Random Cataclysm discussion

[aurik]

^

I can see this working for LFR where you only need 2 tanks for 25 people (under 10%), but if they add it to LFD heroics, I think Blizzard is making a mistake. Some tanks will stop queuing tank to pick up dps gear rather than take a role penalty when rolling or suffering an extremely long dps queue. Less tanks queueing -> longer queues.

[BadKarma]

Or shorter Ques for us tanks and healers ;D

[etelosbo]

I don't think my tank que can get any shorter.

[SamanosukeShiva]

perfectly acceptable rule IMO, i dont want some DPS rolling on my tank gear when im tanking, and i dont want some tank rolling on my dps gear when im dpsing. they dont like it then it's too bad

[Kaylia]

^

I can see this working for LFR where you only need 2 tanks for 25 people (under 10%), but if they add it to LFD heroics, I think Blizzard is making a mistake. Some tanks will stop queuing tank to pick up dps gear rather than take a role penalty when rolling or suffering an extremely long dps queue. Less tanks queueing -> longer queues.

I'm not particularly worried about 5 man since it's easier to queue as a tank and leave the group if the composition hurt my chance of winning an offspec piece. Not to mention that running a 5 man as a tank is hundred time more fun than dps ( insta queue, call-of-war reward, and the group will automatically suck less when there is a competant tank).

All around, I understand Blizzard decision. They want to give everyone the same upgrades opportunity, instead of ending up with half a raid rolling on a great dps trinket, but the drawback is that you will never get to gears your offspec (unles its tank offspec)

perfectly acceptable rule IMO, i dont want some DPS rolling on my tank gear when im tanking, and i dont want some tank rolling on my dps gear when im dpsing. they dont like it then it's too bad

The rule is fine, but I wish you could pick a loot category that is different from your main spec.

[aurik]

perfectly acceptable rule IMO, i dont want some DPS rolling on my tank gear when im tanking, and i dont want some tank rolling on my dps gear when im dpsing. they dont like it then it's too bad

So any tank which is finished picking up tank gear will stop queueing as tank and your queues on DPS will be an hour long. That's great for dedicated tanks, but sucks for the rest of the population.

[fantasticdan]

So any tank which is finished picking up tank gear will stop queueing as tank and your queues on DPS will be an hour long. That's great for dedicated tanks, but sucks for the rest of the population.

This + what kaylia was saying. If I was playing my prot paladin in 5 mans for dps gears, I'm not going to keep carrying bads for almost no chance at gear. I would either stop queing, or just drop group whenever I see a plate dps that doesn't have the gears I'm going for. Your plate dps rewards vs time invested in que isn't suddenly going to improve, you're just going to be running instances less often.

Also:

Please keep in mind that, at least for now, this system will only look at class role, and not player spec. This bonus isn't only for tanking items either – it applies to Tanking, Damage Dealing, and Healing items, and some items are flagged for more than one class role too. Starting out, only Dragon Soul raid items will be flagged for class roles in this way (though all of the items in the raid will be flagged for one or more roles). As you might expect, all the normal Need Before Greed rules are still in place, so that means that these roll bonuses won't overrule normal class and usability restrictions. Item tooltips in the raid won't reflect which class roles will get rolling bonuses, but it should be fairly obvious based on stat allocations and item type.

won't this be really screwed up for dps shamans/druids? IE: a resto druid can roll on caster gear, a feral tank can roll on agi gear, but a cat dps/boomkin can roll on everything, barring tanking/healing trinkets.

[BadKarma]

I need a new guild. I have yet to experience firelands even in normal mode >.>

[Dareus]

This + what kaylia was saying. If I was playing my prot paladin in 5 mans for dps gears, I'm not going to keep carrying bads for almost no chance at gear. I would either stop queing, or just drop group whenever I see a plate dps that doesn't have the gears I'm going for. Your plate dps rewards vs time invested in que isn't suddenly going to improve, you're just going to be running instances less often.

Also:



won't this be really screwed up for dps shamans/druids? IE: a resto druid can roll on caster gear, a feral tank can roll on agi gear, but a cat dps/boomkin can roll on everything, barring tanking/healing trinkets.

