RAID FINDER! Tanking Siege of Wyrmrest Temple for Dummies

I have not done a guide post in ages so hold on to your socks. Here goes.

Tanking Siege of Wyrmrest Temple for Dummies

It is easy! It is simple! Most of the tanks suck!

Wait what? Yeah. We have to kick them for extreme suckatude all the time. How is that possible? Easy! Most people don’t tank raids. By now all the hard core raiders are done with LRF and most of their alts are already geared up too. So you are left with people that don’t tank much. Have you been kicked from one? Do you die randomly or get whispers from irate healers? THIS IS THE POST FOR YOU!

 

Alright, that is enough capslock and exclamation points. Let’s get down to business.

Intro

Don’t que as a tank just to get a fast que. In raid finder this is both dumb and pointless. Do to the way statistics work tanks don’t have faster ques. If you want an instant que then click heals… And don’t tell anyone I told you that. I mean really. If you get kicked for extremely bad heals don’t you dare tell anyone I recommended you click heals. You know what? Don’t click heals. Just don’t.

Still reading? Then you must want to tank. You probably want to get that role bonus on real tank gear. Good. Lets do this.

 

Boss 1: More-standinbad-chok

Preboss trash:

Pull them, try to keep them all on you. Or let the other tank have one or two. Whatever. Nothing special about tanking these except doing threat to them. If you can’t do that then go play HelloKitty.

Boss:

He is big and he is easy. Pull him, stand there, hit him. If your health gets low or DBM whines at you then pop a cooldown. You do know what a cooldown is right? Oh for crying out loud… Any move that makes you die less is a ‘tanking cooldown’. Click = live = win. If you are not sure which of your moves make you dodge more, heal yourself, or take less damage then try a strategy I like to call: “read the damn tooltip”.

Where was I? Oh right, the boss. When he summons rocks and stuns you for a few seconds go and run behind one. Keep him targeted. When his cast is about done, go out and tank him some more. That is all. If you mess this one up please please please just que as DPS and stand around sucking your thumb like most of them do. We will all be happier that way. You can’t possibly do worse DPS than that hunter pulling 8 k last night.

 

Boss 2: Tentacleguy

What? That is not his name? Do you think I can be bothered to look them up and spell them right? His The trash around him is tentacles. You can’t miss him. He is on the left side when you go into Wyrmrest.

Preboss trash: Tentacles. Get on the biggest one and tank it. If it knocks you back move back to it again. Repeat for all packs.

Boss:

Pull boss. Stand in the center. Tank him. It is a one tank fight. Pop cooldowns if you get low on health. When the floor turns black move to stand in whatever AOE heals are near you. This boss (on LFR) might be the easiest boss to tank ever.

 

Boss 3: Slime dude

Yeah he has slimes. On the right when you go into wyrmrest.

Preboss trash:

Kill the slime packs. DON’T pull two packs. Mark a target. A purple one or blue one or whatever. Someone will tell you that you picked wrong no matter which you chose. Just pull one and watch their health bars. Whichever people are hitting more, do more threat to that one. Repeat for all packs.

Boss:

Did I say the last boss was the easiest ever? I lied. This one is. Stand in the center and tank him. That is all. Every now and then the DPS will run off and kill something. Ignore them. Some loudmouth is sure to point them at the right slime so don’t worry about any of that. Oh, if lots of adds spawn, do some AOE and help kill them faster. If a mana void spawns use some cooldowns until it dies. Space them out though. Those morons are not likely to kill it very fast. Until it dies your healers have no mana so use those cooldowns and stay alive.

 

Boss 4: Ice Wall dude… er chick?

Yeah ‘she’ is up top through the portal.

Pre boss trash:

Let people CC if they want. Don’t stress about it. Stuff comes from all around so keep your eyes open and your taunts handy. When the last big dude comes out pull him to the edge of the platform. That way when the boss spawns it kills the dumbest DPSer who forgot to move. This is LOADS of laughs so don’t taunt and spoil the fun.

Boss:

Pick the boss up as soon as that person dies. Now back up FAST. Are you dead? Yeah you should have finished reading this before pulling. This boss does something called ‘ferocious assault’. Or maybe ‘Frenzied Attack’? or was it ‘mana rage’? Whatever it is you will notice when it 2 shots you. Then someone will berez you and you can try again. Watch for the other tank to get killed by it too. He did not read this post. Now check your DBM timers. Every time the Frenzied Assault is about to go off… BACK UP! When it starts going off, keep backing up and pop a cooldown if you have one. If you do this you will live every time. If you don’t you are putting your life in the hands of the healers who are all checking facebook after that boring trash. Don’t do it! Back up 3 steps and amaze everyone with your incredible tanking skills. Other than that… follow everyone else. If they run out to the edge and you see a big add, tank it. If you see some crystal, kill that. As you are killing it watch for ice spike walls. Do NOT move until you see them. Once they spawn move clockwise and DON’T touch the wall. Also don’t look now but another wall is behind you. Yeah if you slow down you die. Don’t worry about the walls killing half the raid. That always happens. Enough will survive to win the fight… maybe.

 

Next time… Deathwing!

