Maximizing MT DPS

[Tohunga]

Good day Tankspotters!

I am working on maximizing my dps within all possible situations (i.e. 5 mans, 10 mans, 25 mans), and I'm looking for some advice and/or improvements that I could look at. Typically, I use the rotation SS/dev/dev/X/SS, where devastate is replaced by revenge whenever it procs, and X is whichever CD is up (using the priority of concussion blow/shockwave/heroic throw/TClap/demo). My question is: I'm hitting 1600-1800 dps in 10 mans and 25 mans, and I'm reading posts of people hitting mid-high 2k's. I realize that a certain amount of this is gear (my SBV set isn't especially strong at the moment, and I'm planning on snagging some naxx 25 SBV gear for this), and I could do some things with my enchants (expertise on bracers, SBV on shield, etc.), but I'm looking for advice on changing up my rotation or gear to get the most bang for the buck out of it.

Also, when I pop my SBV trinks and shield block, I start spamming revenge/devastate to maximize SNB procs. I think thats the best strat, but I'm not totally sure. Should I be stacking Lavanthors and Auto-blocker for this? Are people using rend to supplement their dps?

I need helpz!!!!!

Thanks in advance

[Angry Grimace]

Good day Tankspotters!

I am working on maximizing my dps within all possible situations (i.e. 5 mans, 10 mans, 25 mans), and I'm looking for some advice and/or improvements that I could look at. Typically, I use the rotation SS/dev/dev/X/SS, where devastate is replaced by revenge whenever it procs, and X is whichever CD is up (using the priority of concussion blow/shockwave/heroic throw/TClap/demo). My question is: I'm hitting 1600-1800 dps in 10 mans and 25 mans, and I'm reading posts of people hitting mid-high 2k's. I realize that a certain amount of this is gear (my SBV set isn't especially strong at the moment, and I'm planning on snagging some naxx 25 SBV gear for this), and I could do some things with my enchants (expertise on bracers, SBV on shield, etc.), but I'm looking for advice on changing up my rotation or gear to get the most bang for the buck out of it.

Also, when I pop my SBV trinks and shield block, I start spamming revenge/devastate to maximize SNB procs. I think thats the best strat, but I'm not totally sure. Should I be stacking Lavanthors and Auto-blocker for this? Are people using rend to supplement their dps?

I need helpz!!!!!

Thanks in advance

If you see a figure that looks simply unbelievable, it probably is, or was done on a gimmick fight (i.e. Loatheb while persistently spore buffed). Given that the Warrior only has one completely spammable at-will ability (Devastate, which is not a high-damage attack), the only thing you can do to really increase your DPS is to ensure in infinite rage situations that you're queing a Heroic Strike on every hit. I think this is the key to why I can't break 1550; because I frequently do not get off my HS's.

The way Warrior mechanics work make it hard to "do it wrong" unless you're actively missing an ability that's come off it's cooldown.

Spamming Dev. to get a SnB proc during SB's duration works, but I've never noticed it to be a significant difference in DPS count, because I generally find that if Concussion Blow, Heroic Throw or something is off it's CD and I'm spamming Devastate for SnB procs, my DPS dips rather than rises.

I also have a tendency on fights that aren't Patchwerk to just use the Mirror of Truth trinket.

[Strucker]

Greetings
A couple tricks I use to increase my DPS when tanking raid bosses:

Make macros for each of your main moves (Shield Slam, Devestate...) and add Heroic Strike at the end of each so it will always be queued up. You will not want to use these macros during trash or heroic dungeon runs as they may rage starve you.

Also adding Shield Block to the start of your Shield Slam macro helps, unless of course you need this regularly for mitigation.

Hope it helps

[Angry Grimace]

Greetings
A couple tricks I use to increase my DPS when tanking raid bosses:

Make macros for each of your main moves (Shield Slam, Devestate...) and add Heroic Strike at the end of each so it will always be queued up. You will not want to use these macros during trash or heroic dungeon runs as they may rage starve you.

Also adding Shield Block to the start of your Shield Slam macro helps, unless of course you need this regularly for mitigation.

Hope it helps

The Revenge one is perfectly fine if you glyphed your revenge for a free HS proc.

[Strucker]

Yeah I use the revenge on at all times, thou I prefer castsequence for that one as the free Heroic strike buff seems to miss the next heroic strike on occasion otherwise.

[Angry Grimace]

Yeah I use the revenge on at all times, thou I prefer castsequence for that one as the free Heroic strike buff seems to miss the next heroic strike on occasion otherwise.

I haven't really noticed a problem with it, although it can happen if your white swing goes off at the wrong time (since your Revenge needs to land before you are assigned the Glyph of Revenge proc), but it seems too trivial on any current content I'm facing to bother "fixing" the macro.

