Why do people do low DPS?

[Tombs]

These are the main reasons I have found for people doing terrible DPS, in no particular order.

1.) Not paying attention to the fight, watching TV
2.) Clickers
3.) Crappy computer
4.) Lack of knowledge of class/rotation/itemization
5.) Stubborn, "good enough", or just not really into the game (Guild Leader's girlfriend for instance)
6.) Some players are actually really young, trying to explain itemization, rotations, and hotkeys is lost on an eight year old.

[Gadzooks]

* Pressing these buttons as fast as you can

I actually disagree with this - most rotations do have time involved, and if you push the GCD, you can screw things up for crits, especially with casters.

Here's how I break it down:

Class knowledge. Do the right attacks, at the right time, in the right rotations, to do the right job. You want to crit as much as possible, if you're not draining, interrupting or anything else like that. This takes some effort on the player's part. If you're raid leader, learn to pull reports for boss fights and study them for problems, like the mage never getting a crit.

Gear. Obviously. But enchants, jewelry, gems and other goodies also make a HUGE, HUGE difference. Are all your casters wearing titanium spellshock at minimum? The better gems? Does everyone have good glyphs, trinkets, and idols?

Raid knowledge. This can be the hardest part. Back when I raided, I joined a new raid team that had to learn as we went - we knew the tactics, but we had to learn to act as a group, and learn that what we do can effect other players. The raid leader and the players have to be willing to learn their role as DPS, heals, and tanking, AND as a whole. Like, what buffs to use, what totems to drop, should the rogue take a poison off because of the WF totem, things like that. Are the casters and healers using their talents effectively, or just spamming buttons and wasting mana? Do the druids never cast innervate on anyone else? See what I'm saying.

The raid I was in was all casual players, and we started in Zul Gurub, and we figured it all out in about a month's worth of raiding.It took a lot of talking on vent, explaining everyone's role, especially the tank - and teaching people what things like offtanks were and assisting were, and targets - it was kind of scary how little some players who'd been through MC did'nt have a clue about any of it, because they'd been carried in a 40 man where mistakes could be overlooked (and usually were).

Attitude. If the raid leader freaks out at wipes, you'll lose the team fast. Patience is key. Communication - you want people talking about what they're doing, not about American Idol - and most importantly, your players need to not be afraid to show they don't know something, and ask about it. I have run with many, many, many refugees from raiding guilds who were expected to be experts when you join, and were thrilled to pieces they could ask questions on our raids, no matter how stupid.

Mostly, have fun. If you're not having fun, it's time to scale back and give the team a few wins on bosses on farm, to get their spirits up. Wiping endlessly where everyone runs back in silence and the raid leadership are cussing or freaking out or being mean is a good way NOT to play.

Take your team, go to an instance you have on farm, even if it's not Ulduar or Naxx, and practice, practice, practice. Call a practice raid once a week in an Outlands 10 man, like Shadow Lab or Mechanar, and practice - it'll be easy enough that if you screw up you won't wipe.

[Gadzooks]

i think a lot of it depends on how much attention is being spent focusing on doing DPS. This is the same reason that some multiboxers fail at DPS as well I think. in the case of someone playing multiple roles simultaneously as we do while multiboxing, especially mixed groups, it's easy to let concentration slip from maintaining an optimal DPS rotation. In the case of solo toons who don't perform I think often times you'd find that they're sitting there in /tells or watching TV/Movie or talking to people in RL or what have you...

It's interesting that you say that, because I've had a shift in how I look at my teams, and it's becoming less important to me that my guys all crit and have huge damage reports, and more important that I am getting consistent results, with good solid healing, so if it takes an extra minute or two to burn some mobs or a boss down, so be it - surviving is more important now than two shotting everything in sight.

I got it by getting frustrated with my current team, a priest, a pally, and a rogue. The Pally was consistently topping the damage meter, over a rogue 4 levels higher with better gear - and the rogues dps was about a quarter of what it should be. So I slowed it down and studied the fights and found the errors in my rotations, and after a few days of experimenting I have have the rogue and pally just about neck and neck in DPS - and it's high dps. The priest can now sit back, heal, apply some dots, and I can manually do her rotations if the mobs live long enough. It's a lot less hectic, and they are a killing machine again. I had to bring my 80 mage once or twice, but it's smooth sailing now.

