So i was trying to figure out at which point Drain Soul is better to use than Shadowbolt while flying through the hoops on Alysrazor. Google brought me this fabulous video guide of Alysrazor as an Affliction warlock. The play here is very good and a real pleasure to watch + there were even extra tips such as double dotting onto the birds with soulswap. Not sure if i can pull it off next week but definitely going to try. But enjoy the video.
Anyway - why is it benefitial to switch to drain soul at a certain point you ask? As you gain haste Drain Soul gets extra stacks and still keeps the same drain time while the shadowbolt casts will eventually be faster than your GCD and so you will be waisting time waiting for the GCD will be up. Not to mention DS also refreshes corruption and UA on your target, So you will not have to worry about recasting them.
Not sure if this is backed up by any math, but it does seem pretty reasonable.
PS: Personal tip for the beginning of the fight. Drop your lock portal near the side of the firewall. So you can recover quickly after the initial knockback and you won't have to worry about owning a pair of goblin rocketboots ;)
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Dragonwrath, Legendary Staff - questline overview
Right Trying to compose some sort of a quick guide of how-to get the staff once you are on the questline.
- Preparation. kill a T11 endboss. Any of these, Nefarian, Cho'gall or Alak'ir, will do.
Step 1 (A Legendary Engagement)
- Go pick up the initial quest from inside the mage tower in the portal room.
Step 2
- Simply follow the quests to Caverns of time and watch a cutscene.
Step 3 (All-Seeing Eye)
- Go kill a bunch of Firelands bosses to collect 25 Eternal Embers.
10 man drops 0-1 per boss kill
25 man drops 1-3 per boss kill.
Also go buy 3 "Sands of Time" from uldum. Should be around 3k gold for 1. Less or more depending on reputation and guild perks.
Step 4
- You will need to do some solo quests in the nexus area and inside the nexus. Nothing really difficult just follow the quests and you should be done nicely.
Step 5 (Delegation)
- This is where the real tricky bit lies. You need to go dig out the branch of nondrassil from Firelands.
Basically you have to fight each of the 1st 4 bosses in the firelands to aqcuire certain items.
And once you have those items there is a special encounter that needs you to combine all those items to summon it.
Here is a very good post on the forums that explains what you need to do.
Also of a video of the encounter:
After you have killed the boss as you can see you get the branch of nondrassil and you can go and turn it in for your reward.
Step 6
- Some more running about and quest chains
Step 7 (Time Grows Short)
- Collect 1000 "Seething Sinders". Again dropped from bosses in firelands. More RNG. Nothing more really needs to be said here i think.
Step 8 - (The heard of flame)
After successfully managing to grind your way to a 1000 seething sinders you will be given your final task to go an kill ragnaros and obtain his fiery "heart of flame"
After managing this the staff should be in your hand
Reference: http://www.wowheadnews.com/blog=188751/dragonwrath-tarecgosas-rest-legendary-staff-quest-guide
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Follow up to the 5 mans
Seems that the 5 man dungeon groups problem got a slightly different but also quite elegant solution by blizzard.
Basically they increased the "Luck of the draw" buff to 15% for totally random groups (3 or more random people in the group) and it is slightly lower for groups with more people from the same erm original party in it. So it should work out quite well i think.
Source: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/2209011
Alhtough it is not as "cool" as quests to introduce dungeoneering abilities would be, it will do the job i think. So good game blizzard.
In case you aren't already aware, Luck of the Draw is the name of the buff you get for grouping with random people using Dungeon Finder. It currently provides a 5% buff to damage, healing, and health if you have at least one random player in your group. With patch 4.0.6, we are increasing this buff to 5% damage, healing, and health per random player, up to a maximum of 15%.
Basically they increased the "Luck of the draw" buff to 15% for totally random groups (3 or more random people in the group) and it is slightly lower for groups with more people from the same erm original party in it. So it should work out quite well i think.
Source: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/2209011
Alhtough it is not as "cool" as quests to introduce dungeoneering abilities would be, it will do the job i think. So good game blizzard.
Friday, February 4, 2011
On 5 man heroic dungeon difficulty and the LFD tool.
So the debate rages on with blizzard again announcing that 5 man heroic difficulty needs to be seriously looked at since dungeon finder groups are having a hard time with it (Source). Instead of saying yes this is a good idea or no this is a terrible idea, they are too easy already - i'm first just going to explain based on my own experiences why groups fail in 5 man dungeons.
The main reason why dungeon finder groups fail in Cataclysm in my opinnion in is.. tantadadaaa... Dpsers who don't know how to fill their role efficiently.
How have i come to such a conclusion?
When i started 1st running heroics on my warlock and now while still running my daily random on my warlock i notice that the tank and the healer you usally (90% of the time) get can more or less tank and heal efficiently. The people filling those two roles have really had to rock it out in heroics since the start of Cata as the difficulty in healing and by extension tanking smartly (stunning, interrupting also asking for CC-s for as much as you need) has increased by 10 fold compared to the end of WOTLK where we went into some heroics with our DK just switching into his Tank spec while being in full dps gear. So this has pretty much weeded out most of the bad tanks and bad healers or has taught them already enough to know how-to manage in these kinds of conditions.
