Since I have zero experience as a raid leader and only know raiding from the mage perspective I was wondering what the general idea is about where to put shadow priests. Both in this thread and the last pages of the "mages in WotLK" one the absolute requirement to supply mage DPS with a shadow priest was brought up again and again, but does that mean "proper" T6+ raids have to run with two SPs at least, or do healers not require one themselves?
I ask because since my previous posts a few pages back we've had our first Archimonde attempts and are prioritizing BT now (Teron atm), yet the raid support issue didn't change much. Sometimes I end up grouped with elemental shamans and/or moonkins but we still have 0-1 shadow priest most of the time, and that one's always in the healer group. And I notice myself that my DPS (despite of improved gear) isn't really going anywhere while especially the locks (and melee who get far more optimal groups) are widening the gap
Your healers should not be having mana issues with most of the fights in early T6 save maybe Naj'entus and Kaz'rogal. If you're raiding arcane then SP can account for about 100-200 DPS, for a classic fire mage the DPS decrease is a lot lower but still great to have. So if you're raiding with 2 arcane mages, a SP have the potential to increase raid DPS by 600 (Since it would also increase the ele shaman & Moonkin's DPS as well in an ideal group set up). The DPS increase far out weights giving your healers mana, unless you have stingy healers who doesn't pop mana potions everytime the CDs are up. So to answer your question, if you're running with 2+ mages they should get the SP before the healers. When we actually run with two SPs the other one goes to the lock group.
Most of early T6 fights are not very good indicators of mage DPS anyways. All of them are either too short or too gimicky (supremus with his fire resist, azgalor and his AOE silence). You won't have a good DPS gauge until you get Teron down.
Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something. - Plato
For my own guild, the mages ALWAYS get the shadow priest except for the Eredar Twins encounter. At your level of gear (early-mid BT) your mages shouldn't have too much haste to make a Shadow Priest too much of a necessity, unless they are arcane as Rising stated. Some times we loose our Spriest as group make ups will be changed up depending upon the encounter. The notable fights where the mages in my guild loose the spriest is Blood Boil, where we get split up amongst the 3 soak groups; Kalecgos, once agains we get split up into each portal group for decursing; and Eredar Twins, where the Paladins get the Spriest to feed them mana while they don their haste sets and spam the MTs on Lady Sacrolash. The first two fights listed usually 1 mage will be in the Spriests group, sometimes 2 of us will be, the Twins fight is the only fight where we none of us get in the Spriests group.
[58:Death]: [Death] has earned the achievement [An Honorable Kill]!
[80:Kyrielle]: Death has begun his assualt!!
[70:Medeoan]: Death has begun to stalk the alliance!!
[58:Death]: **** YEA!!!
Throughout all of Hyjal and BT, you should be putting your SP with the mages. Typical group setup is 1 SP, 1 Resto/Elemental Shaman, 1-3 Mages and then we generally start slotting in warlocks after that. Healers (especially now with the regen change) shouldn't be needing SPs.
The only exceptions to this rule is Archimonde (where is really just doesn't matter, becuz fire makes uptime limited to the point where u wont be hurting on mana on any class, healer or DPS), mother shah (we typically gave healers the SP if we only had 1 while learning - granted this was before the change so I'm not necessarily sure this would even be required now), and council (we always had mages tanking/CSing the healer and mana just wasnt an issue).
In Sunwell, SP won't matter for Kalecgos much. We do usually run 2 SPs though, so sometimes we'll put a paladin in with a SP for healing on Brutallus and Twins so they can spam holy light, but never at the cost of replacing a mage.
edit- forgot about bloodboil. We always put our SPs in groups 1 and 2 (1 being an all healer group and 2 being a group of mostly warlocks) to help ease healing, and mages usually went into group 3.
My guild recently downed Illidan and is now gearing up for Sunwell. We we run extremly caster heavy for dps and i'm tying to figure out the best way to maximize our dps for when we get to Brut.
Our casters rarely miss raid times so the caster groups look like:
First Group:
Destro lock
Destro lock
Destro lock
Ele Shaman
Shadow Priest
Second Group:
Fire Mage
Fire Mage
Fire Mage
Shadow Priest
Resto Shaman
For us right now is pretty much i fight over the Elemental shaman on who it benefits more.
i've been able to read plenty of pros and cons to giving but am looking for solid (some theorycafting magic because i really suck at math) help on resolving the long debated issue.
