Feel like Bambi on Norushen H

[Guest garmeth06]

Norushen probably is my most hated fight, I just feel like its awkward as all hell.

 

My problem - I know the key to performing sublimely on this fight is to get off as many preferably havoced shadowburns as possible, but sometimes I feel like this screws my dps more than helps.

 

 

The big adds get wrecked by our melee before I can even get off two incinerates sometimes, and I would say over half the time the blizz UI doesn't allow me to shadowburn from the time they go from 20% to 0%.

 

This leaves the small adds.. Timing the havoc is an extreme pain, sometimes I'm the only one on a small add and I can get ~2 shadowburns havoced for some good dps. The other half 4 people decide to hit the small add and it dies instantly, I clip an incinerate halfway through and  waste havoc along with 1.5 seconds of cast time on that incinerate.

 

I seriously spend 30% of the time clipping incinerates and trying to spend havoc and failing. 

 

I have resorted to essentially giving up on havocing shadowburns and just use it for chaos bolt now because its exponentially less random. Still there are instances where in order to shadowburn a small add, I have to clip an incinerate because someone else switches to it.

 

My questions, hopefully to give this post some direction and lucidity.

 

1. Is it worth clipping incinerates to shadowburn , I would assume yes

2. Anyway to reduce the amount of clipping or is it something I'm going to have to deal with?

 

I'll post logs if anyone cares or is kind enough to spend the time, 

 

Context of the log

-Rofldotz

-Sent in 1st group

-Ate an orb somewhere in the middle going to 25 corruption

-559 ilvl

 

http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/6jJwhcNfgVZRy3dp#type=damage-done&fight=12

 

Not sure how much I can be pulling, I can't compare myself to other logs because of the randomness of who parses the log, who gets sent down when, etc.

 

Thanks in advance

[Astynax 24]

Okay, While I'm no expert, I will share my experiences:

 

1.This fight is notorious for people "stealing" your DPS. When everyone is on point, this is, in fact, not a great fight for us. Luckily, people are often bad.

 

2. your DPS is still 300k. That's very decent in this fight.

 

3. I notice fel flames in here? Hoping this was when you went down, as it looks.

 

 

Havoc uptime looks good... Damage to small adds may be a it low, but it could easily be acase of people stealign your dps.

 

I'm not a wizard with logs, so I don't see very much, and am probably not the best source.

[Guest garmeth06]

Okay, While I'm no expert, I will share my experiences:

 

1.This fight is notorious for people "stealing" your DPS. When everyone is on point, this is, in fact, not a great fight for us. Luckily, people are often bad.

 

2. your DPS is still 300k. That's very decent in this fight.

 

3. I notice fel flames in here? Hoping this was when you went down, as it looks.

 

 

Havoc uptime looks good... Damage to small adds may be a it low, but it could easily be acase of people stealign your dps.

 

I'm not a wizard with logs, so I don't see very much, and am probably not the best source.

Sometimes I used a FF to get the adds into execute range if they were being bitches sitting at 21%. I might just forget about this fight and focus on the other 13, less random ones -_-

[mediocregatsby 18]

first of all, you should track your own combat logs. it takes no extra special effort and will help you analyze yourself on these stupid phased fights. there are addons that will even do it automatically for you.

 

norushen is a tricky one. at first i tried your initial approach and went for optimal havoc/shadowburn stuff but on 25HC this is basically impossible if your raid is at all good at killing adds like they're supposed to.

 

that being said it IS possible to consistently top meters on this fight. check out my raidbots page for norushen 25HC http://raidbots.com/epeenbot/us/ner%27zhul/vexyl/ i can hit the 96th percentile every week, even on weeks where i don't do my own combat logs. 

 

now check this shit out, it's a comparison of my 3 most recent weeks as destro on norushen http://raidbots.com/comparebot/5317a49874254ee742000435#summary

on week 1 i ran KJC + gosup, on week 2 i ran AD+gosup, on week 3 i ran KJC+gosac. on top of that, i tried some very different playstyles. if you look at the damage tab http://raidbots.com/comparebot/5317a49874254ee742000435#damage, in week 1 i have way more incinerates, in week 2 i have a LOT of ROF hits, in week 3 i have a middle ground of ROF and incinerate hits. in week 1 and 3 i have a lot more immolate ticks than week 2 because i was immolating adds. week 3 was the only time i tried FNBing.

