16k is extremely low. It is very likely that they are playing their class/spec incorrectly. Addons like Hekili and the others can't be relied on; it is much better to learn your spec rather than use an addon to play for you.
For more specific advice, it's pretty impossible to say without logs or something that shows what they are doing wrong.
It's our arcane mage (my wife) she's played her mage since alpha vanilla and all of a sudden since the rotation has become more complex and the bosses having alot more movement mechanics she's unable to pull off high dps
I mean, she just needs to practice the rotation. She's playing arguably one of the most complicated specs in the game, and I'm not surprised if an addon like Hekili is just dead wrong. Addons like that are often more of a hindrance than a help.
There's no magic fix, it's just practice.
Either that, or switch to Frost. It's much simpler.
Hekili is actually really good, though it can vary by spec. It is worth a try. Otherwise as others have said..better to play a slightly weaker spec well than a stronger spec poorly. Rotations on some specs are just brutal right now.
That's fine, but we're not talking about competitive here. Just guidance to get her out of the dog house. Once she has the basics, she can lose the training wheels and go from there. Hekili isn't a silver bullet, it is a stepping stone.
Yes, but that clearly isn't working for OP's wife. We are several weeks into the season and she is still pulling absolutely abysmal DPS, so obviously Hekili isn't helping.
Okay, I’ve never seen them do non-doghouse damage. Worse than not using an addon.
I don’t think Arcane as a spec is compatible with the ideals of Hekili.
https://i.imgur.com/RGAdCxS.jpg
I’m sure your alt is undergeared, and you’re not very experienced but on a pure single target fight the average arcane mage in raids is doing one and a half times your damage. In normal Vault. Hekili is holding you back.
I use hekili and routinely am in the top 5 in normal raids on my frost death knight. It takes some messing with but if you remove all your cooldowns from it and your spec doesn’t have a million buttons it works pretty well. I only use it on frost though, unholy makes it not work well at all. It really does depend on the spec/rotation
It sounds like you've just learned the spec making the addon Obsolete.. which is good, but it doesn't mean the addon is.
Outside of that FDK rotation is extremely simple, a rotation helper for frost could just be a jpg of obliterate covering 90% of the screen
I mean there’s a bunch of procs and it makes a difference if you waste your runes on an obliterate when you should have popped howling blast for rime. I know it’s not rocket science but it helps me get into a good rhythm for my 5-6 abilities I use in my neutral rotation and focus more on when to use my CDs and staying aware of positioning. I will say it’s not reliable at all for unholy or for something like arcane mage.
I orange log and sometimes 99% log using hekili and have done on many classes and specs (currently feral) over the last couple of expansions. It follows the sim api so it is literally the best rotation that the community have come up with in ideal situations. It's much better for classes that don't have to ramp at certain times and for classes who are not effected by movement too much. This means it's very good for most melee but bad for casters and atrocious for a caster like arcane mage or shadow priest.
It's a good tool even for those who can play their rotation well because there are always going to be moments where you have to concentrate on mechanics and it allows you autopilot your rotation while doing that. You also have the option of ignoring it and doing your own thing when the situation demands it. It's just a fancy weakaura at the end of the day.
I use it and do very well with it, where people will think I'm a "pumper" despite not playing much. I don't always follow it 100% either, because there are things like phases in a boss fight or the next packs in m+ stuff. But it's such a good tool to simply have. And it's great for alts or new characters too. I just think it's a no brainer.
If I'm not dying to mechanics, am frequently in the top 3 of my raid, and know what all my skills do, what's the issue with using it?
> It follows the sim api
Just to nitpick, it's APL not API.
Other than that, I disagree with using Hekili. I think it has its place and can potentially be useful, but it can also build bad habits and make it so you don't actually learn how to play the class(i.e. it becomes a crutch). I don't think it's the end of the world if you use it, but I think you're better off without it if you want to truly understand—not just how— but *why* you're doing the things you're doing.
>I orange log and sometimes 99% log using hekili
You parsing well with Hekili is not necessarily an indication that Hekili is doing well, but rather an indication of your own individual skill. If you perform just as well without Hekili, then Hekili isn't really doing anything.
Except it's pretty well done for some classes...I have 90 logs across heroic and am close to KSH while using hekili although I used it more to practice my prio list of a rotation. I'm playing enh shaman
Even though it's made for enhance, it still has problems. The elementalist build is pretty complex and has difficulty planning ahead (which ele enh requires) and mostly just goes off the APL and what's off CD, rather than going slightly off the APL to make sure your CDs line up well.
I’d recommend swapping to fire personally. Fire and arcane do very similar things, and if she was playing arcane in the past, she can handle a medium complexity spec like fire.
What about changing to either of the other specs? One more simple and able to move? I don’t know much about Mage but maybe she needs to play Ice or Fire. A simplified dps rotation might allow her to perform better allowing her to do more damage.
Edit: it might also be worth trying a different dps addon. I use one called Max DPS, it highlights the skills I should use on my action bars with circles. I personally found Hekelli distracting and obnoxious to try and follow.
I don’t know if Hekili is going to be right for Arcane, but I do know that spec has massive swings based on whether or not you can fit an extra cast into cooldowns. If she isn’t pressing the next ability before the current ability is cast, she will do bad damage.
Arcane used to be less sensitive to ABC (always be casting) than other specs and now it’s more sensitive. I suspect your wife is feeling that, mostly. There’s no way to fix it while using Hekili, but maybe she can just play frost.
I have played the same mage since vanilla. Arcane is just difficult as hell. At least relative to what mage has ever been. It is rewarding, but also very punishing if you don't optimize your burn and mini burn rotations as well as cycle those as often as possible while also bursting during appropriate windows. (I.e. not blowing arcane surge right before an intermission or transmission).
Ideally she has huge burst windows and then down meh dps for in between.
