WOTLK raid progression.

[Morfiend]

So, my ragtag band ran Nax10 for the first time this weekend. We had a blast, there was 7 of us, and 3 pugs. Two of the pugs where decent, and the last one was horrible. But from a group where no one except one healer had ever done nax, we did fantastic I think.

We ended up at Sapphron. We 1 shot a lot of the fights. The only ones that gave us any real problems where Grubbulus(sp?) and Thaddius.

[Ingmar]

So, my ragtag band ran Nax10 for the first time this weekend. We had a blast, there was 7 of us, and 3 pugs. Two of the pugs where decent, and the last one was horrible. But from a group where no one except one healer had ever done nax, we did fantastic I think.

We ended up at Sapphron. We 1 shot a lot of the fights. The only ones that gave us any real problems where Grubbulus(sp?) and Thaddius.

That is definitely a good job. How many hours would you say you spent?

[K9]

Doing Kel'Thuzard with a melee-heavy raid is pretty painful I discovered tonight.

[Azaroth]

Whatever. Doing ANYTHING with a melee-heavy raid is painful. There's absolutely no boss fight that I can think of in WOTLK where a melee is advantageous versus a ranged DPS.

In just about every fight there's something that makes DPSing as melee far more complicated.

[Fabricated]

Melee rule in any fight without a retarded kiting or AoE element, especially since melee are the king shit of DPS ignoring hunters. Razuvious, Patchwerk, Grand Widow (not like they have to worry about much), Loatheb. That's about it though.

[Khaldun]

As my main is a rogue, I'm really hating the suppurating hostility towards melee DPS that oozes out around every corner of Wrath. There are almost no fights where ranged DPS are at special risk. There are tons and tons where melee DPS, especially rogues, are at serious risk if they don't do everything exactly right. For example, there's a huge overuse of whirlwind and retaliate which more or less require a rogue to get the fuck away before they even start, and neither move is signalled with emotes or any other mechanism well in advance on bosses or trash mobs. It's like the overuse of dual-direction cleaves in TBC Heroics when they first went live. Which of course also impacts your DPS, and when people are hovering over the meters every second, that counts. One of my few cool new things isn't even being appreciated much, also: with Tricks of the Trade, I'm actually helping weaker tanks keep aggro and boosting the raid DPS considerably, especially when the tank can output decent DPS to begin with, as with a tank DK.

[Simond]

Patchwerk.  Really, really not fun.

 

The 25 man version is really one of the worst parts of the whole place. It's not terribly technical, it's not about skill or coordination, it's simply about tossing some meat in front of a guy that hits like a mach truck and praying your healers can keep up.

Essentially, it's like most of the shitty BC fights.

"Kel'Thuzad make Patchwerk his avatar of war"
http://eqbeastiary.allakhazam.com/search.shtml?id=6416

This is not a co-incidence.

[K9]

Do Sapphiron's Chills ever go under him? We have the ranged kite the chills, so it would seem that melee are slightly better off there, but I'm not sure if chills go under Sapph ever, so I may be wrong.

However, it does seem that the difficulty incurred by being melee-heavy isn't always balanced by their superior DPS in fights like Patch and Loatheb. Healing up 5 frost-tombed melee on KT in 10 man is a bit of an arse.

[Fordel]

The other thing to consider with Melee DPS, is almost all of it is 'infinite' in duration. No such thing as a OOM Rogue.

[Shrike]

There is such a thing as an OOM enhancement shaman, though. Well, if there's no ret pallie around, and usually there isn't.

Blizzard has always been melee hostile, not simply just WoW. Diablo springs to mind, especially Diablo 2--which was particularly egregious following patch 1.7 and patch 1.10.

[Azaroth]

Sapphiron's blizzards are a pain in the nuts as melee. Yes, they come into melee range. Often.

They also prevent me from doing DPS whatsoever after I run away from them and wait for them to GTFO so I can go back in.

This "supreriority of melee DPS" has me confused, too. I'm currently seeing SPriests and Boomkins pull 5k and be untouchable at the top most often, with Mages, Hunters, Ele Shaman being at the top sometimes too. Those are all ranged and mostly casters.

I don't see DKs destroy anything anymore, rogues are generally middle of the pack, Fury warriors got better but they're not anywhere near as OP as I anticipated (Perhaps the bad ones are still gemming for hit? I don't know..).

As a Ret, I'll pull untouchable DPS on undead trash. That's about it.

[Ingmar]

Our top dps tends to be hunter, moonkin, retnoob, in various different orders depending on the fight. Sometimes the enhance shaman gets up in there too. I dunno, from the front side of the mob (tanking) it seems like things are generally better for our melee than they were in TBC.

[Soulflame]

The only fights I find to be truly annoying as a ret paladin are Grobb, Heigan, Sapph... and other fights where there's just too much movement.  Well, and those stupid scions.

Also, if ranged DPS is running out of mana, there's something seriously wrong with your raid composition.  Get a paladin of any sort in there, and have them judge wisdom.  Tada, mana problems solved.  Or get a ret paladin (yay), shadow priest, or survival hunter.

Thaddius is an awesome fight for ret paladins, for example.  Yay for charges.

[Lightstalker]

I abandoned my Rogue for a SPriest in the Burning Crusade after dealing with progression through Karazhan.
I abandoned my SPriest for an Enhance Shaman in Wrath because things aren't so bad for melee dps anymore.  They are still bad, mind you, but they aren't as bad as they have been in the past.

In 25-man:  Warlock, Mage and Hunter should be top DPS based on the strength of the class abilities right now (even on a melee favorable fight like Patchwerk).  Warriors should run away from everyone on Thaddius and Loetheb because their Deep Wounds gets to run amuck for a very long time on these bosses.  Outside of those two fights where a class ability simply overwhelms the player's contribution, it comes down to the player pushing their buttons at the right time.  As Enhance I can top the damage meter on:  Archavon, Patchwerk, Gluth, Thaddius, Widow, Maenexxa, Gothik, Noth, Loetheb, KelThuzad, Sapphirion, Malygos, and Sarth+2.  That's 2/3 of Naxx plus all the other end-game raids at the moment, so while there is a lot of running around like an idiot and standing in fire on a lot of fights melee isn't in that badly off.  For reference I clear 5k on Patch/Gluth/Maenexxa and 8k on Thaddius, so there is room over the top for stronger classes and better players but the choice of class won't disqualify you from claiming top DPS in your raid by itself.

The place I do feel utterly useless is clearing trash.  Dropping totems will put you in a ready state right when everything falls down dead.  Death Knight wing is just pain for melee with too many whirlwinds and way too many spell effects to actually stay on target.  Fortunately, trash is taking less time than bosses in a full Naxx clear, instead of dominating the day's activities like with Molten Core.

[Morfiend]

So, my ragtag band ran Nax10 for the first time this weekend. We had a blast, there was 7 of us, and 3 pugs. Two of the pugs where decent, and the last one was horrible. But from a group where no one except one healer had ever done nax, we did fantastic I think.

We ended up at Sapphron. We 1 shot a lot of the fights. The only ones that gave us any real problems where Grubbulus(sp?) and Thaddius.

That is definitely a good job. How many hours would you say you spent?

Probably 6 over 2 days. With a good portion of the time spent explaining fights.

We went back yesterday and killed Sapphron in 3 tries. We also found out:

Doing Kel'Thuzard with a melee-heavy raid is pretty painful I discovered tonight.

Yes, yes it is. We couldn't bring him down. Probably didnt help that our DPS was low, we had 2 tanks, and one feral in half tank gear, and one of our main healers was so high on pain pills she had no idea what was going on half the time.

[Sheepherder]

The other thing to consider with Melee DPS, is almost all of it is 'infinite' in duration. No such thing as a OOM Rogue.

Can you name a class that has troubles with mana nowadays?

Fury warriors got better but they're not anywhere near as OP as I anticipated (Perhaps the bad ones are still gemming for hit? I don't know..)

No, they're not willing to wear any leather and telling themselves that itemization is better this time around.  Also, the two-handers make rage generation and avoiding stalling your rotation difficult-ish.

Our top dps tends to be hunter, moonkin, retnoob, in various different orders depending on the fight. Sometimes the enhance shaman gets up in there too. I dunno, from the front side of the mob (tanking) it seems like things are generally better for our melee than they were in TBC.

They are, this time around I didn't double my DPS going from Blues to tier gear + entry purples and expect another doubling by the time I hit end-game.

Warriors should run away from everyone on Thaddius and Loetheb because their Deep Wounds gets to run amuck for a very long time on these bosses.

Deep Wounds tends to lower reported warrior DPS when there's a lot of movement and only a single target, because it tends to trick meters into thinking that your warriors have a lot more DPS up-time than they actually do have, because they're constantly doing damage.

Which is why I only use the "Damage Done" option on meters for making determinations, because I know it's valid.  Unless you were retarded and got yourself killed, in which case it's equally valid, because the DPS you could have done generally doesn't kill a boss.

EDIT: Pruned.

[Ingmar]

The other thing to consider with Melee DPS, is almost all of it is 'infinite' in duration. No such thing as a OOM Rogue.

Can you name a class that has troubles with mana nowadays?

Unsupported, moonkins have quite a bit of trouble. Nobody has much trouble with replenishment in the mix.

[Vash]

 Also, the two-handers make rage generation and avoiding stalling your rotation difficult-ish.

Yes, rage gen is extremely streaky as fury and it's compounded when you don't have any haste group buffs in your raid.  Finished up a 10 man Naxx the other night and without Imp Icy Talons or WF totem there are consistently periods where you sit there for 1-2 gcd's waiting for your white swings to land so you can get some rage, then they hit and your rage bar is almost full    This can make it pretty hard to keep a steady flow of special attacks going every time they're off cooldown.  It's also the reason Fury warriors put up crazy numbers or at least significantly better numbers on fights with splash damage.  The damage keeps us raged up so we don't have to contend with dry spells and we can always use specials as soon as they're off cooldown.

