Saturday, April 14, 2012

I need to change... I want to be a pro DK!

[:1]Hey, so I basically do around 22k dummy dps with my current gear. In raids with buffs I do 27-32kish dps.

Sometimes I'm really bad, I do around 25k dps in raid. Not sure what I'm doing wrong...
According to SimulationCraft I'm supposed to be pulling 35k with all raid buffs and dps CDs. The highest I've ever gotten in a raid where you don't receive a DPS buff from an NPC is around 33-35k dps.

How I basically DPS:
    Diseases
    Spam Obliterate
    Frost Strike til Obliterate is up again
    Save KM Procs when Obliterate is on CD for 2 secs
    Spam HB proc because of t13 2 set bonus
    Horn of Winter

It's more of a priority system right? I will spam FS until OB is up again, same with the HB procs. I also use blood tap to get a death rune going, then use OB again.

Please look at my gear and tell me how much I SHOULD be doing in raids. I tried using SimCraft but I'm trying to find a way to take out specific buffs when simulating DPS (if that's possible).

I also think it's an issue with my DoT uptime... I have seen the parses on WoL and it shows that I'm not consistent with applying blood plague... I'm currently improving that now.

I have tried the Masterfrost rotation. It is definitely doable but I am just more comfortable with the old playstyle. Plus sometimes you can't use Masterfrost on certain fights like Spine of Deathwing (have to keep certain adds alive and not AoE them to death).

Also correct my reforges or enchants or gems or anything you see wrong please.

I really need help )=... I've read the stuffs and I think I understand it... My guild is currently 7/8 normal DS and I'm barely doing 40k dps with Kalecgos' buff in the Madness of Deathwing fight...

All comments are appreciated! Thank you.

Edit: Oh and I'm DW Frost! Woops.
You might need to check your spec, your points seem scattered. No need for endless winter in any DS encounter. Icy reach is extreamly more effective.

Proper positioning will allow you to DPS with howling blast and not hit anything important. now seeing you play my first impression is your fault is playstyle or lack of proper (or no) keybinds.
Try reforging some haste to mastery. With the t13 2pc haste loses value quickly if you are using the procs.

Do also remember that the default setting for SimCraft is a patchwerk style fight. So any fight where you aren't standing completely still you'll see lower dps comparatively.
Looking at your spec you do not have 2/3 epidemic or 2/2 improved blood tap - this is a big loss. With 2/2 epidemic, it takes 1 plague strike to refresh diseases in between outbreaks. With 2/2 blood tap it takes 2 strikes, but both are essentially free as they're used with blood tap.

You're wasting runes every time you refresh diseases by not having points in one of these talents (but don't get both). You should be using Glyph of Pestilence as it still provides a 20% increase to Plague Strike damage from when it was the old Glyph of Plague Strike.

OK so I've looked at the following log of your Ultraxion fight.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-t9vh6u5lvoukdx1r/details/8/?s=3723&e=4033

Blood Plague uptime is 64.1% - should be above 95% for Ultraxion (accounting for time you phase out and it may drop off).

I have no idea why, but you used 47 Howling Blasts, but you only had 27 Rime procs. The only time Howling Blast should be used other than on proc, is if you have 2 frost runes and nothing else up at all. This is such a rare occurrence that I really don't think those 20 Howling Blasts were because of that.

I get the impression that it is your wasted runes and poor disease uptime that hold you back. This is a link to my own log on Ultraxion.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/bguxojgtbtmjlrva/details/164/?s=6566&e=6869

Bear in mind there is only an 8 second difference between the length of our fights. (my fight is slightly shorter).

Obliterates are 80 against your 72
Frost Strikes are 105 against your 85

In 8 seconds less time, I used 28 more abilities. Given the RNG style of Frost DK this might not mean much - it's very possible that I simply had better RE procs. Though I think it might have more to do with your rune usage. Looking at the disparity between your Howling Blasts vs. Rime procs (they should be close together, they are 20 apart) tells me you are wasting your runes, which results in less Obliterates/Frost Strikes.

Disease uptime is also quite low, which can account for a decent amount of overall DPS lost. But I think this is more a spec problem than a player problem, as by not speccing Epidemic 2/2 or Improved Blood Tap 2/2 you give yourself no easy way of reapplying diseases.

Anyway there are lots of details I could go into to breakdown how you can improve, but I think these are the main ones. GL with it =)
I would need worldoflogs.com logs to really understand what you're doing wrong.

