I've been away for over a week on a family vacation. I returned last night only say hello to my guild as I'm leaving in 2 days for another vacation.:grin:

While I was on, someone whispered me. They needed a tank for heroic SV. My last run thru hSV took 3+ hours (that's right, 3+ hours). And that was a full guild run. This was a pug. I think 2 of the 5 were from the same guild (but none were from my guild). As such I was a bit concerned (felt my skills/gear must be inadequate for hSV). I asked if they had CC. And they had 3 (mage, rogue and warlock [good for first boss]). I agreed with a warning that I would leave in 2 hours if it wasn't finished.

I thought I was a bit sloppy, but we finished in 55 minutes with 1 wipe (on the first boss)! What a difference good DPS can make. I have always suspected that many in my casual non-raiding guild were a bit weak on skill, but this was a complete affirmation. As there is no way I played that much better on this run than I did on the last (I had 2 CC on the first run as well).

So, let me be the first to give a big hug to all the good DPS'rs everywhere. And, of course, the healers (he saved our butts a couple of times when the mage/warlock went a bit too heavy on the DPS).

Yes ... good dps pug are hard to find but when they come around it is very nice.

yeah good dps, esp dps with cc being so important.

its always nice to find a good mage or hunter and try to grp with them in future.

and its also nice to find out the ones you dont want to grp with again ! like the several dps recently that I, as the tank have out dps'ed :p

like the several dps recently that I, as the tank have out dps'ed :p

should never ever happen :nono:

like the several dps recently that I, as the tank have out dps'edOn a last minute Kara guild run (think guild pug), I was the "off-tank". I was tops in DPS thru the trash before Moroes. We never did get Moroes down.

FWIW, which damage meter should I use?

should never ever happen :nono:
indeed it should not !

but it has....a pally, lock and 2 hunters from memory.

On a last minute Kara guild run (think guild pug), I was the "off-tank". I was tops in DPS thru the trash before Moroes. We never did get Moroes down.

FWIW, which damage meter should I use?
i think mine is called recap ?

I like Recount for damage, dps, hot uptime, dot uptime, damage taken, etc. It's really powerful and automatically breaks things down by fight.

Having GOOD DPS is light night and day. When they're playing their class to the utmost of their abilities it's really amazing how smoothly a run can go.

I had a group like that once. We ran Black Morass. It was a guild 4-some looking for a 5th. We ran BM with no dedicated healer. Warrior, Mage, Rogue, Shadow Priest, and my Shadow Priest. The dps was insane. We downed all the Pit Lords in like 30 seconds each, and the bosses like a minute. The warriors health and my mana never got below 70%. We actually had time to rest between portals. I have never had a group like that in all of my WoW time.

Recount! It has pie charts! Also, you can review someone's death and see heals/dmg taken and stuff, figure out why they died.

Good dps but as a healer I gotta say I appreciate a tank that can hold aggro on multiple targets even more.

I managed a pug on saturday with a hunter geared in resto shammy kit and a talent spec that must have been determined by closing eyes and mashing buttons.

Granted he was only level 65 to everyone else's 70 but couldn't outdamage our nobbie, new level 70 Tank. I took in my hunter and ended up doing 75% of the group DPS.

I did end up sending him a bunch of kit that while isn't great is a damn sight more suitable for a hunter than healing gear :D

I managed a pug on saturday with a hunter geared in resto shammy kit and a talent spec that must have been determined by closing eyes and mashing buttons.It is amazing how often this happens (and it is not just a hunter thing, I see druids with stupid specs/gear as well). Some folks just don't bother to "figure out" what is best for their class/spec. To be honest, you cannot figure this out just using in-game information. You have to look elsewhere (like these forums) for this type of information. So, is it Blizzard's fault?

Unfortunately, for most (all??) classes the solo leveling experience is such that you are not forced to understand these sort of details. Simple button mashing will do.

Unfortunately, for most (all??) classes the solo leveling experience is such that you are not forced to understand these sort of details. Simple button mashing will do.

I agree completely. I've always said that a monkey could get to level 70 in this game. The game itself is not difficult--it's playing it WELL that is difficult. When push comes to shove, it is painfully clear who has done their research on their class, and who hasn't!

Hunter mechanics suck and aren't explained in game well at all so I give them a bit more leeway then other classes (main is a hunter doing ~1400dps in T5 for some context). Like you all mentioned it is the little things that make such a difference. I mean it is great when a mage sheeps his marked target but when it happens as the mob is getting to the pally tank.... The ability/inability for folks to adjust when something gets out of whack and the wrong target gets CCed simply amazes me. "I know it was sheeped/trapped/seducced but it was next in the kill order..."

The other day I was in basically a PUG where everyone had Omen. I about fell out of my chair in shock.

The other day I was in basically a PUG where everyone had Omen. I about fell out of my chair in shock.
yeah that happened for the first time to me last week and i also fell out of my chair.....

we try to run with people we know, most of whom raid with larger guilds so they all have omen.

but sometimes with proper pug people we get to the stage where just the 2 of us guildies have omen.

it was just the other day i learned /omen toggle

i've updated it like twice since the patch, but couldnt for the life of me figure out why it wasn't appearing when i joined a group...

im still a noob at heart

yeah good dps is a must for heroics.

last night we struggled a bit on the last boss in heroic Bot as our dps seemed a little low.

trouble was the lock we had was being out dps'ed by me, the tank :(

Hunter mechanics suck and aren't explained in game well at all so I give them a bit more leeway then other classes (main is a hunter doing ~1400dps in T5 for some context).

I'll give any main <70 leeway to have sucky gear and not really understand the game mechanics, especially if they're hunters. It may be the easiest class to suck balls playing and survive but I maintain it's the hardest class to understand and optimise properly without a degree in advanced maths :D That and people kind of expect Hunters to suck anyway so anything I can do to help other players break out of that mould has to be a good thing.

Having inflicted my resto druid on the guild for a SL run when it was newly 68 a couple of weeks back I still reckon I'll take sucky DPS over sucky healing. As with the hunter previously it took that event to give me a kick up the pants and come find sites like this one to get this healing stuff figured out like.

On the plus side our Resto hunter friend is still in touch asking for advice on kit and spec and playing better, so there may be one less huntard in WoW after in all!

Last night I had a guild run in hUB (one of, if not, the easiest heorics). Me (tank), Rogue, BM Hunter, DPS Pally, Resto Shammy.

According to recount, I was 2nd in DPS behind the Rogue. It was the Pally and Hunter's first heroic. We never wiped. In this case, I give all the love to the healer (he's great). I'm not sure how we managed with such low DPS, but it worked.

I took a handpicked A-Team to Magister's Terrace when it first came out. We farmed the non-heroic version for rep, and at one point managed to complete the entire instance in 17 minutes.

Good dps does make a huge difference :>


-Annikk

and at one point managed to complete the entire instance in 17 minutes.


im not saying that i dont believe you.
but that i want to see... ;)

what team-setup?

Feral Druid tank, Discipline Prest, BM hunter, enhancement shaman, affliction warlock.

It was literally chain pulling with no CC apart from the succbus mobs, which we enslaved and used to tank other mobs.

17 minutes was our very best time, an average time was 25-30 mins.


-Annikk

I believe it.

I have yet to even complete a full MgT run. I did make it past the PvP boss once (out of 3 different runs).

i've only done mgt once on normal and we did finally complete it after about 3 hrs !

not the best of grps for dps.

lock had trouble cc'ing anything. and was doing lower dps than me as the tank.

also i think only 1 of the grp had actually ever been there before.

i dint think we felt anything was particularly difficult - well until the last boss ! but we took a long time getting marking/ cc and pulling correct. also cc seemed to break a lot.

i'd love to go back with a good grp who know the place and give it a try on heroic.

Good groups are like night and day.
All heroic instances should take just about an hour to complete with a competent group. That is the standard I measure all runs by.
If your run took 3 hours for a heroic SV, that is just sad..., because you're better off finishing a complete kara run for 22 badges in 3 hours.

And a word of advice, don't run heroic MGT with a crappy group either. It is an unforgiving instance, which is tuned harder than your normal heroic dungeon.
Speaking of MGT, the best I've done that instance on heroic is in about 55 minutes with no 'tank' either. It was a hunter, a healing druid, healing priest, rogue and a mage. Once in a lifetime kind of thing, since everyone was geared and grreat.


Some rules of thumb for grouping with pugs, for heroic instances:

The healer shouldn't have less than 1200 healing - minimum.
I'd say 1700 is a nice number.
The tank should never outdps the dps while tanking. if your Recount mod shows anyone below you as the tank in dps, then your group is most likely in trouble.
Ideally everyone should be epically geared (read as: all purples), but of course the world isn't round..or is it? Therefore
the next best thing is I'd say, looks for people with mostly purples, and some blues. If they are coming into a heroic with greens, (maybe a trinket or two is ok or one piece at most) then you and the rest of the group are simply carrying that person through for free loot.
The last thing is CC. As a druid I'm like 99.9999% of the time never invited to join a group as a 'dps' despite advertising as such. This is because they are looking for this thing known as crowd control. The good groups can do it with minimum CC. It is all a trade off. (if your group can put out the damage then the group won't need much healing, on the other hand if you can't kill them fast enough you'll need more healing..etc) So what you do is look at your fellow members, like on Armoury or inspect them when you get into the instance and see the kind of game they are bringing to the table.
If say for example the warlock or mage doesn't have like at least 700 magical damage or whatever their highest number is (fire mage look for fire dmg sometimes this number is higher than the actual spell dmg, lock shadow dmg) then you'll be short on the dps. A good number to shoot for is over 1k spell damage. I have no clue what the hunter and rogues numbers should be for atk or whatever skill, someone fill that in.
But if your group is heavy on the CC classes, you might not need all the dmg. [keep in mind some mods don't show the correct +dmg while inspecting, I like to add +200 to whatever I see with my SuperInspect mod. Armory is more accurate but slower to load.]
The last thing is the 'tank', if you see that he can't hold aggro on at least two mobs, or constantly things are getting away from him while he is blissfully & ignorantly beating on that one mob while the rest is killing the healer and dps, you know you have a problem. A good group is a non-dead group.


Obviously all these are not written in stone, if the player is a skilled player that is a different story. I've seen a shaman with like 900healing do a heroic with no problems, but that means everyone else must be on top of their game.

because you're better off finishing a complete kara run for 22 badges in 3 hours.Damn. I just blew Dr. Pepper out my nose. A 4-5 boss Kara (thru Opera or Curator) run takes us ~3.5-4 hours. And that is with what I would call our "best" group (though one of the healers sucks balls always OOM and tops in over-heals) and 0-1 wipes. Not everyone who plays the game is a theorycrafter 733t type player. Many are clueless. Some just want to have fun.

I'm fine with a 2 night kara clear.

The tank should never outdps the dps while tanking. if your Recount mod shows anyone below you as the tank in dps, then your group is most likely in trouble.I'm beginning to wonder just how accurate Recount is if only one person (me, the tank) is running it. I have often thought a couple of our ranged DPS were just horrible (due to recount numbers), but one time I was helping as an off-healer on some Kara boss. And on that boss they were tops in DPS. So, I suspect in-game type DPS meters still have range issues. Now if I were to out DPS a rogue, I'd have issues.

Ideally everyone should be epically geared (read as: all purples), but of course the world isn't round..or is it?Where exactly do you get purples if not from Heroics and Kara? PvP? Seems like a chicken and the egg sort of scenario.

If I were to look, and I don't, I'd look for all lvl 70 blues (pieces with iLevel above 100) and one or two purples. Someone in all purples is overkill for most heroics.

Yea, i have yet to see a 3 hour Kara clear... i know i've been in groups that are completely able to do it, but afk'ers definitely take their toll...

the group i got started for my guild a while ago was Warrior mT, me oT, 2 mages, 2 hunters, rogue, spriest, lock, hpriest, and resto shammy... we would BURN through the front half, then seem to lose concentration after curator... people would afk, and THEN people would afk without saying anything... grrr... i think our best time was probably about 4 1/2 hours

So, I suspect in-game type DPS meters still have range issues. Now if I were to out DPS a rogue, I'd have issues.

I do too. Quite a few fights in BT one person will post their recount and I'm not even on it (tons of SUPER spread out fights), then a person closer to me posts theirs and I'm like #2 or #3. I see this less in heroics and kara as people are generally all clumped together, but it still happens.

Where exactly do you get purples if not from Heroics and Kara? PvP? Seems like a chicken and the egg sort of scenario.

Mix of crafted epics and PvP gear (which is out of control powerful atm... quite a few pieces are better than heroic epics)

If I were to look, and I don't, I'd look for all lvl 70 blues (pieces with iLevel above 100) and one or two purples. Someone in all purples is overkill for most heroics.

Unless you want to clear somewhere in an hour :) I still run heroics when I'm bored on my lock in T5 / T6 for something to do between the endless BG grinding and dailies. And cause I'm trying to get exalted everywhere for the enchanting recipies.

As skid said, Kara 3 hour clears are doable as long as no one afk's and people are chain pulling. Definitley more stressful than a casual run, and after 2.5 to 3 hours people start to lose concentration, get up and wander off etc.

The default logging range is set to 40. As a tank it is probable that you are capturing the DPS most of the time but a ranged DPS could well be out of range of another ranged dps. Set the combat logging range to 200 (max distance) and you should be good to go. Info on how to do that can be found on the WWS site. The WWS site is a great tool to do a post mortem of your raids too if you aren't already using it. The best part is all you have to do is type /combatlog at the start of the raid and /combatlog at the end.

http://wowwebstats.com/doc-combatlog.jsp

The default logging range is set to 40.Thanks for the info. I had always assumed that "range" thing was an addon issue, didn't realized it was an actual Wow setting.

Sort of surprised recount (what I was using to capture data) doesn't expose the setting?!?!

Damn. I just blew Dr. Pepper out my nose. A 4-5 boss Kara (thru Opera or Curator) run takes us ~3.5-4 hours. And that is with what I would call our "best" group (though one of the healers sucks balls always OOM and tops in over-heals) and 0-1 wipes. Not everyone who plays the game is a theorycrafter 733t type player. Many are clueless. Some just want to have fun.

I'm fine with a 2 night kara clear.

A couple things can slow you down that in the end really eat your time:

1) Wipes - goes without saying really.
2) Try to stick to planned breaks (ie every 3 bosses you take 3-5 min)
3) Explaining fights - that eats a HUGE amount of time if you have to do it for each bit of trash or a boss. If you have new folks try to focus on just what they need to know.
4) Don't wait until everyone is full mana to pull. Don't get me wrong, you don't want to bite off more than you can chew and this is probably more gear based element than skill but keep an eye your healer's mana. Especially if you have three.
5) Don't take forever marking mobs/setting up the pull. Folks should (eventually) know the mechanics of a particular pull and move accordingly - ie the spriest knowing they will need to shackle something on the next pull so moves to the front.
6) If you are running with 2 tanks make sure they leapfrog mobs. For example the 4 pulls on the way to Shade. Typical for my runs 2 are tanked and 2 are CCed. As the primary tank's target goes down, dps move to target 2, tank1 breaks CC on target3, target 2 goes down and tank 2 breaks CC on target 4. For S&Gs and because it is so close to the front door in case things go south try to clear the mobs to Attumen w/o leaving combat :).

Casual is casual no doubt but faster = more fun to me. Some people don't like that and you have to make sure the atmosphere is one where people don't feel like you are pushing them too much. Well you are pushing them but there is a difference between a little pressure to get people to step up or realizing they actually can heal if they don't have a full mana bar and them feeling like you are asking them to do something they aren't capable of.

3) Explaining fights - that eats a HUGE amount of time if you have to do it for each bit of trash or a boss. If you have new folks try to focus on just what they need to know.Every time we go there seems to 1-2 folks that have never been in there before. This does take some time.5) Don't take forever marking mobs/setting up the pull. Folks should (eventually) know the mechanics of a particular pull and move accordingly - ie the spriest knowing they will need to shackle something on the next pull so moves to the front.This is really a variant of #2. But otherwise, the leader marks, so marking itself goes fast.
6) If you are running with 2 tanks make sure they leapfrog mobs.We do that.Casual is casual no doubt but faster = more fun to me. Agree.

We can move fairly fast through Curator and the trash up to Aran. Sometimes we wipe on Moroes, but the rest are 1-shots (unless we get BBW in opera, that's a multi-wipe fiasco). From Aran on, thing really bog down. Usually 1-3 wipes per boss (except Chess). There are just too many things for each person to "watch" in those later fights, and in some cases one minor mistake causes a wipe (not avoiding that difficult to see snowstorm in Aran, beams on Netherspite, etc.). Doesn't help we usually have new folks on each run.

On my first and only Kara run with my new guild, we cleared all bosses in 4.5 hours. I found that quite acceptable. I don't think we ever wiped, just a few random deaths. We did the 5 min breaks every 3 bosses or so. Went very well. I can't wait to do it again. Ooh ooh, and I won Prince's dagger, Nathrezim Mindblade. I was so happy!

okay, i have to comment about my experience last night...

i was asked by a guildy to mT kara for a guild run for sorely needed gear... i responded by saying that id MUCH rather OT, and then mT on bosses (i don't have to think very much that way)...

bottom line is that the run ended up taking about 7 hours and we didn't get Prince down... between afk's, and people having to leave, and having to replace them, and dc's, and trash wipes because the spriest seemingly refused to shackle... it was pretty painful...

i DO have to be honest about one wipe on shade though... i moved during flame wreath (le gasp!) i definitely know better, and i could have sworn that i didn't move, but sure enough, i saw myself bouncing off the ceiling :(

funny thing is that no matter how many wipes i saved (which was more than one) by embracing my druidic nature and springing into action, vent was filled with comments like: "dude, i've seen shirts that say DON'T MOVE DURING FLAME WREATH" etc etc

what a nightmare... the only reason i went was because guildies needed it, and because the shoulders and boots from Chess STILL haven't dropped for me (and they didn't last night, either)

first time i've had a shammy in the tank group though... i must say... with GoA totem and LotP, the melee group was mowin $h!t down when i came to the bosses...

oh yea, and as oT for trash and mT for bosses, i was still #4 on the damage charts... someone explain that to me