Sounding the Death Knell for ‘Old Heroics’

Are the original Cata heroics dead and buried already?

As my regular reader may have noted, I’ve not written much on here recently; this is due mainly to me sunning myself in various parts of Europe.  Hope you all had fun while I was away… Having had a mini-break from WOW of just under 2 weeks (which I think I needed as I was becoming a little jaded anyways) I waded back into ZG and ZA with my priest.  Oh how I was rusty, it’s amazing how you forget the subtleties of playing your class after a bit of a break.  Anyway, after five minutes of flailing about aimlessly, I remembered how to cast Chakra and all was well.  I completed a few runs on the priest, but as I’m pretty much as well geared on my priest as I’m going to be from the new heroics (although the damn 2h caster staff from ZG still eludes me) I thought I’d dust off the DK tank and the druid and do a few ‘old’ heroic runs.  Now I know that they’re not technically that old, more middle aged, but that seems to be the way everyone seems to refer to all of the 5 man instances apart from ZA & ZG; far be it from me to fly in the face of convention.

Firstly I dusted off the tank, now I haven’t actually done much tanking since the release of the 4.1 patch as I’ve been concentrating on the mage and the priest.  My ilvl was 2 below the requirement for the Zanzilar instances so I’m pretty well geared as the old heroics go, but oh how I was rusty.  I actually took some time to read up and refresh my memory on tanking with the DK before venturing into an instance.  First off it was Grim Batol, oh the joy (my regular reader knows how I love this place, if you’re not him, have a read of this).  Not only was it Grim Batol, it was a half complete Grim Batol, their previous tank had deserted them, give them a chance I though, ‘he may have just disconnected’.  Oh how wrong I was.   We were at General Umbriss the penultimate boss in there, it’s really not that difficult as DPS or healer (especially with a reasonably geared tank), its a simple matter of not getting too far away so the breath can be avoided, not standing in shit, and dpsing the adds which spawn.  The healer, it seems, had a death wish, running at spawned adds, standing in the shit, and generally just jumping off cliffs as much as possible, but that’s not the worst of it, of the three DPS, only one of them managed over 5k, and him only just.  Now I know DPS isn’t everything, but we had a druid, hunter and a mage, regardless of how bad their gear was they should be kicking out at least double that; hell on my fire mage I was getting close to 12k on some boss fights before getting a single piece of heroic gear.

After five failed attempts, five failed attempts that weren’t even close and showed no signs of improvements, I decided enough was enough.  Now I hate dumping groups like this, but it was clear this was really going nowhere.  I took the time to apologise and politely (I hope)explained that I didn’t feel this groups DPS was anywhere near what was needed and left, I suppose I could have pointed out that their positioning sucked, and at least two of them didn't have a clue how to play their class, but I decided against it; to be fair, I’m not the greatest tank in the world and it would have felt a touch hypocritical.

So I queued for another random, after a quick food break, back refreshed, we were off to the Lost City of Tol’vir.  The first pull went badly, partly my fault I suppose, but not helped by someone breaking the crowd control at least twice and the groups inability to attack the marked targets.  Before the fight was over, the mage who’s crowd control had been broken had left.  Replacing the departed mage we cracked on, round to the first boss.  Now this boss, lets face it, is pretty easy.  Don’t stand on mines, avoid the charge (which is telegraphed well in advance of it happening), and blast away.  As I was kiting xxx boss xxx round for about the tenth circuit, it struck me that things weren’t going to well, we finally killed it, and I had a cursory glance at the DPS meters; none of the DPS had more than 4k!! what on earth is going on?? ok, there’s a bit of movement which effects the numbers, but not that much.  At this point I had a quick inspect of peoples gear, it was clear that at least one of the party had cheated the ilvl requirements, the rest of the party was in low to average quality gear, but you’d expect them to be able to manage the instance easily.  Not long after the group fell apart.

I ran a few further instances, both on the tank and the druid healing.  I witnessed it all, tanks who don’t know how to tank (no not me, worse than that), healers who had no clue how to manage their mana pool, DPS who refuse to switch to adds on bosses, and my favourite of all, people who were new to instances (which is fine, we all had L plates once up on a time) who were asked directly “do you know what to do here” only to cause a wipe and say, “sorry this is my first heroic, I didn’t know what to do”.

Not the most enjoyable afternoons play I’ve ever experienced, but it made for a new rant post, it got me thinking, why is it so bad in PUGs for old heroics? and it struck me, they’re basically training areas for people aspiring to the Zanzilar instances and 10 man raids.  People are able to power level to 85 from scratch in a few days, either not touching an instance on the way or being so overpowered, their inability to play their class doesn’t matter.  They hit 85, buy the gear they need to meet the ilvl, and then hack straight into the heroics. 
I’ve met a lot more new players also over the last few days in old heroics, either WOW is undergoing a resurgence in new subscriptions, or there are less experienced players doing the older content; I suspect the latter.  It seems people plough through the old heroics, gathering the gear they need and then jump straight into the new content; why wouldn’t you?  There’s very little reward for hanging around after you’ve met the ilvl, you’ll replace most of the gear in a few runs of the new stuff anyway.

So you’re not going to get too many people hanging around with better than average gear, so those players with poor gear stand out far more, they can no longer expect to be carried by the players doing the better DPS.  Those players who are ‘good’ players tend, in my experience of the last few days, to be far less forgiving, I’ve seen people drop out on inspecting other peoples gear before a shot had been fired, I’ve seen far more abuse from players, who weren’t that good themselves, and generally people treating PUGs as their means of getting to better things as quickly as possible, not really caring about who they trample over on the way.  The one thing I haven’t seen (yet) is ninja looting of gear which is better suited to others in the party.
It strikes me that the new ZA & ZG instances are where it’s at at the moment, and as everyone is clamouring to meet the requirements to get into those they expect to be handed the gear on a plate from the lesser instances, it seems to be fostering the kind of abhorrent behaviour which no one particularly likes to see, and also exposes the newer players to the game to an environment where they’re most certainly not going to learn, and more likely going to get turned off the game quickly.

Now I’m not saying that I don’t want new content, I’m already starting to feel that I’ve done the two new heroics to death, but Blizzard need to be wary of releasing new content which walks all over the existing stuff, are we going to get to a stage where the next lot of dungeons are released, which means that ZA & ZG simply become gearing zergs? With patch 4.2 coming along sometime soon, T11 gear is going to be far more attainable, I suspect so.  Blizzard have already proved they are capable of revitalising old content, in the changes they’ve made to the lower level zones, but as I’ve already mentioned in many of my other posts, the lower level instances, that is, the instances that aren’t the top level heroics, are just a joke.  Without a bit of care, Blizzard could be nullifying most of the content they created for Cataclysm only half a year after it was released.

LFD

How do you find yours?

Since the 4.1 Patch hit, and before, there’s been a lot of consternation in the blogging community about LFD.  Has the new reward system made any difference to the queue? has the quality of tanking gone down as a result? are groups failing more?  As it’s been done to death by the rest of the community, I’m not going to even talk about the Call to Arms reward system, instead I’m going to take a look at group makeups a little more generally since ZG and ZA hit.

I’ve got two characters of the required level for the new dungeons, my priest and my mage, I’ve been concentrating on running these two primarily, but I’ve done a couple of the ‘old’ heroics on my DK and druid.  Lets take the new heroics first, the first thing I noticed is that players, on the whole, seem to be far better geared; yes I know the ilvl requirement is higher, but actually a lot of the players I see in the new heroics are wearing primarily 10-man epics, where as your average LFD player pre 4.1 would be somewhere between the basic 328 and being kitted out in blues with the occasional rep and / or valour point item.  I guess this is because the raider types were either bored of the old 5 man heroics, or were running less well geared alts through them; the new instances are new content and they’re there either purely to experience it, or to top the occasional bit of gear up that they haven’t gained from raiding.  Secondly, and probably as a result of seeing more raider types, I’ve noticed the skill level has gone up significantly, players on the whole, and in the face of new unfamiliar content, perform far better than I’ve seen over the past three months in LFD.  Take for example a guild tank who came along to a ZA run with me this week, he’d never even set foot in the instance before, let alone tanked it.  We were able to clear it, almost managing a timed run, just by giving him a quick run down of what each bosses abilities were over vent.  I’ve absolutely no doubt that a lesser skilled player would have had all sorts of trouble tanking ZA in such a scenario.  On the negative side, I’ve noticed people are far less forgiving in the new instances, probably as a result of being used to higher performance in raids, the most pertinent example I’ve seen being “5k DPS in here? REALLY?” kick…. (to be fair the guy was abysmal, but I’d usually expect to see him asked why his DPS was so poor and have suggested he needed to improve it before being kicked).  Chatting to people both from guild and randoms, I’ve seen a few comments along the lines of, “if you don’t know the strategies in here by now, you deserve to be kicked” which is a little elitist for my liking.

