[Every Class] DPS Rotation Guide

[TrueRomance]

I want to start this off with saying that the mage/spriest information is only what I could find, I *think* it's up to date but I can not be 100% sure since it's the most up to date I could find.

Note: This is not EVERY spec, only the more optimal ones, if you want to play a 0/0/71 spec feel free but I'm not going to tell you how . Also, most of this information is found at either: elitistjerks.com, forums.worldofwarcraft.com, or their respective class websites, I do not take any credit for coming up with the following information as I'm just compiling it into this one post.

*Tried to make it less of a chance to cause your eyes to bleed*


Death Knights

Blood
Blood Simple - A Blood DK DPS Guide - Updated for 3.3! - Elitist Jerks

Glyph of Dark Death Rotation

IT-PS-HS-HS-DS -Dump- DS-HS-HS-HS-HS -Dump-

Beginning with Dark Death as it is the easier of the two. On a pull to minimize your wasted GCDs during your dump phase you can cast HoW, and raise your Ghoul.


Glyph of Disease Rotation

The GoD rotation is made up of two distinct parts. There is your Open Phase (1), and then the repeated phase (2). You begin with the (1) rotation to set up your diseases, and then repeat two until your diseases fall of some how, or the enemy dies

(1) IT-PS-HS-HS-DS -Dump- DS-HS-HS-HS-Pest -Dump-
(2) HS-HS-HS-HS-DS -Dump- DS-HS-HS-HS-Pest

Dancing Rune Weapon

DRW will gain buffs you have before casting it, but will not get things used after, i.e. Hysteria, potions, etc. Heart Strikes from DRW also are affected by its diseases, and the diseases will stay even after DRW has expired. For this reason it is proper to cast DRW before refreshing your diseases. Note: your heart strikes do not benefit from your DRW's diseases, and vise-versa.

In 3.3 DRW now currently acts as a debuff on your target. This puts us a little bit more at the mercy of Blizzard's pet AI, unfortunately. In its current form the DRW is making its way behind your target, so parry's should still be minimized.

Your DRW checklist looks something like this, in order of importance (and yes, I finally added "Heroism" for all the Alliance out there, ugh).

* Bloodlust/Heroism
* Hysteria
* On use trinkets / Trinket Procs
* Empowered Rune Weapon
* Potion of Speed


Hitting all of those criteria will maximize your DRWs DPS, very important to maximizing your own DPS.

Obviously you can't always meet every criteria, as some are out of your control. You always want to wait for Hysteria if you think the fight will last long enough to do so, and you especially have to make sure your diseases are up and death runes are ready. If you have on use trinkets, you want to be sure to use them before popping DRW as well. Rarely will you be able to use Empowered Rune Weapon twice in one fight.

I'm not a huge fan of waiting on trinket procs, like Greatness or Grim Toll/Mjolnir. I tend to take the approach that if they are up, awesome but if they are not I don't wait for them. If you "feel" like you are due for a proc, it might be worth waiting 1 or 2 CGDs, but I don't know that I would go much beyond that. This is especially true due to the fact that often times your DRW is part of a coordinated burst, like XT heart phase, and you dont want to be lagging behind waiting for a proc.

That being said, if it is a long fairly straighforward fight like Ignis with no real burst phase requirement, I would probably wait to try to maximize my DPS.

It should also be noted that we most often have a lot of procs lining up at the beginning of a fight. If you want to use DRW at the start of a fight, it should always be used after your first full rotation, otherwise you will clip your original diseases losing out on DPS.

Priority Systems

The priority structure to Frost DPS is significantly more complicated than Blood. Apart from adjusting your rotation for missed strikes things flow quite smoothly. The biggest thing you will be watching for will be not Heart Striking right after your diseases have fallen off.

Unholy DK

Generalized Rotation


Single Target

Builds with Reaping
PS – IT – BS – BS – SS – DC – HoW
SS – DC – SS – SS – DC – (DC)

Build without Reaping
PS – IT – BS – SS – BS – DC – HoW
SS – BS – SS – BS – DC – DC– (DC)

The final Death Coil of the rotation is placed in parentheses as you will not always have the RP to perform it every two rune refreshes.

With Epidemic being taken once again, your rotation reverts back to the traditional Unholy one. Priority wise, it is the same as ever: Apply diseases (PS - IT), dump your RP if its capped (DC), burn your blood runes for Desolation and/or Death Runes (BS - BS), use your FU strike (SS), dump your RP (DC), use Horn if you have an extra gcd and are unable to do anything else (HoW).

