Longing for the Lock

Yesterday during our regularly scheduled raid, I realized something very very scary.

As I am the only healer in the group with an "acceptable" dps "set" (Aka switching to Boomkin and equipping one of the DPS weapons I"ve collected in heroics), I have been boomkin'ing a lot of MV lately and I have to say...it sucks.

Considering I am slightly over-hit and have nothing reforged to benefit my dps, I guess you get what you can get right? I don't do piss poor, but the thing is, I'm not top damage. Ever.

So what? Well, when we first stepped foot into MV I had from the get-go began my strategizing for how my WARLOCK can maximize her damage on the different encounters. This can be done being a healer since all you do is push "rejuv" and people live.

So my scary revelation was that "oh my god, I am what my warlock is to what my hunter was to my warlock back in Cata!"

In other words "I can dish out two times more damage five times more effectively and enjoy the game all at the same time!"

I don't like dots. This coming from a warlock sounds strainge. Dots that don't do anything. Well, boomkin dots DO proc starsurge but I have no crit to push this. And I don't really care, we got the bosses down with me being the measley 5th or 6th and perhaps I should just accept this. The Healer That DPS'd.

Perhaps I am just being a whiny non-advanced boomkin, but when you think of it, I have a warlock with ONE dot and no crazy mechanic of waiting for eclipses and managing the best time to cast a certain kind of spell, and a good time to refresh which dot and which dot to refresh first. I just...kill things and Chaos Bolt eats everything up! Perhaps it's the 100% crit that I longed for.

Or maybe I should just work on a dedicated boomkin set. But that would mean I'd have to play my druid. NO!

Anyways I said I'd post pics, but what pics? Uh of course, Battle Pets! No no I'm not going to start talking about that anytime soon, but pics of battle pets that are perfect for the warlock class. Unless you are a cute cuddly creature loving warlock...then just choose one of the many rats/rabbits/squirrels that they added to the game and be happy with that.

Truny the Not A Boomkin

Dailies Suck, But Not Really

As my hunter dinged 90, I decided that he would not join in on the daily race. His new purpose on Pandaria is to fly around and mine and mine and mine and mine. I am considering slowly levelling up my second tauren druid to fly around and herb and herb and herb. Maybe.

The Boring Story

My druid was the first to hit 90 for "professional" reasons, that is to raid immediately. This was a painful process as I had never actually "played" my druid from 1-85 out in the world. I either tanked or healed all the way to max level, then healed at end game. Since doing dungeons wasn't cost-effective I had to indulge in the traditional method of leveling: questing. What? What do I even?

Playing a boomkin is....nice, but annoying. It kills SO slowly. On one hand I can multi-dot and kite many mobs indefinitely with my self heals, but on the other hand, it just takes so goddamn long. By the time I hit 90 I had to gear up slightly so I started doing dailies and building rep. It would be two more weeks until I even touched my warlock.

Since my druid had such a huge lead on rep, I couldn't just abandon everything and let my warlock finish everything. I hit revered with Klaxxi, Cloud People, and exalted with Golden Lotus on the druid and I by the time I had revered with GL my warlock was 90 and ready to go. This was the darkest time, as I was sometimes doing GL on two characters.

Dailies suck. This is no news to anyone. But they sucked especially because I was a boomkin that killed very slow. The Boomkin That Killed Very Slow. Sure, moonfire is a great tool to tag mobs before all the other assholes that are questing can get to them, but once again, very very slow.

The moment I hit exalted with Golden Lotus I completely stopped playing my druid and assigned him to finish up the Tiller dailies, since they are easy and require less killing.

As I had mentioned in my previous post, a destruction warlock is the perfect killing machine when coupled with a voidwalker. It feels like being a hunter back in their prime where you just land in any hub, then completely decimate said hub within 30 seconds without taking any damage at all.

Where it used to take my boomkin about a full 30 minutes to do the full Golden Lotus hub hopping cycle it would take my warlock about 8-10. Hop in, havoc, tag everything and mow them down then hop to the next  zone.

