EU+US Talent/Spec Discussion

[Chops]

I think you may have missed some of the context here. He was saying that prot war is the best tank spec for PvP

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH

My bad @Hashbrowns. It's pre coffee and I wasnt reading carefully enough. Yea, if you're gonna play a tank spec, fugging prot warriors are exceptional. And I find prot pallies to be a laugh too. Arent great but theyre great fun.

 

[Hashbrowns]

How does the vet thing work? I pay for a month and let it lapse and I can stay in the guild?

Yep, you can also get invs while sub off so long as you have a character in that guild already. You can farm your guild looms, enchants, mounts, pets, etc so you are stocked up for other characters. I'd get the plate and mail helms first as there aren't really options for those at 20. When you login it pops up with the battle chest screen asking you to upgrade just click that and see what the price is. Used to be 5 bucks which gets you everything but Legion and 30 days time.

You do lose out of the "purity" of f2p. Some people really like seeing how far they can take a purely f2p account. And your professions bug after you sub is up, you can't make anything past 80. That's probably the 2 negatives otherwise its very much worth 5 bucks.

 

[Hashbrowns]

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH

My bad @Hashbrowns. It's pre coffee and I wasnt reading carefully enough. Yea, if you're gonna play a tank spec, fugging prot warriors are exceptional. And I find prot pallies to be a laugh too. Arent great but theyre great fun.

NP yea they are awesome fun with double charge and aoe stun. But yea, nothing beats arms haha

 

[Protego]

Yep, you can also get invs while sub off so long as you have a character in that guild already. You can farm your guild looms, enchants, mounts, pets, etc so you are stocked up for other characters. I'd get the plate and mail helms first as there aren't really options for those at 20. When you login it pops up with the battle chest screen asking you to upgrade just click that and see what the price is. Used to be 5 bucks which gets you everything but Legion and 30 days time.

You do lose out of the "purity" of f2p. Some people really like seeing how far they can take a purely f2p account. And your professions bug after you sub is up, you can't make anything past 80. That's probably the 2 negatives otherwise its very much worth 5 bucks.

Sounds fun! I read your recruitment thread and ran into an issue. My active times are weekdays during the summer (I'm a Teacher). Looks like your active times are at night.

 

[Hashbrowns]

Sounds fun! I read your recruitment thread and ran into an issue. My active times are weekdays during the summer (I'm a Teacher). Looks like your active times are at night.

Pretty much, we are all over the place. Not a huge guild but our core members have been on BWL for 6+ years so we aren't going anywhere. If you want to start with a f2p you can use the addon to chat with us https://mods.curse.com/addons/wow/f2paddon

 

[Zemmix]

I'm just glad I still have my GF'd fishing and first aid on my main F2P.

Granted my maxed cooking got reset, because I didn't know about doing the dailies would cut it back to 100.

 

[Protego]

Pretty much, we are all over the place. Not a huge guild but our core members have been on BWL for 6+ years so we aren't going anywhere. If you want to start with a f2p you can use the addon to chat with us https://mods.curse.com/addons/wow/f2paddon

I like the idea of a smaller more helpful guild. Is anyone on mornings/afternoons?

 

[tence]

Paladin - Holy/Crusader's Strike is the optimal choice. Casting two of your healing spells more frequently is the clear choice over bestow faith which ends up overhealing all too often.

I'll chime in considering I have a lot of hpally experience at this level. The main benefit of bestow faith is spread healing. You use this on a target that isn't receiving your direct heals of flash of light and someone further to the back (ranged class) that you are confident wont die before the bestow faith will heal. bestow faith, combined with beacon of light, and holy shock (+ flash of light) if used correctly and effectively can allow you to provide a lot of spread healing to multiple characters, and while it may not heal as much as a disc or other classes, it can fill in the gaps of these classes.

Other cool tips, beacon of faith on a target that is not in LOS can be healed through LOS by healing yourself/another character and they are healed for the beacon of light amount. To my knowledge paladin is the only class that can heal through LOS (although a small amount) but combined with bestow faith, you can still somewhat keep people up.

