Generic WoW

v3.2

In the comments on my gems for priests in 3.2 post I was asked about meta gems for priests.  Specificially which was better Insightful Earthsiege Diamond or Ember Skyflare Diamond?

Here are the calculations for determining which is better.

Insightful Earthsiege Diamond

• +21 Int = 24 MP5 for Discipline and 17 MP5 for Holy
• about +80 MP5 from proc effect = 80 MP5 for both Discipline and Holy priests
• Total stat weight = 104 MP5 for Discipline and 97 for Holy

Ember Skyflare Diamond

• +25 SP = 50 MP5 for both Discipline and Holy priests
• +2% Int only grants about 30 Int for Disc and 24 Int for Holy. So equivalent to 34 MP5 stat weight for Discipline and 20 MP5 for Holy.
• Total stat weight = 84 for Discipline and 70 for Holy

So the Insightful is still far better than the Ember.  This applies to both 3.1 and 3.2.

For the Ember to better than the Insightful, with these stat weightings, Discipline priests would need about 2420 fully buffed Intellect and Holy would need 2925 fully buffed.

Gobble gobble.

Edit:  BTW the numbers are based on these stat weightings.

Posted in Jewelcrafting, Priest

v3.1

Its easy to forget about the adventure that is pugging.  You get some gear, you join a guild and you start living in the guild’s little world.  You chat to the same people, you raid with the same people, and you become a bit isolated from the pugging wilderness.

Then one day, for whatever reason you decide to pick up a pug group.  Perhaps your guild doesn’t do Vault anymore and you think it might be a bit of fun.  Anyway, if you’re a lazy healer like me, you wait until you see someone advertising, “LF heal VoA then GTG” or similar.  After all healers are like rock stars and always in demand

So I join a VoA 10 pug for something to do while waiting for the guild raid to start.  I’m in Dalaran and the “please some healer grace us with your awesome presence so we can start VoA 10″ comment comes up (probably in Trade chat) and I take the plunge an express interest.

I used to pug VoA all the time but then when Emalon turned up in 3.1 and every single pug seemed to assume that Emalon would be the same as the existing boss in there.  Major fail!  And of course being a pug they couldn’t just agree to bypass Emalon and kill the other guy.  I mean who’d want to get saved to a raid which failed to kill Emalon, even if there was no chance of that kill happening?!?  Crazy talk.  Anyway I learned to stay well clear of VoA pugs.

Fast forward to July 2009 and I crazily assumed that maybe the pugs had figured Emalon out by now.  I mean its not that complicated.  DPS boss, then DPS huge overcharged add until it dies then DPS boss.  Make sure you run out of Lightning nova.  There is a chain lightning effect, but that never seems to be anything especially important.  Its just something to keep healers occupied when not healing the tanks.  I laugh (and die a little inside) when I see PUG members asking the RL to mark up the overcharged add.  I’m all for marking targets but I mean really, see that huge oversized add?  That’s the overcharged one, ok?  Hit him.

So my Voa 10 pug.  I zone in and the trash is cleared…  They run towards Emalon.  A little warning starts to beep somewhere in the recesses of my brain.  I’m one of three healers, one of which is a Disc priest so I swap to Holy.  That’s probably one too many healers but its not fatal.  Just as we’re about to start the raid leader says something like, “right lets give this one more try”.  Danger Will Robinson, Danger!

Pull.  Boss/add position is decent.  First lightning nova, two of the melee DPS die.  First overcharge wipe.  /sigh  The Disc priest cast about three shields in the entire sixty second or so attempt… /sigh

So I move on. No big deal.  Lesson learnt, PUGS still have trouble with Emalon.  Ten minutes later a guildie asks if people want to do VoA 10, sure I say why not.

Raid fills in about 3 minutes, we’re assembled soon after.  About half alts and half well geared (T8+) mains.  One of the DPS is told to change to his tank spec for a change and to give one of the tanks a chance to DPS for a change.  The ‘new tank’ is well enough geared but not very experienced tanking.

