◊ Rob

Ahh, but what happens if you're taking that Feral away from a hunter group? (I imagine I'm not the first to ask this question.)

We usually have something sort of like this (our GM is a hunter and plays a resto shaman alt, so hunters quite often get some buffs)

Tank group: 2 prot warriors, a lock, a paladin, and some other non-buffing class
Melee DPS group: 1 arms or fury warrior, 2 rogues, enhancement shaman (me!)
Hunter group: 2 hunters, resto shaman, and some other non-buffing class

Now suppose you've got to assign 1 rogue and 1 feral druid. The rogue in the hunter group would get GoA + 2x FI, the rogue in the melee group would get WF + UR, but if the druid's in the melee group it's GoA + UR (based on your earlier post that makes GoA the optimal choice for such a group) and in the hunter group GoA + 2x FI.

What maximizes raid DPS?

 

MikeMo

I know this is a melee topic but I would personally like to see the comparisons of 3x BM hunter, enh. shaman (dropping GoA) and feral druid. 9% damage increase for the whole party, GoA that benefits the whole party and does not diminish DPS on the shamans part, UR that benefits the 3 hunter pets and the druid and of course the LotP for all. I am pretty sure that group would absolutely destroy any rogue group. It would be neat to see how magic caster compositions would compare as well to melee.

 

tobiah

The question also arises as to which group gains more benefit from a resto shaman in the group. A Warrior and 3 rogues or 3 hunters and a feral. Assuming you only had one shaman to put in a group.

What is the average increase in DPS that rogues and warriors expect to gain from a resto shaman, basicly non upgraded totems , no shaman rage and not counting the bonus heroism brings. The Hunter and Feral Druid spreadsheets do not model the bonus heroism brings.

According to the numbers I posted earlier in this thread for using a resto shaman in the hunter group.

Me (Best Spec): 1891.85 DPS -> 2018.94 (127.09 DPS increase)
2nd Beast Hunter 1721.74 DPS -> 1846.26 (124.52 DPS increase)
Survival Hunter: 1519.02 DPS -> 1607.36 (88.34 DPS increase) -> Expose Weakness goes from 207.56AP to 233.04AP
Feral Druid: 1012.92 DPS -> 1089.93 (77.01 DPS increase)

We are all in at least mostly Tier 5 with some Tier 6 level gear.

If we would take an "average" it seems like a beast spec hunter might gain around 125 or so DPS and a Survival Hunter around 85DPS.

Having a shaman in a group with the survival Hunter increases the bonus to Expose Weakness by about 25 or so attack power. So with the shaman in the hunter group all physical DPS gains about an extra 25 attack power from the survival hunter.

This works out to about 416DPS increase from the hunter group getting a resto shaman. Not counting the added bonus the bigger Expose Weakness brings the other physical DPS classes. That DPS number is also not counting the extra bonus heroism would also bring the group.

In my guild our raids usually have 1 DPS warrior, 3 rogues, 1 feral (DPS or off-tanking) and 3 hunters. However at times when we only have 1 shaman the trick is figuring out where to put him for maximum benefit. Traditional wisdom has always been that the "pure" melee classes always benefit more from even a resto shaman. However as gearing changes I am not sure that is always true anymore.

 

xyruul

WWS Scoreboard Gives an easy to read adjusted time for the top 15 kills on each boss. Interestingly almost every t6 fight is 2-4 just like Teron. Archimonde and Bloodboil are 4-5, as are most t5 fights. Cooldowns play a large part on group composition and should be included to some degree since classes scale so differently with them.
Modeling the ideal dpson some sort of baseline time and then scaling back for your individual raids situation is always easier then modeling sustained dps and then trying to scale it up, especially since most guilds improve every week.

