Random Complaint Thread

[FailureMidgard]

Old content stuff

Is there a point to this? You ignored the longest wait, gave random excuses (does this make the 8 month wait ok?) for other shit...sorry, it was never ok. Furthermore, I'll respectfully disagree with you that AQ was worth raiding in Naxx, etc (Naxx was hardly worth raiding in Naxx, which is why tons of guilds had issues fielding people towards the end...oh ya, ICC wasn't worth raiding towards the end of ICC also). You also ignored the longest wait...still unsure what your point is...

Now you have BoT and BWD and Throne. BoT is laughable unless you're doing heroic modes but again that=/= content other then Sinestra. BWD is also boring other then Nefarian and Chim. They are also very quick raids as the trash ratio in raiding has gone down a lot.

To each his own, Chim is the most boring and worst fight of this raid tier, imo, and if you want interesting and challenging encounters, *gasp* do hardmodes.

I really have no issue with content coming out a little slow, but I do have an issue when the excuse is that hardmode fights are supposed to be "new" content. Hardly any effort goes into something like that and to people like me, who like to see how new gear looks, its a slap in the face because its all just recolored FFXI shit.

They are content, and they are far better "content" than bullshit that is released FFXI style and expected to be beaten the second day it is released where a single wipe is questionable and winning is a foregone conclusion. IF anything, the "not content" is the normal mode, but it's there to appease everyone who thought raiding in the past was way too hard. I'm also confused where you get your idea of amount of effort that goes into a fight. A hardmode takes no effort on their part, but Brutallus, wait I mean Argoloth took effort? Or was it FelmystSindragosa, I mean TheralValiona that took effort? Every fight out there is re-used mechanics for the most part, I fail to see why the hardmode aspect of re-using annoys you so greatly.

My extremely high-pop server (KT) has I think 7 or 8 guilds that are still active in 25-man. 1 horde, MAYBE a 2nd horde that I don't know about. Maybe 6-7 alliance. And I think the typical backwater server will have 3-4. So in order to average almost 8, there's gotta be a whole shitton of servers that are secretly harboring 10+ 25-man raiding guilds.

Is that Kel'Thuzad? If so, looking at realm forums and wowprogress, it looks like you easily have 10-12 25 man guilds, with possibly 15+ if I went in and looked. And when I say 25 man guilds, I mean were 25man at some point in Cataclysm. I think that average of 8 is actually really close to accurate (as long as we're counting a guild that has even been 25man in Cata, 25man, regardless if 2 weeks ago they switched to 10).

Never pulled Nef on 25, but Cho'gall is a pushover on 25.
On 10 man, Cho'gall is significantly easier. Took us like a grand total of 8 pulls to learn Cho'gall, and we're well over 30 pulls on Nef without being "close". But a lot of that is because we can't get a solid 10 raiders together anymore, every week we're purp-training a new shitbag that we've brought in to replace someone who has burned out and no-shows.

I haven't done 25 at all in Cata, so all my statements are 10. Chogall requires a lot more attention from everyone in the raid, and better execution from everyone in the raid. Nef requires attention from 3 people during p2 to not miss interrupts (really, missing interrupts on Chogall is really bad also...), 1 good person who can kite adds in P1 (or otherwise control them....can 3tank the fight and make the entire fight a joke if you want), and umm, enough mana regen to last? It takes little to no execution, has no burn aspect, and is all around easy. That being said, we had a bitch on progression because some people watched some videos and took them as gospel, even though they did the fight in a retarded manner, thus making P3 hell. Don't take Nef on the side, tank him in the center of the room. Don't kite adds, tank them, and move them 5 steps whenever a shadowflame fires off. At the very start of the phase, if they weren't grouped and 4/5 activated, purposefully get all 5 up, and drag them all through shadowflame to reset their energy bars to be equal. You'll take some insignificant amount of extra damage, but it will make the entire phase a joke and easy to control. Backpedal around the edge of the room with a healer in front of you, maybe use some sort of random CD or ability whenever a Lightning Machine goes off, and you're golden (doesn't need to be a lot, even just a snare and get a small lead for 5-10 seconds, an intervene, shield block, AMS, TB trinket, etc). The point is take the hits and control the fight, and don't do this kiting nonsense where they never reset stacks/etc/etc. It's easier than Chogall for sure if you have a proper strat.

I think the main reason why content seems "slow" (when in reality most non-hardcore guilds didn't start seriously raiding until January, so we're barely in month 3. At this point in tier 10 the lich king fight was only 2-3 weeks old) is that we are still hungover from the terrible length of ICC/T10, a full 11 months of which 6 the content was absolutely trivialized by the scaling buff.

This makes no sense...because we're just over truly slow content, we think this content is also slow? 3 months should seem fast compared to 11, no?