The old heroics are a complete different kettle of fish to what they used to be, I’ve been running a couple of specific dungeons on my DK to get the items I need to unlock ZA & ZG, one of which being Stonecore, on the first three trash packs, where a little crowd control and DPS focus is essential for all but the best geared groups, I’ve seen DPS pulling before the tanks ready or in one case before the healer was even in the instance!  The impatience of players that you typically see in the low end instances to level up and get ma gearz is creeping into the heroics where you really can’t afford to be so gung-ho.  Added to this, the queue’s do seem to be shorter, so I’ve seen a lot of people simply leaving the group if the random instance turns out not to be one of their liking, or one pull doesn’t quite go to plan. 

Come on people! do it right first time, take a little bit of time to do stuff, with some consideration for the other four in your group, and you’ll get it done quicker in the long run and you might even have a bit of fun (ya know, the reason you play the game) in the process.

Dispelling

I’ve been having a look back over my posts over the last few weeks and it struck me I’ve not mentioned my primary topic; priests, nothing, nada, not a drop.  Possibly something to do with priestly ways being done to death by the blogsphere until the next patch drops, and possibly something to do with me playing alts more, and being generally slack…. so in an attempt to redress the balance a little, here we go, a post on dispelling for Shadow (and any other) Priests.

Dispelling (and decursing or curing poison etc. I’ve decided I’m going to use dispel from now on to cover every generic kind of ‘remove something’ simply for my sanity, don’t come whining to me ok… deal with it) like interrupts have made a bit of a resurgence since Cata, yes they were used in previous versions of WOW, but I can’t ever remember an occasion when they were needed so heavily.  Yes, back in the days of Molten Core and Lucifron as a mage(which I was at the time) you’d find yourself decursing 40 people.  Back when decursive was ‘legal’ you simply mashed the button 40 times and carried on.  Then it was outlawed and there was uproar; dispelling classes would have to do more than just mash keys, oh the pain!! to placate people (I assume, or perhapse they realised that, actually, selectively dispelling tens of people was quite hard, and actually VERY dull).  Blizzard introduced mass descurse/spell/poison Prior to Cata there was the occasional boss fight which required this, but it was occasional, and it was generally restricted to raids, not 5 mans, and you’d generally have a designated mass dispeller who did nothing but dispel.  In Cata, as a healing priest, I constantly find myself dispelling nasty crap, even on trash, to mitigate healing needs, there’s some quite nasty stuff which gets thrown about.  In Grim Batol, Throngus really needs to be dispelled, the end boss, Asaad, in Vortex Pinacle is one example who requires the use of mass dispel, and a whole host of others.

Gone are the days when dispelling was the sole responsibility of one unfortunate in a raid, and gone are the days when only the healers are responsible for dispelling.  I still occasionally see the ‘we always used to do it that way’ from the DPS, but I’ve found more and more that when I’m shadow, I need to dispel to help my healer out.  It’s quite polarising actually, the good DPS players tend to be those ones who know how to use their classes secondary abilities like interrupt, dispel, and to some extent crowd control (though most classes have had some form of crowd control for years so are generally quite comfortable with it).

I use healbot when I’m healing, binding my most used healing spells to direct mouse clicks, my lesser used spells with a shift-click and my dispel abilities an alt-click.  I replicate this across my alts, so on my druid my most usual heal is the left click, my ‘panic’ heal is shift right click, my dispel mechanic is alt-click and so on, this really helps (I find) with the muscle memory.  I used to disable healbot when I was playing DPS to give me more screen space, but recently I’ve kept it active so I can see when people need dispelling; if the healer is doing it (and not struggling) I’ll ignore them and melt away.  If we’re having problems then theres an easy indication both because the debuffs are highlighted and I can see peoples health bars more clearly. 
I’ve actually since re-skinned healbot so it’s not so big when I’m playing DPS, I still have all of the same keys bound so I can not only dispel, but also drop out of shadow form and start healing if I’m needed.
More generally, I’m not a big fan of mass dispel (in heroics) there’s for the bosses like Asad in Vortex Pinnacle where several classes can get out themselves, and anyone with any nouse is able to jump to avoid the debuff in the first place so dispel is simply used to pick up the stragglers.  In most other scenarios its simply a case of knowing the debufs that mobs dish out on knowing whether they’re worth getting rid of; for instance a melee speed debuf on a caster can be left.  This has got me wondering if there's any intelligence built in to healbot (or any other mod) or any other add to tell you if you really need to dispel someone.  I’ll have to break Google out when I get home.  Clearly in raids it’s a different story, its a case of choosing the most efficient method, be it mass or point dispelling. 

I think my point is, as a class who can dispel, you should always look to dispel, if possible, (and beneficial) whether you’re the healer or DPS; don’t assume someone else will do it, they’re probably assuming you will.  Know your debuffs too! know what might be coming, and be ready to deal with it.  Oh and when some muppet spams the DPS meter at you, spam the interrupt / dispel count back at them.

What would you have done?

Another weekend, another job lot of heroics, all pretty non-descript valour points and rep grinds, that is, all but one. I jumped into the queue with a guild tank and another DPS, I was healing, PUGing the final two DPS. The guy tanking normally plays a priest and was undertaking his first tanking exercise since Cata so we were chatting most of the way through, we ended up in Blackrock Caverns, not the best place to have your first experience as a tank. The other two DPS, a mage and a rogue, were kicking out a decent amount of damage, nothing special, but nothing bad, so we decided not to re-queue; all was going relatively well until Karsh Steelbender, Steelbender himself was dispatched with ease, it was the item drop which caused the problem; a spirit neck piece dropped, now I'm at ilvl 346 or above on pretty much everything these days, so it's unusual that I take anything from heroic drops, but my neck was the final piece I needed, I already had a 346 item, but it was a DPS item, so I rolled need. No biggy you might say and I carried on, not noticing that the Fire mage that we'd picked up had also rolled, but had been beaten by mine.

To my surprise I got a whisper: "didn't you already have THAT necklace on?" ( I actually thought this was from my friend the tank as we'd just been talking about gear)

to which I replied

"I don't think so, I hope not"… as I furiously checked I hadn't been thick, realising that it wasn't actually the tank whispering me.

"link your old neck now" came another whisper, which I duly did, explaining that it was a DPS piece and this was a bit of an upgrade for my healing clobber (I kind of which I hadn't bothered trying to justify myself, in hindsight there was clearly no point).

"OMG!! You selfish tard! I've only got [some ilvl 333 piece], give it to me now!" (Actually, I think I'm doing him too much of a service including the punctuation in the correct place…) followed by a tirade of additional abuse before I had chance to reply which were a bit too x-rated to quote here.

Now normally, had this guy asked me politely to give up the item, I wouldn't have thought twice about it, I've actually, on several occasions, given loot that I've won fairly to people in PUGs who would benefit more than I from it; it really doesn't bother me in the slightest, this chap however had managed to rile me a tad. Quite understandably, I feel, I told him to stick it (I'll let your imagination work out where), and put him straight on ignore. I kind of wish I'd had the presence of mind to realise that for a fire mage, this SPIRIT item was actually a downgrade from the item he linked, I also kind of wish I'd given him both barrels and responded in the same manor he'd whispered me, but I think I'd of been annoyed with myself had I let him get to me enough to force me to sink to his level. And part of me wishes I'd taken a step back and tried to explain that, actually, I won it fairly, and actually, it was about as much use to him as it was to the rogue anyway.

