Monday, May 13, 2013

Monday Random Thoughts

- I've always been a fan of the little things.

- I noticed one of those little things this weekend.

- Remember the caterpillars in townlong?

- You know the ones around the trees and rocks that seemed to have an aggro range of roughly six and a half miles and moved so damn slow.

- They would keep you in battle and force you to run to get out of range of them or to try and find the offending caterpillars so you could kill them.

- And they had a long leash so if you did not go back to kill them you could cover damn near half the zone and they would still have you caught in battle so you could not mount up.

- Well, they are neutral now.

- Color me surprised.

- I was leveling my monk through there this weekend and as per habit I was taking the long path around where they were just so they would not aggro on me when I noticed something odd with my name plates.

- They were not red.

- I stopped and took a closer inspection and they were not aggressive.

- It wasn't that way the last I can remember.

- When I leveled my lock through there last week I thought I was just getting better avoiding them.

- I wonder when they changed it.

- As I said, I am a big fan of the little things and I really like this change.

- BTW, that said monk is now 90 too.

- I did not intend on leveling it.

- I popped on sunday and was going to queue for the LFR on my rogue when I decided, screw it, I really do not want to do the LFR.

- So I popped on my level 87 monk and figured I would play a little bit.

- 6 1/2 hours later I was 90.

- I can't believe they are speeding up leveling, it is fast enough already.

- When you can get from 87-90, three full levels and the last three levels at that, in one sitting on a weekend, leveling is way to fast as it is.

- But I like it.  I think the timing is just perfect in my opinion.

- If anything that 85-87 time needs to be sped up.

- While I do not know exactly I would guess it took 12 hours to do 85-87 and 6 to do 87-90.

- 12 hours for 2 level and 6 hours for 3 levels?  Who designs these things?

- In all honesty I did kind of dilly dally in the 85-87 range which did waste a fair deal of time.

- I probably just went around gathering and doing nothing but that for 4 hours of that time.

- Had to catch up the skills you know.

- Nice to see that my monk did not suffer the same issues every other class in the game did when hitting 87, or 88 however.

- All classes suffer from stat deprecation and really start to feel it at 87 or 88.

- Not my monk.

- Was doing 40K in all leveling gear at 87.

- Was doing 40K in all leveling gear at 88.

- Was doing 40K in all leveling gear at 89.

- And when I hit 90 I am doing 40K.

- Not sure how the design of monks is.  Either they are awesome at scaling with gear, so as I get more quest gear and upgraded, I stayed the same, or if there is some other effect going on there.

- Either way, I have leveled everything to 90 with a DPS spec except paladin and warrior which only have tank specs and none of them could do 40K the moment they hit 90 in all quest gear.

- I did my normal, finished out the klaxxi area to get all those nice 450s, hit exalted with klaxxi because of those warbringer tokens, and got my 489 ring.

- Now, with a 442 item level from quest gear only, I can pull 48K on the dummy self buffed, and of course, no gems, no enchants and no reforges.

- I can't wait to see how this goes.

- I am going to guess as I get more gear it goes up extremely slowly.

- Kind of like hunters were before this expansion.

- Hunters were always great out of the box and scaled horrible and always needed buffs later on.

- But when you first hit max level, hunters ruled.

- I am going to guess that is how the monk DPS spec will work, because I can not see building on 48K at only a 442 item level.  That would mean once you hit 500 item level you should be doing roughly 200K and I don't see that happening.

- It is just sick to see those types of numbers come out of a class I consistently see doing poorly in random content.

- Monks, of all specs, seem to go two ways.

- They are either great or they suck.

- I can't see anyone sucking too bad at a DPS monk however.

- You do not even need to look up the rotation, it is rather self explanatory.

- I remember when I first decided to look it up and saw it.

- That is what I am already doing.

- I must say that monks, in that sense, are the easiest class in the game.

- Even knowing nothing about them, there really was no issue figuring out a rotation for them without even trying.

- Simple rotations are nice sometimes.

- Better than hunter whack a mole where you always need to be hitting something and there are usually 3 or more things available at any given time.

- And you need to use them all.

- So what you hit and when you hit it makes a difference.

- So nice to see a rotation that is just hit what is there and that's it.

- Might be a nice change of pace.

- Too bad monks are melee and I hate melee.