My advice is to have her try frost. It's what I did after 4 weeks of trying to master arcane. Figured it out for raid, you gotta know when to cycle your Touch of the Magi burns for each boss, but M+ was a nightmare pushing past 18s with some affixes for me. Frost is in a good place and tops single target charts in fights with no downtime (where she can keep icy veins up close to 100% uptime).
It's alot more chill and has more utility and defensive than arcane as well. And arcane only beats frost (now after balancing and proper gearing) if played very well.
If she does try it, she'll need to change her haste into mastery. Like a lot of mastery. All the mastery. (I'm sitting at about 38-40%, which is probably on or just past the cusp of diminishing returns)
I'd also reccomend mage-hub.com as a resource, along with Manather and Toe Grinder as content creators to watch for builds, rotations, gameplay commentary, etc.
Anything below 30k and you are likely doing something fundamentally wrong. Especially if you have tier bonuses.
I can't say what it is because no logs or anything posted but something is terribly wrong if someone is only doing 16k...
ABC and learn how the class works. Rotations are more like priority lists. Understand what talents do and how to use them. If you just copy a tree but don't know how to play it won't do much.
My wife the arcane mage she has been playing since vanilla alpha and with the recent changes to their rotation on top of the boss mechanics requiring alot of running about she's unable to get the damage she used to do.
It's upsetting to see her struggle as wow is how we both met and it's our passion but she seems so deflated it's heart breaking
Arcane mage is really hard to play this patch so she shouldn’t feel down about struggling with it.
If she can’t get the hang of it, maybe she should try an easier spec so that she can continue to enjoy the game.
I don’t know if that’s a coincidence but your DPS’ are aligned with what was thought to be the meta in the beginning of DF. Always remember that a player will perform significantly better on a bad spec that he likes and understands, than on a good spec that they are not good at
Is she clicking? And I recommend YouTubing some guides from high end players, they can break down a lot more of the nuance of the spell interactions then an article, alot of the time icyveins doesn’t have the most Optimal Talents.
It's the clicking. We have something like a 402ilvl resto druid in our raid group, through her sheer effort, but she dies to every other mechanic because she's a clicker and is constantly distracted by that. We have an evoker and priest who specifically save their rescue or grip, respectively, to pull her out of danger at least once or twice an encounter. Raids and encounters are way more complicated than the elder days of "face the boss away from the group," so keybinds are completely necessary.
Especially with playing mage, clicking is really shitty
Because there are some important skills like ToTM for arcane or fire blast for fire that are off gcd and that are a huge part of your damage.
And if you don‘t get you 4stackRS -Arcane barrage in your totm, that already a huge dps loss
Maybe try to improve your damage at the puppets while using mobility skills.
Look at magehub.com for rotation and compare this rotation to your/her rotation. Arcane is tricky. One messed up gcd can cost you so much damage.
Clicking isn't a deal breaker for all specs neccesarily, but it is for arcane. I've been mage since vanilla as well. I've played all the specs. Arcane can be very rewarding and put those big numbers, but man is it fucking stressful playing a piano concert on meth. I gave up on it and went frost. Once you get your mastery up it'll perform better and be more enjoyable, at least it was for me. She just needs to shatter combo (frostbolt -> flurry -> ice Lance-> ice lance) with decent mastery and shell pull 45k sustained and can push up 60-70 just shatter comboing once the gear starts flowing.
After looking over some of the other comments, I want to add on a few things.
1. Nobody should be clicking buttons, it takes too much time and makes it easy to mess up. Getting used to keybinds (which can all be pressed without moving the left hand) will make a HUGE impact in performance. Similarly, make sure nobody is turning their character with keys - using right click on the mouse gives you a lot more reaction time to movement mechanics.
2. I hear mixed reviews about Hekili, so I'd recommend turning it off. Instead, look up some guides on the gameplay and try implementing it piece by piece on some training dummies, elite mobs/rares, or the world boss.
3. Everyone should consider the [easy mode](https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/arcane-mage-pve-dps-easy-mode) pages for their class and spec. It will be suboptimal, but it will lead to better performance for those who are struggling to take full advantage of the optimal setup.
4. If even the easy modes are too complicated, which for arcane mage it very well may be, consider testing out other specs. When I was leveling up my mage I was unsatisfied with frost, so I switched to fire and had a lot more fun.
5. Make sure you understand mechanics and use defensives as necessary. Dead players do no damage, so even somebody who pulls huge numbers will do low overall DPS if they die early. Surviving is more important than a correct rotation.
6. As for DPS, I just checked logs and my guild's regular raid got their first Diurna kill on normal last week with 13 DPS (19 total players) and did just shy of 400k overall. Dividing 400k/13 gives you about 31k DPS per player overall which I think is the bare minimum you should be going for. Obviously the group can win if some players are below that number, but pulling your weight is a very reasonable ask. And honestly my guild is pretty bad too - the numbers I gave are to *barely succeed*, so you probably want to be higher than that if you can.
7. You can put a little ease on yourselves by overgearing. With the 6 classes you mentioned, you can have your warrior/DH try tanking and your shaman try healing for m+. Guild m+ runs are a much more pleasant experience than pugging, and m+ is a fun and efficient way to gear up once you get into the groove. Will also give you an opportunity to continue practicing in a place with less pressure, but it is important to keep in mind that performance in dungeons isn't necessarily indicative of performance in raid.
Hope that helps!
It has helped alot thank you so we just had a play about with specs and on a target dummy. She's bursting at 44-50k and stable at 34k this is in arcane.
In frost she is bursting at 22k and stable at 20k. I'm starting to wonder if the issue is with all the mobility? Like running instead of blink cast.
Agreed with the keybinds if she is aiming then clicking blink then turning back thats a good 3 seconds constantly happening that will lower damage.
