A Good Night Raiding

Yesterday with my newish guild I had my third night of raiding, I had a really good time, seeing 3 new encounters and even getting some loot! :)

We started off taking down Leotheras the Blind and Fathom-Lord Karathress. Leotheras was a fight I really enjoyed, it took us three goes. The first time he enraged due to lack of dps, a few people including me died early on, I made a mistake not stopping fireballs early enough on the switch from demon to human form and he one-hit me. This prompted me to make my deadly boss mods larger and more obvious on my screen, it helped make me more aware of them rather than just looking past them. The second wipe was silly, a pulled group of mobs by someone avoiding whirlwind resuilting in the wipe. Third time was great, no problems and according to mine and anothers I topped the meters on damage which I was thrilled with, because there is a lot of time when dps has to stop it allowed me to take a few Destruction Pots to boost my damage. I also used Arcane Blast whenever I had to be ready to stop dpsing.

Fathom-Lord Karathress was also a simple fight, for me all I had to do was kill the adds in the right order, as well as any Spitfire Totems that were dropped, using a /target spitfire macro to pick up any that needed removing. I think I'm not a great poster. But I enjoyed these encounters.

This was actually about a week ago.

Fuzz

Arggh!

I was drunk when i posted that last one...
I have a load of uni work at the moment, i will post properly soon.

Fuzz

Sorry for the delay

BRB

Morogrim Tidewalker Down

Tonight I went to my first raid with Koma, SSC with only Morogrim Tidewalker and Lady Vashj left.

I was pleased to get taken along for Morogrim, I had a good idea of what to expect in the fight, I died stupidly on the 1st attempt not bandaging after a watery grave cause my death at about 50%, on the first attempt he got down to 1% when the tank was dead and dps was wiped out. But it gave me another chance to learn the fight :) Second time was simple with no deaths, all went really well. I could have done better on dps and I will do once I get more used to the fight.

He dropped Mantle of the Tireless Tracker, Band of the Vigilant and Girdle of the Tidal Call. Nothing for me, but I don't have the dkp to spend at the moment anyway.

I wasn't taken to Lady Vashj, which I was kind of relieved about, the fight seems complicated and I don't want to hinder progression. I need to watch some more good Vashj vids.

Fuzz

Ding!

After finishing most of my Nagrand quests I dinged 70 on my druid :) Just over 10 days /played.

Not sure what to do now, I either have to gear up for feral or resto, I haven't decided which. Levelling to 70 is only the start really, there's so much I need to do ;get gear, enchants, gems, rep, epic flying :S, or I could just level another alt :)

Fuzz

Fuzzbip in a Koma

Bonus points for getting the terrible pun/reference in the title.

I now have a brand new guild and a new server! After looking at the guilds on my server none of the serious SSC/TK guilds seemed to be recruiting. I decided to look on Aggramar where a friend of mine plays, I looked to see out of the progressed guilds who was recruiting and a guild called Koma wanted mages along with a few other classes. So I thought it was worth a shot, they seemed to be a guild wanting to progress with the right attitude, so I applied. And they wanted me to join.

It was a really tough decision to leave my server, it's nice to have all my characters in one place. It was hardest knowing I would never be able to move back (going from PvP to PvE is only one way) but after a chat with a couple of Koma guild members and some deliberation I decided it was worth a shot. Koma has 5/6 3/4 SSC/TK progression and I really want to see the raids and do as much with my mage as I can, so I went for it. I packed up my bags and left Kor'gall behind.

Well I haven't really left it behind, I still have my druid who I'm enjoying playing and is just a couple of hours from 70. I tanked Shadow Labs at 69 and picked up my first Kara key fragment, I even got a whisper complimenting me on my tanking which put a smile on my face. I've not really settled into Aggramar yet, I went on a Sethekk Halls heroic run with a guildie, but apart from that I've stayed on Kor'gall on alts. I couldn't resist creating a new mage who looks exactly the same as Fuzzbip and is also called Fuzzbip :D Now a mighty level 6 logged off in Kharanos. I don't have much I can do on my mage, so I'll be waiting for raids to get to know my new guildies, either that or roll a new alt to level so I can spend some time in the guild.

But tomorrow if I'm needed I will be going along to SSC, Morogrim Tidewalker and Vashj are left, I'm brushing up on my knowledge of the fights as best I can. It's likely the guild will take more established members as it is a progression raid, but I'll be logged on at raid time, showing I'm ready to give all I can to Koma.

