HEROIC Warmaster Blackhorn - DEFEATED 01/04/12

[Slush]

To low dps if we try 3 healers..

Agreed.  

There are several pages with kills recorded with 3 healers out there on WoL. (yes, even with 2xMdps)
Your statement seem to be "the general" rule amongst RGT, and it keeps frustrating me... Am I alone on this? I think I am. (I was not raiding yesterday, nor Sunday.. so its not me that wants in. Its a 3rd healer).

We tried 2-healing Morchok.. it didnt work out so we did our first kill with 4 healers.
We tried 2-healing Yor'sahj... it didnt work out so we did our first kill with 3 healers.
We tried 2-healing Hagara...  it didnt work out so we did our first kill with 3 healers.

We never tried 2-healing Zon'ozz... and we got a 1st Heroic Zon'ozz kill just 6 days after we got our first Heroic Ultrazion kill. Only 6 days?! Is this becuase 3 healers from start made us nail the strat straight away?

Does history repeat itself? Firelands is a way back... but I remember Shonnox... trying with 2 healers; Didnt work out. Killed Shannox with 3. The same with Alyszrazor and Majordomo?


I dont want these Fatboss guides to be "general rule" at all. We dont fit in their box because
A) Our gear is superior to what they had when they killed these bosses.
B) DS nerfs.
C) Playstyles... They are EXTREMELY aware of movements and do not allow any safety margin.

We do take alot more damage in every fight than they do.
With 3 healers we will have a huge safety margin timewise (to heal up) when there is
A) An onslaught after barrage to any player.
B) A barrage after onslaught to any player.

Looking through logs, there was alot of this happening.

[TeaLeaf]

With tongue firmly in cheek, can I remind you Slush of your comment from the last time you were calling for us to go with more healers?

Ok, I was properly proven wrong tonight by TL. The dps barely lasted. Gz RGT on the kill, and yay for a fun fight.

Seriously though, we're open to exploring the different options Slush, but I can see what we're killing (or not killing) much better than I can see what you are healing - and I suspect the reverse is equally true.    

We're not generally dying to lack of healing, we're becoming overrun with melee adds & fire on the deck because Drakes are still alive.  These are not lack of healing problems.  The ship blowing up means we did not soak well enough and adding a healer to this will only make it worse not better.

You will have noticed that when we added heroism it suddenly cleaned up that phase of the fight, that's because the adds died quicker and we managed to keep up with things until the final phase.

As a sanity check, I picked page 500 from WoL for this Heroic kill and went through the logs:

25 kills listed on the page
Only 2 used 3 healers and their DPS was higher than ours was even with the extra DPS we use.
The vast majority of other kills used 2 healers and a DK tank (who was also 3rd highest healer).  

We're not averse to looking at changes, but as far as I can tell from looking at what we are DPSing, we're hardly keeping up as it is.   An extra healer would increase ship damage and slow us down even further.   That's my reasoning.

We're not slavishly following FatBoss or any other guides, but we are adjusting to what suits us as we learn an encounter - exactly like we did with Yor'sahj.

[Azunai]

Well I won't say you couldn't try, as you say it's been succesfull in the past. But I reckon we'll lose by attrition in the end, as the drakes possibly won't die fast enough to go down in 1 tether (yet), resulting in more barrages than the ship can handle. Remember if we stick with 1 melee that'll also mean a slight loss in dragon dps. We'll have less dps on drakes than we had when we were rolling 4 ranged 2 melee.

Granted, we have seen a lot of premature deaths and not often seen later phases with all dps up. We also used to threeheal normal mode before, because twoheal didn't cut it yet.

[JonnyAppleSeed]

I know what ya saying slush and it may be worth a try but looking at the damage taken by the boat at the moment means we are needing all the dps we can get ...The healing on the fight is not massive tbh.. If you look at my healz most of it is heading to overhealing. The deaths we are getting are due mostly to soaking/personal errors. We remove them and there is very little to heal.

[hubbah]

I dont want these Fatboss guides to be "general rule" at all. We dont fit in their box because
A) Our gear is superior to what they had when they killed these bosses.
B) DS nerfs.
C) Playstyles... They are EXTREMELY aware of movements and do not allow any safety margin.

