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[Angry Grimace]

Everyone knows Arcane Mage is the most complicated class. It explains people with 7000 DPS in heroics in that spec, right? =V

 

[Deputy Moonman]

Enhance is not particularly complex at all. In fact, it's even got a few open GCDs, which you don't get on other classes.

I've never done Feral (although I have an 80 Druid), but I'd say of the class/spec combos I've used the most complex is probably destruction warlock. You have to keep Soul Fire up every 15 sec. then Bane of Doom, Curse of Elements, immolate, conflag, chaos bolt, corruption, incinerate until your backdraft expires, then go back and keep all of the other ones up.

So you end up with a rotation like, Soulburn--> Soul Fire, BoD, CoE, Immo, Conflag, Chaos bolt, Corruption, Incin Incin, Conflag, Chaos Bolt, refresh Immolate, Incin Incin, refresh Corruption, hard cast soul fire. If you get an empowered imp proc, you have to wait until it's about to expire so that you aren't wasting time on a current Imp. SF buff.

There's just a lot of shit to watch. I really wish it had the highest DPS capacity for warlocks because it rewards skill to have it be that complex, but even perfect play on a destro lock is below Afflic and Demo.

Demo locks have a lot to keep track of, too. I haven't been playing recently (last few months), but Demo locks were definitely harder than Destro for a long time and did a lot less dps for it. It was basically all of wrath and early cata. Maybe that's not the case anymore.

Destro locks used to piss me off for how high their dps was compared to their easy rotation.

 

[Alucrid]

Fuck. Subbing for a year was a mistake. A huge, huge mistake.

 

[Bisnic]

Everyone knows Arcane Mage is the most complicated class. It explains people with 7000 DPS in heroics in that spec, right? =V

It always makes me a rage a little inside when i see arcane mages using Arcane Missiles and Arcane Barrage more than Arcane Blast. Or When Arcane Blast is only used 50%(or less) of the time.

And i don't even play the arcane spec.

 

[B-Dex]

Fuck. Subbing for a year was a mistake. A huge, huge mistake.

One of us! One of us!

 

[Anno]

Did Blizzard give a time frame for the 1-year-sub-for-Diablo 3 offer?

 

[Miletius]

Demo locks have a lot to keep track of, too. I haven't been playing recently (last few months), but Demo locks were definitely harder than Destro for a long time and did a lot less dps for it. It was basically all of wrath and early cata. Maybe that's not the case anymore.

Destro locks used to piss me off for how high their dps was compared to their easy rotation.

Demo locks are only complicated now because of pet twisting and cooldown syncing. Otherwise it would probably be just about medium complexity. Destro is by far the hardest warlock spec to play right now, but it's so rewarding to get the rotation down just right.

 

[Alex]

Enhance can be really fairly convoluted, especially in terms of the breadth of abilities and some of their 2-3x priority mods in a single rotation.

But that's why everyone just uses Shock and Awe. :lol Out of the dummy-mode frames, it's the only one that really makes sense and works well, like I tried CLCRet and CLCDK after just for the sake of it and those were just pointless and made me play worse.

 

[Angry Grimace]

Demo locks have a lot to keep track of, too. I haven't been playing recently (last few months), but Demo locks were definitely harder than Destro for a long time and did a lot less dps for it. It was basically all of wrath and early cata. Maybe that's not the case anymore.

Destro locks used to piss me off for how high their dps was compared to their easy rotation.

I have no clue what you're talking about. Destro has 0 automatically refreshing DoTs and requires very careful timing management with 7 different spells.

It always makes me a rage a little inside when i see arcane mages using Arcane Missiles and Arcane Barrage more than Arcane Blast. Or When Arcane Blast is only used 50%(or less) of the time.

And i don't even play the arcane spec.

In a 5m dungeon I use Arcane Blast 100% of the time, all the time. I might cast missiles just for the catharsis of removing the buff.

In raids, it's still not hard. Just spam AB until you get to 40% mana, Evocate and then save your mana until you can evocate again and blow all your cooldowns again. (yes, I know I'm dumbing down a little in terms of cooldown management, but that's essentially the offensive rotation).

