Showing posts with label news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label news. Show all posts

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

4pc becoming worth something

As mentioned, the 4pc was...highly lacking. I don't normally post about upcoming changes, but...
With the upcoming patch, our 4pc is now slated to increase damage by 10% in addition to the cooldown that is already on starsurge. In short, the new set bonus will make more sense to pick up now, beyond just for the ilvl upgrades.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Important changes with 4.0.6

4.0.6 is now finally live. Along with it are a small smattering of boomkin changes.

In general:
Moonkin form looses armor bonus, gets 15% damage reduction. Cool, since it should just be spells hitting us in raids anyway.
You'll have more mana as a few things (moonfire/sunfire) cost less mana to cast now.
Planting shrooms is now instant so can be done while moving and they do more damage, very handy for raid AoE damage such as on Cho'Gall.
Starfall is now smarter (won't hit mobs you're not in combat with), except when it bugs (often), and drops more stars more quickly.
Meta gems are fixed, but we also have new ones so who cares. You should now use Burning Shadowspirit Diamond.
If you aren't a LW, enchanting now has an Int to wrist enchant, use it.
The stat priority shifts to move Mastery above crit, as our mastery got a buff, so now the priority is:
int > spirit/hit (to hit cap) > haste > mastery > crit

Really, most of these are minor for us. Our play style is the same, as is our cast priority, we just get a little more out of some of our gear and the new gems.

Also, a note: it appears as if all the glyphs got switched around on the talent tree I had posted before, so here's what you'll want to be using in almost all cases:
Prime: Moonfire, Insect Swarm, Wrath
Major: Starfall, Rebirth...optional last spot as Focus, Monsoon, or Innervate depending on fight.
Minor: Mark of the Wild, Unburdened Rebirth, Dash (all optional, as they don't affect combat, but are often helpful)
Once you reach certain gear levels, and for certain fights, the StarSurge glyph may be good to replace one of the above.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Moonkin 101 for 4.0.1

OK, so 4.0.1 has entirely changed the game, here is what you need to know.

1) Go to your trainer and learn everything, lots of things need to be trained (again) such as Bear Form.
2) Use this spec: http://wowtal.com/#k=15tOzTvD.a67.druid.dyfgnz
3) Put your abilities back in your bars, and add the new one (Starsurge).
4) Sell your reagents, you won't need them anymore.
5) Visit your friendly scribe or the AH. Pick up any druid glyphs you don't have (as you now "learn" a glyph and can apply it at will).

For the glyphs, follow the above spec. You may want to swap in/out the following for Major Glyphs depending on the situation: Focus (situational), Monsoon, Hurricane. I've included Rebirth, which isn't a dps glyph, but helps a lot if you ever need to brez, which we often do.

Now that your spec is all set, let's look at gear. Follow these simple rules:
1) Take off any cloth you have.
2) Put on the highest ilevel caster leather that you have (keeping your 4pc t10 of course).

The main things you need to know about stat changes:
1) You now need the full 17% hit. You will hit cap at 446 hit.
2) Spirit becomes hit, use it instead of hit when you can, because it also gives you mana back (this won't matter now, but it will as you level).
3) Int = spellpower (weapons and some trinket procs may still have spellpower, but everything else will have int).

Your stat priority looks like this:
Int > spirit (to hit cap) > hit (to cap) > haste > sp > crit > mastery

Now, gem everything to match socket bonus if the bonus is sp. If it isn't, put a pure int (red) gem in it. You should use:
Red: Brilliant Cardinal Ruby
Blue: Purified Dreadstone
Yellow: Reckless Ametrine

You will also want to go to Wyrmrest and Hodir to pick up the old healing head and shoulder enchants. The mp5 has turned to spirit and the sp to int. The sp/crit ones stayed sp/crit (so if you're on a budget or don't have the rep, they're still ok to keep using, but not optimal).

