Posts tagged 3.0.2

Now Is Not the Time to Evaluate CoH and WG

15
November 6, 2008
by Lume in , , ,

Circle of Healing and Wild Growth are definitely on our radar. This would be a good time to discuss them.

Our concern is that they are turning two classes with a large arsenal of healing spells into single-button healers. Meanwhile, ironically, the other two healing classes have fewer heals to use in the first place.

We have seen raid parses where 75 to 90% of a priest’s healing is through CoH. It’s a good spell, useful in a variety of situations. But I think you can understand our concern.

A priest said to us the other day “Please nerf Circle of Healing so I can push another button!” He’s even thinking of going Disc.

–GC (src)

In my opinion, it would be a mistake for the development team to evaluate this now. 3.0.2 has nerfed the current content so hard that people are using circle of healing and wild growth so frequently because the tanks are taking virtually no damage at any given moment. Further, it is because a lot of the existing raid encounters were designed with raid-wide damage in mind. What’s more, there could be sarcasm, exaggeration or ignorance underlying a statement like “Please nerf Circle of Healing so I can push another button!”

From Felmyst on, in Sunwell Plateau, the raid-wide damage is enormous. It’s only natural that you’re going to see a large amount of raid-wide heals going off, especially when the tanks are taking so much less damage than they were pre-3.0.2.

Furthermore, Naxxramas and the Obsidian Sanctum are entry level raid dungeons. You can’t possibly balance spells solely around entry level content. Especially when you consider the fact that a lot of Naxxramas’ fundamental encounter design was based around level 60 tools.

So to evaluate CoH and WG now would be a mistake. One of the reasons CoH was changed and WG added was because you only had the group-only CoH and chain healing to deal with high amounts of raid damage. So tack on heroism, and shamans were too highly valued, making the change to CoH and the addition of WG necessary to make sure shamans didn’t dominate the scene also in Wrath. So to go back on this now would be tragic.

While there will definitely be some need to balance the spells against each other in the future, depending on just how well CoH or WG scale in comparison, now is not the time to do it. The current content is not a good benchmark for it. Especially when you additionally consider that the parses are showing high percentages largely because these classes are assigned by their healing leaders to cover raid-wide healing, while others are assigned to focus on the tanks.

When and Why WG Is Used, and When It Is Not: A Look at Specific Encounters

Rage Winterchill

The tank takes virtually no damage in this encounter. Even before 3.0.2, the tank literally had to stand in death and decay to artificially generate rage (or mana, in the case of a paladin tank). Because he hits for virtually nothing and spends a lot of his time casting spells, very little focus is placed on tank healing, which is best combated through single-target heals.

He does, however, cast a frostbolt that entombs someone in a block of ice and deals heavy damage to this target. A druid will not use WG when this happens. I would be casting regrowth, a nature’s swiftnessed healing touch, or rejuvenation followed by a quick swiftmend to keep this person alive.

Death and decay is a raid-wide damage spell. When he uses this spell, I am naturally going to use WG. What’s more, he cannot cast a frostbolt and this spell simultaneously, so I don’t have to worry about looking for the frostbolt the moment it goes up. And because he hits the tank so softly, I have time to cast WG. Often more than once, even.

Kaz’rogal

There is very little raid-wide damage that goes on during this encounter. The only time the raid-wide damage is high is when someone runs out of mana and blows up on people. If there is a high amount of WG or CoH casts during this encounter, it’ is because someone didn’t manage their mana well, or because the raid’s DPS is so poor they didn’t kill him before people started blowing up.

Because my raid kills him so quickly, I spend most of my time keeping single-target HoTs up on the tank. However, even then, because 3.0.2 nerfed the boss’s melee so much, this is usually only when he cleaves the tank. So 3.0.2 has lowered the amount of single-target heals I cast even in this encounter.

Azgalor

Rain of fire is the big damage dealer in this encounter. And because only the cleave does significant damage to the tank, I primarily focus on making sure I have full HoTs up on him only when the silence is incoming. This is because the paladins won’t be healing him at all during the silence, and I don’t want the cleave to gib the tank. Otherwise, outside of the silence, the paladins are focusing on the tank and I’m focusing on dealing with rain of fire damage. WG is the natural choice for this.

Archimonde

I don’t use WG as much on this fight as I do single-target heals. This is because the damage is concentrated on people randomly, given the very nature of doomfire’s random trajectory and the erratic synchronization of various abilities. The only time I do use WG on this fight is when a large group of people standing next to each other get doomfire at the same time. Otherwise, I’m using single-target heals.

