Showing posts with label dps. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dps. Show all posts
Tuesday, 2 October 2012
Time for a Main Change
After four years of playing melee dps I'm kinda fo tired of it as my main spec. Yes, I still love the feeling when I pwn my opponents and I love the new Templar's Verdict annimation. Somehow swinging a sword over my head feels incredibly epic. But it's getting to the same boring old "beat-shit-with-stick" point that it doesn't feel challenging or exciting anymore. Not the way that it used to. My other half is currently loving how snappy Retribution is. He says it feels like Ret did during Wrath, but I don't feel the same sense of pure ownage. Especially without Consecration or Holy Wrath, both of which I used to use as part of my rotations for a good 4 years. This combined with a longing I've been having for my Shaman has made me seriously think about maining the shaman for Mists. Achievements are account wide, I've got my pets, mounts, and Over 9000 already so really the only thing holding me back is the fact that I leveled the paladin to 90 and not the shaman. Additionally, on the horde side I'm going to be leveling a shaman to 90 there and I dont' want to get burnt out on shamanism, but I know I'm going to be asked to heal in raids and right now I think I'd rather be tossing "jeebus beams" than Flashes of Light.
Monday, 3 September 2012
Patch 5.0.4: One Week Later
It's been a full week now since Patch 5.0.4 dropped and I've had a chance to play around with some of the changes a bit. Here's my impressions and opinions on the changes.
Paladin
Retribution—I feel like a n00b again. The rotation doesn't feel smooth or even like a rotation at all, more like awkward mutton mashing. Having 5 charges of Holy Power is great. And even feeling newbish, my dps is still through the roof. I think with time and practice it will feel more fluid again.
Holy—Pretty much the same. I miss being able to AoE stun the adds on Mannoroth with Holy Wrath, but healing is smooth and doesn't seem to be too much of a mana drain. Just is odd not to have to use Judgement EVER and not having to recast Beacon of Light on the tank. Overall, I like it.
Shaman
Restoration—RIP Telluric Currents as I knew it, and with it my mana regen. Heals them selves are great and Healing Tide Totem provides great AoE healing. Mana is a HUGE issue. Glyph of Riptide removes the CD on RT and thus makes it a huge drain on mana if you try to keep a rolling HoT on more than 2 people. I still love my Shaman, but right now I'm worried about her.
Elemental—Amazingly fun. Everything I loved about Ele they kept. Rotation feels fluid and with Glyph of Telluric Currents you will almost never go OOM as long as you can cast Lightening Blot. I actually switched my OS back to this because of how fun it was.
Enhancement—Feels pretty much the same. Still capable of high damage, but CDs on abilities leave downtime. Not quite as much fun as it used to be in Wrath.
Priest
Discipline—Atonement has been buffed! Smite healing is now one of the largest heals you can do. Pennance is affected by Atonement as well. This is even better news! But wait, Body and Soul is now a talent we can choose and finally the speed boost that was formerly way down the Holy Tree belongs to the "bubble" spec. Overall really enjoying it as it plays pretty much the same as before.
Holy—Three words: Glyph of Lightspring. Now you never have to worry about your healing suffering from people NOT clicking the Lightwell as your Lightwell is now a Lightspring and emits a smart heal to players with low health around it.
Mage
Fire—Glyphed, Fireblast now spreads your DoTs every time you use it. Combustion only explodes your Ignite and Pyroblast DoTs, not your Living Bomb. Sadly Flame Orb is now gone, but the Fireblast Glyph more than makes up for the AoE. All in all, play is a lot like before and feels solid.
Druid
Balance—Insect Swarm has been replaced with Sunfire that is now a separate spell from Moonfire. Changes to the way solar and lunar power are generated makes it easier to have more Eclipse uptime. You can now mount in Boomkin form! Overall, enjoying changes to Balance.
Restoration—Healing Shrooms. Nuff said. No, there's more, but that's a huge change as our Wild Mushrooms now have healing functionality. Glyph of the Treant allows us a "perma-tree" cosmetic form.
That being said these are the only classes and specs that I have played since the patch and even then some I have had a chance to play more than others. I'm not too worried about my favorite classes in the long run as I know high levels and more of our stats will even things out, just makes me a little worried in the short term.