There is a bit of discussion about positioning for the new tank and a warning to the DPS to watch Omen. Pull. New tank has a bit of trouble establishing clear agro (think he may have mis-targeted and taunted one of the adds).  A DPS and a healer die.  Lucky we had three healers.  Now have just have a holy pally and me as a Disc priest healing.  Hmm, healing might be a bit more frantic, but this is a DPS limited fight so one down from the start is bad.

Agro established, position established.  Overcharge.  I’m thinking, “well this is the wipe I guess”.  Overcharged add dies.  Wow!  Maybe not.  Frantic healing, I think we took more chain lightning damage then we should have.  Second overcharge. Overcharged add dies.  By the third overcharge i’m no longer expecting a wipe   It gets close a few times healing and I almost dropped the add tank once, but Emalon goes down with only 8.  Yay!

T8 pants drop and i’m the only one wanting them.  Strangely its my first T8 piece.  I seem to get plenty of upgrades, just nothing with the word ‘tier’ in it.

So yeah, I can confirm that PUGs are still random in their competence with a slight bias towards incompetence.   Part of me wonders what the thought process is like for some of the puggers.  Surely after you have been killed a few items by lightning nova, or been in a few pugs which haven’t managed to kill the overcharged adds, because of low DPS, you’d maybe assess your performance?  Maybe you’d figure out how to avoid lightning nova and check to make sure you weren’t the source of the low DPS on the overcharge adds…

I guess i’m probably more self critical than a lot of players.

/shrugs

Gobble gobble.

Posted in Blogging

v3.2

Well I guess now i’ve published my theorycrafting/stat weights for 3.2 I might as well push the other 3.2 posts out too.

As you can probably guess this is my suggested list of gems for healing priests for 3.2. It is aimed at the tier 8.5+ geared priests as it is heavily spell power focused. Less well geared priests could probably safely use these although I do have a 3.1 version of this post published also.

For the well geared priests spell power is king as critical rating and haste rating suffer from diminishing returns.  Gearing for mana regen is pretty much irrelevant as mana pools are large and mana regen, even 100% inside the 5 second rule, is generally more than satisfactory.

To this end red gem slots become increasingly valuable. Runed Cardinal Rubies will be *the* gem for 3.2 and i’m expecting them to command outrageous prices for most of patch. I’m pretty sure most of the other casters will also be chasing Runed Cardinal Rubies.

My lists below ignores Jewelcrafting BoP gems. If you’re a JC I assume you can figure out what to cut your three Dragon Eye’s as. I have also listed at least one rare gem for each slot in case your gemming on a budget.

Discipline

Meta

1. Insightful Earthsiege Diamond

Red

1. Epic – Runed Cardinal Ruby (+23 SP)
2. Epic – Luminous Flawless Ametrine (+12 SP +10 Int)
3. Rare – Runed Scarlet Ruby (+19 SP)
4. Rare – Luminous Monarch Topaz (+9 SP +8 Int)

Yellow

1. Epic – Luminous Flawless Ametrine (+12 SP +10 Int)
2. Epic – Brilliant King’s Amber (+20 Int)
3. Rare – Luminous Monarch Topaz (+9 SP +8 Int)
4. Rare – Brilliant Autumn’s Glow (+16 Int)

Blue

1. Epic – Purified Dreadstone (+12 SP +10 Spi)
2. Epic – Royal Dreadstone (+12 SP +4 MP5)
3. Rare – Purified Twilight Opal (+9 SP +8 Spi)

Holy

Meta

1. Insightful Earthsiege Diamond

Red

1. Epic – Runed Cardinal Ruby (+23 SP)
2. Epic – Purified Dreadstone (+12 SP +10 Spi)
3. Rare – Runed Scarlet Ruby (+19 SP)
4. Rare – Luminous Monarch Topaz (+9 SP +8 Int)

Yellow

1. Epic – Luminous Flawless Ametrine (+12 SP +10 Int)
2. Epic – Potent Flawless Ametrine (+12 SP +10 crit)
3. Epic – Royal Dreadstone (+12 SP +4 MP5)
4. Rare – Purified Twilight Opal (+9 SP +8 Spi)

Blue

1. Epic – Purified Dreadstone (+12SP +10 Spi)
2. Epic – Royal Dreadstone (+12 SP +4 MP5)
3. Rare – Purified Twilight Opal (+9 SP +8 Spi)

Comments welcome.

Posted in Priest

v3.2

I’m going to go out on a limb and put this up now, even though 3.2 might not break for a couple of months and things might change.   I’m mainly putting it up now because I am moving to a more throughput bias for tier 8.5+ priests and you might like to start applying this to gear you collect in preparation for 3.2.

Previously for 3.1 I did a mass of work theorycrafting a set of stat weights for healing priests. This is the updated version for 3.2. To prevent having to post another six or seven post series explaining all the detail I am just going to post the summary (at this point). The formula are all the same with the exception of Replenishment, which has been simplified. For the detail of how these calculations were made refer to that older post.

So I am using pretty much the same model as previously, however I have changed some of the assumptions. As at tier 8.5 priests have more intellect, spirit and spell power generally I have increased the base levels for these in the model. I have also included some of the standard buffs any raiding priest is likely to have. This includes Inner Fire (+174 SP), Prayer of Spirit (+80 spirit), Gift of the Wild (+37 to all attributes), Dalaran Brilliance (+60 intellect) and Blessing of Kings (+10% all attributes).

Also, in my experience in Ulduar (i.e. T8 and T8.5 content levels) mana regen is relatively less important than for priests starting Naxxramas (T7 and T7.5 content). This is because the levels of mana regen stats such as intellect, spirit and MP5 on the gear at this level is sufficient to give a reasonable mana regen. To this end I have increased the throughput:mana regen (spell power:MP5) ratio from the 0.6 I used previously to 2.0. Above tier 8.5 gearing level spell power is the only stat which scales well and continues to give strong additive benefits.

It is important to note that at tier 7.5 and below you are better to use the stat weights in my older posts. This is because a fresh level 80 healing priest needs stats in order something like this:

MP5 > Intellect > Spirit > SP > Crit > Haste

At tier 9 your stat priority is going to be more like:

SP >> Haste > Crit > Intellect > Spirit > MP5.

Assumptions are generally the same as my previous post with the following exceptions:

• Mana regeneration is based on the caster spending 90% of their fight time inside the 5 second rule (up from 80% previously).
• Stats, where required, are based on Turkelife’s approximate stats at time of writing. This is about a T8.5 gearing level:
  • Discipline
    • Intellect 1488.5 (1100 base and including talents and buffs mentioned above)
    • Spirit 991.5 (750 base)
    • Spell power 2374 (2200 base)
  • Holy
    • Intellect 1197 (1000 base)
    • Spirit 1098.76 (850 base)
    • Spell power 2649 (2200 base)
• Fight length is 8 minutes (up from 6 minutes)
• Surge of Light procs are assumed to be used 90% of the time (up from 70%)
• Replenishment now gives 1% total mana over 5s, instead of 0.25% per second
• Inspiration now gives 10% physical damage reduction, instead of about 5% via armour increases previously

Stat weights

Here they are broken down into their components.

MP5

• Discipline = 1.00
• Holy = 1.00

Spirit

• Discipline = 0.4138
  • MP5 value from mana regen = 0.4138
• Holy = 1.0278
  • MP5 value from mana regen = 0.3675
  • MP5 value from Holy Concentration = 0.0827
  • MP5 value from Spiritual Guidance = 0.5775

Intellect

• Discipline = 1.1483
  • MP5 value from mana regen = 0.1494
  • MP5 value from maximum mana = 0.1976
  • MP5 value from Replenishment = 0.1518
  • MP5 value from Shadowfiend = 0.0790
  • MP5 value from Rapture = 0.1581
  • MP5 value from critical healing = 0.2016
  • MP5 value from Divine Aegis = 0.1815
  • MP5 value from Inspiration = 0.0291
• Holy = 0.8403
  • MP5 value from mana regen = 0.1606
  • MP5 value from Holy Concentration = 0.0361
  • MP5 value from maximum mana = 0.1718
  • MP5 value from Replenishment = 0.132
  • MP5 value from Shadowfiend = 0.0687
  • MP5 value from critical healing = 0.1855
  • MP5 value from Surge of Light = 0.0614
  • MP5 value from Inspiration = 0.0240