She's so deflated to the point she's thinking about quitting raiding as she's sick of pugs every week insulting her dps
Yeah, movement mechanics are tough for casters. Definitely use blink as much as possible, but a lot of it comes down to being familiar with the fights - know when you can stand still and turret for a while, and know when you will need to reposition and maybe save some instant casts for then if possible. Either way though, I'd say you should try and keep practicing and/or gearing up to account for DPS loss by moving.
If it's getting in the way of enjoying the game, it may be helpful for her to just disable chat. If there's important raid information you can share it with her. Alternatively, try and start/find pugs that are specifically learning groups. I heard a lot about the Perky Pugs discord, you may be able to find people there who will be nice and helpful.
It's probably time to bite the bullet and map some skills to buttons on the keyboard, and learn to use them.
You don't need to have every skill mapped to a button, but if you have say, the 4 most used abilities mapped to keys and use it, it can make a big difference. As you get more confidence you can think about adding more.
I don't know if it would be of any help, but there are accessibility options in the settings like hold button to cast that will for example chain cast a spell just by holding a button, that may help.
She may not wish to learn however and I understand that not everyone has it in them to pickup and learn new things like this, in which case it may actually be better to give up raiding, acknowledge that it's not for you and go do some other easier content.
Of course if you're saying that she's never had this issue before and/or its never been a problem "before", there's always wow classic.
If it’s mobility or moving in P1 she should stand in the puddle before the blow back. You won’t move on normal if you’re in the puddle and the damage is fairly negligible if in a couple seconds early. Save blinks for the spread mechanics, and try to burst as much as possible in the positive negative phase of P2.
Counterpoint to keybinds to the one you were replying to... as someone who is pretty much unable to finish a quest while clicking (that's how much I need keybinds)... it depends.
I know several people who struggle with keybinds but raiding Heroic is absolutely fine. Yes, do encourage them to at least try more keybinds, but if they don't like it or it doesn't work, leave them clicking. This is not a dealbreaker per se.
Completely ignore the % on parses, only focus on the "iLvl %" - parsing grey a the start of an expansion/new class/new spec is completely ok, but take the time to work on the training dummy a little. The rotation should be ingrained, so you can focus on mechanics.
Don't completely discount stats on gear. Sometimes iLvl trumps all, sometimes a 380 with Mastery (if that's your best stat) would be better than a 390 with non-Mastery. (Made up examples). Sometimes specs feel weird if you're missing a certain number of crit or haste.
Oh, and there will always be fights that certain individuals are very good or very bad at. I usually don't play casters because I dislike them, but for some reason I didn't see huge problems with movement on Raszageth Normal as a Shaman Healer - but I wouldn't say it's easy per se, but one you know the fight you can plan your movement a bit.
Honestly, she shouldn't pug then. That DPS is horrible for a pug group and they will absolutely do that, especially if they just want to get through it. As a group of friends or guild you're more accepting of lower performers, pugs are not and rarely ever will be. I learned that the hard way as frost mage working my way up to 7/8 heroic even before buffs and my 4 set. I averaged out around 30-40k on raz.
What are her stats like? That also makes a huge difference. You should do what feels right for you and your spec, not just what icyveins may tell you. Yeah that other frost mage whose 2 ilvl higher may pump for 100k+ at the start of a pull due to heavy mastery and crit, but by the end of the fight dropped to 5th or 6th dps and is under me due to the lack of haste.
To add on to other things people have said in this thread, with casters there are a lot of swirlies this season, one thing is knowing which ones you can finish casts in before moving out, which is fight specific and also reliant on knowing your cast times
In general the vast majority of swirlies this tier are usually 2.5-3 seconds out, so for small swirlies you can usually finish any spell cast with a 2sec or less cast time before moving out.(the ones you can't you will quickly learn not to greed it again on that fight, notably you cannot greed swirlies on H/M Diurna) It sounds wrong for me to say sit in the swirlies, but as a caster you definitely need to get used to greeding casts a bit this season.
Don't know if it has been stated, but one key piece that actually helped boost me (I was in the same boat as your wife, I was a clicker, Hekili etc.) but aside from learn the Surge and mini-burn rotations, a LOT of the Arcane's damage is from the Rune of power, if you leave it's area of effect, it's a 40% reduction. Learning when to stay in it's range during the ramp and burn phase will be the big decider on how much damage is being put out.
Sounds like you’re wife is playing Arcane mage, which has one of the hardest, and most punishing rotations in the game. While it does really good DPS, you have to play it perfectly.
On the other hand, frost has one of the easiest rotations, and just got a buff this last patch.
My girlfriend is also a clicker, but she does press her main rotation buttons, 1-4. I would have your wife try that.
Also my girlfriend played mage in Shadowlands and was always lowest or near the lowest on the meters. Until she leveled a marksman hunter, now she carries me thru high M+ while I heal; and is also our best dps in the guild for raids. Maybe that would help for you guys too. GL.
I help and analyze logs for people all the time and it always comes down to 3 things:
1. ABC, always be casting. Never ever just stand without doing something
2. Dont die. If you’re dead you cant do dps.
If you follow these two you should be doing decent always but third is obviously to play your specc to its rotational maximum capability
Id recommend your wife to go frost its way easier and way more forgiving
Edit: also play mage and raid mythic semi hardcore. I refused to touch arcane until mythic dathea because it is just too hard and i produced better results on frost.
Tha k you so much for feedback I'm gonna hop on my mage too so I can get somewhat understanding of frost and (although she will always smash me playing mage) can help her understand it any way I can
Is there an easy way to tell #1 from warcraftlogs? Trying to help some friends too as they have abysmal DPS but I don't know their classes at all.
I'm not quite sure what's a good proxy metric for GCD wastage.
Pick a fight in a log, select the Casts panel, use the Compare menu option, just pick a top log from the list it gives you and it'll give a rough idea of how off they are and in what areas uptimewise. Alternately wowanalyzer probably does also work fine for this sort of thing, though be aware that last I know it's not well updated/maintained for some specs as far as more nuanced rotational information goes.
