World of Warcraft

[Mack Kilimaro]

We finally dove into raiding stuff that's not Baradin Hold last night. I think about two people other than me had even watched vids of Magmaw/Omnitron, which is fine, because that's just really not how we roll. I felt like those fights were do-able and we'd just have to learn the coordination. Then we wiped like three times on the drakonids before Magmaw. Haha!

Raiding is serious business again. I think I had total of 200g repairs for the night and it was a blast. After an hour and a half or so we got down Magmaw and had some pretty solid showings on Omnitron - got them down to about 25% at the best and we seemed like we were getting the hang of it. Of course, the two items Magmaw dropped were the only two items that no one could use for their main spec (1H sword, healing plate). Figures, huh? All throughout the night everyone kept telling me, "OMG, guys, I'm having so much fun!" which continued on to the end. Turns out people are pretty excited to be at the ground floor of an expansion again.

Two fights in, I have to give a pretty earnest GG to Blizz. If this is a sign of what's to come, Cata raiding seems like it's going to be a blast.

[Greywolf2375]

OK night last night - Magmaw, Omno & Lootavon. Went to see what Halfus would offer - are there any "good" combinations? This week we have malevolent strike, fireball and the interrupt/shadow AoE.

Got a warrior tank, rogue and Shammy for interrupts, but for some reason the shammy Windshear wasn't working. Any idea if that is just an issue with the macro being used or is there some mechanic that Shammies can't interrupt that cast?

Absolutely.

And 9/10 times you will get a plate melee DPS as pug if you pug 1-2 spots. Which basically makes Stonecore first boss undoable cos you only have one DPS on the crystals.

I'd like to see this - I think it would make people want to use LFD a little more, however I think it would also result in certain classes/specs waiting even longer in queue - we see "tank selling insta queue". it would go even more to Tanks, then healers, then CC classes getting the quick queues. if they could make it work, great, but since the pool of what is available is only defined by whomever clicks LFD, it could cause even longer delays.

[Solmyr]

And 9/10 times you will get a plate melee DPS as pug if you pug 1-2 spots. Which basically makes Stonecore first boss undoable cos you only have one DPS on the crystals.

I fail to see why Corborus would be undoable with only melees. He will surely be a bit harder, but nothing else. All melee dps have some form of aoe with ~10y range, crystals can be killed that way. I have even had cases where we lost our ranged dps mid-fight and the melees were retards (naturally) so I had to aoe the crystals myself using thunder clap (blood&thunder talent) and shockwave. It's tricky doing that and not getting hit, but even if you get hit it's not a big deal as Corborus adds provide you with a neverending streak of victory rush to self-heal yourself.

Also, since we're on the topic of melee dps ... anyone knows who in Blizz should I write to, offering for them to double my monthl subscription fee for the ability to be able to kick retri paladins from groups without any cooldown? I'm dead serious.

[Arakasi]

As I expected. You have heroic gear (346) or better in every slot except two; one is 333, and the other is 308. Two slots have 359 gear in them. You need virtually nothing from any heroic, most of your gear is stuff you got for completing them. Instead of complaining about how easy heroics are (now that you've got all the gear that you entered heroics for), you should be raiding. I haven't raided in Cata yet; if, in your current gear -- assuming your raid is similarly geared -- you judge raids to be too easy, you might have a case.

Your numbers are a bit wrong here. I have 2 333 plate pieces, I have a 318 trinket. And of my 2 359 pieces, one of them is a dps piece (the belt). Of my actual gear only 3 pieces other than the Hyjal epics are from rep or JP. Rings, trinket, neck, bracers, chest and boots are all from instances. The thing is I have a ton of upgrades I can get without ever raiding. Boots from DM, bracers from Ramkahen, I could get crafted BoE chest/belt from BS, weapon from archeology and so on. I am hardly overgeared for the content. You can't say I have all the gear I need from heroics when I'm waiting on 6-7 drops/BoEs/rep items. That's nearly half my gear set.

Disagree with you Kal that LK was wildly more popular. Subscription numbers were pretty flat through TBC til LK and such. Raiding is definitely more accessible. I think it is dumb that the LFD tool solves one problem (quickly finding instances and getting to them) while actively working against the thing that makes heroics fun and quick (LFD totally killing guild building and community building). LFD yes needs to get a class with an interrupt. But what it really really needs to do is get you people from your own realm who you'd want to play with again.