Dailies now do not suck. My warlock has taken over doing Shado Pan and August Celestials, and is now doing the Tillers for sport (and fish?). Kill 10 Chiji Students? No problem, 4 dead within 10 seconds of me landing in the area.

Now with my hunter, he doesn't feel as "strong" as he used to be. Perhaps I got too used to end-game, wielding a Vishanka for most of the end half of Cata, but now my attacks feel rather insubstantial. Or perhaps I'm just irked that I can't do back to back 200,000 hits with my pet?

Anyways, the irk with dailies now, is that some of them are horribly designed.

That ONE Horribly Designed Daily

Now we were promised changes to one especially excruciating daily, "The Bigger They Come". Or what I like to call it: "The Fly Around Looking For Non-Existant Elites That Other Assholes Are Looking For Quest".

This quest, which would otherwise take about 2 minutes to complete turns into a 20 minute mad dash to tag and kill. Really? What happened to the share tag? Why can't we work together? This just harvests anger and rage. Perhaps the Sha designed this quest.

What happens is you either find the elite and kill it and be happy, or...

You find a mob, fail to tag it but end up facepulling extra mobs, then get hit by a fear and run into even MORE mobs, then DIE, which gives you a ton of down-time. Not very efficient. And kind of sad too.

Otherwise, I need to start posting some PICTURES!

Truny the Efficient

The Greatest Apology to Warlocks Ever?

As I love doing so every now and again, come with me my dear reader who may or may not still be that warlock from many years ago, and travel with me back to late 2010 when Cataclysm launched.

/cast Reverse Time

It was an exciting time, the first time in fact that we could do anything relevant such as...earn exp in the newly shattered world. There were many new zones and dungeons to be explored and we leveled our merry way to 85. Then something happened. Class changes were put through, raiding got more serious and everyone got a lot more competitive. Warlocks still held their own as formidable dealers of chaotic damage but something just felt wrong. Our spells were awkward, and the felguard was no longer the optimal pet.

I thought I was burnt out, or that I was doing something completely wrong, or that I had to just accept the fact that either Demonology was ultra clunky feeling with disjointed mechanics, or that I HAD TO KEEP ISF UP AND CHAOS BOLT HIT LIKE A WET TOWEL. Fun and enjoyment in the class itself had been lost. I defaulted to my hunter who could dish out just as much damage with a great feel to their class and had a great bond with his pet. I tried to keep my warlock relevant up till T13, running the occasional LFR until she was FULL 384 and pretty much abandoned her by the inscription trainer until further notice.

It was sad, yet there was nothing I could do.

--Begin: Rave on Destruction Warlocks--

Then MoP Beta was released, and having read of the complete overhaul for the warlock class, the first character I copied over was Truny. I tried out all the specs and found that:

1. Demonology: OMG teh demonz!
2. Destruction: Chaos Bolt just EATS everything up!
3. Affliction: Nice! Malefic Grasp!

The potential was HUGE, and having had a taste of this delicious malefic fruit I would at least log into my warlock once a week (we still sucked) to make a glyph or whatever, in the spirit of looking forward to the changes to come. I also embarked on a journey across Azeroth to collect ALL the shiny 2-handers that my future Wrathguard could wield. I believe he has a heroic Kiril, Fury of the Beasts that nobody wanted.

After the talent change revamp hit near the very end of DS, I gave my warlock a spin in Dragon Soul and just as I had predicted, the potential in the new changes was amazing. No longer did we have to spend MORE time juggling dots and managing buffs than we did paying attention to the fight and maximizing our "rotation", but instead we were just destructive powerhouses. Once again in my full 384 gear I was performing at and beyond what everyone else who was in full regular to heroic DS gear. (I know, this isn't Diablo where gear matters but that's a lot of missing stats).

What Changed

First and most importantly was that Chaos Bolt was actually WORTH casting. At level 85, if anyone even remembers, or if they had even cast this spell...what did it hit for? 30k crit? How much did incinerates crit for? 40k? Yeah. Now it is a GURANTEED crit, with even more damage based on how high your crit chance is and hits for over 100k, and sometimes 300k.

