So my rogue (and my other 90s) has been unlocking the various NPC helpers at the Shado-Pan Garrison, so that they can start working on that achievement to have each helper accompany them on 15 Shado-Pan dailies. I’m wondering if somebody has put together a guide to which NPCs are best to bring along for particular sets of dailies. Because today, my rogue brought Hawkmaster Jurong along with her while she did a set of dailies over on Sra’vess, and I think he may have been the worst possible choice for that set of dailies. He performed as a true huntard. I lost count of how many times he Disengaged right into a crowd of mobs that, before he landed in the middle of them, were not aggro’d on us. My rogue did not appreciate finding herself in the middle of half a dozen adds. Not to mention that he didn’t seem to have a pet, and he kept melee-ing, and he kept waking up mobs that I’d sapped … GAH!
Hawkmaster Jurong actually appears to be a weird blend of hunter and rogue. He had his own Stealth, which he was conferring on me, which led to all manner of confusion. My rogue is skulking around like she’s stealthed, and I would think I was stealthed until I tried to use some ability (like Sap or Ambush) that only works when she’s stealthed, when I’d discover that she wasn’t actually under her own stealth…
I’m still feeling the same thing I’ve felt since the beginning of the expansion: They completely forgot about rogues (and cat druids) and stealth when they were designing stuff. (“Forgot” is more charitable than “had some grudge against stealthed players and wanted to make them pay”). When my rogue is doing the Battlefield: Barrens weekly, she keeps running into situations where mobs she’s sapped spin around to face her while she’s stealthed and they’re still sapped. Which creates much aggravation when she’s trying to get behind them to Ambush them.
I’m trying to decide on my next 90. Contenders include but are not limited to a 67 DK, a 50 Lock, and my former 19 Rogue twink.
Took the DK out for a spin today. Blood spec. Can’t do shit with him in PvP. Probably because I don’t have a feel for how his abilities work together. Didn’t even bother questing on him.
The Lock is…ok, I guess. Another ranged DPS, though. I already have a Mage, Boomkin, and Hunter. Stand off and nuke/shoot. Send pet for those that have them. Meh.
Which leaves the Rogue. She’s a sexy little thing. Twinked out decently, back when twinking was a thing. I could give her pretty much a full set of heirloom gear if I wanted. Not like JP/honor do much for my 90s anymore…except maybe the druid. Haven’t played him in a long time. I guess heirlooms are the new twink gear, but they make leveling a pure grind. Dungeon drops/quest rewards are generally inferior to heirlooms, so I sell or disenchant any drops I win (on other toons that leveled with heirloom gear).
I started a Monk…stopped mid-teens. Not feeling it.
Have a Shammy. I suck at shammy even worse than I suck at DK, and I really suck at DK.
Could go Hordeside and revisit a Warrior I started on some server I disremember, but could find again. Only issue with my horde toons is the couple of servers I picked for Horde just happen to be the only Horde servers/battlegroups that do not totally own all BGs except Alliance Valley and Isle of Allies Win.
Also have a Priest somewhere…but healing isn’t my thing, and shadow is…another DPS caster. Meh.
I dunno, I’m totally rocking my shadow priest. Lots of fun! Since Cataclysm, I’ve succeeded with my priest where I’ve completely failed with my fire mage. My mage rocked in Wrath, but with Cata (as well as her early forays into MoP content), she (I) just doesn’t work as a solo adventurer. So my priest took her place, and has been a lot of fun.
Battlefield: Barrens commanders: Could they have made those commanders any more melee-unfriendly? In particular, the ones that cast “Venom Bomb”. They jump all over the place, forcing melee toons to chase them around (which is not conducive to hitting them with melee attacks), and then as soon as you finally catch up to them, you have time to maybe hit them twice before they cast Venom Bomb again and you have to run away. And then stand there not attacking because they insist on standing in the middle of their cloud of poison, and that poison is brutal. Similar problem with the two goblin commanders, except fire instead of poison. My rogue and paladins have a miserable time with them, while my spriest and hunter have no trouble at all. I was doing commanders on my tauren paladin Tuesday morning, and after she died for the sixth time (she was apparently one of only three Horde toons on Cairne doing commanders on a Tuesday, so was getting no healing except her own) I just said, “Fuck this” and went to grinding mobs for the supplies instead of commanders.
Huh…my first 90 was my Mage. Frost spec had no trouble solo questing anywhere except that horribly designed cave used for dailies tied to the Alliance landing/fort thingy. In fairness, I had 4-piece tier bonus before the Isle of Thunder dailies opened. That place would be brutal for a new 90 mage.
