Looking for help/advice on improving our raid group

[cganz]

Hello, A few RL friends and I started this guild about 6 weeks ago with the intent on being a 3-day a week(3-4 hours/night) type of raiding guild. We're currently 1/8 HM, tied with 8 other guilds on our realm(sad realm I know).

We tried HC Yor'sahj for two nights last week, with no real "good" attempts. This week we decided we could push the necessary numbers to *barely* scrape by and beat HC Ultraxion before the enrage. However, people are failing to push the button(lag issue?). That's not my concern though.

What I'm looking for is advice from fellow raiders on things each player can do to improve. Whether these are glaring issues in rotation or something else. Unfortunately I'm well versed enough in each class to do this alone.

Of note, nearly everyone's iLvL is 391-394.

Here are are two most recent nights of logs.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-bnnfkcm33t8f6tx9/

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-ymblzsrk0f6krthy/

Also: If these types of threads are frowned upon or something just lock it up and we'll survive alone :P

Thanks!

[Henline]

I can't really tell what buffs/debuffs you're missing in your 10 man (honestly I'm just to lazy to look), but both of your mages look a bit low on Ultraxion (easiest to compare since it's patchwerk style). Uraicecube should have at least 1505 haste, but he's sitting at 1438 on the armory (his damage wasn't to bad though). Likewise the Avynn should only need ~1268 iirc and he's sitting at 2174 (which is a lot of mastery he's missing). I don't know if they normally play other specs in your 25 man or if they have other gear they swap around to, but those immediately stood out to me. The other thing that immediately stands out is Avynn only used arcane power 3 times over the 4:10 kill. With 4t13 he should be able to use it every 40ish seconds so he should have used it another 1-2 times I think.

Something you also might consider doing though is lusting at the very start of the fight (speaking about ultraxion) since all procs and such will be going off in that time frame. If you want it for your healers at the end they can hit heroic will a few seconds before you pull so you can lust while they are in the normal realm for your dps/tanks then once more when the healers need it later.

I looked at your MoD kill as well and Uraicecube did pretty similar to what I manage. Depending on what order you do platforms you might let him know if he keeps living bomb on the limb/tentacle on the main platform and on the limb from a nearby platform he'll have an extra 10% haste for the first 2 platforms (if he isn't aware already). I manage a bit more than him so I suspect he's probably not.

Avynn on the other hand did really poorly and it leads me to believe he probably doesn't play it very often (correct me if I'm wrong). He used arcane power only 3 times over the entire 13 minute encounter and that's really not acceptable. It's understandable to hold it very briefly for the bolt or extra burst during cataclysm, but he should be using it at least 14 times in that time frame. Ideally he should be able to use his 2 minute CDs to burn the tentacle on each platform and evocate after while using arcane power 1-2 other times on the same platform. He also only used flame orb 2-3 times from the looks of it and it only has a 1 minute CD so it should have been used 12 times. It honestly just looks like he doesn't play arcane often so I'm assuming it's just that he's lacking familiarity with the spec and not timing things right (I'm guessing he needed to go arcane for the 3% damage).

Uraicecube was doing well for the most part from what I can tell. I can't really say much about Avynn except I hope he normally plays fire cause his arcane CD management isn't very good.

[cganz]

I can't really tell what buffs/debuffs you're missing in your 10 man (honestly I'm just to lazy to look), but both of your mages look a bit low on Ultraxion (easiest to compare since it's patchwerk style). Uraicecube should have at least 1505 haste, but he's sitting at 1438 on the armory (his damage wasn't to bad though). Likewise the Avynn should only need ~1268 iirc and he's sitting at 2174 (which is a lot of mastery he's missing). I don't know if they normally play other specs in your 25 man or if they have other gear they swap around to, but those immediately stood out to me. The other thing that immediately stands out is Avynn only used arcane power 3 times over the 4:10 kill. With 4t13 he should be able to use it every 40ish seconds so he should have used it another 1-2 times I think.

Something you also might consider doing though is lusting at the very start of the fight (speaking about ultraxion) since all procs and such will be going off in that time frame. If you want it for your healers at the end they can hit heroic will a few seconds before you pull so you can lust while they are in the normal realm for your dps/tanks then once more when the healers need it later.

I looked at your MoD kill as well and Uraicecube did pretty similar to what I manage. Depending on what order you do platforms you might let him know if he keeps living bomb on the limb/tentacle on the main platform and on the limb from a nearby platform he'll have an extra 10% haste for the first 2 platforms (if he isn't aware already). I manage a bit more than him so I suspect he's probably not.

