Cracks starting to show?

[LK]

Knee-jerk reactions to something new they don't understand and don't have explained to them is typical of the "just tell me what I have to do for fun" crowd that is WoW's audience.

It may be broke but I am positive they are taking a close look at the situation and making the right long term choice, rather than the options players think is viable.

Not saying they will be right, but rushing a fix isn't their M.O. unless it is *obvious*.

[Rendakor]

A big problem with the LFD system in Cata is that at minimal gear levels some CC is required, but there isn't a CC role players can queue as. And while there isn't a dedicated chanter class in WoW, at least the LFD system should factor in what classes are CC-viable for what instances, and make sure to provide one of said classes to every random group.

Example: a Rogue is good CC for Blackrock Caverns since the mobs are Humanoids, but not for Vortex Pinnacle which is mostly elementals.

Of course, this wouldn't magically teach bads how to CC, but at least the group would have the appropriate tools for the job.

[Lantyssa]

The problem with weighting by dungeon is that would mean some classes never get to see certain dungeons, and the group without much crowd control might see their queue times increase even more.  With there already being a huge disparity between tank/healer queue and dps, it'd be another poke in the eye to dpsers.

[Numtini]

I haven't seen any lack of ability to crowd control, just an absolute written on stone tablets 100% unwillingness to do so.

[Rendakor]

Warriors in particular suffer from a lack of crowd control; Unholy DKs too. Then you have the classes who can only do so if talented/glyphed accordingly: Frost DKs, Shadow Priests, etc. The most guilty class for refusing to CC so far has been Warlocks, because no one likes switching to a pet that's going to do no damage; "I"ll just fear one around" gets an instant votekick.

[kildorn]

Succy is actually the highest affliction dps pet right now. The problems with lock CC are:

A) people still don't trust fear, and don't know it can be glyphed for pve (I do that, because why not)

B) pet AI with glyphed fear is broken. If I fear something on the pull, my pet will try and run over and beat on it by default.

C) everyone forgets I can CC when marking for CC. I have to repeatedly point this out. Which amuses me, because locks are frankly overpowered for CC. I can at the same time lock down 1 elemental/demon, 1 humanoid, and 1 anything. And none of that has a terribly brutal cooldown. And Banish even works on things that are already in the middle of the melee crowd, since it renders them invulnerable.

[caladein]

The only classes lacking in sustainable CCs these days are Priests (very few Undead this go around) and the Plate wearers aside from Ret Paladins.  That's even before you get to the Hungering Colds and glyphed Psychic Screams that make the openings to nasty pulls (read: double Evoker in Heroic Deadmines) a lot easier.

At least most Warlocks I've run into have Glyph of Fear, but I very rarely see a Succubus used.  I don't think I've ever seen Bind Elemental used and I'm pretty sure Druids forgot they had CCs before Cyclone was added as I have trouble remembering an Entangling Roots or Hibernate.

E: Forgot about Ret .

[Rendakor]

I've seen shaman get a lot of use out of Bind Elemental, but I've never seen a glyphed Fear. Every lock I've run into has had either an Imp or a Felguard. Rogue's only reliable CC is Sap, but if that's not glyphed it won't last the whole fight. Hibernate is useful if you're in the right instance; Entangling Roots isn't bad, except its usually the casters you want CC'd not the melee.

[kildorn]

I've seen shaman get a lot of use out of Bind Elemental, but I've never seen a glyphed Fear. Every lock I've run into has had either an Imp or a Felguard. Rogue's only reliable CC is Sap, but if that's not glyphed it won't last the whole fight. Hibernate is useful if you're in the right instance; Entangling Roots isn't bad, except its usually the casters you want CC'd not the melee.

imp locks are destro, and kind of bound to it (seriously, a good 30% of their damage is imp-related due to talent procs beyond the imp's actual firebolt), the felguard ones are annoying demo locks who don't read forums. Succy is actually higher dps for them glyphed single target.

I glyph fear because reliable instance CC? YES PLEASE.

edit: I fondly remember when you were a badass lock if you could juggle CoEx and Fear/break fear to keep something CCed in the old days.

[Zetor]

Yup, I remember the days when I fear-juggled one mob (curse of recklessness/curse of exhaustion), kept another seduced, and kited a 3rd one with COEX back in the era of endless UBRS runs. I do not miss those days.

That said, I try to make the most of my CC. The main reason I went with druid for my tank and shaman for my healer character is just that -- I can cc two mobs with my druid tank (usually only one... but virtually every trash pull has a melee-only mob) and CC at least one mob with my shaman, sometimes two (BRC, Grim Batol, Stonecore...).

[Shrike]

I've seen shaman get a lot of use out of Bind Elemental, but I've never seen a glyphed Fear. Every lock I've run into has had either an Imp or a Felguard. Rogue's only reliable CC is Sap, but if that's not glyphed it won't last the whole fight. Hibernate is useful if you're in the right instance; Entangling Roots isn't bad, except its usually the casters you want CC'd not the melee.

Bind elemental is the shiz. Problem is tanks don't tend to mark for it or even bother to ask about it. If I try and "help out", some jackhole always breaks it, so I don't much bother anymore. Heck, that was quick. It usually takes me a couple of months to get disillusioned at spell use; only a couple of weeks this time around.

Hex is still pretty good. At least PuGs have asked about it lately. Dimbulbs still break it, but not nearly so often.

This all is actually rather surprising. Shaman have excellent CC now, but rarely do people ask or even notice. Only caveat is enhance needs some cast time, so if you (all three of you) ask for it, it's best if I pull.

[Merusk]

Funny how experiences differ.  We have had some locks in my BG sharing the glyphed fear thing in their groups and its begun to spread.  I'm seeing it more and more and it's a good thing.  Now if only they'd rebanish after the initial pull, too.   Locks atm are the master of CC, with the Succ, Glyphed fear and banish you can shut-down a lot of the really annoying and dangerous pulls in some places.   If you can talk shadow priests into remembering where their MC button is, you also increase Priest CC quite a bit.   

As someone else mentioned, only the plates are missing a good CC right now.. and the nefarious part of me wants to think that's by design.  Want to be valuable in a group and you can wear plate.. start tanking.  Hell, some of the trickier dungeons with lower geared groups I've been asked to throw on my tank spec and offtank an add on some bosses.  Works out pretty well, but I didn't think we'd see offtanking in 5-mans.

[Shrike]

I'd love to see offtanking make a come back. It was my main role in EQ as a shadowknight, and one reason I rolled a fury warrior in vanilla. I've had to do it a few times as enhance, but that wasn't what you'd call intentional...

[K9]

The Adepts after the second boss in Vortex Pinnacle are a great target for holy priest MC, since they have a heal which does about 200K HP per go.

[Ingmar]

Arenas seem fine from the limited 2v2 I've been doing. Certainly no worse than last expansion, if anything healers aren't as broken as they were in the small scale stuff.

[Merusk]

The Adepts after the second boss in Vortex Pinnacle are a great target for holy priest MC, since they have a heal which does about 200K HP per go.

Also a good place for DKs to use Scourge Strike.. which many seem to forget about as it's seen as a PVP ability.

[K9]

Arenas seem fine from the limited 2v2 I've been doing. Certainly no worse than last expansion, if anything healers aren't as broken as they were in the small scale stuff.

They're broken for priests

[Rendakor]

The Adepts after the second boss in Vortex Pinnacle are a great target for holy priest MC, since they have a heal which does about 200K HP per go.

Also a good place for DKs to use Scourge Strike.. which many seem to forget about as it's seen as a PVP ability.

Necrotic Strike you mean?

[Merusk]

Yeah I even thought Necrotic as I was typing.. I blame the booze.

[Ashamanchill]

I finally made it to 85 (it took me a while because I was leveling two toons simueltaneously, a problem I've never had before), and I've gotten to run a few heroics as a tank, and a few as a dps. Fuck that. I think I'll focus on pvp for a bit until they dish out some gear to make heroics trivial again. You can count me amoung the group who is scratching their head regarding the new 'fun' change to heroics.

[Rendakor]

You can count me amoung the group who is scratching their head regarding the new 'fun' change to heroics.

I'm with you in that regard; heroics are much more ANNOYING now than they were previously, and as a result I'm less inclined to do a bunch for my guildies now that they're (heroics, not my gulidies) practically useless to me personally.

[apocrypha]

I'm using Hex & Bind Elemental all the time and seeing rogues sap, locks do all the locky stuff, mages sheep, the works.

Problem is I'm also constantly seeing warrior, DK and paladin tanks just storming in and AOEing all the CC'd mobs. 9 times out of 10 it's the tanks that need CC explaining, not the DPS.

[Fordel]

My most potent dungeon CC is Solar Beam, it can trivialize just about any trash pack with that.

There isn't much opportunity to use hibernate yet, but I haven't really done the Dragonkin filled dungeons yet either.

Rooting a melee mob is trivial and just makes the pull easier to handle. Plus it's funny watching Ingmar try to break the root effect with his untrained rifle skill.

[Ashamanchill]

It's not the boss mechanics that are so irritating, it's the fucking trash. Nothing is more wiping repeatedly to trash.

[Sheepherder]

Rooting a melee mob is trivial and just makes the pull easier to handle. Plus it's funny watching Ingmar try to break the root effect with his untrained rifle skill.

Rifle skill doesn't exist anymore.


Shit that should have happened to not make Blizzard's vision suck:

- Better tank pulling tools.  One AoE move worth an absolute fuckton of threat that only works on targets which are out of combat.  Like a rogue opener, but for tanks.
- Tricks of the Trade and Misdirection are a 30 minute buff on the tank, and re-apply the hunter/rogue buff when out of combat.
- All CC imparts a regenerating damage shield of n strength (threat from damage still counts vs. shields).  To break a sheep you need to do n DPS, where n is proportional to the caster's [noun]power.

[WindupAtheist]

Man am I the only person willing to admit that they totally didn't mind AOE roflstomping Heroic Whatever in 15 minutes flat during WOTLK? Whatever man, it was amusing, it was fast, it wasn't a raid or serious business or anything. Get into a good group, stick together, pound out like four instances in an hour? Fuck yeah.

[Ashamanchill]

I'm with you. Hell, half the point of raiding was getting new gear so I could watch bigger numbers appear over baddies's heads.

[Sheepherder]

Man am I the only person willing to admit that they totally didn't mind AOE roflstomping Heroic Whatever in 15 minutes flat during WOTLK? Whatever man, it was amusing, it was fast, it wasn't a raid or serious business or anything. Get into a good group, stick together, pound out like four instances in an hour? Fuck yeah.

Don't take my post as a refutation of the WotLK model.  That was actually pretty badass for my fury warrior.

[WindupAtheist]

No, not really your post in particular. I just keep hearing people everywhere go "I don't mind more challenging heroics but..." and want to be the first to officially just blurt out "Fuck you I loved easymode LK heroics!"

Want moar welfare epix plz. Fuck it, it's just pixels, I pay my $15, and the epeeners have raids they should be caring about.

[Sheepherder]

You don't actually have to explain your rationale, I don't think.  I would fucking love being able to queue for a five man Lich King fight which ends in me looting his corpse.  I think anyone else who doesn't must just be broken in a way that you and I aren't, and we're broken in a lot of ways.

[Simond]

Thing is, this is as difficult as they are ever going to get. As the expansion progresses, and people gear up, I fully expect the heroic to head back to twenty minute to half-an-hour speedruns. The real contrast is that LFD didn't get added until, what, 3.2 or so? So people are comparing two-tiers depreciated heroics (in an expansion where Blizzard admits gear scaling went out-of-whack by the end) run by classes with strong AOE to brand-new content run with (essentially) levelling gear and after a major AOE nerf.

