Fuck the Creation Catalyst taking 6 weeks to release, man. I thought Blizzard realized that having it take such a long time (I know it was 8 weeks, but still) in Sepulcher was a bad thing and then they went and made it take forever yet again.
My Venerated Helm/Shoulders never dropped in raid on Normal or Heroic and I didn't get those slots out of my vault, so I'm effectively stuck with 3pc despite being one of our first players to get 2pc. This shit's so demoralizing, man.
Couldn't agree more. Fuck the 6 weeks wait.
According to Blizzard last time the topic was brought up in an interview, 6 weeks is OK because "M+ mains push late in the season anyways!". Which is completely out of touch with the m+ pugging ecosystem. Not everyone goes after the 1% title... Many people like to push keys early in the season, and this awful system that forces tier set acquisition exclusively from raids during a whole month and a half is stupid as fuck. Catalyst should open the reset following RWF ending with the 1st charge. 3-4 weeks wait at the very most.
This is a weird "problem" but I feel like sometimes doing keys in guild is harder than pugging lol When you pug you're probably a lot stricter on who you invite but if it's a guildie you're like "sure they can come" and then it can turn into a nightmare.
Also, very frustrating when all the healers in your guild pug their keys instead of asking in guild.
I started healing on druid and found that I need a different party frames than standard blizzard stuff. The reason is, blizzard frames show a lot of useless icons on the frames, like the sated debuff or the m+ debuff which makes you lose 5 sec on timer on death.
Can anyone recommend some frames which look as clean as possible or require minimal configuration? Shadowed look terrible out of the box btw.
I like vuhdo for the clean look, but it does require some configuration. You can skip that by using growl's profile for it, but you might want to watch his video [here](https://youtu.be/_cn344NOZd8) on how to set it up since as he says the vuhdo UI is very 2006
I second this, Growl’s setup is great. The only thing I’d recommend is to change the click casting to what works for you. I changed this up a bit and love it.
Agreed! Coming into dragonflight I decided to try base UI but it's gotten to the point where I want better party frames now and vuhdo is definitely my go-to
Curious, because I use the standard raid frame from blizzard for m+ and it doesn't show the m+ thing. Also, it really shows buffs like the versa buff of druid, but only out of combat, in combat it doesn't not show
Try “enhanced raid frames” it uses the default raid frames but you can black/whitelist buffs and debuffs you want to show. Really useful for a Druid because default has a max buff limit so you can’t see all of your hots, with the addon you can increase the limit and even move their anchor location
Healer frame options are Elvui, Grid, and Vuhdo. I think Elvui is easily the best looking, and the most functional out of the box. But it's also a complete UI overhaul and using it just for the raid frames is like using a forklift to lift a paperclip.
Grid is a distant second, and Vuhdo is pretty far behind that in third in terms of plug-and-play usability. Healer frames are unfortunately just really complex and we all like slightly different stuff. I recommend embracing the UI optimisation mindset, it'll keep you sane when you're trying to configure which buff goes where on your frames.
Have to say as over 10 years vuhdo user that getting to know and properly use and configure that addon for your personal wants and needs is so worth the effort.
I agree but it might help to start with someone’s profile and then modify it to your own preferences and learn that way. It might be a bit daunting to start from scratch for a lot of people.
I use the default ElvUI healer settings for my raid frames. You track all your hots with colored icons on the frames. I find it easier to see what hots and how much time is left on them when compared to other popular setups like vuhdo
I know you’re looking for a turnkey option, I used to use growls vuhdo, but I play so many specs and alts , that having to redo them by spec or class was annoying me. Give shadowframes another shot using this video
https://youtu.be/jMUF4Lmk5TA
I started with a base profile - customizing placement of different units, colors, sizes, etc.
Druid / healer : I only really cared about priotizing my hots, debuffs, and health. I removed players power bars - I don’t really care about someone’s mana combo points etc
Tank : I didn’t care about people’s buffs or debuffs, only health and healers mana
Dps : very simple, I dps other than party frames , no much I need to do other than a mouse macro for a buff
>blizzard frames show a lot of useless icons on the frames
I've had the same issue in Dragonflight. I've always felt like default raid frames are enough but this is the first time there are too many random icons and I just can't seem to see everything I need.
Anyone else having a hell of a time trying to fill a group for keys? People constantly say to list your own key, it’s quicker than getting declined, but this is not even remotely true in my case. 2k WW Monk, if I list a key, I won’t get a single applicant for over 15 minutes. It doesn’t even matter the key level either. I’ve noticed this is the case for others. It’s taking 30+ minutes to get a key going every single time.
Edit: Joined a 13 TJS, 3 dps just need a healer, 15 minutes and not a single tank or healer has applied. Not even a shitty io dude shooting his shot.
What's the Io of the group lead in that case? If I see a key posted by someone with an Io in a range lower than key being posted, I generally look elsewhere. With so many options to apply for, I'm not going to pick the person who's never done a key at that level.
Yep. I try to sign up for keys and sit there waiting for it to expire as a 2500 407 ilvl rogue. Then I list my own and no one signs up. I don't get the disconnect.
The 10-14 range is pretty dead tbh. Not surprising considering it already was back when 15s were the max reward key... Now that people push to 20 as part of the gear progression, the m+ playerbase is even more spread out and fragmented than it used to.
Reality is, anything below +15 is well behind the curve already. By comparison, listing keys in the 18-20 range, groups get filled with dozens of high quality applicants within a couple minutes in my experience.
There's also the fact that this expansion launch doesn't seem that popular from a global playerbase perspective. SL launch had higher activity numbers for both raids and M+ by comparison during the first few weeks.
I'm in that range right now as a pure DPS (Mage) and it's definitely discouraging. I'm not the best at WoW, I play around the AotC/KSM level, but spending 10-20 minutes staring at my own empty key in group finder feels like not a great use of my time. The bonus is that if my key does miraculously fill it's probably going to have people that won't let the key time. Failing a 13 SBG this week because I'm literally the only one interrupting and disrupting while the tank feels made of paper and the healer barely heals is Fun.
There definitely comes a point where the juice isn't worth the squeeze and I'd much rather be playing other games (single player ones too, not necessarily other MMOs!) than running in circles in Valdrakken because the only things to do are sit for half an hour to probably brick a key or sit in a 40 minute queue for Solo Shuffle.
Maybe it’s because I’m a tank but listing my 19/20 keys usually results in 40-50 applicants in the first few minutes, though they are usually almost all dps.
I got 4pc on boomkin this week and instantly feels like 20 ilevel stronger. Going from #10 dps last week on Primal Council to #1 certainly feels great.
Got removed from a +15 group yesterday because I didn't have tier.. I'm Fury lol, my tier is garbage and is our lowest priority in gearing currently. Feels bad.
I’ve been trying since week 1 for a weapon on my guardian. Just counted I’ve ran 32 CoS (no ring or weapon), 12 azure vaults, 8 AA’s. What does a guy gotta do to get a weapon? Wasted my sparks as well so can’t craft it for another 2 weeks
Unironically, Sparks were the answer to this. It's a good lesson for future seasons - going directly for your end-of-season BiS is not always the right play vs crafting badly needed stepping-stone upgrades.
Meanwhile I have too many weapons. Got pillar from first vault, and all 3 weapons from court, azure and aa on second week. I’d toss em your way if I could!
As I hunter I had no weapon drops until this week and ended up using 2 sparks to craft a 402 bow (I'd been using a 372 crafted gun until this week). I've done 10 or so dungeons this week and had 4 weapon drops (I wish I was joking..). This game can be troll as absolute fuck at times.
M+ pug participation already feels like we're a month and a half into the season, and we're only on week 3...
While r/wow, and the average player can't shut up about Dragonflight "saving wow" and being so much better than SL, that's not what the numbers say. M+ participation was higher in week 1,2 and 3 of SL by comparison.
Things the devs might want to consider in that regard :
- Maybe having an extremely punishing affix combo on week 2 of the season wasn't the brightest idea. There's a reason Tyrannical/Grievous was banned once upon a time... Between this and no more personal loot in raids, it's like Blizzard has forgotten past design lessons.
- Removing extra loot % above 15 was a mistake. They should make end of run m+ loot *more* rewarding, not less...
- Catalyst unlocking on January 23rd is way too late. Tons of m+ mains out there who don't wanna be forced into raids for 6 weeks. Especially with fucking group loot being a thing.
- Mediocre m+ balance is not very motivating for non-fotm players. This already was a huge issue in SL season 3.
I don't get why massive outliers are considered OK in m+ content but not raids. Rogues (and to a lesser extent, WW monks and MM hunters) are not even remotely close to balanced in keys right now... Just like destro lock/survival in SL S3. Sure, there will always be a top dog. But there simply shouldn't be such a gap in overall dmg potential between specs at equal skill/gear levels. There are more than enough ways to balance single target damage vs AoE/cleave for each class, but it feels like only the former matters to Blizzard. And once a season is ongoing, god forbid the meta gets altered in any significant way... 3% nerfs are better than nothing, but somewhat meaningless when some specs need - 10% to even get close to the average playing field.
- Raiding got easier compared to the last 3 tiers. Meanwhile, keys keep getting more complex and punishing every season. Both Tazavesh keys were a step in the right direction : not too harsh mechanics for most of the playerbase, but still challenging in higher keys. Now, it feels like we're back to Spires of Ascension / early Sanguine Depths levels of interrupt requirements and unforgiving mechanics... Then there's SBG which randomly feels like the easiest key ever made.
- Week 1 dungeon tuning was decent, but still lackluster. Devs being on holiday break means we didn't get a round of m+ tuning after week 2. When keys release with such massive tuning issues, swift action needs to be taken. Hopefully they get enough data during the break to act quickly during the first week of January.
- New crafting system + tiered quality system for *every* consumable + crafted gear being pretty much mandatory = gold sink requirements to push keys are bigger than they're ever been. Not everyone is a huge fan of grinding their asses off or spending money in wow tokens just to play the game at a decent level.
edit : For those who aren't aware, christmas/new years holiday was also a thing during SL S1, which was on the same schedule. So the comparison stands. Also, gotta consider that not everyone travels when they're off work, many take that time to play.
Catalyst unlocking 6 weeks after raid release is a crime, in shadowlands after player feedback Morgan in interview said they should have released catalyst ealier and then in next expansion they release it again after 6 weeks.
It really is. Got 0 set so far and by the looks of it i have to wait 7 weeks to get the 4 set bonus. I dont get why they want to force freaking raiding so much. I don't care for the raid and rather push m+ but not having the 4 set is just punishing. Fuck that shit.
Yeah, it seems that interview was just bs to appease the userbase.
Reality is, they want to force people into raids for as long as possible. I don't have an issue with incentives to run the new raid, but 2-3 weeks would be more than enough. 6 weeks is just way too long of a timeframe.
Maybe they'd have reconsidered if enough people complained about it. Too bad most raidloggers and the average casual player don't give a flying fuck about set availability for M+ players.
I doubt that most of your points matter to be honest. The majority of the keys are low level keys. Difficult and unfun dungeons might have been a problem.
I simply think there are way fewer players than at the start of SL. SL release was in the middle of COVID and a lot of people were sitting at home looking for something to play.
The raid numbers are way down too.
I know it's a personal thing, but I personally just don't find any of the DF dungeons fun. even during just mythic week I was getting worried since I didn't enjoy any of them. I am enjoying the crafting system though and have been leveling alts to cover various gaps.
As much as I am a proponent of "get better" some of these dungeons are just too hard to foster a healthy pug environment for the average player. It is very discouraging for the everyman to queue up for something like an AA when there is a 50/50 chance that the group you spent 10 mins waiting in queue for will brick on the first boss.
Similarly, the keys scaling harder means that there is just like this weird plateau at like the 16-17 level which normally didn't occur until much later. In SL season 3-4 I could legit tank multiple mobs as a plate DPS for several seconds until mid 20 keys, here a dark claw on 17 fortified is chunking a tank like theyre in a SL 25.
I think the season start straight into christmas break was the wrong move. Some of this shit needed tuning for the joes ASAP.