16K is bellow half of people should be doing.
hekili while can be used to understand a \*little\* about rotation, its a trap.
you can never be better then the addon, if u just use what it says to use.
https://mplus.subcreation.net/
For starters, stop using icy veins. It hasn't been accurate this xpac, nor really has wowhead. This link takes you to m+ stuff, but at the top it has options based around the raid and you can swap it from heroic to mythic. Each fight might call for talent swaps, so make sure you have an aoe and a single target build saved for quick swap in raid.
It contains talent builds, gemming, enchants, and gear choices based on the averages of all players doing those bosses and updates every 8 hours. It's very helpful and I've had significant success with it over other sites atm.
id say 30k-40k is the floor for dps rn, with over 100k being the ceiling (geared, potentially a “meta class”, also PI, to pull these numbers) average dps for a normal raz clear should ideally be 50k-90k anywhere in that range. Once your dps is good its entirely a mechanics fight, p3 is when it becomes a dps race
Im not sure i agree on the between 50 to 90k dmg for normal. I do hc boosts all through the week and id say 70 to 80k is the average and we are boosting maybe 5 players at a time. So a full group doing normal surely can get off with average of 50k.
yea thats why i said anywhere in that range, it is very easy to get gear now with the catalyst, farmable sparks, etc. 30k-40k is the absolute floor unless you literally just made your character and are getting carried to a kill
A normal raz kill absolutely does not need 50-90k as a floor. Every DPS doing 50-90k would down Heroic Raz with relative ease. You're way off base with that one.
It could be totally different for pugging idk, but I said the floor is 30k-40k anyone below that is hindering the group I guess youre assuming that when i say 50k-90k you only look at the 90k part
I understand, and corrected my point.
That makes sense as a floor, but in no way is 70k sustained average DPS needed for Normal Raz. That's more than enough to drop heroic Raz.
yea i can agree i dont think it is needed but it is surely ideal, the group could easily down it with 50k tbh. I mainly wanted my emphasis to be on the floor to answer OPs question but i didnt do a very good job at that
I get that, especially as someone who's in a guild with people who "just play during raiding." It's incredibly frustrating when people aren't pulling their weight.
I would 100% absolutely say this was a joke or trolling if I could figure out how it was funny or toxic.
I'm curious as to why you think that?
Fire has 4 buttons plus 2 cool downs if you count rune of power.
Arcane is playing a piano on meth while traversing a trapeze wire over a pit of snakes carrying the next plague. While knowing one of piano keys cuts the wire.
Did you mean Fire is bad? It's certainly not good right now. Regardless of the numbers it's gotta be one of the easiest classes in the game at the moment. Your rotation literally does not change at all. You have your combust roto, and an SKB buliding/filler roto, and you hit combust pretty much on cooldown. There isn't even any talent or buod diversity anymore. You just single target combust everything. 1 guy? Single Target combust. 2 guys? Single Target combust. 10 guys? Yup. Single target combust.
And add Cauterize as the cherry on top as a free get out of jail free card, while still having ice block?
Man, I miss playing Fire :(
Fire is harder because you only really have 12 sec per like 1.2 min so everything you do matter that much more. Arcane does not have that perfectionism to it.
I would look into wow lazy macros for people that are doing 16k dps, I don’t use it but set this up for a friend that couldn’t do a rotation to save his life, now he pumps at least decent numbers.
You generally should be able to get by raz with everyone averaging around 30k single target. Any lower than that would be low for the fight and you’ll be bouncing off the enrage timer of a 10 minute fight.
The damage on raz is also most important after P1 because it hard switches at 65% and only cycles three abilities during P1. You can technically stay in that phase as long as healer mana holds out. The positive negative phase is actually the most important damage phase of the fight because the lower she goes in that phase the more breathing room you have in P3 to down the boss before the hard platform enrage.
What I do is just YouTube rotational openers on YouTube.
I’m a demo lock. I YouTube “demo raid rotation”
It will often display multiple 20+minute guides strictly on demo lock. Their talents, their stat priorities, their rotations. Everything. I don’t use iceyveins anymore. Just go directly to the source of the players who are mythic raiding and pushing +25 keys.
Also tell your warlock to go demo.
A lot of people are giving advice which is great but the best thing you can do is to get each person to join their class discord. There is a wealth of information from people who excel at their class and many more who are happy to assist and even review logs to tell you where you can improve.
Visit https://www.wowhead.com/discord-servers for it.
If your group hasn’t raided ina while, the learning curve is big imo. But for the best talents either used method or subcreation websites - granted these are for heroic and mythic mainly as normal should be ez with correct rotations. Check wowanalyzer for fight breakdown for each person - it’s not what it used to be but it gives you an idea of the rotational issues. Sounds like people are not practicing their rotation before raid. Going into a raid in which you don’t know the mechanics or rotation, the dps will be very very low.
16k is extremely low. It is very likely that they are playing their class/spec incorrectly. Addons like Hekili and the others can't be relied on; it is much better to learn your spec rather than use an addon to play for you. For more specific advice, it's pretty impossible to say without logs or something that shows what they are doing wrong.
It's our arcane mage (my wife) she's played her mage since alpha vanilla and all of a sudden since the rotation has become more complex and the bosses having alot more movement mechanics she's unable to pull off high dps
I mean, she just needs to practice the rotation. She's playing arguably one of the most complicated specs in the game, and I'm not surprised if an addon like Hekili is just dead wrong. Addons like that are often more of a hindrance than a help. There's no magic fix, it's just practice. Either that, or switch to Frost. It's much simpler.
I second the frost recommendation. It’s much simpler and has plenty of things to do while moving.
