I have a few suggestions to help dps improve.

1. Tracking temporary buffs.

One thing that really sets people apart is your ability to track your temporary primary stat buffs and time your dps cds so that you're stacking buffs effectively. This becomes MUCH more important as we start to get RPPM trinkets and legendary meta gems.

Having a system wherein you're able to easily see what buffs have procc'ed and their duration is exceptionally helpful. For this task, I use weakauras. It's a little hard to learn, but once you learn it, it's A MUST HAVE addon, in my opinion. Regardless, there must be a way to track your procs effectively. If you want help setting up an indicator for your trinket procs, I am happy to help you (and even do it for you and send you the code via whisper--ask Jobs for how easy this is. I was able to send him the Wooshlay's code last night in about 10 seconds).

2. DPS CD usage.

In almost every fight, there are ways to use your class specific mechanics to really optimize your dps. However, in many cases, people think of using these abilities as a pain. I'm farmiliar with warlocks, so I'll use a warlock example: Havoc. Havoc is the most useful dps CD in the destro warlock toolkit, but without some streamlining, it can be a pain in the ass to use. Without proper macros you end up having to change targets from your main target, activate havoc, change targets back and then start to cast your duplicated spells. This sucks. UNLESS: you use some sort of a macro to help you out. Something like this:

#showtooltip Havoc


/cast [@mouseover, exists, nodead, harm] Havoc; [@focus, exists, nodead] Havoc;


This allows you to either cast havoc at whatever you're using your mouse to hover over (or your focus if you're not hovering over a harmful, alive target) and to, with a single button press apply havoc to another target...no messy target switching. Lots of classes can utilize such functionality. Again, I'm happy to help with macros if it makes raid dps go up. But, you'll also find that a quick google search for "helpful [insert class here] macros" will return some gems.

Also, many people have almost completely abandonded stopcasting macros. However, I've found that stopcasting macros are an essential part of dps-ing well for many casters. Say for example you're on a fight like Horridon and your main nuke (again you may have to translate this out of warlock) is a chaos bolt. You're casting a chaos bolt on a dying add and shortly after you begin your 3 second cast the add switches from 24 to 19% health (you know it switched below 20% because you have a target health indicator with a sound warning that shows a shadowburn icon and plays a horn when you enter execute phase--all handled via weakauras). Well, you could continue your Chaos bolt cast and lose dps, OR you could macro in to the beginning of your shadowburn a stopcasting macro like this:

#showtooltip Shadowburn


/stopcasting


/cast Shadowburn

Understanding how these macros interact with encounter mechanics can easily boost dps substantially. Which leads me to point #3.

3. Understanding encounter mechanics is essential to maximizing dps.

There are rarely (if ever, anymore) fights that just allow you to stand there and dps. There's a dps buff pool to stand in, fire to get out of, etc, etc, etc. These things are not optional things to let other people do while you stand there and treat a boss like he's Patchwerk. It is essential to maximize these mechanics for your spec and class.

The primal nutrients buff on Ji'Kun is a nice example. You don't HAVE to fly up to grab the buff each time Ji'Kun casts Feed Young, but if you don't you're giving up 30ish seconds of double dps--to me that's just silly, so I grab every single one I can.

Similar, and even more straightforward tactics exist on other bosses. Megaera, for instance. Does the damage done to the head that we're not focusing do anything to kill the boss faster? Before you yell out, "NO, IT'S WASTED DAMAGE" think about it. If you can gain procs by using spells against the non-targetted head, you're actually gaining damage on the head you ARE focusing.

Another Destro warlock example: Say you're focusing down the blue head while the green one is up. Yes, when the blue head dies, any damage done on the green head is healed to full and the fight goes on as if you'd never done damage to the green head; however, if you've been wise about your spell usage, dropped your rain of fire between the bosses so it hits both heads, used Havoc on the green head and casted an immolate and 2 incinerates on both instead of just one head (all for the low, low cost of a single GCD--because you're using a mouseover macro to put havoc on the other head) you've essentially generated enough embers for an extra chaos bolt per 25 seconds. And I'm not picking on warlocks here, there are other classes that can benefit from knowing how your class interacts with specific encounters.

I don't want this to sound like a downer. I've been having tons of fun with Man Hug. You guys are awesome. I just think that having specific things you can work on and improve your play makes the game funner both for yourself and the people you raid with. And do take me seriously when I say that any help I can offer with regard to weakauras or macros, I'm happy to do so!

 

Now that I'm on a roll with parses here's something else I'd like to add.  Pot usage.  First of all I'm not expecting everyone to prepot before every boss fight like farm bosses or use pots on Jin'rohk etc.  BUT there are fights were EVERY dps should be prepotting and potting again during hero/raid buff times.  Fights like Megaera, Tortos, Ji-Kun everyone should be prepotting.  So over the course of the night lets see how many pots people used.

Luminescent
10

Ghostess
10

Grasen
9

Taliv
7

Chaca
2

Shatner
31

Scaron
10

Jobs
6

Treelapsed
4

Daïsey
3

Armoredcore
3

Faedrakai
2

Unless parses are wrong there are a bunch of people who didn't even use a single potion the whole night.  If nothing else everyone should have been using ONE on Megeara.  Guys, this is terrible.  COME to raid with pots already made.  Don't wait until raid to ask someone to craft them.  These pots are a HUGE dps increase.  To be honest if everyone prepotted and used a pot during burn phases we could shave a lot of time off bosses and even get us kills.  If we're on progression you should be using pots.  PEROID.  With that said everyone needs to make sure they bring TWO stacks of dps with them for Monday's raid.  We're going to need as much dps as we can get for Ji-Kun.