1. #1

    Heroic Progression Help!

    Hey all, my guild has been stuck on Heroic Horridon for quite a bit now, and as of last week everybody is at least 520+ iLvl. I thought I was at least carrying my weight in the attempts, but apparently myself and a few other dps are performing quite a ways below the 50 percentile compared to others of the same spec on that fight.

    In my case, I was playing frost and, despite being 3rd in damage done, on our best attempt I was told I performed in roughly the 10th percentile. On the following parse you can see I did roughly (DPSe) 160k dps, (DPS) 180k dps.

    This is a link to my character's performance on that attempt specifically:
    http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-kk...=11896&e=12517

    My armory (currently specced as fire, but the gear would remain the same, except the DA trinket would be replaced with an upgraded Meg trinket for frost):
    http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...oneri/advanced

    One of the issues I see on this attempt is that I had a fairly low uptime on Invoker's Energy, and slightly less than 90% active time, but I don't think that's enough to make up the difference. I'm not sure of the official number value for at least the 50th percentile, but I don't think these things alone will make up for that. What other ways can I improve, besides what I've discovered myself? Should I not use NT on that fight? Most parses I've looked at, at least pre-5.3, were Nether Tempest, and although I've read LB is now better for single target, I'm not sure which is better in this fight.

    Secondly, it was pointed out to me that fire mages are parsing much higher than frost on that fight. Is this because those fire mages are sitting on the boss? Or do they also deal more damage to the adds? I'm currently specced for fire, as I considered switching, but I'm having second thoughts and not really sure which will be best at this point. Fully raid buffed/food/flask, I can reach just under 42% crit in fire.

    To summarize:
    Should I continue playing frost, or should I switch to fire?

    If I should continue playing frost, how can I perform better? (I use AMR defaults for gemming/reforging/enchanting, although occasionally SimCraft weights Mastery higher, I've never been sure which I should follow). I've also recently read about something very strange having to deal with stacking pure haste and then following Int > Mastery > Haste, until you can reach your next max haste point, in a recently posted thread on here. Is there confirmation that this is ideal? Would it be ideal with my current gear?

    If I should switch to fire, are there any fire specific tips? (What should I set for a "good" ignite value in MyBigIgnite, when to combust? anything at all that can help.)

    If there is any more information necessary please let me know, I just want to improve. Thanks.

  2. #2
    I can't comment on Frost vs Fire on this fight as I've never played Frost this tier, but I can point a couple things about the log.

    As you can see, your Nether Tempest is doing the bulk of your damage, but your uptime is only 78% for the fight. Considering there are always multiple adds up and Horridon in range at all times, your uptime for NT should be at least 90. Even if you are single targeting for a specific add, NT should still be up, so there's no excuse for a low uptime.

    As you said, your Invocation uptime is pretty bad and is something you definitely need to work on. How are you tracking it? I suggest getting something to let you know around 5 seconds before it's going to expire, so you know that you will be need to refresh it soon when it drops and you can prepare. I use weak auras for this.

    As for fire, if you feel comfortable playing it try it out because you definitely have the gear for it.

  3. #3
    Your NT and Invokers uptimes are absurdly low. Do you use an addon to track either of these? That's pretty much where all your lost damage is coming from. Apart from that, frost is just as good as fire on that fight unless you can get lucky combustions at near perfect timings. And I hope you gem haste over int with your current trinkets and gear for frost, because it looks like that's the better setup. Other than that, nothing to say. Just try to have 90%+ uptimes on NT and Invokers and you'll be more than fine.

  4. #4
    When you say gemming for haste over intellect, do you mean in the style of this thread?: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...ou-Quick-Guide

    And what would be more beneficial, just keeping nether tempest up on all adds, or 1-2 and doing the normal rotation?

  5. #5
    Deleted
    Best tips I can give as a Frost mage, try keep NT up on horridon as much as you can, even when adds are up, to kill Horridon it helps immensely the lower you can get his health before your finished on the 4th gate, all your ranged dps should be at least keeping some form of dot on him at all times. Also if your dps can split their big CD's for the doors, ie half them use big CD's on 1st door and other half keep them for 2nd door. As frost I could use all my CD's on pull and they will be back up for when the 2 Priests spawn on 2nd door and again on 4th door. I make a focus target macro for Horridon so I dot NT without target switching and also stick my pet on the Direhorn beast(W/E its called). Hope any of this helps.

