My guild, Zealous has a lot of talent. I used to be in a guild in BC that was constantly getting server firsts. When I came over to Zealous I had little faith that we would be getting anywhere that fast. Once I saw how much we did accomplish I was pleasently suprised. Biggest problem is getting enough of those people together to get a quality 25 man going. While we got up to Vezax last week we were lacking in numbers to take him down.
Though with all that talent we make a pretty impressive 10 man raid. We decided to blow through some hard modes this weekend and in one night we got Flame Leviathan +2 towers, Ignis speed kill, XT hard mode, Kologram's open arms, Auriaya's crazy cat lady, Hodir 3 minute kill, Thorim hard mode, Freya +1, and up to Vezax all in one night. That is an impressive first night of 10 man raiding.
Yogg is a complicated fight with a lot of stuff going on in all 3 of his phases. Last night our group spent over 4 hours learning this fight. In the beginning we looked like a bunch of stumbling idiots trying to get through phase 1. As the night went on we were constantly getting to phase 2 figuring out all the action that happens inside and outside the portals. We all were feeling how close we were to downing the boss and were salivating to make it happen. We get into phase 3 and try to keep control of what was going on. Over vent we called out to kill adds, face our character around, and keeping everyone alive. Once we finally did take him down there were shouts all over vent. We all had wanted to do this for so long and we finally were able to say we had conquered Ulduar.
If you are a good raider you are always looking for ways to improve your character. Once you know how to play your character to the max potential it usually comes down to getting improvements in gear. As a damage dealer you want your gear to push your dps to the max. As a healer you want to increase your healing throughput and longevity. As a tank you push up your survivability as high as it can go. But once you gear to the point where you never will die under normal circumstances is more gear wasteful?
Going through Ulduar there is a certain gear threshold you have to meet. If you look at many of the encounters there isn't a lot of tank damage. Yes the bosses do hit hard but if you are geared well enough they really don't ramp up in physical damage done. The final boss doesn't even get tanked. Also if you look at the hard modes throughout the instance only two bosses do increased damage.
XT is a dps check and a movement check, Iron Council will auto kill your tanks because of the debuff, Hodir is a dps check, Thorim is a dps race with increased raid healing. Freya does 50% increased damage but her damage wasn't high to begin with. Its more about the damage of the adds and raid damage. Mimiron is another dps check with a stay out of the fire component thrown in. Vezax is about mana management of your raid with an extra add to dps down. Yogg is where things get complicated. The watchers give the raid buffs and provide helpful extras. Not having those means less health and less dps.
As a raid leader and you look at all these encounters you probably notice a trend. Having more dps and being smarter wins most encounters. So if you had a choice of how to increase your raid's chance to down encounters how would you proceed.
As a tank I am pretty happy with my gear. Outside of hard modes I feel as if I have some of the best gear I can get. There is always room to improve but most of it will give me like a .5% increased chance to survive. The other problem is that there is a lot less +defense on the gear in Ulduar. If I were to equip some of the items there I would have to change my other gear around to remain uncrittable.
I am a tank about 60-75% of the time. I go back and forth with our other main tank depending on if we need more dps or more healing. Throwing more dps is usually a better choice if you have a good healing core already in place. A quicker boss death is usually preferred over the alternative. Whenever there is a fight that only requires one tank I usually am asked to switch over to my ret set.
My ret set is pretty solid. Looking through Rawr and Max Dps I have some pretty solid gear and there are only a few pieces out there I can readily receive if I wanted to increase my effectiveness. So considering my tank set is top notch should I spend my emblems of conquest on more tank gear or spiff up my ret set? I'm not going to be at a disadvantage as a tank if I dont get an ugprade anytime soon but if I can push out an extra 100 dps it might be more beneficial to the raid.
What our raid really needs is people showing up constantly. We all have been there where we are pushing content and don't have the people we had the night before. Its frustrating and with as much talent as we have in Zealous we could be in such a better place if only we can fill in the holes.
