# World of Warcraft General Discussion **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [March 4, 2009, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294 "2009-03-04T17:44:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 556
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/11102 "2010-04-30T16:18:46Z")
> [@One\_And\_Only\_Wanderers](#): > > Now I have my Top Prot talent filled, what do I spend future points on? The typical Prot spec isn’t very flexible at all. 15/3/53 is standard. In Arms, just about everybody does a Deep Wounds build. It’s pretty much required if you want to hold aggro. The three points in Fury almost always go into Armed to the Teeth (I think that’s what’s it’s called–the one that gives you AP for Armor.) Some people go with the Crit talent instead, but quite frankly it’s just not as good, point-for-point. You have a few points to play around with in the Prot tree itself. If you look up Sleutel on Stormrage, you can see how I’ve got my points distributed. I might make a few changes in where I have points distributed in the Prot tree for leveling/5-mans versus endgame raiding, but IMO what I have now will work well for pretty much anybody regardless, and it’s definitely the best raiding spec. ETA: If you haven’t seen it before #/#/# is a standard way of referring to talent builds, where each number is how many points are placed into a given tree. They’re always listed in the same order, i.e., they go left to right the same way that the trees do in the GUI. So for Warriors, the numbers are Arms/Fury/Prot. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/11103 "2010-04-30T16:53:52Z")
> [@hdc\_bst](#): > > It seems to me like multishot would be pretty good, as I really don’t have all that many buttons to press. So far on the various hunters I’ve made, I haven’t found Multishot to be very useful for soloing. If your pet is engaging a group and you use Multishot, it will hit everything (up to however many shots it fires), and all the mobs that your pet isn’t directly attacking will come running after you. My experience, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![hdc\_bst](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/9f8e36/32.png) [@hdc\_bst](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hdc_bst)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/11104 "2010-04-30T17:18:58Z")
> [@Mister\_Rik](#): > > So far on the various hunters I’ve made, I haven’t found Multishot to be very useful for soloing. If your pet is engaging a group and you use Multishot, it will hit everything (up to however many shots it fires), and all the mobs that your pet isn’t directly attacking will come running after you. My experience, anyway. I was mostly thinking of ways to boost my dungeon DPS a little bit without respeccing. I solo great as a beast master, but my feelings were a little hurt when it was pointed out that I only beat the healer in dungeon damage done :). ---
**Author:** ![kushiel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bbce88/32.png) [@kushiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kushiel)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/11105 "2010-04-30T18:41:49Z")
> [@hdc\_bst](#): > > I was mostly thinking of ways to boost my dungeon DPS a little bit without respeccing. I solo great as a beast master, but my feelings were a little hurt when it was pointed out that I only beat the healer in dungeon damage done :). So I wrote out this whole post about how awesome Multishot is just to realize I confused it with Volley. Make sure you get Volley, it’s awesome. ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/11106 "2010-04-30T18:54:22Z")
Volley is a standard Hunter ability. It’s not a Talent–everyone gets it when they hit the right level. (And honestly, gold is so easy to get these days, are there still people who _don’t_ train all their abilities?) ---
**Author:** ![Mogle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mogle/32/12021_2.png) [@Mogle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mogle)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/11107 "2010-04-30T18:55:18Z")
> [@hdc\_bst](#): > > I was mostly thinking of ways to boost my dungeon DPS a little bit without respeccing. I solo great as a beast master, but my feelings were a little hurt when it was pointed out that I only beat the healer in dungeon damage done :). Someone pointed that out to you? Did you have a damage meter so you could see for yourself? As a BM hunter much of your damage comes from the pet, problem is that pets, cross realm grouping and damage meters don’t always play nice. It might be that the damage meter isn’t recording your pet damage properly. ---
**Author:** ![hdc\_bst](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/9f8e36/32.png) [@hdc\_bst](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hdc_bst)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/11108 "2010-04-30T19:16:45Z")
> [@Mogle](#): > > Someone pointed that out to you? Did you have a damage meter so you could see for yourself? > As a BM hunter much of your damage comes from the pet, problem is that pets, cross realm grouping and damage meters don’t always play nice. It might be that the damage meter isn’t recording your pet damage properly. I’m not running any add-ons, this was supplied by another random dungeon member (cross-realm). I’m not sure which meter it was, but will now tell myself it wasn’t counting my pet damage :). In the group’s defense, only one person commented on it, and was told to hush. ---
