Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Priest specs for arena - Holy/Discipline


The usual spec for a healing priest is 28 discipline / 33 holy because it can be used for all brackets and make it hard to kill the priest. It can be used for PvE without losing much healing and efficiency. Deep discipline specs are also viable to heal but they're better for 2v2 than other brackets. It's not very good for PvE and requires +damage gear to get the most of it. I'll post about other specs later.

Starting from discipline.
  • Unbreakable Will - Get it, no need to explain.
  • Silent Resolve - This may prevent other priests and shamans to dispel some of your buffs. The more time and mana they waste dispelling the better. It's also helps for PvE.
  • Improved PW:F and Improved PW:S - Some people get this, I don't think it's good enough. You can put some points here and remove points from Silent Resolve.
  • Martyrdom - Considering they'll focus fire on you half of the games and mostly by warriors and rogues, this is a good talent.
  • Absolution - There're 2 things a holy priest can do in arena other than healing, dispel and mana burn (well.. we can try to run too..). And you want to dispel HoTs, shields, Blessing of Freedom and all their buffs. Mass dispel must be dispelled fast if you go against a paladin. So.. get this.
  • Inner Focus - You get OOM, this helps. It's good for a one point talent.
  • Meditation - No good for arena because we don't have enough spirit with arena gear to make it worth. BUT if you play some PvE you'll want it. I get it so I can raid without problems.
  • Improved Inner Fire - Increases armor against melee and ranged damage. It's 474 more armor (I think it's ~4% less damage). It's good for PvP, useless for PvE most of time. If you only play arena, get this.
  • Mental Agility - Must have, most of your spells are instants, including: Renew, PW:S, PoM, Dispel, Shadowfiend, SW:D and SW:P.
  • Improved Mana Burn - Another must have. In long games mana is what makes the difference. Drain their healer's mana and your team wins.
  • Mental Strength - Not good enough. With 8.5k mana this gives 850 mana and it's a 5 points talent. Mental Agility is better.
  • Divine Spirit - Another buff for the other team to dispel and will help you regen a bit of mana. If you already got Meditation, get this.
  • Improved Divine Spirit - Only useful for raids (even for raids I wouldn't get it), completely useless for arenas where not even a priest has enough spirit.
  • Focused Power - You need this to dispel paladin's bubble and mage's ice block. Considering the amount of paladins on all brackets...
Holy tree
  • Healing Focus and Improved Renew - Get them.
  • Holy Specialization - I get 5 points here, but you can't rely on crits, most people just get enough here to get talents lower in the tree.
  • Spell Warding - Good talent, not a must have but it's nice to have.
  • Divine Fury - Must have for PvP and PvE. Some says you never use Greater Heal on arenas, but this isn't true. I use it a lot because of it's mana efficiency.
  • Holy Nova - I just get this to kill snakes from hunter's trap. You can also spam rank1 of this against stealthed opponents.
  • Blessed Recovery and Inspiration - As holy specialization, you get this to get other talents. Some people get one point on each just for the proc, another buff for dispel.
  • Improved Healing - Same as Divine Fury.
  • Healing Prayers - You'll use PoM a lot, so this one is good but I don't see as a must have.
  • Spirit of Redemption - Ah.. improved death. This one is really good for PvP. Free heals after you die can win games especially against DPS only teams on 2v2 and 3v3.
  • Spiritual Guidance - Don't get this for PvP. Even for PvE you need a LOT of spirit to make this worth.
  • Spiritual Healing - The best talent to get so you can reach Blessed Resilience and 10% healing is really nice to have.
  • Surge of Light - Waste of talent to get this. You don't have enough crit to get this to work and discipline talents are better.
  • Lightwell - Lolwell... completely useless talent. IF they eventually change this so it doesn't cancel the effect when you get hit, this will be useful with improved death (I never got this, so I'm not sure you can cast this with improved death).
  • Blessed Resilience - The reason holy tree is better than discipline tree even for PvP. If you do arena, get this one.
  • Holy Concentration - You don't have points to spend here... It's a good talent though.
  • Empowered Healing - Gives +200 healing to your Greater Heal and +100 healing to your Flash/Binding Heal if you have +1k heal. To get it you need 3 more points in holy. This talent is not worth for PvP, it scales with +heal and you don't have enough when you use your sockets for +stamina and +resilience gems.
  • Circle of Healing - Some people get Circle of Healing for PvP. I tried it when I was lvl60 and it's good. CoH is a nice spamable spell that is probably better than PoM (with +1k heal it should heal for good 900 and cost 450mana). But it has 2 problems, 15 feet area is too small and 0.5sec Mass Dispel is better than CoH and Empowered Healing. With PoM I don't think you really need it.
How to play with this spec depends on your team and bracket. For 2v2 and 3v3 and you're the only healer, you'll probably heal more than anything else, but this also depends on your team style and the opposing team matrix. Defensive games needs more heals and defensive dispels. You should also stay back and keep yourself out of their line of sight if possible (so.. less fear). Offensive games requires offensive dispels and mana burn, you also need to fear more. Pillars are your friends, use them. Be aware that, if your team's target is targetting you, you kite him, you also kite your team. Mana burn should be used against healers and shadow priests, but mages and hunters are good too. Drink when possible and have your team pets on healers so they can't drink. Shadowfiend should be used when you get to ~50% mana, so it also helps with DPS.

