The AT World of Warcraft Thread (Where do you play) and general BS

[Glayde]

Originally posted by: Chimley

Originally posted by: Glayde
M'uru finally dead. Time to work on KJ1

Grats. Just wondering if you would care to share an overview of your strat. We've been working on him for a couple weeks. Using thw following setup:

Bear Tank on Nearside adds
Warrior Tank on Far Side adds

Prot Warrior on Big Shadow Dudes
Prot Pally grabs the little dudes when it's killed


We seem to be doing alright with the adds.. but something always seems to mess up.. and in that fight 1 death/screw up usually = wipe.

The GM is thinking of nixing the Prot Warrior on the big shadow dudes and having the Prot Pally tank them+adds.. but we're worrying about the mass burst dmg on him.

We have bear on the ramp side, prot warrior on the near side, but that's basicly because our 2nd bear hasnt been reliable. Prot warrior on sentinals and a respecced prot paladin on void spawns, that sounds about right. You need the spell reflect on the sentinals for dps/threat.

I'm the enhancement shaman on the door side with the prot warrior.

You basicly have to get past the 1 screw up or the 1 death. It took us over 400 attempts, though over half of those were with really bad composition, and people playing classes they usually dont in order to make it anywhere near feasible. We did use a second enhancement shaman, so each door side had one.

You basicly have to min/max all your synergies etc, and bring your best people.

 

[BenSkywalker]

IDK why people think locks have no mana issues ill OOM in under a min spamming SB without a shadow priest, with one its closer to 2.5 min, yes we can LT for a sweet sweet DPS loss, we chain chug super mana pots on CD just like mages on any fight that lasts over 2 min

It's not that I don't think locks don't have mana issues, I know they don't. Our locks don't even bring water to raids. One LB gives locks ~3K mana from a moderately geared tree, a stack will fill them. Mages do not have that option. Yes, using lifetap temporarily reduces your dps, mages don't have that option.

im not saying your class does not have issues, ive played one and i just dont feel they have as many issues as mages think they do

As a mage I can play a DS lock and beat every mage in the raid group without trouble, this is knowing none of the finer nuances of the class- and locks bring WAY more utility to a raid. They are a utility class, now they are the highest ranged dps class AND have superior itemization AND have superior utility. In short- why bring a mage to a raid at all? Trash pulls? Heh.

yes if they dont fix itemization in Wrath then you have a serious arguement, it was there before the all spirit changes, expecting them to reitemize everything was unrealistic

Convert spirit to 1/2 Int on the tier gear. That is an unrealistic expectation? They entirely reworked mana regen for every class, completely reworked how Int modifies MP5 and how it stacks with spirit and they did this for every class- but it's too much to ask them to remove a completely useless stat from our gear? How would you like having bonus frost dmg on your tier gear? That, in essence, is what we are stuck with.

if you want to get all into PVP we have more stamina because its umm our only defence, and even with it we get raped by physicial damage dealing classes, we have 0 escape mechanics and 0 "oh shit" buttons

Really? Locks on your server must be different, on mine they have fear and nubcoil- the two most powerful ways of dealing with melee dps in the game. Locks on my server also have pets, can seduce, have CoW- it just must be a lot different.

your current pet (as frost) is god damn over powered with its shatter combo ability, lock pets need a serious buff so they arnt 2 shot by warriors

Lol- our pets are overpowered? They last 30 seconds, go OOM in 25 and get one shot by warriors- and your pet needs the buff? Your dog can single handidly shut down the most powerful 2v2 healer when used properly- your fel guard can rip a mage to shreds and reduce the effective healing of a priest by an enormous amount- your imp gives you whole party close to 1K HP- my pet can maybe get off a couple shatters if he isn't either one shotted or banished by an uber nub lock.

 

[Anubis]

if you can blindly pick up a lock and out DPS anyone then your raid either ungodly stacks the lock group or you have really really bad hunters and rogues

no converting 1/2 to int is not unrealistic but im sure ill find proof of life on other planets before blizz revamps another set of gear for any class mid game,

yes our pet > casters but it helps little when its dead, and yes shatter combos are OP, only ele shams can frontload that much damage, but they dont have a snare/slowing effect. and no one uses the succy/imp in arena. the 2 biggest issues warlocks want addressed is pet scaling with gear and some sort of defence against mele, i think we deserve to be given instant corruption for free as well

in the past 3 months i dont think i have had a DC last more then 1 second before its trinketed and a 1.3 second cast fear that takes 6 seconds to cast with a rogue beating you helps very little, normally because you are kicked/pummeled/CSed/Stuned or whatever else interrupts it before its even close to going off

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker

I rolled a druid, obnoxious how much easier it is to play effectively. Healing in BT and beating all but one of the chain healing shammies. True, haven't gotten to head into SW yet on the druid, but so far despite what people have been saying I am having no problem more then holding my own in Tier6 with the druid.

