Simple questions. Simple answers. Complex questions. Flow charts.

[craan]

Some months ago I played for the first time and leveled a rogue to 80 mostly through quests and a sprinkling of dungeons.  After some time away I resubbed and started a ret paladin and really enjoy it.  I've started to duel more and try out some BGs but I'm really terrible.  So I'm trying to fix that.  For BGs should I helping guard things or going on offense?  I'm level 26 and don't have any fancy gear just soloable quest items which right now means an axe and shield from some Darkshire quests.

I dueled a 26 warrior yesterday and got stomped.  Thinking about it I'm wondering what your keyboard/mouse setups are?  I'm using wasd for movement and have some attacks/heals bound to 1-5 and I'm using the mouse for moving the camera.  It seemed pretty clunky during PVP fights especially with all the jumping around.  When I play a FPS I map everything to the number keypad and am wondering if I should do that for familiarity.  What setups are you PVPers using?   

[Lantyssa]

Here's the thing:  Gear >>>>> Everything.

Once you are geared, then other things matter if you meet equally decked out players, but that is the number one thing that will determine your success in any BG.  And until you're in enough gear you don't go splat instantly, you can't really refine your strategy.  Remapping your keys is probably a personal preference.  It could help your reactions, but I found my default PvE mapping sufficient.

[Ingmar]

Also if this was on live, a bunch of the numbers on sub-level-60 stuff is completely out of whack. The scaling is fixed on beta but I don't think will be live until either the shattering patch, or the actual expansion.

[Zetor]

Your keyboard setup is fine; the only thing I'd change is weaning off the backpedal (s) key - assuming you're using it, if not, disregard the next sentence - and using strafe w/ mouselook instead. Backpedaling is much slower than strafing, and both allow you to keep your enemy in your LOS; it IS useful for pve tanking, however. Mouselook with holding down right mouse button, turn camera with holding down left mouse button. Target with tab / clicking on the opponent nameplate (use a mod like Aloft). I personally target group members with F1->F5, but there are other approaches as well.

Other than that, most pvpers have the 1-5 keys bound with ctrl/alt/shift modifiers along with other buttons near wasd [qezxc, some of those with ctrl/alt/shift mods as well]; some use esdf instead of wasd, but that's not a big difference.. If you have a multi-button mouse, its side buttons are good to bind abilities to as well. Numpad is not really a good idea IMO unless you use one of those fancy gamer keyboards.

[Dren]

Here's the thing:  Gear >>>>> Everything.

Once you are geared, then other things matter if you meet equally decked out players, but that is the number one thing that will determine your success in any BG.  And until you're in enough gear you don't go splat instantly, you can't really refine your strategy.  Remapping your keys is probably a personal preference.  It could help your reactions, but I found my default PvE mapping sufficient.

This X 10.  I was geared pretty well and starting to come into my own on all my characters prior to the patch that opened up all the items to anyone with honor points.  Now I've fallen behind the gear curve again and am back to getting insta-stomped a lot.  I'm getting back to adequate again, but it just shows that even though the person and skill didn't change, without the gear, it doesn't matter.

[Ingmar]

Again, don't underestimate the 4.0 class changes' impact on level 80 PVP. The new design isn't built to make a lot of sense with overgeared level 80s, and it shows in pvp especially.

[Dren]

Again, don't underestimate the 4.0 class changes' impact on level 80 PVP. The new design isn't built to make a lot of sense with overgeared level 80s, and it shows in pvp especially.

What I've noticed from this is that casters rule now.  Their damage is so crazy, 1100 resilience doesn't do a whole lot.  Throw in a ton of different CC powers and it is just damned hard to compete.  Most fights come down to dps caster against healers anymore.  The melee run around trying to cause a lot of confusion and cc when they can, but otherwise get ignored until the end.  Whoever kills the other side's healers first, wins.

I'm a bit bitter about that because for some reason when I get into PUG BG's, Alliance has between 0-1 healer per event.  Yeah, we lose a lot!

[Sheepherder]

If you have a multi-button mouse, its side buttons are good to bind abilities to as well. Numpad is not really a good idea IMO unless you use one of those fancy gamer keyboards.

It's not a bad idea if you're willing to fuck with the keybinds a bit, have space on your desk to shift your keyboard sideways a little, and really dislike WASD.

Your modifier keys are just to the left of your arrow keys.
Six mappable buttons are just above your arrow keys.
Fifteen mappable buttons are just to the right, seventeen if you're willing to fuck with numlock and numpad enter.
A shitton of mappable keys are just to the left, if you still need more.
All of the keys are clearly delineated by empty space between the groupings, which makes playing by feel easier for people like me: too retarded to type.

If you're playing Ret you need a two-hander though.

