Help with DPS - MagDK

Vildebill

Hey,

I'm doing some DPS parses on my MagDK, and I seem to be unable to get the DPS numbers that many good players get on the trial dummy, so I'm here to get some advice, and see if I'm missing something, because right now it seems like I do.

Just for the sake of it, I ran almost the same setup as Liko uses on a YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Po8MOLyLVnc), which is:
5 Siroria (non perfected though) with inferno front bar, fire glyph.
5 Mother's Sorrow, bloodthirsty jewelery, spell damage glyphs.
2 Maw of the Infernal.
The Maelstrom's perfected inferno back bar, spell damage enchant.

Eye scream or witchmother's on the parse (not big of a difference either way). Shadow mundus. Race is Khajiit. I use the exact same champion points as in the video (Blue CPs: Elemental Expert 49, Elfborn 61, Spell Erosion 10, Master-at-Arms 61, Staff Expert 14, Thaumaturge 72, Piercing 3.

With this setup I get between 70-73k. I get almost the same numbers by using medusa/perfected false god/succession too in different combinations. When I look at my CMX parse, I have about the same percentages on the skills, so the rotation seems to be pretty identical. My light attack ratio is about 0.9 -0.95 consistently. Here's a CMX parse:


So my question is, what am I doing wrong? Why are my numbers significantly lower than many others? What am I missing?

Thanks in advance!

Edit: forgot to add that I'm been using both spell power pots and structured entropy for the buff. Not that big of a difference either.

Everest_Lionheart

What’s your CP? I use a variation of this build and last time I parsed at around CP670 I was hitting 73K also, Siroria front bar and Mother’s Sorrow with the Maw monster set. I have my maelstrom inferno on the back bar. I have only arcane jewelry no bloodthirsty but I will change those soon. My Siroria and Maelstrom are normal I don’t have perfected.

My skills are the same front bar as Liko. Burning ember, engulfing flames, flames of oblivion, inner light and molten whip.

My back bar is slightly different. I use blockade, barbed trap, scalding rune, spell symmetry and eruption.

I have standard double barred at the moment. I chose to use scalding rune because with mages passives the duration runs 14 seconds and lines up better with the 14 second dots of the class. I use the same food and spell power pots.

My rotation is static. I play on console so there is no way to check timers on all the skills, in fact as far as I can tell eruption and blockade don’t even show up on screen. Luckily blockade is the same length with passives as the DK dots, but I do end up overcasting eruption so spell symmetry is a must but it has conditions I will explain after I go over the rotation.

My start is the same 3x FoO to get the passive up then swap to back bar hit a spell power pot and begin the static rotation anything you see in (parentheses) is conditional.

Blockade - Trap - Scalding Rune - (spell symmetry) - Eruption - barswap - (Standard) - Burning Embers - Engulfing Flames - FoO - Whip X7 - barswap - Repeat

Now obviously (Standard) is self explanatory that’s your ultimate and you will drop it when it’s ready specifically in this spot because you will charge up your seething fury for a harder hitting first whip followed by 6 more normal whips. Your back bar you will skip (spell symmetry) on the ultimate phase because you will always cast it leading into your ultimate phase which I will explain in the next paragraph. So by skipping symmetry here you get a second fully charged whip to land during your standard plus one additional whip depending how fast and smooth you are with your rotation.

Now I will explain (spell symmetry) and when to cast it. As a general rule I only cast (spell symmetry) when my magicka falls below 50%. So if you are flowing well with your rotation making sure all your LA’s land and hitting your pots and synergies as they are ready plus getting your standard down in the right place than you will make it through the full rotation at least 3-4 times before needing to cast (spell symmetry) except as I said above right before your ultimate phase which you’ll want to do every time because you need that one extra LA to cross the threshold so you can activate standard. That also insured that you have enough magicka to complete the phase without running low. All other times when below 50% I recommend casting it. Depending on your comfort level you can cast it right on 50% but I’ve gone as low as 46% without casting it and barely held on to finish the rotation. This skill absolutely has to go before eruption as it is your most expensive skill and the magicka gained plus the cost reduction basically amounts to a near free cast of eruption.

So yes I do overcast eruption in my rotation by roughly 3-4 seconds but it has a massive initial hit which I prefer to the dot running out completely and over complicating the rotation. The only thing dynamic here is (spell symmetry) and that makes DK much more smooth and streamlined.

Once I get to CP810 with full BT I expect to climb over 80K. Another MagDK in my guild took my version of this at CP790 and hit 79K on the first try. The key to it all is staying smooth. I set a metronome when I practice to 112bpm, each tick of the metronome is alternating LA and skill. Bar swaps, pots and synergies go between the tick (beeps, clicks, whatever sound you choose.) That tempo is slightly below the GCD threshold so each of the LA and skill should fire and land. The max you can go tempo wise using this method would be 120bpm but that’s right on the number and I don’t recommend it. 112 give you a LA ratio 0.93 or 56 per minute.