From what I understood about it, it's only the class role you selected in the random raid finder (Tank, dps, healer) that you will be able to roll on items for. Aka a boomkin can only roll on caster gear and cat on dps gear.

[jmc]

I need a new guild. I have yet to experience firelands even in normal mode >.>

I'm in the same boat as you -_-

[fantasticdan]

From what I understood about it, it's only the class role you selected in the random raid finder (Tank, dps, healer) that you will be able to roll on items for. Aka a boomkin can only roll on caster gear and cat on dps gear.

And how will the class role system differentiate between a boomkin and a cat dps, since they're the same class picking the same role? As quoted above, Blizzard said the system will only look at your selected role, not your active spec, which is why I pointed this out. If they change the system to make melee and ranged dps to be separate checkboxes it would solve the problem.

On this topic, the armor archetypes in this game are pretty outdated/retarded. Why can a feral tank/dps in the same gear, but a plate tank can't? Why can healing priests/druids/shamans heal in the same gear they can dps in, but a paladin can't?

[BadKarma]

I'm in the same boat as you -_-

If you find a guild tell me. I have 3 85s >.>

365 Hunter

364 Priest

363 Blood DK

[aurik]

And how will the class role system differentiate between a boomkin and a cat dps, since they're the same class picking the same role? As quoted above, Blizzard said the system will only look at your selected role, not your active spec, which is why I pointed this out. If they change the system to make melee and ranged dps to be separate checkboxes it would solve the problem.

On this topic, the armor archetypes in this game are pretty outdated/retarded. Why can a feral tank/dps in the same gear, but a plate tank can't? Why can healing priests/druids/shamans heal in the same gear they can dps in, but a paladin can't?

There are plenty of problems that their design has run us into:
Druids are the only tanking class that doesn't use plate which means either they have to make tanking leather, or bake the tanking ability into talents. But then druids don't have a separate tree for tanking and cat dpsing, so it's hard to have tank talents in the tree without having cats pick them up.
Paladins can't dps very well as holy, but druids priests and shamans can dps ok in their healing spec.
Holy Paladins are the only spec out of 30 that lots on healing plate. Every other armor that can possibly drop has multiple specs lotting it. Even still, there is a full set of healing plate that drops in the same quantity as every other armor class / itemization style.
There's no spirit cloth in the drop table in firelands. So essentially all 9 specs are lotting on non-hit cloth drops in firelands, and healing priests just have a limited loot pool.
The loot table in firelands is incomplete for many classes, and unbalanced as well. For example, http://www.wowhead.com/items=4?filter=sl=6;minle=391 http://www.wowhead.com/items=4?filter=sl=16;minle=391 http://www.wowhead.com/items=4?filter=sl=2;minle=391

And so on and so forth...

Ultimately I think that holy paladins should have been designed around using mail armor (with some talent that allows their armorclass bonus to apply to mail) so that they can share loot with shamans, which will take a lot of pressure off of the loot tables since they've decided that 7-8 bosses is enough to represent an entire tier. One of druid's 4 specs should be cut to bring the class in line; given the lack of healing/tank classes, either cat or moonkin. Obviously cat would be the easier cut to make. Moonkin, spriests, and ele shamans have an unaddressed gearing advantage: due to the conversion of spirit and the fact that they can make good use out of both hit and spirit itemization (especially on high-traffic items such as weapons and capes and rings) so they get more lotting opportunities; They should either be designed to favor spirit or favor hit to a significant degree, and then increase the drop rate of the associated item class to compensate.

[fantasticdan]

Honestly, I would prefer they homogenize things even further to the point that all classes use the same gear (barring weapons and trinkets) for all 3 specs. I'm sure we'll never see changes this drastic, but here's how I think things could have made a lot more sense, (spoilered for wall of text):

Spoiler: show

-Move shamans and druids together onto one type of 'caster leather', maybe replace intellect with something that does the same thing (call it 'wisdom') just to put the final nail in the gear downrolling coffin, and divide the demand on int accessories. Make 'wisdom' convert to strength/agility for shamans (more so for enhance), bears, and cats, and restrict the mana increasing property to ele/balance/resto.

-Put rogues and hunters back together on the same agility gear.

-Merge leather/mail back into the same armor type, and turn level 1-40 mail into plate, while giving str classes baseline plate proficiency.

