Lucky Lurky

Lucky Lurky has moved!

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 14:32:00 +0000

It's been a while since I've updated, and I've only just started again! Check out Blind Deaf Mute, my new Shadowpriest blog! Be sure to update your bookmarks and I'll see you guys in the land of cool wordpress layouts!

Sindragosa and Lich King

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 04:25:00 +0000

Went to Vegas, came back and didn't really feel like playing WoW therefore didnt feel like blogging about it, plus have some uni crap to catch up with. Excuses out of the way, here are a couple videos.

It's amazing the quality between how crap our first time kills are and our subsequent farming kills.

How To: Love is in the Air

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 01:12:00 +0000

The Valentines event, Love is in the Air, started last night at midnight. I just so happened to be in Ironforge at the time to realise that it had begun and immediately flew to Shadowfang Keep to check the new boss out. Seeing as how most event bosses are generally really easy to kill, we tried it out as a trio. Turns out they were pretty easy! As for the loot:

Times thrice.

After the event boss we did a daily heroic - which was Azjol Nerub - and found we were randomly getting Lovely Charms. It was only when the warrior thunderclapped the small adds just before the drop after Hadronox did I realise that: 1) Killing blows were required and 2) They had to be a non-grey level. So knowing this, the best places to farm would be instances where there were quick kill quick respawn mobs like the Stratholme zombies or areas where you control a vehicle or use bombs to mow down hordes of enemies like the bombing run quests in TBC. I opted to farm the Lovely Charms in Ulduar:

This technique may end up being hotfixed, but it's doubtful, due to the many ways of exploiting it. Some people do bombing run quests in Icecrown, or even running over the bone guards in the Battle Before the Citadel daily. But the fastest is just spamming fireballs in Ulduar. These Lovely Charms convert into Lovely Charm Bracelets, which are then traded for the Love Token currency. In order to complete the meta achievement, you will need:

My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose: Solo either Old Kingdom or Utgarde Keep normal until the San'layn.
Dangerous Love: Just complete the questline, gain 5 Love Tokens as well.
Nation of Adoration: 4 Lovely Charm Bracelets (Also gain 20 Love Tokens in the process)
Shafted!: 10 Silver Shafted Arrow: 10 Love Tokens
The Rocket's Pink Glare: 10 Love Rockets: 10 Love Tokens
Be Mine!: 1-3 Bag of Heart Candies: 2-6 Love Tokens
Sweet Tooth, Lonely?: 1-2 Box of Chocolates: 10-20 Love Tokens
Flirt With Disaster, Fistful of Love: 15 Handful of Rose Petals: 6 Love Tokens
I Pitied The Fool: 5 Love Fool: 50 Love Tokens
Lonely?: 1 Romantic Picnic Basket: 10 Love Tokens
Flirt With Disaster: 1 Perfume: 1 Love Token

In total, 113 Love Tokens. Considering Nation of Adoration and Dangerous Love, thats 92 extra Lovely Charm Bracelets that are needed to be converted to Love Tokens to complete everything. It's not hard, just time consuming! I did it all within a few hours:

Icecrown Unlocked

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:55:00 +0000

At Nibuca's whim, I updated Raider101's Shadow Priest Guide. It was pretty outdated before, having not been updated since August, so I brought it up to how it is currently. I am never confident in the stuff I write - otherwise I would be a teacher - but it gives people the general idea of how to begin and if you want to be up to date, then follow the EJ Shadowpriest discussion.

With the Icecrown Citadel fully unlocked, you can now gain 83 Badges of Frost a week. That's around 3.6 Primordial Saronite, so the price may go down with supply increasing. Heres the breakdown:

ICC10 (2/Boss) + Sister Svala: 25
ICC25 (2/Boss) + Sister Svala: 25
ICC10 Weekly Quest: 5
ICC25 Weekly Quest: 5
Weekly Raid: 5
7x Daily Random Heroic: 14
VoA10: 2
VoA25: 2

I watched some Lich King streams on MMOChampion last night, and that fight looks tough! Seems very difficult for a 10man guild like ours to do, but we'll try and give it our best shot, tonight!

Edit: Messed up maths, will edit later !!

Wait of the Lich King

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 23:30:00 +0000

As the last week until the Arthas update, and the subsequent Heroic modes, this week was the ideal time to attempt some Icecrown Citadel raid achievements required for the Frostwyrm meta achievement. For the 10man raiders among us, we should have a few just from beating the encounters correctly - Boned and I've Gone and Made a Mess for example. And according to WoWProgress more than half of the listed people have those achievements. The others require more work.

Most guilds aiming to collect achievements should be able to get Flu Shot Shortage and Once Bitten, Twice Shy without much effort. The hardest I've found so far are Full House and Dances with Oozes.

We made pretty reasonable progress on the former, as coordinating the required adds in phase one went pretty well on our last attempt. Our tactic was to bring Deathwhisper to 100k mana while collecting the three uncommon types, then aiming to bring her to phase 2 as soon as the next adds were called. Trying to kill Deathwhisper with those five adds are another matter however! The three main things required for successful phase 2 are: High DPS, Crowd Control and Interrupts. It will take a bit more work to get this down pat.

