Epics, DPS report, and Fury DPS Rotation Breakdown

I promised yesterday I would post a Screenshot if I ever get a 2H weapon.

Well here it is!

Don't mind the roasted pig on the left =). After a month of waiting for a 2H to drop I finally was able to get replacement for my sub par weapons.

I got the following loots last night

Armageddon - pretty nice 2H. This is really not the ideal Main hand for fury warriors as we want Slow/Slow combo but this one was a great pick up nevertheless.

Inevitable Defeat - more of a DK tanking weapon IMO but again another big upgrade so I took it anyway.

I picked this one up from the trash to Noth a few minutes after I got Armageddon.

Crude Discolored Battlegrips - got this one from patchwerk. I will lose 4pc bonus next raid when I do wear it but I gain more stats.

Grim Troll - Beast Trinket. This one procs alot and I mean alot. My armor ignore goes up to 50%+ when this trinket procs and I like it. Plus the hit allowed me to swapped in 16hit for 16str gem.

With all these gear changes I ended up not being expertise cap for dodge. So I went thru all my gems again and I found that I'm way over hit cap for specials.

I changed another 16hit gem into a 8expertise/8hit gem. Turned out I was exactly at the cap at 4.5% + 2%(from talent) ignore dodge.

DPS Report

Well we were all pumped cause we were getting ready to get the Immortal title but something went wrong at Patchwerk that killed almost all of melee.

Some F*ing genius decided to shrink Patchwerk. By doing that he shrunk the boss' hit box which in turn made him kill all nearby melee!

After that the next 2 hours of the run would turn into a lag fest.

You know it's bad when Thaddius take's 5 sec to cast Polarity shift and then another 5 to wait for your debuff to show up. He went on to Enrage and for some miracle 2-3 people lived to finish the job. It was messy but we were glad it's over.

Me and SPQR(other TG Warrior) were trading wins in the DPS races.

Here are a couple of SS I took last night

This was from Loatheb

This one is from Kelthuzad

I was 3rd but check out my DPS. I was at 4k. My hits were all critting like crazy during the last 20 sec.

For the rest of the bosses we were pretty even. Sometimes I would pass him sometimes he would do the same. It would be interesting to see the results next week with my new gemmed and enchanted gear, my weapons(the new ones) didn't have an enchant but they were still better than the ones I was using.

Which brings up another thing, Enchants. The weapons that I have looted are not top end weapons in the game right now. So I'm not gonna put berserking on both of them.

I plan on putting the old Mongoose/+85 AP combo from my old weapons. Now I just need to look up the mats again.

I think the leadership decided to do Naxx on another day besides Tuesday to avoid another lagfest which I think is a good move.

Fury DPS Rotation

Well there is no magic here really. I should have taken SS of recount on all bosses for my personal DPS breakdown but I tend to forget after I pick up my emblem.

I do BT>WW>Slam if up>HS till BT is up>Heroic Throw when everything else is down.

I can't say I'm 100% disciplined on that rotation, which I should but sometimes I use Slam even though I'm suppose to hit WW cause my Bloodthirst crit. Then sometimes I would hit another special causing the use of BT/WW delays which results in lower DPS.

When Bloodlust is called

I pop my trinket(s) as soon as BT and WW is on CD.

I use recklessness during the duration of Bloodlust but sometimes I vary it

Sometimes I would just use it after a Bloodlust then do BT-Slam-WW combo with all of them being a guaranteed crit.

There are times though when I use Recklessness with the boss having less than 20%. I would include Execute in that combo. A guaranteed 12-14k crit is pretty awesome sometimes.

What I'm still trying to figure out is timing my executes w/o Reck. Sometimes I would get lucky on execute crits. When they do it's awesome. If not I tend to get rage starve and my dps goes lower.

I think I'll just stick to my rotation and use Executes instead of Heroic Strikes. Next week I'll be sure to take SS of breakdowns of my DPS.

Well there it is.

Another exciting night from WoW Raiding. Our next raid isn't scheduled till Sunday/Monday for Sartharion with 3 drakes up.

EDIT: I also got this achievement last night

Blog Update

I have added another Gadget that shows what game's I am currently playing wether it be PC or Console games.

With WoW being too easy right now I will be dividing my game time playing WoW and console games. WoW will still be my main game, attending raids whenever we have one. I want to experience/play other games that I have passed to play in the past cause of time spent on raiding.

There's a good amount of quality console games out there that should keep me entertained till Ulduar instance comes out. I'm a big fan of shooters/action adventure and there seem to be a fair amount that I need to try out.


WoW news

Group 2 did Naxx last Sunday night and of course F*ING Armageddon dropped AND Betrayer! WOW! Seriously?! The week that I decided to do Naxx with Group 1 ...

Wish me luck on 2H tonight. If I get one ... you'll know! I'll post a big ass SS tomorrow if I do.

Also tomorrow I will be posting another Weekly DPS report. I'll try to break down fights as much as I can to help out fellow DPS warriors who has asked me about my rotations tomorrow.

Peace for now

Back from Christmas Break

/wave

I logged in last night after a 5 day break from WoW. I still had my flask from last Tuesday. It worked out cause we did Sartharion with 2 drakes, no loot for me. I logged in here and there to open the gifts at Orgrimar.

Also last night I got my Gear Score finally, I got a perfect 10!

Gear Score
Is a system that we used in guild to check if you have the right gems, enchantment, and items outside 10/25man raiding optimized for PVE. Highest possible score is 10 and you need an 8 to be able to loot in raid. You also need 9.5(I think) to have your alt raid with the 2nd group.

During the 5 day break I decided to dust up my xbox360 and play some console games. Holy crap! I did miss console games!

Xbox 360
It was perfect too. Two of my buddies from the military just got back from the desert and they have been playing the new Call of Duty: World at War. I gave in and bought the game so we can play some games. This game ain't better than COD4 but I think that one just raised the bar a little bit high. It's still a good shooter nonetheless plus the campaign has a good story in it.

So if you have XboxLive and have Cod5/Gears of war 2 and you wanna party it up my tag is spybreak4u. Just add me and include a short message.

PS3
We also just bought a PS3, got Metal Gear Solid 4 in the mail 2 days after. I really love this series. If you have played at least 1 of the previous installments you will love this game. If not, then you might get bored with the excessively long cinematics.

This game is about stealth and close quarter combat but sometimes I get impatient and just treat this game like a shooter. Also this is a lot more forgiving than the previous ones. You actually have a chance now to survive if a guard has found you.

So last weekend I bought Unchartered and Resistance Fall of Man from Gamestop, taking advantage of their buy 2 get 1 free used games.

Question for PS3 users.

When you play online, do you have to change your psn name/tag everytime on a new game? I still haven't tried the online multiplayer option. I plan to get Resistance 2 pretty soon.

Is this it for WoW?

Nah, I still like doing dungeons! I still love performing in Raids and of course Questing! It just won't take up a weeks worth of gaming anymore.

I can really see myself just playing console games when not Raiding dungeons in WoW. I had a blast last week and can't wait to get my groove back in shooter games and pwn some nubs.

Tonight it's Naxx time. Hopefully we get some 2H drops and I get one, the rest of my upgrades are going to be coming from 25man Malygos.

Santa Claus: An Engineer's Perspective

The following is copied and paste from here. Good read though.

Santa Claus: An Engineer’s Perspective

There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the population reference bureau).

