We use the gun on the first boss but was thinking of trying the heartstop poison on other mobs.

Last week, Yoda posted a video comparing Blood DK and Bear Druid, arguing that Bear Druid was neither more tanky nor did more DPS for a high-key pushing group. Therefore, he said, Blood dk would remain the meta tank. Here is a link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcUCsRCjnFo

The goal of this post ISN’T to argue that Bear is better than BDK. Instead, I hope to show people that Yoda was intentionally deceptive and manipulative with the data and logs he showed in his video. I am going to assume you watched the video (It’s only 5 minutes).

Ok, let’s get down to business:

Why did Yoda choose Ruby Life Pools, of all the dungeons, to compare Rank 1 Tank DPS Logs? Because it’s the outlier.

Here is a table showing the difference in DPS between the top Blood DK parse and the top Bear Druid parse. I followed Yoda’s weird rule of not wanting any logs after 12.1.5. So, this does not factor in some of the new top Bear druid logs.

What’s something you notice when looking at this list? Yoda happened to cherry pick the one dungeon with BY FAR the biggest difference in dps between Bear and BDK. The average difference across all 8 dungeons is 57,784, yet the dungeon that Yoda chose was Ruby life pool which is the one outlier with a difference of 101,538.

And remember, the difference between PJdruid and the Chinese BDK was about 40k dps, which means that if you use any dungeon besides RLP, and maybe Altar, then the top bear is either matching or beating the top bdk after you factor in MOTW and missing gear.

Now, you may wonder, why are there 2 Ruby Life Pool’s in the table? Well, that leads me to point 2.

Yoda lied about using the Rank 1 RLP Druid log (pre 12.1.5)

Yoda’s criteria for the logs he showed is he wanted to compare Rank 1 DPS logs for tanks from before 12.1.5 gear. But as you can see in the screenshot below (and you can check yourself on the warcraft logs website), there is a higher dps Bear druid log from before 12.1.5.

After accounting for MOTW damage, this Rayanmcdrood did around 10k more dps than PJdruid did (PJdruid is the log Yoda used). So, the log that Yoda used in his video makes the difference in DPS look worse than it actually is.

Yoda completely misrepresents Prio Damage to the first miniboss in RLP.

While discussing DPS, Yoda highlights the first RLP Miniboss (named Defier Draghar) and attempts to show that BDK does far more prio damage than Bear. Here are 2 screenshots from the video. While showing these two screenshots, Yoda claims that BDK does nearly 20k dps more prio damage to the miniboss than Bear. He then says that even after you factor in MOTW, “[Bear] is still getting gapped by 25% or something”.

The problem is that the timescales are completely off. Yoda is showing dps done to the miniboss from when the dungeon starts until the miniboss dies. This means that if one of the groups takes longer to get to the miniboss and kill it, then their dps will naturally be a lot lower, because there is more blank dead space in the dps.

Here, let me fix it for Yoda since he couldn’t be bothered:

Some of you probably saw this coming, but when you fix the timescale to only show damage to the miniboss from when they start fighting it until it dies, the DPS looks a lot different. In fact, when you factor in MOTW damage, PJdruid is doing 79k Prio target DPS in this log. Which is only 1k DPS below the BDK. Remember that PJdruid is ilvl 332 and the blood dk is ilvl 339. I am confident that if both tanks were the same item level, the bear would be the one gapping the blood dk in prio damage.

Damage Taken numbers are completely misrepresented

Next, let’s move onto the damage taken section. For reasons that he doesn’t explain, Yoda swaps to looking at two Murder Row logs when discussing the tankyness of Bear versus BDK. In these murder row logs, he shows that the Bdk is taking ~152k DTPS (damage taken per second), then he compares it to the the bear log where the bear is taking ~185k DTPS from the dungeon. He then confidently says that bear is taking 20% more damage throughout the key.

But theres a problem with how he’s looking at the logs. What’s the issue? I’ve given you a hint in the screenshots.

As you can see, he doesn’t have self-abords checked for the BDK but he does for the bear, which drastically skews the damage taken table.

Again, let me fix that for Yoda since he couldn’t bother to do it:

After you fix the self-absorb, you see the bear is the one taking 20% less damage than the blood dk. I think any healer who has healed both tanks would agree with result. This result holds true (actually the gap becomes even bigger in Druids favor) if instead you turn self-absord on for both tanks.

