Tank #3 is there for one attempt on Steelbender before falling victim to the same problems and drops with the DPS DK whining about bad tanks. Rather than re-queue everybody else gives up at that point as well.
It took me one attempt to learn Steelbender. You have to run through the fire. THEN YOU HAVE TO DO IT AGAIN OMG SO HARD
Plate DPS whining about bad tanks need to sack up and tank instead of diluting the queues for other classes who have no choice but to DPS.
Tanked my first heroic last night, Stonecore. We queued as tank/healer/mage dps, and ended up in a group that had already cleared the trash to Corburus. I thought oh thank god, the bad trash is gone.
Corborus then proceeded to rape us for an hour. We went through 3 dps that way -_-
Because if you can get through one, it means you're a hero.
SabreMau on
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Tanked my first heroic last night, Stonecore. We queued as tank/healer/mage dps, and ended up in a group that had already cleared the trash to Corburus. I thought oh thank god, the bad trash is gone.
Corborus then proceeded to rape us for an hour. We went through 3 dps that way -_-
Heroics are...hard...
No, you see, that is a sign of bad times.
A group that has cleared up to the first boss with their dps intact and tank missing.
Something is wrong with this picture.
Which is why I always ask why the old tank left.
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
I think people underestimate how much one person can influence a group's success.
Someone doing ~10k dps, not getting hit by boss abilities, and interrupting/dispelling properly can carry a group. Even moreso if they have good people skills and can get the rest of the group to follow suite by politely giving pointers along the way. If you're that person... surprise, now LFD seems easy to you.
So much this.
There are so many people that get upset when they're not #1 on dps. Well you know what sonny? You may not be number one on DPS but your tanks and healers love you because you're not standing in the exploding fire jerking off to your DPS numbers. It's amazing just who is left alive at the very end because they usually mitigate so much of the avoidable damage that they don't die until the boss is like "okay your raid is dead, now to kill you."
So much this.
"Uhh Jyodi your DPS is about 650 points below what it should be on a Patchwerk fight according to this spreadsheet I have."
"Well, this is Lich King, though. And I'm switching to adds when you need me to. And I went Arcane to slow the Valks more effectively. And I only get hit with Defile when someone else chains it far enough that I can't escape. And I blink before being thrown off the edge when the Valks grab me and we mysteriously can't DPS it in time with me gone."
"Yes but according to this chart, your DPS is about one spell off for DPS so you need to step it up."
What the fuck
I think I told you guys about a similar situation where my girlfriend was like #7 or 8 of the dps in a 25 man doing like 13k dps in ICC and the GM of the new guild was all burgle burgle you're sucking, you should be at 16k with all the (insert ArP class). And then he switched to his warlock to show her how it's done and proceeded to do 7k dps.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Tanked my first heroic last night, Stonecore. We queued as tank/healer/mage dps, and ended up in a group that had already cleared the trash to Corburus. I thought oh thank god, the bad trash is gone.
Corborus then proceeded to rape us for an hour. We went through 3 dps that way -_-
Heroics are...hard...
No, you see, that is a sign of bad times.
A group that has cleared up to the first boss with their dps intact and tank missing.
Something is wrong with this picture.
Which is why I always ask why the old tank left.
Well I mean all that was left was two dps. They said the problem was "tank let the adds eat the healer." So I solved that problem, we just had some growing pains. And DPS had problems burning down the crystals, and then we got blown up by burrows a few times. We learned eventually though.
I was proud of myself though, my healer friend thought that Ozruk was going to dominate me but I got his number fairly quick. The matador danced with the blind shoemaker.
I feel confident in saying that blizzard purposefully made the easy normals the hard heroics. Stonecore is easy on normal but one of the worst on heroics. Per nerf VP was terrible on normal but is now the easiest heroic. TotT easy normal, potentially terrible heroic. LCoTV is garbage both ways.
having something 1 shot be affected by lag is a terrible design. Since if I wait until I see the dust to move I will die 100% of the time, I just constantly move back and forth and pray I'm not going to die.
Downed Nef last night making for 12/12 and got my tier helm. Feels good man. That fight is a righteous bitch on 10m. Guess it makes up for Al'Akir being easymode.