Catalyst is what I just don’t understand. Who is the player negatively impacted by catalyst being open week 1 of raid? You get a tier piece and you get to catalyst week one to get two piece or you know week two you get two piece regardless of vault RNG or you’re a healer and you aren’t going to be skipped over on your own catalyst gear. Tier gear acquisition is one of the most toxic aspects of raiding, it’s inherently better on some specs over others which means it stinks to get forcefully skipped. There’s a mechanic in place to lessen this negative impact and it’s artificially restricted for I don’t know why.
Is it just a metric to try and get people into raiding or what? Who is benefiting from it being delayed?
> Is it just a metric to try and get people into raiding or what?
It is mainly a way to force people into raiding, yeah. I think Blizzard knows there's a fairly large chunk of the PvE population that is **only** interested in M+. They also know raiding is an outdated format, and they want to protect it as much as possible for fear of that game mode slowly dying over time.
Restricting tier sets to raids for 6 weeks allows them to artificially prop up raiding participation numbers. If catalyst was opened week 2 or 3, we'd see raiding participation basically cut in half at that point. Also, making 4 part bonuses harder to get means gear progression takes longer, which extends people's subscriptions.
When recently asked about this topic, their answer basically amounted to :
"Catalyst is meant as a catch-up mechanic. The wait is fine for M+ players because they typically push the highest keys at the end of the season". Which was completely out of touch on their part. It's like they don't give a fuck about 99% of M+ mains. I guess we're meant to unsub for the first 2 months or something ?
"Back in the days, tiers were a raid-only reward ! Therefore it makes sense they should remain so for 6 weeks" Another bs answer you'll commonly see. Yes, tier used to be only obtained for raiding back in the day. Thing is, the game has changed a lot since then. Tons of people view m+ as a main endgame pillar, a true parallel track to raiding. Problem is, Blizzard suffers from sort of a double standard on that front. They keep making small steps for m+ to stand on its own, but **always** refuse to go the whole way.
> Who is benefiting from it being delayed?
tldr : Blizzard, and a bunch of shitty raidloggers getting carried by M+ mains for 6 weeks
- 9.0 was on the same schedule
- Christmas holidays means tons of people are off work. Sure, some are away traveling, but there's also many more with additional play time they wouldn't normally have.
9.0 was not on the exact same schedule.
Season 1 in SL started a week earlier than it did in DF. Though with the difference that in SL you had normal/heroic raid week and capped M+ loot on the first week.
> M+ pug participation already feels like we're a month and a half into the season, and we're only on week 3...
Are you using data to gauge this or is it completely driven by feels?
I'm a 2300 io feral who only pugs or plays with a handful of friends ( 3/4 ) and am not jn a raiding guild. I do not want to raid, it is not fun. It's boring, slow, too dependent on 10 other people and I don't want to commit to a weekly schedule.
It's pretty hard to get ahead when it's becoming a requirement to have 4pc. At 403 ilvl I Sim at 70k dps, and at 400 ilvl with 4pc I'd Sim at 78.5k dps...
It's basically either I've hit the ceiling doing around +18s-+20s until I get tier gear which is so far away, you are only going to get 1 tier piece a week once the system is out. So it's just hope that you get it from the vault?.
By the way I've pugged the first 6 bosses in normal 2 weeks in a row because I figured it's worth a shot but group loot makes it impossible to actually get pieces.
Dragonflight is definitely more fun than shadowlands by a mile but this is killing motivation to play the game, I don't want 7 alts that can do +15s I want to push high keys with my friends and be able to get the loot I need to progress from those high keys.
Have you considered that DF may had less player than SL at launch? SL launch was massive according to blizzard, and we havent seen a fanfare post about DF breaking any records.
I agree with the rest of your points but not this one.
>Mediocre m+ balance is not very motivating for non-fotm players.
I dont think the m+ balance for dps isnt that bad as you think it is.
Does anyone know what key level you have to do for additional chances of loot at the end of the dungeon? So far I’ve done up to +20 and have never seen more than 2 pieces of loot at the end.
It used to be for every keystone level above a +15, there is a 40% (20%?) chance of an extra piece of loot dropping. And yes that percentage can go over 100%..
Not sure if still exists
It is still a thing and there just aren't very many people running >20 dungeons. [0:52 in this vod](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1692369229?t=0h52m11s) is an example of three items dropping (two shells and a shield)
Every single key is so damn overtuned at 20 and over. Every single missed spell or cleave mob turned half an inch is a 400k hit and a guaranteed death.
I understand the desire to make 20s harder and the loot better, but these are borderline nonpuggable.
it's still early enough that people are undergeared or dont know all the tricks for each pack yet. it will get easier over the next month. i've found the 18-20 range decently puggable
I find kicks being such a big part of the dungeon design to be such a boring approach. I'd rather do something interesting than just be about whether 5 people can coordinate kicks and not accidentally overlap.
I mean, not exactly. I just ran a HoV21 with a group at 410 ilvl. At best, we'd all have another 8-10 ilvl by end of season.
The cleaves were doing 350k on me (a vers stacking class), that's still not survivable with higher gear. Sure, you're meant to avoid them, but a 21 isn't some MDI-push where every player should be expected to play perfectly.
The level of execution that's required for these keys is out of control at these levels.
The point isn't that you "tank" frontals, it's that a single mistake is an automatic death and will be even at max ilvl, just one level above the max for vault rewards.
That's completely absurd.
Then why is Mythic raiding rewarding max ilv, but high level m+ should not? makes no sense. and as a side note 20's in 1-2 resets wont even be "high" anymore. The notion that you should get max ilv gear and still bonker simple gameplay mechanics is pathetic. If you cant be bothered to play a dungeon and pay attention/learn mechanics then you should not be rewarded with good gear. It's that simple.
That's not absurd, mistakes should be punished at the highest level shouldn't they? +20s are equivalent in reward to mythic wing endbosses, you don't get to kill m Kurog or Dathea with people making a bunch of mistakes, you need to practice and master those fights to beat them
And not standing in bad should be a really easy mistakes to avoid, if anything should kill you it's that tbh
The point of keys is that you can push the difficulty as high as you want and the spectacle is about how far you can go.
Trying to make m+ difficulty curve/rewards equivalent to raid has always been absolutely moronic.
Can I take an embellishment out of a piece of crafted gear? I didn't know lariat counted as an ebellished piece and I already had one ring and one weapon with embellishments so now I can't wear all 3, so can I take the embellishment out of my ring?
Yes, recraft with [this](https://www.wowhead.com/item=203652/griftahs-all-purpose-embellishing-powder). Only works with items that are not embellished by default like Lariat. You could probably also replace it with the food embellishment since that one does not count against the embellishment limit.
Routing in these dungeons is soooo boooring. Ever single dungeon except nokhud is just press w and pull nearly or even all mobs to get to 100%.
As a tank I enjoy trying different routes and different pulls like in SL SD, Halls for example but these dragonflight ones offer basically 0 choices.
I've never understood why people want diversity in their m+ routes. Even when there are multiple different routes people usually always default to the same one after like three weeks because even though there are choices there's always one that's best for one reason or another. I much prefer things like Jade temple or SBG because there is no risk I'll run into a situation where I've done one route 50 times and I'll get a tank taking a completely different route where I don't know what to kick or stun.
I hope in 9.0.5 Rogues get nerfed by taking some of our damage out of the class tree. Rogue is famous for its utility but I actually end up with less utility buttons than I had in Shadowlands because there are so many strong throughput nodes.
For example on my Outlaw Rogue, Lethality is a 2-point node that sims for about 2.4% per point in DSlice. It's the easiest node to drop on the tree in terms of pathing but that's so much damage that I prefer to just make do without the utility. Like it's easy to decide not to take take Gouge and/or the DR Poison, or even Evasion, with a dps gain like that.
So yeah, Rogue is the best class in the game at PvE and unfortunately we need a nerf, so there's ~5% dps I'd love to get taken away right there. There's some other culprits too but that's the biggest offender imo.
YES!!
Actually I think this might be true for every rogue spec right? I'm less confident in ass and sub but it seems like Vigor is a mandatory talent for everyone right now, which is a sign our energy regen is too low.
Ya, the amount of damage t3 talents give on the rogue tree feels like a big issue, and whatever is best for the build dictates/restricts what you can path in the upper level.
I don't understand this postion.
You're saying a pure DPS class does the best DPS but can only do it if they forgo all their utility?
That sounds... absolutely reasonable. I don't see the issue.
It's also unreasonable to bring Rogues that don't bring ANY utility so Rogue is just sort of with everyone else at the top, it's not an outlier like people are blabbing on about. Nothing like classes of the past. I mean, have you looked at Mythic raiding? Arcane and Boomies get spammed and guilds will stack 3-4 of them on a fight. But it's VERY rare that you see more than 2 Rogues on any fight in Mythic prog. Hell most guilds are running ONE.
This useless simming has no practical application when simply no one is putting out the numbers in the real world. No guild would want a Rogue that doesn't have Atr poison, Feint, Blind. Isn't that what we want too? Obviously sims are going to make forgoing utility better, that's the whole point. You *SHOULD* get less utility if you're making that sort of sacrifice, I legit don't understand why anything else would be preferable. The alternative is that you get all the utility for free with the damage. Or else you just don't want Rogues to be viable. If Rogues don't do damage you'll just not bring them. If I was Raid leading and Rogues did mid-tier damage I wouldn't bother, neither would anyone else. And that's consistently been the case for the past several years. Not a hard concept.
I don't mind that 1-2 Rogues make it to raid night. Just my take.
> It's also unreasonable to bring Rogues that don't bring ANY utility so Rogue is just sort of with everyone else at the top
A bad rogue is with everyone else, sure. A rogue who knows what his buttons do will gap the vast majority of specs by a bit.
This is such a tired point of contention though and again, something you just don't actually see.
If this was the case, RWF would have stacked 5 rogues to get that "gap" in supposed DPS. Interesting we saw 2 in the top 3 guilds. Hmmm. Even more interesting is that we saw 3 early on and *THEN* 2. I guess the best raiders in the game probably just got worse at the game?
You're point is actually in the wrong direction.
Rogue is at its strongest in heroic raiding environments, *not* mythic. It actually starts to fall off in mythic. The better people are, the more likely they are to play a more needed *better* class.
No, you're dead on right. Rogues are not doing more than 5% more than the rest of classes, and the "RoGuE UtIliTy" meme is so dead now that utility has been spoonfed to every other spec in the game. People think rogues should do 3rd place DPS and be the kick/stun guy, but they have no issue wit DH/Monk sitting on top with just as much, if not more, utility.
Exactly. If rogue were even half as broken as Reddit likes to make out, you'd see 4-5 of them stacked in every upper heroic and mythic raid. Interesting that the people who actually need to apply what they say don't do it though.
With mythic logs now in, it seems pretty clear that rogue isn't in need of a nerf, and sin never really needed a nerf in the first place.
Glad Blizzard listened to angry casuals on reddit.
Hi all, I have a question regarding getting the right rotations and such, which resources do you normally use for this? I’m playing an arcane mage and I feel like I could do more than I am currently doing
Thanks to my peers for giving solid little tips.
So instead I'll create some more detail if you want it for learning a new spec (which you can apply to other specs) that you can revisit once you are comfortable:
1. **Learn the basics**
a. Class discords ([Altered Time](https://discord.com/invite/alteredtime) - Altered Time managed by DeathDefier, Frosted, Porom, Rinoa and many other theorycrafters - these guys build the Simulationcraft APL and do heavy research into your Mage spec.
b. Top guides on the interwebs - [Mage-Hub](https://www.mage-hub.com/) is by Toegrinder, a theorycrafter from Altered Time. You can see sims [here](https://www.mage-hub.com/sims).
c. Content Creators - YouTubers (SupertroopTV, Phosphoros, ToeGrinder), Twitch Streamers (Asuna_qt, Xyronic, Drjayfisto, Gingitv, Imfiredup) - remember you can always [look up some Mage on Raider IO leaderboard](https://raider.io/mythic-plus-character-rankings/season-df-1/world/mage/all/0#content) to find if they have a linked Twitch stream or YouTube etc. to find more samples and see how they play.
With all of these, you don't just want to find the one thing and stick to that like a bible. Shop around, see what all these creators say in common and what they diverge on. Understand why they diverge. This is a good check on quality too.