Next I need to work on threat. The Pally loses threat too easily from the rogue. It's a timing thing, I need to overhaul the pally's macros. The two kill so fast, it's not an issue yet, because I'm not running dungeons.

[Zaelar]

Either they aren't trying or they fail at life. Being unaware of the mechanics on some fights is sometimes a reason but typically if it's important then the raid will tell you, like standing in dead sparks on malygos or in the blue circles on iron council.

Gear isn't a major issue. Once you're at least in 200 blues, aside from a few pieces(usually weapons or trinkets) you aren't going to see a big dps increase items. A full tier upgrade is going to help but a couple pieces isn't.

Unless you have some really retarded spec, it isn't going to be a big issue either. As long as you have all of the key talents the rest won't matter much.

Rotation doesn't matter all that much. As long as you're using the spells you should be using(and only the spells you should be using mr. arcane barraging frost mage) getting them all lined up perfectly isn't going to make a big difference. Castrandom with a hunter isn't ideal, but it isn't far off from what a real rotation is going to do. A frost mage doing straight frostbolt spam and using cooldowns whenever they're available isn't going to be far behind once that's timing cooldowns properly and using ice lance during fingers or frost procs.

Glyphs sometimes matter. Flame shock is very important for elemental shamans, but after that the difference between all of the other reasonable glyphs isn't so great.

Just mash whatever skills/spells you speced for and you'll do passable dps. Do them in some reasonable order and you'll do decent dps(like an ele shaman doing flame shock then lava burst). As a general rule, at least for casters, it's not worth it to stop casting to wait for a powerful cooldown, IE if lava burst is .5 seconds away from being usable, cast another lightning bolt or chain lightning instead of waiting for it.

So basically just tell them what spells/skills to use, a rough order to do them in, never stop attacking unless you need to get out of the fire, and to mash instead of waiting since it'll help minimize lag downtime. It won't be the best dps but it should get at least decent.

[Basilikos]

I used to do bad DPS. Sort of. I say "sort of" not because my numbers were so-so, but because I KNEW I was bad and took steps to fix it gradually.

My mixed group hit 80 and I as using Naive rotations (i.e. spamming primary damage spells) with nothing else. I knew what my rotations should have been and I started implementing them. It worked out a lot better right off the bat. Then, I converted both of my mixed groups to using almost solely macros in order to control them. This is EVEN BETTER. Aside from the oddball proc (depending on class and spec), this is just fine. Each DPSer was doing well over one thousand DPS without buffs. Note that I had NOT finished ANY instances or instance quests when I was doing these tests. The gear these characters used for testing DPS and rotations was half green and half blue. All of the group quests outside of instaces had been completed.

Anyhow, with group buffs, these characters were all doing well over fifteen hundred DPS and some were closer to two thousand DPS. This is a Mage, Druid, and Shaman DPS team. And further more, this DPS was sustainable. Yay me!

Others have said it - the bottom line is rotations. The gear will come, but you need to know your class and how to use your spells first.

Also, I haven't played with any Trinkets. The characters I play with are all wearing them, I just haven't used them for anything yet. I'll have to fool around with them in gameplay and report back.

[Sychosys]

I have been in the shoes of the "n00b" that needs to "L2P" many times. Very little grouping, very few instances, so basically I was always under geared and never knew strategies (reading things on the net is usually not enough, and anyway doesn't compare with real experience). Most of the time people would just behave like jerks, really not friendly or helpful at all. So actually I stopped grouping all together. That made end-game content rather empty to me, and that's what got me into multiboxing.

That's actually one of the reasons why I love multiboxing : If I fail, it's my fault, I can blame nobody else for it, and nobody else is going to blame me for it. I only play alone, with real life friends, or with people I have known basically from release and who didn't forget it's a game

It is interesting to see that all the PUG invitations on the trade channel (which is already annoying) seem to ask for people who already know the encounters and already have the gear. Hhuu ...