Advertisement

Read Full Post »

“Through a Glass, Darkly” – the Resto Druid Way, Pt 2

Part 1 yesterday described how to get ready for this quest chain. If you haven’t read it yet and you’re an actual resto druid, go take a look. If you’re a holy priest or something, it might have some good advice for you too, just ignore the druid specific stuff.

Ok. So you’ve got your gear reforged, gemmed, enchanted; your buff food and flask; your keys bound to useful stuff; and your mage slave waiting around at the Nexus entrance to Arcane Brilliance you. Now what?

Enter the Nexus and you’ll see a big blue dragon there – our buddy Tarecgosa who we met outside. When you talk to her, she’ll start the gauntlet. Now, the gauntlet isn’t that bad, but I found it really confusing the first few times I ran it, so I’m going to do a whole walkthrough here.

Like everyone who runs the Nexus, she heads down the hallway to the left. Partway down she casts invisibility on you so the big sentry doesn’t see you. Keep with her and when you get to the room at the end of the hall, start attacking the big arcane sentry.

You’re going to dot him up with Moonfire and Insect Swarm, then look at the two doors you didn’t come in. A little magic-eater-dog thing is going to come in both doors. Guess what? Hibernate works on them! Pop Nature’s Grasp to root them when they touch you, and Hibernate one. Dot the other, then kill it with Wrath. Note, these guys have a really really nasty silence. Definitely keep one asleep while you kill the other.

Once dog 1 is dead, kill the other dog, then kill the sentry. All this time the sentry is doing an ability you will want to avoid. When there’s a big glowing ice patch under your feet, move. Get off it. Don’t stand there. It hurts.

If you get low, pop out of boomkin and drop a few heals on yourself.

When the sentry dies, Tarecgosa gives you a chance to rest – heal yourself up now – and then leads you down a corridor of mists. Stick with her and don’t stand in the mist.

You’re going to come down to the next corridor. In the normal Nexus, this is where the frozen people are. This time you’ve got another Sentry plus dog pair to handle. Just do it the same way as before. Hibernate one dog, kill the other, keep the Sentry dotted, heal yourself, kill the other dog, kill the sentry.

Tarecgosa will play with the Sentry while you kill the dogs.

Now that the sentry is dead, start heading down the corridor. Halfway down, this happens:

Yeah. Two big nasties. She freezes you and lies to them. They disappear and she runs ahead.

Now the first couple times this happened, I got really confused. See, there’s a slow effect on you after you come out of the ice, but you can more or less catch her at the end of the hallway. She runs up the next ramp and if you follow her, you’ll probably die, because things are coming up behind you to nom your face. Let her go on ahead, while you go to the end of this corridor and turn around to deal with the new threat: not two but three puppies. They spawn right where you were frozen and run for you.

See this image? This is what happens if you don’t move from where you were frozen. They spawn right there and you have no time to get set.

Hibernate one, pop your Nature’s Grasp, let one get rooted, and then move away and kill the third. They’ll still silence you but you can handle it this way.

I forgot to screenshot this next bit. As you go up the ramp there are frozen spirits in ice cubes, and mists. There’s basically 5 spirits to a “chamber”. Enter the chamber. AOE. When the mists disappear, go to the next chamber. AOE. The bits to worry about here are, these guys hit really hard. Don’t worry about mana, nuke ’em. Starfall kills them dead but Hurricane works well too. Also, they respawn when the mist forms, so don’t stay behind in a chamber – keep moving forward.

When you get past these, you’ll be up where Whatsername usually is, the splitting mage chick. Telestra. You know her. Anyway, instead, our buddy Tarecgosa is there, with a pair of arcane sentinel guys. Kill the first sentinel, avoiding the ice, and then the second.

Now Tara leads you around the corner and you find an ice wall. She’ll deal with it, and you get to deal with a great big named fel puppy demon this! Piece of cake. Dot him up, avoid his breath of fire attack, boom, he dies. I am serious about avoiding the fire breath thing though, it hurts if you don’t. When he’s casting, just get behind him, he doesn’t move once he starts casting.

Now – the funnest part!

Tarecgosa flies off and leaves you alone to make your way across the chasm. But you can’t use flight form inside! So just hop on that little platform. It’s a vehicle, but don’t worry, you don’t have to use vehicle abilities. It just takes you to the next guy to fight. There’ll be a big dragon on a big platform with four floating orbs. Nuke him, and click the orbs as your platform goes around. They give you a shield against his big damage attack although it doesn’t completely prevent damage. When you kill him, you have a new empty platform. Don’t jump yet – heal your wounds first. Then jump.

Two little adds will spawn, rising up on platforms. Hibernate one! Hibernate is awesome and this is the first time, like, ever, that it’s been so very very useful. Kill the other, then kill the hibernated one.

Then jump to one of the little platforms. Rinse and repeat your way across the chasm.

When the big scary dragon dude shows up, don’t panic, just jump to the next platform, kill the last dragon that you have to face, and jump to the ground. When you do, Tarecgosa will make her way to you and kill all the dragons on the ground. You don’t have to fight them!  Just try to avoid attention til she gets there.

