World of Warcraft XVI: Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey Orcy Worcey...Stuff

[mistformsquirrl]

Woohoo! I finally have Quel'delar!

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I ended up making so much money from selling the stuff from my multitudinous runs through Pit of Saron that I ended up just buying the darn hilt, heh. Worth it though. Only negative is that it doesn't look good with my Rune of Swordshattering, so I switched to Fallen Crusader for now. We'll see if I need to switch back or not later on.

[ryuplaneswalker]

Woohoo! I finally have Quel'delar!

Spoiler

Show

I ended up making so much money from selling the stuff from my multitudinous runs through Pit of Saron that I ended up just buying the darn hilt, heh. Worth it though. Only negative is that it doesn't look good with my Rune of Swordshattering, so I switched to Fallen Crusader for now. We'll see if I need to switch back or not later on.

Oh you are a death knight! *Gives a Death Knight High five*

Edit @Kish Ehhhhhh, it would be really hard to pull off unless Anduin died, if that happened I could see Wyrnn go Cray Cray, My main complaint about Garrosh is that they abandoned the honor part of him starting with Theramore.

A True Orc Warrior would not want to gather his opponents and bomb them. A True Orc Warrior would want to gather his opponents...and try and smash them with an axe.

[Kislath]

Are the Blizzard forums down, or at least the WOW forums? I have been trying to read them for a few days now, but can't get a connection. The highlighted recent posts shown on the opening page are also several days old, so I wonder if I'm not the only one who can't get through?

[ryuplaneswalker]

they work fine for me.

[Sylthia]

Are the Blizzard forums down, or at least the WOW forums? I have been trying to read them for a few days now, but can't get a connection. The highlighted recent posts shown on the opening page are also several days old, so I wonder if I'm not the only one who can't get through?

Seem to work for me as well.

[Krazzman]

Druid is 85 my DK is still at 80... somehow my wife can't grant me any levels.
We are going to start Paladin(her)/Hunter(me) next. Although I am thinking about maybe going Rogue over Hunter.

Tonight we maybe go with our new guild into a Firelands funraid. Also they finally downed Immerseus HC on friday.

[mistformsquirrl]

Oh you are a death knight! *Gives a Death Knight High five*

*high five* Suffer well!

[Karoht]

Roflstomped my way through LFR the other day. First time playing 'seriously' in months. Top DPS was 110k. Top healer other than me managed a solid 10% of healing done. And I had to shake off a boatload of rust too.

I greatly underestimated how much I can do with my mana. Between the Legendary Meta proc, the Druid T16 2pc, and Nature's Swiftness, and Clearcasting proc, I can actually go a full 30 seconds and probably not actually spend any mana. Then there are zero mana heals like mushroom/Efflorescence and Ysera's Gift.

And that Tranquility buff? It was awesome to watch my entire raid frame light up with stacks of the Tranquility HoT, while watching absurd green numbers exploding across the screen. THAT was fun.

[ryuplaneswalker]

I swear that mushroom Glyph is Overpowered, I have no idea how that glyph was allowed to happen.

[Karoht]

I swear that mushroom Glyph is Overpowered, I have no idea how that glyph was allowed to happen.

Yeah, because Druids aren't allowed nice things, I should have remembered that from the vanilla days.

Contrast with the OP'ness of Restoration Shaman and it starts to make a lot of sense.
-While they don't have a lot of free healing, they also have literally no need of the Spirit stat, once they hit a sufficient amount of Crit. Their Lightning Bolt can also be used to regain mana and heal people at the same time, one is a mid-tier option, one is a glyph. To even heal (poorly) while casting Wrath bolt (the equal to a Lightning Bolt) Resto Druids have to take a final tier talent, it isn't mana efficient and the HPS is terrible.
-Healing Rain heals for literally quadruple what my mushrooms ever will, that includes the mushroom explosion. And has a much larger radius and I believe it no longer has a target cap, or that cap is now virtually not important.
-With Tier bonus, Healing Stream Totem smart heals 2.5 targets per tick (with a much larger range than mushroom, smart heal, no real positional requirement) for a minimal amount of mana, on a short cooldown of 30 seconds, which can be reset with a 2 minute CD for HST chaining. Mushroom gets 3 targets per tick, and they're much weaker ticks than HST (mushroom crit for 60K per tick, HST starts at 100K and with mastery crits have been recorded as high as 400K). HST costs a small amount of mana.
-Chain Heal, fullstop. With the only exception being Wrath of the Lich King, every expansion Chain Heal has been the best spamable healing spell in the game.
-AG/Ascendance + Healing Tide Totem = Most powerful healing cooldown combination ever. HTT outputs about the same as my Tranquility and hits the same number of targets. However, with AG or Ascendance all the overhealing going on is redistributed to other targets who are not getting heals, with Ascedance it gets a boost as well. So rather than hitting 12 targets in 25 man, it hits basically all 25 targets via redistribution of overhealing into more healing.
-The class has 4 healing cooldowns (Spirit Link, AG, Ascendance, HTT), all quite strong, all AoE oriented. Resto Druids have 2 (one talented), Tranquility (HTT but channeled, Shammy can cast other heals or lightning bolt for extra mana while HTT is going), and Tree of Life Form which is like Ascendance but less output potential.

