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[borghe]

The DPS list is longer on that picture though. =P

it's longer, only because it's a lot of "are you doing this wrong? are you doing this wrong? are you doing this wrong?"[/quote]

And melee DPS has it pretty rough--maybe not a lot of responsibility, but it is a pain in the ass!

lol.... ok, melee dps has it really bad. I'll give you that.

"Hey dummy, move around and stay out of shit!"
"Umm.. but I have to be right next to the boss and move to where the boss is...."
"Excuses are for losers. If you stand in stuff, you die!"

Yeah, that sucks. One of these days I'll get around to rolling melee dps. I did run Fury with my warrior previously mentioned for a while.. but I get it's a problem for... well rogues I guess (the only "squishy" melee). Even feral druids aren't squishy as they can temporarily switch to bear to beef up a little.

 

[Ferrio]

lol.... ok, melee dps has it really bad. I'll give you that.

"Hey dummy, move around and stay out of shit!"
"Umm.. but I have to be right next to the boss and move to where the boss is...."
"Excuses are for losers. If you stand in stuff, you die!"

Yeah, that sucks. One of these days I'll get around to rolling melee dps. I did run Fury with my warrior previously mentioned for a while.. but I get it's a problem for... well rogues I guess (the only "squishy" melee). Even feral druids aren't squishy as they can temporarily switch to bear to beef up a little.

I haven't played my rogue since this expansion, but I'm guessing with recuperate or whatever it's gotton a lot easier for them. Gone are the days in vanilla where you ran off and bandage.

 

[J-Rzez]

it's longer, only because it's a lot of "are you doing this wrong? are you doing this wrong? are you doing this wrong?"

lol.... ok, melee dps has it really bad. I'll give you that.

"Hey dummy, move around and stay out of shit!"
"Umm.. but I have to be right next to the boss and move to where the boss is...."
"Excuses are for losers. If you stand in stuff, you die!"

Yeah, that sucks. One of these days I'll get around to rolling melee dps. I did run Fury with my warrior previously mentioned for a while.. but I get it's a problem for... well rogues I guess (the only "squishy" melee). Even feral druids aren't squishy as they can temporarily switch to bear to beef up a little.[/QUOTE]

It's just flat set-damage for many of the mini-aoe melee eats, especially unavoidable types. Sometimes I get to avoid it via AMS, but that's about it really. They really love fire trails so far for example, I can ams through them, but they really can hurt your dps that can't do that.

 

[charlequin]

The DPS list is longer on that picture though. =P

I was just talking to a friend about that earlier today. The difference is the level of sophistication each list is written at.

DPS: "Here are the exact buttons to push!"
Tank: "Here's a broad strategic guide for what advanced techniques (that you presumably already know how to do) to apply when!"

My favorite is when it's like "kite the boss INTO OR OUT OF THE POOP, PRESUMABLY YOU KNOW WHICH"

 

[thetrin]

I've never done more than Hellfire, Zangarmarsh, Terrokar and Nagrand in Outland. My current 'main' (65 Warrior) did all of Hellfire, less than half of Zangarmarsh and I've skipped Terrokar completely and moved to Nagrand. With the instances I'm running I'll be 60 long before I finish the Nagrand quests.

Wait, what?

 

[Deleted member 30609]

After spending a fair chunk of time questing in Nagrand (and promptly moving on during the second set of "Mastery" quests), I did a whirlwind tour of Blade Edge Mountains (Killed 40 enemies, wanted me to do it again, moved right along), the Netherstorm (seemed pretty cool on most respects, vanilla quest design but no offensive kill amounts or anything, the bio-domes were gorgeous) and Shadowmoon Valley (Only did a handful of quests and flew around it a bit, surprised to see they actually made it so you can't fly over that giant stronghold).

Now I'm an instance run away from 68. I upgraded my account all the way to Cata so I can fly in the Old World. Time to go buy that license, run an instance or two and then move onto Northrend, leaving Outland behind me.

Note that I spelt Outland right this time, not 'The Outlands' or 'Outlands'. I'm learning.

So I'll probably stop by both Northrend 68 zones, but which would you guys recommend?

 

[Sai-kun]

I thought it was Outlands? :0

I did Borean Tundra, that was fun.

 

[thetrin]

After spending a fair chunk of time questing in Nagrand (and promptly moving on during the second set of "Mastery" quests), I did a whirlwind tour of Blade Edge Mountains (Killed 40 enemies, wanted me to do it again, moved right along), the Netherstorm (seemed pretty cool on most respects, vanilla quest design but no offensive kill amounts or anything, the bio-domes were gorgeous) and Shadowmoon Valley (Only did a handful of quests and flew around it a bit, surprised to see they actually made it so you can't fly over that giant stronghold).

