Remember that most dungeon quests don’t count for Loremaster. I have an add-on that tells you what does and doesn’t (or, sometimes, what may or may not) count toward Loremaster, added as a line in your Quest Log entry for the particular quest. I don’t remember the name of it offhand, though. I’ll have to check tonight when I get home.
Trying to gear up my disc priest. Does anyone know if the effects from the following two trinkets stack? Or does the better effect overwrite?
Spark of Life
Purified Lunar Dust
I have the Spark currently, I’m wondering whether I’ll be replacing it with the dust or equipping it alongside. Or whether I should just run regular ToC for Tears of the Vanquished and using my frost badges for something else entirely.
I don’t raid regularly, by the way.
Here’s my armory:
Thanks!
Yeah, I have that. It’s called, oddly enough, Loremaster 
I use that, Everyquest, Carbonite and Handynotes as my helpers for this journey. I have a zillion other addons as well, but those are the ones that are making this easier. Anyone have any suggestions for other addons that could help me with Loremaster?
In addition, since I’ll be exploring like mad finding quests I’m going for the Seeker achievement (explore every area in the game) and my try for the Dungeon achievement as well. Then after that I may try for the “Leave your apartment every once and a while, for God’s sake” achievement. But so far the constant rain is making that unattractive.
Both of those trinket procs will work. Bear in mind one is about mana and one is about mp5 (mana regen) so it’s not the same effect.
This is supposition, because I can’t do research at work:
I know similar effects don’t stack; if you have two on-use trinkets that increase spellpower, they’ll share cooldowns so you can only use one at a time. But I don’t know how that works with procs. I know procs usually have an internal cooldown, so they might be up for 15 seconds and then have another 45 seconds before they can proc again, for example. It’s possible that one will trigger while the other is on ICD, so you’re effectively getting +MP5 twice as often. It’s a pretty good bet I’m wrong, though, since that seems like a good deal to me.
ETA: sandra_nz, the procs are both MP5.
(PS - ignore the PvP gear and stuff with +hit, I already know I need to find replacements for my healing set, but these were better than what I had)
:smack:
I’m not totally sure. From my perspective, we were tearing through the instance - in fact I was getting a little annoyed that the two times I asked to drink for mana the group kept going on and pulling. But we never came close to anyone dying. Then we came to this big room and the mobs were pulled and suddenly the tank was gone. I was like, WTF? and the warlock said the tank quit because the ghouls kept pulling. Then the DKs quit. So I assume that the ghouls were set on Agressive, but since I was running behind the party I didn’t witness it first hand.
Yes, that’s definitely true. I find even good DKs harder to heal, which is why these low-level BC dungeons are hard because about 70% of the tanks are DKs (and usually inexperienced at tanking).
Also, one of my tanks this weekend /w me during the run to say I was a great healer. I need to remember to compliment my good tanks more often, because sometimes I take them for granted.
I’m trying to get that done on my 80 pally before Cataclysm hits. Current status:
Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms: Complete (700/700)
Loremaster of Kalimdor: 619/700
Loremaster of Outland: All zones complete except Blade’s Edge (64/86) and Netherstorm (1/120)
Loremaster of Northrend: Complete
Speaking of +Hit and PvP … I made a startling discovery that, while in my PvE gear I’m way over the hit cap, at something like 358 Hit Rating, but when I switch to my PvP set my HR drops all the way down to a mere 70 :eek: Really need to find a way to boost that, unless HR doesn’t matter so much in PvP? I can’t see that being true…
As melee DPS, there’s really no way to get aggro off yourself except getting close to the tank so they can do their thing or using a class skill (like rogue’s Feint), right? I got aggro a couple of times last night but I was right in the thick of it with the tank, so other than Feint, there really wasn’t much I could do, right? Sometimes backing out of the fight will result in the mob losing interest in you.
I’m asking because last night a healer kept on getting mad because DPS was taking threat from tank, but every time Omen alerted me I took action and never held threat for more than a few seconds. But the healer wouldn’t give it up, and I couldn’t figure it out. I mean, I’m melee DPS, sometimes being in the mob with the tank will result in transfer of threat - as long as you promptly try to get rid of it, it’s no big deal, right?
It does, but PVP to-hit is 5% (the 8% is necessary for bosses calculated as level 83, but 5% is base when attacking a same-level entity). I don’t know what that translates to in rating offhand, but it’s a lot less.
Is it possible that they were using Army of the Dead? I know as a tank I get extremely annoyed when DKs use that on pulls unless I ask them to, because it brings up a whole herd of aggressive ghouls that run around and grab aggro on everything in sight. Sometimes it’s useful (for example, in the Black Knight fight in ToC) but usually it’s just annoying and makes it very hard for the tank to control the group.
