The Bleeding Edge of TPS

[Treck]

I wasnt aware that reckoning procced on things other than hits taken.

[inthedrops]

At level 70, I was always surprised the things that proc reckoning. I have no idea if they changed it since then. And I don't completely recall what I was surprised about. I just know things procced it that I'd never have guessed if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.

[Chicken]

As I recall from back then it's pretty much anything that doesn't get listed as periodic damage. So it wouldn't proc from most persistent raid AoE effects like Festergut's constant gaseous blight ticks, but it'll proc from AoE 'bursts' like Festergut's exhale blight. Basing this on back then frequently seeing it proc from bursting Naj'entus' bubble, but never seeing it proc from Felmyst's noxious fumes.

[Worldie]

At level 70, I was always surprised the things that proc reckoning. I have no idea if they changed it since then. And I don't completely recall what I was surprised about. I just know things procced it that I'd never have guessed if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes.

I think i had it proc every single time i passed close to a flame in Shattrath

[Meloree]

Back on topic:

Havoc's Call is awesome. That is all.

[Sparan]

Hey all! I know I'm a total unknown here, but I've been lurking about for about the last year soaking up Mel/Theck/Knaughty's insights into protadin-ing. Anyway, this little gentleman's contest is very interesting to me, so I whipped up an incomplete but passable set (http://chardev.org/?profile=448534) and decided to try my hand at some tanking pewpew (http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-g61kishrytufo6qh/). Great fun! I've actually found cycling the AS into the standard 969 relatively simple (although I seem to get an abnormal incidence of AS coming off cd at the same time as HotR, which is annoying and wasteful-feeling). Once I get a Catacylsmic Chestguard and 284 Havoc's Call I think I'll be able to put out some much better numbers, as right now I have a TON of wasted itemization on my tier chest. If anyone notices something I could be doing better than I'd be happy to hear it!

My big question:

Is there any way to buff PP dps in a way that will put us out in front of the pret crowd? I have a pretty streamlined approach to tanking him at this point that gives me basically 100% contact time with the boss or boss+ooze depending on where we are in the fight, and on transitions I'm pretty much just tunneling PP, but I still come up terribly short. It seems like the big problem is reckoning uptime, since the boss spends so much of the fight inactive or not in our hands.


My little question:

Any anecdotal evidence on right/wrong times for HoW? "Whenever the boss won't be railing you for 10 second intervals" seems like a decent start, but I'm wondering about specific instances here.


On a separate note... Thanks so much for providing really quality information and an enjoyable forum-reading experience. I'm going to try and work myself back into the state of mind where I can be an active participant in the future here.

[Meloree]

Hey all! I know I'm a total unknown here, but I've been lurking about for about the last year soaking up Mel/Theck/Knaughty's insights into protadin-ing. Anyway, this little gentleman's contest is very interesting to me, so I whipped up an incomplete but passable set (http://chardev.org/?profile=448534) and decided to try my hand at some tanking pewpew (http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-g61kishrytufo6qh/). Great fun! If anyone notices something I could be doing better than I'd be happy to hear it!

Is there any way to buff PP dps in a way that will put us out in front of the pret crowd?

Any anecdotal evidence on right/wrong times for HoW?

(minor trimmings of quoted content, for brevity)

Welcome to the forums, and nice job #1 on Rotface, I'll have to tank it next week and seize back my spot.

With regards to your questions: I don't tend to parse-hunt on Putricide, because I tend to spend most of my time on Putricide convincing my raid not to parse-hunt. Being a responsible raid leader is no fun Parse-hunting on that fight often ends up causing wipes (badly timed transitions, bad risks, etc), but it shouldn't be too hard to do pretty good dps there. Keep Putricide beside green oozes for as long as you can, maybe even kite him along with the orange for extra cleave dps, if you're really parse-hunting. You can get away with the same gearset, he doesn't really hit hard until P3, and you can cover the entire P3 tanking time with cooldowns. I don't see a reason you couldn't keep up the standard 11-12k tank-and-spank level dps output on him if you really wanted to.

HoW I generally use as a straight replacement for HS, except on Saurfang. At Saurfang, HS triggers a lot, with his 0.9s attack speed at sub-20%, it does a lot of damage. Most other fights you might look at chasing parses for, HS is your worst ability by a small amount - just behind Consecration. HoW itself isn't staggeringly impressive, it's only barely better than HS - about even with Consecration.

I'm not sure that I completely agree with your gear choices, but it's all pretty minor, and you use what pieces you have, so take my suggestions with a grain of salt. I know you mentioned Cataclysmic Chestguard (which is an excellent piece of gear for this particular purpose), but I think the tier gloves are very very strongly itemized for this purpose as well - hit and defense, I'd prefer them, and a ret piece elsewhere - perhaps a cloak replacement, as your cloak is pretty low on strength. I prefer the Tier hat to Broken Ram Skull, as well, simply because it's just dripping in strength, but you find what hit you can. You're also currently crittable, which is bad. Your cloak enchant is spellpower, that should be worse than 22 agility.

