World of Warcraft

[Tobin]

[quote name='Shryke' post='1640234' date='Jan 6 2009, 23.55']Well, I came back from 1.5 weeks of no WoW today. Did the heroic (no legs from VH, fuck you Cyanigosa), did some dailies, was headed to the Basin when I suddenly remembered "Hey, my egg should be hatched by now".

I open it up.

[url="http://www.wowhead.com/?item=44707"]Reins of the Green Proto-Drake[/url]

Fuck YA!![/quote]


Gratz!

[RaceBannon42]

[quote name='SergioCQH' post='1640833' date='Jan 7 2009, 14.50']What are your system specs Race? Most importantly, what graphics card do you have? The recommended specs for WotLK are significantly higher than those for WoW and TBC. Upgrading your graphics drivers may help.[/quote]
I just installed an XFX 9800GT 512 MB DDR3 Dual Dual-Link DVI + TV-Out PCI-Express Video Card a month or so ago. It was the best one the store had that I didnt need to also upgrade the powersupply for. I also added a 3rd gig of Ram at the same time.

The mobo and proceser a bit over 3 yrs old.
MOTHERBOARD: (Sckt939)MSI MSI-K8N NEO4/SLI nForce4 SLI Chipset Dual PCIE MB w/Gb-LAN,USB2.0,IEEE-1394,&7.1Audio
CPU: (939-pin) AMD ATHLON64 X2 4400 CPU w/ HyperTransport Technology

It was pretty high end at the time. dual core/64 bit and all

[TerraPrime]

Meh. Our guild needs better organization in getting raids going. We're rather random hotch-potch grabbing whoever's on line at the moment. The GL is rather impatient in progressing through Nax, but the rest of the guild are not nearly geared ready yet. Meh.

At any rate, the rest of the guild muscled through Nax 10 and got to Sapph. I was there for trying Sapph, and we could not get pass 65%. People are dying too damn fast. I suspect that it's a gear level issue, but the GL insists that it is not. I have no other explanations. Most of us managed to avoid the blizzard, and not get hit by the AOE when the iceblock lands, and also to hide behind the iceblock. But usually, by the end of the first air phase, our healers (3 of them) were down to below 50% mana, and one of our dps is dead. Things just go downhill from there. Are there other tricks to the fight? Do your DPS split into 2 groups on left and right side of Sapph? Or do they cluster up at the hind leg? During air phase, do you spread out to avoid eating the AOE, or do you cluster? How is healing handled for the constant cold dmg tick? We tried different healer combos, with priest/sham/pally, or priest/priest/pally, or priest/priest/sham.

In other news, I traded my badges for an off-hand (2nd best in slot) and a belt (4th best in slot), and got to hit-cap finally. I danced with glee when I saw the WWS that I had 0% miss. Woot! I tried the different lock specs and found that I do better in Afflic with the current gear. The Felguard/Ruin did similar DPS, but I decided against it because my pet is doing 15% of the DPS. In many fights, your pet simply does not live long enough to do anything. In Afflic, if I don't get a felpuppy out, I only suffer a slight drop in damage output. I really sucked at the 0/30/41 spec, though. Probably because my crit was too low (19.5%). Thankfully, very few other locks are afflic, so the bug with Death Embrace doesn't affect me (currently, the first lock to land Death Embrace gets the dmg boost, so the second afflic lock is loosing the DE effect). I hope they end up fixing the bug as they promise in this next patch. I also got a better spell rotation for my afflic so that helped too. I need more badges for Orbs, so I can craft the tailoring pieces, and I also need badges for the trinket and the neck.


/whine

Seriously, WTF is with my rolls. I did maybe 12 heroics over the holiday, and lost every single orb roll. The 3 times that gear I can use dropped, I lost all of them. I did win some shard rolls, but seriously, I'm getting sick of having to rely on badges for everything.

/whine

[SergioCQH]

Ok, your system is probably limited by your CPU. You have all your graphics turned down to minimum when you raid?

[Kalbear]

If that's the case, Steve, chances are that you've got some issue with older drivers on that card, some problem that's conflicting with WoW (their FAQ has some hints on what to disable), or something that's consuming a lot of resources in the background. I suspect that it's the first one.

