Apanthrope, Shadow Priest

What does it take to succeed in WoW?

2008-08-21T12:04:00.003-04:00

The answer is rather simple: don't be an idiot. If you are even half paying attention and aren't a complete scrub, you'll probably get as far as you want to in WoW.

I'm going to do the Aged Grandfather thing and embarrass my guildies by telling stories about them now. The long and short of it is that they aren't scrubs, and don't know how good they really are.

Take Gorgor, our Hunter. He takes no end of flak for being a Hunter. Let's face it: everyone makes fun of Huntards. The class will be forever prejudiced against and stigmatized. But the thing is that Gorgor is actually the exception to the rule — he's a good Hunter.

I'm not going to say that his pet has never accidentally pulled aggro, or that he's never made any mistakes. Instead, his mistakes are so few and far between that you tend to forget that he's there.

Tanks and healers get to be superstars when they save the day, but how often do you think “dude, that Hunter just totally saved my butt!”. Not often. And yet, I can think of a number of times that Gorgor has been there for me, whether it be bandaging me while I DPS because the healer is focused on the MT, or laying down a Freeze Trap between my Mind Controlled mob and my body, or whatever.

Gorgor doesn't raid much — having little kids will do that to you. But after two weeks in Kara he'd picked up enough blues and purples that it looked like he was ready ...

Last night with us, Gorgor ran his very first Heroic.

The dungeon in question was Arcatraz — one of the hard-mode Heroics. Not only did he comport himself admirably, he managed to top the damage and DPS charts. Oh, and he died less often than everyone else. Not half bad, I think.

And sure, it irks me to no-end that this lowbie Kara-level Hunter can out-DPS me. I'm not bitter. Not at all.

But I digress.

Then there's Groosalugg, our Protection Warrior and MT. Groos pines for the days when he was specced Fury, and half-heartedly threatens once a week to respec back for good. He raids with roughly the same frequency as Gorgor, which is to say some Kara and maybe one other dungeon per week. I believe that Warcrafter ranks the two of them within a couple of gear points of each other.

And yet, for that infrequency and Kara-level gearing, Groos is an exceptional tank. He's exceptional to the point that I'll give him my highest praise: even with him in pre-Kara blues and greens and me in all purples at 1175 spell damage, I still had a hard time pulling aggro off of him. Even when I could, he'd almost always get it right back before I got squished.

On his first outing to Kara two weeks ago he was OT for most of it, switching to MT when it made more sense, and we one-shotted our way through almost the entire dungeon. On his first time ever seeing Maiden he was the MT and pulled off the kite-to-pop-the-healer maneuver flawlessly.

I'm lucky to run with such great people. We're calm on Vent. We handle wipes well. We take our time and think things through. PUGging is made all the more reprehensible because I know what it's like to be part of good group.

Arena: still mostly hopeless

2008-08-17T12:07:00.003-04:00

This week's Arena record: 2-8. And yet, we still get the occasional gem like this:

Shadow Priest and Prot Warrior — there's a reason our Arena team name contains the word “ludicrous”.

I am trying to figure out if it would be worth it to respec for Arena matches. If nothing else, the lack of Silence in my raiding spec is a major handicap. But if I'm going to respec, why not go Disc so that I can last longer than 15 seconds? Is it worth 100g for the pair of respecs? Napkin math says probably not — at least not until we get serious about Arena and actually care what our rating us. Until then, we're just farming points, and the gold could be better spent elsewhere.

Oh, and this just in: you might want to equip your PvP trinket for Arena matches. Maybe.

How To: Shadow Priest in Karazhan

2008-08-15T12:55:00.003-04:00

I've been looking over the traffic reports for this blog, and it seems that many people get here because they are looking for advice on what Shadow Priests should do in Kara. This one's for all of you.

First things first: remember that Shadow Priests (and Frost Mages and Warlocks) have the potential to significantly outgear most other classes at a Kara level. This includes tanks especially. Because we can complete our FSW set at 70, we're sitting on 3 purples the moment we step through the door to Kara. Many tanks won't be geared this well — there are a ton of tank drops in Kara that will help them catch up, but they may not be there just yet.

Because of this gear imbalance, a Shadow Priest will generally have to be extremely careful with their threat when running Kara with a fresh group. When you start to get Kara on farm it won't be so much of an issue, but it definitely is when you are just starting out. Keep an eye on your threat meter (you cannot run as a Shadow Priest without one) and make sure you are never at the top of the list.

Here are some Shadow Priest tips for each fight:

Attumen

Do what all of the other ranged DPS are doing. That is, give the tanks a few moments to build threat, then go to town and make sure you don't out-threat them. You probably won't need to keep up VE during Attumen, as it should be just the tanks that are taking damage, and they probably aren't in your group.

When Attumen and Midnight join, make sure you stack up on their rear with everyone else. Their charge is nasty and you're squishy.

Moroes

Priests, Shadow and Holy, can turn Moroes from a nightmare into a breeze. You have exactly one job in the Moroes fight: keep your target shackled. You've got the focus shackle macro, right?

#showtooltip Shackle Undead
/clearfocus [target=focus,dead][target=focus,help][target=focus,noexists]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]
/cast [target=focus] Shackle Undead

Generally, I find that if you reapply your shackle as each of the other mobs go down, you are probably okay. Or, if the rest of the DPS is going slowly, just count out 3 Mind Blasts between reapplications of your shackle. It's better to reapply the shackle far too soon than even a little too late. Your DPS for this fight is almost unimportant — always interrupt your spells to reshackle if you need to.

VE can be useful here to counteract the bleed effect from Garrote, but do be careful that you don't use it too soon and pull agrro from one of the mobs.

Most of the time, I don't SWD for this fight. It's not just the Garotte, but there is also and the potential for a long fight if the DPS is on the low side, meaning you need to be mana-conscious. If you run out of mana, you can't reapply your shackle.

Maiden

Priests and Paladins are crucial for Maiden. If you are the only one, you are going to have a rough time of things. The DOT that Maiden applies must be dispelled. Again, that means that if you have to interrupt your DPS to dispel, that's okay. It helps to have an addon like Decursive so that you can see and dispel with a single click.

Other than that, just stand with your back to a pillar and go nuts.

VE is useful here, as you aren't worried about threat.

SWD is a double-edged sword: if you can time it right, it will get you out of the silence phase. But if you mistime it, especially if you happen to get DOTted at the same time, you can one-shot yourself. Use it with extreme caution.

Opera: Wizard of Oz

There isn't much for a Shadow Priest beyond DPS here. You might be asked to fear Tito when he comes out, if there are no Warlocks in your party. I don't normally throw in VE or SWD until after Dorothy goes down. (She may not have an aggro table, but the others certainly do, and remember that your VE draws aggro from every single mob, not just one one you are targeting.)

Opera: Big Bad Wolf

You may want to use your focused chain-shield macro here to help the transformed player stay up. Beyond that, do your best to stay away from the Wolf and DPS him down. If everyone can stay away from the Wolf you don't need to be worried about aggro, so VE and SWD as much as you would like.

Opera: Romulo and Julianne

Tank-n-spank. If you know that you aren't going to have mana issues, and have a pair of good tanks, you can DOT up both of them to help get them down faster.

Curator

Ignore everything going on around you except Curator. No matter what the RL tells the other ranged DPS to do (kill the sparks), you need to focus on Curator. If the other DPS is slow, you may need to shield yourself if you get a spark, but you shouldn't have to switch targets.

Keep up VE at all times, as there's going to be a fair amount of raid damage. You can SWD for most of the fight, but you may want to drop it towards the end when Curator begins to evocate. At that point you will be doing massive DPS, and you don't want to one-shot yourself.

Shade of Aran

Do not move during Flame Wreath!

Beyond that, do what everyone else is doing. When you see yourself get targeted by Shade, shield immediately — you're about to take a bunch of damage. Don't bother trying to Fade. You can try to fear the elementals when they pop, but don't count on it working 100% of the time.

You probably want to keep up VE for most of the fight, but be careful with it as it comes time for elementals to pop. You have the potential to draw immediate aggro from every one of them if VE is up, they pop, and you SWD crit. It should go without saying that if you see yourself get targeted, that would not be the best time to SWD.

Illhoof

Unlike Curator, for Illhoof you must switch targets to the chains whenever they come up. Yeah, your DPS is going to probably drop significantly for this fight. Beyond that, do what ranged DPS is doing.

Netherspite

Make sure you get a rotation in the blue beam, that you have VE up, and that you DO NOT use SWD when you are in it. Never stack higher than 30 or 35 stacks of the buff before stepping out of it. Give your tank time to get aggro when the banish phase is over — don't do anything dumb before the red beam comes back up.

Oh, and remember to check out your DPS while standing in the blue beam. You won't see that again until Sunwell.

Prince Malchezzar

You may have to help dispel DOTs on the MT — this is especially crucial at the 63% range before Phase 2 is started, as you don't want the tank going into Phase 2 with anything less than full health. If you get the axes on you, shield and ignore them.

VE is normally not really useful until after Phase 1 is over, at which point you should keep it up until the end of the fight. Watch the SWD — if you mistime it and SWD as an enfeeble hits, you're down.

Nightbane

Watch your aggro during the air phases and do not DOT Nightbane during this time. Keep VE up the entire fight. SWD should be timed so that you know you won't be standing in the fire when the backlash hits. That is, it's safer right after a charred earth has just popped and you aren't in it.

Blizzard party and raid frames: FAIL

2008-08-11T15:31:00.006-04:00

In an attempt to clean out some of the cruft leftover from constantly trying and removing new addons, I wiped my addons folder last night and reinstalled everything from scratch. Well, almost everything. I didn't reinstall Pitbull. For those that don't know, Pitbull is a set of replacement raid and party frames. Similar addons include CT and XPerl.

As I've shown before, I have a rather heavily modified UI, and most of those modifications come from Pitbull.

The big green and blue bars are my own HP and mana bars. The rest of the party and raid are listed beneath that. Each person's target is off to their right.

Compare that to the default frames provided by Blizzard:

Besides being more condensed (admittedly, the Blizzard Raid frames are more condensed than their party frames), there are a couple of things that non-Blizzard frames show that Blizzard frames don't:

Who has aggro — if a mob is targeting someone, the player's HP bar goes red.
What everyone is targeting.
Incoming heals — you can't see it in that picture, but when a healer starts casting a heal, I can see the effect of that heal on their target before they finish casting.

I don't have it set up, but I could also see frames for just the main tanks and/or healers, etc.

Those seem like such little things, but they are absolutely crucial. You may not need that last one unless you are a healer, but those first two apply to any class.

Let me put this bluntly:

If you don't have a unit frames addon, you aren't ready to raid.

Your unit frames don't have to be as ugly as mine. Have the pretty pictures, and textures, and borders, and glowy effects, and whatever else makes you happy. But get them.

Yeah, they take quite a bit of customization to get to a usable state. But here's the thing: Blizzard's frames simply do not provide enough information.

Tanks, how do you know your healers don't have aggro?
Healers, how do you know the DPS hasn't pulled aggro, or that someone else in the raid is about to land a heal a half-second before you, thus wasting your heal?
DPS, how do you know you aren't the only one in your party/raid targeting a mob? Or that the mob you have targeted isn't about to be CCed by someone else? Or when you Feigned Death, Faded, Soul Shattered, or Ice Blocked, that the mob headed toward you didn't turn straight for a healer?

Running with the default Blizzard frames last night, I felt blind. I couldn't see any of the useful information that I need to be a productive member of the team. I'll be reinstalling Pitbull tonight.

Zul'Aman 5, Apanthrope 1

2008-08-07T23:46:00.014-04:00

I got into Zul'Aman for the first time last night, with Origin as my host. Long story short: 5 boss wipes, 1 boss kill.

Frankly, we didn't have the DPS, the heals, the know-how, or the organization to tackle ZA. Several of us had never been there, and several were also undergeared. (Some, significantly.) We had heart, though, so we tried. And tried again. And again.

But it wasn't enough.

We did manage to down Nalorakk, the Bear, on our third attempt.

In the end, it was a long night and we walked away thoroughly beaten. But I did get to learn a few things and get a feel for the place, so it wasn't a total waste.

And yes, I am still walking around with my name and title visible to me. Give me a few days — I'm sure it will wear off eventually.

At last we meet, for the first time, for the last time!

2008-08-07T14:26:00.003-04:00

I've never actually mentioned it specifically, but our guild's name is <Bleeps Sweeps and Creeps>. If it seems like I go overboard with the Spaceballs humor, there you go. We're a small guild of IRL friends that have known each other forever.

Last night BS&C and Origin teamed up for Kara. Our BS&C Prot Warrior and Hunter had never been, and it was about time. Origin contributed the other 7 members, including a Paladin MT so that our guy could learn the ropes. We didn't have a Mage or a Rogue, and the only Priest was my shadowy self. Some of the Origin guys had been once or twice, but hadn't seen all of the bosses. The players ranged from early-T5 down to our two guys, with a nice spectrum in between.

We set the expectations for the raid from the start: this was to be a learning run. We would not be moving quickly. There would be lots of narration and exposition. Everyone was expected to explain what they were doing and why they were doing it. We also fully expected that we probably wouldn't get through a full clear in one night — our BS&C guys were expecting us to split the run across two nights, and only run for maybe 3 hours the first night.

For those that want to follow along at home, the WWS report is here.

As you would expect, the first few pulls were a little shaky. Nothing memorable, just the standard first-timer jitters. Attumen went down in one shot without a hitch — only the Warlock died, as he was the most OP person there and wasn't keeping an eye on his threat. We all had a good laugh about it and kept going.

Moroes went about the same — the Hunters (we had one from each guild) had problems getting their mobs out of the Paladin's Consecrate, but we all recovered and had another one-shot. (Vanish, Shackle, Garrote, Repeat.) I have to say, I love Moroes' voiceovers. “Now where was I? Oh yes ...”

Our first wipe of the night was because our Warrior was too busy looking at his shiny new Moroes' Lucky Pocket Watch to remember that we hadn't completely cleared that first hall before Moroes. Again, everyone knew exactly what had happened even as he was fessing up to it, and had a good laugh over it.

Maiden was completely flawless. The Paladin handed over the MT reins to our Warrior, and the RL explained how to kite Maiden around to pop the healer out of the Silence. Our Warrior was completely on top of it, and had it down the very first time. Our third one-shot.

Our second and final trash wipe of the night was the pull on the way to Opera. We were handling it until we got the patrol. Everyone acknowledged that particular pull was one of the toughest in the instance, and we were up and moving again.

For Opera we had Romulo and Julianne. The RL gave a quick synopsis as the event began, and ... you guessed it, another one-shot. Yours truly, along with 2 others, forgot that you have to loot both corpses and had to run back after making it all the way downstairs for repairs.

Curator — nothing exciting here. Another one-shot.

I will say this, though, to my fellow Shadow Priests: stay on Curator. No matter what the RL says about downing the adds, don't worry about it. The RL is not talking to you. Not only do you need to work on keeping Curator dotted up, but when he goes into Evocate and you get the damage bonus, the extra punch to VE will help keep the party up as they deal with the rest. Just stay on Curator the entire fight and keep an eye on your threat.

By now we had been in for just over 3.5 hours. I checked on guild chat to make sure that our BS&C guys were doing okay. I told them to speak up if they wanted to call it for the night — everyone knew we were going to split it.

Their response? They were digging it. They wanted to finish it all.

Kara. The first hit is free.

Illhoof — another one-shot. We forgot to mention to our Warrior that Kil'rek respawns. Oops. But he figured it out and we got through it. (In this fight, fellow SPreists, do switch to the Demon Chains when they come up. Squishies go down fast, and they need all the help they can get. And, really, you'll probably only get a single MF off so it's not a waste of too much time.)

Shade.

You're expecting me to say that Shade was our first boss death, right? Between the Flame Wreath and the Elementals and the Blizzard and the Arcane Blast, surely one of the n00bs screwed something up and we wiped, right?

Nope.

Shade was another one-shot. No one moved during Flame Wreath. I don't think anyone got hit with the Blizzard or the Arcane Blast. A couple of us dropped because we pulled aggro on an Elemental, but that was it. The band played on and Shade went down.

Chess was the usual mass chaos. No wipe, of course. Can you wipe on Chess?

Prince, however, was our first boss wipe. To our credit, however, we had a series of Infernals that dropped right on top of the ranged party. We made it through the first one, but the second dropped only a moment after a Shadow Nova. I didn't make it out in time, and a few others went down quickly thereafter. The third took out everyone but the tanks. To our credit, we did manage to get him to 2% before we all finally dropped.

Prince to 2% on the first try! Not bad!

Instead, Prince was a two-shot. The Infernals didn't come near us the second time and we had him down.

Netherspite? One shot. Explaining the beams to everyoe that hadn't seen it (not just the BS&C guys) was tricky — you've got to see it to really get it. But get it they did. Our Warrior danced in and out of the red beam like a pro, then regained aggro after each Banish phase without a hitch. The Warlock and I got to switch back and forth in the blue beam. I do love that blue beam.

We hit Nightbane at just past the 4.5 hour mark. The clock tower in the background tolled midnight as the pull was made — it was the stuff of RP legend.

Unfortunately, we wiped on out first try, for our second and final boss wipe of the night. We didn't have good skeleton control during the air phases, and they took down first the Lock then me. The rest of the party lasted through to the next air phase, but the writing was on the wall.

The second try, however, went like clockwork. Skeletons went down with plenty of time to spare. Everyone stayed out of the Charred Earth. Misdirects kept the tanks holding aggro. Nightbane went down in just over 9 minutes. Not bad.

The final score: 8 one-shots, 2 boss wipes, and 2 trash wipes. Just under 5 hours total.

Not frickin' bad for an introductory run, I think.

Our Warrior got, I believe, 3 new pieces of gear. Our Hunter, however, was the clear winner of the night with 6 new purples. Best of all, almost all of the lot was uncontested — the rest of the party was geared enough that the drops went quickly to the new guys. We might have had to actually roll for maybe 2 or 3 items? No drama, just lots of gratz. The Origin guys got some gear, mostly off-spec, and I believe we had 10 Voids at the end of the night.

As always, Origin was a pleasure to raid with. I really can't say enough good about them.

Gruul and Magtheridon with Honor Eternal

2008-08-06T11:44:00.004-04:00

I ran Gruul and Magtheridon with Honor Eternal last night. While it certainly was not a personal best effort for me, I don't think I embarrassed myself or anything.

Honor Eternal seems like a no-nonsense kind of group. They had their game faces on from the moment we stepped through each portal. The joking and cavorting was reserved for after each boss was down. They had a few hard-line policies, all of which I agreed with. For example, you get one battle rez — if you keep getting yourself killed then you get to lay there for the rest of the encounter. Totally fair. Also, once everyone zones in and you've gotten a summon already, you don't get another. You can run to the raid, which will start without you. Disconnects were replaced within minutes, without slowing down the pace of the raid.

Like I said: no-nonsense, and a solid guild to raid with.

And speaking of battle rezzes, I did manage to not pay enough attention and get squished by the falling rocks at Gruul. n00btard.

For Mags, I couldn't bring myself to include SWD until the last half of the encounter. It's a tough call — it significantly increases my DPS, but if I am running with unfamiliar healers then I don't know how they are going to take watching my health drop to 50% every 15 seconds. I also wasn't in the group with the healers — I was in with the ranged DPS. It's harder to justify the mana expenditure for the heals if I know the healers don't have a SPriest with them.

Generally, I'll run through the first wipe without it, then bring it on in the second attempt if it looks like the Healers will be okay. But, it was a one-shot. Not that I'm complaining!

Oh, and this was my first time raiding with a Moonkin and their Crit buff aura. A 36% Crit rate on SWD, plus all of the typical raid damage buffs ... compared to my pitiful 8k health ... yeah. Fun times.

I did feel bad, though. I was asked to be a clicker at Mags and had to ask to have the duty reassigned.

The thing is, my computer is old. I built it 6 years ago. During 25-man raids I'll generally run at 2 FPS. Yes, two. And I'll occasionally freeze up for a few seconds. In an encounter where a freeze could wipe an entire raid, I know that I should not have that level of responsibility. Getting myself killed is one thing, but wiping the raid? Nope. Not gonna do it. If anyone from Honor Eternal reads this, I am sorry! I hope you understand!

In other news ... I still don't think I am completely comfortable with the decreased CD on MB. I had quite a long time to get used to its CD, and now that it is up 2 seconds sooner, it is throwing me off. I'll get it. Eventually.

Apanthrope, Shadow Priest, Champion of the Naaru

2008-08-06T10:22:00.005-04:00

There's something different ... what ever could it be?

Champion of the Naaru, bishes!

Ahem.

Yeah, I might be a little happy and proud of that one. I only started playing WoW a few months ago, so the pre-BC titles were not available to me. I hit exalted with SSO a while ago, but the “of the Shattered Sun” title doesn't mean anything to me. (Well, beyond “I can run dailies and tolerate the gank-fest-orgy that is Quel'Danas”.)

But “Champion of the Naaru”? That means something.

Specifically, it means:

I've downed Nightbane.
I've downed Gruul.
I've downed Magtheridon.
I've beaten 4 of the hard-mode Heroics.

Or, more succinctly:

I totally win at the Tier-4 content!

This title was another one of those things that I thought there was no way I'd see before Wrath put a stop to it. But here I am, and here it is.

I'm beginning to believe.

I believe it might be possible to get my “Hand of A'dal” title. Maybe. I'll need to really step it up if I want it. Shadow Priests seem to be in decent demand for 25-man content on my server. Let's be honest: no guild wants to have to PUG SPriests for end-raid bosses.

Can I PUG my way to Vashj, Kael'thas, and Hyjal? In the next 3 months?

Three months ago I would have laughed at you. Today? I don't know. Maybe. It does seem that fewer and fewer guilds are going for the end-bosses. But at the same time, I can't be the only one that knows the titles will soon be gone.

Maybe.

You are a unique and beautiful snowflake ... just like everyone else

2008-08-04T10:21:00.004-04:00

Have I mentioned that I PUG quite a bit? Maybe? I might have brought it up once or twice.

As my Server dropdown list in Ventrillo gets longer and longer, I realize that I am learning something about people: everyone is different.

Yeah, duh.

It may seem like I QQ quite a bit about bad PUGs. I don't mean to QQ — I really just enjoy sharing the horror stories of my bad experiences. Raiding is mostly the same. There are good raid and bad raids. But because there are 5x as many people, you can get a much better sense of the guild.

I want to share some of my insights. Compare and contrast, if you will. Lest I am misinterpreted, let me make one thing perfectly clear before I continue:

I have respect for each of the guilds I mention by name. I wouldn't name them, otherwise. There are plenty of guilds that I do not respect, and they aren't named here.

Got that? Good.

I'll take Origin first. Origin is a very cool bunch of folks. Even though I am not in their guild, most of them treat me like I am. There's a reason I have so many WWS reports with Origin: whenever I need something for a quest, Origin generally steps up and helps out. Even if it's a Heroic Shadow Labs at 3am, Origin is there. That's just cool.

If I had to use one word to describe raiding with Origin, it would be calm. There's a bit of joking around on Vent, but mostly everyone seems willing to STFU and listen to the RL. There are a few people that seem to not like the peace and break it at inopportune times when they should be taking in chat and not Vent, but not many. Everyone is generally respectful to everyone else. I cannot express how much I appreciate this kind of serenity on a raid Vent.

If pressured to say one bad thing about Origin, it would be that they might be too quiet. Because of the low-drama approach to raiding, it seems that some people will occasionally not get it when it is time to listen to a strategy. We'll wipe a few times because people are doing things they were explicitly told not to. Eventually, everyone gets it and comes together, but I doubt Origin will have too many one-shots. In the end, though, that's okay — Origin is also the guild most okay with wiping and trying again. Wipes don't phase Origin in the least. I'd raid with Origin any day.

Raiding with We Raid Naked is the exact opposite of raiding with Origin. It's very high-drama, high-excitement, and noisy. It seems like everyone talks on Vent. Talks, tells lewd jokes, curses other players, etc. Patience is in no way a part of We Raid Naked raiding. If you aren't there 100% or aren't paying attention, you get kicked and replaced within minutes. They are a steamroller, and raids are the road.

But none of that is necessarily a bad thing. We Raid Naked will one-shot many bosses. They have to, as they don't take wipes nearly so well. The RL is strong, and loud, and there can be no doubt when you need to listen. Organization is accomplished with an iron fist, but it is also air-tight and unbreakable.

I've only gone on one raid with Totem Totem Totem, but they seem to be somewhere in the middle of the other two. The Vent chatter is raunchier than Origin, but nowhere near as much as We Raid Naked. Organization and leadership isn't as cutthroat as We Raid Naked, but is still much more heavy-handed than Origin. These guys are more about throwing themselves into the mix and hoping one or two people are still standing at the end. The organization is mostly front-loaded, with the vast majority done before combat and somewhat-controlled mass chaos during combat. They are a "just do it" group.

I've only done a couple of 10-man runs with Gank This, but from what I can see they are no-frills, balls-to-the-wall, get-the-damned-thing-done type people. It is assumed that you know what you are doing and know all of the strategies, so Vent is used mostly for casual chatter. They are cool to raid with, but the speed completely wipes me out for the night. I have to assume that raiding with T6 or late-T5 guilds would be like this.

I guess that's why I don't get all of the turf wars that go on between guilds. Each guild has their own personality, so why don't people get and respect that? Do you want hardcore? N00b-friendly? A Vent to tell raunchy jokes? High or low drama?

I guess that's one more nice thing about being the PUG master that I am: I can choose to run with a guild that suits my mood for the day.

Sunwell trash farming and Kalecgos

2008-08-04T08:09:00.005-04:00

I got an invite to do some Sunwell Plateau trash farming last night with Totem Totem Totem. I managed to roll low the entire night and walk away with nothing other than a huge repair bill. But, it was still worth it to get to see new content.

Lots of “Everyone stack on me! Now ... everyone spread out!”. It was a drunkard's ballet.

Oh, and we took a half-hearted shot at Kalecgos and got him to 80%.

Yep. That's my 'leet Kalecgos screenshot. I was too busy trying to keep up with the group given my whopping 2 frames per second to get a chance to take anything better. /sigh

Sunwell is cool. It took 2 hours to clear trash just to the first boss, though. That's nuts.

Magtheridon is now officially on farm

2008-08-01T09:46:00.005-04:00

Got an invite last night to do Magtheridon with We Raid Naked. They were very well-organized, and were able to two-shot Mags after a 1% wipe. You might want to glance over the WWS reports for the encounter. Why? Because ...

Yours truly was #1 for damage both for the night and for the kill.

No, I am not quite sure how it happened, either. Sexy though, eh?

I had done my second respec the night before, going to a raiding build instead of a flat PvE build. I reconfigured to put 4/5 points into Improved Mind Blast, reducing its cooldown by 2 seconds, and 5/5 into Shadow Power, increasing the crit chance of my big spells by 15%. The loss of Silence is going to take some getting used to.

I took some time earlier in the night to run out to Dr Boom to practice with the new talents, as the ImpMB changes my rotation completely. But, the time paid off. I managed to out-DPS the other SPriest at Mags by a fair margin, even though he outgears me by roughly 100 +Shadow. Holy practice-makes-perfect, Batman!

The increased crit on the SWD apparently gave a few of the healers heart palpatations, however. I spoke with two of them, independently, and each brought up that they spent a significant amount of their time healing me. It doesn't help that I apparently stood in the falling debris a little too often. (Spell Detail video setting on Low FTL.) Looking at the WWS, I need to figure out how to convince them to ignore healing me directly and just let the raid heals get me.

I think I should have all of my Trial of the Naaru quests done before next week's Mags, which would be the awesomest of the awesome.

Apanthrope, a definition

2008-07-31T11:58:00.007-04:00

I'm a word snob. A linguaphile, if you will. I don't apologize for it, but I do apologize that I forget that not everyone else is.

So, for the record:

Apanthrope (AH-pan-throwp): A person who does not feel any compulsion, positive or negative, toward other people and does not actively seek out their company.
See also apathy.
Contrast with misanthrope (a person who wishes other people harm) and philanthropist (a person who helps other people).

Now you know.

As far as pronouncing it ... the last part is one solid syllable. The stress is on the first syllable. If I can get Blogger to embed a Flash Audio clip of me saying it, I'll do that. If it's easier for you, think of it as AHP-ahn-throwp. It's NOT:

ah-PAN-throwp (should be first, not second syllable stressed)
ah-pan-thro-pee (pseudo-Latin?)
ah-pan-thro-pay (French?)
AY-pan-throwp (should be a short "ah", not long "ay")

So you can see why my blog is titled "Apanthrope, Shadow Priest". The "Apanthrope" is both my character name, as well as a description.

Update: Well, I can't include an MP3, but it will do video. Goofy, but there you go.

Addon: Baldrick

2008-07-31T10:00:00.001-04:00

Do you do your dailies? Of course you do.

Get Baldrick.

Baldrick adds a single button to your interface, along with a single (changeable) keybind. But it's a very smart button:

All of those dailies that you do that require some random item? Baldrick automagically changes to suit whichever quest you are working on. It is geo- and context-aware. If you are near Oshu'gun, Baldrick becomes the Multiphasic Goggles. If you are doing your cooking quest, Baldrick becomes the pot. If you are bombing Skettis, Baldrick becomes the ammo. If you are running Quel'danas ... well, you get the point. Baldrick is immensely helpful.

All with a single button that disappears when you don't need it. Never fumble around in your bags again for dailies.

(To be clear, the first shot with the "Nothing to do" tooltip is Baldrick in debug mode. Most of the time, you don't even see it.)

Addons: wowmatrix

2008-07-30T17:47:00.003-04:00

Let's face it -- WoW is great, but it's missing quite a few features. Blizzard made an interface UI for a reason. I'm going to start doing posts about addons. I've recently started the massive undertaking of cleaning out some of the 200+ addons I had been running. I figured it probably would benefit a few people to see some of the more helpful and obscure addons. Sure, everyone knows Auctioneer and Questhelper. But there are so many more.

Before you can start seriously playing around with addons, you need to get a good addon manager. You can't just install an addon and forget about it. When Blizzard has their patch Tuesdays they almost invariably change something that some addons will depend on. Those addons then need to be updated to account for those changes. Most addon creators are pretty good about updating regularly, but some take a few days. You don't want to have to go out to Curse.com or WowAce.com or whatever your favorite addon webiste is and check to see if anything new has come out.

If you are running even a single addon, you need to be running an addon manager.

I've messed around with a few of them. Don't bother with the Curse manager, it's bloated and buggy and overkill. I used WAU2 (WowAceUpdater2) for a long time, as it is very good at what it does, and very fast. But it doesn't catch all of the non-Ace addons that I use. So, nowadays I use wowmatrix from wowmatrix.com.

One of wowmatrix's main selling points is that, like WAU2, it is a stand-alone application. There's no installer -- you just run the app and go. You will have to point it at your WoW installation folder, but after that it just does its thing.

Get in the habit of running wowmatrix before you login for the first time each day. I find that it will catch a few out of date addons each day, and dozens after a patch Tuesday. It will automatically check for updates when you run it, so you just need to give it a minute or two to do its thing, then click the "Update All" button. Easy.

The other nice feature of wowmatrix is that you can install more addons without having to fire up a web browser. Click on the "Get More Addons" tab and do a search. Sure, it's not going to be aware of every addon ever developed, but you'll find that it will handle the vast majority of them. And, even better, if you manually install an addon that it doesn't already know about, it will do its best to try and keep that addon up to date.

My only complaint is that wowmatrix is on the slow side. Post-patch Tuesday updates where several dozen addons are being updated can take up to 5 minutes. Maybe I was just spoiled by WAU2 which was lightning fast.

Oh, and wowmatrix works for all you Mac users. Yay!

Magtheridon, round 2, fight!

2008-07-29T04:01:00.004-04:00

Tonight was Magtheridon with Origin.

Long story short: we totally win at the WoW.

I got #5 overall for damage done, and #7 for damage on the final try. I might have taunted the other SPriest, Casprin, a bit too much about not mashing his buttons hard enough. After beating him squarely on the initial attempts, he got me by 3k damage, or about 0.7%. Still, I'm extremely pleased with my performance. I still need to work on my rotation under pressure, but I'm getting noticeably better.

Also, I am now completely convinced that SWD is uber for raids. WWS says that I did 31k self-inflicted damage, but healed myself for 61k. If I'm reading it right, I also gave each of my party just about 20k in mana, or the equivalent of 7 Super Mana Potions each, or 160 MP5. Win!

Practice: Black Morass

2008-07-24T02:29:00.003-04:00

We ran regular Black Morass again twice for some more people that needed the Kara key quests. This time, I was pure DPS and tried to work in SWD as much as I could. My rotation wasn't perfect, but it seemed pretty good.

I feel like I've learned something and maybe progressed a little ... but I would also like to hear from someone who has more experience reading WWS reports. How did I do?

The first run with the Paladin tank was rough. He just couldn't regen mana fast enough to hold aggro in the beginning, so was doing a low-mana rotation, which was in turn making it harder for him to outpace my threat. (With Salv and no damage buffs.) Around the fourth portal I told him that the conservative route just wasn't cutting it (I was spending more time /dancing than doing damage), and told him to go all out. That enabled me to put up VE, which got him heals and thus mana, and everything moved on quite a bit faster. Threat was still a problem, and I ended up pulling aggro in the last 10% more than once, but we had the DPS to burn them down.

The second run with the Druid tank was a 4-man effort, but was actually a little easier. The tank had a much easier time holding agrro, so I was really able to go all out on all of the portals.

Thanks in advance for any feedback!

Imba?

2008-07-23T13:56:00.008-04:00

I just realized that I've been sustaining a rolling 300 +Shadow gain per month pretty much since I started the game. If I was a naive idiot, I would say that means that I only have 6 or so weeks until I down Kil'jaeden.

Yeah, right.

