Blog Archive by month: October 2008
Felmyst down
by Tachyon on Wed. 22. October 2008, 00:24
Filed under: sunwell, raiding, felmyst
Brutallus went down last Thursday, so tonight we could attempt to beat Felmyst.The fight is not that hard post-patch 3.0, and after a few tries we got him down.
It's not that spectacular for a raiding guild post-patch 3.0, as the bosses all have ~30% less HP than before, but to me it's relieving to get a chance to see some more bosses before the expansion, so I'm as excited as ever
In this encounter, the Improved Blizzard specs (all of the 3 mages in the raid were deep frost) came in quite handy to AoE the pulk of skeletons that spawned from the Demonic Vapor trail.
Felmyst dropped 3x the mage/rogue/druid token. We changed our loot policy to free roll, as 3 weeks before the expansion loot does no longer matter, we're equipped well enough for the few remaining BC raids with or without the drops.
I rolled a 89 and am now prowd owner of the Boots of the Tempest.
I completely missed to learn Mixology until two days ago. This new passive ability for Alchemists prolongs the duration of flasks from 2h to 4h, and also increases the effect slightly (e.g. Flask of Pure Death from +80 to +103 fire/frost/shadow spellpower). Very nice addition for raiding alchemists, I wish this came earlier.
If you're an alchemist, and did overlook Mixology just like me, go visit your profession trainer in Shattrath to learn it.
Patch day and first raid in 3.0
by Tachyon on Fri. 17. October 2008, 17:43
Filed under: raiding, patch, sunwell, brutallus
Wednesday was patch day here in Europe. The servers were burdened by a clusterfuck of returning players, all simultaneously trying to log on, resulting in realm servers switching on and off as if they were lights on an early christmas tree.Those lucky to get in usually had a minute or two to check which addons were injured the most, to download updated versions where available once the servers dived again.
I'm blessed with a divine patience, so I kept revolving in the logon/crash cycle until I got all of my addons updated and my UI setup right again.
In the late evening, the servers became more stable, allowing me to learn the new spell ranks, build my new deep frost spec, buy the new pvp items (trinket and cloak), get myself a shave and a haircut and do a quick BG before I logged off.
Yesterday (Thursday) my guild finally picked up raiding again after more than a month of idling. The participation for the Sunwell raid was high again, everyone who could showed up to test their new builds in action, so we had to bench a few of us.
Raiding was nearly impossible due to the heavy lags and zone crashes, which caused us to wipe quite often. Sometimes when dying, the 'resurrect now?' message popped up, and it also worked: one would be resurrected on the spot, only to be ported to the graveyard on sheer minute later (usually on the next pull, especially when on sheeping duty), or worse, being steamrolled by the armada of added mobs that went berzerk in the raid. Alliance players camping the entrance, putting the unlucky lagging horde souls out of their misery, added their share to our repair bill.
We finally got to Kalecgos, where we had to assemble a Field Repair Bot 110G (nomen est omen). Now the boss had 30% less HP (leaving about a 2M left), and with the new talent builds, we faced another problem, which was doing way too much DPS on the Kalecgos compared to the damage we did on Sathrovarr (they have to die almost simultaneously, or the portals won't spawn again, resulting in a reset of the encounter). It was a little chaotic, but we finally managed to kill him.
I would have needed the bracers, as I was still one piece shy of the 4xT6 bonus, but due to bad luck no single mage T6 token dropped.
It was alredy late (11 pm), but nevertheless we headed to Brutallus to give it a try, despite being short of healers. The first try looked so promising that we decided to do a serious attempt, and managed to kill him in our second try in only 4 minutes.
My DPS was abysmal, I ended up as 7th on the damage meter, with a little over 2000 DPS. I can and must do better next time. Trying to weave Deep Freeze into my rotation on Fingers of Frost procs was pointless, getting out of mana and having to use evocation was inexcusable, and the water elemental had its usual share of resists (18%), which was surprising, as Blizzard announced that it would inherit the mage's hit rating, which obviously not the case (let's still hope for WotLK).
My fellow fire mage comrade, Ashenshogar, excelled with >2600 DPS and (to his surprise
) ended on position #1 in the DPS meter, congratulations! 
This was the first time we killed Brutallus, pre-patch we only managed to get him down to 17% before he enraged. Too bad the boss despawned before I was able to make a screenshot, but my guild will hopefully post one soon on the <Dal Marok> home page. We're now excitingly looking forward to beat Felmyst and Eredar Twins, which I think we manage before the expansion comes out.
Oh, and I was given the mage token we looted from Brutallus, so I'm now finally at 4x T6, which means my Frostbolts will to 5% more damage next time.
Preparing for the 3.0.2 patch
by Tachyon on Tue. 14. October 2008, 07:38
Filed under: patch, talents, tips
The WotLK compatibility patch 3.0.3 is currently going live in the US, and will hit Europe tomorrow (October 15th).
My guild stalled raiding completely in the last 3-4 weeks, but tomorrow we will pick up raiding Sunwell again and intend to kill Brutallus for the first time this id, now that all trash packs and bosses get their health points reduced by 30%.
There's lots of things to prepare for wednesday, as the patch has a broad impact on talents, addons and game mechanic.
How to prepare for patch 3.0.3:
- The new WotLK talents are now in the game, and all talent points have been refounded. Chose your new spec wisely.
- Visit your class trainer, he's got some new spell ranks available (at least on the PTR this was the case). For mages, Frostbolt rank 14, Fireball rank 14 and Arcane Missiles Rank 11 are available.
- Note that the hit cap has been raised from 99% to 100%, and the Elemental Precision ghost hit bug has been removed. You now need 17% to reach the cap, that is 176 Hit Rating with Elemental Precision, or 214 Hit Rating without it.
- Update your addons, most of them (in my case Bartender3 and Recount/Recap and some more) aren't compatible with 3.0.3.
- Adapt your macros, some spells/abilities have changed. 'Remove Lesser Curse' has been renamed to 'Remove Curse', so change it early before causing a wipe.
- Use (right-click) your mounts/pets to 'learn' them and thus adding them to the new mount/pet interface, this frees also some bag space, It was rumored that mount speed items such as the Riding Crop now become applicable enchants, and that they can only be applied before you learn the mount. Be careful to verify this! Also adapt your mount macros to include now the name of the mount, and not the former mount item's name (they're usually different)
- If your talents include procs (such as Brain Freeze, Fingers of Frost or Hot Streak), consider using a specialized addon such as TellMeWhen to display them, making it easier to not miss a proc.
- If you've accumulated enough honor and marks, go get the new PvP trinket and cloak, they're excellent also for PvE
- Get a shave and a haircut in the new barber shops
That's quite a lot of preparation to be done, I'm curious if we manage to raid at all on patch day, but I hope that we get at least a group together to kill/free Kalecgos.
New PvP items in 3.0
by Tachyon on Sat. 04. October 2008, 15:38
Filed under: pvp, items, patch, battleground
A complete honor reset (points and marks) with the release of the WotLK expansion was first announced then cancelled. Blizzard announced then that the prices of the lvl 80 honor items would instead be raised, to make sure that saved honor points won't be that much of an advantage when the first players enter the new PvP endgame.What remains from the original plan are the new PvP items that will be added in the 3.0 patch, meant as a last occasion to spend the remaining points and marks.
The items are cloaks and trinkets, 4 different variants each, and every one of them is item level 156.
I'm currently stockpiling my honor and marks to buy these two beauties when the patch goes live:
The cloak costs 20k honor and 20 Eye of the Storm marks, and the trinket 35k honor and 40 Alterac Valley marks.
Both items are not only among the best for PvP, but also PvE, definitively worth getting them, and they are also unlikely to be replaced before the late lvl 70s in WotLK.
For a complete list of all 4 cloaks and trinkets, see: mmo-champion.com
Crowd Control effects explained
by Tachyon on Fri. 03. October 2008, 21:35
Filed under: crowd control, deep freeze, talents, spec, gameplay, pvp
I guess that's why the player community has a hard time comparing different character classes' CC effects, and lately underrate the new Deep Freeze talent, especially now the latest patch stripped the damage component off it.
Back in my DAoC (Dark Age of Camelot) days, we used to distinguish 4 classes of CC effects, which I take the occasion to reintroduce here, from the weakest to the strongest:
Snare
Lowers the movement speed of the affected target, but does not disable them to do anything.
Our arsenal of snare effects resides in the frost tree, where most spells have a snare component built in (Frostbolt, Cone of Cold, Frost/Ice Armor) or can have a snare with special talents (Improved Blizzard).
Arcane mages can have an even stronger snare effect, Slow, which not only affects the movement speed, but also the attack/cast speed. The daze effect of Blast Wave in the fire tree is also a snare (50%), and lasts for 6 seconds.
Snare effects are very effective against meele targets, allowing you to keep your opponent at distance (unless you're also snared). Snaring a non-meele or ranged class is only effective when supporting other meele players in your group, making it harder for the target to escape.
Our strongest snare is Improved Blizzard, which can reduce the movement speed down to 15% if all snare-enhancing talents are taken.
Root
Movement imparing effect that glues the target to the ground for a given amount of time, but does not disable them to do anything but moving.
Again, this is primary useful against meele classes.
Our basic root CC is Frostnova, and the Water Elemental's Water Nova. Frostbite adds a proc to Frostbolt, Cone of Cold, Frostfire Bolt, Improved Blizzard and Frost/Ice Armor which has a 15% chance to root the target.
Mezz
Mesmerizes the target, disabling it to do anything. Effect breaks as soon as the target gets hit.
Polymorph is our primary mezz, but has the annoying sideeffect to heal the target quickly to full health. An other instant mezz spell can be found in the fire tree: Dragon's Breath disorients the target for 3 sec.
Stun
The king of all CC effects: Completely incapacitates the target for a short time, and damage won't break the effect.
The only stun mages had was the Impact talent, which gave fire spells a 10% chance to stun the target for 2 sec.
In patch 3.0 and WotLK, Impact will be able to proc from all spell schools if you can spare 13 points in fire for this talent. That will be interesting for channeled effects such as Arcane Missiles and area effects in general.
And the frost tree gets a new ultimate talent, Deep Freeze, which can stun a 'frozen' target for as long as 5 seconds. For PvP, this is still godsend, although the damaging component was removed in the latest patch.
Hint: if the Fingers of Frost effect is active, you can instant-stun anyone you want, preferrably a healer trying to get a heal off.
While most of the CC effects in WoW fall into one of those categories, some of them have exotic side effects. Druid's Cyclone for example would be a stun, but renders the target invulnerable for its duration. The Warlocks' Fear is something between a mezz and a stun, as it can break on damage. The Priests' Mind Control would also be a stun, but with a much stronger sideeffect which almost qualifies as an own CC category.
The changes to Impact as well as the new Deep Freeze provide us with more stun tools, so from a CC perspective, we can be pretty pleased with patch 3.0/WotLK.
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