Here comes the next content patch (3.2)

[WindupAtheist]

Before the Ret nerfs, it didn't matter how much gear you had compared to the Paladin. They were just that obscene for the first 2/3rds of the expansion.

After years of being a joke spec, god it was great... *wipes away a single tear*

Anyway, as an addendum to Nebu's already answered "Can I PVE in PVP gear?" query, I plugged my info into wow-heroes and was told that I should be in Naxx 25. Now I assume it goes by item level and that my PVP-itemized gear is thus somewhat less useful than it seems to think, and furthermore Naxx isn't exactly serious business. But if you're like me and just want to keep up with whatever good weapon is coming out of heroics then yeah, you're golden.

[bhodi]

"Can I X in X Gear?"

If you can stay out of the fire and can become familiar with the boss gimmicks, the answer is probably "Yes."

If you are a DPSer, get recount and go to the training dummy in the ironforge warrior's section hallway. Do your rotation for a minute or two until your dps stabilizes. If you want to know what you do in a 10man, multiply that number by 1.25. If you want to know what you'd do in a 25, multiply that by 1.5. It's rough but it works. You should be doing at least 2k+ in heroics, 3k+ in naxx, 4k+ in ulduar, 5k+ in ToC, once you are geared FROM that instance. Entry level is being geared from the previous instance, so you'd want at least 3k before you step into ulduar.

If you're a healer, the answer is yes, but you might run out of mana fairly early. See if you can arrange for a druid to be your innervate buddy. If you can, you're fine.

If you're a tank, as long as you are def capped and aren't doing super end game content, again it's knowing how to play your character that makes the difference. That, and your healer, of course.

[Sheepherder]

Anyway, as an addendum to Nebu's already answered "Can I PVE in PVP gear?" query, I plugged my info into wow-heroes and was told that I should be in Naxx 25. Now I assume it goes by item level and that my PVP-itemized gear is thus somewhat less useful than it seems to think, and furthermore Naxx isn't exactly serious business.

Naxx10 Patchwerk requires 1700 DPS with an average raid comp after raid buffs are factored.  You can literally just walk right in in 78-80 quest blues or pvp gear.

[Rendakor]

And now for something completely different...

any word on how puggable the new Onyxia is? I did the 'original' back in vanilla, but that was like 4 years ago and whatnot. I saw ilevel245 stuff on her loot table, so the encounter is probably tuned out of reach for most groups... or is it?

One shot both 10 man and 25 man in PUGs yesterday; I was fairly picky about who I would take, so everyone was geared and not retarded.

10 man felt so easy it was silly. One guy died because he stood in deep breath, otherwise it was simple.

25 man was a little tougher; it actually felt like I was taking damage this time. We had someone get feared into the whelp cave, lost a couple dps on adds/breath, and I died once to the large add while out of heal range. Brez saved the day and we downed her. Phase 2 seems to take a lot longer in 10 man; maybe that's because most of our dps were busy killing whelps/large adds and not DPSing Ony herself.

[Ingmar]

When you say "geared" what level are you talking about?

[Ashamanchill]

When you say "geared" what level are you talking about?

Good question. I'm at 2349 on wowheroes, if that means anything. Where do you think that will land me?

[Rendakor]

I think I set the bar at 4300 Gearscore; didn't throw that number out because a lot of people don't like measuring people by GS. Several of us were in the 4700-5000 range, however.

[Ingmar]

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah OK so your review is worthless to us. 

[Rasix]

When you say "geared" what level are you talking about?

Good question. I'm at 2349 on wowheroes, if that means anything. Where do you think that will land me?

I think GearScore (the addon) score's are a lot higher than what you see on wowheroes.  I think the plugin page mentions about double.

edit: I had no idea what GearScore was until now. 

[K9]

Onyxia is about equivalent to Kologarn or Lord J in difficulty on 10. A fair bit of movement and healing, but nothing too threatening,

[Lakov_Sanite]

http://www.wow-heroes.com/index.php?zone=us&server=Blackwater%20Raiders&name=fortunado

i dunno wtf it means though.

[Ingmar]

When you say "geared" what level are you talking about?

Good question. I'm at 2349 on wowheroes, if that means anything. Where do you think that will land me?

I think GearScore (the addon) score's are a lot higher than what you see on wowheroes.  I think the plugin page mentions about double.

edit: I had no idea what GearScore was until now. 

Ooooooh OK. I didn't realize it was something other than the WoW-Heroes score.

[Selby]

Where do you think that will land me?

I consider anyone with a wow-heroes rating of over 2200 or so to be decently geared for anything outside of ToC.  Anyone over 2450 is really good, 2600+ is the realm of the high end for my server (I'm 2550 and #19 out of my class).  But I've also seen a 1500 geared DK pull 2500DPS, so knowing your class and rotation really makes a difference.  I don't trust gear scores alone personally, they just let me know whether a player is investing in their character (gems, enchants, semi-optimum gear matches, etc).

[Rendakor]

Sorry for the confusion, I meant 4300 with the addon, not 4300 Wow-Heroes. I stopped using WH because of hassles with dual spec, and occasional lag in updating gear. Being able to get a number on mouseover in game is much more convenient. 5000 GS ~= 2700 WH.


As an aside, I wish they'd release Wow-Heroes in addon form; it uses a much more intelligent set of calculations. GearScore basically takes the ilvl of a piece of gear and multiplies it by a constant, based on the slot (i.e. a 226 weapon is worth more points than a 226 ring). Wow-heroes doesn't weight by slot, but it deducts points for missing enchants, missing gems, etc.

[Sheepherder]

Blizzard weighs by slot when distributing points, weighing by slot when calculating a score is kind of important.

[Ingmar]

The issue isn't the weighting, its the lack of any kind of check on enchant by spec etc.

[Soulflame]

Onyxia on 10 (and 25 for that matter) is a complete lootbag.  Just beat on her til purples fall out, while not standing in front of her, behind her, in a cave, in fire, or in the path of deep breaths.

We killed her so fast on 10 she didn't even have an opportunity to deep breath.  Or the mechanic is bugged.  Either way, it was amusing to have 3 achievements pop up.

As a useless aside, my wow-heroes gear score is now over 2700.  

[Rasix]

Onyxia on 10 (and 25 for that matter) is a complete lootbag.  Just beat on her til purples fall out, while not standing in front of her, behind her, in a cave, in fire, or in the path of deep breaths.

We killed her so fast on 10 she didn't even have an opportunity to deep breath.  Or the mechanic is bugged.  Either way, it was amusing to have 3 achievements pop up.

As a useless aside, my wow-heroes gear score is now over 2700.  

Heh, back in the days of vendorstrike and shaman helms, I never did see deep breaths on sucessful attempts.  DB usually meant you lost.

Heh, with that score you'd be in my server's top progression guild.

[Soulflame]

There's at least one ally guild ahead of us in progression, and one or two horde guilds.  My guild believes in gearing up tanks and healers first, and for some reason they think I'm their best healer.

 

We saw at least two deep breaths on our successful 25 man attempt, but we had to focus down the add with the PBAE thing.  I think we saw two or three of those pop.

I'm not sure those adds are in the 10 man version.

[AutomaticZen]

The thing about the encounter is the Deep Breaths were always the hardest part with 40 people.  Except now you have the same space, for less people.  In 10 man, Deep Breath is entirely negligible.   Dodge Deep Breath, AoE Whelps, and watch out for the new Guardian pair spawn every 30 seconds or so.

Loot Pinata on 10, slightly more coordination on 25.

[Ratadm]

I always found picking her up after p2 the hardest part of ony 40.  She had a nasty habit of breathing on half the raid or agroing random people.

