So, finally Mythic Blackhand

[Deleted]

Eminently doable at current iLvls, if less reliable than having 3 Foxes. We did it on a couple of progress nights where our hunters couldn't make it for whatever reason. iLvls are so high now that P1 isn't really an issue at all any more.

We did it with 1 hunter perfectly fine.

[Deleted]

I suppose my Guild is somewhat lucky with comp, we have 2 Moonkins, 2 Hunters & 2 rogues, we use a Spriest on the Balconies instead of a 3rd Moonkin and he clears it with 0 problems, heck I'd say he generally clears it faster. We've only gotten him to 21%, but it really won't kill you to take a few Plate dps etc, we even use an Enhance shaman for his burst in P1 and the fact that he can heal whilst baiting out fires. Having the perfect comp really doesn't mean much if people struggle with the mechanics though, especially for Balconies in p2, if someone misses it's pretty much over because you'll probably have a lot of Veteran mobs gunning your raid down.

Does your Shadow Priest solo the balcony or does a healer go with him?

Also, something else is still unclear to me. Do the mortars always go on the furthest player and why do you need 3 to bait it?

[Deleted]

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/yqnN86xZvXT71fkz


Help. We're in about 50 wipes right now and we can't cleanly transition from p1-p2 without Heroism. We're hung-up on melee with the method of starting on the outside, moving in to detonate bombs with our retadin, then moving right on the edge of the circle. My main concern is why we aren't able to get down to p2 WITHOUT heroism. My raid leader argues that we have a lot of -execute classes- so heroism might not even be needed for p3. Halp... I'll tell you all I can, but I just don't know what to do other than keep running 9/10M until we get enough gear to roll it over.

We're not so much onto p2 just yet so try not to look at that too much. We're going to put our BrM against the wall with the siege engine, but yeah. Phase 1. How do we ensure our range don't die every time and squeeze out more damage?

Looking through your logs and comparing them to our own (with no Heroism used in P1 and consistently clean transitions), your basic issues are two things.

First of all, people keep getting hit by Impaling Throw. Start benching people who do this constantly, or you will not kill the boss. They need to understand that you can NEVER, EVER, EVER get greedy with casts or positioning on Blackhand or you will wipe your raid. All it takes is one guy eating an Impale early in the fight and dying and you might as well wipe it.

Secondly, your healers are terrible. Your Disc is your highest-throughput healer in P1 when he should be lowest. Your Holy Paladin cast Holy Radiance half as often as he should have, your MW has awful RJW, REM and Chi Burst (like unbelievably, 1/10th of the throughput he should have had, bad Chi Burst) usage, and your Holy Priest basically has no clue how to play his/her spec - spamming Flash Heal in P1, casting no Binding Heals, barely any Renews, etc. Your healers essentially all need to go and take a long, hard look at what they're doing, and start doing it properly.

[Dracodraco]

Does your Shadow Priest solo the balcony or does a healer go with him?

Also, something else is still unclear to me. Do the mortars always go on the furthest player and why do you need 3 to bait it?

Targets 1 of the 3 furthest people, always. Thus 3 people are needed to bait it (think garrosh Desecrates, just with half the people). You use melee because ranged can get targetted by impale, which will utterly fuck up everything towards the end of p2 - won't have a chance to go hide behind the siege if they're out baiting fire = byebye decent attempt due to RNG.

[Deleted]

Does your Shadow Priest solo the balcony or does a healer go with him?

Also, something else is still unclear to me. Do the mortars always go on the furthest player and why do you need 3 to bait it?

yes he solos, uses reverse grip glyph if he gets marked before the smash.

and as Draco said, targets the 3 furthest people away. use rets, enhance, monks as a prio to do it since they have self healing. the fire rng spreads and sometimes it doesn't, not uncommon to get clipped by it and take the dot if you're not paying attention, or bad (like me).

[Dracodraco]

yes he solos, uses reverse grip glyph if he gets marked before the smash.

and as Draco said, targets the 3 furthest people away. use rets, enhance, monks as a prio to do it since they have self healing. the fire rng spreads and sometimes it doesn't, not uncommon to get clipped by it and take the dot if you're not paying attention, or bad (like me).