That isn't to say that Resto Druids are OP, the breakdown goes like this according to World of Logs:
-Resto Shaman
-Mistweaver Monk
-Holy Priest/Resto Druid (Holy Priest is technically valued lower but the difference is too small to be significant in most cases)
-Holy Paladin/Disc Priest (Disc Priest valued higher).

So we Resto Druids are sitting about mid-pack. Which is fine, we were upper pack towards the end of Wrath, most of Cata, and most of MoP. I merely find it amusing that someone complains about a mana-less healing option in contrast to anything Resto Shaman's have going for them right now. Again, how dare Resto Druids have nice things right?

[Traab]

But its totally unfair! Druids are tanks, melee dps, healers and ranged dps! Thats so unbalanced that they HAVE to be nerfed so they suck at all 4. You dont see MAGES tanking healing or doing melee dps. You dont see priests doing melee dps or tanking, why should druids be able to do it all?

At least, I think thats the outlook from pretbc on druids iirc.

[ryuplaneswalker]

-While they don't have a lot of free healing, they also have literally no need of the Spirit stat, once they hit a sufficient amount of Crit. Their Lightning Bolt can also be used to regain mana and heal people at the same time, one is a mid-tier option, one is a glyph. To even heal (poorly) while casting Wrath bolt (the equal to a Lightning Bolt) Resto Druids have to take a final tier talent, it isn't mana efficient and the HPS is terrible.

Yeah high crit shamans get a bit insane in the mana department, which causes other things to sorta break, such as your next point

-Healing Rain heals for literally quadruple what my mushrooms ever will, that includes the mushroom explosion. And has a much larger radius and I believe it no longer has a target cap, or that cap is now virtually not important

.

Healing rain also costs 1/3 of a shaman's mana pool to cast, which is why Conductivity has the 40 second limit to it, healing rain also diminishes in effect with every player beyond 6 that is in it.

-With Tier bonus, Healing Stream Totem smart heals 2.5 targets per tick (with a much larger range than mushroom, smart heal, no real positional requirement) for a minimal amount of mana, on a short cooldown of 30 seconds, which can be reset with a 2 minute CD for HST chaining. Mushroom gets 3 targets per tick, and they're much weaker ticks than HST (mushroom crit for 60K per tick, HST starts at 100K and with mastery crits have been recorded as high as 400K). HST costs a small amount of mana.

Funny thing about set bonuses and trinkets, they eventually go away and should not be balanced around so we don't get happy fun time yo-yo balance like some classes got to have fun with this expansion *cough festerblight cough*

-Chain Heal, fullstop. With the only exception being Wrath of the Lich King, every expansion Chain Heal has been the best spamable healing spell in the game.

This goes back to point 1, if not for crit stacking being able to heal a shaman chain heal spamming would be horribly inefficient.

-AG/Ascendance + Healing Tide Totem = Most powerful healing cooldown combination ever. HTT outputs about the same as my Tranquility and hits the same number of targets. However, with AG or Ascendance all the overhealing going on is redistributed to other targets who are not getting heals, with Ascedance it gets a boost as well. So rather than hitting 12 targets in 25 man, it hits basically all 25 targets via redistribution of overhealing into more healing.

-The class has 4 healing cooldowns (Spirit Link, AG, Ascendance, HTT), all quite strong, all AoE oriented. Resto Druids have 2 (one talented), Tranquility (HTT but channeled, Shammy can cast other heals or lightning bolt for extra mana while HTT is going), and Tree of Life Form which is like Ascendance but less output potential.

I agree here, Druid's getting most of their cooldowns by talent is daffy and insane, and I have no idea why they made that choice, and yeah wrath heal should probably be a baked in thing.

