Hello all, I specifically created this thread in the hopes of gaining some real feedback from people here that clear content and know a little bit about how to raid, especially at the NiM level.

 

And I've hit a little bit of a snag. With our raid group that I lead, I personally only have very small ideas as to why our group struggles so hard with the content, where none of my suspicions or possible reasons would warrant me to bring them to light.

 

To put it simply, I don't "say what's need to be said" because I am still unsure of what needs to actually be said. I am equally torn between whether our problem comes in a weak link in the healers, the tanks, or the DPS, so I come here to post a few videos in hopes of getting some feedback from you guys.

 

Below, I have the link to pretty much every clear we have done on Youtube, ranging from our NiM EC clears at 55 to HM SV and even of our Dreadful Entity clear. The guild is Contra Sanctus on the Imperial side, so if you see any video on Youtube with that guild name, it's us.

 

So if any elite player would like to take a look and maybe give some feedback as to what they see as the weakness in our raid group, by all means, comment away! Be rude, be mean and hurtful, whatever you feel gets the message across.

 

As long as you have a message beyond "quit the game", I would like to hear it no matter what way it's put.

Link to a search query that has most of our operation clears that have been filmed

 

 

 

Obviously, I believe the last two links give a better insight into our group, as to what the problem may be. Of course, I know the various reasons for things such as "enrage always = bad DPS", but I want to discover what the true cause for weakness is and I don't want to point to specific weak link unless I am positive it needs to actually be said.

 

Thanks guys, I look forward to hearing from you! Also, just let me know if you want to know the exact team comp for any kill, as I can easily fill you in on what we brought to the event.

Edited February 2, 2014 by ZooMzy

Good starting point is to have everybody in your raid group run torparse or parsec. Numbers don't lie. You can see who has the weakest dps, who has the most ehps, how much damage tanks are taking and from what source, and more stuff like that. Parses are a great way for you to dissect the fight bit by bit, and are always the best starting point to see how each individual in a raid performed.

Good starting point is to have everybody in your raid group run torparse or parsec. Numbers don't lie. You can see who has the weakest dps, who has the most ehps, how much damage tanks are taking and from what source, and more stuff like that. Parses are a great way for you to dissect the fight bit by bit, and are always the best starting point to see how each individual in a raid performed.

 

not standing in red circles while yelling at others to get out of that same red circle is also a good thing, not mentioning any names.

 

and on a more serious note, its hard to tell whats happening without log files, but it seems you left thundering blast on cd too much and hardcasted cl at least once.

Edited February 2, 2014 by akabane_k

Hey, only looked at the Grob'thok video. Can't comment much on most of the classes there but for your mara, unless I completely missed it, I don't recall seeing the satiated debuff so it looks as though he/she didn't use bloodthirst. It buffs damage/healing by 15% for 15 seconds; it should be used. Your fight lasted long enough that you could have used it twice. Looks like they are in ataru form on the carnage tree, due to the amount of adds that spawn rage is pretty neat for this fight.

 

Your offtank needs to drag those annoying pigs to the boss. If they're miles away not only can your melee dps not reach them, your other DPS are wasting time killing them and in the meantime nobody is hitting the boss = enrage. Drag the pigs to the boss every time if possible and both boss and pigs can be nuked with aoes. Damage is more efficient that way. Good luck!

Edited February 2, 2014 by Dractonis

Good starting point is to have everybody in your raid group run torparse or parsec. Numbers don't lie. You can see who has the weakest dps, who has the most ehps, how much damage tanks are taking and from what source, and more stuff like that. Parses are a great way for you to dissect the fight bit by bit, and are always the best starting point to see how each individual in a raid performed.

 

Right, but again, I'm still having trouble dissecting the true problem. Sometimes, I try to call out HPS was too low and the healers need to step up their game. Then I discover in the next pull, DPS running behind different obstacles, blatantly positioning themselves in a manner that forces the healers to fix LoS issues and forcing them to get out of range of the tanks, and thus, low heal numbers.

