And hello heroics

Though it's technically my second successful heroic, it's the first I've done after completing my mad max gear up and my first since March 17th(!). Had never run Shadowfang before. Was relatively enjoyable. We had one wipe before Lord Godfrey, and then had three. The fourth, we had two go down again, including the priest (who went down first maybe two or three of the four shots; still not sure how that happened), and I hit rebirth to bring her back.


Seconds pass, and no rez. Quick typing (the "@" symbol in my frantic "take the rez!@" is, of course, the Angband guy pleading too) and some mad off-healing later, she's taken my Rebirth and is back, I'm DPSing again, and we finally bring him down (though the priest dies again after we're done. I guess she kept catching the Cursed Bullets, but I wasn't calm enough to see.)

It was one of those exciting gaming moments when you breathe a literal sigh of relief. It's fun and, more importantly, memorable to scoot through by the seat of your pants. I was awfully lucky to have a group patient enough to sit through four wipes and a dungeon guide nice enough to give us the 411 on each boss. And I was even luckier to bag the Chaos Orb when it was done. Strangely, two in the party dropped as soon as Godfrey's loot popped up, not even interested in greeding a few more gold into their pockets.


Overall a good, fun run. I (barely) had burst DPS over 11k when things cut just right, and managed to keep it around 7.5-8.5k outside of trash (ie, bosses) when I wasn't off healing (strangely kept it around 6k+ even when I was). I'm not going to say all those hours of grinding gear paid off, as it's wasted time I could have been spending doing something productive (read: "paid"), but they have made the game more fun.

Wow, as an aside, I just Armoried (this is like Googling a date, isn't it?) the other folks. Gear scores:

Priest 345 (7 unenchanted items)
Shaman 342 (10 unenchanted, 9 empty sockets(!!), no belt buckle, unenchanted ring)
Tank/Prot Paladin 339 (5 unenchanted, 5 missing glyphs, no belt buckle)
DK (Frost) 352 (only thing missing is a Chimera's Eye)

And I thought I was behind. But I'm at 344 equipped and a perfect audit. Makes me wonder how much heroics have changed. The DK was the only guy doing serious damage consistently, but I guess I know why now.

Of course, as I've said before, off-healing is about as fun as it gets, as you really do feel you're the only thing between the group and failure. At least one boss required some off-heals and a tranq pop, and of course I had to heal our way through each of the wipes once the priest died (the first time, some DPS died first and I battle rezzed him, not knowing it was going to get lots worse, which kept me healing for a while). Honestly, that's a ton of fun.

I think the secret to good DPS really is mushroom use. I don't enjoy it, but it's growing on me, har har. I'm also using Pickled Guppy and Scrolls of Intellect, something I haven't done with regularity before.

Phew, I'm going to need to run a little archeology just to calm back down.

In other news, I got a free fishing pole with +25 fishing just for catching up with Nat, and even though some NPCs ignore Deathwing's fire, checking how badly the flames are killing your framerate is not A Good Idea.

The PUG to raid gap grows

From Lissanna's Some thoughts on the Dungeon Journal:

To prepare for raids, I read the spell abilities on wowpedia, and THEN I read strategies there. Then, I hop over to watch a Tankspot video on youtube and read the comments on tankspot.

Boy, that sounds like fun, doesn't it?

For raids, okay, I'll allow the point. This isn't that crazy a set of research prereqs. But for heroic dungeons? I really still think the gap between PUGging normals and hitting heroics is too large, from the gear needed to the amount of gaming knowledge before the fact (see "spoiler" comment from Lissanna below). Making a stupid Dungeon Journal is a real coward's fix and, if what Restokin says is true, only a partially successful way to get players up to speed.

Third party sites and addons did the same thing, but better and with more detail.

That's just a sad state of affairs. The game should prepare you for bosses. There should be preparation quests. NPCs helping teach you what's going to go down.

That you're in a state of affairs where...

Most raid groups “spoiler” bosses before they step foot in a raid dungeon

... tells me Blizzard really hasn't finished the game. And with 4.1 only bringing serious new content for those done with heroics (the mini quest line was fun, but really only a distraction. And much MUCH too easy. It was like a 4th grade in-class worksheet), the gap isn't closing and the game isn't approaching finished at all.

I wish we knew why subscription numbers are down. I've seen hard core bloggers say it's because hard core players have finished the content. But you know, I really don't think 10% of the player population is necessarily hard-core, end game finished players. The drop is from the casual player too. It's really no surprise. If I hadn't accidentally forgotten to cancel my autopay, I would probably be taking a week or two break this month myself. I barely have time for Tol Barad (where I've painfully found that I won't yet have the rep to buy Stump of Time when I have the commendations), often squeeze in a few minutes on my underpowered laptop without the Razer Naga (really hurts the DPS), and often just log in for another frostsaber cub whisker. Dude is getting big though. ;^) Watch him shoot up around 0:14...

