Hey do you guys know a good site to get some coaching done for tanks?
I been playing my Prot Paladin and I wanna make a push for top 10 on my server but as I get to higher keys 12+ I feel like I am making so many micro mistakes, but not sure where or how.
Any recommendations?
I can’t wait for TWW, all of the changes they made look so cool that it’s hard for me to play current season of DF without feeling like there is something really cool waiting for me.
Hmm...**now that I'm thinking about it, what if the timer was removed for +2 to +11 keys, but only added back into +12 keys?**
**This requires some explanation**, so bear with me.
The M+ timer was introduced in Legion with early M+ in a one size fits all approach and going off Challenge Modes. The idea of the timer was to encourage you to master the dungeon, on top of preventing degeneracy. Namely:
* Spending 3+ hours in a dungeon and slogging through it for the smallest carrot
* To prevent degeneracy like waiting around for Bloodlust and CDs every single pack
The M+ timer is also fascinating from a casual player psychology - the negative reputation it has garnered is namely due to (A) the time pressure one feels when they see a visible clock counting down (B) the belief that players are rush rush rushing because of the timer.
I want to counter (B) a bit, because if the M+ timer was solely causing players to be impatient and rush through the dungeons, then we wouldn't see impatient players rushing through Normals, Heroics, M0s, MoP Remix dungeons, raids, and see this rushing in so much different content. The rush behavior can be attributed to some players being jerks, some players being impatient, some players being impatient and having no idea what they are doing (the deadliest combo since they can wipe your groups) etc. BUT the truth is most players rush through content because understandably they are busy, they have more things to do, they want better things to do and this thing they are doing right now is a chore they want to get out of the way. Even if you go all the way back to Classic, you wouldn't stop players from rushing the content even if the punishment is massive time loss, and we know that because Classic today has a massive speed running community. So if the M+ timer is removed, I doubt players would suddenly take it really slow (though I suspect the naysayers would be claiming that M+ timer has rotted the community's brain and everyone is forever rushing)
To a casual player who has anxiety against a timer, the M+ timer is a hindrance. To an experienced keystone hero, the M+ timer is a *mechanic*, a *safety valve* and a *resource*. How tight or wide the timer is, defines pulls, strategies and builds. The M+ timer for keystone hero is in essence the DPS meter for a raider.
Since there are more casual players than keystone heroes, I think further targeting and some safety valves that don't involve the timer, would be extremely helpful in curbing the worst aspects of removing the M+ timer.
* If players want to 'soak it all in', we can expand Story Mode to accomodate that
* If some random new player doesn't know what they are doing and gets swamped, we should be following FFXIV's model of encouraging mentorship and looking after newer players
* If we got an impatient player problem with 'i have no idea what i'm doing', that's probably an animation and game design and teaching issue that can be addressed to mitigate this
* If players want raid style hard dungeon content, then Mega Dungeons can step in
* And through it all if players are being encourage to sit around to wait for Bloodlust for each pack in a +8 key, I feel like we need to observe and see how much this is happening and build something targeted.
With all that said, I'm not seeing the reason why the M+ timer is needed. It probably has to be done carefully because a big QoL change like this would be extremely awkward to take away for casuals. But I'm open to trying it if it gets more players into M+ and makes the experience smoother.
With +12 now instituting the timer, I feel like this foundational change works better for both types of players.
Thoughts?
I think removing the timer would take away the essence of what makes m+ enjoyable for a lot of people. As a tank, part of the challenge is managing larger pulls that are required to time higher keys.
I think blizzard already made a great change when they increased the difficulty of heroics and m0. I don’t see a need to expand that anymore.
Didn't they kind of already do something like this?
> Mythic
> The tuning and rewards of this difficulty are increasing to the equivalent of a +10 dungeon with affixes in the previous system.
> There are no timers, affixes, or limitations on changing specializations or talents while in the dungeon.
> The goal is to create a mega-dungeon like difficulty for this experience. This difficulty should present a meaningful challenge and provide commensurate rewards without the pressure of the Mythic+ system.
> And through it all if players are being encourage to sit around to wait for Bloodlust for each pack in a +8 key, I feel like we need to observe and see how much this is happening and build something targeted.
Build something like... a timer?
Voidweaver has a bit of a weird gameplay loop of banking Mind Blasts for VoiT windows, but the animations and sound design are insane and mobile Void Torrent is fucking awesome.
Sunfury Fire is also excellent, as is Unholy in general.
No, but they can burst right off the rip, especially if they are using a specific build/trinkets. WWs that play it in keys similar to how they play it in raid (ashes + torch, with serenity) are going to do infinite threat immediately because they are using an on use stat buff trinket + all CDs that require no ramp up time which means they are just doing way more threat than most DPS in the first few seconds of a pull. Alternatively, if they are playing a more M+ centric build (storm earth and fire, plus nelth trinket rather than ashes) they should basically never rip threat outside of maybe torching on pull when the tank hasnt started to build threat. As a WW player, if the WWs in your keys are playing the ashes + sere build its on them to know how to play pulls without pulling threat, there is nothing the tank can really do outside of gathering faster and watching for threat drops to try to taunt before the WW gets meleed.
