Just put together a new melee group, couple questions

[d0z3rr]

Taking a break from the paladins and the grind to 80 (almost there!). I did a character transfer and put this new melee group together:

Paladin tank lvl 60
Fury warrior (terribad gear) lvl 60
Combat rogue (mainly swords) lvl63
Feral druid lvl 68 (some northrend greens)
Resto Shaman lvl 68

After getting all the castsequences sorted out on the dps, I set them off to the target dummy. I compared the AP on the 3 dps, rogue has 1400 fully buffed, druid has 2700, warrior has 1300.

First of all the warrior's dps is just sad as can be. He averages about 250-300 dps with titans grip and 2 2h weapons. I made sure my castsequence was not the cause. I'm really hoping he picks up the pace once he gets more gear. He will be dualwielding most of the time, but his off hand damage is piddly! I haven't played a fury warrior since pre BC, but the offhand damage is so low I'm wondering if I should just stick to 2h?

Rogue's dps is right at 500 when attacking by himself. But once he's in the group and everyone is attacking, fully buffed, he almost out dps's the druid! I was very surprised by this, he's an animal. His dps increases 300 when everyone is attacking. The druid and rogue are neck and neck for total dmg and dps, sometimes the rogue is on top.

Here's my question, if the druid has a 1300 AP advantage, how the hell is it not outdpsing the rogue? She does about 650dps by herself.

If the warrior's dps continues to be fail, I might swap it out for something else.

[Ualaa]

With a lot of melee gear, the warrior will do very well.
Not sure how much constitutes "a lot".
For a lot of raid content (in various expansions), the DPS warrior has been top or near the top on DPS.
Had one in Tier 5/6, which was always behind the warlocks, but ahead of everyone else.
Have one, who through Naxx25/Ulduar25 was top, every raid he played - but guild kind of fell apart, so not sure if that would have continued in ToC/ICC25's.
If you stick with the warrior, it should really improve; not sure another toon wouldn't be easier though.

A few questions...
The Druid is going cat and not bear to DPS, correct?
Are either the druid or rogue attempting to be behind the mob?
What are they using, as far as abilities?

[d0z3rr]

With a lot of melee gear, the warrior will do very well.
Not sure how much constitutes "a lot".
For a lot of raid content (in various expansions), the DPS warrior has been top or near the top on DPS.
Had one in Tier 5/6, which was always behind the warlocks, but ahead of everyone else.
Have one, who through Naxx25/Ulduar25 was top, every raid he played - but guild kind of fell apart, so not sure if that would have continued in ToC/ICC25's.
If you stick with the warrior, it should really improve; not sure another toon wouldn't be easier though.

A few questions...
The Druid is going cat and not bear to DPS, correct?
Are either the druid or rogue attempting to be behind the mob?
What are they using, as far as abilities?

Whenever I can, I always position melee behind the target. Of course, the rogue is sword spec so he doesn't have to worry about backstab. The druid does not have shred in her rotation, and I wouldn't want to deal with her being incorrectly positioned, and having shred hold up one of the castsequences (unless this can be worked around? I use castsequences and /click).

The rogue does a 2 combo point slice n dice, then does a 3 combo point eviscerate, rinse and repeat. The druid starts out with rake, then tiger fury, then builds up a 5 combo point ferocious bite with mangle. rake is always put up after cooldown, and tiger's fury as well.

The warrior simply spams bloodthirst, and keeps rend up. He also will do overpower if it's available.

I changed the warrior to use a 2h, and his dps went from 180 to 350, but I really like dualwielding....I like the warrior because his macros were so easy to set up, did it first try. The only thing I need to figure out is how to only apply battleshout when it's not up, I basically loaded his battle shout cast with max commas so he doesn't waste a rotation so often.

If anyone could offer tips, that would be nice. I'd say I have the least experience with feral druids and warriors.

*edit* After more testing and tweaking, I squeezed 850 dps out of the rogue, and about 760 on the druid. Still weird how the druid has such a large AP advantage, not to mention 5 levels, yet falls behind on dps. She also has a 29% crit rate, where the rogue has a 19%.

[Ualaa]

I'd guess there's room for more improvement on your druid.

The best I can see, for your macro to not get stuck, would be to go with two macros.
One is spammable from any direction.
And one is spammable only from behind the mob.
The rear attack will be a lot of DPS for the cat, just as it can be for a dagger rogue.

Even if the rogue is swords, I'd attempt to get behind the mob as much as possible.
You'll land more hits, with fewer dodges, parries and blocks.
And need fewer heals from frontal effects, etc.

I don't have much experience on warriors.
Dual wielding generally had a lot more rage, and dumped it via specials.
While the big two-handers were more Mortal Strike types with slower but bigger hits.
Pretty sure, Fury will beat out Arms for dps.

