Ret Positioning Mechanic

[Iamafk]

First of all, what exactly I mean by positioning is that of course your rotation will affect your dps, and we all know the optimal dummy rotation based on our gear/buffs. However, your rotation is actually dynamic. The correct rotation can be directly dependent on where you are, if you are in special situations, jump back to your regular rotation, then switch again, though this seems to be more present in heroics chain pulls than in raids (where DS priority can increase). In raids, the most important positioning is that of having a maximum dps uptime on the appropriate target. A simple version of this is Algalon, where you can avoid the main cosmic smash damage even if the tank does not move Algalon while staying within melee range.

On my server, there are lots and lots of rets who are better geared than me since I haven't raided consistently in a long time, but at the same time their dps fails. Certainly many of them use the wrong FCFS rotation, or else they don't faceroll hard enough, as is evident from recount parses. However, many others I have observed suffering huge dps differences between, say, hitting a single target nonmoving target, or participating in encounters that require movement.

Consider Twin Valkyrs. This is an example of maximizing dps uptime while getting ecounter buffs. Most pugs on the server tank the twins together in the middle of the room, in cleave range, rather than at the door. Now at this position, there are a few options. The first one, which many pugs do, is simply stand there behind the twins and not move all encounter long unless they need to switch colors, or if there is a massive amount of opposing colored balls about to hit their location. Another option is to chase balls around the room, pew pewing when there is nothing else in sight, until you get Super Saiyan'd, and then repeating until the twins are dead. The former is just bad, and the latter is not reliable as you lose dps time, and as the distribution of balls is random, it is not a good rule to follow.

Another possibility is to try always to remain in melee range, and adopt a fluid ball chasing strategy. Note that if you are doing HM, you will probably be clustered at the door, so this does not apply quite as heavily. The twins don't have a particularly large melee range, but it is sufficiently large that you can move around a nontrivial bit and still be able to hit them. Therefore, the easiest balls to grab are those that you can grab without leaving melee range. However, the balls also have a bit of splash, so you can actually pick up orbs that are out of melee range without leaving melee range, so long as you see someone else about to pick it up, and you can get within splash range of them. Of course, it is permissible at times to leave melee range, especially if you can go out, get an orb, and then come back all within a cooldown period. Yu may actually be able to time it sometimes, so that you run out in between melee swings, if by chance this is not happening during the time periods where everything is on cooldown. This is doable, though rarely, if you use the splash range, though usually you will have to suffer the loss of just over one GCD doing this unless you are lucky. Also, if you see a particularly large cluster of balls, then time it so you can run there, get buffed, and come back in the least possible time. You should NOT just go and chase after them from the get go.

Remember that on Valkyrs, chances are you will only get the dps buff once throughout the entire encounter (unless you are both good and the rest of the raid dps bad). You will also most likely get the buff and have it end before the fight ends. Therefore, you do not need to take too much special attention to getting the buff, though generally you should try to get it just before a special is cast, since having a buff which coincides with a special uptime has a chance of causing a dps uptime loss.

The latter strategy is what I used on valkyrs when I returned to raiding during winter break, and it was good for #16 US on WMO in my rather bad gear (no DC of any sort, using greatness and wrathstone, and a few ulduar 226 gear), though my gear has improved a bit since.

Another example of the above type of positioning mechanic is Hodir hardmode, as even the slightest dps uptime loss can (especially back during the period just after release) be the difference between a successful kill and a fail.

There are other somewhat more subtle positioning mechanics that you can use to your advantage as well. We'll cause this an example of maximizing dps uptime while avoiding death mechanics. Consider Firefighter. Suppose a water bomb is nearby, but not too near. Often, you can max melee range Mimiron in phase 2 in order to avoid a water bomb. Sometimes, you cannot. In these cases, you can time your exiting melee range so that you exit, avoid the water bomb just in time (plus some buffer, because lag can happen), and go right back in, without going too far out. This is similar to the ranged positioning mechanic on Vezax hardmode. However, most melee I observe go excessively far out, or stay out longer than needed. Also, consider the shock blast. You don't need to run out excessively early, or go very far (the range on it is actually pretty low). Then there is the spinning up in p4, which is usually adjacent to shock blast. All you need to do is position yourself run to the side opposite of the spinning up rotation, which sometimes involves running through Mimiron, and you will be safe. You don't have to actively run with Mimiron really, as doing that increases the chances of you reducing the uptime on your castable spells through multitasking error.