Enhance can be really fairly convoluted, especially in terms of the breadth of abilities and some of their 2-3x priority mods in a single rotation.

But that's why everyone just uses Shock and Awe. :lol Out of the dummy-mode frames, it's the only one that really makes sense and works well, like I tried CLCRet and CLCDK after just for the sake of it and those were just pointless and made me play worse.

What? I have no clue why you would need any of that. I'm just lost by what you mean by "2-3x priority mods in a single rotation."

 

[Rokal]

Fuck. Subbing for a year was a mistake. A huge, huge mistake.

Sort of regretting it too. It's entirely possible that Blizzard will (as usual) fail to deliver on time, so I'll end up paying for another 2 months of 4.2, and then 10 months of 4.3. If I'm lucky, my annual subscription will expire right before MoP comes out in Q4 2012 when I'd actually have content I wanted to play.

This will have either been a sound investment that Blizzard implemented to combat SWTOR, or it will have been a way for Blizzard to keep people subbed through a massive content drought. If MoP isn't out by Q2 2012, I'll be pretty disappointed about buying the annual pass.

 

[Rokam]

Sort of regretting it too. It's entirely possible that Blizzard will (as usual) fail to deliver on time, so I'll end up paying for another 2 months of 4.2, and then 10 months of 4.3. If I'm lucky, my annual subscription will expire right before MoP comes out in Q4 2012 when I'd actually have content I wanted to play.

This will have either been a sound investment that Blizzard implemented to combat SWTOR, or it will have been a way for Blizzard to keep people subbed through a massive content drought. If MoP isn't out by Q2 2012, I'll be pretty disappointed about buying the annual pass.

I honestly dont' think we'll see a year of 4.3, I'm expecting an August release date, with Heart of the Swarm coming in late 2012 early 2013. And if you subscribe to WoW again for a year you get Swarm and SC2 base for free. *crosses fingers*

 

[Alex]

What? I have no clue why you would need any of that. I'm just lost by what you mean by "2-3x priority mods in a single rotation."

Apologies for not being clear, all I'm trying to say is if you're trying to min/max on Enhancement, it becomes pretty convoluted. I'm unsure what's going on with it nowadays, or how the 4.3 spellpower changes will effect it but the priority chain on it used to be like Feral where it was a mile long and trying to crunch spending on lower stacks of Maelstrom, Unleash Flames LvB hardcasting with a high end SP weapon VS Flame Shock's remaining ticks against everything else going on was rough for me. Enhancement had a lot of little modifiers like that where if you were really going at it hard it took some kind of savant to sink it all in during combat.

I actually got a few first place parses for Enhancement out of working pretty hard on it on WOL, so that was kind of fun but I'm getting lazy now and when I go back I'll probably pick something a little simpler and just care less in general. I'm not much of a performance nut like that typically but sometimes it's just fun to spreadsheet things out.

As for Shock and Awe, it's just a really good learner or reference tool for the class unless things have changed enough so you're just going through the motions or just playing casually in general. The other Enhance on our guild just leaned on it and pulled off reasonable numbers too but there's only so much you can get out of automation due to the lag of it all. (his was just an alt, anyhow though)

My reference to the other mods like that (CLC's paticularly) are just that they're worthless because they're just for, well, lazy people, they're not testing tools and you can't even change the priority chain, let alone anything else. For me, building up the muscle memory is always the most important part of playing a new class in this game, with as many things to watch and all the hotkeys it takes.

 

[TheYanger]

Apologies for not being clear, all I'm trying to say is if you're trying to min/max on Enhancement, it becomes pretty convoluted. I'm unsure what's going on with it nowadays, or how the 4.3 spellpower changes will effect it but the priority chain on it used to be like Feral where it was a mile long and trying to crunch spending on lower stacks of Maelstrom, Unleash Flames LvB hardcasting with a high end SP weapon VS Flame Shock's remaining ticks against everything else going on was rough for me. Enhancement had a lot of little modifiers like that where if you were really going at it hard it took some kind of savant to sink it all in during combat.

I actually got a few first place parses for Enhancement out of working pretty hard on it on WOL, so that was kind of fun but I'm getting lazy now and when I go back I'll probably pick something a little simpler and just care less in general. I'm not much of a performance nut like that typically but sometimes it's just fun to spreadsheet things out.

