Why do we need raid food?Follow

It occurred to me the other day that I can pretty much pull aggro off of any tank. Now I'm not saying this to stroke my epeen but I started to wonder why we need raid food. At least the spell damage kind. It's not that I'm cheap. I always carry it with me weather I plan on raiding or not. It just seems like a waste to me. I DOT up the mob and cast SB's in between and usually have to hold off. This is of course after I let the tank establish control of the mob.

I suppose it would help on trash mobs but I don't think it's that big of a difference compared to using something that maybe increased my Stamina and Spirit instead. What do you think?

Get Salvation from your lazy Paladins.

Get Salvation from a pally? You said raid, so I am curious as to what are you attacking that is so easy to pull aggro off? You either need a better tank, better pallys, or to move searing pain out of your rotation.

I use wizard oil and food. But is it really necessary. I think most of you are missing the point I am trying to make. If you have to back off at any point then the food is a waste. Now this doesn't work for all bosses. For example more DPS is great when you are trying to burn down Curator adds since you are mainly Shadow Bolting anyways. I'm talking about single boss mobs. Just because you get to the point of breaking aggro faster than someone that doesn't eat food doesn't mean you are doing more DPS if you have to hold back while the other guy keeps DPS'ing. This is my thinking anyways.



- That's just what I call it since I generally don't use food and oil when I'm grinding mobs or questing. Also, insert any boss that lasts over 2 minutes for the benefit of this topic if you are having a hard time understanding the point I'm trying to make.



- All could be the case with the exception of Searing Pain. I never use it.

OMG, I didn't know this... Thank you!

Alas, don't forget to have improved drain-soul and/or destructive reach, an extra 10% less threat for each tree. The more threat reduction you can muster the more you can dps, and the more those little buffs like well-fed pay off.

I find that after a well timed soul-shatter you will usually be able to go all out without worrying about threat for the rest of the boss fight.

If your pulling agro at a reqular rate while raiding, something is wrong.

Questions to be asking.


Are you watching agro meters?
Are your tanks well geared?
Are your Hunters using Misdirect to give the tanks an initial agro boost?
Do you have either Salv or Tranq Air Totem?
Do you have the Cloak enchant?
Do you spam Searing Pain?
Do you have Imp. Drain Soul, Destructive Reach, and Grim Reach talents?
Do you use Soul Shatter regularly?

Any, or All of these could be your problem.

I still disagree, I think any and every way to boost your damage should be taken. If you do a large amount of damage with a small amount of spells and pull aggro, I think that would still be better than doing the same amount of damage with more spells that hit for less.
And if you have well geared, knowledgeable tanks, and you still have to sit and wait for them to get some aggro, consider it mana conservation :P

Almost everyone here seems to think that I am in some way against using Raid/Damage food. I'm not. I always use it when doing heroics or Raids. I have just noticed that sometimes I have to hold back which makes it kind of a waste. I'm not hurting for gold so it's not a waste of funds but rather seems like maybe sometimes it might be better to use something else.



For cloak I use 20 Spell Penetration. I assumed (and you know what they say about assuming) that it was the best for cloak and my Afflic spec. 2% damage reduction didn't seem worth it to me compared to the benefit of the spell penetration.



I have both improved drain-soul and destructive reach. As far as soul-shatter goes I usually use that in case of an emergency. When do you guys use it?



A little harsh but that's your opinion. I use omen and it's default setting gives me a warning at 90% aggro. I never payed attention to how much it took to actually pull the mob off the tank. My sockets are filled with hit, spell penetration and damage gems. I have only been in Kara twice and done a bunch of heroics so I don't have as much experience as you obviously have but I don't think I'm as much of a noob as you think I am.

I

I watch the meter but I held back to avoid going over the tanks threat. Not to 130%.
Tank seems very well geared.
Don't pay attention to what the hunters do.
Don't pay attention to what Totem's are out.
Don't have the Cloak Enchant. Would still like some more imput on this one.
Never use Searing pain.
Have all 3 talents.
Doesn't sound like I'm using it when I should be. Would also like more imput on this.

This has been one of the best reply's yet and I thank you for that! By looking for answers to these questions I can increase my damage and hopefully get a better understanding of what it takes to make the boss go down.



I don't ever recall saying that boosting your damage was a bad idea. In fact this is what I said:



I do apologize if I came of sounding like an elitist. That wasn't my intention at all. Some of you seem to be getting pretty worked up over a simple question.

i do use buff-food, oil, flasks or two elixiers at bossfights.
as mentioned above as soon as you hit ssc you will have to take care of adds
who have to go down asap.
I shatter soul as soon as i get around 5% above the MT, do not use it
in emergency situations but use it before. You can even use it twice during alot of bossfights.
Of course there are alot of situations where you do not really need the buff-food, but there are alot of situations where you want to squezze every single point of dmg you can muster.
E.g. Gruul, Voidreaver, Lurker (since you can´t really pull aggro of him)+doing the adds as fast as possible and Hydross where you have to down the adds really quick as well, the same goes for Morgrim Tidewalker when the murlocs spawn.

So maybe in Karazhan you overaggro the tank too easily, where fights are rather short, my advice would be give the tank 12-15k aggro-advance, than onve you have the same amount of aggro make use of your soul-shatter ability and go for it again.

Totems and Pala-Buff doesn´t stack i believe.
I got the cloak enchant ant it works pretty well, but do not expect it
to work wonders.
Hunters can use Missdirecting Shot (funny thing here cause our raidleader always calls it "directors shot") on Tanks so they get all the aggro generated from the hunter for for a short amount of time (this aggro stays on the tank).



Edited, Oct 21st 2007 4:37pm by Oakenwrath

agent law. it's not a 2% damage reduction. it's a 2% threat reduction. meaning you can generate 2% more threat before pulling hate. it's DEFINATELY the best enchant if you have aggro issues. also if you're actually geming for spell penetration then you seriously need to regem soon, you never need it for pve. CoE/CoS is enough. currently in TBC there hasn't been any high res bosses so it's not needed. (if you're worried about partial resists on bosses. they have a base 6% chance for partial resists, so you can't get it lower).

from the sounds of things you've yet to get gear that can generate alot of threat fast. meaning that you've yet to encounter as to why threat reduction is so important. also if you ever get to do void reaver then you'll understand how important soulshatter and -threat is.

30% threat reduction doesn't mean 30% more potential damage. Let's assume you have no threat reducing talents, and you can do 1000 DPS (easy number to work with) without pulling aggro. Now every time you do 1000 DPS you only do 700 TPS, so in order to move up to 1000 TPS you can do ~1428 DPS, which is a 42.8% increase.

As for using Soulshatter, In the case of bossfights I usually find myself using it early in the fight.


In most cases, on boss fights I bengin hard dps as soon as the fight starts, even before the tank sunders. The reason being: I can dps as hard as I can as soon as the fight starts, allowing me to pump out a good chunk of dps within the first phases of the fight. After about 2-3 cast rotations, im usually sitting around equal to or slightly higher than the MT in threat, this is when I Soulshatter, for two reasons. First, this starts Soulshatters 5 min cooldown early in the fight, meaning I have it up again sooner in the fight to drop agro again if needed. Second, after I Soulshatter, this puts the MT and most of the entire raid far ahead of me in threat pretty early in the fight, allowing me to dps as hard as possable for a long time before I reach the MT in threat again(or ever), and usually by the time im at the point again, the cooldown on Soulshatter is up again, allowing me to drop agro if needed.

I do NOT advise this unless you meet at certain criteria though, as this can wipe the entire raid if your lacking most of these things.

I do not suggest doing this unless you have a combination of these things, if not all of them.

Threat to cloak enchant(2% threat redux). Blessing of Salvation(30% threath redux). Tranquil Air Totem(20% threat redux). 2/2 Imp. Drain Soul(-10% threat redux to affliction spells). 2/2 Grim Reach. 2/2 Desructive Reach. 5/5 Master Demonogist(20% threat redux while using Imp). Tanks with good gear with a high tps(Ive found Druid tanks are the best for raw tps in my experiances). Hunters who know to Misdirect to the MT(even better if you have multiple Hunters whoset up a Misdirection rotation). And at least a 14-16% spell hit chance to reduce the chances of Soulshatter being resisted.

All of these will help with my method of using Soulshatter early in the fight.

All of these will also help with you not pulling agro in general.

And remember, if all else fails, give the tank a good ammount of time to get agro before laying into the mob, remember, the simplest of strats seem to usually be the best.