Here’s all the stuff that doesn’t really fit into the other guides. A lot of this will be techniques and addons to optimize your gameplay to its upper limit. Currently, this post is just a list. Feel free to either google unfamiliar terms, or ping us in Discord for an explanation of what these terms mean. We may come back here eventually and expand upon these ideas over time.

Stuff includes:

• Maximizing Cooldowns/Minimizing Downtime
  • Optimizing ABC’s
    • Proper Positioning
      • Under ideal circumstances, every player can maximize their dps to their fullest potential when they don’t have to move. Unfortunately, mechanics often get in the way. Proper positioning is a matter of minimizing or eliminating the amount of distance you need to move to safely react to an individual mechanic. Keep in mind that not every mechanic needs to be brought super far out. Refer to the ‘Rotation while moving’ bullet for dancing around the boss or keeping your damage up while dodging.
    • Keybinds
      • Using keybinds will always provide a higher damage output over directly clicking your spells and abilities. You don’t have to aim your mouse and your eyes will spend less time looking at your action bars instead of the fight. Keep in mind for certain specs that it will be necessary to use more than just the 1-6 or even shift + 1-6 keys for all of your rotational spells.
    • Stutterstepping
      • Stutterstepping is an advanced technique used to optimize uptime while moving. To perform a stutterstep, you’ll need to move as soon as the global cooldown starts from you casting an instant cast spell and then start casting as soon as that global cooldown ends. Rinse and repeat until you get to where you need to be. When performed correctly, you are able to split your movement into chunks based on your rotation. The overall movement will, of course, take longer, but it’ll help prevent large gaps in your rotation due to large periods of movement. It won’t be ideal for every fight, but it’ll help you maintain your rotation regardless.
    • DoT Uptime
      • With select classes, maintaining as close to 100% uptime as possible on your DoTs is paramount to your success. If you’re struggling to maintain high uptime, something in the rotation is getting goobered somewhere and no amount of gear will be able to fix it on its own. If you’re having trouble tracking when your DoTs are falling off, there are likely several Weak Auras or addons that can help, especially for fights where your targets are spread apart.
    • Pooling
      • Similarly to DoT Uptime, Pooling affects certain classes in a different way. This mainly applies to specs that naturally generate their resources at a steady rate. To pool means to hold off on pressing buttons so that when you pop your cooldowns, you are able to maximize your output during the entire duration of the cooldown. A major example of this is Feral Druid, you’ll want to be pooling every time your energy every time you use your Ferocious Bite finisher since it’ll deal 100% increased damage if cast at 50 energy or higher.
    • Mouseover Interact
      • Mouseover Interact is an option available in the keybinds that would allow you to interact with whatever your mouse is hovering over, instead of having to click it. Doing this with an @focus macro would allow you to use something like a Warlock’s Demonic Gateway using a keybind, provided that you had the Gateway set as your focus and you used the interact keybind while hovering over your focus, for example.
    • Click to Move (featured on Mythic Carapace)
      • In tandem with the Mouseover interact, the Click to Move option located in the interface settings would make it so that right-clicking would move the character to the location clicked or even interact with an object from a distance (if an object was clicked). This would also have an interesting interaction with Mouseover Interact and something set with your focus. From the previous example, using the Mouseover Interact on your Focus would cause you to walk over to the Gateway and use it, regardless of the number of people standing on it. Click to Move + Mouseover Interact is also handy for open-world movement as well, since it can walk you to lootable bodies.
    • Rotation while moving
      • Stop Backpedaling (very few scenarios where it’s good to do)
        • Backpedaling is best used as a tank where you need to slowly kite something backwards while precisely moving whatever you’re tanking, or any other situation where that precise movement shines.
        • Backpedaling should not be used if you really gotta be somewhere that isn’t your current position. Mechanics attached to players should not be backpedaled slowly out of the group.
      • Be comfortable using your movement keys in the middle of your rotation (remember that clicking both the left and right mouse buttons will run you forward)
        • This mainly involves being comfortable strafing left-to-right and vice versa for melee.
        • For ranged, this involves making sure you’re still able to cast your spells while moving (if your spells require facing the target) or if you need to pool resources so you can fire off instant casts for every global you need to move.
  • Target swapping
    • Tab Targeting
      • Tab Targeting is the quick and easy way to switch between different targets. It’s keybound to your Tab key by default, and it will cycle through targets in a set order. Shift + Tab can be used to cycle in reverse. Do know that some targets may be too high vertically to be caught by Tab Targetting and may need to be manually targeted via clicking them.
    • Focus Macros
      • These are macros that affect your focus target. You can use the [@focus] parameter in macros to enable this. These are best used for when you know for sure a certain target is going to take big damage or for when you need to hit a different target without actually targeting it. Example: /cast [@focus] Blessing of Protection.
    • Mouseover Macros
      • Mouseover macros are often seen on healers and function similarly to Focus macros. These are more suited for hitting multiple targets one at a time instead of just a single target. Example: /cast [@mouseover,exists] Rejuvenation; Wild Growth. This macro will cast Rejuvenation on a single target your mouse is over, or if there is no target, it’ll instead cast Wild Growth on whichever character you currently have targeted.
• Useful Raid Info (under Interface -> Raid Profiles)
  • Enable Raid-Style Party Frames
  • Group your raid frames (enable Keep Groups Together)
  • Display Main Tank and Assist
  • Make your frames be able to show people in 5-8
  • Show Debuffs
  • Show Health Remaining (in one way or another)
• See more mechanics
  • Adjust your brightness so everything isn’t dark in Revendreth or blinding on Bastion
  • Go to System -> Graphics -> Projected Textures -> Enabled
    • Adjust the UI scaling so you see more
  • Unclutter your User Interface so you can see what’s going on
• Unlock Flying
•  Pre-pull
  • Cooldown Timing
    • Opener (More pve focused)
    • Set-Ups (More pvp focused)
• Look both ways before taking the brez
  • Check for the small, white circle on the ground; this is where the brez was cast and shows where you’ll be brought back
• Don’t outrange your healers
• Update your graphics drivers
• Important Racial abilities to remember in m+
  • Arcane Torrent (aoe magic dispel)
  • Shadowmeld (personal stealth regardless of class)
• Don’t cover the lock gateway with your body
• Traversing sites (know what you’re looking for)
  • Herodamage/Bloodmallet (ideal gear from a bis list, remember to sim)
  • Murlok.io/Lootdistrict (grain of salt, need context of why someone has a certain build, don’t follow to a T)
    • Arena Meta Comp Lists (Can be found on Wowhead and/or Icyveins, check if it’s up-to-date)
• Addons
  • Back-up your addons or else
    • Simcraft (https://www.ministryofdefense.net/quickguide-to-simming/)
    • Weakauras (https://wago.io/)
      • Weakauras Companion App (https://weakauras.wtf/)
    • Venture Plan Mission Table Addon (https://www.townlong-yak.com/addons/venture-plan)
    • ElvUI
    • Other Addons (dungeons stuff, pvp stuff)