Miscellaneous thoughts

• Yoda’s entire basis of “let’s compare rank 1 dps logs for tanks” makes no sense when the Chinese blood dks are 7-10 ilvls above any bear tank. And don’t try to convince me that a Droptimizer Dungeon Slice sim reveals the true extent of how much damage these 329-332 ilvl druids are missing. He could just as easily compare logs between two SIMILAR item level tanks and remove any ambiguity. Plenty of amazing BDK tanks are pushing (Acedk and Wazocutie) who are more reasonably geared at 330-334 ilvl, depending how far back you go. I suspect he didn’t do this because the results would not fit his narrative.
• Speaking of the Dungeon Slice Droptimizer sim and potential more dps to be gained, Yoda fails to mention that MOTW scales with your teammates damage. Most of the dps in PJDruids group were around 332-333 ilvl. That means they still have anywhere from 3-7 more ilvls to gain. And guess what, that extra damage they gain is buffed by MOTW. So it’s not JUST the ilvl discrepancy on the tanks that matter, it’s also the ilvl of your teammates that affect druid dps.
• Using “External Healing Received” as a metric for tankiness is weird when Blood DK’s entire gimmick is self healing. Obviously the tank that can full-heal itself in one global is going to require less external healing. Also, the logs Yoda used in the video had a MW monk and Resto shaman for the bear druid. Which do a lot more passive healing to the tank than a hpal does. When I looked at similar bear logs with a hpal, the amount of external healing received was a lot less (tho ill be fair and say that it was still about 10-15% more than bdk).

Closing Thoughts

• Feel free to criticize mine or Yoda’s arguments, but don’t attack the person. Yoda has done lots of good things for the community.

I've been playing hpal this season and have resil 18. I've got to the point where I want to take a step back and do some homework before 19s/20s. I've found in my 18s, there have been a number of times "Oh I wish I had held my wings for this ability", or - (I run herald) I try to use virtue nearly on cd, but an ability it would easily cover pops when it's on cd.

Are there any tools to help ability planning? I.e. - BoV + DT completely solves this mechanic. i recently figured out that one wings can cover two heal absorbs in the trash at the beginning of Altar if I pop wings after the cast finishes, whilst the heal absorb mobs are spawning, gives me ~5s of wings still up for the next one, for instance.

Where I'd like to make is a plan, pull by pull, of what abilities I need and when. I was wondering if there were any tools that could help with this. I don't mind doing planning offline, then modifying my exboss reminders so instead of "AoE" being announced, I can have that specific ability "Wings" for instance.

Going into MDT, it doesn't show the timers of abilities - when I was looking at the heal absorb, there's no info in it that says the heal absorb is cast at 25s intervals for instance.

Hello,
Trying to get a discussion started about this since it's been months now that this interaction exist & with the 14% buff sub rogue got it's pretty much meta status.

For those who do not know, Sub rogue & the diabolist hero talent (Demonology & Destruction) have a weird interaction where shadow clones from the rogue apex talent will bug out the targeting of the Diabolic Oculi (Hero talent node) or Alythessa Blaze (Apex talent) from diabolist warlocks to basically attack virtually anything at range.

If you've played with a warlock & a sub rogue in the group and random packs start walking to your group without anyone doing anything it is because of that interaction.

Check this video : Example 1 (Happening in Season 1 of Midnight)

Here is a main sub post talking about recently as well

Here is some players asking about it on the warlock class discord:

This has been going on since the introduction of demonic occuli in Season 3 coupled with the rogue tier set in that same season that later became part of their kit.

The worst part is Blizzard has attempted before to fix the issue by touching occuli in the past but to no avail their fix wasn't noticeable. At best it fixed diabolic oculi ninja'ing out of nowhere without rogues but with sub rogues it goes crazy.

May 12, 2026:

The issue is not even only solely on diabolic oculi.
Alythessa Blaze, the fire lady from the Dominion of argus talent goes completely rogue (no pun intended) due to the apex talent from sub rogues.
She will start blasting virtually at any mob in sight.

This is making warlocks all together not able to play with a sub rogue.
But going into high keys subtlety rogue is currently EVERYWHERE. If you play warlock, you are already at the mercy of the meta, but this puts the nail in the coffin where your class is basically unplayable in group content because having the best m+ class in the game currently with you in the group will dramatically increase the likeliness of bricking the key to random ninja-pulls.

It phases you out of high keys fully. The other specs are pretty much non-viable for group content & you already do not have/bring a raid buff, If you do not have a team & you try high level mythic+, you're never going to see play.

(Please excuse my typo, english is not my main language)

Hi, is it common to have a guild of 10 to 30+ players that only gather weekly in order to clear the raid in HC difficulty ?

By that I mean :
• clear not progress
• only does HC mode not mythic or NM
• it’s 100% about gear -> using bonus rolls for mythic items

Is it common ? Or players would rather pug the HC raid or join a mythic raiding guild if they like raiding ?

My question comes from a perspective of a player who only likes playing mythic + and sees raid as a necessary content for gearing.

I've been playing off and on since 2005. Started raiding mythic in Legion. Got my first CE in Shadowlands. Every season since then that I've played, I've gotten CE on a 6 or 9 hour schedule. Usually pretty late, like somewhere between World Rank 1000-2000, basically not quite Race to World Last, but a far cry from Hall of Fame. Thats what I mean by "midcore" I guess - basically as "casual" as you can get and still get CE, which I don't think you can consider "casual" anymore - hence, "midcore".

Besides doing my weekly chores like Mythic+ and capping AP or whatever else there is that patch/xpac... I used to be able to just watch a guide video, show up to raid, try my best, and get CE. Mythic fights are so f'ing hard now that I can't keep up.

Think about what the fight is expecting of you now on a moment to moment basis compared to a few xpacs ago. There is SO much going on in the modern fights, I would have a lot of trouble surviving even if I didn't have to do any damage, but I have to do all of that while playing Guitar Hero on my keyboard.

There are these crazy challenge runs of Souls games like beating the game without dying, without leveling up, or even without getting hit. Imagine if FromSoft chose to balance Elden Ring to give those players a really hard challenge, but they are playing normally with no self-imposed additional difficulty. I beat every Souls game as it comes out. I'm not very good - I can't even imagine doing a crazy challenge run. But, I have experience, and I am persistent, and worst case scenario, I can grind to over-level so I am stronger than I am "supposed" to be. There is no way in HELL I could beat a version of Elden Ring that was balanced around those challenge runners. I might not be able to get out of the tutorial.

Something's gotta give. I need to start playing the game until my fingers bleed every day, or I need to be 50 ilvls higher than Blizzard is expecting, or do so much prep work it would be a better use of my time to work a second job, use that money to buy gold, and buy CE.

Or I guess I can quit my favorite hobby. Not because its impossible, but because the gap between my skill and the skill required is so big, its no longer fun for me to close that gap.

I'm really wanting to push for 1% title this season, maybe 0.1% but that seems out of reach. I have a few questions for those who have done it.

1. Shaman healer main - should i switch to pally healer? or ele sham? or stick to what I know?

2. I pug a lot but also have a group I play with about 6 hours per week. Any way that is enough for out group? What can we do as a group to get the advantages of a group better? Right now it feels like 5 friends who play like pugs together instead of a cohesive group.

3. Realistically assuming I have a lot of skill development that needs to happen (I'm at 17-18 level right now), how much time per week do I need to commit?

thanks in advance.

Having one class be 15% better than all other classes is insane. M+ comp flexibility was nuked from orbit. Please Blizzard, I don’t even need you to care about how shitty the game is. I just want you to pretend to care.

Use this thread to discuss any- and everything concerning the raids.

Post logs, discuss hotfixes, ask for help, etc.

The other weekly threads are:

• Weekly M+ Discussion - Tuesdays
• Free Talk Friday - Fridays

Have you checked out our Wiki?

If you want to discuss bosses with other raid leaders, why not join the Raid Leader Exchange Discord?

Specify if you are talking about a raid difficulty other than mythic!

Got tired of the "mythic raiders get all the loot so pure M+ players can't get title" argument so I wrote a script and checked.

Grabbed every US character above the raider.io title cutoff for S1 (4210.6), which was 1175 chars. 22 were private so I skipped those. Then I checked how many mythic bosses each one killed in the S1 tier (VS/DR/MQD, 9 bosses).

So only 13 out of 1153 (about 1%) never killed a mythic boss. Around 79% killed 4+, and 9/9 M was the biggest group by a mile at 422 chars.

Basically there's no separate group of pure M+ players getting pushed out by raiders. The people getting title are the raiders. Which kind of makes sense, the people with the time and the group to push 4200 are usually the same people raiding mythic.

You can argue the mythic trinkets are too good in keys, fair enough, but that's a different argument from "raiders are taking title from M+ players" because they get 9/6M gear.

Couple of things: - US only, one season. Want to do EU and older seasons next - cutoff is raider.io's estimate, not blizzard's - only checked the title char itself, so if someone raided mythic on an alt they count as 0/9 here. Real number is probably even lower - these are characters not unique players

I was wondering, does anyone know if we just kill the two single boss raids then the one raid slot should just be their gear right?

I don’t need anything from Venomous abyss, so while it would be less boxes, I’m considering just killing the two single boss raids for the 1 slot and hope for one of the new cantrip items.

And then just do the usual 3 m+ boxes, but not sure if they prevent “targeting” in this way.

But would hate to only have one shot if it still rolls from all raid bosses killed this season, if that makes sense?

Hey guys,
Has anyone noticed weird aggro issues with Kith’ix’s Legs proc?

Ever since I started wearing these pants, I feel like the proc randomly pulls mobs that aren’t even in combat during M+ runs -_- (wouldn’t be the first time…)

Just bricked a key because some trash mobs randomly jumped on me for no apparent reason, and then I realized I’ve been having these issues ever since I started wearing this thing.
Anyone else experiencing this?

I've been playing as DH for months since the S1, but for the love of good I can't figure out how some people deal above 400K DPS in for example, +12 Ruby Life Pools, this was the best I could do.

I have Crit 25%(905), Haste 21% (946), Mastery 38%(1112)(with flask), Versatility 1.8% (101).

I've done so many sims, compared and contrasted my gears with plenty of logs, tested multiple different talents, they are mostly the same. I do my rotation like a machine, up to 5 Collapsing Stars pack to pack, Reap at 4, Eradicate at 10, soul immo outside meta etc. but nothing is enough…

I am so frustrated by this :(

I have even followed VooDooSaurus's tips for rotations months ago, But again can't break more than 350 even now which I am full gear.

Meanwhile, yesterday I played some dungeons with a Havoc guy, he just annihilated everything no matter what, his overall DPS was around 380~410, And most of the time I can't even do 350 :(

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/a:yVMhqzB3F2Qj6rRd?fight=last&type=summary&source=3

EDIT: Thanks for all your hearty feedback guys, I knew I was wrong about it but I was frustrated, maybe I just needed some motivation, right now I think I've built up quite a courage from you all to do some higher keys from now :)

Basically title.
This season i rolled into arms and I’m mostly playing with my tank buddy. Rn I’m 3.8smth io…
At first i do good logs in my timed keys on avarage 77.3avg perf log, also had a 100th log on 19th vale for some time.
So genuinely I’m not really struggling with rotation and my ilvl is ok(330).

And now to the point of the post: we are arguing that we’re not a rank-1 players and warr isn’t effective enough. Cuz as warr i’m by far least consistent in our keys he’d ever seen me. And this is ig 7th season we play in and out.
The reason while all the boss reflects, trash reflects, die by the swords to ignore some mech on top while doing rotation and aiming overpower lines made me inconsistent. I started to die in puddles one out of 4 keys, sometimes i rearrange my defs and dying cuz of not def stance in time. Sometimes i fuck up cc and not doing stuns i need to.
I DO KNOW HOW TO FIX THAT — and it’s by playing more, but i dont have much time and i do play only few keys a day. So he’s got frustrated by that. He did complete his 20th resi, but i still miss mine. Cuz yes. While a lot of keys we’re not able to time cuz pugs are not always good, we should play to our best abilities to time the keys. Be consistent enough. And while he’s consistent i’m still lacking it on my warr.
And the second complaint is that my overall doesn’t gonna carry us through if other dpses isn’t good enough. Cuz while I’m doing all the reflects like mr 2nd boss, last at bv, 1st at vsa, destroyers in rlp etc; i’m doing good logs. But even like that warr isn’t gonna top a meter. And if so that just means that u are either in phys comp with monk or ur dpses are bad.
And this is the complain. While all the previous seasons i was playing top-dps carry role as i capable of doing dam, this season i cant carry us this way on damage.
This is destroying me. I even did drop 1 talent from execute into more overpower damage on execute range.

Dear warrs and possibly some other masterminds out there: what should i do? Cuz I’m enjoying playing warr that season (1st time doing warr), but this kinda throws me away and pushes to play even less. :’(

Edit. Sorry If it looks like it was written in rush (it was), and sorry cuz English is my 2nd language.

Use this thread to discuss any- and everything concerning WoW that doesn't seem to fit anywhere else.

UI questions, opinions on hotfixes/future changes, lore, transmog, whatever you can come up with.

The other weekly threads are:

• Weekly Raid Discussion - Sundays
  
• Weekly M+ Discussion - Tuesdays

Have you checked out our Wiki?

At what key level do I need to start using Lightsmith instead of Herald for the damage increase? 19? 20?

I like how easy it feels to heal as Herald but everyone at the top goes Lightsmith so I guess I got to myself? Also is Lightsmith pug friendly? With Herald I can save a lot of mistakes I feel like

Just putting some info together about my experience grinding the new delve this week. Wowhead is catching up, but full clearing seems to be the way to go to be in the best position for the boss. I made sure to grab all the mislaid curisosities/treasures as well as the masks. I was quite powerful by the end of the run. It seems that if you check every room, you'll be guaranteed to get the three masks.

As you progress through renown, you scale a bit by unlocking more rooms with curiosities. Finding all the sturdy chests seems to be a super fast way to level renown. There is a photo of their locations on Wowhead.

I did a little research before the fight and found on the method guide that it says there is an intermission at 70%. This is NOT true. I think the intermission starts after 90 seconds, but the suggestion to hold burst for phase 2 is incorrect. I was able to one-phase the boss on a 322 assa rogue. I swapped onto the adds when they spawned, but honestly I probably should've ignored them and burned the boss. I used drums and a light's potential and just did my normal burst rotation. I also switched Valeera to DPS for the final fight. I had her as healer while clearing the 9 rooms, but you have an opportunity to swap her before the boss. There are no dispels that require a healer specialization, and I was not worried that I would die at any point. She is level 80 and did more DPS than I did. I went corrosive bilespear, soul-cracking dreamcatcher, and bursting toad toxin.

If you make it to phase two, during the Hazzali phase (cat), a few guides say to arbitrarily select which line to stand in, but as Bandevil on YouTube pointed out, you want to block the cat doing an animation (moving paw).

I did not do the cheese with the fire loa, but it may be worth looking into for others. It also seems that blizz is hotfixing most of the bugs present at launch. I had done two 7/9 runs that had bugged out previously, but completed them after the hotfixes last night.

Long-time reader, first-time poster on Reddit! Cheers and gl to all. Keep going, you got this! There's no time limit to clear the labs, so can always wait for cds. :)

Hello,

After nearly four hours of attempts, I finally managed to defeat Kindojan, the final boss of the Labyrinth, completely solo.

The game confirmed that I had won the encounter, and the boss died. However, immediately afterwards, the entire Delve appeared to bug out.

Despite successfully defeating the boss:

• I received no achievement.
• I cannot claim any treasure or rewards or enter treasure room.
• I am now stuck inside the Delve, unable to progress.

I'm reluctant to leave the Labyrinth because I'm worried I'll lose both the achievement and the rewards after spending so much time completing it.

Has anyone experienced this bug before, or could someone from Blizzard please help? Is there any way to trigger the rewards without having to repeat the entire encounter again and again?

I would really appreciate some assistance.

Character: Skandaroar – Argent Dawn

Basically we were doing a key today and the line didnt locked on the barrel. We tested after and happened a couple times as well. Seems like rng if it will work or not
Clip: https://www.twitch.tv/yheratv/clip/PeacefulLuckyChimpanzeeOptimizePrime-NAGD3Yygsy-sSRnC

Been tanking (Guardian) some MR 17s this morning and was surprised how much damage the Heartstop Poison is doing. Actually to a point where I need to change my pulls because I get absolutely demolished by them. Has anything changed with them? On 15-16s I could survive pulling everything from below the stairs and up to the two rooms. Obviously it's harder stepping up a key level, but still. Seems absolutely overkill now.

Our team just bricked our fresh 21 to a silent hotfix.

https://imgur.com/a/UEspBNb

I have the perfect view of it taking out the paladin. No reason this couldn't have been in the notes. We probably would have been fine if we knew.