Cataclysm

[Ingmar]

After dropping like 5 grand crafting and enchanting and gemming over the last 2 days, it made me sad to plug my new hammer in at the reforger and see a 40g price tag. Not that I really have a point, other than QQ I'm poor now. Having 2 specs and 3 sets of gear is annoyingly expensive.

[Nevermore]

You could have up to 5 sets of gear on just 2 specs if you had a Druid. 

[caladein]

That's a crappy pic; it looked dark blue in-game.

Was helping a guildie with the Crucible of Carnage, noticed he had one, and was reminded of this post.  Open in new tab for full-size.

[Morfiend]

Anyone have a decently friendly casual alliance guild, on a populated server? I have been itching to try Alliance for once, and with all the new leveling content it seems like a good time, but I was hoping to find some people to play with.

[Rasix]

There's always the Slap people on Doomhammer.  Not a pvp realm, however.

Plus, they're easy to ditch when you realize leveling a priest is completely shitty. 

[Morfiend]

There's always the Slap people on Doomhammer.  Not a pvp realm, however.

Plus, they're easy to ditch when you realize leveling a priest is completely shitty. 

Ahh, you know me so well Ras, I forgot to add PVP realm.

[Ingmar]

I think at this point the only f13 Slap people playing are me, Nevermore, and Mattemeo.

EDIT: By the way, ran 6 or 7 more PUG heroics last night (non Zul), all were fine. I declare the game fixed, you can all come back now. 

[WindupAtheist]

I might get bored and use this card I have laying around at some point, but basically my plan is to wait for the next xpac and the next inevitable pally redesign, and see if I like what they come up with then.

[Rasix]

I declare the game fixed, you can all come back now. 

Still mad.    

I see no point until I reach my breaking/bored-now point with Rift (will probably happen 10 minutes after my first lvl 50 character  ).  Until then, I can effectively remain mad. 

[Paelos]

It's still going to take a more public apology from Blizzard than they've been willing to admit to get me back. "See? It's easier now with gear! We promise! We were right all along! Go forth and enjoy the nerfs! PLEASE ENJOY!"

Not buying it. They are still pushing the same bullshit design in raids until proven otherwise. If 4.2 goes better, I'll return at the end of the year for 4.3 and after the Q3 conference call mea-culpa.

[Ingmar]

You want an apology? 

[Merusk]

Pretty much what most who quit in anger want.   I'm only in again because of Holiday Achieves and I'm still not having a good time of it. Once I get the free epic flying on the last 2 chars I'll be out again until after I'm bored with SWTOR or the next X-pac, whichever comes first.

[Fordel]

I want the Evil kalgans head on a pike!

[Paelos]

You want an apology? 

Yeah. I do. From Ghostcrawler. I want his smug ass to get on his little watercooler blog and tell all the suckasses out there that the developers made a mistake. They had the best intentions, but their vision didn't really mesh with the playerbase. I want them to admit that there were unintended consequences to their design that they didn't foresee, but in the future, they want to make content that's MORE inclusive and approachable, not the opposite.

Will I get it? Nah. I'd settle for them hemming and hawing about more approachable designs, stop copying old content, and maybe fire his ass when the financials go in the shitter.

[Fordel]

Your anger is misplaced entirely. It's The Evil Kalgan that is the source of your woes.

[Nevermore]

Ghostcrawler is still horrible at class balance, though.

[caladein]

Ghostcrawler is still horrible at class balance, though.

From a PvE perspective, class balance could be better but it's still in a pretty good place right now if your heart isn't set on playing Unholy DK, Frost Mage, or Subtlety Rogue.

For comparisons between players using any of the 19 other damage dealing specs though, they're close enough that the better player (however you want to define that) should win out.  The same can be said in a lot of cases about tanks and healers since the last patch's raid cooldown homogenization.

[Ingmar]

I'm trying to think of an MMO I've played that has/had better class/spec balance than current WoW and I'm not coming up with anything. Maybe LotRO is good, I haven't done any grouping there.

[Zetor]

The last time I played lotro in ~2009, classes were pretty clear-cut to only focus on one role each (with few exceptions), it was very roughly like this:

Champion - good melee dps, can spec for off-tanking (equiv to a vanilla WOW warrior specced 31/5/15 and using a shield in defensive stance).
Burglar - okay melee dps, debuffs, cc, fellowship maneuvers
Hunter - good range dps, traps, debuffs
Loremaster - okay range dps, debuffs, cc, mana battery
Runekeeper - good range dps OR healer
Minstrel - okay range dps OR healer (more tools than RK)
Captain - bad melee dps, support, off-healing, off-tanking, buffs (somewhat like a vanilla WOW ret pally, with better healing/buffs)
Guardian - tank OR decent melee dps
Warden - tank OR okay ranged dps with energy issues

Basically your class defined your role for the most part -- specs didn't matter that much for most classes. The loremaster "dps spec" actually gimped your control abilities, but improved your damage. I hear that after the captain patch you can choose to spec a captain as a tank, a melee dps or a healer now, though. I do remember that if you played a warden, you *had* to tank since you'd run out of energy all the time when DPSing.

