Melee damage

[MrHepp]

I downloaded and installed a damage meter (Recount) for the first time. I haven't used one before since I thought that I roughly knew what damage my characters did. Well, I was wrong.

I went to Slave Pens with the following team:

Level 70 druid tank
Level 64 death knight
Level 66 arcane mage
Level 65 destruction warlock
Level 66 holy priest

I thought that the mage would do most damage, tightly followed by the warlock. They only stand 30 yards away from the mobs and burn them down with bolts. Since I always have to move around the death knight to position him in front of the mobs I thought he would end up at the bottom (excluding the healer of course). The death knight's weapon was also a crappy green quest reward from Hellfire Peninsula.

The result was really surprising: The death knight's damage outclassed both the mage's and the warlock's, and 40 % of the death knight DPS was pure melee (that is autoattack). The casters dealt roughly the same DPS.

I also measured the DPS of my other teams where all members are between level 72 and 75, and found out that both the rogue and the arms warrior did more damage than the fire mage.

Is it normal for melee classes to deal more damage than casters in Wrath of the Lich King? Or am I just using bad rotations on my warlocks and mages?

[elsegundo]

are you sure its not because of your AoE (ie. DnD)?

it could also be bad rotation. but then again, you've never mentioned your rotation.
another thing, affliction locks do less in the damage meters no matter what. edit: just read, destro, so nevermind that comment.
are you geared well for the level?

remember, your ranged dps are "following" you, so you need to target enemy first, then attack. the mage and warlock, due to lag, would target the mob a second later, then begin their casts.

[Bigfish]

Chances are its a rotation issue, potentially /castsequence lag is delaying your casters while melee's are not experiencing the lag due to instant casts returning a successful cast within the global cool down. It may also be a synergy issue, if your druid tank is giving buffs to the DK.

Of course, its not terribly uncommon for me for my melee to out DPS the ranged. I would surmise it has something to spell clipping, which is to say that while a melee may swing up to several times per second, a 3 second cast may be clipped by the spell firing off when the mob is about to die and does so during the travel time of the spell. You also experience a faster reaction time on melee who rely just on acquiring a new target before their DPS starts again, while casters experience about a 3 second lag before their dps starts up again.

Of course, there is also an issue of Melee having an easier time of utilizing AOE moves such as whirlwind, pestilence, etc, basically giving them splash damage that you generally don't get with casters.

[MrHepp]

Thanks for your answers. You're right that it could be spell clipping and lack of AoE. The program I use to control my alts can't handle mouse clicks, so I can't use any ranged AoE mage and warlock spells, like Blizzard or Rain of Fire.

The reason why I ran Slave Pens was that the bosses are simple tank and spank bosses where the damage dealers just can stand and constantly deal damage. But the result was the same there as well; the death knight pwned the casters. So I don't think that spell clipping is the main issue.


My fire mage rotation is Combustion, Scorch, Pyroblast, Fireball, Scorch, Fireball, Fireball, Fireblast

My arcane mage rotation is Arcane Barrage, Arcane Missiles, Arcane Blast, Arcane Barrage, Arcane Missiles

My destruction warlock rotation is Curse of Agony, Corruption, Immolate, Incinerate, Incinerate, Shadow Bolt, Chaos Bolt

[unseen]

Well, to keep this in perspective for you, I had my warlocks at level 66 and a friend was just starting a DK. My warlocks were specced demonology at the time (the felguards were tanking instances), he was specced unholy.

I took him through ramparts when he hit level 60 and he outdps'ed all of my guys who were 6 levels higher than him.

Class balance, heh.

[Stabface]

As far as casters go, my warlock loses on the meters in non-AoE trash situations to most classes, but I'm generally top on boss meters, except for hunters and people who out-gear me.
For AoE trash nothing can touch casters though as long as your tank can hold aggro. I've seen numbers as high as 20K+ DPS on trash pulls in Naxx25 but that tends to get me killed. :)

[Bigfish]

My fire mage rotation is Combustion, Scorch, Pyroblast, Fireball, Scorch, Fireball, Fireball, Fireblast

My arcane mage rotation is Arcane Barrage, Arcane Missiles, Arcane Blast, Arcane Barrage, Arcane Missiles

My destruction warlock rotation is Curse of Agony, Corruption, Immolate, Incinerate, Incinerate, Shadow Bolt, Chaos Bolt


Ok, in that case, looks like your /castsequences are to blame. Pyroblast can really eat up your DPS, especially since a portion of its damage is a DoT. I don't know enough about Arcane Mage rotations to comment there, but your lock is going to see reduced DPS simply by merit of it taking ~6 seconds for a Direct Damage spell to hit, and chances are your dots aren't ticking off on mobs long enough to do the damage they are supposed to. Curse of Agony in particular is back-end loaded.

That said, instance DPS isn't necesarily an accurate portrayal of your ideal DPS. Many spell rotations are idealized for extended, single target fights. The important thing is you are clearing content. If you are clearing the stuff you want, I wouldn't sweat the individual's burden.

If you want a second look at your DPS, I'd suggest a training dummy in a capital. You will get much different numbers than you get in instances, ideally more in line with what you expect.

All else fails, run your characters as individuals with a PuG or something, and try to act like your alts do. Ideally you'll get a firsthand look at what is happening to each character specifically.

[elsegundo]

for better dps measurements, just take your mages and warlock and group with other people. you'll see that if you're under direct control of your mage/lock, you'll find your dps go up a bit. i also think that the pyroblast in the middle of the sequence is odd. perhaps you'll find a better rotation even. good luck.

[MrHepp]

I know that my fire mage rotation probably sucks compared to the DPS a real player can dish out. Instant pyroblasts with hot streak seems to be how deep fire mages reach high DPS nowadays, but I hadn't figured out a way to use it in a /castsequence macro.

Now I bound this simple macro to another key:

/cast Pyroblast
/stopcasting

I use my standard /castsequence macro when attacking but hit the other key once in a while. If hot streak is active it will send an instant Pyroblast, and if not it will try to send one but immediately cancel it. Hopefully it will increase my fire mage damage.

You guys who use destruction warlock and arcance mage alts, what spell rotation are you using?

[Bigfish]

Well a fire mage, I find I generally try to get 4-5 casts off in the 10 second time frame hot streak will pop up. Something along the lines of scorch, scorch, fire blast, fireball, fireball, pyroblast, fire blast, fireball, fireball, fireball, fire blast, pyroblast, etc. With a 50% crit rate (post buff) 90% of your pyro's will be intsant cast. Destro locks seem to function better spamming shadow bolt or incinerate on trash, and using the full DoT rotation on bosses.

[Bena]

yep DKs do tons of dmg.. with group pulls, pestilence and DnD they're pretty much doing AoE all the time. I think I get around 10%-15% actual melee dmg.. all the rest is diseases related. I noticed that on single targets their dmg goes down but on packs they're awesome.