official World of Warcraft

[the evn show]

i find it interesting in teh context of after 4.03a was released before cata everyone was saying how OP we were and how we needed to get nerfed

They were overpowered then, things have changed.

now it turns out that we're still kinda gimpy at endgame. b

Two out of three specs are viable in PVE, and they're arguably one of the strongest classes in PVP which is why they're getting nerfed.

If you're having trouble right now it's probably got more to do with your lack of experience than the class. Almost everyone is in 'crap'

gear right now - unless you're playing arena (or rated BGs) at >2k it's not going to be a gear issue that's holding you back.

2 pages ago you were talking about dominating people with icelance spam, the game was supposed to be more complex than that. PVP is supposed

to last > 30 seconds, and you're supposed to have to work your ass off to keep melee at a distance.

can't give you that side of things, but for PVE both are used A LOT.

It trivializes a chogal and makes magmaw/maloriak much easier but you can get similar levels of CC from a hunter or frost DK. You can certainly do those encounters without strong mutli-mob snares but they're much harder than they need to be. It sounds like these are intended to be PVP nerfs so it'll be interesting to see how they shape up for PVE.

Honestly thats my biggest complaint, is heals haven't really scaled at all with the HUGE health pools now. I mean I know its a tough balancing act between, do we make it so healers do nothing again but hots or do we make it so they are spam heals the entire instance, but I think it can be better than what it is.

They didn't need to because nobody gets one-shot unless they're retarded any more. Once you get used the idea that people have to end fights above 1 HP but not at full health healing becomes almost trivial again (having heroic blues helps too). All of the mechanics that will kill you at less than full health are avoidable, DPS has plenty of self healing (OH NO! My damage meters!) to help with the incidental damage, and tanks have enough cooldowns to survive a good while when "oh crap" happens. For the first time in years players are starting to learn that mobs have mechanics - it's taking time to adjust.

If anything I think healing is still too easy because once you're out of greens the new dungeons go back to being chain pulled without CC. His mana issues would vanish if people learned to play: they're refusing so it's making the whole experience miserable.

Yea, it's like the health has jumped to double. But my heals increased by 10 - 20% not the 100% that health did. I mean, it's kinda strange to sit there and cast smite to heal players.. don't really get that whole DPS to Heal Better thing. I wish it was something like the holy tree where if ya cast heal 5x you get the speed and mana bonus.

You can always just not spec evangelism: going for more direct healing buffs works just fine. You lose your AOE heal but that's only really hitting your tank + melee anwyay. You've still got POH/POM/Nova/Renew which are viable.

[firey]

They didn't need to because nobody gets one-shot unless they're retarded any more. Once you get used the idea that people have to end fights above 1 HP but not at full health healing becomes almost trivial again (having heroic blues helps too). All of the mechanics that will kill you at less than full health are avoidable, DPS has plenty of self healing (OH NO! My damage meters!) to help with the incidental damage, and tanks have enough cooldowns to survive a good while when "oh crap" happens. For the first time in years players are starting to learn that mobs have mechanics - it's taking time to adjust.

If anything I think healing is still too easy because once you're out of greens the new dungeons go back to being chain pulled without CC. His mana issues would vanish if people learned to play: they're refusing so it's making the whole experience miserable.

You can always just not spec evangelism: going for more direct healing buffs works just fine. You lose your AOE heal but that's only really hitting your tank + melee anwyay. You've still got POH/POM/Nova/Renew which are viable.

Renew actually uses 5% of my mana, which is quite a bit. I always keep a POM up, and I do POM when things get rough (that was the AOE heal I was talking about). And yea, I can manage but the problem is with the tanks being retarded if I don't spam heal them, they will die. Especially as they are rocking greens.

[the evn show]

Renew actually uses 5% of my mana, which is quite a bit. I always keep a POM up, and I do POM when things get rough (that was the AOE heal I was talking about). And yea, I can manage but the problem is with the tanks being retarded if I don't spam heal them, they will die. Especially as they are rocking greens.

You're not in full epic gear so "end-game" content shouldn't be trivial in the best of situations.

If you can struggle through even when people are being idiots then that sounds like everything is fine.

You're not supposed to be able to carry idiots through a dungeon: it's nice having that burden lifted.

[treemonster]

They were overpowered then, things have changed.

Two out of three specs are viable in PVE, and they're arguably one of the strongest classes in PVP which is why they're getting nerfed.

If you're having trouble right now it's probably got more to do with your lack of experience than the class. Almost everyone is in 'crap'

gear right now - unless you're playing arena (or rated BGs) at >2k it's not going to be a gear issue that's holding you back.

2 pages ago you were talking about dominating people with icelance spam, the game was supposed to be more complex than that. PVP is supposed

to last > 30 seconds, and you're supposed to have to work your ass off to keep melee at a distance.

ice lance spam was at 82 with a shadow priest against unorganized players in world pvp.

tell frost mages they're op when their ice barriers break instantly when they get targetted in bg's or arenas and frost nova often breaks before the mage has a chance to turn around and shot a single ice lance when specced or glyphed or w/e it is into frost nova. never mind when we use these spells to get some distance on melee who out burst us easily while stunning the **** out of us.

they're talking about them being lowered in the duration they last when they're like hte shortest cc any class has already.

look at how long lock's fear lasts without breaking from damage for example.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1648731654?page=4

pali's and druids qqing about our freeze effects, as if they aren't the two most annoying classes to fight as a mage besides warriors.

[Slane]

We assembled a raid last night now that everyone's back from Christmas obligations. Had some really good attempts on Cho'gal but an under-performing ret paladin who isn't a regular member of our group held us back (my opinion, he'd disagree). Given our progress so far I think there's a pretty good chance we'll be getting mounts and titles this lock-out.

Nice man. What about 3 weeks till exalted with guild and you can fly?

[the evn show]

tell frost mages they're op when their ice barriers break instantly when they get targetted in bg's or arenas and frost nova often breaks before the mage has a chance to turn around and shot a single ice lance when specced or glyphed or w/e it is into frost nova. never mind when we use these spells to get some distance on melee who out burst us easily while stunning the **** out of us.

I checked with a couple of friends dan and mark. They've got alts in my priest's guild and PVP alliance side.

"mages are fine" - details will have to wait until we're all done with our raids tonight.

they're talking about them being lowered in the duration they last when they're like hte shortest cc any class has already.

So warlocks have a 'forever' cooldown on deathcoil, and a cast fear (learn to counterspell IMO, and you can out range it) and that's over powered.

Mages have roots that can applied at range, that can be applied in melee, a stunn that can be applied at range, a "put the fight on pause" CC, and

an automatic root that happens when you get hit too much by melee. None of those with cast time.

Then there's rogue CCs which on average last 2 seconds less than frost nova, intercept stun, etc. etc. etc.

It's hard to take you seriously when your post is so "Sky is falling" and the best evidence you can offer to support your claims is random bitching on the wow general forums (which arent' exactly known for the quality of their content).

look at how long lock's fear lasts without breaking from damage for example.

12 seconds, on DR.

How long do frost nova, freeze, polymorph and deep freeze last when you do 0 damage?

I bet the numbers are similar to sap and kidney shot.

Or seduce and deathcoil

or repentence and hand of justice

or...do you see a pattern?

Nice man. What about 3 weeks till exalted with guild and you can fly?

Give or take, I'll hit revered next week.

[Noveed]

Few weeks into Cata and the main problem I am seeing is ignorance, mainly due to wotlk. Players who thought they were great in wotlk think they still are great now but even the simplest of encounter mechanics can send them packing. Players who have brought the wotlk mentality into cata need to be weeded out and separated from the players who actually spend time to gear sensibly, to look into encounters, to actually listen to other. I was always under the impression blizzard had some sort of matchmaking system for Random Dungeons but this does not seem to be the case.

Some problems that I am seeing are DPS wearing healing gear to DPS (doing less dps than tanks both single and aoe damage), the same is going for tanks, they think they can get away with tanking 85 Heroics in DPS gear and finally DPS wearing Tanking gear, now I am not talking about 1-2 items I am talking about the full sha'bang set!

I have asked a few times why they queue for heroics when clearly they are not prepared and want to be carried, I have never been given a straight answer. I do not get how most people can tolerate random dungeons, some of the scum that is present in them disgusts me.

[Dotdot]

Few weeks into Cata and the main problem I am seeing is ignorance, mainly due to wotlk. Players who thought they were great in wotlk think they still are great now but even the simplest of encounter mechanics can send them packing. Players who have brought the wotlk mentality into cata need to be weeded out and separated from the players who actually spend time to gear sensibly, to look into encounters, to actually listen to other. I was always under the impression blizzard had some sort of matchmaking system for Random Dungeons but this does not seem to be the case.

Some problems that I am seeing are DPS wearing healing gear to DPS (doing less dps than tanks both single and aoe damage), the same is going for tanks, they think they can get away with tanking 85 Heroics in DPS gear and finally DPS wearing Tanking gear, now I am not talking about 1-2 items I am talking about the full sha'bang set!

I have asked a few times why they queue for heroics when clearly they are not prepared and want to be carried, I have never been given a straight answer. I do not get how most people can tolerate random dungeons, some of the scum that is present in them disgusts me.

+1. It really is making me give up hope.

[gigapixels Veteran]

So I finally tried healing tonight on my Shaman. It was not fun... Not in the slightest.

I was expecting a challenge -- which I have no problem with -- but instead all I got was having to worry about my mana the whole time, seeing heals do practically nothing and/or be negated due to damage less than a second after they were cast, and having DPS die because I didn't have the mana to spare to save them.

It's not fun. It's just stressful. And I'm not a bad player; I tend to do very well despite what role I'm in.

I hope they fix healing. I don't mean Wrath level where I could basically do whatever I wanted the whole time (that was boring; I don't want that again). But perhaps make heals cost a little less or do a little more so I don't have to worry about running out in trash pulls. I actually found boss fights easier than trash. It just didn't make sense to me.

[treemonster]

I checked with a couple of friends dan and mark. They've got alts in my priest's guild and PVP alliance side.

"mages are fine" - details will have to wait until we're all done with our raids tonight.

So warlocks have a 'forever' cooldown on deathcoil, and a cast fear (learn to counterspell IMO, and you can out range it) and that's over powered.

Mages have roots that can applied at range, that can be applied in melee, a stunn that can be applied at range, a "put the fight on pause" CC, and

an automatic root that happens when you get hit too much by melee. None of those with cast time.

Then there's rogue CCs which on average last 2 seconds less than frost nova, intercept stun, etc. etc. etc.

It's hard to take you seriously when your post is so "Sky is falling" and the best evidence you can offer to support your claims is random bitching on the wow general forums (which arent' exactly known for the quality of their content).

12 seconds, on DR.

How long do frost nova, freeze, polymorph and deep freeze last when you do 0 damage?

I bet the numbers are similar to sap and kidney shot.

Or seduce and deathcoil

or repentence and hand of justice

or...do you see a pattern?

Give or take, I'll hit revered next week.

i didn't say they were gimp now, but we're not OP either. i just don't think the duration of our already breakable with a gentle breeze frozen effect should be reduced. sure it happens often, but it's also an easy cc for almost any class(well pretty much every class) to get out of.

and speaking of fear vs polymorph, polymorph lasts less than half it's pve time in pvp, where as fear lasts a long time. not says polymorph isn't worth casting, but it's something you're going to use as more of a opportunity to spike someone down while it's up in 5 seconds then something to take someone out of the fight or control while you dps them, like fear can be used.

what is DR exactly? nvm lolz

speaking of taking seriously being hard to do, hard to take people here seriously when i ask for advice on how to play frost mage in pvp and people tell me to spam anything let alone hard cast time nukes, but at least i took it into consideration modified my play into something more similar to what i did in tbc anyway even if the way frost mage has changed quite a bit since then(no more fb shatter combos for example)

frozen state is easy for any class to get out of with a pvp trinket. it's also an integrated part in a frost mage doing decent/good damage.nerfing it means buffing mages in some other way even slightly to make up for it.

PS it's hard to cs a warlock casting fear when it's on cd.

[firey]

So I finally tried healing tonight on my Shaman. It was not fun... Not in the slightest.

I was expecting a challenge -- which I have no problem with -- but instead all I got was having to worry about my mana the whole time, seeing heals do practically nothing and/or be negated due to damage less than a second after they were cast, and having DPS die because I didn't have the mana to spare to save them.

It's not fun. It's just stressful. And I'm not a bad player; I tend to do very well despite what role I'm in.

I hope they fix healing. I don't mean Wrath level where I could basically do whatever I wanted the whole time (that was boring; I don't want that again). But perhaps make heals cost a little less or do a little more so I don't have to worry about running out in trash pulls. I actually found boss fights easier than trash. It just didn't make sense to me.

It's strange how healing works now, and it's unfortunately very gear dependant as opposed to skill dependant. Yes, it requires skill in knowing who to heal and when, the problem is with green, or quest blue items, you could be an amazing healer and mana will still be an issue. I find that as a healer you tend to rely on your group to do the right thing as opposed to you being there as a carry through. If the tank, or dps lack in any way it's a sure fire way to kill all your mana, and you are SOL. I always felt as a healer if DPS died that I be able to heal the tank through whatever encounter we are in. However now, if a DPS dies my mana just flies out a lot faster as the mobs are alive for longer.

Im not a bad healer/player either I manage, albeit im doing non-heroics, I've not caused any wipes, and I've held my own but at the same time, I spend less time learning fights, and learning what I should be doing, instead I sit there watching my mana, and healbot which to some extent takes the fun out of the game.

Wrath was way to easy for healing, I could chat on msn while doing heroics, or be texting. But hell if i fart during a cata dungeon I risk a wipe (no pun intended). I don't care if our heals get boosted, my preference is that the mana use be dropped on spells like flash heal or renew as FH was a quick, strong heal now it's just a waste of mana. Same as renew, it uses 5% of my 75k mana pool.

[Slane]

Few weeks into Cata and the main problem I am seeing is ignorance, mainly due to wotlk. Players who thought they were great in wotlk think they still are great now but even the simplest of encounter mechanics can send them packing. Players who have brought the wotlk mentality into cata need to be weeded out and separated from the players who actually spend time to gear sensibly, to look into encounters, to actually listen to other. I was always under the impression blizzard had some sort of matchmaking system for Random Dungeons but this does not seem to be the case.

Some problems that I am seeing are DPS wearing healing gear to DPS (doing less dps than tanks both single and aoe damage), the same is going for tanks, they think they can get away with tanking 85 Heroics in DPS gear and finally DPS wearing Tanking gear, now I am not talking about 1-2 items I am talking about the full sha'bang set!

I have asked a few times why they queue for heroics when clearly they are not prepared and want to be carried, I have never been given a straight answer. I do not get how most people can tolerate random dungeons, some of the scum that is present in them disgusts me.

Reason why I quickly decided to stop queing unless I have at least two guildies. With me tanking and either two dps or 1 heal and 1 dps we can nearly carry anybody already. Once you get geared, it's not bad, but it's going to be a long time before I que w/o guildies. Just not worth the headache at all. Nobody likes the pally healer who didn't know he could cleanse. :(

@Giga - I don't play a healer so can't comment on much, but the healers in guild once they got some gear we can go nearly non-stop in any instance using light CC. W/o CC'ing and just AoE tanking, having to drink roughly every 3-5 pulls. This is them in 346 heroics and some 359. I do know when the healers were gearing up it was extremely important for DPS not to stand in "fire", for people to properly react and plan accordingly to boss abilities. While you may not have gear to chain pull non-stop, it won't help if DPS/tank are standing in "fire" or not moving out of the way from abilities.

[LittleNeutrino Veteran]

Currently working on both getting the Camel mount (Tol'vir)and the flying mount from Hellscreams watch or wardins or whatever from Tol'Barad.

[SMELTN]

Few weeks into Cata and the main problem I am seeing is ignorance, mainly due to wotlk. Players who thought they were great in wotlk think they still are great now but even the simplest of encounter mechanics can send them packing. Players who have brought the wotlk mentality into cata need to be weeded out and separated from the players who actually spend time to gear sensibly, to look into encounters, to actually listen to other. I was always under the impression blizzard had some sort of matchmaking system for Random Dungeons but this does not seem to be the case.

Some problems that I am seeing are DPS wearing healing gear to DPS (doing less dps than tanks both single and aoe damage), the same is going for tanks, they think they can get away with tanking 85 Heroics in DPS gear and finally DPS wearing Tanking gear, now I am not talking about 1-2 items I am talking about the full sha'bang set!

I have asked a few times why they queue for heroics when clearly they are not prepared and want to be carried, I have never been given a straight answer. I do not get how most people can tolerate random dungeons, some of the scum that is present in them disgusts me.

You know on some of that I blame blizzard. We had an open spot last night come up for a (H)Deadmines last night and we decided to take the first person in guild to say they had the minimal gearscore to go. When he got in the instance and I looked at his gear, I noticed he was wearing some greens that were just horrible.. I mean he is a lock wearing greens that had a ton of spirit or like his robe, had nothing but int/stam, when I asked him about it, he said he was just trying to get the gear score to do heroics. His dps sucked, his hp sucked, and overall there was NO way he was ready. I showed him all the great quest rewards, not counting rep rewards that were so much better then what he was wearing and he is now focused on getting those,, but my point is:

I blame blizzard with the gearscore deal, because most people I see coming in to a random queue are just wearing crap gear just to get the ilvl requirement. Thats why 99% of the time we do a full guild run so we avoid that.

[Slane]

I showed him all the great quest rewards, not counting rep rewards that were so much better then what he was wearing and he is now focused on getting those,, but my point is:

I blame blizzard with the gearscore deal, because most people I see coming in to a random queue are just wearing crap gear just to get the ilvl requirement. Thats why 99% of the time we do a full guild run so we avoid that.

I always tell people to go quest highlands. Tons of 325+ gear available for nearly everyone there, not to mention a great pre-heroic weapon for a fairly simple/straight up quest chain (Crucible).

[greenwizard88]

I blame blizzard with the gearscore deal, because most people I see coming in to a random queue are just wearing crap gear just to get the ilvl requirement. Thats why 99% of the time we do a full guild run so we avoid that.

It shouldn't be too hard to implement an in-game GS, combine that with your level and racial/class abilities, to determine an optimum set of dungeons for you to queue up for... does it really matter if a level 20 player with good gear is playing with a level 25 player with bad gear? likewise, a level 85 DPS with great DPS gear would be placed in a different queue than a level 85 tank with mage armor (who would get a level 70 dungeon)

This would prevent the awkward situation I had last night where I was healing, and after the tank died right away on me, one of the DPS took over and lived for a good while...

[Bryan R.]

So I finally tried healing tonight on my Shaman. It was not fun... Not in the slightest.

I was expecting a challenge -- which I have no problem with -- but instead all I got was having to worry about my mana the whole time, seeing heals do practically nothing and/or be negated due to damage less than a second after they were cast, and having DPS die because I didn't have the mana to spare to save them.

It's not fun. It's just stressful. And I'm not a bad player; I tend to do very well despite what role I'm in.

I hope they fix healing. I don't mean Wrath level where I could basically do whatever I wanted the whole time (that was boring; I don't want that again). But perhaps make heals cost a little less or do a little more so I don't have to worry about running out in trash pulls. I actually found boss fights easier than trash. It just didn't make sense to me.

One of the main reasons for the hugely increased health pools is that players can take slow, heavy damage. As a healer in LK and now in Cata, the biggest change in technique is knowing who to heal when and how much. That is skill by definition. If your goal is to top everyone off, that is a flaud technique in this expansion; you cannot afford to top everyone off in early gear. At best you are going to just get by by a hair in some encounters with 333-346 gear levels. Maybe even giving up a DPS to save the tank.

Now, on the other hand, most of these encounters involve tons of avoidable damage. It requires everyone to be knowledgeable of the mechanics to avoid taking unnecessary damage. That is, until the healer has the gear to compensate for baddies.

These are the main points of what makes these heroics so much more "difficult".

[Tharp Daddy]

I kinda enjoy the new healing. Now that i've gotten some gear i see where they were going with it. Healers are now part of the group, it's used to be that a good healer could make up for a crappy tank and dps; but now everyone needs to be on their game. Tank dies? Wipe. One of the DPS dies? Fight may go on too long, adds may not die, etc - any of these will cause the healer to eventually go OOM. Healer not on the ball? Wipe. Groups really are now a cooperation, and i run into very little mana problems unless people are not doing what they are supposed to. If a DPS is stepping on mines in Tol'vir then talk to them and get them to fix up, or kick them. It is no longer our responsibility to heal failure, and i have no problems letting someone take durability damage until they learn to not step in the fire. The mana problems described in posts above are only really apparent at lower GS. I'm around 345 average item level and i'm getting to the point where i CAN use any spell i want, but its' not economical in the long run. My healing wave will heal for plenty with healing stream, earth living, and ancestral fortitude/awakening.

[tablet_user]

Few weeks into Cata and the main problem I am seeing is ignorance, mainly due to wotlk. Players who thought they were great in wotlk think they still are great now but even the simplest of encounter mechanics can send them packing. Players who have brought the wotlk mentality into cata need to be weeded out and separated from the players who actually spend time to gear sensibly, to look into encounters, to actually listen to other. I was always under the impression blizzard had some sort of matchmaking system for Random Dungeons but this does not seem to be the case.

Some problems that I am seeing are DPS wearing healing gear to DPS (doing less dps than tanks both single and aoe damage), the same is going for tanks, they think they can get away with tanking 85 Heroics in DPS gear and finally DPS wearing Tanking gear, now I am not talking about 1-2 items I am talking about the full sha'bang set!

I have asked a few times why they queue for heroics when clearly they are not prepared and want to be carried, I have never been given a straight answer. I do not get how most people can tolerate random dungeons, some of the scum that is present in them disgusts me.

lol damn, wow is srs bzns. People like you that get so worked up over a game is a major +1 why i started to think i wanted to leave the game.

[firey]

lol damn, wow is srs bzns. People like you that get so worked up over a game is a major +1 why i started to think i wanted to leave the game.

The thing is man, granted we are there to have fun, it is a game. But at the same time, when you have people holding you back from enjoying the game (that you pay 15$ a month to play) yea it does bother ya. It's like driving somewhere being stuck behind someone going super slow, you get mad and angry it wastes your time, and wastes your gas. With driving you can just speed up and go around them, but that's not the case in wow, especially now. So yea, it is a bit of a **** off when you can't enjoy all aspects of what you pay for because of some idiots.

[Bryan R.]

I kinda enjoy the new healing. Now that i've gotten some gear i see where they were going with it. Healers are now part of the group, it's used to be that a good healer could make up for a crappy tank and dps; but now everyone needs to be on their game. Tank dies? Wipe. One of the DPS dies? Fight may go on too long, adds may not die, etc - any of these will cause the healer to eventually go OOM. Healer not on the ball? Wipe. Groups really are now a cooperation, and i run into very little mana problems unless people are not doing what they are supposed to. If a DPS is stepping on mines in Tol'vir then talk to them and get them to fix up, or kick them. It is no longer our responsibility to heal failure, and i have no problems letting someone take durability damage until they learn to not step in the fire. The mana problems described in posts above are only really apparent at lower GS. I'm around 345 average item level and i'm getting to the point where i CAN use any spell i want, but its' not economical in the long run. My healing wave will heal for plenty with healing stream, earth living, and ancestral fortitude/awakening.

Precisely. During the first week/week and a half of the expansion I was rapidly gearing out my paladin. During that time, I was able to see a very clear and steady performance increase in my healing. At this time, with 6 epics, I can start to carry some players who tend to make mistakes. I can see a light at the end of the tunnel for the baddies who rely on Valor Points to get gear, or worse, other players with better gear.

lol damn, wow is srs bzns. People like you that get so worked up over a game is a major +1 why i started to think i wanted to leave the game.

You must be so fond of yourself to talk a topic down as if you are so much better.

[Tharp Daddy]

lol damn, wow is srs bzns. People like you that get so worked up over a game is a major +1 why i started to think i wanted to leave the game.

What is so different from any other video game? People in a CoD thread will complain about ___ weapon mod, or gun. People in a Starcraft 2 thread will complain about ___ strategy, or ___ unit. WoW is much the same, it's many players who interact and when said players are nurturing habits which reduces others enjoyment of the game there is reason to complain.

[treemonster]

You know on some of that I blame blizzard. We had an open spot last night come up for a (H)Deadmines last night and we decided to take the first person in guild to say they had the minimal gearscore to go. When he got in the instance and I looked at his gear, I noticed he was wearing some greens that were just horrible.. I mean he is a lock wearing greens that had a ton of spirit or like his robe, had nothing but int/stam, when I asked him about it, he said he was just trying to get the gear score to do heroics. His dps sucked, his hp sucked, and overall there was NO way he was ready. I showed him all the great quest rewards, not counting rep rewards that were so much better then what he was wearing and he is now focused on getting those,, but my point is:

I blame blizzard with the gearscore deal, because most people I see coming in to a random queue are just wearing crap gear just to get the ilvl requirement. Thats why 99% of the time we do a full guild run so we avoid that.

yeah the min i level for heorics is too low imho. i have 333 i level and i don;'t think it's enough as a dps to do heroics. i'm not even a big pve player either. but i think i'll stick to normal mode for point and minor gear upgrade farming with some gold gains.

i'm seeing people talk about doing heroics and linking their profiles and they don't even have the basic rep gear you can buy for cheap from the QMs with rep you get from just leveling to 85 via world quests alone.

on my normal run the other night i saw dps deaths due to the healer healing like it's wotlk and only thinking about the tank. even if trash pulls would've been faster with cc and single target dps/tanking to avoid resting afterwards, they still ran in without marking and aoe faceroll fests.

my bro had to drop out of shadow a few times that run to heal dps that were taking damage and hitting below 30% hp.

One of the main reasons for the hugely increased health pools is that players can take slow, heavy damage. As a healer in LK and now in Cata, the biggest change in technique is knowing who to heal when and how much. That is skill by definition. If your goal is to top everyone off, that is a flaud technique in this expansion; you cannot afford to top everyone off in early gear. At best you are going to just get by by a hair in some encounters with 333-346 gear levels. Maybe even giving up a DPS to save the tank.

Now, on the other hand, most of these encounters involve tons of avoidable damage. It requires everyone to be knowledgeable of the mechanics to avoid taking unnecessary damage. That is, until the healer has the gear to compensate for baddies.

These are the main points of what makes these heroics so much more "difficult".

+1

lol damn, wow is srs bzns. People like you that get so worked up over a game is a major +1 why i started to think i wanted to leave the game.

welcome to absolutely any kind of gaming, spectator sports included. or absolutely any hobby or form of entertainment. there are american/european football nerds who are more hardcore about mathleting than the most hardcore number crunching wow raider. and in the case of sports they're willing to gamble large amounts of money in addiation to nerding up the numbers and arguing passionately and playing fantasy leagues and so on.

anyways my biggest concern about the state of pve, as this was mentioned in the thought about upcmiong changes article, is that people are going to find pve too hard to prgress in, and switch to pvp to progress in gear, adding even mor ebaddies in an activity saturated by faction skill imbalance, and grindy matches. the plus side is queues will shorten in bg's. but we'll probably lose even more often(as if you can call a 90% loss rate better than a 100% loss rate in terms of how grindy honour gear progression is) as well arenas are also more grindy especalliy for losers because you can no longer lose 10 matches a week for points(which is a good thing imho) but you never go down in rating either, so while i'm not sure how that works for matching(my bro noticed a component in teh kill screen in areas showing some kind of match rating) but i won't be surprised where many arena player will be unable to prgress gear wise and still be matched up with people who are progressing and even outgear them, creating a downward spiral of a brick wall in gear progression only fo rht esake of equal footing in pvp. as well losers are going to spend more time grinding for wins in arenas to get their weekly cap, vs winners who can one shot 5 and 0 matches for th cap and go back to honour or 5 man grinds for extra upgrades creating an early gear imbalance that may translate to later gear imabalnces if they maintain their win ratios fairly well and spend their off time rpgressing othe rupgrades through non arena means.

at least on the big upside is that rated arena gear is now cosmetic, which was a huge thing in previous expansions where you reached a point where you could no longer progress in gear to iron out imbalances due to rating and were still matched with higher rated teams with those rated upgrades. however thi smay not matter much with the other changes to the system highlighted above.

then again some of that may be tinfoil hat zone, but just some thought sna dfeelings on the grindiness and other issues involving pvp gear progression. i may end up totally wrong or partially wrong and the cata pvp system is the best arena/ladder/pvp system in anexpansion yet, and most worthy of being any kind of esport(if blizz is till pushing that angle-idk)

oh and rated bg's seem to be just for fun. considering you can hit conquest cap for the first few weeks in 5 wins in 2s and the dificulty in recruiting the 10-25 man teams for a rated bg team coupled with the only wins give points system. all of this makes me think it's going to be more of novelty then something a fair section of pvpers take seriously do often. which in turn leads to longer queues in this particular actviity.

[the evn show]

Some problems that I am seeing are DPS wearing healing gear to DPS (doing less dps than tanks both single and aoe damage),

For some casters spirt = hit, and when you need 1742 hit to be capped that healer gear starts looking pretty damn good. Roughly half of my 'best in slot' gear is healer loot.

I expect the same is true for warlocks and moonkin. Enhancement shaman apparently get something out of using caster weapons right now too.

The first tier of gear has some pretty rough itemization so sometimes even if a stat is useless to you (like spirit to mages) healer gear might still be an upgrade to the alternatives.

eah the min i level for heorics is too low imho. i have 333 i level and i don;'t think it's enough as a dps to do heroics.

I ran every heroic and the first 4 raid bosses with a group average of 325 -- we couldn't even use the random dungeon finder to get in to heroics. You don't need gear, you need experience. Right now ilevel is sort of a proxy measure of experience. If someone is at 350-something you know they've been raiding, if they're at 340-something they've been doing heroics, and 330-something they've been into normal mode dungeons.

That almost works right now but it'll start to fall apart very quickly. "Welfair epics" are just around the corner. Right now it's PVP blues (you can honor cap yourself in < 5 minutes with the new tol barad changes) but it'll expand fairly quickly as more crafted gear become available, as people start selling conquest points, valor points, and raid epics trickle down, and lose 10-games arena/battleground teams collect points, etc.

IMO some sort of attunement chain for heroics similar to magister's terrace would be a good place to start. Maybe bring back some element of the TBC rep grinds where you had to run normal mode dungeons a couple of times before you could go to the heroic version. That's annoying as hell for alts, but this early in the expansion it's not going to be a big deal.

[Bryan R.]

IMO some sort of attunement chain for heroics similar to magister's terrace would be a good place to start. Maybe bring back some element of the TBC rep grinds where you had to run normal mode dungeons a couple of times before you could go to the heroic version. That's annoying as hell for alts, but this early in the expansion it's not going to be a big deal.

I was always very fond of the attunement chains and rep grinds. It kind of goes against what Blizzard wanted in terms of progression though. In TBC, the attunements forced progression through earlier content. They wanted a complete 180 in LK. I would love to see it come back though.