I was invited to TofFWs run last night. It was set up with hand picked people from all over the server with alternates. Not sure if I was an alternate or a main but I was one of the ones invited and oddly enough, with as OP as Survival is now, I was also the only Hunter invited.
Of course I accepted. I am dying to raid, I hate sitting around doing nothing. Seems I was one of few that accepted. Only 6 people over all accepted and there were a few tentative so the raid never took off.
That is the story of my server lately. Nothing going on. So I continue to work on my characters just for something to do.
Reached 45 exalted reputation by getting my Hunter exalted with the Wardens yesterday. That is even with taking a week off from doing dailies because I was already bored to sin of them. Was easy to get that one maxed.
I also reached 1000 Valor Points yesterday. That took a lot longer then it should have. I was ready to start running heroics on day one. Only recently has it become possible to finish them on a near daily basis. I entered the queue when I started my TB dailies and it pooped shortly after I was done. Dungeon was already in progress which is never a good thing right? I entered and was in the middle of a boss fight, the only one there, I was two shot before I even had a chance to move. Oh well.
Over all that was the only bad thing about it. The run went super smooth. One good thing about joining a dungeon in progress, it is shorter. They still need to fix the amount of time these things take. Dungeons are too long time wise. They are there as an extended five person daily quests just to get points for gear. At least that is how I see it. I think of it as a quest. Quests should not take 2 hour or even 1 hour or even 30 minutes in my opinion. 30 minutes I can deal with however and being I joined this dungeon in progress that is all it was.
A 30 minute heroic with no wipes, now that is something I can live with. I pulled 19K on one of the bosses. That is a new high for me. I am getting more and more comfortable with focus and survival, while overpowered right now, is so amazingly easy that you could be in all quest greens and still pull 10K I think. I feel dirty every time I play now, it is like I am cheating. Survival is like having my own personal I Win Button.
I can't wait until they fix Hunters in PvP however. I want to get back to doing arena and right now Hunters are completely useless, at least as I know how to play them, in an arena environment.
Hunters can still be pretty damn useful in battlegrounds however if the people around you realize that you are no longer the burn character, you are now the control character. In MM I can pretty much lock someone down nicely for a while. Honestly, while that can be fun, I like the old days of being the big gun that can burn anyone down, no flag runner ever made it past me. One concussive and that was long enough to keep you in range to toast you even with a healer on your the whole time. I want that type of hunter play back.
I healed a guild run on my Priest yesterday, sitting at 328 item level still (even if the system tells me 329). I tanked a guild run on my Druid yesterday as well. Have no clue what the item level on that char is however. I got a healing drop, which is nice being I want to work on my healing offspec for my druid.
I think item level is a little bit on the useless side for judging if you are ready for heroics. First off, my Priest's item level is higher when I have my craftables in my bag. Why should things I crafted to auction off be considered part of my gear? Why should my PvP gear be considered part of my gear? The web site shows equipped item level and total item level as two different things. Why does the dungeon finder not use the same criteria to judge?
On my Priest I have set a marker for a number I will look for before I consider heroics. 2000 Spirit. Once I am at 2000 spirit then I know I will not be running oom every time I turn around. That should be a solid starting number to make heroics a bit more bearable.
From what I have been reading it seems like most priests seem to have the 2200-2300 as the magic number for when heroics become easier. While easy is nice I just want to be comfortable. I want to learn to manage mana, that is fine. I do not want to go oom on every single pull. 2000 should help with that. Give me enough to not have to worry about trash and still not give me too much to make bosses no brainers. So I can still work on learning mana conservation on them.
When I headed last night I was letting people sit with missing a little health. Do you know how hard that is? I was getting itchy trigger fingers wanting to click something to heal them. Anything, even a shield. Someone is missing a sliver of health... I... must... do... something.
God it is hard to not heal someone. I managed to get through it and to my surprise most of the people I ignored healing where back at full health on their own before we made it to the next mob. What a relief. I did not keep everyone at max and the world did not end.
I noticed, from not healing the small stuff at all, that my mana was going much further. I always had the extra mana to use my expensive quick heal on the tank should it be needed. Having that option, to use the expensive quick heal, has really taken the pressure off of me while healing and that has helped me not over heal out of fear of losing the tank knowing all my heals take forever to come off it seems. I think I am really starting to get a feel for the new world of healing and over all it is not that bad.
I am a little over 1600 spirit now and it seems that on many trash packs in normals, if appropriate CC is used, I am ending every battle with a decent amount of mana and on occasion even close to full mana. That is a good sign that I am getting closer to being able to do heroics as well. It also helps that I am running with guild mates. Not sure I would have the same success in normals with a pug but I am almost to the point where I am willing to try it.
To me, that will be the real proof if I am ready to make a step forward. Anyone can heal with a group of people that know how to CC, know how to avoid the bad, know how and where to tank the mobs. To do healing in a random with the chance of getting a group with four complete morons and still do good, now that is the sign of a good healer. Maybe another week and I might be ready to try that just to test myself.
As far as tanking on my druid. Tanking was tanking. Ask for CC, get everything else mad at you. Let them beat on you while everyone kills them. Move on. Tanking is as easy as it gets in this game. Again, with guild members that know what they are doing at least. I will still never tank a random. Ever. Just not happening. Way to many stupid people out there to risk it.
While tanking might be the easiest job in a heroic from a standpoint of execution it is the hardest job when it comes to accountability. Anything goes wrong, it is the tank fault when in fact it is more often the DPS that did something wrong and the tank was just not good enough to cover for them. Sure, I have seen my fair share of complete failure tanks out there but good DPS (or healers) can make up for a bad tank sometimes as they have the correct spec and gear. My Hunter and my Priest have carried more bad tanks then you could even count.
The main reason there is such a lack of tanks in this game is that there are way to many bad DPS characters out there. Ones that do not follow kill order, ones that do not watch threat, ones that like to pull more mobs for you, etc. If you get competent DPS then tanking is all about smacking around the big baddie and letting everyone do their thing. Like me for example. I do not tank randoms because random people are undependable. You never know what you will end up with and it is not worth it.
I am sure many tanks are like that. They will just ask in guild. I'm going to tank my random, who wants in? and instantly you have a guild group. No need to take risks. And even with lesser guild members that do not know fights, you can be on vent with them to yell, watch your aggro. Step out of the void zone. Trap the square. Once you do your random, there is no need for you to run again that day so that is one tank out of the pool of available tanks. This is also the reason why in randoms you normally get horrible tanks. If their own guild does not want to run with them, they must be bad.
Speaking of tanks. I really need to get back to my warrior. Last I was on he was sitting at 72 and enjoying northrend. I can probably knock out up to 80 in a matter of 2 days if I want to and then just let him sit and get full on rested.
I am so sickeningly bored of this horrible Cataclysm content that going back might be a nice change of pace. Not to mention I have the heirloom cloaks now as well to make things quicker. Go back to a time where all questing wasn't boring and follow one quest line type of questing. Go back to areas that where designed to look good, not look cluttered. I think it would be a nice change of pace.
At least it would give me something to do while I wait for my server to catch up so some raids actually start to get done once in a while. It is sad when friends tell me their servers are bored because all raids have been done by most of the server already and not even one guild on my server has finished one raid. Sad, isn't it?
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Monday, January 10, 2011
Gathering Differences?
Out of boredom this weekend I decided to do some gathering studies for my own personal needs. I have maxed characters of all gathering professions so no areas where hard for me so adding a difficulty level was not a factor. I also used my Shaman miner for the mining instead of my druid miner as the druid has instant flight and that could have skewed my results some.
Mining:
I made a route in Deepholm and traveled for 1 hour. 340 ores collected. (148 O, 192 E)
I made a route in Twilight Highlands and traveled for 1 hour. 161 ores collected. (142 E, 19 P)
I made a route in Vashj'ir and traveled for 1 hour. 244 ore collected (244 O)
Herbing:
I made a route in Uldum and traveled for 1 hour. 233 herbs collected. (225 WT, 8 C)
I made a route in Hyjal and traveled for 1 hour. 190 herbs collected. (16 AV, 61 C, 113 SV)
I made a route in Deepholm and traveled for 1 hour. 212 herbs collected. (157 HB, 55 C)
Skinning:
I made a route in Twilight Highlands and traveled for 1 hour. 110 skins collected. (110 HSL)
I made a route in Hyjal and traveled for 1 hour. 61+ skins collected. ( 28 BDS, 33 HSL, +scraps)
The mining numbers in Twilight Highlands could be off because of the huge, and I mean huge, amount of people farming mines there but the numbers where still respectable even if every node I landed on I landed with at least two other people most times.
I did not try any other areas because there were not enough spawns to make it worth it. TB can offer great gathering as well but being it is not always available I did not include it.
