I will say, that if PvE is your gig, it is easy as all fuck to get geared out at least at the ilvl 200 epic (naxx10/heroic) level, and thank goodness for that. Tons of fun to get into some good looking gear instead of dragging yourself around in goofy random blues for a long time.

I think the pace and risk/reward right now in WoW are right on target. I expect the difficulty will ramp up soon enough, but I think it's a nice start to let everyone have an opportunity to see the raids and succeed in them.

As an old naxx 40 raider, though, it has been odd how the little changes to the zone make a big difference. I never died to Heigan's dance before and it dropped me twice, 4h might as well be a totally different fight, just kinda funny how they tweaked everything.

I'm almost to 80 on my Ret Paladin and right now, the only class that can challenge my DPS (with similar gear/level) is a Hunter (and they're about to get nurfed). I do appear to be slowing down though. I wonder if other classes will scale better with better gear and the retribution paladin will be marginalized to heal in a raid while just using its aura.

I'm sure once Warriors (especially with pocket heals) get some of the best gear they'll continue to be the powerhouses they were before WotLK.

I'm wondering about that because I haven't been able to find a warrior that could compete on the damage meters. I guess I'll have to start leveling my warrior to find out if other people suck or if they really are useless. And rogues.. what happened to rogues? They used to be tops.. now they are near the last. OR I just haven't run into any worthwhile players as I've been leveling.

Had a rogue in my guild that was neck and neck with the ret pallies we have in the guild. Most of us are sporting the best gear from crafting and heroics. They can still put out some good DPS but they have to know what they are doing.

I almost had a chance to run Naxx last night with another guild and their healer popped up at the last minute. I have a few epics and the rest are blues that are the best I can get from heroics. I'm pissed that blizzard changed the Restro druid buff from a percentage of your spirt (25%) to a set amount (6%). I'm close to 900 spirt and that would have rocked for a buff for the entire raid. Oh well, they did take away the movement speed handicap. I'm ready to put myself up against other healers and see if I can still top the charts in raids.

Rogues and warriors are by far the most gear-dependent classes in the game. They've always started off a little slow and then dominated by the last tier of raiding instances/gear. Have no fear that by the time Icecrown rolls around fury wars and rogues will be tearing it up. We just are at the gear level where less gear dependent classes (hunters, ret pallies) are able to pump out a ton of dps due to how their dps scales with leveling up, instead of how it scales with increasing gear.

Now, I haven't played in quite some time, but if I recall correctly, my ret pally was hugely gear dependent. Actually, all specs for my pally were extremely gear dependent. I couldn't tank (pre-BC) with out a good 1h, I sure as shit couldn't hurt anything without warrior plate and a good 2h, and...well I guess healing wasn't terribly gear dependent.

I'm not saying that other classes don't benefit from better gear, as well, but it has been a distinct trend in TBC and vanilla WoW that by the last tier of instances, rogues and warriors, due to being physical damage classes with infinite resources whose damage is based highly around weapon damage, tend to get considerably more powerful as time goes on compared to classes who only benefit from increased stats which translates into damage.

It could end up differently this time around, but the design favors that outcome and it's been true in the past, so I guess we'll see what happens.

Actually I remember Ret Paladins being very gear dependent as well, because I also played one to 60. I have a different 70 Holy spec on another server too but I haven't played the game since June. Once Arms Warriors start getting incredible gear they will destroy in PvP.

My pally is lvl 43 and Ret as of yesterday and she just hits like a truck and I always seem to have mana and health, this will probably change but for the time being im having a blast, time away from running fail heroic 5-mans for a couple weeks only thing I do on my mage is dailies and that's about it.

Ret should be pretty enjoyable all the way to 80. I'm still impressed with how much they improved that spec over what it used to be.

hmmm... i got bored around 29 on my pally... maybe I should try it again.

You might still be bored at 29. The new toys dont really show up until the 40s.

I might make her prot from 70 to 80 guild seems to need tanks so if I get my warrior there first (lvl 72) she will be prot until I get my pally up to 80 and geared, I like tanking just not much help as a mage.

My pally is pretty nice. 2000 raid DPS when Ret. I'm now tanking heroics. I'm slightly undergeared for them, but I've managed to find some good healers. Pally aggro is amazing. Having a pally tank is like having a 4th DPS.

Anyone roll a Death Knight yet?

I resisted for the first couple of weeks, and just focused on one of my 70s to 80 before trying DK. I made 80 with my lock, and now I can't stop playing my Death Knight, I should hit 80 by New Years, and demoted my warlock to Alt with my DK as my new main.

The opening quest/storyline was a great add and really gets you into the character, even with 50% of the Northrend population running around as a DK playing the character it feels like you have a purpose as opposed to playing other classes. Include that with the storyline that unfolds in WoLK and I don't think I've had this much fun playing WoW ever.

It's not just Northrend (I've never been there). Just about every time I look (anywhere), about 50% of the zone population is DK. I'm assuming 50% of any server's population is made up mainly of DK at the moment. It's the case on Warsong anyway.

It will be a long time--if ever--before I try out a DK. I wouldn't mind. It looks cool. I'm just patiently awaiting them to be nerfed. They seem to overpowered. They're supposed to be a hero class; not a god class. I guess it's just because I go up against them as a holy priest, but they seem to kill me far more efficiently than others. I'm starting to find more even matches as there are fewer and fewer PVPers who are above my level, as I'm now 67. (Why do people only go after me if they're above my level? :shakehead: Too many ?? killers. :expressionless:) Are DKs that hard to kill, or is it just my pajama-wearing healer? Will I ever out-heal the wrath of a DK?

