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World of Warcraft |OT2|
- Thread starter EviLore
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uggh. chimaeron is going to give me a heart attack. About half of the group (and healers) have this thing down perfectly. The other half seemingly fly into spasms as soon as chimaeron does something. anything. We actually had one pull with him down to around 28%. I was shocked. Like 3-4 feud phases with almost everyone still alive. AFAIK there wouldn't have been another feud phase (at least unlikely). But then a healer died on slime and the rest of the raid slowly started dying after that.
The funny thing is, the encounter is not hard. Well, it is hard, but as a mage for example, here's how it goes for me:
fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire caustic slime fire fire fire fire fire (glance at health, 10456 fine) fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire caustic slime fire fire fire fire fire fire (glance at health, 9989, oh well) fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire massacre (glance at health, 51K... uggghh.. oh well) feud run to get on tank bandage slime glance at health (40K and growing, fine) fire fire slime (glance at health 40K and growing, fine) slime (glance at health, 10K) massacre while running back glance at health (10K, ok) fire fire fire fire fire fire repeat
now obviously that's best case. but in any of those instances if I glance at health and it's under 10K, no problem.. I'll bandage, pop a health stone, pop a pot, or evoke. if, in the rare chance, I take a caustic slime and don't get above 10K before the next caustic slime, then i'll take the cauterize and IB out of it for a quick 40K heal and be out of my way.
now obviously this shit is working... because I am ALWAYS one of the last 2-3 guys left having to wipe when the rest of the raid dies. And I'm not some amazingly brilliant guy or some crazy amazing video game or wow player. If you just follow the freaking directions and do what you are supposed to, you will win! Hell, the only damn 359s I even have are all purchasable from rep except my valor cloak (about 500 VP away from my chest) and my belt (dreamless belt).
With that being said, I believe it's been mentioned (or strongly hinted at) that when a new tier is released, all VPs will be turned into JPs and JPs will then be soft capped (i.e. if it takes you over 4K you won't be able to gain any more until you go under 4K). At that point all current tier 346 gear will be reduced in price and all formerly VP gear will have its price changed (it looks like almost directly) to JPs.
So your saved Valor Points from a specific tier will never be lost or devalued in theory. But you won't be able to build up VPs during tier 11 and then get to spend them on T12 gear. The VPs you earn now will only ever be able to buy T11 gear.
The funny thing is, the encounter is not hard. Well, it is hard, but as a mage for example, here's how it goes for me:
fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire caustic slime fire fire fire fire fire (glance at health, 10456 fine) fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire caustic slime fire fire fire fire fire fire (glance at health, 9989, oh well) fire fire fire fire fire fire fire fire massacre (glance at health, 51K... uggghh.. oh well) feud run to get on tank bandage slime glance at health (40K and growing, fine) fire fire slime (glance at health 40K and growing, fine) slime (glance at health, 10K) massacre while running back glance at health (10K, ok) fire fire fire fire fire fire repeat
now obviously that's best case. but in any of those instances if I glance at health and it's under 10K, no problem.. I'll bandage, pop a health stone, pop a pot, or evoke. if, in the rare chance, I take a caustic slime and don't get above 10K before the next caustic slime, then i'll take the cauterize and IB out of it for a quick 40K heal and be out of my way.
now obviously this shit is working... because I am ALWAYS one of the last 2-3 guys left having to wipe when the rest of the raid dies. And I'm not some amazingly brilliant guy or some crazy amazing video game or wow player. If you just follow the freaking directions and do what you are supposed to, you will win! Hell, the only damn 359s I even have are all purchasable from rep except my valor cloak (about 500 VP away from my chest) and my belt (dreamless belt).
dont' know how CP's max, but you can't max VPs. there's only a weekly max.vehn said:
With that being said, I believe it's been mentioned (or strongly hinted at) that when a new tier is released, all VPs will be turned into JPs and JPs will then be soft capped (i.e. if it takes you over 4K you won't be able to gain any more until you go under 4K). At that point all current tier 346 gear will be reduced in price and all formerly VP gear will have its price changed (it looks like almost directly) to JPs.
