The Highlord's Return Tips

[Deleted]

Quite a few here are arguing that DPS shouldn't matter as a tank, but rather the tanks responsiblity is to "keep the group safe". Well, if you kill stuff, there is nothing to threaten your group, so I don't understand your argument? Maximize your DPS, kill stuff, and your group will be safer quicker. The best defense is a strong attack, or however the saying goes.

By that logic, healers should stop healing and focus everything on dps. In fact, forget tanks and healers, everyone goes dps, the enemy will fall and there will be no need to heal right?

[Deleted]

How far have you guys managed in the prot paladin challenge? It seems like quite a rough one.

Hey! Prot pally ilvl 902 equipped here. I've gotten so far as to ~24% on Phase 2. The thing that keeps killing me is the annihilate shockwave from Kruul. I've tryed blocking it with my bubble but you still get a stack on you.

[Deleted]

"Love" how there isnt any Guardian druid video yet..

Guardian video a few posts above yours.

[Yirman]

By that logic, healers should stop healing and focus everything on dps. In fact, forget tanks and healers, everyone goes dps, the enemy will fall and there will be no need to heal right?

You are absolutely right about my logic in my comment. However, I was intentionally leaving out other important aspects of tanking intentionally to be more provocative in hopes of sparking a discussion. Because in my world, if you have damage tools available, which tanks have, then you ought to make use of them to their fullest potential. If you aren't, you are really just half-assing around, doing your job with your left hand, so to speak. You are making it intentionally harder for your group if you don't use your available kit, and in the current design of the game, tank damage indeed does make a significant difference, especially when we are talking M+ clearing times, for example, but also that .2% extra dmg on that progress boss kill.

What I am trying to say is, if you really want this appearance, then you gotta put some effort into it. The effort doesn't only lie in surviving by avoiding mechanics on the ground and pressing Shield Wall when the boss starts casting his big ability. That is only part of it - the enemy has to die regardless of what, and if you aren't willing to do everything you are capable of in that regard.. Well then you are only making it harder for yourself and your party/raid. Shame on you. It's just how the game works in the current system and has been for a while now. Tank damage matters, just like a DPS still have to avoid dying by dealing with mechanics and using their own personal CD's for those purposes, not much unlike the tanks, except that they specialize in different areas of the same thing.

[Deleted]

You are absolutely right about my logic in my comment. However, I was intentionally leaving out other important aspects of tanking intentionally to be more provocative in hopes of sparking a discussion. Because in my world, if you have damage tools available, which tanks have, then you ought to make use of them to their fullest potential. If you aren't, you are really just half-assing around, doing your job with your left hand, so to speak. You are making it intentionally harder for your group if you don't use your available kit, and in the current design of the game, tank damage indeed does make a significant difference, especially when we are talking M+ clearing times, for example, but also that .2% extra dmg on that progress boss kill.

What I am trying to say is, if you really want this appearance, then you gotta put some effort into it. The effort doesn't only lie in surviving by avoiding mechanics on the ground and pressing Shield Wall when the boss starts casting his big ability. That is only part of it - the enemy has to die regardless of what, and if you aren't willing to do everything you are capable of in that regard.. Well then you are only making it harder for yourself and your party/raid. Shame on you. It's just how the game works in the current system and has been for a while now. Tank damage matters, just like a DPS still have to avoid dying by dealing with mechanics and using their own personal CD's for those purposes, not much unlike the tanks, except that they specialize in different areas of the same thing.

Shame on me? No, shame on Blizzard and people like you who are trying to make everything about damage. If we continue down this road, we'll end up in a situation where role doesn't matter because everyone is a damage dealer. We've already lost "support classes" (Shaman and Paladins providing buffs at a cost of damage), let's not lose the few roles we still have yes?

[Matthias]

Shame on me? No, shame on Blizzard and people like you who are trying to make everything about damage. If we continue down this road, we'll end up in a situation where role doesn't matter because everyone is a damage dealer. We've already lost "support classes" (Shaman and Paladins providing buffs at a cost of damage), let's not lose the few roles we still have yes?

Where have you been like the last 7 years? It's been this way since WoTLK. Ever since they got rid of threat the games been all about unloading your DPS wad, and less about control. With threat gone, one of the best ways to measure a tank's performance was how much damage they could put out. I mean in TBC a tanks damage was pretty much non existent, WoTLK it was higher, but very small in the grand scheme. I forget how much we did in Cata, but MoP....lol Vengeance.

I'm not a fan of how much damage a tank can put out these days since I often compete with DPS....which makes me wonder WTF they're even doing in the group. But to say healers should be measured by damage is silly. I mean yea these days if they have free globals they should do damage, unless your a Disc Priest they can't heal and DPS simultaneously. Where as tanks can hold aggro, mitigate and do damage all at once. Most tanks do abysmal damage, so maybe this challenge will show them how to push their class further.

[Deleted]

Where have you been like the last 7 years? It's been this way since WoTLK. Ever since they got rid of threat the games been all about unloading your DPS wad, and less about control. With threat gone, one of the best ways to measure a tank's performance was how much damage they could put out. I mean in TBC a tanks damage was pretty much non existent, WoTLK it was higher, but very small in the grand scheme. I forget how much we did in Cata, but MoP....lol Vengeance.

I'm not a fan of how much damage a tank can put out these days since I often compete with DPS....which makes me wonder WTF they're even doing in the group. But to say healers should be measured by damage is silly. I mean yea these days if they have free globals they should do damage, unless your a Disc Priest they can't heal and DPS simultaneously. Where as tanks can hold aggro, mitigate and do damage all at once. Most tanks do abysmal damage, so maybe this challenge will show them how to push their class further.

To me it's just as ridiculous to measure a tank based on damage as it's to measure a healer. It's not their role, it's not their primary objective, regardless of your "ever since wrath[...]". Yeah sure tanks can deal damage whilst mitigating damage, doesn't mean they should ever have to prioritize it over other things.

[Matthias]

To me it's just as ridiculous to measure a tank based on damage as it's to measure a healer. It's not their role, it's not their primary objective, regardless of your "ever since wrath[...]". Yeah sure tanks can deal damage whilst mitigating damage, doesn't mean they should ever have to prioritize it over other things.

Lol of course staying alive is the priority. I mean since my Tanking Artifact was only 35 in 7.1.5 I wouldn't run Devastator on Guldan Heroic. I mean I could, but I was liable to get gibbed by a Fel Scythe, thus I'd go Indomitable for the extra health. 7.2 now that i have the extra 10%, I'm able to run Devastator, and I feel I can contribute to burning Empowered Eyes and Dreadlords better. So yea....once that whole not dying thing is out of the way, optimize damage.

DPS do the same thing honestly. There is an old saying "Dead DPS is no DPS". Often on progression people disable their damage meters because they want to worry about nailing the mechanics first.

[Deleted]

Lol of course staying alive is the priority. I mean since my Tanking Artifact was only 35 in 7.1.5 I wouldn't run Devastator on Guldan Heroic. I mean I could, but I was liable to get gibbed by a Fel Scythe, thus I'd go Indomitable for the extra health. 7.2 now that i have the extra 10%, I'm able to run Devastator, and I feel I can contribute to burning Empowered Eyes and Dreadlords better. So yea....once that whole not dying thing is out of the way, optimize damage.

DPS do the same thing honestly. There is an old saying "Dead DPS is no DPS". Often on progression people disable their damage meters because they want to worry about nailing the mechanics first.

When you no longer need to focus on surviving but switch over more towards dps, isn't that when the content is on farm? And by that point, shouldn't the healers be able to focus more on dealing damage as well? So again, why do you judge tanks based on damage (especially outside of progress, isn't progress the only thing that matters?) but not healers?

[Deleted]

MMOchamp community never fails to amaze me. Le'ts get this clear once for all: tanks are not damage dealers. Good tanks will always optimize damage and try to squeeze out as much dps as they can whenever possible, but that's not their role, and it should not be the focal point of their challenge.
Claiming that a good tank is measured by his dps is simply asinine. Even my dog could spam everything he got at Aluriel to do damage, and then horribly die at the first annhilate. A tank primary job is to mitigate as much as possibile, and THEN to do as much damage as possibile.

Let's make an example about this: you have two bremasters in your raid, A and B equally geared, and you're facing Aluriel. Brewmaster A pushes A LOT more damage than B spamming brews like crazy to get more Special Delivery procs, but when Annihilate comes he needs external and/or extreme healing to be kept alive, and he doesn't know how to solo soak the Felsoul cleave. Brewmaster B deals A LOT less damage than his partner, but spend brews carefully to keep Brewstache uptime and during Annihilates he has enough brews to pause stagger and purify it, resulting in effectively no damage taken. He also know how to solo soak the arcane phase add.
Now to the 1m dollar question: who's the best tank?

