• Tibor

Our raid has felt keenly the impact of the beginning of school: our raid leader and main tank has been forced to step away from his duties, due to class conflicts. In the last week or so, we've been "auditioning" new people for the raid leader role, and I'm being given a shot, probably this coming Sunday. I want to be prepared, but I'm lacking some analytical techniques. More frustrating, I'm not sure I fully grasp my inadequacies, or that I can communicate their absence.

Take last night's raid, which should have been a walk in the park: a half-cleared MC (clear to Geddon). Our raidgroup has progressed as far as Firemaw, and had listed Ragnaros as farm-status for six weeks. Our raiders are largely epicced out, with smatterings of ZG/AQ20 blues, and some of our newer members are still in some Tier0. Our tanks, in particular, are very well-geared: tons of Might, bits of Wrath, Quels all around, Hakkar shield, Buru shield, etc.

We rolled into MC tonight, looking a little sparse, around 35 total raiders, eleven healers (3-4x Shaman, 4-5x Priest, 3x Druid). The second pull was an omen of things to come: Firelord pull, immediately pops a Spawn behind him, which proximities the Giants behind. We get the Firelord down, but the first Spawn isn't picked up until it's split a few times, we turtle and wipe. We try to shrug it off to bad luck, and continue on our way. Geddon and Shazzrah submit without incident.

Sulfuron takes two tries. The guild strategy is for Hunters to pull the adds to a tank, who iteratively pull them up to the hill leading to Golemagg/Domo to get DPSed down. The MT charges Sulfuron and tanks him up on the dais. Typically, none of the Hunters get any heals or dispels/cleanses, so the DoTs kill us. Then tanks and healers start dropping, and we wipe. The second pull, only three of the Hunters die; I live through popping a HS, Major Heal pot, and get SW:P removed after three ticks (Immolate continues to tick). Only three tanks die, and two Priests.

I don't remotely consider it a win, and the point of this thread is to figure out why, and how to analyse it myself in future, but let me finish the flashback first.

Golemagg is a pretty smooth kill, though we lose a few DPS initially to sloppy threat control from the MT.

Then Domo. Domo fucks us up. We put two attempts on him before we call the raid, neither of which kills more than four of his adds. The first raiders to die are the Rogues. The consequent significantly reduced DPS mean that tanks are getting smacked around a lot more than they ought, and often dying. Once a couple tanks are down, their healers follow soon after, and then the rest of the raid.

The raid is called, some of the officers contending that we didn't have enough healing. I'm not so sure, which is why I'm posting here. Our healing corps is pretty well geared, similar to our tanks: lots of Tier1, bits of Tier2. Intuitively, it seems that eleven well-geared healers should be able to keep five well-geared tanks alive, as well as light heals on DPS. However, what happened was that each tank had two healers assigned to them, the sheeping Mages had one healer assigned to the lot, leaving nothing for DPS, and even then were running out of mana. I've formulated a few theories in my head:

1. Skill deficiency in the healing corps. Whether through massive overhealing, poor technique in mana conservation or in choice of heals, or poor organisation, the healing corps are not sufficiently competent.

2. Gear deficiency in the healing corps. My assessment of our healers' level of itemisation is off, and eleven healers simply isn't enough for MC bosses, irrespective the tanking.

3. Skill deficiency in the tanking corps. Tanks aren't mitigating damage as well as they ought, necessitating much more healing than they should. This draws healing resources away from DPS, just to keep the tanks alive.

4. Gear deficiency in the tanking corps. My assessment of our tanks' level of itemisation is off, and thereby soak up too much healing for eleven healers to provide.

5. Something I haven't thought of.

My task now, then, is to prove or disprove these theories. For this I need data: however, I don't know what data I need, nor the best methodologies to collect it. For that reason, I am coming to you guys. You are seasoned raiders, not a few among you excellent raid leaders, and many of you are raiders on the cutting edge, where evaluating and correcting failures is everything, the difference between world-first and months-behind.

I would appreciate any advice you can provide, any thought processes I may adopt, and any tools you can suggest to improve the analysis of my raid's performance. I believe strongly that teaching a man to fish is the right answer; I don't want you guys to solve the riddles my raid encounters, I want to learn how to solve them myself.

Thanks, and apologies for the colossal post. :)

 

◊ Kalman

11 healers at your level of gear sounds a bit light for Domo. That really would be my first guess.

