So for the last two weeks, I've been called upon to cat dps for the middle part of the 25 man ICC. Last week, however I noticed I did a full 1000 less dps than the week before. (5.5k vs. 6.5k). This distressed me, so I dove down into the logs to see what the difference was. I had switched out a few pieces of gear in the intervening week, but I thought it was in the interest of more dps. Join me on this journey, and we all might learn something about how to analyze our performance with the help of logs.
First, a quick primer on the basics of cat dps so you understand this context. There are the combo moves, all of which give one combo point, two if they crit (with a talent): Mangle, which does reasonable damage and puts a debuff on the mob that increases bleed damage and the debuff should always be kept on; Shred, which does a lot of damage but must be cast from behind the mob; and Rake, which does a very minor amount of damage, but then puts a bleed on the mob. Then there are the finishing moves: Rip, which is a very powerful bleed that does more damage the more combo points you have, and can crit if you've got the right talent point; Savage Roar, which puts a buff on you which increases your damage dealt by 30% and lasts longer for each combo point; and Ferocious Bite, which just does a chunk of damage and is typically only used during Berserk when you have GCDs and energy to spare. So it's a big juggling task to make sure that Mangle, Rake, Rip and Ferocious Bite all never fall off, using spare cycles to shred.
Next, the two fights in question:
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/l6iz ... 870&e=4136
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/mop5 ... 660&e=4919
The first is the 6.5k week, the second is the 5.5k week (this week). Both fights lasted about the same amount of time (4:25 vs. 4:19, hooray consistency) so this is a very apples to apples comparison. Let's look at the damage breakdown by spell.
Week 6.5k
36.5% - Melee
22.0% - Rip
20.9% - Shred
12.3% - Rake
05.2% - Mangle (Cat)
02.8% - Ferocious Bite
00.4% - Pounce Bleed (LOL)
Week 5.5k
35.5% - Melee
23.5% - Shred
19.7% - Rip
13.0% - Rake
04.8% - Mangle (Cat)
02.4% - Ferocious Bite
First of all, one big thing jumps out. Rip is #2 the time I did well, but only #3 the time I did poorly. Well, there's a very easy check. What was the uptime on Rip? Well, a quick check shows it was 71.5% in the first fight, but only 59.0% the second time. What does that 11% represent? Well, the entire fight was about 260 seconds long, so that's about 30 seconds. Rip ticks once every two seconds. I have a buffed crit rate of about 60%, and on average Rip was ticking for 2258 and critting for 4773. So of the 15 ticks, 9 would be crits, so that's (4773 * 9) + (2558 * 6), or 58305 damage. Well, that's 224dps over the fight, which is significant, but only accounts for a fraction of my dps loss. Resolution #1: Be more diligent about keeping Rip on the boss.
While we're checking uptimes, how good was I about keeping Savage Roar on? In week 1, I had a 90.4% uptime, and week 2, I had a 94.2% uptime. Well, this makes sense, all those times I made the mistake and used Savage Roar when I should have used Rip. What does that 4.2% represent? Well, that's a hard number to calculate, as I have no idea when it was, but if you consider I was doing 5.5k dps on average, and that 17 seconds of 30% less damage would be back of the napkin about 20k damage. Well, that just made up for a third of what I lost in Rip downtime... Where is the rest of this lost dps coming from?
Rake uptime was about the same in both fights, so that's a wash. Of the things to juggle, it's the easiest, as it has a long duration and the cheapest energy cost. Let's start looking at raw numbers instead of percentages for some of the combo moves.
Week 6.5k total damage (and count) for combo moves
Melee: 613981 (352)
Shred: 352497 (42)
Mangle: 86680 (15)
Week 5.5k total damage (and count) for combo moves
Melee: 519067 (303)
Shred: 334099 (40)
Mangle: 68873 (12)
Well, hello! 100k difference from melee hits? That's 384 dps! 50 fewer hits one week in the same time frame? How do I hit 14% slower in between two weeks? This was bugging me quite a bit, so I got a bit crazy. I went into the World of Logs Expression Editor:
Code: Select all
sourcename="Werehamster" AND type=TYPE_DAMAGE AND spell NOT IN("Rip","Shred","Mangle (Cat)","Ferocious Bite","Rake")
The average swing speed for the 5.5k run was 849ms (820ms without outliers) and the 5.5k was 747ms (708ms without outliers). If we're just looking at melee speed we should ignore when I wasn't swinging due to being out of position. That's a difference of 112ms per swing. So what caused the difference in melee speed? Well, I changed out some gear, could it be a haste rating issue? I wonder how much haste rating is equivalent to a 112ms increase. Cat melee has a base rate of 1s, so 112ms is very simply a 11.2% increase. At 32.79 haste rating per 1% increase, that works out to 361 haste rating. Did I really lose that much haste rating when I switched gear around?
I switched out my Chestguard of the Frigid Noose for my Ikfirus's Sack of Wonder after regemming it to work for both tank and dps. That was a loss of 99 haste.
I switched out my Soulthief's Braided Belt for my Vengeful Noose after regemming it to work for both tank and dps. That was a gain of 64 haste.
I switched out my Shaft of Glacial Ice for my Hersir's Greatspear. Neither had haste.
Okay so that theory didn't pan out. What about Windfury Totem? It looks like it was up both times. The log only shows when it was dropped, not when the buff is gained or lost by people, so I don't know if it was on all the time. Could it be that for some reason it was dropped outside of melee? I have no way of knowing. And why only 11%, not the full 16%?
So that's about as far as I can go in determining what caused the discrepancy. Rip not being up all the time accounts for 25% of it. Another 50% is from melee hits. The other 25% is just from miscellaneous other stuff that probably comes from being a bit off the game this week. And both weeks, I probably didn't move when the boss moved. One big resolution, one minor resolution and a haste mystery.
