WoW - The best it's ever been!Follow

Again, but this time with the "Bawdy" option selected.

If you had picked the right faction, you could have been flown in by Flintlocke.

SpoilerAnd then shortly after, become the chuckshot.

Edit: Quotefail

Edited, Dec 14th 2010 1:03am by Poldaran

http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/578/578734p1.html

One of the best webcomics ever, IMO.

Oh, I completely agree. I even told the group to avoid the black spots on the floor, which is why I decided to sac the DPS who ran into one for just a bit too long. Still, I can't just let people die if they don't do the fight 100%. The longer the fight takes, the harder it gets. There's no room to train stupids by letting them die. If I let all the bad DPS die, we're down to the tank and me, which means a good 10 minutes of fighting before I run out of mana.

That's the other issue with this "triage" thing. You can't afford to sacrifice people, because the fights take so long. Is the tank dying, of course he's got first priority, but you still have to keep everyone up, so it's still Rejuvenation spam and Wild Growth + Swiftmend on cooldown. Except now it just costs a boatload of mana, so I can't do it for as long as I could in Wrath.

The whole "let DPS fall in health" mentality doesn't fly as long as people are leveling. I can't let my 40k DPS drop to 20 or even 30k, because that means having them die on me in 1-2 GCD if stuff goes bad. And I know Druids allegedly have it harder than other healers, but this doesn't feel right. It feels wrong on so many levels. It's like that first Nexus run where some people still have TBC blues or greens, except with these level ranges, it's more like doing ToC with people in early WOTLK greens. Stuff dies - fast.

And the above applies to the "squid boss" as well. Sure, I could tell the DPS to stop attacking, but have you guys done Forge of Souls recently? How many people stop attacking when the Mirrored Soul pops? The good ones do, yes, but the bad ones just rage on without a care, because ultimately it boils down to the healer's capabilities.

It doesn't help that trash is still handled like in WOTLK either. The tank I mentioned getting GCD locked on was more than capable of pulling large groups at a time. I could keep him up with just a full stack of Lifebloom. Enter some silly boss mechanic that requires the impossible from a random PUG (cooperation and ability to adapt) and you've got hell.

I imagine the dungeons are fairly easy with a guild run or even a good PUG, but with terribads, which is the majority of what you meet in PUGs, it's challenging to the point of being silly.

Of course, my entire rant is pretty much just me being sour grapes and all that. We did the run with just one DPS dying a couple of times. It's not like we wiped or anything. It's just that healing the run felt frustrating. It felt like WOTLK raiding, except 5-man scale and with less mana available.

So far I'm not seeing how CC and triage will work in there. The trash fights are easy (save for the squidfaces who pull people in, prevent healing, cause massive falling damage and then AOE bursts) and the boss fights come down to a gearcheck for healers and avoiding stuff that instagibs DPS.

I'm just disappointed. Take my rant with some salt.

Edit: From a Kitty Druid's point of view, the new dungeons came off to a bad start as well. The boss who tosses spots on the ground made attacking him from the back kinda impossible some 20 seconds into the fight. And phase 3 of the last boss was also impossible to get attacks in from behind. I still topped DPS, but apparently Kitties are OP and stuff.

Edited, Dec 14th 2010 9:53am by Mazra

Are you sure about this? At level 80 I did buy all AH gear and saw my health go up to around 50k in caster form - but by the time I finished Hyjal I was level 82* and had found equivalent or better pieces to what I had purchased. My caster form hp was just under 60k.

*(Technically 83, but as I had a level and a half of experience from archeology, through pure questing I would have been 81-82).

We're talking about a DPS getting knocked into AOE and dying before I could shift my attention to him. Having people wipe on a leveling 5-man dungeon due to mechanics or gearchecks is just silly. It's a dungeon intended to prepare people for end-game, not punch them in the face for absurd reasons.





I'm fairly sure of it, yes. I just leveled through Vashj'ir and Hyjal on my Druid. By the time I was done with Vashj'ir and unlocked Throne of the Tides, I had 45k health in Cat Form. I went into Vashj'ir with WOTLK gear and came out of the quest lines with a mix of WOTLK gear and Cata greens.

Of course, if you buy an entire level 80 set from the AH and wait until you're 83, you'll have much higher health. My Druid is now level 83 and wearing a mix of quest rewards, rep gear and AH greens, and his health went from 45k to 60k. But that's not my point here. Point is, if people only quest and then hit Throne of the Tides without spending money on AH greens, they'll be level 82 and be semi-decked in Cata greens. Depending on their WOTLK gear, they'll be around 40-45k health.

Which is like having 20k health in a WOTLK heroic. If stuff happens, and it does, you're the first to die. The tank had 56k health buffed.

I actually healed a newly hatched Retribution Paladin through Heroic Drak'tharon Keep and it was easier than healing Throne of the Tides with a crit immune tank and people having 10-15k health more.

I'm just saying the curve is a bit rough in the beginning. If we all level to 83 and buy a full set of gear from the AH, sure, it would be easier. You're not supposed to have to do that, though. Not for a leveling dungeon. Imagine having to buy a full set of gear at the AH before doing any dungeon while leveling up.



The problem is the 45-minute queue that makes me go *GROAN* when a group falls apart. Sure, if I didn't have to spend more time in the queue than it takes to clear the dungeon, I'd be all for wiping, disbanding and finding another group. The ideal solution would be to notice who fails and kick them to the curb, but when the failbad is the tank or the healer, what're the chances of that happening?

Edited, Dec 14th 2010 3:30pm by Mazra

LOL!

On a general note, I haven't played any of my 80s since Cataclysm launched. I have been focused on my new Rogue. So, I wrote this thread based on what I saw at low levels. I can't comment on the curve from 80-85.. I am very much looking forward to it, eventually. Right now I'm as happy as a shig in pit just gathering herbs for money and leveling at the same time while queued up for instances or BGs and sampling new questing areas!

Very funny, Xsarus.

Haven't had issues with people failing to focus fire the right stuff (well, yeah, but overall DPS is still enough to kill the stuff being healed). Only had issues with mobs doing random AOE stuff that brings people with low health to critical levels, launching me into a Rejuv + Touch spam to keep stuff alive.

I'm convinced that adding five seconds to the duration of Lifebloom would also solve a lot of issues. The timing on Omen of Clarity and Lifebloom duration being refreshed by Healing Touch just seems off at the moment. Either Omen fades just as Healing Touch is about to launch, or Lifebloom pops just before Healing Touch finishes. Or Healing Touch lands just before an Omen proc and way before Lifebloom pops.

There's no... symbiosis. Which is ironic in the funny way.

Edit: teacake, the 45-minute queue is as DPS. I rarely queue as healer due to the frustration of being close to wiping every other pull, despite being adequately geared.

Edited, Dec 14th 2010 4:40pm by Mazra

Something this reminded me of that I'm dying to try. Pop into tree form at the beginning of a fight and get LB stacks rolling on a few people. After ToL ends you should have a few LBs ticking. While you can only cast LB on a single target outside of ToL you can, at the moment at least, keep the LB stacks rolling on several targets post-ToL with Nourish. LB being the awesome HoT with mana efficiency to boot, and extra OOC procs for fun.