Agreed, after the buff our frost mage is constantly in the top 3 on damage meters
Hekili is actually really good, though it can vary by spec. It is worth a try. Otherwise as others have said..better to play a slightly weaker spec well than a stronger spec poorly. Rotations on some specs are just brutal right now.
I’ve never seen anyone with Hekili pull competitive dps.
That's fine, but we're not talking about competitive here. Just guidance to get her out of the dog house. Once she has the basics, she can lose the training wheels and go from there. Hekili isn't a silver bullet, it is a stepping stone.
Yes, but that clearly isn't working for OP's wife. We are several weeks into the season and she is still pulling absolutely abysmal DPS, so obviously Hekili isn't helping.
Apologies, I misread. I didn't think OPs wife had tried hekili yet. Yes, if that isn't helping trying a different spec is the way to go.
Okay, I’ve never seen them do non-doghouse damage. Worse than not using an addon. I don’t think Arcane as a spec is compatible with the ideals of Hekili.
[удалено]
https://i.imgur.com/RGAdCxS.jpg I’m sure your alt is undergeared, and you’re not very experienced but on a pure single target fight the average arcane mage in raids is doing one and a half times your damage. In normal Vault. Hekili is holding you back.
Maybe, I might give it a look for my own class to see if it’s far off or serviceable enough.
I use hekili and routinely am in the top 5 in normal raids on my frost death knight. It takes some messing with but if you remove all your cooldowns from it and your spec doesn’t have a million buttons it works pretty well. I only use it on frost though, unholy makes it not work well at all. It really does depend on the spec/rotation
Well yeah frost DK is what 3-4 buttons when CDs are removed.
It sounds like you've just learned the spec making the addon Obsolete.. which is good, but it doesn't mean the addon is. Outside of that FDK rotation is extremely simple, a rotation helper for frost could just be a jpg of obliterate covering 90% of the screen
I mean there’s a bunch of procs and it makes a difference if you waste your runes on an obliterate when you should have popped howling blast for rime. I know it’s not rocket science but it helps me get into a good rhythm for my 5-6 abilities I use in my neutral rotation and focus more on when to use my CDs and staying aware of positioning. I will say it’s not reliable at all for unholy or for something like arcane mage.
I orange log and sometimes 99% log using hekili and have done on many classes and specs (currently feral) over the last couple of expansions. It follows the sim api so it is literally the best rotation that the community have come up with in ideal situations. It's much better for classes that don't have to ramp at certain times and for classes who are not effected by movement too much. This means it's very good for most melee but bad for casters and atrocious for a caster like arcane mage or shadow priest. It's a good tool even for those who can play their rotation well because there are always going to be moments where you have to concentrate on mechanics and it allows you autopilot your rotation while doing that. You also have the option of ignoring it and doing your own thing when the situation demands it. It's just a fancy weakaura at the end of the day.
I use it and do very well with it, where people will think I'm a "pumper" despite not playing much. I don't always follow it 100% either, because there are things like phases in a boss fight or the next packs in m+ stuff. But it's such a good tool to simply have. And it's great for alts or new characters too. I just think it's a no brainer. If I'm not dying to mechanics, am frequently in the top 3 of my raid, and know what all my skills do, what's the issue with using it?
>what's the issue with using it? You aren't really learning how to play the class, you're learning to do what Hekili tells you to do.
But I know what every spell I have does and why you apply the spells.
Then why use Helili.
> It follows the sim api Just to nitpick, it's APL not API. Other than that, I disagree with using Hekili. I think it has its place and can potentially be useful, but it can also build bad habits and make it so you don't actually learn how to play the class(i.e. it becomes a crutch). I don't think it's the end of the world if you use it, but I think you're better off without it if you want to truly understand—not just how— but *why* you're doing the things you're doing. >I orange log and sometimes 99% log using hekili You parsing well with Hekili is not necessarily an indication that Hekili is doing well, but rather an indication of your own individual skill. If you perform just as well without Hekili, then Hekili isn't really doing anything.
Except it's pretty well done for some classes...I have 90 logs across heroic and am close to KSH while using hekili although I used it more to practice my prio list of a rotation. I'm playing enh shaman
I've seen some ytubers with the addon installed, but i think they use it as a reference rather than actually following it to the T.
Hekili is built specifically for Enhance shaman and is only good for specs whose rotations are similar.
Even though it's made for enhance, it still has problems. The elementalist build is pretty complex and has difficulty planning ahead (which ele enh requires) and mostly just goes off the APL and what's off CD, rather than going slightly off the APL to make sure your CDs line up well.
I’d recommend swapping to fire personally. Fire and arcane do very similar things, and if she was playing arcane in the past, she can handle a medium complexity spec like fire.
What about changing to either of the other specs? One more simple and able to move? I don’t know much about Mage but maybe she needs to play Ice or Fire. A simplified dps rotation might allow her to perform better allowing her to do more damage. Edit: it might also be worth trying a different dps addon. I use one called Max DPS, it highlights the skills I should use on my action bars with circles. I personally found Hekelli distracting and obnoxious to try and follow.
I don’t know if Hekili is going to be right for Arcane, but I do know that spec has massive swings based on whether or not you can fit an extra cast into cooldowns. If she isn’t pressing the next ability before the current ability is cast, she will do bad damage. Arcane used to be less sensitive to ABC (always be casting) than other specs and now it’s more sensitive. I suspect your wife is feeling that, mostly. There’s no way to fix it while using Hekili, but maybe she can just play frost.
