World of Warcraft XVII: Warlords Gone Wild

[ryuplaneswalker]

I absolutely agree. More *real* choices ==> more fun, but just more choices =/=> more fun. Which was exactly Rift's problem, as I stated, and as you reinforced.

Yes, however I should not have to say "More real choices" because a False Choice is not really a choice.

[Icewraith]

The problem with more choices is in the long run it rarely matters. There will still be at best a handful of "ideal" choices. It doesnt matter if there are a thousand points to put into every conceivable skill choice imaginable, there will always be the best and the rest will be dismissed as not worth it. The early talent point setup is proof of this. Even though there were a large number of combinations you COULD use, and most of them werent that bad, if you didnt use the cookie cutter specs then you "sucked" according to raid guilds and such. "If you're not first, you're LAST!" is the mentality.

And it is a total pipe dream to make it so there are a large number of specs equally viable in the same role. Sure you could make a tank, healer and dps spec all excellent choices for a class, but try setting things up so there are 3-4 equally excellent tank specs for the warrior to pick. It wont work outside of specific gimmicky battles designed for other specs, there will be one thats the best, if only by a narrow amount, and the rest will be dismissed as not worth picking except for those specific fights. I have been playing MMORPGs for over 16 years now, and I have yet to find a game where this isnt the case. Some games do a better job than others, but there will always and forever be a single superior choice, and a selection of second string options.

I agree that getting the three talents in each tier and each tanking class and each dps class to within the same order of magnitude has been a major challenge on Blizzard's part. However, they've mostly succeeded. I never hear about any tanking class being outright unsuitable for a specific boss, there's very rarely a talent that doesn't have a use even if it doesn't come up in PvE content, there's no longer "must have" classes only "must have" roles (although one of them is still "provider of raid-wide DPS cooldown", it's no longer only one class). Going to even four talents in a tier or adding more specs per class would complicate the balancing effort tremendously, I think. The more options you have, the easier it is to have an outlier.

[danzibr]

Yes, however I should not have to say "More real choices" because a False Choice is not really a choice.

Hmm. I had a bunch of text written, but a nice way to say it is as follows: there is an important distinction between choice and meaningful/viable choice.

Just saying more choices yield more fun makes it sound like a quantity-over-quality thing.

[Traab]

I agree that getting the three talents in each tier and each tanking class and each dps class to within the same order of magnitude has been a major challenge on Blizzard's part. However, they've mostly succeeded. I never hear about any tanking class being outright unsuitable for a specific boss, there's very rarely a talent that doesn't have a use even if it doesn't come up in PvE content, there's no longer "must have" classes only "must have" roles (although one of them is still "provider of raid-wide DPS cooldown", it's no longer only one class). Going to even four talents in a tier or adding more specs per class would complicate the balancing effort tremendously, I think. The more options you have, the easier it is to have an outlier.

It is true that its gotten to the point where you no longer have tanking classes that arent accepted as tanks, healers that are considered to suck at healing, and dps classes that always scrape the bottom of the meter. Thats why im saying that adding in tons more choices would make things worse. Thats why they got rid of the talent trees in the first place, within the dozens of combinations you could use, there were always a couple that were clearly superior for whatever role. It was an illusion of choice, or a bad choice. Your choice was, "Pick the best options, or suck." Yeah you could come close to the best options with a little fiddling, but that information was always in the back of your head, "No matter what other option i pick, it will never be as high dps/good at tanking/healing as the cookie cutter spec."

[The_Jackal]

With respect, you basically described the design philosophy behind Guild Wars 2. Which was... not the staggering success Arenanet proclaimed it to be before launch.
In fact, ditching the trifecta basically meant that people found the most tanky of the classes and used that to tank to ensure everyone else had maximum uptime to damage the bosses. Which turned out to be the Necromancer because they basically had an active mitigation ability.
Part of why I'm a healer isn't because I have to be, it's because DPS is something I'm just flat up not interested in. Your system basically turns everyone into a DPS, which means the entire game has to be centered around that. And if there is nothing to differentiate one DPS from another, you get class stacking in a hurry. Why be DPS B when DPS A puts out more damage and neither have any difference in utility? So guess what everyone was playing in GW2 for a while there. Yeup, Necromancer spam. It broke entire encounters, never mind the PvP issues for a while. Sure, it was patched, but the community basically repeated the pattern for about the first year of launch. And it's part of why PvE content was quietly abandoned early on in development in favor of their PvP content.

Ditching the trifecta was an attempt to patch players, and the genre as a whole, and it failed. Hard.

As for MoP, part of why I really enjoyed raiding this expansion was because as a healer, I had something to do in nearly every fight in addition to your over simplification of 'fill up green bars' as did most DPS had more to do than 'deplete red bars' as it were. Particularly in Throne of Thunder where they introduced mechanics which went specifically after roles such as ranged and healers and ignored melee, and vice versa.

There's more games, MMO and otherwise which don't use the triad to deliver their multiplayer experience. The Diablo games don't have support roles, and yet they have disparate character classes and party synergies which encourage group play. City of Heroes also does a pretty close take to the paradigm I offer, with their 'support' powersets mostly going toward buffs and debuffs, eschewing spam-able heals.

But really, you don't have to look at other games to see the problems imposed by the triad. Every expansion, Blizzard is trying to fiddle with the formula of tank durability vs healer efficiency. They routinely point out that tough tanks and efficient heals make rage timers necessary, make bosses which can casually one-shot non-tanks necessary.

