World of Warcraft General Discussion

[Shot_From_Guns]

@SteveG1

The meter told me that it was not my fault. I was repeatedly dying to “friendly fire”. Someone ELSE was screwing up on the polarity switches. That made me feel less angry, as during the ordeal I had been blaming myself.

If you die because you didn’t switch sides when you should have, doesn’t that still show up as friendly fire, because the damage is coming from being in proximity to other players with the opposite charge? If you’re the only one dying at the time, it could be because you’ve just got less armor/HP… or it could be because you just took 4,500/3,500 damage from each person standing around you because your charge was the opposite of all of theirs.

[Shot_From_Guns]

Oh, and here’s my official position on meters, for anybody like **ashman **who wants to put words in my mouth:

1.) Recount and WWS give a great wealth of information that can be interpreted in useful ways. I run Recount, and my guild runs WWS.

2.) Breakdowns by ability and logs especially can be useful for analyzing performance. I do this frequently when looking at myself, and have also done it when analyzing other tanks to give them feedback. (For example, it’s one thing to know what your rotation/priority should be, and another thing to verify that you’re actually doing what you think you’re doing.)

3.) *Just *talking about who is doing the most DPS/HPS isn’t necessarily an indication of who’s doing the best job.

4.) People who brag about being on top of the meters sometimes get there by ignoring other things they should be doing (CC, interrupts, cleansing/decursing/dispelling, rationing mana, moving out of the fire, focusing heals or DPS on a particular target, etc.).
Because I have run into a *lot *of people in the game who think that top DPS or HPS automatically means top damage-dealer or healer, but are actually bad players and no one you’d want to run with if you had any other option, I am very knee-jerk leery of people who claim that anything is the “best” because their meter says so, without any further explanation or parsing.

[Redwing]

@Ferret_Herder

Should I raise your blood pressure more by noting that he doesn’t have Soul Leech or an Immolate Glyph?

I already take 3 blood pressure medications. The fact that you’re taking him into Ulduar is punishment enough for you.

I really really don’t want to know. But, can you link to his spec (if you don’t want to call him out via armory, that’s fine, an mmo-champions link will do :D).

I just want to know what kind of synergies he’s trying to get. Deep destro doesn’t have that many variants in it. I can spend 55 point without getting soul leech, and that gives me every raid useful talent in the tree except the 5 soul leech talents. I could understand putting 1 in shadowburn if you didn’t know any better, but where else? Molten Skin? Nether prot? Imp Searing Pain?!? Those aren’t really raid useful talents, ya know?

As for the Glyph, again, deep destro gets incin, conflag and either life tap or immo depending on whether or not you have soul leech.

Tom Scud, I pug occasionally, but not low level instances. Or if I do low level instances, I am either the tank or the healer.

OTOH, both of my 80s are dual specced. My lock’s off spec is a (bad) tank spec for Mimiron from when our main locks missed a week. My pally’s off-spec is solo-prot so I can help my wife farm old content for mounts, or just goof off.

@Shot_From_Guns

I am very knee-jerk leery of people who claim that anything is the “best” because their meter says so, without any further explanation or parsing.

My meters show that our GM is best at dying to his own soul charge.

[Mogle]

@Ferret_Herder

My husband was playing his low-60s warrior out in Hellfire Peninsula when he got a group begging him to tank. He said in many ways, ‘you don’t understand, I’m Arms-spec.’ He was told, ‘we understand, please just get out your shield, go defensive, and try this with us?’ After painful progress followed by miserable failure, he just got out his 80 tank pally and ran them through, because they were being so pleasant about the whole struggle.

Leveling instances are perfectly tankable by non-prot warriors, granted it is easier to do as prot but if you have the gear and know what you’re doing your specc shouldn’t really matter until you hit the heroics.

[Yeticus_Rex]

@Tom_Scud

Heh, as long as I’m getting my numbers sorted out, anyone have an estimate on the expertise cap? I realize that this varies from boss to boss by their dodge numbers, but is there a rule-of-thumb number?

(Also as far as I can tell there’s no haste cap and the armor penetration cap is so high I’m basically never going to have to worry about it, right?)

My turn to pile on…here’s my main, just 4 points short of max Hit Rating which is 7.90% compared to max 8.00%.