We are once again pretty useful when it comes to trash mobs. You gotta love this:

1. Spread immolate on EVERYTHING.
2. Rain of Fire - Which is now cast it and does not require channeling
3. Havoc 2 mobs, you can either incinerate or DOUBLE chaos bolt them.
4. Pick off weak mobs using Soulburn, which hits ALMOST as hard as chaos bolt, but can be cast indefinitely as long as you have embers, which you get back if you land a killing blow.

Oh, another note on Havoc. This spell actually duplicates the next spell you cast to another target rather than just apply the damage done. In otherwords, you get TWO physical chaos bolts, or six incinerates while this buff is up. DOUBLE DRAGON!

Essentially, even with trash we have a very powerful "execute" that can be used on EVERY SINGLE mob as long as you catch the killing blow. Go try it out and giggle with glee as you chain cast 150-300k on 7 mobs. GO do it now.

Though when I first tested out destruction, the "rotation" felt kinda....non-existent. I would put on my curse, use my one dot, use conflagrate up and spam incinerates until my ember meter filled up. That's it. The rest is managing how to spend those embers throughout a fight by maintaining a balance of chaos bolt usage vs saving up for execute. There isn't much going on, which one may find that the class has become too over-simplified. This could be the cast for single target fights where you really can't do anything else, and your old brain is just twitching to keep some buff up or looking for some other complication.

My thought was to add just a SLIGHT tiny smidgen of RNG into our nukes, perhaps we have a chance to proc 3 mini-chaos bolts. Maybe? Perhaps we auto-cackle when we cast chaos bolt?

I am definitely not complaining, we've got it all. A flaming mount that can cross water, a VERY powerful execute, a very satisfying nuke, NO mana management, and we set ourselves on fire as each fight goes on.

On dailies, my warlock does not worry about doing dailies because she is so efficient at doing them. Since I  had levelled my druid to 90 first, and he had such a huge head-start on rep, I felt obliged to get him to revered/exalted just because all this rep would have gone to waste if I abandoned my druid. Being a boomkin sucks. Well, not really. Having multiple dots and self heals is nice, but.......it's very slow. As a warlock with very solid voidwalker tank, I could pull multiple mobs and kill them withing 3 globals all the while continuing to pull multiple mobs. So much more efficient.

Now we have news that we can embark on a quest for green fire, and can cast Cataclysm....what else is missing? Are we not allowed to ask for more? I say we stop complaining....

What about Warlock demon flying mounts?

Truny the Warlock

Blood and Thunder

I had discovered an interesting little shrine in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms and couple weeks ago, which detailed the origins of our beloved rare Thundering Cloud Serpent Alani. This got me thinking to the popular Horde phase of "Blood and Thunder". Is there some intricate web of history and lore that ties the origins of the horde and the burning legion straight to the land of Pandaria?

Alani was born out of warfare. Well, moreso exploded out of a bloody lake after it was struck by lightning.

Is there some scandal brewing here? Or perhaps the ideal of blood and thunder is just a common theme for Blizzard designers? Or is this ANOTHER cultural reference that I am not getting? Wrathion did hint at fel meteors striking Azeroth, but how does this relate to events that have happened in the past that could tie Pandaria to the burning legion.

I thought Emperor Shaohao had shrouded the lands in mist before the well of eternity exploded?

I think the only way for me to find an answer to this riddle is to continue to eviscerate every living creature other than the Pandarens in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms, collect 7 more Skyshards and ask Alani myself!

Turny

No Time for Dailies

Hello dear reader,

I had intended to write this post the day Mogu'shan Vaults was released, however I did not have much time. Ever since the first raid was released, we were sitting at "end-game" whether we liked it or not, despite being VERY ambitious this was the plan and we weren't going to deviate from it.