 

• Chicken

I'd have to agree with Kalman. Never forget that raids are (supposed to be) tuned for 5 of each class, so at least 15 people capable of healing.
Plus take a look into what is killing those Rogues you mentioned. I can't really think of anything which is likely to kill the Rogues fast that they should be capable of surviving and/or avoiding.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

Tel

Although its slightly late now, for future wipes like that I would suggest a /combatlog from your main tanks followed by input into a parsing program (or if you're like me, 3 hours of sitting and reading through it). That way you can find out who is taking most damage etc and whetehr they died to spikes, or because healers simply werent able to keep up.

In addition getting hold of something like SWStats, and getting the majority of your raid force to install it will help too, it allows you to see which tanks are taking most damage, which healers are under/overhealing, which dpsers need to l2p etc etc. Having recently taken over alot of my guilds raid leading i found that doing these two very simple things has taken us from '4th or 5th guild alliance side on our server' to 2nd alliance and 3rd overall with a much tighter raiding force, and with VASTLY VASTLY improved healing and dps control (we're not exactly bleeding edge, but with Forte and Last Resort on our server, we're hard pushed to keep up :P ).

From the sounds of it, your tanks and healers need more experiance on the fights and probably a bit more gearing up. It sounds like the most problems were had when dealing with mulitple add fights (sulph and domo) this suggests that you probably have a number of tank/healers who with that low number of healers are simply unable to keep up. Thats through no fault of your own, it'll just take a few more runs and a bit o practise to get back on track. Losing your MT is a bit hit for any raid, just suck it up and keep hammering at it, you'll get there :)

 

◊ Kalman

Shadow Shock + Blastwave, no heal, Shadow Shock might be enough. If they aren't getting heals, they will die.

 

• frmorrison

You need more healers than 11, I would go for 14 at your gear levels, and the Rogues should stop dpsing when the Domo physical damage shield is up, and of course bandaid when needed.

Use Damage Meters or SW Stats to look at the healing info, maybe there is overhealing going on? Maybe you need healing assignments?

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

• Chicken

That's true I suppose. That's a bit of a healer deficiency in that case. I'm more used to focusing on two (or three, or all of them if I feel like it) tanks for Domo.

Anyway, that just adds to the first point, it's most likely the case that the 11 healers the original poster has are overstretched for the fight.

buff /bʌf/ Pronunciation[buhf]
–verb (used with object)
- to reduce or deaden the force of

 

thejdawg

As much as it sucks, if you're going to run with so few healers, your dps classes for Domo should be equipped with Fire/Shadow Protection Pots, in addition to healing pots/health stones. With more gear, or HEAVY consumables, the healers might be able to keep up, but I'd think it'd be quite a feat if they did.

 

◊ Anias

11 healers in mc level gear on domo is quite difficult.

I'd look at two things -

One, were assignments effectively handed out, and did they take into account the lower than expected healing availability?
Two, were the people who were taking all this damage actually doing something smart to mitigate it? You're in the MC/BWL days, your raid should be rocking anywhere from 40-400 greater fire protection potions across the raid on any given night. Did your rogues think to use them to offset the blasts? Were the mobs tanked far enough apart that blastwaves didn't overlap?

Moving on from domo - Sulfuron is a massive decursive marathon, and we have paladins. It seems believable that you simply did not have sufficient dispel magic/minute capability to keep up with the pains and dots. I certainly hope your warriors were tanking out of line of sight of the raid, and each other, but within line of sight of a priest.

That's the questions I'd be asking. While it's entirely possible your healers are terrible, look for the simplest answers first. They weren't terrible last week, this cocntent is normally smooth. What's changed? Well we're down 4-5 healers, and our usual organizer isn't here. Let's look at those as possible causes for tonight's abnormal performance. From there you get to my questions above, and can continue your analysis with that same method. As others have suggested, superior combat logging can let you look at what happened in a more granular level for the fight, but I honestly think it's an organizational or simple numbers issue. YMMV DFTD etc etc.

Math is very easy, explaining math is quite difficult.

 

Flubber

Positioning plays a decent roll in domo, melee dps sandwiched between 2 elites will die from chain aoe and the occasional shock. I'd assume healing aggro is an issue due to so few healers, so you can expect them to be getting smacked when domo ports.

You are healer light which causes dps to be lower priority, and causes healers to be targetted fast by loose mobs, meaning even less heals available.

