In-depth Class Communities for other Dps Classes?

[macbeet]

I am super happy having found Altered Time --- it has helped me improve my play and also my fellow mages in my raid. But not everybody agrees that Mages is the best class and so I've got a lot of players in my raid that I neither can council myself, nor can I recommend a good resource on their class. So this is my question:

What are good sites for the other Dps classes that provide in depth discussion and simulation of class mechanics?

While I play some other classes, I don't raid enough to judge the quality of the guides that a search on mmo-champ and other forums produces. Maybe some of you are experts in another class as well and can point me and my fellow raiders the right way? Thanks.

[Komma]

Death Knights: http://sonofalich.com/" target="_blank
Feral Druids: http://fluiddruid.net/forum/" target="_blank
Shadow Priests: http://www.howtopriest.com/" target="_blank
Rogues: http://ravenholdt.net/" target="_blank

[intotreason]

Have to say, I love this site too. I've been using it for a while and I guess I forgot to register. Either way, I wanted to help my buddy out on his warlock but we can't find a single site that's been updated for WoD and few that are updated even to MoP. If anyone has a suggestion, I'd love to hear them.

[Chev]

Icy-veins used to have a huge Warlock community. I am pretty sure it is quite active.

[zhengma]

Here are two other forums that are associated with the two "major" alts of mine in WoD:

Protection Paladin: http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/
Shaman: http://www.totemspot.com/vb/forum.php


Another hint: many of the reviewers of icy-veins.com spec guides are blog authors and/or forum moderators, in which case the blogs/forums will be linked when they're introduced.

[zhengma]

Maybe some of you are experts in another class as well and can point me and my fellow raiders the right way?

As a disclaimer, I am nowhere near an "expert" in any class/spec of WoW. Mage is the only class I can play to a semi-hardcore progression level, and my skill/knowledge in other classes aren't close to even that.

What I'm here to share is: how do I learn a new class/spec from scratch? Here are the steps I follow:

1. What's the "basic logic" of the spec?

Currently in WoW, the basic mechanics of almost all the DPS specs fall into two categories: proc and secondary* resource. Most DPS specs contain a bit of both, but rely of one of them more heavily. For procs, the questions to be asked include: What procs are there? What abilities are they procced from? What abilities will they affect? What is the most hard-hitting proc that should be consumed first if multiple types of procs present simultaneously? For secondary resources: What's the name of the resource? How is it built? How is it consumed? Which resource-consuming ability hits the hardest for each unit of secondary resource? Then we ask: Can we increase the proc rate/resource generation rate? If yes, is it worthy to increase it via gem/enchant/gear selection? Then we can conclude: does the spec mainly revolve around proc or secondary resource?

The answers to these questions form what I call the basic logic of a DPS spec, which organizes the core abilities together and is the foundation of its rotation. Figure it out first.

* There are tertiary resources, like Chi and Rune Power, but they usually have a very strong coupling with the secondary resource and should be examined together. Interestingly, Arcane Charge can be considered as a tertiary resource as well, because you have to manage it together with a secondary resource (mana).

2. How does each talent fit into the basic logic?

Talents (and some glyphs) are never core abilities, because they seldom ever affect the basic logic described above, however much you use them or account for a top percentile in your damage. However, many of them do fit into the basic logic somehow, and we gotta figure out how. Start with an all-around configuration if you find considering all 21 talents is too overwhelming, but eventually you have to get a grip of them all, even though you never use half of them.

3. What is the "skill checkpoint"?

After years of evolution of WoW, all DPS specs have at least some depth, in the sense that you can't actually roll your face over the keyboard to achieve optimal DPS, nor can you read an icy-veins guide for 10 minutes with zero prior knowledge and then play it at world top level. That is: there are some tricky actions you have to perform with your eyes, your fingers and your brain, and if you're not proficient at these actions you'll underperform. These actions are called "skill checkpoints".

Skill checkpoints comes in all shapes and forms, but I'll try to make a (quite incomplete) category: 1) monitoring for procs from passive abilities and/or from trinkets/weapons, and decide what to do accordingly before the next GCD; 2) make sure the secondary resource fluctuates in a desired range (usually we never want it to overflow), and try to maximize the damage done by each unit of secondary resource. 3) cooldown management: do we use them on cooldown or do we couple some of them together or delay the usage for specific moments?

Some specs offers very interesting skill checkpoints: http://www.wowhead.com/spell=76659 actually doesn't break if you move for less than 3 seconds, and by move-stop-move, one can keep a 100% uptime in movement-heavy fights. http://www.wowhead.com/spell=48107 expires if the next spell does not crit, but before it expires there is a "grace period", and if a third spell does crit within this teeny tiny time window, the proc will still be upgraded, and we all know how that's executed and how hard it is. http://www.wowhead.com/spell=51128 is a most skill-demanding proc in the game, as it procs from "white" attack (i.e. can't pause its proccing), can be consumed by two abilities, but you'll always prefer using one of them (depending on how many sticks you have in your hands), consuming it on the less preferred ability or let it overwrite is a big DPS loss, say nothing of the fact that these two abilities both consume resources that are not always available without reservation out of foresight.

4. Make sense of every line of the default APL script on SimulationCraft

The quality of the default APL scripts varies. My friend keeps complaining that the Feral script is "over-simplified" (but I don't know about the spec at all), and he has indeed been doing 3k+ above the simulated results all the time. However, I do trust that most authors of these scripts get the basics straight, so I still read them when I roll a new class/spec. It'll also enhance your understanding of the skill checkpoints, as some of the action lists are harder to follow with human hands.

4. Know your raid utilities and personal defensive/mobility cooldowns.

Since too many people overlook this, I have to mention it here. Never forget a corpse does 0 DPS!


You never asked about healers and tanks, but learning them could follow similar ways. The basic logic of all healers is to conserve mana when no one's dying, pop cooldowns and/or burn mana when a big damage spike is incoming/just hit, or someone is about to die. The basic logic of tanks is to prepare and to use semi-spammable abilities (e.g. http://www.wowhead.com/spell=53600/, http://www.wowhead.com/spell=49998) as frequently as you can to mitigate most of the damage, to use a cooldown of proper function and size to counter an incoming damage spike, and to use an emergency ability to save yourself from an otherwise certain death.



Hope these help!

[intotreason]

Thanks, I'll check out Icy Veins' forums; I didn't realize they had forums but in hindsight I probably should've known!

[Berlinia]

Thanks, I'll check out Icy Veins' forums; I didn't realize they had forums but in hindsight I probably should've known!

There's a button called forums, right on top!

[macbeet]

Thanks for all the feedback, we'll put it to good use.