Feeling a bit of a crisis of conscience, I whispered the tank to ask if I'd done the right thing, it was actually him who pointed out that it was useless anyway for a fire mage. Feeling a little reassured in my actions were both right in rolling on the piece in the first place, and in refusing to give it up, I promptly forgot about it and got on with enjoying my day. Well, when I say forget about, clearly not forget as I'm writing about it here, but you get the picture. This whole unsavoury incident got me thinking, how often does this kind of thing happen? How do people deal with it? I'm thinking how you as an individual behave can kind of bring it on yourself; I (hope) I'm generally polite and laid back in PUGs, and this is my first experience of any such abuse in 4 months of playing, however, there's a few, shall we say more abrasive characters, who I regular party with, who quite often get themselves into a little war of words with a fellow PUGger.

Did I do the right thing? Should I have reacted differently? Have you experienced anything similar? Was it YOU abusing me? :)

Pulling it out of the fire

Last night something strange happened to me! I started looking, and feeling, like a proper tank for extended periods of time in a heroic. I was milling around waiting for the footy to start (disgraceful refereeing btw) with nothing to do, a couple of guildies wanted a heroic so I asked what classes they wanted. The answer came back "a tank would be nice" the poor, unsuspecting, fools… Out comes the Death Knight and into the queue we go, only 4 of us so we needed to PUG the healer. Blackrock Caverns, brilliant. For some reason I've not randomly been in the place many times before, to the extent that I only just completed it on mystic for the first time over the weekend, I reckon 4 or 5 times in total on all my characters, I've always skipped Beauty and I've certainly never tanked it.

I explained to the healer and the rest of the group that this was my first time tanking the place, and that they'd have to bear with me, whipped wow wiki up on the laptop and had a quick scan of strategies, fortunately one of the guys there has an alt tank and has done it several times before. My admission also prompted the healer (I think) to say it was his first time too… great… on closer inspection it was his first time healing, he'd got a million alts so knew the instance inside out. We had a load of crowd control with two mages, so the trash was relatively straight forward, a couple of cockups here and there but nothing major. That was until we got to Karsh Steelbender, the basic strategy is to kite him in and out of the flame in the middle of the room, he can't be killed without the having debuff it gives him, but too many stacks of the debuff and the part gets overwhelmed with adds, the trick is to try and get his toe in the fire so he gets one debuff at a time, if he gets to 8 then the tank stands him out until the stack drops and it starts over. You get the picture. It's a pretty daunting task for a tank, or possibly just me as a tank, the onus is on you and only you, if you balls it up, everyone dies. More so than normal. Anyway, I checked up on the strategy and began the pull, all way going smoothly, whilst I wasn't managing one debuff at a time, I was keeping it to two, so not all too bad. We got him down to just below 30% when the healer didn't notice he was stood in crap and died. Now normally a dead healer on a boss fight means wipe, but, amazingly, not this time. The damage is pretty low and smooth in this fight, and I was at about 100% health at the time, with all my cooldowns. Blood DK's have 6 damage mitigation cooldowns (if you include Army of the Dead), or at least 6 that I've found… plus I have a click to increase dodge trinket. So I set off slowly popping cooldowns and healing myself as much as possible with Death Strike and Rune Tap. The DPS was pretty high so it wasn't long before we had him down to sub 5%, I was near death with only Army of the Dead left so out it came. Now this was nearly fatal in itself; as I mentioned earlier the boss needs a debuff from the flames to take damage, the whole point of popping Army of the Dead was to take aggro from me to allow me to heal, but unfortunately I popped it just slightly outside the flames so the boss became immune to damage on 1% health. Bugger. Put fear not, I have taunts! On a massive 20% health myself I utilised the DKs two taunt abilities to move the boss just enough to be in the flames before the ghouls took agro again.

Steelbenders death was greeted with calls for DK's to be nerfed and general mocking of my ability and amazement that I managed to pull it off (don't worry, I gave as much as I got…) Now I've been in situations before as a healer, or shadow priest swapping to heals, which have saved raid or party wipes, it's a great feeling to know something you, and only you, did saved the group. More so with a tank I suppose, as a healer you're expected to heal, as a tank you're expected to tank WITH healing. All in all a great confidence booster, and the satisfaction of actually, for the first time, feeling like I'm a reasonable tank, I've still got a long way to go, but I'm getting there on the tanking front. The run also gave me an appreciation for previous tanks bemoaning the aggro magnet mage, with two of the idiots (one extremely well geared) blasting away controlling aggro was a nightmare, still at least they both knew where the sheep button was.

Nostalgic goodness or developer laziness?

The blogsphere has been awash with news of the instances in 4.1 since the first inkling that Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub we're to make a comeback in the same way that SFK, Deadmines and Onyxia did in Cata, and Naxxramas did back in Wrath. There's been a mixed response on the blogs I've read, and the comments left on those blogs, some hailing it as a great idea, some lambasting blizzard for profiteering and laziness.

The draw of rehashing old content, from blizzards point of view, is pretty clear. Instance design is not an easy thing, simply reusing old instance 'skins' takes a lot of time (i.e. cost) out of the development and testing process so hypothetically sees more profit for them. If you assume profit equals entertainment value though (i.e. blizzard keep making profit as long as their game still entertains people) is this quite the case? Larisa talks about an analogous gum chewing exercise in diminishing returns with her post on the subject, and I have to say I agree (to some extent) with her on this; players play WOW for entertainment, entertainment comes in many forms, but in terms of raids and heroics you can safely say it generally comes down to a mixture of: the challenge, new experiences and loot. If the instance is the same layout and the same strategies, the longevity of the former two is diminished. That leaves you with loot, I've talked about this previously, people think they want loot, but actually they don't it's a pseudo-reward, people need loot to progress to the next stage in the game, it's a means to an end, nothing more (though I accept there are some people in the game who just want loot for loots sake). This potentially leaves Blizzard in a dangerous position which many companies see them self in; reducing costs to boost short term profits, but at the expense of future opportunity. Opportunity is a very difficult thing to measure, and because of this the men in grey suits tend to ignore it; if an organisation cuts costs and costs alone they eventually erode that company's ability to make and money, this is a long drawn out process and is hard to see happening until it is too late. In the same way, Blizzard could find themselves in the position of having a disenfranchised customer base, who up sticks and jump to another game where all of the content is new to them.

The flip side of the coin is actually two fold, firstly, a lot of the players who've been around the block and look back to Vanilla WOW with a certain fondness (despite all of its failings that we've all conveniently forgotten) the chance to run those early instances again, with an added bit of spice is quite appealing. But also, for those players who never played in the days of Vanilla WOW, and there are lots, all of these instances will be new (or very nearly new) to them.

I'm undecided as to whether it's actually a good idea or not, and I suppose the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. I suppose the trick for Blizzard to achieve success with this is balance. Mixing desirable old content with enough new content to attract new and old players alike without giving the impression of the stale gum Larisa refers to for those who've been there before. My fondest raiding memories of WOW are in the days of Molten Core, and Zul'Gurub, but actually thinking about it now, you can compare it to that old flame from school that you never quite got over, as memory fades the downsides are forgotten and the good memories highlighted. Just as in the days of progress raiding in MC, it was mainly fun, but quite often an organisational nightmare which took at least 30 minutes to set up, and 15 minutes per wipe to organise which turned into a monotonous, soul destroying, grind as people geared up for Nax. In the same way, when you really think about it, the old flame was a phsyco bitch from hell and you're well shot of her…. But that's nostalgia for you…

From the limited information which has been released, I'm thinking (or is it hoping?) Blizzard might have got the balance right, they seem to be following their tried and tested model of opening up end content to the masses, just in a different way, this time converting old end content to new 5 man stuff. I like the idea (I think) of the higher ilvl requirement which makes for a heroic-heroic of sorts. I just hope, I mean really hope, that this isn't simply the accountants standing behind the game designers, with their clipboards, ready to pounce on any though of innovation which isn't focussed at maximising short term profits for the shareholders. Old content is fine, so long as it's innovated around, taking the best of the old world content and building on that, so long as this is done in addition to new content and not instead of new content, and for the love of the children, please not all of the old content; there are some things that are best left forgotten (LBRS anyone?).

