OK. So what am I doing wrong?Follow

I'm about halfway through 79, ambling along doing most quests that don't involve dungeons (or groups of 5). Most of them I can solo. So I seem to be managing ok.

However reading the main forum there has been a lot of heat lately about "if you can't break 1000 dps you're useless and we don't want you in instances " etc etc.

So I loaded up Recount and thought I'd better see if I was up to scratch.

I was pretty appalled to see that I'm personally on around 300 with my Felguard doing about the same depending on the fight. SO maybe 650 joint dps.

It may be sustainability, in that if I can DoT up the mob and let the Felguard finish it while I balance off hp and mana ready for the next then I suppose I'm sacrificing dps for continuous killing. However on elites or where I get a chance to slip in a few shadowbolts I'm still not breaking 400.

Mostly I open with Curse of Agony, then Corruption, then Immolate. Then lifetap the mana back and Drain Life. If the free shadowbolt (Shadow Trance) pops I use it. If I'm short on shards I'll use Drain Soul instead of Life.

My build is 12/58/0 Demonology and while my gear is nothing special (quested greens and the odd blue) I'm running at about 1100 Spellpower. I know my hit is low but I'm not missing much with DoT spells and haste is about 100.

I do wonder if the 1000+ brigade are entirely concerned with boss fights where a caster has no other considerations than doing damage.

On the other hand am I doing something wrong?

Same, here. It's not you, it's that soloing and instances are different.
I do a lot more DPS in instances. There's no need for Drain Life in instances, usually; and I prefer Siphon Life instead.
Also, five points in Destruction (at least) to reduce your casting time will help a lot.

If your not raiding you actually don't need 446 hit. In fact if you don't raid you only need 158 to hit cap assuming none of the hit talents. If you take the +3% your down to only need 79.

That's expensive on soul shards!

I've found that my DPS in instances is roughly double what it is when soloing. I'm generally looking between 500 and 700 DPS when soloing and between 1200 and 1400 in instances. I open with Siphon Life then CoA and lastly Corruption. If there's time I get a Shadowbolt or two in. Life Tap at the end of that rotation since my Fel Armour heals me fast enough when soloing. Doesn't vary too much in instances. I sometimes use Seed of Corruption rather than Corruption and use Immolate and throw more Shadowbolts but that's about it.

My hit is hopeless at the moment and my gear isn't great unfortunately so no heroics up to now, this is just normal instances.

Just one thing to point out. The hit cap on Destro builds is 17% (at level 80). So if you are going to do any raids then you HAVE to be hit capped, or as close to it as you can get. 26.23/1% means 26.23 * 17 = 445. If you get the 3% from talents then its 26.23 * 14 = 367. If you use a buff food then 327 will max you out. It's not too hard, and the rewards from raiding are WELL worth the effort! There are enough quest rewards that you can get reasonably close to the 300 mark before level 80 too. Being hit capped is the easiest way to maximize DPS on 83 elites.

Also practice on the elite dummies. You can get your best spell rotations down easily this way.

yes, 80 destro lock here. If I hit my trinkets and am fully buffed, I can solo around 1.4K dps on an individual fight and around 1.1K overall. For bosses on raids, its usually around 2.1 - 2.4K. With a gear score of only 1450 or so, I don't think thats too bad. 1600 geared locks could see close to 3K dps on bosses.