Right now DKs and Hunters are way too OPed. They are swinging the nerf bat at the hunters in the next patch and I wouldn't be suprised that the DK gets hit too. I recently ran a heroic instance (HoL) with a DK I picked up in trade chat. 4 of us were guildies and he has some 25-man gear, but was lacking in other areas. Our lock and ret pally was with us and doing roundabout 2300 DPS and the DK was close to hitting 4000. It was rediculaus. We killed Volkhan in 39 seconds and Loken in 59 seconds. He was also running around with a blue 2h axe and ended up getting the epic axe that drops off of Loken. DKs can hit HARD.

BG, they always kill healers. If anyone in PVP sees my hands raise up in the air as a druid, I'm killed in a blink of an eye.

On a side note, my guild ran their first 10-man Naxx run with only 3 DPS pugs and we cleared 11 of the 14 bosses with only 3 wipes. Two wipes were on the 4 Horsemen at 3 AM. We came back 2 days later and dropped the rest of the bosses then did the rest of the Single boss 10-man raids with no wipes. I got 3 Tier-7 pieces and two badge gear loots. I'm almost epiced out again :thumbsup:.

Hey guys, COMPLETELY off topic here, but I don't know if this video has been posted, but it's not the normal "look at my big numbers and l337 skills" video; it's an insanely well done action sequence.
The Craft of War: BLIND on Vimeo
Enjoy, I know I did.

4k dps? Goddamn I wish I knew that guys armory and rotation. I was running around in full blues doing something terrible like 1500. My rotation was what most dps are doing as Frost/Unholy(never specc'd blood) on EJ, but I was obviously doing something very wrong.

I understand the killing the healer part, especially in a party, but I wouldn't mind surviving for more than 3 or 4 seconds--shield up. I can put up a shield and start renewing and flash healing and I will still get pulverized. Much of it has to do with DKs at higher levels than me, but I don't see why I cannot at least survive long enough to actually put up a bit of an offensive. I never seem to get that far. I do against other classes. I killed a same-level rogue posthumously the other day. It was my first one-on-one PVP kill, I think, though I'm not sure it technically counts. (For the record, I don't fight unless attacked, though it might change soon now that my healing power is getting to epic proportions.)

I will one day relish the moment I put a DK risen as a ghoul using Shadow of Death into a Shackle Undead to watch him slowly die his final death. (Okay, I won't simply watch--I'll probably tickle him the whole time.)

This was very well made with excellent animations but I really hate the "air fight" type of cheesy action scenes that are so common.

I'm a casual player like many others here it seems. The biggest thing that gets to me is all the "leet" players out there who are so dang RUDE when you try to ask for information from other players in chat. They expect everyone to want to play their way, and if not, then they have no business in the game. I started off and didnt really start asking any questions seriously until my Pally was almost 40. Then it was off for help to get the Epic horse quests done. I didnt even know anything about "specing" I just built what worked for me, which turned out to be a Retadin. Now I am a Tankadin for my guild and havin fun!

WOW, you asked in general chat for help? You are a brave, brave man. I hope it wasn't the Barrens chat. I know alot of people are hardcore about the game (I admit that I raid ALOT and play ALOT) and they are elitists. It's hard to ask them for help, hell even I hate to ask stupid questions to my guild cause I know about to get bashed for it. Best way is to look up guides on the internet or just google it. Also a good guild will help.

i miss playing wow. I'm in a pvp server and yet i really dont like pvping. I have mix season 3 and 4 armor and full tier 4 lock armor. But then i just i didnt have time anymore. I love raiding with my guildies, but with my work schedule i dont have time to play at all. Im thinking of re-rolling a casual toon, but i dont think that i'll have fun with it.....sigh...WoW is like crack so hard to get rid of :(

I want to play this game

You can always transfer your toon to a PvE server..

Crack, the people who drink in my guild will playing this game tonight. I love it.

Its better when the drunk people get on Vent we had 2 in are party channel the other night...good times

the other night I got to do a defend the city raid, that was one of the most exciting PvP things I've done in months.

Got a bunch of friends who don't like to raid, pvp into the space and it was just absolute mayhem!!!

Last night in Naxx my guild started the 10-man and tried to do it this time with only two healers. Well our first 3 pulls wiped us once and came real close the other two times. I was putting out MASSIVE heals and wondering why in the hell we couldn't two heal this. Came to find out our raid leader had it on 25-man naxx. We switched over and had a good run. It was good to know if we can accually do heroic naxx pulls with only 10 people.

Just read the 3.0.8 patch notes. Hunters are pissed haha.

Sounds like every class is going to get a ridiculous balance pass for 3.1, at least hunters, priests and warlocks (if not others) so even if it's pretty lame right now, it's only going to be bunk for a few months.

Got my black ice the other night. Beat out two pallies, two dks and a warrior. :X

Not this hunter, but maybe we are tired of getting nerfed EVERY patch?
We are no doubtedly the most nerfed class in the game.
It doesn't matter to me, I'll just find other ways to melt and vaporize faces...
I am a marksman hunter, this is just my raid spec.

The World of Warcraft Armory

Maybe other classes are tired of having hunters be severely overpowered with every expansion and it takes blizzard several rounds of nerfs to get them back down to every other classes level.

Seriously, hunters being the top dps by a huge margin in raids is ridiculous. Other classes don't even come close. Hopefully other classes catch up once once they gear up more.

exactly.

Really, I'm more tired of LAZY players. Really. I am. There are so many lazy players that aren't pushing themselves or their characters and wondering "WTF I've got the same gear as that guy and I'm not even getting close to his DPS?" There are times I'm able to out DPS another hunter with better gear.... this tells me one thing. LAZY HUNTER.

It's easy to do to be a lazy player. You're grinding, questing, instancing, raiding, farming, whatever, it gets tedious, it gets monotonous. But that is no excuse to not be the top of your game when playing with other players, their lives and gold depend on it.
-----Added 15/1/2009 at 10 : 56 : 31-----
I almost forgot, I've been trying to game the auction house and doing very well.

I started with just a few gold and some mats, and over the past close to two weeks, I have turned it into over 2,500g with mats overflowing from my bags, bank, and mailbox. I find it incredible actually.

My goal was to make enough for my epic flying mount, I never bothered to get one back in BC days. Now, the goal is to make enough for that mount, and the Reins of the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth since it helps when farming mats and questing with friends. I love the fact it has a vendor. I've encountered it playing and used the vendor... very handy! Now if I was an engineer and could MOLL-E, I could stay in the outback on a walkabout much longer!

I'm not lazy, but I will see if I can find the WWS reports of ALL top DPSers (from top guilds) in Naxx that I saw posted. The top 10 were all hunters, most of them BM. I think there might have been a death knight in there and then more hunters after the top 10 with a spattering of warlocks and mages. BM hunters are overpowered. I'm not certain as I have never played one but it seems to me that hunters rely a lot less on gear than a lot of other classes. Thats why I said hopefully other classes will catch up when everyone starts getting more geared. Correct me if I am wrong.

Believe me I know about lazy players. As a level 76 undergeared shadow priest, I have out dpsed level 80's in instances and thats just sad. Its even sadder that the people are in my guild.

BM hunters have been overpowered since they got Beastial Wrath and The Beast Within. I've been playing the WotLK 10-day trial and while Death Knights are fun, I won't be coming back. I hate PvE and the changes to Arena make it worse than it already was.

I feel the same way, people are always QQing over one class or another saying "They have this, they have that!" I hate it, just play the damn game! No one was created equal, it takes skill to be the best. Gear helps ALOT, but working on your rotations! Don't just stand back there and press one button and let your pet do everything! Rotate your spells to get max DPS out of your gear. Stop expecting the game to play it for you.

That mount is the shit. Our main tank has it and it makes repairing and getting regents SOOOO much easier. In Naxx we can just run back to the entrance to the instance and he can mount up so we have repair and such. ALOT of gold, but it is worth it. Plus, you can have people on the back of it and run off the side of a cliff. Two things can happen, if you guys stay on the mount, it hits the ground and dies with you living. If you are a druid, you can eject everyone off the mount and hit your flight form cast. You live and they die :).

Hunters were never "overpowered", give me a break. For what we had, we were always on the short end of the stick. Sure, we had great burst damage, but the trade-off to having it was we gave up mobility. We are the only class that has no middle management of DPS, DoTS and we have to stand still to get the most of our damaging shots off.
Show me any other class that has to do the same.
If a hunter stands still in pvp, its over...

Worst of all, we are the easiest class that is susceptible to any form of CC from any class and dependant on others to be aware of the only form of CC we have.
Until they removed the 8 yard restriction we had on us, anything in the range of 5 to 7 yards schooled us and there was nothing we could do about it. Mages frost nova'ed and stood at 7 yards pyroblasted / frostconed, rogues can just walk up and avoid our traps while sapping from 8 yards out (and how useless is our flare?) then with their poisons / stuns / disarm keep us with their striking range while we have no way to combat at close quarters. Warriors, with their charge / intercept / hamstring spammed us to death, Pallies with their stun / quaranteed crit ...... Warlocks with their mini warriors chainfeared spammed and DoT us to death.. And you say we are over-powered....

Sure they gave a so called buff on our AoE, but what hunter uses Volley unless in an instance and raiding?
PVP volley is useless and arenas should be called LoS dancing because everyone humps the poles.
Hunters are OP'ed... Puhlease...

exactly! I'm tired after an instance or a raid because I'm actually pressing buttons in a tight rotation and being hyper aware of that, sometimes to the point of death because I don't see the mob chewing on my foot, I'm looking 25 yards away. I've since learned to just keep my pet nearby so that I can attack the guy on me. Is there a way to stop the autoattack when I shoot something? I'd rather him stay by my side until someone tries to eat me.

really? you can also repair! Oh that is the shit. Do you get faction discounts?

Pole dancing in arena... :)

No unfortunately you don't. Had some pugs in a 25 man the other night start bitching at our tank because he was "jacking the prices up for his own gain". They thought that he got the extra money off the items and when in reality there was no rep discounts that we are used too. Repair, Regents, Poisons, trade goods, food, drink, and being able to empty your bags... that mount is great. If you could only check your mail, but then our other tank is maxed out in engineering and he just drops the mailbox.

I was talking about PVE hunters overpowered. In PVP hunters need a buff, I totally agree. The only thing you have in PVP is your big red pet.

In PVE, good hunters can out dps great dpsers of most other classes, right now. I'm sure what happened in BC will happen again. The more gear dependent classes like rogues and warriors will start to become real strong in the higher tiers of the end game. Terrible hunters can still keep up with good players of other classes. Being a great hunter is very complex, that's true, but terrible hunters still hold there own by doing next to nothing. Believe me, we have both awesome hunters and terrible hunters in our guild.

Lol, pole dancing. Dumbest shit ever.

I really miss this game (back when I had 40 hours a week literally to devote to it). I just watched a video with ventrilo recordings of my guild taking down the Twin Emps in AQ40 when I was the MT of our guild and it almost brought a tear to my eye. A huge rush of memories all at once. This game definitely offers a community that no other game does. Man I wish I was rich so I could stay at home and play all day ha ha ha ha ha.

