Now, you definitely do not have to be a leader to do this, although I feel it is the responsibility of every guild leader to do it.
When you look at your raid, think to yourself, how can you make this raid better. I can only assume that when leading a guild, you would like your guild to be constantly improving. Whether its constantly getting new blood in, recruiting better members, getting more geared up as a whole, getting more experience working together, etc, you want to see these things happening to make your team play better.
Well, much like a professional basketball coach will do after and before games, a very helpful way to improve your team is simply to review the footage from the night before. Now in Warcraft, its difficult to get a fraps of everyone in your raid... in fact, it's darn near unreasonable to do it. But there is a tool out there that exists called WWS-- Wow Web Stats.
It works very simply... anyone in the raid can activate a combat log. It's built into the game.. you just type /combatlog. What this does is it will output all your combat data (and everyone in range) to a text file, which you can then process in WWS after. WWS is a 3rd party program (a Java web application actually) that can parse that combat log that you just took. It goes into some very very good detail, so you can find DPS holes in your raid, or find strategic errors, or just find slacker members.
http://wowwebstats.com
Now how can you use this tool to help your raids? Well, 1st off, try to download an addon or something like "LoggerHead" which can extend the range of your combat log to 200 yards (default is like 45 yards or something small like that..).
Then just follow the directions on the website and start putting up logs. The important thing is to use this to compare both members inside your raid, and to other guilds logs.
If another guild's rogue can do 1400dps, but your guild's rogue can only do 800dps on the same fight... look into it. One would naturally assume gear, but if you look deeper into it, that might not be the case.
If comparing between gear disparity worries you, its ok.. stop comparing with the top 10 guilds in the world. If your guild just killed gruul, keep paging back until you find a dps log that looks close to yours, and see if there's anything they did slightly better than your guild.
The point isn't to use this as some sort of pissing contest to see how good you are compared to others.. it's to use this as a real tool to try to find DPS holes, problem raiders, etc, so you really have to get into the mindset of using this tool to find what part of your raid to devote more time to.
I mean, if on a whole, you see that your shadowpriests are doing only 650dps on a fight where typically other shadow priests in full Frozen Shadowweave are achieving 950dps on, then it's time to examine what they're doing differently, and how to improve that. Is it DoT uptime? Spell/dps cycle? Meta gem or gemming problems in general? Lack of consumables used? This tool can help you a lot, and it has certainly helped my guild tremendously.
Showing posts with label dps. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dps. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Friday, September 7, 2007
End-game priorities for Feral Druids
I was going to just edit this in at the end of my last post, Feral Druid Role in End Game Raiding, but it was getting kind of long, so I thought I'd just make another post.
When I'm recruiting Druids these days, I don't think a lot of them completely understand my point of the last post. I mean, its great and all that you have, say, 30k armor, 40% dodge in bear, and that you've tanked lots and lots of things, but for the most part, that's not what makes you truly valuable to a raid. Yes, being able to tank things is great, but practically speaking, a Druid makes for a lousy main tank in most situations. Bosses either end up fearing in which case Druids have poor fear mitigation, or bosses go through some burst phases where Druids have very little to cope with that (say, a fear and you take a big burst, and you know your healing will be out of commission a while) compared to a Warrior who can Last Stand, Shield Wall, etc.
Overall speaking, a druid's main form of damage mitigation is through his armor, and honestly speaking, armor caps out, whereas a warrior's mitigation will never cap out. They can always get more armor, more parry, more block, more dodge, etc. And from an itemization stand point, you have far more to gain when the itemstats are spread amongst multiple stats than if they're only in agi, or only in armor.
So what do I mean? I'm trying to emphasize the fact that a druid's best role is to tank when needed, then to DPS when needed. DPS is a very very important part of the druid arsenal, which I feel like many feral druids fail to emphasize or understand the importance of.
