Last night’s raid was depressing. The RGT goal last night was to get back to Cho'gall quickly and get more time on the boss to achieve the kill. Unfortunately, we then used up 13 wipes on Council and ran out of time. The question to be asked this morning is why did this happen. My thoughts on this are that we have problems in these key areas:
• Attention to detail
• Survivability
• DPS familiarity
Attention to Detail
I think some people simply do not understand the fight mechanics and turn up expecting to rely on having the tactics and timers spoon-fed to them during the fight. Put simply, why should someone else have to make all these calls for you when they have their own healing/tanking/dps and movement to look after?
We had some comments last night which I simply could not believe when we had been killing a boss for so many weeks. It showed that the questioner simply did not understand the fight mechanics. We also have some people in the raid who seem not to hear or react to TS calls. This is not something that we can carry effectively through the end bosses, you need to be able to handle the fight mechanics yourself - any call from a raid leader is a bonus not a crutch to rely on! We have a regular batch of people who seem unable to listen to TS, why? Are you listening to music too loud at the same time? Are you watching your favourite TV show at the same time? Please help me here, why?
Are UIs and boss mods configured to provide the best assistance? I am not convinced that they are. Why is it that some people seem to regularly not notice things, not move, not react to buffs or debuffs? Why do other people notice the debuffs on you but they do not notice them on themselves? Make sure your UI is configured properly to show you the information that you need in a place on the screen where you are regularly looking. For example, as a dps I am most often looking at the boss and my spell cooldown timers, so my boss mod timers are place centrally between these two areas so that I cannot miss them. Where are yours?
Have you set your debuffs to show larger and in a more BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS part of your UI? My buff list is pushed away to the side of my UI, but my debuff list is enlarged and placed in a far more central area so that I know I have a debuff! How is yours configured to make sure that you notice these things?
We need to look carefully at how we handle these things and *know* the basics of the fight before we arrive.
How can I do this?
So how does a raid leader prepare for a fight? Each will probably do it slightly differently, but if it helps here is how I prepare for an encounter:
Firstly I’ll watch the video several times to get the ‘rythm’ of the fight.
Then I watch the video again and make a key points ‘mind map’ for the encounter. (I have one for every boss).
• I underline boss/mob names
• I put a box around abilities and a line to the mob casting them, required responses or notes
• For abilities which need an interrupt I draw a line from the box to the word ‘Interrupt’ with a circle drawn around it. Any time my bit of paper has a circle on it I know it needs an interrupt.
• DPS classes (ranged & melee) are given arrows pointing towards the boss/mob name they need to attack.
So for example the BoT Council fight cue card looks like this:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]665[/ATTACH]
In this way I can get familiar very quickly with an encounter and immediately see the key things we need to handle in a fight. If you are struggling to handle mechanics and get familiar enough with an encounter to allow you to perform at a high enough level, then why not try this approach yourself?
DPS
I have real concerns about our general levels of dps. If you look on World of Logs and compare us to most other guilds we seem to regularly fall short on dps. This is nothing to do with gear level, it is down to our ability to perform correctly in a boss fight. Some of this I suspect is down to familiarity with your DPS rotation. You need to be comfortable enough for your rotation to be almost automatic - yes I know it is a priority rotation, but it should be automatic enough that it does not require too high a percentage of your brain power during the fight.
If people are unfamiliar with the fight mechanics or abilities, then too much brain power gets diverted towards interpreting the boss mod timers and warnings to understand what is happening in the fight. So if people have not familiarised themselves with the fight thoroughly beforehand then they end up in a situation where there is little brain time available to react to abilities or to maintain a dps rotation. Fighter pilots call it ‘brimming’, your brain ‘bucket’ is full and any more data thrown at you just spills out over the side of the bucket and is not processed. That’s what I am seeing, full buckets - paralysis through analysis as people try to comprehend what is going on. This means poor dps and poor movement.
