The explanation is simple: drums. In particular, the Drums of Battle, which increases melee, ranged, and spell haste. In an exclusive interview with WoW Insider last March, Neg of Nihilum remarked that the one thing that impressed him (and presumably Nihilum and their raid planning) was the effectiveness of haste. Haste is a statistic that became extremely prevalent in Patch 2.4, with many new items containing haste, including spell (currently AWOL) haste gems. Our raid specialist Marcie Knox wrote thoroughly about haste in a series of articles under her column RaidRX. It's a lesson that the top raiding guilds seem to know by heart. Nihilum was so impressed by haste that most of their core raid members leveled Leatherworking to be able to use drums, because it benefits the raid more than the individual unlike other professions like, say, Tailoring.
Before Patch 2.4 dropped, many members of the game's top guilds furiously leveled Leatherworking. With almost all raid members carrying the Drums of Battle, a raid can have an almost permanent haste buff that stacks with Heroism/Bloodlust. Having all your raid members level Leatherworking -- and basically for one item -- for raid progress is a masterstroke that shows the lengths that hardcore raiders will go to push the envelope. Clearly, it isn't the only reason Nihilum beat the Eredar Twins, but with a 6-minute enrage timer breathing down on every raid group doing the encounter, it certainly helps.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
4-11-2008 @ 11:05AM
Balasan said...
Incoming nerf to LW drums...
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4-11-2008 @ 11:18AM
Swiss said...
Agreed. These will be nerfed soon. Cloth wearing classes really have no reason to ever consider leatherworking outside of these drums.
4-11-2008 @ 12:41PM
hellshire said...
Sad truth. I liked those drums too, felt like I had a buff to give when I was raiding on my rogue.
4-11-2008 @ 11:05AM
JPN said...
Those things are nice, and easy to make.
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4-11-2008 @ 11:09AM
Milktub said...
Ah, the joy that is a formerly obscure stat becoming THE stat.
I like punching things faster, so I appreciate lots of Haste.
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4-11-2008 @ 11:17AM
Charlie said...
Makes sense. If the enrage timer is shorter, make your attacks shorter.
If I raiding at that level (bt/hyjal/sunwell i mean, not nec hardcore). I would have no problem dropping tailoring for LW. The benefit of tailoring towards raid progression becomes almost non-existent after you replace your spellfire/primal mooncloth sets, etc. The only thing you really got left is the sunwell tailoring sets and the recipees in BT, which aren't necessary by any means.
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4-11-2008 @ 11:18AM
UFTimmy said...
Interesting tidbit from the wowhead comments:
It works on all party members, regardless of level.
A friend of mine had rerolled on my server and I invited him to party. I used the drums and he got the 80 rating buff, which amounted to a 312% attack speed buff for him at level 10. I dropped party and he proceeded to own every Dun Morogh wolf in sight ;)
Not very useful seeing the duration and cooldown, but a funny fact (and possibly a bug).
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4-11-2008 @ 11:28AM
Milktub said...
That's amazingly funny.
And I would agree that it's likely not intended.
4-11-2008 @ 3:31PM
Isambaard said...
Shaman totems generally work this way also, windfury being the exception.
Giving a level 15 or so hunter 77 agi is insanely amusing though.
Not 312% attack speed buff amusing, but amusing nonetheless.
4-11-2008 @ 11:35AM
Dacool561 said...
i hope they scale the fights in sunwell so we almost everyone doesn't have to have drums. Brutallus made over 1/2 our guild respec to get these drums.
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4-11-2008 @ 11:48AM
Layn said...
True that. The vast majority of our guild has respecced to LW, but we wouldn't have beat Brutallus without having done so. Simple as that. The 80 +Haste they provide is invaluable.
They may be nerfed in the future, but for now, they provide a HUGE benefit to any guild willing to put in the effort to have their members level LW to set up drum rotations.
4-11-2008 @ 12:12PM
DonJuanito said...
All I can say is Thank Goodness that LW is finally getting popular, even if it is in a narrow min/max end-game raiding sense - as a feral druid it seemed logical to me to choose it as a prof, then i saw that many raiding druids on my server weren't using it and I started to think that perhaps I'd not chosen wisely.
Now I'm gratified to see that drums are the 'item du jour'. I
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4-11-2008 @ 2:16PM
my2cents said...
I could be having a bad case of deja vu, but i coulda sworn this exact same story was posted about nihilum after their illidan kill...am i imagining things? =P
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4-11-2008 @ 2:45PM
Sergio said...
Have also seen reports of stacking mage groups to AB spam throughout the fight with 3 mages, 1 elemental shaman, and 1 shadow priest, frostbolting during heroism since it drops AB below the 1 sec GCD cap. Rotating through Drums of Restoration, the group can generate 3000 mana over 75 seconds (200 mp5) every 2 minutes.
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4-11-2008 @ 6:06PM
Sergio said...
Btw, I'm wearing some haste which is why my AB drops below the GCD.
4-11-2008 @ 3:34PM
Replex said...
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Kil'jaeden&n=Takamuri
I am leatherworking as well solely for Drums, I have no need for anything craftable. I sacrificed a profession(mining) for top DPS, I do everything possible to increase my DPS.
"Nerf Incoming" would be retarded because of this.
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4-11-2008 @ 5:25PM
Balasan said...
One profession being better than another to the point that people are dumping other professions solely for one item doesn't sound wrong to you?
Even a clothie? Who can't even wear a single piece of leather junk?
It's going to be nerfed. My guess is you can't be affected by another drum until after a couple of minutes.
4-11-2008 @ 3:42PM
Replex said...
Just another followup, since when is Eredar Twins a 6 minute Enrage? Are you thinking of Brutallus?
The enrage on Brutallus is a joke, I push 2300 DPS in a raid, without drums I will be at around 2150 maybe? Just solely calcing 5% haste to be 5% damage, which is probably wrong and I am weighting it more heavily. If your a DPS class (minus Shadow Priests) and your in T6 and cant break 2k DPS, you suck, drums or not.
As a side note, Brutallus requires 1850 or so DPS from your DPS classes.
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4-11-2008 @ 4:25PM
Zwar said...
Since they went live they have had the 6 minute enrage. I believe Premonition was the first guild to actually come public with something about it on the R&D forums. But now that we have had a couple nights to work on them, more guilds are reporting the same.
4-11-2008 @ 4:26PM
Neg said...
The recent invasion of drums if cause of the range increase drums gotten a few patches ago.
During the beta of TBC I made a post on the guild forums (Beyond Redemption at that time) about everyone going LWking, as LWing seemed as the biggest additional value to a raid of all profs. But sadly they turned out to be quite weak cause of a very very limited range, 10 yards or something. When a few patches ago that range got increased to 40y, it was clear that LW is the way to go to increase the raid dps.
So it has nothing to do with haste being good or bad, all about oppertunity costs.
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