So your saved Valor Points from a specific tier will never be lost or devalued in theory. But you won't be able to build up VPs during tier 11 and then get to spend them on T12 gear. The VPs you earn now will only ever be able to buy T11 gear.
funkmastergeneral
Banned
vehn said:
Valor Points become Justice Points. I assume anything over the JP cap will just be converted to gold.
doubtful, because there's no VP cap. More than likely you will be softcapped on JPs at that point.funkmastergeneral said:
The JP cap is so you can't store an excessive amount of JPs and buy all of the previous tier gear when it cycles down to the JP vendor. If you have the VPs to buy the gear, which aren't capped, forcing you to lose those VPs at the tier change would cause people to rage. Soft capping makes much more sense. You still have your capped JPs, still have your full value of VPs for that tier, and can't abuse JPs by getting more.
To what end tho? So he gets geared out quickly and can do raids. Does he just faceroll heroics on multiple chars, look for a guild to raid with, or PUG raids with elitists and idiots and rely on luck to get raid gear?funkmastergeneral said:
Try and find a guild running heroics right now IMO. Experience progression on a day to day 5 man basis.
letsbereasonable
Member
Neverfade said:
The Karsh Steelbender (H-Blackrock Caverns) MH dagger and justice point OH are a good start. There are a few BoE epics, but the prices are probably going to be ridiculous and IIRC one of them has a subpar proc.
theinfinityissue
Member
Neverfade said:
An alternative to the Steelbender's is the H Windwalker Blade for your main hand, comes from the next to last boss in heroic Grim Batol. If you're trying to get geared quickly, you can just queue for both GB and blackrock and run them both each day until you get one or the other, they're pretty similar. The jp OH is your best bet, but if you're lacking points and you have some time to kill another awesome OH drops off one of the earlier bosses in H Deadmines. Whatever you do, just make sure your mh is 1.8 speed and your oh is 1.4, although you probably already know that.
Speaking of rogue theorycraft (which is something I love to do given I'm the only rogue in the guild and no one else cares) the guild just dropped an incredibly generous Landslide chant on my 359 oh dagger, the maelstrom crystals for which probably would run around 10k on my server. It's got a cool little animation on it, although I'm definitely going to race change back to blood elf from goblin as I'm about completely sick of all my loot being so damn small.
Sweet, thanks for the tips. I actually have the JP OH in my sights as it's really cheap and I'm just about there. I've been slacking on my roguin' cause I'm having a lot of fun leveling my shaman with some lower level guildies.
Also, is Landslide the enchant I should be going for? I didn't know how that one stacked up vs hurricane.
Also, is Landslide the enchant I should be going for? I didn't know how that one stacked up vs hurricane.
letsbereasonable
Member
Neverfade said:
Landslide is definitely better, but after the alch stone trick nerf it's going to be pretty expensive. I went with double hurricane for now.
Evil Benius
Member
Did not get to post yesterday, but Tuesday night we had our entire "ideal" raid team on and bored so we decided to start clearing the bosses we have down before to put us in a better position for scheduled raids this weekend. In about 90 minutes (including travel time) we had Omnotron, Halfus, and the twin drakes down with only one wipe on Halfus. Up until this point our guild has been dicking around way too much on raids by including undergeared/inexperienced people in order to keep guildies happy and this run pretty much proves why we need to stop doing that. Just two weeks ago it took six hours to down two of those three bosses (our first twin drakes kill was Monday) due to idiot players with no business in raids. Now we have all weekend to get Magmaw down and actually start making progress instead of messing around and getting nothing done.
I imagine there is going to be a drama shitstorm this weekend when people realize what we did, but I am tired of not seeing content just to make a few crybabies happy. I have no problem taking the more casual players though once we have content on farm, but I am tired of just spinning wheels just to make those people happy now. If anyone has a problem with what we did I will tell them the same damn thing since our core ten have decided that happy funtime is over.
I imagine there is going to be a drama shitstorm this weekend when people realize what we did, but I am tired of not seeing content just to make a few crybabies happy. I have no problem taking the more casual players though once we have content on farm, but I am tired of just spinning wheels just to make those people happy now. If anyone has a problem with what we did I will tell them the same damn thing since our core ten have decided that happy funtime is over.
theinfinityissue
Member
dual hurricanes is what you're going to want on your heroics daggers (346 ilvls), if you did manage to buy the mats for a Landslide you'd want to save it for your epics. I just happened to get one because we downed 5 bosses last night and only one drop was something anyone needed, ended up with a ton of maelstroms. Anyway, in a perfect world, Landslide is going to be your best in slot chant probably for all of Cata.
funkmastergeneral
Banned
Evil Benius said:
If a raid team started clearing bosses prior to scheduled raid time I would be livid.
