WOTLK raid progression.

[Ratman_tf]

3 resto druids, 1 ret pally, 1 hunter, 1 tank DK, 1 DPS DK, 1 prot warrior, 2 warlocks. The druids can at least both wear cloth and leather, so those won't go to waste. At least we have a good mix of melee and ranged, but the lack of buffs is a concern. I'll keep you guys posted on our progress (or lack thereof).

Do so. I'm interested to see how you guys progress from the ground up.

P.S. Got Kel'Thuzad 10 man on the first try tonight. And then wiped like mad on Malygos. He seems to be a big gear check with his storm thingie kicking our asses.

[Paelos]

We also cleared 10 man Kel'Thuzad tonight. It wasn't as bad as Sapphiron oddly enough.

[Fabricated]

So far Grob and Heigan annoy me more than anything. Good fucking luck to your raid members with lag issues.

Grob just annoys me since we're melee heavy usually and that sucks shit for him.

[Chimpy]

Did Heroic Sarth + all 3 tonight.

Pretty intense fight to say the least.

I think Malygos 10 is the hardest fight that is not tricky extra drakes sarth in the game atm. Basically have to have a priest as one of your healers for vortex. We had a Pally+Druid+Shaman the other night and phase one rocked us like 4 times. I think they are planning on nerfing the vortex a bit soon, the falling damage after the vortex itself is the big problem.

[SurfD]

The only bosses with meaningful hard enrages are grobb, gluth, noth, and patchwerk (4H and Sapph also have hard enrages, but I can't imagine hitting them without sitting down and trying to).  

Noth does not have any form of meaningful hard enrage.

Neither does Grobb (12 minute enrage?) or 4h (they enrage after 99 mark casts).  If it takes you that long to kill them, something is VERY wrong.

[SurfD]

Im a bit confused, as you seem to have basicly ruled out EVERY accepted strategy for doing Loken.

That's because those strategies are all suboptimal.
A. Back and forth kiting strategies: It's way too easy for someone to go the wrong way and everyone has to spend a lot of time running around him to get back into position for the next kite.
B. Stacking together on top of the tank is asking to be smacked around by his chain lightning.
C. Spreading out too much is asking to be eaten by the aura.
D. Asking the healer to heal through nova: wut.

So what should you do?
1. Spread out somewhat - But not too much!  If someone gets chain lightning, spread out more for a bit so it stops jumping.
2. Kite in a straight line away from his starting point; establish which way you're going around the pillar if necessary.  By kiting in a straight line, no-one needs to run away from Loken and then circle BACK around him so they can run back the other way after Nova.  Back and forth kiting strategies are the self-inflicted wound that makes Loken hard.

I'm not sure what you mean by "back and forth" kiting strategies.  Loken is essentially heroic Murmur, except the boss can move.   The chain Lightning is a "charge" debuff.  It sits on one person, then every 3 seconds moves to someone else and deals 3kish damage.  In the greater scheme of things, the damage the charge does is meaningless.

also, i'm not sure why you would want to spread out at all, seeing as you have a very limited amount of time to get away from the boss when the cast starts, and the boss is designed that the farther you are away from him, the more damage his constant aoe pulse hits for.  If you are spreading out around the boss (depending on how many mele you have) to avoid the charge, there is a good chance that someone is going to be somewhere inconvenient when the nova cast starts, and keeping enough space to avoid the charge jumping is going to mean someone is taking more damage from the AoE pulse then they need to.

Strategy I have always used for him is to just stand with the tank, and when nova starts casting, run away down the white line.  Nova goes off, and you can either move back a bit to get to the boss faster, or just wait for the boss to come to you.  He should pretty much be dead by time he gets to the bottom of the stairs.

[Hawkbit]

The only bosses with meaningful hard enrages are grobb, gluth, noth, and patchwerk (4H and Sapph also have hard enrages, but I can't imagine hitting them without sitting down and trying to).  

Noth does not have any form of meaningful hard enrage.

Neither does Grobb (12 minute enrage?) or 4h (they enrage after 99 mark casts).  If it takes you that long to kill them, something is VERY wrong.

Thaddius has an enrage, of sorts.  If you don't kill him in Xminutes everyone dies instantly. 

[SurfD]

Yeah, for naxx, the bosses with a meaningful (meaning short timer) "hard enrage", meaning that they go "berzerk" after x minutes and start doing 500% more damage are  are Patchwerk, Gluth, Thaddeus, and maybe (though i cant be sure) Anub'rhekan.

Sapph, Grobb and the 4h also "hard enrage", but their timer is something like 12 minutes or the like, and if you can survive that long without actually killing them, something is very wrong.

all the rest of the bosses sort of "soft enrage" meaning they either do steadily increasing damage passively over time (loatheb casts doom faster, Noth just keeps summoning harder and harder waves of skeletons each time he ports to the ledge, Gothik keeps reducing your stats), or the gimmick that lets you keep the fight going runs out (limited supply of worshipers to remove frenzy off of Faerlina or the adds tanking Razuvius eventually both die).

[Draegan]

Random question.

Who's playing a raiding DK? 

I've been raiding as Unholy DPS now.  I'm nearly hitting 3k dps sustained.  Last night I got the epic sigil that adds to SS damage, but I also got Widow's Fang since DW spec seems to be doing more.  I'd couple that with the sword from Wyrmrest.

At what point does DW overtake 2H spec?  Or is it always that way.   I'm getting sick so I can't wrap my head around EJ spreadsheets right now.  Who's gonna help me.

[Merusk]

I'm playing one, but haven't been reading EJ "like I should."  Only doing 10-mans and heroics means I'm only at 2300-2500 DPS depending on buffs. 

What I've read from blue posts indicates that Blizz wants DW to be competetive, but not overtake 2H for output.  They're keeping an eye on the procs like Blood Caked Blade to make sure that as faster high-dps weapons come out DW doesn't overshadow for DKs.  GC stated something like they're ok with it doing so for Warriors and Shammies but want DKs to not turn into "just another DW class."

[Zetor]

I play a DK, but I don't raid [except for pugs] and my gear is really really bad. I have one [suboptimal] piece from a heroic, everything else is a blue or green quest reward. I finally got enough badges to buy a mirror of truth yesterday after doing VOA10/25, and won the t7.5 chestpiece from voa25, but that's neither here or there .

At that gear level, I was doing 1700-1800ish dps in 5-mans as 18/0/53 unholy [using the 2-h sword from ebon blade rep]; after I switched to 32/39 [dualwielding the wyrmrest 1-handers], this went up to 2650ish in that one VOA run, and that was at literally 0.5fps and 500 ping. So yeah, I'd say DW is broken and likely to get nerfed...


-- Z.

[Draegan]

DW won't be getting nerfed most likely until 3.1 patch so we can get a few months out of it :)

I got brave and read a few posts over there.  32/39 is the build to go with and there doesn't seem to be a gear threshhold.

[Rasix]

If I wanted to dual wield, I'd play my goddamn rogue or shaman. LAME.  They should just remove the option. "Oops, we're sorry.  How'd that get in there? Here take a stun!"

Good thing I'm not quite 80 yet and in a guild of bads that wouldn't know an optimal spec if it ran up and hit them in the face. Still, once I'm 80 it's just a matter of time before I'm bothered to either tank or dps in heroics, Naxx and elsewhere.

[K9]

From what I read, the reason for allowing DK to dual-wield was to permit them to DW warrior and paladin 1h tanking weapons to help reach the defense cap. Why they did this rather than design a range of 2h tanking weapons (maces) useable by DKs and Druids and not give DKs dual wield is slightly puzzling.

This is compounded by the somewhat blurry line between DK tanks and DK DPS.

[Zetor]

Especially since in 3.08, DKs are getting epic tanking 2-handers and the 2-hander only Stoneskin Gargoyle rune (+25 def, +2% stam)...

Me, I much prefer the 2h unholy playstyle [a lot more variance in abilities], but I can't argue with a 1000+ dps increase, even though it entails mashing only three buttons repeatedly. Sigh, I guess that's template optimization for ya. :p


-- Z.

[Ingmar]

For the triple resto druid plan, another boss fight that might cause some issues is Heigan. There's a pretty serious disease in that fight that needs to be cleansed, at least until you outgear it. You do have some cleansers, but it will cut your dps down to have them spamming that on people.

[Chimpy]

Our raiding DKs have tried both the 2h Unholy spec and the DW hybrid spec. I think they all did slightly better DPS on most things as DW, but are back to Unholy. At least I know we had 2x Unholy aura last night which we did not have when they were the hybrid spec.

If I remember correctly, our top DK on patchwerk was 3rd in overall dmg. Did something on the lines of 5500 DPS I think, would have to look at the WWS when it is posted to be sure.

[Vash]

In a thread on the WoW dps forums, the one that basically showed how insane DW as a DK is with the 32/39 spec to the masses, there are posts where DK's have posted recount/WWS logs of them breaking 7k dps at the 25 man gear level and thats with the gargoyle not even showing up correctly.  Since Ghostcrawler posted in that very thread, you can bet they are looking at it closely and I can't imagine it not getting nerfed pretty substantially.  I mean I sincerely doubt they designed the current level of raid content with people breaking 7k dps in mind.

[Azaroth]

No, but they designed DKs with everyone rerolling in mind.

[Draegan]

The high DPS comes from kicking out Army of the Dead, trinkets, buffs, Gargoyle, Bloodlust, then your normal rotation.

[Dewdrop]

Random question.

Who's playing a raiding DK? 

Poopsock raider checking in: I raid as a DK. Ive gone with 32/39 for now. I prefer unholy with a 2h'r but i cant beat the dps. Nearly topped 6k dps on Patchwerk this week. Came in around 5600-5700 on wws. Went through my skills once, hit trinket + blood fury + empowered rune weapon + gargoyle. Went throguh as normal. Garg did 1800 dps for a full minute, Ghoul did 700 or so.. Its definitely OP so I'm not at all suprised with the nerfs to Killing Machine and garg getting knocked down to 30 seconds. I have the gear to switch back to 2h at any time, but I'll wait to see how it plays out, the removal of the CD on Howling Blast may make up for it.. You never know. Instead of IT spam can go with HB spam with Epidemic..

Currently looking at: It-Ps-Hb-Bs-Bs-RP // Hb-Hb-Hb-RP.

Will need alot of testing to see if it works.

[Draegan]

Random question.

Who's playing a raiding DK? 

Poopsock raider checking in: I raid as a DK. Ive gone with 32/39 for now. I prefer unholy with a 2h'r but i cant beat the dps. Nearly topped 6k dps on Patchwerk this week. Came in around 5600-5700 on wws. Went through my skills once, hit trinket + blood fury + empowered rune weapon + gargoyle. Went throguh as normal. Garg did 1800 dps for a full minute, Ghoul did 700 or so.. Its definitely OP so I'm not at all suprised with the nerfs to Killing Machine and garg getting knocked down to 30 seconds. I have the gear to switch back to 2h at any time, but I'll wait to see how it plays out, the removal of the CD on Howling Blast may make up for it.. You never know. Instead of IT spam can go with HB spam with Epidemic..

Currently looking at: It-Ps-Hb-Bs-Bs-RP // Hb-Hb-Hb-RP.

Will need alot of testing to see if it works.

Yeah I made the switch to 32/39 myself.  I'm parsing a few 100 dps higher than my Jawbone + Sigil of Awareness with only Widow's Fury and Fang of Truth.  I can't get a good roll or a good drop to upgrade the rest of my gear unforntunately.  Sitting at hitcap + 2400 ap.  I can sustain almost 3k dps throughout the raid.

Except my guild is shit now.  Can't even get a 25 man together.  Can I raid with you? :/ 

I hear KM is going PPM with each point in the talent giving you 1 PPM, so 5/5 is 5 PPM and the theory is it's per weapon i.e. maelstrom.  Possible hitting 10 ppm as higher end folks are right now.  It's also affected by haste allowing perhaps more in Unholy Presence + haste gear?  Brings KM up to par for 2h builds perhaps.

I can't wait for IT-PS- HB- BS-BS-DC-HBHBHB-DC.  Thats a fuckton of AOE.

[Dewdrop]

Changes as I see it to DW:

Nerfs:

KM going to PPM. 5PPM but not based on CRITS anymore, just based on hits. I dont know how that number is normalized but I'm guessing that  Fast/Fast (MH/OH) with lots of haste could bump that number up.

Gargoyle reduced to 30 sec max. This one is pretty huge.. Gargoyle accounts for a SHITLOAD of my dps. But, to be fair, it was pretty broken.

Blood Caked Blade Nerfed. Sort of.. They are just making it so that it differentiates between main hand and off hand swings that proc. So, people who do slow/fast will see a dps reduction. People who do fast/fast wont.

Buffs:

Various Glyph Buffs

HB Cooldown removed. My HB's crit upwards of 10k on bosses, adding 2-3 (more with Rime) more HB's in per rotation 'should' outpace IT spam. I dislike the PTR's so I havent tested.

New Icy Touch Sigil. HB cd removal sort of makes this less appealing as you wont be spamming IT as much, in theory, but it still adds quite a bit of damage. It took me 20 minutes to get 30 venture coins.. Basically a freebie item.

Necrosis Buffed. Necrosis right now accounts for 2.5% of my dmg. Not a big number, but its passive and I have to put points down in that neck of the tree anyway. So, Blizzard has stated that they think 1 talent point should be worth 1% dps.. Necrosis was way underbudget. 5 talent points, 2.5% dps increase. So, now they have brought it in line.

Overall it feels like DW will not really change much. Give the EJ thinktank a couple weeks to work out the rotations and all that and I bet it doesnt really lose ground at all.. On trash Im already spiking up over 10k dps at times.. Can IT-Pest-Blood tap-HB-HB on trash.. Will be sick.

KM gets better for 2H builds IF its normalized.. But if its a flat 5 PPM regardless of weapon speed then it may not really be a net gain. We'll see. I could be thinking of that wrong, but thats the way it used to be, iirc. Using fast/fast and fullyl raid buffed im about 1s on my MH and OH swing times. Thats alot of contact for procs.. And the shorter the fight the better that could work out, based on how the PPM system works.

At least you have the Sigil! I havent even seen one drop.. I think one dropped for us and I wasnt there. Total crap.

[Draegan]

I left my guild since we can't get a 25 man together, and when we do it's with bugs and we wipe on patchwork all night.

Meh.

[Hawkbit]

I left my guild since we can't get a 25 man together, and when we do it's with bugs and we wipe on patchwork all night.

Meh.

So instead of doing a recruiting drive, you quit?  I'm not sure I understand. 

I've played with the same guild for 3.5 years since WoW launched.  Do people guildhop that much?

[Merusk]

I left my guild since we can't get a 25 man together, and when we do it's with bugs and we wipe on patchwork all night.

Meh.

So instead of doing a recruiting drive, you quit?  I'm not sure I understand. 

I've played with the same guild for 3.5 years since WoW launched.  Do people guildhop that much?

Pretty much, yes.  If you're still playing with the same group 3 years later you're an anomaly not the norm.   I'm still around many of the same folks, but the guild name has changed about 5 times now.   It's even more common for people to join smaller guilds, get geared and hop on up to the next guild doing the next tier of stuff if the first guild is at a point they just can't transition to the next tier of content.

[Zetor]

Yeah, I used to think small / casual guilds like mine that stick together forever (possibly across games) were commonplace, even if not the norm... after TBC, and especially WOTLK, it seems they're an almost-nonexistent minority, almost everyone is either raiding or wants to raid, and progress / purpz trump everything.

Might just be my perception though... 


-- Z.

[Fabricated]

I've been with the same guild since launch. Started with like 8ish active players, now we have like 60 people who play actively. We're all over the place in terms of location however so we can't really get 25 people on consistently. Also we have like 6 active healers in the entire guild. No one wants to play a healer class.