Downed Nef last night making for 12/12 and got my tier helm. Feels good man. That fight is a righteous bitch on 10m. Guess it makes up for Al'Akir being easymode.
Does Nefarian still make meta comments when you fight him?
I grouped up with some guildies this morning using the Stonecore Finder.
It gave us Stonecore.
Then it gave us Stonecore.
Then Throne of the Tides.
Then Stonecore.
Then Throne of the Tides.
That's like saying there are heroics other than Lost City for me. I have exhausted the JP vendor for two specs and have never even seen Heroic Shadowfang.
Tank #3 is there for one attempt on Steelbender before falling victim to the same problems and drops with the DPS DK whining about bad tanks. Rather than re-queue everybody else gives up at that point as well.
It took me one attempt to learn Steelbender. You have to run through the fire. THEN YOU HAVE TO DO IT AGAIN OMG SO HARD
Plate DPS whining about bad tanks need to sack up and tank instead of diluting the queues for other classes who have no choice but to DPS.
The instructions that the tanks were being given were rather...vague. Basically "OMG run him through the fire." Honestly I should have stepped up and given the tanks help with instructions on the fights, but the idea of fighting it out with other DPS wasn't going to do it for me last night.
And the DPS DK wasn't that hot himself. He was pulling 5.7k dps (max) on boss fights. I was doubling that on my mage.
I grouped up with some guildies this morning using the Stonecore Finder.
It gave us Stonecore.
Then it gave us Stonecore.
Then Throne of the Tides.
Then Stonecore.
Then Throne of the Tides.
That's like saying there are heroics other than Lost City for me. I have exhausted the JP vendor for two specs and have never even seen Heroic Shadowfang.
Queue for it directly?
More so than ever before, I see myself specifically queuing for heroics for a while, because missing 70 JP is so worth not having to do the deadmines.
Septus on
PSN: Kurahoshi1
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Tanked my first heroic last night, Stonecore. We queued as tank/healer/mage dps, and ended up in a group that had already cleared the trash to Corburus. I thought oh thank god, the bad trash is gone.
Corborus then proceeded to rape us for an hour. We went through 3 dps that way -_-
Heroics are...hard...
No, you see, that is a sign of bad times.
A group that has cleared up to the first boss with their dps intact and tank missing.
Something is wrong with this picture.
Which is why I always ask why the old tank left.
Well I mean all that was left was two dps. They said the problem was "tank let the adds eat the healer." So I solved that problem, we just had some growing pains. And DPS had problems burning down the crystals, and then we got blown up by burrows a few times. We learned eventually though.
I was proud of myself though, my healer friend thought that Ozruk was going to dominate me but I got his number fairly quick. The matador danced with the blind shoemaker.
Have you done that fight before? There is practically no such thing. Tank can do his best to try and get the adds that come up, but if there are any issues with the adds, it's the DPS's fault. Tank can't touch the crystals, the adds that spawn during the burrow phase come out too fast and too spread to let the tank pull all the adds of the healer.
If you get into heroic stonecore and they are on Corroborrus, that is your first warning flag. The second is if they are melee heavy. The third is that they claim 'add problems' for their wipes.
It's not exceptionally difficult if you have ranged dps. The utter inability of some people to perform their role is amazing, however.
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
They changed that? I thought you could either queue for a dungeon or a BG, not both at the same time.
I'm not sure
I was able to do it a few nights ago, and then when I tried again I couldn't
either way, you can at least queue for one of them while surveying
You can queue up for a dungeon and Tol Barad or Wintergrasp, but you can't queue up for a dungeon and a battleground at the same time, which I find completely ridiculous. Let me queue up for all this shit and go to whichever pops up first, Blizzard.
So I had one of the nightmare LFD experiences last night. I spent 3 hours in Deadmines. We one shot the bosses up until Foe Reaper and then things went downhill swiftly. The other two DPS (I was the 3rd) were from the same guild and apparently gamed the system with PVP gear, unenchanted and gemmed pvp gear at that. They barely got above 5k the entire run, which made Ripsnarl a fun time. After 4 Foe Reaper wipes and 3 ripsnarl wipes, and 3 Healers later we finally got to cookie and the other dps died within about 5 seconds. The tank, healer and myself managed to 3 man it. The nightmare was horrible...Through sheer force of will we made it to VanCleef and once again, the other DPS died off the bat. 3 Manned it again. No loot drops, couple of achievements (ready for raiding, and the food one for cookie) and 3 hours later I never want to see Deadmines again.
