Secrets of Shadowbolting

They fixed it! I played around with the new portal yesterday in Oculus as people had to repair. It’s much better than the dissapointment of last week when they introuduced a 2 min cooldown on the summon and no portal. talk about annoyance.

At least now we get our pretty red portal and (I haven’t quite tested the multiple summons) it sticks around for the full 2 minutes.

Nifty.

I also got to work yesterday and finally picked up my Champion of the Frozen Wastes title. Heroic Oculus? So not my friend. The pug group I found (Immature DK, holy pally, prot pally, mage friend) wasn’t so bad…until the last boss. My gear durability was at 0% for a few rounds but the great thing was it didn’t matter. It’s a stupid dragon fight. 1 red drake, 2 ambers, 2 greens and lots of deaths later while we worked out how to play together and get our strategy correct we went from getting Eregos from 70% to 2%….2 tries later we downed him and there was much rejoicing.

What Oculus means to me:
You know all that cool gear you worked so hard to get? Yeah. Those purples and blues and stuff? That’s cool. Throw it all back in your bags. You won’t be needing that here. How well can you listen, pay attention and coordinate? Not well? Enjoy your fall.
Oh, so you learned how your new little pet works? Cool. Do that for a few minutes without anyone doing anything stupid. Easy right? So you got a boss down, here’s another talent. Go dive off the side of your dragon a few times until you figure out how not to die.
Go smack yourself in the head. It’s really easy. You win.

Useful things to know:
Green drakes MUST always keep a stack of 3 poisons up to ensure they have enough health to heal others
Amber drakes need to start slow so they do not pull aggro and time stop after Eregos comes back from his Arcane trip so the healers can get their 3 stacks up.

Avoiding those orbs is key to living.

Very busy night, but the overall win was totally worth it. It kind of felt like small progression. New boss, new strat, lots of tries, wipes, deaths…..but we got it at the end.

/Seldovia restro druid hat on

While perusing some of the other blogs out on the web in an effort to take a mental break from my job, I came across the topic of healing and addons. Now, from
the egotistical priest, the world of matticus and /hug came a whole slew of information, thoughts and ideas. Now, as someone who has run the gamut of no addons, addons, healbot, grid etc, in an effort not to completely rehash all the arguments listed above, I think a lot of the use or non use of addons comes from game exposure, length of time with toon, personal setup and knowledge of their character’s healing ability. Here’s why:

The longer you play a class, the more you know about your specific talents (or you should…). The more you have seen in game from quests, 5 mans, heroic 5 mans, 10 man raids, 25 man raids, increases your exposure to different situations you find yourself in. The more time you are trying new things and experimenting with your class you tend to find things that work best for you and layouts you like (stay with me, i’m getting to the add ons bit).

When I first started healing I was overwhelmed with the sheer volume of choices. Now I originally started on a priest back in BC so I was like wait, what are all these healing spells? As my guild was strapped for healers they basically said, great! you can heal now! we’re going to do heroics, you can heal, come along. Here comes my whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

With inexperience can come panic. I have found that HealBot can be a great starter tool for learning to heal. It helps you learn your spells, learn how much a 6k heal really is, lets you basically configure the setup and then play whack a mole to keep people alive. As was stated in some of the other blogs bove, it’s not just the add on that makes the healer. it is the player as well. If you take the time to learn the spells, you then start to move out of your norm and can experiment with other ideas and ways to heal.

Next little story to illustrate point. I leveled my druid to 80 originally as feral and then as boomkin while dual boxing with my death knight. I always had healbot up as the druid was assisting the DK and while in boomkin form I’m not using heals. If the DK or druid’s health is getting to low, its much easier to just click a quick rejuvenation and then pop back to boomkin and continue on with my questing. I dual boxed a few instances as Unholy DK/Boomkin and was fine.
Thursday i hit 80 on both toons. Let the celebration begin. Friday, one of the raid leaders says… uh Vuur, I know we asked you to keep Sel boomkin but we’re short on healers for Naxx on monday if we do a 25 man. Can you make her restro?
Here come’s the OMG phase. I have 3 days to turn a fresh level 80 boomkin into a restro druid for a 25 man naxx run on monday. Knowing full well that I do not know how to play Restro, I start reading forums, I go through Restro4life’s gearing guide and I start running regular instances as a healer. I’m using healbot to teach myself how to play, learning how everything works, watching the numbers on my recount scroll up and checking overheals to see why I’m OOM all the time. I start on heroics over the weekend and I’m slowly getting the hang of healing. I know I’m getting better because people are not dying as much and I’m starting to get frustrated with Healbot with the slow response time for the HoTs I am trying to cast.
As I learn my class and I learn to heal and how to best use my spells, I’m changing the way I look at my interface and how I want it to work for me. Monday comes, we don’t have enough people online for a 25 man naxx so we pug a few people and do Vault and Sartharion.

