PVE Raiding Compendium - Page 130

Kyth · 03/17/08, 5:03 AM

Originally Posted by anton

It's just that every other WWS parse I've looked, the warlocks seemed to be treated like kings. They get a shaman, maybe 2 (or at least 2 bloodlusts), spriest, a leather worker or 2 (for drums, but I won't be picky, just making a point). And we don't do horrible either, damage wise, there's always a lock in the top 5 for all the bosses, maybe 2 (or more) depending on the fight.

Keep in mind there's a good chance the warlocks *are* the leatherworkers, so they aren't being "given" LW's.

Two bloodlusts on a lock group, honestly, sounds rare. Most raids that stack BL's do it on the melee group.

That all said, it's an uphill battle. Many people have "mage" associated in their mind with "the class you buff and give everything to" regardless of what meters say (or specific people's skill in a given guild.)

The best tack I know of is to stop treating it as a class thing and to instead talk about "can we make a caster dps group with the top dps'ers regardless of class" and go with a mix of mages/locks in there depending on skill.

Originally Posted by Arelenda

As destro, I haven't been outdps'd by a mage for as long as I can remember. Sure, in specific fights, or when I screwed up and died. But in general? no. It's not because I'm a superior player and our mages are incompetent. Destro simply scales better than any other caster class and spec, by a large margin.

On paper mages and locks are very close (within 5%; who is the top side of that 5% depends on whether the lock has a spriest) in equivalent T6 gear. Yes, you should be beating them by a bit, but if you're outdpsing your mages by a large margin then they're probably underperforming.

Originally Posted by Morwen

While it's satisfying to get in the perfect group and destroy meters, the statistic I actually find useful is percent time spent casting over the encounter length. That is something you can control and it is really the only metric that makes sense for 21/40 warlocks. I'd worry less about the final output when it's not preventing you from killing bosses.

I'm pretty sure WWS uses a "5 second rule" to determine combat actions and I *think* it doesn't include lifetap as a combat action, so tap x 2 + SB = "non-dps time". (I could be wrong, just going off what I remember when I looked into this a while ago.)

Arelenda · 03/17/08, 5:57 AM

Originally Posted by Kyth

On paper mages and locks are very close (within 5%; who is the top side of that 5% depends on whether the lock has a spriest) in equivalent T6 gear. Yes, you should be beating them by a bit, but if you're outdpsing your mages by a large margin then they're probably underperforming.

This is completely different from my experience. Interesting. Our mages are decked out in 5p T6 and come nowhere close to my dps, despite me not having 4p T6. I'll look into this.

dakalro · 03/17/08, 8:05 AM

Given same group buffs (spriest + resto shaman for my guild) they can be very close when they do try and even beat you if they get luckier (crit rates are a pain sometimes). And yes, making a dps group of your best casters sound like the best idea but of course your current leadership will say the mages are the best if you never get into a decent group. Just make your best mage stay out of spriest/shaman group and your best lock into one of those, for a couple of resets. And pray your best lock is good enough.

dakalro · 03/17/08, 8:13 AM

Originally Posted by Arelenda

This is completely different from my experience. Interesting. Our mages are decked out in 5p T6 and come nowhere close to my dps, despite me not having 4p T6. I'll look into this.

Erm, I just saw one of those 5t6 mages, he was 50/0/11. I'd expect those to be competing more with the spriests on meters rather than any lock

To make it a bit clear, one of our mages tried that (didn't have 2t5) and he got the result I wrote above. He was also getting nice results as fire, being overall out best dps mage. Without 2t5 afaik AB isn't even higher dps compared to fireball/scorch cycle, just wastes more mana. And there's no molten fury to stack with heroism on the last % of a fight.

Just poke em and tell them they're pretty much wasting that spriest they're getting if they're arcane without 2t5 and proper gearing up, and they still won't stand a chance until next patch changes to regen I guess.

Fafhrd · 03/17/08, 8:24 AM

Originally Posted by Arelenda

This is completely different from my experience. Interesting. Our mages are decked out in 5p T6 and come nowhere close to my dps, despite me not having 4p T6. I'll look into this.

In my experience, mages and warlocks in "perfect" gear, with same support and with good players, are remarkably well balanced dps-wise. There aren't many encounters where you can directly compare them though; Rage Winterchill, Anetheron, Kaz'rogal, Naj'entus (disregarding dps loss due to ice tomb/sleep/spine etc). Of course, that is if the warlock don't get to use a damage curse, then he'll usually win. Although it's mostly up to who is lucky with crits.

Kremlan · 03/17/08, 8:33 AM

Sorry if this already has been discussed and I missed it, but is spell haste any good in small amounts or do you need to stack it before you notice the benefits from it? I'm asking because of the new Sunwell gems, socketing all yellow sockets with spell haste or dmg/spell haste gems seems to the best +dmg increase in theory. But will it be worth it for me, who right now has 0 spellhaste, or should I wait until i get some from the Sunwell gear before I socket spellhaste?

Cronjob · 03/17/08, 10:21 AM

Originally Posted by Evidicus

alchemy on this toon in 2.4 just for the caster DPS alchemist stone for the +40% potion effect. Now that the stone has been changed to +dmg instead of +hit, it's become a little more viable for me at least.

Has anyone run the numbers on this to see where it stacks up trinket wise compared to other trinkets out there.

Krazen · 03/17/08, 10:47 AM

Originally Posted by Evidicus

I feel your pain. In my guild, Warlocks are pretty much treated as an afterthought. Mages get both a shadow priest and an elemental shaman most nights, while our Affliction lock gets put into the tank group and Destro locks such as myself go into dreaded Group 3, or as I like to call it, "The Island of Misfit DPS".

Part of the problem is that our Officer core is pretty short-sighted when it comes to Destruction specs. The guild has been around since pre-BC when locks were all Affliction and all completely self-sufficient. The concept of a warlock needing some sort of mana return is alien to them.

The other part of the problem is that our mages and elemental shaman are squeaky wheels. If they don't all get their perfectly stacked group, they start calling out for innervates. (This floored me the first time I heard it. I played pre-BC with another guild, and if a mage ever had the nerve to call out for an innervate there, he'd have had a boot put up his ass so far, he'd have tasted leather for a month.) Sure enough though, if they squeak enough, they get the grease - even if that pulls a shadow priest from the healing group. It's pretty sad. I think the real kicker is that even without any sort of group synergy I can still consistently out DPS all but one of our mages.

That's the real reason I think Blizzard reversed the change to lifetap. If they nerfed it, then the mage argument of needing mana return more than us would go out the window. If group assignments were based purely on DPS alone then it would be no contest, at least in my guild.

I guess what I am trying to say is that, as sad a state as you are in, you are not alone. Some of the more educated and less closed-minded guilds out there realize our full potential and at the very least split up their boomkin/elemental shaman/shadow priests between mages and locks so we can all get some sort of benefit. For those of us stuck in less than optimal conditions, we just have to try to be as self-sufficient as we possibly can. I have a potion spec'd alt who makes all the mana pots I chain-chug on bosses, and I'll probably drop enchanting for alchemy on this toon in 2.4 just for the caster DPS alchemist stone for the +40% potion effect. Now that the stone has been changed to +dmg instead of +hit, it's become a little more viable for me at least.

You can sort of see this effect even in the theorycrafting here on these forums. I'm not the first person to notice this, but joe schmo mage sometimes insists on a flamecap/destropot rotation and refuses to invis/evocate, because it cuts into dps uptime, while locks are expected to Soulstone (at least on Teron)/Lifetap, which also cuts into dps uptime.

Roped · 03/17/08, 11:04 AM

I made it a personal crusade to see Warlocks become the "DPS" casters in the raids ever since the insult that was Naxx put us into that Imp/Curse bitch position.

The best way I found of doing this was consistently dominating every other DPS class in raids, regardless of what group I was in or what buffs I was receiving. As I began to beat every DPS nearly every fight, without buffs, while they were getting fed Heroism and Shadow Priests, it became apparent that Warlocks brought serious DPS to the table that couldn't be overlooked.

We went from running 1-2 Warlocks a raid, in the MT group with an Imp without Heroisms, drums, or Shadow Priests to running 3 Warlocks in a raid all in the Elemental Shaman/Shadow Priest group. Needless to say, the Mages are pretty emo about it.

Spoonman · 03/17/08, 11:10 AM

Originally Posted by Kyth

That all said, it's an uphill battle. Many people have "mage" associated in their mind with "the class you buff and give everything to" regardless of what meters say (or specific people's skill in a given guild.)

I think it's also a case of people assuming that mages "need" an SP more than warlocks, when really, given the length of most boss fights, neither requires one, they simply gain DPS. Realistically, all warlocks and mages in a given raid should have a shadow priest, if your (and by "your" I mean anton) guild is remotely serious about getting the most DPS out of a raid. People seem to think that warlocks don't have mana issues because of life tap - I spend my entire mana pool plus a pot in a little over a minute and from then on my DPS drops substantially as I have to tap every few casts. Life tap only really shines when you have a very long fight like council, where classes without it can potentially go oom after using all their regen abilities/cooldowns, and then do nothing. if you don't have enough SPs for all the casters to have one, there's not really any reason to put the mages with one but not the locks. Everyone assumes that warlocks can just lifetap with no DPS loss, how often do your mages evocate during bosses?