That’s it, that’s the whole gauntlet. Now it’s time to face the boss… or it will be in Part 3!

Read Full Post »

“Through a Glass, Darkly” – the Resto Druid Way, Pt 1

So, you’re a resto druid. Heals are your thing. Maybe sometimes you go boomkin or cat – you’ve probably got an offspec for quests and stuff and maybe on raid nights when the priest refuses to go shadow for the farm content. Somehow or another, you got 25 Eternal Embers and then bought the 3 Sands of Time from that vendor in Uldum, turned the combination in, and got sent to see Tarcegosa in Coldarra.

Now what?

First, don’t just fly off to Coldarra right away. You’ve got serious work to do. Now, if you regularly Boomkin, this may be no big deal. If you’re like me and rarely touch the stuff, it will take you a few tries. You’ll save time and gold in the long run by taking some steps up front

Gear – with luck you’ve been picking up some dps gear in your raids after the mages and locks pass. A pair of solid trinkets will make a big difference, and if you’ve got options in your other slots, that’s good. If you have picked up your Boomkin 2 set, or can get it, I thought it made a nice little dps increase when I used it. Your resto set bonus are going to be useless so if you’ve got alternate pieces for those slots with better stats, then go for it.

Once you’ve picked out your dps set, save it – you might be working on this for a few weeks. Then go to the reforger. Here’s the scoop: the stuff you fight in there tops out at level 85. That means all that spirit – that converts to hit and probably has you way over hit cap – can go. I know, it’s unnatural to reforge spirit, but what you really want is haste and crit. This fight is all about your dots and hots, so pump up the haste! Mastery is basically useless, you won’t be spending much time worried about your Eclipse rotation, so that’s the other stat to dump.

Check your enchants! I had some pieces in my set that had old enchants, or no gems, because it was offspec gear. Spend the money and get your stuff done right.

Spec – listen to me here. You’re doing this in full Balance spec. Your dots won’t hit hard enough in resto, and the dragon is flying way, way overheard so no feral either. But you don’t want a cookie cutter Balance spec. You are almost never going to be standing there casting direct damage spells at the boss – and if you are, it’s Wrath, or a procced Starsurge. So look for talents that boost Moonfire, Insect Swarm, and Wrath. Take a hard look at survivability talents – I took 3 points in Perseverance for this fight, because most of the damage you take is spell damage and that 6% reduction adds up.  I did not take Solar Beam – yeah the interrupt is nice but on such a long cooldown it wasn’t worth it. No Owlkin Frenzy – you are in caster form most of the time.  I also skipped Gale Winds but that one is arguable.  I recommend picking up Blessing of the Grove and Heart of the Wild from the Resto tree.

Glyphs – don’t do what I did and realize a week into this that you’re using resto glyphs. Go buy boomkin ones! The set I used was

Prime glyphs: Insect Swarm, Wrath, and Moonfire

Major Glyphs: Barkskin, Starfall, and Monsoon

Minors: whatever you want, but not Typhoon.

Typhoon is going to be a good friend to you on this fight. You want it on a short cooldown but not – I repeat not – glyphed out of the knockback. The knockback is your friend.

Buffs:  buy a stack or two of fish heads and some flasks of  intellect. Also mana pots or health pots or both. Bandages if you have the skill (I don’t, I admit, I fail). You might even want a few Volcanic Potions but save those until you know the fight well.

If you have a really, really good mage friend perhaps she will park outside the Nexus and cast Arcane Brilliance on you every time you die and run back. I didn’t bother, but it would be a nice little perk. She might even give you cookies so you can eat on the gauntlet phase.

Abilities: I had to redo my bars a little bit to make things I needed accessible. Your major damage spells are going to be Wrath, Moonfire, and Insect Swarm. You’ll get Starsurge procs so have that somewhere easy to use. You’ll use Typhoon  a lot, and you want your Wild Mushrooms and Detonate Wild Mushrooms on the keys. I also suggest having Hibernate on your bar, mostly for the gauntlet but you may need to sleep an add for a second at some point.

You want Barkskin and Nature’s Grasp in easy to reach spots. I had mine mapped to F1/F2 and also F11/F12, for easy access. Innervate – use it early and often! Starfall is a nice damage boost, and your treants should be somewhere easy to get to.

Whew! What else? Why, your hots – but if you’re a real resto druid raider you’ve probably got those bound to mouseclicks in Vuhdo or Grid or whatever. I’ll assume you have access to those in your balance spec, because if you don’t it’s gonna suck. If for some reason you need to map the heals to keys: prioritize Lifebloom, Rejuv, Regrowth, Healing Touch. Nourish isn’t going to cut it.

Yay! You’re ready to go! Make sure your gear is repaired. There’s a repair guy at the Transitus Shield in Coldarra if you need him. Then, hop a boat or zeppelin and get to the Tundra – or fly from Dalaran if you’ve moved back to mageville. You’ll get a cut scene, meet Tarecgosa, and be told to meet her inside the Nexus. Go on in – and note, you cannot be in a group of any sort at this point. When you talk to her, she’ll start the gauntlet event, so be ready.