At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each.
Different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical), this works out to 967.7 visits per second.

This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get on to the next house.

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks.

This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest manmade vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.
The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element.

Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the “flying” reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them. Santa would need 360,000 of them.

This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).
600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance. This would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering the earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake.

The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip.

Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,500 g’s. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.

Therefore, even if Santa did exist, he’s dead now.

Merry Christmas.

Weekly DPS Report

With new toys from last week I was really eager to see how well I do in Naxx this week. I knew it was going to be better but I didn't expect the results I got last night.

This was the Recount for the first boss, Patchwerk.

When I looked at my Recount at first I thought I was #9 but someone posted the dmg and I noticed I had mine setup for Overall. I went from 3700 dps to 4500 dps ... awesome.

Needless to say I am very pleased with the results. Don't mind the rogues up there! They will get nerfed pretty soon cause of their broken spec right now.

Grobulus and Gluth were about the same. I am always behind the rogues, ending anywhere from top 3-5.

Here is the recount for Thaddius

2nd with 8kDPS. I remember having 7kdps on this guy last week.

After this boss I was pretty much excited the whole night always. So excited that I forgot to take SS >_>. I'll post WWS if you want to check the rest of the boss out.

On Loatheb the top dps was 9k DPS, I think I was at 8k+ dps. I was placed 2nd or 3rd can't remember >_>. Not bad at all considering the buff that Fury will receive next patch.

Well while this was going on, my friend spqr(abrems) was getting pissed off why his dmg was always behind.

He actually has better gear and weapons. I'm only sporting 2 180dps 2handers(from heroic and 10man naxx) while he is using the Jawbone(2nd best in slot) and .. I forgot the name both ilvl 213 and has 200+ dps.

On Noth I passed him by 1kdps .... /shrug

We tried to figure out what was going on and the raid leader noticed the meters and wondered "why is herc consistently destroying you". So we went on to check our Stats.

After checking our stats I was only ahead by 200 AP and 1% on crit, so I guess I do have better gear except for weapons. Our dps rotation was about the same. The biggest difference was the Armor Pen Rating.

I was at 16.89% while he was at 2%. I think we found culprit! He changed some gear to get more ArP and he managed to get it up to 9% armor ignore. That helped him out abit. Now he's around 200-500dps behind which is better.

No upgrade for Herc last night >_< I was hoping for a 2H to boost my dps but no luck, I have awesome gear but my weapons makes me sad. Next week we'll see how it goes.

We cleared Naxx around 3.5 hours. Not too bad but we could have done better considering we went with 24 people with the first 2 wings.

Sartharion with 2 Drakes

Done.

Well it has already been done by the guild last week. It was only last night that I was on the raid that I got the achievement.

The plan was to do Sartharion with 3 drakes however people not showing up really screwed us over. So it was decided to kill the dragon with 2 drakes for loot's sake.

If I know Steve(our GM) he will start recruiting again for holy pallies ... cause that's where we are hurting. He really doesn't resort to another Ret/Prot Paladin respeccing to holy mainly cause it's a waste of a time to him. He'd rather grab another Holy paladin who has the gear for it.

Now I'm not sure if we are doing Naxx or will keep trying on Sartharion with Drakes tonight. I want the easy loots from Naxx but finishing up the hardest encounter would be really cool especially if we are first on the server.

I guess we'll find out tonight =P. I'll keep you guys/gals updated.

Weekend update

COMCAST

Well I'm sure you've read the announcement when you logged in at WoW this weekend regarding players (who uses Comcast) having issues with disconnects and ridiculous amount of latency.

I was one of the unlucky players. I was only able to log in for a few minutes then log off, good thing though that we just bought a new TV to keep me busy.

New TV!

Last Friday night I finally replaced my 20 inch tv that I bought back in 2004 when I just joined the military(I just recently separated). We figured it was about time to get a new one. Plus the Base Exchange had an extra 10% discount on already discounted tvs that night =).

We bought a Samsung 42" plasma 720p. Cost us $720 tax-free, original cost was $799.99.

I was going to go with 50" but our TV stand can only hold a max of 42 inch. 50" was only about $200 difference but that also means we have to buy a new TV stand which would cost around $150 up. That would mean an extra cost of $350+. I'll pass.

Why not 1080p? We were thinking really hard if we were going to shell out the extra cash to go 1080p. I read at Cnet and elsewhere that the difference between 720p and 1080p is not really noticeable until you have around 55+" tv/projector. Since we don't plan on getting a tv around that size we just decided to go with 720p. I'm not a min-maxer IRL. Prolly later on down the road I'm going to get a 1080p but it's prolly going for my PC to get more out of the resolution.

We later found out that Bestbuy and Circuit city has the same tv only for $699.99! I'm going to print out a copy of the ad online to get Price matching and get $20 back =). Thing is the TV has to be available at those stores near us. Best buy is out so I got circuit city left to call today. Gimme my $20!

I also got Gears of War 2 and COD: WoW (inc in the mail) for those nights that we aren't raiding, plus the wife is a shooter fan! Send me an email if you wanna play via xbxlive on some nights. Co-Op play should be fun.


Winterveil Achievements

I managed to get all but 3 of the achievements done for the winter veil achievement when my Internet is not crapping out on me.

I was on a roll last night until I hit the pre-quest for the bombing run where it requires a group of 5 people to summon this lvl 70 elite boss.

Now I have to beg/bug people to help me to get to the next stage and have a chance to complete it before time runs out.


Dragons

Last night Group 2 Naxx cleared their instance and tonight we will be doing 25man Sartharion with 3 drakes up. Officers decided we will not do another 25man Naxx till we get the kill or at least till monday next week.

I'm not sure if there is an achievement for being first on the server to defeat this encounter.

So here's hoping healers show up tonight and everyone brings their A game. I will prolly sit this one out again but I'll stay on vent just incase.


Hopefully you folks had a good weekend.

Heroes, Heroics and Arenas

After finishing up my Sons of Hodir quest yesterday I decided to watch Heroes 2nd Season while AFK fishing. I stopped watching the series after Season 1 cause of WoW Raiding times. Now I only raid once a week it's time to catch up.

Heroes

I really like this show. If you have a netflix account(watch it online) or can rent the Season 1 and Season 2 I highly suggest you check it out.

The story is about how humans are evolving. People having super powers that sometimes they don't know what to do. This is not your regular super hero tv shows. This actually has some nice story background and some nice plot twist which is one of the things that makes this series awesome. The acting are above average and the scripts are just pure awesome.

I'm really bad at giving description so I suggest just googling it =).

I watched Episode 1 thru Episode 9 in 1 sitting yesterday pausing for dinner and doing some arenas ... it's that good. So check it out!

Tonight new episode of Naruto is up! You better believe it! Don't watch the english version like any anime, it's just plain awful.

Heroics

As I was watching Heroes on windowed mode I had to resize my WoW window WTB DUAL MONITOR!

I joined this heroic group to clear HoL. No wipes and I ended up being top dps with 2400 dps overall dmg. Not bad while watching tv shows right =P?

We then went to Heroic nexus to get our healer his mace. I was still watching and sometimes I would get left behind on trash pulls, go figure. No luck on the mace and the green hat! /wrist

I'm not sure if I have enough badges now to buy my hunter that Legacy bow or that haste trinket which heals you for 2% if you kill a mob that yields experience.