He can still hit the tank relatively hard compared to other bosses, even after 3.0.2, so I often throw heals on the tank. Also, as a raid healing leader, I can’t micromanage my assignments given the random nature of the abilities people have to deal with. So everyone is going to be casting single-target heals when the tank looks to be in danger. This is because other people might be busy running from a doomfire, flying through the air, preparing for a fear, or decursing.

With my guild, usually only one or two people in close proximity get doomfire at a time. This is because we’ve been dealing with this encounter for ages and most people are familiar with the fight. So instead of spamming WG, I just throw singular heals. The only time a lot of people get doomfire is when Archimonde throws down a fresh doomfire next to people right before he fears them into it. Otherwise, you have time to get away from an existing doomfire and tremor totem usually pulses before people get anywhere near them.

Supremus

During the “tank and spank” phase, people don’t generally spread out. However, they are also not taking a lot of raid-wide damage. Post-3.0.2, it is primarily the off-tanks that take the damage, as special abilities weren’t nerfed damage-wise. However, the primary tank takes little damage. With the focus mostly on only two people, I’m primarily casting single-target HoTs on them.

During the “loose” phase, when he’s running around at people and spawning volcanoes, people are too spread out sometimes for WG to be profitable. For this reason, I have a mixture of both WG and single-target heals.

If you are seeing parses with a lot of WG during Supremus’ loose phase, it’s because the people have a hard time taking a peak away from their raid frames at the player out on the field. So sometimes people will just spam WG because they’re not cognizant of just how spread out people are from the person they’re casting on. Me? I tend to use player health bars and cast on someone who is actually close to dying near me. I imagine I likely save more people’s lives doing that than someone who is indiscriminately spamming a raid heal (unless it’s CH, because its healing is concentrated on the first target, meaning lack of discrimination is less impactful).

Teron

In 3.0.2, the damage on the tank is a joke. Even before 3.0.2, when he was considered one of the more hard-hitting bosses of BT, you could keep up the tank merely with two people spamming chain heals through him or her. So, post-3.0.2, you can imagine that my raid is mostly assigned to raid healing, of which there is a fairly substantial amount. I think I assigned only one paladin to heal the tank and the rest just threw him heals when it was needed (which was virtually never). So, naturally, people were spamming their group heals in high concentration.

Gurtogg

This fight is designed for raid heals, be they chain heal, wild growth or circle of healing. Even before 3.0.2, I assigned bloodboil by group number, meaning we could use CoH to explicitly deal with the mechanic. With the way the encounter is designed, you are simply going to have people who cast primarily raid-wide heals.

Illidan

This is a fight where the spell use depends on the phase and situation. In phase one, there is pretty much no raid-wide damage. The only damage anyone other than the tank can take is from flame crash (the fiery circle Illidan leaves on the ground), and parasites. Flame crash is avoidable by the melee, so they should take no damage from it if your tank positions well and your melee pays attention. Meanwhile, parasite is cast only on a single target. If the resulting parasite mob spawns are dealt with in the correct manner, no new parasites should spread from it, either. So only single-target healing is used in this phase, typically.

Phase two is a mixture of single-target and raid-wide damage. The two flame tanks are going to be taking heavy single-target damage. However, once you have assigned enough single-target healing to them, the rest of your healing is going to be focusing primarily on the raid-wide damage thrown out. This is due to Illidan’s fireball, which does splash damage. There is not enough space on the grate to spread people evenly out and avoid the splash damage. So the way we deal with it is to clump into groups of four. So roughly five or more people are going to take damage, making WG and CoH ideal in this case.

Then you have the final phases. During the human phase, you have to deal with the same thing as phase one. However, instead of merely parasites and flame crash, you also have agonizing flames. However, if your raid is positioned properly, agonizing flames should not be spread beyond its initial target. So only two or three people should have agonizing at any given point. And because these people should be at range and spread out, WG or CoH is not ideally worth using. For this reason, single-target heals still reign.

During the demon phase, however, it’s a different story. You will have residual agonizing flames from the human phase, and possibly a residual parasite. Following this, the damage will largely be focused on the demon tank (usually a lock). So most of the healing is going to be single-target in nature on the demon tank. But we will use an ability called flame burst, which does damage to everyone in the raid. After a flame burst is when people will definitely be using WG or CoH. Otherwise, single-target heals are still best.

