Archive for January, 2009
So last night I took a couple of my alts (a shaman and a priest) and a guildie (a warlock) through blood furnace, boosting them with my Level 80 feral druid.
I wasn’t sure how much the difficulty would increase over hellfire ramparts but I needn’t have worried.
The run went smoothly and the only deaths were when i set my alts to follow my guildie and he decided to loot Broggok (I think that’s his name) before the poison cloud disperesed.
My shaman got the mace I wanted from the first boss (first run luck I guess). The rest of the drops were for clothies.
The nastiest mobs in this instance are the ones that drop the proximity mines. I’d recommend not pulling too many of them at once. Other than that this instance is a piece of cake.
So I’ll definitely boost my team in here to about 64 (with some questing thrown in to alleviate boredom) and then try them out in Mana tombs.
I’m going to add my 61 (oh so nearly 62) mage to the group and I spent some time macroing up a totemsequence on the shaman and am going to add a macro that will pop my trinkets when available and trigger elemental master when I throw a lightning bolt. I’ve got a castsequence I want to try on my arcane mage.
I’m working out what healing macros I need. I figure a macro for each character, possibly with key modifiers to do different heals (and possibly shield them). I also guess one that will heal the target of a mob I select. In general this would be the tank but if the tank lost aggro it would heal the target the mob is going for.
Okay my level 80 tank is unlikely to be losing threat to my lowbies, but when I hit northrend instance it may be more useful.
January 29th, 2009
Post WOTLK I have found boosting with my 80 feral druid to be a joy. My two lowbies that I picked up from level 21 have got to outlands in what seems like super quick time for me.
Whereas before I would boost to 45 then quest the rest of the way, this time round I hit up stratholme from 45 - 58/59.
I hoped that I would be able to boost them through outlands instances at least for the first few levels, and last night I decided to try hellfire ramparts.
I’ve taken it steady, pretty much pulling the mobs in the groups they are in, with no issues. I’m going to get a bit more aggressive with the number of groups I pull from now on though to speed up clearances.
At the moment the lowbies are complete passengers. I did a load of starter quests in outlands just to gear them up a bit and once they are close to 62 I’m going to add my 62 mage to the mix.
I’ll macro up the priest to heal/shield any member of the team and get the mage and shaman to dps.
My initial plan was to just instance my way to 68, but I figure i’ll hit up each new area and do the starter quests for some nice quick XP then head into the instances.
So now I guess it’s a case of looking at instances with bosses that are mainly tank and spank.
At some point I guess I should really fraps these runs.
January 27th, 2009
I promised that I would give feedback on boosting in Stratholme and as I’ve been running that place a heck of a lot recently I’m in a position to give feeback.
Boosting Stratholme with a level 80 druid rocks!
I started out slowly. My druid didn’t have the key to the dead side (and to be honest I didn’t even know where the side entrance was as I’d only been in Strat a few times before).
I did a complete run of the live side and headed on through to the dead side.
If you are multiboxing a team I would highly recommend avoiding the Scarlet compound. It is a pain. Stuns, bubbles, adds and random skeletal groups appearing out of nowhere resulted in my lowbies dying a lot and me needing to res them, and as you know anything killed whilst you are dead yields no XP.
When you are in the undead side keep an eye out for Magistrate Barthilas, I’m sure he’s near one of the gates in to the gauntlet. Kill him and get the key for the side entrance.
After the first run I zoned in to Stratholme from the side entrance, and would kill all of the undead side, and would kill all the undead on the live side. I never set foot in the scarlet compound again.
Some tips for Stratholme.
1. Have someone who can cure disease in your party. One of my lowbies was a shaman so I would just drop a disease cleansing totem whenever I got infected. This disease is a real pain.
2. Watch out for A red yell about there being Living in Stratholme. Basically there are random spawn mobs called Eyes of Naxxramas that appear. They yell out, and if you don’t kill them quickly start spawning pairs of elite gargoyles. My lowbies died a few times to these. Later on I got in to the habit of watching for the yell and killing these characters before the gargoyles spawned.
3. Watch out for Traps. There are a couple of tunnels leading from one area to another. At least two of these have traps. The first spawns a number of shade type characters, which I was able to pick up aggro on and kill with no real problems. The second tunnel (the one that is just next to the scarlet compound) spawns lots of little rats. Difficult to target and I lost my lowbies to them far too many times. I tried keeping the lowbies back, but when the gates slam down the rats aggroed on them anyway and I couldnt get back to them before they died. Later runs I avoided this tunnel and went to the live side from the top tunnel.
Previously the kings of boosting in Stratholme were Paladins. Paladins were designed to kill undead and combined with their ability to heal and cleanse they had the most success.
Since patch 3 druids are fantastic in here too.