I just think it's lame that the new whirlwind glyph is the only significant dps boost for fury warriors in 3.0.8 and Bloodsurge actually seems nerfed to me in it's new implementation.

Also, minus the ass cleaves from TBC, raiding seems just as unfriendly to mele as ever in Wrath so far to me.  If I didn't have almost 30k hp raid buffed in dps gear I'd eat the dust a lot, no threat dump is serious business.

[K9]

Can you name a class that has troubles with mana nowadays?

Holy Priests have the most difficulty out of all the healers I'm sure. I rarely have problems so long as I get replenishment, however raiding without replenishment makes life as a holy priest a lot worse. It doesn't help that Shadowfiend dies before it gets more than one or two ticks off on the fights where you need mana the most (Sapph and Grobb).

[Sheepherder]

Re: Replenishment

Are you really trying to tell me that your server population isn't at least 30% ret paladin?

[Sjofn]

Most of the paladins in my guild do crazy shit like tank and heal. 

We did finally convince one of our trusty hunters to respec to survival (my main is a tankin' DK, otherwise *I* would be the survival hunter) and another dude hit 80 with his retnub, so things are looking better for our poor mana users that had to do without (no!) for the first couple-a weeks of raiding.

[Azaroth]

As Ret DPS is surpassed more and more (single target DPS from Ret lags behind, other classes are being buffed while we get nerfed, and we'll lose a lot of umph when Ulduar comes out) and Ret PvP becomes far less viable with each patch (I use my shield basically as a quick burst interrupt or CC breaker now, then click it off so I can DPS again.. I'd much prefer if it was a three second ability instead of a 12 second one in its current state), you're going to find that more and more Paladins end up Holy and Prot.

Besides - there are only more nerfs to Ret incoming and everyone knows it. The spec will become obsolete before Blizzard is finished with it, like it always has been shortly after every time it ever got buffed.

[Ironwood]

Tanks have 36-40K.

Wut ?

[Dewdrop]

Yea, in full 25 man Tier 7 with mostly all BiS items and gemmed for stam.. Also I think most of our tanks are JC/BS so they get ALOT of stam from the JC only gems + extra sockets. Last time i looked our Pally tank had 40k, 2x Warrior tanks had 37 and 38, DK tank had 40k and Feral druid tank the other night had 46k. Im sure if they swap gear around to stack avoidance or other stats they lose some hp, but I doubt it's alot..

Hell on my DK with tanking gear on and NO buffs im sitting at 32k hp.. and half my tanking gear is blue.

[Lakov_Sanite]

doomgaurds now have 40k+ health as well

[Ingmar]

Yeah those must be 25 man gear and fully raid buffed. I'm only hitting 36k-ish as a warrior fully buffed with commanding shout up, and I have a lot of stamina for a warrior running 10s.

[Ironwood]

Yeah, I was kinda talking about 10 man Patchwerk....

Not even approaching those kinda STA figures yet...

[K9]

So we asked our less experienced Warrior to MT patchwerk tonight, full of vim and vigor he proceded to charge Patch.... while he was in the middle of frogger

Hilarity ensued

[Merusk]

I'd laugh at frogger more if more of my guildmates weren't complete and utter cock-ups with machines in the "passable to run WoW" range. 

Every week 3-5 people die then complain "I was way in front of it."  Never mind the trick is - as I have explained NUMEROUS times- if your framerate sucks or you lag often, run at the rear of the damn things.

[Soulflame]

I'm fairly sure there's something wonky with Frogger.  I've run through the damn thing too many times, only to die directly between the slimes, to not believe that.  I've also watched people run right through the slimes, and of course die, which I can't believe they are doing on purpose.  Or it could be internet lag.  It's not the computer itself, of that I'm fairly certain.

Of course, if we do have to run through it multiple times, I just bubble through it, mostly out of sheer annoyance.

[Paelos]

My computer is coming up on 5 years old, and I never die in Frogger. Like Merusk says, you run just behind the tail of each blob. That means you never lose.

[Ratman_tf]

Frogger is a good example of why we're not even close to having twitchy action MMOGs yet.

[K9]

Frogger is a good example of why we're not even close to having twitchy action MMOGs yet.

Darkfall 

[Dren]

Maybe it was mentioned earlier in the thread and I'm too lazy to find it, but "The Safety Dance" is another test for your computer/lag performance.  We wiped twice last night before we figured out to tell everyone to stop following other people and just look at where the twinkling ground is at.  When looking at other characters in your raid, everything was screwed up.

Even then I still got hit once on our successful run at it.  I didn't die, but when it happened I couldn't help thinking this kind of mechanic in raids is just not a good idea for MMOs.  I was doing it right and ran for the ground that was just finishing having the green lava stuff come up.  The problem was my graphics said the lava fell down when obviously I actually ran right into it just at the end.  Frustrating.

[Soulflame]

I don't die on Heigan, unless the tank decides to run from Zone 4... deeper into Zone 4.     So, I don't think it's me being stupid on Frogger.  I could be wrong.