[caladein]

LotRO is a lot like BC-era WoW: the single-metric balance is rather poor and it has specialists that you need to bring with you in a lot of cases.

It sort of works because the game's six man groups leave more room for off-tanks/healers and debuffers and, probably more importantly, the game tries really hard to make comparative analysis consensual and basically impossible outside of coordinated groups.

[Ashamanchill]

I'm trying to think of an MMO I've played that has/had better class/spec balance than current WoW and I'm not coming up with anything. Maybe LotRO is good, I haven't done any grouping there.

I agree with this, save the part about LotRO, of which I know little. The only bee under my bonnet, class balance wise, right now is in PvP. Healers are way Way WAY too strong right now, because with strong gear they need never worry about mana gain, and can hill themselves or others to full in literally one spell. There was a mechanic to deal with that (cough Mortal Strike cough), which wasn't perfect, but it being missing is even worse then when it was there. The only other option is down cc alley, and I think that cure may be worse then the disease.

Edit: But that's WoW PvP, so yeah, the sky is blue.

As for the apology thing, I am considering the giant raid nerf in 4.2 to be it. The guild I'm testing out right now probably won't be able to down a single boss without it.

[Xanthippe]

You want an apology? 

Yeah. I do. From Ghostcrawler. I want his smug ass to get on his little watercooler blog and tell all the suckasses out there that the developers made a mistake. They had the best intentions, but their vision didn't really mesh with the playerbase. I want them to admit that there were unintended consequences to their design that they didn't foresee, but in the future, they want to make content that's MORE inclusive and approachable, not the opposite.

Will I get it? Nah. I'd settle for them hemming and hawing about more approachable designs, stop copying old content, and maybe fire his ass when the financials go in the shitter.

The devs' money hats have leaked arrogance and hubris into their brains for too long for this to happen, but it's exactly why I'm not going back until they lose their shitty attitudes.

[sinij]

You want an apology? 

Tarring and feathering GC would be nice, but most would settle for apology.

[Fabricated]

Cataclysm killed my release-day guild and caused most of my friends to quit because they simply couldn't get people together who could complete the raid content and the heroic content wasn't fun.

Yeah, I want an apology too. WotLK was the first expansion I got to see all of the content while it was current. BC I got halfway into, Vanilla I saw nothing outside of ZG/AQ20.

[amiable]

The only bee under my bonnet, class balance wise, right now is in PvP. Healers are way Way WAY too strong right now, because with strong gear they need never worry about mana gain, and can hill themselves or others to full in literally one spell. There was a mechanic to deal with that (cough Mortal Strike cough), which wasn't perfect, but it being missing is even worse then when it was there. The only other option is down cc alley, and I think that cure may be worse then the disease.

Edit: But that's WoW PvP, so yeah, the sky is blue.

As for the apology thing, I am considering the giant raid nerf in 4.2 to be it. The guild I'm testing out right now probably won't be able to down a single boss without it.

What healing class are you playing that can heal to full in one spell?  If I crit on a greater heal (a 2.5 second cast) a may pull out 45-50k, but thats in full pvp epics (this is as a priest).  My pally can do a full instant heal once every 10 minutes, but that has always been in the game and does not operate in arenas.  Realistically you are either casting instants, which heal for crap, or flash heals if you can avoid getting interrupted (which is pretty much impossible unless you are the jesus of juking).  Its not like healers are an offensive threat, i can keep myself up for a while against a single dps but my dps is so anemic that all the dps classes can easily self heal through it.

I can tell you now being an arena/bg healer is pure suck, as you spend all of your time stunned, silenced or slowed while a bunch of dps wails on you.   If there is anything in this game worth bitching about it is the retarded cc, I can literally spend the time of an entire arena match (30-45seconds) completely locked down.  (fingers of frost----> trinket out ------> blinded------> circle of frost ------> fear --------> counterspell  -------> stunned).  I have teams at the 1500 bracket pulling these kind of combos off, its retarded.

The only time healing is op is in some of the bgs, where you can stack3-4 healers on a tank and hold a flag forever.  Then it becomes just retarded.

[Ashamanchill]

Holy pally. 3 Holy Power Word of Glory, maybe another free one from Eternal Glory, which of course uses no mana and is instant.

