Nighthold and Salt Updates

Greetings my singular reader of almost a decade,

I just reviewed my previous update back in February announcing my return to WoW and it appears that I have already made some progress:

1. I was 857, now 875 from actually doing content and not complaining.
2. Ran through some LFRs, and Nighthold Flex.
3. Got my first Legendary item (Pillars of the Dark Portal)
4. That's about it, oh and Turny the Druid is now 110

It also appears that there was a patch called 7.1.5 which everyone is salty over, and also these Pillars of the Dark Portal legendary pants are also causing a lot of salt.

Whut.

Why is everyone so mad?

See I've come back to the game with a renewed look on life. I no longer care about topping the meters or the constant gear grind (while upgrades are nice, and helps with overall progress...if I don't get them...then so be it, if I do...they'll be obsolete soon anyways).

This would have been a very strange concept a year ago but I'm just playing for playing. Did I become what is known in the community as a "casual"? Or a "good" player who no longer cares? Does that even exist? Are you even ALLOWED to be "good" if you don't care?

I am still aware of what stats are important to my specs, and know my spells and have all survival buttons in muscle memory, but I just don't "care"? Sure there's the baseline level of caring in that I'm still playing, but just not as crucially intense as before?

BOOM Topic Change: Salt

So according to the overall community I am supposed to be unhappy with all things warlock.

The first instance of this was when my legendary pants Pillars of the Dark Portal showed on the screen.

Let's summarize these pants. Yes pants:

• Let's you cast Demonic Gate instantly and gives you two charges before initiating the cool-down basically.
• Massive stats.
• No specific DPS increase passive.
• Love and hate all over the place.

What do I think about them? Well since they were a 90 ilvl upgrade over what I had before, I ain't complaining.

Now, I do see where everyone is getting at. They changed Demonic Gate to give anyone who uses it a cool-down before entering it again, and if I remember correctly it used to just be 15 seconds instead of two minutes.

So these pants basically bring us back to a halfway point between the past and now, except now the gate casts and shows up basically instantly, letting you jump away...though in a rather clunky fashion since you still have to click the gate (unlike a warrior's instant leap). 

We lost mobility, now you gain it back except you need a freaking legendary item to do it sort of half-assedly. Okay.

But working with what we have, this is really useful to be able to jump at will and teleport across dangerous poo on demand. While I've only literally used them for ONE day I am already looking for ways to make use of this ability, regardless if it doesn't boost my DPS by 50% or whatever the other legendaries do.

Clever Topic Change: LFR

Did LFR get easier, or did the community really rest the calamities that is their mammaries and just really mellowed out? There's no rage, or stupid people? Okay fine the first person that did speak out did call the tank a retard, but otherwise all the runs have been very smooth? Is this normal? Or is it really to the point where the mechanics don't REALLY matter (so much for a stepping stone/learning point for new raiders) and its impossible to die?

Final Rant: World Bosses

Seriously, half the cool mounts now reside in easily soloable MOP world bosses and they need a MASSIVE HP buff. What the actual fuck. Sha of Anger...dead before you can fly to it. Come on, give it a billion HP, give it an immunity shield for 30 seconds...the only way to even get a kill in is to camp out ONE specific spot for all of eternity. Same with Huolon (at least he only has one spawn point) and the like. Seriously it's annoying and makes me once again hate CRZ once again. Not only did you artificially raise the competition for rares you've also lowered the access to them unless you've got 360noscopemountaindew reflexes. Why does CRZ exist again? Since when since Wrath have we needed or wanted the help of others? Them game design choices doe. More people = more competition = fewer mounts = more salt.

Leave CRZ to the group finder. that has been amazing. People on demand, not all the time. When we don't need each other we'll be in our own servers at peace.

Until the day comes where my life is on the line and CRZ saves my ass I will NEVER EVER stop complaining about this. (To be fair I did meet some cool peeps while randomly farming old rep, but there was no competition, only collaboration).

So in conclusion, happy hunting.

Love,

Truny the Carried Warlock

World of Warcraft: Legion - Semi Knee-Jerk Analysis

This was the game everyone has been waiting for and wanted and what Wrathion had predicted back in MoP: The Burning Legion returns!

As a warlock I am supposed to be ultra-hyped for this new xpac, as I adore everything demonic and with the introduction of Demon Hunters, what will happen to the Demo Warlock spec? 2 classes that can turn into demons? If so I demand we get to become more "castery" demons while the Demon Hunters be melee demons and we can all have demon dance offs!

Due to the lackluster taste WoD left in many of our mouths, my initial reaction to this xpac announcement was:

"Hey all you 'I started in BC' folk, come love us again"

Artifact Weapons

Aka: We don't need to design/animate for weapon models for the entire xpac. This saves resources on the business side yet I do commend the team for adapting what I loved about LOTRO and that is a weapon that grows with you.

It appears WoW's weapons are not as indepth in terms of customizing them with runes but there are talent trees tied in, hopefully not as shallow as our own "every 15 levels "talents"".

Even with the multiple skins, as long as one other person has it then it is not "cool"/unique and if everyone is wielding an artifact of Legend.....is this a single player game or an MMO?

Artifact weapons immediately gives every single person "something to do", though how they manage how far/fast you can grind up your weapon may become a concern. Eg. People who play 24/7 may have their weapon maxed before we've even downloaded the game.

