Time to just buy deadly gear?

[heyaz]

When is a good time to make the decision to upgrade to deadly pieces? We've been stuck in the 1600s for weeks, capping out at about 1690 over two weeks ago, and we're actually slowly dropping even though we're playing better every day. Every week we see more gear, 90% of the teams have 1850 weapons, most have shoulders, a lot even have 2250 weapons and full furious. I've got 2100-2250sp on each shaman without ToW - against half geared teams, my nukes are leaving them at 5-10% hp, fully geared teams - forget it, they're still at 50-80% after I blow everything.

I have 2350 arena points, I assume there are 4-5 weeks left in the season, should I just go ahead and upgrade to the deadly helm and shoulders? The battlegroup sucks, on Reckoning anything above 1600 MMR is geared to the teeth and/or plays like a they've been gladiator last 5 seasons in a row.

[asonimie]

Your spellpower sounds very decent, you should be noticing more kills as long as you're SURE all 4 are going off. Hows your spellpen? Correct target choice is everything, they may still be alive because of cooldowns, someone saw your burst coming and threw up PS / Shieldwall / etc. If you could make a video of your average gameplay I would be very happy to sit down and critique it with you over vent or w/e. I love watching movement / targeting / spell order habits of other boxers.

As far as the gear goes... other than the side effect of ending up less-than-honorcapped at the end of the season, I would wait til the absolute last minute before dropping points on deadly gear. The arena pt cap is 5000 i think (correct me if I'm wrong)... so as long as you're below that I would say wait and save. See if you can break 1850 by the end of the season and drop pts on some last minute furious gear.

Let me know if theres anything else I can do to help.

[heyaz]

Your spellpower sounds very decent, you should be noticing more kills as long as you're SURE all 4 are going off. Hows your spellpen? Correct target choice is everything, they may still be alive because of cooldowns, someone saw your burst coming and threw up PS / Shieldwall / etc. If you could make a video of your average gameplay I would be very happy to sit down and critique it with you over vent or w/e. I love watching movement / targeting / spell order habits of other boxers.

As far as the gear goes... other than the side effect of ending up less-than-honorcapped at the end of the season, I would wait til the absolute last minute before dropping points on deadly gear. The arena pt cap is 5000 i think (correct me if I'm wrong)... so as long as you're below that I would say wait and save. See if you can break 1850 by the end of the season and drop pts on some last minute furious gear.

Let me know if theres anything else I can do to help.

I'm running with 95 spell pen and 7% hit with talents. Here's my main:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...rezim&n=Zoobox

I've thought about making videos in the past, taping a bunch of games (mostly losses against higher level teams), even just to watch myself in slow motion. If you or anyone wants to critique it that would be awesome too, I hope you can make sense out of what's going on. I know I make a lot of mistakes in the longer games, in some of the really short cleave games I honestly can't tell you what I could have possibly done.

I'm still using focus, not FTL, so I don't have hidden targets, I don't know if this would make all the difference?

My targeting strategy, against caster teams w/ maybe one melee:
1. pressure melee into using bubble/immunities (usually purge as they run in or come out of stealth)
2. pressure mage into using ice block
3. based on positioning/circumstances take each one out
4. take out healers
5. take out warlock

Cleave teams, well it's a mess but usually looks like this:
1. purge/frost shock first melee in to force bubble (usually ret paladin or dk)
2. thunderstorm + 1 fire nova totem drop (rotation between all shaman). Once or twice until I can make sense of things
3. Stop and heal my main or team if they went for straight burst and aoe
4. At this point things get fuzzy - either I'm in the middle of a chain cc, a shaman is dead, or we're facing all different directions and my targets were thunderstormed in 3 different directions. If I can get things together I try to use my instants, but most of the time with one of them at 5% hp, or worse, just another bubble I didn't know wasn't used before.

I'm hoping I can still get a playable dps when fraps is running, if so I'll take some games. It's going to be pretty rough to watch though, this is my first real season

[Elektric]

Great post btw.

you are experiences what I call Bombardment Failure. These teams Zerg you and destroy you in CDs without you ever having a chance to play. Sometimes they feal unbeatable. The secret...dont stand there! When they zerg your formation run LOS and make them try something new, unless these teams are pro they will realize they have already comitted and live with the results.

Also are you setting a focus? Are you blowing your nuke ASAP to make it a 5v4 fight? The sooner you do that the sooner you win percentage will jump. You seem like your lacking a small amount of patience and a couple of tips from hitting 2k. 4 Weeks left, make the community proud with a Glad post.

[Elektric]

When is a good time to make the decision to upgrade to deadly pieces? We've been stuck in the 1600s for weeks, capping out at about 1690 over two weeks ago, and we're actually slowly dropping even though we're playing better every day. Every week we see more gear, 90% of the teams have 1850 weapons, most have shoulders, a lot even have 2250 weapons and full furious. I've got 2100-2250sp on each shaman without ToW - against half geared teams, my nukes are leaving them at 5-10% hp, fully geared teams - forget it, they're still at 50-80% after I blow everything.

I have 2350 arena points, I assume there are 4-5 weeks left in the season, should I just go ahead and upgrade to the deadly helm and shoulders? The battlegroup sucks, on Reckoning anything above 1600 MMR is geared to the teeth and/or plays like a they've been gladiator last 5 seasons in a row.

Whenever I spend points in an RPG for anything I look at time spent and time used. Shoulders are a good buy. Full Deadly...probably not the best use of points because you might only need 2-3 pieces to move up past the 2k mark. just my 2cents.

