[Balance] Encounter Mechanics (T14) - Page 4

Lilija · 11/04/12, 6:43 PM

Originally Posted by mstWeal

Depending on your strategy, it might not be appropriate to AOE all the time. If your raid decides to focus down one particular mob group, from which only 1 mob is active, it is not helpful if you spam Hurricane. Yes you might get crazy dps but that's just not worth it in my opinion. Applying dots to secondary targets gives you time to cast some spells on the primary target. Also, you will have to transition between storms from time to time or you will be oom very quickly.

The key question is how much time you can spare on adds to not hit enrage. If you don't have problems with dealing fast with add actions, taking them all down together is the most dps efficient and then focusing on one group becomes irrelevant since they will go down more less in the same time.

The logs I have analized had adds going down in about 2-3min (the best moonkin dps on that fight came from mostly Solar eclipse). In this time you won't go oom assuming you are using CA somewhere at the start. However, above that time you will be forced to switch eclipse eventually.

Also see http://elitistjerks.com/f73/t130885-...iscussion/p11/ for a discussion about aoe options. As far as the discussion went, it should be better to use the eclipsed dot and then AS/Hurricane. WrathCalcs Research is still necessary though. However, my personal experience (on other fights) is that straight away storming without using dots leads to higher dps.

The reason why it's best to combine DoTs and AoE comes from the fact that DoTs last longer than Hurricane. Above some amount of targets Hurricane will do significantly more than multidot on its own. The question is tho how many targets you should DoT before starting to cast AoE. As I was playing around with WC it seems that the best effect is to cast DoTs in the time difference between Hurricane and DoT time but that varies a lot depending on Hero/BL and NG.
Having that in mind you need to remember that on this particular fight the AoE phase will have low NG uptime and only partial Hero/BL uptime. During both NG and Hero, you can fit about 4-5 DoTs but most of the time there is no point in casting more than 2 between Hurricanes.

♦ Tecton · 11/05/12, 4:28 AM

Updated (I think) everything to here. Great input, guys!

Narwhal6 · 11/05/12, 4:59 AM

Hello - I'm Närwhal on the server Proudmoore in case you'd like to "look" at my armory / WoL parses.

You really should go into more detail about what specs work better on what fights and how do use your CDs.

For instance - NV is a very strong DPS CD that should be use for DPS means but can be timed on some fights to be that extra help on Heals. A prime example would be Elegon. You would be able to use NV/Inc/CA each time you enter Phase 1 or 10 seconds into Phase 1 so you can top people off / heal for the Add explosions (More important for normal). NV at the Heroism Burn at the end can provide massive HPS (On our first Heroic Kill we actually had 1 healer dead the entire burn phase).

Here's my thoughts -

Think about the duration of the fight. Are you going to get a good amount of use from the NV/Inc combo or should you spec into HotW for the Passive Int.

Dream of Cenarius is a talent that is impossible to maximize effectively. You can max your DPS by casting the NS/HT or HT on yourself - but that generally would be a wasted heal unless you casted it on a target that could actually use the heal. Most of the time...you would lose out on DPS finding a player that could use that heal.

The NV/INC combo becomes much stronger when you have an on use trinket to pair with or Heroism/Bonus DPS mechanic in the fight (ie. Gara'jal).

I'll post more later... but I noticed your Amber-Shaper and Empress Notes were low.

Mel'Jarak-

Eclipsed Dots are important.
I used a NV/INC build.
Use SS procs on the Boss once you kill your first set of Adds.
Don't bother using Hurricane/Astral Storm.
I had two big NV/Inc/CA moments while killing Adds. The last one was saved and used during the Heroism.
Symbiosis on a Warlock helps with the AoE damage at the end a ton.

