-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
FrontalMonk
Banned
Ran my first Heroic last night with my guild. As a Blood DK I figured it'd be pretty easy, but some of the mechanics in Auchindoun still made for a wipe and a few close calls. Wiped on the first boss because I didn't get to the shield in time (didn't even see it at first) and things were otherwise stable, but intense the whole way through. Still, I guess that's how it goes when both the tank and the healer both barely hit the 610 ilvl mark. Based on the messages I've seen in here, it sounds like LFR is pretty faceroll for tanking, even at 615. Is this the case, or should I try to get up to 620-630 before running it?
The servers are pretty busy. I've even gotten booted while doing a get-all scan with Auctioneer, more than once.
I've been tanking Iron Docks every day trying for a weapon, and even though it's super easy I've run into people who seem to be trying to MAKE it hard. I pull the first boss into the middle of nowhere with tons of room to dodge fire, but this one group fucking PANICKED and ran halfway through the instance when the arrows fell. Which brought tons of adds. They then bitched at me for 'not clearing all the pulls'. The rest of the dungeon sucked too, took 4 attempts on Skulloc because people could not figure out how to avoid the first round of cannons. I had to duo him from 30% with the rogue.
Today I had a guy who I guess didn't speak english and would NOT stop attacking the blood shield lady on the second boss fight. He'd heal her to full every time, and the fight went on for a good 6 minutes before I told the healer to let him die. After that we kept him dead until the blood mage was down, I battle rezzed him and the rest of the instance was fine. Got the 1h caster mace AND feral staff too, I still only had a 620 weapon. Which is pretty crazy since I've run so many heroics half my stuff is warforged.
your queue will be faster as a dps and you still pretty much just mash buttons and collect loot. Brackenspore is the only thing which requires you to pay attention as a tank but it's not really much to worry about. You're supposed to swap at 3 or 4 stacks of his debuff and I was letting it get up to 9.
heroic dungeons are much harder than LFR. Auchindoun is by far the easiest of them unless you got people who don't use interrupts on imps. But yeah they all seem hard at 610. I'm up to 635 now and my healer can die at the start of a boss fight, and I can still recover.
Today I had a guy who I guess didn't speak english and would NOT stop attacking the blood shield lady on the second boss fight. He'd heal her to full every time, and the fight went on for a good 6 minutes before I told the healer to let him die. After that we kept him dead until the blood mage was down, I battle rezzed him and the rest of the instance was fine. Got the 1h caster mace AND feral staff too, I still only had a 620 weapon. Which is pretty crazy since I've run so many heroics half my stuff is warforged.
your queue will be faster as a dps and you still pretty much just mash buttons and collect loot. Brackenspore is the only thing which requires you to pay attention as a tank but it's not really much to worry about. You're supposed to swap at 3 or 4 stacks of his debuff and I was letting it get up to 9.
heroic dungeons are much harder than LFR. Auchindoun is by far the easiest of them unless you got people who don't use interrupts on imps. But yeah they all seem hard at 610. I'm up to 635 now and my healer can die at the start of a boss fight, and I can still recover.
FrontalMonk
Banned
Seems good. I love playing blood though so I might try LFR as blood, queue as dps, and just shift to unholy presence and see if anyone notices.
And yeah, I know Auchindoun is pretty easy, it was just what came up in the random. It was mainly just intense because everything felt like it was hitting like a mack truck. I got 2 upgrades from there though so I'm spitting distance from LFR queue and more gear.
Pretty obtuse statement by him. Hunters are great and super mobile, we assign our Hunters all of the movement related tasks on bosses.
That's what it's supposed to do. Normal raids are the stepping stone into raiding.
oops ultraxion can 1 shot you lol. I actually got out of the shadow realm just before he did it, on another spell, i thought for sure that was going to be some sort of 1 shot mechanic but didnt know which spell did it
edit: hmm still died even tho i used the button to get out of the shadow realm when he cast the erruption. guess i should read tacts
edit: wait this guide says the eruption is his enrage at 6mins, but hes doing it like 1min in when hes at about 30% :/ wtf?
Was it set to 25? You have to have 3 soakers for Hour of Twilight on 25 or he wipes the raid. 10 only requires 1 soaker, so either burn before Hour of Twilight or set to 10.
Trickster
Member
For what it's worth, I don't really pay attention to stacks of Rot on Brackenspore - Normal - instead, I base the swaps on the breaths. Me and my cotanks have just adopted of a system of s/he takes it up until the first necrotic breath, then I take the next two breaths while the cotank is on the big add, then the cotank takes the boss back and at that point there's generally a blue mushroom up that I can contribute towards spamming with heals. By the next breath for my cotank the big add's about to spawn and I take the boss back and the cycle continues.
Works pretty well.
