My thoughts on the class balance update

[JohnGabriel]

It changed nothing.

Still the only viable boxing setup for getting the endgame dungeons appears to be 5 tanks. The healer and DPS on my mixed team usually die early leaving the tank to solo most the fight. Tank is still topping DPS as well because the movement required by ranged.

I would probably go with 5x pali tanks because thats what I am used to. But 4xDK and 1 Pali seems optimal just thinking about it. Then again with the protection warrior doing 3rd in heals right now, thats right actually beating out real healers, leading with one of them is also a good choice.

My subscription ends in 9 days, and I am done. I don't have it in me right now to level another team to run dungeons, and I cant do them with my current traditional team. Maybe I will come back in a couple months when I am not burnt out.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

What's odd is that my tanks are healing for more than a primary-spec healer, though they can't sustain the output for more than ~10 seconds. I doubt that's a problem with tanks as much as a problem with healers. If a primary spec healer cannot heal through a normal dungeon boss, there's something fundamentally wrong. Just my experience, at any rate.

[Mosg2]

Healer throughput is just too low compared to incoming damage, even if you execute the mechanics properly.

[JohnGabriel]

In WoD I did best stacking all DPS.

[valkry]

I'm running 4 ele shams with DH tank, done all the normals and have done EoA and Violet Hold heroic, haven't tried the others yet. Some bosses are just a constant movement requirement for my shamans, and it suuuuuuuuuuucks. Who else hates violent winds in EoA? But the change did help me a fair bit, trash dies quicker and I am able to dps boss harder through ascendance, so I'm happy. I'm 840ilvl now and don't think I have ever struggled so hard with heroics. Dreading even trying mythics. Will probably have to wait til next major content patch when I'm 900ilvl and just brute force my way through it.

I'm pretty sure this is what most classes are complaining about for the heroic raids, their dps is fine, until they have to move, then it drops like crazy.

[Mosg2]

The other major issue, in my opinion, is that ranged classes have virtually no DPS while mobile. Except BM Hunters. With healer throughput so low compared to damage taken and the size of health pools, you can't allow your non-tank team members to stand in the fire to continue DPS. It's just doubling down on tanks being superior options for us in Mythic+.

The good news is that you can get the same ilevel from WQs as you can even doing Mythics, albeit slower (Weekly outdoor boss helps a lot). I'm leveling Warlocks with Priest healers now. Gearing will certainly be slower than the DK plus Pally team, but I'll end up in the same place.

[charly]

Arf yeah those bosses where you need to be mobile... I killed the first boss of Black Rock Hold last night and I just could not believe it. With the echoe debuff thing, my 4 priests would consistently run while applying Plea to the tank. It took me like 10 tries because with only the tank doing the DPS, the fight takes a long time and I would always make a fatal mistake after some time. If only my toons could follow me without delay and automatically face the boss, that would help so much but yeah, I'm dreaming I know.

@Mogs2: I'm curious. What do you usually do with your tank team for that boss when your toons get the echoes debuff? Do you run around kitting the boss?

[Andreauk]

I really wanted locks.. but in the end x4 bm Hunters won with a holy priest because of movement.

[Mosg2]

In Black Rook Hold, my experience is that only the ranged specs will get Echoes... And it's only my healer. So, I run him in a circle slowly around the edge of the room. The DKs are basically completely self sufficient--It'd be easier if I specced him Prot, but I'm lazy. And stubborn.

[MadMilitia]

My team is plowing through most of the 5 mans: PROT + MW + 3*BM.

Movement seems to be the big thing here but none of the dungeons are as unfriendly as Grimrail Depot was so far.

Granted, I died a lot and still do sometimes when I'm not paying attention. What I find to be super important is having a setup where you can very easily swap to other windows and still maintain all roles performing. That I think is easier said than done.

For the echo debuff off Souls in BRH I just watch DBM warning for who gets it, swap to that character and run around the back of the encounter to keep my team from getting gibbed. All while I continue healing and tanking and dealing damage.

[davidmage]

I'm 840ilvl now and don't think I have ever struggled so hard with heroics. Dreading even trying mythics. Will probably have to wait til next major content patch when I'm 900ilvl and just brute force my way through it.