I have taken a slightly different approach to the problems with the mage class also. I don't port people nor do I make water or food for people anymore- if they ask why I tell them to have Blizz fix the class- I also refuse to run 5 mans at all. Mages are leaving en masse with the latest Blizz content very cc heavy, my server has gotten to the point that some people are offering to pay mages to come to heroics for runs. Right now my mage stays logged in Scholo, twink chant mats are obnoxiously expensive right now and the one thing mages do solidly still pwn in is tearing up lowbie five mans(yeah, I can only clear the first half of scholo, but it's the greens I'm after anyway ).

I have been playing a resto druid since day 1 of playing WoW which was a long time ago. That comment you made alone shows me how much you rely on those kinds of numbers far too much when trying to justify your class's worth to a raid. Each DPS class provides unique and very necessary roles during a raid. It's not all about how much DPS you can push out although I do realize that is a very important aspect. When it comes to healing, you should NEVER compare yourself to other healing classes with those silly healing charts. Hell, I refuse to even install one. The differences between each fight can be very dramatic when it comes to how much a particular class is capable of healing. A very simple example would be the difference between the fights where only one tank is taking a lot of damage while the raid is taking a lot of damage too as opposed to 3 tanks taking considerable damage while the raid's damage is not so much. Obviously a druid is capable of outputting much larger healing numbers when 3 tanks are taking lots of heat and the shaman should be leading the charts when there is a lot of raid damage to heal.

The point here is that it's really stupid to place so much emphasis on your individual class's strengths vs weaknesses because they all have them and each are different. The absolute most efficient raid groups will always be those where there exists class balance and each player is skilled with their class way beyond the amount of damage they output or healing they do. That efficiency cannot be obtained without Mages.

Again, I realize the Mage class needs a lot of work, but the most common problem I see with the complaining is that far too much of it revolves around the comparison of other classes and particularly Locks. If you want to be like another class so much then play that other class. A mage's best justifiable argument boils down to itemization, but even that is compared to Locks too much in most cases if you were to ask me.

 

[BenSkywalker]

if you can blindly pick up a lock and out DPS anyone then your raid either ungodly stacks the lock group or you have really really bad hunters and rogues

I didn't say anyone, I said any mage Mages are a pure DPS class- they have nothing else going for them. Hunters and locks both have significantly higher utility in a raid- now they have higher dps too. I don't mind losing to the other pure dps slot(rogues)- having to run neck and neck with a utility class I could probably stomach- but being a pure dps class and flat out losing to utility classes is a serious issue IMO.

no converting 1/2 to int is not unrealistic but im sure ill find proof of life on other planets before blizz revamps another set of gear for any class mid game

Yeah, they will make 500 other tweaks to "balance" the arenas before they do anything to fix the stuff that only effects 9.8Million players more(not disagreeing with you at all mind you, my alt is the benefactor of a lot of those tweaks )

yes our pet > casters but it helps little when its dead, and yes shatter combos are OP, only ele shams can frontload that much damage, but they dont have a snare/slowing effect.

You said shammies, what did you mean to say? Between earthbind and the ever popular frostshock I know you had to be talking about another class that can frontload and not slow.

and no one uses the succy/imp in arena.

That is true, but you do have that option

the 2 biggest issues warlocks want addressed is pet scaling with gear and some sort of defence against mele, i think we deserve to be given instant corruption for free as well

What defense are we supposed to have against melee? IB that gets dispelled more often then not? Nova? I honestly am not sure what it is that you are talking about. Also, felguard charge stuns rogues long enough to get off a fear- my 2v2 partner on my drood is a lock- he does it all the time. Yes, a rogue can trinket out of either fear or DC, but not both- we have nova(and hope they don't get off a stun before we can get out of melee range) and that's it. Please don't say blink, I think Blizz has carefully tuned code to allow Blink to move us a maximum of 1 yard in arena.

