The More Things Change...

As the old saying goes, the more things change, they more they stay the same (or it stays the same, or whatevers).  The point is clear.  its all the same.  everything is recycled.  rant time?  yes.

The problem is, yet again, dungeons.  Oh i loved the first few weeks of Cata.  The dungeons were hard.  Every dungeon was difficult.  Every dungeon had wipes.  At the end of the night, i had to redo some macros, or prioritize differently than before. 

I started cata with my warrior, Ithacus.  he's an orc.  they're pretty no-nonsense type of warriors bent on killing things, usually by overpowering them as opposed to out-maneuvering them.  i'll leave the finesse for dainty night elves and blood elves.  but the human counterpart in the world of azeroth are the orcs.  and they are fierce.  they rush into a fight with zero regard for their own well-being with the one purpose to obliterate their foes.  Ithacus was one of them.  he would charge+shout, rend, drop a thunderclap, then cleave+sweeping strikes and bladestorm til he died.  this happened on every wrath heroic between 4.01 and cata launch.  imagine the fun i was having with ARMS warrioring.  =P  yes.  arms... i said it.  Fury my ass.  anyway, moving along...

(to accomplish the above, i had two macros.  one for charge/shout, which had me tap the button twice.  once to charge, and again to shout while i was in the middle of a charge.  easy.  second is the sweeping strikes macro'ed to cleave.  since i only use cleave for multiple mobs, adding a sweeping strikes to it always makes it worthwhile.  especially in wrath dungeons.  you need sweeping strikes on as much as possible, because that's how the game was played. i rend once per fight, so that's not macroed anywhere.  i thunderclap often, so that's its own separate button)

Then Things Changed
Enter Cata.  Life was gleeful.  every dungeon was rough, especially when i was asked to tank for half of them. i was essentially learning two players at once. but overall, i was learning to wait a little to dps.  I was using pummel or body slam or whatever it is.  i forget.  having two specs make it difficult to remember.  but i know i was using my interrupts more.  i found that in the battle between slam and heroic strike, heroic strike wins. i finally started using colossus smash and not just when the "thing" procs.  you can tell i have no idea what the name of the proc is, but i know what it looks like and press colossus smash accordingly.   i even back up and hit intercept now, whenever something needs to be stopped, like a heal from this Adepts in Vortex Pin. 

Overall, pulls were thought out a bit more.  There's more consideration to each class' CC abilities.  I have learned quite a few things about CC, like who can CC what, and who should CC first, etc. I also know that no boomkin has ever used hibernate on a dragon.  none.  the more obvious CCs are usually a hunter's trap and a mage's polymorph.  no one figured maybe you can bind an elemental, or banish it.  or hey, let the boomkin entangle roots and hiberante.  two in one. yay!  several paladins couldnt find Repentance, but they found them eventually.  rogues often use distract before they sap and deathknights.... well they're pretty much useless for now.

Apart from the crowd controls, there's the other obvious good things that changed about the fights themselves.  Mobs lived longer, did more damage, had better abilities and caused a little more trauma. thats great!!!  no seriously, my wrath-era-yawns turned into, "oh hey!! something new!"  i had to watch my surroundings more, had to interrupt more whirlwinds and AoE casts and all that good stuff.  The healer would be OOM after almost every fight.  YAY!!!! that's so awesomesauce.  people were at half health, or less, after every fight too.  awesomesauce with added tobasco!  and at the end of pretty much every fight, it felt like i actually earned that kill.  awesomesauce that's better than Hooter's 911 chicken wings!!


But They Stayed the Same
After leveling my warrior to 85 and getting a few dungeons in, i started leveling my deathknight with my girlfriend's priest.  we leveled through hyjal, deepholm, the ramhaken part of uldum and finally twilight highlands.  While leveling, we did queue for all the dungeons along the way.  What my girlfriend felt was that she had better mana efficiency, which is good. she didnt lose much of the difficulty in healing each fight, but she did find it less stressing when her mana bar was twice as full as usual.  she has two priests, both 85 now. leveling the first one 80-85 was omg hard.  leveling the second one 80-85 was a lot eaiser.  i guess blizzard made a few tweaks. but i am sidetracked.... lets get back to the subject.

I noticed something when i was dps (Arms Warrior and Frost DK), that somehow not a lot of people knew how to dps.  really?  yes. now i dont mean CC, or interrupts, or even moving out of Bad, which is required.  but many of them were doing less dps than me.  there were hunters and boomkins doing 3k dps.  just 3k, at level 83.  they may have had to CC, which was obvious if the tank asks for them, but they did not know how to interrupt spellcasts, dont know how to deal with adds, dont know how to avoid bad stuffs.  many folks are learning, true. but how many times does it take for a summoned elemental to shoot a beam at you before you realize maybe you should kill it before it reaches you? slow it down. run away. kill it or else a gigantic pillar of fire will spawn from your feet and kill you?  how many times???? OMG!!  ARRRRGHGHHHHH.

