AFKing for epics in raids

[Ingmar]

Wait.. people still play shaman?

Playing one caused me to quit.  I want to love the class, but Blizzard refuses to let me. 

Seriously? Apart from about one patch worth of time at the start of Wrath, my shaman has been great fun. (Mostly elemental spec, which was weak at the start of 3.0, but has definitely been fixed.)

[Sheepherder]

You've already got complete parity between 10 and 25 man content. How much more do you want? Add in 5 man content and you have way more than 25 man content.

Parity in number of options, not in loot quality.  Although that's pretty close too.

[Nebu]

Seriously? Apart from about one patch worth of time at the start of Wrath, my shaman has been great fun. (Mostly elemental spec, which was weak at the start of 3.0, but has definitely been fixed.)

Elemental spec was fun solo but dps is done better by many other classes.  Too much downtime for my tastes.  Then again, I didn't have top of the line gear and was used to playing a 70 mage and a 70 rogue before playing my shaman.  My shaman was rejuv and paladins, priests, and druids were almost always taken on raids before me.  I won't even get into the fact that I played on a pvp server.   

[Ingmar]

Seriously? Apart from about one patch worth of time at the start of Wrath, my shaman has been great fun. (Mostly elemental spec, which was weak at the start of 3.0, but has definitely been fixed.)

Elemental spec was fun solo but dps is done better by many other classes.  Too much downtime for my tastes.  Then again, I didn't have top of the line gear and was used to playing a 70 mage and a 70 rogue before playing my shaman.  My shaman was rejuv and paladins, priests, and druids were almost always taken on raids before me.  I won't even get into the fact that I played on a pvp server.   

If that raid selection stuff was happening in TBC, your guild was waaaaaaaaaaaay outside of the mainstream for class selection. The standard operating procedure for 25 man raids was 'get as many resto shamans as you can and chain heal/heroism to victory.' That pendulum has swung a bit now but resto shamans are still good, and elemental dps is plenty competitive now as well (as it was at 70 pre-3.0). I have little experience with enhance, but the dogs are annoying as shit in pvp...

[Nebu]

Enhance was a wonderful way to level solo.  I was enhance to level 70 and then played with resto and elemental. 

I never did a single 25 person raid.  I don't like people that much.  I just noticed that noone wanted shamen for 5 man heroics or for pvp, so I quit. 

[kildorn]

Enhance was a wonderful way to level solo.  I was enhance to level 70 and then played with resto and elemental. 

I never did a single 25 person raid.  I don't like people that much.  I just noticed that noone wanted shamen for 5 man heroics or for pvp, so I quit. 

That was because early on, heroics were "you brought CC, right? RIGHT?"

But honestly, I resto healed heroics Fine in TBC. Earth Shield is hax.

[Ingmar]

Enhance was a wonderful way to level solo.  I was enhance to level 70 and then played with resto and elemental. 

I never did a single 25 person raid.  I don't like people that much.  I just noticed that noone wanted shamen for 5 man heroics or for pvp, so I quit. 

That was because early on, heroics were "you brought CC, right? RIGHT?"

But honestly, I resto healed heroics Fine in TBC. Earth Shield is hax.

I would go so far as to say that a resto shaman, in a vaccuum, would have been my first choice for any instance that didn't need shackle. At least once we all figured out on the Alliance side what shamans actually DID other than spam frostshock on you in WSG.

[ezrast]

Going back to the other derail, why even place strict limits on the number of players in a raid? It wouldn't be so hard to let players bring ten, fifteen, twenty, or thirty-seven players into an instance and scale all the mobs accordingly. If you must have special look-how-leet-I-am indicators hardcoded into the game, there could be better gear and slightly more complicated encounters at beyond, say, twenty-five people or something. But if you can have basically the same content for 10 and 25, no reason to exclude all the numbers in between.

Just another post from the "every game should be more like Diablo 2 and/or CoX" department.

[Fordel]

It wouldn't be so hard to let players bring ten, fifteen, twenty, or thirty-seven players into an instance and scale all the mobs accordingly.

If all mobs were 100% tank and spank, then yes, you could do that. It is slightly less then trivial with the current raid encounters though.


-edit- words, letters, stuff.

[kildorn]

Going back to the other derail, why even place strict limits on the number of players in a raid? It wouldn't be so hard to let players bring ten, fifteen, twenty, or thirty-seven players into an instance and scale all the mobs accordingly. If you must have special look-how-leet-I-am indicators hardcoded into the game, there could be better gear and slightly more complicated encounters at beyond, say, twenty-five people or something. But if you can have basically the same content for 10 and 25, no reason to exclude all the numbers in between.

