Tricentennial

*shakes off dust and cobwebs*

 

Three months ago at Blizzcon, Blizzard showed us their supplemental talent boards for all classes when they get to level 100. Much like current and previous tiers, each talent seems to have its merit depending upon what happens over the course of the fight. Whats interesting about these talents to me is each level 100 talents is drastically different from each other as far as play style goes. One turns you into a pseudo-shadow mage, the other gives you and additional DoT, for the envy of all of your warlock friends, and the other, elevates crit as a priority stat, away from the general haste trumping all concept. Here’s what they look like:

 

Divine Clarity:

 

Increases your damage by 40% to all targets not affected by your damage over time spells. In addition, your Mind Spike now reduces the cooldown of your Mind Blast by 1 second.  Direct damage shadow spells now benefit from Shadowy Recall (mastery.)

 

Shadow priests at heart may have twitched when looking at this talent choice, as being a dot class is what a shadow priest has become known in today’s playing.  But for a true single target fight, such as Jin’rokh in Throne of Thunder, this talent can have some appeal. That being said, there are some restrictions to what can be used with this talent. Such as, you would never want to have Divine Insight or From Darkness, Comes Light with this talent, as using these abilities would nullify the increased damage part of your talent, although your direct damage would still get benefit from mastery. Matching Power Infusion with this talent can make for some very quick burst when used, and your only filled would be Mind Fly insanity when you get to three shadow orbs. A very different direction from the usual shadow priest play style, and the thought of only having 5 buttons in usage instead of 8-10, certainly makes it appealing. It is almost assuredly geared for pvp in case of being locked out by interrupts and whatnot, but if you have a good mix of haste, crit and mastery, it may have some good situational pve use as well.

 

Power of the Void

 

Consume all shadow orbs to deal 250 (per orb) shadow damage every 3 seconds for 1 minute.

 

This is the part where we collectively wish for Mind Flay to act like Malefic Grasp, and make our dots deal a portion of their damage each time MF ticks. The interesting part here would be finding out what talent in tier 3 and 5 to take to make this talent most fruitful. With having 4 dots, haste and mastery rocket up in priority and crit becomes and after though as more ticks means more opportunities to get an additional proc on 4 dots at once. Instead of doing your normal DP -> MFI transition, you will have (about) every third going to use in Power of the Void, so will losing a MF:I every so often make From Darkness, Comes Light the choice to get, or will MFI still be supreme? Also, Divine Insight might be the winner in tier 5 if you really want to maximize your amount of how many MFIs you can get in 1 minute, and with high levels of haste and mastery, you should be getting a decent amount of ticks to make that happen.

 

Spiritual Guidance

 

Your shadow apparitions also grant you 1 shadow orb when they deal damage.

 

Well, overload isn’t a term usually thrown around when referring to shadow priests but, you can definitely have too much resource gain with this talent. If you get enough crit to the point you are sending out 4 shadow apparitions at a time, you will indeed be gaining resources faster than you can spend.  And unlike the other two talents, this one will absolutely center around crit being the predominant stat after haste, and even possibly equal to it in weight in early, entry level raids. If you are gaining too many orbs, you would probably shy away from using Divine Insight in conjunction with it for the sheer fact of having too many shadow orbs to not effectively use, possibly gravitating towards Power Infusion for quicker dot ticks, or Twist of Fate if many mobs are dying. With such high volume of shadow orbs at your disposal, Mind Flay: Insanity is the tier 3 choice to have if you are using this talent, unless you encounter another Thok-like boss.

 

Oddly enough, I am most looking forward to trying out the Divine Clarity talent, as I think it will be a nice change of pace compared to the cast 4 years of being a shadow priest and just weaving too many spells into the same rotation, with masteries tweaked and what not, although each spec has its clear strength and weakness and aside from pvp, should be changed depending on what the fight calls for. I would honestly love if one of the talents, and at such an early stage in development it wouldn’t matter which,  altered your mastery back to the wrath and cata version, where mastery increased the damage of your dots and Mind Blast, back to a time where priests were competitively in the top 5 if not the top source for damage.

 

As a priest, what talent are you most looking forward to try out and use in raids, and what do you think could be done to our talents to make them improve the quality of life for everyone else? As a non priest, what cant you wait for in the Warlord of Draenor expansion?

 

May your Garrison be fruitful!

Blizzcon Recap

Man, it feels like that plane just took off for California and here we all are back inside our homes, giddy with what awaits on the horizon for for our favorite Blizzard games.  2 days is just not enough sometimes to get around to every panel, play every game demo, or meet the people you want to meet up with. Although the mere sight of the Cheesecake Factory might induce some serious napping, the trip was everything I could have wanted and then some. The worst part about the entire trip, aside from it ending of course, was the first flight, where security told me my carry-on had to be checked as luggage, even though it was only a size of a back pack. Someone else was also lacking on coffee for that morning.

 

Change of Scenery if Nothing Else

 

Being that the convention was, unusually, held a month later this year compared to years past. This years trip helped relieve my disdain for suddenly cold weather, with temperatures in the 70s all weekend and sunshine, compared to the flurries that were falling when I was leaving the airport.

 

Hmm, snow or sunshine and relaxation. Almost hard!

 

But the weather is only a small benefit to being around 30,000+ convention goers who all share avid enthusiasm with you, so, onto the con!

You Have Reached Your Destination

 

The Unmistakable Sign of Gaming

 

If for nothing else, conversing with nearby gamers who also make you feel bad for not being horde, the slow moving serpentine of a line leads to exuberance at the end, as gamers dive into their bags to see what they are getting this year. It was rather rewarding getting the extra two hours in of power napping in and not camping out a spot close to the front of the line this year, as the small group of people I was with spent about a total of 90 minutes in line from when the doors opened at 4pm. This left a lot of time for people to freshen up and head out of pre-con festivities on the town, before Friday’s kickoff.  A small group of friends and I headed out for dinner at the Cheesecake Factory (and this will be a recurring spot visited), to get something in us for the WoWInsider/WoWHead meetup. By the time out dinner had concluded and we made our way over to the Annabella, a line was already fully deployed outside of the Tangerine mezzanine. One of the staff memeber told us they were letting people inside in 10 minute intervals, and after being on a plan for 10 hours, and standing in line for an additional 2, this was a bit of a let down to us, and we decided to not partake in that meetup.

 

The Games and Panels This Year

 

Warlords of Draenor (WoW)

 

While WoW is the biggest timesink a lot of us might have, there was not too much that stood out from my perspective with the trailer and question panels. I really like the item squish that is finally being implemented, its been far too long, and was the biggest detail that stood out to me. The character model designs definitely have a more realistic look while maintaining the cartooniness we love.  The garrison is an interesting idea that has a lot of potential and a lot of us will be curious as to see what exact we can do with our personal in-game stead. I spent the majority of my time at the panels and discussions with Kaliope and Emylia of Llane, both of which were extremely ecstatic to be at the convention for the first time after only being able to watch the live stream in the years previous.

 

Give me Liberty… or a Bran Muffin!

 

Reaper of Souls (Diablo 3):

 

While I was not able to play the PS4 version, the line at the PC version was non existent each time I passed by that way, so I was able to get a good amount of demo time in for a game I used to play a considerable amount. The new highlighted features of this expansion are the addition of the Crusader class, the new Act 5, nestled in scenic Westmarch, and of course the reason people keep coming back, the new loot 2.0 system. The graphics are still the same from the core game, and there is nothing too new or exciting, with the exception of the ray of death ability that was playable by the crusader. Seriously, badass. Speaking of Crusaders, they have a nice style of play that allows for almost a ranger like hybrid, being able to stand toe-to-toe in melee, or lash out and strike enemies with holy damage from afar. One thing that I was looking forward to was possibly seeing the Blessed Hammer ability, shades of the Paladin from Diablo 2, unfortunately, it was not implemented in game for that level range, but most people were quite pleased with the skills given to their disposal. And loot 2.0, oh how it made me loathe the system currently in game. Those legendaries, that were supposed to be rewarding after a long day of demon slaying? How about 3 in the span of a 15 minute demo? While I love the sight of shiny gear, a balance should be found, so that when trading games are available when the game goes live, there isn’t an oversaturation of gear available to players, like with the auction house.

 

The Nephalem, will stop you. Except, no one can stop death.

