Hi everyone.
Our raid group has always been casual, fun-first kind of team who raids 4 hours a week, but recently we are thinking of making some improvements to actually start clearing normals in the tier they were designed. We did MSV without much issue, but could not clear Heart of Fear until the 10% nerf came in. Just to give an idea of our skill level, we had 17 attempts on Elegon, 22 attempts on Imperial Vizier, 42 attempts on Blade Lord (many people just couldn't do the tornado phase, despite trying their very best), and 48 attempts on Garalon before we killed those bosses.
We started Throne of Thunder last week, and while Jin'Rokh was relatively decent, we are stuck on Horridon currently (our second night of attempts), and I am wondering what we can improve on. I started using World of Logs for the first time, as I was looking for hard data and analysis from people who know other classes very well to see what we can do.
Our composition:
Brewmaster Monk (Me) - WW offspec, non-optimized gear
Prot Paladin - Ret offspec
Fire Mage
SV Hunter
Ret Paladin
Holy Paladin
Disc Priest - Shadow offspec
Enhancement Shaman
Resto Druid
Frost DK
No one else has any offspecs. Here is our log from tonight's attempts (please ignore attempt #7, that was just a "everyone is exhausted" screwup). Our strategy is to stick the prot paladin fulltime on Horridon, using the many HoPs to clear punctures, and me on the adds since we found out that our total damage on adds this way is higher than the usual tank swapping.
We're dying to add phases, specifically the second and third gate - we never got to the 4th. I think our damage is a little lacking, there were usually quite a few frozen orbs on the ground at the 3rd gate. At the same time, we have had DPS deaths before tanks too. On a couple of tries, my friend the Horridon tank dies from ... I am not sure - either no cooldowns or no heals (he raids heroic on his main though, so I'm inclined to think he knows what cooldowns are).
Anything you can offer is greatly appreciated.