World of Warcraft

[Jimmy Snow]

I had to quit WOW, it was literally taking over my life. I put on a stone in weight in 6 weeks. I basically swapped wow for running and look a hell of a lot better because of it. But GOD I MISS IT

[Inigima]

You realize you could do both those things, right?

EDIT: Restosham is ICC-ready, I think! Any suggestions?

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Whisperwind&cn=Zajat

I know the neck isn't great but I can't get either caster neck from H FoS to drop, I'm still running it every day to get it. I am also aware of the PvP cloak but as far as I am aware there are literally no other decent options with haste until 10 Blood Princes, including the frost badge one. I just added my shoulder enchant, if that hasn't shown up yet.

[Jimmy Snow]

I was literally playing 5 hours a night and wouldn't do much else

[Inigima]

I was literally playing 5 hours a night and wouldn't do much else

Well, yes. Stop doing that.

[Jimmy Snow]

It takes over though and my life revolved around leveling ha. Far better off without it.

[Darkostar]

You realize you could do both those things, right?

EDIT: Restosham is ICC-ready, I think! Any suggestions?

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Whisperwind&cn=Zajat

I know the neck isn't great but I can't get either caster neck from H FoS to drop, I'm still running it every day to get it. I am also aware of the PvP cloak but as far as I am aware there are literally no other decent options with haste until 10 Blood Princes, including the frost badge one. I just added my shoulder enchant, if that hasn't shown up yet.

I have one minor suggestion: get rid of the Glyph of Water Mastery. At 80, it doesn't increase the already ridiculous MP5 that Resto gets by a significant amount. Go for Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave, which is a fantastic glyph that will make you useful as more than just a raid heals.

[Inigima]

I have one minor suggestion: get rid of the Glyph of Water Mastery. At 80, it doesn't increase the already ridiculous MP5 that Resto gets by a significant amount. Go for Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave, which is a fantastic glyph that will make you useful as more than just a raid heals.

That was my plan once I started getting into T10. Right now I'm in 4T9 and the memory of having to be conservative with mana when I got into heroics is still fresh with me. Can I safely drop Water Mastery in the gear I'm in now?

EDIT: Also, what should be my first frost badge purchases?

[Inigima]

I bought and crafted very expensive things for my shaman -- 264 BoE boots and the 28 badge Conquest belt -- because I couldn't get the cloth belt or the mail boots to drop in H PoS. I tank a random for a guildie after running H PoS every day on my shaman, and of course both things drop and no one else needs them. :mad:

[Darkostar]

Ini, my Shaman is only level 50, so I won't ask you to base your judgements on my experience. But based on my research, I think you're ready to swap. I would totally understand if you wanted to keep a spare WM glyph, though.

As for new gear, I'm not literate on what drops early in ICC, but I'm not a guy who likes to have too much PvP gear on when I PvE, so I'd look for a PvE cloak if I were you.

[TerraPrime]

I always go for the big pieces first with the frost badges. First piece I got was the totem, but that's so to up the GS so I can get invited to pugs. Then I saved up the badges for the chest, and then the head. I don't like buying hands and legs, since there's always a chance for the VoA drop. YMMW.

At any rate, I'd suggest you keep an eye out on how your mana works out in boss fights. I'm finding that after swapping out my helm, which gained me a good chunk of haste and intel at the expense of MP5, I'm getting thirsty in some fights. Right now I have 1.88s cast for chain heal and I noticed a big difference in mana use, compared to when it was 2s cast. I guess my point is that haste is good, but only if you don't oom in boss fights.

[Angeleyes]

Indeed. I found that flasks of Pure Mojo were actually useful on my Shaman, even into ICC. Contrasted by my priest who used them only for Naxramas, and had moved onto the Frost Wyrm by Ulduar.

[Inigima]

YES! FUCKING FINALLY! Kingslayer on my main, so it's not just my alt that's a Kingslayer.

[The Winged Shadow]

YES! FUCKING FINALLY! Kingslayer on my main, so it's not just my alt that's a Kingslayer.

Congratulations Ini!

