1. #1

    Elemental DPS help

    So I came into the rather embarrassing situation of having to have raid lead bench me last night after repeated pulls with very poor DPS. We're working on Garalon and the minimum acceptable DPS for our strat is 85k, I'm barely pushing 60k. Our raid lead wanted to transition to a new strat where range no longer use the circles, pushing my potential DPS even lower so I asked him to replace me. You can see in future logs the other ranged DPS had no issue keeping DPS up even after the change.

    In the previous weeks I was willing to blame it on a lack of gear and optimization, but I spent the last week or so fixing that. I'm not sure where else I can make up such a huge difference. I have less obvious but similar issues on a large number of fights, significantly lower DPS than my gear alone can account for.

    http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-qm6awp23wit23h2o/
    http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../Kieris/simple

    Stat weight simmed out to be fairly close to even between mastery and haste.

    I really appreciate any insight anyone can provide. If this performance continues I will be forced to step down from raiding entirely.
    ~ flarecde
    Reality is nothing; Perception is everything.

  2. #2
    haste beats mastery in general

    to help you answer these questions
    1. are you prepotting?
    2. are you standing in the blue circles as much as possible
    3. are you pheromone kiting?
    4. Are you making optimal use of SPiritwalkers grace and your other cds?
    5. Have you picked up a DMF card yet as it is your BIS?

  3. #3
    I mean no disrespect to your raid team and/or raid leader, but if the expection is that you push those kinds of numbers or you are kicked from raiding then perhaps they are setting unrealistic expectations. Especially on normal modes.

    From the log you linked, I see 17 tries of which only two hit the 5 minute mark. That's not even the enrage. If your healers can't even keep people up long enough, then damage isn't your problem or at least not the only one. Your raid should worry about DPS benchmarks when you're hitting the enrage.

    My group has only had one night of attempts on Garalon. In 15 tries, we hit enrage 4 times. I'm not sure if my logs will help but here they are none the less:

    http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/avsnfvmz921evyla/

    Also, looking at your logs, it seems unrealistic to have you be compared with multi-dotters and cleaving rogues particularly for Garalon. I've read it before and I agree that the only real class to class benchmark fight in this entire tier so far is Feng. Single target, minimal movement and mechanics. If you're competetive on Feng, then you're where you should be.

    Now, when I look at your Feng kill from earlier: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=1026&e=1499

    I see a few issues. Flame shock uptime being only 83.4%. On a fight like Feng this should be 97-99% without question. Also, I see only 2 Ascendance uses on an almost 8 minute fight. You should have gotten a third in.

    I know there are shaman experts here that can certainly pick apart a log better than I, but those two stick out for me.

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by shammypie View Post
    haste beats mastery in general

    to help you answer these questions
    1. are you prepotting?
    2. are you standing in the blue circles as much as possible
    3. are you pheromone kiting?
    4. Are you making optimal use of SPiritwalkers grace and your other cds?
    5. Have you picked up a DMF card yet as it is your BIS?
    1 - When I can. Our tank only gives us a 3 count, which after Vent lag results in my pot going after combat half the time. It's something I need to bring up with them.
    2 - I was trying. It's difficult since the circles move around so much, I know I'm losing DPS to having a leg suddenly snap behind where I'm standing. Our new strat has ranged standing in the middle to assist in healing issues though.
    3 - No. I'm usually assigned the easy tasks because I am clearly already having trouble just DPSing :P. I was being beat by two of the kiters though in the later attempts once they got the kiting down.
    4 - I do need to manage better use of SWG.
    5 - I have the card, waiting for the faire to turn it in.

    Quote Originally Posted by Kinnetik View Post
    I mean no disrespect to your raid team and/or raid leader, but if the expection is that you push those kinds of numbers or you are kicked from raiding then perhaps they are setting unrealistic expectations. Especially on normal modes.

    From the log you linked, I see 17 tries of which only two hit the 5 minute mark. That's not even the enrage. If your healers can't even keep people up long enough, then damage isn't your problem or at least not the only one. Your raid should worry about DPS benchmarks when you're hitting the enrage.

