Ionar: Halls of Lightning

Dear Resto Druids:

Do you still run away from his lightning dispersions anymore? Cause I don't.

Either,

a) You resist them.
b) One rejuvenation can cover all the damage
c) Moving is for quitters

When you think about it it doesn't do THAT much damage, sure it stacks a debuff that increases nature damage taken but...how long would the boss live to dish out ANY damage at all?

Sure, DPS standing around are going to look weird, the tank can stand there too its easy to heal through...so....redesign anyone?

Ionar Redesigned

Disperse: When Ionar disperses, four charged bolts leap towards random party members. Anyone who comes within 5 yards of a charged bolt will receive the Charged debuff. When a party member is Charged, they have a 100% chance of receiving 3,000 damage per second and all party members within 8 yard will also receive 3,000 damage per second, stacking up to 5 times, lasts 12 seconds.

NOW...you move the hell out of the way! None of this 1k tickling crap. Seriously running AWAY from the next destination is a waste of time. As is the breaks between Violet Hold waves, and also the break in Culling of Stratholme. Seriously do we need an ENTIRE minute to mana up? I mean in Halls of Reflection, the 45 seconds is good to res anyone who died and top up mana but in all the noobie heroics? And the Halls of Stone SIX minute event? Most bosses seriously die in 15 seconds nowadays! And this is when there are entire ROOMS of adds along with the party!

This is why I secretly like the Trial of the C's. No trash, no waiting, just get the bosses, know their strategies. Sure there's no exploration or much lore anymore but hey it doesn't waste time. OH wait the announcers waste a ton of time. Good thing they shortened THAT too.

Jeez someone's not enjoying the game.

Top 5 Waste of Time Events:

1. Culling of Stratholme.

This is the mother of "oh my god this instance is SO easy, 5 emblems but we have to LISTEN to 50 minutes of dialogue EVERY SINGLE TIME". First you have to dispel 5 containers, and most likely your lazy ass party member WILL NOT HELP YOU since its most efficient if two people stagger the boxes due to the cooldown on that dumb heart shaped blue thing. THEN you listen to Arthas bitch and whine and whine some more. Then after the first boss you wait a few minutes for the next wave and after the second boss you wait TWENTY MINUTES for Arthas to get his ass from the entrance to the inn (which waste precious time, we only have 19 minutes left to finish the gauntlet!). Then you must suffer through what is probably the worst voice acting ever from the dragon boss that stops time and does weird spinny actions.

2. Halls of Stone.

Brann Event. Enough said. And if you don't STOP him from talking after the even the'll go on for an HOUR about some gods or something.

3. Utgarde Pinnacle

Just because of Svala Sorrowgrave. STFU! What has she been chain-smoking since she was child? Comparing the amount of time it takes for her to finish her annoying speech and the actual fight, she is just effing annoying and a time-robber. Svala is usually down before her first "Ritual of Swords" is over if one of my ranged DPS is here in H UP. Just shut it!

4. Drak'Tharon Keep

Prophet Tharon'Ja or whatever his name is. His corrupt flesh ability is cool the first time you experience it, but seriously how can ANYONE lose in this fight? Once you are corrupted you gain the ability to heal yourself for like 4,000 HP every few seconds. Most healers can't even DO THAT YET! Yeah this boss is an "event", not a boss.

5. Violet Hold.

I know, this instance is super duper "fast and easy" but the breaks between each wave of 6 is a bit TOO LONG. They should just throw ALL 18 waves at us along with the last boss. Whatever. Also, what's up with Ichoron? That boss does no damage, and is probably ONLY there for the heroic achievement? Am I missing something? I dread the end of wave 6 and 12 because its just.....go back and dance for an eternity for the stairs.

Next post, the most unecessary bosses (sort of hinted at above)

Turny the Grouchy Patient Tree

Back in Time

Yesterday I hopped onto Turny for his daily Frost-emblem run, and I did not mind having to wait 2 seconds longer for a queue so I only signed up as a healer.

1...2...ready.

The group I was with was at the first boss of Drak'Tharon Keep. That place is whatever weird!

Engage the first boss: Whatever His Name is Summons Exploding Trolls

Rejuvenate, Lifebloom.

Wait....err..they are still fighting.

Rejuvenate Lifebloom.

....they are still going at it. This is taking a while am I lagging?

By now I think he enraged and some trolls exploded and the tank went SPLAT.

WHOA what? On my watch??

Glance recount real quick. OHH.

1200, 1300, 1350, 1000, 16 (that's me!)

I have been so used to GO GO GO fast runs that the notion of "regular" getting geared up toons still existed. I remember Truny the Warlock being one, though she still pulled off 2k no matter what.

So it was a different feel yesterday, no longer did entire mobs go down by one Lifebloom, or did an entire room last for one single Regrowth. We downed the last boss smoothly, and slowly. As expected.

I then logged onto my Hunter. There was just....something I had to confirm. I threw him into the dungeon getter, grabbed the daily cooking quest and off we went.

What seemed like FOUR hours later, Heroic Trial of the Champion. Yay nice and fast, trashless, great for us burst-damagers (which is almost every dps class right?)

For all three boss waves our numbers were like:

4,900, 4,500, 3,200 (some other person)

So essentially my crappily geared hunter (no Icecrown loot, or H ToTGC loot) was equivalent to an ENTIRE party of new 80s in damage output, how scary is that?

Turby the Hunter

Heroic Halls of Reflection - Tanking

So APPARENTLY, queueing oneself as a TANK versus a HEALER gets groups EVEN FASTER.



If you want INSTANT groups, queue as a tank. If you want groups that take 2-5 seconds, queue as healer.



But why wait? So recently I've been queue Turny as a Tank. Though his gear is not stellar, his dodge is about 43% with 45K hp if a paladin or a priest is in the group.



(Remember, only GOOD gear comes from Heroic TOC or ICC, everything else is for "regular folk")



Even though tanking is a bit more involved than Healing, aka having to aim at mobs and keep them attracted to you, in reality...other than the Frozen Halls, none of the mobs really actually DO ANY DAMAGE anymore. Yes, even in crappy T8s. See how the standard has been skewed here?



Frozen Halls. Starting a battle with 0 rage SUCKS. Having a paladin who can shackle undead or a hunter who can freeze one of the Undead Gun-Dwarves is SUPER helpful since we can focus on all the melee without having to run all out of range and or waste rage on a low priority kill.



We used the "Hide behind Falwin" trick (or whatever the eff that boss is called), and WOW for once I can actually SEE what is going on.



What?



Well when I'm healing I practically have my face to the corner of the back wall while I throw out my HoTs and as long as no one is out of range we're good.



When I'm dps'ing I have my camera zoomed into first person perspective, while being ALL the way in the back corner being a good ranged-pew-pewer.



But as a tank you can SEE where the mobs are coming from, which ones are running straight to the healer and which one decides to stay in range.



A little bit hectic, I kind of missed my ranged Paladin taunts but once all the melee were focused on me and the ranged mobs were CC'd we were fine, no wipes.



For the Run Away sequence, it is a matter of gathering enough rage from the little ghouls to grab the attention of the big mobs before they splat the rest of the party. This time we had about 11K total DPS and made the getaway smoothly. The smoothest run being the party having about 15k dps.



So now that I think of it, hey I just tanked the "hardest" five-man without going SPLAT instantly! I mean, there wasn't a lot of movement involved other than sidestepping Corruption Wells but...hey! Ok...lost track of topic again!



BAI

On Beast Mastery

There once was a time before the Rain of Endless Gear where the difference between a Survival Hunter and a Beast Mastery Hunter's power was significant enough to push most Beast Masters to the former, to maintain their damage output.

I was one of those Hunters.

Wait I lie. It was because Dual Speccing came out so I chose Survival as my second spec, keeping Beast Mastery in hopes that one day it will rule again.

When Turby first started, apparently that was the "good time" for Beast Masters as they were THE choice for damage. I didn't know better, all I knew was I could tame all these crazy monsters that would otherwise bite my head off and I could rename them all to be called Puppy.

It wasn't until the demand for 1400+ dps that I realized I had no idea what my DPS was (never had recount back then either) that perhaps I would want to be more competitive just for the sake of it.

But now. Turby is practically T9 equivalent, though every socket is filled to the brim with Agility enhancements (vs the Attack Power I used to stack as a beast master), I decided to do some Random Groups as a Beast Master. No one would ever know.

First thing to notice: I ran out of mana way faster. Without the replenishment and mana-returning abilities I found myself having to recede into Aspect of the Viper WAY more often than in Survival.

Damage-wise I do not have exact numbers but it seems almost the same as Survival. On boss fights BM is completely fine with my personal dps at around 3200 and my Puppy's dps at around 1300, that's 4500 total! I only see those numbers on Survival in the new Frozen Halls or in raids because of the higher HP on mobs!

And 1300 dps for a pet?? I completely forgot about this! It was by the time Dual Spec came in that I had installed this trusty Recount tool so I never knew what Puppy was doing before o.O!

1300 was quite respectable given that one of our warrior dps was doing 1400 on the same boss!

What else? Oh yes, with BM I get to be lazier. I click that "Pet does more damage button" that makes the "GRAWRL" sound, use my shots Arcane, Aimed, Sting at Pleasure, and steady shot until the Cooldowns are up. Nothing to watch out for. No procs, no Black Arrows running out, the pet does most of the work on trash.

Come to think of it what IS that ability called? Bestial Fury? I just know its the button right on top of my #9 key and its RED.

So to end this off I shall make another ridiculous demand that shall be met soon:

Beast Mastery - New Talent - Aspect of the Pack (Redesigned)

The hunter takes on the Aspect of the Pack, bolstering their abilities to control the wild and dangerous creatures of Azeroth. The hunter under this Aspect has their damage and their pet's damage and attack speed increased by 10%. The hunter under this Aspect can take control of up to THREE pets.

Yeah. Three!

You'll have to manage each of them independently but with great power comes great button clicking skills....sigh.

Turby the Hunter

Too Competent!

Wow I am not used to all this competence! A five person group where EVERYONE knows what their role is and can do it with utmost quality? Wow!

