Tank damage during Ragnaros 10m (normal)

[Ereshkigal]

I was hoping someone could help me finding some answers regarding tank damage during Ragnaros (10m normal). My raid leader asked if it was possible for the healer team to 2-heal this fight, and under normal circumstances I would say yes. However the tank damage during the fight is so abnormally high at times that I’m clueless on how 2 people are supposed to keep both the tanks up. I’m trying to find out if it’s the tanks doing something wrong, or the healers, or something done wrong by both teams combined.

The tank team consists out of a warrior and a death knight. They taunt on 3 stacks of the debuff. I have no detailed information on how they use their cooldowns except for AMS when a trap is set off. The warrior always pulls / picks up Ragnaros with the exception of the last phase, as he is tanking the scions. I will provide armory links at the bottom, for both tanks and healers.

Our healer team consists out of 2 holy paladins and a resto druid. We rotate AM on setting off the traps in the first phase, and during the molten seed explosion in the second. Both the paladins are assigned to the tanks with a cross beacon, and the resto druid is assigned to the raid.

While according to several sources phase 1 should be a breeze tank damage-wise I’m puzzled. It takes both paladins to spam the tanks throughout the whole phase while we sometimes have to hold our breath if 1 of us gets knocked back and a heal gets interrupted. During many of the pulls the tanks health drop so FAST it’s even impossible to keep them up, this is while spamming Divine Light and making use of as many instant casts as possible (WoG / Shock). Also most of my cooldowns are being used in this phase with the exception of Guardian of the ancients kings; I prefer to save that one for phase 2 during the Molten seed explosions when there’s no AM available (and it helps me keep the tanks up with movement). I also had to resort to using Lay on hands several times even.

When I did this on 25m I don't even remember there being so much tank damage, and that was pre-nerf. However that might also be because of the gear difference of a casual 10m guild and 25m hc guild.

My raid leader uses the addon Death note to check on how people died and 99% of the time this damage comes from normal melee swings, not even from a too high amount of stacks. I’m at a loss since I have no idea to heal better than I do, and the tanks just simply say they don’t have a clue on any why regarding the damage they receive. The damage on the tanks causes both paladins to run OOM (which is quite hard for me to be honest because I don’t have these issues normally at all).

1. I often notice the tanks receiving a lot of damage even after the taunt. I understand they still have the debuff on them at that point but the damage is high enough that just 1 healer and a beacon isn’t going to cut it. It ends up with 2 healers spamming that tank, the other tank being on low health eventually because of the spam the other requires. I have no idea how to deal with this anymore.
2. I’m not sure if the tanks are using their cooldowns right and how this is shown in the Death note addon (I was planning to install it myself for the next time we get to Ragnaros), but I was a bit amazed when the warrior mentioned he wasn’t using any CD at the pull at all while Ragnaros hits him like a big truck so that makes me doubt if they actually use their cd’s properly.
3. I have no idea on how to deal with this high damage from the melee swings killing them off with 2 healer’s fulltime spamming them.
4. To mitigate some of the fire damage (the debuff and the traps etc.) I asked if they could use a combination of prismatic elixir with the mastery elixir to see if it would be better. Can anyone validate if this actually helps or if it’s better for them to use a stamina flask after all? The raiding guild I healed in previously often had the tanks use that combination when there was a lot of elemental damage involved.
5. A lot of the websites dedicated to information about this fight mentions that tanks should be using the Mirror of broken images because of the elemental resistance use effect. Same as with the elixirs; the raiding guild I previously healed in made this trinket a mandatory as it was a BiS for fights with a lot of magic damage and I keep reading how this trinket is awesome for the Ragnaros fight. Both the tanks refuse to get it because ‘it messes up their trinkets’. That’s the only thing they seem to know during the fight...
6. My HPS skyrockets on recount compared to the other 2 healers, also one of the issues when it comes to managing mana. We used to have a major gear difference but with them now getting their Firelands gear that difference has become very minimal. There are attempts where I heal for 5k HPS more, and I’m not talking about AoE healing to cheat meters, but single target healing. Both of the healers sometimes spike 11k but often drop back to below 10k while I keep a steady 14k HPS. Slacking on their part? They are actually –worried- what happens if I’m not there to heal because of the big difference in HPS.

So yes, sorry for the long story but I’m puzzled. As we are starting heroic modes today I’m looking for a solution because I can see this becoming even a bigger problem. I’m just not sure where the problem lies; the tanks, the healers, or just me being wrong about it. I come from a hc raiding guild (Fallout, Tarren Mill-EU) and since I decided to raid more casual with my real life friends again I noticed I tend to lose patience very fast… So yeah, any help / advice / tip would be dearly appreciated <3

Paladin healer 1 (me):
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...adgal/advanced
Paladin healer 2:
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...flame/advanced
Resto druid:
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../Emus/advanced

Tanks:
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...arica/advanced
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...unari/advanced

[sifuedition]

Sign up for world of logs. Use one of the uploaders (I like the realtime one). A link to logs would help.

Any tank who says a mastery trinket (mirror) "messes up their trinkets" doesn't know his spec well enough. Mastery is a great stat for any tank. For block tanks, it is unbeatable as a stat. For dks and bears, there may be some balance to be had with other stats but it is still near best.

Given that information alone, even without an armory link, my guess is gearing/gemming/reforging/enchanting is an issue on the tanks. I will bet they are chasing item levels instead of optimizing stats. It sounds as if they might even be stam stacking which went out the window with Cata.

For example, for the warrior the wildhammer rep boots are netter than any of the normal mode drops. The crafted are a clear upgrade but not obsidium stompers. The 365 cloak from the rescueing Thrall questline is better than any of the 378 cloaks. The 359 crafted or jumbotron belt are better than the 378 rep, but not the shannox belt.

For the dk, I am less sure about each of those. Generally, two tanking stats (dodge/parry/mastery) is better than one (dodge+hit/exp etc). For a dk, there is some survival value in having some expertise to land more death strikes.

[Ereshkigal]

They don't stack stamina at all. Before I decided to make this post I did everything in my power to make as much improvements to the tanks as possible according to the information on EJ. Both tanks are focussing on avoidance over stamina and then specifically mastery. However, I will direct my raid leader to this topic so he can pick up on what you say about the stats on specific pieces of gear.

I do agree with what you say about the trinket, I've been yelling that for 2 months now but they don't listen. I'm now in the process of discussing this with the raid leader to make the trinkets mandatory, so I hope I have some luck with that soon.

I will sign up for world of logs today and keep a record of it. As soon as we get to Ragnaros (I have no idea what day that is of the week since they want to start attempting heroic modes) I'll post a link.

[Tengenstein]

Any tank who says a mastery trinket (mirror) "messes up their trinkets" doesn't know his spec well enough. Mastery is a great stat for any tank. For block tanks, it is unbeatable as a stat.

yeah this screams at me "Replace the tanks on the basis that they need to learn to play and you can't carry them". I'm a warrior so I'll deal with the warrior

The warrior tank has both hit and expertise caps. Warriors didn't need those caps in wrath when the threat modifier was 214% we didn't need them when them when threat modifyer was raised to 300% when cata hit, and we certainly do not need it now that its been buffed to 500%.

His spec looks more like a PVP spec, except it sucks. He missed perhaps our strongest threat talent for a bunch nigh useless and totally useless self healing talents. He can drop;

• Second wind: few bosses have either stuns or immobilizes, the only one on firelands is shannox, but the tank should never be in a crystal trap anyway.
• Blood craze: this is worth about 400hps with 2 points, if it could be relied on to proc when he's not at full heath. its generally only worht it if the healers are dead or otherwise unable to heal you for siginificant parts of a fight.
• Impending Victory: This is closest thing to actually being good. It still isn't though. its capped at 5% so even if you take a load of +self healing talents it will still only be a 5%. Useful if your healers are oom or struggling or dead at the end of the fight. its still a proc so can't be relied upon. Better to take a Damage talent, work out why the heallers are oom, and finish the fight quicker without doing whatever retarded thing oomed the healer.