As for Shock and Awe, it's just a really good learner or reference tool for the class unless things have changed enough so you're just going through the motions or just playing casually in general. The other Enhance on our guild just leaned on it and pulled off reasonable numbers too but there's only so much you can get out of automation due to the lag of it all. (his was just an alt, anyhow though)

My reference to the other mods like that (CLC's paticularly) are just that they're worthless because they're just for, well, lazy people, they're not testing tools and you can't even change the priority chain, let alone anything else. For me, building up the muscle memory is always the most important part of playing a new class in this game, with as many things to watch and all the hotkeys it takes.

But at the same time, the dps difference between playing optimally and not is really minimal, just like a ret pally or frost dk, to me that's not that hard. I mean, Ret actually has a really convoluted priority system too, but you can similarly just get CLC and do like 100% of your dps just fine in 95% of situations.
EVERY class, even the easiest in the game, benefits from being a savvy player who is paying attention to what is going on and understands the finer points of the game, but there are very few that are actually HARD to play at a basic level.

 

[Alucrid]

Sort of regretting it too. It's entirely possible that Blizzard will (as usual) fail to deliver on time, so I'll end up paying for another 2 months of 4.2, and then 10 months of 4.3. If I'm lucky, my annual subscription will expire right before MoP comes out in Q4 2012 when I'd actually have content I wanted to play.

This will have either been a sound investment that Blizzard implemented to combat SWTOR, or it will have been a way for Blizzard to keep people subbed through a massive content drought. If MoP isn't out by Q2 2012, I'll be pretty disappointed about buying the annual pass.

Yeah. $15 a month, which means 4 months = Diablo 3, which means I need to get 8 months of play time out of this. Meh.

 

[Alex]

But at the same time, the dps difference between playing optimally and not is really minimal, just like a ret pally or frost dk, to me that's not that hard. I mean, Ret actually has a really convoluted priority system too, but you can similarly just get CLC and do like 100% of your dps just fine in 95% of situations.
EVERY class, even the easiest in the game, benefits from being a savvy player who is paying attention to what is going on and understands the finer points of the game, but there are very few that are actually HARD to play at a basic level.

I did Frost (DK) as my main right after I gave up on Shaman, and to be frank Frost was very simplistic to play compared to Enhancement, especially after the Death Rune change. After that things never got much more complex than managing Killing Machine. For me there was just nowhere near the amount going on whereas on Enhancement you could add some interesting layers depending on how dedicated you were.

I do agree that there's not many like that, though, and there is a lot of stress put over some pretty minimal stuff, I was just trying to speak of some experience with the class although I do think going forward, especially with removing spell power weapons and buffs a lot of that convolution will be going away.

However, I don't agree that things like CLCRet and the ilk should be leaned on unless the person is just shooting for mediocrity though. If you were just an iffy player or a more laid back player you could make use of them but in general they're just laggy and inflexible from my experiences.

 

[TheYanger]

I did Frost (DK) as my main right after I gave up on Shaman, and to be frank Frost was very simplistic to play compared to Enhancement, especially after the Death Rune change. After that things never got much more complex than managing Killing Machine. For me there was just nowhere near the amount going on whereas on Enhancement you could add some interesting layers depending on how dedicated you were.

I do agree that there's not many like that, though, and there is a lot of stress put over some pretty minimal stuff, I was just trying to speak of some experience with the class although I do think going forward, especially with removing spell power weapons and buffs a lot of that convolution will be going away.

However, I don't agree that things like CLCRet and the ilk should be leaned on unless the person is just shooting for mediocrity though. If you were just an iffy player or a more laid back player you could make use of them but in general they're just laggy and inflexible from my experiences.

Inflexible yes, laggy? no. Ultimately, the 'complicated' rotations are just complicated because there's too much to humanly track. Using an addon for it will almost always improve your dps for those classes because you won't waste GCDs thinking about what should be going on. I know for a fact some of the top ret paladins in the world go by clcret almost 100% for instance.

