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[0bsessions]

Few things beat an epic Wintergrasp battle. We (Horde) were on defense and we managed to run the timer down with two siege engines on their way into the courtyard, about 100+ people in said Courtyard and a sliver of health left on the relic door.

[Covetous]

Feral druids should gem Streanght as I understand it from elitist jerks until about 11k-12k ap. Previously they should gem arpen as soon as geming it would bring them above 200 arpen rating. Should be 220 or something now then.

Warriors love arpen, especially one of the specs, thinks it's fury.

Paladins never cared about arpen and do even less now. Haste was more crap before 3.2.2 but now even haste is better. Why is due to Arpen only affecting less than 25% of our damage. The rest is holy.

[Dazed]

Fury is a strength spec, ARPen is still pretty tits for Arms though.

[0bsessions]

Strength? Buh wha? Good luck with that considering there's almost no end-game leather with strength on it. Feral Druids want to spec stamina and agility. Gemming strength seems absolutely pointless to me as you'd be supplementing a stat that will actively be coming in lower than your spirit unless every single gem you use is strength oriented.

Feral Druids, be they cat or bear, sink their stats into agility, not strength. Agility is the stat for Druids that effects a Druid's attack power. Strength barely comes into play with a Druid tank, if at all. Either you're reading EJ wrong, or they've gotten a Warrior/Pally who somehow doesn't realize Druids cap never get higher than leather armor writing their theorycraft for Feral Druids.

[Alex C]

Gemming strength seems absolutely pointless to me as you'd be supplementing a stat that will actively be coming in lower than your spirit unless every single gem you use is strength oriented.

That doesn't really matter though since strength scales in a relatively linear fashion and isn't subject to any sort of caps. It may seem counterintuitive, but when you think of Strength as being Attack Power's bigger, nastier cousin, it begins to make sense. Normally, strength provides 2 attack power per point, but since it scales with Kings, Improved Mark and Survival of the Fittest while raw Attack Power does not, it comes out even better than that. In fact, with full buffs a 34 strength gem ends up being worth nearly 90 attack power. That's quite a lot. This sort of thing has often led to Strength and Agility being more competitive against each other than you might think, particularly since Dire Bear actually doesn't get any attack power from Agility, just crit and dodge, which means that for raw threat Strength is actually pretty good and also leads to having a stronger Savage Defense shield.

[Covetous]

1 agility is about 1.1 ap while streanght is about 2.3-2.4 ap in cat form. I'm not sure about the math for bear form but youre geming agility there anyway just for the sake of avoidance. And just cus blizz haven't done the math to the full extent doesn't mean it's wrong.

Also to clearify, when I'm talking feral in this case, I'm talking cat form since bear form falls in the tank section and if you tank a whole bunch of other things mather there. When playing prot paladin or prot warrior you never gem streangth. DKs might do it since it also gives avoidance, but don't think so. Pure parry rating should be better.

[Alex C]

Yeah, Agility is good for bears primarily because it's an avoidance/mitigation stat. It adds to armor, it adds to dodge, and it adds to crits, which in turn adds to Savage Defense and more rage.


As for DKs, even parry stacking is unlikely since parry has a nastier diminishing returns formula than dodge. This is due to the fact that making a parry can reduce/reset your swing timer and thus has a mild threat component instead of being a pure avoidance stat. The swing timer thing was actually a big part of why Unholy tanks were so overpowered back before the Bone Shield and Blade Barrier talents were nerfed. With stacked avoidance and Blade Barrier, you could achieve virtually 100% Bone Shield uptime, which meant you could tank as well/better than the other specs. But what really broke it was how all that parry meant you got more Rune Strikes (can only be done after a dodge/parry) and more Bloodcaked Blade & Necrosis fueled autoattacks, leading to unmatched threat and Blizzard breaking out the nerf bat.

[Lines]

Also to clearify, when I'm talking feral in this case, I'm talking cat form

You want strength for a cat form druid? Huh? I always stuck to stam and agility. I'd try to find items with more strength for bear form, if I could find anything decent, but not for cat... And Jon is right. There is almost no end game leather armor that has strength on it. I mean, things have definitely changed since I was last feral, but I didn't think they'd have changed that much.