 

but despite all that experimentation of different playstyles, my DPS is right around the same point every week. as far as number of casts go, my CB and SB counts dont fluctuate much, but the DPS per cast of those spells do fluctuate somewhat significantly. my own personal conclusion from this is that i can worry less about the small things like filler spells and ROF, and instead focus my attention on maximizing DPS of CB/SB. 96th percentile every week is nice but i want to improve that to 98th or better, and that's what i'm going to try next week. hopefully this improvement can be made with just personal effort, and doesnt require a raid strat/comp change.

Edited March 5, 2014 by mediocregatsby

[Zagam 1,982]

I don't understand the point in complaining about your personal damage as a percentile when you're beating the encounter because your teammates are actually switching and killing adds.  I know it's your job to improve your performance, but no one is "stealing" DPS.  If your team actually switches and kills adds, then quit focusing on trying to get a Shadowburn in and switch back to the boss.  Also, I only use Havoc when the big adds come out.  Very easy to get 2 Chaos Bolts on them while they're alive with Havoc.  If you don't glyph Havoc, then it's even easier to get 1. 

 

The objective of every DPS is to adjust to what's alive and kill it in a priority.  If things are dying entirely way too fast, enjoy being in a group that has enough direction and discipline to perform mechanics.

[Lothrandir 12]

The objective of every DPS is to adjust to what's alive and kill it in a priority.  If things are dying entirely way too fast, enjoy being in a group that has enough direction and discipline to perform mechanics.

 

Amen to that.

 

However, I've often also noticed the issue with not actually being able to SB when the target crosses 20% mark - it's very annoying and produces some awkward waiting moments sometimes.

 

Anyone know what that is? And if it can be remedied?

[Zagam 1,982]

You're talking about how an enemy is below 20%, but your Shadowburn button isn't available for a short period of time?  Yeah, every execute mechanic has some lag to it because the system has to actually understand, react, and relay the message to your UI that you can now use your execute button.  It's frustrating as all hell and there's no fix we can do.  I have submitted bug errors on this numerous times (one from my Warlock, Hunter, and Warrior) in hopes it is fixed for WoD.

[Lothrandir 12]

Yea, exactly that.

 

It's just weird since the UI is fully aware of the 19.7% or whatever, but nice to know someone has addressed this ... multiple times :)

[Liquidsteel 279]

I tend to have my tidyplates set to show red at 21% just to give an extra split second chance to SB.

[Guest garmeth06]

I always thought that shadowburn not updating was intended by blizzard.

 

lol

[mediocregatsby 18]

first of all, you should track your own combat logs. it takes no extra special effort and will help you analyze yourself on these stupid phased fights. there are addons that will even do it automatically for you.

 

norushen is a tricky one. at first i tried your initial approach and went for optimal havoc/shadowburn stuff but on 25HC this is basically impossible if your raid is at all good at killing adds like they're supposed to.

 

that being said it IS possible to consistently top meters on this fight. check out my raidbots page for norushen 25HC http://raidbots.com/epeenbot/us/ner%27zhul/vexyl/ i can hit the 96th percentile every week, even on weeks where i don't do my own combat logs. 

 

now check this shit out, it's a comparison of my 3 most recent weeks as destro on norushen http://raidbots.com/comparebot/5317a49874254ee742000435#summary

on week 1 i ran KJC + gosup, on week 2 i ran AD+gosup, on week 3 i ran KJC+gosac. on top of that, i tried some very different playstyles. if you look at the damage tab http://raidbots.com/comparebot/5317a49874254ee742000435#damage, in week 1 i have way more incinerates, in week 2 i have a LOT of ROF hits, in week 3 i have a middle ground of ROF and incinerate hits. in week 1 and 3 i have a lot more immolate ticks than week 2 because i was immolating adds. week 3 was the only time i tried FNBing.

 

but despite all that experimentation of different playstyles, my DPS is right around the same point every week. as far as number of casts go, my CB and SB counts dont fluctuate much, but the DPS per cast of those spells do fluctuate somewhat significantly. my own personal conclusion from this is that i can worry less about the small things like filler spells and ROF, and instead focus my attention on maximizing DPS of CB/SB. 96th percentile every week is nice but i want to improve that to 98th or better, and that's what i'm going to try next week. hopefully this improvement can be made with just personal effort, and doesnt require a raid strat/comp change.

