by Rich Maloy

Granted, there’s not as much hate on melee in Wrath as there was in The Burning Crusade, but our DPS is still limited by time on target. We are after all, melee. Yet the great thing about enhance is when we’re not in melee range, we can still lob some spells and drop some fire bombs all while running around dodging those whirlwinds.

It was Sindragosa’s Permeating Chill that first got me thinking about maximizing my damage output while I’m not doing melee attacks. Also, her Blistering Cold got me wondering about ways to keep damage on boss even while running in the complete opposite direction. What follows are some of my simple strategies for maximizing time on target and keeping the damage pumping even while running around.

Maximum hit box range

Read the rest of this entry »

by Rich Maloy

In some cases I kept the enhancement abilities because they bring other abilities in addition to just straight damage. Here’s a quick rundown of our major cooldowns for the unenhanced:

• 10 min – Bloodlust/Heroism – you know it and love it
• 10 min – Fire Ele (5 min with glyph) – yeah he’s dumb but what do you expect, his brains are on fire
• 3 min – Berserk & Bloodfury – Troll & Orc racials, respectively
• 3 min – Feral Spirit – two wolves who do damage and heal you simultaneously. Rad.
• 2 min – on-use Trinkets – Currently my trinkets are not on-use but I take them into account in case yours are
• 1 min – Shamanistic Rage with t10 2pc – normally this is a mana-regeneration and damage-reduction spell but with 2pc t10 it increases damage.

Read the rest of this entry »

by Dawn Moore

Today, I’ve put together a little guide for healing priests who want to dabble in the darkness of the shadow tree. While there are notable differences between the styles of playing holy or discipline, the switch to shadow is more than just tossing on some hit gear and taking a trip to the trainer.

How to look the part

As I said earlier, there is a bit more required to succeeding in your offspec than binding Shadowform to your bars, but while we have those in mind, let’s talk about them from a healer’s perspective. As far as talents go, nothing out of the ordinary is required of you as a healer when making the jump into the unknown. You can follow this build.

From here on though, things start to shift a little. I say this because I make the assumption that starting out, the majority of healers exploring shadow will not have a full set of shadow gear on hand (unless you were one of those disc priests who opted for the shadow tier 10 early on.) After that, I also don’t expect you to regem every piece of gear you have, since you’ll probably be sharing several pieces between your two gear sets. Because I’ve assumed this, I’m going to recommend that examine what kind of stats you are running with, and weigh out what you can sacrifice, and what you want to keep.

Read the rest of this entry »

by Fox Van Allen

Fact: According to World of Logs, the top shadow priest DPS on a regular 10-man Lord Marrowgar kill was just over 13,000 DPS. Feel inferior? How about this, then: The top shadow priest DPS on a 25-man heroic Blood-Queen Lana’thel kill is about 27,600. I can’t say for sure whether or not that’s before the 20% buff went live, but when you’re doing over 27k, who cares about that extra 5%?

I don’t want you losing sleep comparing yourself to those fine players. For the most part, these numbers are a result of near-perfect gameplay, top-notch gear and sacrificing no fewer than eight mohawked gnome babies to the random number generating gods. Still, with all those gnome corpses piled in the corner of your room, you’ve gotta ask: “Why isn’t my DPS as good as everyone else’s?”

To those who expect one quick, simple answer, I suggest the following possible things you could be doing wrong:
Read the rest of this entry »

via Righteous Defense

Festergut and Rotface suck. They are hard bosses and require each and every raider to give 110%. Each player needs to maximize the performance of their role and minimize anything that hurts the overall team effort (especially avoidable damage!).

Here are some dopey little tricks you can use to bring your A game to each fight:

1. Use a slow dps weapon for Festergut

Considering how tight the enrage timer can get, dps from every member of your group matters, and as Paladins we have the luxury and privilege of contributing more than our fair share of tank dps to the pile.