Re: Shaman - I found myself loving the glyph of healing stream totem since I barely used lesser healing wave on the tank. I was always the raid healer so it went well with my duties. Plus, I usually don't have to worry about the tank, so the glyph was pretty useless for me, and when I did do some 10man tank healing, I always ended up using Healing Wave instead. Maybe your healing style makes better use of it.

How's your haste coming along? (I completely whore'd out on haste and still not enough! Bah!)

[Lyanna Stark]

At any rate, I'd suggest you keep an eye out on how your mana works out in boss fights. I'm finding that after swapping out my helm, which gained me a good chunk of haste and intel at the expense of MP5, I'm getting thirsty in some fights. Right now I have 1.88s cast for chain heal and I noticed a big difference in mana use, compared to when it was 2s cast. I guess my point is that haste is good, but only if you don't oom in boss fights.

Yeah, I am having the same issue while running as Holy. Some fights are just GCD locked spam, or AFKing, or watching the palas and druids do their thing. Others, like BQL where Prayer of Healing is a good chunk of my output, I swap to my int belt and int trinket, since otherwise I go bone dry before she goes up the second time.

If we run ten mans HMs without replenishment, I normally do the same thing, too.

If you heal with a priest tho, I often run over to my shammies and pop HoH for them if they for some reason go dry (normally due to no replenishment or stupid people dying too soon on blood princes 25 man leaving the last people standing with a mess on our hands and the shamans spamming HW on the tanks :o )

[Inigima]

Congratulations Ini!

Re: Shaman - I found myself loving the glyph of healing stream totem since I barely used lesser healing wave on the tank. I was always the raid healer so it went well with my duties. Plus, I usually don't have to worry about the tank, so the glyph was pretty useless for me, and when I did do some 10man tank healing, I always ended up using Healing Wave instead. Maybe your healing style makes better use of it.

How's your haste coming along? (I completely whore'd out on haste and still not enough! Bah!)

Thanks!

My shaman is at 924 haste, which I'm told is pretty good. I know the ideal is somewhere around 1269 (1sec GCD). I'm still using a 219 staff because the only decent offhand with haste that I know about that's available to me, Surgeon's Needle, has no haste, nor does my Protector of Frigid Souls (I'd rather have the ToC 10 shield, but that one has no haste either). I would like, ideally, Bulwark of Smouldering Steel (25 Marrowgar) and Lockjaw (10 Rotface), but I haven't yet set foot in either ICC. I was going to go to an ICC 25 pug, but I left before we started because of a mouthy fury warrior. My 219 neck also has no haste, save the gem in it, but I still can't get Love's Prisoner or Arcane Loops of Anger to drop despite running H FoS every day.

Incidentally, what would you guys recommend as my next frost badge purchase for my paladin? I'm MS holy but I don't really need much else for my holy set outside of raid drops, so I'm looking to gear my tank set more. I have 2T10 at the moment; I've heard both opinions on whether 4T10 is worth shooting for, and I'm leaning towards "yes" to have another cooldown since LK kills can be so messy. Possible options include T10 chest (currently using the one I have for the hit rating, as I side-graded from T9, but I have enough hit now that I can get away without doing that) or the trinket (I presume to replace the Black Heart). The T10 helm may also be worth considering since what I'm using sucks pretty bad. I no longer have a regular raid for my paladin now that I've stopped leading my permapug, which I stopped doing (a) to have more time for my raiding guild without going insane and (B) because I got very tired of subpar performance and clearing only 6/12 every week because people no-showed every week for day 2. My MT also caused some drama, causing some people to leave, and I thought one of the replacements he lined up -- he was effectively a co-raid leader with me -- was an asshole.

EDIT:

Grats, Ini, though it sounds like you really need to teach your alt his place in the grand scheme of things.

And tell your main to man-up and stop letting himself be pushed around!

Haha. I had it on my druid alt because the needs of my raid comp benefited far more from an extra quality ranged DPS, or occasionally a healer if people no-showed, than a second rogue. But I made that sacrifice a lot, so my guild promised to get my main his title regardless.

[TerraPrime]

Grats ini :)

For tank set, I'm partial to the skeleton key. Huge amount of stam, and a not-too-shabby on-use ability. So unless the tier set is substantially better than your gear, I'd grab the trinket first. The chest of the white knight crafted piece is not that much worse than the tier chest, iirc.