The shifting sands of stat weightings

In continuation to my earlier blog on evaluating your SimulationCraft results, this post covers the stat weightings (or scale factors) in much more detail. These are the numbers that anyone new to SimulationCraft will generally be looking for, they are the way you decide one piece of gear is better (for you) than another, the way you chose your gems, enchants, how to reforge and even which buff food and flasks you use. There are a few things to note about stat weights, firstly they are variable, as your gear evolves, so do they; secondly they are unique to you and your gear, this means that the websites proclaiming the definitive stat weights for your class are, at best, an approximation of an approximation – unless they've been calculated with your stats in mind they won't necessarily be applicable to you; finally, and probably most important, the weightings are a reference, and nothing more – unless you are absolutely perfect in your DPS rotations and positioning, your play style will have a far bigger impact on your DPS, use the stats as a framework for improving your overall performance, but don't expect getting your stats right to instantly make you hit 18k DPS.

A word on variability of stat weights

As I mentioned above, stats weights will vary with your gear (and the level of the mob you're fighting) I've knocked together this graph to try and illustrate this from the five examples I made for my last post. Notice how Mastery gains in importance as your gear (or buff level) improves. You'll also notice that Spirit and Hit are useless to me in heroics, that is because I've reached the hit cap (Spirit gives hit with the xxxxx talent). The other weights vary as your stats change, this is why it's important to run a simulation yourself, I'd even go so far as to run one each time your gear changes so that you understand what the implications are. If you're a more serious raider, you might want to play around comparing what your performance should be like with and without raid buffs so that you can adapt your unbuffed gear to give you the best performance when in a raid.

SimulationCraft: What does it all mean??

It's been a pretty busy week on my blog, the busiest one traffic wise since I started spewing my ramblings onto paper (well electronic paper). My post on SimulationCraft seems to have struck a few chords so in an attempt to aimlessly chase ratings expand on my success I thought I'd have a stab at explaining what the actual results mean in plain English.

So you've read the idiots guide, you've ballsed up at least 5 attempts at simulating your characters DPS, you've gone back and read the guide again, read the official help files a bit, scratched your head a bit, and finally got some figures that look like what you've been reading on the interweb. Brilliant! You've got a page of completely incomprehensible maths, statistics and pretty graphs that'd look more at home on a PowerPoint at that next dull management meeting you were trying to avoid…

There are some figures that (may) make sense to you instantly; there are others that are best when compared to an average, or a target of where you want to be. If you're comparing something you need a baseline, for this example that's you! (or me as the case may be). For the record, I've run 5 different simulations; one with the ultimate tier 11, 25 man gear, with all the raid buffs and trimmings; one with the equivalent 10 man gear and the same buffs; one with my crappy heroic gear with all the same buffs and trimmings; one with (a slightly unrealistic) all the buffs and trimmings but with the target_level override set to 87 (i.e. a heroic boss), you'd NEVER get this amount of buffs in a 5 man as you simply wouldn't have the classes there required (you're pushing it for a 10 man); and then finally, a far more realistic 5 man scenario with just plain old Fort, Int, and MOTW (a reasonable assembly of buffs in my view), oh and replenishment as you'll be keeping that up at all times (WONT YOU?!?) as it's one of your main sources of DPS. The baseline scenario will be the final, and probably worst DPS(it's chugging away as we speak, so we'll see if my prediction shows me up to be the eejit you suspect me to be).

I'm setting the fight length to 350 seconds (nearly 6 minutes), 2 adds, Patchwerk style fight, and assuming you're the best of the best when it comes to mashing keys and given you (well me) an elite skill level – the trick is to only change one variable (or set of variables) at a time so the comparison has some meaning. As homework, I'll leave you to run your own simulation, with your gear, with a realistic skill level and fight scenario, I can't stress highly enough that stat weightings will vary massively depending on your ability (or lack of it), your gear, the number of adds, the type of fight, and a whole host of other variables, what is certain is the figures are a model (a model, by definition is an approximation, and only an approximation) of reality. Go read about statistical modelling in a text book or here on Wikipedia or somewhere else where stats geeks lurk.

Lecture over, and here we are, remember I'm using me as the baseline, the links to the full reports are at the end, I'll reference sections only, for comparison in the main text to keep my ramblings to sub War and Peace word count.

First of all, and the thing you're almost all certainally here for, the scale factors, or stat weighting s as they're sometimes known. You'll notice two values, a scale factor and a normalised value; the latter is the one you want, it simply skews everything so that it's a direct comparison to your best stat (Int) to make it easy(er) to compare one stat to another when you come to chosing your gear. I'll be posting some specific analysis on stat weights in my next blog so if you're still confused check back and I'll endeavour to confuse you more.

Int will always be best, if haste comes in at 0.5 and Crit at 0.25 it means that Int is twice as good as Haste, and Haste is twice as good as Crit (and thus Int is 4 times better than Crit). Put simply, if given those weights, you have a simple choice of a tunic with 100 Int and 150 Haste, you'd always chose the first one (but it's never that simple is it?).

Next you're at the charts, the damage per execute is a telling chart, if interpreted correctly; it's basically saying for the amount of time you spend casting these are the spells which do the most damage – i.e. devouring plague is an instant cast spell so does the most damage per cast.

Next is the damage source pie chart, you'll notice that mind flay is near the top in all, which seems counter intuitive given the last statement. But think about it for a second, mind flay is your filler when all of the other spells are on cooldown or waiting for procs, you're casting it for the most time, so it does lots of DPS, but bang for buck its lower than the others.

The other thing to note in these early graphs is the mana timeline graph, if you're going oom regularly, you're doing something wrong (or something right, i.e. emergency healing which is saving the wipe), I've heard a few Shadow Priests complain about mana issues, this should never be the case with any level of gear.

The most important graph in my opinion is the DPS scaling at the end, this basically says if you add 100(for the sake of argument, you could use any figure) of any given stat, what is the expected DPS increase? You'll notice for me Haste Crit and Mastery all look pretty much the same, crossing once or twice; for the best spec there's a far bigger difference as you follow the graph up with Haste becoming the worst and then the best and then the worst etc. as you go up. This is because of a whole heap of internal metrics (some of which we know about or can approximate, some which Blizzard keep close to their chests).

Notice on the t11 graph, Hit and Spirit have a scale factor up to 0 (i.e. if your gear was worse) and then abruptly stop giving a dps boost – this is the hit cap. Also notice for me, it's pretty much horizontal (at target_level 87) which means I'm over my hit cap for heroics (naughty me, I'll be remedying this immediately).You'll also notice, if you look at the 3rd scenario that my dps drops, even though I've got massive buffs, this is purely because of the hit cap dynamic, and is a good reminder to follow the basic principles that have been with us for all (well almost if you forget the last 3 months) of WOW - get hit capped first!

That's it for the basics, there's loads (and loads and loads) more, have a read, if there's anything you want me to explain (or make up on the spot) leave a comment, or email, tweet, or send a carrier pigeon. I'll be posting an additional blog on the differences of the stat weightings specifically tomorrow.



Report Download

Scenario 1 – best T11 25 man gear, all buffs, raid boss

Scenario 2 – T11 10 man gear, all buffs, raid boss

Scenario 3 – my crappy gear, all buffs, raid boss

Scenario 4 - my crappy gear, all buffs, heroic boss

Scenario 5 - my crappy gear, sensible buffs, heroic boss



 

Idiots guide to SimulationCraft

I recently downloaded SimulationCraft in order to get a better handle on whether I'm missing something on the DPS front, and what my ideal stat priorities are. I've played with SimulationCraft in the distant past but haven't touched it for a couple of years. I'd like to state up front that it's a cracking tool, though it is a modelling tool, by definition models give an approximation of reality and aren't necessarily an exact representation of it. The current version gives you the opportunity to simulate the 'ideal' fight, where everything is straight forward in terms of needing to move (which affects your DPS rotation), hitting your rotations exactly as planned, receiving buffs, and not suffering debuffs. It also gives you the ability to simulate a fight which is a bit more realistic, where you might need to be moving out of crap, dealing with adds, messing up the occasional button press etc.