[Multibocks]

combat daggers is dead, so I assume you mean mutilate rogue and for that you dont have to be behind.

[Ualaa]

While you don't have to be behind, to use a Mutilate.

If you can arrange to be behind, you'll land a lot more hits where the mob does not dodge, parry or block.
And you'll eat no ripostes.
Most mobs also have nastier abilities in the frontal cone, which is why tanks turn them from the raid.
Being behind means you don't take these types of attacks either.

With Mutilate, if you cannot get behind, you can still land your blows fine.
But if you can get behind the mob, it is an immense advantage.
That goes for all melee classes, using daggers, maces, claws or polearms.

[d0z3rr]

So I have been playing this group a lot more lately, and it is really fun. I did Ring of Blood at 65 and it was a cakewalk, did they nerf the bosses in that quest sequence? I remember struggling with that on my paladins.

Anyhoo, before that, the warrior continued to have absolutely terrible dps, I'm talking 350 if he's on a roll, and an average of 120 on trash. I got the druid up to about 1000 with some tweaking, and the rogue not far behind with like 800.

I was super close to ditching the warrior and putting in an enhancement shaman, which is the only spec I have never played before. As a last resort, I respecced the warrior arms and gave him a 2hander. Now he is doing some very nice dps, it's almost a 5 fold increase in dps for him. The funny thing is his macros stayed practically the same, and all I had to do was swap out bloodthirst for mortal strike and remove some commas.

Now he's a beast with about 30% crit fully buffed and more AP than the rogue.

[Jubber]

Remember with Fury and Titan's Grip you are swinging 2h weapons at their slow rate of speed. Also dualwielding requires a lot of hit rating. A rogue dualwielding makes up for this by equipping a fast offhand to get in more hits, plus he has talents that increase his attack speed allowing him to throw out more attacks, so even when he misses he makes up for it by throwing out even more.

The fury warrior suffers quite a bit until later levels of gear as he will miss quite often with his offhand. I would spec him arms like you changed him too until he is 80. Arms is great, and Bladestorm is OMG awesome. Once you are 80 and geared a bit more you can switch over to fury to get the full benefit of titan's grip.

[Multibocks]

Fury warriror is probably the most equipment dependent style in the game. Get a good bit of hit and then stack strength and you should get quite a bit out of him. I'm thinking of retiring my tank warrior and replacing him with a paladin and converting him to a fury dps. I've been on raids where the fury warrior made my eyes almost pop outta my head.

[Ualaa]

With a substantial amount of gear, a fury warrior is insane dps.
But lacking that gear, they're nothing special at all.

The arms respec never occurred to me.
Good call.

[Boylston]

The warrior simply spams bloodthirst, and keeps rend up. He also will do overpower if it's available.

Are you using Whirlwind in there? What about Heroic Strike when he has sufficient rage?

Also, taking advantage of instant Slam procs is a key to decent Fury DPS. Might be more difficult to do that as a multiboxer, but not impossible.

[Kang]

Are you using Whirlwind in there? What about Heroic Strike when he has sufficient rage?

Also, taking advantage of instant Slam procs is a key to decent Fury DPS. Might be more difficult to do that as a multiboxer, but not impossible.

What he said. Whirlwind is your ability of choice for TG warriors. Use it whenever it is off CD.

Warriors require a lot of micromanagement to get good DPS. Many of the high DPS abilities are proc based so you need to watch for those constantly. Let us know how it works out.

[d0z3rr]

Nope, totally did not add ww to the rotation. Didn't even occur to me. I'll add it though.

Thanks for the tips all.

[Boylston]

It's kind of a big deal!

[Acerak]

So I have been playing this group a lot more lately, and it is really fun. I did Ring of Blood at 65 and it was a cakewalk, did they nerf the bosses in that quest sequence? I remember struggling with that on my paladins.

Anyhoo, before that, the warrior continued to have absolutely terrible dps, I'm talking 350 if he's on a roll, and an average of 120 on trash. I got the druid up to about 1000 with some tweaking, and the rogue not far behind with like 800.

I was super close to ditching the warrior and putting in an enhancement shaman, which is the only spec I have never played before. As a last resort, I respecced the warrior arms and gave him a 2hander. Now he is doing some very nice dps, it's almost a 5 fold increase in dps for him. The funny thing is his macros stayed practically the same, and all I had to do was swap out bloodthirst for mortal strike and remove some commas.

Now he's a beast with about 30% crit fully buffed and more AP than the rogue.

I've played my warrior as DPS for a long time, and I can say with certainty that until you get at least ilevel200+ gear on him (if not better), don't bother with fury. Played as a main and not using castsequences, I get the same crappy results you did until I respecced.

Arms is the way to go until he gets WAY better gear. Sad, but true.