Anyhow good luck, hope I have provided some insight.

****edit****

Uploading parse to Youtube and will link it here once done.

https://youtu.be/S0PyLj-R13c

zvavi

First of all you are slower than you think, your actual la/sec ratio is 0.87 (257/294). Another thing as lionheart recommended I would slot rune instead of degen as well, it is tiny bit stronger if you refresh it every 14 seconds. And parse food WILL make a difference, with witch mother's you are losing almost 2k max mag, that's a lot of damage. And it will help you with sustain if you go faster. Also, I dont see it anywhere in the parse because it is probably down, are you using trap?

Edit: lionheart's suggestion of metronome is quite good, for practice, I would use around 56 bpm one (la+skill every bip, if I am very fired up then 58 BPM) and if you are PC EU, do not parse in prime time. It lags too hard.

Vildebill

Everest_Lionheart wrote: »

What’s your CP?

I'm CP 1300-something As I wrote in the start I'm using the same rotation as Liko in the video, with the same percentages of damage on each skill (and it's pretty similar to what you are describing) so don't think the rotation is the problem. I just deal less damage (just to be extra clear, for example, 21% of my DPS is light attack and 18% is molten whip, just like Liko, just lower numbers).

Great write up by the way, I really appreciate it.

zvavi wrote: »

First of all you are slower than you think, your actual la/sec ratio is 0.87 (257/294). Another thing as lionheart recommended I would slot rune instead of degen as well, it is tiny bit stronger if you refresh it every 14 seconds. And parse food WILL make a difference, with witch mother's you are losing almost 2k max mag, that's a lot of damage. And it will help you with sustain if you go faster. Also, I dont see it anywhere in the parse because it is probably down, are you using trap?

Edit: lionheart's suggestion of metronome is quite good, for practice, I would use around 56 bpm one (la+skill every bip, if I am very fired up then 58 BPM) and if you are PC EU, do not parse in prime time. It lags too hard.

Yeah that parse was a little bit lower, but I use the add-on so I have the exact numbers of LA ratio, and I'm usually between .90 and .95 And as far as I understand, that's pretty decent. I'll give rune a go, but when I used it last time it didn't seem to be as good. And as I compare with Liko's video, he don't use it and still get these numbers.

I wonder how much DPS the race will account for. I know Khajiit will drop the DPS a couple of K. Maybe it all adds up, a little too slow LA ratio + race + food. Right now I did 76k, so maybe there isn't something big I missed, just more practice needed

zvavi

are you using trap? (And if yes is it max lvl)

Also ye, dps is a LOT of practice.

Everest_Lionheart

Liko appears to be out criting you by a wide margin across the board. His LA are criting 75% to 54% for you and his Whips are criting 71% to 60%. Those two are the biggest difference but across the board he is averaging 70%+ on all his skills, some lower others higher. Yours look to be a hair below 60% overall with your LA lagging way behind.

Zvavi makes a good point about trap. And that is a 10% boost to critical. The rest is a combination of perfected gear versus normal he is getting extra pen from his perfect maelstrom and an extra 1K mag from Perfect Siroria. Overall the perfected gear is adding maybe 1-2K to the parse, but for sure your crits are way down by comparison and as a result your LA’s are hitting for 4K less on average and your whips are down 5.5K.

If it’s not trap you are missing maybe it’s 1 piece divine instead of infused on the body? Or maybe your backbar enchant perhaps?

Anyway double check your build because with Khajiit you should be making up some ground in critical and not losing any because of your race.

Austinseph1

Parses also have some variability, If he is bash weaving, some have better crits, better dot uptimes, small things can add up to the numbers he gets. Don't get yourself down because 70-75k is awesome and for every parse you see of his with crazy high numbers there are probably 10 others he doesn't show with much more average ones. I hit about 76k on my MagDK with blue food, false gods, and elf bane. I don't build into dummy parses like others do so the numbers are much more tame but I know going into any fight I am able to survive outside of perfect raid environments. Keep practicing and it gets better.

zvavi

I agree, crit is unusually low for someone wearing ms.

Vildebill

Forgot to say that I do use trap.

But yeah, the crits are hitting low on this parse, that seems to be the big difference. All gear is divines and the maelstrom staff is perfected, not that it makes the biggest of difference.

It really seems to be that with some practice, better crits and parse food I'd gain some more DPS. Managed to do a parse on almost 77k today, so I'm definitely getting better

Thanks for all the advice!