Raid spots and leftovers - Page 4

Teenee · 03/02/07, 6:27 AM

Originally Posted by Juli

There are zero boss encounters where ranged dps has a significant advantage over melee dps. Trash is a joke for any group and shouldn't even be a consideration.

Prince? Nightbane? Curator? All good for ranged, significantly less risk bla bla. And as you mention, maiden. Mages are as good and solid as rogues. What you classify as "significant" is unknown ofc, but ranged often has it easier IME.

And don't forget AoE. Lot's of AoE pulls that become quite trivial with AoE power in your raid. An Arcane Mage with the talent Magic Absorbtion also makes Illhoof quite trivial as he can handle all the imps on his own, can a rogue do that?

kamii · 03/02/07, 6:35 AM

Originally Posted by Mearis

If you want to be very cinical, a rogue is probably better than an enh shaman expecially given how few melee DPS you have along on the raid who would benefit from your totems ;p

Except for the fact that mr. shammy outdamages just about every rogue when threat isn't an issue (no onyxia's sofar) and can take care of himself when he takes damage. It also allowed me to reshuffle the groups so our Resto shammy could manatide the casters and our dw shammy could buff the tanks.

I shuffled the setup to:

Prot tank
Lock
Feral druid (offtank/dps)
Hunter
Enhancement sham (me)

Resto sham
Holy priest
Holy priest
Mage
Shadow priest

Only possible spot i'd consider a rogue is to replace the hunter, except then i'd miss pet- and party buffs, kiting, traps and the extra threat (read: raid dps) from misdirect. And even if i would replace the hunter, i'd pref a DPS warrior to stack imp. battleshout with commanding shout for AP + HP instead of just one.

Juli · 03/02/07, 6:37 AM

Originally Posted by Pane

We brought 1 mage along, for dispell, buffs and water; sure you can do without, but (mind you we have only run kara 1 x, and called it a night after trash started respawning after our 3rd try on Maiden) we most certainly can do it without evasion tanking.

here's our set up

Prot tank
resto sham
lock
holy priest
holy priest

feral druid (offtank/dps)
hunter
enhancement sham (me)
mage
shadow priest

which of those would you swap out?

Evasion tanking is not useful on any fight other than netherspite, other than maybe tanking moroes if your offtank is slacking on gouge. In that group I would have no gripes about replacing both the hunter and the mage with a rogue if I had to. Dispel? You have THREE priests, a warlock (felhunter works fine for romeo/juliet) and a shaman. Any ONE of those priests or the shaman can solo dispel both bosses simultaneously.

If your rogues are doing less damage than your mages (or anyone else for that matter), they have been too lazy/bad to gear up, they have bad talent specs, they have poor ability, or they do not understand itemization well enough to competently gear up their characters. Get them to spend a little time on wowhead looking up upgrades and where to obtain them, make sure they know which items actually are upgrades, make them run instances to obtain said upgrades, and get someone who knows what they're doing to look over their talent specs in the new armory website. If they can't come close after that, they should probably be cut. If the difference is measured in multiples, they are reallly bad. I assure you it has nothing to do with the class itself. Also, the fact that you said "even if we assume the rogues do equal dps to say a lock or a shadowpriest" leads me to believe you have some pretty bad/poorly geared warlocks and shadow priests as well. With the quality of crafted gear available to caster tailors, there's really no excuse for having bad gear if you can put in the time to farm the materials.

Pane · 03/02/07, 6:38 AM

Originally Posted by Mearis

If you want to be very cinical, a rogue is probably better than an enh shaman expecially given how few melee DPS you have along on the raid who would benefit from your totems ;p

actually in the group i'm in, 3 people benefit significantly from my totems and unleashed rage, and everyone loves bloodlust, no?

add to that spellinterupts, and panic heals.

A rogue would have to noticably outdamage me to outweigh that, and quite frankly; our rogues don't.

Pane · 03/02/07, 6:41 AM

Originally Posted by Juli

Also, the fact that you said "even if we assume the rogues do equal dps to say a lock or a shadowpriest" leads me to believe you have some pretty bad/poorly geared warlocks and shadow priests as well. With the quality of crafted gear available to caster tailors, there's really no excuse for having bad gear if you can put in the time to farm the materials.

Actually I meant; "should we assume our rogues shape up enough to equal those classes in dps", not that they reach anywhere close right now, or that our sp/wl's are that low on dps.

edit: also, we're just starting kara; we brought the mage to dispell the melee debuff of attumen (druid was tanking midnight)

kamii · 03/02/07, 6:46 AM

Juli,

I think (read: know) "even if we assume the rogues do equal dps to say a lock or a shadowpriest" was meant to indicate that those classes/players do more damage at the moment, not equal or less.

Also: we're not discussing the dps output and equip of our rogues but the fact that, even if they outperform other classes/players on single target damage, the lack of utility doesn't weight up against the dps you gain by bringing them. The DPS-gap isn't big enough to favour a rogue over other classes.

Sure, if we knew Attumen (oneshotting him while getting rid of trash due to ninjapull... underwhelming) and Moroes (and Maiden for that matter... we were nubbing) were such pushovers, i wouldn't mind bringing a rogue. But when the real pain comes, i'd like to keep an ideal setup to make sure we beat encounters instead of banging our heads against a brick wall for nothing.

Juli · 03/02/07, 6:56 AM

Originally Posted by Teenee

Prince? Nightbane? Curator? All good for ranged, significantly less risk bla bla. And as you mention, maiden. Mages are as good and solid as rogues. What you classify as "significant" is unknown ofc, but ranged often has it easier IME.

And don't forget AoE. Lot's of AoE pulls that become quite trivial with AoE power in your raid. An Arcane Mage with the talent Magic Absorbtion also makes Illhoof quite trivial as he can handle all the imps on his own, can a rogue do that?

There is no risk on prince. I do not believe I have ever seen a rogue die on prince, ever. What risk is there on nightbane for a melee? There is no risk of being cleaved or breathed if you position correctly and you have more escape tools for the air phase or anything that goes wrong. There is literally zero risk involved with meleeing curator. The ONLY problem with maiden is that you cannot stack melees to an excessive number. You can easily have 4 melee plus the tank in without any risk though. Just stack 2 melee, 2 melee, 1 tank in a triangle around maiden and it's fine. What I classify as significant is that rogues can consistently pull out the #1 dps spot on meters on every one of those fights, or at a minimum are within 90-100% of the #1 dps without extra attention from healers or added risk to the success of the group. For Illhoof, you may notice that I specified that if you already have a warlock, rogues are better. Warlocks are far better than mages at sustainably killing the imps and it only takes 1 to do it. Any additional dps slots beyond that 1 warlock are better filled with a rogue than a mage. All of this of course assumes that your rogues are capable of out-dpsing or at least keeping pace with your mages in damage on a stationary target. If they cannot, they have other things to fix as mentioned above before they can justify consuming a slot.

Sure, maybe its "easier" for a mage, but the rogue class itself is not limited. Mages aren't bad, but the rogue class is just as good and better in many situations. It mostly depends on who is behind the wheel.

Teenee · 03/02/07, 7:04 AM

Originally Posted by Juli

Mages aren't bad, but the rogue class is just as good and better in many situations. It mostly depends on who is behind the wheel.

And mages are better in some other situations. IME, Mage and Rogue DPS is pretty competitive, and in the end, it usually depends on who is behind the wheel. So what exactly are you trying to prove anyway?

Edit: I know there's alot of rogue QQ, and for many parts of the game this is true (lol maulgar/gruul/whatever), but I'd agree Karazhan is not really rogue hostile in any significant way (I guess you may have been trying to disprove this, anyway, mages sure aint sub-par by default to rogues in Karazhan).

Juli · 03/02/07, 7:05 AM

Originally Posted by kamii

Also: we're not discussing the dps output and equip of our rogues but the fact that, even if they outperform other classes/players on single target damage, the lack of utility doesn't weight up against the dps you gain by bringing them. The DPS-gap isn't big enough to favour a rogue over other classes.

Again, what utility does a mage bring that actually makes any difference at all? Rogues have superior interrupts for the fights that require it and less attention and effort from healers required to maintain them which means more healing that can be focused on the tank or other group members, including the healers themselves. Additionally, rogue dps is sustainable indefinitely with no risk of running out of mana. If you're referring to warlocks and shadow priests for utility, sure. I'd have no problem taking 2 shadow preists and multiple warlocks. Hunters really bring very little in terms of utility in my opinion. Misdirect is the best of what they have to offer and is completely unnecessary with any halfway decent tank.

Originally Posted by Teenee

And mages are better in some other situations. IME, Mage and Rogue DPS is pretty competitive, and in the end, it usually depends on who is behind the wheel. So what exactly are you trying to prove anyway?

That's basically the point. You have a lot of people making blanket statements that rogues are not worth bringing to any difficult content, and it's just not true. There is nothing broken about the class itself.

Maledict · 03/02/07, 7:41 AM

Juli,

Whilst I 100% agree that rogues are a very powerful and useful addition to a Karazhan raid, and indeed we actively try to get at least one in every raid minimum, I think you're now going slightly too far the other way on the mage class to compensate - maybe your mages aren't playing at a decent level either?

Mages shouldn't require more healing and care than rogues in Karazhan - they take less damage on most fights and are at less risk, whilst generally providing at least equivalent damage.

Both classes are worth bringing, and if Karazhan were 15 player I'd most certainly two of each. To be honest, there isn't a class in the game right now that we wouldn't take 2 of in a 10 player group - everyone seems to bring and offer something different and useful to the group.

Juli · 03/02/07, 8:34 AM

My aim was not to portray mages as useless or bringing nothing at all to the table. Yes, they are good to have around and do bring unique benefits to your group. I was really just arguing the other side of the coin and using mages as an example for comparison, with a little bit of overstating and exaggertion for good measure. The rogue class really is just as good and warrants a raid slot. The actual benefits of each class weigh out pretty equally in my eyes as well and probably sit somewhere in the middle of where I was portraying each class to be. I do believe that the set of tools available to rogues, in the particular case of karazhan, are slightly superior to those available to a mage.

Tel · 03/02/07, 8:56 AM

Originally Posted by Pane

@Juli

I'm in the same guild as Kamii, also in 'management'. While it may be true that rogue survivability is > mages, I don't agree their utility is better too. We brought 1 mage along, for dispell, buffs and water; sure you can do without, but (mind you we have only run kara 1 x, and called it a night after trash started respawning after our 3rd try on Maiden)n we most certainly can do it without evasion tanking.

here's our set up

Prot tank
resto sham
lock
holy priest
holy priest

feral druid (offtank/dps)
hunter
enhancement sham (me)
mage
shadow priest

I don't know which spot would have been better filled with a rogue, to be honest.

Now admittedly, there's probably a skill gap between at least _some_ of our rogues and the people we brought along for this first ever attempt. The dps difference between most of our rogues and the people in the actual raid is not expressed in %, but in multiples.

But even if we assume the rogues do equal dps to say a lock or a shadowpriest; which of those would you swap out?

You have a heavily anti melee stacked group there, if you took two rogues instead of the ench shaman and shadow priest, I dont imagine you'd find the results much different, unless your rogues suck ofc.

I run with (as standard)

Prot Warr
Feral Druid
Holy Paladin
Tree Druid
Rogue

Hunter
Mage
Warlock
Holy Priest
Rogue

Ok, so its probably not ideal for any fight. But its more than capable for all. There arent any major difficulties with rogues in karazhan.

Teenee · 03/02/07, 9:02 AM

Originally Posted by Tel

You have a heavily anti melee stacked group there

Enhancement Sham and Feral druid hardly equates to "anti melee", I'd say that's a pretty damn good starting position for a rogue. (Edit: even Hunter! Maybe with TSA)

Mencius · 03/02/07, 1:26 PM

Originally Posted by Maledict

To be honest, there isn't a class in the game right now that we wouldn't take 2 of in a 10 player group - everyone seems to bring and offer something different and useful to the group.

Ret Pallys and Survival Hunters... amirite?

Seriously though, pretty much any group can make things work. It all depends on the quality of players and how they interact with each other. My guild is lucky enough to be blessed with both good rogues, good mages, and good warlocks. So we never have a problem finding good people to take with us. In the month that we've been running Karazhan now I've taken an entire assortment of classes to Karazhan. We've had everything from 2 feral tanks/2 shadow priests, 3 mages/no rogues, 3 rogues/no locks, 3 priests/no druids or pallys, 2 hunters/no locks, etc. All these groups have done fairly well. There has yet to be a week that we didn't at least down Prince (except the first week, which we only got to Shade because of the learning curve).

What really makes the difference is looking around and saying to yourself "ok, with the people we have here, and the abilities we have available to us, what can we do to get past this encounter..." I think many times people get too caught up in things they read or videos they watched so they try to emulate someone else's success and don't find a way to do it on their own.

While all these opinions are valid in one way or another there is always a workable option of some sort. Don't get me wrong, 10 rogues isn't gonna down Karazhan. Neither is 10 mages. But any reasonably assembled group will do fine.

Maledict · 03/02/07, 1:33 PM

I said class, not spec...

You'd be pushed to find *one* of those specs in our raids - not because we forbid any specs, but simply because our players don't like playing specs that simply don't work well in teams.