I don’t seem to do well with melee toons, other than my Pally. My fingers are just not nimble enough for twitchy fighting styles. The Tankadin doesn’t have to be twitchy in pve. Mobs…even big bunches of mobs…will die of exhaustion before they can kill him. The Barrens quests were fun on him, as I could pull a half dozen or more mobs at a time, and if adds join the fight, it just took a little longer to finish. Didn’t bother doing commanders for the reasons you mention, though. Also never did the escort missions. Pally tanking is pretty easy, at least through heroics and world bosses not named Oondasta. I suck at tanking that dino. Holding aggro is no problem, but after I bubble through one frill blast, I’m toast. Sometimes I don’t even get the bubble up in time for the first one.
And there’s your problem. For anyone not playing a tank with decent self-healing, damage avoidance is critical. And that means movement, and lots of it. No DPS is able to eat the damage from more than one “don’t stand in X” mistake, unless they already overgear the encounter.
Sorry. The life of a DPS is fundamentally defined by the ability to move, move, move and still remain combat-effective. As far as I can tell, this has always been true, from leveling to end-game raiding, going all the way back to vanilla.
ETA: This is true even for ranged DPS. My arcane mage has fits because he has to keep moving away from his Rune of Power. Even setting up two (the max you can have out at the same time) isn’t enough sometimes. Boss-like encounters always love tossing point-effect AoEs that you have to move out of.
Yeah, back in Cata, everybody kept saying “go Frost spec”. I had a philosophical problem with the idea that I had to completely change who my character was because of arbitrary changes to her mechanics. I disagreed with the apparent decision from on high that “Frost is the soloing spec. Fire belongs in groups with tanks and healers.” They rendered Mana Shield utterly useless in Cata, and completely removed it for MoP. Kiting mobs around doesn’t work so well when you have to stop moving and stand like a statue for several seconds every time you cast a spell, and in almost every Cata zone running around in combat only served to aggro more mobs. And just try kiting something around a crowded underground cave. I could see Fire being great in dungeons/raids where you have a tank to keep mobs off you, but it completely sucked for solo questing. For me, anyway.
Yeah, but it’s hard to be “combat effective” as melee when the mechanics keep constantly forcing you out of melee range. With those Venom Bomb commanders, I’ll be whaling on them, then they’ll Heroic Leap 50 yards across the terrain so that I have to run after them (unable to attack while chasing), and then as soon as I finally get back in melee range they’re already casting another Venom Bomb that I have to move out of. Though, honestly, I haven’t figured out if it’s deliberate mechanics that make them just stand unmoving in the middle of the poison cloud, or if it’s tanks failing to move them out of it. Most of the time they won’t move until they’re ready to Heroic Leap another 50 yards (or however far it is).
On another note, what’s the deal with the quest difficulty inequality between the Alliance’s Lion’s Landing dailies and the Horde’s Domination Point dailies? Both sides have several quests that are identical or nearly equivalent, yet the Horde versions are much more difficult. For example, “Hero Killer”. Both versions of the quest have the same objective: Kill a specific, named, enemy NPC. For the Alliance version, I just stand at the sparsely-populated edge of the battlefield and wait for this orc, who never enters the main battle, to wander over to where I am, and then I kill him. If I’m unlucky I might pick up one or two adds. For the Horde version, I have to kill this dwarf Mountain King who’s right in the thick of the scrum, and when I pull him he apparently has a special ability that lets him summon every Alliance soldier within a hundred yards to his aid, and I find myself at the bottom of a massive dogpile and very quickly dead. Nearly all of the nearby Alliance soldiers will literally break off combat with their Horde NPC opponents and come running to the Mountain King’s aid (and the Horde NPCs don’t chase after them).
The group of Alliance dailies that require entering the Horde fortress is a virtual cakewalk where I can run around killing my targets and completing my objectives at my leisure, and the generic Horde soldiers don’t appear to have any out-of-the-ordinary abilities. The equivalent set of Horde dailies require me to fight through enemies every step of the way because the Alliance fortress is heavily populated with soldiers, and every one of those human Footmen has that annoying knockback attack.
I did get another good laugh yesterday when my human paladin was doing the quests in the Horde fortress. I mentioned earlier that I’d spotted a night elf warrior NPC in there chasing a terrified peon all over the place. Yesterday, one of those gnome flying machines had glitched its path and kept flying through the top of one of the cannon towers. So the two female orc “hunters” stationed up there had run down and out of the tower and were running around the area with the ogre mage, taking potshots at the flying machine with their rifles. They completely ignored me; they were intent on shooting down that flyer
Oh, yeah, I’m totally there with you. Sometimes my arms warrior or enhancement shaman are the most frustrating thing in the world to play. Especially if the mob won’t deign to move himself out of whatever ground affect is that you have to avoid. It’s sad, resigning myself to Heroic Throws or Lightning Bolts until I can close and resume whaling. But that’s how it is. I’m resigned to it. There are almost no classes that don’t have this problem to some extent, but it is worse for melee.
