The average or "Sustained" DPS from my guild's last 3 Loatheb kills broken down by average damage per class. Various world buffs were used for each attempt. Mages (all are fire) all get the spore buff first followed by Rogues/Warriors then Hunters and Warlocks. Are these "average" numbers close to what others are seeing?
Imo its not even worth trying to do it half arsed by just using healing pots/bandages. You either have the dps to kill him or you don't. If you think you do, you are going to have to go all out with shadow pots to kill him anyway and if you know you don't have the dps, prolonging the fight for 1 or 2 minutes isn't going to do much. It is much better to just go all out on attempt and see how much you have to step it up rather than pussy footing around and not getting any extra info.
I wasn't suggesting it as a viable approach. We spent the entire evening drilling the first two mins until we were hitting ~65% consistently without the tank ever dying. On our last attempt of the night we just decided to stay in till the death to give people a bit more experience with more of the fight. I personally didn't want people going into the last three minutes of the fight buffed to the gills without any sort of experience of what its like when you've got Dooms, poison, bandages and spores to deal with all under severe time pressure.
Imo its not even worth trying to do it half arsed by just using healing pots/bandages. You either have the dps to kill him or you don't. If you think you do, you are going to have to go all out with shadow pots to kill him anyway and if you know you don't have the dps, prolonging the fight for 1 or 2 minutes isn't going to do much. It is much better to just go all out on attempt and see how much you have to step it up rather than pussy footing around and not getting any extra info.
I wasn't suggesting it as a viable approach. We spent the entire evening drilling the first two mins until we were hitting ~65% consistently without the tank ever dying. On our last attempt of the night we just decided to stay in till the death to give people a bit more experience with more of the fight. I personally didn't want people going into the last three minutes of the fight buffed to the gills without any sort of experience of what its like when you've got Dooms, poison, bandages and spores to deal with all under severe time pressure.
It's also worth considering that similar to Thaddius, though not as severe, Loatheb can cause pretty severe lag and disconnects for some people (something which only doing the first 2 minutes of the fight will never show you). Now obviously there's only so much you can do to cope with this, but certainly giving the healers some experience of losing someone out of the rotation or seeing if anyone really vital is likely to lag out (a group leader for one group getting the spore can be disastrous if they aren't all on the ball) can be helpful, even if you only do it by using bandages/heal pots to take you to the third doom (and likely eating up a repair bill in the process).
I think disconnects are a really good advertisment for world buffs incidentally, our last 3 kills we have had a minimum of 2 people disconnect on each kill and yet we've still snuck a kill in each time (last nights kill was a highlight, with 3 healers disconnecting leading, after some desperate rejigging of the healing rotation, to an eventual MT death at 6%).
last night we had a fire mage keep an ignite going which resulted in him doing over 620k alone. This was basically about 2-2.5x higher then the next person on the list.
Lots of excellent info in this thread, but something that disappoints me is the ongoing "warlocks suck, why bother?" attitude. Do you really expect your locks to try and contribute when you're sitting there telling them "we expect you to come in DEAD LAST, we just bring you for the buffs". They get DKP whether they're 5th or 25th, so who cares? If you've ever had a 1-2% wipe, you probably should care. Some of the anecdotes and screenshots here clearly show that a lock who is creative and pushes hard is far more effective than one who is semi-afk spamming shadowbolts and potting while doing their homework. Your guild's attitude toward them as a DPS class is a major factor in their desire to do their best. Can you kill a boss without a fort buff? Absolutely. Would you ever pull a boss(other than Garr) without a fort buff? Absolutely not. You'd kick yourself if you wiped at 1-2% because of it. Same deal here. Think about it.
Disclaimer: I'm not saying warlocks should be first in the spore rotation, I am saying that cutesy charts like Gurg's "Fire Mages > Warriors > Rogues > Frost Mages > Hunters > * > AFK paladins > Warlocks" are not the kind of thing that improves your raid's DPS.
"They're Dragon Kill Points; not Dragon Feed Points"
Disclaimer: I'm not saying warlocks should be first in the spore rotation, I am saying that cutesy charts like Gurg's "Fire Mages > Warriors > Rogues > Frost Mages > Hunters > * > AFK paladins > Warlocks" are not the kind of thing that improves your raid's DPS.
This is an extremely, extremely unfavorable fight towards Warlocks. Other fights are not so, including Kel'thuzad and Sapphiron.
Without a doubt, warlocks will struggle to do great damage on this fight, simply a fault of the fight not the skill of the player.
To an above poster, your Fury Warriors are either undergeared or doing something wrong. Ours are pushing 300-400k nearly every kill.
To an above poster, your Fury Warriors are either undergeared or doing something wrong. Ours are pushing 300-400k nearly every kill.
World buffs and windfury can make a huge difference in how much damage fury warriors do. As alliance without world buffs I usually do 220-270k range as a fury warrior and the rest of the fury warriors about the same.
Lots of excellent info in this thread, but something that disappoints me is the ongoing "warlocks suck, why bother?" attitude. Do you really expect your locks to try and contribute when you're sitting there telling them "we expect you to come in DEAD LAST, we just bring you for the buffs". They get DKP whether they're 5th or 25th, so who cares? If you've ever had a 1-2% wipe, you probably should care. Some of the anecdotes and screenshots here clearly show that a lock who is creative and pushes hard is far more effective than one who is semi-afk spamming shadowbolts and potting while doing their homework. Your guild's attitude toward them as a DPS class is a major factor in their desire to do their best. Can you kill a boss without a fort buff? Absolutely. Would you ever pull a boss(other than Garr) without a fort buff? Absolutely not. You'd kick yourself if you wiped at 1-2% because of it. Same deal here. Think about it.
Disclaimer: I'm not saying warlocks should be first in the spore rotation, I am saying that cutesy charts like Gurg's "Fire Mages > Warriors > Rogues > Frost Mages > Hunters > * > AFK paladins > Warlocks" are not the kind of thing that improves your raid's DPS.
The more I read your post the more I think you've never actually attempted Loatheb. Everything about this fight is stacked against a warlock's dps:
- Your curses are often removed (You lose mana reapplying them)
- Lifetapping can be dangerous because you only have limited ways to heal yourself to survive impending doom
- Healers cannot heal you (Refer to above)
I can get #1 dps on Maexxna because it's easy to whore the spider spawns with a Flamestrike>FN>CoC>AE combo. Does that mean I'm saying the rogues shouldn't even bother because I'm going to be #1? Of course not, that would be asinine.
edit: I just looked at your guild's website and you haven't even cleared to Heigan. So I'm correct, you haven't even encountered Loatheb at this point. Please don't make baseless assumptions and complain about attitudes on encounters you haven't even seen firsthand please.
Warlocks with Ruin need to be in 1st (preferably) or 2nd group for spore buff.
At a minimum 1 warlock in the first group so the others can borrow the damage from ISB procs.
Warlocks drink 1 GSPP before the fight
Warlocks drink 1 major rejuv at 1 min, 3 min, 5 min (if the fight goes this long)
Warlocks use healthstones at about the same time depending on health levels (plagueheart procs affect things)
Warlocks only cast spells that crit, aka Shadowbolt, as well as constantly refresh the curses (COE COS COR) every 30 seconds.
Warlocks use Shadow Ward IV for every doom 2:30 and up
Warlock bandages somewhere around 4min possibly, depending how well plagueheart bonus has been procing.
200k+ damage with good nax gear (8 hit 8 crit 650 damage), and a 'lowly' destruction build. SM/Ruin and DS/Ruin should be a fair bit higher (10 and 15% respectively). Not bad considering how much mana (and time) is spent recasting curses, on the occasional lifetap, and on the occasional bandage.
If you dont shove the warlocks into the first two spore groups you are throwing away approximately 6000 mana or more, which is like 40,000 to 50,000 damage on this fight. The first major rejuv and healthstone in the cycle can be used exclusively for mana and if you dont spend the mana early enough in the fight, the damage is lost forever.
as for warlocks, why bother putting a warlock in the first three groups when you have 15 damage dealers in your guild that will easily top their damage. Warlock is too restricted by being a shitty class at this point, I just hope that the decent ones give their class another go in PVE with TBC
Could I have done more? Probably. I was in the 7th Spore group and we didn't have CoS. Both things that hit hard, but I'm sure it's doable for a warlock with Plagueheart and major rejuv pots to do at least 150, if not more. Top mage was, of course, the resident ignite bitch.
E: This was out first kill by the way. I'd like to stress as well that everyone except me and Moluch had Onyxia, Hakkar and Wickerman buffs. We were in EPL farming more shards while they got them :(
Your healers are really low in that screenshot right? Aren't other guilds having their healers up in the 60k range, with lowest in the 30?
