Challenge Modes

So i'm gonna be starting challenge modes this week and i want to know your thoughts about it :3

So i've just read this and I'm not going to chage my gear strategy but definitely i will equip an on use dodge trinket. I am thinking to equip http://wowhead.com/item=79329 and http://wowhead.com/item=77530 (great aoe dmg and it doesn't get nerfed as it is 450 ilvl.) BTW if anyone has a BiS gear list for Challenge modes it would be great :3 I will do one anyway.

Trash and bosses level are at par with raids i think so our hit/expertise requirements remain the same. So imo our stat priority would be Hit/Expertise(hard cap)>Haste>Mastery>Dodge/Parry. But what gems would you use? expertise/stam, expertise/mastery, pure haste for yellow...?

I don't know if i should use battle healer glyph and SoI, i think i shouldn't because the dps lost (SoI instead of SoR) and there is really no AoE dmg in most trash. So i would go with Alabaster/DP/Holy Wrath or Blinding light or Dazing Shield. (you can use Blinding light glyphed and then change it). Maybe change to focused shield for bosses.

I personally used Relic of Niuzao and Lao-chin's Liquid Courage, since rotating them gives them pretty nice uptime.
I was actually fully mastery geared (still hit/exp capped ofc) when I ran my Challenge modes, cause I was to lazy to change after sha progress, it worked out fine but I think pure sta gearing would have been better, or even haste.
As for gear, you just want items with sockets tbh, a weapon with a socket is really nice (legendary socket isnt nerfed or anything either)

I did my challenge modes pre SoI nerf, so whenever I tanked a lot I healed myself for shitloads, thats not really the case anymore, but I still say that SoI with Battle healer is mandatory.
As for glyphs/specc, I used the standard raid specc tbh, usually lights hammer cause you have to aoe pull a lot if you are going for gold.
Always had Battle healer, Divine protection and Alabaster specced, you can for sure respecc for specific bosses (only takes a sec or two, but it buggs most of the times so didnt bother.
Blinding Light isnt bad, but Its mainly used as an aoe interrupt, so unglyphed is fine.

Challenge modes are going to do a crapton of damage, on top of the fact that you have to have a lot of speed as well, so survivability is much more of an issue for the tank than doing more dps, its obviously a balance but Id focus on surviving, cause you do nothing when dead.

You sure sha-touched gem is active? I'd read that it just didn't give any stats, same as set bonuses are disabled.

Thank you for the tips, i will tell you how it goes

Rhiannon wrote:You sure sha-touched gem is active? I'd read that it just didn't give any stats, same as set bonuses are disabled.

Upon further investigation, yes it seems to be disabled, altho I cant remember ever reading it somewhere.
So that means Scimitar of seven stars (nomatter ilvl) is BiS weapon for sure for challenge modes, Id prolly put a pure sta gem in there.

I've only done a few challenge modes at the start of MoP, hopefully going to have more time for them soon.
I've been thinking as it's almost always the trash pulls that are more dangerous than the bosses should we be aiming for 6.5% hit and 12% exp?

Did all my gold runs way back before I had much raid gear (server first gold what up), so it seems now that your gear choices should just be whatever gives you the most sockets.

If you've done any challenge modes so far you know that surviving trash and killing it quickly is most of the challenge. For bosses my strategy was to passively pump out as much healing as possible so my healer could spend most of his time DPSing (or completely in DPS spec for some of them). I found that battle healer, light's hammer, and SoI were almost exclusively the way to go. On certain dungeons you will find glyphed divine protection to be invaluable, when it's not I liked the extra healing CD from the AW glyph and usually focused shield for bosses if I didn't need the last glyph slot. Obviously for certain dungeons you want holy wrath glyphed on trash. Spec choices are surprisingly limited, obviously certain fights will dictate clemency or hand of purity, but largely your mainstays are pursuit, fist, SS, and LH.

I like pure stamina gearing (hybrid stam/exp or stam/mastery for matching good socket bonuses) for challenge modes the best. You take huge bursts of damage from the trash and you simply don't have enough CDs to cover every pull because of how quickly you move through the dungeon. Lots of mobs stun, disarm, disorient, and other nasty things that make stamina a really strong choice. Most of these are fairly predictable, so a mastery build can work well too if you are very familiar with the gotcha trash pulls. I initially was running hit/exp capped with mastery build but found the trickiest situations to always be made a bit easier with just more hit points.

For trinkets I had to use Relic/Ghost dragonling but now I'd just go double stam trinkets with on-use abilities. Rotate them so you have one rolling when you begin each trash pull and you'll make things even easier on yourself.

Why did you omit Glyph of Blindling Light? I've found it excellent for Challenge Modes. Run into a trash pack, and immediately stun them all for three seconds, which means 3 seconds of not getting any damage and spamming 2 AoE abilities that for sure affects all the mobs, and not one of them running away to one of the healers.

Thels wrote:Why did you omit Glyph of Blindling Light? I've found it excellent for Challenge Modes. Run into a trash pack, and immediately stun them all for three seconds, which means 3 seconds of not getting any damage and spamming 2 AoE abilities that for sure affects all the mobs, and not one of them running away to one of the healers.

Should have mentioned that, I would absolutely have used it if we didn't have a DK for remorseless winter. Our comp was melee heavy so our strategy for most pulls was 1. aoe stun for 6s, 2. burn down the dangerous mob, 3. kite to the next pack while we finish aoeing. I actually wanted to have a bunch of mobs hitting me once the really dangerous ones were down so that I was actually able to contribute to the DPS of the group.

Thels wrote:Why did you omit Glyph of Blindling Light?

The fact that Blinding Light has a 2 min CD, the stun only lasts 3 seconds and DRs with better AoE stuns make this glyph very weak compared to other options.

If you are light on stuns I guess it might be worth it... But the unglyphed blind works just as well to interupt casts and whirlwinds and such so is nearly as good as the 3 second stun (which will usually be DRed to all hell if you are running with a shaman, warrior, lock etc....). It's just not worth it 90% of the time.

I guess it depends on the setup then.