World of Warcraft encore

[Weak With The Dawn]

Yes - lacerate. Though they only use it for single or dual targets. But it's in general a fairly high priority, since a bleed increases the damage done by our biggest threat move by 20%.

You just made my day :-). I'd be combat but for anything over 1-2 targets anyway, but at least now I can maximize my mut spec (when the bear isn't boomkin at least). WTB more classes with bleeds.

[Nathanael]

I've got to say that the waves in Halls of Reflection are a real pain to pick up as a DK tank. I don't know about other classes, but after trying it a few times Tuesday night, my friend and I both went as dps last night because I didn't relish doing it as a tank again.

Our tank ended up being another DK, and after wiping a few times, we finally decided to dual-tank it, with me taking right and him taking left, and we finally managed to get them down.

Haven't tried ICC yet, but word on EJ is that we seem to feel weak there too. All I know is I'm glad I put in the effort to put together a decent dps set during 3.2.

[Angeleyes]

Our tank ended up being another DK, and after wiping a few times, we finally decided to dual-tank it, with me taking right and him taking left, and we finally managed to get them down.

Yes, I tried that Tuesday night only to fail pretty hard. We wiped twice and gave up rather than look at the strategy... Apparently standing in the center of the room is wrong on that one, rather waiting in the hall is the optimal choice. I suppose the fact that we got to wave 7 is a testament to the tank that we had and my leet healing skills. (Power Infused Resurrection between waves FTW)

I stepped out of the game for the quarter at school and stepping back in is daunting. My guild has moved on without me, and rightly so, but it still feels sad being benched for raids : /. I can't decide if I should spend my month back with a switch from offspec = Disc/PVP to Shadow and acquiring a DPS set, or leveling my level 73 Shaman to 80 and getting him mildly geared. Thoughts?

[Mack Kilimaro]

Well, I kind of love the new random dungeon system so far. Being a holy/prot paladin I haven't had to wait more than 15 seconds to get a group to pop up since I can select both tank and healing. It keeps making me tank and then people who don't know me get mad when I ask to roll on healing gear. So that part kind of sucks. Amazingly, I ran about 7 random heroics so far and only one of them did I really have a ridiculous player sucking it up. It threw me randomly into AN and this warlock got locked out of the Anub'arak area. He thought he could stand on the web and DPS, apparently.

The most surprising thing, though, was queuing up for the new heroics specifically and still getting good groups. The ICC 5 mans seem to be rather intense for healing and even being thrown in with random schmucks, I think we only wiped one time, on Ick in Pit of Saron because I forgot to tell people about the pursuit thing. Halls of Reflection must have made that healer want to cry. I think the later trash waves are harder than the 2nd boss and the escape event. Those rogues... holy hell.

[PhelanArcetus]

Also: hit up ICC 10 last night and got bugged to all hell. We entered the first room and I failed to notice the traps that I could disarm, so we spawned to giant skeletons who proceeded to cleave the raid to bits. This would not have been so bad except that for some reason every time our Mage popped a CD the entire room would aggro to him. As in, all mobs in the back and in the corners even though we were tanking the skeletons at the front. We had him hold off at one point and the room never aggroed but our healers failed to avoid the 8 second silence.

We'll be back on Friday and hopefully my disarm trap will work, I hear it's been buggy.

There's traps? Our rogue didn't notice, though this doesn't surprise me in the least. I'll make the point tonight since I'm sure it all respawned. We had the same problem with the mage; Mirror Image seems to be exceedingly dumb, to the point of going and attacking things I'm sure were out of range. After two wipes (one of which included "I won't hit it this time" right before hitting it), he took it off his bars until the room was done.

[Stego]

That's horrible, Stego. Did they get the guild bank, or were you deactivated for your break? Were you not using an authenticator? Best of luck getting everything back!

They got the bank pretty good.

I don't use an authenticator because my son, in another city, uses my account. When I get everything back, I'll use the authenticator. I've had it sitting in a drawer for a year. :P

[Shryke]

I've got to say that the waves in Halls of Reflection are a real pain to pick up as a DK tank. I don't know about other classes, but after trying it a few times Tuesday night, my friend and I both went as dps last night because I didn't relish doing it as a tank again.

Our tank ended up being another DK, and after wiping a few times, we finally decided to dual-tank it, with me taking right and him taking left, and we finally managed to get them down.

Haven't tried ICC yet, but word on EJ is that we seem to feel weak there too. All I know is I'm glad I put in the effort to put together a decent dps set during 3.2.

Halls of Reflection is basically specifically designed to fuck over DK tanks by hitting us, repeatedly, for every pull in the instance, where our big weakness is.

Also, the best place to stand for the first bit is right BEHIND one of the bosses. Tuck yourself in behind the corner and LOS everything to you. Then drop AoE at the opening and you can usually pick up everything.