When I look at individual logs and look at buff/ debuff, dot uptimes, activity times and ability use I see massive variation from what I would expect as 'good/normal' and what we see in our raid ('poor'). We need to fix this fast as fights get ever more complex.
We need to be able to do decent levels of dps *and* handle our movement/debuffs so that healers do not go oom. More importantly, we need to be able to delivering high levels of dps as the norm whilst moving or we’ll not kill any end boss before the next content patch.
Survivability
Part of this is attention to detail, but take look at last night’s logs and see how people died and their survivability. Out of 13 wipes these are some of the deaths we could easily have avoided:
Melee stood in front of Ignatious (cone)
Healer - Water-logged not cleared
Melee stood in front of Ignatious (cone)
Healer - Water-logged not cleared
DPS - shield not cleared fast enough
DPS - shield not cleared fast enough
Melee - Water-logged not cleared
Tank - Glaciate not ranged (accidental)
Healer stood in front of Ignatious (cone)
Healer - hydrolance not interrupted
Multiple - chain lightning
Healer - Water-logged not cleared
Healer - 40k fall damage
Melee stands in Erruption
That's an average of more than 1 death per try that could & should have been avoided. That's the difference between the several sub-1 million HP left wipes and converting them to a kill.
When people die early in a fight we need to look for a reason. Some of these deaths will be due to somebody else’s error (like lightning conductor not moving out of the raid), but a lot are down to personal errors. We need to be identifying these and fixing it so that it does not happen again. Pay attention to why you died. The death itself is not a problem so long as we learn from it. When we ignore it and repeat it, then it becomes a problem.
Farm Content
We need at least one full night on new content each week, ideally 50% of our raid week needs to be on new content, otherwise we’ll not progress at a decent rate. We could, like Ovo and other guilds do, extend our instance each week to go right back to the new boss, but then we all lose out on gearing up our members and I’d prefer to avoid that situation. We ought to be able to blast through the content we have on farm in a night and a half, leaving us the required new boss time. So let's up our game and start doing what I know we can do.
Quote from: TeaLeaf;321821I have real concerns about our general levels of dps.
After witnessing the wipes, my own personal failures and examining WoL, I would like to add these few nugets:
1) Feludis cannot reliably be interupted for hydrolance after he does glaciate by the tank (note the tank death below) so some ranged need to try and interupt this. If it's not after glaciate the tank can easily handle it. Ohterwise, healers just have to handle it.
2) A few people have posted on the DK tank forum say that for P2, it's easier just for the tanks to get the initial buff and then just stand still for the duration. This allows DPS to know where their target is, so just have to be aware of getting the buff as opposed to playing "find the boss" as well. From experience, tanks can survive without the needed buff. This also makes healers lifes a bit easier as Slush was complaining that I took too many critical hits (back towards boss) trying to reach the buffs, which i also missed and had to be healed through that as well.
3) Instead of pulling Cpt Planet around in an increasing circle in P3, simply move him to a wall asap and then move around the wall. This allows ranged to stand spread in the middle and not move much, so more DPS and less movement.
Another tactic is to move him slowly to an edge in one big puddle, which also gets you the achivement for the encounter.
Asside from the above, my biggest failing way getting waterlogged in P1. WoL shows I was waterlogged the most of the last boss fights (nott the first half). If this was through frustration at wiping so much or whatever, I don't know. Probably not paying attention to the fountain spray. But what I learned was this - when you are waterlogged no matter what, you have at least 3 full GCDs before the next hydrolance. It seemed to cause more hurt trying to get rid of the debuff via the fire than just taking it on the chin - threat isn't a problem and I store enough RP for an interupt. Obviously this will be an issue when he casts glaciate, but touch wood I can dodge the water bombs when he does.
All fair points but mainly to do with the encounter not the personal performance.
1. is not a problem as ranged are tasked to interrupt Hydrolance usually, so you're there as a backup when in range only.
2. agreed would help dps, but then that would not solve the deaths listed.
3. that was what we tried initially, the issue with this is that in the time it takes to drag him out to the wall he has already dropped puddles in mid and you have lost about 10 seconds of soft-enrage timer, which is why we reverted to mid for the boss.