Heroic -- It's a different world

Well, the good news is that I've gone through Grim Batol, my first heroic. I lost the Chaos Orb roll, which stinks, but do have a heroic Corrupted Egg Shell, which is at least a good mana replenisher.

Note to self: Use this macro
#showtooltip Corrupted Egg Shell
/cast [@player] Corrupted Egg Shell

The real take-home though is that the Heroic dungeon is a completely different animal socially. It's every bit as bad as you've read. Here's the sum of today's fun, just in case you haven't experienced it firsthand.

I came in part-way through the dungeon with the pre-Umbriss trash already down. Guess that's a bad sign. We have our tank drop soon after, pretty much embarrassed out by the rest of the party (minus me, who stayed silent) for not keeping aggro, which was a legit complaint. "They're casters! They'll attack anybody!" was his response, I believe. Gone. New tank rocks. Knows the instance. Keeps aggro. Tells everyone what to do. Good communicator. I have to race to Finkle's Skinner to beat another skinner to the corpse. Woohoo. One Savage Leather.

(What is the decorum on skinning? I tried to leave about half for him/her, but will admit I raced to skin Umbriss, if only to get some use out of Finkle's Skinner.)

Then, a while later, I have a guy say our dps is low. He's including himself, but mine is awful. At the same time, our healer is over-freakin whelmed with Shadowburner. I'm off-healing like maaaaad, popping tranq, lifeblooming & potting myself, and Healing Touch-ing the tank. We wipe twice. We eventually have to skip Shadowburner. I whisper this to the "low dps" commenter to help him understand why my numbers aren't where they should be, who, it turns out, just turned 85 himself and, though he wouldn't tell me his after asking about mine, has an iLevel of 334 (mine was 340). He defends healz, says that she (?) heals their guild in raids all the time. I say I'll trust him. I could certainly be taking too much damage from not knowing what's up in Heroic as well as I do reg. Seems about as far as I can go towards being nice, right?

We wipe one more time with trash. I'm not healing at all now. /sigh

We get to Erudax. Wipe at least twice. The new tank leaves. I ask if we're calling it. No.

New tank pops in. It's another good tank. I miss the Gale circle somehow, though I would have sworn I was in it, and was stacked right nearly on everyone else. Still, obviously my mistake. I party tell, "the hell? I thought I was in the circle." There's a wipe not 30 sec after (seriously? There are fewer people to heal now, and she can't keep up. Look, I don't expect them to win, but I expect her to keep the tank up long enough for a full party to do so. And no, Erudax wasn't nearly down). By the time I get the tell out, healz has already gone crazy in party chat about Gales being in reg too, referring back to my "Fair Warning Admission (c) 2011" that this is my first heroic run. I whisper, "dude, I've run reg 7 times and read the guides on this. I know the gale."

"^&*! you" is her reply.
"?" is mine, and it comes a millisecond after she's dropped. So does our mage, whose iLevel is apparently 330. Wow, that's low. I'm our best geared dps, and it's my first heroic. Healz' guildie doesn't drop.

Wow, healz even has an iLevel of 350 and has completed Baradin Hold. I don't get it. Resto Shaman, but couldn't keep up with a good tank... with two good tanks... on a sub-boss -- even with trash. I'll take some of the blame, certainly, but I don't think I get it all. Low dps commenter admits later that his weapon broke during the second Erudax wipe and that he, a rogue, was using his hands. "my weapons broke." Seriously? I've got two backup weapon sets, my best one-handed/off-hand combo and a DPS staff, just for fun in my bag, as that's something you can switch during a fight. Explains the horrible dps a bit, though.

Anyhow, we get new dps and healz, a real priest this time. I'm biased. I love priests. We wipe. Np. We wipe again. Np. We finally get dps lined up on the adds in a way that works, and we're golden. Freakin' golden. Erudax drops, I lose out on the Chaos Orb, I win the Egg Shell, all is good, except Mr. "She's Great, Don't Heal" gets the Chaos Orb. ;^)

Wow. Drama. Gear to 21% durability. Hours of life lost. Chaos Orb missed. The drops I want don't happen. We skip Shadowburner. But, ultimately, I've got to admit, a pretty good time.

Another positive (in addition to enjoying the final battle) is that I ended with 2nd in dps on Erudax, even though I was taking time out to drop shrooms to slow the adds. This guy kicked my arse in dps, but looking on the Armory, I guess that makes sense (though why nobody has the Ebonsteel Belt Buckle, I don't know).


Anyhow, you've been warned.

Grim Batol: 5th run and Heroic Prep

Finally Cataclysmically Epic. Broke down and grabbed a Tattooed Eyeball for just under 1300g. That means I spent 1300+750 (bracers)+2700 (Blazewing) = 3750g for my gear. A little lazy, but I'm done.

