Wednesday, January 6, 2010

And the fur will fly! Hopefully...

Took Loke into two instances last night: AN and UK. Tanked both. They went well, but the UK run was much much smoother.

Now, Loke is a feral bear that wants to get out there and prove that he can tank, even as a bear. My personal tanking experience has always been a paladin. So... some mental adjustments have to be made.

Thankfully the runs went smoothly. But the group conpositions were radically different for each instance. Not so much the classes, but the players attitudes. A lot of what Kaly said in her blog yesterday were evident last night.

First run was normal AN. I felt rushed, was told to Go Go Go, aoe dps as soon as I charged, etc. All in all a stressful experience. But hey, that's pugs right? We cleared the content with no deaths, I held aggro once I had the chance. I herded mobs around grouped them up and the resto druid kept me up. Didn't have to use any potions or pop many cooldowns.

Second run was normal UK. Granted it's easier than AN, the mobs hit for less. But this group was amazing. They waited for me, they attacked the marked mobs in order. I was allowed my few seconds to build aggro. Pure joy. Again, I didn't have to use any potions or pop many cooldowns.

Only cooldown that I did pop was barkskin, which is macroed into Swipe. Pretty sure I need barkskin when I'm getting threat on groups of mobs. Helps make me less squishy.

Still need to figure out when I can use Enrage, etc. Occasionally I become rage starved, which has me worried. I'm either not hitting enough, not dodging enough, or not being hit for enough dmg. But I was semi-rage starved on the Anub'arak fight. Too many adds that were dying too quickly that I was wasting rage on for snap aggro. Now, I suspect that's just the fight, and that I should have used a carefully timed enrage.

When do other people pop their cooldowns? When do you engrage? Just before a pull? Ever try popping it with barkskin to try and negate the armor loss some?

These are questions that hopefully I'll develop a feel for. I need to get my fuzzy butt into more instances. And I might have a pocket healer of my own, once Kaly figures out that resto shaman is the way to go for off-spec. :D
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Monday, December 7, 2009

The little priest who tries too hard

So yesterday, Kaly and I decided to do the RaF program so she could powerlevel a paladin. I created a priest. And it's been interesting since.

Poor little girl is level 16 now, with her trusty backpack full of quest items and about 46 copper to her name. She's missing skills, can't talk to anyone in the world, can't trade with people. She's a ghost of her future self. Though she does have a bank she can use... o.O

Kinda frustrating. But we've already done the account upgrade and scheduled a monthly payment for that account. Just waiting on the Blizzard Billing Department to decide that the account shouldn't be a trial one anymore. Hopefully before that happens, read: 48-72 hours, I'll have gotten a freaking bag to drop so I have more than 16 slots of space. Grrr!

But the priest herself, is a lot of fun, though not very mana efficient. She usually resorts to braining people with her trusty mace. Paladin's require so much healing. :p Add to the fact that I'm trying to do her as shadow, isn't helping things.

At least the grind to Shadowform will go quickly. Like I said, Kaly and I started them last night. And with all of the logging in and out to see if Blizz had updated my account, we didn't really put in much time on them.

Hopefully we'll do more questing tonight. I have some instance quests already that should be fun. Lots of XP to boot if we survive. :p

I'm still confused about the RaF bit though. Not sure if I have to keep this account for 2 months for Kaly to get the mount or what. So there's a chance she'll be stuck at 60 for a while, before I can account transfer my spriest from the "trial" account to my "main" Wrath account.

Ughs... need to get money for more mounts and riding skills. *sighs*

The T9 spriest gear looks awesome though. :D She gets to wear robes and not some crappy tunic like my poor mage. :(
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Wednesday, November 11, 2009

?

Kaly covered a lot of what happened last night in her blog. These are just some of my own thoughts about the state of things.

1) I feel that I need to speak with Garris about Oingaboinga. Kaly and I both were uncomfortable around him, and I for one don't want to do any raids with him. I suspect Kaly feels the same way. However that puts us into a delima.

2) Without the "alliance" that we've formed with Garris, we don't really know enough people to try and throw together any pug raids of our own.

3) We really don't want to leave our guild, Faded Delusions, to join any of the other raiding guilds.