Now I'm an instance run away from 68. I upgraded my account all the way to Cata so I can fly in the Old World. Time to go buy that license, run an instance or two and then move onto Northrend, leaving Outland behind me.

Note that I spelt Outland right this time, not 'The Outlands' or 'Outlands'. I'm learning.

So I'll probably stop by both Northrend 68 zones, but which would you guys recommend?

My recommendation for Northrend: Borean Tundra -> Howling Fjord -> Dragonblight -> Storm Peaks.

You should be 80 by the time that's all over.

Once you get your bulletin board quests for cata zones, my recommend Vashj'ir. I adore the look of it, though other people seem to really like Hyjal. Then it's Deepholm, which is pretty cool.

 

[Dresden]

Vash'jir-Deepholm-Uldum would be my recommendation for Cata content. Hyjal and Twilight is decent, but the other three zones blow them out of the water in terms of presentation.

 

[Rapstah]

Vash'jir-Deepholm-Uldum would be my recommendation for Cata content. Hyjal and Twilight is decent, but the other three zones blow them out of the water in terms of presentation.

I consider Twilight Highlands to be at least twice as good as Uldum...

 

[SnakeswithLasers]

I was just talking to a friend about that earlier today. The difference is the level of sophistication each list is written at.

DPS: "Here are the exact buttons to push!"
Tank: "Here's a broad strategic guide for what advanced techniques (that you presumably already know how to do) to apply when!"

My favorite is when it's like "kite the boss INTO OR OUT OF THE POOP, PRESUMABLY YOU KNOW WHICH"

I think tanks and healers think too highly of themselves. =P

Edit: And for the Cata zone discussion, it's totally a matter of taste.

I like Hyjal (have done it three times now), but I've never set foot (flipper?) into Vash. Then I go to Deepholm, leave as soon as I hit 83, go to Uldum, leave the moment I hit 84, then enjoy Twilight Highlands. I also do a lot of dungeons in the meantime.

 

[dimb]

I don't think Borean Tundra holds up that well, there's not a very good cohesive narrative to the zone. Dragonblight was bad at first but uplifted by the not very fun but cool end event, but with that removed I'd say the zone just isn't worth it.

Of course you kind of have to choose one or both of them, so I dunno. Guess it comes down to zone preference. There are certainly some cool quests in Dragonblight.

I really think Zul'Drak is the best WotLK zone. That and Grizzly Hills made the expansion for me. Zul'Drak's undead espionage stuff is great, and it finishes pretty strong with the animal gods. Grizzly Hills still feels like a breath of fresh air in an expansion filled with snow. There aren't a lot of stand out quests, but it goes by fast and most of it feels right. For sure start with Howling Fjord. It's a very impressive introduction to Northrend.

 

[Einbroch]

Playing as a healer for 4 years, I never realized how hard tanking is after rolling my DK. Not impossible, but just as hard as healing. Very different style of play.

 

[AceBandage]

I love Druid armor this expansion.

 

[mcrae]

Playing as a healer for 4 years, I never realized how hard tanking is after rolling my DK. Not impossible, but just as hard as healing. Very different style of play.

i chose warlock back in vanilla cause i liked the concept of a pet, and dots that i could set and forget. thought it would make for fast grinding.

after he sat dormant for 3 years, ive revived him, and i damn i have a hard enough time keeping 100% (lol, more like 80 even) uptime on all my buffs/debuffs/dots. i cant imagine how hard it must be for tanks and healers. at least when i fuck up my dps just drops a bit, instead of wiping the raid. much less stress. i'll never be anything besides a direct damage class lol

 

[etiolate]

I consider Twilight Highlands to be at least twice as good as Uldum...

Uldum is awesome.

Uldum has:

-some actual new mobs
-an actual story
-quests that aren't kill ten rats
-memes if you like that shit
-camels
-the best looking area in the continents since feralas

 

[funkmastergeneral]

I love Druid armor this expansion.

So you play on Gorefiend, too? I'm in a guild called Insomniacs there.

 

[borghe]

I think tanks and healers think too highly of themselves. =P

eh... I've tanked a ton and it's much harder than DPS IMHO. Partly because tanking itself has quite a few extra things to take into account inherently, and partly because one of those things is babysitting horribly careless DPS who fuck things up but you have to fix it or you'll be spammed with "u bad".

