World of Warcraft XIII: Even Aspects Get Nerfed

[Zherog]

Of potential interest to folks here: Author Matt Forbeck will hold a live author talk in WoW. The talk will take place on Thursday March 1st at 4pm Central time on the Saurfang realm in the Ironforge Library.

Matt's a fun guy and great conversationalist. This should be an interesting way to interact with him.

[Skios]

My resto shaman is level 81 now. So far the Cataclysm dungeons have been very easy, provided the tank actually knows the tactics. Right now it's mostly a matter of getting my ilevel up to meet the requirements, which I've mostly been doing through the AH and questing in Hyjal. It shouldn't be too long until I hit 85, and I already have JP boots and bracers, as well as the 378 BoE gloves from HoT and the shield and mace from blacksmithing. Hopefully the character will be ready for the guild's alt raiding team soon enough.

[Karoht]

So for anyone who is concerned about getting a character to 85, gearing up, and killing Deathwing in LFR...

My Shadow Priest recently had some time invested. Now, I'm still a terribad DPS'er. I mean really bad. I'm doing 13K on a target dummy, which to say the least is garbage. Especially in 375 gear. In theory, I should have been doing that damage or better in blues. So I'll chalk that up to lack of experience, and the possibility that I'm reforged incorrectly.
That said, getting to 375 gear was pretty easy. I was in 325-346 gear when I started. In 3 dungeons I was cleared for Hour of Twilight runs. In 5-6 HoT dungeons, I'm at 375. I haven't even scored myself 800 VP and I'm already geared up pretty solid. Next week I'll give LFR a go, if I can figure out what I'm doing wrong with my rotation/reforging. If I can't even get 20K on a dummy, I'm not going to go embarass myself in an LFR.


So we gave Sinestra a bunch of pulls last night. Holy moley, what a clusterboop. It's an easy enough fight once you get a few pulls, but man, try explaining that fight to someone, it's a good 20 minutes. Got her to 10%, probably going to finish her tonight, work on H Nef.
Also, Efflorescence is hella broken on that fight. Swiftmend Calen. Have range cluster on him. Watch as 20k and 40k ticks just pour out of people.

[Dublock]

My Shadow Priest recently had some time invested. Now, I'm still a terribad DPS'er. I mean really bad. I'm doing 13K on a target dummy, which to say the least is garbage. Especially in 375 gear. In theory, I should have been doing that damage or better in blues. So I'll chalk that up to lack of experience, and the possibility that I'm reforged incorrectly.

First off the only thing I know for sure on Spriests is Haste is the best secondary stat (I am assuming after hit to cap of course). I don't remember the rotation and I am not looking over my fiancee's shoulder for her rotation :P

17k on a dummy? Assuming that is single target you are fine for LFR...I've had people doing less (sometimes a lot less) during fights. I promise you, you won't be last (if you are, be thankful you are in a great LFR group lmao).

Just know all the fights and try to push yourself during LFR and I doubt anyone will even mention you. I tend to only pull up meters to check myself or if we wipe and then I might look at whos doing below 20k (which odds are you won't be if you are doing 17k on the dummy, self buffed).

[Karoht]

First off the only thing I know for sure on Spriests is Haste is the best secondary stat (I am assuming after hit to cap of course).

I haven't had time to investigate it so far. Yep, I'm hit capped, I was capped in Blues. But I think I'm more mastery focused right now, so I'll look into fixing that. Is it Haste -> Mastery -> Crit or is it Haste -> Crit -> Mastery?

17k on a dummy? Assuming that is single target you are fine for LFR...I've had people doing less (sometimes a lot less) during fights. I promise you, you won't be last (if you are, be thankful you are in a great LFR group lmao).

Yeah, that might be fine for people doing LFR. I have a standard to uphold. I'll be checking up on Elitist Jerks and Toxxic tonight, see if I can narrow down my problem. I have a feeling it is a rotational issue mostly.
Also, I just checked my Glyphs, I think I can make a change or two there, and looking at a few other Spriests on Armory, yeah, my haste and mastery really need adjusting. Most of them are rocking close to 20% haste and 15 mastery, I'm more like 16% haste and 18 mastery. I also noticed something in my talent spec I can fix as well, just something minor really.