Now dps hasn't really been affected by this change because there are 3 dps in any given dungeon group. And the general rule of the thumb seems to be that if even 1 of those dps manages to pull decent dps (10kish or more dps/s on bosses) and actually CC their target if asked then the group succeeds and the other 2 dps might be just dragged through content without requiring them to give any real effort in playing their class.
Also worth noting is that the higher your average dps is and the more targets you can effectively CC - the easier it is on the healer and the tank.
Now that i have leveled up my warrior to lvl 85 and have started tanking heroics it became very clear why tanks and healers don't want to go into dungeons with random dps. Because more often than not the dps you get from dungeon finder seems to be people who manage to pull barely 6k dps - while you as tank are doing 8k - and either don't speak english, don't know what their CC ability is or just are unable to pay attention whether they are standing in fire or not.
In conclusion. I don't personally understand such people or their goals they have in the game as i find myself being quite the elitist jerk. On the other hand i do understand that everyone who pays their 10$ a month has the right to play the game to their own enjoyment the way they wish.
However i do feel that blizzard needs to do something to remedy the situation where people who clearly are not prepared are thrown into dungeon with other people who are prepared and ruin their day. As we all know this is not a singple player game.
Now my personal suggestion would be that this limit should'nt be a limit such as "get a higher ilvl" it should rather be some sort of questline depending on which role you wish to employ in a dungeon where you have to succeed in defeating a benchmark test. Such as do kill a target dummy with X hp in X seconds to qualify for a heroic dungeon while not standing in "GOO". Now if you fail that - there should be some suggestion on how to improve your dps in game.
Currently the responsibility to teach these skills to you does not actually fall upon the game but rather the other people in your group (to explain on how-to handle situations). While i'm sure such learning is fun to do with a group of friends it can be quite tedious in a LFD group with people who might not even speak the same language as you, might be tired of teaching such things to other, might just be bad teachers who critizise instead of giving any valid feedback or people who can't stand simple pointers and rather take them as criticism on their own person or any combination of the above. So therefore i think such benchmark tests to see if a person should be elgible for LFD groups should be implemented into the game itself instead of dropping the responsibility onto randomly chosen individuals.
The main reason why dungeon finder groups fail in Cataclysm in my opinnion in is.. tantadadaaa... Dpsers who don't know how to fill their role efficiently.
How have i come to such a conclusion?
When i started 1st running heroics on my warlock and now while still running my daily random on my warlock i notice that the tank and the healer you usally (90% of the time) get can more or less tank and heal efficiently. The people filling those two roles have really had to rock it out in heroics since the start of Cata as the difficulty in healing and by extension tanking smartly (stunning, interrupting also asking for CC-s for as much as you need) has increased by 10 fold compared to the end of WOTLK where we went into some heroics with our DK just switching into his Tank spec while being in full dps gear. So this has pretty much weeded out most of the bad tanks and bad healers or has taught them already enough to know how-to manage in these kinds of conditions.
Now dps hasn't really been affected by this change because there are 3 dps in any given dungeon group. And the general rule of the thumb seems to be that if even 1 of those dps manages to pull decent dps (10kish or more dps/s on bosses) and actually CC their target if asked then the group succeeds and the other 2 dps might be just dragged through content without requiring them to give any real effort in playing their class.
Also worth noting is that the higher your average dps is and the more targets you can effectively CC - the easier it is on the healer and the tank.
Now that i have leveled up my warrior to lvl 85 and have started tanking heroics it became very clear why tanks and healers don't want to go into dungeons with random dps. Because more often than not the dps you get from dungeon finder seems to be people who manage to pull barely 6k dps - while you as tank are doing 8k - and either don't speak english, don't know what their CC ability is or just are unable to pay attention whether they are standing in fire or not.
In conclusion. I don't personally understand such people or their goals they have in the game as i find myself being quite the elitist jerk. On the other hand i do understand that everyone who pays their 10$ a month has the right to play the game to their own enjoyment the way they wish.
However i do feel that blizzard needs to do something to remedy the situation where people who clearly are not prepared are thrown into dungeon with other people who are prepared and ruin their day. As we all know this is not a singple player game.
Now my personal suggestion would be that this limit should'nt be a limit such as "get a higher ilvl" it should rather be some sort of questline depending on which role you wish to employ in a dungeon where you have to succeed in defeating a benchmark test. Such as do kill a target dummy with X hp in X seconds to qualify for a heroic dungeon while not standing in "GOO". Now if you fail that - there should be some suggestion on how to improve your dps in game.
Currently the responsibility to teach these skills to you does not actually fall upon the game but rather the other people in your group (to explain on how-to handle situations). While i'm sure such learning is fun to do with a group of friends it can be quite tedious in a LFD group with people who might not even speak the same language as you, might be tired of teaching such things to other, might just be bad teachers who critizise instead of giving any valid feedback or people who can't stand simple pointers and rather take them as criticism on their own person or any combination of the above. So therefore i think such benchmark tests to see if a person should be elgible for LFD groups should be implemented into the game itself instead of dropping the responsibility onto randomly chosen individuals.
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