Posts filed under 'Classes'
This is a bit of a belated post. I actually dinged 80 on the 6th September.
The route I took to levelling them.
0-60 boosting through various Azeroth instances.
60-66 a mix of questing and early BC instances. I did Hellfire Ramparts, and blood furnace, slave pens, steamvaults and mana tombs. Cleared most of the the nagrand quests (apart from the arena event).
66-68 was mainly in Battlegrounds.
68-71 Mostly questing in Northrend to gear up. Did a chunk of BG’s too.
From 71 to 80 just blew by. 99% of the time was spent in BG’s with brief forays in questing. I did break at 77 to do a chunk of quests in Sholazar basin.
The only negative to the whole BG levelling was the lack of income. Only one of my shaman has cold weather flying. The other 3 don’t even have flying yet. To be fair I had stripped all the gold off of my horde characters a while back to transfer to alliance so i could get an epic flapper on my druid so that didn’t help.
In fact i’ve only just got enough money together to train up all the shaman fully.
I suppose I could go and do a load of quests. There are entire areas I haven’t even hit yet so that would bring in a nice quick income. Then again I believe there are some welfare mounts you can get that fly at walking speed. They are over in K3, but if it allowed me to open up the dailies on all my guys it might just be worth it.
However, the battlegrounds are still calling to me. I haven’t bothered doing anything but AV at the moment but perhaps it’s time to hit up arathi, eye of the storm, strand of the ancient. Not sure if I would do warsong gulch - taking up 4 slots as a multiboxer might not be the best move.
September 14th, 2009
Last night was somewhat unexpected.
No scheduled raid and not enough people to do a run with so I wasn’t expecting much. However one of our guildies has been making overtures to another small guild that don’t quite have the member base to raid, or don’t want to be a raiding guild. We were going to do a few trial runs of heroics with mixed guild runs to see what the other people in the guild were like, when one of our guildies noticed we could put together a 10 man. 7 from our guild and 3 from the other.
So we found our way to outside of Naxx. Gave out vent details and did some brief introductions. The folks seemed nice enough and off we all went.
We had a whale of a time. We did spider wing super quick. Had an unlucky wipe on Faerlina when she was very low on hitpoints, but sailed through it. We then headed on to the plague wing.
Our last run there took out Noth the plaguebringer and we finally downed Heigan after wipes.
This time round we killed Heigan on our second attempt and found ourselves in front of loatheb. Apparently loatheb is a bit of a gear check (similar to the curator fight in Kara).
If you can’t down this guy you need to gear up, it’s as simple as that. It’s a fairly simple tank and spank. Healers have a hard time as they appear to get 3 second windows to heal through, the rest of the time they can’t heal.
We downed Loatheb with no problems at all.
So our joint run was very successfull. The other guild seem to match ours in their attitude. Lots of friendly camraderie, no guilt trips, and no egos in play. So things look bright for fun raiding.
We’ll be hitting up Naxx again on Friday. I’m hoping we will definitely clear at least one of the other wings (if not both)
We’ve done a bit of the construct ring before. Downing Patchwerk but wiping on grobbulus so it will be great if we can take him out this time.
April 30th, 2009
I mentioned recently that I was going to switch my paladin from retribution to protection for my mixed melee team.
I want to run heroics on him (although all of the team isn’t at that stage) and so I wanted to get to the 540 defense rating. For heroics 535 makes you uncrittable to the level 82 bosses, 540 is required for the level 83 bosses found in raids.
A quick search on the internet and I found this really good guide to initially gearing up a paladin.
This site is fantastic and contains everything you need to know about tanking as a paladin.
I was lucky enough to have the titansteel shield and at least 1 epic from Naxxramas 10 mans that had defense on it, but still only had just over 400 defense. Following this guide I was able to go from 400 defense to my target of 540 well within 2 days.
The rep items and crafted stuff that phase 1 suggested was relatively cheap.
I did have to gem for defense, using I thick autmn’s glow gems - or something like that.
Each of them adds 16 defense rating (or about 4 defense).
I also had to put a defense enchant on my chest and a titanweave enchant on my cloa to get to the magic 540.
I’ve only got about 19k health unbuffed so some of the harder heroics will be out, but it’s a great starting point.
April 28th, 2009
Last wednesday our guild took our second run at Naxx.