[Lyanna Stark]

Possible options include T10 chest (currently using the one I have for the hit rating, as I side-graded from T9, but I have enough hit now that I can get away without doing that) or the trinket (I presume to replace the Black Heart). The T10 helm may also be worth considering since what I'm using sucks pretty bad.

Get the helm. Unless you start tanking 25 man, a good tanking helm is really hard to come by in ICC 10.

Also, with regards to trinkets, unless you have the TOC25 stamina trinket (satrina's impending scarab?), use the Corroded Skeleton Key and Black heart in the other slot. ICC tanking is ALL about EH. Unfortunately avoidance is a thing of the past.

Remember as well that if you're tanking on a pally, you have a number of tricks up your sleeve, like timing Divine Plea, whacking Corroded Skeleton key and maybe even bubbling with /cancelaura (we had some weird healing fail on Festergut 25 so our warrior tank died. Our pally was able to basically solo tank it by using a fast bubble to reset the stacks of gastric bloat, cancel aura and taunt). Of all the tanking classes, I think paladins are the ones with most "tricks". You can heal your healer in trouble up to full in one GCD (or why not the other tank?), and then bubblewall yourself and Hand of Sac/ Divine Sac someone else, in basically less time than it takes them to say "Oh shit!".

Basically, tanking is the other end of healing: as a healer you want to have time to land those heals, and as a tank you want to buy time for your healer to land the heals (and also outthreat the noob DPS, but that is another thing completely).

[Inigima]

Good advice, thanks. I am an old hand at tanking and I know most of the tricks -- I have solo tanked Festergut using that trick, in fact. (I did learn the hard way that you cannot bubble of Mortal Wound from Precious and Stinky -- a quick-thinking elemental shaman saved us from a wipe by popping out her Earth Elemental. Now that was a slick move.)

I agree with you about EH being king in ICC -- it's why I am gemmed for pure stamina, like most tankadins. I considered my 245 trinket another cooldown to pop in case of trouble though. You're probably right that I should shoot for Key/Heart. (The TOC25 trinket you're talking about is Juggernaut's Vitality, I believe, unless it's differently named between Alliance and Horde. I don't have it; I see plenty of pugs fail at ToC10 even today, so I'd be mortified about pugging ToC25, and like I said I don't have a raiding guild on that realm, so Key and Heart it is. I will probably take your advice and get the helm first, though, you're right. I hadn't thought to analyze by difficulty of slot filling for some reason, so that makes a lot of sense.

Our LK kill last night was pretty epic, by the way. We lost a DPS early due to player error -- I forget which one exactly -- and then our OT was carried off during phase 2 due to a badly placed defile. Our heal team is really fucking pro, and our MT as well, so we managed to pull it off. We always 1-tank LK on phase 2 -- our MT pops CDs on Soul Reaper -- and we brezzed the dead mage. During transition #2 our MT tanked all four raging spirits -- I glued the old ones to her with Tricks of the Trade while she established threat on the new one, she popped tanking CDs, and the healer healed through it. Getting the remaining Raging Spirits down was tricky since she had to hold them as well as LK, but we (melee) spread out to minimize Vile Spirit damage and the healers kept the MT up. We managed to get them down and place our Defiles neatly and we pulled it off. :)

[Lyanna Stark]

Well done on the LK kill :) Sounds like a tricky one you pulled off there.

Regarding the trinket, yes apparently it's called "Juggernauts Vitality" for Horde and "Satrina's impending Scarab" for Alliance. WEIRD!! :P

TOC is a pain to PUG, I agree. That said, I actually prefer to pug the first couple of bosses in 25 mans as you have more people and it allows for more error. Also: the trinket drops off Faction Champions, meaning if you have a mediocre group, you chould at least be able to down Jaraxxus. Really bad groups fail at Beasts (which by the way is FAR harder in ten man to heal, borderline brutal, if you don't have a holy pally) but the half mediocre ones normally blow up on Twin Valkyrs (cos switching colour is hard!)

[Darkostar]