I've been on my Paladin lately, just dinged 43 and her Dungeon Adventures range from exasperating to good. Be it from people disconnecting/leaving party halfway through the instance or not knowing what they are supposed to do or where to go or not doing anything at all....being anything but 80 sucks.

Yes I complain sometimes about the lack of content for the lower levels since everyone's goal is to hit 80 ANYWAYS and have access to all the nice shiny purple level 80 activities but it is here where things are more stable. Sort of.

Anyways, I got bored of Pally tanking and logged onto Turny the Patient Restless Tree for the daily Frost Emblems since I know as a healer, I will see "Your Dungeon is Ready" before I even have time to move my mouse to another spot.

It was pretty late but I thought "hey how hard/long could VH be (if it was VH)?" but as the loading screen popped up I thought something was wrong:

"Hmm...where is this? A blue pedestal amongst blue pillars in a circular ro- oh crap its Halls of Reflection!"

Mumble grumble. Come to think of it Turny does not have the Heroic achievement for this instance and I remember thinking when I was playing on my Hunter/Warlock in this dungeon that "I could probably heal better than these people".

I only say that because my Dps toons take out the mobs that SHOULD die first and or assist the tank. Anything else and its incidental damage like its going out of fashion.

I stand by the doorway and the tank grabs adds and our dps.....are not taking damage....how weird what's going on are the mobs glitched?

Wave 1 down. Tank takes minor damage, great tank at that you unkillable Paladins. I essentially rolled a lifebloom and rejuv and did a mandatory Wild Growth for most of the waves.

Up to the first boss none of the DPS had their health plummet kamikaze style that I was so used to when I was on my own DPS toons. People were calm and competent.

WTF?? START AGGROING MOBS TO SHOW YOUR SUPERIOR DPS!!

Nope, none of that. I had always thought that Shamans/Warriors/Paladin/Death Knight DPS had an ability that made their health jump to 50% EVERY PULL....just a thought.

Boss 1: Falric or Falwyn or Fal-something. I forget what he does, a fear that does damage and reduces health to 50%. Easy peasy. Nothing critting rejuvs and lifeblooms and a supplementary wild growth couldn't handle. He goes down.

Waves 6-9 go down smooth and Malric or Marwyn or Marvin or Mar-something. No one stood in his Soul Wells, and I believe that is the only annoying ability otherwise its tank and spank.

Everyone was over 2500 dps, even myself as a healer...no just kidding.

How smooth and competent this run is so far. And how unlaggy.

Ok answer me this: When you are on your non-level-80-character, do you lag in dungeons and just in general?

On any non-80 toon I lag like crazy I have no idea why but when I log onto a level 80 my latency goes back to green.

Weird?

Anyways, the AMG-ARTHAS-CHASING-US event went smoothly as well, all I had to do was prepare for the mandatory Shadow Bolt volley with a wild growth and some decursing and BAM done.

Weird.

I believe the MINIMUM dps that is needed is 9,000 dps for the entire party. 2500 each person and 1500 for the tank. Because my hunter ran with a group just like that and we JUST made it out, Turby being the only one sitting in the high 3000's. So if you want to know if the group is going to make it out a live check out the dps on the first half of the instance.

OH and I shall now rename this dungeon to: White Halls Of Reflecting Efflorescence.

LF1M H WHORE

BAI

Turny the Patient Restless Tree

Tips for Lowbies

Hello,

Nice to meet you, you must be our tank for this instance. I apologize but I am going to click on you and invade your privacy for just a moment. Do not worry it won't hurt.

I see. You are wearing leather pants, and a cloth shirt. That is a very nice two handed axe you have there, where is your shield?

I see your talent points have nothing to do with tanking, but that is okay we can just Brute Force It. That is a favourite phrase of mine lately, we'll just Brute Force It.

Did you know you are not supposed to follow everyone around and do minor damage but actually HOLD OFF ALL THE ANGRY MONSTERS? Just a tip.

And how are you our nice Sword DPS! I that you and or your pet LOVES to pull mobs all by your very own self! How proud of you I am! Oh look, the damage seems too high for you to handle, perhaps I shall Let You Take One For The Team.

Oh yes I could cast a shield on you, or taunt the mob off you but since you are so good at solo-ing dungeons I shall sit back with my Popcorn and watch you fight for your life. Oh yes the mobs will come after the rest of us after you have died but that is nothing this Paladin can not handle. I shall take over after I finish replenishing my blue mana bar. It is a good thing to be attacking the SAME thing as the tank at the very least.

Oh, and Healer, how are you? You doing good? See the person with the Shield on their name, they will be taking a lot of damage so make sure To Cast Healing Spells on them! Do you even have them on your action bars? Yes, please use them. Do not worry about spamming them since I will stop if you need mana, I know we are not 80 with unlimited mana regeneration yet.

Dear Mr/Ms Afk For A Bit I Will Just Go on Follow. I will make sure you die every single time and not get a resurrection even at the cost of my own life. No one came here to share 20-ish percent of their experience because even though you were willing to wait in Dungeon Finder for 15 minutes but then became too busy right when the dungeon starts.

True story with a person who decided to go take a LONG smoke (they were tank) as Uldaman began. We waited for 5 minutes, and Truby though "Screw it" and we cleared half the instance by the time they came back. I believe they left halfway through anyways.

Yes, most people are Dual Specced are will GLADLY take over your role.

Bye,

Kluptomania

Priesty Pally Progress

Husbrus the Priest. My 10th toon on my main account, grossly underused.

I had manually levelled her up to 16 and started questing ALL the quests in The Barrens with a friend. It was quite enjoyable duo-ing these quests and travelling the dry and barren land that is The Barrens.

We killed and killed and occasionally queued in LFG (both as a healer) and BAM BAM we did some RFC, Shadowfang Keep and OH MY GOD Wailing Caverns.

I healed each time as a Shadow Priest.

I'd have to say Power Word: Shield is my best friend. And learning Flash Heal at level 18 (I think) is a godsend. Healing at low levels is a real mana drain! Well, anything is a mana drain when I'm used to having Life Tap or Unlimited Resto Druid Mana.

I might just respec Husbrus the Priest to Holy/Discipline and heal my way through to 80 since Shadow DPS doesn't feel like my cup of tea at the moment.

Mind Blast, Dot'em Up, Purple Laser. It didn't feel very impactful or painful. We'll see. I will probably avoid my Priest for a bit unless I'm bored. At least she got up to level 23!

Truby the Paladin: Tanker and Retlol'er

Oh Paladin! I made a Paladin JUST so that I could see what all those weird and wacky shiny abilities they used were called and what they did!

Truby Ret DPS and Ret Tanked her way to level 40 and ran to her Trainer to receive Dual Specialization and became a Tank again. (She was Prot, but it was too slow, then changed to Ret...then patch 3.3 came and tanking=groups)

Ret DPS is ....pretty strong for this level consitently pulling 200 dps just by spamming buttons and relying on consecrate. Seal of Command does the rest.

And yes, those are the only abilities I understand and or remember the name to.

If I wanted that 50% reduction shield I know its "9" on my key bindings but I am not sure what its called. Also I can't find my Pally Bubble, what is THAT skill called? Do I even HAVE it? I remember using it once....and it was NOT called Pally Bubble! I can't find it anymore!

What's with all our Hands? And laying hands on friend and foe alike? Jeez!

And all those Seals and Judgements!

Anyways, lost track of things again!

Right, Protection Tanking! Is it wrong to not die after pulling a dozen mobs while the rest of the party is down the hall chatting and drinking up? I think I only took damage all day when I was thrown into Maraudon: Orange Crystals where the mobs were three to four levels higher than me!

There's actually more stuff to do as a Pally Tank. First you put down your Consecrate, then make sure your Holy Shield is always active and you judge as you please! Eight more levels and I can throw my shield to pull too! THIS compared to Feral Druid tanking: Mangle, Maul, Swipe, Barkskin if too much damage. However I do miss Swipe-Spam.

Perhaps I've just never felt so unkillable at a low level but its fun!

Will update more once I get to 50 and throw my shield at things randomly!

Hero Scores Update

Based on WoW Heroes:

Turby (Hunter): 2,492 (Up 85 from last week)
Truny (Warlock): 2,471 (No change)
Turny (Druid-Resto Gear): 2,500 (Up 9 from last week)

This puts my Hunter back in the spotlight and it makes sense since I've come to appreciate the nice consistent high damage output.

Truny is on a mission, to get some more haste. Right now she sits at 190 and it seems really sluggish.

I put an Enchant: Black Magic onto her weapon which occasionally gives + 250 haste and I could definitely feel the difference. So: We'll see (one day)

Krick and Ick

I love this boss.

The key to success is mobility, something that I've learned to use on all my mains.

Let's see what his ingredients are comprised of:

Poison Splotches: Stay out of them or I do not heal you!
Poison Nova: Run away, you are not immortal!
Pursuit: Run away, he will SQUISH you!
Arcane Bombs: I find this part very amusing! Keep moving, and pre-plan where you are going to run to next!

It's one thing to know how to avoid all of the things I listed, but the important part is to continue to excel at your role while avoiding all of those things.

Poison Pools? Sidestep and continue. Heck you can pre-sidestep when you see it flying towards you.
Poison Nova? I dunno I'm not melee. Run away there's plenty of time to do so!
Pursuited? On my hunter I can continue to shoot him by using my mouse to turn myself around as I jump. Learned via PVP. On my Warlock I would pre-set a Summoning Circle and throw on some DoTs. As a Tree, I'm always moving anyways so it doesn't matter!
Arcane Bombs? Same deal, the hunter can continue to use his insta-casts. Warlocks can actually do a quick cast before the bombs bloom fully so I'd move cast, move, cast, etc.

Most people avoid all the damage but they fail to perform any extra action while doing so.

AND this is the first boss after Heroic Ingvar the Plunderer to drop a Crossbow! (Pics to come!)

I Was One of "Them"

Turby and Truny are (still) shaking their heads in SHAME and DISBELIEF as I type this.

Why?

Sigh.

I tried to play on my Death Knight yesterday. You know how well THAT goes.

