US First Lich King 10 Heroic, Blue post

[Boubouille]

US First Lich King (10) Heroic Kill by Adept + Video
On March 15, Adept (US - Dreadmaul) claimed the US first kill of the Lich King in 10-man heroic mode. Congratulations to them!

They also released a full video of the encounter, the encounter definitely looks much harder in Heroic Mode. The 1st part of the video will be available a bit later.

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Blue posts

AE Tanking
Here are ways we could make AE tanking trivial. None of these are things we would actually do, though players have suggested some things dangerously close to them.

-- Challenging Shout has no cooldown. Everything is pretty much taunted to you the whole time.
-- You can tank everything by spamming Commanding Shout. (Back when say warriors tanked the pre-Nef adds, they could do it by spamming Battle or Demo Shout, which generated terrible threat but just enough to actually work on that encounter. Now it really won't work... but it could with the right numbers.)
-- Thunder Clap hits so freaking hard that you hit it once and never really have to again.
-- Thunder Clap puts a dot on everything (stronger than Deep Wounds) so that you hit it once and never really have to again.
-- Defensive Stance has an 8000% threat modifier.

Those ideas would all work if we wanted you to never lose threat. That's not the goal. On the other hand, the goal also is NOT:

-- Some tank classes just generate a lot more AE threat than others.
-- Some tank classes just AE tank a lot easier than others.
-- AE tanking gets harder and harder over time as dps specs gear up.
-- AE tanking is really, really challenging and you're at the constant risk of losing aggro.
-- Just for completeness, I'll add the original one above, which is that you never, ever lose threat no matter what.

What we like about the warrior AE tanking model that is worth extending to other classes without just duplicating the warrior abilities:

-- You hit more than one button.
-- You hit different buttons than you do when handling single targets.
-- You have to pay attention to crowd controlled targets.
-- You don't totally ignore your single-target abilities.
-- You might switch targets on some pulls. (Source)

Hunter (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Beast Mastery
If you're talking best possible gear, we think BM is pretty close to Survival in 3.3.3. Marks is ahead, and that's largely a function of armor pen, but again you are talking about absolute best gear. If you aren't in Icecrown 25 hard modes, then gear is likely to have just as much effect on your damage as spec. Ideally, things are balanced at all levels between level 1 and 80 with BiS gear, but there are going to be a lot of points along the way where that's probably not true. We see Survival hunters beat Marks hunters all the time in what I would categorize as average (meaning not server first guilds but capable of progressing) raids. Hopefully we'll see some BM guys up there too, but it may take higher gear levels. (Source)

I would be pretty surprised if guilds doing hard modes w/ access to lvl 80 BiS gear have hunters raiding as BM, or would be happy with a hunter choosing a spec that isn't min/max'd.
My suspicion is that the hunters with the gear you are describing will have a propensity to go Marks, because that currently yields the highest damage and raiders tend to play whatever does the highest damage. In a world without armor pen, that might not be the case (though I haven't done the math lately).

Nonetheless, it is also true today that Marks can beat Survival, and yet there are a lot of Survival hunters raiding. Our hope is that in 3.3.3 that there will be as many BM hunters as Survival raiding, which would be a really nice bump for BM. Maybe the estimates (ours and those I've read) about the boost BM is getting are overly optimistic. We'll see.

It's possible the Survival hunters are only going Survival for Replenishment, though all 3 hunters bring some pretty solid raid benefits these days. (Source)

Warrior (Forums / Talent Calculator)
Shield Block
If you don't think Shield Block is interesting enough today, that's a fine discussion to have. I'm a little surprised to see any nostalgia for the old model though. Hitting a relatively common dps button that plays into other talents and abilities is one thing. Having to constantly mash "make me slightly more survivable" is another. I'll grant you that it was fun on Illidan, but it took that mechanic specifically to make it fun.

Imagine how you'd react to this scenario:

GC: Good news, everyone! We lowered the cooldown of Shield Wall to 5 sec and balanced assuming you hit it every 5 sec.

Tanks: Um.... Thanks? Could you maybe just make it a passive at that point?

GC: But hitting buttons is fun! (Source)

[Cema]

this news was merely a setback

[B@nj0 P3do]

Gief BM changes!

[Dakario]

I guess i have to say gratz to Adept

[salate]

they werent such exited as i thought they could be
but anyway gz Adept

Gief BM changes!

idd gief

[Zero44556]

Grats to them

Also, "bane of the fallen king" is one of the best titles yet

[stupid11]

well, we know it's possible if you outgear the encounter by almost a full tier now.

Which means there will be a 25m Hard Mode kill during the 10% or 15% Hellscream buff. Calling it now.

[Phibi]

Ping: 405?

Must be a lotta fun to play like that

[JabJack]

Gz , Adept :3

[Whai]

Congratz to Adept !

[Johvendi]

I thought 10m heroic was supposed to be tuned for 10m guilds. If it took this long for LK to be killed in the US, I have my doubts...

[Tyrania]

Hm. Seems like only idiots post videos without thinking. Great Job Guys - NOT !

Tyrania - For the Horde

[Roflomnom]

Ping: 405?

Must be a lotta fun to play like that

You have no idea.

Gratz on the kill Adept. Show us Oceanic people proud.

[Samin]

Hm. Seems like only idiots post videos without thinking. Great Job Guys - NOT !

Tyrania - For the Horde

What?

[Herecius]

Lol those Adept guys are having way too much fun. PURPLLLLLLLEEEEES.

I thought 10m heroic was supposed to be tuned for 10m guilds. If it took this long for LK to be killed in the US, I have my doubts...

You aren't complaining that it's too hard, are you? Please tell me you're not. Please. Hard is good.

[Viperfang]

1) Heroic LK looks sooooo much more epic than reg

2) BM isn't far off of surv now (played properly), can't wait for my offspec to *almost* be useful again!

[ItachiZaku]

They should do mob scaling with gear and bring back CCing that hasn't been aroudn since early BC.

[Gagdush]

well, we know it's possible if you outgear the encounter by almost a full tier now.

Which means there will be a 25m Hard Mode kill during the 10% or 15% Hellscream buff. Calling it now.

Does this mean that you know how 25m Hard Mode is tuned?

Gratz on the kill.

[Tyrania]

What?

Ever wondered why neither paragon, Ensidia nor us posted a lk10 hc kill video yet ?

[Powell]

could warriors please stop whining about AE tps?

our threat is fine, other classes are just spoiled - take it as a challenge and stop complaining...
if you still want your class to be unique (i for one do) then we dont need to copy other classes all the time.

not everything comes easy, you shouldnt want everything to be easy - it takes the fun out of playing, yet you would all still compain if it became to easy.