Monday 31 December 2007

Christmas Holiday Update.

Christmas, not winterveil, nothing else...Christmas. I live in a christian country where political correctness has gone mad, so bollocks, it's CHRISTMAS. Kiss my Arse. Merry CHRISTMAS and a Happy New Year to you all.

Anyway, rant over, PS the Rogue hit 57 and has now got all 4 pieces of the craftable shadowcraft set and 2 pieces of BOE Tier Zero armour tha cost 50-60 gold a piece from the Auction House. He looks cool now. He has all the Sunken Temple quests lined up ready to go and now wants to do Scholomance as well for 2 BOP pieces of Tier Zero that don't conflict with the 6 pieces he is already wearing.

Arcanite the Mage zoomed past level 40 up to level 43 and now has a blue mechanostrider and has finished all the Scarlet Monastery quests and is now preparing for the last slog through Stranglethorn Vale.

Evilbastard is still 61 but Holy Warrior (yes I'm a dual-box geek) and TiceNits finally found the time to take him to Dire Maul and get his Dreadstead. YAY!

Once that was done he went with TiceNits' hunter and did some Hellfire quests and immediately got some nice gear ugrades.

Last Raid of 2007

Thursday 28th Decmeber 2007

We took a little trip to SSC with the intention of doing Lurker and Leo.

We got lurker down with only one wipe and a couple of nice pallie tings dropped, but not for Holy so I didn't waste DKP on them. By the time we had got Lurker down though there wasn't enough time for Leo.

It was suggested we go to Maggy, but by the time we got there people couldn't be bothered so it was further suggested that we go ZA. I passed on this and went to bed.

Sunday 23 December 2007

Alts and Crap Laptop

Was on the lappie again friday night and saturday so not a lot done due to the constant crashing.

Had 2 horrendous pugs trying to do SM Library for mage quests for my level 39 Mage, Arcanite. But a lvl 61 hunter wanted the scarlet key so I told him he could solo it easy and I went in on his coat tails :)

Got Mythology of the Titans, Mage Quest, 2 bosses and scarlet key. Then the rest of the group I was in arrived and we tried to do Armoury. The healer and I clearly knew what we were doing, but the rest were assholes.

Target Moon, sheep, re-sheep, re-sheep, re-sheep, shout athunter to get his dam pet of the sheep, re-sheep, shout at tank to attack skull not sheep, re-sheep, re-sheep, Ding 40, hearthstone out.

PS the Rogue had some fun, got some more quests in Un'Goro done and someone was asking for help with Blazerunner. I was a few steps back inthe quest chain, but he said he could carry on questing while I popped up to Felwood and back to Tanaris to get them done.

It took a while as laptop kept crashing; I'm sure it's overheating so I took it outside and did the grind. It must have been 0 Celsius. The things I do for WoW! It even crashed once outside. Well I got that done and dinged 57 in the process, I got back to Un'Goro and we took out Blazerunner. He reset at one point, dunno how, but it was lucky as I had accidently equuipped the totem instead of using it. DOH! and the level 54 priest was out of mana healing me.

HolyWarrior also got some dailies done, so thats another 100-odd gold.

He also picked up Fanblade Pauldrons the other day. So now I have to think about whether to replace Warchief's Mantle and re-gem. This may give me some more leeway with the defence and replace another +4 defence with more stamina though :)

I'll have a bit of a think later when I've got my dailies done and bought my mage a mechanostrider.

Thursday 20 December 2007

Heroic Crypts

I didn't get to go on the ZA run tonight so those that didn't go got a Heroic Daily done.

I tanked, as I was still prot and there were no other tanks anyway.

It was a pretty bad start with hard pulls but we got through to the first boss and wiped once, but once I knew the tanking strategy he went down on the second try.

By now I had the hang of tanking again and we got to Exarch Maladaar pretty easy.

We downed him pretty quick but everyone else died to his Avatar and left me tanking him and I died pretty quick. We ran back, downed him and looted our gear.

The guide I have says...
The Heroic version of this encounter has few changes, but the DPS increases make it very hard to pull off the encuonter without a very well-geared tank or a
skilled offtank to help out...


So, as we had no offtank I was very happy with that!!!

4 more Badges of Justice, Fanblade Pauldrons (a minor upgrade methinks to Warchief Mantle) and Green Winter Hat. Woot!!

Tanking Progress:
Badges of Justice: 41
Holy Dust: 9
Aldor Rep: 2672/21000 Revered
Shatar Rep: 3184/12000 Honoured
Defence: 491
Avoidance: 102.827%
Armour: 14491
HP: 11227
Mana: 4953

Gems and Voidy

Last night I got some of my tanking gems slotted, still need the Subtle Living Ruby to be cut and 2 Solid Star's of Elune, and I haven't put the epic gem in place yet. This will either drop 3 parry or replace 8 parry with 5 dodge

I did it one gem at a time and it's looking a little close on defence dropping below 490 and avoidance.

The avoidance should be OK, it will come down to the wire as to whether I replace the 8 parry with 5 parry or 5 dodge.

If the defence looks like it will drop below 490 then I will have to hold back on replacing one of the +4 defence +6 Stamina with a +12 Stamina Solid Star of Elune until I upgrade my shoulders or get a better trinket.

Hopefully tonight I will be able to get the final gems cut.

I took a trip to SM Cath to AoE tank whitemane again and died twice, this was worse than when I first specced prot, it maybe a healing issue with lack of mana that all my gear is now all tank based, they may only be level 40 elites but with 30-off of them pounding on you they can grind you down in the end if you don't pay attention.

