Problem with knowing exact location of cat/boss in a large 25man melee group.

[Deleted]

Hi,

After starting to get the feral rotation on spot and getting to know the fights I realized another major thing to improve on.

The not-so-tall cat-model tends to disappear under other models in boss fights, on certain bosses this is even more of a problem if the boss itself is really small or really large as well.

I sometimes find myself out of melee range / not at the back for a short period of time, especially after focusing a bit on whats going on around me and on my rotation.


How have you got around this, or have you even experienced the same thing?

[crakerjack]

Learn to stand next to the boss then??? or stack on everyone??? I don't see how this should be a problem.

[Greeland]

I understand what you are trying to say. I played a hunter for BC and early Wrath. Then when i switched it up and went rogue for a while I found that on boss fights, when the boss moved at all, if i was focusing on watching my cooldowns etc... that i would be out of melee range and playing catchup. Being a tiny little kitty you are claiming that its hard to even see your own toon in relation to the bosses hitbox and I can understand how that could happen when first learning the ropes.

The answer:

Time. I assure you that as your rotation becomes second nature, so to will your control of your toon on screen.

[Deleted]

Learn to stand next to the boss then??? or stack on everyone??? I don't see how this should be a problem.

Yes, as said, that is the whole problem, e.g. Saurfang is quite hard to locate inside the 25man melee swarm, especially when somebody happens to move him slightly.
If you dont see the boss OR yourself its quite hard to find the right place to stand on, no?

Of course this is mostly a L2P issue, but im wondering if theres something that could be done to make it easier?

[Fenixhart]

Yes, as said, that is the whole problem, e.g. Saurfang is quite hard to locate inside the 25man melee swarm, especially when somebody happens to move him slightly.
If you dont see the boss OR yourself its quite hard to find the right place to stand on, no?

Of course this is mostly a L2P issue, but im wondering if theres something that could be done to make it easier?

Muscle Memory.

Spam a Dummy untill you can do your rotation in your sleep.


Unless it's a Priority one, then you're kinda boned...

[Deleted]

You see his hitbox? The red circle around the boss?
Assuming the boss is turned away from you, standing within the 180 degree span from the leftmost part to the rightmost part of that hitbox, you will be able to shred. As for range, try keeping a melee range to this hitbox; no more than a few yards away. Concentrate on the circle rather than the boss graphics.

[Deleted]

Playing a rogue I know exactly what you mean. When everyone stacks up behind the LK getting ready for the Valks it can be very hard to know your own distance from the boss.

Once your rotation is nailed, try concentrating on the boss and your action bar. Skills you can't use due to the target being too far away will be in red or greyed out or whatever, just move forward until they all go white and then you know you are in range.

On a boss that isn't position critical, just stand somewhere in the half circle behind him, so nobody else is standing on you, and that should make life easier too.

[Aliceinhell]

Question, so you watch your keyboard, or your screen when you play? Need to have a healthy balance & learn your keys by touch alone.

[Cheezee]

Bar mods & raid marks on the tank. If I'm out of range my bars turn red. If I can see the tank's mark I'm on the wrong end of the boss.

[Deleted]

What the hell? You can't use cat-model and feral in the same sentence. I have no idea what you problem exactly is

[Darkdruidelf]

dont tunnel vision. Simple. Go play some pvp and you will quickly learn, through punishment, that tunnel vision=death.

[Deleted]

Question, so you watch your keyboard, or your screen when you play? Need to have a healthy balance & learn your keys by touch alone.

Who looks at their keyboard when playing?

dont tunnel vision. Simple. Go play some pvp and you will quickly learn, through punishment, that tunnel vision=death.

Actually I have done mostly PVP, but there you usually aren't standing in a bunch of 15 melee, especially in arena. So you actually see your enemy and yourself.

Good points on the hitbox, barmods etc. thank you! Going to tweak my graphics settings to try and make the hitbox stand out as much as possible.

[koa257]

even though this is a l2p issue, its still annoying. im a pvp junkie/pve enthusiast. many times dpsing is annoying because u get fat tauren fury warrior with wielding 2 gigantic swords swinging around. just practice on dummies and focus on hit box as the other person stated. and in the end you'll get use to it. this patch is piss easy though. mangle shred shred tf rip rake shred bla bla bla. and u will be top deeps from bleeds. So dont worry too much now, cata will be a brand new learning stage for many peeps

[Rudy]

dont tunnel vision. Simple. Go play some pvp and you will quickly learn, through punishment, that tunnel vision=death.

if you played dk retri paladin in 3.1 tunnel vision=win :P

[The Cat]

Droodfocus addon gives a warning icon if you try to attack either out of range or try to shred when you are not behind the target. Obviously it does a lot more than that as well. Energy bar, combo points, buff/debuff trackers, cooldown trackers... Customize to show only what you want. It's pretty nice.

[Mushy]

A quick tip perhaps:

Assuming you have hunters in your raid, as of late hunters can pretty much go with whatever type of pet they want. Try and pick a big one and stand at ALL times on it. Pets are pretty much ALWAYS max melee range and ALWAYS behind a boss.

That's pretty much the way I do fights while concentrating on my priority queue.

[Clawtrocity]

Pro tip: Tell your entire raid to drink noggenfogger and now they are all smaller which makes you bigger. GG

I'd like to say that was a joke, but it was a serious suggestion.

[Deleted]

There are a lot of addons you can use however I'm loathe to recommend addons as a solution.

Myself? I just have my binds on my mouse. Two buttons under my thumb, two under my pinky, scroll up/down, scroll click, left are all bound to abilities, this leaves my left hand free to move. Why does where my bindings are matter? Well if the boss decides it wants to be on the other side of the room I don't have to preform hand aerobics to keep spamming Q,E,F,R,Shift+1 etc etc while I'm also holding W,A,S,D.

My UI is also massive, like really, it's way too big I've no idea why I don't scale it down but I can see the colours of the icons in the bottom of my vision while I play. You can also use something like bad kitty to keep track of cooldowns mid screen too - I used it for a while but I've an ingrained prejudice against addons so I just learned to time my moves with only the occasional glance at the bar.

You just need to get comfortable with your rotation - no one needs you to do hardcore maths in your head but knowing the rough times does separate the men from the boys on dps meters.

[utopianh]

My only issue on hitbox is feral's wonky one. I've been pvping and raiding for years on the feral, but when they introduced Death Bringer's Will, my native sense of being in the proper range was thrown completely off, and suddently I would be out of range when the trinket procs. You actually have a bit more leeway to stand out side of the pack and further back than other melee; at the same token you'll have problems if you stand too close, so unless you're running DBW just stand back a little bit further and you'll be fine.

[Wraith]

yeh this is a issue specific to ferals really cause for some reason we still have a "behind the boss" main ability. IMO should have changed it with Mutilate...anways.
My way round this is to attack from the side of the boss, its still classed as behind. Rotations feral by night is good one i use for rotations.