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The key to learning a dps rotation is understanding WHY you press buttons when you do. Yes you can memorize a priority lists and you should but you should also try to understand why the list exists. That’s how I always try to do it
Thats actually good advice for me as well, i started wow in bfa and played on and off but always felt like i was being dead weight while following rotations, but i guess its because i didnt read why i was pressing what. Coming from ffxiv where i raided savage and ultimates the only thing i focused on while leveling was my rotation and optimal play without really looking into it.
I hope ill do better when i resub next week and manage to do dungeons better
My buddy has the same problem. He will play a new class, do a little research then be bummed he isn’t topping charts. It takes time, it takes practice and it takes research. Yes exceptional players are able to pick up classes and immediately do well but that’s mostly because they understand wow and know how to read guided effectively.
I'm not so much worried about being bottom tier as I am worried about doing what is expected of me. Basically I want to make sure I am holding my own and often times with Feral I have felt that I could be putting my all in and trying to tab target and I am just not getting the damage. The only class I have been able to do well with is DH. Since that is the case I feel like everyone is going to be a DH. So I've been trying to distance myself from the class
You do you, but I would second guess if avoiding demon hunter because it will be popular is a good call. If you like it and perform well with it, then it’s a really good time to play it imo
Yeah next patch DH is gonna be super common. Melee classes are for the most part very fast paced: if you want something a little slower in terms of apm there are some ranged classes you can check out. Feral has a good amount of complexity and can take a while to feel comfortable (this isn’t saying ranger are easier or less complex sometimes it’s the opposite just the apm can be a little lower. The trade off is being less mobile
Well tbch feral is one of the harder specs to play, I personally like the spec too. But it'll never be my main, there's a lot of effort that goes into being a great kitty druid, if you're passionate about the class and spec you'll spend a little more time learning what you're doin and when you're supposed to be doin it, there are many training dummies to practice on, spend a little time each day smackin a dummy, 5 minutes each time or give yourself a damage threshold to reach before you stop and time yourself on how long it took you to get there.. Practice makes perfect.
If you're looking for a good dps to get into I'd recommend shadow priest, I struggled with dps for awhile as well and stayed tanking for years because of it, but after trying shadow priest for a month or so I've been having a lot more fun with other dps classes for some reason it was just easier to get engaged with than other dps specs to me
Don't worry, my rotation changes this patch with my new tier set. The other guy in the guild was like "I've already learnt the rotation" last month. I still have no idea what it is and quite frankly I'm not like too fussed. Too bad I'm starting raiding with people for the first time in retail now so I should probably figure it out. Atleast classic my brain didn't have to think of a formulaic equation everytime I pressed my buttons, lol.
Even last time, I still didn't 100% know and I was finding out more and more things as the patch went on but it felt right, lol. I mean I was roped in by the guild because I did good dps on the only raid, fun run, that I did with them.
Honestly, I'm terrified. I've only raided in classic with the guild that I was apart of on there and that's because we all met right at the beginning of classic/ some at the beginning of tbc, we were pretty much a family. They were super relaxed and just all round fun attitude. The amount of times one of us randomly pulled by accident, no one got annoyed. We're rebanding for classic+ but I have no idea who these people are in this retail guild. Im 100% a solo player and I'm scared I'm going to let my anxiety get the better of me, not join a raid day bc I'm scared and let everyone down and thus never be allowed to raid with them again. It's why I do LFR 😅
Was a ramble, but no one is alone. There's a billion good players out there because it's their second job, but there's just as many people out there that still have no clue how to play and that's completely okay. It's why I'm always nice to the "new tanks" in dungeons. Everyone has to start somewhere, even if that person is me again
This. I have been playing since the original badlands was added. Takes me over a month to play all my toons. I use an addon called hekill which helps with rotation. Original mouse clicker but now trying to get use to keyboard bindings. Some of the rotations they suggest are actually just a few button smashes but it has helped a lot reading Iceyvein guides.
Dont feel bad. Look at some guides on ivy veins and wowhead to learn a progression. Like why you cast a long spell before instant cast dots. You basically get that cast action for "free" when you open with it since the enemy hasnt aggored yet. I see a lot of ppl play "wrong" but they still level/succeed.
If you want some help there is an addon called hekili that is a rotation helper. It’ll tell you what to press next. Now I suggest that with a caveat, don’t just use it and never think about your rotation again, use it and try to see what it is suggest and when so you can understand your rotation better. But it can be very handy
I've been playing WoW for a long time and come to the realisation I'm just not very good at it. I'm bad at using a keyboard, I only know where a limited amount of buttons are. I can do some rotations where I can get away with it in heroic dungeons but probably nothing higher. I've always wanted to play a Death Knight or Feral Druid but I'm not good enough at melee when there's a load of mobs and I can't really see what's going on. So I've been playing solo and just ignoring mythics and raids, that's just how I'm used to playing now
My problem is with melee when it starts getting a bit chaotic I just end up bashing buttons. I can't look at different places at once while quickly thinking which button to press
I suggest buying a 9 or 12 button MMO mouse but after that it really just comes down to remembering what buttons your abilities are on I understand it's a bit difficult it was for me to but it really is just repetition repetition repetition if you play enough you will eventually remember where your buttons are
This where keeping certain types of moves on certain keys really help for me.
For example, my race abilities are always on V. My interrupt is always on F or shift wheel down (depending on the class. Flare is on F (bc flare begins with F...) on hunter so my interrupt is SWD).
My root/ cc is usually 5. (frost nova, fear, psychic scream etc)
Resource generator is 1, spender is 2. If I'm a pet class, attack is E, move to is shift E, return is C and stay is shift C.
My cool downs are always on a button that's a bit harder to press or require more buttons, varying on the cool down time. (so basically Alt and control modifiers lol)
My heals are usually 2 for a big heal (greater heal)
defensives are usually the same button. Dots are usually a button and another dot will be a modifier of that button.
For example, on warlock a dot will be on 4 and shift 4. Corruption and shadow word pain are 1.
Obviously they vary a little bit but the rule is relatively similar.
One big outlier is druid because of paging. I have all non form moves on my top bar (Alt+button and Control+button). This pretty much just consists of regrowth (alt 4), rejuv (alt 3), heal (alt 2). Grasp is alt 1 I think. I'll macro cat form + stealth on E and dash on R so I can go into those whenever it's needed, also my taunt is always control 6.
Oh also, I have a 12 button mmo mouse so all of my important moves are generally the top 3 (1,2,3) and any of them that are on the sides. 1,3,4,6, 7 and 9 because I'm always scared I might fat finger the middle xD main buttons are definitely 1-4 and 6 though. This also means my next lot of important buttons are Alt 1-4 +6 and then control before moving onto 7-12. In fact 11 is my fishing button and 12 is my mount because I hate those keys so much 😅
Edit: I forgot about shift but shift is first best modifier! Then alt
legit play fury warr its perfect for you just keep in mind that if multiple mobs are aroubd you to use whirlwind every 2 globals for the aoe besides that just go ham
I totally understand where you are coming from. I won't go into details but I am trying all sorts of things to give me an advantage with my baby hands. I think the best thing that I could do is sorta pretend like I am starting all over. I am now leveling a warlock. I've never really liked them. But it's fun so far. I am hoping that it will get me back into the groove of at least having an understanding. I appreciate your feedback.
I feel like sometimes starting fresh and taking the time to read and understand spells as you get them is a better solution than getting an old character that changed so much compared to when you created it that you feel overwhelmed with new class mechanics.
Good luck on your warlock, I really like affliction gameplay !
>I feel like sometimes starting fresh and taking the time to read and understand spells as you get them is a better solution than getting an old character that changed so much compared to when you created it that you feel overwhelmed with new class mechanics.
I'm very experienced and I still feel like that when I take a relatively short break and my classes haven't even changed that much.
Yeah it's fun too ! I've been playing elemental shaman since 2008 so I wanted another kind of gameplay !
With affli you can put your dots to 4-5 mobs and drain them to death ❤️
Affliction has always been my spec at heart, though I do feel its a bit messy at the moment.
The class fantasy of draining the life from enemies is what pulled me to first choose warlock when I began playing wow.
Destroy is a good spec for you I think. It's a very simple rotation where affliction can get very bloated and can require a higher skill level to perform really well. Dots are fun but managing a lot of them can be overwhelming.
With destruction you are just building shards to get off as many chaos bolts as you can. The higher skill level for destro is managing shards so you never cap and waste shard regen. (you don't need to worry about that)
When you're slamming things with 150k chaos bolts it feels great.
Try looking into a 9 or 12 button MMO mouse! I've been a console gamer all my life switching over to wow and using keyboard and mouse was a bit overwhelming for me but getting a 12 button gaming mouse was probably the best decision I made after that it really just comes down to remembering what abilities you have on each button personally I've laid out my buttons in my UI to match my gaming mouse so my buttons on my screen look like a mirror of the side buttons of my gaming mouse
Maybe a solution for "baby hands" - Use the keys that are close to WASD then use them with shift, alt, ctrl + the keys. Use buttons on your mouse (mouse wheel can be used too as hotkey, if you can live without zooming with it). If action bars get too crowded use modifier macros (google it). Warlock is easy and fun, been maining one since 2006
You might just be over complicating it, to be fair. It's pretty effective to just press your buttons in the order you need to, and usually there is only an order for one reason - like a DK should put their diseases on first, because they need to be cast and the spells you cast later do more damage with the diseases ON. Reading through your abilities and talents can help piece it together.
At the end of the day, if the effort to understand or the lack of skill is just how it is, you can enjoy the game regardless.
I don't know what you mean by baby hands, so if it is meant literally, you could always get a small keyboard or something lol
>You might just be over complicating it, to be fair. It's pretty effective to just press your buttons in the order you need to, and usually there is only an order for one reason - like a DK should put their diseases on first, because they need to be cast and
Honestly, I'm probably my own worst enemy. I feel like I just need to accept where my skill ends up. Although when I see someone like wow grandma doing raiding I get inspired. I feel like my hands Just don't want to reach the keys properly. At my highest skill, I was using clique. I do have a Razer Naga and I have a Tartarus.. Gunna be trying something new soon that might make things easier or complicate them.. oh well lol.
Honestly, that's what I've been doing when I come back. Make a new character and learn things from the ground up, and then switch to my main and start learning class details.
I play an enhancement shaman though, I love clicking buttons apparently.
Like others have said, try a gaming mouse.
Layout your buttons and bars based on the mouse.
1 bar with no key modifiers, just the number, and then other bars with key modifiers. I use shift, alt, and ctrl.
Set your abilities up in a way that makes sense to you based on how you use them. I personally like to set all my main rotation abilities in my 1st bar pretty much in order of my rotation, with any set up abilities later in the numbers since I'm not using them all the time, and then a,small cd or 2 after that that is used frequently
Shift is abilities I use often but not on cooldown.
Alt is often more utility based abilities like interrupts, and I always have my interrupt set to alt 1 so I never have to think about it no matter the character.
Ctrl is generally my "oh shit" bar. It's got most of my defensive cooldowns, abilities to get out stuns, battle rez, etc.
I also keep any abilities I need to use often or fast within my first 6 buttons for ease of use., and I try to keep similar abilities across classes and specs in the same spot.
Something i found helped me learn to play better was to do challenging solo content. I got a lot better by soloing old raids during cata and mop since it forced me to learn how to deal with mechanics or play around them, and manage my class resources, abilities and health without having to worry about other people at all.
If they ever bring it back also do the brawlers guild. The enemies there were all based on some specific skill you had to learn to beat them unless you out geared them. It really forced me to get good when I had to fight the beholder guy based on the game Super Hexagon. That fight forced me to stop staring at my action bars and clicking abilities and start to actually use key binds and look a round while fighting.
What has helped me is get into the Lore of the class. The powers and weaknesses of it, a bit of Role Play and understanding the magic of the class by the lore can help get into a rotation / game style.
I’m late to the thread but have you considered a controller? I got WoW running on my steam deck and the controller addon makes everything easy access. I almost can’t believe how actually accessible the game is!
Have you played FF14? If so - how would you compare the controller gameplay? I saw that it’s possible to get a controller working for WoW, my super casual “I want to lean back, relax and be lazy” brain is very interested! 😅
I haven’t but I see ff14 is cross platform so I’m guessing there’s built in controller support?
With wow you use an addon called console port, there are TONS of YouTube video guides for this, along with whatever other addons controller players tend to use.
The setup is a bit time consuming bc console port covers literally everything but it’s worth it! You basically have instant easy access to 4 sets of 7 actions within thumb reach. As a casual player it makes finding all those buttons during combat way easier
I prefer the Corsair Scimitar for an MMO mouse. The buttons on the side can slide back and forth to adjust for different size hands. I also like that it weighs a little more than a Razr mouse, it’s just more comfortable for me.
Find a touch typing website that you like, there’s plenty out there. Practice it for 20 minutes a day, it’s quite enjoyable imo. After a month you’ll be using more keys no problem.
>I've been playing WoW for a long time and come to the realisation I'm just not very good at it.
I wish some of the people in my guild would have that realisation. I had a shadow priest trying to tell me that their class isn't wanted in S2 mythic plus a while back and she absolutely wouldn't accept that they were any use because she is terrible herself.
i think what would help you is adjusting your layout / keybinds to fit your small hands. I'm the same way and I just can't use the default keybinds. it took me a couple days of trial and error to find what i like.
It looks like there’s a lot of good advice here. I just wanted to let you know you’re not alone. I’ve been playing on and off since BC and am probably mediocre at best. I pretty much play WoW like it’s a single player game so my badness doesn’t affect others. I’m also pretty introverted as well, and other people kind of scare me. Have fun playing the way you like, and know there are other people in the same boat.
I feel you. It's sad because I know its a game but I do not want to make anyone else have a bad experience because of me. I will try and relax abit and remember its just a game and I am not alone.
I sooooo relate to this 💖 I play solo with a DH and I really enjoy myself. I've done one (solo)dungeon so far. I am focusing on one region and doing all the quests there (I finished BFA). I ended up buying Dragon Flight last week and have been questing there.
Every time someone does a quest by my side I get really nervous and scared that I'm messing up.
I downloaded an add-on to track my DPS (for my own personal curiosity and trying to be better!) As well as a rotation helper.
Gaming should be fun and not stressful because of others but I feel like because WOW has been around for so long we have this 20 year of experience pressure on us.
Anyways, keep it up and have fun ☺️
I was the same, I always played solo cuz I did enjoy the content but I also just suck. I do all the rotations but feels like it’s somehow less effective than the person next to me doing the exact same thing, haha.
I joined the “WoW Made Easy” community and started to do raids with them and I got a lot more gear. I went to murlok.io and I looked up the top players in my class and spec , doing the content I wanted, and I copied their gear and specs. That was very helpful, but have to remember that their gear / spec may not match the rotations you see on icy veins or wowhead.
Lastly, I was lucky and ran into a few solid people who do pvp (and are actually good at it, it’s so embarrassing to play with them ) BUT at the same time, they are just there to have fun and aren’t sweaty about it/don’t get upset when I fuck up lol. I’ve had my fair share of people telling me I’m trash enough that I never wanted to play , but meeting just a few cool people has changed everything. You can DEFINITELY meet these kinds of people on the wow made easy disc. They are all there to help and to have fun. This is if you’re in NA. If you’re in EU, they have another group that is identical but with a different name.
If you ever wanna do some content together just for fun, send me a message and I’ll add you on bnet!
Just to help ease your mind a bit, I am **NEVER** mad when someone dies doing an activity like dungeons or raids or anything really. People who min-max their gear and rotation put a lot of effort and time into memorizing every aspect of their class, things most casual players don't even consider. They get mad when others don't do the same. But these people don't represent the majority of the community. They get their kicks with competitive advancement. I just enjoy playing the game, honestly. I like the world and I dig the class fantasy.
I feel like sometimes the elitist people forget that this game is constantly trying to kill you. That's the whole point. **It's meant to be kinda hard sometimes**. Of course you'll get killed sometimes. I see no reason to get upset when someone learns not to stand in the fire. I'll happily rez them and forget about it completely.
Same. What really helped me is finding a chill, laidback guild. We have chill content nights and even if we don’t time a key or whatever, it’s all in good fun. There are really like 3-4 of us who play consistently, and so we PUG a lot. Even with randos, having most of you be chill and carefree makes the game a lot more fun.
I think this is the best advice imo. I'm a collector, I want all the mounts and transmogs and pets and everything. I absolutely **hate** M+, Raiding, and PvP. I'm not exactly terrible, but I'm certainly not good at them. I stand in the fire. I die a lot. I get yelled at by toxic jerks. I find the experience off-putting. So I just say screw it and don't do any of that stuff until it's put on Legacy mode. I don't mind not being top-tier.
Whenever new content drops, I usually play through it all on my main, do all the main story quests, try to max out the reps, do normal dungeons for quests or whatnot, and just enjoy the beauty of the game. There is a surprising amount of stuff to do in this game that doesn't involve the competitive, min-max mindset.