I just wanted to comment on this part since i do agree with you on most of the other parts

Point A is not only for the DPS it is for the healers as well, your gear is superior to what the healers from fatboss had and even if they would have done it with 3 you should now be able to do it with 2 ( nerfs & gear upgrades ).

For some reason everytime we get stuck it we add another healer and the DPS will just have to pick up the slack which seems abit strange to me
Up untill now it all worked out due to our dps aint that bad, but due to the movement of this fight alot of us are really suffering ( Me and Micro should be to 2 suffering the least, but im just watching my feet and other stuff the whole time and screwing up my rotation, popping stuff at wrong time etc which results in a dps loss on my part. )
I do try to pick it up and as far as i know i went up quite abit yesterday if you look at the sunday try's.

For your last point yes you are right but this is a learning curve, we only see the kill and not the 200 wipes they had before hand

[Slush]

With tongue firmly in cheek, can I remind you Slush of your comment from the last time you were calling for us to go with more healers?

Interesting how my "sorry post" doesnt change the fact that we killed him with 3 healers AFTER I suggested it. Learning curve and adjusting tactics doesnt change that either.

Seriously though, we're open to exploring the different options Slush, but I can see what we're killing (or not killing) much better than I can see what you are healing - and I suspect the reverse is equally true.

Yeh, with 3 healers that keep topping up, we actually have the ability to take more barrages. Gather adds and AoE after the drakes are down? I know they cast Degeneration, but how big is our window from first set of drakes till second set with 1 less dps? Do we have the ability to keep tanks up while their debuff is stacking?
Will we be able to properly handle Sapper with 1 less dps? Questions asked. Would be interesting to "check". Not to "stick to".

As a sanity check, I picked page 500 from WoL for this Heroic kill and went through the logs:

25 kills listed on the page
Only 2 used 3 healers and their DPS was higher than ours was even with the extra DPS we use.
The vast majority of other kills used 2 healers and a DK tank (who was also 3rd highest healer).

I have seen this aswell. 10k+ HPS from that tank. We dont have that. What road does the rest of the guilds take? Some brings a 3rd healer. Some goes with 2 and hopes for the best. So far, we have done the last.. we are headed there, sure.

We're not slavishly following FatBoss or any other guides, but we are adjusting to what suits us as we learn an encounter - exactly like we did with Yor'sahj.

As stated above; Im not saying that we are not going there. Dont get me wrong. Im saying that there are more than one road that can take us there. The reason I am suggesting this is to get my head chopped off... and to hopefully see if going 3 healers is actually worth it.

For some reason everytime we get stuck it we add another healer and the DPS will just have to pick up the slack which seems abit strange to me

-More healing output and lesser damage taken does not actively help to beat an enragetimer (higher total HPS).
-More healing helps out in overcoming the problems that might otherwise have decreased DPS (deaths, not moving out of stuff on the floor).

Point A is not only for the DPS it is for the healers as well, your gear is superior to what the healers from fatboss had and even if they would have done it with 3 you should now be able to do it with 2 ( nerfs & gear upgrades ).

In a perfect world, the every raid member would have moved as well as them. As we are not moving as well as them, there is more incoming damage than outgoing healing.
I am still thinking; Blizzard designed every 10-man encounter with "2 healers, 3 tanks and 5 dps'ers in mind. So there is no "slack", there is just different ways of approaching an encounter.

All in all:
It might be another "lol slush, you naive twat" moment... but hey... I can take a few more blows _and_ pherhaps learn something as we go. I am still thinking; Blizzard designed every 10-man encounter with "2 healers, 3 tanks and 5 dps'ers in mind.

[TeaLeaf]

I think you are totally missing the point Slush.

People are not dying due to lack of healing or soaking less due to lack of healing.  They are dying to:

-soaking mistakes
-the ship blowing up
-becoming overrun with adds

Which of these is related to healing?

[hubbah]

And you did not reply to my last comment that we are still learning and you only saw a clean kill from them.. they said they had like 150 wipes as well before the kill..