I tried out the group generator (and so it shall be called henceforth) yesterday on my lowbie lowbie Paladin and was thrown into SM Cath. And Omg AoE damage for the win. Then I hopped onto Druny, yes you remember Druny who was featured N-months ago? Well she finally hit 16 I think, or is it 15? Well, she gained a level and learned Flamestrike so that should be interesting when she finally finds a group for SFK.

Anyways, who else to play? Hey why not my "bank-alt" Klupty.

Yes, a level 80 Bank-Alt.

"Join as DPS"......"You may enter this dungeon".

It was Halls of Lightning, though that is just a minor detail as it would not have mattered what the random dungeon is. I can't play my DK.

He did pull out a respectable 2k consistent DPS throughout the entire dungeon but it just felt wrong and oh so slow.

And 2K? Wow...that's like...as if Turby was auto-attacking or if all Truny did was cast Incinerate with no buffs....

What is with all this setup?

Icy Touch for that ice disease.
Plague Strike for that other disease.
Blood Strike to use up my runes so I can strike more.
Then Obliterate/Frost Strike/Howling Blast at leisure.

SO much setup. And knowing how geared most groups are nowadays the fights are like this:

Icy Touch. Plague Strike Pestilence. Oh they are all dead. Change strategy.
Blood Boil. Blood Boil. Gah its weak without diseases but as seen from before it is way too slow!

And why was I drawing aggro from a Pally tank?? With my first attack??

And what's with Melee DPS? First you have to actually WALK up to the mob and PRAY that they do not run around and try to spam those buttons while all "Being in Range of that Target" its just annoying I tell you.

Bear Tanking is different. I charge them and they all STICK to me and Swipe hits EVERYTHING!

I don't know, maybe its the mechanics of melee dps that I do not like. I mean, I clearly hit that mob SEVEN times (Dual wield, plus each weapon striking, plus the disease), but I only see ONE damagey number on the screen? Why? It feels so empty! Just like playing a combat rogue, though most of the time you missed is all.

Perhaps I am missing the feedback. With a Feral Kitty you can hear and almost feel the distinct "pow" from each Mangle or Claw or Bite but DK strikes are just like "Swoosh there it goes, you did damage but it felt like you were tickling whatever you are attacking".

Grrr I'll try again today!

Klupty the Jewelcrafting Slave

Work Those Markets

Everyone is receiving upgrades left right and centre and what do they need to do with them to make them "good"?

Gem, scroll, enchant, thread, stitch!

Hmm:

Turby is a max enchanter.

Turny can make the Leatherworking leg patches.

Truny can make the Tailoring leg weaves.

Klupty is a max Jewelcrafter.

= profit?

One more question: Why do people not gem their gear? Or enchant them in one form or another? Are they expecting multiple upgrades at a time? Come on, at least do the pants!

Kluptomania Market

Fastest Run I Didn't Mind

It was one of many random instances I ran while healing on Turny the Restless Patient Tree. Heroic Halls of Lightning. I accept that place. Kind of long, but acceptable. Blame it on the architecture.

Pop pop pop we all show up to the instance and we buff and what-not and our tank says "Don't heal or dps yet I'm pulling a lot, else I'll let you die" something along the lines of that anyways and I think "Ok whatever, you have 50K hp anyways" o.O

So he proceeds to pull the first two guards, then the group down the ramp, and the second group, the first group is dead by now and the charged boss is walking by with his two guards and we are now fighting the charged boss and...this is seriously easier to heal than the first piece of trash in Forge of Souls.

We pull the next two platforms down them and pull the entire elementals area along with the Forgeboss and he dies in probably 10 seconds and we pull the entire hall of Comes to Life Statues along with the elementals at the end ALONG with the Elemental boss and our tank has over 50 nature damage debuffs on him but whatever, nothing a rejuvenation can't overcome.

Same thing for the dwarf and giants area, I think I was finishing up my novel at that point and Loken goes down along with one of the giants in about 15 seconds as well.

"Good group, bye".

I like fast runs, be it if I'm tanking/healing on Turny or dps'ing on my Hunter/Warlock (I have too many toons and it takes too long to type them out EVERY time) but that's because I know they can hold their own when the shit hits the fan.

I am quite guilty of this when tanking in Halls of Stone. I hate this place on my DPS toons I have no idea why. I think its the stupid Waiting for Slow Brann to Walk to Us Part that I can't stand. Time wasted. (In a game....) I tend to pull..well...everything while spamming Swipe. My dodge is good ok!

Anyways, Turby can feign death to hold off mobs, trap them, switch aggro to his pet and kite mobs before feigning again if the mob isn't dead.

Truny is a warlock and doesn't die so she is completely fine.

Turny as a tank can heal himself and is quite resilient, and as a healer I can heal myself through 15-20 mobs bashing my branches.

HOWEVER, we need to understand that not every person you encounter is Geared To The Teeth; Yes I'm talking about YOU resto druid with agility gear! And YOU DK who made me use my brain to heal and then ditched us after Wave 1 in COS! And we still have to adjust our playstyle to accomodate everyone in the party.

Or leave. Without saying anything. Yeah, people do that too.

My recommendation is: Upon entering a Random Dungeon via being transported with the Random Dungeon Finder Tool. Wait 15 seconds after you can confirm everyone is present. Check to see if the tank actually CAN tank (if not they are already fighting the first wave). If everything is checked. Buff. I'm paranoid. And frugal. I'm not wasting 15 or so silver jeez the Random Dungeon only gives me 13 gold EVERY TIME.

On another side note I had realized Turny's gold go from 200-650 gold in just a few runs of healing!

You do not want to buff everyone and have half the party leave for no reason. That ticks me off.

Anyways, this will be the last post related to this "amazing" tool.

Dungeon Acronyms

When I was first introduced to the trade and lookingforgroup channels as a young fresh Hunter I had absolutely no idea what all these acronyms flying left right and centre meant.

"DPS LFG"

I knew that much. Damage per second. Looking for Guild. So I thought.

Why are people using such technical terms? Why not Damage? Whatever.

"LFM ST"

Look Free Market Science Theatres. (??)

"LF2M BFD then G2G"

I realized then Looking for (#) More. Boy Friend Down, then I gotta go. Then why are you messaging if you gotta go so soon?

Now:

LFM PoS

......literally?

I think in the Cataclysm expansion we should have dungeons that have names like:

Wyrmrest Temple Fields

Grand Thaurrisan Flame Orifice

Sunken Temple Further Underground

Lair of Lexarcoz

Etc etc. Sorry brain is not working at the moment but you get it haha!

Fine I'll Do It

Turny got his share of Triumph Emblems yesterday all right. Heck as a healer most queues for the new Dungeon Finder is about a minute. Yes a minute! Unlike the usual 10 for DPS.

So I spent some time jumping from Random Dungeon to Random Dungeon and soon it got kind of annoying...why can't we just have ONE group to chain them together?

So I did what we used to do in the good old days: Manually put a group together. I spammed some channels looking for a tank since that is all we needed and......nothing. No tanks??

Oh wait. I'm a tank!

But....ugh do I have to? Tanking is more brainless than Healing seriously.

1. Get mobs via Charge/Faerie Fire/Walk-up-to-them-and-go-o-hai-guys
2. Maul
3. Swipe
4. Lacerate/Mangle if it please my lord

Everyone is so overgeared for our poor ilvl200 Heroics anyways that movement, kiting, avoidance is not really required.

So I decided: Fine. I'll tank and ask for a heals/tank. And voila we find an awesome Shammy healer and BAM BAM BAM we downed a good handful of dungeons!

On an offnote Oculus was the first thing that we were queued into and I HATED EVERY SECOND OF IT even though we more or less facerolled through it. Bad memories of going into it extremely undergeared.

I felt uneasy as a tank. Compared to most tanks these days Turny's gear is only T8.5ish (Psh only?) putting him at 42% dodge and HP floating around 37-41k (if priested and or kinged), but apparently I don't get hit much. Though having been dps/heals even getting hit ONCE is like "AMG IMMA DIE"!

Most tanks I've been with have like 100K hp and 95% avoidance and 1% consideration for the rest of the party because they could so solo the entire dungeon anyways as we are just there to witness their glory.

And what's with these random DPS going afk for everything BUT the encounters? I tend to see this one random dot on my mini-map wandering aimlessly away from the mumbo-jumbo dots of where the action is going on, then as everything dies they move towards us. Weird.

But not to worry, there was a reason for all the Triumph farming and that is to finish off Turny's T9 Tanking set! I looked at the stats compared to the Conquest gear and Ulduar 10-ish gear and when I looked carefully the upgrades were really really marginal, along the lines of +2 agility, +3 stamina, and the same sockets so I felt really really cheap and didn't want to spend all those emblems for such minor minor upgrades but then again...where else am I to use them?

If anything I should look forward to the 4-piece bonus which is to reduce the cooldown on Barkskin by 12 seconds. TWELVE WHOLE SECONDS OMG I MIGHT ACTUALLY USE IT MORE!

(The 2 piece bonus reduces the cooldown on Growl by 2 seconds but .....why would I need Growl but to taunt bosses back to me at their decided intervals which is greater than the existing Growl cooldown?)

Whatever. Barkskin is the driving point.

Turny the Patient Restless Tree (Hey the lame achievement title says so)

Hero Scores Update

Hello!

I like to compare my three mains in terms of their gear scores and here we go!

Based on WoW Heroes:

Turby (Hunter): 2,407
Truny (Warlock): 2,471
Turny (Druid-Resto Gear): 2,491

Based on Gear Score Addon:

Turby: 4,499
Truny: 4,602
Turny: 4,717 I think.

Poor Turby, other than Bracers he hasn't been finding any upgrades (or being played that much), but don't worry he will keep running Piece of Saron err...Pit of Saron for the Crossbow Upgrade. Nice Icy Crossbow mm!

Good news for Truny and Turny! the IC-10 man icon is WITHIN REACH, they are within the "You should be doing these raids" group and no longer ALL the way at the unreachable end of the Red Bar.

Knowing me I will probably check out the ICC sometime in March and if anything Turny will go heal around in there first.

HOWEVER, just because Truny's gear is "better" than Turby's, Turby's nice stacking Agility makes him much stronger than the Warlock. I found that Turby seemed to maintain a nice 4500 dps in Heroic Frozen Halls instances while Truny would be sitting in the 3000's. It was pretty surprising to see a consistent 4K+ on a character I barely play!

