Really tired of hearing "Which mage or hunter wants to sit"

[Deleted]

Ditch 25, go 10 for now, hunters are perfectly viable and in 10-man environment you WILL be a core player due to bringing on-demand buffs, misdirect (which is frequently overlooked, but many tacts depend on it or are made easier by it), the ability to taunt, kite, and in general control the field. E.g. on Nazgrim or Spoils our hunter makes the fight 20% easier and smoother just by doing the MD/taunt/kite thing.

In WoD the devs have already stated they will design with the assumption of all classes being represented in a typical Mythic group, so I guess you can expect even more scenarios where specific class tricks like MD and other hunter stuff will be pretty much mandatory.

[Belloc]

Sounds like maybe your guild recruited too many mages and hunters. My group just asks if anyone wants to sit when we want to get someone else in.

Either that, or your raid leader thinks he needs to min-max at this point in the tier and doesn't understand that the raid group probably has much bigger problems than the amount of mages and hunters.

[Spiralphoenix]

Rank 10 brawler at ilvl 440 is harder then killing garrosh hc Proving grounds 44 waves at ilvl 440 is also harder, So I consider myself a world class hunter

Putting myself in FD with the lowest gear arrangement I could find (around 450ilvl -- since I can't remember what kind of DPS one could do back then) nets me around 60-70k DPS. Nibbleh for example requires something like ~112k DPS just to meet the enrage. At 440 you'd probably be at half that, if you're lucky. I would agree that it's harder than garrosh heroic, because that's essentially impossible. Ignoring the fact that your health pool would be abysmal, and getting by shit like the bomb guy would be ludicrously hard, putting the damage requirement aside.

[Kazlofski]

Err imo top end at this point is kinda over, now it's just very good/good guilds working on progress so that arguement for me isn't working.

Time to change guild indeed if you are sick of that, managed to progress perfectly well in SoO in 10 man HC with our 2 hunters + 1 mage, they do very well and we don't really have problems with them.

Sometimes perhaps 1 is out but there is always a minimum of 1 hunter + 1 mage.

[Zenfoldor]

The issue is that only US views themselves in terms of "US-Rank", while EU views it in terms of "world rank"

I don't know that you can speak for all US or EU players. Either way, not really relevant, but just wanted to point out that America makes this game(so don't resent us TOO much).

[Belloc]

I don't know that you can speak for all US or EU players. Either way, not really relevant, but just wanted to point out that America makes this game(so don't resent us TOO much).

Blizzard being an American company has absolutely no relevance in this topic, which you already stated. What's the point of bringing it up?

[Deleted]

I take it your guild is still progressing aye? If so, what I write below is relevant.

Speaking as a guild leader of a 25man Heroic 3 day/week raiding guild (13/14hc, Garrosh nearly dead), I've come to rely on bringing 2 other Hunters (me also being a Hunter - 3 in total) and 2 Mages in for that fight and the more 'difficult' ones before it (Siegecrafter and Klaxxi).
To not bring good players to any raid when you have the option to have them in is stupidity by this stage. I understand for the most cutting edge progress it may be necessary but now, it isn't.
One of our Mages rejoined us after doing this Tier in ScrubBusters, he had all bosses done bar Thok on Heroic when he joined (if I recall correctly - Thok I know hadn't done). Mages were not great on that fight during early progress and subsequently he sat out on 'farm' kills after that clearly. The first week he was back with us, he was in on our Thok kill - no problems.

I have no problem in taking Hunters and Mages provided they're good enough to justify vs a CD class - by doing this we've progressed fairly quickly overall. We killed Siegecrafter in like 110 attempts on Heroic and Heroic Klaxxi in 80 odd attempts, both bosses died faster than the average number of pulls guilds have on them, especially Klaxxi - like I said, this was done by taking who I wanted, class wasn't relevant, and we've done fine.
We're still running 3x Hunter 2x Mage on Garrosh Heroic and had a 24% wipe in phase 4 last night, sure, few more healing CD classes would be nice in certain areas but we make do without because the players who come without CDs are good enough to get a spot regardless.

I'll agree, some fights Hunters and Mages can be sub optimal, on others they excel (and example would be Siegecrafter Heroic, Fire Mages on the belt are good and also Hunters can hit every belt by Disengaging off the pipe every 2nd belt).
If the guys running your guild are basing their raid composition per boss based on the highest ranking 25man guilds, or trying to at least, they're looking at it the wrong way for a guild who are still progressing now.