Rotface is much the same, we spread out so that the small adds couldn't merge and also to mitigate the damage. The small adds also vomit out a slime patch in the direction they were facing which skewed up our positions a bit. Overall our main tactic was just to nuke down Rotface as fast as possible, but our best tries had us down to 500k hp remaining with a couple people still alive. Rotface, along with Deathwhisper, will probably require better gear before successful attempts.

Along with the next update we will inevitably see the Arthas cinematic leaked shortly after. I've never been that fussed about spoilers so I can't wait to see it as soon as it comes out, but I also definitely won't be skipping it the first time we kill him either. Wrathgate is a treat to watch everytime the chain is completed, and after so many weeks of battling through the citadel, I suspect the Arthas cinematic will be much the same.

Crimson Hall Cleared!

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:44:00 +0000

We didn't get too far into Bloodwing on Wednesday, due to the Blood Princes doing damage that were practically unhealable by the two main healers and yours truly the offspec healer, with some stating that they were doing more damage than was experienced in the 25man version of the fight. Needless to say we felt that there would be a quick fix later in the week like Rotface, and we got it!

Nothing remarkable about the Blood Prince fight aside from a lot of damage being dealt across the raid, and with the positional awareness required at the same time it led to.. more damage being done than should've been done. We screwed up the last leg of the fight and finished with three people barely remaining.

Blood Queen in contrast felt like a really easy fight to get used to. The positional awareness was simple and the raidmods did their job at marking who had what. We spent the first few tries with me healing and made pretty decent headway into the encounter, before we realised we had more than enough damage to meet the enrage requirements. So they made me go mainspec damage.

The theory was that with Essence of the Blood Queen I would be able to do enough healing for the ranged group and let the healers concentrate on the melee. It didn't go perfectly executed but they managed without my healing and we were able to kill her relatively quickly. So now we wait for the Frostwing.. Wing.

Plagueworks Cleared!

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 09:00:00 +0000

Week 2 of Plagueworks and we managed to do the entire instance in a day, which sets us up nicely for the new wing next week. Thanks to a combination of a guildy's tactics writeup and yesterdays teething tries, we had a good idea of how to do it beforehand. So today it only took us a single wipe before we downed Putricide. It's a relatively long fight and requires a lot of movement and coordination, but ultimately fun! And not because of the Futurama references either. Some screenshots of the kills from tonight:

Professor Putricide is a pretty unique fight in that it seems to currently be the only fight that assassination rogues are not completely owning the meters with. In fact, the ability to do damage from multiple targets and doing this from range makes us a pretty useful class for this fight! It's fun to be given a chance to shine.

I also compared Cookiee, who has been pretty high on the meters, with myself. 36% haste compared with the 28% that I have is the only thing that really seems to stick out. Right now I'm aiming straight for the helm and gloves to complete 4set bonus, after that it's badge cloak or buying saronite for the crafted legs.

Err.. Rotface got nerfed quite a bit..

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:00:00 +0000

This week, being plagued by sickness and other mishaps ourselves, we mustered up a short half-raid after Plagueworks 10 was bug-fixed (or nerfed, depending on your views). We ended with Rotface and Festergut cleared, and used up a couple tries on Professor Putricide. This time we decided to do Festergut first. He seemed pretty easy, not that I noticed since I died almost as soon as the fight started, but it seemed like they had it under control.. I think. Anyway we one-shot him and that's what counts!

After few tries into Rotface a member had to leave our near-midnight raid so we drafted up a casual member of our guild.. who unfortunately disconnected just after we started and spent the remainder of the time eating dirt, but his spirit was with us. As for the fight, let's just say that the % health deduction hotfix earlier this week seemed to help quite a lot! We didn't really see much chaos with the oozes, which were the key part to the fight. Everyone seemed to have it under control and the the oozes didn't have trouble merging compared to Wednesday's attempts, which we'll chalk it down to patchday lag. Aside from the occasional movement there isn't all that much to the fight bar the numbers:

Fight lasted 4 minute 23 seconds, which was probably quicker than our attempts on Wednesday. I also did pretty average DPS for that fight, definitely could've done better given proper DOT management but hey - tomorrow is the start of another week!

Raiding Shadowpriest 3.3 Guide: Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 09:00:00 +0000

Raiding Shadowpriest DPS utilises roughly five core spells for DPS. In order of uptime priority, they are:

Vampiric Touch
Devouring Plague
Shadow Word: Pain
Mind Blast
Mind Flay

My personal opener, since it requires on equip effect procs (Black Magic): MF VT MB DP SW:P

Try to make sure VT is up before MB for Replenishment uptime. Start casting VT when there is about 1.5s left (adjusting for haste).

Some people use Shadow Word: Death in their rotation; I prefer to save mine for movement situations.

MF is a filler spell that has damage ticks at about 50%, 75% and 100% during the channelling. So always make sure you have casted halfway before clipping the spell if you need to. MF also provides a stack of Shadow Weaving every tick. This also applies to the Muradin's Spyglass trinket (unfortunately only provides a single stack per cast for Illustration of the Dragon Soul and Eye of the Broodmother).

DP's instant cast component is very powerful, especially with heroism where you can almost keep casting it, waiting for the first tick and casting it again. This is probably only something you can do with T8 2set bonus though.

Hard refreshing SW:P through recasting it (as opposed to MF's soft refreshing it) can be useful when:
- You possess a crit buff through Potion of Wild Magic and/or Nevermelting Ice Crystal.
- You have a Rune of Power/Malygos Spark damage buff.
- Your current SW:P wasn't casted with 5 stack Shadow Weaving.

Hard refreshing SW:P doesn't have any affect on:
- You gain spellpower buffs. It adjusts automatically.
- Any boss weakened/debuff states.

During Heroism: Leave out MB from rotation, be sure to cast VT/DP as soon as it starts and just before it ends to get full benefit from the haste. Otherwise make use of any potions and MF the day away.

Remembering Wrath Release

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 09:00:00 +0000

Casting my mind back to November I was in an inbetween stage between playing orc warrior and human priest, both had good guilds and bunch of friends but I stuck with the people I knew longer, although it didn't matter much since I would be quitting the game for the next 6-7 months after the first week!

I had bought the Collector's Edition and it arrived the previous day so I knew I would be one of the first people to arrive in Northrend, just as I would be the first to enter Outland the couple of years prior to Wrath's release. However unlike TBC release where Outlands became available immediately after midnight, Northrend came up much earlier, and at around 10-ish a bunch of us were in Borean getting our Grand Master tradeskills and doing the early starting quests. We did Nexus a few times, a guildmate getting realm first skinner shortly afterwards with the amount of dragon mobs to skin. I tried my hand at trying to get realm first fishing but trying to do it in higher levelled Northrend waters wasn't the best of ideas and someone got it way before I was anywhere close.

Anyway, due to the horrible timing of Wrath release and having to deal with work and school at the same time, and not taking part in the all nighter levelling race my guildmates were having overall made me kinda detached from the whole Wrath experience. I gradually stopped playing at 73 and continued after 3.1 came out. In hindsight it did save me from what seemed like the worst period of Wrath, the black hole of post-Naxx pre-Ulduar, and I didn't have to deal with fighting for quest mobs!

Despite not having the motivation to level I managed to get my mage guildmate to portal me to Dalaran, where I spent my time trying to get the coin achievements. I didn't do too bad and was only two gold coins away from the meta achievement by the time I fully quit! It would save time for my Salty title which I got the first couple weeks after reaching 80. Here's to hoping for a nice relaxing summer release of Cataclysm where I don't have to deal with upcoming exams!

Making a Turkey out of the New Wing!

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 09:00:00 +0000

We didn't make much progress past Saurfang last night, partly due to undergeared people, partly due to how we went in almost completely blind on Rotface and spent 2-3 hours slapping away at him. I suspect the main reason was underestimating how hard everything was after the Trial of the Crusader loot pinata and the relatively forgiving first wing.

Rotface has several gimmicks which can take out a raid pretty quickly, and the one we need to get a hang of is the ooze management. As the fight drags on the more diseases he applies to people, not completely sure if it's a soft-enrage timer or a %-health thing. If its the former then the whole thing is a DPS and idiot check which can be dealt with buffs and more gear, the latter then it means we need to accelerate the damage towards the end. Our best attempt last night was 2%, and it felt like we were bruteforcing it with myself as the third healer and didn't feel like it was under control. Our next attempt will be on Monday, which gives us more time to see more detailed tactics hopefully.

Currently 28 badges away from my next tier piece, the shoulders. After I get that I can wear my robe as well for the 2 pc T10 bonus. I also got Icecrown Spire Sandals which were socketed with Reckless Ametrine and Runed Cardinal Ruby. I will lose my one of my meta requirement blue gems when I replace the robe so I will regem for the bonus on those.

Catching Up

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 09:00:00 +0000

I've been a bit lazy these past couple months, but here's a brief update of how I fared since the release of 3.3:

- Levelled a warrior to 80 and did some casual raiding with Goon Squad. T10 warrior pieces look awesome on orcs.

- Racechanged priest to Draenei. They're cute and extra hit is kinda nice.

- Did new 5 man instances as soon as they came out, gotten Battered Hilt on first day of running and completed it subsequently. I also bought the Kirin Tor ring from scratch, which was a costly 9500 or so gold to upgrade to ilvl 251.

- Got Thaumaturge's Crackling Cowl and Muradin's Spyglass from ICC10.

- Bought T10.251 chest with my frost emblems. Can't wear it yet though, not until I get shoulders for the set bonus. Those pieces replace my spirit T9.245 pieces.

- Begun Loremaster on a whim. Northrend Loremaster I got shortly after 80, and just yesterday I got Outlands Loremaster. All thats left is Azeroth which will be a lot more painful without flying mount.

Still got much more things to do, finalize pieces of what I want from ICC10, make a video of ICC10, and the shadowpriest guide which will be abut doling out damage. In great quantity.

Raiding Shadowpriest 3.3 Guide: Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 10:40:00 +0000

This guide is something I've been writing for past few days, and is intended to give you a rough overview of raiding as a shadowpriest. I'm pretty casual as far as raiding goes, but nonetheless I hope this guide proves to be useful no matter if you are a healer looking for an offspec or an up and coming shadowpriest.

Why be a shadowpriest?

