Random Question Thread

[Thuronn]

And all the game's expansions should still be on sale really cheap for christmas, at the blizzard online store.

[supercoco]

what do you think about afli warlock?

[supercoco]

And all the game's expansions should still be on sale really cheap for christmas, at the blizzard online store.

World of Warcraft®: Wrath of the Lich King® and World of Warcraft®: Cataclysm™ cost the same
$39.99 / 35€

I need both of them. Do you know if there will be some kind of pack with both games ?

[Falaras]

So how hard is it to level Archeology and get the epic Staff/Trinket? Am I looking at spending 2 weeks or like 10 hours?

[Eaglestrike]

I'm only in the 80's, but it's not 2 hours. Doubt it's two weeks either. Probably a good long day you can do it.

[Krye]

I'm only in the 80's, but it's not 2 hours. Doubt it's two weeks either. Probably a good long day you can do it.

You stop getting skill ups from digging at 100, then it slows down substantially. Past 100 you only skill up from completing projects that usually require hitting 4 dig sites of one type.

So how hard is it to level Archeology and get the epic Staff/Trinket? Am I looking at spending 2 weeks or like 10 hours?

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1406226255

-Save yourself some time. If you're doing archeology to get epics, they have extraordinarily low drop rates (or chance to get the project in other words). I don't mean this to drive people away, they literally do. You should only be doing archeology as an alternative to bejeweled. It matters just as much and will frustrate you a lot less if you think of it this way. This is the biggest time sink I've ever seen in WoW and it doesn't get better.

So, after hitting roughly 3,000 dig spots or 1,000 dig sites, and finding roughtly ~9,000 fragments here is what I have to show for loot. I concentrated mainly in Eastern Kingdom till I leveled up to IGM, I stayed there for a bit getting most of the dwarf things. I then switched to Kalimdor till I hit 85 as both Night Elf and Tol'vir have quite a few rare/epic projects.



I found a total of five epic projects (one of which I found two bars from 85 so take that what you will). They consist of the Fossilized Raptor (which I started when I was at 515 in level), Ring of the Boy Emperor, Wisp Amulet, Bones of Transformation, and Queen Azshara's Dressing Gown. I’ve found 6 rares in addition to this bringing the number up to a total of 11 finds.



So if you dig 3,000 times you should come up with five epics. That amounts to a 0.16% chance to find a rare project per dig spot. Of course rare projects are found after completing a project and the amount of fragments they use varies, but I think that figure takes into account the amount of time and effort it takes to get a epic rather then a raw statistic. Or another way of looking at it is after you're 525 you should find one after finding roughly 600 dig spots and completing their corresponding projects.



Of course this doesn't take into account that I leveled the profession up to about 82 3/4 is when I hit 525. This also doesn't take into account repeat digs (fossils in my case), however someone will run into these no matter where they go once they collect all the belongings from one type.



Take these numbers with a grain of salt! I would expect it to be around a 0.2% drop rate if you had to put a number on it for a starting archeologist. Don't expect anything till you hit 515 or 525 and that takes a significant amount of time.



I am going to level alchemy, then gear up for epic fail heroics before I do more archeology. Hopefully someone else can provide you with better numbers after archeology is maxed, but I gathered what statisical data I found helpful.



Fragments: ~9,000

Epics: 5

Rare: 6

(This includes leveling from 0 to 525)

[Qalbert]

starting to level a resto druid tomorrow, anyone have basic advice or a link to Druids for dummies?

[Zanz L. Barre The 3rd]

So how hard is it to level Archeology and get the epic Staff/Trinket? Am I looking at spending 2 weeks or like 10 hours?

A couple weeks at least to get the epic and 30-40 hours of leveling. I've been 525 for two days now. I've gotten 5 epics and 5 rares, though I haven't seen any ilevel 359 loot yet. I've pretty much been doing Archaeology on all my down time and it's pretty exciting to see what your next project is!

[Qalbert]

also, addon questions
do I jsut want vanilla Recount? or one of the offshoots?
also what other addons should I get? have questhelper, gatherer, critline, tomtom, auctionmaster, npcscan, and arkinventory

[aurik]

Srspost for anyone who is raiding or gearing for raids, how are your tanks kitting out?

I browsed the tank guides at EJ today, and most of them still are advocating stacking stamina eg on reforging, gems, and enchants. However, we were messing around with Conclave of Wind on the weekend and it seemed to us that Time To Live was not a very effective metric for evaluating tank quality. The tanks were getting hit by the bosses about as hard as a dungeon boss, ie not tremendously hard, to the point where they can and should expect healing before TTL becomes a factor. The main limiter seemed to be how much mana the tank was draining, as in my experience so far, there are plenty of segments both in dungeons and at the least the conclave of wind where the group is taking unavoidable damage, seemingly for the express purpose of burning mana.

TLDR: Since tanks aren't under constant threat of death, +hp on a tank is only worth 5k healer mana. Wouldn't we get more mileage out of mitigation and avoidance?

