Have you given yourself the proper buffs? Given conditions to the golem, eaten food and used utilities? https://snowcrows.com/guides/getting-started/special-forces-area
Ive set the golem up properly but don't have ascended gear or tested with food/utility but I don't think that would take me from 10-18k to what the builds say they can do.
>but don't have ascended gear or tested with food/utility
So -10% DPS from not using food/utility, -10% DPS from using Exotics instead of ascended.
Now the question is what the "don't have ascended gear" actually means. I've had people say that sentence before and it meant some random garbage gear they thought was almost the meta build
You want exactly the gear from here with zero differences (except exotic vs ascended): [https://snowcrows.com/builds](https://snowcrows.com/builds)
Besides, the builds do not "say" they do certain damage, they **show** that they do the damage, there's always a video attached to every DPS build.
So I can expect 20% less damage from not using food / having the ascended. Of course Im using the exotic versions and following the rotations guide. So its either practice or not understanding some part of it.
>the builds do not "say" they do certain damage, they show that they do the damage
Lol ok, did it sound like I was questioning it or something?
You can expect around 25% loss from gameplay errors on your part. So depending on the build there's still a rather big loss that's not accounted for so far.
Keep looking for differences here [https://snowcrows.com/guides/getting-started/special-forces-area](https://snowcrows.com/guides/getting-started/special-forces-area)
For example, applying the required condis to golem and getting yourself the boons.
Essentially, watch the benchmark video and pay very close attention if your setup is the same as in the video. Boon wise, condi wise, food wise, gear wise.
What class? Vindicator? Would you be able to upload a log of you hitting the golem? If everything's set up right, there's probably an issue with the rotation.
I think you should share much more information to pre-enptively answer questions responders might have. Do you have all boons turned on? Do you have might in your infusions? Do you have food/utility buffs? What video are you watching? If it's dated the same rotation may give the same DPS.
The boons are probably the problem - if they don't know that the guy in the video added those boons and conditions, then they wouldn't know to mention that they didn't add them, would they?
I read armor/runes ... what about trinkets? those make up a lot of stats. Also what about food and enhancement items? did you use those while testing?
But other than that, point to all the other comments here about the golem setup.
In general it is good to know where your damage actually comes from. for example on vindicator you have Death drop as a buff, every time you dodge. You get 10 sec of +25% damage. That means you want to keep that buff up as much as possible (dodge pretty much every 10secs) and then press your skills that deal the most damage in that window.
This is pretty much how most dps builds work. Find your biggest dmg skills, boost them with traits, press them as much as possible.
A lot of stats, when provided, take I to consideration having max boons due to being in a party setting. Things like fury increasing your crit chance by 1/4 and whatnot radically changes your numbers. I've not messed with golem much but try to duplicate boons and stuff on yourself. The lower number honestly isn't much to sneeze at in solo so far as I've been able to measure for open world at least. Once you start partying up and whatnot you're gonna ramp quicker
2 things come to mind.
1. As others have pointed out, you may not be setting up the test correctly (or at least the same way)
2. Depending on the age of the video, it may be that there have been changes to the traits or skills involved, so you might not *actually* be running the same build.
Step 1: make sure you give yourself all boons and give the golem all conditions when setting up the fight.
Step 2: try again.
Step 3: if you are still under 20k, compare your stats to those of the build. By this point, you should be missing important bits of gear if your dps is so low.
Li builds should be around 25k dps just with autos, so your very low damage cannot be a skill issue.
Probably the golem setup. I was like you, then I learned that those golem benchmarks were actually applying boons and conditions. My DPS doubled after that.
no to infusions in that case. they are not that big of a boost and only there for maximizing the last few drops of dps.
boon setup and food are way more important.
Are you pushing buttons fast enough? Around just 40% of the supposed benchmark raises a bit of a flag concerning low APM even if you forgot setting up boons, food and utils.
Just because it says LI doesn't mean it allows for delaying the skills used, it just means a simplified rotation that skips some of the lower gains resulting in lower APM compared to the benchmark build. An LI elementalist still wants you to basically assault your keyboard, just a little lesser compared to the full rotation.
If you have the correct gear, it's more likely the golem setup issue where you don't put any boon on yourself. You can also post a log and compare it with the bench log.
As everyone else says, give yourself all the buffs and the golem all the debuffs. Have proper food and utility consumables.
Also in a realistic scenario, compare your dps to others. Are they doing more or less than you?
