World of Warcraft

[devonin]

Re: World of Warcraft

These people are probably expecting everyone else in the raid to be set up "optimally," as well. In this case, provided everyone has the necessary personal skill to run their spec correctly, they shouldn't -need- to vary from their primary job.

I'm not sure how my example of a healer getting a lag spike suggests that they are failing to play optimally. To me, optimal play in the case of a KT fight, is that anybody who has healing spells that are quick try and get a heal on the frost tombed player. The loss of DPS from the 2 seconds you aren't DPSing is lower than the loss of DPS caused by a DPS player DYING in the middle of the fight (Or a healer dying, or the off-tank(s) dying)

Another Mage example: Noth. From what I understand, it -shouldn't- be necessary for Mages to decurse people, because healers have it within the limits of their class to handle it by themselves. But I know that that's not going to work in the vast majority of groups, so I'll sacrifice DPS and take care of the curses. I actually have my decurse bound to an easy key combination (alt+q, since I'm already using WASD to move it's an easy reach) specifically for this purpose.

My point is twofold in response to this:

1/ There are many people who won't do this, they won't sacrifice their DPS to make sure decursing gets done

2/ You -view- sacrificing your DPS to make sure the group gets decursed as part of being the best raid member you can be which puts you in a seperate group from the people I'm talking about.

And since my focus is on constantly striving toward perfection, whatever the current perception of "perfection" is, those are the builds I need to use.

To me the ideal way to "strive for perfection" would be to either figure out the numbers, or use their figured out numbers, and then use that knowledge to create your own spec. If you're going to just use their spec and rotation anyway because you "trust them to be correct" then what's the point in also reading about the underlying numbers? You're going to just use their conclusions too anyway.

My spec is not the ideal spec or rotation as specified by those websites, and yet I like to think I'm a pretty optimal tank at least in terms of the fact that if everybody else is doing their jobs passably well too (Like say, the biggest burst DPS in the raid isn't opening up on the guy I clearly haven't established full aggro on yet [Like guy number 4 or 5 in a big pull]) I do a damn good job building and holding aggro, stacking enough defense and avoidance to be surviviable for the healers to keep up with a minimum of effort, and yet here I am, passing on "better" pieces of gear, putting points in "bad" talents, and yet being diagnosed as "geared to be 2nd or 3rd tank" and having to either pull aggro off the main tank, or hold back to keep myself third on the list.

[Relambrien]

Re: World of Warcraft

I'm not sure how my example of a healer getting a lag spike suggests that they are failing to play optimally. To me, optimal play in the case of a KT fight, is that anybody who has healing spells that are quick try and get a heal on the frost tombed player. The loss of DPS from the 2 seconds you aren't DPSing is lower than the loss of DPS caused by a DPS player DYING in the middle of the fight (Or a healer dying, or the off-tank(s) dying)

A healer getting a lag spike isn't really something that should happen often enough to worry about it. An occasional blip in their connection due to the ISP having issues isn't something that can be helped, and if it happens, then "Oh well, nothing to be done about that. Might as well try again." Hopefully, someone will notice their healer is having trouble before a person is in danger of dying, and another person can take over. However, people shouldn't be -looking- to take over. They should be -prepared- to, but shouldn't expect it. In the case that they have to, then yes, I agree that would be "playing optimally."

1/ There are many people who won't do this, they won't sacrifice their DPS to make sure decursing gets done

These people are idiots and probably fall into the "I want the biggest number I can because it makes me feel good" group. Either that or they have inordinate amounts of faith in their raid members.

2/ You -view- sacrificing your DPS to make sure the group gets decursed as part of being the best raid member you can be which puts you in a seperate group from the people I'm talking about.

Point taken.

To me the ideal way to "strive for perfection" would be to either figure out the numbers, or use their figured out numbers, and then use that knowledge to create your own spec. If you're going to just use their spec and rotation anyway because you "trust them to be correct" then what's the point in also reading about the underlying numbers? You're going to just use their conclusions too anyway.

Reading about the numbers allows me to develop my own ideas when I don't have the ability to create the optimal spec, i.e., virtually always. For instance, according to EJ the current ideal Mage spec is 19/52/0 with heroic Ulduar gear enchanted a certain way. Obviously, as I haven't even completed heroic Naxx yet, I have absolutely no way to reach that level. Instead, I use what EJ has written about hit rating vs. spell power vs. haste vs. crit to determine what is an upgrade for me and what isn't, and what spec to use when I have certain stats.

