Kurn's Q&A #3

Kurn / / q&a, raiding, ramblings

Time for another browse through my site stats and the keywords that brought people here!

1) “does shadow ward stack with acclimation”

I actually had to look this up. Shadow Ward is a warlock spell in the Demonology tree. Acclimation is a death knight spell in the Frost tree. They are self-buffing spells only, so Shadow Ward does not stack with Acclimation as a warlock cannot get Acclimation and a death knight cannot get Shadow Ward.

If you mean the buff you get from the Blood Prince Council fight, Shadow Resonance, I do believe that Shadow Ward would stack with that. (And since it’s a buff from being the ranged/caster tank on that fight, it doesn’t matter if Acclimation stacks with it.)

2) “flask mastery”

There is no “flask mastery”. It’s Elixir Mastery in alchemy that will proc flasks. It’s been this way since The Burning Crusade and has continued into Wrath.

3) 70’s regular dungeon dk defence

Hi there, Mr. or Ms. Death Knight Tank. Thank you for doing research into defense rating! I presume that you were looking for the number your defense rating should be to render you crit-immune as you level.

540 is the number you’re looking for at 80 when fighting level 83+ (raid) bosses. 535 is the number you’re looking for at 80 when fighting 82 level (heroic) bosses.

Of course, the ratings change as you level and so level 80 numbers don’t help terribly much. What you’re looking for is when you hover over your defense rating is:

Decreases chance to be hit/critically hit by 5.6%

That’ll let you tank a boss or mobs 3 levels higher than you. Any higher than that, and you get into crushing blows, so don’t go tanking a 76 when you’re 72. You’re going to die quickly.

Remember to check your defense rating whenever you ding, because it will change due to the way the rating system works. You need less defense the lower level you are and more of it the higher level you are. That’s why 490 was the magic number for raid bosses at 70 and 540 is the magic number today.

Or something like that. Have I mentioned that I don’t do math very well?

4) “are priest still good healers? 3.3”

In a word, yes. That’s the short answer. The longer answer has to do with what you want to do with your priest. If you want to repeatedly drop 20k crit heals on your party members, then no, priests aren’t good for that. You want a pally in that case. If you want to roll Renew on the raid and pretend you’re a resto druid, then no, priests aren’t great for that, either.

Priests can have two main strengths, using Discipline and Holy specs. If you’re a disc priest, you are suddenly AMAZING at mitigating damage and do very solid single-target healing. If you’re a holy priest, you are pretty fantastic at helping to maintain the health of the raid, via Circle of Healing, Renew, Prayer of Mending and such. Both holy and disc priests come with valuable cooldowns, Pain Suppression for the disc priest and Guardian Spirit for the holy. Both specs of priests are an integral part of any raid composition. In fact, my ideal group makeup is:

2 holy paladins, 1 disc priest, 1 holy priest, 1 resto shammy, 1 resto druid

Granted, I’m biased because I’m a paladin. ;) But priests are necessary pieces of the healing composition puzzle. A disc priest is invaluable on Saurfang and Putricide for damage reduction, a holy priest is almost mandatory on heroic Anub’arak for Body and Soul and both types of priests are always able to be used in any healing situation.

So yes. They are still good healers. In fact, my guild is currently looking for a disc priest with a holy offspec, so drop a line in the comments if you’re interested.

5) “can you get rhok’delar now that they changed onyxia?”

Well, according to WoWHead, the Mature Black Dragon Sinew will be a 100% drop off the black dragonkin mobs in the Burning Steppes IF you have the quest from the Ancient Petrified Leaf. So go to MC, get the leaf from Domo’s chest (50% drop rate) and then start the quest. Once you get the quest A Proper String, you should then be able to kill dragonkin to get the sinew.

Some notes about fighting the demons, since I did this back in the day:

– you MAY be grouped when you do the demons, but no one — not even your pet, and that includes the snake trap — can do any action during the demon fights that would cause them to get on the demon’s aggro list

– you MAY be buffed prior to your engaging the demon, so long as the buff is something that just sticks on you (no renew/rejuv/etc — but kings, mark, fort, they’re all fine)

Hands-down, this was the most fun I’ve ever, ever had on my hunter. I wish I could do something like this again. And yes, that even includes the 13975 deaths I had to Franklin the Friendly/Klinfran the Crazed. That bastard.