Next Time: The Gauntlet!

Read Full Post »

How to tank every (almost) firelands boss

Shannox:

Boss tank: Tank the boss. Move when the traps spawn under you. Watch for the spear throw. When it happens pay attention to how far the dog will go to get the spear back to the boss and if it is trapped. If kitting will buy you enough time to drop your stacks, kite. If not, stay there and prepare to use a cooldown. Don’t stand in traps. Position the boss so there is room for the melee to hit it.

Dog tank: Keep the dog off traps. Find a crystal trap. Park the dog near it but not on it. As soon as the red appears for the spear throw run around the trap in a tight half circle. The dog should be trapped. Don’t trap it before the spear throw. When the dog is taking the spear back check your stacks and run away if you need more time. If you run too far, come back when the stacks drop. Don’t get the dog too far from the boss. Don’t stand in the bad.

Beth:

Boss tank. Taunt down two Spinners. Take the web up to the top ONLY when more than one web is down. Pop a cooldown as you arrive up there. Don’t stand in bad. Jump down when she flickers. In the final phase don’t stand on the raid and don’t stand near the other tank and pop plenty of cooldowns when it is your turn. Taunt when the other tank gets kissed.

Offtank: Taunt down spinners when you can reach them. Pick up Drones. Taunt them in a safe spot on the left, far from the small add spawn points. Taunt spinners when you can but always be ready to pick up a drone. In the final phase don’t stand on the raid and don’t stand near the other tank and pop plenty of cooldowns when it is your turn. Taunt when the other tank gets kissed.

Ryolyth:

AOE the add packs. Pick up the Sparks whenever they are up and drag them away from other people. Don’t stand in bad. In the final phase taunt the boss and blow all your cooldowns.

Balroc:

1 tank strat: Pick up the boss. Tank it. Do max DPS by blowing dps cooldowns as needed. When a devastate comes pop ONLY cooldowns that increase dodge or increase healing taken (damage absorb of block cooldowns don’t work on that move). When the last swing is done, pop a cooldown that lowers damage taken.

2 tank strat: same as above but taunt swap between swings of devastation. Be sure the 2^nd tank has tanked the boss before the first devastation to get his Stam up (I have never done this with 2 tanks so I might be wrong about something here).

Alystrazor:

Stay out of the center line of the ‘room’. Assign 1 tank to each side. (marking it helps) Grab 1 feather. Be near the egg when it hatches.  Dodge fire. Pop cooldowns when tantrum goes off and get near a worm fast. Don’t leave works up when your add is about to die (eat them all). Dodge tornados. When the boss is stunned, find the add that spawns on our side and keep it stunned and interrupted.

Pick up the boss when it wakes up. Pop cooldowns then. Taunt swap when one tank just can’t take the damage

Staghelm.

Don’t move on the stack up phases. Pop only light duty cooldowns then. Save the big ones for cat. Pup big cooldowns later in the cat phases. Don’t move the boss unless it is for planned amounts on the cat phase. This movement will depend on your teams strat. Don’t move the boss when it is time to stack up.

Rag:

No idea. I have only pulled him a few times so far.

Read Full Post »

Helpful Hint for Druid of the Talon Dailies

I’m not the only one who encountered a bug yesterday when going to help out the druids of the Talon: the guy who was supposed to clear a path through the flame never arrived. I stared at the flame, wondering. Nope, can’t walk through it on my own and even if I chain-die, will it do me any good?

Note: Be on the quest when you’re doing this! I don’t know if you can get the other dailies without doing this one, or not.

Ado showed me a path through the flames. You start over on the right and look for the line of lava on the ground. Follow it up to a little hill on the extreme right. Wait there and heal and damage you took. Then follow the lava you can see from there to the next safe spot. From that safe spot, there’s a path through the flames. It’s hard to see but to your left there’s a gap.

Or die and corpse jump. It doesn’t matter, just get to the area in the middle where there’s no fire and a big elemental. Heal up. Kill the elemental. He’ll do his thing and knock you into the caverns and you get credit for finishing the quest. Continue doing your dailies like normal. And when you’re done the flames will be clear so you can get back out without dying.

I hope Blizzard fixes this but for now you CAN get your extra marks, fellow Druid-fans. And you did go Druid of the Talon, right? Because they’re so much cooler than those Warden people. (Just kidding. My mage is doing that set right now).

Read Full Post »

Timing Tranquility and Tree of Life

Tree of Life. Before Cataclysm, it was the Resto druid’s hallmark. Now it’s a super cooldown, the equivalent of the Hulk smashing out of his wimpy body to smash something. Even more so if you’re not running with the Glyph of No Thanks Pedotree. Lasts 25/31 seconds depending on talents.

Tranquility. With patch 4.1, Tranquility got a big boost for Resto druids. Instead of being a button you forget about, or hit accidentally and then curse, it should be a part of our toolbox that comes out every fight. Like Tree of Life, we want to time it to get the most use out of it. Lasts 8 seconds.

Right now these are our big cooldowns as Resto druids. There’s a lot of discussion over whether these are enough, since they aren’t particularly tank healing oriented or obvious life savers.  Personally I really like them. I enjoy feeling like a Resto druid isn’t just interchangeable with a Holy Priest or Resto Shaman.

