Random Question Thread

[FailureMidgard]

That would be correct. I went from being in a top 100 guild to raiding with RL friends, so our current makeup is shitty but it lets us see content and play the classes we like to play. We have a hunter for the crit damage. Our comp is:

Blood DK
Prot Pal
Holy Pal
Holy Priest
---Inconsistant healer spot, typically resto shaman (trying to recruit a rdruid with boomkin offspec)
Arcane Mage
Spriest
Hunter
Frost DK
Rogue (Me)

So I can go Mutilate, and hope that the damage I lose from not being combat is made up by the damage bonus the spriest and arcane mage gets. Our main issue is underperforming. I just got my 4pc in our last raid, and I've been #1 on almost every fight, #2 when I'm not #1, and that is an issue to me. We run without an armor debuff, so there is no reason for me to be on top of meters for these fights. Everyone is in similar gear, just underperforming, and it's making the jump to hardmodes almost impossible since people need to straight out bring more dps.

To start with, I don't suggest 3healing any hardmode except for Beth'tilac. I think every other hardmode is better done with 2 healers, even with poor gear/etc. Putting an ele shaman or feral druid (3 melee DPS sounds less than ideal though) in that open slot seems like a really good fit to me, but eh.
Assuming the hunter is running marks, I don't see how expose is not a DPS increase.

Overall, your raid makeup seems pretty crappy...you're missing bleed debuff, sunder, CoE or 5% crit, 5% spellcrit, 4% sp.
You say you're missing sunder so you shouldn't be topping meters, but they are missing 8% spelldmg, 5% spellcrit, and 4% spellpower, so I think you're actually better off than your caster counterparts with the raid comp listed. However, I'm not arguing with you that they are underperforming, as I have no idea what the margin looks like, etc, but they are missing a lot too.

As for mutilate...if it means you can keep sunder up and provide CoE, it definitely seems worth it to me. Alternatively for a fight like Baleroc, I hear Subtlety is nice, which indirectly should provide CoE also, if you prefer it (hunter can CoE instead of 5% crit).

Also, don't overestimate the DPS needed for hardmodes now. With the cheese strat, Domo is 1-shottable on heroic (our alt raid 2shot it, first wipe was just a slow spread...with all sorts of bad gear and stuff, took 9min I think, so still had room on the enrage). Needs to be 2healed though.

[Boyiee]

We don't plan on 3healing any hardmodes that don't require it, but as mentioned we are looking for a consistent 10th that can heal/dps. We ran a shaman in that 10th spot that could heal or dps, but he has been iffy as of late so we were pressing for a druid (ff+earth and moon yay)

Missing the bleed debuff isn't too bad, and as mute i'd be able to keep expose up much easier.

I'm sure I'm overestimating dps needed on hardmodes, but I still think that if I'm hovering at 30k on bale normal without sunder, then I shouldn't be first every single time. I'm almost convinced our arcane mage is doing something wrong - but this is the price I pay for raiding casually with RL friends.

I'm happy with the way we are raiding right now, everyone plays what they want, no complaints, we killed rag, but my old habbits from higher end raiding are hard to ignore. I'd like to see them do more dps, I'd like to get a few hardmodes down, just not sure if going mutilate will make too much of a difference. It'll up the overall raids dps, but if they're under performing they're under performing.

Everything may change with the patch, think the frost dk wants to start raiding on his warlock instead as he's learning how everything favors ranged. Entire comp could change in fact, except for me on rogue (duh legendaries).

I wish blizzard would do away with 10s and make 15mans instead. All they'd need to do is give bosses larger health pools to make up for extra dpsers. I detest needing certain raid comps to progress pre-nerf.

[Tohmane]

While we're on the subject of Rogue DPS, I could use some help with mine.

My gear and stuff:
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...oleus/advanced

I don't raid yet because I feel my DPS is too low,so any general tips would be nice. I know about keeping Slice & Dice up, Blade Flurry for packs, never stacking Killing Spree with Adrenaline Rush etc., but I can't shake the feeling I'm missing something because my DPS in ZG/ZA is around 11/13k.