Rogues are just as good as they can keep up recuperate (and might not be good on the boss due to awry positioning )

[Tehterokkar]

I thought the snipers on the balconies don't target melee, so why should you put the melee which can self heal if there is no damage to heal?

Our guild used 2 melee for our kill, Rogue and DK. Could have gone with 3, but meh. We used a BM hunter for as the third person for baiting Mortar(as their Pet was still attacking the boss).

[Cybrus]

Looking through your logs and comparing them to our own (with no Heroism used in P1 and consistently clean transitions), your basic issues are two things.

First of all, people keep getting hit by Impaling Throw. Start benching people who do this constantly, or you will not kill the boss. They need to understand that you can NEVER, EVER, EVER get greedy with casts or positioning on Blackhand or you will wipe your raid. All it takes is one guy eating an Impale early in the fight and dying and you might as well wipe it.

Secondly, your healers are terrible. Your Disc is your highest-throughput healer in P1 when he should be lowest. Your Holy Paladin cast Holy Radiance half as often as he should have, your MW has awful RJW, REM and Chi Burst (like unbelievably, 1/10th of the throughput he should have had, bad Chi Burst) usage, and your Holy Priest basically has no clue how to play his/her spec - spamming Flash Heal in P1, casting no Binding Heals, barely any Renews, etc. Your healers essentially all need to go and take a long, hard look at what they're doing, and start doing it properly.

Awesome feedback. How about our DPS? We're around 700 ilvl with rings and we're still barely cutting it WITH heroism before we're overwhelmed by slag in p1.

[Deleted]

Awesome feedback. How about our DPS? We're around 700 ilvl with rings and we're still barely cutting it WITH heroism before we're overwhelmed by slag in p1.

There was a fair amount of variation in our DPS on the first night of progress too. When I compare our logs with yours, for the same durations, there's nothing really conclusive. It looks very like movement and/or use of defensive cooldowns that's screwing you judging by the Massive Demolition deaths going on.

[Dracodraco]

I thought the snipers on the balconies don't target melee, so why should you put the melee which can self heal if there is no damage to heal?

Our guild used 2 melee for our kill, Rogue and DK. Could have gone with 3, but meh. We used a BM hunter for as the third person for baiting Mortar(as their Pet was still attacking the boss).

They don't, which is another reason to send melee. Can still take ticks of fire as said.
What did you do when the hunter who was out baiting fire got targetted by marked for death? Or did you just ride the RNG wave and not have that issue.

[Deleted]

Awesome feedback. How about our DPS? We're around 700 ilvl with rings and we're still barely cutting it WITH heroism before we're overwhelmed by slag in p1.

DPS looks low to me considering you're using heroism, but that could be because we have 3 hunters and you only have 2. While the standard of play your healers exhibit leads me to suspect that you also have DPS doing multiple things horribly wrong, it's most likely that you're having trouble making it because you're placing awful Massive Demolitions and thus fucking yourselves over rather than due to an abject lack of DPS.

Like, your DPS has to be so unrelentingly awful at current iLvls that you wouldn't be 9/10 Mythic in the first place, by my reckoning, to hit the "hard" check in P1 which is the 4th Demolition. I simply refuse to believe you guys are getting the 4th Demolition.

[Deleted]

DPS looks low to me considering you're using heroism, but that could be because we have 3 hunters and you only have 2. While the standard of play your healers exhibit leads me to suspect that you also have DPS doing multiple things horribly wrong, it's most likely that you're having trouble making it because you're placing awful Massive Demolitions and thus fucking yourselves over rather than due to an abject lack of DPS.

Like, your DPS has to be so unrelentingly awful at current iLvls that you wouldn't be 9/10 Mythic in the first place, by my reckoning, to hit the "hard" check in P1 which is the 4th Demolition. I simply refuse to believe you guys are getting the 4th Demolition.

Don't you start hitting mines/debris by the time you get to 4th debris anyhow?

Also in my experience of progressing on P1, with same ilevel and composition we went from wiping from not doing enough DPS, to comfortably doing enough. It just takes the confidence of not using the crutch of using heroism, you got to practice and get better and better.