Healing I haven't done since vanilla raiding and that was all pretty much just whack-a-mole. No idea how it's changed since (literally vanilla. MC, BWL, and like a boss or two into AQ20)

the problem with WoW (the MMORPG genre itself?) is that the tank has been unofficially elevated to the leader role, simply because he positionally leads the group down the hall. Now I'm not saying DPS or healers don't know how to play or can't take charge... not at all. But if you have a group full of people who don't know what they're doing, typically they'll look to the tank for direction. This creates a very stressful environment in tanking. Wrath didn't help things with its tank and spank attitude, where it WAS completely up to the tank to keep everyone alive. Now cataclysm is requiring more participation from party members (CC, threat management, etc) and you have a full two years of wrath babies being born who basically think "In tank we trust"..

so yeah... not at all looking forward to resuming my tank (who was built during wrath). Extremely fun times tanking... but shudder at the though of wrath babies wiping the raid (like.. always in pugs) and the /kick you because "it's the tank's responsibility to keep us alive". At least now until healers hit 347 or above tanks can retort with "it was the healer's fault not keeping up"

 

[Ferrio]

Playing as a healer for 4 years, I never realized how hard tanking is after rolling my DK. Not impossible, but just as hard as healing. Very different style of play.

Halfus fight last night probably one of the craziest fights I've tanked. Guess what I get for having almost nothing to do in Magmaw.

As with the regular move priority I had to:

-Taunting between 3 mobs very frequently while keeping an eye on a debuff.
-Avoid fire that spawns *constantly* everywhere
-Interrupting a spell
-Keeping threat
-Popping CD's constantly

Same old shit t that you've had to deal with other fights, but they crammed it all together and put it on hyper mode.

 

[AceBandage]

So you play on Gorefiend, too? I'm in a guild called Insomniacs there.

Oh yeah? I see them around a lot.
I transferred from Daggerspine a couple years ago. Best decision I ever made.

 

[Alex]

Playing as a healer for 4 years, I never realized how hard tanking is after rolling my DK. Not impossible, but just as hard as healing. Very different style of play.

Depends on the class and the situation, Protection Paladin for example is, once again, a hell of a lot simplier than everything else. DK is probably the most difficult at the moment, that's just my opinion though.

But in general for this expansion It's a harder this go around for heroics, like it was in BC, lot more threat management and general care.

For raid tanking though, in my opinion it's in no way, shape or form even close to the difficulty of raid healing presently. I'm primarily DPS at the moment, but I still swap to healing when one of our primaries is out, and healing some of these raid encounters is just agonizing. I mean the heroics are all easy to heal, especially after you're not just scraping by the gear threshold, but the raids are like... yikes. So much for them turning down the breakneck damage spam! It's like their solution to make half the encounters hard as a healer is to frustrate the fuck out of you with Mimiron Phase 2 style bullshit.

I'm woefully unimpressed with Shaman healing in general though. I wish my dual spec to Resto would glitch and turn me into a Holy Priest. I really, really miss my Priest when I have to heal. Not very fun to heal at the moment when GHW and Chain Heal are nigh unusable due to bad balancing and everyone is spread out due to mechanics so you can't pop Healing Rain. Gimmie Prayer of Healing and my cooldowns back, damnit!

It's good to have a break from healing in general though. Since I've been healing since WoW came out, and with the new stress involved with raiding as a healer, I think i'd have burnt out really fast. Enhancement is too fun, it's the first melee I've ever had in an MMO, although I'm paranoid about it's DPS going down with progression or bad changes, so I'm considering leveling a DK on the side to help add some stability to my mindset on all that.

 

[SnakeswithLasers]

eh... I've tanked a ton and it's much harder than DPS IMHO. Partly because tanking itself has quite a few extra things to take into account inherently, and partly because one of those things is babysitting horribly careless DPS who fuck things up but you have to fix it or you'll be spammed with "u bad".

I haven't really done much raiding (not since Naxx), but the raiding I did was tanking--I found that the challenge was just as much the people you were playing with as it was the mechanics you were playing against.

I think the issue is that you hear healers and tanks always talk about bad DPS and use that to stereotype DPS--whereas with healers and tanks, we take the baseline as a successful tank and healer.

