Mists of Pandaria QA answers

Thanks to Seita, Fragi, Baltha, Ets, Oixte, Smirk, Verdisha, Llilja, Jhazrun, and Arx for your answers.

 

How did the guild react when you decided to change to 10man?

Sejta: There was no big reaction, everyone knew something would have to be done if the beta attendance looks like this: http://www.paragon.fi/sites/default/files/user/323/panda-beta-attendance.... 9 of these players were in the 10comp, 13 came to help us clear 25mans on normal (most haven't logged after the terrace clear on 17.11) and 4 players joined other guilds.

 

How whas the 10 man roster picked? The 10 first interested form the old roster? Or were the 10 who made the group hand picked by Sejta?

Sejta: We picked the best players who were motivated enough to push it 100%. The first 7-8 picks were obvious and after that we discussed who we should pick for the last spots.

 

Do you still recruit people and have a belief to return to 25m raiding scene? If so, has anyone applied to your guild after you announced switching to 10m and present time?

Smirk: We are not recruiting at this time.

 

Your 25m progress has a decent progress as well, not top but still full normal clear. Is it the main 10m group with other people or just other members of the guild raiding 25m?

Fragi: We cleared each instance on 25man normal once before the heroic modes were released with our 10 mains and some helpful ex-raiders etc.

 

What do you guys eat during and in between progression (World First) raids?

Baltha: Cold meatballs and sandwiches, washed down with energy drinks.

 

How come you guys don't use a Dps or Healing Monk.

Fragi: I guess our healers were too lazy to level up a Mistweaver on the launch :D, at that point the spec was really good and probably should have belonged to our 10man comp. Now after the big nerfs I'm not so sure anymore.

Windwalker just doesn't bring anything special to the table so we haven't seen a reason to use one.

Smirk: You want some utility as well in a 10man setting not just pure raw hps. Every raidslot has to carry more weight, especially now when two healers is considered a baseline. For Vaults you would have wanted one; before the priest buffs.

 

What is the main difference between World First 10vs25?

Fragi: Weird question.. WF10 is done with 10 players and WF25 is done with 25 players..?

 

How do you develop your strategies? From the first pull on a new boss, until the kill?

Fragi: We get the general idea of the fight (how the abilities work etc.) from the PTR/Beta test. Then it's just a matter of looking up the damage numbers from the Dungeon journal and thinking of the best way to deal with the various aspects of the fight.

If something doesn't work out when we actually get to the boss then we obviously try to think of a better way to deal with that something.

 

Do you have one mastermind or is it a process, developed by everybody?

Fragi: I suppose Seita makes more of an effort than the others in gathering data beforehand from betalogs/DJ, during progress it's more of a team effort where mostly everyone throws around ideas.

 

How do you schedule your day? How long do you actually raid in 24h?

Fragi: Our average day during the last progress would have been something like: raid [email protected]:00, 15min [email protected]:00, 30min [email protected]:30, 15min [email protected]:00, raid [email protected]:00.

Ofc. there were a couple of days when we raided longer(close to a kill etc.), for 20 hours give or take with the breaks.

 

Most outrageous / hilarious moment during this progress?

Fragi: Baltha's adventures with the Amber Constructs were quite memorable. Also Verdisha ending up dying on a Empress field explosion after loudly encouraging everyone in Teamspeak to look at his hp(warlock so stronG and durable): "How can anyone die to these explosions? look at my hp bar guys, it won't even budg-*DEAD*"

 

How's the general raid atmosphere? Tense, relaxed, a lot/ no vent chit-chat? Bashing of players or their skill/ failures?

Fragi: A lot of chit-chat going on, maybe even too much at times (people get too relaxed) and ofc. people get teased about their failures (especially the funny ones), wouldn't call it bashing though :D

 

What do you think of this tiers content compared to T11, 12 and 13?

Fragi: The content was pretty good imo. I just didn't like the long gating, some bosses were easier than they should have been because of overgearing. Also taking the time off studies/work wasn't so simple with the instance releases so far apart from each other.

