Are we ready for heroics?

[Ceresc]

So I'm really interested in getting back into heroics, but I'm not sure if my group is ready.


Logs from last night:

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/ghdd8p99j6s2uuzd/

Constructive criticism is welcomed.

[Devwar]

Not to make things too simple...

But if you've cleared ToT Normal, you're ready for heroic, assuming the same group of people.

[Deja Thoris]

The only way to find out is to set the raid to heroic difficulty and find out! Does the rest of your raid team have an appetite to try? If so then go for it, if not then you are wasting your time.

Read up on jin'rokh and ji'kun, by far the easiest HC bosses and give them a whirl.

Looking at the logs, theres room for improvement (there always is)
- You 3 heal fights that you should 2 heal (twins and iron qon) - especially with 2 palas tanks in the raid. Your healers don't get stretched 3 healing and it offers them no opportunity to be pushed. They will be in heroics.
- One of your pala tanks had less than 45% uptime on sacred shield. He healed about 2 mill less than he should have because of this etcetc.

Bottom line is you've cleared normal, you can sleep walk through them again or you can push to the next level. I'd encourage you to try, but warn your raiders they need to step up their game a bit.

[xfreeder]

You have two Palatanks und Palaheal + Disc + Druid as Heal thats nice. Salari and especially Broccolïform should work on their rotations. Give Jin-Rokh a try and see.

[rated]

So I'm really interested in getting back into heroics, but I'm not sure if my group is ready.

Only way to find out is to go in there and try. Are you ready to wipe a lot in the name of progression ?

If you can easily clear reg (which you can, with exception to lei shen) and got all 522's, there's nowhere else left to go but heroics.

[Ceresc]

I guess what I'm asking is more along the lines of skill. As far as gear goes we are pretty solid, and yes we have cleared normal. I've put a lot of progression in early on but not with this group. I've noticed some discrepancies along the way and wondered, not if we have the gear to do it, but is the group skilled enough to do it.

[tmil93]

Your boomkin should def read up a bit more, a bit over haste breakpoint, should be doing more dps than what they're currently doing, but not too huge of a deal. 10m Jinrokh and 10m ji-kun heroics are more mechanics fights than dps/healing tests. I'd say that as long as no one dies to stupid stuff, you'll get both rather easily.

[TwentyTwelve]

Cleared normal = yes, atleast first boss

However i would say no, dps wise.
The druid is letting your group down badly, i thought it might of been just twins cause he might of been drawing but even on iron qon his dps is quite low. The warrior on iron qon is also low.

I'd say go for jin rokh, if your group stays alive during storm then you will kill it.
Ji-kun is also all about nest control...
After that i'd suggest upping the dps before attempting to go any further, speaking from a pally tank PoV, i'd get one of the pallys to get a dps off spec for 1 tank fights, such as Iron Qon, 1 tanking Iron Qon hc is definantly the way to go, and far easier than 2 tanking i.m.o. Provides solid dps and hps, assuming the tank is keeping SS up and such.

[Tekkommo]

You can pretty much 6 man the first heroic in ToT easily.

Other heroics will take a little bit more work, as it requires most players to do stuff correctly.

[HatredAU]

Jinrokh, Horridon, Tortos, Iron Qon and Ji-kun are pretty faceroll, do jinrokh and then horridon then any of the other 3

[Deleted]

Speaking as a fellow paladin with prot mainspec and ret offspec and 7/13 HC progress, I'm going to be brutally honest and tell you that I suspect you'd have a lot of trouble taking on Heroic content as of right now.

I've checked your current roster and your most recent logs in some detail, and Hoofles, unfortunately, strikes me as an especially weak cog in your lineup - to the point that I'm confident he'd hold you back on the more demanding fights. I find it very telling that he isn't the tank on Tortos during that kill, despite the fact that the interaction of SotR and Snapping Bite make Paladins an exceptionally strong boss tank for this fight - in my opinion much, much stronger than a Druid will ever be.