6) “wow needle encrusted scorpion automatically passed”

That would be because you (or whoever automatically passed) already have it. It’s a unique item, not unique-equipped. So check your bank or your bags, because you can’t get a second Needle-Encrusted Scorpion. Sadly. :)

7) “how do i get to dalaran”

Well, Dalaran is the major city in Northrend, so I get why you want to go there. :) If you’re low-level, the best way is just to get a mage to port you there. If you want to be able to fly out of there, however, you’ll want to make sure you have the flight point at Wyrmrest Temple, too. That’s a good hub and definitely links up to Dalaran. What I like to do is link the following (Alliance-only, sorry!) routes as I’m levelling (from West to East):

Valiance Keep (Borean Tundra), Unu’pe (Borean Tundra), Star’s Rest (Dragonblight), Wyrmrest Temple (Dragonblight), Wintergarde Keep (Dragonblight), Amberpine Lodge (Grizzly Hills), Westguard Keep (Howling Fjord), Valgarde (Howling Fjord). That allows me to fly from one start zone to the other, and will give me a connection to Dalaran as well.

As a mage, at level 71, you get a quest to go to Dalaran and you learn the Teleport: Dalaran spell. Everyone, I believe, gets a quest to go to Dalaran at level 74 (which is when a mage gets the spell for Portal: Dalaran).

As to where it actually is, it’s in Crystalsong Forest, north of Dragonblight. :)

8) “tanks who taunt on pull”

They’re dumb. No, really. They are. They go in and taunt, which has no real effect, and then their taunts are on cooldown when the over-eager DPS opens up. Splat goes the DPS and the tank tries to get aggro back as best they can. Unless the taunt has a damage component to it (like a paladin’s Hand of Reckoning), this is a super dumb move. And even then, it’s not like a paladin doesn’t have better ranged pulling options. Seriously.

I refer you to Kurn’s Guide on How to Behave as a Tank in Dungeons, point #4.

9) wow gemmin t9 paladin

Well, T9 is pretty good gear. I mean, coming from the perspective that this used to be available solely through badges earned in TOC/TOGC and off Koralon, it’s pretty good. Now you can get all your emblems from heroics and buy ilvl 232 without ever setting foot in TOC.

That said, I don’t know what spec you are, random T9 paladin, looking for gemming advice.

However…

Holy: Probably want to gem all 20 intellect gems, called Brilliant King’s Amber, (unless you’re a FoL spammer stacking spellpower, in which case, I doubt you would google for gem advice) with 1 orange gem (Luminous Ametrine) and 1 green gem (Dazzling Eye of Zul) to satisfy your meta requirements. Or, get a Nightmare Tear for the meta requirement and gem intellect everywhere else.

Prot: Make sure you’re at 540 defense, that you have met your meta requirement and then gem 30 stamina with Solid Majestic Zircons.

Ret: Make sure you’re not ignoring your hit and expertise caps, meet your meta requirement, then go nuts with the 20 strength gems called Bold Cardinal Ruby.

10) wow icc 10m composition

Basically, you want 2 tanks, 5 DPS and 3 healers. You ideally want one of the healers to be a direct healer (pally/disc priest) and one of them to be a raid healer (holy priest, resto druid, resto shammy). You want the third healer, not the single direct or a single raid healer, to have a DPS offspec.

You do the first four bosses with 2 healers, then switch to 3 healers for Rotface, have 2 for Festergut and then 2-3 for Professor Putricide. For the Crimson Halls, you’ll DEFINITELY want 3 healers for the Blood Prince Council and probably 3 for Queen Lana’thel. (Haven’t done her yet.)

Apart from that, things you’ll want to include:

– Blessing of Kings (1 pally or Drums of Forgotten Kings)

– Gift of the Wild (1 druid or Drums of the Wild)

– Fortitude (1 priest or Runescroll of Fortitude)

– Replenishment. I don’t care if it’s even a frost mage, Replenishment is soooo good.

– At least 1 person to cleanse curses for Deathwhisper (moonkin/resto druid, resto shammy, mage)

– At least 1-2 ranged DPS for Saurfang kiting of the adds

– At least 1 ranged DPS who can tank on Princes

That’s the bare basics. What is also nice, but still basic:

– Heroism/Bloodlust

– Blessing of Might/Battle Shout

– Blessing of Wisdom/Mana Spring Totem

– Hand of Sacrifice/Pain Suppression/Guardian Spirit

– Strength of Earth Totem/Horn of Winter

– Flametongue Totem/Totem of Wrath/Demonic Pact

– Swift Retribution Aura/Improved Moonkin Aura

– Rampage/Leader of the Pack

That’s just my two cents, really. I don’t even go into Trueshot Aura/Abominable Might and Windfury and all that jazz. The possible combinations are really hard to be “bad” as long as most of the basics are taken care of.

On a related note, I’m getting a LOT of search terms regarding strats, so I’ll be posting basic strats for the Lower Spire and the Plagueworks in the coming days, which should be workable for both 10 and 25-man groups.

New header image.