[quote]At any rate, the rest of the guild muscled through Nax 10 and got to Sapph. I was there for trying Sapph, and we could not get pass 65%. People are dying too damn fast. I suspect that it's a gear level issue, but the GL insists that it is not. I have no other explanations. Most of us managed to avoid the blizzard, and not get hit by the AOE when the iceblock lands, and also to hide behind the iceblock. But usually, by the end of the first air phase, our healers (3 of them) were down to below 50% mana, and one of our dps is dead. Things just go downhill from there. Are there other tricks to the fight? Do your DPS split into 2 groups on left and right side of Sapph? Or do they cluster up at the hind leg? During air phase, do you spread out to avoid eating the AOE, or do you cluster? How is healing handled for the constant cold dmg tick? We tried different healer combos, with priest/sham/pally, or priest/priest/pally, or priest/priest/sham.[/quote] Not sure if this'll help, but I'll try. We have everyone on the right side, and tank him facing KT's door. We like to have one priest or druid for healing the consistent dot, and more make it easier (having three CoH priests makes getting the achievement easy, frex). Having some frost resistance gear is helpful - especially for the tank and for the healers. As is having a shaman or paladin for the FR buff. In terms of other strategy, make sure people stay spread out until both ice blocks go down; the ice block does a fair amount of splash damage. Heal as they can.

[TerraPrime]

[quote name='Kalbear' post='1640903' date='Jan 7 2009, 15.54']Not sure if this'll help, but I'll try. We have everyone on the right side, and tank him facing KT's door. We like to have one priest or druid for healing the consistent dot, and more make it easier (having three CoH priests makes getting the achievement easy, frex). Having some frost resistance gear is helpful - especially for the tank and for the healers. As is having a shaman or paladin for the FR buff. In terms of other strategy, make sure people stay spread out until both ice blocks go down; the ice block does a fair amount of splash damage. Heal as they can.[/quote]

The tank seems to be surviving well without the frost gear, so that's good. Our priests go oom fast if they put frost gear on, though, so that makes it tricky. We've been asking them to put just one piece, and not the whole set, on for frost resist. We do have either pally or shaman for the aura/totem. We are making ppl avoid the splash and we managed it quite decently now. We typically spread out in 2 grps, and have 2 decursers for drain life (one on each side). We don't have a druid healer so we can't try that. The shaman uses chain heals and the priest uses CoH. If we carry the holy pally we typically put him on tank heal. So it seems like we're getting basic strategy down. I think we need better timing, and, despite what others in our guild said, better gear in general. One or 2 super-geared ppl are not going to carry the entire fight on this, I don't think.

[Kalbear]

I'd really recommend against being on both sides. It means that people can be easily out of range of healing and it can put a lot of strain on one healer to heal up a bad blizzard.

It's good that the tank has FR gear just because they can't avoid the blizzard most of the time.

[Stego]

Using one side is almost required. The reason for this is simply the time it takes to get behind an ice block.


A tank not wearing Frost Resist on this fight when it is progression is [i]fucking criminal[/i]. Same for KT. He may be living through it, but he is taking more healing than he needs to, and that in turn, is taking mana from healers and taking healing away from other raid members. The chest should be sufficient. I would not let a tank in the raid without it. Playing with more should also be an option. A tank owes it to his raid to have sufficient resist gear for all encounters, particularly when it is so damn cheap and easy to come by.

I think Kal was mistaken on the healers wearing FR, though. I had all our DPS wear one item of FR gear and the healers wear absolutely none. We did not want to fuck with their mana on learning such a healing intensive fight. (Compared to the other fights in Nax, anyway) I'm pretty sure we one-shotted it or first go. As we did the vast majority of Nax.

[me399]

My 14 year old is so addicted to this game. We got him the new expansion for Christmas. He was a lvl.55 then and right now he is a lvl71. He will sit in his room for 12 hours a day and play if I let him. Any of you want to play with him. He is really good and not a pain in the ass or anything. What info do I need to get from him or you so you all could play together sometime?

