Activity

Is it just me, or are these forums slower than I ever remember? I have been a loyal visitor here for some time. I remember when this site was absolutely nuts with trying to learn/educate/repeat all the new info for wrath. All during wrath, it could be hard to keep up with all the threads, especially in the Halp forum. There was the expected burst of threads and discussion during the Cata changes. It tapered off a lot here lately for quite some time. I chalked it up to end of expansion duldrums and totatlly expected 5.0 to fire it up again. I know it's only been two days, but this seems like the prime time for the activity to explode. I love this site and hope it continues to thrive. Any thoughts on what's happening?

Fewer players who commit to this kind of research?

More info being covered in the vids leading to less forum chatter?

Everyone but me has donor access and I'm just missing it all?

I know the usuals are pretty consistent in the shout box and I suppose that may cut down on a fair amount of forum threads, but it seems like a lot more than that.

All of the best stuff is in the donor forums of course!


You're right, it's interestingly dead around here. Same handful of natives answering more or less the same questions (new questions now that MoP is right around the corner). Not really sure where everyone went, I didn't hear of the big hot new wow theorycrafting site, and EJ is more or less a graveyard as well.

I think part of this is because the player population has shifted more towards people not really making the effort to read up anymore (atleast from what I see in LFR) and the audience for theory crafting sites has just gone down.
The other part may be that rotations have become more complex and RNG-dependant, that in order to get a complete picture, you usually have to sim it, so our audience simply accepts the stat priority & rotation/spell prio as true and can't really get into a discussion about it anymore, because it takes them too much time to really grasp the details of the topic at hand.

^ Well put.

It's pretty dead. Then again most of the old contributors who made for the lively discussion durring WoLK are gone. The ones around now doing any theory crafting are Fetzie, Tengstein, Agg, occasionally,Q and Airowird. (My apologies if I forgot anyone) And no one is really taking issue with what's being posted. Could also be we need the new raid content live to really judge anyting.

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Originally Posted by sifuedition

Is it just me, or are these forums slower than I ever remember? I have been a loyal visitor here for some time. I remember when this site was absolutely nuts with trying to learn/educate/repeat all the new info for wrath. All during wrath, it could be hard to keep up with all the threads, especially in the Halp forum. There was the expected burst of threads and discussion during the Cata changes. It tapered off a lot here lately for quite some time. I chalked it up to end of expansion duldrums and totatlly expected 5.0 to fire it up again. I know it's only been two days, but this seems like the prime time for the activity to explode. I love this site and hope it continues to thrive. Any thoughts on what's happening?

Fewer players who commit to this kind of research?

More info being covered in the vids leading to less forum chatter?

Everyone but me has donor access and I'm just missing it all?

I know the usuals are pretty consistent in the shout box and I suppose that may cut down on a fair amount of forum threads, but it seems like a lot more than that.

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I'd attribute part at least to the two highlighted items. Fewer people will commit to it for various reasons. I'll get into more on that below. Vids are certainly part of that.

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Originally Posted by Airowird

I think part of this is because the player population has shifted more towards people not really making the effort to read up anymore (atleast from what I see in LFR) and the audience for theory crafting sites has just gone down.
The other part may be that rotations have become more complex and RNG-dependant, that in order to get a complete picture, you usually have to sim it, so our audience simply accepts the stat priority & rotation/spell prio as true and can't really get into a discussion about it anymore, because it takes them too much time to really grasp the details of the topic at hand.

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What's there to read up on Airo? Reforging and some of the stat changes SIGNIFICANTLY affected this. Let's see.... just for tanks... we got rid of defense. That used to be a major part of what we did. You HAD to hit defense cap, and then you worked everything around maintaining that cap. Didn't matter is a piece of gear was super pretty or awesome..... if it dropped you below defense cap, it sat in the bank.

Then you need to factor in reforging. Something doesn't have ideal stats?.... reforge it and make it better. Again, for tanks in Wrath.... you simply didn't run with a piece of dps or pvp gear, because you were taking a double whammy. Now.... with reforging.... oh, an item has mastery? Swap out crit or haste for parry or dodge and voila!!!! It's suitable. And depending on what it's replacing, it might be significantly better. Consider..... what would be better for a tank? A set of 346 tank shoulders?...... or a set of DS dps shoulders? Chances are, you'll see a tank take the DS shoulders simply for the str/stam advantage, reforge a worthless stat to a tanking stat, and they will STILL have a very meaningful upgrade.