In truth, while the numbers from his WoL had me expecting to find his armoury profile chock-full of avoidance gear, he is gearing for haste, then mastery, but the fact that he posts the numbers he does has me questioning whether he knows why he's doing it, so I'll state it:

To paladins, haste is not just a DPS stat. We do not gear for haste because it amplifies our DPS, we do so because it is our strongest survival stat, bar none. The added DPS is a bonus - a significant one - but a bonus nonetheless. Now, the added survivability comes from two factors:

1. Due to our Sanctity of Battle passive, haste mitigates the CD on most of our abilities. Lower CD = higher generation of HP, which equals a higher uptime on SotR. Whilst SotR is certainly most important for those telegraphed boss specials, but greater uptime on 40-50% physical damage reduction is never a bad thing.

2. Haste also affects the workings of Sacred Shield. Whilst I cannot remember the exact breakpoints, haste will at several points give you extra ticks of the absorb shield. This absorb shield scales well enough with vengeance to be obscenely powerful. Not having an uptime on it of above 90% is unforgivable. On eventual Heroic fights, provided it is used properly, this absorb will account for well over 30% of all healing on the tank in question, and on some fights significantly more. Simply put, if your paladin isn't keeping an uptime in the 90th percentile or above on Sacred Shield, he might as well be a warrior with worse baseline mitigation. That's how critical the ability is to haste-adin survivability, and, through healing saved on him, to the survivability of your raid in general.

There are other issues, as well, with supoptimal talent choices and bad CD usage. On your most recent Council kill, he managed to post an uptime of 7% on Divine Protection. Assuming he used Unbreakable Spirit on that fight, at his current level of haste, the uptime should be twice that - he should have it up for every Frigid Assault cast by Malakk. He also consistently runs with Divine Purpose, which is the weakest talent in the tier. Holy Avenger is essentially mandatory for Protection Paladins because it provides a consistent period of full SotR coverage. Whilst DP may very well give him a higher overall uptime on SotR, and thus higher TDR, total damage taken is not what kills tanks. Tanks die to sudden spikes in damage; something that Holy Avenger handles very, very effectively. There are fights where taking Sanctified Wrath might be warranted, but he should never, ever be taking Divine Purpose. Ever.

Mind you, this is all meant as honest constructive criticism, and not to beat anyone over the head with their shortcomings. However, these are things I feel Hoofles must master if your guild is to tackle Heroic content with any success, because they're flaws that you can get away with on Normal, but will absolutely wreck your chances of success when the ante is upped. There are probably other issues your raid will need to tackle as well, but you will not make significant progress on Heroic difficulty without significant progress from your tank; I guarantee that.

[Deja Thoris]

He also consistently runs with Divine Purpose, which is the weakest talent in the tier. Holy Avenger is essentially mandatory for Protection Paladins because it provides a consistent period of full SotR coverage. Whilst DP may very well give him a higher overall uptime on SotR, and thus higher TDR, total damage taken is not what kills tanks. Tanks die to sudden spikes in damage; something that Holy Avenger handles very, very effectively. There are fights where taking Sanctified Wrath might be warranted, but he should never, ever be taking Divine Purpose. Ever.

That's just completely incorrect. Refer to the massive discussions on it in the "fix my tanking" section of the paladin forums.

Basically its a personal choice for many but on some fights (tortos fex.) DP is superior because there are no "sudden spikes", only snapping bites and higher uptime on SoTR equals less damage.

[Deleted]

That's just completely incorrect. Refer to the massive discussions on it in the "fix my tanking" section of the paladin forums.

Basically its a personal choice for many but on some fights (tortos fex.) DP is superior because there are no "sudden spikes", only snapping bites and higher uptime on SoTR equals less damage.

I'm afraid I'm going to have to (predictably) disagree. DP being the weakest talent by far isn't in any way related to fight mechanics, at least as I see it, but to its inherent randomness. With HA, if, say, for some reason you end up in a bad situation after a Quake Stomp or a similar mechanic, you can pop it, and reliably mitigate a significant amount of damage. SW is essentially equivalent, and will be so to an even greater degree if the current PTR changes to it make it live.

DP, on the other hand, is entirely unreliable. Sure, you might get 200 chain-procs of it, but you can't ever rely on Divine Purpose to do anything at all. This wouldn't be a problem if you were a DPS class and it consistently provided the highest average DPS, but as a tank, your job, first and foremost, is still to keep yourself alive. Taking a talent that could in theory go an entire fight without giving you a single proc isn't a good idea for the exact same reason that being well over hit and exp caps is preferable to being even slightly under them, and for the exact same reason that haste builds are preferable to avoidance builds - as a tank, you have to be reliable, and DP just isn't reliable.

