Title: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: SurfD on April 03, 2007, 01:54:16 PM http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=89378961&postId=893509173&sid=1
Quote Originally Posted by Tigole Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of posts about the same subjects – subjects that have been addressed in an upcoming patch – so I wanted to let you guys know where things stood. The Rogue Situation We’ve done a tuning pass of many of our dungeons/bosses/encounters to ensure that nothing overly punishing occurs to “melee DPS’ that would lead people to favor ranged DPS over Rogues/DPS Warriors etc. Also, we’ve changed the NPC cleave mechanic so that it’s now a frontal cone ability rather than a 360 degree chain attack. Sweeping Strikes has been removed from all Burning Crusade NPC’s. We’re also reducing the Glancing Blow damage penalty for creatures 1-3 levels higher than the player. This will have a significant effect on melee DPS as it relates to endgame melee dps. More details on this at a later time. End Game Itemization As we’ve stated before, we made a lot of improvements to endgame gear progression. To put it in perspective, take a look at this Warrior Tanking Breastplate from before and after. Destroyer Chestguard – Currently +24 Strength +22 Agility +39 Stamina Blue Socket Yellow Socket Red Socket Socket Bonus +6 Stamina Equip: Increases Defense Rating by 23 Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 16 Equip: Improves hit rating by 18 Destroyer Chestguard – Patch 2.1.0 +21 Strength +22 Agility +51 Stamina Blue Socket Yellow Socket Red Socket Socket Bonus +6 Stamina Equip: Increases Defense Rating by 23 Equip: Increases your dodge rating by 20 Equip: Improved hit rating by 20 ”Trash” Concerns Equally interesting yet non-epic-dropping non-bosses (or “Trash” as he community likes to call it) has been of concern lately on these forums. In all of our 25 person raid zones we’ve made a number of bug fixes and tuning adjustments. For example, the trash should be significantly easier to clear in most cases – and take less time. Also, we’ve lengthened the time between respawn on a lot of the trash. Yes, trash will respawn in some cases. It’s a pacing mechanic and one that works well when tuned correctly. For example, the trash before the Prophet Skeram or the trash before Attumen the Huntsmen or the Maiden of Virtue works well. You get a couple of tries on the boss, and if you fail, you spend a short time re-clearing. Yes, there are cases of the trash respawning too fast or the trash being too difficult or too lengthy. Those are the cases we hope to fix. We’ve also fixed some bugs that were allowing the trash to respawn after the boss for a certain area was dead. Consumables We’re making substantial changes to the way certain consumables work . In particular, Flasks and Elixirs are going to undergo major changes. More information will be available later on. We want Flasks and Elixirs to be a part of the game. We want alchemy to be a cool, needed profession. But we want to remove the tedium and cost from the massive consumable farming that’s going on for endgame raiding. We’ll provide more information soon – but for now, expect big changes to Flasks and Elixirs. Boss Tuning We’re looking at the boss tuning from dungeons to heroics to raids. Your feedback is being listened to. To Summarize We’re making big improvements to the game. Whenever possible, we hotfix changes to get them to you as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, there are many changes that require a patch and cannot be hotfixed. Many of these changes are coming in Patch 2.1.0. The patch will be on PTR’s in the upcoming weeks. You’ll be able to see them there and try them out for yourselves. You’ll also be able to test Black Temple. We’re also looking into ways of making Hyjal accessible on the PTR as well to get more testing on that zone. I can assure you that we’re aware of the issues you guys are discussing on the boards and we’re listening closely. We’re also dedicated fans of the game ourselves. We play it every day =D We will affect change as quickly as we can. Patch 2.1.0 will be on the PTR soon enough and you’ll all have the opportunity to comment and make suggestions on the changes. Quote Wonder what they plan on doing to Flasks / Elixers? I mean, while flasks DO cost alot to make, they also last for 2 hours AND through death, so I didnt think they were too broken. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Triforcer on April 03, 2007, 03:32:37 PM Anytime a dev says "we want a profession to be cool and needed, but..." that is Death for the profession. If I was an alchemist I would be very worried.
Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Merusk on April 03, 2007, 03:40:04 PM Yeah, happened to Engineering. :-( Maybe I need to take-up smithing next.. so far I've been following the 'nerf it!' timeline well.
Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: bhodi on April 03, 2007, 03:41:49 PM Too little too late on the rogue situation too; I canceled months ago ;)
It was clear they didn't know what direction to take them. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Fabricated on April 03, 2007, 03:46:15 PM I can't think of what all they can do to flasks and elixers. Nerf their power but nerf boss encounters more? Lower mat costs/make mats more common? Limit the number of flasks/elixers you can have active and nerf the encounters accordingly?
It's also nice to see melee DPS getting slightly less pounded in the ass on some encounters. Rogues/DPS wars are nearly useless in some of the 5 man encounters and some encounters in raids (Maiden of Virtue) will result in melee DPS being forced to sit back and plink with bows/guns. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Morfiend on April 03, 2007, 04:12:49 PM Maybe Flasks will work like Pally buffs? One flask for all raid members of that class.
Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Paelos on April 03, 2007, 04:19:18 PM Major changes to flasks means they are going to make them fucking useless. That's what happens anytime they say major change to an item that does something useful.
Quote For example, the trash before the Prophet Skeram or the trash before Attumen the Huntsmen or the Maiden of Virtue works well. You get a couple of tries on the boss, and if you fail, you spend a short time re-clearing. This is pure Tigole idiotic bullshit we're still having to put up with in the raid encounters. Karazhan trash respawns every 2 tries is not OK you dipshit. Maybe 20-25 minutes to get back to square one is fine for people nothing better to do, but it's murder on a normal raid that doesn't want to spend 12 hours a week learning the damn place over respawning crap during boss fights. Get this through your head. People HATE respawns. Nobody goes "Wow this boss fight is so challenging because if we don't get it right, we get spawned on" or "Wow, that instance is really well designed because of its challenging respawns." Respawns do not make a place challenging, they make it really annoying. Yes, they don't respawn if you kill a boss, and yes if you have the place on farm it's irrelevant, but since when are you designing instances based on the people who can beat the everloving shit out it? Not everyone is thwomping instances with wild abandon early on. You didn't pull that shit in BWL and it was fine. You didn't really even pull that crap in Molten Core with bosses. You don't need to do any kind of respawn timer under an hour. It's causing people to bypass your content because you have your head up your ass. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Righ on April 03, 2007, 07:48:30 PM Anytime a dev says "we want a profession to be cool and needed, but..." that is Death for the profession. If I was an alchemist I would be very worried. You're not kidding. I can almost guarantee you that the simple fix that they are putting in is that elixirs and flasks will be mutually exclusive across the board. They will nerf the encounters, and in order to make the professions still 'fun' and 'challenging' they will quadruple the herb costs of both elixirs and flasks. So if you want them, loads of farming, but they won't be nearly as important once you gear up, so once you're farming an encounter, it'll basically reduce your herb farming workload. Which will rip the market out of the profession after while. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Teleku on April 03, 2007, 08:53:31 PM Yeah, I'm an alchemist and I'm pretty damn worried right now. It's the only good proffession in the damn game due to actually being able to make a profit with it (Its the only one with constant demand due to people using up what you sell all the time). I'm going to be especially pissed if they nerf it because I JUST got Elixir Mastery. Like, the day before they made this post. ARGH.
Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Calantus on April 03, 2007, 08:58:50 PM To be honest I wouldn't care if they ripped alchemy a new one. Yes I do have an alchemist, but I've never been a crafter type in WoW, it was always something I had just because it was so useful for me to have it and it will not be missed if it is no longer so. I know it sucks for the alchemists that do actually use it for making money, but if it means less stress for the raiders I think it's the lesser of 2 evils. And at least it will be in good company with all the other tradeskills that happen to be of marginal utility.
Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Morfiend on April 04, 2007, 10:30:49 AM You didn't really even pull that crap in Molten Core with bosses. Core Hounds on a 19 minute respawn? Surgers on a 27 minute respawn? Ugh the trash in MC was horrible when you where first learning the place. BWL was better. I dont mind one encounter with trash like the "depression rooms" or the tunnel in AQ40. But re-killing trash is about my biggest pet peve with raids, and the only part I really really dont like. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Modern Angel on April 04, 2007, 10:43:30 AM I hope they rape alchemy sideways with a rusty fork. And I'm an alchemist with every recipe besides some flasks. One of the fundamental problems with the game right now (cue LOLRAIDERS after I type this) is that the introductory raids are tuned for massive consumable use. They have to pretend everyone will use them (because alot of people will) so the barrier becomes not skill but farming. And fuck that noise.
Chain chugging super mana pots nets you over 100 mp5 over an average length boss fight. Even easy consumables net you more than three tiers worth of gear. You can't balance encounters for that. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Paelos on April 04, 2007, 02:05:20 PM You didn't really even pull that crap in Molten Core with bosses. Core Hounds on a 19 minute respawn? Surgers on a 27 minute respawn? Ugh the trash in MC was horrible when you where first learning the place. BWL was better. I dont mind one encounter with trash like the "depression rooms" or the tunnel in AQ40. But re-killing trash is about my biggest pet peve with raids, and the only part I really really dont like. MC had some odd spawn timers on things like surgers and dogs, but to me they never really shit on my fun learning the place. The main reason was that NONE of them would respawn quickly near bosses. Yeah they could ruin your day, and you would have to go back to the start if you wiped before a boss, but generally you could kill your way around the place and have at least an hour in most places to try bosses. There were never points where you had to worry about respawns jumping up your ass in the middle of a boss pull if you were taking your time. This is not the case at all in Karazhan, as most of the bosses have annoying trash mobs directly near them that are on horrible timers, and in some cases are directly connected to the pull if you don't have a full clear. That's the main difference, they put those mobs within a stones throw and then give you the middle finger if you aren't moving fast enough. I personally don't want to play beat the clock on boss tries in addition to focusing on strategies. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: lamaros on April 04, 2007, 10:19:01 PM None of this stuff has anyting to do with you guys. You aren't raiders.
Or is all the bashing and "lol catass" stuff in the other threads just you guys being funny? Consumables are a fucking blight on the game at the moment. There are people in my guild who couldn't afford to repair last night. They could take alchemy out of the game i tell you a lot of people wouldn't care. Alchemy is stupid retarded and only fun for the people who dont raid and just farm all day to make themsleves rich (for what purpose I dont know, there's nothing in this game to spend gold on - except consumables). Rogues are still one of the best DPS classes in the game and constant QQing might have disguised the fact but if you think otherwise you're still an idiot. Trash is stupid and Tigole is a fucking idiot if he thinks making it respawn works well as a 'pacing mechanism'. A huge fucking idiot. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Teleku on April 04, 2007, 10:36:42 PM Two things:
1.) Quite a number of people posting in this thread do in fact raid (or were raiding). Me included. This doesnt mean cat ass, as I thought that term was used for the people who spend every fucking waking hour online. 2.) Alchemy I have always found to be way fun. I almost never farm materials what so ever. I just pick shit up as I go along leveling/questing/instancing/what ever. I still make a ton of money. Many of the potions are very usefull, and its fun to be able to make them at will. It gives me great utility in the field (pisses rogues the hell off when I fear them and hit the swiftness potion stack :-P). It is, IMO, the ONLY worthwhile crafting skill in the game. It is the only one that actually works on a supply/consumption model, like Eve has for all its items. This is why you can actually make money with it. It would be wonderfull if they could figure out a way for all the damn crafting skills to work like this somehow. If they want to fix shit, make it so you dont absolutly have to have stacks of pots for everybody in your raid when you do instances. In pre-bc, all we ever had to end up farming for was fire protection pots when we were first taking Rag down, and mats for flask of the titans for our main tank in BWL. I always carried Greater Dreamless Sleep potions on me in case I needed a mana boost in a fight that went wrong. That was the full extent of it. I havent done any of the 25 man raids in BC yet. Are consumables really that neccessary? Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Chenghiz on April 05, 2007, 12:19:51 AM <words> Did you even read the thread? Good lord. Consensus is that the current consumable use is bad; that isn't even an issue. Rogues are not the best PVE dps class in the game... I'm not even sure where you got that from. The consistent result almost across the board is that basically any class other than a rogue is better in every regard - utility, maintenance, and damage-wise. As far as trash goes, yes I agree that respawns suck but he isn't justifying the current amount of trash - in fact, he is in favour of decreasing the amount of it. Quote from: Tigole For example, the trash should be significantly easier to clear in most cases – and take less time. Also, we’ve lengthened the time between respawn on a lot of the trash. Yes, trash will respawn in some cases. [...] Yes, there are cases of the trash respawning too fast or the trash being too difficult or too lengthy. Those are the cases we hope to fix. We’ve also fixed some bugs that were allowing the trash to respawn after the boss for a certain area was dead. Wow, that was so easy. Are consumables really that neccessary? Since the quality of gear doesn't really increase at the moment, and the difficulty of raid encounters does, the bleeding-edge guilds are using flasks and consumables in general very heavily in order to progress. [edit] Also to expound upon the consumables vs alchemy thing, I don't think 'changes' will affect the alchemy market as it stands now. A good deal of the consumables used by a raid guild are created within the guild and don't ever see the open market. The only effect I think this will have is to make herbalism a less profitable, if indeed these changes are to reduce the effectiveness or increase the duration of elixirs and flasks. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Merusk on April 05, 2007, 04:19:27 AM I think Rogues are still suffering from "I don't get it" on builds. The 3 I know still outdamage the quality mages I know. Of course, it also helps that they've gotten some nice weaps. This guy (http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/#character-sheet.xml?r=Alleria&n=Chyropractic) is always #1 on single-targets. Fuck, he was #1 on the maiden for chrissake. While I'm sure this would change later (prior to the 180 degree cleave change) right now they seem fine.
Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: MrHat on April 05, 2007, 04:56:52 AM I seriously think the cleave change was for the other melee classes like enh. shaman or dps warrior and less for the rogues.
Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Modern Angel on April 05, 2007, 05:37:44 AM lamaros never reads the threads AND I agree that alchemy is a complete and total blight. Funny. Gurgthock over on EJ did some math on precisely how good alchemy is back in the Naxx days. If I may lift the relevant portion:
"Here are the key values: Tier 1 Gear: 4450hp, 6085mana, 251 spirit, 365 +healing, 58 mana/5 Tier 2 Gear: 4250hp, 6700mana, 244 spirit, 567 +healing, 73 mana/5 Tier 3 Gear: 4610hp, 6970mana, 123 spirit (lol), 1008 +healing, 109 mana/5 +healing does less for mana conservation than it once did due to downranking changes, but it still can be more or less converted into some equivalent amount of mana regen since where +healing shines is generally in maximizing healing/mana rather than healing/time. There isn't a boss out there that puts out enough damage to require max-rank spam, so whether the +healing means downranking or fewer heals cast per minute, there is a mana savings. Based on the HealPoints and itemization formulas, I'm going to say that 6 +healing = 1 mana/5 for easy approximations. Using that conversion ratio, we're left with the following: Tier1: 119 mana/5 Tier2: 167 mana/5 Tier3: 277 mana/5 Unsurprisingly, tier 3 is a large step above the rest. That's good. Now, how do consumables fit into the picture? For a healer, let's assume the following non-exotic consumables: Nightfin Soup = 8 mana/5 Mageblood Potion = 12 mana/5 Brilliant Mana Oil = 12 mana/5 and 25 +healing = 16 mana/5 Major Mana Potions = 1800 mana every 2 minutes = 75 mana/5 (!!) Dark/Demonic Runes = 1200 mana every 2 minutes = 50 mana/5 Assuming all of the above used, I get a net benefit of 161 mana/5. That is larger than the gap between mixed tier 1 with suboptimal enchants (no ZG enchants, etc.) and fully-enchanted optimal tier 3 gear. So, in order to feel this amount of character progression as a healer, instead of spending 15 months doing raid progression, I should've just used five consumables. Silly, isn't it? Obviously this is something of an oversimplification, and I do really feel the benefits of the gear, because in practice I am comparing myself fully-buffed now to myself unbuffed or partially-buffed then." So Blizzard has had to tune even introductory encounters (pre-nerf Gruul anyone?) around the assumption that whoever CAN farm mass consumables WILL. The above is pre-BC; it's even worse now because of the scaling and new flasks. So what you have is a fundamental problem which Blizzard coded on Day One of release that's ballooned into a monster. The reason why the MC/BWL "casual" raiding of the past is dead is specifically because of this problem. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: ajax34i on April 05, 2007, 06:42:32 AM instead of spending 15 months doing raid progression, I should've just used five consumables. Silly, isn't it? Obviously this is something of an oversimplification It's a bit of exaggerating and faulty logic, too. 15 months raid progression to get to Tier 3? Shouldn't have taken more than 8 months, once 60 and in the guild and actually starting. But that's beside the point. He isn't using "5 consummables," he's talking about cycling these potions as fast as possible, in order to get those benefits. Sure, you only use the flask of titans once per 2 hours, but chugging mana potions as fast as the timer allows, and buffing yourself up with the other potions every 15 min or 30 min will quickly add up the cost of said consummables to epic proportions. You can look at it in terms of time spent farming for mats vs. time spent farming an instance for your permanent always-on gear, or in terms of cost (and it's better to look at guild bank expenses to "potion up" the raid, vs. whether they could spend the thousand or so gold buying purples (if it were possible to buy said purples, they would not cost all that much, considering how much gear was actually being disenchanted in our MC days)). In any case, we don't like having to farm for stuff that goes poof when used, but we do like to farm for a permanent purple set that we can use forever (well, until the next upgrade). I guess Blizzard tried to make us pay for the purples with the potions, and thus make us spend more time farming. Maybe they're looking to remove the potions but instead add some other cockblock mechanism to slow down progression through any particular instance. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Modern Angel on April 05, 2007, 08:03:53 AM He was talking about 15 months of raiding from MC to Naxx at that time, not 15 months in Naxx. You can feel free to argue with the raid leader of one of the (formerly) top guilds in the world and an all around good guy but you need to read between the lines there: you say who would chain chug mana pots when the answer is everyone at the top. And if a few people are doing it then Blizz has to assume EVERYONE will do it and that's the problem. It eliminates casual to mid range raiding. The beauty of WoW's raiding compared to EQ's was that there was a flavor for everyone. Just feel like raiding maybe four hours total a week? Why, there's ZG/AQ20/MC! Feel like going apeshit? Welcome to Naxx. Except now, because of the consumables, raiding requires maybe that four hours a week plus a shit ton of farming or gold buying.
It's just brutally obvious how screwed up it is now because it's also compounded by the shitty loot in TBC. I'm telling you that the raiding game right now is fucked on a fundamental, mathematical level because of alchemy and I have my doubts it can be unfucked. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: ajax34i on April 05, 2007, 08:56:31 AM the raid leader of one of the (formerly) top guilds in the world and an all around good guy I'll file that in the "Worth Squat" folder, along with all the other gaming "achievements" anyone else boasts of, but I don't want to argue. I agree that alchemy screwed up the game, just don't agree with the particular way he presented that argument. I'm also not sure if nerfing alchemy will, alone, fix the problems; devs have a tendency to nerf one area of a game and then forget to buff the other area, for an actual fix to a problem. Is there gear that can be farmed, given time, that would replace the effect these potions have? My impression was "no", given all the talk about poor itemization. And as far as nerfing mobs so that they're as easy to tackle without potions as they are now (with potions), I really doubt they'll do that. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Modern Angel on April 05, 2007, 09:09:54 AM Which is why they may be in a situation that's unfuckable. I tend to like EJ. They're generally good guys, smart and they actually (gasp!) police their forums so the usual dickwaving is stamped out in a hurry. The forums draw people with firm grounding in the numbers under the hood of the game. If this was Xi (Furor v2.0! The irony...) I'd dismiss it out of hand but Gurg's good people and, while you or I may not chain chug mana pots, the math is sound.
I'm not sure how they can fix it short of putting a limiter of one elixir/one flask (which is the hot rumor right now) and then retuninig EVERY encounter in the game while redoing itemization from the ground up. That's not going to happen; 2.10 goes on the PTR in about three weeks and then another three weeks or so until live... it's a patch not a sprinkling of magic fairy fart dust. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Merusk on April 05, 2007, 09:16:33 AM The problems I have with giving creed to 'top raid leaders' are:
1) The assumption they are 100% correct without doing an analysis on your own. Who else is going to put in the time and the math to validate or invalidate his equations? Even if you do, if you aren't a 'top raider' but are 100% more mathematically competent, you'll get poo-poohed because "you're just theorycrafting, nooblar. Come back when you've ACTUALLY raided." 2) The assumption that raid leaders don't have an agenda of their own. Furor was the biggest culprit of this kind of nonsense. He didn't like that Shaman and Druids were getting good, reliable 75% heals in EQ. (He's a bigtime hybrid hater.) So there were many posts and graphs and charts about how much bullshit it was, and CLEARLY a guild should only use Shaman as healers now, fuck clerics, their Mana Efficiency is for shit! It was an obvious agenda, particulaly when FOH DIDN'T stop using clerics as main healers. 3) The assumption that the way THESE raid leaders do things is the ONLY way to do things. Just based on practical experiene alone, I can tell you this is horseshit. Sometimes, yes, there is a more efficient way, but not always. The prime example I can think of is the Panther boss in ZG. The 'one true strategy' for a long time was 'tank the panthers in the pens, use pallies as healers, don't kill them.' That wound up getting my raid group killed for months on end. Panther was a cockblock we couldn't get past. Finally, we said, "Fuck it, let them come, we'll heal whoever's targeted then nuke the panthers when she vanishes." What do you know, it worked every damn time from then on. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: El Gallo on April 05, 2007, 09:53:09 AM The problems I have with giving creed to 'top raid leaders' are: 1) The assumption they are 100% correct without doing an analysis on your own. Who else is going to put in the time and the math to validate or invalidate his equations? Even if you do, if you aren't a 'top raider' but are 100% more mathematically competent, you'll get poo-poohed because "you're just theorycrafting, nooblar. Come back when you've ACTUALLY raided." I think that's true for a lot of places, but I don't think this is something you can pin on Gurgthok or EJ. I've never seen a post like that on Elitist Jerks, and I'm pretty positive that making one would get you insta-banned. For example, I don't think Kalman is in a bleeding-egde raid guild. Nevertheless, he is widely regarded as the preeminent number-cruncher on EJ (especially for rogue-related issues) and one of the most respected posters on EJ. The EJ forums aren't the official forums or FoH. Quote 2) The assumption that raid leaders don't have an agenda of their own. Furor was the biggest culprit of this kind of nonsense. He didn't like that Shaman and Druids were getting good, reliable 75% heals in EQ. (He's a bigtime hybrid hater.) So there were many posts and graphs and charts about how much bullshit it was, and CLEARLY a guild should only use Shaman as healers now, fuck clerics, their Mana Efficiency is for shit! It was an obvious agenda, particulaly when FOH DIDN'T stop using clerics as main healers. I'm sure Gurgthok has an agenda, I just think the agenda is to not make raiding so consumable-dependent because he thinks farming herbs to make or gold to buy potions is boring and un-fun. It may be an anti-alchemist crusade for some nefarious purpose like enhancing his own profession, but I just don't see it. As an aside, I'm almost positive you are thinking of Thott, not Furor. Thott was the assmonkey with the numerous charts "proving" that shamans were better than clerics despite the fact that not having 5 clerics online = cancelled raid while everything was AOK with 1 shaman (I played a shaman in EQ so the Thott chart debacle is pretty clearly burned in my head). Furor wasn't much for charts, he just would have used Haemish-esque language in reference to Smedley's unborn children. I also think he was a little more open-minded than most (for example, he ranted that defensive discipline broke the game despite the fact that he played a warrior, who were made brokenly overpowered in raid situations by that ability), but that's another issue. Quote 3) The assumption that the way THESE raid leaders do things is the ONLY way to do things. Just from reading his posts on SomethingAwful and EJ, I don't think you can peg this on Gurgthok either. You see people talk about various ways to attack the same encounter on EJ all the time and you don't see people getting shouted down. Anyway, I agree with you that people shouldn't be deemed credible just because they are a top raid leader, but I think this particular top raid leader does have a lot of credibility. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Merusk on April 05, 2007, 10:00:21 AM Looks like I need to start reading the EJ forums. I've avoided adding more boards to my repitore recently due to time, but sounds like one I could spare some time for.