Just another post from the "every game should be more like Diablo 2 and/or CoX" department.

What Fordel said. A lot of the current fight mechanics couldn't scale properly to N players. That said, doesn't CoX have a cap on players in a mission? It's just the Monster types that scale to your level and allow N players to engage them.

[Sjofn]

I think group size is 8? I dunno how the one raid works though.

[rk47]

I don't get the hate.  If the game doesn't pose a challenge, what's the point?  It just becomes an exercise in spending time to get a pull on the slot machine. 

I'm not a gaming elitest.  Hell, I'm barely more than competent at most games.  If an encounter doesn't have some risk/reward balance, I get bored and quit.  Large scale raids are little more than organizational affairs.... and in the case of WoW, having the right gear.

This may seem odd, but i always wished WoW raid had a more 'here's me, and there's the mob I need to face' style of raiding. Instead of 5 (or was it 6) people beating up on one guy, why can't we have 6 players vs 12 mobs that everyone can take 2 each? So at least we know who's really doing anything and why the other guy suck at what's he doing when he faceplanted first and spread uneven load on the rest?

[Triforcer]

Because that would be hard.  MMOs aren't meant to be hard.  They are meant to give the illusion of difficulty, so that the person feels good about himself/herself.  See the "why isn't MMO mob AI better?" thread for details. 

[Fordel]

This may seem odd, but i always wished WoW raid had a more 'here's me, and there's the mob I need to face' style of raiding. Instead of 5 (or was it 6) people beating up on one guy, why can't we have 6 players vs 12 mobs that everyone can take 2 each? So at least we know who's really doing anything and why the other guy suck at what's he doing when he faceplanted first and spread uneven load on the rest?

Well you have this guy, he's sorta like that. Also fits the bill. Can't forget this fucking prick. Heck, even good old Darkmaster Gandling had a little element of that.


The main issue is the class/specs themselves aren't designed around the idea. You either dumb the mobs down back to solo quest trash, or you just tell a bunch of specs they aren't allowed to raid anymore. You also have to deal with the fact the players themselves will always work cooperatively unless specifically forced away from it.

[skolor]

The main issue is the class/specs themselves aren't designed around the idea. You either dumb the mobs down back to solo quest trash, or you just tell a bunch of specs they aren't allowed to raid anymore. You also have to deal with the fact the players themselves will always work cooperatively unless specifically forced away from it.

Not necessarily a bad thing. I don't particularly like the "Every spec should be raid-ready" mindset Blizzard is going towards. I for one rather like the PVE-PVE-PVP setup for talent trees, where the two PVE specs were significantly different. Telling Disc Priests they can't come to raids, or Ret pallies that can't come, because that isn't what their spec does, isn't a bad thing.

[Delmania]

The main issue is the class/specs themselves aren't designed around the idea. You either dumb the mobs down back to solo quest trash, or you just tell a bunch of specs they aren't allowed to raid anymore. You also have to deal with the fact the players themselves will always work cooperatively unless specifically forced away from it.

Not necessarily a bad thing. I don't particularly like the "Every spec should be raid-ready" mindset Blizzard is going towards. I for one rather like the PVE-PVE-PVP setup for talent trees, where the two PVE specs were significantly different. Telling Disc Priests they can't come to raids, or Ret pallies that can't come, because that isn't what their spec does, isn't a bad thing.

Specs should indicate playstyle, not function.  If you tell a ret paladin they can't come because the raid is full on dps, that's one thing. Telling them they can't come because "lolret" is quite another.

[kildorn]

Having useless specs was bad, and having pvp only specs was also bad.

Now, having a SHITTY spec is something entirely different. But going "lolret" or "ahahaha. HAHA. ha. You're disc. HAH." were horrible from a gameplay and a social perspective.

[skolor]

Having useless specs was bad, and having pvp only specs was also bad.

I disagree. Having a pvp only spec is definitely a good thing. It helps to draw the line between PVP and PVE, which helps a great deal. All too often people will come to a raid with a PVP spec, and claim that since there is another person of the same tree in the raid, there's no reason for them not to be there.

[Fordel]

Having useless specs was bad, and having pvp only specs was also bad.

I disagree. Having a pvp only spec is definitely a good thing. It helps to draw the line between PVP and PVE, which helps a great deal. All too often people will come to a raid with a PVP spec, and claim that since there is another person of the same tree in the raid, there's no reason for them not to be there.