 

[BenSkywalker]

Each DPS class provides unique and very necessary roles during a raid. It's not all about how much DPS you can push out although I do realize that is a very important aspect.

Mages give an Int buff at this point, that is it. No matter how you look at it from a synergy standpoint or anything else- mages were designed to be like rogues- pure dps. That was their entire purpose. We have no shadoweaving, no curses, no auras, no totems- we are there for pure dps period. You don't agree with that? You tell me how we benefit anyone else outside of AI. If our class is not pushing out big dps then it is a wasted raid spot to bring us. When I am on my drood I can fully appreciate why we will roll with 0 mages in a 25 man(I leave my mage parked outside for buffs and beverages).

When it comes to healing, you should NEVER compare yourself to other healing classes with those silly healing charts. Hell, I refuse to even install one. The differences between each fight can be very dramatic when it comes to how much a particular class is capable of healing. A very simple example would be the difference between the fights where only one tank is taking a lot of damage while the raid is taking a lot of damage too as opposed to 3 tanks taking considerable damage while the raid's damage is not so much.

I suppose that is a good point for a very casual approach. When I beat shammies and priests healing on fights I am supposed to get crushed on then what those numbers tell me is that either we need to make adjustments to what their classes are doing or we need to make adjustments on who we are bringing to heal on raids. I was in doing Malacrass the other day in a pug with 2 CoH priests and easily beat them both by a large margin while we wiped twice. Raid leader subbed both of them out and brought in another 2 healers(another CoH priest and resto shammy) and we dropped him without any problem at all.

Sure, we could have not been running healing meters like you suggest and kept wiping, that would certainly have been one way of going about it. Myself, I like getting the boss down, but maybe that's just me.

Again, I realize the Mage class needs a lot of work, but the most common problem I see with the complaining is that far too much of it revolves around the comparison of other classes and particularly Locks.

If rogues start getting beat by enhance shammies expect them to go ballistic with good reason. Shammies have higher utility- give them superior dps to a rogue and there is 0 reason to bring them to a raid. That is EXACTLY what mages are dealing with right now. We compare ourselves to locks because we aren't stupid, if we were running a raid group and our life depended on getting a boss down with the exception of some gimmick fights we would bring 0 mages.

 

[Anubis]

no i ment shammys, frost shock is not part of the LB-LO-EM-NS-LB crit chain, and totems just make me LOL its too easy to just avoid them, shamans need lots of help

not commenting on how effective they are but you have 2 shields, block, nova (2 if you count pet) and yes blink, none of which are perfect ill grant you that, and yes blinking 2 inches makes me LOL, however its more then we have, smart rogues dont have to trinket both, just 1 and then cloak of skill, felguard can work, ive made it work, but its a sad answer for the other 2 specs which are much more fun to play


and FWIW our mages out DPS our locks, because they get the stacked group and more BLs at syb 20% because of MA, we discovered that stacking a lock group with 2 locks that have a 2.1 second base SB casts with 1600 or so +damage is a bad idea as we will out TPS any tank in the game

we get a SP, or a Shaman, never both, and we never get the DOOM chicken

 

[BenSkywalker]

no i ment shammys, frost shock is not part of the LB-LO-EM-NS-LB crit chain, and totems just make me LOL its too easy to just avoid them, shamans need lots of help

Thought you were talking from a defensive perspective, I get what you are saying now.

not commenting on how effective they are but you have 2 shields, block, nova (2 if you count pet) and yes blink, none of which are perfect ill grant you that, and yes blinking 2 inches makes me LOL, however its more then we have, smart rogues dont have to trinket both, just 1 and then cloak of skill, felguard can work, ive made it work, but its a sad answer for the other 2 specs which are much more fun to play

Oh come on now, you are complaining that you have to be one specific spec to be competitive in arena? Remember, you are talking to a mage here

and FWIW our mages out DPS our locks, because they get the stacked group and more BLs at syb 20% because of MA, we discovered that stacking a lock group with 2 locks that have a 2.1 second base SB casts with 1600 or so +damage is a bad idea as we will out TPS any tank in the game

And you can out tps any tank in the game while having far greater utility in a raid. Hell, let mages cast amp magic on the boss and at least we would have ONE spot that we could count on

we get a SP, or a Shaman, never both, and we never get the DOOM chicken

You guys roll with an oomkin? How do they hold up in late game raids? I honestly don't think there is a T6 geared chicken on our server.

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
Mages give an Int buff at this point, that is it. No matter how you look at it from a synergy standpoint or anything else- mages were designed to be like rogues- pure dps. That was their entire purpose. We have no shadoweaving, no curses, no auras, no totems- we are there for pure dps period. You don't agree with that? You tell me how we benefit anyone else outside of AI. If our class is not pushing out big dps then it is a wasted raid spot to bring us. When I am on my drood I can fully appreciate why we will roll with 0 mages in a 25 man(I leave my mage parked outside for buffs and beverages).

Mages bring very effective AOE and CC abilities to the raid. While you may not view their ability to sheep as being very important since it used quite a bit on trash, killing that trash quickly and effectively is part of getting purps too no matter how you slice it. Frostnova is also very useful and has saved me many times. In addition, there are also boss encounters which are much easier when you got mages to use their CC abilities and AOE.

Overall, I would say mages are more upset because there are not enough boss encounters which are designed in a way that will give them the opportunity to hit the top of the charts. I don't believe it is so much the abilities themselves although it wouldn't hurt for Blizz to provide them with something which sets them apart from other classes in a raid just a little more. They did that with hunters and Misdirect.

Lastly, when you consider how much AI contributes to additional DPS across the raid, maybe you should also consider how that additional DPS is thanks to you when you look at those DPS charts. Us healers can also thank you for extending the amount of time we can allow the DPS to do their job. So, technically, you should be considered for each additional second of DPS which is permitted due to the extended healer mana thanks to AI can also be partially. While these points may not seem as huge as most others that are considered, my main reason for saying this to you is to show that there are a great many details which are often ignored that the mage class brings to the raid. When you add them all up, the sum is much larger than it seems.

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker
I suppose that is a good point for a very casual approach. When I beat shammies and priests healing on fights I am supposed to get crushed on then what those numbers tell me is that either we need to make adjustments to what their classes are doing or we need to make adjustments on who we are bringing to heal on raids. I was in doing Malacrass the other day in a pug with 2 CoH priests and easily beat them both by a large margin while we wiped twice. Raid leader subbed both of them out and brought in another 2 healers(another CoH priest and resto shammy) and we dropped him without any problem at all.

Sure, we could have not been running healing meters like you suggest and kept wiping, that would certainly have been one way of going about it. Myself, I like getting the boss down, but maybe that's just me.

It's not a casual POV. It's just looking at the big picture. You are justifying your reasoning using the most common mistake which is to compare two healing classes and their effectiveness based on a single encounter. Malacrass does a ton of raid damage so Shaman are going to be more valuable in that encounter than a druid. Not to mention that one of Malacrass's unique characteristics is acquiring an additional ability based upon a particular class and in a druid's case he ends up healing himself which can be a real problem. However, there are many other fights where druids shine much more than usual. Good examples include but are not limited to Gurtogg, Leo, and Karathress. The point is that each encounter allows a raid to take advantage of certain class's strengths differently while they also take advantage of certain class's weaknesses. In order to form a most effective raid, class balance is necessary since you will hopefully be trucking through a great many encounters in a single night.

On top of all that, my guild has not found a single encounter yet where we were unable to easily complete it by using a balanced raid group even though forming an encounter specific raid would have made it easier. That proves that it's much more about performance and execution than it is about raid makeup.

 

[Anubis]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalker

we get a SP, or a Shaman, never both, and we never get the DOOM chicken

You guys roll with an oomkin? How do they hold up in late game raids? I honestly don't think there is a T6 geared chicken on our server.

we dont roll with one 100% of the time but we do sometimes, ill see if i can dig up a WWS when i get home, i think he was there for the last brut kill of ours. hes actually one of our resto Druids who i think has 4 parts of resto T6 4-5 parts of Feral T6 and 6 parts of OOMKIN T6

we have WAY to much Vanq drop

 

[BenSkywalker]

Mages bring very effective AOE and CC abilities to the raid. While you may not view their ability to sheep as being very important since it used quite a bit on trash, killing that trash quickly and effectively is part of getting purps too no matter how you slice it. Frostnova is also very useful and has saved me many times. In addition, there are also boss encounters which are much easier when you got mages to use their CC abilities and AOE.

To quote a very popular line of thinking 'noone cares about trash'. Sure, in ZA on a timed run having mages to sheep helps out a lot, other then that very little trash benefits in a largely measureable way using sheep over one of the other forms of cc. As far as AOE- locks have that under control just fine. I get the oppurtunity to see exactly what difference it makes have a lock versus a mage in a particular raid slot, the raid is better off with the lock almost always.

Overall, I would say mages are more upset because there are not enough boss encounters which are designed in a way that will give them the opportunity to hit the top of the charts. I don't believe it is so much the abilities themselves although it wouldn't hurt for Blizz to provide them with something which sets them apart from other classes in a raid just a little more. They did that with hunters and Misdirect.

Expose weakness>>Misdirect. Besides that, a well played hunter will beat a perfectly played mage all else being equal. But debating which of the hunter abilities is a bigger benefit to the raid simply amplifies the fact that mages bring nothing. Oh yeah, hunters have their ice block trap and aura- and their cc works on more mobs then mage's.

Lastly, when you consider how much AI contributes to additional DPS across the raid, maybe you should also consider how that additional DPS is thanks to you when you look at those DPS charts. Us healers can also thank you for extending the amount of time we can allow the DPS to do their job. So, technically, you should be considered for each additional second of DPS which is permitted due to the extended healer mana thanks to AI can also be partially. While these points may not seem as huge as most others that are considered, my main reason for saying this to you is to show that there are a great many details which are often ignored that the mage class brings to the raid. When you add them all up, the sum is much larger than it seems.

If AI was an aura that would be one thing, it is a buff that can be replaced by scrolls though. Believe me, I have given an enormous amount of thought to exactly what mages bring to a raid.

It's not a casual POV. It's just looking at the big picture. You are justifying your reasoning using the most common mistake which is to compare two healing classes and their effectiveness based on a single encounter. Malacrass does a ton of raid damage so Shaman are going to be more valuable in that encounter than a druid.

I think you are missing the point. In Malacrass CoH priest>Resto shammy. After we made the swaps in that particular raid the CoH priest easily bested the shammy who easily bested me. The point I was making is that we had two healers in their that were superior for the fight and were still getting beaten, easily, by an inferior class. Because we had healing meters running we were able to identify exactly where the problem was and fix it by subbing people out. If we had not had healing meters running, we would not have known where the problem was.

In order to form a most effective raid, class balance is necessary since you will hopefully be trucking through a great many encounters in a single night.

I agree- but everything a mage can do can be handled by easily attainable consumables or another class- and almost everything a mage can do can be handled better by another class.

On top of all that, my guild has not found a single encounter yet where we were unable to easily complete it by using a balanced raid group even though forming an encounter specific raid would have made it easier. That proves that it's much more about performance and execution than it is about raid makeup.

How do you guys do on Brutallus? Blizz has made it so we must min/max for a lot of fights, we have no choice. When you have a hard enrage timer there just isn't wiggle room. Check out the Nihilium vid of them dropping Brutallus- their weakest dps was @1600 and had WAY more utility then a mage(shad priest). Yes, mages can best that, but the more mages you replace with locks of equal or close to equal(a lock can be of lower skill and still beat a mage) the better your odds are of getting him down. That isn't my biased or slanted perspective, that is simply point of fact.

hes actually one of our resto Druids who i think has 4 parts of resto T6 4-5 parts of Feral T6 and 6 parts of OOMKIN T6

Meh, I'd love to see some Vanq drops like that

 

[Anubis]

our first brut kill had 4 people under 1500 DPS only 3 over 2100
we had 4 mages, 2 destro locks and 1 aff lock
we killed him at the enrage

we have beaten the enrage by like 10 seconds with 4 SPs in the raid. 2locks/2mages

we run 2-3 locks 2-3 mages and 2 SPs pretty much every single raid

heres a WWS of our last Brrut with the DOOM Chicken

http://wowwebstats.com/xgmqjxbehkdl5?s=7426-7786

<- Melbufrahma
2 burns
no BL

 

[Xavier434]

Again, it sounds like that the two major things which are lacking with the mage class are the same two things I have been saying for quite some time now (long before this discussion). That is, they need better itemization and even more importantly they need something which brings more of a unique value to the raid. It doesn't have to be very much but a little something could make the class more fun I think. In fact, it doesn't even need to be a new ability. It could be satisfied by a change in core raid encounter design. Blizz has surprised us in that way before. You never know what will be in store for WotLK. Speaking of which, are you familiar with all of the Mage vs Lock changes witnessed in WotLK Alpha? The mages in my guild have expressed satisfaction in terms of better sounding balance.

In regards to your question about Brut, I cannot comment on that because my guild isn't there yet. We raid twice a week at about 3.5 hours on each of those nights. We make good progress, but we are never sitting around waiting for the next content patch to come out while having nothing new to defeat. We are never far behind either though. I prefer it that way personally. In any case, rely on Anubis's feedback in regards to Brut. His guild is more experienced with that fight and based upon his most recent post in addition to his previous posts about Brut it sounds like he is very difficult, but is also like all other encounters in the sense that if you got 25 highly skilled players then it's simply a matter of time until he reaches farm mode like every other boss. Then, magically, the fight doesn't seem to be the challenge it used to be and you are stuck wondering why it was so difficult in the first place.

 

[Anubis]

Originally posted by: Xavier434
In any case, rely on Anubis's feedback in regards to Brut. His guild is more experienced with that fight and based upon his most recent post in addition to his previous posts about Brut it sounds like he is very difficult but is also like all other encounters in the sense that if you got 25 highly skilled players then it's simply a matter of time until he reaches farm mode like every other boss. They, magically, the fight doesn't seem to be the challenge it used to be and you are stuck wondering why it was so difficult in the first place.

brut is more forgiving DPS wise then i think people realize, any well balanced raid will have the DPS to kill him if they have been clearing BT for a few months or so, no need for destro lock stacking or glave rogues

we have more issues with Felmyst then any other boss in Sunwell mainily because its somewhat more random and people fail at running from the green beam of death sometimes, which is why it took 15 or so attempts to kill her in that WWS, took 2 pulls last night :/

my difficulty order of SWP bosses ive faced is this


M'uru, Felmyst, Brut, Twins, kalec


twins honestly is a joke, its the only boss we 1 shot every week

 

[Fingolfin269]

Originally posted by: Anubis

Originally posted by: Xavier434
In any case, rely on Anubis's feedback in regards to Brut. His guild is more experienced with that fight and based upon his most recent post in addition to his previous posts about Brut it sounds like he is very difficult but is also like all other encounters in the sense that if you got 25 highly skilled players then it's simply a matter of time until he reaches farm mode like every other boss. They, magically, the fight doesn't seem to be the challenge it used to be and you are stuck wondering why it was so difficult in the first place.

people fail at running from the green beam of death sometimes

You know, it never ceases to amaze me that no matter what level of content you are in this still happens. Whether it's fire, ash, poison, etc. there are always people who die to this stuff from low level instances and apparently all the way to the highest level end game raid.

 

[BenSkywalker]

Again, it sounds like that the two major things which are lacking with the mage class are the same two things I have been saying for quite some time now (long before this discussion). That is, they need better itemization and even more importantly they need something which brings more of a unique value to the raid.

Better itemization I can agree with, at no point ever was the T6 itemization remotely approaching decent for mages.

That unique thing which mages should bring to the raid has been very clearly defined by Blizzard and is the reason the overwhelming majority of people roll mages- DPS. Blizzard took that away from us.

You never know what will be in store for WotLK. Speaking of which, are you familiar with all of the Mage vs Lock changes witnessed in WotLK Alpha? The mages in my guild have expressed satisfaction in terms of better sounding balance.

Do your mages, play WoW? There is no dissent at all from anyone I have talked to anywhere nor is there any dissent on the WoW forums- the WoTLK mage talents are at best a travesty. Most are more along the mindset that Blizz doesn't want mages in the game anymore at all- they are horrificly bad- almost without exception they would be talents people wouldn't consider for 10 point talents, let alone 51 point talents. They are an entire expansion packs worth of wand specialization. It is utterly shocking how bad they are. I don't know what the mages in your guild are thinking, but locks having 30K armor and 150 resistance to everything we try and do and we get a 2% chance to stun a frozen target(we can already get a 10% chance at the bottom of the fire tree)? Honestly, I have no idea how they can think that is remotely close to being OK.

In any case, rely on Anubis's feedback in regards to Brut. His guild is more experienced with that fight and based upon his most recent post in addition to his previous posts about Brut it sounds like he is very difficult, but is also like all other encounters in the sense that if you got 25 highly skilled players then it's simply a matter of time until he reaches farm mode like every other boss.

Take a look at the WWS stats that Anubis posted, they were seconds away from wiping. I am not knocking them in any way shape or form, 99.99% of people have yet to come close to making it to Brutallus so don't take that the wrong way, I'm just pointing out that with a guild that has been farming BT for months and with 8 toons pushing over 2K dps they still barely managed to get him down on that shot. What if your guild only has 3 people capable of 2K dps? If you want to get him down you will be FORCED to bring only your highest dps toons. Nothing to do with learning the fight or execution- you MUST have a certain level of DPS to get him down. When he enrages he can one shot a T6 tank with shield wall up. Brut isn't an execution fight, it is a straight up gear check.

any well balanced raid will have the DPS to kill him if they have been clearing BT for a few months or so

You guys barely got him down on that attempt you posted, and you have had BT on farm for months and have been into Sunwell now for a while, wouldn't you say it is fair to state if you come straight out of BT you will be absolutely forced to min/max the raid group?

 

[Anubis]

The fastest we have killed him is 10 seconds before the enrage, most if not all guilds first few kills were pretty much at the enrage, we first killed illidan on Feb 5th, and we have been shafted on DPS Drops for casters and Mele/hunters until somewhat recently Conq tokens did not exist. no Skulls, No Glaves, no Madnesses

the video of the US world First on Brute by a guild that had illidan on farm for 6 months before we killed him, they kill brute 4 seconds after the enrage

we have taken him from 5% to 0 after the enrage, took felmyst from 7%-0 after she enraged last night (god damn green beam strikes again), Last stand + shield wall + imp LoH + trinkets, tank lived till shield wall finished, she died right then

the only way to do it significantly faster is to purely stack a raid, and bring 5 shamans for chaining bloodlusts

if you look at the WWS scoreboard of record DPS on brut, you see locks at 2600+ with rogues and hunters hitting almost 3K, that isn?t normal, I could do 2600 DPS if I had a Ele shaman and got 4 BLs during a 6 min fight

yes if you came straight out of BT you would have to purely min/max, which is why every guild i know that had not killed or had just recently killed illidan when sunwell came out just ignored it and gathered gear from Hyjal and BT

stacking a raid for a certian boss isnt new, its happened many times before, Remember 4H in Naxx and needing LOL 8 fing prot warriors in 4/9 T3 so taunts wernt resisted

 

[Xavier434]

Ben, I think it's time for you to switch games or at least switch classes and leave your bitterness behind. You really are not considering the whole picture even though I do agree that mages have some pretty good justifications for complaints. On top of that, Blizz just doesn't agree with you in terms of the DPS thing and I doubt that will change. That doesn't mean that they are ultimately right, but they do hold all of the aces. So, this goes back to a previous argument I made which is that if you are not having fun playing something then either change how you play or play something else and let the QQ end. It's obviously not making you happy so just let it go and have fun playing video games.

 

[Anubis]

just a note on the DPS issue of certian classes, the 4 pure DPS classes, Rogues, Locks, Mages and Hunters. someone HAS to be last, right now its mages
mages bitch about locks, yet hunters and rogues out DPS us both :/

at one point mages were DPS kings and hunters were crap, rogues were on top for a while when locks were almost useless,

it keeps changeing and will change again

 

[Chimley]

I can't view Webstats at work so I can't see this or the other stats..but beating the enrage by a good amount is possible.. but takes practice. And sitting a healer. Only 7 healers on this attempt (not sure what other guilds use).



http://wowwebstats.com/1ecx4yfpupje5?s=848-1180

 

[Mikie46]

Recently i wrote a free guide called "5 Principle Secrets To Earning Gold FAST!" Some of you may be interested in what i have to say, some may not. In any event, i think it may be helpful to some of the newbie's. It may even be of interest to the advanced.

You can pick up a copy. See my signature.

 

[Xavier434]

Originally posted by: Mikie46
Recently i wrote a free guide called "5 Principle Secrets To Earning Gold FAST!" Some of you may be interested in what i have to say, some may not. In any event, i think it may be helpful to some of the newbie's. It may even be of interest to the advanced.

You can pick up a copy. See my signature.

WTF is this? Guys, don't click. I smell keylogger.

 

[CKent]

Originally posted by: Anubis
if you can blindly pick up a lock and out DPS anyone then your raid either ungodly stacks the lock group or you have really really bad hunters and rogues

Easily topping dps is a bit unrealistic, but easily competing shouldn't be an issue. You have one spell to spam. Your only cooldowns to manage are trinket(s), and your only concern is using them as often as possible while making sure they're up for bloodlust. It's not at all unrealistic to have a sp + ele shm in your party, though a boomkin would be stretching it. And it's also not unrealistic to have 3+ destro locks in the raid, which seems to be the sweet spot for ISB uptime.