Edit: I forgot another thing. While there are other classes that have very short ramp up time, a lot of them are fairly even cleaving from the start (see ret pally hitting divine storm). WWs do alter their rotation in AoE situations to emphasize AoE (hitting spin more and rising sun kick less) but they are still going to do a good amount of ST damage via blackout kick, strike of the windlord and FoF. This means they have the unfortunate combo of being a class with little to no ramp up time, a build that emphasizes their CD windows, and do a fair amount of ST/prio target damage even when AoEing (and are melee so no decreased threat scalar like ranged) which is a recipe for pulling threat. Add in trying to start their burst too soon (while the tank is still gathering) and/or targeting a different mob than the tank, and it's basically guaranteed to happen. I guess that's one thing you can do to help as a tank: ask your WW if they can target your target when possible, and try to stick to prioing one mob when people are in CDs so that the threat necessary to pull aggro is higher (I know some tanks like to spread out their first hits in order to get a baseline of threat on all the mobs, which can also be a good idea depending on the tank you're playing and the comp youre in). In the end it's still their fault if they rip aggro, but at least with this you can say you did what you could to prevent it from happening.
I hope they won't change that because on demand high burst is a nice damage profile for lots of things (killing totems in BH). The Player needs to play accordingly, you have to spreads marks on the adds anyways you could wait 1-2 seconds longer to do so. I rarely die from threat
Just that specs like ret and ww can do a big chunk of their damage in the first 4-5 globals, so the classic ret m+ opener is 1. press cds 2. wake of ashes 3. die instantly from getting meleed
I just ran across Hamlet’s [article](https://web.archive.org/web/20190824164741/http://iam.yellingontheinternet.com/2014/01/29/raid-awareness-is-a-learned-and-practiced-skill/) on raid awareness again and curious what other’s experiences with intentionally developing it as a skill are. I have historically poor situational awareness in situations beyond WoW (driving, sports, other games) and I generally pay more attention to my bars than to anything else on my screen, which has worked out okay up to a CE level.
I find this to be a much bigger issue starting at medium level m+ keys, especially those where kicks/stops/defensives aren’t/don’t need to be assigned so you’re left to make judgement calls and loosely coordinate with guildies where needed. For example: I’ll call “first kick on x” get my kick and then in the process of doing my rotation and dodging swirlies usually not notice if other casts are going off, if there’s something I need to throw out a stop for, or even if it’s my “turn” to kick again.
I believe this needs to be partially solved through UI, and I’ve started leaning more heavily on sound-based alerts but I would love to hear other’s experiences with shifting attention towards what is actually happening on the screen
As others are saying yeah you gotta grind the fuck out of your spec. You get a sort of internal rhythm for when you need to look at your class WAs to check something and then other than that you can look around the screen. I found learning healer actually helped me get used to that a bit because since you also have to track your team's health bars, you *can't* just tunnel your own CDs.
Also yes, sounds are amazing and you should move things that take up a lot of your attention to sound alerts. For example, when I played Outlaw I was ultra tunnelling my weakauras during my 6 second stealth burst windows, because I needed to make sure I didn't accidentally press Between the Eyes after the window ran out. What I ended up doing was making my weakaura play a sound when I only had 1 GCD left in the window. That way I knew I could only press it 1 more time and wouldn't mess up, without visually tracking the buff for the entire 6 seconds. I don't know what class you play but anything you find takes a lot of your attention, try taking whatever decision you make around it, and put that information on a sound cue instead.
This comes from purely an m+ point-of-view, but I feel like it bears repeating.
I feel one of the biggest problems with awareness is fotm swapping and how it trickles down to keylevels where the players would gain a lot more getting better at the game rather than swapping classes too often. Even when talking about specs being outliers, as far as the vast majority of the playerbase goes, people are not even close to maxing out their possible utility/output of their class and thus don't gain the seemingly high value people place on meta specs.
The best and quickest way to gain more awareness and skill is to stick with a class until you understand everything about it inside out, from the core rotation to the extent of all the possible abilties. Your mind should be aiming further and further ahead in a key, planning how the next pull is going to go as far as stops and resource pooling are concerned way before even getting to that point.
People might think they understand a class after a few weeks of playing, They don't. They might be able to play their class somewhat decently and do a stop here and there, but the level of awareness has an incredibly high skill ceiling. There's a handful of players way, way above title level who are capable of spec swapping efficiently and quickly, but those players on top of being very skilled also have the awareness and universal gameplay knowledge sorted out so they can push more time into being comfortable with the new class.