Amber-Shaper -

DoT everything with your Eclipse DoT.
Time SS procs with the x2 damage from the Construct to help burst it down.
I used an INC/NV build for our kill where you can get 2 uses for sure, but 3 if you're lucky - meaning you aren't turned into a Construct right away in P3.
Try timing your Inc/NV so you can have it up for the Heroism P3 burn ASAP. That might mean holding off the use of this CD in P2 if you are pushing quickly.
A HoTW Build may be appropriate if you spend a lot of time as the Construct.
Stampeding Roar is a great way to escape the Scalpel and continue DPSing quicker.
Use Tranq as a back up when a Monstrosity Explosion goes off due to fail interrupt.

Empress -

I used a NV/INC build again. It's very effective. Use on Pull, During P2 to AoE/Cleave down adds, Start of P3 with Heroism.
Make sure you keep a constant buff of the Poison-Drenched Armor once P2 begins and keep it as long as possible. I believe it was about 9.5% of my total damage.
Typhoon is very very strong/effective for helping people kite Adds in P2.
Moonkins using Symbiosis on a Warlock can stand in a Dissonance Field for a very long time.
I liked using the Wild Charge for Disengage on this fight. I would refresh my buff by running to the tank and then disengage away so I could continue DPS while getting 5 yards apart ASAP for the AoE damage.

Few things to note: I have never found a use for Force of Nature and Soul of the Forest. There may be a point in time that their scaling will beat out the INC/CA combo but I highly doubt we'll see that happen. I absolutely despise Moonkin Treants in PvE - you'll never see me use them.

I can not emphasize enough how important timing is. You really need to pay attention to how long fights are and when critical moments happen to maximize your damage. A moonkin that wastes their 4 CDs (Including a potion) on a mistimed event will easily be 10-20k DPS behind a Moonkin timing their skills correctly.

♦ Tecton · 11/05/12, 6:40 AM

Thanks for the tips, will update shortly. I've been trying to just collate the conclusions/points made in the thread rather than filling in a bunch of my own ideas (especially after only getting a few pulls into some of the bosses before they died in HoF, I didn't have much time to tune my approach).

Lauser · 11/05/12, 10:01 AM

Originally Posted by Narwhal6

Mel'Jarak-

Eclipsed Dots are important.
I used a NV/INC build.
Use SS procs on the Boss once you kill your first set of Adds.
Don't bother using Hurricane/Astral Storm.
I had two big NV/Inc/CA moments while killing Adds. The last one was saved and used during the Heroism.
Symbiosis on a Warlock helps with the AoE damage at the end a ton.

Really appreciate your insight on this Närwhal. I saw your very impressive parse the other day and tried to mimic the rotation myself. However, somehow I could not pull it off (I put the blame on my lack of gear atm). My own DPS seemed to be a lot worse.

I then switched to a more 'standard' rotation (dot up with eclipsed dot & hurricane, stay in solar after starting rotation), which gave me a 30ish ranked parse in the end.

Did you ever run into problems with 'bad' SS procs by transitioning between eclipses? I.e. did you use Wrath/Starfire to transition?

I will try your approach again next week, since I really hate standing still and channeling hurricane :/

Zantaz · 11/05/12, 12:38 PM

During Blade Lord Ta'yak last night, I found that Wild Charge is a very good choice for both Phases 1 and 2.

In P1, you can Wild Charge (Moonkin) back through tornadoes without getting knocked back by them - which means, if you get knocked back after a stack and can see you're going to hit a tornado, you can WC in midair to avoid this.

Also, when running up towards the boss in P2 in Cat Form, you can Wild Charge (Cat) the last 25-30 yards, with the added bonus of being placed behind the boss straightaway, out of reach of any other tornado spawns. Again, you can WC through a tornado to reach the boss, removing some of the danger element of reaching him.

EDIT: Clarified which form's WC I am referring to in each instance, to avoid confusion.

magojo · 11/05/12, 3:34 PM

Regarding the wild charge, you can also use it in humanoid form when stacking up for the Unseen Strike.