[Kalbear]

I remember having a lot of trouble in the 10-man without people - everyone - wearing FR gear. The FR gear does hurt mana regen, but adding more survivability to the healers seemed to make a couple of attempts more stable.

[Minaku]

[quote name='Stego' post='1640983' date='Jan 7 2009, 17.50']Using one side is almost required. The reason for this is simply the time it takes to get behind an ice block.


A tank not wearing Frost Resist on this fight when it is progression is [i]fucking criminal[/i]. Same for KT. He may be living through it, but he is taking more healing than he needs to, and that in turn, is taking mana from healers and taking healing away from other raid members. The chest should be sufficient. I would not let a tank in the raid without it. Playing with more should also be an option. A tank owes it to his raid to have sufficient resist gear for all encounters, particularly when it is so damn cheap and easy to come by.

I think Kal was mistaken on the healers wearing FR, though. I had all our DPS wear one item of FR gear and the healers wear absolutely none. We did not want to fuck with their mana on learning such a healing intensive fight. (Compared to the other fights in Nax, anyway) I'm pretty sure we one-shotted it or first go. As we did the vast majority of Nax.[/quote]

FR aura isn't enough?

As for me, if it gets bad enough, I'll frost ward to save some healer mana.

[TerraPrime]

Re: me399

[quote name='me399' post='1640991' date='Jan 7 2009, 16.54']My 14 year old is so addicted to this game. We got him the new expansion for Christmas. He was a lvl.55 then and right now he is a lvl71. He will sit in his room for 12 hours a day and play if I let him. Any of you want to play with him. He is really good and not a pain in the ass or anything. What info do I need to get from him or you so you all could play together sometime?[/quote]

It depends on what server and what side he plays on. If he's not on the same server as some of us are, then we cannot play together. If you know that information, you can post here and if someone reading this thread is also on that server and on the right side, they can then contact him or something.


Re: stego and kal

Thanks for the tips. I'll ask the tank whether he can get crit-capped with a piece of FR gear. Given the big Cleave, I'd prefer him to have crit immune first. But I suppose if switching out one piece of gear means the tank can't be crit immune means that our group really isn't ready for the fight (gear wise) anyway, so that'd be a bit moot.

[Shryke]

Quick question for the tanks here:

What's a good HP pool and Armor for Heroics/10-man raiding/25-man raiding?

(Obviously different for each, but I'm just looking for some ball-park figures for each)

[BlueRose]

I have almost 25k health unbuffed now and about 22k armor I think, and I do fine in heroics. I'm a warrior.

[Stego]

[quote name='BlueRose' post='1641041' date='Jan 7 2009, 18.46']I have almost 25k health unbuffed now and about 22k armor I think, and I do fine in heroics. I'm a warrior.[/quote]



This is more than enough.

[Shryke]

Thanks guys. I was trying to get a good sense of how geared I am.

I'm sitting at 24.9k Health, 23.8k Armor and 39.27% Parry+Dodge (49.27% with Blade Barrier up).

[Lyanna Stark]

Terra,

We haven't used any frost resist on tanks or healers (nor DPS, apart from the odd bit) for either Sapph or Kel. This goes for both 10 and 25 man. Our only resists are a paladin with frost aura or shaman totem. I have two man healed Sapph (and Kel) on 10 man with no resists, it is perfectly doable if you conserve your mana and have a replenishment class.

We normally stand between 9 o'clock and 6 o'clock, with the tank healer at 6 and the melee healer at 9, with decursers and raid healer in the middle. One 25 man we have two groups: basically the same as on ten man but with a mirror image.

I'd advice against your priests using CoH unless they significantly outgear the encounter or are healing melee. Don't use any heals you think will overheal or not be efficient. Be patient. Healers need to know how much their heals hit for, and not heal a 3k deficiency with a 7k heal (unless tank healing ofc). CoH is a high HPS spell, and Sapphiron is about HPM normally.

Prayer of Mending is totally OP on this fight. Have your priests use it and use it a lot. Shamans are far better for group healing with chain heals, while holy priests can abuse ProM, SoL procs and renew to keep ranged up plus spot heal. Loads of flash heal normally.

