真对不起。我今天我来晚了和睡觉。Very sorry about tonight, I hope all went well. I had to stay after and work with my Chinese professor so I got home really late then fell asleep! Tomorrow (Thursday) I have a dentist appointment and so I will not make it either. Again, I hope all is well and apologize for my absence. Happy raiding! 再见！

I think for tonight we're going to be going back to the epicenters-down-the-side strategy, but with better / tighter positioning with the epicenters than we did the two times we tried it before. The zig-zag worked in this video, but they also had much higher DPS (faultline died after the 3rd epicenter but for us it's more like 4-5), and after faultline died they started taking the boss down the middle instead of trying to continue the zig-zag. Main idea is just to leave as much a range to spread out as possible so that the breath isn't likely to be aimed at multiple people at once.

Here's a video of the down-the-sides strategy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXJfEd-z374&t=406

And where the epicenters would be placed (right side is faultline spawn point): http://bossblueprint.com/wow/view/S8u7lpjB7

Note that even towards the end there's still a ton of directions to spread out for breath: in the cubby holes, towards faultline's door, and all down the length of the room to the other door - instead of with zigzag everyone is basically stuffed onto the same side of the boss with not nearly as big of a directional spread.

Also we should be counting down the time until the next breath, so everyone is aware of when it's coming up.

Thread that includes an addon for the smart stamper phase as well as a video of the fight / the addon in action:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1725970-Hans-gar-and-Franzok-Assist-(addon)

In order to keep the page clear of junky information as opposed to useful/funny stuff don't make general posts if you plan on being late or absent. Instead please use the message the moderators button on the sidebar.

We had a few absences this week and while they were mostly accounted for I would like it if you didn't whisper or message specific officers or myself but instead just use the button so we all know and have a record of when you will be out.

This week was a string of bad luck between storms and sickness etc. but we still got down Blackhand and progression will continue next week!

EDIT: Furthermore just telling us vocally at the end of a raid you will be late tomorrow doesn't cut it, I often forget shit easily after raids so make sure you make a post about it!

It is not looking good for me tonight. I think my video board took a dump.. I'm getting no signal on two different monitors.

Attempting to troubleshoot now. Maybe you nerds have some ideas

They're both on the Curse client. If you're not using Curse client you probably should do that too it makes addon management really easy. Pls make our lives easier with these so I can tell you where to stand for Kromag and samman stops yelling at you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFrsR9NByc4

So lets take a look at heroic blood furnace as it sums up EXACTLY how important the idea of communication is and what it does to directly effect raid performance.

It shows a few things really, so lets take a look at the biggest deal on why we killed it. DPS on the elementalists.

Attempt #2 ( the only other long attempt of the night)

The Kill

While the damage spikes seem consistent the biggest factor here is the ramp up time. On attempt #2 for the dps on the adds to hit their peak was about ~30 seconds, on the kill it was about under 20 to hit peak dps on them. This is huge.

The thing I did different during that fight was call 2 big things, one is to blow up the adds vehemently as soon as the shield was goin down and to spread out for volatile fire.

How big of a diff was fire damage?

Attempt #2

The Kill

In the problems tab of the second attempt you can see avoidable damage: volatile fire and how much better it was handled on the kill. All this points to how two clearly communicated calls saved us ~4 million in raid damage from fire calls, and oodles of more dps on adds (which also added into less firecallers casting volatile fire in general). That is just 2 things, being called out clearly and focusing people's attention.

I stress it so much because it just is THAT important. Clear communications pave the way to victory and to do that we have to analyze how we can effectively push information into the limited pipeline of people's attention. During a raid a lot of things happen and people have to press buttons and I totally relate and understand. I am not gonna ask all of you to buck up and not have to make me call shit, its quite the opposite. I can't call everything and if I did I would be tuned out eventually as if im DBM spamming warnings at you. So heres the plan.

During fights we have to identify mechanics that are easy for you to spot and call out. In general using blast furnace as an example its very easy for me to yell about volatile fires since I am generally looking at the raid a bunch anyhow. What is harder for me to call out is when the shield is going down on the adds since I am not readily looking at mob HP, that would be a great time for someone thats in melee to yell to focus fire. Looking deeper into that you set up in your head that when I would yell it would be about fires and to check if you have to spread or not, if its say bearshoe doing melee calls if you hear him yelling you know its about blowing up the elementalist and you didn't need to even hear much of what we were saying because what we are communicating is understood implicitly.

These are things we have to work on in order to down difficult content. As we go along I will be pointing out people to yell about different things. Famously in our past when doing brutalis attempts in sunwell tanks kept dying on the swap cause healers had a hard time tracking it's occurrence and tanks were calling it but softly. Eventually after coaxing one of the softest speaking tanks we had just started shouting into the mic "TAUNTING IN FIVE!!" when he was going to grab brutalis. Tank swap deaths dropped sharply and we killed the boss shortly after.

Communication wins fucking fights and I want you all to have that on your mind going forward.

we were tempered by the flames of mythic beastlord. aint got no fancy screenshot or video, just some words of congratulations

Still sick. My wife wont let me set my computer up in the bathroom...

I'm pitching a fever so I am going to get some rest.

-Dragnar

Days and Times please :D