I pretty much stay in bear form and fairie fire a mob in a pack to aggro them all. Swipe kills them all off, as one group dies I pull the next. I’ve pulled two packs at a time and had no real problems. I’ve pulled 3 and had to heal up afterwards.
With two lowbies in the group and a level 80 druid my lowbies were getting about 3/4 of a full XP bar each run. That has stayed fairly consistent from 45 to 56.
Looting will slow down your XP gains. So for most of the runs I didn’t loot. I hadn’t even bought my lowbies any bags but realised I was leaving a heck of a lot of gold lying on dead mobs. So, the last few runs I put my main as the master looter, set him to pass on loot and set the loot level to rare (blues).
This way I would see sparkles only on mobs with blues on them and would assign the blue to my lowbies.
I’ve bought some 16 slot bags for both, and when I next boost I’ll set the loot level to greens and vendor or AH them.
I will be doing this in future for any other lowbies I boost and should help to cover the training and mount costs that I’ve been subsidising so far.
January 22nd, 2009
I promised that I would give feedback on boosting in Stratholme and as I’ve been running that place a heck of a lot recently I’m in a position to give feeback.
Boosting Stratholme with a level 80 druid rocks!
I started out slowly. My druid didn’t have the key to the dead side (and to be honest I didn’t even know where the side entrance was as I’d only been in Strat a few times before).
I did a complete run of the live side and headed on through to the dead side.
If you are multiboxing a team I would highly recommend avoiding the Scarlet compound. It is a pain. Stuns, bubbles, adds and random skeletal groups appearing out of nowhere resulted in my lowbies dying a lot and me needing to res them, and as you know anything killed whilst you are dead yields no XP.
When you are in the undead side keep an eye out for Magistrate Barthilas, I’m sure he’s near one of the gates in to the gauntlet. Kill him and get the key for the side entrance.
After the first run I zoned in to Stratholme from the side entrance, and would kill all of the undead side, and would kill all the undead on the live side. I never set foot in the scarlet compound again.
Some tips for Stratholme.
1. Have someone who can cure disease in your party. One of my lowbies was a shaman so I would just drop a disease cleansing totem whenever I got infected. This disease is a real pain.
2. Watch out for A red yell about there being Living in Stratholme. Basically there are random spawn mobs called Eyes of Naxxramas that appear. They yell out, and if you don’t kill them quickly start spawning pairs of elite gargoyles. My lowbies died a few times to these. Later on I got in to the habit of watching for the yell and killing these characters before the gargoyles spawned.
3. Watch out for Traps. There are a couple of tunnels leading from one area to another. At least two of these have traps. The first spawns a number of shade type characters, which I was able to pick up aggro on and kill with no real problems. The second tunnel (the one that is just next to the scarlet compound) spawns lots of little rats. Difficult to target and I lost my lowbies to them far too many times. I tried keeping the lowbies back, but when the gates slam down the rats aggroed on them anyway and I couldnt get back to them before they died. Later runs I avoided this tunnel and went to the live side from the top tunnel.
Previously the kings of boosting in Stratholme were Paladins. Paladins were designed to kill undead and combined with their ability to heal and cleanse they had the most success.
Since patch 3 druids are fantastic in here too.
I pretty much stay in bear form and fairie fire a mob in a pack to aggro them all. Swipe kills them all off, as one group dies I pull the next. I’ve pulled two packs at a time and had no real problems. I’ve pulled 3 and had to heal up afterwards.
With two lowbies in the group and a level 80 druid my lowbies were getting about 3/4 of a full XP bar each run. That has stayed fairly consistent from 45 to 56.
Looting will slow down your XP gains. So for most of the runs I didn’t loot. I hadn’t even bought my lowbies any bags but realised I was leaving a heck of a lot of gold lying on dead mobs. So, the last few runs I put my main as the master looter, set him to pass on loot and set the loot level to rare (blues).
This way I would see sparkles only on mobs with blues on them and would assign the blue to my lowbies.
I’ve bought some 16 slot bags for both, and when I next boost I’ll set the loot level to greens and vendor or AH them.
I will be doing this in future for any other lowbies I boost and should help to cover the training and mount costs that I’ve been subsidising so far.
January 22nd, 2009
Here is how I boost my alts.
level 1-10 Questing. (on the horde side I get to 8 then go to RFC in orgrimmar till 12)
level 10 - 20 Deadmines (Alliance) Shadow Fang Keep (Horde).
This was how I used to do it - Now I would recommend taking alliance teams through Shadow Fang keep instead. It’s a smaller, packed instance with less issues with patrol.
level 20 - 40 Scarlet Monastery. I just go to cathedral, with maybe one run through library to get the key. As i now hit the instance limit in the hour I will switch to running cathedral, then going to armory then resetting the instance and heading back in to cathedral (all four wings of Scarlet monastery count as 1 instance).
level 40-45 Zul Farrak. Despite the XP drop off in Scarlet monastery you might prefer just to run them through SM a bit more.
