World of Warcraft XIV: Fish Felreed, and the Reed Pond fish

[Togath]

Aye, the lack of cc breakers was something that I've found frustrating as well.(also I mostly relied on other players to kill targets in pvp while I ran around and tried to snare them, the lightning suggestion was more for it's knockback then it's damage)

[Daverin]

Yay, got the Hilt! Now I just need to find someone willing to buy it at an exhorbitant rate on my server... There appear to be none in the AH, so I don't know what to think of that.

And, of course, if it turns out my server does not have any of the kind willing to pay, I've never done the questline. Would be cool to for some class who could wield a sword.

[The Linker]

The questline is guaranteed to grant a useful weapon to every class, yo. Can't use swords? Have a mace!

I've still got to get my hands on one of those. Mostly because I've heard it's a neat questline, though. Someday...

[ZeroNumerous]

The main issues I'm having is no CC breaks (aside from the gnome racial), and the lack of any real CC abilities. Since I hit 60 a bit ago I got the Charging Ox Wave talent (30 yard stun) so that will help. Its just majorly sucks to be passed around like a cheap bottle of wine without any way to break out of the stuns/fear (gods I hate fear)/entangles.

Be a human. Built in PvP trinket.

As far as how to PvP with a brewmaster: Like playing almost any other tank in PvP, your job is keeping dudes off your squishies so they can deal damage. You shouldn't worry about dealing damage yourself, and just work on peeling(clash is absolutely beautiful) and slowing people who want to kill the guys you like.

[Aidan305]

Link here to his page. His main spec is beast master, and he does do about 30k dps in survival.

Hmm. Part of the problem might be that you're severely lacking in both hit and Expertise. Cap on each is, IIRC 7.5% and since you're well below that you're not hitting nearly as much as you should be.

[The_Jackal]

Hmm. Part of the problem might be that you're severely lacking in both hit and Expertise. Cap on each is, IIRC 7.5% and since you're well below that you're not hitting nearly as much as you should be.

No reason not to raid as BM, imo. The parses of top 100 players show not much numeric advantage for SV over BM.

Here's some easily attainable gear upgrades:

Ghost Iron Dragonling
Golembreaker Amulet

With precise/rigid cogwheels, you should be able to stack quite a bit of hit/exp, which will absolutely improve your DPS.

Be a human. Built in PvP trinket.

All being human does is allow you to equip a proc-trinket in addition to your click PVP trinket. Nice, but hardly game-breaking.

[Togath]

No reason not to raid as BM, imo. The parses of top 100 players show not much numeric advantage for SV over BM.

Here's some easily attainable gear upgrades:

Ghost Iron Dragonling
Golembreaker Amulet

With precise/rigid cogwheels, you should be able to stack quite a bit of hit/exp, which will absolutely improve your DPS.

Actually, my hunter is a leatherworker, so I can't use engineer items.
I will work on hit though(also, what would be good pets to keep on hand?, I've mostly ben using a tank spec bear or tank spec quilen, bringing out a corehound to get the timewarp effect and then dismissing him to bring back whichever of the other two I was using.)

[ZeroNumerous]

All being human does is allow you to equip a proc-trinket in addition to your click PVP trinket. Nice, but hardly game-breaking.

Human's are literally the best PvP race, because they get a full set of items in addition to a PvP trinket. That means humans get extra PvP Power in addition to the same amount of Resil that other races get, which means they get extra damage that other races just don't have, even with their DPS racials.

Humans are flat out the best PvP race now, in addition to their ridiculous strength prior to that.

There's a reason a lot of top arena teams include a human as DPS. They are just that good relative to other races.

Actually, my hunter is a leatherworker, so I can't use engineer items.

Everyone can use Ghost Iron Dragonling. It is NOT Engineer only.

[Togath]

Ah, I missed that about the dragonling, I'll keep an eye out for it then, I think there's a 600 skill engineer in my guild, since we got the "get all professions to 600 skill" guild achievment about a week ago.

[Traab]

Yay! Finally hit 90! God I level slow. But man is my affliction warlock pretty much easy mode for solo grinding.

*EDIT*

Ok, so I was reading another topic when the idea hit me. Lets all share our favorite close call wins in WoW!

For me it was back in TBC. We were running shadow labyrinth and we got to Murmur at the end. The fight was going rough, we got close but then our tank died, then the main healer died, then the other two dps died, all the while we are trying to burn him down. He is at 10% life, 5% life, 2% life. The last dps besides my elemental shaman goes down! I have him at 1% life but my hp is low, worse yet, im VERY low on mana! I have enough left to either heal myself, or to cast one last lightning bolt! I take a deep breath, choose to cast the lightning bolt, and BOOM! It crits for all his remaining hp just as I take a lethal hit! Murmur dies, I manage to self resurrect, and we celebrate our skin of our teeth victory!

[Togath]

Congrats on 90.
Also, since your a warlock. How do warlocks keep getting the new warlock pets?, Such as the six armed female demon thing, the fancy voidwalker, fancy imp, dread herald and the beholder looking thingy? I first thought they were a glyph, but I haven't been able to figure it out.

[Lord Raziere]

am now paying for this….highest is troll warlock is now lvl 40 with dreadsteed….discovered that running instances is actually faster leveling than questing….

its all awesome.

Edit: the fancy new pets are a talent demonology warlocks get at level 45 I think.

[Daverin]

Got someone to offer 11k when they can make it for the hilt! Provided there is nothing bad that will happen suddenly, this'll be good!

Also, now have 400 in tailoring and am working on embersilk farming as well. OMG, the trogg war area is so good to farm. And, for whatever reason, fun as heck. As it getting chests for having the potion.

I think I've discovered a new liking for farming.

[Krazzman]

Warlock good in Sologrinding? Yes that's because they seem to be Blizzards loved child while the other classes except the Paladin have to hide in the closet...

On a more serious note: Warlocks and Frost Mages are DPS monsters. As is a good equipped Mutilate Rogue... you can't keep up with that as a shadow... it's really depressing.

Close Calls? Well our first Elegon Kill was... pretty close. Final Phase begins, one after another everyone dies. The Warlock and I stay alive, he uses self heal I dot elegon, mb, 3 orb Devouring Plague then dispersion and I survive as only one and we got our loot. Sunday we had a 0.2% wipe because everything was perfect... right before the second P3 our rogue falls into the pit-.-

[Traab]

Pure talent. No, really, its a talent. I honestly dont recall which level I got it at, as my warlock was already 85 when pandaria came out.

Warlock good in Sologrinding? Yes that's because they seem to be Blizzards loved child while the other classes except the Paladin have to hide in the closet...

On a more serious note: Warlocks and Frost Mages are DPS monsters. As is a good equipped Mutilate Rogue... you can't keep up with that as a shadow... it's really depressing.

Close Calls? Well our first Elegon Kill was... pretty close. Final Phase begins, one after another everyone dies. The Warlock and I stay alive, he uses self heal I dot elegon, mb, 3 orb Devouring Plague then dispersion and I survive as only one and we got our loot. Sunday we had a 0.2% wipe because everything was perfect... right before the second P3 our rogue falls into the pit-.-

Oh good lord, I thought that finally, considering how stupidly easy it is to solo on all classes, the "favored child" stuff was done. Guess I have been away from the blizzard boards too long. Especially considering that my dk and mage, both of whom I am also bringing through pandatown, are having no issues going through. My warlock was just the one that snagged my attention the most for the first 90. I think I will make my dk second.

[Karoht]

Since I've now pushed my Warlock to 90 I can safely say...
It was no faster or slower than my Balance Druid really. There were parts that went faster, and parts that went slower. Even taking multi-doting into account, combats lasted about the same. My bear tank druid is leveling faster than both of them (according to hours played so far).

Warlock, Paladin, and Mage have always been Blizz favorites. But it's severely less noticeable than it was during say, Burning Crusade when the Warlock nerfs finally started to really hit, and fear was STILL broken.

Warriors have always been behind the curve to some extent. But that statement accompanies a qualifier. Warriors have almost always been the most gear dependant class due to their scaling. Which is why things like weapon proc's and proc trinkets tend to get normalized around Warriors using them. Or, tend to get fixed after Warriors use them to break things.
You can thank Swifty for that. That man is probably the source of the majority of Warrior nerfs (and some buffs) since the beginning.

@Close Calls
First kill of Nefarian 25.
Two healers following the skeleton tank. Me and a Holy Paladin. Fire closing in everywhere. Tranquility just got used to save the raid from a bad fire spawn. Treeform still going to squeeze out a bit more life. The Nef tank drops, I battle-rez him.
Skeletons aggro me. And they're uberpowered. I pop barkskin and survive a hit. The tank gets rocked by a bunch of them.

We're both at less than 1000 health.
I hit Nature's Swiftness. And I have to make a call. Heal myself, or heal the tank.
My brain runs through the cooldowns used in the last 3 minutes, I know an Electrocute is coming in 10 seconds or less, I know the Holy Paladin has nothing to help us with, the other healers are tapped out or low on mana or dead.
I heal the tank. And die. As the Nef tank dies again.

All of the above occurs in literally the 1 GCD I had from hitting Nature's Swiftness to using an instant Healing Touch on the tank.
It crit, thankfully, put him just high enough to survive the next hit that came his way, long enough for the Holy Paladin to pick back up. Tank picks up Nef, leaps away from the skeletons.
In the next 5 seconds, the 10 people alive somehow did enough damage to finish the boss for our first Nef 25 kill.

[Traab]

Feh, every class has been blizzards "favorite" at several points in the games history. Equally noticeable, every class has been blizzards "red headed stepchild" and clearly the devs hate the class and anyone who plays it. Just once I would like to play an mmo where this kind of rhetoric isnt used on a daily basis. Class balance is impossible in any game with more than one class. The most you can do, and what is always done, is to constantly buff and nerf all the classes over and over to switch the load of complainers to another pile. Thats probably the real reason blizzard keeps changing the talent system. This way they dont have to waste time fine tuning anything, they just scrap it every year and make something different.

[The Glyphstone]

It's been a long time, but I remember a close-call fail back in the Burning Crusade days against Prince Malchezzar. He was getting sub-10% when something went wrong, the tank followed by everyone else began dying, and the last person alive was a Rogue who popped the one-use 10-second Invincibility potion you used to get from a quest in Eastern Plaguelands...got the guy to less than 1%, but then it wore off and he got flattened.

[Karoht]

Feh, every class has been blizzards "favorite" at several points in the games history. Equally noticeable, every class has been blizzards "red headed stepchild" and clearly the devs hate the class and anyone who plays it. Just once I would like to play an mmo where this kind of rhetoric isnt used on a daily basis. Class balance is impossible in any game with more than one class. The most you can do, and what is always done, is to constantly buff and nerf all the classes over and over to switch the load of complainers to another pile. Thats probably the real reason blizzard keeps changing the talent system. This way they dont have to waste time fine tuning anything, they just scrap it every year and make something different.

Aside from odd outliers (Paladins in Classic solo'ing world bosses in 3 attacks, look it up) most class balance is pretty darned tight. Dragon Soul saw a 5% difference between the top three best specs (Fire Mages with Legendary, Rogues with Legendary and Proc Trinkets, Hunters with Proc Trinkets) and the bottom 3 specs. Which really isn't that terrible a spread. Fine tuning happens all the time.
Besides that, such fine tuning rather than more broad change gets boring, especially in the old system where you had such staple and required talents. A fine tuning change in a staple talent isn't exciting or even all that interesting. Especially among the crowd who refuse to read patch notes. Whole new buttons to push are far more interesting. I much rather enjoy having Drain Life as a viable AoE, that is way more interesting than any percentage based changes to Drain Life.

PvP balance is a bit tougher to quantify, most imbalances tend to be based around a class being too mobile, too slippery, too survivable, or too bursty in relation to another class being too mobile, too slippery, too survivable, or too bursty. And due to the interferance of Resilience and now PvP Powah! stats, the fine tuning there is much harder. Even a 1% change feels like a broad stroke rather than an act of finesse. PvP balance also tends not to be viewed in 1v1 terms. Other games have attempted to balance it around 1v1, their balance has typically been more out of whack, but that's probably due to the rock-paper-scissors effect of balancing around 1v1. Blizzard seems to focus more on 3v3 and larger scale balance for battlegrounds, and that is their stated philosophy.

The 'known OP' classes tend to get leveled first, ranked high first, get resilience and PvP Powah! in good numbers first. This really does skew the initial perceptions of them as well.
Druids were the WORST class for years, we dealt with it. I fought OP Paladins, I fought OP Warlocks (stuuuupid fear chaining), I fought OP Mages. Usually, once the meta game changes, these classes balance out more as well. By which I'm refering to the tactics (in which the new talent system plays a MUCH larger role overall), as well as once gear starts to balance out a bit more. Once that meta game changes around a bit, the complaints follow some other class for a while.

It's all relative really.

[Traab]

Aside from odd outliers (Paladins in Classic solo'ing world bosses in 3 attacks, look it up) most class balance is pretty darned tight. Dragon Soul saw a 5% difference between the top three best specs (Fire Mages with Legendary, Rogues with Legendary and Proc Trinkets, Hunters with Proc Trinkets) and the bottom 3 specs. Which really isn't that terrible a spread. Fine tuning happens all the time.
Besides that, such fine tuning rather than more broad change gets boring, especially in the old system where you had such staple and required talents. A fine tuning change in a staple talent isn't exciting or even all that interesting. Especially among the crowd who refuse to read patch notes. Whole new buttons to push are far more interesting. I much rather enjoy having Drain Life as a viable AoE, that is way more interesting than any percentage based changes to Drain Life.

PvP balance is a bit tougher to quantify, most imbalances tend to be based around a class being too mobile, too slippery, too survivable, or too bursty in relation to another class being too mobile, too slippery, too survivable, or too bursty. And due to the interferance of Resilience and now PvP Powah! stats, the fine tuning there is much harder. Even a 1% change feels like a broad stroke rather than an act of finesse. PvP balance also tends not to be viewed in 1v1 terms. Other games have attempted to balance it around 1v1, their balance has typically been more out of whack, but that's probably due to the rock-paper-scissors effect of balancing around 1v1. Blizzard seems to focus more on 3v3 and larger scale balance for battlegrounds, and that is their stated philosophy.

The 'known OP' classes tend to get leveled first, ranked high first, get resilience and PvP Powah! in good numbers first. This really does skew the initial perceptions of them as well.
Druids were the WORST class for years, we dealt with it. I fought OP Paladins, I fought OP Warlocks (stuuuupid fear chaining), I fought OP Mages. Usually, once the meta game changes, these classes balance out more as well. By which I'm refering to the tactics (in which the new talent system plays a MUCH larger role overall), as well as once gear starts to balance out a bit more. Once that meta game changes around a bit, the complaints follow some other class for a while.

It's all relative really.

I agree. Also, to all those who like to cry about "favored classes" I say this. Do you really think a successful game company is going to stay successful if they blatantly picked specific classes and showered them with everything while your pitiful class got nothing? Of course not. In reality, its nothing more than escalating hyperbole. The complaints start about so and so class being not powerful enough, or too powerful. More people join in, then the exaggerations start. "Omg! My x got slaughtered by y when I was 22 levels above him!!!" Then, when the usual whining isnt enough, they start dragging in accusations of personal bias. Like the game designers all got together and said, "Hey, we all like this class now, lets make sure everyone else sucks in comparison."

Its even worse when you have the people who absolutely refuse to accept that the game needs to be balanced for pve AND pvp. So they focus on the one aspect most important to them, and keep chain posting the change they want made despite the fact that it would ruin balance everywhere else. They complain about how long it takes to change things, when its "so obvious" that all they have to do is z. They dont get that each change has to be tested against every scenario, solo pve/pvp, group pve/pvp, raids, and everything else.

Whatever class is "overpowered" changes so frequently that I cant understand how anyone can be willfully blind enough to miss this fact. Every single class in the game has been "overpowered" and every single class has been "nerfed into the ground" Many have been both repeatedly. So players, stop complaining about favored classes and hated classes. They dont exist. They never have, and never will.

[Karoht]

I agree. Also, to all those who like to cry about "favored classes" I say this. Do you really think a successful game company is going to stay successful if they blatantly picked specific classes and showered them with everything while your pitiful class got nothing? Of course not. In reality, its nothing more than escalating hyperbole. The complaints start about so and so class being not powerful enough, or too powerful. More people join in, then the exaggerations start. "Omg! My x got slaughtered by y when I was 22 levels above him!!!" Then, when the usual whining isnt enough, they start dragging in accusations of personal bias. Like the game designers all got together and said, "Hey, we all like this class now, lets make sure everyone else sucks in comparison."

I do want to point out that this actually took place (not word for word) with Diablo II and the Barbarian. There was a stated personal bias, along with a defense of that bias affecting game balance by the Blizzard North team.
Then they went and made Hellgate London.
Fan-dumb still claim it's part of what made Diablo II great. Not sure why really, but that's off-topic.
So when fans know that Ghostcrawler plays a Mage, then see Mage buffs, then see Mage nerfs get reverted, they do get a tad suspicious. Letting slip back in classic that Chris Metzen's favorite class was Shaman, while Mike Morhaime's favorite class was Paladin, probably contributed to similar assumptions of bias = balance.

And who could forget the Deathknight fiasco back in Wrath?
The assumption that the term Hero Class should mean that class has an advantage was one that Blizzard took literally. But when it went horribly wrong, they fessed up and fixed it.

