Monday, July 1, 2013

Monday Random Thoughts

- The last few weeks it seems like my random thoughts have been more random gripes about the LFR.

- Not today because I did not do even one LFR this weekend.

- Woohoo for sanity.

- I considered it, but then I remembered my own posts.

- So basically I got nothing accomplished this weekend in terms of bettering my characters.

- No new gear, no reputation to buy better gear, no valor earned.

- Is the LFR really that tied to everything that matters for me right now?

- For the most part, yes.

- I did a few heroic scenarios here and there and with the bonus timer and a maxed character it does add up.

- Have one character at over 800 valor just from running a couple of heroic scenarios and tanking the first five bosses of ToT this week.

- So I guess one of my characters got something accomplished.

- I maxed my main, for most likely the last time.

- Even after upgrading my 502 set pieces I am near cap.

- I waited before doing them as long as I could.

- So it would make no sense for me to cap him on tuesday being he can't cap earning 1000 as I do not need 1000.

- So who should be the character I cap?

- My new mage?  A healer?  A tank?

- Healer queues are just as bad as damage dealers sometimes so that might not be the quick solution.

- And I can not guarantee putting up my fair share on my healers to assure we make the timer in heroic scenarios.

- We can, as we have done it before, but it is not assured when I am on a healer.

- My priest can pull 30K in healing spec, maybe 50K in shadow with my healing gear and trinkets.

- My shaman is useless as DPS while in healing spec but can do around 70K-80K in my healing gear while in DPS spec so that is a bit more respectable.

- And I have not done a damn thing on my shaman outside of the world boss here and there in what seems like months.

- So it can use the gear and valor, so maybe that would be a good option.

- I just feel if you can not do at least 100K so you can make the scenarios piss easy you might be holding the group back from the quick valor cap and guaranteed bonus every run.

- When I go on my hunter with 2 other high DPS damage dealers we can cap in less than 2 hours.

- Actually set a record last week.

- I capped 1 hour and 12 minutes after logging on.

- That is how valor capping should be, it should never be something that you would consider a chore.

- Maybe 1 hour and 12 minutes is a bit fast, but capping valor in 4 hours would seem reasonable.

- It would allow people like me to knock it out day one if we want and the more casual part time players to take their time and still be able to reach it.

- I believe that valor rewards should be designed around that concept.

- Now to tanks, I could easily cap a tank.

- Instant queue to the LF* content.

- But they take too long and are not really a good way to make valor fast.

- At least I can pull at around 50K on my tanks, so they are not heroic scenario useless.

- I do some damage and make sure no one else in there has to worry about aggro and can go hog wild.

- I might just go the route of my mage, my new play toy for the week.

- I seem to bounce around alts to which one I am enjoying at the time.

- Right now that is my mage.

- In the end I always come back to my hunter, the only class in the game I have always liked playing.

- Although I do think blizzard loves pushing it as far as they can to make people that love playing hunters to hate them.

- But we are a resilient bunch.

- Did some tanking this weekend on my monk, just to get more of a feel for it.

- I've gotten a lot better with it.

- Still testing myself however, have not really tanked in a raid or in any of the LF*s.

- I was doing some soloing to get a feel for it.

- Got to the point where I can now solo a warbringer with little to no effort.

- I do have two issues however.

- I always take HUGE spike damage on the pull, as in holy crap I almost died type of damage.

- I need to work on that.

- And my DPS sucks.

- Do you know how long it takes to kill a warbringer doing 53K DPS?

- Too long.  That is how long.

- But it worked to be exactly what I wanted it to be.

- A test of survivability.

- I was even standing there toe to toe eating the vengeful spirit.

- Yes, I know I should not do that, I should kite.

- I admit, not the brightest idea, but I needed to see how much I could take and how much I could handle and heal.

- I killed a few like that and had my fair share of close calls.

- Only died once and it was on the pull basically.  A few seconds after.

- There has to be a way to even out that spike damage on the pull before I have anything to work with.

- Or is there something I can do when I pull that I just have not figured out yet.

- That is what I am trying to learn.

- But soloing a warbringer makes me feel as if I am ready to tank, from a survivability standpoint at least.

- If I could last through all that damage without a healer and keeping myself healed, then there should never be a healer on earth that would have a problem healing me.

- At end of the fight I was usually between 14K-20K HPS so that means in a similar situation, the only time they would ever even need to heal me is if I need more than that.

