Confession of a Noob

As of late, I've been posting about Emanee's dps, about how I've experienced a noticeable drop in my damage output and how I can't explain it.

So I'm driving home this afternoon, deep in the middle of freeway rush hour, when the explanation for my dps drop hits me like bolt of lightening. It's as if the heavens had parted and streaming insight beamed down upon me. It was as genuine a Eureka! moment as I've had in the last ten years.

So, what was my dawning realization?

This last week, I've postulated a number of theories to my dps troubles. At first, I thought it was my hit rating. The entire point of respeccing in the first place was to reallocate some Shadow Focus points after some newly acquired gear put me well over the total hit rating I required. But after checking my WWS stats, my miss rating hovered around the anticipated 1% mark. So, it wasn't hit.

I then thought it might be server or IP lag. I downloaded Quartz with the sole purpose of using its red bar mark to help me get a jump on lag cooldowns. But that wasn't it either.

I next chalked it up to the type of boss fighting I had been doing. Kael is like many of the other high-movement fights in WoW end-game content; it's got lulls where you stop and unleash, but mostly you run around with your head cut off, trying to move and mash your keyboard as best you can. I told myself, "You're moving around a lot in the Kael fight, that's why your dps is lower."

But that wasn't it either.

Nope, it wasn't until I was driving home this afternoon that it dawned on me that after I respecced and reallocated my talent points . . .

. . . wait for it . . .

. . . I didn't go back and retrain the shadow tree-specific spells, mind flay and vampiric touch.

Yes, for an entire week, I had been casting both those spells at rank one. Yes, for an entire week of raiding, I was spamming rank one versions of two dps spells. A dozen or more wipes on Kael? Yup, Kael and his motley crew felt the wrath of my rank one mind flay and vampiric touch all that eve.

The irony of all this? I've made this mistake before. When Emanee hit 70 and was ready to enter Kara, I respecced for raiding. I ran Kara for at least a week, maybe two. One night, we tackled and killed Nightbane. The following day, I got a whisper from the guild's priest class leader, Shaddoa. He tells me the guild leader noticed my dps sucked and that he wanted Shaddoa to talk to me, find out the cause of the low dps performance. Shaddoa asked me a few questions before finally getting to the crux of the problem, asking me to check the rank of my mind flay. I told him I didn't need to check, that it was maxed out, that I always train my skills to their maximum potential.

Shaddoa asked me to humor him.

Sure enough, mind flay sat there at rank one. I fumbled for half-ass excuses to explain why mind flay and vampiric embrace were untrained. Shaddoa was cool about it, but I'm sure he was shaking his head while simultaneously checking his roladex for shadow priest applicants.

And now, less than a year later, I've made the exact same mistake again.

Well, at least I flushed the problem out and it was something easily solved. Raids start again tonight and I expect my dps to snap back to its former pattern. Thank god no one in the guild reads this blog, otherwise I might find myself /gkicked and begging to join --Show Me Yer Crits--. Or even worse, --Fate Sealed--.

/shudder