Fuzz

Reaching the Hit Cap

In the last post I mentioned that mages should be hit capped and I realised that there would be people out there who wouldn't be sure what I meant by this. I felt the need to explain.

As a spell caster, all mobs have a chance to resist your spells, spell hit is the stat that reduces the chance that enemy targets will resist your spells. No matter how much spell hit you have, all targets will always have a 1% chance to resist your spells, this can't be negated, removed or avoided in any way. Pulled from WoWWiki here are the base numbers for PvE targets. (PvP hit is calcualted differently when players are more than 2 levels above you)

Level Difference= -3 Chance to hit= 99%
Level Difference= -2 Chance to hit= 98%
Level Difference= -1 Chance to hit= 97%
Level Difference= 0 Chance to hit= 96%
Level Difference= 1 Chance to hit= 95%
Level Difference= 2 Chance to hit= 94%
Level Difference= 3 Chance to hit= 83%

For PvP at level 70 you will never need more than 3% hit, heroic bosses are considered to be level 72 so for heroics you will only ever need 5% hit. When you move onto raid bosses spell hit becomes much more important and you will want to reach +16% chance to hit (202 spell hit rating)

For mages there are two talents that increase your chance to hit with spells. Elemental Precision on the first tier of the frost tree increases your chance to hit by 1% per talent point with fire and frost spells, up to 3% with 3 talent points spent. All raiding fire and frost mages should have these talent points and will be looking to get 13% spell hit from gear (164 spell hit rating). Arcane Focus from the first tier of the arcane tree increases chance to hit with arcane spells by 2% per talent point up to 10% with 5 talent points spent. People speccing for Arcane Concentration will usually want to put points in here to get there, these points are helpful when sheeping or spell stealing. With 5 points in arcane focus, only 6% hit is needed to be hit capped with arcane spells, however most arcane mages will be using fire or frost spells as well, so more spell hit may be needed anyway (I'm not really sure how raiding as an arcane hybrid works to be honest, but you want as much hit as possible with all your spells). If you are in a group with a draenei mage, shaman or priest, and know you will be within 30 yards of them you gain an additional 1% hit from Inspiring Presence. Elemental shaman have the talent Totem of Wrath that will add an additional 3% to hit, in situations where you know you will be gaining these affects you may want to switch your gear to add additional crit or damage. On fights such as Gruul, you may at times be too far away from people in your party to rely on these abilities for the whole fight, only reduce your spell hit accordingly if you are likely to have these effects for the whole fight.

Spell hit is not to be confused with spell penetration, spell penetration is predominantly a PvP stat, every point of spell penetration reduces your target's resistance to your spells by one point. Useful in PvP for negating the effects of a targets Mark of the Wild or any other similar buff. However in PvE almost all raid bosses have no additional resistance apart from a base +15 to all schools of magic that is not negatable by spell penetration, they gain this due to their difference in level. This accounts for any partial resists you may see in your combat log. There may be excepetions such as Supremus who is thought to have around 200-250 fire resistance, but for the most part spell penetration has no use in PvE. For this reason mages should be running with a Subtlety enchant rather than the spell penetration enchant that a lot of people seem to have.

Increasing your spell hit up to the hit cap will increase your dps more than adding additional crit, haste or damage.

To reach the hit cap you can enchant your gloves, add +spell hit gems to your gear, or look here for a list of items mages can use with +hit on them.

So now you can make sure you always hit your target! (Except for the unavoidable 1%)

Fuzz

Servant's Quarters: Moroes

My third installment, I'm not going to go into too much detail, I'll just tell you what you should be doing as a mage.

First up, Moroes. Moroes comes with 4 out of 6 possible adds, these need to be killed or CC'd by the group, your raid leader should determine a kill order, basically kill what you are told to. Baroness Dorothea Millstipe has a Mana Burn ability, and Lady Catriona Von'Indi and Lady Keira Berrybuck both have heals, you will want to Counterspell these whenever possible. If you are killing a melee add that isn't being tanked, you may want to let a player with a higher armour class take the aggro and the hits.

When you move onto Moroes you will want to make sure you are always below both your main and off-tanks on Moroes' threat list. This shouldn't be a problem if Master Target has been set on your threat meter. This is because from time to time Moroes will Gouge the person with aggro and attack the second on his threat list, you don't want that to be you!

