World Of Warcraft Discussion

[Emperor]

So our 10 man group ventured into the Bastion a few nights ago and while we had a few hiccups with the trash, it wasn't that bad. However the first boss decimated us. I am fairly certain this was due to our OT being geared for dps (Druid) and maybe out MT being a little undergeared. I would blame the dps but we didn't get far enough to actually dps.

 

Tonight is Blackwing Raid. I am pretty sure I am healing which I have admit I have never healed a 25 man raid before. Should be interesting.

[SinisterDeath]

True Druids carry all there gear sets with them. At least there main ones. :P

[Verbal32]

There isn't much of a gear difference now between feral bear and feral kitty (according to a reliable source), so I think it might be more that our MT and OT were undergeared for the raid in general. I know the MT is now where he should be, but I don't know about the OT. Hopefully she will be by the time we hit Bastion again.

 

Good luck in BW tonight, Emp. I'll be online, but not in time to raid. Besides, my gear isn't sufficient yet.

[SinisterDeath]

There isn't much of a gear difference now between feral bear and feral kitty (according to a reliable source), so I think it might be more that our MT and OT were undergeared for the raid in general. I know the MT is now where he should be, but I don't know about the OT. Hopefully she will be by the time we hit Bastion again.

 

Good luck in BW tonight, Emp. I'll be online, but not in time to raid. Besides, my gear isn't sufficient yet.

 

Guess it depends mostly on the level/tier of the gear. I'm betting raid tier Cata Leather Gear for Druids, will probably have all the stats they need for feral dps/tanking. But the non tier blue gear, and obviously green gear, leads to more sets.

 

I can see bear druid having a focus on Sta Str and AGI (AGI for dodge/crit) (well, assuming what the tooltips say is correct, about AGI = cat, STR = Bear atk power wise) Defense/hit also plays a factor in it, but from what I've read I don't know the number, theres a hit/def cap and once you hit that you focus on other things.

[Emperor]

Well once the tanks are able to live through the first pull I think we will have a dps problem. If I recall correctly all dps need to be hitting at 10K to ensure the boss fights are over before the healers run out of mana. I think only one person in our party was hitting that on the trash.. of course it was trash.

 

How different is healing a 25 man over a 10 man?

[Mulk]

druid tanks need certain amounts of hit and expertise or else you miss or get dodge/parry/blocked a lot. Those are the main threat boosting stats, until you are capped anyway. STR generates AP for a bear, AGI generates crit and dodge for a bear, mastery helps with the self-shield proc and the damage you produce and without enough STA even the best tank is a a red, pasty smear on the ground...sheesh.

 

A very simplified thing I read says mostly the druid gear will overlap, outside of rings, neck, cloak and perhaps trinkets (though high AGI trinkets are nice either way), but you will reforge and gem a bit differently, not to mention enchants. I've got two sets of a heroic blue shoulder, two sets of heroic blue legs, etc to reflect the differences in what I need. Primarily I've reforged for dodge, since I can't reforge for agility on any of those pieces. Extra damage avoidance is nice to have, since I don't have a ton of trouble keeping things under control.

 

That said, I've done none of the heavy reading on tanks druids that I did in the earlier two expansions, so take my actions with a grain of salt.

[Mulk]

in 25s you really have to trust your other healers to heal their assignments - you could run yourself out in Wrath if you cross healed too much, and in Cata you have very limited capability to do so given the mana restrictions we work under. That's the biggest difference I have seen in my time of trying both.

 

As to 10k for each dps...well, I doubt that, at least for the most introductory fights.. You can get away without quite that much on Magmaw and Omnitron ASSUMING you don't take a lot of excess incidental damage and target swap appropriately - a/k/a don't stand in the fire. Or the green poop. Or whatever form the fire takes in the fight. Kill adds where appropriate. :D Some setups for Halfus Wyrmbreaker (or Healerbreaker as I like to call him; there is one setup that is just murderous) and anything else, though, that's probably a fair assessment.