[Moorea]

About ring of blood; all the bosses beside the last one were ez for my 5 pallies at 65; but the last one wiped me, mostly because of the totems he dropped - were you doing group heals or just fast at targeting totems and killing them while still dps'ing and tanking and healing tank (for me it was a bit too much) ?


[I ended up finishing it because a level 80 hunter showed up to help someone else and I tanked for them and then they helped me kill the last one I had missing]

[d0z3rr]

About ring of blood; all the bosses beside the last one were ez for my 5 pallies at 65; but the last one wiped me, mostly because of the totems he dropped - were you doing group heals or just fast at targeting totems and killing them while still dps'ing and tanking and healing tank (for me it was a bit too much) ?


[I ended up finishing it because a level 80 hunter showed up to help someone else and I tanked for them and then they helped me kill the last one I had missing]

On the last boss I just did tank and spank. Didn't even pay attention to the totems. Shaman just did chain heal when needed, I was very surprised how easy it went.

He does a Chain lightning that will hit everyone in front of him. Maybe your paladins were getting hit by that?

[d0z3rr]

Here's another update.

The reason the warrior never had WW was that I never bothered to get Beserker stance. I'm frickin lazy when it comes to doing old quests like that, so apparently I ignored that stance for 35 levels.

Will beserker + ww help that much?

[Owltoid]

Lol, you were trying a fury build without beserker stance? That's golden.

I'm sure I'll run into similar problems with the DK. It's funny how little many of us know about specific classes and yet often we know how they work in a group.

[Boylston]

Will beserker + ww help that much?


Yes.

[ncmc]

hehe. im one of those players who has played every class untill boredom. kind of the reason im moving on to a mixed grp, "why not try and play 5 different ones at once? :p"

Hats off to you with that group set up. 4 different mellee, u got some balls. espicially with the complex rotation of rogues and ferals. good luck!!

Arms ftw on the warrior while leveling. MS and overpower (proc from bleed) hits pretty damn hard and bladestorm is amazing. (i wouldnt reccomend a slammer build for boxing) and i cant imagine a rend, MS overpower dps macro would be too difficult. oh and i would also reccomend glyph of sweeping strikes so u can use it on cooldown regardless of how much rage u have and it could be easily built into a macro.

[d0z3rr]

hehe. im one of those players who has played every class untill boredom. kind of the reason im moving on to a mixed grp, "why not try and play 5 different ones at once? :p"

Hats off to you with that group set up. 4 different mellee, u got some balls. espicially with the complex rotation of rogues and ferals. good luck!!

Arms ftw on the warrior while leveling. MS and overpower (proc from bleed) hits pretty damn hard and bladestorm is amazing. (i wouldnt reccomend a slammer build for boxing) and i cant imagine a rend, MS overpower dps macro would be too difficult. oh and i would also reccomend glyph of sweeping strikes so u can use it on cooldown regardless of how much rage u have and it could be easily built into a macro.

Good tip on sweeping strikes, thanks.

So far they have been doing very well, cleared Mana Tombs the other day. I always considered mana tombs to be a good test on how I am doing with a group. If they can clear it at 65 with no deaths or wipes, then the group is good to go. This particular group just destroyed the place, probably the most impressive run I've had at that level with any group.

[muffe]

Remember with Fury and Titan's Grip you are swinging 2h weapons at their slow rate of speed. Also dualwielding requires a lot of hit rating. A rogue dualwielding makes up for this by equipping a fast offhand to get in more hits, plus he has talents that increase his attack speed allowing him to throw out more attacks, so even when he misses he makes up for it by throwing out even more.

This and also when the warrior misses he doesn't gain rage for it :mad: , where as the rogue's energy is constantly filling up:).

[Moorea]

speaking of melee, I'm having problems in UK with my level 69 pallies and the mobs (Runecaster I think) who cast Rune of Flame; it ticks for 1.7k on each and just kills me - that's in the 4 pull just before the first boss - any tricks / tips ?

[d0z3rr]

I didn't clear UK on my pallies until 71. That pull is a biatch too. Luckily we have repentance, so repent 3, take them out one by one. Try chain stunning the runecasters too.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

Of that group, the feral druid DPS is the only thing I did a lot of boxing with. My biggest gripes were:

Shred is the best DPS spam, but have to be behind the target, which is a problem for well known reasons.
Weaving in Tiger's Fury as a long-cooldown item is problematic, unless you break it out into a separate long-cooldowns-button.
Keeping Savage Roar up without wasting combo points is another pain.

I suppose you could setup two rotations: one for bosses and one for trash. This would still leave me rather unhappy with my basic trash rotation. The problem, IMO, is that kitty druids have crazy amounts of crit once you get up to heroic-entry-level gear, which makes combo point generation very streaky, which makes it hard not to waste points. Sure, you can just resort to basic attacks or setup a rotation macro with a minimum number of attacks so that you know you'll have at least X combo points. Versus solo prioritized rotations, it really hurts their DPS numbers.

