My new gear, Council one-shot, tactics!

Ahmahgod, I wins you, silly Council mage.

 

Did I do that? Oopsie!

 

Yes, mage tanking is a thing of beauty. So much so, in fact, that I had to post 2 separate screenshots of my leetness in action. =P

I was really nervous about this particular boss; due to this week there being only one other mage in raid, and she not being geared enough to do the mage-tanking, the duty fell to me and my 11001 health (Pre-fight. I don’t know why I have less in the screenshots). It is the mage’s job on this boss to lead the charge into the mobs, and doing so was nerve-wracking especially since I watched our mage tank die on the opening pull a couple times the week before.

Turned out I had nothing to worry about–not only did I get the first spellsteal perfectly, the misdirects (including one on me) went off very quickly and we ended up with an easy pick-up to start the fight.

Tanking this guy turned out to be really easy, as you can probably see by my threat chart on the right-hand side of my UI. It was just a matter of staying alive by keeping the Dampen Magic on me. I did need to move around a bit however as I got slapped with a Blizzard early on and decided that I didn’t want to be in that; in addition, the stairs did cause some LOS issues. Something to look out for for any mages that are trying to tank this–you need to be at a decent range, yet in LOS of both your healer and the mage boss. But yeah, I had leet heals on me, and some mad threat generation. Things looked great as well with my 2/8 T6 set bonus to Evocate, so I was able to sustain mana all fight long. Was really a lot of fun.

As far as strategy for the rest of the fight: Stay out of all AoEs, have 3 shamans/warriors interrupting the priest’s Circle of Healing (and the damaging spell if possible), and DPS the paladin. Just keep hopping around and make sure you keep DPSing. All mobs share the same health pool, so if you *need* to, melee can switch to DPSing the priest while the paladin is immune to melee (I believe this will happen, if I am not mistaken!). Something to look into, perhaps, although it shouldn’t matter; with the nerf you should be well ahead of the enrage timer anyway. We one-shot Council despite having issues last year.

As for my new gear, I got some cool stuff off the trash right before Mother Shahraz…my new [Shroud of the Final Stand] is a huge upgrade from the old badge cloak I was using. It’s a beautiful thing, but I still need Subtlety on it! Other than that…we were fighting Mother, wiped once, and came back and rocked serious face. I Ice Blocked to survive the explosions–my poor group could not do the same, but the shadow priest and I survived out of us 5, anyway. I ended up rolling 2nd highest on the T6 shoulders; luckily there were 2 tokens, so I am now at 3/8 T6, with all epic gems. The only thing I’m concerned about anymore is my PvP wand and my Kara bracers (which are surprisingly good–I think they beat out the badge bracers for sure, and they beat out some stuff from 25-man raids).

We at least got 8 bosses down tonight, but we couldn’t do more than wipe on Illidan. Still, not bad for a 4-hour raid, say I.

I’ll go ahead and close with one of my best screenshots–too bad I didn’t turn off my FPS counter.

Are YOU prepared?

Kael down, request to readers.

CD’s downed Kael now. I’ve officially fought every BC raid boss up to SPT. (Haven’t gone in there yet.) The only pre-Sunwell boss I haven’t downed is Archimonde–we’re only doing him when the majority of the raid is Cloudy Day.

That fight is epic. =) Even with the nerf, it’s just *fun*. I’ll post screenshots of all the bosses I’ve done sometime in a really epically long post, but I’m gonna keep this post short due to

THE IMPORTANT PART.

Hey guys! Readers! Yeah you!

I want *your* opinions on what I should be writing about! Leave comments on my blog! What do you like? What don’t you like? What do you want to know?

Oh, we are prepared.

‘SRIGHT!!!

Illidown. Granted it was post-nerf, but still quite the accomplishment. Next on our hitlist is Kael, I believe–I’m hoping for an Archimonde down too. =) We rocked some SERIOUS face tonight despite a rocky start facing off against the Illidari Council (had some issues, a few wipes) but we pulled things together, and 3-shotted (IIRC) Illidan.