 

Hearthstone

 

Having had zero playing time on this game prior to the event, this was the game I was most looking forward to trying out, as the last time I played a game similar to this (Magic: The Gathering), was way back in the late ’90s. Much like the style back then, the first deck I built consisted of huge, bruising minions ready to crush an opponent after a few turns. Unfortunately, this always left me vulnerable, and usually dead, just like my first playthrough on the demo. Strangely enough, the priest deck felt clunky, but the mage deck really felt like being a true caster instead of a support/healbot, much more conducive to the role of preference carrying over from WoW. After a bit of practice I was able to string together 6 wins for the small prize at the booth, which was $20 off a purchase of $75 or more at the store there. Which would have been REALLY GREAT had I not been to the store right before going to the line. There is a lot of potential with this game as well. The suggestion I left, would be to make class specific legendaries for each hero, that added specific flavor to the game. Mages get Atiesh, Warriors Thunderfury, Hunters, Thori’dal, etc. Also, perhaps a small implementation of mana burn to sap your enemies ability to line up cards with a quick but inefficient monkey wrench as part of your mana would also be lost. Demo felt smooth and I very much enjoyed the game.

 

Stormpike Rifleman. Consider yourself hit for 2 damage.

 

Heroes of the Storm (DotA/LoL)

 

The game that really got my attention at the opening ceremony was Heroes of the Storm. Combining everyone’s favorite heroes spanning the last two decades, the demo of this game instantly became something I wanted to experience before I left, as my ability with RTS games has been shaky at best. This game was wildly popular with the attendees this year, as the line forming seemingly wrapped around endlessly, like a python squeezing the life out of its prey. To my team’s delight, we were able to get in as the last group of players right as the convention was coming to a close. The event staff even came over to watch us rumble. I went with the Elite Tauren Chieftan, and was pleasantly surprised how great this character played. (Note: I am a shameless cheapskate in games like this, and characters that can stunlock [see: Chieftan, Tauren Elite] get bonus points from me.) I like the secondary objectives to create minions  or capture shrines to turn the tide of battle, its a dynamic element instead of camping creeps or the feed of enemies from each lane. One thing I have liked in previous generations of this game was the ability to equip and mold weapons and armor to have unique abilities, like lifesteal, cloaking, +regen, and +% weapon damage. The game itself right now is moderately dependent on using your abilities at the right time instead of hoping for a couple of big hits from an auto attack. Beta invites are live, and everyone is anxious and willing to get their e-hands on them!

 

Your favorites, all rolled together in one neat and bloodsoaked melee.

 

Starcraft

I am not a huge starcraft buff, I play the campaign a bit, but there was nothing at the con that was interesting.  It is not a game I am gushing over.

Random Attractions

No, not Disneyland. A large contingent of our guild had made the trek to the convention, and we convened at the Meeting Stone at 4pm on Friday afternoon. We even tried to summon some guildmates who were not in attendance. In addition to that, how about 6 different meetups with groups, including 5 dinner get-togethers. And if cheeescake is even mentioned in the next week, I might pop. A high-light of the weekend was watching Sheepeater down a hot dog stirfry, with a vegetarian Alfredo sauce for a marinande. Both oddly appetizing, and yet extremely confusing at the same time.

After many attempts, we determined the summon was unsuccessful.

 

So, now that all of the panels and games have been done, what else is a con-goer to do? Well, like in years past, everyone sooner or later found there way over to the Hilton lobby, where it got difficult to even move at times. And then, whats better than having a few drinks with your friends and new acquaintances. This is where a lot of people met up with each other some, for the first time, firmly etching in a memory that will not soon be forgotten. Too many people I was introduced to this year, outside of my guild, I met Anafielle, Arielle, Vidyala, Vosskah, Rhidach, Zerena, Novalas, Kaliope, Emylia, Hestiah, Ghemit, Elvine, and everyone’s favorite lead systems designer, GhostCrawler himself for the first time. I also met Sara, Kristin, Grumdy, Colin, Sheepeater, Serrath, and Sturm as people from in the guild for the first time. And lastly, I met with Shawnelle, Aerista, Jasyla, Kaleri, Chronis, and Tikari again at the convention. (And If I missed someone, I am sorry!) A lot of good people and interesting personalities were met and enjoyed, but as I said to my brother as I walked out of the airport and back to the world we know as normalcy, “It feels like I just got up, and should be getting on  a plane out, not coming back home.” It was an enjoyable 4 days away from home, and I look forward to returning next year and meeting up with hopefully even more people than before, but until next year: For the Horde!

 

To friends, food and fun.

Shadow Power

Gadzooks! Are those heirlooms I see you bringing to raid?! Yes indeed, even the most stalwart of raiders are benefiting from the use heirloom items as they progress into heroics for siege of Orgrimmar. While shadow priests haven’t had much in the way of overhaul of talents going into 5.4, they did receive a few sizable buffs to spells that brought them in line (supposedly) with what Blizzard was looking for.

 

One thing that is notable in fights this tier is there are a lot of intermissions, which are absolutely detrimental to us, as that time elapsing lets our dots fall off, and with our somewhat slow ramp-up time, leaves for lower numbers across the board. On the positive side, a lot of the fights have adds, or segments where the boss dips into execute phase and back to full again, making the tier 5 talent, Twist of Fate, which is now active at 35% which is a godsend, a really desirable option for most fights, something that hasn’t been seen since entry level progression on Mogu’shan Vaults.

 

Stats

 

Haste

With the normalization of haste regarding meta gems and trinket procs, haste no longer is superior to intellect once you get to the 14,873 haste plateau. In fact, anything after 17,200 haste is a detriment, as in haste will begin to put you under 1 second for your cast time, causing you to lose time between Global Cooldowns. Haste is still the superior stat for shadow priests, but given the bevy of gear with haste on it, it shouldn’t be too difficult to get to the final plateau before moving on to other stats.

 

Hit

Also not in short supply, there has been over abundance of hit since Throne of Thunder, and now with amplification trinkets boosting your hit via spirit, getting pieces of gear with two of haste/crit/mastery, makes for a much more acceptable venture when choosing gear.

 

Critical Strike and Mastery

Blizzard decided to throw us a nice curve ball when putting together the 2-piece tier set bonus for shadow priests.  The bonus increases the critical effect of your shadowy recall (mastery) effects by 40%. This bonus, in essence, gets better as you move away from haste and into both crit and mastery. Because of Mind Flay: Insanity  being a periodic effect and benefiting from mastery, you always want to have a slight edge in mastery over critical strike. Ive found a good balance between mastery and crit is keeping a 15 point difference in the two stats, raid buffed. An example would be having 25% critical strike and 40% mastery, and moving that ratio up as your gear improves.

 

Gemming

 

Finally, we begin to feel like the shadow priests of yore, getting rid of those horrid straight haste gems, in addition to some greens as well, and go back to pure intellect, with int/(haste/mastery/crit)[haste level depending] for oranges, and int/spirit for blues. Socket bonus are still worth going for in most cases, as they give intellect bonuses, with the exception being on the shoulder slot.

 

How We Are Faring in Raid:

 

In fights where there’s a few mobs up with cleaving, we seems to be at our best, with Immerseus, Protectors, Nazgrim and Galakras being our top fights. But after that we, start to dip off as your multi dot opportunities diminish and the amount of cleaving is limited, or non-existent, such as fights like Norushen, Sha of Pride, Iron Juggernaut, Malkorok, and Thok. These have been some of our weaker fights in the instance, countering our strengths on the previously aforementioned fights. That leaves us feeling, pretty average, to say the least. In fact, raidbots has us right in the middle in terms of how we are faring right now in raids. I am Ok with this. It certainly wasn’t the massive buffs we expected when we saw VT go up 20%, SW:P up 15%, and SW:D up 15%. But without those buffs, we would be in the bottom quarter of dps specs. We also get the short end of the stick on the legendary cloak, as the proc modifier for us ends up being the worst out of the specs that can use it. 

 

Extrapolating the Shadow Priest

 

I like the whole shadow orb resource, it gives us a different feel as opposed to being a mages with shadow spells. I do not think they are being used correctly though. A lot of people thoroughly enjoyed when shadow orbs gave a passive bonus to our dots, instead of having our dots have a chance to do a Tarecgosa and duplicate their damage. A quick fix could be to move the mastery back to periodic bonuses, much like affliction warlocks, but make the shadow orbs still required to cast Devouring Plague, while not giving the bonus to Mind Blast/Mind Spike. This sounds overly complicated, and I do believe the devs like having us do additional damage via mastery and shadow apparitions. I would like to personally have control over my mastery instead of leaving it up to a chance to duplicate.

 

Enter Shadow Power

 

My idea would be making our mastery increase the damage of our spells by X% and duration of shadow power by Y seconds, increased by mastery of course. We would get a new talent called shadow power which would become an ability the we can activate by casting Mind Blast, Mind Flay and Shadow Word: Death. Mind Blast generates 8 shadow power and 1 shadow orb, Shadow Word: Death generates 3 shadow power each time, and Mind Flay generates 3 shadow power. We can hold up to 100 shadow power, excess shadow power is lost. We can activate shadow power at any time to receive a bonus to all damage and healing for X seconds, depending on shadow power, where every point of shadow power grants .1 seconds of the buff (which would be increased in mastery). Basically, this gives us certainty on our mastery like a lot of classes have (see: aff locks, fury warriors, frost mages).

 

State of the Priest

 

I’m happy where we are at. While we aren’t the reigning dps champions we once were in Catacylsm, the versatility we have with Mass Dispel, Vampiric Embrace, Void Shift, and Angelic Feathers provides for a meaninful contribution to raids instead of sitting back being a stationary turret, although our lack of mobile dps is hurting, as we can only cast Shadow Word: Pain (and death when in execute). But as gear continues to improve and we move back to a solid intellect build over haste, you can expect to see your performance go from middle of the pack to front of the class.

Amped Up on Trinkets

With 5.4, now 3 weeks in the books, most people have been able to get a feel for how the new raid has been playing out. Most notably for players gearing up through another gear of content, they were re-introduced to an old friend, the Internal Cooldown (ICD) trinket. Attached to these trinkets are amplification values, that raise the amount of Crit, Haste, Mastery and Spirit by x% (varying from raid finder to heroic warforged) of the amount you have on your gear.

 

This is a nice solution for 2 aspects: It allows all roles to better line up abilities for when the next proc should happen, and it also bridges gaps for people who are close to a break point (28% crit for frost mages, 14973 haste for shadow priests, etc). As a class that is dominated largely by haste, we, as well as other classes that stack one secondary attribute, benefit largely one the one stat, and as an added bonus, get a small boost to hit via spirit increase!  (Hybrid Tax? I hardly knew ye…)

 

This starts the debate of pushing to the next haste breakpoint, since higher level gear is now obtainable. The next haste breakpoint is 18,200, and it only gives you an extra tick on Vampiric Touch. (Thanks Totemspot!) Unfortunately, a few problems arise if we try to get to the next break point.   Even at 14,873 rating (the current level most ToT geared persons should have striven for), we have whittled down our cast time of Mind Blast and Vampiric Touch to 1.05 seconds.

 

This is to say, there is not a lot of room left to go before we end up seeing haste as a baseline detriment, due to our casts being faster than our GCD comes back up. We already encounter this problem when our meta gem activates (although its a great time to spam the living bajesus out of Mind Flay), and during heroism, but Heroism + meta gem is amazing for Mind Flay: Insanity, as you can squeeze 5 full casts of MFI off with that, detriment otherwise. Also, 3 of our spells got buffed in the patch, making intellect a more valued stat now, even though it is unaffected by amp trinkets. With that being considered, its is best to not go full blown haste as you will lose out in the long run. This will slowly start to make your crit and mastery levels rise, which is good, especially since our new 2 set bonuses places emphasis on having a good amount of crit and mastery.

 

The amplification trinket we seek comes from Immerseus, and is aptly called, Purified Bindings of Immerseus. The ICD timer is almost moot for us, as the only CD we have that can line up with that is shadowfiend. Good timing of Devouring Plague can allow you to get possibly 2 Cycles of DP and MFI out of it. The other three trinkets we can use are The Black Blood of Y’Shaarj (Haste and Stacking Intel Proc (RPPM)), Kardris’ Toxic Totem (Intel Proc and 15% chance to do 1/3 Damage of Spell Proc) and Frenzied Crystal of Rage (3.33 % Chance to Cleave and ICD   intel proc).  Initially, I really like the Black Blood Trinket because haste and intel, what ISN’T to love! And I basically wrote the other two off. However, after getting a first hand look at the Garrosh encounter, I can 100% see the merit of using the Frenzied Crystal of Rage because, oh man ALL OF THE ADDS AT ONCE.   So for those about to amp, we salute you, but just remember to not get too amped up on stacking one stat for you priestly folk, or you might be in line for a serious crash (SRS BZNS) at some point down the line when you are on the bench.

 

Eye-Popping, Vein Bulging Goodness. (Results May Vary)

TWO YEARS, EXECUTUS! TWO YEARS!

Its been that long, yet it doesn’t feel like I picked up this keyboard very long ago and began typing.

 

With that being said, happy birthday domain! Here’s to another year down, and another year forthcoming.  Looking back, I really got away from writing about shadow priesting a lot, mainly because we haven’t had any off-the-wall talents or abilities that can be used in non-explotative fashion. Hopefully, something from Siege of Orgrimmar or The Dark Below (and there could have be a infinitely better title choices, imo) will be added to the priest class that adds a new flare to our play style. When I began writing, I didn’t envision this site still being up two years later, as a lot of priest related topics are covered in depth, yet, I pushed myself to write at least one thing per month, no matter what it might entail. It makes me want to be a better writer, exploring avenues that others may not go down, even if it is unsuccessful, I gave it a shot.

 

Inspiration

 

I’d like to thank Arolaide, Jasyla, and Kaleri for getting me interested in writing my blog in the first place. They were the first three blogs I read after being immersed in the Warcraft Universe for well over 6 years at the time. And all of these three continue to write today! As well as getting to know some amazing people who encourage me to continue to not only write, but to improve my writing, like Discopriest, Zerena, and Devonie. And for anyone who reads or comments, thanks!

 

Going Forward

 

Last year, I tried to make a resolution of altering the style of writing at work, as well as taking a few cracks at myself. This year, we shoot for the stars! For starters:

 

•  A Live Blogcast this year at Blizzcon 2013 with Kaliope from Llane!

•  Guest Writers

•  Multi-Chaptered Short Stories

 

There are a few other ideas as well that may happen, if they are even possible to accomplish. Its been fun to write so far, I just hope the topic I post about hit on something relevant to people out there on the internet.

 

Raise up your glass, and take off your pants, another year is in the books!

 

A toast…. for writing, exploration (and for the horde!).

Fifty Shades of Great (BDSM)

In order for my story to take flight, we must travel through a parabola filled with blight, Reading another line of this text may make you sick, But I promise ….     nothing.

Okay, really not that deep at all, in any contrived sense. What makes something great? Is it keeping true to that new year’s resolution? Is it getting a promotion at work? Is it being at the top of the meters every raid night? These can all be shades of greatness, and the latest shade I have found myself (and a lot of other other players as well) closing in on a pinnacle of greatness, by killing Dark Animus heroic and going 11/13 in H ToT. And while it certainly isn’t the greatest shade to be in by that particular grade scale, it is for myself, as through any expansion, this tier has been the most productive for me in terms of heroic bosses killed before a new raid tier is released. That in itself has been its own form of greatness. In addition, our raid team completed the achievement for the meta skyscreamer for about half of our members. This leaves an interesting point left to be made, heroic Lei Shen is in our sights, and Ra-Den to follow, but with the announcement of a possible patch release date in two weeks, is that enough time left to master the encounter?

Should people invest time into fights if the results may not happen? What about the rest of the team? Should that time be used to help them get to the same level as everyone else so they can feel accomplished too?  This is an issue for a lot of guilds right now, as the patch looms, deciding whether to bear down and push as hard as they can, or ease off a bit and come back with a vengeance in the upcoming raid after a recuperation period. And how exactly does the BDSM acronym fit into this post effectively? Simple! (And it serves as the argument either to press onward, or help everyone else catch up.)

Who controls Whom?

Apotheosis has ran rough shot this tier of current content, namely the latest kill of Dark Animus in only a single night’s worth of work. For one of the harder heroics in the raid, due to its model of controlled chaos, one night in Animus was time well spent. Other heroics may have taken longer, but since killing them, there is relative little difficulty anymore as clearing the instance is less of a time per night issue versus time left until patching issue. No Anima Font tells us what do to and gets away with it.

Bondage/Restraints

The only thing binding us now is the time element. While I have no doubts we will be able to defeat both Lei Shen and Ra-Den in time, with only a few raid nights left it becomes a statistical long shot to kill one or both of them with the time restraint that has been set in place. Any group can defy the odds, just like an underdog winning against a heavily favored entity.

Dominance/Discipline

As stated earlier, we have made this tier work for us. (WHO DOES ToT WORK FOR?) While that dominance is now second nature, it didn’t happen overnight. It required a lot of wipes and discipline on our part to get there. To think that Lei Shen or Ra-den would be any different would be ill-advised to say the least. It is something to build on going forward into Siege of Orgrimmar, knowing full well we have the capacity to quickly adapt and learn non end-tier fights.

Sadism/Submission

Uncle? Uncle. There is no other way to describe what other dialogue the bosses could have after encountering us. Horridon was merely a setback? We set you back to the Dark Ages, Jalak. Submission is sometimes a double edged sword, and there has been our fair share of nights where the mechanics, for one reason or another, just completely decimated us. Like the dreaded Fist (fish) Smash. I guess wiping to farm content can be looked upon as sadistic, especially when you kill the boss mere moments from the enrage….

