I Found My Rhythm

Apparently whining and complaining does actually get me somewhere. A couple days ago I wrote a terrible blog post whining about my miserable DPS. I spouted terrible things about how awful a player I was and generally was annoying. And it apparently worked.

I had just logged on and started Sons of Hodir dailies when Jeff asked if I wanted to do a heroic. I've been wanting to get some instances in before the big patch, when warlocks will change beyond recognition and I will have to relearn to play. He mentioned Utgarde Pinnacle which has been my old nemesis. I just haven't been able to get through the gauntlet. He threw the offer out and we had a group in seconds. The plan was to do UP and UK. The first two bosses in UP went quick. None of us had ever had either with either Svala or Gortak. Then we got to the gauntlet. First attempt was too quick and we were smothered by the constant mobs. The second one was slow but the last ones did us in. The third attempt proved just as frustrating. Then one of our shamans offered to bring in his feral druid. The current tank, a warrior, took the boss after we knocked him off his high horse (ummm dragon) and the druid took the last couple adds. Down without trouble and we even got the achievement.

The last boss went down quick and easy but it was already 11. We decided to just to a quick Violet Hold run. And it proved to be quick. No deaths, no wipes, just constant activity. All the drops were plate but we had a good time and our warrior cleaned up. After the run I did some enchanting for our warrior and Jeff took the time to pull up the WoW Web Stats reports. This is traditionally my least favorite thing. I always come up at 800 or so. He asked me to guess what I thought I had gotten and I said 920. When he said over 1200 I thought he was lying. But no. I did over 1200 for the whole fight and over 1400 for the bosses. Woohoo!!! I had a couple bosses where I was over 1700 and two where I topped 2000. It was amazing.

Here's what I learned. I had been watching my casting bar. It seemed to take forever to get through a spell and I was waiting on that to hit the next one. Jeff got me started looking at my cooldown bars. I had tried it outside of instances and had been happy with how fast I could cast my next spell. So last night I focused on the cooldowns and that worked. I was able to go from 75% dps time to 98-100%. I topped the damage meters on most of the fights. I was tired but happy. But this morning I'm just so excited. I finally found my rhythm. It just took my focusing on the right thing...and possibly a little whining.

DPS Envy

About two months ago we, as a guild, were pushing into Naxx. We got past the first two bosses and were feeling great. It was a huge high. I loved getting a chance to be there on the ground floor. When we came to the third boss it all came crashing down. We tried and tried and tried and nothing was working. We decided that we simply didn't have high enough DPS and that we would take a break. Instead we would run heroics to get everyone geared.

So I started running heroics. Some worked, some didn't. Utgarde Keep or Violet Hold I can pretty much farm. Utgarde Pinnacle I still haven't been able to complete. I mentioned a couple weeks ago how frustrated I was with not being able to get through some. I mentioned that I felt like I wasn't doing enough dps. Everyone told me to wait until I was geared properly. Then I would be easily doing over 1200 dps and I would be ready for Naxx. Yet each report came back with only 800 or so dps.

Two weeks ago I went to wow-heroes and checked out my gear. Apparently I'm geared for Naxx. In fact I'm geared for 25 mans. And I came to the realization that I am geared enough to be doing big dps. I've been getting frustrated and lately haven't been playing as much. (I know, counterproductive). So this weekend Jeff and I tried an experiment. He took me to the training dummies in Darnassus and I unleased hell on the heroic dummy. I'm using a rotation of immolate, conflagrate, chaos bolt, and incinerate. (with curse of elements and corruption for dots) I ran through an entire mana bar while running combat log. I came out with 880 dps. (pretty typical for me). Then Jeff did the worst possible thing. He asked if he could try. He took my character and ran through a mana bar. He did the same spells. And when we checked the log, he had 1150 dps. So now it's official. It's not my gear, it's not my stats, it's ME.

After a 30 second tutorial, Jeff managed to pull more dps than I do on the character I've been playing for well over a year. I'm envious, I'm frustrated, and I'm not sure what to do. It almost makes me want to throw in the towel. It almost makes me want to step away from the game completely. It's really hard for me to know that I have a decent character, but my character just doesn't have a decent player. I want to be a strong dps force. Warlocks can be incredible damaging. So now I have to go back to the practice dummies. And I have to practice. I have to work on my timing and work on my finger speed. The spells are right, the stats are there, the gear is good. Now I just have to figure out me.