The dmg intake & the dmg output will get alot beter after we stop fudging up

[TeaLeaf]

I think that's a very fair point Hubbah.  As we learn the fights and get better then DPS goes up and Damage Taken goes down.  


   Out of interest (and seeing as Morchok, Yor'sahj & Hagara were quoted):

We had a very similar experience with HC Yor'sahj where we initially started with 3 healers but then could not then cope with the DPS requirements.  So we moved to 2 healers and then the DPS improved and became more efficient to the point where we could increase to 3 healers again.

From the outset I recommended 4 healers for HC Morchok, we only tried 2 healers very briefly to prove a point iirc and then stuck with the 4 healer strategy.  

For Hagara we tried just 4 quick pulls at the very end of a raid night with 2 healers and immediately switched to 3 healers from the next raid night onwards.


The message from that is that we do change & adapt to what we see - if we get to a stage where we see surplus DPS throughout the fight then we can move to 3 healers (or need the 3 to survive where DPS requirements are not an issue).  

For Blackhorn, now that we are using 1 melee, 5 ranged, we are for the first time seeing some down time at the end of the first wave (maybe 2-3 seconds of nothing to do but wait for the Sapper), but we're not seeing any downtime later in the fight.  Perhaps with another 5 HC boss kills this reset before revisiting HC Blackhorn we might see a further change as we continue to learn & improve.

We need to stop making mistakes so that we can better evaluate our HPS & DPS requirements.  At the moment the mistkes are killing us or the ship.

[Jesung]

To low dps if we try 3 healers..

This, we are barely scraping it now to be honest dropping a DPS would do nothing but make the fight last way too long, no offence to the other DPS but I don't think we could make up the slack of a missing DPS and as Teaell said we are rarely dying from lack of healing, it's mainly personnel faults of solo soaking or getting charged.

[Slush]

I think you are totally missing the point Slush.

Mmm... nope.

-soaking mistakes

Lets look at your table, 31 wipes:
Try 6 - Whytee hit by 8k Degeneration - slow death over time, insufficient healing
Try 7 - Torgen Last 7 seconds took an Onslaught (82k) and a Barrage (112k) (not topped)
Try 8 - Miicroid Last 9 seconds took 89k Barrage then 120k Onslaught (not topped)
Try 8 - Incendia Last 4 seconds took an 87k Blade Rush then an 88k Barrage (not topped)
Try 18 - Torgen hit by 157k Barrage (was hit by Barrage 11 sec after Onslaught, not topped).
Try 19 - Jesung hit by 115k Barrage (60 deck fire taken in previous 12 secs)
Try 19 - Incendia in final 12 seconds took 31k Onslaught solo soak, 33k Deck Fire, 8k/19k/19k/19k Cauterize then the final 25k Deck Fire killed (not topped)
Try 24 - Torgen hit by 150k Barrage (not topped off after Onslaught 14 secs before)
Try 30 and 31 is very similar to 24.
I count: 8/31 wipes that _might_ have been avoided_

Yesterdays logs, I did a quick browse through wipes: Try 13, 16, 17 and 18 have 1st deaths that could have been avoided with  topping off.

If there was topping off, these killed could have been avoided. When you have the debuff from Barrage, one have to be topped off when going into an Onslaught due to the debuff. In some of these cases.. they were not.

There might have been more. I know I would be scared to take:
A) An Onslaught is I had debuff+low hp.
B) A Barrage if debuffed and low on hp.

as this would then cause soaking partner to die.

-the ship blowing up

This happens because barrage/Onslaught does not hit us. Does this happen due to what mentioned above? People not daring to take it because of low hp?
Would be nice to see if 3 healers actually had an effect on this.

-becoming overrun with adds

The Slayers debuff is "least dangerous". With 1 less dps, he should have last prio. With 1 extra healer we should have enough to keep tank up through some extra stacks. (Tanks dying has this far been rare).
This means the melee dps will have something to work on as new drakes are spawning.
Yes, it will mean we will fall more behind for each wave, but with hero at the end of wave 3.. This can be done?

Which of these is related to healing?

Some.
Not many. Not none. Some.

