A quiet but produtive week

One of the problems with End game WoW is that.. if you don't do pve end-game, and you don't do pvp end game, you get bored as you have nearly nothing to do.

Luckily, I've got achievements to prevent my annoyance and boredom, pet and mount farming, etc.

I'm now running Naxx/OS/VoA 10-men with guild, and trying to do 25-men. A guild mate has been organizing VoA-25, so OS-25 was my next PUG shot.

I went with a PUG, actually downed Sarth easily, but my bad luck stroke me again, with me winning the best game trinket for locks (kind of) by /rolling 86 and then... having Djeka, a son of a bitch of a Raid Leader giving it to some other dude, messing up loot, keeping items to himself and then logging off. Amazing.

I've turned Northrend Dungeonmaster, by finally running Occulus and Old Kingdom. I loved both instances, in opposition to Utgarde and Halls of Stone and Lightning. While doing it, did some more hc/normal dailies for achievement purposes

I also searched for pets and gave pets my love, and killed pests.. I'm now 1 short of geting 50 pets. The one missing will be the Sporeggar one. The next 75 pet step is utterly impossible to reach, unless big luck and real money plays a part.

I got a War Mammoth and I only need 5K rep from Kirin Tor to become Exalted with all the Northrend factions.

I also found a lot more rares in Outland, needing only 5 to complete Bloody Rare.

As to PVP, I'm slowly gearing up, and saving about 2K Arena points atm for the next season, while doing 2v2 with dualbox and 3v3 with Dan and Gris, my guild mates.

Finally, last week was the Love's in the Air week, and I was lucky enough to complete it on time, with the worst part being the bag drop and candy box making.

For the next week, Sporeggar farming, will try to read some Dalaran books, and do a few more dailies to get the normal and heroic achievements.

Last but not least, a few considerations with 10-men Tier 7. IT SUCKS !!!

I got the gloves from OS-10 guild run, and as much as I look at it, I can't find a way for them to replace my SpellWeave gloves I use for heroics, or my Ebonweave gloves I use for raids. T7 has no damn hit, and if I enchant it for hit, I loose 28 spell power. I also have 80 emblems to buy my chest but... it's also not worth 80 emblems to replace my Ebonweave robe. Again, I'll loose 16 hit and 30 INT, although gaining 22 spell power. Ok, I can consider the +10% from the bonus set is imba... if I use both. But then my hit will go down from 303 to 236, when I need 368 !!!!!!!
FFS the chest socket bonus is "+6 Spirit". That's ridiculous, that's at most 2 Spell Power.

Ah, nearly forgot ! Last week we were 1 healer short, so I was invited to go with Tarithel. Lucky me, no lock stuff dropped, and we downed 5 bosses, including Heigan on the first attempt (I actually died, got ressed by our nice MH druid, and then proceeded to heal to the end, while dancing fine.). I delivered about 1200 healing, which was not bad, considering I was mostly with epic tailored 70 gear. Biggest problem was mana conservation, also because my talents were chosen while we were already fighting trash ! Next time I know where to drop some points to enhance my mana. Another problem was stamina, I was about 11K unbuffed, which is terrible for burst damage. I died a few more times than I should.

5 Bosses down in Naxxramas II [Plague Quarter]

After the Arachnid triplet, we went for the Plague Quarter.

Trash mobs are harder, one mob that heals, and another pack with 2 gargoyles that have to be tanked apart. The last trash "keep moving" sequence resembles AQ40 before the corpion boss.

First boss, Noth is easy, actually much easier than what WoWWiki describes. Tank and Spank, nuke. Decursers were fast. If not, random players would get some heavy Shadow damage plus dot. Boss supposedly goes beserk after 3 add waves but looks like our two healers and dps could handle it fine before he upgraded to 1000% dmg.

LOCK SELF HINT: Pet (Imp) should be active in this fight.


Second boss, Heigan... is a dancing hell. I had seen it in movies since pre-TBC, but never saw it for real.
Well it is hard. The timing must be absolutely perfect. No delay, and also NO RUSH. I rushed a few times about 1-2 yars in front of our imba tank and arrived too early. That said, I was able to manage it. What was harder to manage for many, me included, is the exact moment when the teleport occurs. DBM stops talking about the teleport 15 seconds before, afterwards it only says "Teleport soon". When it happens, we have to be fast.. or use Demonic circle. So easy it sucks LOL.

