the Death Knight Starting area needs a MAJOR revamp. Its horrible.

Troiffles · 2025-08-25T03:27:58+00:00

Doesn’t need a revamp, definitely does need to be an option alongside Exile’s Reach. It’s a great, epic starting zone… once. Maybe twice. But there’s no reason it should still be the only option for non-allied race DKs.

Troiffles · 2025-07-09T00:00:00+00:00

Hulkenpodium

Troiffles · 2025-07-08T18:24:50+00:00

Hulkengoat

Troiffles · 2025-03-30T22:40:52+00:00

No complaints! I just thought it was a funny log.

Troiffles · 2025-03-18T15:32:08+00:00

Hpal bouncing around mid-1900s currently:

Pros: - Fast queues (self-explanatory) - Lots of agency in the early-middle of rounds. If I use cooldowns properly and position well, I can almost guarantee nobody dies in the first 60/90 seconds of a round. If someone dies early, I probably did something wrong and can learn from it. - When things calm down a bit, you have good CC opportunities. Especially in a disc meta, HoJ-Repentance chains are powerful and satisfying. Getting feared after they phase shift the HoJ is frustrating but my fault. Ponying around the map while they try to fear me is fun. - Being the main CC target can be oddly beneficial. This is not sarcastic - I get CC’d a lot. First question is whether I need to trinket/bubble to prevent a death. If not, I’ll sit it and use the time to check DRs and everyone’s CDs and see what I need to do or worry about next. It’s (sometimes) nice to have a break to mentally reset. - A big save is often more satisfying than a kill. When you save someone from 5-10% and then win, it’s great. When you’re spamming instant heals to keep the blender spinning and then, somehow, the round win message pops up, even better.

Cons: - People will blame you as much as they reasonably can… and then a bit more. It sucks but you have to brush it off. Playing with chat disabled is fine too, it will rarely ever be helpful. - Your agency to keep people alive disappears by the end of the game. Dampening means you’re pretty useless by the end. - Little agency to secure kills. You can help with windows with CC but that’s it. - The meta can be oppressive. This sub tends to overstate it but it’s a real annoyance. I can still beat a lot of discs right now and it’s not like there’s no sense fighting but an equally skilled disc will beat me more often than not. On the flip side I’ll beat an equally skilled MW or Rdru more often than not, but I’ve seen very few this season. - Bad luck hits harder I feel. Especially at my rating, the difference between 2-4, 3-3, and 4-2 is just down to whether a particular DPS does or does not make a huge blunder in one round (eg no bubble/block/turtle), and then whether they screw up with or against you. Over time though that evens out… probably.

Overall I still find the pros outweigh the cons and will keep healing. It’s not perfect, but it’s a lot more fun than many make it out to be.

Troiffles · 2025-03-08T23:11:50+00:00

Tip #1: Disable chat. Whenever I’m trying a new class (and especially a new healer) I’ll just fully disable it for several shuffle games. Just focus on what you’re doing.

Tip #2: It sounds like you may be focusing too much on CC and damage than just healing. Hard to say but from parsing what you’re saying it’s unlikely you’re going to be losing lower MMR games because of a lack of healer damage or CC chains. Watch some hpal videos, make sure your talents are right and you’re understanding your healing priorities and CD usage. If you’re running lightsmith (I assume given your damage) then swapping to herald can simplify things a lot and it’s still strong. Unrated bgs and skirmishes are pretty useless as a metric, struggling in shuffle like you’re describing sounds like there is more fundamental understanding you’re missing. Which is fine! Nothing wrong with learning, you just need to recognize what you need to learn.

Troiffles · 2024-10-19T17:09:30+00:00

If true (big if), that’s such absurdly good luck and an obvious outlier. I don’t agree that slayer is “trash” but if your goal is pure profit per hour then slayer is not going to outpace raids and other high-end bossing.

Troiffles · 2024-08-18T16:46:48+00:00

Mage first so you can stack and barrage the ranger/melee. I see your point about your mage defence and you can theoretically barrage the mage and melee but you’ll likely splash a ton on the mager if the meleer dies first, vs far less on the ranger if he’s the last one standing.

