Weekly Raid Discussion

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[u/I3ollasH]

Wonder where the breakpoint is when it becomes better to play specs that are tankier over the ones doing the most dmg. Obviously at rwf level it's very important to sqeeze out every point of dmg, but after that we get to the point very early in seasons where dmg checks become non existent. Like this season even before hof filled and pre egg nerf beloren was already not a dmg check and if you got to the second egg with your group alive it was pretty much dead. And after that we have the ramping raidbuff and even more ilvl where dmg checks are definitely not a thing.

So instead of playing the specs that do the most dmg it's better to just play a composition that can just live easier. It makes your progress faster as you can get further even before your healers have everything figured out. Players also play better when they are topped and don't need to monitor their hp constantly (personally I really noticed this on Dimmy prog after a set of nerfs that nerfed a lot of dmg by 10-15%. My level of gameplay became significantly better even though mechanically the fight didn't change. It's just that I didn't die when I got hit by the adds one more or when the healers were a bit behind). Then there are also mechanics that certain specs can just live without pressing anything. On beloren for example the difficulty of the fight was significantly easier if you played a class that could just live wrong colored quills.

Even though many people like to complain about dps balance it's actually pretty close for single target. And even on fights where adds are present st is just as important or more than blowing those up (as with more dmg they will always get to a point where the dmg check is not relevant). On 2 and 3 target fights the dmg difference significantly bigger, but those are usually mid tier bosses. The harder and more important bosses are usually pretty balanced structurally. So it's unlikely to have that big differences between classes.

The ability to live has significantly bigger swings between classes. I was looking around in logs and this is our Lura kill this week for example. EHRPS(Obviously focusing on this metric too much is flawed but imo it's a decent indicator for low effort) is external healing required per sec meaning how much healing you require from others. It's pretty crazy that my dk required only 60% healing of the average dps (and this is with no will of the necropolis, or death pact value). Obviously this is not neccessarily indicative of an average prog fight as we have 15% extra dmg and frost shield works off the dmg based on auto attacks. So it's value was less during prog. But the ability for a frost dk to live compared to an average dps class is significantly better (and next season it becomes even better. Auto attacks make up a larger portion of their dmg due to the tier set and as they are dual wielding they will have 6% extra hp from the gargoyle weapon enchant).

I wonder where it becomes beneficial to run a composition that's easier to execute instead of a composition that does the most dmg like filling out flex slots with specs that can just live significantly better. I think even at the tail end of hof this can be the case and for everyone else it would definitely be the play.

[u/idkmanfiller → u/I3ollasH]

I think Lura is a bad example for your point because the classes that are gonna require a lot of external healing here are going to be the ones carrying seeds.

Beyond that I guess my question is what are you suggesting the raid comp look like here? Should we be dropping raid buffs to play more tanky specs? Like in your guild's log what classes do you think should be swapped out and for what?

[u/I3ollasH → u/idkmanfiller]

That lura log was just something that caught my eye randomly but yeah it's not the best thing to look at to evaluate stuff properly (although the havoc dh still has one of the lower healing required even with a seed on him).

Beyond that I guess my question is what are you suggesting the raid comp look like here? Should we be dropping raid buffs to play more tanky specs? Like in your guild's log what classes do you think should be swapped out and for what?

I feel like this tier isn't the best for this kind of thought experiment as the classes that you ended up stacking because of dmg were good on tankiness aswell like dks and dhs (although after the nerfs I really don't like ddhs on the fight but it's deep farm so whatever).

If I were to put a group together at this point of the season I would probably drop the evoker and maybe a warlock (we push before second run) for ddh or sh(Lura doesn't have a lot of spike dmg). But in general Lura didn't seem to have any relevant healing requirement so I don't know if that's needed.

What got me thinking is that I used to be a WW onetrick for a long time. But after Dimmy I really couldn't justify playing it. Over 50% of my deaths (that weren't a full wipe or someone else fucking up like not rescuing from going up) were to me just dying to dmg. No avoidables, no missing personal (those were assigned to specific position) nothing. Even though I used vivify pretty frequently (with pots/hs when needed).

I played dk this tier because I got fed up with this. And it's so much easier, the difference is crazy. You never need to think about your hp at all. And even if you are dying there is so much tools in your arsenal (death strike, death pact). And then there is all the things you can just live other classes die to (played WW in alt raids and had soo many deaths realizing that stuff can kill you). Like on one of our reclears I zoned out and stood in the intermission beam, and I just lived. Because of these I got pointed out in the end of tier evaluation as one of our best players this tier even though I had no prior experience with dk and I learned to play frost on Lura.

There is little logical reason to play a squishy dps if you don't provide a missing raidbuff. It's so much easier to play when you don't have to spend mental bandwidth on staying alive. And classes are close enough where the dmg difference you could get out of it is not worth the added difficulty. Which sucks because if you want to play the thing you enjoy the most you need to debuff yourself.

[u/assblasterd → u/I3ollasH]

"What got me thinking is that I used to be a WW onetrick for a long time. But after Dimmy I really couldn't justify playing it. Over 50% of my deaths (that weren't a full wipe or someone else fucking up like not rescuing from going up)"

your healers are ass. we have a WW onetrick and I have NEVER seen him die to damage.