But the problems dont end with that. On the DPS platform there are two additional problems.

One is spell disruption with a 20 yard aura, 300% cast time.

The other is a Decrepit Fever, which is randomly targetted and THEN , it has a 20 yards aura around the target. Some ppl talk about of an aura, but it doesnt look like it. I remember I was on the platform, beyond 20 yards (btw, TARGET RANGE ADDON HELPS HERE) and still got it. Conclusion, if it's on platform, every ranged gets it. If it's near boss, every melee gets it.

In general, we should have Nature Resistance aura up. I think we missed it and that was a cause for too many deaths while learning the fight. In the end, we did it. Healers and tank did a great job with half the raid dead.

LOCK SELF HINT: Do NOT active imp pet here. In order for him to be in range, he gets fever and dies. Or gets spell disruption and each firebolt lasts 10 secs. So forget about it. Felguard/felhunter may be much better here because of nature resistance. To be confirmed.

HUNTER HINT: Use Nature Resistance Aura. Helps a lot for poor melee dudes getting the Decrepit Fever and slower dudes getting off the platform, getting hit for 7.5K nature/sec, as well as ground eruption which is Nature damage too. In general, NATURE RESIST FTW.

GENERAL RANGED HINT: Use a "Show target distance" addon. It helps. Or just cast as far as possible within range, in the middle of the platform. Or do small semi-circular movements as boss goes from area 1 to areas 2,3,4.



And then comes the healing nemesis of the Plague Quarter, Loatheb.

It looks so easy when it starts, and it's a nightmare. U can only heal anything every 3 seconds out of 30.

To "add" us, adds spawn frequently, and when killed, give an imba buff (with 0 threat) to every dps. That also means it's mandatory that tank spot doesn't get it.

I was in charge of pulling the adds to us dps dudes; I got marked so ppl would gather around me.

Well, first, I must say I need an addon like Solarian Alarm that sets a "BLUE SCREEN" when it's time to heal. DBM keeps talking, says a lot of shit, even a HEAL NOW, but in the middle of the maelstrom screen, it's easily missed. If we miss the 3 sec window, my HS is used for nothing.

Then there are two damage sources:

One is Deathbloom, doing NATURE damage. Hunter aura will help, but it's not so much damage.

The other is Inevitable Doom, doing SHADOW damage. Supposedly cannot be resisted, but IS absorved by Shadow Ward. Tbh I didn't use it, It was a flaw. It's 3.3K damage absorption for free, with 30 seconds duration.

HINT: Inevitable Doom#1 is aprox. 2m 10 seconds into the fight, every 30 seconds, with 4K damage so...just keep it up all the time the cooldown is over.

And then... there's the task of pulling the adds. It looks easy, just curse it with a 0 damage curse, like COE/COW and it comes to you. WRONG. It gets aggro not only from my curse, but from what others do, meaning, e.g if it's healing time, it aggros healers that just might be on the opposite side of the fight, so it goes straight to the tank. Or it gets aggroed by dmg ppl are doing in the middle and goes there, even if it got no damage from the fight. That's what I saw happening. 0 damage curse won't probably work. Curse of Agony might work coz it gives continues low damage at first and then builds up. To be confirmed.

Of course, the add cannot/should not stay alive forever, so DPS ppl have to gather quickly around me, something that was not so easily accomplished as I had to move every time a new one showed up, in order to pull them. And mobs were weak but NOT THAT weak. A 300 dps wand on him would make something like 10%.

Then there's the fact that the buff is 90 (looked like 120) seconds, but adds come in every 20-30 seconds. So some dps may not have to move.

And then there's mana going down very fast. And then.. Doom#n, Doom#(n+1).. too many dooms every 15 seconds (every 30s until 5 mins). That was a major issue for me, increased from the fact that ... "no life tap and no mana pot allowed"

We wiped a few times and called it a night. But it was entertaining.