Well, I’ve never noticed the same exact effect, but I also clear the inland end of the Alliance battle line of rifledwarves, infantry, and elf sentinels before I range pull the Mountain King up off the beach, so I usually only have him to fight. If I’m in a hurry, I’ll pull him from the other end (water), which has fewer standing adds, but some patrols can add and it becomes very exciting for a while. I’ve had a few overpull deaths (particularly on the aforementioned enhancement shaman… squishish, no good AoE… it’s a fine line between “I’ve got this” and “Oh shit”.)
Well, I have a problem sometimes with multiple aggro in the Horde fortress, especially if I pull a Mook along with a Horde warrior. And all bets are off if I accidentally pull the Ogre Mage quest elite at the western edge of town. Tab target can be bad that way.
And I’ve worked out good approaches in the Alliance fortress so I never have more than a double pull, including patrols, so it’s doable with care and planning (and experience). (Well, at insertion, I sometimes have a triple pull… dwarven mortar guy, draenei paladin, and infantry… kinda fun, but not hard unless the infantry bashes you completely off the dock, at which point everyone evades, resets, and glares at you a lot.)
My human paladin has had a bit of good luck. I’ve been trying to assemble something resembling a tanking set, and I’ve tanked Galleon exactly twice with her.
Still pondering my next 90. Read up on rogues a bit. Probably doomed to frustration, but I’m leaning that way.
Started running LFR on my hunter, and had a pretty good week of it. 4 Sigil of Power, 1 Sigil of Wisdom, and two-piece tier bonus out of The Dread Approach and Terrace of Endless Spring. Skipped Mogushon (sp?) Vaults. Not quite geared for ToT yet. Still doing better DPS in my PVP gear for the moment, but my PVE set is coming along. Need a good PVE gun, and a trinket upgrade.
Also noticed that heroic dungeon queues are way shorter than they used to be. Less than 10 minutes on average for DPS. Even LFR queues aren’t bad lately…about 20 minutes for DPs. Have not tried tanking LFR, not sure of raid tanking mechanics and don’t want to cause wipes.
So I got a few beers in me last night and decided to go try tanking Nalak on my paladin. I figure I can’t screw up tanking too badly when I’m only one of 3-5 tanks in the group.
Ended up not doing that. Instead, I spotted a “LF tank for [Champions of the Thunder King]” and thought, “Hey, I haven’t done that yet!” So I volunteered to tank, and received an invite to the group. It turned out to be a pretty cool group, too. When it was discovered that I had not yet completed [Setting the Trap] (I’ve had the quest in my log for ages, but since I was usually on IoT to do the PvP dailies I never wanted to make a group sit around waiting 5 minutes for my flag to expire), they helpfully pointed out that, without my completing that one first, I couldn’t get the [Champions of the Thunder King] quest, and I wouldn’t get any Valor from helping them.
So instead of being in a hurry and just letting me miss out on VP, they put off what they were doing to help me complete my quest first, had me turn it in, get the next quest, then come back and tank [Champions]. I thought it was pretty cool. And apparently my tanking was acceptable, too. I use the handy-dandy clcProt addon to help with my rotation (I use clcRet for my ret spec as well) and so, despite my intoxication, muscle memory took over and my fingers kept track of my keybinds, so all I really had to do was concentrate on moving out of stuff on the ground, dragging the bosses out of stuff so the melee DPS could hit them, and keeping the bosses’ focus on me instead of the healer. I seemed to do all right, and didn’t get anybody killed
ETA: Oh, I also had a nice, long conversation with the group leader afterward. Friendly Australian guy.
Nalak is easy to tank as a pally. Just pull him near the wall to the left of the staircase where the raid typically forms. When he does his knockback thing, you won’t go far, and you can grab him back if someone gets aggro while you’re bouncing off the wall. I usually drop a raid marker right at that corner and announce that’s where I’m tanking him. One tank is doable for him, two is nice, anything more than that is overkill.
I took the rogue out for a spin tonight. Assassination spec. Decked her out in heirloom head, shoulders, chest, pants, cloak, and weapons. Did…ok in PVP, by my standards, especially since I’m still learning her abilities. Rocked the house in dungeons, topped the DPS meter, doubled my closest competitor in Wailing Caverns, Blackrock whatever it is, and Stockade. Went from 19 to 24 in a couple of hours…but now I’m out of rested XP bonus, so things should slow down a little.
Also did some ToT LFR on my mage. No loot, but picked up another Secrets of the Empire marker for the epic cloak. Decided to blow off the 4-piece tier bonus from last patch and equip some of the ilvl 502 drops I’ve picked up. Gemmed up, but still need to enchant a few things. Makes a big difference. I hit over 100k DPS on a couple of AoE fights, and maintained 93K throughout the first ToT raid. Still running frost. I just can’t hit those numbers as arcane. Not sure why, maybe a gear issue? The mage is ilvl 491 now, seems like I should be doing more damage.
Nothing takes the high out of upgraded gear like having them make no difference.
I just bought some epic gloves and did an item upgrade on my trinket, and then tried out the first Thunder Isle scenario. I had been feeling good about the gear as they made a noticeable difference doing MoP dailies. Got to Thunder Isle, though, and I was bandaging and popping healing potions at an alarming rate. I completed the scenario, but now I think I’ll put off the next one until I’m at ilvl 480ish.
Yeah, I had a very tough time getting my tauren paladin through those scenarios before I bumped her iLvl up to around 470. At iLvl 461 she died three times getting through the first one, and I didn’t bother taking her back until she was a bit better geared. It appears they expected that, by the time IoT opened up, everybody would have already improved their gear via the 5.2 content. My other 90s were all at 480, or close to it, when they first hit IoT, and didn’t have nearly as much trouble.
Oh yeah, forgot to mention: last night I ran my human paladin, in Prot spec, all the way through the non-daily-quest Vale storyline to finally get that “Eternally In The Vale” achievement , which is going to become a Feat of Strength with 5.4. I’d tried it months ago on my rogue, but that one quest where you have to retrieve the Thunder King’s Axe was simply un-doable solo. She couldn’t kill fast enough and ended up with way too many mobs beating on her all at once, so I just gave up. But I figured a Prot pally could handle it, and it was pretty easy.
That last boss fight, though … waaaaay too gimmicky for my taste. But I figured it out
That Thunder axe quest was bugged for me. After I killed all the Jade Constructs, nothing happened. The gate surrounding the axe did not rise, and I couldn’t loot it through the bars. No NPC appeared. That’s another thing I’m going to have to re-try later.
I played three hours of Alterac Valley last night. People still don’t know the difference between being a leader and being a bitch. I got my ilvl to 467 and hope to hit ~480 by the end of the weekend.
My current project involves getting my rogue to Exalted with the Tushui pandaren. I just discovered the guild achievement, “Pandaren Embassy”. My rogue is exalted with everybody in Pandaria except the Shado-Pan Assault faction (tied to the ToT raid), but that one isn’t required. She just needs that Tushui rep, so I got her a tabard and she’s just going to solo Wrath dungeons until she gets there.
One of the things I missed in Cataclysm was getting to Exalted with everybody. In Wrath, my paladin main got Exalted with all Alliance factions (for the Ambassador title), and also got to Exalted, via daily quests, with every single Northrend faction except whichever one it was that was tied directly to the ICC raid (Something Verdict?). But in Cataclysm, there were a few factions with which you simply couldn’t hit Exalted without putting on a tabard and running dungeons. That hurt my OCD, dammit!
Ran my tauren ret pally, Donoma, around the Barrens yesterday, doing Commanders. Let me tell you, it’s no fun when all the “tanking” is being done by hunter and warlock pets. Seriously, there was not one single tank-specced character, of either faction, doing Commanders. So Donoma was, according to Recount, putting out around 50k DPS, and on every single commander she would eventually end up with the boss zeroing in on her, and I couldn’t do anything to drop aggro. It didn’t help that there was exactly one Horde healer to help me out, and his healing on me was very inconsistent, so I ended up kiting the bosses all over the place. And as a melee DPS, I hated doing that because I knew it was probably frustrating the hell out of the other melee DPS people (though, to be fair to myself, I was dragging certain commanders out of their damned puddles of poison/fire). But it was kite or die, dealing damage when I could and almost constantly casting heals on myself. I eventually switched from Seal of Truth to Seal of Insight, simply to give my self-heals a boost. Seriously, being forced to tank in Ret spec sucks balls.
I used to have that OCD pretty bad. I’m 17k away from 999/1000 Exalted with Earthen Ring… sooo close. But since I got the “the Exalted” title, I’ve relaxed. I’m OK with being Exalted with Frenzyheart but not Oracles. Nothing in it to be best buds with Magram Centaurs. And screw Nat Pagle, the ungrateful bastard.
I’m going to spend a few months grinding out Steamwheedle Cartel, vanilla and BC raid, and PVP factions and be happy with whatever I get when I run out of steam. I’ve been rep grinding for about a year now. Can’t do it forever. Thankfully, I never seriously considered pursuing the “the Insane” title.
5.4 will drop on September 10, and huge changes are in store. The Barrens quests will no longer be available, and neither will the “Eternally in the Vale” achievement. Valor points are not going to reset, but Conquest points will, with the new pvp season. Current Conquest gear will be sold for Honor, and current Honor gear will be crafted. The exchange rate will now be 500 JP=250 Honor. Lots of info is available over at Wow Insider and other places.
