Paragon downs Heroic LK 25

[Correction]

I'll just leave it at this:

Watch how fast the kills start rolling in. That will tell us how big of a deal it is or is not.

Good time to have an AH'able stash of lichbloom/snowfall ink!

[aurik]

The scroll thing is really not a big deal at all. As I said before, the amount of mana spent is minor. The only thing it does is allow the transfer of the incurred GCD away from healers (but why would you?)

The real issue is that tampering with max-hp (ie, disc shields to inflate effective current HP without affecting maxHP or canceling buffs to reduce maxHP) is the absolute best way to deal with a debuff that can only be cured by the target being above a percentage hp.

As a side note, disc shields were similarly amazing for anub H, because leeching swarm would continue to tick for only 250 while the shield absorbed the first tick of penetrating cold; other healing classes needed to heal the PC target for 8000+ to be safe, as swarm could leech twice before the cold damage hit.

[Korietsu]

Oh as a side note, their disc priest has enough SP to completely negate infest damage, making it trivial anyway.

[[Cookies]]

You don't understand the effect of infest on this fight, apparently.

This is quite possibly a *bigger* deal than the valks. The valks we know for a fact they could do.

This makes a mathematical impossibility doable.


I.E. you mathematically cannot heal 25 people to 90%+ after a big hit with a major dot ticking with 5 people. Currently, the main thing holding the highest guilds back is that they can't mathematically beat the enrage with enough healers to cover the infest.


Ensidia used bombs to allow them to ignore an aspect of the fight that really isn't an issue. They got what they deserved (bans) as a result of being stupid and lazy.

Paragon apparently used a single no-gcd button with a 2nd button on whoever had the stacks of scrolls to completely eliminate one of the biggest issues currently causing failure in this fight.


And after thinking about it a bit... the fact that they have no resto druids, which was the first thing I noticed... well, that pretty much says it all right there.

They have 1 holy priest and no resto druids in a fight that involves one of the most intense aoe healing abilities in the game, and is used every 20-30 seconds.

I'm aware that "not intended" doesn't necessarily mean exploit, but you guys are severely underestimating how huge this is, and I don't have to point out how obviously unintended it is.

Resto Druids are the worst aoe healing class/spec for Infest. Heck, even Disc priests are better. Just sayin'.

Anyways, there isn't even any proof that they were clicking off buffs for Infest. My advice would be to wait for the release of their video.

[Correction]

It seems to me that if there was an ill-publicized gimmick to an end-of-content boss, and it worked, it was used. The history of world firsts in the game just about guarantees that. Paragon isn't exactly new to the world of top-25 progression races. What ultimately matters is Blizzard's reaction, and seeing as how they have not lost their titles/loot/login privileges in the aftermath, questions of the legitimacy are moot, they beat the world at the game.

[Plow]

It's not like it really matters anyway, what percentage of people could say off the top of their head without guessing who actually got the legit first LK25 normal kill after the Ensidia thing?

[Falaras]

Arcane is still ~5% ahead of fire and even more so on movement fights. The hit cap isn't hard to reach, it's getting the correct amount of crit and haste.

My point was that the hit cap is TOO easy to reach, in arcane gear I have almost 16% hit unbuffed. I would like to see where you read that Arcane is 5% ahead of fire, according to everything I've read and according to rawr when ran in 3.3.3 mode, fireball is ahead of Arcane now.

[Plow]

I'm fairly certain you can get 264+ hastecrit in every single slot as mage now...

[Falaras]

I'm fairly certain you can get 264+ hastecrit in every single slot as mage now...

I didn't say you couldn't, it's just very difficult.

[Kaylia]

People who complain it's an exploit probably want tank and spank everywhere. Punishing clever uses of game mechanics is ridiculous.

If it makes the fight too easy, they can always nerf that

[Plow]

People who complain it's an exploit probably want tank and spank everywhere.

That's an interesting assumption considering this basically makes the fight a lot more tank and spank...

[aurik]

Resto Druids are the worst aoe healing class/spec for Infest. Heck, even Disc priests are better. Just sayin'.

You're absolutely wrong (at least for 25N / 10N), just sayin'. Disc > Holy > Rdruid = Rsham > Hpally.

As a resto druid it's pretty easy to pre-rejuv 2 entire parties, saying nothing about the ability to spot-heal post infest. If you're using strict assignments, rdruids are amazing at picking up slack when a healer is valk'd. While CH Shamans have great throughput in theory, they suffer with strict assignments because chain heal jumps aren't really controllable so a lot of the effective healing actually just pushes other heals into overheal. And of course CH don't work so hot when defile induces scatter.