Though with all that talent we make a pretty impressive 10 man raid. We decided to blow through some hard modes this weekend and in one night we got Flame Leviathan +2 towers, Ignis speed kill, XT hard mode, Kologram's open arms, Auriaya's crazy cat lady, Hodir 3 minute kill, Thorim hard mode, Freya +1, and up to Vezax all in one night. That is an impressive first night of 10 man raiding.
Yogg is a complicated fight with a lot of stuff going on in all 3 of his phases. Last night our group spent over 4 hours learning this fight. In the beginning we looked like a bunch of stumbling idiots trying to get through phase 1. As the night went on we were constantly getting to phase 2 figuring out all the action that happens inside and outside the portals. We all were feeling how close we were to downing the boss and were salivating to make it happen. We get into phase 3 and try to keep control of what was going on. Over vent we called out to kill adds, face our character around, and keeping everyone alive. Once we finally did take him down there were shouts all over vent. We all had wanted to do this for so long and we finally were able to say we had conquered Ulduar.
If you are a good raider you are always looking for ways to improve your character. Once you know how to play your character to the max potential it usually comes down to getting improvements in gear. As a damage dealer you want your gear to push your dps to the max. As a healer you want to increase your healing throughput and longevity. As a tank you push up your survivability as high as it can go. But once you gear to the point where you never will die under normal circumstances is more gear wasteful?
Going through Ulduar there is a certain gear threshold you have to meet. If you look at many of the encounters there isn't a lot of tank damage. Yes the bosses do hit hard but if you are geared well enough they really don't ramp up in physical damage done. The final boss doesn't even get tanked. Also if you look at the hard modes throughout the instance only two bosses do increased damage.
XT is a dps check and a movement check, Iron Council will auto kill your tanks because of the debuff, Hodir is a dps check, Thorim is a dps race with increased raid healing. Freya does 50% increased damage but her damage wasn't high to begin with. Its more about the damage of the adds and raid damage. Mimiron is another dps check with a stay out of the fire component thrown in. Vezax is about mana management of your raid with an extra add to dps down. Yogg is where things get complicated. The watchers give the raid buffs and provide helpful extras. Not having those means less health and less dps.
As a raid leader and you look at all these encounters you probably notice a trend. Having more dps and being smarter wins most encounters. So if you had a choice of how to increase your raid's chance to down encounters how would you proceed.
As a tank I am pretty happy with my gear. Outside of hard modes I feel as if I have some of the best gear I can get. There is always room to improve but most of it will give me like a .5% increased chance to survive. The other problem is that there is a lot less +defense on the gear in Ulduar. If I were to equip some of the items there I would have to change my other gear around to remain uncrittable.
I am a tank about 60-75% of the time. I go back and forth with our other main tank depending on if we need more dps or more healing. Throwing more dps is usually a better choice if you have a good healing core already in place. A quicker boss death is usually preferred over the alternative. Whenever there is a fight that only requires one tank I usually am asked to switch over to my ret set.
My ret set is pretty solid. Looking through Rawr and Max Dps I have some pretty solid gear and there are only a few pieces out there I can readily receive if I wanted to increase my effectiveness. So considering my tank set is top notch should I spend my emblems of conquest on more tank gear or spiff up my ret set? I'm not going to be at a disadvantage as a tank if I dont get an ugprade anytime soon but if I can push out an extra 100 dps it might be more beneficial to the raid.
What our raid really needs is people showing up constantly. We all have been there where we are pushing content and don't have the people we had the night before. Its frustrating and with as much talent as we have in Zealous we could be in such a better place if only we can fill in the holes.
I agree Bladez, some of the problems that we have been having lately has to do with DPS in general. If you are no longer going to benefit from getting items with your emblems for your tank set, getting items for your ret set will help the overall raid damage on those given encounters. I am a big advocate that if you min/max just that little bit, and have 24 others that do the same, thats a significant increase in raid dps/heals/tank survivability and is what sets some guilds above others.
ReplyDeleteGreat Blog once again!!!!
Kiro