Paragons and Garrosh - Destro

[zombiecurse 0]

Alright, so we're on Paragons and Garrosh in flex (yes, I know our progression is laughable), and I'm using destro on them both. I've been keeping my stat priority more geared towards single-target (Mastery > Crit > Haste), as I don't think it's really necessary to regem and all that just for a couple fights. A few questions about these fights:

 

On Paragons: Is it worth it to immolate the other two paragons besides the one you're killing? My first thoughts on this were to ROF and immolate everything, then stay single-target on the focused paragon until rof and immolate needed to be refreshed. My reasoning on this is that i want to generate as many embers as possible, and immolate and ROF are going to help me do this even if their dmg on the other targets isn't going to count. Also been using havoc to refresh immolate or conflag, conflag incinerate.

 

In theory this sounds like a good idea. In practice, I'm finding it may just not be worth the time to immolate the other paragons as it takes away from the focus targets dps. I think ROF and havoc are givens, but I'm wondering about stretching out for the immolates. Any thoughts?

 

On Garrosh: Does anyone have any insight into the Realm of Ysharj phase? I find the Garrosh part of this phase to be a pain in the ass, as I'm constantly being forced to move out of his annihilate cone while I'm casting Chaos Bolt. Wasting a lot of procs, sometimes some dark souls on this. I was going to ask if it's worth it to reforge to multi-target on this as well, but I remember seeing someone (looking at you Zagam) say that it's pointless as it's only really going to help you for the first phase of the fight anyways. That makes sense to me.

 

Thoughts anyone?

[Omaric 246]

I don't see where you're coming from with these single-target/multi-target stat priorities.  Mastery > Crit > Haste blows shit up in multi-target circumstances as well.  *Especially* on P1 Garrosh if you have the 2-piece.  Let's say you're rocking 30% crit in raid and all the adds are up.  That's 9 targets, at least in 25 man.  2 charges of Conflag gives you 18 attempts at getting 10% more crit on Immolate and Incinerate.  You crit a LOT.  Huge numbers breh.

 

As for Paragons, I agree with what you're doing and it's what I'm going to be doing this week.  More Embers = more CB's on the main target.

 

For the Garrosh Y'sharj phase it's a bit RNG, I agree.  I've had to betray a few CB casts, but with KJC I keep moving around him so that I'm positioned where fewer people are.  Just pray basically. :P

[Zagam 1,982]

On Paragons: Is it worth it to immolate the other two paragons besides the one you're killing? My first thoughts on this were to ROF and immolate everything, then stay single-target on the focused paragon until rof and immolate needed to be refreshed. My reasoning on this is that i want to generate as many embers as possible, and immolate and ROF are going to help me do this even if their dmg on the other targets isn't going to count. Also been using havoc to refresh immolate or conflag, conflag incinerate.

 

In theory this sounds like a good idea. In practice, I'm finding it may just not be worth the time to immolate the other paragons as it takes away

from the focus targets dps. I think ROF and havoc are givens, but I'm wondering about stretching out for the immolates. Any thoughts?

Sounds good.  It's never a waste to cast Immolate on other things to keep Embers rolling in.  More Embers = more CB/SB on primary target.  Use Havoc to build more Embers via Incinerate since using them on CB is officially padding, much like hitting another head on Megaera with CB was. 

 

 

On Garrosh: Does anyone have any insight into the Realm of Ysharj phase? I find the Garrosh part of this phase to be a pain in the ass, as I'm constantly being forced to move out of his annihilate cone while I'm casting Chaos Bolt. Wasting a lot of procs, sometimes some dark souls on this. I was going to ask if it's worth it to reforge to multi-target on this as well, but I remember seeing someone (looking at you Zagam) say that it's pointless as it's only really going to help you for the first phase of the fight anyways. That makes sense to me.

 

Thoughts anyone?

Don't cast Chaos Bolts here unless you're going to be safe.  Remember, it's a conal effect, so the closer you are to the boss, the less distance you have to travel if he comes your way.  What I do is stand nowhere near anyone else at all.  And I'm about 10 yards from the boss.  If he picks another direction to Annihilate, I can start a CB cast and get it off easily, even if he picks me next.  His wind up is long enough that you can easily finish your cast.  You CANNOT, however, start and finish a cast if you wait until after he's smashed and might pick you next.  It's all about timing.  That phase is primarily about getting him pulled down before he hits 25 energy.  Surviving is the only necessity and damage done here is a bonus, not a requirement.

