World Of Warcraft Discussion Thread

[Mr Hat and Clogs]

They look a little colourful for a Black Dragon, though. I guess they had to up the aesthetics to make them feel special, though. Thanks for showing that.

They're not Black Dragons, well, not pure breed anyway. These are Twilight Dragons, hybrids much like the chromatic Dragons Nefarian was creating.

Spoiler for Twilight Dragons:

These were created by Deathwing - Neltharion, The Earth Warder - the leader of the Black Dragon Flight and the most powerful of the Dragon Aspects. One of the better bad guys in the WoW universe.

There is a Black Drake mount though, from 10 man Sarth 3 Drakes, which is arguably harder then the 25 man version because the group balance needs to be more precise, so I'd say that's more of an achievement then anything else in the game atm. Not to detract from the 25 man version though, both are quite hard. I have not seen a single Black Drake mount yet but multiple Twilight Drakes on Proudmoore.

For healing I found that my Paladin was relaxing.. or boring I'm not sure which. Only two heals to use meant it was far less stressful then the other classes. Although I really do like Disciple healing.

[krisslanza]

You know I have to wonder... How can anyone tell what is the "right" DPS a class is meant to do anyway?

I mean to me sometimes I wonder if Blizzard just purposely buffs a class to make it more popular/make the whiners quiet down and purposely nerfs classes that get too popular or get complained about too much...

[Last Sinner]

Hmmm. how would you do 10 man 3D Sarth...?

2 tanks, 2 healers, 6 dps? 2 tanks are all you need - 1 for Sarth and one for the current drake. Healing isn't as hard these days. A Holy Paladin and a Restoration Shaman could handle it imo. As for DPS, you're going to need some good AoE to handle the Fire spawns, so you'd need 2 Mages to nuke them and a Retribution Paladin to hold aggro on them. Good guilds can have a Ret pally on the flame adds and keep them up. For constant DPS, a Hunter and a Death Knight? The Hunter could also do some decent AoE control with Volley on the adds. DKs do awesome DPS on Sarth.

[Xacual]

I haven't done 10man Sarth + 3D mainly because I don't have the time to make the offnights where 10mans happen but from what I understand you need 2 good tanks and then another tank capable class.

[Mr Hat and Clogs]

We were trying it today with 3 tanks 3 healers and 4 dps, was fairly horrible class balance/synergy but there was definitely potential there. The add tank takes a shitload of damage, so unless you burned them down to keep the number of add's low you'd need a proper 3rd tank. We didn't have anyone attacking the adds but me today, and I was only able to knock off about 2/3 their health before the next batch spawned, so they started to build up. Could do it with 2 tanks though but the dps paladin/dk/warrior would have to be able to take a hit or two.

I think I've got a fairly decent strat worked out in my head for it but would need some good DPS for it. Gona have to type it up for guildies too look at, and will have to get them to get proper consumables! Cause like Small Feast just doesn't cut it as the only consumable used by the raid.

You know I have to wonder... How can anyone tell what is the "right" DPS a class is meant to do anyway?

You know that's kinda one of my personal gripes with this type of game. Everyone is so obsessed with the numbers. I almost wish that all damage and healing numbers were hidden from players. So people would have to rely on 'gut' feeling more and what feels right to them, and you know just have fun doing stuff with people.

Of course you'd have to replace the numbers game with something... Or maybe not, if fights are dynamic enough (Sarth 3d for eg), you wouldn't even need to worry about numbers then!

[Xellos]

We do it with 3 tanks, 2 healers and 5 dps. Healers really have to be on the ball of course. Three tanks makes the control a lot better and your dps has to be sharp. All in all, it doesn't feel that much harder than 25 man, but my job is easy...

[Last Sinner]

Strange, Blizzard claims Hunters are one of the hardest classes to master in terms of perfecting the move rotation. ^^

[Xellos]

Originally Posted by Last Sinner

Strange, Blizzard claims Hunters are one of the hardest classes to master in terms of perfecting the move rotation. ^^

The Blue post I think you're referring to:

"Even though we can disagree on which hunter spec is the easiest to play, the class as a whole is not easy to play, at least not at the expert level."

While SV is more involved than BM, I can't agree that the class as a whole isn't easy to play. If they're talking about pvp, then I can understand that, but pve huntering is rather easy. The only time where I have to work a bit is kiting zombies on Gluth.