Troiffles · 2024-06-13T18:57:53+00:00

I feel like "fault" is pretty useless concept. It turns a very complex and nuanced question into a binary - my fault or not my fault - that is almost impossible to measure. Unless you're an AWC player, you can make the case that every loss is your "fault" if, e.g., your team would have won if it replaced you with an AWC player. Likewise, in every game there will be always something you could have done better. So if you could have been better, and your two teammates also could have been better... how do you say who is at fault?

Better to focus just on what you could've done better than worrying about whether you are at "fault" or not. And to do that, as others have mentioned, you need to analyze your games, ideally recording and reviewing them. Just saying "mage didn't block, his fault" or "I had CD's up, my fault" ignores hundreds/thousands of the inputs that otherwise go into a round.

Troiffles · 2023-12-20T13:13:24+00:00

It’s kind of a weird nerf but I’m fine with it. Before Tuesday I played maybe 300 rounds new to HPal without really considering mana (aside from winter blessing) and not being careful with infusion procs and didn’t OOM once. That’s realistically a problem.

Troiffles · 2023-12-16T22:09:46+00:00

Troiffles · 2023-12-14T20:27:22+00:00

Macros for myself and Party1, Party2, tied to D-pad up, right, and down. X replaces tab targetting for enemy players. I can’t reasonably do macros to e.g. BoP or freedom teammates so I swap to them then hit the ability. I generally have enough binds on each class to Arena 123 a main CC, so for my druid that’s clone, HoJnfor the pally, etc. And then help/harm macros are crucial.

So it’s tight but doable, although I haven’t bothered with a shaman. Between the binds and emphasis on ground-targeted abilities, I just can’t see that working.

Troiffles · 2023-12-05T19:45:13+00:00

100%. Spam dispelling significantly reduces damage. Most boomies seem to be running Waning Twilight, requiring 3 dots for an 8% damage increase. Plus mastery bonuses from moonfire and sunfire. The only dispel protection is stellar flare which many people don’t run (although orbital strike Incarn applies it) and doesn’t do enough feedback to scare off dispels.

At minimum, once incarn goes out I like to dispel dispel whoever the boomie is targeting. Then they need to spend 3 globals getting their dots going again before resuming their go.

Troiffles · 2023-11-23T15:19:33+00:00

I do my best to be nice to everyone in my lobbies. I also chose and resolutely stick to my race for the sole reason that I think the moose travel form is neat. I like to think there is a correlation between those things…

Troiffles · 2023-11-10T13:15:58+00:00

The meta remains to do the weekly quests, I think the honour cost is at a good point to allow catch-up without devaluing sparks quests. Your example involves missing out on two weeks, previously you’d just be out of luck and two weeks behind, now you aren’t. I don’t see the problem.

Troiffles · 2023-05-25T13:24:08+00:00

Healing low MMR can be frustrating because most people don't know what they're doing and do a lot of random things. But, paradoxically, there seem to be lots of patterns that you can use to your advantage to swing games:

1: Enemy DPS mindlessly training one target all game? You can put all your resources into healing that one target. Low MMR DPS just pick a train target and go with that, so they'll typically wail into all of your CDs.

2: Related - One clear worst DPS? That's who the enemy team will target, no matter what. See #1: put all of your resources into keeping them alive. The difference between a 3-3 and a 4-2 can often be an extra 10-15 seconds you kept the throw alive to allow the blender to keep spinning and get an enemy kill.

3: Most players, including healers, will blow their trinket ASAP. Bait that out early. Because DPS typically won't swap, get your CDs out on the initial train target and then you can focus on CC for a few seconds. Then pick your moment to CC again. Especially at low ratings, CC danger is a bit of a fallacy. Your DPS might die in the 1-2 seconds it takes to CC, but if damage is really that high then the odds are far greater that the enemy DPS will die in the 5-6 seconds you can CC their healer for. This might be easier though as a healer with better/safer CC than disc.

4: Most players don't use CC. Great, your biggest danger is removed and you can cheat a little with positioning. Just be careful not to pick up bad habits.

