World of Warcraft

[Inigima]

Let me reiterate that I do not like Gearscore. That said, the counterarguments:

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.

Absolutely. Maly, however, is a DPS race. It's a very easy one, in current gear, but people are tremendously bad at phase 3 for reasons I don't understand. So the more time you have, the more morons you can get away with having. In 10-man, you should have 8 stacks of the DOT, all approaching 15-20 applications by the end; you can get away with 3 stacks, as long as your group outputs reasonable DPS in the first two phases.

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 .

Absolutely, absolutely. The argument goes, you have two people, and you have no idea if either or both of them are worth a damn. So you choose the higher gearscore to at least tilt the odds in your favor. If they're played with equal skill, or lack thereof, the better geared player will output more damage.

[Darkostar]

Skill is way more important than gearscore. There's a video around somewhere of a guild running Ulduar in Green and blues, and you can see that it doesn't matter one it, because they're so damn well coordinated and skilled. They know their roles and execute them perfectly.

I might not be anywhere near the highest scored on my guild, but I get invites more than some people with better gear because I research what I have to do, and do my best to communicate with the raid. I tend to get higher on the DPS charts because of this, despite a lack of gear (still rocking two blues, although I won't switch out of one until i absolutely HAVE to- I love Meteorite Whetstone.)

[Inigima]

Skill is way more important than gearscore.

everyone else is saying this too including me why do people not get that

[TerraPrime]

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.

For Libram, you want the 30 Frost Badge one that boosts your dodge every time up to 5 stacks. It's great.

There are some decent Heroics purples that will last you a bit, like the Horn-tipped Gauntlets from Gundrak and the pants from one of the dragons (forgot if it's the VH or Nexus). I'd save/buy titansteel to make the White Knight and Swordbreaker (which you already have). Buy the head and shoulder with your Triumphs. Run HoR regular for the shield. ToC has a tanking sword, iirc, and FoS has a tanking mace. That's all I can remember right now. What I do recall is that once I got the chest and shoulder and helm, I was able to do all the heroics except for H-HoR.

As a tank, you get instant queue time for heroics, so you will soon have more tirumphs than you'd know what to do with. I have geared both tank and healing set on Triumphs, including buying epic gems to gear, and now I'm sitting on 267 triumphs.

[Myshkin]

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.

I have the same problem with my lock. My hunter had pretty good gear before I even started running heroics, so I'd never run into this problem before. But when I queued with my lock for the first time, wearing heirloom stuff filled out with blues and greens, I took a lot of shit from stuck up fuckers. I have a good guild though, so they have no problem dragging me through heroics.

[Shryke]

For Libram, you want the 30 Frost Badge one that boosts your dodge every time up to 5 stacks. It's great.

Is it great? The DK one is pretty much exactly the same and is generally inferior to the 245 since it's got a big build up time and provides very little extra dodge. Though SoR is a bit more reliable then Rune Strike I suppose.

But really, it's not worth the extra investment. Get the Triumph one and save your Frost emblems for a real upgrade.

As a tank, you get instant queue time for heroics, so you will soon have more tirumphs than you'd know what to do with. I have geared both tank and healing set on Triumphs, including buying epic gems to gear, and now I'm sitting on 267 triumphs.

I'm using mine to buy all the heirlooms. I only need another 200 or so Emblems to have them all.

[TerraPrime]

I have the same problem with my lock. My hunter had pretty good gear before I even started running heroics, so I'd never run into this problem before. But when I queued with my lock for the first time, wearing heirloom stuff filled out with blues and greens, I took a lot of shit from stuck up fuckers. I have a good guild though, so they have no problem dragging me through heroics.

I don't have problems with newly-geared people, as long as they know what they're doing. The only time I do care is in higher heroics, like HoR, PoS, or ToC, where low output will probably cause problems for the rest of us. In the older heroics, you can probably 4 man most of them with reasonably geared groups, so having a 5th one with low DPS does not bother me. I've saved a few people from being kicked, even if they are doing only 1k dps, because I remember how hard it was to gear up when you don't have a supportive guild or friends to help out. Honestly, the difference between a 1k dps and a 4k dps in a regular heroic run is less than 3 minutes. People can be such douchebags.

And while we're on this topic, I also get annoyed at people who simply tell others that "you suck." Well, yes, their dps is way low, but how about some constructive comment instead? Like, "don't forget to use your ghoul" or "puppy gives better dps than succubus in affliction spec"?

[Inigima]

For Libram, you want the 30 Frost Badge one that boosts your dodge every time up to 5 stacks. It's great.

There are some decent Heroics purples that will last you a bit, like the Horn-tipped Gauntlets from Gundrak and the pants from one of the dragons (forgot if it's the VH or Nexus). I'd save/buy titansteel to make the White Knight and Swordbreaker (which you already have). Buy the head and shoulder with your Triumphs. Run HoR regular for the shield. ToC has a tanking sword, iirc, and FoS has a tanking mace. That's all I can remember right now. What I do recall is that once I got the chest and shoulder and helm, I was able to do all the heroics except for H-HoR.