[Clarste]

Originally Posted by krisslanza

You know I have to wonder... How can anyone tell what is the "right" DPS a class is meant to do anyway?

I mean to me sometimes I wonder if Blizzard just purposely buffs a class to make it more popular/make the whiners quiet down and purposely nerfs classes that get too popular or get complained about too much...

From Blizzard's point of view, what's supposed to happen is that a boss will die in X minutes with a properly geared group, and the damage will be distributed roughly evenly among the dps classes. So they just take the health of the boss, divide by the expected killtime, and divide that by the expected number of dps classes (well, they also have to incorporate the tanks' damage, but that's just simple algebra since they know what fraction of a pure dps spec that a tank is supposed to do). Any class that consistently does more than that is overpowered and any class that does less needs a buff.

Or at least that's how it should work. The point being that the "right" damage is likely a mathematical truth derived from design decisions.

[Last Sinner]

Originally Posted by Clarste

From Blizzard's point of view, what's supposed to happen is that a boss will die in X minutes with a properly geared group, and the damage will be distributed roughly evenly among the dps classes. So they just take the health of the boss, divide by the expected killtime, and divide that by the expected number of dps classes (well, they also have to incorporate the tanks' damage, but that's just simple algebra since they know what fraction of a pure dps spec that a tank is supposed to do). Any class that consistently does more than that is overpowered and any class that does less needs a buff.

Or at least that's how it should work. The point being that the "right" damage is likely a mathematical truth derived from design decisions.

There also is the factor of how that translates into PvP. Blizzard are very hesitant to fix Rogues in PvE because they already do more than enough in PvP.

[Sephi]

Been a blast leveling my hunter last few days, lvl 23 Atm, with about 1 days played.

Thinking of going this as build till i'm lvl 80
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/...30503105000000

And when i'm ready to raid i'm taking 2 point from "Go for the Throat" to Focus Aim.

Is there a bug with Pet Prowl btw? My pet goes in prowl randomly sometimes, even if i turn off autocast :/

[Last Sinner]

They are fun. ^^

Cats and Scorpids have had bugs for most of Northrend. -_-

As for the spec - nope. Go all the way to 51 in one of them. Cookie cutter won't harness what Hunters are really capable of at 80.

Deep Survival

Deep Marksman

Deep Beast Mastery

There might be slight errors in what I thought right for BM and MM, but that Survival spec is pretty much the right one. It's what Blade and Xellos crank and they do beautiful DPS with it. Pick which tree you want to focus on and crank it. Dipping into all 3 won't do you any favours at all.

[Evangelion Xgouki]

Originally Posted by Mr Hat and Clogs

You know that's kinda one of my personal gripes with this type of game. Everyone is so obsessed with the numbers. I almost wish that all damage and healing numbers were hidden from players. So people would have to rely on 'gut' feeling more and what feels right to them, and you know just have fun doing stuff with people.

Of course you'd have to replace the numbers game with something... Or maybe not, if fights are dynamic enough (Sarth 3d for eg), you wouldn't even need to worry about numbers then!

Tell me about it . I hate it in pugs when they constantly ask for the DPS/damage meters to be posted after every pull and especially every boss. The one time I find it useful to have is in guild raids so we (the officers) can evaluate our progress and improvement of raiders from the previous week(s). Though this takes place in officer chat and at the end of the run when we sit down to discuss our progress (or after several wipes to see what's going wrong ). If people wanted to see their DPS I don't know why they just don't get an addon themselves if they keep asking over and over again. I have one mostly so I can evaluate my overhealing to see how I can improve and for raid evaluation in guild runs.

And healing, yesh. It seems like many of the bosses so far are hard on the healers (never ran 40-man Naxx except reading strats back in the day ). So many people are constantly going on and on about the DPS yet there never seems to be any consideration towards the healers that have to keep everyone alive (I also understand how maxing one's DPS can require a bit of concentration to maintain). Trying to keep everyone in the raid alive in Saph with FR gear that greatly decreases our SP and mana regen, constantly on our toes to be quick on the heal for Kael's Frost Blasts, heavy healing yet mana control on 10-man Patchwerk. It'll probably get easier once everyone is in full teir and equivalent gear but when you first start off...yesh it can be a bit stressful

[Xacual]

Does anyone else's guild use Wow Web Stats or an equivalent? I know my guild uses StasisCL and its nice to see raid overviews. Its a lot more in depth then Recount of course.