I'm also getting lots of achievements in a row like this -- I got credit for Epic Waist at the same time I got Cataclysmically Epic Waist, for instance, and I made my own Lava Belt years ago, right after BC's release. It's surprising how much Blizzard apparently didn't track in vanilla and later.

I've now run Grim Batol (normal) five times. I guess it's got the best loot, because it seems to be the most popular PUG/random LFG instance by a long shot. My last run saw two folks drop, one after each of the two sub-bosses when I suppose they got or didn't get the items they wanted. Folks didn't seem to be real familiar with the instance. I ended up dropping into healz for the last two bosses once our Shammy dropped and a gnome priest filled in; we wiped during trash when someone sheeped someone in the next group, and I had to run Tranquility maybe three times total. Nobody even knew to kite Shadowburner's adds, nor did they have much interest after I spend a few seconds dropping into chat to tell them what's up. /sigh

(As an aside, I've been thinking about dedicating a button on the mouse to the WoW in-game voice chat for times like this. I've yet to hear someone on voicechat in a PUG, which seems strange, since even our guild uses Skype when we make guild runs.)

Anyhow, I've done GB enough now to try out heroic. I'm carrying around two pieces of GB (normal) loot already: the Staff of Siphoned Essences and Azureborne Cloak. It'd be nice to get upgrades -- and start collecting some Chaos Orbs.

This looks like an interesting Grim Batol Heroic guide. It feels a little, um, unedited, but has most of the info I've Googled up elsewhere with maps for each boss. I'm a little embarrassed I didn't realize I needed to get behind the Forgemaster when he went with shield, for instance. Shifting Perspective's guide is here, and lets you supplement with a little balance-specific info.

My last experience with GB also has me nearly ready to break down and just slog through heroics I don't know too, admittedly. We'll see if I force myself onto unsuspecting PUGgers. Poor saps. Hopefully I'll stay strong.

Ah, yes, one final point. My trash DPS picked up like mad. I wasn't going around Moonfire and Insect Swarming everyone first. Now I typically rush in with Typhoon, if nobody is CCing, then MF and IS everyone before either tossing off a Starsurge (if its instant-cast procs) to lead into Hurricaning (if the trash is mostly still up) or running to the normal Eclipse rotation. Much better. I'm still not grabbing the top spot on bosses, but I do think I'm trying to do too much, especially this run (lots of needed off-healing).

Gear from PUGging > Gear from rep?

Honestly, I feel the same way as I did in Wrath. I'm just barely strong enough to PUG now, and I've run Grim Batol and Halls of Origination down. And, of course, I'm also starting to get gear I feel I don't deserve (I'm maxing out at about 30% DPS on bosses; much less on trash) that ruins any gear chasing guide.

So the TL:DR version of this post is: Run instances for gear until you're done! The Aessina-Blessed Gloves are really the only no-brainer so far of gear to get via rep. Level 346 for rep I've already got...

I bagged Anhurr's Hymnal from Halls, level 333.

From Grim Batol, I just Needed the Staff of Siphoned Essences, level 333 (see a pattern?) and bagged the Helm of Secret Knowledge from Kill the Courier.

The helm really isn't worth much, though it was the best of the quest reward choices for Jal. Without INT and SPI, it's not really going to make the gear rotation. I looked, and I can only get 63 spirit on there by reforging. What's the point? I hadn't really read up on reforging, but had hoped to get lots more out of it. The helm's art even looks a little, well, odd. I'll also admit I thought spell crit and physical crit had been rolled into one like spellpower did with damage and healing. They haven't. /sigh

(I also didn't know Wild Quilvine is toast now. Well, duh. There's no more MotW, dude.)


Regardless, the Helm, too, is 333.

If I keep bagging a 333 every normal dungeon run, my long, slow march through Wildhammer rep might not be as useful as I'd thought. It's really more fun to PUG than grind, though, again, I'm not DPSing as well as I'd like yet and feel a little like I'm mooching. That doesn't happen when I'm making a a Beer Run.


My equally slow march through Leatherworking to make the Chestguard of Nature's Fury might not be as pertinent either, but since the Chestguard is level 359, I'm guessing I'll still be glad I did. And they sell for megabucks.

In other news, I'm upset I so quickly grabbed a staff with so little DPS. The days of the Panzerkin are over, though I do keep a melee DPS staff in my bag. And, finally, I need that Skinner, well, thirty minutes ago.

Working on rotations

With the Razer Naga, I've already added several spells into the PvE rotation, though I haven't done any of the requisite mathes. Solar Beam-ing a spell casting mob, causing them to charge you, followed by a Typhoon, is a fun way to aggravate mobs and keep damage down. But I Googled around a bit to see if anyone has The Right Way to rotate these spells I've now got at my thumb-tip.