As a tank, you get instant queue time for heroics, so you will soon have more tirumphs than you'd know what to do with. I have geared both tank and healing set on Triumphs, including buying epic gems to gear, and now I'm sitting on 267 triumphs.

This is good advice but I have most of it already. I have all the triumph pieces (including the trinket, now). I already have Rimefang's Claw, which is better than the FoS tanking mace (Lucky Old Sun). Shield, I looked at it but even tanks don't get instaqueues for HoR, so I'm looking ahead to the ToCrusader shield instead. I've got better than heroic purples at this point, heh. And I'm long since past heroic gear, I'm ready for raids.

EDIT: Also, rumor has it the best first frost upgrade for tankadin is cloak

[Shryke]

Rumor is right. It's the best Tanking Cloak in the game AFAIK.

[emberling]

Yes, I'm pretty sure that the cloak is the best first upgrade for any class/role unless they have access to the ToGC cloaks or their T10 set bonus is absolutely game-changing. I haven't really looked at the 25-man case though (as without access to 264 T10 for some time, the 251 T10 upgrades are nowhere near as attractive as the 264 offset pieces, so set bonuses don't really come into play that much).

The trick to the librams/sigils is that the 245 one says 'a chance' to give 200 dodge rating, where it would be more accurate to say that there is a rather small chance that you won't have the 200 dodge rating. They're 80% proc, 10 second ICD, and typically run over 90% uptime in real world. Because of this misleading data, many people dismiss the 245 relic and as such don't realize how much of a relative waste of frosts the 264 one is.

Not to mention that the alternative frost upgrades are either a huge stamina trinket, or pieces absolutely dripping in bonus armor. Stamina and armor are your win stats. Pure avoidance, as from the relics, is not something you want to go so far out of your way for. The current state of the game doesn't value saving healers' mana, or efficiency of total damage taken, much at all; it values being able to stay alive during the low-avoidance strings that will inevitably happen no matter how much avoidance you have.

I have heard a few people complaining about nearing armor cap, but I'm not even close and I'm stacking armor like crazy, so I figure either they're drowning in 25 man gear and over twice the frosts I've been able to collect, or they're talking about with cooldowns/procs up (UA primarily - just another reason why Blood tanking is the way to go), or more likely both.

[Poobah]

Lich King down on 10 man, so I'm now a Kingslayer :D

P1, P2 and the transitions are all okay, but P3 is a bit nuts.

I'm not looking forward to P2 on 25 man. Heh. :unsure:

At the moment my guild is getting totally destroyed by P2 on 25 man. Those Valkyrs are crazy.

RE:Heroics. Anyone who is a stuck up asshole about gear when you're a dps is pretty much irrelevant. Ignore them because they're morons in their early teens who think to quantify everything to the average ilevel of your gear and get off on having a full set of bottom-tier T9. I've never met someone who's a good player or from a good guild who actually cares. Anyone not a moron has the brains to realise that gear isn't that relevant in these situations and/or is doing so much DPS that it doesn't really matter that the rest of the party is afk sitting on their heads. I'm forever running the random daily heroics and coming out with 50-70%+ of damage done, and getting no shards/abyss because the whole rest of the party actually needs 187 blues as upgrades. I don't really care because it still gets done in 10-20 minutes so does it really matter. There's a cap on how fast most things can sensibly be done anyway as most classes have some sort of build up time till they reach their peak dps (though the enhancement shaman is probably the worst offender in this area, gawd I wish I was a class with insane burst on demand sometimes, the only time I get the numbers I really see regularly in raids, in heroics is against bosses, nothing else lasts long enough for me to really get going) and it'll always take a second or three for the tank to be comfortably holding aggro.

Sure they can be run faster with a full team of people in ICC25 gear, but whatever. You can get away running most bottom level heroics with 5dps or two man with Tank+Healer if you really want these days. If someone's an asshole put them on ignore and carry on, sucks to be them that they have nothing better to do with their life and time then complain about others.

I will admit I am bothered when people who are undergeared sign as healers or tanks though; those roles do have a major impact on how fast and easy a dungeon will be, and anyone can always sign up as a dps till they have a suitable gear level. I don't really even care what spec or gear people sign with dps use - if you don't have any pve dps gear or spec but you aren't geared enough to tank/heal then I'd much rather that you signed up as a dps anyway and played in pvp gear or naked or afk'd the whole damn thing, hunter-like need rolling every single drop than came in in greens and tried to tank/heal HoL.