SnakeswithLasers
Member
Well, with today's daily dungeon, I will be able to afford the heirloom cloth shoulders and chest. Guess I'm going to work on my level 6 warlock. I had a 40 lock, but I deleted him so that I could see the new content. I sort of regret that now, but oh well. Silverpine, here I come!
cuevas. PhD.
Member
Macattk15 said:
Just use bloodlust at the beginning and have tanks/healers use CD's. Easy peasy
funkmastergeneral said:
this.
Advising ahead of time that casuals need not apply for now would have been a little more classy. I have so much shit going on in RL that I juggle to make my raid times I would probably just gquit.
If you guy want a 10 man hardcore guild (which is fine), why take the casuals on raids? Let them know in advance where they stand, some will be OK with it. If I was a casual I would think that I was just being used to level the guild rank.
Evil Benius
Member
Dunlop said:
We have tried this approach before but the people who have no business coming cried and screamed in guild chat until our former raid leader quit the raid to make room for them. Last week we took things into our own hands and ran a raid ourselves with the 10 people we wanted to be there and things ran great, except guild officers were upset we handled things ourselves.
Things are at the point now where raid makeups are being dictated to us by people WHO DO NOT RAID and it is just making a mess. Us trying to run things ourselves is pretty much the last step before we just commit a massive gquit and start our own guild. The only people that will be upset by our raiding on Tuesday are those who have no business raiding, but think they deserve to be there and officers trying to make everyone happy.
The only reason we cleared several bosses on Tuesday was to make more time to work on true progression this weekend. It is not like we moved a raid time, only added a spontaneous extra one to the week so we can actual progress beyond only having three bosses down (plus BH) after raiding for a month. I mean jesus we have not even killed Magmaw (what should be an easy fight) because of lack of time and inept players being carried on raids.
Edit: Also it should be noted that we our not a raid guild at all, only a guild made up of people who post on a website that happens to have a few members that want to raid. It is the age old problem of having raiders in a casual guild and a leadership that knows shit about raiding trying to dictate rules.
SnakeswithLasers
Member
How is mage leveling these days? Mine is 43 and with these new heirlooms, I am thinking about blowing the dust off of him.
Are all three specs viable to quickly level or is frost the way to go?
Are all three specs viable to quickly level or is frost the way to go?
the problem to all of this is that is you are clearing content, at the very least you are taking away 20 VPs from everyone because you deem so (even yourselves), or at most are taking away 90 VPs from people because it's not deemed viable to finish a 25m raid for the week because almost half of the members already locked it.Evil Benius said:
I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying entirely. Our guild is actually having a similar problem. We have a lot of undergeared casuals or noobs bitching for weeks now that they aren't being brought on raids and much of the leadership is getting so sick of hearing it that they're choosing to bench themselves so other people can go. On stuff like Argaloth this is fine... but on things like Omnotron or Halfus, where with our core 25m group we should be farming this, but now because we have fresh faces swapped in what goes from a 5 minute omnotron farm to an hour long catastrophe..... so really I get what you're saying.. but trust me when I say you are not making your guild leader's life any easier because now he's going to have to quell the troops who are pissed at missing out on 20 VPs or even 90 VPs for no other reason than "you guys were bored"
my suggestion, and when I say this I think it's the best for everyone from the sound of it, is for you 10 to do just that. quit and form your own guild. it sounds like you aren't a good fit for the guild you're in and while I get why you do what you say you're doing, it's just creating headaches it sounds like for everyone outside of you. kind of sucky. form your own guild, maybe even take a few good guildmates with you you think you could rely on to fill out the ranks, and let the casualness of your current guild be your guild leader's problem.
for me personally.. like I said, I can see your frustration and am there with you. we have maloriak, chimaeron and the twin drakes down in 10m and are nowhere near any of those in 25m. Fuck, we had to do like 4 pulls on Conclave last night. I'm shocked that we managed to one shot Argaloth this week. What sucks is we used to be a god damn amazing hardcore guild.. one of the tops on the server. but our leader (great guy and RL long time friend) has gotten so sick of the guild drama that he's trying to rotate everyone in. now shit that we beat weeks ago like magmaw and omnotron are taking 4-7 pulls and you always end up in vent "oh, that was my bad." "oops. sorry guys. my fault." and it's like shit!! We should be doing this in our god damn sleep!
ugghhhhh.. love my guild. love the long time members. love our history on all past raid tiers. just not getting why T11 seems so fucked up.
SnakeswithLasers said:
I love frost for pretty much anything.
