Monday, April 15, 2013

Monday Random Thoughts

- I took some time off this weekend from my alts.

- I did not go LFR crazy like normal trying to get everyone in.

- I needed a break from the newer LFRs and the nightmare they have become.

- I did do the older ones on my rogue as I am still trying to get daggers.

- Would you believe I was still rocking double 450s this far in?

- This is why they need more valor options.

- For people with bad luck.

- The even sadder part was not that I could not get better weapons but that when I went into the new LFRs I was still top 5 in damage even with 450 weapons.

- I stuck at my rogue, have crapy weapons, am a leather worker that did not even waste a thread on my pants and bracers for an enchant nevertheless any other enchants and I was still doing decent.

- It goes to show you how horrible this player base is when I can shine on a character I definitely do not shine on.

- My big random thought of the week is not the LFR or how bad some people are.

- It is about my daggers.

- It was dagger week, finally.

- I won the 476 and the 483 one.

- Both with the bonus roll.

- And I saw me going from doing roughly 50K-60K to 100K-110K.

- Holy mother do weapons really matter.

- I did not just suddenly become more skilled playing a rogue because I got the daggers.

- So it would be safe to assume that the daggers being upgraded almost doubled my DPS.

- Gear is way too important this expansion.

- Why should one piece in one small jump like that, make that much of a difference?

- Upgrading from a pair for 450s to a 476 and 483 should have made me go from 60 to 65 maybe, not 60 to 100.

- And this is more reason why there needs to be valor weapons as well.

- If weapons are really that huge and play such a major part to being able to do your job well there should be a net to fall back on for people will bad luck.

- Valor gear is supposed to be that net.

- So why not have valor weapons, even at 3K each it would be worth it.

- I also snatched up the shado-pan trinket this week which puts my rogue at a 491 item level now.

- Just a little more and I will be ToT ready, in my own opinion at least.

- Take a look at world of logs and you will see that there are groups doing it with sub par numbers but I don't care what other people do.

- My guild was short a damage dealer because I had to tank but we still downed it this week with only 4.

- Helps the lowest was 135K.

- I believe 100K is a fair mark to aim for on the first boss.

- So if you can not pull 100K, minimum, on the first boss of ToT you have absolutely no business being in there.

- I did 109K in the raid finder version with my shiny new daggers.

- Still not enchanted however, waiting on at least 502s to waste the good enchant on them.

- So I might be ready for it, DPS wise, but I want a little buffer and I think that 495 is an acceptable starting item level for ToT.

- That is assuming you know how to play.

- Or can at least fake it.

- I fake it on my rogue.

- Did the second half of MV to try and get the last sigil I needed and after we downed the celestial dragon guy someone said, how would we ever downed that guy without the rogue.

- I was a full 50K higher than the second placed damage dealer.

- Have to love them daggers.

- Sad state of the game if I can be #1 on my rogue.

- I have fallen back into my bad habit of spamming keys.

- I need to stop that and be more deliberate with my clicking.

- I will sit there spamming 2 over and over waiting for energy because I know that is coming next.

- It is a bad habit.

- And even worse is that doing tends to distract me after a while.

- Planning things out is fine.

- Preemptively hitting your next ability is actually a great idea.

- Spamming keys, while it seems sound, will cause your DPS to drop like a rock.

- I saw that happening and had to start holding off again.

- I finally did the dance on will perfectly as a melee.

- Once

- Had done it on my tank no problem, but never a melee.

- I was so excited.

- So excited that I promptly went and got hit by 4 of the next 5.

- Yeah, that is more like me.

- They say a man of true strength knows his weakness.

- That dance is my weakness.

- Kind of like the safety dance.

- I sucked at that on my main.

- Did it fine my first time on my priest.

- How strange is that?

- I am better at my hunter, more practice and all, yet I could not do the dance but on my priest it was no problem.

- For as over powered as I was on the first two bosses of that run, I was useless on will because I kept getting hit.

- I was second in damage done, sure, but damage done and DPS mean nothing when you get hit by the avoidable.

- So I was one of the worst on that fight, in my opinion.

- It follows one of my rules of warcraft, that applies even to the LFR.

