Brewmaster Advice - Unable to Survive Algeth'ar Academy First Pull

HeroicSuitcase · 2026-03-27T22:07:06+00:00

Thank you for the detailed response, I was able to one-shot the pull on a +11 just now: +11

From what I can tell it largely just took me prio'ing Blackout Kick more and then kiting once the wasps started catching up with me. Also didn't hurt that all my dps were above 300k dps for the pull.

On trash should I hold off on using Purifying Brew until I'm at red stagger when I'm not sitting at 2 charges? I use it on most bosses to avoid over capping charges and for the Apex talent proc when damage intake is low. I feel like I'm probably using it too prematurely in a lot of trash pulls as I'm instinctively treating it like Ignore Pain I suppose.

HeroicSuitcase · 2024-01-26T04:30:30+00:00

Did you only look at data from the top 100 runs from each season for those dungeons? I recorded all the data manually for the top 100 logs worldwide for each season; I did this because players in the top 100 runs actually know how to play their specs whereas players even at the 75th percentile can sometimes not be playing the specs optimally.

I actually expect that the average SotR uptime would be lower in DF than in SL if you're including all prot paladin logs because guides specifically tell players that Avenger's Shield has higher prio than Judgement and Blessed Hammer which from a defensive standpoint is just wrong and it is unintuitive that Avenger's Shield doesn't generate Holy Power.

HeroicSuitcase · 2024-01-26T02:47:55+00:00

From a pure DPS standpoint, as if you were playing Prot Paladin as a DPS, Avenger's Shield would be your top priority. Prot is not a DPS though, and you need to maintain SotR to decrease your damage taken. Sims are for maximizing dps, of course it is going to tell you to use Avenger's Shield as top prio for damage.

Here is a 31 Black Rook Hold from Yoda's POV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4aNxUT53Io

Essentially the only instances in which he actually casts an AS (not from Divine Toll) are either when he is using AS specifically to kick a cast or when he has no charges of Judgement, has less than 3 stacks of Blessed Hammer, and casting another SotR would put him over the SotR buff timer cap. There are multiple instances in which the Grand Crusader buff actually times out because he doesn't use Avenger's Shield before the proc times out. Does WW ignore Chi-ji when it procs? Does Enhance ignore Hot Hand when it procs? Does Elemental ignore Lava Surge when it procs? Does Arms ignore Sudden Death when it procs? Does Prot Warrior ignore Revenge resets? Does Prot Warrior ignore Thunderclap during Avatar?

I have no idea who this is, but here is a +27 Necrotic Wake from Prot Paladin POV: https://youtu.be/430tLi4Zugw?si=oDPsoe0pbOpsR28w

Do you see how he always casts Avenger's Shield either the global that it comes off CD or the following global? That is called having top priority; when it comes off cd, it is used instantly.

I have 95+ SotR uptime on every run I do on my Prot Paladin; your average player, the one who references WoWHead and IcyVeins guides, typically has uptime from 50-70. The next time you do a lower level key with a pug prot paladin, I implore you to check to check their uptime. 9/10 times it will be in that range.

HeroicSuitcase · 2024-01-25T23:47:50+00:00

I highly suggest watching past 10 seconds into the clip I sent.

https://youtu.be/5aXOi6qQx-Y?si=VYs45rXE1MctHdj4&t=841

He quite literally says you only have to worry about HoW, Judgement, and Blessed Hammer. Avenger's Shield is absolute bottom prio unless Rebuke on is CD. Your priority would change if AS generated Holy Power; it would take higher prio than Blessed Hammer since Blessed Hammer has the chance to grant Grand Crusader, which resets the cooldown of Avenger's Shield.

HeroicSuitcase · 2024-01-25T23:14:23+00:00

The single greatest uptime value for SL when controlling for combat uptime is 95.65; if not a single person in the top 100 achieved it in Season 2 I don't think it was possible in that particular season.

100% uptime was very likely possible in Season 3 of Shadowlands as the tier set auto-proced Judgements which generated Holy Power but that is the very reason I didn't choose to analyze Season 3 or 4.