[TheSerialSniper]

I really think Hunters and Mages deserve something unique to bring. I, fortunately, have the highest single target dps in my raid group, so I feel valuable in that regard, but since my sister is a hunter, the only time she comes close to me is Thok and that's still pretty far below me since a Fire mage can have almost 100% dps on Thok.

Everyone in the raid group brings a valuable raid CD that's used for every fight during progress, except my sister and I. You could argue the buffs, but we have a Guardian druid/lock for sp/crit and my sister brings melee attack speed, which basically only our pally tank and herself benefits from. (Because haste is so good for guardian druids and warriors)

QQ




That's Blizzard's view on it too and it makes me sad. It's very easy to make a spell have different effects in PvE and PvP.

Ya if only when they nerfed rampage they kept the nerf to bgs/arenas only.

[ZyloWolfBane]

Being tryhards at this point is ridiculous, you need to find a better guild that'll actually stay together by the time the next expansion hits. Forcing people to sit out for reasons like this will literally break them up eventually.

[Mesovr]

Rank 10 brawler at ilvl 440 is harder then killing garrosh hc Proving grounds 44 waves at ilvl 440 is also harder, So I consider myself a world class hunter

Yes. However in a game that has its core high end modes based on playing with other people solo achievements dont mean much.

[Glurp]

My guild had 3 Hunters and 2 Mages in for 95% of progression this tier... Maybe you have a player skill issue and not actually a class issue.

[Deleted]

I don't know that you can speak for all US or EU players. Either way, not really relevant, but just wanted to point out that America makes this game(so don't resent us TOO much).

Another US citizen that thinks "America" means the United states of America.

[Dracodraco]

I don't know that you can speak for all US or EU players. Either way, not really relevant, but just wanted to point out that America makes this game(so don't resent us TOO much).

Probably not, but when have you last time seen EU players advertise their guild as "top XX EU" rather than "top XX west/world"?
That said, the reason I said it wasn't to incite EU vs US, but rather to give an idea of why alot of people probably wouldn't see US 33 as being "top end", when it's actually well outside of the top 100 when including the EU.

with that being said, it is true that for some guilds at this level of progress, player skill will mean more than class.
However, what this means is that you, as a player, would be playing in a guild that's "beneath" you. If your performance is good enough to being brought over boomkins, warlocks, elemental shamans and the like, it means you're playing at a far higher level than *they* are, in which case you have to consider if you really want to be in a guild where you are dragging people along behind you.

I would also argue, that if you are on the same level as the remainder of your guild, the GM is making the right decision by sitting you for anything with a CD.
After all, the reason encounters get easier and easier over time isn't because people suddenly become better at not standing in shit (sure, getting used to a fight helps, but that's what progressing a boss is there for). The reason it becomes easier and easier is higher output. Some guilds have the output in the gear they arrive at the bosses in (EG, first garrosh heroic kill was 567 avg ilvl or so if I recall correct) - other guilds need higher item levels to help them bridge the gap in output that are hindering them from completing the encounter.

If this is true, then you'd imagine that the need for CD's remain the same. After all, if let's say, method needed 2M effective HPS during an encounter, but could only deliver 1.5M, and had to make up for 500K through CD's - the exact same will hold true for a guild that reaches the boss with 5, or even 10 item levels more. As the relative strength of the guild increases to be on par with the guild that killed the boss earlier, the need for cooldowns would remain the same. Only if the slower guild gets so much gear that it becomes STRONGER than the faster guild by the time they reach the boss, do they reach a point where cooldowns can be dropped.

Of course, this simplifies it all a great deal - I am fully well aware that you can easily have players that are as skilled as a top 10 guild in a guild, yada yada. The point of the argument remains the same, though - just because you get more gear does not neccessarely devalue the need, nor usefullness of a raid cooldown. Every cooldown brought is a means to beating a boss with a slightly lower gear level, because it gives you a boost. Missing 3% dps on thok? Try replacing your mage with a ret paladin that does roughly the same DMG, but gets to let casters freecast for 12-18 more seconds during the fight. Or take in a warrior with crit banner+demo banner+rallying cry, and have your healers throw a few more casts in there to DPS the boss because you have an additional CD.

The only point where raid CD's start to become irrellevant, is when the class is clearly stronger in DPS - warlocks above 1 for the healthstone and portal (let's face it, no encounters this tier actually needs more than one portal) are basicly just a pure DPS with no real utility in the grand scheme of things. But their DPS is so over the top idioticly high, that nobody cares. Hunters and mages can't even begin to compete with it - and that's where the problem lies. When hunters are doing equal damage to a class like a boomkin who brings a raid cooldown and raid utility in the form of roar and basicly the same utility in terms of CC (ursol's, typhoon, AOE slow etc), there just isn't a competition anymore.

