Thursday's PROGRESSION Run Never Gets Off The Ground

[Milric]

I had to cancel Thursday's PROGRESSION run. While we had sufficient heroic level tanks and healers, we just did not have enough heroic level DPS. The Heroic Northrend Beasts-25 encounter demands a certain level of DPS (roughly 5.2K per DPSer from each of 18 DPSers). We only had about 10 DPSers on that could make that number. We had about 4 more that would be shy, but close enough that they could be covered by the extra DPS from the top DPSers. That left us shy by about 4 Heroic level DPSers - that translates to about 8K-12K raid DPS - that translates to killing Gormok about 15 to 30 seconds too late.

I am disappointed that we had to cancel a run. Particularly a PROGRESSION run because we do so few of them. It should be noted that we had plenty of DPSers available; just many of the DPSers do not pull the level of DPS required to down Heroic content.

The leaders considered moving to other encounters. But the other encounters also required Heroic level DPS. For instance, Hard mode Hodir requires 22 DPSers that can pull 8K (remember there are some damage gimmicks in Hodir).

In the end, we had a couple of raiding options that just were not that appealing. Two entry level bosses in Naxx for some specialized tank blocking gear. Later Ulduar bosses (in non-Hard mode), but that just steals from Monday's run.

If you are a DPSer that wants to participate in Heroic level content, you need to be pulling 5.5K+ in a stand-up fight (no damage gimmicks, limited movement.) In turn, if you are not doing that, you need to get with your class lead to figure out what you need to change. For the vast majority of our DPS, the gap is not a function of gear. Most of our DPS are dripping in high end epic gear and I can point you over to WMO fights where raiders with far less gear pull far better numbers. The issues are typically spec, rotation and activity level. If you are not pulling 5.5K+ and you want to, talk to your class lead, leave notes in the forums and get ready to spend time practicing on the target dummies. It's not easy. If it was easy, everyone would be pulling those numbers.