From what I have learned during my encounters in heroics and mythics, the difference is not huge. By now I'm geared above 840 Ilvl. Yesterday I did a mythic, and nailed the mechanics on some bosses. Those went down on the first attempt, easy. A couple days earlier I did the same dungeon in heroic, thinking this will be chill I'm over heroics. So at a specific boss which I oneshotted yesterday mythic, I wiped 2 times before I realised that mechanics still is life or death in heroic. So once I got 100% serious and did everything right, the boss went down on heroic.
Eye of azshara have some bosses which I just technically cannot handle. Heroic is a pain. For me there are mythic dungeons who are about as difficult as that.

I know I'm running a team of 5 tanks, but the difference should scale just as much with my team. Especially because I'm a sloppy boxer, and stand in a lot of bad things. So if any encounter specific AoE (which is avoidable and therefore does noticeable damage) increases drastically from heroic to mythic, I would feel that.

I'm suspecting that they made the heroic to mythic jump in Legion sligthly smaller than in WoD. With all the hell that can be unlocked with mythic+, and that experienced players can get what they need from from mythic+ only, there is no need to make regular mythic much more challenging than heroic.

[Andreauk]

I'm suspecting that they made the heroic to mythic jump in Legion sligthly smaller than in WoD. W


This is due to the introduction of keystones. In our trade chat people were saying base mythic was too easy, and that they could run them as tank and x4 dps.

[Ughmahedhurtz]

This is due to the introduction of keystones. In our trade chat people were saying base mythic was too easy, and that they could run them as tank and x4 dps.

Yeah, but that sorta "I SO SWAG YO" boasting has always been this way. Three people in chat talking about the difficulties in running an instance and someone pipes up with how easy it is, then they find out player four is about 30 ilevels higher in gear, including full class sets and/or legendaries. WTB FacePunchThroughTheInterwebsIRL app, PST.

[valkry]

haha thanks guys, hmm yea, you are right about the jump from each difficulty not being too high, I will try them out sooner rather than later then.

[Xeneres]

I believe my toons (4 blood dks and 1 Prot Pally) are now surpassing the damage they put out since before tank dps nerf and Light of the protector nerf due to increasing artifact traits and item level increase. The gear and increased traits are definitely having an impact on how powerful and durable my team feels. Heroics are largely a joke and there are only few bosses left where I need to pay attention to mechanics. I expect Mythic and Mythic+1/2 will eventually feel this way in the coming weeks.

I've been able to set several 20-50 second faster record kills in heroic and mythic. Most of my toons are now above 850 and are starting to get 855-880 gear from world quests and Mythic and Mythic+. The world bosses are not as loot friendly as Kazzak was in WoD. I've used my bonus rolls on them and so far only 1 toon has gotten loot each week, in the last two world bosses.


Davidmage is right in that the difference between the difficulties of heroic and mythic is minor.

After making some talent changes to my team detailed below and unlocking my 2nd golden trait on my paladin I was able to not move on the 1st boss in Blackrook Hold heroic and sit in every mechanic and with proper CD rotation not die. I burned that boss down in around a minute and basically ignored every mechanic. All I did was slightly spread out so that not all of my toons were taking AoE damage. If a toon got the swirly shadows thing or shadow cleave then the toons in that quadrant ate it.

I'm going to start using Vuhdo mouseover macros and keybinds to control toon CD usage. By doing so, I'll have more control over which Toon uses a personal CD. There is no reason for every toon to use CDs if only one toon is taking damage, low hp or is about to take damage.


