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World of Warcraft |OT4| "Why do we keep playing? It is simply in our nature."

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RPGCrazied

Member
Yeah, it's faction shared. Can't remember if you've added me on Real ID (and if you have, which name do you use on there?). You can add me otherwise: LordWibble#1924. I'll log in and have it running in the background to try to catch you,

Edit: And not worried about your gear for 10m. If you want to do 25m we can try it but we might die, heh.

Yeah. I have you. I saw you playing D3 today. And I'm done playing for today, maybe tomorrow or whenever. I pretty much play everyday.
 

Ceebs

Member
I have a quick question someone may know the answer to. I am able to use my server first titles on my panda shaman, but they are not available for my new monk I just rolled. Is this because they are locked until I hit level 80 or was this just a quirk of the instant 80 thing I got from the Scroll of Resurrection?
 
Yeah. I have you. I saw you playing D3 today. And I'm done playing for today, maybe tomorrow or whenever. I pretty much play everyday.

I'll likely lurk for a bit just in case you change your mind. Figured you want to do it right away tonight since it'll reset tonight allowing you to get the other one starting tomorrow. Up to you. And I think I know who you are on my list now. I really should add more notes to people to help me match names up.

Just got back into Diablo III randomly after not playing it for a year after only beating a couple difficulties previously. I have no issues leaving what I'm doing there as I'm playing solo so if I'm on that and you want to do something just let me know.
 

Berordn

Member
I have a quick question someone may know the answer to. I am able to use my server first titles on my panda shaman, but they are not available for my new monk I just rolled. Is this because they are locked until I hit level 80 or was this just a quirk of the instant 80 thing I got from the Scroll of Resurrection?

(most) Titles are unlocked at the level you originally recieved them at, so the Shaman would've had immediate access to them.
 

vocab

Member
I like how the runic corruption bug is getting fixed, and no dps compensations will probably be given to DK's. Fucking dk's are gonna blow next tier. Hopefully I can get my lock to 90 with some decent gear in time.
 

scoobs

Member
I like how the runic corruption bug is getting fixed, and no dps compensations will probably be given to DK's. Fucking dk's are gonna blow next tier. Hopefully I can get my lock to 90 with some decent gear in time.

ummm pretty positive Lore said theyd compensate for the decrease in dps for unholy by changing unholy pres to pure haste, instead of rune regen and attack speed. Still not as good as pre-bug fix, but this makes blood-tap unholy better
 
Damnit only got 2 secrets of the empire this week. Still haven't done Megaera yet but I'm gonna queue for it a 3rd time to try to get him. Still need 4 more. Got the pet from Dark Animus at least.
 

CassSept

Member
You have no idea how fucking hard that fight was with 3 drakes up while in a combination of Naxx and Sunwell epics still. I swear we spent 5 hours a night wiping non stop.

Rogue T6 2pc bonus was sooo good, I wore it 2 months into Wrath at which point we already had everything on farm status.

Otoh, rogue was so boring in 3.0 :/
 

TimeKillr

Member
I like how the runic corruption bug is getting fixed, and no dps compensations will probably be given to DK's. Fucking dk's are gonna blow next tier. Hopefully I can get my lock to 90 with some decent gear in time.

DKs are already broken so bad...

Frost is just complete shit and doesn't scale at *all*. Going from 496 to 518 as frost gave me a whopping 6k dps increase.

Unholy scales a bit better, but to do relatively good dps you need to do festerblight, which requires specific trinkets and lucky alignment of procs to do good damage, otherwise it's just not competitive with regular rotation...

Blood has initial TPS issues because since hit/exp are very undesirable stats (they're the only tanking class that doesn't require hitting for active mitigation to take effect). If you cap hit/expertise you're gimped and lose a lot of mastery. That weirdo Riposte buff is just weird (parry or dodge? get 20% crit for x seconds! yay! that will fix everything....).

Meanwhile Monks do massive dps while tanking, Pallies are unkillable and can remove every single bad effect on them in existence while being able to heal the raid and have more self-healing than blook DKs do (that's absolutely ridiculous!)... It's just a clusterfuck right now. The only good thing Blood DKs had was massive AoE dps but even then Monks just blow that right out of the water.
 

mclem

Member
Ah, and that's because the debuff that causes you to take more AoE lasts 5 seconds, so if you dance him you don't get multiple stacks and the damage remains relatively low... Interesting. It's a nice possibility.

As mentioned before, though, it really does mean the timings of key events are out of sync with what you might be used to,and that takes a bit of dealing with.
 

mclem

Member
Embarrassing. I can't even do 10 man Sathrion. I get him halfway then all hell breaks lose. He like one shots me or something. :/

Any horde Gaffer want to help me get the twilight drake? :p

There's two mechanics in Sarth+3 that make it kinda awkward to solo:

* When the second drake drops down, Sarth gets a shield which means he takes no more damage - at that point, you're basically screwed.

