It Is Three AM and I Need to go to Bed so Here is This

My level 74 marksman hunter averages 1300 DPS on a target dummy in quest greens and with aspect of the viper active easily 60% of the time.

I have a guildie who’s warrior alt in absolute shit gear (and even the Bind to Account sword from WG) pulls 2200 DPS on heroic dungeon bosses.

I healed a HHoS once, starring a rogue in iLevel 200 epics (his offhand was a 187 blue) and he was drunkenly stumbling about with around 900 DPS. After killing the rock guy, there was a comment made about being stoned, and this fail rogue said “i’m stoned irl”.

So I said “That explains a lot”. He said “lol…”

Then his DPS immediately spiked to 2300 and stayed there for the rest of the instance.

-=-

The closest we’ve come to downing Anub’arak hard mode is 10%. We’ve wiped at that number repeatedly. It hurts so much, to come so close and yet still be so far. Oh well, soon we will have our T10 gear and steamroll over the poor guy. Probably for the best, to be perfectly honest. After a night of heroic Anub’arak, our poor healers are rendered catatonic on the floor, blood seeping from their ears as the infinite abyss of sub 30% health bars claw at their fragile hearts.

I can almost hear them weeping over the sound of my keyboard. A thousand lamentations of a thousand inadequate renews.

-=-

I got my 2piece for T10 finally. Took me long enough.

The effect from the 2piece bonus is called “Pushing the Limit”. An appropriate name, for I get to cast 1.5 second ABlasts with its effect up. Needless to say, it is an extremely good set piece. Shall I compare it to a woman?

She is a long lost lover, a lover I had been rudely separated from many many centuries ago. As fate would decree it, I was lost. Abandoned. An infinite sadness settled upon me, never had I felt such devastating loss. But I would not tire. I could not tire.

For her love, it burned brighter than four hundred billion suns, a beacon reaching out to me across the murky depths of the world, across the sea of black that calls itself the universe. For eons, I searched the world, searching endlessly for my lost love, in the desperate hope that one day… one day we would be reunited.

That day has come, and oh what a glorious dawn it is. See how the sun rises, its gentle light sweetly caressing her face. Tears stream down our faces, as we embrace for the first time in thousands of millenia. Part of me cannot believe that my search is over, that she is real.

This tiny, niggling seed of doubt is swiftly quashed by the warmth of her arms, the silkiness of her skin, the faint scent of cinnamon in her hair. Never have I felt such all encompassing joy. I am home, at last, after so long.

She softly whispers in my ear, her voice the most beautiful music I have heard since the dawn of time itself. She says…

“I have a sister, you know. And she’s open to the idea of a threesome.”

The siren call of 4piece T10 calls to me.

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Lowbie LFG

So far, I have played three different characters through the Dungeon Finder tool. A destruction warlock, early twenties; a prot warrior, mid 40s; a discipline priest, early sixties.

Queue times, oddly enough, are basically exactly the same as they are for 80 heroics. The queue as a DPS warlock usually runs about ten to twenty minutes, the queue time as a healer is always under a minute, and the queue time for a tank is instant. Which is just bloody fantastic! Tanking is surprisingly fun, but I could be horribly misguided at the moment.

See, I’ve tanked Zul’Farrak twice now. That is the extent of my tanking experience. However, I ran Zul’Farrak with a holy priest specced into (and glyphed for!) Lightwell. I was a bit “wtf” at the start, but mr. priest kept pounding that “use the lightwell! USE IT!” drum pretty damn hard, so I figured what the hey. Thunder Clap keeps aggro pretty well by itself, I can afford to deselect my target for a second.

Turns out? That Lightwell we all mock churns out slightly over 500 health every two seconds, or basically 1500 health over six seconds. That’s pretty dang powerful for a lowbie instance, considering that’s half my hitpoints.

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Intolerant of Incompetence

EDIT: Apparently this post is nearly identical to one posted by Rilgon over at SES. So… you can read that one instead and basically get the exact same message.

Ok, let’s be clear here. I get playing “casual”; whatever definition you want to use. Dedicating hours a day into simulation engines, researching your class, finagling with gearing and gem choices for minimal gain… I get that it isn’t for everyone. I get that not everyone wants to spend nine hours a week raiding. I get that not everyone has any desire to throw themselves at the hardest raid content Blizzard has designed.

What I don’t get is why being utterly incompetent, why not even attempting to be any good at anything is somehow acceptable these days.

If you follow any blogs besides mine whatsoever, or occasionally listen to your friends, you’ve heard of horrendous, epic fail PuG groups. You’ve heard of the hunter wearing mp5 gear, the arms warrior trying to tank with 443 defense and DW daggers, or the legions of DKs struggling to maintain 300 DPS.

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Japanese Mandarin Oranges

What’s up with skipping bosses in Old Kingdom? I’ve seen the mushroom dude skipped a couple times, but lately people are skipping nearly all of them. Groups seem to only do the vampirical fire orb boss and the last boss. That’s three badges you’re intentionally skipping! To that I say “double yoo tee eff?”

That’s three badges people! What… why… I don’t get it! If you’re only after the frost badges, that makes sense. I guess being the tank or healer, with your instant queues, skipping a boss here and there doesn’t really matter at all. But when you’re a DPS looking at ten minute queue times, at least, skipping a boss here and there that would take a minute to three minutes to kill is really painful.

So here’s to you, boss skipping tanks: you suck and I hate you.

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The Mage Q&A: Snark Version

(Holy crap, a post two days in a row? BELIEVE IT!)

Q: Where do mages fit in the current scope of things, and where do you see them from this point going forward?

A: Mages are the iconic caster class, squishy as hell, standing at range and chucking things at their enemies. We see them basically staying exactly the same with no major changes whatsoever. Mages are awesome, and we’re going to keep it that way.

Q: What is it that makes them unique when compared to other classes?

A: More than any other class, mages focus on a single spell to the exclusion of all others. This means mages are the only class that can effectively raid by pressing a single button. Kinda like how Warlocks worked in BC, except without all that pesky “sacrifice the Succubus” stuff.

Community Team: A lot of initial questions and concerns we received from mages around the world were concerning itemization.

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Mana, Healer Changes, and Other Alarming Things

There’s been a great deal of discussion in recent weeks about Healers. Specifically, mana consumption.

The consensus seems to be that healers have reached a point where they don’t need to care about mana anymore. It’s a resource that they graduated, so to speak, abandoning the need for efficiency for raw throughput. Or something. Can’t say I’m too familiar, the only healer I play is a Paladin.

Point is, Blizzard feels it’s too much and needs a nerf… err, needs to be made more consistent.

And that nerf… consistency is slated to come hammering down when patch 3.1 goes live.

Blizzard’s goal is admirable. They want to reach a state where the Healer types have to manage GCD’s, their own mana pool, and the health bars of their assignments all at once.

Some nerfs have already been meted out (Divine Plea, anyone?) and plenty more are being discussed for the future. But what specifically? Weakening Spirit? Making mp5 a more expensive stat? Nerfing in-cast mana regen mechanics? (Think Arcane Meditation.) Nerfing all the mana restore abilities kicking around? (Replenishment, Blessing of Wisdom, Mana totems, etc.)

As I’ve mentioned before, a buff or a nerf to anyone is a buff or nerf to everyone.

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Underestimated

Halls of Lightning. Regular. Only reason I joined up was for the daily, and I’m in desperate need of Kirin Tor rep. Cooking dailies do not suffice.

Me. Level 80 Arcane Mage.

Tank, level 80 Prot Warrior. Decently geared, blues, some greens, a few crafted epics.

Healer, Holy Priest, decked out almost entirely in solid blues with a few old 70 PvP epics. Level 77.

Two Death Knights, both level 79, mostly in blues and greens.

Hit the priest with Focus Magic, AI, summon a table, and off we go.

A few trash pulls in. It’s obvious I outgear the tank; I’m riding the guy’s threat like Daddy Tickler in Epic Bust 8. How’s me DPS?

…

Apparently, better than everyone else combined.

To be blunt, the two DK’s were producing atrociously bad DPS. One of ‘em couldn’t break 500DPS, the other was struggling to keep his above 700.

And then there’s me, sporting 2200 DPS, having left ALL my cooldowns and trinkets untouched for fear of roaring over Mr. Tank in threat. I quite often simply stood there doing nothing (or casting Ice Lance) if I got a “lucky” string of crits.

The one who couldn’t break 500 DPS played like he was trying to play on a laptop, sans mouse, with one hand tied behind his back and the other was taped to a wooden spoon. He used the wooden spoon to play. I mean, seriously, how does a Death Knight end up with 32% DoT uptime?

I don’t know what was wrong with the other. He was competent, Death Gripped when asked to, didn’t stand in things, and generally performed very well. His damage was just very poor. Probably just didn’t have a rotation figured.

So we flailed through the instance. Mr. Tank led the way confidently, marking mobs, giving out pertinent info when required, and was suitably embarrassed when he mistook my Polymorph: Turtle spell for a non-combat pet.

Little miss level 77 priest healed her holy arse off. Somehow, this skilled little bugger managed to keep us all up through boss after boss after AoE. I don’t know how she did it. She was specced for Imp. DS, and so didn’t really have all the tasty end tree Holy stuff. She had Lightwell.

And she had 12k mana. Buffed.

Yet somehow, we got past almost everything without a wipe (plenty of single deaths, though). A trash pull shortly before Loken went wrong, due to one of the DK’s accidentally aggroing a second group of mobs.

Loken himself, of course, we wiped plenty.

The plan was simple. Eat the first Nova, one of the DK’s can drop AMZ to absorb it. After that, we do the dance.

The problem was simple. The Loken fight deals a lot of damage. A level 77 priest with 12k mana can only heal so much. And when you only have one strong DPS, the healer’s mana bar will run out long before the boss’ health does.

About two hours after we started, the two DK’s decided to move on, log out, whatever it is people do when they aren’t playing WoW.

So Mr. Tank went to /g and asked for a couple more DPS. We got another DK and a Survival Hunter ready to go almost immediately. Both 80.

Trash mobs had respawned. We’d have to reclear them all to get at Loken again. So Mr. Tank reset the instance, so we could do the boss fights over again. More Stone Shards and lewts!

Please let the DPS be good, please let the DPS be good…

Zone in to dead Loken in slightly under twenty minutes. The Loken fight himself lasted a mere 61 seconds.

In the past, much was made of having a good tank and a good healer. The importance of having good DPS was something severely underrated. Proponents that skilled DPS players are needed just as much as tanks/heals were derided and openly mocked.

Well, now I have proof that skilled DPS is just as important, not that I need it anymore. I’m pretty sure the whole Deathtard thing has showed everyone the folly of having subpar DPS.

No tank? No instance.

No healer? No instance.

No DPS? You’re better off with no instance.

From two hours to twenty minutes. From a brick wall, desperately pounded on, to a pile of leaves contemptuously kicked aside.

Yeah, I still topped the damage meters, but at least if you added up the other two you’d get a number higher than me.

We’ve entered a new world, my friends. A world where a DPS player needs to be much more than a warm button pushing a couple buttons.

Embrace this new dawn, and enjoy it.

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Torment the Weak! And Stuff…

I’ve been waiting a while to talk about this, just to see if there were going to be any further adjustments to how TTW works.

Apparently, there aren’t any, so here I go.

Torment the Weak

Frostbolt, Fireball, Frostfire Bolt, Arcane Missiles, Arcane Blast, and Arcane Barrage deal 12% more damage to snared or slowed targets.

This, this little talent right here, is likely to be the biggest change to the arcane tree this up and coming patch.

The current version of TTW only activates on snared targets. A snare is something along the lines of, say, Frostbolt, Slow, Mind Flay, Concussive Shot. Thus, the talent is very powerful in PvP where it’s nearly a guarantee that your target is affected by some sort of snare.

The problem is that it isn’t viable for raiding. Bosses are, of course, immune to nearly every single snare in the game. In fact, the only snare that actually worked was… Slow.

And so arose some strange strategies. A deep arcane mage, for instance, could guarantree themselves an extra 12% damage as long as they kept Slow active on the boss in question.

It is here that the term “Slow slave” originated.

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Your First 40 Talent Points

A not so brief guide on where to put your talent points (suggested by me, anywho) while leveling up your mage for those first 50 levels. By level 50, I just kinda assume you’d have figured out, at least a bit, how the class works, so you should be able to make your own decisions at that point.

Always remember: as a mage, you want to be attacking from range. Don’t be in melee. Thus, talents that let you stay at range longer are a must for leveling up your mage.

You have two routes to choose from while leveling. You can pick fire or you can pick frost.

Fire offers rapid killing, as it will do more damage in less time. However, you will have serious trouble taking down multiple mobs at once. There is very little room for error as a fire mage; if you mess up even once, you are in all probability looking at a corpse run. Pulling five mobs at once will land you in extremely serious trouble.

Frost offers great control over any given encounter. It does less damage than the other two, meaning it will take you longer to kill any given mob, however, you will have no trouble taking down multiple mobs at once. There is a great deal of room for error as a frost mage; if you mess up a couple times, no big deal. Pulling five mobs at once can be done on a regular basis without worry.

Take your pick. Rapid killing with no margin for error, or slower killing with plenty of errors allowed?

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Euripedes of the Shattered Sun

Does that sound cool to you? ‘Cause it sounds damn awesome to me.

I will most likely be devoting all of my WoW time over the next little while to trying to get this title. I gotta spend 1k in phase 4… can’t miss it. Gotta be Exalted by phase 4, or during. Whichever turns out easiest.

DAMN YOU DUSKWOOD. STOP TURNING IN QUESTS, I NEED MORE REPUTATION.

Ok, ok, ha, I jest. I do believe I will find your IP addresses, hunt you down, then stab your computer.

Oh, yeah, and Patch 2.5 or something hit, there’s some stuff about mages I should really blog about, or raiding… I mean, how cool is that? Euripedes of the Shattered Sun? Feh, I could care less, I just want that magnificent text hovering above my head.

Some day, in the new expansion, I’ll be checking my mail box in my Tier 10 gear, some other people will be standing around, I’ll get a whisper from a level 73 Tuskar Frostknight, “How u get that titel?” and I’ll smile inside. This, my friends, is respect of the highest order. I will have WoW cred. It’ll be like how the titles “Scarab Lord” and “Centurion” are now. Some of us will remember the old times, most will be “Wow! That’s soo coool!”

And we’ll smile.

They weren’t there for the grind, the lag, the server crashes, the nerf bats.

We were.

We… damn! Euripedes of the Shattered Sun!

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