Kitten Brigade - Ulduar
Raid Zone:
Ulduar (and maybe Wintergrasp Raid)
Continuation of Kitten Brigade Ulduar raid. Hard modes include:
1) XT002 Deconstructor hard mode.
2) Iron Council hard (or "medium hard") mode.
3) Possibly Hodir hard mode.
4) Possible Thorim hard mode (big IF).
None of these have been verified by Garreth, but we'll be looking at them sooner than later.
Be ready!
Wed, 06/03/2009 - 11:30
Wed, 06/03/2009 - 15:00
| 9 individuals signed up |
|---|
| Shihli |
| saedo |
| Katibug |
| primistic |
| moriella |
| Keisjaa |
| h4mm32 |
| garreth |
| Enixa |
Ok here are the numbers after
saedo — Thu, 06/04/2009 - 17:39Ok here are the numbers after taking out the last shot since the hitbox screwed some of us over. Also removed the times Nuit was tanking for his averages, to better boost his real dps numbers. A few got shifted around in ranks:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=rINlQ3TBQC5AHJDjrwqGd5A
Time for my MM defense.
Derchlon — Thu, 06/04/2009 - 17:26As Grasen was saying, yes I was running an Imp Mark MM build BOTH nights. The reason for this, is with my testing, MM is ON PAR with SV. I even beat Lumi in DPS and damage on Ignis(DPS of 5,650). Even so, my spec is designed specifically to increase Lumi and Grasen's dps. Imp Mark affects all the hunters ranged attacks, and even the warrior's Shattering Throw. By using my first GCD on Hunter's Mark, all 4-5 of us gain a benefit, (+any other abilities other classes get, if any). In theory, Lumi and Grasen should both beat me in DPS if we are limited in total GCD's. They don't have to Mark, so they gain the benefit without the spell. The DPS increase should be enough from both of them to offset any marginal loss from my lost GCD (in this case, an extra ES for Lumi/Grasen, or ~10-16k damage a piece just to start.)
Next, is the burst combo I mentioned a couple times during raid. This is where I should be making up some of the difference. Rapid Fire/CotW --> Serpent Sting --> Chimera Shot --> Aimed Shot -- Arcane Shot --> Readiness And start over from Chimera. This gives a lot of burst in a short amount of time. It is also a guaranteed combo that does not rely on RNG to use. If Lumi gets a LnL proc (which he did 4 times if I counted right) he will beat me. There is no chance for me to catch up while I'm already behind 1 maybe 2 GCDs. 6% proc chance on LnL really isn't something you'd want to sell the farm for in comparison. As an example, this is a fight with no LnL proc for Lumi, and a perfect execution of the burst combo: http://wowwebstats.com/1t331y3kj6iau?s=75717-84702 . This is what I'm capable of in this spec. pretty significant for a spec that is designed to benefit other classes more (think SV in BC).
and of course, there is the God-awful last hardmode shot. I didn't even fire a single Chimera Shot the entire heart phase. There was some bug, the prevented me from firing, claiming I was too close. By the time I figured out what the problem was, and what to do to fix it, the heart phase was practically over anyway. Hell, even Garreth beat me in damage on that shot. That 5k downer really hurt my average heart DPS.
In Summary, and Conclusion: I'm not as familiar with this spec as I can be. There were many times I screwed up the burst combo by fatfingering readiness before rapid fire, as well as pet management on a couple of the shots. This is something that just needs a little practice to achieve perfection on. Could I do higher personal dps as SV? Possibly, but the extra AP I'm giving Lumi and Grasen as well as myself, I'm increasing the 3 of our total DPS out put during this phase. You would see both Lumi's and Grasen's DPS go down if I went back to SV. I'm convinced MM will benefit the raid more than SV would.
Bugged attempt.
Derchlon — Thu, 06/04/2009 - 17:32Yep, without that bugged attempt I was actually at 10745 DPS average. Still room for improvement, but on par with where Grasen is, even with my combo screw ups.
i want to be here, cya around
Atakheal — Thu, 06/04/2009 - 13:54i want to be here, cya around
20,789 files:
saedo — Thu, 06/04/2009 - 09:5920,789 files: http://stats.downfallguild.org/kb/sws-overall-1244078901/index.html
Heart DPS:
Well last one is combined kill 3 hearts with buggy hitboxes so might not wanna count.
If you want to see how long
Keisjaa — Thu, 06/04/2009 - 14:49If you want to see how long we attempted to "actually DPS" the Heart you can look at my time spent on it
Once a wipe was called I'd find a bomb/pummeler to aggro & die
*edit if you see Army used you can add about 5-8secs or so for pots/CD's and AotD
No. Like I said I split it
saedo — Thu, 06/04/2009 - 14:52No.