Now I really hate healbot. I can’t find anyone, people are all over the place and my dots are taking forever to cast. I do more research and decide Grid is the way to go. before I get grid really configured I end up switching guilds and getting pulled into a 10 man naxx run. Luckily there is another druid healer there and I have someone to bounce ideas off of and get some ideas on how to be better as well (it also didn’t help at this point in time I still had boomkin glyphs on).

Over the next few days, I took my tree self down to crystalsong forest, smacked a wolf, let it beat on me and practiced how I wanted to set up my heals. I use pitbull as well, but Grid keeps everything very compact. I turned all my heals into mouseovers bound to keys and chained trinkets and made a couple OMG HE’S GONNA DIE – HEAL HIM NOW macros. What I do like about Grid is I can put my tanks in one spot, healers in another and DPS in a 3rd. I can color my party members so it is easier to find people by class. I can see the length of time it takes for my lifeblooms to bloom, I can find poisons and abolish them and everything is all in one place, point mouse, hit button, move on.

The beautiful thing is yes, if tomorrow, everything blew up and I had no addons, I would still be able to function. My healing mouseover macros will work on blizzard frames and they will work on grid. However, my learning curve of getting to there was greatly eased by the fact someone took the time to write an addon to help me do my job.

The addons don’t make the game, but they can help when you know the limitations of how far they can take you. At the end of the day, a good hhealer is only as good as the person behind the keyboard.

It’s been a busy week. From finishing Naxx….

Naxx was fun. It was great to run with a competent group of people and see the fights and people working in unison. Was it perfect? Of course not. It’s a learning curve and a relatively new guild still learning how to work together. There was a lot of dead people, a lot of learning but we’re building the guild cohesion. Every raid is a new step.
KT is somewhat complicated, but following directions and assigning general locations for people worked pretty well. Healers were given corners, groups were given healers to spread around. tanks were either given boss or add duty. This fight is all about damage mitigation, ensuring that interrupts happen, if you are affected by anything you don’t take down anyone else in the raid and if someone around you if affected you get away. again, staying alive>>single dps burst and death.

To getting Malygos down in a 10 man…

Finding 10 competent people is much easier than finding 25. When you can hand pick your 10 and have people know what they are doing (even if they have never been there before) says something about the level of players. It was my first time in, I had never seen the fight aside from videos I had watched online and reading up on the fights, but I was alive at the end and I helped us get him down. That’s enough for me. Now I know more about the fight and can help train other guildies on how to be better. The simplest way to describe Maly?
1. You need to stay alive. Yes the vortex is annoying and it screws up all your plans, but know where the next spark is, where you are stacking sparks and don’t dps the boss until the tank has him again just to be safe. The boss will fall but if you’re dead, you’re not helping. Be smart.
2. After the sparks have been stacked, the dps has done it’s job, the healers have kept the tank topped off to avoid getting smushed like a ripe banana, you get to phase 2. Top Melee is going in the air as we burn people down. Ranged and everyone else is running for their lives taking down the scions. STAY IN THE PINK BUBBLES. really. it’s simple. You have raid warnings knowing when he is about to cast that awful buff, make sure you are in a pink bubble. Easy.
3. After killing the scions and getting to phase 3, it’s just like the daily. Keep 25 combo points always in case you are targeted so you can pop your armor. If you are dpsing – 112 is the order. You do not need to build more than that. If the heals aren’t coming in and you’re dying? heal yourself. You have the ability to. There is no reason anyone should die in this phase.

