Hellfire Citadel Notepod

[Fendo]

I wanna address a few more things. At the risk of further derailing this thread, I will keep it short (short for me is still 500 words)

@Klik: I'm honestly much more concerned at your anger over this than the fact that it was funneled, seemingly, at me. I think you need to think about what would make you happy and address it with officers and make sure you don't let this "build up" like it has been. You show up consistently, you provide humor at your own expense, and you are a solid player. I respect that much more than I dislike what I (possibly mistakenly) perceive as a personal attack or whatever. Trust me, I don't care about that. You need to find a way to be a happy raider instead of a mad raider. People don't like doing things that make them mad long term. And that's a concern.

@Shay: Really dude? "Fendo! If there are two targets and you use chain lightning, you're lowering your ST damage as you're typically using the Enhanced Fury talent for the trinket, which Chain Lightning does not benefit from." What? C'mon now. What? That's wrong for a variety of reasons. Take a peek @ http://www.wowhead.com/guide=346/ele...itarget-cleave
I only take that talent on pure single target fights. On multidot or cleave fights you're going to be fulminating much more often for it to be worth it, numerically. On two target its pretty even (but i still dont prefer it, especially not on Kilrogg). Sorry I don't want to call you out, but you kinda asked for it. "The Cleave rotation, on the other hand, is more suited for dealing damage to a primary target with extra damage going to secondary targets." Lord Binki has spoken. Broskis, Ele Shams ST damage benefits tremendously from 3 target cleave, and decently from two target. If you can chain lightning things, it's the right call 90% of the time.

That kinda reminds me of when Kull told me I hated America because CLs were hitting Killrogg and his add instead of hitting the blood. That's still the right call, depending on how many stacks of fulmination you have. If you're at like 12+ you should get in one more CL to get that number higher and then unload in the bloods while praying for a set piece proc. It does much much more damage than swapping to them right away and just lb'ing them (although that is the right call if you have only a few stacks of fulmi). As you see, Ele isn't as simple as some make it out to be.

"I can say that you aren't maximizing your add damage" What? I had two hunters on my side, you had none. Numbers aren't as simple as "lookie here I do more on this and this so clearly it's the right call" C'mon man you know better. Shitting on a fellow brother. I'm disappointed.

And with regards to the ring: Its very simple. If we lose a ring use because we deferred a previous use, it's likely a dps loss. I think everyone agrees. This isn't something that I'm just proposing because it's a DPS loss for me, or because it matters to me. Quite the contrary, lining up Ascendance (our main DPS cooldown) is no longer that relevant as it is complete and utter shit (in comparison to others' DPS cooldowns). To give you an example, our CD was recently dropped to 2min from 3min. So you're thinking, wow amazing buff. Nope, 3-4% max on a 7 min fight. That's how bad it is. I was merely trying to support Ulu because I think its the right call for the guild. Not for myself. Not sure why this had to turn into a shit on Friendo thread. I'm gonna namechange to Kotex tmrw.

[Klik]

Hmmm...

Yes sir, I VTed everything, except for when a boss was sub 30% (refreshed before it happened and then laid off). We weren't in danger of still having Gurtogg alive when mirror images happened (unless a bunch of us died, as happened once) though we were in danger of not killing him before we reached 3 stacks, which meant I traded Mind Flays on Gurtogg (one of the weakest hitting spells in the game) for VTs on Jubbs and Dia, until Gurtoog hit 30%, at which point I tunneled Gurtogg. The result was a shorter mirror images phase, because they had less health, and a shorter fight overall. If you check the progression logs, you'll see that I didn't do this until last week, because, until last week, we couldn't afford the damage.

[Uluuru]

Forget phases shay. Will the increased kill speed mean we kill the boss before it kills us

[Shaylana]

I was never arguing about 3 or more targets. We all know Ion has praised the Earthquake gods and said, "you hate this spell? Well I'm going to make it the thing you have to cast all the time so you understand how important it is, mofos!!!" And then of course, there's a mechanic to make it instant, increase its damage, damage added to mastery, and a visual change to boot.

