I’d Rather Be Wowing!

I hope that this doesn’t come across as a post that were caused from “dissecting” Blizzard’s statements too much. Sometimes I’m just puzzled to they way things were designed.

About homogenization

At one point, Blizzard decides that homogenization of stats are good so that one gear can be considered useful for multiple classes/specs. One big change was the integration between healing and spell powers. I am all up for it, I don’t like loots to be wasted when other people can use it, even if being a cloth caster, I am affected with this the most with respect to the number of people competing for the gears. For most part, I think Blizzard has done a good job to achieve it. The latest example is by removing the druid-only staff, and integrate the druid-stats in general. There are other homogenization that I still find lacking, for example spell power plate can only be used by holy paladin alone. But I can understand the difficulty in changing that.

What puzzled me is how this principle of reducing the chance that the drop loots are not usable by anybody failed to translate for Vault of Archavon (VoA) instance.  According to wowwiki:

On Normal (10 man), he (Archavon) drops two items, which can be a hand, leg or chest T7 (10) set piece for any class (the item itself, not the token) or the new Hateful Gladiator’s Season 5 assortments.

Doesn’t dropping the items themselves - further divided to certain specs for each class, instead of the tokens, , essentially restrict the number of people that can vie for the item? I failed to see the reasoning behind this.

Continuing from my previous post, last Monday we went back to Naxx with only two goals in mind: killing Sapphiron and Kel’thuzad. And after lots of wipes, we did just that. And I won the key for Eye of Eternity :).

Recounting my experience and offering a somewhat amateurish tips below

Sapphiron

As a group, we aim to have about 300 frost resist. With the presence of frost resist aura, we just need to aim for about 170. I only have Glacial Slippers and Titanium Frostguard Ring on me, amounting to a little less than 300 frost resist. With this amount of frost resist, I took about 800 damage per 2 second (from Sapphiron’s Frost Aura). While not using the frost resist set probably would result in higher dps,  we felt that for learning the fight, they are useful to give some breathing room for the healers to also understand the movements of the fight. Especially considering that we have a lack of aoe healers.

Just a short summary to Sapp’s relevant abilities from the eye of a shadow priest. First is the consistent 1200 dmg per 2 second from his Frost Aura. I feel that keeping VE up at all time make a big difference in making myself less fragile (this is compared to our resident mage whose health drops below comfortable level way too many times). Two is his chill spell that looks like Shade’s Blizzard, though more irregular in its movement. I really hate this one because it’s really hard to see exactly the scope of the affected area. Not much advice I can provide other than try to avoid it, and pay attention to its movement, so that if you happened to get stuck in it, you know the “shortest” way to get out from it. PW.S helps in mitigating the damage while you make your way out.

When he took off to the air, he will shoot ice bolt to two random person, one after another. These two people will be ice tombed and you will need to hide behind the the ice block to avoid his other spell, i.e., Frost Breath, that will surely one-shot you when hit. The fact that he tombed two people sequentially is important. Hiding behind the ice block of the first person tombed before the 2nd person is tombed will afflict damage to you.  Also, chill/blizzard will still be going on during the air phase, and it is possible that the ice block lies in the area of the blizzard. So it might be preferable to “wait” for the second ice block and go there if it is safer.

When he’s on the air, you can still attack him. But not when you’re behind an ice tomb (LOS). Coincidentally, trying to cast while behind an ice block is a good check to see if you are truly safe from his Frost breath (you’re safe if you have that LOS warning).

Having some frost gears does reduce our dps capability so this fight can last pretty long, hence putting a strain on my mana bar. I found that my shadow fiend doesn’t last very long because of the Frost Aura. Investing in the glphy that return 5% mana when our fiend died prematurely I’m sure will help but I didn’t have that during this fight. Remembering to take out your fiend early, so that you can use it more than once, does make a difference. But what saves me is dispersion. I tend to save it during the air phase, where I popped it when I’m hiding behind an ice block or when I’m ice-blocked (yes dispersion is castable during it) or when I have to dash my way to an ice-block (and hoping I’ll make it before the frost breath goes down). I have not yet tried to see nor experienced  if dispersion can avoid you being on-shotted with the frost breath. Since I won’t be able to cast anything to him anyway, I minimize the down time from using dispersion.

Kel’Thuzad

You will start the fight standing in the middle of the room, fending from incoming (slow moving) mobs. Generally, casters and range is responsible for the skeleton and the banshee ladies. There isn’t really any tactics/strategies here. I think I used the most SW:D here :), especially to skellies that get too close.

Second phase will start after about 4 min. We still had some leftovers mobs when this phase begins, so the our first priority is clearing them off. As a shadow priest (and caster in general), there are only two things to know about this fight. First, is to spread out. Make sure that you are 10 yard away from anybody (mods can tell you if you are too lcose). If you stay spread out, you can just cast to your heart content except when a shadow fissure appears under your feet (which is the 2nd thing that you have to worry). If it is necessary, you can help your healers by PW:S-ing someone who is ice-blocked.

Kel is just too simple for casters in 10-man group. I imagine finding place to spread out is much more difficult in 25-man.

Vh’s Week

Vh is now 80! I was originally planning to keep her ele specced for a while just because she has more chance in running heroic with the guildies, hence accumulate some gears. On Sunday, in the effort of going into a Naxx25 pug (due to some coaxing from a fellow guildie), she was respecced to resto. But then the plan fell through mostly because I don’t feel that it’s fair to go in with such subpar gears (only about 1400 sp after scrambling for enchants) and relying on the other healers to pick up for my slack.  It’s probably meant to happen, however, since later in the evening, as Vh was just hanging around in IF, she received a tell asking her to fill in a healer in someone’s (mostly) guild Naxx10 run. I told him that she doesn’t have a good gear yet, but apparently they just want an extra healer, and one that is not that geared is better than nothing.

After saying yes, I just realized that I didn’t even ask which boss they are at (proving that I’m just excited to have a chance to get in) :). They were at Patch. Could you get a better fight than that to get acquainted with your healing spelss? At least I don’t have to move around and just concentrate on the healing. I have a big mana problem on that fight, with my mana bar empty about only 3/4 of the fight - and mana tide and pot have already been used. Thank goodness for replenishment. My overall healing was much less than the two priest healers, with also significantly less overheal. Is that a good thing? I am not sure, at least I am not blowing my mana for nothing. And I desperately miss my fiend, dispersion, and hymn.

We went on to kill the remaining bosses in that wing. They are pretty uneventful, except to the fact that I was somewhat behaving noobish in a couple of the fight. In Thaddius, for example, I forgot the polarity placement (they did it the opposite to what I’m used to). I died quite early, but at least I didn’t wipe the raid - but something kills them later on, and on the 2nd try,  I was one of the 2 healers left standing. We gave Sapp a try (another noobish moment here too), after 1 really unfortunate bad luck pull and 1 wipe, we lost a healer to DC and it was getting late. And that concludes Vh’s first venture to Naxx.

Vh gets two big upgrade because nobody else seems to need them. And I get another round of understanding and appreciation to all the healers and their willingness to live such a frantic life :). Also, this guild is interested to have Vh comes regularly, but alas, one of their raiding day collides with E’s, so she just has to be happy on being their backup on Sundays. I think she will remain a resto and learn how to heal better.

E’s Week

E has been trying to sneak in Wintergrasp whenever she could. Sometimes she got unlucky and miscalculated the time and ended up logging in when the battle has already over (and when they win too - to rub it in the face!). In any case, she only needs 10 more marks to get the head gear (Titan-forged Hood of Dominance).

In term of progression, for the last 2 weeks, we are able to clear the four wings (we were a bit stumped after the Heigan’s spot was fixed). But this past week, we had a signficant improvement in term of clear time and we were able to finally take a peek of Sapp - but were totally annihilated by him. We are continuing again today, and this time with the help of a few frost resist gear. We’ll see how it goes :).