Kurn / / ramblings

So since I’m doing more than just talking about Kurn and Madrana, I thought I’d include shots of my toons. Kurn’s up top left, Madrana is top right, then we have the priest, the mage (yes, she looks exactly like Madrana. Shut up.) and then my two druid roles, then my shammy.

The new armory is spectacularly awesome in that if you log in, you can then SAVE your toon’s position. It’s so cool! All those shots were taken from the armory except the druid forms, which I snagged from elsewhere. WTB armory that shows you stats and appearance while in forms, PST.

Druid and Priest levelling

Kurn / / druids, facepalm, healers, lfg, priests, ramblings, tanks

I spent a little while running a few random dungeons on my now-level-72 Disc priest over on Eldre’Thalas on Friday and ran a couple randoms on my level 73 resto/feral tank druid today, with my brother on his level 72 hunter.

Some observations:

1) Priests are excessively squishy. Like, ow.

2) Also on the priest, I ran with a tank who refused to allow the hunter with us to tame a wolf in Utgarde Keep. That’s the bad news, that he (or she) didn’t read party chat AT ALL. Or if they did, they didn’t understand English. The good news is that every single time the hunter pulled the wolf he wanted off the tank, the tank would Death Grip it riiiiight back. So… good tank. Except that they didn’t read party chat.

3) Mass dispell is pretty freaking phenomenal. Properly specced (with 2/2 Focused Power) that’s a .5 second cast. Awesome. And the area of effect on it is HUGE.

4) I’ve only cast Greater Heal a couple of times. PW:S + Flash Heal + Flash Heal, with a Renew already there… Honestly, it works well. I’ve used Power Infusion on myself a couple times for a hasted Prayer of Healing and I always forget about Prayer of Mending for the first few pulls, but I think I’m starting to adjust to disc healing.

5) I was strongly expecting to tank on my druid on Saturday afternoon with my brother tagging along as DPS on his hunter, but apparently, healers were in demand today. So we got Nexus. With a tank so dumb that… that I lack a witty punchline that would properly convey his stupidity to you. I’m okay with doing things slightly different here and there, but when you go RIGHT down the Nexus hallway from the start and then clear to the entrance of Anomolous’ wing and keep going for HIM, INSTEAD of going to Ormorok, then I’m going to question your sanity.

The other hunter in the group died at some point. I can’t remember why I didn’t rez him. I think he may have released and zoned back in while we were still in combat. But because of the direction we’d gone and the seriously SCREWED UP path we took through trash, he died twice more while coming to us.

I actually feel badly about this, but I vote kicked him for not staying put and letting us come to him. We got a mage who promptly got himself killed by going left and not seeing the trash. Then he died again while trying to invis through trash to us. What on EARTH is so complicated about “Stay there. We’re coming to you. Don’t move.”??

We eventually wound up killing all the bosses, but the run took close to 45 minutes.

6) My brother dinged 72 while in The Nexus and I was four bars from 74, so we requeued and got Azjol-Nerub. With me healing. Again. Considering how rarely I get to heal on any toon who can tank, I was confused.

So we blow through AN, which is my brother’s first time there. I’m seriously getting used to druid healing. The way I’ve got my Clique setup means that it’s almost like playing the piano. Ctrl-click that, alt-click that, shift-click that. I don’t even know the binds by heart, but it flows really naturally when I’m playing. And I love that I rarely have to use Regrowth or Healing Touch, although I did use Tranquility once in each instance today.

7) Standing in Hadronox’s poison is bad, just FYI. If you are glowing green, you are standing in poison that is going to kill you. Sorry.

8) Okay. Tanks, listen up. How to avoid Anub’arak’s POUND ability and, as a special bonus, Ingvar’s DARK SMASH/SMASH abilities:

Three words: Run through him. Neither one changes direction once the cast is coming. Watch the cast bar. If you see DARK SMASH or SMASH for Ingvar or POUND for Anub’arak, run directly through the boss until you are on his other side.

You may then want to turn around so they don’t beat you from behind when they’re done casting.

We’ll all miss one here or there, but knowing how to deal with these abilities is seriously important in both regular and heroic versions of Utgarde Keep and Azjol-Nerub.

My druid is still 73, 2 bars from 74 and yet I have this overwhelming urge to throw bubbles at people…

Left scratching my head…

Kurn / / paladins, ramblings

So, as some of you may be aware, I applied to WoW.com to be their new holy paladin columnist. Today, in their paladin column, The Light and How to Swing It, they announced that Chase Christian had been selected to be the new holy paladin columnist.

This gentleman appears to also be the rogue behind their Encrypted Texts column. It appears, after a little research, that Mr. Christian has levelled a holy paladin because his guild needed one.

Honestly, I don’t think someone who has spent the last X number of years raiding as a rogue is going to be able to do a good job in terms of helping the paladin community with the holy side of things. I have no idea how long he’s had a paladin, but I know that I don’t know all the subtleties of all of my alts. I don’t even know all the subtleties of a hunter. But I’m fairly confident that I know my stuff when it comes to a holy paladin. Much like Mr. Christian probably knows the insides and outs of being a rogue.

Out of curiousity, I listened to a few minutes of the WoW Insider show today after it had been broadcast, as Mr. Christian was a guest. They mentioned that he’ll be writing the new holy paladin column and asked what he thought he would bring to the column.

His reply was something along the lines of “well I don’t know how many times I can say stack intellect in every socket…”

Uh? Sure, most paladins do stack int in every socket. I’m no exception. But there are other raiding holy paladins who don’t stack int — they stack spellpower. They are the Flash of Light spammers who use Seal of Light and its associated Glyph and stack spellpower and basically use that. So you have a Holy Light bombing paladin, stacking int and being responsible for the big incoming heals, and you have the Flash of Light spammer who is responsible for keeping the 1-second FoL heals coming constantly.

Further, what about new-to-80 holy paladins? You can’t just stack intellect the instant you hit 80, or even while levelling. You need to hit about 2000 spellpower first and THEN work on your intellect, or else your heals are just not going to be strong enough to keep your targets up. What does it matter if you have 25,000 mana if your Holy Light doesn’t hit for enough to keep your tank up?

Yes, I realize that Mr. Christian’s comment on the WoW Insider show was likely a joke, but I am not at all convinced that he’s the right person for the job. Maybe I’m not either, but I’ve raided as a holy paladin for all of Burning Crusade and all of Wrath and chunks of pre-BC. I think I know how my class works.

Having said that, what on earth was the point of WoW.com calling for applications for the holy paladin column if they were going to consider an internal candidate? I’m not a business genius, but convention has it, in many businesses, that a job goes around internally first, then external applicants get their shot.

I have no idea how many people applied to the holy paladin column, but let’s imagine (and I think I’m probably low-balling it) that 150 people applied.

That’s 150 people who took the time to sit down and come up with:

– 10 sample topics

– 1 sample article of about 500 words

– 1 pretend letter to Blizzard about their class/spec of about 1000 words

That doesn’t include your background and why you think you’d do a good job.

I spent approximately 4-5 hours on my application, re-reading, re-writing, editing and trying to cut my sample article down from 920 words to 500. (I got it down to 606 and honestly couldn’t snip another word.)

Assume not everyone of those estimated 150 people spent 4-5 hours on their application. Imagine 150 people spent an average of 2 hours on their applications. I don’t think that’s too far-fetched, because you needed approximately 1500 words in terms of sample writing in order to apply.

That’s probably 300-some hours of work. That’s 12 days and 12 hours of work by what I think is an obscenely low number of potential applicants.

So you’re telling me that WoW.com basically wasted two weeks’ of people’s collective time and then decided to get the rogue writer to do the holy paladin column?

Nice.

I’ll read a couple of Mr. Christian’s paladin columns, but if I am not absolutely blown away by his work, I’m going to start going elsewhere for my World of Warcraft news.

In the meantime, look for some holy paladin-specific material to crop up right here.

More PUG failure! Hooray!

Kurn / / apotheosis, lfg, mages, ramblings

I may just take a break from using the random dungeon tool for a few days. The stupid makes my head hurt.

Today, my hunter got Drak’Tharon Keep. And the name of my warrior tank was hilarious.

Apotheosis. My old guild’s name. Awesome, right? Wrong. Our healer is a druid and had just switched to his (or her) resto spec and had no mana… and also had other gear on. What does Mr. Slandering My Guild’s Name do? He chain pulls the whole hallway and half of the first room. The ENTIRE TIME, in party chat, the druid is going “WAIT” and “NEED TO SWAP GEAR” and stuff.

That Drak’Tharon Keep run ended for me when we wiped TWICE on King Dred. Well, I only died once because FD was on cooldown, but after the second time, AND Mr. Needs A Name Change didn’t run back for his healer, I left. Screw that nonsense. And then, despite the fact it truly saddened me, I put Apotheosis on ignore.

You bastard. Using my guild’s name and being a dickweed? That is NOT the Apotheosis way. :P I left the group, requeued, and… wound up back in DTK. No problems. Got a couple people their Better off Dred achievement, too.

Madrana’s Azjol-Nerub run went fine, thankfully. I didn’t feel like tanking so I queued as just a healer. It’s nice to not have to tank.

The shammy was less fortunate than my paladin. I got Trial of the Champion. Which, you know, should be fine, right? Again, we would be wrong.

While standing in front of the Horde champions, I realize that the paladin tank has buffed us.

