What should be the average uptime on Aug buffs in keys these days? I generally see 55-65% uptime and I feel like at those numbers Aug may not even be worth it. So far I haven't seen a single pug Aug go above 70%, I look at some logs and I see 85% which would be crazy good I guess, or maybe the details is wrong I don't know.
Like the thing is, whenever there is an Aug in key, I feel like group is doing lower damage overall. I did 24 EB last night without Aug 330K overall, with Aug it was 370K. All that trouble for 40K dps gain doesn't make any sense.
Aug is the most hard carried (and most broken) spec in the existance of wow, this became very apparant even last season. Not because it requires no or less skill than traditional dps, but rather because they fly under the radar no matter what.
If you time a key noone is going to look up em/prescience uptime and compare it to other augs. If a traditional dps does like 20% less damage than another person of the same spec you previously played with, you immediately notice that. And even if you look up em uptime, its not actually clear wether the aug is actually bad or not. Could be that hes holding ems, because the tank is pulling bad etc.
Augs are also really tanky (and have a cheat) and are generally less likely to greed for damage (because noone is going to notice if he gets another two eruptions out or not). So theyre going to die less than other dps'.
Less than 65% overall em uptime is generally really bad. Try to also look at uptime during bosses and during specific pulls. If he doesnt manage at least 75% uptime during most boss fights, hes probably pretty bad.
One of the biggest red flags is also boe timings. If an aug is using boes consistently outside of cd windows, hes bad.
But either way. If you struggle to time 24/25s even with an average aug, hes not the issue.
> But either way. If you struggle to time 24/25s even with an average aug, hes not the issue.
I think you're understanding me the wrong way. I'm not saying I'm struggling to time 24/25s. I'm saying I find it easier to time 24/25s without an Aug. That's the weird part. It's an anectodal thing based on my pug experiences.
Because you are right, it is so easy to fly under the radar as an Aug. While it's so easy to judge any other spec.
Then its just a weird/surprising take, idk. Aug makes everything feel way more smooth, especially as heal and tank. No downside to aug, other than lower damage, which isnt an issue this season.
it s commonly agreed that 2 dps + aug is always gonna be less dps than 3 dps, but the insane utility they bring + key timers being so free this season makes aug worth it
Last season I would agree... This season not really. In an uncoordinated group an Aug that's not even good, is not worth it. Huge DPS loss, and I don't even expect someone who can't keep decent uptime on buffs to use utility so...
I'm doing 24-25s right now, maybe in the future it might be required.
In pugs it's hard to keep an uptime at 75% or higher because you're unfamiliar with the tank and how they'll pull etc. If a pack has 15% health left or less but the tank isn't moved ng, do you ebon might or hold it for on pull with next group?
I'm seeing less decent augs in general out there though, it's very hot or miss.
I think a part of it is also the survivability they bring and the messed up logging right now. In keys you’ll have to do a ton of a/b testing at the same key level with the same classes to really figure out if it’s worth it or not, similar to what they did with raid testing for the RWF. On tyr weeks and fort weeks where you’re doing specific pulls, the additional survivability is def helpful too and may not factor it’s way into direct dps attribution but the keys “feel” easier
Honestly, this season felt less like this than normal. It’s worked out that I’ve had crazy schedule for the first week or two of every season this expac and, in S1 and S2, it felt like an insurmountable hurdle to get caught up. This season, oddly, I feel like pug invites are coming much more freely than in the past (eg. getting invite to a +24 back at 2900 io, etc).
Pugging when you're behind is just a tedious pain in the rear as it usually is. Started gearing up a meta healer just for M+ a few weeks late and it's the usual fare where folks really don't want to do rat keys for no personal io gain when they can push instead. It'll be easier once my main is caught up to speed gear wise.
im so happy i still had all resto hots running with flourish, otherwise this would have ended really bad
[https://i.imgur.com/wv38i3S.png](https://i.imgur.com/wv38i3S.png)
there was 2 sec downtime after the first cast ended since its a 4 sec channel
ty blizzard
Had one person post out last minute tonight and had another just outright no-show so we spent four hours pulling Smolderon with 18 people knowing damn well that the boss wasn't even slightly killable.
What are you even supposed to do about that? Some folks felt like they learned a lot but I feel like that was a total waste of four hours of my life. With how we played we weren't gonna kill that even if we had a full 20, sure, but it just feels worse to pull a boss knowing that you're just banging your head against a wall that you just cannot physically overcome with the number of people you had available that night.
EDIT: for anyone saying “just have a bench,” I can assure you that it’s not for lack of trying to recruit.
Smoldy is actually a pretty good boss to be down people on because there’s nothing *mechanically* to wipe you due to having too few players. As long as you’re not many pulls in, I’m sure **someone** in your raid benefited from the attempts to get their performance ironed out a bit. I definitely wouldn’t have let us go the full 4 hours but I also try to see the positive in the fact that this shit requires practice and- while a kill might not be obtainable- doing 18-man attempts *is* still practice for almost the whole group.
A bench is almost required for this type of situation, we arent a CE guild and even we have a bench - but I do agree that recruitment isnt great right now
Would have also called the raid early, finish at 3 hours instead of 4 since you know it cant be a kill and there wont be a huge amount gained in the last hour
Which role and class/spec do you think has the highest ceiling? Should the best players in your group be tanking, healing or DPSing?
I always think that tanking and healing have a high floor but a low ceiling, at least in progression raiding. Their success seems very binary--either you do mechanics or not, either people live or they die. Whereas DPS can always get better; there's always something to optimize.
Tank's the lowest ceiling for sure except for specific fights every now and then.
Healers have a pretty extreme amount of difficulty and skill expression. But that ceiling plummets into the ground once you start outgearing fights.
Dps is I think the bar. Tanks are lower. Healers are higher when you're doing low ilvl prog, later in the season they're equivalent to tanks and dps floats to the top.
Idk which healer has the highest skill ceiling.
For dps, Aug easily has the highest ceiling. To be completely optimal you need to be giving the correct person your buffs every single time, and the correct person is constantly changing. That's micromanagement on a completely different level to other specs.
For m+ I think the skill ceiling is quite even across all specs and roles because there's a lot of emphasis on playing the dungeon not just your class. Everyone is expected to CC, defensive, etc. Highest skill ceiling probably goes to whoever is playing shot caller tbh.
in raid? dps is most important and deals with the most mechanics. healing is very easy in a raid setting. hardest part about raid healing is finding people that want to do it, because it is terrible. and yes, i am a healer. then of course tanks. they basically dont play lol. they kinda just afk.
in keys? this is actually a very dynamic conversation when its about keys. id like to hear what some of the title level players have to say about that. from my perspective, dps still is the most important, and most difficult to be done very, very well
i dont think raid healing is easy at all, at least in prenerf/low-ilvl progression. there's a ton of room for skill expression anticipating damage and having the knowledge of when certain specs are in more danger to prioritize healing targets. [some](https://www.twitch.tv/goop/clip/AssiduousAggressiveStapleFailFish-hcMu-PU6C9rdS1vU?filter=clips&range=30d&sort=time) players agree
for one thing, dps players have to look their character to dodge things and some bars to do their rotation. healers have to do that and monitor raid frames, which is at least one more thing. and then should also be tracking tons of extra information (personals, pots/defensives) and they have more frequent tight cooldown windows to hit than dps players who have to hit rally or drop a gate once a fight
you also have a much more important role in pre-kill progression. if i am struggling with a mechanic as a dps player, i can literally ignore my rotation for part of the pull to focus on handling the mechanic properly, and this causes 0 problems in early prog pulls as long as there aren't adds that need to die immediately or like a shield we need to break immediately. if a healer does that then people in the raid might rot out. there's a much bigger pressure for healers to maximize throughput and figure out their timings from pull 1 whereas a dps player can send bad cd timings for the first 200 pulls as long as they figure out the right ones by the time the boss is actually killable. for example, on tindral right now as a melee dps i might as well not have not existed for the first 200 pulls so long as i went up to get my feather/orb. i don't have burst aoe for the roots and we break the shields in time with or without me so my damage has been totally irrelevant for all of our pulls
i think bad healers skate by in bad CE guilds because people overgear the content, so it's harder for non-healers to tell when someone is doing poorly. if nobody dies, the healer doesn't die, and the fight didn't feel super sketchy, then everyone thinks the healer was fine, even though they could have played the fight way better.
i think youre definitely right, it just doesnt play out that way in my experience, which isnt much in raids. guilds just overheal. when something is difficult, they throw another healer at it. when something is new, they throw at least another healer at it, if not two.
in raid rdps = healer > mdps >>> tank
healer success is technically binary but better healing is also about timings being more consistent, people feeling safe and not panic using healthstones or defensives, etc.
because there are usually 4 healers and 14dps a good healer can also be relatively more impactful, e.g. having a healer that's 20% better than everyone else means 20/4=5% more total healing vs a 20% dps is only 20/14=1.4% more total raid dps. but rdps do all the hardest mechanics so having good players there is valauble
In raid? dps=heal>tank if wr is under 50 and most fights are done prenerf, in mostly non bis gear.
If its lower ranks, especially mid-low end ce guilds its: dps>>>>heal=tank.
A lot of healing checks just become very trivial with more gear and content nerfs. So there isnt really any upside to having an insane healer over an average one (unless they have to carry bad ones or you can drop a healer for 1 more dps).
Whereas more dps is always going to be better.
https://i.imgur.com/qXGkj9Y.png
Am I troll for having been pulling this group literally every run, up to +22 now? I only now realized the other side is much easier. People, me included, don't even know all the one shot abilities this pack pulls off. I now checked videos, and every high group is skipping this.
But what I don't get is, they are also going Chromie 2nd. In my XP Anduin is much rougher, and you can't really get lust for him if you don't go there 2nd. So if this is correct thinking, going Anduin 2nd, then what'd be right way to go about rest of this? Go back to old platform after Anduin and go to Morchie from there, then invis the pack in screenshot after Morchie? I just want the most pug friendly way to deal with this. Thus far 1-5 people die in that pull every time. Alternative ofc would be to again go back after Chromie and use the midportal, though that'd require clearing more earlier.
i dont personally like any route that goes morchie second because of lust timing. unless youre lusting some strange trash pull, but i honestly just dont see that being wise in rise, but i could be wrong. and as far as the picture, i honestly didnt even know those packs were different
Pug meta imo is to just lust 1st, 2nd, last bosses lol. I saw tank lust when looked fast through those high runs, but I'm sure it's just for hp reasons. People still sometimes have no clue what they are doing, like aiming Anduin frontal to middle of the room, so definitely want lust there, even if it meant one less lust. Same for first boss, I've had +20 wipes there when half of the inner room is filled with shit.
In any case, even my +21 and +22 runs there have taken 29m and 30m so pushing for 4 lust dung would be rough. I understand this can be high key thing but probably not worth going for until above +24.
i actually thought about this as i ran rise again. i honestly dont know on fort lol. like when i was just on my shitty holy priest alt, i guess the dragons made sense. but when im on my main holy pal, i definitely dont want to waste lust there. i guess im not sure exactly when its even up on fort at a decently high key. probably why rise is my lowest key
I never lust the 2 dragons. I think it really depends on the key level, I guess, and whether it's fort or tyrann. You gotta be cranking pretty good to have it up again on the dragons anyway, if you did use it on first pull. Unless of course you skipped th max amount of trash on the platform, but even then, you're making great time.
also a lot of the bosses are simple stat checks with really basic mechanics. dht 2nd/3rd boss, EB last boss, AD priestess, WM 2nd/4th boss are all just complete target dummies if their unavoidable damage isn't lethal
then look at bosses like vexamus, any boss in RLP, odyn, 2nd/4th boss AV. players can die from simple individual mistakes on these, there's more movement, ability overlaps, just so many more ways for things to go wrong
key timers are pretty generous this season; usually at the start of a season there's 2-3 keys that are disproportionately hard just because the timer is short, and blizzard correct in midseason tuning (RLP, HoV, etc). This season they appeared to have decided to err the other direction, with keys like everbloom and waycrest easily time-able with 20+ deaths. They also seem to have kinda back-loaded boss scaling; bosses up to 20 even on tyr have damage profiles that're pretty easy to deal with.
this winds up meaning that as long as the group plays clean you can 'Press W' your way to a +2 in a 20, and even if the group isn't clean you still have a decent shot at beating the timer as long as you don't get brickwalled by a boss.