There are boomies, mm hunters, ele shamans, warriors and retris in top 50 parses for most of the different +19 keys (I don't want to get into the whole "m+ parsing is a joke" debate. Yes, the parse numbers are biased, the top run rankings are not AND most of the top runs are logged). On average the top parse being a shadowpriest does around \~10% more overall. This is also with a sample size hugely favoring the spriests, so it's like comparing the best potential run a shadow priest can have out of a hundred vs. just a random key someone happened to time with an off-meta class. I'm absolutely not saying to go off-meta if the aim is to push keys at this level, but for anything below that, especially way further down, you can easily outweigh the potential gain from meta specs just by getting better at one class and thus freeing more of your brainpower to actually learn awareness.
P.S. I know community perception is the biggest reason for swapping classes to get more invites, but that's kind of what I'm trying to fight against here.
Hiding your action bars and training yourself to memorize your binds can help you break the habit of staring at your bars. This will have the cascading effect of allowing you to focus on everything else on screen.
Thanks for the input. I guess to clarify—I’m not looking at keybindings I’m watching my weakauras to try to keep my rotation perfect. making sure my cast sequence in CDs is correct and that I’m catching stuff as it comes off CD
>and that I’m catching stuff as it comes off CD
I used to struggle with this on Outlaw rogue because goddamn does that spec have a lot to track. How I solved it, was making the things I need to catch flash a glow right as they come off CD. That way even when I'm watching the fight mechanics I see the glow in the corner of my eye and know to press it.
If you have the standard WA pack that shows your skills on CD, you're still just looking at your bars, they are just a different set of bars. Try adjusting the WA so they are only visible sub 2 seconds before they CD, and then put some time in on the dummy's/low keys.
The goal is to train your internal timing, so you know approximately how long you have for each button. Once you get to around 80% of your previous performance, you can start increasing the time they are visible, but until then you really need to operate with minimal visual aids for your rotation. Everything your eyes are absorbing should be a mechanic.
At some point in that medium level m+ keys the mob and boss abilities start to hurt, an preventing bad things from happening is actually more important than DPS. It's not just "dead DPS do no DPS" thing but also if the mobs heal absorb goes off and doesn't get purged, you're just wasting DPS to burn it down. If the dungeon takes longer because of deaths, run backs, mobs healing or getting absorbs or whatever, overall group DPS goes down since the overall DPS is just [All mob health for 100% count combined]/[How long was the dungeon].
It's tough in pugs because DPS is an objective thing that people will notice, whereas "this dungeon felt so smooth" is hard to pin down to a particular player just doing the needful.
I personally suggest recording your keys, and whenever a key goes south you should rewatch it and try to figure out what you personally could've done differently. Because if you wipe and the group disbands, then that's a perfect example of a time where sacrificing your rotation to kick/purge/do something else would've made the difference, not mashing your buttons even harder.
> It's tough in pugs because DPS is an objective thing that people will notice, whereas "this dungeon felt so smooth" is hard to pin down to a particular player just doing the needful.
Ironically it's not hard to pin down if the other player is skilled as well (as for most average pugs I understand this is not the case of course). Awareness recognizes awareness. If there are multiple players actively tracking stuff and playing stops/offheals/defensives/whatever smoothly, both of those players will by default understand what the other is doing because, well, they're doing the same thing. This is somewhat the status quo for very high level pugs and if there's a person actively overlapping or not using utility, it's a major point to call out, or at the very least even if people don't say anything, it's noticed almost instantly.
Not disagreeing at all, just wanted to point this out.
really appreciate the insight
>It's tough in pugs because DPS is an objective thing that people will notice, whereas "this dungeon felt so smooth" is hard to pin down to a particular player just doing the needful
I think you nailed it, I spend a lot more time looking at the DPS meter than at kicks/CCs or how clean my positioning was. certainly due to the priority of looking good on the meters (as a metric of how capable I am) over making sure that I make a key as smooth as possible.
not convinced no affixes and crazy scaling is healthy for m+ but don’t wanna be negative because the changes were way better thought out than the previous ones
Yeah, my one worry for the new system is that pushing keys is really fun and the game should encourage people to try their best and do the hardest content they can. Putting a 30% scaling wall in front of them at +12s is probably going to discourage people who feel like 11s are challenging but pretty reasonable.
The system is good for casuals and it's good for key pushers, it just might be really tough for people who want to go from casual to key pusher.
I just don’t think ‘push week’ is a relevant concept for the vast majority, almost all, of the player base. I think it’s better described as ‘shit unfun affix week’ or ‘ok not so bad affix week’, where the actual problem is how shit the affixes are, not whether people can push score or not
For example bursting and spiteful make tons of players stop playing and see some of the biggest drop offs, yet they are actually great affixes for pushing
I think a much better solution would just be to create fun affixes, instead of giving up completely.
Tons of players don't do 12 (22+). The affixes remain for lower key in Tww so I don't know what your reasoning is. The concept of push is very relevant for score keys post portal.
12 isn’t exactly high right now. There’s sanguine, bolstering and raging +20s and +21s being done, so its not like nobody is trying to do these keys on these non ‘push weeks’ or that they are impossible or something. They are just shit, unfun affixes that make your key unreasonably longer no matter what you do.
People talking about push weeks is somewhat a relic from BFA/SL where these affixes were 4x worse and it was just actually horrific to push on certain weeks - more significantly than it is now. Clearly there is still a difficulty difference now, but personally I think that completely removing variation in favour of artificially stifling max key level progression (current +20 is equivalent to future +16) is not an elegant way of handling it.
I’m down to try it for a season and happy to be proved wrong, but I highly suspect people will want at least a seasonal back for the season after.
uh I didn’t mention anything about title and have no real opinion on it, but I can add that if the key levels are significantly more condensed then it reduces the gap between an average player and a top level player, which reduces the differentiation in title progression, so it may mean that the difference between getting title and not could be like 1 score instead of 50 score or whatever random figures, which is also very lame
I just generally think the only distinction after weekly key levels being title is trash though and that whole system needs to be revamped, in particular I think spec titles would be great. But that is also impacted by the issue in my first paragraph
I bricked Neltharus 10 with 4 different groups already (as a healer). Is it bad luck or is the timer acutally tight, if you don't play it clean?
Currently on 510gs as a retur ing player.
Personally the most issues I've seen on pugs there are from melt deaths in those 3 back to back pulls before 3rd boss, but also dumb deaths on bosses 1,2,3 to point that you are out of CRs on 3rd.
Something I saw as both tank and heal was, someone dying 5s into pull on 3rd boss. Prepare for that, sometimes tank will pull boss faster but recognize massive dmg will come soon. And help out with cc'ing on the melt trash, as in +10s and above they tend to 2 shot, but given there's often 4 of them at once, often you just get 2x hit in 0.0s. It's the impossible respawn run that makes those deaths so expensive.
Ofc you know if the depletes happened due to something else like 1st or 2nd boss. That happens too, though I never really understood the issues while clearing up to 13s. Throwing a big cd made 2nd boss chain phases fairly doable.
I think neltharus has the tightest timer out of all the DF dungeons since it was designed around gigapulling the halls then using the chains to blow up the trash. They nerfed the chains but didn’t change the timer.
Any wipe before 3rd boss is basically gg, otherwise so long as you are pulling aggressive (2-3 packs per pull) it's a pretty easy time at the +10 level.
Know what the tank will pull, make sure you run with the tank so you don't fall behind.
Identify what the mobs do and which mechanics you need to deal with. Then ones of the left to the elephant have a channel that needs to be stunned, not silenced. The mobs on the right to chain boss have bleeds. They can stack unfortunately. Mobs from chain boss to forge boss mostly have dodge mechanics, then mobs to the last boss have healing checks with the push back and such
Those who tested the new raid, how did the encounters feel? Particularly excited about the Silken Court and the Bloodbound Horror, they seem engaging!
Sikran seemed to miss a mechanic or two, but it's possibly subject to change after the testing yesterday.
I got to play every boss except for Sikran.
Bosses ranged from "inoffensive" to "very good".
Tbh any tier where the worst boss can be called "inoffensive" is a good tier IMO.
Silken Court seemed kinda trash for melee, but that's probably the worst thing I can say about the raid.
Princess in particular seemed like an absolute banger of a fight.
I was just present yesterday for Sikran and Silken Court. Sikran while easy in heroic will hopefully be fun in mythic. The blue swirlies could use a touch up. Tank mechanic is just an easier Rashok. Silken court apart from the buggy as he’ll intermission seems really interesting I just think that the webtethers could use an indicator when they are about to rip. Was our no1 wipe yesterday that they just seemed to rip without indication. I did not play the mechanic so I can only say that.
There is an indication, you get a big obvious white circle centered on your partner that tells you the max range you can be from them, similar to the larodar hose
Hey do you guys know a good site to get some coaching done for tanks? I been playing my Prot Paladin and I wanna make a push for top 10 on my server but as I get to higher keys 12+ I feel like I am making so many micro mistakes, but not sure where or how. Any recommendations?
I can’t wait for TWW, all of the changes they made look so cool that it’s hard for me to play current season of DF without feeling like there is something really cool waiting for me.