But my god the dps is crap. on my warrior, i was really miserable at level 81 doing 4k dps inside Throne of Tides.  Then it jumped somehow at level 82 to a whopping 6k.  and if things are done correctly, i can hit 8k+ on some fights.  but that's it.  averaging around 6k and we're not even talking heroic geared.  on my deathknight, who has a lot more AoE tools, she's able to do 8k normally, in her sleep. and 10k+ if i decide to actually do more (like turn on AMS and IBF while bad AoE is happening, etc).  and what is everyone else doing?  half.  yes, half. no not half 10k, half 8k.  some are doing more, yes, but some just cant cut it.  and what bugs me even more, is that these are heroics.  you know the heroics where you have to have an average ilevel of at least 329.  this is where the learning should have already happened.  i had to drop a heroic deadmines run because a hunter was doing about 3-4k dps.  the last boss is harsh if you cannot get him down before the healer was OOM.  and the lock and i were doing 8k dps each.  we go the boss to about 30% each time we wiped.  and we wiped because the healer was OOM.  another 4k dps would have helped.  it may have even prolonged the healer's mana supply because there would be less damage taken overall.  but we couldnt do it since there just wasnt enough dps output.  this is just one of many examples.  i only had one, ONE experience where everyone was about 10k dps.  we were in vortex pinnicle and all the dps were spot on.  my girlfriend had zero problems with healing and things moved like clockwork.  i actually had competition in the interrupt meter. 

Lately, i've been running dungeons without the dps meter on display.  it's on, but not displaying damage.  its switched to interrupts.  and even there, im at the top, usually.  shamans dont windshear, paladins dont rebuke, warriors dont pummel, deathknights dont mind freeze, rogues dont kick, mages dont counterspell, warlocks dont fear (get the glyph), and s.priests dont silence, or fear (again, get the glyph).  i'd like a little competition with the interrupts and i only get it sometimes with the tanks.  everyone else do not.  also, if anyone can suggest a spell for moonkins (besides bearform+bash and typhoon) please comment. =]  but overall, my experience in dungeons are somewhat a mixed bag of fun with minimal challege.  there's not a lot of people to compete with really.  whenever there's a rogue who actually kicks, i find it very challenging to keep up with the interrupt counts.  but more often than not, this is not the case.

Just this past weekend, i decided to level my druid again.  this time, she's going to be boomkin (respec'd and ready, with the pvp healing spec removed) instead of healing.  she deleted much of her pvp gear and upgraded from her mixed t8 and t9 gear to cata "greens".  then went on over to Hyjal, Vashjir, Uldum and Twilight highlands to farm herbs.  im sure she got about one whole level's worth of experience from just picking herbs.  while picking herbs, she's queued in the dungeon finder.  now when i first started this, i knew zero about being a moonkin.  actually, redhawk, graylo and sunfyrre were awesome resources at helping me understand boomkin dps. thanks guys!! =]  and i quickly understood the basics of boomkin dps.  dont ask me what eclipse is for, i just know that i start spamming another spell when it does happen. =P

most of the weekend was used to adjust to the style of dps.  honestly, its kinda different from any other dps styles i've ever played.  as a caster, sure, Shooting Stars procs are like anything else, but the whole sun/moon eclipse mechanic was completely new to me. by the end of the holiday weekend, three levels and about 10 random dungeons, i was able to go from 3k dps to 6k dps.  im sitting pretty at level 83, almost 84, doing "the most" dps in most groups i run with. most, until the last two.

Again, keep in mind that not a lot of people interrupt and there are still some folks who still stand in bad.  i battle rez people for the sheer sake of not wanting to be yelled at (although i would love to have the group wipe sometimes) later on.  also, sometimes its the tank that needs to be b-rez'd during a boss fight, so that's quite important to rez them in that case.  but anyway, i've encountered, finally, a repeat of wrath. here's what happened.

Tank: So someone mark CC please.
Healer:  you dont need any CC.
Tank: oh right!

We were in normal stonecore. The tank was level 85.  the healer was level 85.  aparently they were running their ret paladin friend who was level 83 doing 3k dps, max. yes. that's all he was doing.  i was the only one there doing more dps than the tank.  although he was level 85, he was pulling just about 6k dps.  in this instance, there was zero crowd control.  everything was AoE'd down.  most of the dps were doing less than the tank, no one was focus-firing and no one was interrupting.  sounds like wrath of the lich king all over again, doesnt it?

i know some 85s are newly ding'ed 85s with some gearing up to do, but there are others who are really beyond normal vortex pin or stonecore.  and even when running your friends through instances, at least have your friend make some effort to try to do well.  at least practice good play by incoporating cc's and interrupts and even pull carefully.  maybe?  all youre doing is making a bad, lazy, inexperienced level 85 who will end up being useless in heroics.  and i've gone through one instance where we failed miserably because two of the dps were doing 3-4k, and the tank was doing 3k.  and i was doing 9....

in any case, my arms are tired from all this carrying.