How do you increase your dps?

mostly gear… and chants, gems, buffs…

Improving dps can be simple or complicated, depending on how much effort you want to put into it. But, below are some general guidelines.

  1. Read guides and have a general idea for your class’s rotation.

  2. Raise your ilvl. At your ilvl, I would recommend farming low M+ for gear by pushing your own key because most people probably won’t take a low ilvl dps. But, if your key level gets too high, lower it a few levels and continue farming low M+ until it is unlikely to get you upgrades. Then, farm M+ again at few levels higher and rinse and repeat. Since valor cap is gone, farming M+ is worth it even if you are not always getting drops you want.

  3. Optimize your gear. This kind of goes hand in hand with #2, but know what stats are good for your class. Know which trinkets are good for what situation. If you don’t mind spending the extra time, you can learn to sim yourself as well.

  4. Get a dps meter add on to track your performance. At the end of each dungeon run, see how much dps you did and with which skills. Think about why that is. Did you use cooldowns as much as possible? Did you use cooldowns at the right timing? Etc

#1 Gear
#2 Learn when to use your cooldowns most effectively. For example, big packs of mobs and bosses.
#3 Practice your rotation until you can get within 1k of your sim dps

The best thing to do to increase DPS is to fix any rotational issues you might have. Gear will always make you do more damage but it won’t suddenly turn a bad player into a good one.

There’s the usual reading of class guides but that can only tell you what you should be doing, not what you’re doing wrong. For that you need logs. Log reading is a bit of an art but as a starting point I recommend inputting the log into wowanalyzer-dot-com. (Trust level won’t let put the url). Take its recommendations with a grain of salt but it’s a fantastic starting point. Other than that every class has a Discord server you can find easily through Google. They vary in quality but in most of them the people there are happy to look at your logs for you and give you advice.

One thing no one’s mentioned and I was utterly clueless on was the addon Details! If you don’t have it, I recommend it.

It was just what I needed to show me the damage I was doing on average. It is a good way to show me what little changes in rotation do in making my DPS better.

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I would suggest you try out M+. Valor is now uncapped and you can run 2’s for easy upgradable 236 gear as most people just want the valor and will hand over the loot if your nice. High rated players will welcome anyone with a key and lower rating as they get a valor boost for helping you out and will only take about 10-15 mins.

The correct answer - pick the FOTM class and spec. That alone will likely give you the biggest DPS boost.

Really though, it comes down to understanding your rotation and situational awareness. And for the love of everything good, DON’T STAND IN BAD! You can’t DPS if you are dead.

Confirmed. Also did this in fighting games. Harder you hit the button, the stronger the attack.

Physics 101.

This is literally the worst advice. By the time someone rerolls and gears up, the expectations would have risen (meaning they still aren’t cutting it) and/or Blizzard decides to swing that nerf hammer.

The actual right answer is develop the right muscle memory to perform any aspect of your spec (single target, AOE, cleave, cooldowns, etc) and then begin mastering each dungeon…literally pull by pull. You need to know what each and every mob does and how to handle each one and when and where to start implementing your cooldowns so you get as much use of them while maximizing their effectiveness. It’s dumb to pop a strong offensive cooldown just because it is up when you won’t get that much from it over saving it, but if you hoard cooldowns too long you end up missing uses of them.

This kind of feel you can only get with lots of practice and experience.

Beyond that, it’s just getting gear but I absolutely guarantee you’ll get far more bang for your buck mastering your class/spec in the content you’re doing over getting higher ilvl pieces.

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That part was meant to be satirical :stuck_out_tongue:

The 2nd part though, especially the situational awareness, is something DPS players need to learn. Far too often are DPS players entirely fixated on their rotations and staring at the DPS meter, completely oblivious to puddle / fire they are standing in all the way up to when they die.

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Step 3: Learn to review warcraft logs to understand what the top players are doing because so many people are good at playing specs but terrible at making guides.

Also not terribly good advice.