[zombiecurse 0]

On the stat priorities, I guess I'm a partial AMR victim. Up until yesterday it was my understanding that it was just Mastery > Crit > Haste across the board. However, we have a higher-geared lock that comes in with us once in a while who rocks the meters (relative to the rest of us) and I noticed he was geared out for haste over crit. I took a look at AMR this morning and note that it's their recommendation to do this in multi-target situations. Out of curiosity I optimized him under the multi-target settings and it looks like he followed their recommendations exactly.

 

Which actually leads me into another question. Other lock and I got into a bit of a debate about the effectiveness of KTT with GoSac. I have a raid finder KTT until I get something better. I know Zagam is pretty solid on using GoSac with KTT, and it's been working well for me so far. Just wondering if there's any caveats on this with Garrosh and the first phase.

 

For a bit of a comparison, here's my armory. I'm not going to link other lock's armory, but he's ilvl 561, has about 38,500 SP, 89 % mastery, 25 % haste and 20 % crit (base, not raid buffed). On average over the course of last night's wipes, I pulled around 220K - 250K. This guy was doing between 275 and 350K. There's a fairly large ilvl gap between us, but I think I can tighten it up a bit.

 

Here's our logs for it if anyone wants to go deep. First time we'd done the fight, so go easy on me with the uptimes and active time. I had a lot of time wasted on procs because of Y'sharj realm on a few fights, and likely wasted a dark soul or two because I didn't want to use it right before we got pulled into Y'sharj realm and then waste it on the Sha adds.

 

Edit: I said other locks stats were raid buffed. They're not.

Edited October 24, 2013 by zombiecurse

[Zagam 1,982]

On the stat priorities, I guess I'm a partial AMR victim. Up until yesterday it was my understanding that it was just Mastery > Crit > Haste across the board. However, we have a higher-geared lock that comes in with us once in a while who rocks the meters (relative to the rest of us) and I noticed he was geared out for haste over crit. I took a look at AMR this morning and note that it's their recommendation to do this in multi-target situations. Out of curiousity I optimized him under the multi-target settings and it looks like he followed their recommendations exactly.

 

Which actually leads me into another question. Other lock and I got into a bit of a debate about the effectiveness of KTT with GoSac. I have a raid finder KTT until I get something better. I know Zagam is pretty solid on using GoSac with KTT, and it's been working well for me so far. Just wondering if there's any caveats on this with Garrosh and the first phase.

 

For a bit of a comparison, here's my armory. I'm not going to link other lock's armory, but he's ilvl 561, has about 38,500 SP, 105 % mastery, 25 % haste and 20 % crit (base, not raid buffed). On average over the course of last night's wipes, I pulled around 220K - 250K. This guy was doing between 275 and 350K. There's a fairly large ilvl gap between us, but I think I can tighten it up a bit.

 

Here's our logs for it if anyone wants to go deep. First time we'd done the fight, so go easy on me with the uptimes and active time. I had a lot of time wasted on procs because of Y'sharj realm on a few fights, and likely wasted a dark soul or two because I didn't want to use it right before we got pulled into Y'sharj realm and then waste it on the Sha adds.

 

Edit: I said other locks stats were raid buffed. They're not.

Rest assured it's not purely his stats that are making him rock meters.  He's just doing something better.  Unsure why you are worried about P1 of Garrosh.  The phase is extremely unimportant and should have absolutely no bearing on how you itemize or gear for this boss.  The important part of Garrosh is snap damage for MCs and enough burst to kill Desecrated Weapons.  I can't see your logs, but I'm guessing he is getting in a lot more FnB.  In my 25 man Flex, I was at 950k sustained DPS doing nothing but Fire and Brimstone by the time P1 ended (just as a reference, my Haste is 8097 and Crit is 6.5k with 21k Mastery).  I'm sure someone able to look at logs can explain the DPS difference whether it was FnB, higher Chaos Bolt average hit, more Shadowburns, or more utilization of Havoc.

[Omaric 246]

After looking at the logs your friend and I are pretty close.  My haste is extremely low and it isn't hurting me.  He even has an entire item level on me (HOLY COW)!  It also seems very consistent with my parses doing some comparisons.  Basically what I'm trying to say is that I don't think haste is some kind of Destruction messiah for AoE.

 

I detest haste breakpoints and AMR for anything other than reforging based on feels.  I like being able to lock in certain gems and using it to dance around the hit cap.

 

We do all ('cept Zagam) have something in common though, we need 4-piece big time.

 

Not sure why he'd want to argue the use of KTT and GoSac though.  So many fights where you can Shadowburn like a maniac.  1+ million damage crits that proc KTT are amazing.

[zombiecurse 0]

I've become decent enough at reading logs that I can get a general idea about where I can improve here.

 

It looks like it's all about the immolate uptimes and the incinerates. This guy uses a lot more FnB incinerates than I do (almost fifty per cent more in some cases). However, in some fights I have higher chaos bolt crit averages and wayyyyy more shadowburns.

