[Prot] WoD/Legion Alpha Discussion

[Deleted]

How much of a difference would it make if you prioritized SoI, always swapping back to it on your first open filler? Seems to me that the ideal situation would be maximizing your SoI uptime while always maintaining the haste buff, but given that you should only swap as a filler I'm not sure what sort of uptime that would lead to.

It's just a choice you have to make. I prefer refreshing SS rather than switching into SoI. I don't think there is that much difference between the 2 playstyles and either are fine. You would get more SoI uptime doing it your way, but I'm not actually sure whether it would be much more than a 5% increase over a fight, I always seem to be delaying whenever I switch seals. That said, I avoid the talent like the plague. So maybe I'm not the best person to talk about it.

[Kanadei]

How much of a difference would it make if you prioritized SoI, always swapping back to it on your first open filler? Seems to me that the ideal situation would be maximizing your SoI uptime while always maintaining the haste buff, but given that you should only swap as a filler I'm not sure what sort of uptime that would lead to.

You will find this thread leans towards DPS a bit more than most tanks do, and leans towards SoR a lot more heavily than it does towards SoI.

That being said, the whole idea of EmpS is to twist into what you need. So using SoI as you lay out is definitely a good way to play.

Ideal situation is a bit of a misleading term though. Essentially you should be in SoI twisting SoR when you are worried about your damage intake (like on a progression boss where you are tanking 100% of the time) and otherwise twisting SoR into SoI (when you aren't tanking, when it's farm content or when you just aren't too worried about the incoming damage and don't want SoI to be mainly overhealing).

Neither way is right or wrong, they are just appropriate for different situations.*

*The biggest note here being that letting your insight buff drop off is going to be a lot less devastating to your overall performance than letting that 20% haste buff drop off, so no matter what you are twisting keep an eye on the SoR buff.

[Deleted]

I guess dps whoring during progress is a good thing to be doing when half the top guilds have private logs anyway?

[cujoe]

It's called being good at class, not dps whoring. Not my problem you play at ascendance but still do half of what I manage to pull off.
Don't come here shit talking me whoring DPS when I've been using crappy sta trinkets on gruul and holy shield on thogar for the previous resets.

Just because I do high dps does not necessarily mean I am whoring. There is a difference.

Kromog video :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XK2YLvIPdc

Impressive. I compared logs of you and the other protadins ranked below you to see where you might have cheesed your dps, but you not only manage to get really good aoe on the hands with hammer, but also have the highest effective dps on the boss (some people below you come close, though). Do you care to explain why you delayed your second HA to the four minute mark? Just to line it up with trinket proccs?

I really like your weak auras. Everything is nicely centered around the HoPo bar. You care to share?

[cujoe]

nvm, I will fiddle around myself.

Then another question, how do you guys manage to keep track of the rotational CDs? Do you look at your action bars? Or is it already motor memory? My pala twink dinged 100 two weeks ago, I tried to raid as much as possible, mostly HM HC and BRF normal, but I need some WAs to show me when CS, HW and stuff are up. Sometimes I have the feeling I look at them too much. How do you guys notice when some ability is ready to cast?

[celinamuna]

nvm, I will fiddle around myself.

Then another question, how do you guys manage to keep track of the rotational CDs? Do you look at your action bars? Or is it already motor memory? My pala twink dinged 100 two weeks ago, I tried to raid as much as possible, mostly HM HC and BRF normal, but I need some WAs to show me when CS, HW and stuff are up. Sometimes I have the feeling I look at them too much. How do you guys notice when some ability is ready to cast?

I know i currently have somewhat similar WA but it also shows rotational abilities : http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...Paladin-Bundle

[cujoe]

I know i currently have somewhat similar WA but it also shows rotational abilities : http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...Paladin-Bundle

Very much appreciated, thank you.

[Vergilius]

I delay 2nd HA to the point where boss attacks for around a min and half before hands/spikes come in. Which is the point where I get 2 stacks.

Can't share WAs atm I'm at chool :/

I'd like your weakauras as well if you don't mind, I already use the same ones for HoPo (idk if they're yours or we just got them from the same place) with a few of my own for seraphim and HA, but you have a few I don't have like 2p indicator, SS aura, externals etc. I really prefer the icon based auras, like the stuff that sloot has I find impossible to use...

[Taven]

I guess dps whoring during progress is a good thing to be doing when half the top guilds have private logs anyway?

Basically this

[Deleted]

Honestly, I've gotta take Lazel's side in this case, even if I think his jab at Astur is childish and completely besides the point. Having just done Kromog with HA/Sera, it's every bit as safe as any other conceivable option on the fight and literally all it takes to do 29-30k DPS (provided you don't die and don't have a ridiculous AoE comp) is putting Light's Hammer in the right place during Grasping Hands.

You don't have to whore, you don't have to use HA during Hands, etc - it's just good play, not whoring.

[Taven]

Honestly, I've gotta take Lazel's side in this case, even if I think his jab at Astur is childish and completely besides the point. Having just done Kromog with HA/Sera, it's every bit as safe as any other conceivable option on the fight and literally all it takes to do 29-30k DPS (provided you don't die and don't have a ridiculous AoE comp) is putting Light's Hammer in the right place during Grasping Hands.

You don't have to whore, you don't have to use HA during Hands, etc - it's just good play, not whoring.

And that's fine but random lashing out against someone using EmpS or not using a preferred talent or whatever is just silly and has no place here.

[celinamuna]

I'd like your weakauras as well if you don't mind, I already use the same ones for HoPo (idk if they're yours or we just got them from the same place) with a few of my own for seraphim and HA, but you have a few I don't have like 2p indicator, SS aura, externals etc. I really prefer the icon based auras, like the stuff that sloot has I find impossible to use...

linked in a post above you : http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...Paladin-Bundle

Basically this

Really not.....

[Kanadei]

Honestly, I've gotta take Lazel's side in this case, even if I think his jab at Astur is childish and completely besides the point. Having just done Kromog with HA/Sera, it's every bit as safe as any other conceivable option on the fight and literally all it takes to do 29-30k DPS (provided you don't die and don't have a ridiculous AoE comp) is putting Light's Hammer in the right place during Grasping Hands.

You don't have to whore, you don't have to use HA during Hands, etc - it's just good play, not whoring.

I'd like to second this, you can fault Lazels attitude as much as you want - but you can't fault his results.

And sure, he could provide evidence for his opinions a bit more, but they are almost always correct.

If you wanted to sit down with someone and get some cohesive feedback on your performance, you'd probably do it with Astur. He's an exceptional player and a nice guy if these forums are proof of anything. But Lazel as a fringe case is pretty exceptional at what he does and deserves appropriate recognition for it, even if you don't like him.

[Jaydenkor]

Empowered seals question.. and.. @Theck.. if you have a line to blizzard, this may be a bug to report?

The seal of insight judge buff (the 3% hp regen every 2sec? or whatever it is), this buff correctly respects the pandemic effect.. eg. its a 20sec buff, so if you refresh at 6 (30% duration) or greater seconds remaining, you will get a 26 second buff.
The seal of righteousness (20% haste) does NOT respect the pandemic effect. Every time you judge you set the buff duration to 20 seconds precisely.

is this intended?.. is this some weird problem on my end but no one elses?.. Halp?

[Kanadei]

Empowered seals question.. and.. @Theck.. if you have a line to blizzard, this may be a bug to report?

The seal of insight judge buff (the 3% hp regen every 2sec? or whatever it is), this buff correctly respects the pandemic effect.. eg. its a 20sec buff, so if you refresh at 6 (30% duration) or greater seconds remaining, you will get a 26 second buff.
The seal of righteousness (20% haste) does NOT respect the pandemic effect. Every time you judge you set the buff duration to 20 seconds precisely.

is this intended?.. is this some weird problem on my end but no one elses?.. Halp?

Intended, one is a heal and thus correctly extended due to the pandemic effect. The other is not and isn't.

Someone else can probably explain what does and doesn't qualify for the pandemic effect better than me, but that's the reason.

[celinamuna]

Pandemic was added to things with tick mechanics such as hots or dots (partially to address partial tick issues), this is just a regular buff, from what i believe, the only buff that benefits from pandemic behavior is pulverize.

[Theck]

Unrelated: was doing a little investigation into multi-mob scaling of the different talents. Below are six simulations with varying numbers of targets. The first is just the T17M TMI boss, and each subsequent sim adds another enemy that only melees the tank (for around 1/3 of what the T17M TMI boss does).

TMI Standard Boss T17M
TMI Standard Boss T17M + 1 add
TMI Standard Boss T17M + 2 adds
TMI Standard Boss T17M + 3 adds
TMI Standard Boss T17M + 4 adds
TMI Standard Boss T17M + 5 adds

Gyazo seems broken at the moment, so no pretty pictures.

First thing to notice is that HS seems to scale the best with increasing mob density. If you go from 1 target to 6 targets, you see the HS actors slowly rise up in the rankings compared to the other two talents. The other thing to notice is that *_SW combinations fall behind as we increase mobs (the HS_SW_SoR at the top is misleading - that's HS+SoR dominance pulling ahead, we'd get even higher DPS with HS_DP_SoR or HS_HA_SoR).

On the defensive side, it looks like HS and ES both hold up pretty well. HS_DP and HS_HA remain the low-TMI choices, but you can see the ES actors starting to stack up behind them, pushing HS_SW and the Sera actors further down the list. The high uptime on SotR clearly helps against any number of mobs, and I think this is what we're seeing.

Sera, on the other hand, has a weak point in the cycle that just gets weaker and weaker with more mobs. That said, it's possible that the Sera actors are artificially worse off here, because they're still using the 5-second pool for holy power, which may not be necessary with the higher HP income from Grand Crusader against multiple mobs.

Usual disclaimers apply. This is Patchwerk+DoT with full tanking time, which is why HS is so high-DPS. If you have a narrow window where you need AoE damage, Sera should still be far ahead if you can line it up with that period properly. Likewise, you can get more effective defensive results with Sera if some of the weak points line up with off-tanking periods, or you buffer those with heavier cooldowns or 5BoG-WoGs.

