3781

Well, the threat isn’t the problem. I can keep as many mobs on me as I want, generally speaking. The incoming damage is more the issue ;)

3782

Only need one druid. I was able to root one and sleep another.

3783

Ghostcrawler’s response to healers from 3 weeks ago:

Healers are probably complaining the most and they have legit arguments. One thread was 62 pages. The Dev blog reply to the complaints had 1900+ replies last I saw. I figured there would be more issues from the tank aoe threat nerfs and dps not CC’ing. Those factors plus the new healing design and you have a cluster fuck.

One, healers have to learn some new mechanics on their heals and fight strategies. Druids and priests now are back to essentially the old “rank 4 Healing Touch” spam model or downranking without the spell levels. Nourish and Heal are cheap, somewhat slow at an avg of 2.2s ways to heal but that means you’re spamming them on the tank and nothing else. You’re not using it when you have to move.

Two, the healing numbers are off, way way off. 5 more levels, more mana, more hp, more spellpower and heals are hitting as much as they did at 80. 4k+ mana for one rejuv spell? A spell that hits if you’re lucky for 4k crits? On people with 100k HP? Its a drop in the bucket. Triage is GC’s new buzzword, except the concept seems to be you’re always gonna be behind the 8-ball and a slave to mana efficiency. I’m supposed to heal a 120-150k HP tank with 11k nourish (crit, 7k normal right now at i330 gear level on my druid)heals at 2.2s? Oh, how fun. Also, when you’re bored and not much healing is needed, why not toss out a moon fire or help aoe with a hurricane? Bzzt, no you don’t! Not if you want to have mana for heals. Moonfire is cheaper than a rejuv but a hurricane is 13k mana. Thorns on the tank for more threat? 6.5k mana!

Three, I don’t envy the raid designers because they’re gonna have to watch their aoe damage output. Even with all those high HPs, healers won’t be able to keep up, let alone top off like they used to (and had to often to keep people alive). If blizzard wants players to repent from their zerg “easy” LK ways, I better not see any old design mechanics crop up with massive aoe damage output.

LFD/pug groups are dead in the water until people learn the new mechanics (CC) and get geared. If it doesnt get better in 2-3 months, you’re gonna see a lot of folks lose interest I think. I know I won’t bother to gear up any alts or even level them. But hey, archeology is in and provides an excellent time waster while waiting for guild groups to form up.

3784

My priest has been booted out of random PUGs twice, just a few pulls into the instance, when I told the tank to watch my mana and let me drink.

I appreciate not having to endure an instance with such assholes, but every healer I have talked to has experienced similar things. I can assure you, the new healer dynamics are very easy to adjust to (if anything, they feel less interesting than they used to), and the only reason I go oom is when DPS insist on taking damage. Between that, and the fact that apparently, hit gear is for DPS but Spirit gear is NOT for healers, it’s freaking rough to be a LFD healer.

3785

It sounds like they should give DPS more second wind, self heal abilities or buff their existing ones. My Drain Life is pretty pathetic right now compared to how I remember it on my BE Warlock.

Either that, or in the next expansion, create a DPS group heal class that could help healers kind of like how Death Knights were supposed to be DPS/Tank style class.

Edit: I had a priest get pissed off at me for using hellfire in Throne of Tides normal. Only one so far, and I appreciate his feedback now that healing has changed, but with mages being so insane lately on damage… it’s tough not to use that fast, movable, and heavy damage on things like the murloc packs and elementals. Warlock is also a lot more juggling of abilities than even it used to be, to maximize damage.

3786

I’d love to see an addon become standard, that automatically tracks and calls out on stupid things done by players. Maybe that will create a new trend in e-peen measuring, but based on skill rather than dps or gearscore numbers. :)

3787

EnsidiaFails does that and has been around since the early days of Wrath.

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/ensidiafails.aspx

Only works in raids, though, not 5-mans.

3788

Three, I don’t envy the raid designers because they’re gonna have to watch their aoe damage output. Even with all those high HPs, healers won’t be able to keep up, let alone top off like they used to (and had to often to keep people alive). If blizzard wants players to repent from their zerg “easy” LK ways, I better not see any old design mechanics crop up with massive aoe damage output.

Yeah no. Raid damage all over your face in raids. Good lord, the raid damage.

LFD/pug groups are dead in the water until people learn the new mechanics (CC) and get geared. If it doesnt get better in 2-3 months, you’re gonna see a lot of folks lose interest I think. I know I won’t bother to gear up any alts or even level them. But hey, archeology is in and provides an excellent time waster while waiting for guild groups to form up.

I’ve had pretty good luck with randoms in LFD. Only had one or two runs fail. It helps that I usually queue up with other Guild DPSers, particularly a Mage friend of mine; between Hex and Polymorph, we pretty much have enough CC between us two to carry us through.

In other news, Omnotron Defense System down! Hell of a fight. Very fun! If a single person on your team isn’t up to speed / playing well, you’re doomed.

