4 piece vs Other gear

[Guest garmeth06]

I have a small conundrum concerning 4 piece. 

 

I recently joined a raiding guild that just beat normals and going into heroics at an ilvl of 540, I didn't get a chance to accumulate 4 piece on normal mode. I did, however, receive 553 shoulders and gloves for tier pieces.

 

We downed fallen protectors on heroic and I got a warforged chest that I upgraded to 580. Upon cleaning up the raid on normal and killing thok, I received the normal token for the helmet that gave me 3 pieces. 

 

 

However, I do have a 540 chest from flex that can complete my tier 4 set.

 

 

Do I use the 540 flex tier + the 553 other tier items for four piece, OR, do I use the 580 chest and the heroic helm I got from immerseus and just try to wait till I get tier legs so I can keep wearing the 580 chest and retain my tier bonus.

 

I simmed it out of curiosity, although some say simcraft is trash ( and I would assume its pretty innacurate on calculating the value of 4 piece), and both sims turned out to be the same within ~100 dps. I, however, think the difference will be significant. 

 

Here is my armory.  

 

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/malganis/Rofldotz/simple

 

Yes, locky, I apologize for still having AD. I keep it on for fights where I dont have to move much ( IJ), but I have been swapping it out for more movement intensive fights for KJC, and I imagine it will be mandatory for all fights on heroic.

 

Forgive me!

Edited February 18, 2014 by garmeth06

[Zagam 1,982]

580 down to 540 sounds like a pretty poor decision.  The 4pc for Destruction is pretty incredible, though.  Tough call - I think the decision is almost a nonpoint.  The chest you picked up is Hit/Haste which is rather rubbish for Destruction.  You NEVER want to have any piece of gear not have Mastery on it.

 

Lucky for you, the Heroic Tier Chest is a very accessible piece of gear since it comes off of Sha of Pride.  Your eventual off-piece is your Shoulders. 

 

You don't have to apologize for using AD.  Your DPS will suffer because of it, but it's your call. 

[Lockybalboa 618]

You don't have to apologize for using AD.  Your DPS will suffer because of it, but it's your call. 

 ya that

[Guest garmeth06]

I'm having a very hard time wrapping my head around the dps loss of AD vs KJC on iron juggernaut normal mode. In a 25 man setting, suppose I don't get fixated by the laser.

 

 

The only benefit to KJC would be the ability to cast incenerate while he seismic pulses, however, I feel like this is a non factor due to the fact that I can simply save a conflagrate for the pulse and not have to use fel flame. Running back in range of the boss is negated by good positioning. 

 

There is an added convenience that I can save my dark soul for PBI if its being stubborn, because although the charges refresh on the same cooldown, while I'm holding on to one for a proc, the  cooldown is still burning off time for my second dark soul.

 

In a 4 minute fight, this extra crit chance averages out to an extra 2.5% crit, and allows me to empower an extra 3 chaos bolts. That extra crit is comparable to the destro 4-piece bonus. I'm trading all of this away for incinerates during shock pulses when I just could have conflagrated instead?

Edited February 21, 2014 by garmeth06

[Zagam 1,982]

You're assuming you don't get targetted by anything which is a horrible assumption to make.  You NEVER should assume you won't be affected by mechanics.  Do you really think you're going to go 4 to 5 minutes without being targetted by a saw blade, borer drill, tar, richochet, or the laser?  You're VERY optimistic.  Conflagrate has a charge system - where are you getting all these extra Conflagrates to use during the Seismic Activity phase?

[Guest garmeth06]

You're assuming you don't get targetted by anything which is a horrible assumption to make.  You NEVER should assume you won't be affected by mechanics.  Do you really think you're going to go 4 to 5 minutes without being targetted by a saw blade, borer drill, tar, richochet, or the laser?  You're VERY optimistic.  Conflagrate has a charge system - where are you getting all these extra Conflagrates to use during the Seismic Activity phase?

While talking specifically about normal mode my assumptions aren't particularly egregious IMO. I conceded that KJC was most likely mandatory on every heroic fight. There are no sawblades or ricochet, I use a demonic portal out of the tar, the borer drill on normal mode from the range I'm standing from the boss does a LAUGHABLE amount of damage, as in, I can sustain myself with soul link, siphon life, and/or soul leech. To top it off the non siege phase is already trivial for healers as is.

 

One may argue that I should still be trying to avoid as much damage as possible, but I disagree. My risk of death to borer drill or mortar cannon is 0% and I compare this to sindragosa at least on normal mode. Whenever your guild was geared/good enough to trivialize the encounter, the dps would often push the number of stacks of the debuff very high so they could dps longer and longer.

 

As for the conflagrate I simply never let the charge go below 1 or cap at 2, I can have one up for every knockback, though I do concede its not as fluid as im making it sound. There could be a .4 second span where I have to felflame because I don't have time to cast an extra incinerate before the pulse comes. 

Edited February 21, 2014 by garmeth06

[Zagam 1,982]

Your argument goes back to a similar situation when I advised people learning the belts on Siegecrafter to not get used to using CDs to survive the fire beams of death - it only creates bad behavior in the possibility that you see the fight on Heroic.  By standing in stuff, you're creating bad raiding habits that will translate into poor performance in heroic.

 

If you're doing normal and you've killed it before, repeating the kill as fast as possible enables you to do more progression on other harder bosses.  It also makes it so that you will eventually be capable of killing it on Heroic.  Why relearn the fight when it gets progressively more difficult?

 

The DPS gain that you're trying to get is

1) unnecessary in normal.  It sounds as if you're just trying to do more on the meters which is largely inconsequential

2) not worth the bad habits you're developing by standing in things.  Warlocks are SO good right now and being mobile with a high degree of survivability.  You're essentially removing one.

3) marginal at best.  Like you said, having an extra 20 seconds of 30% Crit might increase your DPS, but it will be a marginal amount.

 

You can play any way you want, but you really can't justify creating bad raiding habits just to boost your DPS a bit.

[Guest garmeth06]

Your argument goes back to a similar situation when I advised people learning the belts on Siegecrafter to not get used to using CDs to survive the fire beams of death - it only creates bad behavior in the possibility that you see the fight on Heroic.  By standing in stuff, you're creating bad raiding habits that will translate into poor performance in heroic.

 

If you're doing normal and you've killed it before, repeating the kill as fast as possible enables you to do more progression on other harder bosses.  It also makes it so that you will eventually be capable of killing it on Heroic.  Why relearn the fight when it gets progressively more difficult?

 

The DPS gain that you're trying to get is

1) unnecessary in normal.  It sounds as if you're just trying to do more on the meters which is largely inconsequential

2) not worth the bad habits you're developing by standing in things.  Warlocks are SO good right now and being mobile with a high degree of survivability.  You're essentially removing one.

3) marginal at best.  Like you said, having an extra 20 seconds of 30% Crit might increase your DPS, but it will be a marginal amount.

 

You can play any way you want, but you really can't justify creating bad raiding habits just to boost your DPS a bit.

 

Very fair points. I believe my reasoning for number 1 and 2 is a combination of me feeling as if I need to prove myself to a new guild using loot council instead of a dkp system ( ), and possible arrogance because I feel like the transition from normal to heroic won't be hard at all for me being a very competent competitor at several other esport-type games.

 

I suppose I am padding in a way by playing like this, but I guess I don't do anything super scumbag like havoc chaos bolt on paragons. < look at me try to rationalize myself haha

 

Alas, I have my vices .