@Shay: Really dude? "Fendo! If there are two targets and you use chain lightning, you're lowering your ST damage as you're typically using the Enhanced Fury talent for the trinket, which Chain Lightning does not benefit from." What? C'mon now. What? That's wrong for a variety of reasons. Take a peek @ http://www.wowhead.com/guide=346/ele...itarget-cleave
I only take that talent on pure single target fights. On multidot or cleave fights you're going to be fulminating much more often for it to be worth it, numerically. On two target its pretty even (but i still dont prefer it, especially not on Kilrogg). Sorry I don't want to call you out, but you kinda asked for it. "The Cleave rotation, on the other hand, is more suited for dealing damage to a primary target with extra damage going to secondary targets." Lord Binki has spoken. Broskis, Ele Shams ST damage benefits tremendously from 3 target cleave, and decently from two target. If you can chain lightning things, it's the right call 90% of the time.

From the guide:

2* Single Target with Chain Lightning replacing Lightning Bolt Same as Primary Target with Flame Shock on the second target as long as it lives for the duration of the dot

*If you have Core of the Primal Elements then the 2 target Primary logic applies to any target count for Primary Target damage, or up to 3 targets for AoE damage, but only if they will live for the duration of the 75-97 second dot

In the Cleave section of his guide: Cleave damage (named after the Warrior Cleave spell, and commonly refers to dealing damage to secondary targets while attacking a primary target) is useful for 2-4 targets, or where you have a primary target to attack over the secondary targets (eg: a Boss with multiple low health adds). it then uses Earthquake.

If you only have 2 targets, you won't get the empowered earthquake, so the cleave section isn't relevant. In fact, he prefaces the section with: The question of "What rotation do I use for more than one target?" is better answered by asking "What are you trying to do?". The AoE rotation is best suited for dealing maximum damage to multiple targets and bringing them all down evenly.

If there's a priority target, you have to make the decision on whether or not you're going to bring them down evenly (cleave / AoE) which means you aren't prioritizing single target damage. The larger question is, does my damage make a difference if I decide to AoE versus ST. Using Chain Lightning over Lightning Bolt on a priority target means you're doing 40% less damage on the primary target when you choose one over the other. But overall, you do more dps because of the additional target. For 2 targets, which has always been the nuanced area of Ele Shams, you have to decide which is the right thing to do, and it depends on the overall damage of the group.

Added: And the guide is really the theorycrafter's method to maximize dps, which is not the same as the raid setting. We all know Binkle just does some heroic raiding usually when content is more nerfed. So to maximize your damage, follow the guide. To maximize your raid performance, know when to temper your maximum dps for encounter design.

[Shaylana]

Forget phases shay. Will the increased kill speed mean we kill the boss before it kills us

Let Kull decide that. He's the man for the job. He may just say, "it's stupid, hit it as soon as it comes off cool down" or "it makes a difference so we need to save it here." I trust the man to make those types of decisions, but if you have input that can help him decide, then bring those things up for him to consider. I think with the 15-20M being 7-10% of boss health (based on 216M total health of a boss I looked at), we've given him some information to help decide.

[Shaylana]

btw Fendo: I only take that talent on pure single target fights.

From the Lord Binklestein: Core of the Primal Elements multiplies with both Elemental Fusion and Unleash Flame it means that Flame Shock can be increased to 630% of its normal damage per tick, with an extra 45 seconds duration with just the 705 Normal version. This makes Elemental Fusion the default L100 talent choice for virtually every fight.

So maybe, you're not following the guide all the time? I think that's good because it means you're using your brain instead.

[Fendo]

btw Fendo: I only take that talent on pure single target fights.

From the Lord Binklestein: Core of the Primal Elements multiplies with both Elemental Fusion and Unleash Flame it means that Flame Shock can be increased to 630% of its normal damage per tick, with an extra 45 seconds duration with just the 705 Normal version. This makes Elemental Fusion the default L100 talent choice for virtually every fight.