The base skill that it takes to be a successful healer or tank is of course light years ahead of what it takes to be a shit DPS that requires babysitting. However, to be a good DPS that uses all of your tools and still tops the charts, it requires focus. Sure, it takes more to heal or tank, but most of that is just rote memorization of when to wind up your cooldowns or what mechanics are coming up to drag the boss through (keep in mind, I've only tanked raids, never healed, so healing may be a billion times more difficult).

I don't know, like I said, I just think DPS get pegged unfairly because there are more of them and it's a job that you can continually do poorly yet still succeed--but in doing so, you ruin the rep of all DPS.

 

[etiolate]

I am worried about my enhance dps now that I've just started to get into the groove of it after years of Elemental. The notes make it sound like they're going to make Windfury overtake Flametongue in damage, but WF doesn't gain anything from Mastery like FT does. It's a dicey change.

I never raid tanked but a couple wrath Naxx runs, but DPS has been higher stress than healing or tanking for me. As DPS, even when I learn a fight, I can't relax on it because your raid spot is made by getting high up on that meter every time. Healing put me to sleep, its just some movement and watching bars. Tanking, once I learned a fight, I could do it easier an easier each time. Every boss though is a chance to keep your DPS job, even if its on "farm" status.

 

[wonderdung]

I don't think Borean Tundra holds up that well, there's not a very good cohesive narrative to the zone. Dragonblight was bad at first but uplifted by the not very fun but cool end event, but with that removed I'd say the zone just isn't worth it.

Are you Horde? I'm of the opinion that Borean is much better for Alliance than Horde, but it could be because I've only done it once on Alliance and like 5 times on Horde. Still the Wrath zones get significantly better the closer you get to 80.

 

[Deleted member 30609]

yeah, Howling Fjord looks more thematically consistent with my Undead character, so I'll start there.

 

[Alex]

DPS challenge varries fight to fight, it's mostly about the stress of being super competitive while intersecting with the mechanics of the fight. Usually that's dictated by the class (difficulty of rotation and awareness) and encounter itself.

Personally I think Enhancement DPS is absolutely perfect in how it operates in terms of variety and skill. It's a bit overwhelming at first, at it's core it's a bit like a WOTLK Retribution Paladin kicked into overdrive, but then you have to deal with all of the procs and weaving of things like Unleash Flame and Flameshock and also totem mechanics, etc. But you catch up to it pretty fast, and if you use a nice addon like Shock and Awe it can make things much simpler to get a grasp on.

I'd soooo much rather DPS in these raids than heal though, fuck raid healing forever if it stays like that. There's just no way I'm into that kind of weird masochistic gig they got going on with it. Now if they had actually dialed back the non-stop AoE damage like they said, sure, but the only real change so far versus WOTLK is that they do the same shit and now you also have no fucking mana.

 

[Einbroch]

DPS challenge varries fight to fight, it's mostly about the stress of being super competitive while intersecting with the mechanics of the fight. Usually that's dictated by the class (difficulty of rotation and awareness) and encounter itself.

Personally I think Enhancement DPS is absolutely perfect in how it operates in terms of variety and skill. It's a bit overwhelming at first, at it's core it's a bit like a WOTLK Retribution Paladin kicked into overdrive, but then you have to deal with all of the procs and weaving of things like Unleash Flame and Flameshock and also totem mechanics, etc. But you catch up to it pretty fast, and if you use a nice addon like Shock and Awe it can make things much simpler to get a grasp on.

I'd soooo much rather DPS in these raids than heal though, fuck raid healing forever if it stays like that. There's just no way I'm into that kind of weird masochistic gig they got going on with it. Now if they had actually dialed back the non-stop AoE damage like they said, sure, but the only real change so far versus WOTLK is that they do the same shit and now you also have no fucking mana.

No kidding. It's stupid how they said they were going to scale back the spike AoE damage and now it's worse than ever. My favorite fights involve coordination and heavy tank damage with some AoE damage to keep people on their toes.

Magtheridon was and still is to this day my favorite fight. Clicking the cubes involved some coordination, the AoE damage was minimal and even when it was powerful it was predictable.

The new raids are fun for everyone...but healers.

 

[J-Rzez]

Questing/Enjoyment wise:
Uldum > Twilight > Deepholm > Hyjal > Doing old wrath quests to 81 > Doing cooking/fishing/jc daily to 81 > Vash

My personal route now for leveling from 80-85 is:

Hyjal -> Deepholm -> Uldum -> Twilight (at 84)

I'll still stand my ground that Vash is the most annoying, terribly tedious zone I've played in a long time. It just dragged on and on and on.