From looking at these numbers I am left to say that leather is, without doubt, the hardest item to gather when it comes to time and effort. Ore and herb nodes where often land and grab. Maybe once every 20 lands did I get in a fight. Skinning is a fight for everything unless you happen to walk up to an area where someone was questing and was kind enough to loot all the mobs.
Looking at those numbers I am wondering why leatherworking seems to require more of each item to make stuff compared to what blacksmiths or alchemy does?
When leveling leather working past 510 you need blackened dragonscale at a rate of 10 per pattern, not to mention 10 volatiles and 8 heavy savage leather per as well. Being in a hour you can farm 28 (lets call it 30) that means you can get 3 (double) skill ups per hour by farming if you also happen to have a stash of volatiles saved up. Basically, it means, even in an hour, you will not have farmed enough to get even 1 skill up for leather working.
When you compare it to alchemy or blacksmiths they can easily get their skill ups, without the need for anything additional in some cases, with one hour of gathering.
When it comes to gathering to level Alchemy is king. The only thing you need to level alchemy are herbs. There are a few speed bumps if you will where you need to do a few minutes of fishing but that is about it. Blacksmiths have it a tiny bit harder but not much. While to skill up faster you can use less ore and some volatiles if you do not have the volatiles you can make some patterns that just require larger amounts of ore to make. Leather working there is no way around it. You need more then just leather to level it. There is no option otherwise.
Those are only three however. There is a forth gathering profession that anyone can do and that is gathering cloth. Tailors do have the advantage of getting extra cloth from mobs but it still seem to be really low drop rates lately and all tailoring patterns require volatiles at a certain level. Whereas you get life from herbalism, some sort in mining and the rare one with skinning you get nothing from gathering cloth except cloth.
I leveled 4 characters to 85 and some others a little here and there and sent every stitch of cloth I found to my tailor and even at that I only just maxed out tailoring.
To even out professions some I think they need to lower the count of "non leatherworking items" required to make leatherworking patterns and the need to up the amount of skins you get from skinning by at least double.
They also need to make sure that every humanoid mob contains at least 1 piece of cloth. Lower the rare mobs they give 4 or 5 or 6 and make sure all give at least 1 and it will even out to be a little more then currently drops and it would make cloth farmable more so then it is now.
The flow of profession leveling does not feel good right now. Just add this to the list of other things that just do not feel right about this expansion so far.
If you are a gatherer I have a suggestion for you right now.
SELL!!!!
Do not worry about leveling your profession. In two months you can buy all your ore, herbs and leather back for a tenth of what you can sell it for now. The bandwagon is not gone on this yet as some people might suggest.
One example. Whiptail. On my server it is still selling for around 200 gold per stack. Being anyone can farm 11 stacks of whiptail in a hour without even trying you know it will be something that will be over farmed or even farmed for milling because it is easy to get. Kind of like tiger lily in LK but with some actual uses. If you recall how cheap tiger lily got then you will understand what will happen with whiptail. Only difference is that whiptail does still have lots of uses so it will not go as low, but it will be the most abundant herb on the market in no time.
If you farm for an hour and sell for 200 gold per stack I can guarantee you that you that in less then two months you will be able to buy them back for 20-30 gold per stack no problem.
While farming for profit is not the ideal way of making money it is the only way that honestly requires zero skill and only some free time you are willing to invest. So turn on the TV and watch your favorite show while farming and make some easy money now and buy back the materials later to level your professions.
Ores and herbs will go down faster then skins or cloth as they seem stupidly easy to gather. Taking advantage of people with money willing to grossly over paid is always a good business plan.
Mining:
I made a route in Deepholm and traveled for 1 hour. 340 ores collected. (148 O, 192 E)
I made a route in Twilight Highlands and traveled for 1 hour. 161 ores collected. (142 E, 19 P)
I made a route in Vashj'ir and traveled for 1 hour. 244 ore collected (244 O)
Herbing:
I made a route in Uldum and traveled for 1 hour. 233 herbs collected. (225 WT, 8 C)
I made a route in Hyjal and traveled for 1 hour. 190 herbs collected. (16 AV, 61 C, 113 SV)
I made a route in Deepholm and traveled for 1 hour. 212 herbs collected. (157 HB, 55 C)
Skinning:
I made a route in Twilight Highlands and traveled for 1 hour. 110 skins collected. (110 HSL)
I made a route in Hyjal and traveled for 1 hour. 61+ skins collected. ( 28 BDS, 33 HSL, +scraps)
The mining numbers in Twilight Highlands could be off because of the huge, and I mean huge, amount of people farming mines there but the numbers where still respectable even if every node I landed on I landed with at least two other people most times.
I did not try any other areas because there were not enough spawns to make it worth it. TB can offer great gathering as well but being it is not always available I did not include it.
From looking at these numbers I am left to say that leather is, without doubt, the hardest item to gather when it comes to time and effort. Ore and herb nodes where often land and grab. Maybe once every 20 lands did I get in a fight. Skinning is a fight for everything unless you happen to walk up to an area where someone was questing and was kind enough to loot all the mobs.
Looking at those numbers I am wondering why leatherworking seems to require more of each item to make stuff compared to what blacksmiths or alchemy does?
When leveling leather working past 510 you need blackened dragonscale at a rate of 10 per pattern, not to mention 10 volatiles and 8 heavy savage leather per as well. Being in a hour you can farm 28 (lets call it 30) that means you can get 3 (double) skill ups per hour by farming if you also happen to have a stash of volatiles saved up. Basically, it means, even in an hour, you will not have farmed enough to get even 1 skill up for leather working.
When you compare it to alchemy or blacksmiths they can easily get their skill ups, without the need for anything additional in some cases, with one hour of gathering.
When it comes to gathering to level Alchemy is king. The only thing you need to level alchemy are herbs. There are a few speed bumps if you will where you need to do a few minutes of fishing but that is about it. Blacksmiths have it a tiny bit harder but not much. While to skill up faster you can use less ore and some volatiles if you do not have the volatiles you can make some patterns that just require larger amounts of ore to make. Leather working there is no way around it. You need more then just leather to level it. There is no option otherwise.
Those are only three however. There is a forth gathering profession that anyone can do and that is gathering cloth. Tailors do have the advantage of getting extra cloth from mobs but it still seem to be really low drop rates lately and all tailoring patterns require volatiles at a certain level. Whereas you get life from herbalism, some sort in mining and the rare one with skinning you get nothing from gathering cloth except cloth.
I leveled 4 characters to 85 and some others a little here and there and sent every stitch of cloth I found to my tailor and even at that I only just maxed out tailoring.
To even out professions some I think they need to lower the count of "non leatherworking items" required to make leatherworking patterns and the need to up the amount of skins you get from skinning by at least double.
They also need to make sure that every humanoid mob contains at least 1 piece of cloth. Lower the rare mobs they give 4 or 5 or 6 and make sure all give at least 1 and it will even out to be a little more then currently drops and it would make cloth farmable more so then it is now.
The flow of profession leveling does not feel good right now. Just add this to the list of other things that just do not feel right about this expansion so far.
If you are a gatherer I have a suggestion for you right now.
SELL!!!!
Do not worry about leveling your profession. In two months you can buy all your ore, herbs and leather back for a tenth of what you can sell it for now. The bandwagon is not gone on this yet as some people might suggest.
One example. Whiptail. On my server it is still selling for around 200 gold per stack. Being anyone can farm 11 stacks of whiptail in a hour without even trying you know it will be something that will be over farmed or even farmed for milling because it is easy to get. Kind of like tiger lily in LK but with some actual uses. If you recall how cheap tiger lily got then you will understand what will happen with whiptail. Only difference is that whiptail does still have lots of uses so it will not go as low, but it will be the most abundant herb on the market in no time.
If you farm for an hour and sell for 200 gold per stack I can guarantee you that you that in less then two months you will be able to buy them back for 20-30 gold per stack no problem.
While farming for profit is not the ideal way of making money it is the only way that honestly requires zero skill and only some free time you are willing to invest. So turn on the TV and watch your favorite show while farming and make some easy money now and buy back the materials later to level your professions.
Ores and herbs will go down faster then skins or cloth as they seem stupidly easy to gather. Taking advantage of people with money willing to grossly over paid is always a good business plan.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Tips & Tricks: Hunters in Heroics
There are many things you can do to make your life, and the life of your party members, a lot easier in Cataclysm heroics. They are getting easier as we all gear up but that does not mean you do not have to play smart and be a good Hunter. Here are some tips and tricks I've noticed while doing heroics that seem to help a lot.
General Umbriss and his Purple Friend: (GB)
This is the best example of a Hunter being useful. Stand all the way to the left, directly across from where the throggs come down and do your pew pew thing. When Mr. Purple comes down, drop a trap at your feet, Distracting shot the little bugger and go back to the pew pew. Refresh the trap as needed and remember to avoid the charge. As long as he remains trapped another Mr. Purple will never spawn and you turn this into a tank and spank.