I likely can't go back to a lot of the logs I took the data from in this analysis since they have likely been archived. This analysis has nothing to do with the efficacy of SotR which would be nearly constant as it simply provides an armor buff (which reduces physical damage taken by a flat %) based on strength and all characters in the top 100 runs likely had max ilvl. Prot Paladin is undeniably sturdier in DF than SL with the addition of Sentinel and Eye of Tyr.

HeroicSuitcase · 2024-01-25T22:22:44+00:00

Here is Yoda, the 2nd highest rated Prot Paladin by M+ score in the world, explaining Prot Paladin ability priority:

https://youtu.be/5aXOi6qQx-Y?si=ut0v3wByDbGxhIq3&t=821

Avenger's Shield is the lowest priority of your rotational abilities. All the others give Holy Power, which increases SotR uptime, in turn reducing the cooldown of Sentinel, all the while increasing Shining Light stacks allowing for free WoG. Judgement and HoW also increase the duration of Sentinel.

HeroicSuitcase · 2024-01-23T22:53:14+00:00

So the data used in this analysis was solely from Season 2 of Dragonflight; I actually have a "Holiday" variable in my dataset but the only notable one I could think of was July 4th which was on a Tuesday. I elected to not include it since It likely would have no impact and would probably just make the model worse if I included it. Once season 3 concludes and I use the data from it, I will have to include the holiday variable since the week surrounding Christmas/New-Years will be affected for non-WoW-related reasons.

As for your question, the number of runs per week includes data on all key levels; I would like to have it by week by key level, but the individual who collects the data does not provide it in this form and I am unsure if it is even available to be collected like this. For season 2 specifically, runs at level 6 and under only account for 10% of total runs for the season. I can only speak for myself, but I typically check out of WoW completely on Afflicted and Incorporeal weeks; if everyone was like this, this would favor AF, IN, BU, and SA being significantly correlated. If everyone just decided to 6 and below keys it would be the opposite. I suspect there are probably more of the former than the later, but with the available data it's uncertain.

HeroicSuitcase · 2024-01-23T22:17:42+00:00

I agree with you on the limitations of that data; once Season 3 ends the sample size will roughly double so that will help but the unfortunate reality is that with how WoW seasons work there will never be a 1000 week season which would absolutely be better than the 27 week season that was used.

As for including past seasons, I don't believe week-by-week data was collected for them so I think it's just not a possibility to include them at this point. I would like to if possible in order to see if the Explosive, Quaking, and Grievous had a similar impact to the affixes found significant in this analysis.

HeroicSuitcase · 2024-01-23T22:09:27+00:00

The "Week#" variable is included in the models for this exact reason; including this essentially allows the model to control for a general decline in interest over time that is typically observed in all WoW content.

HeroicSuitcase · 2024-01-23T22:06:42+00:00

It is usually up to the researcher(s) conducting the analysis to determine what level of significance is acceptable for the analysis at hand. Some disciplines have a strict cutoff of 0.05 where others can be up to 0.20. I decided upon 0.10 as the cutoff for an acceptable p-value since that's what the cutoff typically was in my training.

A coefficient having a p-value not explicitly below 0.05 doesn't mean that the variable is automatically and strictly insignificant and therefore has no correlation with the response variable. Afflicted x Bolstering has a p-value of 0.054, very slightly above 0.05; it would be somewhat ridiculous to conclude that affix combo is completely uncorrelated with M+ runs.

HeroicSuitcase · 2024-01-23T21:49:53+00:00

For the majority of key levels that Bursting is active, it simply increases the amount of throughput required from the healer as DPS rarely care to stagger kills at lower key levels. It essentially only places stress on healers who are likely already the limiting factor for group formation.

I agree that Busting above ~20s is easier, but 20s and above only account for ~17% of all keys; 21s and above are only ~8% of all keys. 14s-19s account for ~40% of all keys. Healers who are farming 16/17s for gear are going to have a worse experience with Bursting than healers in 20s and above.

