World Of Warcraft - Prelude to Pandas

[Insomnium]

I'm getting tired of healing on my druid. My question is, for a 10 man group would it be fair for me to switch to a disc priest, when the other healers are a holy priest, and holy paladin? Probably not, but god I'm tired of keeping lifebloom stacks up, and just using swiftmend, and wild growth on cool down. Seriously that's all I do... If it's more healing intensive I start blanketing the raid with rejuvs. Yay...

Edit: I guess I could also switch to shaman, but I have no experience healing at later levels, and it seems that shammy healing mechanics are even more simple than a druid's.

[Arataniello]

I'm getting tired of healing on my druid. My question is, for a 10 man group would it be fair for me to switch to a disc priest, when the other healers are a holy priest, and holy paladin? Probably not, but god I'm tired of keeping lifebloom stacks up, and just using swiftmend, and wild growth on cool down. Seriously that's all I do... If it's more healing intensive I start blanketing the raid with rejuvs. Yay...

Edit: I guess I could also switch to shaman, but I have no experience healing at later levels, and it seems that shammy healing mechanics are even more simple than a druid's.

Perhaps as simplistic, wouldn't say more simple. Just Riptide, HW, HW, throw down a healing rain to keep melee happy. Keep ES up on tank, WS up on you.

[Insomnium]

Seeing as I was 378 coming out of Firelands (having received no heroic upgrades), and having not received anything from the new content, this would be the time to make a decision. We have no shamans in our group, so our mail spell gear is wasted. Play style wise, though, disc is the bomb.

[Greywolf2375]

Seeing as I was 378 coming out of Firelands (having received no heroic upgrades), and having not received anything from the new content, this would be the time to make a decision. We have no shamans in our group, so our mail spell gear is wasted. Play style wise, though, disc is the bomb.

If it fits better with the raid comp and helps, yeah. We've had three people switch mains - helped with loot, helped with balance, keeps people happy.

[Arataniello]

Like balance/resto specced druids, a resto/elemental shammy can get geared up relatively quickly, and there is almost 100% overlap between the two gear sets.

[TerraPrime]

So, I /gquit last night.

Not anything dramatic. Very amicable.

I, apparently, have lost the ability to play the warlock class at a raid level. Since the start of FL, my DPS has continually gone down, as my gear went up. It was... bizarre. And yes, I am stacking the right stats. I was just at a loss as to what the eff is going on. Last night we did a guild queue for LFR so we can nab some easy tokens for our tanks so that they can get the yummy 4pc cds. There was not a fight where my dps was higher than 20k, sustained, over a boss fight. I was below in total damage than our bear tank. It was absolutely disgusting.

The most frustrating thing is that I've been trying to hard to do better. I re-did my raid frames, I used about 9 power auras for proc alerts so I can line up my dots. I switched between Demo and Aff. I did the pet swapping mid fight. And all of that seemed to have made my output worse, all told. It was unbelievably frustrating.

So at the end, I just told the officers that I am going to quit the guild, as they're pushing progression through heroic content in DS and a DPS who cannot clear 25K DPS has no place in such a group. They offered that I could stay on as a social member, and I said no thanks. What's the point? Though it was nice of them to offer.

Seriously, I have have no idea what the hell is going on with my performance. Granted I was never the top lock on the server or anything close, but I have always felt that I got the class mechanics. Apparently, not anymore. It's a blow to my own sense of self as a player, let me tell you. It really sucks, as I like the class. But at this rate, I'll be doing pug raids with the lock, if I play him at all.

I'll come back to him after Panda and give it another shot, but in the 4.3, I just somehow fail at warlock. *emos*

So, off to playing my healing priest, while finishing up on my hunter. Still zero interest in dusting off my paladin, though.

[Insomnium]

I have the same experience as a lock. I'm just missing something. Never raided with him seriously, but now that the new content came out, I gave it another chance and geared him up, and gemmed, enchanted everything. I read all of the guides, pay attention to to the priorities, and have the Power Aura alerts, but I can't seem to break 20k. I know it's possible as I see other locks in LFR, doing it. Kind of sad, when simulationcraft tells me I should be getting close to 30k with the gear I have.

[Greywolf2375]

Sorry to hear that TP - I understand what you're going through. My wife is playing an ele shaman and has done similar - all the right things, research, etc but the numbers were always low. Figured out the issue she had was not following the ABC theory - Always Be Casting. She'd be worred about things she needed to rely on guildies for - instead of relying on the healers to do their job or waiting for the final second before Twilight, she'd pop out early to make extra extra sure she lived. thankfully for her that did make a big difference - on our Ultrax kill last night she almost ranked on WoL.

Maybe it's something like that - minimize the movement. Hopefully you can still have fun playing around on the other toons you have!

[Insomnium]

I think that's it Greywolf. I'd have trouble playing any caster class. I can get incredible numbers on DK, Rogue, and Enhancement shaman, but then with those you can twist and shift, and not lose any DPS.

[Lyanna Stark]

Sorry to hear it TP. :/

Only DPS class I tend to just automatically fit with is hunter. Mage is arsebackwards for me and lock I never even tried. Can do spriest but not as good as the really good ones. Melee DPS tends to not work well for me. Tanking is ok, and I've done like three raid bosses as ret pala, but no ty. Maybe healing is the way forward, since it works well for people doing their homework, most of the time. and it's more a priority and planning system than just "nuke face". Plus in ten mans, if you go Disc and stack a bit of mastery, you can taste the druid tears when all their WG goes to overheal. :P

Re healing setup in ten mans, druids are still very strong, altho the nerf to WG hurts. Holy priest in ten mans is....super ouch. I don't know how they play it. I went Holy yesterday to luls at the buffed divine hymn and it was just so awful I could not even bear it on trash. Our druid was loving it tho, cos my healing dropped by 30% and he was owning the meters. As Disc, I am head to head with him on almost every fight. As Holy, I drop so far behind and go oom so much I don't stand a chance.