You likely had issues with dispels. Assuming you were so light that tanks were dying on Sulf, 2 priests prolly stopped dispelling to heal. Now lets say your other 2 priests were dispelling. Lets say they are good healers, and play perfect with no lag and decursive. THey spam the dispell hotkey constantly. There is a .5 second cooldown between dispells, so if 10 people get hit with SW:P, in a fight as spread out as Sulf, you can expect 4 of them to take at least 3 ticks.

Really the issue you had was raid balance. You can get away with unbalanced raids if you have the gear (12 warriors in pug MC with 1 priest to do all the dispelling of the other 39 people makes Luci the hardest fight in the game), but since you dont, you really need a good raid makeup to do well.

 

Farstrider

Sulf without enough Healers is just a total pain in the arse to be honest. 35 is enough to clear the place at that level of gear, but under 1/3 healers definitely seems a tad low, there's just too many multi-tank/decursive spam situations for 11 to keep up.

That said, I don't think every tank at Domo should need 2 healers - 3 healers for every 2 tanks should be fine I'd think, especially given that with that many dps-ers you should be taking adds down pretty quick.

John O'Groats to Lands End 2009 for Leukaemia Research

 

◊ Quigon

Healing is the key to victory on nearly any boss that isn't timed. Control first, dps later. Domo is in some sense a losing fight... but 11 healers is almost going to guarantee that.

You have 5 mobs being tanked at first... 2 healers each. Who heals the healer? Who heals the raid?
I used to give 3 healers to each tank... now adays we would use two... I suppose you could heal2 it with 10, but then you're left with 1 healer to heal what is otherwise a MASSIVE amount of splash damage on the raid.

I would point blame at yourself first with your raid makeup, and worry about skill once you feel like you've hit a brick wall w/the proper setup.

I would not point the finger so readily at skill deficiency... especially when you have a raid that is clearly capable of learning.

You might actually find out your raid is full of many gifted players who simply need time to hone their skills. Practice definitely makes for some extraordinary players in this game.

 

◊ Anias

Just because -

You can have 2 tanks (best geared) tanking elites with a single healer each on opposite sides of the platform (back and to the right, and near the front on the left, as you look at domo from the top of the ramp). As long as the healers/tanks use the smokestacks to prevent the healer taking a beating from the random secondaries. That frees up an extra 2 healers, but it's still going to be brutal with 10-11 in sub bwl gear.

Math is very easy, explaining math is quite difficult.

 

Flubber

When evaluating post mortem. The first thing to think about is raid makeup. Then I go to positioning. Then I verify with the tanks that they didnt fat finger or forget about shield block. Then its time for healing to be judged.

During the fight, just watch for stupidity. I have seen pug elemental shamans shooting chain lightning at Rag post sons. Mana is an issue, why are you wasting 600mana on 900 damage? If priests are being one shot by Ony or Nef...you know immeadiately that its the offtanks missing fear breaks. Priests have a stupid talent to resist fear, so they are target #1 if an offtank is too busy watching big numbers than zerker raging.

Never post blame on one person...it takes a raid to wipe. Just go down the line to make sure that the issue is something that can be fixed with your current members...if not, then you know what you need to do to improve for next time.

BTW...your healers dont suck if you can kill Broodlord. Your tanks are okay if you can kill Vael. Your dps is prolly good if you can down Rag.

 

• mutagen

Agreed, not enough healers. 15 is a typical number for a 40 man. With gear you can start to shave numbers off but you quickly reach a point of diminishing returns. With so many people taking damage your healers just can't heal enough people, can't switch to enough targets, to keep the raid alive and effective. DPS dying is a symptom of this, they're often a lower priority than tanks, other healers, mages at Domo.

Remember the way the raid felt. You were probably slowly dying, losing a few people here and there until all those deaths added up. You came close to getting bosses, which makes you frustrated and want to find out what is wrong. In my experience thats a raid that needs one or two more healers. Some of our raid leaders will simply call a raid rather than put people through that, and despite how eager we are to raid and to 'lets just try it and see how far we get'. We've learned from experience that it just isn't worth the frustration.

Measuring it? Not sure how. Maybe watching overheal numbers? A raid with sufficient healing for bosses is going to be overhealing on trash mobs unless you've got lots of AFK on Follow types or healers DPSing on trash.

 

• Tecton

I'm going to wager that a part of the healing difficulties is being made worse by an addiction to emergency monitors.

