beyond 10K!

 

I definitely feel that something is wrong because I had to struggle to keep the agro during the tanking phase.

 

Any ideas?

[Estarriol 167]

Hey, I'll take a look through your logs when I get back from class. I'm heading out soon.

[Estarriol 167]

I haven't used World of Logs in probably close to a year, so this will be a bit rough. I would actualy highly recommend switching to warcraft logs for your combat logging needs. It provides quite a bit more information.

 

I don't have much of a baseline idea of typical play as of yet, so I'm going to use my own logs from the other night as a comparison. Here's the link to mine: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/NkV4mZ8BqM3HvtKF#fight=5&type=damage-done&source=7

 

Looking at DPS, you did 8k to the 15k I did on the same fight. Your fight lasted 4:05 and mine lasted 3:16.

 

Looking at the "Buffs Cast" tab, I'm not seeing Unyielding Strikes or Sudden Death, were you using Heavy Repercussions? If so, I recommend switching that out for one of the other two talents. I see you have a 29.3% uptime on Shield Block, which isn't helping. I'd recommend pulling that up. You can get around a 50% uptime on Shield Block and you'll definitely want it on a fight like Butcher since you're always taking blockable damage - even when you're not actively tanking. For comparison, my uptime is listed as 48.81%. Due to the weakness of Shield Barrier, you'll always want to prioritize your block over your barrier as long as you are taking blockable damage. Looking at the "Healing By Spell" tab, I'm seeing only 1 Shield Barrier. You could stand to have a few more of those.

 

Going to your "Damage by Spell" tab, I see that you have 40 Shield Slams compared to my 33 Shield Slams. This difference can be accounted for by the time difference between our fights. You had enough time for 8 more Shield Slams (roughly) than I had, so we're right in line with our Shield Slam uses.

 

Looking at the next line, I'm seeing you had 51 Devastates where I had 57 in significantly less time. You had 24 Revenge uses to my 23. I may have had better procs, but I suspect you missed out on some opportunities to use Revenge. With you fight length, you had about 33 more GCDs than I did, but it seems like you let a significant number of them go. In total, I had 33 Shield Slams, 57 Devastates, 12 Executes, 4 Dragon Roars, 23 Revenges, and 6 Heroic Throws (one to pull and the rest during the knockback), which total up to 123 GCDs used out of a possible 130. You had 40 Shield Slams, 51 Devastates, 24 Revenges, 1 Impending Victory, 1 Execute, and 1 Bladestorm (4 GCDs), for a total of 121 GCDs out of a possible 163.

 

Looking at your Heroic Strikes, you had 13 uses with 3 Ultimatum procs. I had 12 uses, with 5 Ultimatum procs. The proc difference is partially luck, so it's really only for calculating rage waste.

 

Speaking of rage waste, it's time to calculate that. Warcraftlogs does that automatically, so you can see in the "Resources" tab that I had no rage wasted on this fight. To get yours, I will have to calculate it by looking at how much rage you spent on Execute, Heroic Strike, Impending Victory, Shield Block, and Shield Barrier. In order, you used 30+300+10+600+60=1000 rage total used. From world of logs, I can see that you generated 840 rage from Shield Slam, 420 from Revenge, 280 from Enrage procs, and 35 from Charge, for a total of 1575. Thus, you wasted 575 points of rage over the course of the fight. In other words, 36.5% of your total rage was not used for either defense or damage.

 

Conclusions:

 

Your poor damage output stems from three places: talent choices, rage waste, and lack of use of GCDs.

 

Thankfully, these are all pretty easy to fix. You know that you forgot to switch out Bladestorm, so that's no big deal. Make sure you're using Dragon Roar for single target and switch out Heavy Repercussions for Unyielding Strikes or Sudden Death. (However, if you get to the point where you're getting hit too hard to spend a small amount of rage on US or spare the GCD for SD, Heavy Repercussions would be a good choice. It's just less damage than your other options.)

 

For your GCDs, make sure you Charge back in after he knocks you back and make sure that if you can't use Revenge, Shield Slam, a procced Execute from Sudden Death, or Dragon Roar, that you're using Devastate on every GCD.