[Selby]

Numpad is not really a good idea IMO unless you use one of those fancy gamer keyboards.

I use the Numpad for things like cooldowns and interrupts that don't occur often enough to need them on the main 1 through = keys, but need to be mapped somewhere for quick use.  It was awkward at first but now I just mentally go right for the keys without any issues.

[Shrike]

If you're a shaman, then the numpad is your little island of bliss in a sea of totems. The ones I need individually for certain situations are mapped to the number pad.

The tanks have target making mapped to the numpad. Not that anyone pays attention to it (yet), but it's a habit I've been getting into. Then when morons bitch, I just tell them to follow the icons to avoid embarrassment and a repair bill.

Still, I'm feeling a need for a G13, but so far I'm resisting the call of the gameboard out of sheer bull-headed cheapness.

[Zetor]

Yeah, I use the numpad for target marking as well, along with long-duration buffs (that you might need to reapply in a BG or something, but not really something you push in combat). I -used- to have most abilities bound to the numpad (except for 1-6 number keys and qezx), but the reaction time lost in pvp due to me having to move either of my hands to the numpad and hit my battleshout hotkey [f'rex] was pretty bad. I just switched to shift/alt/ctrl modifications of the 1-5 keys, and that's been enough... so far.

[ezrast]

Some months ago I played for the first time and leveled a rogue to 80 mostly through quests and a sprinkling of dungeons.  After some time away I resubbed and started a ret paladin and really enjoy it.  I've started to duel more and try out some BGs but I'm really terrible.  So I'm trying to fix that.  For BGs should I helping guard things or going on offense?  I'm level 26 and don't have any fancy gear just soloable quest items which right now means an axe and shield from some Darkshire quests.

I dueled a 26 warrior yesterday and got stomped.  Thinking about it I'm wondering what your keyboard/mouse setups are?  I'm using wasd for movement and have some attacks/heals bound to 1-5 and I'm using the mouse for moving the camera.  It seemed pretty clunky during PVP fights especially with all the jumping around.  When I play a FPS I map everything to the number keypad and am wondering if I should do that for familiarity.  What setups are you PVPers using?   

I put my bread and butter spammy abilities on ZXCV; more situational things on shift+ZXCV, 1234, and alt+1234; and cooldowns on FGRT and shift+FGRT. I also assign things to shift+QE and alt+QE, though not to unmodified QE because I like to keyboard turn in town while I mange my inventory with the mouse or eat chips with my mouse hand. I should get over this though.

I don't have a rogue or paladin, but on my pvp kitty for example this means that ZXC are my combo point builders and Ambush-alike, shift+ZXC are stealth, dash, and my finisher, 23 are pounce and my interrupt (3 is always my interrupt on every character or I get confused), F is my damage+energy cooldown, and R is my trinket. Works pretty well for me.

Heals and buffs I do with Clique, not with keybinds, even in PvP. My unitframe is right in the middle of the screen so clicking it is easy. Deselecting your target to heal yourself is probably a bad idea.

[apocrypha]

I got myself one of these a while back and love it. I've swapped the numpad over to the left, so I can use WASD, have easy access to 12 macro keys *and* the numpad, all without taking my hand off the mouse or WASD. The only things I don't like are the fact that the capslock is right in the wrong place and I keep hitting it by mistake, and the action on the keys has a really unpleasant sound.

One of the big problems I have with keybinds is that I now have 10 level 80s. That's a lot of keybinds and abilities to remember. I try and put similar abilities in similar places (group heals shift-4, targetted aoe shift-3, main spam attack 2, etc) but I'm not always that organised as I'm levelling a character. And changing keybinds once you're used to them is a recipe for 2 weeks of playing like a tard.

[Shrike]

Hmm, that is kind of interesting. It would help with the desk room limitations of having a whole keyboard, mouse, and a gameboard all competing for space.

My only concern is I really like natural keyboards with the oversized space, alt, ctrl, whathaveyou keys. Especially that mutant alt key. Still, I do like that setup with the pad on the left. I don't like taking my hand off the mouse and it would facilitate that playstyle.

[craan]

Welp, I tanked my first instance last night.  It was the Cathedral part of the Scarlet Monastery.  It was green to me so I figured it was a good time to try.  I gave my 'Hi, I'm new be nice' intro and off we went.  I got gentle encouragement to 'go faster and pull more when you feel comfortable' and I did so.  I had 8 or so mobs hitting me in the pew area and the healer kept me safe.

The end result is nobody died and I got thanked for being the best tank anyone had had that night. 

I got some good private tells from one of the other members about how i should really be prot specced and not ret for tanking which made me facepalm but he was nice about it.  I got a nice scarlet shield out of it too.

Comments and suggestions here helped this poor newb so thanks everyone.