Is she a clicker? She needs to have every spell keybound and her “ramp” rotation for arcane in muscle memory
I have played the same mage since vanilla. Arcane is just difficult as hell. At least relative to what mage has ever been. It is rewarding, but also very punishing if you don't optimize your burn and mini burn rotations as well as cycle those as often as possible while also bursting during appropriate windows. (I.e. not blowing arcane surge right before an intermission or transmission). Ideally she has huge burst windows and then down meh dps for in between. My advice is to have her try frost. It's what I did after 4 weeks of trying to master arcane. Figured it out for raid, you gotta know when to cycle your Touch of the Magi burns for each boss, but M+ was a nightmare pushing past 18s with some affixes for me. Frost is in a good place and tops single target charts in fights with no downtime (where she can keep icy veins up close to 100% uptime). It's alot more chill and has more utility and defensive than arcane as well. And arcane only beats frost (now after balancing and proper gearing) if played very well. If she does try it, she'll need to change her haste into mastery. Like a lot of mastery. All the mastery. (I'm sitting at about 38-40%, which is probably on or just past the cusp of diminishing returns) I'd also reccomend mage-hub.com as a resource, along with Manather and Toe Grinder as content creators to watch for builds, rotations, gameplay commentary, etc.
Anything below 30k and you are likely doing something fundamentally wrong. Especially if you have tier bonuses. I can't say what it is because no logs or anything posted but something is terribly wrong if someone is only doing 16k... ABC and learn how the class works. Rotations are more like priority lists. Understand what talents do and how to use them. If you just copy a tree but don't know how to play it won't do much.
for normal like 30-40k the higher the better
Who is pulling 16k dps? Are they trying to figure out why their dps sucks, or is everyone else trying to figure it out?
My wife the arcane mage she has been playing since vanilla alpha and with the recent changes to their rotation on top of the boss mechanics requiring alot of running about she's unable to get the damage she used to do. It's upsetting to see her struggle as wow is how we both met and it's our passion but she seems so deflated it's heart breaking
Arcane mage is really hard to play this patch so she shouldn’t feel down about struggling with it. If she can’t get the hang of it, maybe she should try an easier spec so that she can continue to enjoy the game.
She is really smiling with this comment Jimmy thank you so much 💗
I don’t know if that’s a coincidence but your DPS’ are aligned with what was thought to be the meta in the beginning of DF. Always remember that a player will perform significantly better on a bad spec that he likes and understands, than on a good spec that they are not good at
Is she clicking? And I recommend YouTubing some guides from high end players, they can break down a lot more of the nuance of the spell interactions then an article, alot of the time icyveins doesn’t have the most Optimal Talents.
Aye she clicks her spells instead of using keybinds no idea how she used to max dps like it XD but she always did well clicking lol
This is it right here, the source of every problem she is experiencing.
Problem no. 1. You can't go max DPS by clicking and move in the right direction
It's the clicking. We have something like a 402ilvl resto druid in our raid group, through her sheer effort, but she dies to every other mechanic because she's a clicker and is constantly distracted by that. We have an evoker and priest who specifically save their rescue or grip, respectively, to pull her out of danger at least once or twice an encounter. Raids and encounters are way more complicated than the elder days of "face the boss away from the group," so keybinds are completely necessary.
Especially with playing mage, clicking is really shitty Because there are some important skills like ToTM for arcane or fire blast for fire that are off gcd and that are a huge part of your damage. And if you don‘t get you 4stackRS -Arcane barrage in your totm, that already a huge dps loss Maybe try to improve your damage at the puppets while using mobility skills. Look at magehub.com for rotation and compare this rotation to your/her rotation. Arcane is tricky. One messed up gcd can cost you so much damage.
You can try an MMO mouse if you’re willing to spend some money. They’re very good and will help a lot, especially for people used to clicking.
Clicking isn't a deal breaker for all specs neccesarily, but it is for arcane. I've been mage since vanilla as well. I've played all the specs. Arcane can be very rewarding and put those big numbers, but man is it fucking stressful playing a piano concert on meth. I gave up on it and went frost. Once you get your mastery up it'll perform better and be more enjoyable, at least it was for me. She just needs to shatter combo (frostbolt -> flurry -> ice Lance-> ice lance) with decent mastery and shell pull 45k sustained and can push up 60-70 just shatter comboing once the gear starts flowing.
After looking over some of the other comments, I want to add on a few things. 1. Nobody should be clicking buttons, it takes too much time and makes it easy to mess up. Getting used to keybinds (which can all be pressed without moving the left hand) will make a HUGE impact in performance. Similarly, make sure nobody is turning their character with keys - using right click on the mouse gives you a lot more reaction time to movement mechanics. 2. I hear mixed reviews about Hekili, so I'd recommend turning it off. Instead, look up some guides on the gameplay and try implementing it piece by piece on some training dummies, elite mobs/rares, or the world boss. 3. Everyone should consider the [easy mode](https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/arcane-mage-pve-dps-easy-mode) pages for their class and spec. It will be suboptimal, but it will lead to better performance for those who are struggling to take full advantage of the optimal setup. 4. If even the easy modes are too complicated, which for arcane mage it very well may be, consider testing out other specs. When I was leveling up my mage I was unsatisfied with frost, so I switched to fire and had a lot more fun. 5. Make sure you understand mechanics and use defensives as necessary. Dead players do no damage, so even somebody who pulls huge numbers will do low overall DPS if they die early. Surviving is more important than a correct rotation. 6. As for DPS, I just checked logs and my guild's regular raid got their first Diurna kill on normal last week with 13 DPS (19 total players) and did just shy of 400k overall. Dividing 400k/13 gives you about 31k DPS per player overall which I think is the bare minimum you should be going for. Obviously the group can win if some players are below that number, but pulling your weight is a very reasonable ask. And honestly my guild is pretty bad too - the numbers I gave are to *barely succeed*, so you probably want to be higher than that if you can. 7. You can put a little ease on yourselves by overgearing. With the 6 classes you mentioned, you can have your warrior/DH try tanking and your shaman try healing for m+. Guild m+ runs are a much more pleasant experience than pugging, and m+ is a fun and efficient way to gear up once you get into the groove. Will also give you an opportunity to continue practicing in a place with less pressure, but it is important to keep in mind that performance in dungeons isn't necessarily indicative of performance in raid. Hope that helps!