 

[Angry Grimace]

Inflexible yes, laggy? no. Ultimately, the 'complicated' rotations are just complicated because there's too much to humanly track. Using an addon for it will almost always improve your dps for those classes because you won't waste GCDs thinking about what should be going on. I know for a fact some of the top ret paladins in the world go by clcret almost 100% for instance.

Back in WLK I used to wonder why anyone would need CLCRet since Ret was not complicated at all to the point you could probably do 90% of your DPS hitting totally random buttons. It's enough of a pain in the ass now that I assuredly would install the mod if I was playing Retribution now because it has a lot more to track now and learning to track a lot of timers and procs is the most difficult part of learning a class.

The easiest class I ever played was Unholy DK in 3.2.2; the infamous "10 second rotation" which was a hard rotation in which you just went through your rune sets in a very rigid order very quickly. It was actually a lot of fun because at the time the common thinking was that Unholy was totally non-viable due to nerfs made to Scourge Strike. I remember Xabora getting all pissed off in OT1 about it since he would refuse to spec anything but Frost then.

I actually did install CLCDK for my DK recently but I tended to notice that it's choices were almost always identical to whatever I was choosing anyways although I still have it on since it doesn't really take up a ton of real estate and it can be helpful if you get distracted by something else.

 

[ToyMachine228]

Did Blizzard really just send me the 7-free days for Rage of the Firelands email again? When does this offer expire? It says July 17th, 2011 or something. Which was the initial one. But they appear to have sent it again...

 

[aktham]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/area-52/Aktham/advanced

So I'm back at WoW with the NeoGAF guild. When I stopped a while back, I didn't raid yet, so I didn't optimize my gear. My question is, would it be wise to optimize my gear now? or should I just grind out VP and JP (in troll heroics) until 4.3 is out, then upgrade/optimize my gear? Thanks

 

[Painraze]

thinking about starting a priest from level 1... any tips?

 

[TGMIII]

Hit 85 two days ago after not playing since vanilla. What's the fastest/best way to get geared for heroics/raid?

 

[aktham]

thinking about starting a priest from level 1... any tips?

Join us in Area 52 horde side. I'm sure the guys at the guild will help you out as you go.

Hit 85 two days ago after not playing since vanilla. What's the fastest/best way to get geared for heroics/raid?

Grind instances until you're geared enough for heroics. Grind heroics out for gear/JP/VP and become raid ready.

 

[Rokal]

Grind instances until you're geared enough for heroics. Grind heroics out for gear/JP/VP and become raid ready.

There are a couple shortcuts. Thrall quest in Hyjal gets you a 365 cloak. The first couple molten front daily quests will get you an easy 359 piece. After that, you might be able to queue for heroics (it doesn't take much). Heroics will get you valor/justice points that you can use to fill out the rest of your slots, and you can also run ZA/ZG eventually for 353 gear.

It shouldn't take very long to be raid-ready, and 'heroic ready' is virtually instantaneous.

 

[ToyMachine228]

Did Blizzard really just send me the 7-free days for Rage of the Firelands email again? When does this offer expire? It says July 17th, 2011 or something. Which was the initial one. But they appear to have sent it again...

In case any of you got this email as well, it's a scam. Just so you know.

 

[TheYanger]

Yeah don't 'grind' normal instances, go straight to troll heroics. Buy some pvp blues from the AH, DON'T EQUIP THEM if you're poor, once your actual Ilevel catches up you can just resell them. Can do the same with all sorts of random boe's depending on your startup investment.

 

[yukonrye]

thinking about starting a priest from level 1... any tips?

Do quests until you can start doing dungeons. If you are using the LFD tool as a healer you should get in fairly quick and early dungeons are simple to heal. Shadow is the dps spec but in early levels has more downtime for mana regen. Discipline is more of a single-target healer spec but has great survivability/mana regen and is perfectly fine for leveling solo. Equip for spirit and int/spell power, use heirlooms if you've got them, and at the moment there is a buff you can get at the entrance to Undercity that will give you a 10% bonus to xp and rep for 2 hours. Not sure if that stacks with heirloom bonuses or if you can get it more than once per day. You have to click on the piles of ash (or crap or something) in front of the wicker man to get it. You can also get a dps buddy and have him tear through mobs while you keep him alive.

