Ulduar cleared!

Synosis
Last night at a it before 23:00 we killed Yogg-saron and we officially cleared (for now) Ulduar.

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Last week Tuesday we first saw Yogg-saron when we, after about 15 tries we managed to briefly see phase 2 before we all died.


This week after in total 2.5 wipenights this night resulted in a kill. The problem we had was mostly the switch between phase 2 and 3. We got that down 2-ce. The first time it was a 6% wipe where we got some real good practices on switching between the mobs. The last time it was an excellent performance..


I again got the t8.5 item. I have gotten so many items because of tanking loot prio (though I dps more often then tank recently) that I now have 4/5 items. When we stop with tanking prio it will be a long while before I get any item I ever want again.


Don't I look great?

The value of Expertise and Primal Precision

Synopsis
If you can equip a best in slot item with expertise and are over expertise cap rather then equiping something else remove the talent point from Primal Precision.
Sadly there is no real alternative.

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[edit]Corrected some math[/edit]

Recently I have heard from 2 different sides that Primal Precision (PP) is not really worth it. So I decided to do some thinking again.

The first was honest mistake. The person thought that the expertise cap was at 15 for tanking. It is however at 15% (generally accepted cap) which for druids is 60 expertise. If you are below 26 expertise any expertise is double the value since until you are dodge capped it counts towards both caps.

The second one was the following: It stated that when expertise capped by gear Primal Precision is not worth it. I wondered how much it was worth really.

So how can I see what it is worth? If you look at gems you will see that 16 expertise = 16 agility = 16 strength = 32 AP.
Now those gems all have different values for each class, making them perfect for one class, more worthless to an other.

If you look at enchants you will see that on gloves for instance 15 Expertise holds the same slot as 44 AP. You can not look at this for real though, since the expertise enchant is way cheaper. An expertise enchant on gloves is of would be a "green" enchant where 44Ap would be a "blue" enchant (as in green "uncommon" gems and blue "rare" gems). To have the same value expertise enchant it should be 22 expertise (if you follow me).

I did the comparison in a different way: I used Rawr (raidbuffed).
I am expertise capped by using Inevitable Defeat (78 exp). To make that useless I equipped Chestguard of the Recluse (83 expertise).
The dps value from Inevitable defeat dropped from 1583 to 1523. So 78 expertise is worth about 60 dps.

I did the same for Chestguard of the Recluse. I unequipped Inevitable Defeat and was still expertise capped. The chastguard's value went up from 314 to 385. That is 71 dps. So it is about the same.

1 expertise ~= 0.8 dps.

So 10 expertise = 2.5% = 2.5* 32 rating = 80 expertise rating.
PP therefore (for me) is worth about 80 dps on gear. When, and only when, you are expertise capped (26 expertise). If I would not have PP I would have to get it on gear loosing 60 dps.

Total dps is 6363 what rawr tells me. If I had to get that by gear alone I would have 6303 dps. 60 / 6303 = 0.95%%, that is 0.48% per talent point.

So that is not really much. It is that there are not really any other talent points for cat that are worth more.

Once again, don't be mistaken. When you are not capped by gear alone the talent point is worth much more since 1 talentpoint will increase dps with 2.5% alone (double parry and dodge cap). I am only saying that if you find a better place for your talentpoint and your best in slot items have expertise plenty... only then you can remove a point in PP.

Correction! iMangle does not own

Synopsis
Tarskin has pointed out that I forgot the difference in Maul and Lacerate dots when they get 4% MMS damage. So I did the math again. MMS is better by 1.3%.

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Let me state first that this post is a comparison between a very popular tanking spec 0/55/16, holding SS and MSS, and an alternative spec 0/60/11 holding iMangle and no MMS.

I forgot Maul and Lacerate dots in the rotation. The damage for MMS and not MMS is different of course.

So I went back to rawr. Because some values had changed I redid the spreadsheat.
Some weird things I saw; Windfury totem changes the damage per maul. Of course it changes the total damage by Maul, but now also changes the average damage and threat done by Maul apparently. If anyone has an explanation for this I'd like to hear it.

New spreadsheet:



It shows that with WF totem the threat you loose with iMangle rotation is 105 threat per second. This is 1.3% threat loss.

So if you are looking for max threat, MMS spec is the way to go. Well, to be honest, drop something like IW and ask someone else to apply the same debuff. Get iMangle too. That does the most threat.
However you can also ask the few top dpssers to hold back a little bit or use some threat reducing effects (FD) or get hunters and rogues to misdirect to you.

Still, in the end, my conclusion stands I think. 1.3% threat loss on a boss is something not that bad. You get 5% more uptime from Idol of the Corruptor it halves it's downtime. That is worth it I think. If you can dodge an attack that otherwise would have killed you it saves you from a wipe.

PS. This all made me think to what things can you expect normally for being raidbuffed (25 man).
So my next post will hold the raidbuffs you can normally expect in a raid and should be checked while comparing items to eachother.

Breaking news: iMangle rotation owns!!!

Synopsis
Get yourself to an iMangle rotation, even if you don't have the idol!

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[edit]
See next post. The breaking news was broken. It is not true. Thanks go to Tarskin for that. Thank you very much. :-( XD
[/edit]

Either iMangle roation own, or rawr lies.
Inspired by Tarskin's post on Faerie Fire / iMangle rotation I took my head our of my ass and saw that FFF is huge threat. Definately do it every time you can.

I took his post and extended it a bit.

This is a screenshot of my calculations.



First of all the rotation. All rotations are based on a continues cycle. It doesn't say what you should start out with. They all start at the moment lacerate is renewed, thus the first action is Lacerate.

Instead of only looking at Mangle / Fearie Fire I took Lacerate into the cycle. Lacerate can not be allowed to drop, so do that at least every 9 actions. Atfer 10 actions it will have dropped.

6 sec Mangle:
If you are doing Mangle / FFF every 6 seconds, you have to do lacerate every 12 seconds. If you do that every 13.5 seconds if will inevitable collide with Mangle or FFF. It would mean the cycle you would have would be very long, and hard to execute.

That means the rotation would look something like this:
8 moves; 12 seconds: 2 Mangles, 2 FFF, 1 lacerate and 3 swipes.

1. Lacerate
2. Mangle
3. FFF
4. Swipe
5. Swipe
6. Mangle
7. FFF
8. Swipe

4.5 second Mangle:
For refreshing Lacerate it has to be done at least once every 13.5 seconds.
That is coincidentally exactly 3 Mangles. This gives us a 9 move cycle.
9 moves; 13.5 seconds: 3 Mangles, 2 FFF, 1 lacerate, 3 swipes.

1. Lacerate
2. Mangle
3. FFF
4. Swipe
5. Mangle
6. Swipe
7. FFF
8. Mangle
9. Swipe

I must say this rotation is a bit more complex, but I'll show you it is worth it.

It is not disputed that iMangle does more damage. However the fact that if you take iMangle means you will have to drop Master shapeshifter. And everything does less damage.

So from Rawr, using my own gear and fully raidbuffed I took the following average values. I took the average values because you have to count crits too. Here I only discuss threat though damage can also be seen in the spreadsheet:
iMangle spec:

• Mangle: 4552
• FFF: 3434
• Lacerate: 1128
• Swipe: 2142

Master shapeshifter spec:

• Mangle: 4734
• FFF: 3434
• Lacerate: 1153
• Swipe: 2228

This shows that a 6 sec Mangle cycle gives me 24173 threat = 3022 TPS
An iMangle 4.5 sec Mangle cycle gives me 28078 threat = 3120 TPS

So taking iMangle over master shapeshifter is 100% the right thing to do and it even leaves 2 extra talentpoints you can spend somethere you like.
Unless ofcourse my rawr data is wrong.

Invasion of the dutch!

Synosis
Too short a post for a synopsis.

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A fellow dutchman, Tarskin, has started his own blog recently. Check it out!
http://tarskin.blogspot.com/

Ulduar WWS

Synopsis
Cat dps is really nice! Really nice. However some fights are not made for us.

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My raidleader finally got to put up some WWS from fights.

First up General Vezax (last week). We did some wrong strategies on him to start out with. Ranged dps gets an imba buff but not for the fights where we were.

WWS Vezax tries
(Showing only Bosses, I was tanking on trash).
I do not have the Savage Roar glyph yet and in most of the fights I needed to mangle. In all fairness the DK often had to pull a cloud and the rogues were on interrupt duty. For the tries that we did with the tactic that got em down in the 4th try the next day, the WWS is bugged. There was more ranged dps at the top. The last try we took him down on I really screwed up my rotation. A try before that I was at nr1 damage done, 5.2k dps (recount data) 4 or 5 minutes into the fight.

Other fights are often not as nice for druids. Our main dps comes from Rip. We do ok, but when Rip comes in we go to the top. There are a lot of fights that have us on waves of trash. That is not nice for us.

This week we took down 10 bosses in 2 days already. I was there for all fights this time and tanked a lot. I listed the bosses below. Linked a WWS for most of em. (Those that are not linked you can find if you select different fights in the other WWS)

Flame leviathan
Fun fight, no traditional fight. So nothing much I can say about it.

XT-002
Cat; Was new for me. We 2-shotted him so I never got the chance to learn the fight. The rogues are up there so I should be near there too. However the boss completely becoming immune a couple of times in the fight means you loose all dots. My dps should be higher, though it is more suited for rogues.

Kalogarn
Cat; We 2-shotted this one too. So my dps is low again. I was learning the fight, while most knew what to do. Though the targets that are up are really good for cat DPS. When you are on the arm you will move away before it dies and let ranged finish it. In that time you can have Rip ticking while you focus on the main target.

Auriaya
The only boss we really had difficulties with that day.
I was tank here. You need 4 tanks to survive the 4 adds which die within a minute. Makes you pretty much useless for the rest of the fight. The main task I set before myself was to make sure nobody died. Whenever the large pack of little cats was nuking 1 guy I did Demoralising Roar. I think it is really helpful, though in later fights healers got it down and never let a person die again.
Something else I did was assist in killing the jumping add away from the raid. Taunting it too when the jumping was over. If he dies in the pack the whole raid is standing in a voidzone. This guy is really not tankable. Control of raid dps is a must here.

We then skipped a few bosses;

Hodir
Main Tanked him all the way. Full frost resistance.

Freya
Tanked adds here. We tried 3 tries with 1 tree up. That is really hard. Because it was late we took it down and killed Freya easily.

The next day...

Thorim
Tanking; The gauntlet was not that hard anymore (after wiping the weak before for a few hours). Get 2 mages to sheep the whirlwinding mobs that stun. Didn't do the gauntlet though, I tanked in the arena.
At first we tanked em in 3 groups (3 tanks). We didn't get the adds down, though that should not be really bad since you just need to survive till the gauntlet is done. However the less adds the better. Best to do is all aoe tank in the center. The tank who gets agro tanks the champions. These need to be disarmed and there is no real problem. All adds get aoe'd down.
Then when Thorim comes he does a real nasty debuff to tanks once in a while, that will get em easily killed. We started taunting and having alternative tanking by 2 tanks. Though phase 1 might not need that much tanks when all stay in the center, it is a nice thing to have 4 tanks so you can risk 2 dying. However we needed to battleress them too.

Mimiron
Cat; Something like last week. No WWS available. I managed to see dps I did in phase 1. 5.2k and top 3 for sure. Even with running in and out. In phase 2 you need to run to his back all the time and dps suffers. In phase 3 I stood under the head again. Doing nothing, just soaking blows from bomb bots bearform, cat gear and spec. Dps suffered there enormously.
Phase 4 I was again high on dps. When the tank died the lower part immediately turned to me and before I could go bear I died. Not my fault I died this time. Luckily our DPS DK tanked him till the end.

It was near the end of the raid day and with 30 minute trash killing ahead we went back and took some bosses we skipped.

Razorscale
Tanked adds; oneshotted him. Can't believe how easy he was. Of course most of us knew the fight already, but the tactics were so simple to learn and understand.

Ignis the Furnace Master
Tanking; The boss our guild knows the best of all guilds on my server probably. We had the server's first kill. This boss has been fixed and hugely nerfed. Kiting him, I only was in danger once (35% health) and I used Barkskin. Since nobody died in the fight we all got the meta-part for the immortal variant in Ulduar.

2 days of no raiding ahead. Getting some sleep, reading, replying to Tarskin. Sunday we'll get to Yogg-saron and hopefully/probably kill him on monday or teusday.

PS I have 3 t8.5 items now. The gloves. Using EPGP (dkp) system I will get such a low rating that after we stop with tanking prio it will take 3 months for me to get another item.
Do I now have 2t8 in cat? Sadly no. I have the gloves from Malygos (226) that have a lot of hit. Replacing that 226 gloves and nerfing the rest of my gear to get hitcapped again for another 226 item just for the 2t8 set... I don't know if I should do it. I rather save some emblems for the headslot item and get that enchanted properly.

Go for improved Mangle!

Synopsis
Is it better to get improved mangle or master shapeshifter? With Idol of the corruptor; I think so. iMangle here I come!

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Today I just thought of this when I saw the following item on wowhead. Idol of the Corruptor.

As if it was it's destiny, today we got General Vezax down. And guess what he dropped. And guess who got the item. Yep yours truly has the idol now. Now I don't have the time to do this at some point, but I have to do it now, tomorrow Ulduar is waiting again. (Btw more on the Vezax fight later. It is a really nice druid cat fight).

I tested it very shortly, just before we went Yogg-Saron. I did it on cat, and it has no cooldown and a very high proc rate. I guess it is a copy of Idol of Terror, but then with way higher stats. Also there is no cooldown what soever. I think the Idol of terror used to have one. The duration is also 12 seconds and not 10.

Ok so we know it is nice. The thing is, is it worth it taking iMangle for it?

The proc rate for me calculating miss is 61.5%. (see math block 1 below).

With this we can calculate the uptime on a 6 sec cycle and on a 4.5 sec cycle with a 12 seconds duration. This is a really complex thing. I did an attempt to it (see math block 2 and 3 below). If you have real math send it my way!
6 second cycle:
9.1% downtime.

4.5 second cycle:
4.2% downtime.

The difference is 4.9%

Now simplified; (It is late):
What does it give: 2.44% dodge and 1.98% crit for me.
4.9% extra downtime comes to 0.12% dodge and 0.10% crit.
In bossfights you have to consider the fact that you will be not able to dps some time. Meaning the buff drops often. The sooner it can be up the better. It is a stab in the dark but I would double those values. Then it is pretty significant.

For iMangle we would sacrifice Shapshifter and Master Shapeshifter. You dont want to drop anything else really.
2 points in Master Shapeshifter give 4% damage done = 4% threat.

iMangle gives threat back in a dps cycle. Taking a quick look at an old post by Kalon we can see that iMangle does 2.8% more threat.
I don't now how valid the stats currently are. But I want to believe that what he posted then is in general true.

In total we would loose 1.2% threat and gain dodge and a bit more SD.
Also we can go back to 5/5 furor which is really nice since you can't always choose the moment the pull is gonna be. Having a 100% certain 10 rage can avoid some nasty stuff.

As I have seldom threat issues I am willing to trade the threat for some extra dodge, especially when progressing in Ulduar. This will be my spec as of tomorrow: Link


Below you will find the math I used to calculate the values as mentioned in Block 1, 2 and 3.

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Math Block 1
First of all the proc rate. Idol of Terror is said to have 68% proc rate (wowhead.com) I did a quick test on a lvl 83 target dummy. For me I got 52 procs in 51 hits, 28 crits and 6 misses. On hit/crit for me that comes down to 52 / (51 + 28) ~= 66%. So I'll take the 68% as a fact for now.
I also, with current gear, miss 2.33% percent of the time. I get parried (15% cap) 7.25% of the time. So that is a 100 - 2.33 - 7.25 = 90.42% hit chance.
Total percentage of proc = 68% * 90.42% ~= 61.5%. The chance to miss is 38.5%.

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Math Block 2
When it procs it has to be renewed within 6 seconds or 12 seconds. So there are 2 chances not to drop it. The chance it drops is when they both miss = 38.5% ^ 2 = 14.8%
Every time mangle is off cd it can be renewed at 38.5% chance.
1 time: 38.5% ^ 1 = 38.5%
2 time: 38.5% ^ 1 = 14.8%
3 time: 38.5% ^ 1 = 5.7%
4 time: 38.5% ^ 1 = 2.2%
5 time: 38.5% ^ 1 = 0.8%

Now there is a 0.8% is will go to 5 misses.
This means that there is a 2.2% - 0.8% chance = 1.4% chance it will only go to 4 misses. This has been implemented below:

So if it drops is will be down for:
30 seconds 0.8% of the time
24 seconds 1.4% of the time
18 seconds 3.5% of the time.
12 sec 9.1% of the time.
6 sec 23.7% of the time.

Average downtime calculation:
time * percentage
-> 6 * 23.7% + 12 * 9.1% + etc.
-> 6 * 0.237 + 12 * 0.091 + etc.
The result is the average downtime.

Average downtime = 3.72 seconds IF it is down. Chance on that is 14.8% so average downtime with 12 seconds is 3.72 * 14.8% = 0.55 seconds per 6 seconds = 9.1% downtime.

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Math Block 3
When it procs it has to be renewed within 4.5 seconds, or 9 seconds. If not it can be renewed after only a 1.5 second downtime. So there are 2 chances not to drop it.
(Most of the math is the same as in block 2)

So if it drops is will be down for:
19.5 seconds 0.8% of the time
15 seconds 1.4% of the time
10.5 seconds 3.5% of the time.
6 sec 9.1% of the time.
1.5 sec 23.7% of the time.

Average downtime calculation (see block 2)

Average downtime = 1.70 seconds IF it is down. Chance on that is 14.8% so average downtime with 12 seconds is 1.70 * 14.8% = 0.25 seconds per 6 seconds = 4.2% downtime.

First Mimiron - an epic story

Synopsis
Last night we killed Mimiron. It wasn't pretty. But then it wouldn't be epic now would it?

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Last night was the 4th day of raiding in Ulduar for our guild. We skipped Saturday and went at it again on Sunday.

We went back to the hotfixed Ignis and killed him, first on the server. We got the server first because we spent 3 hours wiping on him on Wednesday already (before the fix). After that we went to Mimiron, who promised to be a real challenge. I wasn't there for the most part. Wasn't online soon enough and the raid was full as we don't use signups while progress raiding. As soon as enough people are online we go at it.
I did get subbed in at Mimiron and then got subbed out (see my previous post).

Then I got back in and we got to phase 4 that try with half the raid alive. The next try we went to phase 4 again, but this time with all 25 people alive. This is where it became epic.

None of us had any real practice on phase 4. Though phase 4 is a combination of phase 1, 2 and 3. So we acted like it was phase 1, dodging the barrage and having a tank on the head.
However for me phase 4 ended very quickly. The lower part started to cast his aoe and I ran out. Hard to see where mines are (with the middle and top part stacked on top of the lower part) I managed to not hit any mine! I turned around and ran to his back again. Just at that time it occurred to me that he was doing barrage. Which is like Lurker but slower and only 150 degrees or so.

You might wonder: How did you notice the barrage then. Well I saw my fat Tauren corpse on the floor. That was pretty much it for me.
The fight continued though. One by one we started dying (I was not the first to die btw). Rockets, barrage, the top part killing our ranged tank, some melee getting hit by a mine, and of course the normal shooting an hitting of the middle and bottom part respectively.

All 3 parts have to die simultaneously (within 10 or 15 seconds), or they repair to 50%. So we were trying to coordinate that. First time ever we were doing that so it was 3 people yelling different numbers on vent. "Stop at 5!" - "It is at 3.5" - "Bottom part is at 2.1million" - "No stop at 5%"

When you kill them there is actually a small bar left. They are not fully dead. So it is kinda hard to see if a part is dead or not. Because of people dying we had to take them close to death or else we could not burst the last few to death.
The lower part died first, then the head, though it seemed the head had died first. The few people left were nuking all they had. At that point the lower part was at 20% health again. It had started repair! People on vent crying out in dispair when just at that moment: DING! 25 people had gotten the achievement. Apparently the lower part had not repaired fully yet meaning it was still dead.

The raidleader and tank were so overjoyed they accidentally ran into a mine afterwards and died. We had 6 people left standing.



Next up General Vezax.

Status: 10 bosses down, 3 server first kills, 10 horde first kills. Working on general Vezax atm.

PS. A lot is happening in wow now. Making a pretty large number of posts. Be sure to check if you didn't miss any.

Great addons have lazy people behind it.

Synopsis
Go RPB if you are not hooked to TMW yet.

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I have told you about TellMeWhen in this (link) post.

I have told you about macaroon being bugged, and the lazy programmer finally making a new version that now in 3.1 works (though there was no working version for the first 2 weeks of 3.0.8.

The same thing happened to TMW. The programmer was lazy. I posted on curse 2 weeks before 3.1 went live the following bug (on PTR);

The setting: Show me only if casted by myself was bugged. It should show Rip and Rake only when I casted it, but instead it will show any Rip and Rake casted by anyone. However if mine is active it will show mine before any others.

It really pissed me off because I got subbed from Mimiron because I was doing low dps. I got back in though after the other druid had to leave and we killed him! There was no other druid so the buggy addon didn't bother me much then, though my dps was still low because of me soaking bomb bot blows in phase 3 and doing little else.

This is the supposed fix: (didn't get a chance to try it yet).

elseif ( isMine or not icon.onlyMine ) then

replace it with:

elseif ( (isMine and UnitIsUnit(isMine, "player")) or not icon.onlyMine ) then


Also TellMeWhen doesn't always show Mangle (Cat)/Mangle (Bear). I need to test that and see if it works with what I posted in my previous post.

So if you are looking for using TMW or RPB, go for RPB. TMW is a great addon, but the programmer behind it is not really interested in making his product work.

Mangle & Swipe

Synopsis
The names of Mangle and Swipe have been changed. But even with the new names they might not work in macro's. Here's the solution.

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In addition of Karthis' post "Mangle - Skill name changes" I think it is important for people to be aware that his post was not fully complete (at least for Macro's and not RPB). I posted it as comment nr 6 there, but people might miss it. Therefore this post.

I use macro's to not cast Maul and make it easy to keep a cycle up, not having to spam buttons. Something Kalon brought to my attention in the first place.

This is the macro I used:

#showtooltip Mangle - Bear
/cast !Maul
/cast Mangle - Bear

This didn't work anymore. The reason being that the name has been changed to "Mangle (Bear)".
Still replacing "Mangle - Bear" by "Mangle (Bear)" did not work. To make it work you should be using the following:

#showtooltip Mangle (Bear)()
/cast !Maul
/cast Mangle (Bear)()

Same goes for Swipe, since that name has also been changed.

#showtooltip Swipe (Bear)()
/cast !Maul
/cast Swipe (Bear)()

This is probably a bug, something to be fixed by Blizzard later. I don't know if "Mangle (Bear)()" will stop working, though if I had to program it I would make it possible for both to be used so macro's with "()" will not stop working all of a sudden.

PS. This might very well be true for the cat versions too, but I am not using macro's for those. If you are keep this post in mind.

Drake ^ 2

Synopsis
What to do when you already have a Green Proto-Drake... ?

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This is no photoshop. My GF got a Green Proto-Drake a week ago. She screamed so Loud I nearly forgot to tank Sarth. Then Teusday she had a new egg ready. And it contained ANOTHER Proto-Drake. It is like getting pwned by Blizzard. It is imba, but at this point it is sitting in her bank and is worth less then Aged Yolk. The egg and the Drake are Soulbound so she can't even give it to me or sell for a lot of money... Sigh.

Hey everybody come and see how great I look!

Synopsis
I GOT T8.5 !!!

---

Just a quick one. got little time. And any time I have I should be raiding but...


I am the first horde on the server to have t8.5 chest, together with a warrior from my guild. Probably the allied guild Revelations got that already. Good chance I am the first druid.
We killed Hodir. He was super easy really. First try we got him to 41%. We took him down third try. I MT-ed with full frost resistance (535).
Some DBM lag (I think) made the other tank die. I Taunted him off too late, though I taunted him as soon as possible. He was supposed to tank without much frost resistance. I don't know why we used 2 tanks to begin with. I tanked him solo the last 30%, though threat was a bit low (with 4 frost items with no offensive stats at all). But I held it ok.

More on Ulduar to come.

Status now: 6 bosses down. (Of course Heroic, what else is there).
First 2 bosses were server fists. The rest is horde first.

Diminished returns

Synopsis
Reason why posts aren't as frequent as usual.

---

Nope. sorry, not a post about my calculations on diminished returns.
Most of you noticed me not posting as frequent as what you are used of me. Couple of reasons; Easter, new job and I have said all things I wanted to say before starting this blog. One of the other reasons is that there is little news. PTR is pretty quiet, the game has nothing much to offer at this point. Will be back with reports on Ulduar either PTR or Live.

One tip; If you can craft stuff, check out this site: http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=856
It shows all changes and new recipes there are for you.

Rotation study (Blogsourcing)

Synopsis
Since I had so much trouble with the 12 second mangle rotation I tried some more and this is what I found.

---

I started out dpssing, again on a lvl 80 dummy, and not berserking ever. Berserk will screw up whatever you are able to call a "rotation".

This is the DPS is did over a LONG time (calculated form white damage hits it is 45 minutes).


At the start I was at 3450, that then got to 3650. It went a bit down after some screwups in rotation, but it is a good average. 3.1 PTR servers are in America. Meaning that I did suffer a bit from latency. Renewing Rip and Rake had to be calculated. Do it at 0.5 seconds left, not too soon or the last tick won't get through, not too late or there is a too long period without Rake/Rip.

Below I will tell you what rules I tried to dps by which resulted in this. I ask you the same, if you are possible and willing. Tell me what you found on ptr (not using Mangle glyph). Don't Berserk and upload a screenshot (or post it on you own blog) and link it in as a comment. Judging from white hit damage there is a good comparison to what your total dps to mine would be. If yours is higher i'll try to find out why.

The rules I tried to live by:
Ability strategy:

• SR always up. If it is down and have no CP get 1 CP SR up at least. Then depending on Rip uptime do a 4/5 CP SR.
• Mangle over Rake. Rake does nice damage but Rip does a lot more. Mangle increases that with 30%. Mangle doesn't always have to drop before renewing.
• FB is overrated. It doesn't always crit. Rather keep the 5 CP to keep up SR and Rip then to let one of those drp.
• SR > Rip > Mangle > Rake
  

Energy strategy:

• WAIT! If SR, Rip, Mangle and Rake are up you have all the time of the world. Stock up on energy. Don't let it get too high because OoC procs a lot now. You should spend as little time as possible at 100 energy. (I'd like to be rogue and have 110 or 120 energy to have more time.)
• Don't get to 5 CP asap. Wait to see what happens. If Mangle and Rake need a refresh soon, stop at 2/3/4 CP, get engery refresh en and then wait for SR or Rip to drop to renew it.
  

CP Strategy:

• Try to go for 3CP SR. It is about the same time Rip takes. That is a way to go for a normalisation in Rotation. It will not always hold up and you are seldom able to do it, but it if the choise it is available do that. You will have max time to be ready to renew Rip (where a 2CP SR could have the SR needing refreshing before Rip. Als a 3CP SR gives you that little extra time to build a new 3CP SR after you have renewed Rip.
• The 3 ways to spend CP are SR, Rip and FB. FB should be avoided as much as possible. Saving up on energy and Mangle + Rake to get to 5CP might leave you with a lot of energy (having OoC).
• When to FB? Only when you have plenty of time left on Rip and SR. I find that to be about 12-14 seconds. It will not ensure having SR and Rip up 100% of the time, but the alternatives are worse. (As you see in 45 minutes I only did FB 33 times vs the 4 per 3 minutes I did before, not counting the extra FB I did after a Berserk).
  
• When not to FB: 1: Less then 12-14 seconds on SR only. Wait till the last moment (is having 100 energy) and refresh SR. If Mangle and Rake both drop, do it earlier. so Mangle and Rake are not of or at least not a long time. It is worth it to wait for 70 energy to be able to SR + Mangle + Rake immediately as a combo.
• When not to FB: 2: Less then 12-14 seconds on Rip only. The same as above. Try to avoid this situation. With high time left on Rip (10 sec) you should get the last of the 5 CP's from Mangle and Rake so you dont have them down or are forced to do an early Rip to refresh Mangle + Rake
• When not to FB: 3: Less then 12-14 seconds left on both, Rip to expire before SR. Wait till rip is expired and refresh. 1CP SR (or more if possible) right after.
• When not to FB: 4: Less then 12-14 seconds left on both, SR Expires before Rip. Depends on how long the difference is. If the difference is up 3 seconds you can refresh Rip just before SR drops. (Then 1CPSR after). If the difference is higher, refresh SR immediately (overwriting 10 seconds or so) and use the remaining seconds to get 5CP Rip asap.

This is kinda it. Would love to hear your input and see your tests.
PS, this is not a strategy I did when testing on live (3.0.8) servers. So applying this strategy on live servers can not be compared to my previously posted live dps test.

The fairer sex

Synopsis
It occured to me theat though male WoW players play almost every class there is in WoW equally, I find that females are more drawn to certain types of classes.

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[edit]
This is a entry that is in no way to be considered a serious one.
[/edit]

So to start off, lets be a male and thus blunt, generalize as much as possible here. If you are a woman and playing WoW you are most likely playing a Priest, Paladin or Hunter. Am I right guys? Am I? Oh yes I am!!! High five!

Well let me calm myself down and be a bit less of a drunken bar macho. Doesn't change the fact that this is true though. From the female players I have met in wow I have yet to see one that does like melee dps, though, of the classes mentioned, one can be melee dps. I myself know 2 female tankadins. But seriously, they have been hanging around with guys too much.

I have yet to encounter my first female rogue, warrior or DK. And by that I mean a level 80. Because who hasn't tried making a DK yet?

Of all classes a woman can play I would rate it like this:

• 23% Priest
  
• 18% Hunter
• 18%Paladin
• 12% Druid
• 11% Warlock
• 8% Shaman
• 7% Mage
• 1% Deathknight
• 1% Rogue
• 1% Warrior

Now to be totally stereotypical... this is why:

• Women like to heal and nurture (healer classes)
  
• Women want to multitask and need an overview of the fight to get themselves distracted (ranged).
• Woman want to see all the pretty artwork while nuking a boss to hell (ranged)
  
• Women like to have a pet cause they are so cute and absolutely adoring (hunter).
• Woman playing wow are dark and broody types (preferring warlock over a dull mage)

Now you all let your girlfriends who play wow react and tell me I am an asshole.
Then after you can react and tell me that I am telling the truth. Because... come on. It is so obvious!

PS I have a girlfriend myself... Morituri te salutant.

DPS test

Synopsis
This is a little dps test with about the same gear on 3.0.8 and 3.1. Lvl 80 dummy.

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I promised this a while back and now did it finally. A dps test. Now I am not the best dpsser there is. I lack experience. Though I did ok I think. I dpssed on a lvl 80 dummy (not 83 boss) because they were mostly occupied.
Both test were done over about 6 minutes (2 berserks).

So first in 3.0.8:
Glyphs:

• Glyph of Mangle
• Glyph of Rip
• Glyph of Rake (though this does nothing dps wise)
  

All cycles ended a few seconds after berserk was of the 2nd cooldown. So this dps is the dps I did over that period. It was easy keeping the cycles up and didn't let any buff/debuff go off for too long. So it is pretty accurate and ok dps I think.
I did Ferocious bite 6 times. That is every time I berserk and 2-ce in the rest of the 3 minutes, done when Tigers fury gave me energy and Rip and SR had a long uptime already.

Now for 3.1.0 (PTR):
Glyphs:

• Glyph of Savage roar (3% extra damage when SR is up)
• Glyph of Shred (2 seconds extra Rip time, maximum iof 6)
• Glyph of Rip

The glyph of Savage Roar is available on PTR. It can not be discovered in traditional way though (Northrend Inscription Research). I did those all and there are none left. They will be thought by drops from bosses. A book that when read will give inscribers a random glyph they don't know yet. Glyphs on PTR can be bought from vendors (in Dalaran) for a few silver.

Since I had no Glyph of Mangle this was a hard test. After a few tries I got the hang of the cycle. The DPS meter shows 3884, but should be more like 3950 cause after the 6 minutes rip ticked on a bit. The real dps should have been higher too because I did a misclick and hit SR when it was up at 25 seconds left and Rip was off. Having no SR for extra energy then and unlucky crits made rip not tick for about 10 seconds.
It was easy keeping Faerie Fire up though. 5 minute cooldown is nice. Though it is bugged on TellMeWhen (and maybe all timers) since it didn't show uptime left.
The DPS is not as high as it promised to be a while ago, even though I have Glyph of Savage Roar now. One reason for it is that FB doesn't always crit now. (Only 25% extra from Rend and Tear).

Now the comparison:

• White damage: is about the same. 373k damage vs 372k damage. That did not change much, or at all.
• Ferocious bite: in 3.1.0 I had the opportunity to do a LOT more FB then in 3.0.8. One FB every Berserk and 4 in between Rips. Main reason for this is the 26 seconds Rip takes. When having 5 CP and more then 10 seconds left on both SR and Rip you are "forced" to do FB. Also, not all FB were crits anymore. Total FB is up but average damage is down.
  
• Rake and Rip: In 3.1 I had trouble with the rotation, though they did a lot more damage. Rip did 84 % more damage per tick though Rake did only 10% more per tick.
• Mangle and Shred: I did more mangle (only 12 seconds debuff vs 18 seconds), though the total number of shreds and Manlge is up. The reason is that you get more energy to spend on those hits because Rip takes less damage. It was a bit hard to always get 3 shreds in before rip was down though.

Cionclusion; The main damage increase comes from Rip. So it looks like I might should be doing less FB and more Rip, waste some energy and with 15 seconds left on Rip and 10 on SR I should be doing SR in that case and be ready to hold Rip up.
You can see I had trouble with the cycles. Rip and Rake ticked a lot more in 3.0.8 then in 3.1.0. Though they did a lot more damage (due to Crits). Main reason for this was Rip being up longer. I was also able to get more total mangle + shred. The main reason for this was that Rip was up a lot longer.
To be continued...

Some more blue posts

Synopsis
Some blue post and my comment on it.

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Blue post: Feral DPS
The main issue we are running into here is that the PvE dps, when pulled off properly, can be pretty high and that is what has caused some of the nerfs in 3.1. We recognize that maximizing PvE dps can require a fairly complex rotation which doesn't translate very well to PvP dps and we are considering some changes to improve that in the future.
One example would be to make Rend and Tear include mangle in its damage bonuses or add a glyph of some kind that affects more PvP centric abilities. We are just trying to be very careful to not be so focused on one aspect of the game (PvE or PvP) that we over do it in the other one.

Maybe it would be good to simplify the rotation a bit then? I don't want to be compared to a warlock that spams shadowbolt this way. Melee is not as simple as ranged DPS as it is. When you can't stand still and dps, your rotation will be screwed up. Don't give us the potential to be OP, remove that potential and make us as good as any other class.
And mangle is only a PvP thing. It has been established that mangle is a necessary evil for dps, but shred is not a real thing to use in pvp.

Blue post: New Druid form models
Druid forms are not coming in 3.1, but (big but) we are working on them. I have to say that when these do go live, it will have been worth the wait.
Finally! I myself am thinking more like an option: Form of the beast, where you can target any cat and assume it's form for catform. Would be nice and confusing though when people are assuming we are pets rather then druids.

Blue post: Feral tanking in 3.1
Bears used to have the highest armor and highest health which is no longer the case (obviously), but we added the shield ability and improve their cooldowns to try and bring them more in-line with other classes. We are keeping an eye on them and will make improvements if they turn out to be a clearly inferior tank.
The word: "clearly inferior" is unsettling. So what if we are an inferior tank, but it is not as clear. We'll be clearly not used as tanks. I recommend my guild to clearly not use any druid as MT. Only because we are not clearly inferior, but only slightly inferior. Why would a progress raiding guild ever use a druid? Why test how good a druid is as tank and wipe an extra 4 hours to find out you better use a warrior to tank?

Get your flasks while you can

Synopsis
The crafting materials of flask of endless rage is changed. So craft em before 3.1 if you have the mats lying around.

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New PTR changes:

• Flask of Stoneblood now increases the player's maximum health by 1300. (Up from 750)
• Flask of Endless Rage - Now requires 3xGoldclover instead of 3xFire Leaf

So Flask of Stoneblood is a bit better for tanking. Like that one.

Blue post on the flask of stoneblood changes:
We felt the current amount of health from the stoneblood was just ridiculous at how low it was, especially considering the damage from bosses in Ulduar so we buffed it a bit. Just keep in mind that we don't really like the idea of every new flask/upgrade being something with the same stats and just higher numbers every time. As an example it's possible the next tanking flask would have the same or lower health but extra mitigation stats like armor or defense on it.

I sure as hell don't hope it will be defense. Talking about making all tanks the same this will be a nerf to us druids since we can't use the parry rating it gives. The stamina one there is now might be better then still and blizzard pushes us druids back towards stamina again. If anything they would want druids to 100% always go for the flask that has less stamina.

As to the Flask of Endless Rage; all Flasks are getting changed. There won't be 2 hour flasks anymore, they will last 1 hour. But with the same materials alchemists can now craft 2 flasks. Conclusion, general flask usage is down from this. If you raid for 3 hours you will only consume 3 1h flasks vs 2 2h flasks now. This results in you saving 1 1h flask for an other time.
Other good thing about it, they now stack up to 20! I wish they did that for potions too.

If you have 2h flasks at the time patch 3.1 hits you would be able to trade them. Not knowing what this meant I did not craft the flasks yet. Last time I was on PTR I saw my 2h flasks had been transformed into an item that was usable. Using it created 2 1h flasks. Pretty easy. Knowing this it is safe to let the flasks be crafted now. But with the reagent change to Flask of Endless Rage it is important that you let em be crafted now, if, like me, you saved up and got mats lying around.

Back to the fact that defense on a flask would suck and would nerf that flask for druids. If you think about it, the Flask of endless rage already is nerfed for us druids. Hunters and rogues out there go around with 4k AP (something like that?) Where I myself have 6.7k AP. A flask that gives 180 AP is not as much an improvement for druids then it is for other classes (which in my opinion is one of the reasons that druids can't keep up in dps with other classes compared to the dps they did when everybody was badly geared).

The art of trashtanking

Synopsis
Tanking trash needs dps to understand game mechanics. You can't tank decent with stupid dps.

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Last night I was one of 3 tanks in Naxx 25. The trash tanking in Deathknight Wing can be hard. We did it over and over again after resetting the instance several times when we were failing on Razuvious trying for immortal. (Only to find someone dying on the boss right after that.)

Anyway the packs in there are pretty hard and consist of 5 or more and you often get 2 groups. The raidleader said our tanking sucked. And yes indeed the trash was all over the place. Though I really don't think it was because of bad tanking. It was because of bad dps.

Some examples.

• A dps gets agro. He starts running away. RUN TO THE TANK!? What are these people who don't know to stay in range of the tanks?
• Tanks start out on a group. Charge in and swipe. There are 3 tanks so we all 3 want to get those trash together so all our aoe hits all targets, and others can aoe all at once. We are often not given time to do this and while moving there is already hard aoe and dps on mobs. You loose agro and you have to chase them.
• A rogue wanted to have some fun and gets agro on a mob. You taunt it and want to drag it into the pack. Instead the rogue stuns it... dps on the mob still continues, meaning you have to go back to the mob, do dps and hope you got to do enough threat when the mob gets out of the stun.

All the examples above are there because people have lost respect for trash. Understandable, but I think my raidleader should understand that and not say that 3, good, extremely well geared, tanks are sucking so hastily.

Anyway... the next and last example is in my opinion something hard to forgive. The arrogance is so huge and it shows a total lack of knowledge of the game mechanics. Again we are tanking trash. There is aoe damage. Normally swipe can do more threat then any aoe dps can so that is no problem. The only preblem is there when someone does single target dps. In this case a hunter. There are 3 tanks, and 6 mobs. Not all mobs are targetted by the tanks. Sure the tanks can switch between them, but it is really hard to do it correctly (not without marks anyway). So for tanks (at least for) tanking trash is having 1 main target you mangle and maul and the rest you swipe. Call them main target and off-target. next to that I constantly watch for some mob to break out of the pack so I can taunt it.

To continue on the example. The hunter had chosen a target that was an off-target for all 3 tanks and was not being tanked by anyone directly. This mob then ran towards him and I taunted it. It turned, came back to me, but when he was close the taunt had stopped working and the mob ran back towards the hunter. The thing was, all this time the hunter had targeted this mob and had not stopped dps. If this player had been decent he would have done any of the following (decreasing in most appropriate thing to do, nr 1 being the best imo):

1. before gaining initial agro, he would have seen himself high on the threatlist and switched to a different target. /target tank /assist. Very simple;
2. before gaining initial agro, seen himself high on the threatlist and he could have done Feign Death;
3. when the mob was running towards him he could have done a Feign Death;
4. when the mob was taunted by me he could have changed his target.

No. None of the above. Instead he kept on shooting this target so it ran straight back to him after the taunt was over. I talked to him and he said: "It is the job of the tanks to get them off me". So I really hope he doesn't understand game mechanics rather then be very arrogant, but then again, what is someone like him doing in a hard core raiding guild? Naxx has been to easy on bad players to perform well.

Anyway, to finish my story, if you have dps that doesn't allow you to tank you have to switch your target to the mob running away. You get that mob but that means you can't get threat on other mobs. So they break loose and you have to taunt those, with taunt being on cooldown. It is a cascading effect, that makes it seem you are sucking at tanking. Instead the dps that overagros should wake up and realise they might be doing something wrong...

Maim my ass off... (Blogsourcing)

Synopsis
With not much melee around there is a good chance you will be maiming in Ulduar.

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Last night I was in PTR in Ulduar, testing General Vezax. There was no thrash this time, but compared to last time we only had 1 rogue. The people that could interrupt were that rogue, 1 DK, me and an other druid in catform. I never was in a raid as feral, so I don't even know if Maim could interrupt spellcasts on bosses before 3.0.

Anyway it sucks! For kick a rogue only needs 25 energy. For maim we need to have Combopoints and it costs us 35 energy. A major DPS nerf. When it is your time to interrupt you want to be able to do that immediately. And you have to be ready!. That meant that it sometimes took 20 seconds of waiting time. 20 seconds of keeping GCD ready, 20 seconds of seeing your energy being full, 20 seconds in which you see Rip, SR, Mangle and Rake all drop off from your target... So fair to say my DPS was not optimal. That plus there was a dps nerf about 700 dps for cats on that boss. Well I think it would be about 700 dps even if I didn't interupt.
Also TellMeWhen still isn't fixed and instead of only showing my debuffs it shows debuffs casted by others too, though mine has priority, meaning it will show my rip with 2 seconds left before the other druid's rip with 16 seconds left. But after my Rip is gone it will show the other druid's Rip.

My dps could have been higher but the bossfight itself is totally unreliable too. We were playing from Europe and the server is in the US. That meant we had a .325 latency. Meaning I see the spellcast when it is already going and the boss knows I maimed him somewhat later too. So I had to keep GCD ready.

But it is my thought the boss is bugged. Because of a special shirt GM's provided us for this fight we were all hitcapped and my maim did always hit. The split second I saw the spell being cast I maimed but often the boss kept on casting his spell anyway. He also has the tendency to, after having a cast go through, cast 2 more after that, without others being ready for that. So that was a definite wipe every time.

Now the blogsourcing part of the post; I have a question for you on why maim doesn't always work.
Also I checked combat log and I wonder how that works too. My combat log showed me casting maim and doing x damage. 2 lines below that I saw the General Vezax his spell hit me. The thing I want to know on how that works is: Is the combat log local or server side? For instance, chat is server side. When you type a message and there is a lag you will not see the message. The message has to be processed by the server first and then will be given back to you (and whomever it may concern) and only then the message can be read. Does the combat log work the same? If you maim does the server have to process it and then you will see the maim in your combat log or will the combat log show it the second you cast it, not considering whether the server has received the maim?

PS in this case it could have been that the cast was ready before I maimed and that during those 2 lines I mentioned earlier the spell was traveling from him towards me. Still the change for that is really small, because since I was in melee range the spell (aoe) would have to hit me immediately.