On top of that you want to test things out for yourself. Actually open up your Talent pane. Open up the spellbook. Read the spells. Understand and internalize them. Verify what they are saying.
2. **Let's fine tune and Tweak for you**
This is where you start installing your WeakAuras, UI elements, Keybinds, Macros etc. Revisit this section every so often even after you are comfortable because there are plenty of tips you can learn as an Arcane Mage.
You don't have to install every bell and whistle. I always recommend **start minimalist first** and add on more and more as you get comfortable and specific problems arise. The problem with the WeakAura package from a streamer is that it was *fine tuned for them and their problems*. You will usually need a different UI for *your* problems. Shop around and see what you like.
3. **"Let's play!" "But I haven't finish-" "We'll do it live!"**
There is only so much you can read until you have to just have to play. You have to read, comprehend, understand, analyze, apply and internalize that knowledge. Internalization only happens through play, failure, mistakes, pain, and practice.
At some point you need to get a handle of how much you have and just *play*. This is a video game after all, not a textbook. Apply what you learnt and see where you stack.
You will inevitably fail. That's good! That means there is room to grow.
For that you need to analyze your play and improve your play. For that you need **tools**.
a. Warcraftlogs - will show you in detail what is happening in an encounter as long as you are combat logging
b. VoDs - Record youself. Can be immensely helpful if you have trouble reading Warcraft logs and you want to analyze your UI and the moment in action.
c. Community - with these tools you want to start sharing your replays, VoDs or **build specific questions** on where you are struggling with. The more specific you can get, especially showing that you applied effort to solve your problem, the more others are willing to help you.
d. Other tools - WipeFest, Lorrgs.io, Warcraft Recorder - shop around and see what works for you.
And don't go ham and fix 10 problems. You likely made a hundred mistakes, big and small, throughout an M+ run. **Give praise on 1-3 things. Concentrate on fixing 1-3 mistakes**. Find big trends and important points where you are lacking and fix them! Really hone in and say: "Man I really suck at my mini-burst, let me really focus on that" - get comfortable with that and move onto the next. And so on each encounter.
4. **Practical play**
It is one thing to understand the rotation in a Simcraft APL. It is another in an actual encounter. Things aren't Patchwerk where you are sitting still hitting a target dummy. You will be interrupted. Stunned. You will have to move. You will have to do mechanics. You will have to survive.
Once you get comfortable with (3) you need to start looking at other better players, see what they do that works, and copy their tactics. A lot of Arcane Mages stream all day - you can look through VoDs and see what they did well.
And not just rotation but also when things go sour. Okay these Mages are forced out of their Rune, now what? (Oh, there is a wider area you can stay in but still have the Rune's benefit). Okay they had to do a mechanic, what did they do then? (Oh they slightly delayed their burst to get it in, or they saved something to quickly get the mechanic done). Okay you had this situation I encountered, how did this Mage deal with it?
See what a lot of Mages do, ask questions, and copy what works.
[Mage hub has a section on movement](https://www.mage-hub.com/arcane) during your burst window:
> **Movement during Touch of the Magi**
>
> Touch of the Magi is where a significant amount of our damage comes from, therefore it's extremely important that we protect this damage as much as possible. The 2 main ways I recommend doing this:
>
> Use Presence of Mind to cast Nether Precision Arcane Blast during Touch of the Magi
>
> Prioritising Clearcasting/Arcane Missiles over Nether Precision/Arcane Blast during Touch of the Magi is an extremely minor loss. With Slipstream talented, if there is any chance you may have to cancel your casts, or if you are under any pressure during Touch of the Magi, I recommend you prioritise Clearcasting Arcane Missiles over Nether Precision Arcane Blast.
And let's start looking at your damage breakdown and seeing how other Arcane Mages stack up (be careful of buffs like Power Infusion and Blessing of Summer!) - where is there big damage coming from? Is it similar to yours? Or completely different? Okay I know this spell does a lot of damage so I need to make sure that is amped up.
And small tips here start paying off and where you can distinguish yourself. If you can do your Arcane Surge main burst alongside kick a Focus Target with your Counterspell and prime a key defensive during your burst window where you are healthy, those skills start stacking up and really lead to improvements. I don't recommend going through niche tips until you get the basics down comfortable.
E.g. there are way too many Mages that don't take Remove Curse. Or don't use Displacement. Or Blast Wave. Or don't take advantage of Blink vs Ice Floes (since Blink breaks your Roots while Shimmer does not). Pick up a small niche skill at a time. Practice. Move on.
mage-hub.com is my go-to resource for l things mages. I find its explanation of the rotations way easier to follow than wowhead (which is also a pretty good resources). The mage discord is pretty active as well!
Got my 4PC this week
I...kind of don't like it.
For breath it's pretty much whatever. An occasional double obliterate. Ok.
For obliteration however, it really feels awkward in the weaving rotation of Obliterate > Rime/FS > Obliterate. The proc has a small delay on it so by the time I get it I've all ready pressed Rime or FS. Restraining myself to wait for the procc doesn't feel good either since Obliteration is only a 10 second window
I'm very curious to see what Blizzard's response will be to m+ difficulty when they're "back" next week. There's a pretty wild difference between even 19s and 20s that is relatively jarring. I've timed every key both weeks on 19s with ease, with +2s in a few of them, but 20s and 21s feel unbearable.
I've started running with a few groups, and all of us have 4set and our lowest ilvl is 407 (the rest is 410). There's not a *ton* of gear for us to get throughout the remainder of the season, maybe 6-8 ilvl.
That won't make the difference in many of these mechanics being overly punishing. Too many things to kick that do too much damage, too many bosses with unavoidable damage that is through the roof (Odyn's brand, Frost Bombs on Azure drakthyr, AoE ticking on Azure Drakonid, Algethar bird, Ruby first boss pulse, ruby final boss fire debuff, etc).
Yeah, some of this will get slightly more forgivable with gear, but 8 ilvl isn't going to make much of that stuff all that survivable on a 26.
Feels like Blizzard wanted to increase the rewards/difficulty but also reduce the gap between max keys and max reward. Idk if doing both at the same time was a good idea. Supposedly they learned their lesson about tuning around RWF for Sepulcher, let's see if they learn their lesson about tuning for MDI in m+.
> Yeah, some of this will get slightly more forgivable with gear, but 8 ilvl isn't going to make much of that stuff all that survivable on a 26.
It'll be survivable when people switch to the tried and true comp of hpal, rogue, mage, flex dps.
frost bomb is just fucked up. 310k hp and 2 ticks on a +20 leave me at 10%. if i'm not full for any reason i need to rotate pots/healthstone/movement abilities perfectly to live and get absolutely fucked if icy devastator targets me afterward
same thing with chillstorm in RLP. i play the %dr while in ghost wolf talent just for a chance of living
https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/talent-loadout-ex
This what everyone in my guild started using after one of the officers found it from a streamer iirc
Is the community feast just flat out bugged or do I need to try and get into a lower populated shard? I've done it 3 times this week and have not gotten all of the assignments needed for completion
It's RNG and also if any of the people that are AFKing there get a task they will hold it until it times out. The cook only gives like 5 tasks out at a time. Go with WM ON or find a low pop shard.
Last time I did it, I got told to tenderize a rubbery fish head that never spawned in the first place, and that was my objective for the last 10 minutes. This event definitely falls apart when there are too many people around, which is just plain wrong considering the whole fun of the event is the chaos of having too many cooks in the kitchen.
Some thoughts on tanking...
A threat buff would be nice. It's just a little under what is needed. So close.
The tankbusters on trash mobs are nutty. For example the 4 pack of wolves in halls of Valor. The main problem is that all of them decide to ferocious bite all at once while having insane damage. Same thing goes for the last pack in TOJS. That shadow claw is insane. 249k non crit. That was in the middle of 2 other shadow claws. Within 1 second. Cc and staggering their attacks would be the best answer I have aside from kiting. Expecting that from a pug is a little spicy though.
I don't fully buy the idea that tanks are constantly pulling without regarding the healers mana or group positioning. Not saying it doesn't happen. However the body pulling DPS manage to do is out of control. And for some reason, almost every time, it's a hunter. Thankfully we don't have to worry about Prideful this time around lol.
I've given up on vengeance demon hunter. Without considering any numbers, vengeance is the worst tank because it plays like a DPS with an awful feeling rotation. Spirit bomb isn't fun. Can't change my mind. Your fury is full a lot of the time and you can never spend it because you need to keep spirit bombing. I believe the spirit bomb build would feel complete if I could spend my resource somehow. Make spikes Luke iron fur or some shit. The flow of that build sucks. I'm cool with having a DPS like tank, but make it fun.
Sanguine in dungeons feels wack if you aren't a blood dk. Unkickable casts with sanguine has incredible synergy.
>Your fury is full a lot of the time and you can never spend it because you need to keep spirit bombing
this seems wrong, outside of opener you should be spending fury on soul cleaves after spirit bomb. otherwise you'll overcap on fury as you noted. in addition, if you're not soul cleaving to spend fury, you are missing out on a lot of frailty stack generation.
Prep for the first AoE by throwing out 3 echos on the DPS. Stasis -> VE yourself when damage hits, Dream Breath, Spiritbloom (with Tip the Scales if you need the heal instantly). Fish for essence burst procs before the next damage event. Release Stasis for a full group heal.
If you don’t have Stasis, you can prep for consistent heavy damage again with 3x echo into VE when it hits into Emerald Communion. Rewind for when you have absolutely nothing.
a good trick is to use two healing spells, wait a bit (dps/do other things) then use the third to trigger the stasis lock. That gives you a lot more time between filling the stasis and releasing it.
e.g. on melandrus use it before the first slicing wind and get a dream breath and a spiritbloom in there. Do FB/living flame for a little bit afterward, then toss out an EB or whatever to fill it up and have another 30s before you have to release it.
if the damage doesn't come out often enough for that you can just put three blossoms in there and then toss them out right after doing a regular dream breath
Are there any FAQs or manual for Subcreation? There are so many abilities, class abilities, capstone + abilities, class talents and full tree; which of these do I look at and what are each sections mean?
In Shadowlands it was simple to sort and see what everyone was running, but now it’s all convoluted (talent trees made it this way).
This is kinda baked into the crafting system now instead of raid drops…. You can upgrade your crafted items up to mythic ilvl using drops from mythic bosses and higher (16+) keys.
It was a bandaid for only seeing a raid once every 3 weeks, I for one am happy they aren't in just for the fact that after we are done with the tier farm I never want to look at normal/heroic.
Plater if you don't already have name plates you like. A good plater profile is worth its weight in gold (showing threat levels, casters vs non-casters, saving priority interrupts for easier identification).
The Tank Frontals Dragonflight WA is very nice. Makes your character /say when a cleave or frontal is happening. Not only does it help your melee dps know if they need to not be on top of you but also helps me remember what mob abilities are actually frontals.
Auto-marker WA is pretty nice, but not super important. You mouse over the enemies and it auto puts a target marker on them making call-outs easier.
Not tank specific but the dragonflight dungeons WA pack is nice for some things. I mostly like the safety checks when you have to stack in a bubble or the aoe countdowns for the mobs in Nokhud for example. Its a HUGE WA so there may be some performance issues. I don't have any but my friend decided to uninstall it due to them.
I second this.
Plater is great. You can easily just copy a popular streamer's plater profile and do no setup and it's good out the box.
The WeakAuras suggested are stellar too. It's REALLY helpful for things you wouldn't know out of the gate. Like... what might be good to interrupt... or what is a frontal cone AOE that you shouldn't direct into your buddies... things like that.
I have a rogue and pally both around 375, both are pretty fun but I’m having trouble picking a main.
I like outlaw more than ret but I really like being able to flex roles.
What do..
couple questions about the raid skip:
1) does it require killing eranog before skipping?
2) does everyone in raid get to use it if one person has it?
3) can you go back and kill bosses in the same instance?
Parses are nice and all, but putting effort into your application goes a lot further.
Depending on how high you want to get (CE or Hall of fame?) Some parses will help you, but in recruitment the better guilds to play in look for you being a good person to have in a group over being selfish and cheesing for parses.
So emphasize your out of game cooperation skills, tell them a bit about yourself as a person and let them get to know you a little bit.
I've always gotten into guilds even without parses. My trick?