One reason is: Explosive Shot. It continues to do damage even while you are dodging and even while you are pushing the button for your next shot. Essentially Hunters ARE ranged melee. When Melee are in the group with my Warlock everything is dead before two casts, but if they are in the same group as Turby, everything is fine. Instant cast buttons for the win.

Healing Healing. It is fun to leave the "more difficult" mentality of the new Dungeons and Raids when running the Random Dungeon Generator and realize "Oh yes I can go back to writing that novel while I take short flight to Vancouver to buy some pastries while I heal".

The End

AMG Swooning

OH. MY. GOD.

On our Server, we have coolest, most epic, awesomest, leetest, bestest character EVAR.

I AM SO JEALOUS of him!

Everytime I run to the Auction house in Orgrimmar, it does not matter on which character, on my Hunter, Warlock, Druid, Death-Knight-AH-Slave, I always see him in the same location just being HOLY FACK SO AWESOME!

I just want to stand there and /yell to the entire city how AWESOME his Warglaives of Azzinoth are and how JEALOUS I am of his Mechanohog! HOLY CRAP AN EXPENSIVE MOTORCYCLE AND AN ORANGE WEAPON WTFOMFGBBQQQ??

I am not going to name names but you know who you are and most people reading this and happen to the on the same server as I am will know how EFFING AWESOME it is!

AN ORANGE WEAPON?? I can't ever DREAM of owning an orange weapon, heck when one day I join the Big Boys of Raiding perhaps I will see for myself some raiding loot AMGZ!

And OMG the legendary Mechanohog you know how expensive those things are?? They sell for like 18,000 gold!! SO RICH!!

UGH I'm making myself feel sad and irrelevant by talking about this but I really wanted to let everyone know and give this person a /wave if they see him!

BAI!

Looking for Dungeon Feature

I had heard that the new Looking for Dungeon feature will match people up amongst similar gear scores but from what I saw yesterday, I had been grouped with a lot of people fully decked in HToGC. Every single slot.

Essentially the fights went like this:

Immolate. Good. Conflag. Oh wait the mob is dead, switch targets.
Imm- Oh wait they are all dead. Oh. And the next wave of trash is already dead. Oh wait they are on the boss already.

Recount Details

Person 1: (7,234 dps)
Person 2: (6,352 dps)
Truny: (3,200 dps)
Tank: (2,800 dps) YEAH AS A TANK
Healer: (141 dps) THATS PRETTY GOOD TOO!

I mean, they were completely super fast runs but...really?? On boss fights it was fine and I managed to eek out 4,700 as the bosses went down in 20 seconds but on trash I am tempted to just.....AOE THINGS TO THE GROUND! Though on that one time I tried to use Rain of Fire everything was dead by the time the first tick of damage went off.

It was better on my hunter since I like to fire off a Multishot and Volley feels more "agile" than Rain of Fire.

I've been healing way too much.

Truny on Loot Drama - Seethe

Yes, Seethe, the Caster Sword that drops off of the Devourer of Souls in Heroic Forge of Souls which I saw on Tuesday DROPPED while I was in a party on my Warlock yesterday!

Yes blah blah it is only ilvl232 BUT I would not make my DPS toons set foot in ICC anytime soon and this IS an upgrade to the Spectral Kris. Sorry no math here, just trust me on it.

As our random random group was formed up, I looked around to check out the composition of our party and lo-and-behold one of our DPS was a Mage who was conveniently equipping the same Spectral Kris that I had, which meant: This mage also would roll on this sword if it dropped and me being the Master of Rolling had pre-congratulated the Mage on every cloth drop and the sword after the first boss dropped a piece of cloth I had said:

"Grats on the upgrade, and grats on the sword" to which someone asked:

"What sword?"

"Seethe, the sword that drops off the last boss" I replied.

Now I know there is a random chance that the sword would NOT drop which would be good since having no expectations meant that I would not be disappointed in losing a roll over having not ever being able to roll on the sword to begin with.

I had explained the fights (it helped that I healed all these the day before) and off we went, the group was very competent anyways. I was surprised some people were actually asking "so how does this fight go?" rather than staying completely silent and DYING in their own un-knowledge.

The boss dies and I'm thinking "OK if it drops...whatever I'll try again tomorrow, I'm just super impatient, if it doesn't...ok good no conflict".

It drops. I am thinking "maybe they won't roll."

Mage rolls Need: 4

Truny rolls Need: 93

NINETY THREE??

Isn't it pretty?? And aren't my gloves SO non-distracting??

I will take some nicer pics...perhaps when my Hunter receives his new Crossbow (the boss didn't drop it yesterday which is a complete ripoff since all bosses should drop what I need and only what I need).

I'll try again today for the Crossbow. And Truny needs to do Halls of Reflection for an Offhand Upgrade.

Truny the Warlock

Restoration Druid T10 2/4-Piece Bonus

I was reading around on the Restoration Druid T10 set bonuses because it is most likely my Healer will have his gear maxed before everyone else just due to how useful he is and I read:

(2) Set: The healing granted by your Wild Growth spell reduces 30% less over time.

At first that made completely no sense to me. It Reduces 30% what? It reduces what less? It reduces less Over Time? What's Over Time? We work over time and get paid, but we get paid MORE. Then I realized I was reading it completely wrong. It should be "The rate at which the ticks of your Wild Growth spell decrease per tick is reduced by 30%."

OHH. So each tick does more now. Jeez I thought I was going crazy. That's really nice since I like to throw it out there when I see a group of casters without full HP.

(4) Set: Each time your Rejuvenation spell heals a target, it has a 2% chance to jump to a new target at full duration.

YES, even though I did not get my wish for my Warlocks Conflagrate to jump to mobs, but having Rejuvenation jump can help prepare for a swiftmend or someone that I don't have to cast Rejuv on anyways. But then again at a 2% chance what is the chance it would jump to someone who I wouldn't have already pre-casted Rejuvenation on?

However, the Set Bonuses SHOULD be:

(2) Set: The healing done by your wild growth is increased by 300% and its duration is increased by 300% and now targets all raid members. The period healing done by the druid has a 25% to be a critical strike for 150% of amount healed.

(4) Set: Your Rejuvenation spell now hits Six targets, your Lifebloom spell now hits 3 targets and the spellpower portion of its bloom has been increased 600%, your Nourish spell now hits 5 targets and casts a free Regrowth along with it. The duration and healing amount of Regrowth is now increased by 200%. Each time your Lifebloom blooms it has a 20% chance to cast a Lifebloom on another target. Swiftmend will now activate on nine targets and will heal the nine targets with either the shortest amount of time on their hots or with the lowest % of their total HP. The cooldown of Swiftmend has been reduced by 8 seconds. Your Tranquility is a permanent aura that heals the entire raid for 50% of your spellpower, ticks every 5 seconds. The cast time and mana cost of your healing touch is reduced by 95%. Your heals have a chance to shield their target with the Grace of the Earthmother for 30% of the amount healed (at each tick) and has a chance to leave a heal over time for 30% of the amount healed. For each point of HP that you heal, you also deal 125% damage to the recipient of your heal's damage.

There, now I balanced the game out.

Turny the Restless Tree

Patch 3.3 ME LIKE

I tried out some of the new content yesterday and: COOL!

No longer do my DPS toons have to sit around as idle swords hoping, just hoping someone would choose us amongst the many, but all we have to do now is click, check, GO and BAM a group is formed at random.

I do believe that people with similar gear levels are matched together so no longer do we have to "carry" fresh 80s through dungeons. They can do it themselves.

Come to think of it my Poor DK is a fresh 80 and...I do not think I will play him for a while just at the thought of the people running around at his gear range /shudder.

The new Frozen Halls Heroics were ...kinda fun!

Forge of Souls: Lots of annoying mobs. They will spell reflect, cast random curses, cast random AoE damage and Turny being the AOE damage King handled them quite well as no one died. The two bosses were quite interesting, the first one will heal himself after channeling one's soul so it is best for whoever go be channeled to RUN AS FAR AWAY as possible so the soul that would soon heal him won't heal him as quick because: Once his HP is at a certain level he switches phases. The second boss is just knowing WHEN TO STOP DPS and to move around avoiding all sorts of nasty things. Fun times.

Pit of Saron aka PoS aka Piece of Sh*t. Funny. This instance is shorter than the first but has an extra boss. The first boss has an AOE frost aura which can be avoided, and boulders which can be avoided and used to wipe out the stacking aura (which went up to 21 stacks ticking for 3200 at times). The second boss is ....avoid avoid avoid, avoid puddles, avoid the boss when it chases you and avoid bombs. Fun times. Third boss is cake walk, just lure him over the frost patches when he's enraged and try your best not to be hit by ice.

Halls of Reflection: At all times your tank should have aggro on EVERYTHING in this instance. The first two bosses are located in the same room and are triggered every 5 waves in a 10 wave trash-kill-athon. Kill the Priests first. The annoying thing about the adds before Farwyn and Marwyn (or whatever they are called) is that they attack on all sides and since I sometimes have residual hots on people I tend to draw aggro real quick, or if the tank misses a caster enemy. However being the king of AOE we downed the two for the last "boss", which is Arthas.

Essentially after downing Arwyn and Marlyn we see our faction lady, Sylvanis soloing the Lich King, evidently taking out 7M of his HP while only losing 5M of hers (err...we are needed again why?) and then he...dun dun dun GIVES CHASE AMG RUN!

This was quite hectic, even though the Lich King walks very slowly you still get this feeling of impending doom while he summons lots and lots of minions for the party to kill, and once again the tank should aggro EVERYTHING. While you are killing the waves of adds ice walls are blocking your progress and Sylvanis will shoot them down for you, conveniently the walls fall when the adds are dead. Three such walls exist, each with more mobs than before. This fight wasn't that tough and I don't think it should warrant loot but...whatever...the loot was on our faction airship all along. High DPS is imperative here *cough*.

There ended Turny's adventure as I logged into my Warlock to do some reverse-reverse-pew-pew!