Arenas

For some reason this one shaman in my guild wanted to do 2s with me. We have no raid for the whole week ever since Tuesday ... so I said wth lets do it.

I specced MS and we queued up for 2v2 matches.

We lost our first 3 matchess. I blame myself really for some of them. Last time I played arena was before patch 3.0, so took awhile to get used to my keybinds again.

Fights were just way to fast to end. My shaman partner always goes down first so I didn't bother wearing any Resil gear except for the PvP trinket.

We won 3 times in a row after that. One particular fight against a Ret Pally/DK was I opened up with Sweeping Strikes + Bladestorm as they were both chasing my shaman friend. Those were good times. They both went down so fast it was funny. My crit unbuffed was at 38.5% on zerker stance. Crazy times. My AP is around 3500 plus if I remember right.

I will take advantage of my PVE gear to own some undergeared players before t hey start getting a good amount of quality gear with resil, shameless I know but that's how it goes sometimes.

Peace for now.

Naxx Achievements

Last night I logged in about 10 minutes before the raid invites was suppose to go out. As I was plugging the external dvd player to my other pc when my internet just died on me with 2 minutes left till invites! WTF?! After a bunch of restarts of my modem/router and a call to Comcast I figured out that I accidentally bumped my modem turn on button O_O. I was late but they got me in the raid anyway since they havent killed a boss yet.

Anyway back to the main topic .... Achievements!

Heroic: The Safety Dance

Pretty easy and about damn time.

Heroic: Momma Said Knock You out

Our Dps was so sick that she only enraged once. Our plan was to have the tank use shield wall then after that we switch to another tank to use his on the next enrage.

Heroic: Arachnophobia

Lots of chain pulling and aoe! Once the first 2 bosses were down the ones who didnt need loot just kept pulling.

Heroic: The Hundred Club

Nobody wore any frost resistance, even Mark of the wild. The trade off of not wearing any resistance gear is he went down pretty fast that it in return for the mana usage by healers.

Heroic: Just can't get Enough

We kept pulling a group of 3 Abominations. The other adds don't come out with them so the only thing you have to worry about if you tank getting insta gib. They do alot of dmg so stun them when you can.

We were going for the Immortal Achivement but tank died at Patchwerk!


Herc gets loots

I was really hoping for 2H drops last night but no luck ... while last week when I sat out for group 2 there were 3 2hs that dropped. My luck I guess.

I got some pretty nice upgrades last night though

I upgraded my T7 helm to T7.5! I also replaced my t6 bracers(the last t6) finally. I'm still not sure if i want to buy the bracer from the Emblems of Valor Quartermaster.

After killing Malygos last night I finally completed my quest and got my uber neck till next patch anyway. I also was given the triket. Now that I don't need anymore expertise I don't need to enchant or gem for it which gives more room for STR and CRIT gems/enchants.

I also got some offspec gear for tanking. That's the best tanking shield in the game right now. The belt I really don't know didn't do any research on tanking gear from 25mans.

Hopefully next week I see more 2H drops to really up my dmg for the raid. Peace for now.

Time management and WoW

If you've been around this blog at least once of twice you prolly noticed that I usually blog about endgame raiding content.

Well that's the main reason why I play WoW ... to raid. But that's not the only thing I do in WoW.

Past few days these questions came to mind when I was going thru my time management notes early this year. So I just decided to post them here anyway.

How many nights do I spend a week on raiding?

At the moment we clear 25man naxx and 25man Malygos in 1 night. We spend another night learning Sartharion with 3 drakes up, really tough fight here.

For 10mans, we also clear everything in 1 night except Malygos which can be done in like 20 minutes anyday.

So contrary to the general perception about end game raiding guilds ... we actually raid less.

When the new instances comes out, 25man Naxx will be cleared off the schedule or at least will have to wait till the end of the week as we won't be needing anymore from there. So it will prolly add 1-2 days in our sched.

Our guild doesn't/won't raid 6-7 days a week. Most of our members are adults and got family/work to attend to.

How do I handle Family matters when raiding?

I tend to warn my wife the 2-3 nights I'm raiding ahead of time. I usually do all the houses chores before raid to compensate my uselessness for the next 3-4 hours, I know I'm awesome.

The wife is pretty cool about it since she has her own hobbies online plus she also has her own WoW toons.

She refuses to level her toon by herself so yeah that's out of the question. She usually just plays the AH or go herbing. She makes a decent amount though, can't argue with that.

Best part is I don't feel alone a the house when raiding. We usually talk about work, family, games while I'm playing.


What do I do when not raiding dungeons?

When I log on I usually head right away to do Son's of Hodir rep after that I try my luck on white polar bear mount so thats another set of dailies right there. These can take around 20-30 minutes to complete.

After that if my usual 5man heroics team is on I try to run a couple with them. There's really no need for me to run heroics these days except to gear my alt or help others. Usually last an hour or an hour and a half max.

Once I get tired of heroics or my group won't do more

I log on my bank alt, collect money from the mail and post another set of items for gold. Raiding can be expensive sometimes when learning encounters =P. This takes about 10-15 minutes

I then make sure I got enough Flask/Food to cover me for the next raid. If not then I buy mats and bug a guildy to make me some flask. Another 5-10 minutes.

So all those things takes from 2 hrs - 2.5 hrs if I do heroics. I usually start right away when I get back from work around 4:30 pm.

When me and the wife are not leveling our alts together we usually watch animes/tv shows ... I know were such geeks!

These are currently the animes were watching/catching up to

Naruto - who doesn't like naruto?
Bleach - wife is really into this series atm
Gundam 00 2nd season - I like giant robots!

We just finished watching Kekaishi series. Anyone able to recommend any good anime series?

Sometimes we just watch movies in DVDs, Netflix ftw. We are not a big fan of Cable TV except financial shows or cooking shows.

We do go out from time to time to visit friends, shop, watch movies etc. We are pretty excited about snow skiing this winter. Last year was a blast.


Conclusion

When not raiding in WoW, I usually only log on for a few hours when I do raid I don't mess around and at the same time try to not isolate myself from the family. I dunno, raiding is just the main game for me, if there is nothing to raid I'll prolly quit till new leveling content is opened up. As you prolly have guessed me and the wife are on our early 20s. No child atm so we are both free to do our own hobbies.

Feel free to answer the same questions or better add more!

Group 2 Naxx run report

Last week I posted how I ended up volunteering to MT our guild's 2nd 25man Naxx. This run was composed of mostly trial members, alts and a couple of Main raiders(4 of us I think).

We had 4 tanks in the raid. I thought we were gonna lack dps but we had enough heavy dpsers to compensate. One of the rogues pulled 6k DPS on patchwerk.

Cleared Spider, Plague, and Military wing with no problems. Abom wing took awhile cause of the afks ... seriously!

We had 3 wipes total.

2 on Thaddius. We had a bunch of new people so took awhile for them to realize that you really do need to run ASAP even though Raid leaders told them to for the 10th time.

1 on Kelthuzad. 1% wipe >_<. I died at 4% and it was just chaos by that time. TONS of tank gear dropped. Which went to the would be MT next week.

I did manage to get some purplz for my warrior(c whut i did der?)

Best in slot on chest for me ^_^. Now I can shell out the cash for +10 stats.

2nd Best in slot for belt. It's about 20dps upgrade from what I had. I'll take any upgrades.