So let me reword my statement.

The Mushroom Glyph is overpowered as a Glyph, goes the opposite direction of what they are trying to do with Glyphs as a whole, which is baking in the ones that are "required", and more required Glyphs are a bad thing for a class. Trust me, Unholy as of now has between 0 and 1 Glyph slots to choose depending on if the fight has any AOE whatsoever.

[Karoht]

But its totally unfair! Druids are tanks, melee dps, healers and ranged dps! Thats so unbalanced that they HAVE to be nerfed so they suck at all 4. You dont see MAGES tanking healing or doing melee dps. You dont see priests doing melee dps or tanking, why should druids be able to do it all?

...did... did you use the WAYBAC machine and pull this off the vanilla forums? Oh wow.

At least, I think thats the outlook from pretbc on druids iirc.

Pre-Black Temple was where that mindset lasted until. BT onwards it started to loosen up. By Sunwell, the only role that was still a bit of a lame duck was Balance (moonkin, lazerbudgie, critchikken, boomkin, OOMkin). Druid tanking was quite common by that point, Druids were competative healers, Cat druids were decent but challenging to play.

[ryuplaneswalker]

...did... did you use the WAYBAC machine and pull this off the vanilla forums? Oh wow.

No he did not this topic comes up ALL the time on the forums.

Usually brought up by mages, who don't seem to understand that Tank non tank specs can not actually tank while not in the tank spec, and how much survival really is in mastery specs for tanks.

[Karoht]

Healing rain also costs 1/3 of a shaman's mana pool to cast, which is why Conductivity has the 40 second limit to it, healing rain also diminishes in effect with every player beyond 6 that is in it.

The Base Mana cost of 43% (which was trimmed by 15% back in 5.2) does not mean 43% of the shaman's total mana. Base mana is a set amount of mana as you scale up or down via levels. I can assure you it works out to far far less than 100000 mana at level 90. A quick google tells me that it's 26000 at 90, which works out to be 1/12th the total cost their total mana.

Funny thing about set bonuses and trinkets, they eventually go away and should not be balanced around so we don't get happy fun time yo-yo balance like some classes got to have fun with this expansion *cough festerblight cough*

Actually it's a Tier set and a glyph. The glyph gets them the 2, the tier set makes it more like 2.5. This was after a nerf where it was 3.
Beyond that little nitpick I agree with you completely.

This goes back to point 1, if not for crit stacking being able to heal a shaman chain heal spamming would be horribly inefficient.

Or, and this is just a crazy thought, they could make their mana costs in line with other classes and have them run with spirit instead, like everyone else. In theory, Shamans get to do both (crit stack AND spirit stack, so they get to reforge 2 stats until they are comfortable with their mana), and use DPS to get mana back as well. Oh, and Mana Tide Totem. And Water Shield if the tank doesn't need Earth Shield at the time. Pretty sure I'm forgetting something else. Something something Flame Shock ticks or am I crazy?

I agree here, Druid's getting most of their cooldowns by talent is daffy and insane, and I have no idea why they made that choice, and yeah wrath heal should probably be a baked in thing.

But then Attonement healers would complain. Rightly IMO, but thats what would happen.

So let me reword my statement.
The Mushroom Glyph is overpowered as a Glyph, goes the opposite direction of what they are trying to do with Glyphs as a whole, which is baking in the ones that are "required", and more required Glyphs are a bad thing for a class. Trust me, Unholy as of now has between 0 and 1 Glyph slots to choose depending on if the fight has any AOE whatsoever.

As a Glyph choice? I completely agree. If it were a Talent choice, or a set bonus thingy, I think that would have been wiser.

Glyphs have been in a funny place like that since they were introduced though. They keep trying to make manditory Glyphs less manditory, but then stuff like this happens. Glyphs need serious overhauls IMO. That's for every class, not just mine.

[ryuplaneswalker]

Glyph of Flameshock heals the user, and I would honestly rebalance by giving everyone some interaction with a secondary that restores MP as opposed to removing it from shamans. Especially with Reforging going away everyone is going to need something from every stat so there are no dead ones, the crazy thing with shamans and crit is that they not only restore mana off it they cleave heal with crits, so they are triple dipping into it.

If anything I would scra watershield since that is really the only "free" regen they get and Resto Shamans are the only shaman spec with "two" shields


Also in terms of Atonement wrath by itself would not be anywhere near what atonement/fistweavers healing get since one spell by itself does not equal a full toolkit.

