World of Warcraft XIII: Even Aspects Get Nerfed

[Zeb The Troll]

I was skimming over it when you mentioned it and it would seem that much like Rawr, it's highly dependent on the specific module being updated and maintained. It may help a beginner, but I imagine EJ is still a much better resource for learning and mastering your rotation.

In my experience, EJ is not what it used to be. It's not being updated with any regularity and the information is so dated as to be practically useless. At least for fire mages.

[Gryffon]

Yeah, it looks like generally you don't use Mind Spike. Unless you want to wipe your DoTs for specific reasons. Also it appears that 4t13 provides you a reason to use Mind Spike.

How to use the Tier 13 4-piece set bonus.

Also at the same site:

Kilee's 4.3 Shadow Priest Guide

I skimmed it. However, having never played a Shadow Priest, I can't say much to how good the information is.

[Gryffon]

In my experience, EJ is not what it used to be. It's not being updated with any regularity and the information is so dated as to be practically useless. At least for fire mages.

Well, Fire Mages haven't been updated since April of last year. A lot of other classes definitely have 4.3 updates though, so in this case, it may just be the mages are lacking.

[The Linker]

You think correctly, in the tower just outside Theramore. One of the trophies I have banked is the ring from her quest series from Vanilla.

Err, she's been in the tower in the center of Theramore as long as I've been playing. Why would she be situated outside of the city she's ruling over?

[TheEmerged]

Bad memory, I guess.

[Karoht]

Err, she's been in the tower in the center of Theramore as long as I've been playing. Why would she be situated outside of the city she's ruling over?

The same reason Thrall was meeting her outside of Razor Hill
Yes, that's only in books, I know, you don't see Thrall there in game.
I mean, if she's going to meet with your character in secret, she isn't likely going to do it inside her tower, give the lass some credit.

[The Linker]

I was under the impression we were talking about where she normally just hangs around. I know characters travel around as part of quests, yes, but she's not permanently situated in 'secret meeting place'.

[Zeb The Troll]

Well, Fire Mages haven't been updated since April of last year. A lot of other classes definitely have 4.3 updates though, so in this case, it may just be the mages are lacking.

Oh, but they have. They've been nerfed and buffed both since Cata launched and each of those "tweaks" has caused a re-think of what's most critical stat wise. One of my guild mates is even having success prioritizing Mastery higher than "last". EJ still says to prioritize Crit above all else, even though it's demonstrably better to get haste to a break point and then go crit, but that's not mentioned or even touched on last time I bothered to check there (or maybe it was mentioned but the break points were considered unreachable at the time and what they are wasn't listed). I'd bet it still recommends scorch weaving for mana management even though a) it's less important in current raid gear, and b) there are better ways to manage it in my view.

[Gryffon]

Sorry, I meant that no one on EJ has updated them, it looks like the maintainers for at least the Fire Mage thread have vamoosed.

[Derjuin]

I have a pretty simple End of Cata wishlist, now that I've trimmed it up a bit.

Get a Cataclysmic Gladiator weapon.

Wishlist complete! After some very rudimentary testing I decided the sword looked the spiffiest and nabbed it.

Now to get the rest of the set . I only picked up the belt, cloak and a ring on the way to 7800 Conquest points.

[Leon]

Err, she's been in the tower in the center of Theramore as long as I've been playing. Why would she be situated outside of the city she's ruling over?

She used to appear at a Tower outside of Theramore for a quest.

[Zeb The Troll]

Sorry, I meant that no one on EJ has updated them, it looks like the maintainers for at least the Fire Mage thread have vamoosed.

Yeah, what you meant was explained to me long after I'd made the post. Too bad, too. When it was current it was really good information all summed up in one place. Glad to hear that they're not all rotting on the vine like that.

[Karoht]

H Zonozz. We finally survived to the 4th black phase. But not enough DPS uptime on boss meant we came in very very very far from what we need. We're doing 7-5-5 but now going to 7-7-5 to see if that helps. In my opinion, the DPS just are not getting enough uptime on the boss. I have no idea how we can speed up killing the tentacles on black phase to increase that time, beyond a few tricks like DoTing up while we kill tentacles. We're already tanking the boss on the Claw so that cleave/splash damage will affect both. I'm also throwing Thorns on the tank constantly, and using my Shrooms on the Claw/Boss every phase.

Oh well, we're moved on to H Hagara now. For only an hour of pulls last night we had a very promising Ice Phase, and we haven't lost our touch with Lightning or normal phase. I'm confident we will get her tonight.

Firelands farming on Sunday/Monday. Possible H Nefarian around then as well.