Erudax and the Faceless: (GB)
The key to making this fight easy is making sure the faceless do not get to the eggs. That is easier said then done if you are the only ranged in the group but it can be done. This will be good to do even if there are other ranged in the group. Let it be known you are going to burn the one on the right first. After you are all in the eye of the storm and two faceless come out. Run toward the door.
You know the path the left one will take. Drop a trap in its path (max distance) and concussive the second the left one is in range then switch the burn the right, no need to move, the mob will not attack you. When concussive comes off cool down, concussive the right. Shortly after he should be dead and you switch back to the left one. If you did it correctly as soon as the concussive wore off on the left one he entered the trap slowing him and by the time you turn back he is leaving the trap and your concussive is now off cool down. Concussive and burn. Even with the other two DPS being melee they should have more then enough time to get there to make sure he goes down in time.
Ozruk and the Paralyze: (SC)
This fight is a tanking nightmare, good thing you are a Hunter. Sad part is, the fight is also a Hunters nightmare. There are two good ways to show your awesome Hunter abilities here and one of them is by being a melee Hunter.
When he casts Elementium Shield Wall he will put a DoT on anyone that melees him. When you see it being cast, get into melee range. Wing clip, it is instant, whereas your melee might not swing in time if you are a good Hunter and using a 2 hander like you should be. He will cast paralyze right after, the DoT you got from hitting him should break you out of it and then you Disengage instantly so you do not get squished.
Another option is to get some Sulfuron Slammer from the vendor in BRD and keep them on you. When he has about 1 second left on his elementium cast drink one. It will break you out of the paralyze that comes right after and you can continue to pew pew. Be aware however you will be drunk by the end of the fight making things... fuzzy.
Until the bug is fixed that does not allow serpent sting to bounce back we will have to do these options.
Rom'ogg's Chains of Woe: (BRC)
It should go without saying that as soon as you break the chains you should disengage right? Just make sure before you do this that you are not facing a direction where you had not cleared adds yet. You will instantly go from the smart hunter that disengaged out of damage into the stupid huntard that disengaged into adds.
Corla's Beams: (BRC)
While I still see people trying to rotate two people in beams it is not needed. If you wait until your stacks are 80-85 and move out and then come back as soon as they end it will have had enough time to fall off the add as well. Only one person needs to block each beam. This needs to be said as it seems most people do not realize this. As a Hunter you are in a somewhat unique position of being able to get out of the beam fast with disengage. As you might now, when you move sometimes the beam decides to stay with you. When you disengage out of it you are assured you will get out of it. You can slowly make your way back if you want or just wait until it hits 1 and then run forward back into it from the full distance that disengage put you at. It will be 0 by then.
Lockmaw's Venomous Rage: (LCotTV)
It can be removed with Tranquilize shot, I really hope you figured this one out on your own the first time you saw him get all big and red and, well, enraged.
Barim's Soul: (LCotTV)
The Soul Shards can be slowed by a trap if you didn't already guess that one. When he pulls everyone in it will cause fall damage, the further away you are the more fall damage you will take. Moving a little closer when you know you are getting to 50% is a nice way to help the healer even if they never notice you did it to help them.
As I remember some more little Hunter goodies I will add them. Hope these help some people.
General Umbriss and his Purple Friend: (GB)
This is the best example of a Hunter being useful. Stand all the way to the left, directly across from where the throggs come down and do your pew pew thing. When Mr. Purple comes down, drop a trap at your feet, Distracting shot the little bugger and go back to the pew pew. Refresh the trap as needed and remember to avoid the charge. As long as he remains trapped another Mr. Purple will never spawn and you turn this into a tank and spank.
Erudax and the Faceless: (GB)
The key to making this fight easy is making sure the faceless do not get to the eggs. That is easier said then done if you are the only ranged in the group but it can be done. This will be good to do even if there are other ranged in the group. Let it be known you are going to burn the one on the right first. After you are all in the eye of the storm and two faceless come out. Run toward the door.
You know the path the left one will take. Drop a trap in its path (max distance) and concussive the second the left one is in range then switch the burn the right, no need to move, the mob will not attack you. When concussive comes off cool down, concussive the right. Shortly after he should be dead and you switch back to the left one. If you did it correctly as soon as the concussive wore off on the left one he entered the trap slowing him and by the time you turn back he is leaving the trap and your concussive is now off cool down. Concussive and burn. Even with the other two DPS being melee they should have more then enough time to get there to make sure he goes down in time.
Ozruk and the Paralyze: (SC)
This fight is a tanking nightmare, good thing you are a Hunter. Sad part is, the fight is also a Hunters nightmare. There are two good ways to show your awesome Hunter abilities here and one of them is by being a melee Hunter.
When he casts Elementium Shield Wall he will put a DoT on anyone that melees him. When you see it being cast, get into melee range. Wing clip, it is instant, whereas your melee might not swing in time if you are a good Hunter and using a 2 hander like you should be. He will cast paralyze right after, the DoT you got from hitting him should break you out of it and then you Disengage instantly so you do not get squished.
Another option is to get some Sulfuron Slammer from the vendor in BRD and keep them on you. When he has about 1 second left on his elementium cast drink one. It will break you out of the paralyze that comes right after and you can continue to pew pew. Be aware however you will be drunk by the end of the fight making things... fuzzy.
Until the bug is fixed that does not allow serpent sting to bounce back we will have to do these options.
Rom'ogg's Chains of Woe: (BRC)
It should go without saying that as soon as you break the chains you should disengage right? Just make sure before you do this that you are not facing a direction where you had not cleared adds yet. You will instantly go from the smart hunter that disengaged out of damage into the stupid huntard that disengaged into adds.
Corla's Beams: (BRC)
While I still see people trying to rotate two people in beams it is not needed. If you wait until your stacks are 80-85 and move out and then come back as soon as they end it will have had enough time to fall off the add as well. Only one person needs to block each beam. This needs to be said as it seems most people do not realize this. As a Hunter you are in a somewhat unique position of being able to get out of the beam fast with disengage. As you might now, when you move sometimes the beam decides to stay with you. When you disengage out of it you are assured you will get out of it. You can slowly make your way back if you want or just wait until it hits 1 and then run forward back into it from the full distance that disengage put you at. It will be 0 by then.
Lockmaw's Venomous Rage: (LCotTV)
It can be removed with Tranquilize shot, I really hope you figured this one out on your own the first time you saw him get all big and red and, well, enraged.
Barim's Soul: (LCotTV)
The Soul Shards can be slowed by a trap if you didn't already guess that one. When he pulls everyone in it will cause fall damage, the further away you are the more fall damage you will take. Moving a little closer when you know you are getting to 50% is a nice way to help the healer even if they never notice you did it to help them.
As I remember some more little Hunter goodies I will add them. Hope these help some people.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
More Blue Than Red?
As my gear gets better and I get raid ready I started looking into appropriate gemming and enchanting. While on paper the best meta gem for Hunters is Chaotic Shadowspirit Diamond the requirements for it are appalling. What Hunter in their right mind would have more blue gems than red gems?
About a week ago, when I first got a helm with a meta slot I started to look at my options and in my opinion (no math to back this up really) I believe that the Fleet Shadowspirit Diamond is the way to go. There are various reasons for this.
One being I always used Tuskarr's Vitality on my boots to begin with. It is a minor run increase but I like it. Using this will also allow me to use a better enchant on my boots which in turn can make up for using a different meta. It is just changing some things around.
Another reason is that having two yellow gems is not going to really hurt us at all. Yellow has various options that a Hunter might find useful such as haste, mastery and critical. We could also go with combo gems that include hit if we need hit thus fulfilling two needs, the need for hit and the need for two yellows.
The third reason is actually the most appealing of all of them. Some socket bonuses are now really attractive. Having to use yellows and yellow/blue hybrids allow us to meet the socket bonus requirements while activating the meta.
Reforging makes it even more attractive in some cases now as well. Even if you do not need hit you can use two hybrid gems with hit just to meet a blue socket and your meta requirements for the bonus and then change the stats on an item from hit to something else useful like mastery or critical or haste.
The basic idea now is that you actually want to use at least two hybrid gems to meet the requirements and use them in the most intelligent spaces to get the most out of them. As in the highest bonus you can get from matching gems. Using them in two different pieces to get +10 agility in each is not as smart as using them both in one piece to get +30 agility.
While we will still be stacking agility only for the most part we can now match some gear without feeling as if we are doing something wrong. This meta gem is actually a good thing for us. It forces us to think a little bit about how we gem.
Unless they change the other one back to it's old way I can only see the Fleet gem becoming more and more popular among Hunters. I know I have been using it for a week already and have no designs on changing it.
No Blue Gems for us. Real Hunters use Fleet.
About a week ago, when I first got a helm with a meta slot I started to look at my options and in my opinion (no math to back this up really) I believe that the Fleet Shadowspirit Diamond is the way to go. There are various reasons for this.
