Oh god, the raid marks interpretation thing. The only consistency I’ve ever seen with that is “skull = kill first”
I dunno, the HoR gauntlet seems to depend entirely on whether the party all agrees and properly implements a single strategy for threat management. I haven’t had any problems with it doing the “hide in the alcove, tank gets visual aggro from each wave, pull around the corner and pound the hell out of them” strategy.
Does anyone’s guild have a site hosted at GuildLaunch.com? It’s supposedly a free (ad-supported) guild hosting site. I’m just exploring to see if it’s worth to set one up for the BDL, since our old site expired.
Sadly, I’ve never had a tank mark something and say, “sheep that one”, so my sheeping attempts are usually my best guess. Like certain pulls where I know there’s a caster mob that never gets into the scrum, but hangs well back*, I’ll try to sheep that caster. And what usually breaks it is that sheeped mob will then wander onto the pally tank’s Consecrate, or wander close to the melee just as the warrior tank hits Thunder Clap or Cleave - it’s not so much other DPS hitting it. Though there have been times when I’ve sheeped or Frost Nova’d a mob that was charging the healer, only to have the healer panic and attack it … “No, you fool! Run away! Don’t hi… Oh maaaaan!” :smack:
- This is actually why I love ogres so much when I’m soloing on a melee toon - their casters are all, “Me stand over here and shoot lightning? No! Me run over and bash you with big stick!” My pally can take the beating much better than she can take the lightning
Decisions, decisions. I got the weekly raid yesterday, and also did VoA 10, so I’m looking at having 60 Frost badges tomorrow night, maybe tonight if I do a VoA 25. By Friday night even if I don’t play one night between now and then.
For those 60 hard earned badges, I can get either a trinket–the lunar dust one with 179 spellpower on it, which I would use to replace one of my PVP trinkets, probably the 95 Crit one.
Or, I can get a new belt. forget what they are called, but there’s one that would be no stat decreases in any category, while gaining 42 spellpower + gem slots + the buckle (extra gem) + stat increases across the board.
I think the trinket would make the most immediate impact. Swapping out the crit trinket will make that a pure +179 spell power gain. However, getting the belt will fill the last slot I need for the Epic Achievement, and when gemmed, will result in about a 100 spell power gain.
I’ve been planning on getting the belt…but the trinket is really nice, and I see lots of casters using it (yes, I often inspect people while waiting for RDF, RBG, or WG to pop.)
As a raiding mage, I would say that if you have regular access to ICC, don’t get the Lunar Dust trinket. The spellpower is seductive, yes, but that’s clearly a healer trinket with the MP5 on it. The other badge trinket (the one with all the hit on it) is bad too, unless you really need that hit. You’re better off with Muradin’s Spyglass or the Dislodged Foreign Object (the former drops from 10 man ICC, the latter from one of the easier bosses in 25 man). If you don’t have regular access to ICC, then yeah, the 179 spellpower is going to be a good buy if you can spare the badges. Even the Quill isn’t a horrible buy unless you’re Arcane (and thus will get little or no use from the hit)–the proc is rather nice.
The belt, on the other hand (there are actually two badge belts, and both are good depending on which spec you are) is a very good buy. There are better ones (like the one that drops from Marrowgar in ICC25) but the badge one is quite nice.
Yeah, it can get a bit off with the marks. I nearly blew it when our RL marked the CC target with a skull and forgot to tell me. :smack: They’re lucky I saw the shackle go up half a second before I was about to keymash.
I complain.
“Okay, sorry about that. CC that and don’t touch it.” marks the next target with a skull
/facepalm
Square should be CC, for Og’s sake. And Skull is KILL IT NOW WITH FIRE.
I forgot to add in my previous post: It doesn’t help that Polymorph doesn’t work against undead, i.e. half the mobs in NR.
I can usually spot the PvPers without looking at their gear - they’re the ones who fight by running in circles around the mobs 
(Seriously - I remember watching in utter bafflement one day in STV as this paladin was running in little circles around a Young Stranglethorn Tiger. I guessed he was either a PvPer trying his hand at PvE, or else he’d played nothing but rogues and was now trying out a pally, but not adjusting his technique. I know why rogues do it in PvE - stun, circle behind, backstab, but there’s no real reason for a pally to do it.)
Indeed. I got into a PoS group once with a resto shaman whose GS was well under what you’d expect in that instance, and one person wanted to kick her immediately, but the rest of us said, “Give her a chance”. We did, and made it through without a single death.
I’ve never been to ICC. Dunno if I ever will make it there. Guys calling for pugs don’t like to take people that have never been there. which makes it very hard to get there the first time. Also, lots of them use Vent, which I can’t, don’t, and won’t. I’ve heard that voicechat stuff doesn’t do well with hughesnet, and I don’t wanna do anything that might cause more latency issues.
With present gear and spec, I’m hit capped and then some. My stats show 13% hit rating, plus I’ve got another 6% from talents.
How do I weigh haste vs crit? The Arcane/Frost spec I’m in now seems to love haste. I have two cooldowns to boost haste–Icy Veins and Gloves enchant. the gloves have a 1 min cooldown, think Icy Veins is something like 2.4 minutes. Right now, I self-buff to somethng like 27% crit…maybe a little higher, don’t remember. My main nuke is Arcane Blast, and it’s critting almost half the time.
I’m thinking maybe haste > crit, on the theory that faster casts overall will beat out more crits out of fewer spells cast per fight…
“Chain-running heroics for a week” != “casual”, at all.
Just sayin’.
And Shot, I have no problem with having someone in a team, either in school or at work, who is below the level of the rest - so long as they don’t also happen to be the bleeping idiot who insists that things have to be done his way or that “everybody does it this way”, or the team leader (wouldn’t be the first time I have one with less experience than most of the team; the good ones learn fast that sometimes you have to listen to your subordinates).
If you’re not likely to see ICC, then the trinket you’re looking at wouldn’t be a bad buy. Neither would the 245-level trinket Talisman of Resurgence, which is still very good and some ICC raiders are still using it (especially Arcane). And yeah, you’re set for hit so don’t even look at Maghia’s Misguided Quill unless you plan to go Fire.
For Arcane, haste is king. Crit is good and certainly not to be turned down, but haste is better. Fire prefers crit, since Hot Streak fires off crits. Given the choice between the two for you, though, I’d go with haste.
Hmm… I would have said the same thing winterhawk did - that it was a healer trinket. But then I noticed that one of the better mages I play with has it equipped… so maybe there is more to it than that. Knowing him though, he probably has multiple ones and just had that equipped because we were doing VDW last and he knew he needed the mana regen for that fight. /shrug
It’s still very likely that the belt will be a better upgrade for you long-term.
Don’t base decisions on what random people are wearing - find a good mage and see what they are gearing. Lots of folks buy “bad” trinkets just to get their GS up (because the “good” trinkets - like Darkmoon Card: Greatness have 200 iLvl and PuG leaders can’t be arsed to actually inspect).
Oh, and as far as I know, Arcane prefers haste to crit, but I may be way wrong on that. Based on the above-mentioned mage’s gemming, it looks like it’s basically straight SP, with some SP/Haste and some SP/Spirit to get socket +SP socket bonuses.
I’m finding spell hit rating for my mage to be insanely confusing, ala what mine should be at. My non-raiding, level 80, draenei fire mage currently shows a Hit Rating of 165.
Reading the WowWiki article on Spell Hit and jumping down to the table under the heading “Hit rating caps for level 80”, it would appear that my 165 is plenty against targets of level 82 and lower (despite a “hit cap” of what, 446?)
But I’m not sure if I’m reading correctly. I do know that in actual practice, I miss so rarely that I don’t much notice it.
ETA: there’s also the fact that most of the tier pieces she’s wearing don’t have +Hit on them.
You’ve got Precision in the Frost tree which adds an (invisible on the “character sheet”) extra 3% hit, and you’re a Draenei so that’s another 1%. So you’re actually at 10.29%, which helps.
AHA. That is why that bear was driving my poor ret pally batshit by running in circles around the pulls. When one’s dps requires being behind the mobs, this can be a tad problematical… :smack:
There are a lot of different definitions of “casual” – it depends on what yours is. Frex, my guild has 2 raid teams and an optional ICC25 with another guild, plus the weekly. We still consider ourselves semi-casual since Team Friday is still 10/12 ICC10 and won’t see HMs until Cata. We didn’t even finish Ulduar, we’ve only seen Mimiron once and got fricasseed for our pains.
Compared to my friends who got me into the game though, I’m a hardcore raider. They don’t raid and don’t log in for weeks sometimes. They don’t run spreadsheets or research like a mofo. They don’t do achieves. They don’t PVP. They just like questing and seeing the world. 
And to some raiders, anyone who doesn’t raid is a casual even if they run Hs until they want to cry the next time they see the AN loading screen. (My priest does. Or she would if she had eyes)
If you’re not raiding, your hit should be fine as is. You are reading it correctly–hit cap is much higher for raid bosses (level 83). As a Draenei, you get 1% for free. You also have Precision, which gives you 3% more. Not quite sure where you’re going with your spec (most mages pair Fire with Arcane, not Frost) but if it works for you and you’re not raiding, then it’s fine. If you don’t have a preference and want to maximize your DPS, at your level I suggest going to Arcane rather than Fire, but again, if you’re not raiding and you’re doing decent damage, it’s all about what’s fun for you. Arcane usually has better DPS at lower gear levels–Fire scales better at higher levels.
Spell chance to miss in PvE is 4% against same-level mobs, 6% against +2 levels, and 17% against +3 levels (raid bosses).
You have 6.3% +hit, as well as 3% from talents, and 1% for being a Draenei. So you’re hit-capped against 5-man bosses, but not against raid bosses. To get raid hit-capped you need 6.7% more hit, which should be around 176 more hit rating.
A casual is anyone who raids less than me. Hard-core is anyone who raids more than me. Nub is anyone that is a worse player than me. Elitist is anyone that is a better player than me.
I think that about sums it up.
Sooooo…you’re calling me a casual nub you hard-core elitist! Those are fightin’ words!
I am aspiring to be a casual elitist though and that would make you a hard-core nub!
It’s difficult to CC effectively when your group doesn’t care about CC and keeps breaking it, so it’s not your fault. Instead, I just mark kill order when I feel it’s important enough, unless the tank does it first.
Speaking of CC breakers, I was in Arathi Basin on my mage, defending the farm flag with a holy paladin. Hunter attacks us. I sheep the pet that’s intent on chewing my ankles off and start burning down the hunter. The holy paladin decides she’d prefer auto-attacking the hunter’s pet over healing me, and we both get ripped to shreds. :smack: