Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Underutilized Pain

Searing Pain! Other than in PVP when I need really quick burst damage, where would we throw in this spell? Usually we end up disregarding this spell and just leave it to rot in the bottom of our spellbooks.

But why would we want to miss out on an opportunity to inflict not just Pain, but Searing Pain upon our enemies?

It generates a lot of threat, but maybe we can use it as a finisher if we don't have
Shadowburn in our repertiore.

This spell isn't a nuke, it's what it is, Pain!

"Mwahaha, oh your health is low: *Spams Searing Pain*"

Enemy: "Ow stop burning me, ow, ow, ow!"

"Mwahaha, feel the PAIN!"

I know, lame but I'm still going to put this spell onto my action bar somewhere and spam it for the daily today. Mwahaha!

Truny the Painful

How Random of You to Join Us

Ugh Frost Emblems, we'll need over 400 of these things for our T10 crap save for the weekly Vault of Archavon Lotto where the gloves or pants will drop. Since one thing I would like to do is to collect the complete T10 in preparation for the killing of Spirit.

The daily frost random dungeon thinger is where its at. But okay let me ask, how random is this?

For the past MONTH the instance pattern that my Warlock has seen was as random as this:

Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub

Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Halls of Lightning
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Halls of Stone
Halls of Lightning
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Azjol Nerub
Halls of Lightning
Azjol Nerub

I have 36 Anub'arak kills! This compared to 15 King Ymirons and I'm sick of Utgarde Pinnacle as well!

Point A) This is good, Azjol Nerub takes like FIVE minutes to complete save for the fact that Anub'arak has to burrow underground for about THIRTY MINUTES of the fight, what's the point? They should not nerf this part, but ramp up the difficulty, make it the same difficulty as seen in the ToC RAID, spikes will chase you and ONE SHOT YOU, his leeching swarm is stronger, and the adds hit harder and cleave. This place is BORING, I just set Blagroon the Felgaurd onto agressive and I just stand there waiting for to nuke down the adds. He also tends to burrow when Decimation activates, and re-emerges from underground at such low health that he's dead in one shadowbolt cast. Lame. Why not ramp up ALL five man dungeons to raid difficulties to force everyone to have a sense of awareness/alertness when in a group setting.

Point B) AGAIN?? Though, Point A trumps Point B since H AN is so short. The end.

Truny the Random

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

New Heroic Culling of Stratholme: Seriously??

After all our bitching whining moaning and groaning we can finally skip all of Arthas' bitching whining moaning and groaning and jump straight to killing mobs in this instance.

T'is a good thing no?

NO!

This stems from another issue related to this instance: The people who run past the stupid Chromie and don't pick up the stupid Arcane Disruptors.

NOW if you talk to her there are two options that go something along the lines of:

"Now what do we do Chromie?" or
"Shut the fck up and let's get this party started biatch"


If ANYONE chooses the second option, the first waves of adds spawn immediately and EVERYONE has to talk to Chromie to port to the entrance of the city.

Which means: Let's buff and do all our other useles nonsense BEFORE even going up the stairs to talk to Chromie. This is the new procedure for H COS, Buff at Entry like every other instance (where the tank doesn't run off pulling three rooms and four bosses).

Done buffing? Someone talk to her, and everyone port in.

Don't just run on blindly and make everyone wait SIXTY whole seconds for you to ride all the way to the entrance...please, it's not that scary to talk to Chromie. She will no longer burden you with responsibilities SO ITS OK TO TALK TO HER NOW. Sigh.

Truny the Yeah

Monday, March 29, 2010

Truny the Warlock on Festergut

Festergut Success!

Essentially this fight is a matter of finding the person with a spore to receive a damage reducing buff, and spreading out if you are ranged so that when you are vomitting it doesn't spread to the other players.

Also dear Warlocks, please use Shadow Ward right when its off its cooldown, helps with heals a lot!

And to good times!
Any Juicy warlock loot you are wondering? Yes! He drops some very nice pants which are just 20 haste and 20 spellpower below the Leggings of Woven Death but these should hold up very well!

Truny Out

Truny the Warlock on the Warlock T10 Set Bonuses

Have I talked about this before? Well I'm going to talk about it in more detail again since I'm considering on saving up emblems to obtain the Dark Coven set since I pretty much don't need anything else that can be traded with frost.

Why? Is the T10 itemized really well for Demonology?

Well, it depends on your own playstyle and what stats you are missing, but what's different with comparing an entire gear-set to individual pieces is the bonus it grants.

Two-piece Bonus: The critical strike chance of Shadowbolt, Incinerate, Soulfire, and Corruption are increased by 5%.

Ok, this bonus is equivalent to having an extra 250 crit rating on everything BUT Immolate and of course Demonology corruptions cannot crit (but they should).

Shadowbolt: our main nuke, so this is a no brainer, 5% is 5%.

Incinerate: when we do cast our three Incinerates under the Molten Core effect, they will be hasted, damage increased, and again 5% increase in crit.

Soulfire: When Decimation hits....you know what happens. All your Soulfires will now have a flat 5% increase in crit, and you know you love it when they crit!

Four-Piece Bonus: Each time your Immolate and Unstable Affliction deal periodic damage, you have a 15% chance to gain 10% damage done by you and your pet for 10 seconds.

