Why the hell can I only just break 2k DPS on a dummy, and only get 1800 DPS in Heroics still....

[Gares]

Ok I am running Pally, 3 X Elemental Shammy, Resto Shammy...

Elemental Shammy DPS Macro:
#showtooltip Lava Burst
/castsequence [target=targettarget,harm] reset=6/combat flame shock, lava burst, chain lightning, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lava burst, chain lightning, lightning bolt, lightning bolt, lightning bolt

Now before all you /cast sequence haters tell me its slower I tried the following two macros as well with an actually DECREASE in DPS...

/cast random [target=targettarget,harm] Flame Shock, Lava Burst, Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Lava Burst

This one I manually applied Flame Shock after it wore off to max effectiveness
/cast random [target=targettarget,harm] Lava Burst, Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, Lava Burst


On the Heroic Dummy with my team I get about 2000-2100 on my shammies with my /cast sequence no BL etc.
On the Heroic Dummy with my team I get about 1900-2000 on my shammies with the /cast random including flame shock
On the Heroic Dummy with my team I get about 2000-2100 on my shammies with the /cast random with manually applying Flame Shock.


Now I understand in Heroics my DPS is going to be lower cause I chain heal alot with my entire team on some battles or I use all 4 shammies to mass heal one char on some fights as its just easier, but when I straight DPS in say Vault or OS my DPS is still rather low...I don't know what else to do...

Lastly Armory of my Elemental Shammies

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Azjol-Nerub&n=Gareb
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Azjol-Nerub&n=Garec:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Azjol-Nerub&n=Garee:

Now I do have a DK Tank up and coming (73 ATM) but I highly doubt that is going to jump me into 3k+ on some fights.

I know I should go the way of /cast random, but I honestly don't see the success of it from my end to justify using it as it seems to do equal or less DPS then my /cast sequence. Also don't question some things on my gear as I don't have them all fully enchanted etc yet, but some upgrade I could use help with.

[Hachoo]

Castsequence will lower your DPS. If you do the same castsequence but doing it manually I bet your DPS will be quite a bit higher.

[jettzypher]

dummies arent an accurate reflection of your numbers. they dont dodge, parry, block, crit, attack or anything. so you miss quite a bit of info by attacking them. the dummies are only good to test out new abilities, rotations, etc.

[Gares]

Castsequence will lower your DPS. If you do the same castsequence but doing it manually I bet your DPS will be quite a bit higher.

Your probably right in that I would probably get higher DPS with a manual sequence ( I know I do when I solo some raids), but never the less all the tests I have done on the Heroic dummies with no change of gear etc, and just switching the macro around has found that my /cast sequence macro kicks the shit out of the widely use /cast random macros and I don't know why.

[emesis]

There is no "heroic" training dummy as far as I know. Only the level 80 and the "grandmaster's" which is 3 levels above you - like a raid boss. Heroic bosses are only level 82. Your hit is only 109, which is fine for heroics but not hit capped for raids. You are probably missing quite a few casts.

Your gear and dps for this dummy look fine. What's the problem? The training dummies are there for you to compare the relative efficacy of rotations/gear for yourselves, not to look at your DPS against someone elses parsed data under raid or other conditions and make any kind of valid comparison.

There's a lot of e-peen waving of DPS numbers, but unless your comparing apples to apples I wouldn't pay a lot of attention to this. Raid buff/debuffs and multiple targets have a huge impact on these numbers.

[emesis]

dummies arent an accurate reflection of your numbers. they dont dodge, parry, block, crit, attack or anything. so you miss quite a bit of info by attacking them. the dummies are only good to test out new abilities, rotations, etc.

Umm, training dummies definitely can dodge, parry, etc, and your attacks can miss against them. Wouldn't be very useful otherwise.

Since they don't attack back, certainly abilities that require you to be attacked (e.g. Overpower) will not trigger. For casters this isn't really an issue.

Dummies are a very accurate reflection of your numbers against training dummies. :-)

[pinotnoir]

There is a heroic dummy in org.