Spell Power

• Discipline = 2.0
• Holy = 2.0

Critical Rating

• Discipline = 1.1851
  • MP5 value from critical healing = 0.5798
  • MP5 value from Divine Aegis = 0.5218
  • MP5 value from Inspiration = 0.0836
• Holy = 0.8959
  • MP5 value from critical healing = 0.6135
  • MP5 value from Surge of Light = 0.2029
  • MP5 value from Inspiration = 0.0794

Stamina

• Discipline = 0.2
• Holy = 0.2

Haste Rating

• Discipline = 1.0713
  • MP5 value from hasted healing = 1.0713
• Holy = 1.1337
  • MP5 value from hasted healing = 1.1337

Summary

• Discipline LootRank
• Holy LootRank

Pawn values

Pawn values for these are:

( Pawn: v1: "Discipline32": Stamina=0.2, Intellect=1.1483, Spirit=0.4138, RedSocket=46, CritRating=1.1851, MetaSocket=104.1137, HasteRating=1.0713, BlueSocket=28.1381, YellowSocket=35.4827, SpellPower=2, Mp5=1)

( Pawn: v1: "Holy32": Stamina=0.2, Intellect=0.8403, Spirit=1.0278, RedSocket=46, CritRating=0.8959, MetaSocket=97.6467, HasteRating=1.1337, BlueSocket=34.2779, YellowSocket=32.4032, SpellPower=2, Mp5=1)

Note that the gem values are derived from the best-in-slot gems for each socket. These are Insightful Earthsiege Diamond (meta), Luminous Flawless Ametrine (yellow), Runed Cardinal Ruby (red) and Purified Dreadstone (blue). The Insightful Earthsiege Diamond value assumes the equip effect of this gem grats 80 MP5. Therefore it adds 80 to the value of the meta gem.

How much MP5 are abilities worth a T8.5 gearing level?

• Replenishment about 170-210 MP5
• Shadowfiend about 90-110 MP5
• Rapture about 215 MP5
• Holy Concentration about 75 MP5
• Divine Aegis about 600 MP5 at 25% crit!
• Surge of light about 232 MP5 at 25% crit
• Inspiration about 90 MP5 at 25% crit

Some notable changes in this 3.2 version are:

• The tripling of the spell power to MP5 ratio from 0.6 to 2.0 results in the value of throughput stats (critical rating and haste rating) increasing roughly in proportion. This also increases the value of spirit to holy priests.
• As the fight duration is now 8 minutes instead of 6 minutes (Ulduar fights are generally longer) the contribution of intellect has diminished slightly. This is because total mana pool now has to last longer (i.e. you get less MP5 from the same mana pool). This also diminishes the value of Shadowfiend, assuming it is still only used once per fight.

I will do gear lists at some stage to include new 3.2 gear. Thanks for reading and your constructive comments.

Gobble gobble.

Posted in Priest

v3.1

A few times recently I realised that I’ve never really discussed gemming for priests yet.  So with out further ad do here are my suggestions for gemming in 3.1. Note that this will become mostly redundant in 3.2 with the release of epic gems.

Firstly the reds.

1. Runed Scarlet Ruby (+19 spell power)
2. Luminous Monarch Topaz (+9 SP, +8 Intellect)

For the first six or so months of Wrath Runed Scarlet Rubies were pretty expensive (100-150 gold each) as they are best-in-slot gems for red slots for most casters.  So initially I was using the much cheaper Luminous Monarch Topaz. In recent times on my server the Runed Scarlet Rubies have come down to about 50 gold or so and I am now starting to use these.  The topaz are also good for around the tier 7 gearing level where you are still building up your mana store and regen.  By tier 8 mana is no longer an issue and you might as well go for spell power in every red slot.

For the yellow slots use:

1. Luminous Monarch Topaz (+9 SP, +8 Int)
2. Brilliant Autumn’s Glow (+16 Int)

Holy priests and well geared discipline priests are better served using the topaz.  Less geared discipline priests will get more value from the autumn glows.