[FailureMidgard]

Nobody wants resto druids. Especially since it currently looks like we're still going to be the worst of the 5 healing specs going in to 4.1 and possibly 4.2 because Blizzard somehow thinks a 3 minute tranquility is going to compare well with PWB / AM / newTotem to get us raid spots.

Slightly de-railing, do you actually think the new totem is very good? I think it may have situational uses, but it's really shitty compared to virtually every other CD (including Tranquility imo). I think Lightwell is a better cooldown, for general purpose use also. It feels to me like it's virtually unusable in a lot of situations that you use a raidwall on. Take Lightning Machines on Nef p3 for example...your shaman either has to run out of the raid just far enough that he's 100% sure he's outside of 13 from the tank, but still within 13 of everyone else, or else he literally can't drop it. Same shit on most other fights...it's going to pose a serious risk to either the tank or the raid to drop it in any situation you'd actually want to drop it. It's a really interesting concept, but the only real use I see for it is Halfus HM to help "beat" the MS effect. In pvp, you have to kill your positioning to even try to use it, so meh...if you're trying to counter a smokebomb, you're just letting the rogue blind you without even dropping DPS time or giving you a warning to try to LoS him.

And, we have a resto druid in our raid regularly, it has it's strengths, and weakness, but I think too much of the endgame community gets this idea certain classes are worthless when they are far from it.

[Meresgi]

They are content, and they are far better "content"

It's the same boss, just because now he fires lasers out of his asshole while at the same time hitting you with a mace does not make it new or exciting. It's the same place, the same boss, the same loot, only with a twist. Thanks M Night! Are they challenging? Sure, are they exciting or new or even that interesting? fuck no.

Why was AQ not worth running when Naxx was out? Naxx took a lot to get through at first and most guilds had not gotten C'Thun down. Same for BT, a lot of guilds still had a few issues with getting Illidan down while SWP was out. In retrospect, I don't know of very many guilds who had not completed ToC by the time LK was out.

[aurik]

Slightly de-railing, do you actually think the new totem is very good? I think it may have situational uses, but it's really shitty compared to virtually every other CD (including Tranquility imo). I think Lightwell is a better cooldown, for general purpose use also. It feels to me like it's virtually unusable in a lot of situations that you use a raidwall on. Take Lightning Machines on Nef p3 for example...your shaman either has to run out of the raid just far enough that he's 100% sure he's outside of 13 from the tank, but still within 13 of everyone else, or else he literally can't drop it. Same shit on most other fights...it's going to pose a serious risk to either the tank or the raid to drop it in any situation you'd actually want to drop it. It's a really interesting concept, but the only real use I see for it is Halfus HM to help "beat" the MS effect. In pvp, you have to kill your positioning to even try to use it, so meh...if you're trying to counter a smokebomb, you're just letting the rogue blind you without even dropping DPS time or giving you a warning to try to LoS him.

And, we have a resto druid in our raid regularly, it has it's strengths, and weakness, but I think too much of the endgame community gets this idea certain classes are worthless when they are far from it.

New totem looks pretty good. Damage reduction + near certainty that nobody in the whole raid will die for the duration, due to the health rebalancing thing. It's not the best against massive raid-wide damage, though it certainly has a small beneficial effect. Against patchy damage or tank damage it's a get-out-of-jail-free card. It has better range properties than PWB, and PWB is still practically necessary for HMs, and people make that work.

Also, even with only 2 targets in rage (shaman plus tank) it reduces damage done to the tank by 10%, and then any damage the tank is dealt is "equalized" with the shaman--so if he has 160k hp and gets hit for 17.7k, he actually only takes 5% damage (8k) and the shaman takes 5% of his life, about 6.5k. Overall 14.5k, an actual reduction of ~18%. With more soakers in range, the actual reduction goes up slightly.

Tranquility's achilles heel is that the only thing it does do well is massive amounts of healing. It doesn't stop people from dying if they're being focused by a boss mechanic. Also due to the way that the TranQ HoT works, the healing is quite significantly backloaded: you don't see a lot of the actual effect until 4-5 seconds after you start channeling. Also it's channeled which sucks. There's also the everpresent danger that designing around druids having no damage reduction ability at ALL means they better have significantly superior HPS (or unique utility but Blizzard is trying to phase unique utility out) which leads to massive QQ by meter humpers and then Blizzard nerfing the potency to bring all the healers "in line" for HPS.

Currently the mentality of HM raid organization is "how many AM/PWB/GA do we need for this fight? Ok, take that many priests/paladins. Then fill additional slots with druid/shaman". The buffing of Mana Tide and the new Totem are serious contenders to change that mentality for shamans. I doubt people are going to be doing the same with druids just because they can use TranQ twice a fight instead of once.

[Arvin]

Mana Tide is overpowered as hell, and it's considered a raid cooldown but it's not nearly as game breaking as say.. PW:Barrier is in hardmode.