[dd0029]

Has the theorycrafting discussion moved elsewhere?  EJ is a pale shadow of what it once was in terms of information and discussion. 

Anyway, does anyone have some mage tips?  I've been and have enjoyed Arcane, but things are significantly weaker than the power overwhelming they used to be.  Frost used to be good for solo, but at 70k hp and as much damage as the mobs do Frost just does not put out the damage to not force me to eat or bandage every fight.  Ice Barrier is only good for one hit anymore. Even with Arcane crits I have to remember to summon food and eat with some regularity.    Fire seems to be all about the AoE (somewhat uncontrolled aoe I think ie cleaves?) and that sounds like a recipe for problems in an instance needing CC.

[Sheepherder]

EJ still has decent information, they just seem to be total fucking tightwads about having as few threads as humanly possible, which fucks up any sort of coherence because you have to dig to find shit, and original posts don't always get updated with relevant information.

[Sjofn]

Yeah, I can see why they want to keep the number of threads under control, but it makes my eyes cross trying to find anything there.

[Sheepherder]

It crossed from filtering noise into fetish a long time ago.

[caladein]

Eh, to take the Priest board for instance, what more do you need besides: Disc, Holy, Shadow, and General Simple Questions?  If this round of normal raid mechanics are anything to write home about, Rosin might make a raid mechanics thread soon enough.

Shadow's in a bit of a lurch without a maintainer but that's the only thread I keep up with that's lacking one at the moment.

[Draegan]

Has anyone leveled a Shaman since 4.0?  As in from level 1.

I haven't played a Shaman in about 3-4 years, I haven't played WOW since February and I know there are a lot of changes.

Is there any significant difference leveling elemental vs. enhanced?  Assuming Resto is for groups.

[Ingmar]

Regarding number of threads, it really depends if the OP is being updated quickly or not. Having to slog through dozens of pages to find info when the OP isn't being maintained is a huge pain.

[Setanta]

Has anyone leveled a Shaman since 4.0?  As in from level 1.

I haven't played a Shaman in about 3-4 years, I haven't played WOW since February and I know there are a lot of changes.

Is there any significant difference leveling elemental vs. enhanced?  Assuming Resto is for groups.

Enhance is now the lowbie leveling spec. I play enhance on my main and thought I'd look at how they level now as opposed to the pain that was vanilla leveling. Bottom line was play enhance until you at least get to TBC and some decent tle gear appears.

It's still not as much fun as a L80+ enhance shammy but its ok.

[Sheepherder]

Regarding number of threads, it really depends if the OP is being updated quickly or not. Having to slog through dozens of pages to find info when the OP isn't being maintained is a huge pain.

Like so.

[proudft]

I've been playing an heirloomed dwarf shaman from 1 as soon as it was available.  Enhance all the way.  It's..... wacky.   My health never went down until about level 50.   

I was averaging 30 mins a level until Outlands (I did both 55 zones, so I went there at 63, but they just changed it to cut your Old World xp at 60, bleh & glad I snuck through before that).  In Outlands I had to switch it up and do some pvp to level since I am thoroughly sick of Outlands.  Hit 70 at 3 days /played despite said pvp diversions and dabbling in archaeology.  Currently 73 and doing ~2500 dps with everything fired off, all [2] and[3] quests have just been steamrolled by the dwarf & wolf hammer express.   I think my last UK was like 1600 dps or something?  It's silly (though a 74 mage did beat me).

Sadly, I never played a shaman before so I can't say how it's changed, but currently, it is a lot of lightning-crackling fun.

[Selby]

Sadly, I never played a shaman before so I can't say how it's changed, but currently, it is a lot of lightning-crackling fun.

I leveled a shammy in vanilla and finished her in WotLK.  Your experiences mimic mine with the last expansion changes.  [2] and [3] quests were a joke and the hammer & wolf express is definitely how it goes.  Went like that all the way to 80.  It was loads of fun, but for some reason I really disliked enhance as a raid option so I just healed.

[Fordel]

Just go to the official class forums and read the stickies. They'll have all the information you would possibly want for any spec.

[Draegan]

I don't need spec info, I just wanted to read some personal experience with the two styles.  I ended up going enhanced over the weekend, and played a bunch last night.  Hit level 16 and mobs die very very fast.

They did a lot to the class.  So much better than wielding a 2H weapon and having just one shock spell as it was from Vanilla.

[Shrike]

I don't need spec info, I just wanted to read some personal experience with the two styles.  I ended up going enhanced over the weekend, and played a bunch last night.  Hit level 16 and mobs die very very fast.

They did a lot to the class.  So much better than wielding a 2H weapon and having just one shock spell as it was from Vanilla.