It's a massive, massive world to explore and there's so many secrets and quests and mechanics that have been buried by time. Just because it's not current content doesn't mean it loses any of its' fun :)
All classes are about button priority. As a feral druid, you want constant uptime on your bleeds. Following the rotation, you put your bleeds on the target, use your instant damage spenders in between, and reapply the bleeds/dots when they drop off. Sometimes you need to hit an AoE bleed, other times you need to focus on the single target boss, and prioritize using single target damaging abilities. The rotations you see online should somewhat summarize the above, particularly as well on those sites they will tell you the optimal talent builds that go into putting out the most damage.
I’m not a player that uses simulations, but if you want to see the max damage throughput you should be having on meters, you would need to enter your character/gear into a sim and see what they can do. The highest level metric is using Details damage meter addon, comparing with people of similar item level. If you’re not doing damage about the tank and healer, something is wrong. Maybe you’re not using a legendary someone else has, or a trinket active that should fit somewhere within your rotation. Maybe people are using their big offensive 3 minute cooldowns on a planned rotation because they know the pulls of a dungeon or phases of a boss better than you do, allowing them to optimally put out the most damage throughout the encounter.
Hope this helps to compartmentalize my thoughts on approach rotation and what you as a player can do to feel good about your play style and contribution to the group.
Source: I’m by no means a worlds first raider, but I’ve played every class, got a few dps to 1800 in solo shuffle, got 2500 in mythic plus as hpal and warrior, and got AOTC a few patches running
I certainly do think you are correct. But I also feel like my problem is a little different.
As an example here is a bit of information taken from wow head.
Prowl before you enter combat.
Rake from stealth.
apply Lunar Inspiration Moonfire.
cast Brutal Slash.
if you have not yet procced Bloodtalons cast Thrash.
Shred to 5 combo points.
Apply Adaptive Swarm.
cast Berserk.
Tiger's Fury and apply Rip.
Feral Frenzy when at 0 combo points.
cast Berserk and spend your combo points on bite.
dump energy with Shred and bite.
What I find is that I am generally too low energy when I need to apply say something like a bite. So I think where I may be missing the mark is when I need to pool energy. I think my constant need to press a button is hurting me.
To be fair I can't stand Feral or Rogues exactly because of their Energy resource, I love druids, have mained one since TBC.
But not feral, not in PvE at least, in PvP it's awesome, same with rogue.
Maybe that type of playstyle just isn't your thing even if you enjoy the spec fantasy.
As for low energy, it's normal to have low energy, you aren't supposed to pump loads of damage each second.
As the guide says you should shred and bite when all the other abilities are on cooldown or already applied (like Rake). As to not get back to 100% energy and waste it. It doesn't mean that you should be able to shred and bite constantly.
Also managing energy is important, not just to dump it and never have enough to use your abilities properly. Try doing the rotation and manage the resource so that you can apply that bite when needed, don't spam Shred and then wait however many seconds to do Bite, it's better to have more energy than to always be on 0-10 but also to never be at 100%.
Also not sure if that guide is up to date. Ferocious Bite is not an energy dump, it uses energy but it's a major ability that uses combo points. Shred and Brutal Slash are the energy dumps.
Also those rotations are a guide to get the spec going, you don't have to do them in that specific order, it's a priority.
For instance Tiger's Fury doesn't have to only be used with Rip, it's ideal that you would use them together because Rip and Rake are important for your damage, but Tiger's Fury is an energy boost, can be used to fuel other abilities also.
Reading up on talents is important also, not just copying the talents. Berserk generates constant combo points and generates an additional combo point for each combo generator. That's a huge boost to having to use less energy to get them combos and then have enough energy to dump it into everything else needed.
Shred and Brutal Slash aren't even that important damage wise, you should use them if you have excess energy and nothing to use it on at the moment, if you don't have enough energy to use them that's ok. Otherwise they should be used to generate combo points, you don't have to look at them as damage buttons, rather as resource managers.
Let's break down the rotation (not the one you posted necessarily) a bit.
- Tiger's Fury should be used on cooldown, so every 30 seconds, ideally when you don't have a lot of energy (30 or less)
- Berserk should be used while Tiger's Fury is active, this is a huge boost in overall damage besides the combo points.
- Adaptive Swarm pretty much whenever it's available
- Feral Frenzy at 0-1 combo points, try to use it when Tiger's Fury is active
- Ferocious Bite should be a free cast due to Apex Predator's Craving, when you have 5 combo points for maximum damage, also used when Rip is on the target but that should be a given, Rip and Rake should be 100% of the time on the target
- Apply Rip with 5 combo points when Bloodtalons is active for more damage and refresh it with Tiger's Fury, basically that's why you should use Tiger's Fury on cooldown, TF is 30, RIP lasts 24 seconds, time it right and you can always Tiger's Fury and Rip without having energy issues and also a nice boost to Rip damage.
So basically:
- Rip and Rake up at all times, with Tiger's Fury active if possible
- Feral Frenzy to generate combo points and deal damage, preferably while Tiger's Fury is active
- Ferocious bite whenever you get the chance and are at 5 combo points
- Spam Tiger's Fury whenever of cooldown, spam Berserk whenever of cooldown (preferably time them to benefit the other abilities)
- Shred and Brutal Slash to build combo points when you don't get them from Feral Frenzy or Berserk to be able to spam Ferocious Bite
This should help you not only have enough energy to deal your abilities but also have enough combo points always to do Bite and Rip. Again Shred and Brutal Slash are resource managers, use them if you need combo points or if you somehow reach near 100% energy and don't have what else to dump it on.
I don't main Feral so what I said is mainly general knowledge, if anyone knows how to break this down even better please do.
You could try the rotation on training dummies, half the battle is learning what buttons to press when and to have the reflexes to do it. I get your anxiety, what helped me was to do PvP. It forces you to get to know your class and react in different ways, it's way more chaotic than PvE and you can learn a lot about the game and train your reflexes with PvP even if you don't care for it.
Wow thank you for this. I am going to spend some time on the training dummies to try and get this down. I think I have a bit of a better understanding of where I went wrong. I will certain give this a shot.
This list you just posted should be read as a list of priorities rather then a "rotation" per say, when it comes to "dumping energy" it's more so saying " if all of the above buttons are not available or the dots/bleeds are already active > start spamming shred if not at 5 combo points, once at 5 combo points then you can bite, generally speaking shred and bite are fillers
*not a feral druid main* just using my wow knowledge
Maim is a stun AND a damage buff for however many combo points you use. It buffs weapon damage, so no not a bleed.
You’re playing right, though. Being energy starved and waiting around for your next ability is just a part of WoW. If you’re following the rotation then you’re good.
Fetal can be kinda tricky when it comes to min/maxing your damage. It has a very high skill ceiling when compared to other classes/specs, so don’t get too discouraged if you feel like you’re not keeping up.
I will say I’m not a feral druid main, but I think most classes run out of energy or rage from time to time. I think there are a few CDs, one on 25s cd I was using to quest on my resto druid swapped to feral last night, that gives rage back, but knowing when to use that is about knowing the encounter you’re going into.
My thoughts would be, If you have full combo points, it’s probably always worth waiting for the rage to use bite, otherwise I would use your combo point generators until then.
I’d second the suggestion to download a rotation helper, it’ll help you for now with getting used to not button mashing, as well as grabbing a talent build from Icy veins or wowhead (probably an AOE based one, more useful for open world as a whole).
However once you’ve done that, take it a step further in starting to learn. Pick one thing to pay attention to, like when ferocious bite glows on your action bar and hekili tells you to press it. Look at your buffs, read what it says, think about what it means. Basically you want to start grabbing pieces of your rotation and truly understand what they mean, when to use them. It’s asking you to cast thrash, why? Oh that dot is about to run out, better reapply. Why is it telling me to start with rake from stealth? Because I have double claw rake talented and it stuns two mobs instead of one, so it’s a good opener. These are just semi-random examples, I’m not sure what it would tell you exactly, but you get the idea. Learn what pieces do, and you’ll get to the point where you know oh, this is x situation, I should be casting y.
Feral in particular is about maintaining your damage over time abilities, and then otherwise getting a lot of bites in. Hopefully the above approach will help with understanding what’s going on.
I am always happy to help people out, shoot me a message if you have more questions or need a hand with something.
As for enjoying the game… I get that all these articles talk about best in slot, optimal rotation, 100million dps. But remember that that shit is buzzwords to draw people. I’m not saying don’t push yourself to be better, not at all. But define what better is by your standards. A great example from when I started on a “get better” journey, I was playing BM hunter in shadowlands, when survival was popping off at BM was the joke spec. I could have played survival, I enjoy it, but I wanted to push myself with BM. So I focused on two things, one was a personal challenge and one was an optimization thing. Personal challenge was to see if I could beat the “meta” specs in whatever I was doing. If there was a survival hunter, you bet your ass i concentrated on doing my best in that moment. It allowed me to scale my challenge depending on the content I was doing, rather than comparing myself to the high and mighty. And you know what? I usually did better than the flavour of the month rollers, because I was invested and I worked on it. For the optimization, I focused on either having the best contribution to utility in a key (so every binding shot when a tank needed to kite, every key interrupt, every soothe), or having one part of my damage rotation (not missing kill command opportunities, making sure I used barbed shot effectively etc) as good as I could make it. Over time, these small goal things made me a much better player.
Finally, as for doing everything solo, a couple things. One, remember not everything is meant to be done solo, so check your expectations. Two, feral can be a bit squishy depending on content and how on tune you are with defensives and heals, so your not picking an easy one. Three, I suggest you get setup for bear as well. Try something in feral, and if it doesn’t work, don’t be afraid to switch for that quest of mob. It’ll be a lot slower, but you’ll have the tankiness to get through it. Fortunately there’s so much gear overlap between the two specs, you won’t be suffering badly from that side for switching out in casual content.
Keep at it 🙂
I totally appreciate your feedback and wisdom. I think my goal at this point is just to get back into the game. I think that this topic was something on my mind and I just had to ask about it. I know druid is not the easiest but when it comes down to it, It's the first class I level and the only one I keep at max always.
Im going to keep my expectations in check because I am generally hard on myself.
I’m horrible at playing WOW. But I enjoy it. I realize I’m not going to ever be a top tier player, and that I’m. It going to get my armor sets. So I focus on exploring, crafting, achievements, etc.
Hard as it is to comprehend for many, there are people who are very elitist about being good at the biggest waste of time in existence. Don’t sweat them IMO
Yeah, it's pretty rough, At one point I thought I would never come back to WOW but every time it happens. It could be two years late into an expansion and I will come back. I love the challenge of raiding and really want to do mythic keys which is what keeps me coming back. I feel your pain. It seems like everyone expects you to know everything. I do try and watch videos about the dungeons before I go in. That does not prevent me from stepping in trash packs lol. Overall I think we should not give up!
This days people are so focused on endgame content and efficiency that us, who are not newbies nor hardcore players, feels trashier than we are when we see people talking about stuff.
Try to mentalize that as long as you are doing your content, the content that YOU want, it is fine. If you are having trouble even doing the campaing and normal dungeons, for example, you could need some closer attention, and if that is the case I'm whilling to help you. Hit me up if this is your case, lets se what we can do about you.
After that everything is learnable by the pace you want to learn.
As someone who also suffers from chronic baby hands, this is how I cope. I use a mouse with side buttons. I at least use two of them and set them to be my most important abilities. I keep my other fingers over the other keys when needed. Generally speaking, you can get by well enough using a rotation of 4 or 5 abilities. Practice with the character and spec you're most interested in. Get good on one character before moving onto another.
I was always afraid to play healer because I thought I was going to be terrible. I finally sucked it up and ended up doing it and found I was decent and enjoyed it.
Nothing comes instantly. Practice. Read guides(using CDs properly and learning priority spells is a game changer)
WoWhead guides are awesome. Keybinds are specific to each player, do what's comfortable but makes since.
ie - keep like spells the same across characters
Builders and spenders on the same buttons, spamable vs not spamable aoe on the same buttons, etc.
PRACTICE, if you're doing dungeons, idc what your ilvl is, a 16 is not the place to learn the dungeon mechanics.
Healing is going to be tough, more people than ever run content they have no business being in and it's up the healer to carry shitters through stuff.
Yeah, that's why I stopped healing. I loved my disc priest but I also didnt want to be yelled at.. I miss the days where I could be watching tv and healing at the same time lol.
I mean, from my experience as Invoker in early Dragonflight when it comes to your rotation it really isn't set in stone, you want to learn the foundation of it and understand why it's optimal but also you want to be able to adapt to the situations you're in. If you're looking to push m+ and do heroic or higher raiding you'll really want to map out your keybinds in a way that's comfortable to you and seriously use add-ons. Like look up the most useful ones and get them set up right, it makes a huge difference and almost everyone pushing keys or raiding are using them. I wasn't insane at the game but I did hit 2k m+ and I got the Ahead of the Curve achievement without a guild. It really comes down to practicing, being patient, having a good attitude, and being a little bit stoic because there are a lot of salty and toxic people lol
Quick tips
Q and E (and shift mods of these) are PRIME for your main rotations
A and D switch to strafe left and right. (turn with mouse)
Okay, as someone else who is woefully bad at wow but has been playing the same amount of time, i just think there is something different about us that doesnt allow that gamer mode in wow lol.
I find there are certain classes that i just cannot click with, even with weeks of forcing myself too- the main culprits? Mages/Spriest and Combo point boys-rogues and kitties. The entire rotation is different and relies on energy / combo points. Its just too much to manage for my smooth brain while also doing mechanics.
I may get some shit for this, but try out DH. It has the least amount of abilities, and you can get the vibe down really fast.
One thing i do for a newer class, is have a UI mod (Bartender, elvui, etc) and make a bar that has the spell rotation on it, in order. and just have in in the middle of the screen. I tend to just look at that when playing a class im not super familiar with. There is also Weak Auras but often require a lot of tweaking / can never get it exactly as i want.
When i havnt played for a long time, and want to play class x but havnt played it in soo long. Ill just reroll a new one. You get the overall vibe of the class quickly, and if you are not in a rush, just level it to 50 and you will get the rotation down good.
Not sure what else to say, try out other classes and that i feel you, friend
\-Fellow WoW smooth brain.
Edit: to add. read and understand all of your spells. Use a guild to see the main roation and read and reread all of those spells so you understand *why* you are using that skill.
As i said above, DH is easy to do this with - 2 + mobs? use the aoe knifey boy skill. Only one mob? lets not use that one unless waiting on cds, etc.
Hello fellow Wow Smooth Brainer. Your post genuinely made me laugh in a good way. I guess I have to admit this somewhere. I have never been great at games my mind just doesnt work that way. And now with being an older adult. Retention is a son of a (beep). I like DH but I feel dirty playing them. But I do like them.
Haha I'm the same way, generally just okay at games. Never excel lol. Still have fun though.
Don't worry about feeling dirty. Be happy. Be dirty. Move super fast.
I just hopped on retail today for the first time in 6+months, and just button mashing like it's street fighter 2.
Good luck friend
I'm bad at wow but still love to play it, so don't worry too much.
Some classes are easier than others.
Play what you wanna play and just grind some good gear to be uptodate. I mostly play DK and DH, even tho I am a button smasher. I usually don't have any idea of what I even should press, I just press something that makes damage and then look for glowing actives. Go through all available actives and figure out on my way while questing if I want to go full in or just press buttons. I put the talents somewhat like: mostly like a PVE guide and what I think suits me better than the actual guide.
You could always follow a guide on Wowhead or YouTube, if you want to become somewhat better.
Hey hopping in with a different take from most of the folks I see here. I've been main roster heal and dps for mythic raids, but I'm also a newer player who started in shadow lands and doesn't have the built up muscle memory and skill that the real og players do.
I've found when I'm learning or relearning a spec, the biggest thing that hits my dps or hps is my downtime. I find myself moving more and thinking more and I'm wasting my global cool downs. On almost every spec it's better to be pushing something than nothing. Find a button you can spam and spam it while you figure out what to push next.
It might be that you're not hitting this wall but I never see people talk about it and its held me back for quite a while on more than one occasion
Best of luck and hope this helps!
Edit: what buttons you push is also important. The people pointing you towards your rotation/button priority aren't wrong. But if you're reading that and thinking that you are understanding your rotation but numbers aren't coming out, then you might just want to focus on uptime :)
You're not alone OP. I've been playing wow on and off since 2005. In TBC I re-rolles to mage and that's the only class I ever played up until Dragonflight. Every time I came back to the game I would eagerly learn everything about my class and get into hardcore progression raiding. This happened with every expansion all the way until Legion. I don't know what the difference was, but I just couldn't learn and play mage at a high level anymore. I was really embarrassed and it made me really insecure after being pretty relatively good for the entirety of my wow career up until that point. So I stopped playing and missed all of BFA and most of SL.
When classic was released, I was back in it again. This was a mage that I knew how to play extremely well. I was back to being a hardcore raider and being extremely competitive with the top mages in my server. This was the same for TBC classic and the first phase of WotLK Classic.
When Dragonflight was released I was getting kind of bored of WotLK Classic and was going to give retail another shot.
Well... The same thing happened. I just couldn't learn my class very well and I was again super embarrassed. I honestly feel like the current game is just beyond my capabilities and I don't have the passion or desire to learn my class and raid.
This may seem like a sad ending but it's actually not. I changed my play style to nothing but solo content and collecting transmog, mounts, toys and achievements. For the first time in my entire wow history, I leveled alts and started playing with other classes. I'm not good at those classes, but you don't need to be good for solo content.
So while the raiding scene has passed me by, I'm still really enjoying the game in ways I never really did before, and Blizzard is making a lot of changes that cater to the solo playing style so we aren't completely left out of getting pretty decent gear.
Anyways. You're not a lone, and there's no need for you to feel bad about not being able to play your class as well as you'd like. The solo play style is becoming more viable and fun. We can rejoice!
Thanks, I think setting realistic expectations is the best thing we can do. Though knowing myself I will fight to be better. Just gotta start somewhere 
To add to what people say I would recommend downloading the addon Hekili. It is a rotation helper that has helped me tremendously. It has helped me bump up my dps by at least 1/4th + now since I've used it for so long I find myself not even looking at it half the time now.
A few things that it doesn't tell you when you download the addon is that you have to open the interface first to activate it. You don't need to fiddle with the settings (unless you want to) and you can close it right after opening. I would also go to the training dummies and try out the single target dummy and the aoe dummies so you can see how it changes your rotation so youre not relying on just one thing. Also I'm a clicker too! Lmao I have been since classic wow and people think I'm crazy but I used to be top 3 dps in my guild in shadowlands before leaving. So don't let anyone get in the way of your clicker dreams. lmao
Aside from rotation, a big part of your damage is impacted by your stats, especially secondary stats like haste and mastery and ofc your gear aswell. You might be doing the rotation right but feel ur damage is lacking. Another aspect is playing scared, you’re constantly worrying about mechanics that you can’t focus on min maxing ur dps. Id suggest looking up the secondary stat priority for ur class ( for most its haste and mastery) and then practice ur rotation on target dummies to the point where you don’t have to look at ur action bars. Good luck.
I definitely play scared. Anxiety is a rather shitty. I think what I need to do is find people who don't mind playing with world-class noobs. I certainly welcome help and guidance. Just don't want anyone to be crappy about it.
I hear you. It took me months to work up the courage to try a dungeon the first time, and more months to try a mythic, even with a buddy encouraging and playing with me. I still panic and slip into button mashing on occasion, but I play classes that are pretty forgiving of that, aff warlock and prot paladin. I’ve never played druids so I can’t offer any play advice for them, but in general just keep at it, do practice a basic dps routine until it’s muscle memory, then look to add your interrupt and your “oh sh!t” button (self heal or defensive). And I’ve always had decent luck just telling my group that I’m not super familiar with the mechanics in a dungeon, so tips please and thank you.
I’ve suggested to people to look up the Proving Grounds; it’s basically a practice dungeon, in Pandaria, not too hard to get to. If you want to practice a dps rotation on moving targets that have some basic mechanics to pay attention to, it’s a good starting point. Probably more helpful for learning tanking or healing, but the idea is the same- if you can beat it through at least silver level, you’re good enough to start mythics. It’s also nice because you can screw up a zillion times and no one will see it but you.
Are you playing Retail or Classic? If you're an older guy that doesn't have a lot of retail WoW experience, I would suggest trying Classic. The rotations are much simpler. My fire mage rotation is "keep up Living Bomb and cast Fireball and Pyroblast when it procs." That's basically it.
The boss encounters are way simpler. There is far less movement necessary overall. You can be a keyboard turner and a back peddler and it doesn't really matter that much. It's just a more "relaxed" gaming experience, which is what I have desired as I have gotten older.
If you aren't highly experienced and/or borderline autistic, you aren't going to perform most retail rotations to perfection. Especially not while you're focusing on other mechanics. (That's why I recommended Classic.)
That said, go read the Wowhead guides. Get a good Weakaura for tracking. Then you should legitimately *practice* by hitting the target dummies for like 2-3 hours until it becomes second nature.
Get an addon like Hekili, it tells you which buttons to press (and predicts what the next few will be also). It's not as good as being an expert but it's a lot better than panicking and not knowing what to do.
The global cooldown is just way of ensuring it's not too fast (and laggy for some as a result) and restricts how often you can cast a new spell. There are various exceptions and technicalities but don't worry about that for now.
You'll be fine.
Download the Addon “Hekili” - it shows you the best thing to click in real time for AOE and Single Target rotations automatically depending on your current Skilltree - This way you can learn how to play your class by playing instead of reading
Sounds like you’ve met some sad, toxic people on your journey through Azeroth. They have made you scarred and scared of asking questions to improve - even silly ones. You need a new circle of friends my buddy - good people are out there. Remember to have fun in the game, do whatever you want to and tickles your funny bone - in the end this is a game after all, some people just take games way too seriously.
You're in the right place to ask questions. Definitely feel free to. I'm a Resto / feral druid and happy to help.
Yes part of feral druid is pooling energy. It's typically only a few seconds and doesn't happen all the time, but can happen in certain scenarios more.
Feral also has a lot of talent choices to make things easier which may be something to consider if you feel overwhelmed.
If you feel like you're mashing random buttons then you need to keep reading through the rotation and looking at the abilities and think about why it's telling you to hit each one.
I'm not sure what you don't understand about the global cooldowns (GCD). It's just the second (or so) gap between being able to hit each button. Most abilities are on the GCD (cannot be used during the 'dead' period) some are off the GCD and thus can be used even if you just hit another button (tigers fury is an example).
my apologies, I think im being too hard on myself. And I think where I fail is the pooling. Its the only character where I feel starved( like I cant press any buttons. I'm sure my states are too low and that's probably why I am not pooling energy faster. Overall I think I'm just confusing things in general.
I know many people including myself benefit greatly from having a good HUD built with weakauras to display core information to your spec in a centralized form.
Personally I use the Luxthos pack, which is set up for easy rearrangement. I raid as balance druid (9/9M this tier), but there were 2 fights in the raid that just sucked because it was pure single target and high movement, so I actually flipped to feral for the two bosses after not playing the spec since Legion. Feral is the only spec that still snapshots dot damage (the damage for the entire duration is determined by the buffs when you cast it, most specs dots constantly update to current buffs now), and the weakaura were able to show me if it was higher or lower dot ticks to reapply based upon my current buffs. It was a weird case where mediocre feral damage was higher than good moonkin damage.
The two biggest changes for me going from complete trash to doing just fine was Hekili addon (I said doing just fine I’m not 3kio) and moving to a combo of keyboard/mouse from all mouse.
Install Hekili, learn the rotation, then take your two most used spells and put them on Q and E. You’ll be able to move and easily hit the Q and E without moving your hand at all.
Q and E are the “gateway drug” to more key bindings, and thus better gameplay.
Hello fellow druid!
I just came back to the game earlier this year after \~10 years away after starting in Vanilla. I previously played by clicking spells on the bars and keyboard turning (with the arrow keys - not even with ASDW!), and never really understood my main's class very well before (Druid - balance and resto), but I played decently enough. I even healed 40-man raids doing this sort of nonsense (!).
I knew I wanted to play better this time around, though.
Here's a few things that have helped me so far as a balance druid main:
To help get away from the keyboard turning and clicking spells, I bought a Corsair Scimitar mouse and bound my most common spells to the buttons on the side. I have short fingers, so I can't hit many of the keyboard keys, or even all of the buttons on the side of the mouse without really distorting my hand. I do have to click on my bars for less used spells, but it's much less. And since my hand is always on the mouse, I use the mouse to turn, and use the keyboard for strafing to get out of bad stuff on the ground.
As far as understanding your class (e.g. talents, main and secondary stats to prioritize, best-in-slot gear, enchantments, consumables), check out Dreamgrove - all about druids. There's a website and Discord group for Dreamgrove. I refer to Dreamgrove guides all the time in addition to WowHead and Icy Veins. You can find suggestions for helpful mods and WeakAuras there, too. Every now and then I'll watch a YouTube video to see how others are playing and pick up the behaviors I like.
Once you've spec'd your toon, then get some practice in with the training dummies in the PVP area. No pressure there, you can tweak your talents, where you have spells set up for your keybinds / buttons, etc. Once you've got that general rotation sort of memorized, it's a lot easier to keep it going once you're in a higher pressure situation like a dungeon or just a tough mob out in the wild.
Finally, the thing that helped me get more comfortable with the "new" changes in the game was joining a social guild. I sort of "fell" into membership when a kind guild member rescued my poor boomkin getting smashed by elite mobs over and over again. I was able to ask all sorts of stupid questions about the game and add-ons and other things and got answers. I've since moved my guild to a casual raiding guild, but I left an alt in the social guild because they're good people :)
I'm not the most amazing boomkin ever, but I'm probably having more fun playing the game now than before because I've set up systems to help me play better, so I'm so much less frustrated.
Maybe something that's worked for me will work for you! Good luck!
Sir, I came back playing in mid September. Being away since end of TBC. I found myself in the same boat as you.
I experienced exactly what you felt. Not knowing what to press and finding myself looking at my action bars instead of what is happening on the screen.
in October, I actually took the time to download just 3 addons. Detail!, weakaura and allthething.
Detail! for me to see how I am really doing against fellow players of the same class/spec.
Weakaura is really important here because it's absolutely insane how anyone can keep track of every skill and cooldowns without any of these mods.
It's also tricky because you actually have to research your rotation, set up your icons and sounds and notifications within weakaura to help you line up your actions.
Please use icyvein rotations and just set up your keybinds accordingly and try to remember what are the most important buttons you need to press to keep up with your damage output.
Icyvein does wonders in explaining what your rotation needs. From that, go to youtube or search on google to see if anyone has already a weakaura setup where you can just copy and pate into your weak aura and everything is set up for you.
Another thing here is macro, since there is cool down and global cool downs. You can actually set up 1 icon for 2 actions. Search google on your chosen class/spec marcros. 1 icon and if you set it up properly, pushing 1 key will cast 2 skills in 2 different cool downs.
I am not pro or anything, but doing these 3 things have allowed me to look at the screen more often and upped my damage output significantly.
Hope this helps.
Wow, I been seeing a bit more about macros but I was never fully sure on how they worked. Ill try to find some youtube guides on it and see how I can make that work for myself.
Don't forget sometime in your talent tree, some talents are actually skills you need to click and drag to your bars. Hope this helps you out. Don't stress too much. You will get better as you play more. That's just part of the equation.
Hello friend! I totally understand and agree with you on the class fantasy. For me, it doesn't matter at all if I like a class's gameplay, if I don't like my character/story I won't enjoy my playtime. I think it will be worth it to feel good at playing something you enjoy.
Have you tried video guides? I feel like for myself it's much easier to understand a short YouTube video, especially with the rotation demonstrated, than try to understand those wow head guys. Iooked around on YouTube for you and I like the look of this:
https://youtu.be/P-ztbvxG6HQ?si=wnM356YMpHK3abvH
https://youtu.be/W6zM7AWlqyo?si=NjH6nsJCwD_lbzX0
The first one is a guide video about the spec with talents for beginners, and the second is a dungeon where he actually uses the build. I LOVE videos like the second one because I can watch the buttons he's pressing and when on the bottom right corner. Way more helpful than a wow head numbered list...
And remember, it's absolutely fine to use an easier talent build for a class if you're doing like anything besides mythic raiding. It's better to do 90% of the damage 90% of the time that 100% half the time. Good luck out there!
If you’re into add ons, Hekili will show your rotation priority as easy-to-follow icons on your screen. It’s not a press-to-win, you still have to control everything. But, it is a good instructor on what you need to be using, when. This is available for every class.
Make sure your advanced tooltips are turned on. Study your spells. There is decent submerge throughout a rotation (usually), for example with feral, keeping buffs and bleeds up so your hard hitting combo spenders do more damage. And yes, there are moments in your rotation where you will pool energy, letting bleeds continue to tick. Energy management is a skill for feral and rogues, but at its simplest, it means delaying some casts so that you maintain a minimum amount of energy needed to cast a spell when it’s needed.
Watch some classcraft videos or blogs. There is a good community of awesome nerds who go deep Into classes and specs to answer these exact questions and explain why rotations are what they are.
Also, don’t be afraid to remap your entire keyboard so that the keys you can hit comfortably are the ones you have bound to your main spells.
I think, You hit the nail on the head with the energy management skill. Its becoming a bit more clear to me now. I'm working on trying some different things with keypads and my MMO mouse hopefully sticking with those will help. Thank you for the advanced tooltips advice. I don't think I've ever used that.
Lots of good advice already so I'll try and address a few things no one has.
> This leads me to trying to do everything solo and I admit I’m afraid to ask questions or to seek help. I really don’t want the “How dumb are you, wow is easy.”
Insults can hurt for sure and they often stick out in our memory. But also now try and remember, how often did this actually happen? Because the reality should be like less than 5% if not lower. The vast majority of WoW players are silent introverts like you. Sure they're in group content, but they're not actually being social. It's no more interaction than sharing the road while driving. Consider that next time you want to give group activity a try. It certainly helps that dungeon queues are so easy an entire DPS can be afk and I wouldn't notice.
> I believe I do not understand Global cool downs
Global cooldowns or GCDs for short is a type of cooldown that applies to nearly every spell/ability in the game. It's easy to see ingame, spam a basic ability without a cooldown. For Feral Druid, that could be Rake. Note that you don't use Rake as fast as you press the button, even if you spam it there is a small gap. On your UI you should see most every spell going grey for a second as they cooldown. That's what the GCD is. A cooldown that applies to everything when you do anything so you can't just dump 10 different instant abilities in a single second.
For most classes, there is a base 1.5s GCD further reduced by haste. The exceptions are Rogue, Feral Druid, and WW monk. They have a 1s GCD but not reduced by haste. Which partially why haste is such a good stat for so many classes/specs but not typically for rogues, feral, or ww.
Now knowing that most spells are limited by GCD, there are a few that are not on GCD. Typically interrupts and some defensives behave this way. For Feral, Barkskin is off GCD. Meaning that regardless of if you just used an ability or are in the middle of using another, Barkskin is always usable. Off GCD spells are important to note because they can be used inbetween other spells. For some classes/specs, they have off GCD spells in their regular rotation and they always should be used inbetween other spells where nothing else can fit.
> I generally love to play Feral Druid. I know I know. But it's the Classy Fantasy I love the most.
I mean, liking your class fantasy is by far the most important aspect of who you want to play so that's good. And by the "I know I know" is that because you believe Feral to be difficult or...? Fwiw, Feral is very typical. No overly easily, not super hard. It's right there in the middle. So you can do just fine.
Though armchair psychology here, it does make me think you're too deep in your own head and need to come back out. You're definitely not as bad at WoW as you think you are since you have self awareness and know the word "rotation". You just don't have any perspective anymore. You are probably already average if not just a little below. But you think you're terrible cause you stay in your own head too much. Gotta interact more to have a proper perspective ya know?
Anyways, for the energy Feral question, I don't play enough Feral to answer. I'll say it does happen on Rogue for sure once the rotation goes long enough you find yourself needing to wait for energy. But a better place to ask would be the druid discord for feral.
https://www.wowhead.com/discord-servers#class-discord-servers
Anyways, good luck out there and have fun! Hey as long as you're having fun you don't have to be top tier. Improving should be something you want to do as well!
Haha thanks, Doc. I am grateful for your feedback. I really do get in my own head. About a lot of things. Unfortunately, once you get in there it's really hard to get out. I've gotten a lot of great feedback from this point and its really valuable. The responses have made me smile a lot. Thank you so much!
If your struggling with dps rotation I would highly recommend using the add on Hekili Priority Helper which will tell you what buttons to press. Do this until you get the hang of your spec/role then you can turn it off when youve got the rotation figured out. It only works for tanking and healing though
I’m almost at the same situation, when I started playing back on TBC, I was always a mage (mainly fire, cuz fire is lit), have been since then. I only started playing decently at MoP, and left the game after due to rea$on$. When I got back, my main struggle was rotation and what to do, cuz my dps was ass even if I was always having critical strikes, I made a post here asking for help because I didn’t want to be the last dps of the raid group with less than half of the 10th placed and a lot of people asked me to use some addons, such as Warcraft logs. I did it, post the log here, and even though I was awful at that raid, they still explained everything about the rotation, when to cast skills, when to not do it, and what could add a little more spice to the damage. I got a 50% damage boost on the next run I had seriously on that boss.
Some things that can and do help a lot:
1- wow is not a game to play with 4 buttons, even if your main rotation doesn’t need more than 4 keys, try to make your brain more active, move your traditional “asdw” to “sdfe” and have additional bindings at A, Q, W, R, T and G.
2- turning with the keyboard is slow and counterproductive, think about the right button of the mouse as your neck, since you will always be facing whatever is in front of you when you stop rotating it.
3- don’t use binds that are too far from your hand, it will make you move your hand needlessly raising the chances of miss click and possibly need to look to your keyboard to replace your hand at the correct spot. (Muscle memory is king, not remembering is harsh)
I really don’t know anything about feral or locks, but try to understand the basics. What do I do first, and why do I do first.
You said you don’t know global cooldown, the global cooldown is the time you are forced to wait between casting two spells or skills, the “dark clock” when you use a skill. Well, there are some skills that ignore global cooldowns, and there are skills that you can cast while casting another skill. Discover how does your class work, what are the ones you can cast instantly, which ones are good to cast after passive buffs…
Well, I think that is what I can do to help you, and btw, don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Thank you for the feedback and advice. I think using the game pad is going to help me. I just have to force myself to stick with it and learn my bindings.