    My group has only had one night of attempts on Garalon. In 15 tries, we hit enrage 4 times. I'm not sure if my logs will help but here they are none the less:

    http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/avsnfvmz921evyla/

    Also, looking at your logs, it seems unrealistic to have you be compared with multi-dotters and cleaving rogues particularly for Garalon. I've read it before and I agree that the only real class to class benchmark fight in this entire tier so far is Feng. Single target, minimal movement and mechanics. If you're competetive on Feng, then you're where you should be.

    Now, when I look at your Feng kill from earlier: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=1026&e=1499

    I see a few issues. Flame shock uptime being only 83.4%. On a fight like Feng this should be 97-99% without question. Also, I see only 2 Ascendance uses on an almost 8 minute fight. You should have gotten a third in.

    I know there are shaman experts here that can certainly pick apart a log better than I, but those two stick out for me.
    They were wiping on enrage last week, so they changed up strategies, particularly regarding kiting, which has resulting in some backsliding. From what I was told, 85k by the non-kite DPS is the minimum to beat the enrage with two heals. I removed myself as our current policy is 5 wipes then replacements given our massive bench. The 12 pulls I got were way more generous than they needed to allow. If Ele DPS isn't optimal on that fight, then I'll just tell them that. It looks like the 2 rogue 2 spriest group they had going later was having less issues with DPS, so I may suggest they stick with that.

    I recall that Feng pull. It was a particularly crappy performance on my part. I wish I could provide more logs but unfortunately we have 20 raiders and 10 slots, so I don't go all that often. DPS issues aren't going to help that!
    ~ flarecde
    Reality is nothing; Perception is everything.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by flarecde View Post
    1 - When I can. Our tank only gives us a 3 count, which after Vent lag results in my pot going after combat half the time. It's something I need to bring up with them.
    There is a DBM pull timer feature, have your Raid Leader use that. It makes it much easier to prepot.

  6. #6
    Deleted
    With Flame Shock on the body and a leg, Glyph of Unleashed Lightning, Primal Elementalist and Ascendence+Spirit Walker's Grace you should have no problems dpsing the legs unless your kiters are moving the boss much too fast. It's debatable how useful that is though, depending on raid composition. Also one thing to note is visual bugs with Garalon doing a 180 degree turn and making it look like you're not in a ring, just stand still and let him fix himself before changing targets.

  7. #7
    Immortal TEHPALLYTANK's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Jun 2010
    Location
    Texas(I wish it were CO)
    Posts
    7,512
    If Garalon is moving too much for you to get casts off you can try rolling flame shock on all targets and macroing LvB to be cast at a focus and setting that focus as the leg you are currently in the circle with. You probably want to have a debuff tracker for trying that so you can quickly refresh flame shock where necessary.
    Quote Originally Posted by Bigbamboozal View Post
    Intelligence is like four wheel drive, it's not going to make you unstoppable, it just sort of tends to get you stuck in more remote places.
    Quote Originally Posted by MerinPally View Post
    If you want to be disgusted, next time you kiss someone remember you've got your mouth on the end of a tube which has shit at the other end, held back by a couple of valves.

  8. #8
    I can see your flame shock being <15% uptime over your raid time. That is bad, fix it.

    If this can help here is my log for our latest Garalon
    http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-t0...?s=4570&e=4986

    Also, tell your raid leader how bad your warrior and rogue are at cleaving. :P

  9. #9
    I was still learning how to use the circles, but not quickly enough. thanks for the suggestions, I'll keep them in mind. I'll have to practice in LFR this week.

    Quote Originally Posted by Taoforums View Post
    I can see your flame shock being <15% uptime over your raid time. That is bad, fix it.

    If this can help here is my log for our latest Garalon
    http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-t0...?s=4570&e=4986

    Also, tell your raid leader how bad your warrior and rogue are at cleaving. :P
    On a per fight basis it's closer to 50-80%, still not great though. I think I need to find an addon to manage FS monitoring on targets other than my current so I can keep it up on the body the entire fight. Suggestions welcome. I assume it's better to be rolling flameshock than worrying about fulmination?

    Considering our raid leads are the warrior and rogue, I think doing that might end badly for me :P.
    ~ flarecde
    Reality is nothing; Perception is everything.

  10. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by flarecde View Post

    Considering our raid leads are the warrior and rogue, I think doing that might end badly for me :P.
    I'm sorry for your guild, your leaders are a big chunk of dead weight.

