Brachamul

I'd like to create a thread about spells and techniques that are underused in PvE, and more specifically spells that tend to greatly affect the performance of other classes, just as a small guide helping people find out what they can do to help the others in their group or raid. Dunno if this thread will be of any use to anyone, but I'd like to try it out anyway.

I am posting this because I raid a lot with beggining guilds to help out, and I often realise that they do not fully understand the power of certain effects.



Class : Warlock

Curse of Shadows : This spells and the 2 following curses are very often more effective than Curse of Agony damagewise. Curse of Shadows increases the damage of Shadow Priests, Arcane Mages and Balance Druids by roughly 10%.

Curse of Elements : Increases the damage of Fire mages by 10%, Frost mages by 10% and Enhancement Shaman by a little.

Curse of Recklessness : Increases the damage of all Physical damage dealers by roughly 6-8%. All three Curses should always be used in a raid environment as long as 3 warlocks are available.

[Talent] Malediction : Improves the power of CoShadows and CoElements by 3%. This may not seem like much, but in truth this talent increases the Warlock's DPS by 3% as well as the DPS of any other classes using the same school of damage. It's a great talent and should not be looked over.

[Talent] Shadow Embrace : Most Affliction warlocks only put a single point into this talent to get the bonus to Drain Life. However this talent, when maxed out, is equivalent to your tanks getting a 5% buff to their life points. And this is really not a small increase.


Class : Priest

These are pretty obvious and barely worth mentioning. Misery is +5% damage to all spells, Shadow Weaving is 10% damage to Warlocks using shadow damage, and Vampiric touch and embrace are great spells in group environments.


Class : Mage

Amplify Magic : Most mages will have been using Dampen magic as a solo buff for levelling up, and very few mages have this spell on their action bars. Amplify magic is a very good spell to use on any raid fight that doesn't involve to much magic going around. As a general rule, AoE damage spells are almost never affected by Amplify Magic. It should be avoided on elemental fights like Hydross. However it is a great buff to apply on the whole raid or just on the tanks for many bosses, as it increases all healing done to the target by 240. 360 if an arcane mage puts 2 talent points in it.

Scorch : This effect is often used by fire mages but it also greatly increases the DPS of Fire-using warlocks (Destruction spec) and Shamans who use Fire Shock (Enhancement Shaman).


Class : Rogue

Expose Armor : This should be kept up at all times if you do not have a Warrior around to stack Sunder Armour.


Class : Druid

Faerie Fire : A great boost to melee DPS, should always be kept up. Moonkin Druids should really consider improving this spell if their raid comprises any Rogues and Fury Warriors.

Mangle : Of course a Feral Druid will be keeping the debuff up for himself, but it also boosts Warriors and Rogues with their bleed damage.

Insect Swarm : Should always be kept up by Moonkin Druids. 2% hit chance is quite meaningful at high levels.


Class : Shaman

Stormstrike : Try to always keep this debuff up. It increases the ticks of Deadly Poison (Rogue), Serpent Sting (Hunter), Insect Swarm (Druid), as well as the hits of Wrath (Druid) and Lightning Bolt (Shaman). Favour the useage of Flame Shock instead of Earth Shock in order to let others tae advantage of this debuff.

Windfury Totem : Huge boost to Warriors (Fury or Arms), Paladins (Retribution) and Rogues. Just remember to tell them to drop their main hand poisons or sharpening stones so that Windfury can take effect.

Agility Totem : Great boost for Hunters, Feral Druids and of course yourself. This is equivalent to 5% dodge for a Feral Druid, so If you've got one tanking in your group, use it.


Class: Hunter

Scorpid Sting : This should always be kept up on raid bosses. It reduces their hit chance by 5% and stacks with the Balance Druid debuff Insect Swarm (2%).


Class : Paladin

Jugement of Wisdom : If you're able to, try to keep this up. The task is of course much easier with a Retribution paladin around.

Jugement of Light : Same as above.


Class : Warrior

Thunderclap : This should constantly be kept up on raid bosses. Remember to try and put it up on mobs or bosses tanked by Paladins or Druids, as they cannot apply this debuff themselves. If it is improved, it reduces the attack speed of a boss by 20%.

Sunder Armor : This is equivalent to about a 20-25% damage increase for all physical damage dealers and should always be kept up, either by the tank or by a dps warrior.



If I have not mentioned an interesting spell or talent, either by omission or by ignorance, feel free to tell me about it and I'll edit this post.

 

orcsgotbooty

Not to flame, but 99%+ of the readers here know about what you have mentioned, creative uses for something like sentry totem or levitate, things not used in every single raid might be a fun thread, this tho really is common knowledge.

 

Ghando

I'm pretty sure all of these have been covered in various threads; there's even a "When to use Curse of Recklessness" thread.

<Bryne> >> MILKED TEAT 2, GHANDO NEXT <<

 

• Nurru

Someone is excited to be able to post a new thread.

19:31 <@Zyla> I fuck like a gorilla
19:31 <@Zyla> wait
19:31 <@Zyla> wrong chat room

 

spyroware

Expose Weakness, the trademark Survival talent is left out of the Hunter section.

I'd have to agree with above though. The title doesn't fit, a "The raidwide buffs of each class" would seem more precise.

"Weird Spells and their uses" implies things like Blinking Archi's air bursts, using Water Walking to speed up back-to-back tries on Vashj.. stuff like that.

 

panny

Use Stormstrike as much as possible? Who would've thought!

 

◊ forostie

I better stop stacking Imp Scorch now, I can't afford to have Fire Warlocks out-deeps me.

This.

<dylanm_> I knew it wasn't true when I didn't see it on worldofraids.

<XI> DRAGONS FUCKING CARS

 

Soul

Correspondingly, here are a couple of dirty tricks to help in PvP and the unusual effects that come into play when you are playing in premade vs. premade BGs, arena or other fairly advanced PvP situations.

Class : Warlock

Warlock party buffs: One irritating things about warlocks (and boy, are there many annoying things) is that warlocks provide two great cover buffs, Unending Breath and Detect Invisibility. Their PvP utility is essentially nil except as cheap cover buffs when the presence of these two buffs can greatly aid in keeping that Blessing of Freedom or Protection from getting dispelled off your flag runner/enemy focus target. It really does the heart good to see the mass dispel swirly animation and realize that the opposing priest has wasted 900+ mana to dispel a bunch of worthless 50 mana buffs.

Felhunter aggro radius : Like mobs, pets using the Aggressive AI have a certain aggro radius. For mobs that detect stealth or invisibility, the aggro radius is bigger for invisible or stealthed units than it is for mobs that are neither stealthed nor invisible. This has certain ramifications for felhunters on Aggressive: felhunters will go after stealthed players about as soon as they get detected by Paranoia. This makes the felhunter a great pet for flag guarding. When guarding AV bunkers a great strat is to park a felhunter on aggressive on the stairs leading up to the top floor. This generally ensures that any stealther trying to ninja the flag will get knocked out of stealth... no stealth, no lag-sap into a flag cap into a stun lock. Similarly, when holding Horde AV towers, keeping a felhunter on aggressive will often destealth enemies as they come up the ramp.

[Talent] Shadow Embrace : This talent is yet another annoying aspect of fighting warlocks... the debuff doesn't really mean anything, but it's magic and it tends to get dispelled... then reapplied when you put another DoT on. It's great for wasting other people's mana. Especially if the other person is a paladin.

Curse of Recklessness : Generally, you use this curse to change the direction of a Fear gone bad. Fear causes your target to run in a random direction at 125% speed. Sometimes, this is toward the enemy flag room. That's a bad thing. Applying CoR and then another curse will suspend the effects of fear and then reapply them when CoR is removed, this time, hopefully in a more favourable direction. CoR also has limited use against spike targets... the removal of 800 AR is nothing to sneeze at and can mean the difference between a 3% near death and a successful spike.

Class : Priest

Wanding: In many cases, wanding is the safest way for a priest to stop flag cappers when your team is otherwise occupied. An enemy trying to cap is more or less out of the battle... but so are you. The key to good wanding is exploiting communication breakdowns among the other team and casually hitting multiple cappers in sequence with wand shots while your team's resurrection timer ticks out. Remember that Mind Flay doesn't disrupt caps.

Class : Mage

Armor : Although it is often taken for granted that your armor will be stripped, this often isn't the case in BGs. In terms of damage reduction, 3% crit reduction is on average a wash with the extra armor provided by Ice Armor. The attack speed slowdown is what brings Ice/Frost Armor to the fore in terms of damage reduction. And, of course, there is the current bug with Frost Armor where a 3/3 Permafrost Rank 1 Frost Armor slows the attack speed of your attacker by a whopping 35% (fixed in 2.4). Rank 1 Frost armor has the additional advantage of being cheap to reapply in a dispel happy environment, making it one of the better cover buffs to keep on your bars. When comparing talented procs, note that Impact will stop attacks, while often, that Frostbitten Warrior will manage to get an Execute off due to the magical powers of lag.

Frostbite: Unlike all other forms of CC with shared cooldowns, Frostbite shares DR with Frost Nova and Freeze, making it the only form of CC where uncontrolled procs share DR with controlled procs. This can get terribly inconvenient, so watch the DRs when you want to root that pesky rogue.


Class : Rogue

Expose Armor : In this age of clothies with 480 res, 5k+ AR and 10k+ HP unbuffed, often, the only way to guarantee a spike death is to strip off 2k armor before the spike is called.

Sap, blind: The main use of Blind is in using it to run out the DR timers for other CCs for your teammates. It's always in your best interest to drive the battle away from the person you have blinded. Also, try to blind an enemy that is slowed. that way, they waste more time getting back to the where they can do damage, allowing for more time for DR to run out. Similarly for Sap, you want your team to drive the battle as far away from your Sap target as possible. Often, a good target for a Sap is the guy winding up a big spell with a cast time. Use your Sap as if it were an interrupt in this case... remember that combat is not triggered until the target takes damage or until a spell leaves his/her hands. And never forget the power of lag... those who strive often win!


Class : Paladin

Judgement of Justice : This judgement is crucial to defeating druids in small scale battles. Note that it is not considered a movement-impairing effect, so FAPs, BoFs, shifting and Imp. Sprint don't remove this effect.

Prot PvP Spec : Although defensive builds are generally horrible in arenas, prot pallies can be really nasty flag defenders. As a prot pally, you will likely be wearing gear with decent int... help out with the healing until the teams are whittled down and then let the magic start. You just want to stop the flag from being capped until the next res pulse happens (in the case of AB or AV graveyards) or keep the flag from flipping in AV bunkers or towers. It's pretty scary how difficult a prot pally is to kill when he/she gets bloody-minded about surviving. Try to get your team to focus on getting the offensive casters out of the way, because a Prot spec pally can hold out against melee far longer than against casters.

 

itsafineday

Some of the warlocks in my guild are not interested in putting CoR on bosses that doesnt hit hard like BB,RoS,Mother, i have no idea how to convince them, not that it really matter, but can someone please direct me to a suitable answer as to how it really helps?not even after i link the thread -_-

 

◊ Maniq

I tend to agree, all these spells have been covered with far more analysis elsewhere.