We started out in the spider wing, and had no problems, other than wiping on Faerlina who we successfully one shotted last time.
We had plenty of time left and so decided to try another wing.
So found ourselves very quickly up against Patchwork. This was a very easy fight for us. Tank and spank and we downed him really easily.
Then we hit Grobbulus, and just couldn’t get by him. The first few times we were just getting used to where the druid was kiting him, where we would run to to wait out the debuff. In theory this isn’t a tricky fight, but no matter what we did we couldn’t finish this guy off. Our best attempt got him down to about 1/6th of his hits, so we know he was doable. We ran out of kiting room, as it appears some people weren’t dropping off the debuff where they should have. However after about 6-7 wipes on this boss we had to call it a night.
I know everyone else has been running Naxx forever but I’m loving the fact that our guild is learning this fight together. My previous experiences of raiding has always been joining a well geared up group who know the fights inside out, but I definitely prefer being in a group with friends and learning the fights and gaining the achievements together.
April 14th, 2009
I logged on Friday night and decided it was time for me to improve my gear.
After doing a bit of research I had found that the gear I was wearing (even the blues) really wasn’t that bad and so decided to invest in regemming, getting armour patches and enchants on everything, even adding some decent leg armour. I was concentrating mainly on Stamina as that was probably the stat I was lacking in most.
My health improved quite nicely going from just over 19k to over 22k in caster form, which put me at over 30k health in bear form unbuffed. My armour is about 30k, and my dodge chance is about 33%.
Our main tank was levelling an alt so the guild was quite happy for me to run as the tank to gain more experience.
We started with the
heroic of the day, the culling of stratholme.Quite a quick heroic and can be frenetic. We wiped twice, both times , through mistakes I made.
One was piling in to a bunch of mobs with feral charge, just putting me out of healing range.
The second wipe was just running out of rage when mobs spawned at either ends of a corridor in one of the buildings. No rage to try and gather the mobs together and they were running everywhere. Sadly I failed to get aggro back in time, end result was a dead healer and a wipe.
I did feel bad as we couldn’t remember the last time we wiped on this heroic. Still, I’ll ensure it doesn’t happen again.
It went smoothly after that and we beat the final boss (I won’t say downed him as he doesn’t die 
)
After much discussion we decided to do utgarde keep, and then follow that with the harder utgarde pinnacle.
Utgarde keep was a piece of cake. I’d tanked it easily the night before and noticed a huge difference from my gear upgrades (not to mention my gains in experience).
Utgarde pinnacle was another first time tanking experience. It has one very difficult fight in it. I’d only been in there once after being a fresh level 80, and we wiped tonnes on one particular boss.
However this time round it went pretty well. It’s a gauntlet type affair. When you run towards the boss, he mounts a dragon and flys off. One person picks up harpoons and when the boss is in range shoots him with the harpoon. In the mean time, loads of big vrykul fellas run down the hall towards you, and you have to pick them up and move on towards the end of the hall. The dragon occasionally flies down and does a frost breath down one side of the hall or other, so you have to move to avoid that. Wave after wave of these vrykuls come and you have to pick up the aggro on all of them – which can be quite difficult as a bear tank due to the longish cooldown on your roar.
Eventually the boss comes down and dismounts. He does a whirlwind type thing – going after one person at times , and you have to avoid it. ( I really must pay more attention to the bosses names).
I struggled grabbing the aggro fully on the waves the first time and we died after the boss got to the ground, however the second time went a lot better, thanks to the ret pally taunting off a mob that I had missed that decided it wanted to say hello to the healer, and the boss was dead.It was pretty easy after that. I did have one scary moment on a bad pull but recovered nicely.
It was still quite early and so it was off to do a heroic nexus run. Nobody really wanted to do it but our healer was after a mace from the end boss (called something like the mace of unrequited love) so we went there.
This one was an absolute cake walk. I’d learnt a lot from the tanking of the other instances and we burned through the place.
One boss we used to find hard when we first started doing heroics we breezed through (anomulus), one guildie Jude even commented that she thought this was the quickest we had ever downed him.
All other bosses are fairly simple. The end boss can be problematic if you don’t know what you are doing but now he is no problem at all.
At the end of it all I felt like a proper tank. I’ve got used to watching the other members of the team, and have recovered mobs that were going for the healer before the healer had to worry. My guildies warnings were coming after I spotted what was happening, so I’m happy with that.
I’ve got quicker on the growls and aoe taunts now, which makes a huge difference, when mobs can one or two shot your healer.
I’ve learnt some things to watch for when pulling as well.
And most importantly, I’m having fun too.
March 2nd, 2009
I mentioned to my guild master and the main guild tank (another feral druid) that I wouldn’t mind trying my hand at some tanking.
I’d only ever tried tanking once on my druid, around level 73 having just respecced from Moonkin to feral. I had no understanding of what I was doing and it was a mess. That put me off tanking for quite a while (I got some good natured ribbing from my guildies over my tanking abilities - or lack of them - for quite some time).
However, I figured with all i’ve learnt since then that it was time to try again.
My plan was to break myself in gently with a couple of normal instance runs just to get used to it and learn the ropes.
Instead our guild master suggest we try Utgarde keep heroic and see how it goes, and if I do well we can go on to try gun’drak, the heroic of the day.
I was nervous and headed off to respecc. A straight 60 points in feral and 11 in resto later and it was back to Dalaran. I swapped out a couple of glyphs for more bear form suitable ones, settling for growl, mangle and maul (if i remember rightly).
My hp felt a bit low. I had only 25-26k when I was in the instance. I’ve hit as much as 30k with buffs but not in last nights group which consisted of a fire mage, ret pally, rogue, resto druid and of course myself.
I was pleasantly surprised when we completed Utgarde keep with no wipes whatsoever. I was nervous approaching each boss – especially the last, but it all went well.
My aggro generation was fine and the healer was able to keep me topped up so the guild was quite happy for me to tank Gun’Drak.
(We had been in there the night before with our main tank and struggled with the Snake boss. Without much AOE the snakes wrapped key players up until we got it all worked out).
So I pull the snake boss the first time and run for it. I get poison bolted a couple of times on the way up and was low on health by the time I get up the stairs. The healer pulls aggro healing me and we wipe. It did not bode well.
I pull the boss the second time, manage to run up the stairs with no major health loss, and get aggro on the boss at the top.
We have the extra aoe of a mage in the group this time, so when the snake adds arrive they are no problem, nobody gets wrapped up and the boss dies really quickly. Pleasantly surprised, I was now certain we could cope with the other
bosses.
I wiped once on the elemental boss – he’s a big stone statue with elementals round him. When you start the fight the elementals all go in to him.
It’s a tank and spank for a while. At certain points he becomes immune and a large elemental comes out of him and you have to taunt it, and then kite it round to
avoid these pools of purple water that do shed loads of damage. At certain points he drops aggro and Surges on to one
of the group. The first time I failed to taunt on every surge (thinking he would charge them, then return) , the healer died, then a dps and we wiped.
The second time I knew to taunt and it all went perfectly and the boss died.
I didn’t have any problems with the next boss Eck (That is one ugly brute).
No problems on the boss that turns into a mammoth. We did try interrupting the transform but he snuck one in towards the end.
We wiped once on the last boss, after he wiped out our healer in one hit, but downed him the second time.
There was one near wipe that I directly attribute to my lack of experience pulling groups, but I learnt from it and will try not to make the same mistake again.
So all in all I’m quite pleased with my performance. I need to improve stamina wise, but as it was only my second attempt at druid tanking ever,
my first attempt at tanking at max level and with it being heroics as well, I feel I did alright (I had envisaged a horrible wipe fest and being banned from tanking ever again )
Most importantly, it was fun and I’ll be looking forward to tanking in the future.
February 26th, 2009
Ever since patch 3.08 hit I’ve been meaning to go and train Feral Cat Swipe. It was on my todo list and yet I never seemed to bother, I questioned whether I would ever really use it, and wondered if it would make any difference.
I’ve been doing pretty well on the damage meter in the guild heroic runs but as just about everyone has some kind of AOE I tend to fall behind on trash and pick up a lot of damage on bosses.
So on Friday night I decided to train swipe and get summoned back for our Heroic Nexus run.
A wonderful thing happened. I jumped up to 1st place on the damage meter for a while. For the rest of the run the 1st-4th positions were changing constantly.
The end run had my damage meter reporting me in 2nd place and someone elses reporting them in 2nd place.
A further run through heroic violet hold saw me in 1st place
I particularly love it when I’ve got berserk up.
I pick one of the mobs, put a bleed effect on and a mangle, then savage roar with the combo points. I might do one swipe if i have enough energy left, then hit berserk and spam swipe for all it’s worth.
What a great ability, great ability. I ‘ll be trying it when I boost alts through scarlet monastery.
February 4th, 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
The long awaited Wrath of the Lich King arrived, and it is every bit as good as I hoped it would be.
Northrend looks fabulous, Death Knights are every bit as fun as i thought they would be - and their instances starting area has fantastic quests and a wonderful event as the end quest.
There is only one negative. The masses and masses of idiots that have crawled out of the woodwork. In the race to level politeness and basic etiquette has gone out the window.
Mob tagging and kill stealing are rife.
Even your own faction will be doing their best to tag mobs before you.
The most recent example (which did make me chuckle)
I was questing in zangarmarsh on my Deathknight. I was doing the umbrafen quest and had to kill a named mob in the top of a hut. So i get there and a gnome deathknight has just killed it. So i wait patiently for a respawn. I’ve been there for a number of minutes when a horde deathknight comes in. He stands right in front of my human deathknight and it’s pretty obvious to me that this guy is going to try to tag the mob before I do.
So i get smart. I update a targetting macro I have with the mob name, and I spam it.
I know the boss has a couple of guards and if they respawn and I’m tab targetting I may miss out on vital opportunity to tag the boss.
I’ve also got my fingers hovering over death grip and icy touch (I think that’s what it’s called).
The boss spawns I pull him to me and tag him then burn him down.
At which point this horde Death Knight gets angry.
I get spat on, I get a slap round the face, he brushes up against me and farts and then struts round calling me a chicken. (Even though he isn’t pvp flagged).
This moron was actually upset that he was unable to steal the mob I had been waiting patiently for.
So i did the only decent thing - I laughed at him for a while, then blew him a kiss then went on my way.
Now the evil side of me had toyed with two revenge acts. One was to wait for the respawn and tag the boss again. (mildly naughty).
The other was to log on to one of my horde characters and mock him via whispers. (very naughty, and probably against blizzards rules)
However I think it’s much better to leave them bristling with rage whilst I go on and actually enjoy my game time.
November 18th, 2008
The long awaited Wrath of the Lich King arrived, and it is every bit as good as I hoped it would be.
Northrend looks fabulous, Death Knights are every bit as fun as i thought they would be - and their instances starting area has fantastic quests and a wonderful event as the end quest.
There is only one negative. The masses and masses of idiots that have crawled out of the woodwork. In the race to level politeness and basic etiquette has gone out the window.
Mob tagging and kill stealing are rife.
Even your own faction will be doing their best to tag mobs before you.
The most recent example (which did make me chuckle)
I was questing in zangarmarsh on my Deathknight. I was doing the umbrafen quest and had to kill a named mob in the top of a hut. So i get there and a gnome deathknight has just killed it. So i wait patiently for a respawn. I’ve been there for a number of minutes when a horde deathknight comes in. He stands right in front of my human deathknight and it’s pretty obvious to me that this guy is going to try to tag the mob before I do.
So i get smart. I update a targetting macro I have with the mob name, and I spam it.
I know the boss has a couple of guards and if they respawn and I’m tab targetting I may miss out on vital opportunity to tag the boss.
I’ve also got my fingers hovering over death grip and icy touch (I think that’s what it’s called).
The boss spawns I pull him to me and tag him then burn him down.
At which point this horde Death Knight gets angry.
I get spat on, I get a slap round the face, he brushes up against me and farts and then struts round calling me a chicken. (Even though he isn’t pvp flagged).
This moron was actually upset that he was unable to steal the mob I had been waiting patiently for.
So i did the only decent thing - I laughed at him for a while, then blew him a kiss then went on my way.
Now the evil side of me had toyed with two revenge acts. One was to wait for the respawn and tag the boss again. (mildly naughty).
The other was to log on to one of my horde characters and mock him via whispers. (very naughty, and probably against blizzards rules)
However I think it’s much better to leave them bristling with rage whilst I go on and actually enjoy my game time.
November 18th, 2008
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