GC on cookie cutter buildsFollow

While math is good and all I understand what GC was trying to say, BiS gear and spreadsheets to be semi accurate need to have a basis for their calculations. 1% dps increase doesn't equal that in game normally. Spreadsheets are based around Amount of time on boss, and little to no movement etc. Which any raider will tell you, except in certain circumstances, that the exact right conditions cant always be met. Maybe your missing a key buff or one debuff isn't on the boss. Therefore your dps could and will fluctuate.

The problem I am running into now, the more i think about it, is you can *almost* not ***** up your spec, thats one less variable to hamper your raid, which I understand. Thee problem I run into is all that's left to judge a person is his gear and gemming now, Which will enforce more of the retarded GearScrore mentality.

As it in now, you could have 2 rogues one 5.3 k gs one 6.0 gs lets say they both focus on the correct stats in gear for their spec (EG AP and Haste for a Mutilate rogue) the only difference is one rogue read about his spec and one picked and chose what he felt was "neat or exciting". In all likely cases the lower GS will MATCH or BEAT the higher geared rogue.

Now other then that bothering me, All that Blizzard now has to design around is gear, not so much skill, because they have less variables to deal with while designing a boss or encounter. I'm not saying skill isn't there but thats the feeling I get these days.

Now I probably am wrong, or just thinking about it the wrong way, please feel free to correct me.

I loaded the PTR today to see how Mutilate rogue (PvE) felt and while building the spec I got stuck taking points in something that I really didn't want or care about. Instead of feeling liberated I felt forced and it bothered me. I think i had to choose between + Stam or the ability that refunds combo points if I use the Sunder armor ability or something like that, could be wrong. And really I wasn't overjoyed about either.

Just my take on the subject.

One point to mention: Are there any fights in the current tier that actually NEED pure optimized, min/maxxed DPS toons?

Honestly, I can't think of any fight since pre-nerf Brutalus that really needed an extremely fine edge as far as pure DPS goes. All of the harder fights in WotLK have to do with movement/mechanics and knowing when to use the right abilities rather than optimized damage throughput. If you're within a fair margin of best possible output, the fights seem to be tuned to be kill-able.

Note also that I said DPS toons. Min/Maxxing for tanks and healers is a completely different beast.

Edit: Forgot to ask you Trill... Beer or wine for Saturday? =P

Edited, Sep 23rd 2010 4:54pm by TherionSaysWhat

Whatever gets you there, sexy. Let's get hunnybunch to come with us this week, yeah? :)

Thunder Clap costs 20-4-3=13.
Normal Charge gives 15.

If not, normal Bloodrage gives 20 instant + 10 over time. If you normal bloodrage when you normal charge you get 35.

In the case of a trash group pull you only stun the one you charge so you immediately get the extra rage. In addition to the rage from your initial melee hit.

In the case of a single-target trash pull you don't care about thunderclap.

And in the case of bosses there is no stun so you immediately get the extra rage in massive amounts and you're going to initiate with full TPS instead of Thunderclap anyway.

Edited, Sep 23rd 2010 9:15pm by xorq

Remember back in the days when we would play the game, fail and then try to figure out why?

Yeah, that's progression for us right there. Now we try to figure out how not to fail first, just so that when we do fail, we get to pull out our epeen and do the pissing contest thing about who "spent most time outside the game to play the game".

I love mankind.

If you're a progression player, that's fine. But it's been the case since vanilla that you go read about fights that other people have done that you don't know.

We were certainly doing that when we were progressing through AQ and Naxx the first time. We were talking to other progression guilds on our server and others that we knew on other servers about what they were doing.

We of course weren't going for world firsts, but we certainly didn't do it by ourselves, with no outside help.

I have to disagree with this:



If the boss dies after 82938749 wipes, and there's like, 2 of you alive, there's still something to fix. :)

A good example of this is that, especially for melee DPS, the best boot enchant is often (not always, though) "run speed". More time on target in fights where movement is an important component can swamp the larger baseline number which comes from the alternative enchants. But the simulations have no good way of quantifying it, and in fact the benefit varies from person to person (and even more from fight to fight, of course).

This is very much true, but you're completely ignoring the factors of a raid make-up that might differ and time constraints. Trilliandent pointed out the latter, as for the first...

If one of your DPS is pulling 20K, and all the others pull 5K - yes, the boss goes down, there is 'nothing to fix'. However, that DPS pulling 20K might not be there next time and if instead of him you haul in another DPS that only deals 5K damage, you need to cover 15K DPS of ground before the boss goes down, and will probably spend the whole night wiping.

What people need to realize when talking about cookie cutters is that there's more to it than "how can I deal the most DPS?".

"What boss am I fighting?" / "This spec might fair well against boss X, but will it do well against boss A, B, C and D?"

"What are the time constraints we are limited to?" and

"What is the make up of my group?"

are all questions that very much apply. The last two of those questions are often encompassed in the form of "Are you a casual or hardcore raider?". The two before that are ocassionaly brought up in the form of "Blood is the best DK DPS spec for newbies, but you should switch to Frost once your gear gets good enough".

The very first is the one that people are always ranting about. The problem with this question being 'the main question' is that it's used as a wrong benchmark. The reason this question is 'the main question' is because it's brought up by the most hardcore guilds out there, who have a clear answer to all the other answers. It then gets downgraded to other folks who never even stop and wonder about the other questions, because neither do the pro guilds.

What I'm trying to say, is that it's basically similar to what happens to newbies in Starcraft. They lose to somebody because they aren't good enough at producing enough units (macroing). They then go on the forums and post "I lost to X and Y, what should I do?", and people who do know how to macro reply "just go for Z". Then the newbie runs another game and goes for Z, and loses again. It's not that the tactics aren't right, the problem is that he's got a different benchmark than the pros, but that this is never really talked about.

Edited, Sep 24th 2010 6:48pm by Mozared