Good example of spirit link being used: Hardmode Valiona/Theralion. The damage to the raid gets pretty intense during the 3rd-5th blackouts to a point where most guilds will usually pray it goes to someone with the capability immunity'ing it off. Spirit link could be used to transfer that damage to a group of people and reduce it. Things of that nature are what it'll be mostly good for.

[Kaylia]

@Kaylia. You're completely missing my point. My point is that your original point was hardmodes aren't content because they are recycled content. I'm saying you're wrong, they are. I'm saying nothing about progression burnout, etc, etc. You're just changing your tune now. Yes, people get sick of wiping to the same shit, yes, that's a reason to push the next tier. NO, IT IS NOT VALID TO SAY I'VE KILLED THIS BOSS 10 TIMES SO HEROIC MODE ISN'T NEW CONTENT. Period. You can say it's too hard, you can say it's out of reach, you can say you're sick of wiping. But killing it 10x on normal does not remove it from being content, I'm sorry.

That wasnt my point, but if you say so.

If you're stuck on any boss, easier content is all there is left to do, and it will get old. What you can't do is not "new content".

[Plow]

just as an aside-- blackrock has 32 guilds with at least 1 25 man kill

26 guilds with at least 3

[Viq]

On the flip side, Dentarg has 3 guilds with at least 1 25 man kill, and only one with at least 3.

[aurik]

just as an aside-- blackrock has 32 guilds with at least 1 25 man kill

26 guilds with at least 3

Blackrock is like 2x the size of any other realm, raiding wise.
That said, you can't go with what guildox/wowprogress say as to who is raiding. I know the list for KT is wrong as hell for 25man.

[Intrinsic]

Blackrock isn't really a good comparison server because it's been Top 3 PvE servers since forever. I've raided on BR since Vanilla, it's an insane server. Pugs on BR were downing 25 man content in LK and Cat before top guilds on smaller pop servers had even started thinking about raiding.

[FailureMidgard]

It's the same boss, just because now he fires lasers out of his asshole while at the same time hitting you with a mace does not make it new or exciting. It's the same place, the same boss, the same loot, only with a twist. Thanks M Night! Are they challenging? Sure, are they exciting or new or even that interesting? fuck no.

I guess it's just a matter of preference? I'm sorry, but Halfus normal mode was not exciting, new, or interesting the first time I fought him. Nor was any other normal mode. They are all reskins of old mechanics, sometimes they pick and choose 2 different mechanics from 2 different fights and toss them together. Valiona and Theralion have 2 different uses of the exact same mechanics (stack to split damage), the "spread out" mechanic, felmyst breath, and sindragosa debuff. Oh, and move out of sparkley on ground. Really wanna get technical, they have lvl 60 Heigan hallway as a side deal too! Nothing new, nothing exciting. The only thing that makes a fight interesting is when it's put together in a way to challenge people. Ya, hardmodes aren't for everyone. For that matter, I'm not so hardcore anymore, and am only 4/13 as I said, but I see no logic in your decision on how to label something interesting.

And same loot? Really? I mean, I guess you already said how your armor looks graphically is a huge deal to you, and I'm all about looks too - but wow if you think that having a new name and new graphic on "agility mail bracer with crit + some other secondary" is that big of a deal as opposed to slapping "heroic" on it.

New totem looks pretty good. Damage reduction + near certainty that nobody in the whole raid will die for the duration, due to the health rebalancing thing. It's not the best against massive raid-wide damage, though it certainly has a small beneficial effect. Against patchy damage or tank damage it's a get-out-of-jail-free card. It has better range properties than PWB, and PWB is still practically necessary for HMs, and people make that work.

Also, even with only 2 targets in rage (shaman plus tank) it reduces damage done to the tank by 10%, and then any damage the tank is dealt is "equalized" with the shaman--so if he has 160k hp and gets hit for 17.7k, he actually only takes 5% damage (8k) and the shaman takes 5% of his life, about 6.5k. Overall 14.5k, an actual reduction of ~18%. With more soakers in range, the actual reduction goes up slightly.

Is that actually how it works? 'cause that's not my understanding. If the tank has 200k HP and the Shaman has 100k HP (just using simple numbers for fun), and the tank takes a 33k hit, that hit becomes 30k, putting the tank at 170k/200k. The tick happens 1 second later, and equalizes percentages, putting the tank up to 180k/200k, and the shaman down to 90k/100k. The shaman then lands a GHW .5 sec later for 30k, with a 10k overheal. Your net effect is the shaman down 10k HP in this situation. Admittedly I haven't fucked around on PTR, but the wording definitely doesn't imply what you are saying, at all.