I know personally this would already make me want to run dungeons since there's a slow stream of "progress", perhaps this will fill the Valor Point void as WoD certainly lacked any sense of external character progression outside of the RNG based raids.

Are there meaningful caps to how fast weapons can be ground out? Are they tied to our level? Could be interesting but need more info on how the weapon progression works.

Also I expect a HUGE release of all the warlock info especially how Demo is changing.

Demon Hunters

Sounds cool I'll make one but what of Demonology Warlocks? Dat double jump tho.

Honor Hall

As a warlock, why would I want to hang out with other warlocks? I hate them they steal my cloth gear, heck fewer people should play warlocks.

Seriously though, I hope we get demons as our champions. You know what just copy what FF14 does with retainers a lot of issues would have been resolved if LOTRO had been copied many years ago.

The game has seriously lacked class identity with the culling of skills and all that jazz. Class halls may bring meaning back to the various classes and it is a great concept to have all the different classes united under one single purpose.

Maiev is Back

She was my favourite hero in WC3 and I occasionally visit her in her prison in old Outlands so it'll be nice to catch up again.

My Most Hyped and Hence Bolded Point

TRANSMOG SPACE! See as a warlock, I NEED every single 1H sword, 1H wand, Off-Hand, Staff for myself, and every 2H mace, 2H sword, 2H axe, polearm for my Wrathguard.

Depending on how this plays out this may open up all 160 of my void storage slots and at LEAST 200 of my bank slots! HYPE!

Unanswered Questions

1. What of professions? Are they still gimped?
2. Are factions meaningful?
3. New spells/abilities? Talent tree revamps?
4. Can we start flying at 110? I don't mind the grounded content though.
5. Why Dalaran again? Oh well.
6. Any intent to change the "drop in drop out" attitude of the community?
7. Any new battle pets?
8. New mounts that will blow our minds?
9. Scenarios return?
10. Honor hall invasions?
11. Remove x-realm zones???
12. How's exploration?
13. Is gear going to be not bull-shit RNG with crap secondary stats? Where an ilvl 640 may be better than a 665?

Overall

Hype Level 4.5/10

I have a borderline skeptical good feeling about this expansion but due to the blah that is WoD right now I bet the hype won't hit until actual game play. We also need more info.

Truny for the Legion

World of Transmog: Glyph of Felguard

Ever since this amazing glyph was introduced back in...Cata (?), Truny has been on a relentless quest to collect not only cloth pieces and staves/wands for herself but also exquisite two-handed weapons for Blagroon the Felguard.

If you've somehow been an avid reader many years ago you'd remember Blagroon the Felguard. Truny's trusted companion ever since becoming available as one of the high end talents in the Demonology tree when talent trees were still in style.

We've been making fast progress in "heroic" Blackrock Foundry for the past couple of weeks and what do you do when no one needs a 691 warforged 2-hander?

Give it to the crazy warlock that's what!

For whatever reason, the weapon shows up as the demonic green 670 ilvl color variation, which is actually a GOOD thing because the heroic version is actually sort of blue/aqua and clashes with my outfits!

Truny the Needs All The Gear Types

How to Progress and Escalate Your Gameplay

Up until the very horrible gearscore vortex of hate and shame in Wrath, I had no idea what my DPS was nor what my HPS was nor did I really care but realized a lot of "elite" players DID care.

Today, I will walk you through the time when I was just a mere "casual" player, who found "raiders" intimidating cause they had some innate skill that I did not have (a group of raiders to raid with, I found out later), and how I honed myself to be a "good" player.

My history doesn't go back very early; I started in Wrath so I can already see some readers leave this page since I don't have the endearing street-cred for being a vanilla or BC child. Whatever.

My main was my hunter, and my goal initial goal was to explore every corner of Azeroth as I was in awe the very first time I opened up my map and kept right clicking out, seeing the GIANT land-masses. I would also attempt to make gold through mining to upgrade my pretty bows every few levels and ultimately acquire some dinosaurs and devilsaurs (this was when stable slots only had 3, or 5 slots!)

Now in this time, we had no LFG, nor did we have LFR, everything was manually pugged. As a new player to hit end-game, it was very intimidating to join a group for a "real" raid. You hear of things like the Heigan dance, Flame Leviathan (who was not a leviathan at all) and all these fancy terms that sound so elite and intimidating, that this was the time where we would need or be compelled to watch raid videos.

I wonder, HAD THERE been LFR back then what would my take be. The environment was extremely elitist back in wrath and still persisted to "LFR inferiority complex" when it was actually implemented in Cata. I most likely would have still revered "real" raiders. Yes.

My first jump start into actual "real" raiding was being asked via friends list to tank Onyxia 25 on Turny the druid. TANK? WHAT? I SCARE?!

I knew my basic cooldowns and the group did inform me of the things to look out for, basic positioning. It went well and I thought to myself "that wasn't so bad, but Onyxia is a pretty simple fight".

Though it wasn't this Onyxia fight that eliminated my doubts. It was after, a few stragglers decided to run ToC! ToC was current and was all the rage. I said I DID have a healing spec, but this would pretty much be my very first "legit" current content raid. Note ToC dropped 232 ilvl and I was probably packing lower than that.

My normal activities as a "casual" would be to run heroics, get my valor tokens, and I would save up for the shiny new 226/245 ilvl gear. The "welfare epics" that everyone hates on. Hey, now there aren't any and there's no- no I will not rant on WoD today.

