The Importance of Being Earnest.

I recently received the following PM from someone asking for help. Let me stress that the way that this was worded is what made me decide to take the case. He's comparing himself to another Moonkin. He provides enough data points to prove that he knows at least partially what to look for, but is still at a loss as to why he's doing less damage than a person he believes he should be better than:

So, with what looks like a decent gear disparity and a better rotation, why is he doing less? First, here's a shot of the WWS report, in case it expires:

http://elitistjerks.com/blog_attachm...1&d=1235070781

Yup, 600DPS difference, definitely worth looking into. A check of the WWS shows that Moonkinsauce, as noted, was pretty much just spamming Wrath, ignoring Eclipse procs (well, not entirely. Of the 10 Eclipse procs, 4 were caused by a Starfire, suggesting he was at least aware of the idea of having to switch spells). Here's the fight put into WWScalcs:

http://elitistjerks.com/blog_attachm...1&d=1235070781

77% casting is worthy of attention, being significantly below normal, but it's Thaddius. WWS doesn't tell us when someone's charge is changed, so it's hard to tell just how much movement was necessary. More worrisome is the uptime of IS and MF, both well under 50%. In all, this parse shows a pretty poor performance. So why is he doing so much better when Brenhew has better gear?

Here's Brenhew's entry to WWSCalcs:

http://elitistjerks.com/blog_attachm...1&d=1235070737

More DoT Ticks, more SF casts (which matches with his stated rotation), no misses, higher apparent crit percentage. In all, it looks like Bren is doing much better in the doing-it-right category. But then we look at Percent Casting. 53% (actually, when we account for the FFs put up, assuming they're all Brenhew's, it rises to 56%). And that's all we need to know. Brenhew seems to know more about Moonkin DPS, is paying more attention to what he's doing, has higher DoT uptime, but all that doesn't matter if you're not casting spells.

Now, again, this is Thaddius we're talking about. It's very possible (though relatively unlikely) that Brenhew was forced to switch sides on every charge, while Moonkinsauce was allowed to stay put. And if that's the case, then it's hardly Brenhew's fault, and would definitely explain the lower performance.

So if you find yourself wondering why you're so much lower on the meters than another Moonkin (whether they're in your guild, or you're looking at a parse from someone else's run), you're not done analyzing things until you've looked at how much time you spent casting. Because, as you can see, it can be the most important issue.

Attached Thumbnails