4) Eto is stuck-ish gear wise currently. If he could raid, he'd have the opportunity to get better gear. But really, I'm just holding out until the next patch hits so I can go full t9 with some t10. Just not excited about the gear. Pretty comfortable with where he is with the content. Nothing is beyond his healing. Hell, I've kept Kaly up for a lot longer than we should have while we were learning the first ToC10 fight. And I was eventually told to wipe the raid because we were the only ones left alive. :p

5) Back to the alts, or so it seems. Tried the druids the other night, we became bored. Tried my warrior today, but warriors are so darn squishy. Need to give him another go, because I really want an 80 warrior. And an 80 druid, 80 lock, etc. :p

Why do I always write lists? Sheesh, I get bored reading them, let alone writing them. No wonder I don't have any readers. But since I use this mostly as a repository for my own jumbled thoughts, it still serves it's purpose.
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Friday, October 30, 2009

On Corpse Dust

Latest Three Panel Soul comic. Love it.
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Thursday, October 22, 2009

Shaman Healing Equivalency Points (Shaman_hep)

So... I downloaded two mods: LoggerHead and shaman_hep to help point me in the right direction for my haste vs. crit issue.

After installing ActivePerl and letting LoggerHead record a couple of 10/25 man raids and a few heroics, I get this as a result.

For healing output:
1 SP = 1 SP (0.2946 hps)
1 Crit rating = 0.7013 SP (0.2066 hps)
1 Haste rating = 1.6260 SP (0.4790 hps)
1 INT = 0.3625 SP (0.1068 hps)

For mana regen:
1 MP5 = 1 mp5
1 Crit rating = 0.0683 mp5
1 Haste rating = -0.1911 mp5
1 INT = 0.2219 mp5
1 Mana = 0.0070 mp5
Total mana regen points needed from gear: 821.44

Shaman Healing Equivalency Points:
1 SP = 1
1 mp5 = 1.1268 (calculated)
1 mana = 0.0079
1 Haste rating = 1.4107
1 Crit rating = 0.7783
1 INT = 0.6126 (actual)
1 INT = 0.8816 (max theoretical)

Which tells me that I still need to value haste more than crit. Ok, that's cool and all. But what really blew my mind was the helpful Pawn values (though I don't use it) and Wowhead links (1 and 2).

Course all of the gear that's listed is out of my content range, but I was really surprised how much of the +20 haste epic gems Wowhead showed on the items. I still prefer gemming as much for sp as possible.

Am I wrong in this? Wouldn't it make more sense to do the 12 spellpower/10 haste gem over straight 20 haste even for a yellow slot?

Granted, I might have to fiddle more with the config settings for the shaman_hep script, since you do have to hard code a couple items. But I found it interesting reading. :D

Still wishing I had 3 talent builds and glyph selections though. Do MT resto, raid resto, and enhancement (freaking dailies). But that, if ever (yeah right!) will be way down the line.
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Monday, October 12, 2009

Haste vs Crit balance issues

So I've definitely noticed a difference in how I heal heroics versus raids.

Heroics, I need tons of haste for that slow slow Chain Heal. Raids, I need crit for huge Lesser Healing Waves.

Unfortunately, I'm not at a gear level to be able to swap pieces out for haste/crit depending on what I'm healing.

Maybe if I just insist on tossing Lesser Healing Waves around during heroics, see how that goes, instead of using Chain Heal so much.

All I know is that when I need a heal RIGHT NOW!! it's too late. I can make one big heal every 3 mins thanks to Nature's Swiftness. I had a macro that would pop that, my trinkets, Tidal Focus, and then cast Healing Wave. But I now use it with my Jesus beam. Because if things get that bad, it's nice to have healed more than one person.

I really need the two piece T8 bonus for that reduced cooldown on Riptide. I use that spell whenever I can, but it always seems to be on cooldown. *sighs*

WTB more gear options. :p
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Kaly and Eto's new guild

Faded Delusions, a horde family leveling/casual raiding guild on Shadow Council is up and running. Current roster is small, but we're recruiting active members. Doesn't matter what level or spec, we're taking friendly people.

Looking to build a core 10 man group for casual raiding.

Tired of silent guild chat, bored of not running instances, tired of being told you need gear? We'll welcome you with open arms. Just looking to have a good time with friends and collect loot along the way.

If this sounds like anything you'd be interested in, please contact Kalyara or Etolani in game.

Happy hunting!
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