H-Malygos kill video

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Check it out. One of the songs was requested by a guild member – the other 2 were just me being silly.

Strategy video coming soon.

Malygos down; epic raid night.

After getting Malygos to 6% last night (but running into enrage timer issues), Cloudy Day went in tonight after clearing Naxx with no wipes and one-shot the gigantic blue internet dragon. All that’s left is Sarth+3. Pretty excited – we were stuck on this guy for quite some time. This was a tough fight – we scraped through right under the enrage timer, and I think we were all a little nervous. Celebration on Ventrilo was pretty amazing when he went down, though. Dropped 2 pieces of very nice caster gear, and also the hunter helmet. I forget what the other drop was, though. All in all, a great night.

I’m getting a kill video together for H-Malygos right now – I’ll post it here once I’m done.

In other news, I got my druid up to level 80; he’s already got one piece of Valorous gear despite only hitting 80 4 days ago. Planning to take him Resto. =)

Spec analysis – 3.0.9 (Frostfire, Fireball, and Arcane) – UPDATED FOR 3.2.2

Originally posted by me on the Cloudy Day guild forums.

If you’re looking for a rotation or spec for Fireball, Frostfire Bolt, or Arcane, this is the post for you.

My objective with this post is to assist mages with their DPS while not overwhelming people with numbers.

If there are any questions or debates, please ask away. I’d love to take the time to clarify or help other mages with their DPS.

This was written for 3.0.9. Please note that although much of the information is still valid, the top DPS spec is now ARCANE (3.2.2) (via simulationcraft/EJ). I’ve edited much of this post to reflect new data.

ToC
I. Specs (relative DPS)
A. Arcane
B. Deep Fire
C. Frostfire Bolt
II. Rotation discussion
A. Arcane
B. Deep Fire
C. Frostfire Bolt
III. Addon suggestions
A. Decursive
B. MikScrollingBattleText
C. X-Perl UnitFrames
IV. Links

I. SPECS

A. The spec linked at the bottom of my post is the spec that I currently use (when I’m arcane). You can find other specs in the Elitist Jerks Arcane thread.  Glyph of Arcane Blast and Arcane Missiles are musts – your third major glyph should probably be Molten Armor. That said, if you’re just starting out raiding, I’d instead recommend a Glyph of Mana Gem – although keep in mind that the Mage Armor glyph right now is worthless.

B. The highest DPS build for Fireball is 18/53/0; however, with the longer fights in Ulduar, many fire mages have gone 20/51/0 (to pick up Arcane Meditation for the extra MP5). I’ve linked a 18/53/0 build at the bottom of this page. Glyph of Living Bomb and Glyph of Fireball are necessary, and I would recommend Glyph of Molten Armor as your third glyph. My personal Fireball build is 20/51/0, with 3/3 Student of the Mind.

C. Frostfire builds are centered around a 0/53/18 spec. In Patch 3.1, they provide comparable DPS to both Arcane and deep Fire while having far greater mana efficiency – which is important with the length of the fights in Ulduar. Glyph of Frostfire and Glyph of Living Bomb are necessary, and I would recommend Glyph of Molten Armor as your third glyph.

II. ROTATION

A. The Arcane rotation is probably the most flexible. You can twist the rotation to fit your total mana pool and mp5 by modifying the number of Arcane Blasts you cast in your rotation. Optimal DPS rotation should be Arcane Blast x4-> Arcane Missiles (NEW IN 3.2.2) (Missile Barrage should proc; if it doesn’t, AM anyway). There are some more notes on this in the Arcane Thread link at the bottom of this page.

B. Deep Fire rotation requires you to keep Living Bomb and Scorch x5 up on the target, and then use Fireball until one needs to be refreshed. Use Pyroblast when Hot Streak procs. Basically, think 2/48/11 (BC) rotation, but with Living Bomb added in. (note: as of 3.1, if you have an ISB warlock, you don’t have to scorch).

C. Frostfire rotation is exactly the same as Fireball rotation – just sub in Frostfire Bolt for Fireball. (note: as of 3.1, if you have an ISB warlock, you don’t have to scorch).

III. ADDON SUGGESTIONS

A. Decursive is pretty much a must for mages right now – in fights like Sapphiron, you HAVE to be able to decurse people quickly. Don’t wanna make another decurser shoulder your burden.

B. MikScrollingBattleText is a great addon for giving you combat information easily – it’s easy to see when, say, Hot Streak procs and so forth.

C. PitBull UnitFrames 4.0 is my preference for viewing targets, party, raid, and self frames, including buffs and debuffs. I suggest looking into it. – (todo: insert Curse link)

D. X-Perl UnitFrames is also an excellent UnitFrames addon.

IV. LINKS
1. Elitist Jerks Arcane theorycrafting
2. MMO-champion link to an Arcane build
3. Elitist Jerks Frostfire theorycraft
4. MMO-champion link to a Frostfire build
5. MMO-champion link to a Deep Fireball build
6. Decursive download link
7. MikScrollingBattleText download link
8. X-Perl UnitFrames download link
9. Simulationcraft PTR Results – used for 3.2.2

Arcane Raiding and You: 3.0.9’s hidden nerf

…And how it affects your rotation.

As some of the more extreme among you may already know, 3.0.9 contained a “hidden” mage nerf that lowered the damage coefficient on Arcane Barrage, modifying optimal DPS rotations to edit out said spell. As the hotfix for Arcane Missiles not being affected by Arcane Blast has been applied, highest-DPS rotation is now basically AB spam until Missile Barrage procs, although that’s horribly mana-inefficient.

Strangely enough, I had already resolved to test out a new rotation tonight; mine involves anywhere from 3 to 5 Arcane Blasts followed by an Arcane Missiles, whether Missile Barrage has procced or not. The exact number of Arcane Blasts is kind of based on your current gear level and mana pool: I, having 4/5 T7.5 + much of the best mage gear in the game, usually do 5 Arcane Blasts.

This upped my DPS from the old Arcane Blast x3 ->Arcane Barrage (+MBAM – ABarr) rotation by between 600 and 1400, even factoring in the Arcane Power nerf as well. Needless to say, I like where Blizz is heading with mages. Our QQ as a class should be ended now. It seems like on the surface of every patch, they’re nerfing us, but in reality we get DPS boosts. Eerie. Maybe they’re making up for BC.

Best spec, incidentally, is still 57/3/11. Check my 3.0.8 post for details. Go ahead and take out your Arcane Power glyph and reglyph Arcane Missiles, though. You also might want to spec into increased spell pushback resistance.

A little bonus here, too: my predictions for 3.1.

–We may see a slight change to the Arcane Blast mechanic, possibly making it a buff rather than a debuff and therefore uncleansable.

–Spirit will become more powerful, possibly making Mage Armor a better choice for Arcane raiding mages.

–Frost or Fire will have to be buffed, because otherwise it won’t even be worth taking for Scorch/WC.

–Arcane will remain the leading DPS choice for raiding mages.

NEW STRATEGY VIDEO! Malygos 10-man

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If for some reason the video doesn’t load right off, wait about 3 minutes and try again.

Strategy, of course, by me.

Kill by <Cloudy Day>, Gul’dan US.

Thanks for watching. I would love some feedback here, whether you like this more or less than my written strategies.

Please note that during phase 1 and 2, 3 healers might be best, although it’s possible to 2-heal this fight.

The death of CC

WotLK made me do something that I never thought I’d do.

Yesterday, I took my Polymorph macro off of my action-bars. I haven’t used it ONCE since the expansion came out, save for specific encounters such as Grand Widow Faerlina. In places like Naxx, none of the trash needs CCing – we just AoE through it. Chain pulls? No problem, the trash is nerfed so hard that we just steamroll to the boss. It’s just silly.

The only thing that keeps my hopes alive for my CC role is rumors of Ulduar. For those that haven’t heard, Blizzard has acknowledged that the calls for harder content have been heard, and that they will make Ulduar a pretty difficult instance. What makes this even more exciting is the rumors floating around that it’s gonna be a guild-breaker, on par with Sunwell (which pretty much destroyed a couple top guilds on our server when it came out). Cloudy Day’s got the perfect attitude for instances like these, though, and I think if anything that the guild will be brought closer together by a challenge.

But back to my original point – CC right now is dead, and I’m hoping that Ulduar fixes it. If the rumors are anything, prospects are good. Until then, though? Polymorph can stay off my actionbar, in favor of Fire Blast or something.

New strategy format

I’ll be doing strats in video format from here on out. I picked up Fraps, so things will be pretty decent quality – it’s not hurting my FPS in raid too much. This’ll also allow me to dissect the encounter a little better, and rely slightly less on my memory, as well as analyzing abilities in real time.

I’ll actually be putting up a strategy for Malygos-10 pretty soon! Look forward to that one – it should be pretty awesome. (No audio for the first version of this video, by the way – I’ve got a pretty nasty cough, and when I recorded the voiceover, it sounded pretty terrible.)

What I’ve been doing…

I’m back at college now, and things are going pretty well. WoW-wise, I’ve been carrying on as usual – downed all of Sunwell, so I got my Outland Raider achievement, which is nice.

More excitingly, my druid’s level 72 now! I’m gonna try to get him to 80 and raid as Balance. All my caster friends will love me. I’m currently working through Borean Tundra, something I didn’t do on my mage. I’m really enjoying it; the quests out here are a blast. Nice not to have to retread old content as I did while I was leveling him through Outland.

Vel finally finished exploring Northrend, so he’s got an epic tabard now, which is nice. I’ve pretty much geared him out as much as is actually possible; there’s maybe 4 or 5 pieces left in current raid content that I can use, most off Sapphiron or KT on heroic. Looking forward to benchmarking my DPS on Friday or Saturday against Patchwerk – I should be able to break 5k, maybe 6k. Until then, I’m gonna try and finish exploring Eastern Kingdoms.

Naxx strats: GRAND WIDOW FAERLINA

This fight has the same core concept on 10-man and 25-man, but the execution is entirely different. I’ll explain the basic mechanics, then move on to the differences between the two fights.

Check after the break for the strategy and some pretty pictures.