It's usually a healer task to kill totems when you go against shamans (unless you're their primary target and have to kite them). Use melee weapon to kill totems (usually grounding, tremor first then windfury), it's faster and don't get global cooldown (use wand for earthbind or far away totems). Also try to avoid hunters LOS ALWAYS. Viper sting makes you useless. Try to pay attention to Blessing of Freedom and bubble if they have a paladin. Blessing of Freedom is one of the reason you should keep their warrior without buffs.

For 5v5, unless you're the main healer, keep dispelling and mana burning. ALWAYS keep a PoM up. Kiting is a lot harder here if not impossible for some games. Don't get on their warrior LOS. Without intercept or rogue it's usually hard to get the priest. Defensive dispels are usually for CC, dispelling DOTs only after dispelling the other team. A mage can use Spell Steal if they know what they'll steal. This is why my dispels are slower to remove sheep when I'm on a 5v5, usually I'm paying attention to opponents bars/movements, differently from 2v2 and 3v3 where I try to pay attention to my team bars/movements.

Saturday, July 14, 2007

Guild ranking observation and Zul'Aman

I really liked WowJutsu. Looking at guild ranking I can see that few people can really play all the end game content.

A lot of guilds can see SSC (Serpentshrine Caverns) and The Eye but when you start looking for Mount Hyjal and Black Temple... Today I counted 109 guilds (from US servers, WowJutsu doesn't scan EU armory yet) that can kill a boss in any of those 2 raid instances. Considering that Nihilum killed all the bosses from BT on the first week after the patch release this is really... how can I say... too few.

Even with the raid's size reduction, the guilds that can see the end game content are still only a few. The way it's now, non-hardcore guilds will never be able to see everything (like few people really killed something in Naxx). But I have high expectations for Zul'Aman. I think instances like Zul'Aman where you can get different loot if you do something more than killing the bosses are really good (in this case, timer to clear like 45min Strat). And I can see more and more instances like Zul'Aman. It's like heroic mode for raids. You get casuals and hardcores guilds happy without the need to create different content. Both can get what they want without having to wait a new patch that will only be released in two/three months. Not only that, Blizzard will eventually run out of heroes and villains in warcraft lore for us to kill if they keep creating instances only for hardcore players.

Friday, July 13, 2007

Mage's season2 gear update

The season2 mage gear had incorrect stats when released, so the blues said it would be corrected on a future patch. Hortus said the fix is on PTR. Kryax posted it.

The fixed gear has more intellect and they removed armor bonus. Makes sense, considering that mages take less melee damage than other cloth users and mana is a critical issue.