Moroes will occasionally vanish and Garotte a random target for about 1000 every 3 seconds, if this is you, use Ice Block to remove it.

With any luck Moroes will go down if the adds are handled correctly and the healers are able to keep up with healing the bleeders.

Moroes drops 3 items that may be of use to a mage, Nethershard Girdle, Shadow-Cloak of Dalaran and Brooch of Unquenchable Fury. The belt and the cloak should be quickly replaced as there are better options later on in Karazhan or from badge rewards, but the neck may last you longer for keeping yourself hit capped (Which you should be doing!)

He also drops the recipe for Mongoose, I'm still hoping it will drop for me one day. Other people who needed gear would usually be taken over me for the first bosses in Karazhan when I was raiding there regularly.

So that should be everything a mage needs to know about Moroes, next up the Maiden of Virtue.

Fuzz

Fuzzbip's Foray into Frost

I said I was thinking of respeccing while I was unguilded to try out something new, and I did. I have no intention of PvPing at this time, so I went for a PvE frost build. Undoubtedly it isn't perfect, I didn't pick it up from someone or somewhere else, I just went with the talents that I thought were best, including some points in Arcane for mana efficiency.

The build is nice for soloing, unleashing a Frostbolt and Ice Lance crit combo on a frozen target is especially satisfying. Frost spec seems to be more suitable for soloing, as effects such as Shatter are more often than not negated in group situations, as damage from others in your party usually breaks freezing before your next Frostbolt can hit. I think the talents I have taken are fairly self explanatory and the ones I have missed are ones that are more useful in soloing, PvP or maybe AoE grinding.

The new abilities I have from frost are Cold Snap, Ice Barrier and Summon Water Elemental. Ice barrier is good to have up before a boss fight to avoid some damage, depending on the fight I refresh it if I know I will be taking a lot of damage, it's basically a mana efficient Mana Shield. The water elemental is nice as well, but I tend to have a real problem using anything with a cooldown outside of boss fights, I certainly don't make the most out of it, but when I do use the elemental it does reasonable damage. Make sure to try and use it when it's least likely to get destroyed, you don't want to waste it. On boss fights I tend to summon the elemental at the start and use Ice Block if I need to, I can then use Cold Snap for another elemental and I am able to Ice Block again if needed.

So far on my mage I have done minimal soloing with this spec (I took up the chance to grind some Primal Fires which I normally have a terrible time doing) and have been to 3 or 4 heroics. Luckily I have a regular heroic group to do the daily quest with most days and sometimes another one or two after that. Heroics are easy with the people I run with, we managed to do the heroic Shattered Halls quest with 25 minutes to spare. My damage was acceptable, certainly not as high as with fire, I would usually top damage or come close, but with frost I was beaten by a few percent by a hunter, I could keep up with our fury warrior and came out above a feral druid, but she was tanking at times, I also didn't have any mana problems. My gear isn't completly suited for frost, I'm still running with Sunfire on my weapon and it would be nice to have Sapphiron's Wing Bone (Purple! I'm going to try and remember to put in item quality colours from now on) for an off-hand but I am saving my badges for possible future badge rewards at the moment. These were all well geared people and I'd be happy bringing the amount of damage I do to a PuG. I know I'll be respeccing back to fire when I decide to raid again.

The numbers are lower than with Fireballs, but the crits are very nice. When people talk about Frost dps they tend to be of the opinion that crit is not very important, I'm not really sure why, I feel once you are hit capped which is easy for heroics, then after damage you still want items with spell crit or haste if it is available. If anyone wants to tell me why I may be wrong, then I'd like to see the reasoning behind some people largely ignoring crit for a frost build. With full Winter's Chill bonus on a mob and a few buffs I was able to run at about 38% crit chance, not sacrificing any hit or damage for it.

With the correct gear for the spec and proper management of cool downs and your elemental, frost dps can be perfectly viable for 5 mans and heroics. I have yet to try it out in a raid environment and I likely won't any time soon, if I'm asked to help out on a kara run or something I'll try it out, but that's unlikely to happen. I may find a pug and I am good friends with the raid leader of my old guild 'The Scarlet Knights' he asked me to help out in Karazhan the other day but the raid was cancelled, I'd like to go for the chance at more enchanting recipes and lots of badges.

So there it is, my opinion on frost (as well as a good amount of rambling), it's enjoyable to try out something new and I now know a little bit more about the mage class as a whole. Maybe I will spec an Arcane hybrid spec sometime soon, who knows?

