Random Question Thread

[SamanosukeShiva]

For bear tank at least, stam is still good stat to stack. I try to get at least 50% dodge before proc and stack stam for the rest, reason being stam=vengeance= more ap= more damage you can absorb with savage defense. Bear's savage defense is like free bubble everytime you crit, bear also have pulverize which is 9% crit buff that can be up 100% of the time. No point in stacking more AGI (dodge and crit) because of that. Besides, not all damages are physical, magic damage cant be dodged and free 15k-20k bubble from savage defense is fucking awesome for that. 15k-20k bubble is just a lowball estimation, last time I checked @ICC with 80k HP bear tank, you can absorb up to 24k damage per savage defense bubble, now it's nerfed by half but still damn good. Because of how tanks HP are now (150k+), it might even be more.

[Norellicus]

Savage Defense only blocks physical damage, so your point there is moot. Vengeance is a mechanism to keep your threat scaling properly and not a primary means of threat gen, agi is much better for the all around purpose of threat gen/avoidance/mitigation all in one swoop.

[aurik]

Did a lot of pulls on 10m Omnitron Defense System yesterday, and now I'm pretty confident that avoidance is the way to go. Assuming we didn't fuck up the mechanics, we tended to gas on mana around 40%. Closest we got was like 10-12%.

[Slott]

Is anyone's guild (hardcore, preferably high end) guild recruiting a DK tank for cata raiding? My current guild is going casual and I find myself in the need for a good raiding guild.

Hi Shinoniken, it's possible we may recruit a DK tank. It can't hurt to apply, acquiredtaste.net
We're borderline highend/casual- always somewhere around top 100-150 US (Downed many bosses, focusing on 25 mans, but we won't push raids on a friday or saturday typically) Your app will get chewed up and shit on if you leave anything out, are gemmed/enchanted/talented "Wrong" (ie; you can't provide a proper response for something rather...weird)

Aurik, that fight involves a lot of spell damage in addition to melee. Also, since you're on that fight I'm assuming you haven't seen many of the fights further in, like maloriak or the blind dragon. Both do an adequate amount of magic damage in addition to melee damage. I'm not sure which side of the fence to be on with this argument, but also keep in mind these are [b]normal]/b] mode encounters, and not even hardmode ones yet, which may have different results for your tank.

[bigrougabagel]

landing at most mining points below 82 would agro anything in sight, you would end up leveling the thing with all of the fighting you would do starting at 80, and the fights would leave you bandaging/eating after every mining point to prepare for the next.

Ive already landed an 82 warrior there, and with the mining path i take, there is nothing within site of the majority of the nodes im after. I am sure i would aggro more near some of the more dangerous nodes, but havign found a path i like to mine there already, I dont see it being a big issue.

[Saxon]

Did a lot of pulls on 10m Omnitron Defense System yesterday, and now I'm pretty confident that avoidance is the way to go. Assuming we didn't fuck up the mechanics, we tended to gas on mana around 40%. Closest we got was like 10-12%.

Get your healers to whore the hell out of arcanotrons mana pool, i ended that fight with 30% mana and no deaths.

[aurik]

What healer comp?

We do use the pools, but it's only 7500 mana over 15 seconds x ~3 pools per arcanotron phase, and a lot of time using of the pool is disrupted because of the situation. I'm pretty sure our dps is still low as well, as people are undergeared.

What did you guys do about interrupting the arcanotron while he had his shield active? I was trying to get people to use focus-interrupt macros, but most of them don't even use focustargets at all so.......

[Saxon]

What healer comp?

We do use the pools, but it's only 7500 mana over 15 seconds x ~3 pools per arcanotron phase, and a lot of time using of the pool is disrupted because of the situation. I'm pretty sure our dps is still low as well, as people are undergeared.

What did you guys do about interrupting the arcanotron while he had his shield active? I was trying to get people to use focus-interrupt macros, but most of them don't even use focustargets at all so.......

We had 2 mages spellsteal the buff he gets, and I don't know about the interrupting, think we had no interrupts other than the current tank on it and just healed through it whilst shield was up.

[Falaras]

So has anyone figured out what the best raiding spec is for Mage? Fire seems pretty awesome for heroics but my DPS is Baradin Hold was pathetic because of mana.

[Saxon]

So has anyone figured out what the best raiding spec is for Mage? Fire seems pretty awesome for heroics but my DPS is Baradin Hold was pathetic because of mana.

One mage in my guild tried out frost and he seemed to be happed with his 14k dps, replenishment and 60k crits.