The Demonology Changes are NICE! On normal trash mobs, everything feels the same when Decimate procs BUT on bosses: You can chain cast Soul Fire (while making sure corruption and Immolate don't fall off of course, as that is rule #1 of DPS which is to keep your DoTs on at all times), and my seeing 16k chain crits was quite satisfying WHILE your Felguard is chop chopping away. This was all out of Metamorphosis so I anticipate upwards 20K crits however my talents still need tweaking but was too excited to do so yesterday and will perhaps refine the talent tree tonight and...

KBAI

Icecrown 5 Man Loot

Patch 3.3 is live as of today, and most likely all the dungeons and servers are going to be lag-mania!

I would have to say that the gear in the new dungeons are actually nice!

The Trial of the Champion loot were all just re-used graphics from the argent tournament stupid daily rewards, and the Trial of the Crusader weapons well they all looked like they were missing some oomph to them.

The upcoming gear however all seem nice and solid and refined. And actually have color! Perhaps I am biased because they are all ice-based (zanpakutous) but still, go take a look!

The first thing to do is go run the heroic dungeons (unless there is a lame attunement which involves running the normal veresion first, which is ok since we can take it as practice, but if there is a quest to even get into the first dungeon I am probably not even going to log in) and grab the new SWORD, SPELLPOWER SWORD for my Warlock (YES no more LAME daggers) and the CROSSBOW (YES, no more MANLY gun for my TROLL hunter, who loves BOWS), and Turny is fine with gear but he will most likely have the easiest time finding a group since he is a PLUS and SHIELD.

BUT, I probably wont' have much time to check out this new content until Thursday anyways so I will keep you updated, stalking my Loot Drama just like when Patch 3.2 came out!

BAI

Turny's First Duel

After 79 levels and several months being at level 80, Turny "earned" his Duelicious achievement!

The thing I find so amusing about earning this achievement was that my Druid's PVP track record goes to as much as a couple rounds in Warsong Gulch being disgustingly underlevelled at level 71 as a pocket healer. Those level 79's destroyed me fast!

ANYWAYS, I've actually never "killed" anyone via pvp on my druid and had strayed away from the pvp scene seeing that all I am is a tank and healer for strictly pve content.

Amusing anecdote begins.

It was the end of the Bounty Festival or whatever it was called and I was on my way to run my friend through some dungeons for some good old fashioned power levelling since he was too low to be effective for battlegrounds. I saw there was a completed quest for the Bounty Event in my log and decided to turn it in in front of Orgrimmar.

I ran around the entrance of the city looking for those food people and realized the event had ended throughout the day so whatever, run back to the city and fly to our destination (I think it was Zul'Farrak)

I get a whisper from a Paladin hanging around outside the Orgrimmar Gates saying "come duel" and I thought...oh man a Paladin?? Grrr fine I'll die a nice swift death and be on my way.

But I was in my Feral Spec. Just for fun I changed back to my restoration set, based on the rumors I heard that "resto druids are op". I reckon my survivability as a healer would be higher than as a tank!

I reckon, I'd heal through everything and when they got bored they would leave.

Yes yes.

So the duel begins and I am in tree form.

Throw on some hots, Rejuv, Lifebloom, Regrowth (bad move, they can cancel it).

3...2....1....go!

BAM POW SHINY SWIRL OF JUSTICE they unloaded all this holy power on me and my HP was....at 100%!!

More hots! Lifebloom Wildgrowth! My mana is now at 98%, the Paladin's mana is half used up.

They stun me and start wailing away but luckily my HoTs are way too OP! (/gasp there it is!)

I'm running around with Barkskin and Thorns and ...Thorns is doing some damage!

POW SWIRL SWIRL POW POW POW, Lifebloom Blooms again.

By now our Pally friend is out of mana and can only auto attack and I'm still sitting in tree form...hmm....ideas....

*Pops out of tree form*

STARFIRE, MOONFIRE, WRATH!! Their HP is falling slowly and steadily. Starfire and Wrath however are too risky to use, anything with a cast bar essentially could mean my doom (or I thought at the time). My HP was still at 100% by now.

They cast Lay on Hands, and from my hunter I learned to look for their one 12 second bubble cooldown, and they regain some mana and all HP and we start the cycle again.
BAM POW SHINY SWIRL OF JUSTICE they unloaded all this holy power on me and my HP was....at 100%!!

More hots! Lifebloom Wildgrowth! My mana is now at 98%, the Paladin's mana is half used up.

I'm running around with Barkskin and Thorns and ...Thorns is doing some damage!

POW SWIRL SWIRL POW POW POW, Lifebloom Blooms again.

By now our Pally friend is out of mana and can only auto attack and I'm still sitting in tree form...hmm....rinse and repeat!

Let's use some of this Crowd Control mumbo jumbo that I learned! So I roots the guy and start firing away my three Balance spells, throw in a cyclone just for kicks!

Their HP falls desperately low, to 10% and starts to run away, to where I am not sure but they eventually fall to my Moonfire spam! Moonfire is really strong: especially when you never run out of mana!

I got my revenge for my Hunter.

That is what this duel was all about.

On a Hunter, I'm the DPS, I'm impatient, things must die FAST, and that ONE time a Ret Paladin killed me because Bestial Wrath had worn off and there was a warrior and a priest fighting me was the fight I never forgotten: Pallies are OP if three other people are helping them!

It's all about patience. The first thing I learned on my hunter was that with patience comes victory. And when I'm in my Resto Druid form it is ALL about patience, heck it is our innate instinct to throw on HoTs go bake some cookies, watch a movie, go to the store and buy some milk, renew Lifebloom, check on today's commodity rates, renew Rejuvenation, etc etc

Also, on any other toon I am usually the first to go on the offensive and wait for the dreaded Pally Bubble but this time, it was my slow and steady balance spells that forced them to use it if not just to delay their own demise.

Interesting Indeed.

Turny the Restless Tree

Patch 3.3 Druid Changes

And last but not least are the Druid changes we may see in the upcoming patch 3.3!

Prowl: This ability no longer has multiple ranks and penalizes movement speed by 30%.

So we gain equivalence to the max rank prowl right away. Good!

Rebirth: The cooldown on this spell has been lowered from 20 minutes down to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.

You know that ONE time where you go: Damn if only this was off cooldown! Well here it is! Use it wisely!

Rejuvenation: The base duration on all ranks of this spell is now 15 seconds.

So you're saying we get an extra tick of Rejuvenation? If the base amount healed is the same then I guess along with our talents in the balance tree this HoT will feel more like a Regrowth cast and leave it there type of spell but...we'll have to see on this one since I don't really care how long my Rejuvenation is nowadays...I just cast it...

Tranquility: The cooldown on this spell has been reduced to 8 minutes, down from 10 minutes.

That's nice...

Talents

Balance (I don't play Laser Chicken either..)

Force of Nature: Health on the treants has been increased.

Well at least this one I can comment on: GOOD. I tend to see those trees die mighty fast...

Feral Combat

Predatory Strikes: The Predatory Swiftness buff from this talent now has an 8-second duration.

This talent is nice but just for the beginning part of it where it increases our attack power. The idea of being able to cast an instant spell is nice but why would you ever need it? Oh. Pvp. But why would you PVP in feral form anyways? PVP in Resto Form and...NEVER DIE!

Restoration

Gift of the Earthmother: Redesigned. This talent now increases spell haste by 2/4/6/8/10% and reduces the base global cooldown of Lifebloom by 2/4/6/8/10% instead of its previous effects.

THIS talent. Sigh. Essentially only Lifebloom haste is being "retained" in this change, while our Rejuv and Wild Growth do not benefit from a faster global cooldown which means we'd essentially have to stack more haste! And given the amount of CRIT on the T9 Resto Set (WHY?? I DON'T GET IT??) we'll have to see what T10 offers us.

Once again overall not much has changed except we can Rebirth a bit more often, cast some Tranquility (??) more often and .....have to stack more haste because once you get so used to healing you will DEFINITELY feel the sluggishness of less haste!

Turny the Restless Tree

Patch 3.3 Hunter Changes

I shall post this before the Druid Changes as this one is short and sweet and my Hunter is beginning to collect dust once again!

Call Stabled Pet: Cooldown reduced from 30 minutes to 5 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.

See I like to switch pets randomly, since I believe all my pets deserve my attention. Nejibana the dps dino needs to take a break while my Kitty Cat or my Turtle comes out to play...however I can only do this maybe ONCE per dungeon so this is a good change...though provides no real benefit...

Deterrence: Now also increases the chance for ranged attacks to miss the hunter by 100% while under its effect.

Anyone with a ranged attack will hate us even more now that their critical nuke has missed!

Misdirection: Redesigned. Instead of having finite charges, it now begins a 4-second timer when the hunter using Misdirection performs a threat-generating attack, during which all threat generated by the hunter goes to the friendly target. In addition, multiple hunters can now misdirect threat to the same friendly target simultaneously.

Finally a change to Misdirection. Any good hunter always starts the battle with this spell directed TO THE TANK! Right? You do use this right?? Now we have instead of three shots, four seconds to generate as much threat as possible and the good thing is we do not have to wait for another hunter's Misdirection to be used up before we can start Pew Pewing!

Talents

Beast Mastery
Intimidation: If the hunter's pet is in melee range of its target, the stun from Intimidation will now be applied immediately instead of on the pet's next swing or attack.

Excellent, now we can time those stuns much more accurately to stop your foe's casting or whatever it is you need!

Pets

Avoidance: This talent has been replaced by Culling the Herd. Hunter pets now innately take 90% less damage from area-of-effect abilities like all other class pets. This does not apply to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.

Good! I hated having to put points in this just to make my Puppies more resilient! What's Culling of the Herd? It better show up soon for me to comment on!

Cower: Redesigned. This ability no longer affects threat, and instead reduces damage taken by the pet by 40% for 6 seconds with a 45-second cooldown. While cowering, the pet's movement speed is 50% of normal speed. Cower now only has a single rank and is available at pet level 20.

Weird. Why does your pet need to Cower anyways?

Culling the Herd: This pet talent has replaced the Avoidance talent in the pet trees (Hunter pets now gain that benefit automatically without expenditure of talent points). Culling the Herd increases pet and hunter damage by 1/2/3% for 10 seconds each time the pet deals a critical strike with Claw, Bite, or Smack.

