First Gruul kill, on our second warmup attempt of the night:

http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=6hbpi26y3h3ie

I told our Shamans to not pop when they died early, but we ended up doing so well that they came back at around 20% or so if I remember correctly. We lost the tank near the end so a bunch of the Rogues died to Hurtful Strikes, but all in all our DPS was much improved over previous nights and things went pretty smoothly. We were much more strict about where people started the fight, and as a result we had far less troubles with people getting bunched up on the Shatters.

My DPS was pretty poor, I spent the majority of the fight concentrating on helping people with the Ground Slams, Reverberations, and so on. My cycles were way off as a result.

Still going through the log myself, but the first thing that jumps out is how much better the DPS time is across the board.

Could someone tell me why my WWS parse from Vashj is inaccurate?
http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...493-16173&a=29

When I compare it to numerous other parses, it becomes clear that for some reason, my parse seems to be missing some 280k damage done to Vashj, which I find annoying. I'm 100% I didn't die to get released and I didn't venture far off the Vashj at any point (certainly not 200yard away atleast).

I was positioned at the center for the whole duration of the fight, except for maybe the first few seconds (duh) and during phase3, when I was standing near the edge of high ground, but certainly didn't wander further than maybe first or second step, which certainly is not 200yards away from Lady Vashj.

For comparison:
http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...43-23521&a=128 - Elitist Jerks, by Gurgthock
http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...631-5258&a=118 - Nascent, by Sholdak
http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...s=356-975&a=18 - Myth, by Pepsie

And I do have the following in my World of Warcraft\WTF\Config.wtf file:
Simplest solution is of course to have multiple people send their combat logs to me, but that is very annoying as others from my guild don't seem to be as intrested in parsing as I do, and I'd rather not bug them too much. Do you parse multiple logs always?

For comparison, our first Al'ar kill from yesterday, which has combat logs from both me and Trist:

http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...&s=13493-14340
For those who are intrested, melee and hunters were taking care of adds during phase1 with Sumire tanking them. Kill was very clean, we had only one people dead at the end and this was our first raid against him. Chemi is usually 0/21/40 fire and tops damagemeters. It's clearly more about the skill, than the gear as he has it all wrong, but I can't really argue with our best damage dealer. (and he is best by a wide margin against single target)

I wasn't really planning on posting here because I hadn't thought I could add much of value other than "here's another parse", but really Gurg's op post thoughts about 'contrast' had me thinking. I think there's value in seeing the before/after considering the effect this thread has had in practice.


We've been happily knocking over bosses in SSC and thinking we're doing really well, but in the back of my mind has always been - can we do better? How do we stack up against other guilds out there? When Gurg posted this thread, I grabbed WWS and started logging our fights. More interestingly I started posting our parses and reference parses of other guilds up on our internal forums and doing some breakdown analysis.

A number of folk have provided insightful and particularly well thought out critiques in this thread - which even though weren't directed at our parses - were nonetheless amazingly useful. (particularly standout analysis of mage improvements from Manly, but there were definitely a number of well thought out analysis posts)

This is how valuable this thread has been to our guild.
I picked a Morogrim parse because it's one we 'mastered' a while back and should be a 'routine' kill for us at this point.

Last week's Morogrim kill (12.6k dps)
http://www.lunacy-guild.net/lunacy/w...340/index.html

This week's Morogrim kill (16.6k dps)
http://www.lunacy-guild.net/lunacy/w...944/index.html

(and what I was using for reference was the EJ parse Manly posted http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...1i&s=3708-4130 (17.1k dps))



In the theme of contrast, when stacked up with a SW_Stats damage meter, folk measure themselves against their peers. However when suddenly presented with a parse (such as the EJ reference one I listed), folk realize that gearing is similar, but damage is significantly different. It really didn't take more than that to have folk wanting to rise to the challenge of duplicating those results.

We gained 4k dps over a week with no significant gear upgrades other than some folk resocketing and thinking about their gear switches in the light of more information. The vast majority of the dps improvement came from folk respeccing and playing harder and smarter to beat a seemingly 'fantastic' goal of 17k dps.

Obviously we have tons of room for improvement still, but I was really pleased to see folk take some of the feedback present in this thread and turn it into a 30% increase in raid dps. If folk have any further critique to offer, I'll give my raiders your thoughts - obviously critique the newer parse please as it represents folk in their current gear/spec.