Reforging removed a lot of the difficult gear and stat decisions people had to make. And even then, like Airo said... a lot of it is so closely tied to simcraft anymore. There's really almost no such thing as "theory"crafting as a lot of the "theory" is gone. The reduced talent choices of Cata had a LOT to do with that. A lot of the potential variance in builds had been removed. And in the 5.0.4 world..... even more of it is gone.... in a way......

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Originally Posted by Theotherone

It's pretty dead. Then again most of the old contributors who made for the lively discussion durring WoLK are gone. The ones around now doing any theory crafting are Fetzie, Tengstein, Agg, occasionally,Q and Airowird. (My apologies if I forgot anyone) And no one is really taking issue with what's being posted. Could also be we need the new raid content live to really judge anyting.

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..... and Theo brings up a good point that follows the last point I was bringing up.

So.... here's my bit of theorycrafting contribution for today......
In MoP, I theorize that the majority of theorycrafting will circulate around specific talent-per-fight builds. Sure, there will be some debate over stats, but with mastery functioning as the great-grandaddy of tanking stats now, you'll likely see a "mastery > parry = dodge" for tanks push (again). However, with talents being what they are now, I see tanks potentially swapping out talents to suit a specific fight, especially on 10 man content.

Edit: Oh, and also, without doing extensive simcraft, why would a amateur poster really want to do much theorycrafting? You can research, assemble the info, put up what will look like some sound math. And then you get to deal with some asshat who themselves wouldn't take the time to assemble all that info and try to process it into something worthwhile going and just nitpicking your stuff senseless or bitching that you "didn't provide enough evidence" because you didn't simcraft it..... or because the stuff doesn't work in "AskMrRobot" (which is still a f**kin terrible thing.... I've seen more people do DUMB sh*t based off of what that told them).

Essentially...... why subject yourself to the current batch of troll-criticism? It's not like it used to be where people DISCUSS something in a rational manner. It often comes down to someone belittling someone or just bashing them. I'm certainly not eager to engage in that and I certainly can understand why other people wouldnt'.

Oh, and lastly.... a lot of the stuff is just posted as "truth" and the people who post it treat those with questions like total trash (see: Elitist Jerks). The last REALLY well-done theorycrafting post/guide I've read has been Fetzie's here and amazingly enough, Riggnaros's on Elitist Jerks (amazingly) in regards to DK tanking in t11 and t12.

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Originally Posted by Leucifer

Didn't matter is a piece of gear was super pretty or awesome..... if it dropped you below defense cap, it sat in the bank.

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Tank legs off Crazy Cat lady; no defense, must have sat in my bank for a good month before I could use them.

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Originally Posted by Theotherone

Tank legs off Crazy Cat lady; no defense, must have sat in my bank for a good month before I could use them.

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Perfect example. But it was gear drops like that that MADE for compelling decision making. Now.... there are a confluence of factors. Stat differences between ilvls being another. That Ulduar drop probably served you well from Ulduar and possibly into ICC. Now.... forget it.

I guess in light of the previous posts, I can see a fair bit of that now and just didn't think it through enough.

1) A lot of players just using oversimplified sites like Noxxic, Icy Veins, etc to get the down and dirty and don't care as much about details. Maybe they never did but they needed more in-depth sites like tankspot anyways then because they used to be the only ones with the info that were accurate.

2) Reforging makes comparing gear way easier. More main stat = better and reforge to fit.

3) Reforging tools like wowreforge and even in-game ones that may not be perfect are "close enough" for most players.

I'm not even sure simulationcraft takes much away from here. I know on my guild(which was huge) I tend to be the go-to guy for these kinds of questions. No matter how much I push it, others won't use simulationcraft. They may ask me to run it so they can get custom stat weights but they don't REALLY try to learn it and do it themselves. And that's not really even hard.

Players are generally lazy. I guess there are more casual friendly tools and ways to get the info now?

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Originally Posted by sifuedition

Players are generally lazy. I guess there are more casual friendly tools and ways to get the info now?

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Correction: People are generally lazy.

