So I’m shooting for 342 as a start, since my raid invariably has a boomkin. Right now, in my almost-epic (need a waist and wrist to drop that I don’t get out-looted on, darnit!) with somewhat bad gems and enchants, I’m sitting at 295 hit rating, so I’m doing better than I thought.
I’m also right on top of the crit cap (44.98% according to armory) which is a result of my EnhSim “optimization” of gems that wasn’t all that optimal, so looks like I need to boost hit rating to somewhere in the 400s while getting expertise up a bit as well (my weakest melee stat, at 130ish out of the 213 I really ought to have.)
I was talking about people who simply don’t know the third-party information is out there, or that they should be utilizing it. All the way up to level 80, the game itself is pretty good about letting you know you’re not ready for something, using one simple “mechanic”: you try, and you fail. So I don’t think it’s totally unreasonable that people would approach heroics the same way: “I’m level 80 now; I’ll try this, and see how I do.” I just don’t think everybody who enters a heroic doing subpar DPS is “expecting to be carried”. Sure, there probably are some people who do that, but I’m also willing to bet that there are just as many, if not more, people who are simply ignorant of the “requirements” and/or the available resources. Whether that ignorance is willful or not can’t really be determined when you’re using the RDF and probably only see that person once.
Heck, it wouldn’t surprise me if there are people with the mindset that using third-party resources is “cheating”. This is probably more prevalent amongst older gamers (like, um, those my age). Before the Internet, everything you needed to know to play a video game was there in the manual that came with the game, or was explained in-game. But there were a lot of things you were expected to figure out for yourself, and that was part of the challenge and thus part of the fun. I was there when the Pac-Man arcade game was all the rage. That game came down to learning the “correct” pattern to follow through a maze. Eventually, some companies started selling books that taught you these patterns. Sure, using those books could help you more quickly get the high score on the arcade machine, but there was a lot more satisfaction (and cred) if you got high score by figuring out the patterns on your own. And you figured out those patterns by trying and failing, over and over again.
Man, I went through probably my first 30 levels before looking into 3rd party addons. They seemed daunting to me - why do I need these addons to play the game? Even now I use what would be the bare minimum for anyone who knows about addons (Auctioneer, QuestHelper, Gatherer, Skada and some coordinate thinger).
Without asking stuff here, I’d still be a green newb. This is why I never want to touch more than 5-mans, maybe Heroics. I’d probably do 10-mans with BDL, but that’s because you guys wouldn’t bitch at me.
Did Keristrasza for the first time last night - thankfully, people were nice when I was like WTF THIS LOOKS LIKE IT BE HARD WHAT I DOOOO?
No, they don’t, and no, it doesn’t. A Heroic that required a minimum of 1500 DPS from the damage-dealers in 2009 will still require that minimum today. What *has *increased is the number of people who are geared to a level that they have the capability to carry underperforming group members. The difference between us is that *I *think that people shouldn’t sign up for a job they can’t do, while *you *think that if someone else can carry your ass, even a stranger, you’re entitled to be carried.
And I have *no problem *with this guy, because he’s clearly geared well enough to be in Heroics–and bears have a leg up on that, because they get their crit immunity from a talent instead of from gear.
PvP and PvE have different requirements. You can’t put a solid number on what you should be able to do in PvP to win, because you’ll be playing against a different group every time. But I agree that people should at least have a basic idea of what to do before they queue for a BG.
Actually, I ***am **a crazy hardcore min/maxing asshole… in my private raiding life. Where I’m grouped with other people who feel the same way about the game as I do and have the same goals. I also recognize that not everybody has the same reasons for playing WoW as I do, and that it’s their $15 a month, and they’re entitled to play however the hell they want. If that means they have 71 points all in one tree and are gemming pure Spirit, go nuts. As long as they recognize that if they want to join other people for group content, they must meet the minimum requirements for their role in that group.
*They’re 11/12 ICC25 HMs. I personally am 9/12 'cause I just joined after months with a guild that was stuck on H-PP because (a) people weren’t showing up and (b) the people who *did *show up kept making the same mistakes over and over. I’ve also done fun things like Sarth+3D back when it was still serious business–i.e., before Ulduar even opened.
Exactly. If a DPS isn’t putting out at least 1500 when they hit 80, it’s probably from a combination of the following factors:
1.) They could improve their spec.
2.) They could improve their rotation.
3.) They could improve their choices of stats to focus on for gear, chants, and gems.