While lvling 80-85, i could kill stuff so fast and nothing could came close to kill me. Soloed all these mobs with high amount of health faster than any class around could. (I've also yet to see another class soloing Problim as easily and fast as me, although most people try to do it with others) You got like 3 different ways to stop mobs from running to you and you do huge numbers when mobs are frozen or when you have fingers of frost procs. It's probably not as good at lvl 43, but once you get in the higher lvls, it will be awesome.wonderdung
Member
We found that the best solution to the 10m/25m problem was to recruit up to 30 and run 3 10 mans simultaneously.
I really expected a guild split from this setup but so far it's worked ok. Our first two 10 mans are at 11/12 (ours with nef down, the other with al'akir down)... the other one lags behind a bit but they started really late. I think they're at 5/12 or something.
There were some really good players that got pushed into the third group, which sucked, and we did have a QQer or two leave. But I think everyone is pretty happy with our current setup. It's just so much easier to coordinate 10 people than it is 25. The main problem is that internet issues or RL scheduling problems can kill one group's entire raid night. This happened to us 2 or 3 times while we were working on Nef.
You are giving up like 240 valor points a week, but we're a reasonably hardcore guild and still have people skipping the heroic randoms every day. No one skipping randoms gets to complain about valor points. (I think you bump against the weekly cap anyway when clearing everything, I'd have to check again.)
I really expected a guild split from this setup but so far it's worked ok. Our first two 10 mans are at 11/12 (ours with nef down, the other with al'akir down)... the other one lags behind a bit but they started really late. I think they're at 5/12 or something.
There were some really good players that got pushed into the third group, which sucked, and we did have a QQer or two leave. But I think everyone is pretty happy with our current setup. It's just so much easier to coordinate 10 people than it is 25. The main problem is that internet issues or RL scheduling problems can kill one group's entire raid night. This happened to us 2 or 3 times while we were working on Nef.
You are giving up like 240 valor points a week, but we're a reasonably hardcore guild and still have people skipping the heroic randoms every day. No one skipping randoms gets to complain about valor points. (I think you bump against the weekly cap anyway when clearing everything, I'd have to check again.)
CarbonatedFalcon
Member
SnakeswithLasers said:
Mine is 64 now and I've been fire most of the way - it's been fine. I've been able to solo most elites or group quests as well with the heirloom gear and smart play.
As for Halfus this week, on 25 at least, our strategy has a bear tank holding 2 drakes at the start (and later the Slate), while I (blood DK) and a Prot Warrior were only on Halfus and swapped at 10 stacks. It sometimes took awhile to build up the stacks, and I was able to tank him without a swap from about 50%-40% to end.
SnakeswithLasers
Member
I think I might start with fire or arcane then and move to frost once I'm higher level. I was originally (at least three years ago) frost and I remember just pressing "3" (frostbolt) over and over again while leveling and shelving him for that reason. It *looks* like fire might have some more variety at lower levels, but I really have no clue!
Basically, I want to play the spec that has a lot of buttons. Although "not drinking every 3 pulls" would be nice too.
Basically, I want to play the spec that has a lot of buttons. Although "not drinking every 3 pulls" would be nice too.
Evil Benius
Member
borghe said:
Oh our guild only runs 10 mans, we are no where close to having enough people to do 25s and most people do not want to anyway. We actually downed twin drakes for the first time with nine people because the only 85s who were on and not in our raid actually would have hurt us more than helped. We have a good group of ten people who are on for almost any raid, 2-3 who do not want to raid every week, but like getting pulled in when we are down a man, and then five or so who are undergeared, but think they deserve a slot in the 10 man because they are in the same guild. It does not help that those five would rather play alts instead of getting decent gear.
Trust me we are very close to breaking off and just doing our own thing, but there are two or three people who we are not sure would come with us (including our main tank). Not to mention it sucks to see all of those achievements we farmed and our guild rank go to waste like that (the raiders pretty much farmed everything for the guild).
SnakeswithLasers said:
I suggest you avoid Arcane if you want a spec with lots of button, they barely use 2 or 3 spells, even at higher lvls. I cant talk much about Fire as its the only mage spec i havent touch enough, but i think they have much more spells to use than Arcane.