- And too bad I am liking the DPS because it is so easy and OP, it might keep me from trying healing like I want to.

- One spec will be tank, there is no choice there.

- Any class that can tank, I tank with.

- Really that simple.

- Don't work that way for healing with me.

- I can paladin heal.  I can druid heal.  I just refuse to do so.

- I do not like their style.

- And as I am so fond of saying, if you don't like doing something you will not do as good at it as you could.

- So you are better playing a class and spec you enjoy playing.

- Hey, if anyone sees a post from Bashiok on the forums, quote it and reply, "but whatever".

- I think he should be shown the same disrespect as he shows everyone else.

- Perhaps we could make a call out to the forum trolls to go after him, quote him every time he posts something with just a but whatever.

- I would love to see that.

- I won't be doing it myself however.

- Two reasons really.

- No authenticator here, so I would not be able to log in anyway.

- I never post on the forums.

- Not exactly sure who would either.

- If you post on the forums this is what you get.

- Called a noob by anyone that has more progression than you.

- Called an elitist by anyone that has less progression than you.

- Get insulted for your gear choice, transmog choice, or spec choice.

- Have trolls find something to pick on you for, be it your name, guilds name, arena teams name.

- And lets not forget that they will pick on your BG raiting, arena rating, honor kills.

- And god forbid you say you do not PvP because that just means you are a baddie if you can't even PvP.

- All that fun stuff and the knowledge that the forum moderators never take action against these people for creating that toxic community.

- And if you voice a problem and speak it clearly just to get trolled by the masses don't worry sooner or later you might get lucky and have a blue answer you.

- Their answer will just be a blow off however and they will disregard everything you say with a "but whatever".

- And you wonder why I do not post on the forums?

- I wonder why people do post on the forums.

- Speaking of little things.

- I finally got [got my money on my mind] for 200,000 gold.

- I would have thought I would have gotten that one a long time ago with the amount of soloing I do.

- Speaking so soloing.

- I would love some more hunter healing.

- It is putting a crimp in my style on soloing.

- Still only 1/8 in DS heroic because I can not heal through the next two bosses.

- I will have to find a trick.

- Rule #1 of soloing.

- There is always a trick.

- Went and soloed the hour of twilight heroics because I never had.

- Two bosses seemed as if they might be impossible.

- Just needed to find the tricks that worked.

- Got the moonguard achievement on my hunter finally because of it.

- Of course the healer took no damage, there was no healer.

- Got lazy eye too.

- So much easier when there isn't someone else to screw it up for you.

- But as a hunter I cheated.

- Don't tell.

- I found a nice corner and just hit feign death.

- Used the move command to put my pet as far away as possible, and all the eyes kept going to him, checking him out, looking around a little and then went back to him.

- It looks for targets, when you are dead, you are not a target.

- So unless you get unlucky where one just happens to path over you, you won't get hit.

- See, I said I cheated.

- Or would that fit more in the clever use of mechanics category?

- Thought the azshara fight would be a bitch because when she put the hand on me, as I was the only target, I would be in trouble, but as it works out, if there is only one target to choose, she does not cast the hand and that fight was a push over thanks to our insane DPS now.

- I knew the baine fight would be hell and it was.

- Another case of I wish I had some healing on my hunter.

- But with some decent timing and directional disengages and move command on your pet so it does not try to fight in lava and all was well.

- Just took me a couple of wipes to work it out.

- Slyvanas is the only fight I have not had yet to try.

- It is always two of the other three.

- Did it a few times now and still no love on that last fight I need to do just to say I did it.

- I will keep going until I get to her.

- They are not really hugely challenging but I want to be able to say I did them all and not just assume I could do them.

- Of the three dungeons the only other fight that was an issue was Asira Dawnslayer.

- When she drops the smoke bomb your pet loses aggro and can never get it back.

- And by never I mean even if you feign death, the second you pop back up she comes after you.

- MD constantly to pet, nothing.

- Kiting, nothing.

- Can not be slowed, stunned, snared, or anything and she moves so much faster than you do.

- So what is any self respecting hunter to do?

- Go BM and just send your pet in and go get a drink.

- When she hits kill shot range, throw in a kill shot to make sure you get the physical tag, and the fight is done.

- I am sure I could have done it another way, but that seemed like the simplest solution.

- The other two bosses in there are just flat out DPS races.