 

For your rage use, make sure you never cap your rage. Making sure you use every point of rage you have is the cornerstone of warrior tanking. Keep your Shield Block up as much as possible, but try to time it so that you have it up for Tenderizer. Don't hold onto the charge for more than a couple of GCDs, though. If you are about to cap your rage, use Heroic Strike! It's perfectly legitimate to use Heroic Strike to prevent yourself from capping your rage as long as you have Shield Block on CD and you either have a Shield Barrier up or the damage you are taking is manageable without it.

 

All in all, a few changes to the way you're doing things will give you a huge boost. Let me know if you'd like any further help, I'm always happy to.

[Grakzul 1]

Estarriol,

thank you so much for your help.

 

To begin with, I'll definitely give a try to Warcraft logs. I've been using WoL for, what, 7 years (since TBC actually) and I never tried other tools, mostly because of my lazyness and because I feel comfortable with WoL, too. By the way, the Resources tab is awesome for the rage management. Is there a way to quickly have a look at the overall rage spent, too? Did not find.

 

I was indeed using Heavy Repercussion. I've started to play with Unyielding Strikes in Gladiator Stance, and I have to admit that this talent is extremely enjoyable. At first I did not want to use it because damage output was close to HR, but I feel it more fun to play. So I'll definitely switch to it in Defensive Stance.

 

My SB uptime is low, yes, I already noticed that yesterday. I know why: I did not set up my Power Auras addon correctly and played without it during the raid. It helps me a lot to track SB uptime. The same goes for Rage management. I think I can improve that very efficiently and quickly, just by setting up Power Auras again, so that's not a big deal.

 

Now about the GCD management. Thanks for pointing that out, because I had no idea of that when examining my logs. To be honest I am not surprised at the results, because during the offtank phase I felt that I did not get healed enough and I was asking for more heals on Mumble, which is certainly why I was distracted and let some GCD pass. The same goes for the knockbacks, I didn't use any Throws. For sure I can improve my damage output this way.

 

I see that you used more Devastate. I think I'm doing wrong with them, so I will try to use this ability more regularly. there is an issue in my rotation, because Devastate is to be used when SS / rev are off cooldown, and you pointed out that my revenge was not cast enough.Seems not logical, I have to think again about my rotation and read again the Icy veins guides!

 

I am a bit surprised seeing I wasted so much Rage. Again, I think it will be easier with a proper Power Aura showing me my Rage points. A better management of SB/SBar and more Heroic Strikes/Devastates should help me. As for SBar, I should have used it more frequently, considering the Butcher is dealing bleed damage.

 

Well, I think I need some more practice then. Thank you again for your analysis!

Edited December 5, 2014 by Grakzul

[Estarriol 167]

 

Is there a way to quickly have a look at the overall rage spent, too? Did not find.

 

Yes, if you look at the Resources tab, you'll see three columns: Raw Gain, Wasted, and Gain. Raw Gain is what you actually generated, Wasted is how much of your Raw Gain you didn't use, and Gain is what you actually spent.

 

The damage output of US, HR, and SD are all pretty close, but US and SD tend to pull ahead a bit. US is especially nice in fights where you will be not actively taking damage, so you can use extra rage and dump it into US-buffed HS.

 

The case may be that I procced more Revenges than you did in that fight, leading to me having more (compared to the length of the fight). However, make sure you're using every Revenge that you can. Shield Slam is your highest priority, but Revenge is only slightly behind. Other than that, you should be using Devastate in every GCD that isn't used on something higher priority. Devastate is a filler, but that doesn't make it unimportant. It still can Enrage you and give you 10 rage.

 

Rage waste is definitely something that can creep up on you. I use protwarbar to track my current rage and I have the bar change colors at certain thresholds. Specifically, 30 rage (enough to Heroic Strike/Execute), 60 (enough for SBar/SBlk), 80 (risk of capping rage), and 90 (any rage gain will cause waste).

[Grakzul 1]

Again, a big thank you for those tips. I've tried to improve my rotation and I managed to improve my DPS as well as my protection in regards to SB uptime. Well, that's what I guess because we had no logs for this raid. But according to Skada I was beyond 10-11k when fighting against Ko'ragh, a boss with many movements. So this must be an improvement.

 

I'll check for ProtRageBar asap, I've tried to make a Power Aura aura for my Rage but couldn't find a way to.

[Estarriol 167]

Glad to hear it helped!