That’s right. Buffed us. All of us. With SANCTUARY. The group makeup is pally tank, DPS DK, mage, hunter and me on my shammy, healing.

So naturally, I ask for kings.

(The tank also had Crusader Aura up ’till I asked for a change in aura.) But basically, I was agog. The tank actually believed that Sanctuary was the same thing as kings, but you got less damage taken.

Strictly speaking, he’s wrong. But for a tank, a paladin tank at that, he’s more or less correct. You lose 10% agility as opposed to Kings when you use Sanc, but you gain an obscene amount of mana from the blocks, dodges and parries, plus you get your 10% stam for your health pool and you get 10% strength for your threat.

Does not mean that a resto shaman has any use for any of that. How many attacks will I block, dodge and parry, if I even get attacked at all?

The one who did cry was the hunter. I should have spat out “you don’t get 10% agility when you have Sanc, buddy”, but the paladin relented and gave me kings. Doesn’t mean the MAGE and the HUNTER didn’t still have Sanc, but whatever. And for that cry comment, I will admit, I let the hunter die on the Black Knight. And almost didn’t rez him before leaving the group. I also elected to use Wrath of Air totem just to spite the pally tank, even though it was just me and the mage who would benefit.

Oh, and more proof that the pally tank was fail:

STOP USING SEAL OF WISDOM, YOU MORONS. Seals of Wisdom and Light are basically for the holy paladins of the world. Seal of Command is primarily ret, occasionally prot. Seal of Vengeance is prot. STOP BEING NIMRODS and using Seal of Wisdom even when your mana bar is FULL.

Finally, I spent a mana bar’s worth of casts at the heroic target dummy in IF to determine what the hell I should use as an Arcane mage — Flamestrike or Blizzard. My Rotation was: Flamestrike 9, Flamestrike 8, Blizzard. I did this five times, emptying my mana bar almost entirely. This is, of course, an extremely small sample size, but I think that under the controlled conditions, it’s a relatively accurate comparison.

56,054 damage from Blizzard versus 48,057 damage from Flamestrike and its dot. This leads me to believe that Ignite and the various fire-related crit talents are a HUGE component of Flamestrike damage, since I have no Frost talents to improve Blizzard at all. So I do believe that the resto shammy believed me to be a FFB (Frostfire Bolt) specced mage when, neener neener, I am Arcane or Frost, depending on which of my two specs is active. So THERE.

Random Dungeon Storytime!

Kurn / / facepalm, hunters, lfg, mages, paladins, ramblings, shamans

So last night, after my raid (in which I did awesomely in terms of numbers since I was the only holy paladin in the raid), I did the random heroic on 3.5 toons.

On the paladin, I got Utgarde Pinnacle. Nothing seriously good or bad happened except that an enhancement shammy got flattened by Skadi or whatever his name is and, *while* I’m casting the rez, he’s all “rez plz”.

So I’m like “I was, you know, casting the rez.”

“ty”

And the tank, a gnome DK, was like “U MAD? LOL”

The tank, who was subpar to begin with, got put on ignore after the run. :P

Then poor Kurn got Oculus. >< Not only did I get Oculus, which I desperately was not in the mood for, but the holy paladin healer was a dumbass who clearly does not know how to read chat.

As I do in every random run where there’s one paladin, I hit my Drums of Forgotten Kings macro.

I don’t know. Maybe I should figure out how to actually link the item in the macro. Why? Because after waiting about 15-20 seconds for an acknowledgement or the pally to actually start buffing, neither of which happened, I buffed kings.

The pally, IMMEDIATELY thereafter, started buffing everyone… with 10m kings.

My buffs. Granted, it’s Oculus. And we spend half our time on stupid dragons. But really? Overwriting my 8% kings that has a 30m duration with a 10% kings with 10m? Instead of giving me and the DK and the two feral druids might? Instead of giving him or herself wisdom? And you’ll note there’s Crusader Aura, too. Guess what aura was up THE ENTIRE RUN? That’s right. Crusader Aura.

The paladin met my ignore list right after the run.

Then the shammy healed… Utgarde Pinnacle. Yet again, my tank was a gnome death knight. Apart from no one initially picking up the harpoons, and the mage AND warlock pets pulling unwanted mobs on TWO separate occasions (I let the mage die because of it), it went fairly smoothly.

At this point, I was exhausted and wanted, desperately, to go to bed. But just one more random on my mage for the Emblems of Frost, right? Couldn’t be too bad, right?

Wrong.

I get Halls of Lightning. Eh, better than Halls of Stone, I reason. So I buff everyone, put down a table, put Focus Magic on the resto shammy and we’re off.

We do the first pull and the tank runs down to the second pull and I start casting Blizzard.

“don’t forget to flamestrike and then downrank flamestrike” the resto shammy whispers to me.

“I don’t really use Flamestrike,” I reply.

“you should” he says.

Now hold the phone, here. I’m 57/3/11. That’s an Arcane build. Near as I can figure, along with WoWWiki, talents which improve Flamestrike’s damage are:

Ignite, which I don’t have

Critical Mass, which I don’t have

Fire Power, which I don’t have

Pyromaniac, which I don’t have

So is there any reason for me to cast not one, but two ranks of Flamestrike with 0 fire talents benefitting it when I can just cast Blizzard? Blizzard has, near as I can figure, three talents in the Frost tree that directly benefit it, and only two of them benefit its damage. Improved Blizzard doesn’t increase damage, but adds a chill to it. Piercing Ice would give me 6% more damage to Blizzard and Arctic Winds (which I can’t seem to link to from the talent name, for some reason, but is at http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=31678 ) would give me 5% more damage to Blizzard.

Ignite gives me 40% more damage if I crit, I’d get 6% more chance to crit from Critical Mass, I’d do 10% more damage from Fire Power and 3% more chance to crit from Pyromaniac. So shouldn’t I just cast Blizzard? I miss out on 11% damage from Frost talents vs. 10% damage from Fire talents, but I miss out on Ignite and the extra crit chance to help proc Ignite if I cast Flamestrike.

Basically, is it just me, or did the resto shammy think I was a FFB mage?

Since I hadn’t (and still haven’t fully) done my research, I just stopped responding, but he kept it up. I told him that I was just playing to have fun, get my badges. “but thats why your last” he said. I checked my recount. I was, indeed, doing less damage than the rest of the DPS. But really, this is my 4th 80, who has been 80 for less than a month. Do I really care?

“Dude,” I responded, “this is my 4th 80. I really, REALLY don’t care.”

Shortly thereafter, we had a death in the group. One of the DPS died on a pack pre-first boss. Well, we then accidentally (?) pulled the CHARGED boss. So we had a pack of trash, PLUS the boss and his adds.

Other DPS dies.

I start focusing the adds, being that I’m the only DPS still alive. The resto shammy is typing, all in caps “RUN BACK RUN BACK” and the DPS are basically just lying there. “after the boss dies” they said. Apparently, they didn’t understand that it was POSSIBLE that the boss WOULD NOT DIE if they didn’t run back.

So it takes something like five minutes. And the resto shammy wants us to WIPE so that the dead DPS don’t “get a free badge”. So he actually RUNS AWAY from me and the tank and doesn’t heal the tank for the last 40-some seconds of the fight. Well, over the course of the five minutes, I used 2 mana gems, an evocation and a mana potion and we finally got the boss down, no thanks to the resto shammy.

So he’s all like “i’m not rezzing you” to the dead people and I just snapped at him.

“Dude, you’re just a dick,” I said.

“says the fail mage,” he replies.

“Fuck you, buddy,” I said, then left the group, putting him on ignore. I don’t normally give people the opportunity to report me for even something as minor as profanity, but my patience was at an end.

In all fairness, perhaps I am a fail mage. Perhaps I SHOULD be using two ranks of Flamestrike or whatever on AOE. I honestly don’t know. But that guy was my definition of a jackass. Everything he said set me on edge, his suggestion to WIPE on the first boss was ridiculous and clearly he’s a nimrod if he wants to NOT heal his tank so that he can better facilitate his stupid wipe idea. I also think he’s a bad healer for letting two of his DPS die, but hey, if the DPS dies, it’s their own damn fault, usually.

So I left the group, ignored him and logged off and went to bed. :P

And now I’m doing research to figure out what my AOE spell should be. Clearly, Arcane Explosion is a deathwish, since I wear cloth. :P

And this post from Critical QQ says I should use Blizzard. Granted, the post is 9 months old.  Eh, I’ll figure it out.

So those were yesterday’s randoms. I hope today’s will be less interesting.

Huntard Sighting

Kurn / / facepalm, hunters, lfg, ramblings

I ran my daily random heroic on my shammy today and was greeted with Old Kingdom. They’d already done the first two bosses (although I don’t believe the dungeon finder told me it was already in progress) and were going down to the fungus boss, with Jedoga and the last guy both still up.

Honestly, every time I see a huntard, a tiny part of me dies.

We got to Jedoga after the fungus guy. To refresh your memories, Jedoga Shadowseeker is the one who summons volunteers to make their way towards her and we have to kill them, lest she get a buff from them that can, in many circumstances, kill a tank. So I remind them, as the healer, to not stand in Thundershock and to kill the volunteers when they become active.

We have no problems downing the volunteers and the boss, so we go on and finish up the instance.