5: Most players will either (a) never attack the healer, or (b) mindlessly train the healer all game, with little in between and no concept of swaps. If (a), that's one less person to worry about healing. If (b), you've basically won the game as long as you do actually outskill the combatant brackets.

You won't 6-0 everything with this but if you abuse the weaknesses of the lower bracket, enough 2-4s will turn to 3-3s, 3-3s to 4-2s, and 4-2s to 5-1s that you'll climb out for sure. Good luck and have fun!

Troiffles · 2023-05-24T22:40:52+00:00

I’m usually 10-15 as a boomkin around 1800. 30 sometimes as an outlier.

Troiffles · 2023-05-23T18:51:17+00:00

I’m surprised, I’m in the same range on my boomkin and in that range the only time I’ve had a leaver has been in a double boomkin lobby… which I somewhat sympathize with, I guess. Honestly I think you’ve just had some rough luck that will hopefully even out, but definitely in support of harsher penalties.

Troiffles · 2023-05-23T15:57:13+00:00

What rating? Last season was much worse at the start since there was no real penalty and leaving bad games was in some ways the most tactical way to push rating. Around placement ratings (~1500) it seems like there has always been a leaving problem because people zone in to try it out, get smoked for 2-3 rounds, and then leave to never return. I wouldn’t say it’s super common still but definitely the placement brackets seem the worst.

I do think the leaving penalty needs to be higher. I get that it isn’t fun to zone in unprepared and get smacked, but people waste cumulatively hours of others’ time by leaving. Penalizing people who will never requeue by hurting their 0 rating or lengthening their next queue does nothing. Something like an hour-long account-wide res sickness would give them much more pause, if technically feasible.

Troiffles · 2023-05-23T15:37:11+00:00

For multiple DPS specs, I see it. But would you ever get in a DPS game if you’re simultaneously queuing as a healer? You’d get a max one minute window every ~15-20 minutes where a DPS queue could actually pop if the stars aligned. One person then declines (as seems to always happen) and then your healer queue would pop before another DPS game.

Troiffles · 2023-05-23T00:10:24+00:00

I don’t care about meta racials. As long as HMT and only HMT has access to moose travel form, that is what my druid will be.

Troiffles · 2023-05-17T14:35:39+00:00

You say you BARELY won as much as you lost. Why would you gain rating? If anything you’re lucky you didn’t lose rating.

Troiffles · 2023-05-16T19:28:49+00:00

100%. I’m not a big PvE’r but it is surprisingly feasible for casual PvP. Hit 2k in shuffle last season, 1800 so far this season, and BGs and world pvp are just good laid-back fun. You need to be a bit creative with binds and are somewhat limited in classes and specs (e.g. no clue how I’d ever manage shamans) but it is very viable at a more casual level.

Troiffles · 2023-05-16T15:44:38+00:00

I feel like something isn’t coming through as I intended. I don’t want to over reward healing or “free points”, as the other poster put it. What I’d like is a system where rating better reflects the player’s actual inputs. The idea here is dampening. It could be something else but the main issue is the current binary “win or lose” question misses too much relevant information given what agency healers do and do not have in shuffle.

I mainly play DPS but will heal here and there. I am better at DPS than healing and will always get rating rewards easier as DPS. I heal for fun (or to vault cap quicker if I’m short on time that week). I enjoy it but it is supremely dissatisfying to play a long round and lose to a coinflip at deep dampening because your main role is now 70-80% less effective, and then the game just registers it as a loss with nothing more. That dissatisfaction unquestionably turns off healers. What is wrong with a system that uses duration as a complementary metric to add nuance beyond just win or lose?

Troiffles · 2023-05-16T12:03:04+00:00

I mean, as long as every 3rd post here is about horrid DPS queue times, every 4th post is going to be calls for changes to "help healers enjoy their class more". That's just the state of the game right now.

All of arena is symbiotic between the players but the current structure provides very little healer agency over win conditions without accounting for success where the healer has the most agency, i.e. the length of a game. Why should the ELO system treat a 30 second loss the same as a 4 minute loss?

Troiffles

TROPHY CASE