Let me give you a recount (get it, recount?) of my druid's Pandaria experience thus far:

1. Level to 90 as fast as possible while gearing up along the way. I did not read any quests, nor was I actually present for probably 30% of my leveling experience (questing with an efficient buddy with a ridable mount helps).

2. Hit 90, and run Sha of Anger IMMEDIATELY upon receiving a luck token, and grind heroics until they are sick of me and vice versa.

3. This part gets messy: grind dailies because ohgodwhy.jpg

Dailies. This aint fresh news to nobody, but... I'm not quite sure where I stand on the topic of dailies.

First off, I felt compelled to do EVERY SINGLE faction's dailies, everyday. My motivations might be different than most. See, how I see doing dailies and getting rep, gear, and mounts are tinted by how I perceive society as a whole from an American standpoint. Wait what? It's sort of a Keeping Up With the Joneses notion where if you aren't in a certain "stage" of the game, then you are behind and "bad". It's not exactly how I see view society, but how I think society wants me to think about itself. Y'know?

I knew for sure that I wasn't going to be server first 90 anything. I had actually put off levelling for several days to check out pet battles. Thus, right off the get-go I wasn't going to be the "best" druid. Someone else had hit 90 before me therefore I am irrelevant. See what I am trying to get at? Other than playing the game, which from what I see is actually pet battles, and materials collection, I was made myself do the "other" thing...dailies.

The moment where the answer to my question of "do we get tabards?" was a resounding "no", I decided that I disliked the entire reputation system only on the basis of "needing" to gear up and have all the mounts right now.

My major qualm are the Golden Lotus dailies. There are a LOT of dailies divided into multiple hubs, which provides one "reward" at the end which may or may not contain something useful/useless. My ranting on the Treasures of the Vale thus ends here because I did find a Sky Shard in one of my bags so now I know they DO work. (However, someone had already found 10 shards and caught Alani, so that mount is no longer special)

These dailies involve a lot of killing, then some clicking, then more killling and clicking and ends with a "big boss" type quest, then sends you away to do more killing or clicking. This would be fine if I had TIME. By the time I get off work to bed-time I have about 4 hours of playtime. Yesterday was a non-raid day so I did these dailies with glee. However on raid nights, there's no TIME since I "have" to do them on multiple characters with various professions. And you know what the sad thing is? Truny hit honored, which means she has to do all THREE hubs of dailies! BAH. Luckily a destruction warlock is about three times more efficient than my poor boomkin.

I wouldn't mind if the Golden Lotus dailies were just THREE dailies that reward 550 rep each. For example the dailies could be:

1. Kill this dangerous monster.
2. Traverse this dungeon and kill another monster
3. /wave at Alani

Instead of committing genocide on everything in the vale amirite?

This, my friend, is just one faction. At revered, I opened up Shado-Pan (SP) and the August Celestials (AC). SP requires you to go all the way to Townlong Steppes to kill yet another hundred or so mobs. Fuck that I don't even have time to fly to their hub let alone do their lame quests. AC has a hub in Krasarang Wilds? What am I a time traveller you might as well send me back down to Tanaris to do a quest.

I have rationalized these two factions, and considering that my VP acaquisition rate is so slow, there won't even be a feasible method for me to have every faction unlocked to buy everything they have to offer anyways. My plan is to have Truny work on Shado-Pan, she is the most efficient killer, and the mobs from those quests are rather annoying to kill; and to have Turby work on AC once he is 90 and once he hits revered with GL in his own sweet ass slow time.

After hitting revered with the Tillers and Klaxxi I sighed a breath of relief that I would never have to interact with them ever again on my druid. The sad thing is that my VP acquisition rate slowed completely down and I'll be damned if I can ever manage to cap my VP in any given week.

So now we go back to the age old question of "what can we do at end game?"

If you think about it, dailies are a HUGE part of end game, they unlock the gear, and also provide the currency as a means to obtaining said gear, they unlock recipes and also the mounts. ALL the mounts (except the Yaks).