Seriously, though, thanks to my be.imba.hu profile, the gear threads on shadowpriest.com, and my own data mining, I can see that 1100 +Shadow is realistically attainable. At this point, all it would take is gold for enchant mats and gems.

But here's the thing: I have the raw power, but not the control.

That 1100 number might get me a spot in a TK raid, but quite frankly my skills aren't up to it just yet. I need to practice. Not just practice going all out (Dr. Boom), but also practice running around and dealing damage when I can. Kara runs are good for that, as there is a nice variety between the boss fights — stand-n-spam for Maiden, run-n-dot for Nightbane and Shade, back-n-forth for Prince, multitask for Moroes.

Problem being, it's a week before you can do them again. And how well is your party going to take it if you ask “hey, can you all just stop DPSing and wipe, because I really need the practice”?

I haven't set foot in ZA yet, but maybe it's the same?

Actually ... as I type this out, a thought occurs to me. I'm somewhat ashamed to admit it, as it is kindof a “duh”: I really just need to PUG (or, preferably, guild-assist) every frickin' thing I can. Kara, ZA, Mags, Gruul, and any Heroic I can get into. Is that the answer? Brute force it?

Not that I mind, of course. I've yet to run into any content that I am tired of doing. Heck, I still do 15-25 dailies every single day. I'm even looking forward to revisiting BRD for Brewfest, and I hated BRD when I was leveling.

I don't know where I'm going with this little self-deprecating diatribe. Just still feeling like I've fast-tracked myself to stuff that I'm not ready for. Worried that people are going to figure out that I don't actually have a clue what I am doing.

So ...

Enchants to get me past 1100:

Enchant/Item	Dmg	Gold	SPS 10g	LPS 25g	GPE 11g	Fi 27g	Wa 25g	Ma 17g	Sh 25g	Ne 50g
Runic Spellthread	15/+10	220g						10		1
Bracers, Spellpower	15	462g		6		6	6
Gloves, Spellpower	15	318g		6	6			6
Cloak, Subtlety	-	262g	4		2				8
Runed Crimson Spinel x2	18/+8	185g
Total:	+48	1447g	4	12	8	6	6	16	8	1

That would drop me at 1106. No, I am not including Soulfrost for now — the mats are ridiculous for the extra spell damage, and I'd rather wait until I got my Badge or Arena (ha!) blade.

From there, assuming no gear upgrades, it'd be 300g for each of 12 Runed Crimson Spinel and +3 damage. Oh, yay. I can't express how much fun 3600g is going to be to farm, all in the name of getting to 1142. And along the way, I'll hopefully be getting new dropped gear.

Oy.

But it's good to at least have a plan, right? It's worked out well this far.

Oh, and I've noticed that I'm getting dead less and less in BGs lately. To the point where it's kindof creepy, actually. In the last couple of days I've managed to take down several Warriors, Rogues, Druids, and Mages much faster and easier than I was expecting. I've had a few zero-death runs. When my Prot Warrior guildmate and I run BGs it's sick how well we work together and the path of carnage we create. Sure, I hit quite a bit harder than I used to, but maybe I'm actually getting better at it?

Kara on Crack

2008-07-23T03:54:00.003-04:00

I got an invite this evening to do a badge run in Kara with some guys from Gank This. A scant two and a half hours later I had 22 badges in my bag and my new Handwraps of Flowing Thought.

Yeah, two and a half hours later. W. T. F?

I'm sure it's probably not a world record, but it's certainly a new one for me. The group was, obviously, wicked OP. The Druid tank had 22k health and didn't stop for anything. People went AFK and then had to run to catch up because the rest of us kept moving. The healers were bored, and only one of them ported out with less than 77 Mana Biscuits on him ... and he had 76.

With the exception of my Shackle and the Hunter's Freeze Trap on Moroes, we didn't use any other CC at any point.

I died a few times, but not excessively. Sometimes from my own stupidity (like not waiting for the red beam to hit the tank on Netherspite), sometimes from bad luck (on the trash before the Opera). I uploaded the WWS for the entire run if you'd like. No, I still didn't use any SWD, but based on recent comments, I certainly will now.

Oh, and after the gear upgrade and some more regemming, I am now sitting on 1058 +Shadow. In theory, I could get into TK right now. I don't see that as likely, but it is possible.

Again, I say: W. T. F? How did I get here?

I honestly never thought I'd make it this far before Wrath. And yet ... I keep progressing. It's awesome, albeit very surprising.

Personal WWS Reports

2008-07-22T19:43:00.002-04:00

For better or for worse, I've decided to start uploading and making public my WWS reports. Given my limited raiding experience, I'm hoping to use them to see how I could improve.

First item of business: use more Shadow Word: Death. I know, I know. It's hard, healing my way through to 70, then switching to Shadow and expecting healers to keep up with me as I periodically hit myself upside the head. Especially on fights where we're not sure if the healers are going to go /oom before the end.

Yeah, I get that more DPS == more mana for healers, but I'd need to see some pretty definitive numbers showing that there wasn't a net loss in mana due to extra healing before I'd be okay with it. For fights like Lurker where I am guaranteed to not get aggro, sure, maybe. But other new stuff? I'll need to work up the courage, first.

Raiding with another guild

2008-07-22T14:00:00.001-04:00

Because of my views on raiding guilds, I end up running almost all of my raids as the only non-guild player in a guild-sponsored run. Lately I have been running with Origin, but last night I needed to get a bit of Kara in and got an invite to run with Alliance Homicide. They needed more DPS for Netherspite and the Prince, so in I went.

Being the only non-guild player in a run has the potential to be tricky. I find that it can generally go one of two ways. If the guild group is at a similar level of progression and has a good RL, then I will normally just STFU and do my best to fill my role. This is by far the easiest, and for me the preferred, outcome.

The other path is the tricky one. If the guild group is new to the content or the RL isn't quite where they need to be, I have a hard time with things.

But I'm starting in the middle. Let me back up.

Why don't I do the raiding guild thing? I used to, just not in WoW. I've played a few other MMOs, but by far the heaviest was Dark Age of Camelot. In DAoC, I progressed to being not just a GM, but one step beyond: the GM for the guild that led the largest raiding alliance on the server. In DAoC, for those that aren't familiar, guilds could join forces into an alliance, giving a shared alliance chat channel and other niceties. Raiding in DAoC was also a very different thing than in WoW — we'd regularly get 200+ people on a raid.

If you think coordinating 25 or even 40 people is rough, try coordinating 200 from 8 different guilds. Multiply your typical guild drama x8. So, after 3-4 months, I burned out. How could I not? Now, with WoW, I'm here with friends to just have fun.

Back to my story.

The problem is that I can lead. I really try not to, as I like being the anonymous face that helps but isn't noticed. But I do know how. When I am raiding with a group that the RL isn't stepping up to do what I think should be done, there is much gnashing of teeth as I try to bite my tongue. Instead, I offer up encouragement and try to motivate instead of pointing out what I think is missing.

Everyone has their own style, and far be it from me to assume that mine is any better. And, especially when running with a guild, I really don't want to step on their toes or make them look bad. The guild is supposed to look up to the RL for guidance, and I don't want to do anything to tarnish that image.

It's rough. Generally, even when I know that we're going to wipe, I'll continue to STFU and let us wipe. I know, that sounds horrible, but I am also a firm believer that wipes are a good thing, as they help everyone learn what not to do.

You're expecting me to say that the RL from the Alliance Homicide was bad, right? You'd be wrong.

The RL, Dytinn, actually did a pretty good job. Several of the players had never been to Netherspite or the Prince, and several were woefully undergeared, and yet we were able to down Netherspite and get the Prince to 2%. That's not bad! And, really, as it always is with the Prince, we didn't wipe due to lack of skill, we just got a few really bad Infernal drops. We kept an eye out and moved proactively instead of reactively, but we just had bad luck.

Through it all, I did my best to STFU and DPS.

But ... there was one thing that Dytinn needed to do that he didn't: he needed to get everyone on Vent. Eight out of ten were on Vent, but that just didn't work. The other two asked if they needed to get on Vent, but were told that it was no big deal. Sorry, but that's the wrong answer. Explaining complex fights like Netherspite and Prince to people that have never been there simply cannot be done effectively over chat and voice at the same time. Invariably, one of the groups is going to miss something. A few of our wipes happened because the non-Vent people weren't getting to where they needed to go.

In the end, my leader-nature got the better of me and I started outlining the main points in chat. "1. Don't ever pull aggro off the tank, so watch your Omen. 2. When you get Enfeebled and turn purple like me, run to the healer. 3. ..." I hope that it helped, but I am not so sure. It's a tough call, deciding where the line is between trying to help and looking like an overbearing know-it-all ass-hat.

I catch a lot of flak for being a non-guildie in a guild run. Some people think I am taking up a slot that could/should have gone to a guildie. Some people think that I am riding on the coat-tails of the guild. Some people are made uncomfortable by my very presence — like they can't talk with an outsider around.

It's cool. I swear. I'm here to do a job. I'll try to disrupt your lives as little as I can. Pretend I'm not here, and just know that the mana, health, DPS, and shackles are coming.

Bad day in WSG

2008-07-22T09:00:00.000-04:00

It's never a good sign in your BG when the n00b SPriest has the highest kill count and damage.

SSC, take 2

2008-07-21T09:35:00.004-04:00

This weekend marks my second foray into Serpentshrine Caverns. I am not in a raiding or progression guild, but the good people in Origin have been kind enough to invite me along for their last two runs. Good times!

Our Main Tank and guide for SSC was Luxora of Tempest, the #1 Horde guild on our server. She and and Vigaut, her MH, had been brought in by Casprin, the Origin GM.

Let me just say this and nothing more about Luxora: if you want 20+ people, mostly young guys, to STFU and do what they are told, have a smart woman with a soft British accent whisper in their ears, giving orders and telling them to stay calm and that they can do it. It helps if she can tank and hold aggro like superglue. 'Nuff said.

The Friday night run was for The Lurker Below. We'd wiped a few times on him last week, as we couldn't quite get the rhythm down. This run was similarly frustrating, but for a different reason: one of the adds kept bugging and going into Evade mode, teleporting around and one-shotting casters until the raid wiped. This happened twice, and we never could figure out what was causing him to do it.

Our third attempt looked like it was going to be another wipe. Luxora took a bad knockback and went out of LOS of the healers, going down at around the half-way mark. Honestly, though, it was the best thing that could have happened and pretty much guaranteed a win—it freed her up to talk everyone through the encounter. She issued concise orders, calling out timers and targets. The OTs were picked off one by one, but we adapted and knew we had it.

There was a bit of chaos as Lurker went down, as too many people were busy celebrating to remember that we still had adds to handle. Yours truly was the last fall, excepting only a Rogue who Vanished.

We called it for the night, as it was late and everyone was pretty well fried.

Saturday night found us back at SSC. First target: Morogrim Tidewalker. This fight is similar in nature to the Lurker fight, in that it's all about getting the rhythm down. Luxora called out when the murlocs were about to spawn and we all paused DPS to let her get aggro so that they could be AoE burned down. People cleared Vent and called out when they were hit with the Watery Grave (Priest bubble FTW). We really came together as a group. It took us another 2 wipes to really get it, but again on the third try we got him:

While I wasn't the last to fall on Tidewalker, as about half of the raid stayed up, I fell only two seconds before he did. (I suspect that, again, too many people were pre-emptively celebrating and not paying attention to what was going on around them, as I got rushed by what looked like several dozen murlocs.)

From there we moved on to Leotheras the Blind. Unfortunately, the Tidewalker fight had taken quite a bit out of us. I think we were all a little too burnt out and should have left Leo for Sunday, but I am not GM or RL so what do I know? The Leo fight didn't go nearly as well, with another 3 wipes before calling it for the night. Most of us had been told that we would be doing Hydross, not Leo, so almost no one knew what to expect.

But, of course, it was still fun. Thanks again to the guys and gals at Origin (and Tempest) for having me along!

Good weekend, but very long

2008-07-21T00:52:00.002-04:00

For now, I am too tired to go into details. Highlights:

I am now at 1010 +Shadow, unbuffed, thanks to a major regemming. Yay, 4 digits!
We downed Tidewalker in SSC, and got in a few good shots at Leotheras.
We ran an amazing Heroic Shattered Halls and got our Trial of the Naaru: Mercy quest done. I still need to go back for the Kalynna's Request questline, though. Bummer.

There's probably more, but I can't remember it right now.

Gear Longevity Chart, Beta 2

2008-07-18T17:16:00.004-04:00

I've mentioned before that I've been working on this tiny little data mining project ... that just happens to now have ten thousand characters in it.

Long story short, it has undergone significant upgrades, and is now interactive! There are currently versions for: Shadow Priest, Holy Priest, Beast Master Hunter (Agility or Ranged Attack Power), and Protection Warrior. Gee, which specs do you think my guildmates are?

All of the versions start off showing you just Quest rewards and Crafted items, but can be expanded to include every kind of item available to that spec. Play around! Tell me if you break something.

Unfortunately ... it doesn't work in Internet Explorer 6, and is tricky in Internet Explorer 7. Sorry, folks, but I don't have time to work around busticated web browsers. Use Firefox or Safari or Opera or just about any sane web browser, please. Or, post the CSS workarounds as a comment and I'll update them.

What do you think?

Primal Priest

2008-07-17T10:07:00.006-04:00

A comment on yesterday's entry struck home:

"I can see no end in sight to the endless farming for primals"

Yeah. Pretty much.

Gear	Fire	Water	Shadow	Mana	Earth	Air	Total
FSW Shoulders	2	10	2				14
FSW Boots	4	12	4				20
FSW Robe	7	16	7				30
Belt of Blasting	15						15
SS Hood	15	5		15	5	5	45
SS Legs	15	5		15	5	5	45
Black Void			3	3			6
Nimble Thought	4			12			16
Total	62	48	16	45	10	10	191

191 Primals. Yeah, that's a ridiculous number. Don't try to figure out how much that would cost you on the AH—it would only depress you.

That 191 number assumes Shadowcloth specialty and making your own Spellcloth. If you can find a Spellcloth Tailor that will make it for you for only the mats, you lower your cost for the Spellstrike set by 28 Primals.

In theory, if you are proactive enough, you could specialize in Spellcloth first, before you can even wear the FSW gear. You'd make the 24 Spellcloth you need (12 trips), then respec to make Shadowcloth. The 150g respec cost would almost certainly be cheaper than the 28 Primals you'd save. But if you do that, then you need to not make any Shadowcloth during that time, as you'll be losing the Shadowcloth bonus. I'm not saying it's a good idea, but it is a theoretical possibility.

Unfortunately, I can't really offer any comforting words here. It is what it is. What I can say is that you probably won't farm all 191 of them. Instead, farm enough to get your FSW pieces as they become available to you. Once you hit 70, do dailies instead. Even as a fresh 70, you can pull in 75g+ per hour doing dailies. You won't have to buy all of your Primals, as you'll get a few motes as you do the dailies:

Fire: The Throne of Kil'Jaeden quests involve killing Fire elementals.
Shadow: The Multiphase quest puts you by Oshu'gun and all of the Void Reavers around there.
Water: When you do the Fishing quest, make sure you fish out any pools of fish, especially the Pure Water ones.
Mana: The Mana Wyrms in Bash'ir Landing drop these while you are collecting Mana Cells. Or, when you go up to Netherstorm to get your Sunfury Attack Plans, stop by the Violet Tower and kill a few elementals in the area.
Earth and Air: Grab these from the elementals in Nagrand when you are doing your Skinning and/or Cooking quests.

At each stop, make yourself hang around for an additional 10 minutes and farm a few more motes. They'll add up over time.

Don't get frustrated with another SPriest or Lock comes along and says something dumb like "omg you can get more primals/gold if you do ...". Ignore them. Almost invariably, people with that attitude have forgotten what it was like to be a fresh 70 with only 500-600 +Shadow. Farming sucks. Period. It doesn't get "easy mode" for SPriests until roughly T5-level, right about the time you don't need to farm Primals any more.

Yeah. /sigh.

There is one exception. Before I started this blog, I made a short 1-minute video showing how Shadow Priests can farm motes of water with a surprising efficiency. Even before level 70, you'll be good enough at it that the spawn rate of the mobs will be the limiting factor, not your skill.

Oh, and as a general rule:

it is very worth it to take the time to make Primal Mooncloth while you are making your Shadowcloth and Spellcloth.

Healers and bag-makers will trade you straight up for it. The primals to make it are almost always cheaper than buying the Shadowcloth or Spellcloth off the AH. As you pass through Shattrath, do a quick advert in /Trade: "WTT your Spellcloth or Shadowcloth for my Primal Mooncloth". If you get a bite, take a few minutes to complete the trade. If not, no harm done and no time wasted.

(Edit: Updated to include Bracers of Nimble Thought.)

Downgear, Upgear

2008-07-16T10:06:00.004-04:00

We ran regular Shadow Labs last night, as it was the daily and our guild's Hunter is lusting after the [Sonic Spear]. That, and I like Shadow Labs. It and Slave Pens are probably my two favorite 5-mans.

So there we were: a Heroic-geared Paladin healer, SPriest, and Mage, a Kara-geared Hunter, and ... a pre-Kara Warrior tank. Oh, and post-patch server lag that froze several people any time a mob was looted or a trade window was opened.

Long story short, I had to downgear for the first time last night. I ran almost the entire dungeon in my PvP gear (such as it is), which drops me down almost 80 spell damage. Even with that and me doing not much other than DOT and /dance, no MB except for bosses and counting to three between MFs, I still managed to get aggro a few times, even with Pallie Salv. I ended up hiding Omen and just winging it as I got tired of it screaming at me.

It was fun and all, and bosses went down fast and hard, but still quite a bit more work than I had anticipated.

...

On the flip side, I embezzled a bit from the guild bank and gemmed up the [Spellstrike Hood] I had made last night. I still have a bit of regemming to do to supplant all of the old +SpellHit gems I used to need, but I am pretty much done with my crafted gear for now. From here on out it is Badge and Tier loot.

I'm sitting at +926, but I think I can hit +950 on my current gear if I fix my gems and enchants. Not bad for a guy that just hit 70 two months ago, I think.

Metareference

2008-07-15T14:26:00.001-04:00

I got my first "this is going to be on your blog tomorrow, isn't it?" comment on Vent last night.

Happy to oblige, but I honestly don't remember what it was in reference to.

First Arena: 1-9

2008-07-15T12:18:00.003-04:00

I am a squishy SPriest, and I have the resilience of tapioca pudding.

In 9 of 10 matches I was the very first target. Normally, I was stun-locked and dead before I could get a spell off, my Shadowguard being the only thing to produce damage. I did manage to get a single kill—a paladin, i think. SWD FTW.

After a few matches I did start to last longer than 10 seconds. I got my head on straight enough to Mass Dispel a Paladin bubble and an Iceblock. I finally remembered to Fear whenever the cooldown was up. Chain-dispelling Druids is fun.

But the one thing I am having trouble with: not tab-DOTing everyone there. I know that if I do that then the CC efforts of my team are in vain. But ... staying still and uninterrupted long enough to get off a MB? Riiiight. I did get a few MFs off, but the big blue frickin' laser beam made me a target every time. "Oh, you're still standing? I can rectify that."

And Proximo went crazy on our last game. I'm going to hope it was just a bug and not a hack, but it effectively disabled us as our coordination went out the window.

New trick: Focused Chain Shield

2008-07-14T12:04:00.003-04:00

I ran Heroic Shattered Halls this weekend. We had a good group of guys, but we may have been slightly undergeared for it. Two of us needed it for our Trial of the Naaru: Mercy quests—which we didn't get because we wiped far too many times and missed all of the timers.

But it was still a good run. I learned quite a bit on those dozen wipes. I can appreciate a few wipes when learning an instance, and actually prefer it to a one-shot run. When I run it later with a few of my guildmates I am going to know what not to do.

And I figured out a new trick.

The Shattered Halls run had a Mage who was good and was keeping an eye on his threat, but with the number of mobs he was bound to get aggro eventually and often. Especially since we had a Druid tank, instead of a Paladin.

I've been running with a Shaman main healer lately. He's a great healer, but due to the specifics of Shaman healing (lack of HOTs and instant-cast heals) damage and healing tend to be spikier than with other healing classes. When we run with DPS that don't watch their threat, Mages especially, even the fastest reaction from the Shaman might not keep them up.

After we had to rez the Mage a half-dozen times or so, I got to thinking about what I could do to help. I was getting used to throwing out more bubbles lately, as the Shaman healer is overpowered and overgeared for much of what we have been running and tends to pull aggro off of most tanks. I could watch Pitbull for the Mage's threat to go red (meaning he got aggro), but bubbling him meant stopping what I was casting, targeting him, and throwing out a bubble. The Shaman could take a few hits, but the Mage was exceptionally squishy and kept getting one- or two-shotted.

Then I remembered that really neat Shackle macro that we use.

Sure enough, this did it:

/stopcasting
/cast [target=focus] Power Word: Shield

Better yet, the way I have my UI done up, the focus target goes above my own health bar, and is big and prominent. When it flashes red, I can't help but notice it no matter where else I am looking at the screen. I bound the macro to a single key and kept an eye out.

It made a noticeable difference, especially on the last boss fight. The Blade Dance that Kargath does wasn't one-shotting the Mage, but if the Mage already had aggro from one of the adds, he was guaranteed to go down. In that fight I had to step things up even further—instead of being reactive about the bubble I essentially chain-cast it throughout the entire fight. I watched for the Weakened Soul debuff to time out, then as soon as the shield went down I threw up another one, whether or not the Mage currently had aggro. After that, the Mage never went below 50% health.

Yeah, I went out of mana with 5% left on Kargath and ended up wanding my way through the end, but we all stayed vertical.

So now I have a new tool in my toolbelt. I just have to remember to use it.

Exalted, two new areas, one long night

2008-07-11T08:12:00.006-04:00

Thanks to running the SSO dailies for the past two weeks, last night I got this nice message:
Which also means that I now get these goofy messages from the NPCs:
But that's not even the big news. Last night, thanks to knowing people who know people, I made it into some new content.

I was literally one minute away from logging out for the night when Udevil got on vent and said that Origin was running a Lurker raid (SSC) and had several open slots due to a scheduling snafu. (They had both Kara and SSC down for the same night.) I glanced at my whiteboard and saw that the Spell Damage requirement for SSC was 900. I just got my [Spellstrike Pants] the day before and hadn't had a chance to properly gem them, but I was standing at 856. I had just finished a boatload of dailies and had some 350g and 20 Badges on me. It was a theoretical possibility that I might get close to 900. I asked Udevil to confirm that 900 was the requirement, which he did, and the guys thought I should go for it.

Ranii stepped up and offered to cut some gems for me, as the selection on the AH was pretty thin for reds. 300g got me one [Crimson Spinel], and 15 Badges got me a second. Slons offered to whip up some [Mystic Spellthread], and Ranii had the [Primal Mana] for it.

Holy crap, this might actually happen.

Skipping to the good part, it did happen. I was summoned and within a minute had two [Runed Crimson Spinel] and my spellthread. I got off the second elevator in SSC with exactly +900 Spell Damage.
Hi, ma!Wicked cool, eh?

Unfortunately, 4 wipes later we still hadn't downed Lurker. On the first 3 wipes I was in the last 3 or 4 people to die (being the very last on the first wipe), so I felt pretty confident that I had it down. But then 90 seconds into our fourth attempt I was the first one down. I was falling into the water as the Spout hit me. I hadn't tried to cut it close -- I jumped as soon as I heard the call. But I hadn't been paying enough attention to DBM and thus didn't have enough warning, as I was only a few degrees off from the tank that bought it at roughly the same time. We were the only two down, but the truth is that we just didn't have enough DPS.

Eventually the RL called it, as the fish had respawned. Everyone ported to Shatt and was told to head up to Gruul's. Awesome!

Maulgar and his crew took three attempts. There was some confusion as to healers and tanks and Hunter misdirects, so the Mage tank kept going down. I macroed a PWS for my focus, set it to the Mage tank, and spammed it whenever the timer was up. I doubt it helped all that much, but every little bit, right?

On to Gruul!
Grr! Arrgh!

Gruul was a one-shot. We didn't have much time left on his Enrage timer, and the tank got to the point where he was being hit for almost 10k a shot, but the healers kept him up and the band played on. I managed to avoid most of the cave-ins, only missing the animation on two of them. I ran out of mana literally as Gruul went down: a Flay was cut short with an oom message (stupid bug), so I know I had exactly one left. Gruul dropped a second into it. That was just too cool for words.

I came out in DPS just behind the other Shadow Priest, Caspin, who was the raid leader. For it being my first time at Gruul and not being sure of myself, I'm not unhappy with that.

It was a long night, but it was fun. I honestly didn't think I'd make it into SSC any time soon. I'd been hoping for a Gruul PUG, but this worked out so much better.

Crafting Cooldowns FTL

2008-07-10T09:00:00.001-04:00

I've been farming and saving for a week to get my mats for my Spellstrike set. Not being an Alchemist, I didn't know that Transmute: Primal Might has a 20-hour cooldown. D'oh!

wtb TEN Alchemists that can transmute Primal Might.

Long story short: when you start to work on your Spellstrike set, do the transmutes as you get the Primals. Don't save them all up for one big orgiastic transmute party. Because, you know, it won't be.

What (not) to wear, Public Beta 1

2008-07-09T14:06:00.005-04:00

Here's the first semi-real version of the chart I mentioned last time. It is essentially a "how long am I going to wear this, and when can I expect to get it?" chart for SPriests. This image just shows the Feet for now so that you can get a feel for it.

Horizontally along the bottom you can see the +Shadow damage of the character wearing the specific gear.
The vertical orientation is meaningless—it's just an order to make a pretty layout.
The width of each gear bar is the +Shadow range for which people are currently wearing that gear. There is at least one person at the very beginning of that range, and one at the very end of that range. (Except for the perfect squares, which mean that only one person has it equipped, but I didn't want a zero-width sliver.)
The color theme tells you where you get the item. Bright yellow gear, for example, are quest rewards, while the darker gold are crafted.
The color gradient shows you how the players are distributed within the range. In this example, you can see that the Footpads of Madness, while they cover a large range, really only have a few small clumps of players wearing them. On the other hand, FSW Boots are worn pretty much consistently across the range.

I have, for now, intentionally left out how many people are wearing the gear. I thought about scaling the bars vertically based on popularity, but I'm not sure what that would communicate. (And, really, I don't think I want to tackle the logic to wrangle a much more complicated layout.) In most cases you can infer how many people are wearing the gear by looking at the distribution gradient.

I'm hoping that this will help the "what gear should I go for next" and "should I swap out X for Y when they are basically the same" type questions over on shadowpriest.com. I'm sure it won't completely eliminate them, but it's bound to help someone other than just me.

I need more data. Many of these items are only equipped by a single person on our server, which doesn't make for a good statistical population. If anyone would like to drop a comment and suggest a particular server that I should include (this data is from Bleeding Hollow), I can do so.

Also, what do you think? Too much clown vomit? Not enough cowbell?

On Priest CC

2008-07-09T14:00:00.000-04:00

I'm sure I am not the only person who has a lot of “if I could get others to understand just one thing about my class” moments. In fact, WowWiki has a whole series on it. This week's lesson that I want to shout from the hills is simple:

Mind Control and Shackle Undead work just like every other form of CC.

I know, it sounds like a duh kind of thing, so let me explain.

First, yes, I can pull with either. Just like a Polymorph or Hibernate pull, there are times when you want to take a mob out of the fight from the very first moment, not giving them a chance to do absolutely anything. And, just like both, some mobs are Immune. With Mind Control, I can probably even do a little extra with the abilities that I gain from the mob. It may be nuking or melee or healing, or in very rare cases buffing.

But that's not the problem. Everyone gets that part. The second part is what non-Priests seem to have the hardest time with.

If the Priest is not pulling, then Priest CC is more like Hunter CC than Mage CC.

Wait, what?

Yet again, the Priest shows a bit of flexibility and versatility. Think for a moment about the difference between how a Mage does CC and how a Hunter does CC. For a Mage, gaining the mob's attention before CC is almost always a Very Bad Thing. For a Hunter, almost all of their CC relies on getting the mob's attention. If the Hunter cannot get the mob's attention, then traps become much harder to work, and we're back into Very Bad Thing territory.

Having said that, let me repeat: If the Priest is not pulling, then Priest CC is more like Hunter CC than Mage CC.

Let me break this down by spell. Shackle Undead is the easiest to explain:

Shackle Undead is the Priest's version of a Freeze Trap.

Just like you expect a Hunter to get the mob to rush them, you need to get used to the idea that a good Priest will do the exact same thing. We'll probably tap them on the shoulder with Mind Flay (the blue frickin' laser beam). Yo. What up? Can I talk to you over here for a second?

Wait, wait, I know: “But you're squishy!”. Very, very true. Unlike a Hunter, we don't have a pet for backup. We're definitely putting ourselves at extreme risk. But, that's just how it is done. We've got our bubble and we're smart enough not to bother channelling all 3 seconds of our Mind Flay. The Shackle will come. Just be patient.

We tap the mob for the same reason the Hunter does: when we Shackle, we want the mob to be as far from the action as possible. We want the Mages and Paladins to be able to AoE without fear of breaking the Shackle. We want people to be able to tab-target without accidentally hitting our trapped mob. We also want to be able to keep our eye on it. Unlike a Freeze Trap, we can preemptively re-Shackle our target. In fact, most of us have a beautiful macro that lets us re-Shackle without ever taking out eyes off of our DPS target. (Ever tried to do Moroes without a Shackling Priest? It's a much longer and trickier fight, I assure you.)

So when the mob you've marked for Shackling runs right past you because it's got a blue laser beam hitting it, don't panic. We've got it under control. Pretend it's heading for a Freeze Trap and that the blue laser beam is just a really, really pretty arrow.

Mind Control works almost the exact same: we need to tap the mob first.

In the case of Mind Control, we're tapping the mob for a different reason: range. See, Mind Control is tricksy. Every tick that goes by the mob has a chance to break the Mind Control early. That chance is increased by the range between the Mind Controlled mob and my Priest body. The first thing a good Priest will do after applying a successful Mind Control is run the mob back to stand next to his Priest body.

Yeah, I know. We're back to that whole squishy thing. But again, it's got to be done. It's better that we take that risk than the bigger risk of letting the mob out of Mind Control early.

Wait, there's something you might have missed. Think about the implications of the range problem with Mind Control.

If you want us to melee with a Mind Controlled mob, you need to kite your mob to our mob.

Yeah, sorry, you have to come to us. We can't come to you. If we're standing around at the back of the fight doing nothing, it's probably not because we're /afk. It's probably because our mob doesn't have any ranged abilities and you've got your target too far away for us to feel comfortable running to.

We know that we're supposed to help out by using the mob's abilities. Promise. You don't need to tell us. But help us help you. We'll come a little towards you, maybe 10 yards, but that's it.

Last thing. I'm almost done.

When you ask us to “chain MC”, expect to hear our teeth grinding and a bit of a sigh. Some Priests will do it, but some won't. You've essentially stepped up from asking us to put ourselves at extreme risk to asking us to tank in our squishy cloth. Yes, really. See, did I mention that Mind Control is tricksy?

Chaining Mind Control is more of a theoretical possibility than a proven reality.

Let's go slow-mo here for a moment and recap what needs to be done to chain Mind Control:

Walk the mob as far from us as we can without accidentally breaking the Mind Control as per the rules above.
Cancel existing Mind Control.
We could wait for it to end on its own, but at the level you are probably asking us to chain, we'd rather be exactly sure when it will happen. If it breaks even a second too early, we could get turned into paste pretty quick.
No amount of Fade will help us here. Mind Control creates more threat than Fade can deal with on its own, as we're probably the only one on the mob's threat list.
Bubble.
We have to do this, as we know that we'll never get the next Mind Control off with the mob pounding on us.
Wait for the GCD.
Cast Mind Control.
Wait 3 seconds.

It's that last step that is, sometimes quite literally, the killer part. Mind Control has a 3 second cast time. Sure, in way, way endgame scenarios (Hyjal, Sunwell) we might be stacking enough Spell Haste to reduce that to as little as 2 seconds. But any time before then, probably not.

In most cases, the mob is free to beat on the Priest for a full 4½ seconds.

Yeah, maybe a little less if we've walked the mob far enough away, but not much. For caster mobs, that's 4½ seconds to nuke us, or sheep us, or whatever. For melee mobs, that's 4½ seconds to tear down our bubble and interrupt our casting. If the mob can Kick, Silence, or Counterspell us, it may well be Game Over.

But wait, it gets worse.

Mind Control is subject to diminishing returns with many mobs, just like most other CC. Since we have little way of knowing when the second Mind Control will break, we're really hesitant to do it. So please, please appreciate why we're reluctant to chain Mind Control. It can work out okay, but the vast majority of the time it does not.

And, of course, just like a Freeze Trap, Polymorph, or other CC, the mob is going to come straight for the CCer when either Shackle or Mind Control is done. Please get the mob off of us. kthxbye.

Remember:

Blue Beam → Pretty Arrow
Don't Panic. Wait for it.
Kite to the Mind Controlled mob.
Chain Mind Control is almost always a Very Bad Idea.

Raid and Heroic timers

2008-07-09T09:00:00.000-04:00

One of those things that they never officially explain to you is how timers work for the 10-man-and-larger raids and Heroic dungeons. The problem is compounded by the fact that many people that have been doing those types of things for a while and seem to have forgotten that not everyone knows it.

Long story short: raids and Heroics are on lockout timers. Once you have downed a boss, any boss, you are "saved" to that instance of that dungeon.

Being saved, in this sense, means this: until the timer resets, you will enter the dungeon in the exact state in which you left it. (This is true as far as bosses are concerned. Different instances have different rates at which trash respawns.)

You can check your saved instances by opening up the Social window and going over to the Raid tab:

The 5-man Heroics are on a 24-hour cycle and reset at the same time each day. The 10- and 25-man raids are on a 7-day cycle and reset the same time each week, except Zul'Aman which is on a 3-day cycle.

