Druids, Melee, and Dragon Soul

[tethealla]

OK so after a month and a half of rest from raiding, the itch returned to raid last week.... and to somewhat of a underwhelming result. I followed my progress in my damage meter and was not happy about it. I was expecting better. Last week in LFR, I was pulling 21-25k+ depending on the boss. In our raid, I was consistently under 20k. I've reviewed the logs and my DPS was 5th(out of 5) at 21k overall.

So now some of it was just plain learning the difference between the LFR and normal fights. I wasn't expecting a few of the changes, but this wasn't really much. It does throw off when to pop buffs because I don't know when to align them with heroism.

I see the following
A) I'm spending more time in front of bosses. On Zon'ozz, approximately 1/4th of the fight (and when he's vulnerable), we're in front of the boss. This is not ideal for druids.
B) Feral damage has moved around in the recent patches and I didn't notice to reforge/regear. Previous, ferals could get better dps out of other stats than hit. Yeah, we'd miss, but we'd get the energy back from missing a special so we'd just do it again. The logs showed melee was 20-25% of my dps. Nearly 10% of my melee hits were either missed, dodged, or parried. I can fix this by a visit to the ethereals and maybe some regemming.
C) Question: Will hit or expertise help with glancing blows? 35% of my melee hits were glancing.
D) My dps was lowest on Yor'sahj. Some of this was due to the time away from the boss. 20%ish of my damage comes from a dot that requires 5combo points. It's uptime goes to hell if I can't get 5 more combo points during it's uptime. I might have to rethink my rotation for this fight. Concentrate more on more direct damage and directly applied dots.
E) I'm also low on Haggra. I have a couple of questions I didn't see answered in the boss strat I read. What do you do about Ice Lance? When DBM tells me my stacks are high, I wander away from the boss. I wasn't really seeing anyone else do this. I might have not noticed though. Should I stay until a particular event? What about when DBM starts to count? I usually start running too soon. Should I stay until 3? I did learn not to stop on the ice talismans. I died once stopping too long. Drop a dot, maybe a direct damage shot and move.

F) Any other melee tips for the first 4 bosses?

I will improve.

[hung]

hey Brhoam,

First off, great attitude~! That is the key to improving. I'll offer what advice/answers I can, but it won't be cat-centric for obvious reasons. Maybe the rogues/other cats (andy?) can get more specific.

- Standing in front: Zon'ozz. Should only happen during black phase, but that's actually not when he's most vulnerable. Zon'ozz becomes more and more vulnerable as the fight goes on. The black phase is when he stops swinging at the tank and starts raid wide high dps. We pop hero during this phase more for the healer's benefit than for the dps. Range dps also looses some time running in and out. Again, the benefit is entirely for healing. BTW, the increased dmg zon'ozz takes at the end of the fight is quite high, which will lead to inflated dps numbers for that fight. Don't use it as a bench mark for other fights. Use cool downs early, then save them for the late burn (since they'll be most effective then).

- standing in front: Ultraxion. Got nothing there.... no back stab for anybody, afaik. On the plus side, he can't parry.

- Switching targets: Yor'aj/Hagara. Can't offer much advise there, the fight mechanic does require everyone to switch, especially in 10 man. Stampeding roar is great for the running parts though.

- Gear questions: i'll stay quiet unless its plate related.

- Hagara ice lance: Its a random attack she throws around. nothing that can be mitigated/avoided. It does however have a small aoe effect (3 yards). So try not to stand on top of other people when the countdown happens. that's really all it is, you should be able to continue dps-ing her (even in melee) while being targeted. just shuffle around until no one's near you.

[freynei]

speaking of raids...i will probably be late tonight. gotta work late.

[Archetryx]

i will also be missing tonight's raid, have to finish painting a room before the flooring goes in haha

[Werehamster]

I can only speak to Ultraxion, as that's the only time I dpsed. First of all, glancing blows are unavoidable until waaaay into the combat table. You used to be able to finally push them off the table by getting your crit up high enough, but they stopped letting tha happen. Anyway.

I did two weeks of dpsing. The first week, my gear was still reformed to mastery, so I was not hit nor expertise capped. I did 23k dps I think. The next week, I had reformed to be capped for both. I also had one upgrade (378 shoulders finally). I did 25k. So it mattered a bit.

In both cases my rotation felt odd. Mangle instead of shred is less dps, but also less energy, so I ended up ferocious biting more often. Thankfully, the former glyph of shred also applied to mangle now, so mangle dpsing isn't as much of a loss as it could be. I have read online that ferals are the lowest performing dps on that fight, though, so this all might just be spitting into the wind.

[tethealla]

I haven't done Ultraxion yet. I read up on it though. Shifting Perspectives Suggests replacing the glyph of bloodletting for the glyph of mangle for that fight alone. I guess 10% extra mangle damage straight up may be better than the extra 4s on rip.

I reforged last week. I'm a hares breath from cap on both expertise and hit. It'll take me a bit to get used to the lower energy regen rotation.

I'll see how I do on Tuesday if there is space for me in the raid.