From the ret pally thread on Elitist Jerks, in the OP:

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Observations

This section clarifies some things regarding hits, crits, and expertise. Much of this section is thanks Retesting hit table assumptions . The people in that thread have solid math, and Vulajin has provided pretty solid evidence of these theories (40000+ swings!)

Current observations:
Our specials are based on a 2 roll system, our normal (autoswings) are a one roll system. This simply means that hit and expertise are even more important to us than before.
You need 8%, not the BC 9%, to be 2H melee hitcapped vs skull level mobs (bosses).
You (still) need 26 expertise (6.50%) to be expertise capped, not the 6.25% reported lately.
All melee classes seem to suffer a 4.8% crit suppression vs skull mobs; this means that your melee critrate will be on average 1.8% lower than your character sheet implies (HotC covers 3% of this, procs from librams and such not accounted for).
All spell attacks have a 3% crit suppression vs bosses. Because of HotC, we do not notice this at all; also only exorcism and holy wrath are affected by this.
The spell hit cap is still 17% - the only skills we have that are affected by this are exorcism, holy wrath, and consecrate ticks - so this is of little importance to us.
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Stats

(In order of importance!)
If you are looking for stat weightings I suggest you use one of the spreadsheets at the top, as they vary greatly depending on your current gear.

Hit (See Observations)
32.8 rating gives you 1% hit. At level 80, we require 263 hit rating, or 8%, to be hit capped on white swings, specials, and judgements. Note that Exorcism and Consecration are considered spells and use the spell hit table, thus we can still miss with these abilities. As of 3.1 hit cap is very important, and quite a bit easier to attain - you need to be hitcapped in order to maximize your dps, so gemming for it isn’t a bad idea. Hit is as good or better than STR until you are hitcapped, and then becomes worthless after the cap, so gear appropriately. If you always raid with a draenei, you have the option of gearing for 7% hit due to their racial.

Strength
Our DPS stat to stack after the hitcap, as we have various talents that multiply it’s effect. 1 STR gives you 2 AP baseline, multiplied by 1.15 from Divine Strength (Tier 1 Prot) giving us 2.3 AP per STR when specced. This number is further affected by buffs such as BoK. STR also increases the strength of our utility spells such as JoL/SS/AoW via talents. It is recommended that you gem STR after you are hitcapped.

Expertise
Introduced in late BC, this stat allows us to remove dodges from the attack table - you cannot remove parries from the table, but you only get parried from the front, so don’t attack bosses from the front! 8.2 rating gives 1 expertise; you need 214 expertise rating (26 expertise, 6.5%) to reach the cap. If you are a human using a sword/mace you need 23 expertise (189 rating), and if you are a dwarf using a mace you need 21 expertise (173 rating) to reach the cap due to racials. Capping this stat is a significant dps increase vs uncapped (or none at all) as it affects our whites, strikes, and SoB. You ideally want to cap this stat alongside hit in order to maximize your dps and this is possible in 3.1 with the amount of expertise on gear. You have the option of gemming for expertise to get caught up/close to the cap, but there should be enough on BiS gear naturally that this isn’t necessary.

Crit (See Observations)
We are quite reliant on critical strikes to do damage. You can never really have too much crit, but it is not worth gemming for it, gem for STR instead. You need 45.9 crit rating to gain 1% crit at 80. This stat gains no benefits from raid buffs, but you get more per itemization point from crit than you do AGI. This stat also increases your spell crit rating, making it flat out superior to AGI.

Agility
We need 52.08 agility to gain 1% melee crit. Like stated before, crit is flat out better, however AGI does scale with raid buffs such as BoK where crit does not. Often found on leather, mail, or sometimes weapons, but not on plate.

Haste
Haste received some buffs in 3.1; namely for paladins we get 30% more haste from each rating point. Haste increases white damage and SoB/SoM damage by giving you a few more attacks against a boss; haste does NOT decrease the GCD on our instant strikes or instant spells. You will find plenty of it on our sets and pieces, don’t enchant or gem for it. You need 32.7 baseline haste rating to gain 1% haste at 80, but adjusted with the 3.1 changes paladins require 25.2 haste rating for 1% haste.

Armor Penetration
ArP was buffed in 3.1 by 25% - but it still only affects 40% of our damage, meaning we received about a 10% increased benefit from this stat (as opposed to warriors who received a 25% increase). 12.3 rating now gives you 1% armor piercing; unlike BC, you can no longer fully ignore boss or player armor via this stat. ArPen does NOT increase damage done by seals, just white damage, CS and DS.

Attack Power
Most of our skills scale off AP, but this stat is now bottom of the melee barrel - STR is just so much better. AP isn’t really seen on plate (so you often don’t have to worry about this) but you will run into it if you dip into leather and mail. Note that despite AP having a 2:1 item stat budget, it is still far weaker than STR as we have no talents that boost it’s effect. When comparing or considering pieces with AP vs plate, you need to look at the item stats/level as a whole.

Spellpower
Bad item stat for us. Spellpower increases some of our skills’ coefficients, but at a rate much slower than STR/AP, and does nothing for our white damage and instant melee strikes - CS and DS gain nothing from spellpower. Avoid this stat (easy to do, since none of our ret gear has spellpower).

Intellect
As of 3.1, INT sucks due to JotW/SA changes. 1 INT gives you 15 mana and a negligible amount of spell crit; you need 166 INT to gain 1% spellcrit. INT will increase the mana you get from DP, and your total mana pool, nothing else. You will only find int on hunter/enh shaman gear and it is rare to find a piece of mail better than plate/leather.

Stamina, Armor
Ultimately, stam does nothing more than keep you alive in situations where there is raid damage, and in wrath there is a lot of raid damage. Most of the damage is magic (not mitigated by armor) therefor armor class does not matter to us, as we have no Armored to the Teeth talents like warriors or deathknights. You’ll find all the stam you need and much much more on all wrath gear.
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My bolding…Expertise rating for you is 214 (for 26 Expertise = 6.5%). That is my mains’ weak spot that I must start working on to raise my DPS further. I’ve only done a handful of 5-man runs myself, and I realize the need to find/acquire gear that will help. I have a few empty gem slots on my current gear, so maybe a few of my Burning Dogs can help Jewelcraft a bevy of jewels that I have been mining for that expertise.

This last portion of the quote refers to the stats most important (in that order) for Ret Pally’s although I think that there are some general similarities that DKs and RP’s have (melee damage, stats from plate armor, weapons), so I believe (and I could be way off base here) that the stats your looking to build are pretty much near the same order as a Ret Pally’s.

The first four stats should be always a priority…Hit, STR, Exp, and Crit. Max the Hit (@ 263), look for improving STR in all forms of gear, and look to max Exp (@ 214), while finding items that also bolster crit whenever possible.

The middle four stats, should not override the top 4 stats but should be accumulated when allowed…AGI, Haste, ArmPen, and AP. Crit supercedes AGI, Haste and ArmPen just helps on white damage, and AP is inferior to STR.

The last 4 stats are of little help or are given so freely, that it really doesn’t matter what plate you wear, you’re gonna get more than enough…
Spellpower and INT…you too much to get so little benefit. DK’s don’t even need it since they have Runepower and Pally’s have buffs that help regain used mana when they crit (all the more reason to find Crit gear)

Stamina and Armor…pretty much given out like government cheese…DO NOT go shopping for gear that has the Stamina and Armor at the cost of the top 4 stats unless you’re gonna tank.

Anyways, here’s my two cents on what I’ve learned in the few months that I’ve been playing. I could be dead wrong though and I won’t deny it.

[Infovore]

@Redwing

My lock’s off spec is a (bad) tank spec for Mimiron

Tank spec? I’m curious about this–I didn’t think you needed any particular spec to tank Mimiron. My mage does it fairly often when our main warlock isn’t around, and he does it in his normal raiding gear. He has Mage Armor up to help with the resistances, but since he’s Arcane he has that up most of the time anyway to help with mana regen. This is on both 10 and 25, btw (I’m the default Mimi-head tank in our 10 man group).

[Tom_Scud]

Well. I do have a few points in bladed armor, so armor does buff my attack a bit. And come to think, haste helps with dps beyond the whites, what with all the odd little extras that death knights get with their attacks. Still, thanks for the big fat reprint.

[Ferret_Herder]

@Mogle

Leveling instances are perfectly tankable by non-prot warriors, granted it is easier to do as prot but if you have the gear and know what you’re doing your specc shouldn’t really matter until you hit the heroics.

That’s what’ll ideally happen, sure, but it definitely didn’t happen in practice in this case. He told them over and over that it wasn’t going to work, and it didn’t in the end. I don’t know if it was just him (we didn’t twink out our 60s really, and they only had random green stuff from BC and prior, no instance gear) or him plus the rest of the group. Side note - I find BC much less forgiving of this kind of thing than WotLK instances.

@Redwing

I already take 3 blood pressure medications. The fact that you’re taking him into Ulduar is punishment enough for you.

I really really don’t want to know. But, can you link to his spec (if you don’t want to call him out via armory, that’s fine, an mmo-champions link will do :D).

I just want to know what kind of synergies he’s trying to get. Deep destro doesn’t have that many variants in it. I can spend 55 point without getting soul leech, and that gives me every raid useful talent in the tree except the 5 soul leech talents. I could understand putting 1 in shadowburn if you didn’t know any better, but where else? Molten Skin? Nether prot? Imp Searing Pain?!? Those aren’t really raid useful talents, ya know?

As for the Glyph, again, deep destro gets incin, conflag and either life tap or immo depending on whether or not you have soul leech.

Here’s the spec breakdown with glyphs.

[Tom_Scud]

@Ferret_Herder

That’s what’ll ideally happen, sure, but it definitely didn’t happen in practice in this case. He told them over and over that it wasn’t going to work, and it didn’t in the end. I don’t know if it was just him (we didn’t twink out our 60s really, and they only had random green stuff from BC and prior, no instance gear) or him plus the rest of the group. Side note - I find BC much less forgiving of this kind of thing than WotLK instances.

Yeah, I remember doing a Nexus run with a bunch of exactly-level-70s, with a shadow priest healing and I think it was a Fury warrior tanking. Somehow we cleared all the wings (with multiple wipes), but the dragon at the end was hopeless. Five wipes later I had to quit for the night.

[lizardling]

@Tom_Scud

You’ve obviously not had to rely on PUGs much recently. It’s distressingly common to be short a healer or a tank and have the choice of (a) sitting around waiting for someone to show up on someone’s friends list/guild/in LFG or (b) going with someone off-spec and just eating the occasional wipe. I wound up healing SM: Armory with my on-spec but under-level priest (only level 30) for a group the other day after they’d been spamming Trade for half an hour asking for a healer.

Fortunately for that run the tank was level 39 and the group was very organized and handled the pulls beautifully - I only had to drink once.

(Oh, and they didn’t know to back away from the boss’s whirlwind, but my mass-heal worked ok for that.)

That sounds familiar. Last night I was healing SM Arm on my lil’ 34 priest. Turned out to be a somewhat hair raising experience as the second DPS d/c so we wound up 4manning it until we could get a 39 prot pally in. She liked really really pushing things. Collecting… 10 mobs and letting the rest of us sort out the furball. :eek:

On one exceedingly hairy pull, things got nasty enough that the ret pally died and I was spamming Heals and Flash Heals on the tank. The instant *right after *I went definitively OOM and said as much, I dinged. YAY MANA.

How’s that for timing eh?

I still am not used to having Prayer of Healing though, but I’ve bound that and Desperate Prayer as OSHITE! mouse button bindings in hopes I’ll learn to use them. (Three second cast, though? )

[SteveG1]

@Shot_From_Guns

If you die because you didn’t switch sides when you should have, doesn’t that still show up as friendly fire, because the damage is coming from being in proximity to other players with the opposite charge? If you’re the only one dying at the time, it could be because you’ve just got less armor/HP… or it could be because you just took 4,500/3,500 damage from each person standing around you because your charge was the opposite of all of theirs.

I guess that is possible, I will have to see what happens next time. Let’s just say I have developed a serious and pathological hatred for that patricular boss now.

[Mogle]

@Ferret_Herder

That’s what’ll ideally happen, sure, but it definitely didn’t happen in practice in this case. He told them over and over that it wasn’t going to work, and it didn’t in the end. I don’t know if it was just him (we didn’t twink out our 60s really, and they only had random green stuff from BC and prior, no instance gear) or him plus the rest of the group. Side note - I find BC much less forgiving of this kind of thing than WotLK instances.

With green gear, very little(I’m assuming) tanking experience as a warrior and a few average puggers in an instance that isn’t the easiest out there, I don’t think it was the Arms spec that was the problem. But I wasn’t there so I can’t say for certain.

[Tom_Scud]

@lizardling

That sounds familiar. Last night I was healing SM Arm on my lil’ 34 priest. Turned out to be a somewhat hair raising experience as the second DPS d/c so we wound up 4manning it until we could get a 39 prot pally in. She liked really really pushing things. Collecting… 10 mobs and letting the rest of us sort out the furball. :eek:

Gah. I hate it when tanks do that, even if it makes the dungeon run faster. I healed a guy through Stockades who would go run into one room, smack everything with a consecrate, then go run across into the next room and do the same. Aargh. (He did know what he was doing, though, I have to give him that - only wipe was the result of a boss mass-fearing everyone.)

[Jas09]

@SteveG1

I guess that is possible, I will have to see what happens next time. Let’s just say I have developed a serious and pathological hatred for that patricular boss now.

Out of curiosity, do you have Deadly Boss Mods installed? Cause it blares at you if you’re on the wrong side and makes it pretty much impossible to screw up… Now that won’t help you with other people screwing up, but at least you’ll know if you’re doing it wrong.

That said, it’s one of the reasons I dread 25-man Naxx… the odds of having someone screw up is just too damn high.

[Mogle]

@Jas09

That said, it’s one of the reasons I dread 25-man Naxx… the odds of having someone screw up is just too damn high.

If you think he is bad now you should have tried it when Naxx was a 40 man instance.

[Shot_From_Guns]

@SteveG1

I guess that is possible, I will have to see what happens next time. Let’s just say I have developed a serious and pathological hatred for that patricular boss now.

1.) As has been mentioned by Jas09, make sure that you and everyone else in the raid has some kind of boss mod installed. Deadly Boss Mods (DBM) or BigWigs are the usuals–if there’s anything else that’s worthwhile, I haven’t heard of it. IIRC, BigWigs gives me both a sound and a screen flash when my new polarity is different from my previous one.

2.) Have everyone turn on enemy cast bars so they can see when Polarity Shift is being cast, and alert them to the giant glowing ball of energy Thad gets in his hands when he’s casting it.

3.) If people are STILL getting too busy dialing in to their cooldowns and castbars to pay attention, have someone call out on Vent when Thad starts casting his Polarity Shift.

[Quasimodem]

And y’all oughta be used to these by now.

If you’d rather not be bothered with the talking to me like a kid thing, just skip over me okay?

Here we go: When I’m in a Pug, some of those in the group look a *lot[/] like the enemy, and some of their pets look a lot like enemy pets.

An example would be that big blue thing which follows the Defias Mystic around in DM, I have seen that thing (as well as a spider) as someone’s pet.

Once

I

was

in a

Pug where one of the characters looked a LOT like one of the Defias crooks. So MUCH so that one of the others in my Pug even commented on it.

My question: Is it possible to attack the wrong person/thing if you’re not in PvP mode to begiin with?

Thanks

Q

[twilly80]

@Shot_From_Guns

We’ve already discussed that the char that needs the money is on a different server and of a different faction. Where are you going with this?

You sayed you were on Borean Tundra and that is where my horde is. :smack:

[jayjay]

@Quasimodem

Here we go: When I’m in a Pug, some of those in the group look a *lot[/] like the enemy, and some of their pets look a lot like enemy pets.

An example would be that big blue thing which follows the Defias Mystic around in DM, I have seen that thing (as well as a spider) as someone’s pet.

Once

I

was

in a

Pug where one of the characters looked a LOT like one of the Defias crooks. So MUCH so that one of the others in my Pug even commented on it.

My question: Is it possible to attack the wrong person/thing if you’re not in PvP mode to begiin with?

Thanks

Q

Unless you’re in a duel, you cannot attack same-faction players. Period. Not even if your PVP is on. And since you’re not going to be grouping with opposite-faction players, ever, anyone you group with (and their pets/minions) will be safe from you if you accidentally try to attack them. You won’t even be able to target them for combat. (With the possible exception of a warlock who’s enslaved an infernal…but that’s not technically a minion, I don’t think)

[Ferret_Herder]

@Quasimodem

My question: Is it possible to attack the wrong person/thing if you’re not in PvP mode to begiin with?

The short answer: No.

The long answer: You won’t do damage to the “good guy”, but you might well stand facing some kind of groupmate/pet and flail away doing nothing, instead of actually attacking your intended target. Even worse if you have the actual monster/opponent targeted so that your on-screen target box looks like you’re right, but you’re really staring at a friend.

If you want more of a hint, press the “v” key once. This should pop up a horizontal health bar over the heads of things that are attackable to you, which is a very strong visual cue for what’s friend vs. foe. (Press “v” again to turn it off.)