We went to Lootreaver tonight, it was scheduled to be a Kara run unless enough people turned up and NicePallyClassLeader was planning on tanking Kara with 450 defence and I guess no-where near un-crushable, lol - that would have been funny!

So we went to voidy, and what with buying gems, trying to get them cut and cooking dinner I ... err ... forgot to respec holy before the raid. I was wearing my holy gear so it must have ... err ... just not clicked that I was prot specced.

Having said that I still finished 7th on the healing charts at roughly the same level as the 3 druid healers and I was up at 4th at one point.

For some reason though we wiped 3 times on him - not a good raid at all.

Wednesday 19 December 2007

I hate Leo

Back to SSC for some more tries on Leo and we had a trialst from "Fucking Tossers" tonight, Bordemn, apparently FTs have been screwing him over so he's looking for a nicer guild. No surprise there!

First pack of mobs and I went out of mana pretty fast. Guess what? Yep - I was wearing my tanking gear again - lol.

We had a fair few tries on Leo, and even got the mofo down to where he splits at 15% but a few seconds later he enraged anyway. Guess we just need a little more DPS and no-one to die.

The deaths were less frequent though, but I had to remind RaidLeader of Combat rezzes!!

I got my Inner Demon a few times, one time I didn't notice him and he was all mixed up with someone else's demon so took a while to target him, by that time I was on half health and no time and I was MC'd.

We reset and luckily I got caught on the lip of his platform or he was reset, but anyway, suddenly I was not MCd again and could start rezzing, and survived a 10% durability hit!

I managed to get back up to 2nd on the healing meters after my tank healing earlier, with the paladin with previously really bad healing in 1st spot. Maybe my subtle question to NicePallyClassLeader along the lines of "Is Kinky Ret Specced?" her reply "No, Holy" and my response "Oh, OK" prompted her to look into his healing and found it wanting.

I knocked him off top spot eventually only to be replaced on 1st spot by NicePallyClassLeader herself, but only just!!

Leo didn't die and we timed the respawns just right, with most of the raid well into their hearthstones by the time the respawns jumped us. I bubble-hearthed and the guy who always goes on about bubble-hearthing YouthClub, mistimed his and got wasted - haha

After the raid I couldn't find any guild Jewel Crafters so will have to wait to get my gems cut.

Tank Build Update

Spent some time working out exactly what to do with which gems and where to put them and came up with 2 solutions.

1. Get 4 * +4 Int +6 Stamina Unstable Periodt gems from Ogri'la for 40 Apexis Shards
2. Get 4 * +4 Crit +6 Stamina Jagged Talasite gems from AH

Well, the Ogri'la gems, it turns out, require you to complete the 10 man escort to the north of Blades Edge. Well, that wasn't going to happen in a hurry so looks like the +Crit gems for me. +16 Crit should help get a bit more threat I suppose!!

So, off to the Auction house and I could buy everything apart from the subtle living ruby and 3 Solid Star's of Elune. Onto my JC Alt (Actually he isn't yet, but he will be when I train him up!!) to find some uncut gems. He had a living ruby and 2 Star's of Elune so all I need to do is get one more Solid Star or a Star of Elune and get the a Guildie to cut them for me.

Couldn't get that done last night because it was then time for the raid and I had to do a quick 40 gold respec back to holy!

Monday 17 December 2007

Tankadin Stamina

Figures Totally Updated - must have been pissed when I was working out the figures!

Did some mathcraft on avoidance versus stamina now that I have my Aegis shield and Phalanx bracers. I have gone from thinking "loads of extra stamina" to "absolutely no point" to this afternoon's "Worth doing some additions" to this evenings realisation that almost all the defence I can remove from the gems is given by the shield and bracers. So those gems can now be almost entirely replaced with stamina. Woot!

I think its not going to be as beneficial as at first thought on the boost to stamina front, but let me work through the maths again.

I originally thought that as I had 510 Defence I could lose 20 Defence points and replace all that with Stamina.

So back to Zen Tanking for some Maths.

Quote:



At 70, 2.4 Defense rating converts to 1 Defense skill.

So the 20 Defence Skill I can lose is made up of 2.4 * 20 = 48.0 Defence Rating.

First impressions was that I could take 48 Defence gems out and replace them all with Stamina gems.

Luckily, before I went ahead and made this purchase I realised that Defence Skill also contributes to Combined Avoidance.

By reducing Defence from 510 to 490 I will also lose 3.216% Combined avoidance. Now with the bracers and the shield I have added around 2.06% 3.0579% combined avoidance. So to regain 102.4% avoidance out of those 48 defence points I need to make up 0.1581% with dodge gems.

But, of course I'll also need to take into account that I was actually above 102.4% CA so can probably lose a fraction of that too. I think I may have been at 102.8% so that's another 0.4% to lose for a total of 0.5% more CA I can afford to drop.

Edit: having respecced back to prot my CA is now 105.8853 so this loss of 3.216% reduces my combines avoidance to 102.6693.

Having worked out the standard deviation (right phrase?) of my actual CA against my calculated CA to be about 0.1% I should assume I am about 0.15% over.

As dodge contributes 0.053% CA per point that means I need to put +2.98 dodge rating back in to make up for the loss of avoidance from reducing my defence. OK, so that's 22 dodge gems.

Dodge comes in batches of +8 so I'll have to get 3 of them, that's 24 dodge.