Masochism

This would be throwing ourselves against a brick wall (or glass case of emotions) repeatedly for the next however many raids, and ultimately coming up with nothing. Or, in the same vein, doing something over and over again, hoping that the result would change. The one saving grace here is that we don’t have to look at this content for 39 consecutive weeks like Icecrown Citadel, you know, the time frame where people took long standing and sometimes permanent hiatuses from the game, because after the 15th clear, it really becomes trivial, painful and insane (the same thing over and over hoping for change) to continue to move forward.

To highlight, raid teams as a whole are very strong and unified, and the can generally eliminate the obstacles before them. Its when elements outside of their control enter into the scheme of things, that plans change and decisions will be made that not everybody agrees on. Still, the raid stays cohesive and marches onward. Control – something at times that is so valuably desired, and at times is fleeting. And that begs the question, with so many things to consider, how we and many other guilds have done so far, what would you do to achieve that shade of greatness?

– Would you valiantly push on for Progression, Loot, Server firsts and complete dominance over those whom would doubt you?

or

– Would you remind yourself that you didn’t get here alone, and help those achieve the same greatness you have obtained, even if it means compromising some of your own goals?

This is the crux we (and perhaps other guilds) face at the moment when, with little provocation, the end of arena season was announced for August 27th. Kind of interesting how dedicated PvPers get an end date for their season, but new raid content is on a tentative. Let the cards fall and see what happens.

What would you do for your Fifty Shades of Great?

Confined to the binding that is reality.

PvP is dead….. and Blizzard killed it.

Once, a long, long time ago, there was a time when I actually enjoyed PvP combat. Even back to my vanilla and BC days as a hunter, I remember walking up behind some poor, unsuspecting mage and unleashing an aimed shot that would crit for 3900. (3900!!) and 1-shot my adversary back in vanilla. And then in BC, the old passage was to locate the hunter and mana burn them as fast as possible, rendering them useless. It became common to see hunters with intel enchants and full time running aspect of the viper for preservation purposes. Resilience was introduced here, and it provided a new element to pvp, mainly as a way to not completely wreck the opposing priest/mage/warlock by sundering off all of their armor.

 

Around the middle of Wrath, I underwent my identity crisis, and eventually became a full time priest. Nothing new was introduced in Wrath as far as elements to PvP (aside from death knights having a joyride of a time deathgripping the heck out of people), so the play stayed consistent from BC, although learning how to effectively juke people on my priest gave adversaries, and even my own teammate, terrors.

 

As cataclysm dawned upon us, I was no longer enjoying healing in arenas, and decided I wanted to be the one getting healed, so back to shadow I went. Priests were all the rage as the end of the expansion broke, and this was where I got my first taste of rated battlegrounds. And it was glorious. I lived and died by the sword. I was willing to take the risk of using my PvE-acquired gear, with no resilience, in favor of higher spell power, secondary stats and tier bonuses. This tactic worked with devastating effect, as I used my tier set bonus, which allowed you to gain 3 shadow orbs each time your shadow fiend or shadowy apparitions did damage. Back then, your shadow orbs modified how much damage your mind spike or mind blast did, and we had archangel as well, which increased the damage of those spells by an additional 20% for 18 seconds. Throw in a rogue for a stun, and dk for a ranged silence and necrotic strike and you had yourself one dead flag carrier. PvP was fun.

 

And then Mists of Pandaria came, and the game of PvP started to drastically change. The pre-patch introduced a baseline resilience of 40% to everyone. And this was okay, it allowed me to take less damage and survive a bit longer in an iffy situation. Although I could no longer dispatch opponents with swift efficiency,

 

As someone who is a PvE content player first, and PvP’er second, its a nice change of pace to be able to do a battleground here and there. It breaks up the tedium of dailies and the same raid over and over (I’m looking at you Icecrown Citadel). By no means am I a rookie or scrub when it comes to out-thinking an opponent, or experience in a battleground as I have 100,000+ lifetime HKs, the battlemaster achieve, and duelist achieve (s2). Its the last change of late that has really crushed any type of fun I once had with queuing up for a battleground.

 

In 5.3, Baseline resilience for characters has gone up from 40% to 65%, and in addition, all gear is scaled down to 496 if the item level is higher by default. Throw in your new and improved battle fatigue ability, which cuts healing done by 45%, and you have quite a situation for your-not-so-dedicated-to-PvP player. Interested in these changes, I decided if I further became an indestructible tank, bringing forth indiscriminate justice to his foes, or if something was greatly a miss. And it turned out, something was a miss. I lacked the gear and “required stat” of pvp power to have much effect on my opponents. It was like being a wet match, in a damp cave and trying to light. My spell power declined by over 40%, and my health by over 200,000. Players whom I would make short work of anywhere in the world if I saw them were now crushing me with literal ease, despite using crafted pvp armor and entry level weapons. PvP power is designed to give the user more damage and healing from their abilities, as opposed to having stronger gear. What does this mean? It means people who are like me, no longer get to have their cake and also eat it. People using last or current season PvP gear, not only do not suffer a penalty to using higher level gear, they also get a bonus versus players wearing higher gear (as they aren’t going to use PvP power for anything LFR or higher raid based).

 

People who “casually” do PvP, are put at a disadvantage, not because they are under geared, as someone who raids is not, but because this change has made PvP a fully separate entity from PvE. In order to be competitive in PvP, you must also grind out a full set of pvp gear as well. Which makes sense, if you want to be a Tyrannical Gladiator. But for someone who just wants to blow off steam from raids/dailies? It seems completely absurd to go this route to even be semi-competitive.  I mean, you don’t see people who queue up into LFR or heroics get their gear normalized down to 463/476/483 do you?

 

Here’s the gripe: We put in a lot of time and work, sometimes fruitless nights of fighting encounters for powerful rewards (and the content of course…..). Those players have earned the right to use that gear as they see fit (without exploiting game mechanics, etc). Why should they be punished for bringing them to pvp? Because new person X doesn’t want to get killed by heroic raider Y? Here’s something to consider: We have all been at that point at some point in the game. We were all once noobs (to whatever we did). I remember being on my hunter back in ’05 and thinking counterattack was the coolest thing ever and melee’d the heck out of stuff hoping for a parry (god it was awful). PvP is no different. If you are undergeared, you are going to get beat down by the people who have better gear while you get your ownself better. This is the rite of passage/initiation. Then, once you have the gear, you get to do the beating down, and the cycle continues.

 

The practical problem to this is gear inflation. Right now Ilvls are shooting up stats at an enormously large rate. And there are ways to fix this: (Queue idea for expansion planning)

 

– Since ilvls aren’t going away, continue with them but alter the storyline of WoW.

 

– The burning legion returns after Garrosh is ousted in Orgrimmar. In the midst of celebration, Ner’zhul’s agents return to Azeroth and kidnap Anduin Wryn and warp him back to their home planet. Varian decides to enlist his gnomish engineers to make transport to the planet, and being the cunning tactician, enlists Vol’jin’s help, or otherwise threatens to Destroy the new Warchief’s regime before it rebuilds.

 

– The fight takes place on the Eredar planet. The atmosphere is filled with bacteria that alters the state of anything entering into it. STAT CRUSH! All items and stats have their level reduced by 98%. This takes gear and damage down to around what people had around the early stages of Burning Crusade. Health pools of 600,000 drop to 12,000. DPS drops from 200,000+ to around 4,200 (PvE). This cuts the insta-gib factor down quite considerably. Since we travel back and forth between the planet. Traces of bacteria linger in our atmosphere and carry over to the old BGs. This means:

 

– Battle fatigue has been disabled on the planet and any battleground/arena.

– Players no longer have a baseline of 65% resilience.

– This accomplishes: People who travel the world and engage in World PvP get to have super inflated stats and the feel of crushing anyone. People who want to queue for battleground can either use pvp or pve gear effectively, because a 98% reduction of ilvl 700 vs 98% of ilvl 600, is very miniscule.

 

TLDR: This is a whiny QQ post because I feel I have lost the capacity to enjoy an aspect of the game because of gear normalizing, or as I call it challenge mode PvP. And because I want to be able to make a cake and eat it too.

 

Mmmmmm….. cake…….

 

Here, have some cake. All this talk of cake has made me hungry, and I am going to go bake my cake and eat it right now.

Celestially Blessed

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnd, 12.  Done. Thank goodness for that runestone guarantee from Lei Shen, otherwise I might have never received any. It almost became disheartening watching my luck turn up empty each passive week in LFR when others would get 4, or even sometimes 5 runestones over the last two bosses, but I digress.

