Random Question Thread

[aurik]

Well, I don't know the specifics of rsham yet (will be leveling my sham and priest over xmas holiday probably), but I can tell you some general suggestions: don't cap anyone off. Certainly not the DPS, and the tank either generally. Generally you want only to use your most efficient heal, and always be casting. If someone is below 50%, then you can use your big+efficient heal. Never use your fast+inefficient heal unless the tank or you are about to die. Don't ever use it on DPS; let them die. 2 dps and a tank/healer with mana is far better than 3 dps and a tank/healer without mana.

When you're just starting to gear up, you will want to make sure to use maximum CC on every trash pack. It's normal to run out of mana on the tail end of bosses.

[The Stig]

Regarding Stamina/Avoidance:

http://pwnwear.com/2010/12/16/at-end...-than-stamina/

If blocked:

If you have not been following the theory development on stamina, avoidance and mastery in our forums, I wanted to briefly highlight current thinking.

Stamina effectively has diminishing returns.

I mean whether you’re wearing a lot of Tier 11 gear or lots of top-quality blues, and have not stacked stamina in gems, you probably still have enough stamina to avoid any risk of dying before the healers can save you. You do not need more stamina to survive.
There is a lot of math and some if / then conditions involved in this statement, so if you’d like to get involved please read the full threads linked below.

This post is the TLDR version.

So once you have enough stamina, what matters next is your healers’ mana, and you help them by using mastery or avoidance stats. That includes your runeforge. Just in the last few days, Anaroth’s led a surprising analysis on runeforges which leads me to conclude that once you’re geared appropriately for your content, the swordshattering (parry) runeforge is going to be more helpful than gargoyle.

Gargoyle used to automatically be the best because it has more stamina. Enough said, that used to be the end of the conversation. However in Cataclysm, there will be point of gearing where you gain less from additional stamina than you would gain from additional avoidance.
In terms of gems, the same argument stands that mastery instead of pure stamina is valid.

Whilst the +armour of gargoyle is very attractive, at our lower level of total armour and avoidance in Cataclysm (as opposed to high levels of both in WotLK), currently the avoidance runeforge is looking better once you have enough stamina.

There is no hard rule yet for how much is ‘enough’, but it won’t be hard to work out case-by-case. If you do not get heals, do you die in a 8s window or so? Then get more stamina. I don’t yet know how much time is the right minimum, but that’s the gist of it.
I have revoked my earlier post about stamina being the emperor, my thinking now is bias to a richer and more complex model — something like: stamina is king up to some point, after which you should go for mastery or avoidance (in that order). I guess that makes Mastery the new overlord.

[Galaika]

Well, I don't know the specifics of rsham yet (will be leveling my sham and priest over xmas holiday probably), but I can tell you some general suggestions: don't cap anyone off. Certainly not the DPS, and the tank either generally. Generally you want only to use your most efficient heal, and always be casting. If someone is below 50%, then you can use your big+efficient heal. Never use your fast+inefficient heal unless the tank or you are about to die. Don't ever use it on DPS; let them die. 2 dps and a tank/healer with mana is far better than 3 dps and a tank/healer without mana.

When you're just starting to gear up, you will want to make sure to use maximum CC on every trash pack. It's normal to run out of mana on the tail end of bosses.

To add some shaman specific advice, our fast and inefficient heal healing surge has the same heal/mana as our slow heal greater healing wave. Theres no point using GHW except with natures swiftness for large instant heals, and make sure you use unleash elements right before too to get the most out of it. On 5 manskeep riptide and unleash elements on cooldown, use healing wave a lot, get people to stand in healing rain on aoe damage phases (rain + healing stream totem is excellent) and use healing surge on tanks under 50%. DPS I let die on trash, but bosses i can usually spare mana to keep them up, with 2k spirit, + elixir + heartsong enchant + trinket procs I dont really have mana problems

[Saxon]

To add some shaman specific advice, our fast and inefficient heal healing surge has the same heal/mana as our slow heal greater healing wave. Theres no point using GHW except with natures swiftness for large instant heals, and make sure you use unleash elements right before too to get the most out of it. On 5 manskeep riptide and unleash elements on cooldown, use healing wave a lot, get people to stand in healing rain on aoe damage phases (rain + healing stream totem is excellent) and use healing surge on tanks under 50%. DPS I let die on trash, but bosses i can usually spare mana to keep them up, with 2k spirit, + elixir + heartsong enchant + trinket procs I dont really have mana problems

No. In 5mans where dmg doesn't come in that fast, and keeping up mana to keep the trash coming is main prio, only use Surge when someone is at near death and the .5s difference in cast time will mean the difference in life and death. Not only does GHW heal for 2-3k more on non crit, if it does crit, you have a 100% chance to get mana back, as opposed to the 30% from surge from improved water shield. And only Chain heal if you have riptide up on your target and are going to hit 3/4 targets, otherwise its just a waste of mana. Just gear crit/spi and forget about haste, assuming the tank isn't in dps 333's then you shouldn't need insane amounts of haste, and mastery is just a waste.

Also, if you haven't already, glyph water shield.
Raids are a different ballgame though.

Also, question of my own: Glyph of Windfury or Feral Spirit for my Enh in http://wow-heroes.com/character/eu/Mazrigos/Saxonn/ (idk if that link is useful since it doesn't show my reforge and I don't log out in enh gear for armory) & wtf weapon enchant, hurricane even worth it for enh?

[Galaika]

Well i never really use chain heal anyway, and I never really have any mana problems so ymmv. For enhancement, feral spirit glyph is the best of the lot, always use it.