But now I have overkilled avoidance again with a boost of 1.272% (24 * 0.053%) as opposed to the required 1.156% and increase of 0.116


So, Defence now sorted and I want to up any shortfall with dodge, so those stats sorted.

Block next, well I don't think I have, or they even exist, any block gems. All my block rating comes directly from the gear, so I don't have to worry about that. The consequence of this is that my quandary between removing block rating or adding stamina is over. I have to add stamina! Edit: No block gems.

Sidenote: I'm not even going to worry about Agility, I'm going to assume that I don't have BoK going and I'm pretty sure that none of my gear has any + Agility on it, so any part that Agility plays in my avoidance is static and is made up from my base stats. Edit: +20 Agility on Garona's Signet Ring which is 0.8% CA so any new ring has to replace that :(

Last, but not least, well yes least actually as it's pretty crap, Parry, as this has the worst conversion ratio, 0.0423%, I want to lose any parry gems in preference for dodge and stamina.

I think I have 2 +8 parry gems, maybe 1, maybe 3. Each gem adds 0.3384% Combined avoidance. Edit: I have 2 +8 Parry gems in red gem sockets.

So losing 2 parry gems I lose 0.6768% combined avoidance, reduced by around 0.15% leeway that I have from the new armour and the loss of defence gems, so I need to put in enough dodge to make up 0.5268% CA.

1 Dodge gem ([Subtle Living Ruby] ) will add 0.424% and Defenders Tanzanite will add 0.2115% making 0.6355% well within limits! Both go in a red slot so wil replace the parry gems in the red slots of my helmet and waist.

OK, so at this point I want to replace all but +16 of my defence gems with stamina.

My slots are as follows:

Head
Red +5 spell dmg + 6 stamina
Yellow +4 defence +6 stamina
Blue +4 defence +6 stamina

Shoulder
Red +8 dodge
Yellow +8 defence

Chest
Yellow +8 defence
Blue +4 defence +6 stamina
Blue +4 defence +6 stamina

Shield
Red Nothing
Red Nothing
(newly acquired +18 stamina)

Hands
Red +8 parry (replace with +8 dodge)
Yellow +8 defence

Waist
Red +8 parry (replace with +5parry +stamina until I can lose parry)
Yellow +4 defence +6 stamina

Legs
Red +5 spell dmg + 6 stamina
Yellow +8 defence
Yellow +8 defence

Feet
Red +8 dodge
Blue +4 defence +6 stamina

I'm not going to do the comparison now because it is midnight but the gems that have the stamina on that I want are:

Red: None
Yellow: None
Green: Solid Star of Elune +12 Stamina
Orange(Red or Yellow slot): None
Green:(Yellow or Blue slot): Jagged Talasite +4 Crit +6 Stamina
Green:(Yellow or Blue slot):Enduring Talasite +4 Defence +6 Stamina
Green:(Yellow or Blue slot): (Vendor 40 Apexis Shards - Ogri'la?) +4 Int +6 Stamina
Purple:(Red or Blue slot): Sovereign Nightseye +4 Strength (aids block) +6 Stamina
Purple:(Red or Blue slot): Glowing Nightseye +5 Spell Damage +6 Stamina

NB There are other purple gem that add Stamina and Agility or Attack Power but that is white damage increase and pallies threat is unmodified for white damage so yellow damage is better. So I am going to ignore them.

OK. So tommorrow I will work our what gems I want for each slot.

So course of action:

  1. Check actual figures and work through previous calculations again
  2. Check I have no block gems
  3. Check I have 2 * +8 parry Gems
  4. Map out gem socket colours and required gems and ensure a match - In Progress
  5. Replace +48 defence with stamina or something
  6. Replace parry gems
  7. Enchant the bracers with something.
  8. Enchant shield with stamina

If my calculations have gone awry then this is going to be awfully expensive in blue gems, so I will be doing it one gem at a time and comparing the results with what I have calculated. Wish me luck!

Leo Again

Went to SSC again last night for another pop at Leo, I was late and wearing my tanking gear - oops.

So started off at 7th place on the healing meters - haha. Swapped into healing gear after the fist pull and was up to second on the healing meters within 10 minutes at 10% when we had 9 healers. the only holy priest was up at 12%. We had 9 dedicated healers and some off healing.

By the time we had cleared Leo's trash I had actually topped the holy priest and was above 14% to her 12% - Oh joy!

We had a good few attempts on Leo and I got my Inner Demon's a few times but got the down each time real quick, again - thanks Bliz for patch 2.3 increase to healer damage!!

We got Leo down to 17% at best and managed to reset the bugger a few times by running him into the tunnel - never heard of that before.

A good experience fight

Sunday 16 December 2007

Heroic Mana Tombs Daily

Popped into to do the daily quests and the 2 normal quests that were outside.

Did Pandemonius after 2 wipes cos I didn't heal tank enough. I gave up grop healing and concentrated on tank and he went down easy.

Tavarok went down 1st try and then I mined up some good stuff from his body :)

Nexus-Prince Shaffar was harder and we wiped a few times untill we actually kept the beacons down and finally got him down.

So including daily hand in that's 5 Badges of Justice as well as
Consortium Plated Legguards
Design: Lustrous Star of Elune
Warp-Scarab Brooch

Tanking Progress:
Badges of Justice: 37
Holy Dust: 9
Aldor Rep: 2672/21000 Revered
Shatar Rep: 3184/12000 Honoured
Defence: 491
Avoidance: 102.827%
Armour: 14491
HP: 11227
Mana: 4953

Auction House Gone Mad

It must be Winter Veil Festival, maybe christmas costumes, but the price of wool went through the roof on Saturday.

