Not cool Blizzard, not cool

What is the WoW population like at the moment?

I played Vanilla until half way through BC - then quit until around 3 months into Wrath.

I quit again around December - the expansion just does nothing for me, I tried but I don't have a desire to play the game. Don't know what has put me off - but I've stopped playing and so has a huge proportion of my former guild.

Would be interested to hear how this expac is performing - in my opinion it is very poor, I liked vashj'r but I didn't find the instances at all fun and the community has worsened a lot.

Count Duckula

I couldn't really get into Cata and stopped playing after a couple of months, but I'm enjoying playing again after four months off. Things seem to have improved quite a lot now it seems.

Berns

Columc wrote: »

as all DPS gear does not have spirit, spirit is healing only.

Prity sure Elemental Shammys and Boomkin Druids get hit from spirit so not as straightforward as that :rolleyes:

Calhoun

degrassinoel wrote: »

I've even seen groups all drop or blame&votekick the healer on the first boss in zg, because they were too dumb to move from aoe.

You can bet your arse that this new dungeon journal thing will never be read by the halfwits that you meet in pugs too.. bleh!

I have just started playing a healer currently running Heroics as i dont have the gear for ZA/ZG but the above rings so true, one of the things i have figured out is you cant heal stupidity as any attempt to do so is just a waste of mana.

Group members need to also understand priority Tank > Healer >=DPS so dont go on a solo run when the tank is attacking something else and from the otherside the tank has to be able to keep up aggro as i occasionally see undergeared tanks who just can't keep up.

Overall though it is a hard issue to fix because supply and demand is at play here and DPS far outnumber tank and healers, maybe if there was an additional time penalty put in place it would make drama queen tank and healers think twice before just dropping.

witless1

Running out of mana is simple if you are healing wrong. My priest is DPS and 365 geared, I run the odd instance as Disc because of the gear overlap and a couple of decent OS pieces. Mana is not an issue and I haven't healed Disc since Ulduar. In guild groups we can chain pull for the most part and in undergeared groups keeping people alive isn't a problem once they play smart. It's all about knowing the cost of your heal and how much you need to heal for. Part of me wants to cry when I see healers spamming the equiv of Flash Heal and wondering how they spent 50k mana in a few seconds.

DPS do have a big part to play in how a healer behaves, normal scripted AoE is healable with no real mana implications. It's spamming the person who aggroed the secondary target or the person standing in fire that kills healers ability to keep the group alive. That makes an experienced or geared healer sweat it at the best of times, it just makes a panicky healer dump an entire mana pool or simply quit out. Even little things like interrupting a mob seems to be lost on most DPS, leaving it to the tank (or healer) to do it. WoW is a very simple game for the most part but people do their best to make it complicated.

From healing on the priest I think if every healing class had a Lifegrip (with no cooldown) it would make instances so easy I must really macro it to whisper the target telling them they were saved from their own stupidity!

TheDoc

Deleted User wrote: »

What is the WoW population like at the moment?

I played Vanilla until half way through BC - then quit until around 3 months into Wrath.

I quit again around December - the expansion just does nothing for me, I tried but I don't have a desire to play the game. Don't know what has put me off - but I've stopped playing and so has a huge proportion of my former guild.

Would be interested to hear how this expac is performing - in my opinion it is very poor, I liked vashj'r but I didn't find the instances at all fun and the community has worsened a lot.

Its horses for courses really.

If your not into raiding this game gets pretty boring quickly imo. I think thats the simplest explanation.

I'd do my barney if I had to run random pug heroics and raids every week, I'd literally have quit in wotlk.

Cata is paced nicely for me in fairness, granted our heroic progression has got slack, I've opporunities to play other characters seriously, I'm able to play other games and do other things without feeling pressured and pushed to the end.

I actually think its been perfectly fine tuned and paced, its not easier despite what some people say , no one wants 8 hour raids again like.