Chya. We did it.We were not prepared!

We also hit A’lar and VR in TK tonight after BT…obviously a cakewalk.Personally, I’m very happy with the way the raid went! I actually ended up with my T6 legs off of Council, putting me at 2/5 T5 and 1/8 T6 now.The fights themselves are awesome all the way through BT, especially the ones near the end. Council, although hard (like HKM ish stylistically, except a lot more difficult, and the bosses share the same health pool), is a great fight, and all sorts of fun to DPS, except when the paladin throws up Chromatic Resistance Aura (250 to all resistances). Really it’s a blast! However, Illidari Council ended up basically being essentially a warm-up for the big guy himself.

We were not prepared!

Yeah. It wasn’t great the first couple attempts. Had some trouble with the shadowfiends–”buttworms” as Nino called them–partly due to both of our mages dying in the phase where we had to group up in teh center. (Phase 2, I believe.) Although we both got back up, it was still difficult to get things done on recovery. As you can see in the screenshot we had only me up for mages at the time, and much of our raid was down from spreading shadowfiends. Was a lot of responsibility for a mage, but it was pretty easy. Easier than keeping the constructs down in the Gorefiend fight, I think. All this took was Frost Nova + Blast Wave. =)

The rest of the fight is a blast, too.

*SPOILERS*

When Maiev comes out while the raid’s trapped and there’s that mid-fight cutscene…yeah, that is absolutely sweet. This was seriously some of the coolest stuff I’ve ever seen. His death however was somewhat lackluster. Rather unfortunate. At least things went really awesomely well on that last attempt. We had very few deaths compared to previous attempts. =)

*END SPOILERS*

Skull of Gul’dan dropped. I wish I woulda gotten it. It’s a beautiful thing.

No Warglaives, sadly, cause we had some warriors who could have used ‘em. Even so, a great fight.

11/50/0 is a great spec, but I’m having a lot of trouble getting my spell hit up. I was at 176 or something with my T5, but my T6 brought me down to 150-ish–and that’s WITH spell damage food. I’m considering respeccing to 0/50/11 for IV and Elemental Precision; I just can’t find the gear to get up to 215 hit rating right now, or whatever I will be needing–I have no hit rating gear after being Arcane for so long. (I liked only needing 76!) Although I am considering going Arcane for the expansion, right now Fire’s the best I can do for DPS, as Arcane’s DPS got nerfed with both our current mana pool and the lack of duration on the AB debuff.

The Achievements system is pretty fun. I’m working on some of the quest achievements right now. I think that Loremaster title would be pretty sweet. Gotta go back and kill a bunch of low-level bosses cause achievements weren’t totally retroactive though. =(

Update on Neo Imperela: As I’ve heard from a guild member, Mymichelle has delivered a “slap in the face” to the remaining NI members by essentially giving the Vent server to her Alliance guild. She’s also changed her usual Vent name back to her Alliance toon from what I hear. Bye, Neo Imperela. I’m pretty sure this is the true death-knell of the guild.

One week hiatus, BT runs, new respec, and NI update.

Well, I have had a forced week and a half essentially AFK; I was able to try out my arcane spec (as noted in a recent post), but that was on a laptop running at 4fps. I’m back on my good computer (Finally!) and was able to try out a couple of Arcane specs at 60fps, both with and without Arcane Barrage. (Actually tried my Arcane Barrage spec out on Headless Horseman.)

I gotta say, Arcane’s essentially worthless with the mana pool we have now. The new Arcane Blast mechanic doesn’t allow for mana conservation, and it’s pretty difficult to maintain DPS with the current mana pool. I’ll take another look at it at L80, but for now…don’t bother.