This was a late night ToC and I was intimidated as heck. I was so nervous that I was simultaneously watching youtube videos and healing at the same time (this was actually really great for multitasking I later found out, and that I would soon raid while multi-tasking).

The raid leader explained the fights very well, though I did get killed by the charging Yeti and I was so ashamed. Though my first death to the yeti would have been my last. The worm fight went well, as did the demons and the PVP fight. Twin Valkyrs was serious business but being a resto druid I was at an advantage of having high mobility.

We also downed Anub'arak and the very very nice raid leader Warlock (if you read this, I am so sorry I have forgotten your userid!) passed to me my very first legit raid item: Perdition!

Wow, my very first real raid weapon!

I was also recruited into my first guild shortly after and we would eventually raid Ice Crown Citadel weekly and it was all uphill from there. I swapped to my warlock, bringing in my hunter or druid on occasion.

If I had to leave a legacy for my characters, I would say I had done them proud. I have ranked at least in the top 200 for: BM Hunter, Destro Warlock, Resto Druid. This would have been during Cataclysm and MoP when people cared, though my druid would have had the highest ranking when Heroic Dragon Soul was current. Still I don't consider myself a pro since I have not participated in any world-firsts, then again the ONLY fights that actually matter ARE the world-firsts so anyone clearing content after is meaningless in my mind.

I believe our guild was in the top 20 in the realm for one brief moment, but then again that's the 19th loser, and again, not world first so who cares.

So why would you want to listen to advice from someone who has heroic raiding experience but no world-first experience is beyond me but if you're interested then stay tuned.

Before We Begin

I assume you are able to do the bare minimum basics such as:

1. Move out of bad looking things.
2. Dodge things.
3. Having appropriate output vs. your ilvl vs. your secondary stats (because of WoD)


Truny's How2Pro Raid Tips:

There are a few over-arching methodologies that I utilize to:

1. Maximize my output/throughput.
2. Maximize my utility.
3. Maximize my survivability.

"DUH" you say. Not only do you need to do (you don't NEED, but you SHOULD) the maximum amount of damage/healing, you also need to try to RECEIVE the least damage. But, how?

Internal Timing

Whoa, whoa what's going on? A lot of what I do is all about timing. Timing of your spells, knowing the "feel" of your spells, knowing roughly the timing of when your CDs are up without even looking, knowing how long they last and also knowing how long they are in relation to each and every single encounter.

One thing I do when going into a fresh encounter is seeing when is the optimal time to use my Demon Soul CD, and getting a feel of when it comes back up based on boss mechanics. If the boss has a mechanic that requires moving a LOT I may shift my demon soul accordingly to maximize my damage. Next time we do the encounter, I won't even have to look at that spell.

For the first few encounters, work on recognizing the "best case scenario" timing situation. For example, if the boss puts a target on you or a debuff that breaks your pattern, try to either work that in right away or ignore it until you're comfortable.

If your guild makes you watch videos, pretend you are actually playing IN that encounter to get an actual feel rather than just seeing the encounter, then getting hit by what you were trying to avoid.

Learning the timing of encounters saves a LOT of brainpower, and also means you don't need the ridiculous deadly boss add-on, as I believe the game's default messages are sufficient. One of the best examples is the train boss in BRF, as long as you know to start at 2, then 2, 2, 3, 2, fast 3, 4, 2, 3, etc., you don't even need an add-on or even look at the track doors. It's not just knowing the order, but getting the internal TIMING of these doors and also all of your CDs that saves you a lot of brainpower so you can possibly do other stuff while doing these boring encounters.

This is what it means to be "good at your class". Just knowing the simple rotation you should be monotonously droning out is simply not enough if you're not maximizing your utility and taking opportunities to squeeze out that extra slaying power.

It is easy to tell someone to learn their rotation but to actually train someone to make that rotation 2nd nature, learn the synergies of their spells and timing their cd's is all up to that person!

Team Awareness

This is where LFR tends to fall apart and almost needs to be designed to under-tuned. If you're with a constant raid group, you'll soon get a feel of everyone else's timing and tendencies. I found this to be more relatable as a healer, since all you're doing is keeping everyone alive and are actually looking at where people are standing.

The only example I can readily relate this to is driving.

Yes, with a vehicle. Bear with me if you don't drive.

So say you're on a three lane highway. What are you doing? Scanning the environment. Who is in front of you, behind you and beside you.

How fast are they going? How fast are YOU going relative to them? What is the optimal safe speed for you to follow the person in front of you vs. the relative speed of the person behind you?

Add in the fact the intended speed of the people beside you and also the vehicles in front and behind THEM, if you should adjust your speed should they need to change lanes.

Now, how fast is the person TWO cars in front of you? Are they driving safe? If not, then the person directly in front of you, are THEY adjusting their speed safely? If not, you'd need to adjust your speed.

The point I'm getting at is that to work on being more effective is to know where everyone is at every given moment and also predict WHERE they will be going in case a mechanic hits them and they try to run away so you can throw heals on them if the other healers are going to be out of range, or if a big mechanic is also going to hit the tanks. See how it all ties? Timing, and awareness to the next level.

It seems daunting at first but don't worry: it gets worse. Not only should you be comfortable with your OWN timing for spells/encounters, you should be familiar with your team's cool-downs and what could possibly be available if an "oh crap" moment arises.

Examples?

