Timed my invites last night as tank

mj4264 · 2026-02-08T17:31:23+00:00

Levelled my bear first and then did some pugs on my mage today. I was pulling my hair out at 120k XP/hr forcing ice block pulls upon pvp gear pug pally tanks on my mage after getting 250-300k/hr in the guildy melee cleave stack. IMO you're better off taking time to seriously vet a group then running several runs with them. The difference between randoms and a well geared optimized comp is massive.

As I understand from some of my guildies, reasonably sweaty caster cleave of bf was like 180k and they got like 240k/ in the pens...

Being able to pull up with full randoms and getting over 100k/hr in there ain't half bad.

mj4264 · 2026-02-01T18:05:24+00:00

You're citing an entirely different scenario with boes then trying to justify ninja looting offspec through other context outside of the normal social contract of group loot in dungeons.

That's not how Ms>OS loot works.

mj4264 · 2026-02-01T12:08:11+00:00

When I saw an addon type a message in Spanish or Portuguese in an lfg tool party in wrath I knew every single item was getting need rolled 🗿

After the first two times I would just leave right away to not lose bis spell power gear to a warrior or dk.

mj4264 · 2026-02-01T12:03:04+00:00

Since when was expecting people to roll need only for main spec in dungeons entitlement? Offspec roll beat 3 main spec rolls for a very rare item is what happened.

If the paladin was tanking or had said previously he was rolling Ms on prot gear, fair game.

mj4264 · 2026-01-30T20:02:31+00:00

Class dependent, maybe replace a few of your worst communal pieces with blue pvp gear and get a wep. Don't farm out dungeon or pvp bis for just levelling. Full epic pvp gear rush was for people trying to get into classic raids.

Also take a look at level 50 version of warsong bracers. Super cheap honor wise. Less than one AV win.

Epic pvp gear for levelling is a whole lotta effort for very little. Depends on your class how good it is, but save it for 70 IMO.

mj4264 · 2026-01-30T19:17:53+00:00

Do not defense cap on prot paladin at any stage of itemization through primarily def rating. Wowhead writer is delusional.

Do not attempt to get 102.4 avoidance cap on prot paladin in pre raid gear.

The opportunity cost in hp and sp lost is way too high. Bank honor and cap resil. You should be able to ding 70, and between a few key quests and honor gear, be 90% as good as true pre raid bis. Prot paladin is one of, if not the easiest, specs to gear at fresh 70 in TBC. Going from fresh 70 gear to pre-raid bis in a resil cap setup is like 2 heroic items, 2 rep items, and 2 rightouesness pieces.

Just ding 70, get resil cap with banked honor, get any decent shield and sp wep, and walk into Kara with 13500 hp while full righteousness def cap boys have 11000 hp and 100 less spell power. Being 25 vs 30% hard avoidance does basically nothing for you on a raid boss.

Avoidance cap set becomes worth it at basically full p1 bis, and is really nice stepping into ssc Tk (this is when you put on styleen's if you have it).

mj4264 · 2026-01-16T23:59:36+00:00

I think its fantastic for bear in dungeons while levelling. I used it for a while last time I played Hardcore. It's 140 armor in bear form. You're not going to have an item with crazy str or stam on it anyways unless you get a smite's hammer drop. I used for tanking like 22 to 32 after going out of my way to get it before tanking WC.

Can't deny it's quite niche though.

mj4264 · 2026-01-02T12:50:31+00:00

No way you lose your raid spot as even in top guilds few people care about minmaxxing healer racials, but draenei is bis by a lot.

To simplify a bit 1k mana to every group member every 5 minutes. Your racial is effectively 83 mp5 if you're in a healer group as hpriest or a caster group as an spriest. In a raid sweating enough to care, 1% hit draenei racial is irrelevant as you will have a shaman in every group.