What I love most about being a shadowpriest is Vampiric Embrace, the ability to steadily heal my group in the raid through damage. It allows me to take a lot more risks and be a rebel, standing in fire, whirlwind, fire, orbs and fire. If we underestimate the damage then we have Dispersion to fall back on. It's pretty stupid to like a class for the ability to play bad, but it's funny on fights like Twin Val'kyr to see everyone manically running around trying to dodge orbs, sometimes dying, while I am able to more damage through not having to move and healing myself for more at the same time. We're not immortal, but we're not pushovers.

Unfortunately we will always have some deficit to our class, known as the 'Hybrid Tax', that makes us inferior to pure damage dealing classes. We put in more effort than others only to get less in return. But if you are looking for a class that can stand on it's own two feet in raids, Shadowpriests are it.

Key points about shadowpriest.

- Provides Replenishment through Vampiric Touch and Mind Blast. Same as Retribution Paladins, Frost Mage, Survival Hunter and Destruction Warlock.
- With 3/3 Misery, a deep shadow talent, gives entire raid an extra 3% spell hit. Same as Balance Druids.
- Constantly heals yourself for 25% of your damage done, 5% to party members, through Vampiric Embrace. A Paladin's Judgement of Light is similar on a smaller scale, but benefits the whole raid.
- Shadowform provides 15% less damage. Also, the talented cooldown ability Dispersion temporarily reduces damage by 90%.

Gearing a shadowpriest.

It used to be simple, reach spellhit and stack spell power. Shadowpriests get a decent amount of hit through talents Shadow Reach and Misery, requiring 289 hit with both talents to hit the cap, 263 if you're a cute draenei to boot (<3 racechange). You still want to keep gearing for more spellpower, but that comes with a penalty in terms of gear itemisation - you gain more from multiple stats rather than one stat.

Thankfully haste is thrown into the fray due to patch 3.3, and is weighed up very close to spellpower, with Vampiric Touch and Devouring Plague ticking faster with more haste. Affliction Warlocks, our closest cousins to the DOT-oriented playstyle, have the same buff with Corruption. Haste is beautiful, but it changes things around a bit. With the Black Magic enchant on a one handed weapon you have to keep an eye on your Devouring Plague and Vampiric Touch when it procs. If you don't refresh them while it has procced, then you lose the real benefit of the haste.

Spirit is calculated into spellpower through Twisted Faith (increases spellpower by 20% of total spirit) and Improved Spirit Tap (increases Spirit by 10%) talents and Glyph of Shadow (increases spellpower by 30% of spirit when critting with non DOTs). Thats 50% of our spirit, which also gets an extra 10% increase. Moonkins and Warlocks also get 30% as spellpower while Mages get 55% as crit rating. When both proc on my self-buffed priest I gain around 220 spellpower. There is no spirit on any of the T10 pieces, nor do the set bonuses provide crit buffs to spells which proc Shadowy Insight like T9 gave 5% crit to Mind Flay. As far as 3.3 looks, we will be spending 5 talent points and a glyph for an increasingly diminutive gain in spell power. That 220 bonus spellpower will end up at 140 spellpower with full T10 and a couple of spirit pieces.

Ultimately, priority for gearing is, with values from shadowpriest.com:

Hit = 1.88 (0 after cap)
SP = 1.00
Haste = 0.98
Crit = 0.76
Spi = 0.59
Int = 0.22

If you're switching from holy or levelling pieces with shadow, a good mix of crit and spirit will give you uptime on Glyph of Shadow and some decent spellpower to compensate. But ultimately go for spellpower and haste pieces for good, consistant damage. You can afford to go for gem bonuses with red/yellow requirements thanks to Reckless Ametrine, which is rated close to Runed Cardinal Ruby. Note that you should spend Heroism badges on the Ametrine and Honor on Cardinal Rubies, as the rubies are more expensive with badges.

Shadowpriest Glyph and Talents

My Talents and Glyphs

Damage (which includes Hit) are top priority talents for shadow, and we get a lot of them. Along the way we will get some utility talents, some more useful than others but all ultimately situational. There isn't really a right or wrong, the Shadow tree is pretty good as talent trees go. But within that tree there are many mana conservation and regeneration talents, which can be sacrificed for less interruptions or constant self healing.

Glyph-wise it's the same principle; Damage before Utility. Patch 3.3 turned Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain into one of less importance, making Glyph of Shadow and Mind Flay the chief damage dealing glyphs. Glyph of Shadow Word: Death is also a damage dealing glyph but it's situational requirement of 35% or less health for 10% damage buff means it is useless for the first 65%. It is a prime choice for the mana regen utility of either Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain or Glyph of Dispersion. The latter comes with a shield wall like ability and is my chosen third glyph.

The WoW Year in Review

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 23:27:00 +0000

A bit belated after being tagged by Jaedia but I got round to it in the end! Not a big fan of these questionaire type things but I figure what the hell.

What did you do in the World of Warcraft in 2009 that you’d never done before?

I played Wrath of the Lich King when it first came out in November 08, but I never had the attention span to reach 80 at the time. This year I've gotten a priest, druid and warrior up to 80, and if I'm lucky, my 70s paladin and hunter will get there soonish too.

What was your favorite new place that you visited?