Nice! So only pets that can Claw, Bite or Smack can use this ability, and depending on the internal proc cooldown of this ability I can see the 3% damage buff up at all times.

Demoralizing Screech: The attack power reduction from this ability has been increased by 40%, equaling the maximum possible attack power reduction from the abilities of other classes.

Uhh what is that? Bird attacks?

Improved Cower: Redesigned. This ability now reduces the movement penalty of Cower by 50%/100%.

Ok so why are our pets cowering so much that we need to emphasize this talent with another talent??

Pet Leveling: Hunter pets now need only 5% of the experience a player needs to level, down from 10%.

Anything more convenient is good, in this case halved.

Venom Web Spray: Range increased from 20 yards to 30 yards.

?? Spiders

Web: Range increased from 20 yards to 30 yards.

?? Web people from farther away? Ohh pvp! See I use a dps pet for PVP because...you just can!

Wolverine Bite: This talent is now enabled when the pet lands a critical strike rather than from the target dodging the pet's attacks. In addition, this talent no longer has a prerequisite.

Whatever the hell that is. Critical strikes probably occur more often than a dodge at max level so...good??

So in conclusion nothing really major for hunters except for a 3%ish dps increase.

Turby the Hunter

Patch 3.3 Warlock Changes

And here we go!

Create Soulstone: The cooldown on this spell and duration of its buff have been lowered from 30 minutes down to 15 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.

Nothing major here, but having a Soulstone available in half the time originally can't be argued with.

Talents

Affliction (I don't play Affliction but will comment anyways!)

Improved Drain Soul: This talent now reduces threat by 10%/20%, up from 5%/10%.

I guess any reduced threat is good, that is if you guys use this spell a lot??

Improved Felhunter: This talent now also reduces the cooldown on the felhunter's Shadow Bite ability by 2/4 seconds.

Felpuppy bites moar = good??

Shadow Mastery: This talent now also increases the damage done by the felhunter's Shadow Bite ability by 3/6/9/12/15%.

Felpuppy bites moar and harder = good?? Is it to force you to use it more? Is it because it was said the Felpuppy had been weak? I dunno....ok skip this!

Demonology

Decimation: Redesigned. When Shadowbolt, Incinerate or Soul Fire hit a target that is at or below 35% health, the cast time of Soul Fire is reduced by 20/40% for 8 seconds. Soul Fires cast under the effect of Decimation cost no shards.

The major difference here is that Soul Fire itself can proc Decimation, which means that we no longer need to weave Shadowbolts and have to worry about standing at a particular distance. All we need to pay attention to is to have our first Shadow Bolt or Incinerate hit the target at 35% or below and spam Soul Fire until it is dead, very nice. Should be a nice increase in DPS for Demonologists.

Demonic Pact: This talent now also increases the warlock's spell damage by 1/2/3/4/5%.

5% extra spell damage does not mean 5% extra spellpower. In this case it would be 1.05 times whatever the spellpower co-efficient for each spell is. Though 5% spell damage is still a juicy deal since we lose nothing here. Definitey a buff to Demonologists, if my Soul Fires crit for 14k, they now do 14,700!

Molten Core: Redesigned. This talent now increases the duration of Immolate by 3/6/9 seconds and provides a 4/8/12% chance to gain the Molten Core effect when Corruption deals damage. The Molten Core effect empowers the next 3 Incinerate or Soul Fire spells cast within 15 seconds (Incinerate: increases damage done by 6/12/18% and reduces cast time by 10/20/30%; Soul Fire: increases damage done by 6/12/18% and increases critical strike chance by 5/10/15%). Molten Core now has a new spell effect.

The old Molten Core ability had our shadow spells giving us a 15% chance to increase our fire damage by 10% for 12 seconds at max level. Now that it also gives us a buff to Immolate I have a feeling we will be playing this class much like a destruction warlock, by using Incinerate as our major spam. I can see it now, Corruption, spam Shadowbolt until you see Molten Core, THEN spam Incinerate as essentially now it would have the "backdraft" effect in the Destruction tree, and when Soul Fire can be Decimate-executed, then spam Soul Fire. Very interesting! And remember, you are doing all this with your Felguard out! Wow yay buff to my favourite spec!

Destruction

Conflagrate: Redesigned. This talent now consumes an Immolate or Shadowflame effect on the enemy target to instantly deal damage equal to 9 seconds of Immolate or 8 seconds of Shadowflame, and causes additional damage over 3 seconds equal to 3 seconds of Immolate or 2 seconds of Shadowflame. In addition, the periodic damage of Conflagrate is capable of critically striking the afflicted target.

Another interesting change. Essentially Conflagrate will be doing a bit less up front critting since we tend to Conflagrate our Immolates and this was based on 12 seconds now reduced to 9 seconds. However, the lost three seconds is made up for after the Conflagrate effect as a short three second dot (probably feels like a hunter's Explosive Shot) that can Crit so technically this is a dps increase! NICE! DOT>CONFLAG>*Pain*>Leave a Crittable Dot> Nerf Warlocks.

Though I think change should have been: Conflagrate damage has been increased by 500%. Done. Easy.

Destructive Reach: This talent now reduces threat by 10%/20%, up from 5%/10%.

GOOD!

Ruin: This talent now also increases the critical strike damage bonus of the imp's Firebolt spell by 100%.

KTHX!

Pets
Avoidance (passive): Now reduces the damage your pets take from area-of-effect damage by 90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.

Right...

Doomguard/Infernal: These pets now innately have Avoidance like all other warlock pets.

Alright then...

Inferno: The cooldown on this summoning spell has been reduced from 20 minutes to 10 minutes. Cannot be used in Arenas.

Yay we don't care!

Shadow Bite: This pet ability now does 15% increased damage for each of the warlock's damage-over-time effects on the target.

Ok we get it: Affliction locks, use your goddamn Felpuppy!

Summon Imp: This ability is now available from the trainer for level 1 warlocks and no longer requires a quest to learn.

Good I can level EVEN faster right from the ground up!

So Overall: Very nice!

Truny the Warlock

Priesty Beginnings

Remember how I had deleted my Priest because I thought they levelled way too slow?

And remember how I had to delete my Warrior to remake another Priest because I thought I wanted a priest again?

Well, my remade priest is TADA now level 14! Yes! Already caught up to my level 14 Mage!

I think one thing I can not stand are cast times. Especially when your spell with a cast time does not decimate the mob in one shot.

I like mobility.

Sure Ice Nova is instant but then I'd still have to stand around and cast...but wait! I completely forgot about the WANDS!

That's what made the difference on my priest. I had actually remembered to buy her a wand, and essentially how I down mobs is: Mind Blast, Shadow Word: Pain (words hey?), WAND YOU TO DEATH!!

Sometimes if I'm feeling brave I'll throw on that shield and DOT up another mob and slowly whittle their health away.

The wand made a difference, it's constant white damage, no standing around, no being pushbacked or interrupted. And NO MANA USEAGE!! (Even though the very first Shadow Talent practically gaurantees a full mana bar after each kill with my sparing mana usage).

So I'm going to try something today with my mage: Wanding things to death!

Or maybe its just because I love shadow based damage over time instant cast spells.......

Husbrus the Priest

Rotations, Routine

Do you have a dps toon at max level? Do they have some sort of casting rotation? Thought so.

It gets boring after a while, regardless of the encounter. Despite being physically on a pixel level, in a different location, your button presses remain more or less the same.

Random gripes thats all, maybe I should PVP if I wanted some element of change. Or danger.

I liked levelling up from ground 0. Our spells and abilities are limited and our talents are premature, which allows us to sometimes just randomly attack mobs.

Think back to level 1. You're a warlock. You'd cast shadowbolt then realize spamming it would waste your mana so what do you do? Yeah! Stabbity stab that wolf down!

Soon you gain curses, you can throw curses all over the place, or you can curse and stab, or curse and shadowbolt, optimalistic thoughts out the window.

Enjoy it while it lasts because pretty soon the basic concept comes into play for ALL classes (I think).

1. Make sure your dots are on the target. (Curse, Corruption, Serpent Sting, Death Knight Diseases, Feral Bleeds) See the pattern. Keep them up.

2. Use your one short cooldown ability which boosts your other abilities (Immolate, Mangle, Black Arrow, Keep Blood Runes Busy, etc). Keep them up whenever possible.

3. Fill with your nukes and watch for procs (ok this one is exceptional since its a given), spend your resources wisely while waiting to refill # 1 and 2.

4. Blow Cooldowns, if you have any.

5. Dance.

Sure, we adapt to what's most optimal for what we have but....there isn't much extraneous adapting to do which changes our rotations dramatically like "omg I can only cast Searing Pain cause we have to use only our highest threat abilities".

Even when running around in highly mobile fights we find ourselves trying to stick to our rotations.

But then again I don't see why we wouldn't use our most optimal cast priority...sigh the less you know...

See, that odd person in the group may be doing 800 dps but perhaps....just perhaps they are having the time of their lives being untalented, unglyphed, and autoattacking!

Rasengan!

Good old Turny and Leshief wreaking some havoc in Zul'Farrak today; Naruto Style!

Warlock Levelling

I did it. I couldn't resist it. I couldn't help it. I made a warlock. Another one. Another Warlock to join my Druid on this new server.

Druny the Human Warlock. Notice her posture, it is perfect. Druny was Truny's former self before she was slaughtered at Lordaeron. Creepy.

*BAM* Level one, let's do these starter zone quests!

Since Shadowbolt is such a mana waste, I would cast one on the wolves and dagger them to death.

No worries, come level 2 we get Corruption! Or is it 3? Whatever. Also, a quest to get our imp!

NOW levelling is no worries.

Druids level really slow. I still find it slow at level 21.

Warlocks are crazy.

Essentially I cast corruption on five or six mobs, and have my imp take on one whilst I happily dagger the rest away.

Usually my imp downs his mob faster than me and proceeds to help me at my target where I then switch to my next target.

Rinse and repeat, BAM BAM BAM level 6!