[Pennoyer]

I take it your guild is still progressing aye? If so, what I write below is relevant.

Speaking as a guild leader of a 25man Heroic 3 day/week raiding guild (13/14hc, Garrosh nearly dead), I've come to rely on bringing 2 other Hunters (me also being a Hunter - 3 in total) and 2 Mages in for that fight and the more 'difficult' ones before it (Siegecrafter and Klaxxi).
To not bring good players to any raid when you have the option to have them in is stupidity by this stage. I understand for the most cutting edge progress it may be necessary but now, it isn't.
One of our Mages rejoined us after doing this Tier in ScrubBusters, he had all bosses done bar Thok on Heroic when he joined (if I recall correctly - Thok I know hadn't done). Mages were not great on that fight during early progress and subsequently he sat out on 'farm' kills after that clearly. The first week he was back with us, he was in on our Thok kill - no problems.

I have no problem in taking Hunters and Mages provided they're good enough to justify vs a CD class - by doing this we've progressed fairly quickly overall. We killed Siegecrafter in like 110 attempts on Heroic and Heroic Klaxxi in 80 odd attempts, both bosses died faster than the average number of pulls guilds have on them, especially Klaxxi - like I said, this was done by taking who I wanted, class wasn't relevant, and we've done fine.
We're still running 3x Hunter 2x Mage on Garrosh Heroic and had a 24% wipe in phase 4 last night, sure, few more healing CD classes would be nice in certain areas but we make do without because the players who come without CDs are good enough to get a spot regardless.

I'll agree, some fights Hunters and Mages can be sub optimal, on others they excel (and example would be Siegecrafter Heroic, Fire Mages on the belt are good and also Hunters can hit every belt by Disengaging off the pipe every 2nd belt).
If the guys running your guild are basing their raid composition per boss based on the highest ranking 25man guilds, or trying to at least, they're looking at it the wrong way for a guild who are still progressing now.

Yeah, I really agree w/ this post. After a certain point you bring too many raid CDs.. if you need a billion raid CDs and can't afford to bring hunters or mages then you're just using them as a crutch and aren't taking advantage of some of the things those other classes bring (and are possibly wiping because you lack a diverse toolbox). Hunters and mages are great for Thok (despite all that hoopla early on about mages being terrible for thok), Siegecrafter, and Paragons. Hunters give your raid "on-demand" DPS, which is good for stuff like target switching to sparks on Spoils or picking off that stray mine who wants to hug your group. Using and providing deterrence is good for Malkorok. Not sure about Garrosh since we haven't gotten there yet, but I imagine both classes are good there as well.

A lot of this stuff doesn't fall under the 'let me push my button and heal for 4 million', but you only need so many of those buttons. Other classes can bring things to diversify what your raid is capable of-it becomes a problem only when you start bringing TOO much of 1 class either way.

I'm actually really interested in learning how you guys killed Paragons in so few pulls. Siegecrafter just took us a similar number of pulls and we started Paragons but we haven't had a chance to really dig deep into it because of the holidays.

- - - Updated - - -

0

The only point where raid CD's start to become irrellevant, is when the class is clearly stronger in DPS - warlocks above 1 for the healthstone and portal (let's face it, no encounters this tier actually needs more than one portal) are basicly just a pure DPS with no real utility in the grand scheme of things. But their DPS is so over the top idioticly high, that nobody cares. Hunters and mages can't even begin to compete with it - and that's where the problem lies. When hunters are doing equal damage to a class like a boomkin who brings a raid cooldown and raid utility in the form of roar and basicly the same utility in terms of CC (ursol's, typhoon, AOE slow etc), there just isn't a competition anymore.

Warlocks are OP which is just a problem in itself, but IDK how boomkins compare. A boomkin can bring amazing 3 minute burst, but otherwise lack in single target and are horrendously impacted by movement or needing to do other things that don't involve them getting from eclipse to eclipse (and causing NG to fall off). Hunters have much better sustained damage, bring an easier to use AOE slow (I kept having to blow 8 GCDs just to drop a massive amount fungal growth on Siegecrafter so everyone else can have fun AOEing, in part because we don't have hunters ), and full DPS regardless of movement.

The point is we all are good at different things, and then Warlocks are better than us.