Your post, and blizzard's actions in 3.08, speak only to the fact that you're looking at the game from a very short term perspective. Hunters and druids are the classes which scale best with levels, as opposed to gear, because weapon damage doesn't do as much for us (particularly BM). Both classes will fall behind the classes who benefit more from having big crazy weapons in Ulduar and on. It's just a mechanic of the game, and it's the same mechanic that has been true of hunters and druids v. rogues and warriors since the game began. Handing out a bunch of nerfs on this content because of that discrepancy is silly.

And, if you've been paying any attention, hunters in 25 man guilds who are clearing the expansion are no longer the dominant crazy force they're made out to be. We have very good hunters in my guild, and they're already falling behind classes which scale better with gear.

Hopefully this will all be a moot point when 3.1 rolls around, though, since it sounds like they're going to rebalance us again anyway.

You see that's my point. I want hunters not to be a powerhouse for awhile then fall back. I think it's the class mechanic that needs reworking, not just a round of nerfs.

To say that hunters are overpowered is a misstatement. To say that BM hunters in general are OP is also incorrect. We have 3 contributing factors to topping the DPS meters. An overpower tanking pet that does way more damage that it's supposed to. I'm talking about the scorpid. We have 1 specific BM spec which is 50/21/0 which gives us about 40% up time on Bestial Wrath over a 4 minute fight which is insane. We also have a bugged Aspect of the Beast that's giving pets 20% AP instead of the advertised 10%. If you take into account the Glyph of Aspect of the Beast also gives 4% more AP to pets instead of the advertised 2%. All of these things whether used by themselves or all together contribute to hunters being top of the DPS. If you take the 2nd best hunter spec(imo, of course) 53/11/7 and a non-scorpid pet, He will not outperform a Warrior or Unholy DK on fair fight.

ALL of the things I mentioned are being nerfed. Readiness no longer affects bestial wrath, Aspect of the beast is fixed, Scorpids are nerfed. I'm definitely not complaining about them. The problem is they're also nerfing non-"exploiting" hunters by reducing the damage of Steady shot by roughly 35% and reducing pet haste by 50% and pet damage modifiers by 10%.

Another thing is that pet management is a pain in the ass that other classes don't have to deal with. You think it's hard to get out of a fissure when it's a glowing red circle right under your feet, Try getting your pet out of it when he's on the other side of Kel'thazud and out of your sight. Our pets also don't get the gimmick buffs from Loatheb or Thaddius which puts us roughly 3k dps behind other dps. Other fights, like Malygos our pet bugs out. They can't attack Scions, they can't attack necro lords, They won't reliably stand in static fields, they get bugged on the cyclones and need to be pulled back. They get insta-gibbed out of nowhere on Anub'Rekhan, 4 horsemen, Grobbulus, Sapphiron, Kel, and Heigan and 2-3 drake Sartharion. When our pet dies. It's a straight up 60% damage reduction until it's rezzed which is 4 seconds of zero DPS just to rez our now-unbuffed and unhappy pet.

I'm sorry but hunters should not be judged by perfect condition fights like patchwerk and we should not be judged by specific specs, pets and abilities that are overpowered and/or glitched. It's no different than 5 HAT rogues in a raid all pulling 7k+ dps on every fight. The only difference is that hunter's big dps doesn't require 4 other hunters to do it. It's broken and it's being fixed, the rest of the nerfs, steady shot, pet haste and dps% were too much.

It's true that hunter's don't scale with gear very well/ I dominated DPS when we first got into naxx but as my raid mates and I geared up at the same time, their dps got higher and higher while my DPS has barely moved. Now I'm pushing hard, cuting corners and risking my pet's life at every corner just to stay in the top 5 which consists of a fury war, arms war, unholy DK and Mage. I'm one of, if not the best geared person in my guild and Without "exploiting" OP and soon to be nerfed specs and pets, I would fall out of the top 5, guaranteed.

I'ved typed too much.. gotta go raid now. 3 drake Sartharion sucks.

Well said mike!

Hunters are doing fairly well in arena atm.

We're very well represented in 3s and 5s. We're being killed in 2s but I believe it's because the DK/Paladin is such a dominating team. When that combo gets nerfed and with the 3.08 deterrence changes, it should help us prevent some of the huge burst damage we take from mages and other classes. BTW 7 of the top US 2s teams are Paladin/DK and teams with DKs make up about 45% of the top 100 teams.. OP much?

Lol, the new 2's team is Paladin/DK. No longer is it Paladin/Warrior.

If DK's are OP now because of their arena representation, what about Resto Druids before WotLK? Shit, what about Resto Druids now? I don't know if they're still as ridiculous as they were before Wrath, but I remember them being extremely frustrating to play against because of their HoTs, travel form and LoS exploiting.

I haven't really encountered many restro druids in arena this season. Lots of moonkins in 2s, lots of Ferals in 3s and I haven't even done 10 games in 5s yet so I don't even know about that. As a BM hunter, they haven't really been a huge problem. We've run into a moonkin/shaman team on my server that destroys us with bloodlust wolves/ents and it sucks we had to fight em like 5 times one night. Not to mention spirit wolves will jump off ledges to chase me while my pet runs all the way around and down the ramp to chase them.. grr..

Ya spirit wolves got that pounce and stun also. Which me as a mage hates.

Spirit wolves are fucking overpowered as shit right now. I was questing on my (then) 76 (now 78) DK in Dragonblight and this 73 shaman jumped me. The wolves absolutely wrecked me. I guess I'd have been ok with a touch of healing, but right now it's punishing.

Just need a new ring on my hunter (Surge Needle plz?) and I'll be in full epics on him. Nice to be shiny again.

