This was my first week on LK 10 normal. We were able to eek past phase 2 by the end of the night, but were still having problems with Valks (single Valk for 10 man)

To snare the valk, we had a rogue stunlocking it, a shaman frostshocking it, a hunter concussive shotting it, and a dk putting in a few chains of ices. From reading the thread it seems like we're doing something wrong, ie it's overkill and everyone is just overwriting each other's snares, or not doing enough damage because everyone's trying to snare it. I also didn't know that it was capped at 50%.

My question is, for 10 man lich king, is Slow the most reliable snare for valks in the game, given its nature (instant cast, ranged, no cooldown, etc)?

For next week's attempt, I'm thinking of just speccing into Slow and letting everyone else not have to worry about snaring. Also, is there a chance for Slow to fall off early, or will it last the entire 15 seconds?

Honestly it all depends on your 10man raid comp. If you have DK n rouge in your raid comp, there is no need for you to slow anything. Your primary job is to blow Valkyr up! but if you lack DK then Yes I will highly recommend using slow. Like I said it all depends on your raid comp. My following comment applies to 25 and 10man LK fight. You want to assign 2 people per Valkyr, One should only worry about stunning the target and Second one should only worry about slowing the Valkyr. For 25man you might want to assign a 3rd stun/slow person if one of your assigned guys get picked up, the 3rd guy can take of the snaring/stunning.

Generally you want to keep mages away from slowing anything down. Mages have the highest burst damage out of any other class imo. So use them wisely.

Frost shock is a great slow for the valks. You shouldn't need anything beyond that.

I don't really understand the appeal of DKs as slowers. CoI is only greater than 50% for ~5 seconds and they pay a relatively high dps cost to keep it up.

Just spec into slow already. Even if you aren't using it on LK the dps cost of picking it up is incredibly low, you'll find something to do with it.

Couple of things.

Was reading about people wanting 4/5 Arcane Stability - don't you only need 3/5 if you have a ret pally with improved conc aura (which you most likely would in a 25 man raid)?

I am having a hard time deciding how to spec now with the IA nerf (just came back from a hiatus and forgot about it). I dropped Arcane Focus so that I could put 3 points in Stability, but I'm thinking about going 1/3/3 and dropping a bunch of hit. I feel like the crit rating I could replace by dropping 3% hit would be better than getting MA.

I feel like everyone else is debating between pushback and MA, though.

Gems aren't a huge issue. Optimal gemming would net maybe a few dozen DPS. Lacking some key raid buffs creates a much larger deficit, all of which I believe are turned on by default in Rawr.

The gems question (while admittedly trivial dps wise) had me doubting Rawr altogether, even for gear pieces - i.e. when to break the tier set. I was also hoping the log might help someone identify something wrong in what I am doing: clipping, bad rotation (ABX4[mbarr] abarr), or something.

"ABX4[mbarr] abarr" is obviously a bad rotation. ABarr is not part of any sustained PvE DPS rotation. Look at what rotations Rawr is using for you in the Solution panel of the Stats tab. Most likely it's a mix of AB04MBAM and AB023MBAM.

Krankster,

In the log you linked you are severly handicapped by the lack of raid buffs and that will have a big effect on your dps/damage. In Rawr on the buffs tab make sure that only the raid buffs you can expect to get are checked before making decisions on changes and what your potential is. Things like movement, dps time, focus magic rate, absence of a Blood Lust, fight length and other things on the options tab should also be marked/adjusted correctly. Looks like you are way over hit capped as well.

@Krankster: Did you disable evocation/gems/pots by any chance or did you just omit that in your solution output?

Krankster, my biggest question for you is why are you buying non set pieces with Frost emblems before filling out your 2 (huge DPS upgrade) or even your 4 piece? It's so weird that we get mage apps when people are buying these off set pieces before set pieces. I can understand not breaking a 2 or 4 piece with one piece of Bloodmage, but to have two off set pieces when you could have gotten your 2 piece is curious to say the least. This problem is exacerbated by your current 4 set bonus being lower than T9 stuff.

I'll echo what others said in that raid buff synching with Rawr is your first step for more accurate DPS expectations. As a matter-of-fact, there is a raid buff template for self buff only. You should probably start with that and then add on the few buffs you are actually getting. This should give you a more accurate representation of what you *should* be doing. That said, even with Rawr putting me at around 7.2K on a dummy self buffed, I can still only manage to get around 6.8K with pretty optimal latency.

Bottom line, use Rawr as a tool, not as an instruction manual.

Krankster,

Yea, I remember when I was saving up my first piece and I kept eying that Meteor Robe. It wasn't really a GS issue for me, more of a "WOW, look at those stats." Fortunately, I researched a bit more and even ultimately decided against the typical 4 PC T10, get legs since I got lucky and got the Sanct legs from a VoA run.

It is nice being able to get a 6K GS with my gear, but ultimately running around 5.85K gives me better bang for my buck. Once you raiding with your guild, you won't care about GS anyway. Pugging, well that's a whole 'nother topic.

I've been pretty steadfast in using my AB Spam til proc, even pushing to 6 or 7 stacks before finally going with an unhasted AM, but I think I'm going to try out the AB0234AMMB and see how that works. I thought I remembered trying it a patch or two ago and not seeing the results, but I've never truly gotten nitty gritty enough to factor mana savings into the equation.

Even the avid raiders learn something from time to time