 

[Alex]

Hey guys, remember Archaeology?

Seriously, why did they put that thing in the game. Have they even given it a word of mention for 4.3 or Mists? Maybe they should just dissolve it and roll the existing prizes into something else.

 

[Tamanon]

They really didn't talk much about any profession for Mists yet, just vague hinting at a Jewelcrafting mount.

 

[C.Dark.DN]

EJ doesn't have an affliction or demonology guide anymore?

 

[keeblerdrow]

http://www.noxxic.com/

It's still in beta, but it's quite useful.

 

[C.Dark.DN]

http://www.noxxic.com/

It's still in beta, but it's quite useful.

I keep forgetting to go there, thanks.

 

[Angry Grimace]

EJ doesn't have an affliction or demonology guide anymore?

They do but EJ is so psychotically zealous about moderation that they archive them or something so that each class forum doesn't have three guides for no reason that is apparent to me.

http://elitistjerks.com/f80/t112939-affliction_cataclysm_4_2_release/

http://elitistjerks.com/f80/t110366-demonology_cataclysm_4_2_release/

 

[Miletius]

They do but EJ is so psychotically zealous about moderation that they archive them or something so that each class forum doesn't have three guides for no reason that is apparent to me.

http://elitistjerks.com/f80/t112939-affliction_cataclysm_4_2_release/

http://elitistjerks.com/f80/t110366-demonology_cataclysm_4_2_release/

It was on the main forum as late as last week. I just don't think it's getting any discussion any more, so they archived it? Sounds kind of silly actually.

I like EJ, but the way they set things up does mean that the community that will dare post there to contribute is minuscule. That's why you see things like this happen.

 

[Syphon Filter]

What is the difference between horde and alliance? I honestly can't tell. Also i thought other races cant join the same world but i saw an undead in my blood elf world.

 

[Bisnic]

What is the difference between horde and alliance? I honestly can't tell. Also i thought other races cant join the same world but i saw an undead in my blood elf world.

1)The difference is right there when you create your character? I mean, you got Horde races and Alliance races. Not sure why you can't tell the difference.
2)Every races can go to every worlds. There is a few exceptions like the goblin starting zones though.

 

[Yoshichan]

What is the difference between horde and alliance? I honestly can't tell. Also i thought other races cant join the same world but i saw an undead in my blood elf world.

Blood Elf is in the horde faction

 

[Angry Grimace]

What's really going to jam usage of LFR is the frequency of times you get "3/8 complete" and then you click "decline."

 

[YakiSOBA]

Can someone explain to me what all this talk about "raid ready" and "grind troll dungeon" means in preperation for when I hit 85? I hit 80 last night Thanks!

 

[Rokam]

Hey guys, remember Archaeology?

Seriously, why did they put that thing in the game. Have they even given it a word of mention for 4.3 or Mists? Maybe they should just dissolve it and roll the existing prizes into something else.

Think they said they were going to put a way to focus in on a type, but yeah epic failure. So many hours wasted.

 

[suzu]

Can someone explain to me what all this talk about "raid ready" and "grind troll dungeon" means in preperation for when I hit 85? I hit 80 last night Thanks!

Raid ready is when all/most of your gear is epic/purple (correct me if I'm wrong?). People usually want players that have an a certain average item level (I forget what #) before they will invite you to raid.

Grind troll dungeons means doing the Zul'Gurub and Zul'Aman dungeons (they are troll themed) over and over for gear or valor points. lol.

 

[Angry Grimace]

Can someone explain to me what all this talk about "raid ready" and "grind troll dungeon" means in preperation for when I hit 85? I hit 80 last night Thanks!

It means you no longer progress by gaining levels but by acquiring gear and content tends to be gated based on your gear level so that you won't be ineffective compared to your team mates. What class?

 

[McNei1y]

Raid ready is when all/most of your gear is epic/purple (correct me if I'm wrong?). People usually want players that have an a certain average item level (I forget what #) before they will invite you to raid.

You've pretty much got it correct. From my understanding its whatever item level, it was 345 when doing normal BWD and BOT but I forgot what it was for norm FL... I think its 362?? (Whatever the ilvl from troll dungeons are).

