Ok, I have officially come to the realization that I am epic fail when it comes to any DPS class. I know, I know, how can anyone not be good at DPS? Well, maybe it's because I refuse to conform? I want to play the specs that aren't "popular" or aren't really high dps specs? Who knows, but check these examples...
Subject One: Kalyina - Demonology Warlock
Now I know her biggest problem is that I refuse to go affliction or destro. Why? I like demonology. I know it doesn't push the big dps numbers but even duel speccing her for destro I wasn't able to push the numbers. And it's my Zili...it's my awesome felguard bodyguard! Who doesn't love him?
I can't really blame her problem on gear either. At the time she was geared pretty well actually. At least for her content level. At the time, in the appropriate tier gear, she was doing good to push 3K dps as Demo in a 10 man raid. Blah...
Demonology locks rely heavily on the raid make up to boost their DPS. I learned this early on. Paladin buffs are a must. Especially when you rely so heavily on your Felguard for his cleave damage. Getting Might on him is very important. Sadly, most paladin's don't understand this which means you have to ask for them to buff the felguard differently. Regardless, I've always believed if you can't pull the dps on your own, you shouldn't be relying on group make up to boost it.
Subject Two: Kalyista - Elemental Shaman
This one, maybe I can blame it on gear. She is able to get into heroics now, thanks to 2 pieces of LW gear that Eto made for her. I also threw on some leather BoE blue gloves and bracers I had on my bank toon and purchased the blue BoE cloth shoulders. She's now hit capped at least for heroics. I don't intend to raid with her so heroic hit cap is all I'm really worried about.
We ran 3 heroics last night, H-OK, H-VH and H-UK. Of those three the first was H-OK and my dps was pretty bad, I wasn't hit capped and was trying to figure out what I was doing. The last was H-VH and we had a Paladin and a lock pushing 5K - 7K dps. So over the course of the night my dps started at 1.5K and ended at about 2.2K - 2.3K.
Now that does give me a little hope that with decent gear, she has the potential to push some decent dps numbers. I've researched her, thanks to you guys who recommended sites. I've learned the rotation, glyphs, changed her build around some and hope that maybe I can figure out how to enjoy playing her.
Subject Three: Kalyanna - Shadow Spec
If I want to pass this toon up on the DPS break down I'm sure I could simply because I rarely have to go shadow and when I do, it's still her off spec. But this is probably the worst. I refuse to look at her DPS number. I don't run recount on her since 99% of the time she's healing. But I know there has to be more to shadow priests then just SW: Pain and spamming the purple beam of death thingy. *sigh*
I've also tried kitty dps, hunters, unholy DKs, just to name a few. Granted the hunter and kitty were not 80 toons and the unholy was in my tank gear. So I won't comment on those.
This isn't leaving me very optimistic about my up coming mage. Can I somehow manage to actually be good at DPS?
Seriously, I am a good tank and a good healer. Probably a better healer then a tank actually. DPS is suppose to be the "easier" role to play.
I have a couple other ideas on why I can't find a good dps class.
1. I jump around on my toons too much. Making myself ok at a lot of things and really good at nothing.
2. DPS requires consistency. Spell rotations, gear, stats, moving, adjusting, etc. I'm not so good at consistency.
3. I'm not willing to conform. I choose to play them differently so I pay the price with lower dps.
Who knows? But regardless, it's given me a new respec for the dps classes. I'm in the shoes of that person in the pug who's total damage falls below the tank. I'm that person in the pug who get lectured by everyone else about how I'm doing this and that incorrectly. I'm that person who often forgets to change to tremor totem or to put the soulstone on the healer.
I have a new respect. Learning to DPS is just as stressful as learning to tank or learning to heal...
Happy Tuesday!
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
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4 comments:
Unfortunately some specs aren't as high dps as others and I have very little experience with the specs you mentioned, so I can't recommend anything. I can talk to our resident shadow priest when I get a chance and see what she recommends.
I do have a demon lock, because I love the felguard, but I can't stand her anymore... warlock used to suit me but doesn't, so I'm not really up on the rotation anymore.