 

As a group, I'm just not entirely sure, especially since I'm not exactly sure how to come up with numbers each group should be hitting outside of DPS, especially not for say, what kind of mitigation a tank should be doing in HM content like DF and DP. So, given that the numbers are more likely a problem across all three areas (2-3k in HPS for both healers, 1.9-2.9k in DPS for certain DPS), I'm looking for more of an insightful look into how we play, as the numbers only tell us what the resulting problem in the group is, not a solution or where the playstyle is weak at.

 

EDIT: I'll get some log files here shortly, after the next couple of posts, and throw them up for viewing.

Edited February 2, 2014 by ZooMzy

Looks like they are in ataru form on the carnage tree, due to the amount of adds that spawn rage is pretty neat for this fight.

 

Your offtank needs to drag those annoying pigs to the boss. If they're miles away not only can your melee dps not reach them, your other DPS are wasting time killing them and in the meantime nobody is hitting the boss = enrage. Drag the pigs to the boss every time if possible and both boss and pigs can be nuked with aoes. Damage is more efficient that way. Good luck!

 

Stop encouraging this "strategy." This the wrong way to kill the boss and a group that struggles with the encounter will struggle harder if you try to get them to AOE when they don't need to.

 

Offtank kills the ugnaughts by running them through lava. Nobody else needs to touch them.

 

http://www.twitch.tv/fridge_sa/c/3200413

Edited February 2, 2014 by FridgeLM

Stop encouraging this "strategy." This the wrong way to kill the boss.

 

Offtank kills the ugnaughts by running them through lava. Nobody else needs to touch them.

 

http://www.twitch.tv/fridge_sa/c/3200413

 

Looks like he's having difficulty even bringing them to the boss let alone navigating lava trails ijs. Both work fine.

Just a few thoughts. Some general, some specific

 

1. Agree wholeheartedly with the parser. Some people (I don't think you're one of them) think parsers are evil and that once everyone's DPS is known and public, the person on the bottom is going to be shamed out of the group. It's only like that if you want it to be. Ask your group to download a parser and get into it so that you know where the "problem" could be. Grob'thok can be killed with 3 DPS and not enrage, so the fact that you have the full complement and hit enrage ~15% without any prolonged pipe smash phases (i.e. the tank positioning was more than sufficient) means it's a DPS problem. And as a good DPS you have to know when it's your fault. If you know who your lowest DPS is, when necessary, you can assign them tasks that allow your higher DPS characters more up-time on bosses. Parsers help you determine who is good at what. And that information is priceless.

 

2. If you're leading, you need to be mindful of the little nuances of specs. I'm not saying you should know how to play each roll of each member in your group (because that's impossible) but I find it very beneficial to be able to speak with other raid members and ask them what their rotation is. Maybe they are going X-X-Y, when it's way better to go X-Y-X and by having an open conversation about it you'll get some more DPS out of people.

 

3. Open gear discussion. You're clearing some HM content, so clearly you must be somewhat geared. Make sure the group is aware of which augments are "best", and are trying their best to avoid high endurance mods/enhancements

 

4. Re: Grob'thok specifically. You spend entirely too much time on the adds. The Jugg co-tank should be able to kill them on his own, with maybe a little AoE help from the Merc, or one Sorc.

 

Around the 3:00 mark I notice the Sniper using Shatter Shot, but you already have Tracer Missile and an off-tank Jugg, who also appears to occasionally put his debuff on Grob'thok (rotationally) after he leaps back. It's a super small thing, but it's a couple of GCDs wasted, and kind of speaks to general "raid awareness". Armor debuffs don't stack. The merc/jugg will put their debuff on rotationally, there's no need for the Sniper to do so as well.