Bottom line / TLDR : sign as dps and regardless of your performance if anyone cares really then they're stupid because a single dps doesn't really matter that much. Armour yourself with your own individual irrelevance. I can understand why you might be harangued if you sign undergeared as a healer/tank because then your performance effects everyone.

[Third Knight on the Left]

I think the problem is that a lot people just kick you if your too low. At least I get alot of people trying when I tank stuff, I always refuse because I'm pretty sure I could two man heroics ToC and under.

[Poobah]

I honestly don't see too many kick-votes, and I've only voted to kick someone when either they are an asshole, or they are dragging the rest of the party down with them eg. a dps chain pulling because he thinks he's batman or something.

[Third Knight on the Left]

I honestly don't see too many kick-votes, and I've only voted to kick someone when either they are an asshole, or they are dragging the rest of the party down with them eg. a dps chain pulling because he thinks he's batman or something.

There is one thing that happens often enough, when I'm doing blessings at the beginning and start drinking sometimes dps will pull the first group. When that happens I vote to kick immediately and if it doesn't happen I leave.

[Inigima]

There is one thing that happens often enough, when I'm doing blessings at the beginning and start drinking sometimes dps will pull the first group. When that happens I vote to kick immediately and if it doesn't happen I leave.

Yep, yesterday a geared-out-the-ass huntard pulled while I was blessing, because apparently ten seconds was too long to wait to get started. I asked him to stop, and when he didn't I let him die, refused to rez him, and votekicked him -- I had two friends with me and the other was a random pubbie we'd run with before and liked -- as soon as I could.

Generally, though, I'm not an asshole. If I see someone doing shit DPS, I do some combination of ignoring it, making smartass comments in guild chat, or give him advice (get out of unholy presence [you blithering idiot], for example). (I don't say the last part.)

[Inigima]

Ugh, Lunar Festival.

[Myshkin]

This DPS pulling problem is so foreign to me. I'm pure ranged dps. I've never done anything but dps, and have no desire to do anything other than dps. And it has never crossed my mind to start pulling mobs in dungeons (unless the tank has asked me to MD them to him). That's how you die. And not dieing is half of my job description (the other half being shoot things till they're dead).

I ran my first 10 man weekly yesterday, it was the plaguebringer guy in Naxx. I was super proud of myself for coming in tops in DPS. Admittedly we 7-manned it, so there were only 3 other dps to contend with, but still....

[TerraPrime]

Last night I queued my lock for the daily random heroic and got DTK. Great, easy fast run? No.

The pally tank was afk for 5 min in the beginning, in the wrong spec (DPS). Then he came back, had to switch gear and spec. He didn't bring any water or food, so I gave him some so he can get ready to pull. So, it was 8 or 9 minutes now and we still had not pulled.

I was a bit annoyed, but ok.

Then he said "This will be a fast run."

Before I had a chance to snark, he started pulling. He pulled the entire hallway up to the 4 mobs near the stair. I wouldn't have a problem if he could keep aggro on everything he pulled. But he didn't. The DPS, understandably, try to AOE because single-target in that is just worthless. And of course we get aggro. Then healer tried to save everyone. Void zones covered half the hallway so people were cut off. He's charging ahead. We all died. We left him two mobs at half health when the last DPS died, he finished off. The healer asked for a rez, he refused, saying that if the healer can't keep people alive he doesn't deserve a rez. I told him he's a fucking moron, and quit group, right after everyone else did.

This tank is not alone. I've met a few tanks who're "I'm a chain puller, rawr!"

Well half of them can't hold aggro on shit they pulled. The other half paid no attention to whether the group can keep up. Just because you can charge ahead, it doesn't make you uber-tank. Any moron can aggro the entire instance. Being a tank is more than just aggro'ing mobs, you know.

So, if you are tank in a random, don't be that tank.

At any rate, I noticed that with the new gear, the dps difference is really pronounced between some classes. In heroics with people less geared than I am, my lock can do decent dps (4k). In instances with melee people (cats, pallies, rogues, DKs) equally geared or better geared, I end up with just a bit over 2k. The mobs die so fast, sometimes, I can't even finish a single cast of shadowbolt. My dots tick maybe once. I'm stuck with using instant AoE like rain of fire, which is not strong my an afflic spec. I've had cases in boss fights where the boss dies before my first Haunt runs out. In the end, it doesn't matter because things are dying, and there's that. But it does make for a boring run for me.

[Shryke]

My Lock is Demo and I just spam SoC. Works well enough.

But yeah, it can get fucking annoying since I am lucky to even get 1 Soulfire in because we blow past the execute phase so fast. It gimps my DPS pretty badly.

[Inigima]

We just failed Ony 10 twice, my first time tanking. First time we were doing great, then MT didn't get all the whelps. (DPS didn't help drag 'em there, either.)

Question: every time I've seen it, the MT got both sides except for the initial waves. Am I expected to grab whelps after that?