CHEST
228 Armor
+57 Stamina
+21 Intellect
30 Crit rating
26 Resilience
35 Spell dmg

HEAD
185 Armor
+52 Stamina
+26 Intellect
20 Crit rating
33 Resilience
42 Spell dmg

LEGS
200 Armor
+52 Stamina
+36 Intellect
29 Crit rating
30 Resilience
49 Spell dmg

GLOVES
143 Armor
+43 Stamina
+20 Intellect
19 Crit rating
23 Resilience
36 Spell dmg

SHOULDERS
171 Armor
+46 Stamina
+15 Intellect
14 Crit Rating
23 Resilience
36 Spell Dmg

Netheran compared the sets.

The difference between S2(current) and S2(new) is
-910arm
7sta
36int
7crit
5res
6dmg

compared to S1 gear, the new S2 has
87arm
13sta
33int
7crit
9res
23dmg

Locks forum signatures

Some signatures Adresa copy/pasted from forums and sent to me and Pyra sometime ago.

----------------------------
"Playing a Warlock in WoW is like being the US in the Olympics
If you win, everybody hates you
If you lose, you're terrible and everybody still hates you"
----------------------------
mages =walk on air
priests= walk on water
warlocks= walk on corpses
its all balanced you just didn't see it
----------------------------
"There is nothing to fear but Fear itself...and Death Coil...and Howl of Terror."
----------------------------
I think every one has a little god in them...If your a lock
----------------------------
When i bang your mom and she gives me the clap, I still have the Clap after she dies. Why should my DoT's be any different?"
----------------------------
"My mana bar is green"
----------------------------
How can a warrior manage to uncork and chug a potion in combat wearing plate gauntlets while juggling a sword and shield yet a bearform druid cannot. You'd think the bear could just eat the flask. No, no locks mentioned here.
----------------------------
One Time, In Av. I Killed a Warlock, All the sudden Credits rolled and it said i Have Beaten World Of Warcraft.
----------------------------
Nerfing warlocks is like duct tape, It fixes everything....
----------------------------
"I soulstoned Jesus"
----------------------------
"I saw a rogue kill a pally once, so nerf warlocks!"
----------------------------
"I just keep reading to see what kind of stupid happens next"
----------------------------
One day, functions were having a party. x^2 heard they were gonna get integrated there! So he goes to e^x and says"lets go get integrated!"
e^x replies"whats the point,it doesnt make a difference" No, no locks mentioned here either...
----------------------------
"Let him play a warlock then cut him out a mask of bubblewrap and watch him roll his face around the keyboard owning everything."
----------------------------
"In the arena of logic I fight unarmed."
----------------------------
Destruction warlocks laugh even when they're on fire.
Demonology warlocks laugh even when they're stunned.
Affliction warlocks laugh even when they're dead.
----------------------------
Welcome To My Shardbag
Your Grandmother is over in slot 12
----------------------------
Soul Shards are like air, they're no big deal until you dont have any.
----------------------------
I have finally acquired enough QQ tears to fill the salt-water tank for my baby whale ^_^ Many thanks to all who contributed.
----------------------------
a mentally deranged gorilla angrily smashing a keyboard with a dead fish could get a 2000+ rating playing a warlock. grats anyway though
----------------------------
Flamethrowers are just proof that somewhere, sometime, someone though to themselves, "I really want to set those people on fire over there, but I'm not close enough."
----------------------------
Oh no, it's the dreaded 41/41/41 Warlock with all pets at once =O
----------------------------
Any one can be a good warlock
it takes skill to be a great warlock
no way! or your a warlock or you dont have skill
----------------------------
....................../´¯/)
....................,/¯../
............./´¯/'...'/´¯¯`·¸
........../'/.../..../......./¨¯\
........('(...´...´.... ¯~/'...') Nerf this.
----------------------------
I once Deathcoiled an old lady out of the path of a speeding bus.
True story.
----------------------------
You /who Orc Warlocks you get about 15 results
You /who Undead Warlocks you get about 40-50 results
You /who Blood Elf Warlocks you get herpes.
----------------------------
Keep Detect Invisibility and Unending Breath up at ALL times. Nothing worse then being obliterated in an invisible tsunami without even knowing it.
----------------------------
"My other mount is a succubus"
----------------------------
In the world of virtual paper-rock-scissors you're a twat
----------------------------
Don't piss me off..... I'm running out of room to hide the bodies.....
----------------------------
Mage: Our QQs will block out the sun!
Warlock: Then we will fear in the shade
----------------------------
to win everything, every time, all you have to do is this:
1. Be a warlock.
2. Bind every key on your keyboard to deathcoil.
3. Apply both hands to keyboard forcefully.
4. repeat as necessary
----------------------------
and how do you expect us to win against warlocks with 100+ dots and unbreakable fear???
-tankme, 70 warrior
----------------------------
Welcome to the intarweb, where the men are men, the women are men, and the children are federal agents.
----------------------------
If you want to get drunk before raiding I strongly suggest you improve rep with your local AA faction.
----------------------------
...in fact, four out of five doctors agree: SHUT THE HELL UP
----------------------------
PvPing as a Warlock is like having sex with Keira Knightley, first you're all weirded out because there are no tits, then you realize it's @@%#ing beautiful.
----------------------------
I don't think I've ever been grouped with a warrior who didn't think "O.O.M." meant "Alright lets pull this boss and go home!"