Shit, go tell the numbnuts on the O-fficial forums that. It's a rare day that doesn't go by without some jackwagon spouting off about how much better things were for enhance in vanilla and it could be so again if only 2h would come back and if the devil DW were purged from the trees. It's all bullshit, of course, but you can't argue with these people.

The only legitimate complaint about enhance is its lousy physical damage scaling and the fact it requires way too many keys for basic gameplay. I literally have to run dozens of keybound macros to keep up (hence all my angst over the G13--conveniance vs. cheapness). Too many mechanics (totems) are way to clunky (totems) and require way too many keys (totems). After running a number of heroics this last weekend, my hand was ready to fall off and I wish they'd take totems off the goddammed GCD already (or better yet, get rid of them entirely).

[kildorn]

To raise this thread from the dead: so my affliction lock is doing about 9.6k without cooldowns right now on a boss style rotation, about 11-12k ideal situation DPS (doomguard, using demon soul, decent caster 5 man buffs). But I keep seeing opposite information on stat priorities, so I have reforged my gear about 8 times in the last week trying to work out what the heck I need to do in order to improve my damage output. I know I'll always be a 6-8ker on trash, because lol ramp up time getting shadow embrace up, but I'm looking for any real advice.

I know I need to re-enchant my new boots, and the one point in demo is non negotiable until we start raiding: it's far too valuable for my solo pve sanity.

The lock!

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/doomhammer/kildock/simple

[Shrike]

I know bupkis about warlocks, but if you're turning 10k or so in 5mans in heroic gear, I'd say you're spot on. This is generally the high end in heroics from what I"ve been seeing.

Our guild hunter maven runs survival and he'll pull down 11-12k. Most runs I'm in have folks gearing like I am turning in 10-11k. My shaman is in mostly 346 gear, with a couple of 359s, and one lone 333 trinket (damned thing...) and I generally pull down 11.5k steadily, if nothing untoward happens (like tanks that can't hold aggro or healers that won't heal dps). My own priority system probably isn't well dialed in--enhsim is still shaky right now--but since I'm competitive in heroics at the moment, I figure I'm doing something right.

[kildorn]

I could do better on trash, even with the shitty ramp up time. I'm too lazy to deal with the imp soulfire buff on trash packs, even if it is a huge unskippable dps boost. Fuck 2.7s hard casts every 13 seconds while trying to keep unsynced dot timers going. :P

[Zetor]

Yeah, eff trash dps -- 10-11k is more than fine for bosses. I've seen destro warlocks do more dps than afflic, but I haven't seen too many locks in H-pugs in the first place. I gotta say that succubus + fear glyph combo looks pretty nice, I haven't seen any locks with it (I haven't seen many locks with glyphed fear period, but that's a rant for another day). 

Unholy DKs, enh shaman and surv hunters seem to be top of the heap atm. Kind of annoying that my better-geared ele shaman only does 9k to my new-85-with-zinrokh DK's 13k no matter how hard I push my buttons (all 4 of them!), but at least I have heroism and CCs and totems... and stuff. (Speaking of which, has the unholy DK nerf gone in yet, or is it slated for a future hotfix / mini patch?)

[kildorn]

Yeah, eff trash dps -- 10-11k is more than fine for bosses. I've seen destro warlocks do more dps than afflic, but I haven't seen too many locks in H-pugs in the first place. I gotta say that succubus + fear glyph combo looks pretty nice, I haven't seen any locks with it (I haven't seen many locks with glyphed fear period, but that's a rant for another day). 

Unholy DKs, enh shaman and surv hunters seem to be top of the heap atm. Kind of annoying that my better-geared ele shaman only does 9k to my new-85-with-zinrokh DK's 13k no matter how hard I push my buttons (all 4 of them!), but at least I have heroism and CCs and totems... and stuff. (Speaking of which, has the unholy DK nerf gone in yet, or is it slated for a future hotfix / mini patch?)

Glyphed Fear is great (since it can take a minor bleed and still stick), the main issue with it is control: pets still consider fear and root to be *not CC* and when I fear something my pet will use her newly buffed 20 yard lash of pain on it until I tell her to stop. But yeah, glyphed out for it, locks are pretty much the go to form of CC imo. Fear works on nearly anything (you can fear the undead casters in HoO. Seriously  ), seduce works on a lot, and banish has the advantage of being one of the few forms of CC that you can cast into the melee/incidental cleave pack without issues. It helps a lot in H-Stonecore where if anyone screws up you can banish the transformed earth eles (though stupidly, their flagged as interruptable but totally isn't AE channel still continues when banished)

Yet still in a pug, I never get a CC icon <3

[K9]

Does anything know much about MC? I've been using it to CC some packs and usually it works as advertised, other times it breaks instantly, then instantly again when recast. As far as I can see there is no AoE damage or interrupt going on, I might be wrong though.