The difference between normal mythic and Mythic+1 is even smaller (8% health and damage). I found that once you go to +2 or +3 we lose our ability to brute force certain mechanics. Last week, I was not able to beat any +2 timer but I did not get very fast or easy dungeons (halls of valor). Sadly, I have not gotten a darkheart thicket keystone yet on my toons. I did get a lot of maw of souls, this week and last, which I'm glad for this because its easy and fast! I think I can probably finish some dungeons at +4 or maybe +5 with with my level of gear and damage output. Until I can clear +2 and +3 fast enough I wont be able to get those keystones. The good thing about Mythic+ is that you do not need to beat the timer to get gear including your weekly reward chest. Another neat thing is that you can get higher difficulty loot chests and keystones in one run, if you are fast enough. Like say you clear something in half the time at +1 you can get +2 and +3 chests and get a +4 keystone in addition to your regular +1 chest. This weekend, I'm going to try clear maw of souls+1 in 10-15 minutes by pulling larger packs of trash and using my CDs on trash instead of bosses and see how it goes. I'm very confident I can destroy all of the bosses in that place without CDs as they are all easy for my comp. Trash I think is our strength with a 5 tank comp. Tanks are typically quite high in trash damage but low in boss damage. So I think we have to play to our strengths if we want to beat these Mythic+ timers.

I try to practice speed clears when I clear regular Mythics as there is no pressure if you die on trash or bosses. I raced a few guildies in Mythic Halls of Valor and I cleared it in 34 minutes! I did beat their group by over 10 minutes but they said they were doing the stag party achievement. The mythic+ timer is 45 minutes. They had much faster boss kills like 50-100% faster but I was able to pull larger packs of trash then they were.

For those of us who run with 5 tanks (and possibly other weird comps that somehow work!) we don't need to 100% follow what the icy veins, wowhead and mmo-champion guides and world first raiders are saying. They aren't playing their character the same way we are. They are great as a reference and baseline to start your character out but don't rule out a talent or trait because someone said it wasn't optimal or was a bad talent choice. I initially followed the cookie cutter builds on my paladin and after doing some experimenting and going for a more passive defensive and healing focused build I found better results for my multiboxing comp.


I go for passive survival/damage reduction in my talents and traits before damage increases for my Paladin which has helped me out by being able to not have to use hand of the protector as much on my paladin which allows me to throw out more hand of the protectors on toons who are actively tanking rather than most of them on the paladin. I recently unlocked bulwark of order (50% of damage as an absorb on avenger shield) and then I started to use first avenger talent (+50% extra cd reset chance and +50% damage but only hits 1 target). I also changed out my 1st talent to use holy shield instead of blessed hammer. I don't actively tank on my paladin so blessed hammer is not the best talent. If you have 5 paladins I also don't believe it would be worth using since 4 would not be taking melee hits and it wouldn't really do anything besides look cool and do a bit of AoE damage. I also got a relic from WQs that boosts my light of the protector healing by 6% which helps offset the 22% nerf. Maybe I need to look at finding other +6% relics that buff light of the protector. Those two talent changes greatly increased my paladins passive survival. Such as doing 30-50% of its healing and absorbs on trash and bosses where the rest was hand/light of the protector. My paladin has 36% chance to block 40% of basically all damage types vs the 15-45% (the hammers can hit multiple targets) reduction to only boss and trash melees.

My DKs I'll admit are cookie cutter. Sadly, Blood DKs really don't have talent choices. There are maybe 3-4 that can be changed the rest are not even worth using.


I invested 13 traits into frost and tried it out in a few heroics with my paladin tanking. I can burn through some bosses very quickly with frosts high burst but there is little to no recovery for mistakes. Its just easier to play as 5 tanks. Frost DKs have a stupid high amount of runic power gain compared to blood which allows me to swap frost strike for death strike when I need healing. They just don't have the survival to handle mechanics and trash. Frost is somewhat ok to play now now with the buffs (its still one of the worst specs even with all of the buffs!) but it really needs a rework/redesign. Obliterate needs to scale with mastery or they need to redo Frost DK mastery.

I imagine playing a more standard comp with 3 dps, 1 healer and 1 tank will work but I don't think with this new tanking and healing style that it will work as well. You are much more heavily punished for standing in bad or not handling mechanics properly in this expansion than previous because healer output is toned down where its not whackamole healing for half the targets HP every cast.

[Multibocks]

Damn I read all of that! Hehe, just kidding, but I did read it. I have pretty much given up on dungeon boxing. Not because it's difficult, more that I just enjoy solo play again. I box hunters just for the WQ rewards. Hoping I get a legendary.