Edited February 21, 2014 by garmeth06

[Kazistrasz 216]

Loot comes naturally. High DPS is a smaller matter in most loot councils than other things like loyalty, seniority, mechanics performance, attendance, attitude, size of upgrade, BiS, etc.  As a GM in the past, these are all the things I looked at. I took more people's spots from them for those reasons than I ever did for numbers. If I were still a GM, and we're clearing normal modes and getting ready to go into heroics, my concern isn't going to be whether my DPS are pulling 300k DPS on IJ. I'd like to hope that this late into a tier of clearing normal modes they'd be able to, but if someone's a little under I know I can live. But, if someone is taking almost as much damage as a tank to be able to pull 350k, even if the next closest is 310k, I'm not going to funnel loot into them. I'm going to funnel loot into other people and try to replace that person, because that tells me they can't handle mechanics. You can't simply out-DPS mechanics when you're doing progression on the heroics.

 

Normal modes are just that. Telling yourself that the transition will be a joke is kind of setting yourself up to fail. You need to go into the progression with the mindset that there will be mechanics, and that you may need to be inventive about how you handle them if there are people in your group you may need to compensate for. In my last build, all the warlocks liked to spam FNB all day. I did the same damage as them, but I only used AoE to fuel Chaos Bolt after Chaos bolt. We did the same damage, but I was much more beneficial for the raid, because I was actually killing the mobs that could cause a wipe and minimize the number of fractures and chain heals that could go uninterrupted.

[Lockybalboa 618]

Thinking the transition from normal to heroic will be easy is the same mistake a lot of athletes make when they go from college to pro.

 

Normal Immer Vs. heroic Immer isn't much.

 

Normal Blackfuse Vs. heroic Blackfuse is a clusterfuck.

 

The best thing you can do for yourself as a raider is to know your limits and to not be arrogant past that. Just because top level raiders make this look easy doesn't mean that it is.

[Guest garmeth06]

Loot comes naturally. High DPS is a smaller matter in most loot councils than other things like loyalty, seniority, mechanics performance, attendance, attitude, size of upgrade, BiS, etc.  As a GM in the past, these are all the things I looked at. I took more people's spots from them for those reasons than I ever did for numbers. If I were still a GM, and we're clearing normal modes and getting ready to go into heroics, my concern isn't going to be whether my DPS are pulling 300k DPS on IJ. I'd like to hope that this late into a tier of clearing normal modes they'd be able to, but if someone's a little under I know I can live. But, if someone is taking almost as much damage as a tank to be able to pull 350k, even if the next closest is 310k, I'm not going to funnel loot into them. I'm going to funnel loot into other people and try to replace that person, because that tells me they can't handle mechanics. You can't simply out-DPS mechanics when you're doing progression on the heroics.

 

Normal modes are just that. Telling yourself that the transition will be a joke is kind of setting yourself up to fail. You need to go into the progression with the mindset that there will be mechanics, and that you may need to be inventive about how you handle them if there are people in your group you may need to compensate for. In my last build, all the warlocks liked to spam FNB all day. I did the same damage as them, but I only used AoE to fuel Chaos Bolt after Chaos bolt. We did the same damage, but I was much more beneficial for the raid, because I was actually killing the mobs that could cause a wipe and minimize the number of fractures and chain heals that could go uninterrupted.

Loyalty, seniority, attitude, attendance are proven over a matter of time, of which I have no control of. I am by no means trying to hoard loot, nor do I particularly care about it that much - I'm just very behind re subbing in december with me not even having a legendary meta yet. I do, however, want to see how well I can rank once my gear is up to par. In terms of my attitude within a guild, I am extremely low maintenance and don't dispute decisions because they aren't mine to make as a normal member - the only thing I can control is my dps and mechanics performance.

 

I believe I have portrayed to you guys that I am this mongoloid, keyboard smasher who ignores as many mechanics as possible for a 5% increase in dps, this simply isn't true. I have no way to dispute this because I I have no important accolades when it comes to raiding except for a rank 3 parse on Blood Queen in ICC eons ago (lol). Its extremely hard to join a good guild when in highschool, and now that I'm in my 1st year of college I'm taking things slow and not wanting to commit to a 4 night a week, 4 hour per night guild - I'd rather get used to the lifestyle than risk failing physics and calculus.

