I dinged 58 on my warlock last night in EPL yay for Outland, parked there now waiting to start questing another evening. A couple of fun things:
I was killing things in the north of EPL where I hadn’t ever been with my pally and saw a level 10 Blood Elf Warlock running towards me which was a serious wtf moment. I followed them around for a bit waiting to see how they would die, it was a plaguehound in about two hits if you’re interested, and wondered how the hell they got there. Then I found the portal to Ghostlands which I guess is closed if you don’t have BC. Always something new to find.
I summoned an Infernal for the first time since learning the ability, no good reason just wanted to give it a go. He’s a monster that’s for sure caused absolute carnage before de-spawning back to the nether (they only hang around for 1 minute). For those that have never played a Warlock when you summon them they say something\make a noise and when I re-summoned my Felguard the random speech chosen was “What happened to your friend?” which was just perfect, I could almost hear the hurt in his voice that I needed to use another demon
You didn’t /gquit by accident? I don’t know how that could have happened, but we’ll get someone to re-invite you. I won’t be online this evening but just speak up to get an invite. That’s strange but it’s obviously someone’s mistake!
So my SPriest recently hit 75, which means an actual Area of Effect spell (Soul Sear I think); but now I’m not quite sure how to use it.
My normal rotation has been to pick a target, apply 3 DoTs, smack with a mind blast to get the mana effect going, then soul flay twice, then reapply 2 DoTs (Soul flay automatically reapplies my Shadow Word: Pain) and mind blast again, then repeat, sneaking in a shadow word: death if I think I can get a kill with it.
So I’m not sure if I should just do my AoE until a couple or three mobs fall down, then switch to single target stuff, or apply my 3 DoTs then AoE, or what.
Anyone with experience running a SPriest want to give me some tips? (Skammer?)
Mind Sear is way cool, but you won’t use it in a lot of fights. It’s a fantastic AoE, but the catch is that it does no damage to your target: it does (quite a bit of) damage to the enemies around your target.
So the ideal way to use it is when you have a crowd of mobs, or ideally one major enemy with a lot of little pesky adds. Then you load up your dots on the main mob, and hit mind sear and watch the big yellow numbers pop up all over your screen as you burn down all the adds. Periodically you’ll need to re-apply your dots as they run out.
This is most handy when you have a tank who 1)can keep you from getting hit, since the spell is channeled and 2) can hold aggro while you do huge damage on everyone except the main boss, which can be tricky for some tanks.
You probably don’t want to use Mind Sear unless you’re dealing with at least 3 (peferably more) mobs at a time, so you won’t use it a whole lot while soloing.
But you know that Argent quest where you have to go kill 10 ghosts, and they mostly are all lined up marching together? I used to pop PW:Shield, target the guy in the middle of the line, and let loose with Mind Sear. I could take down 8-10 at a time that way.
It’s also useful in Phase 2 of the Black Knight, when he summons all those ghouls. Like I said, the trick is not stealing aggro from the tank…
As a Prot War, I am so excited for this patch. (1) Vitality is getting a much-needed boost, and (2) Revenge is finally going to be useful again. The only annoying thing is figuring out where I’m going to pull the two points I need to get Imp Revenge again. I’m thinking Focused Rage. I’m *tempted *to grab two out of Toughness, since half of that talent is so fucking useless. But armor is so important these days that I really don’t want to let any go. :\
Hahaha, you sound like Cap–except *his *problem is freaking out because he’s not used to being melee.
It is possible to have a Game Master transfer the Guild Master role from an inactive player. However, the time requirement for the Guild Master character having been inactive is pretty steep; think on the order of months, IIRC. So if this guy hasn’t been online in three months, it might be doable; if he’s only been gone a few weeks, it’ll be no-go.