If you feel that you are barely able to dps whats already there; Maybe staying with 2 healers is the way to go. AGAIN; Im not saying it is not wrong, its merely a matter of different opinions for how to further progress.

And you did not reply to my last comment that we are still learning and you only saw a clean kill from them.. they said they had like 150 wipes as well before the kill..

Why would we want to comment on this. We are learning, thats why I proposed a different raid setup.
They knew there was no way in hell they could have done that with their gear level, so they _had_ to leave out a healer. They could not leave out a tank due to the tanks debuff/rotation. I dont want to see our guild wipe 150+ times on each encounter when we are already at a decent gear level. Im not saying that 3-healer setup is the way to go, but it might alse give the officers a different view.

[Jesung]

Honestly Slush, without that extra 1 DPS there is no way that we would get the second and third pairs of drakes down in the short amount of time that we should and we would undoubtedly get overlapping adds as we were before added the extra ranged but even worse as there wouldn't be a DPS at all. As you pointed out the dying from barrages from not being topped off is killing people but I think people need to make a conscious decision of whether to soak or not. Also we shouldn't be using hero in the first phase at all, it should be saved for when the boss drops down, and with 1 less DPS at that point without hero I don't think the enrage would be met.

[Azunai]

Bottom line for me, I think adding a 3rd healer in this case is not a solution to a problem, it's a workaround: If we don't mess up soaks, we don't need a 3rd healer. The solution to the messing up is to deal with the cause: properly move in and out of soaks. Not to remedy the problem's consequence: low health after a messed up soak.

Next, if we add a 3rd healer, we'll be able to last longer against more soaks, this is true. But the ship won't. As last night showed we're already stretching it to the limit of what the ship can handle. The solution to this, in my eyes, is that we need to up the drake DPS. I want to refer again to the video Micro linked and have you all look at the DPS numbers they're pumping out. All are 30K+. Our own numbers are all below 30k. That's a *big* difference in how many barrages we have to soak overall.

We find that we can't DPS efficiently enough because we're busy handling barrages (and onslaughts etc.), yet if we can increase DPS, we decrease barrages.

So we need to work on two things:

1. Handle soaking a lot better, thereby preventing premature deaths.
2. Learn to sustain our usual high (enough) dps output while doing so, thereby causing less barrages overall.

With regards to Slush's argument, I've to side with TL and say that neither of those two are directly related to a lack of healing.
Re Hubbah (and other DPS who might experience the same, me included): Maybe it's an idea to handle the problem the other way around. Start with focussing on performing your rotation properly, and work towards keeping an eye out for barrages from there. But keep the DPS rotation as a top priority in your mind.

[hubbah]

Yes i have been trying to do so and my dps went up quite abit if im not mistaken.
The biggest problem i have is that the "soaking" with your partner is not fluent and im losing like 10 seconds ( at least ) of dps time because im going in and out.. holding back screaming on TS ( not really ).
I really believe that once we get used to that part and the moving & dpsing ( so in my case its reserving 100 focus to launch instant shots when on the move, etc ) it should go up quite abit.

All with all im 100% sure that we wont be able to make it with 3 healers due to the DPS numbers being to low AT THE MOMENT ( not saying its not possible in the future ).

Why would you not want a 150 wipes btw slush? We all have to learn & adept to the fight anyway..

Anyway, back to work.. cu tomorrow for some more killing stuff

[TeaLeaf]

The Dreadblade is already prio out of the two melee, so no change there.

Regarding the melee, if we get behind we store up a mammoth problem for the third wave of drakes because the melee need to be dead by the time we kill the last drake as that's when P2 starts.  If we are behind a little on the melee at that point then we give the drakes free reign to toss more Barrage at us and the ship whilst we catch up again.  

So it's a balance we're trying to maintain between minimising drake uptime, keeping up with melee, then trying to ensure (we've yet to have the chance) that we get a nice clean entry into P2.  I've been using heroism mid second wave to help dps acclimatise to the fight, but we ideally want to hold it until Goriona lands in P2 to push through that phase.

Btw, I'm loving the interraction here.  Regardless of disagreement or not, I believe that the fact we all actively & vigorously debate different ideas is what makes us stronger as a raid team. :thumbsup: