[WoW] Thinking on coming back, how much has it changed?

[Sharmai]

Originally Posted by Believe

Ok, my Wife's niece level up a Mage to 63 and has basically abandoned it. I want to level it to 70 but no absolutely nothing about Mages.

Anyone have a good build to suggest for leveling?

All your points are belong to frost.

No seriously all frost you can't go wrong. It's not the most min/maxed optimal build but its 90% good. All frost. But if you want to know which talents to ignore 100% of the time then here they are: Frozen Core, Frost Warding.

Other then that go to town in frost land and just work your way to shatter in the fastest manner possible.

[c8fe]

Originally Posted by Sharmai

For those of you coming back be wary of the groups you go in and the people in them. I've got story of two groups that performed very differently in heroic and normal mgt.

Group 1: Druid/Feral (Me), Warlock, Rogue, Resto Shaman, Mage
Normal MgT

Yes thats 3 forms of CC and a great healer for that instance and it was normal so it should have been a cakewalke right? WRONG. The fucking mage couldn't sheep before it hit my swipe range and I have to swipe or 3 mobs are gonna go straight for the healer fucking idiot. The warlock refused to enslave the succbus.. wtf gogo -3k dps + sleep dot.. The rogue didn't have imp. stealth so he go seen every 3rd pull + he sapped when patrols where close..


Wipe = 9 times before i said fuck it I'm out. Never made it past the 5 pack pulls pass the second boss.

Group 2: Druid(Feral)(Me), Warrior Fury(Welfare epics s2), Mage (frost), Resto druid, Holy Paladin.

Story spoiler because its a wall of text..

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

It was a heroic mgt. Yes that's right we had only ONE CC. I almost pulled out of the run because of that and the fact our DPS was gonna suck for the 3rd boss but I said fuck it we can down two bosses so lets go. We fucking owned. The mage sheeped right after I pulled. EVERYONE LoS the mobs to make sure they were in my swipe range as needed. If the healer got aggro he came to ME and didn't run away. (Cry I miss good players!) The mage frost nova, CoC'ed and iceblocked more then he did damage if he needed to. The warrior was on healer protection duty. His goal in life was to die before the healer(s) died but keeping the mobs off the healers. Needles to say this worked very well.

During the 3rd boss we had no enslave for the demon, and we had the warrior, rogue, and shaman mobs. We could only CC one... We cc'ed the warrior of course and had to cyclone, bash, stomp, frost nova, CoC + kite all the other mobs while trying to DPS down the priest. It took us a good 3 minutes to kill the healing bitch while we did all this since our dps was so low but we did it and once she was down it was all over.

Moral of the story: You can take one of the most fucked up group compositions for one of the harder heroics out there but if everyone knows there class you will fucking own. L2play ur class.

At least your mage knew how to sheep, I recruited a mage from lfg once that didn't sheep anything, summoned water only for himself, and was 31/30 arcane. His defense was he just leveled to 70 that day, but he somehow had nearly a full set of gladiator gear. I check armory always now .

I've done heroic MGT with no CC, but it requires a durable healer for the third boss to prevent one shots along with people who are competent. I'm also a prot pally though so CC isn't exactly necessary. Instance groups like that make things interesting though, I hate cookie cutter instance runs and in all honesty they tend to be more smooth the more random they are. I 4 manned heroic slave pens with a few friends in 45 minutes with no CC and no wipes. I'de rather 4 man something then use LFG normally because in all honesty 4 consistent players is more smooth then 4 smart players and an idiot.

[Sharmai]

Has anyone else been able to tell the difference between when they have a hardcore arena player in their group vs a hardcore PvEer?

A PvP is constantly moving. kicking or cs'ing all heals, auto sheeps the loose mob (it doesn't actually matter what you tell them to sheep they will sheep whatever mob I happened to not pick up during the pull, this is usually not a bad thing if I expect it). They always stand right smack near the healer. For example a hardcore arena hunter always throws his frost trap where the healer stands or a hardcore arena healer always stands on the frost trap. A PvE'er hunter uses misdirect to himself and off tanks another mob with his pet. PvEer hunters also seem much better at small space kiting.

