El_Savor

We just finished our 6th or 7th ZA timed run with 5-6 mins left. Our protection paladin frapsed the whole timed event from the latest run. I apologize for him using the blizzard combat text thingy and for his taste of music! :p

I highly recommend to download the movie because the streaming quality is a pain in the ass.

The following group composition ist basically our main setup. Sometimes we take a second mage for our Warlock.

Group1
Prot Warrior
Rogue
Rogue
Resto Shaman (for Windfury)
BM Hunter

Group2
Resto Druid
Fire Mage (me)
Destruction Incinerate Warlock (to support the mage with CoE)
Prot Paladin
Holy Paladin

Download: za_timed.avi - FileFront.com

 

◊ Malan

It seems to me you'd get more benefit from using CoR than from 1 guy getting CoE, since you're running physical DPS heavy.

~Rocks, coming to a shaman near you in the next expansion~

 

galzohar

6-7% damage increase from CoR to 3 people is about equal with 10% CoE for 2 people, although the rogues would probably do quite more damage than the mage/warlock especially with the warlock using fire, and the tank actually also does a bit of dps... So CoR is probably better.

Is it just me or is no shadow priest just asking for a hard time?

 

◊ Malan

Its certainly do-able with no spriest, we finished last night without one and had 6 minutes left on the timer, for our 2nd bear timer completed. I think the only time that I noticed the healers and our mage/lock getting stretched on mana was on the way to the Lynx. The rest of the time everything looked completely manageable.

~Rocks, coming to a shaman near you in the next expansion~

 

• Maligne

Of course the lock wasn't stretched on mana. I actually was the entire time, but the only time I was actually potting was lynx. The rest of the time I just had to wait for a couple (or 4-5) extra drink ticks before starting to DPS, in addition to using gems and evocate every cooldown. We also waited an extra 15 or so extra seconds before every boss just for me I think.

Overall, yeah I could have done more damage with a priest, but bringing a warlock instead netted way more overall damage. Now, only bringing two healers + a shadow priest, then we're talking.

What better cc is there for a druid than polymorph?

 

El_Savor

The main reason for us playing without a shadowpriest is because good ones a quite rare on our realm and the 2 or 3 from our 25 man raid are actually playing in other groups. Besides, playing with a shadowpriest would only increase our speed at trash, as a mage I have to drink really often but after a few runs I figured out how to keep my Mana Emerald on cooldown and simply recast it to the boss. So I use 3 charges of my mana gem between bosses, plus drinking every once in a while keeps my mana high.

Regarding CoE... our rogues deal high dps anyway. Casters like high crits also. On the other hand, a fireball that is partial resisted dealing 800 dmg or so sucks.

 

• Jamor

Don't forget your prot warrior also benefits from CoR --- I would say it's still the best curse to use.

 

Juli

Personal damage means nothing. You shouldn't use CoE over CoR just to normalize damage numbers between players/classes (bringing your mages up and your rogues down). One is more damage than the other for the raid as a whole. That is the one you use if your goal is to complete the timed event.

"Big crits" should only come into consideration when you're messing around or complete the event with massive amounts of extra time and someone wants to do it for their personal amusement.

 

• Jamor

our bear group runs with no Spriest.

Group1
Enhance Shaman
Rogue
MS Warrior
Prot Warrior
Feral Druid

Group 2
Resto Shaman
Holy Pally
Mage
Lock
Resto Shaman or Holy Priest

If we do two resto shaman, both are LW and have mana drums (or haste depending on if mana is needed) and Mana tide. You don't even really need the Spriest in that case. Mage has to stop and drink once or twice for like 10 seconds is all.

 

El_Savor

As I mentioned above, we do finish with 5 or 6 minutes left without having any trouble. Unlike in Gurgthock's vid, our healers don't dps at all. If there's nothing to heal they just regenerate mana. While CoR would increase physical dps, it would also dampen our caster dps by getting huge resists. Playing Supremus without CoE is almost the same fun. On a side note, we play for our personal amusement only, we don't stress, we don't yell at each other on teamspeak when we fail on the timed run or something. Just playing the instance in time and having a good time.

 

• Maligne

What? What other mobs have Supremus-like resists? Using the resist portion of COE to justify it over COR is silly, it's the same thing as trying to justify spell penetration. Almost all PVE mobs either have zero resists or so much that the little penetration/COE you have won't make a difference. Unless you have more casters using fire and frost spells than melee, COR will always be better.

What better cc is there for a druid than polymorph?

 

El_Savor

I wasn't saying ZA bosses have the same resists like supremus. I just said it is almost the same fun as playing supremus without CoE. Not that you get the exact same resists.

 

• Maligne

Why is it almost? Nothing in ZA has any resists that I know of. Zero resists compared to Supremus is not "almost". It's more like "not even remotely the same thing".

What better cc is there for a druid than polymorph?

 

El_Savor

So I'm back from the latest ZA run, we didn't bring a warlock today, which means no CoE. And as I already mentioned above a few times, I do get massive resists on bosses without Curse of Elements. A Fireball dealing 1400 crit dmg which is supposed to crit for 6,4k and more while the boss is below 20% just sucks. Do you understand that? That wouldn't happen if we had CoE on them.