[valkry]

Well, I'm both a cast sequence AND cast random hater. I manually do all my spells, only using flame shock to refresh. On one boss in naxx you dont even need flame shock lol. But yea, manual will always give the best dps result. All a cast random and castsequence macro is doing is saving you some hot bar room

[Kaynin]

I do 3200-3400 single target DPS on target dummies in pretty good gear. Whilest I can reach 4500's raidbuffed. (No castsequences).

Target dummies often do not reflect your 'accurate' dps (nothing does as it relies on many many different things), however they are a great means to find the DPS method/rotation that suits you best. If you want to get the most out of it, don't castrandom or sequence though and do it manually. If you run a multiclass set up however it might be hard to fit in proper. Maybe find a middle-road. (ie. splitting up Flame shock from your castrandom.)

[Lyonheart]

i keep seeing some of you talk about doing it manually. Ok, so how? when your tanking,healing and DPSing? I have tried to do that but there is just no way in hell its better than a castrandom when your having to tank and heal as well. Please explain? I mean I'm all about maximizing my dps, even when boxing. I understand that doing it manually while solo is way better dps, but how do you manage to keep track of everything else while boxing?

[jettzypher]

dummies arent an accurate reflection of your numbers. they dont dodge, parry, block, crit, attack or anything. so you miss quite a bit of info by attacking them. the dummies are only good to test out new abilities, rotations, etc.

Umm, training dummies definitely can dodge, parry, etc, and your attacks can miss against them. Wouldn't be very useful otherwise.

Since they don't attack back, certainly abilities that require you to be attacked (e.g. Overpower) will not trigger. For casters this isn't really an issue.

Dummies are a very accurate reflection of your numbers against training dummies. :-)

i rarely use em and the times i have ive never seen a dodge, parry. i know attacks can miss but thats on your behalf. i still support that theyre not worth more than working out rotations and learning new/changed abilities. good way to check numbers....go find some mobs and kill em, youll get the full affect.

[Kaynin]

i keep seeing some of you talk about doing it manually. Ok, so how? when your tanking,healing and DPSing? I have tried to do that but there is just no way in hell its better than a castrandom when your having to tank and heal as well. Please explain? I mean I'm all about maximizing my dps, even when boxing. I understand that doing it manually while solo is way better dps, but how do you manage to keep track of everything else while boxing?

Well, I quad-box shamans so for me it's a bit easier.

Just test your dps on a shaman solo, do some solo dps rotations and see what happens. Dunno exactly what your gear is like but I reckon you should be able to reach 2500-3000 single target dps on a dummy at least.

Shaman Elemental DPS just has a complicated DPS rotation(compared to other classes) that require some time and getting used too. A method of how to do it in a tank+heal+dps box would probably be to:

1. /castrandom your tank in a single macro and put it on Q, E and F (as example but whichever bind you like)
2. Control your healer with 1234
3. Set you shaman up as
F) Flame Shock
Q) Lightning Bolt
E) Lava Burst
Shift-E) Chain Lightning
Shift-F) Magma Totem

Learn the rotation F->E->Q+Q+Q+(Q)->F->E->Q+Q+Q+Q->F and fit your other characters in on that button rotation to function as best they can. The main thing is, most other classes can be put on one or two buttons without losing much effectiveness, unlike shamans.

[heffner]

I just spent the evening trying to maximize my DPS as well. I have mixed classes though (Fire Mage 20/51/0, Boomkin 55/0/16, Elemental Shammy 57/14/0, SPriest 14/0/57)

I split up my DPS rotation into 2 macros. One to start with DoTs etc (using castsequence).. and my spam macro (using castrandom)

I tried comparing this to just a basic spell spam (e.g., just lightning bolt, fireball or wrath) and I got pretty mixed results. I couldn't reach a conclusion as to what was better.

I did some trials against the highest dummy in Org for 30seconds each. I am guessing that the longer the fight the higher DPS the more "complex macros" will have,given the random nature (i.e., can't take full advantage of the special procs like Hotstreak etc.. that probably make the big difference).

Going to have to spend more time on this unfortunately.

I might try multiple /castsequences with commas within the macro instead of /castrandom (this removes the effect of cast "lag" I believe and provides a sequence) to see if that helps.