 

Now that the rng based factor is out of the way, we can begin the skill based aspect of this part of the questline. After receiving my 12th runestone from Lei Shen, and ultimately killing him again for his heart, our good ol’ buddy chum, Wrathion tasks us with seeking out the celestials around Pandaria. Each celestial has a special challenge for adventurers to partake in and complete in the legendary questline, and while you have to visit each temple to see the kind of help they need, you are only required to complete one of the tasks. Being a priest, you have the option of doing the healer challenge, or caster dps challenge. Both challenges present obstacles that push your limits and will require you to use most, if not your entire, arsenal to complete them.

 

One thing you may want to bring with you, aside from a full complement of buffs from some of your friends if you can get them, is the Celestial Offering item,  purchasable from the August Celestials Quartermaster in your faction’s respective shrine. This item, depending on what task you pick, will either give you:

 

 

A) 10% Intellect while in the Temple of the Jade Serpent Area (DPS Challenge)

or B) 1000 Health Regenerated per second. (Healer Challenge)

 

While the healer buff does not look very attractive at all to enhance healing spells, it comes in handy for the healer challenge. Being the experimentalist, I decided to to both challenges to see how well they tested the array of skills. I must say, after seeing how the healer challenge worked, compared to the dps one, I was rather underwhelmed by the difference in difficulty. The fights themselves are drastically different.

 

Yu’lon’s Challenge

 

The Jade Serpent Yu’lon charges you with cleansing the remnants of corruption from the temple, specifically embodied in Wrathion himself. Wrathion ties a blindfold to himself and will begin to run to random locations near you. Once there, he beings to cast a frontal cleave that hits anything within a 180 degree radius for 200,000 damage. When you move out of the way of this, as well as his other attacks, if you position yourself behind him, you gain a debuff that increases all damage you deal to Wrathion while behind him by 150%, making quick concise cuts around his cleave something to shoot for. When Wrathion is at long range of you (30+ yards, he will channel an uninterrupted Rain of Fire that has a circle for where the spouts of fire land. Each burst hits for 45,000 damage if you get hit by it. The last major ability he has is A summon Corruption spell, that opens a pool of corruption on the ground, dealing 80,000 damage per second if you stand in it. In addition, 5 Corruption Spawns will come from it, and pursue you around the room. Their melee hits for between 25 and 35k. If you are able to keep yourself alive for the first 90 seconds of this fight, Wrathion will then summon 7 copies of himself within close range of each other. All of these copies will begin to channel Explosion, which will hit you for 500,000 damage if not killed. Each copy has only 1,000 health, but the cast time of eruption is only 3 seconds. Wrathion himself has 19,4 Million HP to eat through before you pass the challenge and get credit for the quest.

 

Talents

Void Tendrils: This will make managing the corruptions easier for a bit and will give you time to plant and refresh your dots, or get a couple of channels of Mind Flay: Insanity in.

Body and Soul: You are going to be using your Power Word: Shield off cooldown to mitigate some of the melee and not special hits from Wrathion, and the speed increase, will again help keep those pesky adds away long enough so you can cast some spells at Wrathion.

Solace and Insanity: While I like From Darkness, Comes Light on high mobility fights, with the gear you have going into this, including the meta gem, you should get 3 Casts of MF:I off during your Devouring plague, and it greatly outweighs the procs you will get from FDCL.

Desperate Prayer:  I know a lot of people use Angelic Bulwark, as its one less cooldown they need to manage. But, on a short fight like this, the extra 10% healing from desperate prayer may be the difference maker, opposed to a 20% absorb from AB.

Divine Insight:  This talent is still a cornerstone, with all the moving you will be doing. The free damage proc and shadow orb generator will give you more MF:I for the fight and  should make the fight beatable before he splits into 2, depending again on your gear level.

Halo: I was really tempted to go with Divine Star here, the only reason I did not, was because of the part where he splits and summons 7 copies. The adds are not stacked in a nice pile or line for you to sling your star through, and by the time cascade goes around, one or two may have exploded. Whereas, you could be in the middle of the copies and Halo will hit them all within 1  second, and Trivialize that part of the challenge.

 

Tips: Make sure the corruption spawns are all grouped up before you get close enough to them to use Void Tendrils, if you get enough distance, mind sear them down as their health is low, but make sure to watch for Wrathion’s cleave. Use desperate prayer early, as if you find your challenge running long, you will be able to use it again if the situation permits. Vampiric embrace only if you happened to get dazed by the spawns and make sure you use DP on Erathion at that time as well.

 

Chi’ji’s Challenge

 

If you are a dps with an itchy trigger finger, this challenge may be more suitable to your liking. Although you will have to use a true healing spec for this, and I chose to go holy because, I haven’t feasibly used either spec and just carried over the spec I had at the end of cataclysm. This challenge pits Wrathion against an avatar of his father, Deathwing. Wrathion will tank Deathwing for you, but takes 300% more damage from Deathwing’s attack than you would. The same corruption spawns appear as from the dps challenge, but have 1/5th of the health pool, making them relatively easy to deal with. The part where the blessing helps is where you need to heal Wrathion from larger hits by Deathwing, while at the same time dealing with the corruption spawns that are also hitting you. Similar to the DPS challenge, if Deathwing is alive after 90 seconds, he will disppaear and Wrathion will become stunned in the middle of the room. Similar to the Deathwing encounter, he will begin to take high damage from Elementium Bolts that will spawn on three sides of him, larger heals/Guardian Spirit/Spirit Shell is advised for this. The trick to this encounter is that it actually encourages dpsing as a healer. As each time you deal damage to Deathwing, you also deal 15% additional fire damage. While I don’t maintain a healing set, it helps using a dps set to make the encounter much shorter. Be advised, your mana regen will stink, and you will have to use your mana return cooldowns smartly. If at any point Wrathion’s health reaches 1, Chi’ji stops the encounter and you start over after ringing the gong.

 

Talents

Void Tendrils: Same as the dps challenge, buy yourself some time to channel hymn of hope, get some needed healing in, or unload a few smites and holy fires.

Body and Soul: Since you are not taking the brunt of any damage, there is no clear cut winner in this tier, but the speed increase of you if you shield yourself is nice from getting some distance on the adds.

Mindbender: Doing this in dps gear will require quicker returns of mana, and while Solace is decent, its in no way comparable to its shadow version in terms of results. Plus, its an additional dps boost that will shorten the encounter.

Desperate Prayer: Similar to the DPs challenge, if you find yourself in a bind with having both you and Wrathion deficient in health, whilst the adds are hitting you, the extra 10% can be the difference between surviving and a do-over.

Diving Insight: For holy, a Prayer of Mending Proc that automatically jumps from injured targets. This is nice because it does some work for you, as long as you are close enough to Wrathion so that the spell can use its charges.

Divine Star: Shortest CD of any spell in this tier and will accomplish both goals of this fight, by making quick work of the corruptions, and healing you and Wrathion twice. As well as burning Deathwing twice.

 

Tips: This challenge is actually pretty easy after you see it once or twice, you get to position the other elements of the fight around Deathwing and Wrathion, allowing you to take full advantage of a Void Tendril + Divine Star combination that should make stress on you a heck of a lot easier. The number one thing to be mindful of is your mana, as Wrathion only has 750,000 health, and a few hits from Deathwing without any sizable heals will end the challenge.

 

Once you complete the challenge of your choosing, its back to Mason’s Folly for another monologue about how the aspects have given us their aid, you are becoming the true champion of Wrathion’s cause, and how we as adventurers wish that he would just clam up and give us our reward already. And without further adieu, you are presented with your ilvl 600 cloak reward. Going into patch 5.4, you want to make sure you take the Jadefire Drape, as this has been designated the “caster cloak” and will receive the legendary proc in the next step of the questline, whereas the Cranewing Cloak will get the healer proc, even though you gain the benefit of spirit into hit. It is quite a step up from what you may be using previous to this, as it has 3 secondary stats and an additional 1000 intellect, and should make you quite happy the first eight hundred times you use it.

 

Best of luck in your challenge, and may the Celestials bless you.

Deck the Brawls with Boughs of Slaughter (Ra-ra-ra-ra-ra, RA-RA-RA-RA!)

He refuses to use conventional methods to tackles his problems.  He once wore a fishing hat to raid, and died on every fight not knowing. Instead of taking long walks on the beaches of Stranglethorn, the beaches of Stranglethron, take longs walks upon him. And he still comes back for more.

 

He is:

 

The Most Un-Interesting Scrub in the World.

 

Here with his advice on:  Brawling Tips for 5.3.

