Same here with my pally. I’ve been accumulating bits and pieces of tanking gear, but just don’t feel confident enough in knowing the fights of the Cat instances and being comfortable with the Protection talents and skills to try tanking anything.
I’ve practiced on the target dummies many times with the Prot gear, but It’s not the same by a long shot. Plus I run out of mana quickly.
On the plus side, my pally’s DPS gear is all 346, except for:
I just haven’t found anything that helps my DPS more than Harrison’s Insignia trinket so far. I would like to figure out how to upgrade my boots though - IIRC, there’s nothing available for purchase with Justice points that’ll help there.
My pally is only 54, but from what I’ve seen, Pally tanking isn’t hard. Pull with exorcism or shield, consecration, holy wrath (on multiple mob pulls), and crusader strike/multi-target attack that generates holy power (Hammer of Something or other, I think), shield bash when up with max holy power…taunt the mob that damn huntard is now tanking because he’s an idiot if feeling generous…refresh/repeat until all mobs down.
I haven’t played my prot pally in a while, but at least pre-Cata you had a talent that generated mana based on how much healing you received. I haven’t looked at that talent tree in a while so possibly it’s changed, but I never had a mana problem tanking up through regular WotLK dungeons.
Ha stereotypical huntard. I think in my experience on both sides of the coin, Warlocks are by far the worst with pet control. Hunters do have a distinct disadvantage since the auto shot will randomly decide to shoot the next mob, no matter where they are. MD to tank works every time for any hunter worth a damn.
Okay, WTF? I was on my human pally doing my Tol Barad dailies, working on the kill-14-Rustberg-villagers quest, engaged with a single target as we Ret pallies are wont to do, when another Alliance player went galloping past me on his mount, coming up from the dock area, pulling a large train of angry Rustberg villagers behind him. And, in a bizarre twist I’ve never seen before, this train didn’t do the normal thing of eventually giving up the chase and leashing back to their starting places (down by the dock, which I wasn’t near). Instead, every damn one of them peeled off this other guy as they went past and descended on me, and suddenly I had about nine of these guys beating on me. As soon as I was dead they all ran back down to the dock. I’m completely baffled.
Also, I really hate having anything to do with that Wellson Shipyard. Curse those suds!
(bolding mine)
I see your point here, and mostly agree, but what if you’re soloing, not running dungeons with a group of close friends/guildies who are going to keep you alive and take up your slack while you’re doing this? That was my situation when Cata dropped and my mage entered Mount Hyjal, and I suddenly discovered that everything I knew about playing my Fire mage was now wrong. It wasn’t even a case of trying to learn a new spec; I had to completely relearn how to use my existing spec, and using every tool at my disposal was pretty much mandatory if I didn’t want to be dying every ten seconds. I could not have survived Cata content — and again, I’m not even talking dungeons here — trying to use one or two abilities at a time. Even just fighting one-on-one required a combination of 3-5 spells, largely just to keep the damn mob off me since Blizzard saw fit to crank everything to 11 but not let my mage’s lonely defense, Mana Shield, scale with level (seriously, at level 85 my Mana Shield absorbes 5k-odd damage? Gee, that’ll save me from a single melee hit.)
And both Ret and Prot pallies have essentially one “primary” attack ability (Crusader Strike), with most of their other abilities enhancing/modifying that attack in one way or another. You pretty much have to get them all working together.
In either case, going back to lower-level content to practice isn’t much help either, since once you’ve hit level 81 and have some Cata gear, even level 80 Wrath mobs aren’t going to last much past 2 hits, which means you never get to even complete a single rotation.
I wish I could find a way (maybe there’s an addon) to switch between specs and have the game modify all of my action bars, not just my primary bar. Particularly with my paladins - the utility abilities I need/want as Ret are not necessarily the same utilities I need/want as Prot. All of my primary combat abilities are on Bar #1, bound to the 1 through = keys, and when I switch between specs that’s the only bar that changes. The rest all stay the same. I use the Dominos action bar replacement addon; maybe there’s a way to set it up to do this.
Since he was mounted, that means he body pulled and generated no threat, they probably ran through your consecrate or you hit them with an ability that hits more than one target and pulled threat on all them (since he had established none).
ETA: Whoops clicked post before I added my question - I’m looking for a Balance Druid noob guide to the basic level of what the hell Eclipse is all about, any suggestions?
[QUOTE=Runestar]
I just haven’t found anything that helps my DPS more than Harrison’s Insignia trinket so far. I would like to figure out how to upgrade my boots though - IIRC, there’s nothing available for purchase with Justice points that’ll help there.
[/QUOTE]
Waywatcher’s Boots from the Guardians of Hyjal quartermaster, you need to be revered to be able to buy them.
Still no Al’Akir kill, but we were making it to Phase 2 consistently and occasionally into Phase 3. I think we’re giving him the week off and going back to Cho’Gall and Nefarion for more gear.
And don’t forget the Darkmoon Trinket - I think it’s probably pretty highly rated for Ret. It only costs gold.
As to your comments about the tank boots - they are still almost certainly an upgrade for DPS over the PvP crafted ones. You trade one worthless stat (resil) for another (parry), but get 73 STR (after the socket) and 160 mastery for only 140 hit. They’re better than the Hyjal Revered boots as well. Get working on that rep!
Thanks, this is helpful for me also as I build my DPS offspec set. Got the Right Eye of Rajh last night in our guild run (luckily, because I really needed the +hit).
Oh, yeah, speaking of which - how does the Need/Greed roll handle ties? Moobird and I both Needed the trinket for our off-spec, and both rolled a 36, but it went to me. I know I’ve lost ties before in the past too so I was just wondering how those were handled. I imagine either the rolls generate a number with several more digits after the decimal point that aren’t displayed, or maybe there is an invisible re-roll? I’m guessing the former but I don’t know.
When I was nine or something, my friend and I were walking back from school and this large woman was out running. I made some dickish weight comment and my friend scolded me reasoning that you shouldn’t make fun of people who’re trying to better themselves. He was absolutely right. The same attitude applies here. If you’re grinding away in a dungeon with lousy DPS or healing or threat so you can get better, you tell anyone who gives you grief to get bent. If you don’t have friends who’ll carry you, it sucks for the pubbies. They knew the deal when they clicked the queue and, if they didn’t, they do now.
I’m 99% sure you can cruise control through a normal difficulty dungeon. If you can’t, then the first learning step is going to be to learn how to survive a dungeon while spamming fireball (or whatever filler.) So long as you’re making a legitimate effort to get better (as in, deliberate and disciplined instead of just hoping to absorb skill), anything you do is perfectly fine, even wiping every group.
I’m pretty sure the default bars do this – it’s just that the first time you switch, your primary bars are duplicated. If you modify them then, they should remember your settings. If I’m mistaken about that, I know Bartender does it for sure.
Ahhhhhhhh, I thought you meant “NPCs that had been added prior to the launch,” not specifically “NPCs that only existed for the pre-launch events.” Gotcha.
That’s because someone in a restaurant necessarily knows what the ingredients are, whereas two identical “dishes” in a programming context could have wildly different “ingredients.”
Lucky bastidge! Don’t foget to advertise in Trade that you have it (specifying a combine fee is a good idea). There may also be a high-end combine thread on your realm forum that you want to get yourself added to.
This would work… Except that WoW is a collaborative multiplayer game. One person’s learning curve is four other people’s “level 85 pulling 2k DPS in a Heroic.”
The worst part IMO is just that it’s so… effing… time consuming.
Bwahahaha, my sentiments exactly.
Did you cast any kind of AOE when they ran past you? A ground effect, spillover from something you were attacking, etc. could have put you on their threat table. Even a debuff like a Warrior’s Demo Shout would probably do it.
By default, the game makes all of your action bars the same as your first spec when you create a second one. After that, though, any changes you make to one or the other are maintained independently.
I actually have the Right Eye of Rajh sitting in my bags - my hangup on equipping it are the words “Your criticals have a chance to add 1710 to your strength for 10 seconds”. Looking on Wowhead, it appears that the ‘chance’ is 50%. Combine that with my current critical rating of 9.22%, and I guess I figure it’s not going to proc very often - about 4.6% of all melee attacks. So I stick with the guaranteed +234 strength (which should be +33 DPS) of the Harrison trinket which applies to all my attacks, rather than the uber-boost of the Eye which doesn’t appear to occur that often (and last very long).
If my math is completely off-base, please feel free to tell me.
Weird, on my Mac the downloader says it’s only 104.
I’m trying to think now what might have done that. As Ret, I never deliberately pull more than one mob at a time while solo questing, and keep Consecration in reserve for those times when a nearby respawn or patrolling mob aggros on me and jumps in while I’m still fighting the first mob (because I hate finding I need to cast it, but oops, it’s on CD). In this case I didn’t have Consecration up when the other mobs went past. I also never use Divine Storm any more since it doesn’t generate Holy Power, and I don’t use Hammer of the Righteous in Ret spec. Basically, I use no AoE at all in single combat as Ret. I do remember I had a similar issue on my belf Ret pally during Wrath, who used a slightly different Ret spec based on Seal of Command (as opposed to my human Ret pally who used … something else), and Seal of Command caused melee attacks to hit more than one nearby target. I guess I need to go over my talents and … hmm. I see the Seals of Command tooltip says, “In addition, your Seal of Righteousness now hits up to 2 additional targets.” But I use Seal of Insight or Seal of Truth, not SoR. So I’ll need to investigate some more.
In any case, from here on out it would seem the thing to do when I see a train coming is “get out of the way”, i.e. drag my opponent to one side so that the passing mobs are out of range of anything that might piss them off
But again, I’m not talking about dungeons, I’m talking about combat while solo questing, which is how I prefer to level. Though it occurs to me that my mage may have been a less than optimal example, since Fire mages didn’t see such dramatic changes as many other classes/specs. But then, that still caused a different difficulty because on my mage I spent that month between 4.0.1 and 4.0.3 just doing exactly what I’d been doing before 4.0.1: doing my dailies using the exact same spells I’d been using all along, and at level 80 in Frost badge gear, she was already killing most level 80 non-elite mobs with 1-2 hits, and I didn’t have to learn anything new (other than a few rather minor changes). Even in Wrath dungeons I kept doing the same thing I’d always done, because it worked fine. It was when 4.0.3 dropped that the trouble started — I had the same set of skills I’d always had, but suddenly the way I used them didn’t work any more, and the mobs were much more dangerous (and I had no tank to keep them off me).
By contrast, with 4.0.1 and the complete overhaul/reworking of Ret paladin mechanics, I actually had to completely relearn how to play my class/spec, but I had a “soft landing” in that I got to practice the new abilities/techniques against level 80 Wrath mobs, and by the time 4.0.3 came around I was comfortable enough with them that transitioning to Cata mobs was fairly simple.
The way you’re trying to calculate the expected strength gain is a bit off. It’s a 10 second buff with a 45 or 50 second ICD. So the maximum up-time is 20% (assuming the 50-second ICD). Then the question becomes how long it will take you to get a crit-proc after the ICD. It gets kinda complicated, and really the best way to measure it is on the target dummy, IMO.
The Wowhead comments indicate that for a 9% crit ret pally they were getting an up-time of about 10% or so, before the buff in proc rate. You’d need about a 14% up-time to break even on just the STR buff.
I’d also point out that the hit on the Eye is probably worth more to you than the on-proc mastery.