Apparently, I roll my face on the keyboard and people die.
----------------------------
"You cheated! We were playing rock, paper, scissors and you threw Jesus!"
----------------------------
I Suck.
But I'm still better than you.
"Im a Warlock, Herbalist/Tailor" TRANSLATES:
"Im an emo kid, Flowerpicker/Nitter"
----------------------------
Only warlocks own so hard that they get their nerfs as hotfixes.
----------------------------
'm sorry, I'm just a little high this morning on a drug called "THE TRUTH"...I didn't realize it was banned...
----------------------------
Rogues do it from behind. Warlocks do it slowly with no downtime.
----------------------------
Unlike when mages clash (giant explosion) when warlocks clash a rift is opened to the dimension of beer and hot topless women, I've heard it takes days to close~ nittal
----------------------------
Felsteeds don't need a saddle. The fel flames emitting from our fiery steed only burn the righteous. To the wicked, they gently massage your buttocks.

Fear doesn't kill people. DoTs do.
----------------------------

2.2 PTR news - warlock flying mount?

People at MMO-Champion played again with the WoW files and found this. Some saying it's the new warlock flying mount lol.


They also posted some screenshots of new designs and where the old AQ enchants will be available now. The new gems are REALLY good.



New Violet Eye rewards.



All images from MMO-Champion.com.

2.2 patch notes

Ah.. the DOT nerf.. but.. WHERE IS THE TEXT SAYING CHANGING GEAR IN ARENA IS NO LONGER POSSIBLE???!! Sigh... And they didn't fix my hood... Anyway.. I already commented about DOT nerf.

Other than that, I compiled what I think can change arena games a bit.

  • They also reduced the duration of all crowd controls to 10sec max.
  • Reduced the duration of blind to 8sec, the cooldown to 1min (talent makes it 45sec cooldown) and it no longers requires reagent. So expect rogues to do better now on all brackets, and can probably be as good as locks for 2v2 now.
  • Blessing of Freedom cooldown is now 25sec and the duration can be extended by 4secs with talents. This is really nice if you don't have a paladin in your team and have dispelers like me =).
  • Blessing of Sacrifice now has a 1min cooldown.
  • Well.. they fixing the resilience calculation, so expect to take more damage now.

