[Ret] Fix my DPS!

[Tanyn]

I didn't have time to look at your logs. I was just throwing out general tips for that fight. Sorry. I was trying to be nice and respond to you as best I could without having the time to check your logs. I did forget to mention Mass Exorcism glyph for this fight. Cast it on your nest to get that 2pc debuff up then go into your DS, CS, DS thing. Honestly, though, if you arent having issues with nests then it's all about getting a nutrient buff every time you use a feather charge. Delaying coming up or down from a nest for 5-10 seconds can make a world of difference getting that buff and doing way more damage at the end of the encounter. Good luck!


@Thete - What DPS glyphs? Besides Mass Exorcism / Double Jeopardy there isn't another real DPS glyph for Retribution that would do anything on that fight. Yes, there may be a cooldown rotation set up, but what if the fight starts going a little sideways? If you're up or down on a nest and your healer dies or misses the platform? It's very useful to have that 20% physical reduction every quills. I glyph it for a couple bosses in ToT. Heroic Horridon and Heroic Ji-Kun are just the two that I can think of at the moment.

[Deleted]

@Thete - What DPS glyphs? Besides Mass Exorcism / Double Jeopardy there isn't another real DPS glyph for Retribution that would do anything on that fight. Yes, there may be a cooldown rotation set up, but what if the fight starts going a little sideways? If you're up or down on a nest and your healer dies or misses the platform? It's very useful to have that 20% physical reduction every quills. I glyph it for a couple bosses in ToT. Heroic Horridon and Heroic Ji-Kun are just the two that I can think of at the moment.

Are you seriously suggesting that you go without glyph of Templar's Verdict ever? In my opinion there is only one form of damage that puts you in serious danger and that's the pools (a couple of which should be soaked by each player). Any deaths caused by quills are down to poor play on the parts of healers or poor raid leadership. Now, steps should always be taken to do what you can in a raid to compensate for the fails of others (everyone mucks up now and then) but not when it prevents you doing your own job; that has to be paramount otherwise you are expecting others to pick up your own slack.

[crazy8]

@Tanyn, sorry if it sounded like I was talking down or anything, I never do that, certainly not when asking for help, was just on about the 5th drink or so and had a toot or 2 already, so i worded it wrong,lol.

What I meant to say is that on normal kills I was always just on the platform and helping to saok, so it those cases any of our 2 dps glyphs are useless anyways so I would always throw that one on for the extra 20%.

I do have the dbm timers, but I had just reinstalled dbm and still had the default "small" bar setup, I need them bigger to be more aware

Will fix that and fix getting the nutrient and I imagine I will be fine then, perhaps even talk the r/l into just leaving me on the platform to help soak as well.

@Thete, I was in the first group to go to nests, there was 5 of us, 1 healer and 4 dps, I was thinking after the fact that for one our group is at more nests than others plus there are 4 dps, mage, rogue and dk, my numbers may be a bit lower as there are more dps and they are doing more aoe damage than me, therefore making me lower, all the other dps I beat regularly on other fights and I have never made aoe rotation a priority.

I know its not always the case with adds and this fight in particular but I have always thought that focus targeting adds down with burst as ret was better than trying to do any aoe.

I only mentioned the shammy as he was higher on most attempts, but looking at the logs perhaps he was part of the reason we were not getting closer to hero time, he had lots of active time on the big bird compared to his damage on the eggs and hatchlings, plus enh aoe is in a far better place then ours, certainly for a positional fight like this one on the nests.

Thankyou both for your responses and one extra question, is it just me or does tab targetting and melee range in general suck for us or is it for everyone,lol.

[Riemu2k3]

I only play Ret as an offspecc, so I didn't really bother with it until now. I have about 546 itemlevel in Ret Gear (no set bonus however).

I've read/heard, that using SW is the best dps choice. But I seem to get into rotational issues with my haste (48%). While SW is active, my rotation usually looks like this (start at 0 HP): CS -> HoW -> FILLER -> HoW -> TV -> HoW -> CS -> HoW -> TV

Is that somewhat correct? I usually just alternate between FILLER and HoW. While Filler is sth like TV > CS > Rest?