So why simulate your DPS in such a way? Simple really, it gives you an idea of what your DPS potential is given your current gear levels (rather than what some Elitist Jerk tells you it should be) and lets you compare your 'normal' performance with what it could or should be. More importantly, it lets you play around with your Enchanting, Gemming and Reforging to maximise your DPS (and of course you re-run the simulation when you've changed it to confirm it's had the desired effects). SimulationCraft can be very eye opening if done right, but it does require you to be honest with yourself, if the figures come out at 15k DPS and you currently do at best 7k have you done something wrong, can you dismiss it as errors in the tool, or is there something fundamentally wrong with your playing style? Use SimulationCraft as any other addon or tool, to augment your ability to playing performance.

The main issue for most with Open Source packages such as SimulationCraft is the sheer dauntingness of opening up for the first time and trying to figure out what the hell is going on. I've had occasion to be involved in several Open Source projects over my career (I've even wrote a number of white papers on the subject) and there are two recurring theme's which are replicated in most project. Firstly the project fills a gap which is missing in the area, it is written by the 'people' (by people read user / consumer etc.) because there is a dearth of information or functionality in the said area. Secondly, the documentation sucks; developers hate documentation, Open Source developers excel at hating documentation… SimulationCraft seems to fit these two area's quite nicely, hence me writing a quick guide, I'll cover the 'perfect' scenario for a boss fight in Heroics for a Shadow Priest, the closest approximation I can come up with off-hand in Cata is if you stand up on the statue for the croc boss (thus avoid the adds) in The Lost City of Tol'Vir. I'll leave it to you to make the changes for the less than ideal scenario, raiding, or other classes, the best advice I can give you is have a play, it's the best way to learn.

Anyway, enough rambling, here we go:

You'll need to download and unpack the SimulationCraft files from here it's a standalone executable (i.e. you don't need to install it) so just stick it somewhere on your hard drive, open the folder and double click the SimulationCraft application icon in the base folder.

First thing to do is make sure you have your base options right, we're going for the 'ideal' run of the mill scenario so we'll be picking pretty easy variables. Click on the options tab and then Globals if it's not already selected here you'll see a number of options, I'm ignoring the obvious ones and concentrating on the less than straight forward ones; you're a Shadow Priest, you obviously have some common sense, use it for the options I've missed ;-)

Iterations (next to the red 'A') are important – you're simulating what could happen, there are lots of random variables around the lines of hit chance, crit chance and a whole host of others, to make sure you're using a statistically significant number you should use at least 1000 iterations, as a rule use 100 first while you're getting to grips with the tool (you'll almost certainally balls it up first time) 1000 when you're comfortable with it and 10000 when you have everything set exactly right 1000 iterations will take 10 times longer than 100, and 10000 another 10 times longer than that.

Length (B) refers to the length of the fight in seconds, we're doing heroic boss fights so pick something sensible, 200 seconds is 3 minutes 20 Seconds which seems reasonable. The vary length (C) introduces a bit of variety into the length, at 20% each iteration will pick a fight length randomly between 160-240 seconds. Adds (D) is pretty self-explanatory – we're doing straight forward so let's go for none. Fight style (E) offers the opportunity to introduce the random movement elements into the fight, Patchwerk (if you remember Naxx) is a stand and deliver DPS race, Helter Skelter is the move out of the crap equivalent of most boss fights, pick Patchwerk for now, but use Helter Skelter when you're looking for realism. The target race (F) offers the opportunity to pick a race which your class / race / build / gear allow you to excel or struggle against, stick with humanoid. Player skill is a strange one, no one (I don't think) can class themselves as Elite this, as I understand it means you get off every spell cast at the perfect moment, without lag or any other issues, even for the baseline I always select good (as an experiment you might want to keep everything else the same after your first run, and come back changing this to elite – I did say have a play!) Threads (H) refers to the processor on your machine, most modern processors have multiple cores, so can use multiple threads (i.e. run faster) if you're unsure hit ctrl-alt-delete (on windows) select task manager and then the performance tab and count the number of boxes in the CPU usage history section, or just select 1.


Next select the buffs tab, you want to be realistic here, I've assumed the presence of a druid and a mage (which isn't unreasonable) plus your own buffs, if simulating a raid you'll add most / all of these. Similarly in the debuff tab I deselect everything, it's a baseline after all, when you're playing later to get a more realistic level, try putting some in.

For Scaling and Plots (i.e. the stats which are pertinent to you as a Shadow Priest) select all of the figures which make a difference to your DPS, if you're looking at a different class then you need to know which these are.

Now comes the tricky bit, the character import, I'm on an EU server, hence the url shown, the important part is to ensure you get the correct server (I) and the character name (J) once you are confident it's correct click import and you should automatically be directed to the simulation tab with a load of stats in front of you taken form the armoury (if you haven't, which happened to me on several occasions, the only way I've got round it is to close the program and restart.





We're now almost ready to simulate something, I say almost because there's one important variable we've forgot, the boss level, SimulationCraft assumes raid boss, but we're looking at Heroic Bosses. Click on the overrides tab and enter the line 'target_level=87' as shown.

Now you can click simulate, and we're off! Depending on the number of iterations, and the speed of the computer you're using this may take some time. If you're on a reasonable PC, by the time you've read this it'll be done, if you're on a Spectrum ZX81 then go make a coffee, if you don't know what a ZX81 is, you're too young and you've not lived! Go ask your dad. Once the simulation has finished you should get a nice results pane, I say 'should', but it never works for me, if this happens go back to the SimulationCraft folder and double click the simc_report.html file – it you're unsure order the folder by date modified, it'll be one of the files close to the top – this will open the report in your web browser of choice.

And there you have it, SimulationCraft, easy no? make sure you look out for the normalised scale factors, these are your bread and butter for gearing, but also have a look at your damage sources, you'll notice your dots are the top DPSers excluding Mind Flay, you'll then (hopefully) notice the DPS per execute times and realise that for the amount of time you spend casting those DoTs compared to MF they're a huge DPS / time boost. Happy Simulating, I don't claim to be the font of all knowledge on this subject, so please if I've missed something please let me know, or just let me know how you got on.


NB: there's some suggestion that there is a slight bug in the SimulationCraft software since the 4.0.6 patch which is causing some inacuracies in the results; you might want check back and download the latest patch from time to time as these these bugs are fixed
 

Dungeon Finder Personalities

I've spent a fair bit of time in Dungeon Finder over the past two months, usually with a guildie or two by my side, but sometimes on my own, I've met a number of interesting personalities on the way. One of the drawbacks with the dungeon finder, in my view, is it doesn't seem to group you with people from your server as often as it should which reduces the chance meetings of people who you are likely to get to know better through sticking them on your friends list and playing with them in the future. I've met two people thus far from other realms who I've added under the real id system, the first one a new player which I wrote about here and a recent altoholic who I got chatting to over the course of several instances which I mentioned in a post more recently. I added the priest because she was new to the game and needed some guidance, I'd spent a while talking her through the basics and said I was more than happy to help her again if she had questions, the friendly tank I added under the assumption that we could group together again. It seems on the later assumption I was much mistaken, come on blizzard, sort it out! Anyways, I digress (again? Would you believe it…), I was going to talk about the types of people I've come across.

Now I always try and be, at the very least, polite and tolerant of other players I come across in dungeon finder, peoples personas will change depending on the day they're having, or the way the group is going;I'd like to hope that I give people a fair crack at the whip. As a rule, I always say hi as I join a group, I tend to make the occasional joke, usually aimed at my own inadequacy to lighten the mood, especially if people seem to be getting frustrated at a roadblock, and if I think I've screwed up, I'll always admit it. I won't reach for the vote kick button too readily, with one exception, if a player is abusive to another party member which in my view is over the top, homophobic, racist or otherwise out of line. So these are my categories of the different types I've met so far:

Quietly Competent

Doesn't say much, just gets on with things, usually DPS or Healing types (Tanks tend to need to be a bit more gobby), they'll just get on with doing their job pretty well. The Quietly Competent player might just squeeze a "hi guys" out at the start of the instance, and possibly a "thanks for all the fish" at the end, but that'll be all you get. They normally have pretty decent gear, either from raiding or rep and dungeon drops. I imagine the Quietly Competents have an accomplished social life and a massively social circle in WOW thus don't need to talk too much in the PUGs, then again they never tell me anything, so I just don't know. Several QC's in a PUG usually make for a quick and uneventful run, but they don't mix too well with players who need a bit of guidance.

