Bring the player, not the gear: A tale

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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I am the best Rogue 10/10. If you want to learn the Rogue things, I can teach you for a nominal fee.

Picture this. You’re attuned for Onyxia at the fledgling level of 58. Standing next to you are level 60 Warriors, Hunters, Warlocks, other Rogues, and Mages; most of whom have quite a few, if not all their Pre-BiS items.

The fight starts, you run in, and BOOM! Explosions happen. You’re thrusting your little level 50 + 52 daggers into Onyxia’s thighs like acupuncture.

poke poke poke
miss miss
poke poke

“Oh but you’re not combat swords”, they said.
“You’re not viable unless you blindly follow these cookie cutter builds”, they said.
“You smell different when you’re awake”, they said.

You pop slice and dice! The poking gets faster like you’re Michael J Fox after 6 shots of espresso.

pokepokepokepokepoke

Suddenly through the haze and flurry of stabbing you notice you’re overtaking these Pre-BiS geared level 60’s on the damage charts.

Onyxia realizes what a threat you are and cowardly attempts to run away. But you’re too quick. All that Coffee and crystal has heightened your senses. You pop vanish, then AMBUSH her, then sprint behind her as she attempts to take flight, all the while still poking to your heart’s content.

We ended up not getting the kill that night. Not all stories have happy endings.

But I wanted to tell you that story, because it is true. I did out damage several level 60’s as a level 58 who had MUCH better gear than my own. I really do use a spec that isn’t cookie cutter, and is one that I came up with myself.

How did I do it? Because positioning. Because I watched threat and didn’t rip it from the tank resulting in Onyxia turning and killing half the raid on 3 attempts. Because mechanics.

Gear is great and all, but dead DPS don’t do ANY DPS, and that is how I out damaged players who out leveled and out geared me. Mechanics > Gear

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downvoted.

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This kind of reminds me of when people started freaking out about how Onyxia was somehow tuned wrong in Classic because people were killing her with 20 man groups.

The reality is, back in Vanilla you would bring 40 people. Twenty of them would die foolishly, and Onyxia would be killed by whoever was smart enough not to get knocked into the whelps.

Dead players do zero dps.

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I learned a long time ago, the most important, and really the only goal is to not die during raids. Everything else is secondary. Top DPS means nothing, top heals mean nothing, holding threat means nothing, if you’re lying face down on the floor.

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I can help you to avoid the fire, too. No need to be all negative. It’s okay to admit that mechanics can be difficult for you.

You’ll get there, buddy. :slight_smile:

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Yep. Fresh level 60 came in 6th dps on Rag vs half a raid that had almost full pre-raid bis plus some mc upgrades.
Neat how that works.

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Link the logs or it didnt happen.

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I am inspired :partying_face:

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Good for you?

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10

only question I have is what class spec were those 60’s? if Ret paladin then meh… or any of the other gimped classic classes.

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I enjoyed your story :grinning:

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So from what I gathered here, you went HAM in Phase 1 when most people are literally just using White Attacks and Wands? Yea… you’re probably going to outdamage someone like that.

Onyxia, in Phase 1 & 3, is a control fight, not a DPS race. No one cares about who tops Onyxia meters. Now when you’re blowing away fully geared Fury Warriors on Magmadar, Golemag, or even Rag with your pre-Perdition’s dagger spec, let me know.

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The one was a Fury warrior. I don’t know what anyone’s exact spec is. Had dual Rend’s with double crusader enchant etc. Some of these people were pretty decked out.

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This is literal fact. We have all this on farm, but still lost 75% of the raid on Saturday’s Ony kill. By the end the raid was.

Tank
Tank

Healer (Me)

Hunter
Hunter
Hunter
Rogue
Rogue

One of those rogues died because my mana was tight at that point, but we got her. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Please see above about this being a control fight. Overdpsing on Ony often leads to wipes.

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You should have probably gathered more. I am usually the last melee dps to open up (you know, the whole waiting for the tank to call it thing).

See the part where I said “attempts to run away”? That’s the beginning of phase 2 after the threat wipe happens. THAT is the moment I pop vanish and Ambush. If I were going ham from the get go, I’d open with a double Ambush.

I’ll continue to blow away any DPS that can’t / won’t follow mechanics regardless of my gear level or boss we’re facing. :wink:

Edit: because dead dps don’t do any dps

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Sorry, you’re still a rouge and will never know the love of a woman.

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Somebody already mentioned it but uh, phase 1 is for auto attacks.

I wonder why you didn’t kill ony that night.

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Honestly it was the transition from P2 to P3 that kept getting us. Healers had aggro on her when she came down and she’d run rampant until they were all dead. Then she’d come after the rest of us.

That last transition is where we wipe our faces off. Best attempt of the night was 1%.

If anyone actually does have tips for that transition I’d love to hear it. I’d like to get her down next week.

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Dude stop backpedaling.

If you were waiting for tank aggro in Phase 1 and just white dpsing like everyone else, how the hell do you have Slice and Dice up? White attacks don’t give you combo points last I checked?

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