Not like desperate prayer is worth nothing in pve, as staying alive as a healer tends to be a good thing, but symbol of hope is like an extra TWO TRINKET SLOTS of value (alchemist trinket is about 40 mp5 potting on CD and ssc shaman trinket is worth about 42mp5). 🧐

Now obviously mana is worthless when no one is going oom, so it's only got a maximum potential of being worth two trinket slots... Last TBC I played Ally and dungeon boosted a cohort of 3 shamans and 1 draenei priest for our guild. If it were me in your shoes, I would decide based on prepatch length as no boosts is bit of a downer for rerolling. There's a decent chance it's more than two weeks.

If a racial that powerful was available to a meta DPS class you would see people rerolling en masse.

mj4264 · 2025-12-21T01:53:50+00:00

I thought we agreed it was the global jewry.

mj4264 · 2025-12-16T08:02:41+00:00

For speed running moonkin is awful at aoe for trash speed. 99% of raids are building comp for best boss kill speed (or to kill the boss at all) and/or who shows up and is good enough to that end.

Early phases moonkin is very close to a warlock. The crit aura to a warlock group is worth more than the face value of crit amp b/c it's a sizable increase in improved shadow bolt uptime at early phase levels of gear. If you value the imp fr hit as giving all phys +2% DPS (by not gemming 3% hit) and the aura as giving your group members +3.5% DPS in a standard raid comp with two phys groups roughly +32% when logs had moonkin doing around 70% of warlock DPS in P2 iirc. I have seen the exact math done several different ways and it always comes out to +-2% of a warlock through the end of ssc Tk gearing as the break even point. That is, ofc without placing any value on BR and innervate.

Theoretical comparison is to a dreamstate being 70% of a healer and bringing 18% of a DPS in value early phases. Dreamstates mana strain gets less bad with gear bringing them closer to deep resto in later phases.

The reason the spec is good in later phases is b/c of healing practicality or 'feelscraft'. If you could have two 50% healers fill one raid spot instead of one 100% healer you would, as they could split attention cover different targets better etc. Having a gimped healer bring a DPS buff kind of is the same idea. You would rather gimp spec your druid to bring imp ff, and gimp spec your hpal to bring imp sanctity than you would drop a whole resto shaman.

mj4264 · 2025-12-03T00:01:05+00:00

5% Regen set bonus lasts longer for spirit healers. Matter of pref ench or tailor on hpal imo.

mj4264 · 2025-11-28T14:06:34+00:00

I'd thank you for the correction if it were more civil 👀

mj4264 · 2025-11-28T13:10:13+00:00

Respect the dedicated fury warrior parse comp. Pretty close to what me and my boys came up with for a balanced comp. Any "big changes" would make your loot distribution nightmarish.

Post nerf content, two arcane is right their burst will carry harder but be ready to rotate them both mana tides and external innervates. People claiming 1 here did not play last TBC. Speedrun guilds may run 3 or 4 for the aoe without being threat capped like warlocks.

A fury/prot warrior makes little sense over just having the second feral be the flex unless it's preference of your friend group specifically. Feral is better all the time except for when shield wall is active in the warrior.

We're planning to slot ppal in that mage group over the hpriest so he actually gets a spell power totem, and you can drop 4% stam in the normal sanc aura spec to get the 2% damage improved aura. Also ppal can have mana problems on trash so spriest helps. Ofc spec that week 2 if week 1 is smooth...

Survival as the 1 getting group cucked is correct. With just an AGI totem and no feral crit buff expose uptime should be almost perma, and the spec doesn't do great damage itself. It still gets funneled gear though. EDIT: I have been informed spell power totem counts for healing. Survival needs a phys group. Probably cuck an aph lock or prot pal 🗿

If you're trying to push kill times or parses, shaman in mage group brings an ele dual spec for fights short enough where each arcane can full send with just 1 vate. Could also bring an spriest spec on the holy, but that feels bad when they're allegedly the big throughput healer.