While Festergut may hit hard, he only does during a small window of the fight. Assuming you have the defense to spare, don’t be afraid to use a slow dps weapon (the slower the better) to maximize your damage. The slower your weapon is, the more damage each 5-stack proc from Seal of Vengeance/Corruption will do.

2. When not tanking Festergut, stand behind him

You should be soft-capped for expertise anyway, so to maximize your damage done on this fight, stand behind the boss to avoid causing parries for yourself and the person currently tanking.

Read the rest of this entry »

via Mystic Chicanery

Here is my generalized list of how to maximize your DPS in order of importance. Start with number 1 and work your way down. Don’t skip ahead.

1. Get to 80. There’s no sense trying to maximize your DPS before 80. You don’t have all the tools, you don’t have all the gear. When you’re questing you need to kill quest mobs. Quest mobs don’t have enrage timers.. so as long as you don’t die you’ll be fine. Frankly you need more stamina and survivability than DPS. So just stop worrying about it an enjoy the leveling experience.
2. Glyph for success. Make sure you’ve chosen the proper glyphs. At this time the best affliction major glyphs to maximize your DPS are Life Tap, Haunt, and Quick Decay. The minor glyphs are -so- minor they in fact have no effect so choose whatever blows your hair back.
3. Spec like you mean it. I believe at this time the “best” affliction spec is 56/00/15 with a little bit of wiggle room.
   – if you have the gear to make up the hit you can justify taking up to 3 points out of Suppression and putting them elsewhere.
   – The two points in Improved Drain Soul and the one point in Improved Life Tap do not directly add to your DPS. Indirectly the 10/20% reduced affliction threat can add to you DPS if you are threat capped by your tank. The 10/20% returned mana can add to your dps because over the long run they will save you GCDs by not having to life tap as much. You could argue that those points could be moved elsewhere.
   Other than those points I don’t see any other points that can be moved in this spec.
4. Choose your pet wisely. If it’s not on cooldown you should summon your Doomguard. If doomguard is on cooldown then summon Felhunter. Then, for the last 60 seconds of the fight (or if your pet dies) call down an Infernal to replace your current pet. Recommended reading: My pet’s better than your pet
5. Buff to the best benefit. For max DPS you should always have your Fel Armor up and a Spellstone applied to your weapon. For flasks choose the Flask of the Frost Wyrm. For food go for +hit food if you’re under hit cap, otherwise choose +spellpower food. Celebrate the fact that we’re one of the few class for whom fish feast actually -are- the best food to choose.If you won’t pull threat, then pre-pot on the fight. This will allow you to get the effect of two potions during combat. I normally pre-pot with a Potion of Speed.
   If there’s a shaman in the raid pop Potion of Wild Magic during the Heroism/Bloodlust.
   If there isn’t a shaman in the raid pop Potion of Speed at the point where you would normally do Heroism/Bloodlust.

   The makeup of your raid, and the buffs each class bring to the raid will greatly influence your dps. Keep this in mind when comparing your dps in different raids.

6. Make sure you’re always hitting the mobs. In a raid you need to make up 17% hit(464 hit rating). In heroics you need to make up 6% hit(168 hit rating).Generally you will get best return by speccing into Suppression and the making up the last 14% from hit rating (368 hit rating) on gear. You can possibly justify only getting 10% hit if you can count on raid buffs (3% from misery from Spriest OR 3% Imp Fairy Fire from druid) and the presence of a Draenei (1%).. personally I hate the idea that I could be 4% below hit cap in the raid if the persons who provide the buffs died (or don’t show up) so I normally gear for the full 14%.
7. Hit the mobs harder/faster. When you’re gearing, make sure you’re maximizing the right stat. For affliction warlocks at the moment your stats, in order of importance, are:
   Spellpower/Haste > Spirit/Crit >> int > everything else

   Once you get to the hit cap hit rating is no longer valuable (I still pick up +hit items and keep them in my bank for swapping gear around), but until you get to the hit cap, hit is -the- most valuable stat. After that Spellpower is valued slightly higher than haste which is valued higher than spirt/crit. Last is int which only shows up on the list because it grants a smidge of crit.

