Raid Advice - Dance of the Demiurge

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Windance, Apr 18, 2023.

  1. Cadira Augur

    With your team, what I might do is this:

    Hit 12m or less burns at the beginning.

    Hit 20m bigoldik burns at the 4 waves of 4 (right after 50% lock).

    Bane one out of every two white con adds from 50% down, off tank the ones that can't be. Multidotters can try and kill a few as you go if they can. Will save you some time later. Kill the blobs everytime they spawn. Hit another 12m burn when he hits 10% and try to burn through the adds by having him eat them instead.

    Quite sure "baning" the boss does nothing and just represents what spells he's casting. Think he swaps colors every 2%. Just focus dps on him and adds.

    Might be bad advice....but it's what I'd try in your shoes.
  2. Alarya Augur

    Have you ever danced with the demiurge in the pale moon light?
    scaethach and Metanis like this.
  3. Knifen Augur


    I ask that of all my prey, I just like the sound of it
    Alarya and Metanis like this.
  4. Sancus Augur

    If you don't want to bench people, it seems like your alternative is to leverage the higher performing players you do have. I'm not sure what your raid makeup is like, but if you have one or two well put together caster groups I'd direct them to some of the class discords/available guides and make sure they're maximizing everything they can. I'd be happy to talk to them or look over logs or something if it'd help.

    Acknowledging that there are a number of reasons that this is not directly comparable, my group last raid did 12.5M DPS on this event. That was on a 709s fight, so DPS would be lower at 2,037 seconds. That said, if everything was tanked/grouped and raid-wide ADPS is generally on point, I would think 8-10 million from a well composed caster group is feasible under those conditions. There's a lot that goes into that beyond individuals pushing buttons right, but if you can get everything together, it would probably help quite a bit.

    Usually it's easier to get someone doing very low DPS to improve than someone who's already performing well (more low hanging fruit), but if that's not an option, it seems like leveraging the players who are able to hit buttons fast is probably the route to go.
    Marton, Windance, keel and 2 others like this.
  5. keel Journeyman

    What is your raid dps on the event if you know? We haven't done that one or parsed it in awhile but at first glance looks like 31M dps for us last run. I would say it is one of the more challenging events this expack on the heals and tanks but not too bad and yes you may need to sit out low performing players until you get it down :( To give you some confidence, AH on Tunare even beat it and most of us would sit out 3/4 of their raidforce including their RL lol so you got this! Friends told me they just zerged it so just keep chipping away at it you'll get the W :)

    Guessing from all the other posts and great info provided you're going to need 15M+ dps
  6. Lianeb Augur

    From 50 down ignore the adds except for banes. OT the adds that do spawn and keep killing boss only getting off him for the blobs.

    After he reaches 10% he will start eating adds and healing to 12....keep pushing him and keep letting him eat the adds (it's faster than you killing them) at some point the timer will line up and you will have no adds for him to eat and the full timer to get him from 12%-0

    He doesn't eat the enrage mobs but they also do not need to be dead to kill him
  7. Szilent Augur



    op's posted parse was for the entire event. they did not spend 2037s, 34 minutes, killing the first monster. They had 16.3M raid dps across those 34 minutes
  8. Windance Augur

    Thank you all for your input.

    Hopefully we have a strong turn out Sunday and make another good push.
  9. adetia Monkess Wonder, Ruler of All

    It seems like a small detail but one thing you can really do if you are "running out of gas" is manage your circle lineups effectively - particularly if your casters/rangers/etc are running out of gas. this is one fight where you want to be thinking marathon over sprint especially if you are dps challenged.

    When we first started we opened with everything that we could that was short/fast reuse, did as much dps as we could on the trash waves in stage 5, then we'd use burn items as they came back up on the oozes that popped in the final boss round to ensure they died prior to the 90 second mark so you didnt get the assorted penalties, then clean up trash, then back to boss. i know this is counter to what other higher dps guilds may have recommended above, but it works with lower dps. its also really helpful once you get the boss down close to 10 to push him past, and let him gobble up the adds - its faster to let him eat them then to kill them.

    Deal with each stage, try to go into the next without extra adds up if you can swing it, but always switch to the new wave, let dots/pets clean up the 1-2 or whatever adds that are leftover. Be mindful of your trash positioning - this will also help reduce deaths (if you have issues with that) that lower your dps, and helps keep your resources strong.

    Also - other then the preincarnation(iirc?) dodge, make sure folks aren't going too far - we dodge all the individual ones, but since they are short range, curtailing people's urge to dodge to outer mongolia helps return them to the fight faster.

    good luck :) personally, i believe this fight is the most difficult in the expansion dpswise/resource management wise. you can do it!
    Metanis likes this.
  10. Nightops Augur

    I'm sure your working some of these tips for better dps already. But if wherever you can make a change... anything will help.

    1. Make the best dps groups that you can. Put your highest performers together. Even if that means putting a good SK or paladin in with a shaman over a poor performing ranger or beastlord for an example.

    2. If you have casters who can not push lots of buttons (or are just generally underperforming). Try to get them to make casting macros. This will keep them on the right casting sequence at a minimum. And if your lucky, they will get more dps out then normal. Lots of classes have recourses now within nukes, AAs, and synergies. Sometimes low dps classes are not taking correct advantage of these recourses and it could be a simple thing like changing cast order, or changing a spell or two.

