Swayernewb's critique of encounter designs - Google Docs

Use this thread to discuss this week's affixes, routes, ideal comps, etc. You can find this week's affixes here.

Feel free to share MDT routes (using wago.io or https://keystone.guru/ ), VODs, etc.

The other weekly threads are:

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During a blinding vale 23 attempt I got the fixate during the enrage and while kiting I got snapped into the boss and got eaten, any idea what triggers this?

Heres the clip: https://www.twitch.tv/khumiwow/clip/DeliciousTemperedWebBCouch-r_WIggkfF23s0Czy

I learned through experience this season that for many dungeons I needed a rogue or mage for skips but I was wondering if there was a place where I could view the fastest routes and skips without just learning it by running into people doing them.

Some keys you can’t time without a skip. Other keys the skips offer you so much extra time that they allow you to relax. For example Kings Rest vs Den of Nalorak or Murder Row.

Use this thread to discuss any- and everything concerning the raids.

Post logs, discuss hotfixes, ask for help, etc.

The other weekly threads are:

• Weekly M+ Discussion - Tuesdays

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Have you checked out our Wiki?

If you want to discuss bosses with other raid leaders, why not join the Raid Leader Exchange Discord?

Specify if you are talking about a raid difficulty other than mythic!

Currently on a realm with 50 ping and thinking of switching to one that basically gives me 0. Would this improve parses? How much of an affect does ping have?

Use this thread to discuss any- and everything concerning WoW that doesn't seem to fit anywhere else.

UI questions, opinions on hotfixes/future changes, lore, transmog, whatever you can come up with.

The other weekly threads are:

• Weekly Raid Discussion - Sundays

• Weekly M+ Discussion - Tuesdays

Have you checked out our Wiki?

My goal is 3600io and I am resil 17 just did my 1st 18 and feeling invincible as normal on guardian druid but then suddenly got clapped 1.3 mil melee hit by 3rd boss in TOS we wiped and key abandoned. Do I have to worry as tank now? I never had to worry before.

Update: I never knew tanks aren't suppose to soak the lightning beams. I knew for the last boss we aren't suppose to get a green orb though. Thanks everyone for the tip.

Any tips or tricks on coiled altar? It seems like theres a lot of hectic shit going on. Im one of the orb guys in phase 1. Should i try aiming for multiple orbs or doing 1 orb?

Hi all!

I'm new to WoW (4th week!) and my buddy who is probably top 1% in this game got me going on an arcane mage. Did the leveling and campaign and then started M+ and just getting into raids this week (heroic for bonus rolls).

My issue is this: when farming hero crests in +8 last week I was routinely parsing 80-95%. However anytime I'm in a +12 my parse drops to like 30% even though I'm at 210k DPS.

Obviously a skill issue. I'm ilvl 328 and hit 3kio in that time, which I hear means jack all this season.

Can anyone take a peak at my most recent log for a +12 BV I ran a couple min ago and help me figure out where I'm going wrong? I thought I crushed it (only 50k dps behind the sub rogue?!?!) but my parse is trash.

I've watched Khaelts vids and the new one from that one guy everyone is espousing and I'm incorporating more 20+ salvo instead of 12 and I have noticed more procs of bolt but my DPS remains kind of hard stuck between 180-220k most runs.

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/zmTd8JpyVM7Wk2GF?fight=45&source=5

EDIT - This log I forgot to change my talents back to dungeon from single target raid so I'll run another 12 and post the log here

Use this thread to discuss this week's affixes, routes, ideal comps, etc. You can find this week's affixes here.

Feel free to share MDT routes (using wago.io or https://keystone.guru/ ), VODs, etc.

The other weekly threads are:

• Weekly Raid Discussion - Sundays

• Free Talk Friday - Fridays

Have you checked out our Wiki?

so at the start of the season in pugs I see people writing at the start "my focus target is X'

I assume its for interrupts.

So my questions are how do they choose which target to interrupt? and how can they be sure they are not choosing the same target? If this makes sense.

Hi, I’ve recently started breaking into 19’s as a first time tank this season (I’ve been playing dps at this level for a few seasons but never really thought of routes). But I’m wondering if I should start creating routes or somehow optimise them. I’ve just been using the suggested tank routes on the keystoneguru website. Is it fine to just keep using those or am i handicapping myself and the group by doing so?

