How are you doing? I’ve seen some top players making use of the spec, which is cool. For me I mostly run and time +10 for vault at this point. I’ve only tried 11 and 12 a couple times.
I don’t play KiR, so I have seen some folks say that’s a -10% possible damage/dps you take (assuming you’re playing it right). My typical run DPS is average 1.3 - 1.4m overall. Maybe 1.5b damage depending on the dungeon. Lately the 630-637 ilvl other classes I run with may pull 1.5-1.7, even some I’ve seen finish with 2 or 2.1-2.2m. I happened to be in a +10 SV with another outlaw with a 633 ilevel compared to my 631, and I was only outperformed by 100k DPS (.1m); this made me think, okay, maybe this is typical.
So is it the class, is it me, is it the dungeon, etc? I only ask to try to maximize my contribution to the team so I can be a viable and desirable choice to take into a dungeon.
Outlaw is solidly at the level of “very decent damage, but not assassination” in terms of its tuning. Our tuning on ST is strong, our tuning in aoe is strong, and the tradeoff between builds is not large so you can mostly do both at once. I don’t really think any of the non metachaser specs should be noticeably beating you without differences in skill level or gear.
On the highest end, outlaws target cap becomes a limiting factor making it practically unplayable for specific keys with very large dangerous pulls that need to be burned (looking at you NW), but this is really an issue for the high end gamers and shouldn’t be a major limiting factor for keys in the 10-14 range.
Assassination is tuned higher in aoe, but its setup is more difficult to pull off in pugs/mid level keys and outlaw can keep up with or even outperform it in these scenarios.
As for KiR vs HO, as I said outlaw itself is tuned very well in aoe so even though kir build is theoretically 10% ahead in aoe, HO still pulls decent numbers. Your dps could definitely go up a bit but doesn’t sound that bad. I generally expect to do 1.8-2.2m overall in pug 10s for my weekly vault at my ilvl, and I am playing KiR.
Easiest way to figure out where you’re at would be to sim your character, with understanding that sims are usually skewed a bit high for Outlaw as they tend to assume unreasonably high uptimes for your buffs that just aren’t what you’d normally experience. It’s a good marker for checking your ceiling though.
I run HO trickster in keys and sit about 1.8-2.1 mil on the high end, depending on the group, dungeon, and pulls. If you’re having issues getting within 10-15% of sims, I’d look into fixing something about your rotation.
Just ran a couple 10s today (SV and NW) and was 1.5m and 1.6m respectively.
Easy things I can think of that might make a difference: clean up use of combo point generators, for example— don’t use Pistol Shot when I already have 5-6 combo points just because it procc’d. Use dispatch at 6+ combo points (sometimes I may cast at 5 instead of using SS to get more). Use combo points before casting AR during active combat. I waste combo points sometimes by rushing to use it for up-time, instead of casting a finisher and then AR.
A couple things I’ve thought of but am not sure about: if I am in active combat and AR is currently down, and I have no vanishes, should I wait until I have at least one, even one approaching two? That’s something I don’t do. I try to just keep AR up at all times, even if my vanishes are on CD.
Also, depending on what’s going on, I may use vanish while AR is NOT up, but may be coming up soon, or I just had a death right after using AR or something. It seems to speed things up and get me back to AR uptime.
One last thing, I use a weak aura for roll the bones and I pretty much cast it whenever it alerts me. I don’t keep an eye on specific buffs I have, which may cause me to replace optimal buffs with lesser buffs.
These are some things I notice about my gameplay. Not flawless execution. It’s fast paced and sometimes I miss little things just to cast cast cast, keep the damage coming.
Edit edit:
Raidbot sim says 2.1m for “6 minutes of M+ dungeon.”
There are some pulls I have seen my DPS up to 2-5m but some single target boss fights I may only do 1m or even less depending on fight mechanics that take me out of melee range or there’s a pause in the damage due to whatever boss specific event takes place. So by the time the dungeon is over, you could have a high end of 2-3m for big pulls and a low end 900k single target boss fight. So overall is 1.5 or whatever. /shrug
AR is currently cast on cooldown when low on CP (2 or less generally) for its generation. This is regardless of how many vanish charges you currently have. There is some nuance/more advanced gameplay to this, if you know forced downtime is coming or any mechanic that might force you to drop AR, then you can hold it if AR is already up.
As for vanish, vanish is only supposed to be used if AR is up as its very important to extend AR as much as possible. If you manage to have two vanish charges up with AR down, it means you probably majorly messed up somewhere earlier, but I would only send a vanish of AR is on a ~1.5m or longer CD (as you will recoup this vanish charge by the time you get out of your next AR + vanish anyway).
There are additional rules to using vanish for min maxing, I’d strongly recommend checking out the rogue discords outlaw FaQ or the wowhead guide (which is based off this FaQ) as both have all the info.
Did you sim dslice when you checked this? I only ask because its important to note that dslice is not meant to be an indicator of overall dps for any specific dungeon. Its a general profile with a mix of ST and aoe meant to help optimize gear for these mixed scenarios but it isnt modelled after any specific dungeon. You should consider the numbers it outputs as a calculator to compare gearsets and stats, not really a goal for your personal DPS numbers.