[Deleted]

Well having 2 or 3 hunters doesn't really matter that much, its more about optimization of the phase. We started with Hero p1 aswell then we went to having no issues with 2 hunters instead of 3. Its just you have to keep making small adjustments to where you want to place it and eventually you get there. Gl m8
. About p2. What we do (still on progress aswell just reached 22% last raid) is:
intermission 1lock+1hunter
1st smash - solo tank
2nd smash - boomking far Lock+healer close
3rd smash - tank solo
4th smash - boomkin/shadow far
5th smash - boomkin close lock+healer far

It might seem wierd. but it actually works out quite nicely if you have the dps for it. It reduces the raid damage by quit a bit for p2. And ye i'm the sad lock that has to wait a long time up there rip

[Deleted]

Don't you start hitting mines/debris by the time you get to 4th debris anyhow?

Also in my experience of progressing on P1, with same ilevel and composition we went from wiping from not doing enough DPS, to comfortably doing enough. It just takes the confidence of not using the crutch of using heroism, you got to practice and get better and better.

You can place Massive Demolitions far enough in on the 3rd Demolition that they won't actually be triggered by Slag before you can get rid of them, AFAIK - the 4th Demolition is a guaranteed wipe, however.

[Tehterokkar]

They don't, which is another reason to send melee. Can still take ticks of fire as said.
What did you do when the hunter who was out baiting fire got targetted by marked for death? Or did you just ride the RNG wave and not have that issue.

Mostly just prayed to RNG Gods after he was there full time for 3rd and 4th demo(he called our mage to blink to other side during 1st and 2nd demo if he got MfD just before 2nd marks). Sometimes if he did get it during 3rd+4th demo, we used a ress.

[Raikan]

Secondly, your healers are terrible. Your Disc is your highest-throughput healer in P1 when he should be lowest. Your Holy Paladin cast Holy Radiance half as often as he should have, your MW has awful RJW, REM and Chi Burst (like unbelievably, 1/10th of the throughput he should have had, bad Chi Burst) usage, and your Holy Priest basically has no clue how to play his/her spec - spamming Flash Heal in P1, casting no Binding Heals, barely any Renews, etc. Your healers essentially all need to go and take a long, hard look at what they're doing, and start doing it properly.

Just thought I should touch on this. I wouldn't go with these harsh criticisms on your healers. I don't know where you got the whole disc priest shouldn't be top in P1 thing. Typically the 2 top performing healers on Blackhand P1 are Disc priests and Shamans from what I have seen.

I can't comment on the other healers but at least in regards to the Mistweaver I don't believe he's doing as poorly as this post makes him seem. Overall his healing is pretty good for P1 the number of ReM's and Chi Bursts are fine for most of the pulls with ReM being upwards of 97% on most pulls (you can lose a few percent on transition or on pull). The Chi Burst healing is largely dependent on how well your ranged and melee stack up so that you can line it up. Some of his chi bursts show the full potential while other are low, yes. He can definitely use more RJW as one of the largest mistakes I made was overestimating the mana I thought I would need going into P2. If you are baiting fire as a mistweaver mana becomes largely irrelevant as you can drink tea while standing in the corner.

[Deleted]

Just thought I should touch on this. I wouldn't go with these harsh criticisms on your healers. I don't know where you got the whole disc priest shouldn't be top in P1 thing. Typically the 2 top performing healers on Blackhand P1 are Disc priests and Shamans from what I have seen.

I can't comment on the other healers but at least in regards to the Mistweaver I don't believe he's doing as poorly as this post makes him seem. Overall his healing is pretty good for P1 the number of ReM's and Chi Bursts are fine for most of the pulls with ReM being upwards of 97% on most pulls (you can lose a few percent on transition or on pull). The Chi Burst healing is largely dependent on how well your ranged and melee stack up so that you can line it up. Some of his chi bursts show the full potential while other are low, yes. He can definitely use more RJW as one of the largest mistakes I made was overestimating the mana I thought I would need going into P2. If you are baiting fire as a mistweaver mana becomes largely irrelevant as you can drink tea while standing in the corner.