To get the most out of our cooldowns, we need to time them right. With the reduced cooldown on Tranquility we can use either of them twice in a raid fight, at least once in any instance boss fight. The cooldowns are short enough we can use them on trash without worry that they’ll be down when we need them. So when is best to use them?

First, any time you want to hit Tranquility, toss out Wild Growth first. The HOT will trigger our mastery and get more healing out of the spell.

Hit Tranquility when three or more party or raid members are hurt, or time it to go off with a big boss ability that’s going to do lots of AOE damage.

For Tree of Life, throw it in one of two situations: First, to straight up boost your heals. Second, if you’re running low on mana, pop TOL and throw Lifebloom around. When you get Clearcasting procs, toss out an instant cast Regrowth. Don’t waste your time with cast-time spells in this mode, or Rejuv, but do throw out WG as it’s stronger than it used to be.

I’m not a theorycrafter, I don’t do heroic raid fights and we’ve yet to down end bosses so take my advice for what it is, but here’s when I find myself getting best use out of both cooldowns:

Magmaw –  Use Tranquility after a Molten Tantrum to get people up. Works beautifully if you’re using the all-stack-in-melee strat, still works if you’re kiting but you have to time it. Use TOL if you’re kiting worms or something else that requires movement. Remember if you’re in TOL and the head’s down and you don’t need to heal/regen mana, throw Wrath. It’s mana free in TOL and you might as well help out.

Omnotron – Use Tranquility when Magmatron does Flame Jets. Use TOL during Poison Protocol, especially if you’re being chased.

Maloriak – use Tranquility either during the red phase when the flame goes off, or during the green phase. We usually have more damage in red. Use TOL whenever you like but make sure it’s back up for P2. That phase can be movement intense and tanks can take spiky damage.

Atramedes – Time Tranquility for the ground phase at a point where you won’t have to avoid discs. Our raid stacks the ranged up in one spot so it’s great. TOL might be a good choice for air phase but honestly we don’t usually have much damage on that phase. Save it for spiky damage or if you get low on mana.

Chimaeron – coordinate with the other healers. You’re going to want to do both during Feud. I’d advise using Tranq the first time, TOL in combination with another healer’s cd the second time, and Tranq might be off cooldown the third Feud. Not really sure. If TOL’s back up in phase 2, pop it and use Wrath. You should be out of mana by then and you’re not healing anyway so go nuts with your tiny dps.

Throne of Four Winds – use TOL when you’re healing on the green/adds platform. Use Tranquility on the blue/ice platform during the aoe damage phase. If you’re on the wind platform, take a nap.

Halfus – pop TOL ten seconds after the pull. Keep people alive. When it fades, use Tranq after the Lifeblooms expire. That should get you past the damage intense part. You’ll have both back later so use them wisely.

V&T – use Tree on the second dragon. Tranquility can work for healing after a Blackout if another healer is dispelling and your timing is good.

Twilight Council – TOL in phase 1 at some point when you’re moving and there’s damage. Tranq in phase 2 after the raid gets hit by a big ability. Try to have both off cooldown for Phase 3. Blow Tranq first to get people nice and high, then use Tree to keep the fight going as long as possible.

Read Full Post »

Bags of Gold

That icon you probably instantly recognize as a Netherweave bag. Most people have a few of these on their alts or alts’ banks. You main has no doubt been upgraded with bigger bags but it’s hard to beat the price on these guys. For anywhere between 6 and 20 gold you can get a 16 slot bag.

They’re also the foundation of my fortune. Oh, I’ve made some good money selling mats, or things we pick up while questing; top end gear, enchants, glyphs, etc. But Netherweave bags are the bonds of my online stock portfolio; not huge money makers, but you’re pretty much guaranteed to make some gold.

I’m not writing this post to convince you to invest in making Netherweave bags. In fact anyone on Winterhoof who is reading this should stay out of the market entirely, ok? 🙂 My point is that everyone who wants a little money should find a niche market that they really understand, and own it. Let’s look at the Netherweave example again.

A Netherweave bag has really simple mats; Netherweave cloth, and one vendor-purchased thread. The conversion between Netherweave cloth and Netherweave bags is easy. One stack of twenty Netherweave makes a single bag. That makes figuring out costs easy!

Netherweave drops from Burning Crusade mobs, and drops pretty well too. But if you want to make money on these bags, don’t farm the mats. It’s just not worth it. Buy the cloth from people who are farming it, or leveling through Outlands.

What I do is I have a ceiling for Netherweave cloth purchases, and both a ceiling and a floor for Netherweave bag sales. I’ll buy stacks of cloth for less than 5 gold. Any Netherweave out there cheaper than that, I buy, even if I’ve got a good stock. Netherweave tends to have nasty spikes and I don’t want to be out!

When the cloth arrives, I turn it all into bolts of Netherweave right away. That takes up a lot less bag space than all those stacks. Then I make just as many bags as I want to sell, for the same reason. Also making bags is slow. A dozen or so at a time is about all that’s reasonable.