Now comes the fun...reforging. Chances are, you have extra hit and extra spirit, and you're finding yourself with less crit and haste than you had before. There is a reforging NPC by the enchanting trainer in Dalaran. You will want to get as close to the hit cap as you can (slightly over is better than slightly under). This works by first taking your gear with hit and reforging that. Reforge to the stat priorities above, each reforge will remove 40% of the stat and let you turn it into another secondary stat (haste, crit, spirit, mastery, hit) that isn't already on that item.

There you go, now you're ready except for the "how to play" part. So, here's the way your "rotation" works.
You have 5 main abilities: Moonfire (MF) which morphs into the exact spell but called Sunfire during solar eclipse, Insect Swarm (IS), Wrath (W), Starfire (SF), and the new one Starsurge (SS) which is on a medium cooldown. You continue to have 2 long cooldowns in Force of Nature and Starfall. You also have an eclipse bar with a sun at one end and a moon at the other (just under your player portrait in the default UI). In order to do maximum dps, you will always want to keep the eclipse bar progressing one way or another.

In order to do that, you should know that only 3 spells move the bar: SF, W, SS. SF will move the bar from the Lunar side towards the Solar side and W will move the bar from the Solar to the Lunar. SS is unique in that it will always move the bar in the best direction. It is important to note that the bar will only move in one direction until it gets all the way to the other end, at which point you trigger the eclipse. You should generally treat your spells as a priority:
Instant SS > MF > IS > SS > W or SF depending on which eclipse.

There is a little debate over that vs having a more strict timing for MF (since it is what gives us the haste buff once we proc an eclipse), but in general it is better to have it ticking than to wait, and you won't waste the haste buff anyway, you'll simply trigger it at a different time...which isn't a problem since eclipses are now based on number of casts, rather than time. It is also helpful since your talents will let you clear the cooldown on SS and also turn it into an instant as a chance per dot tick. I say prioritize MF over IS because both dots are affected by haste (and crit) now, so you want to proc the haste from MF before casting IS.

A couple quick notes on spells for AoE. Hurricane and Starfall are now effected by their respective Solar and Lunar eclipses to make them more powerful. Starfall has unfortunately lost all its splash damage, so you just get 20 stars now with 2+ targets or 10 with 1.

There you have it, the basics for Boomkin in patch 4.0.1. Look for an update soon™ for Bears, as I and some others try out various proposed specs and rotations.

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Loot Sanctum is go

Ruby Sanctum is out, and at least in normal is pretty easy to do, especially in today's gear with a decent raid comp.

There are lots of strats that say things like kite the dragon in a circle, make sure people run away, etc...
Don't count on pugs to do this, and quite honestly, for most of the mechanics don't worry about it for normal mode.

Let me break this down for you.
All phases: it is a dragon, so it has the usual dragon things...tail swipe (stun, didn't even seem to hit for damage...just don't be a healer getting stunned, or stunned at a horrible time in twilight), cleave, breath

P1: physical realm
This is a tank and spank for the tanks and dps, simply avoid anything on the ground and you win. Heals, and/or casters, get to make use of dispells/decurses (anything except remove poison effects will cleans/dispell the effect). This will drop a circle on the ground that will also knock everybody in it away, the longer the dispell takes, the larger the circle. In normal mode, this doesn't need to be worried about, just drop it where you are as quickly as you can, even if you're melee on the boss. There will only ever be 2 of these drops out at a time, as the oldest fades just as a new one comes out, and it is easy to shift to another place to keep dps'ing. While all this is happening, a spot will be chosen for him to drop a meteor on (easily seen by the fire ground effects for several seconds prior), which will then land and spread fire from it. In 10m normal mode, this fire does almost no damage, so just make sure to move out of it quickly and not get hit by the meteor itself.