Frost at higher lvls have Frostbolt, Ice Lance, Frostfire bolt, Deep Freeze, Pet Freeze, (Frost)Fire Orb as their most used offensive spells. Then you have Ice Barrier that you want to keep up as much as you can, help your healer against those hard to avoid boss attacks. Weak AOE since Blizzard is like 11k mana at lvl 85 and i only have 80k with self buffs(and thats with 347 average item lvl, i had around 70k when i was a new 85). And Flamestrike kinda sucks. But i love to use Frost Nova + Cone of Cold against those weak big group of pats in 5 mans, quick easy ~18k DPS in 2 secs lol.
Dual spec Fire & Frost is the way to go i believe. But you'll have to deal with drinking if your gear kinda sucks. But with free water, mana gems, Mage Armor that regen 3% mana every 5 secs and Evocation, its not that bad.
The best marker to see if everyone is doing it right is when P2 hits then about 15-20 seconds later, the majority of your raid gets accelerated corruption. That's a good sign that things should be on track. There is almost no excuse to get hit by the shadow crash or stand in the puddles, which are the main avoidable sources you get can corrupted blood from.Thoraxes said:
Also, when the tentacles spawn, look at where the particle animations are; typically, the tank should find the closest stack of them and drag the boss on top for cleave. If you are horde, arcane torrent is boss on this fight since you can aoe silence them, also prot pally shield toss silences three at a time. Ranged usually pick off tentacles that aren't grouped up.
The only bug I can think of is that sometimes when you kill the faceless adherents in a weird spot, a slime or two will bug out and the rest of the pack will evade inside the raid (they still attack and give CB while evading yours).
Honestly, if everyone else actually put in that effort the game would be so much better. But it won't. Luckily, people who have started to tank, especially in Cata now freaking understand why some tanks/healers get all annoyed when people don't do their jobs correctly A friend of mine started tanking on her pally and now she realizes why certain things need to be CC'd or why certain mobs should be killed first; she is a healer main and even admits when healing she doesn't really pay much attention when you can be 40 yards away from the action.Scrow said:
There are pulls in regular Grim Batol, that if you don't CC or kill with the drakes (especially packs with Elemental Lords and Dragonkin), are almost impossible since they have 5 different AOEs and 2 different slowing debuffs on the healer. I don't want to sound like a shitty healer but I let people die because I don't want to burn mana on stupid people. I've had that happen before where the tank died because I was tunneling some idiot standing in something s/he shouldn't have.
Also, I'm curious, do you use a custom UI? I become extremely suspicious of people who use the default UI or download a preassembled one because it's very likely they haven't tweaked it so they can maximize the amount of information they could receive if they had. First thing I notice is if they have centered unitframes or scrolling combat text. 9/10 people aren't aware they died half the time because they have to bring their eyes back to the top left of the screen to check their HP and the other half of the time they don't know they are standing in something wrong (even when they are looking at the screen) when any form of scrolling combat text would alert you to taking damage on the 'incoming' portion of the addon. I had someone claim last night they weren't hit by Sonar Breath from Atramedes last night until I posted his death log from Acheron that showed him getting 3 hits of it then dying in two seconds.
you lose 240 points per week doing 10m instead of 25m. I do agree though that anyone who misses more than 1-2 randoms a week doesn't get to say shit about missing raids or 10m fewer valor points.
Our guild wants to do 25m mainly because a) it's how our guild was built (originally for 40m, then for rotating 25m) and b) most of the core of that 25m group are from launch and take some joy away from running a big epic guild like that. The problem we are really having (haha.. that one of our members pointed out in vent last night) was that in the 40 man days you could have 25 players who were just the best of the best put in the effort (aka 5/8ths of the raid) and then 15 players who were under geared, bad, or some other way carried. In Cata raids, really you need 22-25 players who are all playing at the top of their games when hardly any of the members are geared 353+. With most running 347-352, one or two guys not clumping up on Chimaeron (or leaving before the last slime) means deaths probably. shit, our current strategy on Magmaw is don't move, only DPS the boss. That's it. Don't move. DPS the boss. Two hunters have to kite worms and 3 melee have to jump on his head. 20 other people have to not fucking move and DPS the boss. Oh wait.. hunter steps out and spawns worms 3yds from the other 19 of us... oh wait, someone accidentally clicked and jumped on his head. oh hey, there's a worm that got away from the hunters. no really. he's coming straight for us. so umm.. is anyone going to hit him? don't even get me started on omnotron "at 50%, stop hitting the fucking boss. Why are you still hitting the fucking boss at 47%?"
We have solid 10 man groups. Part of me wishes we would just stick with those. The problem there is that the officers have flat out said there is ZERO rotation in the 10 mans. If you are not assigned a 10 man you will not be raiding on 10 man nights, plain and simple. However this has led to tons of bitching and the 10 mans shelved on nights for progress in 25m.