 

Coming from raiding 25 mans did you go into 10 mans thinking that it would be easier or did you still go into the raids with the same mindset of "this is still heroic content"?

Fragi: We had some problems in 25man with everyone not giving their 100% so we certainly felt it would be easier/faster to kill bosses with 10 really motivated players. That didn't really turn out to be such a extreme change as I expected it to be.

 

Do you have a full/half time work to live? I'm very curious how can you stay raiding for 5-10 days for every content patch, this is a lot of vacation days to use!

Fragi: I'm a student, in Finland it's pretty usual for students to just work a summer job for a few months and then study for the rest of the year. For a university student it isn't that hard to take the days off, your studies will probably progress a bit slower though.

 

How did this tier compare to the previous tiers? How did Sha of Fear compare to other final bosses?

Fragi: Sha of Fear would have been a lot tougher bossv(in the tune it was killed in) if not for the gating and sick gear on people. But the raiding experience was certainly a lot better than Dragon Soul at least, even with the gating.

 

What boss was the hardest? How hard was he compared to previous tier (an example of t10/t11/t12 boss equally hard will do the answer)?

Fragi: Maybe Imperial Vizier pre-nerf, at least I feel like we worked hardest on that boss to get a kill. The nerfs were a big let down for us. Can't really think of a good comparison from the earlier tiers, sorry.

 

Why do you think there are normally only 1-2 Phases on the Encounters, and to be honest... every really heroic Encounter has more (Ragnaros, LK etc.).

Fragi: Dunno, Blizzard might want to save the multiple phases for the really epic fights as you said. If all the fights would have 3 or more phases that would then be the norm and it wouldn't really feel that special.

xenophics: Also, just imagine all the fights having more than 2 phases. That would actually require a lot more work from guilds to learn. Most of the difficulty from having multiple phases comes from the fact, that you can only practice the different mechanics only when you get to the phase where they are. And practicing something that is 10 minutes into the fight means a lot longer progress. So I’d say the fact that 1-2 phase bosses are easier to design for the development team and faster to learn to the guilds overall is also why Blizzard chooses to make fights like they are nowadays.

 

Do you guys miss the 25man raiding or do you feel satisfied with doing it 10man? If so, what do you miss the most about 25man raiding?

Fragi: I would gladly go back to 25man if we just had the people. It takes a lot of the excitement off the race when there's no real competitor in the 10man bracket and we can't really compare our progress to the 25man guilds because of not knowing the tune of the fights there.

Also I like when there's more people around in the raids for the social aspect so 25man would be better for that, though 10man has it perks too.

Baltha: 25 mans was a bit more fun with the bigger community, other than that 10mans have been great.

 

What are your plans right now? Are you going to continue with this 10man lineup or are you changing anything? (I know it might be really hard to answer something like that 3 days after progress is finished).

Fragi: The lineup is gonna be pretty much the same, 1 or 2 people might change for the next progress.

 

Are you going to make logs public since progression is over?

Smirk: Might make our logs public once Devai starts streaming the raids. New logs, not the old ones.

 

What are your RL's like?

Baltha: Living the dream man...booze, babes and fast cars.

xenophics: To ruin Baltha’s answer, for most of the members in our guild it consists of a lot of gaming, sometimes studying, sometimes work, and sometimes even having some fun.

 

Has a full clear of tier 14 required less overall raiding time than tier 11?

Smirk: Tier 11 took 49 days, tier 14 51 days. The staggered releases really skew that metric though, raiding hours wise t11 was a lot longer.

 

Are you a fan of gating and staggered content, or do you prefer more of a tier 11-style free-for-all?

Smirk: Both have their good sides. I think the staggered release could work without surprises, like the delayed launch of Terrace, making it hard to schedule your RL.

Baltha: I personally like it more when all content is released at the same time, but there should be a linear progress...not the 50 day ffa mayhem like in tier 11.

 

Any comments on this tier in terms of whether ranged or melee are better, either overall or on any particular fights?

Smirk:  Ranged will almost always be favoured no matter the tier. Edge, ranged.

 

Any fights where class stacking helps (or would help if you couldn't do it)?

Smirk: The only fight we ended up stacking for was Will of the Emperor.

 

Any fights where alts have stepped in to help get a kill?

Ets: This tier we used a shaman alt instead of a druid on Wind Lord, Grand Empress & Lei Shi first kills (and a different raid comp on Will, but those weren't alts). Personally, I don't think alts made a huge difference this time around.

 

Most members of the serious raiding community seem to feel that 25 man will always be superior to 10 man as far as difficulty goes. Given the knowledge you have of this tier, would you agree with that statement? Why or why not? Please elaborate.

Fragi: Can't really say for sure as I haven't raided 25man this tier but feels like healing/healer mana and raid survivability in general is more of an issue in 10man, 25man seems a lot more flexible in that area with a lot more of cooldowns to use.

On the other hand, handling some raid mechanics and the general coordination of the raid can be more demanding in 25man. So in the end it's pretty much encounter specific which raid size ends up harder.

 

I was wondering why don't you guys use any Death Knights in your 10 man progression .Is it because you simply lack them or is there some other reason?

Fragi: It took a while to decide whether to take Warrior or DK for a melee plate dps but we ended up with the Warrior. We felt that Warriors did just a bit more damage and brought more raid utility but Death Knights aren't bad either. As for Blood DK, we hear good things about them but still feel that Paladin + Druid is the best tank comp atm. for 10man.

 

It seems like most guilds are considering the tier done. Is there no interest in completing heroic elite mode of protectors?

Fragi: Heroic elite mode of Protectors doesn't really seem doable with the Kaolan dot doing too much damage. So there's not that much interest in the fight because of that. When it gets fixed/nerfed we will of course kill it for the better ilvl loot but don't consider world first from that boss to be of any priority.

 

Off topic from other questions: What character did you first start playing in World of Warcraft? Why?

Fragi: I think I had plans of rolling a Night elf Rogue from the vanilla launch but ended up with a Orc Warrior because we decided to go Horde and I didn't like any of the races for Rogue. Unfortunately my Internet connection got really unstable after a few days and I didn't start serious raiding until WotLK.

 

How do you feel the healer balance for this tier was? (Druid, Shaman, Priest) With Priests being able to do insane amounts of dps and still be a competitive healer as well as ignoring boss mechanics with Spirit Shell and BoP's.

Smirk: Disc priest reigns supreme after the latest rounds of buffs to the class.

Jhazrun: It's fairly difficult for a priest-pally team to speak for shaman or druids (or monks for that matter), but as a priest I don't really find myself missing anything they might provide. Though "insane" might not be the word you're looking for in regards to healer DPS, with Discipline I certainly feel very flexible thanks to that niche. 10-man raids don't usually have option to fine-tune their healer force beyond the 2-or-3 choice. This is especially relevant when pursuing early boss kills with undergeared damage dealers, as unlike healing requirements, berserk timers can't often be played around.

 

At this moment the only shaman in your raid is Ets casually jumping on his alt. Are shamans that much weaker than other classes in hardcore raiding in this tier?

Smirk: Enha and Resto are in a decent spot, I heard Deva is going to ditch his hunter in favor of enha?!

Ets: Enhancement is actually doing surprisingly well at the moment, and resto should be decent enough for 25 mans. Elemental is ok, but not too strong.

 

Do you feel Blizzard did better job in providing challenging and tuned bosses in compare to Cataclysm?

Smirk: My only gripe were bosses two to four in Heart of Fear.

Baltha: No...the few bosses that were hard in t14 were nerfed realy fast, with a couple of exceptions. At least the first two tiers in Cataclysm were better for this part, with much more annoying bugs though.

 

Instance cleared within 1 week from release or 3-4 weeks of progression, what do you prefer?

