Patch 3.0.2 tomorrow

[Soln]

 The looting error is the same launch bug WoW often had with mining/looting/herbing etc.  You time out to the server and stay crouched.

[justdave]

Hmm...Affliction-specced, I don't really feel much pain. Maybe a -little-...I didn't have much +dmg, though, ~460, so maybe it's the coefficient change that   hit hard. Between the tweaks and Haunt, I know I DO feel like a pally in a dress. I have more health coming in than I need to tap out. It's a little crazy

Demo-specced, why on god's green earth would you ever have the voidwalker out for anything other than a free shield while fooling around in a contested area? Serious question.

I still seem to be hemorrhaging mana more than I used to although tap helps (and Dark Pact seems to have negligible effect which means I'm either using it wrong or it's not great).  VW isn't as bad as I thought it was although does seem to have trouble holding aggro if I stick more than a couple of DoTs on. 

What're your talents? And gear?

Gear is nothing special:

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Proudmoore&n=Obskom

Though I am going to be tweaking that and moving Imp HS to Imp Felhunter...Apprently the new affliction thing is to have the Felhunter out, rather than the phased imp as a DP manabattery. Yeah, Dark Pact feels really inadequate right now, to the point that I'm thinking of dropping it. :\ It's gone from  replacing lifetap to being something for emergencies only.

It's nice that that will effectively give me a purge and a silence, but a chunk of your DPS depends on actually having him chewing on something, which...Idunno, if I wanted to be frobbing things with a pet, I'd have gone demo. I have to give it a bit to see how I like it, though.

[Fabricated]

Wow another person from my server. Weirdness.

[justdave]

Im a little dissapointed in the feral druid changes for feral tank specced people.

Hmm...Maybe I'm just an underachiever. I think they're awesome, now...My armor and dodge kind of went in the shitter, but actual tanking feels much more fun, now. Swipe changed from three targets to cone AoE? Glyph of Maul? Longrange Growl? Barkskin in-form? Uncrittable with only 3/3 SotFittest and no +def gear? Additional bleed synergy?

 I'll take one in every color! >:)

[justdave]

Wow another person from my server. Weirdness.

Hah! Yeah, despite it being one of the ancient hi-pop release servers, I almost never run across anyone who's on Proudmoore.

[Fabricated]

Wow another person from my server. Weirdness.

Hah! Yeah, despite it being one of the ancient hi-pop release servers, I almost never run across anyone who's on Proudmoore.

You're in good company here strangely enough. There's like...5-6 other people who post here regularly that're on Proudmoore. We're all alliance-side though I believe.

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Proudmoore&n=Bryce

[WindupAtheist]

I was up to my ass in five-mans all last night on my 70 ret pally and I never had to drink. Not once. Jesus. Mana hax.

[Montague]

Hmm...Affliction-specced, I don't really feel much pain. Maybe a -little-...I didn't have much +dmg, though, ~460, so maybe it's the coefficient change that   hit hard. Between the tweaks and Haunt, I know I DO feel like a pally in a dress. I have more health coming in than I need to tap out. It's a little crazy

Demo-specced, why on god's green earth would you ever have the voidwalker out for anything other than a free shield while fooling around in a contested area? Serious question.

I still seem to be hemorrhaging mana more than I used to although tap helps (and Dark Pact seems to have negligible effect which means I'm either using it wrong or it's not great).  VW isn't as bad as I thought it was although does seem to have trouble holding aggro if I stick more than a couple of DoTs on. 

What're your talents? And gear?

Gear is nothing special:

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Proudmoore&n=Obskom

Though I am going to be tweaking that and moving Imp HS to Imp Felhunter...Apprently the new affliction thing is to have the Felhunter out, rather than the phased imp as a DP manabattery. Yeah, Dark Pact feels really inadequate right now, to the point that I'm thinking of dropping it. :\ It's gone from  replacing lifetap to being something for emergencies only.

It's nice that that will effectively give me a purge and a silence, but a chunk of your DPS depends on actually having him chewing on something, which...Idunno, if I wanted to be frobbing things with a pet, I'd have gone demo. I have to give it a bit to see how I like it, though.

If I remember right, all casters are going to have to start stacking Spirit at least to some degree for mana regen. It's part of the whole standardization of loot kick Blizzard is on. Instead of a set amount DP may scale with your Spirit - don't quote me on it but I remember reading something about it when Beta began.

[justdave]

Alliance! Heathens! 

If I remember right, all casters are going to have to start stacking Spirit at least to some degree for mana regen. It's part of the whole standardization of loot kick Blizzard is on. Instead of a set amount DP may scale with your Spirit - don't quote me on it but I remember reading something about it when Beta began.

Ooh, that's a good point. Yeah, I have that stuck in the back of my head, but forgot to look up exactly when they were doing, and how it affected non-prousts. Thanks for the reminder!

[DraconianOne]

Gear is nothing special:

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Proudmoore&n=Obskom

Though I am going to be tweaking that and moving Imp HS to Imp Felhunter...Apprently the new affliction thing is to have the Felhunter out, rather than the phased imp as a DP manabattery. Yeah, Dark Pact feels really inadequate right now, to the point that I'm thinking of dropping it. :\ It's gone from  replacing lifetap to being something for emergencies only.

It's nice that that will effectively give me a purge and a silence, but a chunk of your DPS depends on actually having him chewing on something, which...Idunno, if I wanted to be frobbing things with a pet, I'd have gone demo. I have to give it a bit to see how I like it, though.

Since that last post, I've gone back and bascially Learned 2 Play.  Once I stopped trying to keep playing like I was still Demon specced. change my rotation to include some extra spells (how did I live wiithout Haunt) and I'm not having any problem.  I've managed to up my spellpower gear which means lifetap is far more effective than I remember it being.  I know the Felpup is meant to be pet of choice for afflic but to be honest, I'm still using the VW which I think still generates more threat so can tank longer. No matter what happens, I end up drawing aggro from it anyway but with the felpup, that would be almost instance and I don't have the survivability I did with demon.

Not as nerfed as I first thought.

[Ingmar]

We ran Zul Aman last night for the first time since the raid zone nerf/talent change.

Holy shit is it easy now. We went from a guild/alliance that was barely getting the bear boss down right around the 20 minute timer, able to get the eagle boss down, and failing on the others, to getting bear/eagle/lynx all done under the timer with 8 min to spare and killing every boss in the zone. 

Its no wonder they took the bear mount out, or every level 70 character in the game would have one.

[SurfD]

yeah, za is rediculously easy now.

Guild i am with now could reliably get to the 4th boss with time up on the timer for 4 chest, but 90% of the time, would fail the chest with a 1 or 2 minute over time.

Our first za run after the patch, consisted of us basicly saying Screw CC, and AoEing down trash pulls, then crushing the bosses.  We finished the 4 chest run with almost 22 minutes to spare on the timer, and that INCLUDED a wipe and rebuff before dragonhawk boss because some bug with hunter pets caused the hunter's pet to aggro 2/3 of the trash gauntlet before the boss all at once.

T6 guilds who could always get the timer could probably clear the place right to zul'jin before the timer ran out.

[justdave]

Gear is nothing special:

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Proudmoore&n=Obskom

Though I am going to be tweaking that and moving Imp HS to Imp Felhunter...Apprently the new affliction thing is to have the Felhunter out, rather than the phased imp as a DP manabattery. Yeah, Dark Pact feels really inadequate right now, to the point that I'm thinking of dropping it. :\ It's gone from  replacing lifetap to being something for emergencies only.

It's nice that that will effectively give me a purge and a silence, but a chunk of your DPS depends on actually having him chewing on something, which...Idunno, if I wanted to be frobbing things with a pet, I'd have gone demo. I have to give it a bit to see how I like it, though.

Since that last post, I've gone back and bascially Learned 2 Play.  Once I stopped trying to keep playing like I was still Demon specced. change my rotation to include some extra spells (how did I live wiithout Haunt) and I'm not having any problem.  I've managed to up my spellpower gear which means lifetap is far more effective than I remember it being.  I know the Felpup is meant to be pet of choice for afflic but to be honest, I'm still using the VW which I think still generates more threat so can tank longer. No matter what happens, I end up drawing aggro from it anyway but with the felpup, that would be almost instance and I don't have the survivability I did with demon.

Not as nerfed as I first thought.

Actually, TBH, you should probably drain-tank rather than even have the pet tank at all.

[DraconianOne]

Actually, TBH, you should probably drain-tank rather than even have the pet tank at all.

That's pretty much what I used to do. Now it's not working out as well.

Not that it matters - I'm questing way below my level so I just spam siphon life/CoA/Corr and Haunt and I have no downtime.

[K9]

We had a go at Kael tonight by teaming up with another guild. I now see what all the fuss is about, our best attempt was around 70% HP in phase 4. I don't know how those guys did it back when all you had was T4-T5 gear and no clue what was going on.

ZA is a lot easier now post-nerf, the dragonhawk boss is still the hardest animal boss imo, just because it needs the most control. We wiped a bit on Akil'zon because his storm isn't preceded by the rain noise anymore. The toughest boss though is definately the gong.

In other news, it seems like the downstairs mirror version of Kara is getting a boss as part of the WoTLK scourge invasion event:

[Ingmar]

The gong boss is a lot easier when you realize its channeled - just click it once and leave it alone. 

We would have not had trouble with the dragonhawk, except apparently our DPS needed to be EXPLICITLY TOLD to help the pally tank killl the hatched birds. I kind of thought that went without saying, but apparently not. As it was we killed it with 4 people still alive or so.

[Chimpy]

The gong boss is a lot easier when you realize its channeled - just click it once and leave it alone. 

Did they fix it so it works again?

First couple nights after the patch you would click and it would hit once and stop so you had to have everyone click at the same time.

We wiped on the gong boss 2x that night, then proceeded to finish the zone in less than 40 minutes door to door.

[Fordel]

We would have not had trouble with the dragonhawk, except apparently our DPS needed to be EXPLICITLY TOLD to help the pally tank killl the hatched birds. I kind of thought that went without saying, but apparently not. As it was we killed it with 4 people still alive or so.

True Story 

[SurfD]

ZA is a lot easier now post-nerf, the dragonhawk boss is still the hardest animal boss imo, just because it needs the most control.

The dragonhawk boss is hardest because with the new lower hp on the boss and higher dps from players, getting everyone to stop bloody DPS so he doesent hit 30% and bust all the eggs at once is and effort in frustration.

[Fordel]

ZA is a lot easier now post-nerf, the dragonhawk boss is still the hardest animal boss imo, just because it needs the most control.

The dragonhawk boss is hardest because with the new lower hp on the boss and higher dps from players, getting everyone to stop bloody DPS so he doesent hit 30% and bust all the eggs at once is and effort in frustration.

We did that too, thankfully Judge of LIght is all kinds of retarded about agro ! 

[K9]

ZA is a lot easier now post-nerf, the dragonhawk boss is still the hardest animal boss imo, just because it needs the most control.

The dragonhawk boss is hardest because with the new lower hp on the boss and higher dps from players, getting everyone to stop bloody DPS so he doesent hit 30% and bust all the eggs at once is and effort in frustration.

Yeah, we did this on our first attempt in 3.0.2

[Driakos]

My guild is crushing Kara and ZA in about 1.5 hours each since the change.  Our biggest problem is just being sloppy due to how fast we are mowing through things.  We were able to do the first two bosses in CoT-Hyjal as well, with only 20 players.  14-15 of them having never been to Hyjal at all.  Our progression was limited to 4/5 SSC and 3/4 TK before 3.0.2.

Achievements and other changes have tons of people logging back in.  It'll be double, maybe triple the amount of people online once WotLK goes live.

[Phred]

Actually, TBH, you should probably drain-tank rather than even have the pet tank at all.

That's pretty much what I used to do. Now it's not working out as well.

Not that it matters - I'm questing way below my level so I just spam siphon life/CoA/Corr and Haunt and I have no downtime.

Even with the max talent for anti-pushback on channeled spells I find it way more efficient to let a vw take most of the hits with my lock. I can do drain tanking. It just feels way less effective because my drains get interrupted so much. I haven't tried since the new changes to how spell pushback works went in though.

[K9]

The changes to spell pushback are very noticeable, and welcome, although I've only really been using static casts, not channeled spells.

[Driakos]

Yeah, I just run around questing with the Imp out.  Pull with a SB, follow up with Haunt, then Siphon Life, Corruption, CoA.  After all are on, I pull the next mob, and so on.  With Dark Pact, I don't have to stop for mana.  If I ever need burst health, there's Deathcoil.  Juggling about 3 at a time seems best.  More than that, I gotta Drain Life for a fight, e.g. slow down.  The Voidwalker was much much slower.

With the XP changes in Outland, I've gained about 2.5 levels in a few hours.  It's nice.

[Azazel]

I know the 30% reduction was in there. I had mentioned it specifically but edited it out because I thought I sounded too whiney.

Basically, with the huge leap in power of DPS/Threat/Healing, 30% was overkill. It goes beyond trivializing the content. 30% is just overkill.

I know they want everyone to experience the content. But making everything so easy that you can trade channel pug Illidan just seems a bit meh.

Effectively I am a little bitter about the whole thing. I was in a guild that was farming Hyjal a year ago, we were the first on the realm to kill Brutallus. I will never have the "Burning Crusade Dungeon Master" acheivement while people who were wiping on Gruul's 3 weeks ago will probably have it before the xpac hits. Hell, I am as much annoyed by knowing that if the 15 of the core of our guild's raiding force who are still around wanted to get together and pull in 10-15 more randoms, we could have Kil'Jaeden dead by the end of the second timer. That zone was hard. They needed to do SOMETHING to make killing K'J pre-patch mean something to the people who did it as the whole removing the Bear mounts. I don't know, maybe they did and I missed it. This is not like people whining about removing attunements, this is totally trivializing stuff at the same time as making having done that thing worth "something".

So you're whining that your elitist catass badge won't mean anything and that god forbid, the masses might get to experience some of the content you did?

 

[SurfD]

My guild is crushing Kara and ZA in about 1.5 hours each since the change.  Our biggest problem is just being sloppy due to how fast we are mowing through things.  We were able to do the first two bosses in CoT-Hyjal as well, with only 20 players.  14-15 of them having never been to Hyjal at all.  Our progression was limited to 4/5 SSC and 3/4 TK before 3.0.2.

Achievements and other changes have tons of people logging back in.  It'll be double, maybe triple the amount of people online once WotLK goes live.

Go try Black Temple :P

My new guild is TK /SSC geared mostly, with badge gear / za gear (all bosses except Vashj / Kael down SSC /TK) walked into BT with pretty much no experience except a few guildies who had been there before on another toon, and 1shot our way clear through to bloodboil, whom we 2 shot. We didnt attempt mother sharaz because no one has any shadow resist gear.  But the boss fights were pretty easy.

Karathess = Joke
Supremus = Ez
Shade of Akama = wow, that was fast (adds died so fast we were on the Shade himself after about the 4th wave)
Gorefiend = Constructs? what constructs?  We had 2 people die and constructs in the raid, and basicly just burned the hell out of him.
Bloodboil is pretty much a joke too.  As long as the target of Fel Rage manages to stay alive, and people can do the Blood Boil dance, he should die just like the rest.

Hell, it might be amusing to try mother, to see of you could kill her without needing as much shadow resist.

[Xanthippe]

My guild went to Black Temple last night.  I'm not a raider, and joined this guild a month or so ago.  My guild apparently used to raid, but no longer does.  Decent players.

I have only been to Kara 3 times, and only since I joined this guild.  I have never been to TK or SSC.  My gear is season 2 bg stuff with the exception of 3 pieces of T4.

Our raid had no resists.  Mother was an iffy fight but we did it in one try.

Anyway, we made it to the Council before being unable to continue - I think that's the 8th boss.

So with some geared people in key positions and most of us in T4 or worse, we downed 7 bosses.

For people like me, this is the only way I'm going to see this content.  I like being a tourist and visiting, but I don't really want to become intimately involved with raiding mechanics.  I'm much more interested in the economic/crafting game.  My idea of fun is not in spending night after night learning fights and struggling really hard to defeat bosses for weeks or months. (I know some people do like that).

[Fabricated]

Mother can just be zerged to death now.

My guild threw together a raid last night with a guild we're buds with and one-shot everything up to the 4th boss in Hyjal. We called it there since it was really late and the raid was so impromptu. We'll probably kill that guy tonight and do some BT since Archimonde takes like an hour to learn.

[SurfD]

so farming for shadow resist is meaningless vs mother then?  Good to know.

[Calantus]

Another nice change I didn't notice until the tip on a loading screen told me so: you can now have 10 characters per account per server. So, everyone who wanted every class can still do that in the expansion.

[Fordel]

Wasn't it always like that? I could swear a few folks in my guild are already set up like that.

[DraconianOne]

10 character slots has been since pre-TBC for sure. Don't know if it was in at start but know it's been around for the 2 years I've been on and off playing.

[Merusk]

So did the 30% nerf hit old world raid bosses too?  I got together a group of about 12 folks on my server last night and we did MC.  We started pulling at about 8:00 and were to Majordomo by 9:30.  That's just nutty.  Hell, the only reason we weren't done with the place by 10 was we had to wait on cooldowns/ swap people's alts for the quintessence to put out the runes and spawn Domo.

For anyone else doing this: It's easy to overthink the fights.  We did the whole place with 2 tanks, me and a feral druid.  Just get a 3rd person to pull the priests out on Sulf as they still complete heal each other faster than you can DPS them down. I think we discussed how to do him and Domo longer than the actual fights took.

[ClydeJr]

I'm not sure if there were nerfed but I got pulled into an MC run of mostly 70s for the MC achievement. We took down Rag in a little over a minute. Not sure if that's just an indication of how much stronger 70s are or if Rags was nerfed as well.