Hey Woeg, my Warlock is about your level (33); we should queue together. I ran RFD (or is it RFK?) with guildies Mogbog and Cyranus the other night and it was fun.
Tonight however is our weekly Wednesday night run, and that group is now in the high-50s to low 60s. If anyone wants to join, we’ll get started between 8:30 and 8:45 (depending on when I get my kids to bed). We’ll probably do a random dungeon in that range, but we’re also prepared for a Dire Maul tribute run if we end up there.
I leveled my alt lock affliction until I got to Northrend.
First and formost, give up thinking of your pet as a tank. Your pet starts out as an extra crappy dot, once you get Dark Pact, your pet is your mana battery.
Second, keep your eye on the AH for +shadow damage items. They are amazing. There are two tailored sets that show up in the 30-50 range.
Affliction leveling is about stacking instant cast dots and fearing. I would “pull” with Immolate, then CoA, then Corruption. Once it gets near you fear it off and drain life as it runs away. It can get kind of dicey if you pull adds in the early levels but Fel Concentration negates most of the problem. And it sharpens your game for when you get Siphon Life. Once you get that, you are going to want to up your pulling speed. Start with your normal plan, but when you fear you want to go find another mob and start it over. Once you Fear the second mob, the first will break and then switch to draining the first as it runs back. It should be dead before it gets to you from the DoT damage. This is honing your skills further for Improved Howl of Terror. Quad kiting for the win. With sufficient +shadow damage, you can easily tank two or three mobs for the time it takes you to gather four to howl them off. And if more comes, who cares, you have Fear and Death Coil. Just make sure you have corruption up on the mobs to get Siphon Life going.
Zangarmarsh was the pinnacle of this. All sorts of autopulls that just keep things rolling. I did switch to Destruction in Northrend as I found they just hit too hard to keep the four pulls going. I could easily handle two in Northrend, but stepping down from the quad fear was just such I let down I switched out.
Skammer, that would rock 
RFK Has two daggers that would be really good for my rogue!
Grats on all the new achievements, experiences, milestones, and gear, all! Sounds like we’ve all been quite busy over the holidays. 
Personally, I did two kind of awesome things:
1.) Soloed my way through BB King on my main. Started with Thrall and Vol’Jin, which was incredibly frustrating until I read someone’s suggestion to rez on the ledge around the edge of the room to give yourself more time before the guards mob you.
2.) Got my Undead Mage to 80! Woooooooo! This is the first time I’ve had more than one max-level character since I started playing. I’ve crafted a few BoE epics for her with her Tailoring (even got the Wispcloak recipe after completing the last Northrend dungeon I needed), got a BoE epic offhand from a friend as a gift, picked up a rep item or two, got the Triumph badge wand (yay +Hit!) and have justed started doing random Heroics. It’s funny to see the wide range of other DPS–there are groups where I’ll be blowing everyone else out of the water, but then there are groups (usually the new ICC instances, which I’m not even doing on Heroic yet) where I’ll be lagging behind everyone else. At least being a Mage gives me extra utility beyond damage–I always make sure to put a table up at the start of the instance, and I try to be quick on the trigger with Decurse.
Some of the most insanely awesome RNG stuff that’s happened this holiday season, however, happened to one of my best friends on his Undead Shadow Priest.
Monday, he saw the Blue Proto-Drake drop off of Skadi, but lost the roll. He then did his first-ever Brunhildar daily on that character and got the Polar Bear mount. Tuesday, he happened to fly by K3 and saw the Time-Lost Proto-Drake, killed it and got the mount, and then maybe two hours later he not only saw the Battered Hilt drop in an ICC five-man, but won the roll.
If he lived closer to Vegas, I’m pretty sure he’d be playing from a new mansion by now. What a lucky sum’bitch.
I can’t get there from work, so here’s some general advice:
[ul][li]There are only four Wrath factions with dungeon-rep tabards: Kirin Tor; Wyrmrest Accord; Argent Crusade; and Ebon Blade.[/li][li]If you go into a dungeon wearing no tabard, or wearing a non-rep tabard, your rep is split evenly among your Horde Expedition or Alliance Vanguard factions.[/li][li]Sons of Hodir have the best shoulder enchants in the game for anyone but an Inscriptionist, which are available at Exalted; at a lower level (Friendly, I think), you can buy the same shoulder chants as the highest level Aldor/Scryer ones. (The only dif is that you’re paying cash instead of the BoP tokens that you get from turning in rep items.) If you haven’t already, you should complete the chain that starts with the quest They Took Our Men! in K3. This will take you from Hated to Friendly, and then open up dailies and rep turn-ins. The latter involves turning in Relic of Ulduar ten at a time, and it’s probably pretty cheap and fast these days.[/li][li]Other factions, such as the Kalu’ak, the Oracles, and the Frenzyheart, are mostly only useful for vanity items such as pets.[/li][li]The new ICC raid returns to the tradition of having an associated rep faction, the Ashen Verdict, which gives a ring that is upgraded with each level of reputation. Once your gear has reached a decent level, you might want to look for an ICC “trash farming” run–this will be a group of people who get together to only kill the trash *before *the first boss, then reset the instance and repeat. You can currently get to Friendly very easily, which is where you get your first ring. Note that any character can only have one ring from this faction, so you should probably choose the one that best suits your main spec. However, IIRC, it’s very easy to change ring types for this faction (for previous factions, it was mostly impossible–once you made the choice, you were stuck with it).[/ul][/li]
Can you say, “eBay”?
Is there a particular reason that you use your fishing outfit in potentially hostile areas? If you’ve got max-level fishing, you shouldn’t need +Fishing gear bonuses in almost any zone, and a +100 lure on your pole will take care of the highest-level areas, like the Dalaran Sewers and the Frozen Sea. I mean, it’s certainly FUN to fish in a fishing outfit (and it can sometimes get people to leave you alone when fishing in enemy faction capitals for achievements), but it can get a little dangerous to get caught mostly naked.
Wooooooo!
Awesome! Jaxx is pretty easy on regular–generally, if you can get NRB down, you should have Jaxx down pretty fast.
For Faction Champs, here’s my advice:
1.) This might seem counterintuitive, but leave the healers for last or almost last. Assign tanks to lock them down with stuns and interrupts, first priority on the Holy Pally and second on the Holy Priest. If you get the Resto Druid, have a Warlock Banish it if there’s one in your raid; if you can’t, make sure someone’s using offensive dispels to clear the HOTs before they can tick too much. If you focus on killing the healers first, that leaves the DPS free to steamroll all over your group; whereas it’s relatively easy to keep the healers from being effective while you focus on killing the DPS, and then once the DPS are dead, the healers can be easily picked off.
2.) If there’s an enemy pet class (Hunter or Warlock) assign someone, probably a Hunter, to focus on the enemy pet. They are not trying to kill it–just keep damaging it. The enemy healer AI is very stupid, in that it will focus its heals not on the ally with the lowest HP by percentage, but rather by actual numbers. This means that almost all the heals will be going to the pet, until whatever target you’re actually focusing on killing is at very, very low health. Your tanks can then save their stuns and interrupts for those heals, letting the healers waste their time spamming at the pet that’s under attack until then.
3.) If you have a Prot War, have them spam Demo Shout as much as possible, anytime they’re not actively stunning, interrupting, or fearing. The AOE debuff attracts a lot of mob hate in this fight. You should also have this person open the fight by charging in with Shield Wall up (and a Pain Suppression if you’ve got it) and immediately dropping Int Shout and then spamming Demo Shout.
4.) Spread out your ranged! The more distance between them, the longer the melee enemies have to spend running from person to person.
5.) If there’s a Shaman, get it down fast and be ready to Mass Dispel Bloodlust/Heroism.
6.) Prioritize the melee DPS. Warrior, Rogue, and DK are the three most likely to eat your squishies alive.
7.) Move out of AOEs like Bladestorm and Hellfire (and interrupt HF as soon as possible), even if it means taking a bit longer to kill your current target.
Also, you’ve made me think of something my mom told me about a while back: she heard an interview with a guy who kept repeatedly saying how something “sticks in his claw.” :smack:
There’s some talent deep in some tree or another that makes them good DPS for that tree. Forget what, but it’s there. IMO, whoever it was that wanted the details, go check out the Blood Pact column at WoW Insider–lots of up-to-date Warlock info, including rundowns of all the demons.
Woo, grats! I have to imagine Mages are useful in HOR, too; Counterspelling mages should make them run in to melee range, where the tank can pick them up more easily.
I ran RFD with Skammer and Mogbog (Cyranus is my mage). First time I’ve been in a 5-man with a mage, and man, was it fun. I probably went a little overboard with the AOEs, but Mog the tank kept aggro well and we were slamming through trash pretty easily. Getting Improved Blizzard made Blizzard so much more awesome; nothing like popping a Frost Nova, casting Blizzard, and having Blizzard just keep critting, refreezing, critting, refreezing, critting…
I have been using the random (nonheroic) dungeon group finder to get the Emblems of Triumph (so I can buy gear) on my 80 Orc Rogue. I have 35 tokens now.
I have only seen three dungeons: Pit of Sauron, Occulus, and Tournament of Champions.
In my quest book, I have unlocked Halls of Lightning, and the two “bug” ones in Dragonblight. (“Old Kingdom” and sumthin-sumthin).
In the “pick a specific dungeon” list, I see that there are potentially many dungeons to go to, even if I am really limited to the dungeons that appear yellow to me (i.e. skipping over the green quests).
Why am I getting such a limited draw?
I don’t know, but I can’t get one of the Icecrown dungeons in random DF at all. I think I’ve done PoS once and that’s it. Meanwhile I’m doing HoL, UP/UK, OK/AK or CoS every time. Oh, I did get ToC once too, but it’s almost always the others.
As a level 80?
As an 80, it’s probably mainly biasing your dungeon selection towards the higher-level dungeons - ToC, the 3 new Icecrown dungeons (forge, pit, hall), plus oculus, halls of stone, halls of lightning, and culling of stratholme - you probably won’t get the lower-level ones like Nexus or the bug ones. I have no idea why you’ve only gotten those 3 of them though; I’d blame the vagaries of the random number generator.
Yup, I’ve been using that interrupt pretty liberally, too. Oh, and the new Deep Freeze is godly… I’ve been seeing it crit for over 14k. :drool:
Mages are the kings of AOE. Until I get a feel for the tank, I generally lead with a Frostbolt or two on the tank’s initial target before letting loose with Blizzard goodness; if I can tell that the tank is going to be able to hold the entire pack, I’ll just Blizz a second or two after the pull.
ETA: I’m running with a 19/0/52 build that’s working pretty well for me so far. If you want to stay Frost PvE at 80, you might want to check it out. (Can’t grab the link from here, but if you look her up on the Armory, it’s Smarati on Eldre’Thalas.)
It’s all randomly assigned. If you’re focusing a lot on certain instances, it could be because other people are selecting those instances, and then you’re being chosen from the pool of available people with no instance preference to fill an open slot.
Not only an 80, but a pretty well-geared 80 (for a non-raider).
ETA: these are all heroics, I should have been more clear.
I loved the effect when you were casting Blizzard while I was channelling Rain of Fire. 
I was also having fun with dropping a Flamestrike (harder to see than Rain of Fire or Blizzard) then immediately casting Blizzard. They were dropping so fast.
I was trying to see if there was a level bias involved in the picks. There probably is.
As Shot From Guns points out, it might be that I am being used to round out partial groups wanting to do the newer stuff.
Your situation, I have no idea. Your groups are doing the older heroics (because they are easier maybe), right? Are you on a newer server (and thus have a smaller pool of level 80 players who are doing the older stuff still)?
I’m on the same server, and I’ve had a pretty random assortment including all three of the new 5-mans.
No, I think I’m just unlucky. Most of the pugs I get seem pretty capable of doing the higher level dungeons (putting out 3-4k dps, for example), but we’re in Utgarde instead.
But at least then you’re through to the other side in ten minutes or so.
Filling what role? Tank?
I’m DPS, and we’re a dime a dozen. 
Yeah, I swear sometimes I’ve been slotted into a group before I’d even clicked the “queue” button.
That’s true. Monday night I did Old Kingdom, which is one of the more difficult of the original level-80 heroics, and it took maybe 15-20 minutes. Barely had time to loot the trash, and got the “Volazj’s Quick Demise” achievement. At least I rack up Triumph emblems quickly.