Fuzz

Thanks for reading!

I'd just like to thank everyone who has read and commented on my blog. I hope you continue to read and enjoy my blog.

Thanks to minignomecakes on Amicitia Incursio, I was amazed to see my blog on the blogroll there, I was even above the mighty Phaelia and Matticus, but I'm sure it's not in order of importance :P

If anyone else has me on their blogrolls, let me know, I don't want to miss people out. Also thanks to Blog Azeroth for giving me a good basis for starting my blog. I will be updating my blogroll soon, maybe even today, but first I have a proper post incoming.

Fuzz

Blog Azeroth: How did you come up with your characters names?

Here's the latest shared topic from Blog Azeroth which I could make into a two sentance post, but instead I'll witter on for as long as I can. Enjoy! As always visit the forum to find other people's views on the topic.

When I logged in for the first time ever, roughly one year ago, I created a Dwarf Paladin (he made it to 21 but is now deleted) and I named him 'Takan', this was a variation on the name Taka that I like, simple as that. He made it level 16 or so before I rerolled a nelf hunter . My hunter I named 'Tarka' :S similar to Takan, but also the name of an otter :) I tend to sit at the creation screen and type random names that pop into my head until I like one. (My hunter made it to about 25 before I rerolled, he was 27 when I deleted him, realising he was the definition of the word Huntard!)

At some point while playing I somehow decided gnomes were cool and I rolled my mage, I wanted a silly gnome name, and 'Fuzzbip' was just what I came up with. I like my name because most people just call me 'Fuzz', the name is suitably cute as well.

When I rolled my druid (who is now 68! Which is why I may have been slacking on posting, also my monitor broke and I didn't have access to a computer for a few days)
I named her 'Zuff', I simply reversed Fuzz, I like this name as well. I used it for my lowbie troll mage as well. I've had many other variations on Fuzz; 'Fuzzo' my shaman, 'Slyfuzz' was a rogue I had, and 'Fuzzbane' was my warlock who is now retired to bank alt status (if only I'd named him Fuzzbank!)

Other names I have had are Dralexi, Lotifa, Reptilian, Ziljaen, Varnax, Alloria, Zakenji, Zakov (maybe he's russian), Kryptika (for my new lock, I think it suits a lock), Henri (human paladin, suitably normal for a human), Boppit (lol, silly name, but you gotta love Boppit). That's all I can remember as I type. A lot of the time I don't really have good reasoning for my naming, but I like what I come up with sometimes and if I don't I tend to delete them. As long as you play a character for a long time and enjoy playing it, you should find you grow to like your name as you grow to enjoy the character you are playing.

Fuzz

Macrotastic!

Just thought I'd share some of the few macros I use with you. I don't use many macros but they can be very useful and I'm sure there are more out there that I will find and wonder how I ever did without. These few are mage specific.

Since the introduction of patch 2.3 and the great change to Mana Emeralds, like me you may have been frustrated about having to find and destroy a gem with used charges before a boss fight, to conjure a new one with 3 charges. Try this:

/run for i=0,4 do for j=1,GetContainerNumSlots(i)do if(GetContainerItemLink(i,j)or''):find("Mana Emerald")then PickupContainerItem(i,j)return DeleteCursorItem()end end end
/cast Conjure Mana Emerald

This will destroy your current Mana Emerald and conjure a new one with one click, excellent!

Need to get off a quick spell interrupt, the following will make sure you never miss one, before I used this I'd be jumping to cancel my current spell casting whenever I needed to interrupt, much easier with a macro. It basically cancels whatever you are doing to immediately interrupt.

#showtooltip Counterspell
/stopcasting
/cast counterspell

The '#showtooltip' part of the macro just means that the usual spell tooltip will appear on mouseover of the macro button.

It's extremely handy to have a macro for sheeping in raids and instances.

#showtooltip
/clearfocus [mod:ctrl]
/stopmacro [mod:ctrl]
/focus [mod:alt]
/stopmacro [mod:alt]
/cast [target=focus,nodead,harm][]Polymorph

Using the alt key with this macro will set your focus to your current target, ctrl will clear your focus. Once your focus is set you can click the macro to sheep your focused mob without having to change your target. So you can be targetting the mob you are dpsing and if your sheep breaks or needs renewing simply press the macro to resheep. No trouble retargetting the mob amongst several other mobs and your group members. It may be confusing setting and clearing your focus at first but you should get used to it.