Well, you're wrong. Just because some people suck at speccing, isn't a justification for making multiple specs terrible at huge chunks of the overall game. We tried that in WoW-Vanilla, it sucked. We moved on.

[kildorn]

If someone is trying to justify a Bad spec (and putting out bad *whatever his role is* in the raid with it), fuck em.

But making entire trees "olo, you just pvp with that" is just stupid. If you show up with pvp only talents, be prepared to be mocked for it. I did all the time, just ask Ingmar! But it's far better for the game's health to allow every tree to be at least somewhat viable in it's pve role, even if the tree has PVP only talents.

[Nebu]

If someone is trying to justify a Bad spec (and putting out bad *whatever his role is* in the raid with it), fuck em.

This is the crux of the problem with WoW (or all diku MMO's for that matter).  If they bothered to balance abilities properly, then there would be no good or bad specs, just specs that play differently. 

[kildorn]

If someone is trying to justify a Bad spec (and putting out bad *whatever his role is* in the raid with it), fuck em.

This is the crux of the problem with WoW (or all diku MMO's for that matter).  If they bothered to balance abilities properly, then there would be no good or bad specs, just specs that play differently. 

Enh, there's also just clicking buttons randomly and ending up with a bad spec. I'm sure I could throw craploads of points in conflicting talents and wind up with something Horrible (grab pvp, pve dps and pve tanking talents all at once without just trying to move up a tree).

But that's different than saying "haha, subt rogue, gtfo"

[Ingmar]

You couldn't create trees that didn't have better or worse specs without severely limiting what talents could do and maybe how many of them there are. If there are any synergies in the talent trees at all, then there will always be bad specs.

[Lantyssa]

I'm fine with games that let you make 'bad' specs as long as those choices give something to the player making them.  It would be nice if other players weren't so ready to turn down playing with them because they don't have the most optimized build though.

[Hindenburg]

It would be nice if other players weren't so ready to turn down playing with them because they don't have the most optimized build though.

Was like that before they allowed people to inspect specs.

It's much better to have the option. MUCH. Seriously.

[Gobbeldygook]

 

This is the crux of the problem with WoW (or all diku MMO's for that matter).  If they bothered to balance abilities properly, then there would be no good or bad specs, just specs that play differently. 

I'd expect this sort of talk in a game with a truly heinous spec situation (e.g. shadowbane),  but not in WoW where the developers very much hold your hand through the spec process.  You can get 90% of the way there by just picking a tree, clicking every talent that gives you a new ability or makes your numbers bigger and then picking another tree once you run out of talents.  The major ways I've found of screwing this up:

-Tunnel visioning, e.g. 0/71/0.
-Picking talents that are obviously antithetical to your role.  If you're a DPS or healer, you don't need any of the survivability talents in PVE.
-Doing it wrong.  If the way you intend to play is wrong (e.g. chain casting arcane missiles), optimizing for that is just going to lead to sadness.

I like that there are obviously terrible specs and ways to gem your gear.  It makes it easy to spot good players that happen to have bad gear and vice versa.

[Lantyssa]

It's much better to have the option. MUCH. Seriously.

I think we've already demonstrated a very different play philosophy already.

If I look at someone's spec it is purely out of curiousity.  Others seem to use it as a way to weed out the chaff.

[Fordel]

There is min/max optimized, and there is "what the hell are they supposed to BE?"

[skolor]

Well, you're wrong. Just because some people suck at speccing, isn't a justification for making multiple specs terrible at huge chunks of the overall game. We tried that in WoW-Vanilla, it sucked. We moved on.

PVP and PVE are two completely different aspects of the game. Saying Tree 1 and 2 are for PVE and spec 3 is for PVP is not a problem at all. It gives more room for room for differentiation in the trees, rather than having to limit all trees to having some amount of PVP and PVE talents.  Admittedly I don't PVP much, but if I understand the archetypes correctly they are:
DPS - Hit things until it stops moving
Healer - Make sure one or more players is not going to die
Tank - Make the big guy hit you, and be able to survive those hits
PVP - Kill something which is actively attacking you before it can kill you

Saying each class' talent trees are "Pick 3 of those archetypes", having one as purely PVP, and two as PVE doesn't seem that aweful.