[Alex C]

Again though, that's immaterial in regards to gemming. Strength scaling is fairly linear; a 34 strength gem doesn't increase your damage less simply because you don't have many other sources of strength. In fact, the math involved says quite the opposite: a crit isn't worth all that much if your base attacks are weak to begin with, which is why BC druids traditionally had to hit a balance between strength/AP and agility to really hit their full dps potential. Blizzard doesn't give druids much opportunity to strength stack these days, but that doesn't mean it's a poor stat or that you should dismiss it out of hand while gemming or when selecting cloaks and rings. Hell, for a long time the very fact that you were forced to wear agility gear meant that filling your sockets with gems gave you that much more value. 3.1 and Primal Gore shifted things further in favor of Agility than it once was, but that doesn't mean ArPen and Strength can't be superior stats at various gear levels. It's also best to remember that what we're ultimately talking about here are very small differences on a point for point basis. For example, I bet you could swap out all of my rogue's Agility gems for Attack Power gems and I'd ultimately lose under a dozen damage per second. As long as you're avoiding the truly abysmal stats you'll likely be in pretty good shape.

[Lines]

Well, AP is one of those things I never really thought about when I was feral and probably wouldn't really think about now, either. I didn't even think about spell haste, crit rating, etc until Wrath. Really, I think all of those are fairly silly and tend to go with things that boost int, spirit, and spell power, sometimes stamina as well. And out of the misc. boosts, I don't really care what I have as long as I have something and it works.

Basically I'm really looking forward to Cataclysm just because it'll make balancing this stuff a whole hell of a lot easier. Actually, I wish they'd not wait and do it in a patch.

[Alex C]

Sadly, I don't think stat consolidation is really going to help things much in the long run. Some attributes are more complicated than others, with Armor Penetration being the poster child for shit that should never have happened, but ultimately, the difference between your top two or three attributes is usually rather small and not really worth worrying about unless you're a raider or perfectionist. There's a few egregious examples, such as Retribution Paladins, for whom strength is unusually good and ArPen is unusually bad, but for the most part as long as you can identify your basic priorities you won't hurting too bad since Blizzard's item budget table is pretty good about making the item with the higher level win when it comes to raw attributes. You might not be optimal, but most of the time you'll be functional enough that most people won't even notice anything awry without inspecting you (defense rating being the obvious, heart breaking exception).

No, what really ruins everything forever are weapon speeds and pretty much anything with a proc. Trinkets are an easy example. Quick, what would be better on my Mutilate Rogue? The Heroic ToC10 version of Victor's Call or the Banner of Victory from 5 man normal ToC? The answer is the Banner of Victory, and it's not even close; I lose somewhere around 100 dps going with that other piece of crap, despite a 45 item level difference! Such things are hard to eyeball though because so much depends on information that you're simply not given, like the proc rate and the internal cooldown. As for weapon speeds, they're worth mentioning since they're uniquely capable of butchering your performance if you don't match the speed to the right hand. For example, I saw a combat rogue dual wielding Hatestrikes the other day and unfortunately he's just plain murdering his dps. Frankly, he'd probably be better off gemming for strength than continuing to use such a fast mainhand.

[0bsessions]

Honestly, I think the worst thing to happen to the game since I started is achievements. Now, I'll admit, I am an absolute whore for achievements. I love collecting them. They're a fun little distraction. The problem is that all those serious players have taken a lot of fun out of the endgame by making achievements yet another source of judging other players. You don't have the Heroic Archavon achievement? Good luck actually getting into an attempt on the VoA. It's like, just one more reason for the elitist douche bags of WoW to take the game way too seriously. I've only been playing for a little over a year now, but I'm already absolutely fed up with hardcore players. Can't the game be fun?

Achievements really exacerbate this whole overdone theory crafting bullshit. I mean, before them: who the shit cares if you wipe on whatever RAID? You can do it again some other time. With the Achievements, everyone's all about bullshit like World First or Realm First or what the fuck ever. Just take whatever trink you prefer, as long as you can get the job done.

I don't think I'll ever want to join a group that's using any kind of meters whatsoever. I just want to do the content, get some gear and feel like an imaginary badass for a couple minutes, why people got to shit it all up with numbers and applications?

[Alex C]

Meters are a tool for self-improvement and constructive criticism in a guild setting. Anything else and yeah, you're basically being a dick. I'll admit to having a few laughs at a truly bad pugger's expense from time to time, but I keep that kind of shit to forum posts and guild chat. It's a guilty pleasure and what puggers don't know won't hurt them. I would argue however that theorycrafting is the symptom of a greater problem, however, not an issue in and of itself. Quite simply, there's items out there that can serve as stumbling blocks for players who put in an honest effort but who understandably aren't aware of some of the more counterintuitive and frankly bad design decisions present in the game. Feral druid gemming, hell, most gemming, doesn't fall under that category. It helps to do it right, but ultimately, if you have enough gear of a high enough item level, you can make up for it through competent play.

But that's why I brought up the trinket and weapon speed thing as being the real problem; those differences are unintuitive yet are genuinely capable of being show stoppers for some classes. Having the wrong speed weapon (even if it is otherwise level appropriate) as a rogue leads to terrible dps which leads to missed enrage timers which ultimately leads to people never getting to do the level of content they want to see. Some people think that such players should have done their homework and deserve what they get. I think the people who say that can suck it and that Blizzard needs to make it a more intuitive process if the consequences are going to be that severe. I'm not sure Cataclysm's stat consolidation is going to do accomplish that unless they go farther than they've currently indicated they will.


As for screening people, I don't do that in general, period. Well, unless I've grouped with you and I know for a fact that you routinely take on content you can't handle. I hate those douches that want like 30k health and an achieve before doing simple content though. Honestly, get a guild if you're that uptight.

[Lines]

The only screening I've done is for hybrids asking what spec they are. And the only meter I use is a damage meter, but only so I can see whether or not I personally am doing enough damage. (Lately I haven't though, as I've been healing.) And using achievements as a screen is stupid. They are meant for fun and another thing to do when you're bored.

[0bsessions]

As for screening people, I don't do that in general, period. Well, unless I've grouped with you and I know for a fact that you routinely take on content you can't handle. I hate those douches that want like 30k health and an achieve before doing simple content though. Honestly, get a guild if you're that uptight.

Jesus, it gets so bad sometimes. I was looking to run Direbrew with a friend and a PUG the other day. Direbrew's tougher than he looks, but he's a pretty generic tank and spank and this Mage actually dropped out after bitching out my friend for not having enough HP to tank (He had about 25K). What the fuck should our DPS care about anything to do with the tank other than his threat ability (Which having done the quest him before, I knew was fine)? If the healer says "Nah, it's cool, I can handle it no problem," shouldn't that be the end of that? The same Mage was still looking for a group an hour later, once our eventual group had long since finished running our daily of him with nary a death.

[Alex C]

The sad thing is I know for a fact that a guildie of mine has tanked Coren a few times with his druid alt's off-spec bear form. We're talking about a guy that only has about 23k hitpoints, a number that is comically low for a bear tank, but he gets it done. I also know a few prot pallies who have soloed him. Just judging a tank by their hitpoints is horrible though, particularly when talking about warriors since they don't have the same health pools as DKs or Bears but make up for a lot of it through oh shit buttons and mitigation.

[Yakob]

Say say my playmate
wont you lay hands on me
mirror my malady
transfer my tragedy

Got a curse I cannot lift
shines when the sunset shifts
when the moon is round and full
gotta bust that box gotta gut that fish

My mind's aflame

We could jet in a stolen car
but I bet we wouldn't get too far
before the transformation takes
and bloodlust tanks and
crave gets slaked

I think I'm playing this game too much.

[clockworkjames]

Coren is a cakeboss now, fucking shadow of who he was back at lv70 where so many attempts at him were actually lost because of wipes and this was accepted.

HH gave way to seasonal cakewalk bosses, I tanked him arms spec holding aggro with bladestorm and mocking blow.

[Chesire Cat]

My gear is getting pretty good, 3 Epics, 4 Rares and the rest uncommon, have 10 gemslots (only one blue). Pretty much as geared as I can get without stepping into some instances.

Im kind of at a brink though, I want to get Revered with Cenarion Expedition so I can have a Hippogryph (provided they look similar to Griffins while flying) and I want blah blah's Legendary Hat from CoT doing Tauren Hill on Heroic, to do that I need Honoured with CoT. Though I want that so I can summon a Ghost Wolf non-combat pet, summon Ghost Wolves for combat and turn myself into a Ghost Wolf just so I can look fucking rad running around town.

Now for a real question. While I generally can solo anything that is realistic (meaning every non instance/raid Group quest that didnt involve killing a Gronn) I am tempted to trade my Fire Elemental Glyph for the Stoneclaw totem Glyph which combined with Earthen Power and Earthen Grasp I can effectively give myself a ~2700 bubble every 30 seconds using a Stoneclaw totem. Is this advisable? I know its not really group or raid friendly but on paper it seems the utility of it is pretty high.

Chorbrak

[Covetous]

Coren is ezez and we usually don't have a healer when we do him. Just bring dps!

As for achivements: FU!
But it's a must, cus when you're being nice and brings "n00bs" and asks people "Hey you know what to do here? If not, just say so now and I'll explain" and all the n00bs sit quite.

[Chesire Cat]

Uhhh that doesnt sound like it would be exclusive to "n00bs" that sounds like something "pe0ple" do. Especially give the fact that WoW can be an unnecessarily harsh environment its no wonder people clam up and dont ask.

[clockworkjames]

People who whine about achievement screening are pathetic.

Chances are if you are good enough to have the achievement you have it, if you aren't then you don't regardless of whether or not you got carried through.

It's like saying "I did it on my main" which means nothing in a fight that tests gear/dps.

It's like people with ungemmed/enchanted gear, make an effort even if it is a cheap blue gem and a 6 dust enchant. If a piece of gear is good enough to use, it's good enough to enchant and gem no matter WHAT the future holds dropwise.

[Chesire Cat]

It's like people with ungemmed/enchanted gear, make an effort even if it is a cheap blue gem and a 6 dust enchant.

Couldnt agree more for the most part. I mean for some Oranges I use (+hit/+expertise) its 200-250g for +10/+10, 40-50g for +8/+8 and ~2g for +6/+6. I always buy the shitty stuff if I cant afford something nicer or the AH is sold out of the one I want (I aim for the rares as 200g+ is too much for +2/+2 boost)

[Lines]

If I haven't done a fight, I'll ask if there's anything special I need to know. I don't want to get people killed. Same as if there's a wipe, I'll either ask what I can do better or ask if someone could off heal if they notice me having problems. If after that someone complains, usually I'll either get over it or leave. I'm not going to waste  my time listening to people whine about a silly game.

Also saying "if you're good enough to have the achievement you have it" is pretty stupid. Not everyone has the time to run every instance ever nor has everyone had the chance to be properly geared to run end game stuff. If people are screening you by an achievement, how are you ever supposed to get it? Also, just because you have it doesn't mean you aren't a crappy player.

This is what I really miss about my old guild. They actually wanted to help people with things while most people in this game don't. I got a lot of help gearing up for Kara and I always helped other guildies level or ran them through instances they needed if I had the time. I mean, it's a game. It's supposed to be fun, not a popularity contest.

Also: Been leveling up a shaman named Lilybird on Forgotten Coast. I'm liking it better than the rogue.

[clockworkjames]

You would have done it when it was new content and a small/nonexistant percentage of the population did not have the achie, or you would do it with your guild.

If I haven't done a fight, I'll ask if there's anything special I need to know.

No, watch a strat vid and read up on wowiki or something.

There is honestly not alot worse than taking time out to explain in detail boss strats when 90% of the raid know it, you are just going to piss people off and get more "GOGOGOGOGO" or people inspecting everyone systematically while whispering the raid leader about someones blue trink and how they should be kicked, when really it is because they are playing the same class and spec and share loot rolls.

If that 10% just take their own time to watch a vid they don't waste anyone elses.

Fuck you, dorf on a kodo.

[jmrz]

On one hand, I can understand what you are saying, because shit damn it's annoying when you pug a group and none of them know what they are doing and a 20minute run turns into an hour. It's annoying, it's painful, but if they at least learn SOMETHING then you've helped them out.

I guess this is the one thing that I'm going to have to start thinking about now, because my guild leader has given me the go ahead to set up my on 10man team. We have one already, but they raid during the day (as they are mostly americans who keep weird hours) and are therefore on an aussie server. I can't raid during the day at all, so I'm setting up a team to run through the 10man content two, maybe three, nights a week. Why only two? Because it's a game and dedicating four nights a week to raiding in said game is kind of soul destroying.

So, I figure I need to set up some kind of balanced 10man team.

I have so far:

- 1 prot pally (gearing up)
- 1 boomkin (played by the same guy with the prot pally, so not sure which he's going to raid with)
- 1 resto druid
- 1 mage (me)


What should I be looking at for a balanced team? I figure a resto shammy would be great, would prefer to have a warrior MT, a mage (me), lock, hunter, rogue? for dps? Any ideas?

[Alex C]

Prot Pally>>>boomkin. You're going to want pally buffs and you'll likely need 2 tanks. A holy or disc priest would be tops. I actually sorta favor disc priests for 10 mans, tbh, but both are good. Shamans also rock.

[Aurjay]

So i hit 80 and i thought hey i can do Heroics. So I tried to do Heroic ToC and got my ass handed to me. Now I am a healer and yes i still use mostly PvP healing gear in the 70's and Kara, Gruul's healing gear, but damn that shit was hard. Neeldess and rightfully to say my group wasnt pleased with me. I need to gear up as one pointed out, which is true. Any suggestions where i can do this? Some Heroics that maybe i can still heal for or soemthing.

Thanksomuch
Aurjay Turalyon 

[jmrz]

Yeah, don't just straight into ToC. For a heroic, it's pretty easy - providing you're at least somewhat geared and have a good party.

I'd suggest starting the Heroic Utgarde Keep and or uhm, Gundrak, VH is pretty quick and easy. You'll get badges from the Heroics which you can then spend on some gear - which is pretty great. You'll also be able to pick up some decent gear through most of the Heroics as well. Start with the easy ones (the ones that were designed for the lvl71/72 crowd in Normal mode) and work your way up from there. ToC is a difficult instance if your heals are not up to scratch.

Alex: yeah, he will probably raid with his prot pally - he's got a shammy as well, which isn't far off 80 either, but I'd prefer him to raid with the pally. I would LOVE a disc priest. My ex played a priest and respec'd into disc for healing and his heals were much better than any holy priest I'd had in a 10man group before. I'll have to really sit down and look into what I've got. I do have a priest (not sure what spec she is) for heals, but she's not guild hopping, but she's definitely up for coming along, so she will probably pick up my priest heal spot.

[Lines]

And yes, from back when I did raid all the time, yes, it is really annoying when most of a pug has no idea what's going on. But having to read up on every instance before I do it takes the fun out of it. I'm one of those people who likes to try everything once, but not if it's going to inconvenience an entire raid and I'll always say straight up before we even go that I haven't done something before and let the leader decide from there. Whatever, it's not like we're ever going to be in the same party anyways.

Jmrz, the pally buffs are better than boomkin buffs and you'll get all the good druid buffs from the tree anyways. If he runs with the boomkin, try to find another pally to fill ot, dps, or healer. Resto and elem shaman are fun to raid with, especially since they can self res (just in case). And I agree with Alex, priests are awesome to have.

So maybe warrior (tank), pally/warrior/bear (ot), tree (healer), priest/resto shammy/healadin (healer), mage (you), at least 1 more ranged dps, 2 melee dps, and then any other dps with useful tricks. I would recommend at least one rogue and a lock, because of stun and soulstones. Definitely find a pally, or even two, if you can.


Edit: Sorry if this is redundant, but two people posted when I typed this out.

Aurjay - I would recommend running regular ToC a few times first. You need new gear badly. Believe me, you'll probably switch out most of your gear after a few runs, which is pretty much what happened to me the first time I ran it. Also maybe do other heroics first, because I think ToC is one of the higher end heroics.

[Alex C]

Alex: yeah, he will probably raid with his prot pally - he's got a shammy as well, which isn't far off 80 either, but I'd prefer him to raid with the pally. I would LOVE a disc priest. My ex played a priest and respec'd into disc for healing and his heals were much better than any holy priest I'd had in a 10man group before. I'll have to really sit down and look into what I've got. I do have a priest (not sure what spec she is) for heals, but she's not guild hopping, but she's definitely up for coming along, so she will probably pick up my priest heal spot.

Yeah, holy priests have a lot of tools. They're great raid healers. But in 10 mans I'd take the superior tank and spot healer, and that's disc priests. They're simply better at saving someone's ass right now, and they're especially good if you can't figure out a way to squeeze a holy paladin in the group too, since then the Disc priest will be your logical tank healer.

[0bsessions]

You would have done it when it was new content and a small/nonexistant percentage of the population did not have the achie, or you would do it with your guild.

If I haven't done a fight, I'll ask if there's anything special I need to know.

No, watch a strat vid and read up on wowiki or something.

There is honestly not alot worse than taking time out to explain in detail boss strats when 90% of the raid know it, you are just going to piss people off and get more "GOGOGOGOGO" or people inspecting everyone systematically while whispering the raid leader about someones blue trink and how they should be kicked, when really it is because they are playing the same class and spec and share loot rolls.

If that 10% just take their own time to watch a vid they don't waste anyone elses.

First off, that is exactly what I feel is wrong with the game. It's a fucking game, I should be PLAYING it, not treating it like a god damn history test. People constantly bitch about how all the new content is easy and people clear it too fast. Yeah, that's going to happen when all anyone give's a shit about is server firsts and the like. Content isn't so easy when you do it by trial and error and treat it like a game, rather than a second job. I'm sorry, but as someone who likes to maintain a life outside of his computer once in a great while, I'd rather not be spending my time studying for a fucking video game boss. I really enjoy the game, but that's just entering a new level of depressing.

What happens to people who just started playing? Or people who just got into raiding? That "well, if you want in, you should have the achievement" attitude is just a bunch of bullshit elitist posturing.

[Covetous]

Just aim at geting about one of every class. Try to not get more than 2 of the same class. As a new group, also aim at geting three healers.
What content are you starting with?


BTW. Yogg down yesterday. Horay for my guild!

[clockworkjames]

Depend on what else you have, prot pallys atm > every other tank bar none. They have better survival and good threat, however warrior tanks are much higher on omen if both are similarly geared and hit capped.

I have nowhere near the level of survivability a pally has, but I can out-threat them like a motherfucker.

Saying pally buffs are better than boomkin buffs is not true, it is often true but if your 10 man group has caster heavy dps, the boomkin becomes rediculegood. Freya 2 elders 10 man for my guild was 3 mages a lock and a boomkin, prot pally holy pally druid healer, dps warrior and me. It was pretty effective on burn stages and nuking lashers.

Disc priests in 10 mans are obscene. 25 man holy wide raid healing is sick, better than restro druids even but 1 druid for motw and a battle res is nice. There is no best group, but 10 man combinations based on these may work nicely.

Prot pally - Awesome survival, Bosanc on other tank, BoW on casters, death cheating AD,
Prot warrior - Commanding shout, thunderclap, demo shout, sunders, threat like a depressed nuklear technician, Unfearabletonk(psychic scream? fuck you, shield bash.), stuns.
Disc priest - stam boofs, shields on the entire party, fear ward
Holy pala - BoK/BoW/BoM depending on what the prot pally is doing, resistance auras
Resto shammy - hero/BL, good raid healing and single target healing, totemz (OMGTREMOR)
Destro lock - SS/Summon/lockrocks/good dps
Mage - Int... food? Portal at end I guess...
Hunter - Crit crit crit/nature res
Arms Warr - bleeds, battleshout
FeralDPS - battleres, bleeds, MotW, FF
Boomkin - Battleres, MotW, spell crit, FF
Blah blah blah.

More than 3 pally is overkill, but one is enough for BoK. Priests for stam buffs, shamans for hero/BL, not many other classes bring this much to the table.
Melee dps go well with melee dps (Mixing bleeds, armour pen on sunder) and casters go well with casters, (boomkin aura, arcane int etc.)

Just realised how many times I used the word "depends", because it really does. If a spare warrior can do BS why use BoM? If there is only one warrior and no pally, BoM and the lock can use imp blood pact etc. etc.

Obviously I value some classes over others, but that is just from grouping with them more.

[Alex C]

Well, the thing is, I can't imagine not wanting a Prot Pally tank in a 10 man. A boomkin? That's more negotiable. They have great synergy (which is nice since a mage is already involved) and can drop form to battle rez in a pinch, but the bottom line is that groups start with tanks and paladins are some of the best right now. After all, if they end up with warrior as the offtank and a rogue, ret paladin and a Hunter instead of more casters, suddenly you're probably going to want an enhance shaman over a boomkin. Prot pallies, on the other hand, are always in style and they've got a buff for everybody.

Really though, it's not that big of a deal; there's a wide gap between what's needed and what's optimal. There's some advantages to having a fairly even split of caster and melee dps even if the synergy isn't always there, particularly for fights like Yogg Saron. Just make sure to try and get a shaman of some sort in there. Between Purge, Totems and Heroism/BL you'll get some nice buffs and an offensive dispel to go with Remove Curse, which is nice for stuff like faction champs. Rogues and Enhancement shaman are also good at interrupting without taking serious DPS losses, but depending on your tank setup that might be easily managed in other ways.

[Lines]

Yeah, if a large portion of your group is made up of casters (including the two healers), then yes, having a boomkin is pretty good. But even I, as a boomkin, would rather group with a pally of some sort than a boomkin if I had to pick between the two. Balance druids have two good buffs - MoW, which if you have a resto druid is redundant, and a caster buff. Pallys have auras and buffs that benefit everyone. But if you feel like you might need a 3rd healer, in a pinch a boomkin or an elemental shaman can easily help out, since they tend to stay out of the fight and can easily cast a heal here or there.

[0bsessions]

I just cannot get myself into Boomkinism. I leveled a feral and have recently fallen absolutely in love with my Resto spec, but Boomkin just never did it for me.

[Lines]

I like all three. I like being a boomkin because you're like a pseudo-mage that wears plate armor. The DoTs and buffs you get on pretty much every cast are nice. Also starfall is one of my favorite spells next to Innervate, Lifebloom, and Wild Growth. Plus you get treants. I love my treants. I would probably be 100% happy with resto if it had Force of Nature. I do miss feral sometimes, but not really. I switched at 70 and really, you still can do a crap ton of damage and drop mobs just as fast as a moonkin as you would in cat form.

Also, the dance is totally worth it...

[Covetous]

I have to disagree with the pally glorification here. Kings is nice but paladins are NOT the ultimate tank right now. To my knowledge most guild use warriors and DKs mainly for progression tanking. Except the silly northrend beasts heroic. There paladins rock due to BoP and Bubble. :-/

[clockworkjames]

No, pallys are rocks due to their survivability, they get more HP than warriors in the same gear, they have AD, they can dispell falcon punches and stuff from themselves, they block alot more and generally take a huge amount less damage. Warriors are only better for CC/fear/interrupt/high threat fights.

Boomkins/non restro shamans should never heal unless the boss is on 2% and the tank is still standing with another dps or two and it is a hail mary attempt. The loss of DPS outweighs the shitty shitty healing non specced healers do.

If your guild is using DK/Warr over a paladin they just don't have a good pally tank. Even a sub par pally tank can be better for taking megahits than a good warrior tank or an obscenely good DK tank.

[jmrz]

Yeah, you guys have been saying basically what I was thinking re: 10man team. At the moment I'm not too fussed about having three healers, as long as we are fairly balanced.

At the moment the guild is particularly melee dps heavy, so I need more casters and I need more healers. Argh.

[Lines]

Boomkins/non restro shamans should never heal unless the boss is on 2% and the tank is still standing with another dps or two and it is a hail mary attempt. The loss of DPS outweighs the shitty shitty healing non specced healers do.

That would be considered being in a pinch.

[Alex C]

Heh, even then I'm not so sure tossing the heal would be the right thing to do. We've had a few cases where our first kill came from me tanking down the last couple hundred thousand health via cloak of shadows, evasion and kiting like a maniac. Hell, one time I was the last man standing because I had vanished recently and was last on the threat list; my 15 seconds of evasion was enough for dots and an eviscerate to finish Auraiya. Of course, other times you hit Evasion and just end up getting RNG screwed and eating about 30k+ worth of overkill. But overall, it's still usually better for everyone to just stick with what they do best. If nothing else, shortening the fight by remaining on dps means there'll be less opportunities for the healers or tanks to end up behind on heals again in the first place.

Of course, though, I'm biased; I do around 10k+ in Hodir fights and play a spec with a decent amount of ramp up time to hit my max dps. If doing something else for a few seconds means that I have to blow combo points on reapplying crucial buffs/debuffs, that means I can easily end up cutting my dps in half for a few seconds even once I get back on target, and even 10k damage counts for an awful lot in a "he's at 400k but we're about to wipe" scenario.

[Covetous]

I just have to say that I don't agree with the warrior vs paladin. AD is just last stand in disguise. About my guild, we are IRL friends who play together. We have two very good warrior tanks but that is due to everybody geting to play whatever they wan't to play while I play whatever is needed (resto druid (main), boomkin, tankadin or retri pala).

[Alex C]

Except it's got a shorter cool down, has most of the user error massaged out of it and is paired with Divine Protection, which in turn has a shorter cooldown than a talented Shield Wall, despite being on a class that can stack stamina more effectively.

Here's how it works in my guild. When we're looking for raw survivability in the face of predictable bursts of damage (think Mimiron's Plasma Blasts) we go with a Blood DK or Prot Pally. When we just want raw effective health it's the Druid or Blood DK. When we need a mix of all of the above plus flexible threat generation, we go with a Prot pally. That's not to say that warriors are useless, however. They've got a ton of utility these days. They're mobile as hell, they bring their own Sunders to the table and they're better than anyone at dealing with knock backs and fear effects plus they can interrupt spells damn well to boot. They can make a lot of fights easier, particularly since you don't really need the sort of overkill, one dimensional survivability tools of a Blood DK most of the time anyway.

[Covetous]

On the other hand, when AD procs, they lose the other effect (Less damage taken while under X% health).

Some initial information about 3.3: http://www.mmo-champion.com/

[Dazed]

If the boomkin can offspec resto, and has decent gear, consider going with that, especially if you're going to run a caster heavy team. It's somewhat absurd just how much a single boomkin can buff a raid's magic damage. 5% crit/3% hit/13% damage is very, very nice.

I'm in a 10 man guild, our makeup consists of:
Warrior MT
Frost/Blood DK (Dps/OT)
Bear/Resto Druid (Healer/OT, usually healing)
Holy Priest
1-2 Holy/Ret Paladins
2-3 of Arms Warrior, Mut Rogues, Cat Druid
1-3 of Boomkin, Ele Shaman, Shadow/Disc Priest
Warlock (me)

So our groups can be kind of weird? We don't really have mages or hunters, and run extremely druid heavy. But it works, we got Glory of the Ulduar Raider and 4/5 in H ToC10 so far. I think one of the keys to successful 10 manning is versatility. It's nice to have a bunch of people who can do a lot of different stuff, depending on circumstances.

[Lines]

I still think prot pallys > warriors only for the fact that I've seen pallys survive a boss when everyone else has wiped and have yet to see a warrior do so. Warriors are good tanks, but the survivability of a prot pally is pretty much next to none. But for 10 mans, I really like having one of each. Warriors can do a lot of stuff pallys can't and vice versa, so it's great when the two work together.

Alright, this is what I mean by in a pinch - your healer is about to die, there's you and one other person who isn't a healer left, your healers are dead and you're keeping the tank alive until you can battle rez the healer. Yes, you may lose some dps, but really, it does not take more than 5 seconds to lifebloom the healer and get back into moonkin form and continue dps. (This is why instant cast HoTs are pretty great.) I do not mean stay out of form the entire fight, just that if there is a need/emergency and someone more important than you is about to die, it does not take much to drop a heal on them, or at least for me it doesn't. Usually if this is in a raid, you're probably on vent or whatever anyways and you can tell your party what you're doing as you're doing it or they can ask you to do whatever.

[Alex C]

But it works, we got Glory of the Ulduar Raider and 4/5 in H ToC10 so far. I think one of the keys to successful 10 manning is versatility. It's nice to have a bunch of people who can do a lot of different stuff, depending on circumstances.

I really wish my guild bothered with 10 mans more often. We did Uld10 hard modes a few times to scare up some mjolnir runestones, but other than that we can't be bothered.

[clockworkjames]

I still think prot pallys > warriors only for the fact that I've seen pallys survive a boss when everyone else has wiped and have yet to see a warrior do so. Warriors are good tanks, but the survivability of a prot pally is pretty much next to none. But for 10 mans, I really like having one of each. Warriors can do a lot of stuff pallys can't and vice versa, so it's great when the two work together.

Alright, this is what I mean by in a pinch - your healer is about to die, there's you and one other person who isn't a healer left, your healers are dead and you're keeping the tank alive until you can battle rez the healer. Yes, you may lose some dps, but really, it does not take more than 5 seconds to lifebloom the healer and get back into moonkin form and continue dps. (This is why instant cast HoTs are pretty great.) I do not mean stay out of form the entire fight, just that if there is a need/emergency and someone more important than you is about to die, it does not take much to drop a heal on them, or at least for me it doesn't. Usually if this is in a raid, you're probably on vent or whatever anyways and you can tell your party what you're doing as you're doing it or they can ask you to do whatever.

My healer dies, last stand + enraged regeneration + pray.

I had rediculously more survivability than all the paladins in my old guild, when naxx/eoe was endgame and I played with lesser skilled players.

I was pretty much infamous for those "Oh SHit the MT/RL/GM Bear who insists on tanking everything is face down and humanform, Wipe it.

No, Fuck wiping, I canot afford the rep bill "Mel is tonk" on KT so I tanked the boss and the adds from 28%.

Saw plenty of pallies dying when trying to do that one.

Cy@~~