Oakminster, remember how much your DPS went up after you took the advice of people in this thread? What if you had asked for help when you hit 80? I *guarantee *you would have more than exceeded the (exceptionally low) minimum requirement for Heroic DPS.
Woo, new gear! And grats on your Epic achievement.
AFAIK, you should *never *gem pure Spirit as a Mage. Unless you meant going for the SP/Spirit gem versus the SP/HP one, which would actually make sense in context. But just making sure.
Since you seem to like PvP a lot, you’re definitely going to want to work toward a dedicated PvP set. For now, cross-gemming and -chanting your gear is going to gimp you quite a bit in both PvE (where your DPS will be lower because you’ll have extra survivability stats you don’t need) and PvP (where your survivability will be lower because you won’t have as much Stam/Resil on your gear as you should).
My $0.02: Get the chest and shoulders first, assuming this is an alt you’re going to level. The XP bonus is worth it. If it’s a low-level twink, though, then getting the weapon earlier might be worth it.
I have. More than once. Not infrequently, unless I’m grouped with a friend to start with, my ~3k DPS *as the tank *will put me at #1 or #2.
And again, we’re back to my main point: Just because a stranger *may *be able to make up for your failure doesn’t mean they should have to.
Here’s another question that you won’t answer: Because of the level of my gear, every time I die to something that isn’t another player, it costs me over 10g. Should I be able to queue up for Heroics as DPS and run naked? After all, those repair bills do add up over time. And it’s not like the other players can’t just make up for my lost DPS. Hey, I even have my Unarmed skill maxed out, so it’s not like I won’t be contributing!
I don’t mind helping people. I like helping people. I do mind someone coming in undergeared and counting on my being overgeared to save his ass, when he could easily be performing the minimum requirements of the role if he asked for help *before *he queued.
Maybe this is just part of my overall mentality toward games*, but I *just don’t get *people who don’t bother to try to find answers to their own questions. WoW is such a huge, complex game (relatively speaking)–why *wouldn’t *you think to just google some shit to see what pops up and what you can find out?
*I’m the kind of person who, when a friend brings out a game I’ve never seen before, insists on sitting down and reading through the instructions. Possibly more than once, at least some passages.
1.) I do not give two shits about how you play when you’re on your own. It’s your $15 a month. If you want to have the stupidest spec on the face of the planet and wear all the wrong gear for your class and spec, I don’t care. I might point out what you’re doing wrong if I think you’re unaware of it, but I’m not going to require you to adhere to my own stringent standards as long as your behavior doesn’t affect me.
2.) When you join a group, it behooves you to perform up to the *minimum *level required for your role in that group, regardless of whether or not other people’s especially good performances can make up for your deficiencies. Obviously, if the group knows about your inability to perform but chooses to take you anyway, that is then their choice. But it is their choice to make–not yours. You *do not *impose upon strangers like that. And so, the minimum requirement will vary based on the needs of the group. For a Heroic dungeon, that’s 1500 DPS as a damage dealer. Period. Anything less than that, and you’re counting on someone else to do your job for you, without asking them first, so that you can collect your rewards without putting in the effort to earn them.
Yeah, back in TBC, at level 70, in gear from Kara/ZA/badges, I was definitely pulling over 700 DPS. And I sure as hell didn’t know much about what I was doing (e.g., for some reason, my T4 tanking helm has a Haste gem in it. Haste. What the fuck was I thinking?).
Do that. It’s what friends are for, and your partymates will thank you.
Congratulations! I just feels so fucking epic, doesn’t it?
You gotta do what you gotta do. Sometimes people’s goals in the game change beyond what their current guild can accomodate. At that point, your choices are to: (a) stay in the old guild and be unhappy (which kind of defeats the point of playing a game); (b) stay in the old guild and try to force it to change to fit your needs (good fucking luck, and not fair to the other members); or (c) find a guild that fits with your new goals. As long as you leave in a mature fashion, there’s nothing wrong about it.
Best of luck with the new guild!
Correct. Mat prices are going to skyrocket from all the new Worgens and Goblins.
Doubtful. They’ve already added the faction discounts and it’s a reasonably important gold sink. Of course, they are planning to add 310% as a trainable rank, so who knows how that will affect things. Overall, I’d say just buy it–4k (factoring in discounts) really isn’t that much for an 80 these days, and the speed boost really is great. (Though not quite as nice as it was back when normal flyers only flew at 60%.)
IIRC this should be the case.
That fight can be a real bitch. It’s one of the hardest HMs, IMO, at least on 25.
I agree… but I also think that performing under very reasonable minimum standards for a role because you expect other strangers to make up the difference *is *an attitude problem.
I believe I’ve said it here before: one of my favorite people I’ve ever met in a random Heroic was a DK with a GS in the low 3k range, who didn’t do a lot of damage, but right at the first pull used DG to bring a caster into the middle of the add pack I was tanking, without being asked.
That’s a decent point. However, in this thread, I’m seeing the attitude that even once someone has been told what the minimum requirement to perform the role is, they’re coming back not with “Gee, I never knew that, thanks!” but with “I don’t care, because other people are good enough to carry me.”
And when you tried and failed, the only consequences were for yourself. *Not *four, nine, or twenty-four other people.
Yeah…I was talking about the purple SP/Spirit instead of the purple SP/ST one. Think it was you who suggested that particular gem. I figure the trade off there was relatively minor…10 spirit for 10 stamina or so (don’t remember exact stats), and I’d rather have a few extra hps than a fraction of a percent of crit chance, or whatever else spirit does. I don’t have mana problems, and my crit rating is already pretty good…over 30% self-buffed.
On the to que or not to que thing, we’re just going to have to agree to disagree. I stand by my observations of the situation on Elune, but that is the only server where I have any experience in high level content. I know servers are very different, and your experience was probably different from mine. On Elune, really, no one cares for the reasons I’ve given. PUG raids beyond the weekly and/or VOA have a much higher degree of scrutiny, and spots in those are hard to get without a guild. Heroics are just trivial among the RDF crowd.
A thought occurred to me…we may be talking about two very different things as far as dps goes. Hitting 1500 dps is relatively easy on a boss fight, as long as it’s one where the arcane mage does not have to move around much. Maintaining at least 1500 dps all the way through a dungeon is considerably harder. Even now, there are fights where I don’t break 1000 DPS. Usually when that happens it means the %$#^@ 'lock or the rogue killed a trash mob before my spell goes off. Sure, when the run is over, my DPS for the dungeon now is going to be somewhere over 2K, and the boss fights will be around 3k, but if you look at that trash pull where the mob died while I was casting, the numbers are sad. I could come close to 1500 on a max-burn single fight as a new 80, in my level 70 PVP gear. Couldn’t finish a dungeon averaging at least 1500 the whole way until I got a couple pieces of badge gear.
Got to fight the LK in ICC last weekend! I mean, it was only because my boyfriend’s group was on the fight, and he zoned in with me and a couple of friends. And also, we died in less than a minute; turns out, we can’t three-man it. But. . .I got to see it, so that counts for something, right?
Other than that, I got the warlock T10 head, and I’m working on the shoulders so I can get the set bonus. I also got the T10 gloves as a drop in VoA-10, but I’m not using them right now; using them in my current configuration would take me way the hell over hit cap, which is not terribly desireable (especially because I’d be giving up a bit of haste and SP, too). They got banked for a later date. I regemmed some, too, according to the info on EJ and Warlock’s Den, so I’m hoping that helps, too. My metagem’s way better now!
Yeah, nobody cares about trash pulls. Boss DPS and overall dungeon DPS are what counts.
That said, I’m wondering why, as an Arcane mage, you’re getting such low numbers on trash pulls. Unless they’re single targets (which aren’t all that common) you should be dropping a Flamestrike followed by Blizzard (if you want to get fancy, drop a rank 8 Flamestrike followed by a rank 9 Flamestrike, then spam Blizzard until stuff is dead). That should give you some nice numbers. For single targets, just spam Arcane Blast. Yeah, you’ll eat through mana a bit, but every additional AB increases your damage, and you can Evocate and use mana gems to make up the difference in between pulls.
My other issue is one of vague dissatisfaction with my raiding guild–between their schedules and priorities:
I’m not in their ICC10 team because it just beat LK and is doing Heroic ICC10 in that time slot.
I’m 1st or 2nd alternate DPS on the ICC25 team, which A) I feel highly inadequate for (we keep getting berserked out on Blood Queen, but that’s at least partially because we ALWAYS screw up the bite thing and lose at least 1-2 dps to mind control. EVERY time. On the other hand, I can only sustain about 7k dps on her right now with raid buffs on.) On top of that, I can only generally make one of their two nights a week, and the other one is about to get overwritten with childbirth classes.
The only other team is the irregular ICC10 alt run team, which I have harvested most of my gear from. And on which I generally top the DPS chart, and on which we have wiped on Saurfang a few times and got no further. On top of that, it’s completely irregularly scheduled so I can’t plan for it, and since admittedly my main focus is EVE Online, if I don’t have a scheduled event on WoW it’s not as likely that I’ll be on.
Basically I’m vaguely frustrated that my guild doesn’t magically generate a ICC10 team with timeslots and skills that would make me able to get a clear before Cataclysm. =P
That’s the disconnect: we (SFG (I think) and I) are talking about boss fight DPS only.
Heck, I’m an enh shaman–my DPS drops by a minimum of 20% on trash groups from targeting delay and running around like an idiot or (same as you) someone killing my target while I’m spamming Chain Lightning. Meanwhile I have grouped with some fire/arc mages who can pull more DPS on certain trash fights than they do on the boss.
Oh, yeah. Well geared Fire mages can pull insane DPS on trash packs. Living Bomb is very very nice. That’s assuming, of course, that the mobs stay alive long enough for it to go off.
The problem I have is on single target, or duo-target trash pulls. Those mobs tend to die before my Flamestrike finishes ticking, or at least before my blizzard gets going good. Sometimes they die before I can get off a single Arcane Blast, if both my haste cooldowns are not available. Pretty much all I can do on those, with certain groups, is to hit my instants. There’s a couple of dungeons that seem to have quite a few non-aoe fest trash pulls.
I like the fights where some uber tank, often a Kingslayer, will gather up several groups at once, and group them in a nice tight little bunch for me. Flamestrike/Blizzard, and I sometimes see spikes of 5k. Sexy numbers
This is the kind of advice I need. I’m a little flush with cash at the moment (my wife just paid back about half of the gold I loaned her for epic/cold weather flying) so it’s time to re-gem/re-enchant!
So on my character sheet/tooltip, what expertise rating do I need it to say? It’s at 24 now. I’m seeing indications (since I have 3/3 Unleashed Rage) that I actually only need it to be 17–or does the expertise rating on the character sheet take unleashed rage into account now that it’s a passive aura?
As a Mage, it will give you Crit if you have Molten Armor up (which you should in PvE) and OOC mana regen (with a portion of that in combat as well, if you’re talented for it). So, yeah, not a huge loss for the stats on a single gem.
Yup, we’re talking boss damage. Being below 1500 on trash packs doesn’t matter–some classes with strong AOE will excel here, while others with mainly single-target attacks that take a while to ramp up will be unusually low. The point is to be able to push out that much for the important parts–bosses. So that means giving your damage time to ramp up for classes that work that way, as well as popping cooldowns like abilities and trinkets.
Heck yeah, it does! I mean, there’s that whole minute of RP at the beginning of every pull.
How are you doing the first bite? That person should be waiting until they have only 2-3 seconds left to bite the next person–otherwise things line up funny with Bloodbolt Whirl and people freak out trying to decide if they want to stand on top of their target and risk splash damage or stay a safe distance away and maybe end up MC’d.
If the timing is right, then you just have to really hit people over the head with the idea that as soon as they’re assigned a bite target, they need to find out where that person is. And when their debuff starts getting low, they need to move to that person and get ready to start mashing their 1 key. Because losing five seconds of their DPS is infinitely preferably to having them MC’d, which not only costs you their DPS for the rest of the fight, but also wastes everyone else’s time with having to kill the MC’d person.
That should be fine for ICC10 regular, I would think. My previous guild was requiring 10k minimum for applicants… for ICC25 HMs.
/wave /grin
My favorite is UK. I start with the pair by the door and run all the way back to the first threesome by the forge, grabbing the rest as I go. Assuming the healer can keep up with me, it’s awesome AOE fun for all.
We’re doing ICC25 regular with this, and keep getting stomped. Granted, I don’t think it’s damage that’s the issue, since we have at least 5-6 10k+ folks.
The expertise from Unleased Rage is added to your sheet so 26 is what you should aim for, which is 140 rating. Looking at your armory you have 124 which wasn’t as dire as I first thought :), so even 1 +16 expertise gem will do the trick.
For hit rating, consider picking up one of the Triumph badge +hit trinkets to tide you over for now, at least until you can get the Frost badge trinket. They are dirt cheap and either one would be better for you than the Needle Encrusted Scorpion.
That’s assuming, of course, that the mobs stay alive long enough for it to go off.