So maybe, you're not following the guide all the time? I think that's good because it means you're using your brain instead.

I don't always follow the guide, no. I think having some things work out numerically doesn't mean they work out in real raid situations. I try out every set of talents during progression and eventually settle on one I find best suitable for whatever it is we are trying to accomplish. With regard to what you linked, I do follow the guide. I think you confused two different talents. Their names are close enough and I do it all the time as well. When you said "you're lowering your ST damage as you're typically using the Enhanced Fury talent for the trinket, which Chain Lightning does not benefit from." I assumed you meant Unleash Fury, as there's no talent called Enhanced Fury. Unleash fury does not benefit the trinket directly or indirectly. If anything, it makes the use of Unleash Elements + our lev 100 Elemental Fusion on multi-target situations (like council) more difficult. I only take Unleash Fury on pure ST. I take Elemental Fusion on several other fights, and it is basically mandatory when you have the trinket equipped. On other fights I use neither. Elemental Fusion does not have any effect on lightningbolt or lavaburst. Anyhoo, I'm not gonna derail the thread further. Let me know via PM if you want to know what fights I use what trinkets/talents on. Talked to Nubbz about this the other day too. He takes Unleash Fury more often than I do, so he might be more inclined to agree with you.

[Thryll]

Hey now Friendo I think you're making valid points. I still wuv you.

[Kulldam]

I'm back home, and boy did you guys go down a tangent here while I was gone! Fun times!

I'll do my best to address both topics that have come up in the last couple pages:

Ring Usage Timing

Yoohoo originally asked/brought up a good question about timing rings and whether we are losing out in anyway:

Could we set a maximum threshold for time we hold dps ring? I completely understand that we are holding the ring to use it strategically but when we hold it longer than say 30 seconds we potentially lose an entire usage during the fight. I'm not sure what the blast hits for but that amount of raid dps we lose is somewhere in the tens of millions.

I think the simplest answer is what Rhokk already stated; that the usage cannot be a simple rule but needs to be encounter-specific, since obviously we need it to hit at critical times on some fights (like Feast during Gorefiend or central-spawns during Hellfire Assault), but on other fights we just need to be maximizing damage at all times (Fel Reaver, Kormrok, Kilrogg, Council [post-Gurtogg]).

I think it's highly encounter specific. [...] So for total dps I think it really just depends on what we use it with.

As a few people seemed to agree, I think Cuts' suggestion to be more vocal/transparent about the usage, and perhaps ideally writing it down somewhere seems to be the best option:

I think a good compromise might be to be more vocal/transparent about any upcoming delays in ring uses, or have it in writing somewhere. In a perfect world where our raid consisted of 20 druids, it would be ultra amazing to have a "next ring being used in X" timer added to Bigwigs that we could customize, or maybe some addon that /raidwarning'd a 5 second countdown before ring uses when we use it at irregular times.

I think you guys found the ideal option, which is to create a public list of bosses and just write down the timestamps (or relative moments) when rings should be used. We can/should originally house that information in this thread somewhere, but ultimately having it available in our in-game Exorsus Notes would be most useful.

The addon warning for when to use them is far trickier, so we can look into that and for now just start gathering "standard" times into one place on the forum here.

Overall vs Priority Damage

Generally speaking, it seems that most of the fervor was burned out of systems prior to this post (which is good; discussion is great but unwarranted personal attacks/anger seems fruitless).

Therefore, I'll just address the big ideas, points, or examples that were brought up with some agreement or counterarguments where appropriate. I don't wish to stoke the fire, but I also think it's important we're all on the same page (roughly speaking).

Before I do, a few terms to settle on so we know what we're talking about:

Incidental Cleave/Incidental Damage - "Bonus" damage that occurs naturally and automatically to nearby targets when rotating through a maximum single-target/priority-target rotation.
Priority Damage - Typically single-target damage that is a standard, maximum damage rotation for a player to kill the priority target(s).
Overall Damage - All damage dealt at the end of the fight (generally whatever shows in totals in a damage meter/log).
Priority Target - Mob(s) that need to die immediately; usually before a specific event occurs.
Secondary Target - Any mob(s) that are not currently priority targets.
Boosting - The act of boosting one's priority damage utilizing attacks on secondary targets.