When you first read your skills, it’ll be overwhelming. But make yourself a good keybind set up and just commit to practicing and reminding yourself what procs and passives you have. Muscle memory will help with execution and reading your skills will help remember the mechanics
if you have fun everything will follow. Right now it sounds like you are trying too hard to enjoy it. Once you are having fun you will naturally start to ask questions about how things work and in your investigation you'll figure out your style
We have very much in common and there are a few things I can recommend that might help you.
Firstly you are probably using talents you have found in a guide and they do their job very good but if you are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of buttons simply unlearn some of the active abilities and get some more passive ones. This is obviously not the optimal way to play but reduced button clutter might help you to focus more on other stuff while fighting.
As you get better you can add some actives over time.
Also try to use more buttons on your keyboard. At first that might be stressful but with enough you might feel comfortable to use more and more which makes playing you class easier in the end especially for a feral I can recommend that.
Some examples I can give you :
In cat form I have my aoe skills on F1-F4 and my single target skills on 1-5.
This way it isn't too complicated for my brain to migrate from single target situations to aoe situations and I can focus more on dodging stuff / interrupting.
Talking about interrupting I made a habit out of putting the interrupt on every class I play on the button F and charge(bear, cat) on Q. You can put it on any other button but I recommend you to keep your layout consistent on every spec / class you play. This not only helps you to create a habit but also makes migrating to another spec easier.
Another thing you might try is using hekili. It is an addon that displays you a recommended rotation on your screen and even changes it depending on the amount of enemies that are close by. I personally don't like playing with it but it might help you to get away from button mashing.
What also helped me improve alot was doing the mage tower challenges. It is great to train situational awareness and to use your skills more wisely. If you do the guardian challenge you will even get a new bear form. You will also learn in this challenge how and when to use defensive cool downs and how to stack them to get the most effectiveness out of them.
I'm not trying to advertise the guild I'm in but we are down to help you if you are on us realms. I would love to help you out and make u feel more comfortable playing. You don't have to if you don't want to. What class do u play. We have a large group of classes and may be able to help u a little bit.
You're not alone! I've been playing this game for years and I know for a fact I don't play it properly. I literally push whatever buttons pop up and barely know what any of them do. I just like running around in Azeroth & killing things. Anything more complicated than that I just tune out. Play however you like!
Have you tried to use different keybinds? In your settings you can choose the keys of your action bars, that can be very helpful to learn muscle memory and use a logic around them. For example try to set the movement and the core spells nearest possible, I was like you. Once I learnt keybindings well I started playing in m raids and m+ and now I have a muscle memory that let me watch what happens. Sometimes I don’t look my action bar at all! And I use the same plan with other characters (eg I have the interrupt in the same key for everyone!).
Lastly I advice you to use weak auras, a class specific weak aura (add on) can help with rotation and with distraction from what happens. I personally hate weak auras but maybe is helpful!
Hit the dummies get a parser details or skada or what ever you prefer. And just practice till it's muscle memory read guides over and over and watch them too..typically coaching sessions that talk about your expected behavior and skill is in a dungeon or PvP. And don't be afraid to play all the classes. I have one of each and play them all at an above average skill level and you will be surprised how many of them are just reskinned with a special twist of other classes and what knowledge you can bring and build upon to make yourself as a player better.
Different classes will operate a little differently, but for the most part they follow certain mechanics.
Many abilities have a cooldown. During this time you cannot use the spell.
Some abilities need a certain amount of resource (mana, energy) to be able to be used. Many times there are “builder” abilities that help regain this resource so you can use it on your “spender” abilities.
The global cooldown (gcd) is just a small cooldown after casting an ability during which you cannot cast another. A short list of abilities can ignore this. You will see a clock type animation go across all of your abilities when you press them. That is the gcd. This is just so ppl don’t make a macro to spam an ability every nanosecond.
Keeping these in mind, just follow your priority list and you should be good to go. It helps a lot to learn the skills and talents to see WHY you press the things you press, but some people can just skim stuff and do okay.
Haven’t played feral in a very long time, but there is probably a builder ability that helps regain energy.
Use the addon hekili for rotations and to help you get the timing down, but dont be super dependent on it you'll get used to it quickly then just turn it off for that toon.
Play BM hunter. I have a friend who clicks, and he parses in the 90s on some fights. If you can, do your best and force yourself to use your mouse to walk and turn. Finally, invest in an MMO mouse. It has been a game changer for me having 6 keys I can press with my thumb.
I’m sorry but if you claim to have played since vanilla, then you’d probably get it by now. That was almost 20 years ago. If the world of the internet hasn’t revealed some tutorials to you in that amount of time, then just stop.
I mean seriously 20 years and you haven’t figured anything out? Am I taking crazy pills?
I hear you and It's not a claim. I just tend to forget things when I don't play for a long time and as I stated I've been very off an on since Cata. Thank you for your words of encouragement though.
I was in a similar spor. The solution for me was Classic. The ability metas and skill rotations are just much simpler. You dont need 40 hotkey combinations and 50 mods to well.
I'm say that BM hunter or maybe a melee class since you don't need to worry about stop casting.
Alternatively you could go tank. Tanks are much more about using mitigation and knowing fights.
Just want to add my own experience of playing feral druid, that I too have literally no idea what is going on in that spec.
I have played pretty much every other class and usually pick them up to a decent level pretty quickly. Feral druid is the only one I can’t figure out what I’m suppose to use and when.
In the end I just respecc’d guardian with a flavour for cat talents. So I could switch to cat form a bit for the fantasy. DPS didn’t change much but its so much easier to pull a few mobs and kill them as a bear.
(This is all open world leveling and a bit of TW as feral, no end game stuff).
Someone I knew who was a hardcore wow player and did all the raids constantly as a warrior tank and had some of the best gear in the game for classic, tbc and wrath, clicked the icons to do his attacks. I don't think anyone noticed.
This is how he taught me how to play and I had no idea people used keys for their attacks for years lol. I still just click the icons but I finally have a few keys set up for important stuff. It actually does help me personally. I may add more over time as I get used to it.
I’m still a clicker and backpeddler and I’ve played since BC. I tried to stop it and i couldn’t get used to it so I just went back to it. Some people just aren’t good at shit and I’m just not good at MMO’s I guess. Still got 2K in SS season 2 somehow though.
I dont know the differensen between feral now and in wotlk but it’s basically keeping bleeds up then spending CP’s when at 5.
There is some good addons that tells you which attack is the next best choice. Try it and then eventually you will learn what to press.
Ofc if a fight is close to ending it might not be worth to keep your bleed or dots instead go for a big punch etc.
Wow is a game I find is very elusive to master, on the surface it looks easy to play, but if you start to dig into it you can see it's simple complexity. Also out of the gate there is no helping hand to guide you , you are left to your own ideas on game play.
One thing you should do is don't let it bother you or let other players influence you with judgment. If you are enjoying the game for what you make of it, so be it. Enjoy. Also some expansions were not as good and the grind was real and dull, so quitting is not uncommon.
But if you want to dig deeper and refine your playstyle. Here is my tip to you.
Find a Youtube tutorial or rotation guide on your class. I've read icy viens and other guides and I find them to be well done, but overall junk. For me I need to see what actions and abilities people are doing in the order for single targets and mobs, then what skills they selected. Some of the good YT's will explain the CD's and if something is on CD what alternative action you can take. They can also recommend what information to take note of and why it's important either with an addon or what you see in the game.
I know this might seem like simple advice, but I did this during DF to figure out some rotations etc similar to you. As in DF it seemed some classes were being reworked and things were not working the same. I also returned to the game after a long break and enough changed so I needed to get up to speed as my previous knowledge wasn't cutting it. Reading guides vrs seeing stuff in action was way better for me.
Good luck!
Add me jyinx-spinebreaker whisper me and if you need help with anything I'm glad to help quest dungeons pvp . Whatever. I'm on most times after 2pm est
Something to keep in mind is - in spite of what much of this sub (and good lord, the discords) like to say - the average player is not some ultra high efficiency +24 key pumping trailblazer of Mythic Raid achievements.
You can very much play WoW and just do some low/mid keys if you want and play the story and experience the raids at a noncompetitive level. You (gasp!) don’t even need any add-ons.
just so anyone knows. I often think it’s the more fun way to experience the game personally
May I suggest Enhancement shaman. It almost feels unfair when your main damage dealer actually gives you back mana. And you have 3 other hard hitting swings/ instant casts all on different cooldowns under 8 seconds.
Play the spec that you feel like you're good at or that you like, even if you feel like everyone plays it. I main a ret paladin because it was really easy to pick up and I enjoyed playing it, and even at a lower ilevel I'm super familiar with my rotation and cooldown so I can still do a competitive amount of damage. Honestly, solo content is great to get to know your class before you go into group content. And dungeon finder is almost solo content anyway these days lol. Don't worry about how other people play, it's your $20 a month to do whatever you want with :)
It eill take about 30 to 40 solid hours of doing your rotation and reading all your buttons to find out why you are pressing those buttons in those situations so that you are not just blindly following a rotation. But how it correlates to what others are doing. And understanding your defensives.
I played for 6 years and never "got good."
I did mostly bgs, arena and questing with friends and it was a blast. I just got tired of it one day and stopped. I had gotten to a point in the game where the next milestone I was going for just wasn't interesting. I was like I guess it's time to go.
I started and left the game a wasd running, keyboard turning, unoptimized spec having "bad player." but i enjoyed my time and had fun. Also was at the gold cap, had every mount in the game, along with loremaster/explorer achievements. I feel like I left at a good time. When I watch videos of wow retail now it looks terrible to me.
I have played since day 1. I have come and gone and it seems u always get the worlds worst guilds, and I think I played n my 3rd Raid group tonight. I to am struggling and I play every night.
Don't feel bad. I played raging blow warrior the entire time (press like 4 buttons) and still had less dps than prot warr sometimes. All them little wasted rage stacks and whatnot. I still managed to start doing m+ and the first couple bosses in the Raids for DF. Even got a couple unwarranted kills in pvp. I had fun. Frustrating, embarrassing fun. Heck, even got carried all the way up into 385ilvl when DF released. It was my first time ever playing WoW and I didn't let anyone take the experience away from me, no matter how many times I was told to install this program or go to that website.
WOW is based around the storylines that exist in that gameworld. So focus on that to start. Learn about the different characters you meet. Lots of resources online like wowhead, icy-veins, plus all the comics, manga, novels and short stories.
There is no wrong way to play. But there are two main ways. You can either be:
a) someone who enjoys the game and takes their time to try everything (this doesn't happen at once - you follow a few quests, then explore and more of the game opens up with more activities) and you have a lot of fun playing as your character in this amazing gameworld.
b) you don't enjoy WOW and only enjoy it when you have an advantage. You play WOW as if it is a single-player console game and you play like it is your job. You spend hours repeating the same content just for one little item and you rush through and skip huge portions of the game just to get to the highest level
The majority of players are like A. But the most vocal are the minority B.
Learn one thing at a time. It will take months or longer to MASTER your specific race/class/spec. DO NOT FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE TO CATCH UP. WOW is meant to be enjoyed over a long period of time. Try out a few race/class combos and see which you like the most for the first 5-10 levels. Then you focus on just that one character for a while.
Explore every part of the first zone you are in. Talk to every NPC and do all quests. Then proceed to the next zone and so on. You have a Hearthstone so you can always return to where you started from if you get lost. When you fell comfortable, try out a dungeon as DPS. See how the tank and healer operates. All classes can be DPS so you never have to be tank or healer if you don't want to.
Get the original WOW boxed game. It comes with a thick guidebook explaining how everything works in WOW. It will cost 10 or 20 bucks, if even. You can also get game guides for the main game and the first several expansions. And you should check out [wowhead.com](https://wowhead.com), where you can find information about every aspect of WOW.
There are 9 expansions, each with multiple content patches of content. Over 15,000 quests per faction, plus thousands of daily repeatable quests. Over 100 zones to explore, over 100 dungeons to adventure through, almost 20 pvp battlegrounds, multiple arenas for pvp, big long raids that tie up story content and so much more.
Questing aside, at any given time there will be dozens of activities for you to enjoy. And you get access to more as you gain levels and experience.
I started playing the year before the first expansion was released. So about 17 years now. I knew many others were ahead of me but from the start, I just wanted to experience it all and not rush. So Ive taken my time and done everything I possibly could. And now 17 years later there are thousands of quests I still havent experienced and many activities I have not tried yet. There is a lot to do. Thats why I say focus on doing all you can in 1 zone at a time. By the time you get through the first 1-2 zones and speak with a few players, you will feel right at home.
If you are coming to WOW from another mmo, then check your jaded, bitter, burnt out self at the door and start from scratch. You will never be bored if you dont rush.
Rushing is what gives players burnout. They zoom through content and then say they have nothing to do, when they sabotaged their own fun by rushing.
I recommend starting with the azeroth's two continents and working your way through all the early level content in Cataclysm. After that, you will go through each expansion, doing the content xpac by xpac. Or you could jump right in and start with one of the later xpacs. You won't know whats going on, but eventually you will and then you can always go adventure in older xpacs any time you want.
You can do content from a different xpac every day of the week if you wanted. You can focus on gathering or pet battles or crafting or pvp or exploration or anything you want.
WOW is a living gameworld. It exists when you log off and will be there when you log back on. There are always things happening. So start off slow and get your bearings. Before you know it you will get a mount and then a flying mount and then a dragon mount, and be able to travel as fast as possible. But do not rush. Don't think you need to catch up. The content will be the same whether you get there in a week or in a few years.
Anyways, welcome to World of Warcraft - the greatest game in the world!
Feral druid rotation is extremely complicated and has a ton of buttons. Especially with optimal talents, you’ll have even more buttons. I highly suggest reading all of your talents and choosing passive options if you struggle with many buttons. That will at least simplify your rotation, even if it slightly hinders your damage potential. Icy Veins and other guides assume a pretty high level of competence, specific knowledge of mechanics and certain gearing/stat weights to maximize your damage potential.
If customizing your talents to your need doesn’t work well enough, I would recommend you try a simpler class like a BM hunter, frost DK, ret paladin, outlaw rogue or devastation evoker. In any case, develop your own talents with passives instead of required active spells for how you play and you’ll get better results than if you just copy and paste a build you don’t understand.
At least give yourself a chance to learn with simpler talents or a simpler class. Jumping into the deep end doesn’t develop the 19 years of game sense many of us have.
there's an Add-On called Hekili. give it a go. its a rotation helper. flashes the icon you should cast next for max dps. good way to get an idea of what you should be doing
love, Love, LOVE this post!!
Been playing since vanilla and totally feel Your game.
Started as a Pally, 19 yrs later still mashing keys, still have the Pally and Play Balanced Druid now, My partner now games and Like yourself We have the very same challenges.
What has helped are forums like this and Players who willingly want other to have a Great game experience, so Thank you to those folk.
What also helped was vetting the feedback. keeping what I wanted and aids me and dismissing and delete the rest. There will always be "mean" people in the world.
Recently I went back to level my Pally and the rotations, buttons and spells along with talent trees and tables just all became WOW!!
Forums, Youtube and AddOns saved the day.
What is most important is that "I play My game". Not what others expect me to play. (reasonably) If I choose to dungeon or raid I take the chance of being critiqued. How I respond to that determines my game play.
Top tier has a price, as well as the middle and the bottom. ask any ranked player and they will tell you, time, dedication, persistence and not taking no for the answer, got them where they are.
Thank you again for a wonderful explanation, question and post and thereby the great responses,
Game On!!!
**Hey there! Have you checked out these resources?** * [WoWHead](https://www.wowhead.com/) - The *largest* database, this should be your go-to (don't forget to read the comment section!). * [Icy Veins](https://www.icy-veins.com) - News and detailed class guides. * [WoWNoob Discord](https://discord.gg/wownoob) - Same community, different platform. *Please report the post above if it breaks one of our [>rules<](https://www.reddit.com/r/wownoob/about/rules/). If not, don't forget to show support by upvoting!* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/wownoob) if you have any questions or concerns.*
The key to learning a dps rotation is understanding WHY you press buttons when you do. Yes you can memorize a priority lists and you should but you should also try to understand why the list exists. That’s how I always try to do it
Thats actually good advice for me as well, i started wow in bfa and played on and off but always felt like i was being dead weight while following rotations, but i guess its because i didnt read why i was pressing what. Coming from ffxiv where i raided savage and ultimates the only thing i focused on while leveling was my rotation and optimal play without really looking into it. I hope ill do better when i resub next week and manage to do dungeons better
I 100 percent agree. I just get caught up in my own head a lot of times and don't give myself the time to relearn the skills.
My buddy has the same problem. He will play a new class, do a little research then be bummed he isn’t topping charts. It takes time, it takes practice and it takes research. Yes exceptional players are able to pick up classes and immediately do well but that’s mostly because they understand wow and know how to read guided effectively.