On the other hand, you can gib your tank with it. Let's say you drop it for a Lightning Machine on Nef. You have 7 nontanks + 1 tank in range. All your nontanks have 100k HP, your tank has 200k HP, and the Machine hits for 80k per person we'll say. Tank drops to 120/200, players 20/100. Equalization happens and raid members all bump up to 28.8888k HP, tank drops from 120k HP to 57.7777k HP. Seems like a negative result to me. The opposite could easily happen as well (Chimaeron Collapse...you stop raid healing because people seems safe, tank takes a double (or just big, say 180k) hit as the last hit before Massacre...thing is there's still 1 last spew of 2x splash before the Massacre, that 180k dmg ends up dropping everyone an extra 18k HP, which results in the spew killing people.)

Sorry if there's actually some source for exactly how this totem works...I haven't seen it, but your interpretation makes no sense with the actual wording.

Also, I thought I mentioned PvP as part of the range issue...range isn't an issue in PvE (can stack when you need it), but for pvp the ability is pretty trash 'cause of range and the fact it's pretty weak. PWB is a 40 range you don't give up positioning for, and is 30% reduction anyway (as opposed to saying "please swap onto me".

Tranquility's achilles heel is that the only thing it does do well is massive amounts of healing. It doesn't stop people from dying if they're being focused by a boss mechanic. Also due to the way that the TranQ HoT works, the healing is quite significantly backloaded: you don't see a lot of the actual effect until 4-5 seconds after you start channeling. Also it's channeled which sucks. There's also the everpresent danger that designing around druids having no damage reduction ability at ALL means they better have significantly superior HPS (or unique utility but Blizzard is trying to phase unique utility out) which leads to massive QQ by meter humpers and then Blizzard nerfing the potency to bring all the healers "in line" for HPS.

It's still good, and there's no real 1-shot mechanics in the game at the moment? Don't get me wrong, raid walls help a ton, but so does insanely efficient and high-HPS healing after the fact. Lightwell is far better for Nef Machines than PWB in 10man (and works for 2.x machines, doesn't take a GCD at a bad time, and lowers the healing required by a larger amount).

Currently the mentality of HM raid organization is "how many AM/PWB/GA do we need for this fight? Ok, take that many priests/paladins. Then fill additional slots with druid/shaman". The buffing of Mana Tide and the new Totem are serious contenders to change that mentality for shamans. I doubt people are going to be doing the same with druids just because they can use TranQ twice a fight instead of once.

That's a distinctly 25-man outlook on raiding. Tranq is amazing. NS is still amazing. I don't think the Tranq change is the right direction ('cause like you said, you didn't gain an ability, you got 1 extra use per fight, whereas priests still have their CD + Divine Hymn/etc), but I'm merely saying that a huge HPS output -is- a good cooldown.

[aurik]

I'm not intimately familiar with how the totem works. It's currently pretty bugged on the PTR anyway, so who knows what it will look like when it goes live.

But I have to say, you really are overvaluing Tranq. Tranq is pretty strong in 10 mans because it covers 5 people, half the raid. In 25-mans, it still only covers 5 people though, whereas other raid cooldowns cover anyone in range of the effect. For example, a well placed PWB on nef's lightning machine stands to prevent upwards of 600k damage on 25-man, far more than TranQ would ever deliver with zero cast time and no need to channel the spell for 6.5 while you pray that your main healing tasks don't die.

But the real core of the problem is that damage reduction is flat out superior to healing that damage after it has been taken.

There is a lot of pretty good analysis at EJ @ resto druid thread. Here's a quote from Hamlet (from Jug on MG), who sums up my feelings on the subject nicely:

The situations where damage would outright kill the target may be "rare" in some absolute sense, but the fact that they often consist of major boss abilities which can be planned around in advance with e.g. a PWB rotation is the crux of the problem.

In the case where you use an emergency heal cooldown in the "intended" way ("oh man the raid is at really low HP let me press this button to try to keep people from dying while we stabilize"), there's no issue. In fact Tranq is probably better there. This is the sort of use that I think raid cooldowns should be for, by the way.

The problem arises when the boss does a huge damage ability to the raid at X points during the fight, and the heavy spike damage would have a high chance of killing at least somebody either immediately (if the raid's not topped off beforehand) or soon afterwards (if people can't be restored to reasonable HP fast enough to survive other miscellaneous damage). Currently, the solution is "bring X Pst/Pal to cooldown each one in turn." This function, and specifically this function, of raidwide DR cooldowns, 1) cannot be replaced by healing alone, and 2) is important enough to make it hard to balance around. Maybe people have gotten the idea that I just hate Tranquility and feel the need to remind me that it can it be good. I know it can often be good, there's just a particular thing it can't do which happens to be of great importance (too much importance even, for sure) in current raid design.

As things stand, having enough "Barriers" in your raid for a particular fight is like having enough Replenishments, or having all your DPS synergies or something. You make sure you set up your roster to do it, because it would be silly not to. Maybe Tranq is good in many situations, but what we care about in balance discussion is raid slots, and nobody's ever said "we have to find room for another Resto Druid in this raid because we need that Tranquility."