The reason I'm Arcane still even though Fire is the "superior" spec is because I don't have the hit rating for it. I only have 9.49% hit off of my gear, and thus I need the 6% from talents afforded to the Arcane spec (in addition to raid buffs from Draenei etc.) to reach the hit cap. And because I'm using Arcane, which I've read to be a less crit-dependent spec than Fire, I try to stack haste more than I try to stack crit, with spell power trumping them both. This is what I'm talking about when I say I try to understand the numbers as well as I can, even though I leave optimal spec-crafting to the experts.

My spec is not the ideal spec or rotation as specified by those websites, and yet I like to think I'm a pretty optimal tank at least in terms of the fact that if everybody else is doing their jobs passably well too (Like say, the biggest burst DPS in the raid isn't opening up on the guy I clearly haven't established full aggro on yet [Like guy number 4 or 5 in a big pull]) I do a damn good job building and holding aggro, stacking enough defense and avoidance to be surviviable for the healers to keep up with a minimum of effort, and yet here I am, passing on "better" pieces of gear, putting points in "bad" talents, and yet being diagnosed as "geared to be 2nd or 3rd tank" and having to either pull aggro off the main tank, or hold back to keep myself third on the list.

"Good," or even "excellent" are not the same as "optimal." I personally enjoy running with you because I know you're an excellent tank, and I gladly accept that you prefer your own developed ideas over reading cookie-cutter builds off of EJ or something. But when I say "optimal" I mean "the absolute best as determined by the game's system of calculation with respect to a person's job." With DPS it's easy, just pick whatever gear and spec allows you to put out the most damage. It's more difficult with tanks, as there has to be a balance between threat generation, maintaining aggro for long periods of time, and survival. Because of this, there can be different flavors of tank that still result in success (mitigation vs. avoidance, for example), but there's only one flavor that is considered "optimal." So while you may have great success in your particular flavor, your success potential is less than that of someone using the optimal flavor.

This is likely why you are relegated to off-tanking. When people who know the optimal spec see you in a non-optimal spec, they automatically assume you do not have the ability to perform as well. When in reality, you may perform better in your non-optimal spec than a person in the optimal spec. In this case, the difference between "optimal" and "non-optimal" is that the hypothetical "limit" to a non-optimal spec is less than that of the optimal spec. People may misinterpret this to believe that the non-optimal spec is always inferior to the optimal one.

But like I said, with dps, it's a lot simpler. There are no "flavors" in a ranged DPS class like mine, as we have only one job: put out as much damage as possible. Granted, crit vs. haste is something of a flavor, but because any change will either strictly improve or worsen our ability to do our job, it's different from the tank flavors in that sacrificing one facet of the job may improve another facet.

Because of this, barring significant gear differences, the optimal spec will generally outperform any non-optimal specs fairly significantly. But in my case, as mentioned above, the optimal spec will -not- do as well for me as my non-optimal Arcane spec, due to the fact that I don't have the gear to support it.

[tsugomaru]

Re: World of Warcraft

A good mix of the two is probably best. There's only so much you can do by yourself, but the help the EJ community gives is extremely useful. Just from playing the game, reading my talents, and watching my stats increase as I put on better gear, I figured out which stats I needed to focus on when gearing. However, this was based on intuition instead of formulas that I couldn't derive. EJ has done that all for me.

I wish more people could understand that charts have a poor representation of actual skill. Two of our top dps are an enhancement shaman and a rogue. When we report the dps charts, they are easily in the top 5, however, when you look at overall damage, they end up being under the tank because they failed to move out of void zones on KT. Some of our lower dps in the 3k range, although they aren't the top, they are the ones who do the most damage over a long term.

It's even worse when you look at healing meters because they are completely irrelevant. Each healer has a certain job and this job is to keep the raid or tanks alive. As long as you succeed in doing that, you haven't failed your job. Your job isn't to have the highest healing ever. In fights like Gothik when he moves back and forth, sometimes recount doesn't track heals for the other side. We once had a fight where our raid leader almost kicked another healer for doing less healing than some of the melee dps and the reason why that happened was because his healing just wasn't recorded.

Another example would be Patchwerk. I personally believe that's a good measure of dps because everyone is allowed to dps without worry. If you don't perform as well, you really don't have much other excuse than gear and, "I can't play my class". However, healing meters hardly matter here because each tank will require a different amounts of healing and the amount of healing you get on recount will be based on how much damage each tank takes.

The same is true on KT. The healer watching out for iceblocks will generally have less healing on the meters because his job is to keep the iceblocked people alive. If he tops the meters on a fight while letting people die to iceblock until we eventually have little dps, he's failed his job.

Your healing on a healing meter will essentially be how much damage your targets take and if you compare healing charts from raids to raids, they should be decreasing as everyone gets geared better and better.

EDIT: Oh yah, I like theory crafting too. However, my builds end up being similar or exactly like the EJ ones, so I guess that's pretty cool.

~Tsugomaru

[tsugomaru]

Re: World of Warcraft

Every time I seem to get a high level of any class they nerf it in PvP. I've never gotten to play an OP class in Arena.

You have a priest right? If you dual spec into disc, even if you're PVE specced, you'll dominate.

~Tsugomaru

[Grandiagod]

Re: World of Warcraft

You have a priest right? If you dual spec into disc, even if you're PVE specced, you'll dominate.

~Tsugomaru

Somewhat, but I need a really good rogue and mage =x

Still not OP though, like warrior/druid was back in BC.

[Sir Psycho]

Re: World of Warcraft

Warrior/druid(holy pally) = win

[Squeek]

Re: World of Warcraft

Champion of Thunder Bluff. Champion of the Undercity.

Starting Sen'Jin now. It's funny that some people haven't even finished their first one yet.

In other stupid pointless news, we set a new record on Cyanigosa. 31 seconds.

Oh and I solo Chillmaw now. Took a few tries for strategy since he's harder than most 100k elites with the elite adds and the lack of pushback but now it's no problem~

[Grandiagod]

Re: World of Warcraft

http://www.popcap.com/promos/wow/

hell yeah

[Necamus]

Re: World of Warcraft

oh damn, i knew about bejeweled.. but peggle? rofl

Champion of Thunder Bluff. Champion of the Undercity.

Starting Sen'Jin now. It's funny that some people haven't even finished their first one yet.

it's funny that i have no idea what you're talking about

[Grandiagod]

Re: World of Warcraft

it's funny that i have no idea what you're talking about

http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=857

[Squeek]

Re: World of Warcraft

Speaking of the tournament, if you have trouble with beating opponents, you just use a very simple rotation.

You talk to them, select start fight, and spam 1. You'll get a hit in before they run away. Spin around to face them and back up the other way. Charge when you get the range. After the charge begins, spam 1 again to get another hit in during the Charge. Stay within distance of Shield Breaker and use it. Then put another charge on your own shield. Repeat this 3(1)-2-4 rotation and you win.

It's depressing that you had no idea what Argent Tournament was =(

ps - when you first switch factions, there's a bug where you can do one of the dailies with the new faction right away, so even though I can't do dailies for Sen'Jin until tomorrow, I already have 4 Valiant emblems. Means I'll have 6 when I start Orgrimmar and will shave off a day of dailies.

Using the Champions Writs I get every day, Thunder Bluff will be Exalted just from spillover rep in 25 more turnins to other factions. Probably going to have to do old quests for other factions since I'm really far behind on Org/Sen (I did all my early quests in Mulgore and Ghostlands).

Oh also I went ahead and farmed for the Black Tabby Cat (1/1000 drop) and got it about 30 minutes later. Funny that Alliance can't get it. Then I got the robot chicken and visited the neutral AH for 8 more pets. Almost at 50. Also KINDA working on the Loremaster achievement, which is hard because I blew through the old quests so fast with 3x, skipping a bunch of quests mid-chain.

[Grandiagod]

Re: World of Warcraft

SYou talk to them, select start fight, and spam 1. You'll get a hit in before they run away. Spin around to face them and back up the other way. Charge when you get the range. After the charge begins, spam 1 again to get another hit in during the Charge. Stay within distance of Shield Breaker and use it. Then put another charge on your own shield. Repeat this 3(1)-2-4 rotation and you win.

I run the opposite direction from them, shield break twice then charge, while spamming 1.

[Squeek]

Re: World of Warcraft

This is one of those times I'm glad I don't play on a large server, and doubly-glad that the vast majority of my server is Alliance. At 5AM, every noblegarden town was completely camped out for eggs.

Good thing I finished before dailies reset at 3am.

I collected about 500 pieces trying to get the rare achievements not part of the meta but it was a no-go. Will probably try again tonight since it's a school/work night and people really shouldn't be on.

My advice to any of you who can't play late and still want the achievement is to do it Wednesday or Thursday, or even Friday. The later you do it, the more people will have done it. Friday would be ideal if you have no interest in joining the crowds of people aiming for Children's Week, since they'll all be off doing that instead.

[Grandiagod]

Re: World of Warcraft

I did all the achievements for NG on a high pop server in about 4 hours.

Well, every achi except shake your bunny maker, and that's just because FEMALE DWARVES DO NOT EXIST

[Squeek]

Re: World of Warcraft

I had to log in later to find a female troll. Finally did, so that's done.

I like it when they realize that they're going to be bombarded, so they just stand in a crosswalk in Dalaran so people can hit them as they go by.

The only one I have left is the Un'Goro one because none of my guildies play past midnight.