In situations where you have additional RP thanks to Anti-Magic Shell, Revitalize, or Rapture, there are three places where you can afford the GCD: at the very end of the first set of runes, at the very end of the second set of runes and, if you still have excess runic power after using up those two spots, in place of the Horn of Winter. Unlike in patch 3.2.2, Death Coil is no longer our hardest hitting ability. It is not worth delaying the entirety of your rotation for it. Dump any extra runic power in the three spots specified and, if you are still over capping on RP after that, so be it. Let it rot.

Multi-Target / AoE

Initial:
IT – PS – Pestilence – DnD – DC – HoW
SS – BS – BB – SS – DC – DC
SS – Pestilence – DnD – DC – HoW

As its name suggests, you perform the initial segment of the rotation with your first set of runes, then alternate between the second and third order of abilities for the remainder of the fight (or until diseases fall off). Do not make the mistake of repeating the initial rotation after the third; it’s unnecessary with [Glyph of Disease].

Blood Striking to proc Desolation is a larger net dps gain than Blood Boiling, for those who are curious. If Desolation is already up, then Blood Boiling becomes the clear winner, of course.

One common mistake players make is to Death and Decay before spreading their diseases. Doing so is a bad move (from a dps point of view. Tanking is another matter). Although it might seem like a dps gain to use Death and Decay initially so it is off cooldown sooner, it loses a lot of damage if your diseases aren’t on the target (15% from Rage of Rivendare, 13% from Ebon Plague, so on). As well, spreading your diseases sooner means more raid dps thanks to Ebon Plague.

Druid

Catfite
Cat DPS Guide - Elitist Jerks

As there is no real rotation, we speak of a "priority list" for cat DPS. Try to follow the following instructions in the given order.

1. Keep up Savage Roar
2. Keep up Mangle
3. Keep up Rake
4. Use shred for CP regeneration (remember, that points 2 and 3 are more important)
5. When at 5 CP and Rip is not up, use Rip
6. When below 30 Energy, use TF
7. Use Clearcast Proccs for Shred
8. When at 5 CP and Rip and SR are running with 8 seconds (might be longer, depending on your gear) or longer each, use FB
9. When Rip and SR will drop at nearly the same time (with less than 3 seconds difference), try to recognize it early. Then use SR with a small amount of CP to desynchronize both timers.
10. Use Berserk only at high energy, (but not higher than 85) not directly after TF and as often as possible. If you will get Hysteria or some boss mechanics will enhance your damage, save it for these situations.


This priority list is quite hard to maintain. Cat DPS is one of the most complicated ones in PvE WoW. Try to remember these rules:

1. Remember: Savage Roar buffs everything; Mangle buffs bleeds and shred; Bleeds buff shred. That means, never shred without applying mangle and at least one bleeding.
2. It doesn't matter how many CP you use for SR. Just make sure it never drops!
3. Use Rip and FB only with 5 CP
4. It is very tricky to squeeze in FB's in your rotation. At first you should try to maximize SR, Mangle, Rip and Rake uptime (in this order). When you get more experienced, try to FB more. You need to guess how much time is needed for building up 5 CP's - this depends on your crit chance. Usually, a FB is worth dropping Rip for 4 Ticks approx (8 seconds). Remember that after using Rip, you need energy for building at least one more CP to refresh SR if necessary.
5. FB is most efficient when used at 35 energy. It gets worse when you spend more, thus making it least efficient when using with 65 energy.
6. A 5 CP FB is always more efficient than a shred, even when used at 65 energy.
7. When using the shred glyph: When rake and rip are about to expire and you could shred to extend the rip duration for 2 more seconds at the cost of letting rake drop for 1-2 seconds - do it.

Oomkin!
Moonkin PvE DPS (updated for 3.3.2) - Elitist Jerks


The Short Version

* Start by applying Moonfire and Insect Swarm. Whenever either of these falls off of your target, reapply it.
* Cast Wrath until until a Lunar (Starfire) Eclipse procs, then switch to Starfire. Cast Starfire until a Solar (Wrath) Eclipse procs, then switch back to Wrath.
* Repeat this Eclipse cycle, always keeping your two DoT's on the target.


For more detail, continue to the following sections.

The Eclipse Rotation

You will generally operate in a four-step cycle.

1. Pre-Lunar. Cast Wrath until the Eclipse buff appears (have some mod that will make it very obvious when you gain the buff).
2. Lunar Eclipse. When you see the buff, finish casting your current Wrath and then cast Starfire for the duration of Eclipse.
3. Pre-Solar. When Eclipse fades, continue casting Starfire. Note that a Starfire only gains the benefit if it is fully completed while the Eclipse buff is up, so if you only have time for a partial cast, your Eclipse is effectively over. Cast Starfire until the Eclipse buff appears.
4. Solar Eclipse. Cast Wrath for the duration. Continue casting when it ends to loop back around into step 1.