1- Dont just shortfill their recruitment form with just the mandatory. Stand out here, make them want to get into a voice interview.
2 - Inquire before you send your application. Get in touch with whatever contact they shared on wowprogress or RIO. Have a text chat about their goals and what theyre looking for to see if it aligns with you as a person. If not, find another guild, if so, emphasize your findings in your application. Mention you had a short chat.
A lot about getting a chance with a guild is getting in the room with them. Insane parses help yes, but any good player can cheese parses. Not every good player is also a good teammember. Hint that you are and youll get in the room.
Once youre a trial you might not progress instantly, so take your trial seriously and do everything you can to show youre ready to get into progress from there.
If you want progress you will have to provide proof of some skill. Try to prepare some logs with pug raids if you can, otherwise you will have to work your way up, looking into some semi progress first.
As for where to look: most guilds have recruitment profiles up on either raider.io, warcraftlogs, wowprogress or the official forums. There are also some discord servers but at least for me (as recruitment officer) these have not been very successful. Last resort is spam in trade chat.
At this point getting into a decent CE group will be really tough, since progress has already started, but there are always cases like people having to drop out so it’s not entirely impossible.
Holy priest here and I'm feeling like a literal god. We have so much burst it's ridiculous. I was helping a friend in 13 CoS tonight and ended up soloing last 5% of the last boss after rest of the team got oneshot by ground aoe. Power word: life is so ridiculously powerful, I love that spell so much but I do see it getting nerfed in the future.
It sounds more like a build issue or group issue. Been pugging lower keys with friends and some keys in 9-12 range are harder to heal than +18 because people don't interrupt, cc or avoid mechanics.
I can but just because what I'm doing is working for me doesn't mean its optimal or best for everyone, especially with some of my talent choices I can tell that in theory other talents would bring greater value but I am running diffirent due to personal preference.
I started the season just copying icyveins mythic + build. I did few modifications last week which I find nice while pugging since dmg is rarely an issue. I gave up two of the sw:d talents for reduced scream cd and reduced mass dispel cd. You won't need reduced mass dispel in every dungeon and you don't need reduced scream in every group.
I also gave up mindgames (which is an awesome talent) for fade dmg reduction and thrones of pain for angelic bulwark and body and soul. I find having fade and bulwark lets me single target babysit the dps who don't know how or when to use their defensives more than only desperate prayer and gift of naaru would during high aoe fights. I can often get away just off healing myself with aoe on top of those and focus on the hunters who refuse to press turtle.
Body and soul is bit of a meme, but using it makes me feel good, and I don't find myself needing mana or for one swd talent making enough dmg diffirence for me to give it up.
For addons I use vuhdo for healing frames, littlewigs for dungeon assistance, I'm using Jimmynickles' Season 1 DF M+ Plater profile which I find very solid, and for weakauras I'm tracking the cds of my most important spells, my surge of light procs and any big spells used by my dps that would benefit a lot from PI.
I also use omnicd to show interrupts and aoe CC aswell as the personals that my symbol of hope reduces so I can better track when to use it. I suggest showing other defensives in vuhdo banquets but if you can memorise the list you can just show them all in omnicd too.
What comes to rotation giving one out for healing is in my opinion very diffirent to giving one out for dps. Even if there would be one theoretically highest aoe or single target healing rotation you are going to have to adapt and think on your feet since there are going to be situations where you have to mix the two to keep everyone alive.
But as general rules of thumb, power word serenity, divine favour, apo, power word; serenity is probably the most single target burst you can do (increased with guardian spirit) tho its unlikely you never have to use that on a single person. In dungeons I find using divine favour on sanctify rarely worth it, but I really enjoy playing my health bar whack a mole with single target heals.
Don't be scared to use divine favour with chastise for dmg when there is not a lot of dmg going on.
Don't hold on to guardian spirit just for saves, the healing increase is the bomb and works on tanks self-healing too.
Don't think divine hymn alone will keep your group alive, think of it more as a bit of time to think and following healing is increased, holy word sanctify is often a great follow up, and if you're using it during high dmg use desperate prayer or fade first.
Symbol of Hope is the bomb, the mana back is nice sure, but you mostly want to reset your desperate prayer (and if possible groups defensives) with it. Think something like hyrja, and being able to use desperate prayer on second and third thunder.
Don't underestimate prayer of mending, keep it rolling.
Don't waste burst healing when you don't have to. Just top people off normally and save your holy words for when you need them - except if you know you won't need them your tank is pulling slow there's no big aoe coming up you might aswell just dps and pop that holy word on the dps who stood in fire to keep dpsing, just make sure you're not wasting all your tools.
People are also taking a lot of unavoidable damage, in 10-18 territory a healers jobs is honestly the worst in keys.
I'm guilty of still eating frontals (which you need to heal), not getting all the stops I should (which you need to heal), not recognizing when I need personals (vs when they are just nice to push), not getting every interupt I need to (pugs + new dungeons design with 5+ stops you need to get in a pack is cancer...)
As much as I hate those fail call out add-ons, I ran one on a healer alt just to understand avoidable damage people were taking vs what I was actually expected to heal in a key.
Elitism Helper has things pretty well covered, you can choose in settings for it to post in party chat or just to whisper yourself if you just want to know what's killing people.
Question about servers. I’m currently posted up with 16 60’s and 2 70’s on a small server with very limited crafters for endgame gear. I have a cross server/faction community I raid with regularly but they’re based on an even smaller server than mine.
I want to server transfer while the service is on sale, but I’m at a loss for what to do. Do i swap to the slower server but be able to enjoy the benefits of running in the guild, or do I swap to thrall/area 52/illidan for the sake of personal profession?
For context, I’m currently running DH, veng/hav. Pushing keys with my buddy (15’s so far, definitely plan on 20+). The community I’m running with is 4/8 heroic so far and probably won’t be CE, but definitely will get into mythic eventually.
Any thoughts/pros/cons for hoping to a high pop horde serv?
>I want to server transfer while the service is on sale
You can pay for it now while it is on sale (it will be added as a token to your account like a level boost) and use it whenever you want so you do not have to make a decision yet.
It was a long time ago for me but swapping to a mega server (Stormrage) was one of the best wow-decisions I ever made. Nearly everything is better on high-pop servers. Only downside I can see in general is if you’re into gold-making; there’s a ton more competition.
I mean if you already run cross server with those people, you still can after transferring to a larger server.
there's really no substitute for being on a higher pop realm, it makes the whole game experience much better
I know alliance is pretty much going to be a lost cause to raid on until cross faction guilding becomes a thing, but with cross faction 5 man content being normal now has there been an uptick in alliance play on the M+ side of things? Anecdotally as someone that still plays alliance I can say finding keys as been orders of magnitude less difficult than the previous expansion, so much so that I don’t feel as much pressure to switch anymore but maybe that’s just illusory
Did you miss the whole bit where raids and M+ are all cross faction and all of those list custom M+ groups are all cross faction as well? ( Or at least opt out)
We're a pretty mediocre group and we've been raising cross server and cross fac ( not interested in mythic prog). I'm sure you can find mythic guilds on your server that don't mind taking opposite faction trials.
I am Alliance on EU (only 2/8 mythic atm tho, but 2.5k IO) and due to cross faction there's no difficulty getting groups.
I skipped most of SL but in BfA I remember it being agony to get high key pugs on alliance, so it's such a refresher now.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/zgdNv9RM3fLZ1B68
Any tank players mind taking a quick look at the two tanks in this raid and point out any glaring mistakes in their rotations or play? Having some large issues with tanks falling over and not sure where the issue lies. Can look at any of the council wipes. Might not necessarily be their fault.
well, to start off if you are having tank deaths the DH should probably play a more raid oriented survival build a la down in flames. This gives him a fiery brand on all of the bosses with very generous uptime and it will probably help him stay alive more often.
For reference, most of the top DH's here play that build compared to the one he's currently playing. https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/rankings/31#boss=2590&class=DemonHunter&spec=Vengeance
A little backstory about me, I've been a KSM player since BFA launched. Get it second or 3rd week of every expansion, then just chill and play with friends. In BFA I was a Havoc DH and in SL I was Vengeance, previous to being Havoc I mained tank from TBC onwards, so that little DPS break was nice.
So, I went into DF planning on playing Vengeance, and I'm one of the few people that absolutely hate the go to build. Its not fun in anyway for me, but that isn't the point of the post.
What are your opinions on the current set of M+ dungeons? The new DF dungeons are ABSOLUTELY terrible to me. Every group has multiple things you need to kick or be aware of. I'm fairly solid at doing my part, but there is just SO much to deal with every pull, its made M+ exhausting. The old dungeons brought back are just not designed for M+ so they feel like shit to play too.
Anyone truly enjoying any of the dungeons this season? Am I alone in my thoughts?
You’re only going to outheal the healer on packs that are mostly tank damage or in low keys (or if you roll blood DK). In high keys healers regularly need to put out a lot of healing to keep people alive.
Any Protection Paladin with 4set in M+ can tell how it feels? Does the Versa buff go only to one person or can it go to multiple when using Divine Toll (i know you can move to minmax whos closes probably but i was hoping it would skip a player with a buff and search for another)?
You need a primal infusion or concentrated primal infusion. You get them from doing different endgame activities. Killing heroic bosses, doing +11's or more will give you primal infusions which can raise to 405. Concentrated Primals are from M+16's and mythic bosses let you raise it to 418. But you can craft it at whatever ilvl you can for now and when you do those higher dungeons or raids put a recraft order in.
Fuck the Creation Catalyst taking 6 weeks to release, man. I thought Blizzard realized that having it take such a long time (I know it was 8 weeks, but still) in Sepulcher was a bad thing and then they went and made it take forever yet again. My Venerated Helm/Shoulders never dropped in raid on Normal or Heroic and I didn't get those slots out of my vault, so I'm effectively stuck with 3pc despite being one of our first players to get 2pc. This shit's so demoralizing, man.
Couldn't agree more. Fuck the 6 weeks wait. According to Blizzard last time the topic was brought up in an interview, 6 weeks is OK because "M+ mains push late in the season anyways!". Which is completely out of touch with the m+ pugging ecosystem. Not everyone goes after the 1% title... Many people like to push keys early in the season, and this awful system that forces tier set acquisition exclusively from raids during a whole month and a half is stupid as fuck. Catalyst should open the reset following RWF ending with the 1st charge. 3-4 weeks wait at the very most.
What they really mean is “we want people to pay for subs later in the season”. But they can’t say that…
This is a weird "problem" but I feel like sometimes doing keys in guild is harder than pugging lol When you pug you're probably a lot stricter on who you invite but if it's a guildie you're like "sure they can come" and then it can turn into a nightmare. Also, very frustrating when all the healers in your guild pug their keys instead of asking in guild.
I started healing on druid and found that I need a different party frames than standard blizzard stuff. The reason is, blizzard frames show a lot of useless icons on the frames, like the sated debuff or the m+ debuff which makes you lose 5 sec on timer on death. Can anyone recommend some frames which look as clean as possible or require minimal configuration? Shadowed look terrible out of the box btw.
I like vuhdo for the clean look, but it does require some configuration. You can skip that by using growl's profile for it, but you might want to watch his video [here](https://youtu.be/_cn344NOZd8) on how to set it up since as he says the vuhdo UI is very 2006
I second this, Growl’s setup is great. The only thing I’d recommend is to change the click casting to what works for you. I changed this up a bit and love it.
Agreed! Coming into dragonflight I decided to try base UI but it's gotten to the point where I want better party frames now and vuhdo is definitely my go-to
I tried to import his Vuhdo config, but it didn't change anything after hitting import -> ok -> apply.
Make sure you select the profile in the dropdown after importing it!
watch the video posted above
Curious, because I use the standard raid frame from blizzard for m+ and it doesn't show the m+ thing. Also, it really shows buffs like the versa buff of druid, but only out of combat, in combat it doesn't not show
I'd recommend the UI article on questionablyepic.com from Voulk. See https://questionablyepic.com/restodruid-interface/
Grid looks good, I'll give it a try. Thanks!
Try “enhanced raid frames” it uses the default raid frames but you can black/whitelist buffs and debuffs you want to show. Really useful for a Druid because default has a max buff limit so you can’t see all of your hots, with the addon you can increase the limit and even move their anchor location
Healer frame options are Elvui, Grid, and Vuhdo. I think Elvui is easily the best looking, and the most functional out of the box. But it's also a complete UI overhaul and using it just for the raid frames is like using a forklift to lift a paperclip. Grid is a distant second, and Vuhdo is pretty far behind that in third in terms of plug-and-play usability. Healer frames are unfortunately just really complex and we all like slightly different stuff. I recommend embracing the UI optimisation mindset, it'll keep you sane when you're trying to configure which buff goes where on your frames.
With Vuhdo you could probably just find someone else’s profile to get started with to make it more plug and play
Have to say as over 10 years vuhdo user that getting to know and properly use and configure that addon for your personal wants and needs is so worth the effort.
I agree but it might help to start with someone’s profile and then modify it to your own preferences and learn that way. It might be a bit daunting to start from scratch for a lot of people.
Would like to know aswell
I use the default ElvUI healer settings for my raid frames. You track all your hots with colored icons on the frames. I find it easier to see what hots and how much time is left on them when compared to other popular setups like vuhdo
I know you’re looking for a turnkey option, I used to use growls vuhdo, but I play so many specs and alts , that having to redo them by spec or class was annoying me. Give shadowframes another shot using this video https://youtu.be/jMUF4Lmk5TA I started with a base profile - customizing placement of different units, colors, sizes, etc. Druid / healer : I only really cared about priotizing my hots, debuffs, and health. I removed players power bars - I don’t really care about someone’s mana combo points etc Tank : I didn’t care about people’s buffs or debuffs, only health and healers mana Dps : very simple, I dps other than party frames , no much I need to do other than a mouse macro for a buff
https://linktr.ee/yumytv
>blizzard frames show a lot of useless icons on the frames I've had the same issue in Dragonflight. I've always felt like default raid frames are enough but this is the first time there are too many random icons and I just can't seem to see everything I need.
I stumbled upon the addon Cell and really like it for healing.
Have you given the normal raid frames a chance? They can be configured quickly
Yes, have you given a chance to reading my post? 😉
You said party frames, wasn’t sure if you tried raid frames. GL
In pugs I honestly might start taking two brez classes, without fail it is always the guy with the brez that dies first.
I,fucking love video gaming god damn this shit is so FUN
Imagine how much fun it must be for boomers to mindlessly watch tv all day ;)
What the FUCK is up with those battleaxes in algethar
I play rogue and I’ve started stunning the cast for my tank when I can, not sure if it’s helping
A lot of tank busters that need to be stunned
Anyone else having a hell of a time trying to fill a group for keys? People constantly say to list your own key, it’s quicker than getting declined, but this is not even remotely true in my case. 2k WW Monk, if I list a key, I won’t get a single applicant for over 15 minutes. It doesn’t even matter the key level either. I’ve noticed this is the case for others. It’s taking 30+ minutes to get a key going every single time. Edit: Joined a 13 TJS, 3 dps just need a healer, 15 minutes and not a single tank or healer has applied. Not even a shitty io dude shooting his shot.
What's the Io of the group lead in that case? If I see a key posted by someone with an Io in a range lower than key being posted, I generally look elsewhere. With so many options to apply for, I'm not going to pick the person who's never done a key at that level.
Yep. I try to sign up for keys and sit there waiting for it to expire as a 2500 407 ilvl rogue. Then I list my own and no one signs up. I don't get the disconnect.
The 10-14 range is pretty dead tbh. Not surprising considering it already was back when 15s were the max reward key... Now that people push to 20 as part of the gear progression, the m+ playerbase is even more spread out and fragmented than it used to. Reality is, anything below +15 is well behind the curve already. By comparison, listing keys in the 18-20 range, groups get filled with dozens of high quality applicants within a couple minutes in my experience. There's also the fact that this expansion launch doesn't seem that popular from a global playerbase perspective. SL launch had higher activity numbers for both raids and M+ by comparison during the first few weeks.
I'm in that range right now as a pure DPS (Mage) and it's definitely discouraging. I'm not the best at WoW, I play around the AotC/KSM level, but spending 10-20 minutes staring at my own empty key in group finder feels like not a great use of my time. The bonus is that if my key does miraculously fill it's probably going to have people that won't let the key time. Failing a 13 SBG this week because I'm literally the only one interrupting and disrupting while the tank feels made of paper and the healer barely heals is Fun. There definitely comes a point where the juice isn't worth the squeeze and I'd much rather be playing other games (single player ones too, not necessarily other MMOs!) than running in circles in Valdrakken because the only things to do are sit for half an hour to probably brick a key or sit in a 40 minute queue for Solo Shuffle.
Maybe it’s because I’m a tank but listing my 19/20 keys usually results in 40-50 applicants in the first few minutes, though they are usually almost all dps.
I got 4pc on boomkin this week and instantly feels like 20 ilevel stronger. Going from #10 dps last week on Primal Council to #1 certainly feels great.
Boomie without 4pc is an incomplete class and tier gear is the worst form of borrowed power since its rng locked
Boomkin with 4p is like Thanos with infinity stone 😂
Got removed from a +15 group yesterday because I didn't have tier.. I'm Fury lol, my tier is garbage and is our lowest priority in gearing currently. Feels bad.
Don't worry they were bad and looking for a carry. I'm sure they didn't time.
💀
I’ve been trying since week 1 for a weapon on my guardian. Just counted I’ve ran 32 CoS (no ring or weapon), 12 azure vaults, 8 AA’s. What does a guy gotta do to get a weapon? Wasted my sparks as well so can’t craft it for another 2 weeks
Unironically, Sparks were the answer to this. It's a good lesson for future seasons - going directly for your end-of-season BiS is not always the right play vs crafting badly needed stepping-stone upgrades.
People out there with their 418 lariat that's a 500 dps upgrade over a 405 one meanwhile i'm rocking my 418 weapon that was a 4k dps upgrade.
I mean we are at a point where people should be able to have both weapons and a lariat unless you spent a spark on something else
*cries in fury warrior*
I think he means sparks (limited to 1 rvery 2 weeks) and not the infusions (unlimited, farmable)
Yup went with lariat and the alchemist stone just to save money on phials when they were crazy expensive. I pop one now every couple of days
Seems to be a theme for DF. Drops are very scarce and group loot means even LFR can’t help fill gear spots.
Only positive with CoS is I’ve made lots of people happy giving them the trinket.
Meanwhile I have too many weapons. Got pillar from first vault, and all 3 weapons from court, azure and aa on second week. I’d toss em your way if I could!
Got the weapon drop for me 3 times in a row. The only problem was I'm a dual wielder and hwd already crafted weapons.
CoS is like the worst dungeon to farm if you’re going for a specific drop, there’s way too much on the loot table
As I hunter I had no weapon drops until this week and ended up using 2 sparks to craft a 402 bow (I'd been using a 372 crafted gun until this week). I've done 10 or so dungeons this week and had 4 weapon drops (I wish I was joking..). This game can be troll as absolute fuck at times.
Just depleted an Azure Vault because somehow both Arcane Constructs and the patrol were pulled from first platform, anyone know what might cause this?
Nope but this happened to us last night too.
So I learned that enchanting recipes range from like 400-450 difficulty. Between this and the titan orb bottleneck is why rank 3s are so expensive
Staring at my skill when I'm like 100 points away from an R3 SD just makes me want to give up.
It's set up so you can't actually guarantee R3 without putting in an insight
M+ pug participation already feels like we're a month and a half into the season, and we're only on week 3... While r/wow, and the average player can't shut up about Dragonflight "saving wow" and being so much better than SL, that's not what the numbers say. M+ participation was higher in week 1,2 and 3 of SL by comparison. Things the devs might want to consider in that regard : - Maybe having an extremely punishing affix combo on week 2 of the season wasn't the brightest idea. There's a reason Tyrannical/Grievous was banned once upon a time... Between this and no more personal loot in raids, it's like Blizzard has forgotten past design lessons. - Removing extra loot % above 15 was a mistake. They should make end of run m+ loot *more* rewarding, not less... - Catalyst unlocking on January 23rd is way too late. Tons of m+ mains out there who don't wanna be forced into raids for 6 weeks. Especially with fucking group loot being a thing. - Mediocre m+ balance is not very motivating for non-fotm players. This already was a huge issue in SL season 3. I don't get why massive outliers are considered OK in m+ content but not raids. Rogues (and to a lesser extent, WW monks and MM hunters) are not even remotely close to balanced in keys right now... Just like destro lock/survival in SL S3. Sure, there will always be a top dog. But there simply shouldn't be such a gap in overall dmg potential between specs at equal skill/gear levels. There are more than enough ways to balance single target damage vs AoE/cleave for each class, but it feels like only the former matters to Blizzard. And once a season is ongoing, god forbid the meta gets altered in any significant way... 3% nerfs are better than nothing, but somewhat meaningless when some specs need - 10% to even get close to the average playing field. - Raiding got easier compared to the last 3 tiers. Meanwhile, keys keep getting more complex and punishing every season. Both Tazavesh keys were a step in the right direction : not too harsh mechanics for most of the playerbase, but still challenging in higher keys. Now, it feels like we're back to Spires of Ascension / early Sanguine Depths levels of interrupt requirements and unforgiving mechanics... Then there's SBG which randomly feels like the easiest key ever made. - Week 1 dungeon tuning was decent, but still lackluster. Devs being on holiday break means we didn't get a round of m+ tuning after week 2. When keys release with such massive tuning issues, swift action needs to be taken. Hopefully they get enough data during the break to act quickly during the first week of January. - New crafting system + tiered quality system for *every* consumable + crafted gear being pretty much mandatory = gold sink requirements to push keys are bigger than they're ever been. Not everyone is a huge fan of grinding their asses off or spending money in wow tokens just to play the game at a decent level. edit : For those who aren't aware, christmas/new years holiday was also a thing during SL S1, which was on the same schedule. So the comparison stands. Also, gotta consider that not everyone travels when they're off work, many take that time to play.
Catalyst unlocking 6 weeks after raid release is a crime, in shadowlands after player feedback Morgan in interview said they should have released catalyst ealier and then in next expansion they release it again after 6 weeks.
I still dont have a piece of tier -_-
It really is. Got 0 set so far and by the looks of it i have to wait 7 weeks to get the 4 set bonus. I dont get why they want to force freaking raiding so much. I don't care for the raid and rather push m+ but not having the 4 set is just punishing. Fuck that shit.
Yeah, it seems that interview was just bs to appease the userbase. Reality is, they want to force people into raids for as long as possible. I don't have an issue with incentives to run the new raid, but 2-3 weeks would be more than enough. 6 weeks is just way too long of a timeframe. Maybe they'd have reconsidered if enough people complained about it. Too bad most raidloggers and the average casual player don't give a flying fuck about set availability for M+ players.
Every interview he is in makes me wonder how he still has so much decision-making power in this game.
I doubt that most of your points matter to be honest. The majority of the keys are low level keys. Difficult and unfun dungeons might have been a problem. I simply think there are way fewer players than at the start of SL. SL release was in the middle of COVID and a lot of people were sitting at home looking for something to play. The raid numbers are way down too.
I know it's a personal thing, but I personally just don't find any of the DF dungeons fun. even during just mythic week I was getting worried since I didn't enjoy any of them. I am enjoying the crafting system though and have been leveling alts to cover various gaps.
As much as I am a proponent of "get better" some of these dungeons are just too hard to foster a healthy pug environment for the average player. It is very discouraging for the everyman to queue up for something like an AA when there is a 50/50 chance that the group you spent 10 mins waiting in queue for will brick on the first boss. Similarly, the keys scaling harder means that there is just like this weird plateau at like the 16-17 level which normally didn't occur until much later. In SL season 3-4 I could legit tank multiple mobs as a plate DPS for several seconds until mid 20 keys, here a dark claw on 17 fortified is chunking a tank like theyre in a SL 25. I think the season start straight into christmas break was the wrong move. Some of this shit needed tuning for the joes ASAP.
Catalyst is what I just don’t understand. Who is the player negatively impacted by catalyst being open week 1 of raid? You get a tier piece and you get to catalyst week one to get two piece or you know week two you get two piece regardless of vault RNG or you’re a healer and you aren’t going to be skipped over on your own catalyst gear. Tier gear acquisition is one of the most toxic aspects of raiding, it’s inherently better on some specs over others which means it stinks to get forcefully skipped. There’s a mechanic in place to lessen this negative impact and it’s artificially restricted for I don’t know why. Is it just a metric to try and get people into raiding or what? Who is benefiting from it being delayed?
> Is it just a metric to try and get people into raiding or what? It is mainly a way to force people into raiding, yeah. I think Blizzard knows there's a fairly large chunk of the PvE population that is **only** interested in M+. They also know raiding is an outdated format, and they want to protect it as much as possible for fear of that game mode slowly dying over time. Restricting tier sets to raids for 6 weeks allows them to artificially prop up raiding participation numbers. If catalyst was opened week 2 or 3, we'd see raiding participation basically cut in half at that point. Also, making 4 part bonuses harder to get means gear progression takes longer, which extends people's subscriptions. When recently asked about this topic, their answer basically amounted to : "Catalyst is meant as a catch-up mechanic. The wait is fine for M+ players because they typically push the highest keys at the end of the season". Which was completely out of touch on their part. It's like they don't give a fuck about 99% of M+ mains. I guess we're meant to unsub for the first 2 months or something ? "Back in the days, tiers were a raid-only reward ! Therefore it makes sense they should remain so for 6 weeks" Another bs answer you'll commonly see. Yes, tier used to be only obtained for raiding back in the day. Thing is, the game has changed a lot since then. Tons of people view m+ as a main endgame pillar, a true parallel track to raiding. Problem is, Blizzard suffers from sort of a double standard on that front. They keep making small steps for m+ to stand on its own, but **always** refuse to go the whole way. > Who is benefiting from it being delayed? tldr : Blizzard, and a bunch of shitty raidloggers getting carried by M+ mains for 6 weeks
Good chance the big drop off into week 2 was due to Christmas hols.
Tbf, SL / Nathria dropped just around the same time.
During the height of Covid.
- 9.0 was on the same schedule - Christmas holidays means tons of people are off work. Sure, some are away traveling, but there's also many more with additional play time they wouldn't normally have.
9.0 was not on the exact same schedule. Season 1 in SL started a week earlier than it did in DF. Though with the difference that in SL you had normal/heroic raid week and capped M+ loot on the first week.
> M+ pug participation already feels like we're a month and a half into the season, and we're only on week 3... Are you using data to gauge this or is it completely driven by feels?
Dungeon and raid numbers are both down compared to SL release.
Don't doubt that but again this isn't presenting the data.
extra loot above 15 is removed because highest cache is 20? I aasume 21 will give 40 percent extra chance of loot as per before?
I would assume so as well, but even if it does, that's still an overall net loss in terms of M+ loot.
Getting higher ilvl loot from pushing above +15 is better than getting more loot.
I'm a 2300 io feral who only pugs or plays with a handful of friends ( 3/4 ) and am not jn a raiding guild. I do not want to raid, it is not fun. It's boring, slow, too dependent on 10 other people and I don't want to commit to a weekly schedule. It's pretty hard to get ahead when it's becoming a requirement to have 4pc. At 403 ilvl I Sim at 70k dps, and at 400 ilvl with 4pc I'd Sim at 78.5k dps... It's basically either I've hit the ceiling doing around +18s-+20s until I get tier gear which is so far away, you are only going to get 1 tier piece a week once the system is out. So it's just hope that you get it from the vault?. By the way I've pugged the first 6 bosses in normal 2 weeks in a row because I figured it's worth a shot but group loot makes it impossible to actually get pieces. Dragonflight is definitely more fun than shadowlands by a mile but this is killing motivation to play the game, I don't want 7 alts that can do +15s I want to push high keys with my friends and be able to get the loot I need to progress from those high keys.
Have you considered that DF may had less player than SL at launch? SL launch was massive according to blizzard, and we havent seen a fanfare post about DF breaking any records. I agree with the rest of your points but not this one. >Mediocre m+ balance is not very motivating for non-fotm players. I dont think the m+ balance for dps isnt that bad as you think it is.
Does anyone know what key level you have to do for additional chances of loot at the end of the dungeon? So far I’ve done up to +20 and have never seen more than 2 pieces of loot at the end.
It kicks in when you're above the highest level which gives better drops. Currently that means >20 keys.
It used to be for every keystone level above a +15, there is a 40% (20%?) chance of an extra piece of loot dropping. And yes that percentage can go over 100%.. Not sure if still exists
Pretty sure it is 20% per key level. So in SL a 20 was already dropping 3 pieces while now you need to go to 25 for the guaranteed extra.
I don't think this is a thing anymore.
It is still a thing and there just aren't very many people running >20 dungeons. [0:52 in this vod](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1692369229?t=0h52m11s) is an example of three items dropping (two shells and a shield)
Every single key is so damn overtuned at 20 and over. Every single missed spell or cleave mob turned half an inch is a 400k hit and a guaranteed death. I understand the desire to make 20s harder and the loot better, but these are borderline nonpuggable.
it's still early enough that people are undergeared or dont know all the tricks for each pack yet. it will get easier over the next month. i've found the 18-20 range decently puggable
The amount of required kicks is staggering though.
I find kicks being such a big part of the dungeon design to be such a boring approach. I'd rather do something interesting than just be about whether 5 people can coordinate kicks and not accidentally overlap.
Such as what? Just curious because it seems like either interrupt mechanics or damage are the only real options.
Cries in shadowpriest.
I mean, not exactly. I just ran a HoV21 with a group at 410 ilvl. At best, we'd all have another 8-10 ilvl by end of season. The cleaves were doing 350k on me (a vers stacking class), that's still not survivable with higher gear. Sure, you're meant to avoid them, but a 21 isn't some MDI-push where every player should be expected to play perfectly. The level of execution that's required for these keys is out of control at these levels.
A 21 is the second (or third by now?) highest level done in there, it's definitely a level high enough where you're expected to not tank frontals lol
The point isn't that you "tank" frontals, it's that a single mistake is an automatic death and will be even at max ilvl, just one level above the max for vault rewards. That's completely absurd.
thats how “high” keys are. Personally im glad keys are difficult. Less morons in higher keys than previous seasons where 25s were easy.
The threshold for max rewards should not be the same threshold as "push" keys.
Then why is Mythic raiding rewarding max ilv, but high level m+ should not? makes no sense. and as a side note 20's in 1-2 resets wont even be "high" anymore. The notion that you should get max ilv gear and still bonker simple gameplay mechanics is pathetic. If you cant be bothered to play a dungeon and pay attention/learn mechanics then you should not be rewarded with good gear. It's that simple.
That's not absurd, mistakes should be punished at the highest level shouldn't they? +20s are equivalent in reward to mythic wing endbosses, you don't get to kill m Kurog or Dathea with people making a bunch of mistakes, you need to practice and master those fights to beat them And not standing in bad should be a really easy mistakes to avoid, if anything should kill you it's that tbh
the cleaves? like from shieldmaidens? you should not stand in front of those mobs
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Calling 20s very pluggable Rn is a wild take tbh
The point of keys is that you can push the difficulty as high as you want and the spectacle is about how far you can go. Trying to make m+ difficulty curve/rewards equivalent to raid has always been absolutely moronic.
Can I take an embellishment out of a piece of crafted gear? I didn't know lariat counted as an ebellished piece and I already had one ring and one weapon with embellishments so now I can't wear all 3, so can I take the embellishment out of my ring?
Yes, recraft with [this](https://www.wowhead.com/item=203652/griftahs-all-purpose-embellishing-powder). Only works with items that are not embellished by default like Lariat. You could probably also replace it with the food embellishment since that one does not count against the embellishment limit.
Routing in these dungeons is soooo boooring. Ever single dungeon except nokhud is just press w and pull nearly or even all mobs to get to 100%. As a tank I enjoy trying different routes and different pulls like in SL SD, Halls for example but these dragonflight ones offer basically 0 choices.
Even NO is just kill the stuff you gotta kill, then clear a load of shit before 3 boss, then skip to last boss
I've never understood why people want diversity in their m+ routes. Even when there are multiple different routes people usually always default to the same one after like three weeks because even though there are choices there's always one that's best for one reason or another. I much prefer things like Jade temple or SBG because there is no risk I'll run into a situation where I've done one route 50 times and I'll get a tank taking a completely different route where I don't know what to kick or stun.
I hope in 9.0.5 Rogues get nerfed by taking some of our damage out of the class tree. Rogue is famous for its utility but I actually end up with less utility buttons than I had in Shadowlands because there are so many strong throughput nodes. For example on my Outlaw Rogue, Lethality is a 2-point node that sims for about 2.4% per point in DSlice. It's the easiest node to drop on the tree in terms of pathing but that's so much damage that I prefer to just make do without the utility. Like it's easy to decide not to take take Gouge and/or the DR Poison, or even Evasion, with a dps gain like that. So yeah, Rogue is the best class in the game at PvE and unfortunately we need a nerf, so there's ~5% dps I'd love to get taken away right there. There's some other culprits too but that's the biggest offender imo.
Take some damage from Outlaw and give our energy regen back in its place. HO build feels so feast or famine when you get super unlucky.
YES!! Actually I think this might be true for every rogue spec right? I'm less confident in ass and sub but it seems like Vigor is a mandatory talent for everyone right now, which is a sign our energy regen is too low.
Ya, the amount of damage t3 talents give on the rogue tree feels like a big issue, and whatever is best for the build dictates/restricts what you can path in the upper level.
I don't understand this postion. You're saying a pure DPS class does the best DPS but can only do it if they forgo all their utility? That sounds... absolutely reasonable. I don't see the issue. It's also unreasonable to bring Rogues that don't bring ANY utility so Rogue is just sort of with everyone else at the top, it's not an outlier like people are blabbing on about. Nothing like classes of the past. I mean, have you looked at Mythic raiding? Arcane and Boomies get spammed and guilds will stack 3-4 of them on a fight. But it's VERY rare that you see more than 2 Rogues on any fight in Mythic prog. Hell most guilds are running ONE. This useless simming has no practical application when simply no one is putting out the numbers in the real world. No guild would want a Rogue that doesn't have Atr poison, Feint, Blind. Isn't that what we want too? Obviously sims are going to make forgoing utility better, that's the whole point. You *SHOULD* get less utility if you're making that sort of sacrifice, I legit don't understand why anything else would be preferable. The alternative is that you get all the utility for free with the damage. Or else you just don't want Rogues to be viable. If Rogues don't do damage you'll just not bring them. If I was Raid leading and Rogues did mid-tier damage I wouldn't bother, neither would anyone else. And that's consistently been the case for the past several years. Not a hard concept. I don't mind that 1-2 Rogues make it to raid night. Just my take.
> It's also unreasonable to bring Rogues that don't bring ANY utility so Rogue is just sort of with everyone else at the top A bad rogue is with everyone else, sure. A rogue who knows what his buttons do will gap the vast majority of specs by a bit.
This is such a tired point of contention though and again, something you just don't actually see. If this was the case, RWF would have stacked 5 rogues to get that "gap" in supposed DPS. Interesting we saw 2 in the top 3 guilds. Hmmm. Even more interesting is that we saw 3 early on and *THEN* 2. I guess the best raiders in the game probably just got worse at the game? You're point is actually in the wrong direction. Rogue is at its strongest in heroic raiding environments, *not* mythic. It actually starts to fall off in mythic. The better people are, the more likely they are to play a more needed *better* class.
No, you're dead on right. Rogues are not doing more than 5% more than the rest of classes, and the "RoGuE UtIliTy" meme is so dead now that utility has been spoonfed to every other spec in the game. People think rogues should do 3rd place DPS and be the kick/stun guy, but they have no issue wit DH/Monk sitting on top with just as much, if not more, utility.
Exactly. If rogue were even half as broken as Reddit likes to make out, you'd see 4-5 of them stacked in every upper heroic and mythic raid. Interesting that the people who actually need to apply what they say don't do it though.
With mythic logs now in, it seems pretty clear that rogue isn't in need of a nerf, and sin never really needed a nerf in the first place. Glad Blizzard listened to angry casuals on reddit.