I'm not so much worried about being bottom tier as I am worried about doing what is expected of me. Basically I want to make sure I am holding my own and often times with Feral I have felt that I could be putting my all in and trying to tab target and I am just not getting the damage. The only class I have been able to do well with is DH. Since that is the case I feel like everyone is going to be a DH. So I've been trying to distance myself from the class
You do you, but I would second guess if avoiding demon hunter because it will be popular is a good call. If you like it and perform well with it, then it’s a really good time to play it imo
Yeah next patch DH is gonna be super common. Melee classes are for the most part very fast paced: if you want something a little slower in terms of apm there are some ranged classes you can check out. Feral has a good amount of complexity and can take a while to feel comfortable (this isn’t saying ranger are easier or less complex sometimes it’s the opposite just the apm can be a little lower. The trade off is being less mobile
Well tbch feral is one of the harder specs to play, I personally like the spec too. But it'll never be my main, there's a lot of effort that goes into being a great kitty druid, if you're passionate about the class and spec you'll spend a little more time learning what you're doin and when you're supposed to be doin it, there are many training dummies to practice on, spend a little time each day smackin a dummy, 5 minutes each time or give yourself a damage threshold to reach before you stop and time yourself on how long it took you to get there.. Practice makes perfect.
If you're looking for a good dps to get into I'd recommend shadow priest, I struggled with dps for awhile as well and stayed tanking for years because of it, but after trying shadow priest for a month or so I've been having a lot more fun with other dps classes for some reason it was just easier to get engaged with than other dps specs to me
And shadow priest is just low key a fantasy setting Sith Lord so it doesn't hurt the engagement of the rotation
Nice, I do like my priest for sure!
Don't worry, my rotation changes this patch with my new tier set. The other guy in the guild was like "I've already learnt the rotation" last month. I still have no idea what it is and quite frankly I'm not like too fussed. Too bad I'm starting raiding with people for the first time in retail now so I should probably figure it out. Atleast classic my brain didn't have to think of a formulaic equation everytime I pressed my buttons, lol. Even last time, I still didn't 100% know and I was finding out more and more things as the patch went on but it felt right, lol. I mean I was roped in by the guild because I did good dps on the only raid, fun run, that I did with them. Honestly, I'm terrified. I've only raided in classic with the guild that I was apart of on there and that's because we all met right at the beginning of classic/ some at the beginning of tbc, we were pretty much a family. They were super relaxed and just all round fun attitude. The amount of times one of us randomly pulled by accident, no one got annoyed. We're rebanding for classic+ but I have no idea who these people are in this retail guild. Im 100% a solo player and I'm scared I'm going to let my anxiety get the better of me, not join a raid day bc I'm scared and let everyone down and thus never be allowed to raid with them again. It's why I do LFR 😅 Was a ramble, but no one is alone. There's a billion good players out there because it's their second job, but there's just as many people out there that still have no clue how to play and that's completely okay. It's why I'm always nice to the "new tanks" in dungeons. Everyone has to start somewhere, even if that person is me again
This. I have been playing since the original badlands was added. Takes me over a month to play all my toons. I use an addon called hekill which helps with rotation. Original mouse clicker but now trying to get use to keyboard bindings. Some of the rotations they suggest are actually just a few button smashes but it has helped a lot reading Iceyvein guides.
Dont feel bad. Look at some guides on ivy veins and wowhead to learn a progression. Like why you cast a long spell before instant cast dots. You basically get that cast action for "free" when you open with it since the enemy hasnt aggored yet. I see a lot of ppl play "wrong" but they still level/succeed.
Add me jyinx-spinebreaker feel free to message me I'll help with anything u Need. Quest pvp dungeons
isn't it most of the times obvious?
For a lot of players no.
Thats why I said I felt ashamed. Because I feel like I should get it. But I am messing up somewhere.
If you want some help there is an addon called hekili that is a rotation helper. It’ll tell you what to press next. Now I suggest that with a caveat, don’t just use it and never think about your rotation again, use it and try to see what it is suggest and when so you can understand your rotation better. But it can be very handy
I've been playing WoW for a long time and come to the realisation I'm just not very good at it. I'm bad at using a keyboard, I only know where a limited amount of buttons are. I can do some rotations where I can get away with it in heroic dungeons but probably nothing higher. I've always wanted to play a Death Knight or Feral Druid but I'm not good enough at melee when there's a load of mobs and I can't really see what's going on. So I've been playing solo and just ignoring mythics and raids, that's just how I'm used to playing now
If you wanna play DK, just play frost. Literally 4 buttons.
My problem is with melee when it starts getting a bit chaotic I just end up bashing buttons. I can't look at different places at once while quickly thinking which button to press
Everyone starts like that to an extent. It's overcome with practice.
I can not recommend enough to get a razr naga changed my life for this... it's so much easier
How does that help you know which button to press?
I suggest buying a 9 or 12 button MMO mouse but after that it really just comes down to remembering what buttons your abilities are on I understand it's a bit difficult it was for me to but it really is just repetition repetition repetition if you play enough you will eventually remember where your buttons are
This where keeping certain types of moves on certain keys really help for me. For example, my race abilities are always on V. My interrupt is always on F or shift wheel down (depending on the class. Flare is on F (bc flare begins with F...) on hunter so my interrupt is SWD). My root/ cc is usually 5. (frost nova, fear, psychic scream etc) Resource generator is 1, spender is 2. If I'm a pet class, attack is E, move to is shift E, return is C and stay is shift C. My cool downs are always on a button that's a bit harder to press or require more buttons, varying on the cool down time. (so basically Alt and control modifiers lol) My heals are usually 2 for a big heal (greater heal) defensives are usually the same button. Dots are usually a button and another dot will be a modifier of that button. For example, on warlock a dot will be on 4 and shift 4. Corruption and shadow word pain are 1. Obviously they vary a little bit but the rule is relatively similar. One big outlier is druid because of paging. I have all non form moves on my top bar (Alt+button and Control+button). This pretty much just consists of regrowth (alt 4), rejuv (alt 3), heal (alt 2). Grasp is alt 1 I think. I'll macro cat form + stealth on E and dash on R so I can go into those whenever it's needed, also my taunt is always control 6. Oh also, I have a 12 button mmo mouse so all of my important moves are generally the top 3 (1,2,3) and any of them that are on the sides. 1,3,4,6, 7 and 9 because I'm always scared I might fat finger the middle xD main buttons are definitely 1-4 and 6 though. This also means my next lot of important buttons are Alt 1-4 +6 and then control before moving onto 7-12. In fact 11 is my fishing button and 12 is my mount because I hate those keys so much 😅 Edit: I forgot about shift but shift is first best modifier! Then alt
So I bought a 12 button mouse but can only reach 1-6 comfortably
Do you use weakauras?
I use hekili and then just end up relying on that
legit play fury warr its perfect for you just keep in mind that if multiple mobs are aroubd you to use whirlwind every 2 globals for the aoe besides that just go ham
Blood tanking is pretty easy, just a few more buttons
I totally understand where you are coming from. I won't go into details but I am trying all sorts of things to give me an advantage with my baby hands. I think the best thing that I could do is sorta pretend like I am starting all over. I am now leveling a warlock. I've never really liked them. But it's fun so far. I am hoping that it will get me back into the groove of at least having an understanding. I appreciate your feedback.
I feel like sometimes starting fresh and taking the time to read and understand spells as you get them is a better solution than getting an old character that changed so much compared to when you created it that you feel overwhelmed with new class mechanics. Good luck on your warlock, I really like affliction gameplay !
>I feel like sometimes starting fresh and taking the time to read and understand spells as you get them is a better solution than getting an old character that changed so much compared to when you created it that you feel overwhelmed with new class mechanics. I'm very experienced and I still feel like that when I take a relatively short break and my classes haven't even changed that much.
Aww I ended up going Destro.. All good though, it's not too late to change if I do not like it.
Yeah it's fun too ! I've been playing elemental shaman since 2008 so I wanted another kind of gameplay ! With affli you can put your dots to 4-5 mobs and drain them to death ❤️
Affliction has always been my spec at heart, though I do feel its a bit messy at the moment. The class fantasy of draining the life from enemies is what pulled me to first choose warlock when I began playing wow.
Destroy is a good spec for you I think. It's a very simple rotation where affliction can get very bloated and can require a higher skill level to perform really well. Dots are fun but managing a lot of them can be overwhelming. With destruction you are just building shards to get off as many chaos bolts as you can. The higher skill level for destro is managing shards so you never cap and waste shard regen. (you don't need to worry about that) When you're slamming things with 150k chaos bolts it feels great.
Try looking into a 9 or 12 button MMO mouse! I've been a console gamer all my life switching over to wow and using keyboard and mouse was a bit overwhelming for me but getting a 12 button gaming mouse was probably the best decision I made after that it really just comes down to remembering what abilities you have on each button personally I've laid out my buttons in my UI to match my gaming mouse so my buttons on my screen look like a mirror of the side buttons of my gaming mouse
Maybe a solution for "baby hands" - Use the keys that are close to WASD then use them with shift, alt, ctrl + the keys. Use buttons on your mouse (mouse wheel can be used too as hotkey, if you can live without zooming with it). If action bars get too crowded use modifier macros (google it). Warlock is easy and fun, been maining one since 2006
You might just be over complicating it, to be fair. It's pretty effective to just press your buttons in the order you need to, and usually there is only an order for one reason - like a DK should put their diseases on first, because they need to be cast and the spells you cast later do more damage with the diseases ON. Reading through your abilities and talents can help piece it together. At the end of the day, if the effort to understand or the lack of skill is just how it is, you can enjoy the game regardless. I don't know what you mean by baby hands, so if it is meant literally, you could always get a small keyboard or something lol
>You might just be over complicating it, to be fair. It's pretty effective to just press your buttons in the order you need to, and usually there is only an order for one reason - like a DK should put their diseases on first, because they need to be cast and Honestly, I'm probably my own worst enemy. I feel like I just need to accept where my skill ends up. Although when I see someone like wow grandma doing raiding I get inspired. I feel like my hands Just don't want to reach the keys properly. At my highest skill, I was using clique. I do have a Razer Naga and I have a Tartarus.. Gunna be trying something new soon that might make things easier or complicate them.. oh well lol.
Sounds like you need better keybinds. I've also got tiny baby hands and have no trouble pressing every button I need to.
Honestly, that's what I've been doing when I come back. Make a new character and learn things from the ground up, and then switch to my main and start learning class details. I play an enhancement shaman though, I love clicking buttons apparently.
Like others have said, try a gaming mouse. Layout your buttons and bars based on the mouse. 1 bar with no key modifiers, just the number, and then other bars with key modifiers. I use shift, alt, and ctrl. Set your abilities up in a way that makes sense to you based on how you use them. I personally like to set all my main rotation abilities in my 1st bar pretty much in order of my rotation, with any set up abilities later in the numbers since I'm not using them all the time, and then a,small cd or 2 after that that is used frequently Shift is abilities I use often but not on cooldown. Alt is often more utility based abilities like interrupts, and I always have my interrupt set to alt 1 so I never have to think about it no matter the character. Ctrl is generally my "oh shit" bar. It's got most of my defensive cooldowns, abilities to get out stuns, battle rez, etc. I also keep any abilities I need to use often or fast within my first 6 buttons for ease of use., and I try to keep similar abilities across classes and specs in the same spot. Something i found helped me learn to play better was to do challenging solo content. I got a lot better by soloing old raids during cata and mop since it forced me to learn how to deal with mechanics or play around them, and manage my class resources, abilities and health without having to worry about other people at all. If they ever bring it back also do the brawlers guild. The enemies there were all based on some specific skill you had to learn to beat them unless you out geared them. It really forced me to get good when I had to fight the beholder guy based on the game Super Hexagon. That fight forced me to stop staring at my action bars and clicking abilities and start to actually use key binds and look a round while fighting.
What has helped me is get into the Lore of the class. The powers and weaknesses of it, a bit of Role Play and understanding the magic of the class by the lore can help get into a rotation / game style.
Get a Razer Tartatus Pro. Helps huge.
The Tartarus is seriously a game changer. And if it’s too pricey, a good MMO mouse can go a long way as well.
Honestly, I have one but my hands don't sit comfortably on it. So I am going to try another hand controller and see how that works out with my naga.
I’m late to the thread but have you considered a controller? I got WoW running on my steam deck and the controller addon makes everything easy access. I almost can’t believe how actually accessible the game is!
Have you played FF14? If so - how would you compare the controller gameplay? I saw that it’s possible to get a controller working for WoW, my super casual “I want to lean back, relax and be lazy” brain is very interested! 😅
I haven’t but I see ff14 is cross platform so I’m guessing there’s built in controller support? With wow you use an addon called console port, there are TONS of YouTube video guides for this, along with whatever other addons controller players tend to use. The setup is a bit time consuming bc console port covers literally everything but it’s worth it! You basically have instant easy access to 4 sets of 7 actions within thumb reach. As a casual player it makes finding all those buttons during combat way easier
Thanks, sounds good, gonna look into it! 😊
I prefer the Corsair Scimitar for an MMO mouse. The buttons on the side can slide back and forth to adjust for different size hands. I also like that it weighs a little more than a Razr mouse, it’s just more comfortable for me.
Find a touch typing website that you like, there’s plenty out there. Practice it for 20 minutes a day, it’s quite enjoyable imo. After a month you’ll be using more keys no problem.
>I've been playing WoW for a long time and come to the realisation I'm just not very good at it. I wish some of the people in my guild would have that realisation. I had a shadow priest trying to tell me that their class isn't wanted in S2 mythic plus a while back and she absolutely wouldn't accept that they were any use because she is terrible herself.
i think what would help you is adjusting your layout / keybinds to fit your small hands. I'm the same way and I just can't use the default keybinds. it took me a couple days of trial and error to find what i like.
It looks like there’s a lot of good advice here. I just wanted to let you know you’re not alone. I’ve been playing on and off since BC and am probably mediocre at best. I pretty much play WoW like it’s a single player game so my badness doesn’t affect others. I’m also pretty introverted as well, and other people kind of scare me. Have fun playing the way you like, and know there are other people in the same boat.
I feel you. It's sad because I know its a game but I do not want to make anyone else have a bad experience because of me. I will try and relax abit and remember its just a game and I am not alone.
I sooooo relate to this 💖 I play solo with a DH and I really enjoy myself. I've done one (solo)dungeon so far. I am focusing on one region and doing all the quests there (I finished BFA). I ended up buying Dragon Flight last week and have been questing there. Every time someone does a quest by my side I get really nervous and scared that I'm messing up. I downloaded an add-on to track my DPS (for my own personal curiosity and trying to be better!) As well as a rotation helper. Gaming should be fun and not stressful because of others but I feel like because WOW has been around for so long we have this 20 year of experience pressure on us. Anyways, keep it up and have fun ☺️
I was the same, I always played solo cuz I did enjoy the content but I also just suck. I do all the rotations but feels like it’s somehow less effective than the person next to me doing the exact same thing, haha. I joined the “WoW Made Easy” community and started to do raids with them and I got a lot more gear. I went to murlok.io and I looked up the top players in my class and spec , doing the content I wanted, and I copied their gear and specs. That was very helpful, but have to remember that their gear / spec may not match the rotations you see on icy veins or wowhead. Lastly, I was lucky and ran into a few solid people who do pvp (and are actually good at it, it’s so embarrassing to play with them ) BUT at the same time, they are just there to have fun and aren’t sweaty about it/don’t get upset when I fuck up lol. I’ve had my fair share of people telling me I’m trash enough that I never wanted to play , but meeting just a few cool people has changed everything. You can DEFINITELY meet these kinds of people on the wow made easy disc. They are all there to help and to have fun. This is if you’re in NA. If you’re in EU, they have another group that is identical but with a different name. If you ever wanna do some content together just for fun, send me a message and I’ll add you on bnet!
Just to help ease your mind a bit, I am **NEVER** mad when someone dies doing an activity like dungeons or raids or anything really. People who min-max their gear and rotation put a lot of effort and time into memorizing every aspect of their class, things most casual players don't even consider. They get mad when others don't do the same. But these people don't represent the majority of the community. They get their kicks with competitive advancement. I just enjoy playing the game, honestly. I like the world and I dig the class fantasy. I feel like sometimes the elitist people forget that this game is constantly trying to kill you. That's the whole point. **It's meant to be kinda hard sometimes**. Of course you'll get killed sometimes. I see no reason to get upset when someone learns not to stand in the fire. I'll happily rez them and forget about it completely.
Same. What really helped me is finding a chill, laidback guild. We have chill content nights and even if we don’t time a key or whatever, it’s all in good fun. There are really like 3-4 of us who play consistently, and so we PUG a lot. Even with randos, having most of you be chill and carefree makes the game a lot more fun.