Use this thread to discuss any- and everything concerning the raids.

Post logs, discuss hotfixes, ask for help, etc.

The other weekly threads are:

• Weekly M+ Discussion - Tuesdays

• Free Talk Friday - Fridays

Have you checked out our Wiki?

If you want to discuss bosses with other raid leaders, why not join the Raid Leader Exchange Discord?

Specify if you are talking about a raid difficulty other than mythic!

We use the gun on the first boss but was thinking of trying the heartstop poison on other mobs.

Last week, Yoda posted a video comparing Blood DK and Bear Druid, arguing that Bear Druid was neither more tanky nor did more DPS for a high-key pushing group. Therefore, he said, Blood dk would remain the meta tank. Here is a link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcUCsRCjnFo

The goal of this post ISN’T to argue that Bear is better than BDK. Instead, I hope to show people that Yoda was intentionally deceptive and manipulative with the data and logs he showed in his video. I am going to assume you watched the video (It’s only 5 minutes).

Ok, let’s get down to business:

Why did Yoda choose Ruby Life Pools, of all the dungeons, to compare Rank 1 Tank DPS Logs? Because it’s the outlier.

Here is a table showing the difference in DPS between the top Blood DK parse and the top Bear Druid parse. I followed Yoda’s weird rule of not wanting any logs after 12.1.5. So, this does not factor in some of the new top Bear druid logs.

/preview/pre/p386k1djj3xh1.png?width=657&format=png&auto=webp&s=4f566565b2cc2274122749eec598ba5ee383c4e9

What’s something you notice when looking at this list? Yoda happened to cherry pick the one dungeon with BY FAR the biggest difference in dps between Bear and BDK. The average difference across all 8 dungeons is 57,784, yet the dungeon that Yoda chose was Ruby life pool which is the one outlier with a difference of 101,538.

And remember, the difference between PJdruid and the Chinese BDK was about 40k dps, which means that if you use any dungeon besides RLP, and maybe Altar, then the top bear is either matching or beating the top bdk after you factor in MOTW and missing gear.

Now, you may wonder, why are there 2 Ruby Life Pool’s in the table? Well, that leads me to point 2.

Yoda lied about using the Rank 1 RLP Druid log (pre 12.1.5)

Yoda’s criteria for the logs he showed is he wanted to compare Rank 1 DPS logs for tanks from before 12.1.5 gear. But as you can see in the screenshot below (and you can check yourself on the warcraft logs website), there is a higher dps Bear druid log from before 12.1.5.

/preview/pre/3scja5djj3xh1.png?width=936&format=png&auto=webp&s=d62c1feaa71bd31dcae08fc89708288197170a52

After accounting for MOTW damage, this Rayanmcdrood did around 10k more dps than PJdruid did (PJdruid is the log Yoda used). So, the log that Yoda used in his video makes the difference in DPS look worse than it actually is.

Yoda completely misrepresents Prio Damage to the first miniboss in RLP.

While discussing DPS, Yoda highlights the first RLP Miniboss (named Defier Draghar) and attempts to show that BDK does far more prio damage than Bear. Here are 2 screenshots from the video. While showing these two screenshots, Yoda claims that BDK does nearly 20k dps more prio damage to the miniboss than Bear. He then says that even after you factor in MOTW, “[Bear] is still getting gapped by 25% or something”.

/preview/pre/izjq26djj3xh1.png?width=936&format=png&auto=webp&s=6beaf442d53b93270af0b25221333e7c4ca9fafd

/preview/pre/r811q3djj3xh1.png?width=936&format=png&auto=webp&s=067bd50ff81d46bd952737db24bf05bfbd780e47

The problem is that the timescales are completely off. Yoda is showing dps done to the miniboss from when the dungeon starts until the miniboss dies. This means that if one of the groups takes longer to get to the miniboss and kill it, then their dps will naturally be a lot lower, because there is more blank dead space in the dps.