Arena healers LoS any ranged dps that targets them like its second nature. It's cool to watch them do it yet jump right back out to get a heal. Arena Rogues Will vanish -> cheepshot loose mobs and go into super evasion tank mode with prep keeping that mob stunlocked as long as possible. PvEer rogues might blind or pop evasion but then they go max dps.

Arena warlocks Fear!! You know the thing you must not ever do in instances! But they will fear and then life drain which when timed correctly it turns a mob around at a certain distance so they don't run to far. (How many of you knew THAT!?)

Arena players tend to work better in chatoic situations and bad pulls but they also have a tank mentality in that they seem to think its ok if they offtank one mob because they think the healer will keep up...

PvErs do better at controlling the whole encounter. They always use abilities to redirect the mob back to the tank and always drag mobs back to the tank. Their goal in life is to not be hit and being hit is bad.

*Note In all cases i'm talking about expert arena players vs expert pve'ers not noobs vs noobs.

All in all both are good in my groups I just always noticed these little things that stuck out when I'm tanking.

[Needless]

The S4/S3 resto shaman i usually play with is very offensive as well, he usually offtanks something just to generate more mana via water shield and his trinket from heroic UB mainly just for more excitement in PVE, assuming it doesnt hit too hard =p

Ive only grouped with a handful of well played arena geared players but yes they all keep moving constantly.. S4 rating rogue doing heroic OHB never stopped moving, whether he strafed around the mob stunlocking everything to shit blinding ect or he just spammed A D A D A D A D A D A D A D A D A D A D just for the sake of not standing still =p

[Lejina Bloodbath]

Originally Posted by spronk

actually when boosting its not even worth going prot. You are better going off full holy,.

To be frank any spec works in SM.

Did some boosting yesterday, first as prot. Was hitting 5 instances/hour np. Then I did some arena and came back as ret, and sure enough I was hitting the 5 instances/hour again, even after my lichen shield broke and I was using a tanking shield. Just equip enough spell damage, pop the wings and everything dies in a matter of seconds. Pending how mauled I got during the pull, sometimes I will show up with barely any hp left but a click of trinket and Im right back to full.

I'm amazed every pull that they never nerfed that place.

[CXB]

As far as PvPers go, we discovered that PvE usefulness held true long before they implemented arenas. Especially for healers. Recruiting a healer with PvP experience was always a sure bet that they would have great spatial awareness. It became quite clear in AQ which was the first raid zone to really make mobility a big deal.

[c8fe]

Originally Posted by Sharmai

Has anyone else been able to tell the difference between when they have a hardcore arena player in their group vs a hardcore PvEer?

A PvP is constantly moving. kicking or cs'ing all heals, auto sheeps the loose mob (it doesn't actually matter what you tell them to sheep they will sheep whatever mob I happened to not pick up during the pull, this is usually not a bad thing if I expect it). They always stand right smack near the healer. For example a hardcore arena hunter always throws his frost trap where the healer stands or a hardcore arena healer always stands on the frost trap. A PvE'er hunter uses misdirect to himself and off tanks another mob with his pet. PvEer hunters also seem much better at small space kiting.

Arena healers LoS any ranged dps that targets them like its second nature. It's cool to watch them do it yet jump right back out to get a heal. Arena Rogues Will vanish -> cheepshot loose mobs and go into super evasion tank mode with prep keeping that mob stunlocked as long as possible. PvEer rogues might blind or pop evasion but then they go max dps.

Arena warlocks Fear!! You know the thing you must not ever do in instances! But they will fear and then life drain which when timed correctly it turns a mob around at a certain distance so they don't run to far. (How many of you knew THAT!?)

Arena players tend to work better in chatoic situations and bad pulls but they also have a tank mentality in that they seem to think its ok if they offtank one mob because they think the healer will keep up...

PvErs do better at controlling the whole encounter. They always use abilities to redirect the mob back to the tank and always drag mobs back to the tank. Their goal in life is to not be hit and being hit is bad.

*Note In all cases i'm talking about expert arena players vs expert pve'ers not noobs vs noobs.

All in all both are good in my groups I just always noticed these little things that stuck out when I'm tanking.

I'de be happy to have either in a 5 man PUG.



Generally as a tank the only way I can tell if a person is hardcore PvP'er excluding their gear is that they never have omen. I think there is some truth to playstyle though because if I can help it I only group with people on my friends list and of them about 1/3 are hardcore arena players. They tend to do a bit less dps (I always assumed it was due to resilience itemization) but they are alot more frantic and notice small things like AE's, loose mobs, void zones, and things of that nature quicker. I imagine there is alot of truth in that PvE focus more on burning things down while PvP players focus more on surviving, I think this only applies to smaller scale things and once people get past kara they tend to focus at all times.

[Kreugen]

PVPers take fucking forever to kill anything. But boy is that shit CC'd like a mofo.

[The Ancient]

Arena warlocks Fear!! You know the thing you must not ever do in instances! But they will fear and then life drain which when timed correctly it turns a mob around at a certain distance so they don't run to far. (How many of you knew THAT!?)

It's easy enough to keep the mob where you want it by swapping between recklessness and another curse, ideally exhaustion.

Though I understand they are taking the ignore fear portion out of recklessness which baffles me slightly. No real outcry either, I imagine I was the only one doing this.

[castarocks]

So I leveled up a gnome rogue on Andorhal (BG9) and it seems like the alliance loses every damn BG. I have not won an AV in 3 days (not kidding). Is anyone else on BG9 experiencing the same rut?

[spronk]

what level? i'm horde on bg9 (blackrock) and i hear 70 is fairly even, 50-69 is heavily horde dominated.

[castarocks]

sorry - 70 BG's. I wonder if its because im playing during 12pm ---> 7pm. I could be rocking with the Soccer Moms and Pedos...

[Pyros]

Thing is, if you chain BGs, it's quite often possible to land with the same general people multiple games in a row, so the results will be the same all the time. There's also days when one side suck much more than the other. If you did get an extensive testing sample though, well can't help, but else don't deseperate, try going afk for 10mins after a lost AV then queue, you should enter one with another batch of people. I know when I was AFKing, some nights I'd get like 4k honor, and the next 20k honor, depending on my luck on who I was with.

[LadyVex]

Originally Posted by Pyros

Thing is, if you chain BGs, it's quite often possible to land with the same general people multiple games in a row, so the results will be the same all the time. There's also days when one side suck much more than the other. If you did get an extensive testing sample though, well can't help, but else don't deseperate, try going afk for 10mins after a lost AV then queue, you should enter one with another batch of people. I know when I was AFKing, some nights I'd get like 4k honor, and the next 20k honor, depending on my luck on who I was with.

Definitely agree with this. I usually chain queue and will see myself with the same group of people over and over again. It's awesome when the people rock and are just blowing shit out of the water, it sucks when you can't get them to do anything cohesively.

Also the other thing I notice is that if I queue for AV and get up against a horde premade, 9/10 times the premade loses. I dunno what it is. Some premades come in actually intelligent, taking only what they need and leave small groups of defense to get their towers etc. Other premades think they win just by being "premade" alone and end up handing an insane victory to alliance. (By having all of our towers, destroying all of theirs, getting the mines + Drek). I've gone out with some pretty high numbers of bonus honor from one match; more if it's AV weekend/AV daily.

Change it up if you are continuously losing and you are more likely to turn the tables. FWIW, I find late nights I win more often than during the day. I find alot of kids tend to be pretty goal driven in pvp, but the soccer moms who just follow the pack is what kills us. During the night there are more adults who are trying for a few wins before they have to head to bed for another day of work. I work 4 - early morning so I am all about the late nights. Queues are longer, however.

[Eida]

I'm going to resub. Anyone here have a scroll for me?