More Damage

[Raptace]

I can't figure it out for the life of me, I'm studying WWS more and more. I'm just not happy with my damage, and I can't figure out how to up my dps. I focus as hard as I can, watching my dots, etc.
Every mob, this is my rotation:
Curse Of Elements-Phewl throws up shadow, so thats why I put up that.
Immolate x1
Shadow Bolt x4
reapply Immolate
Shadow Bolt x4 again, over and over I do that. I rank myself against Phewl, he out gears me with this spec, his hit and crit are quite a bit higher than mine, there is not much I can do to fix that right now, the gear will come with time. He has about 4% more crit and about 4% more hit, I think. I seem to do really well against trash mobs, I'm right up there about 3rd or 4th in dmg most weeks on trash, sometimes even higher than that. But for some reason, on boss fights, I fall off the map of where my dps should be, and I can't figure it out for the life of me. I go from being like 3rd or 4th, to about 8th or so... what am I doing wrong here? I thought maybe I would put up corruption too during boss fights, but after looking at today's stats, that didn't help either. Anyone have any ideas for me? I mean boss fights are where the dmg matters, and I'm not doing something right, but I can't tell what... help me. Someone that can crunch numbers or something here, I'm absolutley terrible with math, that other thread you guys put up with all that math on dps, I couldn't understand almost any of it, I just can't process math, its always been a fault of mine. Again, help, any suggestions would be awesome.

[Wizzer]

well i doubt i can help but maybe this will show how much damage is being done with different spells and how much is being resisted. Just clear it before the boss fight.
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/details/4409/

[Etrigana]

All I can comment on is what WWS shows. And it shows that you cast ~30-50% less shadowbolts and 2X as many immolates per fight as Phewl. Im not sure what Phewl does to get these numbers, but I think he should be the one to ask.

-Etri

[benseac]

I go through the same agonizing whenever I look at the WWS reports. One thing I think I'm going to do is take a hit in the +dmg department and get my +hit back up. I noticed that on shadowbolts, I was missing on roughly 4.5% of the time, compared to 1% and lower, by Phewl and others. Having high +dmg isn't good if it misses and that's where part of my problem is.

I try to keep a decent rotation of corruption, agony and immolate up but I'm wondering if I'd be better off doing an initial round of DOTs and just shadowbolt spamming, at least for trash.

[Wenge]

This may not help you much, but for elemental mages, we want 16% hit, 30% crit, 1K damage - in that order. Note that mages often put points on a talent that adds 3% hit, bringing our "hit cap" to 164 / 13%.

You can see how this works: my fireballs hit less than Chasidy or Vand, but I often have more overall damage.

--W

[benseac]

I spent some time looking at numbers, gear, talents, etc. and have some questions. Yes, I'll probably end up sounding noobish but, eh, I can deal with it.

Looking at the report from Tuesday, I saw that-

I cast: 183 non-critting shadowbolts, with an average output of 2385.
27% of my shadowbolts crit
4.1% missed the target.
Phewl cast:
207 non-critting shadowbolts, with an average output of 3068.
25% of his shadowbolts crit
1% missed the target.
Galeme cast:
174 non-critting shadowbolts, with an average output of 2846.
20% of his shadowbolts crit
.4% missed the target.
Raptace cast:
173 non-critting shadowbolts, with an average output of 2837.
35% of his shadowbolts crit
2.5% missed the target.
After I jotted this information down, I looked up everyone in the armory to check +dmg, +hit, +crit, etc. to see what I can do to get my lower (by a lot) damage up. What I saw confuses me.

When it comes to shadow damage, I have the second highest base +shadow damage at 1007, with Galeme having the most at +1141. My +hit is the third highest at 8.56% but isn't that much lower than Raptace's, which is at 9.67%. My +crit is the third highest at 19.86%. So, some of those stats are low but they're not exceptionally lower than my fellow warlocks.

Even with a good amount of +shadow damage, I'm nearly 500 below the third highest average shadowbolt hit of the night. Regarding consumables, how often is everyone using them? I strive to use wizard oil the entire raid time but only use elixirs and food for boss fights. I'm not sure if this is a reason why my damage is so much lower than the rest of the gang.

Looking at talents, I see that Phewl, Galeme and Raptace all have demonic aegis, which, if I'm reading it correctly, would give them +30 spell damage. Also, Phewl and Raptace have demonic sacrifice, which gives them an extra +15 shadow damage.

Still, that doesn't account for the rest of the SB damage discrepancy, which has me at a loss as to what I'm doing wrong. Any of my fellow warlocks have any ideas or suggestions?

[Mithwen]

Have you looked at warlock dps spreadsheets? I just got one for moonkin (yes, lol) and shadow priests (which I had) and they both gave me some really good ideas on how to switch up my spell rotation for max dps. The moonkin one was pretty cool cause it had all sorts of gear to select and then offered a bunch of spell rotations and picked the optimal. I guess you need that for classes that are more dependent on crits. The shadow priest sheet is more bare bones, but that's cause shadow priesting is pretty basic 'renew your dots, MB and SW:D when you can'. The shadow priest sheet says that I should be able to exceed 1k dps (which I haven't done yet. durrr) ... but I also think that's to oom so hopefully that's something to factor in.