And later on another good post from Puca in Risen/Proudmoore:

What sort of damage would make 3 minute tranquility preferable to AM/Barrier? It would have to be a big raid hit that comes gradually. The problem is gradual damage can be hugely mitigated by just spamming regular AoE heals like PoH from Holy priest. In fact, if PoH+glyph doesn't overheal, it comes surprisingly close to Tranqulity throughput, for a spammable alternative. I am having a hard time imagining a raid hit that comes quickly enough where PoH isn't good enough to get people out of danger, but slow enough that Barrier et al are not useful.

Druid's other big strength is they completely ignore mobility considerations while doing their HPS. This is quite handy sometimes (Al'Akir, Atremedes), but overall healers that give up mobility for burst seem to fare better in the current raiding game. Burst is generally how the hardest encounters challenge healers.

Anyway, that totally sidesteps the other thing which is both Shaman and Druids lack a single-target cooldown. Nature's Swiftness is far too weak to count as a single-target cooldown anymore.


Also I give no shit about PvP.

[FailureMidgard]

I'm not intimately familiar with how the totem works. It's currently pretty bugged on the PTR anyway, so who knows what it will look like when it goes live.

But I have to say, you really are overvaluing Tranq. Tranq is pretty strong in 10 mans because it covers 5 people, half the raid. In 25-mans, it still only covers 5 people though, whereas other raid cooldowns cover anyone in range of the effect. For example, a well placed PWB on nef's lightning machine stands to prevent upwards of 600k damage on 25-man, far more than TranQ would ever deliver with zero cast time and no need to channel the spell for 6.5 while you pray that your main healing tasks don't die.

Admittedly I'm talking and forgetting 25 even exists. Tranquility is pretty much trash in 25man, I agree. It's arguably better in 10man, which is what I meant, though perhaps forgot to say. While I'm a huge fan of the ideology behind Cata 25/10s, it just isn't very easy to balance around. Generally it makes 25mans easier due to raid stacking, and the fact various raid walls "scale" as opposed to Tranq/HR/HST/etc not scaling. Past that, you can do dumb things like have a Lifegrip up for every Gravity dealie on Ascendant, etc...but anyway, on 10man, Tranq will heal for more than PWB prevents generally (but ya, the channel blows).

But the real core of the problem is that damage reduction is flat out superior to healing that damage after it has been taken.

All other things equal, I agree with this statement. That being said, all other things aren't equal. Lightwell in 10man will do some 2x what Barrier will do, so it's pretty meaningless...and you can look at shit like Divine Aegis vs Echo of Light. Echo of Light is 100% superior on Nef, because the damage is 100% spike, and the absorb actually will absorb 0 damage.

In response to your quotes, 2nd quote first:
Big raid hit that comes gradually is really what the majority of big raid damage is. Shadow Conductor on Omnotron Heroic. Feud on Chimaeron. Nef Lightning may as well be (you have a lot of time to heal it all up, as slowly and efficiently as you want really). Blackout on VnT HM is one of the few instant bursts that you can't slowly AoE heal due to heavy other damage and the need to quickly spread after

Actually, don't have much to say to the first. Yea, raid walls are really good, especially in 25man, sure druids maybe need something, but druids aren't by any means shitty or worthless to bring, still. Also, at least for now, you're still worth bringing for crez alone. I'm glad blizzard is fixing that issue, but ya, I'm all for balancing other shit. That being said, I love the new shaman totem because it's interesting, and maybe there will be some ways to use it correctly, but I still think it's pretty trashy, and I think that any analytical players who look at death logs will see it directly causing deaths that would have been prevented by simply not using it. We'll see tho ;p

Anyway, that totally sidesteps the other thing which is both Shaman and Druids lack a single-target cooldown. Nature's Swiftness is far too weak to count as a single-target cooldown anymore.

I agree it's weaker than in the past, due to other cooldowns existing. But I still think it has it's place, and on something like Chimaeron HM, It's really amazing still (and arguably better, in 10man at least, than PS).

[Plow]

Blackrock isn't really a good comparison server because it's been Top 3 PvE servers since forever. I've raided on BR since Vanilla, it's an insane server. Pugs on BR were downing 25 man content in LK and Cat before top guilds on smaller pop servers had even started thinking about raiding.

Well, on the one hand, I'm just saying, someone said something about "hidden servers with 20+ guilds" or something, there are some lol.

But also, keep in mind this: Elementium is gone, TDM is gone, most of the old tbc/vanilla guilds are gone... and that's just alliance side. Nurfed left a long time ago, a ton of the pvp players left, etc. etc. Atm Blackrock is basically just staying on top due to sheer quantity of leftovers.

Were it not for issues with queues and server stability, there would be quite a few more guilds doing 25's on BR.

