World of Warcraft

[Zad]

Eddh said:

Zad said:

Do I really want to spend 2 hours or more doing one heroic, just in case something drops for me that has marginally better stats? I don't know. It feels like a lot of hard work from here, for little forward motion. Hmm. Not sure what to do now. I was going to move to a raiding guild, but I'm not sure the rewards are worthwhile.

Out of interest, have you played since release or are you one of the new breed of LAWLWTFZERG!! wow players?

I started when BC came out, and was in the second raid on the realm to get Kingslayer back in February, before the ICC buffs started. Missed out on realm first by 48 hours. Read into that what you will.

Questing in WotLK took a heck of a lot longer than this. My first slowish run through in beta, even accounting for the server drops, bugs and reading the quest text took maybe 24 game hours. That was on my ret paladin, which is quite a bit slower than my hunter. 80-81 in Mt Hyjal took around 3 hours (admittedly with some 'blue' double XP bar), whereas Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord still take 4-5 hours per level on my 4th toon. Even with a busy server on launch night (and busy is an understatement) and no bonus XP, it took 4 hours 80-82.

What I am saying in my own clumsy way is that I think this is about as far as the WoW engine can be pushed. A boss difficulty is now increasingly down to the "cracks between the stones" where a bit of lag can mean a wipe, but a set of players on a fast connection and who have watched a video means you 1-shot it.

Even when levelling I have to break off to do stuff; eat, drink, go to the loo, talk on the phone, talk to real people, send emails, that kinda stuff. Maybe getting older means I have a shorter attention span, but I just don't have 3 or 4 contiguous hours at a time to commit to a 5-man instance.

[hostyle]

Eddh said:

It is a shame though that you never got to experience the 'WOW of old'. Where no-one really knew the tactics to what you were about to face, we were exploring uncharted waters. It was awesome.

The work behind organising 40 people to all know what they are doing and making sure each of them didn't fk it up was incredible. Some people struggle to run and lead a 10 man raid now-a-days.

I swear if I lose my hair young it will be to raid leading MC, BWL and AQ! I used to like it when we did ZG and AQ20 (once they had come out) as it meant I only had half the amount of people to take care of.

However I am looking forward to hitting the 10 man content again in the new expansion we have a small dedicated guild of 24 people currently so 10 people all knowing what they are doing and playing well not having to carry anyone will be cool

The struggling Raid Leader would be me then But that's probably more down to the less stringent demands I put on people to go along (make sure you've got some ok-gear and be willing to learn). So yeah, 10-mans are a learning curve for me. But then I haven't really started on instances and raids till I hit 80. I was more into questing and minding my own business :P

Now I'm a GM (oops :P ), I see this expansion as sort of a clean slate. When we get into a new dungeon, I take time to explain tacts to people who have never been there. So far, I've only had one wipe and that happened thanks to a tank's phone ringing

If I'll get gray before my time, I'll probably blame the GOGOGO crew and the ones who pull before everyone's ready

[Smashed]

hostyle said:

Silly you? I don't think so... I know the definition of CC. But I haven't had to use in the time I played WoW. I started in march this year (or somewhere around that time). By the time I had quested and random'ed my toon to 80, all the instances I got into were a tank and spank fest.

Most new(ish) players, me included, aren't used to this playstyle. This is one of the reasons why I have been holding back on the pugs. It is in effect a new play style for me, that a) I don't want to bother people I don't know with my fk-ups and b) I don't want other people to annoy me with snide remarks or meet the GOGOGO F*CKING NOOB OMG WTF!-crew.

I'm healing at the moment since dinging 85 and the problems DPS cause aren't entirely their fault. I remember back when heroics and dungeons were this hard that tanks would mark quite clearly each mob in a pack and establish a CC and kill order at the start of a dungeon. Something like, if there's a moon sheep it, star sap it, kill skull first then cross then move onto anything else.

It was simple and it worked. DPS could follow the mark and stick there CC on the marked targets easily. but now there are tanks not marking anything losing control as 3 dps focus 3 different targets which ends up in me dieing by getting healing aggro.

I can't be bothered with tanking at the moment unless it's a group of friends that I'm with as otherwise people say I'm going too slow as I want to mark things and generally make sure we don't die before the start of a pull.

I'd go do some pugs to be honest don't let us put you off. Just make sure you have omen threat meter. Focus your dps on the tanks primary target, if they haven't marked one then just follow omen and stick to a mob that has a lot of threat from the tank on it. I'd stay away from puggin heroics till you're fully kitted in 333 gear though. I tried a couple with some severely undergeared players and it just made it hell.