Like I said I split it for the FIRST HEART ONLY.
From Heart appearing to Heart disappearing. I don't think we ever called a wipe mid first heart. It was always after the heart disappearing and not seeing hard mode.
And the numbers are from Avg DPS column. Not DPS, I don't care if you did 20K dps in a 3 second window. I took avg dps, what did you do in those 30 seconds.
So these numbers are all valid.
then how is it a 20 sec
Keisjaa — Thu, 06/04/2009 - 14:57then how is it a 20 sec window of exposure(supposedly) and there's a minute and a half of dps time?
http://wowwebstats.com/oyklz4
saedo — Thu, 06/04/2009 - 15:08All 30 seconds, not all were 100% dps time too so there's no way you'd get 1.5 mins of dps time in those parses.
I was looking at the StasisCL
Keisjaa — Thu, 06/04/2009 - 15:19I was looking at the StasisCL parses assuming they & the WWS ones were the same split
WWS keeps timing out on me
I kinda made a spreadsheet
saedo — Thu, 06/04/2009 - 11:40I kinda made a spreadsheet info of our Heart DPS: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=rINlQ3TBQC5AHJDjrwqGd5A
Well it's a bit polluted cause most of them have mulitple heart phases where we failed and that dropped dps for a chunk.
All and all, we probably need to bump the average raid dps by 2K to get this.
But I'll have to see if there's a way to fix this by narrowing it down to the first heart phase.
Ok this was easier than I
saedo — Thu, 06/04/2009 - 13:33Ok this was easier than I thought it would be, here's all our first Heart Phases via WWS:
And the updated google doc: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=rINlQ3TBQC5AHJDjrwqGd5A
Based on this, we need an approximate average of 11K dps each, or around 270K total raid dps. On average we need to pump out about a 1.5K more average dps or maybe about 35K more raid dps.
Here's the basic averages through all of them:
looking at heart DPS
moriella — Thu, 06/04/2009 - 14:19I see some obvious break out points here
The top 5 are the benchmarks obviously
Keisha Prim Onrique Seado Shortlived
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Next group
Deadhli Lumi Rupta Shin Vulk PD
I'm struck that Deadhli is 1.3 - 2.5k below the other DK's
I'm struck that Shin is 3.3k behind Saedo
Lumi, rupta, vulk and PD must be considered class standard for their class as there is none higher than they
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Third Group
Nuit Grasen Forsure Knoppix Derch
Nuit is 3.8 behind Prim - I assume similar spec for this fight? Is it gear for nuit, cause Prim hasnt gotten that much dps gear until recently.
Grasen 1.9 off Lumi , Derch 2.4 off lumi. Should you respec for this fight
Forsure and Knoppix are considered class standard but IMO forshure should be in group one based on locks from other guilds
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Forth Group
Dangly Luc Vit Blackoutt Kati
dangly 1.4k behind vulk . could be gear
Vit 1k behind forsure but probably 5k behind where you should be
Blackoutt - 3k behind Knoppix - shadow priests are not scaling with gear, could do better
kati 4.7 behind rupta. Yeah, gear.
Luc - only shaman of type
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Fifth Group
Tanks and Healers trying to dps as best they can
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The point of this post is to get us to look at ourselves as we compare to others in raid playing our spec or a similar spec. If you are a group lower than similar classes/specs - there is probably room for improvement.
If you are 'class standard' in group two - why are you not in group one? I hear ranged dps saying Uluduar is bad because of too much movement. This is pretty much a stand still and nuke fight. There is enough unique fight data here that getting lightbomb etc wont skew it too much
I am unsure if this was the
Grasen — Thu, 06/04/2009 - 15:47I am unsure if this was the night that derch ws running the imp mark MM spec, i beleave it was, He tested that one day this week so i donno what all his outcomes were yet. I will let him comment on his own there.
As for me vs lumi, Our spec is the same, He does have me a decient bit on gear, my hit rateing has takin a hit lately and he out crits me by almost 5-6% fully buffed with scaleing, gear for gear if i was matching lumi right now then thee would be something wrong on his end, he also is running set bonuses i am not, Ulduar and t8 hates me. he has the 4 pc bonus, I have no bonus,
Lumi is critting an avg of
Grasen — Thu, 06/04/2009 - 16:19Lumi is critting an avg of 12% more than me on the heart, thats a huge difference, and 100% gear related,
so there yah go.
