World of Warcraft

[PhelanArcetus]

Blech.

We did dick over our guild leader, actually, last night. I think that between her cranky, lack of sleep, back & neck pain, and the fact that Marrowgar was already dead, we should have sat her (as she suggested) and gotten the druid we had the night before, but instead we brought her along to start learning two new fights.

[Darkostar]

Well, we finally made it, we've broken the 100 million HP barrier.

Lich King has 103 million on 25 Heroic.

[Poobah]

I take it you're ignoring Flame Leviathan and Alexstrasza on account of the one being a vehicle fight and the other being a friendly?

[Darkostar]

I take it you're ignoring Flame Leviathan and Alexstrasza on account of the one being a vehicle fight and the other being a friendly?

Yeah, I'm talking a straight up "punch this dude in the mouth" encounter.

[Kalbear]

To be fair - you only care about 92million of that health.

[RaceBannon42]

To be fair - you only care about 92million of that health.

Does a foghorn blow, followed by wisps coming out and killing him?

[Weak With The Dawn]

Does a foghorn blow, followed by wisps coming out and killing him?

No...it's so much more awesome then that.

They didn't use nearly enough wisps for the fight anyway.

[Kalbear]

It's actually pretty close to Archimonde's ending. I'm curious if anyone's ever decided to just sit there and watch him twirl around for a while.

[Mack Kilimaro]

So, do we have any Kingslayers in the thread yet? The ASOIAF-related vanity possibilities have already been noted upthread. I feel like the title must have been an intentional shout-out on Blizzard's part. I know that I'll run around with that title displayed as soon as I am able to earn it.

Unfortunately, I don't know when that will be able to occur. We seem to have stalled out. Rotface is not a guaranteed kill, because apparently I'm the only person capable of kiting the big ooze, we need more DPS for PP phase 3 (also nobody has successfully done the abomination except for me), and we're still getting the hang of Blood Princes even though we've successfully killed Blood Queen Lana'thel. Took a few shots at Dreamwalker but haven't been able to spend more time on it.

Tanks need to step up and stop failing and DPS need to step up to a lesser extent.

[Kalbear]

My guild got to P3 of LK on their attempts last night and did an okay job there. Defile has been handled, so it's next on vile spirits and dealing with that. The biggest hurdle is tank deaths, though I honestly think we're doing it wrong. That's on 25man. On 10-man they're extending the lockout and it's likely they're going to get him down this weekend so we can all start working on hard modes.

But no kills yet.

[Inigima]

Tankadin hit 80 about 3 days or so ago. I've been off work since then so I've been spamming dungeons for triumph nonstop. Current status here. Doing great so far. A few concerns.

One: Where do I go from here gearwise? I'm going to buy the Valor wrists as soon as I can, I've spent hundreds of emblems and just haven't had enough yet. Same for triumph trinket, but is the triumph trinket even worthwhile? And yes, I know my belt doesn't have an eternal belt buckle or an epic gem. I plan to replace it soon. That's also why my bracers aren't enchanted.

Two: What can I tank (that people actually run)? I've already done every heroic except UP, and I haven't done that because it hasn't come up in random yet. I've also tanked the weekly raid, Malygos. I want to do VoA; trade chat tells me that I need a 5k gearscore, or close to it, to tank it (I'm at 4515 or something like that right now, don't have WoW running right now), which seems ri-goddamn-diculous since that's the baseline for fucking ICC. It looks to me (and wow-heroes agrees) like I can tank VoA 10/25, Ony 10, and ToC 10 without issue. Less certain is Ony 25 and rep runs (no bosses) of ICC 10. Thoughts? I fucking hate what Gearscore has done to the game -- I get the utility, and I get that if you're pugging and you don't know how good either player is you may as well take the better gearscore, but jesus fuck people inflate the requirements insanely.

Third: Admire what I have done in 3 days. Go ahead. :P

[emberling]

Yeah, it's pretty crazy how my server's pug raids are so concerned with your Wow-Heroes gearscore, yet pay no attention to Wow-Heroes' recommended instance gear levels - it's something like 2600 to be considered appropriate for ICC25, and 2900 to be overgeared, based on Wow-Heroes, but good luck getting an invite to ICC10 below 2800.

Though on the other hand, I did try a pug ICC25 the other day on my main's mainspec (2952, listed as overgeared for everything) and died three times during Marrowgar because the moronic raid leader/second offtank was totally half-assing stacking and I was eating his share of Saber Lash most of the fight as well as my own. If that kind of thing is what typically goes on then I absolutely understand why you'd need to be carried by people with ridiculous gear.

Inigma: ToC10 is probably your best bet as far as finding something that:

a) people actually run,

b) you can tank with mediocre/badge gear,

c) pugs will actually let you do so on occasion.

You'll likely run into issues with © and (b) depending on the group. Northrend Beasts is very tank/healer intensive and I'm sure blame gets thrown around all over the place for fails on it but the first place it's likely to fall is upon a tank with imperfect gear.

You should also be beyond fine for ICC rep farms and for the first three bosses of VoA but you're not likely to get a raid leader who agrees, or who is interested in having a tank who isn't certain to be able to handle the new VoA boss (which is ridiculously easy but also pretty gearchecky, though I'm not sure what gear level is required, as I'm way past it).

And yeah, you're about as geared as my warrior, who hit 80 about a week ago and I've been pretty much chain badge farming since, so that's pretty impressive for 3 days.