* when Sarth drops below 30% health (I think it is), any drakes still alive get a *massive* damage buff. You'll probably find it's not Sarth oneshotting you, it's the drake.
 

RPGCrazied

Member
I'll likely lurk for a bit just in case you change your mind. Figured you want to do it right away tonight since it'll reset tonight allowing you to get the other one starting tomorrow. Up to you. And I think I know who you are on my list now. I really should add more notes to people to help me match names up.

Just got back into Diablo III randomly after not playing it for a year after only beating a couple difficulties previously. I have no issues leaving what I'm doing there as I'm playing solo so if I'm on that and you want to do something just let me know.

We can try the 25 man one first, if its to hard I guess do the 10 man. I want both mounts eventually so, doesn't matter to me.
 

Dreamland Boy

Neo Member
I'm not trying to start any arguments and I can't really comment on Death Knights since my highest is 72 I think. But TimeKillr, you make blood DKs sound balanced in this:
Meanwhile Monks do massive dps while tanking, Pallies are unkillable and can remove every single bad effect on them in existence while being able to heal the raid and have more self-healing than blook DKs do (that's absolutely ridiculous!)... It's just a clusterfuck right now. The only good thing Blood DKs had was massive AoE dps but even then Monks just blow that right out of the water.

So you don't have the damage output of a monk, but you have better self healing and survivability?

And you don't have the self healing and survivability of a pally but you have better dps?

As a long time prot warrior main who quit tanking in MoP, that sounds pretty balanced to me. If you have the best dps and survivability you'd be overpowered right?

How is what you've described a clusterfuck?
 
Haven't posted in here in awhile since I've been away from the game, mostly replaced by Dota 2, but I've still kept my EVE sub up.

BUT, this is relevant!:

So I started doing Incursions in EVE Online and it's sort of what I imagine 40-man raids must have been back in the day. Molten Core et al. were probably more complex (and fun) in comparison (and really that's saying something), but it's still sort of neat to see the dynamics of a fully coordinated group that large compared to say, zerging Alterac Valley.

I'm still new to it, and although I'm not complete dead weight, it's definitely a case where no publicly visible DPS meters is a good thing. Although the healing might be more stressful than in WoW between the interface and if you make a mistake and lose someone, there's actual significant monetary damage done to them. It'd be like if you died and lost all your currently equipped gear. Relatively rare occurrence though, and the fleet commander will have everyone chip in to help reimburse the pilot who's ship was lost.
 

vocab

Member
I'm not trying to start any arguments and I can't really comment on Death Knights since my highest is 72 I think. But TimeKillr, you make blood DKs sound balanced in this:

So you don't have the damage output of a monk, but you have better self healing and survivability?

And you don't have the self healing and survivability of a pally but you have better dps?

As a long time prot warrior main who quit tanking in MoP, that sounds pretty balanced to me. If you have the best dps and survivability you'd be overpowered right?

No. Brewmaster Monks have better dps, and survivability, and prot pallies out dps DK's easily. The guild i'm in killed Ra-den last night, and the monk tank out dpsed the whole raid by massive amounts, and he's competing with two 540-550- fire mages.

Blood DK's while fun, and interesting can't even remotely compete on the same level with those two. Their damage is complete garbage. They have a lot going for them in terms of toolset, but they are underpowered in PvE.
 

TimeKillr

Member
I'm not trying to start any arguments and I can't really comment on Death Knights since my highest is 72 I think. But TimeKillr, you make blood DKs sound balanced in this:

So you don't have the damage output of a monk, but you have better self healing and survivability?

And you don't have the self healing and survivability of a pally but you have better dps?

As a long time prot warrior main who quit tanking in MoP, that sounds pretty balanced to me. If you have the best dps and survivability you'd be overpowered right?

How is what you've described a clusterfuck?

It's basically how Vocab has said it:

No. Brewmaster Monks have better dps, and survivability, and prot pallies out dps DK's easily. The guild i'm in killed Ra-den last night, and the monk tank out dpsed the whole raid by massive amounts, and he's competing with two 540-550- fire mages.

Blood DK's while fun, and interesting can't even remotely compete on the same level with those two. Their damage is complete garbage. They have a lot going for them in terms of toolset, but they are underpowered in PvE.

