Heya,
I'm the leader of a not so far in progress but still quite professional guild; at the moment we're having our 3rd week on Vashj, so no BT/HS, but I'd say it's solid so far.

Now what we've noticed is that 80% of our people seem to waste 15% of their possible dps with.... well, that's the point. We're not really sure.
Over the last months we optimized ~30 talent builds, optimized equipment, theorycrafted better dps-cycles, but still - That gave us maybe 3%. We got rid of slackers long ago and I'm very convinced that 95% of our DPSers know what they're doing, so it was a bit of a riddle.

When I compared some WWS logs yesterday, we noticed something I never paid attention to - "DPS-Time". In my understanding that should be the percentage of doing something while being alive and in combat. Compared to logs from guild with almost the same equipment our DPS-Time is ~15-20% lower and so is the overall Raid-DPS.

Just to give you some numbers
our Lurker kill: Wow Web Stats
some other guild: Wow Web Stats

I'd not say this proves anything, but if it's not the DPS-Time, I don't have any idea what's wrong. So let's assume, that's the problem - what can we do about it? Where does it come from?

Is it based on ineffective movement, slow computers, slow brains?
I know how I can improve one's talentbuild, how to optimize their casting cycles, but simply ordering to move faster won't make the cut I guess, so I'd really appreciate any helping thought.

You can increase DPS time on Lurker by having your melee run the circle in front of the Spout as long as they/you think they can avoid screwing it up. Time while they dive to avoid Spout is lost DPS time, as is any time they get knocked back by a Whirl (or step back to avoid it as they should be), or from a Geyser. Lurker is a pretty bad fight to base DPS time on though - Spout, waiting for adds to spawn, waiting for Lurker to come back up will all make your DPS uptime look odd.

Try to use a fight where spells are pretty consistently cast (for spellcasters DPS time). Good examples are Gruul, Tidewalker, Void Reaver. Of those 3, I'm sure you can put together a Gruul parse. Malan is absolutely right, that fight just isn't conducive to this type of comparison. If Hydross is your next target - he won't be either. Stick to Gruul for an honest comparison.

Your casters should be getting 90% DPS Time on Gruul if they are doing at least a decent job (Shatter/Cave-in prevent 100%).

If DPS time is what I think it is, Lurkerr is probably a bad example to base it on. When he submerges thats something like 10 seconds standing there waiting for the adds to become targetable. Hell sometimes we kill them so fast we're waiting another 10-15 seconds before he re-emerges!
I'm however no wws expert at presence and dps time.

Edit: from the wws boards

So yah on Lurker there's a good possibility of dropping DPS Time just from running to the next add on the inner ring.

By the way I don't understand the reference in the thread title about "using the 'S' key."

I agree that Lurker isn't the best example here (especially because the faster you kill the adds the longer you'll wait for him to come back), but as far as I can see, our DPS-Time is always quite low compared to similar guilds.

Mh and by the way... our melees run around him and don't dive...

Now... is your question regarding Lurker, or Vashj, whom you're stuck on?

Lurker is a very specific fight and jumping in/out of the water can take a lot of time. Ranged people in a Shadowpriest group, assuming the Spriest is high enough dps, may be able to stay under for long periods with Water Breathing to increase dps time... also, how are you killing the adds and positioning your ranged? We position ranged on each platform, with the majority on the two leftmost platforms. Melee killing adds proceed from right to left, so the ranged on the far two platforms have time to assist on the last adds before the melee get back.

I'm guessing though, that Lurker isn't your real issue? It's not a big deal whether or not it takes you another dive to kill Lurker...



Assuming your focus is Vashj, she's a very different kettle of fish... You say you did a lot to improve your individuals' dps and I assume that includes appropriate mods as well, like Quartz and stopcasting macros, and hunter mods to help monitor shot rotation.

The big thing for optimizing dps on Vashj in phase 2, at least for us, was to try to minimize the allocation to some duties and maximize the overlap that we had on important things, like killing Elementals before they got to Vashj and killing striders. For us, this meant allocating melee mostly to stairs duty, with hunters assisting. Melee would get so good at handling a quadrant that the hunters could often assist up top, meaning that while we had 8 people assigned to dpsing stairs, we often had more like 6 truly handling it. The ranged, up top, needed to get very good at switching targets. As soon as the kiter called for damage, everyone switched to the strider and killed it. Warlocks, meanwhile, dotted any/all Naga that were up, and Naga, the least damaging add, become last priority for damage. It also allowed us to sort of "catch up" because as we fell behind (more Naga) our dps increased with more targets for dots, places for Chain Lightning to bounce to etc. If Elementals got past stair people, with the large number of ranged up top it was easy to kill them before they got to Vashj. Another important factor there is to ensure that the guy dunking your final core has a Boss Timer so that he or she can dunk it shortly before (not right before, the timers are sometimes off) a new spawn rather than right after. This means that dps that you would have needed to do in the (timed) Phase 3 you instead get out in the untimed Phase 2.


I'd look at whether your strategies allow your raiders to be used optimally, if you've inspected your individual players.

Something like "people that waste time by walking backwards - why can't they turn around or strafe?"


