+1. All of these are great, non-balance breaking changes to improve QoL. I would think that Ravage needs to do more damage in general though, not just for vengeance. Considering it's an ability you need to remain stationary for 3 seconds (not counting alacrity or clipping), it needs to have a bit of a bigger payoff.

I'm glad you posted this. I thought my crappy internet was the culprit for this and didn't think much more of it. I'll keep it in mind.

I'll echo what others here have said: 1) Be patient, everyone starts somewhere. If it really bothers you that much, be willing to coach those who are willing to listen. Pro tip: peeps won't be really keen to take tips from a condescending point of view. 2) Also, I frequently find myself node-guarding about 3/4 of my matches because virtually no one else will do it. I'm not exactly in the position to light up the scoreboard when guarding. 3) Finally, there is some validity to the point you have heard from others. I play primarily focus/rage. I'm not capable of padding my numbers with DoT AoE. I've seen some absurd numbers posted by madness sorcs (eclipsing 3 million sometimes) yet have less than 5 killing blows. Meanwhile, their teams lose because they are so intent on that damage output that they lose sight of me capping their node or rekking their healer. While damage output is invariably an integral part of PvP, 8v8s are won by objectives. While I'm sure many of the folks you were referring to in this post were either inexperienced/unskilled, there very well could have been some who are very skilled, yet their "almighty numbahs" at the end of the match did not reflect that due to some reason or another. Take care not to place too much emphasis on the DPS.

This is precisely why I don't play ranked anymore. I enjoy playing focus/rage too much. Combine my unwillingness to switch to a spec I do not prefer to the already poor situation juggs find themselves in the current ranked meta, I am quite content (now) to troll regs. See the rest of y'all there!

I roll primarily in regs, but I've been itching to take the plunge into 4s for a while now. Can't seem to find folks who I'm around whom have the desire to compete in 4s, are capable of doing so, or on for scheduled times to get our feet wet in the group ranked scene. I main as guardian/jugg (both with 208 augmented). Epok is my guardian, Epök is my jugg, and I can roll as either DPS spec. Let me know if anyone is in need of a member for a team. Thanks.

There is still a "slight" bolster, even when wearing the high end PvE gear. The higher the gear, the smaller the bolster. I'd post something with bolsterizer but, as I said before, it isn't really working properly (at least for me it wasn't). Suffice to say, folks in 220s and 224s will have around or a bit less than 1000 expertise from bolster when they enter a warzone. Not much, but it is there.

Thanks for this! This is just more ammunition we can relay to some of the folks who may not know about it. BW has done better to incentivize the player base getting PvP gear with the massive slashes in price from 3.3. When coupled with an insane loss of DPS, I'm sure there will be a few who will be keen to grab a few pieces and throw it in legacy gear. I think it is also worth mentioning to others in the community that patience will likely be required when communicating with some folks. You will undoubtedly encounter someone who thinks they're too leet to be told how to play. If that's the case, simply move on. There are indeed folks who will be receptive to constructive criticism when they know they DON'T KNOW about one iota of PvP strat/gearing. I myself am a testament to this. Anyways, thanks for the info Nik!

As far as I understood, the warzone dummy operates as a stationary player with 2018 expertise. My parse would seem to corroborate this. However, to answer your question, I have no idea if this did not used to be the case and, if not, when they changed it.

I decided to mess around with the training dummies to see exactly what the extent of DPS you're losing when using PvE gear. Yes, yes, PvP isn't a game where there will be static targets and we won't get a full rotation off on anyone (so on, and so forth). But, with the influx of PvE geared folks we've been seeing in the warzones lately, who seemingly don't know or don't care about PvP gear, I figured giving, to anyone who would listen, a more specific figure to go with the loss in DPS would be better than a nebulous "you don't DPS as much without PvP gear" comment. Because (with what I've experienced) most will shrug it off, thinking that their rotation and knowledge of the spec will carry them through relatively unscathed. Anyways, to the numbers!!!! I parsed on my main (Focus Guardian) up to 1.5 million damage on the warzone dummy with full 208, augmented, optimized gear and hovered around 6,601 DPS (no adrenals or outside buffs). I subsequently did the same thing in my PvE gear (fully optimized and augmented 220s w/ four 224 pieces) and parsed 4,429. That's nearly a whopping 2,200 DPS loss! This isn't mentioning how much freaking squishier you are when wearing the almighty PvE gear. Now, I know you will still receive a slight bolster when in PvE gear. Unfortunately, bolsterizer isn't really working properly and the effect will likely be slight. Also, different specs will parse different numbers and we all know focus/rage is among the lowest of the parsing totem pole. So, all things being equal, it will likely still average out to around a 2,000 and maybe even a 2,500 DPS loss. Look, I get it. A lot of the folks who don't PvP are not going to care either way. But, maybe you can convince someone to get some of the cheap 204s if they have even an ounce of competitiveness in their body. I figure anything to get folks in PvP gear and not be (as much) deadweight on the various teams would be beneficial for all. Also, I'd be happy to see what others are parsing in the different classes/specs. Would be interesting to see what the loss in damage is.

Yes Domi, I understand your point. I have also been in a fair amount of those matches myself and they can be unpleasant whilst grouped with the average pug. But those sorts of premades are far more the exception than the norm. Would you really want to deny the rest of the folks, who are far below the skill level of those you mentioned shrekking regs (likely with their ranked teams), the ability to queue WZs with their friends because of a few poor matches? I completely understand the frustration here, however, lobbying for people to be completely unable to roll premades is not the answer. Some sort of matchmaking I think would be a much better solution (which is likely to never occur). Edit: Even IF BW were to remove the ability to queue grouped, folks would still queue sync (I would). So, there likely wouldn't be much of a difference anyways.