**Author:** ![Jas09](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d07c76/32.png) [@Jas09](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jas09)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/11109 "2010-04-30T19:20:57Z")
> [@hdc\_bst](#): > > In the group’s defense, only one person commented on it, and was told to hush. Damn straight. Nothing is more annoying than random recount meter posts in a PuG. Good on the other members for telling them to STFU. And yes, recount measured across realms is highly unreliable. It’s not even that reliable within a group (in 25-man raids I’ve seen reports vary relatively widely). ---
**Author:** ![lizardling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f4b2a3/32.png) [@lizardling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lizardling)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/11110 "2010-04-30T19:44:17Z")
:mad: I had a very nice post written out and the board logged me out, so I lost it. In a nutshell, what that post had to say was: - Feign Death is your best friend from 30 on for managing threat both solo/group. You can’t dps if you’re eating floor, so use this liberally as needed to manage threat (I assume that you have things set up so that the game beeps at you when you’re about to peel mobs off the tank/pet) - Volley is lvl 40, and while it’s definitely tasty, it should be used with caution because it costs a ton of mana, causes a lot of threat, and is overkill for anything under a 4 mob pull IMO. - An easy way to increase dps without respeccing would be to pick up a ferocity pet. You don’t have to abandon your bear as hunters can have up to 5 pets currently; this means that you can use the ferocity pet in groups and the bear while soloing. If you need a ferocity pet talent build, look at my raptor [here](http://www.wowarmory.com/character-talents.xml?r=Borean+Tundra&cn=Kutkal&gn=Royalty). (Ignore my BM build, that’s for PVP) - Missing swipe/claws: Turn off Cower in your spellbook since all it does is slow down your pet noawadays, which doesn’t do much for managing threat, and burns focus. ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/11111 "2010-04-30T20:30:28Z")
Doesn’t Cower also reduce damage taken? Useful if you’re trying to solo something hard. (Though almost certainly useless in a group, unless your tank is intently studying the floor.) ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/11112 "2010-04-30T20:37:10Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > Doesn’t Cower also reduce damage taken? Useful if you’re trying to solo something hard. (Though almost certainly useless in a group, unless your tank is intently studying the floor.) Yeah, but I’d say that’s better used as a consciously-activated cooldown, not something to have on auto. ---
**Author:** ![2sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/2/e47774/32.png) [@2sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2sense)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/11113 "2010-04-30T20:41:16Z")
> [@Jas09](#): > > Damn straight. Nothing is more annoying than random recount meter posts in a PuG. Good on the other members for telling them to STFU. Recount is a valuable tool but it’s mostly abused in my experienced. It’s never necessary to post the recount on an ongoing dungeon run and when the groups I’m tanking for do it I make sure they know it’s unwelcome. Stats are only important to help diagnose the problem when there is a problem. It’s different on raids where the raid leader needs to keep an eye out for potential problems down the road. As a geared tank/healer I can carry a weak group through a random heroic but not through ICC. Whenever I want to check the numbers I ask someone to whisper them to me. I don’t have Recount so I’m not sure why but that rarely happens as a lot of people say they don’t know how to do so. This more experienced player was telling us the night before last that Recount can also lead to lag for some players because it sends out bursts of info several times a second. Anyone got the straight dope on that? If so it’s even more annoying. ---
**Author:** ![Mogle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mogle/32/12021_2.png) [@Mogle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mogle)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/11114 "2010-04-30T20:56:44Z")
> [@2sense](#): > > Whenever I want to check the numbers I ask someone to whisper them to me. I don’t have Recount so I’m not sure why but that rarely happens as a lot of people say they don’t know how to do so. This more experienced player was telling us the night before last that Recount can also lead to lag for some players because it sends out bursts of info several times a second. Anyone got the straight dope on that? If so it’s even more annoying. As far as I know it’s only an issue for the players actually running Recount, but yes, in a 25 man raid Recount can be a resource hog. ---
**Author:** ![Bosstone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/22d042/32.png) [@Bosstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosstone)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/11115 "2010-04-30T21:00:52Z")
Yeah, I generally don’t run Recount. It’s been responsible for locking up my computer due to lack of resources more than once in the past (although updates to Ubuntu have since fixed the problem, I think). Right now I use Skada, since it’s both a DPS and threat meter (among other things) and it doesn’t put any noticeable strain on my computer, though that could just be because I’m not running 25s. The worst was when I ran Ragefire Chasm, the _first dungeon in the game_, and a Hunter kept posting Recount and bitched out the poor tank for not being able to hold aggro. ---
**Author:** ![Shot\_From\_Guns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ccd318/32.png) [@Shot\_From\_Guns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shot_From_Guns)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/11116 "2010-04-30T21:08:16Z")
> [@Bosstone](#): > > Yeah, but I’d say that’s better used as a consciously-activated cooldown, not something to have on auto. Pretty sure auto-cast on Cower is broken right now, anyway. At least for my Hunter–when I have Cower turned on, I \*still \*have to manually trigger it. > [@2sense](#): > > This more experienced player was telling us the night before last that Recount can also lead to lag for some players because it sends out bursts of info several times a second. Anyone got the straight dope on that? Off the top of my head, I’d say an addon can never affect anyone who doesn’t have it installed (other than by, say, sending them whispers or putting raid markers on them, or other things that a player could do manually). As has been observed, Recount \*can \*suck up memory, but only for people who have chosen to use it. ---
**Author:** ![lizardling](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f4b2a3/32.png) [@lizardling](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lizardling)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/11117 "2010-04-30T23:40:08Z")
> [@2sense](#): > > Recount is a valuable tool but it’s mostly abused in my experienced. QFT. It drives me nuts when people post recount in the middle of runs or ask for someone to spam it to raid or guild. I don’t care if you’re a Kingslayer or you’re 15 in RFC, there is very little legitimate place for recount spammage. I’ll refer to recount on my own to see how I’m doing on a personal basis, but pretty much never spam it. If you care about dps, you should be running it yourself and not depending on other people’s setups. rawr. and yes i r cranky. It’s been that kind of day today. Re Cower, yes it reduces damage but only by a small amount so yeah, while it might be useful while soloing, in groups it’s not worth it. ---
**Author:** ![Infovore](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/infovore/32/420_2.png) [@Infovore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Infovore)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2010, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/11118 "2010-04-30T23:59:55Z")
> [@Shot\_From\_Guns](#): > > Off the top of my head, I’d say an addon can never affect anyone who doesn’t have it installed (other than by, say, sending them whispers or putting raid markers on them, or other things that a player could do manually). As has been observed, Recount \*can \*suck up memory, but only for people who have chosen to use it. Recount can actually cause problems for others for that reason, though it’s not that bad from what I’ve heard. The bad one for that (unless they changed it) is “Gearscore.” I know some raids that have banned it, because it can really slow down folks with lower-end computers or dodgy connections by constantly polling everybody else in the raid for gear info. BTW, if you’re looking for a Recount-like addon with a smaller footprint, try Skada. I’ve been using it for a long time, and I like it a lot better than Recount. ---
**Author:** ![Daedelus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/58956e/32.png) [@Daedelus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Daedelus)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2010, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/11119 "2010-05-01T00:09:11Z")
Incoming wall of post. Apologies in advance, I just have been meaning to reply to posts in this thread but then get distracted (by the SC2 beta, mainly, \<3). > [@winterhawk11](#): > > They’re not killing off 25 man raids. I’m sure a lot of 25 man guilds will still continue to do 25 man raids (I’m pretty sure ours will, for example)–it’s just that they’re giving the option to get the same loot (albeit less of it) and the same challenge from a 10 man raid. > > I’m not sure how I feel about it. I think I’m leaning toward “like,” because it means that I might be able to get some good loot for my geared alts on off nights, and won’t feel like I have raid both 10- and 25-man content on my main in order to keep up with the SOTA. > [@Mekhazzio](#): > > Heh. 10-man hard mode Deathwhisper gets her MC back and it’s not that big of a deal. But I agree with the general premise that it’s very difficult to keep difficulty the same between 10 and 25 while still keeping the fights relatively similar. Sartharion+3 had its 25-man version seriously undertuned in both healing and DPS numbers required relative to 10-man, but even without that, the basic raid quantity became a hurdle in and of itself. Going from 2 tanks to 3 isn’t a big deal in a 25-man but it’s a loss of 20% of your total raid DPS in 10. > > However, I fully support their decision to bring 10 and 25 in line with each other finally. I don’t think it’ll kill 25 - all three 25-man raids I’m familiar with will still be going - but it will definitely solve the really idiotic problem they’ve created where my hard-mode 10-man raid, despite having our pick of the loot from challenging encounters, is still “encouraged” to PUG ridiculously easy 25-man crap because the easier content offers better or unique loot. It’ll also keep them from balancing the badge cost of items around doing 2 or even 4 raid instances a week, which just utterly screws people who would rather focus on what they enjoy. > [@Jas09](#): > > I was gonna mention this as well. Also, it seems clear that they’re dramatically increasing the number of classes that can do “things” (be it dispell, bloodlust, etc…), likely with these issues in mind. > > Like you said there are still some scaling issues, but I think it’s doable the more I think about it (and I was _very_ against it when I first heard about it). > > I agree with all of this (in particular not feeling obligated to grind badges), with one caveat. > > I think the single biggest issue will be with guilds like mine where one 10-man group is pretty far ahead of the 25-man. The 25-man pretty clearly includes 15 “very good” players and 10 “pretty good” players. I’m not sure how long the 15 better players are gonna be willing to stick with “carrying” (God I hate that term) the 10 lower-quality players unless the rewards are significant. Why not split off and focus on 10-man raiding (and heroic modes) rather than deal with all of the issues that come with 25-man raiding? Maybe this is a good thing overall (less stress, less whining, fewer superiority complexes). But keeping this group together is going to be very, very hard IMO. > > I’m thinking recruiting candidates for a 25-man will become much more difficult as well, because more of them will be in 10-man groups that they don’t want to leave (since they’ll be getting top-quality loot anyways). > > Another example: my old guild runs primarily 10-man raids, and has 3 groups at various points of ICC10 (one about to kill Arthas, one working on Sindragosa, and one stuck in Plague Quarter). They also come together on Sundays to have fun as a large group and run the first wing of ICC25. It’s a way to have individual tight-knit groups but still feel like the entire guild is doing something together. This will obviously not be possible under the new system (unless maybe the 10-mans do one raid instance and the 25 is reserved for a different one…). > > So, no, it won’t kill 25-man raiding… but it might just kill “casual” 25-man raiding. Definitely ambivalent about the changes, but can see both positives and negatives about it. I doubt my guild would break, and we will probably continue to push 25s, but after I took my break I was definitely interested in looking for a 10-man strict guild. However, they raided just as much as most 25-man guilds, and I figured if I was going to put in that kind of time, than I might as well raid 25s for the harder content/better loot. On the other hand, now that they’re changing it so that the same quality gear is in both instances, and same level of difficulty, I can see quite a few people who aren’t in as established guilds go to 10-man raiding for the ease of maintaining a group for that purpose. I am very interested to see how they tune various encounters so that their level of difficulty is the same for 25 and 10-man raids. Sartharion 3D is the easiest example for me where 10 was much, much harder than 25, but I am hard pressed to think of another encounter in this entire expansion that reversed the trend in that way. Finding a way to tune fights for both levels of raiding so that they warrant equal gear levels should be interesting. Overall, I’m very excited to see what raiding in Cataclysm will look like. > [@winterhawk11](#): > > Recount can actually cause problems for others for that reason, though it’s not that bad from what I’ve heard. The bad one for that (unless they changed it) is “Gearscore.” I know some raids that have banned it, because it can really slow down folks with lower-end computers or dodgy connections by constantly polling everybody else in the raid for gear info. > > BTW, if you’re looking for a Recount-like addon with a smaller footprint, try Skada. I’ve been using it for a long time, and I like it a lot better than Recount. Skada is great for the decreased RAM usage and inclusion of a threat meter and damage meter into one addon, BUT it does misreport DPS low, often around 10% low. But, I still use it because I find it minimalistic and useful (though not as useful for on-the-spot analysis as Recount can be). ---
**Author:** ![2sense](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/2/e47774/32.png) [@2sense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/2sense)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2010, 7:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/11120 "2010-05-01T07:40:25Z")
Thanks for the info. I don’t have Recount because I don’t DPS. My toons are either tank or heals. So I wouldn’t use Skada for that. How does it format the threat? I might use it if it’s helpful. Right now I use Omen and Healbot. Omen shows the top people on the threat table for the mob I’m targetting and Healbot gives each person’s highest overall threat. Looking at both gives me a decent view of what’s going on but it’s clunky. ---
**Author:** ![One\_And\_Only\_Wanderers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/838e76/32.png) [@One\_And\_Only\_Wanderers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/One_And_Only_Wanderers)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2010, 9:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294/11121 "2010-05-01T09:10:17Z")
ding to 62. Just slaughtered a level 70 rogue trying to capture the Stadium. U assume the guy didn’t know what he was doing cos I thought rogues were good at PvP as a class. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294.md?page=555) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/world-of-warcraft-general-discussion/488294.md?page=557)