Its even worse when you have the people who absolutely refuse to accept that the game needs to be balanced for pve AND pvp. So they focus on the one aspect most important to them, and keep chain posting the change they want made despite the fact that it would ruin balance everywhere else. They complain about how long it takes to change things, when its "so obvious" that all they have to do is z. They dont get that each change has to be tested against every scenario, solo pve/pvp, group pve/pvp, raids, and everything else.

This completely. The sheer amount of hours of testing completed in the Alpha stages alone is staggering, let alone when they start collecting all that data in the Beta/PTR stage.
When gamebreakingly powerful combo's come out and everyone asks, "why didn't it get caught in beta" there are usually three answers here.
1-Clever players didn't report it, less clever players didn't find it, no obvious numbers cropped up from beta to get a substantial lead to investigate it.
2-It didn't get reported nearly as much as another problem, which may or may not have been larger.
3-The problem didn't exist in beta and only cropped up on live due to some other, completely unrelated change, like a change to all ranged spell effects, but somehow it magnified a tiny issue with [insert spell].
And lets also recall that they do in fact look at logs and parses when the players submit them on the forums. They take them with a grain of salt unless the log is conclusive, but ultimately they are analyzed and I don't know any other company that does this.

Whatever class is "overpowered" changes so frequently that I cant understand how anyone can be willfully blind enough to miss this fact. Every single class in the game has been "overpowered" and every single class has been "nerfed into the ground" Many have been both repeatedly. So players, stop complaining about favored classes and hated classes. They dont exist. They never have, and never will.

Generalizations, but mostly true. Warriors have had some serious valleys and few peaks, typically niche. Druids were the yardstick of suck for years. I don't personally recall either class ever reaching OP status.

But this raises the point of perspective. Mages have been on the OP list since Cata, you'll notice Mage nerfs (look up Pyroblast recently) have a tendancy to get dropped entirely. In PvP they are claimed OP due to their levels of control, slipperiness, burst, mobility, and survivability. But place them up against a Warlock player who is better at any one of those things and the Mage melts to the Warlock's DoTs and self-healing. Or a Warrior who, between stuns and interrupts and charges (and a talentable AoE Silence), can stay right in the Mage's face and smash them into next week. This is where the meta comes into play like I was talking about. Eventually, people begin to adapt to these things and deal with it. The Warrior can talent change and adapt quickly and easily if need be. Same with the Warlock. Change pets, lockdown rather than burst, commence with the awesomesauce.

Heck, look at the Arena Teams going to the World Championships. Out of all the teams I saw maybe 1 mage, 2 Warlock's, and 2 Paladins.

[Traab]

When feral druids got a boost in tbc, they kicked ass on a multitude of ways. In pve, a bear druid was able to absolutely crush everything with his frenzied regeneration combos, and cat druids were rather nasty on damage. This is during the leveling grind fyi, im not talking end game or something. As for warriors, it is insane how they do in solo pve during cata. I can rush into a half dozen yellow cons, and end the fight at full health with victory rush or whatever its called and some seriously high damage crits from stuff like mortal strike. Once again, i cant speak for end game, as my warrior hasnt reached that yet, (im levelling up everything lol) But the cata change to warriors made them freaking powerful. But once again, all this is spoken from my reference, which is generally solo pve, as I dont do pvp (burnt out from daoc and never got back into it) and im not a big fan of dungeon runs generally either.

That being said, i DO remember when warriors kinda stank. In classic my enhance shaman could stand toe to toe with a warrior and melee him to death with ease. That all changed once raid gear started getting out there. Those 2h swords were insane, and we shaman got shafted with healbot gear, but thats just one example. Pre raids, warriors got beat to death in melee damage by shaman. That wasnt right.

[Karoht]

Exactly. Class balance is transitional, dynamic, and totally depends on your point of reference. Level 19 Twink Hunters crushing everyone? Wait a few levels and see what happens. Level 29 untouchable uncatchable Druid flag carriers? Wait until 39 or 49 and watch them get eclipsed by Rogues, Paladins, and Mages.

Even taking the point of reference of Endgame, it's still a state of flux. There's gearing up, there's meta game, there are nerfs/buffs/adjustments. We're also only in what, week 6 of a fresh expansion? Most of the numbers aren't really tell-tale yet.