In my reseach on this topic i found EJ's Brut. kill WWS, The Ele Shaman was in the mage group vice stacking the warlocks. I was curious for this reasoning because it might help with our plea. Any help proving the most beneficial would be much appreciated.
Last edited by silverwraith : 07/11/08 at 5:30 AM.
Swapping the raid around to cover a weakness you shouldn't be experiencing is not a true long-term solution. It's a crutch.
Agree. Our guild had this discussion when we started Brutallus. Guild leader and I wanted to learn it with 7 healers and 2 spriests in the dps groups. Other officers wanted to start with 8 healers and give them spriests so that we could at least get to enrage and then learn the dps requirement later. So we tried that, also with an affl. lock for shadow embrace and imp imp, one hunter took an owl and our dps warrior took improved demo. Just in case.
Okay, so there we were with the ability to get to enrage, but 2k rdps short. At that point we hadn't really learned the fight at all. Once we started removing various elements of that tank/healing support and switching to dps, the tanks started dying on stomps again. So more days lost relearning with one less healer, then without SE and imp, then without VT for healers, and so on. In the end, the one crutch we kept was the owl because that seemed to be the least dps loss, and moreover our survival hunter seems to have grown attached to his pet. I have no doubt that we can now kill Brut without, but while it's there, might as well make use of it.
...
Silverwraith, the casters who make the most of the +hit from the elemental shaman should get that one.
You're fighting a lost cause. The ToW is largely irrelevant for a number of reasons. Firstly, you gain much less value from 3% crit than locks do. Secondly, lower hitcap *probably* means you gain less value from +hit on it.
Having said that:
1) on Illidan everyone spreads so much _it doesn't matter_.
2) You only really DPS on P2, and not being fire, unless you're arcane (in which case you want the resto shaman anyway) your DPS is really, really shit.
3) Illidan is utterly irrelevant to DPS, you can do him just as well in 20m as you can do him in 16m.
4) Your job is not to DPS, it's to control adds. Fixating your attention on DPS is succumbing to what most brainless locks do, and thus making yourself look like the mage equivalent, which is even worse.
For non-illidan fights, you could argue that locks may gain more value from a Rshaman than mages gain from one, but that assumes ( 'Lock with manatide' - 'RDPS loss from ToW on Mages Instead' ) > ( 'Lock with ToW' )
All in all, I totally disagree with your mentality. You're propagating class-discrimination. This is a sure-fire way to get yourself pronto to anti-social-bastardville. Obsessing over X class vs. Y class on issues that are not solidly, 100% undisputable will only net you gried. Know who to put in the Eshaman group? Your 3 top DPSers, whoever they are. Tied for the top? Flip a coin, because if you are tied for top, it doesn't matter.
I find it hard to believe you have 3 perfect locks and 3 perfect mages, all at perfect (or in fact, equal) gear level. If this is the case, in all honesty, you'll have to have a go at Rawr and compare Lock+Mtide to Lock+ToW, then compare Mage+ToW and Mage+Mtide. And then you'll be armed with yet more ammunition in your war against locks, which is pointless because it doesn't matter.
Edit: Why, in the Good Lord's name, do you raid with 8 cloth DPS? Are you chronically under-meleed? Bloodboil must be a fucking mess...
Edit: Why, in the Good Lord's name, do you raid with 8 cloth DPS? Are you chronically under-meleed? Bloodboil must be a fucking mess...
Our guild is primarily made up of casters and thats who has the raid attendence. Recruiting for a backwater server, even when you are starting sunwell, is rather difficult.
We have no problems with BB either, or any t6 boss actually.
I believe what Silverwraith question is about, is more along the lines of stacking the raid, casterwise, for better overall raid dps.
I had been raiding for the past 2-3 months as arcane using the head and shoulder pieces to get my 2 piece bonus. Last night I was able to pick up the head from Illidan. So, now I have the [Gloves of the Tempest], the [Leggings of Channeled Elements], and the [Cowl of the Illidari High Lord] and I need to drop one if I am to stay as arcane. (I was never able to get the chest from KT, but I have the other 4 pieces.)
Which piece would best be switched for arcane? Also, my end goal is to spec fire, but I'm afraid I will need the 4 piece bonus from T6 to get the same damage that I get right now. Until we can kill Kalecgos, which pieces of T6 should I shoot for to get my 4 piece bonus, in other words which piece of my current set up do I bank till T6 braces. I know the chest would be huge for me and the shoulders would be the 3rd logical piece to replace.
