20s

We didn't quite have enough peoples to be confident of finishing off AQ40 last night. I think 20-25 would do, but 14 might have been quixotic (as an aside, I like the fact that when you open up the guild list lately, every single person is together in the same instance -- that was kind of the idea). Since we hadn't knocked off AQ20 or ZG yet, we decided to take care of those quickly instead. And we did them quickly indeed. Sometimes we'd pause before a boss to see if anybody could remember any important mechanisms or special elements, but generally we'd just charge in and beast it without any strat. So far, that's worked for everything in the Old World except for the Twin Emperors.

We heard from Draelnor that he was in an different AQ40 group that also broke down at the Twin Emps. Interesting that the design of that fight is technical enough that you can't overpower it with lvl 70 tanking/healing/dps.

Speaking of dps, more and more rumors are popping up about an incoming nerf to Ret Pallies. The "blue posts" keep talking about pvp unbalance, but I wonder if they'll clobber PvE dps as well. One of the blue posts I read talked about how stun-oriented crit spike damage was part of the core concept for Ret Paladins as a class. I'm not sure I understand what that's supposed to do thematically with the class or in relation to other classes. It's also pretty irrelevant in PvE. Since I can't HoJ bosses anyway, I've been using Seal of the Martyr exclusively in raids (even trash has been dying too fast for me to even have time to stun & judge SoC).

It feels to me like they've been futzing around with the pally dmg mechanics for a long time. The constant old complaint from the pally pvp community was that even when the dps was good, it was uncontrollable. You could stack ap and crit and when SoC procced, you'd clobber things. But it procs randomly 7 times/min, so you never knew when it'd go. I can attest how frustrating this was in pvp since if it went off early in a fight, your opp would immediately go into escape mode and survive. If it went off late, it generally resulted in overdmg, making your effective dps pretty low. So they added some controllable spike dmg: Crusader Strike (late pre-BC) and the HoJ mechanic that gives you a guaranteed SoC crit on judging (but not too often, since HoJ has a 1m cooldown).

But for WotLK, I now have 4 different instant-cast high-dps spells: Divine Storm, Crusader Strike, Judgment and Hammer of Wrath. HoW only goes when the mob is <35% hp, but the others hit hard enough that it comes up fast. I got some static in /guild for saying I was going to be sad when I couldn't auto-kill mobs in 2-3 instant cast spells anymore, but that's really the way it works. Run up, Crusader Strike and Divine Storm (or a Judgment if I'm low on mana/hp) and if either crits, the mob's dead. If nothing crits, I HoW and it's dead. 3 GCD's (slightly accelerated by a little haste gear) and the battle is over. I suppose I have one melee swing in there too (possibly critting, possibly proccing SoC). But, for example, *everything* on the Isle dailies dies "instantly," virtually never requiring more than the 3 instant casts and 1 swing.

That produces dps numbers like 1500 on average, so I guess that's working as intended since the lvl 70 dps target appears to be 1200-1500 for all classes. But consider pvp -- if I HoJ somebody, I now have 6s to fully unload and with the auto-SoC crit, I'm pretty sure the avg dmg is going to be >10k. I don't see how to balance that with people having 10k hp in pvp gear unless the idea is that I get to auto-kill somebody once every minute.

Whatever. I topped the dmg total for the runs last night, but mostly by sticking close to the tanks and making sure I was immediately in to every battle spamming all my spells asap. It was totally unnecessary for those instances, but there was no real cost to pulling aggro (mobs died fast and hit weak) and it was interesting to see how infrequently I even pulled aggro. Of note watching other's dps, the top of the chart also has people who formerly topped the charts (e.g., Sherider & Wiseman) plus the warriors are also going off like crazy -- in both prot and dmg spec. So if they nerf my dps back down significantly, I'll switch back to prot and let the warriors go dps and kill everything. Whatever it takes to maximize the total raid dps for our last few weeks of raiding pre-WotLK.

Hopefully AQ40 wraps up tonight. I've been getting on a bit later most recent nights for a couple different reasons including the fact that Grandma is visiting. That could happen again tonight, althought I'll shoot for 11-11:30pm as usual.