Cataclysm

[Lt.Dan]

And on more warlock notes: please, please take Imp Soulfire out back and shoot it. It's an aggravatingly stupid mechanic due to the ICD.

I thought Improved Soulfire was the 15% 15 sec cast speed buff from casting Soulfire?  No ICD, just need to throw in a soulfire every 15 seconds to refresh the buff.  One thing I noticed is that you only get the buff once the Soulfire hits the target so if you queue up a cast spell, say Immolate, then you don't benefit from the buff.

Are you thinking of the instant Soulfire proc from Imp firebolt crits?  I can see that having an ICD but it's something like a 4% proc chance that it's not super likely to get two in row anyways.

[Ingmar]

It has bad effects on loot rolls and itemization when people want weapons they're not supposed to. They distribute weapons through instances with the idea that X number of specs are going to want each one, etc.

They might as well just add "Druid Only", "Warrior Only", etc. tags to items if that's their philosophy.  It's not as if they aren't heading towards a game where you're only supposed to play exactly the way they want.

Except different specs of the same class have different needs, and some specs across classes share needs, etc. A rogue CAN wear cloth, but it is a pretty dumb choice. I don't see why they'd need to necessarily spell out this other possible dumb choice with a class restriction.

[kildorn]

And on more warlock notes: please, please take Imp Soulfire out back and shoot it. It's an aggravatingly stupid mechanic due to the ICD.

I thought Improved Soulfire was the 15% 15 sec cast speed buff from casting Soulfire?  No ICD, just need to throw in a soulfire every 15 seconds to refresh the buff.  One thing I noticed is that you only get the buff once the Soulfire hits the target so if you queue up a cast spell, say Immolate, then you don't benefit from the buff.

Are you thinking of the instant Soulfire proc from Imp firebolt crits?  I can see that having an ICD but it's something like a 4% proc chance that it's not super likely to get two in row anyways.

Imp Soulfire is the 15s buff from casting Soulfire. It has a 15s ICD.

Where this becomes a painful mechanic is that you're expected to have it up 100% of the time as any lock spec to be competitive. If your new soulfire lands before the buff expires, you do NOT get a new 15s buff. So the entire mechanic is timing your rotation to always cast soulfire with 2-3 seconds left on the buff (to account for cast time and travel time, as the buff applies when the projectile lands)

It's freaking stupid.

[koro]

The unholy DK one is the only "stop doing that" in the list. Everything else is an oops (shaman wanting caster weapons. seriously, it's just a broken side effect of +spelldamage being left on some items. Rogues were nerfing themselves by thinking that a mastery that rewards slow offhands = we use slow offhands, when in reality they were nerfing themselves by doing so)

The Rogue one is kind of irritating since it pretty much means "you are going to have a dagger in your offhand regardless of your spec, and if you don't like it, tough shit."

[kildorn]

Due to how poisons work though, it was like that before. Just confusing because the mastery implied there was an alternative. At least as far as I understood the complaint. Basically, the mastery said "use a slow offhand!" and the dps parses with poison said "and you'll suck!"

[Sheepherder]

Paladins are outright easymode simply because they have a lot of reactive damage that generates threat for them on things that mele them without them really needing to actually DO anything to earn that threat.

They only have Retribution Aura anymore.

[Rendakor]

Eye for an Eye too.

[Sheepherder]

Only works on spells, not melee.

[Shrike]

The unholy DK one is the only "stop doing that" in the list. Everything else is an oops (shaman wanting caster weapons. seriously, it's just a broken side effect of +spelldamage being left on some items. Rogues were nerfing themselves by thinking that a mastery that rewards slow offhands = we use slow offhands, when in reality they were nerfing themselves by doing so)

It's not all the spelldamage, though that's part of it. What it really comes down to is flametongue scaling (and lack of WF scaling) and our talents that pump spellpower through stats (attack power and mastery). What happens is FT mainhand begins to outscale and outdamage WF mainhand. When this happens (and it's twice now), spellcaster MHs being to out-perform slow AGI MHs, since FT benifts from spellpower and fast attack speeds. The latter was partially normalized, but with mastery the spell damage scales massively, so the problem has cropped up again.

We're seeing it on the simulator now and Blizz has been talking around the issue, but hasn't done anything yet. A WF revamp is really needed, but we'll see what happens.

[Sjofn]

The unholy DK one is the only "stop doing that" in the list. Everything else is an oops (shaman wanting caster weapons. seriously, it's just a broken side effect of +spelldamage being left on some items. Rogues were nerfing themselves by thinking that a mastery that rewards slow offhands = we use slow offhands, when in reality they were nerfing themselves by doing so)

The Rogue one is kind of irritating since it pretty much means "you are going to have a dagger in your offhand regardless of your spec, and if you don't like it, tough shit."

Luckily, I do like it! It's wielding axes I can never bring myself to do (although I'm assassination currently, so it's not really an option ANYway). I can see being sort of rabblerabble if you like your weapons to match, though. At least there aren't weapon specializations anymore?

