Frost DPS Help (Stop me if you've heard that before)

[Infarc]

So I started playing WoW during the WOTLK era, and after that took a break until just after Legion came out. After that time I thought I knew my stuff...I have a high item level, my stats are well balanced (I think), I sim myself frequently, and I've studied a lot about opening sequence, rotations, etc.

All that being said, my dps seems subpar at best, and downright sucks at worst. For the life of me I can't figure it out. Here are the logs from my last ToS fight with Maiden (earlier today):

[anchor]https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/zK ... analytical[/anchor]

And here is my armory link:

[anchor]https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/chara ... ran/infarc[/anchor]

I know I'm just a little over my crit cap, and my versatility seems a little low (that's just the gear I have), but can someone tell me what I'm missing? Any constructive criticism is welcome. I'll be the first to admit that I don't know how to read the logs.

Thanks in advance!

[Xinder]

So I started playing WoW during the WOTLK era, and after that took a break until just after Legion came out. After that time I thought I knew my stuff...I have a high item level, my stats are well balanced (I think), I sim myself frequently, and I've studied a lot about opening sequence, rotations, etc.

All that being said, my dps seems subpar at best, and downright sucks at worst. For the life of me I can't figure it out. Here are the logs from my last ToS fight with Maiden (earlier today):

[anchor]https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/zK ... analytical[/anchor]

And here is my armory link:

[anchor]https://worldofwarcraft.com/en-us/chara ... ran/infarc[/anchor]

I know I'm just a little over my crit cap, and my versatility seems a little low (that's just the gear I have), but can someone tell me what I'm missing? Any constructive criticism is welcome. I'll be the first to admit that I don't know how to read the logs.

Thanks in advance!

You could swap out some enchants/gems to get closer to just the shatter cap in crit which would let you enchant for vers. It's not going to make a huge difference as it's only a few percent of vers but it's an option for you right now. Did you just swap to mage or just to frost that you're using the BoE lego? It's not a bad lego if it's all you have, but if you have even Prydaz or something it's better to use that.

Biggest outlier I can see is you had 87 total chances for shatter ILs and you only casted 72 total ILs and looking at the crit chance of all your IL casts it looks like those 72 weren't all shatter ILs given your Crit% on IL is not 100%. This happens of course and I even do it myself, but on top of casting non-shatter ILs you also missed out on 15 guaranteed shatter ILs. At 1.6m average based on your 72 that you did cast, that's 24million dmg overall that you missed out on which translates over your fight length to 52.5k more dps. That combined with trying your best to reduce casting non-shatter ILs should up your dps.

Also you popped your 2nd pot shortly after you'd popped your first. It looks like you were lining it up with lust? That works but you may want to play around on that fight with saving your 2nd pot for another time that lines up with your IV. It may result in more dmg. Just something worth thinking about as you get more familiar with the fight.

Lastly, fight length also plays a factor. When your fight ends and it's just as you finished up your major cooldowns, your DPS naturally will be higher. In your case, a 7min 37 sec fight length where your last IV finished a solid minute or more before the end of the fight, your dps will not be as high as if the fight ended right after your IV ended. This is a smaller reason for the dmg difference but I mention it because it's worth noting. By comparison my guilds last Maiden Heroic kill was 4 mins. Your guilds kills will get better with time, if this is your first kill of her. That will help dps a bit.

[Infarc]

Thank you very much for taking the time to look that over and give such a well thought out answer!

I do have other legendary items, including Prydaz. The way I'm equipped now is to a.) keep my T20 4 piece set bonus, and b.) to keep me at the 33.34% shatter cap. My hope is that as I get more epic drops, I'll have more flexibility on switching gear to maintain my shatter cap, and swap sets for pure single target and some cleave depending on the fight.

So other than gear it sounds like I need to work better on taking advantage of shattering all my ice lances, and being careful not to shoot them off without a FoF proc or frozen target.

Sometimes when I move during a fight I'll fire off some ice lances just to get some dps out. Is it better to not do that?

[Xinder]

Thank you very much for taking the time to look that over and give such a well thought out answer!

I do have other legendary items, including Prydaz. The way I'm equipped now is to a.) keep my T20 4 piece set bonus, and b.) to keep me at the 33.34% shatter cap. My hope is that as I get more epic drops, I'll have more flexibility on switching gear to maintain my shatter cap, and swap sets for pure single target and some cleave depending on the fight.

So other than gear it sounds like I need to work better on taking advantage of shattering all my ice lances, and being careful not to shoot them off without a FoF proc or frozen target.

Sometimes when I move during a fight I'll fire off some ice lances just to get some dps out. Is it better to not do that?

It may be worth seeing what you're stats look like with Prydaz on as it's basically a stat stick but comes with the added survivability benefit of the shield. Do you have any other legendaries? Prydaz is good, but the Time warp ring is the best to use with the bracers if you have it. Anyway you can drop the crit on the rings and still be at 33.34% if I had to guess. At least one ring. Or equip prydaz and see where you are then adjust accordingly in terms of gems/enchants.

If you really have to use one while moving that's fine, but keep in mind as a caster you're locked to a 1.5sec GCD. If you bank a few FoF charges in anticipation of movement that's about to happen, combined with using shimmer properly, you get lots of time to move without the need for the non shatter ILs. Like I said, I still do it myself sometimes but I really work on trying to think about things like movement that might be coming up and position myself to best be able to keep casting and move with shimmer, or bank ILs and move with the IL casts. If you have 2 FoF charges banked a sec or two before a movement phase you can get a full 3 sec of free movement while still casting empowered ILs.

[Infarc]

I don't have Shard of the Exodar (warp ring) yet, but I'm actively looking/hoping for it soon!

Great advice on the planning and timing of movements. For the most part Maiden is a very scripted fight. I'll have to learn to plan a little more and be less of a "reactionary" player. I'm going to play with gear/gems/enchants a little later to see if I can't accomplish what you suggested.

One last thing...where in the logs can I find the 87 total chances I had to shatter ice lance? I can see the 72 casts, but that's it. I humbly admit that while typing this I've googled how to read the logs, and am reading the Icy-veins.com article on it. I'm hoping you can point me in the right direction there as well. Teach a man to fish, and all that!

[Xinder]

If you are looking at just yourself and you go to the buffs tab you can see all the buffs you've had over a fight. Brain Freeze and FoF count as buffs. I took the total of those two to come up with the 87 chances as a BF proc should be followed by an IL to shatter it and of course the FoF procs all are shattered ILs. This is also where you can see things like uptime on IV, if you took 2 pots in the fight, if you had to healing pot, if you had a food buff, rune, flask, etc.

[Infarc]

Awesome! You have been such a tremendous help!