Edit:

Oh someone linked your log:

1. In a 5:10 fight you should be using Raise Dead (Ghoul) twice, once right at the beginning, and once somewhere in the middle of the fight, given that you know you won't get 3 Ghouls out due to the hard enrage being 6 Minutes you can save that second Ghoul cast for when Heroism comes up.
2. Frost Fever and Blood Plague Uptime should be close to 100%, you are shifted at most 1-2 seconds if you're timing your Heroic Wills properly, but you should be applying Blood Plague again when you're less than 5 seconds from it expiring. This will become easier once you spec into 2/3 Epidemic.
3. Pre-pot the fight, consume a Golemblood Potion as close to before the pull as possible, this gives you 25 Seconds of +1200 Strength to open the fight and you can Pot again once Heroism goes up because your cooldown will be ticking as you potted out of combat.
4. Looks like you had 91 Killing Machine Procs and you managed to consume 74 of them, that's about an 81% Conversion rate which is pretty close to what we want to try to achieve, obviously the higher it is the better, but not if it results in more of them being consumed by FS instead of OB.
5. You converted 62.5% of your OBs into Crits and 33.7% of your FSs into Crits, this is actually a pretty good ratio of consumption for KM procs but of course, anything that tilts it more in favour of OB without losing out on number of strikes thrown out will improve DPS.

Overall, you need to get more Strikes out per minute, but that's dependent a little bit on RNG, but also in how you manage your runes, however, you're hitting a very good consumption rate for KM (not letting too many procs override) and hitting a high conversion rate between OB crits and FS crits so you don't want to slip up there.

For reference, here's my log from last night and I know I made a lot of mistakes too:

http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-i7j0veh3ymbz940i/details/6/?s=6234&e=6576
Actually, the Glyph of Pestilence bug was fixed a long time ago: http://elitistjerks.com/f72/t125291-frost_dps_winter_discontent_4_3_a/p9/#post2016645. I just haven't gotten around to swapping mine out for Death Grip (useful for Warmaster).

I'm going to disagree with Ohai - using Howling Blast when you have a single F or D and not enough runic to Frost Strike is a DPS increase (it hits pretty hard by itself and gives you more runic that you can use to FS and hopefully proc RE to restart your engine). That said, I'm pretty sure his extra HBs were from the T13 2pc.

One thing you'll notice in both Ohai's and my parses (mine is here: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-v9pdmggewih3w9er/details/5/?s=9169&e=9526, which was good enough to rank) is that Frost Strike was our most damaging ability, with Obliterate in #2. You have Obliterate in #1 and FS in #2. Don't be scared of using KM procs on FS. I pretty much ignore my KM altogether - it doesn't change my priority in any way, the way Rime does, because I'm still going to Obliterate if I have the runes and not too much runic and Frost Strike if I have too much runic or no runes for Obliterate (I might delay a tenth of a second or so to let a rune refresh to Obliterate, but only maybe). Obliterate might be the big showy star (who doesn't like critting for 50k or more?) but Frost Strike is the actual important spell because it procs Runic Empowerment and keeps your engine turning over. Your big fancy V8 engine won't do diddly without gas in it, and Frost Strike is what keeps the gas flowing.

You Death Striked a few times, which you should basically never do in a boss fight as Frost.

Take two points out of Chilblains and put them in Epidemic. Blood Plague uptime isn't really a huge deal for itself (Blood Plague made up less of my overall damage than my weapon proc), it's only important because you want your Obliterates to be fully boosted. The fewer U runes you waste on Plague Strike instead of half an Obliterate, the better.

Basically, my advice sums up as "learn to love efficient usage of runes and runic power".


One thing you'll notice in both Ohai's and my parses (mine is here: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-v9pdmggewih3w9er/details/5/?s=9169&e=9526, which was good enough to rank) is that Frost Strike was our most damaging ability, with Obliterate in #2. You have Obliterate in #1 and FS in #2. Don't be scared of using KM procs on FS. I pretty much ignore my KM altogether - it doesn't change my priority in any way, the way Rime does, because I'm still going to Obliterate if I have the runes and not too much runic and Frost Strike if I have too much runic or no runes for Obliterate (I might delay a tenth of a second or so to let a rune refresh to Obliterate, but only maybe). Obliterate might be the big showy star (who doesn't like critting for 50k or more?) but Frost Strike is the actual important spell because it procs Runic Empowerment and keeps your engine turning over. Your big fancy V8 engine won't do diddly without gas in it, and Frost Strike is what keeps the gas flowing.

Basically, my advice sums up as "learn to love efficient usage of runes and runic power".


Two small notes I want to add on this to sort of expand the idea (which I agree with 100%):

1. It's always better to OB a KM proc than FS, but you should not be waiting a significant amount of time for an OB to come up if and sit on a KM Proc, that causes DPS loss through fewer RE procs and FS per min as well as overridden KM Procs.
2. FS and OB should be very close representation on your DPS breakdown, if you look at the top rankings on WoL some people have FS edging out and some people have OB edging out. If you have better RNG, you will see OB pulling ahead because you will have procced more RE's, connected more OBs with KMs, and thrown more OBs as a result of both those effects.

