flaminroids wrote:
So my DPS in heroics has been between 2400 and 2800 dps (haven't had the opportunity to DPS raids. Get stuck healing) but its stayed that way despite massive gear upgrades. I've been in groups with ele and even enh shamans pulling over 3.5k in crappier gear. However my overall damage has always been higher. I'm assuming its my rotation.
Now I'm aware that the reason most of these shamans are getting higher numbers is because they jump the gun on the AoE and cause problems for the tank. My numbers aren't getting me much respect from other DPS, but I never pull aggro. I target the tanks target, flameshock, lava burst, lightening bolt, then pop off the chain lightening. Giving the tank at least 5 seconds to get everyones attention. Is it possible to be doing at least 3.2k respectively on a consistent basis without being an aggro *****? My armory link is in my sig if you want a good idea of the gear I'm using. Mostly badge stuff.
Tanks are spiking phenomenal threat off the pull these days. I've run with tanks where I follow them in about ten yards behind when they go in to pull, drop my totems and engage and by the time my Omen pane starts showing threat values the tank is at 35-60k. The main thing to be cautious of is Chain Lightning depending on your tank. Even then they'd pretty much had to have missed a mob entirely for your CL to pull something from them.
Hit (as others have said) is an enormous factor to overall dps. (On a personal note I resent like hell the fact that enhancement shaman have to stack way more hit than elemental :P). If you have a choice between +hit gems/enchants over pretty much anything else and you're not at the hit cap already, +hit is almost guaranteed to give the biggest bang for your buck. At the very least it makes your damage a lot more consistent which gives you a better foundation upon which to evaluate what you're doing and how it is impacting your performance. If you know every single one of your spells is going to hit you can play around with your rotation and see if it makes any difference because you've removed the RNG miss factor from the equation.