[Korietsu]

My point was that the hit cap is TOO easy to reach, in arcane gear I have almost 16% hit unbuffed. I would like to see where you read that Arcane is 5% ahead of fire, according to everything I've read and according to rawr when ran in 3.3.3 mode, fireball is ahead of Arcane now.

Rawr is not indicative of target switching. Fire has a harder time in target switching fight. Just because theorycraft puts it ahead, it gets out played by RNG too often.

[Kaylia]

That's an interesting assumption considering this basically makes the fight a lot more tank and spank...

They had to think of a method to go around this issue, as opposed to just heal through it?

[MrSamuels]

You're absolutely wrong (at least for 25N / 10N), just sayin'. Disc > Holy > Rdruid = Rsham > Hpally.

As a resto druid it's pretty easy to pre-rejuv 2 entire parties, saying nothing about the ability to spot-heal post infest. If you're using strict assignments, rdruids are amazing at picking up slack when a healer is valk'd. While CH Shamans have great throughput in theory, they suffer with strict assignments because chain heal jumps aren't really controllable so a lot of the effective healing actually just pushes other heals into overheal. And of course CH don't work so hot when defile induces scatter.

Having dont the fight quite a few times now, i read this not because a resto druid couldn't heal as much as someone else but more due to the fact of phase 3. If a restoration druid goes into Shadowmourne, they are the only healer without a reliable interupt they can use on the add making it a massive loss and no real burst (moonfire and wrath dont compare to a disc priest holy fire/smite or a shammy direct spells) which probably on heroic is more of a guaranteed wipe. I think everytime we had a resto druid go into frostmourne they ended up dying, or taking like 1 minutes to get it down.

[[Cookies]]

You're absolutely wrong (at least for 25N / 10N), just sayin'. Disc > Holy > Rdruid = Rsham > Hpally.

As a resto druid it's pretty easy to pre-rejuv 2 entire parties, saying nothing about the ability to spot-heal post infest. If you're using strict assignments, rdruids are amazing at picking up slack when a healer is valk'd. While CH Shamans have great throughput in theory, they suffer with strict assignments because chain heal jumps aren't really controllable so a lot of the effective healing actually just pushes other heals into overheal. And of course CH don't work so hot when defile induces scatter.

Well my experience is from a 10m POV but that's fairly irrelevant anyways as a Disc priest can practically negate Infest completely (normal mode obviously). On heroic mode i'm sure the gap between a Resto Shaman and Resto Druid is pushed even further apart as more damage means more healing in a shorter amount of time. Resto Druid / Holy Paladins are the only classes that don't have a precastable AOE heal that hits as soon as Infest lands. Sure hots are great and all but by the time they've ticked once or twice the raid should be healed.

Having dont the fight quite a few times now, i read this not because a resto druid couldn't heal as much as someone else but more due to the fact of phase 3. If a restoration druid goes into Shadowmourne, they are the only healer without a reliable interupt they can use on the add making it a massive loss and no real burst (moonfire and wrath dont compare to a disc priest holy fire/smite or a shammy direct spells) which probably on heroic is more of a guaranteed wipe. I think everytime we had a resto druid go into frostmourne they ended up dying, or taking like 1 minutes to get it down.

I would say that Bash is reliable enough.

Healers should only be healing Terenas by the way as the higher his health is the more damage he does.

[aurik]

Having dont the fight quite a few times now, i read this not because a resto druid couldn't heal as much as someone else but more due to the fact of phase 3. If a restoration druid goes into Shadowmourne, they are the only healer without a reliable interupt they can use on the add making it a massive loss and no real burst (moonfire and wrath dont compare to a disc priest holy fire/smite or a shammy direct spells) which probably on heroic is more of a guaranteed wipe. I think everytime we had a resto druid go into frostmourne they ended up dying, or taking like 1 minutes to get it down.

Druids have the throughput to just top Terenas off, whereupon he beats the stuffing out of the add. They don't even need to bash/maim/stomp the spellcast. Get better rdruids.

[aurik]

Well my experience is from a 10m POV but that's fairly irrelevant anyways as a Disc priest can practically negate Infest completely (normal mode obviously). On heroic mode i'm sure the gap between a Resto Shaman and Resto Druid is pushed even further apart as more damage means more healing in a shorter amount of time. Resto Druid / Holy Paladins are the only classes that don't have a precastable AOE heal that hits as soon as Infest lands. Sure hots are great and all but by the time they've ticked once or twice the raid should be healed.