That last point is the central point of all this. Every decent paladin knows what a stationary dummy rotation is, and given equivalent gear and latency, they would probably all be within simulation error of each other. However, what many (especially new) paladins don't seem to understand is that the next most important mechanics in actual encounters are

1) Move as little as possible
2) Premeditate your strategy so that you need to multitask as little as possible

Combined, these two form what I consider to be positioning mechanics. Therefore, I think when people ask for help on their dps or theorycraft, the encounter should also be mentioned. Although certainly many encounter mechanics are random, there are certainly specific relative timings (if not some absolute timings in some encounters) for certain exact actions, all within a specific raid strategy. Thus far I don't see much telling a new paladin seeing Yogg for the first time what exactly to do, to maximize dps uptime throughout all phases of Yogg. There is just the general raid strategy which one can find in many places, but nothing specific. It's just like the difference between stating "you do a +1 zealot and archon rush out of 4 gateways" (which seems to be the standard type of advice) and

* Standard FE opening up to nexus initiation.
* 18 - Gateway (At the latest, should go up immediately after your Nexus)
* 20 - Main Gas
* 22 - Cybernetics Core
* 25/26 - Natural Gas (Must go up before the Core finishes)
* Optional - Dragoon (To chase off/kill the Zerg's Overlord in your base)
* 100% Core - Stargate
* Next 100 Gas - Citadel of Adun
* Next 100 Gas - Corsair
* Next 100 Gas - +1 Attack
* Next 150 Gas - Templar Archives
* Add 3 Gateways
* 2 Archons (Merge from 4 Gateways)
* Zealot Leg Speed
* Pure Zealots until +1 is almost finished, at which point you move out.

To use a Starcraft analogy. It's things like the latter that I believe would be more helpful to newbies
I'll write some encounter specific ret timing guides if there are any specific requests, but I anticipate that each guide would be rather time consuming to get just right, so therefore I'm not going to immediately try to write a detailed guide on every encounter in the game from the ret perspective.

[Rhonen]

What is this shit?

[Cearat]

''Wall of text crits Cearat for over 9000''

[Fujiama]

What is this shit?

[Kittystyle]

I have no words

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEhDZN0RFjw

[ewhenn]

Positioning mechanics?

You mean like, stand near the bosses hitbox so your attacks land?

Pretty sure I've had that covered since level 1.

[DaGhostDS]

Positioning mechanics?

You mean like, stand near the bosses hitbox so your attacks land?

Pretty sure I've had that covered since level 1.

Since Rampage on my old tandy1000

with super high res game

[Komati]

Poor OP! :P
I don't play ret so I didnt bother to read trough it al, but gonna reccommend it to someone I knows that plays ret, and seriously need it. GJ.

[Prentice]

Initially, I saw this wall and figured it was going to be drool from someone trying to convey a new Ret idea. After reading this post in its entirety, I am pretty impressed. In your Valkyr example, I have seen both of the "bad" examples in PUGs and it just makes me cringe. I would guess that most players won't take the logical approach to these fights that you have suggested, but rather will just stand in one spot, pew pew, then panic when movement or change is required.

The Marrowgar fight in ICC provides a similar example of intelligence increasing DPS. By merely standing inside the hitbox of Marrowgar, you avoid the possibility of the flame path spawning on you and requiring you to move. The path spawns right on the edge of his hitbox and anyone inside it has a ridiculously simple encounter.

[Iamafk]

Initially, I saw this wall and figured it was going to be drool from someone trying to convey a new Ret idea. After reading this post in its entirety, I am pretty impressed. In your Valkyr example, I have seen both of the "bad" examples in PUGs and it just makes me cringe. I would guess that most players won't take the logical approach to these fights that you have suggested, but rather will just stand in one spot, pew pew, then panic when movement or change is required.

The Marrowgar fight in ICC provides a similar example of intelligence increasing DPS. By merely standing inside the hitbox of Marrowgar, you avoid the possibility of the flame path spawning on you and requiring you to move. The path spawns right on the edge of his hitbox and anyone inside it has a ridiculously simple encounter.

Also on Marrowgar, during bone storm you can actually chase after him (due to his huge melee box) and keep dpsing, just don't lay down consecrate unless there is a complete full gcd incoming, since he is probably just going to run away to the opposite side of the room or some bad thing. Just so long as you stop dpsing before storm exits and run yourself out of the way, you'll be safe. Of course, your DoT is still on him, so you will have to watch Marrowgar while running so that if the tank is not quick at picking up Marrowgar, you bubble to prevent yourself from getting destroyed, and then unbubble the moment tank gets aggro back. Also, you can put SS on yourself as bone storm starts and use AoW procs to instacast FoL if necessary, if your healers are bad. Most melee I see in pugs just run away and do nothing dps-wise during bone storm, which certainly is not optimal in the regular version. I suspect the heroic version will probably do substantially more damage, so that you don't want to be anywhere near Marrowgar, but at the moment there is no reason not to.

[Iamafk]

Positioning mechanics?

You mean like, stand near the bosses hitbox so your attacks land?

