Here comes the next content patch (3.2)

[Lakov_Sanite]

Bahahaha!
Pre-3.2: Let's nerf the fuck out of bone shield, unbreakable armour et al! Sod DK tanks!
Post-3.2: Wait, why are there no DK tanks at all any more?
3.2.2: Unnerf everything!

My guilds best tank pre and post nerf has been a DK, the only people that are really affected by minor tweaks like these are flavor of the month players.

[Nevermore]

The Vampiric Blood change is a tank change, isn't it? I thought that was blood's version of Last Stand.

Yeah.  It looked like a nerf at first because the patch notes only mentioned the duration reduction.  It turns out Vampiric Blood and Unbreakable Armor both also had their cooldown reduced to 1 minute along with Bone Shield, even though it's not mentioned in the notes.  That also explains why the Strength buff on UBA was reduced as well.  It's making for happy tanks but the PvPers are pissed off at the UBA change.  I still use Frost in PvP (though it's really more of a PvE build, to be honest) and I'll take UBA as a better tanking talent over a PvP talent any day.

[Sjofn]

Bahahaha!
Pre-3.2: Let's nerf the fuck out of bone shield, unbreakable armour et al! Sod DK tanks!
Post-3.2: Wait, why are there no DK tanks at all any more?
3.2.2: Unnerf everything!

The change to frost presence particularly made me feel this way. 

I mean, I could still tank fine, but I could also tell that those changes were probably a little past where they needed to be. :P

[K9]

Killed Hodir in 3:17 tonight 

[Ingmar]

Ha, it takes us like 7 minutes. Your DPS is apparently >>> ours. 

[Soulflame]

My 10 man group just has firefighter and yogg+1 left for the rusted proto achievement.

I'll be so glad when this is done.

Firefighter is just... it's too much fire.  Everywhere.  CHASING YOU.  Still, a moderately fun fight.

[WindupAtheist]

I like how you can't get a group for a heroic TOC unless you're already in raid gear because some faggot healer wants an easy run. But I can't just get a new weapon for honor points, because WoW rewards grouping and blah blah blah. Buncha cunts.

[Musashi]

That complaint is as old as time.  I'm pretty sure Moses was LFG for a geared medic Jew to cross the desert.  Lucky for him he dropped Eternal Salvation (BiS Healer item).  The solution to PuG woes is always make your own PuGs.  Nobody cares if the raid leader is geared if he gets the job done.

[Rasix]

Hah, I got turned down for a regular TOC run last night.  I made the mistake of telling them I've never been.  I'm pretty sure my week old 80 warlock with 2k SP (with just fel armor) can handle a regular instance run.

Did a heroic VH later with no problems.  And unlike the other geared warlock in the group, I managed not to pull aggro on a boss.  Still, it got me thinking that perhaps affliction isn't the best spec for heroics.  Does OK on the bosses, but the trash dies before you can even get going. And that spell rotation... I just love watching 4 timers.

[Musashi]

Yea, it sucks for trash.  But that's true of a lot of stuff.  The problem is that when yous start getting less complicated, it gets pretty boring.

[Sjofn]

I like how you can't get a group for a heroic TOC unless you're already in raid gear because some faggot healer wants an easy run. But I can't just get a new weapon for honor points, because WoW rewards grouping and blah blah blah. Buncha cunts.

I fucking hate that bullshit. If I'm healing and want an easy run, I just make sure I have a hilariously overgeared tank to heal. As long as your tank isn't shit, your DPSers can be, you know, normal. It won't go as fast, probably, but Christ, heroic ToC doesn't take THAT long.

[kildorn]

Hah, I got turned down for a regular TOC run last night.  I made the mistake of telling them I've never been.  I'm pretty sure my week old 80 warlock with 2k SP (with just fel armor) can handle a regular instance run.