DPS is ultimately the best way for a raid to control a fight. This might not be completely apparent at first, and might even seem a little unintuitive, but bare with me here. DPS allows you to control the pacing of the fight. With almost 40% of all boss fights involving some sort of add control, high dps allows you to kill the adds faster instead of having to worry about tank-controlling them for prolonged periods of time. The very best examples of this are what most people consider the ultimate "PvE Walls" that exist today, Gruul, Magtheridon, Vashj and Kaelthas. In Gruul, high dps results in less out of control growths, which leads to an easier time and less really unfriendly wipes. High DPS on Magtheridon allows you to get past the channelers, which everyone will agree is the hardest part of the fight. Killing the channelers fast allows you to get to the boss fight much more cleanly with more people up (also reduces the time that infernals are around to kill your raid). On Vashj, Phase 2 DPS control is obviously the overriding factor on whether or not you kill Vashj, or wipe to her repeatedly. On Kaelthas, well, if you can kill all the adds on time, you can kill Kael no problem... but killing those adds on time is a very very difficult task :)
Ok... so why the lecture on DPS? Because as a Druid, your greatest strength is your ability to tank, then DPS. Bring you instead of bringing another prot warrior is basically giving your raid an extra-DPSer that you didn't have before!!! I don't think many druids emphasize this portion of their repetoire. They focus so much on tanking, when it comes time to DPS, they barely outperform the prot-warrior they were meant to replace. So I'm going to lecture a little on cat dps here.
GEAR
Does this mean you have to roll on rogue loot? In many cases yes... but here are some resources to help you along with that task...
Emmerald, a mildly famous Druid now in Druid circles, publishes a pretty comprehensive Druid gear ranking list for DPS purposes. While I don't necessarily agree completely with the formula used to create this list, as a general rule of thumb, it is pretty good at ranking all the items. Ok.. so you have a gearlist, so what? Well, you'll find that you won't necessarily be directly competing with rogues on every item. Compare Emmerald's list with a famous rogue DPS gear list, like ShadowPanther.
Emmerald's Cat Sustained DPS Gear List
ShadowPanther's Rogue Gear Rankings
You'll find that while there is some overlap, you can probably convince your rogues friends to pass on an item to you if there is another item in the same instance that is much better for them.
Tier 4
Another thing that some druids might not know is about how overpowered our Druid T4 feral set is. I'm talking about the 2pc bonus which allows a 4% chance to gain 20 energy. This is HUGE. Theorycraft speaking wise, I think it results in around a 10-20% dps bonus.... It's so huge that even if you had access to every item in the game, you would still fit the T4 helm and shoulders into your DPS set b/c the bonus outweighs everything.
Stat Balance
I think this is something that most druids always ask about. The simple answer is, AGILITY AGILITY AGILITY. This the #1 tanking stat in the game (thanks to a ridiculously overpowered agi divider for us druids that gives us 1% dodge per 14.7 agility!!). An example of why even for tanking, agility is overpowered:
8 dodge rating gem (Subtle Living Ruby) gives you a 0.423% dodge chance. An 8 agility gem in contrast (Delicate Living Ruby) gives you .544% dodge chance. And not only that, agility gives you additional crit, and attack power while in cat!! It's a no brainer!!!
But I'm not talking about tank itemization here, I'm focusing on DPS... why is this the best DPS stat? Well, the most frequently asked question is, how do you balance strength and agility? Well, you can't design your own items, so you'll just have to look at a stat-comparing page, like Emmerald's gear list as mentioned earlier depending on what drops, but the thing you can control is sockets. Strength or Agility? Well, the answer is actually a little complicated, and it depends on your current attack statistics, but here is a graph a very smart Druid (of whose name I can't find) made, but it was based on formulas by Lolaan:
Actually.. here's a more accurate one from Tangedyn:
But waaaaaaah... how the heck can I get 3000 ap? Well, honestly, its not as far away as you think!!! You'll find that if you can get blessing of kings and blessing of might, mark of the wild, ap food buff, flask, you're well on your way to 3000 ap, if you're not there already... And if you're at 3000 ap, you're pretty much in the agi>str zone guarenteed. So not only is this the better DPS stat, you'll find that it's still insanely useful if you have to switch between cat and bear without the opportunity for a gear change. Agility is most definitely your friend!