Lilija · 11/05/12, 4:28 PM

Originally Posted by Narwhal6

Mel'Jarak-

Eclipsed Dots are important.
I used a NV/INC build.
Use SS procs on the Boss once you kill your first set of Adds.
Don't bother using Hurricane/Astral Storm.
I had two big NV/Inc/CA moments while killing Adds. The last one was saved and used during the Heroism.
Symbiosis on a Warlock helps with the AoE damage at the end a ton.

I have noticed you are doing 10 mans. I don't know what exactly differs from 25 man but your add tactic isn't optimal for 25 man (I've been using it on our first tries and it was very bad compared to everyone else in the group). Anyway, top 25 man parses go for AoE with DoT filler.

Zantaz · 11/05/12, 4:54 PM

Just had my first attempts on Garalon tonight and HotW really shines for burst on-pull - DoT a leg up with a prepot, use HotW and you can take advantage of the leg debuff to deal some insane damage for the first 45s.

We didn't get more than a couple of minutes into the fight this evening, but it looks like a good way to get some actual use of the debuff at the beginning and end of the fight.

Narwhal6 · 11/05/12, 6:15 PM

I forgot to apply that I am a 10 man raider and not a 25.

10 mans have two ways of doing the fight - 2 tank or 1 tank.

For both strats, I still found it better to Eclipse DoT and ignore Hurricane. There are several mechanics that require movement making Hurricane a bad filler - Resin, Boomerang - Blade, Amber Traps. I thought 25 man have the same amount of Mobs as 10 man so I don't really see the need for Hurricane ever unless you aren't using all of the CC.

I find using high crit rating and Shooting Stars to be my best mode of attack along with Starfall uptime. I'm actually excited to try this fight next week since I just earned my two piece off Empress this week.

Just keep in mind that the strategy I'm using is more directed to prep for Heroic Mode as well. Adds will continue to respawn, so you'll never have "ok nothing is alive just burn boss". I believe keeping the Instant Cast SS procs on the Boss to be the most effective while I dot/nuke. Now that I have to 2piece...I'll play around with this next week (I might have to purposefully wipe the raid somehow though).

Some insight for Garalon -

For Progression - whether normal or Heroic, Moonkins are going to feel the need to always "dot-up" the legs but you really should think about how to maximize damage for your raid. I look at the fight as the boss having two "inside" and two "outside" legs. Since most people kite the boss around clockwise on the edge of the room - you'll notice that two of the legs are generally out of reach for melee. These are the Outside legs. To "help" your raid while helping your DPS, most of your damage will be on the boss. I dot the two Outside Legs to help with my SS procs while gradually killing those legs. I believe with my dots and the Warlock's, we were able to kill both outside legs twice for the whole fight. Most of the Leg damage will be done by your Cleavers - Rogue/Warrior/DK ect... on the inside legs. Letting your Cleave DPS use the Inside Legs to get the extra damage with Cleave on the boss is more beneficial than you as the Moonkin standing in the circle and DPSing the leg with out the cleave.

hercdeisel · 11/07/12, 11:13 AM

Hey Narwhal, Apologies for creeping on your log but I was curious about some of the more precise details of your strategy since you had such great results with a non-Hurricane based approach. I thought I might share what I found to help clarify your strategy for others.

First, here's the WoL query set I used for anyone who wants to go through one of these logs:

[{"spellNames": ["Moonfire"], "eventTypes": [6]}, {"spellNames": ["Eclipse (Lunar)"]}, {"spellNames": ["Celestial Alignment"]}, {"spellNames": ["Eclipse (Solar)"]}, {"spellNames": ["Sunfire"], "eventTypes": [6]}]

The basic idea that might not have been obviuos from your first post describing the strategy is as follows:
While all adds are up: At the beginning of each eclipse dot everything with the eclipsed DoT only and do not reapply it. Just transition to next eclipse.
When you get down to the last set of adds, apply both the eclipsed DoT and the uneclipsed DoT so you have basically the same number of SS procs as you did earlier.