Did a heroic VH later with no problems.  And unlike the other geared warlock in the group, I managed not to pull aggro on a boss.  Still, it got me thinking that perhaps affliction isn't the best spec for heroics.  Does OK on the bosses, but the trash dies before you can even get going. And that spell rotation... I just love watching 4 timers.

At a certain level of trash you just AE. Even destro, I barely have time to CoE/Immo/Conflag a target in a 5 man heroic before half the trash drops dead.

[Soulflame]

I like how you can't get a group for a heroic TOC unless you're already in raid gear because some faggot healer wants an easy run. But I can't just get a new weapon for honor points, because WoW rewards grouping and blah blah blah. Buncha cunts.

I fucking hate that bullshit. If I'm healing and want an easy run, I just make sure I have a hilariously overgeared tank to heal. As long as your tank isn't shit, your DPSers can be, you know, normal. It won't go as fast, probably, but Christ, heroic ToC doesn't take THAT long.

It's not the duration of the instance.  It's the stacking debuff.  It doesn't take long for the stacking debuff + whatever he hits people with for 9k to overwhelm the healer.

I find the whole instance to be annoying now.  I pretty much mandate that the group runs out if I'm in it.  Not because of anything like tank pickup, or weapon swapping, oh no.  It's because of how mobs will bug out and be unkillable, which oddly enough, never happens if you zone out after the unspeakably stupid jousting event.

The three mobs have over 1,000,000 health together, which is also very annoying.  On top of that, there's at least one comp that is very unfriendly to melee.  The rogue is a pain in the ass regardless of comp.

Paletress is annoying as well.  I've had her double nuke someone who was already down some health, and oops, run back in.  I find it really annoying to deal with the memories as well, yes, thanks for chaining fear + mob that nukes for 5k, plus random dots.  Real fun, that is.

BK is just a pain, but mostly because of players.  I've watched two dps go down because they stood in a crowd of exploding zombies.  Thanks for that, I do adore having to reset an encounter because you can't see the green zombie growing larger next to you.  Plus I've been two shotted by his stupid attack, yay for abilities that hit one player repeatedly for 9k, and grows the longer the encounter lasts!

Seriously.  I have to put out more effective HPS for this encounter than I do most goddamn raid encounters.  That is some seriously fucked up shit.  Which means I have to use divine plea, mana tap, judge, melee if I can, basically pull out the stops to regen mana, otherwise I might run out if the DPS isn't fast on phase 3.

So yeah.  People are going to be picky about who they take to heroic.  I don't quite get why they'd be as picky for normal.

[kildorn]

HToC phase 3 BK looks like a bitch as a Paladin healer. I've done it fine with druids or priests healing and a shitload of undergeared DPS. You just pray the one geared DPSer doesn't get the mark first. The shade itself has a completely trivial amount of HP, though. It's an AE healing fight, which just suuuuucks for non AE healers. PW:Shield + PRoM however..

[Soulflame]

I generally don't have an issue healing phase 3, although I fully credit the modified Beacon for that.  If that change had not been made, I'd probably never bother trying to heal HToC.  I also credit the dps I usually run with.

[Drubear]

I like how you can't get a group for a heroic TOC unless you're already in raid gear because some faggot healer wants an easy run. But I can't just get a new weapon for honor points, because WoW rewards grouping and blah blah blah. Buncha cunts.

Not sure where you're at on the weapon hierarchy, but PvP weapons need Arena points (and not 2v2) but you can get weapons from the Tournament (with Seals) and there's always the Titansteel items...

Good luck...

[Ingmar]

I like how you can't get a group for a heroic TOC unless you're already in raid gear because some faggot healer wants an easy run. But I can't just get a new weapon for honor points, because WoW rewards grouping and blah blah blah. Buncha cunts.

Not sure where you're at on the weapon hierarchy, but PvP weapons need Arena points (and not 2v2) but you can get weapons from the Tournament (with Seals) and there's always the Titansteel items...

Good luck...