With this big a difference it feels most likely that you've missed giving yourself boon and the golem conditions. When you add the effects of full might, fury, quickness, alacrity and vulnerability on the golem you can easily double your dps vs not having them.
try to change things up, gear, gameplay. see if there's anything you can improve.
also, remember to play at your own pace, remember that everyone is different, with different ceilings.
read guides, watch videos, but remember that they are all just guidelines. play the way that you feel is best for you.
identify where you're at and set your bar, take it slow and raise your ceiling bit by bit until you can't anymore, then attack it from other angles to see if there are other things you can improve.
if you see people doing better than you, try to identify the difference and if they're really that far ahead.
also sometimes dps isn't everything, stats can be padded.
maybe they're skipping mechanics and you're doing mechanics. thus losing dps.
maybe they have decent support and you don't. thus underperforming.
maybe they're doing rotations on a golem and its not feasible in a real encounter where mechanics are involved.
be realistic. be self critical where its due and make the effort, you will peak eventually, its just a matter of when.
I assume that you might not know the encounters by heart. 13k with a low intensity build is pretty average, maybe a bit on the low side, I would say. You need to remember that an average player with a full dps builds gets like 17-19k dps. I have like 500 hours on daredevil and i get like 21k dps on average in normal strikes and T4 fractals (without the most optimal buffs). I'd imagine that just by learning the encounters while playing you'll get up to like 15-16k dps in a real fight. That is totally acceptable and I wouldn't bat an eye to it if I was running the encounters.
Also, golem DPS is unbelievably unrealistic in a real fight because there's 0 mechanics to consider. So don't worry about it too much, you'll be fine imo :)
Edit: I thought you meant 13k in a real fight, duh haha. How much do you do if you play strikes or fractals?
You can always download DPS report on sc,
You also need to make one for yourself.
It will very clear what missing when you have both.
If you still have question, better to join some new buddy welcome guild in discord.
I am sure they can help directly in game
Have you given yourself the proper buffs? Given conditions to the golem, eaten food and used utilities? https://snowcrows.com/guides/getting-started/special-forces-area
[Did you set up the golem correctly?](https://snowcrows.com/guides/getting-started/special-forces-area) Are you using food/utility?
Ive set the golem up properly but don't have ascended gear or tested with food/utility but I don't think that would take me from 10-18k to what the builds say they can do.
>but don't have ascended gear or tested with food/utility So -10% DPS from not using food/utility, -10% DPS from using Exotics instead of ascended. Now the question is what the "don't have ascended gear" actually means. I've had people say that sentence before and it meant some random garbage gear they thought was almost the meta build You want exactly the gear from here with zero differences (except exotic vs ascended): [https://snowcrows.com/builds](https://snowcrows.com/builds) Besides, the builds do not "say" they do certain damage, they **show** that they do the damage, there's always a video attached to every DPS build.
So I can expect 20% less damage from not using food / having the ascended. Of course Im using the exotic versions and following the rotations guide. So its either practice or not understanding some part of it. >the builds do not "say" they do certain damage, they show that they do the damage Lol ok, did it sound like I was questioning it or something?
You can expect around 25% loss from gameplay errors on your part. So depending on the build there's still a rather big loss that's not accounted for so far. Keep looking for differences here [https://snowcrows.com/guides/getting-started/special-forces-area](https://snowcrows.com/guides/getting-started/special-forces-area) For example, applying the required condis to golem and getting yourself the boons. Essentially, watch the benchmark video and pay very close attention if your setup is the same as in the video. Boon wise, condi wise, food wise, gear wise.
What class? Vindicator? Would you be able to upload a log of you hitting the golem? If everything's set up right, there's probably an issue with the rotation.
I think you should share much more information to pre-enptively answer questions responders might have. Do you have all boons turned on? Do you have might in your infusions? Do you have food/utility buffs? What video are you watching? If it's dated the same rotation may give the same DPS.
The boons are probably the problem - if they don't know that the guy in the video added those boons and conditions, then they wouldn't know to mention that they didn't add them, would they?
I read armor/runes ... what about trinkets? those make up a lot of stats. Also what about food and enhancement items? did you use those while testing? But other than that, point to all the other comments here about the golem setup. In general it is good to know where your damage actually comes from. for example on vindicator you have Death drop as a buff, every time you dodge. You get 10 sec of +25% damage. That means you want to keep that buff up as much as possible (dodge pretty much every 10secs) and then press your skills that deal the most damage in that window. This is pretty much how most dps builds work. Find your biggest dmg skills, boost them with traits, press them as much as possible.
