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Bringing all of our dps from where they are to an average of 7.5k dps isn't a realistic goal. However, we have some people with under 4k damage that we need to get up to par (I'm defining par in this case is the reasonable goal of 5k dps per person), or else we'll be stuck on the same issues as always.

Now taking suggestions.

Having people look at their rotations and ability damage percentages may not be a bad idea...

I've already made a post about SimulationCraft that can help with this.

The 7500 is the fully raid-buffed, target-debuffed figure. Taking away those factors, the figure is something more modest in the 5-6k range, that one should see taking on a boss-level training dummy. People who can be a coach should take a name off the dps chart, bring that person to such a training dummy, watch and analyze as they burn off 1M hp, and help figure out what to change. We can't leave it for the individual to do all the reading and math and all that- Some have admitted that it still stumps them, and it doesn't help that a lot of the info out there is not well written. Those of us who can slog through World of Theorycraft can just as easily spend time watching someone unload on the wooden post and point out things.

I've actually spend some time reading someone's log file on a certain fight, had followed along what they did during a particular boss fight, and found what they did wrong. However, I'm not sure what's the best way to point out the mistakes besides catching them online and sending them tells about it. Plus, not sure how they would take it. It is understandable that some people maybe more defensive or stubborn than others, or are used to a certain play style which may or may not be the optimal.

Supporting Dom's 5k dps benchmark:
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/p3ts ... enc=bosses

This log (which will unfortunately expire soon-ish) is from our second foray into ICC25 on January 5th (almost a full month after 3.3 hit). It can be assumed that the top DPS here were wearing all 245 gear (maybe one or two pieces of frost emblem gear). And averaged out over all boss encounters for that raid, they mostly are around 5K+. This means this goal is achievable for all our DPS.

Wynne brings up a good point though: approaching a fellow player and telling them that they're 'doing it wrong' is a quick way to get them to ignore you. However, I hope that most people that do not meet the 5K criteria are open to suggestions/coaching.
Suggestion: make it a point in the next raid (announce it before hand so people aren't surprised), that any DPS that is under 5k dps (on bosses, to prevent AoE padding on trash) by a significant margin will get coaching. If further incentive becomes necessary (I hope it doesn't), make further raid invites dependent on the coaches' feedback.

*edit*
Obviously, allowances should be made for people being in off-spec etc...

I think that there is a more serious problem if someone reacts badly to getting helpful suggestions. Frankly, getting defensive to criticism when we have that table of log data showing where each and every person's performance is at- that would show that person is not really interested in raiding, they're just filling space for us. We've said before, we're not forcing anyone to raid with us, but, if someone wants to come voluntarily to see the content and pick up some rewards, they can put in the same effort as the rest of us.

Our options are: bring up everyone's game so that we can see this stuff in 25, or drop down to the 10 people putting in the effort. If someone doesn't want to bring up their game, that's going to be a damper on the other 24 people. Plain and simple. There is no sugar-coating this.

I for one am fully open to constructive criticism. I am somewhat stumped as to why my dps is lower than I feel it should be. I have the gear to pull off fantastic numbers but I just don't do it. My rotation is sound, I proc my trinket, I have all the right glyphs, I use my Lifetap to get the extra boost of spellpower, I'm hit capped, my haste is over 700, my crit is over 30% buffed, and I still am not pulling the numbers I should be. My DPS isn't "horrible" but again, I should be doing better. I've read all the pertinent threads for theorycrafting and simulations on the Warlock's Den and also Elitistjerks. My rotations and everything match up (minus the flask of the wrym).

Again, you can openly tell me what I'm doing wrong right here. I WANT TO BE BETTER!

Dom, WTF am I doing wrong?

Well, I discovered I had a bug in one of my macros that was causing me to clip arcane missles on burn phases; it was a pretty stupid mistake but accounted for a lot of damage. I also need to replace some gear with equal iLevel stuff that has less +hit and moar haste; I really need to get into some ToC25s (that cape of scapes would be nice too!) for that. Unfortunately I don't have time to raid more than one night a week usually; not much I can do about that. If I need to be benched for people who can commit to two or three raids a week, I guess thats life (although I would be sad.) I don't know much about warlocks Twist, but is it possible for you to move to a more DoT heavy rotation? Anything that you can shoot on the move is good.

If any of the other mages would like to discuss strategy with me, I have thoughts. Possibly not very intelligent ones, but they are thoughts of some kind.

Btw, not to categorize myself as someone who doesn't need help, I mainly have one burning question: spreadsheets, applications, simulations, all point at that I should be doing some kinda sustained 9500 dps. Maybe a chunk of that is a lot of raid buff assumpsions, but I really wonder sometimes if the numbers out of simulators are that accurate. Or maybe I just need to tweak the options to reflect our actual raid makeup and situations.

Well, I'm not Dom and I've not played a warlock at all, so I'm just going off what some silly program tells me, but...

Looking at the Tuesday log for the marrowgar fight and a simulated fight for your spec and your equipment, the numbers are as follows (optimal % - optimal # / actual % - actual #):

chaos bolt: 11.7% - 19 / 13.4% - 8
Conflagrate: 14.1% - 25.6 / 23.7% - 12
Corruption: 2.7% - 9.4 / 0 - 0
curse of agony: 0.2% - 0.6 / 0 - 0
curse of doom: 2.2% - 5.1 / 6.4% - 3
immolate: 9.7% - 19 / 19.4% - 18
incinerate: 45.6% - 88.8 / 28.9% - 20
reign of the unliving proc: 2.6% - 21.3 / 3.8% - 10
shadowfury: 2.7% - 9.4 / 0 - 0

So, assuming that the software and the way I'm interpreting the data is correct, you need to incinerate a lot more. Corruption, I'm guessing, is an instant cast thing that should be tossed when you have to move. I'm bad about doing that also, and it's not much dps lost, but it's there. Looks like curse of agony isn't much of a loss here. Don't know if it affects your other spells. Same with shadowfury. It's not apparently causing much but it's in the optimal rotation.

I'd guess that if you managed to incinerate more often during boss fights, your dps should go up significantly. The log from the same instance when fighting deathwhisper seems to confirm this as you got a lot more incinerates off and you had about 2kdps difference between the two fights, and that's with the deathwhisper fight being seven and a half minutes instead of the four and a half on boney.