[Smashed]

Eddh said:

Storm1984 said:

hostyle said:

the GOGOGO F*CKING NOOB OMG WTF!-crew.

That boils my piss more than anything else. Really winds me up...

Tanks that pull knowing you have no mana and knowing that the next pack of mobs is quite healing intensive and will require a lot of mana...

Damn this winds me up. I've healed maybe 10-15 dungeons this weekend and I can say about 70% of the wipes I had were avoidable if the tank had let me top up my mana first or even waited till I was in rage may have helped.

Oh and I'm getting tanks with less hp than me, what the hell is up with that?!

I think every tank should level and play a healer and every healer should level and play a tank. It will make you 10 times better at your main role.

[GnuBee]

Smashed said:

Eddh said:

Storm1984 said:

hostyle said:

the GOGOGO F*CKING NOOB OMG WTF!-crew.

That boils my piss more than anything else. Really winds me up...

Tanks that pull knowing you have no mana and knowing that the next pack of mobs is quite healing intensive and will require a lot of mana...

Damn this winds me up. I've healed maybe 10-15 dungeons this weekend and I can say about 70% of the wipes I had were avoidable if the tank had let me top up my mana first or even waited till I was in rage may have helped.

Oh and I'm getting tanks with less hp than me, what the hell is up with that?!

I think every tank should level and play a healer and every healer should level and play a tank. It will make you 10 times better at your main role.

I'm kind of in agreement with this...

I'm the raid leader for our guild and normally have the MT role (although main tank/off tank as disparate/seperate roles seemed to not exist in ICC). I went down the route of specifically levelling a healing class to give me a better comprehension of how that role functions and therefore hopefully improve my raid leading.

Before that though I'd always been given the idea that "good practice" was to have the healer set as the focus so that, as the tank, you always have a picture of the healer's mana pool.

The reality is that it would be nice if every player out there had the opportunity to experience playing each of the roles to give them a better comprehension of the specific challenges each faces. Sadly it seems that this is not a common viewpoint and it wouldn't be so much of an issue if people just stop and think sometimes.

The disparity you are seeing in health pools at the moment is probably caused by people wearing bizarre gear (I fall in to the same category).

The changes to healing were ably demonstrated last night as we ran Halls of Origination and Lost City of the Tolvir with our recently dinged Resto Shammy - she was boasting a 76k mana pool but wow did it go down quickly.

[Smashed]

It's amasing what you don't know until you've had a go with other classes. Our old GM did this he had a prot palidn since vanilla. Didn't have a care in the world about any other classes and always made a point of saying how much of a waste of time it was to have an alt when there are things you can do on your main blah blah. Then his wife stopped playing who had a holy/disc priest with ulduar gear.

You should of heard him on vent trying to heal us in a heroic. He was getting so flustered and hands down admitted healing is fking hardwork and he totally underestimated it. Even later on after more practice he still thought this and it did make a difference in his raids.

[hostyle]

Smashed said:

I'd go do some pugs to be honest don't let us put you off. Just make sure you have omen threat meter. Focus your dps on the tanks primary target, if they haven't marked one then just follow omen and stick to a mob that has a lot of threat from the tank on it. I'd stay away from puggin heroics till you're fully kitted in 333 gear though. I tried a couple with some severely undergeared players and it just made it hell.

Don't worry mate. I will not be put of pugs easily. Threat is an issue though. As an Arms Warrior my most potent blows generate a lot of threat, Cleave and Sweeping Strike most notoriously. So if I don't use those in a multiple mob fight, my DPS is down. If I do use 'em, I might suddenly be the centre of attention... wich doesn't end good for me most of the times I installed Omen recently and although it gives me a good view on threat, in the middle of big fights I tend to loose focus on it. I think it's just a case of getting used to. In the DPS-stats I'm mostly on the 2nd and sometimes on the 3rd spot. So no probs there.

I know Fury might bring better DPS, but I can't get used to its mechanics. I tried some instances with it, but I couldn't get to grip with its talents and I'm not much of a stance dancers

[Smashed]

hostyle said:

So if I don't use those in a multiple mob fight, my DPS is down.

Just remember that unless there is an enrage timer the mobs weren't neccesarily designed to go down fast. From what I can tell of the recent nerfs aoe just should not be being used. Melee like you say will pull aggro and casters will just go out of mana and they reduced the dps it does anyway. Single target focus fire them down, once people are geared from raids aoe will come back into it and dungeons will go down fast.