Basically, you cast Wrath until Lunar procs and cast Starfire until Solar procs. But once DoTs and other instants are involved, thinking in terms of the four-step cycle helps you plan your casts well.

Lunar is slightly stronger than Solar (slightly faster to proc and slightly more damage per proc, and makes full use of Glyph of Starfire). So in a situation where you can proc either (the beginning of the fight, or if you've failed to proc Solar for a few seconds and Lunar is coming off of ICD), cast Wrath to proc a Lunar Eclipse. It's good to have an add-on showing your Eclipse duration and cooldown (see below) so you can always tell at a glance which nuke to cast.

Subtleties of Transitions

Solar->Lunar: Wrath procs Nature's Grace when the cast completes, but procs Eclipse when it actually hits the target. This allows a sort of clairvoyance regarding Lunar Eclipses: if you see Nature's Grace refresh when you cast a Wrath, you know that that cast is a crit, and therefore that it has a 60% chance of proccing an Eclipse when it reaches the target (but be careful to remember that this doesn't work if Starfall is up, or if you've cast Moonfire at the same time that the Wrath completed).
If you switch to Starfire as soon as you see this happen (not interrupting a cast, merely swapping after the next Wrath), you have a 60% chance of effectively lengthening a Lunar Eclipse by starting to cast Starfire before it even procs. This is not in the spreadsheet yet, but some brief math indicates that it's worth trying to do, even though you waste a Starfire cast the other 40% of the time.

Lunar->Solar: As of 3.3, there is no longer a way to use latency to get your final Lunar Starfire to proc a Solar Eclipse. So nothing fancy in this direction.

DoT Refreshing

Against a single target, reapply MF and IS whenever they drop. MF should have higher priority for reapplication, but the difference is tiny. During a Wrath-heavy part of the cycle, it may be best to reapply MF last (after IS or other instants) to minimize the chance that it will drop before you cast SF again.

There's currently a slight open question about whether it's worth waiting until Eclipse ends if a DoT expires in the final few seconds Eclipse. This is hard to model and the DPS difference is very small, but doing so can confer a small convenience. Ordinarily, when you proc an Eclipse, you have to cast one extra Wrath or Starfire before switching spells, due to the fact that you queue your next spell before seeing whether Eclipse procs. If you have a DoT to refresh, you can cast that instead, and use the GCD to see whether Eclipse procced.

For example, if Lunar is just ending and Insect Swarm is down, you can cast one extra Starfire and then Insect Swarm. During the GCD from the Insect Swarm, watch to see whether the Starfire crit (it's actually useful to watch for Nature's Grace, as that buff will appear before the Solar Eclipse will). If it did, you can immediately switch to Wrath for your next spell.

Other spells

* Starfall: use this on cooldown against a single target (if there are others mobs in range, remember to make sure it's safe to cast). The best time to use it is theoretically during the pre-Solar phase, as this is when you benefit most from the added Nature's Grace uptime, but this effect is so minor that it's probably best to simply use it when convenience dictates. In AoE situations, try to use it as often as possible on multiple clustered targets.
* Force of Nature: use this as many times as possible in a given fight. If you know when Bloodlust/Heroism is coming, try to cast this immediately beforehand (but not if this requires waiting so long that you can't use it as many times during the encounter). As you learn each fight, pay attention to things that kill the Treants and time your cast to avoid them if possible.
* Typhoon: This spell has two potential uses:
1) The knockback. Occasionally it's useful in a raid encounter to spend a GCD pushing something away. For this it must be unglyphed.
2) AoE DPS. Typhoon on multiple targets has a high chance of proccing both Clearcasting and Nature's Grace. This can make it worth using in between Hurricane casts. For this it must be Glyphed.
* Faerie Fire: Unless your raid has both a Shadow Priest and a Feral Druid, keep this on every mob. Even if it does have both, it doesn't particularly hurt to cast this at the pull if you think there's a chance either of the other classes' buffs will ever drop.
* Rebirth: Remember that this drops Moonkin Form, so be ready to reshift as your next cast after Rebirth.
* Innervate: Unglyphed, this returns 2.25 * 3496 = 7866 mana to the target. If you want to be able to cast it on yourself without detargeting your DPS target, use:

/use [harm, @player][] Innervate

* Gift of the Wild: casting this virtually guarantees a Clearcast proc.
1) If you're very short on mana and want to cast an expensive spell such as Hurricane, you might consider spending a GCD for this.
2) If you're using the 2T10 bonus, the Clearcast gives a damage buff. If forced to move during a fight, you can cast this for the buff.