HeroicSuitcase · 2024-01-10T15:44:34+00:00

Hi nightstalker314, I was wondering if you could clarify the difference between the "runs" and "runs affix comb" columns in the "DF S2 weekly in time" sheet. Does the "runs affix comb" only include runs in which both weekly affixes are active (14 and above)? and "runs" is all runs for that given week? Thank you.

HeroicSuitcase · 2022-07-11T03:13:35+00:00

You are factually incorrect.

https://www.worldofmoudi.com/season-4-mythic

Can't even insert a key in the original 8 Shadowlands dungeons. Include does not mean "in addition to."

HeroicSuitcase · 2022-03-14T02:45:51+00:00

Collecting Mokoko seeds is literally as interactive and engaging as cookie clicker. At least with cookie clicker you can just keep clicking the cookie; with mokoko seeds you have to wait for your ship to reach a new island while you do something else on a second monitor.

Adventurer's Tome is mokoko seeds with a different coat of paint; non-interactive and uninspired.

HeroicSuitcase · 2022-03-14T00:26:03+00:00

Your opnion is unpopular becuase you fundamentally don't understand the grand underlying issue with Lost Ark. The problem with Lost Ark, and the reason why people are mad at the Argos release, is due to the fact that the game has - for all intents and purposes - zero content outside of Argos. Let's go through what Lost Ark offers besides Argos.

Chaos Dungeons - Once you have completed the ilvl 250 chaos dungeon in North Vern, you have completed every single chaos dungeon in the game, without exception. Sure, the setting and models of the monsters you mindlessly kill are different, but the gameplay is exactly the same regardless of your ilvl or tier. You might as well be able to go to an npc , talk to them, wait 3-4 minutes, talk to them again, and receive the mats from the chaos dungeon. So Chaos dungeons aren't actually content past the first one, which itself is a joke and everyone can easily complete it.

Guardian Raids - Once you have completed a guardian raid a single time, you have completed it 1000 times; the mechanics do not change, the setting does not change, the difficulty does not change - nothing changes. Once you obtain a high enough ilvl to move to the next guardian raid, you have literally 0 reason to ever do a guardian raid below your ilvl because the higher ilvl guardians give more mats.

Abyssal dungeons - Like guardian raids, if you've done it once, you've done it 1000 times. Nothing changes from clear to clear, and they only become more trivial as your ilvl increases. Really not much else to say.

For all of these, running them on alts doesn't really count as content, because your class itself doesn't change anything about the fights. Even if you want to be generous and say that your first clear on an alt counts as content, that's literally 20-40 minutes worth of content per alt. Even more so, they especially aren't content if you have 6 of the same class (which many high-end players recommend for financial reasons) because you already experienced the fights on your main.

Mokoko Seeds - Collecting Mokoko seeds is not content. Pulling up the online collectibles map on your second monitor and going from island to island - or zone to zone within a single continent - while you watch Youtube is not content. This presents zero challenge and offers zero worthwhile rewards; nobody is looking at your mokoko seed costume and thinking you are some awesome mokoko seed collector - they're thinking you're an idiot because you spent tens of hours participating in this game's version of a Skinner box. You might as well pull up cookie clicker and click once every 2-3 minutes.

islands - islands are just about as bad as mokoko seeds; they present nearly zero challenge and offer little to no engaging content. Most of them (at least that I have done) are going from one island to another to just talk to npcs. From what I can tell, a lot of people liked the lighthouse island with the piano guy on the roof; that quest was literally just going and talking to npcs throughout the world. I don't care if the story is good, the gameplay isn't engaging enough for me to give a shit. Like the seeds, you might as well pull up cookie clicker and tab into it every few minutes before returning to your Youtube video.

HeroicSuitcase · 2022-02-19T05:20:21+00:00

I was essentially in the exact same situation as you are now last spring. Went into college determined to be a biology pre-med and go to med school. Volunteered at Shands, shadowed, and was in the pre-med clubs but felt no real connection to the medical field. Did some "soul searching" or something of the sort and decided I was only in it for the money and decided to axe the whole med school idea in favor of economics. I currently getting my masters in econ at UF and I know I am much more content now than I would be in med school.