Corruption is your best friend, that is until you get Curse of Agony, which can help you kill ANOTHER two mobs at a time. For the mana cost it does the most damage compared to Shadowbolt and Immolate.

I left a starter mage bewildered as I downed an entire Kobold colony and just walked away like nothing happened.

I also really missed playing a Warlock!! Sorry druid, looks like the cycle is going to repeat itself, the Warlock will be financing your levelling. Don't worry. It's tried and true.

Druny the Truny Living

Druid Levelling

Yes good old Turny is almost level 20, sitting at 87%. Something the accrued rested exp for today should fix, granting our famous druid Kitteh Form!

But wait isn't Turny level 80? Hasn't he been level 80 for months?

Ahh yes I have another Turny. On a PVP Server. A druid of course as my main.

Boy do these guys level slow for the first few levels. Bear form is not as sturdy as it seems once you've experienced the actual potential of Teddy Bearing.

Catform with its movement buff will do the trick. And...it's like a rogue! I can go harass people with kitten stealth (in my level range!)

It is funny, starting out with (almost) nothing. I did make a DK on the same server just to supplement any gold which I need...which I have to admit is not enough for my toons rampant spending habits.

See back at home in Turaylon...I had seven maxed professions between my characters at our disposal and enough gold to...well...enough gold.

Now, without the ability to send gold and frostweave bags like it was free to all my newly minted toons I am actually counting my silvers. We are back to the days when TEN gold was a LOT of money! I am upgrading gear every second opportunity (4 levels, which sucks!!).

Turny also picked up two Production professions. Enchanting (which is going great from dungeons dropping greens like mad), and Jewelcrafting, which is going slow as I save up money to buy the materials. (Even though secretly my DK is a mining slave just in case).

Turny is also levelling in the Alliance starting areas so world PVP is pretty quiet it seems, though there are some people who just LOVE to one-shot lowbies over and over again!

What does this prove? Yes it proves that on a PVP server, and that it would be entertaining to see someone perish at one tick of your dot or auto-attack but...why? That's first degree murder. Now, would you have done the same thing if I was also at level 80? A more difficult target? An unkillable heal-through-anything resto druid? That day is yet to come. Sure I had no business in that area but it was on the way to a dungeon and the flight path would have been nice for future travel. I'll die, res, dance a bit, die, res, dance a bit, die, and nudging my corpse ever so slightly over each time...RUN LIKE THE WIND!

And seriously, one shotting is boring. I like to mess with my target's mind for extra annoyance. This is my inner warlock speaking, whom is sitting at level 1 waiting...I guess I'm just passive when on my druid. Tank and heals. No killing. Protect the innocent.

Ahem anyways....a warlock would Fear people into things. Cast a low level dot that brings people to the verge of death. Cast some useless curses like tongues or weakness. Send in your weakling pet to tickle them. Lure out their mains. Then cast conflagrate...and win!

Or be an Ambush rogue. That stuff is crazy. From what I see in the 50-60 range you can one shot almost all non-plate wearers and disarm any plate users and bleed them to death it is quite entertaining. Vanish, and jumping around like a crazy is your best friend! Off topic. Alterac Valley is EVEN more fun with an exp stream!!

If I were to intentionally kill someone minding their own business with my druid...I would be in tree form. That auto-attack can crit for 700 on heroic mobs dammit!

Someone at or near my own level. Sure why not I can pretty much defend myself if you can't one shot me. Or if I can't hit you. Ever. Wait that sounds like Subtlety Ambushing hehehe

No, must level Druid before Rogue must level Druid before Rogue. Tank and Heals. Mm. Functional before fun. Yes. Ok.

KBAI

Nooby Beginnings

I logged into my Warlock last week and saw a mysterious letter from a friend who said they had changed realms and my first thought was "I wonder who it is", since once they leave your realm, the Sender of the Letter becomes "unknown".

It didn't take long as only one person would contact me about this stuff so I decided to go see how he was doing in his new realm, a PVP one *dun dun dun*

I made a Rogue and named it after my Warlock because my original Rogue name of Runy had been taken already (WTF).

I also made a Druid, named appropriately for my current Druid: Turny.

They are both Night Elves.

Now, levelling as a complete lowbie with no resources and having no idea where I am (my friend is on the Alliance side as we used to be Horde) is quite frustrating!

It shouldn't be frustrating but since I've already had a taste of the end-game, being low levelled is not pleasant at all.

I mean, why can I not take on six or seven mobs of my equal level as a rogue? I was fighting two mobs and thought...oh I can do this but all of a sudden "splat".

WHAT THE HELL where's my dodge??

Oh right, my WHITE gear has no stats boosts...and I'm actually level 5 whilst the two that were beating on me were level 8.

Now that I think back...how did I ever level my druid to 20??

Oh yes, I left him abandoned for months whilst logging in once in a while...slowly inching his exp up.

Right, and each newbie gets an allowance of 1000 gold to upgrade themselves at every possible moment at each level up.

Bad habits.

Yes, having a mana using class at low levels is a pain, running out of mana after three pulls and having to sit and drink for about six to seven minutes every other two minutes is not very productive! I'm impatient, sue me.

On a good note I have accumulated a total of (WOOT) 30 SILVER between my two toons!!

I had been dutifully keeping Gray Items in my two small bags and selling everything at every chance I get and I am hoping once the professions start working up then these humble beginnings shall end.

Through careful stealthing and actually being on even grounds with mobs, I got Truny the Rogue (o,O) to level 10 and joined my first Battleground: Warsong Gulch. I was useless. Everyone in there was level 19 and RED and could see through stealth and HURT. It wasn't like the free exp in AV since I could do nothing to contribute to our achievements so I left and I guess I shall wait HAHA!

I could. I could bring one of my level 80s over, I guess the ones with the most emblems and 10k gold and start a legacy but that's...cheating...let's do this the right way.

Druid T9 Restoration Set Bonuses

The restoration set grants us the following bonuses:

2 Piece: Increases the critical strike chance of Nourish by 5%.

5% is 5%, it is nice to have an increase in ANYTHING but I do not use any of my heals in hopes of them critting. I use Nourish where I know the person is out of consistent damage and may need padding hence Nourish does the trick quickly.

If they do get supplemental damage and may continue to do so then Regrowth is my choice there. (DUHH)

4 Piece: Rejuvenation has a chance for its healing to be critical strikes.

Seriously? In terms of consistent healing I actually do not rely on Rejuvenation regardless of how hard each tick hits, to be padding damage. It acts as a fine soaker, but we have Lifebloom. Lifebloom ticks every second and you can control how much extra padding you need between Rejuvenation ticks. Sure lifebloom is costly but when do we EVER run out of Mana? The only time my mana ran low was when the entire raid seemed to be taking damage and I was throwing Lifebloom on EVERYONE. There is also Wild Growth which by itself is pretty useful and of course if another person is taking damage, the more the better!

Anyways, the critical strike chance of Rejuvenation will come useful to mitigate a LITTLE BIT of health that Swiftmend may not completely cover. Usually it is at this point where Swiftmend is needed that you appreciate the strength of Rejuv, and if it were to crit here then it is quite useful. You know those times where a swiftmend gets absorbed and you resort to Nourish/Regrowth. You know?

However, I find (anything) over-times that can CRIT to be incredibly awesome such as when I found out that my kitty bleeds could crit, it felt nice just to have numbers jumping out at you for no goddamn reason so free big green numbers jumping out at you is for me fairly appealing.

As of now I am half-a-week to a week shy of Trimph emblems to acquire three additional T9 pieces. I have one set-piece equipped and have enough emblems to buy three more but don't feel the need for SO MUCH UPGRADING so I am trying to save until I get the entire set bonus.

If only our faster ticking HoTs such as Lifebloom or Wildgrowth could crit...THEN...../drool

Turny the Restless Tree

Bankai! New Cooldowns

"Blow those cooldowns we're finishing this"

Truny: Err...I'm a destruction warlock...I don't have any cooldowns...

Turby: Umm....I guess Rapid Fire is a cooldown...it won't help THAT much but okay....

Turny: Uhh...the damage is fine so I don't need to blow any healing cooldown aka Tranquility and I will save Nature's Swiftness thank you very much.

ANYTHING WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE??

HOW DO WE HELP OUR FRIENDS PEW PEW MOAR?

Yes, by implementing all new cooldowns for our favourite classes and when I say our I mean MINE.

Hunter: Atomic Shot (Rank 1)
15 minute cooldown.

For 20 seconds, all of the hunter's shots become Atomic Shots dealing 5,352-7,512 fire damage every second for four seconds to all enemies in a 15 yard radius. The explosive charges stack independently so you don't have to do the shoot and wait like Lock'n Load.

There fixed.

Warlock: Cataclysm (Rank 1)
15 minute cooldown.

For 20 seconds, your threat is reduced by 90%, all stats are increased by 100%, haste, and critical chance is increased by 100% and critical bonus damage is increased by 100% and your Conflagrate spell now deals damage based on every negative debuff on the mob.

Ok good!

Druid: Life Sear Presence(Rank 1)
10 minute cooldown.

For 30 seconds, for every point of damage that you heal on your allies, 100% of the health healed (including overheal) damages the target of your ally.

Think about it, pop this cooldown throw your hots on everyone and start channeling Tranquility.

MUCH better.

Turny the DPS Tree

Healing Trial of the Crusader

This week has been a raiding week for Turny. Yes the one who says he doesn't raid is now inadvertantly saved to five raid instances.


The nublets ones of course.


First off there was Onyxia 25, I run this on all my toons once the opportunity comes but Turny takes precedence. And of course once we murder this poor dragon, ten of us decide to stay behind wait for her to resurrect and murder her again.


Two down.


Vaults of Archavon.


Nothing really interesting here save for the lottery-like feel of the bosses, run it whenever it is up. Healing this place is just lolwildgrowthatflamecircle. I never take for granted a Druid's healing mobility.


And again, ten of us will stay behind and murder the bosses a second time.

Four down.


Badges of Triumph. I have no more use of Conquest badges amazingly, save to buy gems or BOA gear. Interesting.


Now this is usually what I run, the easy peasy stuff and maybe some random incomplete Naxx's sprinkled in for fun.


