... is pretty much the same as it was, with the addition of a few new abilities in the mix like victory rush and rend.
Like Q in the post below, I also got DTK as first dungeon I did. The first pull was a little shaky getting the mobs on me because I had some trouble generating rage right off the bat, but a quick shout fixed that. The second pull was a little hairy as well because the DPS in the group got all antsy in their pantys and starting dpsing stuff before I could even get a thunderclap + shockwave off. After that though, it was back to normal speed and we were done in there with no wipes or deaths in about 15 minutes. There was, however, one noticible difference - I did the most damage done. Muaahahahaha! Watching vengeance scale is amazingly fun. My attack power just goes up and up and up and up...
I'm definately noticing how aggro is going to be a little shaky. I look forward to the cries of the dead dps. They haven't quite learned how to assist the tank - but the current dungeons and design don't FORCE them too.... yet.
So much to learn and wrap my head around with all the changes.... so many new glyphs and a few new skills. The new all plate armor bonus is sweet, as well as the mastery bonuses. I'm up to 50k unbuffed HP, which makes me wonder if I should think about swapping out my one stam trinket for armor or avoidance.
I also noticed that dwaves get a +archaelogy bonus. Which is OK, I guess. It's still not enough to make me not want to race change to a worgen as soon as I can. I mean, come on... a warrior with charge, intercept, intervene, heroic leap, AND a racial sprint - as well as a resto shaman arena partner who can now cleanse mage polymorphs and ice novas!? Mmmmmmm..... dead mages.
All in all, wonderful changes and it's fun to learn your class again. And to all of the nay sayers out there... shut it. We don't have the right gear (+mastery points) yet to make your spec shine. It's all new and different and you don't like it. I get it. But shut up and give it a go and see if you like it.
Oh, and the new downloader is rather spiffy! I loaded up while it was still downloading with out much issue and off I went.
Oh, and one last thing... I purchased my 310% flying speed last night which lets me give up on Yogg +1.
And there's finally someting NEW in the game again!
*cue up Choir*
One thing that annoyed the hell out of me was that I wasn't doing a lot of damage --I could tell by the numbers that kept popping up-- but I kept being on the verge of or actually getting threat.
ReplyDeleteI know part of that is that the druid tank was having issues relearning the cycle, but I suspect that the potential threat generated on a Pally's melee attack got amped up.
The more I look at it, the longer CDs on the abilities point more toward Haste being important than Attack Power for a Ret Pally. Methinks I'll have to experiment.
Soul, what are you specced as? Prot? I've heard some Fury Warriors complaining about nerfs, so I figured I'd ask.
ReplyDeleteFWIW, I talked with a Shadow Priest over lunchtime and she was all excited about having a legit finishing spell. She did 10+k in the fire boss in VoA.
ReplyDeleteYou really had to ask? I'm prot... of course.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, dps warriors are hurting right now, but they haven't got their new skills - in addition, all of our armor pen gems were changed to crit. So, to be effective, you need to completely regem. ug.
Pretty much ALL melee plate got nerfed. (I'm Ret) Pre-patch, I was getting ~9k+ with the ICC buff.
ReplyDeleteNow, (using the MMO Champs spec) I'm lucky to get 7k. The new "rotation" (FCFS, plus rogue combo points) is tedious. Keeping tabs on both, as well as the relatively rare AoW and and TV procs makes maintaining raid awareness rather tough now.
And, like Redbeard, I keep pulling aggro.
It seems like all the healers (sans Trees) are really happy, and ranged casters are happy as well.
@SlikRX: When I ran Ahn'kahet last night, I was about 1400 DPS lower than I typically get, and that was with all of that down time waiting for Holy Power to charge up so I could drop TV on the mob. There were points in the instance where I literally was twiddling my thumbs waiting for all of the cooldowns to finish.
ReplyDeleteI saw someone over in RetPaladins mention that he was gemming half strength and half haste, and I might move in that direction too.
*snip*which makes me wonder if I should think about swapping out my one stam trinket for armor or avoidance.*endsnip*
ReplyDeleteI just noticed that. Armour bonuses on many many items got reduced significantly or completely removed. Want an example? Petrified Twilight Scale now has no passively active armout any more. It's down to just +dodge-when-dropped-below-35%health.
This makes high effective health possibly even more valuable in 4.01 - but there are basically no armour trinkets left.
The ones you can still get are Black Heart and Corpse Tongue Coin - their armour bonus is part-time and was not changed.
I'd call avoidance the current way to go - the dodge debuff in ICC was removed as well to make that whole path more powerful.
We ran some ICC the other night in my guild with a few "not so well geared" folks, and I managed to be top DPS.
ReplyDelete"Looks like Balth has figured out the rotation"
It felt good, but honestly it was more that everyone else was lost. Pre 4.0.1, I'd get ~10k overall on the pre-marrow trash. Now I'm 7-8k.
I read a bunch over at MMO champs that talks about the (current) theorycrafted optimal gearing:
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/772395-Ronark-s-Patch-4.0.1-PvE-Ret-quot-To-Do-List-quot
and
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/751779-Patch-4.0.1-Ret-Paladin-FAQ
My initial thoughts are that prot tanking is perhaps a little more fun - the huge shield slams are awesome in particular (37k non crit on Festergut, for example).
ReplyDeleteI didn't play fury on patch day itself, but on the following day my dps had nearly doubled on the target dummy - up from 4k to 7k single target - I assume that's after the hotfix. That's without regemming (I'm all +crit gems here). I'm looking forward to trying it out in a raid.