If you compare the Mistweaver and what he's doing in P1 to what top Mistweavers are doing, my criticism stands. Too few REM casts, too few RJW casts, horrible Chi Burst usage. He's getting like 100k healing from Chi Burst on most P1 pulls and top MWs are getting an entire million or more out of it. Likewise, while the top healers OVERALL on the fight are indeed Disc and Shaman, you'll see that when you look exclusively at P1 the healers with large raid CDs and very, very high raw output like Holy Priest, Resto Druid, etc do 2-3x the throughput of a Disc looking at that phase exclusively when they do well. There's just so little sustained damage going out in P2 that Disc priest catches back up in terms of effective HPS; the only reason Shaman is even competitive on top logs is because their raw output in P1 and P3 is so stupendously high.

[Dracodraco]

If you compare the Mistweaver and what he's doing in P1 to what top Mistweavers are doing, my criticism stands. Too few REM casts, too few RJW casts, horrible Chi Burst usage. He's getting like 100k healing from Chi Burst on most P1 pulls and top MWs are getting an entire million or more out of it. Likewise, while the top healers OVERALL on the fight are indeed Disc and Shaman, you'll see that when you look exclusively at P1 the healers with large raid CDs and very, very high raw output like Holy Priest, Resto Druid, etc do 2-3x the throughput of a Disc looking at that phase exclusively when they do well. There's just so little sustained damage going out in P2 that Disc priest catches back up in terms of effective HPS; the only reason Shaman is even competitive on top logs is because their raw output in P1 and P3 is so stupendously high.

That's not entirely true. There's no way a druid/resto shaman/holy priest/MW can outshine a disc to the extent you're saying.

Assuming that the best ranked output healers must have done near-maximum output in P1 to even get to that rank, let's take a quick look:

Here's the best ranked resto druid:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...ealing&phase=1

Disc only 14K behind.

Resto shaman:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...ealing&phase=1
Got trumped hard by the disc, 11K ahead.

Mistweaver:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...ealing&phase=1
Disc 7K behind.

And holy priests:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...ealing&phase=1
Disc 7K behind.

Of course, this is the disc priests in comparison to the best of each class; the disc in that raid might not be on the same level as the other healers. Let's look at...

The best Disc priest:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...ealing&phase=1
102K. Huh.

Essentially, the only healers I can find topping out at +100K are mistweavers and disc priests, and a single holy priest. Resto druids and shamans gets close, putting out 90-95K regularly, but can hardly find any +100K's on the kills atleast. I found one holy priest doing +100K aswell, but the rest of them are sitting at 80-85K or so. Under representation probably hitting them hard.


Point being, if you think discs are behind throughput healers in, well, throughput, you are willfully ignorant of what logs has to show us. The peak for each class is extremely close, with the best topping out at just over 100K for the phase, and that INCLUDES disc.

(disclaimer: Did not look into holy paladins because 50% of their healing is tank healing and doesn't really matter for the "raid healing" being discussed).

[Deleted]

That's not entirely true. There's no way a druid/resto shaman/holy priest/MW can outshine a disc to the extent you're saying.

Assuming that the best ranked output healers must have done near-maximum output in P1 to even get to that rank, let's take a quick look:

Here's the best ranked resto druid:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...ealing&phase=1

Disc only 14K behind.

Resto shaman:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...ealing&phase=1
Got trumped hard by the disc, 11K ahead.

Mistweaver:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...ealing&phase=1
Disc 7K behind.

And holy priests:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...ealing&phase=1
Disc 7K behind.

Of course, this is the disc priests in comparison to the best of each class; the disc in that raid might not be on the same level as the other healers. Let's look at...

The best Disc priest:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...ealing&phase=1
102K. Huh.

Essentially, the only healers I can find topping out at +100K are mistweavers and disc priests, and a single holy priest. Resto druids and shamans gets close, putting out 90-95K regularly, but can hardly find any +100K's on the kills atleast. I found one holy priest doing +100K aswell, but the rest of them are sitting at 80-85K or so. Under representation probably hitting them hard.


Point being, if you think discs are behind throughput healers in, well, throughput, you are willfully ignorant of what logs has to show us. The peak for each class is extremely close, with the best topping out at just over 100K for the phase, and that INCLUDES disc.

(disclaimer: Did not look into holy paladins because 50% of their healing is tank healing and doesn't really matter for the "raid healing" being discussed).

