Quote:
Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru
I am, however, wondering about BGs. I've only entered a BG maybe 5 times total. I don't think my side has ever won. Are BGs worth it as a priest? I'm currently dual-spec'd as Disc/Shadow, but my gear is increasingly, uh, geared towards Disc/healing.
I suppose after I get the set I'm collecting, I could go after a shadow priest set as an alternative, but what's the best way to do this? Just run as Disc until I get a bunch of honor points to buy shadow gear? Or should I just keep running 5-man heroics and buy shadow gear until I feel happy enough to start running BGs? Is it better to run BGs as Disc and be a healer, or would it be more rewarding to go full-on PvP shadow facemelter? |
Shadow priests massacre in PvP, usually. I consider myself a pretty damn good PvPer (Always in the top three in battlegrounds) and I have a guildie shadow priest who's been consistently about 10-12 levels under me and gives me a run for my money every time we duel.
You might be interested in doing something along the lines of what I'm doing. I'm a dual specced prot/fury warrior. I have my t9 protection gear and run heroics and (soon) raids as a tank. I've also glyphed and trained that spec to optimize my PvE capabilities. My fury spec is trained and glyphed to optimize my PvP capabilities. I'm working on
this set of armor now.
That brings me to my next point. If you're planning to do PvP often, you'll want to invest into a PvP oriented set of gear rather than a PvE one, which is what that shadow priest set you're looking at is. The arena sets are currently the easiest way to achieve this. Season 3-7 sets are available for purchase in exchange for emblems. They are sold by the actual emblem vendors in Dalaran that are just up those stairs in the alliance building. The season 6 set is available for purchase with honor points from one of the goblins outside of the arena in Gadgetzan. The season 7 and 8 sets are also available in exchange for honor points and arena points from other goblins in Gadgetzan. The season 8 set does require you to be in a fairly high rated arena team, though, as it is the newest and best set. The earlier seasons can be purchased as well, but they are harder to attain (they require tier 4 armor tokens acquired in BC raids) and they are not really worth the effort, as they are level 70 items.
Personally, I'm picking up the season 5 set for emblems of conquest because it's a bit cheaper and will be a good enough set of armor to get me through enough BG's and arena matches to be able to pick up a better set with honor points.
I put together
this comparison of the armor you linked and the deadly gladiator set for shadow priests (I believe) to give you an idea of the differences. You'll notice the biggest difference is you're giving up intellect and spirit and gaining stamina and resilience. Basically you give up mana pool and regen for durability, because if you can't stay up in PvP, your mp5 doesn't matter anyway. The stamina increases your HP and the resilience (which is a moot stat against NPCs) reduces the damage you take from players and their pets/minions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru
Unless, of course, I find a place in BGs. Or maybe arenas? What are arenas like? Do I need to be jacked up on Red Bull and have ADD to even make it worthwhile?
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Arenas were actually designed to give people the ability to receive rewards for PvPing, but not have to dedicate their lives to it. Basically, you fight in 2v2, 3v3, or 5v5 gladiator style matches. You do so with a team, and can only be in one team per bracket. At the end of each week you are awarded arena points based on your highest ranked teams performance. The only stipulation is you must participate in at least 10 matches throughout the week to receive any arena points.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru
I know...I see requests for healers all the time, but I fear the whole, "ur undergeared, lol!" or "u don't know the fights, lol!" But I should get over that. According to wow-heroes.com, my gear level makes Naxx 10-man "easy." Should I start with that? How long do raids take anyway?
I don't know the mechanics/stages of these things. How do they differ from 5-mans? It's not that I don't want to raid deep down inside; it's just that it seems like such a closed/exclusive community to me. I don't think I'm a bad healer; I just despise the attitudes of hardcore idiots who don't seem to know how the game works.
Here's an example: I did the Pit of Saron heroic for the first time recently. The tank we had dropped right away, and so another guy came on to fill in. He was an idiot. He ran ahead and did a pull, and it was fine, except he had three mobs on him and they were down to like 10% and he decided to just run ahead to the next 3-mob pull, and then another. Of course, we wipe.
So the tank says, "No wonder the other tank left. The heals can't take it."
One of the DPS replied, "Not with you doing all those pulls. He's undergeared."
While he was right about my being undergeared, I wasn't that undergeared. I found out later that, according to the Random Dungeon tool, I was adequately geared shortly thereafter with one or two fairly minor item upgrades. Plus, it wasn't the first time I was undergeared in a dungeon. I know my class.
So anyway, I said, "Fine, go find another healer," and I left the party without waiting for a reply. As a healer, I don't have to suffer players who don't know what they're doing.
This is the kind of thing I want to avoid. People going beyond the necessary threshold of difficulty and then blaming someone else when things go wrong. If I was indeed the weakest link, then damn well be a team player and make do. We could have beat the dungeon if he did one pull at a time; we only just barely failed on his pulling 3 groups at once. What does that say about an undergeared healer?
/rant
It's not the first time I've come across a tank who doesn't seem to understand that healers have to manage mana, consider their casting MP5, have to make decisions on spells, especially when DPS generates too much threat or if there's AoE damage coming in. I've also suffered DPS players who don't know how to keep their threat under the tank's.
But, of course, it's the healer who gets blamed. "Fucking heal me! You suck!" Um...I can't heal the entire party when it's getting shitstomped all at once. That's called a fucking free-for-all and it gets the party all killed every time.
/rant 2
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Yeah, as a new tank I can sympathize with you. If the healer's not undergeared, it's the undergeared tank's fault we wipe. Couldn't possibly be the DPS death knight that keeps pulling mobs before I can establish any sort of threat, and there's no way it's the healer who's so overgeared for heroics that he thinks he can just sit back doing nothing until I'm dead and everybody's trying to compensate for the lack of a tank.
People are just assholes, sometimes. I actually got with a group last night, though, that was very understanding that I was a new tank, actually praised me for being new at it and doing as well as I did, and when one of us messed up, we figured out what happened, fixed it, and moved on without anybody getting angry or disrespectful. We ended up successfully doing five dungeons together, which rocked for all of us because we didn't have to wait for the queues.
Just goes to show that politeness and respect will really get you to your goals faster in the game. It's almost always much faster after a wipe to find out what happened respectfully and fix it, then just call someone an idiot, leave party, and queue for another dungeon.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru
How is one to know they're ready for raids?
Maybe I'll start with this.
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Just look online for the minimum stat requirements for whatever raid you're looking toward. Look at a few of them and it will give you a general idea of what is expected of you.
For Naxx it looks like most people agree that you should be working with at least 1500 bonus healing, and 160 mp5.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru
Thanks; it's a work in progress. I'm currently grinding reputation for some top-quality enchants for the key pieces.
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Make sure you get your Sons of Hodir rep up. They have the best shoulder enchants.
---------- Post added at 01:01 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:52 PM ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru
Do full raids need to be completed all in one sitting, or can it be done in parts? Are the weekly raids like quests within regular raids, or are they separate things all together? Why are they so short?
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Raids can be split up throughout the week. Once you go into a raid for the week, everything you kill stays dead until the next week.
Weekly raid quests are quests to kill a certain boss within a raid. I did "Flame Leviathan Must Die" this week. It had me kill Flame Leviathan and that's it. He's the very first boss in Ulduar and it took about 15-20 minutes maximum to down him from the moment we entered the instance.
The weekly raid quests are just designed to give people a few more emblems each week, I guess....