From the looks of it, this proc has no cooldown and can stay active just like the druid t9 healing idol if you happen to get lucky with the 15% proc chance per Immolation Tick.

So what can you do for ten seconds? At the very least?

If all I had was Shadowbolt spam-time, they could crit for 15k times 1.10, so 16,500 not bad not bad.

What about Decimation-Time? 24k times 1.10 for 26,400? Ooohh not bad not bad, and I can cast about six in 10 seconds and they will all have a +5% chance to crit with the T2 bonus.

What about Cataclysm-Time? During the Cataclysm proc your Soulfires become Fel Maw, they look just like Soulfires but are three times larger, they chain cast three in a row and do 8,353 - 10,524 fire damage to the enemy and all enemies in a 25 yard radius. The base cast time of this spell is 15 seconds but under the Cataclysm proc they cast for the exact same time as a Decimated Soulfire. The spellpower co-efficient is about 665%. So with a 10% increase if my Fel Maws usually crit for 73,000 now times 1.10 we'll be seeing crits well into 80k which should be enough to catch up with Arcane Mages. In ten seconds we can cast six times and since three spells chain together ok you know what....

..nevermind

I'm only looking at the T10 bonus crap because the Helm looks pretty cool and essentially....

..maybe I'll just save up for the Helm and screw the bonus, too much work, too lazy.

Truny the Warlock

Truny the Warlock on Afflictions

Ehehe yeah, my underutilized Destruction off-spec has officially been changed to an Affliction off-spec because I've heard amazing things about Affliction.

OK so what do we do?

Seed of Corruption is EVEN stronger under this spec since I think two or three abilities in the talent tree buff its damage and crit. Nice spice.

Ok so on single target boss fights what do I do? I THINK:

Corruption
Curse of Agony or Elements???
Haunt, since it will buff your shadow dots by 20%
Unstable Affliction

OK, then spam shadowbolts, and watch DoTimer. Refresh shit. Use soul drain thinger when the boss thing is at 25% health or less. Refresh things while draining soul?? I assume to keep up Corruption and Haunt and let everything else go away since drain soul makes up for it?

(I only tried this out on one heroic and there's only so much to learn and it was Occulus where half the time we're on a dragon or moving around)

From what I've seen Corruption NEVER falls off the target if you are keeping up your haunts and hmm yeah there aren't any big numbers anymore but there are SO MANY numbers that you sometimes won't even see your shadowbolt damage. It doesn't feel like a lot but my threat kept skyrocketing to 80% by the time I cast about four shadowbolts (HUH??)

I will try this spec out in a raid situation tonight and see how it goes, we're doing the Plagueworks!

Truny has (more) Dots

Friday, March 26, 2010

Truny the Warlock on the ICC Gunship Battle: Say What?

If you're assigned to the guns on the Gunship battle, this is what you do:

1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 ...2
1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 ...2
1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 ...2
1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 ...2

When your gun gets frozen, you'll automatically be dismounted (Score! Free movement!)

Now wait for the tank on your boat (or if you are flying over, that tank) to have aggro on enemies, and pew pew their faces!

Keep an eye on your gun because when it unfreezes you want to go and spam a series of ones and hit two a few times.

Oh and apparently, you just shoot at the enemy ship...like at its surface, like...a real siege!

I feel dumb but it took me until the ally ship was down to 30% until I realized where its HP bar was since I was thinking "uhh how do we know when we win?"

Apparently the HP bar of the enemy ship got lost behind my DoTimer which I moved to the side. GG TRUNY!

Yeah, and that's about it for this battle, nothing special but why are we fighting the Allies again? I wasn't paying attention...

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Truny's Mission is Over

Oops, Truny raided!

But guess what? After moaning and groaning about the Shriveled Heart for a month, I replaced it today. YAY. Ironic, that item was the most likely item to be replaced as well, save for maybe a ring.

Yes, the off-hand you'll see a lot of people wandering around with, Lady Deathwhisper's Scourgelord's Baton.
I lost the nice 50 haste rating from the Shriveled Heart but the hit rating from from this new offhand puts me just 7 hit above the cap, which was very nice for the next battles and it didn't need to be enchanted/gemmed.

So yes, more on this ICC10 run later!

Truny the Warlock

Truny the Warlock on Hit Rating

Why is our hit rating, and meeting the hit-cap so important for us? (It's 17% by the way)

I used to think: "Hit is useless, I need to get my spellpower, haste, and critical at a good level and once my spells hit hard enough I'm good to go".

Wrong wrong wrong.

If you are missing, you are doing 0 damage for a certain duration of time. Zero. Nothing. (Except for DoTs and Felguard slashings)

Let's take a look at a very very simple example.

Encounter

Hit Cap Requirements Met
Duration: 180 seconds.
Spell Used: Let's just look at Shadowbolt for simplicity's sake.
Cast Time: 2 seconds. (This is very low haste by the way, but its easy to use the number "2") Crit Rating: 30% Normal Damage done by Shadowbolt: 5,000 (Crits for 10,000 with Ruin)

Now without looking at enchant procs, trinket procs, raid procs, Metamorphosis, movement, other spells, our pets, etc etc, our DPS for this fight is technically:

180 seconds divided by 2 seconds per shadowbolt equals 90 shadowbolts.