 

I think the tradeoff here is that when the adds get low in P1, I havoc as much as possible and use shadowburn to snipe the adds down instead of using FnB incinerate. This seemed like common sense to me, but in thinking about it it's likely the math works out better just FnBing everything in sight. For tonight I'll only use Shadowburn to bounce them onto Garrosh when Havoc is up, and FnB the rest of the time.

 

Edit: I said he had double my FnB incinerates. Not correct after taking a second look.

Edited October 24, 2013 by zombiecurse

[Kazistrasz 216]

I think the tradeoff here is that when the adds get low in P1, I havoc as much as possible and use shadowburn to snipe the adds down instead of using FnB incinerate. This seemed like common sense to me, but in thinking about it it's likely the math works out better just FnBing everything in sight. For tonight I'll only use Shadowburn to bounce them onto Garrosh when Havoc is up, and FnB the rest of the time.

 

My first question: are you using the Iron Star to kill/damage the adds? If so, they're not worth near as much focus as you two seem to be giving them. Phase one is relatively trivial anyway, but when we do it I simply ignore the adds for the most part. I don't spam F&B on them, because it's pointless. That flaming wheel of death metal is going to do 60-70% of their health anyway. Leaving them alive is no threat to our tanks, so AoEing them past that 60-70% point is meter padding in its purest form. The only amount I worry about the adds is to put down RoF and F&B: Immo to increase ember generation to put more Chaos Bolts into Garrosh. Once the Iron Star comes by and leaves most of them at 5-10%, I Havoc Garrosh and snipe three with Shadowburn before dropping RoF again.

 

Why do I do it this way? Because I'm not about meter padding. I like seeing myself leading the meter by 5% as much as the next guy, but it's not actually contributing to the fight. The goal in phase one is to get Garrosh to 10% and push the transition to phase two. The only part of that that requires killing adds is that you want them down before the phase transition is complete.

 

Looking at one of my logs from Monday, I did 58.5mil damage in the first phase. About 32mil of that damage was on Garrosh, with only about 21mil on the adds and the remaining about 5mil on the weapons. Spamming F&B and Sniping all the adds he can, that other lock might do 65mil with 38mil on the adds, 27mil on the boss, and 5mil on the weapons. In this case, I did 5mil more to the boss than he did, which is the most meaningful form of damage here. Additionally, probably 12mil of his DPS to the adds is wasted by being below the point the Iron Star will kill them or Shadowburning mobs just to Shadowburn them with 300k hp left.  In this scenario, that 65mil is really 53mil total since 12mil was wasted, and then include that I still had 5mil more on the boss. Suddenly that 6.5mil difference in our damage doesn't look so big.

 

I'm sort of making up number a bit there, but they're roughly realistic. Long story short: do meaningful damage and your guild will like you more than if you're just a chart whore. :D

[Omaric 246]

Why you gotta make me question my existence Kaz?  Just cruel.

[Kazistrasz 216]

Omaric, if you think that's cruel... The Great Pumpkin isn't real, and neither is the Twisting Nether.

[Rakupenda 15]

Omaric, if you think that's cruel... The Great Pumpkin isn't real, and neither is the Twisting Nether.

You forgot about the cake.

[Omaric 246]

O_O

[Soulzar 42]

Leaving them alive is no threat to our tanks, so AoEing them past that 60-70% point is meter padding in its purest form. The only amount I worry about the adds is to put down RoF and F&B: Immo to increase ember generation to put more Chaos Bolts into Garrosh. Once the Iron Star comes by and leaves most of them at 5-10%, I Havoc Garrosh and snipe three with Shadowburn before dropping RoF again.

 

Why do I do it this way? Because I'm not about meter padding. I like seeing myself leading the meter by 5% as much as the next guy, but it's not actually contributing to the fight. 

 

Well, the way I see it... the more I help the padders AoE down the adds, the faster the padders can get back to doing boss dmg that matters :P... 

 

Seee... I'm a team player....lol

[Omaric 246]

Well, the way I see it... the more I help the padders AoE down the adds, the faster the padders can get back to doing boss dmg that matters ... 

 

Seee... I'm a team player....lol

 

You deserve a beer at Blizzcon for that statement sir.

[zombiecurse 0]

My first question: are you using the Iron Star to kill/damage the adds? If so, they're not worth near as much focus as you two seem to be giving them. Phase one is relatively trivial anyway, but when we do it I simply ignore the adds for the most part. I don't spam F&B on them, because it's pointless. That flaming wheel of death metal is going to do 60-70% of their health anyway. Leaving them alive is no threat to our tanks, so AoEing them past that 60-70% point is meter padding in its purest form. The only amount I worry about the adds is to put down RoF and F&B: Immo to increase ember generation to put more Chaos Bolts into Garrosh. Once the Iron Star comes by and leaves most of them at 5-10%, I Havoc Garrosh and snipe three with Shadowburn before dropping RoF again.