Our guild wants to do 25m mainly because a) it's how our guild was built (originally for 40m, then for rotating 25m) and b) most of the core of that 25m group are from launch and take some joy away from running a big epic guild like that. The problem we are really having (haha.. that one of our members pointed out in vent last night) was that in the 40 man days you could have 25 players who were just the best of the best put in the effort (aka 5/8ths of the raid) and then 15 players who were under geared, bad, or some other way carried. In Cata raids, really you need 22-25 players who are all playing at the top of their games when hardly any of the members are geared 353+. With most running 347-352, one or two guys not clumping up on Chimaeron (or leaving before the last slime) means deaths probably. shit, our current strategy on Magmaw is don't move, only DPS the boss. That's it. Don't move. DPS the boss. Two hunters have to kite worms and 3 melee have to jump on his head. 20 other people have to not fucking move and DPS the boss. Oh wait.. hunter steps out and spawns worms 3yds from the other 19 of us... oh wait, someone accidentally clicked and jumped on his head. oh hey, there's a worm that got away from the hunters. no really. he's coming straight for us. so umm.. is anyone going to hit him? don't even get me started on omnotron "at 50%, stop hitting the fucking boss. Why are you still hitting the fucking boss at 47%?"
We have solid 10 man groups. Part of me wishes we would just stick with those. The problem there is that the officers have flat out said there is ZERO rotation in the 10 mans. If you are not assigned a 10 man you will not be raiding on 10 man nights, plain and simple. However this has led to tons of bitching and the 10 mans shelved on nights for progress in 25m.
Pretty sure SCT is in the game and turned on by default now. then again it's been so long since I've installed the game fresh that I guess I couldn't tell you. As for centered frames, I personally don't use them because I want the center of my screen with my camera pulled back wide open. I don't at all want shit in the middle of the screen. Still, I know from SCT where I should be on health, and know where i should be when I get a "Health Low" warning in SCT. FWIW, I use the default UI with all action bars enabled (and everything I use hot keyed) and the only UI add ons I really use are combustion helper and OmniCC. Though to be fair blizz has added much of the stuff I would have to add previously (SCT, proc visuals, etc)Sober said:
SnakeswithLasers
Member
Sounds like a good idea. I'll spec both in town then just run to where the bulletin board tells me and see which spec feels more fun.Bisnic said:
Looking at the frost tree... Wow, it really seems hard to decide which talents to pick up, they ALL look amazing. Any link to a suggestion for around level 50?
SnakeswithLasers said:
My spec looks like this, its pretty awesome for both questing and instances.
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#o0bZfcZffMosIszMo:MmoqMkmoM
Might want to switch glyph of polymorph with frost nova for questing though.
I guess at 51 you would want something like this : http://www.wowhead.com/talent#oZZffM0shc:
Also, you dont get Flame Orb until lvl 81, so the Frostfire Orb talent might be pretty useless until then, get something else.
SnakeswithLasers
Member
^^^ Thanks!
A couple questions:
Early Frost -- am I reading this right in thinking that it's just a faster cast frostbolt every 15 seconds? Is it that useful for leveling (won't I be pulling with that fast cast frostbolt?)
Improved Cone of Cold -- this seems like it would be quite useful to get those free crits, is there a reason that it's left out? Do mages have a better way to keep things frozen? (Frost Nova?)
A couple questions:
Early Frost -- am I reading this right in thinking that it's just a faster cast frostbolt every 15 seconds? Is it that useful for leveling (won't I be pulling with that fast cast frostbolt?)
Improved Cone of Cold -- this seems like it would be quite useful to get those free crits, is there a reason that it's left out? Do mages have a better way to keep things frozen? (Frost Nova?)
SnakeswithLasers said:
You dont use Cone of Cold that much for the talent to be that useful(most mobs will die before they even have a chance to hit you), compared to everything else. And you have your own Frost Nova, your pet ranged frost nova, Deep Freeze AND Ring of Frost at lvl 83(Every PVP players hates mages because of that spell) to keep stuff frozen.
Im not entirely sure about how Early Frost works(is there a hidden cooldown that reset or something?), but you have to take it. Who wouldnt want a faster Frostbolt for the first 15 secs of a fight? And if you worry about pulling aggro because of casting too fast, you got Mirror Images at lvl 80 that puts your threat at 0% while they last. I always use them at the beginning of a boss fight, so i can do all that big DPS without worrying about threat.