Those numbers seem very representative of a "normal" guild.
our healers range from 20 to 45k usually. hardly ever had a priest/druid above. some shamans depending on their spec were quite a bit higher of course.
for warlock dps, you just have to adjust your pot/bandage rotation. our locks are var from topping the dps meter and we never took more then 4 to the fight, but 140-170k is easily doable. you lifetap early, bandage early so its up 3 times in the fight and lightwell specced priests help a lot as well. generally our locks and hunters are quite hopelessly behind our fury warriors/rogues/mages in mostly all nax fights. they might be not that good, but i don't think other dps classes are that much better players, its a even level i guess. so yeah, the combination of lock/hunter unfriendly encounters along with very positive class reworks for rogues + mages and fury warriors generally scaling more then any ohter dps class with the proper gear means dps fights are fairly fucked up. if you want easy mode, you don't bring many hunters/locks imo.
Meters are always mage/war/rogue intermixed for the top 10-15, roughly in that order (although obviously not strictly in that order). Hunters start showing up in the 12-15 slots. Top player damage tends to be in the range of 265k-275k; top 10 all do at least 200k. Healer damage tends to range from 30k-90k, barring one druid who doesn't get the spore buff and has a specific fire mage to bandage so the fire mage can keep ignites rolling.
Melador> Incidentally, these last few pages are why people hate lawyers.
Viator> I really don't want to go all Kalman here.
Bury> Just imagine what the world would be like if you used your powers for good.
last night we had a fire mage keep an ignite going which resulted in him doing over 620k alone. This was basically about 2-2.5x higher then the next person on the list.
This may be true however look at the damage the other mages in the raid did. Add them up and divide by the total number of mages. At least so far for my guild, one mage leads the damage charts with the other mages lower down the chart. When averaged out they are collectively behind all other dps classes except warlocks.
However in some damage charts mages are far ahead collectively than all other classes. How does the crit buff change the way mages work? For example what kind of gear set-up becomes more effective for the caster class with the crit buff? Does stacking plus hit items help, etc.
Having Imp SB be up permanently + ruin make for pretty good dmg, provided you know what you're doing. Some of these dmg meters are funny, if your locks can't break 100k dmg, even without COS up then they're complete morons/really undergeared. With ony/flasks you should easily be able to go 140k+ with decent gear. The curse removal is the biggest downside to the fight as a lock, easily 30k~ dmg lost, but if you take 4 locks or so the one not having to be a curse bitch can easily do very well.
The problem isn't that the class is bad as much as most people are just stupid/slackers and don't know what to do besides spamming 1 button nonstop which doesn't work here. With bandages on cooldown, an extra HS in the first minute of the fight and substituting shadow prot pots with major rejuv + shadow ward, mana shouldn't be much of a problem, especially if you wanna get really into it (which you should) and mess with downranking. I alternate between r4/r10 shadowbolts throughout the whole fight. The trick is to do a bit of math and count up how many times exactly you can lifetap without dieing before the enrage and set yourself up in such a way (depending on your hp/mp/buffs) that you end the fight with no mana to cast a bolt and a couple of hundred hp without there ever being a second you didn't shadowbolt besides for lifetap/running for spores.
How to DPS on loatheb as a lock assuming the fight ends before a 7th doom ticks...
15,300 taken from doom ticks. 4600 absorbed by shadow wards. Approx 2500 absorbed from initial shadow pot + approx 3000 healed by 2 rejuv pots. 10k healed from bandages. About 3000 healed from untalented major/greater hstone crits. Approx 2000 healed from deathcoils. If you have 8k hp (you should with world buffs), over the course of the fight you should have about 18k hp to lifetap. In my case, that'd be 20~k (give or take a thousand) mana to use through the fight, or about 30~k with base mp/major rejuvs included. Now figure out how many times to downrank/use max rank shadowbolt to end the fight with no mana and chain shadowbolts for 250~ sec (with lifetap/spore runs). Include jow/bow calculations if you're alliance. This is really simplified but use this basic idea based on your gear/buffs and grats on not being a waste of a raid spot.
as for warlocks, why bother putting a warlock in the first three groups when you have 15 damage dealers in your guild that will easily top their damage. Warlock is too restricted by being a shitty class at this point, I just hope that the decent ones give their class another go in PVE with TBC
Your group setup hurts my brain. Do none of your hunters have tsa?
The BB, where being accepted matters
Originally Posted by Kazanir
This thread is hurting my self-esteem because I've never been hit on (to my knowledge) by a gay man. :/
last night we had a fire mage keep an ignite going which resulted in him doing over 620k alone. This was basically about 2-2.5x higher then the next person on the list.