Finally the blues:

1. Dazzling Forest Emerald (+8 Int, +3 MP5)
2. Purified Twilight Opal (+9 SP +8 Spi)

These are the weakest gem slots for priests and you should consider using red gems instead and ignoring the socket bonus if blues aren’t needed.  Personally I pretty much religiously follow socket colours.  Discipline priests are best to use Dazzling Forest Emerald, while Holy priests should probably go the Purified Twilight Opal.  Don’t forget the requirements of your Insightful Earthsiege Diamond, which reminds me…

Meta gem – there is only useful option here currently and it is the Insightful Earthsiege Diamond.

Short and sweet.

Posted in Jewelcrafting, Priest

v3.1

Turkelife’s a free agent again. 

If you’ve been keeping up with your reading, you’d know that a couple of months back she joined Questionable Content (QC) after Dead or Alive (DoA) faded away with real life issues.  She met some great llamas in QC, but now she’s on the move again.

Last night the powers that be in QC (*waves at Immoral, Som-llama and Wild-llama) announced that there would be no more 25 man raiding organised in the near future and that they were going to become a PvP guild instead .  In the last few weeks we had had a fair bit of trouble getting a full 25 man guild run together as the summer boss ran rampart in the guild.  This is quite ironic really as its not even summer down here in greater Australia (*waves at New Zealanders) where most of the guild come from.

Raiding was becoming a chore as the raid leaders kept having to spend time organising PUGs to fill gaps ever single week.  Fair enough.  It was becoming a bit frustrating turning up to raid which were then called off because only twenty raiders were online.

Part of the change came about because QC is a guild breeding like llamas with average baby production of one new child per month since I joined!  I hope its not contagious.   Good luck all you new parents.

So it is with some sadness I say farewell to QC.  No more will Rofl-llama entertain the raid and confuse new raiders with his fake Fish Feasts.  No more will he drive the uninitiated new guildies to distraction with his random comments.

*waves at Rofl-llama

No more will the implacable Wild-llama recite his 20 minute pre-Mimiron monologue.  It was delivered in a calm and unhurried manner no many how times he’d said it before.  At least he can watch the cricket now.

*waves at Wild-llama

No more with Az-llama keep me entertained during downtime with innuendo and a flurry of sexy emotes.

*waves at Az-llama

A special farewell to Som-llama, the indestructible pvp priest, and healer voted most likely to die in raid three time running   Spec for Lightwell I say!

*waves at Som-llama

Farewell QC and good luck with the next challenge.

Gobble gobble.

PS Anyone looking for a a healing priest?

Note: Real names have been changed to protect the innocent make this post more entertaining (fail?).

Posted in Blogging

v3.1

OK so I was wrong.  I’m referring to this post a couple of weeks back.

For those too lazy to go and read it basically it was saying that I found Holy spec to be more useful than Discipline in 25 man raiding (Ulduar).  Not just better, but better to such an extent that I couldn’t find a use for even the first Discipline speced priest in a 25 man raid (forget attempting to argue for two).

The stuff I wrote about in that post is still mostly correct, but I was making the mistake of coming at it from the Holy point-of-view.  Glyphed Guardian Spirit is more useful than Pain Suppression.  Circle of Healing is far more useful than PoH in 25 man raids, because of its smart healing ability.  But this is missing the point of Discipline priesting.

My misconception came about from a couple of angles.  The first one was ‘hero syndrome’.  I have no idea if its a real syndrome, or what its real name is, but i’m talking about the heal mind-set where a healer starts to believe they personally have to make the difference.  Every time someone takes significant damage the healer with hero syndrome believes they are the one that must fix the problem.  They personally have to make the green bar go up.  It’s easy enough to understand, especially in progression type fights where raiders are being pushed to do more than just go through the motions.  Many healers get into a ‘flow’ where they heal almost instinctively, using their main spells.  It becomes a kind of hypnotic rhythm.  I know DPS rotations also sometimes result in the ‘flow’ too but that’s another topic.