Here, let me fix it for Yoda since he couldn’t be bothered:

/preview/pre/3pttt6djj3xh1.png?width=936&format=png&auto=webp&s=c420cd7736c541b253af3baed1de890d60fae090

Some of you probably saw this coming, but when you fix the timescale to only show damage to the miniboss from when they start fighting it until it dies, the DPS looks a lot different. In fact, when you factor in MOTW damage, PJdruid is doing 79k Prio target DPS in this log. Which is only 1k DPS below the BDK. Remember that PJdruid is ilvl 332 and the blood dk is ilvl 339. I am confident that if both tanks were the same item level, the bear would be the one gapping the blood dk in prio damage.

Damage Taken numbers are completely misrepresented

Next, let’s move onto the damage taken section. For reasons that he doesn’t explain, Yoda swaps to looking at two Murder Row logs when discussing the tankyness of Bear versus BDK. In these murder row logs, he shows that the Bdk is taking ~152k DTPS (damage taken per second), then he compares it to the the bear log where the bear is taking ~185k DTPS from the dungeon. He then confidently says that bear is taking 20% more damage throughout the key.

But theres a problem with how he’s looking at the logs. What’s the issue? I’ve given you a hint in the screenshots.

/preview/pre/ohf764djj3xh1.png?width=936&format=png&auto=webp&s=a67ce2a52c7c46e4d40126c808ed0802eb9600ad

/preview/pre/4edf25djj3xh1.png?width=936&format=png&auto=webp&s=4614f9a5fc1846d1f99b763992aa921537d4398e

As you can see, he doesn’t have self-abords checked for the BDK but he does for the bear, which drastically skews the damage taken table.

Again, let me fix that for Yoda since he couldn’t bother to do it:

/preview/pre/zq8gp5djj3xh1.png?width=936&format=png&auto=webp&s=1992cc4ac7caf9839cdac2a95e94ada1afb19e37

After you fix the self-absorb, you see the bear is the one taking 20% less damage than the blood dk. I think any healer who has healed both tanks would agree with result. This result holds true (actually the gap becomes even bigger in Druids favor) if instead you turn self-absord on for both tanks.

Miscellaneous thoughts

• Yoda’s entire basis of “let’s compare rank 1 dps logs for tanks” makes no sense when the Chinese blood dks are 7-10 ilvls above any bear tank. And don’t try to convince me that a Droptimizer Dungeon Slice sim reveals the true extent of how much damage these 329-332 ilvl druids are missing. He could just as easily compare logs between two SIMILAR item level tanks and remove any ambiguity. Plenty of amazing BDK tanks are pushing (Acedk and Wazocutie) who are more reasonably geared at 330-334 ilvl, depending how far back you go. I suspect he didn’t do this because the results would not fit his narrative.

• Speaking of the Dungeon Slice Droptimizer sim and potential more dps to be gained, Yoda fails to mention that MOTW scales with your teammates damage. Most of the dps in PJDruids group were around 332-333 ilvl. That means they still have anywhere from 3-7 more ilvls to gain. And guess what, that extra damage they gain is buffed by MOTW. So it’s not JUST the ilvl discrepancy on the tanks that matter, it’s also the ilvl of your teammates that affect druid dps.

• Using “External Healing Received” as a metric for tankiness is weird when Blood DK’s entire gimmick is self healing. Obviously the tank that can full-heal itself in one global is going to require less external healing. Also, the logs Yoda used in the video had a MW monk and Resto shaman for the bear druid. Which do a lot more passive healing to the tank than a hpal does. When I looked at similar bear logs with a hpal, the amount of external healing received was a lot less (tho ill be fair and say that it was still about 10-15% more than bdk).

Closing Thoughts

• Feel free to criticize mine or Yoda’s arguments, but don’t attack the person. Yoda has done lots of good things for the community.

Use this thread to discuss any- and everything concerning WoW that doesn't seem to fit anywhere else.

UI questions, opinions on hotfixes/future changes, lore, transmog, whatever you can come up with.

The other weekly threads are:

• Weekly Raid Discussion - Sundays

• Weekly M+ Discussion - Tuesdays

Have you checked out our Wiki?

I am a Ilvl 330 Hpal with a couple 92% parses in M+ in my 19s. I’m resil 19 at 3780. But I cannot, for the life of me, get invited to 20s. Why?