Hunter

I couldn't find a guide similar to the other classes above, so you need to go more in depth yourself, follow the links:

Best Possible DPS in Shandaras WotLK Spreadsheet - Elitist Jerks
Hunter FAQ (read this before asking questions) - Elitist Jerks

Survival

-------------------------------
4) Rotation & Play Style (xxxx4)
-------------------------------

Rotation:

The survival rotation has evolved to a priority based system instead of a true rotation.

Kill Shot (KS)
Explosive Shot (ES)
Black Arrow (BA)
Serpent Sting (SrS)
Aimed(AS)/Multi(MS)
Steady Shot (SS)


The way this priority list works is that if at each time the GCD comes up you try to fire the ability closest to the top of the list. This list may change as more real data comes in after the patch goes live.

Every 21 seconds (with Glyph) you will have to refresh Serpent Sting. Every 30 seconds (24 with talents) you will have to refresh Black Arrow.

**2pc T9** - If you have 2pc T9 Serpent Sting should be placed above Black Arrow in the priority.

**3.1 CHANGE** - Kill Shot is now back ON the GCD and you can no longer macro it to all your shots. This will cause further complexity to your priority list below 20% health especially if you have the KS glyph.

---------------------------------
What to do on a LnL Proc
---------------------------------

Ideal LnL rotation: The first rotation is if Aimed/Multi is off CD or any Serpent Sting needs Refreshed when LnL procs. The second rotation is if Aimed/Multi is on cooldown and Serpent Sting is active when LnL procs. If you have nothing else in your priority list besides Steady Shot use the 2nd LnL rotation. You may also insert kill shot into either of these as it is higher up the priority list.

ES > Aimed/Multi Shot > ES > Refresh Serpent Sting > ES > regular rotation.

ES > wait .5 sec after GCD > ES > wait .5sec after GCD > ES > regular rotation.

High Lag/ping LnL rotation: - Timing the Ideal rotation is difficult if you have heavy lag, this rotation will yield similar results with minimal dps loss.
ES > Aimed/Multi Shot/SS > ES > SS > ES > original rotation continues.

At any point in the rotation you can drop a steady shot to reapply serpent sting, hunters mark, mend pet, rapid fire, or anything on the GCD. Due to the potential damage output of ES you should avoid replacing it with anything unless you absolutely have to. Addons such as PowerAura or Class Timers can help you identify LnL procs if you hate staring at your buffs and needs something to pop up on your screen.

At NO TIME during a LnL proc should you use one of the charges to cast Arcane shot. Its damage is pitiful, especially compared to the new explosive shot.

Marksman

Rotation Priorities:

Ok, now to the part that will really make or break you, your "Rotation", which is no longer a rotation as such, it is now a list of priorities that you hit as they come off cooldown with the abilities with the highest priority obviously getting used first, now onto the priority list itself.

Silencing Shot(This is macro'd into all your other shots).
Serpent Sting
Chimera Shot
Kill Shot
Aimed Shot
Arcane Shot
Steady Shot

Now, as a small little wrench in the works, if you have over 350 passive Armour Pen, you can drop Arcane Shot from your shot list, except when moving.

Your DPS boosting cooldowns should be used as often as possible during a boss fight, with the Rapid Fire > Readiness > Rapid Fire chain getting the most use. So far there is two main schools of thought regarding how to use the RF > Readiness > RF combo.

The one I prefer, is Rapid Fire, blow everything wait till RF is up, readiness, and rapid fire again.

The next one, as posted by Xumio, Rapid Fire, then Chimera and Aimed (and arcane if you use it) and then readiness and Chimera and Aimed (again, and arcane if you use it) again, then use Rapid Fire when the timer is up.

Mage

Arcane
World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> The Arcane Mage Guide (rotation included)

# Default High Dps(mana burning) rotation: Spam AB and Mbam(4) <<<only at 4; this rotation becomes better than just Spamming AB once you have your tier 10, 2 set bonus.
(8018.53 dps,134.84 mps)

Mana Burning Xtreme(Non tier 10): For 5x the mana cost per second and 2% dps increase of AB4Mbam, just spam AB
(8173.9 dps, 642.28 mps)

# Default efficient rotation: ABx4AM ignore proccs (you will get Mbam at 4 stacks most of the time)
(more dps than ABspam024Mbam, less efficient)


# Mana Saving: Use MBAM at lower stacks, stop using ArcBar, Reduce your Arcane Blasts per rotation. IE: ABspam0234Mbam(same as ABMbam(7854.93, 79.48mps), ABspam024Mbam(7914.73dps, 97.97mps) The numbers after Abspam means you do Mbam at those stacks.