The only case where Blood's dps is high is in high vengeance, aoe situations (like Tortos, where I'm the bat tank, and I'm typically 1st or 2nd DPS, but that's because I'm tanking a ton of bats and have very high vengeance). Otherwise my dps is pretty low (around 50k) on bosses, partly because due to vengeance you can't go balls out trying to dps as much as you can during tank switches. Vengeance is a great idea in theory, but the big problem is it royally fucks up tank switches - I'm happy that now they buffed Taunt so that you get increased threat after a Taunt, and I'm hoping it will be enough, because as it is when we do a tank switch the tank that isn't currently tanking has to FULLY STOP doing anything but auto-attacking lest you steal aggro, which is a big issue. If you're playing with a Monk, that isn't an issue though (their threat output is massive and they have the ONLY "increased threat" ability with their kegs), but they will have to stop doing anything when you grab aggro off them.

Tanks are pretty unbalanced right now. Prot Pallies and Monks are at the top of the food chain by a lot due to their mitigation and dps being incredibly high, while Blood DKs are weak due to low DPS, low utility and weird active mitigation and warriors are stuck with low DPS. I don't know how Bears are, though.

Monks have incredibly good mitigation through their Stagger mechanic, which lets them just ignore a HUGE amount of physical damage, and Guard which reduces all incoming damage. It's just ridiculous. Not to mention gearing is stupidly simple for them (you just use DPS gear!)
 

FLEABttn

Banned
Molten Core et al. were probably more complex (and fun) in comparison (and really that's saying something), but it's still sort of neat to see the dynamics of a fully coordinated group that large compared to say, zerging Alterac Valley.

It depends on a persons experience. 40 man raiding had a complexity that 10 man can't really compare to (but 25 man generally can), but I preferred the smaller group dynamics of the 10 man. I was the "rogue lead" in vanilla in one guild and it was a PITA to deal with all the crap that popped up constantly.

The organization though was certainly more interesting than zerging AV, but back when MC was hot content, AV wasn't really a zerg either. 24 hour AV was really something.
 
It depends on a persons experience. 40 man raiding had a complexity that 10 man can't really compare to (but 25 man generally can), but I preferred the smaller group dynamics of the 10 man. I was the "rogue lead" in vanilla in one guild and it was a PITA to deal with all the crap that popped up constantly.

The organization though was certainly more interesting than zerging AV, but back when MC was hot content, AV wasn't really a zerg either. 24 hour AV was really something.

I was referring more to modern AV, I never got to play the old version ;_; Maybe I should have just said BGs in general. AV is so fucked up though compared to what it once was (or at least was set up to be.) It's like Whose Line now: the objectives don't matter.

You are right that the complexity difference between 25 people and 40 isn't nearly as discernible as the gap between 10 and 25. The leadership structure in a 25-man raid is already setup so that accommodating 15 more people hardly makes a difference.

There are 10 and 20-man incursions, but I've only done the ones that require 40-odd people so far.

It would be kinda cool if Blizz made another big 40 raid.

The MoP world bosses do this to an effect, but it definitely would be an interesting experiment to put in a big 40-man raid with at least a few bosses as a side option one tier and see how people adjust to the format. Strategic guild coalitions and whatnot (if the content was actually tuned to be challenging.)
 

I'm an expert

Formerly worldrevolution. The only reason I am nice to anyone else is to avoid being banned.
Old AV was meant to be a quest zone and a pvp zone in one. It was an extremely enjoyable zone when bgs weren't cross server as you would really get to know players on both factions and there was a pride to the struggle of winning a 2-3 day long AV. However, from a purely pvp perspective, it was pretty awful (it basically still is, your honor comes from towers/bosses more than pvp). But, imo, it's still the fastest honor grind by far, even for a loss.

I wish we could still summon the elementals/wolves/rams though. =/
 

ampere

Member
DKs are already broken so bad...

Frost is just complete shit and doesn't scale at *all*. Going from 496 to 518 as frost gave me a whopping 6k dps increase.

Unholy scales a bit better, but to do relatively good dps you need to do festerblight, which requires specific trinkets and lucky alignment of procs to do good damage, otherwise it's just not competitive with regular rotation...

Have you considered that you might just not be playing as well as you could be? People love to say "X class scales horribly", but honestly the game is more balanced now than it has ever been and I think you're exaggerating.

Blood has initial TPS issues because since hit/exp are very undesirable stats (they're the only tanking class that doesn't require hitting for active mitigation to take effect). If you cap hit/expertise you're gimped and lose a lot of mastery. That weirdo Riposte buff is just weird (parry or dodge? get 20% crit for x seconds! yay! that will fix everything....).

Actually Blood DKs should be getting 7.5% hit and 7.5% expertise. You don't need any more expertise since Death Strike, Rune Strike can't be parried and Outbreak uses spell hit which is capped at 15%. Rune Strike CAN miss and is a big part of Blood DK resource regeneration, hence the 7.5% hit. So no tanking class "doesn't require hitting" for resource generation. Hit and expertise are also the #1 stats for tank dps. If you don't have those capped and complain about your dps... it's your fault.