On the note of the druid modeling, druids vary wildly with gear (mostly because so few druids get ideal gear over the 10 people who compete with them for it) and whether or not they have a mangle bot. The gear Arkadu was wearing this morning doesn't look like his full pve gear, at least not as I remember it. I know I gain a couple hundred dps by using 2xt4 over 4xt6 and dropping 2xt6 in favor of other things while spamming shred when there is another druid providing mangles. In contrast, the dps rotations of rogues/warriors/shamans doesn't change regardless of how many are in a raid. That effects the numbers to some degree, probably minor though.

 

seminarca

The 1 Enhancement Shaman restriction is core to the issue at hand. As mentioned before, having 2 Enhancement groups in a raid basically solves all melee grouping issues. All melee/tanks would have access to UR/totems/shouts/LotP depending on how many of the other classes you have. I know and love that raid style, my previous raid group almost always had 2 Enhancement Shamans and we ran 2 x tank/melee groups. Of course, this did mean the tank sometimes had to do without Devotion Aura, Warlock Imp and Tree Aura, but tank deaths were never an issue for us on progression.

It's not assumed there is only one Feral, the original group comps had 2 Ferals (one in the tank group, assumed Bear for the encounter, or lesser geared Cat that's simply helping tanks with LotP/iLotP). Only the Feral that is dpsing had considerations for being in the melee group however. If we assumed lesser number of Rogues, then we wouldn't be having this discussion to begin with, as you wouldn't have a choice where to slot people.

But yeh, I see your point. Maybe this is too restrictive in its intent.

The following set of posts also bring up some good points:

Probably cut and dry infinite length models aren't the best way to look at it. Ideal would be a full blown multi-class combat simulator with AI and configurable fight lengths (for intelligent consumable/cooldown popping). Or real life results (i.e. the Teron parses), which paint a completely different picture.

I'm willing to concede inexperience with endgame and dubious assumption making leading to this. I said before that these results were contrary to what I was expecting, and it seems that it's just the way I went about gathering the data that led to it.

Can anyone think of a way to salvage this discussion? There's not much 2.4 speculation that I can think of that might drastically alter the status quo.

 

Letarian

Another thing to consider:

If one of your Prot Tanks is a Prot Pally, the best place for the Ret Pally could be with them, because they will benefit from the +10% holy damage, which obviously translates into a greater threat cap for the raid.

 

Gormal

My Excel isn't working right now, so I'm curious to see the actual numbers when you throw a ret paladin into various group setups versus sticking them elsewhere. There's nowhere that I can find on the forums that has good math done detailing this. It seems that most raids run:

Enhancement Shaman
DPS Warrior
Ret Paladin
Rogue
Rogue/Druid

Retribution Theorycraft Thread

 

Jarush

Would like to know which one of the following setups is generally better:

Melee group:
*enha shaman
*fury warrior
*feral druid
*rogue
*rogue

+retri paladin in no wf group

or

Melee group:
*enha shaman
*fury warrior
*feral druid
*rogue
*retri paladin

+rogue in no wf group


Because I strongly believe that rogue's personal dps gain in melee group > paladin's personal dps gain in melee group + 2% for the whole group, I would use the first option. Problem is that there is also different opinions in our guild so I would like to get a confirmation if I'm right or wrong and which setup we should use (if we have a retadin in raid).

 

Grimfrik

Jarush,

We are having the same discussion right now within our own guild.

I actually got sucked into a discussion regarding it in the Ret Pally megathread here as well.

I did my own math on the subject but I would like to see some others do the same modeling.

 

Ragnor

I had a look the comments in the ret thread and from a quick look at Schadrak's armory he clearly has sub optimal gem and enchant choices, 6 str gems instead of 8 wtf, no enchant on his weapon. All his arena teams in his history are ~1300ish arena ratings (or sub 1500) indicating a probable lack of skill or attention to detail.

I would say given the gear disparity plus the likely skill/game knowledge disparity - it's the correct decision for now for total raid dps to move him out for a rogue.

You made several pointless random rants, for example your comments about Theras' comparison were pretty off.. At the end of the day of course spreadsheet theorycraft assumes the player is actually good and can execute a high dps rotation which doesn't really seem to be the case for your guild.