[Dracodraco]

Warlocks are OP which is just a problem in itself, but IDK how boomkins compare. A boomkin can bring amazing 3 minute burst, but otherwise lack in single target and are horrendously impacted by movement or needing to do other things that don't involve them getting from eclipse to eclipse (and causing NG to fall off). Hunters have much better sustained damage, bring an easier to use AOE slow (I kept having to blow 8 GCDs just to drop a massive amount fungal growth on Siegecrafter so everyone else can have fun AOEing, in part because we don't have hunters ), and full DPS regardless of movement.

The point is we all are good at different things, and then Warlocks are better than us.

If you think boomkins are bad at singletarget dps compared to a hunter, I don't know what to tell you I guess. The highest hunter on Juggernaut is at 465K, with the highest boomkin at 455K - and the highest hunter on Malkorok is at 446K, with the highest boomkin at 456K. Clearly, when the two classes get to just singletarget, they're about equal (within 1-2% of each other).
Sure, hunters has the ability to move and dps, but the majority of encounters where you are forced to move often enough that you can't rely on starsurge procs for boomkins (AKA siegecrafter and Paragons) have multiple targets for you to dot up to proc more starsurges, leading to little to no real difference if played well - you'd be spending your movement dotting up secondary targets to boost your main dps (or help clearing up adds).
On fights like Garrosh where you need multidotting to get the weapons down, or utility like the roars or tranqs vs the empowered whirls (CoS+tranq from boomkin ftw), having a boomkin over a hunter just is far better.
As for the AOE slow, being able to place it in a line rather than just a circular area is a big plus. But even if you decide to not consider aoe slows, the fact that boomkins have both a knockback and ursols at the same time is silly-good for bombs compared to what hunters get - an AOE stun. With all the different aoe stuns that people have nowadays and are just chugging at the bombs, it'll be on DR in no time. Neither of boomkins abilities have any DR.

In any case, you get the idea. Overall singletarget damage is the same for the two classes, roughly - sure, boomkins might be a bit burstier than hunters (but on most fights, that's a benefit, not something bad), but the overall net damage is the same. I'd much rather have the "incredible singletarget burst" from a boomkin for Skeer/Korven/Xaril pushes on paragons, than the same sustained output from a hunter across all bosses. Sure, the dmg overall ends up being the same, but the boomkin actually helps us push the DPS checks, while the hunter just keeps the status quo.
Pushing all that aside, and boomkins still get to have a "heal the raid for 8M over 8 seconds"-button.

[Raugnaut]

Or you could be a top end guild and realize a raid CD dpser is more valuable than a hunter/mage that brings no CD of equal DPS

"Top End" guilds had 14/14 heroic done a month or 2 ago. ATM, any guild still progressing has enough gear to beat whatever encounter is out there without having to resort to class stacking and such. If such a guild ISN'T beating an encounter due to enrage, either they A) should swap a healer for a dps, or B) make dps preform better.

[Dracodraco]

"Top End" guilds had 14/14 heroic done a month or 2 ago. ATM, any guild still progressing has enough gear to beat whatever encounter is out there without having to resort to class stacking and such. If such a guild ISN'T beating an encounter due to enrage, either they A) should swap a healer for a dps, or B) make dps preform better.

Or C), bring a DPS with a cooldown that makes them able to beat the thing they are struggling with, instead of a DPS without one.
Oh wait, that's what we're complaining about, isn't it? Right. I forgot.

You seem to think that it's not a completly logical decision to make, and I can't fathom why. Do you really think a guild has the option to "make the DPS perform better"? Or, if they are lacking a raid CD, dropping a healer for a person with a raid CD is going to fix... Well, anything?

But just saying it as it is: If the guild is struggling to get through something, the obvious response is "how can we fix this". If fixing it is between the arbitrary option of "making everyone play better so it isn't an issue", or switching a DPS that brings no utility for a DPS who does, guess what the obvious answer is? And that's not the GM, RL, whomever has the authority's fault - the fault lies entirely on class balance, and how blatantly powerfull raid CD's are.

[Zoldor]

My biggest question is if you are 25m why you raid needs to sit anyone for Raid CDs? You should have those covered in spades in 25. You aren't cutting edge or top end if you are still progressing at this point and most fights shouldn't be that much of a DPS squeeze. You've got MONTHS until WoD and you aren't in world first race. Maybe server first race but even still there isn't a reason to bench a mid dps at all. If you need to stack a class to beat a boss at this point someone else is screwing it up for you and its isn't who sims higher in dps that needs to sit.

[Faladrath]

So any US 25man that kills Heroic Garrosh today will be ranked US 33rd. That seems top end to me. Not world first material but I would definitely consider that top end.