Edited February 2, 2014 by JMagee

Just a few thoughts. Some general, some specific

 

1. Agree wholeheartedly with the parser. Some people (I don't think you're one of them) think parsers are evil and that once everyone's DPS is known and public, the person on the bottom is going to be shamed out of the group. It's only like that if you want it to be. Ask your group to download a parser and get into it so that you know where the "problem" could be. Grob'thok can be killed with 3 DPS and not enrage, so the fact that you have the full complement and hit enrage ~15% without any prolonged pipe smash phases (i.e. the tank positioning was more than sufficient) means it's a DPS problem. And as a good DPS you have to know when it's your fault. If you know who your lowest DPS is, when necessary, you can assign them tasks that allow your higher DPS characters more up-time on bosses. Parsers help you determine who is good at what. And that information is priceless.

 

2. If you're leading, you need to be mindful of the little nuances of specs. I'm not saying you should know how to play each roll of each member in your group (because that's impossible) but I find it very beneficial to be able to speak with other raid members and ask them what their rotation is. Maybe they are going X-X-Y, when it's way better to go X-Y-X and by having an open conversation about it you'll get some more DPS out of people.

 

3. Open gear discussion. You're clearing some HM content, so clearly you must be somewhat geared. Make sure the group is aware of which augments are "best", and are trying their best to avoid high endurance mods/enhancements

 

4. Re: Grob'thok specifically. You spend entirely too much time on the adds. The Jugg co-tank should be able to kill them on his own, with maybe a little AoE help from the Merc, or one Sorc.

 

Around the 3:00 mark I notice the Sniper using Shatter Shot, but you already have Tracer Missile and an off-tank Jugg, who also appears to occasionally put his debuff on Grob'thok (rotationally) after he leaps back. It's a super small thing, but it's a couple of GCDs wasted, and kind of speaks to general "raid awareness". Armor debuffs don't stack. The merc/jugg will put their debuff on rotationally, there's no need for the Sniper to do so as well.

 

And see, that's my point. For the Grob Thok fight, we specifically had our DPS turn to AOEing the adds to help our off tank, as the whole raid consensus was that the adds were not dying fast enough in the lava trails and he needed DPS help. This was a Jug tank, if that narrows anything down at all.

 

So the problem there would not exactly be lack of DPS, it would be the offtank's inability to kill the adds. Which, in pretty much every situation, I find myself attempting to call the problem on something such as "lack of DPS" and discover the problem is caused by something else entirely outside of their control "offtank can't kill adds on his own".

 

And here we go, I have some logs for my personal numbers to see if this helps. Here are some numbers that we are hitting currently on Corrupter Zero HM, as we have been stuck on him for over 2 months now and just recently got him into the burn phase:

 

 

Corrupter Zero HM One of Seven Wipes Raid Numbers (Some players refused to get in, although thankfully, both healers were in the Parsec)

 

Corrupter Zero HM Personal Tank Mitigation Numbers

 

One of many of the pulls, as most of them were barely above a minute and not worth reporting.

 

However, we did manage to get to the final burn phase, where we died from people getting owned by the laser phase:

Corrupter Zero HM Progressive Pull Raid Numbers

 

Corrupter Zero HM Personal Damage Mitigation Numbers

 

I am Zuhara, a sin tank, running around with full 78s except for the 72 hilt and have the 2 piece set bonus. Am I taking too much damage in these pulls based off the mitigation stats? The last boss fight is a little high, as I was actually tanking the melee mob with the boss at one point, where I literally only survived thanks to Deflection hahaha

Hello all, I specifically created this thread in the hopes of gaining some real feedback from people here that clear content and know a little bit about how to raid, especially at the NiM level.

 

And I've hit a little bit of a snag. With our raid group that I lead, I personally only have very small ideas as to why our group struggles so hard with the content, where none of my suspicions or possible reasons would warrant me to bring them to light.

 

To put it simply, I don't "say what's need to be said" because I am still unsure of what needs to actually be said. I am equally torn between whether our problem comes in a weak link in the healers, the tanks, or the DPS, so I come here to post a few videos in hopes of getting some feedback from you guys.