- I am thinking of going in and running a five man with instructions to the healer to not heal me at all.

- And bring a back up tank so if I go down they can pick it up.

- If I can make it through a 5 man without needing any heals I am ready to raid tank.

- I actually was going to run an alt run in ToT tanking on my monk but I was not needed.

- So I went as DPS.

- Only downed the first two, but it was my monks first time in there so that was fun.

- Looking at some of the things coming next patch one of the ones I want the most is the new pet battle achievement for collecting all the cats.

- My hunter might never want to be the Crazy Cat Man but my priest would really look good wearing the Crazy Cat Lady one.

- My girlfriend is going to go insane when she sees that title and will want it.

- She is a crazy cat lady.

- I've called her that many times.

- She just loves cats.

- Sad thing is it seems some of those cats are going to be hard to get, as in damn near impossible.

- I guess I will have to look to ebay for a few of them, or some of those gold selling sites that sell pets too.

- I want to get myself, and her, the pets needed for it, but not all of them are attainable in game.

- If blizzard really wants people to spend real money outside of the game they surely have found a good way to do it.

- Make achievements that require things you can't get in game and people will go outside of the game to get them.

- Looks like you have finally pushed me to go to one of those gold selling sites, congratulations blizzard.

- I don't so much mind the card game ones.

- I will go buy the cards off ebay or something and get the nightsaber cub and spectral tiger cub that way, but how the hell am I supposed to get the spectral cub?

- It was given to people that attended the Battle.net world championships in Shanghai in 2012.

- Needless to say this elf was not in attendance.

- Which means it is time to hunt one down.

- There are none on my server, so that means another server.

- If I do find it on another server what are the odds I will have the upwards of 200K I can see this pet demanding on an alt I never play?

- Is that pet even tradeable might be a better question.

- Well, thanks to blizzard wanting me to buy gold, looks like I have no choice if I want to get this achievement.

- So off to a gold buying site to either buy the pet from the site or the gold from the site so I can buy the pet.

- I do hope that pet is removed from the requirements of that achievement or that the pet is made attainable another way.

- I would really hate to break the terms of service because blizzard really gave me no other option to get the achievement if I really wanted it without doing so.

- BTW, that rant was completely unneeded.

- You only need 20 of the 24 listed to get the achievement.

- But I posted it either way.

- Why?

- Because that is exactly what went through my mind when I first saw the achievement before I noticed you only need 20 of the 24 listed.

- With that said, I will have the achievement as soon as it is added.

- The only 4 I am missing, meaning I have the 20 needed, are the two trading card ones, the Shanghai one and Xuen, which is being added with the patch.

- So in the end you can get this achievement not going out of the game.

- Seems like blizzard does have someone in their office that thinks like me.

- Someone smart enough to say to them, you can't force people to go outside of the game to get in game achievements.

- There are 4 that require you to go outside of the game, so to speak.

- The cinder kitten is from the blizzard store, one is from the event I mentioned and 2 are from the card game.

- So the achievement is not as bad as it seems.

- Some might say it is easier for alliance however as many of the cats are purchasable from alliance side only.

- They would be right.  But only half right.

- They are also all dirt cheap.

- Start an alliance character, do some quests, make some silver, buy the cats.

- Or if you want the grumpy guide to transfer gold across sides, break out a pen an paper, this is going to be long.

- On your horde character go kill a warscout or a warbringer.

- Make a human alliance character.

- Mail the BoA item that dropped off the warscout or warbringer to your new human.

- Get item out of mail, vendor it, go buy cats and still have 15 gold left over with nothing to use it on because you are most likely going to delete this character.

- Tada, a fast and easy way to transfer 17 gold between factions so you can get your cats without ever actually needing to play an alliance character.

- If you can not kill a warscout alone (which all classes should be able to do) I am sure someone could help you if you asked.

- Not everyone in the game is a jerk.

- Remember, pets are account bound, so learning them on your alliance char means all your chars learn it.

- Just make sure you log into at least one of your other characters to make sure the lists updates before you delete your alliance cat collecting character.

- Also remember, you can send BoA items cross faction.

- Use this to your advantage.

- There are lots of ways you can game the system, if you want to call it that.

- I do it all the time to make money on different servers.

- See what pets are selling for on that server, get them on another server cheaper, or with your higher levels that can farm them, and then sell them on the server you need the money on.

- Tada, used the pet system to transfer gold from one server to another server.