This is obviusly an example taken to the extreme, where one tank is barely surviving to deal damage while the other barely deals damage but takes none. Today any at least decent tank can mantain his mitigation while doing damage, but the example still serves the point: a good tank is measured by his ability to mitigate damage/handle mechanics, not to deal it. Is tank damage important? Yes. Is it what define the role? No.

That's why the challenge is a failure under every aspect. It's not a skill check since the whole strategy/mechanic is a joke, it's a number check: come back after 7.2.5 and most people will be able to do it. You're a monkey with no hands and can't do it in ToS gear? Wait for Argus raid, return and roflstomp the scenario.
It's also not a number check in terms of damage input, but only output, since people in 890 gear are failing because they get overrun by adds and/or knocked off, and are not actually dying from anything.

There is no reason to overreact to this challenge and all the salt in this thread, despite justified, is ultimately useless. Those who can't get it now just have to wait a few months for ToS and come back.

[LittleLai]

A tanks job is to provide as much dps as possible without dying

[Matthias]

MMOchamp community never fails to amaze me. Le'ts get this clear once for all: tanks are not damage dealers. Good tanks will always optimize damage and try to squeeze out as much dps as they can whenever possible, but that's not their role, and it should not be the focal point of their challenge.
Claiming that a good tank is measured by his dps is simply asinine. Even my dog could spam everything he got at Aluriel to do damage, and then horribly die at the first annhilate. A tank primary job is to mitigate as much as possibile, and THEN to do as much damage as possibile.

Let's make an example about this: you have two bremasters in your raid, A and B equally geared, and you're facing Aluriel. Brewmaster A pushes A LOT more damage than B spamming brews like crazy to get more Special Delivery procs, but when Annihilate comes he needs external and/or extreme healing to be kept alive, and he doesn't know how to solo soak the Felsoul cleave. Brewmaster B deals A LOT less damage than his partner, but spend brews carefully to keep Brewstache uptime and during Annihilates he has enough brews to pause stagger and purify it, resulting in effectively no damage taken. He also know how to solo soak the arcane phase add.
Now to the 1m dollar question: who's the best tank?

This is obviusly an example taken to the extreme, where one tank is barely surviving to deal damage while the other barely deals damage but takes none. Today any at least decent tank can mantain his mitigation while doing damage, but the example still serves the point: a good tank is measured by his ability to mitigate damage/handle mechanics, not to deal it. Is tank damage important? Yes. Is it what define the role? No.

That's why the challenge is a failure under every aspect. It's not a skill check since the whole strategy/mechanic is a joke, it's a number check: come back after 7.2.5 and most people will be able to do it. You're a monkey with no hands and can't do it in ToS gear? Wait for Argus raid, return and roflstomp the scenario.
It's also not a number check in terms of damage input, but only output, since people in 890 gear are failing because they get overrun by adds and/or knocked off, and are not actually dying from anything.

There is no reason to overreact to this challenge and all the salt in this thread, despite justified, is ultimately useless. Those who can't get it now just have to wait a few months for ToS and come back.

I'd replace both tanks tbh if I could and find two that can handle both if Tank B is parsing far lower then most tanks. The DPS nature in tanking is what pushes a tank to their optimal ability while maintaining their mitigation. It's very similar to how TPS worked in TBC. You would itemize yourself to do thee most Threat Per Second so your DPS could do more damage. But any moron back then could just hit buttons while keeping up Shield Block. You knew you had a good tank if you didn't worry as much about pulling aggro. Depending on the fight a tank would mix up survival gear and threat gear. On farm status they would normally prioritize threat gear.

I will say I think it's silly that the challenge can just be outscaled. These scenarios should have really scaled your gear to a given set. I mean I'm pretty sure a Hunter couldn't just out gear the Vanilla Epic Quest....either they could kite or they couldn't.

[Krazzorx]

Scaling gear sounds nice but in practice it always fails because you'll get new trinkets and class changes that makes it easy anyways.

Blade master trinket in WoD for instance.

[Deleted]

Scaling gear sounds nice but in practice it always fails because you'll get new trinkets and class changes that makes it easy anyways.

Blade master trinket in WoD for instance.

THen don't use scaling gear, but the stat sets from PVP??

They just have to copy paste the PVP stat gears (which exclude all trinkets) and adjust the challenge to those pvp stats.

DONE!

You can get it easier by 10lvl mean 1% more dmg, but otherwise everybody has the same challenge.