I was under the impression that that was the goal, but I think either they've missed the tuning or the actual intent is to make the entire raiding environment a bit tougher, because I'm finding new-Normal much more heavygoing than old-Flex. Indeed, to me, new-Normal doesn't feel a million miles away from old-Normal in difficulty. Maybe slightly more generous, but it's closer to old-Normal than old-Flex in my eyes.
Blizzard doesn't even try with tauren helms...
I leveled my priest to 100 as disc. It really wasn't that bad.
Gentleman Jack
Member
Looks like your helmet is vomiting hair.
Seems good. I love playing blood though so I might try LFR as blood, queue as dps, and just shift to unholy presence and see if anyone notices.
And yeah, I know Auchindoun is pretty easy, it was just what came up in the random. It was mainly just intense because everything felt like it was hitting like a mack truck. I got 2 upgrades from there though so I'm spitting distance from LFR queue and more gear.
I returned to the game after a long absence and the mechanics of tanking were very different, so I was really thrown off by how hard everything was hitting. I felt like I had bad healers or I was undergeared.
But once you get a handle on your active defensive abilities you start to realize just how survivable you can be. I got to level 97 before I realized that savage defense (eats 60 rage and give you tons of dodge for 6 seconds) had such a tiny cooldown I could keep it up almost constantly if I was taking tons of damage.
I really do think it's better this way. In Wrath I felt like an impenetrable wall of bear-meat and my healers were probably bored as hell in 5 mans. BC was even sillier - you know how people say they have time to get up and make a sandwich to exaggerate things in video games? I actually did that on Morogrim Tidewalker while bear tanking him. It was a peanut butter, banana and honey sandwich.
Giving me more control over damage reduction is more engaging than just adding arbitrary tank swaps or movement in fights. More MMOs should learn from TERA, tanking was amazing in that game.
Personally I think the new Normal is just like old Flex in difficulty. Perhaps what is making it feel harder is your group being a tad undergeared? Getting decent pre-raid gear during the beginning of an expac always helps a lot.
And Heroic feels tuned well for old Normal too. Mar'gok is hard, like Yanger was saying, but we've gotten him to 5% and only reason we haven't killed him is people derping on mines too much and the fact that we are carrying some undergeared raiders. If we sit the low dps and go down to ~22 people, we kill it. So tuned well, but unforgiving if you do stuff you aren't supposed to, which is fine. I remember Lei Shen and Garrosh on Normal presented my groups with a challenge when we first got to them, each took more than a week to kill (2 night guilds).
FrontalMonk
Banned
You're definitely right. I know my active mitigation ability is Death Strike, and I know the healing/shield it gives is based on how much damage I've recently taken, but it's been an interesting challenge to balance how many stacks I can get of scent of blood before I need to hit a DS...and then that moment of panic when you forgot to rune tap and your DS has like a six second cooldown because you weren't watching what you were doing.
Keep in mind that the first week or two of the first tier is ALWAYS harder because the gear gap is just flat out larger. New Normal feels absolutely the same as old Flex to me. Mar'gok is a cut above, but he is on all of the difficulties. Heroic was harder than expected, but we went in with multiple thirty man raids with alts and friend ranks just BARELY at 630 ilevel, once we cut it to two raids with like 640 ilevel average it was not hard at all, so I think it's tuned appropriately. Similarly Mythic kargath with 20 people in a 655 ilevel range was flat out easy.
CarbonatedFalcon
Member
Magria from Mount Hyjal. Another Spirit Beast conquered.
RPGCrazied
Member
Haven't looked, but what is the ilvl requirement for highmaul LFR?
BlitzEngineer
Member
My experience is the same. My guild underestimated Heroic a bit but once we cut raids and did a full clear of normal on mains it fell back into line with what we expected. And yeah Mythic Kargath is pretty easy.
I suspect 5/7 heroic pugs will be very common within the next few weeks or so. Mar'gok is quite rough on heroic for a pug I think, but overall I think that's a good thing for an end boss. Butcher is kind of a heavy numbers check for pugs, too. Might take a few more weeks of loot for him to be consistent.
RPGCrazied
Member
Bummer, my highest is 605.
Robin64
Member
Have you completed Nagrand? Done the proving ground quest at 100? Crafted anything? Started the legendary questline?
RPGCrazied
Member
Yes, yes, and no. I haven't touched any of the 5 mans. lol Thats the problem I guess. I just want to see the story bits.
Yeah I expect Foundry to have a much smaller wall than Highmaul if just because the average ilevel will be so much higher.
LFR is 615. For both Highmaul and Molten Core.
CarbonatedFalcon
Member
Sulfuras (epic version) GET! That sweet, sweet transmog. Gotta fill out my Firelands paladin lookalike set now. (Though rarity says it was first attempt, it was only the first attempt since installing/configuring rarity to track it).
Marks hunters are just as limited to movement as most other casters if not more. Yeah you can move and dps but you lose up to 8-10% of your overall damage if you do. On a patchwerk style fight Hunters are middle of the pack right now after nerfs, thats standing still, any amount of movement past 3 seconds at a time and they will be even lower than that. All that being said Hunters are still the goto people for fights like Brackenspore for flamethrowers because of disengage and posthaste.