[Correction]

I thought the other reason to stack stamina was that it buffs vengeance, so it lets tanks double dip for both survival and threat in progression raiding.

Of course, if your tanks are already miles ahead of your dps in threat and they aren't dying during critical phase transitions then I'm positive your guild could get away with allowing them to enchant/gem/reforge for dodge/parry, but what does that really buy you? The EJ model is based on most benefit-per-stat point with no assumptions of too much of a good thing.

[Kaylia]

also, addon questions
do I jsut want vanilla Recount? or one of the offshoots?
also what other addons should I get? have questhelper, gatherer, critline, tomtom, auctionmaster, npcscan, and arkinventory

Default recount is more than enough unless you want to do some theorycrafting. It's a fun tool to have, but it's not even that useful unless you're trying to compare different playstyle and want to know which one give the best dps, or if you're trying to find the weakest link of a group.

On hunter, you should also get a decent threat meter if you have none (Omen come to mind). Pulling aggro is obviously a big no no (most of the time)


I havent experimented with the new raid UI, so maybe it's going to do the job, but its generally important to have a solid ui that indicate everyone's status (hp, major debuff, who has aggro)

TLDR: Since tanks aren't under constant threat of death, +hp on a tank is only worth 5k healer mana. Wouldn't we get more mileage out of mitigation and avoidance?

Kinda early to say anything, but it might turn out that way. Idk though, I've seen healer hit 0 mana just as often as i hit < 1000 hp in 5 man...

[aurik]

I thought the other reason to stack stamina was that it buffs vengeance, so it lets tanks double dip for both survival and threat in progression raiding.

Of course, if your tanks are already miles ahead of your dps in threat and they aren't dying during critical phase transitions then I'm positive your guild could get away with allowing them to enchant/gem/reforge for dodge/parry, but what does that really buy you? The EJ model is based on most benefit-per-stat point with no assumptions of too much of a good thing.

Haven't seen TPS be a problem yet (5 mans).

What is the benefit of +stam if the tank is never in danger of sudden death? Very close to zero. I'm saying that TTL as a metric may have outlived its usefulness. Not a tank, so I'm soliciting opinions from people who have played tanks.

[Kaylia]

If your tank hp never drop in critical hp, you have a point, but I don't think it will be the case. The same argument used in WoTLK still hold. You want a large health pool to give people more time to react.

Now, if you're actually wiping because the tank healer ran out of mana (and not because of failled gimmick), it will be worth checking. I don't have enough experience (none) with current raid to say anything though, just basing this off 5man with pug.

[aurik]

In 10 man the conclave of wind bosses were hitting for 15-20k, 2s~ delay. Tank has 140k hp. So worst case, we already have a buffer of 14 seconds to react.
Even with the post-gimmick buff on the nature boss, he hits for ~60k, and you will be using cooldowns to mitigate since there's nothing else to use a CD for on that fight, so again like a 6s buffer without CDs, and 8s+ with a single tank CD.

So what encounters will tank max hp be an interesting stat?

[Kaylia]

Is it damage that could be mitigate with the defense stats? That's another thing to consider. It's easy to min/max on an encounter basis, but are you going to be able to go through a magic heavy encounter with your parry gear?


Sometime, it's better to be able to tank all have 10 bosses than do better at 8 of them, and fail at 2.

[aurik]

How does stam help with non-lethal magic damage?

[Norellicus]

How does dodge/mastery?

There's an argument to be made here for allowing the healers to use their "deal damage to heal better" tricks by having a higher health pool. The extra time to live potentially gives them time to actually breathe and consider that option and then drop a giant super efficient heal on you instead of constantly patching you up.

[Ksandra]

also, addon questions
do I jsut want vanilla Recount? or one of the offshoots?
also what other addons should I get? have questhelper, gatherer, critline, tomtom, auctionmaster, npcscan, and arkinventory

Default recount is more than enough unless you want to do some theorycrafting.

On hunter, you should also get a decent threat meter if you have none (Omen come to mind).

best bet imo is to forget omen and get recount with recountthreat. recountthreat adds a tab to recount that shows threat whenever you are in combat, then switches back to the tab you were last at (dps, or damage done, etc. etc.) when you are no longer in combat.

Basically renders omen useless (saves space on your screen), unless you are obsessed with seeing both your dps and threat at the same time without having to tab.

[aurik]

It reduces the boss's physical output and thus saves mana to heal up the unavoidable magic damage. Are any fights this tier purely magic damage? And even if there was, doesn't that just mean we shouldn't bother tweaking for this particular encounter because no gems/enchants are particularly attractive?

14 seconds versus 16 seconds is pretty minor when efficient heals take 2s to cast. Hell, as a healer I've lived through hits from buffed Anshal. Shows you just how unimportant stam should be beyond a certain level, of which more than enough is already on 346/359 gear.

So basically I haven't heard any other argument than "it increases TTL", which I am dismissing because TTL already seems beyond sufficient.