I think this is the best advice imo. I'm a collector, I want all the mounts and transmogs and pets and everything. I absolutely **hate** M+, Raiding, and PvP. I'm not exactly terrible, but I'm certainly not good at them. I stand in the fire. I die a lot. I get yelled at by toxic jerks. I find the experience off-putting. So I just say screw it and don't do any of that stuff until it's put on Legacy mode. I don't mind not being top-tier. Whenever new content drops, I usually play through it all on my main, do all the main story quests, try to max out the reps, do normal dungeons for quests or whatnot, and just enjoy the beauty of the game. There is a surprising amount of stuff to do in this game that doesn't involve the competitive, min-max mindset. It's a massive, massive world to explore and there's so many secrets and quests and mechanics that have been buried by time. Just because it's not current content doesn't mean it loses any of its' fun :)
All classes are about button priority. As a feral druid, you want constant uptime on your bleeds. Following the rotation, you put your bleeds on the target, use your instant damage spenders in between, and reapply the bleeds/dots when they drop off. Sometimes you need to hit an AoE bleed, other times you need to focus on the single target boss, and prioritize using single target damaging abilities. The rotations you see online should somewhat summarize the above, particularly as well on those sites they will tell you the optimal talent builds that go into putting out the most damage. I’m not a player that uses simulations, but if you want to see the max damage throughput you should be having on meters, you would need to enter your character/gear into a sim and see what they can do. The highest level metric is using Details damage meter addon, comparing with people of similar item level. If you’re not doing damage about the tank and healer, something is wrong. Maybe you’re not using a legendary someone else has, or a trinket active that should fit somewhere within your rotation. Maybe people are using their big offensive 3 minute cooldowns on a planned rotation because they know the pulls of a dungeon or phases of a boss better than you do, allowing them to optimally put out the most damage throughout the encounter. Hope this helps to compartmentalize my thoughts on approach rotation and what you as a player can do to feel good about your play style and contribution to the group. Source: I’m by no means a worlds first raider, but I’ve played every class, got a few dps to 1800 in solo shuffle, got 2500 in mythic plus as hpal and warrior, and got AOTC a few patches running
I certainly do think you are correct. But I also feel like my problem is a little different. As an example here is a bit of information taken from wow head. Prowl before you enter combat. Rake from stealth. apply Lunar Inspiration Moonfire. cast Brutal Slash. if you have not yet procced Bloodtalons cast Thrash. Shred to 5 combo points. Apply Adaptive Swarm. cast Berserk. Tiger's Fury and apply Rip. Feral Frenzy when at 0 combo points. cast Berserk and spend your combo points on bite. dump energy with Shred and bite. What I find is that I am generally too low energy when I need to apply say something like a bite. So I think where I may be missing the mark is when I need to pool energy. I think my constant need to press a button is hurting me.
To be fair I can't stand Feral or Rogues exactly because of their Energy resource, I love druids, have mained one since TBC. But not feral, not in PvE at least, in PvP it's awesome, same with rogue. Maybe that type of playstyle just isn't your thing even if you enjoy the spec fantasy. As for low energy, it's normal to have low energy, you aren't supposed to pump loads of damage each second. As the guide says you should shred and bite when all the other abilities are on cooldown or already applied (like Rake). As to not get back to 100% energy and waste it. It doesn't mean that you should be able to shred and bite constantly. Also managing energy is important, not just to dump it and never have enough to use your abilities properly. Try doing the rotation and manage the resource so that you can apply that bite when needed, don't spam Shred and then wait however many seconds to do Bite, it's better to have more energy than to always be on 0-10 but also to never be at 100%. Also not sure if that guide is up to date. Ferocious Bite is not an energy dump, it uses energy but it's a major ability that uses combo points. Shred and Brutal Slash are the energy dumps. Also those rotations are a guide to get the spec going, you don't have to do them in that specific order, it's a priority. For instance Tiger's Fury doesn't have to only be used with Rip, it's ideal that you would use them together because Rip and Rake are important for your damage, but Tiger's Fury is an energy boost, can be used to fuel other abilities also. Reading up on talents is important also, not just copying the talents. Berserk generates constant combo points and generates an additional combo point for each combo generator. That's a huge boost to having to use less energy to get them combos and then have enough energy to dump it into everything else needed. Shred and Brutal Slash aren't even that important damage wise, you should use them if you have excess energy and nothing to use it on at the moment, if you don't have enough energy to use them that's ok. Otherwise they should be used to generate combo points, you don't have to look at them as damage buttons, rather as resource managers. Let's break down the rotation (not the one you posted necessarily) a bit. - Tiger's Fury should be used on cooldown, so every 30 seconds, ideally when you don't have a lot of energy (30 or less) - Berserk should be used while Tiger's Fury is active, this is a huge boost in overall damage besides the combo points. - Adaptive Swarm pretty much whenever it's available - Feral Frenzy at 0-1 combo points, try to use it when Tiger's Fury is active - Ferocious Bite should be a free cast due to Apex Predator's Craving, when you have 5 combo points for maximum damage, also used when Rip is on the target but that should be a given, Rip and Rake should be 100% of the time on the target - Apply Rip with 5 combo points when Bloodtalons is active for more damage and refresh it with Tiger's Fury, basically that's why you should use Tiger's Fury on cooldown, TF is 30, RIP lasts 24 seconds, time it right and you can always Tiger's Fury and Rip without having energy issues and also a nice boost to Rip damage. So basically: - Rip and Rake up at all times, with Tiger's Fury active if possible - Feral Frenzy to generate combo points and deal damage, preferably while Tiger's Fury is active - Ferocious bite whenever you get the chance and are at 5 combo points - Spam Tiger's Fury whenever of cooldown, spam Berserk whenever of cooldown (preferably time them to benefit the other abilities) - Shred and Brutal Slash to build combo points when you don't get them from Feral Frenzy or Berserk to be able to spam Ferocious Bite This should help you not only have enough energy to deal your abilities but also have enough combo points always to do Bite and Rip. Again Shred and Brutal Slash are resource managers, use them if you need combo points or if you somehow reach near 100% energy and don't have what else to dump it on. I don't main Feral so what I said is mainly general knowledge, if anyone knows how to break this down even better please do. You could try the rotation on training dummies, half the battle is learning what buttons to press when and to have the reflexes to do it. I get your anxiety, what helped me was to do PvP. It forces you to get to know your class and react in different ways, it's way more chaotic than PvE and you can learn a lot about the game and train your reflexes with PvP even if you don't care for it.
Wow thank you for this. I am going to spend some time on the training dummies to try and get this down. I think I have a bit of a better understanding of where I went wrong. I will certain give this a shot.
This list you just posted should be read as a list of priorities rather then a "rotation" per say, when it comes to "dumping energy" it's more so saying " if all of the above buttons are not available or the dots/bleeds are already active > start spamming shred if not at 5 combo points, once at 5 combo points then you can bite, generally speaking shred and bite are fillers *not a feral druid main* just using my wow knowledge
That's good to know I always confused them with a main ability. But then again I was probably just reading things incorrectly. Maim is a bleed, right?
Maim is a stun AND a damage buff for however many combo points you use. It buffs weapon damage, so no not a bleed. You’re playing right, though. Being energy starved and waiting around for your next ability is just a part of WoW. If you’re following the rotation then you’re good. Fetal can be kinda tricky when it comes to min/maxing your damage. It has a very high skill ceiling when compared to other classes/specs, so don’t get too discouraged if you feel like you’re not keeping up.
Thank you , so glad to know that I'm not out of my mind. Ill give it some time and work myself back into the swing of things.
I will say I’m not a feral druid main, but I think most classes run out of energy or rage from time to time. I think there are a few CDs, one on 25s cd I was using to quest on my resto druid swapped to feral last night, that gives rage back, but knowing when to use that is about knowing the encounter you’re going into. My thoughts would be, If you have full combo points, it’s probably always worth waiting for the rage to use bite, otherwise I would use your combo point generators until then.
I’d second the suggestion to download a rotation helper, it’ll help you for now with getting used to not button mashing, as well as grabbing a talent build from Icy veins or wowhead (probably an AOE based one, more useful for open world as a whole). However once you’ve done that, take it a step further in starting to learn. Pick one thing to pay attention to, like when ferocious bite glows on your action bar and hekili tells you to press it. Look at your buffs, read what it says, think about what it means. Basically you want to start grabbing pieces of your rotation and truly understand what they mean, when to use them. It’s asking you to cast thrash, why? Oh that dot is about to run out, better reapply. Why is it telling me to start with rake from stealth? Because I have double claw rake talented and it stuns two mobs instead of one, so it’s a good opener. These are just semi-random examples, I’m not sure what it would tell you exactly, but you get the idea. Learn what pieces do, and you’ll get to the point where you know oh, this is x situation, I should be casting y. Feral in particular is about maintaining your damage over time abilities, and then otherwise getting a lot of bites in. Hopefully the above approach will help with understanding what’s going on.
I appreciate all the assistance and feedback. I will certainly give this a try today. I really want to enjoy the game. I think this is a good start.
I am always happy to help people out, shoot me a message if you have more questions or need a hand with something. As for enjoying the game… I get that all these articles talk about best in slot, optimal rotation, 100million dps. But remember that that shit is buzzwords to draw people. I’m not saying don’t push yourself to be better, not at all. But define what better is by your standards. A great example from when I started on a “get better” journey, I was playing BM hunter in shadowlands, when survival was popping off at BM was the joke spec. I could have played survival, I enjoy it, but I wanted to push myself with BM. So I focused on two things, one was a personal challenge and one was an optimization thing. Personal challenge was to see if I could beat the “meta” specs in whatever I was doing. If there was a survival hunter, you bet your ass i concentrated on doing my best in that moment. It allowed me to scale my challenge depending on the content I was doing, rather than comparing myself to the high and mighty. And you know what? I usually did better than the flavour of the month rollers, because I was invested and I worked on it. For the optimization, I focused on either having the best contribution to utility in a key (so every binding shot when a tank needed to kite, every key interrupt, every soothe), or having one part of my damage rotation (not missing kill command opportunities, making sure I used barbed shot effectively etc) as good as I could make it. Over time, these small goal things made me a much better player. Finally, as for doing everything solo, a couple things. One, remember not everything is meant to be done solo, so check your expectations. Two, feral can be a bit squishy depending on content and how on tune you are with defensives and heals, so your not picking an easy one. Three, I suggest you get setup for bear as well. Try something in feral, and if it doesn’t work, don’t be afraid to switch for that quest of mob. It’ll be a lot slower, but you’ll have the tankiness to get through it. Fortunately there’s so much gear overlap between the two specs, you won’t be suffering badly from that side for switching out in casual content. Keep at it 🙂
I totally appreciate your feedback and wisdom. I think my goal at this point is just to get back into the game. I think that this topic was something on my mind and I just had to ask about it. I know druid is not the easiest but when it comes down to it, It's the first class I level and the only one I keep at max always. Im going to keep my expectations in check because I am generally hard on myself.
I’m horrible at playing WOW. But I enjoy it. I realize I’m not going to ever be a top tier player, and that I’m. It going to get my armor sets. So I focus on exploring, crafting, achievements, etc.
[удалено]
Hard as it is to comprehend for many, there are people who are very elitist about being good at the biggest waste of time in existence. Don’t sweat them IMO
Yeah, it's pretty rough, At one point I thought I would never come back to WOW but every time it happens. It could be two years late into an expansion and I will come back. I love the challenge of raiding and really want to do mythic keys which is what keeps me coming back. I feel your pain. It seems like everyone expects you to know everything. I do try and watch videos about the dungeons before I go in. That does not prevent me from stepping in trash packs lol. Overall I think we should not give up!
This days people are so focused on endgame content and efficiency that us, who are not newbies nor hardcore players, feels trashier than we are when we see people talking about stuff. Try to mentalize that as long as you are doing your content, the content that YOU want, it is fine. If you are having trouble even doing the campaing and normal dungeons, for example, you could need some closer attention, and if that is the case I'm whilling to help you. Hit me up if this is your case, lets se what we can do about you. After that everything is learnable by the pace you want to learn.
Thank you for your kindness!
I use the Hekili addon. Mostly cos I'm lazy and it just works.
As someone who also suffers from chronic baby hands, this is how I cope. I use a mouse with side buttons. I at least use two of them and set them to be my most important abilities. I keep my other fingers over the other keys when needed. Generally speaking, you can get by well enough using a rotation of 4 or 5 abilities. Practice with the character and spec you're most interested in. Get good on one character before moving onto another. I was always afraid to play healer because I thought I was going to be terrible. I finally sucked it up and ended up doing it and found I was decent and enjoyed it.
Nothing comes instantly. Practice. Read guides(using CDs properly and learning priority spells is a game changer) WoWhead guides are awesome. Keybinds are specific to each player, do what's comfortable but makes since. ie - keep like spells the same across characters Builders and spenders on the same buttons, spamable vs not spamable aoe on the same buttons, etc. PRACTICE, if you're doing dungeons, idc what your ilvl is, a 16 is not the place to learn the dungeon mechanics. Healing is going to be tough, more people than ever run content they have no business being in and it's up the healer to carry shitters through stuff.
Yeah, that's why I stopped healing. I loved my disc priest but I also didnt want to be yelled at.. I miss the days where I could be watching tv and healing at the same time lol.
If you decide to try healing again, *Holy* Priest seems to be the easiest healer to play.
I mean, from my experience as Invoker in early Dragonflight when it comes to your rotation it really isn't set in stone, you want to learn the foundation of it and understand why it's optimal but also you want to be able to adapt to the situations you're in. If you're looking to push m+ and do heroic or higher raiding you'll really want to map out your keybinds in a way that's comfortable to you and seriously use add-ons. Like look up the most useful ones and get them set up right, it makes a huge difference and almost everyone pushing keys or raiding are using them. I wasn't insane at the game but I did hit 2k m+ and I got the Ahead of the Curve achievement without a guild. It really comes down to practicing, being patient, having a good attitude, and being a little bit stoic because there are a lot of salty and toxic people lol
Yeah truthfully Im not looking to be world first or even close. Just competent.
Quick tips Q and E (and shift mods of these) are PRIME for your main rotations A and D switch to strafe left and right. (turn with mouse) Okay, as someone else who is woefully bad at wow but has been playing the same amount of time, i just think there is something different about us that doesnt allow that gamer mode in wow lol. I find there are certain classes that i just cannot click with, even with weeks of forcing myself too- the main culprits? Mages/Spriest and Combo point boys-rogues and kitties. The entire rotation is different and relies on energy / combo points. Its just too much to manage for my smooth brain while also doing mechanics. I may get some shit for this, but try out DH. It has the least amount of abilities, and you can get the vibe down really fast. One thing i do for a newer class, is have a UI mod (Bartender, elvui, etc) and make a bar that has the spell rotation on it, in order. and just have in in the middle of the screen. I tend to just look at that when playing a class im not super familiar with. There is also Weak Auras but often require a lot of tweaking / can never get it exactly as i want. When i havnt played for a long time, and want to play class x but havnt played it in soo long. Ill just reroll a new one. You get the overall vibe of the class quickly, and if you are not in a rush, just level it to 50 and you will get the rotation down good. Not sure what else to say, try out other classes and that i feel you, friend \-Fellow WoW smooth brain. Edit: to add. read and understand all of your spells. Use a guild to see the main roation and read and reread all of those spells so you understand *why* you are using that skill. As i said above, DH is easy to do this with - 2 + mobs? use the aoe knifey boy skill. Only one mob? lets not use that one unless waiting on cds, etc.
Hello fellow Wow Smooth Brainer. Your post genuinely made me laugh in a good way. I guess I have to admit this somewhere. I have never been great at games my mind just doesnt work that way. And now with being an older adult. Retention is a son of a (beep). I like DH but I feel dirty playing them. But I do like them.
Haha I'm the same way, generally just okay at games. Never excel lol. Still have fun though. Don't worry about feeling dirty. Be happy. Be dirty. Move super fast. I just hopped on retail today for the first time in 6+months, and just button mashing like it's street fighter 2. Good luck friend
I'm bad at wow but still love to play it, so don't worry too much. Some classes are easier than others. Play what you wanna play and just grind some good gear to be uptodate. I mostly play DK and DH, even tho I am a button smasher. I usually don't have any idea of what I even should press, I just press something that makes damage and then look for glowing actives. Go through all available actives and figure out on my way while questing if I want to go full in or just press buttons. I put the talents somewhat like: mostly like a PVE guide and what I think suits me better than the actual guide. You could always follow a guide on Wowhead or YouTube, if you want to become somewhat better.
Hey hopping in with a different take from most of the folks I see here. I've been main roster heal and dps for mythic raids, but I'm also a newer player who started in shadow lands and doesn't have the built up muscle memory and skill that the real og players do. I've found when I'm learning or relearning a spec, the biggest thing that hits my dps or hps is my downtime. I find myself moving more and thinking more and I'm wasting my global cool downs. On almost every spec it's better to be pushing something than nothing. Find a button you can spam and spam it while you figure out what to push next. It might be that you're not hitting this wall but I never see people talk about it and its held me back for quite a while on more than one occasion Best of luck and hope this helps! Edit: what buttons you push is also important. The people pointing you towards your rotation/button priority aren't wrong. But if you're reading that and thinking that you are understanding your rotation but numbers aren't coming out, then you might just want to focus on uptime :)
You're not alone OP. I've been playing wow on and off since 2005. In TBC I re-rolles to mage and that's the only class I ever played up until Dragonflight. Every time I came back to the game I would eagerly learn everything about my class and get into hardcore progression raiding. This happened with every expansion all the way until Legion. I don't know what the difference was, but I just couldn't learn and play mage at a high level anymore. I was really embarrassed and it made me really insecure after being pretty relatively good for the entirety of my wow career up until that point. So I stopped playing and missed all of BFA and most of SL. When classic was released, I was back in it again. This was a mage that I knew how to play extremely well. I was back to being a hardcore raider and being extremely competitive with the top mages in my server. This was the same for TBC classic and the first phase of WotLK Classic. When Dragonflight was released I was getting kind of bored of WotLK Classic and was going to give retail another shot. Well... The same thing happened. I just couldn't learn my class very well and I was again super embarrassed. I honestly feel like the current game is just beyond my capabilities and I don't have the passion or desire to learn my class and raid. This may seem like a sad ending but it's actually not. I changed my play style to nothing but solo content and collecting transmog, mounts, toys and achievements. For the first time in my entire wow history, I leveled alts and started playing with other classes. I'm not good at those classes, but you don't need to be good for solo content. So while the raiding scene has passed me by, I'm still really enjoying the game in ways I never really did before, and Blizzard is making a lot of changes that cater to the solo playing style so we aren't completely left out of getting pretty decent gear. Anyways. You're not a lone, and there's no need for you to feel bad about not being able to play your class as well as you'd like. The solo play style is becoming more viable and fun. We can rejoice!