Talkative Types

Greet everyone with a hearty hello at the start of every instance, they are happy regale you with stories of their last instance, make sure everyone knows what to do on the next boss, or just generally talk about the price of fish. Can sometimes become a little distracted by the conversation and not notice the patrol mob who's just tapped them on the shoulder and is waiting patiently for them to shut up so he can slap them down into a bloody pool. TT's will often go quiet for what seems like seconds, at which point they're either talking in their guild channel, whispering multiple other friends, or dead.

Assertive leader

This guy knows his stuff; he's been around the block and got the t-shirt, twice. He knows everything there is to know about the boss you're about to fight and will make sure you four slackers don't mess it up for him. He'll generally courteous to other players and may join in with the talkative types on the trash, will get frustrated easily at Complete Noobs (see below).

Abusive Idiot

You all know the type, the Abusive Idiot is that guy who uses lots of acronyms, like OMFG, WFT, etc. (not "etc." that's an acronym I'm using to indicate there are more… oh you know what I mean), blames everyone else in the party for everything which has gone wrong in their life and is going to make damn sure you know it's all your fault. The Abusive Idiot, AKA CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK will often try to take the guise of an Assertive Leader, but often not have the first clue what he's talking about, occasionally he will know what he's talking about and just be a prick. He's not afraid to use the leave party button, SO YOU BETTER DO AS HE SAYS, right? Or save him the effort and kick him yourself. The idiot is generally a 15 year old schoolboy who hasn't seen daylight for 10 days and will never experience the pleasures of the opposite sex without first parting with cash, possibly in Amsterdam.

Complete Noob

The complete Noob really shouldn't be here! They're not good enough to be in heroics, and will never be, they're incapable of learning how to play the game and can't understand why they keep being kicked. Complete Noobs shouldn't be mistaken for people who are new to the game and still learning, they are complete basket cases, no hopers, useless. It's possible that your Complete Noob has just parted with their hard earned cash on a popular auction site, the very fact that they've managed to get to level 85 any other way is too scary to contemplate. The Complete Noob is a conspicuous type, generally given away by the fact that they've caused two wipes before you've buffed up, have a spec that looks like your three year old niece chose it for them and wouldn't know what reforging was if it jumped up and bit them on the arse. Noobs will often be quite bitter about the fact that they keep being kicked, and may try to conceal their nubidity (it's a word, I just made it up) by turning into an Abusive Idiot.

Better Than You

The Better Than You is clearly the most gifted player who has ever played WOW, and doesn't he know it. He's played WOW 27 hours a day since the Beta of Vanilla WOW was released, he knows every facet of the game and should clearly be placed on a pedicle by is fellow players. The better than you is at the pinnacle of his prowess and will whisper each member of the party in turn calling them noobs and asking them why they've made such silly choices with their spec, gear choice, enchantments and choice of tabard, despite not having the faintest idea about your class. BTYs have the propensity to quickly turn into and Abusive Idiot and flee the group should anyone dare to step out of line and die.

Happy to Help

Happy to helps are the type that will check you know what you're doing if you seem to be struggling, are generally laid back and unassuming, and are generally a bit more tolerant than most. They are the type who are competent with their class, and remember what it was like to be learning the ropes so are more than happy to offer their advice. This can lead to the Better Than You types getting quite irritated, "how dare you tell me what to do? I'm INVINCIBLE!!!11". HtHs will often offer advice to the party, or where there are Quick Learners in the party take it to whisper and even offer more general advice for classes they know in detail.

Quick Learner

The quick learner is a recent dinger at 85, has gone to the effort of getting some decent pre-heroic gear but doesn't quite know every fight but is prepared to ask. They might take a little more time through the instances than experienced players, but you'll know that they're a good player just waiting to turn into a butterfly. QLs are extremely thankful of a Happy to Help, and are particularly despised by the Abusive Idiots and Better Than You's of the world. They will one day become a Happy to Help or Assertive Leader themselves.

Mr Impatient & Short on Time's

Mr Impatient insists everything be done at the speed of light, he's living in the AOE filled past and doesn't agree with crowd control. He'll often spam "GO", "why are we waiting" and various other gems in party chat. He's not averse to ninja pulling just to help the tank along if things are going too slowly for his liking. Mr Inpatient's good friend, Short on Time is in the instance to do his daily, or get specific loot, he really hasn't got time to finish the instance for whatever reason (usually his mum won't let him play past 8.30) so will try and hurry the party along and is not afraid of logging out without a word of warning should the loot he want drops or he's had enough. Neither of these two characters get on with Quick Learners, Happy to Helps or Complete Noob's and will often imitate and Assertive Leader in order to get things done but invariably revert to becoming an Abusive Idiot.

Sneaky Cheat

The Sneaky Cheat is too good for the ilvl restrictions and has conned the Dungeon Finder by sticking as many rep reward items in his inventory as he can come across, even though he's a warlock and can't wear plate. He's donned in greens primarily, with the occasional blue if you're lucky. The SC has several other characters at 85 and can't be arsed grinding gear for this one, don't let his experience of other characters fool you, he's no more likely to know the strategy for the current boss as you neighbours pet dog.

Clique Group

Whilst not technically a person, the Clique Group is worthy of a mention. You've all been there, you join a PUG and three or four of the other players are from the same server and usually the same guild. The CG don't have enough friends to make a full group, so they've scraped the barrel that comes in the shape of Dungeon Finder and come out with you and your sorry excuse for an existence. They tend to be less forgiving than most groups, will whisper nasty things about you behind your back, and carry on talking on first name terms in party chat with each other as if you weren't there. It's important to note that not all groups of this make up are clique, just some of them, and it's impossible to tell before it's too late, grit your teeth, get on with it and get out as soon as possible.

Prime Position

One of the main aspects of learning to do heroics and rad in Cata is players' awareness of their surroundings and their positional play (i.e. not standing in crap). Now I'm the first to admit my positional play hasn't always been that good, not bad, but not as good as it should be, and I've made a concerted effort since I came back to sort it out. Those of you reading my last blog entry will know that I've rolled a druid alt for a bit of fun; now originally I went balance and restro for my specs as I've never really got on with melee classes, but last night I decided that balance wasn't the easiest way to roll a druid so gave it a go.

The first thing which struck me about running instances with a melee class (ok, I was supposed to be healing…) is that you instantly look up from your cast bars / healing addon, stop playing whack-a-mole and start to take notice of the world around you. I think there are two reasons for this; firstly, as melee, you're position for DPS / survival is far more important, you're far more likely to get tail-swiped, flame-breathed, or a multitude of other nasty's. You obviously need to stay in melee range, obviously, which is more difficult than staying in casting range, and your abilities may also depend on you being positioned behind the mob. Secondly, most of the main melee abilities (certainly of a druid, and a number of the other melee classes I've dabbled with) don't have cooldowns, there's a set priority of abilities to use, all of which I've been using in auto-pilot mode from keybinds, yes there are some big DPS boosts from abilities with longer cooldowns, but by definition, you're not looking down at your cast bar to find them that often.

Contrast this with my priest, firstly as a healer. First and foremost (in a heroic 5-man) I'm looking at the health of the tank, is it high enough, does he have a renew active, do I need to cast a direct heal to refresh it? Are the other party members healthy, if not can I heal them without killing the tank? Have I got Chakra up? Which Chakra state do I need next? Does anyone need decursing? WILL YOU PLEASE CLICK THE LIGHTWELL, which is the best healing spell, or combination of spells from the choice of 50-odd I have to use next? Hang on, why is my health bar dropping faster than Andy Gray's popularity with the ladies? Oh shit, I'm stood in crap….

With the shadow priest it's not quite as difficult, but still demanding, is SW:P up, does it need a MF to refresh it, what about DP and VT, do I have an Orb up to cast MB, is the mob below 25% health for a bit of SW:D lovin? Plus the numerous cooldowns that are crucial to maintaining DPS – I'm generally thinking at least two or three spells ahead at any one time.

