Yes maybe the internet (again) doesn’t really help to convey the subtleties of the language, my apologies Palooka.
Two more levels and you get Feign Death, at least… they really should give hunters Misdirection earlier IMO.
Or you can just auto-shot and eat a sandwich or something. 
Al’Akir down, after only about an hour and a half of attempts! “Defender of a Shattered World” looks quite nice on my DK tank. 
Good work! Our group didn’t kill Al’Akir this week (but I do have the title form killing him in another guild run).
I’m afraid it’s gonna take awhile for everyone in our group to figure out the P1 movement and survivability part… we tend to struggle on fights were every person has responsibility for their own survival (Atramedes was the same way). Group movement we are pretty good at, but individual movement sometimes holds us back.
I think I’m going to start tanking more on the DK and have our current tanking DK go DPS. I just can’t stand going through more raid nights where he’ll tank multiple bosses without using Vampiric Blood even once, and ignores me asking him to please use his CDs. I’m either gonna ragequit or have to step in and do the tanking myself… 
Yeah, it took us a bit to get used to it, but eventually we got pretty good at calling out the locations of the squall lines and where the holes were. Al’Akir is a nasty, nasty boss. He’s not that hard but he’s annoying. I’m hoping we don’t have to kill him too many more times, although I heard in 4.1 he’s going to start dropping tier tokens, so we probably will.
Ugh. Yeah, I got a lot of chances to use all my tanking cooldowns when we were doing Nefarian. I used cooldowns I forgot I had (like hitting Empower Rune Weapon and then doing two or three Death Strikes in succession), mainly because for most bosses I didn’t need them so I got lazy. Now that we’re moving into heroic stuff (we’ve been concentrating on Nef even though we had folks in our group who could have unlocked heroic content for us) I think all that practice will come in handy.
BTW, if anybody has any advice on 2H Frost DPS, I’d be eternally grateful. I went DPS for our Al’Akir kill because the other tank had more experience with him, and my DPS was abysmal. Utterly abysmal. Like below the tank abysmal. I just don’t grok melee, I guess. I’m fine as a tank, but…I just dunno what I’m doing wrong. My gear is great, btw, so that’s not the issue.
I run dual-wield frost, but it’s not that different (except that you run in Unholy Presence and prefer haste a bit more).
The simple answer is that Frost kinda sucks, and is very RNG dependent, and very unforgiving of mistakes. That’s why it’s getting buffed in 4.1. You won’t be punished as badly for using Killing Machine procs on Frost Strike instead of Oblit, and you won’t even have Blood Strike on your bars at all (so you won’t accidentally use a Death Rune on it which is very bad for DPS). Movement will still kill your DPS, but that’s the price you pay for having nice utility - Frost is easily the best for add-kiting and has a few other useful things. I’m sure you enjoyed knock-back immunity on Al’Akir.
I have a very solid DPS gear set (only two pieces I want to replace in normal modes - have my tier 4-set) and I can’t come particularly close to our Ret Pally whose gear isn’t as complete unless I do everything perfectly and have very good procs.
All of that said, it’s possible there is an issue with your priority or your gear set up if you are below the tanks. Are you Hit and Expertise capped? Are you keeping your blood runes cycling into death runes? Are you using Pillar of Frost every single CD (with Rune Tap) and rezzing your ghoul only when Pillar is up?
I was told that I should use Unholy presence for 2H Frost. Not correct?
Uh…<sheepishly backs away>…no. See, I almost never DPS. That’s, I’m sure, a lot of my problem. I didn’t know I had knockback immunity. The only reason I went Frost is because it let me kite the adds for Magmaw, which works really well, I must admit.
What rotation/priority system do you use? I think my biggest problem for melee DPS (especially unfamiliar melee DPS, which is pretty much all of it) is that I have a very hard time keeping track of what’s lit up while simultaneously watching the environment to make sure I’m not standing in anything, my target hasn’t moved off and I’m whiffing at air, etc. I don’t have any trouble doing this tanking, nor while ranged DPSing. But for melee it’s a big issue for me.
My DPS set has no tier in it, but it is almost completely 359, so it’s not too bad for a rarely used off spec.
I am slightly over hit cap and way over expertise cap, even after reforging (I think I’m at 33 now). And since most of what you said there went right over my head, I suspect I’m not doing any of those things.
I am sure that almost all of my incompetence is lack of skill, not lack of gear or improper gemming/reforging/enchanting. I didn’t log out in my DPS gear or I’d let you take a look at it.
[QUOTE=Jas09]
I’m afraid it’s gonna take awhile for everyone in our group to figure out the P1 movement and survivability part… we tend to struggle on fights were every person has responsibility for their own survival (Atramedes was the same way). Group movement we are pretty good at, but individual movement sometimes holds us back.
[/QUOTE]
This is how I saw Al’Akir:
Pull, riptide on the melee in my group. Ice patch, move back out of the way, oh look here comes the tornadoes with the break right on top of the ice. No problem, run through the tornadoes to minimize time on the ice, riptide myself once I’m through. Here comes windblast, run back through the ice, get blown back, then chain lightning, dead.
Ankh up. Al’Akir’s like HAVE MORE LIGHTNING TO YOUR FACE!
[QUOTE=Jas09]
I think I’m going to start tanking more on the DK and have our current tanking DK go DPS. I just can’t stand going through more raid nights where he’ll tank multiple bosses without using Vampiric Blood even once, and ignores me asking him to please use his CDs. I’m either gonna ragequit or have to step in and do the tanking myself…
[/QUOTE]
I’ll back you on this. I think I caught like two Arcane Blasts on Omnitron when he was tanking and nobody else was on that boss, then I got a string of misses and it made me sad. Pretty sure I got one or two Hydro Lances too, but I had to focus more on healing that fight.
Go tank! Come to the dark side! We have brownies!
Ran BWD with my druid last night with my old group before our raid and didn’t do too badly. Only messed up on Chim because I had never healed it as a druid and wasn’t too familiar with my buttons, but he went down easily and I got both the leather bracers and the leather gloves to drop. Cleared all but Atramedes and Nef, even got Conclave down fairly quickly which was nice as well.
Picked up the Jar of Ancient Remedies off Maloriak last night and holy cow is that an awesome trinket. I lost a bit of haste for it, but I think I’m going to like the near constant 3k spirit. Now I just need the belt from Magmaw, the helm from Halfus, and either the mace from Cho’Gall or the mace from Nef.
Some times you’re better off just jumping off the platform to avoid the tornadoes rather than take damage running through ice or going way out of position to run through the gap.
A shaman specific thing you can do if you aren’t already is using Ghost Wolf to run across the ice if you need to, since you will not be slowed below normal running speed. You can also glyph for Stoneclaw Totem and use that before the windblast. An instant 16k absorption shield is extremely useful at times.
If you accidentally get caught in the tornado, bribe a priest to life grip you out
My Piss & Moans from Thursday:
My alchemist went to the AH to load up on more Volatile Life to transmute into Volatile Air, I was was puzzled to note how long it was taking Auctionator to scan the VL auctions. I was even more surprised when I saw the page count climb all the way to 55. I’d never seen that many pages of VL before. Then when it finished, I saw why: some asshat had posted 1900 VL’s one at a time. Okay, somebody posts 200 “stacks” of 1, I’ll grumble, but that happens often enough that I expect it. But 1900? No excuse for that.
Later I was doing my Tol Barad dailies on my warrior, and I bumped into a couple asshats who are probably among those who never actually read their quests to see how they work. I was doing that “Magnets, How Do They Work?” quest, where you use a magnetic gadget to reveal the siege engine parts lying around on the ground. So I fired off the gadget, revealing two parts, and picked up one of them. I turned around to pick up the second part, only to find a worgen warrior snatching it. He ran off, I moved to a new location and used the device again … and yet another person walked up and snatched one of the revealed parts. At first I thought they were just being dicks, but I watched them for a bit and didn’t see either one of them use their own device. They just stood around the broken siege engines like they were expecting the quest objects to just spawn on their own.
On a more positive note, I continue to be impressed with the new armor models for 1-60 quest rewards. Here’s my draenei prot paladin, Phonon, decked out after completing the quests in Searing Gorge:
http://www.mister-rik.com/hosted/phonon_searinggorge.jpg
Everything but his weapon is a quest reward. Personally, I think it looks better than the T9 and T10 pally gear.
[QUOTE=Enilno]
A shaman specific thing you can do if you aren’t already is using Ghost Wolf to run across the ice if you need to, since you will not be slowed below normal running speed. You can also glyph for Stoneclaw Totem and use that before the windblast. An instant 16k absorption shield is extremely useful at times.
If you accidentally get caught in the tornado, bribe a priest to life grip you out
[/QUOTE]
I had actually forgotten about Stoneclaw totem, I am glyphed for the bubble so I’ll remember to drop it next time. Maybe popping Spirit Walkers Grace will help if I’m dipping a little low and “bad stuff” is about to happen.
It was our first look at the fight so I was still figuring out where I should stand in relation to everyone else and seeing how the mechanics worked. It looked so much easier in the video I watched.
We don’t have a regular priest in our raid… yet, but when we do I think she’ll be busy life gripping our tank back onto the platform so I’ll have to fend for myself when it comes to being stupid about tornadoes 
[/shifts uncomfortably] uh, yeah, that’s nice gear there from Searing Gorge..
I posted las week that I made the same mistake in TB the first one and a half times I did that quest
I’m actually impressed the guy saved up 1900 before selling them!
Wow, with heirlooms plus guild perks plus gathering professions I’m leveling super fast. I hit up the Hero’s Call board and I’m overleveled a couple quests in!
How is it even possible that a warlock can hit level 85 and be well enough geared to queue for heroics, yet only capable of doing 2.6 k dps? I did a heroic Deadmines run on Saturday that we essentially 4-manned because the lock was totally dead weight (and frequently, just dead). We weren’t able to kick her for whatever reason but she finally quit after dying on Cookie for the third time.
Honestly? Not paying attention, or playing Affliction really, really sloppily. I guess any of the specs can lead to really crappy DPS when played poorly, but Affliction is trickier than most, IME, especially if the adds are otherwise dying quickly (since your DoTs don’t have a chance to ramp up).
Woooooooo, I got my Sandstone Drake! I finally gave up on waiting for someone in my guild to get the recipe and pulled together the mats. I was even able to get a little bidding war going between the people in Trade who had the recipe, which pushed the combine fee down from the 1k I originally offered to 500g. This thing is so fucking metal.
Grats to all for their various kills and other achievements!
If you think that’s bad, check out the Agi Mail PvE chest. Yikes.
Make friends with a tank or a healer.
I think I’m pushing 30 hours in-game now. Finished Noverian and some more side-quest planets.
If you figure it out, let me know.
I’ve actually heard that Rift had some really bad problems with accounts getting compromised–some huge percentage (10%?) of all accounts got hacked.
Epic ones? I only remember seeing one blue. Anyway, moot point soon!
It can add up. Helps if you have crafter friends who can help you with combines, gem cuts, and chants.
Your tier chest can only be purchased–it doesn’t drop anywhere until the token on Heroic Halfus (which for now also requires the 346 version). I’m not sure how good the set bonuses are for Mages, but probably decent enough that you’ll want at least your two-piece. If the chest is one of your BIS pieces, I’d recommend picking it up first.
All right-thinking people hate Al’Akir.
I laughed. 
Don’t ask. Tell. If a tank is too stupid to use their own cooldowns, tell them which ones to use when, and call them out on it when they don’t. (If you’re not the RL, the RL should be doing this.) There are a lot of fights in this tier that are structured to essentially require tank CD usage at certain points of set spike damage.
IIRC, Elitist Jerks has a good thread up that gives your rotation in excruciating detail.
Yeah, he does that. A lot. Al’Akir is my best example of the things that I hate about this tier: False Difficulty. He’s not hard because he has challenging mechanics; he’s hard because he has an insane amount of RNG.
Some people are just really, really stupid. My *81 Frost Mage *in mostly level 80 gear (T9 equivalent) was doing something like 6k-8k on bosses in BRD and ToT.
[QUOTE=Shot From Guns]
Woooooooo, I got my Sandstone Drake! I finally gave up on waiting for someone in my guild to get the recipe and pulled together the mats. I was even able to get a little bidding war going between the people in Trade who had the recipe, which pushed the combine fee down from the 1k I originally offered to 500g. This thing is so fucking metal.
[/QUOTE]
Grats on the drake. My druid is an alchemist so getting the drake with him would be kind of redundant, plus I think the drake skins this expansion are pretty fugly.
The RNG monster was all over me on those attempts, not like the other people didn’t have some crazy moments, but it felt like he was picking on me the most.
Yes. Very. I just left a random Deadmines (and I’m one of the crazy people that LIKE Deadmines) because the healer said it was my fault the DPS stood in harvest, he got hit by Overdrive, and the enhance shaman kept getting cleaved because he preferred standing in front of the boss. He also told the person in the robot that he was supposed to knock the elementals into the big cauldron, not stand at the bottom and kill them :smack: . He proceeded to argue with me through the next three pulls about how I was suppose to keep the boss facing the wall so he wouldn’t get cleaved… said healer was behind the boss unless it was during overdrive. I finally told him that if he knew so much he could tank the instance and left.
That’s one of the reason I hesitate to tank for random dungeons. Not that I don’t love tanking, but I refuse to be blamed for something I can’t control.
I like Deadmines, with a competent group. With a bad group, that’s a loooong dungeon. I spent over two hours in it on Saturday and they were already at the Reaper when I joined them.
Oh, I know. That’s how we killed Nef - with me calling out his cooldowns every damn 10%. But that’s not fun - I wanted to play DPS this tier so I didn’t have to think about tanking cooldowns but could instead push big numbers for a change (which, of course, with Frost DK damage being shitty I don’t really get to do either).
If I have to be thinking about the tanks cooldown rotations I might as well tank it myself, ya know?
Either way we’ve killed all the normal modes (save Al’Akir, but whatever), and I had and have no intention of doing hard-modes with this raid group (just don’t have the time or patience right now), so it’s not a big deal. Our healers are good enough to overcome his shortcomings and it’s not worth me raging about it and making the group uncomfortable.
It’s a long dungeon even with a good group. Not that I don’t like it, but I do groan every time it pops in the random queue.