# Expert rotations: If you have 1 second left on a non haste buff then use ArcBar at 4 stacks, if you have a haste buff or 3 seconds left on a non-haste buff use AM at 4 stacks


# Ghost Mbam/4 piece t8: Use the Mbam(0), if you got haste cap use Mbam(1)


# Abar: only use it when u have to move and your arcane blast stacks are almost gone

Paladin

Retribution
Retribution: Updated for 3.3 - Elitist Jerks

The Basic Rotation..

Basic clash resolution is as follows: HoW > Judgement > CS > DS > Consecration > Exorcism > Holy Wrath
At T10 levels of gear, Judgement > DS > CS > HoW > Consecrate > Exorcism > Holy Wrath is theorized to be the most dps.
For modified clash resolutions, see below.

After many months of facerolling, sadly not much has changed and we still use FCFS (First Come First Serve) as our "rotation". What this means is basically that it is better to hit a dps skill that is off cooldown - any skill - rather than wait a second for a certain skill to be ready. In the event that multiple skills are off cooldown, use the clash resolution above to prioritize what to use first; these are sorted by DPS, not Damage per Cast.

The reasoning behind FCFS courtesy Avitus:
There are two elements to our "rotation": FCFS and clash resolution

FCFS: Was chosen very simply due to the fact that due to the cooldowns our abilities have, you can't repeat any reliable short term pattern (for example: "1" "1" "1" "3", repeat) that would maximize DPS. The only patterns that repeat are several minutes long (containing several dozen of casts) and therefore not realistic to offer as a "rotation". Therefore FCFS is the only way to go.

Clash resolution: Skills are chosen in the order of highest DPS first, not highest damage per cast (burst).
..and why..

1. Judgement - Hardest hitter, returns mana, can't go wrong with this as your top priority.
2. DS - DS only pulls ahead of CS with 2pcT10 equipped, as its' effective cooldown drops to 6 seconds, and it hits much harder than CS does.
3. CS - Because of the short CD and ability to proc a seal, you want to keep this on cooldown as much as possible.
4. HoW - This skill only comes into play when a mob is at 20%; it then becomes high priority due to it's extremely high crit rate and fairly short CD.
5. Consecration - Consecration moves near the top of the pile only against multiple (4+) adds.
6. Exorcism - It hits hard, but because of it's somewhat long cooldown (15s) and reliance on spellhit, it isn't great dps. Do not use this on a pull because it will not be instant cast, and will delay entering melee combat.
7. Holy Wrath - Only effective against multiple (6+) demons/undead, you are better off using your free GCD casting DP or a SS on someone. This is as close to a mana dump skill as we have.


Addendum

Lately our sets have had the ability to alter our resolution system. There are several different scenarios in 3.3, these only apply if set bonuses are equipped.

If you have 2pc T9 equipped your best clash resolution is: Judgement > HoW > CS > DS > Consecrate > Exorcism > Holy Wrath.

If you have 2pc T9 AND 2pc T10 equipped, your best resolution is: Judgement > DS > HoW > CS > Consecrate > Exorcism > Holy Wrath

If you have 4pc T10 equipped, your best clash resolution is: Judgement > DS > CS > HoW > Consecrate > Exorcism > Holy Wrath

Remember that no matter what priority system you pick and use, we're still bound to FCFS. Roll dat face hard!

Shadow Priests
Shadowpriest Theorycraft 3.3 Edition - I get by with a little help from my friends - Elitist Jerks

Opening Sequence:
Depending on if you have to run in or not, things vary slightly, however, the typical opening sequence is something like this:

Vampiric Touch
Devouring Plague
3 Tick Mindflay
Then SW:P

Alternative opening sequences include:
Casting a SW: P to get misery up, then recasting it later on (this is very viable if you are running in and need 2 GCD to position yourself)

or

3 Tick Mindflay
2 Tick Mindflay
Then full dots - this is a very viable opening sequence if you have several 45 second ICD abilities and want to proc them with mindflay before dotting.

During the fight:

Single Target
Priority:
* Ensure that Misery is up.
* Recast Shadow Word: Pain at 5x Shadow Weaving.
* Vampiric Touch
* Devouring Plague
* Mind Blast
* Mind Flay

1. Mind Blast on cooldown.
2. Cast Mind Flay when everything else is up or on cooldown.
3. Use Shadow Word Death to deal damage while moving

AoE

3 mobs:
Dot everything and then assist or focus.