If you take out dailies, what have you got left? Dungeons? Meh already outdated. Scenarios? Interesting but the rewards have been insignificant since day 5 unless you somehow managed to level up through gathering. It would be nice if they FULLY COPIED LOTRO and gave scenarios/dungeons their own set of currency rather than a pittance of VP and crappy blues.

We have challenge modes, those look interesting. Beautiful transmog gear and ugly phoenixes. I guess we can spam challenge modes non stop for months on end?

LFR? Does this even count? People are crazy in LFR despite long-winded explanations on every single mechanic, which may or may not be relevant.

Farms? Farms are getting annoying. It's nice to have your own plot of land, away from all the crazy people but really it takes so damn long to plant all my crops, why can't they just be planted and stay happy? Does everything I plant have to be infested/weeded/attract angry birds? There isn't much interaction with the farms other than the Annoying Random Event. You plant your stuff, then leave.

We have one thing left, and that one thing is by default the defining "game thing" of WoW: Pet Battles. But who has time for that with all these dailies in the way?

So, what is the point of all this? To gear up? To appreciate the art of the new mounts? To have fun with friends? I think the one single line that the Panda from the Pandaria Cinematic resounds quite well with the game, "what is worth fighting for?"

Nothing. You've heard this line before "slow down!"

Turny the Needs to Slow Down

Who the Heck is Xi'an of the Endless Shadow?

I haven't stalked myself on Armory for quite some time since setting foot in Pandaria, and I just noticed that our Mogu'shan Vaults progress was 4/6. What the heck? Who was the 4th boss? Who is Xi'an of the Endless Shadow? Then I remembered, oh yes, we did down the 4th encounter. It was so horribly easy that I  totally forgot about it, and that we are making attempts at Elegon, who is in fact the 5th boss, not 4th.

I thought the 4th encounter was called Spirit Kings? We 2 healed this and I fail-kin DPS'd it with 1000 latency.

Turny's Tips for Spirit Kings

Are you ready for this? Now that I remember doing the encounter, I believe there are 4 kings that you must defeat, each with fairly trivial mechanics, and once they are defeated, they keep one of their mechanics that you have to deal with on top of any new king you encounter.

I'll be damned if I remember what they are called.

Guy Where You Stack Then Don't Stack and Move Out of Wall
So, stack in front of this guy. When you see a giant ground animation, run out, or through him TOGETHER with your tank so you don't die. If the group does not run together, the tank may die since his main attack is split amongst everyone for a bajillion damage. He summons a line of soldiers that everyone must move together to safety out of.

He continues to summon walls after he is..re-dead.

Pro-laggy tip: If you are SUPER laggy, run out a second before everyone or just stay out.

Guy That Has the Shadow Things
This guy summons shadow things that follow you and ..don't really hit that hard, but kite them and kill them and stay out of shadowy pools.

He continues to spawn the shadowy following things when he is down.

Guy That Shoots Arrows and Pins You and Spins
This guy shoots arrows in volleys of 3, with increasing damage with each volley. Very simple to move out of unless you are dodging a wall of soldiers and trying to kite a shadowy figure. He'll also pin random players to the ground, who need to be freed akin to Bone Spike in ICC and he will spin. That's about it.

I'm not sure what he does when he is down but it is probably trivial.

Guy That Goes Mad and Reflects Damage and You Stack and Do 40k Damage to Each Other
This guy is tricky, and it's ideal that you get him as the last boss as he has an ability that makes everyone mad and take heavy damage until you've been friendly fired enough. This adds a hectic element to the fight especially with all of the other king's abilities going on. But pretty much stack, then stay alive. He also reflects damage when he goes into coward mode? So...don't tunnel vision!

We will be attempting to make Elegon dead tonight so I shall update you shortly!

Turny the Failkin

Brewfest Woes

The timing of the Mists of Pandaria launch and the dawn of the Direbrew Festival this year is just horrendous. I only have 2 characters who can queue at a chance for the one single holiday mount I have not been lucky enough to find: The Brewfest Ram.