Lastly I get the best DPS neck after I kill 25man Malygos this week from this quest. Quest starts from the item that you loot from Saphiron.
Hopefully I get to run with Group 1 next reset. I don't mind running with Group 2 it's just I want to finish Naxx asap and with less wipes sometimes =P. WTB 2H drops pls.

MT Priority Discussion

Yakra at http://mirrorshield.blogspot.com/ describes his first hand experience how a Raid Leader/MT who has grabbed all Tank gear only to disappear on them, causing the guild's progression to hurt.

My Experience
I had the same experience, actually happened twice ... I came back from deployment around May 2006, I left when the guild was learning Razorgore and came back with BWL cleared and up to Princess Huhuran in AQ.

The guild's MT then went MIA. He's actually the 2nd one to do that. So here I am with my Tier 1 8/8 trying to tank BWL and AQ /sigh.

They promoted me to OT quickly and passed all the tanking loot to me. The substitute MT then wanted me to gear up cause he doesn't really want to tank, he wants to DPS.

I got promoted to MT, got Tier 2 8/8 and was ready to tank Twin emps in such a short amount of time. In the end we got server first on Twin emps and 2nd on Cthun.

The guild didn't give up on gearing up the MT despite the bad experience. We understood that when going for server first your tank needs to be really geared. After killing Twin Emps for the first time the loot just started to drop from there =) which means happy raiders.

My thoughts on MT Priority:

First of all Momarr(See Yakras post) made a mistake of not delegating tanking. Bad bad bad bad.

Instead of me saying MT priority is the way to go. I'll just discuss why it works for us =).

For a hardcore raiding guild who is aiming for quick progression. Gearing up your Main tank will be the first priority, always is and always have been if your goal is to be the first in server or at least one of the first ones to clear content.

Why does it work for us?

a.) 99% of the time we know the player we are giving loot to for months if not years. I've been raiding with some of these guys since 2005 pre BC.

b.) The people in the guild has a common resolve. They all agree(or at least looks like) that we want quick progression.

Clearing content faster = more gear for everyone right at the start.

c.) Being #1 guild in the server makes people not jump ship and brings in alot more competition between raiding spots. Though this is not really an issue tanking spot wise.

d.) Tier Token makes it much easier to gear up a new tank wherein back in the day you have to wait for that one specific drop /wrist.

e.) Our MT is the GM who is on all the time. And I mean literally.

f.) Cause we are Min-Maxers =). Gotta get our MT the best possible stats to help out healers. We have our fair share of 1-2% wipes because healers went OOM at about 8-10%.

Eliminating Tank dieng cause of bad gear is always good for us. Which leaves positioning, right strats, more dps left to tackle to get that first kill.

A good example is how we handled Wrath's 25 Mans.

Tank loot went to the GM/MT. He did pass on loot that are minimal upgrade to the offtank. At the same time we geared up our 3rd tank druid but all the major upgrades still goes to the MT. So in reality we didn't just gear up 1 tank, we geared up 3 in a span of 1-2 weeks with MT having priority. This was done mainly because of Patchwerk ...

After doing 2 weeks of Naxx the Tank priority loot has been lifted in our guild. MT priority will come back once Ulduar instances becomes active. Which I think nobody really mind. Hey like I said the faster we clear the next 25man the faster others get loot.

Back in BT we did gear up a new tank who joined only to go POOF on us. It really didn't hurt us because the GM or me just had to respec to tank. Of course GM was pissed =) and so did I but hey shit happens.

Like last night I MTed 25man Naxx but I passed all the tanking loot to the would be MT for Group 2 next week. Did I want the tanking loot? Hell yeah but Tanking is not my main spec .. Herc wants DPS loot! Gimme!

The tank loot that dropped was: bracers, best tanking weapon, best tanking sword, t7.5 helm, legs, bets tanking boots and I already forgot the rest.

All these went to the OT last night. So next week they won't be needing me anymore =P. I just helped out this week and showed how to do things(tank!) to the OT. I know he's more than ready next week. I did my role and next week I'll be back to dps. Those loot will drop again but again securing Group 2's naxx is more important atm.

Guilds have cleared endgame bosses w/o having the rule MT priority of course.

MT priority though when done right can save your raid some wipes and hey maybe even a week or 2 early kill on a boss. Everyone needs to be on the same page and the raid has to trust the MT.

PTR Patch 3.0.8 Notes

Warrior

Bloodthirst: Charges have been decreased to 3, but the effect has been raised to 1% per charge.

Fury:
Bloodsurge: Now has a chance to trigger from any hit with Heroic Strike, Bloodthirst, or Whirlwind.
Titan's Grip: The hit chance penalty has been removed.


All I can say is FINALLY ...

Blizz finally listened to us warriors who were asking to buff Bloodsurge. Proccing only on a BT crit is not worth 3 talent points especially if ends up only 3-4% of my damage.

I believe Titan's Grip penalty has been removed mainly for

1.) Warriors who are just leveling and want's to spec TG and actually make it work. quest rewards/crafted doesn't really have enough hit to make them cap =P.

2.) It's also for warriors who just dinged 80 and wanna make their way into the Raiding scene. Now they won't have to worry about gemming for Hit all the way =) or grabbing some add trinket/gear just to compensate for the hit.

Of course it benefits the TG raiding warriors already like me ^_^. Less hit gems more STR!

It's all on PTR so I'm keeping my gems till it actually goes live. Nonetheless it's good news.

The Undying ...

Last night we did our respective 10 man groups. The guild leadership makes group for 10mans sometimes up to 4 groups. They do a good job on spreading geared/skilled players throughout the groups. I wanna talk about how our guild handles 10mans but that will be on a different post.

I was the assigned co-leader of the group. My group is going the Undying Title. Where no one has to die during ALL boss encounters. If we do that we get an achievement and an awesome title with it like Herc, The Undying. There is a similar achievement for 25man it's called the Immortal.

Our group make up was

Tanks - 2 warriors
Healers- priest, shaman, pally
DPS - elemental shaman, hunter, 2 mages, 1 rogue.

I decided we do Abomination then DK wing first. So if we fuck up .. we fuck up early.

Patchwerk - too easy
Grobulus - is this even a boss? granted he's tougher now than his 40man version.
Gluth - he only managed to do 1 decimate.

Thaddius ... ok everything was going well until our Resto shaman bite the dust! You can imagine the yelling in vent when he died, not angry just getting upset I find it pretty funny tbh.

Priest: Don't even try to pull a Fast DC there!
Hunter: How do you even die to this boss?! I thought it was impossible.
Warrior: You suck!
Mages: I hate you!

Sure enough it appeared the shaman went offline and when he logged back in he said

"Did someone die?"

Funny thing was he didn't DC in vent =P. He was getting shit from us all night. Whenever he tried to talk someone says Shut up Scrub!

Now ... what if we didn't have any other deaths for the rest of the night?

We cleared spider wing, DK, and Plague no problem.

Ninja Afkers

The biggest thing was wiping on trash in between bosses. Not on bosses but on trash. People like to go afk w/o telling me ... or at least in raid chat. Which resulted in wipings on trash pulls >_>. I guess I should have ready check but nobody mentioned they were going AFK.

I have no problems with breaks ... just tell me! geez

Sapphiron and Kelthuzad

We wiped on Saphiron once, I guess the healer wasn't used to the dmg being taken by the raid.

Kelthuzad was one shot but .. he dropped the Fist weapon ... again .. for the third fucking time! No axe for Hercy.


Tonight we are going for 10man Malygos then Sartharion with 1-2 Drakes up cause were hardcore like that.

Maybe next week we'll get closer to that Undying Achievement.

Taking one for the team or am I?

With our guild having 50+ members online at a given night with the cap of 25man raids ... something has got to give.

Last night the leadership announced that they will be having a 2nd 25man Naxx group. The ultimate goal is to take advantage of the trivial content, run two separate raid groups with main raiders spread out so we get twice the chance of loots to gear up faster.

Group 2 will not be as stacked as Group 1 of course. That's why some people were upset. First because they didn't make it into Group1, second they are afraid group 2 will be an altfest resulting into a wipefest. Group 2 will consist of some main raiders, trial members(which we have a ton) and main raider alts who are geared(t6+).

I got an invite for Group1(like always =P). The CoGM pmed me if I don't mind tanking for G2 this week as they need a geared and experienced tank to make the second 25man run smoother. I told him I don't mind tanking till next week because I need Emblems of Valor for my dps gear.

He then went on that all 2H will be passed to me since I'm the only main raider/main spec there who can use 2H and maybe also get some dps gear/tanking gear. With that in mind I went hmmm... that's not a bad deal at all. I agreed, I left the zone and the raid group.

Did I just get played or what? I did it to help out Group 2 make the run smoother but ... I also did it with my own agenda in mind. That is to get decent upgrades for my character. I've tanked 10man naxx(also the 40man) but havent done it on 25s. I guess I better enchant my stuff now huh?

Now Abrems, the other DPS/tank warrior heard this and he then volunteered to tank it also with me and him switching from G1 to G2 each week. Hopefully as we gear up trial members can tank it.

The CoGM announced in vent that me and abrems will be tanking G2 alternately. Were both decent tanks and I hope that's enough comfort to other raiders that it won't be a FailBoat.

Hopefully the rest of the members don't rush and do their own 25mans ... leaving me and the others screwed.

I usually have bad experience when I'm going out of my comfort zone to help people but we'll see.

Honestly if the 2nd 25man naxx doesn't start cause we lack people this week I don't mind really well I guess I won't be too bummed about it heh ... gear is so easy to get with such trivial content.

I mainly want to be in the raids where we are going for our first kill a.k.a progression fights. I have enough gear to be competitive on Group 1 for DPS. I'm a raider since vanilla wow and I still savor those moments when we get server first kills.

Wish Group 2 good luck!

What does your Raid Schedule look like?

For our guild it looks like this

Tuesday - Clear 25man naxx and 25man malygos.

Wednesday - Work on Sartharion with 3 drakes up.(Toughest encounter atm)

Thursday - Raid DPS test followed by 10man Naxx and 10man malygos

Friday - nothing

Saturday - nothing

Sunday - finish up remaining 10mans.(should be done by thursday)

Monday - nothing


So that's 3 nights a week of raiding if we don't wipe like crazy ... again. Then it's back to my druid alt or DK alt if the wife wants to level her shaman.

How is your raiding schedule looking like?

Don't turn down a DPS Warrior

It's ok to turn down a poorly geared DPS warrior from time to time but to turn down all dps warriors just because of their class/spec is just rather insulting.

I should have taken SS but I guess you'll have to take my word for it or ask my guildies who I do 5mans with =P.

Last night was the only 2nd time I respec to DPS a heroic. We did a bunch but here's the 2 heroics that I think shows how TG warriors "don't suck" at 5mans.

Heroic Caverns of Time

A guildy was asking for DPS for H CoT. I volunteered. At first he was reluctant but I told him that Fury DPS warriors own.

Ok, the thing was I haven't DPS H CoT as Fury ... only as MS which I did ok. Now I'm thinking "Oh crap now i gotta deliver! hopefully I don't suck".

I was averaging 4000-4400 DPS on bosses.

On the 2nd boss somehow I managed to pull 4890 dps ... The extra adds with low health helped me kept Victory Rush up. Was that cheating? Hell no, it's part of the game mechanics just like mage/lock AOE.

And of course we got the Bronze drake for our drood tank.

Heroic Violet Hold

We 4manned this instance because our rogue didn't get in time when the door closed. I was averaging 4400-4600 dps on bosses. Not bad at all.


Tonight is 25man Naxx and I'm really excited how will I do on Patchwerk, Thaddius and Loatheb. Last week I pulled 3600 DPS on patchwerk as MS warrior.

So before you say "lol what? No we don't need a dps warrior" or something to that effect think again.

Bind on Account Items FAQ

What do you do when you got all the upgrades you can get from the Emblem Gear Vendor?

Buy Legacy Items(Bind on account items)!

Ever since I hit 80 I've tank enough heroics to get emblems for my DPS gear (lolwut?). I've been lucky enough to get tank gear from Naxx so no need to spend emblems there.

So far I've bought DPS trinket(40 emblems), DPS Chest(80 emblems). DPS gloves(60?), DPS necklace(25) and the latest one was the Legacy DPS leather shoulder(40) for my feral druid.

All my next purchase will be these Legacy items.

How much do Bind on account items cost?

2H Weapons(2H axe, staff and bow) cost 65 Emblems of Heroism

Armors, trinket and 1H weapons cost 40 Emblems of heroism.

PLEASE SEE EDIT

Is there enough variety to choose from?

There are no class specifics but there is enough to get at least 1-2 items per class. Example would be there is no Feral druid staff ... but the DPS leather shoulders I bought are good enough =). Next would be the trinket.

And then when I log on a different alt I can just send the item to another alt that would use them.

How good are these items?

Well these items scale according to the character's level, so when you level up they also level up! I've compared the shoulders to the rewards from my quest and they just totally blow them away. When I head to Northrend I will do some screenshots comparing my shoulders to green and blue items.

The armor items has a bonus of 10% extra experience gained from kiling monsters

This is a total winner right here.

How do I send them?

Easy enough. Just mail them!

Can you Enchant them?

No you cannot.

Is there any other way to get Legacy items?

Yes there is. You can purchase other legacy items by spending Stonekeepers Shard. You can only get stonekeepers shard from heroics IF your faction controls Wintergrasp.

If you plan to go this route. The vendor is at Wintergrasp, same vendor as the black mammoth mount.


I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard added more Bind on Account items. I can imagine myself buying all of them soon ^_^. Leveling alts would have never been easier =P.

If you have any more question regarding this subject please feel free to comment or send me an e-mail.


EDIT: I just checked last night and trinkets and armor don't have the same requirements. Please check the vendor again before making any plans.

Raid DPS Test

Last night was a scheduled Raid DPS Test night. We would all meet at Main cities, raid buffed, flasked, etc at the Boss Dummies to test our DPS.

The CoGM wanted to do this test for the following reasons:

1.) How the classes do against each other.
2.) How each player is doing in respect to the other people of the same class.
3.) Who knows how to DPS and who just bashes their head on their keyboard (ie. uses a good cycle)
4.) Who to take on certain fights where DPS is a must.

I realize "normal" guilds don't necessarily do this but read on if you want to know more about the results of the test. Ok lets move on.

Hopefully this helps raiding folks who are reading this blog where they should be DPS wise.


My Spec

I specced Titans grip last night. I put points into Bloodsurge even though I'm not a big fan of it.

I went down to Arms to get Deep wounds. Don't bother looking at Armory .. I specced prot right after the tests to tank 10man Naxx.

The only glyph I saw that benefits fury was the Heroic strike Glyph.

IMPORTANT: The miss rate was lowered by Blizzard. Instead of needing 9% chance to hit you now only need 8% to be capped on yellow attacks.

This change made the switch from Arms-> Fury(TG) a little easier.

The "Pre-test"

We started at Undercity. Our first DPS test lasted for 6 minutes. We used Bloodlust at the 2min mark.

The problem that we ran into was the Raid boss dummy went down fast. This caused

1.) Mages, hunters, and warriors have finishing moves to use when the target is below a certain %.
2.) Certain class abilities like Ret pallies and DK gets their damage nerfed due to the mob's HP at zero.

So they cut down the test down to 3-4 minutes.

NOTE: I didn't even spam execute. I find that I get rage starve when I spam it. Instead I try to use it whenever I just used Bloodthirst and Whirlwind so it's enough time to get rage for another Bloodthirst.

So after a couple of pre-test we went on to TB for the "real" test. Hopefully by this time classes are already familiar with their rotations and what spec to use.

DPS TESTS RESULTS

Hunter's and Mages just raped everybody on the meters ... heck even hunter's pet do more damage than some of our Rogues ....

Regarding the Dummies armor, yes the dummy has armor we tested it with and without sunder armor and we noticed a significant increase in DPS not as much as the real bosses but enough to make a difference.

Good thing there were trial runs as that was the first night I specced TG boss wise. I had enough time to get used to the rage generation and when to use my abilities.

Of course me being top 1 or 2 melee made me feel pretty good and relieved. The first run where I did 4330ish DPS my crit was just going all over the place it was crazy. The other DPS warrior Abrems was Arms during the pre-test but switched to FUry. He is not hit capped and his weapon is not as good as mine. Next week we will do another run.

The Raid leaders were concerned about Rogue's DPS they are kinda low. They were mostly concerned about players with the same class but a huge gap on DPS.

I think everyone had an idea where they stand now DPS wise, max dps spec, proper rotations, what mistakes to avoid and hopefully everyone had a good competitive fun while doing it. All in all the tests lasted for an hour and a half.

All these are posted at WWS but I think it just took overall. Check out our guildsite http://renascenteredar.com/ and follow the link for WWS if you are interested.

EDIT:

My thoughts on TG spec. It is definetely the better dps spec for pve. The argument now is the 2% increase in physical dmg in Arms, if its worth to have 2 Warriors using Titans grip or the other one using Arms for utility.

This generally depends on the raid makeup and the difference in DPS the TG and arms is doing. I will post more about this later.

Toughest 25man Content Atm

People have been complaining raids being too easy. There's two kinds of players who say that

a.) The ones who have cleared content
b.) The ones who keep hearing about players who have cleared content

I don't have a probelm with a.) but the one's at b.) sometimes I wonder ... they claim content is too easy and even sometimes wants the content to get harder but they havent even beaten it ...

My advice is experience the content first =P before going with what the crowd is saying. Of course we all know Naxx is easier compared Kara but hey it still requires attention. Remember the guilds that have cleared(or at least got far) the original naxx were the ones who generally finished 25man when it was released.

ok back to the main Topic

The Toughest 25man Content atm is

Sartharion with 3 Drakes up. PERIOD.

Quick recap about the fight: The instance has the boss, Sartharion, and 3 mini bosses. If you kill all 3 mini bosses before Sartharion the fight is really really easy, you just have to dodge waves like Felmyst and kill adds.

The real challenge starts when you decide to leave a drake up before engaging Sartharion. It is a whole different ball game much more with 2 or all of the drakes up =). Of course the more drakes up the better the quality of the loot.

Even our guild who has killed Malygos twice is having a hard time beating this event. We gave up after 2 hours and just killed 2 drakes before the boss and killed him.

One word can only be said about this encounter ... CHAOS. There are tons of things going on all a the same time I mean literally even our hardcore raider gets challenged. It's different from what were used to in Naxx where we come in and one shot everything.

In terms of beating content yes we killed all what Wrath has to offer but we havent beaten ALL of the encounters =). This remains a challenge for us and we look forward in attempting it again next week.

25mans Cleared

Well almost all of them =P. We cleared all 25mans last night from Wintergrasp boss, Naxx to Malygos. Only thing left is the 25man Obsidian sanctum.

Of course my spec was DPS.

I speced PVE arms last night and I must say that I did better this time around. I'll highlight some Bosses

Patchwerk: I pulled 3660 DPS. Not bad at all I ended up 6th Overall.
Thaddius: I placed 3rd overall. My max Execute crit was 27k damage!


If you are interested on DPS rotations, talent selection, gear selections here is our Site http://renascenteredar.com/

Click the link for WoWwebstats.

Hopefully it helps other who are still trying to figure out their rotations etc. I got about 3 upgrades from Naxx last night. A new cloak, legs, and t7.5 shoulders ^^.


Titan's Grip

Ok me and my friend abrems are fooling around with this spec. We concluded that it's not worth till we get a good decent amount of hit. We don't have to be hit cap but just enough to make the spec bearable. Of course having another leet 2H would help =P.

Going Back in time - Epic Tiered Items

In the past 4 years Blizzard have made some changes on the way they give out the coveted Tier Epic items for each class. In my experience nothing is more than satisfying than wearing your class specific Tier pieces, using it on progression fights and rocking it out outside AH at Org =).

Let's go back in time and observe how the giving out of Tier Epic items evolved.

Tier 1 and Tier 2 (Molten Core/Blackwing Lair)

Two items that are class specific drops from a Boss. This was an ok system.

The Good

You know who the items go to(duh!) so the argument that this item is better for class x than class y is non-existent.

The Bad

i. There were 7 classes to each faction back then. So you had a 1/7 for your item to drop and if it did you had to win it by dkp or by roll w/e.

ii. Completing your set can take a long amount of time. For some people it took months almost to a year to complete that set waiting for just that one drop. I'm sure any old school raider can relate to this.

iii. By the time the "seasoned" players finish their set they don't want to run that dungeon anymore because they got so sick of it. This puts the new people at a disadvantage and now have to find a replacement. Sad thing is the cycle will continue.


Tier 2.5 and Tier 3 (AQ/Naxxramas)

This is where Blizzard moved to Token drops. Now you can get your Tiered Epic Items thru Tokens which is shared by 3-4 classes.

The Good

i. Instead of having 1/7 chance for you item to drop now it's a minimum of 33% chance add to the fact that there are 2 token drops.

ii. The token be used by alot more players which means getting upgrades rather than leaving the an item to rot because there was no Warlock in the raid.

The Bad

i. You still have to compete for the item but it's only against 3 classes not 7.

Tier 4,5 and 6

They pretty much stick to the token system.

The introduction of Badge Justice.

Badge of Justice can be acquired when killing a boss in heroic mode or a boss in Karazhan. You can purchase t5-t6ish quality gear with your hard earned badges.

This is one of great ideas that Blizzard has put into the game. This is what drove people to do the
daily heroics, the kara runs and more heroics.