Hearing all these stories about Heroics makes me think I won't enjoy them. I resubbed last summer after 3 years, so everyone was in full faceroll mode and whatever skills I didn't have was made up for by the rest of the group pretty easily.
But now it seems people need to have their shit together and I never did invest too much time into rotations and stuff (I play a hunter) ... I usually just shoot shit until it dies, which worked out great so far.
You're a hunter? Do you know where your frost trap button is? Do you use it? Do you use it when asked to? Do you use it when not asked to, just because hey, that mob is trapable, why not trap it? Do you refresh your trap on a mob whenever you can, because you can?
If so, congratulations, you're smarter than your average hunter.
In other news, my raids search for a healer has shifted gears. After trying to recruit raid ready healers who either suck like hoovers or 'forget' to tell us that they decided to do areas instead until 2 minutes before raid time, we decided on a different stratagy. Finding healers is tougher than we thought, we'll have to improvise.
Raid leader found a very pleasent young paladin, who quite enjoys healing, but hasn't been able to run many heroics due to being guildless. She has been guild recruited, chain heroic'ed, forced into crafted epics, dragged around to fill rep bars, and put through her paces by two tanks who know how to pull just enough to push a healer to the limit. If we can't find a raid ready healer, we will BUILD one.
Decomposey on
Before following any advice, opinions, or thoughts I may have expressed in the above post, be warned: I found Keven Costners "Waterworld" to be a very entertaining film.
Downed Nef last night making for 12/12 and got my tier helm. Feels good man. That fight is a righteous bitch on 10m. Guess it makes up for Al'Akir being easymode.
Does Nefarian still make meta comments when you fight him?
You're a hunter? Do you know where your frost trap button is? Do you use it? Do you use it when asked to? Do you use it when not asked to, just because hey, that mob is trapable, why not trap it? Do you refresh your trap on a mob whenever you can, because you can?
If so, congratulations, you're smarter than your average hunter.
Guess I am just an average hunter then. Cause of the face roll nature of Lich King, I pretty much never used traps in instances. And so far in Cata I have only done BRC while leveling ... nothing else.
Outside of dungeons I never use it ... cause I can kill stuff anyways and don't pull that much mob groups.
So I was averaging 5.3k dps on a raid target dummy with my retadin. Almost all green quest gear from Uldum/Deepholm, with a few blue rep rewards. I had Might/Kings, and Dalaran brilliance or whatever its called, as far as buffs go. (sometimes my obsessive impulse to buff random people as I pass them pays off)
My question is this, does that seem like I'm on the right track? I mean, I'm in super shitty gear. The target had no debuffs from party members. And I'm no where near capped on hit/expertise, no enchants, no buff food, etc. etc.
EDIT: Hell, I even have 1 or 2 tanking pieces on because the strength/stam increase was so big it was a dps upgrade over the gear I had at the time.
I routinely see people pulling 6k dps in heroics and we manage to get through it, so if you're not in heroic gear yet, I say 5.3 is okay. But I don't know what stats are for Ret pallies (my server laugh at them alot, so that can't be good), so maybe take that with a grain of salt.
My mind goggles at anything less than 8k from DPS these days. I'm an Elemental shaman, I'm supposed to be lower-mid tier and be beset by design weaknesses, but I don't think I've failed to cross the 10k line in heroics, and now that I have some gear it's more like 13k. I mean, obviously not every fight is every spec going to be awesome, but the average by the end should sort that out.
You're a hunter? Do you know where your frost trap button is? Do you use it? Do you use it when asked to? Do you use it when not asked to, just because hey, that mob is trapable, why not trap it? Do you refresh your trap on a mob whenever you can, because you can?
If so, congratulations, you're smarter than your average hunter.