 

Below, I have the link to pretty much every clear we have done on Youtube, ranging from our NiM EC clears at 55 to HM SV and even of our Dreadful Entity clear. The guild is Contra Sanctus on the Imperial side, so if you see any video on Youtube with that guild name, it's us.

 

So if any elite player would like to take a look and maybe give some feedback as to what they see as the weakness in our raid group, by all means, comment away! Be rude, be mean and hurtful, whatever you feel gets the message across.

 

As long as you have a message beyond "quit the game", I would like to hear it no matter what way it's put.

Link to a search query that has most of our operation clears that have been filmed

 

 

 

Obviously, I believe the last two links give a better insight into our group, as to what the problem may be. Of course, I know the various reasons for things such as "enrage always = bad DPS", but I want to discover what the true cause for weakness is and I don't want to point to specific weak link unless I am positive it needs to actually be said.

 

Thanks guys, I look forward to hearing from you! Also, just let me know if you want to know the exact team comp for any kill, as I can easily fill you in on what we brought to the event.

 

What would make this process a whole lot smoother is you posting your raid group makeup, including specs. Some fights are much harder purely because you decided that 4 concealment operatives were a good idea for Tyrans and stuff like that. So that would give us an idea of what you are working with.

 

Secondly, as general as this sounds, it does have it's base in truth; Your tanks will dictate how the fight goes in nearly all aspects. The tanks are the people who will move the boss as you see fit and having a decent set of tanks up top who know when to use cool downs, when to swap, how to hold aggro, how to not cleave everyone in the raid amongst many other things will make your progression a whole lot smoother as well. If the tanks position your boss better, then your dps can spend less time moving and more time dosing. If your tank takes less damage because they are using cool downs in a smart fashion, then when one of your dps takes a hit because the frontal cone of Nefra was just too tempting, it's not a huge deal. A lot of raiding problems stem from the tanks being bad. Now you have only really posted clears so we can't actually see the mess ups where things have gone to pieces and you are wondering why, so we can only comment on how your tanks did during that particular pull and really have no idea about their skill level whatsoever, so more information is really required about that. There are many people in swtor who can sit there and get hit by a big beastie and everything is fine, but it's only a few people that can make magic happen when the going gets tough. Do fun little training exercises like going through an operation without ever stopping, no ready checks, no healing up at the end of the fights (except to rez) and just hit as many trash pulls as you can without wiping. TFB is a good one for this as the content is still semi relevant for those that aren't full 78's and even if you are full 78's just pull 2 mobs at once and see how well you go. Tanks that can do everything without their "oh no" buttons like taunts and cool downs will become less reliant on them when raiding and then can learn when the best time to hit those buttons in regards to being proactive about it.

 

DPS are next, and from the Grob'thok fight, you can pretty much tell the cause, as you hit an enrage timer. The dps were slow on that fight, casting orbitals 3 seconds into the Grob trapped by the magnetic thing is poor pre planning, you know where the boss is going because there is a nice little circle on the ground which informs you where the bondage will happen, pre casting your orbitals and then having a full on burn at every one of those points in time while he takes extra damage is just the greatest thing you can do as a dps. The faster you kill something, the less time you have for stuff to go wrong. It's hard to know just what is going on with your dps as I don't have AMR's and parses in front of me to nitpick at, but tightening rotations and knowing how to plan for burn phases whilst maintaining enough sustained dps is a key ideal for every dps ever. One very picky thing that I did notice in that Grob fight, was that the sorc was killing an add whilst Grob was trapped, which is a fairly big no no. You have a priority system that happens in operations that basically says that you kill the thing that will have the highest chance of killing you first. The add was not going to do enough damage to your sorc within those 10 seconds of burning that your healers couldn't keep up. What you should have done was stunned the add and then proceeded to burn the boss. Simple little things like that will all add up over the course of the fight because you have 8 people that are all dealing with different things at different times and if they delay things even by a little bit, it becomes noticeable just through the sheer quantity of these events.