[Merusk]

They're already speeding up significantly.  The first time I did Lost City - normal mode - it took us an hour.  Heroic was an hour fourty-fiveish and involved several wipes, both in guild groups.   Ran it yesterday with a similar group of guildies and it took us just over fourty-five minutes.  Now, being a raid guild we're a little more focused on gearing up than most, so the average ilevel was somewhere north of 345 (except me, who's at 340)  but everyone will get there eventually.   Still not LK ezmode, but it won't be the painful wipe fest it's been the first month.

[kildorn]

I LIKE more difficult heroics. The problem is they're balancing them to be "hard" if you have heroic and raid level gear. So if you have the 329 average ilvl to queue for them, they're near impossible in a few cases (it's also 329 to queue for any heroic, and all heroics are not equal.)

They also had scatterbrained mechanics, I think. They said we had massive tank damage in Wrath because it was the only way to pressure limitless mana healers. Okay, so they limited mana on healers and made average tank damage pretty healable (it IS. Renew + Heal can heal pretty much anything sub heroic with the tank using appropriate cooldowns, it's ~12k hps). But then they decided to up the skill level required of the DPS. In order to do that without just having short enrages everywhere, they made it so DPS ABSOLUTELY MUST INTERRUPT SHIT. And the end result is that your tank eats massive spike damage constantly because people aren't interrupting (or have shitty interrupts)

One thing not mentioned about the plate DPS and their lack of CC: what they were given are the best interrupts in the game. The only class with a badass pve interrupt AND cc are shaman. The casters all have painfully long cooldowns on their interrupts for pve boss usage.

But basically, it all comes down to heroics are slightly overtuned right now for starter gear, and the tank/healer mechanic model is broken by a failure of interrupts on bosses, and the occasional bullshit trash pack (I'm looking at you, Lost City. Every one of your trash packs has an instant cast bullshit ability that can murder someone)


edit: And let me come right out and say it after leveling three 85s now: the mana regen model on DPS specs of healing capable classes are all bullshit. Boomkin, Ele Shaman (less so than the others) and Shadow Priests all get dicked on mana regen mechanics, when the idea was that dps shouldn't have casual mana issues doing a dps rotation. My lock either has lifetap and constant health regen from spells, or just to completely fuck with boomkin, as destro:

2% mana restored any time I cast chaos bolt or soul fire, as well as triggering replenishment. And any time my imp crits a firebolt, I get 4% mana back. Oh, and that chaos bolt heals me if I feel I need to lifetap. They mauled healer capable dps specs because they were afraid we'd use them as off healers with limitless mana pools. but it made the casting dps specs feel like they're permanently OOM.

[Azuredream]

edit: And let me come right out and say it after leveling three 85s now: the mana regen model on DPS specs of healing capable classes are all bullshit. Boomkin, Ele Shaman (less so than the others) and Shadow Priests all get dicked on mana regen mechanics, when the idea was that dps shouldn't have casual mana issues doing a dps rotation. My lock either has lifetap and constant health regen from spells, or just to completely fuck with boomkin, as destro:

2% mana restored any time I cast chaos bolt or soul fire, as well as triggering replenishment. And any time my imp crits a firebolt, I get 4% mana back. Oh, and that chaos bolt heals me if I feel I need to lifetap. They mauled healer capable dps specs because they were afraid we'd use them as off healers with limitless mana pools. but it made the casting dps specs feel like they're permanently OOM.

It's not just boomkins/ele shamans/spriests, mages (fire mages at least, and it's the best PvE spec) also have to manage their mana quite a lot. Locks just get a free pass with life tap.

[Ingmar]

I have basically enough interrupt tools myself without DPS having to interrupt, once you count spell reflect, the problem is DPS never notices when I have that up so it gets wasted most of the time.