Pretty sure I've had that covered since level 1.

That... would be the extent of the mechanic in a patchwerk style tanknspank yea. Although you probably have your movements planned out, dps time maximized on fights that actually require movement, and may not have a possibility of having 100% dps uptime, the fact remains that most melee pugs I observe fail miserably in this regard.

[Rhonen]

The Marrowgar fight in ICC provides a similar example of intelligence increasing DPS. By merely standing inside the hitbox of Marrowgar, you avoid the possibility of the flame path spawning on you and requiring you to move. The path spawns right on the edge of his hitbox and anyone inside it has a ridiculously simple encounter.

Most melee figure this out on the initial attempt with Marrowgar, but yes, there are those that (unfortunately) still don't get that there's a "window" for which you can stand and dps, whilst avoiding the flame paths...

Also on Marrowgar, during bone storm you can actually chase after him (due to his huge melee box) and keep dpsing, just don't lay down consecrate unless there is a complete full gcd incoming, since he is probably just going to run away to the opposite side of the room or some bad thing. Just so long as you stop dpsing before storm exits and run yourself out of the way, you'll be safe. Of course, your DoT is still on him, so you will have to watch Marrowgar while running so that if the tank is not quick at picking up Marrowgar, you bubble to prevent yourself from getting destroyed, and then unbubble the moment tank gets aggro back. Also, you can put SS on yourself as bone storm starts and use AoW procs to instacast FoL if necessary, if your healers are bad. Most melee I see in pugs just run away and do nothing dps-wise during bone storm, which certainly is not optimal in the regular version. I suspect the heroic version will probably do substantially more damage, so that you don't want to be anywhere near Marrowgar, but at the moment there is no reason not to.

Again, little things like dps'ing with his huge hit box and class specific stuff like using SS and AoW heals when necessary are things that anyone playing their class (and this class specifically) should be well aware of if they've been playing for more than 2 seconds.

But, I'm pretty sure I'm giving people more credit than they deserve.

Also, I'm convinced you absolutely CHERISH walls of text. :-\

[Prentice]

Most melee figure this out on the initial attempt with Marrowgar, but yes, there are those that (unfortunately) still don't get that there's a "window" for which you can stand and dps, whilst avoiding the flame paths...

This doesn't apply to only melee DPS. There should only be a couple of toons in your raid standing outside this box. Hunters have to and the tanks will be outside by default. Sucks to be them because there is nothing they can do about it.

[Rhonen]

This doesn't apply to only melee DPS. There should only be a couple of toons in your raid standing outside this box. Hunters have to and the tanks will be outside by default. Sucks to be them because there is nothing they can do about it.

Indeed. We usually have a few healers that get in there and heal their hearts out. Our locks and mages are barely catching on though.

[Rhonen]

gj mr. smart retardin op, i liked ur wall of text

dont mind the chimps laughing at u.
playing retard pally urself by now u must know that 95% of dedicated retardins are no smarter then an average chimp.

raaaa die by holy faceroll u evil evil everything RAAAAAAr

<3 Trolls

[Iamafk]

Most melee figure this out on the initial attempt with Marrowgar, but yes, there are those that (unfortunately) still don't get that there's a "window" for which you can stand and dps, whilst avoiding the flame paths...

Again, little things like dps'ing with his huge hit box and class specific stuff like using SS and AoW heals when necessary are things that anyone playing their class (and this class specifically) should be well aware of if they've been playing for more than 2 seconds.

But, I'm pretty sure I'm giving people more credit than they deserve.

Also, I'm convinced you absolutely CHERISH walls of text. :-\

Well, unfortunately in every pug I have run of this (which has also fully cleared each time) I find myself among 2 or 3 melee at most, if any others, who are chasing Marrowgar around and continuing to pew pew.

Also, the conceptual idea of what to do is usually clear to any decent ret. However, most of the time this leads to playing by feel, which while successful most of the time, is not usually optimal. There is certainly an absolute fixed best response to each situation, for example "run away when counter hits 1.8, stay out for 5 seconds of spell duration, run back in" or something like that, rather than "run away when counter is low, stay out for a short time, go back in". In the end the difference is probably only one or two gcds if your intuition is good, but if you spread this across 16 or so DPSers, this amounts to possibly 32 or more missed GCDs raid-wide, which can be well over 100k damage. I've seen wipes that have occurred well under 100k before on progression content, so yea.

Walls of text are awesome. They let you be more specific instead of waddling around in handwaving land.

[harky]

So... this said, "Maximize time on the boss while being aware and responsive to encounter mechanics." Right? I'll admit I have a great love for walls of text, but this seems like pretty simplistic advice. Move around to try and get orbs while staying in melee range? Standing inside Marrowgars hitbox? Shall we add that being in range of adds on Anub is good? It just seems like a very heavy handed. I read over it a couple times to make sure I wasn't missing something, but I can't seem to find anything but fluff.