I'm seeing smaller dps numbers now than I was in lich king and it's purely because people are having to fight one mob at a time. In these situations what makes the dungeon go a lot faster is if all 3 dps attack the same dude.

[scorp]

Smashed said:

hostyle said:

Silly you? I don't think so... I know the definition of CC. But I haven't had to use in the time I played WoW. I started in march this year (or somewhere around that time). By the time I had quested and random'ed my toon to 80, all the instances I got into were a tank and spank fest.

Most new(ish) players, me included, aren't used to this playstyle. This is one of the reasons why I have been holding back on the pugs. It is in effect a new play style for me, that a) I don't want to bother people I don't know with my fk-ups and b) I don't want other people to annoy me with snide remarks or meet the GOGOGO F*CKING NOOB OMG WTF!-crew.

I'm healing at the moment since dinging 85 and the problems DPS cause aren't entirely their fault. I remember back when heroics and dungeons were this hard that tanks would mark quite clearly each mob in a pack and establish a CC and kill order at the start of a dungeon. Something like, if there's a moon sheep it, star sap it, kill skull first then cross then move onto anything else.

It was simple and it worked. DPS could follow the mark and stick there CC on the marked targets easily. but now there are tanks not marking anything losing control as 3 dps focus 3 different targets which ends up in me dieing by getting healing aggro.

I can't be bothered with tanking at the moment unless it's a group of friends that I'm with as otherwise people say I'm going too slow as I want to mark things and generally make sure we don't die before the start of a pull.

I'd go do some pugs to be honest don't let us put you off. Just make sure you have omen threat meter. Focus your dps on the tanks primary target, if they haven't marked one then just follow omen and stick to a mob that has a lot of threat from the tank on it. I'd stay away from puggin heroics till you're fully kitted in 333 gear though. I tried a couple with some severely undergeared players and it just made it hell.

I quit playing about 3 months aho but good to hear heroics sound as scary as they were in TBC. Do people actually need to use CC again ? I spent ages learning to effectively trap CC on my huntard, I remember Magisters terrace being a particularly hard test in heroic, especially if you didn't have mages.

[Smashed]

scorp said:

I quit playing about 3 months aho but good to hear heroics sound as scary as they were in TBC. Do people actually need to use CC again ? I spent ages learning to effectively trap CC on my huntard, I remember Magisters terrace being a particularly hard test in heroic, especially if you didn't have mages.

I did vortex pinnacle last night (one of the new instances) on heroic mode with guildies. All who had been playing since vanilla and we had to utilise, sheep, frost traps, banish, and some clever bits of line of sight kiting in order to deal with trash. With the right CC it was fairly hassle free but the point is that it would of been difficult to sort in a pug, our healer was one of our best and the rest of the guys in the group I've been playing with for years so knew what they were going to do. Took a long time mind but not many deaths. Wiped a few times on 2 of the bosses last boss got one shotted. So yes they do seem to have gone back to TBC style but not as hard as magisters terrace. But now we have achievements to aim for too which makes it a hell of a lot more fun =D We were all in 333 gear or higher by the way so not greens and stuff.

[IainT]

So, a week off work, mostly played WoW.

Hit 85 on Thursday, spent JPs on Ret gear and started hitting up normal instances. Built up tank gear and rep and am now Exalted with Therazane and Revered with Wildhammer and Earthen Ring.

Have an average iLvl of 340 in Ret gear and 338 in tank. We hit up our first raid content on Sunday - the Tol Barad raid dungeon and got the bugger down to 0.2% (~250k) before we ran out of time. One of our healers on the run had average gear of 336 and the other not even able to queue for heroics.

We tried The Balckrock instance last night and the trash in there is harder (currently) than HC mode ICC bosses were!

This expansion finally brings back the worth of good DPS. Not DPS that put out big numbers, although that helps, but DPS that learn tactics quickly and don't take excess damage.

HC instances are draining on the healers mentally and also for the tank to ensure each pull is managed correctly and CC is used effectively. Doign a HC run without 2 viable CC options is not fun nuless you have a Paladin Healer... They don't seem to have the same mana constraints at the moment that other classes do. Holy priests have the most work to conserve mana with druids a little better off.

Our guild has now achieved all the HC content but raiding will be off limits for just a little while longer - until the whole group has HC level gear I think.

[shouldbworking]

So. Tol Barad. how the balls did this make it through beta?

