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Method Jdotb Q&A #8 - Weekly Affix Advice, Resto Druid Weakauras, BFA Disc Priest

posted 2018/04/24 at 6:10 PM by Squishei

My group is having trouble with the last trash pack before the 3rd boss in Seat. Any advice or tips?By “last trash pack” I'll assume you're referring to the patrol with a Grand Shadow-Weaver and two Shadowguard Voidbenders. If this is not the pack in question, you have my sincerest apologies.

All three of the mobs in this pack are annoying and difficult. So the first thing you can do to make this pack more manageable is to break it up. My group, for instance, will routinely root one of the Voidbenders while the patrol is making its way towards us. The other Voidbender and the Shadow-Weaver will continue walking. Tada, you've now got a much more bite-sized encounter.

The Voidbenders' most notable attack is Corrupting Void which will put a DoT on a player. This DoT will also try to pull nearby party members to the affected player. When the DoT expires it does AoE damage to all nearby players. Trying to run away from the target is usually a waste of time so you either need to just accept your fate and stack up or use a movement ability like Blink to create immediate distance. As a healer, the AoE on expiration is what you really need to be concerned with. Make sure people are topped up before the DoT expires.

The Grand Shadow-Weaver is dangerous because of Dark Matter. This ability will summon a shard that will begin casting Collapse. If the shard finishes the uninterruptable cast it will deal an enormous amount of AoE damage. There are two ways to deal with Dark Matter: 1) everyone stops what they're doing and focuses down the Dark Matter as quickly as possible, or 2) everyone runs out of line of sight of the Dark Matter. Finding spots to LoS in Viceroy's room can be difficult, especially if you haven't cleared out the rest of the trash.

Split the pull up if it's scary. People need to be ready to use defensive cooldowns if they get Corrupting Void and switch to Dark Matter as soon as it appears (or hide from it). After that just pray.You've been playing Disc Priest on Alpha the last week. Any insights into whether Disc could be strong at launch?I should start by saying that I have zero experience on a disc priest in Legion or any other expansion, so the thoughts I have about disc aren't necessarily specific to BFA. Some of this stuff may already exist on live and I've just been totally ignorant of it. But what has drawn me to disc in the BFA alpha is the spec's use of absorbs and damage-as-healing.

Disc on alpha has shifted back to the “spam Power Word: Shield” role that the spec has become known for. While I'm sure this will be strong for raiding (because absorbs are always strong for raiding), this will be a very interesting healing style in M+ because no healing spec in Legion had access to an absorb with no cooldown. One of the primary limiting factors in pushing keys as high as possible on live is the ability to survive boss mechanics that hit hard. Various boss abilities would start dealing so much damage that you needed more mitigation or health than you could provide by yourself, and external defensives like Ironbark or Blessing of Sacrifice have a long enough cooldown that they couldn't be relied upon to cover every cast. If a healer in Legion could put an absorb on all party members before abilities like Focused Lightning or Wicked Slam, that healer spec would have an enormous advantage over its peers in pushing keys. So the change to Power Word: Shield is potentially meta-warping for high keys.

The other aspect of disc that I'm really enjoying is its ability to heal by dealing damage. One of the reasons I've really enjoyed resto druid in Legion is that druids can deal significant damage if they've got the correct legendaries and talents. Unfortunately the removal of legendaries in BFA will likely mean that druid damage falls off significantly compared to Legion. While I still enjoy the druid HoT-oriented healing style, I'd like a healing class that can focus on dealing damage when needed -- I'm not sure druids will be able to do that effectively in BFA yet. One of the things about disc that is very appealing is that its mastery increases the damage dealt by Penance. I'm not sure how strong mastery will be for M+, but being able to have all your secondary stats contribute to DPS is something that I believe is sorely needed for all healers. Currently no healer benefits from mastery in terms of DPS, and many of my equipment sets on live have as little mastery as possible, i.e., only the mastery I get from my weapon and relics.

Disc still seems a little squishy so I'm not sure the class will be viable in high keys, but it's definitely fun to play and offers a unique kit that could be very powerful.The MDI APAC group stage was a catastrophe. Do you think it's fair that teams are going to get through to finals eventually when there is no way to even know who is really the best?Some context is probably necessary before I answer. The APAC (Asia/Pacific) regionals stage took place this weekend (April 21 and 22) and was marred by a continuous series of connection issues stemming from the largest ISP in Australia (Telstra). From what I understand, there was severe packet loss along one of the major Telstra nodes that connected to Blizzard servers, and many Australians in the MDI had repeated disconnects during their matches which obviously affected the outcomes of said matches. Several matches were restarted when disconnects flared up, and both days of the APAC regionals were ended early when it became apparent that the disconnects weren't going away. Blizzard has since announced that the matches will take place in the future after the connection issues can be sorted out.