Just know all the fights and try to push yourself during LFR and I doubt anyone will even mention you. I tend to only pull up meters to check myself or if we wipe and then I might look at whos doing below 20k (which odds are you won't be if you are doing 17k on the dummy, self buffed).

I'm doing 13k on the dummy, hence my problem. Not 17K. 13K will very likely get me noticed, and not in the good way.

[flarecde]

I'm doing 13k on the dummy, hence my problem. Not 17K. 13K will very likely get me noticed, and not in the good way.

I did a LFR run on my spriest this weekend and only pulled around 15k a fight. Didn't seem to raise a fuss. There were worse DPS in the group, too. She was one of my PVP characters previously so I really only had about a 360 ilvl and cheesed the queue, so I was panicking the whole way that someone would inspect me and complain.

I'm trying to figure out how to gear out my DK now for PVE, since she doesn't have any non-PVP gear at all.

[Shishnarfne]

I haven't had time to investigate it so far. Yep, I'm hit capped, I was capped in Blues. But I think I'm more mastery focused right now, so I'll look into fixing that. Is it Haste -> Mastery -> Crit or is it Haste -> Crit -> Mastery?

Yeah, that might be fine for people doing LFR. I have a standard to uphold. I'll be checking up on Elitist Jerks and Toxxic tonight, see if I can narrow down my problem. I have a feeling it is a rotational issue mostly.
Also, I just checked my Glyphs, I think I can make a change or two there, and looking at a few other Spriests on Armory, yeah, my haste and mastery really need adjusting. Most of them are rocking close to 20% haste and 15 mastery, I'm more like 16% haste and 18 mastery. I also noticed something in my talent spec I can fix as well, just something minor really.


I'm doing 13k on the dummy, hence my problem. Not 17K. 13K will very likely get me noticed, and not in the good way.

Yeah, for shadow mastery beats crit. But haste is really where it's at. For a few patches, it even beat hit-capping. (Not that shadow with spirit to hit conversion ever lacked hit.) One reason that mastery is so nice is the buff after you mind blast/spike with at least one shadow orb increases your DoT damage, scales with mastery, and doesn't depend on how many orbs were consumed. I don't get to run my priest as shadow much (usually holy), but I think I have decent numbers (though my frost DK, in slightly worse gear, pulls more damage by a healthy chunk).

Regarding LFR: I saw a hunter doing terrible damage on Madness, so I checked the types of damage that he was doing. No damage done by Spellweave. (For those who don't know, that's the buff that causes AoE damage to targets near what you're dps'ing. If you're AoE'ing what you need to AoE (or even switching to blistering tentacles properly, or other adds), it can really jump up on the meters. Yeah, don't be that guy, kill what you're supposed to kill, and watch your place on the meters jump. I'm sure that can't be a coincidence on Blizzard's part.)

[Karoht]

@LFR
Well, other people might not care afterall. But I will secretly feel shame. I feel shame enough only pulling 13K in a 5 man.

[Dublock]

@LFR
Well, other people might not care afterall. But I will secretly feel shame. I feel shame enough only pulling 13K in a 5 man.

I do understand and I made sure my main was geared/gemmed/enchanted before I touched LFR (I came back a week or two before the patch). Also if you run with friends/guildies, that can help as well :)

[Karoht]

I do understand and I made sure my main was geared/gemmed/enchanted before I touched LFR (I came back a week or two before the patch). Also if you run with friends/guildies, that can help as well :)

Guildies? Then I've got even better chance of being laughed at.

Meh. They know I'm not keen on DPS, but they've been quite supportive of my efforts to learn, it probably wouldn't be that big a deal.

[Expf]

There's a lot of "fine details" in the SPriest rotation, but roughly speaking it's a matter of keeping up all 3 dots, hitting MB on CD, and then spam Mind Flay. The Dark Archangel CD is tricky to use, the choice of when to refresh dots will vary with circumstances, and clipping Mind Flay is generally advantageous when used correctly. The new 4pc set bonus also drastically changes your rotation as well. This is what makes it one of the more difficult DPS rotations to learn. I have not played Shadow in a while though, so my personal experience with it is a bit out of date.

