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Now that the holidays are coming to a close, our ranks at 85 are swelling and we should expect raiding to be a more or less regular thing. The few of us who have been running heroics regularly and testing the waters in Baradin Hold and Blackwing Descent can tell you that it’s no longer possible to sleep through heroics or raids. Even with a fully heroic geared group, you can’t slack because the chances of a wipe are still very high this early in the expansion cycle.

Pre-Cataclysm, the onus of success (or failure, as is more appropriate) in a raid almost always fell squarely on the tanks and healers, and we could pretty much drop in any warm body for DPS. But that is not true anymore! Damage dealers have much more responsibility these days in heroics and in raids such as CC and Interrupting. Damage dealers are also required to up their game when it comes to DPS. Especially in the beginning of the expansion cycle, high DPS is now required more than ever to be able to take down these raid bosses in our heroic blues.

With all of the above in mind, I think a very good benchmark for raid performance is our good friend Bradavon (Pit Lord Argaloth in Baradin Hold). He has a lot of raid gimmicks that are essential for all class types to know! For damage dealers he has a relatively high DPS requirement (10kish), a GTFO of the fires requirement, and a “pay attention to where you’re standing otherwise you’ll drop a fire in a bad place” requirement. For healers there’s decursing, single target healing and raid healing. For tanks there’s a relatively simple tank switch and cooldown usage.

But for the moment I will focus on the damage role. To put it very simply, if you can hit 10k DPS, while not standing in fires, and while not killing people with your fires, that’s a pretty good indicator that you’re ready to get a shot at hitting the other real raids.

Don’t worry if you can’t do that yet! Do some normals! Do some heroics! Ask for help! It’s very early in the expansion cycle and mechanics have changed dramatically for almost all classes so there is a large learning curve.

And just for fun, I will keep track of everyone’s Argaloth DPSi week to week in the power ranking format until I lose interest, which I will be blatantly stealing from ESPN. DPSi will be my preliminary metric for measuring and comparing damage dealer performance. The formula is DPS/Average ilvl. It’s a very rough measure but also takes into account your gear level. It’s good enough for now until someone can come up with a better metric.

I just want to chime in and make sure people know that we're not just sitting in some ivory tower judging them as we rub our neckbeards and stare at World of Logs while touching ourselves in inappropriate ways.

This is a cooperative game, and everyone wants everyone else to succeed. In that respect, we are looking for problems and how to fix them. We are also looking for praiseworthy performances. We are not looking for problems and how to kick them out of our raids, unless they show unwillingness to contribute to the good of the guild.

As an example from Tuesday: Jenpants' numbers were just fine in Bradavon, and we took her into Blackwing Descent with us. However, her heals couldn't quite stack up to Magmaw - we're going to do everything we can to help her get ready for raids. The same can apply to dozens of other people - Devinoch's DPS was low for a while as he got used to the new Ret, but he's improved greatly since.

We are here to help! Jeremy asked in the forums about how to get better at playing his rogue, and he got two replies within the day. We aren't just going without you for the sake of going without you and having sexy parachute pajama parties!

Texaporte wrote:I just want to chime in and make sure people know that we're not just sitting in some ivory tower judging them as we rub our neckbeards and stare at World of Logs while touching ourselves in inappropriate ways.

This is a cooperative game, and everyone wants everyone else to succeed. In that respect, we are looking for problems and how to fix them. We are also looking for praiseworthy performances. We are not looking for problems and how to kick them out of our raids, unless they show unwillingness to contribute to the good of the guild.

As an example from Tuesday: Jenpants' numbers were just fine in Bradavon, and we took her into Blackwing Descent with us. However, her heals couldn't quite stack up to Magmaw - we're going to do everything we can to help her get ready for raids. The same can apply to dozens of other people - Devinoch's DPS was low for a while as he got used to the new Ret, but he's improved greatly since.

We are here to help! Jeremy asked in the forums about how to get better at playing his rogue, and he got two replies within the day. We aren't just going without you for the sake of going without you and having sexy parachute pajama parties!

The imagery...my eyes...they burn...THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING!

Seriously, though, I can't wait to finish levelling up, start gearing up, and start leaving Aspect of the Pack on again at really really bad times.

Yeah, I'd like help mostly in the line of running those instances that have a DPS caster trinket or relic that I can swap out of my old LK stuff and FINALLY DPS Heroics and get some better gear. I think I'm doing pretty well DPS-wise, but I need to test it more obviously.

I am guessing I am perhaps one of the few boomkin specced druids in the guild. Correct me if I am wrong, so, I am assuming I will build my gear somewhat close to mage/warlock/shadowpriests? As much as I would like to wear all leather, I suspect I will find myself wearing more cloth than I would like....anyway, I know I haven't been on much..mostly due to the plague wiping the whole Rider household out for almost the entire winter break, but other holiday type things as well. Now that I am going to go back to the ol' grind I will endeavor to get Tsukiki geared up more so, she can run more heroics. I've barely seen all but perhaps 3 instances so far, so, I'd like to chain normal/heroic if people are up for it.

I'm available after 8pm most nights. This week though until Thursday, I am entertaining an out-of-town guest, so, my logging in will be spotty until then.

Seems that's about right. The sort of stuff I'm using is about what you'll need since we have similar priorities. You'll want spirit stuff, assuming that you're spec'd into Balance of Power.

Boomkin stat priorities seem to be: Int->SP->Spirit / Hit (to hit cap of 1742)->Haste->Crit->Mastery

Much more detail available here: Elitest Jerks BoomkinBits

Maria:

Never ever ever ever wear anything other than leather for boomkin anymore. Blizzard quietly slipped in a passive ability to most classes that say something around the terms of "gain 5% of your primary stat when wearing all (insert top type of armor that class is capable of wearing). Which means if you put on even one piece of cloth your primary stat drops by 5%.

Akane wrote:As much as I would like to wear all leather, I suspect I will find myself wearing more cloth than I would like....

I think that's a bad idea. For druids and rogues, we get 5% stat bonus for wearing all leather. So I would say don't wear anything else but leather (other than the cloak). Here's a list of these armor type specialization.

Dengeki wrote:Maria:

Never ever ever ever wear anything other than leather for boomkin anymore. Blizzard quietly slipped in a passive ability to most classes that say something around the terms of "gain 5% of your primary stat when wearing all (insert top type of armor that class is capable of wearing). Which means if you put on even one piece of cloth your primary stat drops by 5%.

OH? I did not know this passive ability thing! Well, gee, I guess I should try to get some leather to fill up the few cloth pieces I am wearing. Interesting they made that passive ability for something I was already doing before Cata.

Thanks for letting me know!