I'd be interested to see if anyone else has better ideas for kitty DPS rotation macros.

[d0z3rr]

I can't type for shit today so bear with me.

The team dinged 70 last night. They have been questing in northrend for a little while and have some decent greens now. I was able to kill the giant boss in nexus pretty easily, but the caster woman of course wiped me twice.

The warrior is now at 1060 dps at level 70. I can't wait to see how he progresses, as he is way ahead of the rogue and druid, that 1000 dps is even without bladestorm (i always forget to use it), in battlestance too! lol, still too lazy to get the beserker stance quest.

The rogue does about 800 with poisons and his new shiv. The druid is slightly behind the rogue. I played with the druids macros for about an hour yesterday and never could come up with one to get her more dps. I made sure it was not the macro and played the druid as if I was playing her solo not using a cast sequence, and she came out with the same dps.

Slightly dissapointing, as I was sure the rogue would be the #1 dps all the way up to 80. I had no idea the warrior would do so well.

it still boggles me that the druid has 3300 attack power, the rogue has 1800, yet the rogue surpasses the druid? BTW, the warrior has crazy white dmg output.

[Multibocks]

Rogue I found was best if I went combat maces (buy a mug from the AH) and did a simple 3 x SS, Slice and Dice, then 3 X SS and Eviscerate. This should ensure that Slice and Dice is up most of the time, your most crucial combo finisher. It's not the bestest rotation in the world, but it did really well on my rogue when I was multiboxing him.

In regards to the attack power difference, it's completely dependent on the base damage of the skill and the attack power modifier. Feral Druids get ridiculous amounts of attack power, but their base damage and attack power modifier is much lower than a rogues. I know in old ToC raids ferals had over 10k AP, haven't asked one recently what they can hit.

[Multibocks]

While you don't have to be behind, to use a Mutilate.

If you can arrange to be behind, you'll land a lot more hits where the mob does not dodge, parry or block.
And you'll eat no ripostes.
Most mobs also have nastier abilities in the frontal cone, which is why tanks turn them from the raid.
Being behind means you don't take these types of attacks either.

With Mutilate, if you cannot get behind, you can still land your blows fine.
But if you can get behind the mob, it is an immense advantage.
That goes for all melee classes, using daggers, maces, claws or polearms.

Haha Ualaa I just had to point this one out. You must be an old Everquest player as ripostes don't exist in WoW, which I'm sure you know. ;)

[Frausty]

Haha Ualaa I just had to point this one out. You must be an old Everquest player as ripostes don't exist in WoW, which I'm sure you know. ;)

Parry's in WOW are all effectively riposte's - when you parry an attack it reduces your swing timer on your MH weapon by 40%, leading to a faster attack back. Thus, if you have 5 guys meleeing a target and that target is capable of parrying you will be eating extra dmg from his faster attacks after parries, effectively a riposte, thus the reason expertise is such a useful tank stat.

Also, rogues have an 11 point combat skill called riposte that becomes available only after parrying an attack -

I played eq too btw, and while I love wow, nothing will ever replace my joy in casting ice comet for the first time... ah that was epic.

As far as the fellow who was trying fury dps without berserker stance and whirlwind --

Whirlwind for a fury warrior hits 4 targets for mh and oh weapon dmg (8 hits) every 8 seconds, so its a pretty incredibly huge deal

As far as buffing the melee group goes though, I think arms buffs that increase physical dmg for you will be better in the long run as a fury warriors rampage doesn't stack with the feral druids superior leader of the pack effect.

Grand Marshal Frausty
80 Gnome Berserker

[d0z3rr]

Ok, so the cat dps was still lacking pretty bad, the cat fell far behind the rogue and warrior. The rogue is now doing better, he is able to keep up with the warrior for the most part. I have him with 2 fist weapons, but would like to aim for 2 swords eventually.

So since the cat was too behind on the dmg meters, I decided to make my paladin tank a ret dps, and make the druid a tank. I had never tanked that much as a druid, so I figured this would spice up the 70-80 instance grind.

Well it definitely seems to be a good change. The paladin as a ret is able to keep up with the other two, although slightly behind

The druid as a tank is actually really sweet. I was aprehensive at first....no block? no divine plea? no multi silence? no consecrate? But a trial run in UK went very well. The druid has a lot of armor, and a couple thousand more health. Swipe seems to be just as effective as consecrate.

But most of all, this druid tank pours out threat, it's insane. I really cannot wait for her to hit 80, cuz it seems they are able to put out gobs more threat than a paladin, pugging will be easy.