DPS 101: Quick Tips To Maximize DPS
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iTZKooPA on Friday, March 20, 2009 - 18 Comments Tags: Addons, Addons, dps 101, enchants, gear, gems, glyphs, guides, melee dps 101, spec
iTZKooPA on Friday, March 20, 2009 - 18 Comments Tags: Addons, Addons, dps 101, enchants, gear, gems, glyphs, guides, melee dps 101, spec  Deeps clothing provided by Ctrl-Alt-Del. |
My new guild - can I still call it new when I get personalized greetings at sign on? - has been going through some troubles lately, and it isn't drama related. I guess you can blame the lack of healers for causing some drama. On top of trying to solve this ancient MMORPG problem, we have also been hit by scattershot attendance. Our GM and Officers have done their best to recruit eager players to the raid, but for everyone four recruited, it seems that only one is willing to show up. Showing up is only half the battle though. Being an able bodied raider is the other half. Apparently, they didn't get the Level 80 memo.
At this stage in the game, gear is only part of one's ability to generate respectable DPS. Don't get me wrong, having the correct gear is incredibly important, but like the global warming problem, it is only one piece of the pie chart.
Gear:
There is gear, and then there is correct gear. For instance, I could have some sick 1.8 Speed Daggers equipped. In fact I have one from Naxx but I never use it. Why? Because its slow speed doesn't mesh well with Mutilate spec - this may be changing come v3.1. There are tons of ways to judge gear which can cause tough decisions. One of the easiest, but not the best, is to let an addon like RatingBuster do the comparisons for you.
Making that type of decision means you have already located and won what you need, which is often the most time consuming challenge. Thanks to Blizzard's constant updates to the WoWArmory, your character profile can give you some tips on what to hunt for. Take Solidsamm's rings (or trinkets) for instance. A quick check through the Upgrade link (On mouseover, hover over the arrow that appears to the right of the item) and you are hit with a two page list of items that are side-grades or better to his Ring of Foul Mojo.
If you don't have the time to sink into instances or Heroics, then perhaps player created gear is more suitable. Crafted gear is a quick and easy way to upgrade many slots. The catch 22 is that these items can be pretty pricey. However, if you spend your downtime shopping around for the mats while grinding the other non-craftable slots, you should save some serious gold.
Spec:
A player's spec is incredibly important for everything they do. A few misplaced points and a toon can be out of 5-20% of potential DPS, making them a poor choice for a raid or PvP partner. I am not trying to say that we should all be cookie cutter copies of each other, but the pattern exists for a reason. My suggestion to those trying to eek out more DPS is to look at the cookie cutter version of your spec and analyze any and all differences. Weigh the differences to see if what you have selected is truly better for what your spec is built to accomplish. And don't be afraid to ask guildmates for opinions and tips!
Glyphs:
These bad boys should be used to strengthen your main spells and abilities. They are relatively cheap compared to other consumables and will remain viable additions to your character until you change specs or new Glyphs are released, which isn't all that often. Again, select Major Glyphs that modify the main abilities you use. For a Mutilate rogue like Solidsamm that would be Slice n Dice (for more poison procs), Rupture and Garrote. Unfortunately there is no Envenom glyph.
Enchants:
Enchants are often over looked, and with good reason. As mentioned in one of my first posts, it is hard to justify sinking tens to hundreds of gold into gear that will likely be replaced very soon. To avoid emptying your coffers repeatedly, only pick-up the most suitable enchantments on gear that shouldn't be replaced in the short term, meaning most epic quality items. For those blue items, grab the mats and have a guildmate do middle of the road buffs on the cheap. If you still have a collection of greens, the money and time are better spent just replacing the gear entirely.
Gems:
Another often overlooked and easily solvable problem. Follow the same suggestions for enchants, saving the best gems for the best gear. Gems are also a fantastic way to boost other stats that you could be lacking, such as Hit and Expertise rating. Once you get those stats on board with the needed numbers, you should re-gem to help your spec, where applicable.
When you do get that fantastic gear that you have been working towards for weeks, be sure to gem it and enchant it ASAP. I always try to keep a handful of gems on hand to apply to new gear on the spot. Why would I do this? Two reasons really. First, I don't want the new piece of loot to look "worse" than the old piece simply because it isn't gemmed. Second, I try to get my gems at rock bottom prices, which means I have to wait sometimes. During the interim, I slap a middle of the road gem in the socket as a placeholder. The trick is that when you do the on the fly gemming or enchanting, you have to remember to go back and replace it. That is a personal tip to myself, evidenced by my recent gemming excursion to replace all the green gems I had.
Don't forget to play the game the way you want to though. Just because one spec does a little more DPS than the other, doesn't mean you should suffer through mechanics that you don't enjoy. After all, you should still want to play the game after you make the changes to be a more productive member of your guild!
Reader Comments (18)
Nice guide!
Getting a gear strat to go for is nice aswell.
It's always fun to grab a piece of gear you've been hunting for.
