4481

here is a list.

Most of the zone drop boe blues are extremely cheap, at least on blackrock, like 150-200g.

you can get some good ones just doing twilight quest as well as through normal faction. also you can buy some in AH for quite cheap nowadays.

use your cooldown a lot, also make sure you know the fights, outside of particular boss fights that are design to make tank work, tanking isn’t hard, you just going to work the healer a bit.

4482

^_^ Thanks, but credit should properly go to my friend, Ax of Kel’Thuzad Alliance, who’s probably the only raiding Hunter taking BM seriously in the whole world right now.

He’s only about 2k behind where he would be if he were Survival, too (18k vs 20k).

I’m actually struggling a little with Balance “rotations”. The combinations of Shooting Stars, Euphoria, Eclipse’d DoT mechanics, and the timing of Eclipse’s spell shifts (it takes a quarter second or so after the last spell lands for Eclipse to trigger) makes for a somewhat counter-intuitive strategy as far as spells go.

Nobody I know has actually sat down and crunched out the numbers on, for example, whether it’s worthwhile to refresh DoTs early to get more Eclipse’d time out of them, or when exactly is it worth holding a Starsurge to get an Eclipse’d cast and risk the waste of an SS proc.

Then there’s the question of the last spellcast on the transition. Going into Lunar with a Shooting Stars proc up, it’s often a gimme (Insect Swarm or Starfall), but is it worth holding off on refreshing IS for a few seconds and casting it on the transition, or should I cast it as soon as the second-to-last tick is out and then just wait, pop my instant Starsurge, and start Starfire’ing? At least going into Solar, Wrath is a fast enough cast that I’ll almost never have an SS proc expire if I hold it for an Eclipse’d cast.

Then there’s the question of AoE. Wild Mushrooms has a tiny radius, and Lunar Showers will pretty much always fall off if I stop to cast a WM, but is it still worth doing? What Eclipse state should I seek to be in for an AoE phase? Lunar has massive Starfall DPS, but Solar has higher Insect Swarm DPS and possibly Wild Mushrooms.

And of course, is Hurricane ever worth it?

I wish I had the time and the mathematical/simulationcrafting knowledge to answer these questions. Hehe. Elemental Shaman is so much simpler!

4483

Yeah, that’s why I love playing frost DK dps. There’s a little more nuance to it, but it’s basically “Is obliterate up? Because you should obliterate.” And frankly, I don’t want to have to deal with a crazy rotation like balance or feral or whatever.

4484

This is good advice. With basically just the rep from leveling, plus doing quests in TH and Uldum, and buying a few not too expensive BoE blues, I got my tank in a decent state for heroics.

4485

Yeah, one of my major gripes with the expansion is that Wrath taught us the path to gearing up was combat currency, and Cat expects us to figure out that crafting and buying world drop blues is now the way to go.

One of my other gripes is the lack of ability to build rep with any faction other than Therazane with dailies (that, and the gunnery daily for Ramkahen is basically broken). RDF is too slow to build rep with only tabards, putting 4 factions worth of exalted purples out of our reach for the forseeable future.

Really, the only way to gear up in a hurry is to join a guild that will put together gearing groups and help with high-level crafting mats. I’ve leveled 2 characters to 85 and 2 more to 82 and I have still only had enough embersilk cloth drop to level my tailor to 480. Geez.

4486

One of my other gripes is the lack of ability to build rep with any faction other than Therazane with dailies (that, and the gunnery daily for Ramkahen is completely broken). RDF is too slow to build rep with only tabards, putting 4 factions worth of exalted purples out of our reach for the forseeable future.

Actually you are wrong, if you are horde, you can do dragonmaw daily, if you are alliance you can do wildhammer they both are in twilight highland.

Also You can do the Tol Barad dailies, there are over 12+ dailies in TB alone, you just need hit revered to get heroic item level gear, which is extremely fast. TB daily are all PVE as well, but your faction need to own TB in order to do half of those dailies.

4487

That grey area is normal instances. And, honestly, the current heroics aren’t that hard. Things like using CC and not standing in fire are basic skills. If you are really struggling with them, you may have to consider that you fall into the portion of the player base at whom these instances are not targeted. Creating challenging content for the average player means that some portion of the player base is not going to be capable of handling it. And, let’s be clear, these heroics are intended to challenge an average player. The genuinely skilled players are already blowing through these, because they have faced and cleared far harder content.

