Without naming names or going into specifics, I have recently had discussions with a reliable raider who’s performance is not up to scratch. I thought that I would cover off my processes for identifying and improving my own performances and maybe you can take something from it.

As a raider it is imperative that you are not nieve to your own weaknesses. Lets be honest, their isnt a raider who couldn’t find a way to improve their toon and its performance on some level.

You should not rely on your class leader or officers to identify where you should be improving, identify what was working well and more importantly where can you get more out of yourself, in fact as a raid leader I enjoy raiders talking to me about their performance in an honest and upfront manor.

So here’s a couple of ideas for how you can gauge your performance.

Combat Logs

We have our raids uploaded to http://www.worldoflogs.com this is a great tool for identifying specific and also comparing yourself to others of similar roles in a raid. If your guild doesnt do this, take the initative to do so yourself.

A word of warning though be careful to make sure your comparisons are realistically, as a dps dont compare yourself to someone in a completely different role in the fight (i.e. if you were on add or cc duty, dont compare yourself to the mage who was kept on the boss the entire fight). This not only ensures you are not being too hard on yourself but also that their are points of similarity between you and the person you’re comparing yourself too.

Their is a list of things to look at in the logs;

• DPS/Heals – Well obviously this is a high level idea of how you went
• DPS/Heals(e) – Effective DPS is the most important, this is your damage done divided by the fight length
• Active Time – How long were you alive for?
• DoT/HoT Uptime – Big differences in this could mean you’re rotation is not right or you’re not focussed enough

Note When You Stuffed Up

If you stuffed up, stood in something, pulled threat, etc etc then you should make a note of the scenario in which you failed. It’s also important to clearly identify what killed you, was it an ability you didnt understand? Did you stand in something you shouldnt have? Did you stack on someone you should have?  Realistically most people learn by getting into an encounter so their is nothing wrong with stuffing up. Just make sure you dont make the same mistake again! haha

Visibility

If you are having issues with seeing things that you need to you may need to review your ui. Do you need extra addons to present information to you? Do you need to reduce the addons to make sure you can see things in game of note (green shit on the ground)?

Preparation

Be realistic about whether you were really prepared for the encounter you had issues with. If you feel you weren’t then read other strats, watch movies and study the abilities for the fight because this could be the difference between winning and losing next time round

Forums and Discussions

Their are plenty of other people raiding with your spec/class/role so ask the questions that you have of them, post on forums to throw ideas around.

Stam, AC, Stam, Stam and maybe a little more AC. Did I mention Stamina?

When it comes to big ugly lumps of mutated flesh that hit for up to 30k, relying on avoidance stats which ‘make it a little less likely’ that you’ll take a few consecutive hits over any given interval starts to look a little less attractive than stacking ‘Effective Health’ (EH) stats which give you a little more room to survive those consecutive hits which will inevitably land.

There’s not all that much you can do to tweak your EH upward short of upgrading your gear or cramming a few more stamina gems in, but if you don’t usually use two stamina trinkets, now would be a good time to equip that second lump of pure health – or a Glyph of Indomitability (cheap at 50 Triumph Badges).

Consumables and Raid Buffs

The other place to go looking for that little edge, is consumables and raid buffs.

Indestructible Potions are rather amazing, and should be tossed back like candy in any content that’s putting stress on you healers with direct physical damage. Perfect for Festergut, you should be able to keep that bonus 3.5k AC up for the entire time you’re taking hits by simply drinking your first potion a few seconds before the pull.

Drinking your first potion while out of combat might ‘waste’ a few seconds of the two minute buff, but ensures that your potion cooldown will be usable again two minutes into the fight, allowing you to get up to 4 minutes coverage – enough that neither tank should have to take a hit without this buff up on this fight.

The two main raid buffs to triple check before pulling are Devotion Aura, and Stoneskin Totem – preferably with the Protection and Enhancement talents ‘Improved Devotion Aura’ and ‘Guardian Totems’ buffing their effect.

There are plenty of other raid buffs you don’t want to be without – but those two are the most likely to ‘go missing’, and are both very strong buffs when faced with hard hitting melee attacks.