To wiping awfully on Malygos on a 25 man…

in 25 man anything, you can hide a couple of crappy players. However, we had some issues as a guild that I know are being worked on and improved. There was some immaturity coming out that was detrimental to the positive attitude trying to be fostered and not everyone had done their research and it showed. Couple wipes without getting Malygos beyond 70% and the raid was called for the day. The biggest problem was
1. the landing and the tank staying alive. The tank takes a TON of damage on initial landing and then shortly after as well. Keeping him up is very important, even if you have 3-4 Ots that can step in at will.
2. Stacking the sparks. The sparks increase dps, standing in sparks increases group dps. Stacking sparks makes it better. Letting sparks hit maly is bad. Sparks can be frost trapped, death gripped, rooted..all sorts of CC to slow them down. There is no reason that a few people keeping an eye on sparks should not be able to stack them all together and then burned in the same location every time. This requires awareness, some smarts and coordinating with the tank so you have the most time to get the spark where you want it.

to randomly finding a reindeer pic I missed…

Everyone loves reindeer. And they are cute. end of story Vuur as a gnome? Maybe not as much. Thank god I’m human.

Naxx can be quite entertaining.. One of my former guildies got the Critter Gitter achievement while in Naxx and I really wanted to do the same. One of the best places for this is right before Patchwerk. There’s a couple of box piles with rats all around them. It also looks pretty funny to have your rat army out and ready for the boss fight. Too bad they only last 3 minutes.

In other news, I had my first Saph kill the other night – this was on 10 man. The frost resist set was definitely necessary here but we got through.

Last night the guild finished up Saph and KT and we wiped a few times on Malygos. One thing I have found is that my uber vista gaming tower sucks at 25 mans. It just can not handle the graphics overload. To make my raid experience less painful, I will go to great lengths to hook up my mac laptop to my gaming mouse and a 24″ widescreen and raid on the mac. I feel this is working for now while I attempt to upgrade the vista box to 64 bit in an attempt to make it run smoother. At least I don’t disconnect every fight like some of my guildies….That was quite painful watching 2-4 people disconnect every fight.

I’m interested in some of my new fellow warlocks. One is also raiding affliction like me and the other is a destro/demo hybrid. The affliction lock is usually ripping up the charts – he also has much better gear than me and has his t7 set bonus…The demo/destro hybrid usually starts high and then falls off and I can sometimes end up ahead of her depending on the fight. I did some reading up on the builds last night and definitely for he short fights – destro hybrids are the way to go. The longer fights is where afflocks shine and there has been much discussion that while initial rotation is pretty important, keeping your dots up is really the most important thing. I know I get in a pattern at times where I occasionally clip dots which is bad. I’m doing a little more research but at the moment I am very interested in getting my last 2 badges so i can get the t7 robe for the set bonus. I want to see how much of a difference that makes.

next raid i’m running my own wws and checking out the rotations of everyone.

Sel also got her explorer title… more on that on a different post.

After talking with the officers of Shadow Syndicate, I decided it was time for my toons to find a new home. This was in no way about any of the players that were in the guild but more about the way the guild was being run and the direction it was going. I was just not feeling that it was the right fit for me so I asked some of my other friends in game if they had space and last night Vuur and Seldovia moved over to Ömen.

I’m continuing to work on Seldovia’s Explorer title and while running around Ashenvale last night, I found a second Emerald Dream portal.

Another large dragon, another green portal that goes nowhere….yet.

A little while later, I had a tree fight. Tree fight you may be asking? Well yeah. He insulted my leaves. I wasn’t “green” enough. Hmmph. Thats what happens when your leaves don’t get sun because you’re in dungeons and stuff. I mean really.

So we went at it in the middle of the forest…Tree vs Tree

And yes it is true. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it does it make a sound? I can tell you it does make a sound. Kind of like a sliding crunch as it falls over.

The reason I know this is because I was a tree, I WAS the forest for that point in time and no one was around.

So there you go, philosophical mystery solved.

And since it is Murloc week (and I apparently have an addiction to winterfin clams so i can get more Siren’s Tears), here’s Sel’s newest buddy.

What could be better than baby murlocs? After days of camping the Clam vendor for a Siren’s Tear to make my Wispcloak I have heard more baby murlocs and regular murlocs speaking than ever before. in fact, I’m getting quite talented at speaking Murloc… In fact, i’m going to learn how to do the Demoralizing Mmmrrrggglll . It makes me laugh every time I see it.

