4361

Did all of those. I was an Affliction Warlock though.

Or, for that matter, Heroic Magister’s Terrace when it first came out.

I had stopped playing by the time MT came out, but the horror stories probably would have kept me away anyway.

Also, BM pulls pretty competitive DPS (maybe a bit lower than Survival, but higher than Marks), from what I’ve seen. Have you tried setting her up with some basic DPS macros and such, or does she prefer just autoattacking her way to quest-victory?

She’s a casual and I know absolutely nothing about Hunters (it’s the only class I’ve never tried and strangely I have no desire to do so). I’m pretty sure she just puts Serpent Sting on something and spams Cobra/Steady Shot, sometimes pressing a macro which pops all the stuff that makes her pet go berserk and do more damage.

4362

  1. Except that the rend change makes rend required on your main target. Usually 3-5th in line of rotation before the second tclap (I’ve not tanked on my war in Cata, he’s still 80, going by post 4.0 patch experience). My main complaint about GC et. al’s design change was, you spammed tclap because it was effective not that you didnt have other options. You also didn’t have too much of a threat problem after the first 10-30s in LK so why bother with shockwave (which is a bad idea if you need to move mobs at times) or the rage sucker (and weak threat) cleave?

  2. This is the mindset that has stressed out healers and tanks. “Balancing responsibility” sounds good but its gonna take time (if ever) to ram that idea home. DPS still blames bad tanks and healers for most errors, especially when healers had to relearn the new healing design. Those two roles still have the most responsibility and power. AOE threat is a problem when a tank often can’t get enough initial threat even before CC goes out to avoid mobs not going for the healer who sheilds/hots/heals early (to get a jump on the “triage” mechanic-mana bar meta game).

4363

In pre-raid gear? Blues and greens? And you thought they were easy?

I remember the nightmare of trying to get my weapon from H-SLabs… oh man, those were good times.

She’s a casual and I know absolutely nothing about Hunters (it’s the only class I’ve never tried and strangely I have no desire to do so). I’m pretty sure she just puts Serpent Sting on something and spams Cobra/Steady Shot, sometimes pressing a macro which pops all the stuff that makes her pet go berserk and do more damage.

Would she accept some basic advice/recommendations? I have a good friend who is a raiding BM Hunter (pulled a little over 12k on Argaloth with zero epics); next time I see him online, I can ask him.

4364

The main problem I see is that tons of people that play WoW didn’t do it in vanilla and aren’t used to anything else but instant gratification.
In vanilla you could go to Scholo 5 man and be sure people would try it for some hours learning while wiping. Today some people will leave after one wipe already or even if only they died.
You can’t go back to vanilla style instances with them.

I would be ok with dropping all vanilla raiders into one pool and only they will be able to queue / form a LFD group (for example sort by “Eternal Quintessence” achievement or other Feats of Strength).
That way I would be sure I have people there that are willing to go the extra mile. People that actually prepared for instances / raids incl. farming herbs for pots and collecting resistance gear like +Nature in Maraudon to have a chance in AQ40 or getting their Dragonscale Cloak for Nef in BWL…

Otherwise the LFD is a damn waste of time and I’d rather log off after my dailies and play something else wondering if my subscription should be renewed or not.

4365

For warrior tanking Tclap in WoTLK was never effective, it was decent, but we by far were the worst AoE tanks in the game. That being said, shit was dead in seconds by the 2nd half of WoTLK that you wouldn’t notice how bad warrior AoE threat was compared to the rest because nothing was alive long enough to peel it off the warrior.

This xpac, in my books, warriors are king for AoE threat. The Blood and Thunder insanity is nuts. Rend on everything? GG. They may have lowered Tclap damage, but it’s more than made up for it with rend spreading everywhere.

As for heroics being hard. They are a challenge your first week in them, after that it’s back to an AoE joke fest. I CC absolutely nothing. I’m not in any t11 gear. Between the smart rolling of CDs, and the fact that spell reflect is insanely over powered, I can pretty much chain pull with 0 CC and DPS can do whatever they please. This is me tanking with random pugs all the time. Some of the healers are downright terribly geared too as I do randoms for 95% of my runs.

Tanking is a complete joke this xpac. First 30 seconds of the fight is harder than it used to be, after that once vengence is peaking over 20% it’s auto pilot.

As for the tanking rotation now for trash packs it’s charge, rend, demo while you pull things out of the CC and hold the tclap for the moment everything is pulled away to rip everything back on to you instantly with the spreading of rend (you might have a mob peel off on to the healer, hence why the holding of tclap with the rend up to instant snap it off before the healer gets punched out). Then shockwave to stabilize the fight so the healer can catch back up.