 

[CarbonatedFalcon]

Questing/Enjoyment wise:
Uldum > Twilight > Deepholm > Hyjal > Doing old wrath quests to 81 > Doing cooking/fishing/jc daily to 81 > Vash

My personal route now for leveling from 80-85 is:

Hyjal -> Deepholm -> Uldum -> Twilight (at 84)

I'll still stand my ground that Vash is the most annoying, terribly tedious zone I've played in a long time. It just dragged on and on and on.

Gathering to 81 is also viable. I got about 40-45% to 81 with a full quest log (on a non-gatherer) the first day though.

Vashj'ir is simply too long and not very rewarding (I finished it at 85 mainly for Loremaster). Hyjal is much quicker, more efficient, and fun. Although, I would still do at least to the Earthen Ring Quartermaster hub, for convenience.

 

[TheYanger]

If you don't enjoy healing don't heal I guess? I know plenty of people that find healing now more engaging than it has been in years (Early BC, late vanilla..when you couldn't just spam stuff).
DPS is definitely enjoyable in the 'no real responsibility except on the odd fight now and then' way, but the reason I gave up my rogue to be a tank was because...your skill never feels like it makes a difference in a fight. I actually don't revel in pressure at all, it's not some hero complex, you just get sick of failing because of OTHER people, that's when you go tank or healer

 

[Devolution]

Finally get into a TB (after days of trying) on defense and horde loses it in 5 minutes cause they don't fight on any flags.

Wow PVP is so fucking terrible.

 

[markot]

I dont like the harrison jones stuff, I dont get why they didnt just use Brann for it all, its abit toooooooooooooo cheesy.

It was funny in bits though >.< but sometimes there is too much.... fluff put into the warcraft universe.

 

[J-Rzez]

I dont like the harrison jones stuff, I dont get why they didnt just use Brann for it all, its abit toooooooooooooo cheesy.

It was funny in bits though >.< but sometimes there is too much.... fluff put into the warcraft universe.

I completely, and totally, disagree here. :lol

I loved the Harrison Jones stuff. Such a cheesy rip of the movies, great stuff.

Brann can diaf.

Gathering to 81 is also viable.

Gathering in general is. I think I went up 2 full levels on my pally doing some farming grinds.

 

[Alex]

If you don't enjoy healing don't heal I guess? I know plenty of people that find healing now more engaging than it has been in years (Early BC, late vanilla..when you couldn't just spam stuff).
DPS is definitely enjoyable in the 'no real responsibility except on the odd fight now and then' way, but the reason I gave up my rogue to be a tank was because...your skill never feels like it makes a difference in a fight. I actually don't revel in pressure at all, it's not some hero complex, you just get sick of failing because of OTHER people, that's when you go tank or healer

Healing now is nothing like it was during BC, why does this keep getting parroted? Because there's a faux downranking system...? It doesn't play out much alike, the mechanics aren't really anywhere near the same, mana was nowhere near this punishing in BC during raiding either. Hell I had the most problems during BC as Shadow rather than as Holy.

Healing in classic just sucked altogether, rank 4 generic healing spell times infinity. That's about it, cept for the one guy with the highest spellpower who'd get to cast rejuv, etc.

Healing now is fine in that it's model is good, it's fine in heroics, heroics are undertuned for healing if anything at times. However it's just shit in raids, it's downright masochistic.

Half the encounters are seriously tuned like like hardmode Mimiron or XT shit where it's just nothing but dealing with AoE damage endurance, only now you have no resources so it's not just breakneck, it's breakneck and frustrating. Pulling a combo with Halfus that requires you to potion and manatide 20~ seconds into the fight isn't very fun.

None of our raid healers currently like it at all, but are suffering through it because they have to. I quit healing, but I'm still going to critique it, because I don't think balancing the ENTIRE raid on the backs of healers not making any mistakes while spamming non-stop every single time is good design. Because that's what they're doing.

 

[MattPeters]

Heroic Ascendant Council down! hooooly hell, that was pure hell on heroic.

We were going to skip it on heroic this week, (after many wipes on the fight this week already) but we thought we'd give it a few more trys. After 7 wipes (with several 5% wipes) we managed to down it. Our raid was dropping like flies, but the Elementium Monstrosity was killed with just myself (holy pally) our Prot warr and fire mage left standing.

There were nerd screams in Vent, it was a great moment.

 

[TheYanger]

Healing now is nothing like it was during BC, why does this keep getting parroted? Because there's a faux downranking system...? It doesn't play out much alike, the mechanics aren't really anywhere near the same, mana was nowhere near this punishing in BC during raiding either. Hell I had the most problems during BC as Shadow rather than as Holy.

