The Glade 4.0

Well either way it's a choice. Folks can either choose to spend the $10 now knowing half the money goes to charity, wait until January and spend the $10 and have the entire thing all go to Blizzard or don't buy the pet at all. Everyone will make their own choice, decide to purchase the pet or protest out of principle. No option is right or wrong it just is what it is.

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True, but that's an entirely different conversation.

Well of course . That doesn't mean I can't think they're kinda expensive for what they are though.

I still wish I could have one...

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Good day today for me. I did regular ToC 4 times, heroic once. Got myself an epic BP, Helm, Cloak, Ring and trinket. Also ran both daily dungeons: CoT regular and DTK Heroic and got some emblems.

All these were firsts for me and I was able to stay in the top one or two DPS with no problem.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

Note - You can do the regular dungeon daily on heroic mode as well.

I am prot spec, with a weaksauce ret offspec. (Some quest blues, no gems, little to no enchanting)

I actually went to do CoS Heroic as ret and was not only beating the hunter but pulling aggro off the DK who has ~31k HP unbuffed.

We got just 3 emblems and everyone died at least once. The mage was down probably 5 times.

I got the Conquerer's Aegis, and my crafted epics are fewer and further between, but Peacekeeper blade and the ring from ToC-H put my +Defense too low. Aaargh! Still, until I get Blade Ward on Peacekeeper, probably best to keep using the Blade Ward enchanted weapon.

Also, for those who time it right - did you know you could run Heroic (X) twice?

On my server, if I get the daily Heroic done by 8 AM Pacific, my lock resets and I can do it again. Useful if you didn't do all the heroics the day before.

Sadly, the daily heroic resets at another time, or that could be wicked evil.

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Once, I was a ranger
Then, I was a warlock
And a mage
And a paladin
Now, I seek to be myself

Yeah the charity bit is really going to be nothing more than a footnote in Blizzard's cash shop history. A good footnote, and one that works especially great for people that only bought the Pandaren, but still a footnote. When discussing the Blizzard cash shop issue as a whole I don't think it's much relevant to bring it up at all except as an exception or footnote of your own.

I think to clarify my earlier unhappiness is that it lowers the purity of the game somewhat in the following way: 3 people are standing around in a city, each with a neat pet out that the others haven't seen before. They ask each other how they got their pets. Player A says "I got it from that badass boss, only a 5% drop rate!" Player B says "man I spent an hour after raids for a month now farming for this and it finally paid off." Player C says "well, I paid the game creators 10 bucks..."

Just kinda... doesn't fit all and well with me.

Nothing I'll be losing any sleep over ultimately, but I don't think it's a positive change. I suspect I'm the grumpy old man fighting against the way the industry is going, though. I need a stick to shake when I talk about the purer days in MMO history when CC wasn't artificially capped, walkthrough videos weren't available, and players earned their cosmetic items. :p

Blade Ward is a horrible tanking enchant, especially for Paladins. The best tanking enchant for Paladins is Accuracy.

http://www.wowhead.com/?item=44496

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Li'l KT vs Mr. Bigglesworth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0_DHuLZmJE

[youtube]H0_DHuLZmJE[/youtube]

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Would you care to explain your thinking, Khross? I've never heard Accuracy ranked highly unless you were particularly low on hit.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

NephyrS:

Best threat-per-second increase of all weapon enchants for tanks, and high end tanking gear has a very noticeable lack of Hit on It. The 25 Critical Strike rating by itself is also more threat per minute than Blade Ward. For Death Knights, Rune of the Fallen Crusader wins out, once you don't need Stoneskin Gargoyle to hit the Defense Cap. Beyond that, Paladins want a minimum of 11% Spell Hit.

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On a side note... t10 gear looks bloody awful. Why the hell would I want to wear a hat that makes me look like I have a big steamy green butthole where my face is?

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Holy shitsnacks!

Warrior T2 armor.

/fail

I was hoping that when they did the original T2 art revision, you would turn in your helmet for the new one and the old one would retain the placeholder art. Alas, was not to be. Also, **** Blizzard; they should never have designed the T1/T2 sets to be uni-functional. Hey, here's your shitty T1 gear that sucks for dps, have fun patching together a set of armor from random drops.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

I would think, then, that it would be extremely gear dependent, as well as content dependent.

Personally, I have never experienced threat problems, so I would prefer the extra avoidance/EH of the other options.

Mongoose is a very useful mitigation enchant, and +26 agi isn't very shabby either.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

NehpyrS:

Our DPS bottoms out at 7500. And all the TheoryCrafting points to Accuracy being the best enchant for tanks.

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So you are referring to absolute endgame only, then? Because if we're talking about what enchant to put on Peacekeeper Blade, I'm thinking the comparable DPS is not going to be pulling 7500 min.

Accuracy is a situational enchant that is useful for a high threat build- not the best all around enchant, certainly not the best for tanking heroics or starting raids.

Not to mention that the current goal for AnubH25 tanks is to get 102.4 baseline, which makes every bit of avoidance golden.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

NephyrS:

It's the best all around enchant. A tank that can't hold aggro is a useless enchant. Nothing is going to increase your avoidance enough to matter when it comes to weapon enchants, because you're well beyond diminishing returns in nothing but Badge and Heroic Loot. My DK, for instance, has 566 Defense, 25.9% Dodge, 19.86% Parry, and 36k unbuffed health with 0 raid drops and only the 30 emblem shoulders in his set.

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My tank that is not even in full badge+heroic gear has no problems holding aggro- why would I need an aggro increasing enchant at the expense of something that keeps me alive longer?

A good +EH enchant is much better than a minor +threat enchant.

So again, if you find yourself too low on threat (as a paladin? really?) then you would consider the Accuracy enchant. Otherwise, for a tank, more EH is always better.

But could you point me to these theorycrafters that are suggesting Accuracy as the all around best paladin enchant? I bold paladin because your argument makes a lot more sense for warriors or DKs than it does for paladins.

I refer you to this maintankadin thread discussing weapon enchants.

Basically, if you need Threat, then accuracy is good. If you want EH, you use Blood Draining, if you want mitigation, you use Mongoose/+26 agility.

There is no all around best enchant, it depends on your gear and where you most often use it.

::edit:: Ah! I found the discussion on +hit gear:

In the best situation (very high strength, almost no hit), 10 hit generates around 20-25 TPS. Therefore, the hit portion of the Accuracy Enchant will give around 50-65 TPS. When a well geared prot pally puts out 7-8k TPS, 50-65 is a very minor addition.

A quick analysis: According to Theck's Matlab Theorycraft

Str: 29 TPS/10 str
Hit: 20-25 TPS/10 Hit (assuming low hit)
Crit: 8-12 TPS/10 Crit
AP: 16 TPS/20 AP

Accuracy: 50-65 TPS (Hit) + 20-30 TPS (Crit), 70-95 TPS total
Greater Potency (+65 AP): 52 TPS
Titanium Weapon Chain (+28 hit): 56-70 TPS
Greater Potency (+20 str): 58 TPS

So they are all similar in magnitude, with accuracy taking the lead, but getting worse as you gain hit.

Also remember that the hit cap for most adds is 5.4%, it's only for bosses that you need the 8% white cap, making hit less valuable in most situations.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

I love the shoulders though. One of the color schemes for it is terrible, one is alright, and one is awesome though. The red? one if I remember right is the good one.



Oh man I wish we could find some dps that could put this kind of thing out. We have people in almost full 245+ that can barely do 4k. I do around 6k in my mix of 213-245 gear, and usually come in around third to fifth. If I can get a decent main hand to drop (using the 219 dagger from htoc right now) I'll probably jump a decent amount.

And we're the second best horde guild on the server, barely behind the first. Our server is way behind though. No 25m heroic anub kill yet, and 25m algalon went down for the first time just yesterday. There are 3-4 alliance guilds that are farther along than the two top horde guilds though.



At lower gear levels, threat isn't an issue. We're talking naxx and a decent ways into ulduar. Around the time your dps gets geared out in 245+ from toc, threat management will become more of an issue all around. It's probably going to become a significant issue in 25m icecrown unless tank gear is itemised better. The 245 and 258 stuff has very little hit or expertise, so you have to pick both of those up from enchants and/or gems.

I was comparing my paladin to Krhoss's Tank, since he brought up that gearing level.

From what I read of the top Paladin Theorycrafters (linked in the previous post), Accuracy is a situational enchant, and many are saying BW and Mongoose both provide better TPS at the highest gear levels.

Also, with a 20% reduction in dodge in IC 25, tanks are going to try to squeeze every bit of avoidance they can out of gear/enchants.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Well I've been able to improve my gear to the point that I can probably do Naxx or OS 10 man. At least according to what I've read.

http://wow-heroes.com/index.php?zone=us ... me=Dashhal

How long of a run are the 10 man instances? Assuming they want to do all wings of it or do people usually split that up.

If an opportunity arises I'll consider jumping in, until then I'll keep running H ToC and the Heroic Daily or any Heroic instances I guess for the emblems.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

Oh and one other thing... I'm going to start up an alt. Not to get to into right now but to have him all rest xp'd up and something to mess around with.

So: Mage or Warlock? Any advice on which is more welcome to groups, pro's and cons? I'm leaning Mage since I'm not a fan of pet classes.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

While it ultimately depends on what the PUG leader wants, you're truthfully more than fine for Naxx 10 now. In fact if you get a few epic to replace those blues (and not trash your hit rating in the process) you'd be hard-pressed to even get an upgrade in Naxx10. Especially once you luck out and get the Edge of Ruin from HToC. :p Getting all that stuff would probably leave you fine for ToC10 raids, despite what wow-heroes says... though ultimately it's up to the PUG leaders to decide that, I suppose.

Naxx and Ulduar are both very long, full instances. Naxx can have a chance at being fast if the group totally outgears it and knows the fights, though, via sheer steamrolling. OS and especially Malygos are both very short. ToC is somewhere in between. Only 5 bosses and no trash turns it into a half-hour affair for teams that steamroll it, but it can occasionally be fairly technical (i.e. know how to handle ability X or die) so inexperienced raids will have to take it slow.

I don't think there's any difference between Mage and Warlock as far as desirability goes. I'd go with personal preference. Like you I'm not too fond of pet classes, so I've had two Mages and zero Warlocks so far. :p Frost Mages are so much fun to level now in my opinion, at least once they get the Shatter talent maxed out at level 27. Ports come in handy too!

...then again my main is a Druid, and my guild Warlocks have a known reputation for Banishing my tree self at every possible opportunity, so I will admit to being slightly biased.

I don't really like either the mage or warlock classes, although my preference is definately mage, mostly because I don't really like pet classes.

I currently have a 75 Warrior alt, a 71 Hunter alt, and druid/shaman alts in the 40s, and rogue/mage alts in the teens.

I really enjoy my prot warrior, hunter to me is 'meh', and I also like my druid alt a lot. Mage is kinda fun, but getting a real feel for a class in the teens is hard.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.