I’ll sell my bags for between 8 and 12 gold.  If someone’s selling for less than 8, I’ll skip my listings and wait til his bags are gone, then put mine up. If the lowest priced bag on the AH is 15 gold, I still won’t list mine for more than 11g 99 s 99 c.

Why those numbers? I don’t have any real data to back me up. I don’t think the profit is worth my time for less than 8 gold. And after 12 the sales drop off. Who is buying these bags? Mostly people leveling alts. They’ll drop 40 gold on a set of four bags, no problem. Much more than that and they buy fewer, or grind rep with a city for the cheap 16 slot bag you can get that way.

I post lots of bags. The listing fees aren’t that much. I like to have at least 8 bags up at a time, more on weekends. Of course if you list a bunch you’re risking someone coming and undercutting you but the demand on the bag market is really steady and my bags will sell. It’s just a matter of time.

This week I’ve been using the Mobile AH app on the Armory to monitor my sales, to buy netherweave, and to repost auctions. It’s awesome and now that they’re adding Guild Chat I’m hooked. It’s just really handy to be able to do boring AH stuff remotely. Now there aren’t any helpful addons, so I only use it for markets I know really well – like Netherweave bags and cloth.

That was overnight. 17 bags sold at 12 gold each, means a minimum profit of just under 7 gold.  120 gold profit. Invariant isn’t my usual banker, so I just sent her enough money that she can buy the cloth auctions remotely. That way I don’t have to log into my banker to send the cloth first.

I don’t sell 17 bags a day; there are some days I don’t sell any. But I sell enough to provide a constant small gold influx. For something that takes me less effort than doing a few dailies, I’ve got my raiding repair bills covered. Yes, in a given week I make more from selling one Tol’vir keystone than all my bag sales; but the bag demand is constant and nothing else I sell is.

Again, the real key is NOT making Netherweave bags. It’s knowing other WoW players enough to identify a steady need. Raid consumables are a good one. Then analyze the components, decide if you can actually make money or not, and go to it. Even people who don’t play the Auction House can pick one or two commodities to provide, and make a nice little income. Give it a try. You don’t even have to read gold blogs!

Read Full Post »

Overhealing is OK

Last night Reversion joined another guild’s raid on his hunter to help them out. He’s done that a few times now with this group and they’re all nice people. Less progressed than the Crits and Giggles raids are, but working hard. Last night they were having trouble getting people, or getting the right balance, and I listened in on vent.

 

They decided to have one of their two shaman healers (they were running two shammies and a disc priest) switch to her druid, which she did good naturedly although expressing that she likes her shammie a lot more. After they downed Magmaw with that setup she stuck with the druid and they went to  work on Omnitron.

I guess they had a little trouble with him; they spent a while analyzing what was going wrong and the druid said something about how “she was sure she’d done way too much overhealing”. I got Reversion to check his meters. She was at 27% overheals.

Druids of the world, that is not too much overhealing!  I went back to a kill we did on Omnitron last month (I haven’t been raiding much so I don’t have anything more recent than that) and looked at our numbers.

 

31.8% overhealing and as a raid, we do darn good at stay out of bad stuff, our tanks aren’t squishy, they use their cooldowns. In a group struggling to get this boss on farm I’d expect to see more overhealing, honestly.

Broken down further, the actual numbers for our healers looked like

 

 

(I cheated. This fight is always really good for my numbers. It’s the same fight this other raid was talking about, after all!)

Might be hard to read, but I’ve got 28% overheals, the paladin has 27%, and the Holy priest as 24%. As a rule of thumb I’ve noticed druids and paladins top the overhealing meters this expansion. If you’re one of those two classes, don’t panic. When I was starting I was getting closer to 37% overhealing. As the raid gets better and you learn the fights, the overhealing drops.

(Note for numbers people: the reason our cumulative overhealing is a lot higher than our individual percentages is that we have a bear tank. Reversion’s mastery procs healing, and it usually inflates overhealing numbers a lot)

So why was the druid healer I eavesdropped on worried? Because she wasn’t really a druid healer; she was a shaman healer in a druid body. Shaman right now look at meters and see overhealing as bad. I won’t go into all the details there because I’m not a shaman expert at all. It’s important to remember when switching classes but not roles that more than just spell names change.

I’m guilty of that. When I paladin heal, I notice I’m better at triage healing than a lot of pure paladin healers; I can get a party up from low without losing people, and I’ve heard other paladins complain about that. But I’m terrible at using cooldowns. Druids have…. er….. Tranquility. And Natures’ Swiftness which I think I ditched the last time I redid my spec, it’s really useless. Paladins have Hands of Various Things, Divine Favor, Divine Other Thing, Shiny Big Angel Thing, Avenging Wrath….If I want to be half as good on my paladin as I am on my druid, I need to get better at using those. They’ve got a great toolset and I’m not working it right.

But anyway; if you switch to a druid and see overhealing, don’t panic.  This is Working As Intended.

 

Read Full Post »

How To CC DESPITE the tank

So you have a tank that is trying the ‘gogogo’ thing or just plain has not asked for CC. There are more than a few ways you can use CC despite him, or try to. Here are a few. There are probably plenty of others. These tips are also useful of you have a tank that wants to CC but the DPS keeps breaking it.