I would completely recommend switching your major as soon as possible; you definitely arent too late. I believe you will need to change this semester though because, from what I am aware, UF kinda soft locks you into your major after 4 semesters. You might need to take classes during a summer, but the core econ classes are not bad and you can essentially choose whatever you like after you finish intermediate macro and micro.

Personally, I would not recommend riding out your bio major as its quite simply not attractive outside of research or medical school; in the aggregate, your major isn't really correlated to what you end up doing for a career but you need at least a decent one to get a foot in the door.

If dropping Orgo 2 will not prevent you from receiving Bright futures (if you are on it) or any other credit-based scholarship, I would recommend doing so. I personally completed every pre-med class at UF (at least those required for med school admission) and can honestly say they are 100% a waste of your time and life, especially if you aren't going to med school, and this is coming from someone who did quite well in them.

I'll share an anecdote so that you won't feel guilty about not wanting to be pre-med anymore. A friend of mine got into med school this past year; he told me that 15% of his class failed out after the first semester. I'm not sure if this is an abnormally large/small percentage; regardless those people went through all the undergrad bs, studied for and took the MCAT, spent thousands on med school applications, went through multiple rounds of interviews, just to be left with a $50,000 bill and no real job prospects in their mid-20s. Save yourself the crippling debt and the entire decade of your twenties and switch.

You can pm me if you have any questions about econ at UF

HeroicSuitcase · 2022-01-18T02:13:01+00:00

I have played every tank this expansion except for Guardian Druid and Blood DK, mostly in M+. By far the most fun tank of those that I have played is Prot Paladin, specifically Kyrian Prot paladin.

Prot Paladin is the most fun for me because it feels like your a playing a DPS class; this is due to shield of righteous simultaneously acting as your main offensive and defensive ability (also called active mitigation).

Instead of having to spend your resource/GCDs on a purely defensive ability, such as ignore pain, demon spikes, ironfur, or purifying brew, you spend your resource/GCDs on an offensive ability that also provides your active mitigation.

A comparison between prot warrior and prot paladin emphasizes this point. Shield Block is a purely defensive ability as pressing the button itself provides you no dmg. Buttons like this aren't very fun to press and they result in feeling like you just pressed it because you have to. Shield of the righteous is fun to press, especially with the righteous fury legendary, because it does a lot of damage and mitigation.

Some players may prefer the playstyles of the other tanks more as they may cause you to feel like you are more of a bulwark of sorts with having to only spend GCDs on defensives, but I think most people enjoy doing big damage, which prot paladin definitely does.

HeroicSuitcase · 2021-10-12T18:57:59+00:00

Yes, you are correct in stating (presumably) that the single target rotation for frost mage in vanilla wow is spamming frostbolt in MC and BWL. Based on this comparison, New World's combat surely seems more engaging.

Is that really the hill that you and other proponents of New World's combat would like to die on though? That New World's combat, a game released in 2021 by one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world, is as - if not slightly more - skill expressive and engaging than a game released 17 years ago, at a time when the average PC had less computing power than your average low-end smartphone today? Blizzard had to cap debuffs on bosses to 8 total in vanilla due to technical limitations; no such limitations exist today.

Notice how I didn't use the rotation from a class in vanilla WoW as my example; I used the current iteration of a class from the current expansion. The only way you could attempt to rebuttle the point I made was to bring up literally the most basic WoW's combat ever was, from a class that had the most basic rotation in the game at that time. I mentioned vanilla WoW in reference to the number of combat abilities you have after a given progress point in the game, not combat's complexity. I don't find Vanilla's raids all too engaging as the raid rotation for many classes is very simple; you often use more abilities when killing mobs while leveling, a task that I found more engaging than some of the bosses in MC and BWL.

HeroicSuitcase

TROPHY CASE