Ulduar was definitely an amazing instance to come from Blizzard, although thankfully I never had to wait the godawful amount of months for it. They really outdid themselves on the whole Titan Vault theme that Uldaman started. I also love the fights and how the hard modes required you to actively do something to trigger them - I don't like how they made it a UI trigger for ICC.

What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?

I'd like to develop a niche and direction to take Lucky Lurky towards. It initially was to become an economic blog but I soon got bored of making gold and steered it towards shadow priests. It still remains a shadow priest blog but I'd like to focus more and have things such as level guides, etc. Basically add more things outside of my current raiding orientated spectrum.

Don't really have major goals ingame, I'd like to get achievements, reputations and such but I don't particularly have the patience to do them all.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Managing to get Crusader I think, because no way can I be motivated to do dailies constantly like that anymore. Especially that annoying one which makes you ride across the length and breadth of Northrend. Also getting Chef's Hat meaning I could stop doing the cooking one too although it wasn't as much as a pain in the ass to do. I also got Salty this year, but drawback is that it has kinda burnt me out on fishing altogether.

What was your biggest failure?

Not being able to separate my detachment from my warrior. It was an older character than my priest and had been through all the old Vanilla content, and when I reached 70 with my Horde hunter I decided to put him in stasis and level my warrior. The result is with my OCD for completion I do all the seasonal achievements for my priest and then my warrior after, although I do get to see both factions point of view in the process.

What did you get really, really, really excited about?

Blizzcon was amazing and well worth the wait. Even with all the good stuff being leaked the few days before the event it still didn't beat seeing the things live. It was still great to be able to watch the panels live on internet stream, you really got a pretty good sense of the atmosphere. Blizzcon also did wonders showing the devs as human beings who just loved their work, and all the presentations were cool to watch.

And patch 3.3 really changed the game for the better, that was a bit of a wait after seeing the wonders of the new dungeons and stuff during the PTR.

What do you wish you’d done less of?

Been less indecisive over my gearing. So many pointless gems and enchants gone into things I barely used, but I guess Blizzard's itemisation has some fault for designing so many similar gear as well. We've been raiding with other casters recently so maybe I won't get the chance to hog all the loot during ICC!

What was your favorite WoW blog or podcast?

I don't really have favourites but there are some that deserve a mention. Greedy Goblin kinda inspired me to blog and it's pretty fresh to see him take his blog to a different direction, into underdogging instances. I like it! Dusk Noir keeps up with shadowpriest changes and offers insightful analysis into any new changes, don't really know of other priest blogs that offer that kind of outlook so it's unique in that area.

Tell us a valuable WoW lesson you learned in 2009.

If you want something done right, do it yourself. That's why I rolled a class that could tank, and a class that could heal.

The Case for Cheaper Dual Specialisation

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 19:20:00 +0000

The new Dungeon Finder was as amazing as it was when I joined on the PTR, and the community as a whole has embraced the idea and there isn't a negative word to be heard anywhere. But where can we advance from this? If we're removing the stigma of finding groups, we can also remove stigmas that still affect the game, such as finding tanks and healers.

I start with dual specialisation; currently available at lvl 40 for 1000g. It's a goldsink for a game that lacks decent end game goldsinks, but with DF embracing the idea of alts levelling through dungeons we should offer more people to dual spec into hybrids. After all, the game lets you join groups as hybrid, so why do we still limit people into choosing to perform as tank/healer at their best at the cost of their soloing capability?

I realise it's not mandatory to be specced as such for low level classes of course, but in such cases it usually requires them to be knowledgable about the game to perform a job not tailored to their spec. At the very least it will prepare people to learn the spec early on so that by endgame we will see more confident tank and healers.

Patch 3.1 debuted dual specs, and it is so prevalent these days at endgame, it's strange that Blizzard hasn't introduced changes so more people can have it. 3.2 introduced cheap mounts - epic land mount and training for 60g, a drop in the water compared to the 1000g of vanilla. So these discounts aren't innovative nor game breaking. But it will encourage people to use it, and a game with hybrids being truly hybrid - even during levelling - is one we can all enjoy.

3.3 Shadow Priest Glyphs

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 01:30:00 +0000

Amongst many other delightful shadow priest changes coming with 3.3, we now have a slightly more varied glyph selection to choose from. Here are the 3.3 changes concerning shadow priest glyphs:

Glyph of Mind Flay
Old Effect: Increases the range of your Mind Flay spell by 10 yards.
New Effect: Increases the damage done by your Mind Flay spell by 10% when your target is afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain.

Glyph of Shadow
Old Effect: While in Shadowform, your non-periodic spell critical strikes increase your spell power by 10% of your Spirit for 10 sec.
New Effect: While in Shadowform, your non-periodic spell critical strikes increase your spell power by 30% of your Spirit for 10 sec.

Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain
Old Effect: Increases the damage done by your Mind Flay spell by 10% when your target is afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain.
New Effect: The periodic damage ticks of your Shadow Word: Pain spell restore 1% of your base mana.