Distracting Shot + Frost Trap

Distracting shot is a 6 second forced attack that hunters can use. If you tag a CC’able melee target with it and then drop a trap at your feet, you can pull that target off the tank and trap it.

Banish

Banish is a ‘lock ability that puts an elemental or demon target in a state where they can’t do anything and they can’t be hit. This is great because you can Banish targets that are in the melee and it will not break accidentally.

Deathgrip plus a friend

Deathgrip pulls a target right out of the melee pack. Then you can have a friend trap, repent, sheep, etc. Be careful though, if the target has a DOT on it then it will not stay CC’ed. And Deathgrip is also a taunt – so if the cc doesn’t go off, you will have a very angry mob up close and personal.

Mind Control

With Mind Control a priest can take over a target and use its abilities. The controlled target becomes an ‘ally’ for a short time so the CC will not be broken since the target can’t be hit.

Knockback plus something else

You can use Typhoon or Thunderstorm to knock targets way from the tank and then CC them. This is risky and disruptive but it can work.

Hex

Hex is very durable. It resists a lot of damage. It can take a few aoe hits and not break. So you could keep something, even in the melee, CCed for at least a short time.

Almost anything during ranged pulls

Many forms of CC work when the tank is pulling the group back with a ranged move. Traps, Hex, Sheep, Repent… just about everything except sap. And even sap works if you get in there fast before the pull starts and hit a target the tank is unlikely to hit with the ranged move. This is effective against DKs tanks that tend to use deathgrip for pulling (some do, but not all).

Hit one in the back while the tank is moving in

As the tank moves in for the pull, the targets aggro and move to meet him. The fight usually takes place about 2 steps in FRONT of where the first target of the pack is standing at the start of the pull. If you preselect a target that is far from where the tank will meet the first opponent, there is a very high chance you can CC it out of range of melee aoe. You can do this even as the pull is happening if you are fast. This can work with a ‘charge’ tank like a bear or warrior, and is very effective with a Pally tank. You may have to do it after a shield throw if you’re worried about the shield breaking your CC.

Hit the caster

If you have run the instance a few times you should know which targets are casters and will not move toward the tank. Many tanks that are not experienced enough to ask for CC also tend to leave a hanging caster out shooting at the party. If you know which those targets are likely to be you can CC them before they get a cast off. This is very effective with a bear tank because they lack a real ranged silence. You tank will be very thankful even if they did not mark targets properly.

Party Chat

Just offer to do it. Some tanks don’t ask for CC, not because they dislike it but just because they are being lazy or forgetful or they don’t like being demanding. Or they may be so new they don’t know what classes can do what kind of CC against which types of targets. If you offer to use CC they will often be glad to let you do it. You might have to pick and announce which targets you are CCing if the tank doesn’t. Many tanks, if you announce what you are going to CC, are happy to let you do it and try to avoid breaking it.

Keep trying

It takes time for tanks to get really good at dealing with CC pulls and just CC in general. It takes time for them to learn not to break it. It takes many tries for them to get the hang of the proper sequence of a CC pull. Keep trying. Help your tank learn. If they break it, don’t cuss them out. Remind them what target you are CCing and tell them how they can avoid breaking it. Tanks did not have to learn this stuff in the last expansion. Don’t be shocked if your tank has no idea how to work with your kind of CC. Offer to use it and help them learn how to work with it.

Or they might just be so gung-ho that they or lazy they don’t want to CC. If you keep trying they may give in and let you do it. It helps the healer and often keeps you all alive so don’t be afraid to push the issue with a reluctant tank.

Read Full Post »

How to tank every (almost) cata raid boss

We have some folks tanking our raid this week that don’t normally tank. So I decided to post the short short version of how to tank 9 of 12 cata raid bosses. This is VERY simplified and aimed at poeple that already know the fights as a DPS or healer and just need to know the tanky bits. Enjoy!

Magmaw

• Get in range fast. Don’t ranged pull and then run in slow.
• Try to not use big cooldowns when you get omnomnomed (mangle) but if you have to, use them.
• When he comes up off the spike be sure you are in your tanking position and that you do some serious threat as fast as you can.
• Use something to stay alive for the first 30 seconds after he comes up off the spike. That is the worst time for heals.

That is all. He is easy.

Omnomnomistron Defense

• Pick up bosses fast on that first cycle. This is CRITICAL. Keep your camera on the next boss near wakeup time and have your taunt ready.
• Don’t stand near bosses that are about to wake up unless you plan to pick them up fast
• Know which boss is your turn and which is your partner’s
• Tank your boss a 1/3 or ½ way across the room from your partner. If you are too close adds or fire beams can kill you or the other tank.
• Be ready to click off your auto attack and stop hitting the bosses for 10 seconds when their shield is up. The shield last 10 seconds. When it goes down,  start up your rotation again.

-Fire guy

• Keep him slightly to one side of the room. Think about where people are going to run from the laser thingy.

