Another evening where I get an invite to replace an early leaver as soon as I log on. Curator is on the plate, it’s only half a guild run with the rest PUGs, they have wiped a couple of times, everyone is starting to feel grumpy. Steptoe has connection issues and cannot summon another late-joiner for a while (and then his inventory is wiped clean, no soul shards left to summon anyone, hope the Game Masters can sort him out).
In short, not the best starting conditions(for me, the raid has been at it for a while already), and there was, unfortunately, not to be any good surprises.
We pull, we DPS and heal, we quaff our pots, we do our best, trash respawns (!) and we wipe. Called it.
Following the advice of several more experienced people, I had installed a combat logging utility and then ran a WWS (WOW Web Stats in case you hadn’t heard about it so far), basically because at that present time, our GM couldn’t really point out any glaring mistakes in my healing, which makes it difficult to improve myself :). I was therefore pretty curious to see in detail how I fared compared to her in terms of healing, knowing that she was focusing on the MT while I was assigned the off-tank and splash damage on the rest of the raid, along with a PUG priest (who, let’s just state this from the get go, did a stellar job).
And, to my surprise, despite worse kit, I actually kept up, mainly because I overhealed less by merely sticking to FoL. Our GM had to resort to emergency Holy Lights on the MT a couple of times, and that made a difference on the meters.
Looking on the report, there’s a couple of tweaks (I still need to work on my bloody gear) I need to use - For instance I tend to “save” Divine Favour way too much, when it would actually have taken some of the burden off my other two healing peers.
We had no proper healing coordination, either, and that showed on the GM’s overhealing score more than on mine - a decent chunk of hers is probably due to me landing a FoL just before one of her Holy Lights cast when the MT started dropping low.
The rest of the wipe is pretty much due to several things a bit wrong in the raid.
DPS-wise, only Steptoe was above 500 DPS. Our MT was third highest DPS, above a PUG mage and PUG rogue (both died relatively late in the attempt, so no excuse there). Next to our warrior MT and OT, we also had a guest tankadin which could not be employed to any effectiveness, and basically just soaked up resources for little gain - in short, an extra tank who would not heal and produce almost no DPS since he wasn’t getting hit. Now I’ve gone on record in the past about using more than one tanking class to maximize raid flexibility, and I’ll stick to that generic philosophy. However, seeing as we had two warrior guild tanks in the raid already (and we couldn’t decently fire one of them for a PUG, no matter how good that guy could have been), with 100% hindsight a tankadin was probably a bad choice. Then again, it’s PUGs and you get what you can - I wasn’t online when the raid formed, and I certainly cannot do anything but theorycraft on class balance from my armchair, a very comfy position where mistakes don’t cause repair bills.
Anyway, as everyone + dog (or cat or ravager or imp or boar or sporeling) has been telling you, WWS is a tool I cannot help but recommend to you, whether you are a raid leader and have to look at the overall picture to have your guild progressing, or a mere peon looking to improve yourself. The wealth of data it provides is useful regardless of whether you are hardcore, dedicated or even just plain casual, as long as no matter your play rhythm, you are striving to perform to the best of your ability.
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