Who's to say the premades are all that good? I am in a predominantly PvE guild (because I like clearing HM PvE content as well) but we do venture into the PvP foray with groups of four on occasion. However, some of my own guildies that I'm running with aren't all too fantastic yet because they are still learning the ropes. Which goes back to my question, who is to say premades are always that good? Bottom line, I enjoy playing with my friends. Don't be so intimidated by the guild tag being there.

In light of the nerfs to some of the stronger burst specs, I'm curious to see how it will impact the population distribution. Specifically, how many, if any, folks who played the others specs, now saddled w/ a not-so-inconsequential nerf to their burst (20% reduction in crit multiplier, wow), will go to rage. Thoughts?

You're correct in your assessment of AP PT strength in comparison to Rage - it is superior to rage. However, AP PT is arguably the best AC spec in the game. If you want a non-burst class and are having fun with the Vengeance spec, have at it. If you ever want to change it up with your burst spec, rage is a ton of fun.

To each their own. I prefer Focus and can dominate an 8v8 match with it. Maybe you just haven't given it a fair shot.

Just for general awareness, rage juggernauts seem to be a bit more popular with the advent of super-crit. Rage have 3 gap closers (two of which can break roots) and another root breaker ability that isn't really a gap closer but can be useful situationally (Intercede). Rage juggs can be particularly potent in the hands of a skilled player. You can identify them if they are in Shii-Cho form (blue color) and vengeance juggs can be identified if they're in shien form (purpleish color). Both specs have different strength and weaknesses, so be aware of this before engaging.

In 3.0, Rage benefited more than Vengeance from stacking straight crit. This may have changed since 4.0 (or not), but I'm going to go out on a limb and say Vengeance will still reach optimum DPS with a substantial amount of alacrity in the build. If you're going for a straight crit build, you may find yourself doing more DPS (and maybe enjoy the rotation more) in Rage. Rage DPS circles completely around crits. So, if you don't want alacrity in your gear because you want fewer APM, give Rage a shot.

I don't normally play vengeance/vigilance (rage/focus ftw), but from my understanding, alacrity benefits the former immensely. However, since 4.0, my guess would be it would be beneficial to have a good split between crit and alacrity until someone crunches the numbers. But that's simply me surmising.

Welcome to the club, my friend. Rage/Focus is a menace on the battlefield and just plain awesome to control.

Well, guess I'll be giving my full attention to MNF.

I'm not wholly familiar with the jugg names of the abilities so I will use the guardian names. There is no strict rotation in PvP because the situation should determine what you use (which I'm sure most know, figure I'd say it anyway as a disclaimer). Focused burst and force sweep is an auto crit after you use any of your leaps. Don't use them unless you have said auto-crit. Also, there is a buff named singularity which increases the damage focused burst and force sweep does. You'll gain the buff from using either combat focus or force exhaustion. Do what you can to have this buff up when using focused burst / force sweep because it consumes no focus and does an additional 15% dmg when the buff is up. It is also important to note that, since 4.0, using focused burst or force sweep gives you a 5% DR buff for six seconds, so it is to your benefit using these on CD. Concentrated Slice auto-crit is tied to blade storm now instead of saber throw, so saber throw should be used situationally (especially if you are specced into the 3 second root). Even without the auto-crit buff provided once every minute by blade storm, concentrated slice crits fairly regularly due to the high amount of crit focus/rage should be stacking in their gear. With all of this being said, I will give my own order of importance to the primary offensive abilities for focus (others may differ, this is my own list): Focused Burst w/ singularity and auto-crit buffs Blade Storm w/ buff to generate focus and if it will provide auto-crit to concentrated slice (this goes down the list if targets health is low) Concentrated Slice Dispatch when available (speccing into it's use after force leap is a god-send!) Blade Dance (I always spec into the root it provides) Blade Storm w/ buff to generate focus but no auto-crit buff Sundering Strike Riposte I haven't included force exhaustion or zealous leap because they are either a) used to prep your focused burst or b) used situationally. Important to note, if you find yourself using slash or strike, you are probably not using your abilities properly such as using blade storm when it will consume focus instead of generating it or using focused burst / force sweep without the singularity buff. I have never needed to use either of those abilities. Also, it's really up to the user if you want to use blade storm before or after your initial onslaught of focused burst and concentrated slice. Sometimes, using an additional GCD for blade storm won't be worth it if the targets health is low enough. Hope this helps!

Agreed. I mainly play focus but whenever I run as vigi, I have always topped the DPS charts with AoE numbers. It is a bit more rare to do this playing focus (for me anyways ). Same goes when I see some of the familiar faces who play vigi well on my server. Vigi/Veng is simply better suited for raw DPS output than Focus/Rage. So, in light of this, I have found a better stat by which to gauge myself when playing focus/rage: killing blows. It doesn't necessarily mean vigi is better than focus because they have moar numbahs, just means that's what the class is designed to do. Still, PvP is so situational that it is almost criminal to base a players skill solely on the numbers they put up. Gotta see what the player does in different situations and judge them from their actions. I.E. if they are futilely derp DPSing the enemy healer with a guard for an entire match instead pushing said healer out of range of the guard or hard-swapping. You'll likely see better numbers doing the former, but the latter is far more valuable. Sorry, that last paragraph is a bit soap-boxy. Sorry bout that.

Has there been any more word concerning this topic, from streams or cantina sitdowns? I haven't seen anything but I figured I'd ask. Or Eric could respond with an update.

Same for all our guildies. No PvPz.

Same here for all my guildies and I.

Lot of fun, thanks for hosting. Looking forward to the next event.