More than 3 mobs:
Vampiric Touch freely and then Mind Sear, rotating the target of Mind Sear.
Vampiric Touch is almost always worth casting over Mind Sear, unless you are AoE'ing a lot of very low hit point adds.

Rogue

Pocket Guide to WOTLK (Updated for 3.3) - Elitist Jerks

Combat

PvE Combat, fast and flawed advice

Mainhand a sword/axe, fist or mace weapon of generally slow speed.
Offhand a sword/axe, dagger or fist weapon of generally fast speed.
Mainhand Instant Poison, Offhand Deadly Poison.

Priority:
* Start up Slice and Dice however you please, really.
* Use cooldowns whenever possible. Killing spree + blade flurry, blade flurry +
adrenaline rush can be used. Adrenaline rush + killing spree is not recommended
due to energy capping.

1. Keep SnD up, no matter what the number of combo points are.
2. 5 point Eviscerate.
3. ToT when off cooldown, especially with 2pc T10.

Mutilate

PvE Mutilate, fast and flawed advice

Highest DPS dagger mainhand, have at least one fast dagger in either hand.
Fastest dagger - Deadly Poison, Other dagger - Instant Poison.

Priority:
* Ensure that there is a bleed (ie. Rupture, Deep Wounds, Rend) on the target.
* Start up Hunger for Blood.
* Start up Slice and Dice however you please, really.
* Use vanish whenever possible for Overkill buff.

1. Keep HFB up.
2. Keep SnD up (mainly via Envenom).
3. 4+ combo point Envenom.
4. ToT when off cooldown, especially with 2pc T10.

Shaman

Enhancement

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> Enhancement for Dummies

Priority System:

A full stacked Maelstrom Weapon Lightning Bolt or Chain Lightning (if aoe pull) > Stormstrike >Flame shock> Earth Shock > Lava Lash > Fire Nova> Refreshing totems, shields.

Use your wolves and your fire elemental as soon as you can, preferably just before Heroism so they get the benefit. If you don't have your fire elemental down you should have magma totem down. Never lava burst.

Elemental

Priority system/rotation

Refreshing FlS before it drops (but not continuously spamming it)
Lava Burst
Lightning bolt
Chain lightning

Flame shock should ALWAYS be on the target. It's 18 second long (before t9 set bonus) and has a very short CD. If you miss you shouldn't cast LvB untill you can get the FlS up.

Lightning bolt still scales better than Chain lightning so that is the majority of the spell we should cast, the other benefit is that it has a higher chance to proc Lightning overload, and then the damage isn't even comparable.

Chain lightning is something we cast after each Lava burst. It's CD is 6 seconds, and Lava burst is 8 seconds so it will always be up.

To give an easy summary: You should always have FlS up, lava bursting whenever it's up, and using chain lightning after every lava burst. In between all that you should be casting lightning bolts.

Warlock

Destruction

The Mage Equivalent: The Destruction Warlock - Elitist Jerks

Since all of our locks seem to be destruction, this is the only one ill post.

"Rotation" is a very common term for damage dealers, but more and more classes now thinks of “priorities” instead since it's easier to keep track of what spells to use and at what time, since haste screws rotations up. This is something that has been used by Shadow Priests for a long time and has been further used by other classes.

Regardless of your build, the priorities stay the same:

1. Curse of Doom – Highest DPCT of all your spells, read below however for extra information.
2. Immolate – Gives an increase to your Incinerate and CB damage through Fire and Brimstone and enables Conflagrate.
3. Conflagrate – To proc both Backdraft and Pyroclasm.
4. CB – Stronger nuke than Incinerate.
5. Incinerate – when DoTs are up and CB and Conflag is on CD, this is your "filler".


Curse of Doom has the highest DPCT and should therefor have a uptime close to 100%. However, if you can manage to proc Pyroclasm before casting it you should wait until the next Conflagrate as it increases your overall DPS. If the target has an estimated time of going down in less than a minute, then you should cast Curse of Agony instead and keep it up until the target dies for max DPS. Corruption isn't used in the rotation when standing still and nuking a la Patchwerk but is more used "on the run" when needing to reposition or avoid damage.
Small note: If you're on Curse of the Elements-duty, it takes priority over CoD.

One common question is if your Immo has less than 1.5 sec left on it's duration and Conflag has come off CD, should you recast Immo first and Conflag second, or the reverse? Well, following the priority list, Immo technically still is on your target, therefor you should Conflag first, renew Immo second. You want to keep Conflag on CD as much as humanly possible since it's the most damaging spell you do (besides CoD).