One being I always used Tuskarr's Vitality on my boots to begin with. It is a minor run increase but I like it. Using this will also allow me to use a better enchant on my boots which in turn can make up for using a different meta. It is just changing some things around.
Another reason is that having two yellow gems is not going to really hurt us at all. Yellow has various options that a Hunter might find useful such as haste, mastery and critical. We could also go with combo gems that include hit if we need hit thus fulfilling two needs, the need for hit and the need for two yellows.
The third reason is actually the most appealing of all of them. Some socket bonuses are now really attractive. Having to use yellows and yellow/blue hybrids allow us to meet the socket bonus requirements while activating the meta.
Reforging makes it even more attractive in some cases now as well. Even if you do not need hit you can use two hybrid gems with hit just to meet a blue socket and your meta requirements for the bonus and then change the stats on an item from hit to something else useful like mastery or critical or haste.
The basic idea now is that you actually want to use at least two hybrid gems to meet the requirements and use them in the most intelligent spaces to get the most out of them. As in the highest bonus you can get from matching gems. Using them in two different pieces to get +10 agility in each is not as smart as using them both in one piece to get +30 agility.
While we will still be stacking agility only for the most part we can now match some gear without feeling as if we are doing something wrong. This meta gem is actually a good thing for us. It forces us to think a little bit about how we gem.
Unless they change the other one back to it's old way I can only see the Fleet gem becoming more and more popular among Hunters. I know I have been using it for a week already and have no designs on changing it.
No Blue Gems for us. Real Hunters use Fleet.
LFD - Bound to Happen
Failure after failure after failure you knew the time would come that sooner or later that I would use the LFD system and actually find a group of people that were not semi-retarded or worse. It took almost a month for the rest of the world to catch up to heroics but it seems it has happened finally for some.
I rarely try getting a random without at least 2 guild mates, usually 3, because of the horrible players that seem to clutter the system. Yesterday it was just me and a tank and no one else that wanted to go was on at the time so we figured we would give it a try.
Deadmines popped up. After waiting so long to get this to pop, needing it for my last dungeon, I seem to get it normally now. I look at the make up. Me (Hunter of course), Bear tank (my guild mate), a Shaman healer, a warrior and a lock. Okay, this might be okay.
We start off and make our way to the first boss and I notice the lock is pulling 18K DPS. I look to my 11K DPS and start thinking I really need to step my game up against this guy but then I realize that he was in the cannon and that is where his DPS was coming from. The tank always brought all packs back to the cannon so he got a lot of cannon time in. The warrior was sitting at 6K DPS. Not great, but not horrible when I was pulling so much and the lock was pulling even more in the cannon.
First boss goes fine. Lock still seems to do 10K on boss fights which is nice but the warrior really does not step it up all that much and came really close to 8K. 8K is the least I would ask on a heroic so we will probably be okay.
We cruise through with no problem, put the warrior in the harvester guy being he was low DPS and basically have no problems the whole way to the end.
We get to Ripsnarl and I am a tad bit worried. Every time you get to Rip it is usually the first wipe even if you are in a good group. Two of the people, the warrior and the healer, have never done the fight before but it is an easy one to explain. Kill the adds and back to the boss. If you have enough DPS it should be no problem.
We rip through rip with no issues what so ever. It was as if this crew had been doing it for a year already. Everyone did perfect, even the warrior had his best DPS, the adds never even got close to going off and rip is a joke if you control the adds.
I got a nice test of my new Survival spec on Cookie. Limited movement fight so I could put my best foot forward and see what I am capable of with some buffs. I had to move a few times (we had only one person doing food) but I was able to pull 16K DPS. Now that is nice. My max as MM was 14K on a boss fight (cookie as well). Now I can see how SV is better. Not to mention, unlike MM, you do not need to pay close attention to anything with survival. Survival is easy mode DPS compared to MM. 16K is nice. I was happy with that but I am sure I can squeeze a little more out of it with practice.
We down Vanessa with no problem as you would expect. Like I said before, Vanessa is without doubt the easiest fight in all the dungeons in my opinion.
So it has finally happened. A pug LFD that actually worked. I am amazed. Maybe there is hope for the future of wow.
I can tell you one thing. If the LFD tool kept throwing crap groups together it would eventually be the end of the game for a lot of people that do not have a lot of time to play. Would suck for the end game to be before even heroics being it only takes a few hours to level from 80-85.
If you take out dungeons and raids from the game once you hit 85 there is nothing else to do. Unless you want to play the AH to make money your game is done as soon as you hit 85 if you can not get a group for heroics. Within another month I am sure things will be even better.
This run, while it still took WAY to long at an hour and a half, was nice and smooth. The more gear people get the faster it will be but sadly it will never get to the point of being casual friendly like it used to be with 15-30 minute runs.
I also got my second heroic piece. Woohoo. I'm moving up finally. Now to try and get the rest of my gear to heroic level. I guess my luck with drops, and rolls for that matter, has continued from last expansion. Oh well, it makes it more of a challenge and I like the challenge. Nothing better then destroying someone with a much higher gear score then you who brags they are so much better then you on the DPS charts in lesser gear. Gear helps, skill helps even more. As long as I am on the top in damage done and on the bottom in damage taken I am happy. Gear is not as much of an issue.
I rarely try getting a random without at least 2 guild mates, usually 3, because of the horrible players that seem to clutter the system. Yesterday it was just me and a tank and no one else that wanted to go was on at the time so we figured we would give it a try.
Deadmines popped up. After waiting so long to get this to pop, needing it for my last dungeon, I seem to get it normally now. I look at the make up. Me (Hunter of course), Bear tank (my guild mate), a Shaman healer, a warrior and a lock. Okay, this might be okay.
We start off and make our way to the first boss and I notice the lock is pulling 18K DPS. I look to my 11K DPS and start thinking I really need to step my game up against this guy but then I realize that he was in the cannon and that is where his DPS was coming from. The tank always brought all packs back to the cannon so he got a lot of cannon time in. The warrior was sitting at 6K DPS. Not great, but not horrible when I was pulling so much and the lock was pulling even more in the cannon.
First boss goes fine. Lock still seems to do 10K on boss fights which is nice but the warrior really does not step it up all that much and came really close to 8K. 8K is the least I would ask on a heroic so we will probably be okay.
We cruise through with no problem, put the warrior in the harvester guy being he was low DPS and basically have no problems the whole way to the end.
We get to Ripsnarl and I am a tad bit worried. Every time you get to Rip it is usually the first wipe even if you are in a good group. Two of the people, the warrior and the healer, have never done the fight before but it is an easy one to explain. Kill the adds and back to the boss. If you have enough DPS it should be no problem.
We rip through rip with no issues what so ever. It was as if this crew had been doing it for a year already. Everyone did perfect, even the warrior had his best DPS, the adds never even got close to going off and rip is a joke if you control the adds.
I got a nice test of my new Survival spec on Cookie. Limited movement fight so I could put my best foot forward and see what I am capable of with some buffs. I had to move a few times (we had only one person doing food) but I was able to pull 16K DPS. Now that is nice. My max as MM was 14K on a boss fight (cookie as well). Now I can see how SV is better. Not to mention, unlike MM, you do not need to pay close attention to anything with survival. Survival is easy mode DPS compared to MM. 16K is nice. I was happy with that but I am sure I can squeeze a little more out of it with practice.
We down Vanessa with no problem as you would expect. Like I said before, Vanessa is without doubt the easiest fight in all the dungeons in my opinion.
So it has finally happened. A pug LFD that actually worked. I am amazed. Maybe there is hope for the future of wow.
I can tell you one thing. If the LFD tool kept throwing crap groups together it would eventually be the end of the game for a lot of people that do not have a lot of time to play. Would suck for the end game to be before even heroics being it only takes a few hours to level from 80-85.
If you take out dungeons and raids from the game once you hit 85 there is nothing else to do. Unless you want to play the AH to make money your game is done as soon as you hit 85 if you can not get a group for heroics. Within another month I am sure things will be even better.
This run, while it still took WAY to long at an hour and a half, was nice and smooth. The more gear people get the faster it will be but sadly it will never get to the point of being casual friendly like it used to be with 15-30 minute runs.
I also got my second heroic piece. Woohoo. I'm moving up finally. Now to try and get the rest of my gear to heroic level. I guess my luck with drops, and rolls for that matter, has continued from last expansion. Oh well, it makes it more of a challenge and I like the challenge. Nothing better then destroying someone with a much higher gear score then you who brags they are so much better then you on the DPS charts in lesser gear. Gear helps, skill helps even more. As long as I am on the top in damage done and on the bottom in damage taken I am happy. Gear is not as much of an issue.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Hunter Respeced / Healer Reborn
Hunter Respeced.
