Decursing

[Wenge]

Vand, please explain:

http://wowwebstats.com/jvnkgdzuaj42k?c=mag

[Chasidy]

What the question should really be is are you using RDX cause that is like the best thing about it is the decursing and the intellect chart in my opinion for mages at least.

[Vand]

I am very surprised that the WWS showed so few decurses from me. I use Decursive, and it has a grid of little boxes that turn red when somebody becomes cursed. And I certainly clicked many more times than is shown by the WWS. I did see a whole bunch of errors saying there was no curse to remove, which means that somebody beat me to it. It seemed like I saw that error much more than I saw success messages.

Probably the main reason that I was beat to decursing such a high percentage of the time is that I waited until I was finished casting my current spell before trying to decurse. And since a high percentage of my time on the trash waves is spent casting blizzard, that means up to eight seconds before I attempted to decurse (although an average of more like three or four seconds). Given that blizzard is the most expensive spell in the mage's spell book by a good margin, and the fact that all the mana is spent at the beginning of the cast, I am reluctant to interrupt it in order to decurse. If I did so, I would be having serious oom problems during the trash waves.

One of the main reasons I cast blizzard so much is because I read on the EJ forum that a lot of raids find it very useful to have somebody spec permafrost and improved blizzard. The effect is to keep all the mobs in the AoE area slowed by 75% semi-permanently. This gives tanks much more time to react when somebody draws aggro. It also gives a ranged person who draws aggro more time to respond appropriately.

So we have two competing utilities...keeping mobs slowed vs. speedy decursing. I am actually gimping my DPS by casting blizzard so much, since I am fire spec and will remain so at least as long as I have my spellfire robe, so I really do not care if the consensus is that keeping mobs slowed is not all that valuable to us. For me, the question really is how I can make the best contribution to the raid's success. In my opinion, curses are coming off fast enough, and the slowing adds more utility than would be added by reducing the average decurse time by a second or two. I am not at all attached to that position, though, and so would welcome a discussion about it.

I am well aware that quick decursing is the key to success in the Archimonde fight. Fortunately, there will be no need to keep groups of mobs slowed during that fight, so this will not be an issue.

If slowing the mobs is of value to us, it should be noted that I have been much less able to do so in the Horde camp. For whatever reason, the mobs are much more spread out there than they are in the Alliance camp. I know that we are still struggling with how best to handle those waves, so I am not criticizing anyone. It may simply be that there is no way to clump them like with do in the Alliance camp, but that does means much less slowing.

[Nortibiry]

I know nothing about mage mechanics, but from my point of view I'd say that the slowing doesn't make a huge difference. I think things are mostly under control (in the alliance base anyways!) and for the occasional one that sneaks away I usually have intervene & taunt ready. If there is a dps impact it might be worth trying not using blizzard next week, or maybe blizzard initially while things settle down and then switching to whatever will net you more dps/flexibility, unless someone with a different viewpoint wants to step in and contradict me :)

[edit] While I'm on the topic slowing/rooting mobs can be a double edged sword when I'm tanking more than one. It's nice if things can't get away, but often I rely on being able to move the mob I'm currently working towards another I want to build threat on, and if things aren't running along with me I can end up darting back and forth, losing a lot of melee time, and threat in the process. Sadly I'm not sure there is any good way for you all to know what my moment to moment intentions are.

[Vand]

While I'm on the topic slowing/rooting mobs can be a double edged sword when I'm tanking more than one. It's nice if things can't get away, but often I rely on being able to move the mob I'm currently working towards another I want to build threat on, and if things aren't running along with me I can end up darting back and forth, losing a lot of melee time, and threat in the process. Sadly I'm not sure there is any good way for you all to know what my moment to moment intentions are.[/b]

Blizzard does not cause rooting unless you also spec Frostbite, which I did not for that exact reason. So the slowed mobs will still follow you, albeit at only 25% of their normal speed. Does that address your concerns, Nort, or does simply having them slowed cause problems?

[Etrigana]

In response to Zhek's post about this idea.

So we have two competing utilities...keeping mobs slowed vs. speedy decursing. I am actually gimping my DPS by casting blizzard so much, since I am fire spec and will remain so at least as long as I have my spellfire robe, so I really do not care if the consensus is that keeping mobs slowed is not all that valuable to us. For me, the question really is how I can make the best contribution to the raid's success.[/b]

If you dont care, then dont ask for input in other posts. If you really want to slow mobs and keep high DPS, spec frost like Zhek suggested, spend the 50g on frozen shadowweave specialization, bust out the robes (which have stamina!) and stop complaining about the lack of stamina on your robes.