The basic notion of overall damage vs priority damage was brought up by a discussion between Klik and Fendo. Fendo states that overall damage is always relevant (which I completely agree with, btw):

@klik: overall dps output is always relevant. There are no adds that don't need to be killed in WoD.

Klik's reply to counter that point contains the following, which has a critical line I'd like to address as I think it's the crux of the argument/misunderstanding here:

Output on specific targets, for specific durations, is what dps is all about, and that does not make overall output relevant. In fact, it makes it irrelevant, because, once you look at each targets damage taken, in order of priority, there is no additional information, or nearly no additional information, gained by looking at overall output.

In other words, every add in every fight dies, but that doesn't mean anything other than incidental/cleave/single target increasing damage needs to be sent at a given mob. Plenty of mobs in WoD die to natural cleave and using abilities on them that aren't in your single target rotation is the textbook definition of padding. Just in case you weren't sure, padding is increasing overall output at the cost of damage to a priority target.

The issue I think is this statement and the false logic that follows thereafter:

Output on specific targets, for specific durations, is what dps is all about, and that does not make overall output relevant.

Or put conversely, the notion that doing damage to secondary targets that don't need to die RIGHT NOW is not only inherently bad/wrong, but that it could take away from the priority damage of other players that utilize those adds as boosters.

As was discussed throughout, many classes/specs benefit from extra boosting -- using other mobs to push their priority damage -- including Shadow Priests and Shamans.

However, here's the rub: This concept is being examined in a perfectly closed vacuum without considering the realities of the situation (or raiding as a whole).

Specifically, the extension of the argument being made above by Klik and others is that all secondary targets would effectively die -- as necessary and when appropriate -- to solely only forms of boosting and/or incidental damage. The reality is, that's almost never the case.

Instead, imagine what would happen if we could somehow make all secondary targets literally immune to any damage source that isn't incidental or boosting damage.

In many situations, I'll tell you exactly what would happen: A  tank or other random individual would die (though usually a  tank), and the raid would wipe or best case, be down 1-2 people after a battle res and recovery were possible.

Why? Because often even secondary targets need to die in a timely manner! Just because a mob isn't currently a priority target doesn't mean that it can be left alive a long time, and certainly not longer than necessary if we can deal with it efficiently in the meantime. Doing so just to "maximize" boosting is best-case foolish and worst-case harmful:

The perfect example which I'm sure others look at from logs and get their panties in a twist over are Dragoons from Hellfire Assault.

It's easy to look at a fight like that and say, "These Dragoons are not priority targets and thus shouldn't be killed by anyone not using them for boosting or via incidental damage." Without getting into the specifics of class mechanics (for which I cannot speak with much experience or knowledge), this is a perfect example of a case where purely boosting and incidental damage wouldn't be enough, and leaving them up to only die to those sources (if that were possible) would absolutely cause problems:

1. Someone would eventually die (usually a  tank).

Like most any mob, they do non-trivial damage (in this case to  tanks). Since they die so quickly right now, a "set" of dragoons isn't a big deal. Yet if they were active much longer (as would be the case in the theoretical example above) -- and in particular if they were alive long enough for a second set to appear -- that would cost a lot of extra healing/mitigation from the  tank or  healers, and in many cases would lead to a death of the  tank or secondarily to another player due to lack of attention/heals allowed by the  healers focusing more on the  tank.

2. Targeting would be far more difficult.

In some cases, not all benefits to killing secondary targets before they become priority targets is about damage output. Many times (as multi-DoT classes should be well-aware), one of the most critical skills in performing well in a multi-target situation is properly acquiring the target to apply DoTs or move onto another priority target when appropriate.

Certainly in some cases boss frames or even /target macros can alleviate this issue, but there's absolutely a tangible benefit to having fewer nameplates on screen because secondary targets are dying faster.