2 days
moriella — Thu, 06/04/2009 - 15:54Unless I'm really mistaken , these were over two nights. If he was testing something one night - he REALLY needs to look at it on a night by night basis to decide which is better
yes but we are only
Grasen — Thu, 06/04/2009 - 15:56yes but we are only showing like 2 pulls from the second day in those numbers, so the first day is the vast majority of the numbers. i'm sure he will look at it on a night per night, but that is not how the numbers that saedo has complaied are,
correction 8 pulls
Grasen — Thu, 06/04/2009 - 15:58correction 8 pulls worth of numbers from night 1, and 3 pulls from night 2,
it does appear he was MM both nights,
For Shinz I can explain a
saedo — Thu, 06/04/2009 - 14:41For Shinz I can explain a similar situation. He was Mutilate I was Combat. Mutilate is best for long sustained fights, no burst CD abilties, he needs ramp up time. Combat has 3 diff CDs to pop exploiting Heart DPS.
Now if this was the whole fight, Mutilate would've been fine. If we were able to just get past the Heart then, it's like 8 mins of uninterrupted dps where he'll shine.
But due to use not going over that hump, he did spec Combat last night, was there for 2 of the shots, d/c'd on last one, and got the 15K and 17K dps respectively.
I can address my own dps on a
Shihli — Thu, 06/04/2009 - 14:32I can address my own dps on a few of these shots.
For one, my dps takes a bit more "ramp-up" time compated to Blood DK's. That is to say, I have to apply two diseases (low damage) at least once (typically twice) per heart phase, as well as use blood strikes (low damage) a few times as well. This is to fuel my Scourge Strike (very high damage).
Quisjaa and Shortlived are both Blood-spec for raids, so they have to apply two diseases (low damage) only once, then Death Strikes (medium damage) a couple times, then Heart Strikes (high damage) every time else. They can just use Glyph of Disease to replace a Heart Strike should they want to renew their diseases, whereas I have to reapply them manually if my Glyph of Scourge Strike doesn't proc. Glyph of Disease, for me, is a huge dps loss.
Secondly, and I won't shy away from it, but last night I screwed up my pre-heart "ramp up" more times than I should have. Typically, what I try to do is this:
1) ~5 seconds before heart phase, cast Army of the Dead.
2) Heart phase begins, I case Gargoyle.
3) Heart is targetable, I use Icy Touch and Plague Strike, and begin my typical dps rotation.
On one, possibly both shots last night I screwed up Step #2 via fatfingering other abilities. Pretty much, I screwed up.
Thirdly, the gear from Ulduar benefits Blood-spec DK's quite a bit more than it does any other spec, simply because they benefit from the armor penetration WAY more than frost or unholy do.
Fourthly, and lastly, I used Army of the Dead on our last shot only. Quisjaa and Shortlived used theirs on the 1st and/or 2nd shots. Army of the Dead, if used properly, is worth at least a few hundred dps, if not ~1k dps when active. It's not something to ignore.
Overall, I know what I need to do (stop fat-fingering the wrong abilities and tighten up my rotation).
Glyph of disease for us is
Keisjaa — Thu, 06/04/2009 - 15:15Glyph of disease for us is just as large of a loss(it is for any raiding dps DKunder normal situations)
Ulduar Gear favors our spec, the 4pc T8 favors yours
I've found that going into the heart phase with 4death runes & 1 F 1 U was also a key to having a quicker ramp up time so if there was a graph you'd see my dps drop a bit in the 80-76%HP range as i save RP & DS to keep death runes before heart drops i pop Hysteria, Army of the dead, Raise dead, Potion of speed, DRW, FF>PS>HS spam till i need to DS (I'm not usre but i assume Shortlived does about the same)
As weird as it may be. No one
Enixa — Thu, 06/04/2009 - 16:03As weird as it may be. No one should ever try to use me as an example. I'm one of those weird wow players that never got into rotations. Made my own aNd it works. Only rotation I have ever followed and masters, was Pre BC Huners 0/0/21 spec(i reall do miss those days). My "rotation" for heart phase is
Emote: Army of Dead, Hysteria
Targetable : DRW -> Icy Touch -> PS -> DS -> HS, HS, HS -> DS -> Restart and fill in where needed. I try to keep my dots up 90%+ on boss fights and goto town.