I had been raiding for the past 2-3 months as arcane using the head and shoulder pieces to get my 2 piece bonus. Last night I was able to pick up the head from Illidan. So, now I have the [Gloves of the Tempest], the [Leggings of Channeled Elements], and the [Cowl of the Illidari High Lord] and I need to drop one if I am to stay as arcane. (I was never able to get the chest from KT, but I have the other 4 pieces.)
Which piece would best be switched for arcane? Also, my end goal is to spec fire, but I'm afraid I will need the 4 piece bonus from T6 to get the same damage that I get right now. Until we can kill Kalecgos, which pieces of T6 should I shoot for to get my 4 piece bonus, in other words which piece of my current set up do I bank till T6 braces. I know the chest would be huge for me and the shoulders would be the 3rd logical piece to replace.
The real answer to most gearing questions is look it up in Rawr. In my current set up as arcane, T6 helm is better than Cowl, as Cowl has no spirit and a lot of crit. When I calculated it out as T5 vs. T6, the best pieces of T5 to wear were the shoulders and then either the helm or the gloves. The T6 shoulders are rather poorly itemized (yuck, spell pen). We haven't killed KT yet, so I didn't look at the chests.
For fire, I believe the suggestion is to wear 4T6 + Cowl or 4T6 + [Leggings of Channeled Elements]. Again, I suggest you do your own theorycrafting with Rawr.
T5 gloves are bad, very bad. Having said that, for arcane, T5 pants are equally bad and T6 gloves aren't exactly the dog's bollocks, as their main strength comes from having 20hit which is irrelevant.
Rawr will give you your answer, though I really think you'd be better off with pads and head T5. The Cowl's biggest benefit is it's 21hit and that's no good for arcane. Droping 28spi from T6->Cowl is also a bummer.
Edit: Why, in the Good Lord's name, do you raid with 8 cloth DPS? Are you chronically under-meleed? Bloodboil must be a fucking mess...
Yes we are Understaffed melee but the raiding pool on out server is really just that bad and we do fine on bloodboil
Originally Posted by Pintofbrew
I find it hard to believe you have 3 perfect locks and 3 perfect mages,
There's no just thing as perfect otherwise there wouldn't be forums to help discuss better methods and theory
Originally Posted by Pintofbrew
in all honesty, you'll have to have a go at Rawr and compare Lock+Mtide to Lock+ToW, then compare Mage+ToW and Mage+Mtide.
Thank you this was more along the lines of what i was looking for to help with our situation
Originally Posted by Gsara
I believe what Silverwraith question is about, is more along the lines of stacking the raid, casterwise, for better overall raid dps.
Yes this is correct. I'm looking for the best possible way to set ourselves up, and arm myself with the information on why we should do so, for max raid synergy (within group arrangements already listed) for brutallus.
[edit] I'm not the one that sets up the groups for raid. I'm just looking for the information to assist our guild in its progresion.
Last edited by silverwraith : 07/11/08 at 10:48 AM.
Agree with previous 2 posters: Illidan hat has no spirit and too much hit, bank it for the moment.
The second part of your question: you are planning to spec fire soon. You have one T6 piece, the gloves, and you want to know which two other T6 pieces you should aim for before T6 bracers. This is answered fairly easily: chest and shoulders. Basically because your Illidan hat and Kaz'rogal legs are likely better for fire than the T6 equivalents.
Yes this is correct. I'm looking for the best possible way to set ourselves up, and arm myself with the information on why we should do so, for max raid synergy (within group arrangements already listed) for brutallus.
Honestly, Pintofbrew is correct in telling you to ignore straight class groups and just put your top three mages/warlocks in the elemental shaman group. Warlocks and mages have no group synergies, only raid ones. ISB, curses and scorch will benefit you whether or not said mage/warlock is in your group, unlike a shaman, boomkin or retadin. If that means the group ends up looking like lock-mage-mage-spriest-elemental, then by all means take that group.
I mean, who would you rather have with the extra +101 damage, your worst warlock or your best mage? It's true that warlocks get slightly more benefit than mages from Totem of Wrath's 3% hit/crit, but it wouldn't be enough to cover a major DPS gap between two players.
Praetorian: I once pointed out that the proper Roman numeral for 500 was D, so they should really rename themselves <Clan DIX>. That didn't go over too well. Sebudai: Imagine a combination of Life Grip, Death Grip, Disengage, Typhoon, and Thunderstorm. It would be like the Large Hadron Collider of WoW.