I understand what you're getting at in this post, and I essentially agree with what you're saying, but should have clarified that I meant raw HPS and not the eHPS that's almost always discussed when talking about "HPS" as a metric. If you look at the RAW throughput being put out in the important phases of the fight, the throughput classes simply put out significantly more raw healing, but with much more of it going into overheal - generally a good disc is somewhere around 85-90k effective AND raw HPS in P1 and P3, while many throughput healers will easily eclipse 120k raw HPS over the course of the phase and 200k+ raw HPS during the casts of their raid CDs - which is sort of ridiculous in the sense that say, Tranquility, is literally overkill in every single possible situation just because it puts out so much healing - but they'll do no more effective HPS than a Disc due to shields and overhealing.

I'm genuinely completely disinterested in the HPS shown on meters for a fight like Blackhand just because of the way Disc priest cockblocks every other class - it's the raw throughput each class is capable of putting out that's interesting because a Disc can't drag your raid's ass out of deep shit in P3 - a Resto Shaman can because said shaman has much, much more throughput theoretically available. When you look at the RAW throughput done by this guild's healers, disregarding overheal, it just isn't hitting the mark. The MW could be worse, I suppose, but the Holy Priest and Paladin are anywhere between 10 and 30k HPS (depending on the pull) short of the sort of raw output you want to see to have a comfortable, consistent P1.

[Dracodraco]

I understand what you're getting at in this post, and I essentially agree with what you're saying, but should have clarified that I meant raw HPS and not the eHPS that's almost always discussed when talking about "HPS" as a metric. If you look at the RAW throughput being put out in the important phases of the fight, the throughput classes simply put out significantly more raw healing, but with much more of it going into overheal - generally a good disc is somewhere around 85-90k effective AND raw HPS in P1 and P3, while many throughput healers will easily eclipse 120k raw HPS over the course of the phase and 200k+ raw HPS during the casts of their raid CDs - which is sort of ridiculous in the sense that say, Tranquility, is literally overkill in every single possible situation just because it puts out so much healing - but they'll do no more effective HPS than a Disc due to shields and overhealing.

I'm genuinely completely disinterested in the HPS shown on meters for a fight like Blackhand just because of the way Disc priest cockblocks every other class - it's the raw throughput each class is capable of putting out that's interesting because a Disc can't drag your raid's ass out of deep shit in P3 - a Resto Shaman can because said shaman has much, much more throughput theoretically available. When you look at the RAW throughput done by this guild's healers, disregarding overheal, it just isn't hitting the mark. The MW could be worse, I suppose, but the Holy Priest and Paladin are anywhere between 10 and 30k HPS (depending on the pull) short of the sort of raw output you want to see to have a comfortable, consistent P1.

That's dumb as fuck. Nobody should care about raw HPS if we know it goes into overhealing. The raw HPS is irrelevant. Disc is top tier for effective HPS; You say that throughput healers can reach +200K when their cds are up, but that's... Irrelevant. We were talking about the phase, not their max theoretical output when a druid is tranq'ing. And even so, if we take the 10 seconds a druid/shaman/holy's tranq is up vs the first 10 seconds of a demolition phase where a disc has pre-shielded:

Disc 297K:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...72&end=9148982

Druid 368K:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...67&end=6057726

Shaman 222K:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...38&end=5571252

Holy 226K:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...8&end=15357038

Mistweaver 285K:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...3&end=16265330

The only class beating the disc on short-term burst is resto druid; And that doesn't include the fact that disc's Barrier is not counted towards healing, and the druid used 2x raid CDs for that burst (tranq+HOTW - HOTW being a 35% boost, or a third of the healing tranq did. Remove a third and suddenly it's right down there with shaman/holy).


So no, even in the scenario you're speaking of, Disc isn't "behind" any of the other healers; Disc should be at the very least competitive with every other healer. The difference is that a good disc has to think ahead. You say that a disc can't drag a raid out of a bad phase 3, but I'd say a disc is far more important than any other healer in P3 due to shields on the 4x soakers, the slag bombs, and the impale marks; getting shields out on those people as they come up is incredibly valueable in terms of survivability, and trumphs random AOE healing from chain heals any day, even if the shaman does slightly more HPS.