- First and third will kill you if you do not have enough DPS.

- First you can get by before it kills you with around 90-100K would be my guess.

- Third, you need at least 130K DPS to out pace the damage.

- I did it as survival and did 138K and barely survived.

- Next time I will do it as BM, the burst from that will make it trivial.

- If not BM however, you must be over 130K to out pace it.

- Didn't really try to solo anything stressful recently, just fun stuff like those heroics.

- Tried to solo some of the current heroics a while back but no luck finishing any of them yet.

- But I will get there.  That is part of the fun, figuring out each boss.

- I think when 5.3 comes out I am going to choose to get gear for off spec on my hunter.

- Just to confuse the system.

- Not to be sarcastic or anything but there really are pieces that favor one spec over another for hunters based on the secondary stats that come on it.

- Any hunter that studies like I do sometimes I am sure has looked at a piece and said, that is a survival piece or that is a beast mastery piece.

- There is a difference.

- It is just not as pronounced as a piece of plate with intellect is a holy paladin piece and a piece with strength is not.

- I think it comes into play more for trinkets than for gear.

- Some procs really do favor one spec over another.

- Its just the way things are in a game of numbers.

- I think I am going to craft myself some cheap 476 gear and 458 PvP gear and get my monk into the LFR.

- Maybe that will be a lucky character.

- I just want to play one lucky character this expansion.

- One that seems to win everything all the time.

- Like my shaman was last expansion.

- It won everything.  Lock box greed, I win.  Items disenchanted, I win the materials.  Item I needed, I won.

- Everything except the damn healing shield in DS that a retribution paladin won both times.

- Why was a retribution paladin even allowed to roll on it and get the roll + bonus for an intellect shield?

- I put in multiple tickets about it and not one person every gave me a half way decent response.

- Funny as it sounds with my horrible luck, only having won three pieces over all so far this tier, my horrible luck has been fantastic.

- What do I mean by that?

- While I basically won nothing, the three things I did win, are all for slots I could not fill in with a temporary item from valor.

- So even my bad luck has been, oddly, good bad luck.

- Still, so few pieces in so many runs, I can see why some people are leaving in droves.

- As long as there is a valor gear net for me however, I feel I can at least stay only half a step behind.

- It is an issue for the people that do not want to grind the reputation or do not have the time to do the LFRs to get the reputation from them, as they need it for the valor gear, and that becomes an issue.

- But in the now immortal words of Bashiok, "but whatever".

- Apparently, that person does not count.

- Ran into a hunter while on my rogue doing one of the LFRs doing 160K+.

- He had slightly better gear than I do, but nothing really excessive.

- I wonder how he was beating my numbers my 25K.

- I poured over the logs.

- Yes, I log these things for personal use only.

- I use them to try and get better myself, and in a case like this, to learn from others.

- I found something really odd.

- He was not, repeat NOT, hitting explosive shot on cooldown.

- Had nearly half the explosive shots of the other survival hunters in there.

- I could not figure out what he was doing for the life of me.

- But he was basically neglecting his signature shot and doing more DPS than I do because of it.

- There has to be something to that.

- Something I have not read about anywhere yet.

- Research time.

- If I can pick up 25K ignoring my signature shot, who am I to keep hitting it.

- Screw that shot, lets get us another 25K.

- From the little I saw it seemed he prioritized everything above it.

- If I am reading the numbers right, glaive toss was his #1 priority shot.

- It looked like he never missed one and fit in the exact number you could have been able to meaning he never delayed it for anything, like an explosive shot, which is what I do, delay it for explosive shot.

- Outside of that one little detail I could not see anything else really jumping out at me.

- I wish I were there on my hunter so I could do a direct comparison instead of being on my rogue and playing the guessing game comparing him to other hunters.

- Still, I did learn something from him, explosive shot is not your top priority as survival.

- Glaive toss and black arrow are over it, based on his numbers, and it might even seem arcane is too.

- But that arcane part I can not be sure of without my own numbers on the same fight to compare.

- See, everyone says LFR is a joke, and I agree it can be.

- But there are also people like me that use it as a training tool.

- I use it as a way to get better.

- BTW, got my rogue almost up to doing 100K on non gimmick fights.

- I am quite impressed being I suck at being a rogue.

- To real rogues it might suck, but to a hunter, 100K on my rogue is pretty damn impressive.