And Boom you have the perfect setting to compare people.

It's dumb that they didn't use the stat sets.

[v1perz53]

your mobs have half the health the paladin one,. give me a fucking break.

Did you manage to somehow literally skip the first line of my post? I play BOTH A PALADIN AND A DRUID TANK. I've been doing the challenge on both of them. It is stupid that the mobs in the pally one have double HP, but that doesn't really change anything about my post.

[Deleted]

I'd replace both tanks tbh if I could and find two that can handle both if Tank B is parsing far lower then most tanks. The DPS nature in tanking is what pushes a tank to their optimal ability while maintaining their mitigation. It's very similar to how TPS worked in TBC. You would itemize yourself to do thee most Threat Per Second so your DPS could do more damage. But any moron back then could just hit buttons while keeping up Shield Block. You knew you had a good tank if you didn't worry as much about pulling aggro. Depending on the fight a tank would mix up survival gear and threat gear. On farm status they would normally prioritize threat gear.

I will say I think it's silly that the challenge can just be outscaled. These scenarios should have really scaled your gear to a given set. I mean I'm pretty sure a Hunter couldn't just out gear the Vanilla Epic Quest....either they could kite or they couldn't.

When will tank doing 100k less dps ever wipe you, id rather have a good blood dk who doesnt require healing, than good warrior doing l33t dps and requiring constant attention of 1 of our healers.

It was also the same thing in tbc, you had "amazing" tanks capable of holding aggro by using http://www.wowhead.com/item=29962/heartrazor things such as this and being literally paper thin.

[Matthias]

When will tank doing 100k less dps ever wipe you, id rather have a good blood dk who doesnt require healing, than good warrior doing l33t dps and requiring constant attention of 1 of our healers.

It was also the same thing in tbc, you had "amazing" tanks capable of holding aggro by using http://www.wowhead.com/item=29962/heartrazor things such as this and being literally paper thin.

100k DPS aka 100,000 damage every second in a 10 minute fight can add up. A DPS can also lose 100k DPS by focusing on keeping themselves alive, focusing on mechanics. In both scenarios I'd rather someone that can multi task. It's like how I use to not bother enchanting all my gear scoffing at how minimal of a DPS increase it would be, something like 50 DPS. But that's 50 damage per second of the course of a fight, if everyone neglected that it would add up.

[Deleted]

Here is what i got so far as Blood DK (910 ilvl equiped). I only got to p2 two times but it is still more than i expected day 1:
*Velen is not afected by the aura of decay, so you can safely grip the inquisitor to him to make the encounter easier (explained bellow).
*You can dmg the eyes with ANY source of shadow dmg (dont know if any other magic schools work)
*Grip and mass grip works on every mob of P1, that makes easier to position things around.
*You can use gliders if you fuck up with infernals/eyes.

My strat so far:
I am using talents 3/1/1/2/2/3/2
*Blooddrinker is used ONLY for eye killing.
*RD is the only viable talent in the row.
*Ossuary is the only viable talent in the row.
*Red Thirst is the only viable talent on the row.
*Tremble before me helps a lot on interrupting both boss and adds making the encounter easier.
*FB is the only viable talent on the row.
*Last row you can use blood mirror or bonestorm, both are used to kill eyes mainly (you can use BM to push dmg on the boss too, but i dont recommend it).
For Trinkets i use the guldan melee trinket (to kill eyes) and the skorpyron melee trinket (pushing boss and killing adds).
For legendarys i am wearing boots (better mobility) and prydaz (extra survivability).
Basically i pull the boss with grip just where korvas is, making easier to manage the nether guys with just one blood boil (i wiped a lot before doing this just because velen got aggro on the fuckers and died because of the netherstorm). Open with all damage CDs (aka DRW+any trinket if you have a on use trinket taht doesnt do magic damage) and wait until 5-6 stacks then go out. An eye will appear but you can kill it with blooddrinker pretty fast. After this just go out and use D&D on Velen to get the aggro of the nether guys, while doing this you will receive up to three casts of the boss: Deal with the first one, use AMS for the second one, use VB for the third one + getting an inmense umbilicus eternus (there will be boss+4 nether guys with diseases). At this point just go out of the area when the nether guys do netherstorm and deal with any eye it's out, then go in when they finish (check the aura, but you should be clean by that moment). When there is a infernal (or more) just run in circles making sure they are in the aura to lower their health. Also, you can set a "a safe line" of eyes (aprox a 45º cone) where you can be watching every time, it will save a LOT of eye killing, and more dmg to the boss. Don't even bother to dps the adds ever, just dps the boss; adds will just die because of cleave+the aura lowering their health. Doing this i could reach p2; but i was swarmed at that point, probably because i was running blood mirror. At that point i probably could just Bonestorm and kill everything, but i was running BM on both the trys. Also: put an eye on Velens health every time adds do netherstorm, if you see the health going down even a bit just massgrip everything to the boss (if it is positioned correctly, velen should be out of the netherstorm range). Use healing orbs only if you are in a serious danger; otherwise just save the orbs for any fuckup you can do (like entering the aura with 6+ stacks on a mistake). To interrupt the boss use the macro:
#showtooltip
/tar inquisitor
/cast Mind Freeze
/targetlasttarget
Keep in mind you can do this at a range up to 15 yd and you need to be facing the inquisitor.
That's all i got so far and i think it will be almost impossible to get the skin on blood DK this time unless insanely skilled AND geared.
Photo to get a better explanation on how do i position: http://i.imgur.com/ZYNdN9X.png
Good luck everybody and hope it helps.

