Just not my night.

Okay, the title does not really sum it up correctly.  I had a great night raiding.  Only did the first wing of ICC 25 man but all it took was about 1 hour and 20 minutes.  Getting nicer, that is for sure.  I think once we get down to 1 hour it will be better.  Why we did not continue is beyond me.  We could have at least taken down uncle fester.  The reason I say it was not my night is because I went in looking for at least 1 of 3 drops.  None dropped.  What did drop that I could use, I rolled like crap and won nothing.  There is always next week.

I was hoping to land the Leggings of Northern Lights or Zod's Repeating Longbow or everyones favorite and one I knew I would have a lot of competition rolling on, Deathbringer's Will.  I figured I would never have a shot at DW and I have a decent bow so I would put that on my list for later, the legs where what I wanted most.  I am still using the legs from T9 as part of my 2 piece T9 set.  I do not plan to upgrade to the 4 piece T10 set until I have the legs so I am not stuck with a pair of 232 legs.  I already have the 4 T10 pieces all gemmed and enchanted and waiting to go.

So nothing I wanted dropped.  That doesn't exactly make the grumpy elf grumpy, it happens and I expect that I will get them some time in the future. So what else was there out there for me that dropped you might ask.

Well, against all odds two Protector's Mark of Sanctification dropped.  Yeap, two of them so two chances for me to win.  Also two chances for me to roll less then 50 and two chances to lose it to someone else.  Also during the run two Primordial Saronite dropped.  I could really use those, if I can not get the deathwhisper drop I can always get the crafted Draconic Bonesplinter Legguards that requires 8 of the saronites.  So any saronite I can get from a roll is 2K less I would need to spend to get them crafted.  I already got my boots crafted so I spent enough.  I wanted to save money on getting the legs crafted if it came down to that.  Needless to say I lost both of those rolls too.  At least I got a 60 this time, but still lost both.

So all in all, 4 things I could have used, lost all roles, the three things I really wanted and none dropped.  It was just not my night.

The other hunters in the run all got huge upgrades.  One got the Scourgeborne Waraxe off the Gunship Battle.  I considered rolling on it, but for 2 reasons I did not.  One reason is that I prefer 2 handed weapons for some reason. I do have a Frost Giant's Cleaver sitting in my bank, so I would have had both 1 handed weapons I would need so that is not the reason.  The other reason was that the only hunter that rolled on it was 4K below me on the DPS list and in my opinion he needed it a hell of a lot more then I did.

I am one of those team play people.  I am not going to roll on something that would be a minor increase for me when it would be a huge increase for someone else that is always at the raids.  Maybe if it was someone that did not raid often or someone that we picked up to fill a spot I might have rolled.  But I am not going to roll against a team mate that got himself a huge upgrade.

Another of the hunters got one of the Mark of Sanctification and one of the Primordial Saronite so that is awesome for him.  Sad part for me is that he was just behind me on the DPS list, this is going to help him pass me.  Guess it will make me step up my game some.  I found out however that he did not know that you can put gems in other stockets that are not the same color.  So I think me telling him that will really help his DPS.  Would be nice to see him overtake me.  He already out geared me to begin with, add the mark in and he has a nice gear lead.  Maybe with me telling him about gemming he will become even better.  I do not mind stepping aside and not being #1 as long as we get the job done.  Remember what I always say, DPS matters, but it should not mean everything.  Don't let trying to be #1 on the charts interfere with what is best for the team.

Speaking of DPS, I did what I like to do at the end of every run.  I checked out what I did and percentages of everything.  One of the first things I like to look at is the "Volley Whore" factor.  I did not want to see a large percentage of my damage being done by volley.  For basically 2 reasons.  First being that if most of my damage is from volley then my over all DPS is inflated and not a good judge of how I did.  The second is that if most of my damage is from volley I know that I could have done a hell of a lot better.

Volley took the number 1 spot on my list, but was only 0.2% above auto shot. I find that acceptable.  When both things are about 22% you are doing okay over all.  I've seen people with 65% volley damage after 4 bosses.  That means you did nothing but volley on anything that was not a boss, and that means you were not doing your job right.  I want to get that 22% down a little, would like to see volley under auto shot for a run like that.

Over all it seems I could have done better.  Came in on the over all at #2 right behind a DK.  Being there are a few target switching fights there and the DK got to stay on the bosses the whole time I think it worked out nicely.  A good DK should be beating me in that area.  But I know I could have done better.  I did better last week.  I did nearly 1K better last week.  I did not change any gear so I will just call it an off night.  I felt my target switching could have been smoother and I felt my occasional shot selection was off a small bit because of timing.  I try to time it so all my instants are available when the blood beasts spawn so if I need to do a bit of kiting I can still jump shot them.  That is what I am talking about with my timing being off.  Did not set it up all that well last night.

More on the topic of DPS and what I will work on while waiting for Saturdays continuation is why my DPS was so low.  Sure I was #2 and it is not about me waiting to be #1 (even if we all do want to) but by low I mean low compared to what I should be capable of doing.

Based on Zeherah's Hunter DPS Analyzer I should be doing 8385.21 fully raid buffed under ideal conditions.  Add to that the 10% ICC buff and I should be doing 9223.73 DPS under ideal conditions while fully raid buffed.  Now I know that I did not have all the perfect raid buffs and I know that in ICC there are no ideal conditions being there is a lot of movement and target switching but over all I think I should still be doing more then 20% less then my maximum potential under ideal conditions.  That means 7278.98 DPS should be the worst I ever do.  I did 7900, so only a little over the worst I could do.  Over all, not bad based on the numbers.  I did what I would refer to as reasonable.  Respectable. Decent.

My problem is with comparing last weeks run to this weeks run.  Same gear, nothing changed in a week.  I did 8800 last week.  That is 900 more then this week.  Add to that the fact that I did not join in last week until deathwhisper.  Which means I missed all the trash before marrowgar and all the trash before deathwhisper.  I can easily pull upwards of 12K on those trash pulls, sometimes 15K if the RNG is being nice to me.  I always pull 10K on the skellies that come out.  So that is a lot of high numbers that did not get into my over all numbers when I got 8800, yet all those high numbers got into my total when I did 7900 this week.  If anything my over all DPS should have gone up with this run do to inflated trash numbers.

It makes me think I was doing something wrong this week.  As I say, I admit my target switching was not top notch this week and my timing for saving instant shots was a bit off but that is all I can pick up from my performance as in being different.  I doubt the RNG would play that huge of a difference.

I guess I will be doing a lot of reading on things I can do to improve on what was a rather lackluster performance this week when we continue.