“No stop signs, speed limit
Nobody’s gonna slow me down”
AC/DC
The Wonderful World of Raiding
I think we all can agree that there is a lull in WoW right now. The content that we are playing is designed to carry us through the summer. Not a lot to do on one level and plenty of catch-up to do on the other level. For example, my Priest is exploring the Class Hall campaign and hunting for the mount with my Paladin waiting in the wings.
Still, this is a great time to raid. The Tomb is new enough that it is not on farm, many guilds and brave players are putting together pug teams. Wipes are forgiven. The biggest hassle in my mind is the astonishing array of chat programs and I wish that we as a world-wide community would pick just one.
If you have a free evening, I suggest that you try it. Open the finder, select Normal ToS and find a group that is “fresh”. Join their chat. Chances are that they are an earnest group that wants to have some fun trying the challenges of a raid. And, maybe they like your charming wit, they might ask for your battletag and want to invite you every week. Bam! A new set of online friends with common goals.
With Method clearing it’s World First kill, this small pebble from some very elite players has sent a ripple effect through the community. For example, in the LFR this week, I saw a bunch of new Balance Druids and I expect to see a lot more rogues.
Here is the raid comp that Method used, I did a screen cap and hope that you can read it. This is the final boss kill, they have a battery of choices for each boss, but this was their successful comp.
Insert Method’s comp pic.
Check it out. Two bear tanks, no surprise. Three MM hunters, two Balance druids and two Arms warriors. And (drum roll) FIVE rogues! That one Shadow priest must’ve been a terror and stood alone.
The healing comp is pretty cool. Resto Druid, Resto Shammy, Holy Priest and (yes) a Disc Priest! This blows completely out of the water that Disc is useless and has been nerfed to the ground. Shut up all you posers who’ve rejected Disc in the LFG, you are class snobs!
Seriously, five rogues amazes me. In their interview they said that rogues and arms warriors are over-powered (OP) and wonder that they have not been nerfed.
Let’s look now at some other stats. If you would kindly click this link here.
This is the Warcraft Logs of the past two weeks in mythic raiding showing the top level DPS. Look at Balance Druid in second place and remember me noticing all of those Boomkins in the recent LFRs. All the way down in 10th place are MM hunters but remember that Method brought three of them. So, we know that it is not all pure numbers desired in a raid comp.
For fun, use the drop down choice and change it to Player Healing Statistics For. You’ll see what you’d expect but it is interesting that Disc is so high but at the bottom you can see that there are so few!
Numbers don’t lie but they can be misleading. Pure output does not mean best. The rogue absorbs as utility is not to be ignored. Still, it was a surprise to me to look at these lists and their results.
The information is helpful to we middle-of-the-road players. Normal and Heroic raiding can be played well by any class. Our raid team last night, a sure mish-mash of classes tried KJ, the final boss, on Normal last night. After some attempts to learn the fight, we hit the Enrage Timer with about 8% health. And this is perfect: next week we will be closer and stronger and so on.
The information is also encouraging in that some of our beliefs are changed; just look at rogues (and how few you see of them) and the poor maligned Disc Priest who is, in fact, standing tall and defiant.
It is the summer lull. The raid is still fresh. You’ve seen most of it on the LFR. The Adventure Guide is decent. If you have a few hours and are tired of running World Quests and farming Big Gamey Ribs — try the group finder and find some entertainment.
Be brave.
Happy Hunting and may all your hits … be crits!
Coffee Cakes and Crits 