Like I said, it works for me. Won' work for everyone and there's no use correcting it. It's imbedded in my BRAINZ
Parses:
saedo — Wed, 06/03/2009 - 22:22Parses: http://wowwebstats.com/1t331y3kj6iau
Well poop
Vitriola — Thu, 06/04/2009 - 04:30I can see why Mori told me about that 3 points worth of supression. On the plus side, even with all those misses, I think that this was my best overall showing thus far. A bit sad but not without its hope. At least it shows that I have been practicing. :)
further questions for vitriola
moriella — Thu, 06/04/2009 - 06:49I've noticed over the last three weeks that you have not broken your four piece t7 bonus. It IS a very nice set bonus, indeed. Everytime you cast life tap you gain 300 spirit which directly translates into spell power for you. I believe you get 30% spell power from spirit, yes ?
To exploit this further, you choose 'glyph of life tap' - which gives an additional 20% spell power from spirit bonus. This does indeed stack with the t7 bonus.
A very compelling reason to keep the t7 bonus IMO.
However, the problem that I see is this......
YOU DID NOT LIFE TAP ONE SINGLE TIME IN RAID LAST NIGHT.
Solution : if you cant remember to tap (instacast, good when moving) - rip that glyph out and use glyph of immolate instead.
Another thing I noticed from your parses, your CoD has pretty poor presence on fights as well. It's a one minute spell, insta cast, doing almost 15k damage when it detonates. Worthless for trash (you should throw up CoA on trash), but important to your dps on boss fights. When I look through parses by fights and I see that you never cast it at all, or you cast it 2x in a 4 minute fight , I see more ways you could get your dps up.
Your conflag is your most powerful cast. It's instant, and deals HUGE damage. it's on a 10 second CD. Yet you cast it less than 60 times over the course of a 210 minute raid. This is not an optional or situational spell. It's very much a class defining spell that should be used every 10 seconds. If we look at it per boss fight, your uptime is even worse. It's insta cast - there is no excuse for missing it.
Warlocks are not an easy class to play. You have to be aware of lots of things that are going on, and they dont really have a 'rotation' to speak of (one that you can cycle thru 100% of the time at least). Frankly, you seem like even with a four piece set, you are still learning the basics of your class.
Lots going on here
Vitriola — Thu, 06/04/2009 - 08:29Mori,
Well, this is quite a chunk. ok. Here goes...
"I've noticed over the last three weeks that you have not broken your four piece t7 bonus. It IS a very nice set bonus, indeed. Everytime you cast life tap you gain 300 spirit which directly translates into spell power for you. I believe you get 30% spell power from spirit, yes ?"
300 spirit, yes. 30% spell power, not that I know.
"To exploit this further, you choose 'glyph of life tap' - which gives an additional 20% spell power from spirit bonus. This does indeed stack with the t7 bonus."
correct
"However, the problem that I see is this... YOU DID NOT LIFE TAP ONE SINGLE TIME IN RAID LAST NIGHT."
Actually, I did, but not as much as I would have liked. I actually cast life tap as the first spell of every boss fight for the bonus. I had a spec that gave me a good deal of mana and did not need to tap often. Add to this, my health was usually down. The boss hits hard and I did not want to tap myself to low health and die in the process. The change of spec from self sustaining to suppression changes this so that I must tap now to have mana through the fight. I looked at my mana and health a LOT and chose to live rather than tap. I did not forget. To say somethng untrue, especially in all caps, seems as if you are trying to say something else. Is this something better covered in private messages?
"Another thing I noticed from your parses, your CoD has pretty poor presence on fights as well."
hmmm... the parse says that I cast it 30 times. Still, I will try to cast it more. Boss mods was covering the add ons that I so carefully placed during dummy practice and I may have missed it.
"Your conflag is your most powerful cast. It's instant, and deals HUGE damage. it's on a 10 second CD. Yet you cast it less than 60 times over the course of a 210 minute raid."
This indicator was covered by add ons again. You cannot just cast conflag. You must also have immolate on the target. There were a lot of times that I hit the button but it did not cast, but not always or even usually because immolate was missing. I cast and recast conflag sometimes a half dozen times before it too. I was struggling against add ons covering things. This is the first raid since I had a major overhaul of the interface. I think that I have it repositioned enough, though it feels like there is more add on than screen now. :)
"Warlocks are not an easy class to play. You have to be aware of lots of things that are going on, and they dont really have a 'rotation' to speak of (one that you can cycle thru 100% of the time at least). Frankly, you seem like even with a four piece set, you are still learning the basics of your class."
Or at least I am learning the basics of a raid build that I have never used in a raid before.
***
Scaron,
"Also, your misses are screwing you over bigtime."
True! I did have 265 hit, but, as Mori correctly pointed out after the raid, I was not capped as I did not have the 3 points in suppression. I fixed that before I logged.
"This makes me wonder, are you using DoTimer?"
I do have that but necrosis also has timers. This can be seen on my application UI screenshots too.