Very painful. To add to this pain, is it just me....or has anyone noticed that a lot of groups that queue for this FAIL HORRIBLY? Honestly, the Coren fight is more hectic to heal than what we have seen so far of Mogu'shan vaults. The one clincher to this fight is Ursular Direbrew, she spawns when he is at about a third health and will CC anyone highest on her threat list. This SHOULD go to a DPS, not the tank, or healer. That should be enough explanation.

Long Explanation: If you are the tank, ignore her, if you are dps, HIT HER so you take one for the team. If you are a healer, yell for someone other than the tank to aggro her.

Lastly, why are people doing 10-20k dps on him? My level 89 warlock managed 35k. Isn't the level 90 baseline 40k? Is this a dire sign that the game is shifting?

Truny the Shuddering Warlock

Check: Spiritbinder Down

Apparently yesterday was raid night for us, and apparently we downed the third boss encounter in Mogu'shan Vaults, the Spiritbinder.

I apologize dear reader, I do hope you are the same reader...anyways...I failed to pay attention to the name of the boss yet again, but I did remember that his name had "Spiritbinder" in the end.

This boss is a solid DPS check. I had tweaked around my talents a bit to help with pushing out just over four million points of damage on our successful pull. That's a lotta wrath! We essentially 2.65 healed, except for when the boss goes into OMGDAMAGE mode where I popped Super Tree and threw everything on everyone.

The Spirit Realm
We rotated healers accordingly depending on who had the Voodoo Doll debuff on them, and my one and only tip in there is: pre-hot anyone going in, refresh your lifebloom on the tank then spam regrowth once inside. Once everyone is full and you come back out, you get all your mana back anyways, this isn't really a healer fight but a damage dealing check.

Alas poor Yorick, nothing useful dropped nor did my Lucky Charms prove to be any useful. Perhaps one day there will be some sort of bonus loot for me (a guildie did win shoulders on their roll, which proves they sort of work....)

Low Level Sha of Anger Kill
I am questing hard on Truny the Warlock and I have to say, levelling as a destruction warlock is oh, probably seven times faster and easier than my boomkin. It's nice that my boomkin can multidot and kite while self healing, but blowing everyone up is just a LITTLE bit more fun.

I was questing in Kun'lai and was in the final stages when a potential Sha of Anger group was forming. I thought to myself "I'll just ask for an invite, no one will realize that I'm level 88". I got invited. I contributed. Sort of. Luckily for the new reforging mount I bumped my hit from 9% to about 13.5%...close enough. I got killed by the wandering or respawning trash once, but I did contribute my measly 22k dps to the effort and was rewarded with a shiny pair of T14 legs. Shiny. Alas, I could not equip it. At least once I hit 90 I shall have a pair of 496 pants and a pair of free 476 shoes.

LFR
LFR is released today. *Shudder*. I am conflicted. Shall I just bear down, and run this? Will the first few weeks of LFR be as smooth as when DS came out? I assume only most raiders who have seen and possibly cleared a few bosses of regular MV will be geared enough to enter? Not saying that non-geared people are batshit crazy but...you know how it is...

...my last few Coren Direbrew runs have been horrendous. How does one manage to pull anything less than 20k dps at level 89+???? HOW?? To be fair, my healer spamming wrath can do that much.....

...anyways. Another concern of LFR is that..well as more toons hit the 90 mark and use LFR as a gearing tool, will I eventually become bored out of my mind with Mogu'shan Vaults? From what I see, regular puts up enough damage to keep my healer awake but.....perhaps we shall switch to heroic in a few weeks.

Anyways, Spirit Kings is our next kill and from skimming the dungeon journal those individual kings just seem like a whole bunch of stacking/dodging.

Turny the Tree

I Fear

Something has been bugging me ever since I dinged 90 and began my epic journey in gearing up for raiding: what is the point of the Justice Point?

I know just recently they unlocked the once "require honored" ilvl 450 justice gear, but one issue I have with that is that there are no sp leather helms, and all the other slots are pretty much obsolete since I have already found full 463 items