Heroic G'huun - reverse engineered

Several people have been asking me what it means to "reverse engineer" a "down" on this boss, so I want to take a moment and detail my thoughts on our comp and what we need to do to get a quicker "down".

All information is being pulled from the logs on last raid night:

Please keep in mind that if you're a raider on the team and your name ISN'T on the list, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't show up to raid, it just means for this fight in particular, your class probably doesn't provide us a huge benefit. Show up to raid and as we progress on Heroic G'huun, we can swap people out or add people as the comp/progression sees fit. It's not entirely about performance, but the biggest thing to consider for G'huun is the fact that you need people to perform other duties. Those that can perform orb duty, provide a raid CD and/or provide a BUFF become a higher asset to the team. Orb runners on our "perfect" comp was. 1) Seesnotrix 2) Josephkony 3) Jumpman

1) Xiuhtecoatl

2) Chispot

3) Nahra In terms of the 2/4/9 group size, we already now have 1 tank, 3 dps and 2 healers. All 3 of the dps are melee, so right off the bat, we may not want to bring any other melee so that we can avoid people clumping together under the boss, but we'll get to that later. Since Caluminus is a tank, the other tank slot is full, so let's focus on healers.

We only want 4 healers, last night we had 5. To reverse engineer this, we have to look at overall stacks and deaths. Since malignant growth was such a huge issue at the start of the night and not so much by the end, we'll take a close look at who is still dying to that. Here is a link directly to overall damage taken by the malignant growth mechanic:

One of our healers is at the top of the list for taking this 100% avoidable damage. So that drops Ahel from the 2/4/9 comp, giving Slappyclown and Morfyeroc the last two spots.

So now we have 2/4/3 out of 2/4/9, let's focus on our DPS.

We need to have 2 warlocks, for this comp, we need to give Kudda and Mizzrym spots. That puts us now at 2/4/5 out of 2/4/9.

In terms of constant overall damage, mechanical awareness and one of the least in terms of damage taken, Firangel is currently one of the only dps who is consistent in her performance, putting us now at 2/4/6 out of 2/4/9.

Now that we have 3 melee and 3 ranged dps, we have 3 dps spots left. I don't want to crowd the melee, I want them to have all the room in the world. With this in mind, I will now be taking 1 melee and 2 ranged dps to finish the group. From this point, I want to look at buffs for the raid. We don't currently have a mage for the main raid team, so that buff will be provided by a tome. Attack power is given by our only warrior Shastoos (who also provides a health pool CD for the group at a point when we need it most), for that reason, Shastoos would be the last in the melee group I bring for this comp. We're now 2/4/7 out of 2/4/9 and need to look at bringing two ranged dps.

Looking back on the log regarding malignant growth, as well as giving our group another battle rez, I would be bringing in Chrono. His damage sits in the middle of the pack and his malignant growth damage taken has been minimal (except for one fight where it killed him). That bring us to 2/4/8 out of 2/4/9.

We need one more ranged dps. Since, for the most part, the other ranged in the group do not provide a raid-wide buff or benefit, we will look at damage taken and from what sources that damage was taken from. I will also not be including the dps that ended up sitting earlier in the night because it's not fair to them to compare their logs to the rest. It comes down to our 3 hunters who were there for the entire night: Duoveridis, Zarrmorre and Natoom.

Let me say this one more time for the audience. If we had a mage, this spot would be given to them for the buff to the party. Think about this as we move forward into other bosses.

For those that are keeping up, I am now looking at the logs for SPECIFICALLY the 5 wipes that we should have gotten a boss **** on. Wipes 15, 16, 19, 20, 22. Refer to this link:

For this comparison, I am looking at several things. Damage done, damage taken, usefulness to the raid and overall awareness. For several pulls, Natoom and Zarrmorre were running the orb; their usefulness to the raid bumps them up over Duoveridis in my opinion as Natoom and Zarrmorre could be used as backups and know what to do with the main mechanic that covers the majority of the fight.

I removed one pull where friendly fire stacks and RNG killed Zarrmorre and am now looking at this log:

Zarrmorre and Natoom are neck in neck in terms of performance, so I will be strictly looking at their percentage of time being alive.

Overall...

Zarrmorre finishes with a 85.3%.

Natoom finished with a 84.7%.

Not a huge gap in performance but in this case, we would look at taking Zarrmorre.

The 2/4/9 comp is as follows:

Tanks:

Calumnious

Seesnotrix

Healers:

Nahra

Morfyeroc

Slappyclown

Chispot

Melee:

Joesephkony

Jumpman

Xiuhtecoatl

Shastoos

Ranged:

Firangel

Kudda

Mizzrym

Chrono

Zarrmorre

This gives each healer 5 people to heal, very similar to how a dungeon group would be set up.

Keep in mind that if someone on the list isn't able to make it to the raid, we have a lot of other people we can swap out into spots.

Also, keep in mind that if we start adding people, we would want to add 5 more people, to bring the comp to 2/5/13, however the performance of this group size quickly tapers off as the logs from last night indicate.

What are your thoughts? Did I not consider something that is jumping out at you? Join the conversation and keep things positive!