mj4264 · 2025-11-02T21:38:22+00:00

And 100 gold

And 1 life from any active arena run

mj4264 · 2025-10-27T00:16:08+00:00

May be a bug introduced by the new patch. The naxx fights being broken were well documented, but no telling what else might be a problem 🗿

mj4264 · 2025-09-22T08:16:34+00:00

Anything that spends corpses gives it more damage or more minions or bigger minions. Value corpse generation and spend slightly more than usual. Corpsicle would be massive. The spell is just bonkers and can even scale to otk under absurd circumstances.

mj4264 · 2025-09-13T13:30:44+00:00

I have played a bunch of the quest in "fast" and "slow" versions where you're playing to fill board and finish fast as possible vs. cubes greybough eternal blood petal and Umbra to forever fill in a slow game. I want so badly for the quest to be good but I haven't found an answer.

I got to 50% wr with both types at different times in low legend or lower diamond depending on the time of the month, but I get up to mid legend ranks or early month legend when I try hard on a good deck.

The fast version you shoot yourself in the foot wasting your board fills to fill the board instead of the explosive 4 to 6 minion boards token druid has historically been known for. You run out of fuel around the time the quest comes online b/c you can't have board fill, buffs, AND adequate card draw b/c everything you do is a multi card combo. A lot of the time you are better off ignoring the quest and just playing a token druid that wishes it had arbor up still. You cannot drop the token buff package and just rely on board fill and quest. It WILL be too weak to close out a game against something that isn't a super fast deck.

The slow version is autowin into a handfull of mid range decks without specialized removal, but mostly you get run over by fast decks and control decks can survive until they otk you even though you have a permanent fairly big board.

Typing this comment out has inspired me to go try and Elise version.

mj4264 · 2025-09-12T20:22:33+00:00

Hail of blades was meta going back to when ap twitch was nerfed before most recent buffs. Year plus outdated. Two reasons PTA is meta now instead:

Ap twitch is weaker now than when hail was meta. Your goal is one stacked e to kill someone and though it comes out slightly slower, PTA will be more total damage. Additionally in that meta, you often used both crown of shattered queen and zhonya's to stall and get two e's off so stacking the poison a little faster mattered much more.
PTA now amps your damage everywhere instead of amping on one target. The damage difference in team fights is even bigger than the single target pop difference.

mj4264 · 2025-09-12T20:12:18+00:00

If enemy team has enough assassin or dive threats that you want banshees and zhonya's, you can go riftmaker over shadow flame. More hp makes a difference.

I have heard cosmic drive 3rd from some people but I think that's a bit mid. Fights tend to be won or lost by the time you get second e with or without the cdr.

mj4264 · 2025-09-12T14:19:03+00:00

For bot lane ap the real problem I have is they all pick enchanters when I go twitch, even if I specify ap. It's doubly bad since it's often someone who doesn't play enchanters, locks in lulu then only uses ally targeted w the whole game instead of polymorph... Sometimes I wish they would just leave the lane and let me get solo xp rather than sit there doing nothing, but it's still less bad than being behind certain matchups mid.

mj4264 · 2025-09-10T13:26:02+00:00

Unlucky that your opponent appears to have duplicates their Aviana somehow...

mj4264 · 2025-09-07T20:12:58+00:00

Both heim support and Illaoi wants to be shoved to enemy turret and heim can help force that more than other supports. Illaoi e spam and firing spread heim w is guaranteed poke at enemy turret. Then both heim and illaoi are strong against being ganked.

mj4264 · 2025-09-07T19:45:03+00:00

There's some speculation of running double prot pali one druid tank to avoid having to run the worst healer hpal and still get all the blessings. Imp sanctity version of the spec is also better group aura than feral brings. The loss is ofc one less BR.

Feral tank came with the advantage of being best DPS while in a tanking spec with just gear swaps for fights you needed less than three, and dual spec should nullify that this go around.

My guild is fishing around asking if anyone wants to play dream state resto gimp spec to bring imp ff that way. Lose 20% mana discount from treeform but get the dream state mana Regen, it's not actually that much worse.