Glyph of Mind Flay and Glyph of Shadow remain the mandatory glyphs for a raiding priest. Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain is optional now, and if you don't want to spend gold changing it around then there isn't a massive reason for doing so. Just remember that Haste not affecting Shadow Word: Pain means there is no scaling, just base mana over base tick. I will be swapping it for Glyph of Dispersion. The attractiveness of a 1 minute 15 second cooldown on greater mana regen and damage reduction appeals to me, despite the con of a 6 second silence. Just make sure you have this macro for the last one:

#showtooltip Dispersion
/cancelaura Dispersion
/cast Dispersion

So you can double tap Dispersion to control over how much mana you want to regen. or just to quickly get out of roots when you're too lazy to fade..

Lastly there is Glyph of Shadow Word: Death - Very situational, but it is the only other glyph option that directly boosts damage. I already seldom use SW:D as it is, so it wouldn't be worth my while glyphing this for now, but if the results are significant then I could see this moving up to a mandatory spot. But for now I'll worry about not being gibbed in Icecrown with my Dispersion glyph!

Oh so close..

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 03:37:00 +0000

The news sites have given their predictions - it's coming!

For those of us who have followed patch 3.3's development, we know all to well about the upcoming release of the Icecrown Citadel dungeons and raids that will come with it. You will also have heard of the Dungeon Finder and will know that it'll be an absolute godsend those of us levelling alts or trying to gear up for raiding. However there is a change that hasn't been quite touched on as much, but still is pretty important. Reputation!

For the reputations that deal with flying mounts and the head and shoulder enchants are all being "sped up by roughly 30%". Along with that, you can now trade in Emblems of Triumph for the 250 rep Commendation Badges - This comes as a result of the removal of the daily dungeons quests. As if that weren't enough, these enchants are now Bind-on-Account. It seems Blizzard is really pulling out all the stops so that people have no excuse to not be prepared for raiding with fully enchanted gear.

PTR 3.3: Reflectin' on the Halls of Reflection [Spoilers]

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 20:30:00 +0000

Halls of Reflection is finally out! It has been delayed on the PTR for weeks now, and only just came out during Thursday's early morning update. I went on shortly afterwards and used the Dungeon Finder tool to join for Pit of Saron, and happened to join for Heroic. Some of us were first timers and we wiped a few times, but eventually made it. At the end an event occurs and you follow Jaina (or Sylvanas if you're Horde) through a portal to Halls of Reflection. Here comes the nitty gritty of the dungeon experience, and how to handle it as a holy priest - spoilers abound!

You step into the instance, into a corridor looking directly at Frostmourne. If your group happens to have the Quel'dalar quest, then the blade with have a reaction to Frostmourne and will attack the group. Once it's been subdued, Uther appears and tells you to take it to the Sunwell. Otherwise, the instance starts with Jaina/Sylvanas attempting to communicate with the blade, which causes Uther to appear as an apparition and starts a minor cutscene that lasts several minutes. At the end the Lich King appears and takes his blade back, summoning his two commanders, Falric and Marwyn, as the first encounter of the instance.

There are ten wave of adds during the fight, and they can end up very nasty. In addition to the traditional Priest (Fear and SW:P dispels!) and Warrior adds, you also get Mages who can single target frost nova and multiply themselves, Rogues which do stacking poison damage and Hunters who will set Frost Traps, slowing down the tank and making his job harder than it is already. They spawn around the Frostmourne chamber, so the party should probably fight in the corridors which are easy to line-of-sight the ranged. The adds are shackable.

I found it pretty challenging to heal the trash waves since our tank was inexperienced and the whole party seemed to be taking a large chunk of damage at times as well. There was also little time to recover inbetween, with adds spawning as soon as the last of the prior was finished. Blizzard seems to be wanting more CC rather than 'WotLKing' (AoE zerging) the new heroics. I suspect priests and paladin groups will be popular for this encounter, Shackle Undead, Turn Evil and Holy Wrath will all be extremely useful to control the trash. We wiped a few times, once on the boss itself. The trash waves only stop after the boss dies, so if you wipe on the boss, be prepared to do those five waves all over again!

Falric will fight as soon as the last of the fifth wave is down, and Marwyn after the tenth. Falric was pretty easy, with only the tough part being Defiling Horror, which did damage during an undispellable fear (Every Man for Himself worked). You get a short break after killing him before the sixth wave appears. Marwyn randomly gives a party member a debuff which does 40,000 damage over time unless dispelled. Dispelling it splits the damage amongst the party, so group heals should be prepared.

After that you fight a lone Frostsworn General who isn't tough to take down, he also has reflections of your party to help him. I assume they are CCable but they all went down easily so it wasn't worth bothering to check. Then its up the ramp to see a low hp Jaina/Sylvanas battling the almost untouched Lich King. He is then disabled and you speak to the heroine to start a chase sequence.

During the chase sequence, the Lich King brings down walls of ice to temporarily stall the party, summoning waves of ghouls, Ymirjar Witch Doctors and Abominations. Abominations were immune to shackles, so should probably be brought down first, whereas Shackle Undead could be used to stall the Witch Doctor's AoE casts. You have to break through around four ice walls with one wave of undead each time, although their numbers steadily ramp up. The Lich King during this sequence will slowly approach the party, with an aura that does damage over time, and if in range, he will oneshot you! In my experience, when he reached the wall he killed only killed one person in my party, but I suspect it was a bug and you are supposed to wipe.

Once the last wall breaks you reach a dead end and the Lich King strangulating the last breaths of your faction's heroine... only to find your factions airship arrive in the nick of time, blasting away at the rock tunnels and trapping the Lich King. The rocks quickly disappear with the Lich King nowhere to be found, and you ascend the steps to the airship and find the loot in a chest at the end.

Overall it's a short and fun event filled instance, similar to ones such as those in Caverns of Time, notably Old Hillsbrad. But it doesn't really give total closure for people who don't raid, since you never really do anything to Lich King other than run away. Unfortunately it seems to get your real chance for retribution at Arthas, you will have to do one of Icecrown Citadel raids. The three 5-man instances altogether have been a great treat though, the music and speeches provide a great atmosphere to them all.

My first and only time in the instance so far has been in heroic mode, which offers the higher end geared raiders a decent challenge. It did seem a little too difficult for the ilvl 232 rewards it gives, although I'm underestimating how the new Dungeon Finder will shower you in T9. Maybe it was the premade tank with no experience, maybe the lack of CC we used, we ended up wiping half a dozen times. Nonetheless, with the trash in there dropping Quel'delar Hilt amongst other random BoP epics, it will end up rewarding for most. During the initial release, at least!

Levelling an Alt: Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:30:00 +0000

With relatively little going on Warcraft at the moment, I have decided to start a new Blood Elf Hunter on a server that I used to play on, Sporeggar-EU. When Wrath of the Lich King came out I decided to go with Alliance over Horde, so I never took my existing level 70 character there up to 80, and didn't have heirlooms during the Hunter levelling process. Since I was doing it with a friend, who's playing a Paladin, and never played Horde before, having no heirlooms meant we would be balanced in levelling terms.

The major changes brought by 3.2 and it's predecessors have seriously revamped the levelling up process. With affordable mounts even for someone who has never played on the server but has economic knowledge of the game (i.e. Has Auctioneer), Azeroth goes by in a blur. And then Outlands. Oh, poor Outlands. The change of normal flyers being boosted to 150% and at 60 has meant that we say hello and goodbye to the Burning Crusade in two, three days. After heading to Outlands at 58 I am currently 64 with 88/90 quests in Hellfire, 53/54 in Zangarmarsh. I expect we'll be 68 within finishing Greatmother chain, as every self respecting person starting a Horde for the first time should see it.

In anticipation of the badge pinata LFG system, it is one of the best times to level a new character. However, on our low population server designated for New Players, we rarely found groups for instances. This could be because we were playing afternoons and late nights instead of evenings, but we did find ourselves wishing for the new LFG a fair few times. While the first few instances you come across can be duo'd, we needed a dedicated healer for later ones such as Zul'Farrak and Maraudon. Sunken Temple we skipped entirely. But these were minor annoyances, and it didn't take long to level up since you can cherrypick your way through 3-4 zones every tier.

In a duo group like we were, killquests were the norm, so zones like Stranglethorn Vale and Hinterlands quickly became our favourites. The latter in particular has quests which are efficient and duo-friendly. Despite the changes to Vanilla itemisation way back in TBC, it still doesn't quite reach todays expected standards, and we went into Outlands still wearing gear acquired back at level 30. It's pretty disconcerting to see spirit on DPS loot, so heres hoping Cataclysm's revamp will sort that out once more.

All in all, I'm pretty surprised at how eager I've been to level a character. Having a friend to level with and to keep each other motivated helps a lot too. The last time we levelled was through Recruit-a-Friend, and we went through it boosting each other in instances and ended up with several new 60s, but sometimes it's fun to do it the old fashioned way.

Tier 10 and their Origins

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 21:30:00 +0000

Most people have probably noticed that Icecrown's Tier 10 reflects upon key iconic figures that make up the Lich King's army in Northrend, so here's a post where you can see for yourself the sets currently available on MMOChampion and from the PTR, and the figures that influence the designs:

Warrior T10. Hard to find the Vry'kul resemblance at first but after looking for the key figure, King Ymiron, we can see the boar shoulders are a deliberate reference to the King's belt. Very cool design, reflective of the wonderful T3/T6 warrior design as well, which was one of the best designed sets out there.

Rogue T10. Obvious reference to the Northrend Geist. Who doesn't love The Leaper? Aside from the obvious one eye helm, a real world reference to the Cyborg Ninja of Metal Gear Solid fame, the noose from the Geist features prominently in the rogue set. The rough stitches provide the details to the set pieces whilst resembling like the same rough stitches that we see on fleshbeast creations throughout Northrend.

Mage T10. The San'layn have been a mysterious prescence throughout Northrend. With a whole wing dedicated to the mysterious blood drinkers in Icecrown Citadel, they deserve some kind of recognition for their services to the Lich King. The mummified bandages go away from the San'layn model in favour of an ornate, jeweled, set design.

Hunter T10. Cryptlordstalker! Nerubians have played a huge part in how the Scourge rose to power, and the traitor king Anub'arak is the basis for the hunter tier. The spiked helm is the obvious trait, as does the big smooth and round shoulders that resemble the crypt lord. However, we lose the minor Egyptian details from the transition of cryptlord to hunter. Instead, we get belts and other leathery touches to make it a hunter set that looks like a cryptlord, rather than the other way around.

Druid T10. Not a perfect reference, but pretty much resembles the undead beasts such as Gluth and other shadowy fiends. It has the stag-like horns that clearly make it a druid set, and despite the faceless look I like it.

Death Knight T10. Pretty obvious! Skull placements, unsymmetric shoulders, triple spiked helm are the main features that make transition from Arthas to the death knight set.

Priest T10. I'm probably a teeny bit bitter that the obvious choice of inspiration for a priest set, the Val'kyr, have been snubbed. Instead we get a Dreadmist sort of looking set, influenced by Necromancers such as Heigan the Unclean. There have been recolors shown on official WoW forums that make it look a lot nicer, but to me, the overall look remains pretty uninspired. Hell, even a skull-o-meter count results is a big fat zero. The only thing that makes it look remotely like an Icecrown set is pair of horns at the bottom of the dress. Sorry Horde, looks like T10 got the same designers that designed the "Alliance" T9 cloth, which didn't have any actual Alliance insignias at all.

Val'kyrs remain the missed obvious choice still, after all, Arthas never seems to walk around anywhere without his two Val'kyrs in early Northrend quests. The angelic winged look combined with the power over life of death that they have would've made a great inspiration for the priest tier 10. Some priests have already taken steps to redesign the set, such as Saerah. It looks fantastic:

I have left out Warlocks and Paladins because I'm not too sure on their in-game references, and Shamans haven't been released yet. Does anyone have ideas?

Priest Tier 10 Released & [Spoiler] "Lava Man"

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 02:54:00 +0000

Quick post before bed, will edit in the morning but:

Ugh, here I was hoping with all the themes going on with the class sets, Priests would get Val'kyrs as their inspiration for T10. Instead we got.. a makeover from the same guys who should've been fired for the atrocity that was Alliance T9. Lately Blizzard seems to have forgotten their priestly angelic icons that formed the basis for some of the stunning early set designs. A real shame that priests have to finish WOTLK with such a dull and generic design, but hey, we can always grab warlock offset pieces, I guess?

This new build also gave us a new model. Humanoid.. burnt and scorched, yet still alive.. almost as if someone with the power of flame and life had touched him. PTR always gives us some fun stuff. Armor on Lava Man remains similar to Bolvar, so it's probably that..

Hallow's End 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Hallow's End started at 01:00 server time and a lot of people had the same idea of getting there early and get a run in before the daily reset. The loots have been updated but the item levels are still Heroic Dungeon/Naxx10 quality epics which isn't what was to expected considering the gear resets Blizzard keeps doing so much of. Maybe we'll see another Direbrew Mug before next week, who knows.

How To: ForteXorcist

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 01:00:00 +0000

ForteXorcist setup as suggested by Jaedia - and all in one image! Only deals with Spell Timer, Cooldown Timer is something I don't really tweak with, although it's not much different.

I also updated my other addons, Postal now tracks how many mails you have incoming altogether, and lets you know when you can retrieve them. I also grabbed GupPet, which replaces Livestock for automated companion pet action. Lurky summoning without effort!

More 3.3 Priest Changes

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:30:00 +0000

As I caught news of the latest PTR changes on Tuesday night, I immediately got the patch and went on it to check it out. And I wasn't the only one.

And so, along with five others at midnight, tested out our damage - although with the amount of debuffs on the dummies, the numbers kept being skewed. I think we can safely say we were buffed. However, I might be wrong, so feel free to buff us some more! The changes have been reported on several blogs already, haste applying to dots when in shadowform being the main buff amongst others.

My testing method remained the same across all tries, which was to simply do damage until I reached approximately 500k, with one shadowfiend usage. The initial buffs we have received so far give us 200-300 dps, but there are still some bugs regarding haste on the PTR, as well as the lag on there. It also doesn't help that I haven't really been gearing for haste (300 was Elitist Jerks current recommendation), and therefore don't get to see the full benefit. I have been avoiding the spirit stat, and means I tend to lose out on haste too. EJ is also rife with theorycrafting at the moment, which makes for some good reads.

Another Good Thing as a result of shadowform haste means that we finally have a choice in glyphs! Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain is being changed so that you gain 1% mana every tick, as a result of mana consumption being higher from haste (having to recast dots more often). Although it is probably going to be the Raider's Choice, there are other choices to take for third glyph, chiefly Glyph of Dispersion, also for mana regen and 'ohshit' purposes. A dark horse would be Glyph of Power Word: Shield, one I used for levelling to 80 during shadow for AoE grinding. Who knows, we might see a comeback for raiding!

I have neglected to mention some other 3.3 goodies, such as the T10 set bonuses. Reducing Mind Flay channelling, meaning we don't have to wait for the first 50% of the spell before we see a damage tick? Awesome. The new 40 yard range on nameplates is cool also, especially when you have an addon like Aloft. Blizzard are really going all out on this last patch (it's going to last a good 4-5 months before Cataclysm, after all), and we ain't seen the end of it yet.

Druid Art Contest: My Submission!

noreply@blogger.com (Ben) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:30:00 +0000

A tweet caught my eye today, and I naturally followed and found a Druid Art Contest! Icedragon is giving away a game card for the best drawing. I don't particularly want to win it but it's nice to have a reason to doodle once in a while. Here's my entry:

That's right. John Lennon Tree. Bitches.