[Deleted]

This post really doesn't seem helpful at all. In fact, it is quite unhelpful.

1) Move as little as possible
2) Premeditate your strategy so that you need to multitask as little as possible

This is truely one of the worst summaries I've ever read. Survival > DPS. And even if you don't die, why then waste the healer's mana? If there is a ball of the opposite colour comming towards you on Twins - move! - even if you have to get out of melee range it is preferable to not being hit. On Marrowgar, following the boss around trying to melee him seems like a good idea because non-heroic Bonestorm damage is not very large, but on heroic mode it will likely be much higher and therefore will be a much worse idea to do so (not that it's a good idea in the first place. You want to take as little damage as you can, regardless of if you lose a slight amount of dps). There are more examples but I don't feel the need to exert myself.

[kailtas]

Dont comment if ure not gona say something constructive to the OP or other posters. What the OP is talking about is positioning in the boss room. And how movement affects Ret DPS. And not only movement but hes talking about what to do when u are forced to move in order to keep a high DPS.

Ret got low skillcap but it is dedicatet players like these who shine on the meters.

[Iamafk]

So... this said, "Maximize time on the boss while being aware and responsive to encounter mechanics." Right? I'll admit I have a great love for walls of text, but this seems like pretty simplistic advice. Move around to try and get orbs while staying in melee range? Standing inside Marrowgars hitbox? Shall we add that being in range of adds on Anub is good? It just seems like a very heavy handed. I read over it a couple times to make sure I wasn't missing something, but I can't seem to find anything but fluff.

Well yes your "Maximize time on the boss while being aware and responsive to encounter mechanics" is indeed a summary of all that. However, as I said at the end, while mostly people just give summary advice, which is useful, it is nevertheless true that the more exact your knowledge is, the more dps you will do. Sure, maximize dps uptime is the goal, but how specifically do you do it on each fight? What are the optimal timings for responding to encounter mechanics? You may have to run out and then run back in, but exactly at what time do you run out, exactly how long should you stay out? You may think this is absolutely poitnless, but it is not inconceivable on non trivial encounters that this can be the difference between losing one or more gcds or not. If you consider this loss occurring to 16 dps'ers in the raid, it is a nontrivial damage loss for pushing content progression while not overgeared.

Also, Marrowgar perhaps was a bad example to respond to. There really is not much to that fight. Anub is also among the simplest ret fights. The only thing you need to know is what timing to stun the adds at so that you don't lose a gcd, but this is dependent also on your lag. Anyways, those two fights are simple. I'm actually hoping that Blizzard will release some more encounters that are not trivial in positioning/timing terms. Otherwise, there's nothing more than facerolling your way through victory.

This post really doesn't seem helpful at all. In fact, it is quite unhelpful.

This is truely one of the worst summaries I've ever read. Survival > DPS. And even if you don't die, why then waste the healer's mana? If there is a ball of the opposite colour comming towards you on Twins - move! - even if you have to get out of melee range it is preferable to not being hit. On Marrowgar, following the boss around trying to melee him seems like a good idea because non-heroic Bonestorm damage is not very large, but on heroic mode it will likely be much higher and therefore will be a much worse idea to do so (not that it's a good idea in the first place. You want to take as little damage as you can, regardless of if you lose a slight amount of dps). There are more examples but I don't feel the need to exert myself.

Yes I know Survival > DPS. Dead dps does no dps. However, healers do exist. There are certain amounts of damage they can heal through without adverse effect on the raid outcome. If say instead, twins had a lot more hp and would actually push the enrage timer, but orbs did the same amount of damage, would you still dodge every orb without context even if doing that required you to move away from melee range while losing gcds?

You said that you want to take as little damage as you can, regardless of dps loss. Well, that's not true. It's true now because enrage timers are a joke compared to the gear level. However, it is possible on true progression fights to down the boss JUST at the enrage. Look at various Cuties Only kills (especially Mimiron HM and Algalon) if you want to see this. In these cases, maximing dps is truly important. Therefore, if taking a certain amount of controllable damage will allow you to increase your damage done, and also almost certainly there will be no adverse consequences given good strat execution, then you should, if the enrage timer is an issue. Maybe every fight from now on will be a joke in terms of dps requirement, but this certainly was not the case in Ulduar.

Note that I'm not saying there is not a way to avoid taking damage and still keep up your dps. For example on twins, you may be able to swing out of the way of incoming opposing colored orbs while placing yourself in position to receive orb buffs, the entire time keeping up your dps. However, this may not always be the case, and you cannot just give a blanket statement of avoid taking any damage regardless of dps cost.