I played a Hunter from launch day until about mid-TBC. I was a heavy hardcore raider; cleared everything in Classic except for 4H, Saph and KT; cleared everything in TBC up to Phase 3 Kael'Thas. Did my Hunter epic quest (with zero outside help or influence) in mostly blues @ level 60, assembled Nature resist gear for C'thun pulling, did more dps in Classic than... the warlocks (heh), got something like 200 days played. I learned to jumpshot, multitrap CC, kite adds, direct pulls and split pulls before Misdirection, protect my healers, and many more things. And then I had to quit due to circumstances beyond my control =(
I sort of kept up with the Hunter changes since then because, well, it's in the blood, you know? But when I came back for Cataclysm, I decided to leave Rius retired and I started up the other class I'd always wanted to play; a Warrior.
What I saw from 1-64 made me very sad. I'm told that things are different at 80-85, but there was essentially zero difficulty, and the consequence of that seems to be that people don't learn how to play their classes. When I'm on my Warrior with a halfway decent healer, I can tank two full packs of 4-5 mobs at once with no regard to CC or kill order, and I can do this all through the supposedly "learning" leveling time where this shit just shouldn't be possible... it's a crazy thing.
So I decided to bring my Hunter out of retirement. I'm going to see just how much of this game I can solo, because that seems to be where the difficulty is now. I'm used to kiting Elite mobs with Arcane Shot and Serpent Sting for 20 minutes until they die; I can't wait to see how I stack up against 10-man level 80 Onyxia.
And when I do eventually get to those challenging level 85 heroics, I hope that I can blow people away with what Hunters can do. I hear all about how CC is important and then I look at this toolset;
Freezing Trap: 78 second duration, 24 second cooldown, can be launched anywhere, works on any mob.
Wyvern Sting: 30 second duration, 60 second cooldown, works on any mob.
That means with Freezing Trap alone I can comfortably CC 2 mobs forever and 3 mobs in dire circumstances; with Freezing + Wyvern Sting I can CC almost an entire pack. And if the mob isn't completely immune to CC, then it's my bitch.
In other news, my raids search for a healer has shifted gears. After trying to recruit raid ready healers who either suck like hoovers or 'forget' to tell us that they decided to do areas instead until 2 minutes before raid time, we decided on a different strategy. Finding healers is tougher than we thought, we'll have to improvise.
Raid leader found a very pleasant young paladin, who quite enjoys healing, but hasn't been able to run many heroics due to being guild-less. She has been guild recruited, chain heroic'd, forced into crafted epics, dragged around to fill rep bars, and put through her paces by two tanks who know how to pull just enough to push a healer to the limit. If we can't find a raid ready healer, we will BUILD one.
I'm of the opinion that this is how it should always be done >.>
So I was averaging 5.3k dps on a raid target dummy with my retadin. Almost all green quest gear from Uldum/Deepholm, with a few blue rep rewards. I had Might/Kings, and Dalaran brilliance or whatever its called, as far as buffs go. (sometimes my obsessive impulse to buff random people as I pass them pays off)
My question is this, does that seem like I'm on the right track? I mean, I'm in super shitty gear. The target had no debuffs from party members. And I'm no where near capped on hit/expertise, no enchants, no buff food, etc. etc.
EDIT: Hell, I even have 1 or 2 tanking pieces on because the strength/stam increase was so big it was a dps upgrade over the gear I had at the time.
I would say that you are on track as your DPS sounds like what I was at while in similar gear . Personally, I had to abandon my Ret for now in favor of my Survival Hunter because the disparity in DPS at similar gear levels was pretty steep. Kinda sucks because I enjoy my Ret but I also like my hunter and he cranks out some pretty nice damage. YMMV
Yeah, retadins are in a weird/bad place right now. Basically if you random into good procs you can pull perfectly solid DPS and if you don't random into any procs at all people are going to be questioning if you are worth having in the group. Hopefully the next patch will fix this up a good amount!
Worst comes to worst at least you can always tank or heal in the interim.
Yeah, retadins are in a weird/bad place right now. Basically if you random into good procs you can pull perfectly solid DPS and if you don't random into any procs at all people are going to be questioning if you are worth having in the group. Hopefully the next patch will fix this up a good amount!
Worst comes to worst at least you can always tank or heal in the interim.
Exactly, it seems to be way too RNG dependent. I know alot of other classes are too, like my hunter and LnL procs, but even if I don't get a LnL proc I still have a nice, high dps rotation going. Not so much with the Ret.
I kinda want to level my lock now to do heroics with until Ret gets help.
I mean, honestly, if you know your shit well and are geared/gemmed/enchanted appropriately even if procs don't go your way you'll be able to put out the DPS to clear heroic. But you aren't going to get the consistent 10k+ of some other classes right now. Play the class you'll have the most fun playing long term, as you've got a good amount of dungeon runs and rep grinds ahead of you. But you do got to put effort into heroics. If I got into one you via a queue I'd be more worried that your boots don't have any gem in them than the fact that you are a retadin. (Not meaning to call you out on that by the way, just glanced at your armory page and noticed that, for all I know you got the boots and then logged off for the night). 346 is the level of gear you are going to be using to progress for a good while and it deserves blue gems and solid enchants (basically the best enchants that don't require DEing cata epics for the mats).
That said, I've played a lock and have been quite enjoying it. Though, keep in mind as things currently stands locks are getting a nerf next patch and ret paladins are getting a buff.
Freezing Trap: 78 second duration, 24 second cooldown, can be launched anywhere, works on any mob.
Wyvern Sting: 30 second duration, 60 second cooldown, works on any mob.
That means with Freezing Trap alone I can comfortably CC 2 mobs forever and 3 mobs in dire circumstances; with Freezing + Wyvern Sting I can CC almost an entire pack. And if the mob isn't completely immune to CC, then it's my bitch.
I can't wait.
You can only use Freezing Trap on one mob. If you put it on another mob before the first one breaks, then the first one will break as soon as you trap the second mob.
But yea, you can CC 2 Mobs with ease with trap and Wyvern Sting.
I plan on getting all the gear I can through rep grinds/etc. first before jumping into group content. So I haven't gemmed/enchanted yet because of that. Once I get ready to do group stuff, I'll gem/enchant everything I have.
Freezing Trap: 78 second duration, 24 second cooldown, can be launched anywhere, works on any mob.
Wyvern Sting: 30 second duration, 60 second cooldown, works on any mob.
That means with Freezing Trap alone I can comfortably CC 2 mobs forever and 3 mobs in dire circumstances; with Freezing + Wyvern Sting I can CC almost an entire pack. And if the mob isn't completely immune to CC, then it's my bitch.
I can't wait.
You can only use Freezing Trap on one mob. If you put it on another mob before the first one breaks, then the first one will break as soon as you trap the second mob.
But yea, you can CC 2 Mobs with ease with trap and Wyvern Sting.
You're shitting me. That's... very sad =/
In Classic/TBC you could have a 36ish second duration Freezing Trap with a 45ish second cooldown; enough to maintain two frozen mobs for a long time if you juggled them. I remember doing this quite a bit in Heroic Hillsbrad, among other places.
I plan on getting all the gear I can through rep grinds/etc. first before jumping into group content. So I haven't gemmed/enchanted yet because of that. Once I get ready to do group stuff, I'll gem/enchant everything I have.
But one of the best ways to grind the rep is to do the group content! What a dilemma! :P
It's gonna be a bit before you get the ilevel for heroics anyway, but running level 85 dungeons with a tabard will be one of your best ways to gear up at the moment. Both via the drops and the rep gain. I think I would have gone mad trying to max out my reps via the dailies alone.
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It took me one attempt to learn Steelbender. You have to run through the fire. THEN YOU HAVE TO DO IT AGAIN OMG SO HARD
Plate DPS whining about bad tanks need to sack up and tank instead of diluting the queues for other classes who have no choice but to DPS.
They changed that? I thought you could either queue for a dungeon or a BG, not both at the same time.
I'm not sure
I was able to do it a few nights ago, and then when I tried again I couldn't
either way, you can at least queue for one of them while surveying
Corborus then proceeded to rape us for an hour. We went through 3 dps that way -_-
Heroics are...hard...
No, you see, that is a sign of bad times.
A group that has cleared up to the first boss with their dps intact and tank missing.
Something is wrong with this picture.
Which is why I always ask why the old tank left.
I think I told you guys about a similar situation where my girlfriend was like #7 or 8 of the dps in a 25 man doing like 13k dps in ICC and the GM of the new guild was all burgle burgle you're sucking, you should be at 16k with all the (insert ArP class). And then he switched to his warlock to show her how it's done and proceeded to do 7k dps.
Well I mean all that was left was two dps. They said the problem was "tank let the adds eat the healer." So I solved that problem, we just had some growing pains. And DPS had problems burning down the crystals, and then we got blown up by burrows a few times. We learned eventually though.
I was proud of myself though, my healer friend thought that Ozruk was going to dominate me but I got his number fairly quick. The matador danced with the blind shoemaker.
Steam (Ansatz) || GW2 officer (Ansatz.6498)
It gave us Stonecore.
Then it gave us Stonecore.
Then Throne of the Tides.
Then Stonecore.
Then Throne of the Tides.
Sucks that no one listens.
Does Nefarian still make meta comments when you fight him?
That's like saying there are heroics other than Lost City for me. I have exhausted the JP vendor for two specs and have never even seen Heroic Shadowfang.
The instructions that the tanks were being given were rather...vague. Basically "OMG run him through the fire." Honestly I should have stepped up and given the tanks help with instructions on the fights, but the idea of fighting it out with other DPS wasn't going to do it for me last night.
And the DPS DK wasn't that hot himself. He was pulling 5.7k dps (max) on boss fights. I was doubling that on my mage.
Queue for it directly?
More so than ever before, I see myself specifically queuing for heroics for a while, because missing 70 JP is so worth not having to do the deadmines.
Have you done that fight before? There is practically no such thing. Tank can do his best to try and get the adds that come up, but if there are any issues with the adds, it's the DPS's fault. Tank can't touch the crystals, the adds that spawn during the burrow phase come out too fast and too spread to let the tank pull all the adds of the healer.
If you get into heroic stonecore and they are on Corroborrus, that is your first warning flag. The second is if they are melee heavy. The third is that they claim 'add problems' for their wipes.
It's not exceptionally difficult if you have ranged dps. The utter inability of some people to perform their role is amazing, however.
You can queue up for a dungeon and Tol Barad or Wintergrasp, but you can't queue up for a dungeon and a battleground at the same time, which I find completely ridiculous. Let me queue up for all this shit and go to whichever pops up first, Blizzard.
But now it seems people need to have their shit together and I never did invest too much time into rotations and stuff (I play a hunter) ... I usually just shoot shit until it dies, which worked out great so far.
If so, congratulations, you're smarter than your average hunter.
In other news, my raids search for a healer has shifted gears. After trying to recruit raid ready healers who either suck like hoovers or 'forget' to tell us that they decided to do areas instead until 2 minutes before raid time, we decided on a different stratagy. Finding healers is tougher than we thought, we'll have to improvise.
Raid leader found a very pleasent young paladin, who quite enjoys healing, but hasn't been able to run many heroics due to being guildless. She has been guild recruited, chain heroic'ed, forced into crafted epics, dragged around to fill rep bars, and put through her paces by two tanks who know how to pull just enough to push a healer to the limit. If we can't find a raid ready healer, we will BUILD one.
Just like in TBC. :P
Guess I am just an average hunter then. Cause of the face roll nature of Lich King, I pretty much never used traps in instances. And so far in Cata I have only done BRC while leveling ... nothing else.
Outside of dungeons I never use it ... cause I can kill stuff anyways and don't pull that much mob groups.
My question is this, does that seem like I'm on the right track? I mean, I'm in super shitty gear. The target had no debuffs from party members. And I'm no where near capped on hit/expertise, no enchants, no buff food, etc. etc.
EDIT: Hell, I even have 1 or 2 tanking pieces on because the strength/stam increase was so big it was a dps upgrade over the gear I had at the time.
I just can't wrap my head around it.
I played a Hunter from launch day until about mid-TBC. I was a heavy hardcore raider; cleared everything in Classic except for 4H, Saph and KT; cleared everything in TBC up to Phase 3 Kael'Thas. Did my Hunter epic quest (with zero outside help or influence) in mostly blues @ level 60, assembled Nature resist gear for C'thun pulling, did more dps in Classic than... the warlocks (heh), got something like 200 days played. I learned to jumpshot, multitrap CC, kite adds, direct pulls and split pulls before Misdirection, protect my healers, and many more things. And then I had to quit due to circumstances beyond my control =(
I sort of kept up with the Hunter changes since then because, well, it's in the blood, you know? But when I came back for Cataclysm, I decided to leave Rius retired and I started up the other class I'd always wanted to play; a Warrior.
What I saw from 1-64 made me very sad. I'm told that things are different at 80-85, but there was essentially zero difficulty, and the consequence of that seems to be that people don't learn how to play their classes. When I'm on my Warrior with a halfway decent healer, I can tank two full packs of 4-5 mobs at once with no regard to CC or kill order, and I can do this all through the supposedly "learning" leveling time where this shit just shouldn't be possible... it's a crazy thing.
So I decided to bring my Hunter out of retirement. I'm going to see just how much of this game I can solo, because that seems to be where the difficulty is now. I'm used to kiting Elite mobs with Arcane Shot and Serpent Sting for 20 minutes until they die; I can't wait to see how I stack up against 10-man level 80 Onyxia.
And when I do eventually get to those challenging level 85 heroics, I hope that I can blow people away with what Hunters can do. I hear all about how CC is important and then I look at this toolset;
Freezing Trap: 78 second duration, 24 second cooldown, can be launched anywhere, works on any mob.
Wyvern Sting: 30 second duration, 60 second cooldown, works on any mob.
That means with Freezing Trap alone I can comfortably CC 2 mobs forever and 3 mobs in dire circumstances; with Freezing + Wyvern Sting I can CC almost an entire pack. And if the mob isn't completely immune to CC, then it's my bitch.
I can't wait.
I'm of the opinion that this is how it should always be done >.>
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
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Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
I would say that you are on track as your DPS sounds like what I was at while in similar gear . Personally, I had to abandon my Ret for now in favor of my Survival Hunter because the disparity in DPS at similar gear levels was pretty steep. Kinda sucks because I enjoy my Ret but I also like my hunter and he cranks out some pretty nice damage. YMMV
Worst comes to worst at least you can always tank or heal in the interim.
Exactly, it seems to be way too RNG dependent. I know alot of other classes are too, like my hunter and LnL procs, but even if I don't get a LnL proc I still have a nice, high dps rotation going. Not so much with the Ret.
I mean, honestly, if you know your shit well and are geared/gemmed/enchanted appropriately even if procs don't go your way you'll be able to put out the DPS to clear heroic. But you aren't going to get the consistent 10k+ of some other classes right now. Play the class you'll have the most fun playing long term, as you've got a good amount of dungeon runs and rep grinds ahead of you. But you do got to put effort into heroics. If I got into one you via a queue I'd be more worried that your boots don't have any gem in them than the fact that you are a retadin. (Not meaning to call you out on that by the way, just glanced at your armory page and noticed that, for all I know you got the boots and then logged off for the night). 346 is the level of gear you are going to be using to progress for a good while and it deserves blue gems and solid enchants (basically the best enchants that don't require DEing cata epics for the mats).
That said, I've played a lock and have been quite enjoying it. Though, keep in mind as things currently stands locks are getting a nerf next patch and ret paladins are getting a buff.
You can only use Freezing Trap on one mob. If you put it on another mob before the first one breaks, then the first one will break as soon as you trap the second mob.
But yea, you can CC 2 Mobs with ease with trap and Wyvern Sting.
You're shitting me. That's... very sad =/
In Classic/TBC you could have a 36ish second duration Freezing Trap with a 45ish second cooldown; enough to maintain two frozen mobs for a long time if you juggled them. I remember doing this quite a bit in Heroic Hillsbrad, among other places.
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
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But one of the best ways to grind the rep is to do the group content! What a dilemma! :P
It's gonna be a bit before you get the ilevel for heroics anyway, but running level 85 dungeons with a tabard will be one of your best ways to gear up at the moment. Both via the drops and the rep gain. I think I would have gone mad trying to max out my reps via the dailies alone.