I also strongly recommend www.wowhead.com 's Item Comparison!
I agree that gems and enchants are waay overlooked sometimes. My friend ended up getting 7k gold at level 70 (before WotLK) and he spent it all on mounts and epic flying. All his gear was un-socketed and not enchanted. His dps suffered.
I love raiding and dungeons, but have a hard time wading through all the information to find which pieces I need. I also find that others are not too keen on answering questions from me. I would love to maximize DPS, but as a balanced druid, I have only been able to get it above 2k on mobs. Bosses and single pulls kill my DPS. Then DPS is only 1500-1800.
I find http://www.maxdps.com/ really helpful even for a Prot warrior like me.
great post, one thing i've learned is that on my warrior main whether i'm arms for arena or fury for pve reading up and finding those key talent points, glyphs, enchants and type of gear to shoot for has always helped me maximize my dps. As you said, find which spec suits you're likes and find out how to maximize it. There's addon's, websites, forums(here at projectlore forums is an easy place to find out info) and even just asking players in game for advice. Some of the best advice i ever got about the fury spec came from another fellow fury warrior i occasionally pugged with.
But if you're trying to gauge your dps i'd suggest getting a damage meter to keep track of performance.
A site that I have found to be very resourceful is http://be.imba.hu/ because of the insane amount of info given. It gives you some sort of direction for us "noobs" and shows what 'chants and gems should be replaced and which ones should be used.
And the only thing I'm waitin for is for them to add info on Talents
Another massively important factor is your rotation. All the gear in the world isn't going to help you do decent DPS (or TPS for that matter) if you're pushing the wrong buttons, in the wrong order.
A Fury warrior not using Heroic Strikes to burn off rage and missing most of his Slam procs (or worse yet, using Slam over WW or BT) is going to do subpar damage.
Same for a frostfire mage who lets Scorch drop or doesn't reapply Living Bomb ASAP, a mut rogue forgetting HfB, etc.
Gemwise-i only buy rare (blue) gems for epic gear. If its blue or lower i buy green gems which can be less than a tenth the price of the blues and only have 1 or 2 less stats(at least in my realm-Kul Tiras).
Good post good sir. And no you can't call your guild new anymore. We love you and your staying so just call it your guild.
There is a point where having too much of a certain given stat, hit/crit/haste no longer benefits you enough to continue stacking it. Just simply maximizing that stat eventually reaches a point where upgrades using that stat provide near negligible benefit. A mage with 800 haste sees less benefit from adding another 20 haste than a mage with 100 haste adding 20.
While stuff like armory can help clarify that, it's something most people overlook when trying to maximize their DPS without evaluating their entire set of gear first
I agree with all the post your made, gear is important, as well as getting the correct enchants and gems, but I think the most important point you made was the last one about spec. I play a warlock, and I was demo up until 80 (and some time after) and decided it was time to change my spec for more dps. I went aff knowing the huge numbers it put up, however I could find no enjoyment in watching so many different dots. Then I tried destructo and am loving it.
I think I'd have to add on that maxdps site that tells you your classes best in slot items. That way when you run through Naxx you know what you need to be looking for in terms of drops.
Helps save rolls or DKP. :)
Nice writeup. Thx.
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/rant
I would personally supplement by saying that if you are raiding, especially with 25 people, and do not have the right glyphs, adequate gems, at least moderate enchants on the pieces you can, and some supplemental BoE blues/epics where needed you should not be allowed a spot. Unless you are an exceptional player (in which case the toon in reference is probably an alt anyhow) you will be gimping the group and wasting everyone's time. More importantly you will be failing at your simple part in a game which is not difficult to grasp.
/stoprant
In terms of raiding I think that a guild should always have a imba score which u must be over to enter a particular raid.
If u dont know what the imba scor is, go to be.imba.hu to check out your score.
Peace out!
In our guild we find spamming heroics like they are going out of fashion gives players a way to gear up so we are running at least 4-5 an evening when we're online and not raiding. The simple fact that newly dinged lvl 80 players feel like they are getting things done and improving gear so will play more.
Oh and the simplest piece of advice I can give you that in my experience encourages people to raid more is to make it fun, don't make it a job, I've seen enough raids become demoralised because the GM wants to down a boss that is proving to be (for now at least) difficult.
Winning = Happy raiders = More raid attendance.
One more tip to add, scan your auction houses for elixers and buff food apropriate for your character. Using proper elixers / buff food can easily make a 10% or larger improvement of your dps.
This can be a bit costly though, so don't go wasting to much elixers on bad pugs. But in general elixers can be bought for as cheap as 3 -10 g a pop. Especially when there is an alchemist around wanting to make a quick buck. They tend to undercut by insane amounts temporarily dropping the entire market level, and usually they throw in a lot at the same time giving you a day or two of cheap stuff.
Other alchemists tend to wait till the stuff is sold before restoring price levels though. A good way to find cheap stuff is an addon like auctioneer ( don't forget to donate to them, or risk losing its functionality due to blizzards change in rules regarding addons )