So we decided a few weeks ago to take our big Kingslayer heads and go back to Ulduar and earn our 10man drakes. This is doubly entertaining since 5 or 6 of the raid members had never done any boss in Ulduar past XT-002.
It was going swimmingly until last night when we hit a 3 hour wipe-wall on Mimiron and his Firefighter hard mode. Ouch.
Thanks for the responses, everyone, this is really helping clear some things up!
YES! This is exactly what I was trying to understand and this helps clarify things a lot.
Ok, good, then I’m not out of place even if I don’t understand half of what’s going on in this thread. Yet.
I knew not to set to Agressive in instance and actually just decided to “play it safe” and leave it passive the whole time while in the instance because I knew there were things I didn’t understand about it. Like the auto-cast thing you just mentioned…good to know. Also the pathfinding is something I will keep in mind.
I do have the Voidwalker right now. He reminds me of Cookie Monster from Sesame Street which I find endlessly amusing! 
Yeah, this has been my theory too so far, and I have plenty of bag space thanks to folks at BDL.
Ooooh, I’ll have to try that…
My own story: I was in The Wetlands a couple nights ago, where I just love the way the sunlight/moonlight plays on the terrain. It happens to be the zone my main was hanging out in more than a year ago when I discovered the “WoW Performance Guide for Macs” thread on the official forums, where some guy has done his research and has come up with ideal video settings for just about every stock Mac/video card combo from the last few years. Before I found that, I’d been just randomly moving sliders around trying to get a good balance between appearance and performance. Using the settings he recommended for my machine, I was blown away by the improvement in both. So while I was there on this other toon a couple days ago, I thought just for fun I’d crank every setting up to maximum to see what happened.
Ugh. The zone looked even more beautiful, but my FPS dropped to around 14. Quick, put everything back!
My WoW directory: 34.91 gigabytes!
My nelf hunter ran into this while questing in Darkshore. Remember that quest where you have to collect mushrooms from that cave full of naga? I was on the upper ledge in that cave, and sent my pet after a naga, and the stupid cat positioned himself with his back to the big hole in the middle of the cave. Naturally, the naga used its knockback attack, which sent my cat flying over the edge and down into the lower area. Then the cat ran all the way back, with about 15 more naga right behind it … Feign Death! Feign Death! Aaaaaagh! 
My troll hunter, Jabloo, has been doing the daily quests to earn his Venomhide Ravasaur mount, which means spending a lot of time in Un’Goro Crater. So since he’s a miner, he’s been taking advantage of being there by mining the heck out of the abundant Thorium in that zone. And getting filthy rich doing so - he’s only level 63, but at the rate he’s going he’ll be able to pay for Artisan Riding before he even leaves Outland! I’ve also had him gathering and selling Un’Goro Soil, and he ran into an interesting situation yesterday. I use the Gatherer addon to show me where every gatherable is, and this includes showing me where the Un’Goro Soil spawns. I wondered if there had been server maintenance yesterday (turns out there wasn’t) and a server reboot, because Jabloo was finding the soil spawned at almost every single spawn point ! He started at the entrance to the zone (coming from Tanaris) and proceeded clockwise around the edge of the zone, stopping to check each soil spawn point, and he made it all the way around to Marshal’s Refuge before he found a spawn point that hadn’t popped. Altogether, in his first full lap of the zone, checking every soil spawn point, he only found six that weren’t spawned when he got to them, and he’d collected more than 80 units of soil, almost twice what he normally picks up in a single lap.
Say, what are the odds of a level 63 hunter surviving an attempt to tame a devilsaur?
This of course goes some way to make up for the wolves who have no teeth, boars who have no intestines, and so forth that wander the world.
Don’t forget those poor zhevras with no feet, and the raptors with no heads!
It’s entirely possible for you to tame one all by yourself, all you need is a little luck and some good timing.
I tamed the elite Devilsaur in Netherstorm, but the ones in Un’Goro are the same. Just clear the area around where the Devilsaur patrols, put down a freezing trap and start taming. He’ll hit the freezing trap and be frozen for 15 seconds. Try to time it so that you tame him just as the freezing trap wears off. You can take a couple of hits so don’t be too scared, plus you can always feign death if things go bad and try again.