Saved instance timers can be both good and bad. For Heroics, they mean that you can run a particular dungeon every night of the week if you want to. Or, if you need a quest item from a dungeon, which presumably doesn't involve downing a boss, then you can have someone from a cleared instance invite you into the raid to get just that item. On the other hand, if you happen to be in the dungeon as the timer is resetting, you get kicked out and the instance resets.

Implications

When you get to the 10- and 25-man content, however, the implications get a bit more insidious. Remember that the rule is that once you down a boss you are saved to the instance. It doesn't have to be the first boss, nor does it have to be the last, just any boss will do. You have to be careful when PUGging the larger raids then, as you need to communicate with the group as to which bosses have been downed, which they will be doing that night, and what the schedule is going forward.

Let's say, for example, that you get in a PUG for Kara that starts with the Curator. If you down the Curator, then you will be saved to that instance. You will have to wait until the following week if you want to go back and hit up Attumen or Moroes or any of the other bosses that had already been downed.

Worse yet, if the group breaks up right after downing the Curator, then you are pretty much up a creek for the rest of the bosses. If you are smart, you will take down the names of the others that were saved to the same instance and try to get as many of them back the following night to continue the raid. You'll probably have holes to fill, at which point you are going to have a harder time as there are now even fewer bosses that other non-saved players can down, and thus fewer loot drops.

What (not) to wear

2008-07-08T18:03:00.004-04:00

The Quest Progression Chart was fun to do, and it taught me more about the game than I probably would have had the patience to scroll through in the tiny little quest window. When people say "I'm stuck on Zuluhed", I actually know wtf they are talking about.

I also learned a very key lesson: doing that kind of thing by hand completely sucks.

Since I've been working on doing data mining of our server's SPriest population, I thought I could put that to some use. To that end, here's a teaser of what I am working on now:

Of course, the final version will include all gear slots, not just feet.

This time it's completely automagically generated. But ... right now it's only seeing around 450 SPriests. I'd like to open it up to get a better sampling of the population, but that takes time.

We'll see how it turns out.

For every Good PUG, there is a bad one

2008-07-08T14:00:00.000-04:00

Got into an Heroic Slave Pens PUG over the weekend. Still lovin' it.

We had a bit of a surprise, though. The MT and Healer group-quit and left after the first boss. No warning, just looted and ran. It wasn't even a ninja-loot: they only took Badges.

WTF? Really?

Kazard of Tempest and Dojin of The Fearless.

Now, a bad PUG is one thing, but this wasn't a bad PUG. We were making pretty good progress, despite the fact that the MT was Fury-specced and in full PvP gear. No one was arguing. As near as I can tell, there was no reason for the two guys to do it. And yet ... they just chose to be jerks.

But wait, it gets worse.

As I was pretty irked, I Armoried both of them and looked around to see if I could find an officer of each guild to let them know that their guildmates were trashing their rep. I spoke with Rabidewok of Tempest, and he was nice but it was pretty much obviously a dead end. I then spoke with someone with The Fearless and was told, flatly, to not even bother: no one cared. I hadn't even said what the problem was, just that I was looking for an officer to talk about a problem with one of their guildmates. I was nice. I was respectful. And in both cases I was blown off.

There's also a half of an epilogue.

Last night in /Trade I saw Dojin spamming for a Tailor. I cannot convey to you how strong the urge was to reply in the affirmative, as I'm sure he has no memory of who I am, then take his mats and tell him to please go fetch my missing Badges. Oh wait, they're Soulbound. Good luck with that.

But I didn't. I'm not that guy. There are times when I want to be, but I'm just not. (And I would have had a hard time defending my behavior to a GM.)

Either way, I don't think I'll be accepting anyone from The Fearless into any of my PUGs any time soon. It's a small revenge, but it's about all I can really do.

Magtheridon!

2008-07-08T09:00:00.000-04:00

I managed to get into a Magtheridon PUG this weekend.

Seeing as how I wondered if I'd ever get into any 25-man content, I was pretty stoked. I did my best to read up and and not make a total n00b out of myself, and think I did a pretty good job. I helped take down the channelers in the correct order. I moved when the AoE hit. I kept up my DOTs. I even kept an eye on the cubes to do backup-clicking as people started to drop.

And I have to say a big Thank You to Ranii for the wicked heals. Every time I looked up, I was at full health and was Ranii's target. Thanks!

We wiped twice before the MT ~~went all emo~~ had computer problems and DCed, leaving his girlfriend on Vent to tell everyone that we were abandoning. Oh well. It was still cool to be there.

And, for the record, I was at roughly 850 +shadow, unbuffed, when I went. I felt just about appropriately geared for my first time. There were a few people that were geared significantly better, but there were also plenty of people that weren't. Unfortunately, I was the only SPriest, so I didn't have another to check out.

PvP epics versus PvE epics

2008-07-07T16:49:00.002-04:00

I posted yet another rant on shadowpriest.com:

Cassock wrote:
Shadowpriests can craft all of their gear, so they don't have to PVP for it. Other classes can't, or can't as easily, so the enormous ilevels from the PVP gear is pretty enticing.

Okay, I hear that excuse quite a bit but I don't in any way buy it. Please don't take the following as a flame, as it isn't, inasmuch as it is a wall-of-text rebuttal.

First, and most obvious, is that plenty of people seem to have made it to 2.4.x and all of the progression bosses without needing to be in full PvP gear because it was their only option.

Second, let's break down the first part of that argument about SPriests being lucky about craftable gear. Sure, I'll grant you that FSW is epic in many ways and probably OP for when we get it. But let's look at the rest ...

Instead of using the Casual Gear thread, which hasn't been updated in a while, let's use this list.

Spellstrike: A boatload of Spellcloth, another boatload of Primal Mights, and a pair of Primal Nether. Primal Mights take 5 Primals each, and are thus the easiest to get ... for a definition of easy that means "farm, baby, farm". Primal Nether are quite a bit more expensive when you can find them on the AH, presuming you don't pony up the 10 Badges for them. 10 Badges? Yeah. Each.

Battlecast: No Spellcloth, but don't think you are saving yourself any farming -- you need roughly as many Primals. Still need those Primal Nethers, so there's still a 20-Badge hump in addition to farming for gold/Motes.

Sure, 20 Badges isn't too bad for a two-piece gear set. Okay, it's dirt cheap. But stop and think about when your SPriest is working on this -- probably while gearing up for Kara/Heroics/ZA. Thus, figure a +shadow range between 700 and 1100? Given that kind of range, how much gold can you make per hour? I figure 100g to 150g per hour if you really crank it, based on personal experience. Farming Motes will get you to Primals without the AH, but I'd argue that the "per hour wage" would be equivalent. That's roughly 5 Primals or one Primal Might per hour, right?

For each item in those two sets, we're looking at 10 Badges (two Daily Heroics) and 5 hours of farming. Per piece. You can't tell me that other classes can't spent the same amount of time and get an equivalent piece of gear. If they can't craft anything and must buy Badge gear then those 5 hours can go to Heroics. In even the worst PUGs, no Heroic will take more than 2 hours. Thus, 10-15 more Badges in those 5 hours, for a total of 20-25 Badges in the same time period. Hey, look, 25 Badges -- that's where the gear starts.

Belt of Blasting ups the ante to 2 Nether Vortex at 15 Badges each, for a total of 30 Badges and 15 Primal Fire. If we go with our rate of 5 Primals per hour, then that's 3 hours of farming, or converted into Badge-hours, between 5 and 10 Badges. The belt is then worth 35-40 Badges, even more than the other pieces.

From here on out, we're pretty much done with the crafting. If we go all-out and fill the rest of our slots with Badge gear, what are we looking at?

SPriests will spend between 341 and 569 Badges to get the best gear. A fully Badge-geared tank will spend 541 Badges. A Druid will spend between 410 and 745 Badges depending on spec.

Point being, we're not much better off as far as how many badges we're going to farm versus any other class. And, I'd argue, we make up for that time farming gold or mats for the FSW.

So what about PvP gear? Does that really take less time to get?

For a full set of S2 Warrior gear you're going to need 65250 Honor and 130 Marks of Honor. That's a per-piece average of 13050 Honor and 26 Marks.

BG farming will run you between 1000 and 2000 Honor/hour, so we'll be nice and say that you could meet the honor requirements for one (average) piece after 7 hours of BG farming. If you played only premades and always win you could probably farm 8-10 marks an hour or so? Thus, the limiting factor there is definitely the honor. Also remember that Honor-farming and Mark-farming are somewhat inversely related: sure, you can premade a zerg win, and you'll get Honor and Marks for the win, but you'll be missing out on the Honor for the kills. It averages out.

But, oh look. What did we say? A minimum of 7 hours of Honor-farming per piece. Scroll up. Look familiar?

Thus:

The argument that PvP epics are easier to get than PvE epics is completely false. It all takes roughly the same amount of time, whether Badge-farming, Honor-farming, or mat-farming.

QED.

Fresh Frozen Shadoweave Gemming

2008-07-05T09:00:00.000-04:00

I wanted to expand a bit on my last Frozen Shadoweave post, particularly on the gemming. I had said:

You've probably been reading quite a bit on shadowpriest.com about how your #1 stat is Spell Damage, right? And how if you are putting anything other than red gems in your gear then you are nerfing yourself? Ignore that advice for now. Come back to it later. The first thing you need to work on before you start worrying about Spell Damage is Spell Hit.

I stand by this 100%. Yes, long term you are going to put in a bunch of red gems and go for max damage. But you must hit-cap yourself first.

I'm not speaking from theorycraft — I'm coming at this from experience. There's nothing more frustrating then seeing a bunch RESIST messages flash by and watching your mana bar drain down. (No damage == useless VT.)

Think about the point at which you are putting together your FSW set. If you've been on the ball, you should already have your shoulders and boots by the time you hit 70. I did it, without a raiding guild to fund me, and it wasn't that much farming. (I am certainly not going to say it was fun — but the first few minutes of running around in my FSW completely made up for the hours of farming.)

But let's say you don't. Let's say that you ground your way to 70 without giving your FSW a thought. Where does that put you?

You've only run Hellfire, Coilfang, and Auchindoun, as Tempest Keep only just now became available to you. The gear in those first three sets of instances is okay, but it's nothing stellar. Certainly not when compared to FSW. As a fresh 70, you can't even look at Kara without keeling over and having to corpse run.

Odds are, you don't have any purples. Okay, maybe one or two, but almost certainly nothing with sockets. If you've been grinding your level instead of your FSW mats, you probably haven't been worried about your rep yet, either. That means no purples from rep rewards. (Who grinds rep before 70? Why?)

With that kind of history, there's only a slim chance that you are hit-capped. You might be, but it would be really odd. It's not like you're going to get hit-capping blues or greens while grinding the mats or gold.

Thus, your first gems in your FSW will probably be yellow, not red. Sure, the reds will come along soon enough. But for now, play by the rules and put the right gems in your FSW. When you do your first Kara run and only get a few resists instead of one after another, you'll know you did the right thing.

But, again, this comes with a disclaimer. Everyone is different. I'm speaking in wide generalities here. Maybe you have gotten some really lucky drops or have been consciously working on hit-capping yourself before getting your FSW. It's certainly possible. I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to the guy behind you that got to 70 and said "now what?".

My first respec

2008-07-04T09:00:00.001-04:00

I may min-max a little when it comes to gear, but I don't when it comes to spec. I assume it comes from the comfort in the fact that I was able to heal my way through 70 even with full Shadow spec and gear. Your spec may be important, but your skill is more important.

So, as I leveled Shadow, I put points into what I thought would be useful, not necessarily what some cookie-cutter spec progression told me to. Yeah, I had points in [Improved Renew] and [Healing Focus]. I'm sorry, but no matter what anyone tells you, those two skills are far more useful to a leveling Priest than [Meditation] and [Inner Focus]. Don't get me wrong,Med and IF are great, but they just aren't that useful until raiding beyond 5-mans.

Here's a fact: I almost never ran out of mana mid-fight in dungeons before 10-mans. Even when healing. And I almost never had to use mana pots. Yeah, it happened occasionally, but it was always a good sign that our strategy wasn't working. Med and IF would only have prolonged the agony.

Sorry, I'm a little bitter.

In a Heroic PUG this weekend I had a pair of people gang up on me and get up in my business about why I didn't have Med and IF. I explained, very politely, that I was still in my leveling spec and hadn't yet respecced for raiding. Instead of moving on, the two went all holier-than-thou on me talking about how they have SPriest alts and I am nerfing my spec if I don't have IF/Med, etc, etc, etc. I, again politely, told them that it wasn't like I was going to keep this spec forever, but that it had served me well thus far and I'm not the type to respec before every group. That wasn't good enough, and the verbal abuse continued for about 10 minutes.

And yet ... there I was. I was pulling my weight and getting it done, even with my nerfed spec. Go figure.

I keep coming back to the fact that I've been able to surprise people with my skill level, despite being a n00b when it comes to the content. It happened in Kara. It happened in Heroic Sethekk. If I can do that, does my nerfed spec invalidate that? Of course not.

I have an entire post brewing about how too many people in this game are looking for the “one true spec/gear” and forget that there's a progression involved.

But, eventually, I did end up respeccing. The truth is that I don't heal nearly as much as I used to, and [Improved Vampiric Embrace] was getting me into more trouble than it was worth. So, I am now a 14/0/47 cookie-cutter SPriest. Huzzah.

Maybe it's just bitterness, but I am not all that impressed with IF. It's one free spell every 3 minutes, maybe with a bit more crit to count it as a spell and a half. That's not going to make or break a fight. Med is arguably more useful, kicking me from something like 5 MP5 while casting up to 56. That's two free MF per minute, or a free SWP.

But for that, I gave up a 70% chance to get off a heal while getting beaten on. Is it worth it? I'm not entirely sure.

Quo Vadimus

2008-07-03T14:00:00.002-04:00

Where are we going?

Well, I don't know about you, but I'm trying to see as much as I can before Wrath. To that end, what is the gear that I am working towards? Well, it starts with a few rules:

25-man loot doesn't count
10-man loot doesn't count (I'll do the 10-man content, but I can't rely on the drops)
I won't be picking up Engineering
Presume that I can farm an infinite number of Badges, mats, and gold

In other words: stick to stuff that I can pretty much guarantee. Given those rules, how far would I get?

For the following table: PD=Pseudodamage, Dmg=Actual bonus spell damage, Hit=Spell Hit, Sock=Socket, Ench=Enchant added damage.

EDIT: Table removed because I am an idiot. It will return.

Two! Ha, ha, ha!

2008-07-03T12:12:00.003-04:00

I did not one but two (!) heroics last night: Mana Tombs (Daily) and Slave Pens.

The Heroic Mana Tombs run was a PUG (for me) with four guys from Grateful Undead. They have a small guild of IRL friends, just like ours, and struggle with finding comparably-able players to fill slots in their groups, just like we do. It was simultaneously comforting to see another guild working the same problem, and also a little bit of a bummer. Long story short, it was a very good fit. (And they spoke in complete sentences! omg!)

It took us a little while to get past Pandemonius. Okay, 3 wipes. After the second wipe we saw that the Druid tank was just taking far too much damage, and was getting 3-shotted. The Shaman we had healing just couldn't keep up with that kind of damage. Given that mana and DPS weren't the problem (the Mage was putting out enough DPS for both of us), we saw that I needed to put on some healing gear and off-heal.

We did wipe one more time. But I immediately saw that it was my fault -- I hadn't gotten into a healing mindset and hadn't been able to keep up, either. (You try switching from DPS to healing and doing it exactly right the first time.) It was frustrating, but we gave it one more try.

The fourth run went as smooth as chocolate silk pie. I kept a Renew, PWS, and a PoM on the tank at all times, then threw out GH and FH as necessary. I even got to practice a few GH dekes as I saw that the Shaman was able to keep up. When I had a few spare seconds, I DOTted and Fiended. Smooooth.

The rest of the run was a cakewalk, and we one-shotted everything else. It's nice to work with proper ~~villains~~ heroes.

But there was a downside.

I really, really had my A-game on for that run. We had a kick-ass team and the synergy raised the bar. I can honestly say that I think I performed better on that run than any other dungeon run I've done. I don't mean in terms of DPS or total damage or any other stats. I mean that I went above and beyond.

I was dispelling Immolates and Silencing left and right. (Recount said I had 52 Dispels by the end of the run.) If it looked like the Shaman needed an extra half-second to get off that Chain Heal, I blew a bubble on whoever needed it. If we started taking massive AoE damage, VE went up on my next cast. If the Shaman started taking aggro or got Silenced, I bubbled him and popped Shadowform to heal for a second, then popped right back in and kept going.

I didn't have to be told to do anything. I just did it, and it made a noticeable difference. I was frickin' heroic, dammit.

So what's the problem?

I thought I had been bringing my A-game before, but it turns out it was more like my B-game. Now I realize I've been slacking off. I need to be this on top of things all the time, not just when I get a good group.

Anyway ... it's something for me to think about.

The PUG for the Heroic Slave Pens run (which I am beginning to love) was both the same and the exact opposite.