Actually, the parse says you
Scaron — Thu, 06/04/2009 - 08:47Actually, the parse says you cast CoD 37 (i think) times...it missed 7 times.
Question...looked @ your UI do you need those party raid frames? And, do you use the quartz cast bar?
Lifetaps?
Scaron — Thu, 06/04/2009 - 07:29Hmmm...I'm showing 59 lifetaps.
http://wowwebstats.com/1t331y3kj6iau?a=x400000001f7b6b3#buffs
Am I reading this parse incorrectly?
Even then, however, Mori's right your LifeTap uptime is still really wonky. I'm showing about 17-18 minutes of lifetap uptime over the 3 hour + raid. Sure there's a lot of downtime, buffing, standing around, etc, but it should be higher. This means your 4pc t7 bonus was only up for about half that time.
Gotta fix that. As I mentioned, use the player aura setting on DoTimer to make your glyph of lifetap buff duration to show up as a timer. That way you can keep this up throughout the duration of a fight.
Also, your misses are screwing you over bigtime. They translate into a straight up DPS loss...worse for Destro because everytime you miss with CB or Conflag you not only don't get DPS, but you also waste a CD. If my calculations are accurate, they indicate that if you were hitcapped, you'd have gotten a 200K dmg increase from Incin, a 108K dmg increase from conflagrate, a 70K dmg increase from CoD, plus a dmg increase from Immo (which i'm neither smart enough nor do I have enough information to calculate...it depends a little on how you played after your misses). This also doesn't count how much your pet hit relies on your personal hit rating, b/c your pet missed 1.1% of almost 1400 casts...at 1000/ damage per spell, that adds up too.
Based on this you're looking at almost 400K extra damage over the duration of the raid (only using your instant damage spells...this number certainly goes up when we take into account Immolate and your pet.) 400K extra damage isn't the be-all end-all of damage, but if you can get it by changing NOTHING about your play style and just add some extra hit...holy cow, I'd do it.
This makes me wonder, are you using DoTimer? If you are, and you see that you missed a CoD, for example, you can just reapply (as long as the spell doesn't have a CD: so CoD or Immolate...incin you'd be putting up anyway and it's a low priority spell). Using DoTimer will indicate to you, immediately, that you've missed because the spell won't be up on the target. and you can reapply. This could be one reason you got so few CoD's to hit (only 30 during the raid).
Re: Mori's comment on Conflag. Part of the problem with Conflagrate is that it is directly reliant on Immolate being up (you can't cast it when it's not). If you're having difficulty keeping immolate up, you won't be able to cast Conflagrate on any regular basis either...a cascading problem, if you will. For optimal DPS one should be using Conflagrate 2 x for every 3 immo...and you want your immo uptime to be high. Right now you're landing about 1 conflagrate to every .9ish immolates. Improving this ratio will help you.
life tap
moriella — Thu, 06/04/2009 - 08:07correct scaron, I looked in the wrong place.
the newest thinking is that at current gear levels, glyph of immolate over glyph of life tap will result in better dps but it's marginal. Destro locks NOT using the glyph should ONLY LT when they need mana. However if you are keeping your 4 piece t7 and glyphing for it you should LT every 20 seconds. period.
on hit - we addressed that last night at the end of raid when I noticed his misses on recount. He had respececed and 'copied' someone elses spec without thinking he didnt have the +hit gear to leave supression out of his build
Frankly, at our level of raiding - I want a player who doesnt need to 'copy' a players spec from the armory. I would hope that after 80 levels and raiding in naxx and heroics that a player would have done enough research and have enough playtime to know the optimal specs and how each talent point directly affects him.
what is really going on?
Vitriola — Thu, 06/04/2009 - 08:44"Frankly, at our level of raiding - I want a player who doesnt need to 'copy' a players spec from the armory. I would hope that after 80 levels and raiding in naxx and heroics that a player would have done enough research and have enough playtime to know the optimal specs and how each talent point directly affects him."
This seems like a bit of a shot. I have been told to do just this. It is now becoming a matter of "too many chiefs and not enough indians." During the talk about suppression, I said that I copied rahn. The discussion then was not that copying was wrong but that I should have copied Watchesup instead. I have been told several times to do this from the warlocks that are doing well in guild opinion, so I am. These guys have used a destro build for a long while and it is a good place to start, of course, and tweaks can come as I get used to the new build. But you knew that I have not raided as destro before and only practiced on dummies. So I have to wonder just why you would think that I do not know even the basics about my class just because I am starting on a new approach by believing that Rahn and Watchesup know what they have been doing for so long?
Is there something more going on here than meets the eye?