[Inigima]

Your numbers are a bit wrong here. I have 2 333 plate pieces, I have a 318 trinket. And of my 2 359 pieces, one of them is a dps piece (the belt). Of my actual gear only 3 pieces other than the Hyjal epics are from rep or JP. Rings, trinket, neck, bracers, chest and boots are all from instances. The thing is I have a ton of upgrades I can get without ever raiding. Boots from DM, bracers from Ramkahen, I could get crafted BoE chest/belt from BS, weapon from archeology and so on. I am hardly overgeared for the content. You can't say I have all the gear I need from heroics when I'm waiting on 6-7 drops/BoEs/rep items. That's nearly half my gear set.

What? No. You're right that I missed your 333 feet but you're still completely ridiculous what is wrong with you. Here's why.

Let's start with this quote:

The thing is I have a ton of upgrades I can get without ever raiding. Boots from DM, bracers from Ramkahen, I could get crafted BoE chest/belt from BS, weapon from archeology and so on. I am hardly overgeared for the content. You can't say I have all the gear I need from heroics when I'm waiting on 6-7 drops/BoEs/rep items. That's nearly half my gear set.

"I don't have all the gear I need from heroics! I have everything I need from heroics but I don't yet have gear from other sources that's better than the heroic gear I already have!" Do you see why this doesn't make any sense? You only need a few pieces from heroics because every other slot has heroic items or better. You don't get to count shit like your bracers because if you have a heroic piece there then heroics have nothing to offer you for that slot.

Let's look at your gear:

Head - Grinning Fang Helm - 346 - Dragonmaw Revered

Neck - Heroic Carrier Wave Pendant - 346 - Heroic Blackrock Caverns

Shoulders - Heroic Earthshape Pauldrons - 346 - Heroic Grim Batol

Back - Wrap of the Great Turtle - 359 - Hyjal Exalted

Chest - Breastplate of the Witness - 333 - Grim Batol (Quest)

Wrist - Heroic Shackles of Undeath - 346 - Heroic Shadowfang Keep

Hands - Numbing Handguards - 346 - Justice Point purchase

Waist - Belt of the Ferocious Wolf - 359 - Hyjal Exalted (DPS item)

Legs - Greaves of Splendor - 346 - JP purchase

Feet - Ramakhen Front Boots - 333 - Lost City of the Tol'vir (Quest)

Ring1 - Heroic Phosphorescent Ring - 346 - Heroic Stonecore

Ring2 - Heroic Entwined Nereis - 346 - Heroic Throne of the Tides

Trinket1 - Heroic Leaden Despair - 346 - Heroic Stonecore

Trinket2 - Za'brok's Lucky Tooth - 318 - Twilight Highlands (Quest)

Weapon - Heroic Arced War Axe - 346 - Heroic Shadowfang Keep

Relic - Heroic Stalagmite Dragon - 346 - Heroic Stonecore

Out of your 16 gear slots:

Number of straight heroic items: 8

Number of heroic-comparable rep purchases: 1 (head)

Number of heroic-comparable JP purchases 2 (hands, legs)

Number of superior-to-heroic rep purchases: 1 (back) - not counting your belt because it's a DPS item although it is pretty well itemized for you and its higher ilvl means the raw stats on it are pretty fucking good

That's 12 right there.

Number of inferior to heroic items: 3 (chest, feet, trinket2)

Number of not quite fitting but decent items: 1 (belt)

So you have four slots that aren't filled with heroic, heroic-equivalent or better gear. And three of them (chest, belt, feet) are still pretty good. Literally 75% of your gear is heroic, equivalent or better and 75% of the remaining 25% is close. You don't have to be as careful in dungeons that were designed to be puggable in the previous tier of gear. Wah. You are not "waiting for 6-7 rep/drop/BOE items" to outgear heroics. You already mostly outgear heroics, but you are waiting for 3, maybe 4 items to have every slot filled with better items.

I'm not telling you that you have nowhere to go from here without raiding, I'm telling you that your gear is very good and it should not be a surprise to you that you can get away with ignoring some things in dungeons that were designed to be challenging but consistently doable by pugs in gear averaging 329. Let's look at that number again and really internalize it. You have 344 average item level equipped. Do you understand how much it takes across 16 gear slots to move the average up by fifteen points? It takes a fucking lot.

Enough gear will always trivialize some things and it is ridiculous to ignore that.

[Kalbear]

Kal,

How do you rate Unheeded Warning?

http://www.wowhead.com/item=59520

It dropped last night only Ghillie was interested in it.