He May also want to drop either Thunderstruck or Imp revenge (he will need to drop one probably both) what he want's to pick up instead is;

• Heavy Repercussions: shield block this should be used after every taunt, and kept on CD otherwise, double damage to our hardest hitting ability? no brainer.
• Incite: Heroic strike should make up the largest portion of a prot warriors damage on any fight that threatens his life. if he has something beating on him all the time it should be close to 35% of his damage done. on Rag with taunt swaps and transitions it likely down to ~20%, either way this talent is stil the only talent he has that directly affects the biggest source of his damage. and your tank skipped it, does he press Heroic strike at all I wonder?
• War Academy: 5/10/15% more damage to Devastate. Devastate is a close third on a prot warriors damage done and it's our filler after Heroic Strike we press this button most. its real kick up the arse to our cruising threat
• Deep Wounds; Prot warriors do actually crit a fair amount even without stacking it HS will have 15% base crit, Dev has 20% both also gain 5% from the crit buff, and Hold the line gives us about another 5%. Deep wounds procs off crits, and on a fight like rag iits about 5% more total damage on something like domo it can be as much as 9%. point for point its one of the best talents Prot has access to in regards to killing things

Optionally he may want to take Cruelty too, its a great talent, he'd have to sacrifice either safeguard, Imp.Rev or thunderstruck in the prot tree to take it.

Glyphs. Make sure he picks up glyph of demo shout, its one of the two protection minors. and make sure that he using demo shout. Glyph of Heroic throw is also pretty pants, Glyph of shock wave would be my third choice on a raw TPS numbers, and having a shorter cd on his stun could help out with the transitions.

Right that being done, he shouldn't need all that expertise and hit rating to hold aggro so he can safely drop it all into Mastery Parry and dodge; that's up to 1759 rating he's got in the wrong places. stop him gemming expertise its either a fractured amberjewel in yellow slots, a puissant drema emerald in blue slots, and fine ember topaz in red slots. His meta should be an eternal not austere. He should be reforging out of Hit and expertise into Mastery, or otherwise parry and dodge. He wants to keep doge and parry ratings about the same with a slight bias to parry, maybe about 20% more parry rating than dodge rating.

do you know what his rotation is? This is judgemental, but this warrior just seems bad to me, not casual, bad.


I'm not an expert on the DK but it seems better than the warrior, still should have a Mirro of TB and the thrall cloak, geeming looks good, GLyphsseem strange DnD probably isn't as good as Heart strike for Rag. He could drop Hand of doom, Abom's Might (2 pallies so the buf fis already covered) Crimson Scourge, and a point from Scent of Blood, if He wanted to go Lichborne and have that self healing method or he could go down unholy and pick up morbidity. Either way he probably wants to pick up Imp. Blood tap

[Ereshkigal]

I don't have the time to reply properly as I'm about to go out for dinner. As soon as I get back (which is actually soon, need to be back on time before raid ) I'll reply, thank you properly and add any information I might possibly have regarding the rotation.

[dhunt91]

Hey man i am a DK tank and my group 2 healed this in a pug with another warrior tank I dont feel like Typeing a wall of text but id be more than happy to go through the whole thing ingame or vent when i get how

we also did this with a Resto Druid and Holy Pally

names Insubtonicad

[Pruke]

I cannot do armories at work but my group killed normal Rag the first couple of times with 3-healers. We then switched to 2-healers who are now usually bored because people know the mechanics. That maybe the case for you as well. I will say reading over Tengenstein's post he is correct and you should have your warrior come read it. If he does not want to change his spec and things as Tengenstein suggested then replace him asap, because he sucks.
tgt

[Ereshkigal]

Thank you so much guys for your input.

@Tengenstein;
Thanks so much for taking a look at it and explaining it; this also makes sense to me and I know almost nothing about warrior tanks except for some basics. This is going to help a big deal, not to mention it will also benefit further progression into heroic modes where additional damage can now give some error margin. Thank you

As for the trinket, I know it's BiS indeed for most of fights with the exception of few (I read Baleroc was one of those). When I got my tanking OS getting that trinket was the first thing on my list. I knew the tanks I healed in 25m hc content didn't go anywhere without that trinket and it saved their butts often. I think the difference was back then compared to now is the general attitude. In a 25m hc raiding guild progression means everything, it's a lot less strict in a 10m casual raiding guild and this might demotivate people in actually getting what's best for them and go for nice numbers instead. However in my opinion, raiding is raiding, be that 25m hc raiding or 10m raiding and progression more slow... Raiding is raiding and with raiding comes the required attitude of getting what you need rather than what you think looks shiny.