Smirk: It would depend on what is blocking the progress. Being stuck on the 2nd boss of an instance wouldn't feel too great, the last boss surviving a lockout I wouldn't mind.

 

How does it feel to hit world first again? Was the content hard?

xenophics: Sorry guys, I couldn’t get anyone from the 10-man team to answer this. My guess is (based on the attitude we have had in the past in the guild), that the raiders do their best to be number one and that’s about it. We have never been super emotional about our accomplishments. Except for the nerd screams of course.

 

Oixte: never seen you in the rooster before are you new or is the warrior just an old alt?

Smirk: Oixte used play a Rogue named Awynia and a Death Knight called Vivanda.

 

Any comments from Awynia on Rogues in this tier and where they are in terms of utility and damage?

Oixte: I haven't had the opportunity to play with a heroic geared rogue yet since playing the warrior as the main now, but I know they are doing rather fine dps-wise. What comes to utility, rogues don't bring much more than pure dmg atm so in 10 mans for example a warrior is pretty much ahead in pick order.

 

Smirk: I saw that you use Divine Purpose, do you use that on just certain fights and then swap to Holy Avenger or you think that's better than the other two talents in that tier?

Smirk: Divine purpose was what made four parts of the PvP tier awesome, now both are valid choices.

 

Jhazrun : Can you please fraps the next tier? Want to see some awesome Priest pov and ofc the most orgasmic UI ever known to man :D / Will any of your full-time healers record their PoV in future tiers?

Jhazrun: I've heard that a lot. Makes one think it might be about time to do just that.

 

Seita’s answers to Guardian Druid qustions

Seita: Guardians were just fine for this progress, you just have to play a certain playstyle/role. In 10man the bosses hit a lot less and tank dps plays a bigger role than in 25man, Guardians are good low vengeance offtanks because of their dps in this situation and HotW can be really powerful. We had a paladin tank as a other tank and druids are weaker than paladins in actual tanking capabilities, so we tried to have the paladin tank as much as possible because he gets more out of Vengeance dps and survivability wise(also heals the raid a bit). For example: Sha of Fear P2, you see me taking all the Naked and Afraids and our paladin taking 95% of the tank damage. Every encounter in the current content is main tankable by druid and depending on your other tanks class you should both play to your strengths.

I have also gemmed/enchanted/reforged everything for this playstyle, crit>hit=exp>haste>dodge>mastery to maximize dps and rage gain. You should use all your rage to maximize Savage Defense uptime and then if you are sure you can keep SD up and use Tooth and Claw proc then do it. You should almost never press Frenzied Regeneration, if you have 150k+ Vengeance and Berserk/Incarnation up then FR becomes quite good (still keep SD up). For Leishi you should use the Frenzied Regeneration Glyph. If survivability would be the only thing that matters I would probably go for full out Dodge gems/reforges with 4P, you will still have enough rage to keep SD up, which is the most important thing.

 

Fragi: Why Haste for a prot pally ?

Fragi: Haste is great for overall survivability and also gives you more self healing + dps which is great especially in 10man.

 

@Fraggi, @Sejta - What was your opinion on the role of the tank in a 10 man setting, outside of control? How did it compare with 25 man tanking? I understand that hit/exp/haste/crit are the optimal stats for your classes, but did you feel more inclined to max. DPS as far as play-style goes?

Fragi: As you said the "dps stats" are optimal for our survivability as well but the extra dps really helped out in some fights. Tank damage is pretty important in 10man as it's a bigger chunk of the overall raid dps, 2 tanks combined do maybe 1.5 times the damage of a real dps class.

 

Verdisha : Who is the best between gems intellect and gems mastery for demo affliction? And why?

Verdisha: Two mastery > one intellect, making my socketing choice the obvious.

 

Verdisha, what "none" tier 14 piece do you not use for your 4-set bonus?

