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  1. #1
    Fluffy Kitten Sonnillon's Avatar
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    [Guardian] How can I improve?

    Recently I've beginning to see that I am falling behind on most fight with my DPS from our paladin tank. I know tank DPS is not that big of a deal, but I just feel that I should be doing much-much-much more better.

    I am the OT of our guild, though I MT Feng, Wind Lord (since we 2 tank windlord (as the prot. pala does more DPS in his tanking spec than in his retri spec), I don't get that high vengeance as I am missing few mobs attacking me. Even with taunts).

    My survival doesn't seem to be much of an issue to the healers. There is nothing I can do for being killed just cause I was not at full HP.

    I just feel that I am doing something horrible wrong to have such a crap DPS as I've watched some other 10-man logs and all bears there with lower gear then mine do better.

    Here is my armory. I am hit and expertise hardcapped. Though I do have more hit then needed, but with the present gear getting hit any lower is not just possible w/o loosing too much expertise in progress.

    As for rest of my gear
    - I got the tier legs from Sha, but I cannot use them, since if I have those on even with full reforge out of hit, I will be 1%+ over hit cap.
    - I do have LFR versions of Bottle of Infinite Stars/Terror in the Mists, which I use for fights when I feel that I don't need the extra armor or avoidance.

    Which tier pieces are the ones I should look for?
    What should I change on my gear? The amount of HP is the minimum atmo which I feel comfortable with. Though getting more stamina could be something I should aim for.

    Here are the logs
    MSV "farm" run for people who needed gear. I DPSed on Kings.
    Wind Lord/Amber Shaper
    Vizier/Blade Lord. Was DPS on Vizier.
    Garalon DPSed as well, so doesn't matter much from tank PoV.

    I would really like to know how wrong I play my class and above all what should I improve (I know that there is lot I can improve)

  2. #2
    Deleted
    Yellow sockets always go for pure crit. Change you'r pandaren's step enchant to blurred speed. Dancing Steel > Windsong. For me expertise hard cap isn't worth it. I just like to keep my expertise above 10% and you should still be able to get enough rage for SD or FR depending on the fights. You might want to think about another profession for a larger gain and transfer herbalism to an alt.

    Final note, have you thought about getting the woundslipper medallion from Domination Point?

    PS. Didn't look at any logs from you just checked gear.
    Last edited by mmoc5444135490; 2013-01-17 at 09:18 AM.

  3. #3
    Fluffy Kitten Sonnillon's Avatar
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    My professions well... I will stay herbalist until I get around to level myself another alt. I just don't have the time for it. But my future goal is to take on BS. But there could be much better professions then BS. But for now profession min-maxing is something I will not do, as I just don't have the time to leveling an alt and getting the new prof. up.

    Woundripper Medallion is agi+crit use. I do have thought about it, but in my eyes for "DPS trinkets" the terror and bottle seem better.

    As for expertise... If I drop my orange gems, I will lose roughly 480 expertise rating and that means I do have to reforge something else to get expertise. I experiment with wowreforge later on today and see what can I do with my stats and try out the tier legs in progress. Though I've tried being below 15% exp and I felt that not enough rage, but maybe it was just me....

    ---------- Post added 2013-01-17 at 02:44 PM ----------

    Well.
    First try:
    • I set some caps so crit (1.8) > hit=exp (1.75)>mast (1.6) would be my priority (I'm unsure of the proper weights). Set expertise and hit caps.
    • Then I replaced all orange gems in yellow sockets with pure crit ones.
    • I left out the trinkets as I swap those around anyway.
    • Also changed the gear stats to reflect my upgrades
    And I got hit nicely to cap, but I can't get any more exp than 4209 rating. I did live the trinkets out as I swap those accordingly. That rating is too little for me. But with the gear and yellow sockets being filled with crit gemmes, I can't get any better. I do feel that having exp. hard cap is good for me.

    I changed my legs to the tier ones, everything else I kept the same, which brought me average of 4045 exp. rating and leaving me under hit cap. As I can't go over the cap

    If I put the xp. gems back to the sockets they are, with the tier legs, it fucks uo my hit rating even more, by making me have tons of more than needed

    So I guess that gear should remain the same for time being. Specially when the 496 tier legs fuck up my hit :/ to have more then needed.

  4. #4
    Just looking at Feng.....

    1) Your number of Mangles is way low. You only had 55, but it should be somewhere around 80 at least for that duration of a fight.
    2) Only used NV once.
    3) There should be north of 100 Lacerates for a fight that long, but you only used it 31 times.
    4) Swipe shouldn't show up at all on a single-target fight.
    5) Only 3 Mauls. Rage should be completely dumped into Maul when you aren't tanking.

    But the lion's share of it is your Mangle/Lacerate usage isn't anywhere near what it should be. Don't use Swipe on single target fights. Ever.

  5. #5
    Fluffy Kitten Sonnillon's Avatar
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    Thanks for the feedback, but when we are speaking of Feng, I am MT it. The OT takes only when my stacks get to high in p2 and p3. I take boss back as soon as I've cleared the stacks.