The use of WG and CoH is concentrated during phase two and right after a flame burst. Phase two is less than half the fight, though it is an important part. And flame burst isn’t constantly being cast during his demon phase (which many call “phase four”). So WG and CoH have their place, but they should not dominate the choices people make in an optimal rotation for the fight.

This parse shows masterfully how the design of Illidan makes it so WG does not chew up 70 to 90% of his casts in an ideal mixture of healing spells. Gian did more healing than anyone else on the fight, even the priest whose cast mostly CoH during phase two and then random spots of DPS, renews and shields.

Kil’Jaeden

WG has its place in this fight, no doubt. But mostly when you collapse and spread after collapsing. It also has its place during flame darts and right after the fire blooms go up. But once the fire blooms are up and people react to them, the spread of people is too large for WG to be ideal. At this point, I’m stacking single-target HoTs and casting regrowth to keep them alive.

This is another parse where Gian tops of the meters. The parse shows that WG was ranked third in the number of his casts.

Spell Use Depends on Encounter Design and Assignments

Some of the examples I’ve given weigh heavily towards the over-use of WG and CoH that the developers are worried about. However, I have also given adequate counter-examples as to where the use of those spells depends on encounter design. To change these spells now would likely throw a wrench into the encounters currently being designed, since the raid developers consider what tools people have available to them. This is why DPS in Sunwell was balanced around the pre-3.0.2 use of heroism and why a lot of raid-wide damage was based around chain healing. In order to create a high level of difficulty, the designers had to consider the best tools for the job. And the major problem was that the people who could bring such tools were limited in number. With the change to CoH and WG creates a situation where more people are capable of bringing those tools.

So it astounds me the process through which the ideas have been implemented and reconsidered. As a joke, I used to reply to people asking for advice on how to beat the Twins by saying, “Just throw resto shamans at them.” While amusing, it was absolutely true. That was the best way to approach the encounter. CoH was just too terrible for dealing with flame sear, given that it that flame sear was not limited to groups, as CoH was. This made recruitment frustrating, as the pool of resto shamans was so limited. So the change to CoH and the addition of WG were extremely welcome and have provided a more than solid fix to what was once a huge balancing issue.

But now the development team is concerned with the overuse of such spells, even though the overuse is merely indicative of encounter design and sometimes unideal approaches to healing by individual players. Parses are not suggestive of the optimal approach to healing, merely of what is adequate. And the fact that people are beating content with tons of priests and druids spamming one spell is simply because the content is extremely easy right now. As the encounters become more finely tuned in the later content of Wrath, you will discover people who only spam CoH or WG becoming less and less successful as they continue to use a strategy that is not prime in every situation. When two people in close proximity are taking a steady stream of damage, prayer of mending is better to use for a priest. When one person is taking heavy damage, stacking single-target HoTs is best. Not CoH. Not WG.

I’ve provided ample counter-examples that already exists to show when CoH and WG are not ideal to use to maximize healing throughput. I’ve also provided counter-examples that explain what is best used for keeping people alive, not simply for topping the meters.

CoH and WG for PvP?

I should also perhaps mention PvP, since it’s relevant.

Players are going to adjust their strategies based on the spells people use. If WG and CoH are keeping up a raid in AV against an AoE strategy, players are going to shift to single-target DPS. This is what is called the “assist train” and it is used to combat area of effect healing and force healers to adjust and change the spells they use. I saw this in Dark Age of Camelot, where AoE healing was so strong, and it is a valid strategy to combat it by shifting to an assist train.

Also, WG and CoH will have virtually no place in 2v2 or 3v3. I doubt a lot of priests and druids will even spec for it.

Not Now

Let’s not jump the gun on changing WG and CoH based on statistics. You can’t rely only on statistics to make adjustments to spells. We have yet to even begin to see enough truly complicated encounters to fully understand where they lie over other spells. And, even then, current encounters suggest that WG and CoH isn’t the only thing there is to raid healing. So let’s not consider changing these spells here and now.

The “Zombie” Portion of the pre-Wrath Event Is Flawed

109
October 26, 2008
by Lume in ,

I’ve been spewing profanities the past couple days. The source of my foul-mouthed escapades: the zombie portion of the pre-Wrath event. Or, rather, the extent to which people can use it to grief players and the lack of safeguards against it.

To give the situation some context, I should explain how the event works:

  1. People become infected with the plague. This is done when a player kills an infected roach, opens some infected crates, or is the subject of infection by either player or NPC zombies.
  2. The infection is applied as a disease. When the disease runs its course, or when a player dies or tries to remove the disease with an immunity effect like divine shield, the player turns into a zombie.
  3. As a zombie, a player retains his or her level and can attack other players of either faction, flagged or not.
  4. NPC’s can be infected and become zombies, as well.
  5. There are “argent healers” that can cleanse people of the infection and attack these zombies. High level players with any sort of disease cleansing capabilities can also remove it, though it has a high resistance rate.
  6. Guards can attack zombies.

This seems an okay situation on the surface. Argent healers were meant to serve as the NPC-driven defense against this menial version of the plague. However, looking deeper into the matter, it is important to note the various conditions that morph the event into one of the most poorly designed experiences WoW has ever offered. These conditions are as follows:

  1. The argent healers are only stationed in major cities at important hubs: banks, auction houses, flight points, and entrances to various areas. They are not stationed in most towns outside of the capital cities.
  2. Guards in most lowbie towns are too low in level to even put a dent in the high level player zombies. At best, they can daze the zombie and prevent them from reaching a lowbie that has managed to mount up and run away.
  3. Lowbie players cannot themselves put a dent in the player zombies that are much higher in level than them, due to the level difference.

Compound these conditions with the risk of putting so much power into the players’ hands and you have an absolutely, positively frustrating experience for many. If not for the fact that I could swap over to my level 70 retadin, turn on sense undead, and completely own the shit out of anyone with poor intentions, I’d be more annoyed than I already am. Especially because I rolled on a PvE server to avoid the type of asshattery I’ve been seeing.

I’ll put this into perspective. The other day I was trying to level up a couple alts in Bloodmyst. This is when two people from my own guild decided to kill me and decimate Blood Watch and all the lowbies there. Having none of it, I lectured them about when to say when, switched to my paladin, owned them, camped them, cleansed them when they tried to continue spreading the plague, and kicked one of them from the guild (who wasn’t a good member of the guild in the first place). As funny as it is to grief people, it takes a ball-less git to repeatedly grief lowbie players of their own faction. And a jerk to do it to people in their own guild, especially when those people are clearly upset or annoyed. Having leveled on a PvP server before, I did what was only natural.

Here’s another interesting case study. Some high level druid decided it’d be funny to grief all the lowbies in Darkshire. I just happened to stop by on my low level alts and notice, so I swapped over to my paladin to take care of the problem. The result is alarming.

y u kill me fagg

Do we really want to give so much power to people like this? Especially on a PvE ruleset? I sure hope not. Notice how he tries to berate me for killing him by justifying that the event is for killing people. “y u kill me fagg” definitely reeks of maturity and social validity. I’m only doing what a lot of people would do on a PvP server when someone griefs and camps lowbies. There are repercussions for being a dick!

But don’t get me wrong. I’m all for having fun with people near the cap, considering they can immediately defend themselves. But thinking about the lowbies who have yet to build up connections on a server, I can’t help but wonder how frustrating this event must be for them. How many of them have quit over this fiasco? I’m willing to bet a rather sizable amount. The fact that safeguards weren’t put in place for low level areas is greatly disappointing.

What’s more, there doesn’t seem to be any purpose to becoming a zombie other than to kill and infect other players and NPC’s. If there was actually a quest to perform as a zombie, and if lowbies could actually defend themselves, I’d be a whole lot more forgiving and inclined to view the event in a positive light. I definitely think it has its place as a fundamental concept. But the specifics are broken.

10/27 Update: It’s Over

For those of you who are unaware, the zombie portion of the event ended at noon today. It was fun and frustrating while it lasted. I’m appreciative that Blizzard is trying to create more dynamic and robust world events that aren’t concentrated in one zone. However, I’m also glad it didn’t last until the launch of Wrath.

10/29 Update: Response to Some Comments

I don’t want to spam people’s feed readers, so I am simply adding this to my entry as an addendum. And since there are 100 comments, a lot of people don’t actually see the points of the event that have merit, so I am adding my general response here.

A lot of people in their comments have made the assumption that I was 100% against the zombie event. This is not the case. Might I highlight an important quote from the entry.

I definitely think [the zombie event] has its place as a fundamental concept. But the specifics are broken.

As a positive point, the event tied very well into the lore. It gave our characters and the factions ample reason and motivation to retaliate against Arthas directly. It proved to be “disruptive” to daily life, just as the first undead plague was. And it turned us against each other. That was probably Arthas’ intention. Or was it Putress’ intention? Who knows. In either case, I understand what the event was supposed to do. That’s exactly the “fundamental concept” I’m talking about.

World occurrences like the zombie event do have their place in WoW and should be done again. However, I still think it had its flaws, and these issues can be fixed without deadening the event’s intentions to the point where its purposes are rendered ineffectual.

Just because the event did its job doesn’t make it perfect. Just because some people enjoyed it, doesn’t make it perfect. Just because these two facts exist, doesn’t mean I should not address any issues I might have had with the event, in hopes of improving similar events for the future.

There is no doubt this event had great potential that it met to some degree. But it’s one thing to be disruptive, and another to completely obliterate people’s abilities to perform certain tasks for hours upon hours upon hours. It is, in my opinion, disruptive and engrossing enough that people can attack others while performing the tasks they deem “routine.” You can make various NPC’s immune, without obliterating the event’s intentions. That’s exactly why Blizzard made the flight master in Shatt immune. And it’s still disruptive and engrossing for lowbies that they can merely be attacked, even if they have the ability to defend themselves.

There is no reason events like these can’t happen in the future. There is no reason such dynamic occurrences can’t happen. For all its specific flaws, the fundamental concepts were sound. Blizzard just needs to take a little more care in designing events like this in the future. That’s all.

No QQ about it.

Post-3.0.2 Analysis

3
October 21, 2008
by Lume in ,

This past week was rather interesting, to say the least. Last Tuesday, 3.0.2 was introduced. It is the precursor patch to Wrath that introduces most of the expansion’s talents and mechanics in preparation for its release.

My guild and I spent Tuesday downloading the patch and fixing our mods. We also endured lag, server crashes and restarts.

On Wednesday, a small group of us cleared Karazhan before our Sunwell raid. It took us a total of 50 minutes.

  • Attumen seemed like a trash mob.
  • Moroes died before his first vanish.
  • Maiden died before her first repentance.
  • Our tank was the target of little red riding hood and just tanked Big Bad Wolf through it.
  • Curator died well before his first evocate.
  • Illhoof died during the first weakness.
  • Aran lasted something like a minute.
  • Netherspite died during the first beam phase.
  • Prince died so fast he didn’t even enfeeble the raid once.

Out of all the encouners in Karazhan, chess took the longest. Following this, we had our typical Wednesday Sunwell. Well, typical in that we usually start it on Wednesday. Not so typical in that we cleared it in three hours total.

  • We defeated Kalecgos during the first portal rotation.
  • Brutallus died in less than three minutes.
  • Felmyst died right after her first flight phase.
  • We wiped to the Twins twice. Once because someone fell off the balcony, and once because a hunter botched the MD because they weren’t used to having a shorter range. Then we aced it.
  • I think we had two waves of humanoids on M’uru. The tanks were never in danger of dying during phase one. And we killed Entropius before heroism dropped.
  • We also one-shot Kil’jaeden with ease, though we almost botched it when our melee brought Kil’jaeden down close to the next phase before the warlock adds from the 85% phase were dead.

We followed our Sunwell clear with the first three bosses. We then called the raid an hour early, so people could get an early night.

On Thursday, we finished up Black Temple. We also killed Al’ar, Kael’thas and Vashj and again called it an early night. Some interesting notes:

  • We killed Shahraz without shadow resistance.
  • Illidan never once reached his demon phase. We brought him down to 30% with five seconds to go on the first timer. This reset the timer, and we brought him down to zero before the second.

In any case, we cleared all of Sunwell, Black Temple, the two most difficult T5 bosses, and Al’ar in a total of about seven hours. We could have done it faster if we hadn’t approached the raids in a relaxed manner.

Were the Nerfs Too Much?

I’m not going to view 3.0.2 in a negative light. At some point, guilds stuck indefinitely on content need the be thrown bones shaped like dead bosses and epics. And to have micromanaged the changes on each encounter of TBC would have taken too many resources away from development of upcoming content.

I am quite positive there are guilds disappointed about how easy M’uru or Kil’jaeden are now post-patch. Especially if they were close to killing either of them pre-nerf. On my own server, Risen was in line to become the third guild to defeat Kil’jaeden. Parn, Risen’s leader, posted this in the progression thread after this post-nerf kill:

Risen downs Kil’jaeden.

Patch came 1 week too early. Sorry about the cheapened victory, guys. But we would have gotten him regardless.