Updated for Dragonflight Prepatch: 11/20/22

Welcome to “Improving your DPS: Revisited”. Some of you may remember the “Improving your DPS” guide that Quetzie wrote during Uldir to help us improve as we moved into harder fights (remember dipping our toe into Mythic for the first time? Ah, nostalgia!). Consider this the successor guide as we move into a brand-new expansion and hope to hit the ground running as a more well organized group. This guide is co-written by Quetzie (Mythic Raid Lead and Person-Who-Thinks-Alts-Are-For-Suckers) and Tiraffe (Mythic Raid Lead and person-that-did-every-Balance-of-Power).

In the first guide, Quetzie spent most of the time focusing on those who might be new to raiding or who were aware of their faulty DPS. In this guide, we revisit some of the tips that can help new players, but we also want to drill home that every level of player can find a place to improve. Even on the mythic team, nobody is perfect. There are always rotation gaps, mechanical failures, and basic preparation that can be improved upon.

Here are the topics this post will discuss:

1. Streamline & Optimize
2. Rotation & Opener
3. Pre-Combat Preparation
4. Class Resources
5. Dragonflight Optimization
6. Asking and Receiving Help

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Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch – 11/20/2022

Excitement! Tuesday has rolled around and you’ve opened your weekly chest. But suddenly you’re faced with a problem: you don’t know whether your currently equipped gear is better than what you’ve got. Maybe you have a couple of new pieces from raid, and you’re not sure which stats are better. What now?

One of the easiest ways to determine if a piece of gear is an upgrade is to run a simulation of your current gear against your new gear to see which is the better option. Maybe these pants have stronger single-target stats, or that trinket is better for multi-target fights. What’s “better” changes with talent builds, rotations and any number of expansion specific factors. Below is a step-by-step guide on how to use the Simulationcraft addon in conjunction with raidbots.com to run simulations on gear, talents, stat distributions and dps. Feel free to click on the pictures to make them larger.

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