[Whaleporn]

I'm on an RP server (If you read the black mage forums on killing ifirit, this is Amentis's fault) that doesn't have a single group actually doing 25 mans. The closest things to it are 1) my guild considering 25 manning BoT to take advantage of heroic halfus giving more loot per person and 2) retard in shout literally picking up people who don't know how to play their class (I spent an hour teaching a guy what resto shamans actually DO when healing). I think part of the reason this content seems long is that people got really burned out on ICC so lots of the 'good' raiders ended up fucking off. 10 mans being cited as harder then 25 man fights (especially when you can trivialize some of them by adding extra tanks) then it feels frustrating from an organizational standpoint. Yeah I know, 15 less retards.

It's not the encounter designers fault though, the boss fights this expansion are generally very good, challenging, and interesting. My only complaint in terms of encounters is that classes are missing shit they need for some of the fights (skeletons on nef come to mind).

The real reason they feel boring is the same reason people got very sick of icc very fast: the current raids have bad art design.

Black wing decent less so: they took an old theme and did their best to create a cool red and black hell dungeon. The problem comes that twilight bastion is halfway between BWD's red and black and ICC's blue skull dungeon, so you end up getting sick of both at the same time. I'm sure they are planning an underwater ulduar or something better for the future but I kinda feel the same way about BoT as I did about the inside of sea: "Cermet again? Fuck you." Aside from atremedes cool lava book case gong storage room most of the boss arenas (magmaw is ok, Nefarion has the whole 'LETS FIGHT OVER LAVA') are really bland and don't add any dramatic feeling to the encounters at all. BoT is literally room -> hall -> balcony -> stair -> room -> balcony -> hall -> room -> hall -> Room with skull throne, all the same textures. Maloriak's lab doesn't really look like one at all. Compare omnitron defense system's room to XT's in ulduar: I can remember one really clearly that I've not done in months and the other is hazy yet I've been there every week. Hmm. I don't know why they used such a boring base tileset for BoT either: Look at how cool and interesting Throne of tides, skywall + To4W, even halls of origination are with colors and using a few different room types and shapes to add variety to a common theme. There's almost no features in any given room besides boss and props. Why does a guy who beats the shit out of dragons for a living have a similar room to a gay dragon and his sister?

Even In ICC they did better then BoT, marrowgar was standing under the pillar from WC3, getting you pumped up to take out one of blizzard's shitty characters once and for all. The gun ship battle, as much of a joke as the actual fight was, felt very dynamic and part of the instance. Same with fighting death bringer on a balcony. The upper spire hub was well made, though besides putricide and blood princes the majority of arenas admittedly were interchangable up to the frozen throne, which before wiping to heroic arthus a billion times felt really epic to reach.

"Finally cho'gall, after 10 hallways, we do battle!"

Another reason this expansion seems weak imo is that heroics are a fucking drain. Even when you out gear them the pulls and bosses just go on, and on, and on, and on. Most heroics in WotLK took 10-15 minutes at max, which is about as much time as I want to spend doing frost badge/valor point grinding. I really don't want to have to go through getting 346 and rep a third time now because even as a tank with instant queues it was a slog.

[Delirium]

Blackrock isn't really a good comparison server because it's been Top 3 PvE servers since forever. I've raided on BR since Vanilla, it's an insane server. Pugs on BR were downing 25 man content in LK and Cat before top guilds on smaller pop servers had even started thinking about raiding.

This is very true. The server I started a character on is freaking terrible with raiding(its a pvp server) and the pvp sucks on top of it.

[aurik]

Admittedly I'm talking and forgetting 25 even exists. Tranquility is pretty much trash in 25man, I agree. It's arguably better in 10man, which is what I meant, though perhaps forgot to say. While I'm a huge fan of the ideology behind Cata 25/10s, it just isn't very easy to balance around. Generally it makes 25mans easier due to raid stacking, and the fact various raid walls "scale" as opposed to Tranq/HR/HST/etc not scaling. Past that, you can do dumb things like have a Lifegrip up for every Gravity dealie on Ascendant, etc...but anyway, on 10man, Tranq will heal for more than PWB prevents generally (but ya, the channel blows).

Again, the main problem with Tranq is that it does the heal in a very backloaded way. PWB preventing 20% of the damage raid-wide as an instant spell is just flat out superior, even if Tranq ends up mitigating more damage so cheaply, because efficiency generally isn't the major concern it was made out to be. Sure, it's a good spell for certain mechanics, Nef's lightning machine, but assuming nobody dies to that damage you can practically just let every class self-heal / bandage as well due to the nature of damage in that fight. Or just have a Holy Priest dropping PoH bombs, that spell is ludicrous when it hits all of its targets without overhealing.