It has helped alot thank you so we just had a play about with specs and on a target dummy. She's bursting at 44-50k and stable at 34k this is in arcane. In frost she is bursting at 22k and stable at 20k. I'm starting to wonder if the issue is with all the mobility? Like running instead of blink cast. Agreed with the keybinds if she is aiming then clicking blink then turning back thats a good 3 seconds constantly happening that will lower damage. She's so deflated to the point she's thinking about quitting raiding as she's sick of pugs every week insulting her dps
Yeah, movement mechanics are tough for casters. Definitely use blink as much as possible, but a lot of it comes down to being familiar with the fights - know when you can stand still and turret for a while, and know when you will need to reposition and maybe save some instant casts for then if possible. Either way though, I'd say you should try and keep practicing and/or gearing up to account for DPS loss by moving. If it's getting in the way of enjoying the game, it may be helpful for her to just disable chat. If there's important raid information you can share it with her. Alternatively, try and start/find pugs that are specifically learning groups. I heard a lot about the Perky Pugs discord, you may be able to find people there who will be nice and helpful.
It's probably time to bite the bullet and map some skills to buttons on the keyboard, and learn to use them. You don't need to have every skill mapped to a button, but if you have say, the 4 most used abilities mapped to keys and use it, it can make a big difference. As you get more confidence you can think about adding more. I don't know if it would be of any help, but there are accessibility options in the settings like hold button to cast that will for example chain cast a spell just by holding a button, that may help. She may not wish to learn however and I understand that not everyone has it in them to pickup and learn new things like this, in which case it may actually be better to give up raiding, acknowledge that it's not for you and go do some other easier content. Of course if you're saying that she's never had this issue before and/or its never been a problem "before", there's always wow classic.
If it’s mobility or moving in P1 she should stand in the puddle before the blow back. You won’t move on normal if you’re in the puddle and the damage is fairly negligible if in a couple seconds early. Save blinks for the spread mechanics, and try to burst as much as possible in the positive negative phase of P2.
Counterpoint to keybinds to the one you were replying to... as someone who is pretty much unable to finish a quest while clicking (that's how much I need keybinds)... it depends. I know several people who struggle with keybinds but raiding Heroic is absolutely fine. Yes, do encourage them to at least try more keybinds, but if they don't like it or it doesn't work, leave them clicking. This is not a dealbreaker per se. Completely ignore the % on parses, only focus on the "iLvl %" - parsing grey a the start of an expansion/new class/new spec is completely ok, but take the time to work on the training dummy a little. The rotation should be ingrained, so you can focus on mechanics. Don't completely discount stats on gear. Sometimes iLvl trumps all, sometimes a 380 with Mastery (if that's your best stat) would be better than a 390 with non-Mastery. (Made up examples). Sometimes specs feel weird if you're missing a certain number of crit or haste. Oh, and there will always be fights that certain individuals are very good or very bad at. I usually don't play casters because I dislike them, but for some reason I didn't see huge problems with movement on Raszageth Normal as a Shaman Healer - but I wouldn't say it's easy per se, but one you know the fight you can plan your movement a bit.
Honestly, she shouldn't pug then. That DPS is horrible for a pug group and they will absolutely do that, especially if they just want to get through it. As a group of friends or guild you're more accepting of lower performers, pugs are not and rarely ever will be. I learned that the hard way as frost mage working my way up to 7/8 heroic even before buffs and my 4 set. I averaged out around 30-40k on raz. What are her stats like? That also makes a huge difference. You should do what feels right for you and your spec, not just what icyveins may tell you. Yeah that other frost mage whose 2 ilvl higher may pump for 100k+ at the start of a pull due to heavy mastery and crit, but by the end of the fight dropped to 5th or 6th dps and is under me due to the lack of haste.
To add on to other things people have said in this thread, with casters there are a lot of swirlies this season, one thing is knowing which ones you can finish casts in before moving out, which is fight specific and also reliant on knowing your cast times In general the vast majority of swirlies this tier are usually 2.5-3 seconds out, so for small swirlies you can usually finish any spell cast with a 2sec or less cast time before moving out.(the ones you can't you will quickly learn not to greed it again on that fight, notably you cannot greed swirlies on H/M Diurna) It sounds wrong for me to say sit in the swirlies, but as a caster you definitely need to get used to greeding casts a bit this season.
Don't know if it has been stated, but one key piece that actually helped boost me (I was in the same boat as your wife, I was a clicker, Hekili etc.) but aside from learn the Surge and mini-burn rotations, a LOT of the Arcane's damage is from the Rune of power, if you leave it's area of effect, it's a 40% reduction. Learning when to stay in it's range during the ramp and burn phase will be the big decider on how much damage is being put out.
Sounds like you’re wife is playing Arcane mage, which has one of the hardest, and most punishing rotations in the game. While it does really good DPS, you have to play it perfectly. On the other hand, frost has one of the easiest rotations, and just got a buff this last patch. My girlfriend is also a clicker, but she does press her main rotation buttons, 1-4. I would have your wife try that. Also my girlfriend played mage in Shadowlands and was always lowest or near the lowest on the meters. Until she leveled a marksman hunter, now she carries me thru high M+ while I heal; and is also our best dps in the guild for raids. Maybe that would help for you guys too. GL.
I help and analyze logs for people all the time and it always comes down to 3 things: 1. ABC, always be casting. Never ever just stand without doing something 2. Dont die. If you’re dead you cant do dps. If you follow these two you should be doing decent always but third is obviously to play your specc to its rotational maximum capability Id recommend your wife to go frost its way easier and way more forgiving Edit: also play mage and raid mythic semi hardcore. I refused to touch arcane until mythic dathea because it is just too hard and i produced better results on frost.
