You Can't Always Get What You Want

I am just starting to wonder if the WoW community have now set their expectations so low that we are now able to get what we need. In business it is quite common to hear people talking about setting low expectations, so that if you manage to exceed the lowered threshold that you look good for over achieving your target.

Big Bear Butt was impressed that he got a nice clean LFD run. Most people are relieved to complete Deathwing on LFR and are mightily impressed if it happens without a wipe. Matthew Rossi wrote about the fears of lesser geared players when a well geared Tank appears in their little universe in the original Cata 5 man Heroics.

Blizzard after the mistakes made in the Cataclysm expansion are on to a surefire winner with the Panda Expansion. Our collective expectations are on the floor, how can it not be an improvement on it's predecessor?

Even the Grumpy Elf is looking for excuses why players are not hitting the levels of performance that he perceives to be attainable by the average player. Obviously with statistics if the bad players and the new players start to perform as well as the average players, then the average players then start to drop into the below average category. In theory the removal of the talent trees will reduce the need for theorycrafting and the amount of damage done by similar geared players should be a lot closer. The new mage design sounds like similar rotations and skills with different coloured spells -Blue for Frost, Red for Fire, and Purple for Arcane.

In the post Metal Guru, I argued that benchmarking is subjective and not fact based. Not every gamer has the latest rig with a steaming hot Graphics Card and more network bandwidth than Facebook. It is the problem that we are trying to compare apples and bananas.

In a recent gearing exercise for my warrior, and based on my general poor performance with melee classes, I was pleased to be doing 10K DPS in Heroic End Time. The tank decided that my poor performance was just cause for some trolling. I kept quiet and let the Troll troll, it was not that I could generate better numbers if I tried. So it was much relish when the Heroic: End Time Achievement appeared on the screen and the Tank left group in disgust.

I admit that I am not the best player in the world and I am far worse with melee than ranged, but I will not apologise for trying my hardest  even if the end results look like I am only doing white damage.

I guess some people still need to lower their expectations

Run To The Hills

In the post Metal Guru I was trying to make sense of the Death Knight. I have covered Glyphs and Talents and got stuck at the Rotation stage. Before I try to tackle rotation here are some other things to consider.

Stats, Reforging and Gems

Strength is by far your most important stat. This is the case for Warriors and I presume Ret Pallies or anything thing that likes to smash you in the face very hard.

Gems: Always choose a Bold Inferno Ruby unless a socket provides 20 or more Strength or 40 or more of another important stat. In the latter case, use either Fierce Ember Topaz or Etched Demonseye as appropriate.
Reforging: Reforge to Hit up to the hit cap. Then, reforge to Haste, or Crit if that’s not possible. Never reforge Haste to anything else, including Hit.

The standard figures for Hit and Expertise apply. Just remembered that Hunters will need to load up on expertise for MoP. The important numbers are Hit Cap 961 and Expertise cap of 26

In order of importance stack Haste, Crit, Mastery,

Rotation/Priority

With a little help from MMO Melting Pot here is the list again.

Single-Target

Top Priority: Diseases and Dark Transformation. Apply or reapply diseases as first priority, preferably using Outbreak, and use Dark Transformation whenever it’s available.
Second Priority: Death and Decay or Scourge Strike if Death Runes are available. Use DnD even on single-target fights. Use Scourge Strike if DnD is on cooldown.
Third Priority: Death Coil IF Sudden Doom is up or Festering Strike. Only use Festering Strike here if it will extend your diseases.
Fourth Priority: Death and Decay or Scourge Strike. This is your bread-and-butter.

From my understanding of the term Diseases this includes:

Icy Touch - Infects target with Frost Fever
Plague Strike - Infects target with Blood Plague
Pestilence - Spreads Frost Fever and Blood Plague to other targets with 10 yard radius (AOE diseases)
Outbreak - Applies Frost Fever and Blood Plague instantly
Festering Strike - Increases the duration Frost Fever and Blood Plague

Dark Transformation - turns your ghoul into a killing machine. The icon flashes when available.

Experiment

Using LFR Siege of Wyrmrest -  I attempted to use more diseases than previously. Reading the above I was probably overdoing the use of Pestilence. Scourge Strike and Blood Strike I used as filler attacks, and Death Coil and Death Strike as the equivalent of finishing moves. Death Strike was used for healing top ups.

Results

I am still wearing the  PVP set with 397 Bracers and Boots and achieved around 15.5K overall. I still think with some tweaks to the rotation and to the talents I can get better results especially around Blood Tap and Anti Magic Shell. After checking MAXdps I have discovered that I am not using Festering Strike, so this also needs to be worked in to the priority.

Benchmarking

WoW lends itself to certain expectations of what is acceptable DPS and what is not, however in the process of researching this post it appears there is no definitive opinion or tool to determine what is acceptable DPS for your current gearscore. Blizzard has imposed some gating of content - 5 Man Heroics needs 329, 346 and 353, with  LFR set at 372 but we don't know anything definitive about the expectations for someone who just meets the requirements.

The de facto way to gear up, is buy PvP set at 377 do the 3 new 5 man Heroics swap the cache of PvE gear for the PvP. Buy the 397 Boots and Bracers from people selling the Valor points and then enter the LFR. So somebody with a mixture of Blue PvP and 378 and 397 PvE Purples and for the sake of argument they managed to get a 378 Weapon. What average DPS should they be able to produce without the huge buffs from Well of Eternity and Madness of Deathwing?

I am guessing that somewhere in the region of 10-12K is the bare minimum for the Siege of Wrymrest and around 15K for Fall of Deathwing. These figures will rattle the troll cages, but I think they are quite reasonable. Personally I prefer to be doing 18K + before attempting Fall of Deathwing, I guess I just don't like being in position 17-19 for damage done and when the inevitable wipe comes I am public enemy number one. In my opinion lFR is more about doing the right things at the right time than smashing out the numbers, Higher DPS which comes naturally from gear just makes us all a little lazier.

Mid Term Report

Showing signs of improvement but with some areas needing extra work. I will hone my skills in the LFD, and may attempt Fall of Deathwing if I can get my numbers up sufficiently. Plan to redo the talent tree as per EJ and make more use of Blood Tap, Anti Magic Shell and Festering Strike. A few drops of the Tier set would also be nice.