Actually, don't have much to say to the first. Yea, raid walls are really good, especially in 25man, sure druids maybe need something, but druids aren't by any means shitty or worthless to bring, still. Also, at least for now, you're still worth bringing for crez alone. I'm glad blizzard is fixing that issue, but ya, I'm all for balancing other shit. That being said, I love the new shaman totem because it's interesting, and maybe there will be some ways to use it correctly, but I still think it's pretty trashy, and I think that any analytical players who look at death logs will see it directly causing deaths that would have been prevented by simply not using it. We'll see tho ;p

No healer is flat-out shitty, I agree. They're all reasonably decent. But in Blizzard's drive to homogenize everything so that classes are somewhat interchangeable, they haven't addressed the imbalance in healer cooldowns. Also, in 25 man, resto druid's "unique perks" are not tremendously unique: you get battle-rez out of moonkins and feral dps, and sometimes even feral tanks depending on the fight, and next patch you'll also get it out of locks and DKs. You even get a 70% strength tranquility out of Moonkins, but only once a fight. Enough specs bring replenishment that it's not a big deal in 25s.

As of 4.1:
Every healer has a mana cooldown, but Mana Tide is extremely OP compared to other mana cooldowns.
Every healer now has a raid cooldown (counting Lightwell), but as mentioned before barriers are vastly superior to healing cooldowns in current HM raid design. So I would say that AM/PWB > Totem > Tranq/LW
Only 3 of the 5 healers bring effective tank cooldowns. Shaman and Druid have a weak-as-hell Nature's Swiftness, but it works out to like a 30k heal, big fucking deal. It's actually going to be around the potency of smend+efflorence when the new patch drops.
Only 4 of the 5 healers have a throughput cooldown. Shaman doesn't have one.
All healers are being tweaked to bring "about" the same HPS, factoring in the healing given by cooldowns, which makes non-healing cooldowns even stronger.

So, given that chart, the problem is that HM raid stacking for healers goes like this: Add priests/paladins until cooldowns are covered. Add shamans until mana is no longer a concern. Fill remaining slots with any healer. It's no wonder that when you look at pages and pages of recruitment posts, virtually any progression guild looking for a healer wants priests and paladins, and occasionally shamans. Druids only fit with the "filler" role.

[Meresgi]

Huge thread on MMO-Champ about how bad Rag looks with people photoshoooping him up


http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/9...wheelchair.jpg

but wow if you think that having a new name and new graphic on "agility mail bracer with crit + some other secondary" is that big of a deal as opposed to slapping "heroic" on it.

Considering how fucking HORRIBLE some of the modeling is right now in Cataclysm (TB horse model is fucked up, tons of armor were not textured for a long time after launch) and the body/leg armor is just painted on character models I thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiink they could take a little more time to design a few more pieces of very cool looking gear for heroics instead of recoloring some shoulder pads in a couple mins and then saying "Done!"

[FailureMidgard]

As of 4.1:
Every healer has a mana cooldown, but Mana Tide is extremely OP compared to other mana cooldowns.

You just went from "efficiency isn't a big deal" to caring on how overpowered a Mana Cooldown is. If efficiency isn't a big deal, neither is an OP mana cooldown tbh.

Every healer now has a raid cooldown (counting Lightwell), but as mentioned before barriers are vastly superior to healing cooldowns in current HM raid design. So I would say that AM/PWB > Totem > Tranq/LW

Strongly disagree. Aura Mastery is pretty trashy. It has a 6 second duration, which can make it fall off before a breath goes off on Maloriak/etc. It only works on Shadow/Fire/Frost damage, making it specifically not work on at least 2 of the fights that are popular to raidwall (Heroic Nef and Chimaeron).

Lightwell Renew heals some ~22-23k dmg per click and has a full 3minute duration, meaning in 10man, you can have ~8 people use it the first time, and 7 the second time, and you're alleviating 23k dmg to almost every member of the raid on 2 Machines in a row, 2 chim collapses in a row, 2 flame breaths on maloriak in a row, 2 blackouts in a row, etc. Most of these mechanics are barely breaking 100k dmg per target (as a high end really, even with resistance totem/aura you resist a significant amount of that, average taken is closer to 80kish on most these...Chimaeron the damage is actually spread out, but it of course followed a reduce everyone to 1 HP, making a raid wall only actually last for ~2 spits out of 4. Basically, on all of these fights, there is absolutely no way for any raid wall to even come close to Lightwell in effectiveness. In fact, 1/2 of a Lightwell would give them a run for their money. Granted, this isn't Tranq, it doesn't require any GCD or attention on the priest's part since it's pre-dropped during a lull in healing needed, but this idea that prevention is always better is most definitely wrong.