However after one of our Onyxia 25's and 10's, some of our group was like "Let's do TOC 10" and my first thought was "oh like ...with me as heals? HAHA never been!"


But everyone was quite accomodating and ensured some of us who have never been in there that "don't worry its easy that place is cake".

Still, I quickly tabbed out and wiki'd up Trial of the Champion and was trying read as fast as possible all of the boss strategies. I had read up on them a LONG time ago and the only one I really remember was Gormok the Impaler T_T

And actually...the raid was kind of easy. For a healer anyways. For a tree anyways.


First Boss: Gormok the Impaler


Who caught him to begin with anyways? Why are we killing him?


He stacks debuffs on the tank and APPARENTLY kobolds are supposed to spawn and attack people however I never got attacked. Nor did any fire spawn under my feet (it hasn't been spawning on me for a LONG time, having run VOA on three toons...hmm...)


When the tanks switch...err...heal the other tank and spam hots on the rest of the party who are wrestling Kobolds off their faces.


Ok..


Second Boss: Giant Jormungars (Spellcheck)


Two worms that have poison, if you have a paralysing poison get cleansed by someone with a fire poison, make sure to also be healing said fire-poisoned person and....that's it. Again, for a tree anyways.


Right..


Third Boss: Icehowl


A giant Yeti which is more or less a tank and spank except when he knocks everyone back to the wall and will charge and one shot you. However at that time everyone has a movement speed debuff and should probably just be running around in circles to avoid him.


I failed to do that. I got stuck in the crook of the doorway and sometimes my camera likes to completely FLIP itself so by the time I realized he chose me as the target I went splat.

(Like that time some idiotic paladin bubble taunted Emalon and as he changed his aggro to me just as I reached the instance exit my camera flips itself and I charge right into him..)


He went down anyways.


Riiiight. So next time, RUN and maybe pre-set the Camera somehow.


Fourth Boss: Lord Jarraxxus (Spelling)


AMG DEMONZ. The soul of my inner warlock burned with an envious frenzy as I saw that little gnome summon a Demon of Awesomeness out of a Portal of Awesomeness!


He has a debuff that absorbs healing (30k) and if not healed through apparently will explode and damage everyone. We managed to get rid of it everytime. He also has portals which summon other demons and those should be picked up.

And apparently there is another fire type debuff that whereever you run around it leaves patches of fire on the ground and once you realize this is similar to the Grobbulus fight then its pretty much GTF away from everyone and heal yourself.

Otherwise with the fires, easy peasy.

And I think one of the succubi that spawned did a WRESTLING MOVE on me o_O

Fifth Boss: Faction Champions


WTF? Those allies look...funky. The only class I could distinguish was the Restoration Druid because it was in tree form.


PVP? I know how to decimate people with a hunter or a warlock in a PVP situation and as a Resto Druid...I just heal through the damage of five of six people until they got bored...and this fight was...annoying.


It wasn't even a fight per se. I was cleansing curses, healing people lightly, barkskinning, had to use cyclone once though to no avail and...by the time it was all over it didn't really feel ....right. Not exactly challenging but just ..a big mess of people running around.


I guess it'll be different when I regain access to Shadowcrash!

Still, waste of a boss fight but easy gear which fits with the theme of this current patch so I'm not complaining.


Sixth Boss: Vrykul Twins


I almost typed Vrykul Twinks (hahahaa *cough*...) ok ok. So this fight I had read and glanced bits and pieces of info on other blogs and what-not but I really had no idea what the hell was going on as it was probably around 3 a.m. when we reached them since this was a late run and my brain was just like "WTFBBQ?"


So apparently most of the information did not apply to me. It was DPS and tanks who had certain debuffs could utilize buffz to do what they do best but as a healer it didn't really matter...sort of.


When the battle starts we did the "two groups on two colours" things and I clicked the first portal I saw: Dark Portal.


As a Druid healer, it didn't really matter what color I started with as long as I :


a) Dodged white balls (err..white orbs...err...white spheres)

b) Clicked to the colour of whatever Twin was Channelling

c) Kept everyone alive


..then everything was good. I didn't need to attack them, so I am assuming there are certain damage buffs. And once again, MOBILITY was awesome. I was jumping around dodging balls and grabbing balls (err..) and just...being a Druid!

And I had to reconfirm that if I had a dark aura up that I would not damage people with light aura cause...yes I prance around!


Final Boss: Anub'arak (Ice Style)


Styling a new skin, Anub'arak was easier than I thought.

He has a frost type DOT that is easily offset by a rejuv and some lifeblooms, the adds should be killed off and run away from his spikes while not trailing it into your party members. Basic stuff.

Until the third phase.

In his third phase, he does a super style Leeching Swarm which damages the entire raid ticking for a minimum of 250 hp per second and it heals him for the amount it damages.

So it is best to keep everyone except the tank at fairly low health.

But actually, this was pretty simple: Wildgrowthlol, lifebloomlol, rejuvlol, go watch a movie, bake some pastries, wildgrowthlol.

I wonder, how do Paladins heal this place? Their heals recover like 353k HP per hit...do you just use a level 1 flash of light?

Constant damage offset by constant heals gotta love it.

So there we have it, easy peasy 15 emblems of Triumph...I wonder how the 25 man version then the heroic 10 man version and the heroic 25 man version is like ...so many versions.

I have enough emblems to buy two more pieces of ghetto ilvl 232 T9 but....why do I need it?

Turny the Restless Tree

Fail Pally

I got home real late last night but decided that there was still time to run the daily on my Druid as being a healer/tank makes finding groups VERY easy.

Luckily, both of the Emblem-Rain dailies was Heroic Culling of Stratholme yay I love that instance save for the drama and insanely long dialogue!

As no one needed a healer I started up my own group and off we went!

Our group consisted of a Warrior Tank, who I reassured that even though I was healing while equipping my skinning knife, that I would skin our foes alive!

Two mages and a paladin.

Our Mr. Paladin was concerned if we would make the timed-run requirement and I said "DPS Hard?"

Come on, nowadays most people make it to the bonus boss with about 4 minutes left. (Though the fastest run I've seen was with 8 minutes left, jeez these new tier items make for some crazy AOE damage)

He then said "I don't know..we have two mages...."

Meaning what? Mages have bad DPS? I dont' think so. Meaning what? That his super awesome DPS was too good for mages?

It wasn't until about Wave 4 that I realized on my trusty little recount meter that the results thus far looked like this:

Warrior 1500
Mage 1600
Mage 1800
Paladin 700
Turny 60 (With a skinning knife! I RULE! AND Keeping you all alive! *Cough*)

What the-....I do what I do best and that is click into our Mr. Paladin's damage details.

I saw lots of exorcism, some righteous something, lots of consecrate (almost all consecrate)...err where was melee?

Oh there it is...9th most damaging factor was melee...and...they were hitting for 200?

Err..

Inspect.

He had on an ilvl 245 Breastplate, ilvl 245 Wrist, some H TOC gear, and an ilvl200 weapon.

That should warrant enough numbers to pull off 2400 dps. I know.

"I don't think we're making the timer" he says. No shit look at what you're (not) doing?

I observed him for the next pull and I saw some movement and ...having no knowledge of how Pally dps works I reset my recount and tried again.

Nope, still 700 dps.

Weird!

It wasn't until after the Spinny Boss in the Room that the tank said "stop sucking and going afk, I am not carrying someone through this" that was when I went "ahhh afking". I have seen this before back in the levelling days an overgeared Rogue joined us for Maraudon and was just autoattacking while afk for each pull......ugh.

We all stayed quiet and missed the last boss by a couple minutes no thanks to you know who because even if everyone averages just over 1400 to 1500 dps, we usually make the boss, that's how it is.

700? No, that is for Outlands.

Afterwards he seemed to have woken up and did contribute 1800 dps for Mal'ganis which is I guess okay right?

Maybe he was working up his weapon skill too who knows.

Or I hate to think this: Ebay?

Vault of Archavon Competency

VoA 25, free loot rain. I always get pugged to run this as I have mentioned before the only members of my guild are my friend and my own's alts.

ANYWAYS. I ran this a total of three times this weekend.

Run 1: Turny the Healer. This run went smoothly, everyone stayed out of fire for Koralon and I received a pair of godly boots. Yes.

Emalon was trouble. People began leaving when a premature pull of one of the exploding adds in front of his hallway killed everyone.

Whatever. We kill Archavon with our eyes closed.

Overall: People, don't leave so fast a-holes!

Run 2: Truny the DPS Warlock. This run was INSANELY competent. I did not stop to check if I was part of a guild run or anything but Koralon went down INSANELY fast with no one dying. Emalon went down INSANELY fast (adds were dead by the time FOUR stacks of explode were going on), everyone spaced out and switched to kill the add, and Archavon died in probably 30 seconds and that was the super quick 10-minute Vault of Archavon. Oh and by the way not ONE piece of fire spawned under my feet for the entire Koralon run WEWTS.

Overall: Insanely Competent HOLY CRAP

Run 3: Turby the DPS Hunter. I don't really run with Turby anymore but the potential for hunter damage is too good to pass up and he's my very first toon and all so yeah...
Koralon was one shotted but it was kind of iffy, our tank had died when Koralon was at about 100k and Koralon was running amock the people taking them all down and I thought "no, we are too close", so as he approaches me I feign death and as he leaves shoot him with a kill shot to help take down his HP a bit more (that thing crits like a warlock) and he goes down. No loot but who cares, got the achievement after all this time neglecting me hunters.

Emalon was fail. We seemed to have an excessive amount of melee dps and said melee were dying to lightning nova and chain lightning or what-not and from my general experience with how fast the exploding adds would die in comparising to how much their exploding buff would stack, we would always barely make it for each time Emalon charges his minion. If we lost any more people, we'd die. And die we did.

We tried again and this time...Emalon enraged at 500k HP and killed everyone.

Come on, where's the DPS? You know there IS a minimum amount required to kill him? And come on, who nowadays can NOT do over 3k (while on the premise that you felt you could perform well enough to JOIN a VOA group). Come on!

It's ok, got the Triumph badge and achievement and all was good.

But come on Emalon's SOO last tier!

BYE!

Koralon