On the Eve of 7.1

WoW Patch 7.1

Major patch update 7.1 releases tomorrow, bringing with it some huge updates to WoW.

KGC (Keen and Graev’s Community WoW Guild) has progressed decently for how casual we’ve played. We spend 4 hours a week raiding, and haven’t really made a push for high level Mythic+ yet. Although we’re taking it slow, we’re still seeing the content and having fun.

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Return to Karazhan

This 5-man Mythic dungeon is like a raid, and drops gear equivalent to what my team has been getting in Emerald Nightmare so far.

What I really like about 5-man content is how easy it is to get a group together and just go. When organizing 10 people, things become a lot more complicated — even when you go casual.

We should easily fill a group or two on a regular basis to clear Karazhan weekly. I’m excited for the gear, change of scenery, and the experience of new content.

Trial of Valor – 3 Boss Raid

ToV is going to be a 3 boss raid similar to the Onyxia experience. I believe the devs even stated they mean for it to be a complementary raid like Onyxia was to MC back in Vanilla. There will be little if any trash, and hopefully the whole thing goes down like a nice loot pinata.

Again, this is totally my style of play. I like shorter raid with less trash. I want to go in, do a fun boss fight, and walk away with loot. I don’t want to invest 2-3 hours clearing crap to get to a boss. Although I will say that Emerald Nightmare hasn’t been horrible in this regard either, but I’d simply prefer no trash at all.

We’re going to tackle this right when it releases.

My Great Class Struggle

I was so dead set on playing a Balance Druid. I spent the past 2 weeks really working hard on mine… then I realized that Boomkin (Balance Druids) aren’t any better off than freaking BM Hunters. In fact, both are near the bottom of the dang charts. WTF did I get myself into?

I might just give up on Balance and make a push for Feral/Guardian or Heals on my Druid — which I really do love. I love my Druid. I just HATE being that guy pulling up the rear on the DPS logs (despite knowing I perform admirably in raid boss mechanics).

I’ll spend some time working up my Feral spec for sure now that I know Balance is going to be in such a rough spot.

Edit 1: Hah, doesn’t look like Feral does much better. 😉 Heals it may be…

Edit 2: I spoke to the team and they think I should go Heals. So there it is.

  • Balance is in a way better spot right now than BM is. With Xavius as the exception(not entirely sure why, haven’t spent enough time on my druid), Balance parses solidly in the top half in heroic EN. BM on the other hand is in the bottom third for pretty much every fight, and I attribute that solely to the lack of a rotation it has.

  • Play what you enjoy. Class balance is impossible to get perfect due to so many variables and will always be in a constant state of flux. If you aren’t pushing Mythic progression it doesn’t matter and you should just play what you like. Every spec is fine for getting through Heroic.

  • Just wait for the next patch and the DPS rankings will change. 🙂 I agree with Misaligned, you should just play what you enjoy. I’ve mained a ret pally since vanilla, so I understand your pain.

  • What charts are you looking at (please don’t say Noxxic, noxxic is horrible and full of misinfo). If you look at warcraftlogs and actually looked at parsed fights for heroic EN over the last week, Balance is middle of the pack DPS (not in a bad place at all) and Feral is slightly higher. Balance is miles ahead of BM (which is barely above survival).

    Also, you should stop looking at charts and just play what you enjoy. We have a balance druid in our guild who is 5/7 on heroic EN and he is usually within the top 3 DPS. Our two Ret Paladins and Myself (as Enh) druid make up the other top 4 normally Ret paladins are supposed to be slightly worse off than feral druids.

    Anyway if you do want to look at the charts, most people go by logs rather than simulated crap on Noxxic. Here is what most people look at:

    https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/10#difficulty=4&sample=7

  • Oh my goodness! Karazhan? SO many good memories of that place! Have fun with all that new stuff, and don’t be discouraged with the Balance dps!

  • Going to echo the rest,

    Balance druids are better than BM by a large margin, and are fine DPSwise. BM on the other hand is across all difficulties bad. If balance is not working out for you, stick with it and practice more. Do not swap to feral, since it is barely better and a lot more difficult.

  • Our smallish group is stacked with the well off dps specs and your ilvl is a bit lower than everyone else so yeah I would expect you to be lower on the charts for our group. Plus I think there is a big adjustment going from hunter to a real caster that will take some time to get used to.

    But yeah looks like we’ll need you healing anyway so it doesn’t matter. And druids are pretty good at that.

  • I was looking at the logs people were sharing in the Druid Discord channel and listening to the constant stream of bitching. I admit that could just be people being people. Also experiencing it first hand in raids and groups, though.

    I just can not seem to pull anywhere near the DPS that others are pulling. As Krigare says above, our raid is stacked with good specs. My iLvL is 851, so maybe that’s also why. Perhaps this changes with Legendaries or a good setup. I have no legendaries, and I admit my trinkets are less than stellar (no pun intended). I’ll stick with Balance as my group needs it, otherwise I’ll probably spend a good deal of time as Reso.

    One question for the Balance pros here… how do you DPS in Mythic+? Why would anyone want a Balance Druid in Mythic+ compared to any other class that has phenomenal AOE dps? Reason being, Mythic+ are entirely based on trash. Bosses are easy. Trash sucks.

  • I main feral, our guild is 2/7 mythic and I am usually #1 dps. There are better performing specs on average, but we are more than capable of pulling great dps. Here’s a link to our elerethe kill last night, you’ll notice #2 is an ele shaman, another spec people would warn you against playing.

    The best thing to do is instead of spending time flip flopping between classes based on what people say is good, find the one that you like the fantasy and gameplay of, and then spend that time comparing logs with the top players of your class and hitting training dummies. Just be great at your spec, whatever spec that is.

    https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/4VZqTk3nzgwMyQmc#type=summary

  • Keen, I know for our balance druid in my guild, trinkets and the neck enchant make a huge difference. As do the artifact goldens.

    I am not sure how it is exactly for balance but I can tell you for Enh at least a bad trinket vs a good trinket can be a difference of 20-30k DPS, the neck enchant is around 10k DPS, using consumables (pots/flasks/food) is worth anywhere from 15-20k DPS. So the trinkets could be a big part of the problem there, not sure if your neck is enchanted either but that could be another part. Or if you are using consumables but that could be another factor as well. Also from each class it’s different but I know for a lot of them, the golden traits mean a lot. My second golden on enhance is an ~8% damage increase overall (which is about 24k when I was averaging 300k before hand).