The screenshot osse doesnt want you to see, from Leotheras!

Hi Whiteknight. I checked quickly your WWS parse, and there are a few things I'd like to mention. Please note that this is the result of my own analysis through trial-and-error, and not really a direct comparison to your WWS parses.

I found out that generally, on Morogrim and Astromancer Solarian, that dragon's breath does not hit enough target to make it 'worthwhile' DPS-wise. I am not recommending not using the spell; but If your goal is purely to kill aoe targets asap, then a mage is generally, in my experience, better served with combustion, blastwave, arcane explosion spam. Of course, the disorient effect makes dragon's breath quite interesting, but assuming you don't need it, I came to the conclusion that personally I will try and stay away from it. (Although I *do liken using it as a finisher move, if combustion is still up after the initial blastwave).

You will note that in pretty much any aoe fight, the aoe dps always varies upon your other dps-ers; the better the people aoe, the lesser everyone's dps is (obviously). This is why I find it funny when I see a WWS where one player is head and shoulders above everyone else -- I know it is probably because the others are somewhat 'allowing' that player to be up there. The only exception to the rule is that mages can 'steal' aoe dps if they time their blastwave/dragon's breath to fit within 20%- life of the mobs (where fire mages get +20% dmg), but that's nothing more than mages trying to get their epeen up.

Now as for your recent parse. As I mentioned in a few other threads, I found out that Shiffar Nexus-Horn and Sextant of Unstable Currents are quite a+ for aoe tasks. The core of the reason is that they have 20% chance to proc on crits, but if your one aoe spell crits 3 targets, then you get 3 times chances to proc it. Plus they give passive crit, which is always good for aoe. For instance, I can see in your parse that your mages activated 3 times their Icon of the Silver Crescent, whereas my Sextant procced 7 times within approximately the same duration. I also hearthily recommend your mages to try out Darkmoon Card: Crusade; it is probably hands down the best trinket for the fight

Now comes my usual nitpicking part. I can imagine you use frostnova as part o your strategy, but I'd just make a quick mention that if you don't need it, thats more dps to be gotten

EDIT: I'll make a small mention that I wouldn't be surprised to see Lightning Capacitor possibly giving good results on morogrim. I've never had the chance to try it out.

We are working on our first Gruul kill - have been for a few weeks.

Here is our parse from our best Gruul pull last night (12%-13% wipe): http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...ie&s=4657-5149

We raid 3 times a week. 2 days in Karazhan (full clears, since we took out Nightbane 2 weeks ago, anyway), one evening in Gruul's Lair.

You can see we aren't racing anyone but ourselves, but are really enjoying things. Anyway, HKM dies easily, but we consistently lose it on Gruul around 13% (our best) or 25% if things go worse earlier.

Typically, we lose the MT around 12-13 growths. I also notice that we often lose melee dps due to hurtful strike, even when they are well below our bear off-tank on threat.

Regardless, I think what we needt he most help on is our DPS. I'm happy to dispense some tips to folks on what to improve first, whether it is particular gear upgrades they should go for first, different spell selections, better uptime on DoTs, etc.

I generally am top DPS, but feel I could use some changes too, considering I have around 1126 shadow dmg and 5.75% hit, but only sustain 665 dps according to our wws parse, but it'd be nice to pull everyone else up as well!

My best guess as to why the melee dies to hurtful strikes - even tho they are under the bear offtank in threat - is because they run in too fast after shatter, so he just picks the nearest melee in range and kills it.

If all melee waits for the second in aggro to get into meleerange - they should have no problem keeping alive for the duration of the fight.

Here's our guild first Morogrim kill.
http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=3ppgpgejxzvuw

This is really good to hear, and the sort of thing I was hoping for when I started the thread.

I started using WWS for our own kills a while back, for similar reasons. For me, Sebudai's Juggernaut parses, which were among of the few available endgame guild WWS parses out there at the time, served as a similar sort of benchmark. I'd look at our warlocks and compare them to the people like Rikktor that I saw topping DMs there, for example, and start internal discussions about what the key differences were on fights like Gruul. Pretty min/max'y, but those discussions are what led to basically everyone who hadn't done so skilling up tailoring, the mages all going 10/48/3, etc., and the internal tinkering has only continued to help.