Probably wrongly, traditionally the last thing on my mind has been movement. I put this down in some part to my past raiding experience back in the day; yes you occasionally needed to move to get in range, but it's rare as a ranged caster that I'd have been standing in crap, or had to move quickly, in any of the Vanilla WoW raid instances.

Where is this all going I hear you ask, well here it is, I've spent a couple of hours playing a melee druid in instances, and already I've noticed a marked improvement to my positional play and awareness of what's going on around me. I've only managed one heroic since then but even there I noticed my reaction times with the movement keys was a lot sharper. The moral of the story, well, if you're struggling with avoiding crap, or just general awareness of the world around you, why not roll yourself a melee class and see how the other side lives. It won't instantly make you pro, but it can't hurt? Can it?

Every Little Counts

When you know you're going to be tight on mana for a boss fight either because you're still improving your gear or the guys you're healing aren't capable of not standing in the crap, there are a few things you can do to help yourself out.

Making sure you have mana potions handy is the first thing to look at, there are a number of different favours useable depending on the situation allowing you to instantly recoup 10k mana with a Mythical Mana Potion, or 22k with a Potion of concentration providing you can spare 10 seconds to use it.

Look at the makeup of your group, a warlock has health stones which are a must, someone healing themselves is a mana saving for you. A shadow priest can help out with shielding and is far better equipped to regen the mana than you, arcane mages can buff your crit rating with Focus Magic etc. Aim to know the details of all of the other classes in the game and work out how you complement each other.

One thing which may not be so obvious for a healer is first aid, if you need a heal, but you're not desperate, then a bandage is a far more efficient way of doing it. Common sense needs to be employed, but there's definitely a time and place for bandages.

Now we come to pre-casting spells, I regularly do this and it can save around 10% of your mana bar. Lightwell is the obvious one, get this down before the fight and make sure it's well positioned. I generally follow this with a Renew on the tank, Chakra, Heal, Prayer of Mending and a power word shield for good measure. You can then sit down and drink as the tank pulls and be full mana before he takes any damage, it also gives you a little grace to get into position before the tank gets squashed. A word of warning, if it's a PUG, whisper your tank and explain what you're doing, there's no point doing all of this if the tank instantly charges in or sits there waiting for the spell effects to wear off.

None of this replaces players ability, and those players who don't take damage by doing silly things will always be easier to heal. As my year has got better I've found I need to do this less and less, but it's good to have it in your locker.

Cool(downs) and the gang

I've been putting together a compendium of all things shadoo over the last few days for a standalone page on the blog, which has taken far more time than I thought so rather than neglect the blog, I thought I'd plagiarise a section from it on proper use of cooldowns. There is no absolute answer here, use your common sense, for some fights where there is an enrage or similar, but for 'normal' circumstances this is the general guidance:

Dark Archangel gives a dps boost as well as mana, the timing of its use is entirely situation dependant. If there is no danger of you running out of mana, pop it as soon as you have five stacks of Dark Evangelism and reuse it immediately it comes off cooldown. If you are in danger of mana depletion, use this at around 80%

Shadow Fiend similarly to Dark Evangelism, this gives a reasonable DPS boost, and should be used as soon as possible providing you do not need the mana, should you need to extend your mana casting it at around 80% (not at the same time as Dark Evangelism)will ensure you don't waste any regen.

Mind Blast has been relegated to a buffing spell since 4.0 it doesn't do enough pure DPS to warrant normal rotational use, it does however provide you with a nice buff, Empowered Shadow, giving you 15% extra shadow damage, you should use MB whenever you have one or more shadow orbs up and the buss has, or is about to expire.

Dispersion is primarily a panic button spell, use it to stay alive. It also returns mana with the drawback of rendering you incapable of doing any damage for its duration, if you have to use it for mana, try and make sure all of your DoTs are renewed before casting it.

Shadow Word: Death makes it into this section because it has an artificial cooldown of sorts, you should only use it in normal rotation if you're running low on mana and its glyphed (it should be). Else it should only be used on a mob under 25% health, and not if it'll kill you.

Hymn of Hope & Divine Hymn should be used sparingly, if at all, they have long cooldowns and are purely situational, have them on the cast bar, but only use them if your party is in dire straits on the health or mana front

Class specific cooldowns (beserking for trolls) give a big boost, in my case haste and should not be ignored, usual rules apply on the situation, else it's as early as possible, try to combine beserking with other damage buffs as the increased haste gives a good multiplier.

It’s Grim in Batol

I've had a quiet weekend on WoW front, excessive amounts of alcohol and trying to avoid removing extremities with a circular saw have taken priority (not both at the same time I might add). I've managed a total of two instances this weekend, both of them in bleeding Grim Batol. Let me state up front, Grim Batol is a horrible place, it is my Stonecore… I don't mind doing it providing it's with reasonably geared guildies or friends, but as a PUG, unless you get very lucky it's not going to get finished.

The first boss, General Umbriss, isn't too bad, providing you have the gumption to keep an eye on your deadly boss mods warning and move when he decides to pick on you and you have someone capable of either crowd controlling or killing the purple trogg. My first run was in shadow form, with a guild healer but the rest PUGed saw not one, but two wipes mainly because the tank was under-geared and didn't have a clue (I know tanks get a hard time, but having some idea of how to tank with your class, before pressing the LFG button and clicking the shield icon is desirable). In is customary for PUGs wiping in such fashion the tank blamed the healer, everyone else in the group, physics, and pretty much everything else possible before quitting, as did one of the DPS only not quite as dramatically. Reformed with a reasonable tank, Umbriss was despatched pretty quickly, and we were off to Forgemaster Throngus.

Now Frongus has been my least favourite boss as a healer, since I got bored of queuing and added my holy spec, that was until I realised dispelling the nasty debuff on the tank makes things simpler. Amazingly both as dps and healing this weekend we saw him off first time. I can't ever remember two fights going so smoothly with him. I suppose the source of my dislike for this boss is the fact that being unlucky makes it infintately harder; if you get more than one shield, or get unlucky with cave-ins with a shield and then get swords it becomes very difficult for the healer through no real fault of his own, just random chance. I'm all for encounters being variable and challenging, providing they don't become impossible randomly.

Drahga Shadowburner is the real group killer for me, it's the one where I've seen the most PUGs fall apart and although it's skippable, if you have to skip it you're probably not going to do the last boss either. It is also for me, since I figured out how thick I was being on Throngus, the boss which I'm currently finding the most difficult. There's just so much going on! Generally the tank takes a battering and so is needing big heals, there's adds running around like loons just waiting for you get your spell book out so they have an excuse to aggro you. The little exploding git add which needs to be kited or it'll pretty much one-shot whoever it's got targeted. And then there's the flames, I just can't seem to reliably keep myself outside of them, either I avoid them and the tank dies, or I completely miss the warning because of the anarchy which is ensuing and cop it straight in the face. It has to be said, it's easier with people you know and much easier if people are on vent communicating, but with PUGs it's an almost guaranteed fail. Not wanting to break with tradition, my first trek did exactly this, with a fair stab at it, but sadly a couple of the group just weren't up to it and neither were their replacements as in turn people quit.

The second group, with me healing, decided to skip it all together and head for Erudax, I quite like this boss, as bosses go in Grim Batol, but today was a different story. The first tank, who wasn't bad to be fair to him, had other commitments, made his apologies and left before we had our first stab. The second tank TALKED ONLY IN CAPITALS, said FFS in every sentence, and insisted his strategy which was "the way tankspot say you have to do it" (I checked, it doesn't) lasted all of two attempts before doing us all a favour. Another short wait and an unsuspecting tank later the DPS decided the adds weren't all that important, the idiot healer, ignoring my own rule, decided to stand outside of the crap and promptly died. At which point the hour and a half I'd set aside for a 'quick random' was up and I had to do something I hate and make my apologies. I hope they went on to kill Erudax at the next pull, it's not a particularly difficult boss, but people's minds just seemed to be elsewhere so I suspect it would have been called pretty soon after my departure.