[Diamicles]

Regarding Stamina/Avoidance:

http://pwnwear.com/2010/12/16/at-end...-than-stamina/

good information, looks like I'm on the right track with my tank build.

[Meph]

swap out windfury for feral spirit

[Tomino]

So, is it Lichbourne the way to go for a DK tank, or just the over-the-top heroic raid solution?
Can't help but feel so weird about it, but I understand the reasons behind it.

[Saxon]

swap out windfury for feral spirit

Awesome done, only ask because EJ said to use Feral or Windfury depending on gear and I cant be bothered to set up enhsim.

[BadKarma]

I need a really sleek and nice looking UI

In reality, this IMO would be the perfect one for me

Spoiler: show

http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j202/seph32/85.jpg

[Thuronn]

Woke up this morning and got into my first random dungeon. I started hearing some very unusual sound glitches then the game crashed.

Now everytime I try logging in, when I press enter I crash.

Anyone run into wow error #132?

I've done most of what it says to fix the error (delete files/folders, update drivers ughh)

[Saxon]

I need a really sleek and nice looking UI

In reality, this IMO would be the perfect one for me

Spoiler: show

http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j202/seph32/85.jpg

That UI is ncUI.
http://www.wowinterface.com/download...5210-ncUI.html

[aznmajiktaru]

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 just coming into heroics. It's gear coupled with people needing to learn fights, especially in pugs. Unless someone knows all the fights in and out and directs people on what they need to avoid, most groups take a lot of unnecessary damage. I've let a couple of melees just die if they stand in like lava bursts in stonecore or earth spikes in tide/lost city etc cause i'm trying to keep the tank up.

Separate question though, I've just started playing for roughly about a month and I level'd as a disc/shadow priest. I thought about switching to holy when I was doing instances in cata due to the amount of damage everyone was taking but that was null once you learned the fights; however after trying omnitron last night, the druid and shaman were doing a much better job at keeping people up since PoH isn't raid wide and with all the moving around it was pretty hard to get good heals off. Anyone played with both specs can give me a run down on how holy's been working out and what's the general rotations?

[Ksandra]

Ok I know completely n00b question but I want to ask about Lockmaw in Lost City. Supposed to be a very easy fight but we couldn't kill it. ( I static with 3 other people: Prot palli, arcane/frost mage, ele shaman, holy priest (me) ).

We are at about ilvl 333~ so not over geared for these which would call for some of the difficulty. We watched/read tons of videos/guides on it and it looks to be so easy. But the thing that's killing us is the crocs. We tried aoeing them down/single targetting them down both next to the tank and also tried kiting/killing. We also tried to kite them while just dpsing the boss but that got to be too much.

dps on average was about 7.8k which I know is low but again, shouldn't make it impossible for 5man heroic. fwiw on healing we did it 4 times and I thought maybe it was me because everyone was taking a shit ton of dmg and I couldn't keep the heals up, so after the 5th guy left I switched to sp and we got another holy priest healer and we wiped again twice without any improvement. Last time we tried we got a druid and we thought that was they key (since up until then no one could get rid of the poison) and we still wiped.

Everyone is avoiding the dust so that's not it either, but I feel like we must be missing something because we only get it to about 50% and the healer is already out of mana with all cooldowns blown. Looking at the logs it's always the crocs.

any thoughts for people that did it with lower gear scores? What do you think we're doing wrong? We left at this point (dinner time) but I want this figured out for the next time we go in there.

[Noobta]

Cheese it and have everyone but the tank stand on the statues. 7.8k is really low, don't know how they manage to do that in ilvl333 gear

[Patb]

Has anyone had any problems after cata installing the ncUI? I can't seem to do anything to make the accept button work when first logging on.

[Bweigelt]

Cheese it and have everyone but the tank stand on the statues. 7.8k is really low, don't know how they manage to do that in ilvl333 gear

I've seen lower than that, in most of my the runs I do even with some guild members 7.8k would be first or sometimes second as in certain instances I can pull that as the tank. DPS for the most part is in a really sad state, I guess it's the fact that almost every class in on a priority system now and people just have no idea what they are doing.

As an aside, what sort of dps should a Hunter be pulling in Heroics? I haven't really grouped with any hunters this expansion and have no idea what I should be striving for.

EDIT: to the above poster I had the same problem, and it seems a lot of people on Wowinterface did as well and I haven't been able to find a fix for it.

[Falisa]

Btw I changed my play style a bit, reforged my gear to different stats and I have nearly all 346 gear in every slot... healing is a shit ton easier now as long as the tank isnt a complete idiot. Just did vortex pinnacle and had 100% mana for nearly the entire run except for after bosses of course.

[Clemz]

As survival I pull between 12-14k right now, granted I've only done a couple heroics.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...s/ouryu/simple

As for Lockmaw, when we did it today with Rogue, Death Knight and Hunter we just aoe'd the crocs down. If they were on me I ran to the tank and feigned, between myself and the rogue we were able to misdirect/tricks the crocs onto the tank and then take them out. With fan of knives, howling blast and multi shot they were dying too quickly to even be a hinderance.

[Angelicus]

Only done 1 HC, as still not completely up to iLvel for random, was with a guild group and the sad thing was I was pulling the most dps on the bosses. With a Rouge and Elemental shammy, who had doen quite a few HCs pulling about 1.5K less than me.

8.5K ish as SV, I averaged out as, but we couldn't get past the Dragon boss in Vortex

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...horne/advanced