Thankfully the ‘hero syndrome’ is easily broken.  Die.  Especially on the non-progression content, death of the healer usually results in the raid surviving just as well without the healer.  Other healers cover for the dead one, etc, etc.  The hero then hopefully realises that perhaps they don’t have to single heal the entire raid.

In my case it wasn’t my death in raid that broke my hero syndrome it was forcing myself to stay Discipline spec for an entire raid.  That is stay Discipline even if I thought i’d be more effective as Holy.  The outcome of this was that the raids green bars still went up just fine, even when it wasn’t me casting that Circle of Healing, etc.

The second angle was me stepping up my aggression when shielding to 110%. Penance is a great single target heal, etc, etc, but if your a Discipline priest in 25 man raids, its all about Power Word: Shield.  PW:S is your reason to be in that raid. This partially followed on from the hero syndrome above, but in Discipline spec I wasn’t pushing the envelope enough.  I was healing my tank fine and healing with raid damage a bit, but for the raid damage I was too focused on making green bars go up.  Any healer can do that   What I started doing was using every single spare global cool down to shield the raid.

What I discovered was something amazing (well I was amazed).  I could prevent the need to raid heal entire groups!  For example on Kologarn, when your tank assignment is topped up and shielded, start shielding the healers group.  When he casts “Oblivion!” or whatever that spell is really called, which he does very regularly, that’s one less group that needs healing.  If I get a lucky run on eye beams and tank damage I can actually shield two entire groups.  Thats 60k+ effective healing when he does his AoE.  Same for Auriaya’s sonic cone attack and same for Frozen Blows on Hodir, although Hodir allows a smaller window for pre-shielding.  I’ve started playing a mini-game where I see if its actually possible to go /OOM without dying during a fight. (So far I haven’t managed to do it)

Apparently this raid shielding also does wonders for your numbers on the healing meters.  I suppose its kind of like the ultimate heal sniping.  That is ‘healing’ the damage by prevention/mitigation before it actually impacts the health bar.

So, yeah, I stand corrected, don’t hate your Discipline speced priests in 25 man raids, just challenge them to shield more.

Gobble gobble.

Posted in Priest

v3.1

OK so I was wrong.  I’m referring to this post a couple of weeks back.

For those too lazy to go and read it basically it was saying that I found Holy spec to be more useful than Discipline in 25 man raiding (Ulduar).  Not just better, but better to such an extent that I couldn’t find a use for even the first Discipline speced priest in a 25 man raid (forget attempting to argue for two).

The stuff I wrote about in that post is still mostly correct, but I was making the mistake of coming at it from the Holy point-of-view.  Glyphed Guardian Spirit is more useful than Pain Suppression.  Circle of Healing is far more useful than PoH in 25 man raids, because of its smart healing ability.  But this is missing the point of Discipline priesting.

My misconception came about from a couple of angles.  The first one was ‘hero syndrome’.  I have no idea if its a real syndrome, or what its real name is, but i’m talking about the heal mind-set where a healer starts to believe they personally have to make the difference.  Every time someone takes significant damage the healer with hero syndrome believes they are the one that must fix the problem.  They personally have to make the green bar go up.  It’s easy enough to understand, especially in progression type fights where raiders are being pushed to do more than just go through the motions.  Many healers get into a ‘flow’ where they heal almost instinctively, using their main spells.  It becomes a kind of hypnotic rhythm.  I know DPS rotations also sometimes result in the ‘flow’ too but that’s another topic.

Thankfully the ‘hero syndrome’ is easily broken.  Die.  Especially on the non-progression content, death of the healer usually results in the raid surviving just as well without the healer.  Other healers cover for the dead one, etc, etc.  The hero then hopefully realises that perhaps they don’t have to single heal the entire raid.

In my case it wasn’t my death in raid that broke my hero syndrome it was forcing myself to stay Discipline spec for an entire raid.  That is stay Discipline even if I thought i’d be more effective as Holy.  The outcome of this was that the raids green bars still went up just fine, even when it wasn’t me casting that Circle of Healing, etc.