Anyway, I'd suggest playing around with a spreadsheet. While most of us casters only have 3 buttons to push, stuff like talents, crits, and plus hit all fit into the mix in a fairly calculable way. WWS is a fun tool, but the data presentation might not be the best way to figure out exactly how to make YOUR gear and spec work for you.

Pika.

[Wenge]

Remember that talent-based increases don't (always) show on the paperdoll.

[Raptace]

I guess I would need to know where these spreadsheets are. I think my spell rotation is fine... but I think some of these issues could be my computer. I mean, I'm throwing up these spells constantly, and I'm still behind, shadow bolt is what I use to dps about 90% of the time... so why am I throwing less than others? I can't answer that, I'm throwing them up as fast as the casting bar allows me. I'm throwing up immolate everytime it is gone, should I be throwing it up less? I don't know what to do here. I'm going to wear more of my tier 4, try to wear everything that I have with hit as well Xaan. 2% of my bolts missing is not good either. Basically I'm trying to do the best with what I have, not having enough crit and hit for this spec is making me think of a change, but I'm not sure. I did enjoy affliction when I had it, but I'm not sure that I can pump out the dps like I do with this spec, maybe next week I'll try out affliction, and see how that goes. Compare I guess, don't know what else to do really. I can't keep up with Phewl till I have have some gear that I don't have currently, just need to keep raiding and hope I get some drops.

[Wenge]

Change your +crit +dmg gems to +hit +dmg and get the +15 hit to gloves.

Also penetration is useless (for mages, anyway) in PvE.

[Mithwen]

Putting 'warlock dps spreadsheet' into my handy google searchy thingy on my browser yields at least 1 spreadsheet on the Elitist Jerks forums. There is a link to EJ on our front page here. There's also a long and active thread on warlock dps on the EJ forums.

While gear is important, skill always trumps gear. I'm sure we could all benefit from an analysis of what we're doing every so often. At least, I know that I have. Also, given the ability to customize gear with gems, spreadsheets can be useful as they can show little things like 'stop stacking crit and get some plus hit' or 'more spell damage has diminishing returns compared to stacking some crit now'. Incidentally, spell penetration doesn't do anything in pve.

Pika.

[Raptace]

Well, after getting those boots today, and switching around some gear, my hit is at 150 rating or so, and my crit is at about 27-28% with the talent from destro. Tonight overall I critted for 30% on bolts and like 29% on immolate. I did alot better on boss's than I had been, those boots gave me some abillity to move things around. I'm pretty happy with what I did tonight on dmg, so for now, I'm happy. I honestly just need a new main hand, off hand, necklace, then I think I'll be pretty good. But we'll see.

[Nortibiry]

Putting 'warlock dps spreadsheet' into my handy google searchy thingy on my browser yields at least 1 spreadsheet on the Elitist Jerks forums. There is a link to EJ on our front page here. There's also a long and active thread on warlock dps on the EJ forums.

While gear is important, skill always trumps gear. I'm sure we could all benefit from an analysis of what we're doing every so often. At least, I know that I have. Also, given the ability to customize gear with gems, spreadsheets can be useful as they can show little things like 'stop stacking crit and get some plus hit' or 'more spell damage has diminishing returns compared to stacking some crit now'. Incidentally, spell penetration doesn't do anything in pve.

Pika.[/b]

I'll second that the elitist jerks forums are a gold mine for information (although sometimes you have to do a bit of mining yourself). There's a 76 page thread there on warlock dps that I started to read but haven't found the time/energy to really pick through yet. It can be a bit overwhelming I know but even reading a few pages here and there can sometimes yield some things to think about.

I'll also second the underlying sentiment that while gear is important, it will kinda come at it's own rate. We're only going to get so many drops per week, and once you have everything enchanted and gemmed, there's not much you can do with your time to improve... other than rethink and adjust what you're doing behind the keyboard :)

You might also want to look into the stopcasting macro stuff, depending on your latency. I think Phewl has experimented, you could probably get info from him on how that all works.

[benseac]

Macros are something I was thinking I should look into using. Right now, I point and click on everything I want to cast. I don't use keybindings or anything. I'm wondering if I could somehow automate somewhat what I'm doing if that would help.

[Aurorawind]

I'm trying out a new ACE addon called quartz. This constantly analyzes your latency and puts up a cast bar, the red section is when it's alright to click on the next spell because of latency, the server won't register it until your current spell has been cast.

I'm going to play with it on my frost mage and see if I wind up with alot of interrupted spells or if I can clean up alot of wasted time and get more spells out.

[Wenge]

I toyed with a stopcasting scheme but my latency is incredibly low (usually just under 90, even in a raid), and I ended up interrupting more casts than getting them off.