Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Raiding in WOTLK

Well, I have nothing to do so I thought I put down my thoughts on raiding in the next expansion. It looks like you can do anything with 10 people (though that isn't for certain). In reality there probably will be no more than three of four (at most) 25 man raid guilds on the server. I'm sure more will try, but they'll fail.

I've said before I worry a bit about being a moonkin in a pure 10 man raid, I'm way better in a 25 man. The new balance talents on the test servers give a couple of nice buffs for group usefulness, but how it compares to the other classes I don't know.

I also worry about how Blizzard plans on handling the loot situation. My plan is stay balance, does that mean I'm doing entire raids where no "moonkin" gear drops. I'm thinking badges will be around and I can get gear that way, but I'm still at a disadvantage. I might need to spend badges on 75% of my gear. If it's like ZA and the matching set through badges, it will suck. One drop, everything else badges, for rogues only 4 badges items and the rest drops.

The other loot concern is that at this point they are planning to make 25 man loot better. Does that mean 10 mans will be less challenging? It could also be more difficult if the bosses are of equal level but your gear isn't as good.

For a ten man raid team to work you need to be a team. Classes who can fill more than one roll but don't, don't fit in my mind. If you are going to have a small group that means hybrids need to build up their other gear sets without taking gear that people will need for their main set.

For my money a balance druid would have the most painful route to go. Gearing to be useful to heal, tank and do melee dps in case I'm needed is a lot of work. I'm never going to respec because we need a kitty druid for something, but if I need to be feral for off tanking I need to able to push decent dps when I'm not. I'm going to try my best to keep up on this, I don't want a week of raids called because we have a couple of tanks or healers who are gone and we don't have someone to fill in. (I've seen this happen more than once).

Loot distribution is a minor concern, I'd love to be on a team that is looking for the team to gear up not individually. People passing on gear to someone who it is a bigger upgrade or it is better for them. No holy paladins rolling for spirit please if even if at the time it's a bigger upgrade for the paladin. Blizzard made something designed for you, grab that instead please.

I personally like the idea of getting tanks geared first. As we were first tackling HKM I was always hoping that if our mt didn't win the token for his shoulders that I would so I could give them to him. My dps is useless if he dies. I don't think healers need priority, not because they aren't important but because they are easier to gear, at least in my expierence.

Well, FedEx claims they sending me my computer tommorow, but they are liars so I'm not sure about that. They are on my enemies list, here's a quick run down of the list.

1. Super Bowl 40 officials. Getting into why may make my head explode.

2. Clay Bennett. Loser currently trying to take my basketball team to a minor league town.

3. The "Man". Always keeping me down.

4. FedEx. Takes a week to do 2 day shipping.

5. Roger Clemens/ Bill Belichek (mispelled I'm sure). Cheaters who lie about cheating and call and into question the character of those who accuse them. Cheaters cheat.

That's all.

6 comments:

Honors Code said...

One thing that Blizzard has alluded to is that they want to make gear appealing to more specs.

They are changing Ret Paladins to want Arms Warrior gear and Feral Druids to want Rogue gear for DPS.

One idea that was floated was that they would combine the gear of Ele Shaman/Boomkin. Several ideas have been tossed around, but I don't wish to comment on leaked patched notes or speculation.

It's way too early.

I'm frankly paranoid what will be become of Paladin Tanks, and I'm leveling a Warrior as an insurance policy.

Honors Code said...

An a kinda related note:
In the alpha atm all +healing stats have been replaced with +spell damage/healing with healing spell reportedly to have much higher spell dmg co-efficients.

It seems to be the intention to have all priests/mages/locks share the same gear regardless of spec. How it will work out for holy pallies is stil undetirmined (them still being the only users of caster plate), but it seems Blizzard is working towards the same gear across classes and specs idea.

Honors Code said...

/boink

That would mean that you could use the same gear for both Healing and Boomkin!

Bacon said...

Interesting point on the gear comparisons between classes as Honors eluded too. I'm just curious that to make a piece that is friendly between classes like an elemental shaman and Moonkin it would have to be leather. And if the shaman takes the piece, how does that look when a piece of mail drops later for the same shaman?

As for making the fights different, I was thinking of the samething the other day. I mean how do you tackle a boss pull that has 4 mini bosses attached to him (like HKM)?

Ellevis said...

That's what Hex Lord is right now.

Honors Code said...

@Bacon,

Unless there was a deep Balance talent that allowed the Boomkin to wear mail, but reduced the armor modifier.