I decided to make a survival spec and lose my beloved BM spec for now being it seems to be the #1 DD every where I look and I wanted to put my best foot forward if I did get an invite to the raid from the top guild on my server last night. (They canceled, not enough showed up)
Running some tests on the dummies in my current gear it went like this.
Survival: 10400
Survival: 10200
Survival: 10200
That is a 5 minute testing with no buffs. except for hawk of course, and no cooldowns. Female dwarf says it should be 12800 so that means I am doing something wrong. I can't figure out what it is. Survival is idiot proof. That is why I never liked it. It is even more boring then it was before.
Doing Marksman these where my results.
Marksman: 9900
Marksman: 10100
Marksman: 9800
As you can see my marks spec is not to far behind and in my opinion marks requires more timing and when it's special procs you actually need to do something different and not just do the same thing but sooner like it is with survival. Based on female dwarf the max I should be doing with MM is 10500. So I feel I am definitely doing about as well as I can do with it.
So it means I am leaving a lot on the table as SV and leaving basically nothing to spare as MM. It would make sense being I've been MM for so long and I am good at it but what does not make sense is why I am off in SV by so much.
SV is stupid easy. Sting, Explosive, BA, CS. That is basically it with one small addition to it. If you need to dump focus you use AS if you are out of Lock N Load and you use KC if you are in Lock N Load. See, that is all you need to know to be SV. It is a 3 button rotation for the most part if you do not count start up buttons, cooldowns or close procs of LnL.
If LnL procs close I can find myself focus capped really fast otherwise I will almost never need to use AS or KC if LnL procs with some decent space between it. I will never be focus starved and I will never be focus capped. One of my tests I never needed to fire an AS or KC at all over the five minutes and that was the highest test. The LnL procs just timed themselves perfectly.
Three tests, only one clipped shot, no focus cap ever, and the same basic results for each one. How is it I get 10400 on a dummy with no buffs and female dwarf says I should be doing 12800. There is nothing more to it. I am not missing anything. I'll do some more dummy tests and see if I can boost it up some. I was talking on vent at the same time. Maybe I was a little slow on the draw or maybe I was waiting to long as I have become accustomed to doing as MM because that stupid queue system always locks me into a second Aimed when I hit it for the proc, so I have learned to wait and single cast instead of spamming the 6 over and over waiting for it.
Testing should tell but from what I see so far I think I prefer MM even with its 400 less DPS because of the silence shot, a 3 minute RF and readiness for even more burst during burn phases. I do not see survival having anything that can come close to those things.
Healer Reborn:
So the days of Cataclysm are upon me as a Disc Priest. From what I have read it scares me. Disc seems to be what everyone says is the worst right now. Even one of the bear tanks in my guild has said he would rather kick a Disc Priest the moment he sees them then to even try because he has yet to see one that could heal anything. He has however offered to tank for me being it is a guild thing. I am glad to take the challenge.
I know Disc Priests are totally broken right now being the shield is basically useless. The mana it costs to cast it is not really worth it most of the time. Doing the shield, heal heal thing for rapture is a nice idea but doesn't work as well as intended from my limited experience so far.
I healed two runs with all guild mates. Normals of course. I am sitting at 323 item level right now. Mind you I just hit 85 and that is mostly all quest reward stuff. One tailoring item and one reputation item. It won't take me long to be heroic geared but I am not going to make that jump lightly. When I am comfortable with my mana regen and usage then I will do that. I will not judge it on some stupid item level. Item level means nothing in my opinion.
Both runs went smoothly. Had three 83s and an 82 along with me the 85 priest. We only wiped once and that was on a mispull by the tank that got 2 packs and one huge mob with no CC set up yet. He meant to only pick up the big one. I don't think I could have healed us through that even if I were raid geared.
My only issue was on a few of the harder trash pulls I went almost oom and on most of the boss fights I went oom. Oddly enough, two of the boss fights I was still at half mana.
I noticed my biggest problem so far is me. I am casting heals that are not quite required. I see a DPS get aggro on something and I shield them. It is a natural reaction I need to stop. Being I use healbot for display I was also overhealing. How healbot shows things make it look like the tank is in deep trouble when the tank is only missing 10K health. I could hold off even healing the tank if all it is is 10K.
Maybe I should wait for my next shield to be placed for rapture or a renew. I need to learn how much health is really missing based on that bar that healbot uses. At the moment it is quite deceiving. I was throwing heal after heal when I would have been better waiting a few seconds and just casting a greater heal instead with the haste buff from the shield. That would have made more sense.
Mana management is all in my hands and no one elses. I need to learn that on my own. Sure, if I had better DPS in the group the bosses would have went down faster and I would have not been out of mana so soon but I can not always count of having a group of all 10K+ in a heroic and need to learn to heal as if every fight is going to last three minutes even if it isn't. If I can do that then I will consider myself a good healer.
As it was, I was very happy with my performance over all. At some points in the instance I even entered LK mode where I started smiting just for something to do. Some trash packs required no more then a renew to be rolling on the tank. Even with 4 or 5 mobs on him. No, this is not over geared people. This is a level 83 tank tanking a level 83 instance, Stonecore. It was just that easy.
It helps that it was all guild and everyone there knew the fights beforehand. I doubt if I do randoms they would go that smoothly but I can hope. When I can get through the normals with at least 30% mana left and not having used my oh shit buttons during boss fights then I will say I am ready for heroics.
Of course I can always play the healer game I see a lot of healers in randoms doing now. They join the group, if the group looks like they overgear the heroic already they stay. If the group looks like it might actually require work they leave. With their instant query they are not really losing much time and they are basically getting carried through heroics by a good tank and some awesome DPS. I just can not see myself doing that. I consider it wrong.
But I will tell you one thing for sure. If I enter a group that does not seriously overgear the content already and the tank charges into a pack of five without saying a word and no CC at all, I am dropping so fast. As a healer at least I have that option, not like on my Hunter where I have to sit around and endure the abuse or wait for another 45 minutes for another group that might even be worse.
So far however I am not as turned off to healing as I expected to be based on what everyone was saying. That is a pleasant surprise.
I decided to make a survival spec and lose my beloved BM spec for now being it seems to be the #1 DD every where I look and I wanted to put my best foot forward if I did get an invite to the raid from the top guild on my server last night. (They canceled, not enough showed up)
Running some tests on the dummies in my current gear it went like this.
Survival: 10400
Survival: 10200
Survival: 10200
That is a 5 minute testing with no buffs. except for hawk of course, and no cooldowns. Female dwarf says it should be 12800 so that means I am doing something wrong. I can't figure out what it is. Survival is idiot proof. That is why I never liked it. It is even more boring then it was before.
Doing Marksman these where my results.
Marksman: 9900
Marksman: 10100
Marksman: 9800
As you can see my marks spec is not to far behind and in my opinion marks requires more timing and when it's special procs you actually need to do something different and not just do the same thing but sooner like it is with survival. Based on female dwarf the max I should be doing with MM is 10500. So I feel I am definitely doing about as well as I can do with it.
So it means I am leaving a lot on the table as SV and leaving basically nothing to spare as MM. It would make sense being I've been MM for so long and I am good at it but what does not make sense is why I am off in SV by so much.
SV is stupid easy. Sting, Explosive, BA, CS. That is basically it with one small addition to it. If you need to dump focus you use AS if you are out of Lock N Load and you use KC if you are in Lock N Load. See, that is all you need to know to be SV. It is a 3 button rotation for the most part if you do not count start up buttons, cooldowns or close procs of LnL.
If LnL procs close I can find myself focus capped really fast otherwise I will almost never need to use AS or KC if LnL procs with some decent space between it. I will never be focus starved and I will never be focus capped. One of my tests I never needed to fire an AS or KC at all over the five minutes and that was the highest test. The LnL procs just timed themselves perfectly.
Three tests, only one clipped shot, no focus cap ever, and the same basic results for each one. How is it I get 10400 on a dummy with no buffs and female dwarf says I should be doing 12800. There is nothing more to it. I am not missing anything. I'll do some more dummy tests and see if I can boost it up some. I was talking on vent at the same time. Maybe I was a little slow on the draw or maybe I was waiting to long as I have become accustomed to doing as MM because that stupid queue system always locks me into a second Aimed when I hit it for the proc, so I have learned to wait and single cast instead of spamming the 6 over and over waiting for it.
Testing should tell but from what I see so far I think I prefer MM even with its 400 less DPS because of the silence shot, a 3 minute RF and readiness for even more burst during burn phases. I do not see survival having anything that can come close to those things.
Healer Reborn:
So the days of Cataclysm are upon me as a Disc Priest. From what I have read it scares me. Disc seems to be what everyone says is the worst right now. Even one of the bear tanks in my guild has said he would rather kick a Disc Priest the moment he sees them then to even try because he has yet to see one that could heal anything. He has however offered to tank for me being it is a guild thing. I am glad to take the challenge.