[zenga]

If you want to cheese mythic you can always go with affliction locks. If specced properly they will never die but from 1 shot mechanics, and movement isn't a big deal at all. Prot paladin, 3x afflicition lock with a resto druid is insanely strong from a boxing perspective. The raw dmg output for affliction is on the lower end class balance wise, but that isn't the most important thing for a multiboxer imo on boss encounters. They are so forgiving ...

[Pazgaz]

@zenga care to explain that bit about affliction locks? :)

[valkry]

I just rolled fresh lvl 100 pallies x4, pug a healer in a random WoD just to try them out, they smashed it haha. Though old content so...

[konraddo]

Protection paladins are very strong at the moment. The heal that's based on attack power with less than 10 seconds cooldown that can be used on other people and stack? I surely hope they don't nerf it but if they do, that would be the end of paladins in multiboxing.

The movement requirements are noticeably more prominent in legion. Casters have a real hard time maintaining consistent DPS in boss fight. Trash pack is fine because of AE skills and stun on rotation, but some bosses just keep throwing different location-based attacks continuously.

I wonder if BM Hunter x 4 + Druid would be a good combo for movement fights...

[davidmage]

Protection paladins are very strong at the moment. The heal that's based on attack power with less than 10 seconds cooldown that can be used on other people and stack? I surely hope they don't nerf it but if they do, that would be the end of paladins in multiboxing.



--EDIT-- (info below is wrong) -- Edit--
By stack do you mean if they all heal their full potential when healing the same target? If you use them at the same time on a damaged character, each heal will heal more than if you use them following each other (because the missing hp part will be less after the first heal). That kind of synced heal can only be performed by us boxers I believe, so thats a bonus for us.
--EDIT-- (info above is wrong) -- Edit--

Also I recently got my second gold trait Light of the Titans. That HoT x5 on your tanking character helps. I've started to use my heal just before engaging bosses to apply that HoT.

[Lyonheart]

By stack do you mean if they all heal their full potential when healing the same target? If you use them at the same time on a damaged character, each heal will heal more than if you use them following each other (because the missing hp part will be less after the first heal). That kind of synced heal can only be performed by us boxers I believe, so thats a bonus for us.
Also I recently got my second gold trait Light of the Titans. That HoT x5 on your tanking character helps. I've started to use my heal just before engaging bosses to apply that HoT.

like a dummy i went the other way 8( it will be awhile before i get the third trait!

[davidmage]

like a dummy i went the other way 8( it will be awhile before i get the third trait!

I'm not sure which way is the best to go. The path I have left are all a bunch of dps increasing traits. That will be a big boost for when I start to try some more real attempts for the timer on mythic+. Also I have until now played with purely defensive trinkets, like this: http://www.wowhead.com/item=137362/parjeshs-medallion&bonus=1826

I am now looking for trinkets providing a dps increase. I'm aiming for 1 strong static trinket, and 1 with a nice proc. I got this (845 titanforged) during my daily hc yesterday, it has an interesting proc. http://www.wowhead.com/item=137312/nightmare-egg-shell&bonus=1826

[CMKCot]

not really, if you cast all the heals at the same time they heal for the updated amounts. the multi heal with no reduction was hotfixed a few days before the prepatch. (you could do a lay of hands using only two heals.)

it will fully heal because the % heal is calculated first, THEN its increased Scatter the shadows and by versatility.

imagine you have 0 /100 hp (i know its impossible, but its to make the numbers easy.) you do one cast with a tooltip of 30% you get afaik 30 hp * .18 * versa lets pretend you have 10% vers so you would get 38.94 hp

this extra healing is what creates the illusion that the healed amt is updating once, so you would get 38.94 *5 = 194.7 hp .... the truth is that its not updating once, its updating with every cast. but even updating properly you still get 100% health back, just not as OP as you though. (not that having over 100% hp healing would matter) this same effect can be seen with +% healing effects from avenging wrath and the last boss in BRH

if you cast all the heals at the same time you WONT get:
30
30
30
30
30

increased to 194.7 hp


if you cast them all at the same time you "should" get:

30
21
14.7
10.29
7.203
increased by Scatter to 98.16774
and then by versa to 107.984514

BUT blizzard has some wonky serverside code to prevent this. so in reality you get:

30
30 (no effect)
21
21 (no effect)
14.7
Increased to :