AP Debuff

2/2 Vindication, 5/5 Feral Aggression, 5/5 Improved Demoralising Shout, 2/2 Improved Curse of Weakness

Make sure someone in the raid is keeping up the fully talented version of one of these debuffs with as close to 100% uptime as possible. Your friendly Neighbourhood Prot or Ret Paladin is the most likely suspect, thanks to the relative ease of application – but if you can’t guarantee that someone else will be keeping it up for you (or won’t be running around with a spore for long enough for their debuff to drop off!) then it may be worth considering spec’ing into this yourself where possible.

I find Auracle a very nice little addon for tracking debuffs like this.

Ok, so you’ve Piled on as much mitigation and health as you can, the boss is hitting as softly as he’s likely to – what now?

Well, aside from doing your best to save your cooldowns for your turn at tanking the three-inhale phase (during which you’ll probably want to be chaining your survival tricks together right up until he burps on everyone) the only things left to do is try and kick out as much damage as possible. Try to line up a salvation for the tank swap and do your best to return some of the love. With tanks capable of breaking 5k DPS on this one we suddenly become a realisitic part of the effort to beat the enrage timer

In line with my plan for the next 12 months I have twisted the arm of one of our guilds feral druids to hopefully contribute on a regular basis to the Blog.

Introducing Katjia this is what he has to say about himself;

I’ve played a Feral Bear from Maraudon through Stratholme, Kara to the Black Temple and onward into Northrend.

I certainly enjoy playing Balance, Restoration and Feral DPS, but Tanking (10% Meticulous attention to gearing, 20% Gleefully ripping the Face/Kneecaps/Toe-Hairs off the big ugly standing in front of you, 65% Finding bloody good healers you trust and 5% not standing in the fire) has been my primary focus since TBC.

I may not be an expert at all things Druid – napkin math is about the limit of my theorycrafting – but if I don’t know something, I’ll probably know where to go to find out more about it.

If you have any questions or topics you would like Katija to cover please post your comment here and we’ll see what he can do for you

Well it’s true, it’s been 1 year since I opened the doors at upyursh.com. It’s been in interesting year.

I thought I would share with you what I think are some cool stats

131 Posts

161 Comments

25, 476 Visits

Avg of about 75 Visits/Day

Its been an interesting ride for me personally, it’s my first blog and the first time that I thought I had something worth sharing in regards to wow.

Thanks to those regulars who check my posts and thanks to the other sites who felt my topics were worth linking.

So what does the future hold for upyursh.com you ask?

You may not have asked but I’m going to share anyways. I would like to look at bringing on another druid or two as regularly authors to offer alternative points of view and add new styles and direction for posts. I would also like to have the 3 specs covered as well.

On the back of this I would like to see the average visit increase and also increase the ping backs to upyursh.com

I would like to try increase the number of comments on my posts as well.

Other than that it’s business as usual, I’ll continue to share my self defined wisdom and thoughts with the community and hope they continue to be worthy of your views.

Abilities

• Slime Spray – Raining Green Ooze. Deals 5363 to 5637 Nature to enemies in cone. 1.5 sec cast / Channeled – Deals 6338 to 6662 Nature damage to enemies in a cone infront of the enemy. Instant
• Ooze Flood – The Ooze Flood inflicts 5363 to 5637 damage every 1 sec and reduces move speed by 25% for 5 sec..
• Mutated Infection – The Mutated Infection inflicts 3900 to 4100 damage every 1 sec and reduces healing receieved by 50% for 12 sec. After the Infection is removed a small ooze is created at the target’s location. Instant

Adds
Little Ooze
Spawned each time Mutated Infection is debuffed / expired

• Sticky Ooze – The Ooze sprays a puddle of Green Goo near the target. The Green Goo inflicts 2925 to 3075 damage every 1 sec and decreases move speed by 50%. 1 sec cast
• Weak Radiating Ooze – The Radiating Ooze inflicts 3413 to 3587 damage to enemies within 10 yards every 2 sec, it will also cause the Little Ooze to merge with other nearby Ooze.

Big Ooze
Spawns with the first Sticky Ooze, a Sticky Ooze can merge with the Big Ooze and adds a stack of Unstable Ooze. Two Big Oozes can merge and combine their stacks. When the Ooze reaches 5 stacks it will explode.