8. Choose the right curse for the job. Choose Curse of the Elements if you’re in a group that does not have a Boomkin to provide “Earth and Moon” or an Unholy Deathknights to provide “Ebon Plague” (yes, CotEl in this case will improve your personal DPS). Choose Curse of Agony if the mob will live for greater than 20 seconds and the 13% granted by CotEl is covered by another class. Choose no curse if another class is covering the 13% buff from CotEl and the mobs die in < 20 seconds.
9. All mobs (and mob packs) are not created equal.
   If there are 3+ trash mobs in a pull.. and your tanks generate good AOE threat:
   Seed of Corruption multiple mobs. (seed, tab, seed, tab, seed, tab, etc) Rain of Fire does less DPS but is more consistent and may be preferable if you outgear your tank or if the group of mobs are going to die too quickly to get 3+ seeds cast.

   Single/Double Trash rotation: (trash dies too quickly to get a full dot rotation on them).
   Haunt, Corruption, Shadow Bolt until dead. (Drain Soul if you need soul shards). Sometimes it may even be better to just spam Shadow Bolt (or Searing Pain) especially on -very- quick dying trash.

   Boss/high-HP trash, use a full rotation.

   Double Boss/high-HP trash, use a rotation on both. Haunt/Corruption/UA/Curse/Shadow Embrace on one and Corruption/UA/Curse/Shadow Embrace on the other. This is difficult and should be practiced.

10. Cast your spells in the right order and refresh in a timely manner.
    Startup:
    If on CotEl duty cast CotEl first. Follow up with Shadow Bolt and Haunt to stack your Shadow Embrace buff (This will change when Shadow’s Embrace changes to 3 stacks. At that point the startup may be Shadow Boltx2, Haunt.). Then Corruption, (CoA, if no CotEl), Unstable Affliction, then Shadow Bolt until Haunt is off cooldown.

    Refresh priority:
    1. (CotEl) (if it drops)
    2. Haunt(whenever it’s off CD to refresh Haunt buff and Corruption)/Lifetap (to keep lifetap buff up or for mana)
    3. Corruption (if it drops)
    4. Unstable Affliction
    5. (CoA) (if you’re not on CotEl duty)
    6. If nothing else, Shadowbolt

    During the last 25% of the mob:
    1. Haunt (should also keep up your Shadow’s Embrace effect)
    2. Corruption (if it dropped)
    3. Drain Soul. Note that the channeling of Drain Soul should be interrupted after a tick to refresh #1 or #2.

11. Do not clip your dots. That is, do not cause a new dot to land on the mob before the last tick of the dot that’s already ON the mob goes off.Corruption: if you’re doing it right it will never fall off because of Everlasting Affliction. If it accidentally -does- fall off then just recast it as soon as you can.Unstable Affliction has a 1.5 second cast time(effected by haste)(in Red, with an X across it). This means that you should start casting UA when there’s <1.5 seconds left in the dot. You don’t want to start early as you’ll overwrite the last tick and lose dps. You’ll get the most dps if you can get the cast off as early as possible without overwriting the dot.

    Haunt is kind of special. It’s barely a dot as it does minimal damage. Really it’s there because of the boost it gives to your other shadow dots. You have ~4 seconds in which to refresh it (after it comes off cooldown but before it drops). Anytime within those 4 seconds is fine. For highest DPS you should hold off until it’s 1.5 seconds away from dropping. That way in a full boss fights you have it up the most but spend the least time refreshing it.

    If you’re using Curse of Agony, it’s instant and its last tick is really powerful so you do not want to overwrite it. So do not cast CoA until it has fallen off the mob but cast it as soon after it falls off as possible.

12. ABC. Always Be Casting. Anytime you’re not casting you’re losing dps. While moving you can cast corruption, curse, life tap or Death Coil. Do it!Also make intelligent use of you Demonic Teleport to minimize the amount of time you are wasting in moving around.
13. Practice practice practice.

