Okay, first of all, heroics were intended for people in blues and greens.

Second, unless you're a bad tank who ignores everything but stamina, full naxx 25 gear BARELY nets you 30k, and that's way overgeared for heroics.

Good gear does not a good tank make. Threat and survivability are both more largely influenced by skill than gear.

I suppose this is kind of a "gear check" as you kept putting it, but as is usually the case if you are failing the issue most likely goes deeper than gear. Keep in mind this instance only expects you to be Ina mixture of 219/232 gear (232/245 for 25 man). By now almost everyone has some 245 or even 258 which sets off the balance as well. Chances are you are geared for it, don't fall into the "we're not geared" fallacy that so many guilds rot away in.

Whoops, I missed "level 70", misunderstood, my apologies

No Pavel, that's not accurate.

You get 2 emblems of FROST for your first completion, but you get emblems of triumph on every successful subsequent run. Bosses also drop triumph instead of conquest (this wasn't listed on the patch notes, but there is no doubt this is the case on live realms right now). So you're looking at 5-7 triumph badges per instance.

To clarify, I understand what you are saying about how just about any composition can do decent in arena, but there is no question whatsoever that some specs/comps have to work a LOT harder for it. No matter how you spin it some comps are just at an inherent disadvantage and I think comp is the single biggest factor in arena other than skill.

When you're talking about high end of the bracket, there are some comps that simply will not work no matter how good you are. I realize this article is geared towards low to mid level playing... Having a poor comp can make the experience challenging and fun for some people, while for others it can make it just frustrating. It depends on your playstyle and attitude.

"Team composition, like spec, does not really matter that much."

....... is this a joke?

Aside from that good article and thanks for the info, although I really hope to see some more advanced stuff soon.

"...chances are the guild isn't good enough to matter anyways."

This is the elitist prick attitude that needs to stop. Don't get me wrong, I'm in a progression guild, and I mostly agree with your points here, but saying no one but the top % MATTER? You are completely deluded. The game is about fun, and if your guild members aren't having fun then your guild doesn't MATTER if it's #1 in the world.

Ugh, wtb edit button. I meant to say "I'm NOW saved" not "I'm not saved" in the example... little different.

"As long as you are using the Random feature, the completion of a Heroic will not give you a lock-out."

If that's how it's supposed to work, it's not how it's working currently. You do indeed get saved to dungeons you complete with the random dungeon finder. (Or at least, I do. Boy that would suck if everyone else didn't, cause it's most definitely saving me, I have completed nothing but randoms yet have tons of lockouts).

IE, say I haven't done anything today, and I queue for a random dungeon and get Occulus (damn the luck). We complete it after wiping twice since some nub thought the light ball thingies were a crit buff. I'm not saved to Occulus. I can't specifically queue, or go there with on-server friends to complete it, I'm saved to the dungeon. There is still a chance I could be exceptionally unlucky and get it again while queuing randoms, but that's it.

TL;DR: You DO get locked out of dungeons from the LFD tool.

You keep on saying that crit isn't good for elemental shaman. I'm trying to understand where you're coming from on that. If you look at elemental dps charts the bulk of their damage is from lightning bolt, and when that ability crits it does more than twice as much damage.

If you're talking about pvp, I could understand, because between having to move around a lot and having utility things to do (purge, hex, keep totems up) you don't get a chance to throw a lot of lightning bolts (it's still a very useful stat for the chain lightning, but worth a little less).

But in PVE, crit is fantastic. I just can't see how you would say repeatedly that it's a near-useless stat. Yes, we can force a crit with lava burst, but lava burst isn't the bulk of our damage. In fact without its guaranteed crit, Lava Burst is only marginally better than just throwing another lightning bolt.