The Good

i. You can get decent upgrades for your character w/o even stepping into a 25man raid dungeon.

ii. You don't have to wait for that one special tier item from raids for a nice upgrade.

iii. People still ran Kara/heroics even though they outgear the place. This helps alts or the characters who are needing some gear from there.

iv. Epic gems! For you own use or for profit don't matter.

The Bad

i. I just wish there were set bonus from badge gear. But hey we can't have them all right?

Now lets see what we currently have.....

Tier 7 and 7.5

The Return of the Badge System(but better)

What's new?

A.) Emblems now drops off bosses in 10mans(Emblems of heroism) and 25mans(Emblems of Valor) instead of just dropping in 5man Heroics.

B.) With Emblems of Heroism. You can now buy t7 tokens! Whoa?! You can purchase the t7 Chest(80 emblems) and t7 gloves token(t7 gloves).

For Emblems of Valor you can buy t7.5 tokens. You can purchase the t7.5 shoulder or legs.

The Good

i. More sources of emblems. For those that only has time to do 10mans/25mans this is a pretty good deal.

I currently have spent 205 emblems of heroism and 25 emblems of valor. I'm gonna pimp my alts pretty soon with the bind on account items.

ii. No more need to wait on that token to drop!

iii. You can get 4 pieced of tiered epic items w/o setting foot in naxx. Progression for your character will be alot faster than the previous expansion and back in Vanilla wow.

The Bad

i. In terms of item availability none. If terms of item rarity well you'll see tons of people wearing the same gear as you so it's not as epic anymore =P. I won't feel bad because I also look at my gear as a key to conquering the next raid instance.

ii. My only fear is people will tear thru this content like nothing. But then again not everyone plays like I do so I think were good. It will only a matter of time before blizz adds another set of badge rewards.

What do you think of the new system? Of course it's good for character progression, but do you think theyre giving away powerful items that fast?

25man loot is still superior but I'm happy that my alt doesn't need to raid like my main to enjoy some purple goodness.

Weekend Blitz

First off.

Malygos 25man is down =). Got her Saturday night. I wasn't in the raid when they did it >_<> US: 144 Realm: 1. So I guess that's it for now eh?

I can see ourselves clearing all the 25man content in 1 or 2 nights then for the rest of the weeks ... I dunno prolly 10mans or leveling alts/proffesions. Blizz has really gone casual with this released content. Again not a bad thing cause I know I can't keep up forever spending hours raiding like I did TBC for BT/Sunwell, school starts soon for me.

Second.

I did get all the remaining 80 emblems like I planned on. I got it Saturday afternoon. By 6pm last night I got another set of 44 emblems. I bought the DPS neck. So my DPS gear is starting to look decent. Now I think I'll buy some tank gear =P with all this tanking in 5mans.

Third

Herc has 4 new toys.

Bronze Drake

We have a group for a Strat run every night. This is our 2nd one so far and I got lucky with the rolls. The group is pretty strong and I won't stop tanking for this group until everyone has one. I have no SS >_>

Black War Mammoth

Ok ... this thing ... is HUGE!


Red Sword of Courage
After having run Heroic Utgarde Pinnacle over and over this baby finally dropped.

The other day, all of our DPS died when the 3rd boss was at 95%. Me and Renyeturn(resto shaman) duoed the boss till he died. It took about 10-12 minutes but hey we got him down =P.


L33t 2H Axe(Forgot the name!)
Pretty nice axe. Got it on my 2nd Heroic Halls of Lightning run. Another big upgrade for my DPS gear.

Bind on Account items.

I mentioned earlier I was going to spend emblems for tanking gear. Well there is only 1 item from Heroism emblems that would be a major upgrade for me, the trinket. After that I'm going to buy Bind on Account items and send it to my alts ^_^. 2H for the Pally, mh for the lock and bow for the hunter.

My next post will be about how Blizz has changed the distribution of Tiered Epic Gear.

More purplz?

Last time I mentioned I was going to offtank 10man Naxx. Here are some items I looted off that run(I didn't get the SS of my T7 Helm and tanking gloves).

I also got the key from Sapphiron to open the Portal/Door to Malygos

In the end of the run I felt like a lootwhore but hey I can't just let them rot right?

I'm pretty excited with my new tank gear but I just wished there more dps plate that dropped or at least the 2H mace ^_^. That being said all this new gear is just gonna help run 5mans and 10mans smoother, and that is always a good thing.

I'm still running heroics. I need about 32 more to get my t7 chest piece which will be the 3rd item that I wil have bought thru Emblems of Heroism(total of 180 emblems).

Heroics has 3-4 emblems per run(5 if you make the timer in Strat) + 2 if its the daily. So prolly around 10 Heroic runs should cover it. I'm hoping to get it all done by Sunday.

Warrior PVE DPS at Naxx

Is not pretty. I was doing more damage when I was 70! Seriously. So frustrating. I was at 3k DPS on Brutallus and now I'm stuck at 2400 on Patchwerk ... wtf?

I know i know, crit/hit ratings have been changed for lvl 80 that we need more =). It' s just the warriors are the most gear dependent class be it Tank or DPS.

I can't wait to cross that line ,just like prebc and TBC, where warrior's gear starts scaling exponentially.

More gear -> hit harder -> more rage -> spam abilities -> hit more -> more rage -> and so on and so forth.

I just hope I start crossing that line after I get all my epic stuff.

My current spec is Arms. I specced Bladestorm and I spent the rest in Fury till Imp Execute.

It is just frustrating right now to be at the bottom of the charts when I'm really doing my best like pots, food, get heroic gear, strict on my dps rotations etc.

I got 2 dps ring upgrades since patchwerk and I'm missing 4 emblems till my t7 gloves. I'm also planning to regem my sockets to favor crit and expertise.

So next week should be different .. should be.

Royal Crest of Lordaeron

Is mine!

We cleared 25man naxx and 25 man Obsidian Sanctum but was up till 2am ... yeah never gonna do that again. I got some nice DPS ring upgrades last night but I also got some new tanking shoulders.

Stats are mainly for DKs imo but the DK already got the chestpiece for tanking offspec on an earlier boss so the shoulders was given to me for offspec also =P. Hooray for offspecs!

We won't do Malygos till Sunday prolly. Raid leaders wants us to branch out tonight and do our respective 10man naxx group assignments mainly to get gear and second to get used to 10man malygos ... that way it will be easier on 25mans if everybody already did the 10man version.

I will be offtanking our 10man group tonight. Hopefully we get far and I get some decent DPS/Tank upgrade. I just need 4 more to get my t7 dps gloves which will make the total emblems looted = 100 emblems.

How are your leveling experience going? You guys had a chance to do some heroic runs yet? I'd love to hear how everybody is enjoying the game right now.

Heroic The Culling of Stratholme Tips

This is the new instance which can be found at Caverns of time.

When done in Heroic mode this place is like the ZA time event. Where if you clear this instance in 25 minutes you get a mount at the end. I know a couple of our guildies has this already.

My favorite part is where Arthas bitch slapped one of the citizens. Bad part is you gotta wait about 5 minutes for the dialogue to be over with ... hopefully in the future they implement a skip button.

I''ve cleared this place about 4 times on Heroic and here are some info/tips I can share:

Lot's of chain pulls, not enough time to regen. Mobs keeps spawning.

Aboms hits for a shit ton and Ghouls hits hard and they Enrage when their health is low. So when you have 2-3 ghouls on you and they are being Aoed ... yeah careful.