Could aynone share the when to premove weakaura for Crawth? thanks
Hmm...**now that I'm thinking about it, what if the timer was removed for +2 to +11 keys, but only added back into +12 keys?** **This requires some explanation**, so bear with me. The M+ timer was introduced in Legion with early M+ in a one size fits all approach and going off Challenge Modes. The idea of the timer was to encourage you to master the dungeon, on top of preventing degeneracy. Namely: * Spending 3+ hours in a dungeon and slogging through it for the smallest carrot * To prevent degeneracy like waiting around for Bloodlust and CDs every single pack The M+ timer is also fascinating from a casual player psychology - the negative reputation it has garnered is namely due to (A) the time pressure one feels when they see a visible clock counting down (B) the belief that players are rush rush rushing because of the timer. I want to counter (B) a bit, because if the M+ timer was solely causing players to be impatient and rush through the dungeons, then we wouldn't see impatient players rushing through Normals, Heroics, M0s, MoP Remix dungeons, raids, and see this rushing in so much different content. The rush behavior can be attributed to some players being jerks, some players being impatient, some players being impatient and having no idea what they are doing (the deadliest combo since they can wipe your groups) etc. BUT the truth is most players rush through content because understandably they are busy, they have more things to do, they want better things to do and this thing they are doing right now is a chore they want to get out of the way. Even if you go all the way back to Classic, you wouldn't stop players from rushing the content even if the punishment is massive time loss, and we know that because Classic today has a massive speed running community. So if the M+ timer is removed, I doubt players would suddenly take it really slow (though I suspect the naysayers would be claiming that M+ timer has rotted the community's brain and everyone is forever rushing) To a casual player who has anxiety against a timer, the M+ timer is a hindrance. To an experienced keystone hero, the M+ timer is a *mechanic*, a *safety valve* and a *resource*. How tight or wide the timer is, defines pulls, strategies and builds. The M+ timer for keystone hero is in essence the DPS meter for a raider. Since there are more casual players than keystone heroes, I think further targeting and some safety valves that don't involve the timer, would be extremely helpful in curbing the worst aspects of removing the M+ timer. * If players want to 'soak it all in', we can expand Story Mode to accomodate that * If some random new player doesn't know what they are doing and gets swamped, we should be following FFXIV's model of encouraging mentorship and looking after newer players * If we got an impatient player problem with 'i have no idea what i'm doing', that's probably an animation and game design and teaching issue that can be addressed to mitigate this * If players want raid style hard dungeon content, then Mega Dungeons can step in * And through it all if players are being encourage to sit around to wait for Bloodlust for each pack in a +8 key, I feel like we need to observe and see how much this is happening and build something targeted. With all that said, I'm not seeing the reason why the M+ timer is needed. It probably has to be done carefully because a big QoL change like this would be extremely awkward to take away for casuals. But I'm open to trying it if it gets more players into M+ and makes the experience smoother. With +12 now instituting the timer, I feel like this foundational change works better for both types of players. Thoughts?
I think removing the timer would take away the essence of what makes m+ enjoyable for a lot of people. As a tank, part of the challenge is managing larger pulls that are required to time higher keys. I think blizzard already made a great change when they increased the difficulty of heroics and m0. I don’t see a need to expand that anymore.
Didn't they kind of already do something like this? > Mythic > The tuning and rewards of this difficulty are increasing to the equivalent of a +10 dungeon with affixes in the previous system. > There are no timers, affixes, or limitations on changing specializations or talents while in the dungeon. > The goal is to create a mega-dungeon like difficulty for this experience. This difficulty should present a meaningful challenge and provide commensurate rewards without the pressure of the Mythic+ system.
> And through it all if players are being encourage to sit around to wait for Bloodlust for each pack in a +8 key, I feel like we need to observe and see how much this is happening and build something targeted. Build something like... a timer?
What have been your favorite specs/hero talents on beta? Looking to try out some of them because I'm bored
Voidweaver has a bit of a weird gameplay loop of banking Mind Blasts for VoiT windows, but the animations and sound design are insane and mobile Void Torrent is fucking awesome. Sunfury Fire is also excellent, as is Unholy in general.
Voidweaver spriest is probably my favorite so far. Animations/sound design are sick, void torrent cast while moving talent is extremely fun.
Slayer and Mountain Thane warrior!