I can't speak to GW:2, but bad class balance can exist in any MMO, with or without the triad. Blizzard had periods where everyone wanting to crush content needed to stack Shamans (for Bloodlust) or Warlocks (for massive DOTs) or whatever. And the reason DPS is a montonous affair is largely BECAUSE of the tank/healer mechanic. That's what allows the other 17 players in the raid to mostly forget about self-preservation and focus on stepping through their rotation and dodging fire on the floor.

[Icewraith]

There's more games, MMO and otherwise which don't use the triad to deliver their multiplayer experience. The Diablo games don't have support roles, and yet they have disparate character classes and party synergies which encourage group play. City of Heroes also does a pretty close take to the paradigm I offer, with their 'support' powersets mostly going toward buffs and debuffs, eschewing spam-able heals.

But really, you don't have to look at other games to see the problems imposed by the triad. Every expansion, Blizzard is trying to fiddle with the formula of tank durability vs healer efficiency. They routinely point out that tough tanks and efficient heals make rage timers necessary, make bosses which can casually one-shot non-tanks necessary.

I can't speak to GW:2, but bad class balance can exist in any MMO, with or without the triad. Blizzard had periods where everyone wanting to crush content needed to stack Shamans (for Bloodlust) or Warlocks (for massive DOTs) or whatever. And the reason DPS is a montonous affair is largely BECAUSE of the tank/healer mechanic. That's what allows the other 17 players in the raid to mostly forget about self-preservation and focus on stepping through their rotation and dodging fire on the floor.

How is staying out of fire forgetting about self-preservation? On what fight do you only have to dodge fire and dps the boss anymore? There's almost always some kind of add that needs to be killed, or a mechanic that will kill you if you don't pay attention to it (OMG WTF TANK! TAUNT NEW BOSS OFF ME AND SOMEONE CLEANSE ROOT!! HEALS DISPEL PLZ I CANT MOVE! TANK DO YOUR JOB AND TAUNT!) (OMG BOSS WALKED OVER ME AND 1 SHOT ME WTF!), or a crapton of different kinds of fire to stay out of. There's fire you MUST stand in, debuffs that cause you to aoe your buddies, forced group splits, missions for solo dps (although usually the best player keeps on getting these in each fight), fire that sucks you into the middle and forces you to run out before it explodes, mind controls, things that must be interrupted or stunned at regular intervals, places you have to stand to stop bad things from happening to the raid, forced directional movement...

The kind of fight you're talking about I don't think has been seen since Patchwerk or Noth in Naxx 2.0, and that's also the raid that gave us the Four Horsemen, Loatheb, Sapphiron and Kel'thuzad. DPS still probably has fewer things to worry about than the tank or heals overall, but most fights you can't just check out and spam your rotation. I think. Granted I spend way more time tanking and healing than DPSing, but tanking nowadays is just keeping track of your co-tanks debuff and paying attention to the boss' positioning and any adds that spawn while being aware of most of the raid hazards everyone has to worry about and monitoring your own health and doing your rotation. When I do get the chance to dps, I don't find it boring, I find it more relaxing.

[Astrella]

Huh, so I have a lvl 45 Pandaran Monk. Used to be a Windwalker but changed just now to Brewmaster since I want to try out those skills and get a bit of a feel for it before I start doing dungeons.

But... my Keg Smash is somehow hitting for over 1,000 damage right now, it's essentially one-hitting everything I fight on an 8 second cooldown, I'm dealing with stuff a lot easier than I was when I was spec'd Windwalker and that doesn't seem right?

[Traab]

Huh, so I have a lvl 45 Pandaran Monk. Used to be a Windwalker but changed just now to Brewmaster since I want to try out those skills and get a bit of a feel for it before I start doing dungeons.

But... my Keg Smash is somehow hitting for over 1,000 damage right now, it's essentially one-hitting everything I fight on an 8 second cooldown, I'm dealing with stuff a lot easier than I was when I was spec'd Windwalker and that doesn't seem right?

I find the same thing with my prot spec pally and his shield smashing everyone. I think a prot warrior does the same.

[Seerow]

I find the same thing with my prot spec pally and his shield smashing everyone. I think a prot warrior does the same.

Prot war used to do the same.

I started a fresh prot warrior on horde side, and shield slam got nerfed into oblivion below level 80. Like to the point it deals half the damage of an auto attack until you hit level 80 and it gets unnerfed. It's so sad.

[Traab]

Prot war used to do the same.

I started a fresh prot warrior on horde side, and shield slam got nerfed into oblivion below level 80. Like to the point it deals half the damage of an auto attack until you hit level 80 and it gets unnerfed. It's so sad.

Ouch. Glad I switched back to mortal strike. In hellfire im still nailing stuff pretty fast.

[ryuplaneswalker]

Prot war used to do the same.

I started a fresh prot warrior on horde side, and shield slam got nerfed into oblivion below level 80. Like to the point it deals half the damage of an auto attack until you hit level 80 and it gets unnerfed. It's so sad.

Shield Slam still does decent damage on my warrior below 80, the gap between it and revenge is not as bad now since now they both work off attack power and before...Shield slam had Very high base and low scaling with AP, and Revenge had sort of the opposite going on where it had low base but went up with AP.

[Antonok]

Shield Slam still does decent damage on my warrior below 80, the gap between it and revenge is not as bad now since now they both work off attack power and before...Shield slam had Very high base and low scaling with AP, and Revenge had sort of the opposite going on where it had low base but went up with AP.

My 44 War disagrees with you. I stopped using it to tank honestly. The damage and threat gen on it is just not worth it over thunderclap and devastate.

[Karoht]

There's more games, MMO and otherwise which don't use the triad to deliver their multiplayer experience. The Diablo games don't have support roles, and yet they have disparate character classes and party synergies which encourage group play. City of Heroes also does a pretty close take to the paradigm I offer, with their 'support' powersets mostly going toward buffs and debuffs, eschewing spam-able heals.

The fact that you mention CoH and it's PvE content makes me laugh. What little 'raiding' content they had was designed in such a way where half the raid team could AFK and you could still beat the content with your eyes closed. Literally, this was a stated design choice by the development team. Honestly, you are comparing a game where the only necessary healing buttons were "100% health, spammable" and the unlimited in-combat rezes. The game where 'mash buttons in no particular order' was basically everyone's rotation, outside of a few cooldowns. When they introduced the "Don't stand in fire" mechanics, most of the community flat up gave up on end game content in that game. Ask Acanous some time. Or anyone from speed club if you can still find them. You are genuinely comparing a game where end game content genuinely didn't matter, to a game where the end game content is the focus of the game, it is very much an apples and oranges difference. And the lack of trifecta dependance (Dark/Regen scrappers tanking say hello) doesn't mean that the trifecta was non-existent to any meaningful degree.

I can't speak to GW:2, but bad class balance can exist in any MMO, with or without the triad. Blizzard had periods where everyone wanting to crush content needed to stack Shamans (for Bloodlust) or Warlocks (for massive DOTs) or whatever. And the reason DPS is a montonous affair is largely BECAUSE of the tank/healer mechanic. That's what allows the other 17 players in the raid to mostly forget about self-preservation and focus on stepping through their rotation and dodging fire on the floor.

If the experience you are describing is LFR and nothing else... you are still inaccurately describing raiding in this game. There are incredibly few output fights in this game anymore. There is maybe one or two per raid tier, usually at the early part of the raid, mostly to act as DPS/HPS checks. In other words, the few of those you see exist for that purpose.

Honestly, if all you are doing is your rotation and little else, I greatly question when the last time one has actually set foot in any of the content, difficulty notwithstanding. Honestly, if the game were that simple, it wouldn't take guilds like Method and Paragon and Blood Legion so long to defeat the content, and the rift between other guilds attempting it wouldn't be nearly so bad. If the game were nearly as easy as your oversimplification makes it out to be, pugs would be killing mythic bosses left and right rather than scrambling on LFR and Normal.

Class stacking Shamans (Sunwell pre-nerf), Shadow Priests with Valanyr (Ulduar pre-nerf), or Warlocks with Tic Tok's and Mages with Dragonswrath (Dragon Soul pre-nerf) just to have even the slightest chance of downing content, is kind of old hat, and extremely niche. If you want to have that conversation we can, but it's about as relevant as comparing the new lockout system with 40man molten core vanilla. Suffice to say, the point here is that those mistakes were made and learned from, and became long ago outliers for a reason. GW2, for all their smack talk of WoW, learned precisely nothing from it. Neither did Rift really. Lets not even discuss SWTOR, AKA Space WoW.

[Seerow]

My 44 War disagrees with you. I stopped using it to tank honestly. The damage and threat gen on it is just not worth it over thunderclap and devastate.

It is still worth pressing over Devastate for the rage gen if nothing else. Especially if you take the level 45 talent that drops your HS cost dramatically.

[The_Jackal]

How is staying out of fire forgetting about self-preservation? On what fight do you only have to dodge fire and dps the boss anymore? There's almost always some kind of add that needs to be killed, or a mechanic that will kill you if you don't pay attention to it (OMG WTF TANK! TAUNT NEW BOSS OFF ME AND SOMEONE CLEANSE ROOT!! HEALS DISPEL PLZ I CANT MOVE! TANK DO YOUR JOB AND TAUNT!) (OMG BOSS WALKED OVER ME AND 1 SHOT ME WTF!), or a crapton of different kinds of fire to stay out of. There's fire you MUST stand in, debuffs that cause you to aoe your buddies, forced group splits, missions for solo dps (although usually the best player keeps on getting these in each fight), fire that sucks you into the middle and forces you to run out before it explodes, mind controls, things that must be interrupted or stunned at regular intervals, places you have to stand to stop bad things from happening to the raid, forced directional movement...

The kind of fight you're talking about I don't think has been seen since Patchwerk or Noth in Naxx 2.0, and that's also the raid that gave us the Four Horsemen, Loatheb, Sapphiron and Kel'thuzad. DPS still probably has fewer things to worry about than the tank or heals overall, but most fights you can't just check out and spam your rotation. I think. Granted I spend way more time tanking and healing than DPSing, but tanking nowadays is just keeping track of your co-tanks debuff and paying attention to the boss' positioning and any adds that spawn while being aware of most of the raid hazards everyone has to worry about and monitoring your own health and doing your rotation. When I do get the chance to dps, I don't find it boring, I find it more relaxing.

And yet all those raid mechanics are about one of two things: switching targets or moving your butt to the right spot, and doing the right thing is largely a function of having DBM installed and up to date and having read about the fight offline. It's a challenge only to your patience, especially when you're partied with people who refused to do those things. I submit that the game would be better with fewer mechanics you need to research and 'push button to not die' decisions, and instead presented players with more intuitive, more chaotic, and less curated gameplay.

[The_Jackal]

The fact that you mention CoH and it's PvE content makes me laugh. What little 'raiding' content they had was designed in such a way where half the raid team could AFK and you could still beat the content with your eyes closed. Literally, this was a stated design choice by the development team. Honestly, you are comparing a game where the only necessary healing buttons were "100% health, spammable" and the unlimited in-combat rezes. The game where 'mash buttons in no particular order' was basically everyone's rotation, outside of a few cooldowns. When they introduced the "Don't stand in fire" mechanics, most of the community flat up gave up on end game content in that game. Ask Acanous some time. Or anyone from speed club if you can still find them. You are genuinely comparing a game where end game content genuinely didn't matter, to a game where the end game content is the focus of the game, it is very much an apples and oranges difference. And the lack of trifecta dependance (Dark/Regen scrappers tanking say hello) doesn't mean that the trifecta was non-existent to any meaningful degree.