Another week, another rounds of pugs - especially for OS, VoA, and Naxx. One in particular though, kinda stood up. This happened to be the pug that Vh was trying to get in. The raid leader is a very spirited person. And when I say spirited, I mean intense. He’s very generous in dishing out sharp banters (read: insults) that I think is appropriate when running with or targeted toward guildies and friends, but not really for strangers during pug. For example, someone after responding that they can watch out for locust swarm timer with the addon, he would say “yeah, Naxx10 needs an add-on cause Naxx10 is serious business.” At first I thought he only did it with his guildies, but apparently I was wrong. Under his ruling, some of his other guildies also plays this insult game. I guess that’s just how they are.

Anyway, the run pretty much fell apart after failing to kill Anub twice in a row - which is also the first boss that we tried. I don’t know if the fact that we couldn’t get the, supposedly, easiest boss down was the one that is causing it (which cause few of the healers to leave), or it is the chain quitting after fingers were beginning to be pointed toward people with less than 1.5k dps (with one guy casually told them to get their dps to at least 1650 before coming back), and the low performing mages pointed out that they tried to get the little swarm adds under control (whether or not this caused them to have less than 1.5k dps is reasonable, I do not know).

All I know is that, the raid leader, which throughout the fight also “insulted” the tanks for not kiting Anub appropriately (which coincidentally their first time tanking as well), continously saying that we are an “Epic Fail” group, is part of the low 1.5k dps team (yet, I found it amusing that he was on the top in healing meter). His reason for the low dps is simple, he is in ret pvp spec. It seems that it’s just fun and game for him. Boredom maybe? For me, it’s one thing to demand other people to step up their game, but it’s entirely different thing when it’s done in such a crude manner and when it comes from a person that is also part of the problem.

/rant

The WoW’s entity that governs all loots and rolls and I - we don’t get along very well. Simply explained, he has his favorites, and I’m not it. I am getting tired of his old routine like putting my much needed upgrade in my least favorite heroics (i.e., Heroic Loken) or end bosses, making me runs countless heroics with only repair bills and pug stories as my reward, and when he “choose” to let me see the shiny loots that I desperately wanted, he made me choke on my rolls.

How can it be more obvious? You keep dropping the leather caster loots that only one person in the group can ever use or the mail caster loots that just end up to be sharded. It’s like you look at our group composition, find out which class/spec we don’t have (or the minority), and decides that it will be that class/spec “day”. Again.

Or how you make the loots that I need drop along with half people of the group that want it (and let it be won by someone who run it for the first time). Or decides that the two same persons win rolls 90% of the time - and make these people shares tier token AND gear category class with me. Tell me what they do for you so I can be one of them, for once.

***

I hate the “luck” aspect of this game - where you don’t get rewarded based on your effort but based on your luck.

/rant

But I can’t help it, I’m so happy when I realized (after wasting several candles) that Prayer of Shadow Word Protection is now raid wide!!!

And really loving the buff for elemental shammy, it’s going to make switching Vh back to resto really difficult :).

Things that E’s working on getting.

1. Titan-forged Hood of Dominance (40 Wintergrasp Mark of Honor).
Sadly, E’s still using Hood of Hexing having no luck from Forgotten Shadow Hood dropping in my countless forays to heroic Strat. At least this seems attainable with effort and not with luck, though with the trade-off of wasted resilience stat. Any other good alternative?

2. Titanium Spellshock Necklace (crafted).
Alternative: Encircling Burnished Gold Chains (25 emblems) or Hateful Gladiator’s Pendant of Dominance (38k honors). Nothing prevented me in getting them except that I’m hoping Chain of Latent Energies (trash drop Naxx10)  or Circle of Arcane Streams (OS10) will someday drop.

3. Titansteel Guardian (crafted).
I am hoping for the cheaper alternative, War Mace of Unrequited Love (heroic nexus), but it is also another item that has been alluding me :(. Currently saving up for titansteel, should be doable by next week.

