Ok, well at least you know you should be running H HoS....I'll stick with my earlier comments about this spec being not terrible but nothing new or improved then, just another long-known variant of FFB. If you're enjoying it, grats to you.
Mobidity and glyph of dark death over death strike?
I've been tanking heroics / pug naxx as blood since I hit 80 and I personally find that by dropping the glyphs / talents for DS gives me more flexibility while still allowing good threat generation. Only tanked Ulduar once but threat was nowhere close to a problem.
Anyone else played with more of a focus on DnD / HS / DC for blood tanking?
ST rotation: IT PS DS HS HS RDump DS HSx4 RDump repeat
I find the lack of DS talents give me room for Morbidity and Dark Death which means I can include more HSs in the rotation and stronger death coils which give me about the same ST threat but much better AoE threat from Morbidity
I am looking on my current gear setup on RAWR and even with totally regemming for hit to make up for dropping the Elemental Focus Stone, and using the Gemmed Wand over the Plauge Igniter I am still seeing a 70dps drop installing the Forged Ember from HOS. So, that trinket may not be a dps upgrade, but the Dying Curse, The Eye of the Broodmother, the Fate of Heavens, The Dragon Soul, and The Living Flame are all dps increases not to mention all the other items Ulduar drops for other slot gear. I completely agree with you that I should be looking for all of these alternatives to be able to utilize Precision once again.
Thank you for your comments
Last edited by Ishwar-Area52 : 07/07/09 at 3:28 PM.
I liked the Q&A. Mostly because I take the long view... in the short term, my preferred spec sucks. But I'm confident that, long term, it'll all balance out. So why worry? I'm having some fun actually playing other specs (which I had completely avoided up until 3.0.8 actually... frost4lyf until then), trying out other rotations, and becoming a more well rounded mage.
Nothing is completely bad. Frost sucks for most fights... I only get to bring it out on Vezax, Freya, and Council Medium-hard. But I'm sure it'll get balanced eventually. We finally got confirmation that they know the ice lance is a straight dps loss; we got confirmation that they see Frost dps as a problem. So we're on the back burner... I'll live. I'm living it up on my priest and DK as much as my mage anyway.
Contented wheels don't squeak (or post). I'm having more fun in WoW than at any prior time in its history... one sucky aspect isn't enough to get me down.
Is the jury out on how important the 4pc set bonus is yet? I am thinking of breaking the set bonus to replace my T8.5 chest with the Insiduous Intent chest from Yogg Saron.
You make it sound as tho on Freya dpsing the Snaplasher is the only alternative. If your Frostbite is going to be an issue then bring that up to your raid leader so he can put you on the Stormlasher. Problem solved. As for the detonating lashers you have to remember that after you stack up on Freya, call out for AOE till they are at 20% or so, then call out for stop AOE everyone then spreads out which takes a couple seconds. The 1 point in Improved Blizzard only slows these targets for 1.5 seconds with a minimal 25% movement speed reduction. The Frostbite proc that may have affected a couple targets in that group are Frozen for a maximum of 5 seconds which will be broke if they are hit at all. During the single targeting part of this phase you should only be targeting the lashers that are away from Freya as not doing this will cause unneccisary damage on the tank and this will last for about 15 seconds giving your Frostbite procs plenty of time to fall off while the raid is targeting the lashers they should be.
So, even in this rare situation where you might want to argue the negative effects that Frostbite brings I think they are nil since I have done Freya with this spec and had no issues whatsoever. The added AOE damage helps get them to 20% faster as well, but lets not forget that specing for Frostbite/Imp-Bliz/Shatter does not in some way remove Flamestrike from your spell menu. So, if this is a better choice for this encounter then use that spell. Another group that recomend Flamestrike for is the adds you face when approaching XT since they pop the giant bubbles that reduce damage by about 90% or more so Frostbite doesnt hold them in these bubbles. Just simple research and raid awareness will help you decide what to use and when to use it. I still hold that Frostbite is optimal for the added aoe damage it does provide with Shatter and Imp Bliz over talents that you can easily live without.
Last edited by Ishwar-Area52 : 07/07/09 at 4:39 PM.
* Animal Handler now increases your pet's attack power by 5/10% instead of increasing its expertise by 5/10.
*Wild Hunt now increases the contribution your pet gets from your Stamina by 20% and attack power by 15%. (Up from 10%)
Also cat pet buff
Rake (Cat) now deals 47 to 67 bleed damage and an additional 19 to 25 damage every 3 seconds at max rank. (Up from 19 to 25 additional damage over 9 sec)
Since our pets will already be expertise capped as long as we're hit capped, it was obvious it'd be changed. I'm curious as to how much of a boost the changes will provide.
Permafrost: In addition to its existing effects, this talent now also causes the mage’s Chill effects to reduce healing received by the victim by 7/13/20%.
I may have missed it sorta new to this forum. I was wondering if any one had a suggestion to some useful mods for a rogue? First time playing one in Wow and wasn't sure as to where to start?
Ardent Defender: Redesigned. Any damage that takes the paladin below 35% health is reduced. This reduction applies only to the portion that pushes the paladin below 35% health (example: a paladin at 50% health takes a 40% hit; the first 15% hits as normal while the next 25% is reduced). In addition, once every 2 minutes an attack that would have killed the paladin will fail to kill, and instead heal the paladin for up to 10/20/30% of maximum health depending on the paladin's defense rating (example: a paladin with defense equal to only 5 times his or her level will receive no healing from the talent, while a paladin who is immune to critical strikes from boss creatures through defense will receive the maximum amount).
so we basically have exactly what we had, but it can't leepfrog. + oh shit aspect that we can't control. Not impressed from my part.