My dps comments are not specific to one encounter, so I'm not looking for a P2 dps solution for Council, I'm worried why we're generally low on all fights.
I wasnt there for that fight with council on thurs,so dont know who was in there so i cant comment apart from saying as every1 has said b4 espesh the officers....DO your RESEARCH!!...As Tl says watch a few vids and read posts on it,yes its diff when you are in the fight,but u will pick it up quicker and have more knowlegde of the fight by being prepared...In regards to your cue cards i have a little book with notes on boss fights,not as good as yours tl but it helps....reminds me what i have to look out for etc....
In regards to dps during fights,i can hold my hand up and say i vary ALOT.....im a panicker lol...for the 1st few tries or if i miss something it really throws me off and im sorry for that and im trying to get it better.Also i need to pinch u Tl to help me set up an add-on which will help with my dots as i miss them or re-dot too early which affects my dps alot...
Thats 1 thing i can do and if every1 has a look at what they could improve,it will help the raid out vastly....if u think u cant improve or dont know how...ASK...dont be affraid no 1 will bite ur head off...just say like i have,and try and act on it :)
Also I havent got my top end ench on wep yet which is stupid of me as officers are helping us out with them so dont forget that enchant and go request it like im going to now :)
Nice to see a reply from the dps camp .... we need more
I know you guys are putting in the time raid wise but we need to go that extra bit to break thu the next level of fight .... we have the gear we have the tactics.. what we need now is some hard-hitting angry mo fo's :P
We look thu the logs (go do it now too) look at your personal output on any fight. You can look at simple things first activity for example.. if you are around 80% then that's a chunk of time you could be doing something A>B>C always be casting. If you use dots look at the uptime again it should be as close to 100% as possible. Spend 15 mins today on a target dummy, refine that rotation for boss fights (we don't care about trash). I can bet that you will be hitting 14k+ if not then its time to look into whats going wrong. have you got the hit/expertise ect needed do you *fully* understand your own class mechanics. Are you tracking what you need to know.
We can't have 1 person doing 22% of the damage and another doing 10% tho that's what we have at the moment. If help is needed on anything then shout up. There is nothing special to dps no secret macros nothing that pressing the right buttons at the right time will not fix.
I can say most of this as im not a great dps never have been... I find it difficult after healing fo so long to give 100% of my concentration to just doing damage. I tend to slip off and look at what other people are doing. They look in trouble ill just give them a hand type thing. Dont fall into my trap. If you come as dps then that is your job. If something is preventing you from doing that job then let us know
Anyways its time to push for these last 3 bosses .... can I get a "HELL YEH!!!"
Well, Im nodded alot when I read TLs post. But... We are spoiled. 2 people in the raid spoils us, and those are Whitey and TL (last one in particular). We are being spoon-fed every raid with alot of info. And this goes on during the raids. Everything is being called. The calls, are short and spot on. They tell us where to run, when to run, what to dps, who tanks... And I think its over the top.
-Choggy for instance. Puts a debuff on tank, and then tank switches are made. Tanks call out the switch. This is not needed.
-V&T "avoid swirly stuff" ... I smile everytime.
-Omntron - "Shield up, dps on lolatron".
Above are not needed.
Only the most superessential and/or changes in fight needs to be called. If someone doesnt run out when he/she has a skull on his head in Omitron.. let him/her wipe us. Let him/her feel the paaaaaaain. Dont call it out. It makes a difference for next time the person has a skull on his head.
If we are going hard modes, we need people watch and react, not being spoken to and react.
Oh... thats a nice one. You may qoute me on that one.
So... TL, you know we all enjoy your voice (yes, I do know you talk much less than you did a couple of months ago! :-).
These are my thoughts, feel free to disagree or agree or share your thoughts.. the imporatant part is the bold part. Normal modes = Practice for hard modes, and this is also the reason for not calling it all on TS.
