Well I’m excited because my wife and kids are going out of town for two days - coming back Christmas Eve - so I have uninterrupted WoW time tonight and tomorrow night (too bad I have to work during the day) and at least a half a day Friday. The only other thing I need to get done is some present wrapping, and to feed myself.
I’ve been enchanting Cat greens to 1, level my enchanter and 2, as a sort of extra buff so I can kill faster, take a better beating, and thus level with less downtime.
Of course, your mileage may vary. You certainly don’t have to enchant greens, but there are a few reasons you might want to do so.
History and Philosophy in the Game Room, gotta love that 
Re. tanks and mana, I can (to a point) understand not remembering to watch the mana bars when it’s a little warrior or still-cold DK, both of which are still learning their buttons, but a line I’ve heard a surprising amount of times at whatever level endgame happened to be at the time (apparently I do have a longer fuse than most, otoh I don’t PUG unless my fuse is long) is “you’re a paladin, how come you act like you’ve never heard of mana?”
I’ve been using the in-game raidframes and think they should come with “power bars” as the default, not the opposite.
One thing I like about the changes is that they’ve made brains valuable again, and people are talking to each other again. Too many of the PUGs I had for the last 3-4 months before the expansion had the following dialogue in between the optional greetings at beginning and end:
We’re CC’ing again, people point out which skills others have that may be useful (generally in a polite manner, such as “does banish work on those?”) and people recap at the end, not just “gj” but actual “what we learned today” paragraphs.
Oily blackmouths and firefin snappers have ONLY been saltwater as long as I’ve played WoW (5+ years now).
That said, yes, there WERE other freshwater fishing pools besides various sagefish and deviant fish. The ones that comes to mind were the eel pools in Winterspring that I used to farm for stonescale and lightning eels for my alchemist.
Ah, that must’ve been it, then. I vaguely remembered seeing freshwater schools other than deviates and sagefish, but couldn’t for the life of me remember what.
I’ve been pretty liberal with my Innervate whenever someone gets below 50% in the middle of a fight. Typically it’s been mages, but I would prioritize healers if it was necessary (Still in regular 5-mans - ok ToT only, so it really hasn’t been a deal)
If I can get a guild group together I’m willing to try tanking the lower dungeons to see how I do. Of course that requires that I play at a time other than 6am for longer than 45 min, which won’t happen consistently until next year.
Even when it’s totally fictional history! But I’m a lore maniac for multiple settings (WoW, Trek, Star Wars, Middle-Earth, etc), so these kind of things bother me.
I am a tank, but i pretty much healed exclusively in TBC, so i check all mana bars before every pull.
I’ve noticed lately (and i’m not sure if this is an indication of gear level, or play style, or something else entirely) that some healers are drinking after every pull, and some healers never dip below 90% until we get to the boss fight.
I suspect, as others have mentioned in previous pages, that this is probably due to overhealing. Healers are just so used to spamming heals proactively.
Have you noticed a link between amount of water/ class?
I know that in WotLK I used to have the lowest overhealing ratios in my raids, but it looks like I’ll have to learn to be even more conservative now (for starters, forget about having renews up on anybody who’s at melee range). I haven’t brought out the healer so far, she’s been happy vegetating and leveling her JC.
Oh, and something I left out before: congratulations on being exalted with me distant cousins! Have a stein! passes the ale
So far I’ve only been healing with my paladin, and only regular cata dungeons, but mana hasn’t been too much of an issue yet. I have definitely stopped pro-active healing and only heal when there is damage, and haven’t yet wiped due to being oom although we have come close in a couple bad pulls. I’m guessing it wil get harder when I venture into heroics.
Next I’ll be getting my holy priest up to 81, so I have no idea if the mana issue will be better or worse with him.
My resto shammy, as an aside, ran a 5-man recently and spammed heals constantly on every fight without dipping below 80% mana. But he’s only level 17 and it was Deadmines so that’s probably not a very telling anecdote.
I haven’t necessarily noticed a correlation between class & water, but i have recently had a couple of Shammy healers where mana seemed not to be an issue at all… just drinks after boss fights.
And thanks for Ale, I hope it doesn’t send me into a drunken rage like the stock from the daily quest 
I just want to say, that for anyone that has aspirations of becoming a raid leader, taking charge in these heroics is certainly good practice.
I’ve only ever lead a raid or two in my career and i learned quickly that understanding a fight, and trying to explain all of the finer details to a group of people over vent are quite different animals. But… what with all the trash marking, and boss fight explaining i’ve been doing in these heroics for the past week i’m starting to feel like a mini raid leader. Now if only there was a book to read on how to deal with loot drama…
Finally got a few heroics in last night: SFK, Stonecore, and Halls. Got exalted with Guardians of Hyjal for a smexy plate DPS belt and tanking cloak. Just need bracers, shoulders, and a relic to get the 333-and-up achievement.
The SFK group proved what SFG and others have been saying - gearing and knowledge will make these “OMG, Heroics are soooo hard” stories rather obsolete. I hadn’t run the new SFK at all, but was running in a guild group with a raid-geared tank (top geared toon on Cairne atm, I believe) and a resto Shaman who’s raid-geared and has a seemingly endless mana bar. There was no CC at all (although we were all pretty good about interrupting), and the bosses just melted (even the “impossible” Springvale - at least impossible according to some on the WoW forums - we even got the achievement). All DPS was 10k or higher, I believe, and it felt pretty much like Wrath heroics did at the beginning.
The others went smoothly as well, but not without some deaths along the way (mainly to trash). Folks are getting smarter about their CCs, and especially not breaking them.
Those Stonecare bosses are really nice stupid-checks though. We had a new DPS recommended for my former raid group, and a run through there pointed out rather quickly that that wasn’t going to happen unless he got much more aware…
Now that I’m finally getting geared, I’ve started enchanting my gear and getting my gemming in order and it’s making a rather large difference in DPS as well. Now if only they would fix the damn melee DPS meta requirements… :mad:
Wish I had time to raid, but it’s nice that the guild is making progress - 6/12 currently.
I likely won’t get much playtime between now and Christmas, what with travel and such. That whole “having a girlfriend” thing sure takes a chunk out of my gaming time.
That noted, I got a really nifty weapon upgrade in ToT on my druid last night. Think it dropped off the second boss? Was one of the easier fights in there, basically tank & spank. Weapon is a staff, major upgrade over the one I had from Occulus.
Did you leave Vashj’ir? To get back there, you need to take the portal (in the little island in the lask in the northeast corner of Stormwind, kind of behind the Keep). If that portal isn’t active, you should try riding the boat again, but I’m not sure that will work a second time. If you’re really stuck, you may have to open a ticket.
Sylvanas and Varian both have the same problem: they’re either blindingly incompetent or morally bankrupt. Sylvanas either had no clue what Putress was doing (incompetent), or she was just angry that he used the new plague without her permission (morally bankrupt); Varian either had no clue that the people who rebuilt Stormwind were cheated of what they were owed/had no power to prevent it (incompetent), or he was complicit in cheating them of their compensation, thereby helping to create the Defias (morally bankrupt).
1.) Consider making a macro to announce a reminder to the party that your mana is more constrained than it used to be and the tank should remember to keep an eye on mana, especially the healer’s mana.
2.) If they consistently ignore you even after reminders, you can at least keep in mind that it’s their problem not yours. If they think you’re a bad player… who cares? You know they’re the ones who suck.
Agreed. I’d actually forgotten that they weren’t on by default, since I turn them on ASAP.
I’ve been seeing a lot of correlation there, too. The healers that go OOM the most, or spend the most time at low mana, are the ones that constantly push to keep me topped off. Which is absolutely the wrong way to approach things now. You can’t afford constant overheals anymore.
He really wasn’t that hard. IME it worked perfectly to tank him on the stage and just swap sides as he dropped his ground AOE. That way, he was always faced completely away from the rest of the group for his incredibly nasty conal AOE.
Actually no, Varian did know and did try to help. Two things prevented him. First, he simply didn’t have the money. Stormwind was rebuilt with payment promised by all the nobles together. The King, however wealthy, couldn’t make the payments. He, and particularly with help from his Queen, Tiffin, tried to organize meetings and get everyone to cool off and work things out.
Then the stonworkers rioted and killed the Queen with a thrown paving stone. Bashed her head in. Varian actually got to hold her while she died.
Thereafter, well, he wasn’t inclined to pay off the men who’d murdered their own strongest voice of support. He also sunk into a deep depression. This is a man who’s lost everything he loved more than twice over. He’s been hurt so badly it’s a wonder he’s funcitonal. It didn’t help that “Lady Katrana Prestor” was using her wealth, might, and magic to screw both sides at once in a bid to become the ruler of Stormwind herself. Stormwind has its own secret service and is hardly blind to the odd traitor, but Onyxia and her daddy are really good at this. She in fact used sorcery to further his sorrow.
And then she found that he cared enough about his son to slowly heal from his depression. So Varian had to go, and she arranged for him to be kidnapped, and that’s about where WoW begins.
My mage’s last run through H:Halls of Lightning was like that. She was nearly out of mana right before the Loken fight, so once the trash right before him was cleared she sat down to drink … and the tank ran away and engaged Loken despite my “OOM!” announcement. And then, to top things off, something happened I had utterly never seen before: one of those big golem things respawned right on top of me. I don’t mean it patrolled over to me; I watched it actually “fade” into existence right on the spot where I was sitting. Of course, with the rest of the group occupied with Loken there was nobody to come help me, so I spent the Loken fight lying dead on the ground :mad:
I wonder if the problem here is that the Sagefish/Greater Sagefish were the only Old World freshwater fish (that I can think of) that could be cooked into a buff food (they both make caster food that increases mana regen), and so they’re the only schools people specifically remember? As far as I can recall, Old World buff foods all came from “meat”, not “fish”. I just seem to distinctly remember fishing from Bristlewhisker Catfish schools at some point.
My paladin has a nice new weapon, the Axe of Earthly Sundering, a quest reward at the end of a chain in Deepholm. Oddly, it was the only reward offered for the particular quest (rescuing the Earthen king). Seems kind of useless for anybody who isn’t a paladin, warrior, or DK. Perhaps it offers a different reward to other classes? Anyway, I went ahead and enchanted it with Avalanche. Interesting that it says it makes the weapon deal Nature damage, but the glow effect is fog and snowflakes. Also, Avalanche was one of the enchants that gives 5 skillups, but apparently only the first time you enchant something with it. I put it on this weapon, got my 5 skill points, and it immediately went yellow and the up-arrow icon and number 5 disappeared.
As far has healer mana goes, the biggest factor in my experience is gear. Simply put if the group is just barely past the minimum gear required for a heroic, the healer WILL go out of mana, and often, no matter how skilled or how careful he/she is. With full heroic gear, the only time a healer should go oom is during a bad pull. In full raid gear, I expect heroics to be trivial.
Exactly. And he couldn’t make the nobles pay–that’s incompetence. He’s *King *Varian Wrynn, not a President Wrynn or Prime Minister Wrynn.
No, there are just some quests that only offer one reward.
And Enilno, I entirely agree with your assessment. Even now, in mostly 246 Blues, the fights are very smooth with a good group.
Random “help me!” question:
Because a friend of mine has recently gotten into the game, I’ve been leveling up my priest in instances. However, my-friend-the-tank has joined in, and he’s playing his shaman. Both of us want to heal. I’m a bit cross about it, but decided to go for a priest DPS spec anyway.
My priest is at 32, and I just can’t figure out a spec that doesn’t absolutely suck. I don’t think that it’s because I’m an idiot: on my hunter and ret pally, in the 20s, I almost always pulled top DPS. But I’ve tried all three trees, and I can’t find one that lets me do acceptable damage. I’m usually coming in fourth.
Are low-level priests just not designed for instance DPS, or is there a specific spec I should look at?