I normally deal in wool cloth, buying low and trying to keep 5 stacks at around 50-60 silver, but it was flying off the shelves.

It went up to 1gold 99 a 5 stack and someone was so desparate they bought a single for 60 silver and a 20 stack for 10 gold! WTF?

It seems to have returned to normal now though :(

Friday 14 December 2007

More Tanking Stats...

Well, I just bought myself Bracers of the Ancient Phalanx with 35 Badges of Justice.

I equipped them and my Ogri'la Aegis and gained a whacking 3% avoidance and 19 defence at the expense of HP and Mana. But this means that I can now drop some defence and avoidance gems in favour of stamina.

Not only that but the shield has 2 red gem slots and I can enchant the bracers, probably, with +12 stamina.

Now that I can increase my HP pool and have a full set of tanking gear I can also look to swapping out some of the parry in preference for some dodge. Unfortunately there is no block I can eliminate at the moment.

Tanking Progress:
Badges of Justice: 32
Holy Dust: 9
Aldor Rep: 2672/21000 Revered
Shatar Rep: 3184/12000 Honoured
Defence: 491
Avoidance: 102.827%
Armour: 14491
HP: 11227
Mana: 4953

SSC Lagathon

I don't know what was up with Blizzard last night, maybe they just had lots of people off sick or maybe this is just another example of their horendous incompetence, but the lag issues effecting our realm since just after patch 2.3 hit a peak last night.

I had to do the Simon Says quest in Blades Edge 3 time because I would get a lag spike and it would send 5 colours at once - yah, which order were they in? Wankers.

TiceNits was in SSC by know and her raid was plagued by DC's and lag spikes.

We ventured into SSC as well and lo and behold, lag, lag, DC, lag, DC all over the place.

Having said that we did quite well to only take 2 attempts to get Lurker down, he dropped some trinket, a ring, a recipe and Some Plate chest with healing thing, wich must hae been moer shockadin because the healing bonus is in the 50s rather than the 80s which my breastplate of the lightbinder is, it had the same armour and the same in but a little moer stam, less mp5 but had a plus crit rating too.

The lag was toobad so we quit at that point rather than trying for leo.

Wednesday 12 December 2007

More badges

Karazhan was tonight, got myself some more badges but never got round to checking my tanking stats.

Took Attumen down easily and of course Vambraces of Courage didn't drop but Stalkers Ward Bands and Gloves of Dextrous Manipulation did along with a Badge of Justice.

Then Moroes went down dropping Shadow Cloak of Dalaran and Emerald Dagger and 2 badges but didn't drop the Boots of Valiance. So a wasted night, cos we ain't getting Prince down tonight and I doubt we'll be lucky enough to get Red Riding hood again :(

So onto Maiden and I put Blessing of Sacrifice on the MT and of course didn't have too much of a problem with healing as I was always being broken out of it. Bitch dropped Barbed Choker of Discipline again and Shard of the Virtuos along wth another 2 Badges.

So we of course got Romeo and Juliet (can't bring myself to name it properly anymore) and another one-shot with Earthsoul Leggings and Masquerade Gown dropping plus 2 Badges, yes I remembered to loot both corpses this time!

Curator was easy, but did get 2 evocations off, possibly a third, can't remember as I was concentrating on keeping JoL up. He was kind enough to throw Staff of Infinite Mysteries and the Rogue, Shaman, Paladin T4 glove token into the pot along with 2 more badges.

We finished off the night with a Nightbane one-shot and got Robe of the Elder Scribe and Ferocious Swift-Kickers and 2 Badges.

So, a good Kara farm seeing as we were group 2 and only got started building the group at about 21:00 after I suggested Kara rather than Heroics!!!

My healing was of course great (sorry if that sounds egotistical) with a paladin and a druid as the other healers. In the first half hour I was on 48-49% and was hoping I'd be able to hit 50% with 2 other healers, I eventually dropped to around 42% with the druid at around 29 and the other pally floating around 20% - thats clearly not good for him :(

Well, 11 more badges at least along with 5 soul essences and various grey crap including The Stoppable Force - lol and only a 9 gold repair bill.

Tanking Progress:
Badges of Justice: 67
Holy Dust: 9
Aldor Rep: 2672/21000 Revered
Shatar Rep: 3184/12000 Honoured
Defence: 491
Avoidance: 102.827%
Armour: 14491
HP: 11227
Mana: 4953

Leoblahblah the Blind

Having wiped on Morogrim on Sunday night and learnt a bit the guild decided to do the same with Leo.

Good old Blizzard popped a server crash on us about an hour and a half before raid start and seeing as I was in an Heroic Slave Pens at the time I was locked out of the game for longer than most cos it took ages for the instance servers to come back up. As a result I couldn't sign up for the raid.

Lots of other people also had trouble getting into the raid as well, I presume their characters had been invisibly locked into groups.

After a lot of frigging around I ended up in the raid group and off we went.

Clearing to Leo was pretty painless and we got there quicker than I expected, then the fun began.

We wiped several times but got further and further each time, my main problem was my group kept getting out of range and my mouseover Divine Intervention macro didn't work (still haven't figured out why yet!)