I'm not sure if just rambling on works, so here are some examples:

1. I know player X will almost always die to mechanic Y, therefore I will prepare my soulstone and also position myself AHEAD OF TIME to resurrect them in a safe place, which also enables them to transition to the next encounter phase. Because of this I will not pop any offensive CDs since it will be wasted in the time it takes to prepare this.

2. A certain mechanic is JUST owning you every single time? Break all convention and work on JUST countering that one mechanic. Even if you have to stop and WAIT for it, just wait for it and look at your current state, how could you have prepared for it better? And how can you be doing your thing and preparing for it?

Conclusion?

Wtf is this a report?

Ultimately, there are only so many mechanics happening at once and are not impossible to deal with. If they were, people would have noticed. If you have to dodge three things while kiting another thing and damage two other things, you can do it, maybe not effectively but it is doable.

Ok I'm going to stop ranting now, bye!

Upcoming: Battle Pets for Warlocks Edition 3, or 4?

Truny the Annoying

Analysis on: Zandalari Warbringers and Griefing

Good day readers,

Patch 5.2 is what I would like to call the Stressful Patch. Warlocks are stressing about finding non-existant tomes for a try at the green fire quest-line (I wish you luck not in finding the tome but actually doing the fight).

There's stress regarding Oondasta, idiots who keep him in combat long enough so the opposite faction's pull does not reset, and the fact that one single guild in the opposite faction in our server controls everything anyways so it wasn't really a surprise that they'd get the first, and all subsequent kills for the next 9 months. I'll just do Oondasta when he's not current. Just like how they kept Galleon on perma-lockdown until probably last week.

But no, this post is in regards to the new "rares" called Zandalari Warbringers and my moderate commentary regarding their design.

I shall also do up this post in the report format in which I was trained in. For accounting.

Introduction

Patch 5.2 introduced Direhorn Mounts to the populace, in the form of a rare-ish drop off new world-rare-elite mobs called Zandalari Warbringers. This short post will review their design and gameplay implications regarding their status as rares, griefing and tagging, and potentially recommend a new design for them.

Zandalari Warbringers

Now let's face it, a dinosaur mount is just cool. Direhorn mounts look like triceratops, and are dropped of new rares called Zandalari Warbringers. These warbringers spawn in each zone except for the Vale and the Valley, usually near a cliff/water.

The warbringers have a small chance at dropping a Direhorn mount of the same color that they are riding. They also drop reputation tokens and material bags, which are moot since those are useless nowadys. We're only interested in the mounts. The warbringers appear to have a 30-60 minute respawn timer and have just over 21 million hitpoints. They do require a tank/heal/dps or if you re a blood DK or a hunter who is really comfortable in kiting.

Issues

My first issue with these mobs is not even the griefing and tag-stealing. It's their status as a "rare". Also, their status as one of the very first non-actually-rare mobs which drop a mount. Let's think back to what are the only mobs out in the wild who drops mounts? Aeonnax, and Time Lost Proto Drake right?

Those two are special and have their own "time lost" category. They have erratic spawn points, and spawn so infrequently that only the most devout will be willing to camp them out.

The issue with warbringers is that their spawns are completely predictable/campable, which then demotes their mounts to a status of "not that prestigious". However, the drop rate is still so low that you may kill ten and still not get a mount.

See where the issue is "mounting" now (yay puns). Not only are they not actually prestigious, but they are also so high in demand that these direhorn mounts are momentarily perceived as "rare". Even if you find one, you may not be guaranteed a mount, which there are three different variations of. This sets off a cycle of continuous hunting and competing.

Next issue is the general gameplay competition you see. You could be waiting for 30 minutes but you are slow, another group can just swoop in and tag the mob once it spawns. This is ineviable. We did it to a group yesterday and another group did it to us.

Another issue is purposely despawning the mob and trying to steal it on reset. Hunters can powershot warbringers off a cliff, or an entire group can taunt-kite the mob so far away that it resets. This is a total dick move.

Alternatives

There are a few alternatives to alleviate the aggravation of these mount-dropping-not-actually-rare assholes. First is to make them untauntable except for within the group that has the tag. This is a simple which prevents seven paladins taunting your mob out into the sea. I do not see a downfall to this other than it can't be taunted externally.

A second option would be to make these rares share the same tagging mechanics as the rares on the Isle of Thunder. Blizzard did good on making them tag-to-EVERYONE. There's no stress, just find the mob and get to it and you have your independent loot. What you can do with the warbringers is make them tag-to-faction, just to have a little bit of competition. My reasoning is, if our little group of 3 can take down a warbringer, why would we want to help out fellow hordies and diminish our SMALL chance at the mount? Selfishness justified. We killed five with no mount, why would we want to kill more and then extend the roll on the mount to even more people?

A third option to everyone is to wait it out for a year. In a year no one will be hunting these mounts, so setup a small fun guild expedition to hunt dinosaurs. This is the single positive point that I have managed to salvage from these rares. An event for the FUTURE. It's a conspiracy to get us playing into the future.

Recommendation

I recommend switching these mobs to be untauntable AND tap-to-faction. WoW has done such a good job in mitigating threats in regards to rares, and this stems from helping out hunters and their rare pets.

Let's take a look back to Wrath.

We had spirit beasts. Coveted beasts with low health and a high demand. Angry hunters may kill your tame, or kite it away. This was alleviated through the challenge tames in Cataclysm, and further alleviated with HIDDEN tames in Pandaria.

