Speaking as someone who loves to heal (85 pally, 85 priest, 80 shammy), I’ve never bothered to dps an instance before healing it. Usually I’ll read up on (or ask someone about) general boss mechanics, but unlike DPS, you really only need to know Avoid Damage and Heal People. It often helps to know when and how the damage is coming, but I don’t think the experince of dpsing is that helpful.
I now believe Loque’nahak is an urban legend. I’ve seen the Time-Lost Protodrake (albeit already dead) more than him! And by that, I mean I’ve never seen Loque. Got Aotona twice as well as Krush, but no Loque.
Huh. My luck is diametrically opposite. Got Aotona twice (different toons, but at least once on the main), and Loque’nahak on my main, but I’ve only seen Krush as a tamed pet. Otherwise I’d doubt his existence entirely.
That, and I’ve only seen Vyragosa either already dead, being killed by someone else, or (once) not on the only toon I’m trying to get the Frostbitten achievement for. And I’ve never seen the TLPD, ever. I’ve seen the TPLD dropped mount only once or twice in Orgrimmar, although by now anyone who plays enough to have that has already gotten several newer and cooler mounts to show off in town.
FWIW, all I lack for Frostbitten is King Krush and Vyragosa. Maybe I should just spawncamp one or the other, rather than trusting luck as I’m (infrequently) passing through their areas. (Fer instance, I visit the Oracles camp in Sholazar at least every few days, since I’m still buying their Mysterious Egg in vain hope of getting the Green Proto-drake. That gives me the excuse to zip through Krush’s spawn zones before moving on.)
Well, I made the leap this weekend and committed my holy priest to Shadow. Actually, pretty much the extent of the change was clicking a different checkbox when queuing in RDF – I already had a Shadow spec, and the gear and stat priorities are essentially the same as far as I understand.
Based on iLevel I can queue for Heroics, but I wasn’t feeling confident enough so I just did some regular dungeons to get used to dpsing. I’m doing about 6.9k on most fights, unless the fight goes long and I run out of mana. In most of my runs this weekend I had the second-highest DPS, so I don’t think I’m terrible. Is 7k enough to not get kicked out of heroics?
If an S-Priest expert wouldn’t mind taking a look at my spec (Kene @ Cairne) and giving me advice, that’d be appreciated. It’s currently set up for PvP so I know I could probably make a few adjustments to eke out more damage at the cost of PvP survivability, which is fine.
Also, my rotation is basically VT>DP>SW: P>MF. I toss an MB whenever I have at least one orb and MB is off cooldown, and I start using SW: D when the mob is <25%. I got a timer addon so I can keep my DoT’s refreshed. I also use MS for groups of 5 or more.
Any tips or suggestions would be appreciated.
Some quick advice for gearing. Your reforging is somewhat inconsistant. Also, if you are only concerned with 5 mans for now you can reforge a lot of spirit/hit. You can also pick up 20 spirit on your chest if you replace the Brilliant gem with a Purified, or alternatively swap the Reckless with another Brilliant. +15 all stats is better for your chest enchant than +40 spirit. You can replace the 50 spirit to bracers with 50 haste. You can add a buckle to your belt.
If you want to focus on PVE you’ll definitely want to respec out of some of the PVP talents and pick up PVE ones like Harnessed Shadows, Mind Melt, and Masochism.
Thanks - a lot of the spirit enchants are from when I was building for Holy and trying to increase regen. The reforging is inconsistant for the same reason - I didn’t go back and re-reforge anything. Thanks for the tips/reminders.
I think what I’ll do, instead of changing my PvP build, is scrap my Holy build for a Shadow PvE spec and see where I end up.
It’s on the lower end, but if you also play smart (don’t be the dude in the fire! ha ha) you’ll be cool.
I’m trying an experiment.
I created a mage character a while back on the Korialstraz server, named Neverloots.
The rules I enforce for her are:
- No looting anything. Ever. No corpses, no objects, not even a treasure chest.
- No questing. Ever. If the game ends up forcing a quest into my log without my permission, I am to abandon it.
- No trading with other players.
- No entering any kind of group with other players (party, raid, battleground, or any other group type they invent).
- No accepting anything in the mail from other players. Not even from one of my alts.
The consequences of these rules are:
- I never have any money. Ever.
- Without money, I cannot pay class trainers. I am stuck using the Fireball spell I got at character creation, and whatever spells my talents give me for free.
- I also cannot take up any professions, since they cost 10 copper to learn (which will always be 10 copper more than I have).
- With no money, no trading allowed, and no questing allowed, I never have any gear other than the level 1 gear I started the game with. (Which I don’t have any money to repair.)
So … no looting, no questing, no trainers, no gear!
Neverloots is now level 56. I’m curious to see if she can survive in Outland after she turns 60, since at level 60 the kill XP from old Azeroth mobs gets cut down to 1/10 its normal value. Progress is slow, since I only earn 3 bubbles of Rested Bonus per day, and I don’t like to grind mobs without Rested Bonus – this means it takes me roughly a week to gain a level.
By the end of the year, if all goes well, she should be level 85. Here’s hoping!
…“Neverloots, if you can snatch this pebble from my hand, it is time for you to go to Outland” (Northrend, etc.).
“But, Master Po, my lack of gear means my spell crit chance is only 2.7%!”
Well, after a 0.6% wipe last week, my guild finally got Cho’gall tonight 
I know we’re a little late to the party, but it feels good to clear a raid instance before the next raid patch comes out. It would be nice to get Nefarian too, but we haven’t put in any attempts on him yet, so that might be a tough one.
PS. before we got him tonight, we had a wipe where some players claim they saw his health get ast low as 863 (yes thats hundreds). glad we got him on the next try cause that would’ve been a hard one to swallow.
Erm wow this is pretty impressive. And slightly mad but you know that, good luck. One bonus is that the starting gear for most classes looks pretty good these days I often feel bad replacing it at level 2/3 with something crap looking.
I am about half way through Southern Barrens on my druid and I really must /clap the development team, great story telling and the zone looks wonderful.
Grats!
Grats Clawdio! My guild made its first attempt at Nef last night. I think the best we did was 21%. We seem to have a good system going for phases 1 & 2. We’re starting to push Nef a bit more during those phases to make Phase3 easier. Of course the fight seems easy for dps. It’s just a race (though a bit of ‘slow down…speed up!’) Seems much harder for tanks and healers. Glad I’m not one of those:) We seem pretty comfortable with it, so I’m hoping for a clear next week! (And my phoenix!, oh damn exalted with my guild? Not sure if I am…)
Thanks, and thanks Martu.
Yeah i watched the Tankspot guide video for Nef a while back, i remember it was something like 17 minutes long… I am a tank, so lots to learn i guess… oh well, more fun than stand still & tank 
I have a feeling i’ll be on add duty, cause i’m usually tasked with such things when the fight calls for it. I don’t mind though, it seems like us Bears are suited for it. (not that we can’t be boss tanks too!!)
Well, on the bright side, at least you didn’t lose any stats other than a trivial amount of armor when they broke.
Your lack of gear is going to be a serious problem later on though. I can’t imagine leveling in the Cata zones without gear AND most of your spells, or even just water. I tried to think of some way of making a bit of gold that doesn’t break your rules so you could at least train conjure food, but I couldn’t think of anything.
Does WotLK just hate tankadins, or what? Reason I ask is I’m seeing lots of quest rewards and a few loot items that are plate, but have stamina and intelligence on them. WTF is a tankadin gonna do with +Int? I need tank gear–STA/STR, but there is none to be found in and around the Borean Tundra…
I dunno if it’s still true, but before Cata, you could buy a set of Cobalt armor pretty cheaply on the AH, since blacksmiths need to make a ton of it to level through the 300s.
Well, the INT plate would be for paladin healers.
Here are the plate quest rewards in Borean Tundra without INT:
Thanks for this advice. I re-specced into a shadow PvE build and reforged one or to items, and last night on the last boss of HoO I did over 10k dps. So now I feel like I can take him into heroics without being embarassed.