Deep Freeze against bosses at lvl 85 can deal insane numbers. I've seen it crits for over 100k a few times with trinket buffs. And i dont even have the glyph that increase its damage by 20%. Can't imagine the numbers it can do with a full set of 359 epics AND the glyph.
borghe said:
Lots of people get that sort of 'I don't need mods' attitude, but I can guarantee you'd be a better player if you used less default. The built in SCT is a mess, and anyone that says they can effectively read everything on it is lying or is spending far too much time paying attention to it where a superior mod would filter so much of the garbage out, or have a stronger layout, etc. "having a good idea" of your health is not nearly as good as actually HAVING your health somewhere highly visible, along with target health, buffs/debuffs, etc. UIs are very personal things, I don't like to be too specific when I think about what could be done better or worse with people's setup, but the default is almost universally worse, even if it's 'improved' over the years.
wonderdung
Member
Bisnic said:
I think he's right, early frost isn't essential for leveling. It's still handy though and I'd still take it. Just because you're pre-casting on mobs doesn't mean you want that to take a long time.
When it's off cooldown your first frostbolt casts at like 0.7s (obviously depending on haste) and puts it back on cooldown. It's not faster frostbolts for 15 seconds. It's one fast frostbolt every 15 seconds. So its value as a dps increase diminishes to zero if all of your fights are under 15 seconds. But like I said, it's still a handy talent.
I've turned on the default SCT a few times actually, while waiting for mods to catch up, or they bugged out.TheYanger said:
It is pretty atrocious. All I see are numbers coming across the screen, and anything incoming on your character completely obscures your view. Not to mention, even though you have the option to colour-code sources of damage from the combat log, all the Blizz SCT shows AFAIK is white = auto, yellow = anything not autoattack, green = heal.
Almost every SCT I've used colour-codes sources of damage (and lets your change them if you want) and shows the source of an attack or spell, names with icon and/or text. I dunno if this is the non-dps class in me speaking but it helps to know how much a particular mob is doing to me, instead of seeing 6k 5.4k 6.2k 6k 18.5k 6k 24k"" flash across my screen without knowing what was a melee swing, a breath or a spell ability proc (e.g. Flame's Orders on Cho'gall) against me. Hell, even as DPS, it helps when you don't have 2/3s of your screen covered up by 6134's when you aoe a large pack.
Also, the default combat log is broken for me or something. I can turn nearly every filter off, delete other filters and only allow one source of data to display yet it continues to chug along as if I never changed it.
eh.... don't take this the wrong way, but everything you are saying is just making things easier.. and that's fine and all.. but if you and I are doing the same job and I am fine with the way my UI works, it's pretty needlessly condescending to say "my way is better". You have a lot of "this and that and this is better" but as a PVE mage here is what I care about:TheYanger said:
am I standing in shit (SCT)? move
does the boss have a buff that I can steal (UI only set to show buffs I can steal)? Steal it
Is my health lowish (glancing once in a while or Health Low)? Step 2 steps over to AOE heal
Did cauterize just proc (i.e. I died)? Cast Iceblock
where am I at on impact combustion? (combustion helper)
how long before MI, Flame Orb, or Counterspell comes up (OmniCC)
what bad boss shit is happening now? (DBM)
how is my threat (Omen)
Seriously, I don't care where my health is because it's not my job to manage that (provided I'm not at fault for taking the damage). For the most part I don't even care what damage I'm taking because either a) it is raid wide damage that is healed through or b) I'm standing in shit or doing something I'm not supposed to be in which case the healer won't heal me anyway.
Now I was overly simplistic in my UI talk. To be exact I have the following add ons I use regularly:
OmniCC
DBM
CombustionHelper
archaeology stuff
Outside of that there is nothing that isn't in the default ui that is actually making me less efficient at my job. Maybe it's not as simplified or right there all in the center of the screen, but that in and of itself doesn't make it better or me worse, just easier, which at the basis of something being easier or not comes down to "is it difficult for the person to begin with"
the only thing in my UI that I've decided I will probably add is TidyPlates, only because Maloriak, Omnotron and Magmaw have really stretched beyond the limits of blizz's default nameplates... and really that's what it is. If something needs fixing, I'll go out and grab a fix for it. But if I don't think it needs fixing, I am doing my job, not dying, and in the top 5% of damage for the raid, don't tell me how much my stuff sucks or how broken it is.