- - - Updated - - -

This is what it looks like if you sim for only 20-30 seconds and disable bloodlust:

T17M + 5 short


ES_HA_SoR is at the top of the DPS chart here, where you may have expected Sera_HA to be. HS_HA is beating Sera_HA as well. Two logical reasons for this:

1) 6 targets is where Sera's AoE scaling hits a plateau due to AS's five-target limit. HS_HA and ES_HA both hit that same limit, of course, but more of Sera's damage is bound up in those AS casts than is HS_HA's.

2) ES_HA_SoR is obviously using SoR, while HS_HA and Sera_HA are using SoI. This is really showing the dominance of HA over the other talents in a short fight window. To get a fair comparison we'd need to check HS_HA_SoR and Sera_HA_SoR actors, both of which should top ES_HA_SoR by a fairly large margin.

I didn't think about this when I started the sim, I just took the 6-target sim from the previous post and made the tweaks to fight duration and bloodlust. Going to re-run with Sera_HA_SoR and HS_HA_SoR added to see how that pans out. However, these sims take 300k iterations due to the short time limit, so you'll have to wait until tomorrow for results (unless I run a quick one at 1% target error rather than the default)

- - - Updated - - -

Yeah, re-ran it (and overwrote the old file) at 1% error, and Sera_HA_SoR is clearly on top. Though by less of a margin than I expected over HS_HA_SoR, but again, that can probably be attributed to having 6 targets instead of 5.

[Lifire]

Just a quick note on Kromog, you can do 800k+ damage on the Pillars, with 3 pillars that is almost 2.4mill +/- (top5-8 damage on them)

Focused Shield/ES/Sera/HA

Light's Hammer is a whoring ability on Kromog no doubt, you should run Prism for covering melee (if your melee team is weak and doesnt always move instantly in range for the breaths) or ES for damage on the Pillars

If you struggle with Hands DPS then your not efficiently placing your dps. e.g. Hunters barrage/Arcane Explosion/Starfall/Bladestorm etc is plenty and its about placing the correct targets out. Same goes with tanks staying out with bubble/bop/leap or rogues with shadowstep

You should always single target those who struggle to be broken out (bottom/top left/right and back row) for 1-2 sec and just cleave everyone out so that everyone is broken out before the Breath

This obviously is only valuable advice for a guild thats I suppose rank xxx-xxx with struggles meeting Pillar checks/lack gear or individual player skill to consistently make that check. With other guilds that might have a higher skill cap on their individual players meeting DPS checks like Pillars might be trivial (with couple of TOD's lol) so helping on hands is fine but then again, would these guilds struggle on hand dps ? Here ES is still better for Boss damage

You have Seraphim/an abundant amount of externals usually to be covered for melee swings so requiring HA for survivability is questionable (just line it up on Pillars), I always say use externals before pooling all your cds just incase a healer/player dies to a fault or poorly handled raid damage, you can trust to fall back on your bigger personal cooldowns. If you play yolo god mode tank and end up blowing everything, out of range of a healer and have nothing to survive things like:

- Second tank death
- Execute melees with armor + breath inc
- Other rare or uncommon scenarios then you are likely a dead tank and another pull wasted if your behind on a res etc

Being comfortable with external cooldowns is more useful on progress then a tank dieing, just like using things like Flask/Trinket for EHP for "just-in-case" scenarios on progress (speccing single target/proccs provide much larger dps increases then the flask/trinket).

This is just how we approached Kromog, each guild has it's strengths and what not but yeah, Hammer on Kromog will never be justifiable.

That fight is all about a) Getting out of hands before breaths & b) Killing pillars before the calls -- If you struggle with a) then you can reposition your DPS, run an extra boomkin (pre-nerf) or have 1-2 players spec for AOE without losing much single target (my ES crits for 130k? or more which is 15% of my total Pillar damage)

Obviously hands damage is important but its almost solvable by spreading and more importantly, too much hands dps is quite terrible if people are broken out early due to be being dead center

[celinamuna]

Light's Hammer is a whoring ability on Kromog no doubt, you should run Prism for covering melee (if your melee team is weak and doesnt always move instantly in range for the breaths) or ES for damage on the Pillars

Or you can use LH for damage on the pillars + healing + possible cleave on the boss ?
On only 1 target LH is only ~ 20% behind ES, while still providing possibility of cleaving onto 2nd target + random healing.
At the same time, looking at most logs, pillars tend to stay up long enough for LH to full damage to it.

[Deleted]

I believe most people who take LH on Kromog don't only use it for dps, but also the small amount of healing it does on both tanks as well as being half the dps of ES per use.
Unless your Health Pool is around that where you can never die in 3 or less hits, then the extra EH from healing that LH gives during its window can be a severe boost to survivability.

On a side note, does every guild 5 heal Kromog nowadays? It was 4-healable from week 1 and then became an execution check rather than a dps check.