DPS Tips Part. 3-Start Large

Start large.

The final step in the process is performance. This is where recount makes its money as an analytical tool. Aside from measuring DPS, recount tracks all manner of useful statistics that can help you evaluate your performance. Key items to hone in on include: Activity (how much of each fight did you spend moving/doing nothing), DoT up-time, Buff up-time, DPS by fight, and deaths to name a few.

Lets take each of these categories in turn.

Activity. The more active you are in the fight the more damage you are going to be able to do. In a perfect world, DPS would get into position and never have to move until everything was dead. Since this is rarely the case, you must learn to move efficiently to maximize your DPS. In general movements should be restricted to the space of 1 global cool-down, or until you are out of the fire/poison/goo etc. Using instant cast abilities during movement will allow you to move further as the ability resets the global cool-down without interrupting movement or damage output- but at all costs moving excessively or for long periods of time without doing damage should seek to be avoided.

DoT up-time. While DoTs may be a waste on short fights that result in dead mobs before the DoT has time to expire, DoTs on boss fights should reach near 100% up-time. The key to maximizing damage is to refresh DoTs at the last possible second- thus keeping the DoTs rolling while not wasting GCDs/mana/time with unnecessary refreshes or worse gaps in time when no DoT is up.

Buff up-time. In the stat weight priority example above, proc based class/talent buff up-time should also be near 100%. If you are not seeing those kinds of results, maybe the stat priority is off, or maybe you just had an unlucky crit-less dry spell. Chances are, if you seem to be getting unlucky pretty frequently you may need to stack more crit/haste/ whatever stat your ability is dependent on. This will also display buff uptime from trinkets, both trinkets with “on hit” and “on use” so you can see how many procs you get from the “on hit” trinkets, as well as if you need to be more diligent in using your “on use” trinkets.

DPS by fight. While getting an overall picture of your DPS is important, getting breakdowns by fights will add depth to your knowledge of how you perform. Looking at DPS from a variety of fights (those with adds/AoE, lots of movement, and no movement) will help focus your efforts on your weak points leading to an overall increase in DPS.

Deaths. Figuring out what killed you will go a long way to avoiding the same fate next time. Dead DPSers don’t do much damage, so staying alive is in your best interest as well as everybody else’s.

While there are plenty of other factors to consider (fast vs. slow weapon, 2 hander vs. main-hand/ off-hand, etc.), an understanding of the basics will ensure you are on the right track towards maximum DPS. Benchmarking yourself against others of a comparable gear score will also help give you an idea of where you stand in your learning curve.

Never stop striving to be better. Once you have a handle on the “basics”, constant refinements and testing of different strategies will help push you to even better results. If this seems like a lot of work, it is…but not in comparison to the amount of effort put into leveling and gearing your toon to begin with.