Why do people do low DPS?

[Tonuss]

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...

That always amazes me with hunters. We had a hunter like that in our ZG runs way back when, it was a young boy IRL (and a nice kid) who would be near the bottom of the DPS meters whenever he joined us. And by near the bottom, I mean near the BOTTOM. Holy priests who would cast the occasional DPS spell were close to his damage sometimes.

I mean, you're a hunter. If the only thing you do is send your pet and hit auto-shot, you should do XXX DPS. How can you be doing HALF of that? The only way is if you're not even attacking half the time!!!

[Clone]

I used to be a guild leader in a semi hardcore guild. We had a few people in the guild who where not up to the same level as our top dps. I took them and the top dps aside and asked the top dps to make a macro which best matched their cast rotations and put it in a cast sequence. Spec's werent debateable in that guild so it was either the low dps wasnt pushing the right spells at the right time, where clicking or had a bad pc (low fps).

The macros where given to the low dps people and told to be bound to key 1 on the keyboard. Then the macro was to be spammed 8+times per second for the whole fight. The top dps people where also using the macro to dps. When we tried it on a boss fight we no longer had any low dpsers. They all came out about the same. This was slightly lower than it would be if people where pressing the buttons manually, but it got over the block in the minds of the low dps people that it was all about gear/having no life.

After the low dps people saw how the macro worked they then (with help from the high dpsers). Learned to press the buttons manually and most of them did improve their dps then quite dramatically. There where still a couple of people whos dps was lacking but I do think it was because of pc/connection issues there.

I do think for the most part though that the problem is with those low dps people, they are just happy to accept that player X is better/has no life/better gear etc. Rather than do the research to maximise their own dps.

Ive done some pug raids with my ele shamans in Wotlk and I just used the same macro as I use while boxing for my dps. Thats because I was learning tactics and didnt want to make any mistakes (Im usually a min/max whore). My dps was always in the top 5 for 25 man raids. Couple of times I was first (Vs far better geared players).

So in summary I dont think Ill ever understand how some people are so bad at this game, but there is hope of improving people if you can get them to follow simple instructions. If you cant get them to do that then you definately need to consider wether you and the rest of your raid group are going to be happy carrying said people for the rest of your raiding days.

[Bot]

i had a couple of good friends in a guild that did very poor dps. we're talking 5-600 at lvl 80. the first step i took was in private individually asking them if they new what the meters that all the noobs always post after every trash pull meant. they both said no and i explained that it was the damage per second meter and asked if they new why they were so low on them.

well, as expected, neither had a clue. so started my quest to figure it out. i started off by finding a few numbers such as target hit ratings and whatnot and some basic rotations and specs. both were fully invested in only a single tree, and severely under hit cap. then i started telling them were i was finding all this great info. now theyve gone from totally clueless to decent well mannered very competent dps with only a little proding on my part. and now i cant keep them off of elitist jerks. they actually like reading the wws parses as well and often find things i miss.

also keep in mind not everyone has even heard about wowhead let alone sites like EJ, wow-heroes, wws, maxdps or even RAWR. so it may not be just laziness. hell some people dont even know what addons are.

so imho just be tactful and private about it and be as helpful as posible and eventually they usually come around.

[Drew]

I guess you could say I'm one of the "clueless but trying to change" ones. I mostly play solo, or group with people in my casual guild, and we do pretty well. None of us are epically geared, and there are only 2 80s among us. (I'm not one of them, though my just-about-74 Druid will be 80 next week sometime.)

I've started using recount to track my DPS, and downloaded RAWR to check out my gear, but there's still one thing I don't know - how much DPS should I be doing? I won't be in Uludar epics anytime soon, and the best I'm looking at right now is a full set of Eviscerator's Battlegear that I'll be crafting myself once I skill up a few more points and get all the leather.

Here's what RAWR says about me now (at level 73):

Overall Points: 2120.311
DPS Points: 1903.32
Survivability Points: 216.99

Optimal Rotation DPS: 1903.32
Custom Rotation DPS: 1140.383

After loading up a full Eviscerator Set and setting the talents to lvl 80 Cat, I get this:

Overall Points: 3570.162
DPS Points: 3341.272
Survivability Points: 228.89

Optimal Rotation DPS: 3341.272
Custom Rotation DPS: 1764.553

Right now my recount average is about 520 or so, well below what RAWR's telling me. The thing is, RAWR says to keep up a 4 point Savage Roar - a spell I don't get until level 75! I know I can't come close to that 1903 right now, but with the Eviscerator Set, Savage Roar and level 80 talent points, is that 3341 really something I can pull down?

[MrHeppman]

Right now my recount average is about 520 or so, well below what RAWR's telling me. The thing is, RAWR says to keep up a 4 point Savage Roar - a spell I don't get until level 75! I know I can't come close to that 1903 right now, but with the Eviscerator Set, Savage Roar and level 80 talent points, is that 3341 really something I can pull down?

Feral dps is commonly viewed as the hardest dps spec, so it's not so easy to meet the optimal rotation dps numbers. You have to count combat points while keeping track of four timers, and it can give anyone a migraine.

When my cat dinged level 80 a couple of days ago I did 1600 dps on a training dummy in questing greens and blues. Then i crafted a couple of epics (shoulders, belt and the Titansteel destroyer mace), downloaded an addon that helped my keep track of my timers and - viola! - i did 3600 dps on the dummy. I beat fully naxx-geared dps on my first 5-man heroic boss fight. The total dps is much lower, usually 1800-1900, and I can't reach 3600 on boss fights since it's hard to keep an optimal rotation up when having to move and look for other things, but I usually pull out 2500-3000 dps on bosses.