-Etri

[Assault]

I believe he meant that he doesn't mind being directed to stop using blizzard and spec out of that business if the slow is not particularly valuable.

[Vand]

Etri,

For some reason, you seem to be making the worst possible interpretation of anything I say. Assault was exactly right in his interpretation. I am seeking input as to whether keeping the mobs slowed is of greater usefulness to the raid than slightly speedier decursing, and I would be happy to do whatever I am told would be most useful. It is not a matter of not caring about other's opinions, otherwise I would never have made my post.

[Wenge]

At the time that Etri complained over vent last night, I had decursed around 240 times, Chasidy had about 100, and Vand, 10.

By the end of the night, the numbers came out to Wenge 315, Chasidy, 181, and Vand 73.

Please explain.

[Assault]

Just to belabor the point, the curse really is a big pain in the ass and needs to come off ASAP for several reasons. It's 50% hit reduction.

This means that the tanks generate half as much threat anytime they have the curse on them.

This means that the rogues and warriors can't stun or interrupt with any regularity further banshee wails (or shadowbolts) which only exacerbates the problem. We try to interrupt the shadowbolts as often as possible to reduce strain on the healers. I know I'm not a tank, and when I tank the necromancers I do everything in my power to reduce the amount of damage I take.

Not to mention that the 50% hit reduction also halves the dps of the physical classes it's on, and we obviously want as much dps as possible on these trash waves so that we get them down before the next one arrives.

I think that any dps a mage can put out with any given global cooldown is far outweighed by the benefits of decursing us. Also, Etri needs to be healing, not dropping out of tree form to decurse. In return, we of course do our best to interrupt the banshee wails so that the decursing is unnecessary, though this is unfortunately almost impossible on the waves when we have multiple un-cc'd banshees.

[Vand]

My low decurse numbers are primarily caused by two things.

First, decursing with my UI comes down to basically a whack-a-mole thing. I must not be very good at it, because at least 2/3 of the times I try to decurse somebody, I get an error saying that there was nothing to decurse, meaning that somebody beat me to it by less than 1/2 second.

Second, I am doing my best to keep mobs slowed using blizzard. I noticed a few times on Tuesday that some other DPSer drew aggro, but the mob was just crawling towards them, slow enough for people to react and get the aggro back on the tank.

So it basically comes down to me being discouraged by failing at decursing attempts a large majority of the times and feeling that I am making a bigger contribution to the raid by keeping things slowed. If the consensus is that keeping mobs slowed during banshee waves is of less use than lowering the average decurse time by a second or two, then I'll stop using blizzard during those waves. My perception, however, is that we have not struggled all that much during the banshee waves...that overall we are handling them ok.

If we do decide that speedier decursing is more important than slowing, we may want to come up with assignments for each mage in order to reduce the amount of duplicated effort that leads to the failure messages that I mentioned. It could be by class (e.g., Wenge gets the warriors, I get the rogues, and Chasidy gets the hunters), groups (much like we assign groups for int buffing), or something else. Healers make sure they know their assignments, and decursing is a form of healing.

I do have one question about the banshee curse. It says that it reduces chance to hit. Does that affect physical damage only (warriors, rogues, hunters, Kub), or does it also affect chance to hit with spells? In other words, can we safely ignore the curse on casters?

One other thing we might want to consider is that of all the waves we have faced thusfar, only two of them (both before Anetheron) have more than two banshees (they both have four banshees). It may be that one mage is plenty for decursing when there are only two banshees, but not when there are four. There is a six banshee wave before Azgalor where mages may need to do little else other than decurse. My point here is that the relative value of slowing vs. having another dedicated decurser likely depends on how many banshees there are during a particular wave.

By way way, Wenge, please try to keep things constructive (like I have attempted in this message), rather than simply making a post that says basically "Vand, please explain why you suck," as you have done twice in this thread.

[Wenge]

The priority for decursing is tanks (so, Norti, Seld, Tier, Slam, Assault*) then additional physical DPS (Jackal, Haythan, Rora), then casters, then healers.

I'm apologize for being confrontational, but the numbers were so out of whack, and I really don't like to be called out on Vent during a raid. I understand you're running long-duration Blizzards, but instead of doing damage for some of those waves (the banshee heavy ones) I was doing nothing but decursing and resheeping. I've only ever complained to you when your DPS was in the basement, otherwise I think I tend to leave you and Chasidy alone.

--W

[Nortibiry]

Why don't we try winterchill and perhaps the second boss next week without blizzard, and see what the difference is? The alliance base trash is much easier than the horde base trash, and I think we'd be wise to take advantage of it to experiment and try new things while we have some room for error.

[Mithwen]

I think that could be a good idea Nort. I admit that I haven't optimized my shackling yet, and those darn banshees either come right into the aoe area or else the stand and cast. I skated on the edge of pulling aggro in order to get my shackle in early a few times this week, and that's not good. Maybe if the banshees didn't get blizzarded they wouldn't break shackle. >.> Not that that's what was breaking it. Wenge's reporter thing refused to report on my shackles, after a while.

Anyway, I try to keep the shackle up to cut down on the decursing ... aoe and the like can break the shackle ... I'm sure we can work something out though. It seems that with so much of our ranged dps potentially tied up on CC or decursing, it's doubly important to get the decursing done on our melee dps.

Pika.

[Vand]

Instead of doing damage for some of those waves (the banshee heavy ones) I was doing nothing but decursing and resheeping.[/b]
Does that mean that you are fine with not having three decursers on the waves with only two banshees? I'd be happy to simply not worry about slowing mobs during the banshee-heavy waves and focus on decursing.
The priority for decursing is tanks (so, Norti, Seld, Tier, Slam, Assault*) then additional physical DPS (Jackal, Haythan, Rora), then casters, then healers.[/b]
That didn't answer my question about whether we should have assignments in order to avoid losing time due to multiple mages trying to decurse Nort. You mentioned five tanks, although you left out Mack. We could assign two tanks as top priority to each mage and then all take care of the others as we got to them. Or is that just too complicated?

[Vand]

Maybe if the banshees didn't get blizzarded they wouldn't break shackle.[/b]
I am pretty sure that I almost never break shackle (or any other cc) with my AoE. One of the advantages of mage ranged AoE is that we get a nice pretty green reticule that shows exactly what area will be hit by either flamestrike or blizzard. I am always very careful that mine do not overlap cc'd mobs. I am pretty sure that most of the breakage comes from SoC, which not only has a much larger range than anything a mage has, but is also impossible to judge exactly what will be hit by it.

I am not trying to argue that warlocks should not be using SoC. SoC does a huge percentage of the damage during the trash waves. If you look at the WWS from last Tuesday's trash waves and sort it by DPS, five of the top six spots are warlocks. Given that trash waves are by far the most difficult part of Hyjal, we want to find ways to make AoE work better, not limit it. In my opinion, at least, for Hyjal trash AoE > cc.

[Vand]

Why don't we try winterchill and perhaps the second boss next week without blizzard, and see what the difference is? The alliance base trash is much easier than the horde base trash, and I think we'd be wise to take advantage of it to experiment and try new things while we have some room for error.[/b]
There are no banshees in the waves before Winterchill, so there would be absolutely no benefit to dropping blizzard from those waves. And one of the reasons the Horde base trash is harder is because it is more spread out, making AoE much less effective. So I am really not attempting to slow the mobs there.

I think the only real issue is the two waves with four banshees before Anetheron. So my proposal is that I not attempt to keep the mobs slowed during those waves, and focus instead on decursing. Let's see if making that change for just those two waves makes a big enough improvement.

[Nortibiry]

There are no banshees in the waves before Winterchill, so there would be absolutely no benefit to dropping blizzard from those waves. And one of the reasons the Horde base trash is harder is because it is more spread out, making AoE much less effective. So I am really not attempting to slow the mobs there.

I think the only real issue is the two waves with four banshees before Anetheron. So my proposal is that I not attempt to keep the mobs slowed during those waves, and focus instead on decursing. Let's see if making that change for just those two waves makes a big enough improvement.[/b]

The benefit would be that we would then know what impact blizzard has on mob control. Right now we don't know how much it is helping. I'm not trying to be snide or suggest that anyone isn't doing well or that we are doing things wrong, but the honest truth is that without experimenting we don't know.

I know that this thread is focussed on decursing and appreciate that dps and aoe are critical to getting through the Hyjal trash, but I want to re-emphasize that we might need to experiement (ideally on 'safe' trash in the alliance base) and develop new techniques to get through the larger waves in the horde base. Personally I'm stretched to my absolute limits with what we're doing now if we don't bring in an extra tank and while I don't mind working for my epics it just isn't going to scale up to larger waves of trash. In a perfect world we would aoe everything and not have to deal with CC but honestly I can't handle that many mobs. My threat is almost exclusively single target, when I tank four things at once I'm more or less tanking four things at once.

[Chasidy]

Personally my decursing sucked last week and I feel bad for it. I will damage less and decurse more since thats where I see my problem lieing