The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements. Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest.

www.retpaladin.com

 

Grimfrik

At the risk of derailing, because I have already been accused of Trolling and recieved an infraction, I disagree a touch Ragnor.

Spreadsheet modeling assumes the best possible scenario. All the stars align, 100% attention to cycles/rotation, none of your buffers die, etc...

So if spreadsheet modeling doesn't support a specific makeup due to the numbers, than in the real world the disparity is going to be even bigger. There is no way you are going to "outperform" the spreadsheets, but you definitely can underperform it. I know my spreadsheet shows that I should be pumping out 1350ish DPS right now, but I am lucky to crack 1050ish on most fights... we all have room to improve. So while the theoretical numbers might show X vs Y while the reality numbers show W vs Z it doesn't mater because the gap remains about the same.

As far as Theras goes, his math is way off and he made very myopic calculations to prove his point at the expense of all the variables I had previously posted (Like how to get the math to work out the way he wanted he gave me sanc aura in his model, magically produced two beast master hunters to buff me that were never part of the model, forgot to add in the 2% bonus the Pally gives to three members of the ranged group that a rogue wouldn't bring to the table if they were in that group, etc...). So my comments weren't out of line at all imo.

 

Yvil

Hello!

I would like to se what class benefits more and give more total DPS

Melee grp:
Arms Warr
Sword rogue
Sword Rogue
Enh shaman


And now the big question!

Feral Druid or retri paladin?
As im atm being put in the tank grp and im not happy with that and doing crap dps.

 

Exemplar

Feral Druid gains Battle shout and (if the Shaman twists) GoA. Feral gives 5% crit.
Ret paladin gains Battle shout, GoA, WF. Paladin gives +2% damage.

Without WF your Paladin is going to suck. If there's a Shaman in the MT group (even Resto) dropping WF, they can scrape by like the Feral does (regardless of Shaman, since Resto don't totem twist).

From my research, it would actually be best to have Paladin with the melee and put the Feral with your BM Hunters. Your crit helps their Ferocious Inspiration. Their FI helps your DPS. More Raid DPS with Ret and Feral there than sticking either in with the MT. Ideally the Hunters have a Resto dropping GoA instead of WF, so total win for Hunters, Bear, Paladin, and rest of melee.

 

Username

Is it posible that the modelling or the variables are inaccurate here? 1 dps difference between WF and GoA+IP sounds a little low. My personal DPS is lower than these figures but the Rogue Gear (not DPS) spreadsheet shows me as losing over 36dps switching from WF to GoA+IP. If I bump up the quality of a few pieces of my gear in the spreadsheet then the gap between WF and GoA+IP goes up even further.

 

seminarca

This is a fairly old thread, and since then it has been discovered that the Rogue DPS spreadsheet greatly undervalued Windfury totem. The same sims run with that correction in mind would probably yield a far bigger difference. The optimal melee group at this stage in the game's lifetime is inarguably Arms/Enh/Rogue/Rogue with the fifth being Rogue or Ret Paladin depending on availability/gear/skill. Ferals are best put in the Hunter group or the tank group if your raid doesn't run with a Hunter group (which in my mind is a big mistake considering how well Hunters are doing at the moment).

 

alienangel

I would also like to see that group, but with one of the hunters replaced with a warrior using talented and trinketed Battle Shout, since if you're giving pets UR, you may as well give then an extra several hundred AP.

Of course the shaman would need to keep up imp SoE, imp GoA, and twist in WF for the warrior.

This means losing 3% damage, on each person. Assuming the hunters are each doing a baseline of 2.5k dps, that means each of them lose 75 DPS. Would the pets gain 75 dps each? I think they would, but I'm not sure. Would the gain on the pets outweigh the loss of 3% of whatever dps the shaman and druid also lose? Probably not - but perhaps the addition of battleshout on the shaman and feral, and the addition of 6% on the warrior will make up that loss as well? The warrior would only lose sanctity aura in being moved from the melee group to the hunter group, and basically the only group comp awkwardness this causes is where do you stick the survival hunter, since you're likely not running a third group with a GoA down.


