World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

AaronSofaer · 2011-01-07T21:19:11.000Z

Yeah, but I have yet to find an addon that can do that for two focuses. The problem is keeping up a root plus a Hibernate consistently and not letting either drop while not spending all day refreshing the two of them…

Ranulf · 2011-01-07T23:57:48.000Z

Andrew:

Its “flavor”! It is annoying, but occasionally stuff like that happens, where one or more tanks get screwed by encounter design. A ton of paladin’s single-target abilities in Wrath were AoE, but on fights like Saurfang and Lich King, you couldn’t really use them for long periods due to not wanting to pick up adds. I believe that DKs and paladins are also more affected by silences than druids and warriors. Warrior mobility is really awesome for some fights, but their almost total lack of ranged abilities makes kiting for long periods extremely difficult.

Overall, occasionally a pain, but I prefer it to the alternative where every tank has the exact same abilities.

This particular instance is especially bizarre, because how often do mobs have buffs that you DON’T want to get rid of?

Ahh, the LK fight, such fun as MT or OT. As a druid MT I had to watch swipe spam and maul spam or I’d grab too many of the adds especially nasty if the OT was a warrior. That made threat “fun” at times too. The transition phases were easy on a druid usually more than any other tank due to swipe. Phase 1 adds were a bit easier to hold as a pally OT.

I could never kite slimes well on Rotface as a druid but it was easy as a DK or Pally. Me and another guy got pretty good at it on our warrior tanks too. Think it helped we’d done it before though on a DK/Pally.

James_Johnson · 2011-01-08T00:23:16.000Z

AaronSofaer:

Gearing:

As with nearly every caster, your gearing is pretty easy to figure out. Intellect > Spirit/Hit until you’re capped > Haste >> Mastery >> Crit.

I assume this is a typo or oversight, but getting Hit Capped is by far the most important thing you can do on any DPS.

(Exception: You can’t hit cap for dual wield autoattacking, don’t try.)

MrPerson · 2011-01-08T01:35:00.000Z

James Johnson:

I assume this is a typo or oversight, but getting Hit Capped is by far the most important thing you can do on any DPS.

(Exception: You can’t hit cap for dual wield autoattacking, don’t try.)

Not with the current rating conversion. Even before cap the base stat of the class (e.g. Strength) massively dominates all the rating based stats for some classes. For DKs for example Strength is about 2 to 4 times as valuable point for point as hit before the cap, depending on spec. The hit cap is mostly valuable if you need to land a specific ability, and because the other rating based stats are poor for the same reason and you can’t reforge them into a base stat.

Andrew · 2011-01-08T04:31:02.000Z

Yes, Blizzard seems to have messed up when doing the rating conversions, at least in that they made base stats so much better than other stats. For Ret paladins, Str is worth more than twice as much as hit before cap. Blizzard should really have dropped base stats from gems to make gemming more interesting, but what can you do. I’ve also seen people complain about professions, eg LWs can enchant +agi to wrists, but there’s (apparently) no agi wrist enchant, so they are getting “more” than their profession bonus of bonus stats.

Lorini · 2011-01-08T06:49:18.000Z

EJ is saying INT is more valuable than hit for Mages. I’m not sure what that means in reality though.

Lorini · 2011-01-08T08:50:42.000Z

James Johnson:

I assume this is a typo or oversight, but getting Hit Capped is by far the most important thing you can do on any DPS.

(Exception: You can’t hit cap for dual wield autoattacking, don’t try.)

The reason this is no longer true for at least fire mages is because in Cata, it’s pretty easy to go OOM. If you go OOM, the amount of hit you have is irrelevant. And going OOM is not simply a L2p thing; fire mages are designed that way now. Until you can sustain full mana capabilities (maybe with raid gear; I haven’t heard), then getting more mana through INT is more important than hit.

Athryn · 2011-01-08T09:52:53.000Z

Going back to Ozruk a little bit, I ran across these pictoral guides and thought they were pretty cute:

Ozruk.jpg1000×640

Ozruk2.jpg1000×706

rei · 2011-01-08T11:05:33.000Z

What’s the source?

Athryn · 2011-01-08T11:09:10.000Z

They were one of the guide writing winners for MMO Champion. The whole guide is on this page, the Brewmaster’s guide to Murdering Certain Individuals.

Aceris · 2011-01-08T11:17:06.000Z

James Johnson:

I assume this is a typo or oversight, but getting Hit Capped is by far the most important thing you can do on any DPS.

(Exception: You can’t hit cap for dual wield autoattacking, don’t try.)

Not true for cat druids, since they are energy limited, misses refund energy, and non-energy based autoattack is a very small proportion of dps. With 4.0.6 cats will need to hit cap to reliably land their spell-interrupt so people might hit cap anyway, as it also makes the rotation easier.

idrisz · 2011-01-08T12:04:58.000Z

2 hitcap for non casters, yellow hit cap you want to cap, white hit cap, not so much.

Matthew_Bramblet · 2011-01-09T03:07:29.000Z

Yeah, the value of hit cap varies dramatically depending on the DPS class. Of course, if you need to do interrupts you have to reach it regardless, but for straight DPS it’s not worth hitting for some specs.

Skull Bash for ferals was changed via hotfix, so hit rating is now more important for them when worrying about interrupts.

Trelane · 2011-01-09T12:38:14.000Z

Lorini:

The reason this is no longer true for at least fire mages is because in Cata, it’s pretty easy to go OOM. If you go OOM, the amount of hit you have is irrelevant.

That’s not really why Int is better. 2/3 of the benefit of int is because it adds spellpower. Another small chunk is because it adds crit. The remainder is because it increases mana.

Fire mages never get into a situation where they cannot cast anyway, since scorch is free.

AaronSofaer · 2011-01-09T12:50:17.000Z

Assuming you spec’d Imp Scorch, but why would you? There are better talents.

MarchHare · 2011-01-09T12:56:21.000Z

AaronSofaer:

Assuming you spec’d Imp Scorch, but why would you? There are better talents.

Improved Scorch is part of the cookie-cutter raiding spec for Fire Mages suggested by EJ.

http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t110326-cataclysm_fire_mage_compendium/

Scorch is actually very competitive DPS compared to Fireball. It’s not quite as good as Fireball for single target, but close. It also has several key benefits: It’s completely free, makes use of the Crit from Molten Armor (another reason why we don’t use Mage Armor), has more chances to proc Hot Streak and Impact, and can be used while moving or during knockbacks.

AaronSofaer · 2011-01-09T13:03:12.000Z

Interesting. I’d be curious to see what the numbers looked like for Clearcasting vs Imp Scorch; on first glance, since Fireball has twice the mana cost of Scorch, going from 1/3 to 3/3 Clearcasting should give you more mana saved than 2/2 Imp Scorch, going by a few glances at my Guild’s WOL parses (50 Scorches, 16 Clearcasts with 1/3).

ColonelT · 2011-01-09T13:46:45.000Z

As the creator of this thread, I feel it’s my duty to inform you I unsubscribed today. I had a great time with Cataclysm and binged completely on all the content over the last month. (I even leveled Archaeology to 525.) Maybe I’m just burnt out, maybe I’ll be back, but for now the thought doing more heroics and raiding just doesn’t turn me on the way it used to. Anyone else cancel, or are thinking about it?

sinnick · 2011-01-09T14:01:16.000Z

I’m probably going to let my subscription run out in a week or so. Mainly for financial reasons, and I have so many other games to play. I am still having fun though, and now that I’m around ilvl 340, Heroics are getting more do-able for me. So I will probably be back.

jeffd · 2011-01-09T14:05:17.000Z

On Tuesday our guild is stepping into Blackwing Descent. I’m one of the tanks, and I’m nervous! On the other hand, Magmaw doesn’t seem all that bad mechanically, especially for tanks.