I'm more then happy with the pace and think firelands is coming at just the right time, remember the levelling gap was only 5 levels, I got it within 48 hours so this content is defo going to expire quicker then previous ones

witless1

I just popped onto wowprogress out of curiosity, the top ranked server EU is Ravencrest and currently 3 guilds have seen 13/13 heroic progression with 3 other guilds on 12/12 i.e. cleared all bar the special heroic only boss. Taking a peak at a couple of other realms and very few guilds have cleared 12/12 on heroic mode. To me that's excellent pacing considering the expansion is out for so long.

Even our own progress, which stalled for 2 weeks due to holidays and the double bank holiday, is nicely paced on 5/13. We should be on 6 possibly 7 had those two weeks not been lost as we have had decent attempts on ODS and Valiona. I'm happy to see more people experiencing content as in WOTLK a lot of the player base saw hard modes one tier behind and even then it was 10s rather then 25s when it was relevant. Even looking at the stats above if 4.2 dropped in the morning <10% of a servers raiding population would have the current tier cleared and that's being generous. I'd happily hit 4.2 seeing 10/13 on heroic downed, obviously I would like to see all 13 dead but I am a realist and if I wanted that I would be looking at a more hardcore guild. If I wasn't involved in a raiding guild I would probably be playing a different game, if your not into alts and cannot commit to a raiding guild WoW holds very little to do. That being said just limiting yourself to raiding and your /played a week is going to be <12 hours giving you a lot of time for other games.

degrassinoel

Columc wrote: »

lack of gear, lack of spirit for regan simple as that. It was the same at the start of cata were healers didng have enough regan for there mana pool and oom was the main problem once dinging 85.

Now since people are going healing to get tgoodies/skip the que they dont have enough healing gear, as all DPS gear does not have spirit, spirit is healing only.

that and using entirely the wrong spec and spells, though how people can get spec's wrong these days is beyond me..

seen a druid healer spam the living crap out of regrowth on me (tanking) in stonecore, first pack, kept me alive, fair enough but he was totally oom before the pack had been finished off. Same thing with shamans spamming healing surge.. just /facepalm

StinkyMunkey

Im a bit of a slacker when it comes to reading patch notes. I was wondering why so many tanks and healers where failing in the hc's. My main is a DK, and with the new content i always run as dps, so i get a feel for the hc's. My dps gear is better than my tank geared at the moment, but my tank gear is catching up.

On a number of occassions of late (just started hc's a few weeks ago.) ive had to step in as tank, even though i joined as dps. And for the most part ive been lucky, the pugs ive been in seem to be full of adults or people just learning the new content. Maybe its because i play late at night.

I have half the cata factions now at exalted, so that really helps with picking up tank gear. I generally do one hc a night (dont have time to do more, they take so long in pugs). But im thinking ill be joining more as tank now to pick up the goodie bags

Berns

If you can join as tank or healer, do it basically. Que's were never long and can go at your pace more or less as long as check with the other (the tank or healer dependin on which you are) on mana breaks.

Flojo

Columc wrote: »

spirit is healing only.

Tell that to Elemental Shamans

Columc

Flojo wrote: »

Tell that to Elemental Shamans

in the mian cases, same as balance druids. But spirit is the main healing spec for mana regain. And When you group with a healer for ZA/ZG you would expect them to have spirit on their items, not reslience or hit

Flojo

Columc wrote: »

in the mian cases, same as balance druids. But spirit is the main healing spec for mana regain. And When you group with a healer for ZA/ZG you would expect them to have spirit on their items, not reslience or hit

It's not healing only, that was the point I was making.

Columc

Flojo wrote: »

It's not healing only, that was the point I was making.

But what I am getting at is that all healers need spirit,

Flojo

Columc wrote: »

But what I am getting at is that all healers need spirit,

Of course.. I never denied that :P

Berns

Should make a system if the healer in the group passes, then dps can need and not until then. Would make sense :rolleyes: Same for Hit & DPS.

Flojo

Berns wrote: »

Should make a system if the healer in the group passes, then dps can need and not until then. Would make sense :rolleyes: Same for Hit & DPS.

That system is in place.. if the healer passes and an elemental shammy needs then they get the loot and vice versa! It just means that healers have to fight for neck/rings/back/trinket/weapons etc with Ele shamans and Boomkins.
Kinda sucks but that's the way it is.

Rhalliord

Flojo wrote: »

That system is in place.. if the healer passes and an elemental shammy needs then they get the loot and vice versa! It just means that healers have to fight for neck/rings/back/trinket/weapons etc with Ele shamans and Boomkins.
Kinda sucks but that's the way it is.

I think the op means that the need button is greyed out for ele shammies/boomikins/spriests until the healer passes on it?

Flojo

Rhalliord wrote: »

I think the op means that the need button is greyed out for ele shammies/boomikins/spriests until the healer passes on it?

That still doesn't help anyways. What they're saying is that healers should come before dps in relation to gear. Which isn't fair really. Bring back mp5 ffs.

Rhalliord

Flojo wrote: »

That still doesn't help anyways. What they're saying is that healers should come before dps in relation to gear. Which isn't fair really. Bring back mp5 ffs.

Well imo spirit is more important for healers than hybrid dps , since the dps can choose to spec into the spirit=hit gears. I can understand why Blizzard implemented that though so that they could use gear for both specs. This is why I think that the need roll should only be there for the spec you are in in the dungeon at that time. (on a completely different note the numbers of times ive lost on rolls for dps plate when tanks and healers roll on it is unbelieavable). Then if the tank/heals/dps pass on the loot people can roll need on it for their offspecs

Flojo

Rhalliord wrote: »

Well imo spirit is more important for healers than hybrid dps , since the dps can choose to spec into the spirit=hit gears. I can understand why Blizzard implemented that though so that they could use gear for both specs. This is why I think that the need roll should only be there for the spec you are in in the dungeon at that time. (on a completely different note the numbers of times ive lost on rolls for dps plate when tanks and healers roll on it is unbelieavable). Then if the tank/heals/dps pass on the loot people can roll need on it for their offspecs

Yes but a lot of DPS have specced into it. I agree that being able to use the same gear as both dps and healing spec is pretty sweet but it's rather annoying when you loose out to a "healing neck" to a hybrid dps for the 3rd time.
I guess the need after the healer route is really handy but there would be a lot of backlash from the hybrid classes. Just wish there was a fairer way around it. I just don't think it's right to say healers should come before dps is all, i'd rather the loot was kept separate.

witless1

Rhalliord wrote: »

since the dps can choose to spec into the spirit=hit gears.

You do realise that it's simply not a case of choosing the talent? Each spirit to hit talent has a flat DPS increase, it's a mandatory talent within the tree and is mandatory for 2 of the 3 hybrids if they want to gear.

- It's 3% damage for Elemental Shamans
- It's 2% damage for Shadow Priests
- It's 2% damage for Balance Druids

So if we opt to save the few talent points we gimp our DPS potential not to mention our gearing options. Itemisation is another reason behind why they went down this route. Having mail / leather gear with +hit on it is pointless where as +spirit means less dev work and smaller loot tables and also less loot wasted. Imagine your frustration if a +hit piece of gear dropped constantly and had to be disenchanted whereas a +spirit piece would be ideal. This all comes from making classes wear the gear intended for them. Take any Elemental Shaman in WOTLK and they had a mix of cloth and leather because of random drops and poor gearing options. Think of the arguments they had to make to justify to a raid leader to allow them roll on leather / cloth pieces that were BiS for them.

The only class to gain massively from this situation is a shadow priest as haste is our strongest stat and cloth itemisation for haste is poor. There is very very little haste + hit gear in the game yet a lot of haste + spirit gear. Additionally I can't get hit capped with anywhere near ideal stats on my priest without taking spirit gear. So as the only class capable of opting to skip the talent, I lose 2% damage off the bat, have an inferior gear set and gearing options not tailored to my spec and can't operate as a hybrid.