trust me, it's the non-dps in you talking. As DPS, the very very very very very last thing you should care about is your health. Shit, I pay more attention to my healers' and tanks' health bars than I do my own. If you are doing your job and your healer is doing their job, health is never an issue (which is why stamina doesn't even register as a moderately valuable stat when choosing gear or enchants for DPS)Sober said:
as for the screens getting covered... eh, the worst I've seen are either the cultists at the end of Stonecore or the side packs in BoT... and in both cases my rotation goes something like:
target one of the mobs ahead of time
blast wave
flamestrike
blizzard
as soon as I see fire blast proc, cast living bomb on my actual target in the pack then spread it
so really, having everything covered by numbers does nothing to bother me, and actually is kind of fun when you start seeing crits popping up left and right all over. everything else I care about is, ironically enough given this conversation, passed on to me from the default UI.
edit - and yes, I obviously care about my health during chimaeron.. but only to the point that I glance at it before massacre comes up. heck, I don't even worry about it during the normal caustic slime phase simply because if I am at 9999 health and a slime hits me I have cauterize and can IB out of it.. however if I am at 9999 I have to assume that a healer with a good grid setup is going to be like "hmm.. might as well toss an AOE heal over on those three" and grab a tick from somewhere.
but yeah, outside of weird fights like Chimaeron, I don't care about my health.
borghe said:
It's not about 'making things easier'
I played a DPS for 4 years, your UI is a tool not a bragging right. "I did the fight with the default UI" isn't something people will be excited to hear or clap over or something. The less you have to look at anything at all, because the information is laid out correctly for you to absorb while watching the environment, the better. Even as a DPS if you're saying not knowing your health, buffs/debuffs on you, QUICKLY, is not your problem, you're putting far too much extra strain on other people to carry your weight. The fact that you don't actually care about your health is telling, good DPS know how to use healthstones, know how to see quickly when they're taking damage they could be avoiding, or not taking damage they should. Good DPS have just as much situational and environmental awareness as the healers and tanks do, and can make large strides to correct mistakes that arise.
Of course it's entirely possible to play with the default UI, good players don't do it because they know they can be better players without it, reducing the possibility for player error to simple mechanics so they can focus on the harder aspects of a fight.
SnakeswithLasers
Member
Thanks for the frost tips guys. I went home at lunch and bought his mount, specced his talents and flew out to where the board led me (1k Needles). I killed a couple dudes and noticed crazy shit going on in my UI that I'll now need to figure out. I'm pretty stoked. I just need to successfully finish an instance on my 84 warrior tonight and between him and my hunter, I'll have the JP necessary for two cloth heirlooms.
Is this crazy shit on your UI the Fingers of Frost and Brain Freeze procs appearing around your character? Yeah, they were a little confusing for me at first, but they're pretty useful, better than watching your buffs at the top right corner of your screen.
When its some ice stuff above your character, that's Fingers of Frost, when its some Fire/Ice thing on both your left & right sides, that's Brain Freeze for instant free Frostfire bolt. The best time to use it is when you have both procs at once though.
When its some ice stuff above your character, that's Fingers of Frost, when its some Fire/Ice thing on both your left & right sides, that's Brain Freeze for instant free Frostfire bolt. The best time to use it is when you have both procs at once though.
SnakeswithLasers
Member
Yup, it was those.Bisnic said:
I don't think I have frostfire bolt yet--I saw the Brain Freeze one and was utterly frantic because I didn't have Fireball on my action bars. Heh, this is going to take a bit for me to get everything set up right. Then I'll have to work on power auras too.
Meh, I was one of the main tanks in a major raiding guild in EQ for years and vowed to never do it again. I let my life be controlled by the raids and completely regret it. I want to just play for fun and it isn't fun right now. May come back down the line, guess we'll see.Scrow said:roll a tank or healer
or get in a good guild
cuevas. PhD.
Member
Twig said:
Which guild was he in?
So guys, I have a Mage level 48 and my professions are Herbalism and Minning (almost level 300 on both).
So, I decided to make a new character, a Draenei priest, which is level 7 so far. My question is since my gathering needs are pretty much covered with my mage, which professions should I pursue with my priest? I'm trying to be full support to the party so I was thinking alchemy and I dunno, jewelcrafting maybe?
So, I decided to make a new character, a Draenei priest, which is level 7 so far. My question is since my gathering needs are pretty much covered with my mage, which professions should I pursue with my priest? I'm trying to be full support to the party so I was thinking alchemy and I dunno, jewelcrafting maybe?
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