I'm Dangerous, Really I Am

I was fortunate enough to be selected to join the Raid to Black Temple last night.

Our night started out with the Horde in control of the stone. As I hovered over them in my Gyrocopter, I was thinking how cool it would be if Blizzard let Engineers drop bombs from their flying mount. But those thoughts soon gave way to fighting for the stone.

After we zoned in, it wasn't long before I started noticing a problem, and it's name was Omen. I simply wasn't producing the same kind of threat numbers that I'm used to seeing. I checked all the usual suspects. Righteous Fury was on, Blessing of Salvation was off. I don't know what has happened to all our Paladins because we only ran two last night so it was Kings and Salv across the board.

One issue I had was some small four legged creatures known only as Sheep. These Sheep make it difficult for me to use Consecration. Apparently, Sheep have a problem with Holy ground and break. Broken Sheep makes my Raid Leader very grumpy.

The next issue was tanking the Elementals. I was really excited when Vlad (Raid Leader) assigned me to tank one of the large Elementals that guards the entrance to Najentus' lair. I'm usually on the spawns. Elemental attacks are unblockable, so on those mobs I lose some Holy Shield threat.

But what I was looking at last night was producing numbers far lower than I'm used to producing. Something was definitely off.

I think the core issue might have been a degradation of performance. My framerate dropped into the single digits at points. The only significant change I've made to my system is adding Decursive. So next time, unless we are specifically fighting Terron Gorefiend, I'm going to leave Decursive off.

The other action step is to update Omen. Is it just me or does that mod update every hour on the hour!

I'm also going to update the drivers on my Video Card. That should cover almost all my bases.

I will say this, the difference between 0/49/12 and 0/40/21 is very noticeable. Threat is much better in 0/40/21, but survivability is much better in 0/49/12. You can feel it, and you can see it on Omen. If we could just get a Ret Paladin, I could get the benefit of 0/40/21 with the survivability of 0/49/12, because the Ret Paladin could provide me with Sanctity Aura.

It is up to the Raid Leader to make the raid she feels has the best chance of success. We have a Paladin in our Raid who really wants to raid as Ret. I would think that, even if his DPS was a little low, we should let him raid as Ret. I think it would make him a happier raider.

The basic question I need to answer for the Raid Leader is will the Raid DPS be higher with DPS Warrior/Rogue/Rogue/Feral Druid/Enhance Shaman, or DPS Warrior/Rogue/Feral Druid/Enhance Shaman/Ret Paladin.

As our DPS has geared up, all of our tanks have started to run into threat issues. There are a couple of well geared Hunters and Warlocks who can pull over any tank we throw at the Bosses, myself included. These guys could easily make up for any lost DPS from a Ret Paladin.

As for the Raid itself, I'll say Dominion is getting really good at adapting to new faces in the raid and outside of them dying on Najentus due to low stamina, we didn't miss a beat.

Of course, the one time our Hunters didn't get the Misdirect up to get Supremus back on the tank, he had just punted me so I was no where close to him, and he squished one of our Warlocks.

Najentus still hates me, by the way, and steadfastly refuses to give up the Tide Stompers Greaves when I'm around. I think all the mobs gather around and hide all the Illidari Runeshields when I zone in as well. They only seem to drop on my off nights.

I did see a Syphon of the Nathrezim drop off of Supremus, but one of our Rogues needed it. I'd like pick up either the Syphon or Rising Tide (off Najentus) for my new tank weapon once patch 3.0 hits. Another option would be a Breaching Comet off of Kael in Heroic Magisters Terrace.

Hopefully, the steps I'm taking will eliminate the threat issues I had and everything will be right as rain come Monday night.

Comments

Adlib said…
Funny, our pally tank had PC issues last night too. Fine in Shatt and other areas, not so much in BT. A Siphon also dropped from Supremus for us. At least I got my Maelstrom's Fury from Naj though. ;)

Actually, we're having issues with people d/c'ing a lot during raids. So much so that we've taken a policy of replacing them in the raid if it happens too much. Is this an isolated problem or do you have that in your guild too?

-Adlib, of The Phoenix, US-Kul Tiras

(My guild's claim to fame: http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/08/27/guildwatch-unknown-withdrew-any-chance-of-joining-another-gu/)
Honors Code said…
We had several people with connection issues to the point that 2 or 3 had to be replaced.
Shwitz44 said…
RE: Raid DPS levels with a Ret Paladin.
Earlier this week, I was discussing this very topic with my GM. Doing some napkin math on our recent Brutallus kill, he estimated that my Improved Sanctity Aura, Improved Judgement of the Crusader, and personal DPS (~1650 over the 6 minute fight with 1 Heroism and enh shaman/fury warrior in group) accounted for roughly 2700 DPS of the raid's total. That means my aura and judgement accounted for 1100 DPS.

If you can find another DPS'er who can add 1100 DPS to the raid (above and beyond Judgement of Wisdom being up all the time, which also increases DPS) outside of their own personal damage, more power to you. But 5% crit to 4 people (feral druid) or 3% damage to 4 people (BM hunter) does not outweigh 2% damage to 4 people AND 3% crit to ~14 people, plus full-time JoW.

Chew on THAT.
Ardent Defender said…
Will sure want to invest in a Good Ret Pally for the future if don't have one now and can. ------>WotLK.
Anonymous said…
This is Mitchelld from Manus Domini, if you guys want to get a ret paladin or have one of your pallies go ret, by all means, send them to me adn ill have them out dpsing half the raid. But if possible to answer your question and specualtion, in my experiance the ret paladin need only join the pally tank group in threats where threat is insanely touchy such as Leotheras, tank pallies tend to build fast and as the fight goes on attain a nearly untouchable amount of threat. Therefore on normal fights if you really need threat a ret pally could hang with the tanks for a little while in the beginning then get swapped back into the melee group towards the end of the fight. What i find to be best synergetically is fury warrior with his shout up, enhance shammy with WF, sword specc rogues with high hit, ret pally, and then you kind of get a wildcard to play with, MS warriors if done correctly can do a very large amount of dmg and they apply the increased damage to target debuff to the boss, if you have another rogue then sure they can spit out dmg, while recieving the ret enhance and warrior buffs, if they are LW they should def be spamming their drums to earn their keep. The trick with ret pallies as well as MS warriors is they must A: know exactly what they are doing and be good at it, B: watch their threat and definetly always at all costs have salv, C: Have WF all the time, WF as well as the other shammy buffs can easily boost my DPS by areas around 200 damage per second, and D: be hit capped, its easy and a huge DPS booster. I assure you, get a smart, consistent, eager, ret paladin let me show him how its done, help him get gear, and you will never regret it.
Even though seals do not seem like alot the difference is more noticeably than you could ever guess, the ability to have three seals running on a boss the entire fight and you and a healadin only had to toss them out once, the increased threat you get from the seal of the crusader being on, the raid wide damage increase... its self-evident.
If you think this is E-Peen ramblings or would just like to have confirmation of my boasts, msg me in game, ill be glad to help you guys or just prove my facts by re running some old WWS's. As a final note as i am typing this the only piece of gear that i have from a T5+ 25 man raid is The Blood-Stained Pauldrons from Rage Winterchill.
Anonymous said…
hey thought i would share something i have noticed with threat issues. sometimes i will notice a member jumping on threat like a mad man, and not being very high on damage meter. Crits is what the problem is.

They will have 30-33% crits and a little lower attack power/spell damage. I have advised them on it, they lower to around 25-27 and up their power, and their threat is more manageable with better dps coming from them.

Just remember, 3k white damage is less threat than 3k crit. Seemed to help my threat issues, hope that helps you some.

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