Wrath trained a portion of the player base that they deserved rewards simply for logging on. The dungeons, even the heroics, in Wrath were a joke even before people were massively overgeared. That’s no longer the design, and I hope Blizzard doesn’t cave. Don’t worry, if you want to keep playing like you did in Wrath you can just start clearing heroics in a tier or two when the gear trickles down.

4488

Dev responds to the LFD problems:

“We would love to implement better ways for Dungeon Finder to detect if players know what they’re doing in dungeons beyond just the gear they’ve accumulated. We have some long-term design goals in mind for this we’re not quite prepared to share this early on though. ;)”

I wouldn’t have near the anger I have now regarding Cata and heroics if they had done some balance in difficulty and CC requirements. Blizz kinda just went with a cold turkey approach, ignoring all the problems with Magister’s Terrace groups in BC and say Oculus/HoR in LK. Once geared up, not many are gonna want to just log on to do their daily heroic without another ploy such as an extra badge/mount chance they put into Oculus. Especially since they’ve increased the dungeon length over LK.

Mr.Person, enjoy the game when folks leave in droves after leveling an alt or two but can’t get into heroics/early raids. I had plenty of folks leave in my casual raiding guild by late spring last year, burned out before even getting to the lich king fight.

4489

So, they quit by burning out when content was a joke, and that’s somehow a knock against slightly challenging content?

Also, your doom and gloom is hilarious seeing as the game also grew quite well back before free loot for incompetent players was the model.

Bliz is trying to find a balance where content is challenging, but the majority of players can see that content. Vanilla was too far one way, where a very small percent of the player base ever saw endgame content. Wrath was too far the other. Catering to the bottom 10% is at least as poor a design choice as catering to the top 10%.

This content is just not that hard. You’re not being asked to bring perfect class composition, and use every consumable, and operate within 5% of the theoretical maximum performance for your class. You’re being asked to not stand in fire and not break CC.

4490

in case people think raid content is hard, we manage to down first boss in bastion of twilight with a 8k dps mage in tow, that’s 8k on a boss that was taking 100% extra damage…

4491

It doesn’t work for everyone but I bypassed this problem by playing as DPS for a while and building my now solid tanking set by picking up drops that tank didn’t need. (Pray for bear tanks!)

4492

A lot of the DPS gear is basically tank gear, and vice versa since the core stats are mostly set by ilevel, and you can reforge part of a secondary stat. A good DPS piece with gem slots can make a good tank piece.

4493

A lot of the DPS gear is basically tank gear, and vice versa since the core stats are mostly set by ilevel, and you can reforge part of a secondary stat. A good DPS piece with gem slots can make a good tank piece.

hmm what…

maybe for feral druid…

4494

Not just for druids. For example, consider the Alpha Bracers.

4495

Erm, no.

Hit and expertise are basically useless for tanks.* Crit and haste are even worse. Dodge/parry/mastery are what you need, and you don’t get those on DPS pieces.

*Don’t bother trying to argue; they are. Threat is not an issue.

4496

I don’t need to argue. I’m right, you’re wrong. Are they best in slot? Generally not. Are they viable, most certainly. Go take a look at, say, Alpha Bracers.

Also, are you seriously suggesting tanks don’t value expertise?

4497

I get the mastery part, DK/warrior/pally tanks love to stack mastery, but Hit is fairly useless, hit cap is easily reach and threat really isn’t a problem at all.

Every stats is valued, but expertise is worth probably much lower vs dodge or parry.

I mean can you dps in a tanking gear, or tank in dps gear, yes, but should you go out your way to score some dps gear then reforge it in order to tank, probably not.

4498

So slot in a defensive gem, and reforge 40% of the hit off.

I can rip threat off tanks with my DK. The best tanks? Not really. People who are still gearing up from dungeon drops? Yes.

4499

I guess it’s negligible for raids, but I missed a Shield Bash on Shock Blast in Throne of the Tides yesterday. Then I had a fun miss string on one of the adds and a DPS got gibbed. Not to say that wasn’t also partly the DPSer’s fault, but ensuring more hits is not “useless” on heroic level.

I can see a tank being forced to interrupt if you’re 10manning Halfus and get the Storm Rider as well. If you’re learning the fight then you do not want any novas at all, period.

4500

Wow, really? Our tanks did 12.5k and 11.7k dps on that fight. I can’t imagine how poorly a mage must have to play to only do 8k unless he died early or something.

[Edit]
Were you using six dps or five? Our lowest non-tank dps did 15.7k, and we beat the enrage timer with 17s to spare. If you were only using five dpsers and one of them was putting out only 8k, your other dps must have some serious skills to make up the difference.