None of the rares in Pandaria on the get-go dropped mounts, just useless vanity items and they were also very plentiful.

Everything was going SO WELL until the arrival of the Warbringers. What happened? I don't want to fly around for hours looking for a "rare". They aren't even "rare", we know when they will spawn and hence there's no thrill of the hunt involved. It all boils down to who hits it first? You know what that means? This reminds me of world-bosses in MAPLESTORY. Do you want to become Maplestory? No!

Does tagging a mob first mean you are a better player? No it means you were a split second faster or your ability has priority over others.

I guess this goes towards the Isle of Thunder rares as well, we know when they will spawn so we treat them as VP farms. However it's independent loot so there's no grief.

Conclusion

Just get exalted with your new faction rep and buy the exalted Direhorn mount and pipe the fuck down in the mean time. It's been less than a WEEK of 5.2 those warbringers aren't going anywhere. We have such a massive hunger for content that we don't even appreciate how awesome everything else is. The end.

Turny the Direhornless Tree

MoP LFR Tips: Terrace of Endless Spring

Hello reader! I totally forgot that I was supposed to finish up my MoP LFR Tips pages!

We have been making slow progression in the real raiding-land, with Garalon successfully dead, we are now beginning to work on bosses that drop real T14 tokens for real tier items. Exciting! (But not really)

Anyways, to get into ToES, one must have completed the HoF achievements by having killed all the bosses.

ToES is relatively easy except for Tsulong. Tsulong is another fight that requires RAID WIDE co-ordination and from what DS has taught us, is that it taught us to tunnel vision and ignore mechanics.

SO here we go!

The First Guardian Bosses

I have no freaking clue what these are called in game, but essentially they are 3 Jinyu guardians who have been corrupted. This fight is almost idiot-proof and the only thing I see that you can do is:

• Dispel/purge the heal effect that the healer dude puts on the other fishes.
• Prepare yourself for lightning rings, stand out, then run in to avoid the multi-step lightning AOE, it hurts, but not too hurtful, but come on, just try to stay out. You'll see.

Tsulong

Tsulong either goes really great, or really bad.

I think Tsulong deserves a srs bsns paragraph to describe the intentions of his mechanics.

Tsulong is a DPS and healer race. Ignoring all other mechanics for now, essentially Tsulong shifts between two different phases, day and night. During the night, you DPS him hard while avoiding damage. During the day, you heal him hard and protect him.

Why?

Ok, the reason is that during each phase, his health inverses to whatever you put it at. Say at the end of the first night phase you get him to 60% health. When day flips over, he'll be at 40% health that you have to heal up. Say at the end of this day phase you heal him up to 60%, at the next night phase, he'll be down to 40% health.

Got it?

SO the key is to do lots of damage, and lots of healing.

Now I shall explain the phases.

• Night Phase: There is a sunbeam on the ground. The main purpose of this beam is to eliminate his stacking AOE debuff that ticks for something like 20k. I recommend building up about 10-15 stacks of this debuff based on your ability to survive, then dip into the sunbeam to remove the debuff and spread out.
• Spread Out for Night Phase: Why? During this phase he summons random purple circles on the ground, where if you stay in them you get feared. And the circle is big. If everyone is grouped up, everyone will get feared. This is a HUGE dps uptime loss. And we want lots of DPS.
• Day Phase: Healers, stand in front of him and wait for him to do a cone attack. You want to be hit by this as you regen mana and do 500% healing. Heal the fuck out of him. When he gets debuffed, DISPEL this immediately. I believe it's called Nightmares. Nightmare ticks for 2% of his health, which is a lot. Think about it this way, for each 2% tick, you have to either heal back 2% more or do 2% more of his health in damage. If this ticks for its full duration, you might as well wipe or kill yourselves.
• Kill Adds in Day Phase: Focus on the unstabale adds that spawn on the outer ring, if they reach Tsulong, he takes 2 million damage. 2M damage that you either have to heal back or dish out in damage.

That's it. If you hit the enrage, either heals sucked, or dps sucked or stacking sucked. You'll know.

Lei Shi

The 2 bosses after Tsulong are snoozefests. When Leishi hides, AOE the corners to reveal her, then if she summons guardians, focus fire on one and if she pushes you back, run towards her for reduced damage. Blah.

Sha of Fear

Sha of Fear is relatively easy but still requires slight explanation.

Tanks should take turns standing in the golden light, which generates a wall behind them preventing his big fear attack and reducing damage taken.

Occasionally he'll send a group off to the side platforms. Kill the add, then click the portal in the middle to return to the fight. Healers make sure to heal hard and touch the little orbs around the add to get mana back.

The Sha also summons adds that'll wreak havoc outside of the light wall, you must run behind them to DPS them. The thing is, if you are outside of the wall, you are susceptible to his high damage fear, which the Sha casts when he is full energy. Run back in the wall when he is at around 80 energy.

Easy sneezy!

Truny the Tipper

MoP LFR Tips: Mogu'shan Vaults

Now now calm down, I know I said I'd stop writing tips and reviews but let's face it, the more knowledge we have out there the better it is for all. In order to facilitate a smooth run where everyone can get their gold, item (yeah right), and VP as quickly as possible and never see each other again I am going to provide my Quick Tips for LFR.

And honestly you should not be wiping in LFR. That is just sad.

First off is Mogu'shan Vaults (MV).