4366

That’d be great. Yeah, she’s reasonable. The more macros the better, though. She’s got really small hands and clicks most of her abilities (I know, I know…). That’s one thing that really frustrates her – me trying to explain that she needs to be using buttons for her abilities and turning with the mouse, not the other way around. She’ll try it for about 30 minutes and then goes back to what’s comfortable (and horribly inefficient).

This is pretty much the problem I’m trying to point out.

You can’t go home again. Especially not with LFD, which removes all accountability and chance to develop a good/bad reputation (or form relationships with random people that lead to static groups/solid guilds).

4367

Make a macro:

/cast Focus fire; /cast Cobra Shot

Bind that macro to mousewheel up and mousewheel down (rebind zoom to ctrl+MW or alt+MW) for hilarity, or just press it a lot (Quartz will give her a better castbar than the default game uses, but it’s not particularly necessary).

Hit Kill Command on every cooldown and Arcane Shot when you have more than 22 Focus after a Kill Command.

Use a cunning pet (here is a list of them).

For most groups, I think she would want a Ravager of some sort? Though a Wind Serpent or Dragonhawk would be good if both of the other DPSers are casters and there isn’t the debuff already (8% spell damage from a DK, Balance Druid, or Warlock). Ravager debuff is the same as Blood Frenzy from the Arms tree, 4% more physical damage taken by the mob.

But which pet she uses isn’t as important as which type of pet she uses, specifically Cunning.

What’s her talent tree look like? I have some advice to pass along if she has/has not taken specific talents.

4368

Talents here.

Pet talent calculator on WoWhead is broken, so…

4369

I’m beginning to wonder if it’d almost be better to take heroics off the dungeon finder (or at least for that grouping) and make it server only. Then dumping someone, even DPS, has a larger opportunity cost to just trying to work with them through it.

4370

Also, when she has Bestial Wrath up, spam Arcane Shot for nice damage.

4371

She will want to get a cat, which provides the most potent group buff for hunters (a straight agi boost if the DK/warrior/totem buff isn’t being provided). I’d say the next best choice is a wolf for 5% crit so healers get a benefit too.

As I understand it, the difference between Cunning and Ferocity pets is rather low and unclear at the moment. Perhaps we’re going off different sources here. Mainly she’ll want to make sure she’s not using a tank pet as that’s something that may get you jeered at in pickups.

Petopia is a great resource for any hunter, by the way. It’ll show you what skills pets have, which class they belong to and most importantly of all: what colors are available and where you find them!

4372

Oscar: The difference is apparently much larger going to Cunning from Ferocity for a BM Hunter because of… something? The extra 4 talent points? I’m not sure.

4373

did they ever fix mobility on non-flying pets? They get dash and not dive and it wasnt’ counting towards the requirement for mobility for me.

4374

From what I know, the spreadsheets are still being tuned. However, Cunning is slightly better for Surv/MM since Roar of Recovery translates into more hunter damage, while Ferocity is a smidgen better for BM since their passive flat damage buff goes into more pet damage. The group buffs are in any case what you want to decide by.

This is of course not useful for James’ GF, so here’s some general hunter tips that I’d give to anybody planning to get into heroics:

  • Just because it hasn’t been mentioned, BM Hunters should spam Focus Fire as well. The flashy yellow arrows that occasionally show up around your character mean that Focus Fire’s cooldown is up and your pet is ready for you to use it.
    Edit: Err, I fail at reading. Aaron already handled this.

  • Make sure your pet’s Growl autocast is off. You right click it to turn it on/off, and you can tell by the twinkly icon border. This is a general courtesy thing that many, many hunters forget, and it’s especially important for BM as a taunting enraged pet can really ruin a tank’s day.

  • Make sure your pet is set to passive and get used to sicking it on things manually. I know this is not newbie friendly and a difficult adjustment to make, but getting chewed out because you pulled another group with realising it is not newbie friendly either.
    The macro command, since you may want to make a pet attack button to click/hotkey, is simply /petattack.

  • If you’re going into a fight with a lot of movement, or just generally want to make sure you can dodge stuff, don’t forget about Aspect of the Fox. It basically lets you do all your DPS stuff while running and hopping around.

  • Make sure you know how Trap Launcher and Freezing Trap work. It’s not that complicated, but it takes a little getting used to and people will expect you to know how to CC. The other traps are far less important in heroics.

  • While certainly not set in stone and subject to taste/preference, here’s a good basic pet stable: Cat (for agi/str), Wolf (for 5% crit), Wind Serpent/Dragonhawk (for 8% magic damage), Silithid (for stamina) and maybe a Shale Spider (5% stats, though note this is a tenacity pet).
    It’s not like you need a full pet collection before you start heroics, but it’s something to aim for. Core Hounds are awesome for Heroism as well but that’s less newbie friendly since it has to be activated manually depending on the fight.