[koro]

The unholy DK one is the only "stop doing that" in the list. Everything else is an oops (shaman wanting caster weapons. seriously, it's just a broken side effect of +spelldamage being left on some items. Rogues were nerfing themselves by thinking that a mastery that rewards slow offhands = we use slow offhands, when in reality they were nerfing themselves by doing so)

The Rogue one is kind of irritating since it pretty much means "you are going to have a dagger in your offhand regardless of your spec, and if you don't like it, tough shit."

Luckily, I do like it! It's wielding axes I can never bring myself to do (although I'm assassination currently, so it's not really an option ANYway). I can see being sort of rabblerabble if you like your weapons to match, though. At least there aren't weapon specializations anymore?

Well I'm Assassination as well, so it doesn't affect me either! It's just kind of grating from a conceptual standpoint. "Oh, there are all these nice agi/stam offhands that are perfectly itemized for you, but you can't use them 'cause they're tooooo sloooow. DAGGER FOR YOU~"

[Sjofn]

I'm so used to that as other classes that doesn't even register. Ask Ingmar how he feels about caster DPS swords sometime. 

[Ashamanchill]

I've yet to see a Tol Barad thanks to that retarded 1:1 thing. And normal BGs are on a 15 minute plus wait on my server, I rarely do those. My friends both play dps, so their dungeon queue times are way to long to be playable, they wait for me to log on so we get to do one, the problem is that after doing one random daily heroic, we don't want to do anymore, and we all log.

Yeah, cracks are definately starting to show. Oh well.

Edit: Yeah my grammer sucks.

[01101010]

I've yet to see a Tol Barad thanks to that retarded 1:1 thing. And normal BGs are on a 15 minute plus wait on my server, so I rarely do those. My friends both play dps, so their dungeon queue times are way to long to be playable, so they wait for me to log on so we get to do one, the problem is that after doing one random daily heroic, we don't want to do anymore, and we all log.

Yeah, cracks are definately starting to show. Oh well.

Or maybe the community as a whole is just getting tired of the game.

[Yoshimaru]

What's the state of druid tanks at the moment? Normally I heal for instant ques on my druid but I've gotten my fill of that on my Goblin shammy. I haven't tanked on him since BC days so not sure how they are faring.

[K9]

Their HP is now in line with other tanks, and I think their threat generation is supposed to be a little sub-par. I have a feral friend who I run heroics and dailies with and he seems to do fine though.

Innervate is now pretty useless for ferals though.

[Ironwood]

I have tamed Terrorpene at 81.  He's mega cute.

[Sjofn]

Aw, awesome, I love his model. 

[Ashamanchill]

What's the state of druid tanks at the moment? Normally I heal for instant ques on my druid but I've gotten my fill of that on my Goblin shammy. I haven't tanked on him since BC days so not sure how they are faring.

My feral is awesome at tanking bosses and with single target threat, but SUCKS at multiple mobs. Really really sucks.

[Ironwood]

In my opinion, if you're tanking more than 2 mobs, its the CC in the group that sucks.

[Malakili]

In my opinion, if you're tanking more than 2 mobs, its the CC in the group that sucks.

Wrath spoiled everyone.   The best strategy for pretty much every 5 man was "pull it all together and AoE it down."

[Merusk]

One to which I'm STILL seeing people try to adhere to.  I just hit 85 on the priest and the jump in mana consumption from 84-85 means it's time to just start letting these fools die.  I didn't realize I'd actually be LESS effective with that one level difference.  If I had, I'd have just turned off xp while farming gear in normals.

[01101010]

In my opinion, if you're tanking more than 2 mobs, its the CC in the group that sucks.

Wrath spoiled everyone.   The best strategy for pretty much every 5 man was "pull it all together and AoE it down."

Sadly, it's the only strat some of these kids know. Who will crack first, the community in figuring out that pulling small groups and single target focus is more efficient than the barn burning, or Bliz caving in to the beast they created by allowing the barn burning?

[Pennilenko]

In my opinion, if you're tanking more than 2 mobs, its the CC in the group that sucks.

Wrath spoiled everyone.   The best strategy for pretty much every 5 man was "pull it all together and AoE it down."

Sadly, it's the only strat some of these kids know. Who will crack first, the community in figuring out that pulling small groups and single target focus is more efficient than the barn burning, or Bliz caving in to the beast they created by allowing the barn burning?

Blizz is totally gonna cave.

[kildorn]

The amusing thing is: it's not just AE threat that got mauled, it's AE damage. So pulling everything with no CC doesn't clear the instance any faster really. It's faster to just single target things down while the tank has everything on him as is, so CC and save some healer mana :P

My lock's version of AE is just dotting everything in the pack that isn't going to be CCed, and only bothering with imp SB and Haunt on the primary target.

[Azazel]

In my opinion, if you're tanking more than 2 mobs, its the CC in the group that sucks.

Wrath spoiled everyone.   The best strategy for pretty much every 5 man was "pull it all together and AoE it down."

Sadly, it's the only strat some of these kids know. Who will crack first, the community in figuring out that pulling small groups and single target focus is more efficient than the barn burning, or Bliz caving in to the beast they created by allowing the barn burning?