    I can suggest you to burst the first leg down with this macro and standing under the leg. Stay on the edge of the ring so it doesn't get behind you or some glitch when he jumps and what not, jump on the second one and then go on boss. When a leg mends next to you hit a flame shock on it and maintain both for maximum use of Lava Burst. Don't change the legs on the other side of the boss.

    #showtooltip
    /cast Ascendance
    /cast Spiritwalker's Grace

    Also, if you could add Stormlash Totem and your Fire Elemental Totem that would be great. It gets me really high and keep it steady on the boss until the end.

    I don't use anything to monitor and keep track of flame shock. Our strats might differ from 10 to 25, BUT ranged is generally on the boss the whole time and the melee cleave the legs down, unless help it called, to keep leg spawning steady.

    However, if I may suggest, FortExorcist is a great addon for DoT tracking. You can also get a raid frame addon that has a "Boss Frame" type thing and make it show your debuffs.
    Last edited by Taoforums; 2012-11-27 at 12:55 AM.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Taoforums View Post
    I'm sorry for your guild, your leaders are a big chunk of dead weight.
    If you want to provide me with something I can go to them with, I can try :P.

    I'll give the macros a try.

    No an issue with Garalon, but how long do you guys usually hold out on Ascendance if heroism/bloodlust is coming up? Is it worth saving?
    ~ flarecde
    Reality is nothing; Perception is everything.

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by flarecde View Post
    No an issue with Garalon, but how long do you guys usually hold out on Ascendance if heroism/bloodlust is coming up? Is it worth saving?
    If the fight will end in less than 3 minutes, then go ahead and hold Ascendance a bit for hero/lust. Otherwise, you'll usually gain more from having an extra use of the CD the fight.

  13. #13
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by flarecde View Post
    1 - When I can. Our tank only gives us a 3 count, which after Vent lag results in my pot going after combat half the time. It's something I need to bring up with them.
    tell him to do a /dbm pull 10

    Will give you a pull timer on DBM and a raid warning for the last 3 sec each sec.

  14. #14
    So I looked at how you were generally doing on the logs for garalon, and to be honest, if you've been sworn off legs and are simply tunnelling boss you are doing alright for your gear level and expected skill for a guild at your progression.

    I rank on every fight in this tier, the only one I didn't on my first kill was Garalon because I decided the best strat for the guild I raid lead was for melee to only hit it. My dps was around 70k

    The biggest issues for your group as far as dps is your tanks. They are both doing 20 something k dps. Both of our tanks do around 60k dps.

    The DPS benchmark is wrong, you should have 1 or two melee doing ridiculous dps and your ranged doing much lower in the range from 60-90 depending on class and gear.

    As an example on our first kill we had this:

    Rogue 120k
    War 110k
    Spriest 73k
    Ele - 63k
    Tank 1 59k
    Tank 2 58k
    Badpughunter 45k.

    Second kill
    Rogue 122k
    Monk 122k
    Hunter 80k
    Ele 73k
    Spriest 73k
    Tank 1 60k
    Tank 2 25k (being played by someone who had literally never played DK before) - This is where your tanks are sitting.

    I was also kiting so your dps should probably be nearer to mine if you improve the little mistakes ur making (people refer to flameshock uptime in here).

    The biggest benefit you can be on progression on this boss is put your hand up for pheramones, it is not an overly complicated mechanic assuming your raid leader isn't a tard stratter. You can still do most of ur dps while kiting and it frees someone else up to tunnel.

    Also as stated before if you are not making it to enrage you are not yet experiencing a dps issue.

    ---------- Post added 2012-11-27 at 12:48 PM ----------

    In the logs I looked a little closer and in all the attempts your listing ur doing like 40% legs and 60% boss, I feel like the strat is also a problem. You should have a leg up 100% of the time for melee, and ranged should only hard switch (more than double dot) if a 3rd pops up. The biggest problem is still tank dps, 28k is horrible, like not bad just plain horrible...

    Oh and someone said the rogue was failing, no he just doesn't have alot of cleave time cause the whole raid is raping the legs.

  15. #15
    Our tank is using a 5 second chat macro now, someone else must have said something :P.

    They downed Garalon last night, so whatever issues they had they resolved. I went in to finish MSV, unfortunately I died on Elegon at the beginning of the burn phase and Will sucks for any sort of benchmarking so I won't have any new data until the next MSV run.