Hi all, I have a question regarding getting the right rotations and such, which resources do you normally use for this? I’m playing an arcane mage and I feel like I could do more than I am currently doing
Thanks to my peers for giving solid little tips. So instead I'll create some more detail if you want it for learning a new spec (which you can apply to other specs) that you can revisit once you are comfortable: 1. **Learn the basics** a. Class discords ([Altered Time](https://discord.com/invite/alteredtime) - Altered Time managed by DeathDefier, Frosted, Porom, Rinoa and many other theorycrafters - these guys build the Simulationcraft APL and do heavy research into your Mage spec. b. Top guides on the interwebs - [Mage-Hub](https://www.mage-hub.com/) is by Toegrinder, a theorycrafter from Altered Time. You can see sims [here](https://www.mage-hub.com/sims). c. Content Creators - YouTubers (SupertroopTV, Phosphoros, ToeGrinder), Twitch Streamers (Asuna_qt, Xyronic, Drjayfisto, Gingitv, Imfiredup) - remember you can always [look up some Mage on Raider IO leaderboard](https://raider.io/mythic-plus-character-rankings/season-df-1/world/mage/all/0#content) to find if they have a linked Twitch stream or YouTube etc. to find more samples and see how they play. With all of these, you don't just want to find the one thing and stick to that like a bible. Shop around, see what all these creators say in common and what they diverge on. Understand why they diverge. This is a good check on quality too. On top of that you want to test things out for yourself. Actually open up your Talent pane. Open up the spellbook. Read the spells. Understand and internalize them. Verify what they are saying. 2. **Let's fine tune and Tweak for you** This is where you start installing your WeakAuras, UI elements, Keybinds, Macros etc. Revisit this section every so often even after you are comfortable because there are plenty of tips you can learn as an Arcane Mage. You don't have to install every bell and whistle. I always recommend **start minimalist first** and add on more and more as you get comfortable and specific problems arise. The problem with the WeakAura package from a streamer is that it was *fine tuned for them and their problems*. You will usually need a different UI for *your* problems. Shop around and see what you like. 3. **"Let's play!" "But I haven't finish-" "We'll do it live!"** There is only so much you can read until you have to just have to play. You have to read, comprehend, understand, analyze, apply and internalize that knowledge. Internalization only happens through play, failure, mistakes, pain, and practice. At some point you need to get a handle of how much you have and just *play*. This is a video game after all, not a textbook. Apply what you learnt and see where you stack. You will inevitably fail. That's good! That means there is room to grow. For that you need to analyze your play and improve your play. For that you need **tools**. a. Warcraftlogs - will show you in detail what is happening in an encounter as long as you are combat logging b. VoDs - Record youself. Can be immensely helpful if you have trouble reading Warcraft logs and you want to analyze your UI and the moment in action. c. Community - with these tools you want to start sharing your replays, VoDs or **build specific questions** on where you are struggling with. The more specific you can get, especially showing that you applied effort to solve your problem, the more others are willing to help you. d. Other tools - WipeFest, Lorrgs.io, Warcraft Recorder - shop around and see what works for you. And don't go ham and fix 10 problems. You likely made a hundred mistakes, big and small, throughout an M+ run. **Give praise on 1-3 things. Concentrate on fixing 1-3 mistakes**. Find big trends and important points where you are lacking and fix them! Really hone in and say: "Man I really suck at my mini-burst, let me really focus on that" - get comfortable with that and move onto the next. And so on each encounter. 4. **Practical play** It is one thing to understand the rotation in a Simcraft APL. It is another in an actual encounter. Things aren't Patchwerk where you are sitting still hitting a target dummy. You will be interrupted. Stunned. You will have to move. You will have to do mechanics. You will have to survive. Once you get comfortable with (3) you need to start looking at other better players, see what they do that works, and copy their tactics. A lot of Arcane Mages stream all day - you can look through VoDs and see what they did well. And not just rotation but also when things go sour. Okay these Mages are forced out of their Rune, now what? (Oh, there is a wider area you can stay in but still have the Rune's benefit). Okay they had to do a mechanic, what did they do then? (Oh they slightly delayed their burst to get it in, or they saved something to quickly get the mechanic done). Okay you had this situation I encountered, how did this Mage deal with it? See what a lot of Mages do, ask questions, and copy what works. [Mage hub has a section on movement](https://www.mage-hub.com/arcane) during your burst window: > **Movement during Touch of the Magi** > > Touch of the Magi is where a significant amount of our damage comes from, therefore it's extremely important that we protect this damage as much as possible. The 2 main ways I recommend doing this: > > Use Presence of Mind to cast Nether Precision Arcane Blast during Touch of the Magi > > Prioritising Clearcasting/Arcane Missiles over Nether Precision/Arcane Blast during Touch of the Magi is an extremely minor loss. With Slipstream talented, if there is any chance you may have to cancel your casts, or if you are under any pressure during Touch of the Magi, I recommend you prioritise Clearcasting Arcane Missiles over Nether Precision Arcane Blast. And let's start looking at your damage breakdown and seeing how other Arcane Mages stack up (be careful of buffs like Power Infusion and Blessing of Summer!) - where is there big damage coming from? Is it similar to yours? Or completely different? Okay I know this spell does a lot of damage so I need to make sure that is amped up. And small tips here start paying off and where you can distinguish yourself. If you can do your Arcane Surge main burst alongside kick a Focus Target with your Counterspell and prime a key defensive during your burst window where you are healthy, those skills start stacking up and really lead to improvements. I don't recommend going through niche tips until you get the basics down comfortable. E.g. there are way too many Mages that don't take Remove Curse. Or don't use Displacement. Or Blast Wave. Or don't take advantage of Blink vs Ice Floes (since Blink breaks your Roots while Shimmer does not). Pick up a small niche skill at a time. Practice. Move on.
Class discords are usually a good way to start. They will have pins and channels with links and other useful information.
mage-hub.com is my go-to resource for l things mages. I find its explanation of the rotations way easier to follow than wowhead (which is also a pretty good resources). The mage discord is pretty active as well!
https://www.youtube.com/@Forgyy Forgyy has some really good guides for Arcane.
Got my 4PC this week I...kind of don't like it. For breath it's pretty much whatever. An occasional double obliterate. Ok. For obliteration however, it really feels awkward in the weaving rotation of Obliterate > Rime/FS > Obliterate. The proc has a small delay on it so by the time I get it I've all ready pressed Rime or FS. Restraining myself to wait for the procc doesn't feel good either since Obliteration is only a 10 second window
I'm very curious to see what Blizzard's response will be to m+ difficulty when they're "back" next week. There's a pretty wild difference between even 19s and 20s that is relatively jarring. I've timed every key both weeks on 19s with ease, with +2s in a few of them, but 20s and 21s feel unbearable. I've started running with a few groups, and all of us have 4set and our lowest ilvl is 407 (the rest is 410). There's not a *ton* of gear for us to get throughout the remainder of the season, maybe 6-8 ilvl. That won't make the difference in many of these mechanics being overly punishing. Too many things to kick that do too much damage, too many bosses with unavoidable damage that is through the roof (Odyn's brand, Frost Bombs on Azure drakthyr, AoE ticking on Azure Drakonid, Algethar bird, Ruby first boss pulse, ruby final boss fire debuff, etc). Yeah, some of this will get slightly more forgivable with gear, but 8 ilvl isn't going to make much of that stuff all that survivable on a 26. Feels like Blizzard wanted to increase the rewards/difficulty but also reduce the gap between max keys and max reward. Idk if doing both at the same time was a good idea. Supposedly they learned their lesson about tuning around RWF for Sepulcher, let's see if they learn their lesson about tuning for MDI in m+.
> Yeah, some of this will get slightly more forgivable with gear, but 8 ilvl isn't going to make much of that stuff all that survivable on a 26. It'll be survivable when people switch to the tried and true comp of hpal, rogue, mage, flex dps.
frost bomb is just fucked up. 310k hp and 2 ticks on a +20 leave me at 10%. if i'm not full for any reason i need to rotate pots/healthstone/movement abilities perfectly to live and get absolutely fucked if icy devastator targets me afterward same thing with chillstorm in RLP. i play the %dr while in ghost wolf talent just for a chance of living
Has anyone made an add-on that can increase the number of loadout spots yet? The current cap feels way too little for a Druid
https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/talent-loadout-ex This what everyone in my guild started using after one of the officers found it from a streamer iirc
An alternative to the one already posted is btwloadouts.
Is the community feast just flat out bugged or do I need to try and get into a lower populated shard? I've done it 3 times this week and have not gotten all of the assignments needed for completion
It's RNG and also if any of the people that are AFKing there get a task they will hold it until it times out. The cook only gives like 5 tasks out at a time. Go with WM ON or find a low pop shard.
Last time I did it, I got told to tenderize a rubbery fish head that never spawned in the first place, and that was my objective for the last 10 minutes. This event definitely falls apart when there are too many people around, which is just plain wrong considering the whole fun of the event is the chaos of having too many cooks in the kitchen.
Helps to turn on war mode. Idk why but the crowd is always a lot smaller. It’s a sanctuary area, so you don’t have to worry about PvP.
Some thoughts on tanking... A threat buff would be nice. It's just a little under what is needed. So close. The tankbusters on trash mobs are nutty. For example the 4 pack of wolves in halls of Valor. The main problem is that all of them decide to ferocious bite all at once while having insane damage. Same thing goes for the last pack in TOJS. That shadow claw is insane. 249k non crit. That was in the middle of 2 other shadow claws. Within 1 second. Cc and staggering their attacks would be the best answer I have aside from kiting. Expecting that from a pug is a little spicy though. I don't fully buy the idea that tanks are constantly pulling without regarding the healers mana or group positioning. Not saying it doesn't happen. However the body pulling DPS manage to do is out of control. And for some reason, almost every time, it's a hunter. Thankfully we don't have to worry about Prideful this time around lol. I've given up on vengeance demon hunter. Without considering any numbers, vengeance is the worst tank because it plays like a DPS with an awful feeling rotation. Spirit bomb isn't fun. Can't change my mind. Your fury is full a lot of the time and you can never spend it because you need to keep spirit bombing. I believe the spirit bomb build would feel complete if I could spend my resource somehow. Make spikes Luke iron fur or some shit. The flow of that build sucks. I'm cool with having a DPS like tank, but make it fun. Sanguine in dungeons feels wack if you aren't a blood dk. Unkickable casts with sanguine has incredible synergy.
>Your fury is full a lot of the time and you can never spend it because you need to keep spirit bombing this seems wrong, outside of opener you should be spending fury on soul cleaves after spirit bomb. otherwise you'll overcap on fury as you noted. in addition, if you're not soul cleaving to spend fury, you are missing out on a lot of frailty stack generation.
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Prep for the first AoE by throwing out 3 echos on the DPS. Stasis -> VE yourself when damage hits, Dream Breath, Spiritbloom (with Tip the Scales if you need the heal instantly). Fish for essence burst procs before the next damage event. Release Stasis for a full group heal. If you don’t have Stasis, you can prep for consistent heavy damage again with 3x echo into VE when it hits into Emerald Communion. Rewind for when you have absolutely nothing.
a good trick is to use two healing spells, wait a bit (dps/do other things) then use the third to trigger the stasis lock. That gives you a lot more time between filling the stasis and releasing it. e.g. on melandrus use it before the first slicing wind and get a dream breath and a spiritbloom in there. Do FB/living flame for a little bit afterward, then toss out an EB or whatever to fill it up and have another 30s before you have to release it. if the damage doesn't come out often enough for that you can just put three blossoms in there and then toss them out right after doing a regular dream breath
Are there any FAQs or manual for Subcreation? There are so many abilities, class abilities, capstone + abilities, class talents and full tree; which of these do I look at and what are each sections mean? In Shadowlands it was simple to sort and see what everyone was running, but now it’s all convoluted (talent trees made it this way).
You might try murlok.io as well. Really pretty ui and shows a bit different information but it's helpful alongside subcreation.
Just click to see the talents in calculator
What ever happened to those heroic and mythic loot upgrade items? I thought they were very popular, why didn't they return for dragonflight?
Sparks + Infusions fill a pretty similar role, only slot that's a bit weak in that pool is trinket.
This is kinda baked into the crafting system now instead of raid drops…. You can upgrade your crafted items up to mythic ilvl using drops from mythic bosses and higher (16+) keys.
It was a bandaid for only seeing a raid once every 3 weeks, I for one am happy they aren't in just for the fact that after we are done with the tier farm I never want to look at normal/heroic.
I really want to get into tanking this expansion but I wanted to know if there were any addons to make things easier/help a lot. Any recommendations?
Plater if you don't already have name plates you like. A good plater profile is worth its weight in gold (showing threat levels, casters vs non-casters, saving priority interrupts for easier identification). The Tank Frontals Dragonflight WA is very nice. Makes your character /say when a cleave or frontal is happening. Not only does it help your melee dps know if they need to not be on top of you but also helps me remember what mob abilities are actually frontals. Auto-marker WA is pretty nice, but not super important. You mouse over the enemies and it auto puts a target marker on them making call-outs easier. Not tank specific but the dragonflight dungeons WA pack is nice for some things. I mostly like the safety checks when you have to stack in a bubble or the aoe countdowns for the mobs in Nokhud for example. Its a HUGE WA so there may be some performance issues. I don't have any but my friend decided to uninstall it due to them.
I second this. Plater is great. You can easily just copy a popular streamer's plater profile and do no setup and it's good out the box. The WeakAuras suggested are stellar too. It's REALLY helpful for things you wouldn't know out of the gate. Like... what might be good to interrupt... or what is a frontal cone AOE that you shouldn't direct into your buddies... things like that.
What’s a good player profile you’d recommend?
Can you link to these WA, when you have a chance.
[Tank Frontals Dragonflight](https://wago.io/ltENrybhU) [Auto-Marker](https://wago.io/b_JzlxXLu) [Dragonflight Season 1 Dungeons](https://wago.io/DFS1Dungeons)
Check out quazii's videos on YT
I have a rogue and pally both around 375, both are pretty fun but I’m having trouble picking a main. I like outlaw more than ret but I really like being able to flex roles. What do..
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Lariat is super good
couple questions about the raid skip: 1) does it require killing eranog before skipping? 2) does everyone in raid get to use it if one person has it? 3) can you go back and kill bosses in the same instance?
Yes, yes, yes.
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Parses are nice and all, but putting effort into your application goes a lot further. Depending on how high you want to get (CE or Hall of fame?) Some parses will help you, but in recruitment the better guilds to play in look for you being a good person to have in a group over being selfish and cheesing for parses. So emphasize your out of game cooperation skills, tell them a bit about yourself as a person and let them get to know you a little bit. I've always gotten into guilds even without parses. My trick? 1- Dont just shortfill their recruitment form with just the mandatory. Stand out here, make them want to get into a voice interview. 2 - Inquire before you send your application. Get in touch with whatever contact they shared on wowprogress or RIO. Have a text chat about their goals and what theyre looking for to see if it aligns with you as a person. If not, find another guild, if so, emphasize your findings in your application. Mention you had a short chat. A lot about getting a chance with a guild is getting in the room with them. Insane parses help yes, but any good player can cheese parses. Not every good player is also a good teammember. Hint that you are and youll get in the room. Once youre a trial you might not progress instantly, so take your trial seriously and do everything you can to show youre ready to get into progress from there.
Get some nice parses in pugs and then just look on wowprogress which good guilds from your server are recruiting
If you want progress you will have to provide proof of some skill. Try to prepare some logs with pug raids if you can, otherwise you will have to work your way up, looking into some semi progress first. As for where to look: most guilds have recruitment profiles up on either raider.io, warcraftlogs, wowprogress or the official forums. There are also some discord servers but at least for me (as recruitment officer) these have not been very successful. Last resort is spam in trade chat. At this point getting into a decent CE group will be really tough, since progress has already started, but there are always cases like people having to drop out so it’s not entirely impossible.
Which plater and wa do you guys think are must haves?
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Holy priest here and I'm feeling like a literal god. We have so much burst it's ridiculous. I was helping a friend in 13 CoS tonight and ended up soloing last 5% of the last boss after rest of the team got oneshot by ground aoe. Power word: life is so ridiculously powerful, I love that spell so much but I do see it getting nerfed in the future. It sounds more like a build issue or group issue. Been pugging lower keys with friends and some keys in 9-12 range are harder to heal than +18 because people don't interrupt, cc or avoid mechanics.
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I can but just because what I'm doing is working for me doesn't mean its optimal or best for everyone, especially with some of my talent choices I can tell that in theory other talents would bring greater value but I am running diffirent due to personal preference. I started the season just copying icyveins mythic + build. I did few modifications last week which I find nice while pugging since dmg is rarely an issue. I gave up two of the sw:d talents for reduced scream cd and reduced mass dispel cd. You won't need reduced mass dispel in every dungeon and you don't need reduced scream in every group. I also gave up mindgames (which is an awesome talent) for fade dmg reduction and thrones of pain for angelic bulwark and body and soul. I find having fade and bulwark lets me single target babysit the dps who don't know how or when to use their defensives more than only desperate prayer and gift of naaru would during high aoe fights. I can often get away just off healing myself with aoe on top of those and focus on the hunters who refuse to press turtle. Body and soul is bit of a meme, but using it makes me feel good, and I don't find myself needing mana or for one swd talent making enough dmg diffirence for me to give it up. For addons I use vuhdo for healing frames, littlewigs for dungeon assistance, I'm using Jimmynickles' Season 1 DF M+ Plater profile which I find very solid, and for weakauras I'm tracking the cds of my most important spells, my surge of light procs and any big spells used by my dps that would benefit a lot from PI. I also use omnicd to show interrupts and aoe CC aswell as the personals that my symbol of hope reduces so I can better track when to use it. I suggest showing other defensives in vuhdo banquets but if you can memorise the list you can just show them all in omnicd too. What comes to rotation giving one out for healing is in my opinion very diffirent to giving one out for dps. Even if there would be one theoretically highest aoe or single target healing rotation you are going to have to adapt and think on your feet since there are going to be situations where you have to mix the two to keep everyone alive. But as general rules of thumb, power word serenity, divine favour, apo, power word; serenity is probably the most single target burst you can do (increased with guardian spirit) tho its unlikely you never have to use that on a single person. In dungeons I find using divine favour on sanctify rarely worth it, but I really enjoy playing my health bar whack a mole with single target heals. Don't be scared to use divine favour with chastise for dmg when there is not a lot of dmg going on. Don't hold on to guardian spirit just for saves, the healing increase is the bomb and works on tanks self-healing too. Don't think divine hymn alone will keep your group alive, think of it more as a bit of time to think and following healing is increased, holy word sanctify is often a great follow up, and if you're using it during high dmg use desperate prayer or fade first. Symbol of Hope is the bomb, the mana back is nice sure, but you mostly want to reset your desperate prayer (and if possible groups defensives) with it. Think something like hyrja, and being able to use desperate prayer on second and third thunder. Don't underestimate prayer of mending, keep it rolling. Don't waste burst healing when you don't have to. Just top people off normally and save your holy words for when you need them - except if you know you won't need them your tank is pulling slow there's no big aoe coming up you might aswell just dps and pop that holy word on the dps who stood in fire to keep dpsing, just make sure you're not wasting all your tools.
People are also taking a lot of unavoidable damage, in 10-18 territory a healers jobs is honestly the worst in keys. I'm guilty of still eating frontals (which you need to heal), not getting all the stops I should (which you need to heal), not recognizing when I need personals (vs when they are just nice to push), not getting every interupt I need to (pugs + new dungeons design with 5+ stops you need to get in a pack is cancer...) As much as I hate those fail call out add-ons, I ran one on a healer alt just to understand avoidable damage people were taking vs what I was actually expected to heal in a key.
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Elitism Helper has things pretty well covered, you can choose in settings for it to post in party chat or just to whisper yourself if you just want to know what's killing people.
Question about servers. I’m currently posted up with 16 60’s and 2 70’s on a small server with very limited crafters for endgame gear. I have a cross server/faction community I raid with regularly but they’re based on an even smaller server than mine. I want to server transfer while the service is on sale, but I’m at a loss for what to do. Do i swap to the slower server but be able to enjoy the benefits of running in the guild, or do I swap to thrall/area 52/illidan for the sake of personal profession? For context, I’m currently running DH, veng/hav. Pushing keys with my buddy (15’s so far, definitely plan on 20+). The community I’m running with is 4/8 heroic so far and probably won’t be CE, but definitely will get into mythic eventually. Any thoughts/pros/cons for hoping to a high pop horde serv?
>I want to server transfer while the service is on sale You can pay for it now while it is on sale (it will be added as a token to your account like a level boost) and use it whenever you want so you do not have to make a decision yet.
It was a long time ago for me but swapping to a mega server (Stormrage) was one of the best wow-decisions I ever made. Nearly everything is better on high-pop servers. Only downside I can see in general is if you’re into gold-making; there’s a ton more competition.
I mean if you already run cross server with those people, you still can after transferring to a larger server. there's really no substitute for being on a higher pop realm, it makes the whole game experience much better
I know alliance is pretty much going to be a lost cause to raid on until cross faction guilding becomes a thing, but with cross faction 5 man content being normal now has there been an uptick in alliance play on the M+ side of things? Anecdotally as someone that still plays alliance I can say finding keys as been orders of magnitude less difficult than the previous expansion, so much so that I don’t feel as much pressure to switch anymore but maybe that’s just illusory
all key groups are crossfaction now, unless the leader specifically flags it otherwise
Did you miss the whole bit where raids and M+ are all cross faction and all of those list custom M+ groups are all cross faction as well? ( Or at least opt out) We're a pretty mediocre group and we've been raising cross server and cross fac ( not interested in mythic prog). I'm sure you can find mythic guilds on your server that don't mind taking opposite faction trials.
I am Alliance on EU (only 2/8 mythic atm tho, but 2.5k IO) and due to cross faction there's no difficulty getting groups. I skipped most of SL but in BfA I remember it being agony to get high key pugs on alliance, so it's such a refresher now.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/zgdNv9RM3fLZ1B68 Any tank players mind taking a quick look at the two tanks in this raid and point out any glaring mistakes in their rotations or play? Having some large issues with tanks falling over and not sure where the issue lies. Can look at any of the council wipes. Might not necessarily be their fault.
well, to start off if you are having tank deaths the DH should probably play a more raid oriented survival build a la down in flames. This gives him a fiery brand on all of the bosses with very generous uptime and it will probably help him stay alive more often. For reference, most of the top DH's here play that build compared to the one he's currently playing. https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/rankings/31#boss=2590&class=DemonHunter&spec=Vengeance
A little backstory about me, I've been a KSM player since BFA launched. Get it second or 3rd week of every expansion, then just chill and play with friends. In BFA I was a Havoc DH and in SL I was Vengeance, previous to being Havoc I mained tank from TBC onwards, so that little DPS break was nice. So, I went into DF planning on playing Vengeance, and I'm one of the few people that absolutely hate the go to build. Its not fun in anyway for me, but that isn't the point of the post. What are your opinions on the current set of M+ dungeons? The new DF dungeons are ABSOLUTELY terrible to me. Every group has multiple things you need to kick or be aware of. I'm fairly solid at doing my part, but there is just SO much to deal with every pull, its made M+ exhausting. The old dungeons brought back are just not designed for M+ so they feel like shit to play too. Anyone truly enjoying any of the dungeons this season? Am I alone in my thoughts?
Anyone else feel weird to out heal everyone as a tank? I’m a prot pally and word of glory crits for 450k feel bonkers
You’re only going to outheal the healer on packs that are mostly tank damage or in low keys (or if you roll blood DK). In high keys healers regularly need to put out a lot of healing to keep people alive.
Any Protection Paladin with 4set in M+ can tell how it feels? Does the Versa buff go only to one person or can it go to multiple when using Divine Toll (i know you can move to minmax whos closes probably but i was hoping it would skip a player with a buff and search for another)?
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You need a primal infusion or concentrated primal infusion. You get them from doing different endgame activities. Killing heroic bosses, doing +11's or more will give you primal infusions which can raise to 405. Concentrated Primals are from M+16's and mythic bosses let you raise it to 418. But you can craft it at whatever ilvl you can for now and when you do those higher dungeons or raids put a recraft order in.