Also, Riposte is going to have around 100% uptime while you are tanking (assuming the mob melees and isn't Lei Shi), 20% crit is a TON of dps.

If you have Blood threat issues, glyph DRW and get hit to 7.5% and expertise to at least 7.5%. If you still have threat issues you are doing something else wrong.

Tank balance should be a lot better in 5.4.

Blood DKs getting crit buff, Prot Warriors getting a crit buff and crits give them rage, Guardian Druids are getting an additional 20% stamina for bear form, Prot Paladins are losing Battle Healer unless they forgo SoI self healing, Brewmasters are getting an 18% Keg Smash nerf.

I play a Brewmaster and have alts for all tank classes, I think the changes are looking good. Sucks to get nerfed, but Brewmaster damage is OP right now.
 
So I've got a question for some people in this thread. I've been playing WoW on and off for a few years now and for the entirety of that time I've just been questing and running random dungeons with my balance/resto druid. I'm about to hit the level cap for the first time, and while I'll probably keep questing and going through those motions, I feel like there's a lot of stuff in this game I haven't experienced. My armor isn't that great, and I've never gotten my feet wet with PvP or raids to anything along those lines.

So I guess my question is, for someone who plays this game fairly casually by himself for a few hours a week, what would you recommend I do to get some more out of this game once I hit 90? Thanks!
 

mclem

Member
So I guess my question is, for someone who plays this game fairly casually by himself for a few hours a week, what would you recommend I do to get some more out of this game once I hit 90? Thanks!

I can only really answer on the raiding side, but from that: you've got two choices, depending on how much effort you're able to put in.

Investigate LFR. That's the absolute entry level of raiding. You might need to do a bit of prepwork to actually access it, to get your gear itemlevel up to the required entry point. It's extremely low-commitment; it's handled just like a very large dungeon. Rewards are handed out at random, rather than rolls being required. It's fun to do, but I'd suggest that it's not terribly rewarding from a playability standpoint for a good player; rather simple to just breeze through.

Join a raiding guild. The challenging option - some guilds are very demanding about how you push yourself, and it might be difficult to find one that's willing to work with a fresh 90 without previous raid experience (for what it's worth, *we* would, there are certainly guilds out there; but many just want to work with the most experienced players). More rewarding than LFR, but with a workload and a requirement to keep to schedule you may not be able to operate under

There is a third compromise option, although I'm not sure how realistically viable it is at this stage: Attempt the legendary quest. That's been a long quest with components added in every patch, giving an extremely good item at the end of each stage. It'll give you a whistle-stop tour of most of the varieties of gameplay - most parts are carried out in raids (normal and LFR are equally important), but there's also PvP aspects, external questing aspects, and stuff to lead you to each patch's new content.


(Oh, one final point: If you want to see as much content as possible, dive into the Golden Lotus daily hub as soon as possible; there's a time limit on that)
 

TimeKillr

Member
Have you considered that you might just not be playing as well as you could be? People love to say "X class scales horribly", but honestly the game is more balanced now than it has ever been and I think you're exaggerating.

Oh I know the game's been more balanced now than it's ever been, more or less.

I'm just stating what the data's backing: Frost DK is scaling really, *really* bad. It went from being very competitive (I don't say top, I say competitive, there's a huge difference) in T14 and now in T15 it's bottom of the barrel with Arms Warrior. You get a lot more ilvl and your dps barely increases - it's the same that's happening with Fire Mages. Once you get to a certain crit threshold, you're doing massive, *massive* DPS. Before that, you're gimped. The same is happening with frost DKs right now - haste, their primary stat, doesn't scale well at high levels, so your DPS increase doesn't go that high (str is good for Frost but not as good as haste for 2h. For DW you get mastery, which helps is a bit better, but it still is too low).

Actually Blood DKs should be getting 7.5% hit and 7.5% expertise. You don't need any more expertise since Death Strike, Rune Strike can't be parried and Outbreak uses spell hit which is capped at 15%. Rune Strike CAN miss and is a big part of Blood DK resource regeneration, hence the 7.5% hit. So no tanking class "doesn't require hitting" for resource generation. Hit and expertise are also the #1 stats for tank dps. If you don't have those capped and complain about your dps... it's your fault.

Also, Riposte is going to have around 100% uptime while you are tanking (assuming the mob melees and isn't Lei Shi), 20% crit is a TON of dps.

If you have Blood threat issues, glyph DRW and get hit to 7.5% and expertise to at least 7.5%. If you still have threat issues you are doing something else wrong.

