Finally some logs.... Also: I suck

[Astynax 24]

So, I've got a log from flex 2 tonight, and was hoping some experts could take a look at it for me. I think I did decently, except maybe cleaving adds properly on nazgrim. I think I focused too much on havoc + soulburn, and didn't use all the stacks efficiently. Nor was I potting (i did in nazgrim, as I felt we needed the extra DPS) or food buffed (banquet laid out after the first wipe @ nazgrim.)

 

Also, the raid group did some dumbass dark shaman strat where they pulled them to opposite sides of the courtyard there. So there was no opportunity to cleave, and god did I every try to make one....

 

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-1a88r988emz4netw/dashboard/?s=437&e=1010

 

My armory, as of the raid: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/senjin/Astynax/simple

 

 

Thanks in advance. =)

[Zagam 1,982]

Also, the raid group did some dumbass dark shaman strat where they pulled them to opposite sides of the courtyard there. So there was no opportunity to cleave, and god did I every try to make one....

A lot of groups do this on normal and heroic.  While you lose cleave capacity, it GREATLY trivializes the number of mechanics each group has to deal with.  There's no DPS race on this fight anyways.

[Ilion 8]

You shouldn't be doing more damage with incinerate than with Chaos Bolt, fix that.

[Astynax 24]

A lot of groups do this on normal and heroic.  While you lose cleave capacity, it GREATLY trivializes the number of mechanics each group has to deal with.  There's no DPS race on this fight anyways.

 

It was a  3 healer, low DPS group. TBH, I feel it only served to drag the fight out, not really help mechanically. But I was moreso just angry that I didn't get to stat pad. lol

[Kazistrasz 216]

A lot of groups do this on normal and heroic.  While you lose cleave capacity, it GREATLY trivializes the number of mechanics each group has to deal with.  There's no DPS race on this fight anyways.

 

This. My guild uses this, and our first ever pull on normal was a kill. When you split the bosses, several things happen:

 

You're going to have more in your ranged group than melee/tanks, so most of the mechanics will be on them instead of near the boss. It means your tanks have significantly less to watch out for in terms of things on the ground to move bosses out of or not move them into. It lets them focus significantly more on survival when they don't have to worry about positioning beyond just keeping the bosses in range of the ranged group. It also means your melee have a higher uptime on the boss for not having to chase it and constantly run out of mechanics to then get back on the boss. I'm very certain my warrior would rather I let him stay on the boss 100% of the time than let him cleave with only 80% uptime on the boss (possibly exaggerating).

 

The slimes will spawn on Kardris's tank and near no one else. Your other tank and the melee will be on the other side of the room with Harrom, and your ranged are in the middle where they can safely pew pew the slimes.

 

Only the melee and Harrom's tank have to worry about Ashenwall, which is easy to aim away.

 

It's much easier to avoid hitting the raid with/being hit by Foul Stream.

 

By concentrating most of the mechanics in the middle and moving up and down the path accordingly, you minimize the danger to the ranged group (who are moving along the central path to adjust) as well as the melee and tanks.

 

Your raid group feels much more pro, because they're executing an organized strat and not letting the fight become the clusterfuck Fatboss promised it would become (they didn't use this strat either).

[Kazistrasz 216]

Now, for the logs.

 

Iron Juggernaut:

 

Things I'm considering as I look at this: the shaman is bad and never used Heroism, which deprives everyone of fun times on the pull. For flex, you're not pre-potting. I'm also assuming you didn't have flask or food buff. 

 

Average Chaos Bolt Damage: 708599.6 This needs to be a lot higher.

 

Immolate Uptime: 88.5% This also needs to be higher. Aim for 95%. Sometimes it'll fall off because CB is more important with a proc, but in general you never want this off for more than a second or two.

 

Curse of Elements Uptime: 64.9% Don't forget to reapply this on long fights! This is very important not only for your damage but for the other people in your raid.

 

Dark Soul Usage: You used this 3 times in a 7:20 fight. you should have 4 times in that range. Make sure you hit it before you hit ANY damaging skills on the pull. Look at Zagam's destro guide here and read his opener section. Do that. You started your CB most of the way through your PBI proc. From then on, you should be using it at the same time as PBI procs (usually means waiting 2-3 seconds once it's off CD). 

 

Doomguard: Use him on the pull with everything proc'd. The extra damage he does for 20% isn't worth the risk of not getting every single bolt out.

 

More Chaos Bolt stuff: These are the Chaos Bolts you cast (by base damage, not including DoT):

 

987314, 1166795, 539348, 539526, 738615, 738678, 572045, 573155, 739249, 739313, 922381, 573371, 541164, 539873, 539503, 541307, 772290, 773473, 773669, 772123, 738473, 545598, 513492, 735728, 674457, 906856, 907362, 735630

 

Your base CB seems to be about 540k. I think 572-573k is with Jade Spirit, and I'm not sure about the 513k outlier. You have a total of 28 Chaos Bolts cast, and 11 are that 500k range, which is way too many.

 

Let me look at this as a timeline:

 

You start the opener, your first CB is cast without DS (hence being below 1mil), though your second has DS. This is fixed by making sure you pop DS at the very start with your opener and getting those first Chaos Bolts with everything live. That's the main goal of your opener: two Chaos Bolts with all buffs running. After your opener, you fire two with no procs at all. You should be able to fit two in opening ten seconds, and you should have definitely got a third in before PBI/DS run out (and a fourth if you'd had Hero). When DS and PBI fall off at the start, you should have no embers left.

 

You then fire two CBs without any procs whatsoever. The first of those should have been much earlier with procs, and the second should have just been saved (I doubt you needed to actually burn one before first KTT proc). Your first KTT proc comes and you got two in, which is good.

 

Then you fire two more without procs. PBI procs, and you fire two at the tail end of it. In that twenty second window, you should have gotten at least four off, especially when KTT proc'd at the end of it. Your DS should also have been used there with PBI. When you finally popped DS later, you had a KTT proc. You only fired one CB in that entire 20-second window of DS. Even if you're using DS without PBI as an ember generator, you should be firing CBs during it.

 

You then fire five CBs with no procs in the next minute. Coming out of that DS, you should have had no embers at all. Even if we assume you're generating an ember every 8 seconds, you shouldn't have had to burn off any more than three there. You then got a PBI proc and got four in during it. That was well handled, except it should have been with DS.

 

Then you got a KTT proc and got one off. Seeing that you had no embers coming out of PBI and they were very close, two should have been possible. Two more without a proc in the next fifty seconds, which seems about right to be burning off embers, though one might have been enough. Then you got a KTT, launched a CB, hit DS and waited for PBI before you started dropping a couple more, which is fine.

 

Basically, work on the opener, line up DS with PBI better, come out of DS/PBI with no embers, fit as many as you can in during KTT, and don't cast a CB with no procs unless you're at 3.5 embers and need to avoid capping out at 4.

[Astynax 24]

In response to Kazi:

 

I think I said I didn't use pots, flask, or food, except the nazgrim fight in my first post. Also, yeah, our shammy never heroed. IDK why. I think I held some of my CDs, namely doomguard and DS, for it, hoping it would come. But some of the things you mentioned are just things I'm bad about.

 

This should be very helpful. Thanks a ton! =)

[Demonolish 0]

hey, firstly don't feel down everyone has a start :P in time your gonna get the feeling of the spec hence also rotation wise

 

Secondly : just to make sure ! Doom guard does not benefit from secondary stats (mast,hast,crit) just from intellect so you would want to summon that bad boy up with trinket procs : >

 

on the other hand it seems your using kiljadeans cunning ill advise you into making a stop cast macro if needed if trinkets happen to proc while you cast an incinerate you could stop and switch to a CB (cause dark shaman trinkets proc time is really fast)

 

a quick remark to your CB dmg that Kazistrasza mentioned isn't it low cause hes reforging mainly to haste rather than mastery/crit  so he could switch to affliction ? i could see him fixing his average choas bolt dmg by a margin of 100K-150K but not any higher am i right ?

[Kazistrasz 216]

You're going to want your Doom Guard to do the most damage possible, which would be when everything is live.

 

Don't stop casting to start laying out Chaos Bolts during a proc. KTT proc is 10 seconds. That's enough time to cast Chaos Bolt three times and refresh Immolate. Also, rather than a macro to stop casting, I recommend just binding it to a key (there's an actual keybind for it). Mine's middle click.

 

At the time of his posting, he was straight up mastery. 700k isn't low just because of mastery, it's low because of all of the damage lost from not making proper use of procs. 

[Astynax 24]

At the time of his posting, he was straight up mastery. 700k isn't low just because of mastery, it's low because of all of the damage lost from not making proper use of procs. 

 

Kazi's correct. When this log was collected I was ~95% mastery raid buffed, and only 10% haste. I recently reforged because I was able to hit my 30% haste BP and sacrificed about 10% mastery, feels like a DPS increase, and I'm liking flinging things out a bit faster.

 

I try to throw my doomguard out with bloodlust, which is most of the time at pull, but generally he gets most of the DPS cooldowns. 

 

I don't stop casting. The way I see it: I've just wasted my time to accommodate a proc I'll take some advantage of anyway. Yes, getting three chaos bolts off > getting 2 chaos bolts and an incinerate, but I've already wasted a second casting incinerate, and wasting a GCD and my time tends to not be worth it, as my overall reacion time won't be enough to capitalize, and the wasted time will add up, probably to a DPS loss.

 

When I need to stop casting, I hit my esc key. It's next to my teamspeak binding anyway, and my naga has all of my common keys anyway, so I'm rarely far away if something comes up.

[Zagam 1,982]

Just to clear something up: if you've started a cast, finish it.  Even if it's a huge mistake in your rotation, you should NEVER be cancelling a cast.  Don't compound more errors onto the first error.

[Kazistrasz 216]

The only exception is if finishing the cast will get you killed.

[Rakupenda 15]

The only exception is if finishing the cast will get you killed.

I think he meant more along the lines of accidentally casting Immolate twice in a row or casting an un-Backdrafted Incinerate while sitting on a charge of Conflagrate.

Edited November 12, 2013 by Rakupenda

[Zagam 1,982]

The only exception is if finishing the cast will get you killed.

Of course.  The survival decision tree always supercedes the DPS decision tree.  If you're only working on DPS and not surviving, it's foolish to stop a cast and start another.

[Kazistrasz 216]

I know what you meant Zag, I just didn't want someone else to come along, read that, and dying because they're trying to finish Chaos Bolts in the middle of fire.

[Rakupenda 15]

"It's pretty easy to calculate the DPS of a corpse."

Your signature says it all.

[Kazistrasz 216]

I got it from Lore, who got it from an old GM of his.