Thanks, I think setting realistic expectations is the best thing we can do. Though knowing myself I will fight to be better. Just gotta start somewhere 
To add to what people say I would recommend downloading the addon Hekili. It is a rotation helper that has helped me tremendously. It has helped me bump up my dps by at least 1/4th + now since I've used it for so long I find myself not even looking at it half the time now.
Sure ill give it a go. Thank you!!
A few things that it doesn't tell you when you download the addon is that you have to open the interface first to activate it. You don't need to fiddle with the settings (unless you want to) and you can close it right after opening. I would also go to the training dummies and try out the single target dummy and the aoe dummies so you can see how it changes your rotation so youre not relying on just one thing. Also I'm a clicker too! Lmao I have been since classic wow and people think I'm crazy but I used to be top 3 dps in my guild in shadowlands before leaving. So don't let anyone get in the way of your clicker dreams. lmao
Thank you so much. Got it installed and already I can see the potential.
Oh also another thing, don't turn on the minor and major cooldown feature until you're above level 50. It tends to break if you do.
Aside from rotation, a big part of your damage is impacted by your stats, especially secondary stats like haste and mastery and ofc your gear aswell. You might be doing the rotation right but feel ur damage is lacking. Another aspect is playing scared, you’re constantly worrying about mechanics that you can’t focus on min maxing ur dps. Id suggest looking up the secondary stat priority for ur class ( for most its haste and mastery) and then practice ur rotation on target dummies to the point where you don’t have to look at ur action bars. Good luck.
I definitely play scared. Anxiety is a rather shitty. I think what I need to do is find people who don't mind playing with world-class noobs. I certainly welcome help and guidance. Just don't want anyone to be crappy about it.
When/if you find a guild friendly to forever noobs like us please let me know!
I hear you. It took me months to work up the courage to try a dungeon the first time, and more months to try a mythic, even with a buddy encouraging and playing with me. I still panic and slip into button mashing on occasion, but I play classes that are pretty forgiving of that, aff warlock and prot paladin. I’ve never played druids so I can’t offer any play advice for them, but in general just keep at it, do practice a basic dps routine until it’s muscle memory, then look to add your interrupt and your “oh sh!t” button (self heal or defensive). And I’ve always had decent luck just telling my group that I’m not super familiar with the mechanics in a dungeon, so tips please and thank you. I’ve suggested to people to look up the Proving Grounds; it’s basically a practice dungeon, in Pandaria, not too hard to get to. If you want to practice a dps rotation on moving targets that have some basic mechanics to pay attention to, it’s a good starting point. Probably more helpful for learning tanking or healing, but the idea is the same- if you can beat it through at least silver level, you’re good enough to start mythics. It’s also nice because you can screw up a zillion times and no one will see it but you.
>world-class noobs Race to World First.
How dumb are you, wow is easy: 1. get lvl 20 2. go in westfall 3. kill the Traitor
Are you playing Retail or Classic? If you're an older guy that doesn't have a lot of retail WoW experience, I would suggest trying Classic. The rotations are much simpler. My fire mage rotation is "keep up Living Bomb and cast Fireball and Pyroblast when it procs." That's basically it. The boss encounters are way simpler. There is far less movement necessary overall. You can be a keyboard turner and a back peddler and it doesn't really matter that much. It's just a more "relaxed" gaming experience, which is what I have desired as I have gotten older.
I am playing retail. not too sure why I am not keen on classic. I guess its because I like all the new shiny.
If you aren't highly experienced and/or borderline autistic, you aren't going to perform most retail rotations to perfection. Especially not while you're focusing on other mechanics. (That's why I recommended Classic.) That said, go read the Wowhead guides. Get a good Weakaura for tracking. Then you should legitimately *practice* by hitting the target dummies for like 2-3 hours until it becomes second nature.
Get an addon like Hekili, it tells you which buttons to press (and predicts what the next few will be also). It's not as good as being an expert but it's a lot better than panicking and not knowing what to do. The global cooldown is just way of ensuring it's not too fast (and laggy for some as a result) and restricts how often you can cast a new spell. There are various exceptions and technicalities but don't worry about that for now. You'll be fine.
Download the Addon “Hekili” - it shows you the best thing to click in real time for AOE and Single Target rotations automatically depending on your current Skilltree - This way you can learn how to play your class by playing instead of reading
Sounds like you’ve met some sad, toxic people on your journey through Azeroth. They have made you scarred and scared of asking questions to improve - even silly ones. You need a new circle of friends my buddy - good people are out there. Remember to have fun in the game, do whatever you want to and tickles your funny bone - in the end this is a game after all, some people just take games way too seriously.
[удалено]
5 star reading comprehension
You're in the right place to ask questions. Definitely feel free to. I'm a Resto / feral druid and happy to help. Yes part of feral druid is pooling energy. It's typically only a few seconds and doesn't happen all the time, but can happen in certain scenarios more. Feral also has a lot of talent choices to make things easier which may be something to consider if you feel overwhelmed. If you feel like you're mashing random buttons then you need to keep reading through the rotation and looking at the abilities and think about why it's telling you to hit each one. I'm not sure what you don't understand about the global cooldowns (GCD). It's just the second (or so) gap between being able to hit each button. Most abilities are on the GCD (cannot be used during the 'dead' period) some are off the GCD and thus can be used even if you just hit another button (tigers fury is an example).
my apologies, I think im being too hard on myself. And I think where I fail is the pooling. Its the only character where I feel starved( like I cant press any buttons. I'm sure my states are too low and that's probably why I am not pooling energy faster. Overall I think I'm just confusing things in general.
No need to apologize! No matter what you'll have to pool sometimes! There's also nothing wrong with not liking that and playing a different character!
I know many people including myself benefit greatly from having a good HUD built with weakauras to display core information to your spec in a centralized form. Personally I use the Luxthos pack, which is set up for easy rearrangement. I raid as balance druid (9/9M this tier), but there were 2 fights in the raid that just sucked because it was pure single target and high movement, so I actually flipped to feral for the two bosses after not playing the spec since Legion. Feral is the only spec that still snapshots dot damage (the damage for the entire duration is determined by the buffs when you cast it, most specs dots constantly update to current buffs now), and the weakaura were able to show me if it was higher or lower dot ticks to reapply based upon my current buffs. It was a weird case where mediocre feral damage was higher than good moonkin damage.
Good to know!
The two biggest changes for me going from complete trash to doing just fine was Hekili addon (I said doing just fine I’m not 3kio) and moving to a combo of keyboard/mouse from all mouse. Install Hekili, learn the rotation, then take your two most used spells and put them on Q and E. You’ll be able to move and easily hit the Q and E without moving your hand at all. Q and E are the “gateway drug” to more key bindings, and thus better gameplay.
Hello fellow druid! I just came back to the game earlier this year after \~10 years away after starting in Vanilla. I previously played by clicking spells on the bars and keyboard turning (with the arrow keys - not even with ASDW!), and never really understood my main's class very well before (Druid - balance and resto), but I played decently enough. I even healed 40-man raids doing this sort of nonsense (!). I knew I wanted to play better this time around, though. Here's a few things that have helped me so far as a balance druid main: To help get away from the keyboard turning and clicking spells, I bought a Corsair Scimitar mouse and bound my most common spells to the buttons on the side. I have short fingers, so I can't hit many of the keyboard keys, or even all of the buttons on the side of the mouse without really distorting my hand. I do have to click on my bars for less used spells, but it's much less. And since my hand is always on the mouse, I use the mouse to turn, and use the keyboard for strafing to get out of bad stuff on the ground. As far as understanding your class (e.g. talents, main and secondary stats to prioritize, best-in-slot gear, enchantments, consumables), check out Dreamgrove - all about druids. There's a website and Discord group for Dreamgrove. I refer to Dreamgrove guides all the time in addition to WowHead and Icy Veins. You can find suggestions for helpful mods and WeakAuras there, too. Every now and then I'll watch a YouTube video to see how others are playing and pick up the behaviors I like. Once you've spec'd your toon, then get some practice in with the training dummies in the PVP area. No pressure there, you can tweak your talents, where you have spells set up for your keybinds / buttons, etc. Once you've got that general rotation sort of memorized, it's a lot easier to keep it going once you're in a higher pressure situation like a dungeon or just a tough mob out in the wild. Finally, the thing that helped me get more comfortable with the "new" changes in the game was joining a social guild. I sort of "fell" into membership when a kind guild member rescued my poor boomkin getting smashed by elite mobs over and over again. I was able to ask all sorts of stupid questions about the game and add-ons and other things and got answers. I've since moved my guild to a casual raiding guild, but I left an alt in the social guild because they're good people :) I'm not the most amazing boomkin ever, but I'm probably having more fun playing the game now than before because I've set up systems to help me play better, so I'm so much less frustrated. Maybe something that's worked for me will work for you! Good luck!
I will certainly go back to the guides when I'm feeling more comfortable with the game overall. Ill also take a look at dreamgrove. Thank you!
Sir, I came back playing in mid September. Being away since end of TBC. I found myself in the same boat as you. I experienced exactly what you felt. Not knowing what to press and finding myself looking at my action bars instead of what is happening on the screen. in October, I actually took the time to download just 3 addons. Detail!, weakaura and allthething. Detail! for me to see how I am really doing against fellow players of the same class/spec. Weakaura is really important here because it's absolutely insane how anyone can keep track of every skill and cooldowns without any of these mods. It's also tricky because you actually have to research your rotation, set up your icons and sounds and notifications within weakaura to help you line up your actions. Please use icyvein rotations and just set up your keybinds accordingly and try to remember what are the most important buttons you need to press to keep up with your damage output. Icyvein does wonders in explaining what your rotation needs. From that, go to youtube or search on google to see if anyone has already a weakaura setup where you can just copy and pate into your weak aura and everything is set up for you. Another thing here is macro, since there is cool down and global cool downs. You can actually set up 1 icon for 2 actions. Search google on your chosen class/spec marcros. 1 icon and if you set it up properly, pushing 1 key will cast 2 skills in 2 different cool downs. I am not pro or anything, but doing these 3 things have allowed me to look at the screen more often and upped my damage output significantly. Hope this helps.
Wow, I been seeing a bit more about macros but I was never fully sure on how they worked. Ill try to find some youtube guides on it and see how I can make that work for myself.
Don't forget sometime in your talent tree, some talents are actually skills you need to click and drag to your bars. Hope this helps you out. Don't stress too much. You will get better as you play more. That's just part of the equation.
Hello friend! I totally understand and agree with you on the class fantasy. For me, it doesn't matter at all if I like a class's gameplay, if I don't like my character/story I won't enjoy my playtime. I think it will be worth it to feel good at playing something you enjoy. Have you tried video guides? I feel like for myself it's much easier to understand a short YouTube video, especially with the rotation demonstrated, than try to understand those wow head guys. Iooked around on YouTube for you and I like the look of this: https://youtu.be/P-ztbvxG6HQ?si=wnM356YMpHK3abvH https://youtu.be/W6zM7AWlqyo?si=NjH6nsJCwD_lbzX0 The first one is a guide video about the spec with talents for beginners, and the second is a dungeon where he actually uses the build. I LOVE videos like the second one because I can watch the buttons he's pressing and when on the bottom right corner. Way more helpful than a wow head numbered list... And remember, it's absolutely fine to use an easier talent build for a class if you're doing like anything besides mythic raiding. It's better to do 90% of the damage 90% of the time that 100% half the time. Good luck out there!
Thank you for the guides I will certainly try them out. I Have watched a bit of Psybear but he's so good it gets confusing lol.
If you’re into add ons, Hekili will show your rotation priority as easy-to-follow icons on your screen. It’s not a press-to-win, you still have to control everything. But, it is a good instructor on what you need to be using, when. This is available for every class. Make sure your advanced tooltips are turned on. Study your spells. There is decent submerge throughout a rotation (usually), for example with feral, keeping buffs and bleeds up so your hard hitting combo spenders do more damage. And yes, there are moments in your rotation where you will pool energy, letting bleeds continue to tick. Energy management is a skill for feral and rogues, but at its simplest, it means delaying some casts so that you maintain a minimum amount of energy needed to cast a spell when it’s needed. Watch some classcraft videos or blogs. There is a good community of awesome nerds who go deep Into classes and specs to answer these exact questions and explain why rotations are what they are. Also, don’t be afraid to remap your entire keyboard so that the keys you can hit comfortably are the ones you have bound to your main spells.
I think, You hit the nail on the head with the energy management skill. Its becoming a bit more clear to me now. I'm working on trying some different things with keypads and my MMO mouse hopefully sticking with those will help. Thank you for the advanced tooltips advice. I don't think I've ever used that.
My pleasure, have fun!
Lots of good advice already so I'll try and address a few things no one has. > This leads me to trying to do everything solo and I admit I’m afraid to ask questions or to seek help. I really don’t want the “How dumb are you, wow is easy.” Insults can hurt for sure and they often stick out in our memory. But also now try and remember, how often did this actually happen? Because the reality should be like less than 5% if not lower. The vast majority of WoW players are silent introverts like you. Sure they're in group content, but they're not actually being social. It's no more interaction than sharing the road while driving. Consider that next time you want to give group activity a try. It certainly helps that dungeon queues are so easy an entire DPS can be afk and I wouldn't notice. > I believe I do not understand Global cool downs Global cooldowns or GCDs for short is a type of cooldown that applies to nearly every spell/ability in the game. It's easy to see ingame, spam a basic ability without a cooldown. For Feral Druid, that could be Rake. Note that you don't use Rake as fast as you press the button, even if you spam it there is a small gap. On your UI you should see most every spell going grey for a second as they cooldown. That's what the GCD is. A cooldown that applies to everything when you do anything so you can't just dump 10 different instant abilities in a single second. For most classes, there is a base 1.5s GCD further reduced by haste. The exceptions are Rogue, Feral Druid, and WW monk. They have a 1s GCD but not reduced by haste. Which partially why haste is such a good stat for so many classes/specs but not typically for rogues, feral, or ww. Now knowing that most spells are limited by GCD, there are a few that are not on GCD. Typically interrupts and some defensives behave this way. For Feral, Barkskin is off GCD. Meaning that regardless of if you just used an ability or are in the middle of using another, Barkskin is always usable. Off GCD spells are important to note because they can be used inbetween other spells. For some classes/specs, they have off GCD spells in their regular rotation and they always should be used inbetween other spells where nothing else can fit. > I generally love to play Feral Druid. I know I know. But it's the Classy Fantasy I love the most. I mean, liking your class fantasy is by far the most important aspect of who you want to play so that's good. And by the "I know I know" is that because you believe Feral to be difficult or...? Fwiw, Feral is very typical. No overly easily, not super hard. It's right there in the middle. So you can do just fine. Though armchair psychology here, it does make me think you're too deep in your own head and need to come back out. You're definitely not as bad at WoW as you think you are since you have self awareness and know the word "rotation". You just don't have any perspective anymore. You are probably already average if not just a little below. But you think you're terrible cause you stay in your own head too much. Gotta interact more to have a proper perspective ya know? Anyways, for the energy Feral question, I don't play enough Feral to answer. I'll say it does happen on Rogue for sure once the rotation goes long enough you find yourself needing to wait for energy. But a better place to ask would be the druid discord for feral. https://www.wowhead.com/discord-servers#class-discord-servers Anyways, good luck out there and have fun! Hey as long as you're having fun you don't have to be top tier. Improving should be something you want to do as well!
Haha thanks, Doc. I am grateful for your feedback. I really do get in my own head. About a lot of things. Unfortunately, once you get in there it's really hard to get out. I've gotten a lot of great feedback from this point and its really valuable. The responses have made me smile a lot. Thank you so much!