Now, this is more or less a moot point. I can't see Blizzard going back and re-designing the talent trees for this, but if from the start it was balanced that way, so that each class had 2 PVE trees and a PVP tree, and considerations were not made for the PVE trees in PVP and vice-versa, there would be far more room for expansion and class differences. Now they've got to try and balance 36 different possible major spec-types, plus hybrids for both PVP and PVE. It means all the classes have to have more or less the same tools in both, and doesn't leave a lot of room for uniqueness.

[Sjofn]

There is min/max optimized, and there is "what the hell are they supposed to BE?"

This. I generally don't look at someone's spec unless they are showing themselves to be totally inept at their class, so by and large, I don't give a crap about someone's spec, because I have not actually run across THAT many people I would consider truly terrible. But if someone is, I'll take a peek at their spec to see if something there is making them make the jump from "not very good" to "actually really bad."

More often than not, though, it isn't the spec. 

[skolor]

This. I generally don't look at someone's spec unless they are showing themselves to be totally inept at their class, so by and large, I don't give a crap about someone's spec, because I have not actually run across THAT many people I would consider truly terrible. But if someone is, I'll take a peek at their spec to see if something there is making them make the jump from "not very good" to "actually really bad."

More often than not, though, it isn't the spec. 

Actually, going from a "I thought these talents looked cool" build to one of the cookie cutter builds you find on WoWWiki and the like, the ones that are designed to put out the most dps, heals or similar, will generally show a large increase in DPS numbers for most players (After a given period of time, where they have to re-learn the play style).

Anyone putting out under 1500 DPS in a raid should have their spec looked at, with even a moderately optimal build, they should be doing that as long as they have decent quest blues. We had a Shadow priest recently join our Naxx raid, having hit 80 hours before, and not have a single epic item, putting out 1700 dps. Likewise, we've had a few people doing 1300-1500 dps and after a sit down with a more experienced player of that class who said "Get rid of those talents, get these instead" they were doing 1700+.

[Khaldun]

I appreciate it when there is something in a talent tree whose potential initially goes unnoticed and then suddenly people are like, "Whoa, look at at that!" Honor Among Thieves builds for rogues is a good example. At first glance, HaT just looked like a kind of ok talent, but it's deep in the Subtlety tree, where mostly PvE raiding rogues don't go--then more and more people started to play HaT raiders, because they realized if you were in a larger raid with ranged dps, you could essentially spam Eviscerate constantly.

On the other hand, I hate class designs where there are abilities that really serve no useful function at all--that no one in their right mind would choose--or abilities that for some reason you simply shouldn't use.

[Nebu]

What's wrong with taking an ability because it makes the game more fun?  I don't have to be the most dps efficient or heal efficient to have fun.  There's more to fun than min-maxxing a toon and waiting for hours to gather widgets from the slot machine. 

Other players shouldn't be able to easily see your spec and gear.  It allows easy elitism.  If they want to see my gear or spec, it should require my permission.  Then people would be forced to judge other players based on ability (and how annoying they are in ventrilo).

[Hindenburg]

It allows easy elitism.

That is a good thing.

Easier for you to get away from elitists. Easier for elitists to get away from people they think will suck. Everybody wins.

[kildorn]

What's wrong with taking an ability because it makes the game more fun?  I don't have to be the most dps efficient or heal efficient to have fun.  There's more to fun than min-maxxing a toon and waiting for hours to gather widgets from the slot machine. 

Other players shouldn't be able to easily see your spec and gear.  It allows easy elitism.  If they want to see my gear or spec, it should require my permission.  Then people would be forced to judge other players based on ability (and how annoying they are in ventrilo).

Nobody I play with will kick someone out due to having a talent that makes the game fun for them (unless it's Improved Earth Elemental: Reduces cooldown by 18 minutes)

We'll quietly go  if your spec is insane, like having a axe mastery and no sword mastery on a sword using character, or like 1/5 in tons of random talents. But we'll also only LOOK if something is really odd, like you're clocking in right above the holy priest on the dps charts, or putting out shit all healing (healing meters: useless shit for the most part), or if you're the tank and just got instagibbed by trash. And if it's really bad, I might have a private nice conversation trying to explain the game mechanics behind why X Y or Z might be a better setup for their playstyle. Not everyone loves the math behind the games, so they don't go into detail of why something random like Epidemic is actually a really great pve talent.

I'm not looking for you to be PERFECT. I am looking for people to not waste my time and be indistinguishable from an empty group slot. Likewise, I won't attend raids I can't pull my weight in: I won't be the jackass wasting everyone else's time.