Understanding class balance is a mindset. Just like understanding that dailies are more optional than everyone lets on is also a mindset. Just like understanding that LFR is more optional than everyone lets on is also a mindset.
Lets be honest. Most people don't want to think about this sort of thing, it's a game. Anything resembling work get's pushed aside. Then someone beats them at PvP, their mindset regarding their performance is inflexible, so it must be someone else's fault. One starts seeing favoritism and unfair treatment very easily with that mindset.


That said, I look forward to Heart of Fear on LFR tonight. My priorities for this week are get LFR done, and the rest of the week see about finding myself a better raid guild that has an open dedicated healer spot. I'm having difficulty finding a group that raids at my time of night (midnight server onward) or on tues-wed-thurs, so I might have to change some things up.

[Krazzman]

Ok let me clarify my "rant".

First off the gear. It is practically more suited for a Warlock (on nearly every item is mastery... a pretty important stat for warlocks and a nigh unwanted stat for spriests. Now comes the big thing: despite having more other stuff they could take they also need a certain amount of haste which is mostly exclusively on the gear Frostmages and Shadows need. Desparately. But there isn't that much of this.

I haven't done a full depth analysis on this yet but I can't keep up with them on similar gear. And no this does not come from my playstyle. If I recollected it correctly I had a DoT uptime of ~90% on elegon, which is good considering that he is inactive for a few seconds. And yet I were around somewhere 90kdps compared to the near 120k dps of our warlock. And this is in nearly every fight. Stoneguard or Feng might be a close call but when I am in LFR, totally own the recount for stoneguard and then I get behind the Warlock that has worse equip than me, while I still have my flask... this isn't even remotely funny. The problem here is I want to play my Priest to 100% but I get demotivated when I see our Warlock outperforming me... while messing up.
The same for Paladins. My GF plays the Restoration Shaman since WotLK. At the beginning of MSV the holy paladin and my GF were even. But now for elegon it was just unfair. The Holy stood there with near full mana and ahead in HPS by a wide margin. As it has been said a difference can't be avoided but not one for about 20% with similar gear.

[Karoht]

Paladins. My GF plays the Restoration Shaman since WotLK. At the beginning of MSV the holy paladin and my GF were even. But now for elegon it was just unfair. The Holy stood there with near full mana and ahead in HPS by a wide margin. As it has been said a difference can't be avoided but not one for about 20% with similar gear.

Right, but that isn't every fight.
Not every spec is going to be even on every fight.
Also, in a vacuum this example doesn't tell us much. We don't know if the Paladin focused on the tanks or raid or both. We don't know if the Shaman focused on the tanks or raid or both. And that does have a significant impact.
Are you two healing it or three? That is also going to make a major difference. If you're two healing it, effects like Beacon of Light become much more significant, so that could skew the numbers somewhat.

Mana at the end of a fight isn't really relevant. Especially when it comes to Paladins who get incredible amounts of mana from Divine Plea every minute. I speak from experience when I say that if you push your cooldowns hard enough, especially your mana cooldowns, it isn't hard to end fights with lots of mana left.

When the shield drops and everyone is on the outer ring, it is entirely possible that the Paladin lucked out and ended up with a group which, for whatever reason, took more damage therefore had more damage to heal up, thereby placing him higher on the meter.

Lastly, this is why I only partly pay attention to healing meters. Being ahead on the meters by a severe margin might mean something, or it might mean nothing. I imagine if you compaired total output the two healers would be closer, which is why I also look at total output when I analyze healers, not just total healed.


========
Did Heart of Fear LFR last night.
Garalon is fun. Everyone hates him, I think he's fun.
Blademaster is awesome. I'm excited to see that fight on Heroic.
And the Viszier? I see him being way more engaging in higher difficulty, but ultimately it's a well designed encounter.
MSV LFR tonight.

[Shishnarfne]

Having breezed through Mogu'shan Vaults last night (one wipe, due to both tanks attempting to grab the same add on Elegon, leaving no one on the boss), with our first kill of Will of the Emperor (we'd nearly downed him with three undergeared bench players Monday), I finally feel that I can give a reasonable assessment of the instance.

As I am currently the guild's main tank (Death Knight), my thoughts may be skewed a bit. (Yes, that means I'm one of the people who caused us not to one shot the place.)

Stone Guard is all about the tanks managing the Empowerment correctly, with healers picking up the slack when a "bad overload" occurs, and with the raid disabling jasper chains and cobalt mines properly. It's not a hard fight, once you get the hang of it, but most groups will wipe repeatedly while learning it and again a few times as weeks go on. DPS requirement on normal seems minimal (as long as they're attacking the pair, it'll probably be fine).

Feng is a fight that seems to rely heavily on proper use of Nullification Barrier (yup, tanks again), with the Shroud of Reversal dropping off dramatically in usefulness after you stop seeing Epicenter. It's healing intense, and requires a bit more raid awareness than Stone Guard (one person with Arcane Resonance standing in the raid can wipe you!), but DPS is more of a case of getting everything down before healers fall too far behind/oom.

Gara'jal is a DPS race. Our best results have been 2-healing it, sending in a Shadow Priest to DoT up all the adds each time, if possible (along with a healer to regen mana and another DPS if more help is needed). It's probably the easiest one to tank, but demanding on DPS and healers. If you can limit damage taken while a Voodoo Doll, it helps, but it's really the healers and DPS that determine this fight.

Spirit Kings is a practical examination in raid awareness. Having single-tanked this, my main concern is trying to be roughly near the middle of the room when Flanking Orders goes out (easiest place to handle it), and being ready to race the boss away from a poorly kited add. Frankly, as long as your raid stacks, spreads, and moves correctly, it'll probably be fine.

Elegon tests everyone. Phase one requires that the Main Tank be able to survive a Total Annihilation from the add while rocking at least 8-10 stacks of the debuff that increases damage taken. I like Anti-Magic Shell. It's possible that if a healer is resetting stacks at the time (so they don't get rocked by the Annihilation), that they'll be out of range of you. Meanwhile, the off tank (roles switch with each add) has to tank the add on the vortex until 25%, then get it off before it dies while your DPS is going bananas on it. And then rush in to rescue the main tank from Elegon. A healer cooldown for this transition works nicely, too. And it goes much more smoothly if you push Elegon to a transition to phase two right when an add goes down, before the next one arrives.

It's the most complicated fight (and hardest, probably), and that's just phase 1!

Phase 2 consists of nuking down as many waves of adds as possible while resetting personal stacks so the damage when the adds die doesn't kill you. Our raid gets 3 sets down. We let the fourth through while we get DPS time on Elegon (precious, precious 10 seconds); we then rush madly to get off the platform before we fall to our deaths.

Phase 3, damaging the focuses isn't the hard part, it's doing so while the tanks pick up all of the adds (whose damage can start to add up), and being ready to get back to phase one as smoothly as possible. Usually, some quick AoE will rapidly drop these guys.

Then, the cycle repeats once more, before going to a modified version of phase one, minus the adds, but plus an increasing AoE damage on the raid.
This fight is rough on everyone.

Will of the Emperor is mostly about 3 things: proper add management, ducking Devastating Combos (both for reduced damage taken and extra DPS), and healing through the increased damaged phases of Titan Gas. Essentially, the same fight as LFR, with bigger numbers. So, once your tanks and melee learn how to dance around the combos, the fight really isn't that hard, provided that your DPS down the adds properly. My health felt a bit spiky when I loused up a Combo dodge... an Emperor's Strength trying to stun you makes that trickier. However, I'd say that this fight is mostly won by DPS managing adds, with tanks and healers helping out.

I hear that LFR Heart of Fear has been wiping people who don't know how to handle mechanics even worse than MSV. I may test this tonight.

Also, it feels weird that after swapping out my Brewfest Stam trinket for the mastery trinket off of Elegon, that my raid buffed hp exceeds that of our bear off-tank by 100k.

[Krazzman]

Right, but that isn't every fight.
Not every spec is going to be even on every fight.
Also, in a vacuum this example doesn't tell us much. We don't know if the Paladin focused on the tanks or raid or both. We don't know if the Shaman focused on the tanks or raid or both. And that does have a significant impact.
Are you two healing it or three? That is also going to make a major difference. If you're two healing it, effects like Beacon of Light become much more significant, so that could skew the numbers somewhat.

Mana at the end of a fight isn't really relevant. Especially when it comes to Paladins who get incredible amounts of mana from Divine Plea every minute. I speak from experience when I say that if you push your cooldowns hard enough, especially your mana cooldowns, it isn't hard to end fights with lots of mana left.

When the shield drops and everyone is on the outer ring, it is entirely possible that the Paladin lucked out and ended up with a group which, for whatever reason, took more damage therefore had more damage to heal up, thereby placing him higher on the meter.

Lastly, this is why I only partly pay attention to healing meters. Being ahead on the meters by a severe margin might mean something, or it might mean nothing. I imagine if you compaired total output the two healers would be closer, which is why I also look at total output when I analyze healers, not just total healed.

Not quite what I meant but yes it's not in an vacuum. The problem is more in the terms of how unfair it is compared in gear. Our Warlock has 480(479 equipped) while I have 478 equipped. That's not a big enough difference to say that 60k dps compared to 90k dps is ok. The same difference between Shaman (478) and the Paladin (480). Really in nearly every encounter they are on the same... a difference of about 2% to 5% except that the Paladin doesn't have any mana problems while my GF needs my Hymn of Hope.

[Karoht]

Not quite what I meant but yes it's not in an vacuum. The problem is more in the terms of how unfair it is compared in gear. Our Warlock has 480(479 equipped) while I have 478 equipped. That's not a big enough difference to say that 60k dps compared to 90k dps is ok. The same difference between Shaman (478) and the Paladin (480). Really in nearly every encounter they are on the same... a difference of about 2% to 5% except that the Paladin doesn't have any mana problems while my GF needs my Hymn of Hope.

Is the Shaman rocking a Blue weapon or a Purple weapon? The difference in spell power does equal a lot of throughput. Amped up by Elegon's buff, I would imagine that right there could be a major difference. Same also applies to Windsong VS Jade Spirit enchant on the weapon. A blue weapon with Windsong (or no enchant) VS a purple with Jade Spirit? Magnified by the 50% healing buff, could be your difference right there alone.
Also, how's the spirit look? My mana regen sucked when half my gear had spirit and half didn't. Once all the slots had spirit I was fine again.

Lastly, I'm not normally a fan of such automated optimization, but have you checked out Ask Mr Robot or any other such gem/reforging website? I didn't think a 2% difference in gear optimzation was that big a deal. Then I followed the instructions and tried it myself. And life got better.

[Krazzman]

Is the Shaman rocking a Blue weapon or a Purple weapon? The difference in spell power does equal a lot of throughput. Amped up by Elegon's buff, I would imagine that right there could be a major difference. Same also applies to Windsong VS Jade Spirit enchant on the weapon. A blue weapon with Windsong (or no enchant) VS a purple with Jade Spirit? Magnified by the 50% healing buff, could be your difference right there alone.
Also, how's the spirit look? My mana regen sucked when half my gear had spirit and half didn't. Once all the slots had spirit I was fine again.

Lastly, I'm not normally a fan of such automated optimization, but have you checked out Ask Mr Robot or any other such gem/reforging website? I didn't think a 2% difference in gear optimzation was that big a deal. Then I followed the instructions and tried it myself. And life got better.

I think we both have 463 weapons (I have a staff, my GF mainhand and shield). The Paladin doesn't seem to have an epic weapon if I recall but I'm not so sure if he might have an "LFR-Weapon". I know for sure that my GF only has spirit items and AskMrRobot told her last time to pump everyxthing into haste. I already used it but couldn't really get anything from it due to our first tries on the emperor and the first boss in Heart of Fear.
FOr the healers it's not the output but how this output is achieved. It's aggravating that when someone has a few better items than you and outperforms you while having no mana problems. A 5% difference is ok in terms of balancing... 20 to 30% is not... at least for me, when they also say they need the items I would need desperatly. I think when Elegon drops his wand... I'll have to wait for a second time since the warlock has it only in lfr version. I'm not sure if I should change my DP makro and make an additional MB makro to ensure a near 100% uptime/cd-time for my trinket.

Another thing that irks me is the supposed BiS list for Spriests. Sometimes they reforged crit to haste and used that value to calculate the ranking... sometimes they did not. Example is the Spirit/Crit ring you can get from Feng or the Spiritbinder (unsure which it was).

[Karoht]

Okay, so then what in your estimation is the reason for the extreme difference between the two? A few item levels of gear? If that were the case the difference would be far more severe on all fights, not just Elegon. There has to be more to it.
Also, this is rather odd, because the Paladins I've been speaking with seem to have the inverse of your situation. They end the fight with no mana, rock every cooldown, and end up behind everyone by a 10% or larger margin.

I would check and see if Aura Mastery is counted in there. Some meters take damage negated as potential healing. However, they specifically do not count Spirit Link beyond noting that it was used. Aura Mastery (raidwide 20% reduction) on Elegon? Yeah, that would kind of be a big deal.


I really enjoy Will of the Emperors and Garalon. Yeah, I'm crazy. Whatevs.
I'm still having difficulty finding a guild that works for me. I'm just going to have to take an earlier time by the looks of it. 830pm server is the latest group I can find right now, that works out to be 630pm my time.