Askmrrobot.com has a really cool new feature - it now automatically parses your fights and organizes it into a very handy and digestable infographic.
An old guildie of mine used to parse all our fights and upload it to world of logs, but he is no longer with us. And those logs weren't always the most informative - mainly just a lot of numbers that were hard to puzzle out. But the logs on mr robot are simple and easy to figure out as they display everything in chart form.
Best of all, it compiles the data and lets you know how you and your raid are doing compared to the "average" - ie, how good your dps/hps is compared to others at your gear level. It's really handy!
I've always been dps but due to a shortage of healers of late (a problem common to many guilds and pugs these days, it seems), I've gone over to healing. And after looking over the logs for the past few attempts, one thing became very clear: people can't dodge fire.
It almost made me laugh when I saw just how much damage our healers were eating - all of it avoidable damage, mind you. The number of times hit by stamp on Hanz & Franz, the times stood in Gruul's cave-in, the times pinned by Darmac's spear...yeah, a LOT of avoidable damage.
And yours truly? Almost none at all. I was lowest (of the healers) on avoidable damage taken. Hell, I was doing better than most of the other dps too. On some of the logs I didn't even show up because I didn't take ANY avoidable damage. None at all. And I think I know the reason - because my main is a dps toon, and always has been.
As a dps, you'r always told to dodge shit. It's implicitly agreed on that for any fight, the job of the tanks and healers are always much harder than that of the dps (something I agree with 90% of the time, I do think there are fights where it's equally stressful for everyone and maybe even harder as dps). Therefore, the dps should always be dodging the bad stuff, not only because their task is the easiest (stab boss), but because it makes the healers work less.
As a healer though, you're already doing a stressful job, so the task of dodging the bad shit is somewhat secondary. This is not strictly from personal experience, but what I assume to be the default attitude of main-spec healers. And I think overall the raid tends to feel more forgiving towards a healer who stands in the fire than a dps - that's something I've certainly observed first-hand. Dps is replaceable, healers less so.
And so there it was - me, having been told to dodge fire for years, managed to do so, even though I was playing a healer. And the other healers sat there and ate it. It struck me as rather funny that the very people who are always screaming at me to move out of the fire were doing the exact thing themselves. And that I had never noticed this pattern until the logs made it abundantly clear.
To be sure my healing needs some practice (not to mention gear, as I'm quite a few ilvls behind our main spec healers). But dodging fire? Apparently I'm already a pro.
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Monday, February 23, 2015
The triumphant return of PUGs
Maybe PUGs never went away, but I sure as hell haven't stepped foot into any since wrath...
Since I began raiding with a semi-hardcore guild at the end of wrath, I haven't felt the need to pug, really. There was plenty of normal raid content for my guild to do, and I didn't feel a pressing desire to pursue heroics (in fact, the guild was clearing a good amount of heroics as it was). There was LFR for my alts, and beyond that I didn't see a need for pugs as they caused me more stress than fun.
With Warlords, however, we saw a major slowdown in guild progress. And blizzard decided it would be fun to add yet another tier of raiding - mythic. In essence all it did was push down "normal" mode raid down a notch. That was what my guild was running. I decided to give pugs another chance when I saw the new group finder feature, which looked pretty seamless - and it was, to a point.
It works kind of like a dating site, imo. You browse around to see which groups are running the bosses you want, and what their requirements are in terms of ilvl and class/role. You apply to a few, and if you meet the criteria, they'll invite you and you're in a raid group, easy as that. No more spamming trade chat for people, no more resorting to third party services like o-queue or openraid.
I found quickly, however, that making it so easy has also made pugs much more of a brutal place to be. Back when you had to spam trade for hours to find a player, you generally put up with other players' incompetence of mistakes, up to a point. Obviously if someone was really dragging down the group you'd replace them, but otherwise you sighed and resigned yourself that someone was earning a free carry.
Not in these group finder pugs, however. You make one mistake and they might keep you around, but make two in a row, and boom, you'll find yourself removed from the group. And why not? There are 20 other DPS waiting in queue to take your place. If that one mage isn't dodging fire properly or that rogue isn't pulling his weight in dps, it's as easy as a few button clicks to kick them and have a new one with a higher ilvl to take his place in literally seconds. The only hassle is to re-summon the new members (a cinch if you have a lock) and having to deal with some nerdrage.
Even healers and tanks aren't immune - their mistakes are tolerated a bit more due to their natural scarcity in the queue system, but even then I've seen tanks kicked for not getting mechanics (completely justified as this is almost a certain wipe) and I've seen healers get kicked for low numbers.
Another facet in this is that the new raid system allows for flexible numbers - bosses hp and damage scales to raid size. So that gives even more incentive to kick players. Back in wrath you had to bring 10/25 players for a 10/25 player raid - even if one or two or five were really bad, it was better than not having anyone at all. Whereas in the new system, if you have one really bad dps, it's actually beneficial to kick them, thereby reducing the boss's hp by an amount greater than what that player was contributing.
Sometimes you get invited to a group, and before you even zone in they'll kick you for seemingly no reason. I've yet to whisper anyone to ask why, but my guess is they found a high ilvl dps in the queue. Or someone complained about tier token imbalance. Or they found a friend in the guild who's done the fight before. A thousand possible reasons.
Basically, all this amounts to a brutally competitive and cut-throat raid environment. I'm constantly on edge not not fuck up - it's either pull amazing numbers, or don't make a single mistake. That's the only way I've found to not get kicked. Even if your dps isn't amazing, if you do your job properly (interrupt, get adds, etc) and stay alive to the end, you generally keep your spot, assuming your dps wasn't dead last. Or if you balls-out embarrass everyone else with your dps, they'll hesitate to kick you even if you fuck up a couple times.
My strategy has been to play it very safe, mechanics-wise, at least on heroic modes. Generally my dps isn't anything to brag about when I'm surrounded by all the better geared people so I concentrate on not dying. As the higher dps folks start dying to mechanics towards the end, my numbers start climbing the charts as I stay alive. I pad the numbers whenever I can - going balls-out aoe with my combat spec on add-heavy fights really helps.
I'm not gonna lie, it's super stressful and there are times when I wonder if I'm actually good at the game or not. But then I realize, not many people have 9/10 bosses cleared on the first week of a new raid. But man, it's really killing my sanity...
Since I began raiding with a semi-hardcore guild at the end of wrath, I haven't felt the need to pug, really. There was plenty of normal raid content for my guild to do, and I didn't feel a pressing desire to pursue heroics (in fact, the guild was clearing a good amount of heroics as it was). There was LFR for my alts, and beyond that I didn't see a need for pugs as they caused me more stress than fun.
With Warlords, however, we saw a major slowdown in guild progress. And blizzard decided it would be fun to add yet another tier of raiding - mythic. In essence all it did was push down "normal" mode raid down a notch. That was what my guild was running. I decided to give pugs another chance when I saw the new group finder feature, which looked pretty seamless - and it was, to a point.
It works kind of like a dating site, imo. You browse around to see which groups are running the bosses you want, and what their requirements are in terms of ilvl and class/role. You apply to a few, and if you meet the criteria, they'll invite you and you're in a raid group, easy as that. No more spamming trade chat for people, no more resorting to third party services like o-queue or openraid.
I found quickly, however, that making it so easy has also made pugs much more of a brutal place to be. Back when you had to spam trade for hours to find a player, you generally put up with other players' incompetence of mistakes, up to a point. Obviously if someone was really dragging down the group you'd replace them, but otherwise you sighed and resigned yourself that someone was earning a free carry.
Not in these group finder pugs, however. You make one mistake and they might keep you around, but make two in a row, and boom, you'll find yourself removed from the group. And why not? There are 20 other DPS waiting in queue to take your place. If that one mage isn't dodging fire properly or that rogue isn't pulling his weight in dps, it's as easy as a few button clicks to kick them and have a new one with a higher ilvl to take his place in literally seconds. The only hassle is to re-summon the new members (a cinch if you have a lock) and having to deal with some nerdrage.
Even healers and tanks aren't immune - their mistakes are tolerated a bit more due to their natural scarcity in the queue system, but even then I've seen tanks kicked for not getting mechanics (completely justified as this is almost a certain wipe) and I've seen healers get kicked for low numbers.
Another facet in this is that the new raid system allows for flexible numbers - bosses hp and damage scales to raid size. So that gives even more incentive to kick players. Back in wrath you had to bring 10/25 players for a 10/25 player raid - even if one or two or five were really bad, it was better than not having anyone at all. Whereas in the new system, if you have one really bad dps, it's actually beneficial to kick them, thereby reducing the boss's hp by an amount greater than what that player was contributing.
Sometimes you get invited to a group, and before you even zone in they'll kick you for seemingly no reason. I've yet to whisper anyone to ask why, but my guess is they found a high ilvl dps in the queue. Or someone complained about tier token imbalance. Or they found a friend in the guild who's done the fight before. A thousand possible reasons.
Basically, all this amounts to a brutally competitive and cut-throat raid environment. I'm constantly on edge not not fuck up - it's either pull amazing numbers, or don't make a single mistake. That's the only way I've found to not get kicked. Even if your dps isn't amazing, if you do your job properly (interrupt, get adds, etc) and stay alive to the end, you generally keep your spot, assuming your dps wasn't dead last. Or if you balls-out embarrass everyone else with your dps, they'll hesitate to kick you even if you fuck up a couple times.
My strategy has been to play it very safe, mechanics-wise, at least on heroic modes. Generally my dps isn't anything to brag about when I'm surrounded by all the better geared people so I concentrate on not dying. As the higher dps folks start dying to mechanics towards the end, my numbers start climbing the charts as I stay alive. I pad the numbers whenever I can - going balls-out aoe with my combat spec on add-heavy fights really helps.
I'm not gonna lie, it's super stressful and there are times when I wonder if I'm actually good at the game or not. But then I realize, not many people have 9/10 bosses cleared on the first week of a new raid. But man, it's really killing my sanity...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)