Maximizing your raid performance

[Rayne]

This is something that was discussed after the most recent Gruul run.  No names were mentioned, no finger pointing, but lack of consumables, elixirs/flasks, gems, enchants was noted by some.

Nobody is saying you need to spend a fortune, but there are some things you can do to improve your stats for an encounter.

I'm going to get this started, please chime in with other things that were missed.

Stat Foods
This is pretty simple. 

Tanks: use something of the 20 Stam family.  I use Clam Bars and Talbuk Steaks.  I'd love Spicy Crawdads (hint), but I don't have the fishing skill, nor the recipe, necessary for them.
Melee DPS: either go with 20 stam, or one of the attack power boosts like what comes from Roasted Clefthoof (20 strength) or Ravager Dogs (40 AP).
Caster DPS: personally I always liked Blackened Basilisk (23 spell dmg, 20 spirit).  There are a ton of the basilisks outside Shattrath and the meat drops ~50%.
Healers: Blackened Sporefish gives 20 stam and 8 mp/5, or Golden Fishsticks +44 healing.

Weapon Oils
Caster DPS: Superior Wizard Oil adds 43 spell dmg for 30 minutes and persists through death.  You can get them from Enchanters, including me as some of you know =).
Healers: Superior Mana Oil adds 14 MP/5 for 30 minutes and also persists through death.  Yep, I make those too.

Generally I'd like to get the occasional green in return (each 5/charge of oil takes 3 arcane dust, an imbued vial, and either a Nightmare Vine or a Netherbloom).  Being an Enchanter and Herbalist makes these pretty easy to supply and I'd far rather donate a few herbs and vials to the cause than wipe repeatedly from a lack of juice.

Enchants
Way too many for me to discuss, but I'd say, in general, that if it's blue and you're raiding you should enchant it.  Yes, you run the risk of enchanting something and then getting a purple drop and then having to re-enchant.  PITA, trust me, I know all about it.  But what's nice about enchanting your gear is it's a deterministic way for you to upgrade as opposed to waiting for luck (a. the item you want dropping, and b. winning the roll).  And there's a noticeable difference between someone who's put the best enchants on their gear and someone who has similar gear that's unenchanted.

Gems
Blue gems > green gems, especially for gear that supports your primary role.  Socketing out a piece of gear for 150gp and then upgrading hurts, but only for a little while.  Doing the Terrokar and Blade's Edge dailies currently nets 72gp plus drops.  It adds up quickly.  Let me put it another way, if you want to tank and have green gems, bzzzt, wrong answer, try again.  Now that's just an example, I haven't studied other tanks gems in our guild, but I think it's reasonable that if you want to perform a role and have 9 to 24 other people depending upon you to succeed in that role, you'll put in the effort to maximize your success.

Flasks/Elixirs
For Karazhan, I'd say at this point it depends.  Have you cleared Kara multiple times?  You can probably get away with out them (personally I still use them).  Is it your first time?  Spend the money and use the appropriate elixirs or flasks.

Which elixirs?  Good question, here's what I've used:
Healing: Draenic Wisdom/Healing Power or Adept's (I liked the extra crit in Tree Form)
Nuking: Draenic Wisdom/Adept's
Tanking: Major Agility/Major Fortitude
Melee DPS: Major Strength/Major Fortitude (Onslaught is not quite as good for a feral cat)

If you want to use a flask then pick the obvious one for your role.  I don't use them because I get more bang out of two elixirs, although it can get a bit expensive from wipes.

For Gruul's Lair there's just zero excuse not to use one of the Unstable flasks available.  There are two that anyone can purchase for 10 Apexis Shards each: the Unstable Flask of the Beast and the Unstable Flask of the Sorcereror.  Those two work fine for melee and caster dps.  For healers you'll probably want physician which, along with the other three, can only be purchased during the event out in the Bashiir area.  I've always wanted to get together a group to do that, be a good use for the over 2,000 shards I have banked.  I personally have 20 beasts stored away, and 10 sorcs.  So for most people I can hook you up.  If we wanted to make a guild event one night to get a bunch of the other flasks that would rock.

