Hah, I had a guildie hunter intentionally MD to my priest before a pull in Kara (back in the BC days). He did pretty much do everything but pull out a klaxon announcing that he was doing it, and set it off early enough for me to click off and at him in raid chat.
My response to the tank would probably be “Yeah, but I’m not a good DPSer” and use it anyway. Or claim I had it macro’d into some shot.
I think the only time I (knowingly, though not intentionally) offended a tank as a DPSer was when we had some guild warrior who just could not taunt to save his life. I could not for the life of me figure out what his deal was, and we kept asking - trying to be subtle, but hey, that only works for so long - questions about what stance he was in, etc. I was playing my warlock and could only cast a spell on his target if I waited a few seconds before starting to cast the next, or else it would try to crawl down my throat. That was just a terrible run, and tough on the healer due to fight lengths and the damage spread. I tried not to run with him again.
Yeah, this was usually happening with the mobs you marked with the skull, which appeared to be healers (Anvilforge Medics, I think?). I admit it was probably a bit of “I outlevel this mob by 7 levels” arrogance on my part; I knew that mob needed to go down first, and I knew I could take him out with 4-5 hits, so I was running a bit ahead in an attempt to take that guy out as quickly as possible (and before he got into the scrum where I couldn’t see him). But I’d get in maybe 2 hits and the mob would take off again.
Yeah, that’s one of those things I know, but that doesn’t come up much at all when soloing (which has been the vast majority of what I’ve done), so it’s not an automatic thing for me yet.
I’m afraid I’d probably just get us all killed if I brought the DK, because I honestly have no idea whatsoever about how to play a DK - I got through the starting quests just swinging my weapon and randomly mashing buttons. I could slide back into the hunter easily enough, but then I’d run into the problem that made me abandon him in the first place: tauren size making it hard for me to see what I’m doing if I zoom the camera in, and the yoyo-effect of the camera bouncing in and out when in enclosed spaces if I zoom it out making me seasick. (You may have picked up on the fact that I really have issues with being able to see what the hell I’m doing. Damn these aging eyes! )
A lot of it was, again, the “can’t see what I’m doing” issue. That wasn’t a problem at all when we ran ST, because the mobs there were generally bigger than us, and it was a simple matter to target whatever mob Rillian pulled, run up alongside Rillian, and then circle around behind that mob. But with all the little dwarves in BRD, as soon as the mobs got to Rillian and all the spells started going off, I was completely losing track of who and what was where. Hell, half the time I couldn’t even see Rillian in the middle of all the flashy-bangy stuff. So I was trying to compensate by engaging mobs while I could still actually see them.
Hey, remember when we were discussing fall damage and I said I’d test it out? I did, and then forgot to post the results here.
I dropped two characters off three different locations in Stormwind. One toon is my level 2 bank alt; the other is my level 80 main.
SW Harbor, banner in front of fountain
Bank: 30.43% HP damage
Main: 30.27% HP damage
SW Harbor, cannonballs
Bank: 47.83% HP damage
Main: 48.10% HP damage
SW Mage Quarter, portal tower
Bank: 17.39% HP damage
Main: 17.26% HP damage
So, when you figure that the granularity on the HP of my main is a lot more fine than that of the mule (my main has about 455 times as much HP in the armor she was wearing at the time), the damage percentage seems to be identical.
You need to figure out which deity you pissed off and make amends, before you get hit by a truck.
Grats! And no, the remote is not a guaranteed drop. My pocket healer still doesn’t have it, and this is his third Brewfest at max level.
Grats! And isn’t the bank/mailbox/vendor the whole point of the pony? It’s what I’m currently saving for. I didn’t know they dropped the CD to four hours–when the patch notes first came out, it was something like eight or 12 hours.
Well ground, sir.
Woohoo! Your first flyer is the best ever–you can’t imagine how much easier it makes things. (You know they dropped the price again, right, from 600g to 225g for the training, and the rep faction is now Org or SW versus Thrallmar/Honor Hold?)
IIRC, the door gets busted open in the fight. Two other ways to open it are to have a Rogue pickpocket the food vendor or to do the quest for the Succubus.
The control panels and the trash on them are only up during Brewfest. The remote that drops off of Direbrew, however, can be used any time. (It used to be a great portable ghettohearth before they nerfed that exploit.)
Generally speaking, Tenacity pets are for soloing, Cunning pets are for PvP, and Ferocity pets are for groups. I don’t know how this would change for a BM hunter with the 51-point talent, but for most hunters right now Wolves are the best pets for grouping.
If you need everybody in your raid wearing three pieces of FR gear…
1.) You need a Paladin or a Shaman for FR aura or totem; or
2.) You’re not bringing enough healers; or
3.) You’re bringing the wrong kind of healers (too many single-target vs. raid); or
4.) Your healers suck.
When you’re first learning the fight, I’d could see using one, maybe two pieces of FR gear for everybody, but even that’s going to generally gimp your DPS and healing pretty hard, assuming they have halfway decent gear. I certainly can’t imagine **anybody **but the tank wearing **three **pieces.
And my point about mats still stands: it doesn’t matter how much AOE Frost damage your raid is taking if the tank can’t stand up to a single Frozen Blow.
Not very often. Like I said, the situation doesn’t come up very much anymore.
The past three guilds I’ve been a member of have all used loot councils, and the loot council has worked well for all three. The first guild was a hardcore raiding guild on Arygos, the second was a decent raiding guild on Borean Tundra, and the current one is the top raiding guild on BT. I can only speak from my own experience, and my experience says that loot councils work well and are the best thing for your guild as a whole.
If you’re not tanking, that’s what’s supposed to happen. Unless you work something out with the tank ahead of time, they’re going to peel mobs off of you, because ideally the tank is the only person who should be getting hit.
Do you have enemy health bars enabled? The default keybinding is “V.” This will pop up a little bar that hovers over their heads, which you can click on to target them. This is also a good way to monitor their relative HP levels.
You can also enable target-of-target displays, click the tank, then click the tank’s target. There should also be a command called assist (IIRC the default keybinding is “F”) that should do the same thing after you target the tank.
See if you can pick up any +Hit enchants (or gems, if you have slots). It’s also possible you got cursed with something that would cause you to miss a lot. As far as 2H weapons go, there’s a quest from the Cenarion Expedition group in western HFP that gives you a 2H sword as a potential reward. My DK uses it–you can look up Amritam on Borean Tundra to find the name of the sword and then check Wowhead to see what exact quest it came from.
AFAIK, that’s not a client/server problem, that’s just mob behavior. A few major patches ago, they upgraded mob AI to make them try harder to get behind you, and it’s been a huge pain in the ass ever since. I spend a lot of time dancing around trying to get all of a pack in front of me. Just ask my friends how many times I bitch about it when we’re chain-running Heroics.
That’s probably going to be your best way to get them to do it, actually. A geared and experienced tank shouldn’t ever need an MD unless there are really weird fight mechanics (which won’t happen in 5-mans, just raids), so most Hunters aren’t even going to think to use it. I mean, not that they shouldn’t be keeping an eye on their threat and MDing to you if they start creeping up your ass anyway, but.
Might be two different things here. I’m thinking that if it was programmed behavior, then wouldn’t all the mobs of a particular type do the same thing? I’ve run into quite a few instances where I’m fighting (one-on-one) a series of identical mobs, and they all run up and stop right in front of me. Except for one who runs up and stops right on top of me, or just behind me. I’ve of course seen many instances where I’m fighting two mobs and one will stay in front while the other circles off to the side or behind me, but it doesn’t seem to be normal behavior in one-on-one fights.
Mobs don’t try to get behind you. They did change player pet AI so that they try to get behind mobs due to the benefits attacking from the behind has, but not mobs. Mobs will just run at you from whatever direction and start wailing on you. It is indeed a client/server problem when you’re trying to get the mobs in front of you while tanking and they just refuse to do so. The fix to this is moving reeeeeeally slowly.
I’ve got around 75 Emblems of Conquest and 35 Emblems of Triumph. It’s confusing trying to spend them on armor. For my tank chest armor I went to the Conquest vendor, bought an item that wasn’t actually armor, then turned it in to another vendor in Dal for the actual armor. The vendor in Dal has other armor available that I’d like but I have no idea how to buy it. It’s really confusing.
I’ve gotten some good stuff at H ToC. I find that depending on the group it’s either really easy or we all die a lot. Doesn’t seem to be a lot of middle ground.
Odesio
Yep the price drop is what prompted me to stop questing for a week and hit the nodes. Much as I would love to write ‘Yay Mining 300!’ I unfortunately have to write ‘Yay Mining 296’, as soon as I got to 295 every damn node (bar one obviously) was Mithril. Hopefully it wont take too long to pick up those last 4 points and if all my auctions sell I’ll easily have enough for flyers for me and my levelling buddy.
Gear and experience were the issue; it was maybe my third heroic where this happened. I used to tank Kara back in the day, but that was a while ago and my druid tank is my third character to get to 80, so she hasn’t been my priority. Plus it feels like druids are kinda limited on what they can do for aggro maintenance. There’s Challenging Roar which has a huge cooldown, Swipe can hit up to 4 targets in an arc in front of you but doesn’t do a whole lot of damage compared to a misplaced crit from some DPS, and Growl, which I finally glyphed for to overcome my low Hit issue. There’s also the technique of laying down Lacerates all over your targets to tick them off, but I do run into the positioning/camera problem with that.
Also, I’m paranoid about how well I’m doing. People tell me I’m a great tank (and I’ve managed to get Achievement-hunters some achievements in runs that they’ve tried to get for a long time) but it always feels like if I have to do any rounding-up of extras during a fight, then I’ve clearly failed.
There’s also feral faerie fire for some moderate, but long-ranged and rage-free threat, glyphed Maul to hit two things like a truck without having to pause your other ability use since it’s a swing attack, and the Berserk-powered cleaving Mangle for when you really want to do truly ludicrous threat output. The target and facing limit on Swipe was also removed some time back - it now hits everything in a wide radius around you, leading to an endless slew of jokes about butt-swipes.
Swipe hits all targets in range, including those behind you, and does pretty decent threat despite its low damage. Not enough to keep aggro from single target dps of course, which is why you get the Maul glyph and cycle around the mobs you’re tanking while spamming Swipe and Maul, hitting Mangle whenever it’s off cd. If you spot one mob where you have low aggro(you do have a proper threatmeter, right?) make sure you hit it with Mangle and/or Faery Fire.
I have the Ambassador title at last, after doing every goofy little quest I could find. I am never going back to Uldaman on this toon again. I bought myself a celebratory mechanostrider and rode it around Ironforge for a while to the accompaniment of my own laughter. A female night elf doesn’t look quite as funny on one of those as say, a male draenei, but it still is pretty funny. I also tamed a Cursed Offspring of Har’koa to try out a cat. I am going after a devilsaur next.
I’ve been spree-shopping for mounts…I made the rounds and bought every regular and swift faction mount in Horde (old-world). I am one tooth away from my very own venomhide ravasaur mount. I skilled up my fishing to 200 last night. And after I get my lizardy companion, I’m going back to Outland to continue questing.
Sigh, see? I keep splitting my attention between characters because our guild runs in cycles over what we need more. So I forget changes or miss them. Well, at least I was doing better with Swipe than I thought. Or worse, depending on how pessimistically I’m looking at my performance.
And yeah, Swipe ‘CC’ isn’t the best since the damage isn’t that hot. I try to get in an early Swipe to spread out some hate, then turn into a spamming maniac, trying to slap attacks everywhere. I do have Maul glyphed but it seems like it takes so long to go off that I don’t use it as often as I should.
I pull one target with Growl, then switch to Feral Faerie Fire for what’s supposed to be the primary target, so I’ve established some aggro on two targets before they even arrive at the group. Then Demoralizing Roar to debuff all of them, Swipe, and from there start popping whatever I can. Occasional Mangle as a debuff and to activate my idol, Lacerate all over, throw in Maul when I don’t get annoyed with the timer.
I do have Omen as my threat meter, and do put out a whole lot of threat. My husband - who isn’t inclined to soft-pedal his opinions about WoW - says I’m a great tank. I just go “omg they hit someone else!!!” if one runs off to slap a hunter or something. :smack:
On my “can’t stay on one class” tendency, my hunter did great in Naxx10 last night. I was naturally not at the top of the DPS chart, but did beat out a pretty well-geared DK! We were doing an emblem/twink gear run (emblems for the rest of the group, gear for my hunter and a priest twink. And the loot came fast and furious of course. Got The Stray off-hand fist weapon as a random drop in the Arachnid wing, Collar of Dissolution off Anub’Rehkan, Rusted-Link Spiked Gauntlets off Grand Widow Faerlina, and Cuffs of Dark Shadows off Heigan the Unclean. (Yes, those are leather, but they’re better than what I had.) I was a big loot-ho last night. (Only because we’d have DE’d them otherwise - no one else even rolled.)
A druid tank’s going to want the Challenging Roar, Maul, and Growl glyphs. Far as I’m able to understand, that’ll make sure you can hold threat nice and strong. Course, it sounds like you’re already doing quite well there anyway.
I did something similar this week; I went back to Brill and got all the fast skeletal mounts (I only had one). Then I went th Nagrand and got all the Talbuk mounts (I only had one). I even went ahead and got the Wintergrasp mammoth, and purchased the White Skeletal horse at the argent tourney. I don’t have the rep to buy the other Horde faction mounts yet, but now that B’fest is about over I can go back to the tournament dailies. And I, too, am one tooth shy of the Venomhide mount. Should have it tonight! Along with the 56 Emblems of Champion to get my new headgear.
Yup, got those set. I think I have Frenzied Regen as my other major glyph for extra healing power. (Husband complains that he gets bored while healing me in heroics.)
This has been my experience too. If we have trouble, it’s usually on phase three of the Black Knight, and it’s almost always because our DPS is too weak. Last failed run, two of our dps’ers were below 1.2k, which is not enough. It’s certainly never the healer’s fault!
I don’t think that it’s that they try to constantly get behind you–just that if they’re close to the back, they’ll move around that way. I really do think I saw patch notes about this quite a while back, and I’m sure I’ve seen it happen even when my latency is fine. Can’t search for the patch notes from work, unfortunately. I could be wrong, though–it’s been known to happen. From time to time.
For T7/7.5 (Naxx 10/25) and T8/8.5 (Uld 10/25), you buy your tier pieces with tokens. These tokens drop off of specific bosses in the raids; some of them can also be purchased with emblems. For example, the T8.5 head and chest tokens can be bought with Emblems of Conquest. In addition to the tier pieces, there are also other items that can be purchased straight with Emblems (no need to convert to a token first).
If you see a piece that you want at a vendor, look it up on Wowhead. It will show the price as either a tier token or a number of badges. If it’s a token, click on the token. This will tell you what bosses the token drops from, and if it can be purchased, how many emblems it costs (and what type of emblems).
Most content, from Heroics up to Uld25, currently drops Emblems of Conquest. ToC and Onyxia drop Emblems of Triumph, and you can get two more Triumph from doing the Heroic daily.
It seems pretty complicated now, but it used to be a lot worse. First, bosses just dropped the tier pieces themselves. Think about that for a minute–a piece would drop that would be equippable only by one class, and would often only be useful for one spec of that class. The next step was to have bosses drop tier tokens, which would be good towards a specific piece for several classes, but turning them in required faction rep, and often other items as well. Then, in TBC, you only needed to turn in the token to recieve your item. Finally, with Wrath, some tokens for each tier of armor were made purchasable by emblems in addition to dropping off of bosses.
Have you thought about marking targets and setting up a kill order? The current MO for Heroics tends to be to gather everything up and AOE the hell out of it, but that doesn’t mean **you **have to operate that way. Focusing your group’s DPS on one target at a time makes your tanking job a lot easier–you can concentrate your attention on the same mob as everyone else, just hitting a few AOE abilities to overcome whatever threat your healer is putting out.
On preview: You say you’re pulling with Growl and then using Faerie Fire on the primary target so that you have threat on two mobs. The way the Warrior ability Taunt works is that it resets your threat to that of the person who’s highest on that mob’s hate list and then forces it to attack you. (Whereas normally you’d need to hit 110% of the leader’s threat to pull aggro as melee.) AFAIK Growl works the same way–i.e., it does not, by itself, create any threat. So, really, you’re only starting out with threat on the mob you hit with Faerie Fire–all you’re doing with the Growl is putting it on CD unneccesarily.
Woot! I bet you never want to look at another piece of Runecloth, either.
at him in raid chat.
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