- I can not wait until I get the 2 piece set, I am sure I will easily break 100K then.

- Heck, most of my gear is 483, once I get all 502 I would not be surprised if 120K was the normal.

- But running one LFR a week and nothing else on my rogue is not exactly the best way to get him geared.

- But I am in a new mode now.

- I am taking a break from the treadmill.

- I will run when I feel like running on alts and if I do not feel like running, I will not get rep, I will not get gear, and I will not get valor.

- Screw it if the game passes my alts by because they can't play it any more.

- That is what blizzard wants.

- Just ask Bashiok, he will tell you, but whatever.

- Have a great day.

18 comments:

  1. I've been having a lot of issues on daily island lately, more than usual, being in combat with something and having to run half the length of the zone to get clear. I think I've narrowed it down to the slaves you save by killing the slavers, seems you sometimes (or always) get put in combat when they run and engage another mob. Since I started killing them instead of saving them I haven't had the issue. I feel a bit dirty, but by the 5th time I'd had to run half the zone to get out of combat, I'd had enough.

    Monks are, IMO, the smoothest dps rotation... it's simple enough to do well at but there are things you need to watch to be great. Timing a RSK to get the 10% (20% in 5.3... incoming 10% buff!) extra damage debuff on a newly spawned pack of adds for AoE (Tortos, among others). Only using FoF when your target won't be moving during the channeling period (I've mostly dropped FoF from my rotation when I'm doing LFR these days, I just hit it on the move to trigger my Tiger Brew buff (I have it macroed to FoF)). Timing when to hit Tiger Brew for maximum benefit. When to use ToK on specific fights.

    Reminder that monk tanks and dps basically have the same statistical priority, especially at lower gear levels (at some point you'll hit a haste soft cap as dps and maybe as a tank, I find 7000 is comfortable but probably a bit high, I'm toying with dropping to 6000 or 6500 to free up a GCD or two a minute). Haste > Crit >= Mastery (> Dodge > Parry). The only possible significant difference is that you might want to hard cap Expertise as a tank but since I'm an off-spec tank, I just keep an Expertise trinket to swap in when I'm tanking... doesn't get me to cap but it gets me close enough.

    Otherwise, you're dealing with the same gear and the same reforges and the dps gems and enchants are close enough to parity that unless you're short of health (which, if you can monk tank relatively well, you won't be), you can literally just switch specs without changing a piece of gear and be 98% efficient.

    As someone who's leveled... 13?... toons to cap almost entirely through questing the zones, I find the time per level to be pretty consistent all the way from 85-90... 3-4hr per level with rested XP. Your monk may have also had the 100% XP buff which obviously skews things quite a bit if it ever dropped off. Jade Forest does seem to take a bit longer than subsequent levels, though.

    My monk was doing about 92K single-target at i500, currently i515 or so and doing about 117K, although I got an i522 2H weapon between those levels, that helps quite a bit. DW is higher dps (up to 5%, last I heard) than 2H but I haven't gotten lucky on Council once yet, let alone twice. Not sure an i522/i502 combo would be better than an i522 2H, probably close enough not to switch until I get a second one.

    It's funny, I've felt that ExS has been a weak ability for a long time, back into Cat... I recall at one point they buffed it in a patch so it'd feel like a button worth pressing (paraphrasing but it was somethink like that).

    Regarding off-spec gear, it shouldn't make any difference for your hunter, all Agi pieces should be tagged for all 3 specs, it only classifies gear based on useful stats, not optimal.

    Speaking of luck, I had my worst LFR loot luck streak ever this weekend... ran 9 5.0 bosses (5 in MV, 4 in Terrace) with tokens for all, got zero drops. 0/18. Then ran another toon through ToT, used 2 tokens, went 0/14. Did a Nalak kill right after that, no loot from the boss but I finally got a piece off a bonus roll. My other ToT runs dropped an appropriate amount of gear (usual 10-15%) so while RNG didn't immediately make it up to me, I'm not complaining. Bad streaks do happen. :)

    Oh, and my DK gearing experiment has been pushed back a week, spent too much ToT time this weekend on my main server toons, didn't have time to run the DK.

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    1. I like that idea that I can use the exact same gear with the same gems, enchants and reforges for tanking and DPS. I think you have just sold me on waiting on testing healing.