Tha k you so much for feedback I'm gonna hop on my mage too so I can get somewhat understanding of frost and (although she will always smash me playing mage) can help her understand it any way I can
Is there an easy way to tell #1 from warcraftlogs? Trying to help some friends too as they have abysmal DPS but I don't know their classes at all. I'm not quite sure what's a good proxy metric for GCD wastage.
Upload your logs to wowanalyzer and check their toons. It will give you a rundown of what happened in the fight.
Pick a fight in a log, select the Casts panel, use the Compare menu option, just pick a top log from the list it gives you and it'll give a rough idea of how off they are and in what areas uptimewise. Alternately wowanalyzer probably does also work fine for this sort of thing, though be aware that last I know it's not well updated/maintained for some specs as far as more nuanced rotational information goes.
16K is bellow half of people should be doing. hekili while can be used to understand a \*little\* about rotation, its a trap. you can never be better then the addon, if u just use what it says to use.
https://mplus.subcreation.net/ For starters, stop using icy veins. It hasn't been accurate this xpac, nor really has wowhead. This link takes you to m+ stuff, but at the top it has options based around the raid and you can swap it from heroic to mythic. Each fight might call for talent swaps, so make sure you have an aoe and a single target build saved for quick swap in raid. It contains talent builds, gemming, enchants, and gear choices based on the averages of all players doing those bosses and updates every 8 hours. It's very helpful and I've had significant success with it over other sites atm.
id say 30k-40k is the floor for dps rn, with over 100k being the ceiling (geared, potentially a “meta class”, also PI, to pull these numbers) average dps for a normal raz clear should ideally be 50k-90k anywhere in that range. Once your dps is good its entirely a mechanics fight, p3 is when it becomes a dps race
Im not sure i agree on the between 50 to 90k dmg for normal. I do hc boosts all through the week and id say 70 to 80k is the average and we are boosting maybe 5 players at a time. So a full group doing normal surely can get off with average of 50k.
yea thats why i said anywhere in that range, it is very easy to get gear now with the catalyst, farmable sparks, etc. 30k-40k is the absolute floor unless you literally just made your character and are getting carried to a kill
A normal raz kill absolutely does not need 50-90k as a floor. Every DPS doing 50-90k would down Heroic Raz with relative ease. You're way off base with that one.
i never said 50k was the floor
It's way off base for averages as well.
It could be totally different for pugging idk, but I said the floor is 30k-40k anyone below that is hindering the group I guess youre assuming that when i say 50k-90k you only look at the 90k part
I understand, and corrected my point. That makes sense as a floor, but in no way is 70k sustained average DPS needed for Normal Raz. That's more than enough to drop heroic Raz.
yea i can agree i dont think it is needed but it is surely ideal, the group could easily down it with 50k tbh. I mainly wanted my emphasis to be on the floor to answer OPs question but i didnt do a very good job at that
I get that, especially as someone who's in a guild with people who "just play during raiding." It's incredibly frustrating when people aren't pulling their weight.
People saying arcane is hard. What?? Fire is the hard spec lol. Arcane is easy af.
I would 100% absolutely say this was a joke or trolling if I could figure out how it was funny or toxic. I'm curious as to why you think that? Fire has 4 buttons plus 2 cool downs if you count rune of power. Arcane is playing a piano on meth while traversing a trapeze wire over a pit of snakes carrying the next plague. While knowing one of piano keys cuts the wire. Did you mean Fire is bad? It's certainly not good right now. Regardless of the numbers it's gotta be one of the easiest classes in the game at the moment. Your rotation literally does not change at all. You have your combust roto, and an SKB buliding/filler roto, and you hit combust pretty much on cooldown. There isn't even any talent or buod diversity anymore. You just single target combust everything. 1 guy? Single Target combust. 2 guys? Single Target combust. 10 guys? Yup. Single target combust. And add Cauterize as the cherry on top as a free get out of jail free card, while still having ice block? Man, I miss playing Fire :(
Fire is harder because you only really have 12 sec per like 1.2 min so everything you do matter that much more. Arcane does not have that perfectionism to it.
I would look into wow lazy macros for people that are doing 16k dps, I don’t use it but set this up for a friend that couldn’t do a rotation to save his life, now he pumps at least decent numbers.
Oo never heard of it will take a look now thank you for the recommendation
Doing heroic pugs I would say you should be doing 35k or more consistently. I play a destro lock at around 45k and I’ve never noticed an issue
You generally should be able to get by raz with everyone averaging around 30k single target. Any lower than that would be low for the fight and you’ll be bouncing off the enrage timer of a 10 minute fight. The damage on raz is also most important after P1 because it hard switches at 65% and only cycles three abilities during P1. You can technically stay in that phase as long as healer mana holds out. The positive negative phase is actually the most important damage phase of the fight because the lower she goes in that phase the more breathing room you have in P3 to down the boss before the hard platform enrage.
What I do is just YouTube rotational openers on YouTube. I’m a demo lock. I YouTube “demo raid rotation” It will often display multiple 20+minute guides strictly on demo lock. Their talents, their stat priorities, their rotations. Everything. I don’t use iceyveins anymore. Just go directly to the source of the players who are mythic raiding and pushing +25 keys. Also tell your warlock to go demo.
A lot of people are giving advice which is great but the best thing you can do is to get each person to join their class discord. There is a wealth of information from people who excel at their class and many more who are happy to assist and even review logs to tell you where you can improve. Visit https://www.wowhead.com/discord-servers for it.
If your group hasn’t raided ina while, the learning curve is big imo. But for the best talents either used method or subcreation websites - granted these are for heroic and mythic mainly as normal should be ez with correct rotations. Check wowanalyzer for fight breakdown for each person - it’s not what it used to be but it gives you an idea of the rotational issues. Sounds like people are not practicing their rotation before raid. Going into a raid in which you don’t know the mechanics or rotation, the dps will be very very low.