Breaking down our Warlock for N 10m Garrosh - frustrated

[NRL1515]

Hello Warlocks,

I humbly come to you asking for help in analyzing some logs for our Destro lock in this fight. I've been playing this game for a long time, yet Warlock is one of the few classes I hardly know anything (more than the basics) about. We're up to about 80 wipes on Garry, and I decided enough was enough and need help from you experts with improving the play of some of our members before drastic changes need to be made to our group.

Armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...topia/advanced

Logs from night #1: http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...59/details/10/
Logs from night #2 (ignore the thok, blackfuse, and paragons fights obv): http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...tdu/details/8/

First things first, what are some of the most glaring issues (if any)? Is there anything that can be fixed rather quickly, and/or are there some habits that need to be changed?

I appreciate any and all time you can spare to help us out! Thanks!

[Cardio32]

At a quick glance his gear and itemization looks fine, could use a better 2nd trinket but not terrible, should definitely be able to perform at the normal and even heroic level.

I'm curious as to why you are pointing him out as one of the main problems for struggling on Garrosh? There are several players that are struggle from a dps standpoint, only your rogue is doing an acceptable amount of damage.

Can you please provide more detail as to what you are asking him to do? He has a high portion of damage on Garrosh (which is good) but he's not even looking at the Wolf Riders in P1. He's not padding a lot of aoe damage on Warbringers but he's definitely swiching on the desecrated weapons.

Only thing I can see rotation wise he might be doing wrong is low immolate uptime but I'm not exactly a pro at reaching these logs.

Back to the point around raid wise damage done, anyone below 200k effective dps on Garrosh is pretty bad and we remove people below this number when we are pugging flex.

[NRL1515]

Thanks for the quick reply, I never intended to insinuate that our warlock was one of our main issues. Basically, our entire group of ranged dps is struggling with certain areas of the fight, and I wanted to get a breakdown - person by person - of how they were performing in this fight. Again, I don't know very much about warlocks, so I don't know if what I was seeing in logs was acceptable or not (or how the fundamentals of the warlock class and/or destro spec was being applied in this fight by her).

I'm not saying she's one of our weaker members, I just didn't know enough about what I was seeing. If you're telling me that even though there are some holes that could use some filling (though, don't we all to some extent?), she's not keeping us from a kill; that's all I need to know.

[Cardio32]

I took another look at her second night. She slightly better with immolate uptime and started to aoe the warbringers more.

Why do you think the raid is failing? It could help us point your warlock in the right direction. It looks like you have several attempts +8 min so looks like the final phase might be a problem. Breaking MC and burning Garrosh?

If you are having trouble burning adds in P1 I would like at your mage and shammy, very low aoe damage. Is wolf rider getting off casts?

Is descerated weapon the problem and you are running out of space? If that's the case your shammy is doubling hunter and mages damage on DW.

If I had to single out one ranged dps that is underperforming, in relation to gear, I would say the hunter, although all of their numbers are quite low.

[Baconeggcheese]

Really quick skim on your longest / last pull from night 2.

~His immolate up time is abysmal, he should be maintaining immolate on the boss, any weapons that you're trying to kill, the warbringers at the beginning, anything that you need to kill during the fight that's gonna live for more than like 3 seconds. I don't feel like checking how many embers he should have generated vs how many he spent but the # of chaosbolts and shadowburns over the course of the fight seems a little low. That might be because of him having really low immolate up time though.

~He's isn't really padding much off of the warbringers, which is making him look a lot worse than say your rogue who is padding his ass off on those things. Normally I'd say it might be because he's trying to focus more damage into the boss but he's kind of low there too so not sure what exactly he's doing there beyond maybe him not knowing how to aoe properly or something. Having a normal ToT trinket definitely isn't helping though.

~I think he's using rain of fire for single target or something with the ludicrous number of hits he has from it, which is a no no. You used to RoF single target last tier but that stopped in 5.4 and he's just gimping his dps hard if he is.

Beyond that everything looks pretty normal, is doing 34%? of the raids dmg to desecrated weapons so he's carrying the weight there which is lowering boss dmg so not too much to fix from what I can see on a quick skim.

[Cardio32]

^Exactly what Bacon said,

Low immolate uptime and overly high RoF. But he should be using RoF on single target with haste procs.

The only person in your raid aoeing adds properly is your rogue. Dk is doing "ok" and the casters haven't figured it out.

[Deleted]

My first post I created an account to reply.

We only downed Garrosh I think on Monday just gone, and we use two destro warlocks (myself as a secondary spec) and another.