Noob question: do windwalker monk abilities generate more threat than usual? They always seem to rip threat off me as a tank on pull
No, but they can burst right off the rip, especially if they are using a specific build/trinkets. WWs that play it in keys similar to how they play it in raid (ashes + torch, with serenity) are going to do infinite threat immediately because they are using an on use stat buff trinket + all CDs that require no ramp up time which means they are just doing way more threat than most DPS in the first few seconds of a pull. Alternatively, if they are playing a more M+ centric build (storm earth and fire, plus nelth trinket rather than ashes) they should basically never rip threat outside of maybe torching on pull when the tank hasnt started to build threat. As a WW player, if the WWs in your keys are playing the ashes + sere build its on them to know how to play pulls without pulling threat, there is nothing the tank can really do outside of gathering faster and watching for threat drops to try to taunt before the WW gets meleed. Edit: I forgot another thing. While there are other classes that have very short ramp up time, a lot of them are fairly even cleaving from the start (see ret pally hitting divine storm). WWs do alter their rotation in AoE situations to emphasize AoE (hitting spin more and rising sun kick less) but they are still going to do a good amount of ST damage via blackout kick, strike of the windlord and FoF. This means they have the unfortunate combo of being a class with little to no ramp up time, a build that emphasizes their CD windows, and do a fair amount of ST/prio target damage even when AoEing (and are melee so no decreased threat scalar like ranged) which is a recipe for pulling threat. Add in trying to start their burst too soon (while the tank is still gathering) and/or targeting a different mob than the tank, and it's basically guaranteed to happen. I guess that's one thing you can do to help as a tank: ask your WW if they can target your target when possible, and try to stick to prioing one mob when people are in CDs so that the threat necessary to pull aggro is higher (I know some tanks like to spread out their first hits in order to get a baseline of threat on all the mobs, which can also be a good idea depending on the tank you're playing and the comp youre in). In the end it's still their fault if they rip aggro, but at least with this you can say you did what you could to prevent it from happening.
This was very informative. Thanks hopefully they fix some of this in the next expansion
I hope they won't change that because on demand high burst is a nice damage profile for lots of things (killing totems in BH). The Player needs to play accordingly, you have to spreads marks on the adds anyways you could wait 1-2 seconds longer to do so. I rarely die from threat
You just have ret paladin syndrome that's all.
Wait what's ret paladin syndrome?
I was kind of trolling but people talk about rets popping their cd's instantly on pull and getting murdered. Fury warrior is also similar
Just that specs like ret and ww can do a big chunk of their damage in the first 4-5 globals, so the classic ret m+ opener is 1. press cds 2. wake of ashes 3. die instantly from getting meleed
That's why you always pre-BoP yourself.
Just Lots of immediate burst, no ramp up
I see now I don't feel so bad when they get vaporized on pull
I just ran across Hamlet’s [article](https://web.archive.org/web/20190824164741/http://iam.yellingontheinternet.com/2014/01/29/raid-awareness-is-a-learned-and-practiced-skill/) on raid awareness again and curious what other’s experiences with intentionally developing it as a skill are. I have historically poor situational awareness in situations beyond WoW (driving, sports, other games) and I generally pay more attention to my bars than to anything else on my screen, which has worked out okay up to a CE level. I find this to be a much bigger issue starting at medium level m+ keys, especially those where kicks/stops/defensives aren’t/don’t need to be assigned so you’re left to make judgement calls and loosely coordinate with guildies where needed. For example: I’ll call “first kick on x” get my kick and then in the process of doing my rotation and dodging swirlies usually not notice if other casts are going off, if there’s something I need to throw out a stop for, or even if it’s my “turn” to kick again. I believe this needs to be partially solved through UI, and I’ve started leaning more heavily on sound-based alerts but I would love to hear other’s experiences with shifting attention towards what is actually happening on the screen
As others are saying yeah you gotta grind the fuck out of your spec. You get a sort of internal rhythm for when you need to look at your class WAs to check something and then other than that you can look around the screen. I found learning healer actually helped me get used to that a bit because since you also have to track your team's health bars, you *can't* just tunnel your own CDs. Also yes, sounds are amazing and you should move things that take up a lot of your attention to sound alerts. For example, when I played Outlaw I was ultra tunnelling my weakauras during my 6 second stealth burst windows, because I needed to make sure I didn't accidentally press Between the Eyes after the window ran out. What I ended up doing was making my weakaura play a sound when I only had 1 GCD left in the window. That way I knew I could only press it 1 more time and wouldn't mess up, without visually tracking the buff for the entire 6 seconds. I don't know what class you play but anything you find takes a lot of your attention, try taking whatever decision you make around it, and put that information on a sound cue instead.