 

The brawler’s guild some some modifications made to it during the 5.3 patch, with the changing of current rank 8 bosses into their own rare category, as well as adding two new ranks of bosses to the foray for the most dedicated and geared individuals. On top of this, items could be obtained from various places around the world, that would return you to the brawler’s guild to face a special combatant. These combatants award 50 VP per kill, a designer shirt to match your mog with appropriate flavor text, as well as varying amounts of gold with 400 being the lowest, and 900 the highest. Some of the new bosses model after the races of Pandaria, in a similar fashion to the way the Glorious! achievement works.  The fights themselves for the most part, do not require as much coordination as say, the Disruption challenge, where a high level of movement and damage are required. Nope, In fact, things start off with a bit of good luck, from a Grummle?

 

Level 1: Grandpa Grumplefoot/Knockoff Grumplefoot

 

This is the first challenge (according to difficulty) of the new bosses in Brawler’s Guild that can award VP and their matching shirts. To acquire the quest for this item, simple visit Grandpa Grumplefoot at the Grummle Exchange in Kun-Lai Summit, and then dance with him. The item will automatically appear in your bag, and it will lead you to either Bizmo’s Brawlpub or Brawl’gar Arena. From there, and will all other challenges, you will need to buy and select the option to use your challenge card to defeat the boss. Grandpa Grumplefoot is a fairly straightforward encounter.

 

Grandpa Grumplefoot will drop assorted luckydos around the area to either help or harm you. Red luckydos damage you if you run over them, blue luckydos will heal you if you run over them, and after about 30 seconds, he will summon yellow luckydos, which move around on their own and deal 200k damage to you if you hit them. Other than his standard melee ability, his has two flute channels, neither of which can be interrupted. The first channel, is a heal on himself which will restore .5% of his hp per 1/2 second for 3 seconds, the other is a DoT channel on you, that deals .5% of your health every second for 3 seconds. Additionally, if you stay in his melee too long he will use an exploding luckydo which deals 100k and knocks you back. Grandpa Grumplefoot has roughly 5.5M hp, which for a 2 min fight, puts the dps requirement at 50k. The reward: 400g, 50VP, and shirt that occasionally toots when you wear it! Difficulty for a Shadow Priest: 2/10

 

Level 2: Ty’thar/Raptorhide Boxing Gloves

 

Your next challenge is a bare knuckled fistfight where you are meant to look like your character is ready to do some serious melee combat with your spiked mitts drawn. The item for the challenge is obtained by completeing the barrens weekly quest and exchanging 1 radical mojo for the Raptorhide Boxing gloves.

 

Ty’thar is a troll fighter, who is modeled out of the Mike Tyson Punch-Out games from the old 8bit Nintendo. While his standard melee attack is fairly weak, if he connects with one of his special punches it will automatically knock you out. If your struck by 3 special punches, you lose. Like wise, you must “kill” Ty’thar three times in order for the fight to end. Each time you or Ty’thar recover from a knockout, you come back with 75% and then 50% of your health before the third KO ends it. His three special punches are Left Hook, Right Hook, and Slam. In order to successfully dodge the punches, you must move opposite the direction of the punch being thrown, and backwards for slams. Ty’thar has  a sparse 4.2M HP, however, each time he gets KO’d and recovers, you are unable to interact with him to do damage for about 10 seconds, which cuts the effective berserk timer to 100 seconds. Still, the dps requirement to make the reduced berserk timer comes out to 42,000. Float like a feather, sting like that pissed off hornet that comes out of nowhere on your way to work. The reward: 400g, 50VP, and the Undisputed Heavyweight Championship. Difficulty for a Shadow Priest: 3/10

 

Level 3: Master Boom Boom/Hozen Fur Fuse

 

Here is where you start to see the boss gimmick mechanics start to take flight. This is probably one of the most annoying pieces to get, as the item is placed into your back after killing a random number of hozen in the Burlap Trail within Kun-Lai Summit. To make life easier, it has been highly encouraged to the the quest, “The Burlap Trail” and crush quicker respawning hozen with your Kota Beast, as opposed to trying to dps farm them on the ground.

 

The Master Boom Boom encounter itself involves a lot of… you guessed it…. BOOM. His basic attack is a dynamite toss, and intertwined with the regular dynamite sticks, are heavy clusters of dynamite which hit for about 50k if they land on you. They also knock you back and form an impassable pillar where they land. He will throw 5 of these out in each of his transitions, at which he will start the gimmick of the encounter at 66% and 33%. At those percentages, we will summon a huge block of TNT in the center of the ring attached to the 5 large clusters that are placed out. They will all ignite and move towards the TNT. You stamp out each dynamite clutser by running over it before all 5 get to the center. If even one reaches the TNT, it will explode for 900 MILLION (!!!) damage, so even with dispersion, you will not be able to survive the mechanic. You will have to do this twice at both the splits, but after that, the fight is just be able to dodge the dynamote clusters. And If you can dodge dynamite, then you can also dodge the avoidable repair bill. Master Boom Boom has 5.06M HP, and with all the moving you have to do to dodge dynamite and stomp the TNT fuses, your dps requirement comes in at around 44,000.    The Reward: 400g, 50VP, and a shirt that goes BOOM to match that explosive personality. Difficulty for a Shadow Priest: 4/10

 

Level 4: Razorgrin/Impeccably Sharp Tooth

 

If I were to ask you, “What does 2-time NBA Champion, Lebron James, have to do with our next boss?” you might be a bit perplexed as to what they could have in common. Razorgrin is a shark that is heralded as the Terror of the South Seas. However, upon entering the arena with him, you’ll find that his only ability he has, is Flop. He will flop around helplessly towards you, using no other special abilities whatsoever. This item is obtained via fishing, specifically, from the pool of the day in pandaria, giving the highest chance compared to other world pools.

 

The trick to this fight, if at any point in time you enter his melee range, its an automatic death. So, while you have nothing special to avoid, the fight will keep you moving more than most normal raid encounters in Throne of Thunder, to ensure that you cant just stand back and tee off on the shark. Razorgrin has 6.5M hp, so for all movement you have to do, you also have to pull out 55,000 dps to beat the berserk timer. The reward: 500g, 50VP, and a brand new sharkskin tunic. Yeah, tunics people. Difficulty for a Shadow Priest: 2/10

 

Drop on the deck, and flop like a fish!

Level 5: Splat/Vial of Reddish Ooze

 

This is one of two new items that lead to the brawler’s guild that are acquired by doing scenarios. While Ive yet to get either from a heroic scenario box, I do believe they are both from normal Greater Caches of Treasure only.

 

Splat is an exact replica of the rank 3 Brawler’s Guild standard fight, Blat. Reddish in her demeanor, Splat slowly moves around the arena, splitting periodically into smaller replicas that also move slowly around the room. The only catch is, every time she splits, a pool of red is created at the point where she split, effectively covering up the entire floor of the arena. Similar to the first encounter, killing off the clones will serve no purpose, as killing her remains the sole objective. Splat has  6.8M hp, and again, your moving and damage skills will be tested, as later on after a lot of adds have accumulated, standing in melee, will result in many hits, possibly fatal to you. Try to unload your burst at the start of the fight, as it will be harder to do so later on, aside from saving shadowfiend. You will need at least 58,000 dps to comes out with a victory before the berserk timer. The Reward: 500g, 50 VP, and a shirt thats soaked in, hopefully, ooze. Difficulty for a Shadow Priest: 3/10

 

Level 6: Dippy & Doopy/Frost-Tipped Eggshell

 

Have you been collecting pets? Our next boss hopes you have been. The Dippy and Doopy encounter is a reward from defeating an elite pet battle in northern Icecrown. Doopy is anaquatic type, so bring your favorite fliers or magical pets to battle to give yourself the best chance to get this item.

 

For this fight there is an unusually long pause to begin the fight, which unfortunately takes about 8 seconds off your berserk timer. When the boss appears, its the same old dippy that melee have learned to love and lovingly throw their keyboard at. Only this time, Dippy has brought their much larger and slower cousin, Doopy! Both of the penguins perform exactly the same, they have one ability in Peck, and will be knocked back each time a spell is applied. The only difference is, Dippy is still a hyperactive kid on a triple shot of Ritalin, and zips around the ring, while Doopy is the Fat Owlbert of the bunch. (HES A BIRD PEOPLE!) Dippy has 2.1M hp, and Doopy has 4.3M hp, collectively giving the encounter 6.4M HP to eat through at the end. In order to make life easier for you, you need to kill off Dippy first. Doing so will allow to to plant in the ground and free cast on Doopy, as his movement speed is too slow to every catch you while you plaster him with spells. 60,000 DPS and a lot of moving in the first 30-60 seconds, will net you a kill and some free ranged bird for dinner. Do not stop moving while Dippy is up and cast SW:P for instant damage to knock him back as often as you can.  The reward: 500g, 50VP, and a slick new Tuxedo Shirt. Difficulty for a Shadow Priest: 4/10

 

NOT THE EYES PLEASE!

