25-man raid night and I was off to heroic Ulduar after missing a week (summer slump, not enough numbers last week).
As I’ve mentioned, my guild was formed by Aussies, and it’s Aussie’s running the raid using Aussie strategies. I’ve noticed before that their strats are slightly different than the ones we use on our 10-man team. There are a lot of ways to tackle any given fight, so it wasn’t terribly surprising to me that there were differences between our methods and I endeavored to adapt.
So as I lay dead on Kologarn (and sundry other wipes) I had some time to think about their strats, and I realized they demonstrated a profound philosophical difference between the Aussies and our 10-man.
The Aussie strats are mostly designed around maximum efficiency, so that if everything goes right there are no moments lost, no damage taken that need not be took. The flip side of that is that they seem to really depend on everyone doing everything just right. If one person has their positioning off by 1 or 2 yards, then it’s guaranteed that several people will die – or in the case of one fight – that the whole raid will wipe.
Now I may have alluded before that our 10-man team is a little bit… well, tarded. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve cleared through Thorim, so we’re tarded like a fox!
But still.
Our strategies are fundamentally designed with the assumption that someone will probably do something wrong. So we prepare for it by designing things so that we minimize the damage when someone does that wrong thing – our total damage throughput is probably lower, because even if we do everything right and there are no mistakes our strategy is less efficient. But when there are mistakes, we don’t necessarily lose anyone and have no problem pulling off the win, because the strategy is more flexible.
So I’m now wondering if one strat is fundamentally better. I mean, I would love to be in a group that did it the Aussie way — maximum efficiency and no one making a fatal error. But I suspect my 10-man group would still be farming FL if we did that. On the other hand you can make the argument that eventually fights will be hard enough that they will depend on doing everything just right, and it’s a habit we should get into now.
I’m not sure.
And I’m dead serious about the 1 yard thing. We had a good couple of wipes in the 25-man raid because if you literally moved 1 yard too far away, the entire raid wiped. And wipe we did!
Oooh, on an unrelated bright side, for my… I think my 9th run on Ulduar 25-man, it was the first time I saw any hunter loot drop, and I ended up getting it. I passed initially ’cause I kinda want something else for my melee slot, but no one else put in for it either, and it was being threatened with DE, which I obviously couldn’t let happen. So I’m the proud new owner of Twisted Visage.
I forgot to reset recount after FL, so I had to reset it after Razorscale. This is just XT (1 wipe) and Kolo (1 wipe) and maybe 4 wipes worth of trash 
Hey Frost, you don’t need to reset it. You can set it to only show the current encounter, and you can go back and look at the last few encounters (default 5). Cright click on ght icon of a piece of paper (not the ony with the red X through it) and you can isolate your boss DPS.
gah. Cright = Right, ght = the
Sorry, can’t type this morning.
I know you can check any given encounter, or the current fight; however, I always post overall results which gives a better view of total contribution to the raid. I always reset after FL, because that fight radically skews the overall results.
(especially since historically, the healers are higher than him on the dps during FL due to vehicle assignments…)
“we’re tarded like a fox!”
Awesome.
Commie: hey now. In our 10-mans I’m usually a siege gunner, and up at the top of the chart. Though in 25 I’m a biker and down at the bottoms.
demolisher drivers should have the highest dps in FL because of stacking pyrite on FL. It does ridiculous amounts of damage.
Pulling off “Aussie” strats is a thing of beauty. We have a couple bosses like this in our 10M’s, though I’d shudder to think of trying to pull them off in 25M’s.
I’ll also be honest and say that I have plenty of bosses where “don’t screw up” is a far higher priority for me than “top the dps meter.” In that sense, I’m very much a “tarded like a fox” style player (hilarious phrase, btw).
Recount is nice when you look at it and you’re on top but its not really an accurate representation of how anyone is doing, even over an entire night. Some trash is aoe joy, some bosses are eaiser for melee than ranged and some are easier for ranged than melee. Although on the whole, I find Ulduar is more melee friendly. So Damage meters are nice but not very accurate for how someone is doing.
I find recount to *usually* be an accurate check of how a dpser is performing — as long as you’re also paying attention to deaths (and causes) and damage taken as well as damage done.
You’re certainly right though that every fight favors different classes (which is nice). Thus my goal is to be on top both for overall, and every boss fight. Not always there, but I always work to be there.
Nice being top damage after dying so much haha
I have to say grats on the loot. My guild just did ulduar 25 this weekend, and our top hunter (poor Flo) came just after the Giant’s bane from kolo (I got it :3) and the Siren’s Cry from Auriaya dropped, 2 bosses in a row!!
We tried about 2 hours on Hodir before calling it quits.. and 3 hours on the night after.. coulnd’t get the bugger. Closest we got was about 6% :/
I’m curious, how far have you all gotten in 25?
We’re onto Yogg Saron. However we’ve never had a chance for more than 1 full night on him. Due to Summer droppings and dc’s in the middle of Mimiron etc we’ve fallen behind with progression.
9 runs? unlucky!!…
gratz on the sweet gear
no doubt you have some aussie gangsters in your guild. very probably. I’m sure we all have met one of them in our life
i bet they listen to Hilltop Hoods. realized i was listening to one of their songs while i was reading this article
I am the proud owner of a twisted visage. it’s not bad at all. Use it well!
I managed to get visage just before our guild turned back to 10 man due to the summer drop in attendance. I still have a chance to upgrade it with the vezax 10 man hard mode staff which looks nice.
I really like the way that th 10 man hardmode loot has a lot of BiS items for hunters. Hopefully I can get rid of all this damn hit I have, I am on 400 hit! A lot of wasted item points but I take what Im given.
well i got my hands on the beutiful twisted visage this week too. and i felt terrible for rolling against a cat, but lacking some hit, i just couldn’t resist. god who would even think of deing it?
now i have a question on 25 man kologarn. is it a good idea to assign 1 ranged/healer per orange dot on a single line where the fight happens? i reckon that way the eye beams never begin to hit multiple raid members and whoever is getting targeted can simply run back, kite it get back to their assigned spot.
philosophy be damned when the server has destined you to wipe. im on one of the young servers created for wotlk, and WOW is it bad. we had some of the weirdest glitches, from aggroing while dead to ghosts popping in ulduar. one time when are ghosts made it to the grave, we flew back, got our bodies back when we tried to enter the instance, but couldnt, so we decided to call it and fly back to Dal, only to be transported back to ulduar while we were flying half way through storm peaks.
the highlight of the evening was watching XT and his adds wail away on a long since dead shaman. that shammy was tanking like a boss.
really doesnt matter what strat you use when the server has condemned you lol >:O