Anyways, this post is getting a little long-winded, but I hope its a least somewhat informative. I want you feral druids out there to understand the equal important of DPS. I'll get into the finer details of druid dps rotations, power shifting, addons to assist on dps, etc in a later post.
When I'm recruiting Druids these days, I don't think a lot of them completely understand my point of the last post. I mean, its great and all that you have, say, 30k armor, 40% dodge in bear, and that you've tanked lots and lots of things, but for the most part, that's not what makes you truly valuable to a raid. Yes, being able to tank things is great, but practically speaking, a Druid makes for a lousy main tank in most situations. Bosses either end up fearing in which case Druids have poor fear mitigation, or bosses go through some burst phases where Druids have very little to cope with that (say, a fear and you take a big burst, and you know your healing will be out of commission a while) compared to a Warrior who can Last Stand, Shield Wall, etc.
Overall speaking, a druid's main form of damage mitigation is through his armor, and honestly speaking, armor caps out, whereas a warrior's mitigation will never cap out. They can always get more armor, more parry, more block, more dodge, etc. And from an itemization stand point, you have far more to gain when the itemstats are spread amongst multiple stats than if they're only in agi, or only in armor.
So what do I mean? I'm trying to emphasize the fact that a druid's best role is to tank when needed, then to DPS when needed. DPS is a very very important part of the druid arsenal, which I feel like many feral druids fail to emphasize or understand the importance of.
DPS is ultimately the best way for a raid to control a fight. This might not be completely apparent at first, and might even seem a little unintuitive, but bare with me here. DPS allows you to control the pacing of the fight. With almost 40% of all boss fights involving some sort of add control, high dps allows you to kill the adds faster instead of having to worry about tank-controlling them for prolonged periods of time. The very best examples of this are what most people consider the ultimate "PvE Walls" that exist today, Gruul, Magtheridon, Vashj and Kaelthas. In Gruul, high dps results in less out of control growths, which leads to an easier time and less really unfriendly wipes. High DPS on Magtheridon allows you to get past the channelers, which everyone will agree is the hardest part of the fight. Killing the channelers fast allows you to get to the boss fight much more cleanly with more people up (also reduces the time that infernals are around to kill your raid). On Vashj, Phase 2 DPS control is obviously the overriding factor on whether or not you kill Vashj, or wipe to her repeatedly. On Kaelthas, well, if you can kill all the adds on time, you can kill Kael no problem... but killing those adds on time is a very very difficult task :)
Ok... so why the lecture on DPS? Because as a Druid, your greatest strength is your ability to tank, then DPS. Bring you instead of bringing another prot warrior is basically giving your raid an extra-DPSer that you didn't have before!!! I don't think many druids emphasize this portion of their repetoire. They focus so much on tanking, when it comes time to DPS, they barely outperform the prot-warrior they were meant to replace. So I'm going to lecture a little on cat dps here.
GEAR
Does this mean you have to roll on rogue loot? In many cases yes... but here are some resources to help you along with that task...
Emmerald, a mildly famous Druid now in Druid circles, publishes a pretty comprehensive Druid gear ranking list for DPS purposes. While I don't necessarily agree completely with the formula used to create this list, as a general rule of thumb, it is pretty good at ranking all the items. Ok.. so you have a gearlist, so what? Well, you'll find that you won't necessarily be directly competing with rogues on every item. Compare Emmerald's list with a famous rogue DPS gear list, like ShadowPanther.
Emmerald's Cat Sustained DPS Gear List
ShadowPanther's Rogue Gear Rankings
You'll find that while there is some overlap, you can probably convince your rogues friends to pass on an item to you if there is another item in the same instance that is much better for them.