You also have to consider, a lot of the top guilds have contributed to some of those sites. Whose word is a player going to take? Mine, when I write out a lengthy dissertation going over the how's and why's of a particular class and its function? Or a website run by Blood Legion or Vodka, where a guy like Landsoul (who actually has done a ton of VERY in-depth work for warriors.... just only name I could think of without throwing stones) posts a "THOU SHALT DO THIS!"?

WoW has increasingly become a bit of a popularity contest in a way. I mean, there are quite a few who care about what Fetzie has to say about pally..... but I'd bet you a fat chunk of cash that if Lore went and did a video on paladin, you'd see a LOT more people following his recommendations.

The thing is, WoW is built at normal levels so that min/maxing or having a perfect rotation is not required to kill the boss. Just looking at some of the gear, gemming, enchanting on players in random heroics, LFR or even a normal DS pug proves this point 1,000 times over. The tank in full pvp gear taking every shot full in the face tends to complete the run and as a result thinks, "hey this is easy." The rogue stacking intell may not top the dps meter but he completes the run. Maybe the players who do min/max carry them, but the normal modes and heroic dungeons are built for player success.

Maybe the days of theory crafting being necessary are, except for the most cutting edge, are over.

I'm hoping with the Mana change its not entirely over. but even as late into Cata as last easter me and Kopcap where having to correct EJ and 90% of the prot warrior guides on you tube where wrong and noxxic and ivy-veins are also wrong.

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Originally Posted by Theotherone

The thing is, WoW is built at normal levels so that min/maxing or having a perfect rotation is not required to kill the boss. Just looking at some of the gear, gemming, enchanting on players in random heroics, LFR or even a normal DS pug proves this point 1,000 times over. The tank in full pvp gear taking every shot full in the face tends to complete the run and as a result thinks, "hey this is easy." The rogue stacking intell may not top the dps meter but he completes the run. Maybe the players who do min/max carry them, but the normal modes and heroic dungeons are built for player success.

Maybe the days of theory crafting being necessary are, except for the most cutting edge, are over.

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That's the thing. In normal modes (especially Dragon Soul and after nerfs), people are able to be carried. Plus, with the way gear is now, let's be honest. At this point, a lot of these groups simply overmatch the content. Normal DS, fresh out the gate, was being tackled by people in Firelands heroic gear, or people in Firelands normal. Those running normal gear back then, I don't think the margins for screw-up were that big then. Now though, when you're regularly seeing people in partial heroic sets running normal with others?..... yes. It's real easy to be carried.

I don't think it's quite as bad as you make it out to be, but I do think you have a good point. And honestly? At normal? I honestly believe that normal should be a REAL CHALLENGE for a player using the stock UI and running in previous tier gear, while collecting that tier's normal tier gear, and using modest enchants (having 80%+ of ideal enchants or so). Normal raiding should be a solid challenge for these people.

At the same time..... when you have people who ARE maxxed, doing a very near ideal rotation, using enchancements to the UI, and tackling the content in "higher" base gear (previous tier heroic sets with topped out everything).... yeah, they're going to say, "Oh... this is easy." Well... no shit it's easy. You're the semi-pro racer basically racing a tricked-out sports car against someone in a sedan. -_-

Normal should really be a challenge for 80% of the player population. Heroic raiders...... again, I full-on advocate a no-holds-barred, uncompromising HEROIC difficulty that is GOING TO REQUIRE top notch gameplay. Sure... your tricked-out sports will get you in the door, but you're never going to complete this level without a LOT of skill..... and a Formula One car. Period. Sorry.... but all this crap about "competition"?..... Make it truly competitive at that level. No nerfs. No nada. Prove you belong or stfu and gtfo.

But again.... I still believe that COMPLETING NORMAL should actually be looked at as a real achievement! That should honestly be a badge of merit showing that hey, you are actually a truly COMPETENT (not pro) player, and true competency should be smiled upon! Being able to complete normal mode raids should earn a person a "Oh hey! Nice job! Grats!"..... and not the "Oh whatever..... you haven't even cracked 1/8H.... loser". (And I do think nerfs contribute to this.... as they skew the perception of difficulty).

But that's not the case. And I'm griping now....... :P

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Originally Posted by Tengenstein

I'm hoping with the Mana change its not entirely over. but even as late into Cata as last easter me and Kopcap where having to correct EJ and 90% of the prot warrior guides on you tube where wrong and noxxic and ivy-veins are also wrong.