That is basically what I was trying to say here. Nothing more.

 

• Maligne

Do you understand that 0 - 88 is still 0? I realize you get partial resists, everyone does. It's not because the mobs in ZA have fire resist, because they don't. COE can't lower their already zero resistances, which means it does nothing for your partial fireball resists, no matter how much anecdotal evidence you have. If you think it does then you are misinformed.

What better cc is there for a druid than polymorph?

 

◊ Nork

Actually, it would still happen. The only resistance that bosses in ZA have is the innate resistance provided by being a boss level mob (roughly 24 spell resist to all schools). That resistance has been thoroughly tested and shown to be unaffected by spell penetration or CoE/CoS. As such, CoE only provides the percent-based damage increase on the boss - it does nothing to prevent partial resists.

 

galzohar

(a bit off topic)
As said, 24 (or something close to it) innate resist is on all "boss" level mobs (71/72 mobs will have the same kind of resistance only less) and it cannot be mitigated by any resistance reduction. A boss resisting 1/2 your damage will happen regardless of CoE or not, and even more common to see him resisting 1/4. However when you average it out it turns out as 5.1% resistance based on the resistance formula which seems to not be contradicted by WWS parses both with and without coE on bosses, however it's quite impossible to determine accurately if it's really 24 or just something close to it. However it's easy to see that CoE has absolutely no effect (unless its effect is so small nobody ever managed to see on a WWS parse it which is very unlikely).


Back to topic:
I AOE tanked the hawks today with full FR badge gear, blue FR neck and green wyrmcultist FR cloak with FR enchant. While we'd probably get 3rd chest if people weren't slacking so bad I still don't like how hard it was to heal me (although with a better group it would most likely be successful). I was wearing pvp healing gear for the rest of my slots as it provides the best combination of stamina, healing and damage (I actually had 1300 +healing and did 24% of the group's healing when the priest also did 24% and the shaman did closer to about 35%). Would it be better/easier to just wear some/full tanking gear for the pieces that aren't fire resistance? Does avoidance have any effect? Is it any likely to actually out-do the extra healing (and healing threat, which should be minor assuming it gets divided over all the mobs) I generate, in terms of raid having an easier time to 1-shot that boss in a timely fashion?

 

Touf

Think of it this way: if the hawks didn't exist, you could probably 5 man it. And I doubt you're healing while you're tanking.

 

Roywyn

Wow Web Stats
3-3.5% partial resists on Fireball, no warlock in the raid.

Zul'Aman bosses have no resistance. If that cannot convince you, nothing can.

 

galzohar

I was actually healing quite a bit while tanking. The question was wether this is actually a good thing to do - or rather - is avoidance of noticeable effect (or any effect at all) when tanking them? Or is fire damage all they really do? I mean if they do significant physical damage on top of the fire damage I would just wear some more tank pieces and not worry about healing anything and take a lot less damage, however I'm not sure if this would be correct, as if they're pure fire damage that cannot be dodged there's no reason to wear tank gear.

 

◊ Malan

We've been using 2 paladins on separate runs, one of them has FR gear, the other doesn't and he tanks the hawks using his PvP gear. The FR paladin almost always dies during the 2nd side, the PvP geared paladin managed to stay alive the entire time. Anecdotal evidence to be sure, but its another option.

~Rocks, coming to a shaman near you in the next expansion~

 

vorda

From a ZA run last week: Amani Dragonhawk Hatchling - WWS

55% fire damage, 45% melee damage.

I was prot spec in a mix of tank/healing gear (something like 1500 healing with 2pc t6) but with no FR but the aura, and avoided 72 of their melee hits. If I assume they all hit me (and do the same for the fire damage), this brings their damage output to:

22455 fire damage
32670 melee damage

 

Kukulzaa

Our prot pally typically uses no FR or healing gear, just his normal tanking gear. Most of the time he forgets to put his FR aura up too, and we haven't had trouble on him in a while. As long as you're single targetting the DH's as they spawn and dropping an earth elemental or two to help, they shouldn't be a problem. One other thing we do is kill the hatcher after he hatches the first or second wave of DH's on the second side. Multiple waves of five dragonhawks can get out of hand rather quickly. When the next set of hatchers spawn, three-quarters of a side is easy to manage.

 

galzohar

- Are you running with 3 healers in addition to the prot pally? (this kind of raid setup has quite gimped dps especially on the first boss)
- He has spell warding
- He has a lot more HP
- He has a lot more avoidance
- He has argent defender
- He has holy shield

All of those make a prot paladin much easier to heal regardless of what gear he wears, and if he was wearing at least the epic FR gear he'd probably take less damage than full tanking gear, as resistances scale damage reduction by a lot per itemization point compared to anything else. I would guess that as a holy paladin you can't just go in with normal tanking gear and expect to tank them with only 2 healers (maybe unless you have full S3 gear with T6 healers), or at least it would be much easier to keep me alive as a holy paladin if I wear full FR + tanking gear in the rest of the slots. Note that you get almost max FR with just epic badge gear, wyrmcultist cloak with enchant and neck from cipher of damnation, and with some pvp gear still ~13k HP or so. I just think it will make