A 3rd Circle of Healing based priest here would work wonders. Besides 0 sec cast AoE heal, it has shields !

Voidwalker demonic Sacrifice won't probably work here.

What works here is... FELGUARD + SOUL LINK

LOCK SELF HINT: Use FELGUARD spec here, according to all comments, the damage is purely AOE so he gets nearly none. He keeps fighting even If I'm busy collecting adds. And... use SHADOW WARD ! And pull with CoA. And use Soul Link. 20% less dmg for me. And dont forget, Pet may charge the add every time I need him to stop going into the wrong direction (aka tank or remote healer spot)

HUNTER HINT: Use NATURE RESISTANCE aura, helps mitigating Deathbloom.


In general.. for this quarter, Felguard Spec looks like a winner here. 0/50/21 or 0/41/30. 0/50/21 will give more crit power to the pet and will give 10% spell power to all the raid, continuously. That's A LOT. 0/41/30 will give me 0.25 secs in every Incinerate and 15% for my Fire damage. It's nice but a more egocentric spec. Considering (for this raid) 2 healers + 2 mages + 2 warlocks... it would give 6/10 * 10% = 6% more raid power.

5 Bosses down in Naxxramas I [Arachnid Quarter]

Yay !

This week I tried a somewhat weird spec, without insta casts (no conflag,no shadowburn) but giving a situational dps improvement, namely in AoE, due to crit and spell power increase. I can now come to terms with mages in trash. On bosses, I lost Chaos Bolt and conflagrate, but at the same time Incinerate improved, so dps remained roughly the same. Pet (imp) improved by around 150 dps to 300 dps. Strangely enough, I saw a lock in VoA with EXACTLY the same spec and similar gear (but with 2x more haste) where his imp did 450 dps. WTF ?

But anyway, even with this spec I was flabbergasted (again) in Heroic UK when a mage with half gear 70 epic, a few 75/77 and a few 80 greens was able to do 3K AoE DPS, exactly the same DPS I do with rain of fire in full 80 blue/epic gear. Blizzard ?




Last night we went for a Naxx-only raid, as we'd gone to VoA+OS already.

We started with Anub'Rekhan and it was like farming.

LOCK SELF-HINT: Pet can and should be up for the entire fight.

Grand Widow Faerlina was next. Down she went. Ppl learned to move from rain of fire. With my imp giving me fire resistance, I think I could not move at all and compensate some time later with a pot/HS but move I did.

LOCK SELF-HINT: Pet can and should be up for the entire fight.

Then came our last-week nemesis, Maexxna. I think we downed her in 2-3 tries. Our tank moved her ass right to our faces. Tbh, the position is terrible in terms of camere view, you have your butt against the wall and the camera must be looking from the front, which makes it a bit hard to quickly find the webbed dudes if u fail to see them flying. But I did ok. The enrage is a trade off problem, if adds dont die soon and u have to start aoe'ing'em, u don't nuke her. Same with saving webbed ppl. It was a close call.

LOCK SELF-HINT: I didn't use pet for this fight because of Web Spray. It generates about 3K dmg, imp has 10k, but with all the adds/etc, it can be hard to health funnel. On the other hand, that's 300 free dps. I think I'll activate it next fight... I think I did activate it for the enrage period though. Probably that's the right thing to do.

With this, Arachnid Quarter achievement done.

First official raid and gear problems

Yay, Sartharion down, and two bosses in Naxx's Arachnid Quarter down.

And today, VoA and my first Gladiator gloves ! YAY !

But... as I said before, something continues to be dead wrong with locks. Or at least with this lock. Once again, I went flat out dps on some mobs, like Sartharion drakes, and still I was about 10% below a guildie mage with the so called imba arcane spec with no epics, no enchants, and less spell power (200 or 500, counting Fel Armor).

I go on forums, and there's a lot of talk of ppl whining about the same. The difference may vanish for equally 213 epic items geared players, but for entry-level raiding, it sure is huge.

One way is to use my imp more. As it was my 1st time in wotlk 10-men, I'm still a bit uncertain about imp survivability, but guess I'll have to activate it, giving me 150 dps more. Even so, it's not enough.

My spec is 0/13/56, should maximize single target dps.

I could use 0/41/30, the so called 90% popularity spec, with felguard cleaving each and every mob.

Problems with this spec ?
- Glyphs are too different, instead of Immolate+Conflagrate Glyph.
- I'll have to use Felguard+CoA glyph, and use CoA+Corr+Imo+Incinerate spam. It may help my dps, but it will remove the 10x1.3K HP blood pact offers. On the other hand, we got a warrior in raid, meaning shout, that doesnt stack with blood pact.

Lunar Achievement and lunatic thoughts

During the last days, I've been completing the Lunar Festival Achievements. Task done.
I've also geared up, running mostly guild heroics, and having a nice time.
That said, I've now got enough badges for a T7, and I've bought a few epics, having a total of 5. I've also have ~1900 sp while hit capped, both for heroics and 10/25-raids. It feels good not to miss a hit.

DPS-wise, many talent points in demonology were fun for PVP and some PVE, but I'm not so confortable in being a meleee dude and charging mobs for the imba fire aura damage in heroics. In raids, it would probably be not so great. Still, I dearly miss 0/55/16. Fel synergy should help but...well, the amazing demonic pet would also be a nice raid buf.. we shall see.

So, I tried destro fire specs.
- 0/41/30 with felguard was in my mind, but that means a pet control that i'm not so fan of, playing hunter, where I have to watch for his hp, meaning loosing time. I might try that later when my gear is better.
- 0/40/31, with imp out, using CoE,Imo,Corr,Incinerate and Conflagrate on bosses, and AOE rain of fire like hell in trash. It was nice to have 30% crit as base, but surprisingly, dps didn't go up much. Also, survivability was not so good, and mana issues came up a bit.
- 0/13/58, with imp out, and the fabulous Chaos bolt, plus utilities like spell -near-imunity, self healing and self-mana regeneration. The result was nice, and I'm now able to do nearly 1900 dps in VoA-25 and around 2K in some heroic bosses. In PVP, things are also not so bad, since the conflagrate now speeds up the next incinerate and chaos bolt. The bad part is a loss of 200 spell power and 12%crit, which has impact in my AoE/trash dps. But tbh, my overall dps was much better than with 0/40/31.

Thank god for recount and dummy targets and shame on Blizz for charging some 50 gold per respecc.

PVP-wise, been doing some more arenas with Tarithel; last week was better, I won 3 or 4 out of 10, all against the same team of a pally + priest. They pwned Tari, but then I pwned both of them. Destro rocks. Also been doing WG. It's a dumb battleground, much more difficult to control what happens than in WSG/AB. It's also laggy and slow inside the fortress. But it gives honor and gold from dailies, plus VoA.

Achievement-wise, I'm now exalted with Wyrmrest and Oracles. I'm doing a daily run in STV to become Guardian of Cenarius, 3 more runs and it's done.

A crazy, lunatic thought came to my mind, which is to become Hero of Shattrah, requiring me to switch from Scryers to Aldor. But after doing a single repeatable quest, taking 15 mins to do it, and learning that I need 130 quests to get out of Hated.. ZOMG ! No chance.

Finally, I've been practising Shadow Priest with Tarithel dualboxing. Not so bad, I can do above 1K dps with 70 gear (1200 sp +/-)!

Badging and a nice site

I've started doing heroic runs with guild. A slow start, but it's starting to get going. No epics yet but slowly going up the ladder on Kirin Tor reputation. With revered I get a nice mace.

On another topic, a nice site with a synchronized world wide view of achievement status of every WOW player: http://wow-achievements.com

A lucky Salty

Weee another title, Salty Netcownt, and another major achievement, this time a profession based one, fishing.
Coin mastery was not that hard to get, neither was the rare fish. A few days of Dalaran fising and that's it. Then I went to Elwynn Forest and got my 15-pound mud snapper in less than one hour. To celebrate the Salty title, I returned to Dalaran and in 10 minutes I looted the Giant Sewer Rat. Now, the only fishing achievement that remains is the damn Old Crafy from Orgrimmar... to say the least, fucking horde aren't letting me fish, they attack me even though I'm naked fishing. Oh well.. three hurras for www.elsanglin.com