It's a very very careful balance between completely disregarding KM procs and using OB until runes are depleted and then FSing until you can OB again vs very carefully watching your Rune Timers, keeping the window at which matched pairs are fully depleted only as wide as the window you need to Frost Strike and trying to line up as many OBs with KMs as possible. Your engine is still capped by your RP generation model and some RNG, you aren't necessarily punished for very very short wait times within the minute (due to statistical chance).

My general rule for Rune consumption is dependent on how much RP I've got currently, if I can FS twice, then I'm going to put my runes fully depleted with 3 seconds or so and try to proc my RE, otherwise I'm going to let my runes sit a little bit in the off chance that a KM comes up and I can line up that Obliterate. I personally never wait more than 1-2 seconds of idle action for a KM proc, because that would end up sacrificing way too many strikes per minute but having that little lull when you have one set of runes already cooling down and just enough RP for 1-2 FS' you can afford to use a small delay to try to line up those procs.
Are you making sure to dps in Unholy presence?
@Greylus I see... I've always kept endless winter there. I'll invest the points into much more effective talents, thank you.

@Knave How much haste is enough? Currently I have around 82.62% haste and a mastery rating of 1547.

@Ohaidere The reason why I was using HB more was because I was trying out the Masterfrost rotation for that fight. It requires more spammage of HB than OB. But you're right, my disease up time is definitely an issue. Also I will invest points in the talents you recommended, thank you!

@Leihn Thanks! I always have trouble judging when the appropriate time is to use Raise Ghoul. And the balance is hard to get sometimes, especially when you hit FS a split second AFTER KM procs. Urgh.

@Favlos Yeah I did notice that most ranked frost DKs on WoL have FS as their #1. And I used death strike because I was going to die at some point, and wanted to see if I could survive... lol.

@Scarlen Yes I am haha.

Oh, you also only pillar'd once in 5 minutes.

That's unacceptable.
If you're having trouble remembering to use Pillar of Frost and/or Blood Tap, you can always macro them into Frost Strike since they don't trigger a GCD (trinkets too). It's not ideal since there is a bit of gaming you can play with Blood Tap, and at times you might want to delay Pillar of Frost for a few seconds. But no matter what, using Pillar 5 times in a fight will always be better than only using it 4 times regardless of timing.

On a fight like Ultraxion, start off by using a pot before combat starts. If you really want to maximize DPS, use Army before combat begins. Right away pop Pillar of Frost so that it can multiply the effect of your Golemblood Potion (or if it's macroed to Frost Strike just start up your rotation). Once Pillar is up summon your ghoul. You should always summon your ghoul when Pillar is, which is easy since the cooldown for Pillar is a multiple of the one for ghoul.

If doing this means your ghoul is down for Bloodlust/Heroism then that's fine. Two ghouls per fight is always better than one regardless of buffs.
Building on what Enderon said, since you use a proc trinket (Heart of Rage), set some sort of addon alert with Power Auras or Mik's Scrolling Battle Text to let you know when it's up. It should proc within the first few seconds of the fight - delay your Raise Dead until then. Your ghoul snapshots your stats at the moment of summoning, and therefore the effects of non-static stats (where "static" also includes semi-static stats like Vessel of Acceleration's crit and License to Slay's strength, which are stronger than static stats but not as strong as procs or use effects) are dramatically multiplied out of proportion to their effect on the rest of your DPS. Ideally, you'd have a prepotted Golemblood, a Heart of Rage proc, a Fallen Crusader proc, and a Pillar of Frost all up at once when you hit your first Raise Dead button (procs tend to desync later on, so don't worry so much about having everything up at once when Raise Dead comes up again, but you should always always pop it with Pillar).
I agree with the poster's above. Cooldowns are a necessity to doing better dps. I have my ghoul, pillar, synapse springs, trinket, and blood fury macro'd into 2 buttons for quick and easy access.

It is generally recommended to at least macro your ghoul + pillar so he gains the strength bonus, plus they line up perfectly every 3 mins.

Macro:
#showtooltip Pillar of Frost
/cast Pillar of Frost
/cast Raise Dead

If you want to macro a trinket with anything:

#showtooltip 14
/use Apparatus of Khaz'goroth
/cast Blood Fury

(14 is just the equipment slot for apparatus)

And disease uptime should be >95% but you've been addressing that already it seems.

As for how I start a fight, generally it goes like this:
-Outbreak
-Spam Oblit (waiting for procs)
- Once procs happen, pop your cool downs
-ERW if you need it
-Go on with the normal priority system from there, keeping up diseases and using cool downs when appropriate

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