markv
4641
Except you skip out the part where I stated why said statement was made. Vengence. This makes any kind of difficulty tanking, threat, non-existent. Tanking requires you to pay attention for more than 5 seconds at a time, something no-one should consider remotely difficult. People like to DPS because it’s mindless in comparison.
I spent my time doing both dungeons and questing. I went from zone to zone with each level and flew to the dungeon entrances and then starting questing and would dungeon when one of my friends sent me a tell or someone in guild asked. Sometimes it would fill up with people I knew, often times we took 1 or 2 random people we got in the dungeon finder. I would say the majority of the XP I earned was via questing because it was just faster to do.
I actually made note that you could in case people didn’t realize it. I’m sorry that you seem to find it offensive that I can gather 4 other people to run a dungeon with me. Having friends is such a burden in life I guess.
Mana was still an issue for people when first entering heroics in WoTLK as well as damage output. CCing on certain pulls was also required so you didn’t get your face punched in as a tank who was more than likely under D cap and critable. Running Naxx when WoTLK came out was easier than doing heroics at the time.
No wonder you top the meters on trash on your tank; the DPSers you’re playing with must really suck.
Even on a relatively simple class (Elemental Shaman), I still have to think about between six and twelve spells on any given trash pull. Playing badly is boring.
And I pull off of pug tanks regularly on both my Shaman and Druid. The curse of doing 14k+ DPS, I guess? :)
RickH
4643
Cast time. My experience has been that including scorch in the rotation significantly improves Hot Streak procs. Especially now that we dont enjoy the near 50% crit chance that ICC gear gave us.
Perhaps its the way shorter casting cycles interact with Living Bomb ticks.
JM1
4644
Seriously, I’m not going to argue the point about tanking. I’ve no interest in this part of the discussion.
I actually made note that you could in case people didn’t realize it. I’m sorry that you seem to find it offensive that I can gather 4 other people to run a dungeon with me. Having friends is such a burden in life I guess.
Find it offensive? What on earth are you talking about? I was just pointing out that playing with friends isn’t the issue. God knows why you thought I was being hostile.
Mana was still an issue for people when first entering heroics in WoTLK as well as damage output. CCing on certain pulls was also required so you didn’t get your face punched in as a tank who was more than likely under D cap and critable. Running Naxx when WoTLK came out was easier than doing heroics at the time.
The baking in of crit immunity has made being geared easier for a tank, sure.
markv
4645
Well in all fairness when I’m tanking 6 mobs at once and rend on everything and hitting over 20k AP and pushing 15k DPS as the tank it’s kind of hard for DPS to keep up ;)
Tanking really is broken right now in regards to the dmg output you can do. Doing Halfus as the tank I can hit 18-20k DPS for the fight because of vengence.
Argh, when the hell did this happen, I take back everything I said because they have the wrong goddamn information on the tooltip. I hate that.
RickH
4647
I had the same negative experiences in Wrath trying to bear-tank around lvl 50 or so. Leet DPS doesn’t wait for rage to build, pulls the mobs, forces you to burn your one global taunt every time its off cooldown, and then has the termerity to throw out the one phrase a tank LOVES to hear: gogogogogo.
All of a sudden questing looks pretty damn good.
Start a DK. Level 1-55 is really quick then!
Just two of the reason why I lost all interest in tanking with my 85 prot Paladin. If it’s not some jackass bitching about going slow, it’s two DPS players trash talking each other while comparing crits, or some dumbass noob DK who rolls on every thing that drops. My personal favorite is the healer who doesn’t heal, but instead just stands there and lets you die on the first pull, then mysteriously disconnects immediately after.
I quit after Burning Crusade, and just recently re-subbed for Cataclysm. After being gone for so long, the first thing I noticed was dungeons were much easier. CC was a thing of the past, casters almost never run out of mana, groups of mobs that would have been a wipe before could now be cleared with ease. Honestly, pre-80 dungeons aren’t even a shadow of what they used to be. CC wasn’t optional, stopping to mana up after a fight wasn’t just for bosses, and you really had to watch for adds or patrols.
After running a few of the new 85 dungeons, they almost seem like a throwback. All of the sudden casters are running out of mana, CC becomes necessary again as groups can’t simply be AoE’d down, and you really have to watch out for adds and patrols. The few boss fights I’ve done required strategy, or an instant wipe. It’s nice to see the difficulty come back up, but I’m afraid the vast majority of players aren’t up for it. They’ve been playing on “easy mode”, and either never played or don’t remember what the game used to be like. My guess is these are the same people bitching about things being too hard, but I could be wrong.
My guild went retro-raiding for fun and cleared ICC last night. While we were there, we decided we may as well do all the required achievements for the drake since we were missing two or three of them (and we had a few newcomers who joined the guild for Cata and hadn’t done any progression raiding with us in Wrath, so they were missing most/all of the achievements).
I’m sure this is no surprise, but ICC is ridiculously easy at level 85. We cleared every boss on heroic mode including their optional achievements in about three hours. We didn’t wipe at all to the bosses, but the RL had to call for a few intentional wipes after someone failed the Sindragosa achievement. We (sadly) opted to kill the Lich King on normal mode because it was getting late by the time we got there, but even on heroic I doubt he’ll be much of a challenge now. Fun times. :)
sinnick
4651
How many people do you think could do that, MarchHare? Could you 5-man it with a bunch of pre-raid 85’s, you think?
We did the first 7-8 bosses with nine people (two tanks, two healers, five dps), then a tenth logged in and joined us for the rest. Conceivably, you probably could do it with a 5-man group, but the difficulty in that case would likely be similar to a 10-man group of level 80s wearing ICC epics. For LOLSTEAMROLL mode, it was pretty simple with our team of 9-10 players.
Note though that most of the people in our group were experienced heroic-mode ICC veterans from level 80. We stopped progression raiding in late May, but at that time we were 9/12 on ICC hard modes (and had both H-Sindragosa and H-Putricide down to about 5% on our best attempts) and had already completed most of the drake achievements. Certainly our experience from level 80 was a factor in the ease at which we blew through it at 85, but it wouldn’t surprise me if a novice group could do the same with a bit of practice, especially if you have a raid leader who is familiar with the fights.
Man, that sucks. My wife tells me similar horror stories when she tanks, both in leveling dungeons & in max-level heroics. But personally, I seem to have much better luck than most people. I can count the number of failed heroic pugs on one hand, and I seem to encounter fewer assholes in Cata than I did in Wrath. At worst, there’s one (maybe two) terribad players, but we just kick him/her and all is right with the world.
And it’s even better when running leveling dungeons: almost every group I’ve gotten has been fun & at least minimally competent. Ppl seem to be fairly patient & understanding with the tank, and tanks in turn are usually pretty good about waiting for healers to drink.
Off-topic to the rest of your post, but… I’ve got a 85 Rogue and a 73 Lock. I did a couple of runs with my Rogue and remembered why I originally shelved my Rogue in 2005 – not just because we were starting to raid and the guild needed a Lock but also because it was so much more active than the Lock.
After a Grim Batol run my wrist actually hurt. Just so much positioning, etc. than I experienced raiding on my Lock. I also felt like I was also missing out on DPS. Running to the targeted mob, running from the targeted mob (when they did a PBAoE), having to run out of melee range and look like an idiot tossing out thrown while the ranged DPS was doing super damage (the purple cyclone of (I think) the Duke of Below). I know I’m just coming back to dungeon crawling after a very, very long hiatus on the Rogue and that I’m rusty as all get-out but… I dunno. Seriously considering just leveling up the Lock as well for (to me) the much more relaxing ranged DPS dungeon crawling. Add on to that the lack of need for CC in normals (and I’m a bit away from Heroics) – I was really looking forward to sapping stuff.
Do you have any experiences to relate on Rogue (Assassination) v. Warlock (will probably go Affliction, as it is the style I most enjoy)?
And yes, I’ll give the Rogue plenty of chances and I do know that, for now, I suck – it isn’t the class.
idrisz
4655
there are a lot movement in most boss fight now,
but in grim batol,
first boss doesn’t require melee to move at all, blitz only target range.
2nd boss requires everyone to move,
3rd boss requires everyone to move, but range should be able to dps the add easier, but range also have harder time dodging dragon’s breath if they stand too far.
4th boss requires everyone to move, either dodging the shadow binding or moving to center of shadow gale and all dps should get on add right after shadow gale.
it’s not bad for rogue since you have sprint on 1 minute cd now.
plus as assassination, position doesn’t matter as much as sub until below 35%, since white damage is low on your total dps and you get energy refund if your skills are parry/dodge/missed. envenom actually still give you the buff even if you miss the attack, doesn’t refresh slice and dice though, but you get energy back, and still keep all the combo points.
BigWeather: I’ve played a rogue from a few months after lanuch (Jan. 2005) to present and have raided at a high level in every expansion. Your experience is far from unique. The only other class I’ve ever leveled to the cap is a mage, and if I wasn’t such an achievement whore and didn’t want to abandon my rogue’s ~9000 achievement points, I certainly would have switched mains for Cata.
I enjoy the rogue playstyle and like the class, but I wish the encounter designers would stop creating so many fights that are extra punishing for melee dps. :(
first boss doesn’t require melee to move at all, blitz only target range.
Melee still needs to strafe around the boss to avoid the blitz, and we lose dps time on target while he’s out of melee range. Those are relatively minor annoyances, though.
4th boss requires everyone to move, either dodging the shadow binding or moving to center of shadow gale and all dps should get on add right after shadow gale.
During the shadow gale, ranged dps can keep nuking the boss while melee usually can’t do anything at all (pewpew with throwing weapon notwithstanding).
idrisz
4658
that’s tank’s fault, tank can actually move the boss during the casting of shadow gale, it’s up to tank to look for shadow gale center, and starting to move boss towards that location before the gale is done casting and boss goes into channeling.
because duke AKA Lobster Man takes 100% more damage during the shadow gale.
Also you don’t need to worry about blitz at all as melee on the first boss, because blitz doesn’t hit in a line but it’s a target aoe on target player.
as melee you need to worry about ground siege, but it’s really easy to avoid though, plus even if you don’t avoid it, it’s only 35k damage, really easy to heal through.
Well I always played Combat as rogue from reaching level 60 until today so I can’t really comment on assassination (the original reason might be laughable today but back in vanilla I simply got my hands on 2 swords first and since then stayed with it). At boss fights however all rogues have to be behind because of a) front cone damage) and / or b) to avoid getting parry of attacks (a boss can’t parry in his back) so it’s the same.
My lock is affliction (again always stayed that from way back in vanilla) so I can compare them a bit.
It might sound odd that I sticked with my speccs for all of WoW but actually it’s MY play style for the game I’m paying a monthly subscription. I would never go with another specc or profession just because some encounter asks for it. Not gonna happen.
The main issue is that melee dps takes too much damage right now in instances (and as it seems raids, too) unless they run around a lot to avoid standing in “shit” or be hit by some “aoe” on cooldown of trash / bosses. Now moving around as rogue is the worst thing that could happen for dps after dying. Playing a rogue in instances / raids is all about DPS. Hitting things hard and fast is what this class is all about in that setting.
My rogue always competed for top dps with any other class and most times took the crown.
This is simply not possible right now unless I stand in so much shit that I become a liability for healers and will be considered a bad player that “stands in the fire” given they could keep me up (some stuff will more or less one-shot you).
My 2nd issue is that there is no decent OH weapon other than daggers for Combat rogues right now.
A rogue without decent weapons is again not fun and I always used my DKP on my weapons as they make or break the class.
If you go assassination you won’t have that problem though as plenty of daggers are available.
Now the lock is pretty cool I have to say. She competes for the top spot in instances regularly and is head to head most of the times.
I had to relearn the order when to cast what (it’s a bit different to Wrath) and get familiar with some new stuff (Soul Swap is pretty cool as well as the new soul shard system once you understood it).
Another nice touch is the “Fear Glyph” that makes feared mobs stand in place instead of running around which effectively gives you 2 CCs now (succubus and fear) which are pretty reliable and not as risky as the old fear.
Now with ilevel333 gear + Gems (no enchants on those blues) I pull around 8.5k dps if I can focus on the boss and have my cooldowns ready.
The rogue I had today in the group pulled 4k though I’m not sure if he was good or not (with a hunter also pulling 8k it didn’t matter much).
As it stands right now I would suggest playing ranged for the forseeable future to everyone that doesn’t want to endure the frustration of being melee right now.
If actually when Blizzard will fix these issues I will probably go back to my rogue just as I did when they fixed the EXACT SAME ISSUES in TBC (no idea how they could forget that lesson!).
I am in more and more groups with ranged dps only so it seems people are leaving their melee chars shelved as well which kinda sucks as I have to compete for drops with shadow priests / boomkins a lot now but well I understand them.
Edit:
With proper CC things would look different on trash though as usually the combination of 2 AOEs will kill you but no one gives a fuck about CC in LFD.
With the lock I use “Seed of Corruption” from afar and pray that the healer can keep up the tank (2 groups in HoO are brutal without CC) -> The 1st one for example
I try to “sneak” in my fear on the hunter type guy with his hurting aimed shot and often people don’t even notice apart from the confusion that one mob is still up when all the aoe stuff is down but if the tank is DK and has his red shit on the ground it will break this…
idrisz
4660
get feint glyph, and basic spam feint whenever there are aoe damage, also knowing what boss do does wonder for your dps.
My assassination rogues are ilvl342 right now, horrible dps at trash, but on boss fights easily 10k+, you can buy offhand weapon with Justice points, as well as do arena for conquest, you can buy epic offhand pvp weapon in 4 arena wins. I sacrifice FoK glyph for sap glyph which is probably one of the best CC since sap never breaks before duration.