While we're discussing mixing groups though, it's worth mentioning that throwing a hunter into a group with a shaman using GoA and heroism is not the same as putting a shaman in a hunter group. In the latter case, the shaman would use his heroism when the hunters are all ready for it, when Beastial Wrath is about to be used (for threat reasons, this will probably be the 2nd BW cooldown, around 2:30 into the fight, although I imagine higher TPS guilds than mine manage fine on the first BW 30s in). If you're tossing say a hunter into a melee group or heaven forbid, a caster group, chances are his shaman isn't going to tailor his heroism to when the hunter needs it - which is likely a completely different time from when a warrior or a fire mage needs it.

 

Feanor73

I think this is a rather good summary of the situation.

We have to go back to the natural synergies :
with Windfury totem : Huge bonus for Dps warriors, Ret paladins, very good bonus for rogues, no bonus for ferals.
with Grace of Air totem : very good bonus for ferals.

So ferals are best put in the hunter group indeed.

About the fifth spot in the melee group, a post was made in the Ret paladin thread, which seemed to favor Ret except if the third rogue did vastly more DPS than the Ret paladin (warglaives).

 

thesmoosh

I keep seeing this on these forums, but isn't it entirely trivial for a prot pally to just spec 21 points into ret for the 10% extra threat, and all he'd give up would be avenger's shield which is pretty much useless outside of 5 mans?

I've actually tested this out last week on teron. We run a melee group and a hunter group, with two enhance shamans. I asked both shammies to twist and arranged the groups as:

Grp 1
Fury
BM
BM
Enh
Feral

Grp 2
MS War
Rogue
Rogue
Enhance
Survival

The survival hunter in the situation loses 5% crit and 6% from FI, and possibly some GoA uptime. His pet gains a battle shout. The fury warrior on the other hand gains 5% crit and 6% from FI while the hunter pets, the feral, and the enhance shammy all get a battle shout. I could post the WWS but it's rather inconclusive due to a couple of deaths, including the holy pally that was keeping up JoW for me. I'd like to ask though, do the dps gain from the battle shout for grp 1 buffing the fury warrior's dps justify sticking the survival hunter in the melee group? Would it still have been a correct switch if instead of the MS warrior we had a ret pally?

 

Iluminati

Avenger's shield isn't useless. It takes away from some really good tanking talents, and it also means you cant run devotion aura for yourself. It's really not a good idea.

 

Buanna

No, it is not trivial. The typical protection Paladin build is 0/49/12. In order to get to Sanctity Aura, a Palatank has to forgo important tanking talents (of which Avenger's Shield is the least useful) and would be required to take several talents of no use to tanking.

Boni and Bonii are not words.
Bonuses is.

 

zeusal

Every argument I see for Ret Pali in the melee group is for themselves to increase their DPS; is anyone else seeing this? My questions is for the actual melee dps group what is the best. Feral Improved LoftP also heals the critting classes for 40-50% of their effective healing. I'm sorry but if you think the Pali judge is going to do anything near that you don't understand how the ILoftP healing works, Light is typicaly half the healing of LoftP. I'm not concerned with the Pali dps, just the melee group themselves.

We nearly always run with 2 ferals and 1 Prot Pali. Typically we setup the groups as follows:

Melee group
Enh Shaman
Fury Warrior
Feral
Rogue
Rogue

Tank group
Warrior
Warrior
Prot Pali
Feral
Resto

So the question is, where do you put the Ret Pali, move one of the ferals? My first inclination is that the ret pali belongs in the tank group, as i'm not so concerned with their personal dps in favor of the most overall raid dps. In the tank group they offer an aura as well as increased holy damage for pali tank, which is excellent for AoE tanking intensive situations (of sorts, multiple mobs *I know) that are so common in BC raiding. Perhaps the answer is move the Tank group feral to the hunter group, and put the Ret in their spot in the tank group. Any thoughts/comments?

