Probably, yes. You won't be the only one though, pretty much all classes will need to re-evaluate their gemming.

Not quite SoL, all the relevant abilities still scale with spellpower, they just scale better with Strength. So probably not worth the effort to re-gem.

I am in the same boat with my restoration druid. I am currently Red Gemmed and may have to swap over to Purple Gemmed depending on how things play out.

I also looked at having two sets; complete or partials; one specifically for the on the move I am never out 5SR and the other where the encounters are pretty much step, step, step, with downtime between each.

Without agility conversion if Sunwell Radiance was gone Rogue could cheese Kalecgos by tanking dragon form and using Cloak to remove stacks of Arcane Buffet. I still think threat would be a concern but who knows.

Actually on 2nd thought probably couldn't, isn't a Rogue tank dependant on totems or party buffs or something to get the necessary avoidance? Might be tough on a fight where people have to take portals.

It depends. Threat shouldn't be an issue at all after everyone entered the portal for the first time. This could allow him to use even more avoidance to handle without totems, insect swarm etc. On the other hand, since you'd still need real tanks for the demon, are they just gonna afk on the outside?

Ah. I'm used to tanks taunting to gain threat from the other tanks who have done the work, but with a single tank even low TPS means he will outthreat anybody after awhile.

It is a nice advantage if you have a tank who basically cannot die in one half of the fight. I would think that would be the advantage.

The person on top of Kalecgos's threat list isn't capable of being targetted for a teleport, and rogues have Cloak of Shadows to get rid of Arcane Buffet stacks (Which is what normally prevents a single tank on him).

But the issues with buffs would, even with a lot of them going raid wide, probably make this non-viable indeed.

Well, I doubt they are going to test any lvl 70 encounters with the changes, which is why I'm sure they are going to break them. There are no lvl 70s on the beta server running lvl 70 raids, obviously. On PTR that could be different if you could get competent raids into BT and Sunwell, but I'm skeptical.

That said, I think your examples are not the most trenchant ones. RoS Phase 1 stops no guild. Bloodboil's hard part is not healing the Bloodboil. CoH/Prayer already do that. Archimonde's hard part is not the decursing. And, btw, even if Tremor had a raid-wide effect it would have a range. Nothing crosses the realms in Kalecgos.... (Archimonde is already a joke if people avoid the fire....)

The big issue with 3.02 is that Brutallus is tuned around existing buffs and consumables. To some extent Muru is as well altho guilds that have gotten to Muru since the nerf generally probably outgear the encounter. Kalecgos, Felmyst and Twins are all healer stackable so the changes really are going to be probably manageable -- albeit annoying for whichever fight you happen to be working on when the patch comes since you'll probably be doing things radically differently.

The other big issue is Illidan and the fact that if you don't have a paladin tank or if your paladin tank happened to be tanking flames and they don't fix shear you are screwed. You either need to switch and FR gear your warrior or basically never kill Illidan.

Now, as far as I can tell, those are the two most problematic fights at this stage where there is a mechanic or a time limit and the rules of the unknown come into play. And once 3.0 goes live there will not be time to fix them again. Someone also mentioned Kazrogal because of the unknowns on mana regeneration at lvl 70, and I'm sympathetic there because I really don't know what a tier 5-geared guild facing Kazrogal with new mana-regen mechanics will be looking at.

Because of the general buffs to AoE healing, other fights that could be troublesome for guilds showing up at them: Najentus, Reliquary, Bloodboil, Shaz, Anetheron seem to be non-issues. None are hugely intense DPS races for badge-geared guilds even though each has a DPS requirement. Shaz is definitely a multiple mana potion fight for healers because of all the SR gear as is Illidan phase 2 so those are going to be very interesting, especially with the priest nerfs to Imp Holy Conc and Serendipity in the latest release.

I mean arguably the best way to "fix this", assuming the patch is <4 weeks from the release of the expansion is to go ahead and also nerf all the affected fights slightly. Take 10% off the HP of Brutallus, the Flames of Azzinoth, Shaz, Kazrogal (?). Remove Shear. And leave it at that. If those fights are trivialzed, well, so was Muru when the nerf came according to many of you. And guilds will get to beat them 2-4 times and they are fights beaten more than a year ago in all cases except Brutallus. And the guilds that get to beat "east Brut" will probably never beat Felmyst after, but certainly won't get KJ in the remaining time even if by some miracle they get to Muru.

WoW Forums -> Illidan's Shear and WoW 3.0 Talents

"Changes can be made to encounters if we feel they are necessary to allow the fight to work right. That said, the release of the patch isn't tomorrow, it's sometime in the coming weeks, so you still have time to work on the raids. Good luck on Illidan. "

They already said they are going to adjust some of the TBC fights to work better with 3.0 talents. They don't want the raiders to have nothing to do for 3 weeks between 3.0 and Wrath.

Correct. If you stay at 70, you will keep your current amount of arena points, and compete in level 70 arena. Blizzard won't update the bracket with new items though, so you're stuck with S4 and S5 gear will not be obtainable. You can stay at 70 bracket forever, but chances are there won't be many teams you can play, unlike battlegrounds.

Some interesting food for thought.

Tremor Totem is still described as affecting party members only.

We only have one, maybe two tanks with shields for RoS, we use 2-3 bear tanks normally and have one main prot warrior. We haven't downed RoS yet, we're 4/5 Hyjal and 4/9 BT.

I don't really anticipate too many problems with the existing fights we know how to beat, but I'm more concerned about our ability to progress during 3.0, so for instance, I'm concerned about Gurtogg Bloodboil and Mother Shahraz healing (once we get up to that point). What kind of options do we have if we assume Blizzard won't significantly change the mechanics of those fights?

Assuming not much change to gear itemization now, druids are going to take far less damage in 70. Beacon of light will make healing tanks much easier. Lots more raid synergy so a moonkin might be good, and you can bring less Shadowpriests

The bonus armor on Druid tier gear and Sunwell stuff will be removed in the patch.

While true our dodge remains near or even higher than before due to the new talents even after the agi->dodge nerf. Mitigation gets reduced by2-4% depending on your gear which is significant but not insurmountable. The current statement that Barkskin will be usable in Feral forms helps a lot as well (though it remains to be seen what the cooldown/damage reduction will be changed to, if anything).

One big this is that, with the removal of sunwell radiance, any tanking (in sunwell at least) will become WAY easier.

I'm worried about this one as well. Shadow priest mana regeneration was nerfed to make their bonus raid wide. Since I get them on quite a few encounters, I'm worried that I might not have enough mana on encounters like Brutallus. Burnout, one of the new fire dps talents, increases mana cost of critting spells by 5%. Spells in general seem to cost a significantly higher amount of mana as well. I guess I'll just have to switch to mage armor on Brutallus if it comes to that. Of course, the raid wide spriest bonus will help on some fights. Due to the way my guild makes groups for Felmyst and M'uru, the mages don't get shadowpriests.

Also, I'm not sure about the dps increase. Timing heroism at 20% is a huge dps gain. Getting it earlier because of other classes might make it problematic. The bonus from improved scorch was nerfed as well and I don't know if everything else makes up for it.

Molten Fury has been changed to 35%, and a 12% damage bonus, similar to most other execute effects.

I don't think it necessarily does mean that Bloodlusts will come at 20%. A majority of classes / specs stand to gain with Bloodlusts from 35% on. Though of course, depending on boss health, 25% might be the best compromise for maxing out Raid DPS. You'll have to factor in the fact that as Raid DPS goes up, you'll want to pop Bloodlust so that it benefits everybody, for it's full duration. Chances are, the boss might die before Bloodlust wears out if you pop it too late, and at the same time, pop it at 35% and it has a strong chance of running out before the boss dies, as a result hurting Warrior and Affliction Warlock damage.


Combat Rogues: (Though, theirs is active from pretty much 99% on)
Prey on the Weak - Spell - World of Warcraft

Fire Mages: (35%)
Molten Fury - Spell - World of Warcraft

Frost Death Knights: (35%)
Merciless Combat - Spell - World of Warcraft

Subtlety Rogues: (35%)
Dirty Deeds - Spell - World of Warcraft

Hunters: (Cunning Pets - 35%)
Feeding Frenzy - Spell - World of Warcraft

Survival Hunters: (Oddly, 30%)
Sniper Training - Spell - World of Warcraft

Affliction Warlocks: (Oddly, 20%)
Death's Embrace - Spell - World of Warcraft

Warriors: (Again, 20%)
Execute - Spell - World of Warcraft

It doesn't matter, bloodlust is raidwide with raidwide cooldown; so to maximize raid dps you blow it when it maximizes dps for everybody. Only reason to blow it earlier is if you blow it at 20% and the boss dies before it fades.

Which is exactly what I was saying. There will be cases where it won't be prudent to blow it at 20% because many classes might get more of a benefit out of it sooner, depending on boss health.

The other option is to pull Lusted/Heroism so the debuff fades after 5minutes and you have more effect in the same encounter.

You left out Paladins and Hammer of Wrath, which is also at 35% now. Given that it is now instant cast yet still retains the .5 second GCD (for now...) all three specs might end up tossing it pretty much on cooldown (mana permitting). So everyone except Warriors is getting their "low target nukes" at 35%.

I think Lusts will just end up going out at the position where you can get the most out of it. If it takes 45 seconds to go from 35% to 0 you pop it at 35%. If it takes 45 seconds to go from 20% to 0 you pop it at 20.

This Lust/Heroism discussion really is kinda pointless. Lust 40 seconds before the boss dies (such that the greatest amount of time is spent sub 20% when *everyone* gets benefit from it). If the fight lasts longer than 5 minutes, lust at the start and again at the end. Granted, if the fight lasts ~5:15 or something, it would likely be better to just lust a single time due to potential threat issues in the begining (tank tps doesn't scale as well with haste as dps generally).. but you get the idea.

Granted, knowing *exactly* when 40 seconds before the boss dies isn't always easy, but you should know roughly when it will be, and if that is below 20%, just lust at 20. The notable downside to a raidwide lust is that you can't lust classes which do NOT get a benefit from sub 20% before 20, thus increasing the ratio of time spent above 20 vs time spent below 20.