Paladin
Retribution—I feel like a n00b again. The rotation doesn't feel smooth or even like a rotation at all, more like awkward mutton mashing. Having 5 charges of Holy Power is great. And even feeling newbish, my dps is still through the roof. I think with time and practice it will feel more fluid again.
Holy—Pretty much the same. I miss being able to AoE stun the adds on Mannoroth with Holy Wrath, but healing is smooth and doesn't seem to be too much of a mana drain. Just is odd not to have to use Judgement EVER and not having to recast Beacon of Light on the tank. Overall, I like it.
Shaman
Restoration—RIP Telluric Currents as I knew it, and with it my mana regen. Heals them selves are great and Healing Tide Totem provides great AoE healing. Mana is a HUGE issue. Glyph of Riptide removes the CD on RT and thus makes it a huge drain on mana if you try to keep a rolling HoT on more than 2 people. I still love my Shaman, but right now I'm worried about her.
Elemental—Amazingly fun. Everything I loved about Ele they kept. Rotation feels fluid and with Glyph of Telluric Currents you will almost never go OOM as long as you can cast Lightening Blot. I actually switched my OS back to this because of how fun it was.
Enhancement—Feels pretty much the same. Still capable of high damage, but CDs on abilities leave downtime. Not quite as much fun as it used to be in Wrath.
Priest
Discipline—Atonement has been buffed! Smite healing is now one of the largest heals you can do. Pennance is affected by Atonement as well. This is even better news! But wait, Body and Soul is now a talent we can choose and finally the speed boost that was formerly way down the Holy Tree belongs to the "bubble" spec. Overall really enjoying it as it plays pretty much the same as before.
Holy—Three words: Glyph of Lightspring. Now you never have to worry about your healing suffering from people NOT clicking the Lightwell as your Lightwell is now a Lightspring and emits a smart heal to players with low health around it.
Mage
Fire—Glyphed, Fireblast now spreads your DoTs every time you use it. Combustion only explodes your Ignite and Pyroblast DoTs, not your Living Bomb. Sadly Flame Orb is now gone, but the Fireblast Glyph more than makes up for the AoE. All in all, play is a lot like before and feels solid.
Druid
Balance—Insect Swarm has been replaced with Sunfire that is now a separate spell from Moonfire. Changes to the way solar and lunar power are generated makes it easier to have more Eclipse uptime. You can now mount in Boomkin form! Overall, enjoying changes to Balance.
Restoration—Healing Shrooms. Nuff said. No, there's more, but that's a huge change as our Wild Mushrooms now have healing functionality. Glyph of the Treant allows us a "perma-tree" cosmetic form.
That being said these are the only classes and specs that I have played since the patch and even then some I have had a chance to play more than others. I'm not too worried about my favorite classes in the long run as I know high levels and more of our stats will even things out, just makes me a little worried in the short term.
Friday, 17 February 2012
New Talents = New Toys
I was just checking out the updated Mists of Panderia Talent Calculator and have to say, I think the Pally ones are going to be fun. I really like how most of the really cool abilities have a damaging and healing effect depending on how they are applied. not only does this give Holy Paladins something to do on their downtime besides casting heals and upping the their over-healing it also makes Retribution and Protection Paladins more flexible and more of an asset to the group as a whole. When I started playing Mirax, that was how you played a Ret Pally. You would cast Blessing of Protection on the tank when asked, you covered heals if you were waiting on the healer to get battle rezzed, and you did all that while pumping out crazy amounts of damage. Now as long as Blizzard doesn't mess with the mechanics of playing a Paladin (like they did when Cataclysm came out), Mists looks to be a fun time to play a Paladin.
Tuesday, 31 January 2012
Tearing Up The Charts Again
It's been awhile since I last posted. I'll admit I've been a bit distracted by real life, but I'm still addicted as ever to WoW.
I can gladly report that I am once again running on Mirax as a Retadin for raiding. In fact, I've been consistently the highest DPS in guild for all of my guild's 4.3 raiding. The best part is that I'm actually loving Ret once again. With the introduction of Holy Power in Cataclysm, Retribution changed completely from it's incarnation during Wrath. It took some time to become comfortable with these changes and I was decent at playing my class, but not as good as I could have been. A lot of that had to do with me healing more often than not during both 5-man dungeon runs and raids.