I've found the crusader's strike talent to be quite situation and bad. A lot of time as a healer you don't want to be within melee range of anyone besides a pet that is on you (smart hunters ensure you can't run off and drink) and even then, holy shock isn't that great to begin with. I always loved that crazy hammer thing at max level when I raided as a holy pally since I could ensure people were all bunched up, but with how chaotic positioning styles are, and with melee classes always running off to africa and dying, its better to have that consistent time bomb imo.

 

[Protego]

I'll chime in considering I have a lot of hpally experience at this level. The main benefit of bestow faith is spread healing. You use this on a target that isn't receiving your direct heals of flash of light and someone further to the back (ranged class) that you are confident wont die before the bestow faith will heal. bestow faith, combined with beacon of light, and holy shock (+ flash of light) if used correctly and effectively can allow you to provide a lot of spread healing to multiple characters, and while it may not heal as much as a disc or other classes, it can fill in the gaps of these classes.

Other cool tips, beacon of faith on a target that is not in LOS can be healed through LOS by healing yourself/another character and they are healed for the beacon of light amount. To my knowledge paladin is the only class that can heal through LOS (although a small amount) but combined with bestow faith, you can still somewhat keep people up.

I've found the crusader's strike talent to be quite situation and bad. A lot of time as a healer you don't want to be within melee range of anyone besides a pet that is on you (smart hunters ensure you can't run off and drink) and even then, holy shock isn't that great to begin with. I always loved that crazy hammer thing at max level when I raided as a holy pally since I could ensure people were all bunched up, but with how chaotic positioning styles are, and with melee classes always running off to africa and dying, its better to have that consistent time bomb imo.

Another great response! I am happy that people are challenging my assertions. In all honesty I had completely forgot that crusader's strike was not a ranged attack! However, I do still believe that bestow is too often just overheal, especially when there is another healer in your area.

 

[tence]

Another great response! I am happy that people are challenging my assertions. In all honesty I had completely forgot that crusader's strike was not a ranged attack! However, I do still believe that bestow is too often just overheal, especially when there is another healer in your area.

Bestow faith simply opens up more possibilities than the crusader's strike ability. It allows you to heal yourself and the beacon of light target while mobile, and can be timed to heal dots/burst. Like I said before it can be used to heal through LOS. It can also spread healing easier (bestow faith a target, spam heal a target and have beacon on a target effectively healing 3 targets.

You can easily also bestow faith on yourself and when you are stunned, provides a heal when you otherwise could not, allowing you time and heal to fake cast the melee on you, then heal back to full, rather than spending time fake casting the melee and dying before you can get that last heal off.

It may just be that I play this healing class in an odd way, but I have found great success with bestow faith. It is a cheap heal vs your other abilities (mana is a huge problem for hpally) and can be used in so many different ways and situations. In my eyes it's very clearly the winner and superior option when used effectively.

 

[Protego]

Bestow faith simply opens up more possibilities than the crusader's strike ability. It allows you to heal yourself and the beacon of light target while mobile, and can be timed to heal dots/burst. Like I said before it can be used to heal through LOS. It can also spread healing easier (bestow faith a target, spam heal a target and have beacon on a target effectively healing 3 targets.

You can easily also bestow faith on yourself and when you are stunned, provides a heal when you otherwise could not, allowing you time and heal to fake cast the melee on you, then heal back to full, rather than spending time fake casting the melee and dying before you can get that last heal off.

It may just be that I play this healing class in an odd way, but I have found great success with bestow faith. It is a cheap heal vs your other abilities (mana is a huge problem for hpally) and can be used in so many different ways and situations. In my eyes it's very clearly the winner and superior option when used effectively.

Very well stated. I will update my original post!

 

[Hashbrowns]

Bestow Faith to predict damage too, like if you see 3 surv charging in you know the triple flanking strike is coming.

 

[Protego]

Nice thread! I'd play decent amount of healers but didn't keep up was the recent talent changes. I thought d-priest talent was to allow penance to heal allies, did they change during the recent patch? My current default is twist of fate and based on description it does seem pretty strong.

Shaman:



You captured the point perfectly! I really can't say much than that. When it crits the heal boost is really significant. Sometime it feels sad that due to the lack of healers efficiency really depends on spammable a healer is. This gives hot and long casting healer (druid and monk) a hard time. Their spam heal cant really keep people alive for long and that makes thing so much trickier. I switched from Cenarion Circle to Double swiftmend. so that I can have more leisure using an instant life saver. I can't' say exactly how helpful it objectively is, but it buys time.