That's all the mage specific macros I use at the moment, but feel free to enlighten me on others I should be using.

Fuzz

Alt update

After about 2 weeks at level 64, I managed to complete the rest of my Zangarmarsh quests and ding 65 :) Hopefully I'll breeze through Terrokar and the next few levels. Or alternatively I'll switch over to my Troll mage, he needs some loving, he's only level 15 and I'd quite like to explore Ragefire Chasm at some point. I need to level something, I feel like I'm going no where at the moment.

Fuzz

Does WoW need another party role?

Another shared topic on Blog Azeroth asks the above question. My initial response would be no. Currently there is the standard tank, healer and dps trinity of roles, CC/utility is arguably another but there is no pure utility class as of yet.

There are suggestions for new class roles, but while they sound plausible they would be difficult to implement due to class balance and whether they would fit into WoW in it's current state.

It would be nice to see another class role in the future if Blizzard were able to implement it well, but for now I'd say WoW is suited to the current party roles and until I see a flawless suggestion for another class with a different role my mindset will likely stay that way.

Check out the forum to have a look at other views on the subject.

Fuzz

Frosty Fuzz

I think now is a good time to experiment with specs, I've been deep fire long enough and now I'm unguilded I can try any spec I feel like without having to worry about my dps. Time to try out Frost I think, or maybe arcane/frost, next time I feel like going on my main I'll respec and try and get a group for a heroic. I need to broaden my horizons, as a mage blogger I only really know about 1/3 of the mage class.

Fuzz

/gquit

I left my guild today, why? Well after a terrible Gruul run, starting late, taking 2 hours for two HKM attempts with nothing down I was a little pissed off. Also I didn't really enjoy the guild, guild chat was full of bitching, whining and immaturity and I didn't really like a lot of the people in the guild. The raiding was ok, it was nice to have a little peek inside ssc and tk even though nothing was taken down.

Also I don't really feel like raiding at the moment, I need a break from raiding for a while, so now I'll log on when I want to play and do what i want. I probably won't be on my main much for a while, I'll focus on my troll and maybe do the last few levels on my druid.

I'm not sure what I'll do in the future, I'll stay unguilded for now, I would like to see more of ssc and tk, so at some point I'll look for a new guild. Maybe see if I can get into one of the guilds with better progress in a few weeks.

Fuzz

Servant's Quarters: Attumen the Huntsmen

Welcome to my second installment of my series looking into Karazhan, looking at the first and easiest boss Attumen the Huntsmen and his trusty steed Midnight. Some of these posts will be relatively short, others much longer, depending on the complexity of the fights.

The fight isn't particularly long or mana intensive, so unless you tend to have mana problems you will want to be buffed to increase your damage. For paladin buffs I prefer to have salvation for this fight as there is an aggro reset during the fight and this will allow you not to have to hold back too much on dps.

The fight starts off with one of your tanks enganging Midnight, begin dps as soon as the tank has some threat, being careful not to overaggro. When Midnight is at 95% Attumen will spawn and should be picked up by the second tank in the raid. Raid dps should continue on Midnight at this point and continue until Midnight is at 25%.
At this point Attumen will mount Midnight and all threat will be wiped, dps should be stopped at this point until the tank has picked up the boss and started to build up threat. Now he simply has to be nuked down until dead.

The one thing you have to watch for as a mage is Intangible Presence, about every 30 seconds Attumen will cast an AOE curse targeting multiple random raid members. It reduces their chance to hit with melee, ranged and spells by 50% and as a mage you have to help remove this. I recommend you dispell the tanks first to allow them to continue with their threat generation, then any others who have the curse. There are add-ons such as Decursive which are helpful when dispelling.

Once he is down there are a few pieces of loot that a mage may be interested in. Harbinger Bands are nice entry level epic bracers, he also drops gloves that are great for the hit rating and a ring that you may want to pick up. You will be able to pick up better equipment further into Karazhan, but any of these will work well for a mage in the meantime. He drops one Badge of Justice for everyone in the raid.

If you get really lucky there is a very small chance he will drop a rare mount and you will get to ride around on the huntsman's steed. Rare mounts such as this have a certain cool factor to them, mainly due to the drop rate of about 0.5%. Also if you happen to have engineering this Schematic may drop for you as it did for me just a couple of weeks ago :)

Fuzz