But then, out of curiousity, I checked my recount’s damage and facepalmed. Here’s the damage from the Jedoga fight.

Top DK was DPS. The pally was DPS. The second DK was the tank. And right there, above me (thankfully) is the huntard.

Just low DPS isn’t my problem. Nope. I don’t care about low DPS. We killed the boss with no issue. My problem is this:

So hang on a second here. He did 3013 damage to THE THREE VOLUNTEERS? His PET did more damage to volunteers than he did? As if that wasn’t bad enough… he used Volley. I’m sorry. VOLLEY. On a single-target fight? VOLLEY?

Here’s his breakdown. On the whole fight. 11 autos, 4 hits of Volley (so one cast, it looks like), 3 steady shots and FIVE, count ’em, FIVE concussive shots. Conc shot is on a 12 second cooldown. So… I’m sorry, did he nail all three of the volunteers with it (I’m not sure that even works, to be honest) and then hit the boss with it? Twice? Even though bosses are immune? What the hell was he doing, just standing there?

It makes me want to cry.

Problems with all this:

1) Not enough focus damage to volunteers. Although we can give him the benefit of the doubt and maybe, MAYBE Concussive Shot works on them and MAYBE he was focused on slowing them down. But that’s your first global. Don’t just stand there like an idiot. Hit Arcane Shot, Multishot. ANYTHING to up the damage on the volunteer. DROP A TRAP, for crying out loud! (He’s BM, so he has no Chimera Shot, no Explosive Shot and also isn’t specced for Aimed Shot.)

2) Don’t use Volley for single-targets. Had it not been his SECOND kill of Jedoga, according to his armory, I wouldn’t fault him for using Volley once. But of all the abilities to use on this fight, Volley is the stupidest one. In the first place, there is no point in the fight where you fight more than one mob. Period. In the second place, if you’re using it on a volunteer, yay, EXCEPT the volunteer moves OUT of your Volley circle.

3) Even BM hunters have a shot rotation. According to the Warcraft Hunter’s Union (written by Frostheim, who now does Scattered Shots at wow.com), it is this:

  1. Put Hunter’s Mark on target (usually before combat begins, or as part of a macro)
  2. Send pet in to attack
  3. Put up Serpent Sting (reapply to boss when it goes down)
  4. Arcane Shot
  5. Hit Steady Shot or Multi-Shot/Aimed Shot until Arcane is off cooldown

Didn’t notice HM either way, but he did use his pet. But there’s no Serpent Sting damage, there’s no Arcane Shot use, there’s just auto, steady, conc and volley. Don’t even look at his armory. It’s even more painful than his poor play. IT HURTS, PEOPLE. IT HURTS. :(

Granted, he just dinged 80 on January 12th, according to the armory. So, okay, yeah, he’s still learning. But WHY is it so difficult for people to do even the slightest amount of research on HOW TO DO SOMETHING before they wind up in my groups? In your groups? In anyone’s groups? (I also had a fail bear tank in my UK run today on my hunter and a fail pally tank in my DTK run on my mage today. Sigh.) Take an hour. Read up on your talent spec, your glyphs (huntard is missing a major glyph), your gems, your enchants, your gear and YOUR CLASS ABILITIES and how to effectively merge them all together to become one kick-ass killing/tanking/healing machine.

Please.

Kurn's Q&A Time #2

Kurn / / q&a, ramblings

So I went poking through my site stats again. Let’s look at a few interesting search terms, shall we?

1) holy paladin improved judgements

Please, please, God, please have shown holy paladins to go to this entry:

http://kurn.apotheosis-now.com/?p=317

2) “halls of reflection” heroic howto

Head over to Kurn’s Guide on How to do Heroic Halls of Reflection Without Being Lame and Cheap. Note that I don’t mention the cliff “strat”. That’s because it is, in my mind, an exploit, similar to standing on the ledge in Mandokir’s room in ZG. In other words, just plain ridiculous.

3) addon healer is drinking

Well, now, this could be interesting. I don’t actually know of an addon that lets you see if your healer is drinking, like that pops up with “ZOMG DON’T PULL HEALER IS DRINKING” or something. If one exists, please post in the comments!

Otherwise, keep an eye on your healer’s mana bar. Basically, if they’re above half, you’re good to go on trash. You can also, you know, look at the party portrait of your healer and see if they’ve got the eating/drinking buffs on them, or just watch your healer to see if they’re eating or drinking. But thank you for being considerate of your healer’s mana!

4) can dps use death and decay in instance

The quick answer is yes. The longer answer is, let your tank pick up all the adds, first. While Death and Decay is good damage, it’s also high-threat. You’re going to pull off the tank if you drop it ASAP unless your tank is totally on the ball.