[emberling]

Huh. Every time I've done HoR as DPS - with good guildy warrior and druid tanks - I've found that those tanks struggle to get the mobs in a nice clump as well, and that I regularly have to death grip something and strangulate/arcane torrent something else to help out. I think it's just a bitch for everyone. As far as aggro/positioning is concerned, anyway. Not sure on the incoming damage; it wasn't on my list of things to pay attention to.

And yes, we went in the cubby on the left from the entrance where the first boss hangs out. It just seemed we couldn't reliably LoS everyone because one or the other side would be able to attack a pet or something that wasn't able to fully get in the corner.

Is it normal for random dungeon to have a ridiculous amount of declined/AFK queues? I literally had six in a row fail because one person declined. I can't imagine how bad that would have been if I'd been on a DPS at the time; a mage in a group that actually managed to form commented that he'd been queued for 30 minutes. (This is for a low level character, I imagine they're faster at 80.)

Also, new scourge strike is just... wow. Long story short: its crits can crit. Upwards of 15K with my Naxx gear. And it's practically spammable. Doing so can be very unforgiving of lag and movement, though, because you have to refresh diseases at 1 second remaining and if they fall off you lose an SS.

[GoN]

They got the bank pretty good.

I don't use an authenticator because my son, in another city, uses my account. When I get everything back, I'll use the authenticator. I've had it sitting in a drawer for a year. :P

Well, I'll keep my fingers crossed that you get everything back. The few people I know recently who've gotten hacked have been pretty lucky in their restores. :grouphug:

My peeps are all loving the LFG tool. I've only had one bad group out of it so far, and even that we finished the instance alright. No drama so far, people seem to just want to efficiently farm badges, so its okay by me.

[TerraPrime]

Well, the new LFG system doesn't think my new pally is ready for any heroics, even though I've run two heroics as dps and while I was lowest in dps of the 3, I was only 20% or so lower. So I don't know how I'm going to be able to pull random groups to go do heroics at this point. The only method left to me to improve my gear would be to grind reputation to get blue vendor gear, or buy crafted purples. That or join a guild to get some regular runs.

[Inigima]

Well, the new LFG system doesn't think my new pally is ready for any heroics, even though I've run two heroics as dps and while I was lowest in dps of the 3, I was only 20% or so lower. So I don't know how I'm going to be able to pull random groups to go do heroics at this point. The only method left to me to improve my gear would be to grind reputation to get blue vendor gear, or buy crafted purples. That or join a guild to get some regular runs.

What's your DPS like?

Also, you can still recruit in /trade.

[TerraPrime]

What's your DPS like?

Also, you can still recruit in /trade.

1.3 - 1.4k on average.

I'm not working too hard on it, tbh. If I look up some strat guides I can probably get a bit more out of my current gear. I just want to run for badges to get gear. I'm learning to tank on him.

[Kalbear]

That's pretty shitty dps, honestly. You should get carried for a bit.

[emberling]

Just did some ICC10 with six to seven guildies and the rest randoms including both tanks. Seems like a pretty damn good raid. Marrowgar is fun. After booting the rogue with 0% damage done to bone spikes (who we had repeatedly told to attack them and eventually decided it would be a good idea to suggest that we should assign one dps - him, naturally - to stick on the boss, for no concievable reason other than that he's a retard); and after the tank who refused to demo shout because 'it's just like 400 AP that's not much' randomly left, we dropped him pretty easily, even though the replacement tankadin had the TPS of a wet noodle. I got a sweet sword out of the deal.

Lady Deathwhisper is a pretty fun fight in general, but it sure sucks as a DK. I absolutely despise getting my spells reflected, and in general, remembering not to push icy touch or death coil when the enemy has a reflect buff is one of the hardest things in WoW for me personally. Fortunately, Scourge Strike's magic damage doesn't reflect, or else I'd be a splatter on the ground after critting myself for $lol. We got in two tries and were pretty much getting the fight down, but people had to leave and I just have to go play with my new toy.

[Darkostar]

So. My week so far.

Hit 80 Monday.

By thursday I've done Ony 10 (Doing a solid 3K DPs and single handedly DPSing Ony in phase two because our mage and lock died), parts of Uld 25, every Dungeon except Heroic Nexus and HoR (both), and VoA.

Already gearing up on Tier 9s, grinding WG and Randoms.

I think I like doing this much more than dailies.

So far my favorite dung is AN, oddly. I just like the atmosphere and flow of it.

Specc'd over to survival for now, increased my DPS from BM by a good K or so. I'll go back to BM once I'm geared for ICC, I think. I'm too fond of Ferocious Inspiration not to.

Oh, and abused Tabards to hit Crusade and Kirin Tor Exalt.

[Kalbear]

That really sucks, Stego. :( I hope you're able to get all your stuff back safe and sound.