Tier 4
Another thing that some druids might not know is about how overpowered our Druid T4 feral set is. I'm talking about the 2pc bonus which allows a 4% chance to gain 20 energy. This is HUGE. Theorycraft speaking wise, I think it results in around a 10-20% dps bonus.... It's so huge that even if you had access to every item in the game, you would still fit the T4 helm and shoulders into your DPS set b/c the bonus outweighs everything.
Stat Balance
I think this is something that most druids always ask about. The simple answer is, AGILITY AGILITY AGILITY. This the #1 tanking stat in the game (thanks to a ridiculously overpowered agi divider for us druids that gives us 1% dodge per 14.7 agility!!). An example of why even for tanking, agility is overpowered:
8 dodge rating gem (Subtle Living Ruby) gives you a 0.423% dodge chance. An 8 agility gem in contrast (Delicate Living Ruby) gives you .544% dodge chance. And not only that, agility gives you additional crit, and attack power while in cat!! It's a no brainer!!!
But I'm not talking about tank itemization here, I'm focusing on DPS... why is this the best DPS stat? Well, the most frequently asked question is, how do you balance strength and agility? Well, you can't design your own items, so you'll just have to look at a stat-comparing page, like Emmerald's gear list as mentioned earlier depending on what drops, but the thing you can control is sockets. Strength or Agility? Well, the answer is actually a little complicated, and it depends on your current attack statistics, but here is a graph a very smart Druid (of whose name I can't find) made, but it was based on formulas by Lolaan:
Actually.. here's a more accurate one from Tangedyn:
But waaaaaaah... how the heck can I get 3000 ap? Well, honestly, its not as far away as you think!!! You'll find that if you can get blessing of kings and blessing of might, mark of the wild, ap food buff, flask, you're well on your way to 3000 ap, if you're not there already... And if you're at 3000 ap, you're pretty much in the agi>str zone guarenteed. So not only is this the better DPS stat, you'll find that it's still insanely useful if you have to switch between cat and bear without the opportunity for a gear change. Agility is most definitely your friend!
Anyways, this post is getting a little long-winded, but I hope its a least somewhat informative. I want you feral druids out there to understand the equal important of DPS. I'll get into the finer details of druid dps rotations, power shifting, addons to assist on dps, etc in a later post.
Feral druid role in end-game raiding.
This might be immediately obvious to some, but I think I need to explain this anyways.
The reason why feral druids are so strong in end-game raiding is not only for their tanking ability, but more because of how strong the feral talent tree is.
Warriors have been complaining about this forever, but the fact remains that the druid feral tree is so compact that the same tanking spec you use is equally viable as a cat-form dps spec!
How does this affect raids? Well, simply put, a simple gear swap can change you from rogue-wanna-be to melee-tanking-god! This is very key for people wishing to min-max their raid. Most raids, starting as early as Karazhan involve a fight which starts off with multiple mobs and some sort of need for multiple tanks, but inevitably end with a single boss.
Well, say you have 2 protection warriors, tanking a simple fight such as Attumen the Huntsmen. During the 2nd phase where there is both a rider and a horse that need to be tanked, 1 warrior can tank each, no problem. But what happens during the 3rd phase, when there is only 1 boss to tank? The 2nd protection warrior goes to DPS. Very low DPS I might add.
Ok, alternative #2, you have 1 protection warrior and 1 dps warrior. Well, honestly, either of those mobs hit for a decent enough amount that you might not want your DPS warrior in full DPS gear! In fact, he might be in tank gear, and even then, ultimately, he will be tanking a lot of damage. When he switches over during phase 3, how much DPS can he put out? More than if he were a prot warrior, but even then, probably not very impressive damage.
So this is where a feral druid truly shines. You bear form when you have to tank, then switch to cat form the rest of the fight and enjoy some very rogue-like dps!! This extends throughout every instance in the game and every boss I've ever fought so far (and I am quite progressed).