In a previous post I noted my decision to be a main spec Holy Paladin for the remainder of the Patch 4.2 lifetime. True to my statement, as soon as Patch 4.3 came out I went back to being Ret and have kinda put my foot down on the swapping specs for raiding. In fact, I haven't even healed on Mirax since 4.3 came out. Sure, I've gotten some upgrades for her healing gear, just I haven't made that my gearing priority. One thing that has helped me in being able to stay as Ret, are some real-life friends, Rolo and Ruckis, who x-ferred to my server and joined my guild. I have to say they are far better raiders than half the people in guild, and I respect their talent and insight into class and raid mechanics. They've also been supportive of "not making your highest dps heal," as one of them pointed out a few weeks ago when the RL was going to ask me to go Holy and then started looking for a new melee dps even though I had not agreed to heal. Since that time I've proven myself to be a consistantly high dps and being one of the two dpsers in guild who can hold their own against the PuGs we bring in to fill out raid team out, the other being Ruckis.
I'll admit, I'm kinda of missing playing Holy a bit. But ow that I have an equipped ilvl of 390 for my Ret set and average close to 30k dps on boss fights, I think I'm ready to start working on my Holy set and playing Holy again. That's part of why I've been logging out in my Holy gear so I can check it out on Mr. Robot and get it all itemized properly. I don't think I'll be going back to raiding as Holy any time soon, but I won't mind switching into it for a final boss attempt or two if a healer leaves early. This happened two weeks ago and I brought my Shaman, Rhysati, in to heal thinking that we wouldn't down Ultraxion. Well, Rolo and I two-healed it and while I have credit for the kill on Rhys, Mirax doesn't. I don't want my alt to end up farther along in progression than my main again just because the alt is the healer.
I can gladly report that I am once again running on Mirax as a Retadin for raiding. In fact, I've been consistently the highest DPS in guild for all of my guild's 4.3 raiding. The best part is that I'm actually loving Ret once again. With the introduction of Holy Power in Cataclysm, Retribution changed completely from it's incarnation during Wrath. It took some time to become comfortable with these changes and I was decent at playing my class, but not as good as I could have been. A lot of that had to do with me healing more often than not during both 5-man dungeon runs and raids.
In a previous post I noted my decision to be a main spec Holy Paladin for the remainder of the Patch 4.2 lifetime. True to my statement, as soon as Patch 4.3 came out I went back to being Ret and have kinda put my foot down on the swapping specs for raiding. In fact, I haven't even healed on Mirax since 4.3 came out. Sure, I've gotten some upgrades for her healing gear, just I haven't made that my gearing priority. One thing that has helped me in being able to stay as Ret, are some real-life friends, Rolo and Ruckis, who x-ferred to my server and joined my guild. I have to say they are far better raiders than half the people in guild, and I respect their talent and insight into class and raid mechanics. They've also been supportive of "not making your highest dps heal," as one of them pointed out a few weeks ago when the RL was going to ask me to go Holy and then started looking for a new melee dps even though I had not agreed to heal. Since that time I've proven myself to be a consistantly high dps and being one of the two dpsers in guild who can hold their own against the PuGs we bring in to fill out raid team out, the other being Ruckis.
I'll admit, I'm kinda of missing playing Holy a bit. But ow that I have an equipped ilvl of 390 for my Ret set and average close to 30k dps on boss fights, I think I'm ready to start working on my Holy set and playing Holy again. That's part of why I've been logging out in my Holy gear so I can check it out on Mr. Robot and get it all itemized properly. I don't think I'll be going back to raiding as Holy any time soon, but I won't mind switching into it for a final boss attempt or two if a healer leaves early. This happened two weeks ago and I brought my Shaman, Rhysati, in to heal thinking that we wouldn't down Ultraxion. Well, Rolo and I two-healed it and while I have credit for the kill on Rhys, Mirax doesn't. I don't want my alt to end up farther along in progression than my main again just because the alt is the healer.
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| Mirax and Ruckis at the Faerie Circle in Tirisfal. |
Tuesday, 16 August 2011
New Favorite Alt
When is it time for you to move on from a character to another?
This is a question I have been pondering for awhile now. For the most part is in regard to my druid, Ineri, but these days I almost wonder if I shold start asking the same about my paladin, Mirax. The question about benching Ineri comes fro the fact that I feel as though I suck at playing her. Of the three characters I have leveled to 85 in this expansion she has been by far the hardest to gear and run with. Just transitioning from regular dungeons to heroic dungeons was painstaking and I didn't feel comfortable running those with her until she practically outgeared them. I have talked about her restoration and balance specs with the main resto druid in guild. He helped me with my spec and things have become a bit easier, but I still feel that druid healing and I do not belong together. I do love playing bear, but I am a horrible tank with the exception of one boss fight in Violet Hold. For some reason I can kite the kite boss perfectly in there but cannot tank anything else successfully. thus my inepitude at the druid class makes me wonder if I should stop playing a class I once enjoyed so much.
This brings me to the topic on benching Mirax. She is my first character and the main one that I play. I'm not sure I could ever truely bench her for that reason alone. Lately however, I feel as though I am not able to play her to her full potential. Other retribution paladins kick my ass when it comes to dps. Other melee classes that are less geared than I make me efforts look silly. I have been wrestling with making her a holy paladin as her main spec, and while I do well at healing on her I still feel as though I do not play her to her full potential. This combine with the amount of time I have spent leveling my two discipline priests, Elscol and Ayella, I feel as though I am almost more proficient at playing them than Mirax. I'm constantly getting complimented on my healing skill as a disc priest and the insane things I can heal through. Heck, Elscol pulls the same HPS at level 72 that Ineri pulls at level 85. And with my current drive to get Ayella to 85 I'm not sure what I'm going to do in terms of the character I play most when she gets there and gets geared up. I guess I'll have to wait and see.
This is a question I have been pondering for awhile now. For the most part is in regard to my druid, Ineri, but these days I almost wonder if I shold start asking the same about my paladin, Mirax. The question about benching Ineri comes fro the fact that I feel as though I suck at playing her. Of the three characters I have leveled to 85 in this expansion she has been by far the hardest to gear and run with. Just transitioning from regular dungeons to heroic dungeons was painstaking and I didn't feel comfortable running those with her until she practically outgeared them. I have talked about her restoration and balance specs with the main resto druid in guild. He helped me with my spec and things have become a bit easier, but I still feel that druid healing and I do not belong together. I do love playing bear, but I am a horrible tank with the exception of one boss fight in Violet Hold. For some reason I can kite the kite boss perfectly in there but cannot tank anything else successfully. thus my inepitude at the druid class makes me wonder if I should stop playing a class I once enjoyed so much.
This brings me to the topic on benching Mirax. She is my first character and the main one that I play. I'm not sure I could ever truely bench her for that reason alone. Lately however, I feel as though I am not able to play her to her full potential. Other retribution paladins kick my ass when it comes to dps. Other melee classes that are less geared than I make me efforts look silly. I have been wrestling with making her a holy paladin as her main spec, and while I do well at healing on her I still feel as though I do not play her to her full potential. This combine with the amount of time I have spent leveling my two discipline priests, Elscol and Ayella, I feel as though I am almost more proficient at playing them than Mirax. I'm constantly getting complimented on my healing skill as a disc priest and the insane things I can heal through. Heck, Elscol pulls the same HPS at level 72 that Ineri pulls at level 85. And with my current drive to get Ayella to 85 I'm not sure what I'm going to do in terms of the character I play most when she gets there and gets geared up. I guess I'll have to wait and see.
Wednesday, 13 July 2011
Drawing the Line on Guild Raid Performance
My guild has a BIG problem. Our players are constantly getting outshined by the PUGs we bring in to fill out our 10-man raiding team. Last week in the first official guild-sponsored Firelands run one of our 3 dps was constantly lower than the tanks on the meters and the undergeared PUG was outshining our fully geared out in Tier 11 enhancement shaman. Had our dps been pulling the numbers we needed them to we would have had Shannox down no questions asked. Many times we got him to 3% but then everyone started taking too much damage and the raid wiped or we were too slow on the dps and he hit enrange. At 3%.
Our officers, who coincidentally are our regular raiders, had an impromptu meeting after the raid to discuss the issue. Sadly the meeting didn't result in much except our low dpsers saying their dps was low "because we're melee and have to run around a lot." This kinda pissed me off because the main spec on my paladin is retribution and earlier in the day I had been pulling 14k dps without thinking about while running around like an idiot trying to heal the tank while do ranged dps in a ZG because the healer and dps kept dying. And I'm just as geared as the enhancement shaman. Hell my under geared enhancement shaman pulls the same dps as the other raider. Back to the issue at hand, being melee dps isn't a good excuse for low dps in a raid. I think I was so pissed off about the comment because I had been asked to heal for that raid due to the fact that we have too much melee dps and the only other melee with a heal offspec is the guild lead who pulls the trump card. And this issue has come up before--forcing one of the best dps in guild to go heals.
So last night a few of the officers were talking about the raid dps issue once again since our previous meeting had not produced anything other than excuses. We realized that our guild is in the EXACT same position it was in when Trial of the Crusader came out--our guild dps and overall player performance is lacking and Zeffra and Mohrrgun are not in the picture currently--and the guild needs a gimmick to re-invigorate it. (Zeff and Moh are two of the guild founders who happen to be the glue that holds us together.) And just like when TotC came out we decided that we are going to start running 25-man PUG raids on Saturdays that are not guild sponsored and thus we are not obliged to take under-performing guild members along with us. This also means that any PUG we bring in has to pull at least 15k dps or they will be kicked from group. Granted leading 25-man raids makes out main tank and primary raid leader go batty, but he was the one who suggested it. However, unlike TotC he's not running the 25-mans on his own. He has both myself and his co-raid lead to help with group formation and raid execution.
I will always hold out hope that our guild can regain the glory days of our 10-man Ulduar raid team that made our guild 9th on server for 10-man progression. Maybe this is what's needed. Maybe we need to stop walking on eggshells around guild members feelings and be straight up asses about the raid performance. Maybe we should just start our own new guild or go join another. But I don't want to leave a guild I have worked so hard to make a great place to play WoW that it is.
Our officers, who coincidentally are our regular raiders, had an impromptu meeting after the raid to discuss the issue. Sadly the meeting didn't result in much except our low dpsers saying their dps was low "because we're melee and have to run around a lot." This kinda pissed me off because the main spec on my paladin is retribution and earlier in the day I had been pulling 14k dps without thinking about while running around like an idiot trying to heal the tank while do ranged dps in a ZG because the healer and dps kept dying. And I'm just as geared as the enhancement shaman. Hell my under geared enhancement shaman pulls the same dps as the other raider. Back to the issue at hand, being melee dps isn't a good excuse for low dps in a raid. I think I was so pissed off about the comment because I had been asked to heal for that raid due to the fact that we have too much melee dps and the only other melee with a heal offspec is the guild lead who pulls the trump card. And this issue has come up before--forcing one of the best dps in guild to go heals.
So last night a few of the officers were talking about the raid dps issue once again since our previous meeting had not produced anything other than excuses. We realized that our guild is in the EXACT same position it was in when Trial of the Crusader came out--our guild dps and overall player performance is lacking and Zeffra and Mohrrgun are not in the picture currently--and the guild needs a gimmick to re-invigorate it. (Zeff and Moh are two of the guild founders who happen to be the glue that holds us together.) And just like when TotC came out we decided that we are going to start running 25-man PUG raids on Saturdays that are not guild sponsored and thus we are not obliged to take under-performing guild members along with us. This also means that any PUG we bring in has to pull at least 15k dps or they will be kicked from group. Granted leading 25-man raids makes out main tank and primary raid leader go batty, but he was the one who suggested it. However, unlike TotC he's not running the 25-mans on his own. He has both myself and his co-raid lead to help with group formation and raid execution.
I will always hold out hope that our guild can regain the glory days of our 10-man Ulduar raid team that made our guild 9th on server for 10-man progression. Maybe this is what's needed. Maybe we need to stop walking on eggshells around guild members feelings and be straight up asses about the raid performance. Maybe we should just start our own new guild or go join another. But I don't want to leave a guild I have worked so hard to make a great place to play WoW that it is.
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