I know Disc Priests are totally broken right now being the shield is basically useless. The mana it costs to cast it is not really worth it most of the time. Doing the shield, heal heal thing for rapture is a nice idea but doesn't work as well as intended from my limited experience so far.
I healed two runs with all guild mates. Normals of course. I am sitting at 323 item level right now. Mind you I just hit 85 and that is mostly all quest reward stuff. One tailoring item and one reputation item. It won't take me long to be heroic geared but I am not going to make that jump lightly. When I am comfortable with my mana regen and usage then I will do that. I will not judge it on some stupid item level. Item level means nothing in my opinion.
Both runs went smoothly. Had three 83s and an 82 along with me the 85 priest. We only wiped once and that was on a mispull by the tank that got 2 packs and one huge mob with no CC set up yet. He meant to only pick up the big one. I don't think I could have healed us through that even if I were raid geared.
My only issue was on a few of the harder trash pulls I went almost oom and on most of the boss fights I went oom. Oddly enough, two of the boss fights I was still at half mana.
I noticed my biggest problem so far is me. I am casting heals that are not quite required. I see a DPS get aggro on something and I shield them. It is a natural reaction I need to stop. Being I use healbot for display I was also overhealing. How healbot shows things make it look like the tank is in deep trouble when the tank is only missing 10K health. I could hold off even healing the tank if all it is is 10K.
Maybe I should wait for my next shield to be placed for rapture or a renew. I need to learn how much health is really missing based on that bar that healbot uses. At the moment it is quite deceiving. I was throwing heal after heal when I would have been better waiting a few seconds and just casting a greater heal instead with the haste buff from the shield. That would have made more sense.
Mana management is all in my hands and no one elses. I need to learn that on my own. Sure, if I had better DPS in the group the bosses would have went down faster and I would have not been out of mana so soon but I can not always count of having a group of all 10K+ in a heroic and need to learn to heal as if every fight is going to last three minutes even if it isn't. If I can do that then I will consider myself a good healer.
As it was, I was very happy with my performance over all. At some points in the instance I even entered LK mode where I started smiting just for something to do. Some trash packs required no more then a renew to be rolling on the tank. Even with 4 or 5 mobs on him. No, this is not over geared people. This is a level 83 tank tanking a level 83 instance, Stonecore. It was just that easy.
It helps that it was all guild and everyone there knew the fights beforehand. I doubt if I do randoms they would go that smoothly but I can hope. When I can get through the normals with at least 30% mana left and not having used my oh shit buttons during boss fights then I will say I am ready for heroics.
Of course I can always play the healer game I see a lot of healers in randoms doing now. They join the group, if the group looks like they overgear the heroic already they stay. If the group looks like it might actually require work they leave. With their instant query they are not really losing much time and they are basically getting carried through heroics by a good tank and some awesome DPS. I just can not see myself doing that. I consider it wrong.
But I will tell you one thing for sure. If I enter a group that does not seriously overgear the content already and the tank charges into a pack of five without saying a word and no CC at all, I am dropping so fast. As a healer at least I have that option, not like on my Hunter where I have to sit around and endure the abuse or wait for another 45 minutes for another group that might even be worse.
So far however I am not as turned off to healing as I expected to be based on what everyone was saying. That is a pleasant surprise.
Monday, January 3, 2011
2 More 85's + Other Stuff + Tips
My Druid and my Priest have now joined my Hunter and my Rogue at 85. Now to finish topping off the professions for those characters so I have everything I need for my Hunter.
My Druids JC will take a longest as I can only get one JC token per day to get new patterns. Should only be a few more days before I have everything my Hunter will ever need however.
My Priest's Tailoring is 512 and Enchanting is 513 and my Rogues Leather Working is about the same but not like I can do much with it being I will never be getting any orbs on my Rogue to make gear. Kind of sad really.
Leveling the Druid was a breeze. Being I leveled Bear things did not die fast but I easily made up for that by killing three, four or five at the same time when I attacked. Bear leveling was rarely a problem unless I bit off more then I could chew. Being I am a Bear that did seem to happen sometimes however. Leveling the third character to 85 was even faster.
Leveling my Priest to 85 was not that hard with managed pulls. Did a few instance runs along the way and I can safely say that mana does not really become an issue until level 83. Also, leveling does not become an issue until level 83. As soon as you hit level 83 it is not longer DoT them up, shield, smite a couple times, pop angel to regen mana and wand to death. Once you hit 83 you can kiss your shield goodbye. It will no longer be of any use in most situations. Most mobs destroy it in one hit. For only a few fights did I even still use it. Otherwise I dropped it from my questing rotation all together.
That is where the AA spec really seemed to show it's worth. The smite heals where the only thing that kept me going. If it were not for that then I would have had to do the unthinkable and switch to Shadow. I would sooner level in dungeons only then switch to shadow.
The Twilight Highlands and the ending quests in Uldum where brutal on me and I loved every minute of it. Each fight was truly an epic battle. I could not just ignore mechanics because I needed to avoid every but of damage that I could. Level 85 elite mobs hit hard on cloth and even shields, renews and smite healing where not enough to keep up with it.
The fights took a long time, took planning, took execution. I loved it. A real battle. Now that is how questing should be. I managed to do them all and never died even once. So needless to say they are not impossible, just difficult and much much longer when doing them as a healer.
I stick by what I said after my first time through however. Leveling is way to easy. When I could do all these epic hard quests, on a healer, and never die or even really feel myself as being in serious trouble, the leveling process is way to easy. While I enjoy quick, I do not enjoy easy and quick. It was only a challenge because I leveled as a healer. Otherwise, questing this expansion is a joke. The rate I am getting characters from 80-85 kind of proves that when I am only playing limited time on them at best.
Next topic: Tol Barad Dailies.
Now you want to talk about hard? The TB dailies are brutal. I am not talking the ones outside. While they can be difficult if you try to run past mobs and end up with 5 or 6 on you at one time, if you take your time they are doable. One issue however. Unless you get lucky, out running mobs in TB is nearly impossible. I've had ghosts still firing bolts at me when I was half way across the zone. They do not give up and their range is apparently unlimited.
The ones on the inside however are beyond brutal. If you are questing alone there is almost no way to get some of these done in a reasonable amount of time. For those that do not know there is usually a set of quests that require you to go to one of the dungeons and do one thing each. Collect x items, kill x things and kill x boss. These are the ones that become an issue because whatever it is in that dungeon you are battling through doesn't make a difference, they spawn faster then you could ever imagine. For each one you kill two more pop up.
If you are the only person in there then you are not getting these quests done. At all. You need to hope others are down there killing also or making it to the last person is a matter of luck, superior skill or dying, releasing and reviving further in. Soloing the kill x and collect x can be done. Getting to the end and back out alive is not. Doesn't this seem a little extreme in comparison to what you just taught people while leveling up?
I can get a character from 80-81 faster then it takes me to complete 12 TB dailies inside. I guess it does not help being I am on a small server. On a big server I might be complaining that there are not enough mobs. All a matter of perception I always say. For me, I think these are a little difficult for dailies.
Pro Tip for Gold Making: There is something good about it. It is a great place to farm cloth. Cloth is still going for 8g per piece on my server. 45g for a bolt. Pick a spot on the outside at a small distance or on the stairs going down. You can pick off mobs and bring them to you meaning no multiple mobs and the spawn rate is so insane you will be constantly killing. Seems cloth is a 50% drop and drops from 1 to 4 per mob. Depending on how fast you kill, you can easily farm a stack in under 5 minutes. They also sometimes drop greens.
The funny part of those quests are that they do not say 3 people needed. Going in with 3 people those quests would be a breeze. For some odd reason they do call that one elite mob quest a 3 person quest.
I don't know about you but if you need 3 people to complete that quest there is something serious wrong with you, two maybe, not three. That one and tank the shark (says it is a 2 person quest) are easily soloable by any class in the game. Even more so for a Hunter. Neither mob does much damage and neither mob has much life. How are they multi person quests yet the quests with the respawn rate from hell are not? Makes no sense.
Next topic: Speaking of Multi Person Quests.
Remember a few days ago I was complaining about someone asking for the achievement for BH to do BH on only the second time we had it? Well, that tard, the same one that told me I could not come along because I did not have the achievement was spamming TB looking for a group for problem. He was spamming for a few minutes and then finally said that he found him and was following him. Needless to say I did not whisper this retard because, well, he is a retard. I did however go to find him and find the mob he was following around waiting for a group to kill.
I rode up, dismounted on the run, MDed and started shooting. A few seconds later the mob was dead, I had only needed to hit mend pet once to cover anything that might have happened to my pet, and nothing did. I looted. Mounted back up. Stood in front of him for a second so he could see it was me and then ran off.
Lets see. I was not good enough to do BH because I did not have the achievement yet he was better geared then me, same class as me, and he could not solo a mob it took me only seconds to kill. Maybe he was right, I am no good for BH, I am already better then what is needed for it. I went along and finished my quests and left. When I left he was still spamming looking for more for the elite. Some people just do not get it.
How can someone be so bad and still be an elitist? Maybe someone should be questioning how he ever got into BH in the first place if he can not even solo one mob. Apparently he is not very good at his class if he does not realize that in most cases Hunters can solo anything in the game.
Next topic: Raiding
The top guild on my server is in need for a fill in DPS for tonight and asked if I was capable of pulling 20K DPS. I told them I can do 12K-13K steady and 17K max during burn phases with heroism. They said it was beneath what they are looking for. I have no issues with that. I do not even have all heroic gear yet and I am not in my raiding spec yet.
Hell, I am not even gemming and enchanting correctly yet. I am just using whatever my JC and Enchanter make while leveling just to have something. It is not like I am going to be wearing any of this gear long at all and it is better to have a lesser gem in then to have no gem in at all. So I was not offended by them saying that at all. I am not a min/max person and I am not the best, never claimed to be.
The funny part is, about 20 minutes later they came back and asked me if I could be on call for tomorrow (tonight). I said, sure thing. Just give me a heads up so I can throw on some better gems and enchants.
While I do not mind doing heroics in lesser stuff I refuse to enter a raid like that. Even if I am not an elite player like they are I am still a serious player and I know I can not take anyone serious that can not even gem and enchant properly so I would never show up to another persons raid unless I am prepared.
I am sure if I switch to survival I can turn my 17K burn phase into a 20K burn phase. Survival is over powered at the moment even after some patching. The thing is I still think the utility of MM is needed more while the people in heroics are still not very good. Even if the tanks never notice it, it is my silence shot that keeps bringing the caster to them, it is not their leet skills. I'm not quite ready to give up MM until people in dungeons get better.
Next topic: Heroics
Speaking of dungeons I finally got Deadmines as my random which means I got the Dungeon Hero achievement. Ripsnarl is everything I heard about. We wiped on him more then a few times, went through two healers and one DPS. The one DPS seemed to be the difference. A DK came in to replace the Paladin we had and we downed the boss with only one more wipe to our name. As for the last boss, I had heard nightmare stories from beta about her. I am guessing they changed it. I've faced harder quest mobs. She has to be the easiest boss of this expansion.
Yesterday on a guild random we ended up in Stonecore. Nice instance. A quicker one really. One problem, two hunters. Me being MM and a Survival hunter from my guild. Normally the CC the two of us can provide with solid DPS can power a group. Here however, the rock boss was going to pose a problem. Either way, we went on with it. We will deal with the issue when we get there.
We pull first trash pack. Healer heals the tank twice and that is all. We all die. Healer leaves saying, you all suck. Excuse me? You didn't even attempt to heal anyone and the tank died so we all died. How does that mean we suck?
Either way, we get another healer and move on. After two trash packs and the healer going oom on each someone inspects them. They are in mostly green gear. One guild mate mentions that gearscore says that heroics are impossible for them.
Someone says something and they say that all their gear is DPS gear, they are working on their healing set now. See people, this is why I do not think that gear check thing works. They are heroic geared for DPS, not for healing. Either way, they are not doing all that bad. They offer to leave and we say we are willing to give it a try. They need to get gear and experience some way. <--- See, it is not true that all 4/5 guild runs are filled with assholes.
We make it to the boss and wipe. Oops, healer died right off the bat. Lets try again. Much better, healer goes oom however and we die. They offer to leave again and we say we are willing to try with them one more time if they want to and they say thank you. We give it the old college try and of course we wipe. The healer thanks us for having them along and says they are going to run as DPS for a while as they work on getting their healing gear and they leave.
Next healer is all heroic geared. This has to mean they know something right? First attempt. The healer dies, we wipe. Second attempt I went oops and died but the rest of them do okay but never get it down and wipe. Makes it seem like if I were there it would have been fine and maybe the healer saw it that way as well so they stayed. We get it down really low but the healer goes oom and we wipe. Healer leaves telling us we suck. Okay, at least with this one they stayed to see something and we did not exactly dazzle.
Next healer comes through the revolving door and we proceed to wipe almost as if we never did the fight before. You know the saying anything that can go wrong will? Well, we all screwed up. The healer however did not leave us. Amazing. Next attempt we get it down. No one even dies, all is well in the world. I blame that one wipe to basic frustration.
We went on and one shot the whole instance. Makes you wonder, to those healers that said we sucked, how come we could one shot it with a healer with only one piece of heroic gear but we could not get one boss with you? Maybe it was not us, maybe it was you? These in and out healers have to stop waiting until they find a group that can carry them and they need to learn to heal. I am guessing that the full heroic geared person got all their gear that way. Keep joining randoms and pray that they group can carry you, if you don't get one you drop and join another.
As for the rock boss, when we got there we stood there and talked for 10 minutes. How the hell do we do this fight with two hunters. I think it is a bug or an oversight on Blizzards part. I doubt they purposely made it so Hunters had no way to break the paralyze. The healer said it perfect, it makes no sense that serpent sting would not work, it is a nature damage DoT. Ding! Right on healer. It should work.
Either way, while figuring out what we were going to do someone mentioned the beer in BRC that puts a DoT on you for 5 seconds. That just might work. None of us had a direbrew remote but the healer did. They ported out, ported back in, dropped it, we jumped through, bought a stack of beer and went at the boss. I miss timed it the first time around and got paralyzed. It wears off quick, so next time I timed it better and never got caught again. Cake walk of a fight for hunters then.
Pro Tip for Hunters: Doing random heroics? Keep a stack of Sulfuron Slammer on you in case you get Stonecore as your random. You will end the Ozruk fight piss drunk, but you will never take any paralyze damage and you will never have to run in and lose DPS time. Even with average DPS you should need to drink no more then 5 per battle and they stack to 10.
Pro Tip for Grinding: Found a good spot to farm for leather? Cloth? Volatiles? If you plan on grinding there for a while and have the ability you might as well make (or buy) some Potion of Treasure Finding. You are killing and looting anyway, might as well use it to get the chance to get a chest that can contain gold, cloth and/or volatiles. It only makes sense.
My Druids JC will take a longest as I can only get one JC token per day to get new patterns. Should only be a few more days before I have everything my Hunter will ever need however.
My Priest's Tailoring is 512 and Enchanting is 513 and my Rogues Leather Working is about the same but not like I can do much with it being I will never be getting any orbs on my Rogue to make gear. Kind of sad really.
Leveling the Druid was a breeze. Being I leveled Bear things did not die fast but I easily made up for that by killing three, four or five at the same time when I attacked. Bear leveling was rarely a problem unless I bit off more then I could chew. Being I am a Bear that did seem to happen sometimes however. Leveling the third character to 85 was even faster.
Leveling my Priest to 85 was not that hard with managed pulls. Did a few instance runs along the way and I can safely say that mana does not really become an issue until level 83. Also, leveling does not become an issue until level 83. As soon as you hit level 83 it is not longer DoT them up, shield, smite a couple times, pop angel to regen mana and wand to death. Once you hit 83 you can kiss your shield goodbye. It will no longer be of any use in most situations. Most mobs destroy it in one hit. For only a few fights did I even still use it. Otherwise I dropped it from my questing rotation all together.
That is where the AA spec really seemed to show it's worth. The smite heals where the only thing that kept me going. If it were not for that then I would have had to do the unthinkable and switch to Shadow. I would sooner level in dungeons only then switch to shadow.
The Twilight Highlands and the ending quests in Uldum where brutal on me and I loved every minute of it. Each fight was truly an epic battle. I could not just ignore mechanics because I needed to avoid every but of damage that I could. Level 85 elite mobs hit hard on cloth and even shields, renews and smite healing where not enough to keep up with it.
The fights took a long time, took planning, took execution. I loved it. A real battle. Now that is how questing should be. I managed to do them all and never died even once. So needless to say they are not impossible, just difficult and much much longer when doing them as a healer.
I stick by what I said after my first time through however. Leveling is way to easy. When I could do all these epic hard quests, on a healer, and never die or even really feel myself as being in serious trouble, the leveling process is way to easy. While I enjoy quick, I do not enjoy easy and quick. It was only a challenge because I leveled as a healer. Otherwise, questing this expansion is a joke. The rate I am getting characters from 80-85 kind of proves that when I am only playing limited time on them at best.
Next topic: Tol Barad Dailies.
Now you want to talk about hard? The TB dailies are brutal. I am not talking the ones outside. While they can be difficult if you try to run past mobs and end up with 5 or 6 on you at one time, if you take your time they are doable. One issue however. Unless you get lucky, out running mobs in TB is nearly impossible. I've had ghosts still firing bolts at me when I was half way across the zone. They do not give up and their range is apparently unlimited.
The ones on the inside however are beyond brutal. If you are questing alone there is almost no way to get some of these done in a reasonable amount of time. For those that do not know there is usually a set of quests that require you to go to one of the dungeons and do one thing each. Collect x items, kill x things and kill x boss. These are the ones that become an issue because whatever it is in that dungeon you are battling through doesn't make a difference, they spawn faster then you could ever imagine. For each one you kill two more pop up.
If you are the only person in there then you are not getting these quests done. At all. You need to hope others are down there killing also or making it to the last person is a matter of luck, superior skill or dying, releasing and reviving further in. Soloing the kill x and collect x can be done. Getting to the end and back out alive is not. Doesn't this seem a little extreme in comparison to what you just taught people while leveling up?
I can get a character from 80-81 faster then it takes me to complete 12 TB dailies inside. I guess it does not help being I am on a small server. On a big server I might be complaining that there are not enough mobs. All a matter of perception I always say. For me, I think these are a little difficult for dailies.
Pro Tip for Gold Making: There is something good about it. It is a great place to farm cloth. Cloth is still going for 8g per piece on my server. 45g for a bolt. Pick a spot on the outside at a small distance or on the stairs going down. You can pick off mobs and bring them to you meaning no multiple mobs and the spawn rate is so insane you will be constantly killing. Seems cloth is a 50% drop and drops from 1 to 4 per mob. Depending on how fast you kill, you can easily farm a stack in under 5 minutes. They also sometimes drop greens.
The funny part of those quests are that they do not say 3 people needed. Going in with 3 people those quests would be a breeze. For some odd reason they do call that one elite mob quest a 3 person quest.
I don't know about you but if you need 3 people to complete that quest there is something serious wrong with you, two maybe, not three. That one and tank the shark (says it is a 2 person quest) are easily soloable by any class in the game. Even more so for a Hunter. Neither mob does much damage and neither mob has much life. How are they multi person quests yet the quests with the respawn rate from hell are not? Makes no sense.
Next topic: Speaking of Multi Person Quests.
Remember a few days ago I was complaining about someone asking for the achievement for BH to do BH on only the second time we had it? Well, that tard, the same one that told me I could not come along because I did not have the achievement was spamming TB looking for a group for problem. He was spamming for a few minutes and then finally said that he found him and was following him. Needless to say I did not whisper this retard because, well, he is a retard. I did however go to find him and find the mob he was following around waiting for a group to kill.
I rode up, dismounted on the run, MDed and started shooting. A few seconds later the mob was dead, I had only needed to hit mend pet once to cover anything that might have happened to my pet, and nothing did. I looted. Mounted back up. Stood in front of him for a second so he could see it was me and then ran off.
Lets see. I was not good enough to do BH because I did not have the achievement yet he was better geared then me, same class as me, and he could not solo a mob it took me only seconds to kill. Maybe he was right, I am no good for BH, I am already better then what is needed for it. I went along and finished my quests and left. When I left he was still spamming looking for more for the elite. Some people just do not get it.
How can someone be so bad and still be an elitist? Maybe someone should be questioning how he ever got into BH in the first place if he can not even solo one mob. Apparently he is not very good at his class if he does not realize that in most cases Hunters can solo anything in the game.
Next topic: Raiding
The top guild on my server is in need for a fill in DPS for tonight and asked if I was capable of pulling 20K DPS. I told them I can do 12K-13K steady and 17K max during burn phases with heroism. They said it was beneath what they are looking for. I have no issues with that. I do not even have all heroic gear yet and I am not in my raiding spec yet.
Hell, I am not even gemming and enchanting correctly yet. I am just using whatever my JC and Enchanter make while leveling just to have something. It is not like I am going to be wearing any of this gear long at all and it is better to have a lesser gem in then to have no gem in at all. So I was not offended by them saying that at all. I am not a min/max person and I am not the best, never claimed to be.
The funny part is, about 20 minutes later they came back and asked me if I could be on call for tomorrow (tonight). I said, sure thing. Just give me a heads up so I can throw on some better gems and enchants.
While I do not mind doing heroics in lesser stuff I refuse to enter a raid like that. Even if I am not an elite player like they are I am still a serious player and I know I can not take anyone serious that can not even gem and enchant properly so I would never show up to another persons raid unless I am prepared.
I am sure if I switch to survival I can turn my 17K burn phase into a 20K burn phase. Survival is over powered at the moment even after some patching. The thing is I still think the utility of MM is needed more while the people in heroics are still not very good. Even if the tanks never notice it, it is my silence shot that keeps bringing the caster to them, it is not their leet skills. I'm not quite ready to give up MM until people in dungeons get better.
Next topic: Heroics
Speaking of dungeons I finally got Deadmines as my random which means I got the Dungeon Hero achievement. Ripsnarl is everything I heard about. We wiped on him more then a few times, went through two healers and one DPS. The one DPS seemed to be the difference. A DK came in to replace the Paladin we had and we downed the boss with only one more wipe to our name. As for the last boss, I had heard nightmare stories from beta about her. I am guessing they changed it. I've faced harder quest mobs. She has to be the easiest boss of this expansion.
Yesterday on a guild random we ended up in Stonecore. Nice instance. A quicker one really. One problem, two hunters. Me being MM and a Survival hunter from my guild. Normally the CC the two of us can provide with solid DPS can power a group. Here however, the rock boss was going to pose a problem. Either way, we went on with it. We will deal with the issue when we get there.
We pull first trash pack. Healer heals the tank twice and that is all. We all die. Healer leaves saying, you all suck. Excuse me? You didn't even attempt to heal anyone and the tank died so we all died. How does that mean we suck?
Either way, we get another healer and move on. After two trash packs and the healer going oom on each someone inspects them. They are in mostly green gear. One guild mate mentions that gearscore says that heroics are impossible for them.
Someone says something and they say that all their gear is DPS gear, they are working on their healing set now. See people, this is why I do not think that gear check thing works. They are heroic geared for DPS, not for healing. Either way, they are not doing all that bad. They offer to leave and we say we are willing to give it a try. They need to get gear and experience some way. <--- See, it is not true that all 4/5 guild runs are filled with assholes.
We make it to the boss and wipe. Oops, healer died right off the bat. Lets try again. Much better, healer goes oom however and we die. They offer to leave again and we say we are willing to try with them one more time if they want to and they say thank you. We give it the old college try and of course we wipe. The healer thanks us for having them along and says they are going to run as DPS for a while as they work on getting their healing gear and they leave.
Next healer is all heroic geared. This has to mean they know something right? First attempt. The healer dies, we wipe. Second attempt I went oops and died but the rest of them do okay but never get it down and wipe. Makes it seem like if I were there it would have been fine and maybe the healer saw it that way as well so they stayed. We get it down really low but the healer goes oom and we wipe. Healer leaves telling us we suck. Okay, at least with this one they stayed to see something and we did not exactly dazzle.
Next healer comes through the revolving door and we proceed to wipe almost as if we never did the fight before. You know the saying anything that can go wrong will? Well, we all screwed up. The healer however did not leave us. Amazing. Next attempt we get it down. No one even dies, all is well in the world. I blame that one wipe to basic frustration.
We went on and one shot the whole instance. Makes you wonder, to those healers that said we sucked, how come we could one shot it with a healer with only one piece of heroic gear but we could not get one boss with you? Maybe it was not us, maybe it was you? These in and out healers have to stop waiting until they find a group that can carry them and they need to learn to heal. I am guessing that the full heroic geared person got all their gear that way. Keep joining randoms and pray that they group can carry you, if you don't get one you drop and join another.
As for the rock boss, when we got there we stood there and talked for 10 minutes. How the hell do we do this fight with two hunters. I think it is a bug or an oversight on Blizzards part. I doubt they purposely made it so Hunters had no way to break the paralyze. The healer said it perfect, it makes no sense that serpent sting would not work, it is a nature damage DoT. Ding! Right on healer. It should work.
Either way, while figuring out what we were going to do someone mentioned the beer in BRC that puts a DoT on you for 5 seconds. That just might work. None of us had a direbrew remote but the healer did. They ported out, ported back in, dropped it, we jumped through, bought a stack of beer and went at the boss. I miss timed it the first time around and got paralyzed. It wears off quick, so next time I timed it better and never got caught again. Cake walk of a fight for hunters then.
Pro Tip for Hunters: Doing random heroics? Keep a stack of Sulfuron Slammer on you in case you get Stonecore as your random. You will end the Ozruk fight piss drunk, but you will never take any paralyze damage and you will never have to run in and lose DPS time. Even with average DPS you should need to drink no more then 5 per battle and they stack to 10.
Pro Tip for Grinding: Found a good spot to farm for leather? Cloth? Volatiles? If you plan on grinding there for a while and have the ability you might as well make (or buy) some Potion of Treasure Finding. You are killing and looting anyway, might as well use it to get the chance to get a chest that can contain gold, cloth and/or volatiles. It only makes sense.
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