Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Havoc and Trinkets and Such

Good evening!

So yeah, I remember reading a long time ago as I began my devious warpath of pain and destruction upon Azeroth..about the intricacies of monitoring trinket procs and how various procs gave average int and sp and all that nice dps-talk jazz.

I took in the info and thought "meh, if my trinket procs while I am doing something, good".

This all changed last patch with all our fancy active trinkets, and in particular I have grown quite fond of one trinket specifically: Wusholay's Final Choice!

Now, I *think* I have the 522 one, but all versions of them are good, and with 5.4, they made this baby proc more often and in return, it ticks down quicker. I've gotten really used to watching my buff bar for the special stacking lightning icon and timing it just right to fire off a couple of ultra powered Chaos Bolts.

And no I do not use any fancy addons to track my dots or buffs or whatever, I use my sense of timing, after a while your finger just knows when your dots are falling off, and after a while you get to adapt into your muscle memory the various permutations of dot combos, especially when playing demo/affliction, such as when you are approaching Meta, or exiting, or if you had to move 15 seconds ago, etc etc.

Anyways, this trinket made raiding extra fun cause ultimately most fights are snoozefests in regular. I've also liked timing Havoc to these trinket procs, and with the new glyph of havoc, this can result in some amazingly gigglicious crits that make you really bursty!

Imagine four chaos bolts all hitting for over a million as you time your trinket as it approaches 7-10 stacks. Bahahaha!

I also appreciate our very very simple yet intricately optimizable rotation, which allows us to even worry about this stuff.

Glyph of Havoc

Have I even talked about this before? Probably, but briefly.

So what does this glyph do and should you use it? I will not make any recommendations but its all up to your playstyle and how you currently utilize your havoc CDs.

This glyph makes our effective CD a 60 second CD (long if you got used to the 25 seconds), but it can give a total count of the following spells:

1. 4 x Chaos Bolts
2. 6 x Incinerate
3. 2 x Immolate, 4 x Incinerate
4. 6 x Fel Flame (WHY?)
5. 4-6 (Cutting it Close) x Shadowburn

And any other combo, you get the point.

From a PVE perspective this glyph is nice if you need burst and don't want to worry about having to actually use Havoc a lot. For burst, this glyph is great for opening on multiple bosses/councils, and for execution phase, if you pre-dot everything up and spam a rain of fire, you MIGHT be able to eek out five or six shadowburn. And if your group kills fast, within 25 seconds it would be worth to have burned more shadowburns than to have used two applications of havocs. Did that even make sense? Essentially three more embers you wouldn't have had to try to save up once a boss hits 25%, especially for close kills where you are trying to survive or manage adds and everywhere like such as.

I personally use this glyph because I also like to watch my Wusholay and try to optimize its use every minute, but sometimes this requires me to wait a couple extra seconds for the trinket to proc. It really depends on how fast your group tends to kill duplicate adds.

Other

Otherwise, I did this week's pet tournament, umm, did Celestials on everyone, and the only lucky toon was my DK, who now has his 2P T16 just for hanging around. Maybe I should actually play him.....

So everyone but my hunter has a 2P to play with, but yeah, I'm mainly just hanging around the timeless isle to stock up on the Magical Pet Biscuits! My pets HUNGER!

Truny the Hungry

Monday, November 4, 2013

SIege of Orgrimmar Tips: Wing 1 Vale of Eternal Sorrow

Hi Reader!

I guess I should apologize for my lack of LFR tips lately, considering that I've completely boycotted the great mess that is LFR.

With the addition of Flex raid, I greatly prefer experiencing new fights with people I know and trust, rather than potentially crazy people who apparently don't know where their Raid option panel is in game. This puts me on the verge of being a whiny elitist, but at the same time I came into 5.4 at a significantly higher ilvl than what the new LFR had to offer anyways.

And as I've said before, since Flex is the new easy, why would you do easier than easy? Is that even possible?

From what I hear, Blizzard has put in an excessive amount of mechanics into LFR where the intended audience of this great mess now has to push their game up to make sense of it all.

Anyways, I believe Immerseus is only probably hard on heroic and only if you are undergeared so here are some tips from what I've seen:

Immerseus

Tanks: Swap on each stack of the only one thing that he puts on you. Run out to the side to avoid getting hit if you've just been hit.
Heals: Focus on healing the blue slimes when the boss splits, you'll get a healing bonus after you heal one to full.
DPS: Kill boss and black slimes.

For the first boss, this is insanely boring for any class since it requires you to do your role for short bursts, and the wait for him to split and get back together is just zzzzzzzz.

Protectors

We gotta love council type fights, and I think this one does a good job in not overwhelming us too much, and also requiring co-ordination.

You essentially want to bring each protector down to 66% then 33% and deal with their abilities.

Tanks: One get Hook or Rook or whatever. The other one get the rogue one, the non-female one and turn around when he's about to "Gouge" you.
Heals: Dispel some magic thing.

Rook: Avoid his tornado kicks. When he does his special, depending on your group, either burst down misery to avoid stacking, or gloom to avoid the AOE. We like Misery so we don't have to stack.

Rogue One: If you have a blood DK, throw the add onto the blood DK and call it a day. Otherwise co-ordinate and make sure you've got CD's up.

Female One: Stack in the middle and kill adds.

Norushen

Now I have healed, tanked, and dps'd this one. Again depending on your group, assign high priority people to use the first couple orbs to cleanse themselves. We usually do 2 high dps or 1 high dps and 1 high heals (disc priest). This will help bring the boss down in time.

Kill adds ASAP. Tanks/heals co-ordinate picking up glowy balls that the big adds drop and dodge lasers of death.

Inside The Orb:

Tank: Survive. Dodge smashes and interrupt when possible.
Heals: Heal the 3 crazy pandas and yourself.
DPS: Kill a big add and 3 little adds with shields. Should be able to kill the first 3 within 5 seconds with a well timed havoc (warlocks)

Sha of Pride

This fight is interesting yet pretty easy. I always equip my Valany'r to heal this and try to beat my "Absorbs" record every week (as a resto druid).

Tank: Taunt off boss when other tank gets a thing. If you're non-active tank, try to help with little adds. Active tank gets the prison button closest to boss.
Heals: If you get the titan buff, you are dispelling. Otherwise just spam an AOE every few seconds and do whatever.
DPS: Kill boss, and little adds, and big add fast.

All: This fight is based on your Pride levels and different things happen depending on your pride level and when the Sha casts his 100 energy AOE:

1-24: Nothing
25-49: Before he casts, make sure to spread from the group and keep moving so you automatically run out of the big bad splotch.
50-74: You will now see a thing with an arrow anywhere 15 yards away from you. Move into it or it will AOE everyone.
75+: If you get more than 75 you should not be raiding.

He also always does little adds, which you have to move out from a floor effect, prison, then big add to kill/interrupt.

But yeah, that's about it. Any questions, let me know.

Truny

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Doing The Things

Wow it's been a month since my last update!

What have we been doing? Nothing really just putzing about SoO, and then doing our weekly celestial kills.

The Casual Isle has no appeal, running around doing nothing much. Then again running around doing nothing much with no commitments IS kinda nice. You get what you get.

But I'd like to revisit the 5.4 trailer. When Taran Zhu, regardless of how useless he is, says to Garrosh that he has fought alongside the Tauren, Trolls, and others..I remember getting a slight chill down my spine. Yes! We did fight alongside one another, and what Garrosh is doing is atrocious!

I think the world of Pandaria has been laid out so well, we started out as adventurers in a strange land, learning the ways of the Pandaren, making friends on the farm, getting to know the Golden Lotus and the Shado Pan, I think they did factions right this time around.

Heck, what am I even talking about, now that I think of it the Hour of Twilight trailer was utter garbage. Really what happened? I know I harp a lot about Cata but we have to ensure that this crap never ever ever happens again!

But anyways, other than doing the weekly celestial tournament (I've taken screenshots of all my pet combos now), there really isn't much else to do. Which is fine.


Truny the Fine