You're right about Thott. I knew it was Furor or Thott but couldn't remember who, so I punted. Damn crosswinds. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Modern Angel on April 05, 2007, 10:23:33 AM Yes, do check it out before judging it. This isn't your standard beat off contest WoW board. There's precisely one shining light in WoW fandom in the entire world and it happens to be those forums.
Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Lum on April 05, 2007, 01:08:31 PM Yep, the EJ boards are THE place to go for quality Theorycrafting with a minimum of noise. I've lurked there for a while now.
Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: WayAbvPar on April 05, 2007, 03:08:28 PM Yep, the EJ boards are THE place to go for quality Theorycrafting with a minimum of noise. I've lurked there for a while now. And you semi-lurk here for the poo-flinging :-D Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Morat20 on April 05, 2007, 03:19:00 PM Hmm. The Cleave changes mean that BM-specced hunters have an easier time in raids. At least if they're using Warp Stalkers.
Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Merusk on April 05, 2007, 03:39:36 PM Hmm. The Cleave changes mean that BM-specced hunters have an easier time in raids. At least if they're using Warp Stalkers. Was just reading a hunter mechanics thread noshing on this exact fact. Once again the BMs are crying "we do more DPS than U!" while providing nothing more than anecdotal evidence. So far I'm seeing little difference between the EJ and official WoW forums. :-D I'm also puzzling over EJ's insistence on using both Arcane & Multishot. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Morat20 on April 05, 2007, 03:47:51 PM Hmm. The Cleave changes mean that BM-specced hunters have an easier time in raids. At least if they're using Warp Stalkers. Was just reading a hunter mechanics thread noshing on this exact fact. Once again the BMs are crying "we do more DPS than U!" while providing nothing more than anecdotal evidence. So far I'm seeing little difference between the EJ and official WoW forums. :-D I'm also puzzling over EJ's insistence on using both Arcane & Multishot. Frankly, I don't give a shit who does more DPS -- I'm just happy that I might, in fact, be able to use my pet. I didn't go BM specced so it could sit next to me and howl. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Modern Angel on April 05, 2007, 04:12:18 PM Hmm. The Cleave changes mean that BM-specced hunters have an easier time in raids. At least if they're using Warp Stalkers. Was just reading a hunter mechanics thread noshing on this exact fact. Once again the BMs are crying "we do more DPS than U!" while providing nothing more than anecdotal evidence. So far I'm seeing little difference between the EJ and official WoW forums. :-D I'm also puzzling over EJ's insistence on using both Arcane & Multishot. Assuming you have a single target and aren't going to bust up your CC why wouldn't you Multi? Dump some mana for higher dps in your shot rotation. Setting aside whether you give a fuck about dps or not it boosts your dps considerably over not using it. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Modern Angel on April 05, 2007, 04:19:04 PM Oh, and I see which thread you're looking at. Don't judge it from that. Judge it from the fact that one of the mods will lock it sometime soon for being pointless bickering. Check the class mechanics forums instead.
Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Threash on April 05, 2007, 04:39:25 PM Hmm. The Cleave changes mean that BM-specced hunters have an easier time in raids. At least if they're using Warp Stalkers. Was just reading a hunter mechanics thread noshing on this exact fact. Once again the BMs are crying "we do more DPS than U!" while providing nothing more than anecdotal evidence. So far I'm seeing little difference between the EJ and official WoW forums. :-D I'm also puzzling over EJ's insistence on using both Arcane & Multishot. Assuming you have a single target and aren't going to bust up your CC why wouldn't you Multi? Dump some mana for higher dps in your shot rotation. Setting aside whether you give a fuck about dps or not it boosts your dps considerably over not using it. Well theres that whole dump some mana part, steady shot is very very easy on your mana pool while ms and arcane are not. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Modern Angel on April 05, 2007, 07:13:44 PM I only got my hunter to 53 so never got SS. Does it share a cooldown with Multi?
Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Calantus on April 05, 2007, 08:50:49 PM The only problem with EJ is they follow the Something Awful philosophy of long-ass threads with fairly wide scope so it takes forever to catch back up to speed whenever you haven't been keeping up. Want to know the latest and greatest hunter rotation? It's somewhere in that 20 page hunter mechanics thread, have at it! There's also a hell of a lot more posters there now then when I last played... makes for really fast moving threads sometimes and a lot of "EDIT: beaten" all over the place.
Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Chenghiz on April 05, 2007, 11:31:11 PM I only got my hunter to 53 so never got SS. Does it share a cooldown with Multi? Steady Shot has no cooldown and a 1.5 second cast time. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Modern Angel on April 06, 2007, 06:46:54 AM So why wouldn't you go AS, MS, SS?
I know the answer to the question, I think: mana, like you said. And now you have the beginnings of why consumables are a problem. The above would have to up your dps over steady shot-auto shot only. So bosses are tuned for X dps before they enrage or become unbeatable or your healers run out of mana. BUT X dps is only gotten through burning through your mana bar four times in eight minutes, meaning you better have a stack of super mana pots and some mana regen... maybe a few dps pots to hedge your bets. That's what bosses are in BC. You can't halfass it. There's no Lucifron... hell there's no Ragnaros. You go apeshit on these dps races or you lose and the only way to squeeze out the required dps (since there aren't any upgrades) is to pot up. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Merusk on April 06, 2007, 06:52:05 AM Hmm. The Cleave changes mean that BM-specced hunters have an easier time in raids. At least if they're using Warp Stalkers. Was just reading a hunter mechanics thread noshing on this exact fact. Once again the BMs are crying "we do more DPS than U!" while providing nothing more than anecdotal evidence. So far I'm seeing little difference between the EJ and official WoW forums. :-D I'm also puzzling over EJ's insistence on using both Arcane & Multishot. Assuming you have a single target and aren't going to bust up your CC why wouldn't you Multi? Dump some mana for higher dps in your shot rotation. Setting aside whether you give a fuck about dps or not it boosts your dps considerably over not using it. The quick response - to which I'll elaborate more later if I have time at lunch: I do use multi & arcane, but not the way the EJ folks are saying to do it. They are insisting that you hit them every time the cooldown is up. That's foolishness. Not only is arcane far, far less mana efficient than steady, it does a LOT less damage at the RAP people are now hitting. It's like they figured things at 60, with 60 stats and then ignored what they have at their disposal now. At 1950 RAP, arcane R9 does 663 damage for 230 mana, Steady Shot does 735 for 110 (no efficiency). Arcane should ONLY be used if you don't have the 1.5 secs to stand still and cast steady, or armor mitigation is so great that your steadys are doing jack squat. Multi is so mana-inefficient on single-targets that unless you need the burst, just don't use it. I'll weave it in once in a while, but not if I can stand there plinking. In long fights Damage/ Mana > than straight DPS, and Steady blows multishot AND arcane shot away on that front. It's no wonder the high-end hunters are complaining of mana problems, they're playing w/o metagaming in EQ style against EQ designers. If consumables get nerfed, it's something they're going to HAVE to consider. I regard the whole thing kind of like priests who only use flash-heal because G-heal 'takes too long to cast'. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Merusk on April 06, 2007, 10:30:09 AM So why wouldn't you go AS, MS, SS? I know the answer to the question, I think: mana, like you said. And now you have the beginnings of why consumables are a problem. The above would have to up your dps over steady shot-auto shot only. So bosses are tuned for X dps before they enrage or become unbeatable or your healers run out of mana. BUT X dps is only gotten through burning through your mana bar four times in eight minutes, meaning you better have a stack of super mana pots and some mana regen... maybe a few dps pots to hedge your bets. That's what bosses are in BC. You can't halfass it. There's no Lucifron... hell there's no Ragnaros. You go apeshit on these dps races or you lose and the only way to squeeze out the required dps (since there aren't any upgrades) is to pot up. Quickie again, since nobody's responded so far. :-D As I mentioned above AS is horrible, outside of a few specific times you WANT to use it. It just doesn't do the damage that SS does, so there's no real point in using it. Some people continue to insist on doing so, however. (Formula for R9 AS is RAP*.2+273, SS is RAP*.3+150) I haven't recalced my MS damage recently, but its formula is (Ammo * Range Weapon Speed)+((RAP/14)*2.8)+150)*(1+(Mortal Shots)+(Barrage)+(Ranged Weapon Specialization)+(Humanoid Slaying)+(Giantstalker's 8 Piece Bonus))) at level 60. Just looked up the 67 multi on Wowhead and it does 205 dam instad of 150. Clearly this is a shot that relies on talent spec and a lot of other factors. When I last crunched it, it was prior to BC, but I was doing ~795.6 damage on average at a cost (then) of 345. When I examined things at 60 I found that Multi was 2.31 dam/mana. Arcane did 2.47 dam/ mana and steady (if available at 60) would have done 4.77 dam/ mana. (using Rhok, the 2.0 patch ammo and GS with a RAP of 1250) Since a hunter w/o mana is useless, the choice was (to me) clear.. fuck the other shots on the long-haul and just use steady. If burst DPS is an issue, weave-in Multi as you need it but otherwise it's no good as it's just a mana-hog. Hunter burst damage, in itself, is pretty much gone anyway. Crit % are in the shitter, and those I've seen whose Crit isn't and still have a decent RAP have all been using equipment most folks won't see anymore (AQ40 & Naxx). The best you can do to increase your DPS is to pump your RAP, since AGI is so damn item-budget expensive, and crit seems to be nearly as expensive. Tapping that multishot every time it's up might help you in the last minute or so of a fight (so I can see the advantage there, particulalry with improved barrage for the extra crit) but it'll drain you faster than your potion timer, and feign + drink vs 'just fucking steady-auto-steady' has proven (for me) to be a lot less damage over the course of a fight. It's not about 'halfassing it' but knowing what the design philosophy of the class as it exsists NOW is. That would be, to be steady, even, low-maint DPS with the ability to shed all aggro and do some CC. It's not going to get to the burst of a rogue who has to stand in melee and be healed or a mage, who has no ac or hps and dev-blinders about mana issues and aggro-reduction. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Llava on April 07, 2007, 12:27:24 PM Re-enacting lamaros:
hmnmn bjkjm h nhb Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Chenghiz on April 07, 2007, 02:03:23 PM Tapping that multishot every time it's up might help you in the last minute or so of a fight (so I can see the advantage there, particulalry with improved barrage for the extra crit) but it'll drain you faster than your potion timer, and feign + drink vs 'just fucking steady-auto-steady' has proven (for me) to be a lot less damage over the course of a fight. From what I understand (my hunter alt is only 62) is that most hunters do the AS/MS/SS thing fulltime until they hit bottom and then just pop aspect of the viper and SS mores slowly until they're at full again. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: lamaros on April 10, 2007, 08:56:42 PM Re-enacting lamaros: hmnmn bjkjm h nhb Heya Bigot, who are we dumping on today? Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Teleku on April 10, 2007, 10:08:37 PM The posted a preview of the proffession changes comming. Not all the changes, but some they say:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=93032551&sid=1 Nothing to bad for alchemy so far.... Quote Alchemy Elixirs now stack in two categories, Battle (Offensive) and Guardian (Defensive) Elixirs. You can only have one of each type of Elixir up at a time. As a result Elixirs now stack with class abilities such as "Arcane Intellect." Four new defensive elixirs have been added. Two are on trainers, one is in Halaa and one is in Cenarion Expedition. "Flask of Petrification" can no longer be turned off during its duration, but it now will clear all threat from all monsters for the duration of the effect. Though monsters may reaquire you after the effect ends. The cost to purchase Imbued Vials has been reduced. Edit: And this is fucking awsome. I`ve been bitching about this since release. Quote "Seaforium" now opens locked chests as well as locked doors Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Merusk on April 11, 2007, 04:09:52 AM Edit: And this is fucking awsome. I`ve been bitching about this since release. Quote "Seaforium" now opens locked chests as well as locked doors woo, motherfucking HOO. Of course now I have to lose ANOTHER inventory slot. Hrm, elation now tempered. Quote 11 new epic goggles have been introduced at 350 engineering skill and are available from the trainer. They range from cloth to plate, and have a variety of stats to appeal to most talent specs. That's really nice, though. I was kind of pissed at not even wanting to bother making my professions 'epic equip' (which also wasn't epic) because it was worthless to hunters, the class that traditionally has had engineering. Quote # The fishing timer has been reduced from 30 to 20 seconds and it now takes less time to fish. # The fishing timer can no longer run through its duration without a fish biting. These are :heart: :heart: :heart: Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Dren on April 11, 2007, 05:23:11 AM Oh, I missed that fishing one...sweet. I had been ignoring that skill from the pure boredom. I'll have to try it again.
Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Morfiend on April 11, 2007, 09:53:08 AM More leaked notes.
Funny thing. I came up with the idea to have hunter pets be immune to AE in raids, to help hunters with dps. Passed the idea along to my friend who works there, and look what shows up in the notes. Quote Should be released shortly but a few of the changes but several changes involving all classes that aren't including in this list (as well more for those in the list). Also most changes are paraphrased Druid -Bear Mangle damage increased by +15% but bonus threat has been reduced so threat should be the same -Omen of Clarity no longer castable in Moonkin or Tree -Swiftmend will now properly penalize +healing benefits for casting low rank Rejuvs or Regrowths -Barkskin now reduces all damage taken, duration reduced to 12 second with cooldown reduced to 1 minute, Tooltip changed to say it can be used while frozen, incapacitated, cowering in fear (functionality always present but wasn't in the tooltip) -Cyclone will no longer work on hunters with "The Beast Within" active or hunter pets wtih "Bestial Wrath" active -Epic Flight Form quest opened up similar in nature to Paladin/Warlock epic mount quests. Also adds a new boss to Sethikk Halls Hunters -New avoidance ability for pets reducing damage from AOE spells & abilities -New cobra reflexes ability for pets that increases atk spd but reduces damage -Entrapment duration reduced to 4 seconds and now subject to diminishing returns in PvP -Expose weakness changed so triggers with 33/66/100% chance at 1/2/3 talent points -Hunter's Mark now becomes stronger each time the target is struck by a ranged attack -Survival Instincts now also increase atk pwr by 2%/4% -Pet mending changed somehow Paladins -Illumination only gives 50% of the mana cost of crit heals also returns correct mana amount when used with rank 4 or 5 of Holy Shock -Seal of Righteousness no longer gives additional chances for weapon procs to trigger -Seal of Blood no longer gives additional chances for weapon procs to trigger -Stoicism should now properly affect all magic effects cast by a paladin and will no longer apply double its benefit to Blessing of Might and Blessing of Wisdom -Avenging Wrath and Divine Shield can't be used together anymore (they are fixing how forbearance works for these apparently) Priests -Binding Heal mana cost has been reduced by 32% -Circle of Healing effect increased -Shadow Word: Death cooldown increased to 12 seconds -Pain Suppression now reduces damage taken by 65% and increase dispel resistance by 65% for the duration Shaman -Windfury Weapon, mixing 2 ranks while dual wielding will no longer increase the number of windfury procs -Frostbrand Weapon, now properly receives increased effect from spell damage Warlock -Spell Lock duration reduced to 5 seconds (Rank 1) and 6 seconds (Rank 2), cooldown reduced to 24 seconds Warrior -Flurry has had atk spd increases reduced to 5/10/15/20/25% from 10/15/20/25/30 -Death Wish and Enrage no longer stack -Commanding Shout now increases your max health but your health stays a constant percentage Item Changes -All items of Tier 5 and above quality have been upgraded to reflect their intended power -Armor: All items that spent part of their budget on increased armor have been reevaluated. Some have added armor while others have gained additional bonuses. -Heroic instances will now always drop epic loot off the end boss and all heroic bosses have a chance for epic gems -Additional darkmoon cards can now be found on high level outland creatures. They can be turned in to the darkmoon faire to make powerful new darkmoon card trinkets. Look for Lunacy, Storms, Furies and Blessings cards. -Alcohol Stam buffs no longer stack with stam buffs from other foods SSC Changes -Trash before Hydross and around Lurker (Blizzard calls them the six pumping stations) have had respawn timer increased from 45 minutes to 2 hours -Trash no longer respawns if the boss nearby has been killed -Lady Vashj will no longer use Persuasion -Tidewalker Lurkers no longer call for help from nearby creatures -Greyheart Technicians are now easier to kill and deal less damage -Coilfang Priesttesses may now be polymorphed. -Morogrim Tidewalker's Earthquake can no longer be LOS'ed Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: WayAbvPar on April 11, 2007, 09:59:03 AM Quote Paladins -Illumination only gives 50% of the mana cost of crit heals also returns correct mana amount when used with rank 4 or 5 of Holy Shock -Seal of Righteousness no longer gives additional chances for weapon procs to trigger -Seal of Blood no longer gives additional chances for weapon procs to trigger -Stoicism should now properly affect all magic effects cast by a paladin and will no longer apply double its benefit to Blessing of Might and Blessing of Wisdom -Avenging Wrath and Divine Shield can't be used together anymore (they are fixing how forbearance works for these apparently) I don't play a pally, but two of the folks I group with regularly do. How big a nerf is this? Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Merusk on April 11, 2007, 10:26:03 AM Quote Hunter's Mark now becomes stronger each time the target is struck by a ranged attack Wow, that could be huge. Even moreso if it works with Improved Hunter's Mark (5/5 applies 100% of HM attack power to melee hits as well as ranged hits) Leave hunters out now, and you ignore the free 110+ AP and-up for every physical damage dealer. I think the biggest nerf in the pally list is the Illumination change, Way. There were folks saying that Pallies never ran out of mana, so long as they were in a group with a shadow priest using Vampiric Touch and the SP had 1100+ damage. (Which is why Shadow Priests are now referred to as "mana batteries". Welcome to EQ Necro-hood.) Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: MrHat on April 11, 2007, 11:39:29 AM Haha morph, like you were the first person to have that idea.
Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: SurfD on April 11, 2007, 10:51:37 PM Its a pretty big hit to paladins:
5/5 Illumination = 100% chance to gain FULL base cost of spell back every time you crit a heal Divine Illumination (41pt talent) = reduce cost of spells by 50% for 15 sec. Basicly, with a high crit rate (most heal pallies i know run with anywhere from 25-30%+ crit rate), paladins got a LOT of free heals. Add in Divine Illumination, and coupled with a crazy crit rate allowed them to actually GAIN mana while healing. Include fairly mana efficient heals, the paladin ability that gives them a % of all healing done to them by another player back as mana, and a shadowpriest DPSing with vamp embrace, and a paladin / shadowpriest combo were litterally the most obscenely effective Main / offhealer combo you could dream of. PvE spec shadowpriests with Vamp Touch were just icing on the cake. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Teleku on April 12, 2007, 04:08:06 AM Quote -Shadow Word: Death cooldown increased to 12 seconds Blizzard really needs to release a single patch that doesn't have at least some kind of nerf to priest in it, no matter how small. The community has already been on meltdown for awhile now. They also said in the forums a little bit ago that they were looking closely at priest (again) to try and fix problems. I really hope there is alot more in the patch than these few notes. The only thing semi-usefull was the the 32% reduction to binding heal, and thats pretty much only for pvp and certain pve situations.Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Teleku on April 12, 2007, 05:23:06 AM Oh, they released a clarification post concerning the alchemy changes:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=94161512&sid=1 Quote In an upcoming patch we will be changing the way elixirs function, allowing a player to only have two elixirs on them at any one time. The change will allow you to use one offensive elixir, and one defensive elixir. All elixirs will be set into one of these two categories. This also means that although elixirs of the same type cannot be used at the same time, they will now stack with class buffs. We’re making this change for a number of reasons. By allowing players to use any number of elixirs it was necessary that we balance raid and dungeon encounters with the idea that all players in the group had the potential of having all available elixirs on them. In many cases this resulted in the spectrum of elixirs being necessary for dungeon and raid attempts as they were balanced to be more difficult. This put a large strain on guild alchemists and their need of materials for the elixirs they would then distribute throughout the guild. With fewer elixirs being allowed, fewer elixirs will be expected on raids, and less herb and material collection will be needed when attempting raid or dungeon encounters. In turn this change allows us to design and balance encounters around it, keeping the difficulty in line with a clearer limitation of what each group member has at their disposal. Since the number of elixirs is now limited, we can also now allow them to stack with class buffs, so intellect elixirs will actually matter since they will now stack with arcane intellect. As mentioned previously we’ll be introducing some new recipes that would have simply been left unused before as they wouldn’t have been allowed to stack with class buffs. We’ve seen many requests for new recipes, and to some extent it was necessary that we limit how and when we introduce new recipes as any new elixir added in-turn resulted in a potential power increase for every member of a raid or group. With the number of elixirs on any one player now limited we can add more recipes than we would have been able to in the past. Flasks will work in this new system by taking up both the offensive and defensive elixir slots. We of course recognize this as a reduction of total effect of flasks, but as mentioned we will be balancing to take into account the use of a single flask on each player in an encounter. Potions (rather than elixirs) will not be affected at all by this system. This change will generally not impact solo players who currently already only use one or two elixirs at a time, but will certainly be a restriction for players who tend to use a lot of elixirs simultaneously. In the case of raid and small group parties the change is a clear benefit. The need for herbs and materials, and thus the strain on a guild or individual alchemist to collect these items is lowered substantially, in combination with the encounters being tuned with the limitation in mind. This change to elixirs and flasks also allows us to improve and expand the alchemy profession in new ways, and removes the need to design and balance encounters around the potential use of all possible elixirs. We’re currently planning to implement this change in a future patch and we’ll release further details as well as information on the new recipes as soon as we’re able. The part about Flask's taking up both elixir slots is a big kick in the nuts. Going to hurt the usefulness (and, more importantly for me, the demand) of elixirs big time. I knew they were going to fuck me over as soon as I chose my mastery. :cry: Ah well, maybe I'll get REALLY lucky and actually discover one of the few usefull flasks. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Paelos on April 12, 2007, 07:20:53 AM Quote -Shadow Word: Death cooldown increased to 12 seconds Blizzard really needs to release a single patch that doesn't have at least some kind of nerf to priest in it, no matter how small. The community has already been on meltdown for awhile now. They also said in the forums a little bit ago that they were looking closely at priest (again) to try and fix problems. I really hope there is alot more in the patch than these few notes. The only thing semi-usefull was the the 32% reduction to binding heal, and thats pretty much only for pvp and certain pve situations.I'm not clear on exactly what is wrong with priests. Please clarify. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Miasma on April 12, 2007, 07:49:05 AM It's not so much that there is anything wrong with priests they are just really upset that paladins are now far and away the best healers in the game, especially when teamed up with a shadow priest. Holy priest talents kind of suck and you always need to blow lots of points in Disc to be a better healer. I kind of hope those patch notes are fake because the holy priests on the boards always come up with contemptuous potential upgrades when they think we might get looked at. Stuff like "lightwell now has a new graphic" and "circle of healing is now slightly less useless" and those notes are actually in line with the sarcasm. The 31 and 41 holy point talents are mostly worthless.
Knowing blizzard they will probably nerf paladin healing instead of buffing holy priest though... Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Chenghiz on April 12, 2007, 08:52:33 AM I was always under the impression that paladins were really only good at single-target healing. They don't have HoTs either... isn't that a bit important?
Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Merusk on April 12, 2007, 09:30:53 AM Depends on what you're doing, and what encounter it is. In oldschool raids, single-target healing was where it was at. Even in 5-mans you can generally get away with single-target heals, and in fact I've had better experiences with pallies healing for the group than druids, shaman or priests. Of course, that might have to do with priests not using their AOE heals, because they're mana hogs.
I haven't healed any raid encounters 61+, but haven't seen any real terrible AOEs beyond the exploding-death stuff, where group vs single doesn't matter so much since the mob's usually dead or the adds are already CC'd. Do we even have any high-end healers reading this board anymore? I think (like the game itself) most of us are DPS w/ a few tanks. :-D Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: WayAbvPar on April 12, 2007, 09:57:58 AM Quote I haven't healed any raid encounters 61+, but haven't seen any real terrible AOEs beyond the exploding-death stuff, The last boss in Underbog is pretty nasty- his static charge DOT will keep a healer on his toes. Or his party on their deathbeds :-D Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Merusk on April 12, 2007, 10:03:24 AM What, the Black Stalker? I guess I didn't realize that was an AOE.. then again I also never had any problems with her in any groups. The exploding mushrooms on Hungerfen were always the problem.
Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: WayAbvPar on April 12, 2007, 10:05:09 AM I think it jumps from player to player like Chain Lightning. Either that, or I was always the lucky target.
Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Morfiend on April 12, 2007, 10:15:47 AM Haha morph, like you were the first person to have that idea. Definitely not. But it makes me feel good that I came up with it on my own, and then passed it along to the dev team, and then it shows up in the very next patch notes. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Miasma on April 12, 2007, 10:17:01 AM I haven't healed any raid encounters 61+, but haven't seen any real terrible AOEs beyond the exploding-death stuff, where group vs single doesn't matter so much since the mob's usually dead or the adds are already CC'd. Do we even have any high-end healers reading this board anymore? I think (like the game itself) most of us are DPS w/ a few tanks. :-D I've never raided so all I know is that the holy priests on the boards are always screaming "I lost my raid spot to a Pally" or "I've been told to go shadow" and that they always point out the top two raid guilds run with paladins for healing and priests in shadow form so that the pallys never go oom and the ve is used for a degree of group healing - they might bring along one holy priest for fort/spirit buffs and AoE heals.Of course if everything complained about on the boards were true the game would suck so bad no one would play it, take their complaints with a grain of salt. My impression is that they are just ticked that they don't get instant spots in groups and a slew of guaranteed raid spots anymore. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: bhodi on April 12, 2007, 10:58:44 AM I *was* holy -- I went shadow. The top tier talents are a huge letdown, especially circle of healing. Pallies CAN heal better, now. I pretty much quit since my two classes (rogue, priest) got shat upon, plus the fact I'm pretty bored of the grind.
Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Teleku on April 12, 2007, 11:27:11 PM Yeah, what they said. Priests have basically not had anything really done to the class since we got our overhaul. While that did add in some nice things, the holy tree still remained shitty. Spirit of redemption is basically useless unless they give it a longer time, and lightwell IS completly useless in every way imaginable. Then BC hits, priest get some decent new spells and talents, but holy basically gets shafted again, as nobody ever uses circle of healing. So again, just as even before the talent review, nobody really specs full holy. After a long time of not getting touched, blizzard just threw a bunch of nerfs at priests last patch, for no real good reason. Priest were already pissed, and this just put the whole community into meltdown. Because really, I cant think of any other class more undeserving of nerfs than god damn priests at this point. Paladins are better healers and get to wear fucking platemail, and Druids are pretty damn close (and they get all the other added utility that comes along with the class, such as DPS, Stealth, Tanking, and Sky lasers. We just get to die alot).
And now I look at the new patch notes just released, and they did throw in some new shadow nerfs, and basically gave us nothing of real note (though Ill have to play with it to see). Circle of healing has had its `potency` increased. Woopdy shit. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Calantus on April 12, 2007, 11:44:40 PM Holy tree pisses me off whenever I think about it. It's not terrible in that we can just put points in disc but it's so insulting that the tree is so bad and has been since the history of time.
Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Miasma on April 13, 2007, 07:14:10 AM In addition to a better holy tree I really wish they would add in some way to make farming/questing less painful as a holy priest. That's the main reason I haven't specced holy. There is some dragon you have to kill for a quest in blade's edge and it seemed completely immune to shadow so I had to resort to smite/holy fire, my God that was painful. Maybe they could add a buff that boosts your non shadow damage spells so long as you aren't grouped and the target isn't another player. As it stands now if I want to switch and stay holy I'll have to level up a hunter or something for farming. I do not look forward to having to quest in Azeroth again.
I haven't played many other classes very high but if there are other healers who are basically useless solo they should also have some viable way to farm that won't work in groups/PvP. I don't know if protection warriors have the same problem. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Dren on April 13, 2007, 09:59:15 AM Yeah, Holy Priests are not solo friendly. I always spec Shadow until I max lvl, then go to Holy for my guild. The only way a Holy spec could make is to do a LOT of instances with friends and do the harder quests with groups. Even then, I'd just skip a lot of the quests and go for pure instance farming.
The good part would be that you could probably get into a lot of PUG's if you hung out around the stones. Just my guess though. I hear Druids and Pally's heal better anyway, so that may not be the case. :| Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Rasix on April 13, 2007, 11:33:44 AM Holy priest in my guild (bunch of casuals) is probably the best healer I've worked with recently. He does rather well, but he's got great gear (he does a lot of instances) which has him working with a huge mana pool with a lot of +healing. The huge heals are great for a bear tank. He does bitch quite a bit about how bad his DPS is.
Grouped with a paladin the other day doing Shattered Halls and well.. damn. Those guys nearly never run out of mana. The holy priest in our group decided to DPS and play backup healer. Would have been nice if that priest was shadow in that instance. Haven't been impressed with shadow priests as main healers though. Had one that couldn't keep me up at the end of Black Morass. It was probably more of a player skill thing though. Guy just couldn't heal worth shit though the damage spikes had trouble dealing with the time lapse. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: ajax34i on April 13, 2007, 01:43:01 PM I've levelled a priest as holy to 60, but this was a long time ago (my first priest), and basically what I had to do was double-up on zones (did the quests for 2 starter zones, and I always did the quests for 2 zones at the same time) so that I could keep quests and mobs below my level. That, and a good wand.
I did group a lot and heal a lot, did instances and levelled up while helping others do their quests. The biggest thing required for healing as a shadow priest IMO is the talent that reduces healing aggro (so 10 points in discipline). Then you just need more int on your gear, and you burn through mana potions a lot (compared to a holy/disc priest), so your costs increase. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: SurfD on April 13, 2007, 04:55:39 PM Haven't been impressed with shadow priests as main healers though. Had one that couldn't keep me up at the end of Black Morass. It was probably more of a player skill thing though. Guy just couldn't heal worth shit though the damage spikes had trouble dealing with the time lapse. Shadow priests just arent supposed to be main healers. They are a dps class, with benefit of lots of group healing and mana back (if Vamp Touch specced). Throw a shadow priest in with any other heal specced class as main healer and you sail through most stuff. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: rk47 on April 13, 2007, 07:09:33 PM Yep, Shadow priest is an awesome dps & support utility. It is never meant to be a main healer. I did Steamvaults with a druid healer. He got disconnected. So I told my shadow priest guildy to come along and I converted my Elemental spec shaman to healer. We managed to take out the 2nd and 3rd boss with no problems since Vamp. Embrace covered the Heal over Time components and gives me mana back to offset the inefficient heals I'm dishing out.
He even had a nifty MC ability that works on most instances. some mobs under MC can give coolbuffs to the party too as well as some sick AoE Ability that cleans up mobs like tissue. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Teleku on April 14, 2007, 07:45:10 AM Holy God The PAIN:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=94850206&postId=947518381&sid=1#0 Quote We wanted to give players a closer glimpse at the changes being made regarding flask reagent costs and potency in patch 2.1. Please see the example below: Flask of Mighty Restoration - Current Instant Regenerate 70 mana per 5 sec for two hours. Dreaming Glory x20 Mana Thistle x10 Fel Lotus x1 Flask of Might Restoration - Patch 2.1 Instant Regenerate 25 mana per 5 sec for two hours. Dreaming Glory x7 Mana Thistle x3 Fel Lotus x1 (Please Note: The drop rate for Fel Lotus is also being increased by approximately 15% in the same patch) Players will notice that while the effect of the flask has been dramatically reduced, so has the cost to create one. All alchemy flasks will be adjusted similarly. Lets look at an elixir with the same effect for comparison: Elixir of Major Mageblood Instant Regenerate 16 mana per 5 sec for 60 min. Ancient Lichen x1 Netherbloom x1 While the flask still requires more materials than this elixir, it also allows 9 more mana to regenerate per 5 seconds, lasts twice as long, and persists through death. The flask is probably best used when facing encounters that are especially challenging to your party or raid. Also, we've seen players request details on the four new elixirs scheduled to go live with the next content patch and as a result, they've been detailed below. Elixir of Draenic Wisdom: Intellect and Spirit are increased by 25. Earthen Elixir: Reduces both spell and physical damage taken by 20. Elixir of Ironskin: Resilience is raised by 30. Elixir of Major Fortification: Increases health by 250 and provides 10 health every 5 seconds. They are nerfing flasks completly to hell and gone, as well as making them take up both elixir slots. Jesus christ my money making days are over. Hell, the usefullness of my profesion for myself is almost gone. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Merusk on April 14, 2007, 08:08:57 AM Holy monkeyfuck.. and I thought Engineers got screwed.
Wonder when they'll turn their eyes on taoloring, then. I know several people who gave up professions to grind-up tailoring for the epic stuff we're seeing. They say lots of it's equivalent or better than raided purples. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: rk47 on April 14, 2007, 09:36:00 AM As a shaman who is waiting for his spellcloth to cooldown and wear spellstrike pants tomorrow, I'm very fucking worried to hear that hahah.
But seriously, crafted. 3 Socket. Epic with a little less stat but lots of spell dmg & Crit + hit. Hell I'll take that over my shammy tidefury kilt (no socket). Slot +8 Spell crit gems on taht bitch and get around 45 Spellcrit from one pants. Mwahhaha. Then 10 days later, Imma make my hood for the set bonus. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: SurfD on April 14, 2007, 12:52:09 PM yeah, they are REALLY hammering the stackability of buffs. Notice also that:
- Beer nolonger stacks with food - Juju's, Blasted land Farmables, Ungoro Crystals and Zandalar token pots now all count as elixers for purposes of stacking Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Chenghiz on April 15, 2007, 11:37:19 AM Alchemy really isn't profitable unless you can make rare flasks or have transmutation mastery, as far as I can tell. This patch can't really make it worse.
Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Teleku on April 15, 2007, 04:49:08 PM Wrong actually. Even when I was leveling up, I easily had enouph to buy my epic mount (back when they cost 900 gold) by the time I hit 60, and that was with me not even trying to farm, just picking as I went. That was just from selling swiftness potions, Major Agility Elixirs, Mongoose Elixirs, Health Pots, mana pots, Major Dreamless Sleep potions, free action potions, elixir of giants, and a few others I think. Also just selling arcanite transmutes when ever they were up was profitable. All of these netted me more gold than just selling the mats, though I did also make a good amount of gold from just selling herbs like kingsblood, which was used for Thorium Brotherhood rep.
In BC, while many of the potions aren't profitable, I was still make a good 2-4 extra gold a stack compared to selling mats by making Elixir of Major Agility, Onslaught Elixir, Elixir of Major Strength, and Adept's Elixir (this one kind of sold shitty though). Maybe it depends on your server, but I've always been able to make a great profit with Alchemy. Kind of scared to see what the changes are going to do to that. I am actually farming mats right now and trying to make/sell as many flasks as I can while my Elixir mastery will net me more profit (since I have a chance to hit a flask proc). Between that and just completing the quests in Netherstorm at level 70, I've managed to hit almost 4k gold, so only a little left to go anyways for the stupid epic flying mount, heh. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Fordel on April 16, 2007, 01:47:59 AM I have *NEVER* understood this idea that Alchemy isn't profitable. It has, since the first level I got it, made me money. Lots of money. I don't have any flask recipes nor do I have any of the "good" transmute recipes. I don't even have a specialization yet for bonus potions and it still makes me far more money then I ever put into it. It's gotten me my mount money at 35, my epic mount money in less then a week, my Rep with Scyers to exalted several hundred Sunfury signets later... and I'll probably have my epic flying mount before the patch, or near enough to it so I can work on getting epic birdmode for my druid. Never have I felt "oh woe is me, if only my profession could make me money somehow"
I have no idea what everyone else seemingly does wrong, or what I seemingly do right. I'll probably spend an hour running (now flying!) around a zone, picking up every herb I can see, head to town, build whatever potions I can with the mats I gathered and toss them onto the AH. The next day I log in to find a giant pile of money in my mailbox. Sometimes I'll sell the excess herb that I can't really use, ManaThistle is the most common direct to AH for me since I don't have a single recipe that uses it. I don't get it, why doesn't this work for other people? The amount of cash I get comes in smaller chunks of 5-20gp per sale, but multiply that by a few dozen sales a day... /shrug As for the patch, my only concern is with Healing/Mana potions, now that there will apparently be dungeon only versions of them for raiders. All the buff/protection potions will still sell, more so even, now that they can stack with the class buffs. The clearness of the offense/defense potion buffing design will probably get even MORE people buying potions since they won't feel the need to get all 30 varieties of buffs via consumables. Currently a raider would have to get the world buffs, then the dungeon buffs, then the food buffs, then the JuJu item turn in buffs etc... now, none of that stacks so what is a raider going to choose? Farm 30 basilisk brains for a +int buff, or spend a handful of GP on a stack of +int/spirit buff elixirs. That will probably be the irony of the changes, while the raiders consumable bill will drop drastically, the amount they'll spend on actual Alch potions will increase which will benefit the producers. I really don't get how Alch doesn't make people money, maybe I should just go with it and let everyone continue to think its crappy so I have less competition. Go start mining everyone, I hear GemCutting is where its at! :evil: Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: bhodi on April 16, 2007, 07:29:20 AM some servers are heavily populated by bots who do nothing but run from macro'd herb site to herb site picking them up. At least it used to be like that... I finally gave up.
Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Chenghiz on April 16, 2007, 02:59:59 PM You may have made alchemy - it's possible - but are you making more money selling pots than you could make just selling the herbs? On my server at least the margin between the two is vanishingly small.
[edit] And if it's herbalism and not alchemy that makes you money, you could just go and pick up skinning and make even more. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Kail on April 16, 2007, 03:37:29 PM [edit] And if it's herbalism and not alchemy that makes you money, you could just go and pick up skinning and make even more. Or mining. The market may have cooled down a bit (I haven't been playing my miner lately) but back when BC was fresh, stacks of copper were going for upwards of ten gold. That's some serious cash for a level ten character. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: Fordel on April 16, 2007, 04:17:20 PM The thing with selling herbs is they don't sell nearly as reliably. I'll have to re-list them 2-5 times for them to sell without drastically undercutting all the other herbs on the market, all the while still accumulating more herbs in my daily travels.
Potions? I almost never have to re-list those, depending on the time/day the potions will start selling before I finish listing them all. Only raiding alchemists buy herbs in any worthwhile quantity. Everyone buys potions of one kind or another. Title: Re: Time to roll out your rogue again? Post by: MrHat on April 16, 2007, 06:03:09 PM Best way for money as an alchemist is to find who is buying your stuff and sell direct via CoD.
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