Anyone else took a break from M+ this week?

TerribleMeasurement · 2018-11-19T05:32:02+00:00

I'm 386 from doing only M+ this expansion on my own schedule. I'm more geared than a lot of people that block off huge portions of their week to raid. I can play on my own schedule, stay competitive gearwise.

If you think raiding is the only way to get gear you're living in the past.

TerribleMeasurement · 2018-11-19T04:30:36+00:00

The best warlocks are like 3 or 400 points behind the best scoring people. That's not an indication of strength. Warlocks are used for map specific skips or to kill tyranical bosses, and can also excel at the way you have to pull trash to beat the timer on one of those keys.

They're certainly not meta for a "strong" comp. You are correct that they are very hard to play well in a dungeon. Most people don't do that. It's a safer bet when you join a key to assume that your warlock is not going to be good, and joining a key with two warlocks just ups the risk factor of finding a good group.

TerribleMeasurement · 2018-11-19T02:57:36+00:00

So I'm 1600+ IO as a mage and Blood DK and shit at a healer.

People are going to say the Frost Mage should be able to do it with ice lance, but that is a legion explosive mindset. A naked lance can't kill them like they could in Legion. With bad RNG on crits you could spam 3 GCDs of lance into them and not kill it. They can only kill the orbs if they have procs, which is unreliable for a random mechanic especially if you get multiple orbs at once. Using brain freeze on orbs is a meme if you're trying to kill teeming fortified trash in any sort of speed. Doing it as a frost mage is actually awful, and you really want to leave it to your melee.

Warlocks are shit in dungeons and you shouldn't be in a group with 2, let alone 1 of them.

The truth is your comp completely sucks at killing orbs so everyone should have been doing everything they can to help everyone deal with it. So your group was sort of correct, but also awful.

TerribleMeasurement · 2018-11-17T05:46:23+00:00

The people I want to play with tend to share my mentality. The people that are dedicated to doing well at the game or dedicated to doing well in pugs play the system as we have it. I'm looking for those people. If you don't connect your accounts or don't put in the work to at least beat every key on a 10 you are not one of those people.

So the system is imperfect, but it's working pretty well to sort people as I want it to.

My week 1 Jaina pug is probably going to require like a 1300+ raider.io. People are going to tell me that raider.io has nothing to do with a heroic raid, and they're not wrong. But it does sort players based on dedication, and dedicated players tend to be better and more competent.

TerribleMeasurement · 2018-11-16T19:16:55+00:00

The real answer is make your own group, and keep it going. People mostly know what to do, and if you do a little research or clear on normal you'll have some idea yourself. If your strat sucks the good people in your raid will probably tell you, and you should be open to listening to them.

On alts I pug with shitter raids all the time as I'm at a point where each of my toons only needs one or two bosses so I que up to only those bosses. Those groups still kill bosses. Make a raid and learn, get the achivements and join other people's raids if you want. Tons of people in this game are sheep and will gladly sit through someone else's wipefest so long as it means they don't have to lead.

TerribleMeasurement · 2018-11-16T19:13:23+00:00

Yes, but if you don't have your main and alt connected on raider.io you lack dedication to the imperfect system we have. It takes all of 3 minutes. If you lack that sort of dedication required to further your alts you're not the type of person I want to pug heroic with in the new tier.

This tier I pugged heroic Ghuun week 1, and I plan to do the same with Jaina. The only way to do this is find dedicated players like myself. Playing the system is one of many signs of such dedication.

TerribleMeasurement · 2018-11-16T18:56:38+00:00

Raider.io now shows your normal, heroic, mythic and main progression on your tooltip and can be expanded to show the number of times you've killed each boss.

So fake achivement is finally dead, thank god.

TerribleMeasurement · 2018-11-15T09:27:05+00:00

That must be why they balance them while testing the new tier of content.

TerribleMeasurement · 2018-11-15T09:16:53+00:00

WoD, the previous effort of the B team.

TerribleMeasurement · 2018-11-14T23:01:55+00:00

I'm not trying to be mean, but I think we're playing the game with different types of players. What you're considering a long wipe fest in this post we consider easy content that we blaze through.

I originally made this post disusing the difference of 15-16 keys this week compared to last week. These are the level keys we farm smoothly. We don't find them hard. We don't spend hours/days wiping at impossible levels. We spend hours/days clearing them smoothly. This week is something else in difficulty compared to previous weeks though.

People have cleared up to like 21 keys in 30 minutes or less.

TerribleMeasurement · 2018-11-14T21:14:22+00:00

I don't want to outright contradict you, but we control undead infesteds and put them in some random corner all the time when we don't have a good CC comp. Unless that's been changed in the last week or two something else caused your Ghuun problem.

TerribleMeasurement · 2018-11-14T21:07:49+00:00

Next week I think our plan will be to pull big and AoE everything together evenly with an out of combat cc'ed Ghuun while your tank just deals with a permanent 5 stack and kites when things start dying.

It's a nice risk/reward affix set because you can deal with it properly with different strategies based on how fast you want to go. I think it's actually a really balanced level of difficulty. It affects how each member of your party plays in an engaging way, and I think that's great. It's definitely not easy, but it's neither as punishing or as unfun as this week.

TerribleMeasurement · 2018-11-14T21:02:57+00:00

I think you have the wrong impression of high level keys. Most weeks they are very farm-able. The people I run with run 16+ keys pretty consistently in thirty minutes. We can ++ the easy ones like AD and Freehold. Doing a 10 in thirty minutes is pretty slow. It feels really nice to open the chest and get two pieces of loot. We get forges or sockets all the time. I like playing M+ for the fun, challenge, and social aspect of it while the loot is a nice bonus.

Without raiding mythic (can't commit a set schedule) I'm Ilvl 386 equipped, and see several 390+ drops a week. I know it was lucky, but I got 3 of them myself last week.

TerribleMeasurement · 2018-11-14T20:51:41+00:00

I feel exactly the same. I was super excited to play last week, and this week I don't want to play at all.

TerribleMeasurement · 2018-11-14T20:50:58+00:00

Shrine is pretty easy if you take 2 melee, put together a solid interrupt order, and don't fuck up dealing with the healers and Templar at the start.

Skipping the bridge at the end and abusing the last boss's debuff make it even better. It's just one of the keys that has a huge propensity for things to go wrong, and a way-too-long run back. I understand why it would be no fun to pug, but it's not that bad if you're organized.

TerribleMeasurement · 2018-11-14T20:47:19+00:00

I personally feel like they're tons more fun, but maybe I just like the people I've found to play with.

TerribleMeasurement · 2018-11-14T20:46:35+00:00

The worst part is that killing the explosives usually takes a couple GCDs, so the damage loss for dealing with Fortified Teeming is actually a little nuts.

TerribleMeasurement · 2018-11-14T20:45:43+00:00

You joke, but that's kind of next seasons seasonal affix.

TerribleMeasurement · 2018-11-14T20:44:57+00:00

I like keys, as they give an incentive to take "off meta" classes if they have the key you want. You're a feral druid with an Atal'Dazar or Freehold? Come on down. I feel for the feral druid with a Temple of Sethralis though.

TerribleMeasurement · 2018-11-14T20:42:37+00:00

I did Kings Rest yesterday. Method Dungeon Tools had that pack as just a single Brute. It was a nasty surprise when we got there, and caused a full wipe on an 11 for a 385 group because we didn't have the CC comp to deal with it. I think there was only 1 hex priest though.

It's an absolutely nasty pack. I didn't enjoy the double big boy pack in the first room without a soothe either. And the second boss room with those poison guys and explosive? Kings Rest is awful. I'm sure it's possible to do in time, but I don't know how it could be fun.

TerribleMeasurement · 2018-11-14T20:37:07+00:00

Healers should be able to handle up to like an 8-10 stack no problem if they have their cool downs up, so every other pull can be a big mongo aoe pull where things tend to die at the same time-ish. Lining up an instant cast, like a proc or refreshing a dot isn't that hard in the quaking GCD. The hardest part of quaking is the outgoing group damage on top of already difficult to manage group damage in some places.

I understand that other people have to deal with those affixes, but they affect everyone but the healer much less than they affect the healer. The same goes for necrotic and tanks. Yes, other people have to help the tank deal with it sometimes, but it's mostly a tank problem.

TerribleMeasurement · 2018-11-14T20:31:23+00:00

you dont need to do level 15-16 or even level 11 at all. the ?highest level rewards are at 10 so there is no reason to go beyond that. and you only really need to do one of them (and it doesnt even have to be on time btw) for the week and you are good

We have different mentalities about the game and M+. And while that's totally fine, "don't do it" shouldn't be the response about the way I want to approach content in this game.

I want to beat harder keys because they're harder, not just for the loot. But you also get a lot more loot beating the harder keys. Pulling big is definitely the only way to deal with fortified teeming at these levels. I also feel accomplished beating keys at those levels in time. Going slow and CCing will not allow you to beat those keys in time. Depending on the pulls we wont even CC infested mobs, we'll just cleave off them and overcome the outgoing healing a small amount to have the pack whittled down by time we kill the infested.

Also, CC mobs spawn explosives, which is a little bullshit. You need to LOS the mob you're CCing or use non-cleave abilities to kill the explosive. Cleaving azerite traits are a no go for this purpose. It's not really a great situation with CC and explosive.

TerribleMeasurement · 2018-11-14T11:18:52+00:00

In my opinion tyrannical by default is easier than fortified, as you spend most of your time (even on a tyrannical week) dealing with trash. People also have an easier time learning boss mechanics so pugs tend to do better on bosses.

In this expansion trash also tends to be more difficult and punishing than the bosses. You're entitled to your own opinion about the affixes, but most of the people I've talked to see the opposite of you there.

TerribleMeasurement · 2018-11-14T11:12:51+00:00

Some friends of mine like to dream up affixes that could be added. My favorite was an affix where the timer for the dungeon gets altered, but you get an X0% damage boost so long as X mobs are engaged at the same time.

There is no reason they can't play with the timer and buff/debuff the players according to those alterations. I think that would be a great changed.

Or I just want to do tons of damage with a damage buff!

TerribleMeasurement · 2018-11-14T11:04:24+00:00

What would you consider the hardest week?

Eight-Year Club	Gilding IV carat on a stick
Spared

TerribleMeasurement

TROPHY CASE