- Those footslasher pets sell for nothing on my server, but on some of my other servers they sell for a kings ransom.

- So I get them on mine, learn the, box them and sell them on the other server.

- It is a thing of beauty to watch yourself making money doing nothing but switching servers.

- One server I am on has a level 13 goblin priest with over 10K on it.

- Will I ever level it?  Who knows.

- But at least if I do I have a nice gold start.

- And if anything I need is ever listed there cheaper I have the gold to buy it from there and flip it to another server.

- So you do not even need to play characters to use them for this.  Just have them near an auction house.

- And it does help to have characters on servers you never go to.

- Sometimes you can find nice flip deals.

- Having characters on the largest of large servers is also a great way to make money.

- Buy the new hot pet that is flooding the market from there, list it in you nice quiet server for 10K and you effectively turned 1K into 10K nice and easy.

- I am not into the money making part of the game really.

- Never been capped, never will be capped.

- But I wonder if I ever decided too get into it how long it would take me to make a million from nothing on a brand new server with nothing to start out with but my pets for flipping purposes.

- Perhaps I will do that some time in the future when I am bored.

- How many hours /played do you think it would take someone to reach gold cap just selling pets from a level one?

- Maybe one of you gold whores out there can try it.

- Its not my style of game play.

- As long as all my characters have at least 30K on them I am happy.

- Anything more is bonus.

- Those random thoughts were a little more random today.

- And a lot less LFR related.

- It makes for one slightly less grumpy elf.

- Have to add the obligatory "the LFR is too hard for the people it is meant for" line however.

- Maybe one day blizzard will realize that and do something about it.

- Hey, they did something about the cats.

- Maybe that guy, the only one there with a brain apparently, can move on to other things and teach these people to open their eyes once in a while and see things as they are instead of how they wish they were.

- Have a great day.

32 comments:

  1. My biggest gripe about my monk tank is spike damage from pull as well. I went to my tank friend, he used to be a paladin, but now raid tanks as a monk. He said that it is difficult, your healers should be prepared, and about the only thing he recommended was pre-placing those 3 healing orb things on the ground. That and you can pre blow a big cd, but personally I like to keep them for when I need them later.

    I've soloed a warbringer on my paladin once. It was easy enough to do, I was never in any danger of dying. That'll be because of my gear advantage over you no doubt but it was so boring, it took forever, so I've only done it once. Now I group up with a couple of people whenever they offer which isn't often. People don't seem to want to kill them, I still don't have all the mounts. I'm starting to think that I might not get them all until next expansion when I can solo on a dps, not just as a tank. However, the problem with that is next expansion, or hell 5.4 will me 'merged' servers or still CRZ crap. So my nice quiet server where 95% of the time I look for warbringers they are up, will probably be dead the whole time even in the new expansion, as I won't be the only one then that can solo. It's very annoying. I guess I should just suck it up and spend the time, but it is so boring. Doing it once was once too much for me.

    In regards to your other bit about not really doing much of your regular grind, you've still done a lot more than me. I'm just sick of the grind right now. I have run LFR for my runestones but aside from that and logging on to raid, or rather not raid as we can't get a group, I haven't played Warcraft really in a couple of weeks. Someone posted in the Queue on WoWInsider about end of xpac blues, I think I caught them early. I've just been playing other stuff, well Swtor and Marvel Heroes. I'm not feeling any inclination to log into WoW right now outside of my responsibilities at all. I should be doing quite a few things, I have a list, but it's just not fun right now.

    So do you think you've caught end of xpac blues? Or just ready for the next raiding patch to drop? 5.4 really can't come soon enough, true we haven't cleared ToT yet, but at this rate we won't and we won't have a raid team either. I need 5.4 and the hopeful infusion of new blood in Virtual realms, or the dropdown option of Flex raids. I need them now because well we're not going to survive much longer. That's by the by but people could be fed up of ToT due to seeing it more than once a week. With Siege that'll only be worse as you could see it 3x with no repetition. Maybe that's why blizz has tried to be alt unfriendly so people don't run the content on alts, as running it on your main makes you fatigued enough.

    Oh by the way you mentioned a post or two ago about levelling your paladin. How is that going?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh, forgot that, it is 90 now, exalted with klaxxi (as I do with all my chars) and has the 489 ring and 463 weapon and the 496 gloves. Kind of just hanging there doing nothing until I feel like using it.