3789

Yeah Ensidia was what I was thinking (couldn’t remember the name), but it needs complete coverage including leveling instances. We need people to learn to want to be good way before raids. :) I don’t think it’s really possible because it would need to track tons of things (overheals, useless dispels, pulls with oom healer, dps taking 180 cleave damage, tank not turning mobs away from group, ppl standing in the fire, CC breaks, etc etc etc) and blend them down to a single, recognizable value…

3790

It would be interesting to build such an addon (call it FailScore, perhaps) and then have it propagate its rankings outwards anytime you were in a raid or party, even with people from other servers.

There are a number of ways to do it, depending on your angle, so to speak… this requires some thought, as I have a friend who makes WoW addons in his spare time…

3791

As a substitute for that, I think I’m going to be posting the “damage taken” recount after each fight and see what happens. :)

3792

Frustrating… got ragged on in tells by a couple of my guildies for doing low (very low; only around 8.5k) DPS on our Omnotron Defense System kill.

I pointed out that I got half of the interrupts out of the entire raid (26 out of 52) when there was an Enhance Shaman (the best interrupt class in the game), (they’re on a random target on the raid and hit for 60k), and Grounding Totem ate another 10.

Blah blah “More DPS would mean a faster fight which would mean less healing needed” shut up, dumbasses, 60k damage nukes to the face are going to kill people, not just require more healing. Hell, the one person we lost on the kill attempt died because he was targeted by back-to-back nukes when I was out of range and Grounding Totem was on cooldown!

Raaaaaaaage.

I mean, yeah, if I were playing perfectly, I could interrupt without slowing down my DPSing (the nuke’s a 2-second cast, LB is my slowest spell and it’s under 2 seconds, even latency-adjusted), but I’m not perfect, I’m still getting used to my raid priority rotations as Elemental, the fight has a non-trivial amount of stuff to pay attention to (purges, interrupts, movement, target changes, and timing when my DoTs fall off targets)…

Raaaaaaage.

Oh well. Hopefully my GM isn’t as retarded as the DPSmeterwhores. We did down him, after all.

3793

Re: Hybrid DPS throwing out some heals, I think if you can do it without destroying your own DPS for whatever reason, then absolutely do so. My enhancement shaman is useful with the regular maelstrom weapon procs giving me free instant Greater Healing Waves I can throw on whoever needs it - I’ve got a mouseover macro setup. It is absolutely useful and anything that can take the strain off the healers a little bit is more than welcome.

I thought Retadins could spec to chuck out free heals that boosted their own dps?

3794

Throwing a heal as Ret either takes your Holy Power (say goodbye to a GCD and a Templar’s Verdict) or your Exorcism proc (I think? regardless, say good bye to an Exorcism and a GCD).

3795

But you get a 10 second 12% damage buff in return. A fair trade?

3796

In fact you could spec it for 30% chance of not using up that 3 Holy Power, and the increased critical chance on targets below 35% health.

It’s a trade-off, a small drop in DPS for a very useful hybrid ability.

3797

These instances will be nerfed in a couple of weeks.
They wanted the casuals in and they got them in. Expect massive rage once they hit 85 and want to stomp the 5 mans just like in WoTLK.

We had some DK tank pull trash in Grim Batol with aoe (red shit on the ground) until we asked him to let the mage and my rogue cc some shit.
After that the run went much smoother though especially since the shammy hexed mobs as well.
However the tank complained that sapping takes so much time! /facepalm

Healing is really no fun and a lot of shit is melee unfriendly just like at the beginning of TBC. I know how not to stand in the fire and I still take quite some damage from aoe shit around trash.
I also expect this to be nerfed in a couple of weeks just like in TBC.
Considering playing my lock (83 now) in the mean time as ranged is much easier / less stressful.

3798

I’m all for making things more difficult, but I remember the old class balance problems in vanilla where you’d only want certain dps classes for certain instances because they had the “right” CC. Is this an issue in Cataclysm?

3799

Well as most people use Dungeon Finder right now you don’t see the “mage / rogue” prefered yet in chat.
Also a lot of classes have some cc now (from the top of my head besides those 2: shammy (hex), druid (root), warlock (succubus / banish), hunter (traps).
I could envision some harder times for dps pally and warrior to get spots in the long run especially on heroics unless they bring a lot of dps as they lack cc. Maybe they can off-tank something though so we will have to wait and see.

I would prefer mage + rogue + hunter as dps right now since ranged takes much less damage and sap is 100% working once applied. Kidney Shot is pretty nice as well as it interrupts stuff that can’t be interrupted otherwise (apart from fear) unless the mob is immune to it.
Also that way most of the loot will find someone that might want it (cloth, leather, mail, plate if the tank is other than druid).

However in guild we will go with anyone that is available as you can count on these people to play really well.

3800

DPS pallies should be fine for CC - Repentance is pretty much identical to Hex isn’t it?