Drakonoids on the way to the 3rd boss has packs of 3-4 mobs. You don't actually pull them. They spawn.

Gauntlet on the way to Malganis can be mana intensive for you healer.


Here is what I did to help my group:

It is highly advisable to CC one or two mobs. Anything to help your healer out.

When dealing with 3-4 Packs bunched up.

I start with Tclap followed by a shockwave. If i know there are 3-4 melee who hits hard I use shield block and demo. Hopefully by the time my shield block expires one mob is already dead.

Sometimes I ask for an HOJ after my shockwave is done

On my first few runs I had to use fears on the drakonoids. They just hit to hard for me back then.

Use cooldowns! Don't be shy in using Shield wall, last stand, and trinket. Help your healer out. I use one of these cooldowns on trash too simply because wiping just demoralizes the groups so I just use it.

Spell Reflect! If you have the imp spell reflect this is a life saver. One it helps out on healing and two more aggro. You can also charge the caster, shield bash then reposition the packs that are on you if spell reflect is down.

*note there is a mob in Heroic Ank Old kingdom which cast Shadow blast. If you spell reflect this it comes back to that mob for 50,000 Shadow dmg.

This is pretty basic but wait for your healers especially in this instance. They can go oom pretty quickly here cause of the nature of the pulls.

Of course you can ignore all this if your overgeared for the instance =P.

My main reason for running this instance is the shield ^_^. Pretty nice shield with some lore in it. Mount would be nice but I prolly won't do mount runs till everyone is geared up.

Kel'Thuzad Down, Server First!

Realm First! Can't get any sweeter than that plus another server first title?

Last night we started with Patchwerk. We wiped about 3-4 times on him. Grobullus was 1 shot. Gluth took two attempts and so did Thaddius.

We took a break to gather all our frost resist gear, gem, and enchant them. Took 3 tries and he was down.

We headed to Kel'Thuzad's room and there he is ... waiting for us. Last time I saw him was 2 years ago with 39 other people. The planning took about 10 minutes making sure everyone knows where to go and what's their responsibilities.

We charged on! It was a long a battle really. In the end we ended up one shotting him.

Can you find me in that picture? I'm that awesome cow with nub illidari helm shatterer.

What will the guild do after clearing Wrath? Well we will farm it over and over. Atm we have 4 10man naxx groups setup for next week. Not every group will clear it but oh well, it's just a matter of time.

Getting ready to tank Heroics/Naxx

As tanks get ready to conquer Naxxramas one problem that they will run into is

Hitting the Defense Cap

As every tanks know now, the defense cap is 540. It's really really hard to get defense cap w/o some major work, time, and sometimes even gold.

Let's get some facts out right now before we go deep into this.

You can't effectively aoe tank 4+ mobs. Three mobs? Maybe depending on your gear. If you are just starting heroics chances are you fall in this category.

Geez guys I saw some tanks yesterday charging in like a wild man. That's ok if you are geared. But if your health is around 20% after the pull and stays there ... yeah rethink that charge pull strat.

CC in heroics is key again.

If you are not a sunwell geared tank expect to replace your items before naxx and some 5man heroics. So expect to do a TON of 5mans and get ready to craft some blue items.

If you are BT/Sunwell geared tank. You'll notice you only had to change couple pieces like I mentioned months ago they will last thru naxx. Problem is your still not defense cap you'll prolly be around 500ish not bad but not realy recommended for Heroics.

So what's a tank going to do?

Base on my limited experience

Socket for defense

If you are using BT/Sunwell and can't find any blue gear that is an upgrade ... socket all defense. Chances are you already did =P if you were raiding naxx past few days.

That's right you heard me. Socket +defense not stam, there are some cheap ones out there that gives +12-15 defense. Sacrificing 450 HP to get closer to that magic number is worth it.

Nothing is more frustating than getting crited for 7-9k over and over again. Effective health/effective stamina works if you're def capped or close ...

This is what our MT did. He socketed all defense on his t6 chest and other items. Granted he's decked out in Sunwell you can still see the changes he had to do.

That is the key for us right now. Don't worry you'll be stacking Stamina soon enough but for now socket for DEFENSE.

Craft Blue tanking gear!

Crafting titansteel mats is out of the question. They are too expensive but hey if youve got the money more power to you.

You will do better crafting the blue tanking gear and get experience and emblems in 5mans. Because by the time you get all the titansteel bars you'll have better items or enough badges to buy new gear.

Run Heroics!

At least run the easy heroics once a day ... Utgarde, nexus and Azjol Nerub, comes to mind. Get some easy Emblems and upgrades =).

Lastly

A good compromise for 540 defense cap is 520ish. You will still get crit but not so much that your healer will go OOM the first 30 second of a fight because you decided to pull everything anyway ...

If you have been running heroics lately chances are you got some nice upgrades along the way =). Keep it up and you'll be tanking Patchwerk soon!

Next I will try to cover what Reputations do you need to get started tanking in Heroics or 10man naxx.

If you found this helpful or disturbing please please feel free to comment.

EDIT: I might go ahead and list some tanking gear that I am aiming for heroic runs next post.

4H Down & more Heroics

We didn't had the heals for Patchwerk yet so instead of banging our heads on him we decided to head onto the Military Quarter

Instructor Razuvious

This guy hits so hard that it's impossible to have a player MT him the whole time. So you mind control one of his students to tank him after that you get the next student to tank and so forth. Sounds easy right? Yup! If I remember right this is one of the fights where Blizzard took priest out of their normal Whak-a-mole playstyle.


Gothik the Harvester

You divide the group by 2, one on the living side one on the undead side. You basically have to survive a series of waves. This is the hard part, not the boss. Once it's done the boss comes down and you get your loot. Note though that whoever is tanking him gets a debuff that reduces their stat by 10% and stacks all the way to 100% so your DPS needs to be alive when he gets down.

We had trouble at dividing which side needs more DPS but we got it down.


The Four Horsemen

It took our old guild a month to beat the original 4H event but it was worth it. It's still challenging and requires players to be pay attention but for those who has done this before it's easymode.

It is ,like I said, still a test of raid coordination and somewhat of a gear check. SW raiding guilds shouldn't have a problem.

A badd ass tanking sword drop last night and I can't remember the name ... just look it up =P it looks sexy too.

The raid was called early cause we did not want to waste time on Patchwerk but rather they just did some 10mans to get some upgrades(I had to go to bed >_>).



Heroics

One thing ... Heroics are hard again!

Heroic The Unculling of Stratlehome

Wow just wow. Nice instance here. This has a timer like the Bear runs on ZA where you get a mount if you finish the instance in 20min. Doing this on heroic with a tank who is not def cap is hella hard. We wiped like 4 times on the trash =P and once on the first boss.

Heroic Hall of Stones

First boss was like Maiden. Easy stuff. She puts a blackhole in the ground which is used by the tank and healer to break the upcoming CC. Pretty cool. Pvp Trinket works here too

Second boss has a mechanic like Gruul where he shatters. He yells "ha.. ha" when someone dies on your party.

Ok the part where you escort Bronzebeard and protect him is really hard(duh its heroic). We wiped so many times it was ridiculous. Good thing by the time everybody died Bronzebeard was finished LOL. So our shaman ankhed and rezzed us while there was a speech going on.

Third boss you just assign dps to kill slimes, you get reinforcements and you collect badges and loots.