This may be true however look at the damage the other mages in the raid did. Add them up and divide by the total number of mages. At least so far for my guild, one mage leads the damage charts with the other mages lower down the chart. When averaged out they are collectively behind all other dps classes except warlocks.
However in some damage charts mages are far ahead collectively than all other classes. How does the crit buff change the way mages work? For example what kind of gear set-up becomes more effective for the caster class with the crit buff? Does stacking plus hit items help, etc.
oh for sure if you actually avged out their damage they would be behind all the rogues and fury warriors but i just wanted to point out how important a good ignite roll is for this if your not using world buffs. but yea its usually
ignite mage/rogues + fury warriors/other fire mages
The problem isn't that the class is bad as much as most people are just stupid/slackers and don't know what to do besides spamming 1 button nonstop which doesn't work here.
Thank you, that's exactly the point I'm trying to get across. Nurru unfortunately missed it, as most people do. You have to SEE the difference between a stupid/lazy lock and one who REALLY works at it to understand, and unfortunately the majority of locks don't take the time to do that. Sitting there going "lolwarlockdps" isn't exactly pushing them to try.
EDIT: Yes, I figured you might have Nurru, but the point I'm trying to make is one which relates to the general attitude toward warlocks in Naxx. I didn't make a list of "locks need to do this this this and this for Loatheb", now did I? I left that to the people who HAVE participated in the encounter, so I fail to see how you attacking my experience has ANYTHING to do with my post. If you want to debate my point, then debate it. Don't go "lolnoob" and completely ignore what I wrote. This isn't coming from somebody who just killed Magmadar. I hear people talk about how "useless" my class is on a daily basis, and I can tell you right now that the people who let that sentiment get to them end up producing far lower DPS.
"They're Dragon Kill Points; not Dragon Feed Points"
The problem isn't that the class is bad as much as most people are just stupid/slackers and don't know what to do besides spamming 1 button nonstop which doesn't work here.
Thank you, that's exactly the point I'm trying to get across. Nurru unfortunately missed it, as most people do. You have to SEE the difference between a stupid/lazy lock and one who REALLY works at it to understand, and unfortunately the majority of locks don't take the time to do that. Sitting there going "lolwarlockdps" isn't exactly pushing them to try.
If a guild's Warlocks were worth anything they would work to prove they could dps to dispel the beliefs rather than relegate themselves to subpar as you seem to imply some are doing because of guild attitude.
If a guild's Warlocks were worth anything they would work to prove they could dps to dispel the beliefs rather than relegate themselves to subpar as you seem to imply some are doing because of guild attitude.
It's not as easy as you make it sound, unfortunately. Locks can be intelligent players and good people, but name another class that needs to get so deeply into the mathematics of the game to be effective? For some people it's just not that easy to sit there with a notepad and windows calculator and spend hours working out what order to tap/SB/use consumables, what ranks to use and when, etc etc. It's mind numbingly boring to them and while they COULD force themselves to do it, why bother when their guild doesn't care anyway? Sure, myself and some like-minded people do it regardless, but there are many who don't and I have a hard time holding it against them when there's no recognition to be had for it. I WISH it was as easy as just carrying a few mana gems, fireballing til OOM, evocating, and fireballing til OOM again(and before you go saying it, I have a level 60 mage).
We're not talking about noobs who wipe the raid on C'thun/Grobbulus/Thaddius here. These people aren't dead weight, they just reach a point where nobody really cares where they finish on the charts except them, and since nobody else does, they also stop caring.
"They're Dragon Kill Points; not Dragon Feed Points"
for the most part this is true. having the right guild attitude plays a large part in how well people will do. If you tell people they will be marginalized because they're not supposed to do that well, it's damn likely that that's what they will become. No other class has to put up with these kind of bullshit preconceptions (no not even Hunters). That it's not always completely clear what to do to maximize your dps doesn't help things. Of course some people may be immune to this guild attitude and do well. But there are shitty reasons for that attitude even existing in the first place.
edit: or, who knows, maybe we're intended to be marginalized and denied CoS and all that just to make playing warlock more warlocky
The 2 warriors on the top are our 2nd and 3rd OTs using Crul/Widows Remorse/Thunderfury and the 3rd war is an orc using Severence. I thought him being MS spec would lower him by a lot but he is a beast with the best dps plate we have.
10/30/06, 9:11 AM
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