- If everyone does the exact same as you, would you have downed the boss?

- In this case it would mean that everyone got hit with four out of the five arcs more than half the times he did it

- In this case even with my higher DPS, we would have wiped if everyone played like I did there.

- So that is why I say I did badly.

- It is a line I like to use for hybrids that sign up as heals and just DPS hoping no one notices.

- If everyone does the exact same as you, would you have downed the boss?

- Nope, because you would have 6 people using the healer queue when they have no intention to heal and it would be an instant wipe.

- So next time you enter the queue, think about that.

- If the answer to the question is no, we would have not downed the boss, do us all a favor and not queue up.

- I will never queue for that one again on my rogue.  I mean I did not do horrible by any means, but if everyone was me on that last fight, it would have been a wipe.

- I just get hit far too often.

- I have had enough chances to learn it and am willing to admit that as a melee I just can not get it, so I will not abuse the community with my lack of ability to play melee on that fight again.

- I would love to ask those two mages, one hunter, one lock, one rogue and two warriors if everyone was them, doing under 20K, do they think that bosses will go down?

- Do us a favor and reroll, learn to play or just stay out of group content please.

- Even in MV with its 460 item level requirement doing under 20K is unacceptable.

- How can I say that?

- Because if everyone played just like them, under 20K, they would not beat the enrage timers.

- Also, if the healers and tanks played that badly as well, you would not need to worry about the enrage timer.

- You would be dead way before that happens.

- First boss of the ToT raid, super shaman with 110K, priest in second with 102K and me third with 96K.

- The other three healers, combined, did not do 40K.

- I know you can not judge healers by their HPS alone, but if every healer there was doing 15K HPS it would have been a wipe.

- But perhaps they are the reason that the top three were all around 100K, because there was something for us to heal.

- But I still say it goes back to one of the rules of warcraft.

- If everyone does the exact same as you, would you have downed the boss.

- If the answer is yes, you did good, if it is no, you did bad.

- Aim for good, even in the LFR because if everyone was you, would the boss die?

- Have a great day all.

24 comments:

  1. "Would you have downed the boss if everyone did the same as you" sounds like a good general rule, indeed. Sure enough, it can't be taken literally, but the gist is true.

    Now, for my bullet list (two parts, sorry for the length):

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    1. * One reason to love the game and one reason to hate it.

      * First, a reason to love...

      * PVP finally seems to get on its feet!

      * Yes, there are balance issues, but nothing is completely imbalanced like it was in the previous seasons, and they fixed quite a number of long-standing issues.

      * Fixed issue 1: PVE gear in PVP. No more. Finally. There might be a few gotchas down the road, but by and large the issue is put to rest.

      * Fixed issue 2: capping PVP gear. This season is very good in this respect, no rating reqs, only one set of gear which really takes time to get (conquest one) without upgrades (thank god!), catch-up mechanism for late starters. If they just keep the current model, the gearing issue will be put to rest.

      * Fixed issue 3: listening to the community. There is that new PVP guy, Holinka, and he tweets, and is talking a lot of sense, and is knowledgeable, and very responsive, and very creative. Of course, his appearance is just a sign of Blizzard finally waking up to PVP and not the other way around, but, again, if they just keep it up, the most important issue of them all - that of Blizzard doing things which are easily seen and proven to be stupid - will be put to rest, too.

      * There are other fixed issues, too. They really did a lot of good.

      * There are several important unfixed issues as well, like low-level BGs, but hey, can't do everything at once.

      * Now the reason to hate...

      * I have been dabbling in WoW lore for a long time. A fragment of lore here, a fragment there, frequently very interesting.

      * I always wanted to go through the entire chronology - books, manga, etc - to sort out everything in my head.

      * I finally did it. I read everything there is to read, then read the lore forums, then asked questions on these forums, then found other guys interested in the lore and talked to them. It took about half a year...

      * ...and now I am disillusioned.

      * Fragments of the lore are good, but the moment you climb up to see the bigger picture it all falls apart very quickly. Almost everything is illogical and contradictive. Almost everything is one-sided and without depth. And there are biases. Terrible biases. Everywhere.

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    2. * Several illustrations from the coming patches:

      * In Fire and Iron, Muradin at one point says this: “Aye... but I’d rather die fer me kin in a fight I know I canna win than not fight at all." He's going to die for his people. Fine.

      * Yet in Blood in the Snow (the new scenario), when dwarves of Dun Morogh, his people, are being slaughtered by trolls (don't ask), he says: "We cannot help you, for if we turn our back on the Dark Irons, they will defeat the Wildhammer and take over Ironforge!"

      * What happened to dying for your people, Bronzebeard man??! Blizzard creative dept happened, that's what. The dwarves are being killed, but Bronzebeard would rather now sit tight in the city, protecting his damn rights to Ironforge from other dwarves!

      * In the planned siege of Orgrimmar, the Horde have a civil war: part of the Horde, particularly trolls, are fed up with Garrosh tyranny, and they revolt. The rebels are too weak to dethrone Garrosh on their own, so they turn to Alliance for help. Fine.

      * So, what exactly Vol'jin, the head of the rebels, tells to the Alliance? "Come help us or we will kill you." Holy sh**!! And the Alliance come to help! And the Alliance players have to do quests for Vol'jin to "*prove* themselves" to him, because he doesn't completely trust them!!

      * WHAT???! Why the ef the Alliance cares for some rude troll? Why the ef don't the Alliance strike the Horde when the Horde are busy fighting between themselves, and, like, drive the undead off Gilneas and maybe get Lordaeron back? Or at least Ashenvale?

      * WHY THE EF do I have to obey the orders of some lunatic, help him get the Horde back together by killing the tyrant who is ruining it from the inside, AND THEN GET THE EF OUT without taking anything for my own faction??! WHY?

      * Yeah... and there are literally hundreds of such things, the above examples are only the last ones.

      * They don't call it "lolore" for nothing.

      * So, no more lore for me.

      * The Burning Legion in the next expansion can come on Humvees and be armed with assault rifles, flamethrowers, and tactical nukes, for all I care.

      * But PVP is still very good, and it looks like it will only improve, so I am going to play the game and have fun, even though the "story" behind it is, well, pretty terrible. :-)

      Have a nice day!

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    3. By the way, just found out that there is a good write-up on the subject of terrible biases in the recent lore developments:

      http://wow.joystiq.com/2013/04/15/another-take-what-is-the-alliance-missing/

      The author hits all the right points.

      And, mind you, that's - again - just *one* glaring issue, that has been lucky enough to get onto front pages.

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    4. There are a lot of lore mistakes in the game. Too many writers, none of them looking into what the other writes and then the game makers thinking, this would be cool, lets do it, damn the lore, always throw a wrench into the works.

      I am looking forward to the PvP changes and wonder if it will make it easier for new people to come in. If so, I might start doing it more often.

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  2. I'd say 100K+ for the first boss of ToT is reasonable for a normal mode kill but I'd expect anyone in a serious group doing that fight to be doing quite a bit more than that. My Atonement priest in i479 gear did 89K dps and 95K hps in LFR (had a slightly better dps trinket that allowed me to queue - I have a personal "better than average" rule, similar to yours, that determines whether I'll queue for something despite gaming the iLvl requirement a bit... my priest is the exception, he's normally top 10 dps and 25-40% of the healing for any LFR group regardless of iLvl so I don't even worry about that with him). I figure if a borderline geared Atonement priest can do almost 100K dps, a dps toon should be able to.

    You're not wrong about weapons but that's true for rogues especially... at one point my hunter and rogue had basically identical iLvls, i472 or so... while my hunter wasn't doing huge dps (maybe 70K single target on a good day) my rogue was doing about 60K and I was a bit concerned so I ran both through SimC with the same settings, my hunter came out at 82K dps, my rogue came out at 64K. Main difference, my hunter has an i484 weapon, rogue had a pair of i463 weapons. Still does, actually.

    My rogue was really my only toon that felt underpowered going into LFR, that's why I think weapons impact them more than anyone.

    Side note - Klaxxi rep has i463 weapons for gold once you hit exalted, since you should get to mid-Rev just by finishing off the zone, it's only a few days of dailies to get access to the weapons. There isn't much reason to have a toon with sub-i463 weapons unless the toon was leveled through there before the Commendations became available.