Verdisha: Both chest and head are very good, if you are not to kill sha anytime soon, you might aswell stick with head as you will have your BiS armor easier accessed that way. Its also a bit dependant on wether you perefer to play with, or without a hitcap.

 

Llilja：Do you choose DOC for feral dps in raid? Do you use more trash（cat）or ferocious bite?

Llilja: Dream of Cenarius all the way. There are some fights where NV might have some merit due to good burst on demand or HotW for a massive Tranquility, but so far DoC has served me well. I also like the fact that I actually need to pay a bit of attention to what I'm doing with DoC, whereas HotW and NV have barely any effect on how you play Feral (discounting the Wrath spam that was thankfully taken care of). As to your second question, I probably end up using Thrash slightly more than FB, even though I try to bite aggressively for SotF energy gains.

 

Now that Xeno is back, will she be a part of the main progression team the next tier? didn’t see her in this tier at all.

xenophics: I'm still very much in Korea, and not back at all. Even if I was, I highly doubt I'd be a part of the progress team again, as there are more skilled and motivated people than me in the group right now.

I have been doing some posting on the site out of sudden inspiration, so don't expect me to be as active as I was at some point.

 

Baltha: How come you changed back to your mage mid-progress? Was it because a "lack of skill" at the priest or just because you love your mage too much? :)

 

Baltha: Shadow priest being the gimped piece of shit with no proper dps-cooldowns, in comparison to dps-god firemage (rip)...there really wasn't much of an option.

 

Baltha: WTB POV !?

Baltha: I'm actually quitting WoW, so not happening sorry. unless big €€€€€€€!

 

My question is how you deduce a players’ talent. Let’s say you will have to recruit for the next tier what will your logic be? I assume your raiding team consists of very highly talented persons (i.e all 10 of them equally high), so you have all understood, I assume, that higher (than someone else) dps doesn’t actually mean higher SMART/CORRECT dps and generally higher numbers doesn’t necessarily mean higher correct/smart numbers. My point is that you make a difference because you are open minded enough and you are able to think outside of the box. So how the fuck can you deduce another person’s skill if all the information you can get while trialing him?  For example progress raids cannot give a 100% correct answer for that.

Arx: Beyond a certain point, you really cannot do that outside progress. You can gauge the basics - is the throughput what it should be, does the player stand in fire, is gearing correct, etc. - but while essential, basics alone won't make you a player guilds would kill for.

What you look for in a player during progress is pretty much what progress raiding itself is about: adaptation, endurance, commitment, competitive mindset, and clever ideas. You want to have someone who still plays well at 4 am. Someone who still comes on time after a week of hard raiding. Someone who understands how the game works, comes up with clever ideas, learns fast, and knows how to adapt to a new environment or ruleset immediately. Someone who hates losing and making mistakes.

You cannot know if someone has these qualities without throwing them in at the deep end and observing what happens.

 

Which Tanking Class is at the moment the best for 10man Raid?

Fragi: We aren't 100% sure how good Blood DKs are but Paladin seems like the top choice for 10man atm.

 

With the current itemization for protection paladins, what non-tier item do you consider the best (stat wise for a expertise, hit & haste-minded protection paladin)? Also, are you a new face or who was your former main?

Fragi: At the moment it looks like the Protection tier legs are the worst piece. I'm not 100% sure of the BiS set-up yet but it looks like the Retribution tier piece is a pretty good choice there so you don't get too much hit rating. I played a Shadow priest (Fragi) in Firelands and a Rogue (Fragie) in Dragon Soul. Unfortunately Lazeil quitted his Paladin so I had to step down from the top of the dps meters and grab a shield :(

 

What is in your eyes the easiest Tank Class?

Fragi: I have no personal experience of other than the 2 shield tanks but Protection Warrior seems quite easy to play close to optimally.

 

Which is in your eyes the 5 Top Burst DPS Classes in MoP?

Oixte: If the burst means like 10 seconds or less, I'd say arcane mage, subtlety rogue, fury warrior, bm hunter and possibly elemental shaman.