I like the idea of tagging HS to everything though, I might try that with my second hotbar for bossfights.

[Tohunga]

Thanks for the replies guys!

I usually am part of the 15 apm crowd with my keyboard slamming (i.e. i queue up HS after every attack, and usually spam my next intended move as fast as i can to reduce the implications of lag), and I don't think that this is the reason that I'm missing out on dps. I guess my question is more centered around how other warriors are getting their numbers. Are you 2k+ guys wearing all SBV gear? Autoblocker+lavanthors? Mirror of truth? What tricks do we have working here that is causing a difference of 25% in damage?

[Angry Grimace]

Thanks for the replies guys!

I usually am part of the 15 apm crowd with my keyboard slamming (i.e. i queue up HS after every attack, and usually spam my next intended move as fast as i can to reduce the implications of lag), and I don't think that this is the reason that I'm missing out on dps. I guess my question is more centered around how other warriors are getting their numbers. Are you 2k+ guys wearing all SBV gear? Autoblocker+lavanthors? Mirror of truth? What tricks do we have working here that is causing a difference of 25% in damage?

My theory?

A lot of lies, exaggerations and Thaddius/Malygos/Loatheb WWS's.

[Rukrow]

i am currently getting a steady 2500 dps on patchwork.
i have 2 sets of gear Stamina where i sit at 34khp unbuffed, really not needed for any current content, another set for DPS its in the works of being completes and i sit at 1153 SBV 29khp unbuffed. i used the hit trinket, and lavahorn for my dps set, i shield slam for glyph, then proc lava/shield block and slam away. always heroic striking. and use conc/shock/throw when its up. im working on getting over 3k dps thats my goal

i however stack exp and hit rating with gems/enchants 13.25% exp reduced chance. and +5.18% hit rating.

[Rhyseh]

OK a few points that I can see from your armory:

You're crit is lower than the average tank IMO you would be better off taking 2 points out of shield specialisation and putting it into cruelty. This will increase the proc rate of deep wounds and will also increase your base DPS.

You aren't hit capped, hitting this cap will help you're personal DPS output.

You aren't expertise "soft" capped you need 26 expertise to push dodge's off the table, parry's will still occur at this value.

I'd personally go for the SBV meta over the Stam/armour meta, more damage is win.

None of the above are off by a large margin which means you should be hitting close to these values. You're raid makeup may be the issue, what is your normal raid composition?

[Strucker]

Well I cant think of any magic bullets but a couple tips

I would probably go for a faster weapon, Broken Promise is nice for stats but to slow imo

Your expertice and hit rating arent bad but your not capped yet so stacking some more will help, for instance you could trade the defence gem on your belt for a hit one (You would still be at the soft defence cap)

Thats all I can really think of, but I dont consistently get over 2k on all bosses so I might be missing something if everyone else is always reaching 2k.

[Konfusion]

make sure you hit caped - it will increase your damage as well as your threat

[Korentul]

Good day Tankspotters!

I am working on maximizing my dps within all possible situations (i.e. 5 mans, 10 mans, 25 mans), and I'm looking for some advice and/or improvements that I could look at. Typically, I use the rotation SS/dev/dev/X/SS, where devastate is replaced by revenge whenever it procs, and X is whichever CD is up (using the priority of concussion blow/shockwave/heroic throw/TClap/demo). My question is: I'm hitting 1600-1800 dps in 10 mans and 25 mans, and I'm reading posts of people hitting mid-high 2k's. I realize that a certain amount of this is gear (my SBV set isn't especially strong at the moment, and I'm planning on snagging some naxx 25 SBV gear for this), and I could do some things with my enchants (expertise on bracers, SBV on shield, etc.), but I'm looking for advice on changing up my rotation or gear to get the most bang for the buck out of it.

Also, when I pop my SBV trinks and shield block, I start spamming revenge/devastate to maximize SNB procs. I think thats the best strat, but I'm not totally sure. Should I be stacking Lavanthors and Auto-blocker for this? Are people using rend to supplement their dps?

I need helpz!!!!!

Thanks in advance

Okay, bro, the first thing you do is change all your red gems into expertise. So change your 16 strength games into 16 expertise gems. You also change your parry/stam gems to expertise/stam gems. You're plenty geared bro. You have enough avoidance to tank anything in the game anyway.

Drop accuracy on your weapon to get you ever so close to the hit cap. If you put 40 SBV on your shield you will be right at 540 defense. Not sure if you want to risk that because you may get an upgrade and not be able to supported it because of defense.

You would also put expertise on your hands and bracers.