Feel free to offer your DPS sequences =)

[Hachoo]

i keep seeing some of you talk about doing it manually. Ok, so how? when your tanking,healing and DPSing? I have tried to do that but there is just no way in hell its better than a castrandom when your having to tank and heal as well. Please explain? I mean I'm all about maximizing my dps, even when boxing. I understand that doing it manually while solo is way better dps, but how do you manage to keep track of everything else while boxing?
Depends on what DPS classes you're using. For me, a DK tank and 4 shamans its not too bad. Mostly all I need to cast on my shamans is Lightning Bolt, Lava Burst, and Flameshock. On my DK Tank mostly I just use 2 buttons, 1 for DnD and 1 for a castsequence tanking rotation.

So, when I'm fighting a boss and want to up my DPS, I spam my tanking rotation on my DK ("1" key) and then I basically do the following, WHILE I'm spamming the "1" key

hit shift+c to cast 4x flame shock
spam ctrl+alt+2 (which replaces the "1" key temporarily) to cast lava burst
spam 1 and 2 at the same time ("1" for tanking rotation, "2" to just cast lightning bolts repeatedly)
hit 1 + 3 whenever I need healing ("1" for tanking rotation, "3" to have my shamans cast lesser healing wave)
After ~8 seconds, spam ctrl+alt+2 again for another lava burst
spam 1 and 2 at the same time for more lightning bolts
as soon as flameshock goes away hit shift+c for 4 more
after 8 seconds from the last lava burst spam ctrl+alt+2 again

repeat until boss is dead, etc, but usually the boss dies after that last lava burst.

For trash I don't bother doing this and just spam a castrandom:

/castrandom Lightning Bolt,Chain Lightning,Lava Burst,Purge

[puppychow]

Just try both, you may find you don't need to manually control everything. Again, track both overall dmg and DPS -- dps is a very misleading number, you may see very high DPS numbers but lower overall dmg, so you think you are doing great but in fact doing worse.

Me personally I tried heroics with manual control of everything and found the overall dmg boost during bosses very minor, and so haven't bothered. I have 3 basic buttons I always use:

1 = my resto shaman casts lhw on my tank. shift-1 my resto shaman casts chain heal on himself (heals group).
2 = my prot pallys tanks /castrandom macro, it does pretty much everything. I use two lines, to always keep holy shield up:

/castrandom Holy Shield,
/castrandom Consecration,Hammer of Righteousness, etc, etc

2 = my shamans castrandom macro of lightning bolt, lvb, chain lightning, purge, lvb. also my mages castsequence (ya i know lower DPS, but he is super geared and pulls aggro if I go all out lol)

shift-2 = flame shock

so most of my fights just consist of starting with avengers shield, shift-2, and then spamming 2 till stuff is dead. ez. And I've cleared every heroic except Oculus and Halls of Stone (haven't tried either yet since 3.08).

I in fact I have seperate buttons for FS, LvB, LB, CL, Purge, etc and could control it all manually but heck I'd rather just press 1 button.

[Gares]

I may have to try this and see if I manage to down bosses faster....I don't know its just pissing me off.

[Vicker]

My fire mage has two castsequence macros. One for attacking enemies that have more than about 8 seconds to live, and one for when the enemy is going to die soon. The one for enemies that have a while to live includes fireball, pyroblast, living bomb, scorch, and fire blast. The one for enemies that are about to die includes just scorch and fire blast. I also used a little "double comma" trick to make sure that a fireblast cooldown from one castsequence macro doesn't lock the other macro when it hits fireblast.

Example of the double comma thing:

/castsequence scorch,,scorch,scorch
/cast fire blast

When it hits the double comma, it tries to cast fire blast. If fire blast isn't ready, it moves on.

[Gares]

Well I did a Vault run with my best solo shammy (Gareb) and I only managed to pull out 2050 DPS, I didn't actually look at his overall damage but it seems low to me still. I guess I really need to work on his gear still in order to see bigger numbers, IE Deathchill cloak, Heros Gloves and Breastplate, wrist enchants etc

[Bigfish]

I don't see anything wrong with 2000 DPS. Heck, I'd call that good

[Gares]

Maybe but I have seen better and I know I should be doing better.