    3. Make sure every class is contributing. Yes, druids and sham should be casting dots on non-trash mobs. Several years ago when I was looking at a similar problem with the casual raiding guild I was a part of, we were able to get each druid to go from 1-2% of the raid DPS to 3-4% just by having them dot more instead of nuking. Shamans should be able to do even better as long as they are actively doing their canni AA, spell, and rods.

    4. If your guild has GINA mandatory to raid, it would likely be helpful for your dot casting classes to make timers for your dots. You don't have to do a timer for every dot, but something to tell the player when the dots need to be refreshed. Example, if your best dot lasts 60sec, do a timer for this one and then cast all other 60sec dots. Repeat for 45sec dots or 90sec dots. Class with dots which fulminate to a more powerful dot should have a GINA timer for those dots. Recasting too fast cuts out big chunks of dps and recasting too slow eats away at dps a lot too.

    5. Also, with TeamSpeak or discord, you can try to get similar classes together during off-nights in order to discuss class strats and dive into questions about who has or is missing AAs, poor spell sets, or lack of class knowledge that has evolved over expansions. It may surprise you how many of the poor performers are doing simple things wrong. Or who need to get 1 or 2 more ranks of a focus line in order to boost a spell by 35%. Especially classes like necros and shaman who have TONS of focus lines to max every level increase expansion.

    In my old guild several years ago, our dps would tail off after 15ish minutes and then the next 10minutes would be a slug it out type of thing. After talking with people, I felt some had the mindset about saving mana for a long 25-30min fight instead of pushing for high dps for 20mins until they were oom. When several people take this concept, your raid basically ends up fighting extra mob regen, timer spawns, rage timers, deaths, etc. etc.

    I realize lots of this stuff should be trivial for a non-lvl increase expansion, but you gotta find out why and where the problems are before you can get them to improve. Just remember to not get frustrated and to take the small improvements as a sign of the overall dps improvement with the whole raid. Getting 10 low dps people to contribute by an extra 1% each in the total raid damage can be huge. Then if you can get a few more people who are in the middle of the list to improve their total raid dps % by another 1%, you will see a lot of improvement on your overall raids.
    adetia likes this.
  11. Svann2 The Magnificent

    Maybe use glyphs
  12. Jeebs New Member

    That's rich coming from someone in a guild that just wiped on Darklight.
    Conq likes this.
  13. Tacoheals TACOBELL !!!!

    I bet if all the tanks stacked heroic agility like he does there guild would be fine.
  14. Windance Augur

    I want to thank you all for the advice. We were able to get a win tonight on this event. It was ugly.

    The key was as Lianb and Rules said:

    We could win the event after enrage as long as we get the boss to 10% so he starts eating the adds. You can win while penalty adds are up.

    This was 100% the case for us.

    At 50% killed first blob and did banes
    Failed to kill 2nd blob so called all DPS on boss and OT everything else.
    Had 7-8 yellow cons up and several 0-1% boss heals, but then squeaked it once burns cycled for 3rd time.

    Parse: Combined (67): Oern in 1881s, 37.03B Damage @19.69M
    Cicelee, Metanis, Szilent and 3 others like this.
  15. FranktheBank Augur

    Congrats. I just want to challenge your idea here...

    Most classes are pretty multibind friendly. Even my grandma with arthritis can hit 1 button per second. Alternatively, give them auto clickers and make them just worry about toggling it on/off.
  16. Windance Augur

    I just want to challenge your idea here:

    that any class except the most straight forward of DPS classes can do well simply spamming a single button.

    Especially on events that have lots of target switches, run away mechanics, etc.
  17. Szilent Augur

    There is a substantial UI / play mechanics issue to address if moment to moment play conflicts with paying attention to an event. I'm with FranktheBank on this one: most classes are [very] multibind friendly.
  18. Goratoar Elder

    I will have to agree on that. If your raid force is putting out sub 20m, then the vast majority of them would improve with just a multi-bind and autoclicker setup. It is a crutch that at the highest levels of play will actively make you worse, but it would improve 90% of player's dps just because it is enforcing the use of correct spells and setups.

    That being said, if you throw in a couple top level sustained dps classes into that mix your problems will seem to go away quickly. One solid Enc/Brd/Shm/Mag/Nec/Nec group can sustain 10m easy even on a long fight. Obviously that's not a silver bullet, and everyone else could stand to step up a bit, but the vast majority of very low dps issues is simply because of lack of setups or knowledge, not because of physical or mental barriers.

    Edit: Oh yeah, one more thing that seems to always need to be brought up for this kind of discussion. You give your bards to the good Shm/Dru/Mag/Necs. If you don't have good players of those classes, the next in line are SK/Bst/Rng, but for a sustain of that duration, those classes do fall off. No other class benefits nearly as much from the raw amount of dps upgrade, not even close. Always stay strong against the people that will whine about it, results will speak for themselves. And if this wasn't your final event of the expansion, good luck on finishing out.
  19. FranktheBank Augur

    Off the top of my head; mag, wiz, enc, mnk, ber, bst, rog, and rng can all dps with a multibind. Shm/clr heal with a bind.

    There are some classes in there like bst/enc/rng that should also be multidotting, but if we are talking baby steps then we can ignore that for now.
  20. Szilent Augur

    Your list is short by several, imo. By my count only bards & necromancers have "no" utility for keybinds.

    Regardless, having a keybind for something, and using it to trivially raise the floor on one's standard of play, does not necessitate being a slave to that keybind. It doesn't replace heads-up play. On the contrary, it should be found to enable even better heads-up play as both strong and weak players get to pay more attention to the emotes, targeting, and movements that have been brought up, instead of to their own UI.
    Sissruukk likes this.