Pots
Super Healings for melee/tanks.  Expected.  Bring enough to support an evening.
Super Mana pots for casters.  Sorry, unstables don't cut it on boss fights until you outgear the fight.  Bring a bunch (20+).
For Gruul's you can get Blades Edge only pots once you're honored, again, for those apexis shards of which you'll wind up with a bunch.

Please list any enhancements you feel were missed.

[Oracus]

Shoulder enchants from honored, exalted aldor/scyer faction. Honored are dirt cheep and theirs really no reason a lvl 70 char shouldn’t be at least honored. Exalted on the other hand takes a bit of work and time/ cash. if you only have one primary char this shouldn’t be an issue.

Also hunters should get ravager dog food 40 ap/20 spirit. 
warp meat one is 20 agl 20 stam for them who like agl over pure ap.

I also think in a bind the 20 stam/spirit food isnt a bad sub for any char.

Personally for gems I don’t put blue gems in non purples. But if you have a miner or some cash it isn’t that big of a investment. theirs at least 2 jc in the guild that has lots of the patterns for blue gems. Thier is no reason to spend a baot loa dof cash on the ah.

One last bit of optimization. Your talent spec. I not saying you have to play cookie cutter template. but if you choose a talent spec. play that role and use that gear.

A few examples are;

Ret pali. Don’t be signing up as a healer. Sure you can do it. But a pure holy pali would be a better use of that slot. Same goes for some druid specs. If you want to be a moonkin then go dps. If you want to heal then heal. But make sure you sign up for the role that your talent supports.

And not like I hate ret pali (I do) but having some who can use judgments on bosses is very handy in raids and has much to offer.

Arms/fury warriors. Sign up as a dps slot.

All talent specs have a role. Just let people know what role it is your good at. And I am sure we can arrange something. It’s not like we will not invite people because of spec.

Kith

[Ladyro]

This topic ought to be stickied, I think.

Rowhan

[Doggerel]

Here's a link to the Unstable Flasks:

http://www.wowhead.com/?search=unstable+flask

[Niuk]

I know I am not part of trans anymore so I hope im not sticking my nose where it dosen't belong but if your a caster you can check out my armory for refrence enchants for almost every slot, I'm sure Flinter has almost the same enchants if you check his armory profile.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Dalaran&n=Groober

About the only thing I don't have is a soulfrost for my weapon because its not a prince dagger and a boot enchant because there is not a good one out there for casters.  Being an enchanter helps because that means you can enchant your rings.  I was engineering/mining before BC and switched to tailor/enchanter for the BoP tailoring stuff and the ring enchants, but I am a min max kinda guy so I felt like I had to do it.

As far as consumables, I hope no one gets mad, I would say 99% of the time about the only thing I have on is wizard oil, and I drink unstable mana pots on fights like gruuls.  If im feeling saucy I go with a food buff and a adepts elixir along with super mana's but never really use anything outside of that.  I have not bought a flask since I was healing spec in BWL wayyy before BC.  Then again, I despise gold farming, my level 52 mage AOE grinding alt has more gold than groober, I have not even unlocked any daily quests except the bombing run in skettis, and I don't even do that one FWIW.  Consumables are nice but I don't think they are the end all be all they used to be.  I have 1130 unbuffed shadow damage and if I go with adepts/food/wizard that is an additional 85 damage, nothing earth shattering, less than 10% actually.  Now mana pots on the other hand scale exceptionally well and I advice to use at a minimum unstable mana pots or a awesome alternative is the combat mana pots from BG token turn ins.

Just my 2 cents, take it for what its worth because everyones situation is going to be different.

[Terrel]

Of course to maximize your performance there is:

LEVITRA, CIALIS, and VIAGRA

check your emails I am sure they are available.