Also, always make sure you're casting something. Destruction suffers a whole lot more from standing still doing nothing and moving around than the other Warlock-specs considering you don't have much DoTs to throw around.

Warrior

I can post a little about warriors,

ARMS

My warrior uses the

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft spec

Basically you spec into Fury for the added shout AP; since I run mostly heroics its useful when you don't have two pallies.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

This is the incite spec that specs into protection for the 15% heroic strike/cleave/thunder clap. Since Thunder Clap damage increases based on attack power if there are >3 mobs it can do quite decent aoe damage. However, threat there could be an issue since its really bad already as arms.

*Note that Polearms specialization is chosen since 5% crit is the best dps increase of all the specs. Try to get an axe, but if you cant the others are good as well.

Arms doesn't really have a rotation more of a priority system.

Single Target

1. Rend
2. Overpower less than 3 sec until next Taste of Blood
3. Mortal Strike
4. Overpower with more than 3 sec until Taste of Blood
5. Execute
6. Slam if nothing else to do

Essentially refresh Rend on your next open GCD after it drops off, also Mortal Strike is worth more dps than Execute so if MS is off CD and you have a Sudden Death! proc it is still best to use MS.

Spam Heroic Strike with > 70 rage.

Bladestorm is best used at the beginning and because you have all your procs in the first minute, it can also build a lot rage if you find yourself starved.

Shattering Throw is a personal DPS loss of us, but a gain for the raid; so use it every cooldown.

AoE

Use sweeping strikes every 30 seconds, bladestorm, rend and follow the original priorities except using cleave instead of heroic strike.


Major Glyphs:
Glyph of Mortal Strike
Glyph of Rending
Glyph of Bladestorm

As far as gearing goes;

Get the +21 AGI/3% crit damage meta and put 1 nightmare tear in a piece of gear to unlock the meta. After that you should gem Strength if you don't have an ArPen trinket ( NES, Grim Toll, Mjolnir's Runestone). If you have one of those you should gem to the soft cap which, for the NES at least, is around 48% arpen, also take into consideration that battle stance is 10% arpen ( or 13% with 2pcT9 ) so you need to get from gear and gems about 39% arpen.

Make sure you are hit capped,

try to get close to expertise cap of 26.

try to get your crit around 38~40% unbuffed.

Fury

Spec should be something like;
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

You can decide at your own juncture whether you want to get imp cleaved or execute, or put one of those points into anger management.

Fury is also a priority system:

1. Whirlwind
2. Bloodthirst
3. Slam! proc

Heroic Strike > 50 rage.

There is a generalized rotation that goes like this:

WW > BT > GCD > GCD > BT > WW > GCD > BT > GD > WW and it starts over.

Make sure you always have enough rage for WW or BT, so you should stop heroic striking if you start to become rage starved. At high end gear most warriors can stay rage capped almost constantly and can spam HS the entire fight, making it one of highest damaging abilities as fury. Use your cooldowns every time their up for maximum use.

For AoE situations you can just swap HS with Cleave.

Major Glyphs:

Glyph of Whirlwind
Glyph of Cleaving
Glyph of Heroic Strike

*Note that Glyph of Cleaving can be exchanged with Glyph of Execute at your own discretion.

As far as gearing goes;


Get the expertise cap of 26(gem if you have too)

Get the +21 AGI/3% crit damage meta and put 1 nightmare tear in a piece of gear to unlock the meta. After that you should gem Strength if you don't have an ArPen trinket ( NES, Grim Toll, Mjolnir's Runestone). If you have one of those you should gem to the soft cap which, for the NES at least, is around 48% arpen, so you need to get from gear and gems about 52% arpen.

the hit cap is 8% but we get 3% from talents so you only need 5% from gear/gems or 4% if you are a draenei. However, extra hit isnt useless since DW cap is 27%. Just get however much hit you need to not be rage starved.

Try to keep around 35%~40% crit, with 40% giving you good enough uptime for flurry that any more isnt as valuable.

I hope this helps all those lonely warriors out there!

[evilegrob]

so wrong with arms pve for warriors..
1. Rend
2. Overpower less than 3 sec until next Taste of Blood
3. Mortal Strike
4. Overpower with more than 3 sec until Taste of Blood
5. Execute
6. Slam if nothing else to do


Do this:
1. Rend
2. Execute
3. Mortal Strike
4. Overpower
5. Slam
6. Heroic Strike (can be combined with slam!)