Other changes with original text:
  • Power Regeneration: Any effect which triggers a change in your rate of power regeneration (Mana, Rage, Energy, Focus) will now cause an immediate reward of some power at the old rate of increase, and then begin new "ticks" of power at the new rate approximately 2 seconds later. This was done to improve functionality of abilities such as Evocation and Innervate so that they did not have wasted "ticks".
  • Mac Movie Capture: the Mac client can now capture in-game video to QuickTime movie files using a configurable choice of codec (H.264, Motion JPEG, or Pixlet), resolution, and frame rate. Two new entries have been added to the Key Bindings dialog for start/stop recording and for cancellation of a recording. For more detailed configuration options please see the Mac Options panel in game. Mac OS X 10.4.9 and QuickTime 7.1.6 or better are required. Not all machines have enough performance to smoothly capture video at high frame rates; end user experimentation will be required to find appropriate settings for each system.
  • Cyclone: Paladin Auras, Trueshot Aura, and Aspect of the Pack will now be automatically reactivated when Cyclone wears off of a victim who had one of the abilities active.
  • Mangle: The duration remaining graphic will now display properly for Mangle after it has been refreshed on a target. It will also no longer sometimes apply the Mangle debuff to nearby targets when the Mangle victim is killed by Mangle.
  • Entangling Roots: It is no longer possible to have more than one rank of this spell active on a player.
  • Sword Specialization: This talent's free extra attacks can no longer trigger additional extra attacks.
  • Greater Blessing of Kings, Light, Might, Salvation, Sanctuary and Wisdom increased to 30 minutes.
  • Guardian's Favor now increases duration of Blessing of Freedom by 2/4 seconds.
  • Pain Suppression: This talent will now reduce the chance for any buff on the Priest to be dispelled, rather than reduce the chance of dispelling buffs cast while it is active.
  • Formula: Enchant Chest - Major Resilience: Corrected a tooltip error.
  • Formula: Enchant Cloak - Dodge: This enchanting recipe is now available from the Lower City Quartermaster. The reagents required have been adjusted to match the level 70 content.
  • Formula: Enchant Cloak - Greater Fire Resistance: The reagents required for this recipe have been adjusted to better match the level 70 content.
  • Formula: Enchant Cloak - Greater Nature Resistance: The reagents required for this recipe have been adjusted to better match the level 70 content.
  • Formula: Enchant Cloak - Stealth: This enchanting recipe is now available from the Cenarion Expedition Quartermaster. The reagents required have been adjusted to match the level 70 content.
  • Formula: Enchant Cloak - Subtlety: This enchanting recipe is now available from the Thrallmar Quartermaster and Honor Hold Quartermaster. The reagents required have been adjusted to match the level 70 content.
  • Formula: Enchant Gloves - Superior Agility: This enchanting recipe is now available from the Keepers of Time Quartermaster. The reagents required have been adjusted to match the level 70 content.
  • Formula: Enchant Gloves - Threat: This enchanting recipe is now available from the Sha'tar Quartermaster. The reagents required have been adjusted to match the level 70 content.
  • Formula: Enchant Weapon - Greater Agility: This enchanting recipe is now available from the Violet Eye vendor.
  • Various crafting recipes have been added to the Violet Eye faction vendor.
  • Enchanting
    Nexus Transformation: This recipe to transform a Nexus Crystal into a Small Prismatic Shard has been added to some Enchanting trainers.
    • Small Prismatic Shards: This recipe to transform a Large Prismatic Shard into 3
    • Small Prismatic Shards has been added to some Enchanting trainers.
    • Large Prismatic Shard: It is no longer possible to gain skill points in Enchanting from this recipe.
  • Six Demon Bag: The damage spells cast by this item no longer benefit from a player's bonus spell damage effects.

What does this mean: "Items that are indicated as quest items in their tooltips and have a "use" or "equip" ability will not work in PvP arenas."? What quest item you can use that really makes a difference?

The full patch notes can be found here.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Zul'Aman, the next 10man raid instance

Tigole posted about the new raid instance in Ghostlands (blood elf area north of Eastern Plaguelands) that will go live someday... I looks really cool. I think it'll be a 3 days reset like ZG.

"I've been following a lot of the reactions on the WoW forums as well as the fansite forums to our announcement of Zul'Aman. I've noticed that there's a little bit of confusion as to some comments that were made in various articles that said that (I am paraphrasing here) "Zul'Aman will be more casual than Karazhan."'


Of course, what most of us in the WoW community have come to realize over the past few years is that the term "casual" means different things to different people. In fact, I am at the point where I try to avoid using the term at all. I've come to discover that most players consider themselves "Casual" when it supports their argument and likewise, they think of themselves as "hardcore" when convenient. We have the largest Casual Hardcore (or Hardcore Casual) community of any MMO out there!