So, while the multi-dotting is important, it's also important to not over do it by spending too much time on your dots either by casting both eclipsed and uneclipsed dots or by refreshing them at the end of eclipse. The loss in NG and Starfalls isn't worth the extra uptime. Just let them tick and let your SS procs carry you quickly to the next eclipse. BUT you do want to maximize your chances at SS procs. So as the # of adds goes down, you should spend more time DoTting, even with the uneclipsed DoT.

Narwhal6 · 11/07/12, 5:10 PM

Awesome work. I appreciate you explaining it better.

Zantaz · 11/08/12, 8:56 AM

Killed Ta'yak again tonight and wanted to point out that giving Symbiosis to a Warrior for this fight is an excellent trade. The raid gets an extra Stampeding Roar for the Phase 2 run and Intervene allows you to stack almost instantaneously for the Unseen Strike. Coupled with WC (Moonkin) afterwards, you can cut your actual movement in P1 to almost zero.

Tuscarora · 11/09/12, 10:06 AM

On Mel'jarak, it isn't clear to me that the optimal AoE strategy involves combining DoTs and Hurricane. What I mean is that, from a theoretical point of view, if it is optimal to put some dots but not a lot of them between Hurricanes then it is better to put *all* dots and only channel Hurricane if everything has dots rolling (and that is impossible once the number of targets surpasses 14/(1.5*2)*(1 + effective haste) ). In reverse, if Hurricane is better than dotting *everything*, then it is better than dotting *anything*. Therefore "casting some DoTs then Hurricane" deals less damage than either "spam DoTs" or "spam Hurricane" (only exception is when "some DoTs" means "the Eclipsed DoT whenever possible")

That is, if:

1) You have some fixed amount of GCDs to spend on several possible actions (which are available or not at a given point in time)
2) You need to choose how to distribute the GCDs between the actions
3) The amount of damage you add on a GCD does only depend on what action it is (no diminishing/increasing returns and no interaction between spells)

Then the optimal rotation is to spam the highest DPET spell available, be it Hurricane, SS or a DoT (defining "DoT available" as "there exists at least one target without that DoT"). Therefore, the optimal rotation should be one of:

a) Hurricane spam
b) DoTs spam
c) Eclipsed DoTs spam > Hurricane when everything is dotted
d) SS procs > DoTs spam
e) SS procs > Eclipsed DoTs spam > Hurricane

In all cases, the optimal rotation involves spamming the highest DPET spell that is available (there is no "cast DoTs on X targets then Hurricane" since that strat would be outclassed by either "spam DoTs" or "spam Hurricane")

Note: on Celestial Alignment, a GCD spent on DoTs deals 2x damage but the same Hurricane as a Solar Hurricane, so the optimal rotation may be different during CA.

Tuscarora · 11/09/12, 10:10 AM

Originally Posted by Zantaz

During Blade Lord Ta'yak last night, I found that Wild Charge is a very good choice for both Phases 1 and 2.

In P1, you can Wild Charge (Moonkin) back through tornadoes without getting knocked back by them - which means, if you get knocked back after a stack and can see you're going to hit a tornado, you can WC in midair to avoid this.

Also, when running up towards the boss in P2 in Cat Form, you can Wild Charge (Cat) the last 25-30 yards, with the added bonus of being placed behind the boss straightaway, out of reach of any other tornado spawns. Again, you can WC through a tornado to reach the boss, removing some of the danger element of reaching him.

EDIT: Clarified which form's WC I am referring to in each instance, to avoid confusion.

Wild Charge is useful on Ta'yak but if your goal is to reach the other end of the room as fast as possible in Phase 2, then Feline Swiftness may be better. However, if you don't need the extra speed because you want to stay with the peloton to favour healing, then Wild Charge is probably better (you use it at the end of the run).