 

[Deputy Moonman]

I'm letting it go.

 

[Rokal]

It means you no longer progress by gaining levels but by acquiring gear and content tends to be gated based on your gear level so that you won't be ineffective compared to your team mates.

This is pretty much all you need to know. Raid-ready just means you have decent enough gear that you'll be able to contribute during raids. It also means having your gear enchanted and gemmed.

You could boil it down to a current ilvl you should ideally hit, but there isn't a need to get that specific. If you've run out of useful gear to acquire from Heroic 5-mans like ZG/ZA, you're raid ready once you enchant/gem said gear.

It can get a little more complicated since you'll want to make sure your hit is high as dps (so that you aren't missing the bosses), and you can reforge your gear to trade useful stats (like hit) for less useful stats on your gear. But the basic description above is really all you need to know until you start raiding regularly.

 

[YakiSOBA]

Thanks! I hit 81 earlier, I'm a mage class by the way.

Cataclysm content is pretty cool so far, shouldn't take me very long to hit 85 I don't think!

 

[FLEABttn]

It was on the main forum as late as last week. I just don't think it's getting any discussion any more, so they archived it? Sounds kind of silly actually.

I like EJ, but the way they set things up does mean that the community that will dare post there to contribute is minuscule. That's why you see things like this happen.

EJ's usefulness I'd say died halfway through WotLK, when I started getting better, more updated, and more detailed theorycraft from the official WoW boards.

 

[Angry Grimace]

Thanks! I hit 81 earlier, I'm a mage class by the way.

Cataclysm content is pretty cool so far, shouldn't take me very long to hit 85 I don't think!

Then you got lucky.

All you need to do in dungeons is use Arcane Blast repeatedly until you get low on mana, then evocate back up to full and then use Arcane Blast until you get four stacks at which point you clear them with Arcane Missiles. These tend to be called "burn phases" (spamming Arcane Blast) and "refractory" phases (doing three or four arcane blasts and then arcane missiles). On trash packs, just spam Arcane Blast until everything is dead and start drinking/eating to recover your mana if you've got the time.

Also, don't roll on cloth gear with spirit.

 

[TheYanger]

I wouldn't say EJ has outlived its usefulness, it's still more mathy and generally correct than most other forums, but the overly moderated nature combined with its seeping into the public wow players consciousness during BC definitely led to it declining greatly. I don't know a high and raider that doesn't still read it, because sometimes new info pops up there or good math and it's very helpful, but most just do things for themselves and can figure it out better at this point. Most wow math isn't that complex, even sims help a lot and are flexible usually, and the moderation style makes it so that you can't actually 'discuss' anything, you're left with the epeen flexers who love to theorycraft and post gigantic swathes of information, and then the idiot peanut gallery who is not very successful but drown out useful conversation with inane drivel. The lack of boss specific strat threads REALLY made it pointless aside from class guides, whereas back in Vanilla it was amazing for that sort of things. The irony of course is that that part was self-imposed as a rule because Gurgthock and them didn't want strat info up until after a few weeks of a boss being out or until it was killed or whatever, which rendered it useless once bosses became killable within a reset or two, and in hindsight it seems so arrogant a gesture from such a bad guild (EJ used to be a lot better, but they were never THAT good. and now they're just another shit 6/7 guild).

anyway, done rambling. EJ still the best place to quickly get up to date on a class, beyond that you need your own intuition/math.

 

[TGMIII]

Any holy priests out there have any words of wisdom/guides I can have a look into. Only ever played tank/dps and while I'm not doing poorly healing right now I'd like to optimise what I'm doing.

 

[Azwethinkweiz]

Any holy priests out there have any words of wisdom/guides I can have a look into. Only ever played tank/dps and while I'm not doing poorly healing right now I'd like to optimise what I'm doing.

I only have a holy priest alt, but it's lvl 85. Anyway, stack spirit until you're comfortable with your mana regen, and stack haste until you're around 12.5%(I believe?). It's whatever percentage that gives you an extra renew tick. After that it's mastery and crit. I don't really know which is better now. It used to be mastery until the crit changes to healing, but I don't know if the crit buff put it ahead of mastery. Someone may be able to answer better.