Shamans are ok, but suffer from the mechanics of chain heal. Our resto shaman pulls good numbers, but it feels wonky to feel together with him, as if he heals a lot, but the wrong targets, you know? The same druid who goes happy when I swap to failangel spec also cries emo tears when I swap out for the shammy and keeps sending me tells with "we're going to dieeeeeeee now". Dunno if it's just our resto being a bit airheaded sometimes or whether it is shammy mechanics making it so.

[Greywolf2375]

disappointing night. Took us 2 1/2 hrs to get Spine down. people marked for DPSing the corruptions get grabbed, the back ups decide not to switch. Had a great pull going 1/2 way through, on the final piece, tank is getting the Amalg in position and a warriors UI bugs, taunts the amalg and we wipe.

One of the things that is always fun is when a boss does finally go down, you can almost hear the thoughts..."wait, that's all we had to do? huh."

got two pulls on Madness...first bolt killed us...2nd pull we missed ending Cata by less than one second on the third tentacle.

back to recruiting...had 5 people not show which put two good DPS into OS healing specs

[Solmyr]

TP I noticed the same thing with my lock over the course of cata. I used to top the meters at the start without breaking a sweat, it got progressively worse as patches came and went, now at 4.3 I see DKs and Palas facerolling and doing way more than me. Seems the class just doesn't scale as well with gear as the others. Not a big deal for me since I stopped playing seriously half a year ago and with swtor coming around I don't think I will be revisiting WoW until Pandamonium hits (if then).

[Nukelavee]

That sucks, Terra.

It's the reason I rarely raid, or even pve, Aff is just a bitch to wring high-end dps out of.

[Insomnium]

I tried healing on the priest in a 25 LFR, and it was hard to tell what the hell was going on. We're not raiding until Monday, so I have some time to figure things out.

[Arataniello]

LFR is really only a good place to get the very very basics down of the DS bosses. I ended up in one yesterday and the fact is that people aren't prepared to take the time to explain things in a PuG, and especially when there is no voice channel. So being told to "ping pong the ball for X stacks and then let the boss soak it" are realtively meaningless.

Saying that, I was able to get the first four bosses under my belt without having detailed knowledge about the fight meachanics, only dying once on Hagara to something.

Now that I have been through the fights once (resto sham), I will read the mechanics and watch videos to fine tune the understanding for guild runs in the upcoming weeks.

[Insomnium]

It was still nice to see an encounter like Madness, before ever having to tackle it in my 10 man. Less stressful, and you do get some knowledge of the mechanics involved.

No one really bothers to explain things for the first 4 bosses, and you can get away with it, and probably even for Ultraxion. I didn't really get what was happening for lootship, but it seemed like the DPS knew what they were doing. The last two encounters however, have some pretty tight mechanics that can quickly wipe the raid.

For Madness you need everyone switching to priority targets. I guess it can also be brute forced with some exceptional DPS, but that's not always the case in PUGs. So, the random DK who refuses to attack anything but Deathwing's body part on the last platform, can really screw things up when you need to get the bloods down and only need that small little push in damage.

[Mack Kilimaro]

For Madness you need everyone switching to priority targets. I guess it can also be brute forced with some exceptional DPS, but that's not always the case in PUGs. So, the random DK who refuses to attack anything but Deathwing's body part on the last platform, can really screw things up when you need to get the bloods down and only need that small little push in damage.

Or in the case of the first group where I tried Deathwing on RF difficulty, the two random DKs and one random ret pally who whould never move off the arm/wing tentacles. Good grief. Plus, on raid finder, you're pretty much required to do the Alexstrasza platform last at this point, because nobody's gonna kill the blistering tentacles.

[TerraPrime]

Re: warlock

I wish I could say that it's the class mechanics changing, but I'm not sure that it is. There are still 2 good locks in the guild, and one of them has slightly worse gear than me but is performing much better (yes I did ask for help and pointers and she did help). It really is a case of something not working, and I have no idea what, why, and how to fix it. I read the parses, I read the forums, I gem/chant/reforge accordingly, I track trinket procs, and there's still something missing. It seems to be me, and something about my playing. It just gets to be too frustrating for a game that I am supposed to enjoy playing.

Still, thanks everyone for the words of sym/em-pathy. :)

[Greywolf2375]

WOOT!!!111 !! Got Deathwing down in 10 man last night. Started with me and a DK tanking, then just switched to solo tanking it and walked right through it. Once I got the timing down for my CDs on impale it became much much easier. Had resto Shaman, resto drood & a disc priest and we really didn't come close to problems. I did die to the Terrors because I oopsed, but other than that had it in control. 25 man is going to be crazy.

[Lyanna Stark]

Grats Greywolf!

We got it down yesterday as well, which felt really anticlimactic after all the hard work we put in last week. It really only was gear for us. Last week we hit hard enrage, with the extra gear (I counted an average +2 ilvls for everyone) we had assembled we killed him with 1 min to spare to enrage and healers going into P2 with full mana bars, compared to almost running on empty last week.

Had some wipes on Blackhorn and Spine cos of swapping in noob DPS and another tank than we had in our "top team". Madness we ended up two shotting. Got two rounds of elementium terrors, but once people clicked their Dream when they had the Shrapnel debuff, it was fine. On and we got TWO twohanded swords of Madness. *sigh* Loot RNG is retarded.

I think we're going to try Morchock (naturally dubbed "morecock" by the guild) on heroic next week.