At the time CoH had no endgame content, the pinnacle of paladin rotation was the one-button macro, and by the time Blizz upped their rotation game by putting in random procs to shake up the monotony, CoH was on autopilot, riding on UGC and paid costume packs. At no point did I suggest it had better raiding or endgame content, or even gameplay than WoW. It's merely an example of a game whose design didn't have eight required support toons to actually drive the game.

If the experience you are describing is LFR and nothing else... you are still inaccurately describing raiding in this game. There are incredibly few output fights in this game anymore. There is maybe one or two per raid tier, usually at the early part of the raid, mostly to act as DPS/HPS checks. In other words, the few of those you see exist for that purpose.

Honestly, if all you are doing is your rotation and little else, I greatly question when the last time one has actually set foot in any of the content, difficulty notwithstanding. Honestly, if the game were that simple, it wouldn't take guilds like Method and Paragon and Blood Legion so long to defeat the content, and the rift between other guilds attempting it wouldn't be nearly so bad. If the game were nearly as easy as your oversimplification makes it out to be, pugs would be killing mythic bosses left and right rather than scrambling on LFR and Normal.

There's no need to get defensive, I admit my choice of words was poor, and not intended to be inflammatory. I've been in plenty of the content, I've done all of Siege, I like quite a bit of it. But the gulf between the top guilds and the rest is mostly just time and momentum. If you're fortunate enough to get in a guild that has a slot for you and isn't filled with ham-heads, you're going to down raid content just fine. But that's just the problem I believe needs solving: decent healers and tanks are the gating factor of raiding. How many raids have you had called because insufficient DPS showed up?

Class stacking Shamans (Sunwell pre-nerf), Shadow Priests with Valanyr (Ulduar pre-nerf), or Warlocks with Tic Tok's and Mages with Dragonswrath (Dragon Soul pre-nerf) just to have even the slightest chance of downing content, is kind of old hat, and extremely niche. If you want to have that conversation we can, but it's about as relevant as comparing the new lockout system with 40man molten core vanilla. Suffice to say, the point here is that those mistakes were made and learned from, and became long ago outliers for a reason. GW2, for all their smack talk of WoW, learned precisely nothing from it. Neither did Rift really. Lets not even discuss SWTOR, AKA Space WoW.

I don't think it's reasonable to hold up a 2 year old game to a 10 year old game and expect the same level of refinement. In fact, that was exactly the point I was making when I brought it up: WoW had to learn lessons during their life cycle, and they had precursors to learn from as well. Balance is hard, regardless of what your coop model is.

Look, I didn't intend this thread to become an indictment of WoW. That's a wild misrepresentation of my position. There's a LOT I like about WoW, including WoW raiding. And I wouldn't have the first problem with the tank/healer/dps triad if it weren't for this pesky tank and healer shortage it's plagued the game with. If you think the triad is utterly necessary to make challenging, fun raid content, then I won't presume to debate you, it sounds like you've done a lot more raiding than I have. But I've played a LOT of multiplayer games that completely dispense with the notion of a full-time healer, and it's my opinion that WoW could do it too, without compromising on the quality of content they deliver.

[The_Jackal]

My 44 War disagrees with you. I stopped using it to tank honestly. The damage and threat gen on it is just not worth it over thunderclap and devastate.

When you're fighting something that can actually hurt you, you're going to need the rage for barrier or block.

[ryuplaneswalker]

My 44 War disagrees with you. I stopped using it to tank honestly. The damage and threat gen on it is just not worth it over thunderclap and devastate.

Are you using an Heirloom weapon?

[Togath]

Anyone have advice for warrior and/or dk tanking?
Been thinking of trying tanking with them.. But I don't really know where to start.

[ryuplaneswalker]

Anyone have advice for warrior and/or dk tanking?
Been thinking of trying tanking with them.. But I don't really know where to start.

For DK? Don't it is kinda bad right now, our mechanics are not at all good, but if you really wanna do it Mastery, Multistrike and Haste are the go to stats, other than that it is just kinda..face roll.

Warrior is fun though, general opinion is stack crit and mastery to the moon.

[Icewraith]

Warriors are fun, charge is still one of the best abilities in the game even if it doesn't stun anymore. The rotation is dynamic enough to not become stale without being hideously complex, you mitigate damage instead of taking it and getting healed (minor drawback when soloing, significant advantage in a 5 man or raid), your general mobility is excellent...

From what I've been hearing, bonus armor is the way to go when you can get it, followed by mastery and crit. Both interact with your rage generation in significant ways on top of flat-out adding to damage.

When tanking on a warrior, think of yourself as a dps class that has to watch its health. You want to shield slam on cooldown, revenge on cooldown, and fill in with devastate. For multiple targets Thunderclap to pick up adds (if you have shockwave or dragon's roar talented use those), then use revenge on cooldown, shield slam when revenge and Tclap are on CD, and devastate when those are on CD (once you have enough crit, you should mostly be sitting on revenge if three or four mobs are hitting you). When things are hitting you and you have enough rage, use shield block- it's six seconds of guaranteed 30% non-special damage reduction minimum, it generates more rage, and if you have heavy repercussions talented your shield slam damage increases. If you're about to eat a magic attack or you're not at full health use Shield Barrier.

If you're facing a constant or irregular stream of adds, save Tclap to pick up new waves and spam Revenge otherwise (you can also heroic leap in a pinch). You can be a bit more liberal with Tclap if you have Shockwave, Dragon roar, or Ravager talented but your main goal is to hit everything and get threat on it before your squishier pals do.

If your health drops really low, it's time to use Last Stand and your talented health regen ability (maybe shield barrier for some more breathing room unless a lot of things are beating on you, if you have Impending Victory you should use it a bit more proactively when you need healing). If you know you're about to take a ton of damage (like some dps just pulled the entire room and you picked it all up), it may be time for shield wall (40% flat damage reduction IIRC).

When incite procs you get a free heroic strike. Always use it, it's free and never uses a GCD. If you're filling up on rage and aren't worried about survival, you can dump some rage into heroic strikes as well (or just use shield block unless you already are).

Don't use taunt unless you need to pull something off someone else. If you are tanking with another tank, it's generally considered to be bad form to taunt mobs off the other tank unless it's required by the raid mechanics (or the other tank is going to die). If the other tank picks everything possible up, you can probably taunt one mob off him just so you have something beating on you to give you rage from critical blocks (this is also less of an issue since vengeance is gone).

Oh, and while charge is fun to use, don't charge out of range of your healers, or if you do, heroic leap back. You can also time a charge into a heroic leap so you get the rage generation and the initial burst of aoe damage. Safeguard/Intervene is a useful way to save people from death (and a mobility tool, you can intervene to people while in midair), but be careful about intervening the other tank on certain boss fights. There are a couple bosses where intervening the tank will refresh whatever debuff the boss puts out.

[Karoht]

And yet all those raid mechanics are about one of two things: switching targets or moving your butt to the right spot, and doing the right thing is largely a function of having DBM installed and up to date and having read about the fight offline. It's a challenge only to your patience, especially when you're partied with people who refused to do those things. I submit that the game would be better with fewer mechanics you need to research and 'push button to not die' decisions, and instead presented players with more intuitive, more chaotic, and less curated gameplay.

Again I sincerely doubt you've done any raiding in the last 3 tiers, outside of LFR. The number of fights I can boil down to such a piddly set of mechanics is pretty minor. Even LFR versions of fights don't line up so such oversimplification.

Before I go fight for fight on this argument, I'm going to point out the obvious, that mods like DBM and websites like Icy-Veins.com wouldn't exist if the fights were as easy and simplistic as you claim them to be. The race for world first would have many more guilds vying for top spot rather than the same top 5 every tier.

Spoiler: MSV

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Dogs-Output check mostly. Tanking the right dogs while dpsing the right dogs, avoid stuff, soaking damage at the right time to remove fire chains, healing output check with jade dog. On heroic, add in the floor tiles which created a DPS timing check as well as a HPS timing check. Healers need to coordinate cooldowns and due to poor mana management at the beginning of the tier, also need to lean hard on their efficient heals.
Feng-Tank skill check. Maximizing Shroud and Barrier along with standard active mitigation effects (AME) usage greatly reduce HPS requirement. Avoiding stuff. Wildfire Spark and Draw Flame do cause raid members to run away, but based on their movement capabilities this allows them to not only take less damage and maintain uptime on boss (or minimize downtime) it also determines how many damage stacks the boss gets when he performs Draw Flame. Extra phase on heroic requires coordinated usage of CC abilities, and due to the short reaction time, often required twitch reactions
Garajal-DPS output check, healing output check, Tanks swapping and not wasting mitigation on his shadow attacks. Spirit World required raidwide coordination to determine when someone should or should not go, rather than any old twit going whenever they felt like. Due to the mana regen effects of the spirit world, healers also had to coordinate this tightly. Heroic added in the random factor of banishment, and those banished needed to assist the tanks before working on voodoo dolls or the tank dies.
Spirit Kings-Spread, Stack, Duck, Dodge, Dive. The first heavy avoidance fight in the tier. On heroic you are constantly avoiding something. CC required for Undying Shadows, interrupts required here and there. Of most important note was Meng and his insanity bar as well as his raidwide Maddening Shout, which required players to switch from single target damage to cleave effects without requiring adds involved in the fight. Heroic Mode introduced a new mechanic for each of the 4 bosses, typically requiring a very tight stop to DPS or the raid dies. Since the abilities were not on timers and could be very random, it was easy for an entire raid to die due to a shield exploding, so raid leaders basically had to be psychic and order a target swap or a stop of all damage before the shield went out or risk a wipe.
Elegon-A survival fight. You had to take your time with this and then sprint at the end. In addition to having an add that had to be killed with specific timing and in a specific place, players also had a buff/debuff they had to manage in order to not die. Far more nuanced than a "don't stand in bad" effect. Stage Two was just a fun little gimmick, mostly boiled down to target assignments, Stage 3 on Heroic required CC to keep the adds from murdering people before your tanks/healers could help them, Stage 4 was a soft enrage burn phase.
Emperor-A survival fight with some small DPS checks. Adds to be killed in a priority, dodge the bad everywhere, CC coordination was critical on heroic, and the dodging stuff gave everyone who succeeded a bonus bit of damage in the form of a big fat button to click. Challenging but extremely fun.

Spoiler: HOF

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Zorlok-Avoidance and communication check. Sure, the effects are simple to avoid and handle, in fact one could even say that this fight was a template for Garrosh. His Force and Verve which spawned shields to hide in was fun, but required communication to ensure the right people were in the right shields, or they would just take a boatload of damage and die. Attenuation was easy to avoid if you knew how but if you lagged you died. He was a sincere pain on Heroic, on 10m it was believed unbeatable due to the splitting required.
Tayak-Spread, Stack, Run. Avoid damage, bait tornados into a safe enough area to buy you more space (similar to baiting the fire on Firefighter), spread and stack appropriately. Dodge stuff on the wind tunnels. Easy gimmick fight, even on heroic.
Garalon-Can you avoid one big yellow circle? Can you stand in smaller red circles? Can you kite? Welcome to a fight that had incredibly simple mechanics but stalled so many players, even on LFR difficulty where his Crush mechanic practically tickled. The trick to this fight that no one got if the didn't do it on heroic was having a kill order for the legs. Seriously. This fight stands directly in opposition to the idea that the game is easy, 'it's all rotation and dodging stuff.' This fight couldn't have been easier if Patchwerk himself designed it, yet it was honestly a stall point for LFR and pugs, even normal and heroic guilds had a tendency to stall on this fight until it was nerfed.
Kill order for the legs was kill the outside legs first (range nuked them), and have everyone stand on the inside set of legs and cleave from the boss to the inside legs, not cleave the legs.
MelJarak-{insert John Madden diagram} coordination check fight. Kill order, TIGHT HPS requirements pre-nerf heroic 10m, tight interrupts required on Battlemenders on 10m, and the CC had to be really on the ball, especially if something went wrong. If the CC broke somehow, it was incredibly difficult to recover, and was often the wipe inducer right there.
Amber Shaper UnSok-To quote the Fatboss video: "AMBER AMBER AMBER AMBER AMBER!!!!11!" In addition to requiring players to randomly be in a vehicle who's abilities and timing requirements were incredibly vague, and if anyone screwed up the vehicle portion, it was a wipe. Besides that it was a pretty straight forward encounter.
Empress-Inverse logic is best logic! If you get a dot, and there's a void zone, what do you normally do? Get rid of the dot and avoid the zone. Not on this fight. Stand in that void zone. Quickly.
This was how you dealt with Cry of Terror and Disonance Field, as well as Amber Trap. Amber Trapping the right mob proved neigh impossible in LFR, pugs rarely seemed to figure out how to not fail at this task, the wrong mob always seemed to end up in the trap. And poison drenched armor? It was almost always dispelled in pugs, rarely used for it's intended purpose either. Shame really.

Spoiler: TOES

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Protectors-Choose your own ass whupping. Kill order gone wrong made the fight harder for no reason, kill order gone right got you better loot with a pretty difficult encounter, kill order gone really right was a pretty simple encounter. Tricky kill timing on globes, ninja fast dispels on Lightning Prison, and on heroic mode we have the minion of fear, which has to be killed, it's buff/debuff has to be absorbed, and with a really specific order of who absorbs and when.
TsuLong-Gimmick fight. Straight forward. DPS at night, HPS during day, manage adds appropriately, avoid bad stuff. The adds can and should be CC'd (cue the resto druid who spams Typhoon and Ursol's Vortex on cooldown), but that's about it.
Lei Shi-Gimmick fight again. Random abilities being random, Hide, Get Away, and Protect. Hide required AoE and some communication, Get Away required some movement control, Protect required some tanking/CC and some burst DPS. Heroic Mode has Scary Fog debuff, which was actually very fun to manage as both a positional and damage dealt/taken effect.
Sha of Fear-Coordination/Execution fight. Randomly pulls people to the platforms, which means you can't plan for it or assign people to the duty. Also of note, on heroic the platform guardians will drop most people in two hits with their spray, never mind the fear mechanic. Tanks absolutely MUST collect orbs during the Death Blossom ability, and they MUST pop a defensive while running, probably two defensive abilities chained. Also on Heroic, transferring the Fading Light buff around in order to break fears from Huddle in Terror required some serious coordination. And you also have to kite via passing that buff around as well, but not too much or the raidwide damage will wipe everyone so again, requires some serious coordination. Incredibly hard to kill spawns fast enough and still have enough uptime on the boss to kill him.

Spoiler: TOT

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JinRokh-DPS check. What it says on the tin. Some avoidance mechanics, surprisingly a few that can one shot or insta wipe if they are mishandled. On heroic it was much harder to survive the lightning storms and the debuff was even more important to manage properly or you wipe.
Horridon-Tanks gonna tank. DPS gonna kill adds and get uptime on the boss when they can. Stacking adds on the bosses flank = cleave fun. Lots for healers to do, as there is a lot of spikey damage along with things like dispel spam to worry about. If you dispel on CD, you still can't keep up with all the dots all the time, so as a healer you have to make triage decisions on dots and dispels. Hex of Confusion was very lethal to the wrong people. Also, certain healers can't dispel certain dots, so that was a problem. Also, Frozen Orbs were surprisingly hard to avoid and still be within range to heal people or nuke adds. And those bear swipes could one shot clothies with poor gear. Not much different on heroic beyond the fact that disarming Jalak was pretty much a requirement early in the tier. Oh, and the Direhorn spirit who would kill you if you let it get close to you, but you could easily kite because any damaging effect was a knockback. Really annoying for healers though.
Zandalari Council-Coordination and DPS check. It was stack spread duck dodge dive time again, and there was something always to be avoiding. Or kiting. Or stacking in. Or CCing. And the empowerment meant that you were constantly changing focus in addition to avoiding something new. On heroic we get Soul Fragments, abilities working opposite of normal mode, and Twisted Fate. What's that, healers just push up green bars? Nope, not this resto druid. I had to get to the middle of every Twisted Fate, knock one of them back with Typhoon and Ursol's Vortex immediately, or we wiped. Fun times.
Tortos-Survival check with some DPS management. Kill turtles, manage the turtle shells to interrupt boss from wiping the raid. Also, bats had to be kited constantly on Heroic, and there was a nifty damage absorb/shield on Heroic that was lots of fun to goof off with. Plenty of void zones to avoid, some unavoidable damage here and there. Also, to help our DK kite the bats, myself and another druid had to alternate our Stampeding Roars, as well as Typhoon + Ursol's just seconds before the automatic stun that went out periodically. Timing those CD's and topping the healing meter, and still getting more damage output than the Disc Priest in our group? Yeah, just pushing up green bars, that's all I do.
Megaera-Heads = Kill order. Kill order controls the fight. Most of this fight involved groups figuring out what way they had to overcome certain specific problems at different stages, and it also involved people learning to run the heck away when told to. Heroic was hell until we had enough cleave damage to reliably take care of the adds, and a few things like stuns and yet more use of Ursol's Vortex and similar effects.
Ji-Kun-Pandaren for "Chicken" I'm sure of it. Gimmick fight mostly. Flying to nests to manage those problems, Ji-Kun on the platform was surprisingly simple to handle. Tanks enjoyed keeping their Vengence up by going around and soaking a few poison puddles while waiting for the tank swap, healers got in on that action too. Movement powers to avoid being pushed off the platform, but most guilds just stacked up and used the warlock portals all down a single lane for emergencies. Fliers trying to catch "feed young" AKA bird vomit for a DPS boost was a bit silly and required some flying skill. Sadly, the only heroic mode requirement was that you needed a tank in each flying group, though most groups got away with a DPS plate wearer or some clever ability usage by Rogues, or Warlocks using their Void Walkers, or Feral Druids standing in Bear form, or DPS Monks. Even Moonkin got in on the action from time to time, or so I heard tell.
Durumu-Oh this fight. How I missed it. Avoidance taken up a notch. Soaking Life Drain was a team sport, running the maze was brutal yet it made you feel like a god if you survived. Of note was the tank damage management effect. Tanks could survive all kinds of damage if they were clever, and if the healers were smart about timing their big heals, a tank swap wasn't really all that necessary. The colorblind phase or rainbow phase was rather annoying to coordinate, but coordination was really what that phase was all about, not much else. You had excellent control of the phase, the faster your people worked together, the faster it was over. Still, so many ways to wipe on that point. Heroic mode was annoying, but just upped the ante so very well. Colorblind phase was harder due to another color to worry about, Life Drain was much more of a problem and needed cooldowns to really survive it. Dark Plague was an absolute annoyance, and if you had the Life Drain target you with that up you could be in serious trouble. The frozen walls on the maze phase weren't really much of a problem, so long as your raid was smart and actually changed targets and used AoE to hit multiple points on the wall. The day we got this fight on farm, it honestly felt like we had really accomplished something great.
Primordius-Step in red, don't step in purple, kill adds hard and fast, don't let the boss step in anything, oh and the pools move towards the boss. Greaaaaat. Heroic mode added another type of add to be tanked, but also added a buff to compensate.
Dark Animus-This was an add control fight on steroids. And on Heroic? If you screwed up even one add being killed in the wrong place or at the wrong time? Reset because you'll probably wipe on the enrage. The strategy page on this fight is HUGE, which is saying something given that there are only a handful of effects going on. Special mention to Matter Swap which required very tight timing to dispel, as if you were off by a second you could kill one or both people affected.
Iron Qon-Oh this fight. Windstorms that could just murder whole raids at a time. On Heroic, Arc Lightning was a debuff to be managed with quality positioning, and if you couldn't get it to drop by phase 3 or 4 from everyone in the raid, chance are good the soft enrage of phase 4 would kill you. Oh, and Phase 4. On heroic, he gets all of his dogs back. Yaaaaay.
Twin Consorts-The constellation mechanic was pretty awesome. Beast of Nightmares was interesting for punishing spam heals, and I was always amazed how few healers understood this mechanic. Interestingly on this fight, one had to loosely stack around a point, and only when the timing was right, actually stack on it or risk being knocked off the safe spot. And Heroic. The invisible adds being only revealed by a highly damaging AoE? Oh man that was a pain.
Lei Shen-This fight was highly controllable, which is what made it extra interesting. Most of the fight was spread and stack, AoE and Burst Single Target, lots of transitions like that. Good old bouncing bolt, so good at wiping groups. Nothing like having a split second from one effect to get half way across the room to get hit by Bouncing Bolt. Oh look, you're going to make it... no you aren't, Helm of Command, lols. And that final burn phase on Heroic? Oh man, so freaking tight. Very little uptime on boss and so many ways to die. Kudos to Blizzard for that sweet Lightning Whip effect, arguably one of the best in the game.