    But that is actually no excuse for the crap up-time of the skills I should be using. I just need to remind myself more often which skills I should be actually using, as most of my "most frequently used skills" are in a good location on my mouse/keyboard....

  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Sonnillon View Post
    Thanks for the feedback, but when we are speaking of Feng, I am MT it. The OT takes only when my stacks get to high in p2 and p3. I take boss back as soon as I've cleared the stacks.

    But that is actually no excuse for the crap up-time of the skills I should be using. I just need to remind myself more often which skills I should be actually using, as most of my "most frequently used skills" are in a good location on my mouse/keyboard....
    My co-tank (prot pally) has been having similar problems, and I've been trying to coach her on it.

    My suggestions:

    1) Sit at a boss dummy to practice your rotation.
    2) Use LFR as a "practical encounter test" since the mechanics are mostly the same, but you aren't really in any danger of dying.

    There are some good points to what you're doing though.

    1) Thrash uptime is excellent.
    2) Correct amount of Incarnation and Berserk usage
    3) Armor debuff uptime is also excellent.

    It's just a matter of using more Mangles and Lacerates

  7. #7
    Aside from everything that Arielle already mentioned, I wanted to point out the following: Vengeance is a huge portion of your damage, on meters.

    If you disregard your dps on any tank-swap fights, and look at something like LFR, where the two tanks usually fight for aggro, keep in mind that if the other tank gets an aggro lead, and keeps it, you'll soon drop any and all vengeance, and your AP will be crap. Whereas, if you maintain an aggro lead, then your vengeance (which is currently not capped, until 5.2 hits) will skyrocket, and take your AP (and thus damage) through the roof.

    I understand why blizz made vengeance the way it is, now, but it becomes a bit ridiculous in the scenario, above. I've had over 500k dps on large-mob fights, only to eventually die, because my mitigation couldn't keep up, once my cooldowns expired (and the healers couldn't keep me up). The specific example I'm thinking of was an LFR, where the other (fool) tank pulled the whole room on wind lord mel'jarak, and, because of my hit, expertise, and crit, compared to his fail threat gen, I wound up with aggro on every mob, and the boss. Apparently, he didn't think to taunt at least one mob off of me, in order to build vengeance, in order to get more of the mobs off of me, and spread the damage between us. Of course, having none of the mobs CC'd hurt tremendously.

    So, once you've already done everything that Arielle suggested, if you still have any issues, try to determine if the other tank is getting much more vengeance uptime, than you are.

  8. #8

  9. #9
    You have improved, yes. But there's still some stuff that doesn't make sense.

    You only had about 181 of 234 possible GCDs used on Feng. Some are going to be lost because of Epicenter, but not 75 seconds worth.

    Stop using Swipe on single target fights. Literally any other button is better to press than Swipe on a single target.

    For Will you should have 100% uptime on Savage Defense while being attacked. That means you should dodge about half of the melee swings. You only dodged 22%.

  10. #10
    Fluffy Kitten Sonnillon's Avatar
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    GCD used? Like attack skills used or what do you mean. I do get stunned as well, but that probably is not that long time in total in p1 on Feng.

    You are correct on Will, I don't pay enough attention to my FD uptime yet. I just react and use maul or FR, neglecting SD, though I know I should be using it.

  11. #11
    GCD used? Like attack skills used or what do you mean. I do get stunned as well, but that probably is not that long time in total in p1 on Feng.
    Just make sure you always press something when you are in melee range, and that "something" is never Swipe.

  12. #12
    I always spell steal on Feng...makes for a lazy bear watching cooldown bars and not attacking.

    Here is a Raidbots comparison of My log vs Mari va Arielle (had to go back about a month for a normal kill from Arielle!)

    raidbots.com/comparebot/5101bfea74254e271f000486

    Arielle's comments go for me too: "LTL (learn to Lacerate)", only reason I save face is due to Reversal.

  13. #13
    Fluffy Kitten Sonnillon's Avatar
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    I suck at stealing buffs... That's why I do the bubble thing. But for me probably I will have to change my mindset that if I die due to having too low health I can blame the healers (I don't feel comfortable with few healers from our raid group (specially the "static" rdruid)) and not FR self...

    Swipe is my downfall. I will have to probably place it someplace else so I won't use it. Hmm, I might move my binds bit that they would start from 1-5 not ~-4 (last one being swipe).

  14. #14
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    Sorry for the noobish question, but how can you see how many GCDs Sonnillon is using Arielle? Are you just counting them or is it displayed somewhere?

  15. #15
    Fluffy Kitten Sonnillon's Avatar
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    It will probably math. The length of the fight devided by the GCD... That's why I have my BF do some math for me ^^

  16. #16
    Deleted
    Ok, hm.. so if I want to check the GCD usage of a affliction warlock in my guild its gonna be impossible due to reapplying dots and pandemic?

  17. #17
    Length of fight / 1.5.

    Subtract any time where you can't really be hitting something. It's easy to count GCDs for Guardians because everything has impact damage. No idea how you'd do it for something that doesn't.

  18. #18
    Can't believe no one has said it yet, but here's something I used when I was starting to bear tank again (and still use occasionally): castsequence macros.