All joking aside, the clarification is this:

--Zul'Aman will be a 10-person raid zone
--Zul'Aman will be on a quicker reset than 7 days (some might call this "casual")
--Zul'Aman will be MORE difficult than Karazhan and drop better loot (some might call this hardcore)
--Zul'Aman will feature 6 bosses and it's our goal that you can kill them all in one night -- perhaps 2-3 hour clear times (some might call this casual)
--Zul'Aman will not have a key requirement. Nor will it have an attunement quest\ (some might call this casual)
--Zul'Aman will have a VERY challenging timed quest for those who choose to participate in it. This *will be* hardcore and will be very rewarding. Players do not have to engage in the timed run (very similar to the Baron run in Stratholme)
--We're tuning the first boss in Zul'Aman to require less raid coordination than some other raid bosses. He will still hit very hard so you'll need to be geared properly but it won't take 15 minutes to explain the fight. It will be a simple yet challenging fight. The other boss fights get more complex and challenging from there. If players want a basis of comparison, imagine the tuning of ZA started around Nightbane/Prince difficulty and ramped up from there.

ZA is a very cool looking zone. It will feature brand new troll models -- Forest Trolls. They are very impressive looking. There will also be a large amount of brand new item art in the zone. We'll get screenshots of this out soon.

I know this question is going to come up so I'll answer it now -- Yes, you can totally skip Karazhan if you're an amazingly elite guild who doesn't have time to key up for KZ yet can face the challenges of ZA without gearing up in KZ. Have fun storming the castle." - Tigole

More information can be found here (IGN) and here.

Spectral Tiger Mount

New mount and all I can say is.. WOW. It makes me want to play some WoW TCG...


The video was made by MMO-Champion.

Best way to clear low level instances FAST

When I created my paladin I was discussing with Adresa what was the best class to clear low level instances. I said mages was better than locks, a mage can use Arcane Explosion rank1 to get the mobs together then Frost Nova, Flamestrike/Cone of Cold/Blastwave all of them, while a warlock have to use the void to group them together and use Seed of Corruption. And mages are really faster... for VC, Stockades and Gnomer... then...

How can a lvl70 get into SM Cathedral with 1/3 health and mana and finish it with full health and mana without drinking and eating and pulling mobs non-stop with at least 5 mobs hitting all the time? Well.. that's a warlock clicking just 3 buttons (tap, curse of agony and syphon life)... I know prot paladins can do that too (they can get all the instance mobs together I bet)... this is broken, why I can't do that with my holy priest? =P.

The fact is that VC mobs dies fast even with the nerfed AoE spells (they was nerfed sometime ago to reduce damage if you hit more than 10 mobs or so). That not what happens in SM. Mobs there actually hits the mage and getting hit by 15 mobs = death, and I don't have mana to kill more than that. I remember that at lvl60 it was possible to get into the Cathedral, pull Mograine and kill all the mobs together with a frost mage (I saw a video.. even though I couldn't do that). That's no longer possible.. =(

Warlocks.. OP?

Pyra made some modifications to Caster script and got some really interesting numbers for 2v2 and 3v3 arena. I asked Pyra to post the results here (so.. don't forget it Pyra..).

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

YAY.. 5v5 team

We finally got more people to our 5v5. This time I think we'll be able to play. It's not a godly matrix but I think we have potential.

Now we have:

  • holy/disc priest (me)
  • affliction warlock (Adresa)
  • frost mage (Pyra)
  • combat mace rogue (Eclipsez)
  • combat sword rogue (Lurana)
  • ms warrior (Druin)
  • resto druid (Caspion)
and EVERYONE was online today. 16 wins/ 8 loss and we got to 1626 rating, not bad. We still have the weekend to play and get used to 5v5 and how each one of the team plays. And I have to make ventrilo to work here. Even if it gets difficult to manage, I want 2 more to our team, a holy paladin and another ms warrior so we have backups for everyone.

I had plans to change to shadow because it's a better combo with a affliction warlock for 2v2 and 3v3, but now I'm not sure (again =/). We would probably have to change to 4DPS team because of how many healers we have... hmm...

Resilience and DOTs

So Blizzard finally posted their solution to DOTs doing too much damage on arenas. Yeah.. resilience WILL AFFECT DOTs after the next major patch. Not only that, you'll not be able to change gear after arena opens, only weapons/off-hands/ranged weapon will be allowed to be changed.

