Once again I am playing the role of the time-traveling blogger, blogging to you today from the past!
I’m heading off camping for a few days, so I’m spending a chunk of Monday making sure that there’ll be WHU posts for the week (assuming I don’t screw up the scheduling somehow). I’m also thinking I should tell Arust that he has to fill in one of the days. It’s been… damn I don’t have the faintest idea how long it’s been since he’s written something. He doesn’t even read the WHU regularly anymore, and that needs to change.
I haven’t had a ton of WoW time recently, so I’m behind on my beta goals: I want to get to 83, do a bunch of aspect of the fox testing, and spend a lot of time in inns collecting well-restedness for the haul to 84. Alas an improbable amount of my wow-time lately has been spent at the zoo, of all places. On the bright side, here’s a cool picture of a moth!
After a lot of time spent testing tons of stuff at the target dummies, measuring mastery bonuses (only to have them taken away), taking video to do frame-by-frame studies of cast times, etc., just about the only thing I’ve done in the last week or so in the beta is desperately leveling, which I hate, but here’s what I can tell you so far about the trip from 80-85:
I was able to get to 81 without too much trouble. I had some well-rested for big chunks of it, so it’s hard to say exactly how long it took me, but I figure getting to 81 should be easily doable within 5-6 hours. Of course I have no idea if leveling is being boosted in the beta. If it is, well, all bets are off. The new dungeons that I’ve done — Blackrock Caverns and Throne of Tides — are great and fantastic sources of xp; however, they do seem to be more difficult than Wrath dungeons — and they are way, way more challenging than the current grossly over-geared roflstomping. You will actually need to follow the boss strats, for example. However I haven’t yet encountered anything that actually requires ccing, but single-targeting is certainly there.
If the beta is any indication, there will be a lot of wiping going on in PUGs in these dungeons. A lot. In particular you have a lot of really quite bad tanks right now that don’t really understand much about tanking, but they get away with it because of their insane gear and overpowered unlimited mana healers — you know the ones I’m talking about, the tanks that gem only for stamina, don’t pay any attention to threat stats like expertise, or to avoidance. With Cataclysm making tanking a bit more interesting (especially for the jokingly simple tank classes, like pallys and druids) those bad tanks are now a disaster. I’ve done these instances with level 80 tanks that had no issues holding threat, no issues tanking their way through it. I’ve done it with tanks that couldn’t hold threat on anything, ever. I’ve done it with tanks that took so much damage even when the healer ignored everyone else and did nothing but heal the tank he couldn’t keep up (tank had crazy low avoidance clearly chose gear only for stamina… and maybe didn’t have talents. It was pretty bad.).
My point here is, you probably don’t want to pug these things, at least not in the first week or two. There’ll be a lot of wiping, and usually after the first wipe at least one person leaves the group because they can’t find their way back.
Right now — and this is subject to all kinds of change — I’m still finding MM to be the best spec to level in. The key here is the guaranteed opening crit from Aimed Shot and the focus regen from rapid killing. With the changes made to mob health (doubled) aimed shot no longer one-shots stuff, but by opening with aimed you can still get them dead before they reach you (aimed > chimera > arcane) and end with a nice healthy focus bar.
I have done all of the Mt. Hyjal quests except the bugged ragnaros finale. I am almost done with Vashj’ir. I’ve done a good amount of dungeon running and have had rested xp for a decent amount of the time (20% or so) and I’m still not 83. 80 – 81 wasn’t bad. 81-82 took a lot longer. Going to 83 is taking forever, it seems. The underwater zone isn’t as bad as I feared, but it still can be hard to loot people, and it’s much easier to get lost since even if you’re in the right spot, there’s a lot of space above and below you. This is especially rough since most of the quest hubs are in caves, so you can be in exactly the right spot on your map, but really you have to go down, then off in some other direction to find the cave mouth. And of course view distances are shorter under water.
