WWS an Eye Opener
I am getting familiar with WWS. It is a lot of information and I don’t want to interpret the data wrong. I am mostly concerned with my DPS in …well… DPS fights.
I am a clicker in Mag’s so a lot of time is spent positioning myself. I am also doing a lot of banishing and fearing. So that will not work.
The Gruul’s Lair fights, other then worrying about a cleave or cave-in, my job is DPS. I pulled up these to assess my overall DPS.
Date Boss DPS Presence (otherwise known as not dead time)
2/25 Maulgar 477 96% Gruul 580 87%
3/3 Maulgar 648 98% Gruul 570 99%
3/6 Maulgar 728 100% Gruul 576 86%
The biggest thing I am seeing with the Maulgar fight is KNOWing the fight. The first attempt I didn’t even know I was going. Had to write down and refer to a notepad each time a boss was downed so I knew which to DPS next. I was totally slow to react.
Another thing, of course, I had some gear changes. But really I have not seen my Spell Damage go up by much. What I have worked on is my Spell Hit getting that up to 202 (Nibuca over at Mystic Chicanery just did an entry on Spell Hit).
The big increase in DPS was in me learning the fight dynamics.
As for Gruul I need to stay alive. I am heading in the right direction. But I am having trouble with seeing the cave-ins. Having to adjust my camera angle after every knock back is …well… I forget. Then I die. On my second run, I focused on staying alive till the end . Being dead doesn’t help me DPS a boss. So I still have to work on that.
Comparing myself to the other Warlocks in the group has been the most enlightening. WWS shows how many of each tick each DoT goes off. For the last Gruul fight comparing myself to the highest Affliction Lock DPSer I saw something immediately…
Dmg. Out Me Him Difference
Corruption 56 84 -28
Immolate 8 12 -4
Shadow Bolt 18 47 -29
Shatter 7 8 -1
Siphon Life 89 89 0
Unstable Affliction 66 73 -7
That really opened my eyes. I need to work on reapplying my DoTs better. That is a lot of damage that I am missing. This doesn't have anything to do with gear. It is something that I can affect without anything other than changing macros and practice. The Shadow Bolts?? … what is that all about… how could I miss 29 Shadow Bolts. Something is seriously wrong and I have to fix it.
I did get to run Kara with this same lock… he said something that made me laugh after he died…
“I don’t notice that I die because I am so focused on my timers to reapply.”
That is some of my problem. I like to LOOK at everything. Where everyone is at, what is going on in the room, where the healers are, how the boss is dieing… that kind of stuff. So somewhere in the middle (as always moderation is the key) I need to pay more attention to when my DoTs expire AND Shadow Bolt more.
In this last Gruul run a CoD went off for 9461. Checking Mag’s I had one go for 11,507. Never cared for big numbers before, I feel they get distracting in the middle of a fight. Seeing the information afterwards is much more satisfactory for me. Still lots to learn but I am excited to have the information there for me to poke around in.
Comments
As far as the cave-ins go, are you using Deadly Boss Mods? There's a warning for the gruul fight that tells you as soon as you're under a cave-in... in big blue letters... close to impossible to miss. If you're using DBM, make sure you have that warning turned on for the fight.
For DoT refreshing, a few tips:
1. Don't use regular WoW frames to judge when you should refresh DoTs. Your DoTs and those of other raiders are the exact same size and it's tough to distinguish between them. Get the DoTimer addon or get xperl raid frames and make it so that your DoTs show up as double size. The visual cue that your DoTs are about to run out really helps.
2. Don't overwrite your DoTs. Wait until each one has fully expired to reapply. The last tick of each DoT happens the instant it expires, so even if you reapply a curse like CoA with 0.1 seconds to go, you've still lost the final tick of damage (and the biggest tick, I might add). It's not a big deal if you go 0.5-1.5 seconds or so with no DoT up... it still works out to be more DPS. When I first learned about this mechanic my DPS jumped up significantly.
3. Definitely don't refresh DoTs just because your trinket is up or because you're moving and want to capitalize on your instant-cast spells. Wait until you have multiple DoTs that are about to expire to pop your trinket. Then you can maximize the damage from your trinket boost.
4. Shadowbolt frequently, and cast it continuously when you're not refreshing DoTs, lifetapping/dark pacting, moving, or clicking cubes. You can increase the number of shadowbolts you put out by actually spamming your shadowbolt key about a half second before your cast bar reaches its end. This accounts for server lag and can be the difference in getting another shadowbolt (or two) in every DoT rotation.
5. Do you have the destruction talent that reduces your shadowbolt cast time by .5 seconds? (I think it's called devastation). If you don't already have it, get it. Your DPS will thank you.
6. Have a good DoT rotation. The old standard starting rotation is:
curse->corruption->unstable affliction->siphon life->shadowbolt until you need to refresh DoTs... refreshing accordingly.
This rotation optimizes both DPS and refresh times, making sure that you aren't having multiple DoTs running out at the same time. There will eventually be overlap, but this one seems to work out the best.
