Taloquin posted:

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Assuming of course Blizzard gets their heads out of their asses and realizes that there is something wrong with Ret.

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Auenwing posted:

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PS: for the sake of the thread, I will say: if I end up back in PuGs again (which I probably will), you can bet, I will bring either my druid or pally as DPS with an ability to backup heal. I've learned, that's the best all around contribution I can make to a PuG (outside of tanking)... somebody sitting in the back (or up front) keeping an extra eye on on mobs and everyone's health bars, including the healer.

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Quazimortal posted:

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Auenwing posted:

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PS: for the sake of the thread, I will say: if I end up back in PuGs again (which I probably will), you can bet, I will bring either my druid or pally as DPS with an ability to backup heal. I've learned, that's the best all around contribution I can make to a PuG (outside of tanking)... somebody sitting in the back (or up front) keeping an extra eye on on mobs and everyone's health bars, including the healer.

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Druid healing is very broken right now in case you didn't know.

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PallyDog posted:

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TANK!! Sprawl, your kind of role makes me nuts. If a dps starts acting like a tank I stop tanking and let them die. Sometimes it takes a few times before they get it. Since I usually run with a pocket healer who knows what I'm doing they die fast. Really fast!


Lately I've wanted to play a mindless dps. That way I jsut jsut go pew pew pew and have no one seriously depending on me for the success of the group. As long as I don't screw up, I can just follow along instead of leading. It's nice change of pace from my normal "I'm the tank that's why. Now shut up and follow kill order" mind set.

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Auenwing posted:

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Quazimortal posted:

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Auenwing posted:

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PS: for the sake of the thread, I will say: if I end up back in PuGs again (which I probably will), you can bet, I will bring either my druid or pally as DPS with an ability to backup heal. I've learned, that's the best all around contribution I can make to a PuG (outside of tanking)... somebody sitting in the back (or up front) keeping an extra eye on on mobs and everyone's health bars, including the healer.

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Druid healing is very broken right now in case you didn't know.

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No, I didn't know. I've been healing 4 of us as we go through instances from 80-84. When does it start breaking? <serious question>

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LordHalcyon posted:

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I've not seen it either. We've got 2 druid healers in our core group and they seem to have no trouble.

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Auenwing posted:

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Quazimortal posted:

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Auenwing posted:

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PS: for the sake of the thread, I will say: if I end up back in PuGs again (which I probably will), you can bet, I will bring either my druid or pally as DPS with an ability to backup heal. I've learned, that's the best all around contribution I can make to a PuG (outside of tanking)... somebody sitting in the back (or up front) keeping an extra eye on on mobs and everyone's health bars, including the healer.

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Druid healing is very broken right now in case you didn't know.

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No, I didn't know. I've been healing 4 of us as we go through instances from 80-84. When does it start breaking? <serious question>

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Taloquin posted:

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LordHalcyon posted:

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I've not seen it either. We've got 2 druid healers in our core group and they seem to have no trouble.

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Agreed. I've rarely run into bad druid healers, especially in my guild raid group where we have 2 of them as well. From time to time it happens, but almost always in LFD runs with baddie druid healers. The rest of the time the druids that know what they are doing only go OOM when something goes drastically wrong, like broken CC or DPS that like to pull.

As for the poster earlier who said he's usually the top dps of his group as a ret paladin... if that's the case, the rest of your group sucks. Ret is far too reliant on random procs. Sure, sometimes ret pallies can do stupid crazy dps when the stars and planets align. But that doesn't happen often. It's gone back to the days of waiting for Command procs, but now it just uses more buttons.

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Urk_VN posted:

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I know, some of you may not group ever because grouping is for losers, but for those of you that do, what role do you typically like to play?

I'm an altoholic, so I like to play several classes, partly to learn how the class works, but mostly to keep gameplay varied, since a mage plays differently from a warrior.

Usually I like to tank, because it's normally the easiest role overall. Some groups I've run with are obsessed with high DPS, which is understandable to a point (which helps explain why Blizzard keeps making instances so that only cookie-cutter high DPS specs are viable even though they try to say otherwise), but as a tank, your only job is to worry about making sure the mobs beat on you instead of your group. I seem to enjoy tanking on my paladin the most, since they have the most tools to play with as far as holding aggro on multiple mobs and can self-heal if needed.

I suppose healing is my least liked role. I can perform it, but I'm not terribly good at healing multiple peeps getting hurt at once. And if the tank is really good, then playing a healer is boring because you don't have much to do either lol, but that's not always a bad thing.