I could be wrong and that's the DPS I should expect with my gear, but I have no idea, so thus I ask. Any help is greatly appreciated.

[Slott]

Bear mastery is good as is dodge. If anything, I think your opting to reforge into dodge always, but gem mastery is a bit odd. I don't entirely agree with Slott necessarily (but my druid is an alt who's MS is resto anyway), but there should come a point when dodge is being DR'd a bit too hard to make it worthwhile. Dodge until that point is good, mastery after. Regardless, I do agree with Slott that gemming for mastery is kinda weak as a druid, agility or stam both seem like better options (I prefer agility), though I generally think mastery socket bonuses are fine (agi/dodge in yellow, agi/stam in blue).

Agi > dodge > mastery > crit/exp>hit point for point. Armor is somewhere in there since it typically comes in a large sum when it's available on an enchant, hitting armor DR is a lot harder since agi offers no armor anymore.
Mastery is a great stat - aim for it on all your gear, reforge the other stat to dodge. It's the highest mitigation secondary stat you can get on gear, you typically should aim for crit mastery but reforge the crit to dodge. You're unlikely to hit dodge DR with an ilvl of 360.
Agility is the best stat, it offers AP crit and dodge, the AP and crit both effecting your savage defense.
You only need enough stam to be alive after something like 2 unmitigated hits and still have 1 hp remaining or so. That being said, you can easily get a stam trinket with a dodge proc, like the one off valiona and theralion, or the one from fireland dailies, then start gemming agi instead of agi/stam.

[Correction]

Is expose armor a DPS loss when you don't have someone else bringing the debuff?

if your raid doesn't provide it then expose armor is a personal DPS loss made up for by an increase in rDPS. Do it if you're seriously running without druids/warriors of any kind.

While we're on the subject of Rogue DPS, I could use some help with mine.

At a glance, you are running WAY too much hit, especially if you're not raiding yet. Assassination Rogues only need to reach (or dance within ~.3%) of the Spell hit cap (1127 rating). Switch your gems to AGi then reforge excess hit to Mastery or Haste, depending on what's already on the gear. You should probably also get some of that Expertise off your gear, it's not as important a stat as it was in Wrath. Both Mastery and Haste are better stats than Expertise.

I just noticed you're Combat Daggers. You'll probably see a DPS increase going to Assassination, or switching to a Mace/Sword/Axe in your MH if you have one.

[FailureMidgard]

Missing the bleed debuff isn't too bad, and as mute i'd be able to keep expose up much easier.

I agree it isn't huge (and I have no idea what it means to a rogue), but to a MM hunter, it's slightly more important than sunder, so it's still a significant loss for him to not have it.
I think Arcane mages as a whole are a bit overrated these days...the top #s you're seeing all include a Shard of Woe, which is a -huge- upgrade for them. Assuming yours doesn't have it, I really wouldn't expect spectacular DPS from him. IIRC, Shard is some ~2-3k dps over any other trinket available.

Agi > dodge > mastery > crit/exp>hit point for point. Armor is somewhere in there since it typically comes in a large sum when it's available on an enchant, hitting armor DR is a lot harder since agi offers no armor anymore.
Mastery is a great stat - aim for it on all your gear, reforge the other stat to dodge. It's the highest mitigation secondary stat you can get on gear, you typically should aim for crit mastery but reforge the crit to dodge. You're unlikely to hit dodge DR with an ilvl of 360.
Agility is the best stat, it offers AP crit and dodge, the AP and crit both effecting your savage defense.
You only need enough stam to be alive after something like 2 unmitigated hits and still have 1 hp remaining or so. That being said, you can easily get a stam trinket with a dodge proc, like the one off valiona and theralion, or the one from fireland dailies, then start gemming agi instead of agi/stam.

I agree with most all of that, except I think stam is a very nice stat for h-Rag (it's not only about multiple unmitigated hits, it's about said hits during times when your healer -has- to be moving, or 2 hits + 80k fire damage). Dodge probably isn't DRing yet, but it's still worth considering that it will start to DR more and more as gear increases, and it's worth looking into a spreadsheet or something to help tell you just how bad it is (as a matter of checking it every so often as your gear improves, not right this second).
Also, as far as stam trinkets go, you're better off taking any mastery, stam, or agility socket bonus first in my personal opinion. Obviously taking a haste or something socket bonus is less than ideal.

[Slott]

I mean, if you're going into the intricacies of a fight he's nowhere near, you could argue that stamina is the worst stat for heroic baleroc, with mastery offering little to no benefit, dodge being the best and using a tb trinket. lets be real here and stick to the topic of a 360 ilvl bear that hasn't even entered firelands yet for normal shannox, let alone heroic rag. Keep in mind, i was specifically giving his character notes, not for specific fights such as heroic rag, which someone else may be doing.

[FailureMidgard]

I mean, if you're going into the intricacies of a fight he's nowhere near, you could argue that stamina is the worst stat for heroic baleroc, with mastery offering little to no benefit, dodge being the best and using a tb trinket. lets be real here and stick to the topic of a 360 ilvl bear that hasn't even entered firelands yet for normal shannox, let alone heroic rag. Keep in mind, i was specifically giving his character notes, not for specific fights such as heroic rag, which someone else may be doing.

Sorry, I assumed your 2nd post that quoted me was directed at me, and not him.
Going into normal FL with a group that isn't progressed will have similar uses for stam. The exact same time periods on normal Rag will be an issue for a nonprogressed group. Seed explosions + Rag melee. Trap explosion + Hand + Rag melee. Alysrazor can easily have stam save your life (taking worm spew or brushfire or the dot to 50% + a melee hit). Shannox if bad with dot resetting...the list can go on here. Stam becomes significantly worse on farm content outside of a few niche scenarios, but can still be huge for progression/first few kills on almost any fight.
You're entirely correct that stam -was- pretty meaningless on Baleroc, however, since the nerfs, I think inferno blade is actually a larger risk than decimation blade now, so I'm not really sure I agree anymore.

As for general notes at his ilvl, I agree with reforging to pure dodge, I still think any agi, stam, or mastery socket bonus he should get (red=pure agi, yellow = agi/dodge, blue=agi/stam), and TB trinket should be something every tank, all 3 classes, has available, if not almost fulltimed.

[Meko]

Thanks for the feedback. I'll look into making a few changes. Which TB trinket are you referring to?

[Kaylia]

http://www.wowhead.com/item=62466
Mirror of broken images.

400 resistances every minutes is great to survive some of the hardest boss abilities like Nef's crackle, Bal's inferno blade, Ragnaros' traps/seed. It's better than most cd you have tank.

[The Stig]

While we're on the subject of Rogue DPS, I could use some help with mine.

My gear and stuff:
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...oleus/advanced

I don't raid yet because I feel my DPS is too low,so any general tips would be nice. I know about keeping Slice & Dice up, Blade Flurry for packs, never stacking Killing Spree with Adrenaline Rush etc., but I can't shake the feeling I'm missing something because my DPS in ZG/ZA is around 11/13k.

I could be wrong and that's the DPS I should expect with my gear, but I have no idea, so thus I ask. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Along with what Correction said, Combat uses a 2.6 agi weapon on the mainhand. Sinister Strike hits harder the slower your weapon is.

Having 17% hit is actually good, especially if you switch to Assassination, as poisons are the bulk of your damage and ensures the poison will always tick/land on bosses.

Grab a tankard o terror off AH if you want to stay combat.

Stick hurricane on offhand.

(Unless you're PvPing and it's a life style choice)

Change all your 20 agi 30 stam gems to 20 agi 20 hit gems

Then with the extra hit gained, reforge it off your current gear.

Retalent a bit -- get rid of reinforced leather (face it, if you get meleed for whatever reason, I don't think that talent will save you at all)

My talent tree looks like this when I used to play Combat, but now I'm Assassination:

http://wowtal.com/#k=b164dDED.b0w.rogue.

I find Assassination more fun as it's more about pooling energy and using it at the right time, rather than "furiously" pushing buttons as Combat.

[aurik]

http://www.wowhead.com/item=62466

Every raider should have this trinket available.