Our tacts as warlocks, is basically cleaving Desecrate weapons with Havoc using CB weapon and garrosh, also used for the wolf rider that comes in while being hit by iron star so it gets taken out right away. Immolate should always be up either by single target on Garrosh of from when using FnB spreading on all adds.
As for multi adds being stacked on garrosh just using RoF, FnB immo and incenerate and they go down pretty fast.
For the 3rd phase we both used supremacy (Observer, Optical blast) for the inturrupts on the MC people.
As for WoL i'll leave that to the experts xD, also looking back I think myself personally had over 120+ wipes on Garrosh but it was worth it and fun :P

[Deleted]

I know sod-all about Warlocks so don't my advice as truth, but I noticed two things with our Garrosh progress; 1) we needed 20 wipes max on every boss to clear it for the first time on Normal - Garrosh needed 200. Garry is an outright nightmare to finetune, the problem being the chaos and getting to know the fight. (I really, really don't like the fight myself).

2) Our Warlock kept dying after the MC phase. Whenever he got MCd, it would simply not break, leading to his death - I don't think you're suffering from it yet, so cross yer thumbs (our second warlock didn't have the issue though so it might be spec related).

However, I can only suggest you keep finetuning until you get there. Best of luck.

[Baconeggcheese]

^Exactly what Bacon said,

Low immolate uptime and overly high RoF. But he should be using RoF on single target with haste procs.

The only person in your raid aoeing adds properly is your rogue. Dk is doing "ok" and the casters haven't figured it out.

RoF has no breakpoints and gains nothing from haste beyond it literally ticking faster which if the mob isn't going to move out of a full duration one the DPCT hasn't changed from gaining haste which still makes it worse than just casting an incinerate. It does worse dmg, and they neutered its ember generation you'll at best get 2 ember bits typically speaking single target if you're lucky where incinerate can generate up to 4 ember bits from a single cast if you get lucky. They literally left you with 0 reason to ever use RoF single target because they absolutely don't want you doing it.

[Vulcanasm]

FWIW I'm no "expert" (semi-casual 9/14 10H as of yesterday), but I agree with Bacon, Hokusai, and Cardio. I think Hokusai probably has the best suggestions about what to do.

I'll add a couple points about gear that I see:
* Your Warlock's 2nd trinket is flat-out terrible. It was mediocre for Destruction even during the last tier. Any fully upgraded 528 trinket is a better choice except maybe Black Blood. [I say "maybe" because the 528 version isn't worth farming unless you're really good at setting up Havoc/Shadowburn cleaves] I fear this is just laziness at this point, since 5 months into a tier it's extremely unlikely that luck alone is responsible.
* If it were me, I'd reforge Crit to Haste on chest, legs, and feet. All three are Crit/Mastery. Crit's the least useful secondary stat for Destruction.

- - - Updated - - -

2) Our Warlock kept dying after the MC phase. Whenever he got MCd, it would simply not break, leading to his death - I don't think you're suffering from it yet, so cross yer thumbs (our second warlock didn't have the issue though so it might be spec related).

I haven't needed this in awhile, so it may have been hotfixed out, but there used to be a way Warlocks could help break their own MCs. Just spec Unbound Will and use when MC'd. While it won't break the mind control, it does drop your health, making it easier to DPS you down before you get a cast off.

[Deleted]

Obviously the guys have already made some great points so I'll just make one comment.

Whatever advice you translate back to him/her will not be as effective as getting he/she to come here himself. Not calling you out but you said yourself you don't understand warlocks. I can imagine you pointing something out, him giving a reason as to why or questioning it, and then you not being able to respond and coming back here asking for better clarification. Chinese whispers analogy I guess.

Save yourself the effort and tell them to make accounts and to post in their relative sub forums themselves. If they care enough to improve they'll do it, otherwise you probably won't see much change other than minor details. This way they can give reasons such as "on I thought X/Y was a good idea, guess I'll stop that now".

- - - Updated - - -

2) Our Warlock kept dying after the MC phase. Whenever he got MCd, it would simply not break, leading to his death - I don't think you're suffering from it yet, so cross yer thumbs (our second warlock didn't have the issue though so it might be spec related).

Tell him to turn burning rush off before MC's.

[shats]

My logs from earlier this week for comparison:

well, can't post links yet, but some numbers below:

The low immolate uptime is a problem, but RoF usage is what's causing such low numbers. It was cast 90 times in that attempt with a 76.8% uptime. Compare that to my 16 casts with 19.1% uptime.

What's really troubling is the number of incinerate casts. There were 49+42=91 casts in an attempt 11:41 long. On our kill I had 84+46=133 casts in an attempt 8:13 long. That's 40 more casts in a pull 3.5 minutes shorter.

So really, stop casting RoF, and cast ANYTHING else.