Thanks everyone for every effort they have made.

My own guild had the same thing happen to us with Gruul. We had him down to 5% pre-nerf and we were certain of his death the very next week. This would have made us the only guild on our server to kill him legitimately pre-nerf (Ruined killed a bugged version). But then they nerfed him and we came back and one-shot him during what was supposed to be our warm-up attempt. It was an anti-climactic end to the hard work, consumables and gold we had thrown at the encounter.

However, for all the disappointment, it would not have been worth it to micromanage the changes to raiding. With only a month left in TBC’s lifecycle, it would have been a mistake to push 3.0.2 back a couple weeks for the sake of making the encounters easier, but still challenging. Especially considering those encounters will become obsolete at Wrath‘s release.

It’s Too Difficult to Predict What’s to Come Using 3.0.2

I originally stated that I thought Blizzard would do well to prolong the introduction of 3.0 for the sake of benchmarking class performance in raids and PvP. However, I ended up changing my mind just before Blizzcon for these reasons:

  1. Encounter difficulty was going to change with new concepts and mechanics in place.
  2. The encounters weren’t designed with the new talents in mind.
  3. We are missing ten talent points and new abilities that we will have at level 80.

Tack on the additional nerfs to raiding that Blizzard introduced, and there’s very little point in using 3.0.2 as an environment in which to test a class’s viability. And the same could be said for arena. Without an official ladder going on, a lot of people are using this opportunity to simply test new abilities and specs. But optimal team composition and specs for level 80 will not become evident until Wrath‘s first season.

I Hope 3.0.2 is Not a Precursor to 25-Man Raid Difficulty in Wrath

One of my colleagues, Matticus, had this to say about the current ease of 25-man raiding on live:

Don’t assume that things will be this easy at level 80, because it’s not going to be. You get yourselves new bosses, new mechanics, and new challenges to toy with.

To some degree, he is correct. Malygos is not nearly as easy as raiding in 3.0.2 is currently. However, conventional wisdom and statements made by the developers leave me to disagree on a level more subtle. Afterall, the developers did say they thought Sunwell was too hard during Blizzcon’s raids and dungeons panel. So I’m not about to assume that the 25-man version of Icecrown Citadel will be as difficult as the Sunwell.

Having worked my way through Sunwell well before 3.0.2, and killing M’uru before his first nerf, I have a keen understanding of just how difficult raiding can be. And while, yes, slogging through that content was at times frustrating, I am retrospectively appreciative of just how difficult both M’uru and Kil’jaeden were to defeat. As I said some time ago, downing them provided two of the most satisfying gaming experiences I’ve ever had since picking up an Atari controller when I was three.

So I personally worry I will never have that experience again in WoW. In fact, I would be upset if the 25-man version of Icecrown only stood at the difficulty level of Black Temple. Afterall, one of the very reasons I thought 10-man versions of every raid dungeon were being introduced was to provide an alternative, more accessible form of the content people might find too difficult in a 25-man setting. Getting stuck at the 25-man level will result in a lower impact on morale when people can simply form up a solid 10-man raid and experience that same content in an easier and more accessible environment.

My Advice for Guilds Clearing or Deep into Sunwell Pre-3.0.2: Tighten Your Recruitment Standards

If you were clearing Sunwell level pre-3.0.2, I would say you shouldn’t use the time to recruit new people unless they come from an extremely solid and verifiable raid background.

As it stands, it is currently too difficult to trial someone in the difficult aspects of raiding you will see re-introduced come Wrath.

  • For Sunwell-clearing guilds, Felmyst won’t last more than one ground phase on a perfect attempt, meaning you will have limited opportunities to use the encapsulate as a situational awareness check.
  • Sacrolash dies so quickly, there will be a low chance for your new DPS recruits to be the target of conflag on the Eredar Twins.
  • Since bosses have had their melee damage reduced so dramatically, you won’t have ample opportunities to challenge your healer recruits.
  • Furthermore, because bosses hit so weakly, you can’t challenge your tanks to accurately time their cooldowns to mitigate awkward damage bursts.
  • Also, for tanks, positioning plays less of an important role when you don’t have to worry too much about avoiding gravity balls on M’uru, or creating an optimal pattern of flame patches on phase two of Illidan.

That said, if people coming from top guilds are applying and their skill level is already verifiable, it might be worth it to take a chance on them now. However, if this is not the case, I would advise taking a pass on them until you can incorporate them into level 80 raiding.

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