Elitist Jerks seemed to have the best guide:

This is a compendium of information on raiding as a Balance Druid. It contains everything a beginner needs to achieve basic competence at raid DPS, as well more detailed discussion for people more interested in understanding the theory or more advanced play. The article is supplemented by the attached spreadsheet.

I haven't mathed up Starsurge, but I think it's to your advantage to cast even in the midst of an eclipse, something Jerks seems to agree with, though it's written just ambiguously enough I won't swear to it.

Casting Starfall during Lunar isn't something I'd considered closely enough. Good point.

EDIT: For some reason, I conflated Thorns and Roots, below. Honestly, I've completely forgotten about Thorns. In the Recruit-a-friend, I'm playing with a druid who is Thorning, and I caught the mistake. I should throw it onto the Naga rotation.

I may be underutilizing Thorns, which, since it doesn't set up melee mobs for Wrath-spams any more, has fallen off of my rotation in PvE almost entirely. Jerks suggests it does enough dps to keep it up. From outdoor only to ubiquitous use to nothing, it's been a real pain to keep up with Thorns. I'm also likely underusing Insect Swarm. I only use it and Faerie Fire for long fights in instances, though Jerks would have me believe that I should keep IS and scrap FF almost entirely -- "Faerie Fire: We no longer need to use this unless the raid is missing an Armor debuff." /shrug

Honestly, though, this is the sort of stuff that kills the enjoyment for part-timers like me, yet I'm just math-inclined enough (and efficiency worried) that I keep getting drawn back in. There's probably also a small tinge of worry that a PUG might get upset that I'm not using my skillz The Right Way. I don't know why. I've never been called out for not putting out enough dps.

And, honestly, for PvE, the fights are too short for maxing DPS and Innverate too good at keeping you at max mana for much to matter, afaict. Fire and forget.

In any event, Jerks' is a good guide, and the Naga really does change the way I play.

More xserver PUGging

Another good night of PUGging. Back in June I was looking at gearing up with pre-raid content, mostly using the guide at Laser Chicken to figure out what to get after WoW.com's Shifting Perspectives had let me down so badly with the shoulders. I also decided it was about time I got serious and enchanted some gear. I'd been using the [Totemic Purification Rod] so long I figured it was safe. About 50-60g later in tips and mats, I had +50 Spellpower.

Not two hours later, I rolled on and won a [Blood Boil Lancet]. Bittersweet.

The cross-server LFG has really changed the game. I've been running quests and rep runs, and barely got in 5 minutes at a time before being zapped into a dungeon. The way this changes geography and social interactions is bizarre. It's the same game as before, sure, but it plays to much differently, it's difficult to describe. Obviously much quicker gear accumulation. No real reason to run rep for gear anymore, it'd seem, other than to pass a little time between instances. I'll probably start camping Sons of Hodir.

The grouping has gone well. I've gotten invited to two 50-80% done runs, which stinks a bit. I'd like to enjoy the whole instance rather than finish off a last boss or two, but on random you don't know ahead of time (and I guess you don't on the named dungeon LFG either). One group seemed to have recently kicked a hunter. I'm not sure how much better I did -- though I heard he didn't have ammo. FTW!!!!#1 Still, I'm not seeing people more than once. It's weird. Was nice to see someone who had gotten kicked out of Wintergrasp into the queue area in the snow from The Demonic Reich. At least they're local.

In other news, I leveled my Leatherworking to 440 so that I could make -- and did make -- [Windripper Leggings]. The leg armor that got me from 435 to 440 is worth about 100g a pop, which has been nice. Farming Eternal Air was a breeze in Wintergrasp. At first Wintergrasp was being contested and I had to wait. Couldn't even be a rear and sneak in; too long a queue for the battle. Later, however, I found that you could sneak into a couple of areas on the edges of Wintergrasp, not quite be in the zone, and farm some Tempest Revenants and Whispering Winds while technically in Dragonblight. The farming was very quick. Nobody around. Felt eerie. Quiet.

So that's two purples in the rotation with a low bid on some Windripper Boots that I hope comes through that would make three. The spellpower is growing well. No big deal to many, I know, but I'm at about 9k starfire crits now, which happens enough during Eclipse that I feel useful.

Last item -- I probably won't play as much for the balance of this month. Felt like taking a WoW break, and I've nearly gotten my $15 out already. I've enjoyed the instance runs and the gear, but I'm so freakin' far away from raids it's disheartening.

(Last last item -- none of my screenshots or movies from the last run were saved. Odd. Have to settle for making my leggings.)

From the joys of PUGing

I'll backfill the 71 ding in a bit, but this shot captured what it's like to wait hours to PUG what you need only to, well, be thwarted later. We were supposed to run Dark Portal next, and had run Durnholde just to qualify the healz. /sigh About an hour later, still no full replacements, and I went to Nexus instead for a full run.