How to build up your DPS in raids

 This is going to be some of my thoughts on the subject of damage per second. This is not aimed at bleeding edge raiders, they should know this. Note that I do not claim that this is the only way to do things.

Raid DPS.

First and foremost it is important to note that in a raid environment it is your raid dps that matters most. To some of you this is perhaps obvious but it is very common that people just focus on their own personal results.

Why is this important to state? Because there are ways to increase your own dps by sacrificing potential gains to the raid. Example: not applying sunders or shattering throw as a dps warrior. Not doing that extra work will, most likely, improve your personal dps but lower the raid dps and in the end it might cost you that important boss kill.

How to tackle this? Find out what raid buffs and boss debuffs you have and see if they’re already covered. To continue with our dps warrior, if you have a warrior tank in the raid you will not have to stack sunders for example since he will do that automatically through devastate. Once you have gone through your abilities and you see what your need to worry about, and what not to, you can move on to what you can do to improve yourself.

Gear and Spec.

Can’t say much here except get info on what your class and spec need to focus on in terms of stats and make sure you have a viable skill tree. You should know this already.

Consult elitistjerks, tankspot, random youtube clips etc.

Rotation.

First find out what your rotation/”priority list” is. Some classes don’t have a set rotation but use abilities based on priorities. The most important step towards really understanding your class is to find out why your rotation/prio-list is the way it is. This more than anything will give you the edge when a new patch or hotfix rolls out.

After that you will want to get comfortable with your rotation. Use those dummies in your city. Once you have your rotation down, try to do it while moving around your target. If you can’t use some of your abilities while moving find out which ones you can use and put them to work. Flexibility is key.

Cooldowns and trinkets.

The timing and usage of cd’s and trinkets can make a huge difference for your dps in a fight, and the most important concept here is to stack.

Say you have one ability that increases your haste by 20% for 20 sec and one ability that increases your chance to crit to 100% for 15sec, now using one after the other will increase your dps but if used together you can squeeze in more guarantied crits in those 15 secs because of that extra haste and therefore get more dps than you would have if you had used them separately.

Now let’s say you also have a trinket that has a chance to increase your damage by 20% for 30 secs. If you use your other 2 cd’s right when your trinket procs you can see that the effect would be increased even more. They all build on each other.

Flipside. The problem is that you can’t always wait for everything to line up perfectly. When it comes to cd’s and usable trinkets you will want to use them as fast as possible so that they can be used again and again later in the fight. This leads me to my next topic.

Learning boss fights.

In order to maximize your effectiveness this step is essential. You need to know if you can pop all your cd’s and go all out at the start of the fight or if you need to wait for the tank to get enough threat (Al’Akir). Maybe very high dps right at the start is not very necessary or even detrimental due to the need for timing (Onyxia dpsers in Nefarian fight). Is there a phase where you need to change target? Is there a phase where you do extra damage (Magmaw exposing his head)?

These things are important to know so that you can time your cd’s, AoE bursts etc well. You do not want to get to the last phase on Ascendant Council and find out that you have no cd’s available. But don’t worry too much. You are going to figure this out simply by trying the fights a few times, don’t expect to be able to study up and know this on the first pull. Find a way that works for you in your raid.

Tips:

* Min/maxing spec - Is there another */insert your class and spec here* in your raid? If so how is that person speced and can you change in relation to that? Have you both speced into the same ability that is optional and affects the raid? Is it necessary to have two of those abilities or should you respec out of that and into another ability that might help the raid?

* Pre-pot - It is only possible to use one potion per combat if it is used when in combat. However if you use one potion just before you enter combat you can use another one after a 1 min cd. Pre-pots should be used when your tanks countdown is at “1”. If your tank does not count down before a boss pull you should ask him to please do so, any decent tank should already be doing this though. The second potion can be used at for example the “execute phase” (boss under 20% health) or at another suitable moment, like when bloodlusting.

* Don’t die! - Dead people have 0 dps and you don’t want that now do you? On a more serious note when you take damage as a dps you cause your healers to have to spend mana and focus more on you instead of others like the tanks, and dead tanks usually means dead raid.

In short: Less damage taken = easier on healers = living tanks = living you = more dps!

* Theory crafting - This is something that can be a lot of fun to mess with but unless you already do decent dps, for your class/spec, you should not get too bogged down in it. This is mainly a way to squeeze that little tiny bit of extra dps out.

Those are the things I can think of right now.

Please leave a comment (constructive) if you have any input.

Edit: Put the theory crafting bit in