Slam you can spam when theres nothing to do, 0.5 cast and does not reset swing timer anymore.
Heroic strike can make you ragestarve even if you use it at 100 rage, if you are unlucky and get like 2x execute proccs right after using it, etc..

I would say using heroic strike WITH slam is the best, but you should do this during a speed potion or bloodlust, as you will get the rage back faster that way, should rather save the rage for those double execute proccs (sometimes 3-4proccs in a row aswell!)

Execute should be prioritized after rend, as for all the other abilities can procc another Execute to happen AGAIN! which is alot better than overpower, as overpower does less damage than a execute, doesnt matter if it use less rage or not.

And glyph of bladestorm is a waste unless your doing like heroics or something.
Mortal strike
Execute
Rending

those 3 glyphs are the best. Execute will do even more damage, and you should specc your way into improved execute in the fury tree aswell!

**EDIT: battle stance is 10% arpen ( or 13% with 2pcT9 )
wtf..?
its 6% additional armor penetration from 2pcT9
so thats 16% from battle + t9.

[BiGDeE]

nice.. copy paste... from numberous sites, such as elitist jerks.

[evilegrob]

at least the guy did mention that it was taken from other sites:

"Also, most of this information is found at either: elitistjerks.com, forums.worldofwarcraft.com, or their respective class websites, I do not take any credit for coming up with the following information as I'm just compiling it into this one post."

Anyways, someone should make a real one, with commentaries from people who really know their class.

There are so many bad guides, with no maximizing utility and damage, just what people think is a "decent rotation".

Various things for AoE, Single-target etc.

[rindy]

Theres a typo in the Ret pala rotation, it saw HoW (hammer of wrath can only be used when enemy is under 20%)

I think u mean HoJ (hammer of justice) which stuns

Good guide tho

[Explisivia]

6. When below 30 Energy, use TF

10. Use Berserk only at high energy, (but not higher than 85) not directly after TF and as often as possible. If you will get Hysteria or some boss mechanics will enhance your damage, save it for these situations.

First, the TF part is off. You should use it between 30 and 50 energy but never over 80 energy because it would go to waste..

and yeah, I have no idea why you say that you shouldn't use berserker if you have over 85 energy ? I mean, the ability makes everything cost 50% less, so using it at 100% energy is the best, you get the most out of it that way.

And you probably don't have an answer seing how this is copy pasta


Oh yeah, and the arcane mage part is wrong, now the rotation is - Spamm AB untill missilebarrage procs(all depending on gear ofcourse) but with ICC gear you go untill it proccs.

And no fire and frost rotations huh ? sadface..

[wac]

Do'h.

After skimming through for about a minute or so I realized the fury rotation was wrong too.
1. Whirlwind
2. Bloodthirst
3. Slam! proc

Heroic Strike > 50 rage.

There is a generalized rotation that goes like this:

WW > BT > GCD > GCD > BT > WW > GCD > BT > GD > WW and it starts over.

IS WRONG.

It's actually a prio of:

Bloodthirst
Whirlwind
Slam if proc'd.
Heroic Strike if rage > 60


Under 20% (When Execute is posssible.)

Bloodthirst
Whirlwind
Execute
Heroic Strike if rage > 80

[iRockMyiPod]

Er... Okay I guess ? I've seen better DK rotations though.

[hocius]

+Rep for compiling all this useful info.

[[Z]em]

thanks for this guide, is usefull.
+rep

[sneakkz]

Copied straight from elitist jerks

[Subset]

Amendment to Destruction Warlock as I play Destro and Affliction:

-Destruction Rotation should use Curse of Doom ONLY if there is a hunter, boomkin, or another warlock.
-Second, the boomkin's debuff that increases magic dmg taken by 13% DOES not also reduce resistances, so CoE is a sure thing imo.
-Third, Why waste the Backdraft buff on a Chaos Bolt? CB is a fast cast and should be CB/Conflag.

These are not flames, but suggestions for you to change.

------------------------------
Edit: You might wanna just say keep Immolate up and Cooldowns on CD. Pretty much it. I do around 9-10k on normal fights since Destro is OP

Also, Immolate first when renewing, then Conflag, since you don't waste a charge of Backdraft on a 1.5 second (not modified by haste) cast.

AND you might wanna suggest putting a Grand Firestone on your weapon.

[Líz]

Nice tho ive seen it before Thx anyway

[kiniss]

aww, no preist DPS :P

on a more relevant note, do you know if there are non lvl80 DPS guides? I am a 40 assasination rouge (currently locked there to let my friends catch up) and I want to do better DPS in instances.

[Subset]

There is priest DPS, its in purple and says Shadow Priest.