And yes: Dont panic. Dont ever panic. There is never any reason to panic. Ask a question on vent if unsure what to dps or where to run during a fight. We all enjoy different voices, and other than the officers voices is also goodie.
I agree that the spoon-fed shouldnt be necessary, however a short reminder of the fight however can be usefull. On the not calling debuffs ect part I am not sure, letting him/her feel the pain, hmm my gold says otherwise im quite sure. I myself find it usefull thats its being called, not saying it should be done by 1 person, the more the better(shows you people are busy with the fight), sometimes I am just focused on something that I dont notice something else.
How I always review my raid is checking if im on top of the healing meters :P, I wanna heal the most, yet within my assignments, I always check if im ranked, caus IMO if you are then you did a great job :P, maybe I say that caus I got ranked a few times :P /flex.
But I do notice that we are slacking a bit, thinking ohh this is a farm boss I know this one its easy, but we cant do that, we whiped to much last raid on bosses that should be 1 shotted but what people might forget is that if we dont push it at the start we cant even try the last bosses, if someone cant be focused 100% for the entire raid then say so and IMO you can be swapped so you can have a longer break then the 10min break at half time.
Quote from: Arcticfire;321960How I always review my raid is checking if im on top of the healing meters :P, I wanna heal the most, yet within my assignments, I always check if im ranked, caus IMO if you are then you did a great job :P, maybe I say that caus I got ranked a few times :P /flex.
Of course, everyone wants to be on top of the healing metres. But i would be happy to be on bottom with 5k HPS if the group did a one-shot.. Means everyone avoided all the damage. Ah... dreaming away now .-)
Anyhow: How was Choggy on your mana? 3 tries, did u manage to go into burn phase? And did you have any mana left?
We didnt get to the burn phase, best try was getting him down by 20M at that point mana wasnt a issue however I used mana tide once(olmost of CD), both TL and Switch used there Mana Hymn. I think I had 25% left if it wasnt more.
Right its not about being top,its managing dps and heals on the end bosses....Heals are great as far as i can see...
Last night for example on the 1st few farm bosses i was top with Tl then taking me and by the end of the night Jesung also beating me..../care...In Jas's post 1 person is doing 22% dmg on a boss and 1 is doing 10%...This isnt acceptable...As ive stated i know i need to improve and hopefullly will get a few add-ons sorted tonight which will help me.But i am 1 of 5 dps in the raid grp....So all need to address this apart from the dude doing the regular epic dps and we all know who that is :)
Last night on Chog was unlucky cos we swapped few ppl in and had no real slowing for the adds and also on the last try we forgot about adds...We really need to pull our fingers out and get results...As ive said i know i need to improve and im working on it but also others need to work towards our goal! Smashing the hell out of the end raid bosses!
So ask yourself "what can i do" if your not sure then check logs and ask somebody who will know...The officers are there for a reason to run this for all of us but also help, as generally they have more exp than us.DONT BE AFRAID! They and others are willing to help as we all want the same thing...
sorry bout last night,, have had connection problems for a while now.
I've got my pay now and will be sorting it out.
Edit:
you can put me down as tenetative for tues and thurs, talked to my ISP and new hardware wont be here in a few days :(
Nps, Tan, it made slows a little more challenging, but it was still good experience.
Yeah, TL is most probably right. What shall I say? Guilty as charged. I really want to see end game content and I am doing already a lot for being prepared and being in time. Sometimes you prepare and watch videos and at the end we are going somewhere else. Me as a normal member, I don't know that beforehand. No excuse, but some explanation!
But the bottom line is: when I saw TL's preparation with exact drawings a master plan and the whole shebang, I have to confess, I never can get there. Impossible. This penetration into the depth of the game requires too much attention which I cannot divert from "Real Life" to Wow. Still, it is a hobby and not a profession.
Until lately DMR was a casual guild with a raiding unit which went into the difficult content but not on that "I give up my RL" level.
Many people sitting quiet and dont post as they dont dare to say it loud: ofc it is very comfy to have TL, who knows the fights (obviously for a reason), and to rely on him to help you getting over your "omgwhatdoidonow???" moments.
Bottom line: I love raiding, I try to be prepared but if TL's level of preparation is required from everyone, I am not suitable for DMR'S raid group.
With regards to the DPS discussion and the variations and to know your char and stuff: It is the same story, some people put an amount of time in this game which others can't and usually you see that from their dps, from their healing and from the frequency they are standing in whatever (surprise: fire hurts, poison poisones, ice slows) for too long...!
Bottom line: TL is right again, many of us are not on the same level as 24/7 Wow gamers.
Bottom line of all the bottom lines:
Noreia is still a dedicated player with no attitude of moaning when the wiping is going on and with a high interest to further progress, but if you guys want to go as professional as TL indicated, I am most probably not able to follow. I know, this might jeopardize my raid spot, but I dont wanna be yelled at and much more important: I dont want to hamper your progress and to be a reason for too slow progress.
I think the main issue with any boss fight that does require a bit of thought is to know the fight well enough so that it is second nature. Therefore all brain power goes into producing maximum healing/DPS as moving into the correct places and other fight mechanics just happen naturally. I don't think that requires the raid to be hardcore, just willing to concentrate for the time that you are in the raid and learn the fight tactics as fast as possible within that time. If you're hitting a new boss for the first time it's normally necessary to at least watch a video of it and read the tactics to have an understanding of it otherwise you walk in very unprepared with no real idea what the hell is happening. I don't think any of this requires you to be a hardcore player by any means.
I knew that this would eventually become an issue, the casual-hardcore-limits-time-consuming.
Let me tell you, Noreia; No. What TL schedules is a suitable level of preparation for a casual raider. TL is the RL, and dont think you need to do what he does.
Watch the fight a couple of times on Tankspot. Read through the tactics a couple of times. Ask questions about rotations/dispells/interrupts/dps target before the fight starts. All of this takes 45 minutes. And if you are not able to make that sacrifice, ok... You should not be raiding.
Im a casual raider.
I raid twice per week.
I have a full time job.
I have a gf that needs/wants alot of attention.
I have 3 kids.
I have a dog.
I have 2 steph-kids (or w/e its called in english.)
I drink too much whisky, but in a good way.
And... I do have time for 45 mins of preparation before every new boss, just to avoid n00b mistakes.
Gawd knows, I do make mistakes, alot of them. But I avoid the ones that are avoidable. Thats what my 45 mins are for. I dont make notes, but i have a web-browser open with wowhead.com and every boss ability. I read this during wipes/before tries, just to get my head updated and/or if there is some ability that we somehow missed.
So Noreia. Step it up, this thread isnt meant for you alone. This is meant for the team. All of us. :-) Its not about how much time you spend online, its how you spend it.
Wow, you may quote me on that one.
Wait. No.
TL had 3 bullets in his original post and I would like to stress that, as this is important:
• Attention to detail
• Survivability
• DPS familiarity (I would like to add "maximize healing output/mana management" for healers and "CD management" for tanks here)
But healers and tanks so far has been good. If Tirk went oom at 50% on a boss fight (as he did on Choggy), he fixed it to next try. And a couple of tries later we had Choggy on 6%.
Hal knows when to put his wings on, and his buff bar says so. We can all see that.
If I want twisted to do something different on tanking one of the Council members, I whisper him. He fix, or take it to forums to get it fixed.
I come prepared, knowing my role. If theres some questions I have on healing/healing assignemts ->> /dmrhealz (there is a reason for them channels).
To get end-game content down, everyone needs to do their part. Even you, Noreia.
Everyone needs to carry their own weight.
If this cant be done, dont sign up. No, seriously. Im not wiping for 3 hours because 1/10 doesnt prepare/learn.
I'm glad we're getting some reaction to this thread, finally. It's what I wanted, for people to stop and think about what they do when they commit to the other raiders to spend 3 hours with them 3 nights each week.
