Every day or so, I peruse the guild roster on Wow-heroes to see how people are doing on gear upgrades. One of these days, I'll take it one step farther and figure out what ppl need instance wide to help them.
A few people asked me to explain my spell rotation on Bandage the other day and it got me thinking. I usually power-level a toon to 75 or so and don't really pay attention to the mechanics of a particular class as they change very rapidly every 20 levels or so. Once I hit 75 now, I tend to focus on learning the techniques and focus of the playstyles.
The first thing I do is look the character up on the net, look for the highest damage specs, rotations, and the stat focus. For healing, this changes to Healing per mana efficiency of various spells, then stat focus. Also for healers, you have highest healing/minute and highest mana efficiency builds.
First: Check out http://www.talentchic.com/
Second: Google your class/spec "shadow priest wrath 3.1" and look for blogs, but turn security on your browser way way up and do a virus scan before you log into wow next. Ppl love to toss keyloggers into ads or other portions of sites.
Third: Look at http://www.wow-heroes.com/, look up some of the better raiding guilds, find a person who is the spec you're looking into, compare you're gear/stat focus/spec to theirs.
Fourth: Adjust your spec to focus on either heroic or raiding, get the best enchants you can afford (keeping in mind that unless your in full 200/213 gear, you're going to be getting upgrades so don't do the ones that cost 1+K gold apiece)
Fifth: look up your char on http://www.wowarmory.com/ and find craftable/questable/Reputation upgrades and make a list in a word file. List the SLOT for the item, then list the order you're likely to persue/obtain them. This will help with which instances to run.
Sixth: Glyphs are an insane addition to every spec. And they are completely spec dependent. These are an absolute necessity.
Interspersed Between 1-6: Talk to ppl who are masters of their spec, hell, ask for advice on general " Anyone on that can give me advice for specifics on XXXX class/spec" And then look up this person on armory/heroes and guage their char versus their advice.
Sixth: Here's something alot of parttime or periodic raiders dont like. When you raid, you're responsibility is to bring the most you can do the raid, that means bring potions, food, etc. Of even higher importance is that even though you may like a particular spec, if one does substantially better dps across the board.... use the higher dps one.
Example: A hunter in DnR had been marksman for years, kept the same spec. Last week, changed to survival. DPS went from 2.9 to 3.7K dps in the course of one night raiding. With research, he chose survival because alot of the fights in naxx/ulduar are AOE intensive which makes keeping pets alive difficult, and BM damage is greatly pet dependent but higher than survival when the pet survives.
One of the problem I think people are facing is that they don't raid fulltime so in their spare time, they lvl alts. Rather than focusing on one, and getting the best gear available, they spread that time commitment across 2-3-4+ alts.
Just as a frame of reference
Heroics: you're going to have 3-5 buffs.
Raids: You're going to have 7-20 odd buffs.
Test Dummies: will be lower than your actual dps output in raids/heroics. On the regular dummy I pulled 1.9K on a shadow priest. Heroic/Raid I pulled 1.4-5K. In actual heroics I pull 1.8-2K and Raids I've pulled 2.3-2.6K due to buffs and other factors.
For Heroics, if you can't sustain > 1.2K dps across the board, you're a liability. This might sound harsh, but the longer a fight lasts, the longer it takes to get that rift down, the more adds/spawns/damage etc the raid takes. Now, given that this is a game, and "liability" is a hardcore term. I don't define "liability" as "you suck" I define it as "you're character/rotation/gear needs more work." With gear and proper rotation, you should be around 2.2-3K dps or somewhere around there.
For Raids(10): 1.5K is the rough minimum unless there are proportionately better geared people to carry you. Well geared in raids should pull 2.5K+ dps. Truly obsessed people should be pulling 3K-5K+ dps depending on fight and class.
Before Wrath, I was uninterested in raids, focused on alts, had 4 70's and every craft to 375. I'd gotten into a few raids, but didn't know the mechanics/fights/ or how to maximize my dps in given situations. Didn't really care as I was enjoying the experience. Needless to say, the fights took longer than they should have and were rougher. Once wrath came out, I went resto with Wad, got invited to raids, and quickly learned the cost of the above mentality. Ulduar w/ one unaware person = wipe. Deconstructor has a 6 minute rage timer, requires 2.8K+ dps constant throughout. Try doing that with 1-2 people dead.........
:P, Got to love being bored at work with nothing whatsoever to do except spam a blog site :P
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Figured I'd add my 2 cents as a follow-up:
ReplyDeleteTauren Stampede will never be one of those guilds that require members to be available at certain times or be certain specs or do certain damage. Just know that you won't be able to discover certain parts of the game UNLESS you do the things that Wada is talking about.
2 things:
#1 - I'm not able to raid at night when our main group goes. If I am available, I see if there's an opening and if not, then no big deal. I play when I'm able to and when I want to. There are some guilds where you cannot be a member unless you are on at certain times. That's why our guild is great. Play when you want, just realize that you may not be able to experience certain parts of the game.
#2 - At one point, Deadrush was pulling around 1K in dps on heroics. I made a decision that I wanted to increase that so I could get invited to more heroics/raids, so I read up on it and worked on my rotation and now I do 1500+ and break 2K on bosses. It would have been perfectly acceptable for me to stay at 1K, however I would have had to accept that fact that I wouldnt get invited to any raids and very few heroics.
All in all, it's a video game. Have fun and relax, just know that others want to do certain things for their enjoyment that you might not be able to do unless you: change your play times, change specs or work on improving rotations/gear.
We have lots of WOW veterans that can help you and Wada has laid out some good info for those that want to improve. I'm always up for heroics, so let me know if you want to run something. We usually have enough geared people on that can cover for low dps or other things, so always feel free to ask.