7. Don't use Immolate. It just isn't worth it if you're an affliction lock. You're wasting casting time that could be used on shadowbolts on a spell that not only scales poorly with spell damage, it is also likely not getting a lot of +spell damage from your gear (FSW is only +shadow damage). I've seen a bunch of theorycrafters run the numbers and they all come up with lower DPS when immolate is factored in.
I hope some of this helps. Sorry for being so wordy. I just get going and can't stop. If you're already doing these things and are just working on smoothing them out, then... kickass. :)
Well, I have struggled with the exact same issues as you have. Let me tell you what I have done to resolve it. And I have to respectfully disagree with Logan.
I use BigWigs, which is vastly superior to Deadly Boss Mods IMO, which I started with. This makes the boss fights a lot easier. I recommend trying both; I did, and I've had DBM uninstalled for a long time.
Install Quartz for your DoT timers. It puts them in First out order with the one to expire on the bottom. Quartz will also show you your server to client lag on spells as red in your cast bar, so you know when to cast your next spell without losing even a second.
I put my trinkets on macro and cast them as soon as they are up all the time. That is the only macro I have other than ones that help with Amp Curse or mouseover curse casting. You need to have every spell available to you, you can't macro a boss fight. There will be resists and the expiring of DoTs at different times. I use A and D as left and right strafe and put all my spells on Q,E,F,Z,X,C,R and use shift and control for variations. So every fight is Q E F Z X Shift-Z for me. Shift-Z is Shadowbolt ;P An unused CD is a wasted CD, so don't save your Amp or trinkets. They will always come up in the boss fight anyway.
I read elitist jerks quite a bit, and there is no perfect Dot rotation. Lately I've been using Global CD cast followed by instant, and that works exceptionally well. So UA - Curse - Immolate - Corruption - SL. The UA will expire at the same time as the Immolate, so perhaps that should be first... Regardless, Immolate has a 15s timer, so it will always screw things up.
Most importantly though, Immolate does more damage than SB. That's a fact that has been mathematically proven. So I don't know where you got the info on not using Immolate, but you need to do some more digging. Not casting it is gimping your DPS Logan, you'll see an immediate jump when you add it back in.
I think you are doing everything right, and hopefully a couple tips will let you skip some of the things I struggled with. Quartz will make the biggest impact, and I think BigWigs will make quite an impact also.
Oops, It worth it to note that Immolate should be dropped once you have haste, high crit, and other factors. But at the Kara / Tier 4 level, it is equal to SB.
From Elitist Jerks:
Immolate vs Shadow Bolt
Immolate has a much higher base damage then Shadow Bolt, and both have around the same spellpower coefficient (85%). For this reason, at low amounts of spellpower, keeping Immolate up is clearly a better choice. Some well geared warlocks drop this spell in favor of Shadow Bolt due to any combination of these factors:
- Higher hit/crit/haste rating benefits Shadowbolt.
- ISB debuff
- Most debuffs tend to favor SB instead (absence of CoE, Imp Scorch, CoS, ISB)
- More talents into SB (Shadow Mastery, Demonic Sacrifice, Shadow And Flame)
- More items that benefit SB ([Ritssyn's Lost Pendant], [Orb of the Soul-Eater], [Nethervoid Cloak], [Boots of the Shifting Nightmare], FSW and Soulfrost)
- Debuff slot shortage
- Higher mana cost per point of damage, so more life tap down time
Whether it's worth it for you should be checked with the appropriate tools: ShadowSeer, Leulier's sheet, DrDamage (all linked below). Even a lower damage-per-casting-time, it is worth it occasionally if you don't think you'll have the time to get a SB off or can't risk threat bursts.
So, we are both right, but most of the gear at Tier 4 is not good enough to drop Immolate, excluding FSW. And, Immolate should be used undoubtedly up to this point.
Yeah, I guess I didn't make it clear that Immolate should only be dropped if some of the factors mentioned on EJ are true. In my case, my shadow damage outruns my spell damage by around 200 (it'll be more when I get a new weapon and put soulfrost on it), I have 5 points in ISB, and I have the .5 second reduced cast time on shadowbolt. I've run the numbers for myself many times and when I put immolate into my rotation I lose 50 or so DPS (more if I'm in a crit-heavy caster group with a shaman or a boomkin or we have 3+ locks all keeping the ISB debuff up).
But again, it's situational. I was running with full FSW, Ritssyn's Lost Pendant, and the Orb of the Soul Eater from very early in my raiding "career," so shadow spells have pretty much always meant better DPS for me. If you're one of those locks that isn't a tailor (why you wouldn't want craftable gear that's on par with tier 5 is beyond me), or you're just starting out in raid content, Immolate is definitely worth working into your spell rotation.
Just my two cents -- everything already said!
No really -- there is server lag between when you think you can start casting your next spell and when you really can start casting your next spell. I don't have the addon that tells me when (I should get it), I just know to start casting before my last casting bar is done.