Raid DPS, can you help me?

Alexander · 05-14-2008, 03:41 AM

I'll start by saying thank you for taking the time to read my topic.

I'm currently raiding in T8, I joined a guild and happened to be in the first guild flagged for VP, but I really feel that my DPS just isn't up to snuff, and tonight's raid parse just secured that belief.

On tonight's raid we had 3 assassins, over 3 zones, one parsed about 400dps higher than me, and the other parsed about 50dps higher than me, and I'm a bit OCD about being on the top.

Comparatively they're very well geared, but I'm working on gear as much as I can outside of raiding, but with a busy work schedule it's difficult.

I'll start by explaining my skill rotation, as I've noticed since I've made some improvements I've seen a dramatic increase in ZW dps.
-I start by auto attacking
-I start off with debuffs, including hex dolls (if named mob or in VP)
-I cast Death Mark whenever it is up
-I then cast one of my temporary buffs
-I cast finishing blow (if the mobs don't are stronger, and will survive long enough for me to get a second cast in)
-I then follow up with most of my bleeding skills.
-My stealth skills are used in batches, masked strike+ pointpoint blade 5 times between every FFU combo and within it, spy+stealth assault are used every 30 seconds, and starts my FFU combos (3 one minute skills are in every FFU combo, Mortal blade is in every 3rd combo, execute is in every 10th combo)
-I fill in down time with other skills, like velium strike, resourceful weapon, or a quick dart back and earshot/deadly blast.

I keep crit potions on hand, and can reach DPS of 4500+ on a good amount of mobs, but it's usually followed by a relatively low parse since my big cooldowns will be down.

Here are my stats, self buffed, no crit potion on:

Here is a link to my equipment:
http://i278.photobucket.com/albums/k...play2/gear.jpg

and here is a link to my parse from tonight (SoH upthrough sisters, ToT, Pawbuster)
http://i278.photobucket.com/albums/k...2/dpschart.jpg

Constructive criticism or tips would be highly appreciated, I know I have a lot of work to do, so please don't flame because of my low DPS.

Thank you,
Bayharbor Butcher

Pexsus · 05-14-2008, 07:08 AM

First and foremost, make friends with a troub, make a macro and get jester's cap for your temp buffs every time they are up. Depending on your raid's pace that combo could be up every second or third fight and yield a significant DPS improvement.

Farm gear every chance you get. There are still a ton of upgrades for you in instances/group zones.

Leave the hex dolls to someone else. At the very least get a chicken's foot and a gorwynian rune of intent to fill those charm slots.

crit potions, temporary adornments, magma infusions, blissful obscurity take advantage of every method you have of boosting DPS even for a little while.

If I am reading it right you have +10 piercing damage adorned on your epic. That is a complete waste of an adornment. Phantom if you have power issues otherwise go vampirc. Also, adorn everything. Even if you use T6 adornments for the items you plan on replacing soon the boost to stats never hurts.

I dont know how feasable it is with your raid force, but try and weasel into a caster group. In a caster group you should wind up with procs from casters(ro's blade/magma seed/malignant grasp), Faerl, Illusory Arm and Bard buffs (double attack/deaggro/crit) off the troub.

My $0.02

Vaanir · 05-14-2008, 07:58 AM

Don't use your hex dolls, ever..
Your gear is quite ok actually, but missing a couple easy jewelery pieces.. do the quests in Jarsath Wastes to get two better ear items, also the Veeshan's Feast series and the Tynonnium series in Kunzar Jungle for two better wrists. Get all of that and your gear adorned and you should be better.

dgelias · 05-14-2008, 09:32 AM

Couple of quick things --

Str seems really low. Is this gear adorned at all? Would throw STR adorns in every spot where I could. Also, from the quick look I took you have a lot of ranged crit crap taking up spots where there could be melee crit instead. Fix that.

Also, not sure how huge of a diff it would make and what kind of group you're running in on raids, but I almost always get more DPS out of caustic on raids than hemo. (of course, I'm a MT Ass, so YMMV)

Alexander · 05-14-2008, 09:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vaanir

Don't use your hex dolls, ever..
Your gear is quite ok actually, but missing a couple easy jewelery pieces.. do the quests in Jarsath Wastes to get two better ear items, also the Veeshan's Feast series and the Tynonnium series in Kunzar Jungle for two better wrists. Get all of that and your gear adorned and you should be better.

Ah yes, those happen to be some of the main quest lines I'm focusing on, I'm almost done with the jarsath hunter's earring quest line, but since I only get about an hour to an hour and a half a day before raids in which I could play it's hard to get much done. The only reason I use hex dolls is became sometimes our tanks have troubles staying alive it seems (Leviathan, Malevolence/Ire, VP nameds especially seem to give them trouble)

"If I am reading it right you have +10 piercing damage adorned on your epic. That is a complete waste of an adornment. Phantom if you have power issues otherwise go vampirc. Also, adorn everything. Even if you use T6 adornments for the items you plan on replacing soon the boost to stats never hurts."
-I have a phantom adorn ready for when I get my mythical, if anything the +10 piercing damage is a temporary hold over, all that's left for my mythical is Druusk (well, we haven't even tried pulling him yet, just got to ekron).

"crit potions, temporary adornments, magma infusions, blissful obscurity take advantage of every method you have of boosting DPS even for a little while."
I do try to do all of that, although when I'm not on much to grind instances/harvest money becomes an issue.

"First and foremost, make friends with a troub, make a macro and get jester's cap for your temp buffs every time they are up. Depending on your raid's pace that combo could be up every second or third fight and yield a significant DPS improvement."
Hm that's the first I've heard of that, I'll have to talk with my guild leader about it.