• Unstable Ooze- Increases damage dealt by 20%. Instant
• Sticky Ooze – The Ooze sprays a puddle of Green Goo near the target. The Green Goo inflicts 2925 to 3075 damage every 1 sec and decreases move speed by 50%. 1 sec cast
• Unstable Ooze Explosion – Inflicts 9750 to 10250 damage to enemies within 6 yards. 4 sec cast
• Radiating Ooze – Inflicts 4388 to 4612 damage to enemies within 10 yards. Instant

Strat Overview

• If its green and not alive – dont stand in it
• 2 tank fight – melee and ranged stand on boss (on his arse)
• OT stands off of raid (preferably where the Green Goo just came from)
• When raider gets Mutated Infection run to OT and this it should be cleansed (disease) once they are in position.
• OT pick up small ooze and kite around outer ring
• When the second mutating infection is cast player runs between small ooze and tank to be cleaned, OT needed to get the two oozes to merge by having them near each other to create a Big Ooz
• Keep doing this until Ooz gets 5 stacks of Unstable Ooze and casts Explosion (OT to call for people to move)
• Boss and raid move to the opposite side to the exploding ooz and to avoid the explosion. 2 smalls will be left – OT gets them to merge and kites them and it starts again.
• Boss will focus a raid member and cast Slime Spray – move derrrr

Nice pictures here : http://www.stratfu.com/strats/rotface/rotface-pre-release-strategy

Abilities

• Gaseous Blight – clouds the entire raid and does raid wide damage every 2 secs.
• Inhale Blight – Uncle Fester will inhale the Gaseous Blight, giving him a 30% damage/attack speed but but also reduces the amount of raid damage by 30% or so too. Stacks up to 3 times (when blight is all gone)
• Pungeunt Blight – Once he’s inhaled the entire blight he will cast this causing 50k shadow damage to all players.
• Gas Spore – Players targeted will explode and infest all nearby allies. 2k damage but increasing resistance to Blight (see Inoculated)
• Inoculated - buff decreasing 25% shadow damage. Stacks 3 times (before Pungeunt Blight hits ALL raid members must have these stacked)
• Vile Gas - 4k damage every 2secs for 6 secs. Must be healed through. Affected Players must not be stacked or they will cause 4k damage when they vomit (i wanna see this one heh)
• Gastric Bloat – cast on tank, tanks will need to switch at 8-9 stacks to prevent explosion at 10 stacks.

Strat Overview

• Can be 2 tanked with going to 8-9 stacks of Gastric Bloat
• We ran with 6 healers while learning but will prolly drop down to 5 eventually
• You need (estimated) 8 range to avoid  but we went with 8 ranged dps and 2 healers
• 2 Healers are marked with star and nipple (ill get into why in a second) and stand at range forming a tight triangle with melee
• Ranged stay spread out except on Spores
• We took Lust at start to get the most of it (prior to vomits etc)
• Star and Nipple stay and everyone stacks on them for spires, 3 Spores will spawn and must make sure 1 spore is on melee, 1 is on star and 1 is on nipple.
• Make quick clear calls if spores are stacked, X to right, Skull to Melee etc. We chose to not have healers moving cause it was easier and better for consistent tank heals.
• If you have Vile Gas you must not stack up even if Gas Spore is up.
• Big focussed heals on boss tank on inhales (2 tank heals+hots should be enough)

The key to the fight is managing the Spores really, get that sorted first. If you hit enrage then you can start focussing on picking up the DPS you can do this by working on your timing for spores (get an extra cast or two), popping a second Blood Lust for temporary pets (call it or set a specific time)

Updated with real strat.

Interesting mechanic, basically all of Saurfangs abilities grant him Blood Points (BP) when they do damage to enemies.

The key is to manage the amount of points he is getting because when he gets to 100 (you can see this by checking his energy bar) we will cast a Mark on a random raider. The victim of this mark will take large amounts of damage consistently for the rest of the fight and if a Mark victim dies Saurfang gets 5% of his health back. It can not be cleansed and persists through death so Soul Stone / Battle Rez etc are out

• Tank Boss at the bottom of the stairs so tank is facing ranged dps
• Melee stack and go nuts on boss, be careful of AoE though as boss will spawn adds that need to be kited and killed other wise mass amounts of BP to Saurfang
• Ranged must spread out and be 12 yards from each other, this is definately a fight where stacking melee is going to help.
• Healers should be evenly spread as to cover mark victims (shields on marks = win)
• Setup a slow zone where hunters lay traps and shammans put earth binding totems down as required.
• Have your pally healer up the back with your boomkin. RF the adds and then when they get near Boomkin Typhoons then back to the slow area
• Adds should be focussed down (left right side focusing on a set mark)
• At 30% Saurfang does a soft enrage so big heals and you’ll be fine.