Stone Guards

This is the first boss in MV and consists of 3 random dogs with varying abilities. From what I've seen in raid finder, the tanks just hold them all together and everyone just AOE's them down while the healers heal through everything. With that said, here are the abilities to take note of to save your healers some stress.

• Cobalt Mines: Activates with the cobalt guardian and is a crystal that will deal damage and root you when it explodes. Move out of the blue circle.
• Jasper Chains: If you are chained to someone, run close to them or you will burn to death. Ideally ranged would run to melee so the melee can keep poking.
• Amethyst Pools: Stay out of shit.

Feng the Accursed

The second boss has 3 main abilities that I would like to highlight.

• Earthquake: I think it's called something else but it's an earthquake. Stack up to heal through it if the tanks don't know how to use a shield. Make sure to spread out in case the boss casts a lightning fist onto the ground.
• Wildfire Spark: In P2, just keep doing what you are doing but pay attention to Wildfire Spark. If you get this debuff, run out of the group and will drop some fire onto the ground. DO NOT drop a pool of fire into the melee or ranged groups. Most likely people won't see this and you'll kill them.
• Arcane Resonance: This is probably the most important ability which occurs at P3. If you get a debuff on you and you start pulsating arcane energy, run away from everyone so no one is inside that little circle. For every person in that circle the damage increases. So if you are in melee with EVERYONE...yeah.

Garajal the Spiritbinder

This is the last boss of the 1st half of MV and probably the easiest.

• Healers take note of anyone with Voodoo doll debuff on them. They take damage with the tank.
• DPS make sure to click the totems around the room which are spawned periodically and go into the spirit realm to kill spirits, they do damage to players in the real world. ALSO click the special button you see once you are done to come back to the real world or else you die. You ALSO get a nice damage debuff aftewards. Healers can also go in to refill all their mana when they come back out.

Spirit Kings

The first boss of the 2nd half of MV. He consists of 4 "phases", which get more and more "complex" as the fight goes on.

• Qiang: PLEASE stack with the tank in FRONT of the boss to absorb his huge cleave attack, then run through the boss for his huge smash attack (denoted by a very obvious animation)
• Xian: Kite shadows and kill them as necessary.
• Meng: Group up to lightly AOE each other, and when he starts running away he will stack a debuff on himself that will slowly reflect more and more damage going from 0 to 100%. This is when you will see lots of people die.
• Subetai: Dodge his volley and free anyone stuck under his pinning arrows.

Elegon

Elegon would make a nice mount. He also deserves a real paragraph.

In P1, everyone will be inside the celestialy looking area for a 50% damage and healing received buff and pew pew pew. Elegon will spawn an add that should be nuked down.

Elegon will then begin to "Draw Power". This part is crucial. Once he is finished casting, he will send 6 orbs to the various pillars around his platform. The raid should split up and make sure each orb gets killed before it reaches the pillar. For each successful wave of orbs dead, Elegon receives a +% damage received buff, which is great for burning him down faster in P3.

IF THE ORBS don't get killed, PAY ATTENTION. If an orb reaches a pillar, you will see a pillar pop up and this is your queue to get out of the middle since the floor will completely disappear and you will fall to your death and people will call you very mean things.

Once the pillars are up, kill the pillars, stay out of lightning pools and kill the adds.

That's it. Rinse and repeat until he does this a 2nd time. After the 2nd time, stack on Elegon and burn him down.

Will of the Emperor

This is the final encounter in MV and has a lot of tank dancing and add control. I will provide tips for individual roles.

• Tanks: Your only goal here is to survive and also dodge the giant construct's "combos". They will either slash to their left or right, or do a smash. When you see them winding up to slash left, dodge right and you get a buff. If you see them raise their leg, they are about to stomp, so move back. Each time you dodge you gain a buff and once this buff reaches 5 points you get a special "opportunistic strike" ability that hits for 500k. This should be a steady source of damage for the raid since...
• DPS: Your main goal is to kill all the adds before even touching the big emperor constructs. CC rages, keep Strengths out of the raid as they stomp, and burn down Courages from behind. You are allowed to DPS the boss only when ALL the adds are dead.

Ideally, you will know if your group is good or a fail by telling how many adds are up by the time Titan Gas, a mass AOE damage phase, hits. If only one mob is just dying as this phase hits, you should be good as long as everyone is consistent. Also, anyone comfortable in melee, including hunters or healers can also deal with opportunistic strikes.

So that's my short run-down of MV.

Truny the Impatient

The Bug is Dead

This may not be a big deal to anyone since Heart of Fear has already been out for so many weeks and all the top guilds have cleared it on heroic, but we have shuffled our three raiding days to fit in both MV and HoF and I am pleased to say the first boss is dead. I apologize as I do not know the name of this boss, I believe his name is Grand Vizier Maloriak. No wait, Maloriak was in T11....well anyhoo he is the first boss and he has some deadly abilities and some...*cough* fun mechanics that I am actually quite impressed by.

As a resto druid, I spent most of my time DPS'ing and we effectively 2.25 healed this. I jumped in and helped in P2 when the boss did his Hard Hitting Stand Under The Shell Yell ability that ticked for 60k a second. The spiral dancing and MC control were all great mechanics.

Alas, we have not seen any spellpower leather or healer items for several weeks and my Lucky Tokens have been really shitty on the druid. My warlock seems to win something everytime she uses those??

 I do believe HoF is being released in LFR today...that should be a blast.