85.2786



will you still get topped? yeah, but consider this. you now have all your heals in cooldown.
you could have done the same with 3 heals, and used the other two to much greater effect on other targets. this gets even worse when you consider that this serverside "fix" is not working all the time the same way, you will sometimes see 3 heals with no effect!

the point is: IF you cast all heals at the same time you will usually get healed by the first cast, the third and the fifth. the second and the third will show as having the same healing as the preceding one, even on the combat log, but don't seem to do any healing. you can see this if you tank is under heavy MS effects.

the best usage of HoP is to stagger cast. so DO NOT cast them all at the same time. just make a hotkey that does round robin. if you cast them all at the same time going past mythic 3 is a nightmare, some bosses will destroy you with meele attacks alone. if you wait for the tank to get to 20 % to do an uber heal you wont have any healing left for aoes. or the next time the boss smacks you on the face for 400k damage


the one thing that does stack is Light of the titans (each alt will cast one), that's a nice 50k hps on the tank with 100% up-time. definitely a great trait. it will also get casted on the caster. so if you cast 5x on the tank he gets 5 Hots, and all the alts get 1 for a total of 9 hots and if you cycle cast them you can keep all the hots refreshed. with proper timing you can keep up to 20 hots rolling on the entire team. currently its about 40% of my healing on Aoe heavy fights.

sadly it doesn't seem to be modified by haste, and its scaling is just plain terrible... mastery is a garbage stat for prot and without it, strength just doesn't translate in enough AP.

as far as Mythic+ goes im doing 750k dps on bosses, with an average of 675k dps on the entire run. sounds pretty good, but i feel the ceiling is at M5 currently, going past those levels you need to do invi runs to skip trash and having to take Hop over Kp and Spellwarding over Cavalier your mobility, A lot. not to mention i can't start a boss bull until i have wings, pot and my alchemy trink off ICD. so i have to sit doing nothing for a good 30 secs. (i can burst 2m DPS for the first 10 secs)

also, im chugging PoW like its candy... down about 60k gold per run in pots alone. :( to think regular players bitch about having to pot and flask a single character... lol

[davidmage]

Thank you sir for all this info.
Then was wrong about the mechanics of simultaneous heals of LoTP. I just assumed that because simultaneous heals could bring me to 100%, that the heals would compute at the current health (if they did not it would not be possible to reach 100% ever). Seems the bonus to the heals was strong enough to trick me. I also did not anticipate that blizzard would implement specific code to counter this which only would affect boxers probably 100% of the cases. Isn't all there single scenarios bad enough for us? :)

Looks like I am using my heals in a bad way then, as I have clumped them together by x2 and x3 same time usage. Definitely best to go round robin then, and it will work nice since there is no GcD in it anyway.

Light of the titans and it's hots are nice indeed. But I was also worried about the scalability for the same reasoning you mentioned.

Sounds like you are running mythic+ with 5 paladins? Which Ilvl are they at? Artifact progress? I'm curious since I'm planning to get going with that in the future. (beating the timers that is)

I'm still in the stage where I have not bothered with any of the expensive enchants or gems, and I've only drunk 1 flask ever. I'm chugging old WoD pots which are basically free.
I'm planning to step up my game when I have filled all the dps increasing artifact traits, and have replaced my defensive trinkets with dps ones.

[zenga]

@zenga care to explain that bit about affliction locks? :)

Affliction has 4 dots if you talent them like this (http://www.wowhead.com/talent-calc/warlock/affliction/cTyM).
Agony can ramp up to 20 stacks, corruption is eternal, siphon life heals you. All 3 instant casts. Phantom Singularity heals you as well and is also instant. And the way unstable affliction works in legion means you can cast 4-5 in a row if you don't have to move for a couple of seconds. Drain life is your filler spell and thus channeled, but not as important as UA or Agony.

To put it in an extreme way, the point is that you can basically run around and spam dots, and that your damage spells heals you w/o really needing a healer.