Tank balance should be a lot better in 5.4.

Blood DKs getting crit buff, Prot Warriors getting a crit buff and crits give them rage, Guardian Druids are getting an additional 20% stamina for bear form, Prot Paladins are losing Battle Healer unless they forgo SoI self healing, Brewmasters are getting an 18% Keg Smash nerf.

I play a Brewmaster and have alts for all tank classes, I think the changes are looking good. Sucks to get nerfed, but Brewmaster damage is OP right now.

All the data I've seen doesn't suggest capping hit and getting more exp. Seriously. The only thing you lack from not being hit capped is your RS *sometimes* missing. It's a small hit to resource regen, but it's not *that* big of a hit. It's certainly not enough so that it's worth it, imo. And from every piece of data I've read, the problem is that if you do cap hit, you run into other issues with mitigation, so while you might make your rune regen a little bit more efficient, you're losing out on mastery/parry/dodge/sta which just isn't worth it. That's the thing - if being hit capped means you get what, at best 3 more DS during a fight, it's definitely not worth it.

Let's look at it this way. 20% crit is essentially a 10% DPS increase. It's definitely nice, but it won't make everything magically better all of a sudden. If it has 100% uptime, I can expect to do what, 5k more dps on a fight? That's all it is, though, more DPS, which is a problem but it's not the root of the problem.

Glyphed DRW is going to be a little bit better in 5.4, but as it is now DRW is a shitty, *SHITTY* cooldown for threat, because it requires you to pool your runic like crazy, which is the main source of threat off a tank swap (spamming RS). When it doesn't have a runic cost, sure, it's very helpful. The only time where you truly have threat problems with the DPSers is on initial aggro - we have a fire mage who goes batshit insane during pulls and we have to be super careful because when all his procs line up he does MASSIVE damage. After that the problem isn't dps out-threating us, it's the other tank who has to sit there and do jack shit. My Warrior co-tank is hit/exp capped and I still have to be careful because it takes a little while for vengeance to drop off.
 

cdyhybrid

Member
Oh I know the game's been more balanced now than it's ever been, more or less.

I'm just stating what the data's backing: Frost DK is scaling really, *really* bad. It went from being very competitive (I don't say top, I say competitive, there's a huge difference) in T14 and now in T15 it's bottom of the barrel with Arms Warrior. You get a lot more ilvl and your dps barely increases - it's the same that's happening with Fire Mages. Once you get to a certain crit threshold, you're doing massive, *massive* DPS. Before that, you're gimped. The same is happening with frost DKs right now - haste, their primary stat, doesn't scale well at high levels, so your DPS increase doesn't go that high (str is good for Frost but not as good as haste for 2h. For DW you get mastery, which helps is a bit better, but it still is too low).



All the data I've seen doesn't suggest capping hit and getting more exp. Seriously. The only thing you lack from not being hit capped is your RS *sometimes* missing. It's a small hit to resource regen, but it's not *that* big of a hit. It's certainly not enough so that it's worth it, imo. And from every piece of data I've read, the problem is that if you do cap hit, you run into other issues with mitigation, so while you might make your rune regen a little bit more efficient, you're losing out on mastery/parry/dodge/sta which just isn't worth it. That's the thing - if being hit capped means you get what, at best 3 more DS during a fight, it's definitely not worth it.

Let's look at it this way. 20% crit is essentially a 10% DPS increase. It's definitely nice, but it won't make everything magically better all of a sudden. If it has 100% uptime, I can expect to do what, 5k more dps on a fight? That's all it is, though, more DPS, which is a problem but it's not the root of the problem.

Glyphed DRW is going to be a little bit better in 5.4, but as it is now DRW is a shitty, *SHITTY* cooldown for threat, because it requires you to pool your runic like crazy, which is the main source of threat off a tank swap (spamming RS). When it doesn't have a runic cost, sure, it's very helpful. The only time where you truly have threat problems with the DPSers is on initial aggro - we have a fire mage who goes batshit insane during pulls and we have to be super careful because when all his procs line up he does MASSIVE damage. After that the problem isn't dps out-threating us, it's the other tank who has to sit there and do jack shit. My Warrior co-tank is hit/exp capped and I still have to be careful because it takes a little while for vengeance to drop off.

Wat. Both EJ and Icy Veins suggest capping hit/exp because it's a negligible mitigation loss for a significant DPS increase.
 

Angry Grimace

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
It depends on a persons experience. 40 man raiding had a complexity that 10 man can't really compare to (but 25 man generally can), but I preferred the smaller group dynamics of the 10 man. I was the "rogue lead" in vanilla in one guild and it was a PITA to deal with all the crap that popped up constantly.

The organization though was certainly more interesting than zerging AV, but back when MC was hot content, AV wasn't really a zerg either. 24 hour AV was really something.

Is this really true though? Looking at the mechanics of 40 man raids, the complexity seems to be mostly just herding cats.
 
I can only really answer on the raiding side, but from that: you've got two choices, depending on how much effort you're able to put in.

Investigate LFR. That's the absolute entry level of raiding. You might need to do a bit of prepwork to actually access it, to get your gear itemlevel up to the required entry point. It's extremely low-commitment; it's handled just like a very large dungeon. Rewards are handed out at random, rather than rolls being required. It's fun to do, but I'd suggest that it's not terribly rewarding from a playability standpoint for a good player; rather simple to just breeze through.

Join a raiding guild. The challenging option - some guilds are very demanding about how you push yourself, and it might be difficult to find one that's willing to work with a fresh 90 without previous raid experience (for what it's worth, *we* would, there are certainly guilds out there; but many just want to work with the most experienced players). More rewarding than LFR, but with a workload and a requirement to keep to schedule you may not be able to operate under

There is a third compromise option, although I'm not sure how realistically viable it is at this stage: Attempt the legendary quest. That's been a long quest with components added in every patch, giving an extremely good item at the end of each stage. It'll give you a whistle-stop tour of most of the varieties of gameplay - most parts are carried out in raids (normal and LFR are equally important), but there's also PvP aspects, external questing aspects, and stuff to lead you to each patch's new content.


(Oh, one final point: If you want to see as much content as possible, dive into the Golden Lotus daily hub as soon as possible; there's a time limit on that)

Awesome, thanks for the response. I'll look into that when I get home later. I guess my question now is I don't really feel like my gear is up to snuff. Will that come about as I begin to raid, or should I go about looking to complete certain sets, and if so, how do I go about doing that?
 
To cap valor for the week I queued for ToES because it seemed like it'd be a quick run. I got in and they were at the last boss already so that seemed perfect. Also, no Determination stacks so apparently someone simply ditched giving me my spot. Seems good. One tank does ask in chat if there's anything to know and was told to just stand in the circle and keep aggro. I just DPS but that seemed easy enough instructions.

So we wipe on the first attempt. I never really knew the mechanics that don't pertain to me but it seems that when no one is in the circle in front of the boss that cone shield thing for the raid isn't in place. One tank had died right away somehow and the other was whisked off to the second platform. Everyone dies.

Second attempt. Again a tank dies and things scatter. Fear is hitting everyone and while the one tank does his best again it just goes everywhere. I got battle rezzed by someone, likely due to being the highest DPS by a fair margin? No way to zerg the boss down in these conditions.

And this is where things got silly for me. Third attempt. I've now skimmed the dungeon journal to see what tanks deal with. We start again and this time both tanks are staying alive. But AGAIN the shield is going down as the pally tank is missing. He's there somewhere but he's not getting aggro and he's not in front of the boss. Once the druid tank is whisked away at around 85-90% boss health I see DPS and healers starting to become the focus. I run into the circle to put up the shield and hope to stay alive. The healers do a great job but it seems I take massive hits following the Breath of Fear attack. I'm assuming this is normal since generally the hits were soft up to then but that would drop me to around 10%. I notice the pattern and save my damage mitigation but eventually die with the boss around 50%. Again I'm rezzed so I continue to tanking and get better at timing self heals and mitigations to follow after the Breath when I get hit really hard. We end up actually beating the boss. Recount shows I took 13m damage. Next closest was the druid tank with 2.5m damage taken. Our second tank was fourth with 2m damage taken. I honestly have no idea how any of that happened.

Anyhow, it was really exciting and neat to tank again but shamans really shouldn't be tanking raid bosses, even if it's LFR.Thankfully the mechanics were fairly simple and I didn't notice any need for tank swaps to worry about going rockbiter and actively taunting. Oh, and I was top DPS and sixth healer (so I somehow did better than someone specced for healing?). I think I get LFR MVP for the night.

Edit:
Awesome, thanks for the response. I'll look into that when I get home later. I guess my question now is I don't really feel like my gear is up to snuff. Will that come about as I begin to raid, or should I go about looking to complete certain sets, and if so, how do I go about doing that?

This is what most people use to work on gearing up for current content: http://www.icy-veins.com/forums/topic/2022-catching-up-to-53/

Specifically the section down the page with the header "Gearing for Throne of Thunder." Mainly what you'll be doing is gearing up enough to hit 460 to get into the first wings of LFR and from there getting gear in LFR (and other places) to continue improving your ilvl to get into the harder LFRs that drop better gear all the way up to current content.
 