Ya I love how I can pull 4 things a couple lvls higher then me and the wolves keep my healed till almost if not all the mobs are dead... I just hope I can hit 80 with her before the big nurf comes, unless it was in this new patch, didn't read the Shaman part of the notes.

The more I read this thread, the more I realize how little I know about what goes on in this game. I've only been playing for a few months, and I use the resting system heavily, to give you an idea of my experience. I'm more or less a PvE holy priest who runs the occasional instance.

What's a good resource for figuring out how to pwn as a healer by expanding beyond the basics? I want to know how to figure out getting into raids and more instancing. I understand that holy priests are valuable in these situations, so how do I get into the action?

Also, from what I understand, you get good gear from doing quests, instances, and raids, but the gear varies depending on which you do. Is this right?

Are there any good (and free) online guides for figuring this stuff out? Most of what I see are wikis, databases, and wildly random forums. I've found the occasional guide that has helped, but mainly when it comes to questing, skills, and talents.

Before you ask: Yes, I'm a part of a guild, but it's a casual guild with only a few members. It consists of a few of my cousins and a couple of friends. My cousin plays heavily, but I find it hard to get advice through WoW directly. We only play together on occasion. He's lvl 80, and I'm sitting at 69.

My Character @ The World of Warcraft Armory

There's a "blog" called wowinsder.com that could provide you with a TON of information. I imagine if you search "priest" you could find a listing of good starting gear and where to get it. But to save you some time, here are two excellent posts for both shadow and holy: Spiritual Guidance: Hitting the cap - WoW Insider Spiritual Guidance: Easy pre-Naxx gear for Holy priests - WoW Insider.

The place to go to "l2p" as it were is probably the Elitist Jerks forums. They're very heavy on the theorycrafting over there, but if you can spend some time going through it, there's a lot of really good information to be had. They can be found here: Elitist Jerks.

Basically you have the idea right on the sources of gear and the order of their power. "Weak" items come from questing (with the occassional gem), "Good" items come from regular instances, "Great" items come from heroic instances and "Awesome" items come from raiding. The power of the item corresponds relatively well to the difficulty of coordinating what you have to do to get the item.

Raids are almost exclusively max level only. There are still level 60 and 70 raid instances but they're very rarely run on a serious basis. I don't know of an end all, be all guide to holy priests. You just gotta dig around the wikis and forums.

There's some good strategy at Holy Priest - WoWWiki - Your guide to the World of Warcraft

That page covers alot. It's not hard to cast heal, you just want to keep practicing how to conserve mana, when to renew, aoe heal, flash heal, or greater heal. One thing to remember is you have more than 1 spell. You have aoe, instants, heal over times, dispel quick and mana inefficient or slow and mana efficient heals. Stopcasting is a strategy you'll need to learn for raids. That's covered on the wowwiki page.

I hope it helps.

Thanks, guys. I think I've become quite good at healing: choosing the right spells in terms of mana effciency. I need to work on bringing enough mana water with me though.... I also need to be more forward in coaching my party. I hate it when I'm doing my best keeping a barely passable tank alive and one or two rogue/mage/hunter/whatever(s) do something to spin the aggro out of control. Nothing pisses me off worse than blowing my mana load because I have to split greater heal between two or three players when group heals won't keep them alive. And I can see where they go wrong too. (And I have limited experience outside of being a healer.) Either the tank doesn't know how to build aggro or the others try to do too much at once and all hell breaks loose (or both).

Where I need to focus is on doing more instances and maybe just level as fast as I can. I have 11 levels to go to max. I don't do nearly enough instances. Maybe I'll start mapping out which ones I want to do and try to get some better gear that will help me level faster.

Thanks for the resources, guys. I'm certain to use them.

Before today, a renew and spamming CoH was more than enough to keep the group alive. Oh well, I guess CoH was getting boring just spamming but I liked being able to have a great aoe healing spell and 6 seconds isn't too bad i suppose.

Man Frostbyte.. Hunter nerfs are crazy. I dropped over 1k dps in Naxx and I wasn't even using a 50/21 build pre-patch.

People are talking about 15k+ Arcane Barrages and the like, so if thats the case I'm going to put "Mages" at the top of my "need the fuck nerfed out of it" list.

Okay, I'm beginning to understand things a bit better.

I set my sights on the Auchindoun instances. I had run 3 of them already, but I did Auchenai Crypts (first time) and Sethekk Halls (second time) tonight. I got two good drops: Light-Woven Slippers and Hallowed Trousers. And now I have a goal: I want to get the Hallowed Raiment. It's for lvl 70, and I'm halfway to 70 at the moment, and will greatly improve my stats as a holy priest. I should get to 70 tomorrow if I'm lucky.

Awesome.

The hunters in my guild switched over to Survival spec and they haven't missed a beat. They're all still doing 3k+ DPS.

We also switched to Survival tonight. The spec and strategy is a little sloppy for me. Laying down traps on bosses and shit just doesn't seem right to me. We did alright on the dps meters but nowhere near what we were doing last week. I liked being more in control of my DPS and not having to rely on my pet for 50% of my damage. I noticed a DPS gain on gimmick fights like Loetheb and Thaddius but noticed about a 600 dps loss(compared to pre-patch BM) on Patchwerk and similar dps losses other fights. A few fights were HUGE losses but it was lagging and survival really loses alot due to lag so I really shouldn't count them. Having to FD again sucks :(

Baraka_Guru, at 68, go to northrend, borean tundra imo, get away from the outlands asap

Yeah baraka, if you are 68+ get the hell out of outlands, you want to do both Northrend 68-70 zones to get to the lvl you need to be in Northrend, but don't hang around outlands. You will find more people to group with and those sets are great pre-wrath but now they are worthless, you will find better green drops than those items. Jump over, hit lvl 70 and start doing the wrath instances. I also recommend looking around your server and checking out who is raiding the most (guild wise) and think about who you would like to join up with later when you hit lvl 80. Most guild will take healers in a heartbeat even with no raid experience, they will just stick you in a 10-man with a experienced and over-geared healer and let you learn.

Cool.

See what I mean? I have a lot to learn. A part of me doesn't want to leave Outland yet because there are three entire regions there I haven't even touched...but I suppose I could always check them out at a later time.

I've had WotLK installed since Christmas, but I've been reluctant to go pre-70 because I'm a holy priest who tends to solo a lot. I've gotten into the habit of doing quests 3 to 5 levels below my level to keep things moving.

Maybe I'll have an easier time grouping for quests in Northrend? People like to quest with healers, right?

Doing quests a few levels below you is a good way to level, as far as I have seen. Northrend also gives really good xp for quests so you should hit 70 in no time.

Questing as a holy priest is a hard thing, you could do nothing but instances in Northrend, but that would become a grind. You could also try finding a melee class (Warrior, Shaman, Feral Druid, Prot/Ret Pally) and teaming up with them. Finding a warrior to run with you is the best bet as alot of the other classes can handle alot of mobs at once. The warrior could take on alot of mobs at once and you could keep him healed. Quests go faster and you can team up on instances. You could also go shadow for northrend and solo that way, you will do alot better at soloing that way. When you reach lvl 80 switch back to holy and start doing instances to get better healing gear so you will be rdy for raids. It all depends on how much you like to stay holy the whole way.

Edit: Never asked when you hit lvl 80 what do you want to do? PVP or PVE or a mix of both?

yes, that's why Skogafoss and I play well together :) she's a shadow priest currently and has a resto druid.

it's become much easier with the changes to spell power

A bit from column A, a bit from Column B....

I like PVE because I like adventures.

I like PVP because I like large-scale battles.

I have little experience in raiding. I've done it two or three times. It was a bit chaotic, so I've stayed away since.

People are still playing this? WoW is soooo 2008 :P :D

but raiding is so good when people work as a team and take down a boss... this was way I liked the 40 man raids, getting teams of people to work as 1 team, imagine as a large scale battle, but a bit more predictable.

25 man kind of gets it but not to the same degree.

The trap dance is the dumbest gimmick for a dps class to have to do maybe ever. What a fucking joke of a design.

I do like the idea of not losing all my dps if my pet isn't around, but I keep hope in my heart that I'll be able to find the spirit beast one day, and god if I wouldn't kill myself if I weren't BM when it happened.

Ah well, here's to hoping that 3.1 makes things better.

IMHO, you are best to make one your priority and the other for fun. To get the high lvl tier 7 PVE gear or the season 5 arena gear takes TIME. PVE after awhile becomes less about adventures and more about finding the right people to raid with every week. To get to the point that you can go to Naxx (lowest lvl WotLK raid) you need to be equipped with the best Heroic instance gear. That means you have to raid those everyday until you get the drop you need. Then it's either finding 10 people to raid with that are not noobs and can actually listen to instructions or finding a guild that is already farming those 10-mans.

Arena gear takes time too, but you could (in theory) do on a less structured time frame. You would need to farm honor (do nothing but PVP for awhile) to get the beginning lvl gear you need to find people to do 2v2, 3v3, 5v5. Then do those everyday to get Arena points to get the s4-s5 gear.

Now, by assuming by your previous posts, you probably don't want to get that serious into the game like some of us on the board. My recommendation would be to stay PVP. It seems like that would fit your playing style better than PVE after 80 (Again IMHO take my BS with a grain of salt).

Don't ask me how I did it, I cannot begin to explain it...
But....
My new survival raid spec might be a little "OP'ed"...

http://img44.imagevenue.com/img.php?..._122_998lo.jpg


Here's a "This one time, at bandcamp..." moment..

http://img12.imagevenue.com/img.php?...122_1165lo.jpg

Don't let a GM see that autoshot crit - They'll nerf us again!

Do you really not know how you did that or am I not reading into your sarcasm? Those numbers don't seem particularly off to me considering what they hit.

It says I hit a level 82 Death Knight Understudy in 25 man Naxx for over 80 THOUSAND hitpoints with a normal auto-shot.
So I figure I must have hit the one that all the other understudies and Instructor Razuvious was attacking.

I really don't know.

"After Instructor Razuvious dies these will take 1000% extra damage from players."

Who didn't know this? :p

Is anyone else servers getting huge lag in Naxx 25 mans? I know that are server is full and on Tuesday and Wednesday just about every alliance and horde raiding guild run that place, but I can't DPS when I'm running at 10fps with all my graphics set down as low as they can go.

And no I'm not with Comcast.

I'm a little confused by your question, Scorps. "Huge lag" shouldn't have anything to do with your graphics settings or your FPS. If you can't dps because you have low fps, then your problem is your system not being fast and powerful enough to handle what's going on in the raids. The only thing that can be done about that problem is upgrading your rig. Nothing on blizzard's end would have any impact.

I'm sure that there are a ton of people hitting the naxx instance servers and hopefully the fixes they're putting in will help out with that, but that's an entirely different problem from FPS. Are you noticing particularly bad ping to the server or are you just not getting good response times on your actions?

Well I fixed the fps problem last night, but lag during boss fights is what is killing us and its all server side because everyone in the raid lags, like instance cast take 5 secs to go off and I got a MS of 128.

I am levelling a priest right now as discipline and it's actually extremely easy to dps, yet still viable as a healer in instances.. try to get in as many instance runs as possible, though, because it will still be faster to do those than it will to quest.

I personally find it easier to lvl solo but that just me, Unless my good friend is around but she works odd hours/days.

My lag is HORRIBLE when I get into Naxx. 10 or 25 man, it doesn't matter, I lag like HELL. I disconnect every 15 mintues which fucks the group when I'm the tank healer. I've learned to heal "with" the lag. When I hit a spot of lag I know what cycle I'm into in my spells so I just hit the buttons for the next spells I would cast and hope for the best. I run a computer that gives me 30-50 FPS anywhere in WoW. I *know* it's not on my side. It's freaking killing me (and the tanks for that matter). You think putting a ticket in for it will help?

Well, couple suggestions. My first is to check with the rest of your crew. Is EVERYONE experiencing bad lag when doing naxx? If so, then there's not much any of you can do. Blizzard has said, repeatedly, that they know performance, especially in naxx, is subpar and claim they're working on it. If not everyone is having the problem, the problem lies somewhere between your computer pumping out FPS and the server, in which case it could be a lot of things.

Do the dumb stuff first-plug your ethernet line into a different port on the router. Make sure everything is tightly plugged in. If you're on wireless, make sure it's secure so some douchebag isn't streaming 1000 Mbps of porn while you're trying to raid. Check your task manager and process list to make sure you're not doing something weird that could clog the lines. If you've done all of that and you're not coming up with any solutions, I'd go to the blizzard tech support board. They'll have you do a trace on your connection and post the results and they usually are able to at least help you out with spotting where the problem is popping up.

Good luck.

In the rare chance that anyone here doesnt browse other websites on WoW info, here are some of the proposed class changes for 3.1.0

PRIEST

* Divine Spirit – this spell is now a core ability available to all priests.
* Discipline has access to a new talent, Power Word: Barrier. (Think of it as Power Word: Shield for your whole group).
* Several area of effect (AOE) heal spells have been improved: Prayer of Healing can be cast on any groups in your raid party. Holy Nova’s mana cost has been reduced. Circle of Healing now heals for more.
* Shadow priest PvP survivability has been improved: Shadow Form now reduces magic as well as physical damage. Dispersion now removes snares.
* Penance – this spell can now be targeted on the priest.
* Serendipity – this talent now reduces the cast time of Greater Heal and Prayer of Healing when Binding Heal or Flash Heal are cast.
* We are also working to give Holy additional PvP utility.


ROGUE

* Hunger for Blood – instead of a self-buff, this ability can only be used when there is a bleed effect on the target. However, it has no stacks and grants a 15% damage bonus.
* Adrenaline Rush – the cooldown on this ability has been lowered.
* Lightning Reflexes – reduced to 3 ranks. In addition to 2/4/6% dodge, this talent now also grants 4/7/10% passive melee haste.
* Killing Spree – while this ability is active, the rogue does 20% additional damage.
* Savage Combat – now causes 2/4% physical damage done.
* Mace Specialization – this talent now grants haste in addition to armor penetration.


SHAMAN

* Chain Lightning – now jumps to 4 targets but does less damage. We wanted to make the distinction between Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning more clear.
* Storm, Earth and Fire – this talent now increases all damage done by Flame Shock, not just periodic damage.
* Spirit Weapons – now reduces all threat, not just melee threat.
* Unleashed Rage – reduced to 2 ranks, now also increases your critical strike chance with melee attacks by 1/2%.
* Totem streamlining: The Mana Spring and Healing Stream Totems have been combined. The Disease Cleansing and Poison Cleansing Totems have been combined.
* We are also working on giving Enhancement and Elemental more PvP utility.


Warlock (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

* Improved Shadow Bolt – this talent now provides a 5% spell critical strike buff (similar to Improved Scorch).
* Improved Soul Leech – this talent now provides Replenishment (similar to shadow priests)
* Drain Soul now has a chance to produce Soul Shards even if the target doesn’t die.
* Siphon Life no longer as an active ability but the talent grants the old Siphon Life effect to Corruption.
* Curse of Recklessness and Curse of Weakness have been combined into one spell
* Consume Shadows – this Voidwalker ability is no longer channeled but has a cooldown.
* Several other warlock talents have had their ranks reduced, their effects changed or removed. This list includes but is not limited to Demonic Empathy, Shadow Embrace, Eradication, Suppression, and Pandemic.
* Additional new talents have been added.


Druid (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

* Savage Defense – this is a new passive ability. When a druid in Dire Bear form deals a melee critical strike, the druid gains a damage shield equal to 25% of their attack power. The next hit completely removes the shield regardless of how much damage was done.
* Survival of the Fittest has had its bonus armor reduced to compensate for the above increase in damage mitigation.
* Faerie Fire (and similar debuffs) now reduces armor by 5%. See Sunder Armor in the warrior update below for additional details.
* Thorns and Nature’s Grasp can be cast in Tree of Life form.
* Survival Instincts now works in Moonkin form.
* Replenish – to avoid confusion, this talent has been renamed “Revitalize.” It now also works with Wild Growth.
* We are also looking at increasing the sustained (not burst) damage of feral druids in cat form.


Warrior (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

* Changing stances now has a much reduced cost: you lose a maximum of 20 rage (10 with Tactical Mastery). For example, if you have 100 rage and change stances, you will have 80 rage remaining. If you have 10 rage and change stances, all of your rage is lost. In addition, we may change the penalties associated with some stances.
* You now gain rage when damage done to you is absorbed, such as through a Power Word: Shield.
* Blood Frenzy now causes 2/4% physical damage done.
* Sunder Armor (and similar debuffs) now reduces armor by 4% per application, and is now a single rank. Creature armor has been globally reduced so that debuffed targets should take about the same damage from physical attacks that they did before this change. The net effect should be that this debuff is slightly less mandatory in PvE and is not disproportionately more powerful against cloth targets in PvP.
* We are also adding increased damage to Arms, possibly through Overpower or Slam.
* We are also looking at granting rage when the warrior blocks, dodges or parries.

Mage (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

* Improved Water Elemental – this talent has been removed and replaced with a new talent that grants Replenishment (similar to Shadow priests).
* We are also working on a way to give frost mages Ice Lance “Shatter combos” in PvE.
* We are also working on more survivability for Fire spec in PvP.
* We are also working on making Spirit a more useful and interesting stat for all mages.


Paladin (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

* Blessing of Kings – this spell is now a base ability trainable by all paladins.
* Exorcism – this spell now causes damage to all types of enemy targets. However, it always critical strikes undead or demon targets. This change should make sure paladin damage doesn’t drop when going from Naxxramas to later tiers of content.
* Shield of the Templar now causes your Avenger’s Shield and Shield of the Righteousness to silence targets for 3 sec. The old damage bonus of this talent has been folded into Holy Shield, Avenger’s Shield, and Shield of the Righteousness.
* Ardent Defender, Improved Hammer of Justice, One-Handed Weapon Specialization and more have had their ranks reduced.
* Guarded by the Light – no longer reduces the mana cost of shield spells, but now has a 50/100% chance to refresh Divine Plea duration.
* Judgements of the Just – now also reduces the cooldown of Hammer of Justice by 10/20 seconds and increases the duration of the Seal of Justice stun effect by 0.5/1 second.


Hunter (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

* Consumable ammunition has been removed from the game. Arrows and bullets no longer stack, but are not consumed. Ranged attack speed bonus gained from quivers and ammo bags will be preserved in a different capacity.
* A new tier of hunter pet talents have been added. In particular, this allows Beastmaster hunters to improve their damage per second (DPS) with their 51 point talent.
* Hunting Party – this talent has been reduced to 3 ranks and also grants a passive bonus to the hunter.
* Piercing Shots – this talent has been changed. Your Aimed, Steady and Chimera Shots cause the target to bleed for 10/20/30% of damage dealt for 8 sec.
* Sniper Training – this talent has been changed. After standing still for 6 sec, you gain a 2/4/6% damage bonus to Steady, Aimed and Explosive Shot.
* We are also looking to add additional trap functionality to Survival.


Death Knight (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)

* Gargoyle and Unholy Blight have swapped talent positions. Gargoyle’s damage has increased and runic power cost per time has decreased.
* Pestilence – this spell no longer causes damage but just spreads diseases. Blood Boil is intended to be the general area attack, and has been changed to be castable on targets with no diseases on them, but does extra damage if diseases are present.
* Unbreakable Armor now absorbs a flat amount of damage that increases as your armor increases. It no longer boosts armor.
* The Frost tree has been shuffled. Among other things, PvP talents such as Endless Winter are closer to the top of the tree where Blood and Unholy death knights can access them.
* Sudden Doom – this talent now procs a Death Coil rather than requiring an additional button click. It works similarly to shamans’ Lightning Overload.
* Magic Suppression and Blood of the North have been reduced to 3 ranks for the same benefit.
* Blood Gorged now grants armor penetration instead of expertise.

I see you are on Dragonblight realm. Hit me up some time. Do a search for "Shalladon" I am on every day for a bit checking up on things. Being a GM means you have to dedicate extra game time...lol.

Heh, no, misread me. I'm ON Korgath realm. I was questing IN dragonblight ;)

lol goodluck with that surge needle. I just got Darkmoon card greatness today and I'm lovin it so far.

One of those greatness cards sold for 10k the other night on my server...now if anyone spends that kinda gold on a trinket is insane, yes I know there some of the best trinkets in the game.

Nobles decks are very expensive, They sell for around 10-12k on my server too but if you're patient you'll notice the price of each card fluctuates significantly. As the AH gets flooded with a specific card the price on it will drop and you can pick it up cheaper. I had been doing pretty good getting each card for around 500g each but with the ice storm here I lost electricity for half the faire and ended up paying way too much for a few of the cards just because I didn't want to risk waiting another month. I had the gold to waste though, if you're not going to spend it on something, why have it. Hell, The extra gold was making me lazy anyways.

I look for cards when the faire is over :D

I don't mind waiting im causal not hardcore.

Wow I can't believe they are thinking about making Warriors only lose 20 rage when changing stances. Did warriors suck in WOTLK or something? I haven't played in a year and a half.

Welp I've ended as main tank for my horde guild on farstriders.

Our melee dps isn't happy with me. I'm top on dps and dmg in 5 man heroics. hehe

I've had one of the best rogues on our server come close but not pass me. I tell them its my rotation.

As long as the mobs strike at me and i dodge, parry and block i get mana back. I get mana back from healing done to me and more with my glyph.

Hell in a boss fight im never outta mana.

Gives me a chance to front load my whole mana bar at the beginning then go nuts during the fight.

A dk tank and i started out on patchy we wiped.. he was trying to main tank him with me as off tank. 45 sec into the fight it went terribly wrong. We swapped and Woot down goes patchy. (10 man naxx btw) I was putting out too much threat even though im just using my dps (hah as a tank) but patchy is undead sooooo.

but anyhew this is my typical view as a tank. This was a few days ago in heroic VH.

lol heres a typical image of my fights.


http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/491...vemyagria7.jpg

Ha Drider, I absolutely can't play a melee class because of views like that.