Grimoire of Supremacy has the advantage that you have a pet that does a lot of dmg as well that adds to the mobility. And if your tank happens to die you just summon a tank minion. That tank minion is not gonna tank a mythic boss 24/7 but if you have 3 of them out (summon has no CD) you have plenty of time to get a rezz off / survive a hectic phase (3x soulstone as well). The pets are incredible in the open world, like solo my pet tanks pretty much every big ass Danger Boss from world quests (talking about the dudes with 40m-ish hps) without the need for a heal.

TLDR 3 affliction locks really allows you to cheese many mechanics if you take it slow.

[Andreauk]

How about drop that tank and healer and go x5 aff locks.. could it work?

[JohnGabriel]

I don't have a dev quote but some complaints in the forum that they are nerfing locks ability to tank.

http://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20749825587

Have not been keeping up with things but seems like something you'd want to look into if you plan on 5x locks.

[CMKCot]

afaik the fix wasn't for boxers, serverside wow uses a similar system as the one EVE online uses. time on the server is divided in "ticks" i guess they do this for the same reason they do it on EVE, to save bandwidth and keep the server hardware usage to the minimum.

using ticks works usually, but can lead to things that shouldn't happen and potential exploits by top end guilds. back on beta the only team to make mythic +6 and over, was made of 4 tanks and a healer, and 3 of the tanks were prot palas. after this they changed the heals (around the time they also buffed the heal on prepatch), after this the dudes running those teams decided to deck them and play the game proper.

keep in mind this "ticks" seem to go at a one second interval, more than enough for a coordinated team of players.

if you were boxing on old azeroth, back on the day, we could activate the same thing on multiple characters at the same time and we would get multiple credits to quests, for example.

in some VERY rare cases we still can. for example on the WQ in suramar where you have to give arcwine to the meth-heads if you click the dialog option on all windows at the same time you can get multiple credits using only one mob. not a real abuse seeing as the advantage we get is doing a quest in two minutes when it usually takes 5. but think of how this could be used on mobs that used to give you things for interactions. or to spawn mobs with quest items indefinitely, bosses in dungeons, or a wide arrange of weird and unintended things.

blizzard has been actively moving away from this, after the azeroth revamp in cata and ever since with new content finding quests where you can take advantage of this is very rare. on legion the only quest i found is that one in suramar. and if i recall correctly there's the one where you have to ress the small drakes.




as far as the team, im currently doing 5 prots, the DPS is pretty good, and on par with high lvl mythic groups. the problem is mobility and the disparity between damage on trash and damage on bosses. on trash you can pull some INSANE dps, specially if you pull a ton of mobs and let them pick whos going to tank them instead of taunting them and then just rotate blinding lights and hammers while consecration and Avengers mow them down.

on bosses whoever, DPS can tank badly. if you can burst and don't mind trowing 5k gold in 5x pots then you can pull some monster DPS. but if the fight has a lot of movement, lots of gtfo the fire moments and target swapping, DPS stinks. it can go from 700+ down to 400ish... that's usually and two to three minutes on the fight. and some fights are a bitch to do. Nal'tira and the worm boss in neltharions lair come to mind. doing that on a single pull on mythic 4+ is pretty much impossible.

im thinking of going 3 prot 2 ret once i get the proper legendaries. to compensate for the lack of boss DPS

Artifacts are at 22, took the HoT first and moved my way up to Tyrs enforcer and down to bulwark now. (2 points away from it)
http://www.wowhead.com/artifact-calc/paladin/protection/IO-4IxBGABRiA0YwNGUDRmA0ZwNGgCRqAUbAFG4BRvAVPwE

i think its the best for boxers, hammer time is useless. faiths armor is nice but only as a burst dps gain. and faiths armor is only good if you have one tank, quite pointless when you have five and you can just taunt off if you are in danger or debuffed.

and all the talents along the way are useful with the exception of the extra block chance.

and don't even bother with enchants... get the crap ones for rings for extra Versa... the neck enchants are complete crap. mark of the priestess is garbage... heals for about 1.5m when i add up the entire team on a fight where they healed over 50m. its not even a smart heal. :/ and will often proc at the moment you pull doing an overheal. -.-'

[Andreauk]

Changes here for classes: http://www.wowhead.com/news=255940/patch-7-1-ptr-now-live-build-22578-mounts-karazhan-bosses-ptr-patch-notes-music-