 

Vhal

11 healers is light for Domo, especially with 35 people in mostly MC gear. My wife is one of our top shaman healers, and she has expressed the sentiment that domo is harder for healers than any boss fight in BWL.

Why did your MT lose threat on Golemagg? Back before we even set foot in BWL (or killed Rag) or MT offered 50g to anyone who could (without taunting) pull threat off of him on Golemagg after he sundered twice and no one ever collected on it. If this wasn't purely inattentiveness (which is its own demon), it points to a big problem with your tanking.

If rogues are dying repeatedly, there's a problem. The first job of a rogue is self-preservation, and especially in a low-healer situation they should never expect healing (aside from the odd fight like Vael, of course). Note that this is entirely different from the healers being told to not heal rogues -- just that rogues should always be operating as if their next heal may or may not come.

It sounds like you may have a problem with attentiveness; I'm used to the same thing -- players seem to pay more attention to the raid when the raid is full and there's a waitlist, and thus can be replaced more easily.

 

Fizil

I don't know, given the gear level you say your healers have, I don't see this as necessarily to few. Specifically on the Domo fight, healing should have been fine. When you have to be light on healers like that, people need to be prepared to take things into their own hands (meaning people need to Bandage if they are low on health and not the main focus for the healing force). IIRC there isn't really much in the way of AoE during Domo, although there is plenty of RST. But Hunters/Rogues/Warlocks/etc... should be able to handle keeping themselves up most of the time.

On the other hand something like Sulfuron you may have been suffering from lack of dispellers, I am not sure what your healing class composition was.

I will second the use of a tracking mod like SWStats, although even DamageMeters isn't that bad to get an overall picture. For awhile in our first Noth attempts people were blowing up left and right till I starting watching a Decursing meter, and had to call out various slackers. Right away decursing jumped up and I havn't seen a anyone blow up the raid unless most of our decursers are dead since then :)

 

Lousifer

Heh, there isn't much splash damage from the back line, but there's actually quite a bit of aoe that hits non-tanks, both blastwaves and some point blank shadowbolts.. I die more on Domo than I do on Rag, I don't expect heals, I burn health pots and I bandage all the time.

Of course if we rogues are inattentive, we can kill ourselves REALLY fast with damage shield... I don't know how many times before I learned the fight I had my CT notify lag and I'd hit myself with a backstab and a bunch of autoattacks... Ouch.

 

Tuftears

Hmm. Domo fight: two healers on the two Majordomo tanks, one healer apiece to the four elite tanks, one healer keeping an eye on the mages, that's 7 healers, leaving you 4 to go free-for-all. In the event of lesser-geared tanks, put them on the first elites to die and warn FFA to be ready to help the healers. We normally kill elite, healer, healer, healer (last healer pops out of sheep here), healer, and remaining elites.

For Sulfuron, we use druids to heal the MTs, frees our priests up to dispel. Since many of the magic debuffs land two at a time, their improved dispels really help. Two healers of any kind on the MT, one druid apiece for the priest tanks.

We have paladins on dispel duty too, but that won't help Horde-side.

I'm going to guess you had an inexperienced healer class leader, and the healers weren't in sync because of that. Assigning one healer to a tank works for us on MC fights because the healers aren't fighting over who gets the next heal, or assuming the other person will get the heal while the first person regens, when they're thinking the same thing.

upstart feline miscreant (47 feral/14 resto)

 

◊ Quigon

Are we now just posting whats possible for the sake of it? Because 11 healers on domo isn't even remotely close to ideal for a guild learning the encounter.

 

Oneeye

Deviating from the topic a bit, but is anyone else seeing a huge turnover now that school is starting backup? Our guild leader, our Atiesh "Receive", and about 10 other core raiders (myself included) are just burnt out and quitting the game, or at least taking extended breaks. Cross server recruiting seems to be the only thing keeping my guild alive, but even so, our progress has been slacking as of late with so many people stopping.

 

◊ Quigon

summer turnover has been around since the dawn of online gaming... part of making the guidl work is dealing with it.

 

Nurru

I'm less concerned with them dpsing and more concerned that they're using Chain Lightning on a single target rather than Lightning Bolt.

< Aislinana> Why would it be my job to sleep with vontre? Don't I have standards?

 

Nite_Moogle

Technically Chain Lightning is usually more damage if you get a Clearcast proc.

Not that you should be nuking on Ragnaros mind you...