We then proceeded to get the 2nd boss all the way down to 40% before everyone started falling asleep. I shall update you on our Thursday run when we revisit HoF. I do remember his name, it was Blade Lord Talaraiak or something like that.

Turny the DPSing Tree

Slow Down

I bet you read the title of this post in that male Pandaren voice didn't you?

No?

Well, eat poo!

The very first time I heard this utterance in Jade Forest while I was rushing my way to 90, I knew exactly what he meant. This statement does not provide any lexical hints or subtleties to the Pandaren culture, but it's an early hint of MoP's new gating system. It's not a suggestion to slow down, it's saying "you are going to slow down, whether you like it or not!"

Think about it, VP is now acquired at a snail's pace. To max VP you would have to do 200 dailies, or 2 LFRs and dozens of dailies and a dozen heroics. Apparently all you have to do is just stroll into Challenge Mode and clear everything a few times to cap VP. Easy peasy cause Challenge Modes are just so easy. *Cough* Or if you're not heroic world first raiders, no one even cares about what your gearing strat is because you're not even going to get the world/realm first so you are non-important anyways. (I agree with this point, yet also disagree)

Reputation is now based on dailies and the few basic quests, but you can pretty much calculate the exact day that you will hit revered/exalted with any given faction.

I am not stating any opinion on this gating (yet), but that's how it is. To appease us, the ones who said there was "nothing to do" at end-game, now there's LOTS to do, however, it's also a lot to do spread out over time whether we like it or not.

Think of how it was, we would equip our tabards, grind out reputations and do dailies until exalted and then never pay attention to that faction again once we've bought our ware (many many wares). As with VP, 2LFR halves would net you half of your weekly total and a few easy heroics could finish that up in ONE day. Then you would never run heroics or do LFR again for the rest of the week.

It's a fine delicate balance, a balance that might have been tipped awry due to everything being tied to VP. We are used to capping our weekly VP in a couple hours, not slowly drip feeding it over the course of an entire week. Heck I usually hit 800/1000 every Monday and fail to even cap. But that's fine. Cata VP items turned out to have lots of BiS items (right?) and actually just a LOT of items that we could buy since they would never ever ever drop in real raids. Perhaps my hunter is a special case, having only received 2/3 pieces of "real" gear while raiding T11 and 12.

On a side note, why does LFR reward more VP than the actual raid on a per-boss-capita? 25 VP for a boss kill...really? Has that been ninja-changed, I don't even pay attention anymore.

See, the issue with collecting ALL the VP in one day so we won't have to do anything, only to complain about having nothing to do. See the deadly evil cycle? Let's say dailies rewarded 20 VP each, we would still do them, and cap out much faster. Would we be compelled to do dailies for any excess factions? Maybe. Perhaps less. We would probably find it redundant and tedious to do Klaxxi after we've valor capped and again go back to the "we are forced to do this for rep" argument.

I use that phrase with heavy irony, but it seems some people find this to be true. No one is forcing you to do anything. Did they hold you at gun point? No. Is an upgrade going to help you stay out of fire faster? No. Do you have absolutely no way of obtaining a similar piece of gear? Aha. There's always LFR? No, too tedious? Well, you can uhhh...hmm.

See, I still think we should utilize a secondary currency to purchase random things for those who don't raid- oh wait, those who don't raid don't "need" gear. Bah. You see the dilemma?

With the release of Heart of Fear, valor gear is starting to look rather unattractive and actually slowly grinding out VP to fill any missing pieces is a much more enjoyable experience than facerolling LFR for a chance of loot.

Ideally, what everyone wants is probably for their VP to slowly accumulate at 100 per hour, and their rep with all factions to accumulate at 1000 per hour..while they are offline so they can log in, be "done", then complain about having nothing to do. The end. (I gotta get back to work)

Turny the Slow Tree

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

Azeroth is Saved

My beloved druid Turny's fate had been sealed the moment he hearthed away from Anub'arak's rotting corpse beneath the Argent Tournament grounds. He would be the one to lead in "progression". (Shut up, I know MOP is close and everyone has killed Heroic Deathwing, but shush). We've been working for a couple weeks on Heroic Madness and let me just
say....wow can this fight be any more boring? You think Spine is boring, think again. 3 Platforms of mind-numbingness, then one platform of mildly intense healing, then apparently Deathwing's head platform is all out madness...at least for our first kill anyways.

We've been working out a lot of kinks. A LOT of kinks. We had our mechanics pretty much down on the get-go, and it was mainly an issue of (in order), surviving impales, placement of parasites, not running off the platform while zoned out (guilty), and nuking down adds. Anyways, Azeroth is safe and now I must go pick up garbage for the Darkmoon Faire folk.

Turny the Tree

Looks Nerfed to Me

In response to Ratshag's pondering of whether or not the Reins of the Raven Lord drop rates have been nerfed, I think they have! (Or probably not)

I haven't been to Sethekk in a while, I used to run it almost everyday on my druid when it was pretty much druid exclusive to no luck.

His post reminded me about this mount that I was still missing, and that..well I can has! It actually looks better and featherier than I had expected!

Turby the Hunter

Why Visual Input is Important

I may or may not have complained about SWTOR's gameplay feel via the distinct disjointedness of my button presses to what I see on screen, but I realized how this flowed through to affect my enjoyment of my warlock!

Just to re-iterate on my SW:TOR experience, let me transpose my trooper's abilities onto an existing warlock just so you know what I'm talking about.