4. Deathchill Cloak (crafted).
Not in the highest priority with the reason of not being hit-capped if switching from Dark Shroud of the Scourge (plus other planned gear switch, such as the weapon).

The championing system works in raid. With both 10 and 25 man raid, I don’t always have time to run heroics. I’ve been trying to get my rep up with the wrymrest accord, but with their measly 3 daily quests (750 rep total), it will take me almost 2 weeks even if I dilligently do them.

Crafted bags are not soulbound.  I have a bunch of 18 slot bags on E since she started crafting the 20 slog bags. While on Val and Vh, they mostly don 16 slot bags.  But, I can’t even do anything with the spare bags that I have in the bank unless vendor it. It’s such a waste.

We were excited to continue Naxx10 yesterday and make it another new boss night. We were planning to do the 4 horsemen fight and looking forward to practice the safety dance with Heigan. Also, for the first time ever, we didn’t need to pug. Our enhancement shammy managed to leveled up his DK and geared him to the def cap - which involves too-many-to-count trips to HoL, with guildies and with pug (I’m in most of the run, I think I can run that place in my sleep now).

Alas, when we came in, as we are running to Heigan, something was amis. It was too quiet. “Err…isn’t there supposes to be trash mobs in here”, said our GL. Yeah, our raid ID get “stolen”, and this “group” has fully cleared the place.

We were disappointed, that’s for sure. Our GL and our shammy/dk took the blow the most. We were speculating who might have took the raid ID. We run with a total of 3 pug members that week - two offtanks (one on Tues which didn’t end up too well because of the massive lag and another one Thurs that ended up guiding us to a lot of new bosses), and a boomkin. From those three, only the boomkin was online yesterday. So I decided to chat with her - not really knowing how to put things so that she won’t get offended and think we are suspecting her. Luckily the boomkin was so sweet and very understanding, but also was innocent. So it’s between the two tanks. But I don’t think we’ll ever know.

It’s funny with the number of times that we’ve run raid with pugs that this was the first time it ever happened. It’s a “gentle” reminder to choose wisely who you pug with.

Our GL, regardless how disappointed he is, still mentioned that in a sense, if it was the 2nd tank that took the raid ID, the instance is as much right to his as to ours since he helped in the majority of it. Also maybe since he was aware that we were planning to go again over the weekend (which we didn’t end up going), and he might think by then, if we wouldn’t be able to fully clear the place anyway, it is okay to take advantage of the partial clear. Regardless, it would be nice if he would check with us before taking it :(.

Saturday morning, a friend whispered me and asked if I wanted to go for Naxx25 that he was about to form. The group was going to be mostly pug. I was in his pug group several times before, and yet, I didn’t know most of the people in this pug group.

We were attempting 3 wings and he wanted to start with the Military wing. I look at the roster. Hmm 5 priests, but I was the only shadow. I shuddered. That means that I’m going to be given the MC-ing duty. Oh, did I mention that this was my first Naxx25?

You should know from the post’s title - the outcome of attempts. I was the first priest to MC. First pull - Hmm what are all these buttons do? I took too long in initial taunting, MT was downed, and the other priest didn’t have a mic, and I must have missed his msg in raid chat to taunt it over. Why do they have the “cancel” button if it didn’t work for actually dismissing the MC?  Second pull - Raz was distracted too far from the MC-ed guy. As I was going to be in the range for taunt, I broke my MC because I went too far. Upon recovering, the other priest and I were not coordinating our taunt correctly.  Third pull - the other priest asked to be relieved from the duty, so another priest took over. The pull was ok - but messy - because we sometimes have the bone armor on cooldown when we were tanking. Two of the understudies were killed because of that. We just couldn’t recover from it. Fourth pull - things started really nicely. Except…I was following the suggestion to dismiss the understudy after tanking twice. That didn’t work so well. By the time I was asked to taunt the 2nd time, there were less than 15 sec left in my MC. To make matter worst, when the other priest tried to MC to take over my understudy, it broke because he wasn’t hit capped. Note to self - follow what you read in shadowpriest forum and not what people told you. By then, we gave up and went to another wing.