Or should I not prioritize HoW that high?

I seem to have an issue playing Ret, because I always forget that my finisher (TV) is on the GCD unlike SoTR.

Or should I use another talent instead of SW?

I can't really seem to get into the rythm using SW while actually doing a heroic boss (dummy is fine, but as soon as movement and stuff comes in, I seem to forget about HoW or TV)

[Colmadero]

I only play Ret as an offspecc, so I didn't really bother with it until now. I have about 546 itemlevel in Ret Gear (no set bonus however).

I've read/heard, that using SW is the best dps choice. But I seem to get into rotational issues with my haste (48%). While SW is active, my rotation usually looks like this (start at 0 HP): CS -> HoW -> FILLER -> HoW -> TV -> HoW -> CS -> HoW -> TV

Is that somewhat correct? I usually just alternate between FILLER and HoW. While Filler is sth like TV > CS > Rest?

Or should I not prioritize HoW that high?

I seem to have an issue playing Ret, because I always forget that my finisher (TV) is on the GCD unlike SoTR.

Or should I use another talent instead of SW?

I can't really seem to get into the rythm using SW while actually doing a heroic boss (dummy is fine, but as soon as movement and stuff comes in, I seem to forget about HoW or TV)

AFAIK Always use HoW on CD. The only ability that rankes above HoW during AW is TV with the 4pc bonus.

[Deleted]

I only play Ret as an offspecc, so I didn't really bother with it until now. I have about 546 itemlevel in Ret Gear (no set bonus however).

I've read/heard, that using SW is the best dps choice. But I seem to get into rotational issues with my haste (48%). While SW is active, my rotation usually looks like this (start at 0 HP): CS -> HoW -> FILLER -> HoW -> TV -> HoW -> CS -> HoW -> TV

Is that somewhat correct? I usually just alternate between FILLER and HoW. While Filler is sth like TV > CS > Rest?

Or should I not prioritize HoW that high?

I seem to have an issue playing Ret, because I always forget that my finisher (TV) is on the GCD unlike SoTR.

Or should I use another talent instead of SW?

I can't really seem to get into the rythm using SW while actually doing a heroic boss (dummy is fine, but as soon as movement and stuff comes in, I seem to forget about HoW or TV)

If you have an heroic 2/2 weapon, CS hits harder than both J and exo :

best opener I found was : build 3HP>GoAK+SW+HoW macro to have 4HP>INQ>HoW>CS>HoW>TV

This way, you always use TV at 4HP until you have 10stacks of jikun and use ES in place of CS, and then you'll have an optimal number of HP to never waste HP while using HoW, can use TVs at 5HP, and the only HoW non inq-buffed will be at the very beginning while your str and goak aren't full power yet, and inq will fall AFTER your CDs that way.

same way with later usage of SW : builde 3hp>SW+HoW macro to get 4HP>INQ>HoW>CS>HoW>TV etc..

SW is the best talent, with or without 4p.

[Larthin]

I've been playing ret since very early Wrath, but lately, during my guild's heroic progression, my numbers have just been absolutely shitty for the most part, and for the life of me I cannot figure out why, so I figured I'd post for some help if anyone wants to delve in and help figure out why.

Armory - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...Saveena/simple
Logs - http://worldoflogs.com/guilds/227917/

We just hit 8/13H last night, but I feel like my numbers are well below where they should be. I know I'm in two pieces of LFR tier, because conq tokens refuse to drop, and I haven't been blessed with a heroic weapon of any sorts, which I know doesn't help.

[Saelem]

Paladins, I beseech your help.

Our Ret paladin is terrible. I need to know what he is doing wrong what he needs to improve on.

I'm aware of a couple of glaring issues. Like the tank shoulders he's wearing and the dying to avoidable stuff.
I've included logs from last nights raid IQ kill, Twins Kill and a lot of wipes on lei shin.

As far as glyphs, I assume he doesn't change them at all. In fact, I can probably guarantee it.

Feel free to critique the raid as a whole, there is a lot of room for improvement for everyone in the entire raid.