3. Not all incidental or boost damage is equal.

Probably the simplest example is Blade Flurry for Combat Rogues, in that their own incidental damage comes automatically when attacking a primary target and is limited to a maximum number of potential targets. When a larger pool of mobs are available, it's far more likely that this sort of incidental damage hits secondary targets (such as Dragoons) instead of on the more useful priority targets.

Take this line of thought further and you'll soon come to a realization: In many cases, disallowing all damage sources outside of incidental or boost damage to secondary targets will often lower actual priority target damage across the raid, and thus lengthen the fight or raise the difficulty.

4. Brain power is not an infinite resource.

Somewhat tied to everything that is involved in raiding, this one is less tangible or measurable but is absolutely a key concept to understand for any raider (and certainly something I've come to understand from raid leading so many years). The idea is simple: Each individual can only process so much input during an encounter at any given time. Reducing the number of variables -- and thus lowering the total input that must be processed -- simplifies every current and future action of every individual raider, and makes it all the easier to deal with the encounter.

This concept has very obvious applications to a discussion about whether or not killing off secondary targets early is beneficial or detrimental. In nearly every case in raiding both past and present, killing secondary targets sooner rather than later makes the encounter slightly easier. Examples from this tier are numerous, but obvious ones might be:

• Adds when fighting Mannoroth himself. While they have no inherent reason to die, leaving them active makes positioning for critical abilities far more difficult and dangerous (on Heroic, Mythic is a different story entirely).
• Tank adds on Archimonde Phase 2. While they do slightly increased damage to the raid over time, most of the threat is on the  tank. This could be ignored/mitigated by the  tank and thus ignored by most  DPS, but doing so requires far more brainpower from the  tank and of course the  healers.
• Shadowy teleport adds on Xhul'horac. Similar to above tank adds, they don't inherently do anything bad so long as they're controlled by a Hunter or two, but they require extra concentration and consideration from the entire raid while active that can easily be mitigated by killing them off quickly.
• Tons of stuff on Hellfire Assault (already discussed).

---

Moving on, there were also some points brought up, specifically about add damage (priority target damage) relative to overall damage. This example by Shay in particular caught my eye:

Take this:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...en&hostility=1

Overall, my damage sucks. But if you look at add damage, I can say that you aren't maximizing your add damage. With the exception of Fel Blood, I beat you by a significant amount on the ranged priority adds. Sure, you maximized your overall damage, but overall DPS output isn't relative if we wipe to an add getting through.

Pointing out specific examples without absolute certainty is only going to backfire if not every detail was accounted for.

Fendo pretty much nailed it in his reply:

What? I had two hunters on my side, you had none. Numbers aren't as simple as "lookie here I do more on this and this so clearly it's the right call"

To further elaborate on Fendo's point above, across all attempts it looks like the ranged DPS on Fendo's side of the room contained (3) Inner Eye players (Cutsman, Aelloon, and Klik) while the side with Shaylana contained (1) Inner Eye player (Rhokk). Granted, Klik is in the last inner team it looks like so he didn't go in during too many attempts, but the results should be obvious: One side has 200% more Inner Eye burst damage available than the other and thus the damage to Bloods and Thirsters required from non-Inner Eye players is greatly lopsided.

The damage over all attempts supports this: Of the top five ranged target damagers, (4) were among the Inner Eye groups, with Shaylana squeaking into 4th place at 2.7m above Klik.

Based on Shay's comment above and linked log, plus the general arguments being made by him and Klik, it seems that the only supposed "relevant" damage is that from the above log. While admittedly Shaylana is about 12m (23%) above Fendo in damage dealt to Bloods and Thirsters, as illustrated above, this is hardly the only relevant damage.

Putting aside the ability for Fendo to do more damage to Bloods/Thirsters if he wanted to (addressed already), let's dig into actual numbers a bit more since that seems to be the basis for the argument posed by Shay here. Here are some logs first:

Damage to adds, in millions (all attempts).