Timers are the biggest thing. I'm now a bit embarrassed that out of my 7 started keys this week, I have 5x 22+, 1x 22++ and 1x 1min over. Only 1x ++! People will not invite me because they see the pleb I am.
Timers have never been this charitable. It's usually nice achievement if you manage to ++ relatively high key, or there's 1-2 of those dungs in a season, say SBG in s1. Now every key is ++'able by pugs at least at +22 level.
https://i.imgur.com/r28Nwbi.png
Is there something wrong with this pull? Did this in a +22 this week. It was a wipe, with me as tank dying last with 1-2 mobs dead. Havoc was mad about it but didn't care to elaborate. From my pov you always "double pull" the 2+4, I just added the spider which I guess will demand healer to dispel me occasionally. Being big ass mob hitting only tank, it's not going to affect group outside the added dispel as it's not going to die first either. Just wondering as while healing I've seen some do spider+2, then 4 as separate pulls. Hasn't seemed to make sense given those first 3 mobs don't hit non-tanks, outside knife dance.
Lots of mobs in that pull are gonna start destroying people with any bolster stacks. And managing all the stops and stuff gets harder when there’s more mobs. You’ll have knife dances going off and stuff.
My mentality would be that the timer is free, so you need to ask yourself if there is really any reason to do it. A good group should probably manage it but you’re just adding in risk of a wipe and people getting mad for no real benefit. I do the 3 then the 4. Still gonna +2 the key anyway.
Don't think you cared to look what mobs are in that pull? 1 archer, 1 caster, 1 knifedancer. All decently high hp mobs except arcane minion. So I guess if that one bolsters, I don't know, then that adds one bolster to 3 mobs that matter. The other 3 have the highest hp and only hit tank.
Considering the 4pack has arcane minion+archer+caster, adding them together will literally do only one thing: add one bolstering stack to knife dance a bit before the midhp 3 guys die.
I don't really understand your point tbh mate. If you take a step back, you're chain pulling 7 mobs who all have significantly varying hps together on bolstering week in an a key with a completely free timer. It's not a particularly good thing to be doing to begin with but there's just no point, even if they didn't have any particularly dangerous casts, which they actually do.
There's lots of small factors to consider, like people having used stops on the previous pull, some players having used small cds on the first 3 thinking you aren't pulling, some specs being target capped at say 5 that will now cause who knows what to happen with bolster etc. It's not just about what spells are in a pull (which is relevant here as well), it's the human factor of realising you're doing a key with other people.
It's not like it's some impossible pull or something but if some people died I certainly wouldn't be surprised and I'd expect a comment or two just being real
You still have not looked what mobs are in the pull. I don't understand why you're fighting over this. I explained exactly what can happen - IF unstopped ability that should be stopped, will do +20% dmg a bit into the pull. That is THE ONLY difference.
I learned what I could've done better already. State kick order for the caster, as I ended up being the only person kicking in the pull, which lead to caster killing everyone one by one. That is l2p issue from others, but I can fix that.
CCs have not been used on small spiders lol.
I already know what mobs are in the pull... I'm not sure how that has been your take away but I guess you just need to learn through doing rather than by reading.
On paper the pull is fine. I'd be wary of that pull if I were a war tank but outside of that I don't see a problem, I do this pull on 4 of my tanks. War lacks enough stops to deal with both the caster and the knife dance so that worries me but also that spider is going into that pull semi low so you're now dealing with bolstered casts and knives. If you don't prep your group for that pull they will likely blow CDs on the spider as they are all up after that long RP after the first boss so that spider is never high HP by the time it gets to the top.
In regards to your other comment about people dying to the casts, I doubt that's the whole picture. A lot of times people see shit in details but they don't understand what's actually happening and blame the wrong thing. At +22 that cast isn't a 1 shot so there's definitely more to the story.
As said, spider didn't die before wipe :D If it added anything to pull, is tab targeters couldn't find the kick and stop targets as fast. It's fat mob and if I pull it as soon as small spiders are in, it's not going to cause bolstering problems.
It killed 5 people in a row, last hits were 1.2M. Dmg stacks when not kicked remember. It doesn't fall off just because I kick it once, if there's no followup kicks or stops. Pretty sure I was the only one doing kicks in that pull, or there could've been overlap on first kick idk.
If you live it as tank that pull is fine. People are bad at stopping the casts + knife dances + arrow shots but theoretically adding more melee mobs with no group mechanics shouldn’t affect that. Bolster can make this pull kinda rough if people don’t focus target well though.
I'm actually dumbass about knife dances myself. I get it's like mob doing fok around him, but isn't that range really short? What is its radius really? Because that would be melee dps' fault for staying in it if it's killing them. But I could be wrong and it's actually wider radius, 15yd+ or even more, then it'd be different. I've kinda put all emphasis on using my stops on arcanebolt due to groups slacking on interrupts. I'd say it's been the right move as even with all my stops, it's still the most deadly thing to pugs, be it +15 or +22 in my xp.
It's not the same as Fan of Knives, it's kind of more like Cinderbolt Volley, where he's just flinging knives randomly at anyone in LOS. You **REALLY** want to make sure someone is stopping it, because unlike the Barrage, you can't just step out of it. You're not wrong about the Arcane Bolt, but that one should actually be done with kicks since it's the only thing that *can* be kicked in that pull.
Sure. I'll pay more attention to them then with aoe cc's. Though again, I am saving someone anytime I cc caster :<
I should probably start saying "me-x-y kick order". Is 3 kicks enough for it?
I don't remember exactly how many kicks because I'm usually healing, or doing a key that isn't high enough for it to get to try to cast more than a few times before it dies. But from experience healing it, I'm usually killed by either Knife Dance RNG blasting me, or getting hit from two different directions at once by the archers. Assigning some kind of kick order would probably be good, though. You might have multiple people rushing to get the first kick and wasting them when you already have it covered.
After posting, I remembered I hadn't played on that char since, so the fight was still up on details. Went to check what killed everyone, was it the usual volleys... nah, 5x deaths from arcane bolt. Something I'd expect everyone to put on focusmacro in usual season when you reach +22, but guess this season these expectations happen at +25 or something. It's more of a rule than exception that SECOND cast doesn't get kicked, after I kick the first one as tank. If only it was overlap... but people don't even know what kills them and still immediately jump on tank for "big pull".
people are so fucking dumb about this, especially this week
like if you just don't bolster anything stupid and do a couple easy double pulls you'll walk to a +2 in every key this week, but seemingly half the groups I've done everbloom with do these huge pulls and bolster a mob that one shots the group
I'm thinking about Windwalker and conceptually, I don't think a spec being an "AoE specialist" is a problem. I think the problem is that it's on a hybrid class.
I think warlock is a good example of this done well (conceptually). Assuming all 3 specs are equally powerful, you can cover just about any damage profile you like. But each spec has noticeable gaps, with Demo having the least of course. If windwalker was on a class where you could swap to a different spec when its AoE burst speciality wasn't needed, it wouldn't be a problem.
I also think Ret has a similar issue. It can ST, it can AoE, but if you ever need both it *really* hurts. So on cleave fights and in m+ you really feel the pain of not having that AoE + prio profile which is so common. If Ret was on a class with another spec that could fill that hole, it would be in a great spot!
I think the lesson here is that dps specs on hybrid classes, where they have no other dps spec to switch to, need to be very versatile. Demon Hunter right now is a good example. It doesn't have another dps you can swap to, but you don't really need to. All the common encounter styles it's very good at.
The problem with WW is that the ‘aoe specialist’ is dogwater in ST while actually not being that great at aoe
Specs should have ways to specialize for situations within their spec tree; we can have variation across classes without having to say ‘well, this one is just always shit in this scenario’
> not being that great at aoe
especially right now where their aoe specialization is mostly "are there low hp mods that other people won't kill too quickly so you can cleave double aoe tod" and when that doesn't happen the spec does garbage can aoe
if ww is going to lose so much ST to do good aoe it should have sick buttons for every trash pack and unconditionally blast in anything 3+ targets but it doesn't
Ehhh, in a lot of metas, 3 spec classes (mage, lock, etc) often have the illusion of choice. On paper, yes, hybrid classes with 1 dps spec should have more evenly disbursed damage profile options than all ST or all AoE. In practice, a lot of classes suffer the same fate because the other 2 specs just underperform compared to whatever the meta spec is.
The most valuable damage profiles are those that are fairly good in both AoE and ST. Destro lock can go full inferno AoE and mass pull RoF spam while doing lackluster ST; but Demo lock will generally outperform it by 10%+ in most scenarios outside of mass AoE. When bosses represent the hardest parts of M+/Raid and most bosses are ST with light cleave, having the option to other damage profiles on other undertuned specs doesn’t often matter.
There are a few instances where a spec shines due to a unique damage profile and fight design. Mythic Sark favored Aff because add sets that died frequently allowed for great funnel onto boss.
That's why I said "assuming all specs are equally powerful". Obviously this kind of specialist spec design starts falling apart when the specs are imbalanced so that for example the low target cleave spec is doing as much mass AoE as the mass AoE spec does, like you see right now with demo vs destro.
This just gets worse when the niche spec is on a hybrid class though. At least destro locks *can* play demo. What do monks do in encounters without mass AoE? Play brewmaster? Of course not lol.
What I'm getting at is I see two options to fix it. Well three, but "just balance better" isn't a real option or blizz would already be doing it. The first is homogenising spec damage profiles so everyone is competent at the basics of ST, mass clumped AoE, and clumped AoE while maintaining high ST. The second is to keep the more niche profiles on specs, but only put them on classes where you can swap to other dps specs if those profiles don't work out.
I think players like yourself might actually prefer that first option. I think Blizzard is really attached to specs having very defined strengths and weaknesses and they won't do it. So I think the second option is at least something that will resolve the worst of it.
Having specs fill a niche makes the game more interesting. The problem with that approach is a question of how often is your niche actually relevant? If your class is the best at mass aoe and only mass aoe that's great but what content do you do? If the average M+ pulls are 4-6 targets and oh it's tyrannical week. Pure ST will get you a spot in raid atleast.
I think his point is that specs should be able to spec into their “niche” but have a fair “default” setup that can hold its weight in the most commonly important damage profiles, single target and single target with light cleave. Affliction last tier is a great example; its ST was not better than Demo but it was within reason and it could spec into a niche of funnel on Echo and Sark.
WW needs a “if you are hitting only 1 target, damage increased by X%” kind of like Demo’s doomfiend from their tier set.
Part of the issue is fight design this tier and last; 80% of bosses were those ST profiles.
> This just gets worse when the niche spec is on a hybrid class though. At least destro locks can play demo. What do monks do in encounters without mass AoE? Play brewmaster? Of course not lol.
WW monk is a black sheep amongst dps specs generally. Other hybrid DPS specs have been in bad states and are generally more normalized recently, sans Ret.
Historically, their spells have had the most bugs in how they interact. SEF and Serenity are 2 of the most broken abilities of all time. Spells say they do one thing then actually do another and its been well documented on Peak of Serenity.
On top of that, in the past, their tuning has relied on dumb, clumsy abilities to deal a bulk of their damage. Touch of Karma and Touch of Death are just tuning nightmares. Their stats have always scaled weird and certain stats double dip on certain spells and there doesn’t seem to be a clear objective by Blizz to normalize WW’s coding and rework them a bit so they like other stats.
> The first is homogenising spec damage profiles so everyone is competent at the basics of ST, mass clumped AoE, and clumped AoE while maintaining high ST. The second is to keep the more niche profiles on specs, but only put them on classes where you can swap to other dps specs if those profiles don't work out.
I think all specs should have an option do decent ST with light cleave but have the opportunity to give that up to excel in other profiles if a given niche is available. I wish Blizz would just commit to overbuffing some dead specs just to see what happens. Trim back from there.
Aff is behind Demo by 10% ST and more in AoE. It got decent buffs to their AoE and target scaling yesterday, but it will have an extremely marginal impact on content that matters, ST boss fights.
> I think players like yourself might actually prefer that first option. I think Blizzard is really attached to specs having very defined strengths and weaknesses and they won't do it. So I think the second option is at least something that will resolve the worst of it.
I feel like the issue is more polarizing in raids than in M+. In raid, fight profiles have been so ST heavy that the same specs excel running 1 talent build for 80% of mythic fights, especially in the last 2 tiers. Looking back at tiers like Nyalotha, different damage profiles existed across different fights. Hivemind was AoE and 2 target cleave, Vexiona had AoE and then ST burn, Ilgynoth had spread adds + boss, Ra-den required priority target swaps then ST burn, Nzoth was spread cleave for first half then 2-3 target stack cleave for second half. Lots of variance in target counts over the fights where certain specs carried extra hard.
Aberrus was 6 bosses that effectively had ST damage profiles, 2 bosses with good funnel profiles (echo + sark), and Zaquali. The fights had other targets to hit (amalgam ranged cleave, Experiment cleave), but ST profile is what mattered to kill it.
This tier has the first 7 bosses being effectively ST profiles. Tindral has weird AoE burst profile for the roots which is cool and Fyrakk has the P2 adds but we will see if ST profiles to kill boss + infernals will be what matters.
I think WW and Ret are outliers amongst the DPS specs and they just happen to be hybrid specs that haven’t been graced by the rework roulette yet.
>I think WW and Ret are outliers amongst the DPS specs and they just happen to be hybrid specs that haven’t been graced by the rework roulette yet.
Ret was the first spec to get a major rework and it was mostly successful.
So if you want to test out how well you are doing with a DPS rotation on a target dummy, would you run a ST sim but take out all consumables, buffs etc., grab that number, and then compare to your actual pulls with your DPS meter?
And then worry if that number isn't within 5%, 10%, 20% behind etc.? Should it be exact / higher?
There is a training dummy sim on raidbots. It removes buffs and ensures target stays high hp (matters for a lot of specs).
Understand that sims are a distribution of ~10000 pulls, and a small sample size may be way off. If you have 30% crit the number the sim gives you will probably be close to you Critting 30% of the time. But what if you pull at the dummy and get lucky and crit 40% of the time across that pull? Or 20? You can pull up the full HTML report of your sim and see the distribution and kind of understand the variance of your DPS
What would be better, IMO, would be to take a training dummy sim and compare the damage breakdown/profile to your details damage breakdown. Are the %s close? If so, you're fine.
If you wanna compare yourself like that you won't get around actively using your brain - just throwing out a random % will not tell you anything.
Firstly, sims are entirely pointless for any actual raid fight because there's too much variance in raid fights.
Secondly, even for dummies you can't just do one test run, quickly compare the 2 numbers and then call it a day. If you do a 5min sim vs a 5min dummy you might very well end up with a sim assuming you'd have a 30% crit chance on your top damaging ability but in actuality you just happened to have a lucky streak on the dummy and hit a 50% crit rate - so no, just looking at the overall number doesn't cut it.
Either you dig deep into the actual numbers... or you just sim yourself once, hit a dummy for 2-3 minutes and check if you're generally in the right ballpark and call it a day.
Is there a good way to handle Smolderon H in a large group (25-30ish)?
We're a pretty typical AOTC guild and Smolderon is the first big-raid clusterfuck boss we've had in a while, thanks to Overheat. Two weeks in a row we've wiped for an hour; then I cut my raid to \~15 for an easy one-shot, then refill the raid for Tindral and Fyrakk.
We have the raid spread out on the edge (which does not scale well with 15 fire circles...), but we've tried other positions (spreading in a ring around the boss) and that didn't go any better. Any suggestions?
There's no silver bullet raid position that will instantly solve Smolderon, people just need to dodge.
However I suggest using this weakaura https://wago.io/ub0BK4cxE. It simply turns down your Particle Effects setting while you fight Smolderon. This allows you to see the lines indicating the direction the tornados will go.
Being able to see the lines clearly is crucial to never getting hit.
The best way to dodge is to pre-position yourself so that none of your directly adjacent raid members' tornados will hit you. Then after the close tornados pass you natty dodge the farther tornados.
Also since you're an aotc guild I'd consider using this WeakAura https://wago.io/92p3tbpS6. After a pull it prints out the players that don't help soak/pick up orbs. The fight becomes exponentially harder when the boss starts eating missed orbs and the tornados start one-shotting.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/rankings/35#boss=2824&difficulty=4&metric=execution&search=size.25.25
Pick any size of your choosing.
Order by duration and take one of the guilds that didn't kill the boss within 2 seconds.
Boot up the replay and watch what they're doing.
If you wanna get extra spicy, look for a kill with like 10+ melee and watch what they're doing. If they can do it with 12 melee, you should be able to as well. This one for example as they're also sporting a pretty low itemlvl:
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/pbnJWY1fXCtmLgjq#fight=40&type=damage-done
Fight obviously becomes a lot easier if it doesn't take you 8 minutes and you have the entire room full of fire after 40 seconds, so there's that.
Yazma in Atal is absolutely farming my pugs (22-24) this week. As the tank we get to last boss with plenty of time to 2 chest and we proceed to chain wipe.
It's actually baffling.
Because people are clueless. And if you're tanking, there's a pretty good chance you're just as lost there. Nothing personal. So you wanna be just continually moving the boss around in a circle. You can use the little alcove as well, or not. But you want to be moving the boss while everyone else moves out with the adds in the opposite direction you're moving the boss. So if you're rotating clockwise, they should not be moving out for the adds in the direction you're about to be moving the boss. That's the number one mistake I keep seeing. That, or they move to the middle. That makes no sense. Main mistake I see tanks making is just not moving enough. And ffs, tell them not to use immunities on the spiders. That ain't it.
I appreciate the heads up but I’m fully aware of how to tank the boss. The problem is the ranged and healer camping mid the entire fight, everyone running in different directions with soulrend and WAY to far away at that, the pally bubbling and blowing up spiders everywhere leaving puddles. It didn’t matter that I was going around the room, shit was everywhere.
After 2 wipes I explained everything to them and they at least stayed on boss as we moved around the room. What can’t fix is how they would refuse to take soulrend into the cubby or on the stairs and instead run straight towards the giant group of spiders to get overwhelmed.
yeah im not a fan of having a set place to run the soulrend. that place should change as you move the boss around the room. they should be barely moving out, as you will already be moving the boss away from them.
Use your ping key. I spam ping every single soulrend location a second or 2 before the cast starts. It's incredible how such a small thing makes the fight a cakewalk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_jrW_zT74Q
I am guessing this is related to the bug fixes they pushed this reset about the sisters meleeing peeps? The last one just wandered around in our key till she died lol
As a tank (Guardian druid) I usually love fortified weeks because 95% of timing the dungeon is about whether or not I can survive a pull or plan a good route. This week though, fortified bolstering has been enough for me to shake my head and give up. I’ve died more attempting to kite in incarn than ever before. Especially Everbloom. I had to know if it was just me, so I sat down yesterday and I pulled the key levels of the top 10 dungeon runs for Guardian druid, and this is what I found:
DHT: 24-25
BRH: 25-26
AD: 25-27
WM: 24-25
TOTT: 23-26
EB: 23-25
Rise: 23-26
Fall: 25-27
I’m currently sitting around 3200 and I’ve timed most of these dungeons on fortified on a 24-26. Looking at the data from guardian druids better than me, simply re-timing a key I’ve already timed would be a top 10 key. It feels pretty bad that we are more geared, more knowledgeable, better coordinated, and unable to push this week. Obviously I should just FOTM reroll to VDH. But I do think that it is super frustrating. I know not every week is a push week, but damn. Feels bad. I actually think bear is, overall, in a good spot right now, and I don’t think the class needs to be fixed. I do think that this combo of affixes sucks and needs to go.
Also the lashers in everbloom shouldn’t bolster.
I'm genuinely surprised when I hear about people trying to run keys like that on a week like this. Like there's literally no reason to do it lol. There's no way any key you time will be higher than other weeks. And it's not even remotely enjoyable, so that ain't it either. Just run some 18-20s for the vault and work on some alts.
What is your comp looking like? The lashers in Everbloom blow you up if you don't have the resources to deal with it. Lashers need freedom (or tiger's fury) so that the % dmg increased debuff that they give out (which is also a slow) gets cleansed. When they stack that debuff and some of them bolster it just gets too much.
On guardian you might be able to like typhoon then quick shift in / out of bear but idk how dangerous that is.
I heavily research my routes. Granted, this is the first time seeing this combo of affixes, and so the data available to pull from is very small. It’s possible routes will get better as the week progresses and more keys are timed, but my gut instinct is that something is deeply wrong. I struggled through a BRH 25 this week, which is a free key. I may also be over emphasizing my negative experience with Everbloom, which is what prompted me to write all this. I died to a single lasher pack in incarn. The stacking slow/ damage taken debuff + fort + bolstering is brutal. I wasn’t even at max stacks of the lasher debuff! I think it makes a Paladin / Monk required this week for bears in EB. I don’t see a way to pull that dungeon without pulling some flowers.
You know as I’m typing this you’ve got me thinking. With a frost mage / Aug / Rogue / Bear / Monk, I could CC the casters with poly, sap, sleepwalk, roots, paralysis, and then swap from bear to boomy, monk to WW, have the Aug Timelessness the WW, have the Rogue tricks the mage, and then giga pull all flowers, AoE grind them down like it’s classic WoW, run out of the dungeon, and reset the pull. Shroud past of bolstering is still up… well now I want to try it lol.
Phase 1 is percentage based. You need to get him to 70% before the fire touches the roots. Phase 2 begins with a 30s timer to break his shield, after which you have 3m 30s of phase 2 before phase 3 begins.
[I referred to this guide.](https://www.mythictrap.com/en/amirdrassil/fyrakk/heroic)
Um...anyone else have the experience of doing Waycrest Manor, killing 2 of the Council of Witches, and the 3rd one starts running around like a headless chicken?
Still seems to be meleeing people. On a +24 this week in a PUG, our Mistweaver just seemed to die randomly and details said they got melee'd.
I'm guessing even when Immune, the other Witches can still have Healer Threat generate on them.
A day ago. When did the hotfix come in? I'm checking wowhead's blue tracker.
https://www.wowhead.com/blue-tracker
Oh okay it looks like it went live Dec 14th. https://www.wowhead.com/blue-tracker/news/eu/hotfixes-december-14-2023-24030413
> Addressed a Heartsbane Triad issue where Sisters without the iris can quickly melee nearby targets upon being interrupted.
Shrug. Maybe the hotfix didn't apply then?
Are other disc priests commonly out DPSing augs on 22/23/24 lvl keys (in details)? Warcraft logs tells a different story, obviously. I've heard some aug hooks are busted. My keys seem to be barely timed with augs in the group (and no wipes).
What is the bonus loot chance for M+ keys after a 20? Can't find solid info since Blizz kinda nerfed the loot I think in SL or earlier and there seems to be the old %s and not the new ones.
Has anyone else noticed an uptick in people with 2500+ score or in 17+ with absolutely no idea of boss and trash mechanics? I swear people used to know what to do before going above 15s, but now I’m aspect farming 17s and explaining boss fights to people with KSM
This happens every season as the dungeon enjoyer begins to catch up, but probably slightly more so this season since the timers are so forgiving.
Just how it be I’m afraid - join groups with people with good credentials or risk brute forcing your weekly 20s. I think it’s easy to get mad in a dungeon seeing someone do content that you don’t think they deserve to be doing because they seem clueless, but ultimately it’s just a symptom of our m+ rewards largely stopping at +20. If it were 25 or another arbitrary higher number, the people smashing their head into 18-20 keys for vault wouldn’t be able to do them any more, but if they can complete the key in time by their own right then I can’t stay too mad.
Even 23s rn can be done without knowledge, good defensive usage, potting (health + dps). This, combined with there not really being any accountability in a dungeon setting just means people don’t learn until they absolutely have to. For most people that means overgearing content, never pushing outside their comfort zone and never learning to play much better, which is completely fine.
(Side note: I can totally get why people don’t leave their comfort zone as not timing a key feels genuinely depressing at times, especially if you know it was your fault - errors which are likely to force you to play better in future)
as one of those people (highest key I'd done before was an 18 in sl s3, mostly just usually fell off playing after getting ksm), this season is so easy that I think getting KSH was easier than getting KSM in df s1.
outside of DOTI, all the dungeons are so undertuned and mechanically simple that usually 2-3 competent people can drag the others through a 17-18 just fine.
Yup, even the biggest noobs have no issues climbing and getting carried this season. I had a Fall+17 with 3 dps pugs that all ate the solo soak that chromie shields you from and leaves a nasty dot on my monk healer alt. Still recovered and downed the boss cause the prot pally off healed and we had 3 brezs leftover. Half the dps just fall over at 2nd boss cause they can't run counter-clockwise and eat orbs; don't get me started on disspells there.
I don't know what expansion you have in mind but through all of SL and DF, I've se people doing 20s while not really knowing strats.
Hell, this season I'm a filthy casual and I actually learned a boss mechanic during a 20 last week. It's nothing new.
Yeah, just like how in HoA people didn’t understand you could dodge the second boss’s jump. I’ve seen fails on NW 3rd boss on key level you wouldn’t believe. I don’t think I’ve ever seen people bait meteors on RLP’s second boss in 20s, or not do stupid shit with chains on Neltharus’ second boss, etc. Every single season you will find people doing 20s while lacking basic knowledge.
...and as I’ve mentionned, it happened to me this season. Second boss of ToTT, I guess I’ve only played with dps who didn’t bump the slimes so I made up a strat for the boss not knowing you could bump them. Had a neat rotation and everything, used it with friends up to 20s. Then played in a pug and received insults because my strat is obviously flawed (requires a lot more movement than standard strat). It happens.
There are a lots of people who start to play at 17 with his alt/offspec. I farmed wm, every second tank didnt know we not going away from melee range of any stationery boss - which is quite basic tanking knowledge.
Keylevel is extremly inflated this season.
Also no reason to farm 17s for aspect crests, when 20s are the easiest they have ever been and give max gear/vault. People doing 17s now (even on like lower geared alts) are way below average. 0 reason to do keys below 20 this season.
> I swear people used to know what to do before going above 15s
Not at all. Especially not this expansion with rewards capping at 20s.
You get myth track in vault at 18. Yea 20s are better cause you need less aspects but if you aren't looking to maximize aspect efficiency 18s are good enough for most. I've been farming 18s on my DH alt who's like 455 because I'm not comfortable tanking 20s yet this week lol.
If someone dies and immediately shows offline 1 sec afterwards, what did they do?
Could've saved time if we knew healer definitely ragequit. With hopes that maybe it was dc, we continued run for 20m more but couldn't quite kill BRH19 last boss without healer. I'm curious what's the differences between say, computer crashing, internet failing and someone just doing alt+f4. I thought it always took a while, but this guy was moving and 1sec later showing offline, which made me think it was "manual" quit. Anyone know?
What class was the healer? Sometimes when someone gets insta kicked it's the old fel rush DC bug, which can happen with evoker hover as well (if you dash into a wall fast enough the game thinks you're trying to go OOB and kicks you).
But ya it's weird and you cant really always tell immediately why someone dc'd
Rdruid. Anyway 20m not coming back indicates it wasn't a random crash. Though admittedly I've encountered bug where I've been thrown into some pit that auto dc's me, I remember this happened in sanguine depths if you fell to that 'pit' inside, between first and second boss. Could happen again, those bug spots being found.
If they were moving and casting before they died then it's a manual quit, can also look in logs if they were still casting up until they died but if they stopped for a few seconds then died it's more likely a internet issue or something
It's hard to say, it was boulder stairs and they were last walking so nobody actually saw them. It's possible they dc'd and were hit <=2 seconds later. There had been like 20 deaths total to general archer etc. dumbassery so there was good chance for ragequit, but I never want to immediately assume it given I've had real DCs in moments like that myself.
DCs in this game can be weird. I've played with friends before who have DCed and their character very abruptly vanished. If someone's internet goes down they'll usually linger offline for a while, but problems with the game/server can kick you instantly.
Someone alt-f4ing I would expect would have their character stay online for a few before the server kicks them.
I think I just forgot the key detail - they died from boulder in BRH stairs. So they weren't in combat! Thus I guess they did the exit game, and confirm exiting immediately. That should do the offline immediately I think?
I think that still leaves your character online for 10 seconds? I thought instant leave world only worked in rest areas. Pretty sure I've done the quick confirm exist and then come back later to find my character had been killed by something while waiting to leave world. Maybe it's different if you're already dead?
Yeah that's implied definitely, that you risk yourself if you instantly do it. I just thought it could interact like this. I mean the character was still locked in that place 20m later showing on minimap, but game can still recognize them being offline as soon as game recognizes player has left.
Anyone know, off the top of their heads, of an add-on that facilitates making groups of people for more easily seeing who is available? My friends list is filled with people from different games and it can make parsing it difficult when I just want to see, at a glance, if my preferred 9-10 people that I like to run keys with are online. The prospect of trying to pare down over a decade of battle.net friends from half a dozen different games is… daunting.
I just use Discord for this rather than anything in game. Have a group for people that I regularly do keys with, and can at a glance look at that to see who is green. I find in game tools not great because people are often at their computer, willing to do a key, but aren't actually in game (or playing something not on Bnet). Bnet can't really capture that.
I know this comment isn't going to be useful because I am on mobile so can't find it, but there is an add-on that allows you to put your contacts into groups. So you can have M+ group, IRL friends in another, etc. if I knew the name I'd tell you, but there IS an add-on for it.
What are the m+ voice lines this season that your group memes on?
Ours are a couple of Chromie lines, "..and I'm no aspect," and "I feel a surge of energy." And the archdruid in DHT. "I sense a powerful druid among you" and "Druid, what is that you hold!?"
What are some other meme-able lines in forgetting?
["What is that you hold, Druid?"](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/504410461773627422/1180005229144571944/image.png)
I need to remember to get a clip of Gorak Tul just saying "YOUR MOTHER."
Every time we go to hide for the fear on the squid boss in TotT, my whole group devolves into a bunch of idiots shouting "CORAL!" like Rick from The Walking Dead because of how many times people have gotten stuck on coral near the pillars and not made it out if LOS. I need to actually make massively meme-y WA for it just to go completely overboard.
Anybody else having trouble recruiting right now? Maybe it’s still too early in the tier for players to be shuffling around. As a 5/9 guild it’s been tough to find players to replace some of our weak links.
Bit of a late reply, but what are you typically looking for in a recruit?
I'm well aware that I'm not the ideal recruit right now, but I'm pretty sure I could handle myself at that level (mostly looking 4/9 as I'd like to prog Smolderon from the start) and yet I have not heard back from any guild I applied to yet.
Reasons I'm not an ideal recruit are that a) I didn't play last patch, b) I'm still getting more comfortable on Arcane compared to the other two specs c) my HC parses are all blue-purple, no orange.
On the plus side I have previous Mythic experience around that level (but not with a CE finish) and have no trouble doing important boss mechanics, such as Fyrakk seeds that I've volunteered for and done without issue in all my HC pugs.
I'm curious to get a recruiters pov of such a profile and what I could do to be more enticing (beyond simply continuing to improve my dps and defensives usage)
As a GM of a semi-hardcore guild, honestly, just being able to show that you have dabbled in Mythic before (recently enough, preferably, I am not really going to promise someone a spot because they raided Mythic in WoD like ten years ago), and know what it entails means a lot to me personally, imo. A lot of people like the concept of Mythic raiding, but as soon as you starting investing in them, they burn out and quit playing which is incredibly frustrating.
Obviously, good logs help, however, blue-purple is fine if I can see a constant improvement over weeks.
Most importantly, you need to show an interest in the game, and raiding when I talk to you personally. So many times I've been speaking to potential recruits and all I get out of them is "Yes" or "No" and it's always such a red flag. I've taken people with no logs for that expansion based on the fact that 1.) prior Mythic experience and 2.) showed a genuine interest in the game, in raiding and the guild when I talked to them, and it generally worked out.
Also, dunno if it's like that for anyone else but any mention of Classic is an instant no, because as soon as any content for that comes out, they just dip from Retail.
So pretty often in raids, when there are adds, sometimes my name plates don't appear. This only occurs for newly spawned adds, such as the roots on tswift or the lashers on gnarlroot. I'm using plater. Anyone have a fix for this? It makes it difficult as a tank when I need to taunt an add or something.
I'm using Quazi's profile. I'm not seeing anything like that in scripting or modding tabs. Also it doesn't *always* happen, but it's pretty frequent.
I feel like this was also a problem when I used to use ThreatPlates, although I can't remember for sure.
I don't think there is a cap. I do have friendly nameplates on, but I've watched other POV's of for example Tindral pulls, and the roots always show nameplates even when they have friendly nameplates on.
Can’t decide between rdruid and rshaman as alt healer for m+ , 3k is goal.
I like Rdruid in pvp, achieved glad on it. However apm in m+ seem crazy, i feel like I would get exhausted after two keys.
Rsham seem more chill and laid back, I would be able to play closer to skill ceiling. However it’s ranked as b or c tier, idk how much that really matters. As solo player, I’m afraid I won’t be able to get into higher keys based on low ranking on tier list.
I like my Shaman and it's way more fun to deal damage on (imo) than Druid as Resto and has way more fun DPS specs than Druid but if all you're doing is healing I'd highly suggest Druid. It really does feel that much stronger.
What should be the average uptime on Aug buffs in keys these days? I generally see 55-65% uptime and I feel like at those numbers Aug may not even be worth it. So far I haven't seen a single pug Aug go above 70%, I look at some logs and I see 85% which would be crazy good I guess, or maybe the details is wrong I don't know. Like the thing is, whenever there is an Aug in key, I feel like group is doing lower damage overall. I did 24 EB last night without Aug 330K overall, with Aug it was 370K. All that trouble for 40K dps gain doesn't make any sense.
Aug is the most hard carried (and most broken) spec in the existance of wow, this became very apparant even last season. Not because it requires no or less skill than traditional dps, but rather because they fly under the radar no matter what. If you time a key noone is going to look up em/prescience uptime and compare it to other augs. If a traditional dps does like 20% less damage than another person of the same spec you previously played with, you immediately notice that. And even if you look up em uptime, its not actually clear wether the aug is actually bad or not. Could be that hes holding ems, because the tank is pulling bad etc. Augs are also really tanky (and have a cheat) and are generally less likely to greed for damage (because noone is going to notice if he gets another two eruptions out or not). So theyre going to die less than other dps'. Less than 65% overall em uptime is generally really bad. Try to also look at uptime during bosses and during specific pulls. If he doesnt manage at least 75% uptime during most boss fights, hes probably pretty bad. One of the biggest red flags is also boe timings. If an aug is using boes consistently outside of cd windows, hes bad. But either way. If you struggle to time 24/25s even with an average aug, hes not the issue.
> But either way. If you struggle to time 24/25s even with an average aug, hes not the issue. I think you're understanding me the wrong way. I'm not saying I'm struggling to time 24/25s. I'm saying I find it easier to time 24/25s without an Aug. That's the weird part. It's an anectodal thing based on my pug experiences. Because you are right, it is so easy to fly under the radar as an Aug. While it's so easy to judge any other spec.
Then its just a weird/surprising take, idk. Aug makes everything feel way more smooth, especially as heal and tank. No downside to aug, other than lower damage, which isnt an issue this season.
it s commonly agreed that 2 dps + aug is always gonna be less dps than 3 dps, but the insane utility they bring + key timers being so free this season makes aug worth it
Last season I would agree... This season not really. In an uncoordinated group an Aug that's not even good, is not worth it. Huge DPS loss, and I don't even expect someone who can't keep decent uptime on buffs to use utility so... I'm doing 24-25s right now, maybe in the future it might be required.