      I might have to see what tanking is like this weekend with some guild mates I can abuse. Should be fun.

      Explosive shot does seem to be doing a little less if only seeing that one thing as an example. If a survival hunter can do more DPS without using its signature shot then there is something seriously wrong with their signature shot in my opinion.

      I know all gear will be flagged the same, was just being sarcastic really. But there are some things that are better for one than the other but the system thinks of them all on the same level as just plain and simple good for a hunter.

      Your 0/18 seems like my normal week. If I get 1/18 I am happy. Hey, take what you can get.

      For every person out there that says they have good luck, I am the person on the other end of the spectrum that is the reason it averages out. So you have me to thank for your luck when you have it. :P

      I did not do anything on my DK or my lock this week either. Got all caught up with the monk and wasted all my free time doing that.

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    2. Yeah, monk tanks have ridiculous synergy when it comes to the stats, it's almost poetic.

      (I may have a bit of terminology wrong below but the gist is correct)

      Haste regens energy faster which gets you Chi faster which means more uptime on Shuffle as well as more opportunities to clear Stagger. Crit gets you more Elusive Brew stacks which means more uptime on a large avoidance increase CD. Mastery means you take less immediate damage from every hit, putting more into Stagger, which can be cleared faster because of haste.

      The only hitch is when you get into tier pieces... the tank 2pc and 4pc bonuses seem, IMO, relatively stronger than the dps ones for both T14 and T15. My monk is heavily dps main so I get the dps tier, someone who does both might have a tougher decision to make. On the other hand, the dps tier piece socket bonuses are generally going to be more useful for both specs than the tank pieces, which could have dodge/parry/stamina (pretty sure I saw dodge on at least one piece).

      So, it's not perfect gearing between the two, but damned close to the point that nobody but you would even notice.

      As a total sidenote, monk healing is a beast... seems to be something with a very steep learning curve, you suck for a while until you have some sort of ah-hah moment, then you start topping meters. About 90% of the monk healers I've run into are in the first category, including myself during my brief attempts. :)

      It can't be a normal week, though, I was bored and did the math based on a 35% drop rate in 5.0 and 15% drop rate in 5.2, my particular streak was something like a 0.005% probability. I'm hoping that isn't a normal week for you. :)

      Yeah, my monk took over immediately as my favourite toon once I started playing "serious content". Not my main, I don't do mains, but my go-to toon of choice for now. I certainly get it. :)

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    3. Minor update dps-wise, just got a 1H weapon so testing out DW vs 2H, 2H is i522, DW is i528/i491 (was even luckier and got a TF weapon, the second weapon is a VP upgraded i483 Sha weapon, will be replaced by any i502+ weapon when I get one)... figured they'd be close but not so much, DW is simming about 5% higher than 2H and I've at least somewhat verified it, did 136K on Gara'jal in LFR last night, previous best result was 117K (a few pieces ago but the weapons would be the biggest contribution, I would have expected mid-120s with my 2H). Also made the decision to push mastery>crit for my stat priority, figured there are enough fights in the game that benefit from specific periods of damage that having the extra control would be beneficial. So far so good with that as well, definitely doesn't feel like it's cost me any dps. Also prepping for eventually getting the RoO trinket where I'll want to have roughly balanaced stats with mastery on top. I find that trinket a bit intimidating but looking forward to trying it out one of these months.

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    4. Lucky with the TF weapon. Finally had one drop that someone in the raid could use. We kept getting holy paladin things with no holy paladin. It was like the game laughing at us.

      Nice work on it. I am doing 2H at the moment because that is what I have and what I will roll with for the time being.

      I got the RoO on my rogue and it sits in my bags. My 483 raid finder trinket is better than it. For some classes it rocks, others it really sucks.

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    5. I've been 2H for about 90% of my playtime on my monk... almost as soon as I got a 1H weapon off the last boss in HoF I picked up a 2H ToT LFR weapon. You go with what you have. :)

      Yeah, I'd imagine its usefulness for specific classes would depend on how well the additional stat boost could be used during the proc - specs with long DoTs that you can load up during that period would likely benefit most (and in the case of the monk, it's about gaming TEB... you stockpile stacks and blow 'em as soon as the trinket procs while you have a massive amount of mastery... combine that with getting lucky timing-wise and, say, being in a pool on first boss ToT, and BOOM). Note, though, that unless you have specifically reforged for the trinket, any tools like Mr. Robot that are dealing with your particular toon snapshot will underestimate the benefit of the trinket, that's one of the reasons I'm making the switch now (gemming mastery instead of crit on new items, etc). If you're dealing with a generic BiS list, though, and assuming it has factored in appropriate stat allocations, it's probably a reliable indicator.

