First I want to thank Blizzard for being ready for #somechanges and the already announced Seal of Blood changes and for the fact that you’re looking into drums. That’s absolutely fantastic news and only will improve the game without breaking it!
One last thing that gets me worried after we’re finally being released from the obnoxious and tedious world buff meta.
That’s Shaman bloodlust/heroism chaining and swapping Shamans in and out from your warlock/hunter groups.
I hope we learn from private servers that this will be equally or even more tedious and obnoxious meta than world buffs ever were.
BL/Heroism chaining will be going on every single raid, every single boss through out whole TBC.
It will be extremely off putting job to keep swapping shammies in and out while calling them out to pop BL/heroism one after another. Doing it for awhile I’m sure wouldn’t kill anyone, but imagine doing it for 1-2 years on every single boss.
I’m sure there will be people who will say “you don’t need to do it” or “stop being a meta monkey”, for those people the answer will be the same. As retail have shown with covenant system, even the most casual people in the game wants to be as optimal as possible, so if this stays in-game it will be a meta and will be done even by Gruul pugs in Sunwell phase. Similar way as MC/ZG pugs are getting world buffed in classic phase 6 currently. Absolutely not needed, but absolutely optimal, so it will be done by everyone.
Guild drama and parsing issues. We need to face the fact that most DPS love their logs, and so do I. Those are good way to track down your improvement and trying to better your self upcoming weeks.
I can already hear the moaning and drama about not getting bloodlusts and can’t compete against people who are getting chained. Once again, off putting and unfun.
This change would not make Shamans any less valuable either. When ever this topic comes up on reddit or forums there’s Shamans always saying that then you bring 5 Resto Shammies and no one needs for example Ele or Enhancement Shammies. That won’t absolutely be the case at any point. Resto Shammies are great, but you want max 2-3 max.
Even if blizzard agrees and they hopefully fix bloodlust/heroism, you still do want at least one Holy Paladin to tank heal Priest/druid to help with the raid and Blooms on tanks. Ele shaman will still be needed for Warlocks and 1-2 enhancements for Tanks and Hunter group. This would not change.
Let’s hope that any left overs from #nochanges mentality won’t ruin the TBC meta too and blizzard will save the wow community from it self, because everyone will be doing this.
You don’t to juggle 5 shammies in and out from groups to PI anyone on retail. The class balance on retail is better than on TBC so giving PI anyone else but Warlocks and Hunters won’t be as big deal as chaining lust on TBC.
It’s literally different in every way possible. But good take anyway.
If you want your precious logs this is what you have to do.
I’m a warlock and this would benefit me exactly. I just rather not go through it as it would make the game worse.
It’s cheese that you don’t have to do in either case is my point.
Is it about the awkwardness or the power spike?
So just don’t do it and make the game better?
If parsing a 14 year old expansion is so important to you why aren’t you an orc? Maybe Blizzard should offer a faction change as well?
Or what about Malediction? Maybe your guild will force you to play a spec you don’t want. Let’s get rid of that too.
See what I’m saying? Where do you draw the line on this stuff?
My point still stands. If you want to be number one you have to do stupid things in this game.
And rather than not doing it, you want the game changed so it’s not possible to do it.
Sorry can’t co-sign this.
If classic has shown us 1 thing, is that #nochanges leads to changes. So rather we get on with the #somechanges that we can control. This should be an obvious one.
As current raid manager it is annoying enough to swap Warriors, rogues, rogues and feral druid around in combat to benefit party buffs. Now that we are getting an atiesh in the mix, this even becomes more and more. Outside of combat is one thing, doing it during combat is annoying and currently it is done in certain fights with higher dead count. But let’s not make it something that is done for every fight and every raid.
Can we please learn from the way retail has done this? Move away from the Tedious party buffs in a raid and go to raidwide buffs. This has an added benefit that it brings more flexibility to the raidsetup.
I’m not sure if you know this as you are writing this with a alliance character. In medicore guilds where kill speed is slower we were already shaman chaining to mana tide for the healer group. This was more common place in vanilla but it still happens.
Also we need to consider the practical reality of bloodlust. Let’s say we have 3 tanks 6 healers and 16 dps. In total we have 5 shamans in the raid. 1 tank group 3 dps groups and a healer group with a shaman in each. Bloodlust lasts for 40 seconds with a 10 minute cd.
If we were to chain a single group for 3 minutes and 20 seconds the damage of those four would be significantly higher true, yet if there is a damage check it would be better to BL the 3 damage groups to meet it. Also we need to consider threat issues that might arose if those 4 are dealing that much more damage. MD is limited to 3 attacks only with a 2min cd attached in TBC and no ToT untill Wrath.
Unless every boss is long Patchwerk style fight and those 4 want to get parses it would be more beneficial to BL all of the dedicated dps groups and the two that does more damage another time after the 1st one is over for faster kill speed. Especially if there are times without the possibility to stand and turret for 40 sec. If the damage window is limited or you want to burst through a phase of a boss keeping BL on one group only would be detrimental to the raid as a whole.
My guess is they will fix both drums and BL/Hero in one swoop by adding 2 min Tinnitus after drum pop and 5 or 10min winded/exhausted after BL/hero. There already is precedent with Forbearance, so it will be relatively inoffensive.
So what you’re asking is a nerf for raid that include more than 5 shaman.
And essentially making a WotLK version or BL, why dont you just skip TBC whatsoever if you so dislike it state of affairs.
Party swapping sounds like something that can be discussed to be locked during combat, but limiting an entire class to avoid party swapping is too far.
#somechanges are not #majorchanges , and you keep those for Cata & beyond.