The second angle was me stepping up my aggression when shielding to 110%. Penance is a great single target heal, etc, etc, but if your a Discipline priest in 25 man raids, its all about Power Word: Shield.  PW:S is your reason to be in that raid. This partially followed on from the hero syndrome above, but in Discipline spec I wasn’t pushing the envelope enough.  I was healing my tank fine and healing with raid damage a bit, but for the raid damage I was too focused on making green bars go up.  Any healer can do that   What I started doing was using every single spare global cool down to shield the raid.

What I discovered was something amazing (well I was amazed).  I could prevent the need to raid heal entire groups!  For example on Kologarn, when your tank assignment is topped up and shielded, start shielding the healers group.  When he casts “Oblivion!” or whatever that spell is really called, which he does very regularly, that’s one less group that needs healing.  If I get a lucky run on eye beams and tank damage I can actually shield two entire groups.  Thats 60k+ effective healing when he does his AoE.  Same for Auriaya’s sonic cone attack and same for Frozen Blows on Hodir, although Hodir allows a smaller window for pre-shielding.  I’ve started playing a mini-game where I see if its actually possible to go /OOM without dying during a fight. (So far I haven’t managed to do it)

Apparently this raid shielding also does wonders for your numbers on the healing meters.  I suppose its kind of like the ultimate heal sniping.  That is ‘healing’ the damage by prevention/mitigation before it actually impacts the health bar.

So, yeah, I stand corrected, don’t hate your Discipline speced priests in 25 man raids, just challenge them to shield more.

Gobble gobble.

Posted in Priest

v3.1

My pre-raid questing activity has finally flowered into the Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms achievement.  Now just Kalimdor to go for the big one.  I figured while it was fresh I might rattle of a few random points to help others doing this.

Turn on low level quest tracking on your mini-map – this automatically deactivates each time you log off and each time you enter a raid group.

Methodically start at one end of the continent and work your way along.  This will make it easier to keep track of which areas you have done and which you haven’t.  Complete your explorer achievements as you go.  This will also help you find some of the less obvious quests such as those started at Captain Grayson at the lighthouse in south-western Westfall.

Do as many quests in an area as you can. It does not matter if you miss the odd one though as there are extras.  For example Vulture’s Vigor in Blasted Lands is one of the more annoying quests to do and I ended up skipping it.  I have at least nine extra quests on completing the Loremaster of Eastern Provinces and I am sure there are more I missed.  You can get some tips on extra quests by reading the comments tab of the map area on WowHead.

You do not need to do any PvP quests, these are bonuses.  I’m not really into PvP and only completed a couple of the easier PvP quests.

You do not need to do any quests which go into instances, these are bonuses also.  Quests which you hand in inside the instance do not count towards your total.  Quests which you complete inside the instance but hand in outside the instance count for which ever continent you hand the quest in on.

You can pick up some bonus quests by handing in 60 wool/silk/mageweave/runecloth for reputation at each capital city (of your faction).

You can not complete quests while in a raid group.  You can accept new quests and hand in completed quests, but you can not gather quest items or kill quest mobs while in a raid group.  Well you can kill them but they don’t count to your quest tally.

So, yeah, some tips.  I hope they are useful.

Just Loremaster of Kalimdor to go for me!

Posted in Questing

v3.1

As you may have read previously I am slowly leveling a protection warrior alt.  Moowall is now level 75 and finishing up questing in Dragonblight.  He’s tanked a few instances and has good survivability and ok threat generation.  The threat generation is mostly keyboard error I think as I am still learning multi-mob tanking.

Anyway, as usual I have put together a list of gear I am targeting for my toon.  In this instance it is initially to get to 535-540 defence and tank heroics, but it it includes some easy upgrades to go beyond that.

Firstly I am aiming for about these numbers to be comfortable tanking heroics.  I expect i’ll be a bit less than this at the start, but my targets are (unbuffed) 21k armor, 21k health and 32% dodge+parry.  I didn’t come up with these numbers, but I can’t remember which web source I got them from either.  So take them with a grain of salt.