Heya, I'm new here but i already love this place! Particularly this thread since i recently became level 80 with my mage and it's helped SO MUCH in finding the best gear for me
Anyways, I was wondering if anyone thought [Breeches of the Caller] should be added to the legs section, I've been using them instead of anything else on there and i think they're great
How high is the importance of expertise for a Combat Swords Rogue ? [ currently 18/51/2 spec ] ... as my gear has been 'upgrading' i have been losing loads of expertise to the point I am at now where I only have.. 13 expertise on my char sheet ( 2/2 wpn expertise talent + 3 from Human racial ] ..
26 expertise (214 expertise rating) to cap.
16 expertise (132 expertise rating) to cap for rogues with 2/2 Weapon Expertise.
13 expertise (107 expertise rating) to cap for combat human rogues wielding a sword/mace.
I think you perhaps misunderstood my question Kaidagar, i know what the expertise cap is.
My question I guess was more along the lines of ' I am getting gear 'upgrades' ' however I am losing expertise. HOW important is the expertise for overall dps and am I better off sticking with worse gear with expertise or better gear but lose expertise.
Is there any possible way of adding a 1button task bind to the addon to make it even more simplistic... when the skill in the middle changes, it auto hits/changes to it?
hey all,
i have been messing around in the spreadsheet a little bit and i have noticed that replacing all my agility gems(+16) with ArP gems(+16) increases my dps by 4 for ever 16 ArP i put in. i have grim toll. so i was wondering would it be worth it to do so and replace all gems with ArP (i will have 462 ArP if i regem) or just get ArP from gear?
im already useing the spec with no imp arcane shot and im not useing it in my rotation and have noticed 600-800 more dps with 317 ArP just from gear?
right now as a resto druid, i have no problem healing. rejuv, regrowth, nourish and wild growth are really good for healing. swiftmend and natures swiftness healing touch, make druids great healers. the problem is that life bloom doesnt really fit into the rotation like it use to. i understand the change so rolling 3 lifeblooms isnt as good as it use to be, but i have healed 25 man content without using lifebloom at all. the problem is that lifebloom takes so much more mana then the other hots and the refund isnt that great that it has worked its way out of the healing rotation. lifebloom use to be what druids needed to roll, and now it is "optional". rolling lifebloom added a type of strat to the druid rotation, lifebloom still can be usefull to druids with enough mana regen to afford to roll and stack it, but most druids will go without it due to it costing too much mana to keep it up without mana problems. the mana return is nice, but most times i use it is when i clearcast so i get the free mana back but it is still a mana hog and using it to roll lifebloom will just kill mana. lifebloom needs to be altered so it can fit into a resto druids healing rotation more then just an optional heal.
I got wind of some new trend (if it is really a trend) in DK Blood DPS today while tanking a heroic. The DK DPS with me was speced Blood (I verified this with Recount seeing that they were using Heart Strike) but glyphed for Obliterate and using that ability as their Frost+Unholy ability in their rotation.
I find this curious for the fact that the Blood tree encourages you to use Death Strike as much as possible; Might of Morgraine comes to mind immediately as that also increases crit damage for HS as well.
I hopped onto the PTR to check this out. Even though my build is glyphed with Glyph of Death Strike I did some testing regardless. My PTR build is the same as my live build (51/0/20).
Utilizing my typical rotation of IT->PS->HS->HS->DS->RP Dump eventually leading to repeating HS I found that my DS crits were doing an average of 5341 damage on the raid boss dummy. When I changed out DS with OB in my rotation I found OB doing 3582 on average for crits. Now assuming I switched out the DS glyph for the OB one that would only bring the average OB crits to ~4300.
I'm curious what others think of this "trend". For typical Blood builds that have HS in the rotation I can't see a reason why one would use OB over DS even if you glyph for it since you will almost certainly have Might of Morgraine and NOT Guile of the Gorefiend (which would boost OB). Additionally the current rotation I use encourages an RP build up to maximize the effectiveness of the Glyph of DS where OB would not do that.
Mutilate rogues cap expertise only to avoid cycle interruptions due to dodged finishers. That doesn't really apply to combat rogues, whose finishers can't be dodged anyway (due to Surprise Attacks) As such, expertise is inferior to other stats with higher EPs, like ArP, Agi, and straight AP. For exact EP values I'd suggest using one of the spreadsheets available in these forums.
I think you perhaps misunderstood my question Kaidagar, i know what the expertise cap is.
My question I guess was more along the lines of ' I am getting gear 'upgrades' ' however I am losing expertise. HOW important is the expertise for overall dps and am I better off sticking with worse gear with expertise or better gear but lose expertise.
Thanks :-)
I'll quote myself from a few pages back in this thread. In general, the answer to these questions is really best found from consulting a spreadsheet or simply using search:
Originally Posted by Feist-Mok
The problem is not your expertise. Expertise is a solid 'B' stat for Combat Rogues, right there along with Hit before the poison cap and crit. ('A' stats, by comparison would be Agility, Attack Power, and Armor Penetration). The Expertise cap to prevent dodges is 26/26. Given that as a Combat Rogue, you have 10 from talents, your primary CP builder only costs 40 energy, and that your finishers are undodgeable thanks to Surprise Attacks, Expertise has comparatively little DPS impact. It results in a few more landed Sinister Strikes, and some extra white damage.
Given we can now get [Idol of the Plainstalker] as an early quest reward in BT is it still worth going back to farm the BoJ for the [Idol of Terror] given it's only a difference of 10 agi?
I realize that farming the 20 BoJ isn't really that difficult (will get that just going back to get the heroic dungeon acheivements) but is it enough of a difference from the quest reward for it to be something we go back and do asap?
07/07/09, 3:17 PM