[Shryke]

Though on the other hand, I did try a pug ICC25 the other day on my main's mainspec (2952, listed as overgeared for everything) and died three times during Marrowgar because the moronic raid leader/second offtank was totally half-assing stacking and I was eating his share of Saber Lash most of the fight as well as my own. If that kind of thing is what typically goes on then I absolutely understand why you'd need to be carried by people with ridiculous gear.

This is why I always OT for Marrowgar. I don't trust most other tanks to be smart enough to stack properly.

[Poobah]

Why the hell do people give gearscore the time of day? It's a meaningless number. A group of good players doesn't need 6000 gearscore to kill hogger y'know.

[Mack Kilimaro]

Yeah, it's pretty crazy how my server's pug raids are so concerned with your Wow-Heroes gearscore, yet pay no attention to Wow-Heroes' recommended instance gear levels - it's something like 2600 to be considered appropriate for ICC25, and 2900 to be overgeared, based on Wow-Heroes, but good luck getting an invite to ICC10 below 2800.

I like the wow-heroes green/yellow/red meter because it lets me get at least some basis to evaluate the gear level of some class where I don't know anything about what armor drops from where just from eyeballing it, whether it looks like a starter purple or the top of the line stuff. I will generally not invite anyone who's not yellow or green, which I don't think is an unfair standard when trying to make a snap judgment with limited information available.

But if you're talking people not even inviting to ICC10 with 2800, well, that's kind of lame. My holy gear is by far my best set, includes four ICC drops, two Frost emblem pieces and the revered Ashen Verdict ring, and that only gets me to 2847. Which is a green rating for everything except ICC25 - where it is yellow instead. It's a useful tool but it seems that some people use it stupidly.

Shryke hits on a pretty key point. It's hard to trust other tanks. Sometimes if you want to get something done right you've got to do it yourself.

[BlueRose]

We did get our loot and badges from the dreamwalker kill, yay!

Poobs, my server is obsessed with gear score, it's awful.

[Shryke]

I just got my rogue to 80 and man, the Gearscore "I want to massively outgear heroics" shit has gotten WORSE since I leveled my Warlock a month or 2 ago. About half the groups I get in, someone drops immediately after seeing me in questing blues and greens. Sometimes they've left by the time I've finished loading into the instance.

[Shryke]

Shryke hits on a pretty key point. It's hard to trust other tanks. Sometimes if you want to get something done right you've got to do it yourself.

You'd think Damage Soaking OTing would be a no-brainer too.

Stand on top of the tank. That's it. That's the whole fucking job.

Jesus, I can't count the number of times I've seen the tanks get hit with Cold Flame (or whatever it's called) and they both jump different directions and then the OT just stands there and won't restack.

Goddamn morons.

[Inigima]

Yay, just finished procuring the mats for Saronite Swordbreakers. Unfortunately no one seems to be around to craft them right now. I WANT TO GIVE YOU FREE MONEY PLEASE HELP ME

I absolutely loathe gearscore because of the ridiculous inflation of requirements it causes. And because of the way the WoW community behaves, I don't see that it's possible to change that. That said, there are a few uses for it:

- If you can get an honest answer, it can be a very useful shorthand. I asked in trade the other day what I should want to have to tank Malygos, and I was told 4k or so, maybe a little less. I was at 4100ish, so I went. I did fine, but much lower than that and I'd have had trouble holding hate off the more insane DPS in the group. It's useful to have an aggregate measure.

- Some fights are straight-up DPS races and it's legitimately important to know if someone is going to be able to dish out the damage you need.

- The main argument in favor of it is that while it tell you nothing about skill, if you have to choose between two pubbies you don't know and one of them has a significantly gearscore, the smart play is to take the higher one.

Unfortunately none of these are how it's typically used.

I just got my rogue to 80 and man, the Gearscore "I want to massively outgear heroics" shit has gotten WORSE since I leveled my Warlock a month or 2 ago. About half the groups I get in, someone drops immediately after seeing me in questing blues and greens. Sometimes they've left by the time I've finished loading into the instance.

The best is when you're top DPS anyway, by a country mile. But yeah, fuckin' a, HEROICS ARE SRS BUSINESS OK

[Weak With The Dawn]

- If you can get an honest answer, it can be a very useful shorthand. I asked in trade the other day what I should want to have to tank Malygos, and I was told 4k or so, maybe a little less. I was at 4100ish, so I went. I did fine, but much lower than that and I'd have had trouble holding hate off the more insane DPS in the group. It's useful to have an aggregate measure.

- Some fights are straight-up DPS races and it's legitimately important to know if someone is going to be able to dish out the damage you need.

- The main argument in favor of it is that while it tell you nothing about skill, if you have to choose between two pubbies you don't know and one of them has a significantly gearscore, the smart play is to take the higher one.

In regards to the first point, if DPS is over geared for an instance, then they can monitor their threat and still kill whatever they need to kill. It's the DPSers job to adjust to the tank, not otherwise. You NEED a tank, you don't NEED that one specific DPS so if their pulling aggro off you, they're in the wrong, imo anyway.

I don't even want to start counting the number of rogues I've out DPS'd who have better gear (and better GearScore), especially when I was starting out and trying to find raiding guilds.

The problem is, there is no good indicator of skill passed actual raw data, and obviously we're not going to demand a combat parse for every PuG we pick up, so yeah GS is a decent way to pick but at some point this obsession needs to stop. I absolutely refuse to get gearscore because I don't want to turn into one of those trade monkeys .