His Armory

The WoL

[Huntingbear_grimbatol]

Inquisition 52.5% uptime on Iron Qon kill. needs to be 90% uptime+
He has terrible, terrible gear, reforged and gemmed decent though.
His damage breakdown is terrible as well, his finisher (templar's verdict) is insanely low.
197 holy power total gained.
9 holy power spent on self heals
90 spent on Templar's Verdict
18 spent on Divine Storm (if that much)
Where did his other 80 Holy power go? or did he simply not use them.
Ask him to get CLC ret or CLC info addon it's going to help him a lot.

[Deleted]

Hi guys, coming here from the lock forums as our ret has been struggling recently with his dps, and we could do with squeezing out as much as possible in order to finally get lei shen heroic down.

Here is the link to our attempts from last night. We all played terribly for most of the night, but we had a 6% and 9% wipe towards the end so maybe they can provide you with the most information.

Problems are that we lack dps in second phase and it's sometimes hit or miss whether we end up leveling overcharge before he hits 30%.

I realise he doesn't have a heroic weapon yet which hurts, and there were times he was using his wings just before first transition which meant he only got 2 uses in p2 instead of 3, but is there anything about his general play that you can glean in order to improve his damage on this fight? We're using second potion after first transition in order to push him faster.

One thing I questioned was that he forgoes the 120 str socket bonus for pure haste, but he assured me that haste was so far ahead that those bonuses didn't matter.

Thank you in advance.

[Riemu2k3]

snipped

I can't comment on your Retri, but I'm sure that will do someone else. I can comment on your Rest however, maybe it will help you guys abit.

Your best try: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/i...=12303&e=12866
Our last Kill: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=8486&e=8994

- Your DPS overall seems fine. You still have problems in the last phase. You need to focus on keeping everyone alive till the 3rd Thunderstruck. After that, shit becomes serously hard anyway and if you lose people here, you can zerg him down in most cases.

- How do you handle the 2nd Pillar Phase? We move 2x Diffusion - 2x Overcharge - Balls (doesn't overload). Naturally, we start with Static Shock in p1. Having enough DPS to push without 2 Overcharg-Overloads is pretty much impossible on your first kill. We only manage to do that, if we have perfect setup. Play it safe and overload 2x - 2x. You will have enough time then. Time / DPS before P3 doesn't matter at all with this tactic. You can avoid whipes at the 3rd Plattform this way. Overloading Overcharge 2x is also no problem at all - you just need to make sure that you have 1 targetable person (everyone but tanks) in each quadrant when the first overcharge goes out in the transition phase. Dont overcomplicate things and dont force it. It will happen naturally.

- You take 50 Charges of Discharged Energy when you move between pillars. That's 11 more Stacks than our 39. That drains Healer Mana that's not necessary. Optimize your Taunting / Switching. Trick here is to let your monk do all the transitions because of the Speed buff the Boss gains. Also, try to always drag him in a straigth line from where he stands. You can shave off 1-2 stacks this way.

- I can however comment on your Prot Pally. And he is not doing a very good job.

Compare: http://www.raidbots.com/comparebot/5...254ef736000e67

- Execution Sentence: WHY!?!?!? Leishen is perfect for Holy Prism. You can use it after every Crashing Thunder to heal your melees and to help out in P3 where healing is badly needed after each Thunderstruck. I can also see LH useful here but ES... no way.
- He doesn't play with Battle Healer!? Again, healing in P3 is badly needed. There is no better glyph here. He played with Alabaster Shield + Focused Shield. Alabaster Shield is useless because he should only ever take direct damage from the Boss and Final Wrath is just way more DPS, especially because the 20% phase lasts pretty long. Focused Shield is not the best choice either. You need to get those Ball Lightnings down ASAP and every bit of DPS helps. He should really help out here. And again, even if its not needed, Final Wrath is more DPS then Focused Shield on this Boss, because of the gigantic HP pool.
- He needs to play Leishen HC with Final Wrath / Wrath-Stun-Glyph / Battle Healer. Everything else is just not ideal.
- Sacred Shield Uptime is at 48%. That's really bad. Should be 90+ - better 95%. No point in keeping it up in Transitions when you dont take damage (also, he should be soaking things here).
- He plays with Tank meta instead of DPS meta. Not the best choice for 10m HC Leishen Progression. Should be playing with DPS meta.
- Rest of his Gemming / Reforging / Gearing seems ok
- His DPS is quite low. Needs to work on that. If his DPS is low because he doesn't tank Lei Shen for most of the time because your Monk is tanking him, then your Monk's DPS is shit. Either way, your tank / tanks need to do more damage for their Gear / this fight.
- His Rotations seems ok on first glance. HP used / gained is ok too because of Transitions. Haven't really looked at GCDs used or JS/C ratio though.