[Traab]

...did... did you use the WAYBAC machine and pull this off the vanilla forums? Oh wow.

Pre-Black Temple was where that mindset lasted until. BT onwards it started to loosen up. By Sunwell, the only role that was still a bit of a lame duck was Balance (moonkin, lazerbudgie, critchikken, boomkin, OOMkin). Druid tanking was quite common by that point, Druids were competative healers, Cat druids were decent but challenging to play.

Heh, I actually remember that. When the expansion came out, suddenly a feral druid was a pretty damn awesome class! Though I didnt do raiding, we became acceptable classes for 5 man content in pretty much any of our roles, though I do recall the boomkin lacking due to gear choices. I think the nicest thing was finally giving druids frigging STAVES. Suddenly we got "+400 attack power in feral forms" or something to that effect added onto the decent melee staff items out there.

But even then you had to deal with people having hunter loot flashbacks whenever a druid tried to claim need on an item. God forbid a cat form druid roll need against a rogue, I mean wow, thats so terrible of a thing to do! Or a boomkin desperate for SOMETHING decent to equip rolling on cloth gear./final boss dies in heroic dungeon "OMG YOU CANT DO THAT!!!" /links level 67 "of the eagle" green "Doesnt matter, thats loot for REAL casters!"

[Icewraith]

What's the scaling on this ranking?

Like, how far ahead of Holy Paladins are Resto Shammies?

[ryuplaneswalker]

I think the big ones are Disc Priest, Holy Paladin and Resto Shaman, atleast those are the 3 I always see people looking for, I know Mist monks can do insane things if a person knows what they are doing with them.

but talking about actual balance between them all is hard with the OP trinkets and set bonuses going about..

[The_Jackal]

I wouldn't put too much stock in healer rankings, or any class rankings, to be honest. Every class is always in flux, between class balancing, gear progression, and fight mechanics. A class which excels at one fight can be utterly miserable in another, and that's true for tanks, healers AND damage.

Take a class whose aesthetic and playstyle you enjoy. That's what will keep you at it, and invest the time and effort necessary to master.

[mistformsquirrl]

Well, last night I got 600 smithing, woohoo! Also got my Onyx Netherwing Drake! Really chugging along at full steam - loving the Pandaria content for the most part, even if a lot of the time I wish I could side with the Pandaren over my own faction lol

Will in all probability hit level 90 tonight; and if I do I may see what it takes to learn to make Living Steel and Lightning Steel, as I have my eyes on making a Lionblade Executioner Reborn down the line. (As near as I can tell it's the best weapon someone who doesn't group can get.)

Also started up an Enhancement shaman - she's not far along though, just level 13. Not really sure what I think of it yet, but it's way too soon to pass judgement anyway.

[ryuplaneswalker]

Enhancement..is a love hate thing.

The Spec is cool and awesome, but unless you are raiding..you don't get to do those cool and awesome things cause everything dies too fast and your AOE burst is terribad.

[Kislath]

I've been trying to time this out just right so that I can get a Scroll of Resurrection just before WoD comes out, but so far they haven't updated the S.O.R for the new expansion, and unless they do I don't qualify. Drat!

I want to get back into the swing of things before WoD launches, because my Main has Inscription @ 600 and pretty much the only time a scribe can ever really hope to sell any glyphs is at an expansion launch when everyone needs them. ( glyph selling is otherwise very difficult ) The chance to get a full set of 20-slot bags and a levelup to 80-85 is one I don't want to blow by resubbing the day before they announce a new S.O.R., though.

I did manage to finally get into the Blizz forums, but when I checked through my list of toons, about half of them are "not available." More distressing, it looks like pretty much all of the characters on one server are "dead" while the ones on another are still good. What's up with THAT?

[Krazzman]

as I have my eyes on making a Lionblade Executioner Reborn down the line. (As near as I can tell it's the best weapon someone who doesn't group can get.)

It will take 30 days for this weapon to finish... if you play every day.
Also do your crops every day and get exalted with the tillers asap.
Just plant the weeds that give you either Harmony particles or the ones giving you ore. And if you have enough ore turn everything into Trillium via an friendly alchemist and then trillium into living steel.

It is the best weapon if you don't want to group for anything. Else there is still LFR or an Heroic Scenario (516 weapon).
Also Statwise the Axe (I think it's Lunar Crescent) is better for Bloodspecc. You still need Hit/Expertise but as I see it with my paladin... that are stats you are swimming in. Really.

[The_Jackal]

Don't bother with the Lionheart, it will be wildly overpriced. Yak-Herder's Longstaff is pretty easy to farm on Timeless Isle, and it's close enough to get you into LFR.

[mistformsquirrl]

I'm not buying the sword hehe, I'm making it, much cheaper that way (just time intensive); it's the best I can get since I'm not planning to do LFR or any other group content. I'm quite happy just soloing < ._.> Learned the secret of Lightning Steel today, so it's only a matter of time before I can forge the first version of the sword.

Speaking of soloing - I started doing Ulduar solo today - the biggest problems I've encountered so far haven't had anything to do with the raid itself unfortunately. First I was just confused as to what I was supposed to do (I didn't realize we had to drive vehicles, and to drive them, you had to talk to Brann first, oops.)

The second is more recent... I made it to the Assembly of Iron, was doing a pretty good job on them, and suddenly everything started lagging terribly and became unplayable. My internet appears to be fine so I don't know if it's on Blizzard's end or if there's something else going on. < . .> It was definitely lag though, and not just choppy framerate.

Upside is, I've already got my chestpiece for transmog - not in the color I want yet (I'm doing the 10-person version at the moment) - but I figure later I can try the 25-person once I have an idea of the mechanics and such.

[The_Jackal]

If you want to do it for completionitis, I can't argue with that logic, but I promise you that if you spend the 30 days of combines simply grinding Timeless Isle drops and raiding SOO once you qualify for entry in LFR, you'll have better. Which is not to say you shouldn't make it, but just understand that you're spending about 8k gold in materials to build it.

[Karoht]

@Lionheart
Do you have a specific transmog in mind? As in, that weapon matching the rest of your gear?

[Icewraith]

I'm not buying the sword hehe, I'm making it, much cheaper that way (just time intensive); it's the best I can get since I'm not planning to do LFR or any other group content. I'm quite happy just soloing < ._.> Learned the secret of Lightning Steel today, so it's only a matter of time before I can forge the first version of the sword.

Speaking of soloing - I started doing Ulduar solo today - the biggest problems I've encountered so far haven't had anything to do with the raid itself unfortunately. First I was just confused as to what I was supposed to do (I didn't realize we had to drive vehicles, and to drive them, you had to talk to Brann first, oops.)

The second is more recent... I made it to the Assembly of Iron, was doing a pretty good job on them, and suddenly everything started lagging terribly and became unplayable. My internet appears to be fine so I don't know if it's on Blizzard's end or if there's something else going on. < . .> It was definitely lag though, and not just choppy framerate.

Upside is, I've already got my chestpiece for transmog - not in the color I want yet (I'm doing the 10-person version at the moment) - but I figure later I can try the 25-person once I have an idea of the mechanics and such.

Be warned that if you kill the big guy last on assembly of iron, he has a debuff that autokills you after 30 seconds or so. At 90, you should have little issue killing him before the debuff kills you and the fight resets (especially since you gain a damage buff iirc), but he uses it almost immediately when you hit that phase so you probably won't be able to avoid dying. To avoid extra running make sure you loot before you die.

[ryuplaneswalker]

I'm not buying the sword hehe, I'm making it, much cheaper that way (just time intensive); it's the best I can get since I'm not planning to do LFR or any other group content. I'm quite happy just soloing < ._.> Learned the secret of Lightning Steel today, so it's only a matter of time before I can forge the first version of the sword.

Speaking of soloing - I started doing Ulduar solo today - the biggest problems I've encountered so far haven't had anything to do with the raid itself unfortunately. First I was just confused as to what I was supposed to do (I didn't realize we had to drive vehicles, and to drive them, you had to talk to Brann first, oops.)

The second is more recent... I made it to the Assembly of Iron, was doing a pretty good job on them, and suddenly everything started lagging terribly and became unplayable. My internet appears to be fine so I don't know if it's on Blizzard's end or if there's something else going on. < . .> It was definitely lag though, and not just choppy framerate.

Upside is, I've already got my chestpiece for transmog - not in the color I want yet (I'm doing the 10-person version at the moment) - but I figure later I can try the 25-person once I have an idea of the mechanics and such.

If you want to solo Old Raids, one thing I can suggest is to do some LFRs...and get a trinket called the Juggernaut's Focusing Crystal, then you can solo in a DPS spec since all the damage you deal will heal you.