Kurn's Q&A #5

I have done virtually nothing in WoW since last Thursday. A couple random dungeons on Madrana, a couple on my druid, but I haven’t even raided. Let me tell you — being too sick to even veg out and play WoW? Not fun.

Anyways, I thought I’d do my weekly combing through my web stats and pull out 10 search terms that sent people here, as I usually do.

For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to lump all the Toravon the Ice Watcher results into one:

1) minimum stats tanking toravon, how to do toravon, toravon taunt, toravon “emblems of frost”, frost resist toravon, can you 2 heal toravon, toravon 10 how many tanks needed

That ought to be sufficient.

For tanking stats, I presume that if you can tank Koralon, you can tank Toravon. I think there’s less damage taken in the Toravon encounter overall. Figure 35k+ health for 10-man and 40k+ health for 25-man. You will only need two tanks for Toravon, just like Koralon, Emalon and (back in the day, anyways) Archavon.

I recommend taunting Toravon every 3-4 stacks of Frostbite.

Yes, Toravon drops 2 Emblems of Frost on BOTH 10-man and 25-man, just like Koralon dropped 2 Emblems of Triumph on both 10/25.

You don’t need frost resist gear for Toravon. It’s advisable to have Frost Resistance Aura from a paladin or Frost Resist Totem from a shaman, however, just to mitigate the frost damage. But resist gear is, in no way, needed.

Yes, you can 2-heal 10-man Toravon. My (not well-geared) resto shammy successfully did so with a druid. I chained off the tanks and the druid hotted up the raid.

As to how to do Toravon, here’s a guide I wrote last week.

2) “body and soul” rotface

Totally. Awesome plan. If you have a holy priest specced for Body and Soul, have them toss the infected people a shield. Good call.

3) “invisibility potion” putricide

I think I see where you’re going with this. You think if you can go invisible (like mages can) in combat, before a phase change, you can get free DPS on Putricide, right? Not bad thinking, to be honest, but I’m pretty sure this doesn’t work. During my sneaking around Orgrimmar to get the BB King achievement (that video’s still forthcoming, btw!), I used the invisibility potion to no effect once I was actually IN combat. If, however, I was fading out of visibility when I engaged mobs, it worked fine. So, sorry. Only mages and rogues, to my knowledge, can use their abilities to get some free DPS on Putricide.

4) does divine sacrifice stack

That’d be a big ol’ “no”, sorry. If you activate Divine Sacrifice and another pally does so immediately after you do, your DS will fade on yourself and the raid, and the other paladin’s will become active. You CAN use them back to back, however. On heroic Twin Valkyrs on 25-man, for light vortex, the other holy pally pops his divine shield/divine sacrifice, then I pop mine after I see his emotes in raid chat. The theory here is that his DS will have already been consumed by the insane raid damage light vortex causes by the time I go through the globals to activate my bubble and then DS.

But no, it doesn’t stack.

5) do icc bosses drop emblems of frost

Yes. Each boss on 10 and 25-man versions drops 2 Emblems of Frost, even the Airship battle. (Although that one doesn’t give you any rep.)

For clarification, here’s how you can currently get Emblems of frost:

a) 2 per level 80 character per day for the successful COMPLETION of a random heroic dungeon

b) 5 per level 80 character per week for the successful completion of the weekly raid quest

c) 4 per level 80 character per week for downing Toravon on both difficulties (2 Emblems of Frost for each 10 and 25-man kill)

d) 2 Emblems of Frost per boss killed in Icecrown Citadel on 10 and 25-man difficulties

e) 5 Emblems of Frost per ICC weekly quest completed (up to two — one on 10 and one on 25-man)

If you can down the Lower Spire, the Plagueworks, The Crimson Halls and heal up Dreamwalker, for example, on both difficulties, plus you do your random daily every day, plus you kill Toravon twice, plus doing two ICC raid quests, plus the weekly quest, you would get:

8 from Lower Spire, 6 from Plagueworks, 4 from Crimson Halls, 2 from Dreamwalker (20 total) — times 2 for 10/25-man, so that’s 40 from boss kills in ICC. Random heroic done daily is another 14 badges. Toravon dead twice is another 4. Two ICC raid quests is another 10. Then the regular weekly raid quest is another 5. So that’s like, 73 badges in a week. Yowza. Makes me want to get my non-raiding toons into ICC. :P

6) mobs dying to ret aura not giving loot

Not sure if you mean that you were just sitting there, afk, with ret aura on, and something beat on you until it died, but if that’s the case, that makes sense. Your character has to deliberately attack the mob in order to get credit/loot for the kill. Hunters and warlocks have the same problem with pets. If I send my cat over to wail on something and he kills the mob without my having even shot at the mob once, then I don’t get loot.

If you mean that the killing blow was from ret aura and you didn’t get loot, open an in-game ticket.

7) two elixir or one flask?

Well, now. That’s an interesting question and generally depends on what stats you’re looking for. As a holy paladin, I use Flask of Distilled Wisdom. But because I’m an alchemist, my flasks last two hours. So I’ll generally finish up my raids with two elixirs instead — which are actually better than the flask. I use Guru’s Elixirs and Elixirs of Mighty Thoughts. Due to my being an alchemist, I get a slight boost to each of these elixirs and will end up with slightly more mana/intellect than if I use the flask, not to mention another 200-some health from the Guru’s. So technically, it’s better for me to use the two elixirs than to flask.

Your mileage may vary, however. On my hunter, I’d much rather use a Flask of Endless Rage because 180 attack power is more than I’d get from an Elixir of Mighty Agility or Wrath Elixir along with an Elixir of Mighty Thoughts. (Why an intellect elixir? Careful Aim.)

In most situations, a flask will do just fine, but definitely check out wowhead.com for consumables you might prefer to use.

8) razuvious be tanked in icecrown gear?

No. He casts Unbalancing Strike. Apart from the fact that wowhead.com says it hits for about 100,000 physical damage AFTER mitigation, it reduces your defense rating by 100, leaving you crittable. Note that it WAS possible to tank the level 60 Razuvious in Sunwell gear, but even then, you risked an unlucky hit that would instantly kill your tank. I do not believe this would now be possible or would even be possible once we’re in Cataclysm.

9) onyxia where should healer stand

Onyxia is, believe it or not, your standard dragon fight. That means two things off the bat: being at her head is bad and being at her tail is bad. All dragon fights in this game (well, boss-dragons), without exception (I believe) have some sort of damage at the head and some sort of damage or otherwise bad thing at the tail.

So, being a healer, you should go left or right and stand about 25 yards away from Ony at her midsection, so you can heal melee, ranged and the tank. I prefer to go left, but that’s leftover from 40-man Onyxia, where I was usually in Group 1 and we had groups 1, 3, 5 and 7 go left, 2, 4, 6 and 8 go right.

10) flash of light hot tick

You know what? I always put Sacred Shield up on my target (if I’m not sharing with the other holy pally) and ALWAYS put up (and try to keep up) my Flash of Light HoT. It’s not that it ticks for anything like Rejuvenation or Renew, but it’s a bit of extra healing which is never, ever a bad thing. Does it lower your overall healing per second? Yes, because the time you spent casting Flash of Light could have been used to cast Holy Light. But honestly? I care more about keeping my tank alive than my numbers.

Raid-buffed, my FoL HoT ticks for anywhere from 450/tick to 950/tick, depending on if I crit or not. Every second for 12 seconds. That’s really not too bad. I do miss my 4pc T9, though, which doubles that.

Okay, I wrote this throughout the day. Time to post and try to get some sleep.