Wild Growth? In 10m Infest mostly hits for 4500~5500 after resistance and then ticks for 1200,1350,1550,1750 base -- minus ~20% for resistance. Wild Growth actually nullifies infest up to the 3rd second, which means even without RR, Rejuv will tick fully against the initial damage. With 10m buffs, my Rejuv is hitting for somewhere in the 3200-3400 range, which means they'll be at a deficit of ~2-2.5k, which is enough to eliminate infest on anyone that doesn't fail to resist everything. And, even people that don't pick up WG tend to shake the debuff through incidental healing and when the rejuv happens to tick soon after the infest initial hit. Also, all these heals keep ticking post-infest while the druid single-target heals as well as any other class (SM for 12k, Nourish for 8k+).

In 10 man there's hardly a necessity for strict assignments. On 25 man that often changes. Our shamans in 25 were really dragging ass until they stopped using chain heal after the infest hit--mainly because their CH bounces were picking up targets that were not in their assignment, and their assignments were dying. Once we had our shamans doing RT-HW-LHW or RT-LHW-LHW (after pre-winding a CH for the instant infest hit) they did much better. Further, chain heal is pretty useless when everyone scatters. That's mitigated a bit by assigning shamans to melee groups, but that only goes so far when everyone is scattering for defile.

On 25m also generally you have a shorter infest assignment (we went with 6 healers / 5 people per healer + 1 tank healer) than 10m where you end up responsible for 7-9 people if the tank healer is busy with the tank. This means you can either dabble in assisting someone else's assignment, for example when they're valked, or double up your prehots with single-stack LBs, which ticks for 700+ per stack with 25man buffs (and if you time it right, will pop a few seconds after the infest for 4k per stack, which in addition to rejuv is almost 100% guaranteed infest cure). Buffered rejuvs and LBs also continue to work while valked: if a valk wave is lining up with an infest a smart rdruid can actually cover his entire assignment even while incapacitated.

So, resto druids can take on a scattered assignment quite easily, aren't limited to party-line assignments like PoH, and if they're smart will have hots running on their assignment even when they're getting valked. Given all these unique advantages, saying resto druids are the worst for infest is pretty much wrong. Maybe you guys just don't know how to utilize resto druids, I don't know. They're plenty strong for countering infest, and plenty strong for the fight in general.

[[Cookies]]

I was under the impression we were talking about 25 heroic mode and why Paragon didn't use any Resto Druids. Plow's reasoning was that they didn't use Resto Druids because they weren't healing Infest. To be honest both Resto Shamans and Resto Druids are pretty equal. The only reason they went for a Shaman over another Priest is because of Bloodlust and totems.

Oh and I didn't realise Wild Growth did 15k+ healing as soon as Infest lands.

Edit: you're actually looking at closer to 30k PoHs with 25m gear/buffs.

[aurik]

I was under the impression we were talking about 25 heroic mode and why Paragon didn't use any Resto Druids. Plow's reasoning was that they didn't use Resto Druids because they weren't healing Infest. To be honest both Resto Shamans and Resto Druids are pretty equal. The only reason they went for a Shaman over another Priest is because of Bloodlust and totems.

Oh and I didn't realise Wild Growth did 15k+ healing as soon as Infest lands.

Edit: you're actually looking at closer to 30k PoHs with 25m gear/buffs.

Who the hell knows why Paragon didn't use any rdruids. Perhaps their other healers are just a bit stronger/better geared at the moment, or provide more dps as a healer, or won the coin toss. Honestly I don't care, because the game they play is quite different than the game I play, and that's probably true for any guild not world top 50 as well.

In any case, I was under the impression that we were talking about fights that we have experience with, rather than talking out of our ass about 25H that realistically probably only 2 or 3 people on the board has even seen once let alone made progress on.

But, since you ask, WG heals for ~20k within 3 seconds of landing, and another ~24k over the last 4 seconds, and casts as an instant. Similarly, Rej ticks for 3300 per target and you can go with RR and cover 7+ people trivially with a worst case of 1 infest bleed before it ticks, or go without RR and cover 12+ people trivially with a worst case of 2 infest bleeds before it ticks.

That's not to say PoH isn't a good tool. It's pretty strong: the healing is all frontloaded and can be pre-wound effectively. But PoH has its limitations as well: It can only be cast on fixed groups. It has a cast time, so isn't very useful when you're picked up by a valk or forced to move by a defile. It has a maximum range from the target, so if the party is too dispersed it won't hit some people. It is expensive.

Similarly, CH has its cons: the jumping is unpredictable, so a lot of the healing it does is off-assignment. It requires the targets to be clustered. It has a cast time.

I've healed 10m LK as both shaman and rdruid, and I have a healing priest which is almost to that gear level as well. I have a good understanding of the pros and cons of the 3 classes. Stating, unequivocally, that one of the aoe healing classes is worse than the others is just showing off your ignorance.