Read the rest of this entry »

by Euripides of OutDPS

Lady Deathwhisper is the second boss in ICC, and while this fight was recently nerfed, it is still a challenge. Especially on 25 man. Hunters have a few unique roles in it too, so today we’ll go over what it takes to take down Deathwhisper.

The fight

There are two phases in the fight- during one, you have to take out adds and focus down the boss’s mana shield, and as soon as you get the shield down, the adds stop spawning and you can burn the boss down.

Phase one, add management

The ultimate goal of this fight is to take down that mana shield I mentioned. Since all damage done drains it, don’t use viper sting, use serpent sting. Unless you’re about to go onto some adds and you need a convenient mana battery. The DPS on the boss while you’re 100% focused on adds is great, but not better than finishing the adds without going into aspect of the viper.

There are two types of adds that spawn- casters (cult adherents) and melee (cult fanatics). When they first spawn, they are not immune to any types of damage, however the casters will reflect spells back at players. You should always single target casters when you can, allowing your mages and locks to focus on the melee adds.

Read the rest of this entry »

by Messiah @ tentonhammer

This section of the Death Knight guide is all about the gear you use and the improvements that you can apply to it.  You spend a lot of time leveling, questing, and raiding to earn your gear, but what is it that really makes a piece any good?  Which stats are good for which type of Death Knight?  Better yet, what can you do to make that gear even better?

We start this guide by looking at the basic and advanced stats that you will require as a Death Knight as both a DPS and Tanking character.  Since gear lists change all the time depending on your level or the current raid content you are working on, it is far more important to have a good understanding of the stats you are looking for rather than the pieces at that level or in that raid.

As a Death Knight, unlike most other classes, you can choose your role regardless of which talent tree you wish to focus on.  This means that unlike a Paladin tank that must spend most if his talent points on the Protection tree, as a Death Knight you can choose to tank with the majority of your points in any of your three talent trees.  The same holds true for DPS.  Each tree offers enough to make you viable as either DPS or Tank.

Basic Stats

Lets Start out by looking at the basic stats and see which is best for each type of Death Knight.  Remember though that these are only your basic stats – Strength, Stamina, Intellect, Agility, and Spirit, not your advanced stats.  The next section will cover your advanced stats and they are at least as important as the basics, if not more so.

DPS – As a DPS Death Knight your main goal is to get as much Strength as possible since it allows you to cause the most damage. Beyond the stats that come on the gear that bring you the most Strength, don’t even worry about other stats.

Tank – As a Tanking Death Knight your main stat will be Stamina to increase your health pool.   Strength is also a solid stat since it will up your damage output and therefore your threat, but it is a distant second from Stamina.
Read the rest of this entry »

by Mike Schramm

Now that players have had their hands on the Dungeon Finder out on the live realms for a while, they’re learning a few more tricks and tips about how to use it. As Rohan brings up over on the WoW Ladies LJ, it’s easy enough to keep a good player once you’ve found them through the system: as long as none of you drop group once you’re done with an instance, you can go back in and run as many as you want. Unfortunately, you can’t friend them yet (hopefully that will show up whenever Battle.net functionality does), but the comments on that post point out that if you both sign up for an unpopular instance at the same time, chances are good you’ll end up in the same group together (of course, that requires coordination, but maybe you can set up a time out of game).

Other tips we’ve heard: finding an instance as tank or healer will go even faster than trying to get in one as DPS, so if you can specialize into a more useful role and just want to grind out instances fast, do that. Damage meters are supposedly broken — they haven’t figured out how to track ranged damage across realms quite yet. Which may be a good thing, as lots of players never liked following those meters anyway. The vote kicking system seems to be working well — the number one reason we’ve heard that players are kicking each other is that they’re going AFK without notice, so if you’re in a random PuG queue, be sure to be ready when it pops up to do the instance ASAP. Oh, and let’s just agree right here and now: Frozen Orbs are Need, unless you don’t want them for some reason.

Read the rest of this entry »