Druid PVE DPS: Gameplay rotation
I tried making a visual representation.
So, what is happening here?
Allow me to explain ability by ability.
1) Bee Swarm:
Start by applying the DOT, and the 12% damage boost for 10 seconds. Readying yourself to boost everything you're about to throw at your target.
Also giving your coming Poisonous Vine another buff by 50% dmg thanks to the Explosive Mixture rubies.
And if that wasn't enough, applies Natural Abundance, which boosts your T&L and Tornado by 40%.
O man it all comes together so nicely, druid is balance <3.
2) T&L:
Applying the next DOT, buffed with the 12% Triple Trouble from our Bee Swarm. Also pushing our Determination to the maximum before giving your target our biggest hit about to come.
3) Poisoned Thorn:
There it goes, The biggest sucker punch we can deal. Enhanced by Bee Swarm DOT buffing it by 30% thanks to the Forest Keeper ruby, and another 40% from Adder's Tooth, and another 18% by Poison Expert rubies, this cannot go wrong.
4) Poisonous Vine & Tornado:
Why link these together?
Poisonous Vine speeds up Tornado casting and buffs Tornado by 20%, so you always follow-up Tornado on Poisonous Vine.
Tornado will apply the Dancing Flashes debuffs, up to 2 stacks. That's why you repeat this twice.
That's also why I mentioned you could take Windcatcher rank 2 and hope on Double Attack procs, having to use 2 gcd's less, getting 2 Dancing Flashes from one Tornado, so you can start the following faster...
5) T&L:
...start the following faster, T&L.
T&L uses the Dancing Flashes stacks, 2 of them in one casting, proccing the extra damage from the Dancing Flashes rubies, and reapplying the T&L DOT.
6) Emerald Glow:
At the end of our rotation, Emerald Glow. Remember we started with Bee Swarm? Emerald Glow will buff our Bee Swarm again when starting our next rotation. Granted, if we have Raging Storm effect active, which comes from doing 4 castings in our situation (Raging Storm rank 2).
This ability can also be used to proc the Dancing Flashes stacks on the target, but using both stacks is faster with T&L and applies DOT in a single gcd rather than using Emerald Glow for it.
Now when we take a closer look at the picture, we can see that everything is the same, except for one. Our Poisoned Thorn. It is so that we can, and should, move our Poisoned Thorn one gcd earlier after each rotation.
I have written it several times now, but what is a gcd?
GCD, standing for Global CoolDown, stands for the time (cooldown) between two abilities. This prevents people from spamming ALL abilities at once, basically nonstop bursting.
Basically one ability is using a gcd. moving Poisoned Thorn forward one gcd will keep pushing our dps slightly upwards.
Not a big deal if you make mistakes on this one, but it's something to pay attention to, and practice on.