[Ivellius]

I think Jaina was around since vanilla, I think. Rexxar was also around since Vanilla, but I think he was removed as a fightable boss in Cata.

What kind of project are you doing? It sounds interesting.

I was really meaning have they always been tagged as "boss" characters, but yeah, that's fine. If I'm not mistaken, Rexxar's been in Outland since the Burning Crusade hit.

The project's nothing too spectacular, just a content analysis (gender, race, and role) of their website screenshots and a secondary gender analysis of each faction's "boss" characters (just to have something else to throw on there). Last semester I did some review of existing WoW avatar research, focusing on player/avatar gender statistics. (If anyone cares, according to the most recent statistics a female avatar is about 50% likely to be a girl, while a male avatar is something like 95% likely to be a guy. Women now make up close to a third of WoW players in the U.S., interestingly enough.) The boss character analysis is really just supporting one of my other points. Here's some of the research hypotheses I have going into it.

Hypothesis #1: Male characters will be more common than female characters.
• The incidence of female characters will increase in the more recent expansions.

Hypothesis #2: “Attractive” characters will be more common than “unattractive” ones.
• The Alliance will be represented more than the Horde.
• Most characters will be human, night elf, or blood elf.
• Humans, night elves, draenei, and blood elves will be more likely to be female than other races.
• Horde representation will increase following BC because of the blood elves.

Hypothesis #3: Female characters will be relegated to more supportive roles than male characters.
• Male characters will more often be “tanks.”
• Female characters will most often be healers or ranged damage.

[Expf]

H Zonozz. We finally survived to the 4th black phase. But not enough DPS uptime on boss meant we came in very very very far from what we need. We're doing 7-5-5 but now going to 7-7-5 to see if that helps. In my opinion, the DPS just are not getting enough uptime on the boss. I have no idea how we can speed up killing the tentacles on black phase to increase that time, beyond a few tricks like DoTing up while we kill tentacles. We're already tanking the boss on the Claw so that cleave/splash damage will affect both. I'm also throwing Thorns on the tank constantly, and using my Shrooms on the Claw/Boss every phase.

Just curious, are you killing the adds in the 4th black phase or just nuking the boss with Hero/BL?

[Karoht]

Just curious, are you killing the adds in the 4th black phase or just nuking the boss with Hero/BL?

Kill adds (going left to right in a large pack) on Black 1-3, Ignoring adds and Bloodlusting on 4th, still taking the boss over the Claw.

[Expf]

Kill adds (going left to right in a large pack) on Black 1-3, Ignoring adds and Bloodlusting on 4th, still taking the boss over the Claw.

How much health (in %) does he have left when Berzerk occurred in your best attempt? How many melee do you have?

Having the melee return to the boss once they finish killing their add assignments might help. Ideally, each ranged should have specific add assignments, so multiple ranged don't "overkill" a single add due to their low health; this also means that they can return to the boss as soon as they are done with their assignment(s). By the time the black phase is over, most of the DPS should have already returned to the boss. One (or sometimes 2) ranged will finish off the remaining 1 or 2 adds (usually the most distant ones to the right of the claw), and hopefully return before orb bounces the 3rd time. Some more practice would definitely help: part of it just comes with getting used to switching off the boss, killing the adds, and going back to the boss as quickly as possible.

[Karoht]

How much health (in %) does he have left when Berzerk occurred in your best attempt? How many melee do you have?

17 million give or take.

Having the melee return to the boss once they finish killing their add assignments might help. Ideally, each ranged should have specific add assignments, so multiple ranged don't "overkill" a single add due to their low health; this also means that they can return to the boss as soon as they are done with their assignment(s). By the time the black phase is over, most of the DPS should have already returned to the boss. One (or sometimes 2) ranged will finish off the remaining 1 or 2 adds (usually the most distant ones to the right of the claw), and hopefully return before orb bounces the 3rd time. Some more practice would definitely help: part of it just comes with getting used to switching off the boss, killing the adds, and going back to the boss as quickly as possible.

That basically describes what we are doing. The DPS were rather slow getting back to the boss. I think the range weren't back on the boss until at least the 3rd or 4th bounce. Obviously this is an issue. The melee I think are peeling off correctly, we've got an officer watching that, no complaints thus far.
We can survive it, but our Time On Target is just crap at the moment.

We got H Hagara down to 3 million last night. We're going to spend all of next week on her rather than split our focus up.

[Alarra]

Any interest in getting something together tomorrow maybe? I think it'd be fun to play with a fair few of you. I know we're currently locked to FL, but it might be fun to do some t11 heroics/achievements? Thoughts?

[Shishnarfne]

H Zon'ozz down. Rest of night spent wiping on H Hagara... we need to figure out how to manage lightning phase and ice phase without everybody dying.

I think that since we only bring one melee (combat rogue), it made the black phase significantly easier. And we had the DPS assignments adjusted to try to speed up killing the eyestalks as smoothly as possible.

This makes us officially the number two alliance side guild for progression (we can tie the leader if we down H Hagara Monday night, since I don't think they'll get Blackhorn this lockout), and about 5-7 overall on Moon Guard. (Yes, that Moon Guard. Please stay out of Goldshire for the sake of my sanity.)

We'll probably only have time for a few pulls on Heroic before we decide to focus on clearing the rest of the raid (H Ultraxxion, though, naturally) for more loot, more gem clusters for our rogue, and maybe a chance to swap in a few alts that might be useful later (our disc priest has a resto shaman alt that he'd like to have available for some of the fights).

[Zherog]

Any interest in getting something together tomorrow maybe? I think it'd be fun to play with a fair few of you. I know we're currently locked to FL, but it might be fun to do some t11 heroics/achievements? Thoughts?

Depends entirely on time. Evening is generally better for me. Especially tomorrow since I have practice in the afternoon with my daughter's basketball team.

[TheEmerged]

So, pretty serious update to how stats will work in Mists.

http://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/2...-stat-changes/

[Karoht]

My vote would be BoT first for Heroics and Achievements. It's an easy enough starting place. I would recommend Achievements first, as they give you some idea as to what you will be facing in the Heroics. IE-Killing the adds in the Twilight Realm for the achievement on normal gives you an idea of what you'll have to do on heroic.

A few Heroic Modes I would recommend initially are:
-Halfus. Mostly harder on tanks, DPS follows a kill order and doesn't touch the boss until that kill order is done.
-Valiona/Theralion. Just need a DPS and a healer to hit up Twilight Realm and go kill stuff, nearly identical to the achievement
-Chimaeron. Almost no change to healing, slight timing issue for last phase, DPS burn/kite for last phase as normal.
-Atramedes.There's a big trick to this on heroic. And it's... don't get hit by sound. The Achievement? Don't get your sound bar above 50. Easy stuff. No really, thats it. Other than that, it's just a tighter DPS check. Easily two healed or even solo healed.
-Maloriak. New phase, black phase, don't stand in stuff, don't position puddles poorly. Really not hard, adds die easy with 378 or better gear.
-Cho'Gall. Extra target to DPS down on normal phase, extra target to manage on burn phase. Otherwise it's pretty much the same, it is imperitive that no one take Corruption at all until the last phase.

All the rest are a huge pain in the bottom. Al'Akir is actually rather brutal on heroic. Sinestra really wasn't that bad, it just takes solid 'dance' skills.

[Zeb The Troll]

Depends entirely on time. Evening is generally better for me. Especially tomorrow since I have practice in the afternoon with my daughter's basketball team.

Evenings are typically better for us too. What time are we talking?

@Karoht - thanks for the tips! You're coming, right?

[Zherog]

Evenings are typically better for us too. What time are we talking?

I can be on as early as about 7:30 eastern, though I'd need a 10 minute (give or take) break around 9:30 or so for bedtime tucking in with the rug rats.

[Gryffon]

The Diva and I are childless for the majority of the weekend and would probably enjoy some WoW time with friends.

[Karoht]

Evenings are typically better for us too. What time are we talking?

@Karoht - thanks for the tips! You're coming, right?

Set a time, I'll see what I can do. Also, you have my Real ID now.

[Zeb The Troll]

I can be on as early as about 7:30 eastern, though I'd need a 10 minute (give or take) break around 9:30 or so for bedtime tucking in with the rug rats.

We normally start things around 8PM, so that's no problem, and lots of us are family folks so ten minutes for bedtime, during a fun run, shouldn't be an issue.

The Diva and I are childless for the majority of the weekend and would probably enjoy some WoW time with friends.

Sweet!

Set a time, I'll see what I can do. Also, you have my Real ID now.

So, how's 8PM Eastern? And I've already sent you the friend request.

[Karoht]

8pm eastern is about 4-5pm my time I think. Give or take. On a Saturday? That shouldn't be an issue. I might be going to see a movie around that time, I might not. The film in question is Ghost Rider.
So I would totally love to not go see that film and hang out with you guys instead. And you know, maybe kill some bosses or something. Yeah, that would be alright.

[Expf]

Shame though but I don't happen to have any Horde character at 85. :(