Spoiler: SOO

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Soooo, where to start?
Immersius-Output, movement, and avoidance fight. Initially tight on DPS, slowly transitioning that difficulty to healers. Nothing really noteworthy on heroic. Seriously, Blizzard likes their split phase fights (A, B, repeat)
Protectors-Kill order, avoid stuff, DPS checks. Heroic is much the same, just harder.
Norushen-Manage corruption, kill adds and soak Residual Corruption. Tests based on role, really just a gimmick. Again, nothing really noteworthy on heroic.
Sha of Pride-Swelling Pride varying based on each targets corruption was pretty cool. Also, the pac man maze on heroic was amusing.
Galakras-Adds, towers, mini bosses, burn phase. Heroic only had an extra mob to deal with the towers.
Iron Juggernaut-Before anyone says this was an output check fight, I have to ask, how was one dealing with the Crawler Mines? Hunters, Paladins, and Druids using Symbiosis on Hunters, that's how. Those mechanics working in with coordination is probably the most important part of the fight. Some tanks could take a mine or two with cooldowns. Especially on heroic.
Dark Shaman-Mostly an avoidance fight. Iron Tomb was probably the most interesting part of Heroic. Worth it to split the two bosses apart.
Nazgrim-I loved watching LFR groups fall apart on this fight, based on the fact that they couldn't figure out how to not stack up absurd amounts of rage. Ravagers. Ravagers everywhere. Kill adds, kill banners, kill boss, dodge stuff. He was really predictable, but in a good way. You could tell his next move just by watching his rage bar and the cooling off debuff.
Malkorok-Avoid certain spots, keep track of them, stand in puddles to soak explosions so the raid doesn't die. On heroic, dodging the orbs to reach explosions was downright annoying. Oh, and the stack phase on heroic? Yeah, lets hear it for Druids with Stampeding Roar to break that debuff. While we're at it, let's also thank Druids for using Symbiosis on Hunters or Monks to get another cooldown to soak more explosions. Yeah, you're welcome.
Spoils-Add control fight on crack. High RNG element to the add spawns meant the raid really had to roll with the punches. Still, kill orders were the name of the game. On Heroic, the extra orbs were fun to kill as a healer. It became extra imperative to point that healing buff and line up lots of stuff to damage, the orbs primarily. Doing so basically enabled the DPS to ignore them. Sadly, so few people could figure out how to drop bombs and not kill other players.
Thok-DPS/HPS check. With a kiting phase in between. Oh, and just to liven things up a bit, lets make the boss spam a silence effect to prevent virtually everyone from doing their best or spamming heals. Awesome. How few people could comprehend that being in front of the boss was a terrible idea... no matter how many times the boss had turned them into exploding meat puppets. Once you got your cooldowns sorted out, this fight went pretty smoothly.
Siegecrafter-Dodge all the things. On heroic? Dodge more things! Also a conveyor belt with lasers of death. What's not to love?
Paragons-It was cool to see these guys back from a daily questing area to a raid boss. Very cool. The buffs you could pick up were really neat too. On Heroic? Being turned into a scorpion and having to find a parasite and eat it to turn back? Toxic Injection and Fiery Edge added a ton of random crap to the fight. Seriously, this fight was nuts on heroic.
Garrosh-Spread, Stack, Duck, Dodge, Dive. A lot of mechanics are back from previous bosses such as the need to stack up and cleave your raid team to break their MC. The 'Visions' really added weight to the fight. The Heroic only phase with the Iron Stars and Bombardment were interesting as well.

@CoH
At no point did I say one game was better than the other. I said it was an apples and oranges example. I outlined why it was an apples and oranges example. I am completely unsure how you got game A </> game B out of that. Really.

[ryuplaneswalker]

Before I go fight for fight on this argument, I'm going to point out the obvious, that mods like DBM and websites like Icy-Veins.com wouldn't exist if the fights were as easy and simplistic as you claim them to be. The race for world first would have many more guilds vying for top spot rather than the same top 5 every tier.

That is because the same top five spend 40 hours a week plus raiding on their mains and use alt groups to learn fights before going with their main group, I do not deny the work they put in, but Raiding is NOT that hard, it is about learning the fights and execution of anything else, and most of it is really not too difficult even in Mythic SoO, outside of specific class things.

DBM and Icy Veins exist because Blizzard is terrible at UI and presenting the information players need in game in a way that is easy to understand, WoD has taken a step forwards and backwards in that regard.

[iyaerP]

Does anyone know when the legendary cloak quest line is being removed?

[ryuplaneswalker]

Does anyone know when the legendary cloak quest line is being removed?

It already is on anyone who did not pick it up before it was taken out

If you picked up any part of it before 6.0 you can do the whole thing on that character.

[Togath]

Wait, so I actually can still get it(the cloak) on characters who started the chain?(asking since I still need to gather those sigils from raids, and there isn't enough time to get all of the drops before draenor releases)

[ryuplaneswalker]

Yes any character who had started the quests can complete it, My Rogue and my Monk both have it to complete.

[danzibr]

Wait, so I actually can still get it(the cloak) on characters who started the chain?(asking since I still need to gather those sigils from raids, and there isn't enough time to get all of the drops before draenor releases)

Yes any character who had started the quests can complete it, My Rogue and my Monk both have it to complete.

Currently, anyone who is not on the quest can pick it up.

I've heard once WoD hits, it's scrapped. Even those currently on it will lose it from their quest log.

[ryuplaneswalker]

That would be a really strange thing to do.

Of course Removing it as a WHOLE is a really strange thing to do.

>.> If I wanted to make a bonus for those who did it while the expansion was going..I would have a feat of strength with a title and the ability to purchase the 4 "Transmog" cloaks that look the exact same..and have the animation if you use them as a transmog source.

You know.."If you get it while it is current..You get to Transmog it"

[Seerow]

That is because the same top five spend 40 hours a week plus raiding on their mains and use alt groups to learn fights before going with their main group, I do not deny the work they put in, but Raiding is NOT that hard, it is about learning the fights and execution of anything else, and most of it is really not too difficult even in Mythic SoO, outside of specific class things.

DBM and Icy Veins exist because Blizzard is terrible at UI and presenting the information players need in game in a way that is easy to understand, WoD has taken a step forwards and backwards in that regard.

Think about what you just said for a minute.

You are talking about fights that take the best players in the world multiple weeks at 40+ hours a week to learn. You're talking about a learning curve for a single tier of raiding that is somewhere in the vicinity of 80 hours. For the best players in the world (out of a population of millions of players who have been playing for nearly a decade).

In what world does that translate into easy by any stretch of the imagination? That is more time spent than the vast majority of entire games out there. Seriously, even take a difficult fast paced action game like Bayonetta or Devil May Cry, how many hours does a great player invest to be able to beat it on its highest difficulty? I'd guess about the same, likely less.


Your whole argument comes off as "It's not something I enjoy, so I am going to write it off as easy and dumb", rather than actually being rooted in reality.