[SinisterDeath]

From the sound of it QuietAiel, thats exactly what is needed or at least 'theorized' needed at @85. I dunno where you would place STR and AGI over each other for bear tanks, as IMO they are both just as necissary, though not as much as STA. Course, Dodge is probably the biggest stat for a bear tank, so AGI could be better than STR, but without enough ATK power, your not going to deal that much dmg to get that threat. But isnce all that gear probably has STR/AGI/STA on it, it becomes less of an issue or so i'd imagine.

 

By the time I get to 85, and start gearing up, I'll probably have 4 sets of gear.

 

Tank Set

DPS Set

Balance Set

Healing Set

 

 

back in Classic and BC I had more sets.

 

Tank Set - Def

Tank Set - Sta

Tank Set - Dodge

Tank Set - Resistances

 

DPS Set - DPS

DPS Set - Crit/Hit

 

Balance Set - Mana

Balance Set - Spell Power

 

Healing Set - Mana

Healing Set - Spell Power.

 

Obviously there was alot of cross over gear, else I'd need a guild bank with me.

But I basically had 1.5 Bags 'empty' everything else was gear, and other stuff I hauled around.

 

Do they have Hoarders... Wow edition?

[SinisterDeath]

I thought 10k DPS was fairly easy for DPS classes in cata?

 

Though I do know moving fights are a pain on dps...

 

Speaking of that, are Cat druids still have lousy hit range right? (becomes very noticable in pvp and pve with moving encounters, I haven't got that far yet)

[Emperor]

I wouldn't say easy. Some classes and specs have a much easier time hitting 10K+. On my S-priest I can do 10K if I play perfectly... and I can apply dots. I haven't dpsed magmaw yet (healed) but my dps would be crap due to the moving and worms (crap being 7 - 8K).

 

Friday and Saturday were Magmaw attempts. Our current strategy is having the healers hug up to his body with the melee and the ranged away dealing with the worms. We have like 3 hunters with tank pets that are using them to hold the worms away from the ranged. We have a few issues. The ranged like to run out of healing range. Because healers don't like to see people die they move away from the boss to reach them... and worms sprout under their feet and we wipe. Ranged also need constant healing love... so we are sucking wind about 4 minutes into the fight. There are other issues as well.

 

We did get him down to 44%. However we were not doing it quick enough. Even if we would have lived, we would not have beaten the enrage timer.

 

If 25 man runs are easier, I would hate to see this fight on 10 man.

[SinisterDeath]

They can be easier, if you got the cordination to it. Prolly the hardest part about 25 mans is the gear requirements, and not necissarilly the actual 'cordination' in the fights. at least, thats been my experience with BC. ;)

[Mulk]

Single target dpsers are going to have trouble in five-mans generating 10k in blue or blue heroic gear. Anyone who says otherwise is on something. As a feral, I spend way too much time target swapping or running around to interrupt or whatever, so I keep losing bleeds - it takes a boss fight for me to get anywhere near max dps level. I run anywhere from 7500-9k in heroics, and around 12k or so in raid boss fights, maybe a touch more, just because I actually have time to get all of my bleeds/debuffs/buffs up before something is dead in a raid. Mostly the higher dps you see in 5-mans are the AoE classes - locks, mages, some DKs, etc. It tends to even out over the long haul. Keep in mind whenever you read someone demanding those sorts of levels, the person behind that toon and the ones that brag about doing 12k no sweat in a 5-man aren't telling you a few things:

 

1) they're darned near always doing it in a guild run and not a PuG;

2) they're in 359 purples;

3) they're flat out lying; or

4) they don't perform any CC or any other kind of group aid.

 

Sometimes they really are that good at it. I knew a guy in Wrath who could challenge for the top of the dps meter pretty much no matter what class he played, and to an extent irrelevant of gear. He really was that good, but most people aren't. I ignore those kinds of posts. They're generally made by people whose greatest accomplishment in life is killing the Lich King or Yogg+0 or whatever, which is all kinds of sad. I'm a good enough druid player to gain admission to many of those kinds of guilds if I wanted to, and I say they are full of it. /shrug

 

Re: Magmaw: I run this in a 10-man and what works for us is this - have a hunter drop their frost trap, and have a rogue spam crippling poison FoK - that was what we had available and we wanted two slows in case one worm was just out of range. Our rogue macroed a weapon swap to a weapon with crippling to use on those spawns. As SOON as the slows hit, max AoE. The rogue had to watch his threat so he didn't wind up getting eaten, everyone else went hog wild. Our healers stood with the ranged, as usually the worms liked the healers initially (I don't know if that is normal, but that happens in our group) and we wanted the worms to stay grouped up and heading in the same direction. It's also critical that you lasso Magmaw correctly on the first try and that people light into him pretty hard.

 

The main issue with 25s was (to me) always finding 25 who can coordinate properly as opposed to just 10; plus the fact that things hit a bit harder. I did both 10s and 25s of almost everything in Wrath, and it kinda went back and forth, with the main issue between 10s and 25s being the extra healing needed at the 25 level. I always thought the second boss of ICC was a bit more of a pain to learn at 10 level because you had fewer dps per add you needed to kill; I also thought the Blood Princes were harder at 10s because it was really hard to have three tanks at that level, but having two Princes on one guy was a healer heart attack, especially in entry level ICC gear. ymmv

[Verbal32]

Alright, I have a problem. I'm a Resto Shammy, and we suck. My mana is awful compared to similarly geared healers, and I have absolutely no tank cooldowns or +healing cooldowns. I have a nerfed Mana Tide totem for a little mana replenishment, and a Nature's Swiftness for an instant heal every few minutes.

 

Big whoop.

 

I did a lot of reading over the last few days and have come to the conclusion that we are at the bottom of the pile right now. That wouldn't normally bother me, but I'm a healer. In a 5-man, it's just me....and in a 10-man, I'm 1/3 of the healing corps. If I was just below the other healers, I'd deal. But I'm so far below that it makes me not want to log into my Shaman anymore.

 

And here's my real problem: I don't have another toon at a high level. All my alts are in their 20s, lol. I'm not even sure I want to heal anymore. Been thinking about a pure dps class, or maybe even trying tanking. I'm not a good melee (tried enhancement shammy a few times to no avail), so I think caster might be the best option.

 

So, I look to you all. Thoughts? Advice? If I want to keep healing, I might level my priest. I don't have a pally, but I figured tank/heal specs would be cool there. I've never DPSed in a raid before, so I'm really not sure what to do. I've always been a healer.

 

HELP!

[Emperor]

DPSing is FAR easier than healing or tanking. When I random, I most always dps. I actually have a decent DPS spec for my priest now and I always find myself ranked in the top. I ran a 10 man raid dpsing with the guild and was second behind Din.... damn his rogue dps!

 

Options - DKs start at 55. Would take no time to level one to 85. They are great tanks and dps atm. Actually I think they nerfed dps a little but they are still kicking ass.

 

If you level your priest we could be BFF!!!

 

Healing options.... stack spirit? Not sure how that works with shammys. My spirit in a raid is almost 4K in combat.

 

If I recall the one heroric I ran with you had you putting out decent dps. If you geared more toward dps you could be solid.

 

Come to think of it, I hardly see shammies in cata instances.

[Verbal32]

Come to think of it, I hardly see shammies in cata instances.

 

There's a reason for this, hehe.

 

I do have a DK at 60. Thought about it. I'm also looking at what the guild needs, as that has always helped me lean one way or the other. The big decision I need to make it heak / no heal. If I decide no heal, I should level a pure so that I'm not "forced" to heal. If I want to do either, then priest or pally is where I'll go.

 

You have a high level pally, right? And a DK - how to they function?

 

 

And my spirit isn't the problem as a Shammy. It's the lack of cooldowns and hard hitting spells. My spells are geared towards 25-man raiding (Healing Rain & Chain Heal), but I can't get online early enough for that. So 10-man with our group is where it's at.

 

Ugh.

[Emperor]

I have been collecting gear to heal with my pally but haven't had the stones to actually try it out. Mainly because I have little to no idea how to heal as a pally and learning in a high level instance worries me. I do know pally healers are the rave right now. I love (loved) tanking as a pally pre cata. I found it quite easy in wrath so I assume it would be a bit challenging in cata. I know I liked it much more than tanking as DK or Warrior... and Druid.

 

Whats your top Crit heal? I think mine is 40K.. but I genernally put out 20 - 30K per heal. You generally out heal me in our 10 man raids. However I generally hold back as mana is an issue with me.

 

I am not sure why, but I could never get my DK dps to a place where I went wow. Probably missing something.

[Verbal32]

My top crit heal is probably a bit under yours, partially due to gear. You outgear me. In Wrath, Karm was the only healer in the guild that could top me. In Cata, I can still hold a #2 spot to him, but only by trying 2x as hard and being OOM every fight....while he's sitting at 60% mana. And anybody with a Pally can kick my ass at will. If you went all out and left yourself OOM like me, you'd probably kick my ass as well.

 

That's my problem. If the tank is about to die, I don't have anything to freeze time / up my output for a few seconds while I spam heals.

 

Pally: divine whateveritscalled that reduces dmg to tank or shields...whatever

 

Priest: shield, pain suppression, power infusion, whatever

 

Druid: less than the 2 above, but they have tree form for a brief period of killer heals....plus they have their own barkskin CD

 

Shaman: a water totem that gives me some mana regen....wooooo....yay. I'd say heroism, but that is reserved for dps moments and mages can do it now anyway. I'd say my totems, but they are now shared across all classes.

 

 

I'll look into Enhancement Shaman and try melee again, or just shelve Verbal and roll a Pally or level my Priest.

[Mulk]

a pally can shield himself from all/most damage for a few seconds. He can use divine illumination for a burst of heals that lasts...15 seconds I think. Where a pally gets ahead on regen is with judgments, imo. Assuming you can spare a gcd here and there, it's a small burst of mana available every few 8-10 seconds. Divine Plea is the bigger regen spell but you pay a price in terms of a large nerf to your healing output while it is up so you have to be wise in its use. There is also LoH which is basically a full health bar heal on a long cooldown, 15 minutes or so.

 

A pally is freaking fantastic as long as the damage is limited to two people, or to more than that no less then 30 seconds apart. The minute I have to start chain casting anything other than Holy Light I go oom and I have to melee for mana. I've had to do that on the third boss of Lost City and on the second boss of GB.

 

Not saying pallies aren't good. From what I've seen they are really good. Just there are some limitations. My Horde raid group doesn't have a holy pally and we get on just fine imo, so I don't think pallies or lack thereof are make or break.

[Emperor]

I was in a pug last night... a really good one. The tank had 195K health and was doing about 10k dps. Actually on the first pull he did 14K and my jaw dropped to the floor. Oh it was a pally. Anyway... we also had a shammy dpsing. Freaking awesome. I tried all my tricks to catch up with him and he blew me away. He was doing 13K dps which is probably the best I have ever seen in an instance. It was the first time I felt I was back doing a wrath instance. No CC, mobs down in 30 seconds and we finished the instance in like 30 minutes.

[SinisterDeath]

Got to lvl 84, have a caster set, (not resto spec) and my biggest heal, hits for a maximum so far of 12k. (with 90k hp, thats 9 heals to full. Pre-80, It used to take 3 heals to full. Thus soloing now actaully requires me to stop, heal 5 times, then move on, instead of stop, healing once, keep going.)

 

I'm assuming with resto, even at a 250% increase due to talents, 12k would go up to 30k, and even with better gear, 50% increase at most on top of that, 45k which is highly doubtful seeing how empies highest crit is 20-30k, so its more than likely druids big heal is probably closer to 15-25k, at most.

 

All I can say is, the heals in conjunction with the HP just doesn't seem congruent.

 

Druid Big Heals always did 1/3 total health, and Priest Big Heal did what, 1/2 to 1/1 of even the biggest tanks HP? Seems to me Whatever blizzard plans are, it feels like they want you to have multiple healers, spamming there biggest/best heals onto the tank just to keep them leveled off, which means more chaos as you have less healers focused on healing the likes of say, Off tanks, or DPS, making content harder...

 

Sounds to me like they upped the difficulty to make it harder to actually complete said 'end game', so people won't storm through it as fast, then once they release new content they'll 're-evaluate' everything else making it easier, possibly buffing heals, or reducing mob dps.

Thats my guess.

 

 

(On a side note, Feral-Druid can out-heal a Balance druid, as I can convert all my +agility into +healing, So i effectively have 'almost' as much +healing in feral as a resto, but not the talents that increase the healing spell directly on top of the healing spells. And given the difference between level 84, and 85, and level 80-84 quest gear vs lvl 85 quest/dungeon/heroic gear, ect will make a larger difference, but I stil lhad a 12k crit. :P)

[Mulk]

one qualifier there, SD. A feral can do that well for about 10 seconds or so; 15 or so after self innervate (I really hate what they did to that spell). Then he/she is out of mana. A moonkin at least has the mana pool to be more than a "stick your thumb in the hole in the wall to keep the flood out" fix. I have around 25k mana in ~ilevel 347 gear, which is a third of what my lesser geared holy paladin has, so probably about 1/3 or a little less of an equally geared moonkin. I personally didn't take the healing talents. I plugged those two points into a couple of tank talents instead to help me not immediately explode if I have to tank something in cat spec and gear. Now, if I was pvping more, I probably would have....I dunno. Have to think about that.

 

I love the survivability talents for pvping so I generally just pvp in my tank spec, but I haven't ever really sat down and considered what a true pvp feral spec would look like. I did some pvp yesterday, but my 500 resilience is just crap in the face of some of the people out there. I did manage to sneak a flag run in Twin Peaks yesterday though; they had four guards who got drawn off to one side and I took the flag at a full sprint, managed to turn some corners before the DK could DG me back; after that I had a DK and warlock escort (guildies). Also managed to finally separate that guy from his healer and discovered he wasn't all that good...which made me feel a bit better after he squished me the first two times I crossed his path. :D

 

Emp, sounds like you had some guys in full 359 or better gear. I haven't seen a tank with that much health yet myself; I think 175 is the highest I've seen. Nice when that happens; I've been drawing some pretty crappy pugs lately, though thankfully that last tank I had the other day was a good one. I bet it was nice to have a smooth and fast run eh?

 

I wasn't in the run last night, but my friends are close to clearing Bastion of Twilight now; I think they had Cho'gall under 50% on their first night working on him. I was jealous. They had a lot of trash epics drop yesterday. ;.;

[Verbal32]

I was in a pug last night... a really good one. The tank had 195K health and was doing about 10k dps. Actually on the first pull he did 14K and my jaw dropped to the floor. Oh it was a pally. Anyway... we also had a shammy dpsing. Freaking awesome. I tried all my tricks to catch up with him and he blew me away. He was doing 13K dps which is probably the best I have ever seen in an instance. It was the first time I felt I was back doing a wrath instance. No CC, mobs down in 30 seconds and we finished the instance in like 30 minutes.

 

 

Emp, was that shammy ele or enh? Ranged or melee?

[Emperor]

I checked his top spells and two were the chain lightning and lightning spell. He was also heavy into using that rumbly ground thingy. Sorry I don't know enough about the specs to say more.

[Verbal32]

Was he standing next to you, or on the boss? Hehe....kidding....I can tell by your answer.

 

The rumbly ground thing is Earthquake, and is the 31 point talent in the Elemental tree. So he was ranged DPS. Surprising, as the Enhancement tree is currently in a better spot. He had to have had epic gear all around.

[SinisterDeath]

one qualifier there, SD. A feral can do that well for about 10 seconds or so; 15 or so after self innervate (I really hate what they did to that spell). Then he/she is out of mana. A moonkin at least has the mana pool to be more than a "stick your thumb in the hole in the wall to keep the flood out" fix. I have around 25k mana in ~ilevel 347 gear, which is a third of what my lesser geared holy paladin has, so probably about 1/3 or a little less of an equally geared moonkin. I personally didn't take the healing talents. I plugged those two points into a couple of tank talents instead to help me not immediately explode if I have to tank something in cat spec and gear. Now, if I was pvping more, I probably would have....I dunno. Have to think about that.

 

Thats why I said in caster gear, not in feral gear. ;)

I don't believe a Moonkin Druid is going to have significantly more mana than a Feral druid, in Balance/healing gear. :P