I am about 2 bars away from level 83. I have not yet replaced any gear. No green gear is an upgrade (though even the green gear has better stamina, often). A lot of the blue gear is really, really close to as good as what I have, often just about the same only without the gem sockets. I have chosen not to switch to this almost the same gear mainly because I’d have to re-enchant it all for it to actually be almost the same. However, if I was to go ahead and take the dps hit in all those slots, I’d have a hell of a lot more health. Since you’ll be replacing it all at level 85 anyway, I figure it’s really your choice: replace your gear with slight downgrades and big stamina boosts, or keep what you got for the tiny dps advantage. Either way is just fine, and either way you’ll replace it all soon.
Now I just hope they don’t have a major new beta build while I’m out in the woods.
“In particular you have a lot of really quite bad tanks right now that don’t really understand much about tanking, but they get away with it because of their insane gear and overpowered unlimited mana healers”
Ha, yes I know this very well, being one of those healers. The number of terrible tanks I keep up in randoms is staggering to be honest and those tanks just keep going and going and being terrible but they have good healers who keep them standing and absurd DPS that takes down the mobs in seconds.
The healing/tanking dynamic is going to be interesting in Cataclysm, there will be a lot of bad tanks yelling accusations of badness at the healers, I can see that coming now.
I’ve been trying to practice mana efficiency in heroics now so as to be a bit more prepared for healing in Cataclysm but good lord, too often doing this would result in the group wiping because people just don’t know what they’re doing.
That is a fantastic picture of a moth.
…and it’s totally relevant what with Draenei getting moths at level 1, amirite?
I mean, look at the stats on that thing. *whistle*
Love those reports, keep them coming! I can’t wait to see the new dungeons. Although maybe I’ll hold off taking my holy pala or my priest just yet. I’ll send the hunter first, she’s more important anyway.
Don’t get lost in the woods! And I wish you better weather than we have in Ireland at the moment… wait, did I just say “at the moment”? Make that most of the time
I’m sure you’ve had some bad tanks, but your comments in the article show a lack of understanding of current tank theorycraft. The slight at Paladin and Druid tanks was unneeded. You play a hunter. I would think you would know only too well that sometimes the labels don’t fit. Just as their were many good hunters in the days of ‘huntards’ so there are many quality Paladin and Druid tanks. Understand as well that vengeance is bugged and Paladins have been completely redesigned.
Frostheim, I love your blog even though I don’t play a hunter but watch what you say about tanks because you know not of what you speak. “you know the ones I’m talking about, the tanks that gem only for stamina, don’t pay any attention to threat stats like expertise, or to avoidance. ” is a just plain wrong jab at tanks. In fact, current tank theorycraft is exactly the opposite of this statement. Currently, if you’re a tank and you gem avoidance, you’re just plain wrong. If you’re a lower-geared tank starting out in heroics, you might need to gem expertise & hit for threat but if you’re tanking in ICC with ICC gear there is no reason to gem anything but stamina.
@ honor
I’m sure it was not meant with any disdain. In the end his point holds. Wrath has made tanking very easy, and as a result we will see a lot of these tank’s true colors coming through.
I will admit that when I was leveling my druid I decided to go bear to make leveling faster, and this is what a lot of people playing plate wearers and druids have done. Unfortunately we overgear the content to such a huge margin that it becomes very easy to get away with tanking, being bad.
I felt this personally when I walked into Uldy in my t9 welfare gear having only tanked regs, heroics and lower spire. I was off tanking Ignis and I was a huge fail. Hopefully what will happen is that these people will either realize that tanking sucks and quit or they will get better.
And to back you up a bit, yeah a gud bur tenk does actually have a lot to pay attention to in order to maximize threat when single targeting. It involves watching several debuffs and keeping them up. It’s actually a little like kitty dps, only without the john madden requirement.