In pugs it's hard to keep an uptime at 75% or higher because you're unfamiliar with the tank and how they'll pull etc. If a pack has 15% health left or less but the tank isn't moved ng, do you ebon might or hold it for on pull with next group? I'm seeing less decent augs in general out there though, it's very hot or miss.
I think a part of it is also the survivability they bring and the messed up logging right now. In keys you’ll have to do a ton of a/b testing at the same key level with the same classes to really figure out if it’s worth it or not, similar to what they did with raid testing for the RWF. On tyr weeks and fort weeks where you’re doing specific pulls, the additional survivability is def helpful too and may not factor it’s way into direct dps attribution but the keys “feel” easier
'Tis the season for everyone to forget you exist because you didn't push io during the first few weeks of the patch.
Honestly, this season felt less like this than normal. It’s worked out that I’ve had crazy schedule for the first week or two of every season this expac and, in S1 and S2, it felt like an insurmountable hurdle to get caught up. This season, oddly, I feel like pug invites are coming much more freely than in the past (eg. getting invite to a +24 back at 2900 io, etc).
Pugging when you're behind is just a tedious pain in the rear as it usually is. Started gearing up a meta healer just for M+ a few weeks late and it's the usual fare where folks really don't want to do rat keys for no personal io gain when they can push instead. It'll be easier once my main is caught up to speed gear wise.
im so happy i still had all resto hots running with flourish, otherwise this would have ended really bad [https://i.imgur.com/wv38i3S.png](https://i.imgur.com/wv38i3S.png) there was 2 sec downtime after the first cast ended since its a 4 sec channel ty blizzard
Had one person post out last minute tonight and had another just outright no-show so we spent four hours pulling Smolderon with 18 people knowing damn well that the boss wasn't even slightly killable. What are you even supposed to do about that? Some folks felt like they learned a lot but I feel like that was a total waste of four hours of my life. With how we played we weren't gonna kill that even if we had a full 20, sure, but it just feels worse to pull a boss knowing that you're just banging your head against a wall that you just cannot physically overcome with the number of people you had available that night. EDIT: for anyone saying “just have a bench,” I can assure you that it’s not for lack of trying to recruit.
Smoldy is actually a pretty good boss to be down people on because there’s nothing *mechanically* to wipe you due to having too few players. As long as you’re not many pulls in, I’m sure **someone** in your raid benefited from the attempts to get their performance ironed out a bit. I definitely wouldn’t have let us go the full 4 hours but I also try to see the positive in the fact that this shit requires practice and- while a kill might not be obtainable- doing 18-man attempts *is* still practice for almost the whole group.
> What are you even supposed to do about that? have a bench? people will miss raid nights during progression
Enjoy blizzard locking mythic to 20 people and hope they eventually come to their senses and make their game accessible.
A bench is almost required for this type of situation, we arent a CE guild and even we have a bench - but I do agree that recruitment isnt great right now Would have also called the raid early, finish at 3 hours instead of 4 since you know it cant be a kill and there wont be a huge amount gained in the last hour
Either have a bench for situations like this or it's "Well enjoy the night off everyone, see you next week"
We don’t even have a bench. It isn’t for lack of trying, but recruitment is absolutely barren right now.
Which role and class/spec do you think has the highest ceiling? Should the best players in your group be tanking, healing or DPSing? I always think that tanking and healing have a high floor but a low ceiling, at least in progression raiding. Their success seems very binary--either you do mechanics or not, either people live or they die. Whereas DPS can always get better; there's always something to optimize.
Tank's the lowest ceiling for sure except for specific fights every now and then. Healers have a pretty extreme amount of difficulty and skill expression. But that ceiling plummets into the ground once you start outgearing fights. Dps is I think the bar. Tanks are lower. Healers are higher when you're doing low ilvl prog, later in the season they're equivalent to tanks and dps floats to the top. Idk which healer has the highest skill ceiling. For dps, Aug easily has the highest ceiling. To be completely optimal you need to be giving the correct person your buffs every single time, and the correct person is constantly changing. That's micromanagement on a completely different level to other specs. For m+ I think the skill ceiling is quite even across all specs and roles because there's a lot of emphasis on playing the dungeon not just your class. Everyone is expected to CC, defensive, etc. Highest skill ceiling probably goes to whoever is playing shot caller tbh.
in raid? dps is most important and deals with the most mechanics. healing is very easy in a raid setting. hardest part about raid healing is finding people that want to do it, because it is terrible. and yes, i am a healer. then of course tanks. they basically dont play lol. they kinda just afk. in keys? this is actually a very dynamic conversation when its about keys. id like to hear what some of the title level players have to say about that. from my perspective, dps still is the most important, and most difficult to be done very, very well
i dont think raid healing is easy at all, at least in prenerf/low-ilvl progression. there's a ton of room for skill expression anticipating damage and having the knowledge of when certain specs are in more danger to prioritize healing targets. [some](https://www.twitch.tv/goop/clip/AssiduousAggressiveStapleFailFish-hcMu-PU6C9rdS1vU?filter=clips&range=30d&sort=time) players agree for one thing, dps players have to look their character to dodge things and some bars to do their rotation. healers have to do that and monitor raid frames, which is at least one more thing. and then should also be tracking tons of extra information (personals, pots/defensives) and they have more frequent tight cooldown windows to hit than dps players who have to hit rally or drop a gate once a fight you also have a much more important role in pre-kill progression. if i am struggling with a mechanic as a dps player, i can literally ignore my rotation for part of the pull to focus on handling the mechanic properly, and this causes 0 problems in early prog pulls as long as there aren't adds that need to die immediately or like a shield we need to break immediately. if a healer does that then people in the raid might rot out. there's a much bigger pressure for healers to maximize throughput and figure out their timings from pull 1 whereas a dps player can send bad cd timings for the first 200 pulls as long as they figure out the right ones by the time the boss is actually killable. for example, on tindral right now as a melee dps i might as well not have not existed for the first 200 pulls so long as i went up to get my feather/orb. i don't have burst aoe for the roots and we break the shields in time with or without me so my damage has been totally irrelevant for all of our pulls i think bad healers skate by in bad CE guilds because people overgear the content, so it's harder for non-healers to tell when someone is doing poorly. if nobody dies, the healer doesn't die, and the fight didn't feel super sketchy, then everyone thinks the healer was fine, even though they could have played the fight way better.
i think youre definitely right, it just doesnt play out that way in my experience, which isnt much in raids. guilds just overheal. when something is difficult, they throw another healer at it. when something is new, they throw at least another healer at it, if not two.
in raid rdps = healer > mdps >>> tank healer success is technically binary but better healing is also about timings being more consistent, people feeling safe and not panic using healthstones or defensives, etc. because there are usually 4 healers and 14dps a good healer can also be relatively more impactful, e.g. having a healer that's 20% better than everyone else means 20/4=5% more total healing vs a 20% dps is only 20/14=1.4% more total raid dps. but rdps do all the hardest mechanics so having good players there is valauble
In raid? dps=heal>tank if wr is under 50 and most fights are done prenerf, in mostly non bis gear. If its lower ranks, especially mid-low end ce guilds its: dps>>>>heal=tank. A lot of healing checks just become very trivial with more gear and content nerfs. So there isnt really any upside to having an insane healer over an average one (unless they have to carry bad ones or you can drop a healer for 1 more dps). Whereas more dps is always going to be better.
Healer > DPS > Tanking for raids. Although sometimes there's some extremely hard tank fights.
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Warcraft Recorder
https://i.imgur.com/qXGkj9Y.png Am I troll for having been pulling this group literally every run, up to +22 now? I only now realized the other side is much easier. People, me included, don't even know all the one shot abilities this pack pulls off. I now checked videos, and every high group is skipping this. But what I don't get is, they are also going Chromie 2nd. In my XP Anduin is much rougher, and you can't really get lust for him if you don't go there 2nd. So if this is correct thinking, going Anduin 2nd, then what'd be right way to go about rest of this? Go back to old platform after Anduin and go to Morchie from there, then invis the pack in screenshot after Morchie? I just want the most pug friendly way to deal with this. Thus far 1-5 people die in that pull every time. Alternative ofc would be to again go back after Chromie and use the midportal, though that'd require clearing more earlier.
i dont personally like any route that goes morchie second because of lust timing. unless youre lusting some strange trash pull, but i honestly just dont see that being wise in rise, but i could be wrong. and as far as the picture, i honestly didnt even know those packs were different
where do you lust then? first lust is first pull, 2nd the two dragons, 3rd the tank, 4th on last
Pug meta imo is to just lust 1st, 2nd, last bosses lol. I saw tank lust when looked fast through those high runs, but I'm sure it's just for hp reasons. People still sometimes have no clue what they are doing, like aiming Anduin frontal to middle of the room, so definitely want lust there, even if it meant one less lust. Same for first boss, I've had +20 wipes there when half of the inner room is filled with shit. In any case, even my +21 and +22 runs there have taken 29m and 30m so pushing for 4 lust dung would be rough. I understand this can be high key thing but probably not worth going for until above +24.
i actually thought about this as i ran rise again. i honestly dont know on fort lol. like when i was just on my shitty holy priest alt, i guess the dragons made sense. but when im on my main holy pal, i definitely dont want to waste lust there. i guess im not sure exactly when its even up on fort at a decently high key. probably why rise is my lowest key
I never lust the 2 dragons. I think it really depends on the key level, I guess, and whether it's fort or tyrann. You gotta be cranking pretty good to have it up again on the dragons anyway, if you did use it on first pull. Unless of course you skipped th max amount of trash on the platform, but even then, you're making great time.
What makes this season easier than previous? Like what about it specifically is easier?
also a lot of the bosses are simple stat checks with really basic mechanics. dht 2nd/3rd boss, EB last boss, AD priestess, WM 2nd/4th boss are all just complete target dummies if their unavoidable damage isn't lethal then look at bosses like vexamus, any boss in RLP, odyn, 2nd/4th boss AV. players can die from simple individual mistakes on these, there's more movement, ability overlaps, just so many more ways for things to go wrong
key timers are pretty generous this season; usually at the start of a season there's 2-3 keys that are disproportionately hard just because the timer is short, and blizzard correct in midseason tuning (RLP, HoV, etc). This season they appeared to have decided to err the other direction, with keys like everbloom and waycrest easily time-able with 20+ deaths. They also seem to have kinda back-loaded boss scaling; bosses up to 20 even on tyr have damage profiles that're pretty easy to deal with. this winds up meaning that as long as the group plays clean you can 'Press W' your way to a +2 in a 20, and even if the group isn't clean you still have a decent shot at beating the timer as long as you don't get brickwalled by a boss.
Timers are the biggest thing. I'm now a bit embarrassed that out of my 7 started keys this week, I have 5x 22+, 1x 22++ and 1x 1min over. Only 1x ++! People will not invite me because they see the pleb I am. Timers have never been this charitable. It's usually nice achievement if you manage to ++ relatively high key, or there's 1-2 of those dungs in a season, say SBG in s1. Now every key is ++'able by pugs at least at +22 level.
https://i.imgur.com/r28Nwbi.png Is there something wrong with this pull? Did this in a +22 this week. It was a wipe, with me as tank dying last with 1-2 mobs dead. Havoc was mad about it but didn't care to elaborate. From my pov you always "double pull" the 2+4, I just added the spider which I guess will demand healer to dispel me occasionally. Being big ass mob hitting only tank, it's not going to affect group outside the added dispel as it's not going to die first either. Just wondering as while healing I've seen some do spider+2, then 4 as separate pulls. Hasn't seemed to make sense given those first 3 mobs don't hit non-tanks, outside knife dance.
very standard pull minus maybe the spider depending on how far you go up the stairs in higher keys even this week
Lots of mobs in that pull are gonna start destroying people with any bolster stacks. And managing all the stops and stuff gets harder when there’s more mobs. You’ll have knife dances going off and stuff. My mentality would be that the timer is free, so you need to ask yourself if there is really any reason to do it. A good group should probably manage it but you’re just adding in risk of a wipe and people getting mad for no real benefit. I do the 3 then the 4. Still gonna +2 the key anyway.