 

Level 7: Mecha-Bruce/Modified Chomping Apparatus

 

The Fan Favorite and proverbial pincushion finally makes his return. Whats that? You wanted to get your Haters Gonna Hate achievement by picking on poor ol’ Bruce? And as soon as you get done beating Bruce again, the item to challenge him again pops right into your bag. Only this time, the new and improved version of Bruce is definitely harder, better, faster, and quite possibly stronger too.

 

The fights starts out the same way the normal Bruce encounter starts, he hits you with his weak melee, you can stun him, and OH NO THE CHOMP IS COMING let me just walk off to the side over >>>> this way. And so you move off to the side expecting the same old fight, well this time, after every chomp, Mecha-Bruce powers up. He gains stun immunity, 40% movement speed, 40% reduced casting time for power up, and 40% increased damage, each time he chomps, and it stacks. In addition, if you thought you were going to run, Mecha-Bruce puts you in a Stasis for 5 seconds, rendering you unable to move from the chomp that follows immediately after he re-enters melee range. Because of this, every time Bruce powers up, you should position yourself in the corner farthest from him, so that time elapses from the stasis, giving you time to move just before Bruce arrives to chomp. Mecha-Bruce has 6.55M hp, so dealing with all the stuns and the amount of damage you need to pull off is around 63,000. The Reward: 600g, 50VP, and your right to heckle any brawler with your Crochide shirt. Difficulty for a Shadow Priest: 6/10

 

Level 8: Blingtron 3000/Old Dusty Robot

 

And here is where the gimmicks really start to pile up. The Blingtron 3000 is the bi-pelagic predecessor of the current Blingtron 4000 model, which fittingly enough, is where the item comes from to open up this encounter. Since you can only get one get package from blingtron on your account per day, if you want to get this encounter wait until you are on the toon you want to fight with before accepting the gift.

 

The Blingtron 3000 encounter is not so much a dps check, as it is awareness. The goal of the encounter is to take the small, even more obsolete Blingtron 2000 adds, and line the up in such a fashion that, they create a chain link from Blingtron 3000 to the Gnomish Tesla Coil located in the opposite corner from Blingtron 3000. Blingtron 3000 does not move, but will occasionally launch errant rockets at your location, which will deal 200k if they come in contact with you. The Blingtron 2000 adds damage is dismissible and will not put you under duress. Once you overload the coil, run to an empty corner, as the coil will overload every blingtron on the floor in contacts with. it will chain up to the Blingtron 3000, and if you get caught in the Tesla Coil overload, it will hit you for 400k. While Blingtron 3000 has a large health pool at 21.8M hp, once the tesla Overload Hits it, it gains a debuff which increases the damage it takes by 900%. Effectively, you can chain a minimum of 6 adds up (7 is a much safer number) to chain to blingtron in a circuit. Each add has 140k hp, making the damage you need to do at around 1 million to the adds. Once Blingtron is vulnerable, its 21.8M HP is cut to an effective 2.18M hp, bringing the grand total to 3.18M hp. So in 2 minutes, the amount of dps you need to pull is a sparse 26,500, but the key is getting the adds to be where you want and not dying to overload or rocket strikes. The reward: 600g, 50VP, and some washed up, hand me down shirt from last year. Difficulty for a Shadow Priest: 5/10

 

Level 9: Argh/The Bear and the Lady Fair

 

This is the second of the items that can be found in the scenario ward caches at the end of each run. This quest is a bit harder, as the dps check skyrockets compared to Splats. The Bear and the Lady Fair is a romance based off of…. Romeo and Juliet?…. Beauty and the Beast?…. and involves you the antagonist, trying to kill over these “lovers” before they form an unspeakable union!

 

For shadow priests, the gimmick/buff to this encounter is extremely unfavorable. There are 3 trampolines spread around a set of two tables stacked upon each other, with the person you have to kill, Argh, located on top. If you successfully bounce on each trampoline in succession, the next attack you deal with deal triple damage. While this sounds nice, it really only enhances Devouring Plague or Mind Flay: Insanity for the timetable its up. You can choose to avoid the trampoline aspect and plant on the ground, dealing with the other half, Raaaaaaargh. Raaargh is a bear with 25.3M hp and any dps to him is a waste. Raargh hits moderately hard for around 25k per swing, and will periodically interrupt your casting for 4 seconds. The good thing about Raaargh is that you can fear and CC it to no end and no diminished effects. Allowing you to plant and nuke Argh from a far. Argh has 10.8M hp, so the dps check is not pretty by any means. If you find yourself getting spell locked especially while you are casting Mind Flay: Insanity, you may want to switch up to From Darkness, Comes Light so that you can still cast your procs while shadow is coming back to you. The DPS to beat this comes in at 90,000, which means if you haven’t already, its time to start using the brawlers potion before the fight starts so you can get 2 off. A safer bet is closer to 100k, as getting caught with spell interrupt takes 4 seconds off your berserk timer each time. The reward: 700g, 50 VP, and a shirt that just permeates the room with a aura of “Chivalry”. Difficulty for a Shadow Priest: 6/10 (ignoring trampoline), 9/10 using it.

 

 

Level 10: Ro-Shambo/Paper Covered Rock

 

This item I have found to be the most rng based drop of the set, as I harvested over 300 sets of pumpkins and other assorted vegetables before I finally found a paper covered rock amidst the refuse of the untilled soil. Fortunately, while it may prove difficult to come by while you play your Farmville for the 265th time, it is one of the easiest fight to beat the gimmick around.

 

Ro-Shambo is a giant hand, a la Adams Family style, that hits you with basic attacks until the gimmick where you are forced to choose Paper, Rock or Scissors. If you win, Ro-Shambo is stunned and takes 500% more damage for 5 seconds. If you lose, Ro-Shambo smacks you for 2/3 of your health, and if you draw, nothing happens. Each time you select, a version of what Ro-Shambo selected is placed in the area, if he wins or ties, its a normal version, if he loses, it will be an extremely weak and aoe-able version. The good news about this is, if your running Deadly Boss Mods, the mod will tell you which option to select ensuring you win each time, and ultimately trivializing the encounter. If you wish, to enjoy the feeling of playing a true blind draw, I would turn off any mods that can give you clairvoyance before attempting this fight. Ro-Shambo has 12.2M hp, but you can eat through good chunks of that with the debuff while hes stunned. Over 2 minutes, the dps to Ro-Shambo to Ro-Shambo is 105,000, with or without the damage debuffs. The reward: 700g, 50VP, and when in doubt, ROCK. Difficulty: 1/10 Using DBM, 8/10 Blind Draw

 

Level 11: Blind Hero/Well-Worn Headband

 

The Blind Hero is the closest thing to resembling the vanilla WoW/Warcraft 3 demon hunters, as he is classified as undead, but wields the dual swords and wears the blindfold as its signature. The item to get to the blind hero actually comes from playing carnival games. As the blindfold has a small chance to appear in the darkmoon prize box you get upon completing the games. While you can only do 5 per day on any character, the prize boxes are not soulbound, so you can send the box to the toon you want to get the blindfold on.

 

The blind hero, has no basic attacks, and instead assaults the area with three attacks. A small cone, frontal crush which hits for about 175k. A 180 degree cleave, which hits for 200k, and a full 360 degree slash which hits for 350k. The small crush is the attack he will use most often, and he will swing roughly once every 2.5 seconds with this attack. This is a very high mobility fight, and you probably will not be in the same place for more than 3-4 seconds at most. Because of this, you may want to make sure you have the Divine Insight and From Darkness, Comes Light talents, as they will boost your mobile dps. If you get to more than 30 yards from the Blind Hero, he will walk around aimlessly for a moment, allowing you to get off a little burst before having to get back to moving. You are going to have to make good use of self healing as well, liberally using Power Word: Shield and Renew at all times, with Desperate Prayer/Angelic Bulwark in emergency situations. The Blind Hero has 9.3M hp, but with the amount of moving involved, it might seem more like 19.4M. In the end, if your able to do 85,000 dps while dodging at least 95% of his swings, you will come away with a victory. The reward: 900g, 50VP, and a shirt that just begs to be looked at by fellow brawlers. Difficulty: 9/10

 

 

Level 12: Mingus Diggs/The Digmaster’s Earthblade

 

HEY THERE LADDIE! ARE YE READY TO GET YER KNEEPADS ON AND DIG? The Mingus Diggs is the dwarf to help you out.  As if insulting us wasn’t enough by not getting the creepy claw to pop up in our archaeology tab (seriously, 350 finds and not yet?)  the item to fight Mingus Diggs comes from digging up tol’vir finds, or trading in completed Pandaria finds for crates of Tol’vir artifacts. Once you have the item, find 5 or so of your close friends to give you some raid buffs, and break out the flasks and feats, you’re going to need them.