[KrotosTheTank]

When will tank doing 100k less dps ever wipe you, id rather have a good blood dk who doesnt require healing, than good warrior doing l33t dps and requiring constant attention of 1 of our healers.

When the boss has <36M HP left after a 6 min wipe? or how about when an add has a sliver of HP left before a cast goes off? Should we not just blame the DPS until the end of time when a simple target swap for the tank (which doesn't affect survivabilty btw) would be enough. [insert countless other examples here] When you're tanking in Nelth's lair, do you ignore the pelters because they can't be tanked and therefore require zero of your "pure to the bones" tank role attention? or do you drag the other mobs onto them to maximize damage? The latter sounds like a better tank to me. As a tank you control the fights, the goal is to kill the enemy, that's it.

It feels almost as if people are being obtuse here on purpose. No one is arguing that staying alive isn't first and foremost for a tank, but let's be real here, even on most progression fights, tanks aren't on the bleeding edge of death at every second to the point where nothing else can be looked at. I play a warrior; you better damn well assume I'm going to pick my lvl 45 talent based on the fights to kill it faster, it's a DPS row.

Should tanks just go back to being completely useless in world content because nothing hurts, but we can't kill anything quick enough either? People here, especially By The Emperor, keep talking about our role in the holy trinity as if somehow by us doing more damage changes the fact that we are still the ones getting hit, we're still the ones positioning the bosses, we're still one of the only two players in a raid whose death is truly problematic in nearly every encounter.

Tanks aren't going away just because we can do damage...that's a ridiculous grab at a non-issue. As has been somewhat mentioned, you do realize that the only alternative to scaling the pace of this challenge is to just put a hard timer on to survive for X seconds and then win. That's incredibly boring; when you put a timer on something then it all becomes purely a script, do [this] at x:xx and [that] at y:yy. This encounter gets tougher the longer it lasts, you put a timer on it and then it will always be the same difficulty in the last 30 seconds, no matter what.

The hardest part about this encounter is the DnD and the stacks from Kruul. The DnD is essentially a tank swap mechanic, just without the other tank, you have to manage your stacks and the timing of the stack applications to maximize your up time on the Inquisitor and then you want to maximize the efficiency of your downtime by clearing adds, thus aiding you mechanically. You are crying about how DPS shouldn't matter at all, well, guess what, you still do do damage. If you want to focus purely on survival then you should time everything appropriately and then you can take an extra stack or two from Kruul, thus giving you more time to kill him. If you go pure DPS tank then you probably can't take as many stacks, but you won't have to. Somewhere in the middle there is the ideal setup, but as is extremely common for cutting edge kills (read: under-geared) damage output matters, because skill doesn't matter when you get one shot.

It was also the same thing in tbc, you had "amazing" tanks capable of holding aggro by using http://www.wowhead.com/item=29962/heartrazor things such as this and being literally paper thin.

Speaking again as a warrior; you wanted to have quick weapons back then, it allowed you to do more threat which was a major limiting factor in kill times. Kill times, which btw, were a huge factor in killing a boss because enrage was really the only mechanic you had to worry about on a huge amount of encounters. Why do you think TF was BiS well beyond it's ilvl window? It was a threat machine.

[NanoNikk]

Is Velen supposed to stop spawning orbs in Phase 2 or have he bugged out for me twice now ?