And world 118... been brought up already but makes no sense to me why US want to underline their US rank and not world, yes it becomes a better number then but so would it for EU yet most I've seen state world rank not EU rank.Even so I can't see how you feel getting 33rd would be a top-end. It's good, but how is it top-end? The name it self clarify what it means and finishing 33rd in a race is not that. But I'm guessing each to their own and justification on time spent with their own guild etc.

[Pennoyer]

If you think boomkins are bad at singletarget dps compared to a hunter, I don't know what to tell you I guess. The highest hunter on Juggernaut is at 465K, with the highest boomkin at 455K - and the highest hunter on Malkorok is at 446K, with the highest boomkin at 456K. Clearly, when the two classes get to just singletarget, they're about equal (within 1-2% of each other).
Sure, hunters has the ability to move and dps, but the majority of encounters where you are forced to move often enough that you can't rely on starsurge procs for boomkins (AKA siegecrafter and Paragons) have multiple targets for you to dot up to proc more starsurges, leading to little to no real difference if played well - you'd be spending your movement dotting up secondary targets to boost your main dps (or help clearing up adds).
On fights like Garrosh where you need multidotting to get the weapons down, or utility like the roars or tranqs vs the empowered whirls (CoS+tranq from boomkin ftw), having a boomkin over a hunter just is far better.
As for the AOE slow, being able to place it in a line rather than just a circular area is a big plus. But even if you decide to not consider aoe slows, the fact that boomkins have both a knockback and ursols at the same time is silly-good for bombs compared to what hunters get - an AOE stun. With all the different aoe stuns that people have nowadays and are just chugging at the bombs, it'll be on DR in no time. Neither of boomkins abilities have any DR.

In any case, you get the idea. Overall singletarget damage is the same for the two classes, roughly - sure, boomkins might be a bit burstier than hunters (but on most fights, that's a benefit, not something bad), but the overall net damage is the same. I'd much rather have the "incredible singletarget burst" from a boomkin for Skeer/Korven/Xaril pushes on paragons, than the same sustained output from a hunter across all bosses. Sure, the dmg overall ends up being the same, but the boomkin actually helps us push the DPS checks, while the hunter just keeps the status quo.

Like I said, boomkin is AMAZING 3 minute burst DPS, especially with Incarnation and when you lust on pull. Fights last longer than 30 seconds though, and you generally want to kill things that come up in a fight reasonably fast where a boomkin just isn't going to cut it. For example, I can top DPS on Skeer, but then I significantly fall compared to my raid on the next couple paragons. When we get to Garrosh and try to push him into phase 3, I don't think that 2+ million burst DPS I did in Phase 1 as a 470 resto druid-geared moonkin is going to help all that much. Even when CDs are back up the burst isn't nearly that good without the reliable trinket/meta procs that a pull provides for a dot snapshotting class.. which is kind of the problem that blizzard is trying to get rid of next xpac where some classes are doing as much DPS on the pull as they do over the course of the next several minutes.

Constantly drawing fungal growth on the ground was good for our raid, but it came at the cost of me only having like 50% nature's grace uptime and thus having like 230K DPS. If a hunter was there to drop his traps and root, and use his significantly superior AoE, that would have been both a raid DPS and mine DPS increase (notwithstanding the fact that belt duty hunters lessen the need to shuffle melee back and forth between the belt and thus increase DPS in that way as well). We actually required more CCs like Vortex because we brought two moonkins to this fight and couldn't just lolAoE the mines down as fast as a comp without us. This is an issue relatively unique to moonkins, though, so it doesn't address the overall point of the thread but I think it's useful in highlighting how you have to look beyond the haves and have nots in the healing CD realm.

In fact, raid CDs have become so prevalent that I don't think losing an 8 minute CD tranq for more unique skillset ends up being all that big of a deal, especially because 3 of the final 6 fights don't require any off-healing CDs at all and Thok is the only one where you'd actually want to stack as much healing as possible. In a 25 man, I'm not sure how much I'm going to believe that an extra non-resto tranq makes or breaks Whirling Corruption. Then again, I've only watched streams of Garrosh progression (though I've not seen anything that would suggest otherwise).

Everything I've read for Paragons recommends against multidotting for Paragons because it's effectively a DPS loss (on the paragon you're trying to kill). Maybe they're wrong, I'm really not sure because I've only just begun this fight and I'm actually a healer having to DPS more due to these last few fights requiring few healers, partly because too many f-ing classes already bring raid CDs such that your raid is loaded with them and actual healers are redundant.