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Oh. I know Teng. But how many times did those people argue with you and tell you in no uncertain terms that you don't know any better (putting that nicely)? How many times did people just take them verbatim and roll with it and not pay attention?

Ideally, I'd LIKE to see HEALTHY discussion of these things again.....
However, I don't think that'll happen. Maybe in small circles (like here..... hopefully)..... but in general, that time has come and gone.

I agree that normal should be a challange and heroic should be just that - heroic. I don't have an issue with nerfs after a period of time, Blizz said recently that they err on the side of making fights too hard because they don't like to buff bosses, they'd rather nerf them. DS nerfs may have come too fast.

Normal DS may have been a bit too easy - I think Ulduar normal was about right.

[QUOTE= Normal DS may have been a bit too easy - I think Ulduar normal was about right.[/QUOTE]

pretty much all normal modes up to ulduar were right in the case of wrath, in BC is was 10 man kara and 25 everything else and it seemed to fit just fine, players back then didnt complain it was to hard they just rose to meet the mechanics of the fight. somewhere in trial of the crusader this was lost X_X

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Originally Posted by penguinrampage

pretty much all normal modes up to ulduar were right in the case of wrath, in BC is was 10 man kara and 25 everything else and it seemed to fit just fine, players back then didnt complain it was to hard they just rose to meet the mechanics of the fight. somewhere in trial of the crusader this was lost X_X

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Don't sell the rest of wrath short, what's now Ensidia killed the entire first tier withinin like 3 days of expansion release. Naxx, Malygos and Sarth (save for 3 drake) were jokingly easy. Ulduar was refreshingly harder and then ToC. eww

It all started with class homogenization back in wrath. top guilds and players who were good, even those who couldnt clear everything, saw this coming a long time ago.

It started as a way to make every class feel useful in some way, and to keep you from stacking classes.. that was good.
But when they started letting every boss in a heroic dungeon drop epic loot.. that wasnt okay. questing at level 80 to get those blues you needed to become "raid ready" wasnt necessary. all you had to do was run some heroics and you were fully epic'd out.
(ensidia killed all of nax using a lot of gear they got from sunwell at level 70).
Then they decided to make hard modes in ulduar, and players rejoiced. We LOVED the idea of doing something special (or not do anything at all) in a fight to make it enter a harder mode, and in the case of deconstructor it was actually hard to get him into hard mode. if you couldnt kill the heart you knew you couldnt do the hard mode. And hard modes droped extra gear you couldnt get normally.

Also in here was the impossiblitiy to gear up with offset items, because you could run some dungeons and get the two set bonus that way..

Enter toggle-able hard modes... ToGC wasnt a bad raid because of the fights per say, yeah some people complained, but the fights werent bad. But not only did you have to do normal mode every week... you had to progress thru heroic too?! fuck all of that. Getting to heroics wasnt fun anymore. all you did was toggle something and BAM it got a little harder and droped gear with "heroic" on it... which severely fucked up wow's gear scaling.

ICC wasnt much better, all they did was make heroic and normal share a lock out...

CATA was a bust mostly... no need to post about that..

Now we have easy rotation... The new talent system is great for PVP but not for PVE, and some classes have trees that are much better then others.


They need to bring back ulduar style hard modes, make normal modes a tad more challenging, keep LFR for the extream casuals. Keep the current type of talent tree but let every spec get a talent tree of its own ( allowing more options that every spec can actually make full use of). give us back off set gearing, and make us quest and run heroics to get BLUE quality gear for the first tier of an expansion, and FORCE players to progress thru the whole expansion and not skip tiers.

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Originally Posted by squats

and FORCE players to progress thru the whole expansion and not skip tiers.

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I was ok until here. I usually feel dragged if I have to go into an old tier for someone. I know how hard it can be to get a group for an old tier. If the only way to progress your gear after 5 man heroics is progressively through the tiers, you essentially lock out anyone who doesn't start with T13 from ever catching up.

Even if running older tiers is easier because there are more people in the same boat due to being locked out, the odds are, they are not actually going to ever catch up. If it was me, I'd be tempted to quit if I can't catch up to my friends until the next expac. Even if I can catch up but it's going to take months (which getting YOUR drops might), then I'm not sure I could be fussed.