 

TL:DR version: No one is ever going to put out the maximum dps possible, even if they think they have had a flawless run, they can do better, if you have to continually move in a fight, you're doing it wrong, if you require lots of healing during a fight, you're doing it wrong (exceptions of course). Every time you go into a boss fight, you should be learning how the boss moves, what things to watch out for and applying that knowledge to give yourself the best chance at pulling off the most dps you can.

 

Healers are funny. Healing in this game is so ridiculously easy on average but occasionally requires massive burst healing, a good healer can switch from maintenance healing to burst healing within a couple of seconds, and a bad healer would have been dead long ago. Healing is easy and relaxed for quite a bit of the content and even in NiM content, the only reason why the healing starts out so freaking hard is because people haven't refined and tightened their strategies so people are taking lots of damage that they probably shouldn't be, and you will notice quite a large decrease in the healing as your team gets more comfortable with the fight. That said, because healing is relatively easy and straightforward, no one should ever die. So lets have a look at some contributors to this.

 

Bad tanks. Poorly optimised tanks are surprisingly not a huuuuge issue these days because of the massive health pool you are able to get and the cooldoowns attached. So someone having iffy stats (as long as the stats aren't stupid like 0 def and 1 absorb to get 55k health) it shouldn't make a massive impact to your healing, your healers may have to work a little bit harder but they shouldn't be overworked in the first place. So the bad tank statement refers to the tank losing threat to a non mechanic related issue at any point in the fight, not swapping at the right time, many many other reasons including the ones I listed above. Tanks are bad, healers get overworked, every little thing suddenly becomes a mountain.

 

Bad Dps. Dps that don't pull their weight will cause more healing to be required. Dps that love the smell of lava and fire and want to get all warm and toasty and realise a bit too late that fire is actually not a fun place to be chilling in the middle of will increase your healing required.

 

Bad healers. Every healer has a fairly straightforward rotation, usually 2 abilities that interact with each other via buffs. These rotations are not hard to figure out, the only people that really have to ever worry about RNG are operatives, but even then, when rng decides to throw poo at them, they have so many other ways of proccing TA that it's not even close to being an issue. So healers that are bad will cause more healing to be required. Learn your basic rotations, then add the filler abilities into it. you don't have an infinite pool of resources, but you have the next best thing, an infinitely regenerating finite pool of resources. WoW was basically a race to kill the boss before you ran out of resources, swtor is not. Being aware of just how much you will actually need to heal in order to get someone stabilised is a key piece of knowledge to have. If your dps just got hit for 80% of their health due to a mechanic, there is a very good chance they won't get hit again for quite a while. Your tank however is whimpering in the corner because he is at 10% and has been for the last 10seconds, and is just waiting for an unmitigated attack to kill him. Tank is priority 90% of the time. Dps are expendable if they are bads.

 

Anyways, without much more information about your raid group including failure videos, it's hard to nitpick accurately and these are just general pieces of advice. there are guides around that give you advice on strategies for each boss (Stuff like Suckafish's DP/DF HM strat guides and KBN's Cooldown guide for Assassins) so look them up and practice being an actual team where people know what they are doing and also know what other people are doing.

 

Wall of F***ing Text.

Right, but again, I'm still having trouble dissecting the true problem. Sometimes, I try to call out HPS was too low and the healers need to step up their game. Then I discover in the next pull, DPS running behind different obstacles, blatantly positioning themselves in a manner that forces the healers to fix LoS issues and forcing them to get out of range of the tanks, and thus, low heal numbers.

 

As a group, I'm just not entirely sure, especially since I'm not exactly sure how to come up with numbers each group should be hitting outside of DPS, especially not for say, what kind of mitigation a tank should be doing in HM content like DF and DP. So, given that the numbers are more likely a problem across all three areas (2-3k in HPS for both healers, 1.9-2.9k in DPS for certain DPS), I'm looking for more of an insightful look into how we play, as the numbers only tell us what the resulting problem in the group is, not a solution or where the playstyle is weak at.

 

EDIT: I'll get some log files here shortly, after the next couple of posts, and throw them up for viewing.

 

Well, from what it sounds like, you need to make sure all your raid members are up to par with your expectations. Such as gearing correctly, knowing their rotations and jobs, and understanding raid mechanics. Depending on your raid composition, you can have a multitude of strategies that optimize each raid members class/job to the maximum efficiency. From the videos and logs, there is a lot of room for improvement on every member of your raid.

i run an average group and we just managed to clear all HM content.

 

one thing that came out from our progression was that Tanks needed to improve. what was impossible for them (I asked them to do something and they were like *** you on about - its too hard) now is easy to do.

 

Look at your tanks first in fight for fight basis. make sure they do everything that is required to improve DPS uptime on the boss, make DPS live easier by stacking adds on the boss, or keep boss facing away from group. Help healers by adjusting your tactics so group can stack - makes AoE healing much easier and though so much smoother.

 

Both mentioned fights Gobth'rok and Corruptor Zero hugely benefit from stacking at the back of the boss for AoE heals.

 

DPS - look at each DPS and ask them to tell you how much accuracy, crit, surge, alacrity they have. All DPS should be >99.5% accuracy and no more then one enchantment with crit.

Another thing is that some DPS classes need to change build for certain fights until you have enough DPS so you can take a hit on one or two players not doing their most. Gobth'rok was one that when we first tried to kill him i was in SS as sharpshooter and was doing poor 2.3k I swapped to doting class (due to interrupts to my skills like speed shot) and i DPS went up to 2.9k. From hitting enrage to easily killing it from one pull to another. Also if you have sniper in your group (or two) you should get then to go hybrid build and when small adds land all they have to do is DoT with skill that is same as Sharp Bomb, then use one granage on them and tank will do the rest. Same with Tyrans in DP, Dotting class will do much better on this fight then stright up damage class.

 

Healers - look at logs why your raid is wiping - too much damage on group from adds, off tank not grabbing enough agro on adds, boss killing people - tanks not holding aggro on boss. In general unless you healers are bad, this should be least of your problems. For corruptor zero fight, get one of your DPS (sage) to dispell DoT from chest laser skill which will help healers a lot. Stack on the boss for AoE heals.

 

I will watch some of the movies when on faster internet connection and will comment on what we do different to make the fights easier. But having DPS logs from failed attempts, and maybe some videos from each fight that you struggling with will help a lot to help you.

Just a quick thought, if you are constantly running Sin and Jugg, get the Sin to deal with the adds. The damage from Grob is not hard to heal (if you think the Jugg is under geared) and a Sin will have much easier time keeping threat on the adds with Discharge used on cd. The idea is not to have the tank DPS the adds down but to simply take them to the lava pools, the adds die very fast if they are kept there. Let the tank even run through or jump across the lava. As long as he is not standing in it, he should not take much damage. I tank this by 'dancing' around the lava until all adds die and then get ready to hit the next group.

 

Playing into strengths and weaknesses of each class is something you may need to do as raid leader and if you are not sure there is wealth of information around.

 

Also I noticed that the Sorc is a clicker and moves camera with keyboard. While I am not going to go 'lol noob' it is generally a sub optimal way to play even if less crucial in PvE than in PvP. Try to have him practice rotation on a dummy only using key binds and see if that makes any difference to him and your group. His rotation is also a bit off, particularly not using Thundering Blast on cd which is where majority of Lightning damage comes from. Furthermore casting FL without proc, casting Chain Lightning without proc and using Shock rotationally as well a for some reason Force Slow on a boss with Immunity. All these mistakes add up and lower his potential DPS. Swtorboard.org has some excellent and detailed guides up on DPS.

 

Having logs from all DPS would help us fine tune their rotations too or at least see who is 'weak link'. In the meantime just have them look up either Swtorboard or Dulfy and see how far off they are from optimal rotations.

 

Healers seem to be okay but this is not a taxing fight to heal so hard to tell. I can't speak for the Sorc due to unknown usage of Static Barrier which lowers shown HPS/EHPS considerably (ST healing loss of cca 400 HPS when used as soon as Deionised debuff wears off, fully effective).

 

It is hard to tell if you are taking too much damage, but have a look at this and see how close you are to those mitigation ratings and change your gear accordingly. You are also saying that you run with 78s. Provided you bought these with comms, the mods and enhancements are worse than 72 token ones.

 

EDIT: looking through the videos linked I would have to agree with BreakingNews that there is a lot of room for improvement for most people taking those videos. Again, just have them do some research on both their class and the fights.

Edited February 2, 2014 by Darth_Dreselus

As other posters have mentioned, seeing wipes often tells you much more about a team's weaknesses and areas for improvement than simply looking at the clears and trying to pick out the shortcomings. With wipes you get a chance to see where the failures are occurring as well as the team members' ability to adapt to new strategies in real time.

 

That being said, not a lot of people post their progression wipes online. However, a great way to gain some insight into your team is to have an outside individual run some operations with you. If you know someone in another guild that is HM DF/DP farming, perhaps has cleared some nightmare content, and they are able to bring an Alt to fill in for a missing member on your team some time, they would probably be able to give you a tonne of feedback with just an hour or two of gameplay. Ideally it would be someone who is operations leader for their team and has a sense for total team performance and good trouble shooting skills.

 

I know that when I tank or heal with someone else, I have a pretty solid sense of their ability within a boss fight or two, especially with healing, where so much of the experience is how a fight "feels" as it progresses.

 

So reach out to a trusted friend or two outside the guild and see if you can fit them into some runs.

 

P.S. And for Grob'Thok, the off-tank (ideally Assassin) takes care of the adds on their own by repeatedly running them through the lava pools. The rest of the team should help the off-tank by dropping the lava pools in a helpful pattern. A small circle works very well, so that the tank can hop in and out across the circle, avoiding as many lava stacks on themselves while dragging the adds through it repeatedly. DPS should basically never need to touch the adds. So you see, the root of the enrage problem is "off-tank not killing adds," but they're not alone in that responsibility. The lava pools need to be placed logically by everyone else on the team.

i am not sure on Gobthrok "tank need to kill adds". we never do it that way but its just us.

I dot adds, use grenades and usualy other DPS adds their little bit of damage to it.

Commnado will do Mortal Volley on CD when adds get close to boss, our two sentinel's would use sabre throw on the adds. Off tank would try to grab then if he can.

 

There is a lot of ways of killing this boss, for one DPS on adds to only tank killing them thru lava.

 

But knowing who is struggling most on current content and helping them to improve should be your priority.

 

But they need to want to improve. so they need to all upload logs so you (or us) can look at it and advise them what they are doing wrong. If they refuse to upload logs or don't want your help them its your call, wipe till all get fed up with your group or replace them as they don't want to help yourself and your group. I hope you will not have to do it.

 

I spend a lot of time on dummies with DPS from my group when they are not sure are they doing rotations well etc. I don't mind doing it as i know this will benefit my team in the long run. I have looked thru healer's healing logs when needed, and helped them to improve. Same with tanks on threat etc. its just a case of how much you want to help them to improve and how much they want to improve.

i am not sure on Gobthrok "tank need to kill adds". we never do it that way but its just us.

I dot adds, use grenades and usualy other DPS adds their little bit of damage to it.

Commnado will do Mortal Volley on CD when adds get close to boss, our two sentinel's would use sabre throw on the adds. Off tank would try to grab then if he can.

 

There is a lot of ways of killing this boss, for one DPS on adds to only tank killing them thru lava.

 

One way is faster and better, one way is slower and worse. It is faster for dps to spec for single target and focus only the boss, leaving the adds to the offtank. If ugnaughts so much as touch the lava, they get a permanent debuff that guarantees that they will die. Yes, if you have sufficient dps you can screw around and pad meters with aoe, but that is not the fastest way to kill the boss.

 

For a group that actually hit the enrage on Grob'thok, I would never recommend they try aoe. I don't recommend it for any group unless they specifically want to mess around.

Thanks again guys, I really appreciate the feedback.

 

I'll be taking more of a look into specifically changing things up on how to do things, possibly coming up with some PvP oriented exercises to train raid awareness (overall, I think that's our biggest flaw based on your responses, as people are easily overwhelmed in our group and reaction time is very slow for some).

 

Also, I'll be sure to get some videos up from our "wipe nights" with more detailed raid logs, only problem is that I have to actually get a recorder of them now. Originally, I had hoped the videos above, especially in the methods that we cleared them, would give a better insight because although they were clears, they were still very inefficient and very ineffective means of killing the boss.

 

I'll let you guys know in a future post when I have taken the time to upload, thanks again!

Edited February 2, 2014 by ZooMzy

General strategy and tanking can certainly help as others have mentioned, but here are some comments about the two people making the videos. I think somehow cultivating an atmosphere where it's okay to make suggestions and discuss improvement is going to be important.

 

1. The dps sorc making the draxus and grobthok videos needs some work on rotation. Single target: force lightning is being cast without the proc (better just to spam lightning strike), and other non-optimal things. AOE: I don't really play a dps sorc, but I think you want to force storm, wait for proc, then hit chain lightning as soon as it procs (i.e. break the force storm channel --- force isn't an issue for lightning sorcs). The sorc in the video is usually waiting for the end of the force storm to hit the instant chain lightning and/or hard casting chain lightning to start. Also, altogether too much time is spent single target when there are 3+ adds. Maybe others who are more familiar can confirm my suggestions.

 

Single target rotation priority: 1. Keep up your dot. 2. Thundering blast and crushing darkness on cooldown. 3. Chain lightning and force lightning on proc (you delay using it if it's time to do item 1 or 2). 4. Fill with lightning strike.

 

Also, maybe you skip crushing darkness when you're taking damage (I don't really play a lightning sorc, as I said) due to the pushback.

 

2. The healing sorc making the S&V videos: He doesn't cast while moving, and even when still seems to have low APM and to sit doing nothing occasionally. When nothing too drastic is going on, you should still be casting usually. If he's doing this so he doesn't run into force issues, he should be tapping more (when nothing big is going on is a good time) and putting a bubble on himself to regain the life, say. Or contributing dps if the healing is really easy. Some sort of APM practice would be good, as would practice casting while moving.

 

Also, he's delaying casting innervate too much sometimes (even casting dark infusion when it's available), which should be cast roughly on cooldown whenever it's still needed. I have heard of healing styles involving saving it in case burst is needed (I don't personally do this unless people are nearly topped off), but when multiple people are near half health is not a time to save it.

 

----

 

All this is not to criticize them too much or anything; they're doing various things right. As I said above, somehow cultivating acceptance of constructive criticism will be key to improving your group.

Edited February 2, 2014 by cxten

Hitting enrage on Grob'Thok means your dps are slacking. A lot. Theres no need for live dps-meter (like you said, some refused), but everyone should upload logs after raid to compare. Because someone is doing something wrong. I'm not saying to point fingers at low dps, just help them realize they are underperforming so they can improve their own play. There are a lot of players who think they are doing okay, and doesn't realize they can improve a LOT.

For all those commenting, please recognize that the Grob'thok video posted is our first clear, not a representative sample of our raid group. We haven't hit rage once since that video was shot. Thanks and have a nice day.