We finally downed Yogg0 tonight. Unfortunately anyone who was dead at the time of Yogg's death didn't get their title, but fortunately I was one of them. It's a hard fight, and it's an interesting one, but man do I wish it wasn't so damn touchy with DCs. With the sanity mechanic, anyone who DCs is going to be insane when they log back - and that's worse than simply them being gone. Meh.

The amount of QQ over mimiron's head in Dalaran's trade chat was well worth it. :)

Next we'll be reclearing Ulduar and getting more people their ironbound, and hopefully finishing up mad skill/insanity on ToGC. Because...what else is there to do? The new instance takes like 2 hours to finish. Very disappointing.

The new random dungeon system/LFG tool is great. Auto teleporting, easy making it up, easy doing the 'daily heroic'. Just great all around. Very good job. Too bad it utterly fucked the rest of the instance servers.

[The Winged Shadow]

...I finally grabbed Dual Spec (since mutilate is the bees knees but I still love combat) and as soon as I get another dagger I can try it out, however unless our Bear has a bleed, I can't go ruptureless (which would make me very sad)...

Even if you don't have someone else applying bleed, you should be able to spare a combo point for rupture + hfb, cause i doubt that one combo point will result in such dps loss that rupture cycles pull ahead.

On the other hand, HFB got nerfed so things should be more even now between the specs. Rejoice!

Wiped on Heroic Halls of Reflection for 40 minutes. Got through first boss then wiped on the trash repeatedly from then on. So damn fail!

[Inigima]

1.3 - 1.4k on average.

I'm not working too hard on it, tbh. If I look up some strat guides I can probably get a bit more out of my current gear. I just want to run for badges to get gear. I'm learning to tank on him.

That is lousy DPS, especially for a retadin. Sorry you don't like it, but them's the breaks. 1500 is generally considered bare minimum for heroics if you want to be a contributing member of the group. If you're "not working too hard on it," you probably shouldn't be complaining.

It's fine that you're not there yet -- it takes time. But no, you aren't ready to pug heroics, the game is right.

[Greywolf2375]

Cleared the ICC bosses - seems like the same experience as the others that have posted; Marrowgar was tank and spank; Deathwhisper wiped us a few times until we just had a rogue or hunter ToT/MD the third adds to the tanks; ship fight was fun - though we did have someone die when he tried to rocket to the other ship, hit one of the cannons and fell to his death. Hilarity ensued. Saurfang - interesting opening speech, wiped once because people thought "move away from the ads" meant "stand there and let them beat on your face". Got it the 2nd try without issue.

Because of work haven't had time to go through the LFG or even do anything other than the raids. need to go do some dailies and get some money back.

BTW - anyone know what the new towers at the tourney are for?

[PhelanArcetus]

Got virtually nowhere in ICC10.

Of course, we had issues. Our regular OT was out at a basketball game, and two other regulars were stuck taking a late in the evening final, complete with 1-hour break for no apparent purpose. So we picked up a warlock with embarrassing dps and a holy paladin who turned out to be in Naxx gear. By this point it was try or just call it immediately. The paladin of course failed to keep the OT up, whether it was because of gear or skill or both I can't say. But we did manage to get far enough to get some work on the fight itself, so once we have our core group we should be pretty ok. At least we avoided problems with the trash and now know how to disarm the traps that trigger the big guys.

After that, disdaining sleep, I did the full trio of new heroics on my warrior and then on my paladin. Too many delays, as always seems to be the case, with things like the tank going afk for "2 minutes", which lasted so long that the warlock went to "let the dogs out quick", and in the end, that was 10 minutes.

So I'm up to 1/11 for hilts dropped/ICC Heroics run. And I didn't win it.

Halls of Reflection was hell when I tanked it, but it was very clearly the result of a lousy healer. We wiped something like 4 times on the first event, initially owing to me not being prepared for stuff coming from everywhere, then due to people standing too far out in our LoS corner plus the healer eating a lot of interrupts. In the end we did it in the hallway, with the spriest and hunter moving out to CC something, ideally a ranged, which helped a lot.

Second run through, I was dpsing, and both the ret pallies would repentence something on the way over, which coupled with an actual good healer meant that even with a weaker tank (though I'd like a no-cooldown AoE for picking the stream up), it was easy. Until the healer died, but in the crowning moment of the run, us two ret pallies traded off healing and dpsing / recovering mana through the end of the pull so the bear could get a battle rez off. Then we wiped to the second event because 4/5 people ran too far ahead of Jaina and were on the wrong side of the wall when it spawned. Which was hilarious.

I walked out at the end with 2 greens, 2 abyss crystals, a frozen orb, and a healing chest. Despite the fact that we killed every trash mob, and there were a hell of a lot more than ~10 greens. But that's my dice.

Tonight I plan to repeat, and also try to do a random heroic.