      Might add something in next mondays random thoughts about it. My thoughts are random, not always time specific. So sometimes you could be reading about a thought from 2 weeks ago. ;)

      I am going to miss having my world to myself too really. Could be good and could be bad.

      I did the runestones, that is all I want to do.

      Oddly I am having great fun, not really end of the expan blues. Trying to get the 25 going is good and making some progress in 10s again thanks to having people to drag in when I need them. But I just do not "feel" it even if I am having fun, if you catch my drift.

      Delete
  2. Also hardly played this last week. Just didn't feel like playing. I think it's summer blues. Hardly anybody online when I log in ("heroic scenarios... world bosses... who does that?" ...) and I'm seriously in need of a real vacation anyway so I don't have a lot of energy to put into WoW.

    I did some AH stuff (I'm one of those gold whores but I got lazy after getting over 1M. I do xmog stuff; don't really mess with pets) and did the last two ToT LFR on my hunter for runestones. 11/12 runestones... so I'll probably log in tomorrow to get my cloak and then I'm done with LFR!!! until 5.4... I have enough vp to fully upgrade it so don't really need to do anything else.

    I should try soloing a warbringer on my DK but I bet it will take forever as you guys mentioned. I solo'd the stupid turtle on Isle of Thunder as blood and that took forever... I'm sure the warbringer will be worse. Should probably learn unholy or frost as an off spec but if I want to dps, I'll use the hunter, not the DK. Kind of bored with the DK though. I might level my mage over the holiday weekend. At least she's ranged dps.

    Oh, right, I was going to use her for pet battle stuff. Maybe I'll do that instead. She's lvl 61 so she can do all the old world and outlands pet stuff at least. Perhaps that's what I'll do on the 5th; most of my friends are working that day anyway.

    Guild leader has been trying to start a second 10man group on Fri/Sat nights but he keeps cancelling or rescheduling it... Not enough people.

    I need to find an east coast raid group. Current guild is mostly from SoCal and they raid too late in the evening for me. Maybe I'll be able to do that with flex raids in 5.4.

    Other than flex raids and possibly proving grounds, rest of the PTR changes aren't looking too interesting. 14 bosses (too many)... linear progression (no options again)... more hunter nerfs (ugh)... ooh, a LEGENDARY cloak! (another cloak, wtf?)... arena changes (don't care)...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And a world boss that you need to legendary cloak to do. I really hope that was a typo. I use world bosses to gear up alts. Alts do not have the legendary cloak and never will.

      The DK would do the warbringers a lot faster than a paladin or monk because their DPS is double if not triple those two classes. Oddly enough they are buffing blood damage because they feel it is not enough.

      Maybe it is just that I am better at my DK and that is why I do more. Who knows. Either way blood DPS seems insane compared to other tanks for me.

      I miss being able to solo it on my hunter. I understand taking away the ability to taunt from people it is not tagged for so people do not steal kills and reset it but not allowing taunt to people that have it tagged have made soloing it on my hunter a nightmare.

      I still need 6 runestones, so 6 more weeks at worst for me. If not for the guaranteed one the last three weeks I would still be sitting at 3 and I started this damn thing ages ago. Three people in guild already have the cloak and they started after me. I hate the RNG drop crap.

      How about that legendary cloak, one that is useless for a hunter because of the proc. Ghostcrawler is laughing at us again. We are the only class that gets a useless legendary. I am sure they are going to fix it on the PTR or at least hope they do. They need to stop forgetting about hunters. As I said once before, if they really do not want hunters, delete the class but please stop treating us like second class citizens.

      Delete
    2. I think the problem with hunters is the ranged physical damage dealer one... I'm starting to wonder if it wouldn't make more sense for them to convert hunters to being actual casters... playing SV is basically playing a caster anyway, a combination nature/fire/arcane caster. Have the weapons fire some sort of frost bolt (since the other schools are covered) and you're pretty much done. Would also then move them back to mana, which you would have been a fan of at some point (would you still?).

      Have hunters use caster shammy gear and make the next class added use Agi mail so you'll have 2 classes using each.

      Delete
    3. I loved mana for the burst instead of being constricted by focus. I've learned to like focus but a return to mana would not be a turn off, as long as it was like all other caster classes now, where there basically isn't a need for mana to begin with because you are always at 100%. Not even sure why it is there.