The tree that you *do* want to look into is Fire. Although with a 11/50/0 spec you’re looking at over 200 HR–something like 215 or close to it–to cap (I don’t have much HR gear, so it’s tough–I’m eating hit rating food. Thank goodness they rolled hit and spell hit together!), it’s worth it. Hot Streak’s a lot more useful now than I thought it was going to be when I saw its initial idea in the beta, and 2 crits in a row happens a LOT with Focus Magic and 5x Scorch up now. (Speaking of Focus Magic, it is very sexy. I cast it on Galistul, our warlock, throughout BT earlier tonight, and I was basically sitting with a permanent 3% addition to crit.) The rotation for 11/50/0 is easy to pick up–it’s similar to 10/48/3 or 2/48/11–and the DPS is impressive. (More so once I cap, I’m sure.) This is pretty much THE spec to be looking at for L70 endgame.

Speaking of L70 endgame, Cloudy Day’s at 8/9 BT now. While I was gone, we cleared everything up to Illidan and got him to phase 2, I believe. We went back in tonight for a 2-hour raid, and cleared Mother Shahraz as well as everything before her. 2 T6 shoulders dropped…my 89 got beat out by a 91 and a 95, go figure. =P I did get a nice ring out of the run though–Naj’entus dropped what used to be a healer ring but is now great for all casters. It replaced my Kara ring, surprisingly–I didn’t think I’d be getting rid of that any time soon. Looking forward to Illidan tomorrow, hopefully I can get my hands on Zhar’doom, Greatstaff of the Devourer. I’m having so much fun in CD, and am looking forward to raiding at 80 with the guild!

Neo Imperela has continued to fall apart during my absence; Sinithos /gquit and was later accepted to <The Prophecy>, while 5 other members, Sfcnez, Mangus, Rageoflight, Hogal, and Trayton have all left for <The Immortal Dragons>. Sfc cited a lack of help and a lack of people online as reasons for leaving–basically those 5 were the only people online much of the time. 2 other healers plan to leave shortly.

Arcane Mages and 3.0.2

01/24/09: Have you considered looking at my post regarding Arcane DPS in 3.0.8? You may want to check that out instead. In that post, I explain a good spec and rotation for the latest patch.

I’ve been telling myself since Tuesday that I needed to write this blog. Unfortunately, I haven’t had access to WoW until Friday, and my desktop is currently out of commission–which means that I haven’t had a chance to raid in 3.0.2 yet. However, from what I’ve seen so far of the Arcane tree, the changes are largely in our favor.

Of course, there are some things that, although they look cool, will be largely useless in raid situations as far as I can tell. Take, for example, Torment the Weak–alhtough the bonus to snared damage would be nice, it probably won’t be effective on raid bosses.

My current build looks something like this: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=of0Vfu0hzeGuGxcbcZ0o. (Missing two talent points – I think I might have put them in Arcane Shielding but I’m honestly not sure.) For some reason I’ve been having some trouble getting my mana pool up to where it used to be (14500 – ish); I think Blizzard either adjusted some stats on my gear or reworked some game mechanics. Either that or I’m just failing because I don’t have raid buffs or something.

EDIT: Due to only getting 4fps on my laptop, combined with my talent mod and chat frames being out of commission, I screwed up my spec, so I don’t have Arcane Barrage. I will talk about it as soon as I get it. =)

The build that I linked there has upped my AB damage enormously; however, the changes to the AB debuff mean that you’re probably gonna be stuck with AB spam to do your damage, as trying to weave spells will kill your debuff.

The spell haste talent – Netherwind Presence – coupled with a bit of spell haste items, is absolutely sexy. There’s really no other way to put it. Add in all the talents that increase spellpower and AB damage, and we’re looking at some phenomenal numbers for Arcane.

The new version of Magic Attunement is a beautiful thing too. +range to Arcane spells? Yes PLEASE! I was getting sick of having to be closer to mobs than any other mage, and actually having to back out of some stuff because 30 yards is just barely too close. Kudos to Blizzard for fixing that!

OMG. We can actually hitcap to 100% now. I was a very happy mage when I saw that. Still a low hitcap for Arcane, and we don’t have to worry about capping for, say, Frostbolt *too*, since there’s no more rotation in Arcane raiding.

Arcane Barrage is a pretty beautiful thing from everything I’ve seen. Now I’ve gotta figure out how that’s gonna work with the AB debuff stacking.

That’s most of the good news–now for what I’ve heard for bad news.

From almost everything that I’ve heard, Arcane will not be really worthwhile in raiding compared to Fire. I’m not sure how true or untrue this is–it’ll require some experimenting–but it’s got me a little worried. I did Fire forever, and I’m still sick of it. Arcane has been so much more fun.

The 2/5 T5 set bonus got nerfed down to 5% – a saddening change, but the T5’s still usable right up to 80 and into Naxx from everything I’ve heard about the gear scaling in Northrend.

I’ll post again as soon as I get a look at both the new DPS and mana longevity I’m getting in raids and how it compares to other specs. Until then…experiment with new things! I’d love to see some of your specs–feel free to post comments with your 3.0.2 talents! (Any and all classes would be welcome for this! I have alts of almost every class, and would like to see what builds are looking good for those classes too!)

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Well, raiding has been fun recently. Rocked through ZA a couple times–i’ve now cleared every boss in everything up to Kael’thas. I feel experienced. =P

As far as loot goes, I haven’t gotten much–however, I did grab an upgrade that I would strongly recommend to any mages. The Shattered Sun Offensive rep reward necklace is all well and good, but honestly, I recommend spending a couple days grinding out 15300 honor and 10 EotS marks for the Guardian’s Pendant of Subjugation (I think that’s the right one! The one with no spell haste and extra +damage.) It’s a huge upgrade.

In addition, I have been doing really well in terms of socketing; I’ve spent 45 badges recently to get myself some +10 int gems, and am now over 14k raid buffed mana!

With the talent tree redesign and boss nerf coming up soon, I’m planning to stay as close to my current spec as possible until WotLK, when I go 50/3/18 for raiding. I’ve heard that that particular spec is gonna be awesome (source: elitistjerks.com). In addition, good news for all you raiding mages in T5–looks like we’re gonna be using that as long as we’re specced Arcane right up till Naxxramas II! Glad they’ve made the gear scaling a little less insane this time around!

Neo Imperela: the story as I’ve heard it

Ungui

Here’s what I currently know about the status of my old guild. If you play on Gul’dan, you may want to read this.

Firstly, I would like to point out that much of the core of NI as far as progression in raiding goes (me, Fingan, Demuerte, Eradicator, Faingoro/Hogal) has already applied to another guild (in these cases, Cloudy Day; however, I know of at least one instance where a former raider of NI has left to go to another guild, namely Midnight Reign.), and I know of at least 5 other guild members that are going to be leaving NI shortly. In addition, NI has stopped raiding Kara because they can’t get the people anymore.

One story that I feel obligated to relate happened earlier this week, when I got 3 NI members (Trildia, Demuerte, and Sinithos) pugged into a Kara run with Kittypewpew of Cloudy Day leading. Remember, NI had stopped raiding by this point. We got 20 badges out of the run (skipped Netherspite cause ppl left before we went back for him) and all NI members got upgrades, but instead of being happy for her guildies, the former GM and current officer Mymichelle went ballistic for about 20 minutes in Neo Imperela gchat, angry that they did not consult with an officer before raiding (Despite not raiding herself due to the lack of people!) She even went to the extreme of calling (IRL) the currently offline GM Biochemistry over this, and threatened demotions. A very over-the-top reaction, in my opinion–and ironic, cause when I was in the guild, Mymichelle claimed the last thing she wanted was drama, yet here she is causing it. I saw a couple miniature versions of these rants against members before I left as well.

Another member of NI whom I respect, trust, and consider my friend, Kythrine, posted a question on NI’s website asking about the reason for the recent gquits. Shortly after, she got her post deleted–I’ll not speculate as to who did it, but as far as I can recall, the only 2 people with deletion access to the site are Deluxeburger and Mymichelle. This deletion was, in my opinion, an immature reaction–whoever deleted the post should have instead addressed the problem, explaining what was happening, rather than trying to cover it up.

I have heard stories from 2 members of Neo Imperela recently that they had asked for a pattern/design from teh guild bank, only to be stonewalled for a few days, and then the design being given to someone else.

Another friend of mine, Reanimator, transferred to Mal’Ganis shortly after the change in leadership due to some (personal opinion) bad decisions on the part of the new management; he was demoted to “Co-Officer”, on a par with one member who had only been in guild for 3 weeks or so. (Note that he had been with the guild since long before I was.) I was also placed above him in rank, which I think was silly.

It’s unfortunate that NI had to end this way. I really enjoyed my time in there, and am somewhat depressed that things ended this badly for the guild. I foresee NI falling completely apart in the near future, save for some close friends of the officer corps. Everyone in the guild is still good players; however, I disagree with the way the guild has been managed recently as in the examples above.

Neo Imperela players who have gquit are welcome to hang out in my guild, The Twilight Brigade, until they find a permanent home; their alts are welcome to stay in Twilight Brigade as well. Message me in game about this or comment on this post!

Kael’thas Sunstrider – A Mage’s First Impressions

Yeah. The Sunstrider fight…not the 5-man, the 25-man. We blew through Al’ar and Kael trash with some people from Confirmed and Contempt supplementing CD’s raid team (and I got the nice ring from Al’ar!) and made it to Kael in no time.

The fight explanation was one of the most complex things I’ve heard. I thought Vashj was something, but Kael’thas is a very tough fight. Took a lot of concentration.

We wiped quite a few times tonight. The first few were due to transition problems as far as I could tell–we still had the Phase 2 weapons up when Phase 3 started, and we never did get all the adds down before Phase 4 started. All in all, it was a great learning experience, but it’s really intimidating looking at that guy.

Of course everyone running up and hugging him pre-fight was a great stress reliever.

Anyway, the first thing I thought when I saw him was…”Epic!” And yes, the fight was epic. Scared the piss out of me when the first add (who acts surprisingly like that guy from AQ20!) started eyeing me.

In phase 2, I found it difficult to find the staff to loot. It’s a little hard to see against the floor. But I got it okay, and it certainly helped my damage. Upped my gear rating too…L175 items tend to do that. At least temporarily lol.

I got a Lionseye today, so I have officialy started socketing for Arcane! Very happy to finally get around to doing that; should be at 14k+ mana soon.

Most eventful event: I ran Mag’s after over a month of trying to pug. We took a bunch of ppl from our TK raid, threw in some overgeared puggers like Annoyance (BT shadow priest) Envvy (T6 pally tank with Thunderfury!) Umbrae…and rocked that guy. Burning him down by keeping the channels on him more during Blast Wave interrupts makes that fight very fast.

I didn’t get any gear from Mag’s of course, but I am now:

VELINATH, CHAMPION OF THE NAARU.

Incidentally with that kill I have officially downed at least one boss in EVERY end-game instance in BC. (3 in ZA, 2 (the 2nd and 3rd) in BT, and 1 in Hyjal). Exciting business.

An eventful day

Well, I spent today relatively quietly, watching some anime (Death Note and Kasimasi, for those interested. I highly recommend Kasimasi, some of the later episodes are real tear-jerkers.) Almost leveled my hunter to 30, and did SSC and Gruul’s tonight. (Well, not all of SSC, but a decent amount–raid went late tonight while we downed Lurker, Leo, Kalithress, and the one guy with the murlocs.)

Got a nice upgrade off of Leo; won the roll for the crit trinket too, but I did pass on that despite its being a huge upgrade for me. Even so, I should see a nice DPS increase with this new weapon.

Being guildless for the last week has been interesting. No less than 5 guilds approached me about a possible membership, but I pretty much had my heart set on Cloudy Day.

Speaking of Cloudy Day, I did an interview with Nino tonight, and I’m now officially an “Initiate” of CD! It’s exciting business, and I’m looking forward to a bright future with this guild. Very proud to have <Cloudy Day> under my name, that’s for sure.