Knowledge is DPS

Every now and then I hear from someone complaining about their dps. This is usually accompanied by complaints that the people with high dps either have a more favored class, or way better gear.

Here’s the thing: the single biggest thing you can do to increase your dps, is to increase your knowledge. This goes for any class.

For a hunter this means understanding the hit cap, the conversion between AP, Agil, hit rating, crit rating, haste, armor pen, and all the rest. It means understanding the dps returns of different talents and talent builds. It means knowing what the optimal shot cycle is for your spec. Other classes need to know different information, but knowledge is the key to making logical dps decisions.

And the best part is, this knowledge isn’t that hard to obtain, because odds are someone else as done the work. You don’t have to train and test every ferocity pet in the game to find out which is the best dps — we’ve already done that for you. And most things you need to know, someone has probably already tested and posted the results online.

And now, with Wrath, this knowledge plays a bigger role than ever.

At level 80, our enchants and gems are making a big difference — a really big difference. And you have to know which gem is best, which enchant is best. Do you want crit or hit rating? Agility or attack power?

Gear choices are also wider than ever. Blizz is deliberately trying to give us choices — no longer is it safe to say that Tier X will be the best for you. You have to know how to choose between one piece of gear and another. And your decision needs to be based on knowledge, not gut intuition.

I look at my Recount dps results after boss fights, and there’s a huge spread among the dpsers. Sometimes the top few will have over 3k dps while the bottom few are at 1.3k. Gear is not the only thing making a 1,700 dps difference between those players, I promise you.

The one thing that the cluster of players on the top of the charts tend to have in common is their knowledge of their class. They know what gem they need, which piece of gear is better, or what attacks to use in what order based on what they’re fighting.

Interestingly, one thing experience has shown us is that experience is not enough to acquire this knowledge. Without a controlled scientific analysis, our “gut” feelings are often wrong. So just go online, look stuff up, and find out what makes your class tick.

Of course if you’re a hunter, just peruse our Guides section. We’ll be adding more regularly. After all, we all have to pay our dues.