Sorry couldn't resist

Terrel

[Keluvan]

Of course to maximize your performance there is:

LEVITRA, CIALIS, and VIAGRA

check your emails I am sure they are available.



Sorry couldn't resist

Terrel

LOL
Anyway an other good idea is to use BG/Arena gear for some hard to get items. For example I am using the Merciless Gladiator pants for PvE (at least until I get the cloth pants from the Opera event). I can easilly get 1K honor points by running a few AV's a day and it's not hard to get a 2v2 or 3v3 man arena team going where you only need to play 10 games a week for 200-300 points. And as for pots I carry both the good and the Volatile/Combat ones so I can decide which to use. Would have to wipe knowing a little extra mana would have saved the day (rare I know but still).

Also Exe I would love to run the event to get more flasks for Gruuls for folks. I can even shame Wich into going I bet.

[-=Ash=-]

I'd love to get on that pvp arena train =)
Let me know if you guys have room for a rogue.

[jazzy]

Anyway an other good idea is to use BG/Arena gear for some hard to get items. For example I am using the Merciless Gladiator pants for PvE (at least until I get the cloth pants from the Opera event). I can easilly get 1K honor points by running a few AV's a day and it's not hard to get a 2v2 or 3v3 man arena team going where you only need to play 10 games a week for 200-300 points.

It's probably worth noting that Blizzard has announced that as each new arena season goes live, the gear from two seasons back will be attainable through honor points.  When Season III starts, you can pick up Season I stuff for pure honor.  That means you can fully avoid the arena if you want.

As far as consumables go, I've fully converted over to the flask mentality...  Flasks and Oils.  Neither of those go away when you die which makes them considerably cheaper than using two elixirs over multiple deaths.  Yeah, yeah, I know, some of you never die.  I do, though.    I'm fond of Flask of Mighty Restoration for nights when I'm looking at long boss fights and Flask of Supreme Power for Heroics, KZ and other runs where I'm just blowing stuff up.  The materials for these really aren't that bad.

For Gruul's Lair there's just zero excuse not to use one of the Unstable flasks available.  There are two that anyone can purchase for 10 Apexis Shards each: the Unstable Flask of the Beast and the Unstable Flask of the Sorcereror.  Those two work fine for melee and caster dps.  For healers you'll probably want physician which, along with the other three, can only be purchased during the event out in the Bashiir area.

I have to agree with Rayne on this...  The Unstable flasks will get you over the Gruul hump if everyone is using them.  On the server where I'm playing my Shadow Priest, people who don't flask up for Gruul don't get invited back.  It's a pretty simple edict of "spend the 20 minutes preparing yourself so you don't waste 24 other folks' time."  I know that sounds brutal and unfriendly, but these flasks really aren't much of an investment time-wise, especially when you consider all the time spent in a raid.

[Jebu]

Those doing dps might also consider Spicey Hot Tabuk which gives +20 to hit and spirit.  Personally increasing my hit from a horrible 163 to 183 seems more significant then increasing a 2K+ attack by 40. The recipe is drop from the create of meat you get from the cooking quest, but if you don't want to do the quest, just send me Talbuk steaks and I will make it for you.  63

[DyeDoe]

There are now the mana injectors too...20 mana in one slot in your bag. You can have someone make you one (engineer) or buy on one the AH for 30g ...saves space and leaves you with lots of mana pots

[Alysandir]

There are now the mana injectors too...20 mana in one slot in your bag. You can have someone make you one (engineer) or buy on one the AH for 30g ...saves space and leaves you with lots of mana pots

Hell, I would pass out if I ever saw them for 30g; I can't even get the potion components for only 30g and I make the damn things.

-Alys

[DyeDoe]

wow..really? I guess I lucked out. The pattern dropped and I was able to sell it immediately and then bought the injector for 30 gold...guess I was in the right place at the right time. Love when that happens