 

I am taking nowhere near as much damage as a tank, and depending on how much demolisher cannon damage (note: not the mortar cannon, I'm talking about the unavoidable damage) I take, I can end up well below average in damage taken. If I was taking 4x the damage of the other dps for 5k increase in dps, I would undoubtedly change my ways. 

 

Now as for my mindset, I don't feel as if heroics will be a "joke", I never said that, nor do I believe I insinuated I thought they were going to be THAT easy, I do, however, feel that switching to KJC and running out of more mechanics won't be a drastic paradigm shift on my gameplay. I have to use KJC for other fights. The only allure to heroics is the challenge, and If I thought they weren't challenging I'd quit and go back to grinding the starcraft 2 ladder. I'm very self critical when it comes to my mistakes and its helped me drastically improve in games quickly - if I end up holding the raid back when it comes to heroics, I will fix myself, whatever I'm doing wrong. At the end of the day my numbers are just a mean to an end, I'm part of a team and if I only cared about myself then I NEED to quit and return to starcraft 2 ladder.

 

I also seemed to have been confusing in my wording. When I talked about the transition from normal to heroic of my playstyle, I simply meant in the context of Iron Juggernaut alone. I'm very aware that blackfuse, paragons, and garrosh are extremely hard and each can take upwards of 200 wipes. 

Edited February 21, 2014 by garmeth06

[Lockybalboa 618]

 Its extremely hard to join a good guild when in highschool, and now that I'm in my 1st year of college I'm taking things slow and not wanting to commit to a 4 night a week, 4 hour per night guild - I'd rather get used to the lifestyle than risk failing physics and calculus.

 

 

I understand how you feel man, I started playing when I was 14, started raiding when I was 15. Although I started raiding and in fact learned HOW to raid with a top 50 guild, I was just a fill in that was learning. My regular raiding was mostly limited to semi-casual groups or alt of the big time raiders for a long time.

 

I finally wanted to make the big jump from ~200US raids to major progression raiding and landed an raiding offer from Vodka, at the time they were #2 US. That same week I was starting college though and turned down the offer because I thought that raiding 6 nights a week AND doing classes wasn't going to work. By the end of my freshman year I found how wrong I was and annoyed by how much free time I had.

 

Take your time, get used to things. You'll be fine.

[dacrushah 0]

Thinking the transition from normal to heroic will be easy is the same mistake a lot of athletes make when they go from college to pro.

 

Normal Blackfuse Vs. heroic Blackfuse is a clusterfuck.

 

Heroic blackfuse makes me want to cut my nuts out with a spoon.   Pretty much every Heroic boss after Nazgrim is a movement shitshow where you are constantly moving endlessly.  KJC is a must.  DS sux for Destro anyways, Trinket procs much more important.

[Guest garmeth06]

I understand how you feel man, I started playing when I was 14, started raiding when I was 15. Although I started raiding and in fact learned HOW to raid with a top 50 guild, I was just a fill in that was learning. My regular raiding was mostly limited to semi-casual groups or alt of the big time raiders for a long time.

 

I finally wanted to make the big jump from ~200US raids to major progression raiding and landed an raiding offer from Vodka, at the time they were #2 US. That same week I was starting college though and turned down the offer because I thought that raiding 6 nights a week AND doing classes wasn't going to work. By the end of my freshman year I found how wrong I was and annoyed by how much free time I had.

 

Take your time, get used to things. You'll be fine.

Yea I started raiding when I was 14 as well -was on a casualish guild for ICC then ended up quitting due to mom aggro. Picked up sc2 shortly after and played the hell out of that game. Sucks you had to pass up Vodka though. The hardest thing for me in this game is definitely the logistics. 

 

I do have lots of free time this semester, but first semester I was in marching band with 15 hours of practice per week at prime raid times so no dice for me there TT.

Edited February 22, 2014 by garmeth06