I'm not really sure how the proc stands up, and it looks like its being changed in the next patch.

Well, before the patch it was pretty meh, especially for ferals (who have fairly low overall melee damage). I'd imagine it'd be best for things like ret or arms warriors who rely a lot on melee damage. As to agi users, the only ones that might like it are rogues right now, I'd think.

When it goes to the next patch and becomes a bonus to weapon damage, it's going to be a much bigger win. For ferals it'll beat out almost any other trinket. I'd imagine that anyone that does primarily physical DPS will love it - so rogues, ferals, and maybe enh will like it. Some other flavors of rogues (I think combat is low on phys damage) likely won't.

Disagree with you Kal that LK was wildly more popular. Subscription numbers were pretty flat through TBC til LK and such.

Actually no - LK hit record subscription rates. Furthermore more people got into raiding than ever before, which was more the point - people really liked being able to pug raids, run heroics quickly, etc.

o you have four slots that aren't filled with heroic, heroic-equivalent or better gear. And three of them (chest, belt, feet) are still pretty good. Literally 75% of your gear is heroic, equivalent or better and 75% of the remaining 25% is close. You don't have to be as careful in dungeons that were designed to be puggable in the previous tier of gear. Wah. You are not "waiting for 6-7 rep/drop/BOE items" to outgear heroics. You already mostly outgear heroics, but you are waiting for 3, maybe 4 items to have every slot filled with better items.

Yeah, that's bullshit. Sorry, but I seriously outgear him and I still need to be careful depending on the dungeon (hi, Stonecore) and the group. Just because you have 346 gear doesn't mean you magically don't take any damage. Heroics are designed to be challenging at non-heroic gear, routine but somewhat hard on heroic-levels of gear, and trivial at raid-levels of gear - but that doesn't mean that you won't find a group that sucks balls.

I'm not telling you that you have nowhere to go from here without raiding, I'm telling you that your gear is very good and it should not be a surprise to you that you can get away with ignoring some things in dungeons that were designed to be challenging but consistently doable by pugs in gear averaging 329. Let's look at that number again and really internalize it. You have 344 average item level equipped. Do you understand how much it takes across 16 gear slots to move the average up by fifteen points? It takes a fucking lot.

Do you understand how much 15 ilvl points means from a tank perspective? It means maybe 20k more health (which really doesn't help as much as you'd think), about 4% avoidance and another 5% reduction in damage. That helps - but it doesn't trivialize the fight, especially if you've got a 329 healer or a bunch of scrub DPS.

What about DPS? 15 ilvl points increase most DPS by about 10% total. That's it. Not enough to trivialize anything in a 5-man unless everyone's like that.

The healer is probably the best slot that goes from hard to easy, since 15 points means they regenerate about 10-15% more AND their heals are all about 10-15% more effective, meaning they have to cast fewer heals and they can cast more of them. That tends to make things much easier. Doesn't stop gibs from Ozruk tho.

[Kalbear]

I fail to see why Corborus would be undoable with only melees. He will surely be a bit harder, but nothing else. All melee dps have some form of aoe with ~10y range, crystals can be killed that way. I have even had cases where we lost our ranged dps mid-fight and the melees were retards (naturally) so I had to aoe the crystals myself using thunder clap (blood&thunder talent) and shockwave. It's tricky doing that and not getting hit, but even if you get hit it's not a big deal as Corborus adds provide you with a neverending streak of victory rush to self-heal yourself.

Also, since we're on the topic of melee dps ... anyone knows who in Blizz should I write to, offering for them to double my monthl subscription fee for the ability to be able to kick retri paladins from groups without any cooldown? I'm dead serious.

You've never, not once, tried this with melee dps, have you?

Depends on the melee dps. DKs (especially unholy) can blow the fuck out of the crystals without an issue, but they've got a ranged AOE. Warriors basically get insta-gibbed unless you also stun them - which is a warrior-only thing basically. So yes, if you have a warrior tank that can trivialize that part of the encounter anyway, melee dps can handle them. If you don't, you're fucked. Rogues AOE doesn't do enough damage, ferals don't have a 360 arc and it doesn't do shit for damage.

[jurble]

I did Corborus with melee dps only, before. It was me, a warrior, and a ret pally. Fan of Knives DOES do enough DPS to take out the crystals. If the rogue doesn't have enough energy to spam FoK the two or three times he needs to do it to kill the cyrstals, he probably doesn't have rupture up on the boss, and is bad.