Boss	General	Healing	DPS
General Umbriss	Move on charge Stay at range to avoid ground seige/ move when he turns to face you	Fade to avoid adds	Kill purple add if no CC Kill other adds if being overwhelmed
Forgemaster Throngus	Shield (flames) – get in close, move behind boss Sword – big DPS on tank Mace – Kite, stay out of path Avoid cave in	Dispell tank big AOE heals on shield, use chakra floor heal if neccesary Sword – big single target heals – use guardian spirit if needed Mace – small AOE heals
Drahga Shadowburner	Kite add if targeted Move on flame warning Avoid crap on floor	Conserve mana where poss Small aoe heals	Disperse if caught in flame
Erudax	Move into circle to avoid shadow gale	AOE chakra heal in circle if needed Keep players topped up in case of stun	DPS add immediately after gale

Lost: One City of the Tol’vir, if found, please return to…

My most popular post by far, to date, has been my recount of my first heroic journey into Stonecore; so in an attempt to push my readership firmly into the double figures mark on the way to achieving world dominance I thought I'd write a review of another instance. You never know I might even make it a weekly feature.

Into the instance and over the, pretty pointless, bridge you go. General convention seems to be to head to the right round to General Husam. I'm not sure why this is and it strikes me as being pretty leftyist, but I digress. The trash mobs generally come in small groups which can be crowd controlled, don't be lazy, if your group can CC them, then do CC them, they're still capable of wiping you if you get sloppy. Make sure you clear a little past Husam's cubby-hole as you'll need to be moving him around while fighting and you don't want uninvited guests crashing the party.

General Husam

Let me state upfront, this fight is really, really, easy if your party has mastered the use of the W,S,A & D keys (with the possible addition of Q & E) combined with a little bit of awareness of what's going on around you. Sadly it seems that a large proportion of the population of WoW is deficient in at least one of these qualities so the fight can become a bit of a drag.

The main crux of this fight is a modification of my first rule of Cata Heroics "don't stand in the crap on the floor or you'll die". Husam shows complete contempt for the Ottawa Treaty and not only continues to stockpile landmines, but also deploys them at regular intervals. He places these mines at reasonably regular intervals around the area he's being tanked, you're safe to stand near these mines (for the moment) but if you stand on them they go bang. Now this has a couple of effects; firstly, as you might expect, it hurts; secondly it hurls you into the air generally causing you to detonate several other mines not only hurting yourself but also any of your team mates who were stood close to the said mine happily minding their own business; thirdly it really hacks off the healer. Now the second caveat to the rule is that after a number of these mines have been placed they will all explode together. They give you a nice little warning that they are about to explode by illuminating the blast radius in yellow on the floor around them. Make sure you're not stood in this.

The second ability to be aware of is the shockwave where he cracks the ground in a straight line outwards from his position; it's pretty slow moving and easily avoidable at the range a cloth wearing squishy should be (what do you mean you like the Tanks hand during a boss fight?). Just be careful you don't jump out of the frying pan into the, errr, mine, when doing so.

The real killer in this fight is the Bad Intentions ability, this will randomly pick a player (usually me) which he will charge, pick up, and throw against a nearby wall. This in itself isn't generally fatal, unless you're already low on health. However if you're unlucky (or me) there will be a mine at the bottom of this wall, as you slide down and land on it you're back to jumping between the yellow flashing things shouting ouch lots. If / when Husam decides he doesn't like you try and do whatever you can to mitigate damage through Dispersion, Power Word Shield, etc. don't just expect the healer to keep you up automatically. If you are the healer and someone else gets nailed shove some heals their way as a matter of urgency. Be careful not to sacrifice the tank, the final ability, Hammer Fist, can dish out the damage pretty quickly; Guardian Spirit is your friend here.

In quick summary; gear levels don't really matter here, it's all about positioning and awareness. People who are new to the place and have a bit of the grey matter will pick it up after a few attempts, perceiver with them till they get it. If you find yourselves continually wiping here with no improvement you'll struggle with the two final encounters in the instance.

Lockmaw and Aug

These two come as a pair but not together, it's Lockmaw first up, then Aug pop's in to say hi (technically Aug comes first but scarpers before you can tip him upside down and rinse him of his loot). This is a pretty easy encounter for priests and healing in my view, the only problems you'll have as a healer are if the DPS are stooped. As a shadow priest you're never stooped are you? No, good.

Rule 3 all the way here folks,"kill the adds please" randomly a player gets a scent of blood debuff which attracts tiny crocks. Pretty easy to deal with, but if your healer cops it you need to look out for them. Don't stand too close to each other, there's a poison debuff which I handy if someone can remove. If you're stupid enough to stand close enough to his rear end to be tail swiped please stop reading now, turn your computer off, and take it back to the shop.

Aug is a bit more involved so sit down and drink up, stick a new Lightwell down etc. His main threat to us squishies is the dragons breath which will disorient the dank for a few seconds causing him to jump to the second in the threat meter, combined with a spinny-whirly-gig thing he does slapping anything in his path. If you're lucky enough to have a portable vending machine in the group, especially one spec'd fire, he'll almost certainly be higher in the agro stakes than you so will soon be smeared across the floor – just don't stand too close to him. As an aside he does a nasty poison debuff too which you should encourage people to remove if possible – the damage is nasty enough but more importantly it cripples the recipients haste.

Neither the croc nor the pigmy should pose you too much trouble.

High Prophet Barim

This, in my view, is the hardest boss in here. Make sure you've buffed shadow protection before the fight. As DPS it's all about following my rules of engagement… do that and you're on to a winner. As a healer it's highly mana intensive, the Tank is going to get spanked hard, if one or both of you are under geared have a chat beforehand an agree how to utilise your cooldowns for the 50 lashings ability. There's a nasty disease that should be dispelled if at all possible especially if you're shadow and not struggling for mana or trying to keep the Tank alive. Keep out of the swirly vortex jobby, it hurts. There's also a golden phoenix spawns, kill it please.

At 50% health phase 2 starts, be prepared to crack out an AOE heal or two. Forget Barim, he's immune to damage. The tank needs to kite the purple phoenix away from the shards which spawn; ideally you don't want any to come into contact with the phoenix at all. Whether you're healing or DPSing watch out for the circles of crap on the floor and move out of them, they hurt. Once the phoenix is dead its back to the phase 1 abilities, make sure the tanks HP is topped up if you're healing, if you get a lashing early on it'll kill him.

The difficulty in this fight is all in the mechanics, there's so much going on for all of the classes; it's easy to panic and get things wrong. Stupidity = lots of damage = healer oom = squashed tank. Do what you can to avoid damage, help mitigate damage by curing disease where possible), keep away from the adds. You'll generally find you wipe lots here to start with, and lots if you have one or two inexperienced party members. If you have a good group it's quite an enjoyable fight.

Top tip: if it's looking like you'll need to pop Hymn of Hope. Do it early so it's not still on cooldown for the next boss.

Siamat

This is a pretty straight forward fight, pay attention to the adds, the ones which are top priority are the Servants, the others can be 'kited' (more ignored than kited but someone needs to keep interrupting them) or killed, I prefer the latter. Keep a reasonable distance to avoid the chain lightning and stay out of the whirly crap.

While the servants are still up Siamat has a shield which absorbs a high proportion of damage, so the auto-shooting hunter really does need to swap to the adds or his precious dps figures will dwindle… When the shield drops ignore the Minions completely and blast away. If you're DPSing here you should save your cooldowns for this part. Healing you'll need to employ AOE as there's a lot of party damage.

Job Done. Have a biscuit!



Mystic's black book says:

Boss	General	Healing	DPS
Husam	Don't stand on mines Move to safety before detonate	AOE heals after detonate Big heal on player who gets grabbed Shield yourself if you get grabbed	Disperse / shield yourself if grabbed
Lockmaw	Keep distance from party members	Easy healing Look after player with debuff Fade to avoid adds	DPS adds
Aug	Avoid spinning AOE	AOE heal after boss spin	Straight DPS
Barim	Move out of fire Move out of Light Avoid Purple Phoenix	Heavy healing on tank Needs Big AOE heals On phase change Mana intensive – conserve mana where possible	DPS Adds
Siamat	Spread out a little Avoid winds	AOE Heals to top up group	DPS Servants first Don't dps him with shield up