[trooperiziz]

Tempted to fir up wow again after seeing everyone talking about it

A couple of questions, do I need to buy Wrath, or can I jump straight to Cata? I stopped after BC came out.
What's the deal with addons these days? I used to use a pretty good on screen healing helper thing a few years back, has most of the good stuff now been built in?

[Zad]

Tol Barad is great in theory. On beta, Horde utterly owned it all the time so I hardly got a look in. On live we have a very low horde population in Nagrand Eu, so battles generally only have 10-15 people on each side and I get to see even less of it. Which is utterly rubbish.

On the whole, the boss fights are great. Everyone has to do their job, but good players can really shine. Trash however, that is a HUGE pain in the posterior. 90% of a dungeon run is just Cc'ing and DPSing down trash, which gets boring very quickly. It is ok for grinding reputation, but I suspect that once all reps are exalted then people will be reluctant to run heroics.

[Smashed]

Zad said:

Tol Barad is great in theory. On beta, Horde utterly owned it all the time so I hardly got a look in. On live we have a very low horde population in Nagrand Eu, so battles generally only have 10-15 people on each side and I get to see even less of it. Which is utterly rubbish.

On the whole, the boss fights are great. Everyone has to do their job, but good players can really shine. Trash however, that is a HUGE pain in the posterior. 90% of a dungeon run is just Cc'ing and DPSing down trash, which gets boring very quickly. It is ok for grinding reputation, but I suspect that once all reps are exalted then people will be reluctant to run heroics.

Weirdly that's exactly what I like about heroics =D We've been going for all the glory achievements and it turns all the bosses into raid bosses, so much fun!

[Smashed]

trooperiziz said:

Tempted to fir up wow again after seeing everyone talking about it

A couple of questions, do I need to buy Wrath, or can I jump straight to Cata? I stopped after BC came out.
What's the deal with addons these days? I used to use a pretty good on screen healing helper thing a few years back, has most of the good stuff now been built in?

Erm all the other healers in my guild think I'm mental as I run with no addons. Just things like omen for when I'm tanking and DBM for general raid warnings etc. It seems a lot of people use Grid and Healbot still. I've never been a fan though.

Oh and you'll need lich king, not sure if it's still on sale but it's pretty cheap anyway now.

[IainT]

Smashed said:

trooperiziz said:

Tempted to fir up wow again after seeing everyone talking about it

A couple of questions, do I need to buy Wrath, or can I jump straight to Cata? I stopped after BC came out.
What's the deal with addons these days? I used to use a pretty good on screen healing helper thing a few years back, has most of the good stuff now been built in?

Erm all the other healers in my guild think I'm mental as I run with no addons. Just things like omen for when I'm tanking and DBM for general raid warnings etc. It seems a lot of people use Grid and Healbot still. I've never been a fan though.

Oh and you'll need lich king, not sure if it's still on sale but it's pretty cheap anyway now.

IIRC Wrath is reduced to either 15 or 20 quid.

[shouldbworking]

Zad said:

Tol Barad is great in theory. On beta, Horde utterly owned it all the time so I hardly got a look in. On live we have a very low horde population in Nagrand Eu, so battles generally only have 10-15 people on each side and I get to see even less of it. Which is utterly rubbish.

The population imbalance is an issue on my server (aggramar eu) as well, but the whole mechanic is just ridiculous. All the defending team have to do is sit on one objective - the other team is forced to split their attack force so will always have less numbers and fail.

[IainT]

shouldbworking said:

Zad said:

Tol Barad is great in theory. On beta, Horde utterly owned it all the time so I hardly got a look in. On live we have a very low horde population in Nagrand Eu, so battles generally only have 10-15 people on each side and I get to see even less of it. Which is utterly rubbish.

The population imbalance is an issue on my server (aggramar eu) as well, but the whole mechanic is just ridiculous. All the defending team have to do is sit on one objective - the other team is forced to split their attack force so will always have less numbers and fail.

On our server there's a horde majority and TB has now changed hands at peak times a few times. The weight of liklihood is that the attacking side will lose but organisation and a lack of can change this picture.

IMHO the design should favour the attackers to allow regular transitions of the zone. It's no good if he area stays in one factions hands all day.

I'd go with a model where the defenders must hold 2 or more of the key points to hold control.

[PabloTeK]

Dragging this up a little; anyone noticing the amount of guild invites? My alt Horde gets them at a rate of at least 1-2 per hour!