I got my inner demon twice. The first time I didn't notice it for a few seconds as I was concentrating on healing, it was only when I moved and spotted this bugger following me that I realised it was mine. It still went down pretty quick though with the improvement in patch 2.3 adding 1/3rd of your healing as damage. The second time it went down even quicker, I suspect NPCL thought I wasn't on the ball and shouted over TeamSpeak "HL - get your demon down" and which point the cool down finished on Judgement and Holy Shock and it was on the floor before she could take a breath to shout again.

One of the wipe was caused by me; we had just about got everyone up after a wipe but there were 3 peeps that had been mind controlled and had been standing with Leo, when the mind control wore off they died immediately. I decided to try and get close enough to rez, Uh-oh - body pull and another wipe.

Well, we had another go and wiped and just as we were ready for another pop, 5 minutes after end time, we got re-spawns right in the middle of us. Bubble-Hearth and raid over.

I started the outing 4th on the healing table after a few trash but was soon in second place 2% behind an uber priest and at least 1% ahead of a shammy with NicePallyClassLeader mixing it with the druids down at the bottom of page one. This time I remembered to throw in the odd down-ranked Holy Light to ensure Light's Grace was around when needed. I even remember to pop Divine Favour and xxxx (can't remember name) once in a while!

Not a bad run, I hope that "Portugese Porkers" start using wws soon so they can see I am uber-healer!!

Post-Uncrushable - Dodge or Block

I just commented over on Zen-Tanking about his block/parry/dodge/defence comparisons because I was slightly confused as to the value on any avoidance once you have hit 120.4% avoidance and are un-crushable.

I'm a little confused now having been looking into this more and more.

Surely once you have reached 490/1 defence and are uncritable and then powered on to 102.4% CA there would be no point in putting any more effort into avoidance as crits, crushes and hits have all been pushed off the table and the only thing that can hurt you is when you block.

So presumably at 491 Def/102.4% CA you just want to keep piling on block so that you mitigate more and more of the damage that gets through?

Of course I may have completely misunderstood the whole concept!!


It has now occurred to me that even though block has twice as much value contributing to being un-crushable, damage does get through so you really want to replace as much block as you can with dodge that gives you 0% damage at the best ratio of points -> avoidance rather than taking mitigated damage.

So now that I am un-crushable and un-crittable the only thing left to do is push this mitigated damage out of the equation with pure avoidance?

Am I on the right track now?

Xmas Food >> Raiding

Monday night was yet more christmas dinner goodness so no raiding for me, although I did manage to bash out another Aldor Rep quest so that is progressing nicely. Will update my rep tally when I get home later.

I have also been doing some more research into tanking gear in light of the fact that those bloody Vambraces of Courage never bloody drop from Attumen the Huntsman in Karazhan.

I found Badge Rewards - Sidegrades? over on Zen Tanking. Thanks for that Everlight. Luckily the only badge reward I want, Bracers of the Ancient Phalanx, is the only one that is rated better on all counts than the Attumen bracers, regardless of that, I'm not even looking at an upgrade from tank to tank piece, the bracers are the only tanking pieces that I have that is not a tanking piece, it's my healing Justicar Gloves. So all is good. And as for Everlight's last comment on the Lootreaver bracers - with my DKP looking the way it is I am unlikely to be seeing those bad boys on my wrists for quite some time!!

I have still not done an overall calculation of how my tanking stats go up with the Orgrilla Aegis as opposed to my Tryptiach Shield of the Ancients, or even if they do. I will lose 1K of armour and a few block points (although the tool tip is unclear whether this is block rating or block value). But I can socket it with a couple of red gems which should boost stamina if I don't need to stack any more avoidance.

Next up there is mention of a cloak, now I have the Ironscale War Cloak which may last me a while so I may spend badges on healing stuff instead, I'll have to check the cloak stats at home later. That is if I can find and good healing upgrades from badges rewards.

Regardless, it looks like I'll be going on yet another gem spending spree, hopefully I can drop quite a bit of defence and parry (because new pieces will have more defence on them and because parry "alledgedly" can increase boss attack speed) and boost stamina and block (or is it dodge? - see next post)

Monday 10 December 2007

Morogrim Tidewalker and Uber Healing

Last night we finally fielded the second raid of the week into SSC and Target: Morogrim Tidewalker got going. This time we were over-subscribed so the DPS classes had to rolll for places, not the fairest way of doing it I suppose but, this guild does a lot of things in an arse-about-face fashion.

Luckily as usual we didn't have too many healers so I'm guaranteed a spot.

We clear our way to Morogrim with a lol-wipe and then a body pull on Morogrim himself but luckily we have DI's a plenty and soulstones thrown out for good measure.

We give him a few goes and each go gets better and better, but we didn't really get much progress on him. I suggested that we really need a pally tanking the murloc adds, I would be perfect, swap on some tanking gear and AoE tank, but alas we didn't have enough healers as it was, so we just took them on ad-hoc.

It wasn't the murlocs that wiped us anyway, it was the spike damage on the main tank, he died, we all died. Not quite the Uber Healing as mentioned in the post title, but I'll get on to that...

What was great was that for the first time ever I remembered to reset Omen and I could see that right up until the end I was top of the healing meter and then I only dropped by 0.4% into second spot to NicePallyClassLeader.

Looking at the data it also looked like NPCL was spamming Holy Light on the MT, so that is why she overtook me. I asked her if she was going OOM and indeed she was and was having to chug mana pots, whereas I was still on 50-75% having used no mana pots and kept up almost 100% constant FoL on MT and across the whole raid.

So if I throw in the odd Holy Light then I will knock her off the top spot again and will still maintain masses of mana to ensure I can get through the whole fight.

I suspect when we survive longer on him that NPCL will go OOM and have pots on cooldown so my mana efficiency will put me back on top spot anyway.

I am going to keep a closer eye on those healing meters from now on. Yes, they can have the same effect as damage meters so I am not letting on to anyone that I'm looking at it and starting a healing war that may actually damage the raid healing.

What was even better was when I checked the over-heal report, which can indicate healing meter chasing, and whilst I was top of the actual healing, my over-heal was at 8-ish % and down at 5th position, with NPCL up at first.

I really am getting to be a bloody good healer...and modest with it - hehe!!

When I was raiding with "Fucking Tossers" I was plagued with being 4th or 5th on the healing and suffered chronic over-heal. I haven't really got much more bonus healing, although I am now on 1705 and with epic orange gem and meta gem hope to boost that to 1725, but what I have got is Grid, a great addon that I have mentioned before, but have to mention again.

The name plates are compatible with my mouse over healing macros and the green dot really does seem to indicate that someone is being healed, and that is what has cut my overheal down, and that is all good for the raid.

Enough of this disjointed blog post, I have another Christmas Party tonight so no raiding, but I may get some more Aldor rep done.

Badge of Justice Purchases

What with the gem problem I have with my Justicar Headguard it occurred to me that I could spend some of my badges on a BoJ piece.

I'm wearing Kara Epic Mail boots and belt and a blue cloak and trinket. I can hopefully get either Red Riding Hoods cloak or Prince's Stainless Cloak and of course Boots of Valiance. So I checked out trinkets and Plate Belts.

Now, trinkets can't be socketed and none jumped out at me anyway so it's the belt.

I am pretty sure there are no plate healing belts in Karazhan so this would be the ideal BoJ purchase.

So I get looking for epic plate healing belts with gem sockets, the plan being so that I can socket an orange epic gem in them giving three benefits.

1. Upgrade to Plate
2. More healing from Orange Epic Gem
3. Orange Epic Gem will activate the Meta Gem

Guess what, there are quite a few epic plate belts but none are specifically healing, there was tanking, ret, tank/ret. There may have been one healing and spell damage, but that was lower healing than the one I already have, so that would be a backward step.

Looks like I'm gonna have to look elsewhere for my meta gem activation, or bite the bullet and over-write the purple epic gem I already put in the headpiece.

Aldor and Sha'tar Rep...

Saturday night and some of Sunday was spent progressing the aldor rep quests lines. I got the Shadowmoon and Nagrad quests done up to the stage where I need to go to Arcatraz to do Seer Udalo.

Also got 3 quests from A'tal, or whatever his name is, in Shattrath to do three different Heroic's to prove allegiance to the Sha'tar, along with some other heroic quests I have I can see myself doing quite a lot of heroics in the near future.

Saturday 8 December 2007

Progressing the Aldor Rep

Spent most of today on the Aldor rep quests and also handed in an Auchenai Crypts quest and got me some more Sha'tar rep.

So Aldor = 4762/21000 Revered
and Sha'tar = 3745/12000 Honoured

We were supposed to finish Karazhan tonight but couldn't get any tanks and if I respecced then we wouldn't have enough healers :(

So, I'm gonna do some more Aldor rep quests now then pop onto PS the Rogue and do some imba damage to poor unsuspecting mobs.

Friday 7 December 2007

Heroic Sethekk Halls

Did a guild run through Heroic Sethekk Halls this afternoon for the daily quest, did it with only 2 wipes. Dodgy trash pull half way through and then I didn't know about the end boss's Arcane Explosion thing, so died. I was only healer so everyone went down eventually.

Not a bad run though as I came out with another 3 Badges of Justice, Deathforge Girdle and Ravenclaw Band for my Ret build. I'm sure I need the ring, not quite so sure about the leggings though, I'm pretty sure I have been using Belt of the Tracker for that build.

When we got out the mage tailor offered to make me Golden Spellthread with the Primal Nether we got. So I "acquired" 10 Primal Lifes and now I have even more healing on Justicar Leggings :)

And of course the quest hand in gave me another 2 Badges of Justice.

Tanking Progress:
Badges of Justice: 56
Holy Dust: 9
Aldor Rep: 2672/21000 Revered
Shatar Rep: 3184/12000 Honoured
Defence: 491
Avoidance: 102.827%
Armour: 14491
HP: 11227
Mana: 4953

Aldor rep

Had a christmas party to go to last night so no raiding.

Today I have decided I am fed up with slowly grinding Aldor rep whilst doing other things so I spent 160 gold to buy enough fel armaments for 2 lots of epic shoulder enchants. 1 tanking and 1 healing and enough Marks of Sargeras to get to revered.

Now I'm going to do all the rep quests and see how many more Marks of Sargeras I need after that. By my calculations once I've done all the rep quests (and with 10% human rep bonus) I'll need to buy 360 marks, and on my server they go for about 1 gold each.

360 Gold and some questing and I will finally be exalted with Aldor.

This is just on HolyWarrior you understand, still gotta worry about EvilBastard and what he is going to do

Thursday 6 December 2007

Karayawn

Did Karazhan again last night, sarting to get a bit boring now with Attumen never dropping Vambraces of Courage, Moroes never dropping Boots of Valiance and being denied red Riding Hood's Cloak ... have I mentioned that before? And we rarely get as far as Prince so still short on his loot.

But we 1-shotted Attumen and got: 1 Badge of Justice, Stalkers War Bands and Gloves of Saintly Blessing.

On clearing trash we got a random drop of Inferno Waist Cord.

We the gave Moroes a hard time after a quick reset because we pulled him while clearing trash, after that we 1-shotted him too for: 2 Badges of Justice, Shadow Cloak of Dalaran and Broach of Unquenchable Fury.

Then another Inferno Waist Cord dropped while clearing more trash before we got to Opera and pulled the Romeo and Juliet fight. we had three rogues and they still managed to fail to sto Juliet healing so once healers got down to zero mana we wiped. We returned and gave them a good kicking and got: 1 Badge of Justice, Despair and Libram of Souls Redeemed.

Wierd, though, the Crone gave us 2 Badges of Justice last week so I was miffed to only get 1, maybe youhave to loot Juliet as well, I'm sure se didn't have loot sparklies above her though.

Anyway, next came Curator who was one shotted before he could even stat his second evocation - woot, and for our troubles: Dragon-Quake Shoulders, T4 token for paladins, rogues and shamans (I have all 3 sets) and 2 Badges of Justice.

Finally we go and take out Shade of Aran, I'm taken out about half way through but have a soulstone up and then we get him down to about 5% and lose the tanks and then he runs around 1 shotting everyone, he has about 1 or 2% left and there is one rogue left - he saves the day and gets him down :)

Somewhere along the line I had been soulstoned again, either it was lucky cooldown timing or we had 2 warlocks, I can't remember. But anyway, he drops Steelspine Faceguard, Tirisfal Wand of Ascendancy and 2 Badges of Justice.

We ran half a hour over rad time but worth it for the badges.

I'm not sure where I picked it up from but my Aldor and Sha'tar reps have increased slightly. Aldor has gone up by 165 (150 + 10% human bonus?) and Sha'tar has increased by 437 (Can't figure that one out!!).

Tanking Progress:
Badges of Justice: 51
Holy Dust: 9
Aldor Rep: 7989/12000 Honoured
Shatar Rep: 3184/12000 Honoured
Defence: 491
Avoidance: 102.827%
Armour: 14491
HP: 11227
Mana: 4953

Wednesday 5 December 2007

Login when you sign for raid ffs

Last night's raid was supposed to be SSC again. Target: Tidewalker.

What happened? well, not enough sign ups to start with (16 an hour before raid time), but that's not usually an issue because a lot of the guild don't bother signing up.

But that was combined with the fact that people who had signed up didn't even log on till at least half an hour after raid start; if at all.

Result: Maximum of 16 people in the raid.

And to make matters worse, of these 16 people, there were not enough that even wanted to make a Karazhan run to clear it by getting Netherspite and Illhoof down.

This guild, "Portugese Porkers", is really starting to piss me off. People don't sign for raids so we never know if we have enough for 25 mans beforehand = Target:Whatever! People not logging on when they have signed for a raid. People arriving late and not ready.

I'm not even going to mention the time when I won the roll on Red Riding Hoods Cloak with a roll of 93 and was told I couldn't have it - Bastards, oops I have mentioned it.

I am constantly amazed that this guild has gotten anywhere, let alone the ease with which the likes of voidy and lurker drop when people actually get organised and put their mind to it.

Oh well, got to sit in front of the telly with GF and watch our fave TV programme as she wasn't raiding either. Then I bashed out a few dailies before heading to bedroom land to grind some gf rep.

Tuesday 4 December 2007

Some Pallies Give Us a Bad Name

ZOMFG - Soooo funny

Thanks to Paladin Schmaladin for this. :)

What happened to my 3K FoLs?

Last night I knocked out a batch of daily quests including the mana berry collecting cooking quest to make up for the weekends repair bills and then into ZA as part of 3 man healer team (2 pallies and shammie).

We missed out on the 20 minutes to down Bear Boss Nalarakk by about 30 seconds. We started the fight with about 7 minutes left, I think, and he was down to about 10% with 2 mins left and I went in and JoL, Consecrate and Holy Shock and hit him with my big hammer in between healing but he just would not die. Grrrr. But I got a badge of justice out of him I suppose.

It was decided we didn't have enough AoE for the dragon and bird bosses is it? So we went onto the Halazzi the lynx boss, on the way I threw some consecrations out on the packs of wolves that were being multi tanked and this all seemed to go pretty well with me only dawing aggro once, which I bubble out of. The other pallyhealer was also managing to drag aggro from random trolls, a quick Hammer of Justice (from me ?!?! why?) soon dropped him aggro and allowed the tank time to get back on him.

So onto the Lynx and a quick pep talk beforehand and straight in. 10 Seconds later ... "Err I forgot to tell you guys about this thing the boss does" ... Wipe!

Well that was the first and only wipe of the evening and after that he went down pretty standard, with me focusing on MT and a little raid healing and cleansing.

I have put Grid on as my raid frames now and I like it lots, I think it tells you when someone is being attacked (red dot in top left hand corner) and being healed (green dot in bottom left hand corner) but I will need to investigate this further. It allows my mouseover healing macro to work so this is good and it also shows when someone is poisoned so this was super helpful.

The Lynx dropped some plate dps boots which no-one else wanted so I got them and also got 2 Badges of Justice.

Skullshatter Warboots

But I never once saw a 3K FoL crit :( the best I got was 2780 I think. Maybe I had better and/or more buffs when in SSC

Tanking Progress:
Badges of Justice: 43
Holy Dust: 9
Aldor Rep: 7824/12000 Honoured
Shatar Rep: 2747/12000 Honoured
Defence: 491
Avoidance: 102.827%
Armour: 14491
HP: 11227
Mana: 4953

Monday 3 December 2007

Lurker Kill and 3K FoLs

Last nights raid went to Serpentshrine Cavern for Lurker.

I've fought him once and died lots but the guild pretty much has him on farm.

I was doing pretty well, but yet again, even though I was safely in the water for the spout I was still getting hit by it, it's bloody annoying.

But we got him down on the third attempt where I had been dead for most of fight. Just once I would like to be survive an encounter with him.

Of course there was no loot for me, but at least my DKP is building up, so when something does drop I may have enough points to win it.

It must be the new helmet and gems socketed in it, combined with lots of raid buffs; but I was quite regularly getting 3K Flash of Light crits - woot!! I wasn't even eating Golden Fish Sticks, I wonder if I'll get 3100 FoL Crits when eating them. Now I really am uber-healy-pally :)

First Time in Underbog

I am going to tidy up this post soon ... honest!

Having spent the morning levelling PS and waiting for TiceNits to come online, she finally arrives and asks if I want to help power level her hunter FuglyNelf. I remind her that we were going to go Underbog to bang out some quests clogging up the quest logs.

She accedes and we decide we may as well make it a heroic run, but she won't PUG it.

I'll finish this later but as reminders to myself

Iodine the rogue from FTs and Ticenits
Horizon the Feral Druid from PPs
LFg mage, druid or shammy - took the shammy GodAwfulShammyTwat

graphics crash - couldn't get back on for ages
buttons, heal macro doesn't mouseover standard party frame wiped group
shammy asked if Iodine had threat meter - cheek!

Got first boss down on second try
got frond for quest
wipe after wipe
gettiong sanguine hibiscus for quest not picked up yet
2nd boss Gahz'an - pain, swipes with tail and shammy kept going in water. spits acid to front, i kept dying
Iodine left and was replaced IceMaiden the mage from PPs
TiceNits had to get ready for raid and was replaced by BlackBag the Rogue from PPs

finally got Gaz down and he drops the last Sanguine Hibiscus i need

Now shammy keeps getting aggro on way to third boss - lol - threat meter?

Found 3rd lost guy for lost in Action quest

Got to 3rd boss. Shammy dies pretty fast, tank dies as boss dies and the bear pet is on full health with me, rogue and mage left.

Mage kittes it around, rogue keeps getting stunned, so mage tanking with me spamming heals and keeping JoL up. And we get him down to 30% - just where he goes back to being NPC Claw, so I can speak to him and complete Lost in Action.

Final Boss goes down pretty quick and I get a nice tanking trinket and the primal nether to sell cos noone wanted it but i can't use it.

4 Badges and tanking trinket!

Tanking Progress:
Badges of Justice: 40
Holy Dust: 9
Aldor Rep: 7824/12000 Honoured
Shatar Rep: 2747/12000 Honoured
Defence: 491
Avoidance: 102.827%
Armour: 14491
HP: 11227
Mana: 4953

PS the Rogue Update

I still haven't started re-levelling EvilBastard the Warlock yet but I did try to get some work done on PS yesterday, problem was I was on my lappy and it kept crashing again :(

I moved to a cooler room and the crashed stopped but the lag was worse, maybe I'm gonna have to re-locate the wireless router :(

But I did manage to rep up Timbermaw hold and head through to Everlook and progress the Linkens Boomerang quest line and follow up in Feralas and then headed over to Blasted lands to get some demon killing done for Razelikh quest chain.

I dinged 56 but this was frustrating to start off with as lots of crashes at most in-opportune moments and getting back in to find dead rogue :(

Saturday 1 December 2007

Holy Paladin Gem Problems

Last night I started looking at socketting my shiny new Tier 4 Helm, its got a meta slot and a red slot.

But first I threw the Lesser Arcanum of Rumination on it which I've been saving for this for ages, and also because my Sha'tar rep is not enough for the grea head enchant, or is it Aldor rep? who knows :)

So lets look to socketing. I picked up Royal Tanzanite last week so that should be ideal. In it goes.

Off to the auction house to look for meta gems ... Nothing really useful and what there was required a certain number of this colour gem and that colour gem. Hmmm a problem here; most of my gear is Karazhan healing epics and guess what, not one single item has a gem socket :(

So, I woke up this morning and straight onto the Auction House and found this little beauty for 120 gold (Ouch! Full set of dailies need to recoup that) Bracing Earthstorm Diamond.

Now for some reason I though the Royal Tanzanite was an orange gem, ie red and yellow, which would meet the stupid requirements of "more red than blue gems" and "more yellow than blue gems", hmmm, It's purple, so it's back to square 1. I need an Orange gem to activate the meta.

I have 2 choices both of which include getting an orange gem.

1) Get a piece of gear with a red or yellow slot and socket an orange gem I don't have.
2) Replace the Royal Tanzanite with an orange gem I don't have.

ARRRRRGGGGGGGG!!!!

Tanking Shield and more

Last night I got Ogri'la Aegis so next time I respec to protection I should be able to replace some parry gems with stamina. At the same time i may also replace all parry gems with dodge in case parrying and attack can increase a bosses attack speed as some people have been musing upon.

I have enough Badges of Justice now to buy more gear as well. But I am unsure whether to buy up tanking bracers or get some more healing gear.

After the head piece my only deficiencies in healing gear are

Cloak: Cloak of Whispering Shells
Belt (mail): Belt of Gale Force
Feet (mail): Windshear Boots
Trinket: Scarab of the Infinite Cycle