It also started off with a few wipes, but they were dumb accidents. Several of the others were on Vent, but I wasn't given the info so I just did my thing to a mostly-silent chat channel. But ... that was okay. Vent is great for coordinating, but sometimes it is overkill. It was getting late, and I now feel like I have HSP down pat, so I appreciated being able to work in silence.

Hello. My toon's name is Apanthrope. Duh.

The bosses were all one-shots. I got a nice healing belt that no one else wanted, as well as my second [Primal Nether] for the evening. The entire run, including the dumb wipes at the beginning, took just over 45 minutes. Wicked.

But that was pretty much it. There were no tales of heroism for the second run. It was a nice, quiet way to end an evening, but with a few more Badges and mats in my bag.

Archbishop Benedictus down!

2008-07-03T09:00:00.000-04:00

At some random early-morning time this weekend, Miller Time pulled together a raid to kill Archbishop Benedictus in Stormwind and the Gnome King in Ironforge. I was on and had nothing better to do so I joined up. Having for the first time seen the inside of Ironforge the day before to get the bonfire, I figured it would be nice to see more of it.

I doubt I was much help beyond being another target, but it was amusing. And I did get to see a bit of Stormwind, as well, which helped me orient myself for the bonfire run later that day.

(I didn't remember that I had [Mind Soothe] until I hit Stormwind, the last of the 4 bonfires I needed. D'oh!)

No screenies of the Gnome King because I R DUMB and forgot. Oh well.

I do it on the daily

2008-07-02T14:00:00.000-04:00

My Daily rotation doesn't require any rep grinding to start, nor any group quests. (Ogri'la and Netherwing Dailies require a bunch of group quests before you can get to the daily quests.) It does, however, presume that your server has unlocked all of the SSO quests.

Start in Shattrath. Pick up:

[Maintaining the Sunwell Portal] from Nasuun at the Quel'danas portal (10g)
[The Multiphase Survey] from Haronem on the upper tier by the BG ramp (9g)
[Gaining the Advantage] from Mordin by the flight point (16g)
[Sunfury Attack Plans] from Torvos right next to Mordin (10g)

Fly to Nagrand.

Fly to Oshu-gun. Don your [Multiphase Spectrographic Goggles] and get your 6 multiphases.
If you are a skinner, while at Oshu'gun, kill any [Aged Clefthoof] or [Clefthoof Bull] mobs you see. Fly back toward Garadar and kill more clefthoofs until you've got all of the [Nether Residue] you need. You should also get a few [Oshu'gun Crystal Powder Sample], [Clefthoof Meat], and [Thick Clefthoof Leather] which are good for Halaa and the AH.

Approximate time: 15-25 min.

Fly to Blade's Edge.

Head north to Bash'ir Landing.
Kill ethereals until you get your [Bash'ir Phasing Device].
Phase, then kill [Phase Wyrms] and pick up [Smuggled Mana Cell]. You should get a few [Mote of Mana] and [Apexis Shard] Save the shards for the Ogri'la questlines later.
If you need to farm [Mote of Fire] for crafting, head east and kill off a few [Searing Elemental].

Approximate time: 15-25 min.

Fly to Area 52.

Run west to Coruu and kill BElfs until you get your [Sunfury Attack Plans].
If you need to grind Consortium rep, head south and kill ethereals to get [Zaxxis Insignia]. It's not worth any gold, but it does convert to rep.

Approximate time: 5-10 min.

Hearthstone back to Shattrath and turn in those 4. The whole trip should get you 45g and several mats for crafting or the AH. If you're lucky, the whole trip will take 30 minutes. If the drops aren't so good, it might take an hour.

Port to Quel'Danas. I'm not going to bother detailing the SSO Daily quests here, as they are all on one place.

[Further Conversions] (9g), [Arm the Wards!] (9g), [Crush the Dawnblade] (12g), and [Open For Business] (12g)
[The Battle Must Go On] (10g), and [Know Your Ley Lines] (12g)
[The Air Strikes Must Continue] (9g), and [Keeping the Enemy at Bay] (8g)
[Don't Stop Now...] (12g) and [Disrupt the Greengill Coast] (12g)

Approximate time: 60-90 min. Revenue: 105g.

Pick up two more quests before you leave Quel'Danas: [Ata'mal Armaments] (18g) and [Rediscovering Your Roots] (14g).

Hearthstone back to Shattrath.

Fly to Shadowmoon Valley.

Fly out to Ata'mal Terrace.
Kill Shadowmoon orcs until they drop enough [Ata'mal Armament].
Fly to Skettis.
Pick up [Fires Over Skettis] (12g) from Doryn.
Bomb the eggs.
Land and talk to the Skyguard Prisoner to pick up [Escape from Skettis] (9g).
Help the Skyguard Prisoner escape, then fly back to Doryn.
Fly to Razorthorn Rise.
Kill [Razorthorn Flayers] until you get a [Razorthorn Flayer Gland].
Use the gland on a [Razorthorn Ravager] and get it to dig up [Razorthorn Root].

Approximate time: 25-45 min. Revenue: 21g.

Fly to the Throne of Kil'jaeden in Hellfire Peninsula.

Talk to Seyla to get [Blood For Blood] (12g) and [Blast the Gateway] (10g).
Use your [Sizzling Embers] so that your [Fel Flare] is out as you kill 8 [Fel Spark].
Kill [Wrath Herald] to get [Demonic Blood].
Use the blood on the [Felblood Initiate] to de-elite them, then kill them.
Use the flare to blow up the gateway then turn in the quests.

Approximate time: 15-25 min. Revenue: 22g.

Fly or Hearthstone back to Shattrath. Port to Quel'Danas and turn in the last 2 quests for 32g. Use the [Darnarian's Scroll of Teleportation] to get back to Shattrath.

Total quests:	20 Dailies.
Total revenue:	225g, several greens, some crafting mats.
Total time:	2h 15m to 3h 45m.
Realistic time:	3h.
Wage:	70g-80g per hour.

While you can certainly farm for stuff that will AH for more than 80g per hour, call it 100g per hour including all of the extra motes and greens that you get, it won't be nearly as varied and far more boring. It also probably won't get you nearly as much rep as the Dailies will. You get a ton of SSO, some Skyguard, and even some Consortium if you kill a few extra things along the way.

During the Midsummer Fire Festival, the Daily [Striking Back] is good for 7g and can be done in under 5 minutes including travel time while you are in Hellfire. If you make it back to a main city at any point, you can also do [More Torch Tossing] for 12g and, if you have enough skill, [More Torch Catching] for another 12g. If you are geared and can get a good group, you probably want to do [Summon Ahune] on Heroic for the extra badge instead of one of the torch quests.

That should leave you with 2 free Dailies. One, of course, should be the Daily Heroic for the Badges. The other, also of course, should be the Daily Battleground for the Honor. If the Daily BG is AV, I suggest you take the time to do it before all of your other Dailies. You have a better chance of getting Biscuits in AV than any other BG, and an 80-stack will easily last you the rest of the day.

Yesterday was a "WoW day"

2008-07-02T10:19:00.002-04:00

You know what I mean. Yesterday was one of those days that you want to remember and put on your "Top 10 Best WoW Moments" list.

Helped get our last guildie up to 70 and made her a 3-set of Tailored gear that should last her a while.
Got my [Belt of Blasting], which hit-capped me.
Helped another guildie get what may very well be the last cloak he ever obtains.

In short: I did stuff that made me realize that for all intents and purposes I have already beaten the game.

What do I mean? Two things, really.

Thing One:

I finally have Dailies figured out, which means that I pretty much have an unlimited supply of gold.
I finally have Heroics figured out, which means an unlimited supply of Badges.
Combine unlimited Badges and unlimited gold and I can get the gear that I won't be able to surpass before Wrath, without ever stepping foot in a 25-man.
At the rate that I can farm Badges and gold, I have a very real chance of being geared enough to see at least some of the 25-man content before Wrath.

So, yeah. While I may not be full-T6, I've already won — the rest is just a matter of time. If Blizzard shut down the game tomorrow, I would still feel completely fulfilled.

That's a pretty good feeling. But I have something better for you.

Thing Two:

Now that I've already beaten the game, I can make serious strides towards helping my friends beat the game, too.
Need gold? No problem.
Need mats? No problem.
Need contacts? No problem.
Need to know where to go next? No problem.
Need another body? No problem.

Yesterday I was able to help two of my other guildies log off feeling good about the game and looking forward to coming back tomorrow. There's a pretty good chance that I will continue to be able to do that. My own progression is fun, but it's a means to an end.

The ultimate goal is to drag my friends along to every last corner of the game. I want to /point and say "Look at that, isn't it cool? They made this for us".

Daily Quests: 24/25

2008-07-02T09:00:00.000-04:00

I passed a milestone this weekend. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not.

I managed to do 24 of my 25 daily quests. And, really, the only reason I didn't hit 25 was because I wanted to do another Heroic instead of doing the regular dungeon daily (Black Morass).

Heroics have begun!

2008-07-01T14:00:00.001-04:00

As I've alluded to in my past couple of posts, I did my first Heroic run last weekend. The Daily was for Slave Pens, and I'm still locked out of Kara until Wednesday, so I figured it would be worth a shot.

Heroics are actually easier than I expected. For a Shadowpriest, you really aren't doing anything different. In a nutshell, Heroics make the group coordinate and work together better than Regulars where you can get away with winging it. Thus, if you are an “always bring your A-game” kind of person anyway, Heroics won't give you any problems.

It's oh so nice that everyone gets badges every time. Badge gear is still wicked expensive — figure no less than 6 to 8 full Heroics before you get to the first gear, and weeks of farming before you get to the really awesome stuff. But I'll still take that over the drama and chance of farming for loot. (Even with as lucky as I have been with Kara.)

Just one piece of advice: Take the time to get all of the keys before you PUG any of the Heroics. The keys aren't hard to get, especially now with the lowered rep requirements. If you've been following normal progression, you probably already have enough rep to get all of them.

But when you go for that first Heroic PUG, you don't want to walk through the instance portal and not zone in. It's embarrassing. Trust me. Get all of the keys and you won't have to worry what the daily is or what groups are just looking for one more DPS/CC and if you can get in or not.

How do you know if you're ready? In case you missed it in my last post, you are “Heroic-geared” when you are greenless, hit-capped, and sitting on roughly 750-800 unbuffed spell damage. By the time you've gotten your keys and have run Kara a few times, you're probably ready.

Ahune

2008-07-01T09:04:00.001-04:00

Finally managed to down Ahune this weekend. Heroic Ahune, no less!

We wiped a few times. We had been trying to deal with the adds as they spawned, leaving me and the tank to down the elite. On our third or fourth try someone piped up that the elite was taking too long to go down. There was much grumbling, as I was the only ranged DPS and no one else wanted to get close enough to melee DPS and thus suffer the DOT. But, we figured it was worth a shot.

Long story short, the elite was down in under 15 seconds and it freed up time to deal with the adds. We had the core DPSed down the second time it popped. w00t!

Never settle. Ever.

2008-07-01T04:21:00.005-04:00

Clicky-clicky for the larger version. Or, just know that I hit 820 this morning and am now over my hit-cap, thanks to my brand spankin' new [Belt of Blasting].

After three straight days of 250g Daily farming and 15 badges, I was able to afford all of the mats. I sent out the call on /Trade and Osiro, #10 SPriest on the server, answered. Less than 5 minutes later I had my belt, and a few minutes after that I had my gems.

Not two weeks ago at my first Kara run I was at 653. This morning I am at 820, hit-capped, and completely greenless. I am sooo jazzed.

Oh, and Kara unlocks this afternoon. Yay!

Gloves next, maybe? I doubt I'll be lucky enough to snag some [Handwraps of Flowing Thought], but I can dream, right?

What does "Heroic Geared" mean?

2008-06-30T14:00:00.000-04:00

I see this spam in /LookingForGroup all night long:

LF1M DPS/CC for H SP - MUST BE GEARED!!!

And yet, try as I might, I found it was nigh impossible to figure out what that meant. What is “Heroic Geared”? What is "Kara Geared"? How do I know if I am correctly geared? I'm not in a raiding guild, so it's not like I can just ask on /guild and get an answer.

So, instead, I send out a whole lot of messages like this:

I know I don't qualify, but for my future reference, what is the spell damage or DPS requirement for that?

Whenever I see spam for a dungeon or raid, I ask. I don't always get useful answers, but most of the time it is worth it.

To that end, I've started this page on the Shadowpriest.com Wiki: Dungeon Expectations. But that's a huge page with a bunch of tables, so let me give it to you straight.

For a PUGging Shadowpriest ...

You are ready to start on Kara when you have replaced most or all of your greens with blues. If you have greens then you should have at least as many purples to compensate. You may or may not be hit-capped, but you should be a large way towards it. Your unbuffed spell damage should be close to or above 700. You can pull off 650 if your group is very good. You're going to have trouble pumping out the pure DPS and MP5 that the group needs for the big bosses (Nightbane and the Prince) until you are hit-capped and greenless, so make sure you have as many buff foods, elixirs, and oils as you can afford.

You are “Kara-geared” when you are greenless and hit-capped. You should be standing on 750-800 unbuffed spell damage. At this level you can feel comfortable doing full Kara runs, knowing that you're definitely pulling your weight.

The range for “Heroic-geared” overlaps a bit. You can start doing the easy ones (Slave Pens, Ramparts) around 750 as long as you have a decent group. You're going to want to be closer to 850 if you want to start doing ninja-farming runs that don't take two hours. The Heroic bosses take roughly the same effort as the Kara bosses, but there's a bit less wiggle-room for error as you are running a 5-man instead of a 10-man.

Your goal in Kara and Heroics should be to replace as many of your blues with purples as you can.

The next step at 850 is Gruul, then Magtheridon at 900.

At that point it starts over again for Zul'Aman. If you have an experienced group, you can start running ZA as early as 950. But you'll want to be 1000+ if you're going to farm it efficiently and feel like you are really contributing. You should be almost completely in purples for ZA.

#117 with a bullet

2008-06-30T10:19:00.006-04:00

I have several posts that I am working on from this weekend that will go over what I've learned this past weekend. The first and easiest is ...

As near as I can tell, I am the (unofficial) #117-ranked Shadowpriest on my server, Bleeding Hollow. This is out of 217 ranked level-70 Shadowpriests.

How do I know this? I've been working on a spider to crawl the Armory for the gear progression chart that I'm working on. Last Friday, I fed it the names of all of the guilds registered with WowJutsu for my server. It spent most of Friday night and Saturday crawling through characters and guilds and gear, and came back with a list of 217 Shadowpriests. If I rank those characters by Bonus Shadow Spell Damage (then Spell Hit, then Spell Crit), I come back #117.

Yeah, the ranking needs some work and it's a total crap measurement, but it's something. And, given that I was #125 on Friday and #117 this morning, that shows that all of the grinding I did this weekend paid off. (I enchanted my [Evoker's Helmet of Second Sight] with the Revered Sha'tar [Glyph of Power].)

The complete list of people I need to pass to get to the top:

#	Character	Guild	+Shadow	Race
1	Tripler	Tempest	1443	Undead
2	Dezman	Dissension	1396	Dwarf
3	Cloze	Tempest	1346	Undead
4	Nagap	Dissension	1345	Dwarf
5	Priestie	Ancients Way	1339	Dwarf
6	Jayrox	Tempest	1336	Troll
7	Fabftw	Over Rage	1324	Undead
8	Hellno	DIBT FAKK	1322	Undead
9	Maliciaa	Reliquary	1316	Undead
10	Osiro	Clan Redeye	1309	Blood Elf
11	Numbernine	Clan Redeye	1285	Undead
12	Letham	Dissension	1279	Night Elf
13	Bobepine	DIBT FAKK	1260	Undead
14	Menasha	Reliquary	1258	Blood Elf
15	Malizia	Tempest	1249	Undead
16	Roxxa	I Has a Bucket	1247	Blood Elf
17	Starglow	Outcast Faction	1239	Draenei
18	Drlucyo	Heresy	1229	Blood Elf
19	Misled	DIBT FAKK	1221	Blood Elf
20	Suzuna	Twisted	1220	Draenei
21	Maillia	Over Rage	1219	Undead
22	Seraphz	Gankers Gone Wild	1210	Blood Elf
23	Darkwish	DIBT FAKK	1201	Blood Elf
24	Tyresa	Ancients Way	1198	Human
25	Kahlide	HP	1196	Night Elf
26	Talibaster	Eminence	1185	Undead
27	Muffley	I Has a Bucket	1182	Undead
28	Mugins	Explicit	1149	Dwarf
29	Nouveau	Tuttar	1148	Human
30	Praetorians	Undercity Escorts	1143	Blood Elf
31	Majella	Clan Redeye	1135	Blood Elf
32	Lightbloom	Mars	1125	Night Elf
33	Grothum	Honor Eternal	1124	Undead
34	Dianessa	Explicit	1118	Night Elf
35	Chekmate	Over Rage	1112	Undead
36	Needtobe	Censored	1102	Undead
37	Febiyan	Earthclash	1097	Undead
38	Celyina	Tempest	1095	Blood Elf
39	Athear	Gank This	1090	Undead
40	Yau	Wu Tang Financial	1082	Draenei
41	Themasochist	Death Watch	1081	Troll
42	Alagaesia	Twisted	1081	Human
43	Zanyis	Nightfall	1079	Troll
44	Bstaypriest	Tempest	1071	Undead
45	Lexa	Knights of the Undercity	1068	Undead
46	Turune	S T A T S	1059	Human
47	Hibiya	I Has a Bucket	1057	Troll
48	Bryanne	Kitten Mafia	1046	Draenei
49	Falseprophet	Graveyard Saints	1033	Blood Elf
50	Kami	Undisputed	1018	Night Elf
51	Crocadoc	DIBT FAKK	1018	Blood Elf
52	Mornin	All Day	1017	Dwarf
53	Viktur	Blood Seekers	1014	Undead
54	Priamoftroy	Tuttar	1012	Human
55	Metallina	DIBT FAKK	1004	Undead
56	Lumien	Eminence	1002	Undead
57	Popejbone	S T A T S	996	Human
58	Crucius	DIBT FAKK	991	Undead
59	Zodical	Last Stand	985	Undead
60	Tirsie	Twisted	983	Human
61	Crios	Oblivious	983	Undead
62	Khelendros	Veni Vidi Vici	981	Night Elf
63	Saiai	Fueled By Evil	980	Night Elf
64	Borntoheal	Clan Redeye	977	Troll
65	Whoforted	The Fearless	973	Undead
66	Whitenoize	Army of Darkness	971	Undead
67	Thirdstrike	Silver Dragon	970	Human
68	Cadderbury	Mars	958	Human
69	Moobbert	Army of Darkness	957	Blood Elf
70	Uglybish	Onyx Myriad	951	Dwarf
71	Toxico	Assassins	951	Undead
72	Odjo	Alliance Homicide	951	Blood Elf
73	Bebine	Symbolic	950	Undead
74	Sinjonnie	Twisted	947	Night Elf
75	Vipra	Inner Circle of Light	947	Night Elf
76	Casprin	Origin	944	Blood Elf
77	Lifestealer	From the Ashes	943	Human
78	Blacksoda	DIBT FAKK	943	Blood Elf
79	Zylah	Heroics	924	Blood Elf
80	Morian	The Brotherless	924	Night Elf
81	Hellacopter	Kitten Mafia	923	Human
82	Lichprincess	Blood Seekers	910	Undead
83	Jerkodactyla	Mercs	909	Undead
84	Myopicflux	Baker Company	897	Undead
85	Killacozart	Nemesis Knights	897	Night Elf
86	Bunnyluv	Twisted	892	Dwarf
87	Jerald	UC elevator victims	887	Undead
88	Badcaramel	Death Watch	882	Undead
89	Blkorchid	Endeavor	879	Draenei
90	Palitox	DIBT FAKK	869	Troll
91	Boltage	The Fearless	868	Undead
92	Roseheala	Arabian Knights	863	Undead
93	Clamp	Be Negative	861	Undead
94	Ghosfacekila	Clan Redeye	858	Troll
95	Tonca	Legion of Vengeance	849	Night Elf
96	Listaey	Heroics	844	Undead
97	Cyrrhus	Mindless Oppression	843	Undead
98	Aleryia	Veritas Aequitas	839	Human
99	Tehbumpkins	Clan Redeye	839	Undead
100	Bernals	Fueled By Evil	838	Dwarf
101	Llcooljr	SG	837	Undead
102	Hostility	HeMan Woman Haters Club	835	Undead
103	Fikos	Crescent Moon	834	Human
104	Billywitchmd	DIBT FAKK	826	Undead
105	Azoku	Gankers Gone Wild	825	Blood Elf
106	Keuefer	Ancients Way	823	Dwarf
107	Halacyne	Nightfall	821	Undead
108	Nightshaadow	Phoenix	819	Blood Elf
109	Scholesy	red skeletons	811	Undead
110	Espiky	Origin	811	Undead
111	Dementius	Demon Within	810	Dwarf
112	Calath	Phoenix	807	Blood Elf
113	Darkoni	Sentrosi	803	Undead
114	Orzhova	Onyx Myriad	800	Night Elf
115	Meii	Graveyard Shift	794	Human
116	Arkne	Equinox	793	Human
117	Apanthrope	Bleeps Sweeps and Creeps	791	Troll
118	Luvinpetcha	Forgotten Misfits	791	Human
119	Vaeperz	Night Fall	791	Night Elf

Post-70 Quest Chart, v2

2008-06-25T15:39:00.004-04:00

I've added the Sha'tari Skyguard, Ogri'la, and Netherwing quest lines. Check it out:

I'm trying to stick to major questlines. (One-off dailies aren't that helpful.)

Any thoughts on what else I should add?

My luck with Kara continues

2008-06-25T05:54:00.004-04:00

Got my second Kara invite earlier this evening (morning). The group had wiped on Netherspite and lost their SPriest, then found me. They had their Warlock summon me into Kara within seconds of accepting the invite. After my last (first) Kara run I hadn't been planning on coming back for a little while.

Problem being, I've never done Netherspite. I hadn't even read about Netherspite. But I would be an idiot to decline an invite, right?

The fight starts within about 30 seconds. Firefox hadn't even finished loading. So, I did my best.

I saw the RL say I was "Group 1 Blue". I start laying on my DOTs and notice the blue portal open behind him. I see that I can't target it, then see someone jump in front of the red and green portals. I do the same, and hope that's what I am supposed to do.

Yep. I'm supposed to stand in front of the beam. Score one for dumb luck.

That luck runs out, however, as the first Banish phase kicks in. I look around and see that everyone has disappeared. I turn tail and make for the windows, but it is too late. Netherspite aggros me and I go down in two hits.

This faceplant time does not end prematurely with a battle rez, so I take a minute to read the strategies. Oh. Banish == Run. Got it. During that time, the rest of the group is busy wiping.

Attempt #2: we win.

I faced down Netherspite, and all I got was this ~~lousy t-shirt~~ pair of badges.

Next they want to run the Prince. Crap. I didn't have time to read that far ahead. And I can't leave to read as they are running and I have no idea which way to go without following behind someone.

Many twisty stairs later and the RL has explained that it is a DPS-fest, with only a few caveats:

When you get the 1HP debuff, get out of AoE range immediately.
Stay near the (marked) healers.
When you see an Infernal about to land, run.

Three wipes come and go. Infernals drop between the healers and everyone else each time. Everyone is tired. We swap out a Pallie for a Mage in full PvP gear.

On the fourth round the second Infernal drops on top of the healers and ranged DPS. But this is okay because we still have plenty of room to move around. The third Infernal drops right in the middle, snuggling all of us against the outer wall. I go /oom far too fast because I'm too busy running to be mana-efficient. But I'm lucky because I catch a good spot right outside of the point where two infernals meet and just outside of Shadow Nova range. I drop a pot and keep going.

The fourth Infernal drops almost on top of the Prince. Only a few people have died at this point, and melee and the healers do an amazing job of getting everyone into the tiny space we have left outside of Infernal range. Everyone is now toe-to-toe with the Prince, Shadow Nova be damned.

I go /oom again. I've been better about mana use, but this is a long fight. I look down and say a silent prayer -- my Fiend has exactly 3 seconds left on cooldown. I jump up and down, let my fiend out, and start reapplying DOTs as the mana comes in.

More people are dropping around me, but we're going to win. He's at less than 35k health. I look up to see that I am at 100% despite being point-blank with the Prince -- our healers are doing an amazing job.

20k. Burn, baby, burn.

10k. It's in the bag.

Toast!

Now, the astute among you might notice something: I'm not wielding the same weapon in both pictures. In the first, I had my trusty Bringer of Death. What's that in the second?

Why, that's the Nathrezim Mindblade, dropped by our buddy the Prince.

The PvP Mage rolled an 87. I pulled an 88. Someone above loves me. The knife alone added +82 spell damage. A quick trip to the AH provided an Astralaan Orb of the Invoker for another +18 spell damage.

In a single 90-minute trip to Kara I was able to bump my spell damage by an even +100 from +653 to +753.

(All I had to do was wipe 4 times. Deal!)

I have absolutely no doubt that something like this will never happen again.

PvP as a fresh 70 SPriest

2008-06-21T09:00:00.000-04:00

As much as it drives me crazy to be on a PvP server and dealing with all of the ganking Huntards, I do loves me some Battlegrounds PvP action. I absolutely suck at it, but I still enjoy it.

I die. Often. I have cackling-laughter levels of fun, but I really do die quite often.

Of course, my low survivability may have something to do with the fact that I have pretty much no Resilience to speak of. I have a little bit from the Vindicator's Pendant of Subjugation that I picked up the other day, but a grand total of +18 Resilience is laughably low.

And yet ... the times I laugh the loudest are when I have 2 or 3 people nuking me down, bubble and Fear on cooldown with no mana, and I am CCed and have absolutely no escape ... and yet it takes a good 10 seconds to drag me to the ground. I cheer as I hit the Release button. Come on guys, I'm a clothie! I can only assume that those people doing such a horrible job of nuking me down are even worse geared than I am. (Or maybe they have so much Resilience gear on that they've nerfed their damage output?)

For whatever reason, anecdotally, this seems to happen most often in Eye of the Storm. I have no explanation for this.

I know that I'm not quite ready yet for Arena play. Neither in terms of skill, nor in gear. I honestly doubt I'll set foot in one before S4 starts.

Mass Dispel is your friend.

Yeah, it chews through mana. See that glowing bubble around that Paladin? Mass Dispel. (You are the only class in the game that can get rid of it.) Warlock tab-DOTting your assault force? Mass Dispel. Druid at the far back of the opposing force throwing out ethereal green Renew HoTs? Mass Dispel. Mage in an Iceblock? Mass Dispel.

Tab. VT. SWP. VE. CoW. MF.

Try to hit the VT first. You're not looking for mana back (although it is helpful), you're just adding another DoT. The SWP is your big gun, and since it is instant you can probably get it off before the target is out of range. VE is just icing on the cake to get you and your group a little HP back. If you can do CoW, great -- the attack reduction isn't much, but their healers will have to spend more mana to get them healed back up again. If the target is still in range, MF.

Mounted targets almost never stop.

Passing ships in the night? I don't think so. As the target is coming into view, spam SWD. As soon as it hits, turn and run after them and spam VE then CoW (or the other way around if you prefer). You should be able to get all 3 instants off before they are out of range again. I've been able to take out plenty of Warlocks and Mages this way.

If you are in a really vindictive mood, mount up ASAP and follow them. The VE tagging will help you track them. When they think they are safely out of range, they may dismount to Dispel or Bandage. They will almost never look behind them, so you safely run into MB range, tag them, and start Flaying.

Learn to recognize PvP Warrior armor. They are probably immune to your Fear and will most likely turn you into paste. You may want to let them pass.

Take the high ground.

Sun Tzu had it right. You want the high ground for two reasons: the view and the view.

Out of combat, Mind Vision is your friend and has a place in every single BG. Find the highest point you can then start body-hopping with MV. Call out enemy force movements to the BG chat. I have an outstanding Arathi Basin win record because I stand at the top of the Lumber Mill and do exactly that.

In-combat your range is your friend, and melee is your enemy. As a SPriest, you want to be a sniper, not cannon fodder. Climb up into a tower or onto a roof and nuke from above. If your target has to negotiate some stairs or a tricky jump to get to you, that's a few more seconds you have to live. Plus, in the heat of a pitched battle, many (most?) people will focus on what is right in front of them and won't look up.

Let your ~~freak~~ Fiend out.

If you are used to PvE, it can be hard to remember to use your Shadowfiend. You can get conditioned to think of your Fiend as an emergency-only measure. But in PvP, your Fiend is more DPS, more mana back, and helps to interrupt casters trying to nuke you down. In PvP, your Fiend should never come off of cooldown without going right back on.

Fear dispersal.

One of the first tricks I learned was to run into the soup and spam my Fear button. This works well in most BGs, but notsomuch in Alterac Valley. It seems that in AV most people are right there on their trinkets, or are specced to be Fear-immune. In the other BGs, though, this almost always works.

Shut up, shut up, shut up!

We don't use Silence very much in PvE, but it is awesome in PvP. Again, it should almost never come off of cooldown.

Keep your shields up.

This includes Inner Fire, PWS, and Shadowguard if you have it. Shadowguard + Blackout = several more seconds for you to live when that tank starts beating on you.

But don't take my word for it ...

SPriests are great fun in BGs. You'll die, often, but you'll also be amazed at how much damage you can do, and how long it takes some of the enemies to take you down. Even if all you do is run around and tab-DoT everything in sight, you're still making a valuable contribution to the BG. The gear you get from it is very much worth the time you put into it.

Frozen Shadoweave

2008-06-20T09:00:00.003-04:00

FSW. Frozen Shadoweave. Shadow's Embrace.

The set is both a blessing and a curse for Shadow Priests. The three pieces (shoulders, boots, and robe) are probably the first gear set that SPriests are really going to lust after ... and in many cases they are also the last.

The Good

The set is relatively easy to obtain: just level yourself to 375 in Tailoring. This is, I think, easiest done as you level, but you can also grind it out in an afternoon if you have a few hundred gold to spare. (Hint: make bags and AH them.) The patterns are available from your Shadoweave trainer, Andrion Darkspinner in Shattrath, for a pretty reasonable price.

The Bad

Unless you really like to grind elementals, it's going to cost you about 1500g to make the set:

36g	Netherweave Cloth, 234 pcs
28g	Arcane Dust, 26
275g	Primal Shadow, 13
275g	Primal Fire, 13
760g	Primal Water, 38
80g	Netherweb Spider Silk, 8
1454g	Total

And that 1500g? That does not include the cost of the 6 gems that you'll need to put in it. But more on that later.

The Ugly

The cooldown for each pair of Shadowcloth is just under 4 days. The set takes a total of 13 pairs of Shadowcloth. Assuming you are devout in your trips to make Shadowcloth, that's 48 days between the time you make your first pair and your last pair.

Want to save yourself some money?

Farm, baby.

At the just-dinged-70 level of gear (roughly +500 Spell Damage and no real +Spell Hit) I was able to grind roughly 8 Primal Water per hour, and about half that for Primal Fire and Primal Shadow. Netherweb Spider Silk ran about 4 or 5 per hour. Don't sweat the cloth or the dust. You will have an abundance of cloth from questing, and the dust is very cheap on the AH.

Don't be fooled by the people that talk about being able to grind more than that -- they probably are much heavier geared than you will be when you need to do this.

If you don't want to spend anything you are looking at roughly 13-18 hours of grinding, on top of saving all of the cloth you get from questing. Sure, that's a far cry from the 7 weeks you are waiting on Shadowcloth cooldowns, but it's still no less than 13 hours of doing nothing but killing the same 4 mobs over, and over, and over.

The reality is that you are probably going to be somewhere in between. Personally, I made it through 6/13 batches of Shadowcloth, or just about 3 weeks. The other 14 pieces I bought on the AH for about 70g each. I farmed my way through roughly half of the other mats, probably spending a total of 500g on motes and primals. (Always check the prices for both before you buy either.)

Gemming Your FSW

You've probably been reading quite a bit on shadowpriest.com about how your #1 stat is Spell Damage, right? And how if you are putting anything other than red gems in your gear then you are nerfing yourself?

Ignore that advice for now. Come back to it later.

The first thing you need to work on before you start worrying about Spell Damage is Spell Hit. Before you are hit-capped, all the damage in the world doesn't do you any good if you keep missing on spells. There's a boatload of theorycraft involved here, but the short version is this:

Make sure you are maxed out in Shadow Focus.
Get your Spell Hit up to 76.

At the fresh-FSW gear level, your best and easiest bet is going to be to go for the socket bonuses and put in the correct gems, not just red ones. I recommend pairs of Great Dawnstones and Glowing Nightseyes. Yes, there are better ones that you will eventually have access to, but both of those are readily available for a decent price on the AH.

Each pair grants you +8 Spell Hit, +5 Spell Damage, and +6 Stamina. And, oh look, by following the socket colors you got another +9 Spell Hit, for a total of +33 Spell Hit from the set. That's almost half-way to getting hit-capped. Sold! You even still get your +15 Spell Damage, and a little extra HP to keep you alive a fraction of a second longer. It'll cost you between 200g and 250g for all 6 gems, total.

At the gear level you are going to be at when working on your FSW, completing the set should add roughly +100-150 Spell Damage to what you were wearing before. For me, that translated to about +650 Spell Damage, unbuffed. With that, you should be able to sustain roughly 500 DPS on boss mobs, spiking to 600 DPS if you have a good tank and can really go all out and get your rotation down. You're basically ready to take on any Normal-mode dungeon without breaking a sweat. Heroics will be challenging without other gear upgrades.

Oh, and you can start soloing level 68 Elites. It'll take practice and you'll die a few times, but you can do it. How cool is that?

The Curse of FSW

Did I mention that FSW was both a blessing and a curse? Oh yeah, I did. How can a set so be uber and amazing and at the same time a Bad Thing?

You're going to be in that set for a very, very, very long time.

The problem is that we can get the FSW so early in the game. It's T4/T5-equivalent, and yet we can get it within a few weeks of hitting 70. The psychological effect is that SPriests are easily lulled into thinking that continuing to enhance their DPS at that rate will be easy.

The reality is this: if you're not in a raiding guild to where you can get into 25-man dungeons whenever you want, you may never outgrow that set. In fact, many/most T4 and T5 items would actually be a downgrade from that set.

Back to the Upside

Still, FSW is a bucket of awesome.

For the next several months you don't even have to think about it when you see a Chest, Shoulder, or Feet drop -- it's just auto-Greed.
The HP regen as you do damage is nice. It won't keep you vertical if you start taking serious damage, but it's nice to know that you can soak small amounts of secondary damage. Also, in PvP it's an easy way to keep tabs on people you've DOTted.
You have 6 gem slots to mix and match as your other gear gets you closer to, and eventually over, your hit cap.

Oh, and it's not bad looking. If you don't like it, well, that's what Shadowform is for.

Shadow Priest Motivational Posters

2008-06-19T09:00:00.004-04:00

Tales from the Mechanar

2008-06-18T09:00:00.001-04:00

(I posted this a few days ago on shadowpriest.com, but wanted to also have it here.)

So here I am, progressing nicely and generally just trying to see as much as I can see before Outland becomes a deadzone with WotLK. I've been trying to get a PUG for Reg Mech for the last week or so. Before last night, I'd stepped through the instance portal four times, but never once gotten to the first boss as something always happened to the group before then.

(Now that I've done the chart, I see why -- there's just no reason to go to Reg Mech any more. The loot is okay, but not great, and the quests are now irrelevant.)

But last night I finally got into a group and made it all the way through. It was easily the hardest dungeon I've yet run, and yet that difficulty had nothing to do with the dungeon itself.

We started the run like normal, and on the first pull I noticed that I got aggro surprisingly fast. No big deal, though, right? It always takes everyone a minute to get into their routine. On the next pull I waited until I saw two Sunder Armors hit before I started doing anything. Got aggro again. Mmmkay. Pull three, I waited for three SA, and still got aggro. Pull four, I took VE out of my rotation and managed to not get aggro, but Omen screamed at me for the last half of the pull.

It turns out that the MT was an Arms-specced Warrior. I admit that I'm pretty ignorant about tank specs, beyond knowing that a Resto Pallie is a healer and not a tank, and that my Warrior guildie holds aggro like duct tape now that he's respecced to Prot. Apparently, Arms spec means that the Warrior doesn't have much threat-generating capacity?

Crap. I may be a n00b, but even I know that a SPriest is a threat-generating machine. I've spent the last two post-70 weeks getting myself used to going all-out on my DPS. I watch my DoT timers -- I apply my priority queue -- I get it done.

The next couple of pulls were Tinkerers, which had low enough HP that aggro wasn't a problem. Then there's the first boss.

Unfortunately, I am dumb. I knew I needed to leave VE out of the rotation, but the opening spell combo is apparently too firmly ingrained at this point. VE was up before I realized what I had done. Okay, no problem. I left out SWP to try to offset my mistake. I waited for four SA before starting, not with an MB, but with a MF. Things are going well.

Until the boss turns red.

Now, I had read the strategies. I knew that green meant Spell Reflect. Spell Reflect is bad. I knew, in the back of my mind, that red meant Melee Reflect. But, can you see where I'm going with this? I didn't.

A half-second later Omen is screaming at me and my screen is going bright and angry red. I stop casting, actually interrupting my MF. Another half-second goes by before the boss starts to move. I stand there, looking at my DoT timers, wondering if I should just refresh CoW now, since it'll be a few seconds before the tank can catch up to the threat again. Always Be Casting.

But the tank's threat bar stays below mine. The boss is making a beeline for me. I back up, instinctively trying to stay out of melee range so that the boss will reaquire the tank. No joy. A second later, the mobs that we didn't clear behind me have entered the picture and I get ground into a very purple paste.

It's only as we are flying back to the instance do I figure out wtf happened: I wasn't thinking fourth-dimensionally. Yeah, I may be able to cast while he's red, but the tank can't generate any threat while he's red. Duh. I apologize to the group for making such a dumb and n00b mistake. Everyone is surprisingly cool, especially for a PUG. The tank, nicely, reiterates that he is Arms specced, and can't do much to generate threat beyond SA. The healer (a T6 Priest) whispers me, again nicely, to take it as easy as I can.

We get through the rest of the instance with only one more wipe, and that one was Hunter-related and not my fault.

But, that next hour took more concentration and skill than anything I've had to do up to this point. With a Prot tank, I'd have been able to sleep through it. But as it was, I had to ride Omen like a bucking bronco, throwing the priority queue out the window and doing my best to keep high enough DPS to get the mobs down but without ever pulling aggro.

I never thought it would be more difficult to do less damage.

I learned something last night.

First Kara Run

2008-06-18T02:19:00.002-04:00

I just logged out of my first Kara run. I think we ran for just about 4.5 hours. We downed Attumen, the Maiden of Virtue, Moroes, the Big Bad Wolf, and the Curator. We made a decent attempt at Nightbane before we wiped and the MT disconnected. We gave up for the night after a wipe on the Shade of Aran.

And I didn't see half of the dungeon. Wow. I don't know how people do full clears in one sitting.

Everything went by too fast for me to really absorb any of it. The people running the show called out basic instructions on Vent, and I shut up and listened. I apparently did well enough that when we left the main gate to head to the back entrance to hit up Nightbane, and of course I had to ask where the back entrance was, just about everyone in the group was audibly surprised that I had never been to Kara before.

So, yeah, I take that as a compliment.

Unfortunately, I don't think I am adequately geared for Kara just yet. I'm sitting at 650 spell damage unbuffed, getting to just over 700 with Blackened Basilisk and Superior Wizard Oil. On bosses that I could go all out without having to run around I was managing roughly 600DPS. That's okay, but it's just not enough for the heavy hitters like Nightbane. This lack of DPS translated into a lack of mana to my party members, and it was definitely noticed in the longer fights. I did okay, but I certainly didn't do great.

Realistically, I think I'd want to be at 800 spell damage before I give Kara more than just a novelty attempt. Maybe by the time I finish the Kara attunement quests and get the key (I am only on The Second and Third Fragments right now) I will be more appropriately geared?

On the upside, I did pick up 9 Badges of Justice and a set of Harbinger Bands. The bracers were only a minor upgrade, but every little bit helps, right? I also managed to work my way to Friendly with the Violet Eye.

Leveling a Shadow Priest, 1-57

2008-06-17T09:00:00.003-04:00

Let's get the basics out of the way first. Get this through your head right now and you'll have a much easier time of things:

Even though you are a Shadow Priest, you will spend most of your pre-Outland dungeon time as the primary healer.

Here's the thing: until you get to Outland, going Shadow is the only way you're going to be able to solo. You might have Holy Fire in your rotation in the early levels, but you will drop it as soon as you get Shadowform. The other specs, Holy and Discipline, don't do damage quickly enough to let you solo without lots and lots of downtime. As Shadow, you should be able to do 3-5 mob pulls before you have to sit down and drink. The other specs? Forget about it.

The catch to Shadow is that while it is great for soloing, you don't really bring all that much damage to a group setting in your early levels. And the really cool Vampiric Embrace and Vampiric Touch that you can do? They return health and mana based on how much damage you can do. So while they may be great for keeping you topped off while soloing, they just aren't all that useful in a group setting until Outland. I know, it's hard to get your head around, but it's true.

So ... be prepared to be the primary healer until you get to Outland. Get used to it.

In fact, I'd say it's a good thing. As a Priest, you definitely need to understand both how to heal and how to manage the threat that comes with healing. Healing is hard. There are going to be plenty of times post-70 when your primary healer is going to go down. You have the opportunity to keep it from being a wipe by popping out of Shadowform and tossing a few heals.

I am not saying that you have to be great at it (personally, I am a horrible healer), but you need to understand when to use a Flash Heal, when to use a Greater Heal, and when to Shield and Renew. The only way you're going to get that knowledge is to spend a lot of time healing in your early levels.

Got that? Now for the good news.

Even though you are healing, your full Shadow spec and gear are just fine.

Honest. I did primary healer duties all the way through 68 and Auchindoun. I never geared for healing -- everything I had on was for my Shadow spec. But, Priests are such great healers to begin with that it doesn't matter. Gear and spec for full Shadow and don't worry about whether or not you'll be able to keep everyone vertical until very late 60s.

Having said all of that, you'll see that I currently have 2 points in Healing Focus. Get this early on -- it will save your bacon in both solo and groups.

I'm going to reprint something I posted a while ago. Here are some tips for being a primary healer, even when you are full Shadow.

As we're working our way to the instance, I make sure everyone knows:

"I have plenty of water, so we won't have to pause more than 15 seconds between fights."

Do not be afraid to use a water after every single fight. Water is cheap compared to what you're getting from the instance -- even a single Greed drop will generally pay for all of the water you use. I always keep 80+ on me. You might need even more for a longer instance. Hoping for a Mage to provide water, or trying to do it on the cheap and count on your Spirit to get you through will only frustrate everyone.

"Please keep an eye on my mana -- if I'm at less than 2/3, don't pull or I might not be able to keep everyone up."

You may have to say this several times. Remember that many tanks don't pay attention to anything but their combos and think that they can just keep chain-pulling their way through the instance. Don't get frustrated -- it's just the way it is.

"Please don't tank if you aren't a tank."

I've been in more than a few groups where a bored Lock or Shammy tries to get in the soup and tank. If there's a lot of AOE damage going on (proximity bombs in BF, for example) then you're going to have a heart attack trying to keep everyone up. I've gone so far as to reinforce this later with "my main priority is the tank -- if you go down and you're not the tank, I'm not going to feel bad".

Don't be afraid to ask for backup healing help.

Is there a Shammy, Druid, or Pally in the group? There's nothing wrong with pulling them off of whatever else they are doing and having them do backup heals. If they don't want to help ("but I'm not specced to heal!") gently remind them that neither are you, but that you can't guarantee that there won't be a wipe. You'll almost always get resistance for the same reason that you're Shadow instead of Holy -- healing's just not as much fun to most people. But, especially for bosses, sometimes you gotta do it. Tell them that you will worry about the tank and off-tank, and they just have to keep their eye on the off-tank and everyone else. (Yes, you are doubling-up on the off-tank, but in theory you shouldn't have to heal the off-tank all that much.)To sum up: communicate. Talk to your group.

As for efficiency:

Remember the 5SR (five-second rule).

You want to heal in bursts, not continuously like you do DPS. It'll feel weird and you'll have to remember that your goal of "Always Be Casting" as Shadow does not in any way work as a healer.

Try to stick to your Greater Heal.

It's got the best mana efficiency and bang for your buck. If you've got a Druid that can Ennervate, a couple of Flash Heals aren't unwarranted, but you'll almost never want to use Flash otherwise.

Renew is your friend.

Yeah, it's not as mana-efficient as a real heal, but it's instant and it will counteract all but seriously heavy damage.

In non-emergencies ...

You generally shouldn't worry about bubbling people. Especially later, bubble is just too much mana and threat for what will probably only get swatted away in a single hit.

In emergencies ...

Bubble, Renew, Greater Heal, Greater Heal. (And have your finger on the Fade.)

In dire emergencies ...

Bubble, Flash Heal, Renew, Greater Heal.

You will be tempted ...

... to use your SWP+VE to regen health for the entire party. If you're not at a boss, don't bother. It sounds nice, but there's just not enough benefit. Don't even think about VT, even for bosses. You're playing the role of healer -- VT won't do jack for you. Save your mana.

You have a group heal (PoH)

But also remember that it is only mana-efficient when 3 or more party members have significant damage. You can get a pair of Renews down faster and with the same effect. (And if your party is behaving, no more than two people should ever be taking damage at a time.)

Prayer of Healing (group heal) gets even harder to get off in later levels -- the damage just comes too fast. Be absolutely certain that you can make it happen. I've found that it's most useful for bosses, but not much else.

No really, save your mana.

Unless you are in an uber group that somehow barely needs you to the point that you are bored, don't try to "help" with debuffs or DoTs. You're a healer, not a fighter.

Try to keep an eye on pets ...

But remember that your main focus is the tank. Hunters get especially vocal when you "let" their pet die. (The pet comes back unhappier and has to be fed more.) Shrug it off and remember that Hunters are wicked overpowered in PvE, leading to some Hunters not putting the time in to bother to learn how to control their pets beyond just "target and attack", and if their pet dies it's because they're probably not controlling it as well as they should be. (And yes, they can heal their own pets, just not as efficiently as you can.) Locks are generally less concerned about it.

Late-Game Heals

Binding Heal (heal you and me) is a big chunk of awesomeness, especially when you accidentally take damage. Prayer of Mending (bouncing heal) is similarly awesome, especially when everyone has a mob.

You may not need an entire set of healing gear, but ...

A few items wouldn't hurt. Get Outfitter or ItemRack or some other outfit management addon. Set it up as follows:

Your default outfit should be healing gear. Yes, really.
Set your DPS outfit to come on when you go into Shadowform.

This will mean that whenever you pop out of Shadowform you will automatically put on your healing gear. Logically, pretty much the only reason you'll ever leave Shadowform is to heal someone, so this makes sense. If you do it this way instead of the reverse, you never have to remember to manually switch outfits. Just set it and forget it.

Once you get the hang of it ...

Use Mind Control liberally when you can find mobs that heal. It's better to keep them from healing other mobs and use their mana than to use your own. Yes, you will die a few times trying to get it right.

Bind your trinkets to your heals with macros.

You've probably already done it for your Shadow spells, but it's worth it to do it for healing, as well. Just be careful -- extra healing means extra threat. Personally, I bind mine to Flash Heal -- if the situation is desperate enough that I need to use Flash Heal, I'm probably not worried about threat. And the trinket will last long enough for the Greater Heal or Prayer of Healing that I'm about to throw down after the Flash.

Pop your Shadowfiend early (half mana) on boss fights.

I tend to forget about SF when I'm healing, and damage tends to get heavier the further you get into the fight.

Get a trinket that reduces aggro.

Fade is all fine and good, but the cooldown is killer (and most agree that ImpFade isn't worth it). I have the Hypnotist's Watch and it has saved me more than a few times when my Fade was still on cooldown.

Post-70 Quest/Storyline Progression

2008-06-16T12:11:00.004-04:00

Ah, attunement. What an interesting concept. It is the hurdle you must jump over to get to where you want to go. Some people love it, some hate it.

No matter which side you are on, attunement arguably serves a purpose when done correctly. How many times have you been in a group that wiped over and over again, even though everyone seemed to be doing their best? In the end, did it come down to the group just being undergeared? That's what attunement is there for: it's an attempt to make sure you're ready to tackle what is ahead of you. But, attunement can also be done incorrectly. In WoW, I disagree vehemently with most rep-based attunement. No one enjoys grinding for rep.

Quest-based attunement, however, is good stuff. You get to see a bit more of the world around you. You get a bit more of the lore. You generally feel like you are participating in the game instead of just grinding or PUGging.

Here we are, with 2.4.2 being the current patch as of this post, and almost every single attunement has been removed from the game. You can now go pretty much wherever you want to go. Is that a good thing? Eh. Maybe, maybe not.

But having said all of that, what if you want to experience that part of the game? What if you want some of the lore? What if you want the game to be more than just logging in and joining /lfg?

Well then, may I humbly submit the following for your consideration?

That chart contains every quest that pertains to post-70 content. It is not an attunement chart, as there are no more attunements. It is, however, a rough guide to seeing all of the post-70 instances efficiently and completely. If you want one of the existing titles ("Hand of A'dal", "Champion of the Naaru", or "of the Shattered Sun") you will still need to do the quests for it, which is the other purpose for this chart.

Key quests are marked. Even if you don't actually need the key but would like one for your keyring anyway, you can see how to get it.

There are other charts that perform a similar function, but I wanted quest names in mine so that I could easily look something up on WowWiki or Thottbot. I also organized mine so that you should logically progress from left to right, top to bottom.

Thoughts? Comments?

Introductions

2008-06-16T11:49:00.002-04:00

Hey there.

Basic information: Apanthrope. Shadow Priest. Bleeding Hollow, US, PvP.

While I have no problem calling myself a SPriest-n00b, I am not a MMO-n00b. I've led guilds in other games, done the endgame burnout thing, played on test servers, etc, etc, etc. But now I'm digging my SPriest. I'm not the best of the best, but I have fun every time I log on.

There are a number of SPriest blogs. Most of them are quite good, so I hope I can pull my weight. Unfortunately, it seems that most of the SPriest blogs are directed more toward late-game content -- more T4-T6 level, or PvP. My goal here will be something a bit earlier than that, more in line with early post-70. When I hit 70 I stopped and had a "what do I do now?" moment, so maybe I can provide some direction to other SPriests in the same boat.

I'm using Blogger for this because there's a distinction between my personal life, my professional life, and my gaming. I can't imagine it would be hard to find my other blogs, but this one is dedicated to WoW.

The next few posts will be reprints of some of my longer message board postings. I will get to original content eventually, I swear.