I don't mind the idea that I will have to grind a lot harder than them for 2-4 weeks to be able to pull my own weight if I'm behind somehow. But the idea that I'm dragging them back to meaningless content for weeks at a time in the hopes my loot drops and I can catch up to finally run REAL content blows.

Even if you aren't trying to catch up with friends, with the way the "community" is, if you aren't running heroic modes of the current tier, you are a "noob/scrub/baddie" or whatever. Being perpetually a tier or even two behind would be severely demotivational.

idk when you leveled up your first toon sifuedition, but i was in that boat. i didnt come to wow untill the patch that brought dark temple in. i had to progress all of the way and i really enjoyed it. i never got to progress past tier 5.. but im okay with that.
the thing is.. if you have a friend who is in a good guild and they are willing to let you raid, they will carry you to gear. in my case, i didnt have a friend. but because everyone had to progress the same, there were a lot of guilds that were on the old tiers of content still pushing thru it, and back then encounters were made so well that we didnt mind having to do the same fights every week, perfecting the ones we have on farm and learning the onces we dont have on farm. and the funny thing is, thats exactly what people are still doing, but the progression line looks so much different.

TBC
lvl 70 -> quests and dungeons to get ready for heroics-> run heroics to gear for raids->first tier->second tier->third tier..

now we have to run heroics to buy gear with valor, run the normal modes.. then run the same damn bosses over and over again on heroic... that isnt fun..

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now we have to run heroics to buy gear with valor, run the normal modes.. then run the same damn bosses over and over again on heroic... that isnt fun..

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Seems to me, the only difference is while you are farming heroics, you get to run an old raid once a week with the way you are suggesting. You can do that now though, right? The system still allows you to run tiers progressively. The only difference really is that others aren't forced to do it with you. (Edit: And this sounds like what it is like if you are on or ahead of the curve and not playing catch up at all). Also, with the way they are changing valor and justice, who knows just how it will work for Mists.

For me, I think of two situations. I have friends or I don't but I want to progress

A) Maybe I'm not lucky or social enough but I have never been in a guid that can reasonably carry anyone until the nerfs are kicking in (I was on an extreme low pop server until mid DS). I have never experienced a case where they can boost me up outside of old content and running old content sucks when you have nothing to gain there. Granted, ymmv, but I prefer a system where if I am the one who needs to catch up, I need to put in the extra work instead of the other 9-24.

B) Even if it's not to catch up with friends, let's say an expansion lasts 18-24 months. I'll use 18 for the example. If it reasonably takes 12 months to complete the content and the rest of that time is typically farm time for the next patch, etc, then once you've hit the mark of 7 months into an expansion, if you are not already in a stable raid group that is likely to not break up at all during the rest of the xpac, it feels like you might as well quit until the next xpac because you are going to miss half the content anyways.

We are on the opposite sides of the spectrum here and neither is wrong. I don't expect you to suddenly prefer my outlook on it and I understand your side, I just don't agree with it from my perspective. I assume you are in about the same boat but of course, from your side.

If they never nerf raids, then everyone who comes to a raid, no matter how late, has the same experience. Starting late just guarantees you miss the end of the story lines and often, some of the best raid encounters of an expansion. Some of the problems with that:
1. History shows that this creates an environment where a very small part of the player-base ever sees the inside of the final tier
2. Getting new players gets progressively harder as an expansion ages, for the overall game and for a guild
3. This creates a system of haves and have nots that gets progressively worse as an expansion ages
4. Due to #2, guilds who lose a key member, especially late, can be dramatically affected

There are probably more that I'm not thinking of but these are enough for me to prefer the system as it has worked more recently. I'm sure it can be tweaked to be a little better, don't get me wrong. I just can't go back to vanilla/tbc systems on it.

P.S I started at the end of wrath but didn't have my first max level toon until 80 and Ulduar was half over. Even with systems allowing me to "catch up" I still didn't get to raid until ICC because I was a prot pally and tank spots were filled and people still saw my gear as "behind" because it was all 5 man/Badge gear etc. Finding a group for Naxx or Uld or even ToC was a nightmare once ICC was actually released. Even if you found one, it was 99% of the time bad. Maybe that was all small server problems rather than universal ones, but it's the game as I learned it.