[Falisa]

Question for any healers that have already made the move from dungeons to heroics.. I am having hell of a hard time healing past the first boss in any of these because of how much damage is going out. Gone through like 4 attempts with different groups so far and I run out of mana at like 40% on each boss so far. Any advice on what I can do? nearly every piece of gear I have is ilvl 333.. just at a loss at what I can do to make it so I can complete atleast one heroic <_<

[Eaglestrike]

Question for any healers that have already made the move from dungeons to heroics.. I am having hell of a hard time healing past the first boss in any of these because of how much damage is going out. Gone through like 4 attempts with different groups so far and I run out of mana at like 40% on each boss so far. Any advice on what I can do? nearly every piece of gear I have is ilvl 333.. just at a loss at what I can do to make it so I can complete atleast one heroic <_<

That's pretty normal from my experiences, honestly. I just heal more and cycle my cooldowns and we use bloodlust and usually finish it off somehow, haha. I do a LOT of healing as a prot paladin, not only myself, but I use the new AOE spell and occasionally WoG other people.

However, there's also a damn good chance your group is doing the encounter wrong if you're going oom on every boss everywhere. There's a lot of avoidable (but not easily) damage in heroics.

[Saxon]

Question for any healers that have already made the move from dungeons to heroics.. I am having hell of a hard time healing past the first boss in any of these because of how much damage is going out. Gone through like 4 attempts with different groups so far and I run out of mana at like 40% on each boss so far. Any advice on what I can do? nearly every piece of gear I have is ilvl 333.. just at a loss at what I can do to make it so I can complete atleast one heroic <_<

Depends on your class, shamans have the best mana efficiency atm or at least that's what I've seen. If you are a priest then yeah, just stick with it, make sure your dps know whats happening and get them to avoid taking as much dmg as possible. Some of the bosses (SFK,HoO,SC come to mind) have insane raid dmg and for a freshly dinged healer, even I still have trouble in SC and my avg. ilvl is 350

Also, use Spi elixirs if you aren't. They really help even for heroics.

[rithridan]

From my experience (as dps) there are fights where damage is very avoidable but there are also ones where its unavoidable and that basicly makes for a very tense quasi dps race fight. For example yesterday I did Grim Batol in heroic for the first time and the Forgemaster (2nd boss) is just insane with unavoidable damage. In his mace stance he will impale a person who will then take roughly 50-60k damage which I couldn't blink or iceblock out of. In his shield stance people will get a barrage of flaming arrows on them regardless if they manage to evade most of his flame shield (even then its hard to completely evade the damage from his shield).

Compare it to the last boss where you can practicly avoid all damage as dps/healer by moving while he casts his stun/damage spell and moving into the voidzone in time. The 3rd boss being somewhat in between where the breath of the dragon and the exploding add are completely avoidable while during the drake phase you will keep eating shadow/nature(?) bolts from the untargetable boss for fairly low damage.

In Vortex Pinnacle heroic the 2nd boss is annoying in that regard, the damage he does is avoidable but the fight is just so chaotic that I had a hard time avoiding getting multiple people breathed, avoiding the 20 or so vortexes and repositioning to stand downwind every 15-20s. Especially blink was a liability since I kept managing to blink right into a vortex and get tossed out the arena/to another vortex (lovely rng).

[aurik]

Did Omnitron & Magmaw last night and got Maloriak to 1% before succumbing to his hard enrage, still not seeing anything resembling lethal physical damage on the tank.

I must say, the new raid boss fights so far are crazy awesome. They are all as good or better than the best fights in ICC.

[Slott]

Did Omnitron & Magmaw last night and got Maloriak to 1% before succumbing to his hard enrage, still not seeing anything resembling lethal physical damage on the tank.

I must say, the new raid boss fights so far are crazy awesome. They are all as good or better than the best fights in ICC.

Chimaeron hits hard as fuck, but with bile-o-tron it's not so bad. Still you need enough HP to live through double attack.

[Arvin]

chimaeron is very easy, just need smart healers/healers who experienced heroic anub'arak. lots of strong aoe heals as well for massacre phases.

[aurik]

Will probably get to him tonight, that fight looks like massive spot healing + aoe healing phase + tank switch. Should be ok using the double-lifebloom trick.

Can the boss target the caustic bile on tanks? On melee? That's the only thing that looks concerning to me.

[Ksandra]

Question for any healers that have already made the move from dungeons to heroics.. I am having hell of a hard time healing past the first boss in any of these because of how much damage is going out. Gone through like 4 attempts with different groups so far and I run out of mana at like 40% on each boss so far. Any advice on what I can do? nearly every piece of gear I have is ilvl 333.. just at a loss at what I can do to make it so I can complete atleast one heroic <_<

what class/ spec are you?

[Falisa]

Resto shaman. And someone said shaman have no mana problems.. yeah I disagree. SO much damage going out and I cant keep everyone capped off without burning through all of my mana. I really think alot of my problems though are due to the dps (and tanks sometimes) that don't know how to avoid damage they shouldnt be taking, or dps not focusing on adds quickly enough like in Grim batol. I've managed to get a few pieces of gear from queuing up as dps so we'll see if they give me enough of an edge to try queuing up as a healer again.