It’s got a long cooldown, though, so each DK would probably only be able to do it once or twice in the course of a normal instance run.
I was playing my druid (in boomkin form) this weekend and ended up in a random Heroic PoS with a priest from my server, from one of the bigger raiding guilds. She had a gear score over 5.5K, but said at the start that she was new to healing. And yeah, we could tell. I checked her gear and a lot of it was shadow gear, with some healing bits (mostly the substandard gear), and missing a few enchants and 2 gems. Meta gem wasn’t active. There were a few wipes on the hill, and in the tunnel, the tank complained to the priest that her Greater Heals were only doing about 1K each?! We even wiped on Tyrannus and so for the second try I would pop out of boomkin form and drop some HoTs on him as often as I could - usually when I had the Overlord’s Brand debuff. We finally won that when the tank outright told her to focus on healing him.
I wonder if she was wasting time on bubbling the whole group constantly - being Disc-spec’d - and dropping HoTs on everyone. I have the RankWatch addon so it would have been reporting to me if she had been using lower-ranks of the spells.
Weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.
OK, I just checked her Armory - she did not do any glyphs for her Disc spec! :eek: But still, that shouldn’t make such a dramatic difference! Her spec is pretty close to my Disc priest’s spec, so that shouldn’t cause it.
Unless your tank is switching from mob to mob to distribute threat, you should assist the tank and kill his target. Even then, if your threat is climbing on your threat meter, a Feint every now and then helps. If you have Tricks of the Trade, use that on the tank whenever it’s off cooldown. If all else fails, Vanish will wipe your threat completely and start you over from zero – plus it allows you to use an opener again.
If you’re still pulling aggro, either you overgear your tank significantly, or he’s just not a very good tank. Slow your dps some if that’s the issue.
I pull aggro every once in a while on my rogue, as well, even after using Tricks of the Trade, but never for more than a second or two. Generally, for trash, I’m geared enough that it’s not a huge deal. Using whatever combo points I have on a kidney shot, it stops the damage I’m taking, deals zero damage so no significant finisher threat, and gives the tank time to regain aggro. Evasion if it’s a melee mob, use interrupts if it’s a spellcaster (KS, kick, gouge, a well-timed cloak of shadows), vanish if it gets really messy.
You should never, ever be pulling threat on a boss fight though, unless things are really falling apart.
Unless it’s causing huge issues with controlling the fight, most healers won’t complain, as dps pulling aggro every once in a while (during trash) is sort of expected to happen. Bosses are a different story. I think your healer was just being uptight
I think the tank must have been confused, because that doesn’t sound like it’s even possible (unless there’s some disease or something that the mobs in the tunnel cause that depresses healing). The ONLY possible reason a Greater Heal would be under 1k for someone healing with T9 shadow gear is if it was underlevel, but then RankWatch would have caught it. I get better than a thousand healing from my glyphed shields and ticks of renew, and about 4k from flash heal, and I’m not much over 5.5k gear score.
On the “not concentrating enough on the tank” thing - if the healer was new to using HealBot I can easily imagine this happening - it’s certainly a temptation for me to click all over the place instead of sticking to the important stuff. And Tyrannus does that one big spikey hit.
Hell, Flash of Light heals on my Ret-specced Pally for 700-900 base, 2k-3k in practice and I have absolutely no spellpower on my gear (although a talent converts AP to SP). There’s no way a clothie caster can be geared to enter POS and do 1k heals with their biggest heal.
Speaking of which, I finally got the two Sunforged pieces made for my Holy spec. All I need now are trinkets, gems, and glyphs, and I should be more than ready to start healing heroics, even though some of my items are still below 200 for that spec. I’m looking forward to trying it, as it’s pretty much the polar opposite of Resto Druid; Resto specializes in lots of little heals constantly pinging, while Holy Pally relies more on slow but giant heals. I just hope the habits I developed playing Resto don’t screw me as Holy.
Welp, after not having enough people online Monday night, our RL has decided to extend our ICC25 lockout to keep working on Heroic PP. Sigh. I can’t decide if I’d rather we burn the rest of our Heroic attempts on him, so I have a chance to get in on regular Sindri and LK, or if I’d rather they keep going on Heroic, so that I can not extend my lockout and just PUG regular 25.
At least that means I had the time to run ICC10 with some guildies last night. We didn’t have time to do a full clear, but we got 8/10 before people had to go, with our only wipe on Dreamwalker (only two healers in the group, so we had to have the other tank hearth and respec to Resto).
