Hadn’t thought of checking the AH. I’ll see what’s available.
And thanks for the link. There’s a couple of pieces there I could use. At the moment, my pally is wearing heirloom Chest/Shoulders/Helm/Back at level 70. I think the chest/shoulders cease to improve after level 80. Dunno if they still provide the exp bonus or not. Helm/Back are supposed to last until 85, I hope…
Tanking Nef as the main tank is pretty easy–it’s all about cooldown control during the crackle/Electrocutes. I’ve never done the add tanking, but I wish you luck–it gave our paladin tank fits until he got the hang of it, but now it goes quite smoothly.
One bit of advice: if you don’t already have the Mirror of Broken Images trinket (the one from Tol Barad), start working on getting it. It’s very helpful for tanks during that fight, as it gives you a cooldown for pretty much every other Electrocute in addition to your others. As a DK tank I just alternate between that and my Anti-Magic Shell. The only time one or the other isn’t up, I used Icebound Fortitude. I don’t know much about druid tanks, but I’m assuming you’ve got similar/comparable cooldowns to use.
Regarding Masochism, and something I read earlier about rotations: While the tastiness of the Mind Melt buff to SW Death when the target is < 25% health is impressive, I actually like to throw SWD earlier in a fight, because I want the Machochism 10% mana return. Most fights against normal mobs, I can only throw 1 SWD, and doing more damage is lower priority than keeping up mana.
That’s just me. I’ll usually Mind Flay once for the self-damage reduction from Pain and Suffering, but that’s not a priority if I think the target can’t survive the flay and the SWD with enough health for the SWD backlash to get me the Masochism mana return.
(just noticed while previewing: Can’t use the normal convention “SW colon D” for Shadow Word: Death because the “colon D” comes out as a grin. Ironic.)
Not to say you shouldn’t feel ready to (cause your 7k was probably good enough), but Rajh has a 100% damage boost during his re-charge phase. Just don’t get disappointed if you don’t repeat those numbers on other bosses. 
Aww, you spoiled it. Ah well, I was still doing around 8 for most of the run, even while still getting comfortable with the rotation.
The chest and shoulders don’t provide any bonuses after level 80, but the helm and cloak do indeed work until 85.
Random idiocy:
RDF put my resto shammy (82) in Stonecore for the first time. The group was only on the second trash pull and apparently their healer had dropped or been kicked.
DK tank looks at me and says “shit another 82” and quits before I’ve even said hello. One of the dps says “he kept dying and blaming everyone else.” After a few minutes we geta new tank (82 pally) and we proceed to blow through the instance without a problem – I even got a ‘nice heals’ after a very messy pull in which no one died. So mr. “oh no an 82” fail tank: screw you!
It may be confirmation bias, but that ONLY seems to happen for me with DK tanks. If I zone in and see a DK tank, there’s a good chance the run is gonna seem bumpy as hell. When I see a paladin tank, I practically cry for joy. Which isn’t to say I haven’t run with some great DK tanks or poor paladin tanks, but the poor palys don’t seem to be jerks about it.
Yeah, it sucks. Kinda goes both ways too. I’m a DK tank (not a jerk, and MT of a group that’s currently 3/13 heroic, so I at least *sort *of know what I’m doing) and I’ve seen too many instances of “Oh, shit, a DK tank” when I do randoms.
Sadly, a lot of DK tanks do suck–I think it has to do with the fact that people don’t have to level them up from 1, and they start off so OP at level 55 that you can basically steamroll the content up to the current highest levels, so a lot of them never really learn their stuff. I remember my first DK (I have two raid geared DK tanks)–I had no idea what I was doing. I basically just flailed at things…and they died. Groups, two or three levels higher than me, whatever–they died. So that can really give a fresh DK an exaggerated sense of his/her ability to cope with things. This doesn’t, unfortunately, translate to tanking for groups (which I didn’t do until I got to level 80). I’ve heard that DK tanks are harder to play and master than the other tanking classes–I don’t know, because aside from a brief flirtation with running a paladin tank during Wrath (which was dead easy) I’ve never tried the others. I don’t find DK tanking that hard, but it definitely does have a learning curve.
I had this made during a recent trip home to Rothenburg. I call it “The 2 German Boys”! 
Quasi
Really, no posts in three days? What happened to SFG?
I didn’t play a whole lot this weekend but I bit the bullet and queued for a random Zandalori dungeon yesterday, which is usually an ordeal. But the pug I got was fantastic. We blew through ZA quickly, beating the timer for the mount (I lost the roll though) and finished the whole instance with no wipes and, I think, just one dps death. It helped that the worst dpser was putting out 15.9k damage.
We all decided to queue again and got ZG, which was not quite as smooth but not bad either. We were cruising until we just got careless and several people died to the flame-shooting masks and we wiped twice on Zafir or whatever his name is, with the cauldrons. But we just laughed about it and finished up the rest of the instance easily. The only frustrating thing was that we d/e’d almost every drop, and I didn’t get a single crystal out of either run. But the quick 280 vps was nice, anyway.
Love the T-shirt. That made my day.
Got my mage alt to 74, I’m astounded at how absurd Arcane is at that level. Even with a full set of heirlooms, some how doing 3k single target dps on trash and 6k with cooldowns on bosses does not seem right.
You know, I really haven’t had much experience with “huntards.” In fact I’ve played with some very good hunters lately. But last night in regular Stonecore we killed that big worm who dropped a stamina/dodge ring. The tank Needed on it and lost the roll to the hunter.
The tank was remarkably calm: “You’ve got to be kidding.” I tried to be diplomatic: “uh, that’s really not so much a hunter ring.” The group leader was all, “LOL please tell me why you needed that.”
And the hunter just dropped group.
Now I understand that some people don’t have a lot of experience and may not grok which stats are best for their class, but if you’ve reached level 83 by god you should know that a hunter doesn’t need +Dodge. I’m all about helping people learn to play but that was really boneheaded not even to ask before needing or offering to give it to the tank afterward.
I’ve misrolled (and, thank God, lost) on +agi/+expertise stuff (I see the +agi and the brain turns off), but rolling against tank on str/dodge is huntard-headed. /sigh.
When you say “hunter dropped group”, is that after winning the useless-to-him item? I might embarrass-drop if I dumb-headed that way, but only after offering the item up to whomever really won the roll… OTOH, if that’s the only dumb thing I’ve done so far in a group, and I can undo the damage, I figure my value to the group has outweighed the temporary inconvenience, so I’ll keep playing (saving the group a few seconds of LFG). If I feel particularly sheepish, I’ll just pass on the rest of the drops by way of penance.
That said, I will greed stuff I can’t use, because that’s what “greed” is for. And if everyone was greeding, no one really needed. And if someone accidentally “greeds” when they should have “needed”… well, I’m usually a nice guy, so I’ll give the item over if it appears the guy asking has a better use for it than my just pocketing the gold.
Yeah, I’m a sucker, and LFG’ing is only a money-maker if I don’t die once. Oh, well.
Yes, he quit the group without saying a word. If he had apologized and offered to give it to the tank, it would have been forgotten… everyone hits the wrong button occasionally. And no problem on greeding for anything and everything as far as I am concerned – since I hardly quest at all while leveling it’s the only way I’d ever make any money.
Just hit level 20. Do I have to go back to my Tauren start area to get the Kodo mount, like when I played before?
Joe
I’m pretty sure you do.
Yes you can only buy mounts from your own faction to start with. Later if\when you become exalted with the other Horde factions you will be able to buy mounts from them.
After promising myself I’d concentrate on getting the rogue to 80 last week I have spent most of my time Pvp-ing on the warlock or levelling up my druid who is 37 now. I think I have too many alts, since switching to horde I am playing my main, the warlock, and 3 other alts off and on sometimes this is confusing.
Anyone bought the new lion mount? I think it looks pretty good myself but I’ve not gone for it yet.
I’m tempted, but something about his braided beard drives me nuts. At quick glance he looks like some sort of tentacled face (ala the guy from Star Wars or The guy from the Pirates movie) But I didn’t buy the celestial steed and this one looks better than that so I may do it.
Banged our head against Nef last night 
Lotsa wipes. We had such high hopes after our first night. Our group doesn’t have a lot of b-resses so one death is pretty much a wipe. And one tiny mistake leads to a wipe. (like not jumping quickly enough on the pillars or missing an interrupt in P2)
Maybe next week. General agreement was that it just wasn’t our night. Gotta clear up the mistakes.
Don’t feel bad…it happens. Look at it like this–you got a lot of practice and likely cleared up a few issues, so next week when you start fresh you’ll be ready to kill him (you only get one b-rez per fight anyway, so not having a lot shouldn’t hold you back too much!)
I’m trying to encourage you and encourage myself at the same time. We were working on heroic Maloriak last night, and…ever have one of those nights? What’s even worse is when “one of those nights” is all you. I was the MT for the fight, and we got him down to 1 or 2 percent 4 or 5 times…and every single one of those times I felt like it was my fault we wiped. Either I interrupted something I shouldn’t have and mucked up the Aberrations, didn’t interrupt something I should and got somebody killed by Arcane Storm, or messed up kiting the boss at the end (the fire comes a lot faster on heroic–we had fire all over the floor). I felt horrible that everybody was doing so well and I was messing up. I really hope we can get him down tonight so I can stop being down on myself.
As for Nef–you will get him! And the good news is, once you do get the hang of him, it’s not actually a hard fight. The week after we killed him, we one-shotted him.