Here are my rough stat priorities:

• 164 Expertise rating > 263 Hit rating > Str > Stam > the rest
• Dodge > Parry

Reputation-wise there is a lot of good stuff from the Wyrmrest Accord initially with both Argent Crusade and Ebon Blade having some nice upgrades, but generally at revered or higher.  So here is my rough priority list for working on reputation: Wyrmrest Accord > Argent Crusade > Ebon Blade.  Revered is mostly sufficient if you are in a hurry.

Just a couple more things before I regurgitate my gear list, i’m a jewel crafter, so my list is biased in that direction.  If JC isn’t your thing you will either have to substitute your own ideas or buy a few more items off the auction house.  Also because this is my third 80, and I use the auction house a fair bit, it is biased towards the excellent gear I can buy from the AH for 400-600 gold a slot.

At this stage i’m mainly expecting him to be tanking heroics, with the occassional fill-in role as OT in the easier raids.  He will also be only hitting 80 about the time 3.2 arrives, thus there is lots of high end emblem gear included.

Anyway my target gear list is:

• Head – Tempered Titansteel Helm (AH) –> T8.5 hat (58 EoC)
• Neck – Burning Skull Pendant (AH) maybe –> Titanium Earthguard Chain (JC) –> Shard of the Crystal Forest (19 EoC)
• Shoulder – Wapach’s Spaulders of Solidarity (AH) –> T7.5 (60 EoV)
• Back – Durable Nerubhide Cape (AH) –> Platinum Mesh Cloak (25 EoV)
• Chest – Breastplate of the Solemn Council (Wyrmrest Revered) –> T8.5 chest (58 EoC)
• Wrist – Bracers of Dalaran’s Parapets (BoE for 60 EoV from Turkelife)
• Hands – Zeliek’s Gauntlets (AH) –> Gauntlets of the Royal Watch (EoC)
• Waist – Waistguard of the Risen Knight (AH) –> Shieldwarder Girdle (28 EoC)
• Legs –    Special Issue Legplates (Argent Crusade Honoured) –> Wyrmguard Legplates (39 EoC)
• Feet –     Blood-Caked Stompers (Wyrmrest Revered) –> Kyzoc’s Ground Stompers (40 EoV)
• Fingers 1 – Kurzel’s Warband (quest from Mack in Grizzly Hills) –> Titanium Earthguard Ring (JC)
• Fingers 2 – Ring of Earthen Might (JC) –> Signet of the Impregnable Fortress (25 EoV)
• Trinket 1 – Figurine – Monarch Crab (JC)
• Trinket 2 – Figurine – Ruby Hare (JC) –> Valor Medal of the First War (40 EoH)
• Main – Fang of Truth (Wyrmrest honoured) or Hammer of Quiet Mourning (quest Zul-Drak)
• OH – Titansteel Shield Wall (AH)
• Ranged – Armor Plated Combat Shotgun (AH)

This is mainly based on this stat weight/LootRank, which is a modified version of one I found on the TankSpot forums (I think).

You might be lucky to get Zeliek’s Gauntlets off the AH for a decent price.  Its in the list because I already have them in the bank for him.  Likewise for Bracers of Dalaran’s Parapets.

Gems

• Meta – Effulgent Skyflare Diamond (+32 stam and -2% damage)
• Other gems – I haven’t got a fixed plan here.  Being a JC I will be mixing and matching a lot, but this will be primarily defence rating > stamina at the start I expect.

Enchants

• Head –     Arcanum of the Savage Gladiator (Exalted Horde Expedition) –> Arcanum of the Stalwart Protector (Exalted Argent Crusade)
• Shoulder – Lesser Inscription of the Pinnacle (Honoured Sons of Hodir)
• Back – Enchant Cloak – Titanweave
• Chest – Enchant Chest – Greater Defense
• Hands – Enchant Gloves – Expertise
• Wrist – Enchant Bracers – Major Stamina
• Feet – Enchant Boots – Tuskarr’s Vitality
• Main –     Titanium Weapon Chain
• Shield – Enchant Shield – Defense

For more ideas check out Kungaloosh’s post on a similar subject.

Enjoy.

Posted in Jewelcrafting, Warrior