I don't usually notice other people doing lower-than-usual DPS in LFRs since that is generally the norm. The only time when I would notice someone is when they catch up to me, though.

The distribution of DPS in a typical LFR is usually like this on Recount:

1. >>>>>>>>>>
2. >>>>
3. >>>
4. >>
5. >>
6. >>
7. >
8. >
etc....

I call it the "Law of Exponential Decay" in LFR. Sometimes I get lucky and have a couple people pulling 30k+ and the run tends to end a lot quicker that way, but that only tends to have with semi-guild runs.

[Karoht]

I am fully of the mind that the typical distribution of LFR DPS/Heals is not an excuse for poor performance or poor attitude, and as such I hold myself to the notion that my current DPS is unacceptable.

I did however, discover an interesting little addon. Spellflash.
They have a varient of Spellflash for each class. Supposedly it will pop up a picture of a spell icon that you should hit next in your rotation/priority. I might try that out on a target dummy, see if it improves. Once I get in the hang of doing it correctly I'll disable the addon.


In other news, Karoht is now officially a Dragonslayer. Not a slayer of dragons or slayer of many dragons, no, his official title is now Dragonslayer.
That's right. We got Sinestra.
And then went to Throne of the 4 winds and got the meta achievements for both the council and Al'Akir. And got yet another invite to the top guild on our server.


As for that guild invite...
Spoilered. Kinda ranty.

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No. The guild in question, Refined, might be an 'achievement oriented' guild and may have some good philosophies regarding how they approach content. They might be the best guild on the server, they might be a top 100 guild (83). Fine. Whatever.
In my personal experiences in dealing with members of Refined, I've seen some remarkably offensive activity. Last night for example, there was an act of trolling being bragged about in vent by one of their members. Now all I said at the time was 'wow, jerk move.' Honestly they weren't phased. One of them even said "Uh, yeah, we're Refined. We're all kinda jerks, haven't you heard?"
So I don't care how good those guys are, I'm mildly flattered that someone thought I was top 100 material, but I'm not going to be associated with that kind of behavior, even if that association is just a guild name.

I feel good about that decision.

[Dublock]

I *think* I got spellflash on my mage but it makes the spell icon light up when its the right time. Although it won't replace learning your rotation. For example my main is a mage and it always wants to use Living Bomb first when I see (and read) that a hard cast pryoblast first and then Fireorb, and so on.

But I do have it installed and it does occasionally help to see if my LB fell off, etc.

A rant on your rant :P

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I completely agree on your choice of Guild. I would enjoy being in such guild but not if they act in that way. A shame that a good playing guild is such a poor realm leader. Talking about lack of a good community as a whole in WoW? I firmly believe some of that blame resides in those guilds.

If the top guilds are being jerks well the community follows their lead, perhaps not thinking about it, but it does rub off of them. If they were nice to everyone, have some alt runs with some other guilds to get them experience, teach them their strats of dealing with bosses, etc.

Basically I think if they are helpful, to some extent the community will be more helpful. I know this is a generalization, and not all guilds are (and thankfully). A few rotten apples can spoil the whole bunch.

EDIT: I hate Tuesdays. I know I have homework due, (Thursday) but man hard to work on Homework a few days before lol

[Shishnarfne]

H Ultraxxion down. Had to swap out a DPS (one was traveling and had lag issues with the button, so we had to bring a lower-DPS boomkin instead of our Marksmanship hunter), but it really only took two "good" attempts where everyone lived to drop the beast (had a wipe on less than 100k... brutal, but encouraging). As a healer, I'm not sure that I breathe after Nozdormu's buff goes out.

We'll see if the increased debuff (10%, not 5%) and a refined strategy can down Zon'ozz tonight.

Also, I'm a bit curious about the best way to use 4piece tier 13 as shadow... since I have a few pieces for my off-spec already.

[Expf]

Also, I'm a bit curious about the best way to use 4piece tier 13 as shadow... since I have a few pieces for my off-spec already.

I heard it's worthwhile to switch to Mind Spike / Mind Blast spamming when you get the 4pc procs, even if it means reapplying your dots later on.