Now, it is true that lack of focus tends to drop DPS. I can run an Heroic Utgarde Keep in 45 minutes without one character dying when I'm focus, or in 1h30 with several wipes when I'm busy doing other things at the same time. I guess in a raid it must be very noticeable too.

I know that's why I am here as well! I work at a video game studio so I am not alone in my playing of WoW, but you should see the puzzled looks I get when I mention I am multiboxing for teh purpose of not having to group with other people. They can not understand that I just enjoy playing WoW, I like talking with people, but Id rather play it alone so I dont have to deal with, well from reading alot of these posts, half the people here! hehe. Its a game, I enjoy playing games. I do not play the game to play it how someone else thinks I should

on the original topic though. I do enjoy learning how to play differently/better. There was a very nice guild on Shattered Halls that trained me in druid tanking that I was very appreciative of. The guy had no problem explaining just about anything to me... Just beware of trying to get a straight answer about target marking symbols hehe

[ciscokid454]

I play a hunter generally as my main character(albeit very casual now compared to vanilla/bc), and there's a new recruit hunter in the guild i'm in.
Last night I was sitting in IF crafting flasks before switching over to Xmute for 3.2, whene the recruit start's spouting off in guild chat about the cost of arrows from the AH.
I think someone had 500 of the saronite arrows for 9g50s, which is high, especially if you can mine the mats yourself and get someone to craft the boxes for you.
This lead to a 20 minute back and forth discussion where, people were explaining the cost of raiding to him, and he constantly came up with the excuse, that "unless you're a hunter, you wouldn't understand"...
(the hunter above is constantly beat on the meters by a friend playing his boomkin alt, that's in lvl 70 arena epics)
In vanilla/bc I generally carried abour 5k arrows with me at all times, plus pots/flasks, food etc.
There are alot of people playing this game that just don't seem to understand.
Whether it's why a piece of gear is better for them, why x consumable should be used over another.
This rotation versus that. There are truly casual people that are just interested in loot moreso than anything else.

[falsfire3401]

Lol I should get my friend to email me some of the screenshots he's taken when running heroic PUGs. He plays a healer and his wife the tank, he's told me of many a heroic where a DPS DK or hunter or rogue is doing 600 dps at level 80, with 5+ epics on them.

Umm...when your dps is THAT bad, are you even facing the right direction? Cuz just plain ol' white damage should produce higher dps than what some scrubs put out in PUGs these days...

I ran a Naxx pug once on my hunter, a 10-man, and there was one other hunter in the group. When I observed after a full wing that he was barely reaching 800 dps (and he had better gear than me, several 25-man pieces), I shortly realized why. He kept Aspect of the Viper on 100% of the time "so I don't run out of mana" he said. I tried politely to tell him you can toggle it on and off, and that it only takes 6 seconds of AotV to restore your whole mana bar, but he just insisted that he was better off just leaving it on all the time and it was too much hassle to switch it on and off, then he flamed me for having a "noob" survival spec, that all real dps hunters use marksman and if I knew anything about marksman I'd know it consumes more mana and you need viper up all the time.

I tried to explain that my 'noob' 0/15/56 survival spec was letting me do 4x the damage he did, and then I switched to my 2nd spec, marksman, and showed him I can do just as good dps in MM spec and still only have to toggle Viper on occasionally...

[EvoX]

I'm sure that as I get my RAF groups boosted up to 60, I'll be in a good position to start to l2p the different classes. Thats when I would really like to develop good habits/playstyle. Thanks for the raiding 101 link, but can anyone recommend a widely acceptable dps meter that I can use to gauge my own progress?

[Mercurio]

I'm sure that as I get my RAF groups boosted up to 60, I'll be in a good position to start to l2p the different classes. Thats when I would really like to develop good habits/playstyle. Thanks for the raiding 101 link, but can anyone recommend a widely acceptable dps meter that I can use to gauge my own progress?

Yep, get Recount. Has always served me well.