"I dont know how feasable it is with your raid force, but try and weasel into a caster group. In a caster group you should wind up with procs from casters(ro's blade/magma seed/malignant grasp), Faerl, Illusory Arm and Bard buffs (double attack/deaggro/crit) off the troub."
I'll see what I can do, I know tonight with that parse I didn't have a dirge in my group for 2 of the 3 instances, that didn't help.

I guess most of my feelings of insecurity with my DPS come from the fact I hear about assassins parsing 5k-7k zone wide without their mythical epic.

An added note, though I've ran all of the heroic instances hundreds of times since I've hit 80, I haven't gotten ONE assassin master in the entire time, and every time a master did drop, I lost the loot roll, I have terrible luck. So I also have zero Master I's in t8.

I'm still consistently in the top 2-4 in my guild, with a brigand topping the parse (he's been a raider with the guild for a while, has some good gear) most of the time, and me and the other assassins fighting for 2nd-4th (depending on how many we have on, sometimes as many as 3 and sometimes just me), but beating him occasionally.

Thank you for the tips :D

Edit:

"Str seems really low. Is this gear adorned at all? Would throw STR adorns in every spot where I could. Also, from the quick look I took you have a lot of ranged crit crap taking up spots where there could be melee crit instead. Fix that. "
Yes I do need to work on getting more adorns, most of the slots that have ranged crit are temporary items filling in a spot until I get something good.

"Also, not sure how huge of a diff it would make and what kind of group you're running in on raids, but I almost always get more DPS out of caustic on raids than hemo. (of course, I'm a MT Ass, so YMMV)"
I went from using caustic to hemo recently, and saw a slight increase in damage output actually.

Pinski · 05-14-2008, 10:04 AM

Group setups and buffs for the 3 assassins make a big difference, which could be why you're doing 400dps less than the 1.

Nafawo · 05-14-2008, 10:13 AM

Caustic only does more for him in the MT grp cause of Luck of the Dirge and Blessing giving him a higher proc chance. In a caster grp, our sweet spot imo, hemo will do more.

Gummby8 · 05-14-2008, 10:47 AM

You may be suffereing from the same problem another assassin in my guild is suffering from, missuse of FF. While both of us use FF the moment it is up again, his will do 10-12k while mine will do 18-20k. The difference being that he will fire off stealth asssault and other backstabs rather than saving them for a FF combo. Dont know why you start your FF combo with stealth assault when you can use masked and pinpoint, that way they are up right as you finish. If you are using exacting in your FF combo be sure to hit pinpoint twice before FF, one to start and once in the end

Another thing I do personaly, I never use 1 temp buff, the recast on frontload and exacting match almost perfectly, most youl have to wait is 15 seconds. Also honed reflexes and our dps buff (name eludes me) have similar recast as well. Frontload coupled with exacting is pure ownage (however I use caustic for this combo)

Get yourself a blodthirsty choker, keep doing SoF runs untill you get one. It is prety much the poor mans epic weapon as the amount of DPS it adds is massive.

Do not for a second think that getting your mythical is going to magicly solve your DPS and put on top of the parse. I out dpsed the other assassin in my guild with my fabled while he had his mythical. The mythical only adds 800-1k dps overall, it is by far not an "I win" button. You will see though the more gear you get (choker) the higher DPS numbers will come naturaly.

Go get a choker.

Alexander · 05-14-2008, 11:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gummby8

You may be suffereing from the same problem another assassin in my guild is suffering from, missuse of FF. While both of us use FF the moment it is up again, his will do 10-12k while mine will do 18-20k. The difference being that he will fire off stealth asssault and other backstabs rather than saving them for a FF combo. Dont know why you start your FF combo with stealth assault when you can use masked and pinpoint, that way they are up right as you finish. If you are using exacting in your FF combo be sure to hit pinpoint twice before FF, one to start and once in the end

Another thing I do personaly, I never use 1 temp buff, the recast on frontload and exacting match almost perfectly, most youl have to wait is 15 seconds. Also honed reflexes and our dps buff (name eludes me) have similar recast as well. Frontload coupled with exacting is pure ownage (however I use caustic for this combo)

Get yourself a blodthirsty choker, keep doing SoF runs untill you get one. It is prety much the poor mans epic weapon as the amount of DPS it adds is massive.

Do not for a second think that getting your mythical is going to magicly solve your DPS and put on top of the parse. I out dpsed the other assassin in my guild with my fabled while he had his mythical. The mythical only adds 800-1k dps overall, it is by far not an "I win" button. You will see though the more gear you get (choker) the higher DPS numbers will come naturaly.

Go get a choker.

As I said in my original post, I use a minimum of 5 stealth attacks with every fatal follow up, 6 with about every 3rd, and 7 every 10th, as far as I can tell it's the best possible use of stealth attacks I can tell.

I'll try pairing buffs, seems like that might work well with the jester's cap suggestion earlier.

Bloodthirsty choker has been a goal of mine for a while, haven't had much luck getting one though, one time it did drop I got outrolled by a dirge.

As for dps numbers, I'm not expecting mythical to be a fix-all, as I said, I know of people doing 5k-7k pre-mythical, and I'm just trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong.

icKx · 05-14-2008, 12:46 PM

If your playtime outside of raiding is limited I'd listen to Vaanir and upgrade your wrists / earrings asap before you go chasing the rare Choker that you'll most likely be rolling against 4 or 5 other people for.

Just getting the wrists / ears that he suggested would give you an additional 8 static crit which would be noticeable since your crit is kinda low.
Also, your dps-mod self buffed is only at 68 so the dps-mod adorns for neck and bow would be a benefit as well if you have the plat.

And as Pinski pointed out, group setup and what buffs you're getting can easily account for a small discrepancy in dps between yourself and the other sassns.

Overall it sounds like you are doing things right, except don't bother with hex dolls.