Maybe it's just one of those things where being on the other side of the fence gives you a different perspective, but as a 'dps' in BGs, seeing someone you have spent the last twenty or seconds, plus using all your cooldowns, go right back to full. In wouldn't even be that that bad, but for the way the shitty pvp systems are designed. I can't say how many Warsong Gulchs I've been in where the flag carriers are healers, and they are simply unkillable.

[Merusk]

The unkillable flag carrier definitely has more than one healer.  I've been taken-down by teams in the same manner Amiable just outlined 5 times just today. 

Also, don't underestimate the power of Resilience.  I was able to keep a mage up vs 3 DPS earlier today, not because of my uber heals, but because he had resil out the ass.  They couldn't touch him for shit, and it wasn't until they CC' chained  me or got half the team on him that he finally went down.

What I'm continually surprised about is the Alliance PUGs i keep encountering being able to chain rotate CC's like they're on vent and having 3 or more healers per BG.   Meanwhile I'm usually the only healer on Horde and CC?  Pft I haven't seen a sheep with a red tag or a DK specced for that ice tomb in weeks.   Everyone tosses out those damned ice rings, though.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/zuljin/senjadra/simple - Me
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/baelgun/waltdisney/simple - The Mage

[Sjofn]

My paladin healer can carry the flag pretty well in his honor-only suit, but it isn't unless he has a second healer strapped to his ass that he really shines, because only half the team is trying to kill me, the other half is trying to kill my healer.

I'm better not carrying the flag anyway, either I get to merrily heal the flag carrier, or I get to kite a bunch of the opposing team away from the flag carrier because they have their OMG KILL THE PALADIN blinders on. 

[Ashamanchill]

I never doubt the power of resiliance. One of the problems with resiliance is that healers (and healees) benefit double from it so to speak. When pvp gear gets better, your damage increases, but so does others ability to negate it. There is no scaling negation to healing, it just increases. I was fine with this at the start of the Xpac, when I could at least see the healers mana go down as they healed the shit out of everyone. But that's not the case anymore. Resto Druids and Holy Pallies are the worst offenders in this case. I want mortal strike put back the way it was, and I don't even have a class that uses it.

[Sjofn]

Holy paladins are gettin' nerfed next patch mana-wise, although I doubt it'll make a huge difference in PvP. But who knows?

[amiable]

As someone who plays a holy pally and a dsic priest in pvp i can tell you a holy pally is quite literally the worst healer.  You are substantially overstating their burst healing capabilities, a 3 powered wog might heal for 20-30k if you are lucky (much more if you are ret and specced into, but they can only do that to other players and only once every 20 seconds).  WOG also relies on holy power generation which can be slow.

The real weakness of pallies is their vulnerability to interrupts and cc and their lack of hots and instant heals outside wog.  Once they blow their bubble and aura mastery they are sitting ducks to a dps who knows the first thing about interrupts.  BG/Arena healing is much easier on a disc priest who can frontload healing through hots, healing chain and shields.

If you are having trouble with pally healers you or your partners need to learn to time interrupts/cc better.

Now in rated BG's pallies are much better because when you team them with 2-3 other healers they can't be taken down and are annoyingly survivable.  In arenas they are a joke.

Edit:  what class are you playing btw?  Sounds like a non-marks hunter, they do the worst against healers due to the lack of interrupts.

[Ashamanchill]

This must be the disconnect. I should have specified lol, I don't do arenas. Everything I'm talking about is in reference to BGs.

[amiable]

This must be the disconnect. I should have specified lol, I don't do arenas. Everything I'm talking about is in reference to BGs.

Do you play with a team in rated or are you running solo, because if you are running solo, yes healers are annoying, because most of the dumbfucks who play this game STILL haven't learned to kill the healer first.  

Edit:  one other observation:  the games where healers are competent and there are a lot of them are really annoying, but I bet you do not even notice them in games where competent dps that are cc/interrupting them.

[Soulflame]

Killing a holy paladin that doesn't want to die has almost always been a fool's errand.  In Wrath, I'd go tooling around doing dailies in an honor suit, and have three allies try to kill me, to no avail.

[Sjofn]

I honestly get used to never being truly interupted (I'll sometimes get CC'd in the middle of a heal) and then once in a while there will be a rogue or DK or warrior who knows wtf they're doing and I'm totally fucked. I love that *I* have an interupt on my paladin. Once in a while I'll run up to a disc priest or whatever and interupt them. It feels good. Plus I'm a BE, so I can follow that with my bullshit silence when they try again. 

You'll never get me in an arena again, though. I loathed it back in TBC, and I am certain I would loathe it today.