[Karoht]

@Shish-Grats. We had a bunch of pulls where we hit 500K or less. Almost every time that happened, we had a death that required a Brez. Our first kill (pre-nerfs) was one where no one died to Fading light or Hour like silly people.
Also, we were two healing it. It was intense. How about you?

I *think* I got spellflash on my mage but it makes the spell icon light up when its the right time. Although it won't replace learning your rotation.

Right, but if it helps me learn the correct rotation or helps me tighten up the rotation on the dummy, I'll be rather pleased.

Talking about lack of a good community as a whole in WoW?

I am of the unpopular personal opinion that it boils down to individual players, and the loud whiney jerkwad players are always louder than the good ones. My opinion is typically unpopular as it doesn't blame Blizzard for the state of the community.

They removed most of the elitism built into the game via poor mechanics, so now anyone being like that is usually doing so due to an attitude problem and not actually due to a real problem towards other players.

Yes, bad players grate on people, and do so quickly. Anger level towards poor play was much more vocal and much less patient back in the day. Back before LFG/LFR where you had to gather a group and actually fly to the instance, if you already wasted that much time, you were much more likely to rage at a poor player. What the time sink did however do was slightly encourage people to help the poor player, because time lost finding another person was a big deal. Still, in my experience of those times, if there was a poor player, they got a friendly hint or maybe the benefit of the doubt once, and then after a wipe or three after that, the group would just disband. I would argue that while you had more helpful people then (because patience was forced upon them via game mechanic) but you also had a lot less successful groups going to clear content.

"LFG killed the community"
No, jerkwad players ruined the community.
"LFR ruined the community"
See above.


There are two parties at play here. 'Bad' players (who are 'bad' for reasons that may or may not be their fault), and impatient players who do not want to help the 'bad' players and want successful dungeon runs.

I'm going to expand on both groups here.
'Bad' Players

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There are a variety of reasons why a player might be 'bad' at something.
-Brand new to class/spec/role
-Brand new to content
-Mechanics poorly explained, most players won't exert the effort to look up videos or do not know where to look, dungeon journal doesn't actually tell one what to do directly and requires a bit of deduction to figure out some mechanics
-Laggy internet/bad computer-Makes the game nearly unplayable.
-Mechanics are unobvious-Not all patches on the floor are bad, some people are always going to run out of an Efflorescence patch and run into fire patches. Yes, red numbers coming out of your characters should be a clue that it's not good to stand in, DBM announcing stuff at you, etc, but not every player has the faculties to take in all this data and do something meaningful with it, such as move.
-Mechanics are unfamiliar due to type (IE-Driving the mech on Foe Reaper)
-Tunnel visioning. Focusing so hard on performing your role properly (tank/heals/deeps) that one doesn't notice the mechanics regardless of visualizations or warnings
-Unoptimization. Some players intentionally unoptimize for fun. I'm not really qualified to comment here, but everyone plays differently. Still, the mage wearing strength gear? There are some limits of reason here.
In a lot of cases, a quick tip or two will be enough to solve the problem. However, 10 wipes later and the player is still dying to that really obvious patch on the ground that you shouldn't stand in? Yeah, odds are something else is wrong.

Impatient Players

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The kind of people we see now who want to kick out the weaker party members because they don't want to be held back, rather than give a helpful tip or exercise a bit of patience. Yes, some mechanics of this game will take a few wipes to learn. Yes, 10 wipes to the same mechanic, especially simple ones, caused by the same person/s, is incredibly frustrating. And all the impatient players do is create other cynical players who will likely one day do the same thing they are doing, or they magically cause someone to buck up and learn. Since verbal abuse and exclusion tend not to be good education mechanics, this is a backwards model, but this is how people react in game and in real life, it is nothing new.

Solution as a whole is for people to help 'bad' players and give them space and time to learn, and for impatient players to simply not be tollerated.
I don't tollerate what that guild does, hence I didn't join. But this is a player by player basis solution, not one that Blizzard can do anything about, hence it is unpopular because it doesn't place the responsibility on Blizzard.