5) does flask of frost wyrm proc with elixir master

Why yes, yes it does. So do all flasks, from Flask of Distilled Wisdom to Flask of Stoneblood. Flasks count as elixirs for some unknown reason. And that’s why very few people were potion masters in BC and now that you can use one potion per fight, even fewer alchemists are potion-specced. I was potions for a long time, given that I use to live on mana potions in a raid, but even I gave that up and went elixir.

6) could a balanced nightseye gem count as two sockets

Yes! It astounds me how few people realize this.

Purple gems (like nightseye, twilight opal, dreadstone) are a mix of red and blue stats. Red and blue make purple. So a purple gem counts for both 1 red and 1 blue.

Orange gems (monarch topaz, ametrine) are a mix of red and yellow stats. Red and yellow make orange. So an orange gem counts for both 1 red and 1 yellow.

Green gems (forest emerald, eye of zul) are a mix of blue and yellow stats. Blue and yellow make green. So a green gem counts for both 1 blue and 1 yellow.

A Nightmare Tear matches any socket AND counts as all three of the gems and so is known as a “prismatic” gem. So if you’re a holy paladin with an Insightful Earthsiege Diamond as your meta (and it should be!), having one Nightmare Tear in your gear somewhere will be enough to activate your meta all on its own.

Also, a note about the Eternal Belt Buckle. This adds an extra socket to your belt. It is a “prismatic” socket, because it can hold any colour gem. You are NOT required to use a prismatic gem (such as the Nightmare Tear) in this socket! I still see WAY too many people walking around with a Nightmare Tear in their belts for no reason other than the fact that they think they can’t have another gem in there.

7) hunter kiting dk icc boss

Ah, on Saurfang, are we? Your job, hunters, is likely to wail on the blood beasts he calls out. Watch your boss mod timers, drop a frost trap near the spawn points and use Distracting Shot to get them to walk over it towards you. Hope your range knows how to focus fire! :)

8) getting a mage geared for icecrown citadel

I’m still a pretty craptastic mage, but for anyone aiming to gear up for ICC, here’s what I recommend:

– 4/5 Tier 9 (232 is okay, but 245 is better and 258 would be amazing)

– All the badge items you can get that are ilvl 245 that actually, you know, help your toon out

– A couple 264 badge items

– Friendly or Honored Ashen Verdict ring

That’s assuming you’re trying to app to an ICC guild. That’s probably what I’d be looking for in terms of gear from just about anyone. Pugging it will probably require full T9 and a handful of ilvl 245 items. On my server, you get laughed at if your “gear score” is under 5000. (I do not like the concept of “gear score”, but it’s become a fairly sad reality on Proudmoore.)

9) pugs having problems with second wing in ice crown

No freaking kidding. Rotface and Festergut and Professor Putricide aren’t a walk in the park like the Airship or anything. There’s a lot of coordination that needs to take place on all of these fights. I haven’t even killed Putricide yet (although I came close on 10-man last night). Hopefully we’ll down him tonight before the new content opens up tomorrow.

10) why are so many dps idiots

Haha, okay, my final search term for the day. Honestly, I wish I knew. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that the DPS has one job — kill stuff. They don’t really need to worry about dispelling stuff (except mages! You should always decurse!!!). They really have very little in terms of responsibility. You lose a DPS on a fight, eh, big deal. You can still down a boss with the remaining DPS. They’re expendable. I think that because they focus on that one job so much, they ignore everything else except their own damage meters. So they don’t care if they pull aggro, they blame the tank. Guess what, buddy? If you pull aggro off your tank, YOU ARE WRONG. If you don’t save the healer’s ass by sacrificing yourself or your pet or something, YOU ARE WRONG. So what if the boss enrages? Gotta be the healers’ fault for letting DPS die, right? WRONG.

DPS has to stay out of crap on the floor, has to down adds, has to beat enrage timers. And sadly, 75%+ of the DPS out there are total morons who wouldn’t know what Naxx looks like because they’re spending all their time in the instance staring at their meters.

Pro tip: Pay attention to your surroundings and your Omen window instead of Recount.

The Decline of Random Group Quality

Kurn / / dungeons, facepalm, general, lfg, ramblings

I’m getting increasingly worried by what I perceive to be a trend. That trend is the lack of quality in random groups.

I pug a lot. I have the pet pug on all four of my 80s. When the new 5-mans came out, I pugged them constantly. I’m now down to pugging four times a day on my 80s (plus the weekly raid, but that’s a whole other story), once on each of the four for two Emblems of Frost each.

Increasingly, people suck.

In the last 24 hours, I have four stories of failure. Not necessarily to mean that the group didn’t finish the instance, but failure nonetheless.

Continue reading “The Decline of Random Group Quality”