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    1. I had totally forgotten about the klaxxi rep ones. I had finished their rep so long ago and had not been there in forever. Out of sight out of mind they say. That would have helped me a bunch at the start.

      And yes, this toon was leveled before the commendations came but from warbringer killing I amazed a ton of those rep things and get all my reps up on multiple characters leveled before the commendations.

      I am still feeling off with AoE on my rogue, but at least I feel as if I an contribute a decent amount even when doing what I feel is poorly.

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    2. I've noticed that Mutilate seems to have very solid large group AoE from their poisons... if there's a good (and geared) rogue in the group, chances are they'll dominate AoE pulls, including the first ones in MV that I thought were supposed to suppress AoE (might be that they get the AoE up before the suppression and are able to keep it up without the penalty... noticed similar results from SV hunters and Warlocks, too, and probably other classes).

      My rogue really only runs as combat so I can only personally speak to that, I haven't noticed huge gains from the revamped Blade Flurry but it seems ... okay. Just doesn't seem to have the ability to generate huge numbers, at least not without blowing CDs just to pad the meters. I'm not sure it'd do any harm if they made BF hit all targets in range, not just the 4 or 5 that it currently does. They've also just indicated a LOT of AoE dps buffs in 5.3 for a lot of classes and specs so AoE dps is only going to become more important in the future, it seems. BF seems underpowered in that world.

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  3. hi Grump - no, not really back to reading and writing blogs and only doing a few things wow-related these days, but I wanted to yak about a curious thing that happen on Sat.

    My huntress "JuWun" (named after my wife, yup she is from Korea) lvl 67 is out in the Outlands doing the quests for the 2 dwarves (you know the ones, you have to bring one of them a Netherbitter Ale, The Longbreads, I think.).

    Ok, so I am doing "The Arakkoa Threat" quest, and had gone under that one area where a female blood elf is being held captive. I didn't kill her, as that is really silly being caged and all. But I did kill the 2 birds nesting near her and released the egg to kill it, when this lvl 69 goblin hunter who had release the BE, killed my bird. WTF! He stole my kill and possible feather. So I attacked the BE since she was out of the cage, to show him "how does that feel you jack wagon!", making me go in one of my rare moments PVP (I know, still leaves a dirty taste in my mouth). So, he attacks me - remember he is lvl 69 and I am 67. He should have been able to wax my clock. I trapped his pet, attack him with Yin Ying, did the famous jump turn-around for kiting and killed him in 5 seconds. My first pvp kill (honorable, hoo-ray!) and I felt sick. Maybe he thought I would be an easy kill. But if he hadn't been a jack wagon and killed something I was attacking, I would have never killed her.

    Well, he waited for the 5 minutes to remove the pvp and started his quest over again. And I found him and killed her again. This time, he ran away and I let him be. I got killed though by a 'skull to me" orc warrior. Somehow he was able to take me off my mount as I was flying by him and fell to my death. I logged off and came back on as Roo and saw the orc was a lvl 90. LOL. What a little chicken weasle butt goblin that lvl 69 was. :D

    Good times... good times.

    Other than that, "hi!"

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    1. "Somehow he was able to take me off my mount as I was flying by him and fell to my death." -- that's an item you loot from a certain rare mob in Pandaria. You target the mounted enemy, use the item, the enemy is dismounted. Lots of fun. Get it for yourself, too!

      Gz on the kill! :-)

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    2. Congrats on your first kill and doing it to someone that deserved it.

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    3. thanks PVP Anon and GE. It was fun and got my blood pumping, so I can see how one can "get into the feeling of pvp".

      Also PVP Anon, thanks for the info about that item.

      gee GE, you are still turning out thought provoking monday thoughts!

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  4. oh yeah, congrats on those higher level weapons. Weewilly still swings 450 style. Too bad, the game has gone that route- I mean a $5 butcher knife will kill a human as easy as a $480 butcher knife - but maybe "mo' in-style". :D

    What have you heard about "rift"?

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    1. I have 4 characters there. It is a solid game and I really like it. A lot like wow in many respects and better in some. Still can complain about bag space, that seems to follow all games.

      I liked the game a lot, I just did not like the visuals all that much. They tried to make it look so real that it lost something and I did not like it.

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  5. Yup weapons are tremedously important for your damage output on non-casters.

    With levelling characters you can notice similar jumps when you go from White to Green and from Green to Blue (and then Epic), at least as long as the other factors (primarily Weapon Speed) stay the same. It's one of the reasons why Heirlooms are so OP, the weapons have pretty much ideal speeds (3.8 for the two-handers and 2.8 for the one-handers, making them amongst the slowest in the game, ideal for PvP) .

    As for the PvP:

    the bracket scaling from 5.2 is still borked, despite .GC having said to Cynwise that he'd fix it several weeks ago. The hit chances being borked twice (they use the miss chance your original level would have vs top-bracket level, so with your gear being hurt you end up missing a LOT) seems to be annoying people the most (certainly does me), especially because GC specifically said that it would be hotfixxed.

    Which by the by illustrates why I'm only lukewarmly positive about the new PvP guy, it's not about what Blizzard says but what Blizzard does that is important.

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    1. The do talk the talk sometimes but they really have issues with walking the walk.

      It is like the hunter bloat. GC, early on, said he saw the problem, knew it was a problem, and wanted to do something about it.

      ~listen to the sound of crickets~

      Well, we are waiting. Do something!

      I swear I get so frustrated with them sometimes. If you know something is broke just fix it. But they talk the talk, they do not walk the walk.

      Blizzard needs some men of action and a few less talking heads.

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    2. I agree - they can do the talk, but they don't walk. I wouldn't mind men or women of action. Just someone needs to realize that a lot people don't play the way the want us too.

      Hey, has anyone heard of any kind cheater add-on for the different things at Dark Moon Faire? I would swear that folks are cheating at all of them.

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  6. Did ToT pt3 LFR on Tuesday night. Not horrible but still had some wipes.

    Did the other two parts on Sunday afternoon... bad timing but I was busy during the week.

    We one shot everything in both groups. It was quite amazing.

    Even after the nerfs, the trash up to Ji-Kun is still horrendous. I hate those snails!

    No LFR loot this week though.

    Killed Nalak for the first time, we had almost 40 people, so easy fight.

    Bought a [Jeweled Onyx Panther]. Not really crazy about the mount, but it was too cheap to pass up and I was looking for something to spend some gold on.

    Latest patch notes are looking quite interesting. Lots of changes for lots of classes. Will be interesting to see what makes it live and how the balance of power shifts! :)

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    1. send gold to roothehunter on rexxar. :D

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    2. I noticed most of the changes were simple cast time things. Not a great deal of functionality.

      I am liking the lightning bolt being able to be cast while moving as a baseline thing. My healing shaman is going to love that.

      I still have bad luck with my main and my healers in the LFR, but my rogue, first time through there, won 2 pieces. Go figure.

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  7. Congrats on the new daggers, yes the weapons do matter a lot for rogues.Also as you are playing a rogue, I would like to point you to shadowcraft (shadowcraft.mmo-mumble.com) , hands down the best simming tool available. You can check there how future upgrades will affect your dps and also optimize your reforges and gems.

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    1. Thanks. I actually have that linked on my right bar, has been there for a few years. I love tools like that and had to link it so I could find it again if I needed it.

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  8. I think weapons are a big deal for every role except for some tanks. I was having this discussion with my raid leader a while back when we started ToT and he said he doesn't care if we sit on our heads and cry (it's an expression we have, sounds odd in English though), but he's getting next healer weapon that drops since he's still on a 483 (don't ask, horrible luck). He explained that it's like shields are to me. I was like - that can't be so, my shield is 1/3 of my armor, it's so much more important. And we put the numbers up and there it goes, 1/3 of his spellpower. I suppose it's similar for dpses.

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    1. Weapons are huge for every class, too huge if you ask me. I saw a friend of mine get the new bow, normal mode, and all he had was the LFR sha one. It increased his DPS 40K. 40 F'N K, holy crap. One small upgrade and he went from doing 120K to 160K.

      I am so jealous. lol

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