Healing in classic just sucked altogether, rank 4 generic healing spell times infinity. That's about it, cept for the one guy with the highest spellpower who'd get to cast rejuv, etc.

Healing now is fine in that it's model is good, it's fine in heroics, heroics are undertuned for healing if anything at times. However it's just shit in raids, it's downright masochistic.

Half the encounters are seriously tuned like like hardmode Mimiron or XT shit where it's just nothing but dealing with AoE damage endurance, only now you have no resources so it's not just breakneck, it's breakneck and frustrating. Pulling a combo with Halfus that requires you to potion and manatide 20~ seconds into the fight isn't very fun.

None of our raid healers currently like it at all, but are suffering through it because they have to. I quit healing, but I'm still going to critique it, because I don't think balancing the ENTIRE raid on the backs of healers not making any mistakes while spamming non-stop every single time is good design. Because that's what they're doing.

Maybe it's cliche but...tell them to l2p? Our healers have never complained about mana issues, nor have we ever wiped due to healer mana. Not even when we were learning stuff initially. I'm fairly sure that's indicative of your healers casting way more crap,or more inefficient crap than they need to. Which is exactly the same as it was back then.

There is a huge difference between "Everyone almost dies, and you have to heal them back up within a few seconds now and then" and the late BC/all of Wrath mantra of "Everyone is dying every second and needs a heal every second to compensate". I'm sorry if some healers thought the changes implied that people simply wouldn't take damage anymore, but it IS significantly lower over time than it was.

Heroic Ascendant Council down! hooooly hell, that was pure hell on heroic.

We were going to skip it on heroic this week, (after many wipes on the fight this week already) but we thought we'd give it a few more trys. After 7 wipes (with several 5% wipes) we managed to down it. Our raid was dropping like flies, but the Elementium Monstrosity was killed with just myself (holy pally) our Prot warr and fire mage left standing.

There were nerd screams in Vent, it was a great moment.

Grats! Huge accomplishment at this stage. Damage on heroic looks insane in the Paragon vid, not really looking forward to it but we'll see -_- Got 6/12 ourselves this week, hopefully get 7 with two days left.

 

[Deleted member 22576]

Soo.. has anyone read the Warcraft books?
I can't imagine they're anything amazing, but are they fun at least?

I went in to a bookstore looking for the new Halo book [which they didn't have] but they had a ton of WoW books. There was one specifically about the shattering which actually seemed kinda interesting.

 

[MattPeters]

Grats! Huge accomplishment at this stage. Damage on heroic looks insane in the Paragon vid, not really looking forward to it but we'll see -_- Got 6/12 ourselves this week, hopefully get 7 with two days left.

Thanks. We're only doing it on 10m, but the damage is insane. Its a very fun fight, but I can say without hesitation that I fucking hate the Elementium Monstrosity. LOL

 

[wonderdung]

The new raids are fun for everyone...but healers.

Not sure I'd say that. We're at 10/12 (which is pretty average for a "raiding guild") and I wouldn't call any of the fights interesting. Omnitron would be if it wasn't so damn easy... other than that only Nefarian sounds like it will be cool. I have to hope that heroic mode spices up everything else.

I'm still a little burned out from them trying to stretch ICC content to last almost a full year. Even just a few weeks in it's clear that the current raid content won't be much fun to farm for very long.

I'm hoping they have more already in the pipeline.

 

[C.Dark.DN]

So I went from BT to Howling Fjord and decided to go to Kamagua first.

There are a ton of quests missing. I was only able to do three.

Maybe I was supposed to do Kalu'ak Dragonblight quests first since the turtle travels between the two?

 

[Alex]

Maybe it's cliche but...tell them to l2p? Our healers have never complained about mana issues, nor have we ever wiped due to healer mana. Not even when we were learning stuff initially. I'm fairly sure that's indicative of your healers casting way more crap,or more inefficient crap than they need to. Which is exactly the same as it was back then.

There is a huge difference between "Everyone almost dies, and you have to heal them back up within a few seconds now and then" and the late BC/all of Wrath mantra of "Everyone is dying every second and needs a heal every second to compensate". I'm sorry if some healers thought the changes implied that people simply wouldn't take damage anymore, but it IS significantly lower over time than it was.



Grats! Huge accomplishment at this stage. Damage on heroic looks insane in the Paragon vid, not really looking forward to it but we'll see -_- Got 6/12 ourselves this week, hopefully get 7 with two days left.

