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June 02, 2008, 04:47 PM
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#1 (permalink) |
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Character Info
Kiralyn 80 Human Warlock Mal'Ganis US PvP Guild: Self Titled Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 0.13.58 |
On threat and other things
I've posted on this before, and the general consensus was that it's a class problem and we need to deal with it, but I though it would be worth touching on again. I've got every upgrade I can put my hands on without farming ZA or spending 7k gold getting sunwell crafts made, so my big focus as of late has been on maximizing my damage by being aware of what's going on around me. I'm paying a lot of attention to movement on fights that it's needed, and keeping it to a minimum. I'm making sure I'm always on the GCD, so there is no wasted time. I'm working on popping my trinkets and potions at the best times instead of just every cooldown. I'm consistently doing 13-1400 dps on most boss fights, and life has been good. That was until I went into ZA last night. While Hex Lord was cake and I was sitting at 1300 dps with wizard oil, food buff, and adepts, Zul'jin not only saw me threat capped for much of the fight, but also stuck low on damage and DPS. I know this fight isn't about DPS so much as it is on healing, but any time I'm limited to 800 DPS I feel I'm doing something wrong. So in the interest of not pulling off the tank as well as the joy of big numbers and shutting up hunters and rogues, I have a few questions for you guys. How much of a threat lead do you commonly give the tank? How much TPS are the tanks that hold against you doing? Do you find it beneficial to swap out crit for haste or damage on threat sensitive fights, or to use a flask or shadow power instead of adept's?
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Hell, it's about time. -Tychus Findlaw |
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June 02, 2008, 05:02 PM
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#2 (permalink) |
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Character Info
Banatu 80 Blood Elf Rogue Kel'Thuzad US PvP Guild: Massacre Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 41/5/25 |
Re: On threat and other things
I generally drop crit for haste/damage on threat sensitive fights. Haste/Damage are constant dps increases.. but a chain of 5 crits will put anyone over the threat cap. Reducing the frequency of that is key, I've found, to survival on threat sensitive fights. As far as TPS.. it totally depends. Perfect conditions (Gorefiend, for example) our tank can do about 1200-1400 tps, spiking 10k+ threat at times with a block trinket popped and a shield slam crit/revenge crit. On ZJ, especially phase 5, every tank has issues because they're trying to manage a cycle while avoiding the fiery pillars of instagib. While trying not to train the melee into the same pillars. I don't envy their job.
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I'd mana tap that. |
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June 02, 2008, 06:41 PM
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#3 (permalink) |
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Character Info
Yvies 70 Human Warlock Kel' |
Re: On threat and other things
The million dollar question indeed. Personally, I don't worry about swapping gear for fights, but instead I think about how the fight transitions through its phases and work on learning to LT and Shatter appropriately. For ZJ, I'd say rape face the first two phases and if you get close on thread cap, give your tank a couple seconds. (My tanks are gods and I almost never out threat them). I really ride the line of threat most of the time, however if the tank I'm grouped with is crappy, I'll just ride the line until he gets a decent lead. Honestly, this is the second hardest part of raiding as a warlock, the first being proper LTing. I don't really have threat issues even with 1500+dps, but everyone plays differently. The secret is playing to the fight. Leaving crit out is wasting DPS. Just give your tanks a better lead, and if there is silence/stuns for the raid, use those as a time period to let him gain threat while you can't DPS anyway. Wanding is one way to keep up DPS, however I find that I can control my threat w/o it. And sometimes, it may just be your tank. Us big hitting locks will almost always use a shatter in major fights, so use it when you're over 100k threat for a big lead, or right before a heroism. g/l mate... again a difficult question to answer. |
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June 02, 2008, 07:57 PM
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#4 (permalink) | |
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Character Info
Banatu 80 Blood Elf Rogue Kel'Thuzad US PvP Guild: Massacre Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 41/5/25 |
Re: On threat and other things
Quote:
Don't throw away side-grades if you have them.. they come in handy ;)
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I'd mana tap that. |
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June 03, 2008, 12:52 PM
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#5 (permalink) |
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Character Info
Kiralyn 80 Human Warlock Mal'Ganis US PvP Guild: Self Titled Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 0.13.58 |
Re: On threat and other things
I guess the other factor here really is the tank. Our tank group is set up primarily around buffing survivability, with a Paladin, Warlock, and Resto Druid. Has anyone seen specific numbers on tps increases for tanks with windfury? What about crit from a feral druid? I'd have a mutiny on my hands if I started breaking up my melee DPS group, but I figure it's at least worth investigating. As for the tank itself, he is actually a very good player. He's constantly toying with his gear to balance avoidance/survivability/threat to the specific fight. In thinking on this, the weakest portion of our raid is healing, which could be coloring his gear choices, and negatively influencing his threat. Does anyone have a lot of experience looking at healing in WWS parses? I'd be willing to throw links to a couple weeks raids out there and let you know what healing assignments were for the boss fights. This weeks raid message: If I pull threat I'm blaming the healers.