You know, I'm quite capable of both CCing, DPSing and Tanking effectively, but fucked if I just had a damn sight more fun in WOTLK just AE destroying everything. You can call it a kiddie thing, but I'm now old enough to be most of "the kids'" father, and I don't give a fuck about being challenged on trash mobs in a dungeon that I can now only run with guildmates which will take the better part of an hour to get into and a long grindy run to get through. I'm not especially after a lot of challenge at this point in my MMOing life. You know, been there, done that, etc. Now I'm just playing to enjoy myself.

The problem as I see it, is that they have added Heroics in from day 1, so naturally the playerbase wants to skip the "shitty regular" instances and go right for the "good stuff" - heroics. Which they spent the last year(?) facerolling.

 

[Hawkbit]

Answer:  Ultra Heroics

[Paelos]

Answer:  Ultra Heroics

With achievements for how many times you get kicked in the balls and still stand! WoW! Fuck Yeah! 

[Selby]

I personally like CC'ing everything.  I mean, it just makes life so much easier.  1-2 mobs on the tank, everything else is shackled\sheeped\frost trapped and it is quite manageable.  AoE damage has been so nerfed there flat out isn't any point to using it as a mage anymore.

My biggest pet peeve so far is that with healers so concerned about mana, they ignore DPS and let them die on fights where random damage IS taken that is unavoidable.  On the 3rd boss in Grim Batol where the guy summons a dragon and rides it, he will continue to fling out shadow bolts the entire time for 10-15k each that you can't interrupt or avoid.  And I've had like 3-4 healers who just flat out let everyone but the tank die with no heals and then bitch that we weren't doing enough DPS.  Well, it's kind of hard to do 10k DPS (which the healers are requesting) when we are having to deal with adds, avoiding pools, and avoiding dragon breath.  And then when we DIE because of no healing, well...  And don't get me started on people going down and dying (like a decently geared tank) when the healer has almost full mana.

[lesion]

For some reason I liked bad PUGs in Wrath, and I almost like it more now when it's not blatant retardation over and over. Had a tank in Grim Batol stand in fire for a trash mob. He was on one of the bridges over lava, and when I typed "tank, move" the guy immediately ran forward through the mob. I was impressed with his reaction time, but he was already on the edge of the bridge so he dropped a few hundred yards before melting into the scenery. The DPS tanked the rest and I managed to heal them while laughing my ass off.

[Merusk]

I know that bridge.. and had a tank do the same thing in the first few weeks.  It's the pull with the guy who calls the dragon add, right?  I also laughed and laughed and laughed then suggested tanking off of the s-shaped bridge next time.

[Setanta]

I did my first heroic in H-BRC yesterday with friends - we've played together since vanilla. Pally tank, 2x shaman (DPS/Heals), warlock and feral druid. We locked everything down with CC, wiped on the first 2 bosses, smashed the last boss, CC'd Beauty's puppies and collected our loot. It was back to the days of real CC and LoS pulls - and god it was fun compared to the AoE tanking crap in WotLK. Having been told Beauty was hard... nope, easiest boss in the instance.

I have to admit I loved it when I scored a 19K lava lash and WF procs still make me giggle.

[Sjofn]

The AEfest was boring, and I prefer having to CC, but I would not be anything like surprised to learn I was in a small minority there.

[Ashamanchill]

I'm with Azazel; doing the whole cc thing and making heroics a challenge is fun, the first few times around. But we all know what purpose heroics serve in this game once you raid: they are grinds to be tolerated to pick up your justice/valor points. They aren't progression, so once they have been completed and run a few times they quickly become a pain in the ass.

A few pages back Lantyssa said something about designing the game for the audience you have, not the one you want. If most people want to burn through heroics, and treat them as essentially one giant punching bag, why change it? Because let me tell you, if  Ghostcrawler thinks that people are going to pay 15 bucks a month to run through regular Lost City, Grim Batol, and Halls then he is smoking some real sticky shit.

[01101010]

I'm with Azazel; doing the whole cc thing and making heroics a challenge is fun, the first few times around. But we all know what purpose heroics serve in this game once you raid: they are grinds to be tolerated to pick up your justice/valor points. They aren't progression, so once they have been completed and run a few times they quickly become a pain in the ass.

A few pages back Lantyssa said something about designing the game for the audience you have, not the one you want. If most people want to burn through heroics, and treat them as essentially one giant punching bag, why change it? Because let me tell you, if  Ghostcrawler thinks that people are going to pay 15 bucks a month to run through regular Lost City, Grim Batol, and Halls then he is smoking some real sticky shit.

Well how much of the game is comprised of end game raiders vs the rest of the pop? I agree if there is a step above heroics that runs mostly the same way, then heroics should not be a ball smasher; however, if heroics are the end game for the casual gamer and only a step for the end-game raider, then there needs to be a level of difficulty as not to burn through them in a week, get your gear and then stand around org/sw until your sub runs out from nothing to do. Blizzard isn't a stranger to this so I have some faith.