[heyaz]

Are you blowing your nuke ASAP to make it a 5v4 fight? The sooner you do that the sooner you win percentage will jump. You seem like your lacking a small amount of patience and a couple of tips from hitting 2k. 4 Weeks left, make the community proud with a Glad post.

We tried that strategy for the first several weeks. It only worked against bad/undergeared teams. If I blow instants right off the bat now, I usually end up with a bubbler or someone with 10-30% hp left because 4x lvb doesn't instant kill anyone with gear - I need the 4x CL + 4x frost shock to finish the job, but before I can get those off I'm usually in an AoE cc.

We don't rush any high ranked team or blow any cooldowns earlier because we either get LoS'd or the rush hurts our positioning/strategy/morale more than it hurts theirs.

I'll see if I can tape some games tomorrow night, I know we need a lot of work.

Our recent switch to defensive, what with me healing myself and using bloodlust right off the bat to survive high dps cleave teams, it new the last few weeks In the past we went straight offense, but the AoE cc was so bad that we were never really on the offensive anyway, just in the middle of an aoe and dps chain really.

[Gares]

Are you blowing your nuke ASAP to make it a 5v4 fight? The sooner you do that the sooner you win percentage will jump. You seem like your lacking a small amount of patience and a couple of tips from hitting 2k. 4 Weeks left, make the community proud with a Glad post.

We tried that strategy for the first several weeks. It only worked against bad/undergeared teams. If I blow instants right off the bat now, I usually end up with a bubbler or someone with 10-30% hp left because 4x lvb doesn't instant kill anyone with gear - I need the 4x CL + 4x frost shock to finish the job, but before I can get those off I'm usually in an AoE cc.

We don't rush any high ranked team or blow any cooldowns earlier because we either get LoS'd or the rush hurts our positioning/strategy/morale more than it hurts theirs.

I'll see if I can tape some games tomorrow night, I know we need a lot of work.

Our recent switch to defensive, what with me healing myself and using bloodlust right off the bat to survive high dps cleave teams, it new the last few weeks In the past we went straight offense, but the AoE cc was so bad that we were never really on the offensive anyway, just in the middle of an aoe and dps chain really.

This sounds exactly like me except I am stuck in the 1300 rating. I wish I could tape some games of mine too but I am not sure how much less able to edit them either.

[Elektric]

Are you blowing your nuke ASAP to make it a 5v4 fight? The sooner you do that the sooner you win percentage will jump. You seem like your lacking a small amount of patience and a couple of tips from hitting 2k. 4 Weeks left, make the community proud with a Glad post.

We tried that strategy for the first several weeks. It only worked against bad/undergeared teams. If I blow instants right off the bat now, I usually end up with a bubbler or someone with 10-30% hp left because 4x lvb doesn't instant kill anyone with gear - I need the 4x CL + 4x frost shock to finish the job, but before I can get those off I'm usually in an AoE cc.

We don't rush any high ranked team or blow any cooldowns earlier because we either get LoS'd or the rush hurts our positioning/strategy/morale more than it hurts theirs.

I'll see if I can tape some games tomorrow night, I know we need a lot of work.

Our recent switch to defensive, what with me healing myself and using bloodlust right off the bat to survive high dps cleave teams, it new the last few weeks In the past we went straight offense, but the AoE cc was so bad that we were never really on the offensive anyway, just in the middle of an aoe and dps chain really.

You insta-nuke should be = trinket + FlameShock + Lava Burst. Purge Purge Purge Nuke.

LB + CL + ES combo is always devastating.

Never rush teams, it just leads to a crappy record.

There's no way to avoid the mass CC or AoE. You can only minimize it. Since you are never attacking the high ranking teams, you are waiting for them. This moves the odds into their favor greatly. Top teams have no problem cycyling CC and AoE on a team that stands in one area. When you do run across these teams, learn to drop back into LoS and youll see they aren't as strong as they first come off. A win will still be hard, but theyre attainable.

keep us informed of your success!

[Clovis]

When is a good time to make the decision to upgrade to deadly pieces? We've been stuck in the 1600s for weeks, capping out at about 1690 over two weeks ago, and we're actually slowly dropping even though we're playing better every day. Every week we see more gear, 90% of the teams have 1850 weapons, most have shoulders, a lot even have 2250 weapons and full furious. I've got 2100-2250sp on each shaman without ToW - against half geared teams, my nukes are leaving them at 5-10% hp, fully geared teams - forget it, they're still at 50-80% after I blow everything.

I have 2350 arena points, I assume there are 4-5 weeks left in the season, should I just go ahead and upgrade to the deadly helm and shoulders? The battlegroup sucks, on Reckoning anything above 1600 MMR is geared to the teeth and/or plays like a they've been gladiator last 5 seasons in a row.

My main shaman has full deadly with furious gloves (saving honor for either the legs, chest or... hopefully weapon. I gave up on 5v5 with the team and just do BGs with them -- 3v3 is the only arena I do seriously and thats solo.

But anyhow, we run into the same problem -- 90% of the teams we face are in full or near-full furious forcing us to outplay them by a significant degree, especially for our hunter who has just under 20k HP and still has blue boots Luckily his skill coupled with the ret paladin on the team make up for it, but still its frustrating to lose to teams that we out play simply because of gear. The problem we've had for the past week is as soon as we break 1700 we get 2k team after 2k team, after 2k team and busted back down to 1650 -- we'll do 40 games in a night and come out either the same rating wise, or +50 points if we're really, really lucky.

Anyhow, I would say get the pieces that you can afford, especially if the cost is just honor since that's pretty easy to grind out. Items that you buy with arena points on the other hand are a bit different since there are only so many points you can gain per week, while I can hit the honor cap in a weekend of pre-made BGs.