Ret Positioning Mechanic

[The Good Captain]

The former is just bad, and the latter is not reliable as you lose dps time, and as the distribution of bawlls is random, it is not a good rule to follow.

I agree, whole-heartedly. Especially during Marrowgar's Bonestorm; I feel some Ret's need to nut up. One's manhood is not subject to RNG, I say.

But no, really, I read your post in its entirety and know much of it is correct, personally.

[harky]

@OP: I'll agree that there's some use for this type of thinking, but when the examples given are merely fluff on top of a summary? That was my issue. The Twins and Marrowgar examples are just that, really. Your raid will be collapsing on Marrowgar (if they're smart :P) and you should stay in his hitbox. You never have to move except to avoid fire during bone-storm and perhaps get a few hits off on him if it's all right with your healers. On Twins you just rotate around them to grab orbs, make sure to take a few swings if you have to switch colors as you run by, etc. That's why I brought up Anub, the content was trivial, but the summary was important. If you wanted to do the opposite you'd need to have a fight where maximizing DPS time is complicated. Algalon, Yogg, Iron Council, Freiya, etc. There aren't any fights in ICC or ToC that require this type of movement. The additional fights released next week aren't an exception to that, so we'll have to wait until perhaps the BP Council.

[Iamafk]

@OP: I'll agree that there's some use for this type of thinking, but when the examples given are merely fluff on top of a summary? That was my issue. The Twins and Marrowgar examples are just that, really. Your raid will be collapsing on Marrowgar (if they're smart :P) and you should stay in his hitbox. You never have to move except to avoid fire during bone-storm and perhaps get a few hits off on him if it's all right with your healers. On Twins you just rotate around them to grab orbs, make sure to take a few swings if you have to switch colors as you run by, etc. That's why I brought up Anub, the content was trivial, but the summary was important. If you wanted to do the opposite you'd need to have a fight where maximizing DPS time is complicated. Algalon, Yogg, Iron Council, Freiya, etc. There aren't any fights in ICC or ToC that require this type of movement. The additional fights released next week aren't an exception to that, so we'll have to wait until perhaps the BP Council.

I know there isn't much of this type of thinking required in current content (ulduar hardmodes were different). The reason for the examples, and why I don't they are fluff, is that most of the rets who ask me about stuff on server know the summary, but don't think like in the "fluff examples". Basically, if you are a good ret, then all this is old news, but on the same side, so is rotation information, since you know how to update that yourself if you are good and can also guess it from wmo logs (though such threads do serve a purpose of a quick check). However, seeing as how Blizzard has made t9 easy to get so as to encourage new people to start raiding, they may or may not be familiar with this type of thinking since the content they are moving into is mostly absent of it. As I said at the end of my OP, I wish Blizzard would reintroduce this as a nontrivial mechanic. Maybe we will even have to wait to Cataclysm for this, though that would be pretty sigh.