Morwen · 03/17/08, 11:53 AM

Originally Posted by Kyth

I'm pretty sure WWS uses a "5 second rule" to determine combat actions and I *think* it doesn't include lifetap as a combat action, so tap x 2 + SB = "non-dps time". (I could be wrong, just going off what I remember when I looked into this a while ago.)

That sounds right. Personally I use ((# of shadowbolts cast * 2.5) + (# of lifetaps cast * 1.5)) / Encounter Length instead of WWS dps time, and adjust for haste effects and movement/incapacitates as applicable.

LockApologist · 03/17/08, 12:18 PM

Has anyone considered (or knows of an existing) ISB uptime parser for WWS reports? Basically, a script you could point at a WWS to parse out the SB crit events and determine the actual (rather than TC'd) uptime?

Arelenda · 03/17/08, 12:50 PM

Originally Posted by LockApologist

Has anyone considered (or knows of an existing) ISB uptime parser for WWS reports? Basically, a script you could point at a WWS to parse out the SB crit events and determine the actual (rather than TC'd) uptime?

Currently impossible. Dynamic debuffs will kill any such attempt.

In theory, if you know about all debuffs and they're static (say, on Theron, where debuffs will never fall off), you could try to make educated guesses about people's spellpower and talents, and from there determining how much of their damage was boosted. They'd still be guesses, though.

With 2.4. WWS will be changed and it might be possible. I haven't looked into it.

galzohar · 03/17/08, 1:21 PM

The solution is to not have a female raid leader...

On a more serious note, the whole fact you have a "leftover" group like most raid groups do means you will always have people in that group and never actually reach a point where your raid is optimal. Then it's all about deciding who gets leftover treatment. Since elemental shamans and mages (and moonkins if you actually run with them) can't run without a shadow priest, and putting any kind of shaman with the shadow priest is a good idea, the natural choice is to put all the mages with a shadow priest and a shaman (elemental if you have, resto otherwise). First shaman in the raid always goes in the melee group regardless of spec (but enhancement is priority of course), windfury is just too important for them. Tank group will optimally have improved devo aura, tree aura and an imp - buffing the tank with those buffs generally helps the raid a lot more than synergiesing that pally druid and affliction warlock.

The people that the raid leaders actually have a choice about are the healers, warlocks and hunters. Since healers don't seem really *need* a shadow priest for any (or at least almost any) fight in 25-man that is done with a reasonable gear level (as in, a good mix of t5/badge/kara gear at minimum) if they use consumeables, while DPS can always increase their DPS with more support no matter how many consumeables they use, it's generally better to buff DPS than buffing healers. If you have 3 shadow priests and 4-5 shamans in your raid (which is actually a good thing, expection being that I'm not sure about shadow priests being worth it at extreme high end gear considering the shorter fights and lower scaling, but it's generally safer to assume you need them as the extra heals from VE and extra heals from more healer mana, even if not needed, does help), you can just buff everyone. If you have less, it's generally better to buff dps over the healers. At least with a shaman, as the mana totems are nothing compared to his DPS totems in terms of raid benefit, and the DPS totems are quite wasted on healers (even wrath of air is just 100 healing which in terms of relative increases is not much compared to WoA for casters or GoA for hunters).

If all fails, show your raid leaders the spreadsheet and show them the numerical/relative DPS increase you're going to see if you were given a shaman and a shadow priest. Once you put in your base+consumeabled stats, adding mp5 for a shaman+sp and some totems and seeing the dps increase resulting is quite easy. Even seeing raid DPS increase due to added improved shadowbolt is possible to take into consideration (although a little harder as your ISB contribution is only integrated into your own DPS via the "TNS" (to next stat) part and not the actual dps it shows when you increase/reduce crit - but you can still see the change in ISB uptime and make your conclusions).

Arnath · 03/17/08, 1:36 PM

My lock has been Tailoring/Herbalism since early TBC when I realized the Tailoring items were totally worth skilling it up. Since it seems that Tailoring will continue to be useful through Sunwell/WotLK, I'm clearly going to keep that. However, I was considering dropping Herbalism for either Jewelcrafting or Enchanting. JCing would give me a [Loop of Forged Power] which is the best ring in 2.4 as far as I can tell as well as some unique gems that would be (very) slight upgrades in certain slots. Enchanting on the other hand would be just 24 spell damage from the ring enchants. Anyone have any thoughts on the matter?