      Hell now, hunter gear never drops as it is, the last thing I want in another class sharing it with me. When I only see one hunter drop every 2 or 3 months I do not want to compete for it. lol

      They can actually leave hunters as is and make up their mind. Treat them like a melee or treat them like a ranged. There is no hard and fast rule that you need to use mana to be a caster. They can cast with focus. Just have them work off caster mechanics. But in the end that would not change anything really. They would still be a ranged melee class, even if you call them a caster.

      Delete
    4. Mana on a hybrid like a priest, shammy or druid dps is so they can't spam heals... spam heals for 20s and you'll go OOM in a hurry.

      For a mage or warlock, though, I'm not sure, and that does actually cause me some issues on my Destro 'lock, I tend to stockpile embers but I go OOM before I get the 4th so I have to burn one off just to get some mana back. Or I could just be doing it wrong. :)

      Our hunter has done pretty well for himself aside from a weapon, Tortos has been stingy so far.

      Yeah, the main reason I suggested making them a mana-based actual caster is for the Int gear, which means they'd be using things like Int cloaks... I think it would be easier to balance those than to try to balance a hunter and kitty druid for the same piece of gear.

      WoW Insider just posted a discussion about warlocks, shammies and hunters in terms of dpsing on the move that's kind of related to this. The hunter portion of the discussion is ... flawed (probably equivalent to how well a hunter specialist could talk about warlocks), but I think the broad discussion points are valid. Comparing hunters to warlocks and shammies makes sense, you wouldn't normally compare hunters to warriors and pallies.

      Delete
    5. My poor shaman was oom in 2 heals when I was enhancement. So yeah, I get that.

      They could just use a different resource all together or not even have heals when not in heal spec. That would actually make the PvP balancing a lot easier too not having to worry about heals and in the end it is healing that really makes PvP get all out of whack to begin with isn't it?

      True, I would say a hunter is closer to a lock in how they act. I think it is that ranged melee aspect that makes them so hard to balance. Also the removal of minimum range actually made them more caster like. At least with it they had a reason to be considered melee, as in ranged melee, because they were not like casters with no restrictions. But once that restriction was removed they basically became casters in that sense.

      Delete
    6. Yeah, different for an enh shammy or ret pally, I was thinking about the 300K caster dps hybrids when I mentioned the 20s. :)

      I'd be interested to see if they could somehow move dps heals over to the newish charge system (like monk Roll, warlock Conflagrate, etc) where you have a few charges but they regenerate slowly so you can do a quick burst of healing without affecting your primary resource.

      Hm. That would also allow them to equalize off-spec healing for, say, enh and ele shammies... they'd both get 3 heals on a 30 second recharge vs ele being able to cast way more heals than enh before going oom.

      I like it. Assuming you agree, talk to your good buddy GC (I think I saw you semi-compliment him once recently so I just assumed you're recent weekly poker buddies or something) and get it done. ;)

      Delete
    7. That would be a great idea but I doubt it would ever come about.

      Hey, I can give a compliment when one is due, just with him it is due few and far between. I am sure he loves me, that is why he keeps nerfing hunters. ;)

      Delete
  3. A very short story from yesterday's LFR:

    Second wing, I am on a character whom I didn't cap for the last six weeks - and still I have only one valor item to buy. The train to Megaera wipes twice because one tank is on follow and another is braindead and just drives through everything, ignoring that trash decimate parts of the raid along the way and then accumulate into a huge ball of death and wipe the rest. ) But that's not the point.

    The point is this: on the last boss some guys drop out and we get a replacement healer monk. The ilvl of the healer monk is 440, a far cry from 480. One of her trinkets is from WOTLK (kid you not). No enchants, of course, no belt buckle, no gems (not that there are many slots, the gear is bad). Two pieces with agi instead of int. Yet - YET! - we can't kick her! Attempting to kick displays the message: "This player can't be kicked for two hours". Everybody wants to kick her and nobody can.

    WTF is this? Are we supposed to carry this fellow? Did I miss some memo? Can anyone clarify?

    Thanks in advance.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It is a mistake on the blizzard design team I think. There are two reasons that could happen.

      1) Whoever is trying kick the person has kicked so often they are making them wait.

      2) That person gets kicked so much the game is protecting them.

      I think it was #2 as you said everyone was trying to kick them.

      Yes, I shit you not, if someone gets kicked so often the system puts protection in place so they can not be kicked. Did it ever occur to the designers that if someone is getting kicked that much there is probably a good reason for it?

