A LessonFollow

Last night I was on my lock and got into an ICC 25-man PuG. It was comprised of a lot of people from one guild, and needless to say they weren't very experienced; after 3+ hours the raid broke up having only gotten through Saurfang.

I was one of three warlocks in the raid, and since I am always on the lookout for ways to improve my gameplay, I casually checked out the performance of the other two. One stood out as particularly interesting since he was so far down on the DPS meters, averaging somewhere between 2k and 4k on the fights (and this is now with the 30% buff). I figured he was an alt, or perhaps a fairly fresh 80 who was getting carried, so I inspected his gear during one break just out of curiosity.

I was horrified by what I saw, and I almost thought this character was created as a troll of sorts, but who would go through all this trouble to mess with people? This lock has a Wow Heroes gearscore of 3.1k, just under mine, and even has two pieces of 277 cloth gear!

I'd like to present the following not to bash this particular player, but rather as an instructional tool as to how, even with some great gear, your gem/enchant/spec/gear choices can really affect your performance.

I present Roosterfish.

- Yes, your eyes do not deceive you. He has 555 hit rating! Not only is he massively over the hit cap, but he has taken up gem slots with additional Rigid King's Amber gems, enchanted his spell dagger with Accuracy, and enchanted his gloves with Precision! And this is even before taking into account that he has 3/3 Suppression, making his hit cap even lower than normal! Hit is a valuable stat, but once you reach the cap it is useless from then on insofar as increasing your dps. While you may gem, or even enchant, for +hit when you first ding 80, as you progress your gear should provide you with adequate hit rating so that you do not waste enchants or gems on stacking hit.

- Don't gem for critical strike rating; no matter what spec you are running it gives you one of the least bang for your buck. There is no need to gem for intellect either as a lock. Your primary stats (for gemming purposes) to concentrate on are spellpower and haste, and your basic gem choices to match slots are: Red - Runed Cardinal Ruby, Yellow - Reckless Ametrine, and Blue - Purified Dreadstone. This is based on theorycrafting done by Elitist Jerks and others.

- He has purchased numerous frost badge items, but has no T10 pieces. While it is true that usually there are non-tier pieces of gear with slightly better stat itemization, the trade-off is the set bonuses, and in the case of T10, the 4-piece bonus is powerful. As a lock, you are giving up dps by having a mishmash of gear instead of your class set. In addition, who doesn't want to look like a demonic scarecrow?

- Take advantage of your professions. He has 450 tailoring, but doesn't have Lightweave Embroidery on his cloak, which is a dps upgrade from the Greater Speed enchant. It also costs a lot less in materials.

- PvP gear, like his boots, does not translate well into PvE. Itemization points are wasted on resilience and especially in a slot like this, where even if you are unlucky with drops, there are BoE crafted PvE options available on the AH or through crafters in your guild.

- Glyph of Searing Pain is not a good choice for Destruction warlocks. Especially when you then don't put any talent points into Improved Searing Pain. Research the best major glyphs for your spec.

- 63 points in the Destruction tree, and yet zero points in Backlash? 1 point wasted in Nether Protection? No ability to go down the Demonology tree to get Demonic Aegis? Shadowburn?? There are standardized builds out there for each spec, and luckily for most of us, other people have crunched numbers and ran simulations to determine what is optimal. Sure it may take out some of the fun in speccing, but it helps you, and thus your raid, perform better.

- Research and understand the playstyle based on your build. He was a destro lock with a VW out for some fights and when I looked at Recount I don't think he even cast Chaos Bolt. Understand which pet is optimal for each build, how to use them, and what the rotation/prioritization of your spells should be. Practice with a target dummy, and look back at your performance after you run a dungeon/raid to see where your areas of improvement are. Look at what other locks who perform better in the raid are doing to see what you may be missing.

- Finally, research and understand your stat priorities so that you are aware what your gear upgrades are. Don't waste frost badges on a useless trinket when you are already well over the hit cap; instead buy tier pieces or primordial saronites to craft the 264 legs or feet items that will be much more significant of an upgrade.

I am just using this as an example of how some research and some tweaking to his existing gear could have vastly improved his performance and utility in a raid setting. I was doing anywhere from 2.5 to 4 times his dps with a WoW Heroes gearscore of only 45 points higher.

Wow, just wow... I guess it's a good thing he "Has Backup"

I would've made it a point that he's really, really bad. If the guild was an lolroflhezfien type, left the raid saved or not. I mean, this reminds me of the guy nobody knew what he was because he was DPSing in a mix of tank and healer gear (pally), then healed in like ret healer gear and doing a horrible job of both.

I've got a habit of trying to help the, well, less fortunate people on WoW. I guess it's fine if you were okay with the grind.

You mean like this for hit cap?