[ENH] Should I be making arguments against moving?

[Deleted]

I've been struggling lately as my guild is transitioning into mythic raiding. Our roster is still fairly new, have only done 1,2 weeks of raiding so we're still getting used to each other. We're still not doing some tactics optimally and we're still perfecting our gul'dan hc execution. It's come to my attention that the RL has pointed out that I do not help on bonds. It hasn't been made personal but comments like "I counted at least 3 people that didn't move to bonds" have come up.

Now I REALLY don't want to be that guy that wants to just tunnel on boss but I don't feel useful when I move to bonds. Shamans are fairly immobile, having only speed increases and no real dash/displacement ability. When bonds come up even with our sprint ability I usually am not able to make it in time for first bonds target and can really only help with the second one but by the time I'm there 6+ people are already soaking it.

Don't get me wrong. I immediately switch to eyes and the extra add but those are targets that I can be on within a second. Enhancement, unlike some classes, suffers greatly from downtime. Our cooldowns aren't a tremendous part of our damage, our damage relies on hitting and procs. I can't just pop my major damage CDs and walk over while they are recharging so a 10+ sec drop means I go down drastically in dps.

I know that mechanics>logs but then the guild casually jokes about your mediocre damage, sure it's a friendly joke but there's a bit of truth behind every joke so it's really a lose-lose situation. Get scolded for not doing mechanics or for not doing enough damage.

I had this issue on HC Odyn. They wanted all melees to switch to hyrja/hymdal on P2 which was an absolute nightmare especially when half the time during hymdal I was sitting around dodging horn of valor.

Again I'd like to point out. If we have 2,3 ranged dead, I'll immediately help with bonds, or soul soaking or whatever kind of high movement mechanic the boss has that is not considered melee prio because at that point we're struggling and my contribution matters but when there are 20 people alive and well, we're not lacking in damage/healing and our raid composition is good I honestly believe that trying to do quick movement mechanics like bond soaking is hurting us more than it's helping. I really wish enh sham were more mobile, doing mechanics is more fun than pure tank n spank but we just aren't.

Do you think I should be making arguments against moving?

[Yunyuns]

Why don't you just tell to your RL everything you told us ?

The most basic thing should be to ask him "I can go help bonds but I will lose a lot of dps cause Enh relies on hitting and proccing. Should I still go help bonds ?"

He answers yes, you go, he answers no, you don't.

[Deleted]

Because this is all a personal opinion based on my experience which may be wrong. Maybe it's an l2p issue and there's a way to do competitive dps and do high movement mechanics. I wanted to see if other players agree with the points I make.

[Deleted]

are you dying because of bonds (and healing om general) or due to enrage timer?

- - - Updated - - -

send your raid leader to this post. if he's a good leader he will take it into consideration and research how other guilds do it

[Deleted]

No we haven't really died to bonds.

Main issues have been not killing eyes fast enough, bad fire placement, bad positioning causing people to get knocked off when they get hit by bonds, standing in front of boss, forgetting to soak, dying to the beam in P1. All of these have been alleviated save for maybe occasionally slacking on eyes and our fire placement still leaves a lot to be desired. But this is because half the roster is old and has a decent amount of heroic and some mythic experience and half is new and has little to no heroic experience. People are learning.

[Darleth]

No we haven't really died to bonds.

Main issues have been not killing eyes fast enough, bad fire placement, bad positioning causing people to get knocked off when they get hit by bonds, standing in front of boss, forgetting to soak, dying to the beam in P1. All of these have been alleviated save for maybe occasionally slacking on eyes and our fire placement still leaves a lot to be desired. But this is because half the roster is old and has a decent amount of heroic and some mythic experience and half is new and has little to no heroic experience. People are learning.

This is, as you said yourself, due to people not yet being familiar and comfortable enough with the fight.
In general, explain to him how enhancement shaman works if he isn't sure about it and tell him exactly what you wrote here. If he still says you need to help out on bonds, do it. I'm usually the guy in my raid that sacrifices his DPS and helps out on mechanics to actually KILL the boss instead of just saying "ah fuck it, I'm going to tunnel the boss, someone else should do that stuff", because I know how unreliable SOME people can be (at least in my raid), even took a Slam on Krosus after our tank died due to the debuff stacking too high. And yes, we lose a lot of dps if we have to move a ton, this has always been a thing for enhancement shaman though and wasn't really fixed with the remake unfortunately.

