Monday (12 Mar) - Pounding the LFR

Monday (12 Mar) - Pounding the LFR

JB ripped through all eight bosses in the two part Dragon Soul lfr on Monday night. Normally, I'd get that done earlier in the week, but this week JB had only hours before the reset and the loss of at least 500 valor points if she missed those runs. As usual, JB didn't win any Tier drops, as the drops ignored shaman needs. On the final encounter JB finally got a drop - the i390 axe that is the top end weapon short of running normal Dragon Soul. JB already has one of the them, so now she had a pair. JB was pretty happy with the dual blades, although her gear will require some reforging.

JB had a pretty pot full of valor points, so she headed over to the vendor, hoping to upgrade two gear slots. JB is still wearing an i359 ring and was ready to replace that with an i397. To JB's disgust, though, there was only one +agi ring, and the secondary stats on it were made for hunters - crit and haste. The i359 came with expertise and hit, both stats JB had to have. Even with reforging, most of the stats on that i397 would be useless to her. JB could have bought non-tier pants or helm, to replace i378 gear, but opted to hold off on that in the hopes of getting tier drops from the coming week's runs. A forlorn hope, but JB keeps trying. JB didn't buy anything at the time, but just before logging off for the night she went back to the vendor and upgraded her relic from i378 to i397. The new relic matched up well stats-wise with the new axe. The two pieces brought her gear score up from i380 to i382.

Regarding the lfr DS run, JB decided to track her DPS for each encounter, counting trash and boss kills, and clearing the data between each one. I pretty much know what level of DPS JB should be doing, but I thought it would be interesting to show how a normal DPS level would look with each encounter. The mechanics of each encounter greatly increase or decrease DPS, so there is no one DPS level appropriate - it's based on the encounter. There are 17 DPSers in an lfr 25 man raid. The top DPSer in the first four encounters was a deadly hunter. His DPS was almost 10k higher than the #2. JB isn't among the top DPSers, but she is solidly in the middle of the pack now instead of nearer the bottom (most of the time).

Siege Of Deathwing
Morchok: 20.6k dps, 8th (#1 dpser 40.7k dps)
Warlord Zon'ozz: 29.1k dps, 8th again (#1 51.1k dps)
Yor'sahj: 22.0k dps, 8th one more time (#1 45.4 dps)
Hagara: 15.4k dps, 13th (#1 45.4k dps)

Fall of Deathwing (a new group of raiders)
Ultraxion: 19.9k dps, 12th (#1 31.2k dps). JB was joined by two other DPS shaman. They did 30.6k (2nd) and 24.4k (5th). Numbers for JB to aspire to.
Skyfire: 18.5k dps, 9th (#1 28.8k dps, other shaman 26.9k, 3rd)
Spine: 16.4k dps, 8th (#1 30.0k dps, other shaman 22.0k dps)
Madness: 39.6k dps, 7th (#1 84.3k dps, other shaman 41.2k dps)

JB is improving, but she is going to need to step it up. With her gear she should be better. Her troubles with targeting is one area that is holding her back. JB also relies too much on addons to guide her spell casting. It slows her down just a little. But "just a little" can mean a significant loss of DPS.

JB and Daeth got into a Throne of the Tides heroic late Sunday night. It's the lowest level Cata dungeon, but quite challenging, particularly on heroic. On the day Cataclysm went live, Wild joined a guildie group into this place. We got slaughtered at first, but did finish it after a few wipes. It was quite an experience. Since then I think Wild has done Tides once on heroic, and that was months ago. For JB, it was her first trip, and Wild had no advice to give.

I don't know what it is when Daeth and JB run heroics together. Once again we had a tank that was even worse than the one we had the last time. The tank was so bad he once complained that the healer should be kicked. That healer deserved an award just for sticking with the run. The healer complained only once (after two players died on an intentional double pull the tank thought he could handle). Then the healer just grimly did his best to keep us alive.

JB embarrassed herself early on when the underwater elevator refused to work for her. The elevator is known to be buggy, but I didn't know it had it in for shaman. All four of the other players were able to use it, but up and down it went - without JB. JB may have delayed things for a couple of minutes at the most, but it seemed like forever.

After we had killed the official last boss, the tank wanted to kill another boss we had skipped. JB had won the greed roll for a chaos orb and he was grumbling in party chat that he REALLY needed a chaos orb. JB wasn't about to give it to him. Another boss was another shot at loot for Daeth, so we stayed. Not a good decision. The tank did not know the fight or just couldn't handle it. Some of that fight came back to me - lots of constantly spawning mobs to chase, a part where we all grow to huge size, a boss that the tank couldn't keep in one place ... we wiped. Since we had already gotten our valor points for the run, Daeth and JB decided we didn't need to stick around to kill that unnecessary boss. We booked, although the healer beat us out the door, even as the tank was asking if we wanted to do another run together.

JB can't wait until Daeth can join her in the Hour of Twilight dungeons. They're fun and the loot is far better.