You can also take it to another level if you're really comfortable by switching out tank gear with pvp gear for the crit and/or switching your mete-gem to the SBV one. I didn't do that because I wanted to stay at 29k HP unbuffed with my stam trinket on for raiding.

Here are some macros that I use also.

I use this for my glyph of revenge

#showtooltip revenge
/cast revenge
/cast heroic strike

I use this for my trinkets and shield block.

#showtooltip Shield block
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/cast Shield Block
/use Lavanthor's Talisman
/use Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker 600
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/script UIErrorsFrame:Show()


Here is one of my recent wowwebstats:

WWS Loading...

If you look at the first and last boss fights, you will notice that I only hit them with my melee attack 6 times through out the whole fight. I'm constantly hitting the revenge macro during those fights and watching for shield slam procs. I don't use conc blow or shock wave on single target DPS.

Now that I think about it, I remember reading conflicting stories that conc blow is now off the global cool down, but I didn't try it. If it is, you can fit that in your rotation whenever it's up.

[Tohunga]

OK a few points that I can see from your armory:

You're crit is lower than the average tank IMO you would be better off taking 2 points out of shield specialisation and putting it into cruelty. This will increase the proc rate of deep wounds and will also increase your base DPS.

You aren't hit capped, hitting this cap will help you're personal DPS output.

You aren't expertise "soft" capped you need 26 expertise to push dodge's off the table, parry's will still occur at this value.

I'd personally go for the SBV meta over the Stam/armour meta, more damage is win.

None of the above are off by a large margin which means you should be hitting close to these values. You're raid makeup may be the issue, what is your normal raid composition?

TBH, a "normal" raid composition doesn't really exist for me, since I usually find myself being spammed for invites to naxxes and OSes that other guilds are running. I've managed to make a name for myself as being a decent tank on my server, and regularly I get invites to alt runs for the top 2 guilds on server, and main runs for the next couple of guilds. In general though, there are more casters than melee, and hunters are sometimes at a premium.

As a question, how would you recommend reaching the hit cap as a tank? I understand gemming for expertise to push parries off the table, but getting soft capped for exp and hit capped seems like a major undertaking, and I feel like I would sacrifice quite a bit of survivability for that.

[Tohunga]

Okay, bro, the first thing you do is change all your red gems into expertise. So change your 16 strength games into 16 expertise gems. You also change your parry/stam gems to expertise/stam gems. You're plenty geared bro. You have enough avoidance to tank anything in the game anyway.

Drop accuracy on your weapon to get you ever so close to the hit cap. If you put 40 SBV on your shield you will be right at 540 defense. Not sure if you want to risk that because you may get an upgrade and not be able to supported it because of defense.

You would also put expertise on your hands and bracers.

You can also take it to another level if you're really comfortable by switching out tank gear with pvp gear for the crit and/or switching your mete-gem to the SBV one. I didn't do that because I wanted to stay at 29k HP unbuffed with my stam trinket on for raiding.

Here are some macros that I use also.

I use this for my glyph of revenge

#showtooltip revenge
/cast revenge
/cast heroic strike

I use this for my trinkets and shield block.

#showtooltip Shield block
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/cast Shield Block
/use Lavanthor's Talisman
/use Gnomeregan Auto-Blocker 600
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear()
/script UIErrorsFrame:Show()


Here is one of my recent wowwebstats:

WWS Loading...

If you look at the first and last boss fights, you will notice that I only hit them with my melee attack 6 times through out the whole fight. I'm constantly hitting the revenge macro during those fights and watching for shield slam procs. I don't use conc blow or shock wave on single target DPS.

Now that I think about it, I remember reading conflicting stories that conc blow is now off the global cool down, but I didn't try it. If it is, you can fit that in your rotation whenever it's up.

Killer. Thanks bud

[Tohunga]

Question for the masses: accuracy on weap or weap chain on weap?

[Rhyseh]

There's plenty of gear out there which will boost your hit. Also drop by the AH and pickup some snapped Extreme, it gives you 40 Stam and 40 hit, I use it in every raid due to my hit being low.

[Rhyseh]

Question for the masses: accuracy on weap or weap chain on weap?

Weap chain gives 3 more hit rating, however it doesn't give crit like Accuracy does. I've gone with Weapon chain as a cheap alternative until I can afford the mats for Accuracy

[Tohunga]

I've been using rhinolicious wyrmsteak for expertise ;-)

[Naux]

Keep in mind that while all of this advice is right on the money if your guild/the guilds you are pugging with has this stuff on farm, if you are ever tanking for a guild that is less geared/as geared as they should be for an encounter having your gear at an optimal or above-optimal level of avoidance and EH are going to be considerably more beneficial to the raid than your added dps will be.