Ideally you will get to 30% with about 3-4 marks if adds are being managed and people are not stacking on each other.

Once he soft-enrages even if he heals (from marks) to be greater than 30% he will continue to enrage so if you are having issues keeping marked victims up you have a another option.

Basically the concept is to dps the boss to about 35% and let the clothies with marks die. Lets assume we got unlucky and ended up with 2 clothies and a melee dps with marks.

Let a clothy die and he will be up to 40% again but we only have 2 marks to be healing through during enrage.

While you loose dps he is hopefully not going to be getting healed > 30% while enraged.

I suggest trying this as a last resort, if you are getting more that 4 marks then you need to get your range/adds under control.

Well this is the token novelty encounter.

It’s pretty easy but here’s some details for you;

• Talk to the gnome to get your Rocket Pack and equip it
• Do not stand on objects like the roof or the sides (trying to make sure adds cant hit you) we found that this can cause adds bugging out, being unable to be killed by they continue to kill our ship.
• 5 heals is more than enough, and 2 tanks.
• Assign a Tank and a tank healer + raid healer to heal the raiders jumping over to the other ship when mage is up. Healing should be able to be done from your own ship but keep an eye on it
• 4 people take the cannons (which is what does all the damage really)
• When Cannons and Frozen by mage, tank jumps over (first)
• Cannon people who were knocked out jump over to burn mage down. DO NOT TOUCH ANY OF THE OTHER MOBS!
• When done jump back and repeat till deaded

After Lord Easymode I was expecting this to be a walk in the park, instead.. it was pretty tough.

Phase 1

Basically you need to burn down her mana shield to get to Phase 2 and actually do some damage to her.

So Phase 1 has 3 key things to worry about;

• Adds are spawning the whole time, so they need to be tanked and managed
• DPS focus fire, DPS must know what adds they should be killing with focus on high priority adds
• Finding the balance between add dps and dps on boss to get the shield down

Ideally you will be knocking down the shield within 7-8 minutes, that gives you 2-3 minutes to burn down the boss in phase 2.

The Adds

Spawn Locations

Left 2 Fanatic 1 Adhereant
Right 2 Adhereant 1 Fanatic

Focus & Priorities

Reanimated Fanatic – Called for Range to switch and burn
Reanimated Adherent – Called for Melee to switch and burn

This is how we setup;

• 3 tanks – left, right and back (for random spawns)
• 5-6 Healers
• split DPS up ensuring that melee/ranged had more on the side that had their appropriate adds
• DPS were assigned back add duty, they would switch when called for (Range Required at Back)
• We leave 3 ranged on boss (priority to better single target dps like shadow priests) and melee can jump on the boss between add spawns (they must be in place as adds spawn or they get raged at haha)

Phase 2

Really is cake, just tank the boss and burn her down. Interupt her casts and you’re on to Gunship

Note that this encounter has now been nerfed too;

The Lady Deathwhisper encounter has seen the following changes in the 25 player normal version: mana pool has been reduced, the health on all adds has been reduced, and Adherents will wait a little longer after spawning before they start casting.

When we first did this fight I was left feeling pretty disappointed, he looked cool but the trash leading to him was 10 times worse

Phase 1

• 3 tanks are needed although only one needs to actually tank him
• 5 healers seem to be enough, with little spike damage going on it’s easy mode
• Move from ice
• Spread Out as much as possible but make sure healers are spread evenly to cover people who are spiked
• DPS to burn down spikes, focus on healers. If DPS are doing their jobs properly you can have ranged focus of ranged spiked victims and melee focussing on theirs.

Phase 2

• The PTR this hurt, but live he does little damage and moves around a lot quicker.
• Avoid whirlwind and ice
• We have our tanks pick up boss where he stops and takes him to the nearest wall. No need to take him back to the middle
• DPS watch yourself as their is a threat reset

That’s about it /loot