And yes, you can use the guild bank, if there is one, even if you’re the only person in the guild. Some people make bank alts with their own guilds just to take advantage of all the extra storage space. But here are some things to remember:
1.) Guilds don’t automatically come with banks. You have to buy each bank tab. And you can never change a guild’s name or transfer bank tabs between guilds–if you move, you have to start over and buy them again.
2.) Access to the bank will be limited based on your rank, depending on how the Guild Master has arranged things. If you put things in, you may not be able to get them back out again. Each bank tab will tell you how many withdrawals you have per day; if it’s “Unlimited” or a very high number, you’re probably safe to drop things in. But if you can’t withdraw anything from the tab, be sure you don’t put anything in there that you want back. The same goes for money.
3.) Other people in your guild can potentially remove what you put in. Once an item is in there, it’s free for anyone with the right rank to remove.
Woohoo! Did you have fun? It sounds like it!
Welcome to the living piece of evidence that some devs are morons known as Naxx. The problem with Plate drops there is that they are *evenly divided *among tanking, DPS, and healing pieces. Fully *one third *of *all *Plate in Naxx is only useful for a single spec of a single class. :smack:
There’s no reason you can’t keep your hearth set to Dal, too, especially if you’re working on Loremaster. Because the ring and your hearthstone are on separate CDs, it would be like lowering your average hearth CD to 15 minutes.
Macros are useful for everybody! You can live without them, but they make life a lot easier. When I get home, I’ll try to remember to copy down the ones I use on Sleutel. I have things like a single macro for my ranged attack (so I don’t have to swap between Shoot and Throw if I get a different type of ranged weapon), an interrupt macro, a macro that puts Shield Block up when I Shield Slam, etc.
Personally, I don’t like doing this. Instead, I have Heroic Strike bound to my mousewheel, so I can just scroll down whenever I have enough Rage.
Putting a HS macro into your abilities removes your control over when you use it. In an infinite-Rage situation, that’s not a problem, but there will be plenty of times where you have limited Rage, especially at the beginning of a pull. Or what happens if you need to interrupt a cast, but you can’t, because you just automatically queued a Heroic Strike that used up your Rage?
I may be wrong, but this macro to me seems completely broken. Cleave and Heroic Strike are both abilities that happen on your next autoattack. AFAIK, you can’t have both of them queued at once. So the HS in the second line would just overwrite the Cleave in the first line. This is another reason I dislike macroing HS–it means you can’t use Cleave on packs of adds, which is one of your biggest ways of generating AOE threat (especially if you glyph for it).
Thanks, **martu **(and everyone else who offered advice!) This is exactly the sort of thing I was looking for. I’m usually pretty quick to pick things up, but I have to see them in action. Having a little list of things to do means I can write them down and get used to them, and then I can start improvising once I see how they work and what they’re capable of.
It feels weird to be a noob again, given that I’ve got my mage and DK down well enough that I raid progression content with them. I’ve almost got Ret to where I’m comfortable with it (I took him to ToC25 last night with my guild and some PUGs–DPS was crap but I had fun and got a couple of upgrades) but being a noob tank scares me because people in random pugs can be pretty nasty if you screw up. It’s the reason I don’t tank them on my DK even though he outgears almost everybody who might be in his group. Hoping pally tanking is more forgiving once I get the hang of it.
Indeed it does. I remember having to use add-ons like CasterWeaponSwapper in order to maximize my Innervate with a high Spirit weapon before they unlinked Innervate’s mana restore from Spirit. This was because they would time the swaps to occur after an instant cast so that the GCDs would align. I don’t believe this works anymore, though I’ve had little reason to swap weapons/idols since TBC.
You’ve received a lot of good advice already, and I wrote a post further back about some basics. If you already tank at a high level (Kingslayer says you do), then you have the most difficult mechanics down already (being aware of boss abilities, mob positioning, overall awareness of your raid). The mechanics of paladin tanking that are different from other classes is really just about learning the class, as has been stated already. Maximizing your Hand of _____ spells, cleansing, and frontloading threat are important. Mana issues really only become a problem when you overgear an instance, as you require less healing and thus get less mana back from Spiritual Attunement. Although some may discount the 969 rotation as being overvalued, I do think it’s good to stay in the habit of using it. Once it becomes second nature, you have the flexibility to do other actions (Hand spells, cleansing, taunting) and get right back into your highest threat rotation. This will be especially important if you start queuing for random Heroics, as you may start being grouped with people that drastically outgear you, and so your threat generation will be very important in order to keep them alive (if you choose to do so, of course).
Well, Mangle is also your highest threat generation ability on single targets, so it should be used on CD as often as possible. I think the biggest change will definitely be for cats who are their raid’s designated Mangle-bot, as it will significantly increase their DPS while not compromising the debuff.
Only Mind Sear when there are more than 3 mobs up. If there are 3 or less, put VT on them all, and then focus fire one. When there are more than 3 mobs, put VT on them all (unless they’re going to die ridiculously fast, as can often happen in heroics with overgeared toons), and then use Mind Sear, changing targets with each channel. Mind Sear is an amazing spell, and I’m sure you will grow to love it as I do.
Sometimes WoW gets weird like that. There are many times where I will log off, and the last message in my chat box as I’m logging is “You are not in a guild,” despite being in one. Not sure what triggers it, but it does still get me a bit paranoid at times.
Oops. Yeah, you’re right, of course. I was just grabbing Warrior abilities I knew off the top of my head, and I was rushed this morning besides. I forgot that Cleave is a Next Attack modifier too. My bad.
Yeah, though. Basic macros like that can help make a newb more effective than they might otherwise be, but ultimately they’ll hinder skill advancement for the reasons you say. I was just tossing out examples; someone putting thought into their class can usually think up better macros easily.
Yeah, but most of my single target aggro is boss fights; the majority of fights these days that I deal with seem to be groups of stuff in instances. For that I’m spamming Swipe and glyphed Maul. On bosses/single targets I’m usually trying to apply a stack of Lacerates along with everything else and hate having to watch Mangle’s duration as well.
Fair enough. Usually, when I tank on my bear, I just spam Mangle/FFF on CD and hit Lacerate enough to stack it to 5 and then just enough to keep it up. In heroics, Swipe definitely takes priority as DPS get AoE happy and bears just don’t have enough AoE tricks to keep the mobs pinned to you if they out-gear you (Demo Roar/Swipe/Glyphed Maul if you change targets often). Personally, I’d like to see Blizzard give bears a few more buttons to press and maybe another effective AoE threat ability.
I’ve been refusing to raid lately - kind of burned out on the whole concept right now - so yeah, I’m mostly running heroics or the occasional weekly raid quest. I agree that we’d be better off with more AOE aggro tricks. Even when running heroics with guildies I get them peeling off adds because /assist is uncool, and I’m madly spamming glyphed Maul + Swipe + Mangle to proc the debuff + glyphed Growl, not to mention Demo Roar when it’s not on cooldown.
Yeah, apparently the basics of raiding 101 go out the window when you overgear an instance. This is in spite of the fact that it’s a lot smoother and faster to go a little slower and not die, than it is to have to constantly res someone or potentially wipe. Odd, that.
Maybe it’s just 'cause I play mainly healing/tanking classes that I don’t get the allure of ignoring basics, even in fights that I overgear. Some fights are still hard based on their mechanics. My guild went back to do some Ulduar HMs for people who want to get their Ironbound Proto-drakes, and I saw this in spades. Fights like Firefighter, One Light in the Darkness, Freya+3 Trees still require coordinated execution and conscientious play, but because we out-geared it by 2 tiers, people were seeing these fights as jokes. Until we wiped. Repeatedly. On “easy” content.
Honestly, I’d just let those who pull off of you die, 'cause a few repair bills might get them to play smarter.
Yup. My human pally is in a guild of just her and the rest of my alts on that server. We have 5 bank tabs so far.
Heh. I’ve run into this every time I’ve added a new tab. My main/guild master will add a new tab, but forget to set up the permissions. So then one of my alts goes to put something in or take something out, but can’t do either on the new tab because it says “No Access”. Then I have to log out, log in my main, and set up the new tab permissions so that officers have “Full Access” (all of my alts are officers).
Yes! Though I did lead the group in total deaths, with seven. But I kind of expected that, being a brand-new 80 in somewhat lame gear. I’m happy, though, that my only real “bonehead” death was the last one, when I got caught in one of KT’s void zones, but even that was mainly because it hadn’t occurred to me to ask what a void zone looked like. If I’d known, I would have gotten out of it instead of standing in it. Gearwise, I had enough Champion’s Seals the previous day that I was able to upgrade my belt and boots at the Argent Tournament, and then earlier yesterday I checked in with the Argent Crusade quartermaster and found my rep was enough to upgrade my cloak and helm.
I rarely need to hearth twice to Dal in less than 30 minutes, so that shouldn’t be an issue. I suppose I could set my hearth to SW - that would drop me right next to the bank and AH, and I’d no longer have to take the portal that puts me in the Mage District. And it would save me having to travel to Dal in order to get to SW - I could hearth from anywhere.
I get that every now and then, too. But once I’m actually logged out my toon is still wearing the guild tabard, where if I’d actually been “de-guilded” I’d only see the plain gray tabard.
After Naxx I went and played my mage for a bit. Doing that Boulderslide Ravine quest in Stonetalon, I was reminded that deep caves are just brutal for solo casters. Thanks to all the time wasted stopping to drink, by the time you get to the back of the cave almost everything you killed on the way in has had time to respawn. So if you find yourself in trouble, like aggroing 3-4 mobs, you can’t run away. You only have one escape route, and thanks to the respawns you can’t run far enough to get out of combat without running into more mobs. And this particular cave is far enough from the nearest graveyard that, by the time you can run back to your corpse, everything has respawned and there’s no place to rez without immediately aggroing something. Fortunately, last night I was able to get all the way to the back of the cave, which you have to do to complete the quest (it’s one of those “Investigate/explore X” quests where you have to make progress to a certain point to get credit), so I was able to just rez at the spirit healer instead of running back to my corpse and hoping I could survive. The rez sickness wasn’t an issue, because the next several steps in the leveling guide I’m using involved simply turning in a few other quests and then proceeding to Camp Taurajo, so I could stay on the roads without worrying about getting into combat.
Hopefully, Keliraeda (my belf pally) will have access to all of the Argent Tournament dailes before much longer, and she can start shipping heirlooms to my mage and warlock. I want to get them leveled up, because I’ve noticed BDL is pretty top-heavy with paladins and druids; I haven’t seen many mages and warlocks at all.
I didn’t know what KT’s zones looked like either, but here’s a rule of thumb that will serve you well in raids and heroics:
Stuff on the ground almost never helps you. It will either do nothing to you or will harm you. The ground is always trying to kill you. If you see something pop up around your feet and you don’t know what it is, you’re almost never worse off for moving out of it, and you could hurt yourself by standing still. There are some exceptions, but those are usually unique fight mechanics and will be explicitly laid out beforehand.
Short version: if you’re told there’s void zones or fire in a particular fight, watch your feet. If something pops up you don’t recognize, get away.
I kept my hearth in Dalarn after I got the ring - I find it’s pretty useful, especially since my hearth is set to the inn right by the city portals. And, I don’t do dailies very regularly. If I were doing the Argent dailies all the time, or say the Oracle dailies, I’d probably set my stone closer to them.
I tend to call it “Don’t stand in the poo”; I forget if I got that wording from the podcast The Instance, or where, but it works. Stuff on the ground? Almost certainly not good for you. If it is good for you, that’s notable enough that someone will probably tell you this.
