Kurn's Q&A 22

Good evening, or perhaps good morning! Had a lovely Tuesday, including dinner with the family at my parents’ house, then got to login and play with the new chat features a little bit. Again, as stated before, please don’t be offended if I choose not to include you in my Real ID network. I feel that the tools they give us are still rather clunky and not remotely refined enough for my tastes to consider sharing with people I don’t already know in real life.

Having said that, BOY HOWDY, do we have a bunch of interesting terms this week! You’d think someone had been BORED TO DEATH at work or something! As such, starting this week, I’ll have an anonymous form for questions you’d like to ask me for this Q&A-style post. Look for it on Wednesday or Thursday.

In the meantime…

I clearly made a mistake last week when I said:

“I like seeing myself in search terms. It’s cute.”

1)

kurnmogh, why is majik the best tank?
kurnmogh, how did majik redefine the mage class and why was he so good?
kurnmogh sucks and majik rules
why is kurnmogh just not as good as majik at wow?

And my personal favourites:

how come kurn can only play any given class in world of warcraft just about half as well as majik?
how has kurnmogh played and lived in the shadow of majik for so long?

Let’s tackle these burning questions individually.

1a) Majik is the best tank because he is a stupidly good player. It’s like he’s an idiot savant.

1b) Majik was key in redefining the mage class because he was frost and he was competitive DPS through ’till Hyjal. His approach to playing his mage was one that involved using Billy, the water elemental, to his full extent, making sure to be hit-capped and generally not dying to stupid things. However, it should be noted that, while still drunk from the traditional pony keg booze after Maulgar, Majik did blink into Gruul, causing a wipe. He was so good because, as previously noted, Majik is an idiot savant when it comes to the World of Warcraft. It also helped that he was a meter whore throughout the ENTIRETY of Burning Crusade and this drove him to swap to an Arcane/Frost rotation which meant that he was constantly Arcane Explosioning on Hyjal waves. Like a tool. Sure, his numbers were huge, but I do believe he started dying more frequently at this point, which had a negative effect on his overall DPS.

1c) We’ll pair the next two together, as they’re essentially the same. It’s true, dear readers, I am not as good as Majik is at WoW. I just don’t have the instincts that he does when it comes to, well, basically anything. Majik is ten times better at this game than I am and doesn’t have this habit of forgetting to do things like pop class-specific cooldowns the way I do. (Nature’s Swiftness? What’s that?)

1d) My favourite questions! Hooray!

– Majik has four level 80s and is working on his fifth. The classes are: mage, druid, shaman and death knight. Kurn has six level 80s and they are: hunter, paladin, shaman, mage, druid, priest. As you can see, there’s some overlap. Majik’s hunter is in his 40s, Majik’s highest paladin toon still would get beat down by Hogger and Kurn hates death knights in general, so the comparison is really versus each other when it comes to a mage, a druid and a shaman.

– Given that Majik raided full-time on his mage for years, that’s not a fair comparison. This leaves us with two alts, the druids and the shaman. I fully agree I can only play the druid and shaman half as well as Majik can. Why? This is largely because I have spent all my time really focused on the paladin and the hunter.

– Thus, while I fully admit I can’t play a mage, druid or shaman as well as Majik, due in part to my not being an idiot savant, if he wants to try to level up his hunter or paladin to get a good comparison going, he is welcome to do so.

– As to living in his shadow, I’ve got to say that it was cold there in his shadow, to never have sunlight on my face. I was content to let him shine, that’s my way. I always walked a step behind. So he was the one with all the glory, while I was the one with all the strength. I wonder if he knows that I’m really his hero or everything he wishes he could be? Clearly, I am the wind beneath his wings.

Now that I’ve learned from my lesson regarding search terms, let’s move on!

2) unbound plague ticks damage

Here’s a parse of a mage in the raid having Unbound Plague for 10 seconds before passing it off:

[23:34:40.353] Mage afflicted by Unbound Plague from Professor Putricide
[23:34:41.515] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Mage Absorb (999)
[23:34:42.459] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Mage Absorb (1249)
[23:34:43.463] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Mage Absorb (1561)
[23:34:44.410] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Mage 1410 (A: 541)
[23:34:45.424] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Mage 2439
[23:34:46.359] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Mage 3049
[23:34:47.507] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Mage 3811
[23:34:48.433] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Mage 4764
[23:34:49.354] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Mage 5955
[23:34:50.399] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Mage 7444

Here’s me in the same raid for 11 ticks:

[23:37:09.981] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana 681  (A: 289)
[23:37:11.135] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana 1212
[23:37:11.978] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana 1254 (A: 261)
[23:37:13.153] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana 1895
[23:37:13.965] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana 2368
[23:37:15.331] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana 2960
[23:37:15.877] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana 3701
[23:37:17.203] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana 4626
[23:37:17.827] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana 5782
[23:37:19.300] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana 7227
[23:37:19.964] Professor Putricide Unbound Plague Madrana Absorb (9034)

So you can get an idea of the damage: it starts out very low and ramps up hugely. The damage it does isn’t too bad, but if someone with Plague Sickness gets it, that damage is increased by 250%.