All damage done, in millions (all attempts)

Here's a handy (sortable) table showing the total numbers that we're talking about:


(Note: I don't wish to drag Nubbz into this since he wasn't involved in the discussion, but it's just another data point for interest.)

So we can see above more detail of what we're talking about and where the argument that dealing 12m/23% more damage to Bloods/Thirsters only somehow indicates that Fendo is doing something wrong or "[is not] maximizing [his] add damage," or that anyone else in the same situation would be guilty of the same.

Instead, here's the reality: In exchange for that 12m less damage to Bloods/Thirsters, Fendo did 35m (164%) more damage to Hulking Terrors (a Priority Target as well, by the way), or a total of 23m (27%) more add damage than Shaylana across attempts. Moreover, Fendo did 114m (54%) more overall damage than Shay across all attempts.

That's not to suggest Fendo didn't make mistakes or doesn't have room to improve I'm sure (like all of us, and I'll get to a bit more of this in a moment below), but this notion that 12m damage more on a select set of adds is more important than 23m more on priority targets in general, let alone 114m/54% more damage overall is somehow "bad" or indicative of "doing it wrong" is absurd and needs to be thrown out.

Finally, I think it's also relevant to talk about the flipside of the argument; namely the notion that "meter padding is bad."

As a baseline statement seen above, I will agree: padding meters solely for the sake of padding meters is bad. Anytime we notice it is happening (provably that is, don't get crazy or illogical now), we'll do our best to shut it down. Taka calling out issues when we were progressing on High Council is a good example of that, when we had to find a way to drop Gurtogg before 3-stacks (which we eventually did, great work team!)

Fendo also casually made comment to a statement I made to him during a raid a few nights back that I need to address again:

That kinda reminds me of when Kull told me I hated America because CLs were hitting Killrogg and his add instead of hitting the blood. That's still the right call, depending on how many stacks of fulmination you have. If you're at like 12+ you should get in one more CL to get that number higher and then unload in the bloods while praying for a set piece proc. It does much much more damage than swapping to them right away and just lb'ing them (although that is the right call if you have only a few stacks of fulmi). As you see, Ele isn't as simple as some make it out to be.

I thought I explained my position well enough during raid when I brought it up and we were in agreement, but it seems not. To be clear, I totally understand that some specs like Elemental Shaman have the ability to boost their priority target damage by attacking other things. And if that is necessary to be more effective, my all means I'm for it.

However, what I'm not for -- and what I stated during the mentioned raid -- is if, in going through the boosting process, said priority target simply doesn't die in time. That was the point I was trying to get across during this discussion mid-raid. If attacking a Hulking improves your damage (on average) to Bloods/Thirsters within the next 5-10 seconds by X%, so be it, go for it. BUT, you must be sure those priority targets actually die. If all the time is spent on ramp up and they don't die at all, we are forced to wipe, in which case I'd rather have you swap to and deal mediocre damage to said Bloods/Thirsters when necessary.

---

I realize a night of wiping to a "farm" mob is frustrating, but I hope that most of you can understand and recognize that circumstances were far from ideal during the last set of attempts for Kilrogg on Monday night, including lots of substitutes and newer/undergeared players. It's in no way anyone's fault and that is always how things go when something is altered from "the norm," but that doesn't excuse the behavior to witch hunt for things or people to blame.

Changing even one little thing would've dramatically altered things, but sometimes that's just how it goes when swapping stuff around. I'm very grateful to Takaoni (and also Citruss) for stepping up when I'm not able to be around, as overall you guys had a very strong week all things considered.

[Klik]

The damage over all attempts supports this: Of the top five ranged target damagers, (4) were among the Inner Eye groups, with Shaylana squeaking into 4th place at 2.7m above Klik.

As a quick point of clarification, when looking at this graph, note we did not have a single attempt last night (nor are we likely to ever have, due to our current level of dps) where I was able to take advantage of being an "inner eye" ranged dps. We did have attempts where my team went inside, and therefore stopped doing damage to the adds outside, but we were always wiping by the time we came out.