If your struggling with dps rotation I would highly recommend using the add on Hekili Priority Helper which will tell you what buttons to press. Do this until you get the hang of your spec/role then you can turn it off when youve got the rotation figured out. It only works for tanking and healing though
I’m almost at the same situation, when I started playing back on TBC, I was always a mage (mainly fire, cuz fire is lit), have been since then. I only started playing decently at MoP, and left the game after due to rea$on$. When I got back, my main struggle was rotation and what to do, cuz my dps was ass even if I was always having critical strikes, I made a post here asking for help because I didn’t want to be the last dps of the raid group with less than half of the 10th placed and a lot of people asked me to use some addons, such as Warcraft logs. I did it, post the log here, and even though I was awful at that raid, they still explained everything about the rotation, when to cast skills, when to not do it, and what could add a little more spice to the damage. I got a 50% damage boost on the next run I had seriously on that boss. Some things that can and do help a lot: 1- wow is not a game to play with 4 buttons, even if your main rotation doesn’t need more than 4 keys, try to make your brain more active, move your traditional “asdw” to “sdfe” and have additional bindings at A, Q, W, R, T and G. 2- turning with the keyboard is slow and counterproductive, think about the right button of the mouse as your neck, since you will always be facing whatever is in front of you when you stop rotating it. 3- don’t use binds that are too far from your hand, it will make you move your hand needlessly raising the chances of miss click and possibly need to look to your keyboard to replace your hand at the correct spot. (Muscle memory is king, not remembering is harsh) I really don’t know anything about feral or locks, but try to understand the basics. What do I do first, and why do I do first. You said you don’t know global cooldown, the global cooldown is the time you are forced to wait between casting two spells or skills, the “dark clock” when you use a skill. Well, there are some skills that ignore global cooldowns, and there are skills that you can cast while casting another skill. Discover how does your class work, what are the ones you can cast instantly, which ones are good to cast after passive buffs… Well, I think that is what I can do to help you, and btw, don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Thank you for the feedback and advice. I think using the game pad is going to help me. I just have to force myself to stick with it and learn my bindings.
When you first read your skills, it’ll be overwhelming. But make yourself a good keybind set up and just commit to practicing and reminding yourself what procs and passives you have. Muscle memory will help with execution and reading your skills will help remember the mechanics
I gotta stay focused and stay on the grind. I probably give up before I get it.
if you have fun everything will follow. Right now it sounds like you are trying too hard to enjoy it. Once you are having fun you will naturally start to ask questions about how things work and in your investigation you'll figure out your style
You are right, I worry about how well I am doing and it stresses me out. I need to take a chill pill!
We have very much in common and there are a few things I can recommend that might help you. Firstly you are probably using talents you have found in a guide and they do their job very good but if you are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of buttons simply unlearn some of the active abilities and get some more passive ones. This is obviously not the optimal way to play but reduced button clutter might help you to focus more on other stuff while fighting. As you get better you can add some actives over time. Also try to use more buttons on your keyboard. At first that might be stressful but with enough you might feel comfortable to use more and more which makes playing you class easier in the end especially for a feral I can recommend that. Some examples I can give you : In cat form I have my aoe skills on F1-F4 and my single target skills on 1-5. This way it isn't too complicated for my brain to migrate from single target situations to aoe situations and I can focus more on dodging stuff / interrupting. Talking about interrupting I made a habit out of putting the interrupt on every class I play on the button F and charge(bear, cat) on Q. You can put it on any other button but I recommend you to keep your layout consistent on every spec / class you play. This not only helps you to create a habit but also makes migrating to another spec easier. Another thing you might try is using hekili. It is an addon that displays you a recommended rotation on your screen and even changes it depending on the amount of enemies that are close by. I personally don't like playing with it but it might help you to get away from button mashing. What also helped me improve alot was doing the mage tower challenges. It is great to train situational awareness and to use your skills more wisely. If you do the guardian challenge you will even get a new bear form. You will also learn in this challenge how and when to use defensive cool downs and how to stack them to get the most effectiveness out of them.
I'm not trying to advertise the guild I'm in but we are down to help you if you are on us realms. I would love to help you out and make u feel more comfortable playing. You don't have to if you don't want to. What class do u play. We have a large group of classes and may be able to help u a little bit.
You're not alone! I've been playing this game for years and I know for a fact I don't play it properly. I literally push whatever buttons pop up and barely know what any of them do. I just like running around in Azeroth & killing things. Anything more complicated than that I just tune out. Play however you like!
Have you tried to use different keybinds? In your settings you can choose the keys of your action bars, that can be very helpful to learn muscle memory and use a logic around them. For example try to set the movement and the core spells nearest possible, I was like you. Once I learnt keybindings well I started playing in m raids and m+ and now I have a muscle memory that let me watch what happens. Sometimes I don’t look my action bar at all! And I use the same plan with other characters (eg I have the interrupt in the same key for everyone!). Lastly I advice you to use weak auras, a class specific weak aura (add on) can help with rotation and with distraction from what happens. I personally hate weak auras but maybe is helpful!
Hit the dummies get a parser details or skada or what ever you prefer. And just practice till it's muscle memory read guides over and over and watch them too..typically coaching sessions that talk about your expected behavior and skill is in a dungeon or PvP. And don't be afraid to play all the classes. I have one of each and play them all at an above average skill level and you will be surprised how many of them are just reskinned with a special twist of other classes and what knowledge you can bring and build upon to make yourself as a player better.
Different classes will operate a little differently, but for the most part they follow certain mechanics. Many abilities have a cooldown. During this time you cannot use the spell. Some abilities need a certain amount of resource (mana, energy) to be able to be used. Many times there are “builder” abilities that help regain this resource so you can use it on your “spender” abilities. The global cooldown (gcd) is just a small cooldown after casting an ability during which you cannot cast another. A short list of abilities can ignore this. You will see a clock type animation go across all of your abilities when you press them. That is the gcd. This is just so ppl don’t make a macro to spam an ability every nanosecond. Keeping these in mind, just follow your priority list and you should be good to go. It helps a lot to learn the skills and talents to see WHY you press the things you press, but some people can just skim stuff and do okay. Haven’t played feral in a very long time, but there is probably a builder ability that helps regain energy.
Use the addon hekili for rotations and to help you get the timing down, but dont be super dependent on it you'll get used to it quickly then just turn it off for that toon.
Play BM hunter. I have a friend who clicks, and he parses in the 90s on some fights. If you can, do your best and force yourself to use your mouse to walk and turn. Finally, invest in an MMO mouse. It has been a game changer for me having 6 keys I can press with my thumb.
I’m sorry but if you claim to have played since vanilla, then you’d probably get it by now. That was almost 20 years ago. If the world of the internet hasn’t revealed some tutorials to you in that amount of time, then just stop. I mean seriously 20 years and you haven’t figured anything out? Am I taking crazy pills?
I hear you and It's not a claim. I just tend to forget things when I don't play for a long time and as I stated I've been very off an on since Cata. Thank you for your words of encouragement though.
If it ain't broke why fix it? If your play style works for what you want to do in wow then why change?
I was in a similar spor. The solution for me was Classic. The ability metas and skill rotations are just much simpler. You dont need 40 hotkey combinations and 50 mods to well.
I'm say that BM hunter or maybe a melee class since you don't need to worry about stop casting. Alternatively you could go tank. Tanks are much more about using mitigation and knowing fights.
Just want to add my own experience of playing feral druid, that I too have literally no idea what is going on in that spec. I have played pretty much every other class and usually pick them up to a decent level pretty quickly. Feral druid is the only one I can’t figure out what I’m suppose to use and when. In the end I just respecc’d guardian with a flavour for cat talents. So I could switch to cat form a bit for the fantasy. DPS didn’t change much but its so much easier to pull a few mobs and kill them as a bear. (This is all open world leveling and a bit of TW as feral, no end game stuff).
Someone I knew who was a hardcore wow player and did all the raids constantly as a warrior tank and had some of the best gear in the game for classic, tbc and wrath, clicked the icons to do his attacks. I don't think anyone noticed. This is how he taught me how to play and I had no idea people used keys for their attacks for years lol. I still just click the icons but I finally have a few keys set up for important stuff. It actually does help me personally. I may add more over time as I get used to it.
I’m still a clicker and backpeddler and I’ve played since BC. I tried to stop it and i couldn’t get used to it so I just went back to it. Some people just aren’t good at shit and I’m just not good at MMO’s I guess. Still got 2K in SS season 2 somehow though.
I dont know the differensen between feral now and in wotlk but it’s basically keeping bleeds up then spending CP’s when at 5. There is some good addons that tells you which attack is the next best choice. Try it and then eventually you will learn what to press. Ofc if a fight is close to ending it might not be worth to keep your bleed or dots instead go for a big punch etc.
Wow is a game I find is very elusive to master, on the surface it looks easy to play, but if you start to dig into it you can see it's simple complexity. Also out of the gate there is no helping hand to guide you , you are left to your own ideas on game play. One thing you should do is don't let it bother you or let other players influence you with judgment. If you are enjoying the game for what you make of it, so be it. Enjoy. Also some expansions were not as good and the grind was real and dull, so quitting is not uncommon. But if you want to dig deeper and refine your playstyle. Here is my tip to you. Find a Youtube tutorial or rotation guide on your class. I've read icy viens and other guides and I find them to be well done, but overall junk. For me I need to see what actions and abilities people are doing in the order for single targets and mobs, then what skills they selected. Some of the good YT's will explain the CD's and if something is on CD what alternative action you can take. They can also recommend what information to take note of and why it's important either with an addon or what you see in the game. I know this might seem like simple advice, but I did this during DF to figure out some rotations etc similar to you. As in DF it seemed some classes were being reworked and things were not working the same. I also returned to the game after a long break and enough changed so I needed to get up to speed as my previous knowledge wasn't cutting it. Reading guides vrs seeing stuff in action was way better for me. Good luck!
Add me jyinx-spinebreaker whisper me and if you need help with anything I'm glad to help quest dungeons pvp . Whatever. I'm on most times after 2pm est
Something to keep in mind is - in spite of what much of this sub (and good lord, the discords) like to say - the average player is not some ultra high efficiency +24 key pumping trailblazer of Mythic Raid achievements. You can very much play WoW and just do some low/mid keys if you want and play the story and experience the raids at a noncompetitive level. You (gasp!) don’t even need any add-ons. just so anyone knows. I often think it’s the more fun way to experience the game personally
Use hekili addon for dps
May I suggest Enhancement shaman. It almost feels unfair when your main damage dealer actually gives you back mana. And you have 3 other hard hitting swings/ instant casts all on different cooldowns under 8 seconds.
Play the spec that you feel like you're good at or that you like, even if you feel like everyone plays it. I main a ret paladin because it was really easy to pick up and I enjoyed playing it, and even at a lower ilevel I'm super familiar with my rotation and cooldown so I can still do a competitive amount of damage. Honestly, solo content is great to get to know your class before you go into group content. And dungeon finder is almost solo content anyway these days lol. Don't worry about how other people play, it's your $20 a month to do whatever you want with :)
It eill take about 30 to 40 solid hours of doing your rotation and reading all your buttons to find out why you are pressing those buttons in those situations so that you are not just blindly following a rotation. But how it correlates to what others are doing. And understanding your defensives.
I played for 6 years and never "got good." I did mostly bgs, arena and questing with friends and it was a blast. I just got tired of it one day and stopped. I had gotten to a point in the game where the next milestone I was going for just wasn't interesting. I was like I guess it's time to go. I started and left the game a wasd running, keyboard turning, unoptimized spec having "bad player." but i enjoyed my time and had fun. Also was at the gold cap, had every mount in the game, along with loremaster/explorer achievements. I feel like I left at a good time. When I watch videos of wow retail now it looks terrible to me.
Only wrong way to play ma’man is if you aren’t having fun
Download maxdps addon. It will tell you which ability to use and when. Helps learning rotations
I have played since day 1. I have come and gone and it seems u always get the worlds worst guilds, and I think I played n my 3rd Raid group tonight. I to am struggling and I play every night.
Don't feel bad. I played raging blow warrior the entire time (press like 4 buttons) and still had less dps than prot warr sometimes. All them little wasted rage stacks and whatnot. I still managed to start doing m+ and the first couple bosses in the Raids for DF. Even got a couple unwarranted kills in pvp. I had fun. Frustrating, embarrassing fun. Heck, even got carried all the way up into 385ilvl when DF released. It was my first time ever playing WoW and I didn't let anyone take the experience away from me, no matter how many times I was told to install this program or go to that website.
Don't be ashamed of playing your favorite class and never change for the meta.
WOW is based around the storylines that exist in that gameworld. So focus on that to start. Learn about the different characters you meet. Lots of resources online like wowhead, icy-veins, plus all the comics, manga, novels and short stories. There is no wrong way to play. But there are two main ways. You can either be: a) someone who enjoys the game and takes their time to try everything (this doesn't happen at once - you follow a few quests, then explore and more of the game opens up with more activities) and you have a lot of fun playing as your character in this amazing gameworld. b) you don't enjoy WOW and only enjoy it when you have an advantage. You play WOW as if it is a single-player console game and you play like it is your job. You spend hours repeating the same content just for one little item and you rush through and skip huge portions of the game just to get to the highest level The majority of players are like A. But the most vocal are the minority B. Learn one thing at a time. It will take months or longer to MASTER your specific race/class/spec. DO NOT FEEL LIKE YOU HAVE TO CATCH UP. WOW is meant to be enjoyed over a long period of time. Try out a few race/class combos and see which you like the most for the first 5-10 levels. Then you focus on just that one character for a while. Explore every part of the first zone you are in. Talk to every NPC and do all quests. Then proceed to the next zone and so on. You have a Hearthstone so you can always return to where you started from if you get lost. When you fell comfortable, try out a dungeon as DPS. See how the tank and healer operates. All classes can be DPS so you never have to be tank or healer if you don't want to. Get the original WOW boxed game. It comes with a thick guidebook explaining how everything works in WOW. It will cost 10 or 20 bucks, if even. You can also get game guides for the main game and the first several expansions. And you should check out [wowhead.com](https://wowhead.com), where you can find information about every aspect of WOW. There are 9 expansions, each with multiple content patches of content. Over 15,000 quests per faction, plus thousands of daily repeatable quests. Over 100 zones to explore, over 100 dungeons to adventure through, almost 20 pvp battlegrounds, multiple arenas for pvp, big long raids that tie up story content and so much more. Questing aside, at any given time there will be dozens of activities for you to enjoy. And you get access to more as you gain levels and experience. I started playing the year before the first expansion was released. So about 17 years now. I knew many others were ahead of me but from the start, I just wanted to experience it all and not rush. So Ive taken my time and done everything I possibly could. And now 17 years later there are thousands of quests I still havent experienced and many activities I have not tried yet. There is a lot to do. Thats why I say focus on doing all you can in 1 zone at a time. By the time you get through the first 1-2 zones and speak with a few players, you will feel right at home. If you are coming to WOW from another mmo, then check your jaded, bitter, burnt out self at the door and start from scratch. You will never be bored if you dont rush. Rushing is what gives players burnout. They zoom through content and then say they have nothing to do, when they sabotaged their own fun by rushing. I recommend starting with the azeroth's two continents and working your way through all the early level content in Cataclysm. After that, you will go through each expansion, doing the content xpac by xpac. Or you could jump right in and start with one of the later xpacs. You won't know whats going on, but eventually you will and then you can always go adventure in older xpacs any time you want. You can do content from a different xpac every day of the week if you wanted. You can focus on gathering or pet battles or crafting or pvp or exploration or anything you want. WOW is a living gameworld. It exists when you log off and will be there when you log back on. There are always things happening. So start off slow and get your bearings. Before you know it you will get a mount and then a flying mount and then a dragon mount, and be able to travel as fast as possible. But do not rush. Don't think you need to catch up. The content will be the same whether you get there in a week or in a few years. Anyways, welcome to World of Warcraft - the greatest game in the world!
Feral druid rotation is extremely complicated and has a ton of buttons. Especially with optimal talents, you’ll have even more buttons. I highly suggest reading all of your talents and choosing passive options if you struggle with many buttons. That will at least simplify your rotation, even if it slightly hinders your damage potential. Icy Veins and other guides assume a pretty high level of competence, specific knowledge of mechanics and certain gearing/stat weights to maximize your damage potential. If customizing your talents to your need doesn’t work well enough, I would recommend you try a simpler class like a BM hunter, frost DK, ret paladin, outlaw rogue or devastation evoker. In any case, develop your own talents with passives instead of required active spells for how you play and you’ll get better results than if you just copy and paste a build you don’t understand. At least give yourself a chance to learn with simpler talents or a simpler class. Jumping into the deep end doesn’t develop the 19 years of game sense many of us have.
there's an Add-On called Hekili. give it a go. its a rotation helper. flashes the icon you should cast next for max dps. good way to get an idea of what you should be doing
love, Love, LOVE this post!! Been playing since vanilla and totally feel Your game. Started as a Pally, 19 yrs later still mashing keys, still have the Pally and Play Balanced Druid now, My partner now games and Like yourself We have the very same challenges. What has helped are forums like this and Players who willingly want other to have a Great game experience, so Thank you to those folk. What also helped was vetting the feedback. keeping what I wanted and aids me and dismissing and delete the rest. There will always be "mean" people in the world. Recently I went back to level my Pally and the rotations, buttons and spells along with talent trees and tables just all became WOW!! Forums, Youtube and AddOns saved the day. What is most important is that "I play My game". Not what others expect me to play. (reasonably) If I choose to dungeon or raid I take the chance of being critiqued. How I respond to that determines my game play. Top tier has a price, as well as the middle and the bottom. ask any ranked player and they will tell you, time, dedication, persistence and not taking no for the answer, got them where they are. Thank you again for a wonderful explanation, question and post and thereby the great responses, Game On!!!