Explanations, and a New Main

I've been absent from Shadow Priest blogging for a while not because I got bored, or quit WoW (although I've come close a few times, I think). I just switched my main to my mage, located back on Zul'jin where my wife and I were playing last year before transferring to KT in the final months of BC.

Posting about mage theorycrafting doesn't seem to fit in a blog titled "A Shadow Priest," hence the lack of activity. I appreciate that some of my older posts are still getting comments -- I like seeing that I wasn't just talking to thin air (but I wouldn't necessarily care if that was the case, either!).

In the past couple months, I've been dedicated to my mage and finally got back into 25-mans about mid-August. He's about as geared out as one can get without dipping into Heroic 25-mans, pretty much. I also transferred my priest back to ZJ as well. I suppose I should update my bio on the right sometime.

I'm starting to get bored as getting gear is way too easy when you clear 10 and 25 man ToC and 10 and 25 Onyxia every week. Hell, it was easy before I was doing that. After a couple weeks I finally got enough people to get interested in going back to Ulduar, and finally saw Thorim, Vezax, and Yogg for the first time -- sadly enough. We're wiping on Yogg's second phase, but that encounter is everything I was hoping it would be. It beats ToC hands down.

I especially like and enjoy encounters designed not to be brute-forced through gear. They show thought and effort on the part of the design team, and other than Ulduar, that sort of effort isn't really apparent in the raids so far implemented in this expansion. 80s are perfectly capable of wiping even in BWL these days. I've been in quite a few pugs myself who didn't bother listening to warning to avoid standing in front of Ebonroc, for instance, or to avoid Nef's shadowflame.

We're not likely to ever do much in H-ToC25, due to too much dead weight on the roster, but H-ToC10 is still a possibility. This is an unfortunate truth, but given the direction raiding has been going since WoTLK launched, and Blizzard's stance towards universal content delivery, it's kind of to be expected, although I'm not a fan of it. Lackluster performance and minimal drive to succeed are simply a natural consequence of the level of (gear) quality being so high these days, compared to what's actually required for the current content. Improving skills and performance in order to push progression content is simply not necessary when your gear is already compensating for so much in the regular runs, but not enough to bridge the gap to the hardmodes/Heroic modes. Many people in the guild who might be interested in Heroic modes for the rewards in doing so aren't interested in putting up with the weaker links that we would have to bring in in order to make those attempts.

Blizzard really, really fucked up with ToC, in so many ways. It's a mistake in every way.

This is turning into a much larger post, so I'll cut it here. Hope to write more in the future. May be mage-related more than priest-related, so fair warning.

Expansion speculation

So, since I seem to be on a roll today...

I'm very interested in all of the expansion speculation. I like the idea of two new species and (I hope) a new hero class, as well as an underwater, naga-land landscape (the Maelstorm). I would totally reroll as a Worgen, if that ends up being one of the new species, and I bet my wife would too. The biggest doubt in my mind that Goblins and Worgen will be the new expansion's species is lore considerations: it seems like even more of a shoehorn job than blood elves and the Horde was.

In my opinion, although Lich King brought a huge number of improvements to gameplay, lore, and questing, the endgame content has been something of a bust. Say what you will of brutal, back-breaking encounters in TBC, but they sure gave guilds bragging rights after beating them. Although I never had a chance to see them, you still hear people talking about Kael'thas, Vashj, and Illidan, and even some of the minor bosses, in a kind of awe-inspired tone. Hell, even Magtheridon, Nightbane, and Gruul get some mentions. Naxx was really a poor way to open up raid content, and definitely spoiled veterans and newbies alike, in a very bad way. Nobody cares or is impressed by Gothik (who used to be a guild-breaker), Razuvious, Four Horsemen, or even Kel'thuzad.

Ulduar was neat in concept, but it's getting phased out too quickly. Now the cutting-edge raid will be gladitorial-style combat? Seriously? Where's the epic-ness in that? I mean, the only big lore connection I have heard of is Anub'arak's return as an actual boss, instead of the panty-waisted excuse for a schoolgirl his 5-man incarnation is.

I really hope Blizzard comes out with the new expansion inside of a year. We need to move out of Northrend. I, for one, am sick of it already.

A note to puggers

I really dislike it when people specify "x DPS minimum for invite" or other related criteria. It is literally impossible to quantify expected DPS unless you are talking about one specific situation. For example, on a Heroic Target Dummy. And I do 4k+ dps in a well-constructed 25man raid but I'm not going to brag about my 2800 dps on a target dummy. The only other option is, like the theorycrafters at Elitist Jerks, to simply assume that the player in question has all available raid buffs period. This assumption makes sense when comparing top end capabilities of classes in progression guilds in progression content. However it makes little to no sense to compare these imaginary situations to reality when you're spamming for group members in Dalaran.

So, if you're one of those people that sits in Dalaran spamming Trade with something to the effect of "LF 1 DPS 10 man Ulduar 4k dps please" you're an idiot. You're not even going to guarantee you're going to get a decent dps'er either. Depending on your group makeup and buff synergy, in a ten-man raid my 4k+DPS in 25 man Naxx can turn into 3k or less. It's just how the game works. By the time you lower your "required DPS"to an accurate and representative level for the instance you're finding group members for, the less useful and discriminating your ad is going to be.

Therefore, please don't encourage meter padding and bads that raid with one eye fixed on Recount with those LFM ads.

What you want is a 2.8k dpser who will stay alive to the end of the fight, rather than a 3.8k dps'er who dies to a void zone ten seconds into the fight. You're not going to be able to find that kind of player much more easily than simply taking who you can find (in an appropriate level of gear) and giving the instance a go.

Ignis and XT

Last night we made some attempts at XT-002 Deconstructor and Ignis the Furnace Master. And yes, there were lots of crotch jokes on Ignis. I think we added a couple new words and phrases to our guild lexicon on that one.

Although we didn't down either of them, we made some progress. I'm going to go through some of the things we learned both for my benefit and the benefit of any readers (yeah, right).

• There was a rumor going around that killing Ignis adds 1 minute to the enrage timer on XT. This is false.
  
• Ignis' and XT's trash really isn't so hard on 25 man. At least that, or we've gotten much better at dealing with them.
• Positioning is key on Ignis. For that fight, our best attempt had all of the casters grouped up at the center of the room while the MT shuffles Ignis back and forth in front of the waterfall pool, angling him so that the scorches don't fall into the water. The problem with this strategy is that the Scorch patches make kiting the adds through them difficult for the OTs. Walking right in front of Ignis a whole bunch of times is just asking for it.
• Our sticking point at the moment with Ignis is our kiting strategy. Slag Pot (aka "crotchal") duty is handled. MT heals are handled. We only lose our MT or any crotched player when the buff stack on Ignis becomes too high for us to handle healing the MT and healers have to shift their attention (futilely, but it's the natural reaction). If the MT is going to die, it usually happens during or immediately after Flame Jets.
• I fucking blow at Disc healing (my dual spec). At least I have some good excuses. My offset, while including a couple best-in-slot healing pieces pre-3.1, is really shoddily prepared. I also am using a +hit necklace solely because it has Spirit on it, and a cloak and a belt (the belt with +hit on it no less) with all DPS stats on it simply for lacking a better option. My Shadow spec boots pull double duty as healing boots (best in slot, natch). Thus I heal with Icewalker on my boots like all the pros do. Though, admittedly, Icewalker is a halfway decent enchantment for a Disc healer. Also, Discipline-spec healing is much much different from what I was used to as a long-time Holy-spec healer. Much more fast paced, almost no OO5SR (Out Of Five Second Rule) dancing, spamming Power Word: Shield (which, by the way, is AMAZING with Disc talents)... it's a bit too much too much to process and perform at the moment, although I'm getting better quickly.
• Penance and PW:S are the best spells for a Disc healer on this fight (MT duty and Slag Pot duty). Along with the obvious bouncy-bouncy PoM. Slap your raid leader if you're Disc and s/he puts you on raid healing (gasp) . Actually, if s/he puts you on anything BUT single-target healing.
• Flame Leviathan is much, much more fun with 25 people. :)

I'm confident we'll get Ignis down on Friday (although, myself and my beautiful wife-to-be will not be able to attend). I'm equally confident that Razorscale, once Ignis is down, will suddenly seem to get much easier. She may well go down on Friday as well.

Next up, a general status post.

Thoughts on Ulduar

Wow, I was really unprepared for Patch 3.1 this week. My offset wasn't enchanted, incomplete, and I didn't even have enough money for dual spec! I had several real-life plans this week that conflicted with raiding that I had made thinking 3.1 was still at least a week or two off. I'm sure others did as well, and we had poor attendance as a result.

Now we're stuck on Razorscale, Emalon kicked our ass, and we've gotten a nasty shock about our abilities as raiders on progression content.

As others have observed, Ulduar is much harder than Naxx. Someone said that Naxx made them a worse player. I'd tend to agree.

Fortunately, I think once people get back into the groove of making progression attempts, after having been so long without any, things will get much smoother. For now, though, like last night's raid, progression will be painful. Sort of like going back to the gym after a long hiatus.

Now then, on to specific comments about bosses.

Flame Leviathan - I wasn't present for the 25-man version of the fight, but I did it on 10 man just fine. Very well-done fight. I think this proves that Blizzard is finally getting vehicles, and by extension, vehicle-based encounters, right.

Ignis - I guess this is what Blizzard meant when they said they were making trash harder in Ulduar. Wow. Still, they are doable. I wasn't present for the actual attempt on this boss, but I wanted to comment on the insanity of these Molten Giants compared to, say, Naxx trash. From the write-ups, Ignis himself seems to be of compareable difficulty to Razorscale, perhaps with less emphasis on healers and more on raid coordination (as I've said before... not our strongest suit).

Razorscale - Fun fight. I did this as both Shadow and Discipline spec (I switched mid attempts). It's definitely a healer-tank fight. Didn't seem particularly hard though. I did have some issues staying out of the fire... I'm not used to having to move when I'm healing. A Penance channel caused me to die because I foolishly waited for the spell to finish before I moved. Keep in mind it's just slightly more than one second with my haste rating. That was enough to end me, shields, heals, and all. We're changing our setup a bit and I think our attempts will get much better. For the moment, 85% is our high score though.

In general, I'd have to say Patch 3.1 brings a lot of welcome changes to the table. I'm still sad that my Death Knight tank was destroyed in the name of dual-wield nerfing, and sacrificed on the altar of tank homogenity, but I'm enjoying the changes they made to Shadow spec a lot. Critting dots, an Unstable-Affliction-like change to Vampiric Touch, an Improved Devouring Plague talent... it's pretty awesome. I killed myself on one of the Emalon trash because I cast DP too early, forgetting the new initial damage component, and crit on the cast at the worst possible time. Hello trash mob... goodbye shadow priest. Definitely a "that guy" moment.