      I was in a dungeon where the person said "carry me or leave because you can't kick me". It shows people are abusing that kick protection too.

      Delete
    2. Yes, it must have been #2, because almost everyone tried to kick her just to see whether they can do it and reported that no, they can't.

      OMG.

      ...

      Really.

      That's a *very* serious blunder on Blizzard's part. Why the heck do anything if you can just do whatever you want, like, drink tea and watch a movie, and if people kick you, you will simply requeue and eventually they WON'T be able to kick you and will HAVE to carry you.

      OMG.

      Delete
    3. I understand their theory. What if someone is really under geared and gets kicked three or four times in a row?

      Like last expansion, remember those heroics, you needed at least 8K and the ability to CC, get out of stuff, and basically play you role correctly.

      While it could be done with a group of competent people doing 8K, and easily at that, I saw person after person get kicked because they were "only" doing 12K. Only? It is 50% more than is required to complete the content.

      That protection was put there because there are a great deal of jackasses that think you need to be great to do beginner content. Like people saying, and yes I read this on the forums all the time, "if you can't do 100K in a heroic you have no business being there". Excuse me? Do you remember when you first hit 90? Give these people a fucking break and let them gear up.

      Okay, end of that explanation. The real question is, what should matter more, us protecting the unsuspecting new players getting kicked for no good reason by jerks that think they should do 100K the second the hit 90, or letting someone take so much advantage of the system they they can effectively hold us hostage or make us requeue.

      It is an interesting question.

      Like I said, I know why blizzard did it and it does make sense, but I don't like it, not at all.

      Delete
    4. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    5. Insane scaling, that is why.

      If a fresh 85 was doing 8K minimum to be considered to be doing okay it should have ended with a minimum of 16K maybe being the okay mark but even 32K was not okay at the end of the expansion.

      This expansion I would say that 20K-25K was okay to start when you first hit 90 but I say now, not even two raid tiers finished, that anything under 100K is not really all that good. 100K is that okay mark. People in heroic gear think 200K is the okay mark. Can you only imagine what it will be like later? 400K? 500K? Just to be considered okay?

      Stats are just out of control. Sure, numbers are just numbers and there is no difference between doing 500K and 5K if things are scaled to match, but from appearances it doesn't look good to see this type of inflation, at least in my opinion.

      Delete
  4. Just a follow up:
    -Got my 608 cloak tonight
    -Look up the fight you do as part of the follow up quests since Wrathion will kick your ass a couple times if you don't know what to expect
    -Prog team needed an extra person (the mage is out) so went in on a saved lockout and did a bunch of pulls on 10n Lei Shen. They just got their first kill of Twins last week so extended the lockout.

    Sure, my ilvl is 528 but my personal progression is only 2/12 so lots of learning.

    Anyway, didn't get Lei Shen down yet. Going to try again tomorrow. We got him to phase 3 a few times but we can't keep enough people alive during the intermissions. We also do too much dps so he transitions too quickly... All dps are holding back and still doing over 100k... We've got it if we can just keep people alive through the intermissions. They're much more hectic than they are in LFR. Everything is faster, multiple things happening at once, and you have less people in 10m so you can't soak everything.

    Anyway, I need to go to sleep now; it's almost 2am. Ciao.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I hate you. lol Just kidding, congratulations. I only got 1 again this week, but only ran the last part. Will run part three tonight and hopefully get lucky. It has been months, you would figure I would at least get 2 once in a while wouldn't you.

      Remember you can solo soak a lot with deterrence on that fight. Use it to your advantage. Good luck if you get another attempt at it.

      Delete
    2. Yes, the plan was to solo soak the Static Shocks during the 2nd intermission save Readiness as a defensive CD to double Deterrence. I need to setup a macro to say that I'm solo soaking so I can use that.

      People were calling it out on vent but I don't know most of the voices so someone saying "I got this one" doesn't help much... "Who?" Oh you were solo soaking... so now I'm dead instead or oh you weren't solo soaking that was the other side... so now your dead.

      If I go with them again, I'll try to see how we can better coordinate. I got my mic on the new computer working for vent so it'll be easier to discuss things now.

      Delete
    3. Yeah, not knowing who is talking can really make things a lot harder. lol That is one of the reasons I always say playing with the same people all the time helps. You tend to take things like "I got this one" for granted when everyone knows who was talking.

      Maybe have them say their name when there are new people there. It is how we attempt to do things. Like "jaeger got this" so even if people do not know who you are by voice they know who was talking.

      Still not as good as actually knowing people of course, but better than nothing.

      Delete
    4. Yeah, I keep hoping that Blizz will stop making fights that can be broken by doing too much dps even while the fight is absolutely 100% still current. I haven't done LS yet but if doing 100K+ on that fight will break the timing then that'll be a huge problem even for my raid when we get there in a few months or so.

      I was in a run that had that issue on Horridon, too, they had to stop dps on Horridon half-way through the SECOND door since he was about 5% away from spawning the war-god add. I think they even let the Dinomancer do a bit of healing just to get a bit more cushion. So basically, there's no way to make that fight anything but a 10m slogfest until you have enough gear to kill Horridon while also dealing with war-god and the door trash at the time. Poor design.

      Still not as bad as Spine, though, another guaranteed 10m slog that didn't even really give you a lot of adds to kill... standing around /dancing for long periods of time during the 2nd last boss fight of the expansion is ridiculous.

      Delete
    5. It is not anything new. I remember having to behave ourselves on spine or we would kill the tent that was gripping people too soon. Many fights have had issues where you got penalized for doing good. If that makes any sense.

      The lowest DPS in my group is usually in the 120K range. We are not there yet either but I could imagine by the time we do 140K would be the minimum. Would suck to have to play had half ability to do a fight.

      At a certain point, like the horridon example, you can push it to the next phase and really give yourself a test. So at least there is a way around that one. Hard, yes, but a way.

      Delete
    6. Yes, we had those problems on Spine and DW (normal and heroic) where we'd overkill things which would spawn more adds (spine) or cause multiple abilities to stack at once (DW). That's basically what we had happening on Lei Shen. We can get him to 65% before leaving the 2nd quadrant which was messing up the strat they were trying to follow. Instead we ended up basically auto-attacking after 75% to slow down the dps... I think we may need to take a different approach if things don't go well tonight.

      Twins is that way too; if you kill the first one during the first phase, it screws up the rest of the fight. Almost had that happen in LFR a couple times.

      Delete
    7. I've never had an LFR group that good. lol But I have heard people say they were in groups that did that.

      I guess having too much DPS is a better problem to have than having too little. It is easier to stop DPS then get more from nowhere.

      Delete
    8. @Jaeger, regarding your original comment, I was able to join a raid last week that's doing full clears and did the back half with them, including 10m LS and yes, "slow dps" bosses are still in full effect. Sigh.

      On the upside, they all way outgeared me so I was able to go full out and not screw anything up, I hate holding back as a dps, especially when I'm only doing 60% of the dps of the rest of them when I'm going hard.

      It did take us half a dozen pulls to get him, though, he's a pain in the ass even when you know what you're doing. Our issues were earlier, though, the one time we got to P3 we got the kill. We were losing tanks (punted or not taunting), healers (standing in Tstorm, believe it or not) and various other mechanics that I thought folks would have figured out in LFR long ago. So, your progression group should be damned close to a kill if they haven't already if they're not dying to that stuff.

      I also hate the way Dark Animus is done on normal... I literally spent the first 2-3 minutes of the fight not pushing any buttons, I could have gone and made a coffee without anyone noticing. My dps chart log of the fight is a tiny auto-attack blip at the start, 2 minutes of nothing, a bit of burst to get mine down when his turn cambe, then more nothing for a bit, then a 45 second burst of actual activity. That isn't in any way fun.

      It's funny, when I see how awkward some of the normal boss pulls (and trash pulls) are even for heroic raids (I think that raid is H 3/13 when they aren't pugging spots) it makes me wonder if normals aren't tuned a bit softer than I originally realized and we all just got a bit intimidated by them. You can make a lot of mistakes and still get a kill. I mean, hell, my normal raid's first Ji-Kun kill was a broken attempt, our nest group completely botched things up pretty early in the fight and we were stuck on the main platform without feathers to go to the top nests at which point we decided to just try burning the boss from 70% or so to see what happened... and to the surprise of all of us, it worked.

      And yeah, I've had a few LFR groups that have been close to getting the twin down in the first phase but it hasn't actually happened yet.

      Delete
    9. I wonder what it will be like when we finally make it to the last boss. Still have not made it there as a guild group.

      The main 10 man group would have a lot of issues. When the lowest DPS is doing 150K I am sure we will have to throttle back which in turn will be as big of a learning process as pushing for more.