So we ventured to spider wing, one shotted the first boss. Crap…I was going to be asked to MC again. I was totally nervous by then, feeling that I’ve already let down people too many times. I was only half clear on what I was supposed to do. First frenzy - yes, I was ready, hit the button, we were good. Second frenzy - another successful MC. Upon third frenzy -  I had my MC target on focus. By the time they called out for 15 sec before frenzy, I had MC-ed him. All of a sudden, my MC broke. I know that it’s not because it expired. Could it be that I was on the Rain of Fire area? Oh crap. I re-mc-ed the target but nothing happened. Again. And Again. Tanks were dropping like flies. All of a sudden it was over. We managed to burn her down. Someone then told me that when MC breaks, the underlings become immune, and I had to pick another one. Duh…I’ve read about it, I just didn’t remember it :(.

We managed to clear the two wings. I was feeling low the whole the entire time. After the last boss in Plague, some people had to leave. So the raid leader, my friend, was looking for replacements. While we were having a break, the first MC-ing priest wrote in the raid chat that we should find more shadow priests that know how to do crap. I simply commented “Ouch”. I know that I’ve disappointed some people, but that still seems a bit harsh of a comment. What comes afterward was a bit more stingy. He then wrote that he didn’t know I was still there. Another rogue backed him up and indicated that I deserved it because he couldn’t figure out why I kept failing when MC-ing.

So here comes a bit ranty part of my post.

I know that I failed. I could try to come up with a bunch of excuses to justify my poor performance. In the end of the day, more than anything else, I was the one that disappointed at myself for not being able to do my task correctly. But I wish that people can understand that there are always margins of error when it comes to MC (as with anything else). And having to be that person to be responsible for the one breaking point is just too much pressure.

/sigh.

Another note to self: don’t attempt to do something that involves high amount of responsibility in a pug when you don’t know how to do it.

Or so they say….

I was able to finally found the time to log in to WoW yesterday after coming back from a trip and taking care of RL stuff that got neglected during the trip.  The first order of business was speccing back to shadow. If you read my previous post, I’ve mentioned that we have mostly taken care of our healers shortage. Then I proceeded to get the daily quests done.

First to come in mind: “Ugh, is the lag in Dalaran always this bad?” And I realized that I’ve forgotten where everything is at in Dalaran. And that darn lag certainly didn’t help in not getting frustrated when you found out that you just went to the wrong side of Dalaran.

Now that E’s fate is clearer, E bought Sundial of the Exiled which brought me to this tangent thought. You know how nowadays people seems to inquire more about your gear - how many sp you have, etc - this trinket, for example, doesn’t really have static +sp on equip, but it does add a significant chunk on your dps, how do “include” this fact when telling people about your gear?

E put herself in LFG for some heroic runs. I figure that if she gets to do some dps-ing for our Naxx run this week, I better re-familiarize myself with her “rotation” or for a more correct term, the casting priority. It was awful - I kept letting my dots to drop or refreshing them too early. I was spoiled that when healing, you don’t necessarily have to face your target, that I was frequently oblivious of my orientation when casting. But after a while, things started to fall into places. I start remembering to use my shadowfiend and dispersion early. Ahh…it feels good to be a shadow again.

Of course when our GL decided to go to Naxx on a wim that night, we didn’t have enough healers again (one of our healer was locked with another group and the other one was out of town for another week). After our fruitless attempt to secure a healer, I relently offered my service. So, I was back to holy again while wishing that the dual-spec would be implemented soon. Suffice to say that it was not the prettiest healing duty ever, but we kept everybody (most of the time) alive :). The best comment that I heard yesterday was when my GL inquired to how the heck I managed to last cause whenenever he looked up at my mana, he saw my mana was only about one fifth. I’m sure it’s an exaggeration, but I guess months of experience in managing mana as a priest stick regardless if you’re a holy or a shadow.