Antoine

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft would be the similar build with a couple nice pvp/pve talents instead of the demo tree (Malediction, CoEx for snaring things like striders, IHoT for things like infernals), while keeping the same personal DPS as the build you posted.

 

kaib

It was basically just a whine to showcase that warlocks at least have options while poor priests get screwed, don't think that that build is particulary competitive or anything, just off the top of my head. :P

 

ninielin

Clearly, the best scaling warlock template is the one a monkey could play... Highest dps hitting one key for 10min thats so fun

 

mek

I'd take it to mean they've implemented a "No Parry Haste" flag, which they can turn on for specific bosses, much like the "No Crushing Blow" flag which already exists for specific bosses (Hydross, Archimonde).

 

Gumibear

I'm not very happy about that either. I've taken to playing Demonology just because it's a bit more involved than 0/21/40. I hated raiding when I specced 0/21/40, and I'm still annoyed that I'm not playing optimally because I need some mechanical complexity to stay focused.

 

Jebraltar

The "no crushing blow" flag, as you so eloquently put it, consists of lowering the weapon skill of the boss so that it doesn't crush. Changing parry haste would require actually coding a new solution.

 

Kasonic

Wouldn't lowering the mob's weapon skill sufficiently also reduce her crit rate?

Not that even a feral druid would be tanking Shahraz riding the cap, but that would definitely affect other bosses like Hydross.

 

Tunch

You only need to drop the weapon skill of the NPC down to 350 to remove crushing blows... And at 350, it operates like a level 70 NPC, which still has a 5% base crit rate. So possibly, if its coded like you say, you can shave off .6% worth of defensive crit immunity from your gear budget for those encounters. Would probably be worth testing.

 

Thezilch

Unfortunately, the parry mechanic is much worse than most realize. Many encounters have RSTS abilities, and the mobs casting love to turn towards their target, even for instant casts. These turns very often trigger parries from any melee DPS on said mob's "back".

 

Kasonic

Come to think of it, that can't be how they do it, as our Frost tank for Hydross is exactly 2 Defense points short of being uncrittable in his resist gear, and noticed that he took one last week.

 

Alyx

Yep, I wondered at first how there could be parried backstabs listed on WWS, then I realized that this was the explanation (with some lag to make it possible)

 

Jebraltar

They can modify crit rates - that's why trash in Shadow Lab will crit a tank with 490 defense all the time. Modifying parry is more complicated, because it's changing a mechanic. Think about it in reverse: How easy do you think it would be for them to implement the Parry haste mechanic for dodges (because they hate us so much :P) for specific encounters? Certainly not cripplingly difficult, but I doubt that it would be hotfixable.

 

• Karakas

Without a mechanic overhaul, I would think the easiest way to modify parry would be to replace parry with an equivilant chance to dodge (or better yet, a chance to block).

 

Jebraltar

Equivalent chance to dodge increases melee miss rates by 5% - mobs can parry from behind. Equivalent chance to block doesn't provide nearly as much mitigation for the mob (though this is arguably unimportant due to the way that most threat abilities work).

Neither of these are satisfactory alternatives - what they should do is probably just roll out a teeny patch with a global parry change - it's not like bosses being hasted by parry is something that adds to the game anyways.

 

Baconslicer

Daelo has clarified the matter in a later post in the same thread:

 

Whiteknight

Those who have beaten the game - what is your opinion on keying/attunements for TBC raiding?


I think keying to enter Karazhan seems alright, and Bliz clearly recognized that TK/SSC attunement was too much of a barrier.

The remaining attunement - BT/Hyjal is still present in the game. Our guild is just finishing up keying the stragglers (i.e. folk coming back from vacation) and personally I'm finding it to be a royal pain.

I have no problem with the idea that you need a writhing hair-snake from Vashj and Kael's red velvet slipper in order to enter Hyjal - my biggest concern is I would like the game design to acknowledge that my raid is *not* the 25 people who happened to be present for the kill - but it also includes the 5 guys on the bench and the 3 guys who are still on vacation, etc.
I think the BT/Hyjal attunement would be vastly more manageable as a raid group if you could give 3-4 guys a free pass into the dungeon. Also, those guys in the raid on a free pass should have an alternative means to finish their keying on their own - my vote would be a certain minimum level rep with the appropriate faction would complete your key without the requisite Vashj/Kael kill (say friendly/honored rep with the ashtongue would attune you or whatever is appropriate).
The main reason for this being, I don't have to waste a raid night keying the guy who was on vacation the month we killed Kael'thas and Vashj and stopped raiding SSC.


The approach Bliz seemed to take in TBC was to constrain everyone to a linear progression through the content. Solo/levelling -> 5mans for rep -> heroics -> Kara/10mans -> gruul/mag -> ssc/tk -> bt/hyjal
The real issue I see with this is the forced progression through different sized raids. I have no problems with keying/attunements to later 25man raids being based on earlier 25mans, but requiring a 10man dungeon and multiple heroics for access to the raiding endgame seems really frustrating to me.

When the next xpac comes out, I seriously hope that a raiding guild can simply step into the first 25man entry dungeon without first completing all the corresponding 5man heroics multiple times and completing a 10man raid dungeon too.

The significant pain points I found were transitioning from 10man to 25man raiding (our guild was building up at that point). Keying everyone for TK through heroics was an absolute nightmare - as a guild leader and one of the few tanks, I was easily exaulted with every single faction before we were done with this and totally burned out on heroics (not because of difficulty - we never failed to do the run - it's simply an issue of quantity). And most recently, going back for Vashj kills to do BT/Hyjal keys for folk coming back from summer vacation.

 

kaib

Yeah, agreed that attuning extra people/new people etc is a pain. Beating the encounter should be enough. Maybe Vashj should not only drop the 25 vials but five additional BoE ones. I do not think you can seriously abuse that in any way other then attuning new recruits/benching people etc. Stalling progress after the guild has passed a boss is a bit annoying and BoE attunement drops would be a decent solution.
Oh and PLEASE let those things stack. Having three Vashj and two Kael scrolls in my bank at some point was a gigantic waste of space.
At least the animations (a wave for SSC and a fire thingy for TK) were cool when I finally used them on random people in the bank.

 

◊ Praetorian

Why not just make it so that the attunement check is raid-based? If, say, 80% of your raid group is attuned to the instance, OR if you personally are attuned, you can zone in. This would remove most of the logistical barriers involved without throwing the zones wide open.

 

Clandestine

I dunno, I liked the originally planned attunement process of 2-3 vials per kill, so it could take you an exciting 7-8 weeks before becoming attuned to Hjyal /sarcasm.

There's a lot of ways they could improve the attunement process, including the Scroll system that was in before they removed SSC / TK attunement, although with BT it should probably be earlier in the instance (Reliquary maybe.)

 

Bault

Could also make "mid zone" bosses drop backflagging tokens instead of final instance bosses.

 

Renew

Flagging tokens should drop off the first boss of the new zone, so Najentus and Rage Winterchill would be in the case of BC Raid Tier III.

Actually having your guild attuned the first time something dies would prevent people selling the attunement charges.

Confidence is not Arrogance.

 

kaib

That might be abuseable in some way. I am trying to come up with something, but it is quite tricky as the instance is not locked and leaving group would mean that people get teleported. It might just not be abuseable, but the whole instance lockout/teleport out thing is pretty shady, with logging out and then back in and getting reinvited and stuff. There is probably a way to circumvent it, although I don't see it atm.
But after 8h at work staring at stupid numbers my brain tends to not work properly any more. At least Blizz would have to make sure that it can not be abused, I think just making the vials all BoE and letting a boss drop 30ish would be a pretty elegant solution.
Although one guy would have to pick up all and then trade them to everyone. Shit happens.

 

Lumi

They could just re-add the scrolls that Kael/Vashj had to Archimonde/Illidan.

Though I never could figure out what was so hard about the SSC/TK attunements.

 

Kasonic

The attunement items should either drop off the first boss or an item less than halfway through the instance. Placing them on the final boss is both logical in terms of progression and completely illogical in terms of common sense.

If you're killing Vashj/Kael or Archimonde/Illidan, you're not exactly dying for another member, are you?

 

Lupison

For normal people getting the Heroic Shattered Halls was next to impossible wihtout using a perfect group to clear it and then subbing people in for last kill. So off-specs and certain tree hot spec resto druid had a really hard time. In fact at one point we had all the holy priest respec shadow and forced our pallies and 2 best MTs to run poeple through it. It was horrible chore for everyone, instead of fun, which a game is suppose to be.

In all honesty the keying should have left kara out completely.

Kill Gruul (No Kara, No Heroics) -> SSC
Kill Mags (No Kara, No Heroics) -> The Eye

BT & Hyjal attunements are absolutely perfect. We're on Kael right now, and he's insanely hard. But he is the leader of all Blood Elves, he should be insanely hard. There really ought to be a fairly easy way for a guild to back attune members once you kill him, I just don't know the exact solution.