3) any new way to cheat unbound plague

Well, I don’t condone cheating. Are you talking about better plague visibility now that AVR and AVRE have been broken? If so, you may want to look into using HudMap:

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/hudmap.aspx

4) dbm mark vengeful shade

Okay, here’s the problem with Vengeful Shades; they’re not able to be targetted. That means you can’t click on them to mark them, you can’t hit V and see their health bars. You just have to watch for them when they spawn and run the hell away.

5) does feign death work on frozen orbs on toravon

Yes.

6) elixir mastery will double flasks?

Okay, let’s explain this again.

As an alchemist, you get this fun thing called “Mixology” which doubles all elixir and flask *durations* and increases their effects slightly.

In order to have the *possibility* to proc extra flasks, you must be an elixir-specced alchemist, that is an Elixir Master. This will not proc all the time. This will not double your haul. This happens approximately at a 10% rate from what I’ve noticed. So for every ten flasks you make, you will roughly get one extra.

7) how many people go into frostmourne on 25 lk

On normal, this is one at a time, approximately once a minute throughout the final phase when he casts Harvest Soul on someone. On heroic, EVERYONE goes into Frostmourne.

8) lightning-infused leggings worth it

I recently crafted mine, replacing the heroic Legplates of Failing Light. After looking at the Ruby Sanctum loot tables at MMO-Champion there are NO new legs being added. That means that there are no legs higher than ilvl 264 with haste on them. So yes. Definitely worth it for any holy paladin.

9) server transfer raid lockout

It all gets cleared. I had done my daily random heroic before I transferred my paladin. Then I transferred and ran another — none were barred from me, and I also got 2 extra Emblems of Frost by virtue of doing another “first” random.

10) shadow trap lich king

Don’t stand in them. It’s not rocket science, folks.

16 Replies to “Kurn's Q&A 22”

  1. Okay, I’m still a bit in the dark when it comes to Alchemy, but when a guildie made a Flask of Distilled Wisdom for me recently (I only picked up enough mats for one, as the AH wasn’t cooperating) he got 4. Of course, I’m happy enough that I got 3 effectively free flasks. But.. what? Did I just get lucky?

    Oh btw, in case my wife gets to H LK 25 tonight, I’ll look up a vid. You’ve made me terribly curious about Frostmourne.

  2. Alchemists can proc up to 4 extra of their spec (true for pots, xmutes, and flasks), so you can theoretically get 5 for the price of one. It doesn’t happen often :P

    The number I tend to see floating around for xmutes is about a 20% increase

  3. Kaboomski – What Rilgon said. All flask recipes now give you two flasks for the mats of one. Then Elixir Master alchemists can proc extras so you get x4, x6, x8 or x10 instead of x2.

    Rilgon – :)

    thansal – No, you’re not a bad alchemist — I almost always forget that. I think it comes from being a long-term player.

    “Harvey” – Not possible, clearly. ;D

  4. Harvey – Who takes the suggestions of hastily written comments scrawled out on some pavement? Stick to the facts. :-D

  5. Kurn, just wondering, if I ever get another high level alt, is it worth moving gathering to the alt and getting alchemy leveled on my holy pally? I noticed you have both alchemy and jc maxed, which isn’t viable for me atm since I don’t have the goldflow to back up power leveling :(

    I have JC maxed though!

  6. Majik – I totally don’t even understand where that’s coming from. I’m not sure I want to know. ETA: Okay, chalk that up to “Kurn was really freaking tired.”

    Kaboomski – Well, it depends what your other profession is. If it’s mining, skinning or herbalism, yes, you eventually want to drop that and pick up another crafting profession. Alchemy was something I had on Madrana even when she was an alt. I dropped the herbalism portion of it when JC came out because I wanted to make money and have all my own gems. I’m glad I still have alchemy, though — Mixology, as noted in this very post, is great. Blacksmithing, which I hear is TERRIBLE to level, is also great because you get an extra socket on your gloves and bracers, so you can get more intellect that way, too.

    Alchemy allows me to be self-sufficient in terms of my consumables (which last double the length of a non-Alchemist’s) and allows me to gain a slight bonus from them. I wouldn’t ever change, really, although I thought about it before they changed how Mixology and flasks worked.

  7. Dude. Blacksmithing is HELL. Far worse than jewelcrafting or engineering, in my opinion.

    Never again.

  8. Smithing does suck, but I’m not sure I would call it worse than JCing or not.

    I just recently actually leveled my first JC (well, ok, she isn’t done yet, but close). The fact that I HAD to go out and farm for mats really blew me off. Some of the stuff simply wasn’t to be had on the AH, for any price…

  9. Yeah, I had that problem too, thansal, but there’s a much better market for recouping any losses with jewelcrafting. I think that offsets the suck enough to make it better than blacksmithing.

    Unless, of course, you don’t do your dailies and end up with just the Runed Cardinal Ruby and your own Dragon’s Eye cuts. <_<

  10. BS is fine if 1. you have a pocket miner somewhere 2. you plan ahead of time and buy mats when cheap and 3. you do it for the sockets and don’t plan to make money from it.
    JC on the other hand can make money, although I would hate to be starting this late with it, personally. But I suppose even then it could be done smartly.
    I’ve got JC/BS on my pally and JC/Alch on my priest, who is my ‘main alt’. I’ve got another JC and a couple other alchs, having an xmute spec or 2 is handy to feed the JC.

    Anyway, my real point was to thank you for the reminder on those pants, 100 haste, I think I need to get those, my offspec holydin is pathetically short on haste.

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