Avynn on the other hand did really poorly and it leads me to believe he probably doesn't play it very often (correct me if I'm wrong). He used arcane power only 3 times over the entire 13 minute encounter and that's really not acceptable. It's understandable to hold it very briefly for the bolt or extra burst during cataclysm, but he should be using it at least 14 times in that time frame. Ideally he should be able to use his 2 minute CDs to burn the tentacle on each platform and evocate after while using arcane power 1-2 other times on the same platform. He also only used flame orb 2-3 times from the looks of it and it only has a 1 minute CD so it should have been used 12 times. It honestly just looks like he doesn't play arcane often so I'm assuming it's just that he's lacking familiarity with the spec and not timing things right (I'm guessing he needed to go arcane for the 3% damage).

Uraicecube was doing well for the most part from what I can tell. I can't really say much about Avynn except I hope he normally plays fire cause his arcane CD management isn't very good.

These are precisely the types of things I'm looking for that I most likely won't spot myself. Thanks a bunch for your time

More like this would make me a happy panda, unless you're all not into pandas that is.

[Deleted]

if u cant press button @ ultraxion the problem isnt your setup, it's the players. Cba to watch your logs more but i did notice that ur rogues uptime on SnD is pathetic, around 70% on some tries and it should be 99%

[cganz]

if u cant press button @ ultraxion the problem isnt your setup, it's the players. Cba to watch your logs more but i did notice that ur rogues uptime on SnD is pathetic, around 70% on some tries and it should be 99%

That much is clear :P We have an Aussie with latency issues, he'll just need to press the buttons sooner.

[damz2969]

Raid leader and warlock here, I took a look at your warlock's performance on the two longest HC ultraxion attempts in one of your logs, and here are some things I found:

- Looking from his armory, I think he should drop down to 1573 haste rating (he should wait till he's got better gear to go for the 1993 haste cap) and go for more mastery. Mastery is generally looked upon as the best stat for demo warlocks after haste plateues, and his mastery is extremely low (should be close to or above 20 at least). Use reforgelite or wowreforge to help in this.
- I see he is using the shadowbolt filler build, which isn't optimal on Ultraxion HC. He should look into the single-target incinerate spec (3/31/7) with the incinerate glyph over corruption, and use incinerate as filler instead. More information about this spec here: http://elitistjerks.com/f80/t110366-...ease/#The_Spec
- If he could replace his shoulders or head with preferably a heroic t12 piece (normal should be good too, at least over the head), that should be a nice upgrade, as the 2set bonus from t12 is a pretty decent dps upgrade when you already got 2 piece t13 and no 4 piece yet.
- Tell him to get 65 mastery enchant on his gloves and preferably Lavawalker on his feet (not really important on Ultraxion, but it is better in general). Slacking with enchants is like saying no to free extra stats.
- Tell him to prepot on the pull, there is no excuse not to. I don't know how much you enforce this onto your raiders, as I didn't check if anyone else did/didn't prepot but on a fight like this where dps matters a lot, you should really get everyone to do it, as although it may seem insignificant, the added benefit is very helpful.
- He should use felguard at the pull to gain the Demon Soul:Felguard effect, which is vastly superior over the DS:Felhunter for demo, and use the felstorm ability and then Soulburn:Felhunter once it is done. Additionally, he can also hardcast his Felguard ~6 secs before Demon Soul comes off cd to gain it additional times, and then Soulburn a felhunter again after felstorm until he's out of shards. This should be a pretty big dps increase as long as you still use Moonwell Chalice. It takes a few tries to get used to, but once you do it is really worth it.
- Make sure he uses his doomguard in line with all his CDs and ICDs at the start of the fight, but I think he is already doing this(?). This is also the optimal time to pop Bloodlust for your raid. If your healers want BL for the last phase, make them use their heroic will as you pop it, and they will avoid getting the debuff so you can use it again later.
- He also needs to keep a higher uptime on Corruption, he's only at 88% and he should preferably be as close to 100 as possible.