Any class can solo content, in theory. Depending on the class, spec, and encounter (not to mention gear level), some fights will be easier for some characters. Three-way hybrids (Paladins and Druids, but especially Palllies) tend to be the best overall at soloing content. Pet classes can also be good at it, though that varies as pet balance goes up and down. There are some fights that tanks are great at soloing–especially non-scaling bosses, where all damage can be avoided–but there are some where we’ll get our asses kicked if we’re not a class with healing spells.
The best reason to solo content is whatever reason you want to do it for. Could be to test your own skills. Could be to get a drop: a pet or a mount or a cool-looking item. Could be for Achievement points or a title.
Yup, it really makes a difference to have a coordinated group. An organized group of even casual players will do much better as a PUG, because they can learn from their mistakes together, adapt to each other’s playstyles, strengths, and weaknesses, etc.
Woohoo, congrats! Don’t worry about the gold sitch–that will pretty much start flowing in the door now. A single daily quest at 80 will generally get you 13-20g, and you can do up to 25 of them per day.
Yeah, same here. I only bother with large packs or bosses. Not worth it for just one or two trash mobs.
Yay, welcome to the game! RAF is sexy as hell, but unfortunately I don’t have the availability to be a good leveling partner for you.
FWIW, that’s not hacking. It’s a legitimate use of gbank funds, since you’ve authorized anyone of that rank to withdraw the money. What you probably want to do is restrict the amount of gold that any one character can remove.
Also, there’s no way of knowing that it’s the same “Unknown.” That’s just what shows up when (a) the character no longer exists on the server (it’s been deleted or transferred off) or (b) the game’s connection to the database with the information is lagging.
Don’t forget that you can pull things you’re not using off your bars. You might also have the same item on your bars more than once, in which case it’s just taking up extra space. One button for the item will show all of the item–you don’t need a separate button for every stack. Too, you can clear our lower “ranks” of food or potions–just keep the highest-level stuff and sell the rest.
I second the RatingBuster suggestion. Note that while it works pretty well out of the box, you’ll probably want to go in and tweak what it displays for each character. It tends to make assumptions about what stats you want to see based on your class and spec, which may not always be the ones you personally care about.
I’m pretty sure Shift+click is for *linking *items in chat, while Ctrl+click is for viewing them on your character.
Omen is universal for everyone, yeah, but I don’t get the impression that bar mods are anywhere near that common. That’s more of an advanced UI thing to me.
Intimidating!
I know you’ve figured it out, but for future reference, if you use QuestHelper, you can set it to display (on your zone map) all of the quests you haven’t yet completed. AFAIK, it just gives the quest number and name, but you can then plug that into Wowhead to get more details.
That’s what’s nice about playing a Frost Mage–way more survivability. On that fight, I could just keep my Ice Barrier up, which gave me enough time to finish casting before I’d have to move out of the puddle.
Be sure to spam-link it to Cap.
Psh, the cowardly cowards won’t stand and fight, I’d bet.
1.) As has been observed, everyone should be moving in some way while fighting, constantly (or at least as often as possible). This usually takes the form of jumping or small strafing movements. As a tank, I just bang away at my space bar while using my usual rotation, since they’re all instant attacks.
2.) However, if you had to kite, you’d maintain aggro the same way you always do… in theory. You’re just doing your normal rotation while walking backwards. However, because the boss will often be out of melee range, it can get a lot trickier in practice. So, ideally, the DPS would be aware of this and watch their aggro and/or let you get a bigger lead before starting in.
Quests will always be better than cloth, objectively, but it becomes a question of how much time you spend tracking down and traveling to the quests. Definitely clear out the starter zones first. Then, hit any other clusters, like low-level zones for that faction (e.g., Elwynn Forest for SW). One good way to check for any high-rep quests you haven’t yet completed is to visit the faction’s page on Wowhead, go to the Quests tab, and sort it by Reputation.
Once you’re down to Runecloth farming, two good places to pick it up are the whatever-it’s-called Armory in Hellfire Peninsula (with all the ghostly soldiers) and Stratholme.
Nitpick: Taunt will not do anything unless someone else is on top of the target’s hate list. The mechanic is that it will (a) set your threat to be equal to the current top person and (b) force the target to attack you. (Part b is important, because normally you have to pass 110% of the leader’s threat to pull aggro in melee range or 130% as a ranged DPS or healer.) If you use Taunt when the target is already attacking you, all you’re doing is wasting a cooldown and putting Taunt on CD, meaning that you might not be able to use it when you need it.
You’re a Prot Warrior, right? You should be using Shield Slam, Revenge (assuming you have Imp Rev, which you should), Devastate, Heroic Strike, Shockwave, and Thunder Clap to hold aggro. SS and Rev are definitely your top two.
This is standard, because Saronite is worth so much. IMO, it’s a very good system. End loot is best reserved for things like shards, that are useful but not worth giant amounts of money. Primordial Saronite is the equivalent of a useful piece of armor; it makes sense that anyone who wants to use up their main spec roll for it gets to take it. That way, it’s sure to go to someone who will either use it to make a piece of armor, or who absolutely can’t get anything else useful out of the raid.
These quests are faction-neutral. No one at the FP should aggro on you, IIRC, unless you make the mistake of right-clicking on them (attacking).
Check member notes. A lot of us list our SDMB names. 'Course, it doesn’t always say it on all the alts.
Yeah, BPC requires a reasonable amount of coordination. On the plus side, it’s painfully obvious when people need to switch targets, since the HP pool bounces around from boss to boss. So you can at least concentrate the most intensive requirements to a few people, versus Rotface, where anyone in the raid might need to go drag a slime to the right spot for the add tank to pick it up with the big ooze.
Eesh, good luck with that. They’re about a 1/1,000 drop rate. I have all of them, but only one did I get on my own–the rest I bought. It was a good way to level weapon skills, though. 
Those are my favorite random dungeons.
Hit matters, but you don’t need as much of it. Your chance to hit is calculated off the level of what you’re attacking; bosses are considered to be 83, which is why you need 8% to hit them. For a fellow 80 player, it will be lower.
Ideally, you should *never *pull threat, period. Obviously, this gets a little complicated when you’re in the thick of things, especially with an inexperienced tank. But as a Rogue, you have Feint, which is a decent threat dump. You shouldn’t be waiting to pull aggro to use it; as soon as you see yourself creeping up (say, at 80% or 90% of the tank’s threat), you should pop it. If you’re still crawling up the tank’s ass on threat, stop DPSing that mob (unless it’s almost dead) and pick another target–preferably the same one the tank is hitting, if they aren’t tabbing around like they should be.
If the healer was complaining about everyone doing it, though, it was probably because the tank wasn’t holding aggro well. Unfortunately, if the tank isn’t adjusting their tactics, it means that the DPS has to. So sometimes that means just holding back more. Because if the healer has to keep wasting GCDs and mana on the DPS, that means they might not be able to keep the tank up, and then you wipe.
To answer the first question, though, no, the only way to make a mob pick a new target is to use an active ability. This can be an ability you use to drop your threat–like Feint; an ability the tank uses to raise their threat–like Taunt; or an ability someone else uses on you to lower your threat–like Hand of Protection. Moving away will not cause a mob to lose interest after it’s switched its attentions to you,* and moving away from the tank is a terrible idea, because the closer you are to them, the easier it is for the tank to pull the mob back off you.
*Backing out of melee range before you actually pull, however, can be helpful, because while you only need to hit 110% of the tank’s threat to pull when you’re at melee range to the target, that increases to 130% at range. However, you’d be better off just picking a different target instead of just stopping your DPS altogether.
It really sounds to me like the DK’s pet was just set on Aggressive. They have a leap attack that they’ll use on ranged targets, which would absolutely be pulling packs that the tank didn’t want if they weren’t on Defensive or Passive like they should have been.
Got Nexus today and we breezed it, so defo group issues last time. Dinged to 72 mid instance.
Grats on the ding, Wanderers.
We didn’t continue ICC10 last night because we didn’t have a tank healer on hand. :smack: So we wound up running TOTC10 instead – we gave TOTGC10 a few tries before dropping back to reg since Gormok was squishing our tank into a fine troll paste on H. It was fairly relaxing actually, since we all knew the fights more or less and just needed occasional reminders. Good practice for learning others’ styles too.
As a result though, I’m being armtwisted into respeccing little Arhto disc at 80. :eek: What we don’t have is enough holy pallies and disc priests.
The thought of learning a whole new spec is intimidating since a substandard healer stands out a lot more as opposed to a substandard dps’er. I know it took me a few weeks to really become comfortable with the MM rotation. Reassure me that disc isn’t too alien when compared to holy, please? I’ve levelled as holy from square one, so I don’t know much about the disc toolbox.
Uh… let me know how you do. I recently dumped my Shadow off-spec in favor of Disc off-spec because I saw so many PUGS looking for ST healers. But I’ve been scared to use it – healing as holy has become so automatic, and I’ve only done one heroic as Disc but it felt really awkward.
Also – are you going to use your same Holy gear to heal as Disc? I don’t even know if they go for the same stats as each other.