-Poison guy

• Move out of the poison cloud FAST. Leave the boss in the cloud if you can.
• Put him against a wall, or in a good spot and KEEP HIM there. Don’t move around. The kiters need a consistent spawn point for the adds.
• Stun one add yourself if you can.

-Lightening guy.

• Don’t move around a lot. People need to stay spread so just pick a spot and let them move around you.

-Arcane guy

• Move him out of puddles fast.
• Interrupt as much as you can.
• Dont forget to still interrupt while he shield is up.

Maloriak

-Boss tank

• Know who is doing what interrupts. If you are doing some do them right. If you are having trouble with them try to swap the plan around so you can do the storms. Infact, unless you really have a handle on the add thing, just do the storms.
• Make sure you don’t accidently hit an add pack instead of a storm.
• Hold the boss right where he starts. Use the first few seconds of the fight to line him up. Remember he runs back to the pot when he throws a vial. Don’t follow, just wait in your lined up spot.
• If you get the first mark on your head don’t move, but pop some big cooldown to stay alive.
• When you go to the back for the green phase, remember the boss will hit hard and there will be an arcane storm to interrupt. Move back to the proper boss spot as soon as you can while still interrupting all arcane storms. Missing one now will wipe the raid.

-Add tank

• Pick up adds fast. Get plenty of threat and debuffs on them as soon as they come out. By the time you are at 3 packs you are going to be getting pounded. If the fire is coming when you have 3 packs, don’t stand in it.
• Get the adds to the bottom of the steps FAST when it is green vial time.
• If you get 3 packs in the second cycle they hit harder than the first time. Big time ouchy.
• Get max threat on BOTH huge adds as FAST as you can when they come.

Chimeron

                -boss tank

• Find your spot before the fight starts and STAY THERE (until the last phase).
• Watch for the ‘double attack’ DBM announcement. When you see it don’t do anything, but start watching CLOSE for a big green/yellow vertical arc the boss does toward the other tank (or watch for the other tank’s health to dip). When you see it, taunt. If you don’t see it, but the boss is instead casting massacre, taunt anyway. The other tank usually picks the boss off you before the massacre starts and the boss should be back on you after it goes off.
• When it is stack up time you don’t have to be doing much threat or being in tank mode at all. You can throw heals or whatever you want to keep people alive.
• Be sure to be back in tank mode doing good threat as the stack-up phase (feud) ends.
• In the final phase live as long as you can while dragging the boss to the back left corner.

-Off tank

• Watch for the double attack announcement. When it goes off, taunt right away and then do your best threat for a few seconds.
• After a double attack, remember to let the other tank have the boss back. Slow your threat if you have to.
• Don’t forget to stack up!
• If the double attack is really a massacre (DBM announces a nonexistent double attack before massacre) let the main tank have the boss back.
• As you go into the final phase, run to the far right hand end of the room and try to live as long as you can.

Bind dragon (1 tank)

• Tank the boss in the center of the room or wherever the raid leader says.
• Tank him at max melee
• Dodge the rings as good as you possibly can but try not to back up. Just move side to side
• If the flame breath targets you or is headed your way, move! It might LOOK like it is going to go behind you but it still gives you sound.
• Stay moving in the air phase but be ready to pick up the dragon when he lands.
• In the later phases, just position the boss as best you can WITHOUT moving through any walls of fire. If people whine that he is in a bad spot mostly ignore them. Just do your best with the room you have to maneuver.

Throne of the 4 winds

                Go read my old post on this one. Tips for the conclave of the wind

Halfus

-Boss tank

• Range pull then get on the boss.
• Interrupt if you have that dragon.
• Watch your stacks and clear them if you have that dragon. The stacks go to 20. Don’t let them get over 14 before you clear them. Don’t let them get over 9 without using some cooldowns.
• Try to pay attention to where the other tank is if you are going to have to tank swap.
• If you have the interrupts dragon be sure to spam your interrupts as you come out of the 3^rd stun when he does the triple stuns.

-Off tank

• Pick up the dragon as fast as you can.
• Kill it while doing maximum threat.
• They hit hard so use cooldowns if you need them
• Be ready to pick up the second dragon fast when the first dies.

Twin dragons

• Keep the purple one in a stable spot without plenty of space all around it for people to spread out.
• Dodge the fire spray on the purple dragon.
• When the dazzling swirls appear on the ground dodge them while running toward the center of the room. Run fast. Turn your back on the dragon. Use cooldowns.
• Pick up the blue in the center of the room and do good threat even before he feet hit the ground.
• Keep him in the center and faced away from the ranged group.
• Don’t move around much and if you do, tell the melee in vent that you are moving.
• When the fire strips come, remember you can move away from them without moving the dragon. If it comes in the middle just face him to one side or the other and you will be save. If it goes down on a side then just face him toward the stairs on either side.
• If a void zone appears just shift to the side.
• This fight is ALL about using the ‘Q’ and ‘E’ keys to side step and rotate the dragon.
• After the 3 flame strip be ready for the purple dragon to land
• Tank her in the center.

Elemental council of jerks

                You know… I don’t feel like explaining this one right now. Let’s just leave this at 8 of 12. 😛

Read Full Post »