Some more general stuff for your raid group:
- I also agree with the poster above that your mages are doing low dps, especially the arcane mage.
- Seeing from your logs you are missing the 5% spell haste buff. Really, really try to get a Shadow priest, ele shaman or boomkin in your raid group (maybe instead of one of your mages, two mages in a 10 man is rather bad other than on a couple fights) to provide this buff. It's really important. A shaman in general can provide this too with the totem.
- A tip for the tanks on ultraxion, they should reforge for hit cap(not sure if expertise is necessary?) and use strength flask/food/potions to up their dps (also make sure they prepot). If they got good gear they can make use of a few dps pieces aswell. Both their dps should preferably be above 20k.
- Pressing the button at the right times is crucial, and it really shouldn't hold you back from a kill as it arguably is the easiest part of the fight. Bind the key (either in the keybindings or with a macro), and if your raiders still are having a hard time with it, tell them to wake up and focus more/fix their UI's so they can see it better or fix whatever is hindering them from doing it properly. You might also want to call out every time the debuff is applied on someone, and before the Hour of Twilight casts. A downside to getting used to this is your raiders might rely on it too much, so if you forget to call it out once, they die.

Hope it is of help.

[Deleted]

- A tip for the tanks on ultraxion, they should reforge for hit cap(not sure if expertise is necessary?)

It's actually even better than hit for DPS purposes, almost twice as good.

I haven't played a DPS for a main since WotLK, my main is a Prot/Holy pally but I'll see what I can find here. Just for a frame of reference I heal this fight with a RShaman, in 393 iLevel I've done 79-80k HPS overall on our kills spiking up to 200k+ near the end and I finish the fight with half mana or more, so it's quite doable healing wise.

1) Why is your pally taking green crystal? It doesn't work with pally absorbs and it's great for letting druid HoTs spread through the entire raid. Pally is Red+Blue imo, druid is green.
2) On your 2 longest attempts (4+ min) your pally judged once and twice respectively. That means for more than half the fight he was going without a HUGE chunk of his mana regen, that's pretty much inexcusable on a heroic boss.
3) That arcane mage's DPS seems extremely low. My mage in 386 iLevel with utter shit trinkets does almost that much, your mage oughta be able to do at least 33k+ I believe. Arcane is extremely simple, all you do is get down to ~95% mana then pop all CDs (including mana gem) and spam AB until you get to ~30% mana. Evocate back to full, then ABx4+AM keeping yourself at 100% mana until Evocate is almost ready and repeat the whole thing. That's literally it, you can't fuck it up.
4) Your fire mage is missing 40+ seconds of Living Bomb uptime on one attempt and 60+ seconds on another. Living bomb uptime should be 95%+, his is far too low.
5) Your prot pally is missing Glyph of Seal of Truth which is (I think) the single strongest DPS and threat glyph he can take. I would suggest going to maintakadin.com to research prot pallies a bit for stat weights and such, but essentially if he got expertise capped his DPS would go way up.

What are you wiping to (aside from buttons)? Are tanks dying? DPS dying? Is it a heal issue or a DPS issue or both? I can give your healers detailed advice on how to work together but you didn't even make it to the 5 minute mark where it gets really tough so it looks like a bigger issue than that. With your DPS the healers will probably need to heal all the way to the very end which means they have to figure out a way to enter the last minute of the fight with lots of mana (90k on one without blie, 40k on one with it) and learn how to SPAM. Just some advice for when you make it there: Volcanic Potions help, use ALL cooldowns and mouseover macros are very useful for spamming.

[damz2969]

I know normally it is (exp>hit)but ive heard something about ultraxion cant dodge and parry aka exp is useless on this fight. Might not be true.

[Deleted]

I know normally it is (exp>hit)but ive heard something about ultraxion cant dodge and parry aka exp is useless on this fight. Might not be true.

That's actually a good point, I think I remember hearing that too now. So I stand corrected (I think) on Ultrax specifically exp might be useless.

The points about the mages, lock and holy pally still stand though : )

[Daizeyyy]

I know normally it is (exp>hit)but ive heard something about ultraxion cant dodge and parry aka exp is useless on this fight. Might not be true.

This is not true. He is designed so your attacks have the same dodge chance as if you were to hit him from behind, instead of in front. So you still need 26 expertise.

[damz2969]

This is not true. He is designed so your attacks have the same dodge chance as if you were to hit him from behind, instead of in front. So you still need 26 expertise.

Alright, thanks for pointing it out. I wasn't certain, which is why I put the questionmark there.

[morphling8]

My understanding is expertise is 121 per -1% dodge parry, hit is 129 per -1% hit.

Thus, normally you will get roughly, 2% more attacks landing for having expertise. However, since ultraxion cannot parry, you are only getting 1% for not getting your attacks dodged. Granted, rating for rating, hit does edge out expertise on this fight, it's really not going to make a huge difference, as it will likely be the difference between .1% chance to not miss/parry/hit.