[Alarra]

As we're still having trouble getting people to show up for our firelands raid....would anyone be interested in coming along tomorrow night, around 8pm eastern? We're hoping to work on heroics a bit more, but that will be dependent on the quality of players we can get to show up. *sigh*

[Zherog]

I haven't logged into my rogue in quite a while. Not sure why, either - other than I've been having fun on my mage lately. I was pretty burned out on the Firelands dailies, and that was pretty much all I was doing. That's likely a big factor.

Anyway, I can't be on until around 9 eastern. My son has a basketball game from 7-8. And even then, I'm quite certain I can't handle heroic firelands... I'll be back eventually over there, though.

[Karoht]

8pm eastern is my 4pm. I get off work at 4pm, pick up the fiance, home again with any luck by 5pm. By the time I'm ready to play it is usually pushing 6pm. Otherwise I would say yes. I am the sad.

Is that your normal raid time BTW? What days you guys run?

[Zherog]

Pretty sure 8pm eastern is 5pm for you. Your Pacific zone, right? If so, it's a 3 hour time difference.

[Ivellius]

Not exactly game related, but I thought maybe you guys could help. I'm working on a research project for school and wanting a comprehensive list of all of the "skull" bosses on the Alliance and Horde throughout the game's history. I've only been playing since WotLK, so I may not be aware of some things.

Here's what I think is correct:

Alliance
Bolvar (vanilla-Wrath)
Benedictus (for a single patch or so)
Varian (Wrath-now)
Genn Greymane (Cata)
Jaina (???-now)

Tyrande
Malfurion (Cata)
Fandral (vanilla-Cata)
Shandris (Cata alone?)

Magni Bronzebeard (vanilla-Cata)
The Council of Three Hammers--Muradin, Falstad, and Moira (Cata)

Gelbin Mekkatorque (vanilla-now)

Velen (BC-now)

Horde
Thrall (vanilla-Cata)
Garrosh (Cata)
Rexxar (???)

Vol'jin (vanilla-now)

Cairne (vanilla-Cata)
Baine (Cata)

Sylvanas (vanilla-now)
Varimathras?

Those Silvermoon guys (BC-now)

Are there any others I'm missing? Any updates in terms of the time period these characters had this designation? Keep in mind that I'm only interested in Alliance and Horde characters, so don't worry about Tirion or Darion or any of those. Thanks in advance.

[Zeb The Troll]

I'm quite certain I can't handle heroic firelands... I'll be back eventually over there, though.

Heroic Firelands, maybe not, yet. Also, don't be too long away. Periodically Cho goes through the inactive list and purges people who've been inactive for 2 months or longer. So, even if it's just to fish for a half hour or so (I think you need to be logged in for more than 15 minutes in order for the game to register you as having been active) it's better than losing the guild rep you've earned.

Is that your normal raid time BTW? What days you guys run?

My Firelands raid runs at 8PM on Wednesdays only. It may be possible to be flexible on this, but I'm not sure how much since I still want as many guild mates to show up as possible. It's just that, lately, when I make the raid and do the invites, I get Alarra and me and maybe two more as confirmed, another 4-6 tentatives, and then four more who never respond to the invite but may or may not show up on raid night. It's infuriating and I'd drop the whole thing if even one person in guild had the legendary. Sadly, one of the most reliable players, who needs the staff and is farther along in the quest than I am, recently started a retail job as an assistant manager. So she doesn't have a fixed schedule to work with.

I'm considering dropping it anyway since I clearly won't have it when it'd be relevant, so rather than stress about getting any ten people to show up, it'd just be easier to go back at level 90 with some improved gear and maybe be able to do it with 6 or 7 people I can rely on.

[Shishnarfne]

@Shish-Grats. We had a bunch of pulls where we hit 500K or less. Almost every time that happened, we had a death that required a Brez. Our first kill (pre-nerfs) was one where no one died to Fading light or Hour like silly people.
Also, we were two healing it. It was intense. How about you?

We two-healed it: holy paladin and holy priest. Our holy paladin gets the red buff, and I grab green and ride it as long as I can (until mana gets low, since I think that the smart heal is better at keeping the raid up than extra haste), then switch to blue for PoH spam.

It's the most healing intense fight that I can remember. Possibly including H Valithria Dreamwalker in ICC (though I was late to the game on that fight, with the 30% buff already out). And if anyone messes up Hour of Twilight or Fading Light, it's probably a wipe.