[NeverStop]

I'm afraid I'm going to have to (predictably) disagree. DP being the weakest talent by far isn't in any way related to fight mechanics, at least as I see it, but to its inherent randomness. With HA, if, say, for some reason you end up in a bad situation after a Quake Stomp or a similar mechanic, you can pop it, and reliably mitigate a significant amount of damage. SW is essentially equivalent, and will be so to an even greater degree if the current PTR changes to it make it live.

DP, on the other hand, is entirely unreliable. Sure, you might get 200 chain-procs of it, but you can't ever rely on Divine Purpose to do anything at all. This wouldn't be a problem if you were a DPS class and it consistently provided the highest average DPS, but as a tank, your job, first and foremost, is still to keep yourself alive. Taking a talent that could in theory go an entire fight without giving you a single proc isn't a good idea for the exact same reason that being well over hit and exp caps is preferable to being even slightly under them, and for the exact same reason that haste builds are preferable to avoidance builds - as a tank, you have to be reliable, and DP just isn't reliable.

It may be more RNG, but DP scales better than HA. Treckie from Method uses DP on most 25 man fights and bosses on 25 man hit much harder compared to 10 man.

[Fr3nzy]

It may be more RNG, but DP scales better than HA. Treckie from Method uses DP on most 25 man fights and bosses on 25 man hit much harder compared to 10 man.

I have to agree, I do take HA for some fights such as horridon for last phase, and iron qon for the dot - DP is miles ahead for fights with no predictable burst damage. Sure, you will end up in a bad situation sometimes, but popping HA if you find yourself low after say, quake stomp, probably won't save you, especially as the quake fall damage is nature. On fights like tortos you should always bank up 5hp for the snapping bites and then if you're in a bad position pop two shotr's back to back.

[Deleted]

It may be more RNG, but DP scales better than HA. Treckie from Method uses DP on most 25 man fights and bosses on 25 man hit much harder compared to 10 man.

Yes, yes, of course the throughput from DP is great at high haste levels. I'm not even remotely contesting that, but it's also entirely besides the point here.

The fact that Treckie uses DP is great. It's probably the optimal talent from a pure DPS perspective, and undoubtedly for sheer percentage SotR uptime, so if what you're looking to do is rank on Tortos Heroic, then by all means, take DP. Don't forget, however, that Treckie plays his class at essentially the skillcap, and thus can get away with choosing a talent for reasons of throughput rather than reliable survivability.

Someone entirely new to heroic raiding, however, who by no means is anywhere near playing his class at the skillcap yet, has no business choosing a talent for reasons of throughput. What Treckie does isn't even remotely relevant in this particular case, because Treckie doesn't have to worry about suddenly popping like a balloon. The player in question, however, does, and thus should be choosing talents for reliable survivability, and that's where HA is just infinitely better than the RNG-fest that is Divine Purpose.

[Shauni]

Gratz to Elenwe. A full HM-geared player is NOT to be compared as a new HM player, that's just common sense.

...Wish I had blatty's gear...

[trystero]

I'm one of the few paladin tanks here that still advocates HA, but even I use DP on H Tortos. Absolutely no reason to use HA, whose strength lies in massive "effective SotR uptime" due to tank swaps or in having an extra cooldown. On Horridon, it works great as an extra cooldown for his enrage phase. And on any fight with a tank swap, it's great for maximizing your effective uptime. But when you're the only person on the boss, and it's a pretty static fight (which Tortos is), DP wins hands down. If you find yourself "in a bad situation" then you've got cooldowns to bail you out (Guardian, AD, and maybe DP if you're not using it for Rockfalls unglyphed or QS glyphed). And that assumes HA is even off cooldown, which it shouldn't be if it's going to compete with DP.

[Deja Thoris]

Elenwe, take this up the the pala forums. You're wrong, I'm mot debating with you, I'm telling you.

[Alarinth]

I guess what I'm asking is more along the lines of skill. As far as gear goes we are pretty solid, and yes we have cleared normal. I've put a lot of progression in early on but not with this group. I've noticed some discrepancies along the way and wondered, not if we have the gear to do it, but is the group skilled enough to do it.

Hi.

Your warlock has massive potential for better dps - send him to the Warlock forums to read up on the top notch guides written by other warlocks there.