Having "good DPS" is just a boon that can't be overstated in terms of overall raiding progression. A raid full of players that can do 1000 DPS instead of 800 DPS means that fights end faster, you don't have to deal with boss abilities as long, fewer chances for unlucky things to happen, etc. Sounds simplistic, but it's easier to analyze and improve DPS than it is to analyze and improve healing, or tanking, so it makes sense to squeeze whatever advantage you possibly can out of that route.

Although some people in my raid use WWS as their personal "official" sanctioned e-peen meter, I found it an invaluable tool to see where we are and where we should be. Even without comparing it to other WWS, it reveals things you simply can't get easily to, for example hit-sequences that kill your tank.

However that all said, there is some pet peeve of mine:

What is a very good fight for comparison of different raids WWS ?

I mean, you can compare any two WWS of the same fight, but I always feel like Gruul and Magtheridon are somewhat worse fights, since at Magtheridon you always need to explain who was on click duty which somewhat distorts the picture. Same with Gruul's shatter, where sometimes it takes a long time until you can continue to do your job (ex: shatter, bandage, cave in, finally continue). Of course that happens to everyone at some point, leaving the WWS comparable. I guess what I'm asking is, what is the new Patchwerk ? Which is _the_ bossfight really destined to use as a say, DPS index meter.

Personally from all I've done up until now (which isn't much with only Lurker in SSC) I'd still say it's Magtheridon, since the fight is relativly stable in phase 2. Though I really wish you could turn off quakes and cubes for measuring DPS performance there, especially since I'm always on cube duty, being very dependable there.

Sorry I missed this, and didn't reply in, well, forever.

Yeah, I was likely flasked for the majority of that clear. I figure, with flasks so cheap, there's no reason not to. They add efficiency, reduce time spent, and improve performance. All for relatively low investment.

There are some of the mindset, if you don't need to flask, why do it. I'm more of the mindset, it's so cheap to flask for such individual and raid benefit, why not? It's not like we're talking elixers that fall off on death, this is a guaranteed 2 hours of increased performance and efficiency. Well worth the cost.

I'm actually voting for Void Reaver. Yes, it's not a fight where you can stand still and chain cast shadow bolt, but the actual mechanic of the fight is very simple for DPS. Keep doing damage, run away when a bolt is heading towards you, continue doing damage.

One thing I've learned from all these parses is that presence is one of the biggest factors in a person's total damage dealt, and almost all fights require some movement that could lower one's presence. Actual damage dealt means more than what you can theoretically do. A fight isn't a true test of DPS unless you give people the opportunity to reduce their presence through mistakes. Only then can you tell which people aren't wasting time and damage through poor positioning.

Void Reaver seems to have a minimum amount of paying attention but is otherwise a complete DPS race, assuming you have enough tanks to soak his deaggros.

It's really hard to adequately describe just how much easier an 8min kill is compared to an 11 or 12min kill. Nobody is really running out of mana, consumable use is lower and the chances of freakish spike damage or your paladin graved at really inconvenient times really goes down a lot.
Also, I now have my raiders demanding the WWS after each fight, and even capturing the logs themselves, and self-analyzing. The value of this is simply huge.

Thanks again Manly, I'll forward your thoughts on to our mages. From a strategy standpoint, we use a protection paladin to tank all the adds, so I'm not sure why frostnova is being used. I'll go dig into that - perhaps it is used to control a couple of loose adds or something.

We just recently discovered WWS and have begun to use it internally. Much of the discussion pertains to "look at top_hunter ... find out what you're doing differently and fix it," etc. After Looking through a few pages in this thread I'm pretty amazed at how much of a difference it can make being measured up to other guilds.

We just killed Mag for the first time last night, I figured I'd share the log:

http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=tyjtphjlv2bwk

The one thing that was brought up internally was the difference between Toxicant and Shinegaku. The two are specc'd similarly, but put out drastically different numbers.

We also seem to have some problems on Gruul. DPS has increased a lot since we first killed him but I'm sure there is plenty of room for improvement. We seem to be encountering MT deaths rather frequently now around growth 10. Most of the time we can carry the next tank to 18 but everything has already spun out of control by then to be able to recover. We raid three nights a week and are trying to break into SSC, but unless we can get Gruul/mag done in one night it's gonna be hard.

http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=bjkjjkchl36kg&m is our report from our last kill.

Everytime we kill him it's after quite a few attempts and the reaction is the same since the first night we killed him.