For fights with three healers, we have a disc priest (he's gearing up a resto shaman for when he thinks it's a better healing comp), who goes shadow for when we two-heal fights.

It is, however, quite fun to be downing heroic bosses in current content (we were only 2/7 H Firelands when DS launched, though we downed a couple more since).

[Alarra]

8pm eastern is my 4pm. I get off work at 4pm, pick up the fiance, home again with any luck by 5pm. By the time I'm ready to play it is usually pushing 6pm. Otherwise I would say yes. I am the sad.

Is that your normal raid time BTW? What days you guys run?

Wednesday 8pm is our usual Firelands run, or what we've been trying to do anyway. It was Tuesday, but we've moved it to Wed. the past few weeks and it will likely stay that way.

If we're correct in thinking that 8pm is actually your 5pm (you are in pacific, i assume?) We could start as late as 8:30/5:30, if you'd be able to make it on by then. Could work maybe? We don't actually usually start until 8:30 anyway because we have to find so many fill-in people. We don't like to start too much later than that though because a lot of our guildies tend to get cranky if we run things past 11 on a weeknight. Toss Zeb or me a pm with your real id info if you want to come along (we'd really love that, btw), actually pm us even if you don't, cause eventually we'll want to get something together and play with you.

[GolemsVoice]

I think Jaina was around since vanilla, I think. Rexxar was also around since Vanilla, but I think he was removed as a fightable boss in Cata.

What kind of project are you doing? It sounds interesting.

[Karoht]

Ugh, wiped on Heroic Zonozz all night. Fun times. There is definately something we are doing wrong. I think part of our problem stems from the fact that one of our healers doesn't heal and move very well, and the other wasn't doing much better.

I scored a 410 caster dagger and my 410 T13 legs. Rocking a 401 item level. I can't wait until it says 404, I'm going to annoy so many people with terrible 404 error jokes.

We're moving on to Heroic Hagara. We haven't got a pull on her since the first set of nerfs, and we were getting pretty close, so I think some dedicated time on Hagara will land us a kill.


@Spellflash and Shadow
So I tried out Spellflash on my Shadow Priest. Right away I noticed a few things different.
Yes, my initial pull was very different. Okay, great, a slight boost, but good to know. From then on though? SW: Death doesn't even light up. Now some might argue that it's no good until >25%, but it is a critical mana returning talent. As well, it didn't even light up >25% health on a boss, so I think something is wrong. I tried to follow it's rotation exactly on a target dummy, and got a whopping 10k for my trouble, so I went back to what I was doing and got 14k. Huzzah, I improved slightly!

[Gryffon]

I was skimming over it when you mentioned it and it would seem that much like Rawr, it's highly dependent on the specific module being updated and maintained. It may help a beginner, but I imagine EJ is still a much better resource for learning and mastering your rotation.

[TheEmerged]

I think Jaina was around since vanilla, I think.

You think correctly, in the tower just outside Theramore. One of the trophies I have banked is the ring from her quest series from Vanilla.

[Karoht]

I was skimming over it when you mentioned it and it would seem that much like Rawr, it's highly dependent on the specific module being updated and maintained. It may help a beginner, but I imagine EJ is still a much better resource for learning and mastering your rotation.

I checked EJ. It answered some questions and indicated the importance of opening properly (SWP + Mind Flay to first Shadow Orb, Mind Blast, THEN VP) but other than that it wasn't really any help. I have no idea when I should or shouldn't be using Mind Spike, or if it is a DPS loss or gain to use it when Dark Evangelism is up or what. It talks about SWD like it's a thing you maybe want to use some time. It mentions nothing about moving during instant casts to trigger Shadowy Apparition/s, which is basically free DPS for not much additional effort, which I'm already doing.

I don't get it. I don't get what I'm doing wrong for my DPS to be in the tank. For my gear level, I should be able to push at least 20K out, I'd be happy with 18K really, but I'm doing remarkably less. I'm in Firelands quality gear and doing worse than T11 entry level.

[Alarra]

I think in general you aren't supposed to use mind spike, except in specific situations (which I'm currently not remembering) because it strips your dots off, which is a bad thing.