There's one healer we do totally need to l2p, as he is a grand fuckup who makes our other rather sterling veteran healers work harder than they should have to, it's just hard since recruitment for everything but healers pours in and none for healers, because, as you can guess, no one wants to do it.

My complaints are mostly from when I had to sub in to heal last raid. AoE damage in a couple fights is often pretty damn near what it was Wrath though Ulduar at the very least. I just find the combination of styles to be frustrating as a Shaman who has pretty limited scope for AoE at the moment. We had a pretty miserable combo during Halfus which honestly put out a level of damage which is akin to what I was healing through on Mimiron hard as a Priest.

But, in general our miserable comps of Druid and Shaman heavy for healing isn't exactly helping when Priests and Paladins are just flat out better all around currently.

Also, to be fair I'm not abusing spirit trinkets on mana-tide unlike everyone else, knowing it'll be gone in a patch. My only complaint isn't mana though. Mana isn't as annoying to me as the spam intensive nature of it all is. That's what I wanted reduced. Going back to faux downranking while keeping the Wrath-esque spamspamspam is what perturbs me most.

I must ask though, you've never wiped to healing issues so far? Really? Have you wiped at all, then? Because none of this stuff is even remotely taxing to DPS or tank so far, it's all on the backs of healers, and I find it stupid.

 

[dimb]

Are you Horde? I'm of the opinion that Borean is much better for Alliance than Horde, but it could be because I've only done it once on Alliance and like 5 times on Horde. Still the Wrath zones get significantly better the closer you get to 80.

I'm more Alliance. I want to like it, but the Kobold sections and the ghost coast parts just feel like a real drag to me. Even sections I do like, say the Geyser area, become frustrating because of enemy density.

 

[TheYanger]

So I went from BT to Howling Fjord and decided to go to Kamagua first.

There are a ton of quests missing. I was only able to do three.

Maybe I was supposed to do Kalu'ak Dragonblight quests first since the turtle travels between the two?

There's a Kalu'ak guy up above the great lift, he has prereqs you need to do to unlock the vast majority down there.

I'm more Alliance. I want to like it, but the Kobold sections and the ghost coast parts just feel like a real drag to me. Even sections I do like, say the Geyser area, become frustrating because of enemy density.

I've done as both Horde and Alliance...Borean is 'faster' and has better quest rewards, marginally, but I found Howling Fjord far more interesting as Alliance than Borean. Horde borean is decent, but Howling is still more fun to me. The quest lines are more developed in HF, feel less meaningless and random.

I must ask though, you've never wiped to healing issues so far? Really? Have you wiped at all, then? Because none of this stuff is even remotely taxing to DPS or tank so far, it's all on the backs of healers, and I find it stupid.

I wasn't trying to sound as inflammatory as I no doubt did, but no, we've never wiped to healer mana issues as far as I can recall. If you're not running a paladin or priest I can see there being a lot more issue, both are far stronger than shamans and especially druids, though as you noted Shamans really bring the mana. If there is too much damage and spamming going on, it's very possible that people are executing mechanics incorrectly. Most fights either have heavy raidwide spikes (Chimaeron, Magmaw, Omnotron, Nefarian, Atramedes, Maloriak) or consistent but lower damage, you shouldn't be standing around NOT casting, so in that sense maybe it is still spammy? The idea wasn't for healers not to cast spells, the idea was for healers to have a chance to think about what spells they should be casting in order to play more efficiently and creatively, which seems to have been achieved.

And lol no, we wipe all the time.

 

[J-Rzez]

Heroic Ascendant Council down! hooooly hell, that was pure hell on heroic.

We were going to skip it on heroic this week, (after many wipes on the fight this week already) but we thought we'd give it a few more trys. After 7 wipes (with several 5% wipes) we managed to down it. Our raid was dropping like flies, but the Elementium Monstrosity was killed with just myself (holy pally) our Prot warr and fire mage left standing.

There were nerd screams in Vent, it was a great moment.

Grats. I didn't look them up yet as we haven't started them (we're behind the race this time, sadly, due to ppl not having time), but I'm hoping they're a decent change from the normals.

 

[Entropia]

Heroic Ascendant Council down! hooooly hell, that was pure hell on heroic.

We were going to skip it on heroic this week, (after many wipes on the fight this week already) but we thought we'd give it a few more trys. After 7 wipes (with several 5% wipes) we managed to down it. Our raid was dropping like flies, but the Elementium Monstrosity was killed with just myself (holy pally) our Prot warr and fire mage left standing.