  6. #6
    I'm fire, but I've done the fight as frost before too, my tips:

    1. Do *not* get damage on horridon any time adds are up, the only thing that will ever really kill you is a ton of adds being up all at the same time, plus in the last phase you have a huge amount of time to kill horridon, even if he's at 90%, there's a good chance he'll die.

    2. NT is good for this fight, but LB is fine too, some like to multi dot everything, I'd advise against it, at least while learning the fight, the big adds dying is much much more important than the little adds in general.

    3. Make smart use of CD's, don't use any on the first door as everything dies so fast.

    4. Depends on how much crit you got on ur gear, if you're really close to 40%, fire is a good idea (with molten armor of course).

  7. #7
    Echoing everyone else in the thread about low uptimes on both Invoker's Energy and Nether Tempest. There's several points in the fight where your DPS dips to 50-75k, which makes me think you're getting overwhelmed and spending too much time moving around. I play fire predominately, but I hate this fight so much I swap to Frost with a couple on-the-fly reforges to force my pet to send the pink dino back to Africa, then return him to whatever the focus target needs to be. This obviously results in non-optimal DPS (full crit gems as frost wheeeeee), but I still hit around the 75th/80th percentile.

    worldoflogs.com/rep orts/rt-05ilu4ocjsklka08/details/13/?s=1932&e=2584

    Was a little sloppy (pink dino spawning on top of melee is always fun) but you can get the idea.

  8. #8
    Thanks for the replies everyone! I think I'll most likely be sticking with frost, especially since I have to do CMs in frost. I do have another question though, is there some kind of macro that allows my water elemental to stick on the direhorn spirit, rather than targeting whatever I'm targeting?

  9. #9
    Low Bomb uptime = Low Brain Freeze uptime = Significantly lower damage
    Low IE uptime = Might as well go Incanter's Ward

    You'll see great DPS boosts by fixing ONE of these issues, let alone BOTH. Feel free to use IW if Invocation isn't doing it for you.
    Still wondering why I play this game.
    I'm a Rogue and I also made a spreadsheet for the Order Hall that is updated for BfA.

  10. #10
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Leoneri View Post
    Thanks for the replies everyone! I think I'll most likely be sticking with frost, especially since I have to do CMs in frost. I do have another question though, is there some kind of macro that allows my water elemental to stick on the direhorn spirit, rather than targeting whatever I'm targeting?
    Yes, just use

    /petpassive
    /tar direhorn spirit
    /petattack
    /targetlasttarget

    and your water elemental will chase the direhorn spirit until it's out of the arena. Eventually your spirit will come crawling back to you (but won't attack anything), and you'll want to tell it to assist you again. When your direhorn spirit comes back into a dangerous range, set your pet on it again. Repeat.

  11. #11
    Comparing your dps to logs in no way has any bearing on your effectiveness in the raid on that fight. It all depends on your role in that fight.

    Mine as frost is single target bursting down the nasty adds, eg venom priests/effuls. Mainly because we run a shadow priest, warlock, ele shaman, hunter, ret pally. With that combination we lacked focus dps to get certain mobs down before debuffs got out of hand.

    If your a multi dotter mage for this fight fire should give your overall damage a kick in the pants but think about how effective it's going to be against the fight mechanics and your raids setup

  12. #12
    Mechagnome jtmzac's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Jun 2012
    Location
    Sydney, Australia
    Posts
    700
    You shouldn't be multi-dotting if your progressing on this anyway. Horridon is mostly about single target dps and killing adds asap so you can lower the debuffs and damage hurting the raid. This is also why your dps won't and shouldn't be anywhere near as high as the rankings for the fight.

    As frost I only DoT the high priority adds venom priests, frozen warlords etc. and not the other adds. The exception to this is between doors when you can just DoT everything.

    We've been struggling on this too and its really about keeping everyone alive until horridon is enraged which is easier the faster the adds die.

    I suggest using ice barrier for every dire call and cold snap so you can remove some of the nasty dots you'll probably get like the bleed from the bloodlords on the 2nd door.

    Using your elemental to deal with direhorn is so much easier then any other way of dealing with it which makes frost a very good spec for the fight.

    Lastly don't forget to help with decursing on the 4th door. The hex really hurts on heroic.
    MB: Asus Maximus V Extreme CPU: 3770k@4.5Ghz custom water loop GPU: Gigabyte GTX 680 RAM: Corsair 4x4GB 1600Mhz 7-8-8-24
    SSD: Samsung 830 256GB PSU: Corsair AX850 CASE: Corsair 800D
    Armory

  13. #13

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •