Thaiyen - Blood Dead Night

[gameschess]

I just picked the last Ji'Kun kill and a previous jin'rokh kill, tonights jin'rokh wasn't hard, but it was far from my best as I was teaching a new tank the fight. Let me know if you see anything you would like to ask me about.

Ji'Kun = http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-5vk52am0t8lqjhfh/dashboard/?s=3701&e=4269

I pop ibf to absorb puddles when they are stacked 3+ followed by AMS to prevent application, so that may show on this kill.

Jin'Rokh = http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-gm4rz0mf6q89fxrk/details/0/?s=2640&e=2992

[Ashin]

Thanks for the followup - we will circle back with you.

[Hip]

One thing off the top.

Your history concerns me.

I'm seeing a pattern of progressing in raids, gearing up a toon and then selling it off, lot's of extended breaks in recent history, etc. You played early cata, but then took a ~year break? It looks like you've been playing again for only the last 2.5 months or so. It's been said, but I'm echo'ing the idea that there's a lack of consistency/credit score here. Yeah I might just be beating a dead horse, but they can't feel anything so whats the big whoop?

Also, I’d be curious to see if you couldn’t drive up your Mastery with some regemming/reforging work. You’ve gemmed parry and stamina, you might be able to change to some expertise and hit gems/hybrids and reforge to more mastery in a few places. Perhaps not but with your HP pool so high I don’t see a need for Stam gems.

Anywho

your Ji'Kun logs

Death Strikes look low to me. Your average heal was ~77.8K, average shield ~177K

From your current gearing per your character sheet a minimum heal should be around

[815000 (buffed HP) x .07 (minimum DS heal)] = 5705 HP heal

and a minimum shield would be

[5705 (min heal) x 1.5916 (Blood Shield Mastery)] = 9080

Basically what I'm seeing is that you’re DS'ing when you've averaged taking less than 10% of your HP in damage.

Of course this can be skewed by DS'ing while not actively tanking. However this would drive your % uptime on Blood Shield up, but thats still sitting at 48% which is good, but not what I’d expect from someone DS’ing while not taking regular damage. Also I see 83 heart strikes so it seems you weren’t exclusively using DS with your Death Runes.

This information tells me that you were mostly using DS while you were tanking, but not as effectively as I would want to see. Your average heal to Blood Shield ratio is skewed by stacking Blood Shields rather than waiting for big damage and recovering/shielding from it.

Bone shield uptime looks alright at 5 casts and 49%. There’s probably room for another cast or two and perhaps another 10% or so, but it’s hard to be certain with fight mechanics and timing of the CD so I'll give you full credit on that one.

However I can tell that you’re not using your full arsenal of abilities. 9 Rune Taps on a fight where you could have theoretically used it 29 times, and for free. Certainly I wouldn't expect you to actually use it 29 times as that would be impractical with a fight with some significant movement/downtime, but I would want to see that approaching the mid teens to 20 mark. Perhaps more liberal use of Rune Tap (especially with the 2pc) would allow you to camp damage a bit longer to get stronger DS/BS mitigation.

3 casts of Vampiric Blood when you could have used it 10 times. Again I wouldn’t expect 10, but 5+ would be what I’d expect.

Only 2 uses each of Dancing Rune Weapon, and each of your trinkets. Again should have been 3-4. How are you monitoring these? Are you using them in some macro set-ups?

I see you popped AoD which is nice to see.

I see that you are capable of racking CDs better than you are showing as you used your Orc Racial 4 times out of a possible 5 times. I would have wanted to see more effort in your survival tool usage.

You did a good job using your movement tools, 5 casts of Death’s Advance.

I also see you switched into Unholy Presence 3 times, I assume for the DPS and movement benefits? What concerns me is only 1 shift into Blood Presence. Assuming you started the fight in Blood one could assume that you did some tanking in Unholy Presence? What are your thoughts on that? What tools do you use to ensure you’re in the right Presence whilst tanking? (could help explain the DS heals)

Looking at your Jin’rokh logs

I see a similar trend with your DS to Blood Shield ratio. It’s a bit improved here on the DS heal side of things at a 93k heal, but that’s still pretty low. Your average shield is lower on this log at 147k which further bolsters my hypothesis that you were doing more stacking of BS rather than effective DS usage.

Rune Tap use here is better at 9 over a 5 minute fight. You could have possibly gotten 18 of these off, so I would have liked to have seen a few more, but it’s better than before and again I wouldn't expect a full 18 due to tank swaps, etc.

Bone shield looks fine at 5 casts and 50% uptime

Only 2 uses of Vampiric Blood and I’m only finding one Trinket use on this fight, not what I'd want to see at all

Looks like you maxed out that Orc Racial again at 3 uses of a 3 min CD on a 5:52 fight.

Overall I’m not seeing an overwhelming credit score. What are your thoughts? What’s your sales pitch to get a higher spending limit?

Or do you prefer the term African-American Express?

<3

Hip

[gameschess]

I just want you to know I respond to these posts 1 part at a time and when I pasted it into Word it was 2.25 pages lol.

So first off, thank you for your time and insight into the logs.

I do not quit playing in the middle of content, usually if I quit playing it's because the guild has fallen apart and it's late in the tier to find a new group. Now that I've graduated college, I have a consistent work schedule that will allow me to play according to a set raid schedule.

I'm heavy on stam atm, and i've debated lower it down in favor or more passive mitigation or full mastery, but with DS scaling off % of health, my healers like for me to stack stam in certain areas. I also like to keep 7.5%/7.5% hit/exp cap to prevent those annoying situations where a miss can cause huge headaches.

We've had a few 1% wipes on Ji'kun therefore I use heart strike semi-aggressively, and sustaining talon rakes has not been life threatening. In more tight situations, i use DS early just to prevent dropping my hp (increasing the max hit I can take next)

I have a forum that I discuss my cooldown usage and I will post it as my next post. I have it readily available for critique and public knowledge for criticisms.

Vamp blood is a tricky subject. I do not have it glyphed therefore it is only the 15%/15%, again for the hp increase as heals have not been an issue. Sometimes I save it for a bigger talon rake, such as a previous attempt where the nest 12 guardian spawned and ji'kun decided to quills instead of his normal talon rake, this cause a huge pain on one of our attempts and I had to eat 4-5 talon rakes in order to regain control of our timers. Vamp blood is normally something I discuss with healers and it can vary from raid to raid.

Concerning DRW and trinkets... On the Ji'kun fight in particular I save my dodge trinket for medium stacks of infected talons, we have a new tank so it's hard to communicate with him that we need to swap agro right after a talon rake to split up the infected talons.

I am wondering if this set of logs contains some errors as the other tank was the one running the logs. How could I switch from Blood-1 cast Unholy-3 casts? I would have had to swap at least 2 bloods, but regardless. I swap to unholy and use deaths advance durring down-draft to try to stay near the center, about .5-1 sec before down draft ends, I swap back into blood because I am most likely going to eat a talon rake.

On Jin'Rokh, once again we have the fight down, but with a new tank, I decided to keep the dodge trinket in my back pocket in case I ate an extra stack of the static debuff and needed to dodge the melee hits proceeding it. The lei shen trinket, although the benefit is small still should be used and I will keep that in mind during my next raid, although I have been thinking about swapping it out for the dodge trinket from animus.

The sales pitch:

Being in the guild I am in, I do not receive much criticism or critique, I generally self judge myself and I feel my gameplay reflects the group I am with, if we're close to a kill and I'm excited about playing my skill cap goes way up. When people are making the same mistakes over and over, my enthusiasm can be deterred. I greatly appreciate the review and I would like the opportunity to show that I am not only understanding the criticisms, but I am striving to correct discrepancies. Tonight should include another heroic Ji'Kun attempt at which point I will apply the critiques you have concerns about. I would like you to compare the previous Ji'Kun to tonight's Ji'Kun. I want this to be a testament to my ability to adapt and improve.

Major areas of concern:

1. Trinket usage

2. vamp blood

3. rune tap

4. Blood shield (more effective/ higher average)

My concerns:

1. Will a more effective use of blood shield lead to a loss on dps on Ji'Kun as we are cutting it close on the dps.

Futher insight that this topic has made me think about

1. Healthstone usage

If you would like to see anything else in the logs tonight, let me know and I will apply this in my gameplay

[gameschess]

As I am always open to constructive criticism, I thought it would be a good idea to discuss my cool-down usage on the normal ToT fights for those of you who like to theory-craft and to get a better understanding of issues that may arise during heroic fights.

**On all fights I pop bone shield ~1-2 minutes before each pull so I can reapply it when it wears off.

**Also on all fights I bop Army of the Dead at the beginning as well as a Mogu power potion, except Megaera

Jin'Rokh (H) - AMS popped ~5 seconds after pull. This is to prevent the stacking buff that Jin'Rokh applies to the tanks (AMS makes you immune to the application of the debuff but will not remove it) When this is activated on the tank, it does an AOE for about 150k as well. I take advantage of this immunity every time he comes out of lightning phase to prevent the raid from taking a 150k hit when they are already low on HP from the lightning.

After each storm I usually pop vamp blood so that my (DS) will heal me up more as well.

After the first toss, I pop desecrate ground to get out of the stun and taunt, sometimes I use IBF to get out of the 2nd toss/stun, and then desecrate ground on the 3rd to get out of the stun again.

Besides that I cycle through Vamp blood/bone shield/dodge trinket/death strike as I see fit.

Horridon - Normally I only tank the adds on this fight, but in the likely scenario that we will not have a Paladin, I will most likely swap tanking with the offtank. I will post more after our first night of heroic attempts

Council of Elders- In development!

Tortos- In development!

Megaera- I save army during this fight for times when I am taking a significant amount of magic damage, usually durring the 7-8th head when he uses his last breath on me. Besides that sometimes I don't use any cooldowns for the first breath and just save up for a DS(5). I also rotate the head around and cast blood boil to apply my diseases as well as DRW on the add we're dpsing when i'm on the other head. Besides that I save at least 1 type of cooldown per breath, and I usually pop my trinket right after the 2nd breath or so.

Ji'Kun(H) - There don't seem to be many problems on this fight. I use AMS every cooldown when there is a blob near ji'kun. As Irt stated AMS is based on your max health, that is why it is much easier for me to absorb the pool. I take no ticks and I don't get a debuff but I can only remove 1 blob at a time. I save IBF for the platform and I jump down there about 5 seconds before the nest group gets there in order to gain threat and dps the adds, I sometimes save Army of the Dead for this part as I want to make it quick and get back up top. Besides that I try to save vamp blood for the 2nd stack of debuff.

Durumu- I wasn't aware arterial cut was giving the healers any type of trouble. I think it would be beneficial in this fight to swap out for the Vamp Blood glyph which will take away the HP bonus but increase healing by 30% instead of 15%. Also I will consider getting the IBF glyph to reduce the cooldown of IBF but make it last 3 seconds instead of 12. I can either use these cooldowns on cuts 3/4 or 4/5. I think 4/5 would be more beneficial because they will be the highest damage. But I could use it on 3/4 because Keg will taunt as soon as I am at 5, meaning I am no longer taking extra damage from the boss.

Primordius- In development!

Dark Animus- In development!

Iron Qon- In development!

Twin Consorts- In development!

Lei Shen- In development!

Key words

DS()-deathstrike (stacks)

AMS-Anti-magic shell

AMZ-Anti-magic zone

BS- Bone Shield

IBF-Icebound Fortitude (Shieldwall)

Trinket-http://www.wowdb.com/items/94507-steadfast-talisman-of-the-shado-pan-assault

** I started this topic for the healers in my current guild, but there hasn't been much input from my current raid.

[Hip]

So, I'm not what the issue is, but I'm not able to use my enter key when posting replies, and for anyone familiar with my posting style that's a big issue for me. I'll touch base from a different PC tomorrow but I will say that I'm disappointed with your response. A few posts ago you stated that you wanted to get fresh logs as you were confident this would be indicative of your play and that you would stand behind them. Now I'm reading that you're "playing down" to the level of the guild around you, but actually if you put in your full effort you'd really shine. That playing with less skilled players leads you to not be motivated and therefore give less effort and thus have a performance "less than". If that's the case, why should I put effort into reviewing your logs if you're not willing to put the effort in to playing your best?

[gameschess]

I think I came across in the wrong way. Let me rephrase my previous statement, it's not that I think my current group is less skilled. I think most of them are very good. I understand people make mistakes, the bigger issue I have is that they are very unmotivated to do new heroic content and would rather farm normal raid than to progress in heroic the lack of motivation and willingness to try is very unsettling to me. Getting only an hour or 2 of heroic attempts makes small mistakes look like big mistakes because it is the difference between getting a new heroic kill for the week or farming normal content again.

My current guild does not plan on clearing ToT heroic this tier. I am very motivated to clear this tier of content and want to find a guild that is as motivated as I am and one I could progress the next tier with, which is why I am apping for soh.

I'm not saying I gave a "less than" full effort on each of the bosses and I didn't mean to come across that way. I can see how that notion is inferred from the above statement though. What I am trying to say is that when the whole raid starts saying "we can't do this content lets just clear it on normal", it makes me very unmotivated knowing that they do not care. On heroic attempts and bosses that are not trivially easy, I feel that is the time to make the raid motivated, therefore, I push extra hard to do so. Lets say you wiped a couple times on heroic Jin'Rokh, then the guild says lets just kill it on normal and have extra time off this week, I don't feel like putting in the effort to kill it on heroic and we can just get normal gear. Wouldn't that deter your motivation while you killed Jin'Rokh on normal?

Regardless, I will still post logs from tonight, I would appreciate if you took a look at them, but if you feel it is fruitless, I do not want to waste your time.

Thanks

[gameschess]

Ji'Kun (2013-05-31) - http://www.worldoflo.../?s=5676&e=6221

You know you're curious

[Hip]

I do see some improvements here

You did almost 5 million more total healing last night as compared to the previous log. Blood Shields were a bit larger as well and Bone Shield uptime was very nice at 69.5%.

However looking inside the numbers I'm seeing some trouble.

Rune tap usage up to 25 uses from 9, but overhealing was way up. Your Rune Tap overhealing was at 42.6%. I wouldn't expect this many Rune Taps necessarily. Certainly I think there's room for more than 9, but this kind of overhealing looks like mismanagement of the spell.

Same with Death Strike, overhealing was up a bit 8% increase to 40% overheals. Again, this could be attributed to DS'ing while not actively tanking but could also be DS'ing on CD rather than to recover from damage. You did almost 20% more healing through DS last night as well. Less concern here, but still something to note.

I'm heavy on stam atm, and i've debated lower it down in favor or more passive mitigation or full mastery, but with DS scaling off % of health, my healers like for me to stack stam in certain areas.

This statement also concerns me. Stamina directly influences only the size of a minimum DS and resulting Blood Shield. You will be rewarded with a 7% Max HP + %mastery Blood Shield for DS'ing after taking zero damage in the previous 3 seconds. Stacking stamina is an ineffective way of generating bigger shield directly.

Indirectly stamina will produce a larger shield because it will allow you to take a larger amount of damage before needing to recover that damage with a DS, therefore netting you a larger Blood Shield.

Essentially Stamina Stacking is a way to boost Effective Health, or not die from 1-3 big shots from a boss.

Mastery stacking will net you larger shields in all cases, and will allow for the greatest potential for effective shielding in the long run. There are few times through the course of a fight where stamina stacking will be necessary. Outside of a few encounters per tier (if not expansion) will the stamina provided on gear be insufficient for providing ample EH to survive in those "big hits" situations.

I agree, keep 7.5% for hit and expert, but after that your base gear should offer you as much mastery as possible. Certainly keeping a few pieces of gear, or trinkets that will allow you to change out for more stamina or avoidance is nice, but not your bread and butter.

I appreciate that you incorporated the things we talked about in the previous posts and I can see you did them all; DS, Vamp Blood, trinket use, Rune Tap. I'll touch base with Ashin and see what he wants to do from here.

thanks for your efforts.

[gameschess]

Thanks for the review, I appreciate the time put into your posts. Would you like some Bengay for your fingers?