BM and Surv aren't even worth mentioning right now. Garbage dps.
As opposed to the 50%+ for casters >_>
Angry Grimace
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One turns to the other and says "does something taste funny to you?"
The key lesson on Ultraxion soloing (25) is that you literally cannot beat him can kill him before he does Hour of Twilight. This is why 25H is hard to do. You can get him to ~15% or so before he wipes you even if you life through Hour of Twilight. The only reason I need to do 25 is for Gem Clusters, unfortunately.
How was kill speed for mobs? Extremely slow? My priest is 91 and I feel so squishy as shadow. I can't take down a lot rares like I could on other classes. Maybe I'm not playing her right.
It gets a little better once you get the draenor perk that allows shadow word death to give you shadow orbs for faster devourings.
I was in the same place as you. I've never really played shadow, and rares were painful(I had just leveled my shaman as ele, which was considered really underpowered at the time, and I was way more comfortable fighting rares on her). I switched to disc and never looked back. Make sure you use Reflective Shield, Inquisitor, and Smite glyphs.
Unsurprisingly, you're extremely resilient. I stayed in zones as long as I could and made sure to grab any and all nearby exploration items(which is really key to fast leveling this expansion in general). That way I was over-leveled which helped killing speed, although if I were to do it again, I'd still do Nagrand. It's just too important to get the ilevel boost from there so you're not stuck in normal dungeon hell when you hit 100.
Leveling was slow, but not unbearably so. I'd say my priest probably kept pace with my ele shaman pretty well, although I'm finishing 90-100 on my WW monk right now and it's night and day. Regardless, if I leveled another priest, I'd still consider disc the way to go.
Do you have another legendary ring in your bag?
I can't speak from experience, having never levelled as disc or holy, but the killing speed on shadow was upped significantly with WoD, imo. Being able to bank up to 5 orbs now, and having Angelic Feather handy for tons of speed boosts and mobility, it's a breeze.
At least, compared to how it used to be.
With CoP now at 100 and the Mind Harvest glyph, I drop most mobs with instant MB/DP, and a tick or two of Insanity, then SWD. It's beautiful.
I'm sure though, that despite this, it's still faster on other classes....lol.
This. It's why I have two values for Equipped/Total, though they differ by 3 or 4 at least. Having two 680s will do that.
At least, compared to how it used to be.
With CoP now at 100 and the Mind Harvest glyph, I drop most mobs with instant MB/DP, and a tick or two of Insanity, then SWD. It's beautiful.
I'm sure though, that despite this, it's still faster on other classes....lol.
This. It's why I have two values for Equipped/Total, though they differ by 3 or 4 at least. Having two 680s will do that.
Ah, yes, I found it. I overlooked it last time. Does one need to hang onto the old ring once they have the 680?
You can buy them from a vendor right outside Khadgar's tower, so I assume not.
Finally got the transmog sword out of a salvage box. Switched to this new transmog:
Too bad I'm switching mains soon.
Awesome, thanks for the info! I'll switch to disc and give it a try. I do plan on being disc at 100 with this toon, so it might be a good way to get used to all the abilities (even though I'm sure healing is much different to leveling
)Wow, LFR Walled City was... something. I never did LFR in Pandaria. Brackenspore was the only one where anyone really took any damage. Killed it first try, three or four people locked out behind the wall that appears when you pull the boss (one of which was a healer), and I didn't even know you were supposed to heal the mushrooms.
King Gilga
Member
I've been waiting in an Ashran queue for the daily (and the fucking 5k bones for level 3 gladiator sanctum and stupid 200 ashran only cp) over 2 hours now.
This is such bullshit, whoever designed that system should be shot, lucky I got dungeons to grind rep with while I wait.
I also got in exactly while making this post, bitching always gets you what you want.
This is such bullshit, whoever designed that system should be shot, lucky I got dungeons to grind rep with while I wait.
I also got in exactly while making this post, bitching always gets you what you want.
And the ironic thing is some of the pugs I joined with were lacking in positioning and awareness of Brackenspore's fight on normal lol.
Anoregon
The flight plan I just filed with the agency list me, my men, Dr. Pavel here. But only one of you!
My friend got Smoldering Egg and the Throne mount this week. And she only runs on 2 characters. I run on 5 a week and haven't gotten anything since like Onyxia last year.
I also love how Cho'Gall instills his spot as number one troll in WoD. What an awesome character.
I also love how Cho'Gall instills his spot as number one troll in WoD. What an awesome character.
King Gilga
Member
I really regret getting into ashran.
I wish they'd at least let you get bones in bgs, give me some incentive to do them.
Whoever decided on the 200 ashran only conquest points and bones should be shot.
I wish they'd at least let you get bones in bgs, give me some incentive to do them.
Whoever decided on the 200 ashran only conquest points and bones should be shot.