-Get rid of expertise (why do melee dps need an extra stat to cap?) or merge it together with hit rating. Additionally, merge tanking stats with dps stats. Haste = dodge, hit = parry, (or just more dodge for bears), crit = spec based survivability bonus like savage defense. Blizz actually talked about wanting to do this, so who knows.

-Completely merge spirit and spellhit. The current situation with locks/mages simply having access to less gear than other casters is idiotic. Make spirit convert to hit for ferals/enhance.

-Make strength convert to intellect for paladins (100% for holy, and less for prot/ret), restrict the mana increasing aspect of int to holy. Reduce str -> attack power scaling for paladins baseline, but the same as it does now as long as you're specced into prot/ret.

Ignoring weapons and trinkets, this would simplify the following:

Spoiler: show

tanking plate: 2 specs
dps plate: 5 specs
healing plate: 1 spec

agi mail: 4 specs
caster mail: 2 specs

agi leather: 4 specs
caster leather: 2 specs

cloth with no spirit/hit: 9 specs
cloth with spirit: 3 specs
cloth with hit: 7 specs

str tank accessories: 2 specs
str dps accessories: 5 specs

agi accessories: 8 specs

int accessories with no hit/spirit: 14(!) specs
int accessories with spirit: 8 specs
int accessories with hit: 9 specs

into:

Spoiler: show

str gear: 9 specs

agi gear: 6 specs

'wisdom' gear: 6 specs

int gear: 9 specs

-And finally replace primary stats (int/str/agi) on weapons/trinkets with just attack power or spell power, so we don't have weapons with absurdly narrow use; IE agi swords, str h2h, etc, and weapons are more versatile in general like pre-cata. Make daggers viable for enhance while you're at it. Maybe break up spell damage and healing into separate weapons again.

Most people would probably say this would make gearing more boring, but really, aside from trinkets, and procs/set bonuses, it's about as boring as it can get already. For the most part, all you do put on the highest ilvl stuff you can get, barring set bonuses and trinkets, than reforge. This type of homogenization would give everyone the ability to role change easily like priests/druids/shamans have already been doing for 2 expansions, and rebalance the incredibly lopsided demand for different gear types.

[Kaylia]

-Get rid of expertise (why do melee dps need an extra stat to cap?)

Does it really matter? With reforge, it's rather painless, and it's not like melee are behind because of this.


The only thing I hate about expertise is that tank don't have any, and missing 20% of the time isn't fun.

[Cri]

The only thing I hate about expertise is that tank don't have any, and missing 20% of the time isn't fun.

That maybe a bit true for last tier but not the current. Not sure about druids but plate tanks have 3 pieces of gear that are BiS with expertise on them. As a prot paladin with raid buffs I can be soft-capped exp(26), 214k health and remain above 102.4%. Hell, I have a set where I can push 8% hit, hard cap exp use 2pc(prot), 2pc(ret) and still have decent survivability for parse hunting.

[Positive]

If you find a guild tell me. I have 3 85s >.>

365 Hunter

364 Priest

363 Blood DK

My guild is actually looking for a decent Disc Priest (possibly a DPS as well). We only have Heroic Shannox and Majordomo down, would have Alysrazor if we didn't keep having to PUG people who die to the amazingly slow tornadoes/get hit by every brushfire. Other than that everything is down on normal obviously.

http://happyfunrock.guildwork.com/

[Kaylia]

That maybe a bit true for last tier but not the current. Not sure about druids but plate tanks have 3 pieces of gear that are BiS with expertise on them. As a prot paladin with raid buffs I can be soft-capped exp(26), 214k health and remain above 102.4%. Hell, I have a set where I can push 8% hit, hard cap exp use 2pc(prot), 2pc(ret) and still have decent survivability for parse hunting.

Eh, it's not that you cant equip gears with expertise, but the dps gain you get from it is insignificant compared to the mitigation. I don't know which pieces you're talking about, but odd is that you're still far from cap with them equiped.

I still have dps gears for encounter where dps check was an issue, but you rarely get them to equip them since the mitigation is generally better.

[BadKarma]

is askmrrobot down for anyone else?

I cant get it to load any character

[Kaylia]

Is askmrrobot any good? Every time I used it before, it gave me stupid gem/reforge priority.