Three hours on LK last night, best attempt was 39%. I’m so tired of this fight, we get one good attempt and then go right back to making mistakes. People tunnel visioning and not dropping off the plague, standing in defile, spreading out too far and getting killed by infest. Going in again tonight for an hour and a half before ICC25. I hope we kill him so we can reset the instance finally.
What I really wanted to tame was Uhk’loc, a rare spawn white gorilla who hangs out in the gorilla cave in Un’Goro. I went in there looking for him, and there he was! Unfortunately, he’s in the same “room” with U’Cha (the gorilla “leader” there) and at least one other regular gorilla. Since I had to go in without a pet in order to tame a new pet, there was no way for me to do it. I couldn’t survive long enough to melee the two unwanted gorillas to death, and still be able to tame Uhk’loc. Then, while doing my corpse run, a draenei who also happened to be in the cave, came along and killed everything in that room … so much for the rare spawn. So I sat down and waited for U’Cha to respawn. The regular gorilla respawned first, so I tamed him real quick and then abandoned him, and then when U’Cha respawned I tamed him. Not as cool as a white gorilla, though 
The raptors in the Barrens are actually one of the (very) few animal parts quests that have a 100% drop rate. I’ve never killed a Barrens raptor while that quest was active without getting 12 heads in 12 kills. It’s the damn strider beaks that don’t show up.
And for those on the Alliance side, don’t forget those Liverless Goretusks and Eyeless Murlocs.
That’s why you always take a throwaway pet on your taming missions, so you can throw him away as needed when that rare spawn or spirit beast shows up.
Well, I’ve been following this thread (and the monster one before it) for a while, and I thought I’d drag myself out of lurk mode and post a bit. You’ve all inspired me to create a horde character on Cairne and join up with the BDL, so I might see some of you online sometime. I’ve had all alliance spellcasters so far (An 80 lock, a 75 priest I’m leveling, and a 19 mage I PvP with on occasion) so playing a horde paladin feels like a whole new game. It still feels wierd to be running towards the mobs instead of away from them.
I find defensive more useful than passive. If you’re leveling affliction (which is the most mana-efficient levelling spec) you have enough buttons to press without having to manually have your pet attack each target. If you’re using Area-of Effect (AoE) attacks like Reign of Fire, you’ll still need to remember to get your pet to attack though.
This is absolutly true. However, unless the party leader or the tank asks for it, you generally shouldn’t be running big blue in an instance. Your imp puts out superior damage, plus he gives a party wide health buff.
One unusual thing about grouping using a lock is deciding who to soulstone. In general, you want to soulstone a party member who can rez. (Paladins, Druids, Priests and Shamans) If you have multiple choices, pick the one with the best armor. The reason for that is that if you have one mob hanging around once everyone is dead, they are the most likely to be able to survive combat with it and still be able to bring everyone else back.
Also very true. It’s something to watch for, since raiding is one of the most time-demaning parts of WoW. And for us casual types, that can be a very bad thing, especially if your SO hates WoW with the passion of a thousand suns. I did a full Nax run once, and it look over five hours straight … needless to say the Mrs. was less than impressed.
I do have one question. I’m haven’t played in some time, taking a break from the game due to RL issues. Long story short, my account got hacked, I got it restored and I ended up getting the month of gametime that the hacker paid for. Then I got sucked back in. Anyways, My main Miereyn is equipped with ilvl 200 purples, which is ok for heroics, but not that great for raiding. If I want to get better gear for her, is it pretty much chain-running heroics for badges? What about those ICC5 heroics? Is 3000 dps enough for those?
Lately I’ve been playing mostly at work, which is fine with my boss, but I need to be able to quit at any time if something comes up. I’m willing to pay my own repair costs if I die after I alt-f4, but I don’t want to leave a group hanging. Plus I’m not sure if I want to put that much effort into it, especially with the expansion (and new gear) on the horizon. I’ve got one night a week where I can do group stuff from home. Advice anyone?
Firefighter is a giant bitch. Do you have anyone who’s done it before? It helps a lot if you can have one person marked for everyone else to stack on–assuming that the marked person knows how to properly herd the fire.
And for anything you don’t understand–please feel free to ask questions! We can get pretty esoteric sometimes, even just with jargon and abbreviations. I don’t think there’s anybody here who will ever mind breaking down their posts into more understandable language.
M… is for mana… That’s good enough… for the abyss…
They *have *them–you’ve just sliced them in half, or crushed them, or burned them, or frozen them, or zapped them to oblivion.
Is your RL or a designated member of the raid calling out important things on Vent? IME, it’s *immensely *helpful to have someone (one person so you’re not talking over each other) calling out (a) when to be sure to bunch up for valks, (b) when to scatter for a Defile, (c) who has the plague and needs to go drop it off, etc. It’s especially useful when you’re having a valk and a Defile back to back, so people know which to worry about first.
Stable your regular pet(s) and tame a throwaway. Use it to kill anything near the beast you want to tame, and then abandon it.
Welcome!
I’ve had a caster friend or two have the same reaction to trying melee. Personally, I’m a melee fan at heart (through I have a lot of ranged alts now, including my other 80), so it was a change for *me *to not be able to stand up to a couple of mobs hammering on me. 
Are you sure? I’m pretty sure that if I Blizzard on my Mage, her Water Elemental will start attacking any targets I hit.
What’s nice is that the current paradigm allows for everything from very casual raiding (a few hours one night a week) up to hardcore endgame raiding (where you’re raiding three to seven nights a week, for three to five–or more–hours at a time).
And that’s probably overgeared for it–Naxx is huuuuuuuge (15 bosses?), and back when it was progression content at the start of Wrath, you’d be looking at multiple nights to even get through part of it, with hours of raiding each night.
There are, fortunately, smaller and faster raids. For instance, before our H-ICC25 raid last night, a group of us full-cleared Vault of Archavon (four bosses) in maybe 20 minutes. With a group geared enough to zerg him with three drakes up, you can get through Sartharion in just a minute or two, plus the time it takes to clear trash. ToC, with only five bosses, can be cleared in under an hour with a good group.
3k DPS is plenty for the ICC five-mans. And chain Heroics are going to be your best bet for gearing up; as you go, you can also start looking for Ulduar and ToC PUGs. Once you’re in full badge gear, you can start looking for ICC10 groups.
Check your realm’s forum on the official Blizzard WoW forums to see if anyone runs a regular PUG on that night. Otherwise, you can hang out in Trade chat and advertise what raids you’re looking for, as well as listing yourself in the Looking for Raid interface. You can type /lfr to bring it up, or go to the Raid tab on your Social window (“O”). Note that you unfortunately can’t be listed in LFR and the RDF matcher at the same time, and joining any group or raid will kick you out of LFR the same way it kicks you out of LFG.
That made me laugh out loud, getting wierd looks from a co-worker. 
:smack: Looks like you’re right on that one, I got confused on that one. For some reason, I thought when they changed the defensive mechanics that AoE didn’t trigger your pet attacking, but google proved me wrong on that count.
That’s very true. However, it always seems to take at least an hour from just logging on to actually getting a PUG together for everything … plus the time to run the instance. Also, I find that running instances is still more involved than soloing, you can’t just walk away from it whenever RL demands.
Yeah, about half the group, including the tank and healers way overgeared that instance, we were going it more for the experience of it, and to gear up a couple of guildies who were way behind the curve (myself being one of them)
It seems most of the smaller raids have gotten even faster, since most of the people raiding now have ICC level gear, and plus more people know the fights. I think I did VoA once, and it took around an hour. Is that the once where you need to control wintergrasp to get in? I’ve run ToC a few times, since it was so quick and my guild leader had an alt who really really wanted something from there.
That’s good to know. I’ve only run them in regular mode, I was a bit scared to queue up for them in heroic mode. Does anyone still run Ulduar anymore? My guild never ran it.
I had no idea there was a LFR interface, that’s good to know. My guild used to casually raid, but it seems that in my absence all the serious ones have left, so now it seems to be pretty much people leveling.
I’ve read that heroics have gotten really fast with all the overgeared people running them for badges. How many (roughly) would you have to run to get a full set of badge gear?
Yeah, half the problem with a PUG is just filling it in the first place. That’s why your best bet is to get in on a regularly scheduled weekly run, if you can manage it.
Yup! We were able to blast through VoA10 really quickly because the group was all guildies and alts of guildies–geared to the teeth, for the most part, to the extent that we’re massively overgeared even for Toravon, let alone the bosses from the earlier tiers of content. (Toravon = ICC-level; Koralon = ToC; Emalon = Ulduar; Archavon = Naxx.)
Mostly for achievements and hardmodes, I think. But you might be able to find a PUG.
Ugh, lots. You’ll get anywhere from, I wanna say, four to seven badges per random, including your random bonus. I think the cheapest pieces (ranged slots) are something like 30 badges. The most expensive are… 75? Maybe? I haven’t looked at anything besides Frost badges for a while.
In terms of PuGs, my experience has been that you’ll pretty easily find a PuG for whatever the weekly quest is, and VoA PuGs fill up really fast when it’s available (this may be a result of playing Horde-side on Cairne, where we almost never own WG); other than that, you’ll see ICC groups, especially early in the week, and occasional Ony groups, but ToC only occasionally and anything else basically never.
VoA is also very fast to run the way it usually goes, which involves running in, killing Toravon (I think) the frost guy, then someone says, “shall we do the fire guy” while at the same time three people drop out, leaving the answer as “no”. Generally I get both 10 and 25 run within about an hour.
IME, what works best is that I always say, once the raid is full, that (a) I’m interested in running as many bosses as people want to stick around for (b) in order to get more chances for the mount to drop. That usually gets a bunch of other people to chime in, too, and even if some of the raid buggers off as soon as Toravon’s spilled his icy lewtz all over the place, the earlier bosses can be easily finished off with partial groups. (We’ve done them with fewer than 20.)
It’s about 50 and 30 for Tier 9 gear, I think 3 50s and 2 30s but I could have it reversed, so that’s 210; add 50 for a trinket, 35 for a ring (saving up Ten Million Dollars to buy the ring from Dal, say), I think about 60 for a cloak and belt (downgrading to Conquest badges, I think, maybe Valor for the cloak), and 60 for 4 Crusader Orbs to make bracers, that makes a bit over 400, or 70+ Heroics.
Boots, you pretty much have to get from ToC-5 or the ICC-5 dungeons.
Bleah. Hadn’t actually added all of that up before.
So, assuming I could run 2 heroics a week, it would talke me to spring of next year to get a full set of badge gear. :eek: Now, if I could average one every day, that would only be 10 weeks, which isn’t nearly so bad … but that’s not going to happen with my timetable. It’s probably a bit off, since I’d be getting frost badges for the first random heroic, but still I think I might just wait for Cata at this point, and focus on maxing out my holy priest and leveling up and the paladin I just started on Cairne. Besides, if I don’t level up a horde before the next xpack, it’s all going to change, so it might be nice to do that now, before it all goes to hell.
Also, I just found out at lunch today that my guild master, the person who recruited me into this game in the first place, has pretty much given up on the guild and switched to a hordie on a PVP server. Without him around, the thought of raiding loses some of it’s appeal anyways. I don’t care for PvP myself (way too much going on at once) so I’m thinking I’ll just skip WotLK endgame stuff, and try again with the next expansion.
Thanks for the advice all, greatly appreciated.
Factor in “specials” like holiday dungeon runs (which you do get badges for the first one per day and I don’t think count against your normal RDF runs), like the water elemental guy for Midsummer (already past, though), the Headless Horseman and the dwarf in the Grim Guzzler for Brewfest (assuming they give badges like the water elemental guy did).
For boots and bracers, you’re almost better off farming honor for the ilvl 264 wrathful pieces. Even though the stamina and resilience is wasted item budget, the other stats are high enough to be competitive with ilvl 213-232 PvE pieces.