    I've got a lot of good tips from you guys though, I really appreciate it.
    ~ flarecde
    Reality is nothing; Perception is everything.

  16. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by flarecde View Post
    No an issue with Garalon, but how long do you guys usually hold out on Ascendance if heroism/bloodlust is coming up? Is it worth saving?
    This depends. It will be a net dps loss if bloodlust pushes your lava burst cast time to under 1 second. If your gear isn't high enough of a level to do that, then you should be fine. Judging by your armory it will be ok, but overall you should be just using it on CD.

    Also, you don't need tanks for this fight. I can't stress that enough. Put a plate wearer and someone with the next highest amount of armor in front of the boss (preferably a holy paladin) and you will A) have a higher net dps, and B) have more people to cycle for pheramones.
    Last edited by Gerudo; 2012-11-27 at 06:19 PM.

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by flarecde View Post
    1 - When I can. Our tank only gives us a 3 count, which after Vent lag results in my pot going after combat half the time. It's something I need to bring up with them.
    Bringing up the lack of proper count on comms would be a good start however, why not prepot as soon as he starts the count? Ok you may lose 2-3 seconds of pot but that is surly better than using an entire pot duration later on?

    Also, a funky tool I like on raidbots.com, is the compare bot. If you have never used it, quite simply it allows you to compare to wol's against each other for a particular fight so you can compare yourself directly with another ele shaman on that same fight, albeit in a different raid. I know there are pro's and cons to this and you have to consider the other raid comp/fight duration etc however nonetheless I have found it extremely useful.

    I would also echo what other are saying on here when your raid just in general seems to be doing things a little bit wrong, too much dps on legs, lack of legs for melee/cleavers etc.
    I would also question your raid having the healing to survive, with 5 min tries being your longest your healers are simply not good enough to 2 heal it seems, that should be the problem addressed firstly.
    Last edited by Kesandri; 2012-11-27 at 06:33 PM.
    Keeping everyone happy is impossible.

  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by Gerudo View Post
    This depends. It will be a net dps loss if bloodlust pushes your lava burst cast time to under 1 second. If your gear isn't high enough of a level to do that, then you should be fine. Judging by your armory it will be ok, but overall you should be just using it on CD.
    It pushes it to 1 sec exactly at the moment, it was dipping below but I dropped some haste for mastery based on sims. Assuming I'm doing it right by keeping the scaling values about equal by picking up the higher weighted stat. Using it on cooldown may be better for me anyways though, since I don't get to raid often enough to know when we use heroism / bloodlust on all the fights.

    Quote Originally Posted by Kesandri View Post
    Bringing up the lack of proper count on comms would be a good start however, why not prepot as soon as he starts the count? Ok you may lose 2-3 seconds of pot but that is surly better than using an entire pot duration later on?
    I'll do that. I think someone else had the same issue thought, because they did use a five second text countdown last night in MSV .
    ~ flarecde
    Reality is nothing; Perception is everything.

  19. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by flarecde View Post

    No an issue with Garalon, but how long do you guys usually hold out on Ascendance if heroism/bloodlust is coming up? Is it worth saving?
    We hit heroism at the beginning, when Crush are coming up pretty often with changes, some derps in the purple ring, it's a waste to save it for later since the fight never changes.

    We hit Heroism at the beginning, I hit Fire Elemental Totem, Stormlash, Ascendance, the Pre-pot, and Spiritwalker's Grace (not in that order, of course.). I go under the first leg that is the front right side, then move to the left rear leg. The reason why is that most of our raid goes for rear-right so it's less uptime for dps if I go on it. Beyond this point, I only hit legs that mend on top of me. We have a cleave team that consists of being on the legs constantly, and the ranged is on the boss the full time. This allows a steady rate of leg mending and boss still goes down.

    For Cooldowns, use them when they're available, preferably just after a crush happens so the other raid member is building up Pungency/Pheromones and you won,t be interrupted for the duration of Ascendance. Don't be afraid to hit Healing Tide totem and Healing Stream whenever you can. It helps a bunch.

    Also, remember one thing, the ABC of casting. Always Be Casting. :P
    Last edited by Taoforums; 2012-11-28 at 05:28 PM.

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •