Of raiding.. and of Healing and Tanking

For starters, yesterday was a memorable day: I crossed the 10000 achievements boundary, in style :), reaching 525 in First Aid (damn so many bandages for that crap).



Last night, I *finally* kick started my cataclysm raid era by going into Baradin Hold with my italian guild Vindication and killing Algaloth. On the first try, a few of us noobilized and stayed 3-4 yards from our tank, so we died. Or that, or there was no dispelled. On the second try, it came down easily, with me doing ~13k dps. It was not perfect, far from that, and as one can see from recount, there was a hunter doing 16k dps. I've got 351 iLvl, 5 epics, the same as him. So, that's my target, 16k on Algaloth. I tested a bit on training dummies before I went in, and I was doing 11.5k unbuffed.

Tbh I find it it weird that a ranged with 350 iLvl can reach 16k dps on a single-target 5 min. fight. And as I've seen from 4.0.6, they are nerfing warlocks and buffing hunters so... I think Blizzard balance teams are getting worse.

A confirmation of this fact is what I found out this week. My priest is i329 with 2K spirit and 68K mana. Every time I go into a normal dungeon, I finish most bosses with no mana (Siamat,or the 1st boss in Vash'r dungeon, etc), and have to use shadowfiend and sometimes hymn of hope and even kill myself to allow free healing for the last seconds. I tried 1 heroic and I suffered like hell to heal the 1st boss in Vahs'r. I suceeded, but I left as I was too fed up to continue. Then I went as a paladin tank with a druid healer. The healer had also i329. Guess what ? At the end of the fight, he had above 60% mana. What was the difference ? Ok, may be it was because I was tanking. I as a tank was healing myself, mitigating damage on me and others through the use of my abilites. It could be that most tanks are absolute idiots and all they do is threat + dps and don't care about their party. But even so, things are very unbalanced, and from what I saw in the 4.0.6 notes, holy priests are not getting buffed (oh yeah, 15% in Circle of healing..:P)

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON ?

The silly game mechanics

Things were supposed to change from WOTLK to Cataclysm. They haven't. It's true, you can now perform some crowd-control.. if you want. But most times, tanks can tank it all (I have done it in normal, and works fine). Bosses are still ridiculously easy, specially in normal mode. In heroics, you should CC, and depending on tank and healer, you must, but you are not obliged to.
Also, the gearing process is still the same. If you want to raid, you cannot go inside in greens, like it was in vanilla, when you could go with greens to Molten Core, provided you knew exactly what to do. Now ? No way. Not only you have the abject GearScore/iLvl , you also need achievements, otherwise you can't join any pugs. And even if you want, you cannot join a guild raid because in iLvl333 blue (so called rare) gear, you cannot do it. You need a mix of heroic lvl346 and raid359 gear to start raiding.
Supposedly.
I haven't done it yet. After rejoining by $home guild, I found out it is still void of active players, so I now joined an italian guild called Vindication, which will soon start raiding and will do only 2 raid days a week.
That is more than enough for me at this point.
My warlock has 346 iLvl gear, and has been doing up to 14k dps single target in heroic bosses. It still lacks about 4% hit for raids, but he should do reasonable well in the first raid bosses.
My paladin and priest are being geared also, and farming rep in normal.
I've started running Karazhan (finally got exalted) for the mount, and also found out it can be a huge source of farming, since the mobs drop gold equivalent to Cataclysm mobs.
I've also started trying to solo AQ40 bosses for reputation. The first boss is utterly hard to solo, due to its mechanics (mind controls and cast interruptions), but I've managed to solo it with my priest. Sartura was pretty easy to solo. I've also tried soloing Kurinaxx but it worked badly, as we get trapped and get a healing debug. But i'lll solve the problem soon, I hope.
In the near future, I'll try to dualbox some BlackTemple and HyjalPast trash and/or bosses.
I have the dream of dualboxing TK for the ashes of A'lar, but I don't think I have a chance for now. May be with better gear.
PVP wise, I've been doing some runs, and finding again that I'm good at it, when everyone has the same gear level as me, ie, most people have <1000 resilience, and when I go for demonology, my oldschool spec.
Need to get some more time to play.

2011 in slow motion

The year has started slowly, after a Christmas break where I had no computer, no mobile, no nothing, only chanfana, cabrito, and some other stuff to eat that's really bat for your cholesterol. Mine rose to 238, and is going down, whether I want it or not !

WoWwise, it's been fun, but a little lonely. A few Arcadians from my guild got back, so I went back too. But I'm still Puggin'g in dungeons atm ;-(

Last night I finished the last dungeon I missed, Halls of Origination. So now I only need to see the new heroic revamped SFK and DM.

That said, let me make a table:

TANK DPS HEALER JOY-SCORE COMMENT
Throne of the Tides YES YES NO 3 easy
Blackrock Caverns YES NO NO 3 tips
The Stonecore YES YES NO 3 it's a tunnel :(
Lost City of the Tol'vir NO YES NO 5 it's outside !!
Vortex Pinnacle NO YES NO 5 imba graphics
Grim Batol NO YES NO 3 dwarves...
Halls of Origination NO YES NO 5 an egyptian parody

I haven't done heroics yet. Today I'm starting to try and PUG some. My iLvl is 336, so I really need to get some gear. I'm doing 8K and may do a bit more after perfecting my new abilites. I had very little time for them. Warlock changed a lot.

There's now a Soulburn => Instant SoulFire.
There's now a Demon Soul=> Critical imp
There's now a Fel Flame => Endless immolate.
There's now a Bane of Havoc=> 15% of dmg on others replicated to baned.
There's now a Jinx => spreaded Curse of Elements.
There's now a Dark Intent => +3% haste buff on 1 party + up to 9% dps/heal.

Meanwhile, I've learned all the dailies that I need to do. Basically, there are:

- 6x Therazane in Deepholm ( I absolutely hate that place)
- 1x Ramkahen in Uldum (nice to make my daily transmute life->air and make 15x30gold)
- 6x Wildhammer Clan.
- 2x Cook+Fish daily. I'm using them to slowly level up. My time will come...
- 6x (actually 12x as we always hold Baradin Hold on Frostmane)

That makes it 25 dailes. It's a lot, but i'm doing them in packs. Thank god some rewards like enchants are now Bind-on-account !!!

Last but not least. If you're like me and hate logging in and getting a slow motion start because the Trade District has about 1000 players packed up.. there's now a new Inn, AH and bank in the Dwarven District. Yay... silly me, I missed that for an entire month !