AOE tanking is pretty much spam swipe (maul macro’d) and tab around cause some idiot dps is going to be single targeting and pull off of you, so when you switch to that target to taunt and build some threat the other idiot dps who was single targeting pulls another mob off, so you switch again, FFF and wait for growl/mangle to come off cooldown so you can get taht one back, meanwhile the other idiot pulls off of you again instead of learning their friggin lesson and switching to your dang target.
Tanking has made me a better hunter
Frost…Frost…Frost…
Not sure where you got the idea of gearing for avoidance (it certainly was not from me). Gearing for avoidance wasn’t a terrible idea at the beginning of the expansion but now, towards the end, it is very sub optimal.
I agree with people that expertise is not necessary CURRENTLY what with all the MDs and TotTs holding up bad tanks but I disagree with their choice to ignore it.
It is the tank’s job to put out as much threat as possible. Every parry and dodge against a tank is less threat and also less overall DPS. Even if the threat isn’t viewed as a necessity because the DPS are so far behind on the meter, it doesn’t mean you don’t need to keep pouring it (and the minimal DPS) out. I don’t gem for pure stamina and am, in fact, hard expertise capped. I have never been in an encounter where the extra ~300 health would have been the difference between life and death but less global cooldowns used to reduce or eliminate threat (sometimes none at all) have made the difference at times.
I am glad I have healers who don’t need that ~300hp buffer to let us beat content so I can give our DPS more time beating on bosses instead of needed to drop threat.
Or it could just be that I am too used to threat mattering in vanilla and BC and actually taking skill to get instead of the joke fest that it is now. Thank god tanking requiring skill is coming back in Cataclysm.
Out in the woods with the elves and druids taking pictures of moths !!! what HAVE they done to you Frost ???
(BEAUTIFUL shot of the Cecropia moth, Frost! I dont mean to be nosey, but was he just hanging out or was that in your Zoo’s Butterfly House? I’m actually a total bug nerd and am a keeper in my city zoo’s Butterfly exhibit, and am always curious what other Zoo’s have on display.
)
“Wrath has made tanking very easy, and as a result we will see a lot of these tank’s true colors coming through.”
I think this also hold for dps as well. With the current insane gear levels most enounters are just too easy.
A moth? I think Frost secretly wants to re-roll as a Draenei hunter, with their frilly lil moth starter pet.
Stamina+Armor (hit+exp capped of course) is currently way better in ICC than high avoidance. Many twink warriors who only tank in 5mans to get their badges faster look at raid-tanks, see them gem stam only and do the same instead of getting a lot of block value.
We all out gear Heroics by an almost silly margin, whether we’re dps, tank, or heals…and I think to a certain extent it has made us all a little complacent and lazy in 5 man situations.
Unfortunately, for tanks, their role means there is less room for error. Any shortcoming is more visible and is more likely to cause wipes than if that player is a dps class. I’d blame the current state of the game more than the players.
Cataclysm may be a bit of a wake up call for many of us, when we’re forced to remember what 5 man instances were like before we greatly overgeared them.
Re: the tank debate – Avoidance tanking is being seriously nerfed, Blizzard don’t want Avoidance tanks, they want tanks with lots of armour and health that take a beating and keep healers on their toes.
Maxing out Avoidance for ICC seems to me silly as we already have a Dodge debuff in there, so why fight uphill when you get more mileage out of stacking other stats.
Yea, avoidance is indeed going out the window as a reliable tanking stat. I don’t think anyone was arguing FOR avoidance (other than at the very beginning of Wrath in heroics and T7 content. Many healers hated the dodge/dodge/parry/block/OMG BIG HIT HEALS game that they had to play in raids (at least the ones we tend to run with).
@ Armin
Werd
@Queen
Hey, there aint nothing wrong with us sexy sexy draenei, being a hunter just makes us that much better, and don’t you have a hive to tend to? :p
I don’t claim to know anything about any tank other than bears, but for bears, you stack stam. Bears get enough threat stats from their gear. I have all stam gems except for one shifting dreadstone for meta and aside from very well geared tanks, I have a hard time not pulling off of other tanks when they taunt off of me. And as far as survival goes, I’ve tanked 11 stacks of permafrost without dieing when the other tank failed to taunt, and that was while still wearing two pieces of 232 t9.
1. Love Cecropia moths. I sometimes find them in the wild around where I live.
2. Loving one beautiful moth does not make you a draenei lover. I also know I’m not the only person who hates flappy pets in game.
3. When my paladin hit 80, I was advise to stack expertise (after def and stamina). It has served me well.
er… not permafrost, that’s from garfrost in PoS… Frostbite I mean. I;ve actually taken over 30 stacks of permafrost without breaking a sweat.
One thing I will say for avoidance… When you are standing there in front of sindragossa, under 5k HP and you tank her without dieing for a good 45 seconds, you feel like a god!
Its not that avoidance is BAD, its that you don’t gear for it. You get the avoidance you need from the gear, you also get a vast majority of the threat stats you need from gear, (minus expertise, which is why that is a stat to gem for) but there is one stat for every class that you want above all others.
For example a Survival Hunter wants agility more than anything else, so if a SV hunter is hit capped, you gem agility. For tanks, its stamina, when you have all the other stats you need, stam is the way to go. One of the first rules of raid tanking is EFFECTIVE HEALTH IS KING, meaning stam and armor are the two things that will keep you alive, a lucky dodge might save that occasional wipe, but 1% dodge is not nearly worth 1% damage reduction from armor or stamina, not even close when it comes to surviving as a tank.
Also as a tank I have multiple sets of gear, but there are no real threat issues with my effective health set, its just more boring to use then my threat set, as I just stand there and take a beating, healers fall asleep, dps can’t burst as high while I’m getting initial threat, blah blah blah. But even when gemmed completely for stamina, with the exception of my 1 expertise gem to activate my meta, I sit at about 16 expertise 240 something hit and have no threat problems worth speaking of. And if I do I have a way around that. Missing a gcd due to a dodge or parry isn’t the difference between somebody pulling aggro or not.
Ok granted this is true for a Death Knight with overpowered icy touch threat and no shield, blah blah blah. However I believe the same holds true for other tanks as well, once you have a big enough threat lead which occurs in the first 30 seconds of the fight, you could go afk for a minute or two and not have anyone notice on some encounters (I’m looking at you blood queen lanathel), I HAVE afk tanked before for at least thirty seconds and no one was close to me on any threat meter I use
I also feel that you’ve failed to take into account the current state of tanking in the beta Frost.
Do bear in mind you lose masteries, you lose dps.
Tanks lose masteries they lose pretty much everything that makes them decent tanks. Threat AND survivability.
Tanking in the beta since they took out masteries has been bloody difficult.
nice moth!
True story.
Last night myself and 3 friends teamed up for the random daily and we delved into Dungeon Finder for a tank. Shortly after we zoned into HoS. After much sighing we proceeded to get our 2 EoF. We had a Paladin healer and the tank was also a Paladin. We didn’t have too much trouble as we had 2 Tricks of the Trade and Misdirection up most of the time. The problem came when we arrived at Brann and the Tribunal of Ages (or something like that I forget). This tank failed to hold aggro on every single mob that spawned from start to finish. But here’s the pearler: when our healer died and asked for a rez, the Paladin tank said he could not do so because he didn’t have the ability…which is one of the first spells you pick up at lvl 10.
Worst. Tank. Ever.
The Moth was from the butterfly garden at the Minnesota Zoo. In retrospect it’s *possible* that it was a poor way to establish my manliness on a date to spend 45 minutes taking pictures of butterflies
“The Moth was from the butterfly garden at the Minnesota Zoo. In retrospect it’s *possible* that it was a poor way to establish my manliness on a date to spend 45 minutes taking pictures of butterflies”
That’s quote worthy… facebook here I come…