What the tippy top players do usually has no bearing at all with how the riff raff common man do things. One of the bigger issues with mythic+ keys is people thinking and acting like they are MDI-capable players and trying to execute routes/strats from there with people (including themselves) who are nowhere NEAR that level of skilled or coordinated even assuming you have the right comp…not to mention the tippy top folks have access to gear setups the ones like the OP never will.

Again, the best advice is to develop the most rock solid foundation of class/spec /dungeon/encounter knowledge and expertise. With that foundation, you can better adjust your play to whatever scenario comes up.

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This is EXTREMELY incorrect. The reality is that a purple-parsing “garbage tier” spec is worth more than your average FOTM reroller. People overestimate how much the meta actually matters in this game and how long it takes the average player to maximize the higher damage they would get in the new class.

A player who is bad in one class won’t suddenly become amazing in another just because they swapped. The community doesn’t like hearing this but unless you’re doing World First content, every spec is able to perform in all content in this game. Becoming good at your spec no matter what that is will be a greater performance boost than swapping every time the meta does.

EDIT: My bad. I just now noticed the joke.

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There are a lot of classes/specs where if you’re forgetting minor CDs, failing to stack them, or holding them for too long, you give up a lot of DPS. It’s important to set up your UI so you can monitor procs and see spells coming off cooldown. Some players move button bars near the middle of the screen to make a HUD, some use WeakAuras, and some use rotation helpers.

I use an add-on called Hekili, which monitors CDs and procs reasonably well on any class/spec with a minimum of configuration. Otherwise I have to track down and customize a WeakAura (I never like them out of the box) and that’s time consuming.

Following Hekili (or other rotation helpers) will give you an idea of a baseline target dummy/Patchwerk style rotation with reasonable DPS. Research first to be sure it isn’t missing important aspects of how to play the class though. For example it’s fine on my demo lock, but it doesn’t catch all the shatter opportunities on my frost mage. Hekili is not situationally aware so in an instance as I mentioned, I primarily use it as a HuD to see procs and cooldowns.

You may mean it to be a joke, but far too many people are basing decisions on what to play and, worse, who to invite to keys, based on what spreadsheet dorks say.

Like the data shows BM hunters are a “bad” spec, but it’s a spec that is babymode training wheels levels of difficult and something objectively average to even subpar players can play and still pull reasonable numbers over the MUCH more difficult MM or SV specs.

Please sit down, the adults are talking.

My issue with Hekilli is when people develop a dependence on it. It doesn’t teach you the rotation so much as it teaches you how to play whack-a-mole with the ability icons it shows you. It will give you a reasonable skill floor but it also puts a hard cap on your skill ceiling that’s difficult to push past since it requires learning some spec fundamentals that Hekilli doesn’t teach you. Like you said it’s not situationally aware but it also doesn’t give you a good indication of when the best times to ignore it are.

Which creates another problem. Generally speaking your UI should only emphasize important information and it should NEVER show you incorrect information. Any time you have information being displayed that’s intended to be ingored that’s a bad time. A raiders attention and focus are a limited resource just as real as your mana bar and I don’t like spending it on deciding whether or not now is the time to listen to Hekilli. It’s better to develop good spec fundamentals on your own.

Adults generally engage in discussion instead of dismissing people outright. There’s nothing wrong with what Galabris said even if you disagree with it.

Mor Pew Pew

:stuck_out_tongue:

I would say nice try, but that would be a lie. Downright pathetic attempt to refute what I said.

You’re wrong. Full stop. That dismissive tactic isn’t an argument and has absolutely no weight.

Like he dismissed my advice when I run keys constantly. He’s barely running beyond 15’s but I only touch those on my alts now or the first couple weeks of the season.

Like he dismissed OP, their skill, and ability to acquire gear.

Like he dismissed MDI strats (which I can agree, far too many players chase them), but they can be implemented into gameplay.

He’s also dismissing the fact that many people running high keys know the MDI strats are memes designed to run the dungeon as fast as humanly possible and not what’s typically applied to real high keys.

So yes, I was also dismissive, given his dismissive nature.