Removing adds from several fights and keeping boss damage only

SushiCore has posted about this before back in RMT days Change of RMT log evaluation and I would like to re-open the discussion now that the P1GA powercreep is totally breaking some of the fun on parsing.

P1GA: Phageborn Convergence, Guardians C-148 and C-432
In convergence you can skip Noxmind’s midphase to spawn 1 or more Noxpests to cleave them until the end of the fight and get a higher parse that way, I recognize that my own guild has done this before while spawning 1 and honestly I don’t want other guilds to also go through this just to get a parse, mostly because if your tanks aren’t good, they will die. Not to mention that none of the guilds have done this except Do Not Panic and in my opinion it ruins the fun of competition to other guilds that don’t feel like skipping mechanics/boss challenges to parse.
Guardians C-148 and C-432 can be exploited in such a way that if the raid wipes and there are adds alive, there’s a chance that those will stay alive after a complete wipe and the raid will be able to restart the fight while cleaving those adds (they are supposed to spawn after the boss HP reaches 50%). Nobody has done this as far as I know, instead, better fix this before it’s too late.
This hasn’t been mentioned before by anyone but I did a P0GA a couple days ago and I’ve found that cleaving the rhino (Phageborn Colossus) on Fetid Miscreation doesn’t invalidate the log: https://www.wildstarlogs.com/reports/XnvkATb7d8z6NgMJ#fight=12&type=damage-done

RMT: Swabbie Ski’Li, Robomination, Assistant Technician Skooty, Bilgebreath, Headshrinker W’gasa
Swabbie and Bilgebreath require you to ignore the boss mechanics completely while you go and cleave the adds. Nothing much to say about this.
Robomination and Skooty parses are only viable if your raid DPS is bad. Most of the raids push the boss so fast that it’s impossible to get good cleave time on Robomination’s arms or Skooty’s tethers.
W’gasa is pure annoying RNG on add spawn, I seriously don’t understand how no one requested the adds to be removed from the fight even before P1GA was released.

Alternative: there’s a category in logs that is displayed as “player damage to bosses” (example in P1GA: https://www.wildstarlogs.com/zone/rankings/5#metric=bossdps) where rankings are disabled. If people disagree to disable adds from the fights I’ve listed above, we could ask Kihra to process the rankings for damage to boss only, so we can have both leaderboards for every raid instead.

This makes sense to me, and would be more in line with dps contribution to the actual fight instead of manipulating to get higher numbers.

There are some fights in DS which have the same problem with adds.

I think a separate ranking would be nice, both Boss Only and Whatever.

Even if in some fight AoE classes would shine while doing some mendatory adds, I’m still convinced that it’s part of the fight to rank both w/ w/o adds.

Obviously I don’t apreciate the fact that you can drag other adds in the boss fight in consideration (eg: tether mines *wink*) but people will always find a way to cheat parse in the sole purpose of parsing (eg: incap t4 / crush t8, only magic damage got triple debuff).

GA
Convergance add cleave is pure abusing of cleave DMG for logs - nothing else. If you fail that part by accident (aka you fail DPS check), failing other mid-phases is almost certain and killing boss close to impossible.

C-148 and 432 adds are RNG (we can argue how bad that RNG is), but they are part of legit strat. Possibility of spawning them before pull is bad, but to avoid it, I would just reduce max DMG raid can do to them - if its possible (not sure what % of overall DMG it should be - highest I have seen on logs was 9,15%, so probably 10-15% should be max).

RMT
For Swabbie Ski’Li cleave adds is legit strat - even if it is not needed almost since release of RMT. We can argue about disabling it, but personally I wouldn’t go as far as disabling it, even if its stupid to see whole raid on boss and then 1-2 parsing scums 50m away on adds…

Robomination arms - with that I don’t agree 100%. It may be strange/stupid that you can get higher parse with bad/awful raid dmg, but those arms are essential for boss kill. Hell even now with moderate DPS I can see pulls, where group would wipe, cuz ppl focus boss, instead going for arms, cuz they do not count for logs… Its basically reverse on engi generator cleave, where having high enough DPS ppl are abusing strat by overcleaving core all the time.

Chief Warden Lockjaw - cleave on “Blaze Shackle” should be removed. Only way to spawn them is to play badly in first place and then it is abused by overgeared groups to inflate parses by cleaving objects, that even don’t have to be killed to successfully kill boss.

Assistant Technician Skooty - once again cleave on “Fastening Hook” should be removed. You cant avoid having them, but killing them is not essential for this fight (hell they time out if you don’t touch them) and they are use to inflate parses (some parses have 50+% of DPS on them). Cleave on “Jumpstart Charge” is fine and part of strat.

Bilgebreath - cleave on " Odiferous Remnant" not only makes player actively being 20m behind boss and ignoring all mechanics, but can lead to group wipe or in some cases instance crash (yes if you spawn enough adds it will happen). Restarting this boss is also impossible. I am not aware of any strat where killing those adds is viable.

Interro and Rackmaster Antru - this is not devastating, as there is only one add (pet of boss). Basically boss (Rackmaster Antru) has 40ish M HP, his pet has 100+M, so pet never dies (it vanishes after killing boss) but inflate parse - low priority TBF, but if we are clearing logs… TBF as long as ppl focus on main target and there is no reason not to, we may consider cleave part of legit strat.

Headshrinker W’gasa - same deal as on Chief Warden Lockjaw - to spawn “Shattered Soul” you have to fail, you don’t have to kill them after.

DS
Only fight I can think of is Abstract Augmentation Algorithm and cleave on “Quantum Processing Unit”, but once again with lower DPS, cleaving them down is part of normal strat.

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DS
Other fights with adds in DS include

  • System Daemons: Pillars, high raid DPS=low cleave uptime
  • Gloomclaw: In theory, one could design raid strats around stacking all the adds to the detriment of mechanics in order to maximize parse.
  • Megalith and Mnemesis: Crystalline Matrix, high raid DPS=low cleave uptime. Looking at some of the top logs for that fight, it’s possible to completely skip them with high raid DPS.
  • Hydroflux and Pyrobane: Parsing on Magma Vents/Ice Tombs possible in theory, similar to the Chief Warden Lockjaw tethers.
  • Hydroflux and Mnemesis: Padding possible with Logic Wall mechanic.
  • Visceralus and Mnemesis: Thorns can be cleaved for extra damage, but this appears to already have been removed from logs.
  • Optimized Memory Probe P2-Z: If we’re being thorough, there’s minor cleave damage on the Fragmented Memory adds.
  • all three Warmonger fights have Conjured Fire Elementals for additional padding with low raid DPS
  • Grand Warmonger Tar’gresh: Flame of Tar’gresh padding

Yes pls! Pretty much just need to make boss dmg ranking a thing, all the data is already there on the site.