      That is why I like DPS checks more than timing tests. At least a DPS check you know if you make it or not. The timing once are, start a little, hold a little, nope need to stay on longer or hold a little longer, or blah. That is just not fun in any way shape or form.

      Delete
    10. I'm just not sure what the point is of fights that have timings that can be wrecked by too much damage... there should NEVER be a negative to doing a lot of dps, in my opinion. More DPS should make the fight easier, not wipe you.

      But hey, maybe Blizz does have some reason for including those... a way for RLs to see who can follow instructions, etc. Because otherwise you just wouldn't be able to tell who the idiots are, I guess. It's usually so hard to tell. ;)

      Delete
    11. It is a bit of micro management I would prefer not to do.

      Actually ran into that issue with council last week. Too much DPS and we killed one too soon and ended up wiping to one gaining dark power and no one to switch it too.

      Guess that is something else I have to micro manage from now on.

      It makes no sense to tell people to sit around and not do their job. More DPS, like you said, should always make things easier, not harder and should never become something that needs to be micro managed.

      Delete
  5. Regarding monk tanking, you are a bit squishy on the pull but it shouldn't be much different than a druid, both basically just pull with their faces and can't put up a shield on the first attack like a DK can.

    The simplest way to decrease burst damage is to focus on mastery... generally not the preferred method for most experienced/progression monk tanks, I don't think, but probably a solid idea for a semi-geared learning one.

    Beyond that, focus on getting Shuffle up as soon as possible, if you can get 1 or 2 chi from a Jade Lightning at range on a mob before it gets to you, you'll have an easier time doing that. If they have a charge, though, not so much, you'd be better off pulling with Haze.

    All tanks take more abuse on the pull than as the fight develops, though, monks aren't unique in that. Could always kill a few random mobs in the area first to stack up Elusive Brew and use that on the pull, too.

    (note - not in front of my computer but from memory I think all of those are mostly correct)

    I'd probably be considered a gold whore (&/or goblin) by most people but not due to any particular strategy, I just do whatever looks like it'll make some gold and carries as little risk as possible. I'd never try to make gold strictly flipping pets, though, I'm patient as hell when it comes to things like AH play (I've been listing one item since late Cat, for instance) but selling pets exclusively strikes me as a very slow, painful process. If you want to make 10 or 20K on a new server, sure, go nuts, but if you're looking to hit gold cap there are much better ways to do that, even on a toon with no resources. 200g a day is great when you have nothing but once you hit 300K, 200g a day is a rounding error. And 300K is a LONG way from 1M.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have tanked on every tank class and never felt so awkward on the pull as I do with my monk, but I will chalk that up to more inexperience than anything else.

      I like the idea of prestacking to go in with something. Those near death experiences on the pull while soloing are a little rattling. But also a much needed learning experience.

      Yeah, I can see a pet market drying up rather quickly unless you can get the rarest of the rare pets and have no competition.

      I usually use it for the quick cash build up when starting on a new server. Nothing worth with working with 2K in your pocket to start.

      Delete
  6. For Feral DPS just install the Ovale and Nerien's Ovale Scripts add ons. Then use Leafkillers feral script in the Ovale config. It basically tells you what buttons to press for "the best" feral DPS. It feels like cheating, but feral dps is too hard to pull off well without it in my opinion due to the way the dots clip, and perform better depending on stats when applied etc...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I tried something like that for retribution last expansion and for my rogue. I noticed I would spend way to much time looking at the screen for what to cast next that I would end up standing in bad. And that is no good.

      I guess I would have to get used to doing it and it would be fine. But really it is a matter of wanting to and quite honestly if I wanted to get better at it, I would just actually learn it.

      Feral is the harder in terms of things to watch in my opinion.

      At the moment I have a one button macro that keeps all debuffs up, my buffs up, and makes use of the combo points just fine. It is probably only 50% of my potential but being I would only kitty in LFR and my 50% is still better than most people in there, I guess I can live with that. Somewhat. Still would feel bad and as if I were taking advantage of the group.

      This is my my druid still has not done all the raid in the LFR.

      Thanks for the advice. I will at least download them and take a look. Would really like to be able to do better at it. I can use it like I did the ret one. I practiced on the dummy for a while, a long while, and then after I had a feel for the rotation I disabled the addon, but it did teach me a feel for it.

      Delete