This mean a reduction of 10% damage from DOTs for someone with 400 resilience. IMHO, it's not that bad for locks and I think the change on gear swap is more important than DOTs being affected by resilience. We'll see the results of this change after the patch.

"In the next major content patch, the combat rating, resilience, will also reduce the damage dealt by damage over time (DoT) effects. As it currently stands, each new tier of equipment adds to the amount of damage DoT abilities have, yet that damage is not mitigated through combat ratings found on typical equipment. This change will help ensure that DoT effects do not scale too well compared to other damage mechanics.

The amount of damage reduced will be equal to the critical chance reduction effect that resilience grants." - Eyonix

Monday, July 9, 2007

Guild ranking

Someone posted on my realm forum this very interesting site that tracks guild progression. It scans the armory to see what each guild can kill based on gear. Top guilds are updated daily but most are updated weekly. It also tracks the loot from raids and if someone changed from one guild to another.

WowJutsu

Friday, July 6, 2007

Bash'ir Landing Event gems and resilience gem

I got the gems for my priest and realized they're all unique-equipped. I didn't know this and now I have my bank full of gems lol. At least I can use one of them now...

They hotfixed the NPC that sell the design for resilience gem. Now you can buy the design in Halaa. It's a REALLY good yellow gem for PvP. Priests didn't have good yellow gems to use, now we have. Maybe now I can try to get some socket bonus from my gladiator gear. Now, Aelwen has 421 resilience and 10.8k health =).

Golden trinity analysis

Here is an interesting article about rogue, mage and priest composition for 3v3 for Dallas WSVG.

An observation.. this is about LAN competition and even if the combination is good it may not be the best for usual arena game. Running a rogue and priest instead of warrior and paladin is probably used to counter warlocks and paladins. In WSVG competition you can change the team composition after each game and you know who you playing against, so metagame is important. For ingame arena you don't know who you playing against.

Arena add-ons

I have some add-ons that helps a bit with arena. ArenaMaster is a must have. It tracks the name and classes of the opposing team when you pass the mouse over one of them and allows you to target clicking on the name. It also syncronize with your team if they use it too. Targeting is a pain and this can help (even though I'm not used to click on it because I played too much as holy).

There're similar add-ons like Arena Live Frames and SSPVP. I don't like Arena Live Frames and I'm trying SSPVP. SSPVP is not an arena specific add-on, I has a lot of features. It can also show how many points you get and your played percentage on your PvP tab.

Another add-on is Arena Point Master. It converts amount of rating to points and vice-versa, and calculates how much rating was the opposing team based on points you won or lost after a game.

Changed spec again...

I tried shadow and with some tests I think it's good. But not yet, I don't have gear to go DPS and my healing gear is too good to compare. Considering our win/loss ratio if I stayed shadow, it would take too much time to get any gladiator DPS gear. So.. I'll go holy/disc for 1 month or 2 till I can get some gear.

Spec reference for arena

If you want to see the spec for the top teams this is the best place. You can select the bracket, the class and it shows the players and a nice graph with the popular specs.

Arena statistics - 07/04

As usual, Caster posted on the forum the class statistics for Arena.

And priests are doing good for all brackets. I'm surprised to see so many priests for 3v3, but considering the warlock numbers it makes sense. Half the priests are shadow AND near half of them is grouped with a warlock. Another number.. near half the warlocks are affliction, so I guess if you have a priest and warlock, the priest is shadow and the lock affliction. My conclusion, lots of priests because lots of locks.

Hunters are still lacking representation for 2v2 and 3v3. I never played a hunter in arena but I don't think the numbers reflect the class potential. My team always had problems with well played hunters. They do a LOT of damage on us, cloth users and I'm sure they can kill rogues most of the time. Viper sting can take a priest out but we don't face many of them and don't know exactly how to counter them. It's rare to see a 2v2 team with hunters and uncommon to see one on a 3v3. The only team with a hunter on 2v2 is the first on his BG with a priest partner.