At 45 I used to just quest up to 60.
Now I would probably do:
45-58 Stratholme. (If your booster can cure disease, or your lowbies can). It’s a toughie and I would probably only do the dead side but will feedback more when I’ve tried it.
58 - 60 Hellfire ramparts. You can actually go in to Hellfire ramparts at 55 so if you can summon or portal through to outlands do so.
I plan on boosting my team with the druid in Ramparts and Bloodfurnace, possibly underbog - but as the instances toughen up I’ll switch to having them provide dps more and more. However it is likely I will start running them without level 80 backup and just have them quest to 68.
January 15th, 2009
Last night I decided to level another couple of characters.
I miss my horde shaman, so am going to level another one on the alliance side. I started out initially just boosting him - but when you’ve had the refer a friend bonus in the past you realise just how tedious it will be to level all the way to 60.
So I signed up for a new account and linked it to my veteran account.
I transferred a level 20 priest I had on another account to it and so now had a 21 shaman and a 20 priest as my team.
First stop was Stormwind stockades, and a few runs in just under an hour saw me hit the instance cap. Luckily I only had a couple of minutes to wait for it to reset and got another couple of runs in there. End result was my shaman was 25 and my Priest 24.
At this point I decided to take them to the Scarlet Monastery. Man that run is slooooow and long. Tram to ironforge, up through dun morogh, the wetlands, arathi highlands, hillsbrad foothills and on to tirisfal glades.
There’s a half hour of my life (or was it 45 minutes) I’ll never get back.
I finally got to SM and went in. I tucked my lowbies at the start of the instance and stealthed up to the cathedral doors, Opened them and then faerie fired the boss and legged it. I was in bear form and spent my time picking up those outside the cathedral on the way back to my lowbies. I was taking a pounding but nothing bear form couldn’t handle.
So I ran back to the initial corridor, line of sighting the casters and proceeded to swipe them down. I figured Barksin might be a good idea - and hit thorns by mistake.
It took me a precious few seconds to realise I wasn’t in bear form and swap back, but by that time my health was dangerously low.
I died. How embarrassing.
My shaman dinged. At least that was something.
So the next run I varied my strategy. I stealthed to the boss. I faerie fired him in cat form, turned and sprinted. I didn’t bother picking up stragglers and brought them back to my tanking point, and just smashed them down.
It worked a treat. I repeated this a few times (and hit the instance reset limit).
Overall I had advanced my characters 9 levels in about 2 and a half hours of actual instance time.
I’ve kept them stationed just outside SM.
In my next post I’ll list the instances I use and the levels I go there, and stay there til.
January 15th, 2009
In my last post I talked about what a noob I was with Cat dps and what I was going to do to improve it. Well on Friday I got my chance to run a heroic (The Nexus) and try to improve my position on the damage meters.
So, first things first - I installed a damage meter add on (Violation). I figured It would give me a quick indication of how I was doing.
My basic plan of attack was to keep up Savage roar at all times. Have mangle debuff on at all times and rake bleed effect on at all timees). When 5 combo points I would rip. If rip was already up and had time to run I would ferocious bite.
The difference in my DPS was startling. From the start I was high up on the damage meters. Initially in 1st place, but falling behind a Death Knight to 2nd as the instance progressed.
At one point I dropped to third behind our very well geared Paladin Tank.
Previous runs to The nexus on heroic had been significantly harder. Anomalus was a pain with us wiping on him a couple of times. This time round he was one shotted. The extra DPS i was bringing helped against the chaotic rifts and all went smoothly.
The final dragon boss always proved difficult - again this time we one shotted her with no difficulty.
I ended the instance in 2nd place and was a lot happier that I was contributing fully. With this very same group I was always in 4th place, down about 5% in damage from the 3rd place mage.
I disconnected mid way through the instance - and my damage meter was reset, but for the latter part of the instance I was 1st on damage, so I’m hoping that was an indication that I was handling keeping my bleed effects and debuffs up.
It just goes to show a few minor changes can make a huge difference to damage output.
January 12th, 2009
Whilst I love the play style of a feral druid I came to a startling realisation yesterday.
As a feral druid I suck. I’ve failed as a tank in the past (despite tanking successfully on a pally and a deathknight) and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not that good in cat form either.
I’ve recently hit 80 and I’m starting to gear up. Initially on guild runs I was looking at the damage meter and I’m always in 4th place.
I’ve never been consistently in 4th place on any other character.
At first I thought it was because my guildies have all been 80 longer, have geared up a bit more. I put a lot of the damage difference to them all having AOE abilities. However as I’ve geared up I’ve not seen a big jump in my DPS.
Last night I finally faced the fact that It’s not mine or others gear that’s the issue, it’s more the fact that I am very much sub par as a feral druid.
It’s time for this to change!
Whilst levelling I would pretty much do the following.
Run up to mob, mangle,mangle,mangle,mangle and put on a finishing bleed or mangle again. (I used to FB but it tended to be overkill). End result was mob was dead and very quickly at that.
However the clueless little druid that I am I carried that behaviour over into instances.
After a heroic last night, and very much dissatisfied with my damage) I started to read up a bit on ElitistJerks. A lot of what I was reading was related to raiding, but it certainly is applicable to boss fights and will help on trash too to a lesser extent.
I went on another heroic and my guildies were a bit bemused when I was expressing my concerns at my DPS. They’ve always considered me a good capable player. Actually saving the day on some occassions. However I felt like I was being carried.
So I got the damage meter reset and started trying a few new things. I saw an increase but nothing startling (about 1% after a few trash fights, but not anything conclusive).
My guildies said not to worry - we were killing trash - but wait till we get to the end boss and they’ll reset the meter and see how my damage was.
So that’s what we did. I tried a few more of the things I wanted to do, and was 2nd on the damage meter for that boss.
This was still with a sub par rotation, far too much mindless button mashing but I’ve been researching more today and have a load to try for my next session.
I must use Savage roar - I’ve always viewed this as a finisher (and always considered other finishers better). Well when you have an ability that ups your Attack Power by 40% that’s something you want to keep up at all times. This alone would put my damage up through the roof.
I should also be doing rip when I have 5 combo points up, and keeping the mangle and rake debuffs on at all times.
I should fit shreds in when I can, and I guess I should try and keep faerie fire up on bosses too.
I’ve always used tiger fury corectly apparently (at least I was doing one thing right ).
I’m going to grab a dot timer add on (dotimer probably) and make sure I can see clearly exactly how long each of my effects and debuffs have left to run - this is vital.
I really have to play the cat druid more like I used to play my affliction lock. Getting those dots (bleeds) and debuffs up and refreshing them in as efficient a manner as possible. The cat seems more complicated (I played my lock at 70), but I’m at least familiar with what I need to do.
I’ll maybe start using an addon like recount and try some practise dummy action to try and get my rotations down.
This druid is going to improve.
January 8th, 2009
I made a post asking if Wrath of the lich king was too easy.
My conclusion was that for the most part it was. However having Dinged 80 on my trusty druid (who’s now feral) I think I have to revise my assessment.
Heroics in Wrath can be quite challenging. I actually rejoiced when we wiped on a boss a few times as it meant we actually had to work on what we were doing.
That was in heroic violet hold - and we had that awful boss that summons the spheres.
We had to go through the first six portals and got the same boss each time (even after resetting). Eventually we worked out the strategy (keep him and you away from those spheres) and we downed him.
We’ve also found another way of making instances more challenging on our lowbies. (level 70-72 characters).
We 4 man instances that are the right level for us.
Most bosses we down. Occassionally you get one that’s tougher and requires good coordination.
I’m looking forward to doing some of the tougher heroics (and I’m sure blizzard will have a patch down the line with some harder content).
All in all though - I’m very happy with Wrath.
January 7th, 2009
After a break whilst I levelled my druid to 80 and my deathknight to 72 I’ve decided that I’m going to dip my toes back in to the waters of multiboxing.
I don’t fancy multiboxing my current characters - paladin and mages etc so I’ve decided to start an entirely different team.
Contrary to popular advice (including my own) I’m going with a melee heavy team.
One of the problems of melee teams has been the positioning so that all toons are in range of the mob you are attacking and for me I’ve avoided having more than one melee character in a team because of it.
However Deathknights have abilities that negates a lot of the problems.
Firstly, they have Deathgrip. instead of trying to position myself in range of the mob I hit death grip and basically pull the mob to me. Instantly in range of all my melee characters.
Secondly there is death and decay. I can put out a load of AEO damage on the three deathknights. The problem of Death and Decay is it has to be placed via a targetting circle, but I think I have ways to do that on all three characters at the same time.
I was originally going to go with 4 deathknights but figured having a second shaman in there would be good. the extra utility of a second set of totems, a second character that can pop the odd heal seemed too good to pass up. (not to mention the spirit wolves).
I plumped for a resto shaman as my healer. Can aoe heal, has totems for utility, can take a hit or two and will be able to deal with aoe splash damage from instance mobs.
I figure this will be a good team for instances and will be quite useful in Battlegrounds.
January 7th, 2009