[Inigima]

Yeah, that's bullshit. Sorry, but I seriously outgear him and I still need to be careful depending on the dungeon (hi, Stonecore) and the group. Just because you have 346 gear doesn't mean you magically don't take any damage. Heroics are designed to be challenging at non-heroic gear, routine but somewhat hard on heroic-levels of gear, and trivial at raid-levels of gear - but that doesn't mean that you won't find a group that sucks balls.

Do you understand how much 15 ilvl points means from a tank perspective? It means maybe 20k more health (which really doesn't help as much as you'd think), about 4% avoidance and another 5% reduction in damage. That helps - but it doesn't trivialize the fight, especially if you've got a 329 healer or a bunch of scrub DPS.

What about DPS? 15 ilvl points increase most DPS by about 10% total. That's it. Not enough to trivialize anything in a 5-man unless everyone's like that.

The healer is probably the best slot that goes from hard to easy, since 15 points means they regenerate about 10-15% more AND their heals are all about 10-15% more effective, meaning they have to cast fewer heals and they can cast more of them. That tends to make things much easier. Doesn't stop gibs from Ozruk tho.

I agree with you and always have. If you read back, I've been advocating caution this entire time, along with Lyanna. Solmyr and Arakasi were complaining that heroics were too easy and that they didn't need to CC anymore, and I was arguing that if that's true then it's because their gear permits it. In return Arakasi was claiming that this couldn't be true because his gear wasn't that good, and I was disagreeing. At this point I think Arakasi has a hole in his head, but I haven't let it go after all this time because I dislike people who are hostile in threads at the same time they're pretending they aren't via polite PMs.

[Mack Kilimaro]

Are those crystal adds on Corborus really a big deal? I don't think I have ever seen a death on them. As a pally tank, I just shift to the spot, Holy Wrath (stuns with glyph, best glyph ever) + Hammer of the Righteous and they get obliterated. Three melee, no melee, it doesn't matter.

[Kalbear]

Are those crystal adds on Corborus really a big deal? I don't think I have ever seen a death on them. As a pally tank, I just shift to the spot, Holy Wrath (stuns with glyph, best glyph ever) + Hammer of the Righteous and they get obliterated. Three melee, no melee, it doesn't matter.

If you don't have an AoE stun they basically obliterate whoever they're targeted on if they're not killed quickly.

Depends on the rogue as well, Jurble; FoK does very different damage depending on who it is. Mostly, it's that someone else (say, a ret pally) can aggro them based on their abilities and get gibbed even if they're not the one that is the person that should be killing them.

In any case, it's much more difficult as a mechanic than it really should be for a pug. It's either trivial or requires a lot of coordination and good play and that's entirely based on the DPS and tank composition. If that's the way you're designing boss encounters, you really should reconsider.

[Angeleyes]

I dislike people who are hostile in threads at the same time they're pretending they aren't via polite PMs.

Hehe, you are soo fun to read when you have righteous anger on your side. Its one of your best qualities.

Enh Shammy hit 85 today, and I'm realizing he is gonna be a pain to gear out compared to the Spriest who rolled on Spi cloth, Hit cloth, and all caster trinkets.

There is just not that much gear that drops once you get out of the clothie brackets it seems. Which while making sense, makes me a sad Panda. Prime example is Erudax, who essentially doesn't drop anything I could use for Enh or Ele as a shaman. Kind of wild.

[Kalbear]

On CC in heroics - the only one I reliably and regularly use CC on is Stonecore (and to a lesser extent on some of the double healer pulls in VP) If I'm in a guild run I won't even use it there all that much. I use CC sometimes in other places to test the competency of the DPS in a pug early on but usually just ignore it later.

CC doesn't make things faster usually, unless you have really odd DPS makeups that require single target and have no cleaves or spreadable dots at all.

I tend to make up for this by either doing more personal stuns or popping CDs regularly and moving on.

[Inigima]

Congrats!

[The Winged Shadow]

When it goes to the next patch and becomes a bonus to weapon damage, it's going to be a much bigger win. For ferals it'll beat out almost any other trinket. I'd imagine that anyone that does primarily physical DPS will love it - so rogues, ferals, and maybe enh will like it. Some other flavors of rogues (I think combat is low on phys damage) likely won't.