No one doubts the existence of connection problems for the Australian MDI participants, but these sorts of issues are always tricky because it's technically nearly impossible to verify whether someone was in fact experiencing lag and/or disconnecting or whether that person made a mistake and then blamed their connection after the fact. I don't mean to call into question any of the folks that allegedly disconnected -- it's just difficult to know for sure either way.

While several of the matches are going to be played once the connection issues have been sorted out, there were also several matches that stayed on the books despite some questionable lag and disconnects. Did a less deserving team catch some breaks because of lag? Perhaps. But Blizzard is in a tough spot here as the tournament organizer because there is a schedule in place and the show must go on. Is it “fair”? No, but few things in life ever are. I'm sure Blizzard had some contingency plans for potential issues in the tournament, but it's not realistic to expect Blizzard to predict that an entire continent would have pervasive internet issues, so the response was never going to be elegant.

It's definitely unfortunate but I really feel like Blizzard did the best it could with the hand it was dealt.I remember you from the Blood Legion documentary. Do you have any abbreviated wisdom on the mentality of hardcore raiders during Wrath of the Lich King/Cataclysm era vs hardcore raiders now? Why do you think North America has just fallen off the radar in terms of really pushing for Top 3 kills?The hardcore raiding scene has changed quite a bit from my time with Blood Legion. Part of this is because of the arms race nature of raiding, and part of this is I believe due to the shrinking size of raids meaning you have to find less crazy people willing to spend 80 hours a week in a raid on release week.

When I raided with BL, we had a 25 hour schedule (Sun-Thurs 7:30-12:30). We would occasionally raid late if a boss was close to dying, but we never raided Fri/Sat. Alts weren't required. Split runs didn't exist. Titanforging wasn't a thing so once you got gear out of Heroic (the highest difficulty at the time) you were “done”. It wasn't nearly the time commitment then that it was today.

Shortly after I quit raiding hardcore, the prevalence of split runs really increased. I never had an alt in my time in BL, and I was never pressured even a little bit to have one. It was very rare for someone to bring anything other than their main class to a raid. Being able to class stack is obviously a tremendous advantage for certain fights, but there are a lot fewer people who are willing to put up with the time requirements of maintaining two or three (or even four or five) alts. As I said in a previous Q&A, free time is the most valuable commodity for hardcore raiding and pushing M+ keys. The free time needed to push for world first back in WotLK was much less than the free time needed now.

And that partly explains why the North American scene has died -- people just aren't willing to put in the time. The reality is that the top progression guilds aren't stocked with the most skilled players but rather with very skilled players that can commit excessive amounts of time. If you dialed down the time required to raid at a high level, the competition would become more vibrant. Maybe the EU scene just has genetically superior players, but I doubt it. Mostly the EU guilds want it more and do the requisite dirty work to make it happen.Quick and simple. What are your top 3 Weak Auras that you cannot live without as a Resto Druid.I'm going to answer this with M+ in mind. These aren't necessarily the three most generally useful Weak Auras but rather three Weak Auras that do something critical for my M+ performance.

The first is Legion Dungeon - Dangerous Spells. This WA puts a glow effect around the frame of party members that are being targeted with certain spells. The WA has certain spells pre-coded, so if you want to add or remove spells you'll need to dig into the custom LUA. The frame highlight is immensely helpful for quickly identifying which party member is going to need healing or an external like Ironbark or Felshield Emitter.

The second is Effective Health which displays your current effective health value (i.e., your health when accounting for versatility, avoidance, mitigation, etc.) The WA also has a list of “dangerous” spells that it tracks, and when appropriate it displays how hard those spells will hit you to let you know if you have enough effective health to survive. In the infinitely scaling environment of M+ it can be hard to know at any given moment whether a spell will one-shot you, and this WA is the best tool I know of to make that decision on the fly.

Third is Tehr's Raid CDs. This is a comprehensive list of pretty much every ability you'd want to track in a group (CC, immunities, battle resses, utility, etc.) It helps you stay informed of the cooldown situation of your group which is very helpful when trying to coordinate.

These three Weak Auras will be immediately helpful to all healers in M+.Weekly Affix AdviceDungeons Most Affected by Teeming:

Arcway: additional Dreadborne Seers are the thing of nightmares. Melee are almost forced to sit out of range until the Seers are dead. If you aren't running triple ranged DPS to outrange all the prophecies and eyes, someone is going to die.

Maw of Souls: at some point Blizzard decided to spice Teeming up in Maw by adding another Night Watch Mariner that patrols along the top of the ship. You can skip it but it will be really annoying to keep dodging it will while pulling the rest of the trash.

Halls of Valor: Valarjar Thundercallers everywhere. As if keeping one of these things interrupted wasn't enough of a chore. Kiting becomes nearly a necessity here.