Originally posted by: Xavier434
Mages bring very effective AOE and CC abilities to the raid. While you may not view their ability to sheep as being very important since it used quite a bit on trash, killing that trash quickly and effectively is part of getting purps too no matter how you slice it. Frostnova is also very useful and has saved me many times. In addition, there are also boss encounters which are much easier when you got mages to use their CC abilities and AOE.

Where are you in the game? Balance changes rather dramatically as gear level goes up due to different scaling of classes. Mage AoE doesn't hold a candle to seed of corruption. Sheep is good for trash, but if you want to emphasize the importance of trash, then let's talk about mages' 15% lower damage on it, since scorch stacking will actually lower dps on most trash due to how quickly it dies. And since I want a bear mount, I certainly agree with you that trash matters. Mages still fail.

On top of all that, my guild has not found a single encounter yet where we were unable to easily complete it by using a balanced raid group even though forming an encounter specific raid would have made it easier. That proves that it's much more about performance and execution than it is about raid makeup.

http://wowwebstats.com/?search=kil%27jaeden

In the end, playing a mage well in PvE is far more difficult than other dps classes, more difficult than most players would probably realize. You have a number of cooldowns to manage to increase dps, including one cooldown that resets another if you're deep fire or arcane w/ cold snap. You have two ideal opportunities to use them, bloodlust and <20%, but you can't leave them unused for longer than their cooldown or they go to waste. Their use also depends on the preferences of your shaman or raid leader, and on your raid makeup (how many bloodlusts you'll be getting and when). Using them to start a fight and again under 20% is better than using them only once in the middle of a boss's bar, if that's when your shaman decides to make your party big & mean. And to add spice to the mix they have differing cooldowns. On trash you need to analyze before each cast what the appropriate spell is; a fireball might not reach your target before it dies so you need to end with scorches and a fireblast. Fireblast too soon and the GCD means you can't get in another scorch. And for all this trouble we're rewarded with still sub-par dps, though it's at least closer to the real dps classes.

This is what happens when you hire someone of questionable intellect to do something important like develop your MMORPG. The alarm bells should have gone off at Blizzard when they thought about hiring someone who named their EverQuest character "Tigole Bitties". Unfortunately nobody saw fit to speak up :s

 

[JohnAn2112]

Originally posted by: Xavier434

Originally posted by: Mikie46
Recently i wrote a free guide called "5 Principle Secrets To Earning Gold FAST!" Some of you may be interested in what i have to say, some may not. In any event, i think it may be helpful to some of the newbie's. It may even be of interest to the advanced.

You can pick up a copy. See my signature.

WTF is this? Guys, don't click. I smell keylogger.

I'm in ur account, sharding ur purplez!

 

[Aikouka]

Hmm I'm purging some of my banks on my characters. Already made 1000g on my priest and I barely sold anything ( thank you spare Ace of Blessings :laugh: ). What I am curious about... I believe we've had discussions on the Storms Deck in here but what's the overall consensus? I'm triyng to think of a class of mine that might find it worthwhile and the only one I could think of would be my arms warrior. It could benefit my shaman as well, but with how often he crits (a decent amount... could be better, but meh), it wouldn't really do a whole lot. I have an Ace of Storms and a Four of Storms that I'd probably sell. I also need to work on completing my blessings deck (I have an Ace and a Six right now) as well as the Furies deck (I have an Ace and a Four) for my Pally .

What really surprised me was when I went to sell some of my mage's excess alchemy mats that I never use. All I ever did was make pots to sell and I didn't really find that too advantageous money-wise unless you're a potion master because the price of the vials tends to eat away at profits sometimes . Selling Terocone for about 55g a stack was a bit shocking to me... made around 500g on him! My priest still has tons of enchanting mats that I might sell, but I might hold off on that until I actually finish leveling enchanting (seems like such a waste unless I can actually find people that want to pay for the mats ).

Also started selling some of my lower stuff like the old essences and they seem to sell fairly well considering how useless they are . I assume people want them for twinks and stuff like the +spell damage enchant? Oh well, Mo' Monies, Mo' Mounts!