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Hell, it's about time. -Tychus Findlaw |
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June 03, 2008, 02:25 PM
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#6 (permalink) |
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Character Info
Lylie 70 Human Warlock Demon Soul US PvP Guild: Paradigm Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 0/21/40 |
Re: On threat and other things
Threat is ridiculous as a warlock. I actually posted about t6 content threat cause I couldn't even curb it cause I was sitting around more then I thought I should be, but that's the life of a warlock. On Illidan right now, I'm our p4 tank and am threat capping out... meaning in full SR. I manage to maintain hit cap but my crit and damage plummeted to oblivion, and still I have issues, which to me shows its really a class thing versus a gear thing (even though it's a consideration). As far as the haste/crit change, I've actually found the more haste gear I have on the greater my threat is even taking into consideration threat from a string of crits With haste on you don't have time to interupt a SB (at max range and spamming) if you see 2 crits go out whereas if you have none. In fact, my CL was not even worrying about haste and had 0, still out gearing me, I was pulling agro over him. When he switched to haste gear he now gets wtf pwned while I kinda sit back and go see it's not that easy. But I suppose if you drop your crit low enough it's okay, it also depends on spec of course. But ZJ is a bastard with threat, even with amazing tanks there's a ton of down time that basically I throw up a row of dots (yes technically a "dps loss") but I'm able to twiddle my thumbs for 20 seconds and not jump on agro. |
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June 03, 2008, 04:49 PM
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#7 (permalink) |
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Character Info
Banatu 80 Blood Elf Rogue Kel'Thuzad US PvP Guild: Massacre Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 41/5/25 |
Re: On threat and other things
Hit us with a few WWS charts, Kiralyn. Don't bust up the melee group if you don't have to, but if you have a second feral you know where it goes. Also, be sure to give the warrior a resto shaman who has no mana problems (Swapping around for mana tides, then back again.) Warrior gets agi totem/strenght of earth totem, which help a fair bit with both mitigation and tps. The 5% crit is nice but not needed, but if you have a second feral I don't see why not. For farm content, make sure he has a threat set as well (Expertise, hit, massive amounts of shield block value/STR). It really trivializes a lot of content, having one.
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I'd mana tap that. |
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June 03, 2008, 05:35 PM
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#8 (permalink) |
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Character Info
Kiralyn 80 Human Warlock Mal'Ganis US PvP Guild: Self Titled Profile: Blizzard Armory Talent Spec: 0.13.58 |
Re: On threat and other things
Wow Web Stats This is BT from two weeks ago, as last week we had a lot of people on vacation. Thinking back, I want to say that Naj'entus wipes were one part healing on the tank, 1 part people dying to spines. This was also our first gorefiend kill. Melee group was Jiscariot, Moordare, Adamarius, Apropos, Sigurros. Caster DPS group was Kiralyn, Pandawolf, Avista, Bearbank, Powerr. Tank group was Yuya, Lorian, Tigurius, Pyra, and I think a mage. Healing assignments as follows: Naj'entus: All priests assigned and in a group for AoE healing. Daholyman healing any ranged not in a priest group, as well as spot heals on melee. Powerr healing melee DPS. All others on tank. I don't think Supremus or Akama are good healing indicators, so if you want those ask. Teron had Gwendalyn and Powerr on raid healing, all others on the tank. If you'd like the first four in MH, I can do that too, just let me know. As for optimizing the tank group, I currently have 1 shaman, our enhancement for the melee group. Apparently shaman of any sort are either terrible or already raiding somewhere. I do occasionally have a second druid that goes in that group for the crit. The only other potential buff I can think would be adding a second warrior to the group for battle shout. As I said, our warrior tank has a TON of gear. He has an expertise set he uses for trash, and tries to balance gear choices based on how much survivability he needs for a particular fight. I've been discussing this with him for a couple weeks, so I don't think there is a ton of tweaking to do there.
__________________
Hell, it's about time. -Tychus Findlaw |
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