Quote from: NoréiaUntil lately DMR was a casual guild with a raiding unit which went into the difficult content but not on that "I give up my RL" level.
Sorry but this a complete untruth. Quite simply we are not even close to hardcore. However we are now asking people to be more accountable and to have some clue about a fight so that the other 9 people in the instance are not wasting their time.
How *you* prepare is for you to decide, but the important thing is that you prepare at all. I was pointing out that we had people in the raid that night who clearly (a) did not demonstrate that they had spent any time researching a fight, and (b) for a farm fight did not know the mechanics of a boss we have been killing for 2 months.
Personally I like to have acclimatised a little to a fight before I get to it - otherwise I 'brim' and can't produce the dps I need to at the same time as handling the fight mechanics. You do not need to prepare the same way, but you do need to prepare - and that's what we are asking everyone to do.
I do
not usually make my boss diagrams in Powerpoint (like I did for that example), my 'real' boss notes are done on the back of A5 envelopes which are piled up on my desk next to my keyboard - but they help *me* understand the flow of the fight. You need to do what works for you. Mine took me 2 minutes to write so I do not think it is unreasonable to ask every member to be prepared for a fight and to understand the mechanics. If you feel the need to refresh on boss tactics before a raid and find not knowing where the raid is going a problem then may I suggest spending 2 minutes on writing your own 'cue cards' for each boss so that you can review them whilst flying there?
Quote from: SlushIts not about how much time you spend online, its how you spend it.
You wanted to be quoted, so here it is! QFT.
If you want to raid, then you need to commit to making best use of your time and the time invested by your fellow raiders. Being knowledgeable about the fight, listening and responding to TS, making your toon perform at a decent level, none of this is hardcore, it's just common-sense.
My ChoiceIf being a DMR raider is about showing up and not being prepared, not knowing the fights, missing soft-enrage timers, failing at movement, not producing sufficient dps/tps/hps for your gear level, then I'm out. I do not wish to spend 9 hours each week with people who do not spend a few minutes giving respect to their fellow raid members by preparing and performing properly.
On the other hand, if you think that performing at a reasonable level and spending a few minutes preparing for a new boss (and retaining knowledge of farm fights) is reasonable, then I'll see you on TS tonight for the raid and will look forward to sharing many new boss kills with you as we plough through the raid content together. Let's use our limited casual time effectively, not waste it by not knowing what we are doing.
Quote from: Confucious (maybe)If you want to get into the next room then stop trying to walk through walls, open your eyes and walk through the doorway. Not seeing what is in front of you is a path that leads only to bruises not enlightment.
You don't have to give up your real life to raid either. I am not a 24/7 WoW gamer. Check when I come online, it's really only for raids these days and the daily heroic on
one toon only, just my priest.
And to finish, I'll go all 'Slush' on you (and because he wants to quoted more):
I'm an
efficient casual raider.
I have a full time job running my own business.
I have a wife that needs/wants a lot of attention.
I have 2 kids that need/want a lot of attention.
I drink not enough whisky, but in a good way.
I am taking 90 credits of study at the moment towards a mathematics degree (the equivalent of full-time study).
And... I still have time for 15 mins of preparation before every new boss, just to avoid n00b mistakes.
Go DMR! Effective casual raiding for the masses.
Rubbish....i just typed probably the best reply in the world...(sponsored by carlsberg) but got timed out :(
Main point was is we are being asked to address what we are doing wrong and how we can improve it....doesnt take alot of RL time...I can write the list tl and slush both have and add afew more bits to it like have several family deaths in the last few months and being on probation.Yes i havent turned in for a couple nights due to this but i have spoken to and made it known to officers.
Bottom line,spend 15/20 mins reaseraching fights and what u can do to improve to help 9 other peeps out....pure win after that
I dont know if this is the right thread .. however
Sunday night I'll be online, if you need a mage for the RGT (Sunday only) I'd be happy to lend a hand ...
my program is HCx1 , TB dailies and archy. so if you need /w me and I will come soon