 

Why do I do it this way? Because I'm not about meter padding. I like seeing myself leading the meter by 5% as much as the next guy, but it's not actually contributing to the fight. The goal in phase one is to get Garrosh to 10% and push the transition to phase two. The only part of that that requires killing adds is that you want them down before the phase transition is complete.

 

Looking at one of my logs from Monday, I did 58.5mil damage in the first phase. About 32mil of that damage was on Garrosh, with only about 21mil on the adds and the remaining about 5mil on the weapons. Spamming F&B and Sniping all the adds he can, that other lock might do 65mil with 38mil on the adds, 27mil on the boss, and 5mil on the weapons. In this case, I did 5mil more to the boss than he did, which is the most meaningful form of damage here. Additionally, probably 12mil of his DPS to the adds is wasted by being below the point the Iron Star will kill them or Shadowburning mobs just to Shadowburn them with 300k hp left.  In this scenario, that 65mil is really 53mil total since 12mil was wasted, and then include that I still had 5mil more on the boss. Suddenly that 6.5mil difference in our damage doesn't look so big.

 

I'm sort of making up number a bit there, but they're roughly realistic. Long story short: do meaningful damage and your guild will like you more than if you're just a chart whore.

Holy shit, thread officially jacked!

 

Seriously though, unfortunately we're not consistently using the star to kill the adds. Our core group doesn't have any knockbacks that I'm aware of, and our tanks aren't familiar enough with the fight to get them in close to the star without killing themselves.

[Kazistrasz 216]

Holy shit, thread officially jacked!

 

Seriously though, unfortunately we're not consistently using the star to kill the adds. Our core group doesn't have any knockbacks that I'm aware of, and our tanks aren't familiar enough with the fight to get them in close to the star without killing themselves.

 

It's not thread jacking. You posted specifically what I was talking about and commenting on.

 

Also, if you have any priests, they can life grip the tanks out of the way. Druids, Shamans, Priests, and Mages can all help knockback or AoE root the mobs in front of the stars. You can also Shadowfury them in place as well.

[zombiecurse 0]

It's not thread jacking. You posted specifically what I was talking about and commenting on.

 

Also, if you have any priests, they can life grip the tanks out of the way. Druids, Shamans, Priests, and Mages can all help knockback or AoE root the mobs in front of the stars. You can also Shadowfury them in place as well.

Jokes, jokes. Wasn't trying to be a knob.

 

Those are all solid ideas. I'll pass them along to my guild. Thanks for the suggestions.

 

Also . . . I just realized I forgot about Fel Lash. I'll take care of those fucking adds myself. Kicking myself for not thinking of that.

Edited October 24, 2013 by zombiecurse

[Ilion 8]

so AoEing them past that 60-70% point is meter padding in its purest form

 

Lies! :(

[Zagam 1,982]

We dont use the Iron Stars at all.  We just got used to killing them.

[Skyrge 9]

It's not thread jacking. You posted specifically what I was talking about and commenting on.

 

Also, if you have any priests, they can life grip the tanks out of the way. Druids, Shamans, Priests, and Mages can all help knockback or AoE root the mobs in front of the stars. You can also Shadowfury them in place as well.

   We can even knock them back(kinda). Sacrifice a succubus and we get her aoe knockback. This is a horrible idea though! It's more likely to just scatter them, not to mention saccing a felhunter for the interrupt is way more important. Can't deny I have thought about heroicly saving the day with a knockback/shadowfury combo....reminds me of that time I saved the day on Lei Shen with a baller demon leap to catch the bouncing ball...........shit, nvm, this is a useless post! I digress and back away to my dark corner.

[Belloc 6]

On Garrosh: Does anyone have any insight into the Realm of Ysharj phase? I find the Garrosh part of this phase to be a pain in the ass, as I'm constantly being forced to move out of his annihilate cone while I'm casting Chaos Bolt. Wasting a lot of procs, sometimes some dark souls on this. I was going to ask if it's worth it to reforge to multi-target on this as well, but I remember seeing someone (looking at you Zagam) say that it's pointless as it's only really going to help you for the first phase of the fight anyways. That makes sense to me.

 

 

 

It can be beneficial to sit right beside an annihilate and then move into the gap once the cast finishes. The rest of your raid are likely to run away from the annihilate, so you're likely to be the only person standing in that area after the fact.