Monk:
I've been using zen pulse on my mw hoping to give our frontliner a blast heal, but like swiftmend, I don't really know how useful it is. The fact that its range is so short means you are unlikely the boost above 2000. Since the player you are healing is already targeted, they are still likely to die. However, zen pulse has an unique anti-stealth utility. The spell is castable only when there is hostile target nearby, you can keep spamming it when you are guarding a flag, its a really useful tool to blast out rogues and druids since there is no CD if you don't hit anything. For the other two, I've never used Chi wave since it seems to heal very little. The number Qi Burst shows feels satisfying, but I haven't used it enough to judge its usefulness.

Paladin: lol I'm for one that uses holy hammer for its AOE heal and damage. When used optimally, the total heal should be pretty high. Honestly I don't think the three talents are super helpful. I know a lot of people use bestow of light, but it doesn't seem to be really helpful compared to your spam heals.
I do want to start a discussion about how you use the beacon of light though. Who do you usually cast it on? Yourself, nearby healer, FC, or whoever taking damage. I feel like I'm not using it effectively since when you concerntrate

Would you mind teaming up with hash browns to write a little blurb for me to add to the original post? Maybe on the viability of both of your choices? Thanks!

 

[Protego]

Any opinions on warlock?

 

[Zemmix]

Any opinions on warlock?

Yeah, Chaos Bolt hurts.

Thankfully, I never get hit by it on my main F2P to begin with.

Pretty sure most locks at 20 go Destro / Backdraft.

 

[AlisterCrow]

Any opinions on warlock?

Affliction: personal preference is haunt, but the buff to drain soul with malefic grasp is absolutely viable. Using haunt feels better imo with having the ability to melt someone down to half health via UAs and then save that last soul shard for a quick cast, 1k plus haunt for getting someone in to kill range, which will reset the cd on haunt so you can do it again with little downtime. Also, less drain soul animation means less attention payed to you while you make healers cry between fears and UA silences.

Destro: backdraft to get out quick bolts. Mandatory in this patch since shadowburn was nerfed in to uselessness.

Demo: idk probably shadowflame. The "change specialization" button is my preference here. Hand was buffed but meh.

 

[sanraymond]

Can we get a tier of Tanks here? Sorta relevant.

Finishing up what left I don't have for 20s, debating ona Brewmaster Monk or a Guardian Drood.

Both probably suck right now, as I literally see neither. Ever.

Well we all say tanks sucks but BM monks are a interesting one to say. If you ever see one their numbers in bgs are interesting to say at least:

I played BM monks for only a few games, but here are some results: The eye of the storms are close games and i just got wrecked in WSG. However notice the stats of BM, you have both high damage and healings. The damage i'd say is even boarder line good and definitely comparable with MW monks. The healing part is interesting. I did fairly little active healings and the difference between bg stats and recount is huge. I believe its because bg stats sum records all the mitigation you did as heal (absorbs and brews), where as recount list them as damage taken (from yourself). It may look like a bug, but it definitely increase your survivability when you just charge in to enemies as a tank.


Given I only played 4 or 5 games as BM, i'd say one can definitely do better. But what I notice in these games is how much more relaxing it was compared to MW, without chi combo to manage you pace is much slower without a cost of damage (see how I did compared to other monks). The biggest thing I found thou is balancing energy usage better tiger balm and keg smash, I often ran short of energy when CD for keg smash is down.

In short, Brewmaster damage is viable and not as demanding as MW, you also get good numbers for healing, whether that counts depends on your perception.

 

[Zemmix]

I made both a Guardian druid and a BM monk. Screw it, I'll do both. I'm just running out of a bit of room for toons on that server.

Already have:

Rogue
Hunter
Shaman
Paladin
Warrior
Monk (Panda Island stayer)

Now I've got a Guardian Druid and BM Monk in the works. I'd like to have a resto druid, warlock, mage, and priest. >.>

 

[sanraymond]

Would you mind teaming up with hash browns to write a little blurb for me to add to the original post? Maybe on the viability of both of your choices? Thanks!

Never done a guide before but happy to help. What kind of blurb are you thinking about?

 

[Protego]

Maybe something similar to what I have in my initial post?