There were nerd screams in Vent, it was a great moment.

Grats!

What guild are you in??

 

[Einbroch]

I wasn't trying to sound as inflammatory as I no doubt did, but no, we've never wiped to healer mana issues as far as I can recall. If you're not running a paladin or priest I can see there being a lot more issue, both are far stronger than shamans and especially druids, though as you noted Shamans really bring the mana. If there is too much damage and spamming going on, it's very possible that people are executing mechanics incorrectly. Most fights either have heavy raidwide spikes (Chimaeron, Magmaw, Omnotron, Nefarian, Atramedes, Maloriak) or consistent but lower damage, you shouldn't be standing around NOT casting, so in that sense maybe it is still spammy? The idea wasn't for healers not to cast spells, the idea was for healers to have a chance to think about what spells they should be casting in order to play more efficiently and creatively, which seems to have been achieved.

And lol no, we wipe all the time.

The issue, at least for Priests, is that we literally just spam Prayer of Healing on certain fights. Most of the time it's around 20-30% of our healing, which is fine, but on other fights it's 50% or more. I logged like 67% once. That's not fun.

 

[Bisnic]

Just got this http://www.wowhead.com/item=64904 as my next Tolvir rare artifact.

Only took 2 completed artifacts before i got it, not too bad.

Now... i still need 130 artifacts fragments. I guess tomorrow will be a wonderful Kalimdor digging party. I'm ready for 80% of my digsites to be either Night elf or Fossil. /sigh

 

[etiolate]

Just ran some tests between Ele and Enhance. I have much higher level Ele gear than Enhance, and I actually do heroics with ilevel 318 chest and head as Enhance. I can get 10k-12k as enhance in a heroic, get about that on a target dummy. On a raid target dummy I get around 9k because I am not spell hit capped yet as enhance. On the Ele I get around 9k dps on any dummy because I'm hit capped. I get around 7-9k in Heroics depending on movement.

Ele is like barely raid viable dps and 10% oost to LvB isn't going to fix the specs glaring problems. It needs a ton of haste and mastery to start being on the level of other casters.

 

[Twig]

I dont like the harrison jones stuff, I dont get why they didnt just use Brann for it all, its abit toooooooooooooo cheesy.

It was funny in bits though >.< but sometimes there is too much.... fluff put into the warcraft universe.

I'm a bit conflicted on Harrison Jones.

On the one hand, I'm utterly sick of the millions of fucking pop culture references in WoW. EVERYWHERE I FUCKING GO. It is stupid dumb horrible shit. Not to mention, that's quite a decent chunk of lore in which to stuff a joke character, and, yeah, I'm a lore dork.

On the other, Harrison Jones and that whole zone was pretty entertaining and actually made me chuckle a few times!

I don't know what to think. ):

 

[charlequin]

I am worried about my enhance dps now that I've just started to get into the groove of it after years of Elemental. The notes make it sound like they're going to make Windfury overtake Flametongue in damage, but WF doesn't gain anything from Mastery like FT does. It's a dicey change.

I'm definitely not too concerned in the immediate future. When Tier 12 starts to drop there could potentially start to be scaling problems, but there are a bunch of ways that could theoretically get fixed.

Ele is like barely raid viable dps and 10% oost to LvB isn't going to fix the specs glaring problems. It needs a ton of haste and mastery to start being on the level of other casters.

Elemental is just a really poor spec at the moment. Boring design, poor damage output, nothing really going for it. Shamans as a whole are desperately in need of some top down redesign lovin', but at least Enhancement is fun to play and relatively competitive in its current form.

The base skill that it takes to be a successful healer or tank is of course light years ahead of what it takes to be a shit DPS that requires babysitting.

The base skill it takes to be a successful healer or tank is maybe not "light years" beyond what it takes to be a successful DPS -- let's call it "parsecs."

DPS is less demanding, less skill-intensive*, and less unpredictable than healing or tanking by design: this both allows some level of engagement modulation by players (you can play a DPS role to relax) and provides the ability to layer on additional mechanics to DPS classes (CC, many boss mechanics, etc. are the responsibility of DPS classes since they have the bandwidth to handle them.) Some people choose to be judgmental about this and I think that is deeply silly and actively counter-productive, but I don't think it makes sense to downplay the gap in difficulty.


*That is, healing and tanking are more dependent on skill, even though one can still improve one's performance as DPS dramatically through skill.