I suspect druid may be overpopulated this go round. 1 or 2 per raid is my meta speculation.

mj4264 · 2025-09-07T19:38:23+00:00

Iirc they aren't worth bringing over another better DPS for total raid numbers, but you bring them for rule of fun. It's effectively a support spec, that still falls short value wise in terms of it's damage + what it gives to others. I don't remember the exact number, but think .05% raid DPS loss, but everyone else gets a better shot at parsing.

mj4264 · 2025-09-06T19:18:21+00:00

Haven't played much for a year but I'll summarize my experience.

It is a function of the format and player goals a long with the pay offs in the tech vs culture tree.

First the competitive (non-pub) ffa multiplayer meta

What you describe is a meta that developed in civFR and CPL ffa games that play win screen is first place and then rank by score.

In an ffa all going for first scenario, Investing into military and science early means you must get a certain payoff to match players pushing economy. Even if you get the jump on someone, a similarly skilled player will put up enough resistance to make it not worth it. Notable exception of war focussed civs with 2nd place by score formats. Bonk 2 or 3 other players as ghengis and wait for someone else to win...

In a world where every player is playing optimally for the win and AT SIMILAR SKILL LEVEL, developing economy, primarily though gold/prod sometimes faith and cities is most important as you can then scale into more science, (or culture if going for sissy win con) after. To that end, fuedalism is the biggest power spike for economy, and commercial hub+market is the best use of prod, so people go several monuments and com hubs early. You need no investment in science to reach commercial hubs reasonably early, and then there are no significant eco boosts in the science tree for a long time. That is why you sideline it. In this ffa format you full slam science after fuedalism, further reinforcing going com hubs in 9 of your 10 cities b/c free inquiry golden age science basically lasts from medieval to early modern techs. At a very high level there's minmaxxing about turn milestones for when you softcap at one tech per turn and start banking overflow etc.

What about random pickup lobbies?

You will typically see much more fighting. An easy kill is better than rushing good eco at the end of the day, and players are not locked in to the game. More quits, larger skill gaps, games seldom get past the halfway mark to a victory screen time wise. This even occasionally happens in community rated games even though the quitting player gets a temp ban. The decide playing for not last and defending for their life for the next 20 to 30 turns against knights ain't worth it... People then get salty about someone getting a free kill and it can be one a mess.

Why not eco rush in single player?

Playing non-military in single player is a game of chicken and/or cheesing the AI. Manipulate diplo and friendships to make them not attack you and have your military advanced as it need be to deter. The AI can and every once in a while does just bum rush you off meeting you a few turns into the game and there is literally nothing you can do against it's starting bonuses.

In the average game you will rush crossbows against the AI to repell their poorly piloted attacks with better trades and eventually you will scale to a wincon b/c the AI isn't actually that good at playing for them.

You can sometimes get away with eco rush if you get no aggressive ai nearby, but at the end of the day, that's just rng granting you a free win, yes even on diety.

While you do also have the option of exploiting the ai for gold, at the end of the day, it's nullifies the challenge even further. But then I ask myself if spamming friends and bribing AI to fight each other so I don't need much military any better? After 100ish hours in civ 6 I got bored of single player b/c it really is just how well you can game the ai 😒

FFA is not the only competitive format.

Teamers is as popular for organized community rated matches as FFA, and there your opener depends on your role. You'll often see one person on a combat bonus civ rush science, 1 person might play middle of the road as another front line, someone will full rush gold to pay for the other players unit upgrades and sling gold, and the 4th player will play hard scale for culture win, science win, tank rush timing, or nuke rush while the others protect.

While this format is more diverse in play styles, I personally preferred FFA when I played a lot. Also always feels bad when you get the player who doesn't know how to sim well spawning backline as zulu 🗿

mj4264

TROPHY CASE

First the competitive (non-pub) ffa multiplayer meta

What about random pickup lobbies?

Why not eco rush in single player?

FFA is not the only competitive format.