How to be the best that you can be in World of Warcraft
Thrax
🐌Austin, TX Icrontian
World of Warcraft is an expansive game, but one that ultimately runs on Math Almighty. If you see the Matrix for what it is, you can begin to harness it for your benefit in both time saved and DPS out in a raid. Before we begin let me give a few opening statements:
- The Matrix dictates that there's only one right way to play your class. This is the boring truth. If you play this way, no other combination of gear, specs and abilities will yield higher DPS.
- "BIS" means "best-in-slot." BIS items are pieces of gear that are the absolute best piece of gear to use in this slot on your character. For example, my best-in-slot belt is the Cannoneer's Multipocket Gunbelt. Sometimes it will seem like an item isn't best-in-slot, but it can become a best-in-slot item when it fits as a puzzle piece into a constellation of perfectly-itemized gear. Trust in AskMrRobot.
- Complete your Warforged Seal quest as often as possible. Never forget it. In raids, these seals allow you another opportunity to roll and obtain loot from a given boss' loot table.
For example, let's say there's a boss with two BIS items for you (Galakras is one for me), and one of your BIS items drops from that boss. You might want to use a Warforged Seal for a shot at another piece of loot and, hopefully, your second BIS piece from that boss. Alternatively, you can use your Warforged Seal for a shot at loot if the boss drops nothing for you on his/her own. - Run Tier 16 content. That's Siege of Orgrimmar. The first difficulty level for Siege of Orgrimmar is "Looking for Raid," or LFR.
LFR raids can be accessed from the in-game raid finder tool, which works just like queueing for a random dungeon. WoW doesn't make it very obvious, but LFR breaks down the entire Siege of Orgrimmar raid into four mini-raids that you can repeatedly attempt:
You can repeat LFR raids as often as you like, but you only get one chance to loot the boss for an item. After that point, you can re-run LFR raids to continue using Warforged Seals. Ultimately, LFR will allow you to reach the ilvl 528-540 range. You should start looking for normal raids at that point.
Normal raids cannot be queued for, but you can join pre-made groups with the in-game Dungeons and Raids tool. People will label their raids as the normal difficulty, so you only have to search for it:
Normal will get you into the ilvl 550 range. At the raid leader's discretion, loot will use the "personal loot" system (works like LFR) or the more standard loot rules like master looter or threshold. At that point you break ilvl 550, it's time to step up to heroic raids.
Heroic raids will get you to the ilvl 560-570 range, at which point you are ready for the most difficult content: Mythic raids. Like normal raids, heroic raids are joined through the premade group tool. Just search for them:
With the preamble out of the way, let me show you how you can quickly get the most out of your character:
1. Make an account at AskMrRobot -- this website is your one-stop shop to analyze your current character, determine your BIS items, and get a sense of how to spend your Warforged Seals. DON'T BE CHEAP. PAY FOR A SUBSCRIPTION.
2. For today's example, I will be using my newly-90 Monk, Soliri. Upon logging in, I hit the big green "OPTIMIZE YOUR CHARACTER" button. In the provided boxes of the new window, I selected our server, entered my name and "LOAD."
3. Now I see my current character profile as reported by the armory. There's my gear, spec, ilvl, stats, etc.
4. What are the finest upgrade opportunities for content I can do by myself? Let's find out by hitting the green arrow and going to Best in Slot. Then click "Filters and Options."
Because my ilvl is less than what LFR offers, I already know that LFR is a great place for me to start! The settings in my image below make the assumption that I: want those LFR items, am willing to pay for excellent crafted gear, can run heroic dungeons and scenarios, am not doing world raid bosses, don't have or want Burdens of Eternity, don't want to rely on zone/trash drops and won't be gathering PVP gear.
These settings are a safe assumption for anyone new to being level 90, but those ready to raid higher tiers of content just need to select a different raid gear level. (NOTE: Those with a legendary cloak will want to enable Ordos.)
5. Now let's see what turned up! First, we see that everything is iLvl 528, and if I click on the items, it shows me that it's suggesting SoO items. Great! Our item filters are working! Finally, we can see every gem and enchant I need to achieve oneness with The Matrix.
8
Comments
- Thok the Bloodthirsty, for example, offers two BIS items for me. This makes Thok an excellent candidate for the use of a Warforged Seal.
- My BIS belt and legs are crafted, so I could get started on that immediately. This is a great idea when crafted items are much more powerful than the raiding gear you can acquire! My main wore crafted legs/belt through all of LFR, Flex and most of Heroic.
- Most of my BIS items come from The Underhold and Downfall, so I'll want to get there and start running ASAP
- I might want to use a Warforged Seal on any one of these bosses if they do not drop the loot I'm looking for. It's another shot at a BIS piece! And, at the very least, now I know exactly what he's looking for off of which bosses. No more guesswork.
7. As a byproduct of the BIS button, my character has been optimized by the stats most beneficial to me. I could not possibly gear my character any better than by following this template, as these results are generated by thousands of runs of a powerful simulation tool called "SimC." I'm a smart guy, but not smarter than 1,000,000 simulated boss battles.8. If I wanted to reconfigure your BIS list to take Normal into account, then I would enter back into the Filters and Options menu and change the Siege of Orgrimmar dropdown to normal. Now you know what bosses and drops you should be pursuing for normal raids. This will also elucidate, again, what bosses you should be using your Warforged Seals on. For myself, my BIS-LFR and BIS-Flex lists are almost exactly the same: I'm just replacing an item from LFR with the same item of a higher iLvl in Flex. Flex differs in that Garrosh drops amazing weapons, so those are added to my profile.