We also tend to run a little caster heavy, mainly because we can't find a feral druid or good hunters for the life of us. We follow pretty much the same as what some others have mentioned, and ignore class groups and throw the elemental shaman in with our best SP and best mages/locks, which usually ends up being mage/lock/lock. One other way you can go about it is to consider who has some "better" gear when ToW is in play; in otherwords, do any of you have a gearset that is built around having the totem. I know a lot of people (Manly included if I'm not mistaken) are against reducing yourself below hit cap and relying on totems, and I do agree in most cases, but I feel like Brutallus is an exception in my book. However, if you have certain casters that vastly outperform the others, it's likely better to put them with the elemental shaman regardless.
My guild regularly clears MH/BT and we've managed a Kalec kill and a brief look at Brut. I'm constantly trying to improve my DPS, and have recently dropped tailoring for LW for Drums.
Here is last night's Teron kill Wow Web Stats, which is generally acknowledged as a good DPS indicator
My gear is pretty good (5*T6, Skull/Hex), really just need a decent MH/OH. I can't help thinking that I should be able to put out alot more than I currently do. I try to use Flame Caps/Destro Pots, but find I some times have mana issues, an was unable to use them last night. I wasn't flasked here (generally dont bother for 1st half of BT) but was using food/oil.
My normal rotation here would be...
Scorch up
Drums + Hex/Icy Veins/Berserk/Combustion
Skull
Then repeat the above sub 20%
With my current gear and level of progression 1684 DPS just doesn't seem good enough. Any insights into any glaring mistakes I'm making would be apperciated
Remitroll: Since you didn't give any raid/group makeup info, the short answer is to plug your circumstances into Rawr or magegraf to see what kind of numbers you should be producing and then come back here if it's still not clear what you need to do.
Lack of CoE, being the designated scorcher, no flask, no bl/heroism, bad cooldown stacking (Which is definitely true in your case, you should be splitting your cooldowns to match them with both hex and skull, not loading them all onto one or the other. I'm no expert, but I think the standard combos are Combustion + Hex and everything else + Skull), bad shadow priests, no elemental shaman/boomkin, unlucky Spell push back RNG (Teron), and other things can all combine to hurt your dps. Check for these and more in your raid/playstyle.
We also tend to run a little caster heavy, mainly because we can't find a feral druid or good hunters for the life of us. We follow pretty much the same as what some others have mentioned, and ignore class groups and throw the elemental shaman in with our best SP and best mages/locks, which usually ends up being mage/lock/lock. One other way you can go about it is to consider who has some "better" gear when ToW is in play; in otherwords, do any of you have a gearset that is built around having the totem. I know a lot of people (Manly included if I'm not mistaken) are against reducing yourself below hit cap and relying on totems, and I do agree in most cases, but I feel like Brutallus is an exception in my book. However, if you have certain casters that vastly outperform the others, it's likely better to put them with the elemental shaman regardless.
This is absolutely a non-issue if you can rely on weapon-swapping.
Wand from BBoil, Tempest, Grand Magister's, and Chronicle, all have plenty of hit.
Zhar'doom, Sunflare, Maelstrom's Fury, Heart of the Pit, and Fetish all have 0.
You don't need to find a combo that has 3% exatly difference; all you need is a perhaps 1.8-2% gear difference item set that is not more than (as much hit difference) item budget points inferior.
I run Zhar'doom on trash and bosses most of the time, switching to Temp/Chronicle when I'm out of range of ToW or the shaman dies. Granted, this may be a DPS loss if that one swap causes you to drop one fireball (if you botch it) or happens to be the one that gets resisted (even though you still had a 1% resist to begin with) but it's definitely doable and a lot more practical than wearing other sub-hitcap gear.
Remi: Acto is correct, the best way to stack cooldowns is skull + everything and combustion + hex head. Reason being is that the skull use is > hex use, so it's better to use it when you are popping most of your cooldowns (which are generally haste related). Popping combustion at this time would not be ideal simply becuz combustion doesn't benefit from haste (barring rolling ignites), so logically you would wait to pop combustion with your dmg cd (hex head).
As far as Teron being a good judge of DPS, that is only true to a degree. First of all, unless you have a paladin in your group, you are going to suffer pushback which could have significant impact on your dps (RNG ftl). Second, Teron dies so quickly that you cannot full heroism sub-20% as you can on Brutallus. This has a HUGE impact on your overall dmg and DPS. Finally, one thing I experienced on Teron was that when the rest of the raid's DPS increased and the fight got shorter, mana became a non issue and there was less pushback and as a result I saw an increase in DPS.