Seat of the Triumvirate: Several new Shadowguard Tricksters (stealthed patrollers) are added to the dungeon meaning you're virtually guaranteed to stumble into one during a pull. A Shadowguard Voidbender is added to each Rift Warden pull making them much more annoying.

Dungeons Most Affected by Volcanic:

Upper Karazhan: If you ever get a Volcanic patch under you during Medivh's Flamewreath, it can be tricky to avoid it. Technically there will always be at least a little room to maneuver, but if you're the healer and you're trying to keep up with the damage it can be just enough to bump you off your game and wipe you.

Maw of Souls: Harbaron's Fragment will stun you for three seconds. This is enough time for a Volcanic to spawn under you and go off.

The Arcway: If you don't have a way to escape Devour from the Vicious Manafangs, Volcanic can spawn under you while you're immobilized.

Dungeons Most Affected by Tyrannical:

Halls of Valor: Hymdall's Horn of Valor will get dangerous, and Fenryr will start taking long enough that Ravenous Leap DoTs will have a chance to stack up and cause problems. But the real showstopper is Hyrja whose Expel Light and Arcing Bolt will start one-shotting people. Add in Eye of the Storm for good measure and you've got a fight that will likely require multiple battle resses at a minimum.

Darkheart Thicket: Dresaron's Down Draft and Earthshaking Roar combo will be difficult to keep up with, and the fight will now last long enough that you're going to run out of healing cooldowns at some point. Xavius will start one-shotting people with Nightmare Bolt, and Feed on the Weak will be scary. Apocalyptic Nightmare might kill some people, and the extra Tyrannical health on Xavius means the second half of the fight will last long enough that he will eventually get some empowerment stacks and do even more damage.

Seat of the Triumvirate: Viceroy Nezhar and L'ura both become fights that will likely last four or five minutes on higher keys. Viceroy's random heavy single target damage will tax your healer's mana. L'ura's Growing Darkness becomes very dangerous with the extra Tyrannical health -- everyone in the group will be taking significant damage by the end of the fight.

Court of Stars: Talixae Flamewreath's Burning Intensity will deal heavy damage as the fight progresses, and her adds will become more and more difficult to keep CC'd. The Slicing Maelstrom from Advisor Melandrus will require a lot of healing in a very short window, and classes without good defensive abilities will struggle not to die every time it's cast.

Dungeons Least Affected by This Week's Affixes:

Vault of the Wardens: The additional Teeming trash is mostly at the start of the dungeon and not particularly dangerous, though you'll want to be careful with the Spirits of Vengeance before Cordana. Tirathon gets noticeably more difficult on Tyrannical, but the rest of the bosses aren't a big challenge.

Lower Karazhan: Teeming adds some Skeletal Ushers to Lower Kara that you'll need to watch out for, but their Flashlight ability won't be as lethal on Tyrannical. Moroes and Beautiful Beast can be a slog on higher Tyrannical keys.

Black Rook Hold: Risen Archers are the only notable Teeming change to BRH. Soul Burst from Amalgam of Souls and Shadowbolt Volley from Lord Kur'talos get lethal quickly on high Tyrannical keys so make sure you've got immunities or good defensives.

Neltharion's Lair: A few additional Rockbound Pelters show up on Teeming as well as a new Stoneclaw Grubmaster, but these mobs usually get kited anyway. Dargrul can get a little dangerous on high Tyrannical keys if his add isn't dealt with immediately, but otherwise the bosses in here aren't scary.

Comments

Comment by livieI regretted not listening to the weekly advice last week, so definitely taking note today: no Maw, Seat, or Upper. Thanks JB!

PS. Everyone should visit the stream and !wa to get the full list this man knows his stuff. *wink wink*Comment by AerensiniacAt least its not bolstering or fortified.... those are fun with TeemingComment by babiosThe wago.io links do not workComment by RogueRequestOr explosive.Comment by ZlozlaUpper Karazhan is super painful on high keys this week. Unless you have good range dps don't do it.

Maw is not difficult at all. Only second boss can be a problem otherwise free chests.Comment by Sas148The wago.io links do not workComment by babiosYou are right, it works fine nowComment by DarknightTWHere's a question from a restoration druid friend:
When facing Hyrja Tyrannical, some groups use reverse pull (Sanctify at the lightning buff side, and Eye of the Storm at the holy buff side) to make the fight easier for healer. Lower buff stacks could be achieved if timed correctly. But from recent MDI semi-finals, the 23 Tyrannical Hyrja always started with standard pull (Eye of the Storm at the lightning buff side), what keeps them from using reverse pull?

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Method Jdotb Q&A #8 - Weekly Affix Advice, Resto Druid Weakauras, BFA Disc Priest

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