In regards to playing the game wrong…
Picture raiding like a jigsaw puzzle. We all have to put it together, the only real differences is in the details. My approach is to study the picture on the outside of the box, know how many pieces there are, and know what every single piece looks like before I even consider putting it together.
I’m feeling significantly better, and have prepared a time line of my illness:
Saturday: start feeling a little ill, thinking I might have a minor cold.
Sunday: feeling really bad, ugh this is horrible.
Monday: went to school, suffered greatly, extremely ill.
Tuesday: did not go to school, stayed at home.
Wednesday: tried to go to school, gave up due to abdominal pain.
Thursday: stayed home, but felt better.
Friday: went to school, felt more better.
Saturday again: went to work, still sick but definitely much better!
Sunday again: still some coughing and stuffy nosery, but now it just feels like a mild cold. No problemo!
So was it swine flu?
SYMPTOMS!
Fever? Check.
Cough? Check.
Runny or stuffy nose? Check and check.
Sore throat? Check! It actually got so bad I lost my voice completely, and I had Rorschach voice for a day when I got it back.
Body Aches? Check, and boy was that not fun at all.
Headache? Well… not really. I was too nauseous to notice if I had a headache or not.
Chills? Check! This was the worst part. Freezing cold under a massive quilt in a water bed set to a hundred degrees does not bode well.
Fatige or Tiredness? Check and check! Sixteen hours of sleep! It does nuthink!
Diarrhea and vomiting? Check and check. Film at eleven (not really).
I’m guessing it was, in fact, swine flu. My medical expertise at completing check lists I found on the internets tells me so. So HAH. I beat you swine flu! Bring on the zombie apocalypse! I got this!
Get it?
H1Z1 virus?
Eh? Eh?
Nevermind.
I like watching raid fight videos. I like watching arena and PvP videos. I quite enjoy myself, as I can really get into them. I get that some people can’t watch people play WoW, but I can. Provided it’s interesting.
I’ll show you what I mean.
Consider this video. It’s not a clean kill. Nearly everyone dies, and the raid is mere seconds away from a total wipe when the boss goes down. This is the best kind of raid video ever.
It gets boring extremely quickly to just watch a superior raid utterly crush an encounter without effort. It is far, far more entertaining to watch a raid struggle, to see four DPS suddenly bite the dust, to watch the only remaining tank alive come so close to death over and over again… but he just barely hangs on an OHMYGODTHETANKDIEDOHNOOOOOO.
There’s something to be said for watching flawless execution videos, but it’s just more fun to watch a video where suddenly a mage dies out of freaking nowhere.
And when the tank dies (skip to 8:50 to watch the poor feral druid get one shot) and the boss lazily starts killing off raid members one by one… man. Just golden.
I even like the music, being a big fan of “electronic” styled musics. Screw musical taste. Gimme some powerful bass or get out!
Oink.
Agreed on less-than-perfect raid videos being more fun to watch. Also agreed on electronic music being awesome
That’s true not only for raids, any kind of environment, be a 5man dungeon or some world achievement, it’s always full of epic feelings when the fight comes to a melting point and everything seems doomed, yet there’s victory in the end, with several dead players, all survivors on the brink of dying and all skills and spells on cooldown. These are the true epic battles people remembers and is fond of. It really makes worth the money you pay every month.
I enjoy more struggling to bring down a boss than just using my spells/skills mechanically since I know the fight is easy and there’s little danger we will wipe.
On the other hand better don’t abuse those kind of battles unless you’re pretending to have a heart attack
This weekend I learned that Arcane really does smite Frostfire for DPS. It makes me sad because I spent so much time and effort gearing up for Frostfire.
I still don’t have much for haste gear (it’s at 344 right now. /sadface), but I still cranked out over 4200 in a 25 man VoA (#2 or 3, depending on the fight) 3400 in a 10-man, and 5200+ on two bosses in HVH. Would never see those numbers with Frostfire.
Now, should I start looking at replacing some +SP gems for haste at all?
If you had all the gear for Frostfire it would have been a simple matter to grab a Hit trinket or some Hit elixirs/food and respec Fireball. Same rotation, massive DPS boost and about Par with Arcane.
Maybe some regemming is in order again? Crit was getting to the 38-39% range.
Have T9 pants (Yay VoA!) with two big, fat yellow sockets in there…
And not too far away from T8.5 chest which is all +crit as well…
Oh, the things I do for the toon that has to play 2nd fiddle to my Druid for the guild.
Run some theorycrafting!
It could be as simple as importing your character into theorycraftomatic, make sure you’ve got your glyphs, raid buffs, etc correct, then just checking the relative worth of spellpower and haste.
If spellpower is worth, say, 1, and haste is worth 0.6, then spellpower is still massively superior, so gem for that.
If spellpower is worth, say, 1, and haste is worth 1, then an epic spellpower gem is still going to be worth slightly more, but the difference is very small, and you really could go either way.
If you aren’t shooting for world firsts, it’s more a matter of personal taste, within reason.
a) Theorcrafting = scary.
b) Personal taste – I’m kind of indifferent. They’re all kind of fun.
I use two buttons for the most part, but fire has me throwing up a scorch every 27 seconds or so (raid dependent, of course); and arcane has me toss out an ABarr while I run out of the fire.
I’m just trying to be a bit more effective when I do get the odd chance to join up into a raid.
But I shall try theorycraftomatico stuff… even if it intimidates me. (Which is par for the course – bunnies scare me, too.)
If you like those kinds of videos, check out this one of our first 10m H Anub kill. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjsAloSU0yw – it’s not pretty, and is definitely a skin of the teeth kill.
Fireball Spec Glyphs IMO should be: Living Bomb, Molten Armor, and Fireball. Cut scorch right out of your rotation and just monitor your Hot Streak Procs. For movement fights I time my Instant Pyro(if possible or cast Fire blast while moving) to coincide with movement and only stop moving once the GCD is up. I pull almost 6k in 25 mans with 2 piece Tier 9 and 8.5 respectively.
As for Gems I use epic Spell power gems unless I want the bonus then I use SP/Haste or SP/Int cuts.
Would you throw scorch back into your rotation if you had a few casters (and a no lock) in there? Would that extra crit be worth it for the over all raid?
Not that anyone gives a shit about what I’m going to try next, but I’m going to tell you anyway:
I got the confessor ring last night from HToC, which has a bunch of extra hit. Puts me at 396 hit. So, if I switch out two SP gems with +20 hit gems, I’ll end up getting +4 and + 6 bonuses from two items. That would push me to the 446 cap. And I think I’m at 33.6% Crit with molten armour and T9 bonus (before fire spec bonus crit). So, I’ll be able to try a fire/ttw spec.
On a training dummy as self buffed arcane, I do 2500 dps with 4 AB + ABarr. I do 2700 with 4 AB + MBarr (it procs almost every time.)
We’ll see what a fire spec does for me.
No don’t use Scorch at all if you don’t have the Glyph for it, (Until the patch where they make it stack through talents) it will just lower your DPS. Sounds like you have got the needed stats for a good Fireball Spec, I would suspect your DPS to be around 3-3.3k if you get the rotation right.