Edit:
And yes, this is not about Lurker
What I tried to point at is the fact that our DPS-Time always seems to be low on every single log.

Maybe people are afraid to pull the mob off the tank - I don't know.

Edited out - answered already.

Can you provide a parse from a friendlier fight? I.E. Tidewalker / Gruul?

Um, just take three paces forward, off the ring and into the water? You don't have to stop DPS at any point, just keep mashing your buttons as you go forward. You don't have to dive - as long as you're off the ring and floating, you're safe. Yes, you need to get there a couple of seconds early due to latency effects, to make sure the server really does you're floating. If your healers know what they're doing, that's not an issue. After the spout passes, take three paces backwards. Jump as required to get back on the ring. Keep mashing your buttons, of course.

Melee shouldn't lose a single second of DPS time to spout, only to backing out of whirls. And again, just like Ragnaros, that's a "two paces back, two paces forward" thing which shouldn't lose you more than a few seconds per whirl at most.

I've heard Lurker described as C'thun mark II, which is pretty much bogus. It's Ragnaros mark II. Big immobile thing, ranged can't pull aggro. You have abilities on predictable timers, and you move in and out to avoid them. Periodically he submerges and you have adds. Oh, and there's a targeted PBAOE knockback too. Funny that. He doesn't however require resists, the adds don't mana burn, and they're sheepable. So in principle he should be considerably easier than Ragnaros.

People just see the rotating beam of death, get their heads full of the fact that IT'S LIKE C'THUN AND C'THUN WAS HARD, and freeze up. The only C'thun-like thing is the fact that it's a rotating beam. How you deal with it is much more like dealing with Raggy's knockback - take two steps forward, then two steps back again once it's safe. If people don't panic, it's gravy.


TLDR version:
1) Two paces forward for Spout, make sure you're floating.
2) Two paces back after Spout passes, jump back onto ring.
3) Two paces back to get out of whirls.
4) Two paces forward after the whirl happens.
5) You do the hokey cokey and you turn around, that's what it's all about.

We had a similar issue on Vashj and it really came down to experience with the fight -- things like knowing where to stand in phase 2 so that you don't waste dps running around. I remember looking at the WWS figures and the Activity figure in Recount and they went up a lot as we got more used to the fight and killed her.

I'm paranoid about not getting spouted because I don't want to be "that guy," but I was under the impression that you had to sink at least a little bit to not get hit by spout. I'm pretty sure people have complained of being in the water and still getting knocked back. Is this a case where the gnome model is small enough that their heads doesn't clip above the surface of the water and they're safe?

Just jumping in works fine.

Every single instance I've heard of where someone was "in the water" but hit by spout, they simply cut it too close. Latency causes them to be knocked back even though they saw themselves in the water. It's definitely not model: I play a nightelf, I just strafe into the water (I don't sink), and I never get knocked back.

Just taking 2 steps backwards to gently fall in the water works fine and makes it much easier to jump out.

Attentiveness and faith-in-tanks (and tanks that can indeed get snap aggro) accounts for a lot of dps time issues I find. Attentiveness and of course latency are big components but sometimes it is smart play as well. I don't mind the guy that dunks on Lurker way early knowing that a lag spike could splat him otherwise and that 2s of DPS time here and there isn't even going to improve the fight time by a set of adds. It's the same for any fight I've done. Sometimes being too aggressive (and yes, I have that reputation in spades) will endanger the encounter's success more than being too timid.

Specs though also apply as WWS calculates dps time as you might expect. In other words a Rogue using Deadly Poison (which they should when they can), a Mage with Fireball's DoT running, a spriest or DoTing 'lock and so on all have extremely high DPS uptime which in turn can lower their visible DPS itself. In contrast, players using no DoTs or bleeds will encounter somewhat lower overall DPS time if they are working on multiple targets or are not getting all the killing blows. Take that as you will.

Delete me. Question was answered as I typed this.

I'm never in the water for more then about 2-3 seconds. Don't really consider that a substantial amount of time especially considering you can pop off casts while in the water.

Our lowest DPS time Lurker kill is our highest DPS Lurker kill. This is because you kill the adds so fast that you stand around waiting for like 15 seconds for re-emerge I assume. We just sit i the water the whole time when he's up with SP healing so we have great DPS time when he's emerged.

The ease of entering and exiting the water can differ greatly based on your assigned location and your knowledge of the area. For example, early on in SSC, someone died trying to jump out at this one corner and claimed that this particular spot was impossible/near impossible. Someone who'd had no problems getting in and out laughed at them for their "excuses" and hopped blithely in before our next pull... and spent the next 20 seconds cursing on vent as people healed him as he tried to get out.

Not only that... okay, so some people are bad at getting out of the water quickly. It's a flaw, to be sure, but the skill isn't one used anywhere else for any other fight in WoW. So if someone is an awesome dpser but bad at exiting the water, they're going to look like a bad DPSer on Lurker while seeming awesome on any other parse. Hence why I say Lurker is a very bad parse if you want to look at people's overall capability.

I suck at Lurker for the same reason I sucked at Ragnaros, for the reasons outlined by Zifna above. This reminds me, I need to get back into the raid before the reset, I want to go practice getting out of the water in peace and quiet.