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  2. GE,

    I thought you played as a BM and not as SS?

    stay frosty...
    -roo

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    1. I play as whatever does the job. For most trivial soloing Survival is better to beat down the adds.

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    2. How is it better to beat down the adds? I'm all for that, but since never having have played SS, I am at a complete lost.

      Any particular way to play or how about making a new blog entry explaining it as of 5.2? :D not too bright minds want to know.... (aye, mine)

      -roo

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    3. Serpent spread lives a serpent sting on all mobs you hit with a multi shot. So it does a nice chunk of burst damage and leaves a DoT on all of them. This causes them to go down faster and depending on the level of content, even instantly or near instantly.

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    4. Oh so you aren't meant to tab through mobs with Serpent Sting? I'm beast mastery as I said in the other thread and I was experimenting the other day with trying to make my dps go higher (I'm now level 88) and I was out of focus all the time hitting multishot, and when I tried to use cobra shot on one of the many aoe adds it died before the cast finished. So I experimented with hitting multi shot less often and weaving in serpent stings on lots of the targets, also placed an explosive and a snake trap. Not sure if any of that is right.

      You are certainly right about there being a lot of hunter buttons. Frenzy also confuses me, like when should I hit Bestial Wrath in a fight? If I hit it straight away then it'll be off cd and I can hit it again and maybe more times. Or should I wait until I have a 5 stack of frenzy to get more bang for the buck? Also does Bestial Wrath affect Dire Beast? How about Stampede? This is what goes through my mind when I play my hunter. It's like constant questions. That's one point I agree with you on, and like about the monk, it's very much plug and play. There's some questions but not many. It does what it says on the tin, or at least it seems that way.

      I finished my hunter pet collection. I now have pets that cover every buff and debuff that I found on this master list. I still use my stranglethorn black panther cat by default though. It wasn't my first pet, but it's the one I've had the longest and sue me I'm sentimental. What's your favourite pet Grumpy?

      Can I second Roo's call for a blog post about hunters? I'm not asking you to give up all your secrets but enquiring minds want to know.

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    5. Nah, not worth dotting them all up as BM.

      I hate when that happens and you can not regenerate any focus. Get used to it. Happens all the time.

      Hit BW whenever it is up. Do not hit frenzy when you are in BW and hold it off if you know you will be in BW soon. If you will not be in BW, hit it. There are a million and one priorities to follow, kind of annoying and frustrating to learn but like anything else, once you know it you will think of it as second nature. BW does not effect stam or dire beast, or at least it is not supposed to.

      I have a few. A nightsaber from the starting area and mans best friend (see above) are my two most long lived buddies.

      Perhaps I can write something with beginners in mind. Some guides take the basic appraoch as if everyone has a clue to begin with. Make one for the absolute beginner.

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  3. Started preparing my DK for leveling once 5.3 comes out. Got a few cheap crafted items and replaced an old PvP item he still had. He's iLvL 404 now at lvl 85. Half of it is 397 tank gear but whatever... I'll try leveling as Blood anyway.

    I decided to xmog all his gear to the starter DK set. Our guild tabard looks good with that set.

    He has the 463 arch agility polearm though. I've got the 450 2H str sword from relic hunting but it requires lvl 86.

    Took him into Hellfire ramparts to try and get a polearm for xmog: [Hellreaver]. I realized that I truly remembered nothing about his rotation. Haven't played him at all since Mists came out. Reached the 5 instance/hr cap... the item didn't drop...

    Last week I did BT with a guildie, so I decided to solo it on my hunter this week. Very easy. Got my Ashtongue rep to Revered. Also ran MC. Tried to do BWL again but I just can't do Razorgore solo. The boss just dies too fast from the adds and I don't have the patience for it. I hate "vehicle" fights.

    Apparently, the [A Complete Circuit] achievement for Lei Shen is bugged. I got it while doing LFR! Guildies were like: "You're on Normal Lei Shen!?!"