I do understand that elemental shaman are still "lower" dps than Blizz would like - hence why they're getting a buff this patch.
For your mage - for numbers, I recommend arcane. I can push 4k in a heroic on my mage [more practice on my part and that might come up], though I sorely love the frost spec [which only nets me 2kish at best].
I think it sucks that to perform like you want to, you can't always have the spec you want. I have a lot of the same problems with dpsing though. I now have one of every class at max level, and most of them [though not all] have dps specs. The key to a lot of it is practice. All my dps toons have gotten better since I started doing dailies on some of them. My hunter, for example, was doing 1900 dps in some pretty good gear, which is now 3-4k with practice.
I had kind of the same problem with my feral dps druid. I ran into another druid who was pulling around 1.5k-2k more than me -- not that I seen a lot of other cats, I think I've only ever grouped with the one, actually.. lol.. not sure if that tells me something right there.. ;) -- even though his gearscore looked only 2-300 points above mine.
Comparing my spec and rotation to the other feral I met who did dps, I found that my spec was heavily leaned towards pvp rather than pve pure damage output, and even some of the talents that I had taken, while useful, and fun, and talents that had helped me level very well, were now not useful at all.
I respecced to be a little more pve damage spec rather than a soloing spec, and lo and behold, my damage output increased measurably. I also researched rotation, which is situational to a degree, but damage output can be maximized by trying to use certain abilities in certain orders.
Recount and some target dummies in the big cities may help you figure out your own rotation that works for you, or different pieces of gear that you can try swapping out, and see what that does to your dps.
DPS is just like anything else in wow -- people will give you a hard time for not doing it 'right'. Everyone is an expert in every class/spec/role nowadays it feels like. :)
Whatever role/spec you want to play is the role/spec you should choose. It is a game, after all, so you should play it how you like.
It's just like anything else in life as well; the more time, thought, and effort you put into it, the more you will get out of it. Argent crusade dailies would be a great way to try to gear up a little, the rep grind is horrible I know, but you'll have to do it eventually anyways.. And it will provide cash to buy epic gems and best-in-slot enchants for your gear, as well as making available some very nice gear to buy from the vendors there. Also check AH for decently priced item level 200 boe blues. Some of these are just as good as or better than epic drops of the same item level.
But yeah, dps can be frustrating too. As a dps, you want to pull your own weight, right? So you spend so much time trying to maximize your dps with a certain rotation, trying different pieces of gear in different slots, fighting target dummies while recording the fights in recount, and then when you are actually fighting the boss, the tank can't keep it from turning around in circles over and over again, thereby making your best abilities unuseable.. ;) (think rogues' backstab..)
Practise makes perfect.. And also, I find it helps maximize my damage output when I have a nice bubbly drink at my side. :)
Morph
Haha, great advice guys!
And happily I did use it, thus the topic of my blog today. Minor respec on my shaman (still haven't tried too hard on her tonight) and a couple gear changes on my lock as well as a slight difference in my rotation and I was happy to see the number raise just a little.
I have great hopes that as my gear goes up, so does my dps with them both since maybe, just maybe, I might be able to figure them out!
Thanks so much! Lots of <3 to you both!
I know we talked a little about this last night, but if you ever really want to work on your ele shaman, I can help talk you through rotation and all that jazz.
From what I understand of shadow priest DPS (and my understanding is not great as it's Sav's offspec too), you put the VE buff on yourself (once ever half hour), then the single target rotation is Vampiric Touch > Devouring Plague > SW:P > Mind Blast > Mind Flay. Refresh DoTs as needed, Mind Blast on cooldown (I think it's Mind Blast that refreshes SW:P so you shouldn't have to refresh that).
Multi-target: VT/DP/SW:P on skull target, then switch to a non-skull and Mind Sear. Mind Sear will hurt everything BUT what you have targeted. You do want to toss up your DoTs because VE doesn't proc off of Mind Sear, but it will proc off your DoTs.
I have found, for the most part, that I'm less good at DPS classes mostly because I'm less INTERESTED in being good at them. Having my raiding main be an ele shaman is super-stressful sometimes because I'm struggling to keep up on meters.
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