[FailureMidgard]

http://www.wowhead.com/item=62466
Mirror of broken images.

400 resistances every minutes is great to survive some of the hardest boss abilities like Nef's crackle, Bal's inferno blade, Ragnaros' traps/seed. It's better than most cd you have tank.

And much much more. ;p
The fact every tank likes mastery, which is the passive, just makes it even better. It may be a little less total mitigation than others, but it's mitigation that is -always- guaranteed to come at a high damage time, so it's pretty amazing overall.

Every raider should have this trinket available.

Eh, not sure I agree with every raider. Every tank for sure...I really don't see it being too worthwhile on DPS or healers. I know you complained about your guild's DPS, no idea how healing worked out, do you really want them dropping even more DPS? I know people talked about it on Nef, but we never felt it mattered on anyone that wasn't taking melee/breath hits also.

[Tohmane]

Yeah,the reinforced leather was a brain fart I realized now. Used to have blade twisting there but it did nothing for me since I don't PvP so I just put out points on something that looked a tad more useful for misc. PvE.

Hurricane > Landslide? I've pretty much followed noxxic when it comes to spec/glyphs/gems/enchants, and they say Landslide for both, just didn't want to put it on that meh offhand that I hope to replace soon. What should I aim for when it comes to offhand anyway? 1.40 dagger?

I suppose my gear is some sort of solo/dungeon hybrid, I see what you're getting at. I tried Assassination but it's not for me, Combat was awkward at first since I started Subtlety and only offspeced into Combat because Subtlety looked heavily situational endgame, but Combat grew on me.

Thanks for the help, I'll get right on doing some changes and see where it takes me.

[Correction]

Hurricane is better than the weapon chain on your offhand. Of course if you can afford the Landslide enchant it beats Hurricane by a wide margin.

Offhand should always be the strongest 1.4-1.5 dagger you can find regardless of spec.

The usefulness of Blade Twisting seems to come and go depending on the expansion. It was really nice in Wrath. now it's kind of pointless in FL.

[aurik]

Eh, not sure I agree with every raider. Every tank for sure...I really don't see it being too worthwhile on DPS or healers. I know you complained about your guild's DPS, no idea how healing worked out, do you really want them dropping even more DPS? I know people talked about it on Nef, but we never felt it mattered on anyone that wasn't taking melee/breath hits also.

"Available" doesn't mean "wearing fulltime". It takes like 15 minutes per day for all of 10 days to acquire, and it is practically best in slot for any fight that is tuned around survival instead of dps. Thus, no reason why every raider shouldn't have one of these in their bag and available to equip if the strategy so requires.

It happens that most of T12 is tuned around maximum dps, but in T11 this trinket was amazing for many fights where survival was the primary concern. And if T13 turns out the way people are guessing based on tank 4p bonuses, this trinket will once again be great.

[Tohmane]

Lovely, all the OH daggers are either raid or costs 10k (yes I'm poor, I'm a newb). Doesn't help that virtually every PUG group requires you to have the full achievement to join on my realm, better get to farming for gold I guess. But enough of that, this isn't the thread for delving into it.

Lesse, any questions still... How about: have any of you bothered with Time-Lost Proto-Drake and/or Aeonaxx? They look damn good, but the sheer time investment scares me away, and that's coming from someone that's very familiar with grinding.

[Kaylia]

And much much more. ;p
The fact every tank likes mastery, which is the passive, just makes it even better. It may be a little less total mitigation than others, but it's mitigation that is -always- guaranteed to come at a high damage time, so it's pretty amazing overall.

I was supposed to be an "etc" in that list, but yeah, pretty much every fights in the last 2 raid tiers had a burst of magical damage at some point (usually correspond to big raid damage), and that's where this trinket shine.


As long it's an ability that is repeated the whole fight, and the holy paladin isn't going to use aura mastery on each (it's a 2 min cd that nullify the effect of your trinket), you should be using it.

[Anakron]

Did WoW used to auto-run your character into melee range if you had a target and activated a melee skill or auto-attack? I just started playing again after about a year's break, so I don't know if I'm remembering incorrectly.

[Kaylia]

Nope.