Well the difference between those two warlocks seems painfully clear to me...Toxicant had from 4-9 times as many ticks on every single DoT spell he used than Shinegaku, with about twice the DPS time, as well as about 50 more shadowbolts. Also, Shinegaku cast a total of one (1) UA the entire log? What? You should probably let him know that if he's AFK half the fight he won't do good damage.

Going just by the kill attempt, Shinegaku used hardly any DoTs at all, Toxicant had almost 10 times as many ticks of CoA and 7 times as many ticks of corruption, almost 5 times as many immolates and still managed to do 8 more shadowbolts.

Personally I think Magtheridon is the best overall indicator since it really is nothing but 5 minutes of attacking him. And seeing as how WWS parses out cube clicking time for the people that have to do that I think it turns out to be the best meter.

Most other fights are imperfect for some reason or another:
Maulgar- Sub 50% difficult to melee, also melee having to run out of Whirlwind and running to each member of the council at the start.

Gruul- Casters are hindered by silence as well as the fact that they have to stop casting to get out of Cave In while melee can stay in melee range and keep attacking as they run out. Probably my second favorite DPS meter in TBC though.

Hydross- Depending on strategy can vary quite a bit depending on AoE of adds versus single target.

Lurker- Difference of melee versus ranged damage on add phases as well as ranomness in Geyser make the fight not ideal.

Fathomlord- Switching to totems, Interrupts on Priest, Melee being frost trapped, Running all across the room to different guys, all effect damage on the fight.

Leotheras- The randomness of Insidious Whisper and Whirlwind make it not ideal as a DPS meter.

Morogrim- Would be very good except for the randomness of Watery Grave and the difference in strategy for killing murlocs.(My 4th Choice)

Vashj- Phase 2 and 3

Void Reaver- Probably the Third Best meter in TBC although variance in pounding strategy as well as the randomness of orbs makes it non ideal.

Solarian- Aran 2.0 heavily favors melee

Not familiar with many of the aspects of fights in Black Temple and Hyjal and have not attempted A'lar or Kael so can not speak to them.

Here's our 2nd Gruul kill: http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report...dc&s=5207-5710

Our guild's DPS really seems to ebb and flow, in our one night of Maghteridon attempts last week we were consistently getting through the 4th add by Mag release on our last handful of attempts yet both of our Gruul kills have been at the 16th growth mark which is obviously always dicey.

Looking for some things to work on tonight for our Gruul raid. I can dig up group make-up if it would help. I usually keep CoR on Gruul until growth 8 then I let the warlocks have it fall off, at that point we are usually at about 40% HP which would seem to be on target for a 12 growth kill but things seem to really drag on from there. Again any good critiques would be appreciated.

As stated numerous times, mouse over 'Full Report' and you will get a drop down for each attempt.

Ah, I'm sorry, I'll edit my post to reflect that.

You don't have to look at the full log. There is a drop down that allows you to view specific attempts.

Some quick notes regarding your losses:
- Earth Shield was rarely cast on the MT.
- Renew was rarely maintained on the MT
- When you had a Resto Druid in the raid, he did well maintaining his HOTs.
- All your priests love GH7.

From what I can tell, your Priests are not doing as much as they could be that fight. They're not raid healing (which it doesn't appear that it's needed), but their not healing the MT as much as they should be. A downranked GH allows a Priest to land a heal without the huge cost of mana, but still filling an HP deficit. Many of your MT losses were back to back to back 7k hits on the MT, within the span of 3-4 seconds. Based on heal choice of your healers, it looks like everyone relies on queuing up their max rank, big heal.

Suggestions:
- Maintain HOTS at all times.
- Maintain ES at all times.
- Experiement with downranking.
- Talk about "Emergency Healing"

The last thing you want when you see the MT take 7k then 7k is everyone to say, OMG I need to land a 5k heal - cast GH7. You need some people ready to use Flash Heal, Shield, Nature Swiftness, Lesser Healing Wave, etc. You don't want everyone queuing up their big heal after a spike damage string and the MT not get a single heal for 3-4 seconds where he then dies to a measly 4k hit.

It seems a consistent theme on fire mage dps placement that the seperation is due to a lack of +hit.

The second fire mage on you list missed fireball 16.9% of the time. Considering the miss rate on a boss for spells is 17% (16% needed to cap) I would say this person is low on +hit and got unlucky with the RNG. Compare this to your top ranked fire mage with a 4.3% miss and is easy to see why the gap is large.