    Mousewheel up (single target): /castsequence Mangle, Lacerate, Thrash, Lacerate, Mangle, Lacerate, Faerie Fire, Lacerate
    Mousewheel down (aoe): /castsequence Thrash, Swipe, Mangle, Swipe

    With these two macros and 123 bound to maul, sd, and fr, you can do just about 95% of a perfectly executed rotation with 1/10th the effort. Just spam mousewheel up or down as appropriate.

    Branch out to actually performing these castsequences manually and taking into account mangle refrreshes to eke out that last 5% when you're absolutely confident of fight mechanics, positioning, etc.

    I don't tank many fights these days but I actually got a #1 parse on heroic will a few months ago using that one single target macro. It's pretty amazing, heh. I also use them for heroics and challenge modes, and generally hit 100k dps or higher on total damage depending on the dungeon (I'm also pretty sure that the aoe macro gives you the highest potential damage too, unlike the single target which you can squeeze out a few extra percents with good micromanagement.)

    Paladin tanks are going to simply going to outdamage you on single target though, it's just the way tank specs are set up. You should be slightly higher on aoe. Also, don't listen to the "I do more damage as prot" argument, they only do more damage by getting vengeance, vengeance which is directly taken away from you which means you do less damage.

    Edit: Oh, and don't forget heart of the wild damage whenever you're at substandard vengeance and don't expect to get any soon. Offtanking sha, on the pull when the other tank is taking the boss first, etc. I usually spike to about 200k dps (I be Dought) on a single target for the duration of my HoTW which is usually (significantly) higher than what I do single target in bearmode.
    Last edited by kaiadam; 2013-01-25 at 10:33 PM.

  19. #19
    With these two macros and 123 bound to maul, sd, and fr, you can do just about 95% of a perfectly executed rotation with 1/10th the effort. Just spam mousewheel up or down as appropriate.
    Not entirely accurate. You lose ~33% of your Mangles, and clipping Thrash is a pretty hefty DPS loss.

    Paladin tanks are going to simply going to outdamage you on single target though, it's just the way tank specs are set up. You should be slightly higher on aoe. Also, don't listen to the "I do more damage as prot" argument, they only do more damage by getting vengeance, vengeance which is directly taken away from you which means you do less damage.
    Other way around. Our AoE is actually pretty terrible outside of Incarnation / Zerk.

    Edit: Oh, and don't forget heart of the wild damage whenever you're at substandard vengeance and don't expect to get any soon. Offtanking sha, on the pull when the other tank is taking the boss first, etc. I usually spike to about 200k dps (I be Dought) on a single target for the duration of my HoTW which is usually (significantly) higher than what I do single target in bearmode.
    You sacrifice at least 2, possibly as many as 4 NVs to do that depending on how long your Sha fight is. Whether or not it's worth it depends on how many you actually get to use though (if it's long enough to use 4 NVs, NV is better).

  20. #20
    Not entirely accurate. You lose ~33% of your Mangles, and clipping Thrash is a pretty hefty DPS loss.
    You don't "lose" the mangles, you just replace them with lacerates or whatever other filler that would've procced it, and move everything else back. And you clip one tick of thrash max - the majority of the time, human error will basically render that null. Lacerate is already hitting for like 80% of mangle anyway too. I stand by my 95% approximation, and I've got the dps rankings to back me up. Coincidentally, I also have an alt druid (ilvl 490ish) on your server as well tanking normal modes with a dozen or so top 50 ranks so it's not just the gear talking. Still using dragonwrath as my caster weapon swap in fact =/

    Regardless, I don't think there's any argument that those macros will be an absolutely HUGE dps increase for all but the elite of the elite, allowing you to do near perfect amounts of damage with next to no hassle.

    Other way around. Our AoE is actually pretty terrible outside of Incarnation / Zerk.
    Here's the last raidbots of heroic will, about the best single target tank fight I can think of.
    http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Will_of_t...00010010000000

    On the other hand, no fight really caters to straight aoe, stoneguards only has 2 targets and single target damage is pretty high component of Wind Lord. About the only thing I can use is anecdotal data in challenge modes against our paladin MT (who usually has top 10 ranks across the board), and he usually floats around 50-70k dps overall whereas my bear hits 80-100k. Anyway, it's neither here nor there, I've more or less accepted that bears have crappy single target and our aoe is okay. Nothing like monks of course ...

    You sacrifice at least 2, possibly as many as 4 NVs to do that depending on how long your Sha fight is. Whether or not it's worth it depends on how many you actually get to use though (if it's long enough to use 4 NVs, NV is better).
    NV is a 20% damage increase with a 17% uptime (so around a 4% damage increase). HoTW is a roughly 100% damage increase with a 12.5% uptime, along with passive buffs to stamina and extra agility (6% agi is what? roughly 1.5-2% damage increase? something like that). Not much of a fight, in my opinion - HoTW thrases NV, no pun intended, except some specific encounters that you're tanking start to finish and thus have no opportunity to actually use the thing.
    Last edited by kaiadam; 2013-01-26 at 12:29 AM.

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