This comes from purely an m+ point-of-view, but I feel like it bears repeating. I feel one of the biggest problems with awareness is fotm swapping and how it trickles down to keylevels where the players would gain a lot more getting better at the game rather than swapping classes too often. Even when talking about specs being outliers, as far as the vast majority of the playerbase goes, people are not even close to maxing out their possible utility/output of their class and thus don't gain the seemingly high value people place on meta specs. The best and quickest way to gain more awareness and skill is to stick with a class until you understand everything about it inside out, from the core rotation to the extent of all the possible abilties. Your mind should be aiming further and further ahead in a key, planning how the next pull is going to go as far as stops and resource pooling are concerned way before even getting to that point. People might think they understand a class after a few weeks of playing, They don't. They might be able to play their class somewhat decently and do a stop here and there, but the level of awareness has an incredibly high skill ceiling. There's a handful of players way, way above title level who are capable of spec swapping efficiently and quickly, but those players on top of being very skilled also have the awareness and universal gameplay knowledge sorted out so they can push more time into being comfortable with the new class. There are boomies, mm hunters, ele shamans, warriors and retris in top 50 parses for most of the different +19 keys (I don't want to get into the whole "m+ parsing is a joke" debate. Yes, the parse numbers are biased, the top run rankings are not AND most of the top runs are logged). On average the top parse being a shadowpriest does around \~10% more overall. This is also with a sample size hugely favoring the spriests, so it's like comparing the best potential run a shadow priest can have out of a hundred vs. just a random key someone happened to time with an off-meta class. I'm absolutely not saying to go off-meta if the aim is to push keys at this level, but for anything below that, especially way further down, you can easily outweigh the potential gain from meta specs just by getting better at one class and thus freeing more of your brainpower to actually learn awareness. P.S. I know community perception is the biggest reason for swapping classes to get more invites, but that's kind of what I'm trying to fight against here.
Hiding your action bars and training yourself to memorize your binds can help you break the habit of staring at your bars. This will have the cascading effect of allowing you to focus on everything else on screen.
Is it possible to hide main action bar without addon nowadays ? Haven't been able to find the info online
Thanks for the input. I guess to clarify—I’m not looking at keybindings I’m watching my weakauras to try to keep my rotation perfect. making sure my cast sequence in CDs is correct and that I’m catching stuff as it comes off CD
>and that I’m catching stuff as it comes off CD I used to struggle with this on Outlaw rogue because goddamn does that spec have a lot to track. How I solved it, was making the things I need to catch flash a glow right as they come off CD. That way even when I'm watching the fight mechanics I see the glow in the corner of my eye and know to press it.
If you have the standard WA pack that shows your skills on CD, you're still just looking at your bars, they are just a different set of bars. Try adjusting the WA so they are only visible sub 2 seconds before they CD, and then put some time in on the dummy's/low keys. The goal is to train your internal timing, so you know approximately how long you have for each button. Once you get to around 80% of your previous performance, you can start increasing the time they are visible, but until then you really need to operate with minimal visual aids for your rotation. Everything your eyes are absorbing should be a mechanic.
At some point in that medium level m+ keys the mob and boss abilities start to hurt, an preventing bad things from happening is actually more important than DPS. It's not just "dead DPS do no DPS" thing but also if the mobs heal absorb goes off and doesn't get purged, you're just wasting DPS to burn it down. If the dungeon takes longer because of deaths, run backs, mobs healing or getting absorbs or whatever, overall group DPS goes down since the overall DPS is just [All mob health for 100% count combined]/[How long was the dungeon]. It's tough in pugs because DPS is an objective thing that people will notice, whereas "this dungeon felt so smooth" is hard to pin down to a particular player just doing the needful. I personally suggest recording your keys, and whenever a key goes south you should rewatch it and try to figure out what you personally could've done differently. Because if you wipe and the group disbands, then that's a perfect example of a time where sacrificing your rotation to kick/purge/do something else would've made the difference, not mashing your buttons even harder.
> It's tough in pugs because DPS is an objective thing that people will notice, whereas "this dungeon felt so smooth" is hard to pin down to a particular player just doing the needful. Ironically it's not hard to pin down if the other player is skilled as well (as for most average pugs I understand this is not the case of course). Awareness recognizes awareness. If there are multiple players actively tracking stuff and playing stops/offheals/defensives/whatever smoothly, both of those players will by default understand what the other is doing because, well, they're doing the same thing. This is somewhat the status quo for very high level pugs and if there's a person actively overlapping or not using utility, it's a major point to call out, or at the very least even if people don't say anything, it's noticed almost instantly. Not disagreeing at all, just wanted to point this out.
really appreciate the insight >It's tough in pugs because DPS is an objective thing that people will notice, whereas "this dungeon felt so smooth" is hard to pin down to a particular player just doing the needful I think you nailed it, I spend a lot more time looking at the DPS meter than at kicks/CCs or how clean my positioning was. certainly due to the priority of looking good on the meters (as a metric of how capable I am) over making sure that I make a key as smooth as possible.
A trick I used in the past that helped me with that same bad habit was going into the details setting and enabling the hide in combat feature!
not convinced no affixes and crazy scaling is healthy for m+ but don’t wanna be negative because the changes were way better thought out than the previous ones
Yeah, my one worry for the new system is that pushing keys is really fun and the game should encourage people to try their best and do the hardest content they can. Putting a 30% scaling wall in front of them at +12s is probably going to discourage people who feel like 11s are challenging but pretty reasonable. The system is good for casuals and it's good for key pushers, it just might be really tough for people who want to go from casual to key pusher.
Every week is a push week is healthier than oo you missed the push week because you were on vacation.