So what do you usually like to play, and why?

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Quazimortal posted:

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Auenwing posted:

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Quazimortal posted:

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Druid healing is very broken right now in case you didn't know.

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No, I didn't know. I've been healing 4 of us as we go through instances from 80-84. When does it start breaking? <serious question>

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Our druid healer has a lot of trouble in heroics. Always running out of mana, heals not healing for enough, etc. It got to the point where she quit playing the druid and switched over to her disc priest.

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Sprawl-zero1eye- posted:

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Haha, I jokingly play that role at times when we killing trash, although the guild will attest that I main tanked a full Karazhan run back as a Combat Rogue in a full 101% dodge suit, before dodge was nerfed...

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Auenwing posted:

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Hmmm, I switched from my disc priest to the druid to heal as we were leveling. Sounds like the same concerns from priests. Thanks for the heads up. Looks like I need to collect more data for myself and for the guild, (not doubting your statement). My guess is we will end up using a shaman through heroics again, which frees me up to play my DK for the most part, which is the class everyone wants me playing... however, I am skeptical about that as well. We've rerun instances with me on my frost DK and my hubby healing on his priest (and he's finding mana an issue as he gets higher in levels). My DK works just fine through regulars, but once again, those aren't heroics.

I think we're gonna end up leveling a couple of extra alts each until we get a group combo that works again.

That should keep us "busy" for a bit.

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Quazimortal posted:

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Auenwing posted:

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Hmmm, I switched from my disc priest to the druid to heal as we were leveling. Sounds like the same concerns from priests. Thanks for the heads up. Looks like I need to collect more data for myself and for the guild, (not doubting your statement). My guess is we will end up using a shaman through heroics again, which frees me up to play my DK for the most part, which is the class everyone wants me playing... however, I am skeptical about that as well. We've rerun instances with me on my frost DK and my hubby healing on his priest (and he's finding mana an issue as he gets higher in levels). My DK works just fine through regulars, but once again, those aren't heroics.

I think we're gonna end up leveling a couple of extra alts each until we get a group combo that works again.

That should keep us "busy" for a bit.

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It could always just be the aches and pains of learning a new way of healing of course, but she's a good healer and has played a resto druid for a long time now which makes it hard for me to believe they aren't broke as hell. She can heal heroics with very little troubles on her disc priest and that is with less mana regen.

On a brighter note, I'm really liking how holy paladins turned out at 85 my self. The change nerfed me really hard at 80 but when you get to 85 and decently geared they really shine.

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-MrBean- posted:

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Quazimortal posted:

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Auenwing posted:

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Hmmm, I switched from my disc priest to the druid to heal as we were leveling. Sounds like the same concerns from priests. Thanks for the heads up. Looks like I need to collect more data for myself and for the guild, (not doubting your statement). My guess is we will end up using a shaman through heroics again, which frees me up to play my DK for the most part, which is the class everyone wants me playing... however, I am skeptical about that as well. We've rerun instances with me on my frost DK and my hubby healing on his priest (and he's finding mana an issue as he gets higher in levels). My DK works just fine through regulars, but once again, those aren't heroics.

I think we're gonna end up leveling a couple of extra alts each until we get a group combo that works again.

That should keep us "busy" for a bit.

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It could always just be the aches and pains of learning a new way of healing of course, but she's a good healer and has played a resto druid for a long time now which makes it hard for me to believe they aren't broke as hell. She can heal heroics with very little troubles on her disc priest and that is with less mana regen.

On a brighter note, I'm really liking how holy paladins turned out at 85 my self. The change nerfed me really hard at 80 but when you get to 85 and decently geared they really shine.

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Holy pali's are still somewhat of a bitch. But I guess I am doing good. Finally did a heroic on mine and was able to get 3 guildies together for it. We had the tank, me healing and 2 dps, 3rd was a pugger. We did Tolvar. Through most of it I was okay, since I have mostly learned all the tricks for mana management. But in the end when it came down to Siamat, had the group not been 3 pali's, a druid, and a shadow priest... there would be no way in hell I would have been able to heal that alone. As is everyone had to add in some healing, and we even lost 2 dps on the fight.

That fight there is simply just way too much AOE damage for a single paly with no HoT's to heal through. I call that bad design.

I did get kudos from everyone, even the pugger, which was quite nice. (Was actually my first run ever with guildies as they are east coasters and I am a west coaster. They were up late and were gonna log tell I told em I was gonna heal my first heroic.)