With a 30% crit rating:

27 Shadowbolts hit for 10,000 damage for a total of 270,000 damage
63 Shadowbolts hit for 5,000 damage for a total of 315,000 damage
Total damage is 585,000 over 180 seconds, giving us a total DPS of 3,250.

Yes, that is really low but its just spamming Shadowbolts!

Hit Cap Requirements Not Met

Let's say now that you are 1.5% below the hit cap. It's not a lot, but still below, let's take a look at the new numbers.

180 seconds divided by 2 seconds per shadowbolt equals 90 shadowbolts. You will only land 98.5% of your attacks making 88.6.

Missing 2 shadowbolts doesn't seem too bad, but that number is only valid if we cast close to 5838429048343 shadowbolts where the average comes into play. That 1.5% chance my pop its nasty head up more ofthen than you'd think.

So what happens if we missed those 2 shadowbolts?

26 Shadowbolts hit for 10,000 damage for a total of 260,000 damage
62 Shadowbolts hit for 5,000 damage for a total of 310,000 damage
Total damage is now 570,000 over 180 seconds, giving us a total DPS of 3,166.66


You miss two casts, and your DPS drops by 83 just like that.

So what happens if we missed six shadowbolts, Lady Luck doesn't want to play.

By the way I am not calculating 30% times 2, and 30% times 6 to proportionize the crits, this is just a very brief analysis.

24 Shadowbolts hit for 10,000 damage for a total of 240,000 damage
60 Shadowbolts hit for 5,000 damage for a total of 300,000 damage

Total damage is now 540,000 damage over 180 seconds, giving us a total DPS of 3,000

See the drastic difference, almost 10% dps gone just from a little bit of missed hit. Don't think "my spells hit hard, and the harder they hit the more my dps is". Believe it or not you're not the awesome killing machine you are until all your spells or attacks land 100% because if everyone else is wailing away at the boss you want to make every bit of your contribution count.

And this is why we don't train for power, but we train for good technique. Hehe sorry wrong class.

Truny the Hitless

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

New Banner!

I have been meaning to create a new banner for the blog, since Destruction is no more. Sure the green-cero was nice but nothing beats being a Demon on fire, while spamming our favourite spell!

Only Heals can Muck About

In your typical 5-person party, name for me the person who can most likely do whatever they want and still perform their role as needed?

Is it the tank? No, the tank has to lead the group and hold onto the mobs.

Is it the damagers? No, as a dps you must be pushing your limits at every fight, no slacking!

Is it the healer? Specifically, is it the Druid Healer? Hell yes!

It's at the point when I log onto Turny to heal the daily dungeon, I would equip my
Skull Lollipop (the best offhand in the game I believe), and One Of My Various Fist Weapons. (The Burning Crusade items are more flashy and wtfux invoking)

I will then proceed to melee things as if my life depended on it!

The great benefits of instant heals that no one will even know you were healing, except to stop for the occasional nourish or regrowth refreshing. (Usually rejuvenation and one lifebloom is overkill anyways).

"Hi, I'll be your heals for today. Let's ride!"

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Pro Survival

Remember how I said Druny levelled very fast in Wailing Caverns? Well on the second run that we did, all the dinosaurs on the north face of the cliff decided to randomly aggro us as we fought the druid boss. Usually when over ten mobs ravage the party, its a wipe, especially at these levels. However as you can see:

You can see here all the dinos, the druids, and even a slime has succumbed to our competency.

Dinosaur Invasion Fail

Druny the Mage

Too Lazy to Melee

The fact that I have to actually physically walk my toon up to some mobs, and position myself behind them is so daunting that my lazy mind, upon logging into my melee characters such as Klupty the Death Knight or Runy the Rogue, I immediately log back out.

So much movement. So lazy. And I have to swing my heavy weapon? If the tank moves the mobs, you have to move with them? What is this nonsense? Why is this game so hard that I have to move? I can't tab-target because sometimes the next enemy is outside of my melee range and I have to move and reposition and by the time I do that everything is dead and all I effectively did was run circles.

This is why I play a warlock, I get to be lazy, and be lazy for other people.

Disclaimer*: Though playing a Demo Lock requires one to have the same knowledge as melee players, such as which mobs or bosses can cleave because we need to know if it's safe or not to use Demon-Form and Immolation Aura things to the ground.

Lazy for self: Spam one button at the very least and still do fine and no one will notice.

Lazy for others: Summon stones. If someone just went to repair after the first pull, I don't want you to walk the 100 yards back to where we left off, I will summon you. I remember having to repair once because we wiped and I setup a stone so they could summon me back and I said cause I was too lazy to mount back to where Ick and Krick were and got some very negative feedback. Hello, free movement? And anyways, there are scary mobs wandering when we rode past them in a rush to begin with. Well f*ck you you want fries with that? I ended up mounting up cause no one knew how to click.

Soulstones. Oh you died no worries just pop back up where you failed.

Death Coil. Don't worry I'll heal myself for a bit.

Metamorphosis. I'm too lazy to move or run when a mob is on me, I'll just up my armor and hope for the best. It's a fun gamble, I win 75% of the time.

This is why Trial of the Crusader was made for the lazy people. If you position yourself correctly at the VERY first fight and get lucky that no mobs or fire or orbs or spikes chase or attack you, technically you don't have to move for an ENTIRE raid! Well not really...but you get what I mean.

Ahh so lazy I'm not even sure what I was talking about anymore.

Truny the Lazy

Patch 3.3.3 for Warlocks. Easy Peasy.

Phew, compared to the last patch which included the Decimation changes, this one's brainless and painless!

Immolate: The damage-over-time component of this spell can now produce critical strikes.

You see, with our Molten Core talents, our Immolates are nine seconds longer than normal, giving us more ticks and now more chances of crits with ticks. If Ruin applies to these crits, then Immolate ticks can hit well over 3,500. Juicy sprucy.

Life Tap: This spell no longer scales with spirit, and instead scales with spell power.

This is the first step of removing Spirit. Before they change the Glyph, they change the spell. I wonder how much of Spell Power though? At this rate it is probably 105% times spellpower, since that would equal to roughly what I tap for. Whatever, no dps increase = whatever.

Dark Pact: This ability no longer requires line-of-sight with the summoned demon, and the range has been increased from 30 yards to 100 yards.

What's Dark Pact? Isn't it that weird mana-thing affliction locks talk about? Whatever.

Demonic Pact: This effect now has a 45-second duration, up from 12 seconds, and a 20-second internal cooldown.

GOOD. Everyone gets 10% of your spellpower as a bonus boost for a 375% increase in duration (duh)!

So, Immolate can crit. Yay. Longer spellpower buffs, yay.

Culling of Stratholme

Players may now skip the initial introduction dialog to this dungeon once they have completed it at least once.

I thought this was important because FINALLY WE DO NOT HAVE TO SIT AROUND FOR TWENTY FRICKEN MINUTES LISTENING TO ARTHAS WHINE AND BITCH AND TALK AND TALK AND TALK AND TALK BECAUSE IN THAT TIME WE COULD HAVE FINISHED THE GAME ITSELF AND HE'LL STILL BE TALKING NOW WE CAN JUST GO GO GO! *Ahem*

Frozo the Renowned

I am going to buy the Frosty Carpet recipe. Just wanted to put that in.

I THINK THATS ABOUT IT KTHXBAI

Firaga

Hope learned this spell a while ago and I saw him cast it at a group of mobs in Full HD as a Ravager.

We. Need. This. Spell.

I mean mages. Gives mages 1080p abilities and I will continue to level Druny (who hit 22 from 20 over the weekend running just TWO Wailing Caverns)

New Frostbolt: Instead of firing a bolt of ice, you summon a freezing block of ice over the enemy and it shatters.

Or would Square Enix sue for copying their awesomeness?

OH WELL!

Monday, March 22, 2010

Leggings of Woven Death Gear Score

Since there have been so many search results related to the Title: It is 494 I believe. Or 492. However, before you look at the "gear score" these pants give you, are they even an upgrade for you? (They most likely are), but are you giving up let's say....Hit Rating??

Even though these pants are a NICE NICE upgrade, in general to all types of players, don't go stacking your "score" for the sake of it, people will call you out in an INSTANT. If your score is anywhere higher than 4200 and you are missing a gem or enchant, useless. Only use the epic gems, they are easy to get for 200G or 10/20 emblems. If you can't maintain it, just stick to ghetto gear and your dps/hps/tps/whateverps won't even change.

**Operation Truny Update**: Speaking of GS, it seems the highest obtainable score without ICC 25 gear is probably close to 5700 where everything is properly itemized. For Truny, the crafted ICC shoes don't seem to be viable for her spec since they DO NOT HAVE HASTE, so unless she upgrades her chestpiece for Merlin's Robe, and replaces the ICC-5 trinket with the Frost Emblem HIT trinket, THEN the crit on the shoes become very nice since her haste would be just under 1,000 with Merlin's Robe! (WTF RANDOM WORDS)

This gets me thinking, how come crafted items are only useful when the recipes can only be obtained through raids? Think of the ilvl 200 pieces that we can make, how useful are THOSE?

Anyways, those just looking for the gearscore probably wouldn't have read this far anyways, so bye!

Truny the Warlock

Saturday, March 20, 2010

Truny's Shriveled Heart

Right, the actual non WoW-Armory picture!

Friday, March 19, 2010

The Shadowbolt Pace

For Truny's daily yesterday, I tried to run whatever came up as Destruction spec, since it was my offspec and had proved to be quite reliable before the new Decimation changes. And because the last time I used it I had about 500 less base haste.

It's so weird.

The one thing that still annoys me is that 0.1 second of waitng for Immolate to land on a mob and then Conflagrating. It's annoying, and it's a waste of time.

The burst is still nice but we have to reapply our Immolate on anything that we want to Incinerate. Why would you incinerate without an Immolate on a mob? That's illegal.

I guess I am talking about trash mobs again, oh right, I should have just spammed Seed of Corruption, oh no wait that would rip aggro instantly and without Soul Link I'd be a very squished warlock. (Though I do have Shadowcrash in this build to buy just a slight sliver of salvation)

People like repetition, Shadowbolt casts at a steady pace, we fire Shadowbolts steadily as a Demonologist. Ahhh! Insta-cast Corruption, and fire away. Again, with trash I don't even bother with the Immolate since they get crashed into the ground too fast.

Once Decimation kicks in, our Soulfires have about the same if not slightly faster cast speed than our basic Shadowbolt. 1.87 seconds vs 1.98 seconds. Slow, steady, huge crits.

The Destruction "rotation" always felt like a race with oneself, always trying to catch up after the high after a Backdraft and never reaching the same euphoria again. Hmm...weird. Yes, the first time you experienced backdraft was most possibly the best.. and you didn't even realize it until you continue playing...striving for that excitement.

What is shadowbolt anyways? Shadow is the absence of light, so essentially we are firing reverse-light, the dark nether, nothingness at our enemies. This bolt may hit big, but it's a lightweight at best as it is comprised of nothingness. Perhaps it an energy that absorbs light, a black hole, a stable one that doesn't suck everything into it? Who knows. I have a whole new take on this spell, rather than just "oh that black thing warlocks shoot". Hmm!

Truny the Warlock

Monday, March 15, 2010

Resto Druids and Warlocks

Dear Resto Druids,

How do you treat fellow Warlocks that appear in your groups? Throwing out a rejuv for them to lifetap is effortless but are there times where you just...don't?

Coming from the perspective of my Warlock, I would lifetap once after a pull and see if the healer is throwing something on me. If it leaves a HoT then I will tap to full and we are good. If not, I will just heal myself.

Coming from the perspective of my Tree Druid:

A) If you soulstone me, as is customary. I will be throwing the random HoTs on you. You are a professional warlock. Your damage does not matter hereafter.

If there is no soulstone but:

B) You are at the top of the charts but not pulling aggro I will even go as far as using Regrowth AND Rejuvenation for you. Keep killing! (But usually a good warlock will Soulstone you so this has never happened)

C) You are not at the top of the charts but your dps is GREAT for your gear expectations, I will give you a lifebloom or just stand close to Wild Growth. Soulstone could be on cooldown. You may redeem yourself for boss fights.

D) You are not at the top of the charts and your dps is pell-mell, then just wait for Wild Growth, it won't wait for you, you better stand near the tank. 15 minutes later, no Soulstone. (Not that we need it but you know!) You may redeem yourself for boss fights.

E) You are not at the top of the charts and your dps is crappy and you lifetap ALL the way down to 20% expecting heals. No heals. Wild Growths will be strategically cast.

A Warlock can NEVER do less than 2k dps at level 80. Don't complain that your DoTs are not taking effect because mobs die too fast, change your strategy!

I will still heal incidental damage, but trust me when you lifetap...they know! (It's loud it goes PFOOM PFOOM PFOOM PFOOM)

Turny the Restless Tree

Truny the Warlock - Post Leggings of Woven Death

Yesterday there was a great amount of cheap Primordial Saronites on the AH, 1420 gold each. I swept them up and looked for a tailor to make the Leggings of Woven Death. And with this upgrade my stats jump from:

Bonus Damage: 2525
Hit Rating: 347
Crit Chance: 28.3%
Haste Rating: 569


to

Bonus Damage:2575
Hit Rating: 347
Crit Chance: 28.58%
Haste Rating: 623
Mana Regen: 426


Not too shabby! Next upgrade will most likely be the Frost Emblem belt since it comes with two sockets, and can be socketed again whereas if I upgraded my gloves the overall stats upgrade is lower. If I have 40 emblems today, it would take to next Wednesday to have 60 emblems. Or sooner if I do the weekly raid and be patient enough to do the VoA lotto.

Truny the Warlock

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Gear Score Update

HA don't we all hate seeing the words Gear Score? And don't you hate how I use Gear Score to compare toons?

Well, the way I use Gear Score is more of a quantifiable comparison between my own toons.

I know full well their potential.

For example: Truny has a score of 5200. Warlock. Turby the Hunter has a score of 4,750 but his DPS is over 1,500 higher than Truny just for being a Survival Hunter. Imagine the potential of a very well geared Hunter? In short, for Raids my Hunter still trumps my Warlocks, for short bursty burstness, Seed of Corruption and Decimation!!!

In secret, I'm trying to see what the highest possible number I can get out of this system as a non-raider. It looks like this number is around 5400-5500. (All items must be proper and optimal for spec, no cheating with useless trinkets and PVP gear).

You Stupid Quest

Yeah I'm talking about YOU, you stupid quest!

1. A Worthy Weapon. Ok first of all why am I getting the same three blades everyday? Can't you just call the keeper of the blade and KEEP IT WITH YOU? And also, screw that I am not flying to ANOTHER ZONE and FLY BACK because a) I am too lazy to manually fly there and navigate and fly back, but if I want to afk and do it.. b) I am too cheap to pay the flight master TWICE to get your stupid sword. Stupid argent tournament.

2. All Things in Good Time. If you pop into Ahn'kahet Old Kingdom and someone shares this quest. How do we turn the quest in? When you're done you pop back out to the place you started which is definitely NOT in Dragonblight. Do I want to fly ALL the way to Dragonblight just to turn in a quest for a stupid 23 gold? No! The only character who *MIGHT* do this is Truny because her stupid tailoring weave cooldowns all require you to fly ALL THE EFFING way to Dragonblight, in three effing locations to make three pieces of stupid cloth. Though the instance entrance is so far away I usually hearth back after I finish my last piece of cloth. And if reading the patch notes are correct, soon we won't even have to MOVE or go anywhere to make these cloth cooldowns, prices for sure will come down once Frozo the Renowned moves in as well. Yeah I'm talking about YOU crafted ilvl264 welfare items!

3. Any quest that involves gathering random ingredients or items. Ok, eff you I am too busy questing to gather materials for you, stupid NPC get it yourself! Maybe for 120 Emblems of Frost we can hire an Unbound Scourge Slave to do quests for us while we do other quests, they would quest in real time, but save all this annoyance.

4. Any quest that involves killing a certain number of monsters. The mobs respawn, it is hopeless this endless duelling, let us succumb to our defeat. Besides, I'm too busy questing to go and commit MURDER for you! The exception to this are killing Vrykul giants, they are nummy.

5. Any quest that involves "go speak with NPC" at "some other location". Why? We all know THESE quests don't give a lot of gold and why don't you move your lazy ass and speak to them yourselves and have them CALL me when they are ready?

6. Any quest that involves using some item to do something to a static object via poking/probing/scraping/skinning/mining/scalping/scanning/shooting/spraying/doping/etc. If I were you I wouldn't trust me to do this I have shaky flimsy weak caster arms and will probably just ruin everything.

7. Any quest that involves going into some vehicle and I have to shoot things down. Ok have you played Bayonetta? If we had to take down an army of Angels while driving 150MPH on a motorcycle on the interstate, then we'll discuss options. (Though that stage is too long)

8. Any quest that involves obtaining an item and combining it with another item via clicking on it because it says Use: Combine with blah. Ok first of all when I loot the item I am too lazy to check where it went into my bag and I am also too lazy to click on it again to combine it.

9. Any quest where completing them only involves speaking to the same NPC and clicking "Complete". What the hell that wasn't a quest!

Truny the Questing Warlock

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Truny the Warlock's Loot Drama: Shriveled Heart

Remember two days ago when Truny ran Heroic Halls of Reflection and saw the Shriveled Heart drop? And remember how the healer and a dps pally rolled on it and the healer won and I was like "ok next time it is"?

Well, after an excellent run yesterday, our tank held aggro like a champion, we cleared the fourth wave of scary scourage in the Run Away event and I was thinking "ok this is it", and TADA!



(This is just from Wowarmory, I have "real" pics on my laptop)

It actually looks like a swirly frothing Orange Sorbet. I think the actual Shriveled Heart is stored inside this noise-maker.


With this last upgrade it puts my final unbuffed stats at:

Bonus Damage: 2525
Hit Rating: 347
Crit Chance: 28.3%
Haste Rating: 569


I will need to move my talents away from Improved Corruption into Supression to make up for Hit so I don't miss during the VoA Weekly Lottos (though the last run we did I didn't miss with JUST 16% ish hit)

I will also be trying for 760 raw haste (+240 from the Spellgem for 1000!!!!)

Truny the Warlock

ALTS ALTS ALTS: Which One Now?

Klupty the Death Knight: Level 80. Frost (DW DPS) and Frost (DW Tanking)

Quick Note: I know he's level 80 but he's very poorly geared for both of his specs, POORLY GEARED! I don't know, playing a DK is like watching what button lights up and hitting it if the button you pressed before was: Obliterate, or if there was a proc, or if you need free Blood Runes. WTF?

Gear Prospects: Real super slow. I have a feeling one of the toons listed below is going to hit 80 and outgear Klupty.

Runy the Rogue: Level 64. Subtlety and Combat specced.

Quick Note: I find the rogue a much more interesting melee class as a Death Knight, perhaps of my inclination towards the stealthy versus dumb. You have all your stunlocks available, you can vanish from battle and you can Run For Your Life really fast!

Levelling Prospects: I will occasionally log into Runy and run a maximum of TWO random dungeons, he will hit 80, though very very slowly. I do predict he will be the next one to hit 80.

Truby the Paladin: Level 47. Protection and Retribution specced.

Quick Note: Paladins are invincible and OP. Tanking, I don't die. Tanking is fun except when I feel like I am running out of MANA?? WTF MANA?? I do have that "if I get healed I get MP" mumbo jumbo but...MANA?? Retribution is awfully strong for its level too but again its a melee class and grouping at this level is hit and miss. Only if I need entertainment.

Levelling Prospects: Truby will most likely hit 80 after Runy does so unless something dramatic happens and I suddenly feel like going Holy.

Husbrus the Priest: Level 24. Shadow Specced.

Quick Note: Ok I almost want to go holy/disc to level and just heal my goddamn way to maybe level 70 and then pick up Shadow DPS again this is lame with no lifetap! I've always like using the "Fwong" holy word shield.

Levelling Prospects: Probably really slow unless I really want to just heal the hell through to 70.

Druny the Mage: Level 17 almost 18. Frost Specced.

Quick Note: Frostbolt is nice and quick and goes "plop" when it lands and Flamestrike is really fun to cast because I know how much it hurts!

Levelling Prospects: Will probably be taken priority over the prest since a mage has a lot of potential.

Shinjen the Shaman: Level 14 Shaman. Enhancement Specced.

Quick Note: Just so I can have my own bloodlust? Maybe make a healer? Try out chain-lightning and its chain-y-awesomeness? Oh noes that's all three trees!? Right now I am stuck somewhere in Durotar, everytime I log in I'll see my character and then get discouraged then log off.

Levelling Prospects: I don't know, unless I manage to log in for more than 15 seconds but a Shaman does look fun klunking things on the head with a mace.

Bruny the Warrior: Level 17 Warrior. Fury Specced.

Quick Note: Warriors sure level fast with heirloom gear, crusader enchanted swords and crazy dash and slash and stomp and smash and KABOOM!

Levelling Prospects: Bruny has been in some random dungeons and ended up tanking most of them and I probably won't mind Warrior Tanking since my Main Healer practically grew up with a warrior tank, didn't heal any other type of tank until the end of burning crusade. For sure after the Rogue, maybe after the Shaman and at the same time as the Mage?

What If: You Were Your Own 5-man Dungeon Group?

For simplicity's sake let's restrict this to level 80 heroics. If one of your toons' has dual-spec, then they can count as TWO separate characters.

Here is my most likely 5-man composition:

Tank: Turny the Bear
Healer: Turny the Restless Tree
DPS: Truny the Warlock
DPS: Turby the Hunter
DPS: Klupty the Jewelcraft Slave Death Knight

It is quite obvious that in this group, the Death Knight is getting carried by the rest of the party members. He can barely break 3k dps, has no hit rating, and is still wearing some gnarly quest blues.

This would be the ultimate AoE team. Mangle and Swipe. Wild Growth. Seed of Corruption and Rain of Fire, Volley and Multi-shot. Howling Blasts. Heck, the Warlock and Hunter can sustain such high DPS that I might just let the DK go onto auto-walk-follow and just tag along for emblems and drops.

I tend to have this thought in the back of my head because sometimes just SOMETIMES I think "damn if only that crappy dps was my own hunter then we'd be much quicker" or "why is that dumb healer standing still, if it was Turny..."

KTHXBAI

Why I Chose Feral Tanking

Because I don't have to fuckin' waste time gearing up to hit the fuckin' Defense Cap!

Bear tanks are automatically crit-immune. It's only a matter of getting your dodge and stamina higher than the sky and you're good to go!

Turny the Restless Tree

Monday, March 8, 2010

Two Demonology Questions

Truny was asked two rather Obvious To The User questions in a recent Piece of Sh- I mean Pit of Saron run.

"Why don't you use SoC more?"

Because my dear, I only use that when there are more than three mobs to maximize area-of-effect damage. I will throw in a random Rain of Fire to top it off for aesthetic reasons.

Using Seed of Corruption on a single target that isn not a PVP target who is not going to run away is useless. The explosion caused by the seed is not inflicted upon the target but to those around it. If there were only two mobs it is still not worth it.

However, you WILL see me use it in the Tunnel of Love once the tank has maintained proper aggro on the Ice Revenant and all the pretty skeletons.

"Why don't you use Incinerate more?"

Because I am not a Destruction Warlock. If you had not noticed that armor plated Demon over there, I am a Demonology Specced warlock. I will use Incinerate, however you will notice they only come in bursts of three or two, and that is only during my Molten Core procs which increase their damage and casting speed. I say two because they tend to trigger Decimation.

The end. @_@

Truny the Warlock

Truny and the Shriveled Heart - Updates

Yay guess what dropped in the routine H HOR last night? Yes, the Shriveled Heart! The off-hand where EVERY character with an offhand slot that needs Spell Power wants!

Of course I lost the roll, the heart went to the healer, and also one of our dps paladins rolled on it, it seems they are working on a healing set.

I had just realized I was using the "wrong" offhand item. The violet citadel thinger. I switched to the
Handbook of Obscure Remedies. Just for the haste, I like haste, MORE haste! (I am aiming for 1000 haste after spellstone since I do NOT raid I do not count in bloodlusts)

The whole point of going after the Shriveled Heart is to see how "geared" I can get as a non-raider. I guess it's to appease the Godly Raider when they see me in THEIR daily dungeon so I don't hold THEM back in their progress.

(Even though a Demonology Warlock usually tops DPS, Total Damage, boss DPS in every single dungeon in 5-mans. We're just bursty)* Exception: T10.5 geared arcane mages who will just spam Arcane Blast or whatever the hell that thing is on a boss and kill it in 5 hits. (Which is good since its less work for me)

Comparison: Switching from Handbook to Shriveled Heart (Which is NEVER since everyone wants it)

Stamina: +11
Intellect: -2 hmm...
Spirit: -38 (Uh oh) -19 SP later.
Crit: +51. Whatever, don't need.
Haste: +25 (+0.76% haste) ANYTHING more than 0 is good at this point for this slot!
Spellpower: +19 BUT -19 because of Spirit. = ZERO

So we gain a little bit of Crit, a little bit of haste. So it's not THAT much better. And looking at Wowhead it looks like a....Maraca??

One a sidenote, Truny DID receive an upgrade: The
Braid of Salt and Fire from Heroic ICK in Heroic Piece of Shi- I mean Pit of Saron. 60 haste and 60 spirit! With this, I can spend my Emblem of Frosts on the haste cloth glove instead of the belt!

Back to the Halls of Reflection grind for that LAST upgrade! Hoping the rest of the party are Hunters and Warriors (because then they won't need even for off-spec), and hmm what's a healer that wouldn't want that? Forget it, maybe I'll heal it myself on Turny. Oh no wait then my Warlock won't be able to join hmm....ok maybe a really geared healer who doesn't need it! (Though most likely once the Heart DOES drop I will stop playing my warlock just like when she was looking for the Spectral Kris back in the ToC days)

Truny the Warlock

Friday, March 5, 2010

Truny on Leggings of Woven Death

Truny is currently wearing Gul'dan's Leggings of Conquest looking to upgrade to the Leggings of Woven Death. Yes, she is noob her pants are only T9.0. Well too bad since I'm not a srs bsns raider those work fine since they are the ONLY piece in all of the Warlock T9 that has haste.

However, things have changed: As long as you are fairly rich, you can buy some of the crafted ICC welfare epics (everything is a welfare epic if you DID NOT receive it in a raid, preferrably hard modes).

Leggings of Woven Death are one of these welfare items. The materials required to craft these pants are:

10 Spellweaves
10 Ebon Weaves
8 Primordial Saronites

The various weaves are no problem, since in a week or so Truny can make enough cloth. Primordial Saronite can sell for as low as 1,400-1,500 gold on our server. Eight times 1,500 = 12,000. Ok fine, about 14,000 gold isn't THAT welfare, but according to our elitist friends if you didn't do it "the hard way, through hard work, with a big group of other hard workers" then you don't deserve it.

Hey I don't deserve anything but as long as you dish out the funds. Hard work? How hard? Knowing what to do when to do it isn't that hard when you know what to do when to do it? It's an achievement?

Anyways, Primordial Saronites, can either be purchased, or exchanged for 23 Frost Emblems. I prefer a mixture of methods since I am too cheap to outright purchase ALL eight of them since the trade-off isn't "worth it". I come from the mentality that "if I can save money, then save money".

What is the net-upgrade from switching to these pants?

Stamina: +31 (SO MUCH HP!)
Intellect: +31 (More MP to Tap, and a bit more crit. Whatever)
Critical Strike: +4. (About +0.10%)
Haste Rating: +64 (+1.34%) that's huge for a single item.
Spell Power: +40 (That's about exactly 40 spellpower)
+1 Blue Socket: That's about equal to approximately exactly one blue socket.

Is it worth about 14,000 gold for this upgrade? If your answer is also: "Why not, it'll help you kill bosses 1-2 seconds faster", then go ahead!

Truny the Warlock

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Truny's Mission: Shriveled Heart

It is sad to say that Truny is looking to replace the first item she ever purchased with Emblems of Heroism x months ago:

The
Ward of the Violet Citadel!

Truny was very excited because reading around the interwebs, she knew that this offhand would last her a VERY long time.

And a long time it has been indeed until the introduction of this new offhand which can be obtained through Heroic Halls of Reflection:

The
Shriveled Heart

Let us see the net upgrade to be gotten from this item over the Ward.

Stamina: +5 (Awesome!)
Intellect: +/- 0 (Nice, no loss!)
Hit: -38 or -1.45%, make sure to make up for this if you're not hit-capped!
Haste: +50 or +1.52%, haste is a nice for Demonology Warlocks for us to churn out our nukes!
Crit: +26 or about +0.50% Crit, not a big deal since we have such high passive crit but it's a +!
Spellpower: +19. Think of it as a free Runed Scarlet Ruby.

That was the easy part. The hard part is:

1. Finding a group where no one else in the group needs it cause I suck at rolls. Period.
2. Finding a group where the tank doesn't go splat in one second, and end up leaving the party.
3. Actually getting the thing to drop when you are on the correct character at the right time.

One of these days I shall have this ground-breaking 19 spellpower!

Truny the Warlock

Decimation: Get Outta The Way!

Remember when we had to take out our rulers and measure the perfect distance to stand by the Boss to perfect the timing on our Soulfire/Shadowbolt weaving so that when Shadowbolt lands it would proc Decimation for us just in time for Soulfire?

Well, of course that has been changed already, now Decimation gives us Nine Seconds of Soulfires with 40% reduced cast times.

I had misunderstood this ability for about a week until I realized something: I can continue to cast Soulfires under Decimation. Meaning that when a Soulfire lands on a mob, the Decimation effect does not disappear like in the good old days, it's a flat Nine Seconds of Firy Fun!

It was something completely new to Truny: Attack a fresh mob with a starter spell Corruption and then Soulfire (!!) instead of Shadowbolt! And not just ONE Soulfire, sometimes there's time for multiple!

Usually it takes me a wasted cast of Shadowbolt to realize that Decimation has procced so I usually have just over 7 Seconds to Soulfire Spam! Still, with a decent amount of haste, this means that Soulfires under the Decimation effect take about 1.8 to 1.9 seconds to cast which means FOUR Soulfires are available to blast at ANYTHING!

The most likely situation is that mobs are going to be dropping really fast once one is under 35%, so your first Soulfire is most likely to refresh Decimation, and you can switch targets and burn down a second mob by throwing your free Soulfires. If you are lucky, your last Soulfire and the damage from your other party members would have weakened that mob to under 35% and Decimation would be in consistent effect. Feel free to throw in some corruptions to Molten Coreicize your Soulfires as well!

Note 1*: I only find this useful and possible in the Icecrown 5-mans where the trash waves have a high enough HP to NOT die within three seconds. I tend to have a consistent Decimation effect after it has been triggered. However, Warlocks partying with newer groups may be able to do this in the ilvl200 Heroic dungeons just to get a feel of Soulfire chaining.

Note 2*: For the ilvl200 Dungeons, throwing out a bunch of Seed of Corruptions and topping it off with a Rain of Fire (optional) is still Truny's preferred choice of satisfyingly explosive AoE!

Truny the Warlock