I'd put it as LW>PWB>Aura Mastery in 10man. Probably PWB>LW/AuraMastery in 25 (15 charges is still pretty significant, and more reliable than AM). I'm leaving out the Shaman totem for now because I still think you are overrating it, I'm still not convinced it will even be usable in raidwall situations unless you're 100% sure that the tank is not in it, meaning the stack can't be near the tank, and even then it's mediocre at best (10% reduction...the health equalization is interesting, and it may have uses, but you are raid walling when everyone is at risk, meaning the raid's health is generally close to level anyway...).

Only 3 of the 5 healers bring effective tank cooldowns. Shaman and Druid have a weak-as-hell Nature's Swiftness, but it works out to like a 30k heal, big fucking deal. It's actually going to be around the potency of smend+efflorence when the new patch drops.

NS is huge on Heroic Chim. You have 4-5 seconds to get the tank up to a level to survive the first single hit. -dmg taken cooldowns are amazing too, but generally better used closer to the Double Attack, so that an unlucky 0 dodge/parry/block won't gib the tank (and to have up during break). I'm not going to say that NS is better at all here, really using PS early is going to be better than NS (it'll prevent as much as NS healed for that single hit...though it's also a wasted GCD that has to be followed up with a heal in the case the tank dodges, which delays you getting to healing the raid), but saying NS isn't important is silly. It's also a shorter CD, and can also be used to raid heal (for a shaman anyway), and the big catch - it can be used reactively, not as a tank cooldown. When someone takes 4 fireballs in a row on Halfus before time warden is out, gets caught in puddles on Maloriak, etc...PS/etc isn't gonna do shit. A disc priests PWS is maybe comparable, but NS is still a very nice ability to have, and can and should save lives (there is more to healing than tank healing). Discounting it is silly, and in my raids on my shaman, NS has saved more lives than any raid wall has, as far as I've seen. Raidwall obv saves more mana though.
Hand of Sacrifice is nothing special either though, and HoP has use on like 1-2 fights at best.

Only 4 of the 5 healers have a throughput cooldown. Shaman doesn't have one.

Are you counting GS as a tank cd and a throughput cd? I mean, it is both, but you can't use it on separate occasions, so it's kinda silly to do so, may as well call NS a tank cd and a throughput cd also.

All healers are being tweaked to bring "about" the same HPS, factoring in the healing given by cooldowns, which makes non-healing cooldowns even stronger.

Should go ahead and factor in Ancestral Fortitude and Inspiration too. I know priests try to keep it up, but from what I've seen, they struggle with uptime (unless they are just tank healing), whereas a shaman uses 1 GCD every 20 seconds to keep that up (and said GCD heals also).

So, given that chart, the problem is that HM raid stacking for healers goes like this: Add priests/paladins until cooldowns are covered. Add shamans until mana is no longer a concern. Fill remaining slots with any healer. It's no wonder that when you look at pages and pages of recruitment posts, virtually any progression guild looking for a healer wants priests and paladins, and occasionally shamans. Druids only fit with the "filler" role.

Guilds that do this are generally poor guilds, no offense intended. This has happened forever, and will always happen. No matter how much they try to homogenize things, one class will remain better. As long as the classes have a difference, there will be an ideal layout. There are also stronger tanks, stronger DPS, etc. Some guilds really need that advantage to progress, but they are generally also the guilds with really bad players as a result. It has been this way since I was up in progression when we had Nihilum SSing their entire raid to kill Alar. Yea, it works, yea they killed it before us...but if you want to play with skilled players, you really should generally avoid guilds that say that. IF you are a good player, I guarantee you as a resto druid, you can be a bigger asset to the raid than virtually any healer in said raid. As a side note, even my guild back then had it's share of worse players, and I would have gladly taken a good player over a better class any day of the week, and still would now.

[Intrinsic]

Well, on the one hand, I'm just saying, someone said something about "hidden servers with 20+ guilds" or something, there are some lol.

But also, keep in mind this: Elementium is gone, TDM is gone, most of the old tbc/vanilla guilds are gone... and that's just alliance side. Nurfed left a long time ago, a ton of the pvp players left, etc. etc. Atm Blackrock is basically just staying on top due to sheer quantity of leftovers.

Were it not for issues with queues and server stability, there would be quite a few more guilds doing 25's on BR.

I hear ya, only Mediocrity exists on Horde side from those guilds that either cleared or made serious dents in Vanilla Naxx and Sunwell. Nurfed, Malicious Intent, and all the rest have long transferred to other servers that have some semblance of stability on Tuesdays.

The pugs on BR Horde are far better than any other I've seen, although I've never been Alliance side but I hear they're pretty good as well. When I tried to pug BH on my Shaman on Sen'Jin, people didn't know how to dispell, couldn't figure out the beyond simple mechanics after five attempts and half the dps couldn't hit 10k. Then I logged over to BR, ran a BH PuG in which the lowest dps was 12.5k from the shadow priest who was also doing dispells, everyone else was 14k+. So it's definitely true that leftovers are carrying BR now, but they're so much more competent than the players on pretty much any other server.