The point is that high end weapons aren't available to purely-battleground players. At this point, the two handed titansteel mace has lower DPS than the *one handed* weapons from the latest arena season or the top end raids. Being able to buy a different ilvl 200 weapon with champion's seals doesn't really solve the issue at all.

[Drubear]

re: lack of BG weapons.

Totally understand - it was discussed on the Wow forums (and maybe even here) back when it was announced. Just thought I'd throw in my $0.02 about what you >>might<< be able to do about it. Or at least, get some comfort. ;/

[Ashamanchill]

I just want goddamn Marrowstrike to drop from HToC, then I am fucking done with that dungeon for good. Even if it's the daily. But, I keep getting  Eadric, so I guess I won't mothball that lance just yet.

[Sjofn]

Seriously.  I have to put out more effective HPS for this encounter than I do most goddamn raid encounters.  That is some seriously fucked up shit.  Which means I have to use divine plea, mana tap, judge, melee if I can, basically pull out the stops to regen mana, otherwise I might run out if the DPS isn't fast on phase 3.

So yeah.  People are going to be picky about who they take to heroic.  I don't quite get why they'd be as picky for normal.

Meh, we've had our lamer DPSers along and it seriously isn't a big deal. The win might be ugly, but we win. The only thing I've felt I've HAD to have on that fight is a way to cleanse disease.

[Xeyi]

HToC phase 3 BK looks like a bitch as a Paladin healer.

It's not all that bad, the fight phase is so short that with bubble and beacon you only have to heal 3 people.  Also pop aura mastery with shadow res aura and the boss is on the floor before you have to start worrying.

[WindupAtheist]

Finally got my Edge of Ruin. Dropped 550g slapping Berserking on that bitch since I figure I'll be using it for a while.

[Rasix]

Finally got my Edge of Ruin. Dropped 550g slapping Berserking on that bitch since I figure I'll be using it for a while.

Nice. I don't think I'm going to bother on my DK and maybe just get the Argent Tournament sword so I can look at something different.  I think I'm going to stick to casters for the rest of this expansion.  They seem to function best for me if you're not able to raid (or even instance much) at all.

[WindupAtheist]

Now I can safely forget that PVE exists until the next content patch. 

[Nebu]

I'm going to see if I can make a decent set of PvE gear entirely from faction vendors and the AH.  My choice is that or running in pugs and I really don't care enough about pve to be arsed with pugging. 

So far, it's not too bad.  Granted, it would never get me into a heroic group, but it's livable between my pvp gear and some of the quartermaster stuff.

[Merusk]

So far, it's not too bad.  Granted, it would never get me into a heroic group,

That's because most people who form heroic groups are idiots.  My guild and I never did the normal version of dungeons once we hit 80.  Our first experience of several was as heroic in quest-level and lower-level dungeon crap.    Heroics aren't anywhere near as hard as they were in BC, but I've seen people demand a "2000 gear level" for fucking Heroic VH of all things.   That's Nax-level or greater    Yes.. these folks want Nax-gear for running the content meant to gear-up for Nax. 

[Nebu]

What I don't understand is the laziness I see in these games.  When I played EQ, UO, DAoC, etc.  the fun of the PvE game was in the challenge of the encounter.  In DAoC I used to solo/duo content made for groups.  It was a challenge, but that made otherwise mundane pve interesting.  I'd be interested in seeing if we could run a heroic with 3 or 4 people.  That would be a challenge even if it did turn out to be impossible.  

Perhaps I need to rethink things.  People run dungeons to get "stuff" and not for fun.  Blizzard may as well just implement a slot machine that rewards loot every x hours and set some gear level required to pull the lever.  It's the same damn thing for most of the playerbase.

[Merusk]

I know for certain you can do it with 4 people as I've done that.   3 people might be a bit more of a challenge since then it's just a tank, healer and single dps. 