FLEABttn

Banned
Is this really true though? Looking at the mechanics of 40 man raids, the complexity seems to be mostly just herding cats.

From the context of what he was saying was complex, I assume he meant the dealing with large groups of people and not the fight mechanics themselves being complex. I would generally agree with your statement.
 

Bisnic

Really Really Exciting Member!
Awesome, thanks for the response. I'll look into that when I get home later. I guess my question now is I don't really feel like my gear is up to snuff. Will that come about as I begin to raid, or should I go about looking to complete certain sets, and if so, how do I go about doing that?



I'd suggest farming some lvl 90 mobs in the Barrens if you're still in greens/blues. Most of them have a (low) chance to drop purple items that can be turned into 489 epics. If you're really unlucky, you could even buy them from a vendor near Razor Hill in Durotar that will require you to farm some items. There is also an easy quest that gives 502 boots, i think it starts in your main faction's shrine in the Valley and a 522 necklace from the Shado-Pan Assault faction that only require neutral and 1250 valor points.

You could also buy some blue PVP items on the AH to "cheat" the queueing system a little, as long as they're not too expensive, they are of better item lvl than the blues you'll get from quests, justice points or even heroics.

After that, its mostly a question of doing LFRs, capping your weekly 1000 valor points and look for some groups that might be killing world bosses.
 

Tarazet

Member
To cap valor for the week I queued for ToES because it seemed like it'd be a quick run. I got in and they were at the last boss already so that seemed perfect. Also, no Determination stacks so apparently someone simply ditched giving me my spot. Seems good. One tank does ask in chat if there's anything to know and was told to just stand in the circle and keep aggro. I just DPS but that seemed easy enough instructions.

So we wipe on the first attempt. I never really knew the mechanics that don't pertain to me but it seems that when no one is in the circle in front of the boss that cone shield thing for the raid isn't in place. One tank had died right away somehow and the other was whisked off to the second platform. Everyone dies.

Second attempt. Again a tank dies and things scatter. Fear is hitting everyone and while the one tank does his best again it just goes everywhere. I got battle rezzed by someone, likely due to being the highest DPS by a fair margin? No way to zerg the boss down in these conditions.

And this is where things got silly for me. Third attempt. I've now skimmed the dungeon journal to see what tanks deal with. We start again and this time both tanks are staying alive. But AGAIN the shield is going down as the pally tank is missing. He's there somewhere but he's not getting aggro and he's not in front of the boss. Once the druid tank is whisked away at around 85-90% boss health I see DPS and healers starting to become the focus. I run into the circle to put up the shield and hope to stay alive. The healers do a great job but it seems I take massive hits following the Breath of Fear attack. I'm assuming this is normal since generally the hits were soft up to then but that would drop me to around 10%. I notice the pattern and save my damage mitigation but eventually die with the boss around 50%. Again I'm rezzed so I continue to tanking and get better at timing self heals and mitigations to follow after the Breath when I get hit really hard. We end up actually beating the boss. Recount shows I took 13m damage. Next closest was the druid tank with 2.5m damage taken. Our second tank was fourth with 2m damage taken. I honestly have no idea how any of that happened.

Anyhow, it was really exciting and neat to tank again but shamans really shouldn't be tanking raid bosses, even if it's LFR.Thankfully the mechanics were fairly simple and I didn't notice any need for tank swaps to worry about going rockbiter and actively taunting. Oh, and I was top DPS and sixth healer (so I somehow did better than someone specced for healing?). I think I get LFR MVP for the night.

On Sha of Fear the main thing the tanks have to worry about (other than being in the circle and booting anyone else who isn't a tank out of it) is Thrash. If you remember the old Windfury procs - that's essentially what he does. Every fourth attack he does 3 attacks at once. Not too many tanks know how to watch swing timers and keep active mitigation up at the right time on LFR.
 

I'm an expert

Formerly worldrevolution. The only reason I am nice to anyone else is to avoid being banned.
I like to save my (pre-nerf) Lifegiving Gem for just the right time.
 

TimeKillr

Member
Wat. Both EJ and Icy Veins suggest capping hit/exp because it's a negligible mitigation loss for a significant DPS increase.

What? EJ and Icy Veins haven't suggested capping hit/exp in a while. Hell, the default AskMrRobot template doesn't even use hit/exp.

Here's what AskMrRobot's priority for stats is: Mastery > Stam > Str > Parry=Dodge > Exp/Hit. it's suggesting I reforge *all* my hit/exp into Mastery whenever available, and otherwise it's going into Parry or Dodge.

EJ had a huge thing about it last year too, with the verdict being that Hit/Exp are pretty much completely useless. Right now their guide lists both venues are viable, but their stat priority is the exact same.