[NRL1515]

Thanks for the replies so far guys, truly appreciated.

It seems like we have a couple members who are seemingly relying on spell rotations/priorities that are obsolete.

@Cardio: it seems our breaking points seem to be the (mis)handling of desecrates and MCs, and I THINK that people are tunneling the boss (especially during P3) instead of handling the mechanics, which I've tried to explain to our raid EVERY. SINGLE. ATTEMPT. but I'm blue in the face. So I understand it's just a l2p issue. P1 is not an issue at all, the adds are mainly handled by myself (BrM monk), the melee, and our ele shaman, and we utilize the iron stars to finish them off. The melee usually does a good job making sure the warshaman don't get any casts off, but 1 or two sneaking through is a big deal, and we've never had any issues with adds lingering long into p2.

@Bacon, and others: Our whole group has been kind of hurting for trinkets this tier (just EXTREMELY bad luck - but everyone has a tank trinket... /sigh), and as I said earlier I think our lock is still locked on (no pun intended) to the gearing and rotation strategies in ToT. I will inform her that the Hydra trinket isn't as useful anymore this tier, and she MIGHT have a better one from flex or LFR, but I'm not sure.

Again, I appreciate your guys' input on this, and I'm confident our lock will be able to adjust her play accordingly.

[Lether]

I noticed from looking through your death logs that you have a few 10min+ attempts where people are dying to annihilate hits. I'd guess this is a third heart phase which is a big problem on progression.
I'm also not noticing your lock using shadowburn much in the first phase. They can be using havoc on garrosh when the warbringers get low on health then use shadowburns to kill the warbringers and copy the damage onto garrosh.
Even if they're focusing on garrosh damage, using shadowburns to get 2 embers when the adds die is probably worth it for the free embers alone.

[blackblade]

When are you lusting?

[Baconeggcheese]

Crit's the least useful secondary stat for Destruction.

^Just wanted to make sure that got addressed.

This is not true, haste and crit are basically equal in terms of value. Technically mastery haste and crit are all fairly equal in value for destruction outside of aoe situations where mastery is king which is why we stack it. Haste or crit stacking after mastery is entirely preference and there is no right or wrong amount its ultimately just a play style difference. Personally I wouldn't recommend the high haste play style to players who are having trouble downing normal bosses as its a little more to manage and judgement calls than high crit.

[NRL1515]

When are you lusting?

We lust at the beginning of phase 3, right as he begins to transition; although looking at the time stamps it appears we can lust at the pull since our longer tries take more than 10 min.

My fear is lusting at the beginning will obviously lower the time we spend before we take him into p3, and will not have it available at that time.

[krel]

I prefer to sac the felhound for the interrupt on this fight, i've had my pet die a couple times and the extra health doesnt hurt.

Maybe it's been fixed but the unbound will talent would cause the MC threshold to drop equal to the damage self inflicted, which makes things pretty sketchy.

Your rogue and mage are carrying the interrupts. On the second night the lock and dk had 2 each during ALL the wipes.

[donzo]

The suggestions above are all great, he should be utilizing shadowburn alot more and immolate the weapon anytime it comes then havoc it with CB cast, would tell him/her also to watch the weapon while dpsing garrosh to be ready to shadowburn the weapon for more chaos bolts onto the boss etc.. is your lock also prioritizing CBs with trinket proccs ? I recommend the addon ExtraCD to watch when it proccs and use chaos bolts on the big trinkets only unless he has 3+ embers without a trinket proc then just use 1 cb and keep high embers rdy for trinket proccs, and yeah the RoF uptime is 2 high, I mostly only use it at P1 or during transition, now I aint no super warlock expert but I've been reading alot how to maximize your dps, I recommend to tell him/her checkout the destro guide on this forum it's really handy, or checkout www.sparkuggz.com the main lock from Method he has written his own guide which is superior... atleast I recommend that most of all.

[Vulcanasm]

^Just wanted to make sure that got addressed.

This is not true, haste and crit are basically equal in terms of value. Technically mastery haste and crit are all fairly equal in value for destruction outside of aoe situations where mastery is king which is why we stack it. Haste or crit stacking after mastery is entirely preference and there is no right or wrong amount its ultimately just a play style difference. Personally I wouldn't recommend the high haste play style to players who are having trouble downing normal bosses as its a little more to manage and judgement calls than high crit.

While I disagree with that, I think it's more important that the player in question simply pick one stat or the other to build around. You're right that there are two play styles, but they need to pick one. When last I checked their armory, they were reforging everything to Mastery but never reforging to Haste or Crit when gear was Mastery/(other). So they were nowhere near any Haste break point and their reforges looked like they threw safety darts at the screen and put points where they landed.