On eyes though, tell him you're more useful in cleaving down the eyes. Especially the big one, where you can cleave both Gul'dan and the Empowered Eye, if its close to him (which it usually is when it spawns). DPS matters the most in this phase and melees usually have to deal with the fire debuff.

[Deleted]

You have feral lunge, sprint and ghost wolf. You are magnitudes more mobile than a DK. Do mechanics.

You will never wipe on heroic gul'dan in an organized setting due to lack of damage (outside of p3). If you then begin to be questioned on overall dps it will be as easy as just showing actual uptime logs on WCL.

[Deleted]

I do not have feral lunge, I use speed totem full time for raid utility. We do not have a druid for the speed buff.

[Antilurker77]

Melee should not be soaking bonds. Your RL is bad.

[Murderdoll]

It all comes down to your raid makeup.

In our guild, we just had the melee do the Tank (if req) and then go back to boss because we had enough ranged/heals to handle the ones at range.

If the people at range are having no issue getting them, why the fuck would you run all the way out, just to get there, its done, then run all the way back?

If you dont have the ranged and theyre taking longer than youd like, then you might have to start helping.

I would explain your strengths to the raid leader. Dont start yelling about how your mobility sucks.

Oh your mobility sucks? Well maybe you should try Ele or we should find a different melee?

Instead focus on doing the things you are good at really well and explaining that to your raid leader. Show him the damage done to eyes. Explain your better used there. Explain your strength on ST. Perhaps check the logs for the duration of the bonds and check that with how long it takes melee to get out there.

[Deleted]

Melee should not be soaking bonds. Your RL is bad.

This.
Unless your raid is over populated with Melee classes there is zero need for Melee to help with bonds.

[Gunwolf]

Yea, you are prob better off on eyes then bonds... Enhance can be pretty good with quick target switches and bursting them down. So you will be good for eyes, but for bonds ranged is better and even for melee there are more ideal classes who can get there and back quicker like warrior/rogue/monk.

As for mobility.... ghost wolf, spirit walk, and feral charge. That should be plenty, certainly more then some other classes. I know u said u use the wind totem.... and that is great for raid utility but I personally feel that most classes have mobility options these days and if ur raid can live without windwalk totem then go with feral charge. Even an immobile class like warlock has demonic gateway they can use every so often... see if u have another shaman who can use windwalk so u can stick to feral charge, or if u don't have a druid mebbe u have a priest who can drop feather for those moments when u gotta break bonds and melee need a boost. Try a few attempts with charge instead of wind totem and see how it goes, if ur raid can handle the mechanics without it then there is no need to use it. But even without feral charge, you can still be plenty mobile with ghost wolf and spirit walk. You can also try using a different trinket just for guldan to improve overall mobility.... something like a high ilvl chrono shard or hunger of the pack trinket will give u lots of sprint procs.

[Guran]

As long as you have the ranged to soak bonds, let them do it. We pop them in Heroic with our ranged group (4-5 peeps) in a 12man raid and only really need melee if people are dead, but then it's a wipe anyway.
Your focus should be eyes & add. Especially if they come close/together with bonds and range needs to move out of range.

As for talent choices, take Feral Lunge. That totem is way too situational to compete with Lunge on a regular movement basis. Especially if you do need to help on bonds, sprint in and lunge back is simply mandatory for your DPS. Without it you might as well be spamming Lightning Bolt while running.

[Aoyi]

For my raid comp, I mostly don't need to help with bonds. That said, if we lose a ranged or two during the fight. I'll usually run out and help with a few. As ENH, my priorities during Gul'dan are killing eyes and interrupting the dreadlord. I use feral lunge though.

[Riistov]

This.
Unless your raid is over populated with Melee classes there is zero need for Melee to help with bonds.

Yup, every raid I have been in (even raids that are low on rdps) ranged have had no problem soaking them.

[MiseryIndex]

Never had to do bonds as enhancement on H Gul'dan, doubt any melee in my raid group ever has.