I manage to heal my melee pack completely without external healers in P1 with Battle Healer + Holy Prism. So your Druid should be able to squeeze out abit DPS here because other than that, there is nothing happening. Our healers usually enter the first transition with full mana / almost full mana and they managed to do some DPS (Disc / Druid). Your Druid can also HOTW in P2 after you have cleaned up the Ball Lightnings - because other than that, damage in P2 is quite low. If you really need the damage that is.

You can post your Prot Pally in the Fix my Tanking Thread, maybe someone else will comment further.

[Serani]

snip

It could quite possibly have something to do with the EXTREMELY low uptime on Inquisition.

[Riemu2k3]

Now that you mention it - he did only cast Inquisition twice!!!! in the 9:22 fight. lol

He also plays with Sacred Shield (which is ok I guess - isn't SH better?), but has a low uptime on that one too (50%)

- - - Updated - - -

Also, he used HA instead of SW. I believe SW is better? (again, no real clue about ret, just posting what people told me).

However, he used AW 4 times - which means he could have also used ES 9 times (only used it 8 times) and HA 5 times (only used it 4 times).

He also only has 1 proc of Ancient Fury (the GoAK explosion thingy), which means he used GoAK only once in a 9 minute fight...

ES damage seems low (1.9 Mio). Your Prot Pally has 3.x Million. Your Ret should have more damage than your Prot Pally on ES if used correctly / with buffs etc.

6 FoL without SH, hope that was only during transitions

44 TV + 10 DS + 2 IQ = 56 (if I counted correctly) = 168 HP used
9 WoG = Why did he need to WoG himself 9 times!?!? = 27 HP used tops

He generated 275 HP

So he lost about 80 HP!? Can that be right? Or did I miss something? Or do you need to add both Templar's Verdict in the log? If so, thats another 25 TV -> 75 HP. So he didn't lose that much then (if he always WoGed with 3 HP..)

[Deleted]

For second phase we overload diffusion, then go to overcharge and balls without overloading either. In order to do this we use our second potion at the start of the phase. We managed twice to push him in time, but as you can see, it was pretty tight.

You say you overload overcharge, and have one targetable person in each quadrant. We've been having our monk solo a platform, but I guess in second transition we can have someone with him. I presume this causes overcharge to hit all 3 quadrants, but prevents double overcharge occurring in a single quadrant. If so, this sounds like a fantastic change that can allow us to save potions for p3 instead. Cheers.

I'll paste your responses into my guild thread for the boss and see what they have to say, will point them in this direction as well if they require further info.

Also yes, our monk is taking most of the boss damage in this phase. The paladin is mainly just offtanking it. I believe some of his talent/glyph choices were taken in order to maximise boss dps in the second phase, but thanks to your help already, it appears such extreme measures (if that's what they are) may not be necessary with a change of tactic.

I'll keep monitoring this thread if you come back with any more suggestions, but thank you very much for the analysis so far!

[Riemu2k3]

You say you overload overcharge, and have one targetable person in each quadrant. We've been having our monk solo a platform, but I guess in second transition we can have someone with him. I presume this causes overcharge to hit all 3 quadrants, but prevents double overcharge occurring in a single quadrant. If so, this sounds like a fantastic change that can allow us to save potions for p3 instead. Cheers.

Yes, when you have one valid player in each of the 3 active quadrants, you wont have overlapping overcharges on one plattform. Just send over a rogue or mage or sth like that (a player that can soak 2 static shock alone). Healing comes from your monk with Blobs and Stuff.