[Xeyi]

The hardest part for us was always the fears in phase 3.  Back then the tank would lose aggro if feared, and if anything was standing around not in fear they'd be getting a dragon in the face, as well as the side effect of dragon's breath wiping out anything in the vicinity.

Unfortunately this also applied to (not-fearable-at-all) totems and we had a lot of shamans back then 

It took us a while to work out that totems had to be placed up by the tank and not in the raid, else she'd turn and toast all of one side.  It was also a very bad idea to take any fear resist talents for the same reason (and so I used to have wand spec as a priest).

[Selby]

Oh wow, the memories of old Onyxia and the quirks that fight offered.  Sad that after all these years I remember this...

[Musashi]

I hear new Onyxia is not immune to taunt.  If so then that's kind of weak.

Old Onyxia was one of my favorites.

[WindupAtheist]

By the way, have I been reading the rankings wrong or are ret paladins down in the toilet with enhance shamans and boomkins and shit when it comes to arena? Because I'd heard that they're INVINCIBLE GODS WITH PLATE HEALS BUBBLE THREE LIVES LOH WTF!!1!

[Fordel]

By the way, have I been reading the rankings wrong or are ret paladins down in the toilet with enhance shamans and boomkins and shit when it comes to arena? Because I'd heard that they're INVINCIBLE GODS WITH PLATE HEALS BUBBLE THREE LIVES LOH WTF!!1!

They got massively nerfed a patch or two ago, yes. Enhance Shamans were buffed up a lot, for roughly 3 days, now I'm not sure where they stand again. Moonkins are where they always are, making everyone else look good by being so damn awful in PvP. I think Moonkins still technically beat Fire Mages in the rankings, but only just. 

[Gobbeldygook]

By the way, have I been reading the rankings wrong or are ret paladins down in the toilet with enhance shamans and boomkins and shit when it comes to arena? Because I'd heard that they're INVINCIBLE GODS WITH PLATE HEALS BUBBLE THREE LIVES LOH WTF!!1!

Retadins are fine in 3s, holy and prot paladins are an order of magnitude better, enhancement shaman are still a flavor of month, no one cares about the plight boomkins because they have two strong pvp trees available.

[Fordel]

I care, you jerk! 

[WindupAtheist]

I'm just tired of flicking over to the general forums and being treated to a new ten-page thread of "Ret is OP, I died to one in Arathi Basin!" tears from kiddies who splattered all their cooldowns against the side of a bubble and wonder why they lost.

[Fordel]

I think I've said this before, but it's still possible for a Ret to just asplode someone, it just requires a top tier weapon instead of lol-steel destroyer.

Same is said of any melee though, we've just reached the point in the expansion cycle where melee weapons get retarded. HP pools were too small to begin with this expansion, so average go has at best, 20k HP and watches all of that disappear in 1-3 seconds.

[Jayce]

I'm just tired of flicking over to the general forums

Problem found.

[Nevermore]

By the way, have I been reading the rankings wrong or are ret paladins down in the toilet with enhance shamans and boomkins and shit when it comes to arena? Because I'd heard that they're INVINCIBLE GODS WITH PLATE HEALS BUBBLE THREE LIVES LOH WTF!!1!

Retadins are fine in 3s, holy and prot paladins are an order of magnitude better, enhancement shaman are still a flavor of month, no one cares about the plight boomkins because they have two strong pvp trees available.

Wait, when did feral become a strong pvp spec?

[Ingmar]

Arena spec, not necessarily pvp spec. Its that new instant-nature-spell-with-5-combo-points thing.

[Shrike]

Basically giving the fuckers shaman MW capability with more control, while still feeding us the line of shit about ghost wolf not being enabled indoors because, "It'd tread on the druid class' shapeshifting paradigm".

[Ingmar]

Basically giving the fuckers shaman MW capability with more control, while still feeding us the line of shit about ghost wolf not being enabled indoors because, "It'd tread on the druid class' shapeshifting paradigm".

Druids can't travel form indoors either.