Alright, pretend you see a mean enemy and you want it dead now. You cast shadowbolt at it to kill it! As you are casting shadowbolt, the enemy detects you and starts running at you! WHAT? How? Now from what we are used to, the enemy will take 100 points of damage when the shadow bolt lands. Their red health bar SHOULD go from X to X-100 when the bolt touches them. However, this is SWTOR, so the enemy has ALREADY taken 100 points of damage while your shadowbolt was in mid flight, however the visual display shows your shadowbolt split into 3 points of damage, 33, 34, 33. You see these 3 numbers and expect their health bar to go down in those little increments, but when look at the enemy's health bar, but it has already gone down in the entire 100 chunk. Does this annoy anyone else???

Anyways.

Since my Warlock has now been re-instated into "active main" status, I am doing everything I did on my hunter, but on my warlock...now. One of the first things on my list was to knock off the Cata dungeon hero achievements, so I queued up for whichever dungeon I could possibly "solo/rely upon myself" to complete and went on my way.

It was in deadmines that I noticed something weird, I was doing 28k DPS on the bosses, but I didn't "feel" like I was that strong. I pushed all my buttons correctly, lined up my soulfires and soulburns, kept my ISF up had my dots up, but something was off.

I had dot and pet damage turned on.

Because of ALL THE GODDAMN dots that I use, along with my pet's damage and also the dot that our pet leaves my target, all I see are dot ticks and my imp's fireball damage popping up on screen. It's not very glorifying to see 5,000, 10,000, 1,532, etc etc. However, I was maintaining 25k+ damage on this target!

Now I must break off and talk about my hunter. A hunter has a single dot and a pet that does not leave a dot on the target. Our attacks are straight-forward and hard hitting. Kill Command, Arcane Shot. On a regular boss pull I'll use my cooldown and see number such as: 75,000, 25,000, 25,000, 15,000, 60,000 etc etc etc. It's a little more reassuring than seeing little iddy bitty dot numbers tick away.

I turned off my dot damage.

Aha! So I see that my incinerates are actually hitting for 25k and critting upwards of 50k! Aha my conflagration hits pretty hard. Ohh, so Chaos Bolt still kinda sucks.....

Everything made sense again! In my mind, I was still stuck in early Cata when our shadowbolts and soulfires were quite lack lustre, hitting for 8k and critting for 16k so I had assumed that my incinerates were just hitting for something along the lines of 15k.

Now I must talk about Beta. The preview of our future talent trees (no matter how deadly simple or incomplete they are) is one of the driving forces behind my warlock's return. Our convuluted set-up spells are pretty much gone, our pets are sound, and --we can see our nuke damage without it being covered by dot damage---!!



 So yeah, the end!

Heroic Dungeons: Acceptable DPS and Gear

Alright my reader, let's think way way back to before Firelands, and before the Zandalaris. Think T10. No not ilvl 372, think early early Cata when a lot of us were mainly in a mix of 346s and 359s if any. Ok, got it?

Now at this time, we were both probably just running heroics and getting our points and whatnot. What was the "good" DPS doing?

Think.

Early early on I remember seeing a Shadow Priest doing 11k and thought "Wow, so amazing", everyone else was at around 9 or 10k as their non-raiding gear numbers restricted their maximum output. Ok, so 9 or 10 was good so let's say 7-8k dps is acceptable in regular heroics.

Alright, now that we've gotten that straightened out, please use the above analysis to confirm when someone SUCKS.

We do not want to see "Wrath DPS", it makes us as the tanks or healers shudder at the endlessly long fights due to 5k dps. In a Zandalari, please ensure you are able to pull at LEAST 10k. Please. And in the new Dragon Soul dungeons, please at least 18k.

Please note for a majority of players there was absolutely no access to gear above 359, nowadays we have a spattering of 365s and easily accessible 378s. Ay, there's the rub.

Though we all know gear does not equal skill. Gear is just an illusion of progression for some. Take my hunter for example, after he had mastered his class, my skill progression remained pretty much static save for the progressive knowledge of current fights. Gear essentially bumps up my raw numbers based on the total amount of numbers I am able to push out give the constraints of the numbers my gear is able to push out.

The sad thing is, some people think that receiving an upgrade somehow move them closer to their theoretical maximum than the static increase in throughput. Say you see a BM hunter who never uses Kill Command *shudder*, and all you do is hear them complain about not being geared enough, and even when they are they perform subpar. NO piece of gear is going to somehow magically "make" them push Kill Command more, or at all. Ever. Let's break this down into simpler terms.

What Gear Does For You:

-Increases your theoretical throughput. Assuming you are able to maximize every single number at every single moment.
-Increases your stats. Increases your static output.
-Increases your armour.
-May make you look better or worse.

What Gear Does Not Do For You:

-Magically teach you spell/ability priorities.
-Help you stay out of fire.
-Cure your tunnel vision.

See the difference? One may argue that with a massive increase in health/spellpower that the risks of standing in fire could be deterred. But now you're just being a BAD. Why stand in the flames in the first place and char the beautiful gear that you so lusted after? Also, there's something called Expansions that let us immensely out-HP/Damage content.

I'm not saying we shouldn't "want" gear, I am just saying that if you have no idea what you are doing, it probably won't help you and you shouldn't get too hung up about upgrades and perhaps work on learning encounters, learning your buttons, and staying out of shit.

Truny on Gear