Take a look here: http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.c...p?f=48&t=33432

And view this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yk3m1Qk_Srw

Movement is abit different. You overload diffusion 2x and move the boss with the 2nd fusion slash. After that however, things change. You wait for the 2nd lightning whip and taunt the boss from range move about to the half of the plattform and wait for the fusion slash to throw you into the final quadrant. He musn't charge the pillar at all when the fusion slash goes out or otherwise you will have overcharge higher than diffusion.

It's all explained in detail in this thread above.

[Deleted]

Fantastic, thanks!

We had some issues with our rogue being afk a lot (she's also gonna be afk tonight...) so it will likely be me (warlock) who will go with the monk. I've done it with him before when the rogue was missing and he had no issues keeping me alive. I can soak one, and he can do his avert harm combo with my shield wall and I usually survive with about 100k!

Had a chat with our prot and he basically said he knew he was picking subpar talents, he was just doing so because of how hard we had to push dps in p2 (which we will now change).

The ret hasn't been online but his inquisition uptime on other bosses (e.g. qon) was at like 98% so I still need to question him on this boss, but I'm gonna presume he's skipping it in favour of other stuff (could he be holding onto HP in order to burst aoe the ball lightning?). Regardless will get this info passed onto him asap.

[Tanyn]

It still wouldn't make sense. He'd want the 30% extra damage from Inquisition and the 10% crit to AoE DPS the adds more. He should refresh Inquisition about 10 secs before add spawns and then gain back his 4-5 HP. Adds spawn > Exo > DS >Exo(if proc)/HotR > DS. They should be dead at that point.

[Serani]

Fantastic, thanks!

We had some issues with our rogue being afk a lot (she's also gonna be afk tonight...) so it will likely be me (warlock) who will go with the monk. I've done it with him before when the rogue was missing and he had no issues keeping me alive. I can soak one, and he can do his avert harm combo with my shield wall and I usually survive with about 100k!

Had a chat with our prot and he basically said he knew he was picking subpar talents, he was just doing so because of how hard we had to push dps in p2 (which we will now change).

The ret hasn't been online but his inquisition uptime on other bosses (e.g. qon) was at like 98% so I still need to question him on this boss, but I'm gonna presume he's skipping it in favour of other stuff (could he be holding onto HP in order to burst aoe the ball lightning?). Regardless will get this info passed onto him asap.

Without offence, holding HP to avoid Inq refresh is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Inq is literally the highest DPS increase that is possible from HP, holding it is like saving embers 95% of a fight as destro warlock.

[Todyn]

Fantastic, thanks!

We had some issues with our rogue being afk a lot (she's also gonna be afk tonight...) so it will likely be me (warlock) who will go with the monk. I've done it with him before when the rogue was missing and he had no issues keeping me alive. I can soak one, and he can do his avert harm combo with my shield wall and I usually survive with about 100k!

There is quite a bit of downtime on Lei Shen, could that be the reason why his inq uptime is "low"?
Had a chat with our prot and he basically said he knew he was picking subpar talents, he was just doing so because of how hard we had to push dps in p2 (which we will now change).

The ret hasn't been online but his inquisition uptime on other bosses (e.g. qon) was at like 98% so I still need to question him on this boss, but I'm gonna presume he's skipping it in favour of other stuff (could he be holding onto HP in order to burst aoe the ball lightning?). Regardless will get this info passed onto him asap.

There is some downtime during the transitions of Lei Shen, could that account for it?

[Deleted]

Without offence, holding HP to avoid Inq refresh is the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Inq is literally the highest DPS increase that is possible from HP, holding it is like saving embers 95% of a fight as destro warlock.

Yeah I understand, I was just speculating as to what it could have been.

There is some downtime during the transitions of Lei Shen, could that account for it?

Turns out he fiddled with his weakauras and accidentally broke his Inq icon.

Only managed a few pulls last night as our rogue was unable to make it again, but here are our logs from the few pulls that we had. 75% Average uptime seems about right considering how long the transitions last. He's also doing an average of 20k+ dps more than the previous night

Having our rogue afk again made transitions a pain, but hopefully we'll see him down on sunday. Again, cheers for the help.