[xaphel]

WTB Heroic Havoc's Call, PST.

[Meloree]

WTB Heroic Havoc's Call, PST.

Flavor-text makes it do more dps. True story.

[xaphel]

Srs?

[Sparan]

I'm not sure that I completely agree with your gear choices, but it's all pretty minor, and you use what pieces you have, so take my suggestions with a grain of salt. I know you mentioned Cataclysmic Chestguard (which is an excellent piece of gear for this particular purpose), but I think the tier gloves are very very strongly itemized for this purpose as well - hit and defense, I'd prefer them, and a ret piece elsewhere - perhaps a cloak replacement, as your cloak is pretty low on strength. I prefer the Tier hat to Broken Ram Skull, as well, simply because it's just dripping in strength, but you find what hit you can. You're also currently crittable, which is bad. Your cloak enchant is spellpower, that should be worse than 22 agility.

Yeah, as I said at the outset my gearset is "incomplete but passable". I definitely do appreciate the feedback, though. The chest piece is the main X-factor here, if you think about it. It has heaps of defense and makes me feel more comfortable about letting go of some expertise. Also, I need 2-piece for sure, want as much hit as possible, and can't afford to regem/re-enchant my 277 Tier helm and Gloves Back and forth each week (and since one of my profession bonuses will have a pretty reasonable impact on dps, proper enchanting for gloves at least seems indispensible). What that all amounts to is me opting for Broken Ram Skull for the extra D, settling for tier chest (I have no good ret alternatives anyhow and need 2-piece somehow) and keeping a pretty cruddy cape to ease my conscience about bad parry-strings leading to dead tanks or subpar parses. Once the chest falls into place everything else will be easy to remedy. As for being crittable, I'm actually exactly at 540 defense with the elixir of mighty defense (I use that and mighty strength for the time being... a mediocre option, I know, but I opted to hold off on any extreme measures to get top parses until I have a couple more essential pieces).

As for the SP to cloak... you ever have one of those really bad dreams where you're somewhere very public and only wearing your boxers? Yeah... must've misclicked my engi cloak enchant and not noticed. Thanks for pointing that out.


Regarding PP, though, I also think I'm going to hang up the parse-hunting there. There's little risk of death from what I've seen so far (and my raiders have been really encouraging when it comes to gunning for these parses, so hopefully trying to push the envelope a bit doesn't put me in the "irresponsible raid leader" category ), but after thinking about it more and more there's really just nothing aside from the obvious things to scale DPS there.

[Meloree]

Regarding PP, though, I also think I'm going to hang up the parse-hunting there. There's little risk of death from what I've seen so far (and my raiders have been really encouraging when it comes to gunning for these parses, so hopefully trying to push the envelope a bit doesn't put me in the "irresponsible raid leader" category ), but after thinking about it more and more there's really just nothing aside from the obvious things to scale DPS there.

That wasn't supposed to be a shot. Raid cultures differ. I would be an irresponsible raid leader if I went parse-hunting at Putricide, simply because it's a fight where I have to control my raid's tendency to be overly aggressive, but it doesn't mean anyone else is irresponsible for parse-hunting there.

[trellian]

As it stands, I make around 20k per week just from 10-man sales runs on Mondays. 3 hours of work for a pretty extensive pre-Cataclysm bank exploits my general WoW preferences nicely. I'm not interested in playing the AH game for making serious bank, I just have a couple of hundred thousand gold saved up. 1-2k of regemming doesn't really put a dent in my income, I don't mind the expenditure for parse-hunting, because it's fun, and that's what WoW gold is really for.

I died a little inside when I read this... I've never owned more then 10k gold in total
I'm just not made for business...

[inthedrops]

Meloree,

I haven't tried to chase DPS lately, but I was wondering how the original techniques posted in this thread are holding up. I have yet to try the rotation changes. Have you perfected anything else about it since originally posted? How long did it take you to get good at the rotation?

[Meloree]

Meloree,

I haven't tried to chase DPS lately, but I was wondering how the original techniques posted in this thread are holding up. I have yet to try the rotation changes. Have you perfected anything else about it since originally posted? How long did it take you to get good at the rotation?

Rotation is easy. I messed up once or twice the first run - primarily in fumbling other things I should be doing while watching AS cooldown like a hawk, but it's automatic now. I've been a lot less aggressive of late, I haven't been bothering to regem, etc., because I've been trying to push the guild over a bit of a motivational hump. I might play around a bit more on Tuesday, since we cleared ICC25 in 1:40 this week, as opposed to the recent 3 hour slogs, so I think we might be back on the right track.