This is why when you analyze the roster of any good guild, you will see feral druids galore.. in instances like Caverns of Time: Hyjal Summit, waves and waves of trash-mobs come at you 16 at a time before finally you have a rather anti-climactic simple raid boss to kill which requires only 1-2 tanks. How can your raid handle 16 mobs at a time every 2-3 min with only 1-2 tanks? It's impossible. 4 might be the bare minimum number of tanks necessary to do it, but even my guild prefers to do it with 5. This is why druids are so great compared to DPS warriors. Even in a dps spec, your tanking abilities and ability to mitigate damage will be head and shoulders above a DPS spec'd warrior, yet as soon as you go into cat form, you can do nearly equal damage (if not more!).
To give you an idea, as a tank currently, I sport something like 34k armor, 20k hp, 52% dodge buffed, yet as soon as the boss comes, I'm 1 itemrack command away from instantly becoming a 3800ap, 44% crit, 8% hit rogue-wannabe. A warrior just cannot switch tanking to dps roles even close to that. That's not even counting the fact that every druid you bring entitles your raid to an in-combat rez and an innervate.
Every guildmaster must love feral druids, even ones who aren't feral druids themselves ;)
The reason why feral druids are so strong in end-game raiding is not only for their tanking ability, but more because of how strong the feral talent tree is.
Warriors have been complaining about this forever, but the fact remains that the druid feral tree is so compact that the same tanking spec you use is equally viable as a cat-form dps spec!
How does this affect raids? Well, simply put, a simple gear swap can change you from rogue-wanna-be to melee-tanking-god! This is very key for people wishing to min-max their raid. Most raids, starting as early as Karazhan involve a fight which starts off with multiple mobs and some sort of need for multiple tanks, but inevitably end with a single boss.
Well, say you have 2 protection warriors, tanking a simple fight such as Attumen the Huntsmen. During the 2nd phase where there is both a rider and a horse that need to be tanked, 1 warrior can tank each, no problem. But what happens during the 3rd phase, when there is only 1 boss to tank? The 2nd protection warrior goes to DPS. Very low DPS I might add.
Ok, alternative #2, you have 1 protection warrior and 1 dps warrior. Well, honestly, either of those mobs hit for a decent enough amount that you might not want your DPS warrior in full DPS gear! In fact, he might be in tank gear, and even then, ultimately, he will be tanking a lot of damage. When he switches over during phase 3, how much DPS can he put out? More than if he were a prot warrior, but even then, probably not very impressive damage.
So this is where a feral druid truly shines. You bear form when you have to tank, then switch to cat form the rest of the fight and enjoy some very rogue-like dps!! This extends throughout every instance in the game and every boss I've ever fought so far (and I am quite progressed).
This is why when you analyze the roster of any good guild, you will see feral druids galore.. in instances like Caverns of Time: Hyjal Summit, waves and waves of trash-mobs come at you 16 at a time before finally you have a rather anti-climactic simple raid boss to kill which requires only 1-2 tanks. How can your raid handle 16 mobs at a time every 2-3 min with only 1-2 tanks? It's impossible. 4 might be the bare minimum number of tanks necessary to do it, but even my guild prefers to do it with 5. This is why druids are so great compared to DPS warriors. Even in a dps spec, your tanking abilities and ability to mitigate damage will be head and shoulders above a DPS spec'd warrior, yet as soon as you go into cat form, you can do nearly equal damage (if not more!).
To give you an idea, as a tank currently, I sport something like 34k armor, 20k hp, 52% dodge buffed, yet as soon as the boss comes, I'm 1 itemrack command away from instantly becoming a 3800ap, 44% crit, 8% hit rogue-wannabe. A warrior just cannot switch tanking to dps roles even close to that. That's not even counting the fact that every druid you bring entitles your raid to an in-combat rez and an innervate.
Every guildmaster must love feral druids, even ones who aren't feral druids themselves ;)
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