  • Disengage is a great panic button when you really need to move. A slightly more advanced tip: Since it sends you rocketing backwards depending on where you’re facing you can actually use it to move in any direction with a quick right click mouse spin. Takes some practise to get right, but it’s fun to pull off.

4375

I think I’m about done trying Heroics. Once I got my gear up the one run I tried went poorly because it wasn’t actually good enough. I’ve been getting my gear up by dungeon running and grinding rep, but after running the 3 possible dungeons 4 times each I haven’t gotten a single resto druid drop and am seriously tired of them. Only 3 available non heroic dungeons leads to serious fatigue. My problem with trying heroics is that as a healer I’m not sure I can deal with the pressure of heroics. My first heroic run was with a supportive group, but after the 5th wipe on a boss I lost the will to go forward, and was pretty embarrassed.

So I’ve been doing more PvP with my alt feral spec and that’s been more fun. But, I think I’ve kind of capped out there because my guild isn’t quite organized enough to get together a 15 person rated BG team on a schedule that works for me, and the standard BGs are kinda worthless these days. Grim batol is good for free honor points but not much fun. I really wish Blizzard supported individual queuing for rated BGs.

I’m thinking of quitting for a few months until the next content patch, which will bring more level cap-but-not-heroic content that will functionally nerf heroics. Probably should, lots of other games to play

4376

If you haven’t done any research on druid healing for Cata, and you are doing it the way you used to, you need to read up. The druid healing model is quite a bit different now. I went from being out of mana every fight, to having a ton left just by changing my go to spells, watching for clear casts, knowing what spells buff what. First tip: If you are rejuving your whole group like you used to, you are doing it wrong…

This video will help you a lot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cnZl_T_S5g

4377

Yeah, I changed my rotation around when I got into 85 dungeons and started running out of mana, I can do all the normal 85 battles without having to go tree now.

But as soon as it gets to heroic there’s just too much shit to keep track of, and I inevitably let something down. It’s the cognitive load that’s too hard and not as much the gear (although the gear would help lessen it). Reminds me of playing an RTS, and… time to play a different game.

4378

-Resto Druids suck at the moment in PVE. Whenever my Holy Paladin friend decides to go Ret in order to let a Resto Druid guildie into a group, I wince. Things are never anywhere near as clean as they are with a Holy Pal.

-Feral (cat) Druids are (ludicrously) overpowered at the moment in PVP.

Point being, there’s really no mystery as to why you hate attempting to heal heroics and suddenly enjoy feral PVP. It seems like most healers are (rightfully) bitching about what’s happened to them – except for Paladins which are strangely silent. This of course means, in comparison to the rest of their archetype, that they’re overpowered (and they are – my friend ends most fights with full mana).

So yeah, either take a break til Blizzard fixes healing and/or gets their head out of their ass about Heroics and/or takes the first step toward trivializing most heroics by adding much better gear that’s much easier to obtain. Or just switch to Boomkin/Kitty like every other formerly resto Druid I know has.

4379

all healers are bitching, our holy pally decide to go tanking after healing heroic for a bit, especially after nerfs to their tower of radiance.

I switch from resto shaman to holy priest due to better aoe heal and mana management, but once you learn new way of healing, you can end most of the fight will full mana too.

4380

I’m glad that you can still find new and exciting ways to be wrong 150 pages into this thread. Trees have healed me through every heroic just fine. But I guess I’m just that much of an elitist poopsocker.

I’m sure healing is frustrating as hell when the DPS can’t manage to not stand in the fire. You can’t heal them through it like you could in LK. I get that. I did the healing thing through LK and I totally understand that you take it personally whenever one of your groupmates dies, even when it’s their own damn fault. But you have to let it go.

I get that pugs are frustrating. But as was mentioned upthread, you have two options for designing content in a world with LFD. You can a) make everything faceroll easy (i.e. non-ICC 5-mans in LK) or b) make them interesting and accept that poor players are not going to complete the content.

I don’t say this to be a prick. But if you’re not interested in being aware of the fights and learning the boss gimmicks and all that PVE shit, heroic dungeons are not the place for you. And it’s total bullshit to claim that people need to go catass every bit of their rotation and set up TellMeWhen to optimally manage procs and come strapped with reforged-to-hit-cap gear and all that crap. Yeah, optimal 9k+ dps makes things easier. Reasonable (6k+? I don’t watch Recount much) dps along with not standing in the damn fire can get through everything short of silly-overtuned encounters like Springvale.