More accurately: Combustion doesn't have any synergistic effects with anything that doesn't increase either damage (ie: AP) or spellpower (ie: Hex, SCB, or D-pot).
Hence, we combine the most powerful effect (IV) with the most powerful Trink (Skull) and Dpot+Fcap. When it's over, we're left with the remainder of Fcap and Hex. Which make perfect combo with Combustion.
This has the added, wonderful effect of not giving a shit if Comb's CD delays. You have 40sec when the first "stack" of CDs has gone off worth of Fcap. That's plenty of time, even including the delay from your previous Combustion being late.
@ Raencloud & Actovision: Thanks for the feedback. I must admit that I'm a fairly new 'skull' user, so I'll shunt around my macros to 'Hex + Combustion' and 'Skull + everything'.
As suggested also looked at Rawr/Magegraf (which I should have done in the first place) and analysed the WWS logs in a little more detail.
For reference, the group makeup was Fire Mage, Fire Mage, SP, Resto shammy. BL was popped early (13 secs into fight). Mana Spring was down, but no Tide. 3 Warlocks, so we had CoS/CoE/CoD.
I acknowledge all the RNG factors, there are things that you can't do anything about and it all comes down to look. But plugging my gear into Rawr and Magegraf, I receieved hughly different results
Rawr puts me at 1695 for Fireball spam and 1674 for maintaining the Scorch. There was one other Mage, so we'd shared that, and my DPS sits at 1684, pretty much exactly what you'd expect. The same parameters into Magegraf return 2049 DPS. Other than the obvious of setting incorrect parameters (which I have checked), I can't understand the reason for the difference
Not "Hex+Comb"/"Skull+all". The other way round. "Skull+all" THEN "Hex+Comb". Otherwise you risk delaying your second stack due to Comb delay, you risk bossdeath with sub-optimal DPS if the 20% phase lasts under 40sec, etc etc etc.
Bloodlust not at 20% is a phenomenal DPS drop. You should coordinate with your shaman/Rleader to ascertain the Firemage group gets their BL at 20%. Any shitty excuses like "people die" is irrelevant; You should not alter your class/design/aim/goal/playstyle to compensate for shitty performance, idiocy or inability to correctly use W,A,S, and D.
Simulators between each other always have discrepancies. This is something all of science is aware of and is fact. It comes down to the specifics of how and exactly what do they simulate. It is also largely irrelevant, as a simulator is only good for the following:
1) Comparing results between the same simulator with something changing (ie: What changes if I swap weapon?)
2) Comparing results between the simulation changing and real life changing (ie: In the sim, if I change weapon, DPS goes up. Thus, in the game, if I do the same, it should go up)
There is no point in comparing two sims between each other, unless what you want to understand is "they are different" which is more or less irrelevant.
The early BL thing is another reason Teron is a bad fight to judge from. Good luck convincing your RL/shaman to save BL for Molten Fury range when you may have lost 3 people by then to Shadow of Death (or w/e it's called). Teron is only a good dps benchmark if you get your raid to co-operate and perform counter-intuitively. Rage Winterchill is just as good for that purpose, imo, but someone (read: blame manly) posted what was considered sick dps many months ago on Teron to show what mages were capable of and people have been under-performing and coming here for help ever since.
Originally Posted by Remitroll
The same parameters into Magegraf return 2049 DPS. Other than the obvious of setting incorrect parameters (which I have checked), I can't understand the reason for the difference
Can't help you there bud, despite the fact that you say you checked the parameters, there are a great many ways you could be setting them inconsistently between magegraf, rawr, and reality. But just because I don't know of any glaring difference that might cause your dps disparity doesn't mean it doesn't exist, maybe someone else will know what to look for.
The answer is pretty damn simple. Its something that TC assumes, but that most players don't acknowledge. All TC assume 100% dps time. Most players don't even realise it but not everyone really tries to get 100% dps time.
<Eej> YOU"RE GONNA PULL
<Eej> IF YOU SQUEEZE OFF ANOTHER ARCANE BLAST
<Spectear> You've obviously never played with Manly.
<Spectear> That's hardly a reason to stop DPS. Very Manly Staff
I think he was asking the huge DPS difference in modeled in Rawr and Magegraph using the same parameters. Shouldn't both be assuming perfect CD management and 100% DPS time?
Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something. - Plato
07/10/08, 12:57 PM