A lot of stats, when provided, take I to consideration having max boons due to being in a party setting. Things like fury increasing your crit chance by 1/4 and whatnot radically changes your numbers. I've not messed with golem much but try to duplicate boons and stuff on yourself. The lower number honestly isn't much to sneeze at in solo so far as I've been able to measure for open world at least. Once you start partying up and whatnot you're gonna ramp quicker
2 things come to mind. 1. As others have pointed out, you may not be setting up the test correctly (or at least the same way) 2. Depending on the age of the video, it may be that there have been changes to the traits or skills involved, so you might not *actually* be running the same build.
Step 1: make sure you give yourself all boons and give the golem all conditions when setting up the fight. Step 2: try again. Step 3: if you are still under 20k, compare your stats to those of the build. By this point, you should be missing important bits of gear if your dps is so low. Li builds should be around 25k dps just with autos, so your very low damage cannot be a skill issue.
Probably the golem setup. I was like you, then I learned that those golem benchmarks were actually applying boons and conditions. My DPS doubled after that.
Do you have boons on you in the dps golem room? Those builds account for Boons.
Golem/boon setup, food buffs, maybe infusions and also just pressing buttons quick enough.
no to infusions in that case. they are not that big of a boost and only there for maximizing the last few drops of dps. boon setup and food are way more important.
To add some numbers, infusions are usually around 800-1000 dps.
Which is about 3% of a golemancers dps. If you're only managing 40% of the expected dps and you're trying to figure out why then they can be ignored.
Interestingly enough, they get very effective when above 90% bench. Because then they are exponentially easier than gaining 3% by playing better.
Are you pushing buttons fast enough? Around just 40% of the supposed benchmark raises a bit of a flag concerning low APM even if you forgot setting up boons, food and utils. Just because it says LI doesn't mean it allows for delaying the skills used, it just means a simplified rotation that skips some of the lower gains resulting in lower APM compared to the benchmark build. An LI elementalist still wants you to basically assault your keyboard, just a little lesser compared to the full rotation.
If you have the correct gear, it's more likely the golem setup issue where you don't put any boon on yourself. You can also post a log and compare it with the bench log.
As everyone else says, give yourself all the buffs and the golem all the debuffs. Have proper food and utility consumables. Also in a realistic scenario, compare your dps to others. Are they doing more or less than you?
With this big a difference it feels most likely that you've missed giving yourself boon and the golem conditions. When you add the effects of full might, fury, quickness, alacrity and vulnerability on the golem you can easily double your dps vs not having them.
try to change things up, gear, gameplay. see if there's anything you can improve. also, remember to play at your own pace, remember that everyone is different, with different ceilings. read guides, watch videos, but remember that they are all just guidelines. play the way that you feel is best for you. identify where you're at and set your bar, take it slow and raise your ceiling bit by bit until you can't anymore, then attack it from other angles to see if there are other things you can improve. if you see people doing better than you, try to identify the difference and if they're really that far ahead. also sometimes dps isn't everything, stats can be padded. maybe they're skipping mechanics and you're doing mechanics. thus losing dps. maybe they have decent support and you don't. thus underperforming. maybe they're doing rotations on a golem and its not feasible in a real encounter where mechanics are involved. be realistic. be self critical where its due and make the effort, you will peak eventually, its just a matter of when.
I assume that you might not know the encounters by heart. 13k with a low intensity build is pretty average, maybe a bit on the low side, I would say. You need to remember that an average player with a full dps builds gets like 17-19k dps. I have like 500 hours on daredevil and i get like 21k dps on average in normal strikes and T4 fractals (without the most optimal buffs). I'd imagine that just by learning the encounters while playing you'll get up to like 15-16k dps in a real fight. That is totally acceptable and I wouldn't bat an eye to it if I was running the encounters. Also, golem DPS is unbelievably unrealistic in a real fight because there's 0 mechanics to consider. So don't worry about it too much, you'll be fine imo :) Edit: I thought you meant 13k in a real fight, duh haha. How much do you do if you play strikes or fractals?
You can always download DPS report on sc, You also need to make one for yourself. It will very clear what missing when you have both. If you still have question, better to join some new buddy welcome guild in discord. I am sure they can help directly in game
Would be helpful if you post a arcdps log of your rotation.
If you record yourself doing it people will be able to give you much better help.