 

3 weeks of experimenting on the fight, put those learnings in yesterday night and got a really nice result. 476k dps, a 40k improvement over my previous best. ROF doesnt matter, FNB doesnt matter, havoc only sorta matters, it's all about spamming CB and getting SBs when possible and never running out of embers as long as adds keep coming http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/7PwyVCX6Hbhc48BR#fight=5&type=damage-done

[Guest garmeth06]

3 weeks of experimenting on the fight, put those learnings in yesterday night and got a really nice result. 476k dps, a 40k improvement over my previous best. ROF doesnt matter, FNB doesnt matter, havoc only sorta matters, it's all about spamming CB and getting SBs when possible and never running out of embers as long as adds keep coming http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/7PwyVCX6Hbhc48BR#fight=5&type=damage-done

Didn't get a chance to do this fight again for real until tonight, attendance is a real problem now with guild, but you were absolutely right. I stopped focusing so much on trying to havoc shadowburn combo, I ,however, was very strict with at least trying to get a shadowburn on every small add, no matter if I had to clip an incinerate. I ended up getting 6 more shadowburns, but 15 more chaos bolts. 

 

Before I got less shadowburns off and was capped more because I wasn't ready for all the embers, now that I spend my cap and get a few more burns off, my dps rose to 420k, insane increase. Given , ~40k of that is due to legendary cape, but still awesome, thank you!

 

I want to see what I can do in 575 gear now :P

[Kazistrasz 216]

Stop clipping spells. Really. It's about the worst thing you can do for DPS. If you can't get a Shadowburn in, you can't get one in. When you get 1.5sec into an Incinerate and clip it to try to Shadowburn, you're going to get possible scenarios:

 

1) You can't get SB off in time and you just wasted two globals when you could have at least had an incinerate and be partway into the next one.

 

2) Your SB actually goes off, but you still wasted a GCD before it plus its own GCD, effectively halving its DPET and making it not really worth having stopped to cast, aside from the ember you get back. It breaks the ABC rule.

 

Neither of those situations are beneficial for your output. You're in a 25-man, and people are switching to adds. It happens. The solution is, as Zag said, just not focusing on them. Don't try to wait for them to get low to Havoc and try to SB. Just cast Havoc on the boss when it comes up and blast the adds for extra embers. If you can get a SB in that, cool. Do not clip your casts. When adds come out, especially if two are close together, get a Rain of Fire down on them and the boss for embers.

[Guest garmeth06]

Stop clipping spells. Really. It's about the worst thing you can do for DPS. If you can't get a Shadowburn in, you can't get one in. When you get 1.5sec into an Incinerate and clip it to try to Shadowburn, you're going to get possible scenarios:

 

1) You can't get SB off in time and you just wasted two globals when you could have at least had an incinerate and be partway into the next one.

 

2) Your SB actually goes off, but you still wasted a GCD before it plus its own GCD, effectively halving its DPET and making it not really worth having stopped to cast, aside from the ember you get back. It breaks the ABC rule.

 

Neither of those situations are beneficial for your output. You're in a 25-man, and people are switching to adds. It happens. The solution is, as Zag said, just not focusing on them. Don't try to wait for them to get low to Havoc and try to SB. Just cast Havoc on the boss when it comes up and blast the adds for extra embers. If you can get a SB in that, cool. Do not clip your casts. When adds come out, especially if two are close together, get a Rain of Fire down on them and the boss for embers.

 

I agree but I believe I clip far less spells than I implied. Though I tried to get a SB on every small add, I didn't clip for nearly every small add and there were certainly those that died so fast that I didn't even attempt. Perhaps I should have rephrased my previous post to, I tried to use SB more diligently.. I used judgment to the possibility that scenario 1) wouldn't happen... I find that the further the small adds were away from the boss, the less people noticed them and maybe they were dying fast enough to nearly guarantee a SB, but not in time if I casted an incinerate. I can't give any hard and fast algorithm to my thought process though, and I am considering frapsing myself to see what I'm actually doing.