[Fordel]

Large scale raiding guilds are kinda like sport teams, except everyone is a free agent and there is no salary cap. If a player can move onto a 'better' guild, they will. The best guilds have the luxury of picking the best players from the pool, everyone else get's to constantly jockey for position among themselves and the various 'tiers' of raiding guilds.


The small tight-knit guild still exists, and is quite plentiful, but like someone else already mentioned... This type of guild isn't 'recruiting' and has no aspirations for 'greatness'. Also tend to be self sufficient and insular. Our guild on Doomhammer has been there since day 1 server release (arguably since Beta). The number of people on that server that actually know we exist that aren't in our guild? Maybe a dozen. Probably less if you don't count the people from our 'sister' guild that we team up with to run 10 mans regularly. Only like 2-4 of our members ever PuG or group outside the guild/alliance, the rest of us are content and happy with our small community.

Were there, just kinda invisible unless you go looking for us.

[Hawkbit]

That's pretty wild stuff.

In truth, we had a guild splinter (real life friendships were ended in the process) right after BC because we could no longer carry people in greens through raiding like we did in vanilla.  We took half the guild with us to form our raiding guild, so I guess I really haven't been immune to the process. 

But at this point, if the guild I'm in now broke up I'd likely quit on the spot.  I have no desire to find a new group of people that aren't douchebags. 

[Ratman_tf]

Last night our 25 man made it to Thaddius. It was the end of the evening and people were dropping out and coming in, so we just practiced the polarity transition with 25 people. Herding cats indeed. But our guild is good at co-ordination fights. We'll probably get him next time we run.

This is where I'm planning to start farming Prot/Ret sets from 10 man and heroics. My Holy set is pretty strong, and we had 8 healers, 4 of them priests, on the run last night. 

[Azaroth]

Question to Ret Pallies out there on Thaddius, since my group cleared to him last night as well.

Is it possible to cross TOO FAST?

A combination of being in melee range, actually paying attention, and having pursuit of justice making me move 15% faster than most everyone else had me on the other side generally before they had even started moving.

I got bitched at for doing a lot of raid damage, and I'm wondering if this could possibly be why. Because it's CERTAINLY not that I was moving too slowly, as it was insinuated that I "must be" doing.

[Ratman_tf]

Question to Ret Pallies out there on Thaddius, since my group cleared to him last night as well.

Is it possible to cross TOO FAST?

A combination of being in melee range, actually paying attention, and having pursuit of justice making me move 15% faster than most everyone else had me on the other side generally before they had even started moving.

I got bitched at for doing a lot of raid damage, and I'm wondering if this could possibly be why. Because it's CERTAINLY not that I was moving too slowly, as it was insinuated that I "must be" doing.

Polarity shift damage is a big concern. One of the first things to practice in the fight. Our tactic is to "pass on the right" and when we were running with 25 people, everyone steps left or steps right when the polairty shift happens, depending on if they changed or not.

So-
1. Polarity shift.
2. If you stayed the same, step left and wait.
3. If you changed, step right and then pass on the right.
4. Group up again when everyone is on the 'correct' side.

That seemed to help us a great deal. Not sure about the melees, but I believe he has a big hit box and you should do a little circle around him to prevent that. But I'm no melee, and had enough trouble paying attention to healing and positioning to notice how the melees handled it.

[w00key]

Last night our 25 man made it to Thaddius. It was the end of the evening and people were dropping out and coming in, so we just practiced the polarity transition with 25 people. Herding cats indeed. But our guild is good at co-ordination fights. We'll probably get him next time we run.

This is where I'm planning to start farming Prot/Ret sets from 10 man and heroics. My Holy set is pretty strong, and we had 8 healers, 4 of them priests, on the run last night. 

You don't need many healers on the last part of Thaddius, just two works for us. Either paladins (they are horrible dps in holy spec, holy gear) or random /roll, others can go smite the heck out of the boss. The dps is a bit of a problem here, every try some random guys just die, it takes a few tries and a bit of luck with the beserk timer to down Thaddius here

[Fordel]

Is it possible to cross TOO FAST?

Yes.