 

Ragnor

First up in practice either group works perfectly fine, the difference is not an avalanche one way or the other as far as I can tell.

The 2% damage vs 5% crit auras are pretty much even for the melee group, the trivial healing from lotp or jol is irrelevant given the CoH and Chain heal spam in raids thesedays. At the end of the day it really comes down to player/skill gear because "the best" raid dps setup does typically come down to how much personal dps does the player lose without the melee group.

Typically a paladin always loses more dps without the melee group, we have weaker base dps and alot of % modifiers for damage (Vengeance 15%, Avenging Wrath 30%, Sanctity Aura 10% holy, Imp Sanctity Aura 2%).

Are both players ideally geared? Do both frequent places like EJ? Have they both theorycrafted their ideal gear and skill/pot rotations? If one player isn't as up to it with ideal skill/pot rotations they going to be worse raid dps in the melee group.

Stacked hunter groups are all the rage lately, check out sk gaming's new record for Brutallus raid dps.

The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements. Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest.

www.retpaladin.com

 

BigWhil

Nice thread.

I have been trying to "Educate" My raid leaders (subtly) as how to best setup the raid groups.

Our hunters are the floaters atm and just sit wherever...
One of my thoughts is that hunters groups and Mellee groups blend well together from certain buffs, making hunter groups more appealing in my opinion.

To the Guilds that use a hunter group how do you set up the rest of the raid (mages/healers/locks etc) do they get relegated to "wherever they fit"?

Another Question - How essential are ret pallies for raidwide DPS? (Don't leave home w/o one or waste of space)

while this is alittle off topic i cant find a thread to put it in.

Back on topic -

While i know the OP is trying to get the most out of the melee group, my thoughts are with endgame raiding shouldnt we be trying to get the most out of the raidgroup.

 

Ragnor

A solid high dps group for hunters is: Shaman, Hunterx3, Feral Druid

On a 5-6min fight like Brutallus for hunters Judgement of Wisdom regenerates ~12-15k mana, around 5-7k for casters. Probably some ridiculous number for enh shaman (dual wield, 50% proc rate) allowing them to totem twist and use shocks for extra dps.

No boss strictly requires a ret paladin but it's a 3rd or 4th blessing, solid dps and more mana which is all good. Everyone gets to use haste or destruction pots instead of mana pots. That can push you over the the raid dps needed for Brutallus if you're stuck just below it.

If we're short on healers I do the fight as holy, if we're not I do it as ret.

Regarding getting the most out of other groups, we found making a warlockx3, spriest, shaman group was pretty massive dps. More so that giving the mages a spriest sadly (for them).

The universe is run by the complex interweaving of three elements. Energy, matter, and enlightened self-interest.

www.retpaladin.com

 

CoroHD

The DPS for Rogues you are using from the spreadsheets is throwing up a red flag for me.

Heres a sample WWS of a Blood Legion Brut kill (and therefore Furi, your example Rogue): Wow Web Stats

Furi (your example rogue) did 2338 DPS over the encounter. The other imba-geared rogue in Blood Legion Lars did even more. Your example has a rogue doing 1733.

I understand you removed the glaives for your spreadsheet example to stay within reason, and the glaives are indeed a pretty big DPS increase. They arn't a 600 DPS upgrade though.

Heres a Teron kill from my guild: Wow Web Stats

The top DPS is a rogue with Infamy/Merc slicer with 1 T6 piece, badge gear, and no other gear above 4/5 Hyjal and 4/9 BT.

He did 1800 DPS over the encounter. Your example has a rogue doing 1733. How is an badly geared rogue (relative to Furi at least) doing more DPS than the spreadsheet value of a mostly best-in-slot geared rogue.

Somewhere in your calculations there must have been a mistake. Spreadsheets are supposed to be numbers you strive for assuming you run a perfect cycle, not something you exceed by 400+ dps when you change your weapons.