We killed Dios….we were in Molten Core running around, beating on things and then we read the requirements to summon Ragnaros and were like.. ok, onto bigger and better things….

like Maexxna! We have been struggling with the spider lady for a while, but she finally bowed to our command and was squashed.

…finally

So while working on my druid’s explorer title, I’ve come across a couple of interesting parts of the game that look unfinished like they were supposed to be either dungeons or instances or new zones but were never fully completed. Below is a couple of interesting spots I have found so far in the Eastern Kingdoms.

An entrance to the Emerald Dream. Found in the Hinterlands, this lovely dragon and portal sit up north with just an elite group of 62s I believe running around. The portal will not take you anywhere, but looks like it has potential….

The original location of Dalaran. Very scenic, great for a picnic lunch on the Lordareon lake.

The fortress of Grim Batol stands tall in the south east of the Wetlands. A beautiful fortress guarded by red dragonkin, there is currently no entrance available to this dungeon.

There is also the Greymane Wall in the south of Silverpine forest that looks like it has an entire new zone behind it. You can’t get through, but there are some humanoid refugees standing in front of it.

So i’ve been working on power leveling my Death Knight / Druid pair and i’m finally almost to 80. I have about 200k to go on both which I will quickly finish up tonight.

I changed up the druid’s rotation a little after reading through the forums and her DPS went up significantly. Trash mobs I may have to work out a slightly different strategy because as with Vuur, you don’t have time for your full rotation and that cripples the dps. While in BC spamming Wrath was the way to go, Starfire is the new ‘IT’ spell. I’m not completely hit capped yet (still running around in greens) so Improved Faerie Fire is a must. Moonfire is great for pulling as the druid has a longer reach than the DK and the DK can easily taunt the mob off before it gets to the druid.

While leveling, I’m specced into Typhoon which is HUGE when the druid rips aggro because I’m being a lazy tank and i need to get them off me. I’m not so sure I will be using this in a raiding build but for leveling it’s pretty nice.

Mouse over healing has also saved my butt time and time again when I’m in a pry with other people. When I was using keybinds for everything there was too much target swapping while I was trying to tank/dps at the same time. It’s a lot easier to drop the DK in a fight, leave the boomkin back beat stuff up and pop out and heal while I continue my cast rotation on the DK.

Things I really need to work on:
1. Macros for trash Mobs – right now the IFF – IS – MF – Wrath – Starfire is too long, things are dead before i hit Starfire
What has been working better is IFF-MF-Starfire-Starfire-Wrath till dead

2. holding more aggro on the DK – I get lazy with my pulls and dont do everything to maximize threat – the druid can occasionally pull threat off as the DK still misses as her gear is still mostly greens with a few blues.

3. gear! Both are horribly undergeared and this really needs to be worked on. Once I hit 80 i can start bringing them to some other instances where they can gear up pretty quick./ Maybe even hit a heroic or 2 in the near future. The biggest annoyance here is running them both as DPS is harder to get groups. I get better luck going in as dps/heals and then i put out crappy dps since I’ve been gearing the DK to tank….

The Vuur has been busy. Last night we had 2 groups of 10 go into Naxx. We’re a little slower than some of the other guilds but we’re still making a dent. One group cleared 2 wings – Spider and Abomination. Maexxna took out 2 DKs and the main pally tank but they burned her in time before she ate the rest of the raid.

Our crew was a little lighter on DPS. Vuur was running 2100-2300 most boss fights but aside from a rogue tagging at her heels there wasn’t much above 1200. That hurt. We were training a new tank so boss fights took 2-3 shots to get them down.

In the meantime I’ve been dualboxing my death knight and druid. It’s like having a deathknight with a pet druid. I recently respecced from Boomkin to Tree just to be able to do some instances. Healing on the tree and DPSing as the DK was a challenge at first but Halls of Stone is now quite easy and I can pump out about 1200 dps on the DK while healing. Both need gear badly and i’m making the push to hit 80 and start gearing them up.

The biggest change I ended up making was changing around the druid to be mouseover heals and keep the DK bound to keys. The Druid group heal is on the same key as the DK Death Strike but this usually works out ok. Most of the time i can just drop a HoT or 2 on the main tank, occasionally raid heal and wait for a cooldown break on the DK to jump over and heal people up again. Boss fights is a different story. I’m usually paying more attention to healing than DPSing so the DK is not usually as deadly there but no one is dying….