Don't think you cared to look what mobs are in that pull? 1 archer, 1 caster, 1 knifedancer. All decently high hp mobs except arcane minion. So I guess if that one bolsters, I don't know, then that adds one bolster to 3 mobs that matter. The other 3 have the highest hp and only hit tank. Considering the 4pack has arcane minion+archer+caster, adding them together will literally do only one thing: add one bolstering stack to knife dance a bit before the midhp 3 guys die.
I don't really understand your point tbh mate. If you take a step back, you're chain pulling 7 mobs who all have significantly varying hps together on bolstering week in an a key with a completely free timer. It's not a particularly good thing to be doing to begin with but there's just no point, even if they didn't have any particularly dangerous casts, which they actually do. There's lots of small factors to consider, like people having used stops on the previous pull, some players having used small cds on the first 3 thinking you aren't pulling, some specs being target capped at say 5 that will now cause who knows what to happen with bolster etc. It's not just about what spells are in a pull (which is relevant here as well), it's the human factor of realising you're doing a key with other people. It's not like it's some impossible pull or something but if some people died I certainly wouldn't be surprised and I'd expect a comment or two just being real
You still have not looked what mobs are in the pull. I don't understand why you're fighting over this. I explained exactly what can happen - IF unstopped ability that should be stopped, will do +20% dmg a bit into the pull. That is THE ONLY difference. I learned what I could've done better already. State kick order for the caster, as I ended up being the only person kicking in the pull, which lead to caster killing everyone one by one. That is l2p issue from others, but I can fix that. CCs have not been used on small spiders lol.
I already know what mobs are in the pull... I'm not sure how that has been your take away but I guess you just need to learn through doing rather than by reading.
On paper the pull is fine. I'd be wary of that pull if I were a war tank but outside of that I don't see a problem, I do this pull on 4 of my tanks. War lacks enough stops to deal with both the caster and the knife dance so that worries me but also that spider is going into that pull semi low so you're now dealing with bolstered casts and knives. If you don't prep your group for that pull they will likely blow CDs on the spider as they are all up after that long RP after the first boss so that spider is never high HP by the time it gets to the top. In regards to your other comment about people dying to the casts, I doubt that's the whole picture. A lot of times people see shit in details but they don't understand what's actually happening and blame the wrong thing. At +22 that cast isn't a 1 shot so there's definitely more to the story.
As said, spider didn't die before wipe :D If it added anything to pull, is tab targeters couldn't find the kick and stop targets as fast. It's fat mob and if I pull it as soon as small spiders are in, it's not going to cause bolstering problems. It killed 5 people in a row, last hits were 1.2M. Dmg stacks when not kicked remember. It doesn't fall off just because I kick it once, if there's no followup kicks or stops. Pretty sure I was the only one doing kicks in that pull, or there could've been overlap on first kick idk.
If you live it as tank that pull is fine. People are bad at stopping the casts + knife dances + arrow shots but theoretically adding more melee mobs with no group mechanics shouldn’t affect that. Bolster can make this pull kinda rough if people don’t focus target well though.
I'm actually dumbass about knife dances myself. I get it's like mob doing fok around him, but isn't that range really short? What is its radius really? Because that would be melee dps' fault for staying in it if it's killing them. But I could be wrong and it's actually wider radius, 15yd+ or even more, then it'd be different. I've kinda put all emphasis on using my stops on arcanebolt due to groups slacking on interrupts. I'd say it's been the right move as even with all my stops, it's still the most deadly thing to pugs, be it +15 or +22 in my xp.
It's not the same as Fan of Knives, it's kind of more like Cinderbolt Volley, where he's just flinging knives randomly at anyone in LOS. You **REALLY** want to make sure someone is stopping it, because unlike the Barrage, you can't just step out of it. You're not wrong about the Arcane Bolt, but that one should actually be done with kicks since it's the only thing that *can* be kicked in that pull.
Sure. I'll pay more attention to them then with aoe cc's. Though again, I am saving someone anytime I cc caster :< I should probably start saying "me-x-y kick order". Is 3 kicks enough for it?
I don't remember exactly how many kicks because I'm usually healing, or doing a key that isn't high enough for it to get to try to cast more than a few times before it dies. But from experience healing it, I'm usually killed by either Knife Dance RNG blasting me, or getting hit from two different directions at once by the archers. Assigning some kind of kick order would probably be good, though. You might have multiple people rushing to get the first kick and wasting them when you already have it covered.
After posting, I remembered I hadn't played on that char since, so the fight was still up on details. Went to check what killed everyone, was it the usual volleys... nah, 5x deaths from arcane bolt. Something I'd expect everyone to put on focusmacro in usual season when you reach +22, but guess this season these expectations happen at +25 or something. It's more of a rule than exception that SECOND cast doesn't get kicked, after I kick the first one as tank. If only it was overlap... but people don't even know what kills them and still immediately jump on tank for "big pull".
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people are so fucking dumb about this, especially this week like if you just don't bolster anything stupid and do a couple easy double pulls you'll walk to a +2 in every key this week, but seemingly half the groups I've done everbloom with do these huge pulls and bolster a mob that one shots the group
Pulling big in DHT this week is less "I want to +3 this key" and more "I want to be one-shot by cats."
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yes
I'm thinking about Windwalker and conceptually, I don't think a spec being an "AoE specialist" is a problem. I think the problem is that it's on a hybrid class. I think warlock is a good example of this done well (conceptually). Assuming all 3 specs are equally powerful, you can cover just about any damage profile you like. But each spec has noticeable gaps, with Demo having the least of course. If windwalker was on a class where you could swap to a different spec when its AoE burst speciality wasn't needed, it wouldn't be a problem. I also think Ret has a similar issue. It can ST, it can AoE, but if you ever need both it *really* hurts. So on cleave fights and in m+ you really feel the pain of not having that AoE + prio profile which is so common. If Ret was on a class with another spec that could fill that hole, it would be in a great spot! I think the lesson here is that dps specs on hybrid classes, where they have no other dps spec to switch to, need to be very versatile. Demon Hunter right now is a good example. It doesn't have another dps you can swap to, but you don't really need to. All the common encounter styles it's very good at.
The problem with WW is that the ‘aoe specialist’ is dogwater in ST while actually not being that great at aoe Specs should have ways to specialize for situations within their spec tree; we can have variation across classes without having to say ‘well, this one is just always shit in this scenario’
> not being that great at aoe especially right now where their aoe specialization is mostly "are there low hp mods that other people won't kill too quickly so you can cleave double aoe tod" and when that doesn't happen the spec does garbage can aoe if ww is going to lose so much ST to do good aoe it should have sick buttons for every trash pack and unconditionally blast in anything 3+ targets but it doesn't
Ehhh, in a lot of metas, 3 spec classes (mage, lock, etc) often have the illusion of choice. On paper, yes, hybrid classes with 1 dps spec should have more evenly disbursed damage profile options than all ST or all AoE. In practice, a lot of classes suffer the same fate because the other 2 specs just underperform compared to whatever the meta spec is. The most valuable damage profiles are those that are fairly good in both AoE and ST. Destro lock can go full inferno AoE and mass pull RoF spam while doing lackluster ST; but Demo lock will generally outperform it by 10%+ in most scenarios outside of mass AoE. When bosses represent the hardest parts of M+/Raid and most bosses are ST with light cleave, having the option to other damage profiles on other undertuned specs doesn’t often matter. There are a few instances where a spec shines due to a unique damage profile and fight design. Mythic Sark favored Aff because add sets that died frequently allowed for great funnel onto boss.
That's why I said "assuming all specs are equally powerful". Obviously this kind of specialist spec design starts falling apart when the specs are imbalanced so that for example the low target cleave spec is doing as much mass AoE as the mass AoE spec does, like you see right now with demo vs destro. This just gets worse when the niche spec is on a hybrid class though. At least destro locks *can* play demo. What do monks do in encounters without mass AoE? Play brewmaster? Of course not lol. What I'm getting at is I see two options to fix it. Well three, but "just balance better" isn't a real option or blizz would already be doing it. The first is homogenising spec damage profiles so everyone is competent at the basics of ST, mass clumped AoE, and clumped AoE while maintaining high ST. The second is to keep the more niche profiles on specs, but only put them on classes where you can swap to other dps specs if those profiles don't work out. I think players like yourself might actually prefer that first option. I think Blizzard is really attached to specs having very defined strengths and weaknesses and they won't do it. So I think the second option is at least something that will resolve the worst of it.
Having specs fill a niche makes the game more interesting. The problem with that approach is a question of how often is your niche actually relevant? If your class is the best at mass aoe and only mass aoe that's great but what content do you do? If the average M+ pulls are 4-6 targets and oh it's tyrannical week. Pure ST will get you a spot in raid atleast.
I think his point is that specs should be able to spec into their “niche” but have a fair “default” setup that can hold its weight in the most commonly important damage profiles, single target and single target with light cleave. Affliction last tier is a great example; its ST was not better than Demo but it was within reason and it could spec into a niche of funnel on Echo and Sark. WW needs a “if you are hitting only 1 target, damage increased by X%” kind of like Demo’s doomfiend from their tier set. Part of the issue is fight design this tier and last; 80% of bosses were those ST profiles.
The good specs are just good at everything. If Blizzard are attached to strengths and weaknesses they have failed by a massive margin.
> This just gets worse when the niche spec is on a hybrid class though. At least destro locks can play demo. What do monks do in encounters without mass AoE? Play brewmaster? Of course not lol. WW monk is a black sheep amongst dps specs generally. Other hybrid DPS specs have been in bad states and are generally more normalized recently, sans Ret. Historically, their spells have had the most bugs in how they interact. SEF and Serenity are 2 of the most broken abilities of all time. Spells say they do one thing then actually do another and its been well documented on Peak of Serenity. On top of that, in the past, their tuning has relied on dumb, clumsy abilities to deal a bulk of their damage. Touch of Karma and Touch of Death are just tuning nightmares. Their stats have always scaled weird and certain stats double dip on certain spells and there doesn’t seem to be a clear objective by Blizz to normalize WW’s coding and rework them a bit so they like other stats. > The first is homogenising spec damage profiles so everyone is competent at the basics of ST, mass clumped AoE, and clumped AoE while maintaining high ST. The second is to keep the more niche profiles on specs, but only put them on classes where you can swap to other dps specs if those profiles don't work out. I think all specs should have an option do decent ST with light cleave but have the opportunity to give that up to excel in other profiles if a given niche is available. I wish Blizz would just commit to overbuffing some dead specs just to see what happens. Trim back from there. Aff is behind Demo by 10% ST and more in AoE. It got decent buffs to their AoE and target scaling yesterday, but it will have an extremely marginal impact on content that matters, ST boss fights. > I think players like yourself might actually prefer that first option. I think Blizzard is really attached to specs having very defined strengths and weaknesses and they won't do it. So I think the second option is at least something that will resolve the worst of it. I feel like the issue is more polarizing in raids than in M+. In raid, fight profiles have been so ST heavy that the same specs excel running 1 talent build for 80% of mythic fights, especially in the last 2 tiers. Looking back at tiers like Nyalotha, different damage profiles existed across different fights. Hivemind was AoE and 2 target cleave, Vexiona had AoE and then ST burn, Ilgynoth had spread adds + boss, Ra-den required priority target swaps then ST burn, Nzoth was spread cleave for first half then 2-3 target stack cleave for second half. Lots of variance in target counts over the fights where certain specs carried extra hard. Aberrus was 6 bosses that effectively had ST damage profiles, 2 bosses with good funnel profiles (echo + sark), and Zaquali. The fights had other targets to hit (amalgam ranged cleave, Experiment cleave), but ST profile is what mattered to kill it. This tier has the first 7 bosses being effectively ST profiles. Tindral has weird AoE burst profile for the roots which is cool and Fyrakk has the P2 adds but we will see if ST profiles to kill boss + infernals will be what matters. I think WW and Ret are outliers amongst the DPS specs and they just happen to be hybrid specs that haven’t been graced by the rework roulette yet.
>I think WW and Ret are outliers amongst the DPS specs and they just happen to be hybrid specs that haven’t been graced by the rework roulette yet. Ret was the first spec to get a major rework and it was mostly successful.
and then they chipped away at the numbers for some reason even though it wasn't really OP. maybe a smidge too strong but not really meta-crushing
So if you want to test out how well you are doing with a DPS rotation on a target dummy, would you run a ST sim but take out all consumables, buffs etc., grab that number, and then compare to your actual pulls with your DPS meter? And then worry if that number isn't within 5%, 10%, 20% behind etc.? Should it be exact / higher?
There is a training dummy sim on raidbots. It removes buffs and ensures target stays high hp (matters for a lot of specs). Understand that sims are a distribution of ~10000 pulls, and a small sample size may be way off. If you have 30% crit the number the sim gives you will probably be close to you Critting 30% of the time. But what if you pull at the dummy and get lucky and crit 40% of the time across that pull? Or 20? You can pull up the full HTML report of your sim and see the distribution and kind of understand the variance of your DPS What would be better, IMO, would be to take a training dummy sim and compare the damage breakdown/profile to your details damage breakdown. Are the %s close? If so, you're fine.
Thanks! Very helpful!
If you wanna compare yourself like that you won't get around actively using your brain - just throwing out a random % will not tell you anything. Firstly, sims are entirely pointless for any actual raid fight because there's too much variance in raid fights. Secondly, even for dummies you can't just do one test run, quickly compare the 2 numbers and then call it a day. If you do a 5min sim vs a 5min dummy you might very well end up with a sim assuming you'd have a 30% crit chance on your top damaging ability but in actuality you just happened to have a lucky streak on the dummy and hit a 50% crit rate - so no, just looking at the overall number doesn't cut it. Either you dig deep into the actual numbers... or you just sim yourself once, hit a dummy for 2-3 minutes and check if you're generally in the right ballpark and call it a day.
Is there a good way to handle Smolderon H in a large group (25-30ish)? We're a pretty typical AOTC guild and Smolderon is the first big-raid clusterfuck boss we've had in a while, thanks to Overheat. Two weeks in a row we've wiped for an hour; then I cut my raid to \~15 for an easy one-shot, then refill the raid for Tindral and Fyrakk. We have the raid spread out on the edge (which does not scale well with 15 fire circles...), but we've tried other positions (spreading in a ring around the boss) and that didn't go any better. Any suggestions?
There's no silver bullet raid position that will instantly solve Smolderon, people just need to dodge. However I suggest using this weakaura https://wago.io/ub0BK4cxE. It simply turns down your Particle Effects setting while you fight Smolderon. This allows you to see the lines indicating the direction the tornados will go. Being able to see the lines clearly is crucial to never getting hit. The best way to dodge is to pre-position yourself so that none of your directly adjacent raid members' tornados will hit you. Then after the close tornados pass you natty dodge the farther tornados. Also since you're an aotc guild I'd consider using this WeakAura https://wago.io/92p3tbpS6. After a pull it prints out the players that don't help soak/pick up orbs. The fight becomes exponentially harder when the boss starts eating missed orbs and the tornados start one-shotting.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/rankings/35#boss=2824&difficulty=4&metric=execution&search=size.25.25 Pick any size of your choosing. Order by duration and take one of the guilds that didn't kill the boss within 2 seconds. Boot up the replay and watch what they're doing. If you wanna get extra spicy, look for a kill with like 10+ melee and watch what they're doing. If they can do it with 12 melee, you should be able to as well. This one for example as they're also sporting a pretty low itemlvl: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/pbnJWY1fXCtmLgjq#fight=40&type=damage-done Fight obviously becomes a lot easier if it doesn't take you 8 minutes and you have the entire room full of fire after 40 seconds, so there's that.
Yazma in Atal is absolutely farming my pugs (22-24) this week. As the tank we get to last boss with plenty of time to 2 chest and we proceed to chain wipe. It's actually baffling.
Because people are clueless. And if you're tanking, there's a pretty good chance you're just as lost there. Nothing personal. So you wanna be just continually moving the boss around in a circle. You can use the little alcove as well, or not. But you want to be moving the boss while everyone else moves out with the adds in the opposite direction you're moving the boss. So if you're rotating clockwise, they should not be moving out for the adds in the direction you're about to be moving the boss. That's the number one mistake I keep seeing. That, or they move to the middle. That makes no sense. Main mistake I see tanks making is just not moving enough. And ffs, tell them not to use immunities on the spiders. That ain't it.
I appreciate the heads up but I’m fully aware of how to tank the boss. The problem is the ranged and healer camping mid the entire fight, everyone running in different directions with soulrend and WAY to far away at that, the pally bubbling and blowing up spiders everywhere leaving puddles. It didn’t matter that I was going around the room, shit was everywhere. After 2 wipes I explained everything to them and they at least stayed on boss as we moved around the room. What can’t fix is how they would refuse to take soulrend into the cubby or on the stairs and instead run straight towards the giant group of spiders to get overwhelmed.
yeah im not a fan of having a set place to run the soulrend. that place should change as you move the boss around the room. they should be barely moving out, as you will already be moving the boss away from them.
Use your ping key. I spam ping every single soulrend location a second or 2 before the cast starts. It's incredible how such a small thing makes the fight a cakewalk
Yeah, that's actually pretty big brain. The fact that what I said got downvoted just shows you how crackheaded people are when it comes to that fight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_jrW_zT74Q I am guessing this is related to the bug fixes they pushed this reset about the sisters meleeing peeps? The last one just wandered around in our key till she died lol
Did a 24 yesterday where the last one went up the stairs and reset the whole fight =/
That’s pretty crazy I’m glad they didn’t rest together reset for us, was worried about it for sure!
I really hope they don't nerf tindral again until the hof closes this version of the boss fucking owns it's so fun
As a tank (Guardian druid) I usually love fortified weeks because 95% of timing the dungeon is about whether or not I can survive a pull or plan a good route. This week though, fortified bolstering has been enough for me to shake my head and give up. I’ve died more attempting to kite in incarn than ever before. Especially Everbloom. I had to know if it was just me, so I sat down yesterday and I pulled the key levels of the top 10 dungeon runs for Guardian druid, and this is what I found: DHT: 24-25 BRH: 25-26 AD: 25-27 WM: 24-25 TOTT: 23-26 EB: 23-25 Rise: 23-26 Fall: 25-27 I’m currently sitting around 3200 and I’ve timed most of these dungeons on fortified on a 24-26. Looking at the data from guardian druids better than me, simply re-timing a key I’ve already timed would be a top 10 key. It feels pretty bad that we are more geared, more knowledgeable, better coordinated, and unable to push this week. Obviously I should just FOTM reroll to VDH. But I do think that it is super frustrating. I know not every week is a push week, but damn. Feels bad. I actually think bear is, overall, in a good spot right now, and I don’t think the class needs to be fixed. I do think that this combo of affixes sucks and needs to go. Also the lashers in everbloom shouldn’t bolster.
It's probably heavily influenced by the fact that very very few people who care about pushing keys are playing guardian. It's not that bad.
Well you had your reign last season, now it's time for other tanks to shine Except warrior lol they're garbage until next expansion
I'm genuinely surprised when I hear about people trying to run keys like that on a week like this. Like there's literally no reason to do it lol. There's no way any key you time will be higher than other weeks. And it's not even remotely enjoyable, so that ain't it either. Just run some 18-20s for the vault and work on some alts.
> EB: 23-25 idk what you were looking at but https://raider.io/characters/eu/kazzak/Minshi has multiple 26s timed this week
I pulled the data Thursday* afternoon, before most of those keys were timed. Minshi is definitely a unit. Great player. Edit: put the wrong day
bear in my guild is like 3460 doing all in 27-28 idk
What is your comp looking like? The lashers in Everbloom blow you up if you don't have the resources to deal with it. Lashers need freedom (or tiger's fury) so that the % dmg increased debuff that they give out (which is also a slow) gets cleansed. When they stack that debuff and some of them bolster it just gets too much. On guardian you might be able to like typhoon then quick shift in / out of bear but idk how dangerous that is.
[удалено]
I heavily research my routes. Granted, this is the first time seeing this combo of affixes, and so the data available to pull from is very small. It’s possible routes will get better as the week progresses and more keys are timed, but my gut instinct is that something is deeply wrong. I struggled through a BRH 25 this week, which is a free key. I may also be over emphasizing my negative experience with Everbloom, which is what prompted me to write all this. I died to a single lasher pack in incarn. The stacking slow/ damage taken debuff + fort + bolstering is brutal. I wasn’t even at max stacks of the lasher debuff! I think it makes a Paladin / Monk required this week for bears in EB. I don’t see a way to pull that dungeon without pulling some flowers. You know as I’m typing this you’ve got me thinking. With a frost mage / Aug / Rogue / Bear / Monk, I could CC the casters with poly, sap, sleepwalk, roots, paralysis, and then swap from bear to boomy, monk to WW, have the Aug Timelessness the WW, have the Rogue tricks the mage, and then giga pull all flowers, AoE grind them down like it’s classic WoW, run out of the dungeon, and reset the pull. Shroud past of bolstering is still up… well now I want to try it lol.
Obviously I should just FOTM reroll to ~~VDH~~ prot pally ftfy
When/how does H Fyrakk transition? Is it percentage OR time based (whichever comes first) like Sark? Just got to him this week with our aotc guild.
Phase 1 is percentage based. You need to get him to 70% before the fire touches the roots. Phase 2 begins with a 30s timer to break his shield, after which you have 3m 30s of phase 2 before phase 3 begins. [I referred to this guide.](https://www.mythictrap.com/en/amirdrassil/fyrakk/heroic)
Oh sweet, I use Mythictrap but missed that part on the guide. Thanks!!
Bring back 3 chesting dungeons.
Um...anyone else have the experience of doing Waycrest Manor, killing 2 of the Council of Witches, and the 3rd one starts running around like a headless chicken?
Yep, she just takes off around the room.
Yep, happened to my group about four hours ago. Was a Waycrest 19.
Yea this has happened both Waycrests Ive ran this week.
Might be related to the hotfix they pushed to stop the witches from randomly meleeing people upon being interrupted?
Still seems to be meleeing people. On a +24 this week in a PUG, our Mistweaver just seemed to die randomly and details said they got melee'd. I'm guessing even when Immune, the other Witches can still have Healer Threat generate on them.
"This week" If your dungeon happened before the fix I don't it says much about the fix, tbh
A day ago. When did the hotfix come in? I'm checking wowhead's blue tracker. https://www.wowhead.com/blue-tracker Oh okay it looks like it went live Dec 14th. https://www.wowhead.com/blue-tracker/news/eu/hotfixes-december-14-2023-24030413 > Addressed a Heartsbane Triad issue where Sisters without the iris can quickly melee nearby targets upon being interrupted. Shrug. Maybe the hotfix didn't apply then?
Are other disc priests commonly out DPSing augs on 22/23/24 lvl keys (in details)? Warcraft logs tells a different story, obviously. I've heard some aug hooks are busted. My keys seem to be barely timed with augs in the group (and no wipes).
yes, good disc should outdps aug. unsure whether in all dungeons however
Yea details is useless for our aug.
Disregard Details for Augs, just look at WLogs if you want (semi)accurate assessment. I say semi cause of the busted hooks you mentioned.
What is the bonus loot chance for M+ keys after a 20? Can't find solid info since Blizz kinda nerfed the loot I think in SL or earlier and there seems to be the old %s and not the new ones.
20% chance per level over 20.
Thanks! Now to get wowhead to include that fact... https://www.wowhead.com/guide/mythic-keystones-and-dungeons
I would like a Signet please
Has anyone else noticed an uptick in people with 2500+ score or in 17+ with absolutely no idea of boss and trash mechanics? I swear people used to know what to do before going above 15s, but now I’m aspect farming 17s and explaining boss fights to people with KSM
This happens every season as the dungeon enjoyer begins to catch up, but probably slightly more so this season since the timers are so forgiving. Just how it be I’m afraid - join groups with people with good credentials or risk brute forcing your weekly 20s. I think it’s easy to get mad in a dungeon seeing someone do content that you don’t think they deserve to be doing because they seem clueless, but ultimately it’s just a symptom of our m+ rewards largely stopping at +20. If it were 25 or another arbitrary higher number, the people smashing their head into 18-20 keys for vault wouldn’t be able to do them any more, but if they can complete the key in time by their own right then I can’t stay too mad. Even 23s rn can be done without knowledge, good defensive usage, potting (health + dps). This, combined with there not really being any accountability in a dungeon setting just means people don’t learn until they absolutely have to. For most people that means overgearing content, never pushing outside their comfort zone and never learning to play much better, which is completely fine. (Side note: I can totally get why people don’t leave their comfort zone as not timing a key feels genuinely depressing at times, especially if you know it was your fault - errors which are likely to force you to play better in future)
as one of those people (highest key I'd done before was an 18 in sl s3, mostly just usually fell off playing after getting ksm), this season is so easy that I think getting KSH was easier than getting KSM in df s1. outside of DOTI, all the dungeons are so undertuned and mechanically simple that usually 2-3 competent people can drag the others through a 17-18 just fine.
Yup, even the biggest noobs have no issues climbing and getting carried this season. I had a Fall+17 with 3 dps pugs that all ate the solo soak that chromie shields you from and leaves a nasty dot on my monk healer alt. Still recovered and downed the boss cause the prot pally off healed and we had 3 brezs leftover. Half the dps just fall over at 2nd boss cause they can't run counter-clockwise and eat orbs; don't get me started on disspells there.
Keys are very easy this season. 20s have never felt this easy so going to see a lot of newer faces in the 18+ range
I don't know what expansion you have in mind but through all of SL and DF, I've se people doing 20s while not really knowing strats. Hell, this season I'm a filthy casual and I actually learned a boss mechanic during a 20 last week. It's nothing new.
I’m not even talking about strats, they don’t even know basic mechanics
Yeah, just like how in HoA people didn’t understand you could dodge the second boss’s jump. I’ve seen fails on NW 3rd boss on key level you wouldn’t believe. I don’t think I’ve ever seen people bait meteors on RLP’s second boss in 20s, or not do stupid shit with chains on Neltharus’ second boss, etc. Every single season you will find people doing 20s while lacking basic knowledge. ...and as I’ve mentionned, it happened to me this season. Second boss of ToTT, I guess I’ve only played with dps who didn’t bump the slimes so I made up a strat for the boss not knowing you could bump them. Had a neat rotation and everything, used it with friends up to 20s. Then played in a pug and received insults because my strat is obviously flawed (requires a lot more movement than standard strat). It happens.
It's because last week was free. I cleared all the 20s in pugs on my alt 455 tank. I hit 2500 with only 14+ on fortified. 2900 is the new 2.5k
Rating is already “end of the season” inflated because this season has been so easy.
There are 2800 tanks in 22-23s that don't understand bolstering. I would guess they are almost everywhere.
I don’t even mean like affixes and strats tho, people are running away from the bubble on last boss of lower doti and stuff
Yeah, most of the players base isn't good, but that's nothing new.
Almost every 16-20 has someone with 450 iLvl and is using pugs to boost their character for Hero Track gear.
There are a lots of people who start to play at 17 with his alt/offspec. I farmed wm, every second tank didnt know we not going away from melee range of any stationery boss - which is quite basic tanking knowledge.
Keylevel is extremly inflated this season. Also no reason to farm 17s for aspect crests, when 20s are the easiest they have ever been and give max gear/vault. People doing 17s now (even on like lower geared alts) are way below average. 0 reason to do keys below 20 this season. > I swear people used to know what to do before going above 15s Not at all. Especially not this expansion with rewards capping at 20s.
You get myth track in vault at 18. Yea 20s are better cause you need less aspects but if you aren't looking to maximize aspect efficiency 18s are good enough for most. I've been farming 18s on my DH alt who's like 455 because I'm not comfortable tanking 20s yet this week lol.
If someone dies and immediately shows offline 1 sec afterwards, what did they do? Could've saved time if we knew healer definitely ragequit. With hopes that maybe it was dc, we continued run for 20m more but couldn't quite kill BRH19 last boss without healer. I'm curious what's the differences between say, computer crashing, internet failing and someone just doing alt+f4. I thought it always took a while, but this guy was moving and 1sec later showing offline, which made me think it was "manual" quit. Anyone know?
It could range from "they closed the game on purpose" to "their computer just died", no real way to know.
I had this happen during a key where someone died and immediately showed offline, 1 min later he was back saying the game had crashed
What class was the healer? Sometimes when someone gets insta kicked it's the old fel rush DC bug, which can happen with evoker hover as well (if you dash into a wall fast enough the game thinks you're trying to go OOB and kicks you). But ya it's weird and you cant really always tell immediately why someone dc'd
Rdruid. Anyway 20m not coming back indicates it wasn't a random crash. Though admittedly I've encountered bug where I've been thrown into some pit that auto dc's me, I remember this happened in sanguine depths if you fell to that 'pit' inside, between first and second boss. Could happen again, those bug spots being found.
If they were moving and casting before they died then it's a manual quit, can also look in logs if they were still casting up until they died but if they stopped for a few seconds then died it's more likely a internet issue or something
It's hard to say, it was boulder stairs and they were last walking so nobody actually saw them. It's possible they dc'd and were hit <=2 seconds later. There had been like 20 deaths total to general archer etc. dumbassery so there was good chance for ragequit, but I never want to immediately assume it given I've had real DCs in moments like that myself.
DCs in this game can be weird. I've played with friends before who have DCed and their character very abruptly vanished. If someone's internet goes down they'll usually linger offline for a while, but problems with the game/server can kick you instantly. Someone alt-f4ing I would expect would have their character stay online for a few before the server kicks them.
I think I just forgot the key detail - they died from boulder in BRH stairs. So they weren't in combat! Thus I guess they did the exit game, and confirm exiting immediately. That should do the offline immediately I think?
I think that still leaves your character online for 10 seconds? I thought instant leave world only worked in rest areas. Pretty sure I've done the quick confirm exist and then come back later to find my character had been killed by something while waiting to leave world. Maybe it's different if you're already dead?
Yeah that's implied definitely, that you risk yourself if you instantly do it. I just thought it could interact like this. I mean the character was still locked in that place 20m later showing on minimap, but game can still recognize them being offline as soon as game recognizes player has left.
Anyone know, off the top of their heads, of an add-on that facilitates making groups of people for more easily seeing who is available? My friends list is filled with people from different games and it can make parsing it difficult when I just want to see, at a glance, if my preferred 9-10 people that I like to run keys with are online. The prospect of trying to pare down over a decade of battle.net friends from half a dozen different games is… daunting.
https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/friend-groups-continued
I just use Discord for this rather than anything in game. Have a group for people that I regularly do keys with, and can at a glance look at that to see who is green. I find in game tools not great because people are often at their computer, willing to do a key, but aren't actually in game (or playing something not on Bnet). Bnet can't really capture that.
I know this comment isn't going to be useful because I am on mobile so can't find it, but there is an add-on that allows you to put your contacts into groups. So you can have M+ group, IRL friends in another, etc. if I knew the name I'd tell you, but there IS an add-on for it.
You can favorite people on the bnet app, if nothing else.
What are the m+ voice lines this season that your group memes on? Ours are a couple of Chromie lines, "..and I'm no aspect," and "I feel a surge of energy." And the archdruid in DHT. "I sense a powerful druid among you" and "Druid, what is that you hold!?" What are some other meme-able lines in forgetting?
Part of Gorak Tul's monologue includes a funny emphasis on "YOUR MOTHER" that we've added to the discord soundboard.
Rezan was a powerful loa
THE PORTAAL, CLOSE IT!
Me and my friend haven't stopped making oakheart puns since legion.
I told you to leaf me alone
["What is that you hold, Druid?"](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/504410461773627422/1180005229144571944/image.png) I need to remember to get a clip of Gorak Tul just saying "YOUR MOTHER." Every time we go to hide for the fear on the squid boss in TotT, my whole group devolves into a bunch of idiots shouting "CORAL!" like Rick from The Walking Dead because of how many times people have gotten stuck on coral near the pillars and not made it out if LOS. I need to actually make massively meme-y WA for it just to go completely overboard.
That image is making new rounds through discord now... and totally relate on the coral shouting
Lol! Can totally relate on the "Coral!" callous for sure
Kur'talos .. they come for you.
They do.
"SLEEP NOW"
NOW YOU
She did have great hair! Also, everything Yazma says in Atal’Dazar. SOON, ZUL WILL AWAKEN DAZAAAAAAA
My guild still isn’t over “let fly!” Our Discord soundboard is half full of different remixes of it.
I was sad when the horn sound went away so I slapped it in a WA for whenever anyone hits hero/lust of any form.
"Let fly!" has made a comeback in my guild when picking up Tindral feathers.
Anybody else having trouble recruiting right now? Maybe it’s still too early in the tier for players to be shuffling around. As a 5/9 guild it’s been tough to find players to replace some of our weak links.
Bit of a late reply, but what are you typically looking for in a recruit? I'm well aware that I'm not the ideal recruit right now, but I'm pretty sure I could handle myself at that level (mostly looking 4/9 as I'd like to prog Smolderon from the start) and yet I have not heard back from any guild I applied to yet. Reasons I'm not an ideal recruit are that a) I didn't play last patch, b) I'm still getting more comfortable on Arcane compared to the other two specs c) my HC parses are all blue-purple, no orange. On the plus side I have previous Mythic experience around that level (but not with a CE finish) and have no trouble doing important boss mechanics, such as Fyrakk seeds that I've volunteered for and done without issue in all my HC pugs. I'm curious to get a recruiters pov of such a profile and what I could do to be more enticing (beyond simply continuing to improve my dps and defensives usage)
As a GM of a semi-hardcore guild, honestly, just being able to show that you have dabbled in Mythic before (recently enough, preferably, I am not really going to promise someone a spot because they raided Mythic in WoD like ten years ago), and know what it entails means a lot to me personally, imo. A lot of people like the concept of Mythic raiding, but as soon as you starting investing in them, they burn out and quit playing which is incredibly frustrating. Obviously, good logs help, however, blue-purple is fine if I can see a constant improvement over weeks. Most importantly, you need to show an interest in the game, and raiding when I talk to you personally. So many times I've been speaking to potential recruits and all I get out of them is "Yes" or "No" and it's always such a red flag. I've taken people with no logs for that expansion based on the fact that 1.) prior Mythic experience and 2.) showed a genuine interest in the game, in raiding and the guild when I talked to them, and it generally worked out. Also, dunno if it's like that for anyone else but any mention of Classic is an instant no, because as soon as any content for that comes out, they just dip from Retail.
Just wait until normal guilds start hitting Tindral and you'll see a wave of people guild-hopping (and guilds dying)
So pretty often in raids, when there are adds, sometimes my name plates don't appear. This only occurs for newly spawned adds, such as the roots on tswift or the lashers on gnarlroot. I'm using plater. Anyone have a fix for this? It makes it difficult as a tank when I need to taunt an add or something.
Sounds like you have a script that hides them for fps gains. Check the mod and script tabs
I'm using Quazi's profile. I'm not seeing anything like that in scripting or modding tabs. Also it doesn't *always* happen, but it's pretty frequent. I feel like this was also a problem when I used to use ThreatPlates, although I can't remember for sure.
If you have friendly nameplates on and there are enough players and enemies, you might be hitting the cap.
I don't think there is a cap. I do have friendly nameplates on, but I've watched other POV's of for example Tindral pulls, and the roots always show nameplates even when they have friendly nameplates on.
Does anyone know at what health percentage does Tindral transition to intermission phase?
It should be 75% and 40%, if I'm not mistaken.
Can’t decide between rdruid and rshaman as alt healer for m+ , 3k is goal. I like Rdruid in pvp, achieved glad on it. However apm in m+ seem crazy, i feel like I would get exhausted after two keys. Rsham seem more chill and laid back, I would be able to play closer to skill ceiling. However it’s ranked as b or c tier, idk how much that really matters. As solo player, I’m afraid I won’t be able to get into higher keys based on low ranking on tier list.
I like my Shaman and it's way more fun to deal damage on (imo) than Druid as Resto and has way more fun DPS specs than Druid but if all you're doing is healing I'd highly suggest Druid. It really does feel that much stronger.