As Disc I mostly tank heal, but also help out on ranged with ProM, renew, shields and flash. In 10 man a Prayer of Healing timed when everyone is bunched up behind the iceblocks can work wonders and is a very nice HPM spell. Priests can also use their stupid Hymns on this fight, (one of few where it is marginally useful).

Interestingly, 10 man Sapph is probably more challenging than 25 man, as you need to be more careful with how you heal in 10 man and can't just muscle through it. Still, no real need for resist gear, but you definitely want a replenishment class to start out with. And something strong to drink for your healers, as it normally takes them some time to get used to the steady AoE damage going on. :P

[Darian Frey]

[quote name='Lyanna Stark' post='1641391' date='Jan 8 2009, 07.53']Terra,

We haven't used any frost resist on tanks or healers (nor DPS, apart from the odd bit) for either Sapph or Kel. This goes for both 10 and 25 man. Our only resists are a paladin with frost aura or shaman totem. I have two man healed Sapph (and Kel) on 10 man with no resists, it is perfectly doable if you conserve your mana and have a replenishment class.[/quote]

I concur. FR, other than what an aura or totem can provide just wasn't an issue for us, on any level. We have some fairly good DPS though which may have helped us muscle through before the healers ran out of juice. Either that or it's because our resident pally healer is effing insane.

ETA: Nuts and bolts of it is, anything outside of Sarth with drakes up or a touch of Malygos just isn't as challenging as encounters pre-TBC.

Ulduar should be fun :)

[GoN]

Never used FR on Sapph here either, only speaking in a 10 man pov. 2 healers- one shaman (moi) and a druid. Hell, we weren't allowed to use the totem so we could get the achievement. I general tank heal and chain heal melee, while the druid hots the fuck out of the raid.

Working on normal Sarth+2 atm. We only have 2 healers, and 2 tanks, so its been interesting to say the least. Our new guild goal is too see how much heroic content we can iron man. We've 10manned heroic Sarth- no drakes ofc; an 11 man heroic Anub- beating the 10 minute enrage by a minute and a half; cleared the rest of spider wing last night with 13. 2 healering constantly enraged Faerlina was interesting to say the least. Feels like the first challenge we've had in the expansion. Maex was fun as well.

Think we can manage most of the plague quarter barring any surprise enrages. Sadly, Construct and Deathknight are just not going to be doable :(

Yeah, you can say we're kinda ready for Uldaur. I hope its hard :(

[PhelanArcetus]

Well, we should be actually starting Naxx tonight, assuming we don't get too screwed by things like me potentially working late. I understand that it's pretty easy compared to BC raiding, and about half the group (not including either tank) has done at least part of it, so I expect we'll do pretty well. But we'll see.

I suppose I should invest in the chest relatively soon, and perhaps (but probably not) in the ring (not the ring more because learning the recipe takes 6 jewelcrafting tokens, while the chest is trainer; neither has mats I consider problematic).

Since people were in a Naxx group, and not a very good one as I hear it, I went and pugged some. Daily was VH again. No Lavanthor's again, though at least he spawned. Stilll haven't seen Erekem at all. And the only problem in the run was amusing. The mage got killed on the voidwalker, because people weren't killing the spawns (and not to get the achievement, just dumb/lazy; I killed when I got the debuff, since a shield slam crit pretty much handles them, I also kept up Imp Spell Reflect pretty regularly). So he gets rezzed, and asked for a table (which he forgot earlier). He puts up a Dalaran portal by mistake. The healer and hunter both go through it.

Little known fact: once you're out, you can't get back in until the event resets.

I foolishly decided to try for some more block/tankable dps gear, and ended up with an Utgarde Pinnacle group. Well, the priest had to respec from shadow (not like "hey guys I got a priest once she respecs", but like "oh, now that I've gotten to the instance I realize I'm the only person with any healing spells, I should go respec".) We barely got Svala, took a wipe on the menagerie, and wiped a few times on Skadi before giving up. She had not quite as much throughput as I'd like for pushing ahead in the gauntlet, and nowhere near the longevity. Additionally, our dps was low; things were dying much slower than acceptable.

And ground out a couple more bars to get the DK to 68.