[Nebu]

I know for certain you can do it with 4 people as I've done that.   3 people might be a bit more of a challenge since then it's just a tank, healer and single dps. 

If they can be done with 4 well-played toons, then why are people such elitest jerks about the gear they require?  Are they just lazy or is it to minimize the negative impact of a pugger? 

[Soulflame]

Most people already get a steady diet of challenges from ToC, or Uld hard modes, or whatever.  I can't speak for anyone else but me, but I'd rather my heroics be a 15-20 minute milk run, rather than a 2-3 hour "triumph", involving multiple wipes, and a repair bill that wipes out a sizable percentage of monies earned from dailies that day.

One of the priests in my guild was in a "challenged" heroic group like that recently.  He had a repair bill of around 40-50g, and didn't have a single badge.  I believe he was in a group trying to clear heroic OK, which as everyone knows is SRS BZNZ.  

[Rasix]

What I don't understand is the laziness I see in these games.  When I played EQ, UO, DAoC, etc.  the fun of the PvE game was in the challenge of the encounter.  In DAoC I used to solo/duo content made for groups.  It was a challenge, but that made otherwise mundane pve interesting.  

I'd be interested in seeing if we could run a heroic with 3 or 4 people.  That would be a challenge even if it did turn out to be impossible.  

I'm pretty sure just about every heroic (outside of TOC) could be run with 3 people.  4 would not be hard. All it does is just slow things down.  

I did a heroic COS last night (my first full instance since before my son was born) that was incredibly easy.  Only hiccups was the druid healer dying twice (one was due to the tank not turning the boss).  The group was pretty badly geared as I was the top dps with only about 1750 running an affliction spec in my pvp gear with my week old 80.  The tank was second in overal DPS ahead of a new ret pally and a terribad hunter.  Still, it was incredibly easy and with such poor DPS we only missed the mount guy by a minute.

Most people running heroics now would ideally want you Ulduar gear, since they're just doing it for the badges.  Why take time to kill something, when you can have 3 guys doing 4k unbuffed DPS mowing through the place llike they're playing Diablo.

edit: Heroic COS is really easy, however.  Groups that struggle with it are just BAD.

[Soulflame]

Heroic CoS is not easy if you're trying to get the drake.  If you're ignoring the timer, then it's fairly easy.  Although there aren't any truly challenging heroics.  HToC almost approaches the difficulty of something like Mechanar, but... not quite.

It'd be amusing if they'd put in a level 80 equivalent of H MrT.   

[Shrike]

I know for certain you can do it with 4 people as I've done that.   3 people might be a bit more of a challenge since then it's just a tank, healer and single dps. 

If they can be done with 4 well-played toons, then why are people such elitest jerks about the gear they require?  Are they just lazy or is it to minimize the negative impact of a pugger? 

All of the above, and a lot of them are stupid into the bargain.

What really gets me is when I'm trolling for PuGs late at night (when I normally play and my guild doesn't), I constantly get this, "How much dps can you do?" bullshit. It's a stupid fucking question and it really pisses me off. How much dps when? 5man? 10man? 25man? Self-buffed? Rawr rated? Enhsim rated? Auto-attacking (which I'll have to do, since your pig-ignorant, brain-dead, dual-wielding DK ass can't generate any threat worth mentioning)? Exactly what dps are you referring to?

Yeah, it's a pet peeve of mine.

[WindupAtheist]

I'm going to see if I can make a decent set of PvE gear entirely from faction vendors and the AH.  My choice is that or running in pugs and I really don't care enough about pve to be arsed with pugging.

You're probably better off doing PVE in a full set of PVP epics than in vendor blues. I was doing just fine in heroics in full Hateful.

[Nebu]

You're probably better off doing PVE in a full set of PVP epics than in vendor blues. I was doing just fine in heroics in full Hateful.

I have a mixed set of honor and WG gear.  Are you telling me that this is sufficient for heroics?  That would make life pretty easy.