@Pruke
Knowing the mechanics wasn't really the issue; we already got to the point where the people were positioning correctly for the lava waves, the spreading and moving on molten seeds, dealing with the meteors, the common sense of setting off a trap at a good time etc. It was the tank damage that usually just came out of nowhere killing them off leaving us standing there scratching the back of our heads. This will ultimately lead to a finger pointing situation wherein nobody claims to have done anything wrong or to just not have a clue about it. To avoid that (and to prevent going bald from pulling my hair out of frustration each time at Ragnaros) I decided to look for some fresh insights into the whole ordeal

Except for the few things being wrong in the DK's spec is because I already went over the regemming, reforging etc, with him prior to Ragnaros and it turned out to help a great deal already. I didn't had the time yet to spend this time on researching the warrior but in the end I also realized it wasn't my job and I knew next to nothing about warrior tanks. As I'm not a roleleader, officer or raid leader anymore I have next to nothing to say about it, except being really frustrated about it all so I took my frustration to them leading me also, to making this topic

So thank you people for the input... My raid leader is running World of Logs again on request and I hope with the changes Raggy and the upcoming heroic bosses will become a lot more smooth!

[Tengenstein]

Thank you so much guys for your input.

@Tengenstein;
Thanks so much for taking a look at it and explaining it; this also makes sense to me and I know almost nothing about warrior tanks except for some basics. This is going to help a big deal, not to mention it will also benefit further progression into heroic modes where additional damage can now give some error margin. Thank you

As for the trinket, I know it's BiS indeed for most of fights with the exception of few (I read Baleroc was one of those). When I got my tanking OS getting that trinket was the first thing on my list. I knew the tanks I healed in 25m hc content didn't go anywhere without that trinket and it saved their butts often. I think the difference was back then compared to now is the general attitude. In a 25m hc raiding guild progression means everything, it's a lot less strict in a 10m casual raiding guild and this might demotivate people in actually getting what's best for them and go for nice numbers instead. However in my opinion, raiding is raiding, be that 25m hc raiding or 10m raiding and progression more slow... Raiding is raiding and with raiding comes the required attitude of getting what you need rather than what you think looks shiny.

But the TB trinket's on use looks spiffing! I honestly can't say if it's BiS for most fights, On beth it doesn't work against her AoE pulse, and on baleroc you want more avoidance since Inferno balde won't kill but the irressistable deci blade will almost (though ideally the DK will solo tank it and the warrior will go DPS). Shannox it works well against the magmaflare spear thingy, (or if you step in a trap for some fail reason), Alyz it's good for her p4 cleave thingy, Domo its good for his scorpform cleave thingy and Rag its just awesome, I'd only take it for the latter three.

I don't like the terms hardcore/casual. I consider myself casual, I raid 3 hours 3 nights a week 10 mans i'm currently sitting 3/7hc and only just managed to get rag normal down pre nerf, we even get a few rankings on WoL each month. But at the end of the day none of us want to sit around wiping on something for 3 hours for the same reason. And i bet if you asked you're tanks if they want to down Rag or if they'd rather just wipe over and over I bet they'd say they'd rather down it too. and one of the easiest things they'd have to do to make that happen is a few dailies each day. if they hit TB really hardcore and made sure to do all 17 dailies it would take them about a week to get it. and this trinket is pretty frikking awesome; its pretty much a 40% magic damage reduction for 10 sec/min. 40% that's huge that's like another shield wall for magic, but you can use it twice as often!

You'll still need to make sure the the warriors got a decent rotation and is actually using his CDs and such pre-emptively. His only panic button is Last Stand, ever other CD's effectiveness is vastly reduced if he pops them after he get's his arse handed to him, and Last stand a Prot shares a cooldown with his Raid CD, Rallying Cry.

[Broncanous]

judicious use of cool downs is my suggestion. It's a long fight they are up often.

[Charon]

For a dk, there is some survival value in having some expertise to land more death strikes.

Until 4.3, that is. After 4.3 you still get the heal/shield without doing any damage when you miss or get dodge/parried.