 

The Mingus Diggs fight has a lot of things going on that you will need to keep track of, at the start of the fight, there is the dreaded pause which cuts about 8 seconds off of your berserk timer, and once you see the dps check, you will be begging for that time. You do not actually fight Mingus himself until the end, but you engage 4 obelisks in the corners of the arena, that each do the same ability. Mingus is invulnerable and flails at you with his shovel that hits for negligible damage. The obelisks do not attack, but instead channel a dot that stacks to 250 (you’re dead if it goes above 125), and each stack is a separate debuff from each obelisk. The in order to stop the channel, you must move into close proximity of the obelisk (10 yards), and it will stop channeling. Finding the balance of managing your debuff stacks with self healing is the key to the fight. For myself, I managed to survive on shields on the first two obelisks, used Desperate Prayer on my way to the third, vampiric Embrace in between moving between 3 and 4, and dispersion if any stack got over 100. If your stacks get over 100, move to that specific obelisk and disperse to negate the effects, as the debuff only lasts 5 seconds, but refreshes every 1.5 seconds the obelisk channels. And now for the FUN facts. Each Obelisk has 4.3M hp, in addition, the debuff deals 1150 damage per second per stack. Its harmless to start, bothersome around 40-60, and lethal at 75+ stacks, you want to try and clear before then unless you are truly confident in your survival skills. And Mingus? He also has an additional 900k hp that you have to chew through. That brings the total pool to 18.1M hp to do. There are no special damage increasing modifiers or debuffs for this fight, you need to bring yourself and any enhancements available to you. If you’re able to get the obelisks down, you get one last little jab from the encounter, as the immunity surrounding Mingus takes 3 seconds to fall off, therefore cutting the total time you can fight from the start from 120 to 109 seconds. So, at any given time over 109 seconds you need to be averaging 167,000 dps in order to beat the encounter. >>167,000!!!<< This fight is not for those who want to try the fight just in hopes to get lucky, you need to unload. Your reward? 900g, 50VP, A shirt that begs the question “Can you Dig it?”, and a free Coronary from Blizzard Entertainment! Difficulty: 15/10

 

So, now that you have reached the end (hopefully!), what does the Brawler’s guild do to highlight your accomplishments. The promoter of your faction’s Brawling Arena sends you a letter and includes yet ANOTHER SHIRT to show off your truly epic brawling achievements, and 10 points towards your achievement total.

 

 

This fight was completed  with an item level of 530. I was not using the cape from the Celestial Blessings Quest. I did have the Legendary Meta gem. It is advisable to use a flask for the encounters, if not, and you’re a bit lucky, the Crystal of Insanity from Sulik’shor is a good alternative, as it provides 500 intel, stam and hit through spirit. Towards the higher ranked fights, the extra effects from food either via feast or Mogu Fish Stew helped to provide a nice little increase that may serve to be the extra mile one needs to beat the encounter.

 

I don’t always brawl, but when I do I make sure to look as hideous a possible. Stay bloodthirsty my friends.

 

Best of luck to fellow brawlers ready to test their mettle against their increasingly formidable opponents! Rawr!

A Beginner’s Guide to (outside) Blizzcon: Greet, Meet and Eat

Folks, the days are counting down! It seemed like not too long ago, Blizzcon 2013 was announced. Hotels were booked, tickets were released, and flights finalized. All of it starting in February, and June is now upon us, with convention in early November. For a lot of people, it may be their first time attending the event, and the totality of everything can be overwhelming. “What should I do first?”   “Where can I go if I dont like a certain panel?”   “Where are all the cool kids over there going!?”, and there are many attractions in Sunny SoCal that should make your weekend getaway fulfilling.

 

Arrival

 

When arriving into California, you can choose two options of where to fly into: John Wayne International (SNA) or Los Angeles International (LAX). These two are the most convenient for location. Flying into one or the other each has its pros and cons.

 

John Wayne:  

Pros: Short (5-10 minutes) from your hotel in Anaheim. Transportation vans arrive at the airport every 10-15 minutes.

Cons: Costs average around $150-200 (USD) more than flying into LAX.

 

LA Int’l:           

  Pros: The above mentioned savings from flying her over John Wayne, The enjoyment of being driven on a superhighway for 30-45 minutes depending on traffic (may also be a con?), Most people fly into here.

  Cons: If you’re looking to get an early place in the ticket line, the 30-45 minute drive will back you up.

 

Get acquainted with Priceline, Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, and other hotel/flight sites that may change minutes before or after another to try and get the best deal for you.

 

Personally, I have not been to LAX to give it a fair pro/con grade, but have always enjoyed not long rides on super highways as a nice benchmark guideline. While the convention is happening on the 8th and 9th, the tickets are available to be picked up on the 7th at 4pm PST. It is advisable to arrive on the 6th or 7th to familiarize with the area, or even just to get another day of R&R. If you choose to stand in line, be prepared for a big ol’ serpentine of a snake to form, and once inside, the scene turns in something equivalent to your favorite electronics store having a 99% off sale, on your favorite thing you want, ON black Friday. 20 turnstiles open up and you stream on through, have your ticket ready!

 

Hitting the Town

 

So, you arrived and unpacked at the hotel, and picked your ticket up. And its STILL the day before the convention, now what?

 

Are you hungry? Do you happen to have 15 of your closest friends nearby? Then hitting the town for an upscale bite to eat sounds like the venue for you! Being right in the heart of the Anaheim strip on Catella Avenue, you will have access to many fine dining establishments including (but not limited to):

 

The Cheesecake Factory:

 

Chocolate, How Can you say no to chocolate? (Don’t give me that allergy BS!)

 

P.F. Chang’s:

 

Perhaps Chinese is in store for the evening?

 

The IHoP:

 

Tiramisu Pancakes? You’re killing me smalls!

 

 

My Personal Favorite, Morton’s:

 

All the meat, for your mouth. You do the rest.

 

Some places, dress attire is not required but preferred, something like this passes.

 

Me, Dinner Venue, 2010.

 

Not particularly hungry? Conveniently located across the convention center is Disneyland, if you ever wanted to go or return, tickets were 150$ last time for the pass.

 

Oh, I get it now, you want to stay more focused on mingling around with other con-goers. At various hangouts around the convention center you can find meetups, podcasts, and blogcasts with your fellow players going on, usually before and after the convention times at night. The Twisted Nether Blogcast meetup I attended in 2011, is a nice meetup in my opinion at the Bar Louie, and they raffle off some neat prizes towards the end of the meetup.

 

Days 1 and 2:

 

Here is where your favorite and most looked forward to panels this year take place. In addition, you will get a Starcraft and WoW 3v3 Arena finals, the best costume contest for the year, and the comedy styling of <insert some comic to be named at a later date> to follow along to as well. These events of interest really come down to each attendee and what they are interested in, more notable social activities comes on day 2.

 

Realm MeetUps (WoW)

 

Aside from the gatherings outside, Blizzard has timeframes for each realm to meet up and discuss all things wow for … 30 minutes?  In 2010, the realm get together was Massive for the realm I was on, with about 75 people showing up, whereas in 2011, the number was only around a dozen, so it looks to be a hit or miss item, if its something that might interest you.

 

Closing Acts

 

Blizzard is usually good with getting an artist to close up the show properly, with its last three guests being Ozzy, Tenacious D, and the Foo Fighters, respectively. As an aside, Dave Grohl and the Foo are amazing live. Sadly in 2010, I did not get to see Jack Black rock out as the group I went with made prior arrangements. Maybe the band they book this year doesn’t suit your tastes? How can I spend my night if the panels are done and Im not interested in the closing act?  Well, backtracking to the previous hotspots to see if others are mingling there is always a good option, but if your looking for something with more entertainment value, a quick drive down those amazing and terrifying superhighways can lead to:

 

Medieval Times:

 

Where sword and shield meet in arena style combat before an assembly of roleplaying delight. I mean, you can SEE the sparks fly from the weapons clashing with the shield or other sword on parries. But not only that, you get treating to Turkey Haunches, FULL BLOWN HAUNCHES FOR YOUR FACE, goblets of liquor, and you get to heckle any freaking performer you want behind the arena ledge! And for the sentimentalists out there, there are ponies, many, many ponies for your enjoyment, if the melee combat and crass humor doesn’t work for you!

 

Ye Olde Medieval Times, BRING ME THY STEIN OF CHEEZ-ITS AND GOBLET OF MOUNTAIN DEW.

 

And then alas, everything comes to a close on the weekend, and life goes back to somewhat normal? If its your first time going this year, what are you most looking forward to, and if your coming back for your not first time here, what part still holds your interest the most? I personally look forward to seeing all of the people who will be attending this year.