Hi all. I've been playing retail WoW for a few months. Loving the M+ approach. I started with BM hunter, realized they are not too welcome at keys 18+. Switched to demo lock. Liked it a lot. It's being nerfed into oblivion soon though. I tried destro - not loving it too much. Ready to level up a new class and looking for suggestions. I want ranged dps, high mobility, no or very few ground clicks, great for M+ (not interested in anything else). Reading here and there, dev evoker seems to be nla decent choice. How hard is it to play dev evo efficiently in M+, compared to demo? I'm obviously not very experienced in WoW. In S2 I started to suck dps-wise at about key +16. I use Hekili for rotations, using top subcreation build but I'm just not too good (yet) at WoW. Should I roll dev evo? Also I don't like the idea of being responsible for much stuff other than just dps. I was thinking shadow priest but it looks like your duties include not just dps. Thanks for your suggestions.

So I've recently returned to WoW and after first doing only PvP and leveling nearly all classes I've now finally settled on my good old trusted resto druid and are back to PvE.
I'm mainly doing M+ and have started my first vault today. Since I have so many level 70's I just transferred all keys to my resto druid and managed to get all the important stones according to most guides I've found:
Healing : Wild Spirit Stone, Exuding Steam Stone & Deluging Water Stone
Damage: Storm Infused Stone, Desirous Blood Stone & Prophetic twilight.
But now I'm very unsure on what to use and upgrade. If I look at Subcreation about 80% of all healers are using the damage stones. I've read that if you're very good than this is what you need to push the highest keys. But I'm a pleb pugging 14-18's so I think I'm better off just going full healing right?
Was wondering what other pug M+ healers do :)

So now that I've gotten some attention with a sketchy title, let me elaborate.
M+ as an end-game content is often considered pretty stale and boring, especially due to trinket farming in dungeons like MoTS for Changeling, ToP for Ruby, DOS for Scale, etc. Trinkets, especially stat sticks or strong AoE-wise ones are highly sought for end-game content due to websites like Bloodmallet, Wowhead, MPlus Subcreation and YouTube due to the "min-max culture" that exists in the game. As a 3K rating/CE raider, I'm part of it and enforcer of such culture, but again, I'm a overwhelming minority in a game that many people enjoy casually hanging with friends, collecting stuff or progressing at their own pace in the current PvE/PvP end-game and if you think you need such things to be doing high end content, you don't have the right mentality. I usually run with a full group so I don't pug M+/raid much or even at all, but when I do, wow. The standard WoW player that wants to run their weekly 15's usually don't know major trash mechanics/kicks and due to that, usually throw blame around, causing stress among the community and often posts here in this subreddit. And all that makes me anxious to pug even a 15 since I don't know what to expect from a group, and I've ran those dungeons 100+ times each throughout those 2 years of SL.
And we've been running those 8 (Tazavesh being exempt since it got into M+ this season) same dungeons for almost 2 years now. I can't even imagine learning 8 new dungeons each and every season of DF and try to pug a key without making me want to grab only overgeared, overachievers, and such to avoid having 30-40 minutes or even more of stress.
But I need to make the disclaimer: I'm not the target audience of this game and I know I'm a 1%er. But what I'm trying to say here is that I'm not the one which will be affected. I rarely pug. I'll run with my boys for the next expansion as well and I'm not going to get impacted by it since we'll take our time to learn and eventually push 20+ again in a few weeks as usual.
So ponder it with yourself. Do you think the fun factor of having an entire new set of dungeons every patch to learn/run is gonna overrun the frustration of having terrible pug experiences? My solution is quite a known one: let us have the 8 DF standard dungeons in M+ (so we can have a few stable, safe and known dungeons that even if you run with a bad group, you might be able to complete it still), and bring in/out 2-4 old/revamped dungeons to shake things up (bring some new challenges to look forward and "new and shiny" loot) and introduce a mega dungeon as is now the usual.
And here's my main if you want to shit on me in game.
Edit: clarification.

hello guys,
im a newerish wow player and came back in 9.2. im playing elemental shaman in m+ and raids.
i've done quite some research on how to play the class and actually feel pretty confident in m+, but less in raiding.
ofcourse, i often see myself making mistakes, however i feel my heavy lack of damage can't sole be the reason of those (in my mind) minor mistakes
i think i have a good enough general understanding and execution, but my damage and logs say i'm a horrible player lol.
the worst part is, i dont know how to improve. i feel like i need someone to help me, to clarify my mistakes.
also tried wowanalyzer and i wanted to try this addon which tells you which spells you should use to maximize your damage based on the APL used by simcraft.
however, both wowanalyzer and that addon (i think its called HeroLoadout) say that they have not been optimized for ele shaman yet.
i was thinking about recording some m+ and one raid and to send it to someone on fiver and let them analyze it and give me a feedback, but i couldnt find one.
there are some people that teach/coach other classes, but not (ele) shaman.
some of my known current problems:

• i dont have any tier set piece yet
  
• my stats are horrible (have about ~18%-28% of every stat and cant really switch them out. im working on that)
  
• i seem to fuck up 2 or 3 target encounter a lot, although i think i know what to do.
  
• my downtimes are fairly high. the automatic reaction of "cast frost shock or other instant spells if ready" while moving isn't fully there yet
  
• storm elementals cast reduction buff often times does not hit full potential (10 stacks). It feels im mostly using other skills (earthshock, lavaburst) and there’s not enough time to create all stacks (which seems pretty bad)
  
• i'm used to m+ skill build. when changing to raiding i feel i dont have enough practice (and probably also understanding).
  
• ele shamans seem like they have to be very versatile in raid (different legendaries, covenants, talent builds). i feel overwhelmed because (unlike in m+) i cant get used to it as easy and fast. especially as it feels like every raid encounter needs a different skill set
  

welp as i said, i'm feeling stuck in my progression. i dont have anyone that plays shaman to give me tipps and thats why i'm reaching out to you guys
what am i expecting from this thread?
well as i said i was actually looking for some coach on fiver, so i'm willing to spend a bit of money to help me improve.
although i've read guides, watched videos and so on, i feel like it will help me most if i have someone to talk/write about my mistakes and questions.
logs: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/characteeu/antonidas/solakram
thanks for reading and helping
Edit 1: hey guys, i was working the whole day and could only read your replies but not answer.
thanks so much for your words and tipps. feeling more confident now and going to work on my flaws.
you guys really surprised me positively with your friendlines and helpfulnes.
here are the most important things i will work on: - ABC and to play with more foresight about my moving/positioning. - in my weekly chest are 4 set pieces and i can craft one with the catalyst so i have at least 2 pieces by the end of the day :) - get more gear so i can adapt my stats for the different encounters - use subcreation.net to get to know what talents/conv/soulbinds i need to use. very helpful website - watch professional shami gameplays (petko was mentioned a lot) - idealy record and rewatch my own gameplay and notice my own mistakes - dont care too much about my bad parses (and dont get demotivated from them). there are "uncontrollable" reasons why i cant compete with high level players (in my case stats, set pieces) and this will come with time. ofcourse i wont take this as an excuse for everything as i still have to work on my rotation and ABC - work on rotation on dummies and LFR
Edit 2: went nhc twink run with my guild and got 3 pieces. with vault and catalyst i got from 0 pieces to 5 today :) :) :) let's rock some parses

Performance in Sepulcher of the First Ones:

• Feral currently sits bottom 3 in Mythic Sepulcher
• Feral currently sits bottom 3 in Heroic Sepulcher
• Feral currently sits right in the middle of the pack in Normal Sepulcher

Performance in Mythic+:

• Feral is the least represented for 15+ keys
• Feral is the worst performing dps spec for keys 16 and above besides Assassination Rogue
• Feral is the second worst performing spec across all key levels

None of this would be a problem for feral if it had a strong tier set, however, this bodes extremely poorly for feral for the rest of the tier, as the 2 piece and 4 piece tier sets each provide the lowest dps gain of any spec's set. In each case, the effective dps gain of feral's 2 piece and 4 piece is roughly half of that of the second worst tier set.
I will note, that these sims were prior to the March 7th tier set tuning, but those buffs will have very little impact.

(2) Set Bonus: Berserk’s cooldown is now reduced by 0.7 seconds per combo point spent (was 0.5 seconds).

Prior to this buff, the 2 piece set lowered Berserk from a 3 minute cooldown, to roughly a 2 minute cooldown. This most recent buff de-sync'd Berserk with our Convoke timings, now causing us to hold our Berserk to use in conjunction with our Convoke; sometimes holding Berserk for as much as 30 seconds. This effectively renders the 'buff' useless except in extremely niche scenarios or kill timings (i.e. we would get another Berserk, but not Convoke)

(4) Set Bonus: Sickle of the Lion’s damage is increased by 25%.

While this might seem like a substantial buff to our 4 set, this comes off the heels of a 65% nerf in addition to bug fixes which caused our 4 piece to double dip on certain stats and abilities. In total, Sickle of the Lion receives a ~72% nerf on the PTR, right before release. Prior to this most recent buff, Sickle of the Lion accounted for just over 2% of our overall damage. We got a 25% buff to an ability that constitutes 2% of our overall damage....
In total, these most recent buffs to the 2 piece and 4 pieces leave feral's 4 piece dps gain at roughly 5.5%, which is still considerably lower than even the second worst 4 piece tier set
While I very much doubt Blizzard will rework the tier set and/or the spec as a whole, both of which I personally think are desperately needed, Feral is in need of some attention. Even though aura buffs would simply be kicking the can down the road, it would at the very least provide a stopgap to prevent the gap between feral and other specs from growing even larger than it already is.

Hello Fellow Goldmakers.
My name is Andrew and from time to time I make a weekly presentation aimed at keeping myself and anyone interested informed about what's happening in the world of goldmaking. Shadowlands is winding down a bit, I know we all sense that, but there are always ways to make gold for those who are willing to put in the work.
This week in the presentation we're discussing:

• The Weekly Standup
• The Market Update
• The News
• Vanilla Alchemy, Why should you Care?
• Bullish - ??? - Bearish
• Q&A

I'd love to hear what ya'll have been doing to make gold in the past week!
The audio for This Week in Goldmaking is also available in podcast form, just search for "Darkshore Capital" or "This week in goldmaking" on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Soundcloud (https://soundcloud.com/darkshore-capital), or other Podcast platforms which pick up any and all podcasts
Thanks very much,
Andrew
CEO, Darkshore Capital
Attached:

• Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Duh9au35r1o
• Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/47uFaz38xe9vh8kgb8JTZY
• Slide Deck: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1h7J61xwHAFpZ4H7uJBfT1yoSTW5Ha7aA/view
• Subcreation: https://subcreation.net/
• The Auction House Podcast: https://www.auctionhousepodcast.com/
• WoW Recipe Site: https://warcraft-recipes.com/
• WoW Professions Vanilla Alchemy: https://www.wow-professions.com/guides/vanilla-alchemy-leveling
• TSM Vanilla Herbs Group: https://www.tradeskillmaster.com/group-makeqn2iu80d

Q & A links: * 1. https://twitter.com/heyarnold79/status/1389302438830690309?s=20 * 2. https://old.reddit.com/woweconomy/comments/n3u080/what_is_the_point_of_selling_flaskpots_instead_of/ * 3.https://old.reddit.com/woweconomy/comments/n3q8ww/are_mop_jewelcrafting_panther_mounts_worth_it/

Hi folks,
Sharing Subcreation PvP https://pvp.subcreation.net/ -- an attempt to automatically generate tier lists to determine relative spec strength in rated PvP, both overall and for each specific rated PvP mode: https://i.imgur.com/JNyCLwp.png
First, huge thanks to u/geebr for providing an API to easily see leaderboard data.
A few important caveats:

• This is really meant as a "quick reference" guide as to relative spec strength. I was curious how the tier list methodology used elsewhere in Subcreation would work if I looked at leaderboard rating information. See the FAQ for gory details on the math: https://subcreation.net/faq.html
  
• The leaderboard suffers from the "logged out in a different spec" issue where players log out in a spec they didn't play in PvP, but they show up on the leaderboard as that spec. There's also a staleness issue that players might get a high rating and stop playing as the meta shifts around them. No easy way around this, though hopefully WoW Arena Logs can make some progress there. Or even better, Blizzard could expose more PvP API functionality. :fingers-crossed:
  
• Ultimately, you'll want to consult with more detailed guides (some of which are linked in More Resources, and suggestions for sites to add there are welcome). You may also want to see https://luduslabs.org/2v2-comps and https://luduslabs.org/3v3-comps for comp specific advice.
  
• If you'd like to incorporate the tier lists elsewhere, there's a very simple API available. See the pin in the #api channel of the site's discord for details / questions.
  

All that said, hopefully this is useful / interesting to folks :) Suggestions and improvements are welcome!
e (Apr 12): Thanks for the feedback re: the tier list. I've just modified the approach to better account for very popular specs by looking at the top end (top 100) for each spec, instead of all leaderboard entries for a spec. This should give a better tier list, e.g.:

• 2v2: https://i.imgur.com/n73DnZj.png
• 3v3: https://i.imgur.com/JNyCLwp.png
• RBG: https://i.imgur.com/4DAd2cc.png

This should show up on the site once caching updates (~an hour from this edit). Thank you again for the feedback, really appreciated it and hopefully this modification helps adjust the tier list to better represent actual spec strength.

I am trying to decide which way to go with the rdruid legendaries for mythic+.
I noticed that Icy-veins has recently changed their advice and now identifies Verdant Infusion as the top healing throughput choice for Mythic+. VI has been rising quickly in the logs, recently overtaking Circle of Life and Death as the most popular legendary for high keys. They’re close to equal (~35% each) but momentum is certainly with VI.
I have been running the old school set up with Dark Titans Lesson and Photosynthesis, which was originally identified as the top healing throughput set up. DTL is now only used by ~5% and has clearly fallen out of favor as more rdruids pick up Flourish.
What do you use?
Sources:
https://mplus.subcreation.net/restoration-druid.html
https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/restoration-druid-best-legendaries-shadowlands

As Battle for Azeroth is ending, I figured it was a good idea to just take a moment to thank all those who help us all play the game at a competitive level. I've added Patreon/PayPal/Merchandise links for those who are willing and able to support them financially.
I am certain there are some resources missing (for now I have only included stuff where there is some way to support them, which is why e.g. BigWigs and SimC are missing), please let me know if there's something I should add! This list will probably end up being added to our Wiki at some point.

AddOns:

• Deadly Boss Mods - Patreon
• Mythic Dungeon Tools - Patreon
• WeakAuras - Patreon
• Details!/Plater - PayPal
• ElvUI - Premium/PayPal

General Resources:

• WoWAnalyzer (automatic analysis of your gameplay based on logs) - Patreon
• Warcraftlogs - Patreon
• Wipefest (automatic analysis of how bosses were executed) - Patreon - WarcraftYax
• Raider.IO (m+ ranking) - Patreon
• Wago (website to find WeakAuras, MDT routes, ElvUI profiles, etc) - Patreon
• Raidbots (sim yo self) - Patreon
• Wowhead - Premium
• RaidPlan.io (create/annotate maps for boss encounters) - Patreon
• wowaudit (track your guild member's progress in various metrics) - Patreon
• Subcreation (detailed analysis of dungeons/classes/specs/affixes in m+) - Patreon - alcaras
• keystone.guru (map m+ routes in your browser) - Patreon - Wotuu
• Bloodmallet (rough overview of how everything sims) - Patreon
• Luxthos (WeakAuras for every class/spec) - Patreon

Spec/Class Resources:

• Questionably Epic (resto druid and general healer stuff, including QE-Live, simming for healers) - Patreon
• Ancestral Guidance (resto shaman) - Patreon - PayPal
• Storm, Earth & Lava (ele shaman) - Patreon
• WingsIsUp (holy pala) - Patreon - ellesmere_
• Warcraft Priests - Patreon
• Peak of Serenity (monks) - Patreon - PayPal - Merchandise
• Tanknotes - Patreon

Boss Guides:

• FatbossTV - Patreon
• Ready, Check, Pull - Patreon
• Stankie Gaming - Patreon

First, I want to thank everyone in this community for all the help you've all been. I went into this season of M+ just aiming to hit 2K, and I'm now at 3330. I credit a lot of that to the tips/tricks and help that everyone in this community offers. It's nice to have a place where theorycrafting can be discussed without the memes and other bull that would be found in wow.
​
I regularly keep an eye on Subcreation Mythic + because it's a good source to see what the players pushing +30 are running with on the highest end of things. Currently with the BM Hunter the top used essence build is BOE Major, Lethal strikes, Strife and VOP minors. A total of 66% of those completing +30 are running with that. Then, with a total of 13% of users, there is the build of VOP major, focused energy, Lethal strikes and Strife minors. So there is clearly a huge discrepancy between those 2 groups in terms of percentage of users. Is there a reason why BOE is so popular and used in high end over VOP? Maybe it's my playstyle, but as a hunter I'm usually standing farther than 12 yards during most trash and boss fights with the exception of those fights where we stack on the tank, i.e., last boss in UR. Wouldn't I need to run in much closer to the packs each time I wanted to use BOE? Maybe 12 yards is farther than I think it is, in which case is there any sort of WA available which would at least let me know when I'm in 12 yards so I don't feel like I need to run right on top of melee whenever I wanted to use it?
Anyway - just trying to get a better understanding of the use of the essences - I know that we're just a step away from prepatch, but I still want to push my score as high as I can get it before the season is over.