    Got into a 10N ToT run on Friday night. We only did Jin'rokh and Horridon but that was the first time I'd done Horridon. (There's too much trash!!!) Won the chest off Horridon.

    We had a horrible comp. My corehound was on Hero/Lust duty... and I've never had to do that before. On Jin'rokh, we didn't even have the Crit bonus. I could have switched pets back and forth but not comfortable with that (especially since they nerfed the cast times so it takes so long to switch). For Horridon, one rogue switched to his SV hunter so we could have Crit. Healers: Disc, Holy Paly, Resto Druid. Tanks were Prot War and Brew. 2 Ass rogues (1 switched to SV hunter for horridon), 1 Spriest, 1 Dest Lock, and me as BM.

    Checked the logs for Horridon and I was surprised I was doing almost 145K as BM. 79% of ranking limit. The Ass Rogue beat me with 154K, but they can do really good dps on that fight it seems. Not bad for my first time there; focusing on killing the right adds, Misdirecting to the right tank on each door, hitting Hero on the 3rd door at the right time, not standing in shit, watching out for charges. It was fun to raid again. Took us 2 pulls on Jin and 4 on Horridon.

    Won the tier legs off Nalak as well! With that and the 522 Horridon chest, my iLvL is up to 513 now.

    We didn't continue on Saturday though. People were all busy.

    Hopefully, we'll run again this weekend and work on Council.

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    1. I leveled as blood and did not regret it. Need 10 mobs, pull 10 mobs. No problem. If anything, the more you pull the better. Their single target DPS while leveling will take a while to kill things but in less them you can kill all 10.

      Cool. I wish I had an achievement bug like that. lol

      Good luck on council.

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    2. Yeah, I'm not a fan of Horridon as well although once we finally got him down, he's been a one-shot since. One of those fights, apparently.

      My monk in similar gear did about 150K on that fight on our kill attempt so 145K is fantastic for first time in, especially with a non-AoE spec. Sure, most of the dps comes during the final burn phase but the add phases count as well.

      That actually doesn't look like a bad comp to me... any melee-heavy groups are going to have more issues since they'll spend more time avoiding ground effects while trying to stay in range of the mobs. You had a ton of ranged, that probably helped. I enjoy that fight a lot more as ranged than melee. :)

      Curious - do you know if the disc priest was doing Atonement or using a traditional healing style?

      Council isn't bad compared to Horridon, it's rough the first few pulls but once you figure out what things will kill you and when it smooths out in a hurry. Tortos is a whole other ballgame, it's like Horridon with 5x the RNG. Still working on that one, hoping to add it to the "future one-shot" list eventually. Your ranged-heavy comp will help with that too, though.

      Your DK will likely be better off sticking with the 463 Agility piece, especially if you upgrade it with JP once 5.3 hits (and why not, they aren't much use for anything else). The weapon dps should add more to your dps than the lost Str and when leveling as blood, dps becomes your priority, survival isn't really an issue. My ret pally is in the same situation as you, I'm going to level with the polearm despite having the i450 Str weapon.

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    3. Thanks for the tips.

      I meant a bad comp buffs-wise. It's basically a guild alt/pug group. They don't run all the time and it's different people each time. I've only run with them 3 times this expansion. It's the leftovers of a Heroic DS team that I was on in Cata.

      Not sure about the disc priest. Is there anything I can glean from the logs to tell?

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  4. Yeah, that's the type of run I'm in, guild alt run + fill-ins from elsewhere (I'm one of the fill-ins). Different comp every week, etc. Last night was NOT a Horridon one-shot but we did get it with enough time for some Tortos wipes. God, I hate that fight already, but at least you can get back to pulling again quickly after a wipe. Not sure if being able to get 30 wipes into a 3hr timeslot is a good thing or not but if repetition is the key, it can't hurt anything but your repair bill.

    Yeah, just check his damage done, if he's doing competitive damage to an actual dpser on that fight, he's atonement. Horridon is ridiculously OP for atonement priests since their healing scales with damage and Horridon takes increasing damage for every door that's broken. It's a lot of fun in LFR especially... I'm just not sure that the extra damage and healing on Horridon makes up for the loss of a traditional healing spot. I think it would but knowing a similar group to mine got a kill with one would be useful info.

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    1. Oops, meant that as a response to Jaeger above.

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