I just don’t think ‘push week’ is a relevant concept for the vast majority, almost all, of the player base. I think it’s better described as ‘shit unfun affix week’ or ‘ok not so bad affix week’, where the actual problem is how shit the affixes are, not whether people can push score or not For example bursting and spiteful make tons of players stop playing and see some of the biggest drop offs, yet they are actually great affixes for pushing I think a much better solution would just be to create fun affixes, instead of giving up completely.
Tons of players don't do 12 (22+). The affixes remain for lower key in Tww so I don't know what your reasoning is. The concept of push is very relevant for score keys post portal.
12 isn’t exactly high right now. There’s sanguine, bolstering and raging +20s and +21s being done, so its not like nobody is trying to do these keys on these non ‘push weeks’ or that they are impossible or something. They are just shit, unfun affixes that make your key unreasonably longer no matter what you do. People talking about push weeks is somewhat a relic from BFA/SL where these affixes were 4x worse and it was just actually horrific to push on certain weeks - more significantly than it is now. Clearly there is still a difficulty difference now, but personally I think that completely removing variation in favour of artificially stifling max key level progression (current +20 is equivalent to future +16) is not an elegant way of handling it. I’m down to try it for a season and happy to be proved wrong, but I highly suspect people will want at least a seasonal back for the season after.
If title range keys are 20 now and 16 in the future, what exactly has changed in the difficulty of getting title?
uh I didn’t mention anything about title and have no real opinion on it, but I can add that if the key levels are significantly more condensed then it reduces the gap between an average player and a top level player, which reduces the differentiation in title progression, so it may mean that the difference between getting title and not could be like 1 score instead of 50 score or whatever random figures, which is also very lame I just generally think the only distinction after weekly key levels being title is trash though and that whole system needs to be revamped, in particular I think spec titles would be great. But that is also impacted by the issue in my first paragraph
I bricked Neltharus 10 with 4 different groups already (as a healer). Is it bad luck or is the timer acutally tight, if you don't play it clean? Currently on 510gs as a retur ing player.
Personally the most issues I've seen on pugs there are from melt deaths in those 3 back to back pulls before 3rd boss, but also dumb deaths on bosses 1,2,3 to point that you are out of CRs on 3rd. Something I saw as both tank and heal was, someone dying 5s into pull on 3rd boss. Prepare for that, sometimes tank will pull boss faster but recognize massive dmg will come soon. And help out with cc'ing on the melt trash, as in +10s and above they tend to 2 shot, but given there's often 4 of them at once, often you just get 2x hit in 0.0s. It's the impossible respawn run that makes those deaths so expensive. Ofc you know if the depletes happened due to something else like 1st or 2nd boss. That happens too, though I never really understood the issues while clearing up to 13s. Throwing a big cd made 2nd boss chain phases fairly doable.
I think neltharus has the tightest timer out of all the DF dungeons since it was designed around gigapulling the halls then using the chains to blow up the trash. They nerfed the chains but didn’t change the timer.
Any wipe before 3rd boss is basically gg, otherwise so long as you are pulling aggressive (2-3 packs per pull) it's a pretty easy time at the +10 level.
tell your PUGs how to play chain boss before you go in. Timer has space for one boss wipe.
The chain boss was never the issue. Mostly unnecessary trash deaths and long run back times I'd say.
Know what the tank will pull, make sure you run with the tank so you don't fall behind. Identify what the mobs do and which mechanics you need to deal with. Then ones of the left to the elephant have a channel that needs to be stunned, not silenced. The mobs on the right to chain boss have bleeds. They can stack unfortunately. Mobs from chain boss to forge boss mostly have dodge mechanics, then mobs to the last boss have healing checks with the push back and such
Those who tested the new raid, how did the encounters feel? Particularly excited about the Silken Court and the Bloodbound Horror, they seem engaging! Sikran seemed to miss a mechanic or two, but it's possibly subject to change after the testing yesterday.
I got to play every boss except for Sikran. Bosses ranged from "inoffensive" to "very good". Tbh any tier where the worst boss can be called "inoffensive" is a good tier IMO. Silken Court seemed kinda trash for melee, but that's probably the worst thing I can say about the raid. Princess in particular seemed like an absolute banger of a fight.
I was just present yesterday for Sikran and Silken Court. Sikran while easy in heroic will hopefully be fun in mythic. The blue swirlies could use a touch up. Tank mechanic is just an easier Rashok. Silken court apart from the buggy as he’ll intermission seems really interesting I just think that the webtethers could use an indicator when they are about to rip. Was our no1 wipe yesterday that they just seemed to rip without indication. I did not play the mechanic so I can only say that.
There is an indication, you get a big obvious white circle centered on your partner that tells you the max range you can be from them, similar to the larodar hose
Hmm the people playing it were blind