 

However, before ember generation is even calculated, my shadowburn's DPET is over quintuple that of incinerate, and if you factor in ember generation it skews even further in shadowburn's favor.

 

Surely something had to go right for a good result.

[Liquidsteel 279]

I'd cancel an incinerate for a shadowburn. Especially if that incinerate will still be in the air before the mob dies.

[Zagam 1,982]

I'd cancel an Incinerate for a Shadowburn in a 25 man.  I would not, however, do such in a 10 man unless my teammates were trusted to leave targets under 20% alone.

[Kazistrasz 216]

Liquid, if your incinerate gets in the air, you're not cancelling your cast.

 

The 25s I was in had 5 warlocks or 5 warriors, so opportunities to Shadowburn were either time to get one or two off normally or things would die instantly when they hit 20%. It wasn't the kind of thing to cancel a cast over - if I was that pushed for time to get one in it wasn't going to get in. Then again, when I was with <Deviant> no one liked to switch to adds, so I could get two or three in on every add on a fight like Nazgrim.

 

 

It's going to depend on the discipline of your raid how much use you can SB.

[Liquidsteel 279]

Liquid, if your incinerate gets in the air, you're not cancelling your cast.

 

You misunderstand.

 

I meant if the incinerate's travel time would mean the target would die before it hit. Granted, you can argue that it's poor judgement to begin casting an incinerate in the first place, but that's not the point.

[Kazistrasz 216]

Ah, I got you. It's an iffy thing, but I generally rule on the side of not doing it just because of how bad it is if you don't get it off.

[mediocregatsby 18]

Didn't get a chance to do this fight again for real until tonight, attendance is a real problem now with guild, but you were absolutely right. I stopped focusing so much on trying to havoc shadowburn combo, I ,however, was very strict with at least trying to get a shadowburn on every small add, no matter if I had to clip an incinerate. I ended up getting 6 more shadowburns, but 15 more chaos bolts. 

 

Before I got less shadowburns off and was capped more because I wasn't ready for all the embers, now that I spend my cap and get a few more burns off, my dps rose to 420k, insane increase. Given , ~40k of that is due to legendary cape, but still awesome, thank you!

 

I want to see what I can do in 575 gear now

nice, glad my advice was helpful.

 

this is actually true for a lot of fights by the way. for example i see some locks focus way too much on getting damage on siegecrafter's mines the same way some people focus too much on "optimal" dps on norushen adds. if your raid is killing the mines fast enough sometimes the best thing to do is just CB the boss. i have a 433k DPS parse on heroic siegecrafter where i'm just mostly hitting the boss.

[mediocregatsby 18]

i just managed to pull 497k on norushen http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/72anWmDfJAN3d9tx#fight=8&type=damage-done

 

2 things i did differently this week:

- my previous best of 476k was done with AD so i could always save a dark soul charge for when we bloodlust at 30%. this week i went with KJC just so i could move right next to an add, havoc it, and make sure all my projectiles actually landed on the mob before it died. seriously it made quite a big difference. unfortunately this meant i didnt have dark soul available with all but a couple seconds of bloodlust but oh well.

- i actually used FNB incinerate a decent amount this time and something crazy happened. i saw 5 small adds spawn in a clump and when i cast FNB incinerate, the incinerates actually hit all 5 adds and the boss. i have never seen that happen before, although i dont FNB very often on this fight. now theoretically this should mean if i cast FNB incinerate on the boss it should hit all the small adds, right? well unfortunately it didnt work this way and i wasted 2 embers trying it :( i'm not sure why but i would love to know...

[Guest garmeth06]

 i saw 5 small adds spawn in a clump and when i cast FNB incinerate, the incinerates actually hit all 5 adds and the boss. ..

! 

 

 

Grats on the rank. I'm really close to joining you, at least on the fourth page haha.

Edited April 2, 2014 by garmeth06

[mediocregatsby 18]

well i just hit 500k on norushen.

 

guess what? if there are a lot of adds alive, cast FNB incinerate on the boss and watch as you hit a fuck ton of adds in a way that no other class can. OVERPOWERED AS FUCK.

[Zagam 1,982]

This is why we're considered overpowered and won't be in WoD.  Winter is coming friend.