Warlocks.. well.. too many warlocks if you ask me. For 2v2 and 3v3 it was always a dominant class but Blizzard should work some balance here. I frequently see Adresa pissed because of all the forum posts about nerf locks and dots hehe. I know some lower ranked teams are stacking shadow resist, but I still need to see it. On our server, I think only Poor Play guild is doing Black Temple right now, but after the middle of the season we'll probably see some teams with Black Temple shadow resist gear. I don't remember the gear stat right now, but as a high level epic this can potentially kill warlocks and shadow priests on 2v2 and 3v3.

I thought the trinket change would affect rogues for 2v2 and 3v3, but I was wrong. They still good and as expected most of them have a priest or druid partner for 2v2.

Mage guide for arena

Sk|Tarde posted a article explaining mages on 5v5 arena. Nothing really advanced, only basics, good for newbie mages. Here if you want to see.

For more advanced tricks and tips, go to RadikalNoise. His blog is updated frequently and has some good strategy guides.

Monday, July 2, 2007

Bash'ir Landing Event

Me and Adresa tried to get a group for this but failed. I really want to finish this. The event starts every 2 hours on even-numbered hours in Blade's Edge Mountains and starts with the spawn of an Aether-tech Assistant. I think we need at least 20man to complete it.

It sells some really nice gems and it's FREE!! I have tons of Apexis shards on my bag and have nothing to do with it, i'll get tons of gems if I get to complete the event.

After the event starts the NPC will stay near the well (where you get unstable flasks) till the end of the event unless he dies, while he's alive, you can buy unstable flasks from him (10 apexis shards each). Waves of mobs (some elites) keep coming. After sometime, some towers will spawn and start firing AoE bombs on the NPC. Must kill the towers or the NPC will die. Comments on Wowhead says that Aether-tech Adept spawns after the towers are down. This NPC sells blue BoP gems for 40 apexis shards each (click the NPC link to see the gems). Waves of mobs keep spawning till Aether-tech Master spawn. The Master sells 2 BoP meta gems (160 apexis shards each), Accelerator Module that is used to summon a elite (35 apexis shard) and some Metamorphosis Geode (4 apexis shards) that I don't know what it's used for. The NPCs stays for some minutes before despawn.

Daily quests - part2

Ogri'la and Sha'tari Skyguard base in Blade's Edge

The Relic's Emanation
Requires Speak with Mog'dorg quest chain.
Reward: ~12g, 15 Apexis Shards and 250 reputation with Ogri'la.
What to do: Complete the Simon Says game (8 sequences). Everytime you get the wrong one it'll damage you but you can still pickup the sequence if you want. I recommend writing the sequence to avoid getting killed (if you die Adresa said you don't get the durability penalty). After you complete 6 sequences it gives you a speed buff. I usually do this one before the others daily quests in Ogri'la for the buff.

Banish More Demons
Requires honored with Ogri'la.
Reward: ~12g, 15 Apexis shards, bag with something (maybe a darkrune, more apexis shards or crystal focus) and 250 reputation with Ogri'la. The darkrune and the bag are both unique. If the bag has a darkrune and you already have one darkrune you can't open it. You can't complete the quest if you already have one bag.
What to do: Go to one of the forge camps (north or south) of Ogri'la, open a portal with the crystal the NPC gave you and kill 15 demons near it. The cooldown to open another portal is long so open it near 2-3mobs to use the same portal.

Bomb them Again
Requires neutral with Sha'tari Skyguard, Threat from Above and Speak with Mog'dorg quest chain.
Reward: ~12g, 15 Apexis shards and 500 reputation with both Sha'tari Skyguard and Ogri'la.
What to do: Use the bombs on big hunter's marks in one of the forge camps (north or south of Ogri'la). The cannons can hit, unmount and places a dot on you so keep moving. When it fires, change your direction or it'll hit you.

Wrangle more Rays
Requires neutral with Sha'tari Skyguard and Ogri'la, Threat from Above and Speak with Mog'dorg quest chain.
Reward: ~12g, 15 Apexis shards and 350 reputation with Ogri'la and Sha'tari Skyguard.
What to do: Get 5 Aether Rays near Ogri'la to 1k health and use the quest item. Fast and easy, they don't hit hard and don't have much health.