The only site which clearly says "hit/exp cap" is Wow-Heroes, and I'm not sure I trust them that much.

I mean I can give it a shot, but I highly doubt it'll be worthwhile. Just going through it, to cap hit/exp, I have to lose 7% avoidance. I don't think it's worth it, honestly (especially with the buff we'll have in 5.4 with Riposte).
 
On Sha of Fear the main thing the tanks have to worry about (other than being in the circle and booting anyone else who isn't a tank out of it) is Thrash. If you remember the old Windfury procs - that's essentially what he does. Every fourth attack he does 3 attacks at once. Not too many tanks know how to watch swing timers and keep active mitigation up at the right time on LFR.

I looked up the dungeon journal today and saw that was what was hitting me so hard. And it just seemed like it was timed up to always be after a Breath of Fear so that's when I aimed to pop heals and damage mitigation to stay alive. I gave big thanks to the healer as well since they had a real challenge keeping me up. I think we're just lucky I was never pulled away to the second platform while I tanked. The druid tank did try to take aggro from me but was mostly unsuccessful, even when I stopped attacking. Somehow I was still going over him on aggro and kept taking the attention. Could be that they weren't always properly in the circle of light, which I believe holds precedence in terms of aggro tables over someone standing outside it. But now we know it's possible to single shaman tank Sha of Fear, heh.
 

CassSept

Member
So they are mentioning ilvl squish again and I found it funny when I got back to the original post. This number did indeed look ludicrous, but we are oh so close to them. Heroic SoO items are ilvl 566 and are already breaking 2k barrier on primary stats indeed, with thunderforged/bloodforged/whateverforged that's 572 and with upgrades 580. Darn.

This problem is really complicated and has a lot of repercussions. Squishing it in that way would kill soloing of old content unless they rebalanced prior content which sounds like an awful waste of time.

I think they should follow more TBC-early WotLK model with moderate increases within the expansions themselves. Things didn't go that cray-cray until mid WotLK (3.2 to be exact) when they went bonkers with ilevels and only made it worse with Cata where first quests gave greens that were superior to LK25hc loot. At least with the first two expansions your old epics were of some use. Cata went full retard and by the time you reached 85 first level of content reached ilvl of 359. This is where Heroic Dragon Soul should have peaked, not the first boss you come across.

I wonder how they will approach the problem.. if they will at all, instead of leaving it again for another time.
 

RPGCrazied

Member
Finally a ToT weapon drops, but not the one I want. :( Hand of the Dark Animus. Its a mace, and boy is it ugly. Oh well, least its an upgrade. lol
 

Eklipsis

Member
I just hate that with new content no one does any of the older raid ie: firelands, bastion of twilight; at least on my server (draka) . Also why doesn't the dungeon journal so the older raids? Is that something they are working on or am I destin to browse wowhead every time I look for gear?
 

Clipse

Member
I just hate that with new content no one does any of the older raids at least on my server (draka) . Also why doesn't the dungeon journal so the older raids? Is that something they are working on or am I destin to browse wowhead every time I look for gear?
Get the AtlasLoot add-on. Also, check out OpenRaid if you want to do the older raids.
 

CassSept

Member
I just hate that with new content no one does any of the older raids at least on my server (draka) . Also why doesn't the dungeon journal so the older raids? Is that something they are working on or am I destin to browse wowhead every time I look for gear?

It doesn't have older raids because it was a new feature in 4.2 that included only Cata dungeons/raids. They are updating it from time to time. I believe boss skills from WotLK were only added in 5.2 or somewhere around it. Old raids are coming some time too for sure, maybe in 6.0 or something. It's getting upgraded gradually as they probably don't want to waste too much time for it.
 

Kintaro

Worships the porcelain goddess
Alrighty. I have some add ons and having some fun with my Panda Rogue (fun contrast). What sort of time frame would I be looking at to hit 90? Provided I at least play a couple of hours a day (more on days off)? Quicker to level through dungeon finder or area questing?
 

I'm an expert

Formerly worldrevolution. The only reason I am nice to anyone else is to avoid being banned.
^^^ok yeah I've just started playing again after almost two years off so 5.3 had already come out before I started up again





OK I'll have to try that. I have mogit but I'm not a big fan

wut

mogit is godlike

for looking at models, I of course wowhead where to get the item
 

sqwarlock

Member
Alrighty. I have some add ons and having some fun with my Panda Rogue (fun contrast). What sort of time frame would I be looking at to hit 90? Provided I at least play a couple of hours a day (more on days off)? Quicker to level through dungeon finder or area questing?

With full heirlooms I went 1-90 in under 5 days /played on my priest.
 
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