9. I wanted to make this its own point: never forget to use your Warforged Seal!
10. Now that you know your optimal gear, ensure that you are utilizing your optimal rotation (if DPS), spec and glyphs. Also, make sure you are spamming the key for the next ability in your rotation, as that action alone can easily add 30-50K DPS vs. waiting for it to come off CD and then pressing the button. Also, if you're clicking hotkeys, your DPS is seriously suffering. Train yourself out of that bad habit and start using keyboard macros.
Only comment I have to the Warforged Seals... I wouldn't use any of these on LFR for the first 4 bosses in SoO moving forward. I think we can safely assume we'll be downing the first 4 bosses on Flex beginning next week.
Question: does the premium account stuff translate over to the Mr Robot add-on?
Midga, this isn't aim solely at you, but you are the one to bring it up, so here goes.
"I want to be a casual player" - says to me that you probably don't want to be Raiding, at least not in a guild group for the higher/highest level loot. Casual would be raiding in LFR and getting as far as you can there, which is fine.
Not playing your character to its full (or at least 95%) in a raid like last night is just going to waste other people's time, IMO.
I am not saying you need to be at 95% tonight, or next week or even in 3 weeks necessarily. You just made 90 over the weekend, give it time. You need to establish a routine, figure out what dailies (if any) you are going to do. Find out what gaining rep with certain factions will gain for your character, etc.
You will get a chance to find out what you can make and sell to establish yourself with the gold you need to raid. Many of us have been at this part for 5 weeks so money isn't a big issue.
Also, part of a guild is to help other people in the guild, if you need something, ask. I know that several items were created or bought for several people in the last 4 or 5 days so they could participate last night.
Again, I am not trying to pick a fight with anyone over a game
You can be casual and run Flex/Normal raids, IMO. Heroics... that's where you start getting into the more hardcore raiders where eeking out every extra dps matters.
It seems we're pretty much on the same page excluding your definition of a casual player, but as long as it's cool that I'm not a hardcore min-maxer we should be okay. Last night was fun enough that I definitely want to keep doing it.
But the cool thing about AskMrRobot is that it takes the labors out of achieving peak performance. Go where it tells you, hit buttons A-E in a certain order, collect epix. No more excel spreadsheets, no more charting out optimal gear, blahblahblah.
Even for a powergamer like me that hungers for peak optimization, it's relieving to ignore all of the manual backend work and get on with the effort of actually playing the game. Now I can just target the time that I do play at activities that are maximally rewarding for me and the greater Icrontic raid.
As Hydrar put it, its 3 things. I would put gear last in that priority though. IMO:
Situational awareness (know the fights) > Spell rotation > Gear
Last night was actually REALLY good for the first bit. Everyone was responding to the call outs, and improving on their own positioning. We ONE SHOT the first two bosses, both of which I have wiped on in LFRs.
Also last night, we had a quite a bit of improvement on DPS as the night went on. @FreshyP was doing 2nd damage on the self reflections at Sha of Pride, which made him top @Thrax (@Hydrar is super over geared, so he doesn't count
A comment on spell rotation: If you look up a priority list as @Thrax says, it will take you maybe 30 minutes to read. If you then spend another 15 minutes at a target dummy to internalize it, you could increase your DPS by a significant margin.
I think it might be good for everyone to set a goal for target dummy DPS next week. I will go so far as to throw out an arbitrary number here at 80,000 over 10 minutes (time factor since we were hitting enrage timers this week.) Feel free to heckle me over this number
Finally, we also got a significant chunk of gear upgrades across the group last night. Mr. Robot really helps taking the homework out of min/maxing your character, so you can spend time on actually playing the game.
Personal note: if you AREN'T interested in making an effort toward this, yet are accepting help from others, you are essentially borrowing time from them, whether its guild resources, time in raid, money gathered, materials, etc. I am personally OK with this: I want everyone who wants to participate to come out and have fun. This is also why it can trigger emotional responses from people.
I also really want to succeed and progress as a guild. The teamwork and sense of accomplishment is something that tickles my brain like nothing else really can. To do that we all have to work together and put some time to learning fights, learning and practicing our rotations, and getting gear.
You need to look at the rotation, practice it a little and not necesarily worry about the number you're putting out because that number will shift up with raid buffs that you absolutely won't have at the dummy. I jumped from ~58k DPS on the dummy to 65-90 depending on the fight. vOv It can certainly be useful as an internal check, meaning you know what your raid dummy DPS was a week ago and compare it to you today. Just make sure you're comparing like situations.
Elitist Jerks has been the best for me, and probably took about 30 mins to "get it" for my character. YMMV as I don't have a lot of experience outside of the pally and rogue forums and Icy Veins is another choice (that I personally haven't used). Lots of mileage for that time and I definitely agree with not spending hours upon hours obsessing. You don't need to do that, because someone else has
EDITS: lots of edits
If you want to practice solo, the Proving Grounds in the Temple of the White Tiger are a good place to practice your rotations and situational awareness. Your gear gets scaled to an even point, there is a reforger and basic buff food available, and you are given all the buffs that other classes can give you. You are on par as far as outside influences are concerned. So it all comes down to you observing your enemies, moving accordingly, and putting out as much DPS as you can through appropriate combos. In the DPS role challenges at least. There are tank and healer challenges too, but I haven't done those yet.
I guess this is related to being the best. What UIs and addons do you guys like to use?
http://www.icy-veins.com/raids-wow
http://imgur.com/a/gU5r6
Most strats are over complicated for LFR (due to less damage received from mechanics and other simplifications), but understanding the strats for the full difficulty will make the LFR much easier in general.