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-MrBean- posted:

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I don't know what Siamat's AoE damage range is... but 4 of us are melee and he was still hitting the shadow priest at range.

My gear level was 329, 330 now. I don't know if you are well over my gear, so it helps... but I see no way a single pali can do it from my run last night.

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Quazimortal posted:

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Druid healing is very broken right now in case you didn't know.

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-MrBean- posted:

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Advice away. I am always looking to make myself better any way I can. I'm not stupid, I am a good healer, but there is always room for improvement.

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Quazimortal posted:

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-MrBean- posted:

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Advice away. I am always looking to make myself better any way I can. I'm not stupid, I am a good healer, but there is always room for improvement.

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Well my very first bit of advice is to cast your Judgement as much as you possibly can. Not only does it give you mana back but it will also, if you have the correct talent, heal yourself and the tank at the same time through beacon.

Next up, get your in combat mana regen above 2500. Mine is sitting around 2800 right now when I eat 60 spirit food and pop a spirit elixir and I'm only now getting to the point where I can be a little overboard with my divine light heal. I also suggest working towards getting haste and spirit on every single piece of gear, it'll make a difference. Mastery is just barely better than crit imo.

This takes me into your spell selection. You probably already know this but holy shock is something you should be casting every single time it's off of cooldown. I usually opt to always cast it on a DPS that needs a heal, usually the one with the lowest health unless I can see they will be safe for at least a few seconds. Between that and word of glory you can keep the DPS healed in damn near every heroic boss fight. Also, holy light is something you need to learn to get comfortable casting in high pressure situations. You may feel like you need to top that DPS who's at half health off with a divine light but in most situations all you end up doing is wasting mana. And of course divine light on the tank when he needs a direct heal. Holy radiance has become very useful to me now that I've gotten used to it. It may be situational but the healing output is pretty nice if you use it correctly.

Be sure and use your cooldowns liberally and I also suggest selecting trinkets with some type of mana regen proc or use ability. Hand of Sacrifice should be something you know when to cast on the tank because he's going to need it more often than you may be used to. Also don't forget to use your divine protection since the 40 second cooldown means it will be back up fast.

Last but not least, I find flash of light to be damn near worthless. I have yet to be in a situation where I thought flash of light would work better than divine light.

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Blisteringballs posted:

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About ret, I have two friends in raiding guilds and they get by just fine. I still top meters in random 80+ instances on mine. The changes seem really beneficial. Maybe it's just pre heroics and my friends are mad crazy hardcore good, but ret pal lies still seem better off than most classes. IMO.

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-MrBean- posted:

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One thing I do differently, and it's something I have done from the start, so not sure I can change because I am set in my ways on that.... is I beacon of light an off-tank/dps. That is the closest I can get to having a HoT on a pali. Since most of the time you are spamming heals on the tank, it's a good way to keep a second person up. So one heal will heal the tank, me the healer, and 1 dps.

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Rill_of_WE posted:

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Blisteringballs posted:

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About ret, I have two friends in raiding guilds and they get by just fine. I still top meters in random 80+ instances on mine. The changes seem really beneficial. Maybe it's just pre heroics and my friends are mad crazy hardcore good, but ret pal lies still seem better off than most classes. IMO.

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Ret does okay at the higher gear levels from what I've seen and kept an eye on. It's heroic and pre-heroic that's difficult right now. For example, I struggle to pull off 4k DPS on trash or on boss fights where you change targets every 10-20 seconds. A perfect rotation and I can get 7k DPS on a boss. If everything procs just right I'll pull between 8k and 10k DPS. That's a wide range of what kind of DPS I can do depending on the situation. And for such a strict rotation, it's really really random. The buffs should help both problems a little bit.

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Rill_of_WE posted:

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Blisteringballs posted:

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About ret, I have two friends in raiding guilds and they get by just fine. I still top meters in random 80+ instances on mine. The changes seem really beneficial. Maybe it's just pre heroics and my friends are mad crazy hardcore good, but ret pal lies still seem better off than most classes. IMO.

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Ret does okay at the higher gear levels from what I've seen and kept an eye on. It's heroic and pre-heroic that's difficult right now. For example, I struggle to pull off 4k DPS on trash or on boss fights where you change targets every 10-20 seconds. A perfect rotation and I can get 7k DPS on a boss. If everything procs just right I'll pull between 8k and 10k DPS. That's a wide range of what kind of DPS I can do depending on the situation. And for such a strict rotation, it's really really random. The buffs should help both problems a little bit.

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