Nah, Assassination is the spec you are thinking of, which does mostly poison/nature damage (IP, DP, Envenom, Venomous Wounds). Combat does massive amounts of physical damage most of which will get affected my the weapon damage change (SS, Revealing Strike, Main Gauche/mastery, Killing Spree, Melee). Sub is very physical as well with mostly melee, backstab and ambush (with a bit of Eviscerate) making up the damage though I don't expect many Sub rogues in the raid environment :P.

Finally got Cho'gall down tonight.

Congratz!

[Greywolf2375]

Finally got Cho'gall down tonight. :)

More offspec loot and stuff, mind. I picked up another 2 tanking pieces, meaning my offspec gear is better than my main :bang:. Up to 154k unbuffed. I shouldn't complain though, as it'll come in handy if we're going to 3-tank Halfus heroic.

Congrats. Wish we had the tanking gear problem - we haven't seen a tank item drop since the first kill on Magmaw. Thankfully almost everything that has dropped has been used - I think we've only had one item DE and nothing go offspec.

[RaceBannon42]

Loot is so goofy in cata. Usually its hunter loot we get 3 of. We had 3 crossbows drop off our first double dragon kill. Last night Council droped triple hunter helms. Of course the hunters are all engineers. One went off spec to a resto shaman the other two got sharded. Which is nice in a way as we need shards for the high end enchants. But they really should do something about multiple item drops from the same boss.

[Max the Mostly Mediocre]

Today Ini talked and healed me through Blackrock Caverns, which was both a lot of fun and a great illustration of the ways in which Blizzard utterly fails to prepare people for the harder content. A day or two ago I did Halls of Lightning with pubbies. The only person who knew what the fuck was going on was the healer, who didn't share. So we do the boss who splits into balls of lightning and he, well, splits into balls of lightning. It takes me a bit to figure out that I can't damage or taunt the fucking things and back off with 1/3 of my health remaining. The dps don't come to the same realization in time, and die. All three of them. The healer and I then proceed to spank the reformed boss without any difficulties whatsoever. After that I tell the healer he needs to tell us about gimmicks in the future, and he agrees.

Point being, if anything like that--and it wasn't the only such occurrence, just the most extreme (although maybe not. I recall once both the healer and a dps got one-shotted at the start of a boss battle in I-don't-know-where and we still won because I am awesome/he wasn't actually scary)--happened in BRC, it would have been wipetastic, and nothing in the experience prepared me for something as Serious Business as BRC. If I hadn't had Ini whispering sweet nothings in my ear BRC would have been abominable. As it was, it was moderately challenging, but we were not, AFAICT, ever danger of wiping. Except once, when the noob healer Ini got distracted and I died before I realized I need to pop my CDs. Even then, nobody else died or came close to dying.

[Lyanna Stark]

Grats Soylent on Cho'Gall!

We got Maloriak down last night after some tinkering. Had to two man heal him in the end cos our ele shaman only pulls 9k DPS (magically he started doing 12k when we swapped to another DPS, no idea why). I got to use my new showy shadow set, pewpew. Surprisingly easy with two heals.

Went to Chimaeron and got him to 12%, but had issues with DBM errors, not loading DBM, DCs and it getting really late. Our raid healer and our MT had no working DBM, nor any way to show the HP total (or the debuff you get when your HP is at 1) so we were sort of going in blind. Got him to P3 or whatever the last one is a couple of times, but had too few people up to finish him. Once we get visibility off debuff and tank swap down, it should be cake.

On CC: we routinely use 1-2 CC depending on the packs, as what slows us down is my drinking. Since that is basically the "speed factor", it makes far more sense to pull at a rate where I don't need to drink, or can drink while people loot and the tank runs up to the next pack. My ilvl average is 350 and the tank's higher. Most packs = one CC, the 5 mob caster/healer packs in TotT for instance, we used two. It's just faster and less annoying that way. I have done most HCs with little to minimal CC, but it leaves the margins very small and you basically have to wait a long time for drinking, and for CDs to pop up again.

Congrats. Wish we had the tanking gear problem - we haven't seen a tank item drop since the first kill on Magmaw. Thankfully almost everything that has dropped has been used - I think we've only had one item DE and nothing go offspec.

Yep, we have 5 bosses down this week and 4 fresh shards. :/ Guess Blizzard don't get we don't have a resto druid. First week we had two offspec items I think, but this week has been really bad. We have got loads of tanking stuff tho. Our tanks are pimped.

[RaceBannon42]

I wish we had more useless gear. I wants landslide!

But we are giving prio to tanks and healers for their enchants first.