Threat wasn’t a problem as long as the warlock sent his Felguard in after me but I found after pulling one or two suddenly we’re surrounded by 5-6 and picking the next target is where I struggled, all I could see was a sea of nameplates. Fantastic in ‘oh my I have no idea what I’m doing’ kind of way.
I can’t afford it unfortunately
But in good news my new, shiny, dual 9800GT 6Gb RAM laptop has arrived. Tonight I shall be rebuilding it ready for tomorrow night’s living half of Strat, I may even be able to see mobs further than 10 yards away this time.
Going back to Priest glyphs, I have Flash Heal, Renew, and Circle of Healing. I still use Renew a lot on every instance pull; basically I make sure that it is always up on the tank, and if I see another party member below full health, I’ll toss one their way – unless it’s multiple members, then I’ll toss up a Circle of Healing. I tend to use Flash Heal just to top off the tank if he’s taking some, but not a lot, of damage.
I don’t use PW:S much except when soloing. I probably should, but when I was starting out I didn’t use it because I was afraid of rage-starving the tank. Plus it’s not quite as useful for me as Holy as it would be for a Disc priest.
The buttons I really mash when healing heroics are Prayer of Mending, Renew, and Circle of Healing to keep the party alive, while tossing Flash Heals and Greater Heals on the tank as needed.
Well, this sort of proves my point. As far as max-dps rotations that one is decidedly simple. Basically you cast Flame Shock and Lava Burst and spam Lightning Bolt. I have seen quite high-end DPS where 70% of the damage is from one spell (Lightning Bolt). To me that’s a sign of a rotation that certainly can’t really qualify as difficult.
For comparison Survival Hunters, which also have a reputation for being pretty simple, have a 7 shot priority - Kill Shot (if target < 20% health), Exp Shot, Serp Sting, Black Arrow, Aimed Shot, Steady Shot. They also have a few DPS cooldowns (Rapid Fire and whatever your pet has - Rabid for example) and one reactive proc (Lock ‘n’ Load). The single highest component of my damage is Explosive Shot but even it only clocks in at 40%-45%.
This isn’t to say one is better or worse, but if you’re looking for “complicated and interesting” DPS then I’d say Shaman isn’t it right now.
On the first point it’s possible that nobody is playing it to the max but as far as healers go I generally feel safer with a tree than any other - they just seem to be the most powerful raid healers right now (and do quite well at smoothing out spiky tank damage too).
For Hunters, we have at least two or three extremely useful “utility” roles even without CC. Misdirect is very nice for pulling and positioning. Aimed Shot provides the “mortal strike” reduced healing debuff if you don’t have a warrior (essential for some fights - Faction Champions in particular). And some specs/pets have raid buffs (Marksmanship has +10% AP, Wolves have +204 AP for 20 secs).
Druid healing feels strong. I’ve been doing some healing for mid-level 5-mans as Feral spec, and it was incredibly easy. Just slap Rejuvenation (cheap instant cast HoT) on the tank and DPS and look at the pretty surroundings. Sometimes I might need to throw down a Regrowth or something, but otherwise it’s painfully easy. I know 5-mans are generally pretty easy overall, but I’ve been studying the Resto tree and higher-level healing spells, and at least in my limited experience it seems extremely powerful. I’m two levels away from getting the tree and damn well looking forward to it.
And there was nothing more awesome than being invited to my first PUG and seeing someone immediately go “Sweet, a Druid.”
Caveat on the above is I have yet to play in level 80 content, of course.
Low-mid level instance healing is dead easy in general. As a disc priest (back before I swapped to dps to hang out with the cool kids on Cairne) I would rarely even use healing spells on non-boss encounters; just shield the tank, shield anyone who drew aggro, and zap away with my wand for lulz.
Grats! Kind of scary to dump that much gold on one thing, isn’t it?
Since I have Spell Reflect, I was the head tank for Ph3 and Ph4. The first couple of times we made it to Ph4, I had my very own personal retarded deaths when I’d suddenly forget everything I knew from Ph1 about running out when the bottom bit starts to crackle with energy. :smack:
Hoboy, do I feel the gear achievement pain. It’s like Blizzard designed the Epic achievement as a “fuck you” to Warrior tanks: up until the gun that drops off of Razorscale in Uld25, there is literally **NO **upgrade for our ranged slot from the ilvl200 ENGINEERING-MADE BOE GUN. None. Whatsoever. I finally got my Epic achiev when Hodir dropped Avalanche and no DPS needed it, so I got to snag it for my DPS set. And I **still **haven’t seen the gun drop at all.
The Hunter who wasn’t able to make that raid cried. I made a point of linking Avalanche and Marrowstrike to him as much as possible. I’m sure this had nothing to do with the fact that I passed Titanguard to him when it first dropped off of FL25 to what was then his Protection Pally main… only to have him decide he’d rather focus on that Hunter.
Grats for all!
We started last night’s raid with the first two bosses of ToC10. Took a stab at the Faction Champions for the hell of it, without actually planning to do anything other than get a feel for the encounter. Holy clusterfuck, Batman!
Yay for new hardware!
My pocket healer is a Resto Druid–I can attest to Druid healing being just as awesome in raids. He’s consistently one of our top healers (and when he was raiding endgame content in BC with a hardcore guild, he was healing lead and topping the meters then, too).
Yeah, we used a Warrior spell-reflect tanking the head in Phase 3 and soaking the Bomb Bots - seemed to work pretty well (easier than a ranged DPS tanking it I think).
There is also this gun from Ignis in 10-man Ulduar. Sadly, it’s what my hunter is using right now even though it’s a tanking gun.
Heh. Nothing has made me sadder this week than seeing a warrior from a friend’s guild flexing on the bank stairs in Dalaran showing off his HEROIC Widebarrel Flintlock. They don’t have a hunter in their 10-man raid so the warrior got it
Here’s the real kicker: after we geared his Hunter up, he decided that he wasn’t getting to go on enough raids, and gquit with both toons. Funny coincidence, that, how he managed to stop playing each character with us just as it got all the gear it could get.
Really, the only problem is if ranged DPS start to over-threat me. I saw a couple people get close, but nobody pulled. Mainly I just feel like an ass, standing there and plinking the damn thing with my gun while I keep SR and Heroic Throw on CD.
That’s not a tanking gun. It’s got some Stam on it, but there’s less than on the crafted one I mentioned (once you factor in the gem slot), and the other stats are Hit, Crit, and ArP: not terrible tanking stats, but definitely better for DPS, especially physical melee DPS.
Yeah, that really sucks. We had a pally tank do pretty much the same thing - 3 or so runs through Naxx and the parts of Ulduar we had on farm, scooped up all the tanking drops (cause he was less geared than the other tank) and then /gquit. Also the type that would suddenly get tired or have to go whenever we ran into a progression wall, but was always there for the farmable bosses.
You’re right of course. I was just pointing out weapons that could conceivably be rolled on by a warrior to get the Epic achievement - I somehow overlooked the word “tanks” in the part I quoted from you.
I think Yeticus mistook the Ranged slot requirement as needing a bow/crossbow/gun, but it does apply to Relics too, or whatever would fit in that slot. So Pallies can get it. The Pally Relic is the Libram. Don’t see many of them around, but I’m pretty sure there are blue and purple ones available.
That’s what you get for bein’ Relic-usin’ freaks of nature. (ETA: And I’m assuming you mean it’s just harder to get, not impossible, 'cause there are crafted ranged weapons but not crafted Relics.)
Sounds like he’d get along great with one of our newer healers, who I’m currently rather :dubious: about. She “doesn’t want to do ‘hard’ bosses” like Hodir. She also seems to have chronic problems with things like getting her ass out of the goddamned fire. To top it all off, she appears to be one of those gaming women who expects everyone to fall all over themselves catering to her every whim just 'cause she’s got tits.
Yeah, it was the “tanks” part that was the key. I could have gotten the achievment from a DPS piece (and ultimately, I did), but every ranged weapon that dropped ended up being an upgrade for one DPS or another in the raid, and I wasn’t about to try to steal an upgrade out from underneath their feet for my off-spec set, just to get a silly achievment. … Not that I wasn’t tempted, mind you, but.
There are three epic lvl226 Librams available for 19 emblems of conquest (which is like 5 heroic dungeon runs). One for each of the specs, as far as I can tell (never played a pally).
Grats on the various achievements, upgrades, boss kills, and other sundry grats-worthy events thus far
For my own efforts, I’ve finally gotten to exalted with Ravenholdt, putting me at 34 exalted factions. Only 6 more to go… I’ve decided to pass on trying to get exalted with Warsong Outriders, and will instead do Thorium Brotherhood rep. I’m currently training up mining on my lvl 70 rogue, so that he can mine Dark Iron for Thorium Brotherhood rep. And I will be joining up with a friend to do some trash farming in Molten Core for Core Leathers, Lava Cores and Fiery Cores. We found last night that my friend (he plays a fury / arms warrior) can take down an Ancient Core Hound without any healing, which means I can bring my feral druid in (since he’s the skinner), as opposed to my resto druid (the one for which I’m trying to get The Exalted title).
I’m also currently on the fence as to which faction to shoot for as my 40th faction. It’s between The Defilers (Arathi Basin-based rep) or Darkmoon Faire. On the one hand, Defilers rep will be more or less free, and I will probably pick up a variety of PVP-related achievements in my quest to obtain…600,000 resources (the amount I need to reach exalted with them). On the other hand, Darkmoon Faire rep is less likely to be frustrated by people who have no idea how to play AB (or PVP in general), but will be very expensive. If I buy herbs / Darkmoon decks from the AH, I’m looking at an average of 1 gold per rep point, meaning it will cost me something like 36K gold to reach exalted with them. The other option is to spend a lot of time farming up the herbs and make the cards myself, which is cheaper but more labor intensive.
In any case, that 40th faction is going to be a pain…
The other factions I have left are all instance-based: Thrallmar, Keepers of Time, The Sha’tar (I never ran many instances in Burning Crusade, thus the low rep levels for those factions), and Zandalar (can wrap this one up with one good ZG run).
And in about 6 days or so, I should be able to get my shiny new Violet Proto-Drake!
My Cairne DK is still farming old-world rep and trying to get a good foundation going for the old-world loremaster achievements before I move on to Outland. I’m done for now in Kalimdor (440 or so quests done, but I want to level up a little since all the zones I have left are at-level for my 62), and I’ve moved to Eastern Kingdoms. I’m also at the relative beginning of the ridiculously long grind of dailies for the venomhide mount (I’m hearthed in Silithus and I can move instantly to EK with my Death Gate). I have 3 baby teeth now. Only 2 1/2 weeks to go!
