January News/Discussion

[Concillian]

And that was in particular, a few problem teams, based around a single problem class. HOTs were way too powerful with full S2/3/4 gear.

I think this is a major misconception. Druids weren't great in Arenas because their HOTs were way too powerful. That was part of it, but it had to be coupled with the mobility, CC and damage avoidance

Put the same HOTs on a shaman and you're hosed. Hell you could probably give the same druid HOTs AND a cyclone to the shaman and they would still not have dominated like the combination of all three of travel form, cyclone, and powerful HOTs.

Constant damage input means you need to heal through it. If you're constantly healing through it, you're going to run OOM. Druids would eventually get a cyclone, a partner CC or snare, and run away for a nice safe drink.

I think Blizzard is missing the importance of damage avoidance and mobility.

I got in a fight with a rogue in SotA a few weeks ago... I had spec-ed major survivability (Blessed Resilience AND Focused Will). Now my PvP gear is not great right now. Mostly S4 stuff still, with a few L80 pieces, but I have 500 ish resilience and 16k health and more armor than L80 gear (due to actual armor bonuses on L70 gear). Spellpower and mana are on the low side.

Now I was using the teleports of a blasted down gate to be able to kite him and get breaks (drop off a canon platform, start healing until he dropped too, jump in teleport & waddle up to the canon again, forcing him to run around since he was on the other team... repeat.) However, since I couldn't break crippling poison, I could never get away. I had to choose to do major healing to myself through wound poison or hope crippling ran off before he could get to me again. Eventually he got me low enough health that a CS + KS was long enough to kill me. It took a while, but even not being touched for something like 50% of the time I just couldn't survive until OOM.

[Artega]

I play a healer now, Bolty. Holy paladin. We already have enough tanks in the guild (with a couple rogues rerolling DK), so I've decided to work on my pally instead of my warrior. And even as a warrior, I don't think that healers should be instagibbed to the point that healing becomes meaningless compared to raw DPS.

EDIT: And I really do think Blizzard's starting folks off with not nearly enough Resilience and Stamina for the amount of DPS being thrown around, especially clothies. I can at least rely on plate+shield to be able to take some hits (and it gives me a huge advantage against Rogues, believe me), but clothies... man, I feel sorry for them right now.

[Mirajj]

Jan 8 News

~~~
Bornakk drops a bomb when he says that arena matches will now be limited to 45 minutes max, after which both teams, if there is no decision, will lose 16 points. This is quite the change, and I have a feeling there'll be a lot of talk about this change. I do wonder about it, though. Arena's not my thing, but I've heard of 10+ hour matches, at which point I think I'd probably just throw the match.

[Swiss Mercenary]

EDIT: And I really do think Blizzard's starting folks off with not nearly enough Resilience and Stamina for the amount of DPS being thrown around, especially clothies. I can at least rely on plate+shield to be able to take some hits (and it gives me a huge advantage against Rogues, believe me), but clothies... man, I feel sorry for them right now.

My boomkin partner blows holy paladins up pretty quick. ;)

Could I have trinketed? Well sure, then I'd fear, then he'd trinket, then I'd die anyway. Without even touching the Rogue at all. Maybe I'd get off a PW:S to draw the fight out another second or two.

Yes, that was a 1v1 situation and not group pvp, where it would be assumed someone could peel the Rogue.

That's what the auto-silence at the start of the match on the peeler is for, of course!

But in the situations GC was talking about - 2 dps on a healer - the dps should win.

The way I see it, against an appropriately geared healer, the 2 dps should be able to win by either correctly timing their shutdowns, and controlling the partner, or by OOMing the healer over... Maybe 60 seconds? Quite a long shot away from "Letting DPS classes win through not CC, drains, but DPS." Because that's just doing your PvE rotation on another player.

All those crowd controls either have diminishing returns or cooldowns. I believe that Ghostcrawler is simply saying that when those crowd controls (or stuns or silences or whatever) aren't working (for whatever reason), pure damage should still be able to do the job.

And if you think there's no skill in pure damage, well...

So, when the enemy team is able to counter your stuns, control, shutdown... You should be able to mash your PvE rotation for 6 seconds, and win the match?

I'm sorry, but there is very little skill in doing a DPS rotation for the vast majority of classes in this game. Being good at dealing damage comes from high combat presence...

GC: But if you are anticipating a point where you just laugh at warriors or shamans or other classes without brutal CC and drains, then you might be disappointed.

Mortal Strike isn't a drain team all in itself? That's funny, because just about every match I've lost to a warrior team consisted of them OOMing me, seeing as how I had to heal every point of damage they dealt twice. Don't forget the pummels and stuns they use, to force bigger, less effective heals. Again, I'm not sure if Ghostcrawler is playing the same game, here.

GC: My point was that we don't give every spec the ability to stunlock, sheep or silence. And we're not going to. But those specs still need to feel like they can contribute in an Arena. Understanding the concerns now, I should have said something more like "It should still be possible for warriors and shamans to take on and sometimes defeat healers (even if it takes 2v1 or 3v1 or whatever)." Crowd control should not be the dominant factor in Arenas. Neither should burst damage.

Is there a single DPS spec in this game without the ability to stunlock, sheep/fear, or silence? Enhancement Shamans? If GC wants to have them kill people, without giving them stuns or silences, then he'll either have to double their DPS compared to rogues, DKs, paladins, and mages... Or we'll be stuck in the same boat as we are today, where every other "DPS" class can kill healers with their DPS alone - the control just means the healer has no chance.

The bottom line is... Despite what GC may think, there has never been a time in this game when a healer could just stand there, and tank an equally geared DPS class all day. Druids had to run away, root, cyclone, bash, and drink. Paladins had to rely on the warrior not having trained pummel. Priests would go OOM without CC+Regen time. Taking steps to avoid that situation is plain stupid, because it never came up. DPS classes were always capable of DPSing through a healer that just... Healed. They just had to use all their abilities, at the right times.

[Rinnhart]

Retribution damage is fine.

Hey, buddy! You play a paladin, now? You should come over. We can trade pokemon cards!

[Taelas]

The bottom line is... Despite what GC may think, there has never been a time in this game when a healer could just stand there, and tank an equally geared DPS class all day. Druids had to run away, root, cyclone, bash, and drink. Paladins had to rely on the warrior not having trained pummel. Priests would go OOM without CC+Regen time. Taking steps to avoid that situation is plain stupid, because it never came up. DPS classes were always capable of DPSing through a healer that just... Healed. They just had to use all their abilities, at the right times.

:huh:

That is not my experience.

[Sir_Die_alot]

:huh:

That is not my experience.

^ that

[Artega]

Retribution damage is fine.

Hey, buddy! You play a paladin, now? You should come over. We can trade pokemon cards!

I think the Judgement damage is too high (I ate a 6k crit last night), but it's otherwise okay. Maybe make it a little less bursty, because their damage between bursts is pretty lousy.

[Bob the Beholder]

With all this talk of healing in PvP, it is reminding me vaguely of a discussion I saw a while ago about apportioning blame in PvE groups. The original poster was obviously a healer; going on about how whenever anything, ever goes wrong in a pve instance, the healer gets the blame first and gets yelled at and kicked, etc., and that obviously 9 times out of 10 the problem is that the tank is a drooling retard, or that the DPS is playing via vocal commands to a team of trained mice, due to a full body cast, and that they should all learn to affect a proper degree of self loathing, rather than placing it on the surrogate of the healer. Because, naturally, healers are beautiful, unique snowflakes who command respect and admiration simply by clicking their class at character creation.

You might be able to infer that I do not feel that this person's assessment is objective and accurate. I feel that I come at this with a decent perspective--I've played DPS for nearly four years. But my main right now is an 80 warrior. And I'm levelling a right mean Boomkin who has healed more instances post-60 than any other alt I've levelled has even stepped into.

I feel that it is fairly obvious when someone is doing something wrong in pickup groups. You'll see that the DPS is pulling a mob off the tank and running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to solo it. Or the tank will admit that he doesn't own a shield. Or the healer will go, "I am so high right now" and try to mind control rats half the fight.

That considered, one thing I have always seen is, even if it is quite obvious that the healer is the group's mouth-breather (you have to have at least one), most groups I've been in will not say anything. So long as there's a chance that they can just suffer through and finish the instance, then they will be worried more about losing the healer than kicking him, and won't want to say anything that might make him leave. And at the end of the run, they will apply their faces to their keyboards, issue a primal scream of rage, say, "Good run, thanks." and hearth. Because the healers simply command power. They are necessary, and they are hard to replace, and even a bad one is better than not having one.

On that note: Worst group member you've ever had?

Mine was just a couple weeks ago. I was healing Blood Furnace on my druid, and invited a random rogue. This rogue was wearing spellpower gear, specced into mutilate while wielding a sword and mace, and completely incoherent. This rogue tried to outroll my druid on a caster mace, averaged 150 DPS in most fights (at level 64), and in general spent most of the run standing next to my character (healer--you know, way on the other end of the world from melee range) spinning in circles. It was awesome.

[Artega]

Should've kicked the rogue and just 4-manned it for easier XP.

I haven't had any truly awful players yet, but I've quickly left several groups that I felt weren't going anywhere. Always fun when you have two healers and three DPS, and trying to figure out how you're gonna tank anything. Sometimes the buddy system isn't a good thing, folks.

[Sir_Die_alot]

Put the same HOTs on a shaman and you're hosed. Hell you could probably give the same druid HOTs AND a cyclone to the shaman and they would still not have dominated like the combination of all three of travel form, cyclone, and powerful HOTs.

I just wanted to point out shamans have a travel form so that would pretty much make them like druids minus the snare removal. Just a nit. :P

[Taelas]

Ghost wolf has a cast time, and can be dispelled. Not exactly the same.

Worst group member ever? Got to be the DPS warrior I was forced to endure a normal Steam Vaults run with. "I am awesome DPS because I have epics." (He was wearing S1, a while into the patch after S1 went to honor points.) "I know this instance extremely well because I am nearly exalted with this instance. You must listen to me." (Without considering the fact that you can easily get to almost exalted without stepping one foot into Steam Vaults...)
I am not kidding around. I'm paraphrasing, but they might as well have been quotes. He said those things.

He was DPS, along for DPS, and he sucked. He did his job, but he never listened. I only went there for the cloak off the last boss -- I was tanking on my paladin -- and wonder of wonders, it drops. He needs and wins. I was ready to tear him a new one, but unfortunately, they have yet to invent devices that allow you to punch people in the face across the Internet.

A second time that almost matches up was also on my paladin, though much earlier. I was Holy at the time, and was trying to get some healing gear together for levelling through instances. I join a group for Blood Furnace (I was trying to get the trinket), meet what I think is a fairly nice group, and we get through with almost no problems (though no trinket). When we kill the final boss, he drops the healing cloth robe. I weigh it against what I'm wearing -- the Ret DPS chest from Hellfire Peninsula -- and need on it. (No other cloth wearers were along.)

The rogue says, "I'm going to ninja that," needs, wins, and points at me and laughs then starts dancing in place. I was completely flabbergasted; who does crap like that? Oh well.

Pugs.

[Swiss Mercenary]

I just wanted to point out shamans have a travel form so that would pretty much make them like druids minus the snare removal. Just a nit. :P

Snare removal is key. Shapeshifting while silenced is key. Cyclone is key. Feral charge, roots are key. Hots were not overpowered - they just allowed the druid to stop healing... Long enough to cyclone, travel form around a pillar, shadowmeld, and drink.

That is not my experience.

Was their a gear difference? Were you kited? Were people harrassing you?

[Taelas]

In one particular instance, no one else was there. I guess I was kited in that he ran just out of range and healed all the time. I can't say whether there was a gear difference or not. If there were (and it's likely), it was to his advantage. He didn't run out of LOS, there was no resilience involved, and I kept charging him. He had enough mana to keep healing, keep running off, and finish me off with Moonfire. Warrior vs. druid.

Maybe I just suck, or maybe my gear was just that much worse than his, but I cannot for the life of me see how I could have stopped him.

[NiteFox]

On that note: Worst group member you've ever had?

I can name two that are on about equal footing.

The first came during my first run through Ramparts normal not long after TBC went live. He was a tauren warrior, and pretty much the only option the group had as a tank. The party consisted of said tank, myself (tauren/hunter), a second hunter (who was absolutely sublime, and we met again a good few months later in Steam Vaults and she had about as many poor memories of this run as I did), a warlock and a priest.

So this is how the run went. The warrior charged at goddamned everything. The hunters would set up our traps, and we were all on the same page as to how each pull would go, but it turned out the warrior was illiterate. There were many messy deaths as the tank kept charging into packs, only to aggro a nearby pack or a patrol we had all seen. For the first time in a good while, I actually had a paper doll for damage up on my screen, and I couldn't have been the only one. It's the first (and only) instance I've been a part of where we all took an aggreed-upon break to have our gear repaired.

Clearing our way to Gargolmar took the better part of an hour. I am not kidding. We wiped on Gargolmar again, purely because the warrior seemed fond of breaking the traps we'd put on Gargolmar and one of his patrol, as well as due to the fact that he charged at the boss at a point where he would aggro a static pack of trash. By that point, we were all ready to either tear this warrior a new one, or just quit the instance. Warrior then made the decision for us by bandaging up to full health after the Gargolmar fight and charging the next pack of trash (and a patrol, natch) before the rest of the party had managed to recuperate. Cue wipe. So we both tore him out and quit the instance, with the priest first to do so. I remember putting him on my ignore list.

The second was a hunter. Now I'm a big advocate for the absolute abolishment of the word "huntard" and the banning of any account of any player using it, but if so then I'd have trouble finding a word to describe this hunter.

I think I'll settle on two: Whiny moron.

Shadow Labyrinth normal. I had two goals: The most immediate was to get part of the key for the Kara attunement, the second was to hope and pray that Murmur would finally drop his Sonic Spear for me. A troll hunter was putting together a party for said instance, and I actually recognised him from the previous day; I'd joined up with him to run Shadow Lab, but the run was aborted due to lack of a healer. So I sign up with him, party had a third DPS (Feral druid) and a healer (Resto shammy, who turned out to be the best little Resto shammy in the world, bless 'er.) in tow already, and a tank quickly joined (Prot paladin) who was promoted to leader.

We hadn't even opened up the gate when the other hunter began vocalising his desire to have Murmur's Spear. Well, no biggie, I'd just have to compete on him for the roll if it dropped, though I'd probably feel bad if I won it. We had a bit of a problem to start with when the Paladin accidentally narked off a patrol on a trash pull before Hellmaw (He had been using Avenger's Shield to pull until then, and after said wipe I offered to Misdirect pull from then on in, which worked for the rest of the instance.). The hunter was a moderately better player than the warrior from Ramparts, even if he had no clue how to trap and had a fondness for firing at my trapped mobs. We suffered a partial wipe just before Blackheart the Inciter which was caused by the hunter standing in the path of a patrol, but so far so good.

But he still wouldn't shut up about the Sonic Spear. It seemed that every other line that popped up in party chat was about that damn spear, and it was annoying the hell out of us. I, in the hope of letting him know that there was some competition for the spear, mentioned that I wouldn't mind it too. Those words. "I wouldn't mind it too."

A few minutes later, the hunter had delved into his AtlasLoot library and whispered me with a suggestion: "This <A blue strength polearm> would be better for you than that axe."

I laughed in real life over being suggested a downgrade on my current stat stick, and whispered what he had said to me to the healer. The healer wasn't really surprised and told me "If the Spear drops, roll on it. Anything to shut him up."

So we started on Blackheart, and due to some pre-boss fight dicking about I stupidly did the fight wearing these instead of my usual chest piece. Granted, the fight seemed longer than it should have been, but when the druid posted the damage metres for that fight I was surprised (or even not) to learn that I had still out-DPSed the other hunter, who was languishing just above the healer for damage. I sheepishly put my shirt back on, and decided to inspect the other hunter: A lot of green and some blue leather, with a lot of strength, some intellect on the non-leather gear, and practically zero agility. My competition was a guy running in druid leathers.

The instance rapidly went downhill. The hunter's survivability dropped significantly, and we were spending a lot of time waiting for corpse runs. And it seemed that every second he was on autorun, or we were recouping our mana, he would keep on and on about that Spear. We get to Grandmaster Vorpil, and tank asks if we all know the tactics. Only the hunter and druid hadn't run the instance before, so the tactics were explained to the druid and largely understood.

I suggested (Which meant that what followed could largely be my fault) that, as ranged DPS, the two hunters should not DPS Vorpil and concentrate on killing the adds before they heal him. Tank mentions that's an excellent idea, healer mentions that it's a tactic that put him through the instance before, and all five party members agree on the plan: Tank tanks, healer heals, druid DPSes Vorpil, and the two hunters stop those crucial adds at any cost.

So how was it that Vorpil managed to heal himself for so much that my HP report on him suffered an integer underflow reporting his current HP as something like minus several million? Other hunter forgot the plan, instead concentrating on doing his crappy DPS on the boss rather than the adds which he could have killed and controlled? I simply couldn't keep up with killing them to prevent a substantial chunk of them healing Vorpil, and all the while the tank was screaming "Kill the F$%@ing adds!" at the hunter. Tank dies, druid takes over tanking, healer dies, druid takes over healing and my pet takes over tanking, and I just throw as much DPS into Vorpil, only managing to bring him down before my pet dies. Long, awkward silence occurs as we glower at the hunter while the druid resses tank and healer. Hunter comment, "That took a long time."

No #$%&.

"C'mon, let's go. I want my Spear."

We slaughter our way to Murmur, while patiently explaining the Murmur strategy to the hunter: Pet on standby (We didn't really trust him not to be able to control his pet on the back and forth on the Sonic Booms), and just get the hell away if he pulls you in. Oh, and if we wipe, that's it. We're not running this again. As it happened, the other hunter did die on Murmur, but we spanked Murmur down competently.

Guess what dropped? First thing that happened was the hunter automatically clicked on Need. Second thing that happened was that the rest of the party clicked on Pass.

Third and fourth thing that happened was both the healer and the tank whispering to me "Go on, roll on it." Which I did. "You receive loot, [Sonic Spear]", and we all cheered. I equipped it straight away, grinned, and casually said "Right, Kara key next." Tank and healer helped, the druid went for a nice, long lie down somewhere in the dark, and the other hunter quit the group before I had even activated the container.

I do feel bad about taking the roll and winning it (By a wide margin. His 23 roll to my 97), but I still keep trying to convince myself that I deserved the damn drop more than he did.

[Artega]

Stupid people are supposed to get shafted; it's what they're there for. You should only feel bad when smart people get screwed.

[Taelas]

Don't feel bad about him losing the roll. He got a chance to roll on it and he had annoyed everyone in the party with his antics beforehand. You won it, fair and square.

[Swiss Mercenary]

In one particular instance, no one else was there. I guess I was kited in that he ran just out of range and healed all the time. I can't say whether there was a gear difference or not. If there were (and it's likely), it was to his advantage. He didn't run out of LOS, there was no resilience involved, and I kept charging him. He had enough mana to keep healing, keep running off, and finish me off with Moonfire. Warrior vs. druid.

Maybe I just suck, or maybe my gear was just that much worse than his, but I cannot for the life of me see how I could have stopped him.

Warrior vs Druid is very much a case of Rock vs Paper... And you have to realise that while yes, he killed you with moonfire, if you were causing a net mana loss to him (Even if it was a slow one), then in an arena environment, you would have been making headway, as his moonfires would not have killed you. He'd have eventually had to resort to his tricks with roots, cyclones, travel form and drinking...

I don't know what else I could say. Warrior/Druid was a common team, and hence, they'd frequently be pitted against eachother in mirror matches - yet, one of the two warriors would always succeed in killing the enemy druid - at any level of gear.

[LavCat]

Ghost wolf has a cast time, and can be dispelled. Not exactly the same.

Ghost Wolf has a cast time of zero for any shaman I would bring to arena, and can be dispelled but not, as far as I know, by any druid.

Ghost Wolf: 3% of Base Mana
Travel Form: 13% of Base Mana

I am no arena expert, but one of my favorite 2v2 arena matches was when, after a long chase, my shaman finally caught and killed the resto druid in their team's starting area. About the same time my priest partner finished off the warrior. Had the warrior been able to keep my shaman hamstrung things might have gone differently.

Worst group member? That's easy. My hunter was running UBRS. We knew who the other skinners were, and there were several. http://www.wowwiki.com/Finkle's_Skinner dropped. Loot was on group loot. Raid leader said: "Only skinners roll." Woad was high. I was high too. Then after a brief pause the dagger went to a non-skinning rogue. "It's an upgrade for me," said the rogue as they were kicked. We finished the run one member short.

It took another year for Woad to finally get Finkle's. It's been in her inventory ever since, and just last month it was what she used to level her dagger skill to 400. And Lok'delar was what she used to level staves.

[Bolty]

So how was it that Vorpil managed to heal himself for so much that my HP report on him suffered an integer underflow reporting his current HP as something like minus several million?

That reminds me of a Shadow Lab run I once did where I healed on the Vorpil encounter for 13 straight minutes. We finally wiped because I decided to stop healing out of frustration and to halt the outflow of mana potions that I was chugging.

It was just another one of those reminders that while Blizzard did a great job in TBC of making DPS actually really truly matter (whereas with most of Vanilla up to the end of BWL, it was all about your tanks and healers), it also meant that as an experienced healer, I couldn't just pull a group through anything via just sheer healing force.

I really don't pug much anymore, so I'm short of these great stories. I used to love pugs just for the challenges of healing an unpredictable group, but I just don't feel I have the time to spend an evening wiping to things that anyone with any common sense could defeat. Tal's the exception - he has no common sense, but I enjoy playing with him anyway. :)

-Bolty