[RWBladewing]

Originally Posted by Evangelion Xgouki

Trying to keep everyone in the raid alive in Saph with FR gear that greatly decreases our SP and mana regen

Have fun healing Saph with 0 FrR gear on anyone and only 8 people total in the raid (Dedicated Few achievement). Fights like that make me glad I am not and will never be a healer.

On another note, in that same raid we managed to get both Thaddius achievements and the 4 Horsemen all dying at the same time achievement, the latter of which I was pretty impressed with as that took some pretty serious coordination and we pulled it off first attempt.

It's what Blade and Xellos crank and they do beautiful DPS with it.

My dps would be a lot more beautiful if I wasn't still using the xbow from heroics. I have not even seen a single ranged weapon drop since I started raiding.

And now on a completely random note, I fully expect to see Infused Mushroom Meatloaf as the cooking daily today, since that is the daily literally every day. Starting to wonder if it's bugged. At least it picked the easiest one to bug out on though, if that's the case.


Edit:

Originally Posted by Xacual

Does anyone else's guild use Wow Web Stats or an equivalent? I know my guild uses StasisCL and its nice to see raid overviews. Its a lot more in depth then Recount of course.

Yeah, my guild uses WWS. Not sure if you're just asking or actually looking for examples to look over; I'd post one but the guild keeps them in the private section of the forums so I don't think they'd appreciate me doing that.

[Clarste]

Originally Posted by RWBladewing

Have fun healing Saph with 0 FrR gear on anyone and only 8 people total in the raid (Dedicated Few achievement). Fights like that make me glad I am not and will never be a healer.

Sapphiron is actually a bit easier with less people. Less people = less raid damage = less healing you need to do. Sure it'll take longer, but with a sustainable amount of healing to do mana shouldn't be that much more of a problem. And chances are you overgear the fight dps-wise anyway, since you're going for the achievements (and aren't wearing FrR gear, so your dps is higher).

Then again, I've never been the tank healer, and that's likely where the extra time will take its toll.

A lot of fights are actually easier with less dps. As long as you have someone with replenishment, mana is rarely a problem, so less dps means that there's a higher ratio of healers so its easier to heal. This is why they often have enrage timers, to encourage you to actually want dps to stay alive.

Edit: Oh, and I've done a 10 man Sapph with no FrR where 4 people died in the very beginning. Does that count? Also a KT where all the dps but me were melee and all but one died from the first Frost Blast (which chained to all of them of course). Yeah... PUGs. We won anyway, btw.

[Xacual]

No I was just asking for the sake of asking. I assumed most guilds used it but I wasn't sure.

[RWBladewing]

Originally Posted by Clarste

Sapphiron is actually a bit easier with less people. Less people = less raid damage = less healing you need to do. Sure it'll take longer, but with a sustainable amount of healing to do mana shouldn't be that much more of a problem. And chances are you overgear the fight dps-wise anyway, since you're going for the achievements (and aren't wearing FrR gear, so your dps is higher).

I was actually gonna mention that as a possibility, though we actually wiped the first attempt, and then replaced a dps with a 3rd healer. There were fewer people to heal but the raid damage was pretty extreme for the 2 we had used up to that point. Was smooth sailing with that setup though. We did outgear the fight in general, but I wouldn't necessarily say our dps setup was optimal; we did have a feral druid dps'ing in tank spec and me with my crappy weapon.

We were actually attempting the Undying that run also since the officers decided less people meant less chance to screw up. That ended pretty quickly though. Apparently Heigan can still be an issue for some people, heh. Was overall a very smooth run though, we may have gotten it had that not happened (would not have risked Saph with only 2 healers so no wipe there).

[Last Sinner]

A simple lag spike during Heigan Phase 2 is all it takes. *sigh*

[Xellos]

You can have a perfectly capable group for Undying and have things screw up because someone just had a brain fart. Just one more achievement in normal Naxx and I'll never have to go there again, thank goodness. I can't imagine us getting Immortal anytime soon just because I know people are going to be dumb. Still crossing my fingers though.

On a side note, GM asked me to tank adds in 10 man 3D sarth at the last minute...which is awesome since I haven't tanked anything since mid 70s. Needless to say it was kinda painful at first, but I eventually got the hang of it. It was mostly a matter of getting used to all the new bindings, using new cooldowns, and having damn DnD ready when the whelps came up. Lost the roll for the drake of course, but oh well. Not like I'll use it whenever I get Glory of the Raider (hah).