Balance DPS in need of major help

[Shaiana 0]

Hi all. My first time posting. I am in need of some help with my balance druid. I am in 653 gear and averaging between 16-18k dps on many fights. I am obviously doing something very wrong. Any advice or tips would be greatly appreciated.

 

Armory:  http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/runetotem/Shaiana/advanced

 

Logs: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/character/4183295/latest

 

 

I have been going back and forth between Balance of Power/Incarnation and Euphoria/Soul of the Forest.

 

My basic opener is as follows

 

2 secs pre pull - Incarnation

1 sec pre pull - intellect potion

pull -  Macro CA and Moonfire

starsurge

starfire

starfire

starsurge

starfire

starfire

Moonfire (just before CA falls off)

 

I don't think the issue is with my opener, but I could be wrong. I think my issues are later in the fight.

 

Thanks for any help you can provide.

 

 

[Bradykin 16]

From a cursory glance over the log, here's what i've noticed:

 

Step A of checking a boomkin is dot uptime. Your dot uptime is very low. With the Euphoria talent, you need to reapply Sunfire every cycle, and moonfire every other cycle. Don't forget to do so. 

 

The second thing you check is Starsurge/Starfall usage, namely, if any stacks were wasted. You start with 3 charged, and regain one every 30 seconds, then you get one from each Shooting Stars proc. That means for this Kargath fight, you had:

 

3+12+19=34 Starsurge/Starfall uses available if you were making sure you didn't cap out. You used 18 Starsurges and 9 Starfalls, equaling 27/34 charges used. You want to coast at having 1 charge, so you don't cap out if Shooting Stars procs, and want to be very careful not to waste charges, they are a big part of your damage.

 

Boomkin cooldowns are on a 3 minute cooldown, meaning that in a 6:21 fight you could have used them 3 times. You only used them twice, wasting a whole cooldown cycle.

 

Use Incarnation before CA, so you don't waste a GCD in CA. I'm aware that's what you said you did, but according to the log that's not what you actually did.

 

Someone who is better with warcraftlogs could tell you more, but this is what I saw. There, no offense, has to be more things that went wrong, because 20k dps on kargath when you are on stands duty with starfall is really, really low.

[Racter 0]

I may not be the most qualified to analyze your logs but I was doing nearly 10k more DPS than that on all fights at that item level so I will try and offer some advice.

 

Firstly, your weapon is abysmal. You can't really help that, but that makes a very significant difference in terms of DPS. I picked up several thousand DPS from that alone (630 with bleed enchant to H Spire of Tectus with mastery enchant), but that doesn't mean there isn't room to improve otherwise.

 

I have personally found Incarnation to give the best results on all fights, and run Euphoria on all fights except Twins and Tectus, where I switch to Stellar Flare. Even using the flamethrower on Brackenspore I have found double dotting all the adds to be superior to StF or BoP, even more so now that I get them low solo and our lock havoc cleaves off of them to finish them off. BoP in particular seems very weak to me on Twins as there is a lot of movement (meaning a lot of dot spamming). I also recommend running Feline Swiftness for everything but Margok and Koragh (if you're soaking), at least on normal/heroic difficulties.

 

I could only find a log for Twins from you. From that log:

 

-Only used 1 pot.

 

-Your dot uptime needs some work, 99%+ is achieveable and should be your goal.

 

-Your casts of Wrath greatly outnumber your Starfires, suggesting (at least to me) you're making a rotational mistake. I understand throwing out a few Wraths in Lunar during Quake because it can be very difficult to finish a Starfire cast while dodging the flames, but that ratio should be much closer. If you are having trouble tracking your Eclipse state, an addon like Cyous/Lappee's Eclipse bar for weak auras will improve your play substantially. I tweaked a few things with it but in general it allowed me to improve my raid awareness and DPS substantially.

 

-Only used Barkskin once. Part of being a good DPS is taking as little damage as possible, Barkskin is up for every Enfeebling if you don't goof on the fire, make sure you use it!

 

-I shoot for 100% Starfall uptime on this fight and dump my spare charges on Lunar Empowerments on this fight. This may/may not be correct but this yielded the best results for me personally.

 

Also, your opener should be Inc/Pot @ 3, Starfire, CA/MF SS SFx2 SS SFx2, though that's certainly not causing the huge disparity.

[Shaiana 0]

Thanks for the input...

 

I was looking at all my logs and didn't notice how low my uptime on my dots was for this fight.

 

As for the stands, I was asked not to use starfall as it was pulling more than the tanks could handle. As such I used the glyph and dotted a few things before using SF. Any tips on how to handle this?

 

The other things are noted as well. I am currently trying to rework my UI so I can have a better grasp on my CDs and procs. I haven't used many in the past so this will be a new experience.

 

Thanks again!!

[Bradykin 16]

Thanks for the input...

 

I was looking at all my logs and didn't notice how low my uptime on my dots was for this fight.

 

As for the stands, I was asked not to use starfall as it was pulling more than the tanks could handle. As such I used the glyph and dotted a few things before using SF. Any tips on how to handle this?

 

The other things are noted as well. I am currently trying to rework my UI so I can have a better grasp on my CDs and procs. I haven't used many in the past so this will be a new experience.

 

Thanks again!!

 

Ohhhh....you were using the starfall glyph. That makes the numbers make a lot more sense.

 

To be honest, if they don't want you to pull with starfall, they should not be sending a boomkin up into the stands. You could try to use starfall just to hit what was in the nearby radius and not grab to the sides, but if that is still too much, then tell them to send up another dps who does their AoE in close quarters. You shouldn't have to glyph starfall (gimping your own aoe) to try and fill the role when other classes could do it better (since you aren't allowed to starfall properly). With a glance at your raid comp, I would recommend the Frost DK or Ret Paladin go up instead of you if you aren't allowed to starfall properly.

Edited January 9, 2015 by Bradykin

[Racter 0]

You can wait a moment after getting sent up before you start Starfalling. I have to wait until the mobs have been AOE gripped, then I vortex that spot and Starfall with no glyph. Alternatively, stay on the ground.