P2: twilight realm
This is the same as P1 as far as the dragon is concerned, but the mechanics of the area change. The main 2 differences are as follows. Instead of doing a knockback when dispelled, it is now a pull of those surrounding to the person dispelled. Instead of a meteor dropping, there are orbs that circle around the room (2 in 10 man, 4 in 25), and will charge up periodically. When they charge up, they form a beam between them that cuts the room in half. Simply don't get hit by the beam (it will 1 shot and then teleport you into the physical realm in the process).

P3: both realms
There is nothing special or different in p3, except that now you split up your group and the 2nd tank stops being bored. One tank, and half the dps (generally melee due to the constant movement required) will stay in the twilight realm while the other tank will go back to the physical realm with the other half of the dps. Generally the physical realm takes no damage except for the tank, but the twilight realm does, so if you're using 3 heals in a 10 man, you should leave the 3rd healer in the twilight realm. DPS should be fairly evenly split up here, but if it is not, you can adjust on the fly by sending somebody from one to the other (the portals stay up). This is so that the boss will continue to stay in both realms. Note: if one of the realms wipes, it doesn't wipe the other realm, but halion will start healing in about 10 seconds after nobody is attacking her in a realm much faster than you'll be able to damage her. If you're at 1% or 2%, send a sacrificial dps down to go hit halion a few times to prevent the heal from happening and still burn her down.

Collect loot.

This will take a few wipes for most pugs to understand each phase, but after that should quickly become a joke as all mechanics are simple, straight forward, and with the exception of standing in a meteor landing or the orb link, nothing is all that lethal. The 2 things that will often cause you to wipe are if the tank, or the tank healer, get killed by a beam in the twilight realm.

I found it to be a fun raid encounter, but at least in normal mode it isn't very challenging. This should let a lot of people gear up fairly easily. I'll be doing 25m (hopefully with some heroic attempts) tonight with my guild, so expect some more info then.

Friday, May 21, 2010

What topics do you want to see discussed?

So, I have a ton of topics that I'm happy to post about, but I don't want to just post flood people.

What would you like me to post on, or to discuss? Here's some ideas that I'd like your feedback on, but please feel free to add your own in the comments below for me to consider as well. :)

Building/joining a successful guild, and how to tell if they will be.
Discussions about addons (offer me a few you'd like to hear about, beyond just a "mandatory list").
Discuss strats for being a successful while fighting .
Gearing a , from fresh 80 to progression raider, and why this is done this way.
This will not be a simple gear list for people to choose from, but an educational discussion on why one would choose given pieces, and in what order.
Random funny in game stories.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Cataclysm - Will it suck?

By now, I'm sure everybody has heard a bunch of rumors and "blue posts" and random factoids about Cataclysm.

Here are my brief thoughts, with a couple reasons:

Druid changes:
1) Druid tank: New AoE bleed sounds really cool, I look forward to seeing how this works in combination with swipe.
2) Druid ability: BRING ON THE SHROOMS! Seriously, this new spell has a lot of potential to be amusing and useful, so long as it isn't abysmally underpowered or way overpowered.
3) Druid Tree: WTF? No more trees? GIMME MY FOREST! Druids are all about forms, if we wanted to stand around in caster form, we'd play....ANYTHING ELSE. We like our forms, don't take them away because you want to show off armor...make armor mold to our forms if you want to show the armor off. Don't be lazy Bliz.

Mark/Honor/etc changes:
This makes sense, but really doesn't change anything other than making bookkeeping (and explanations to new players) easier. 2 tiers of tokens/points...ignore the names and just think arena/honor and progression/prior-tier, and you're set.

Raiding:
WTF? Seriously, everything on 1 lockout? They clearly don't want people like me to play this game, when the only thing I enjoy is raiding. 10 man has the small charm to it, and I love running 10 mans with friends, either to help them out or to bust up an achievement. Then I run the 25's for gear and an actual skill check. Now, don't get me wrong, if Blizz can actually get 10 and 25 man raids to be the same...which they COMPLETELY failed at in WotLK (and let's face it, just scaling the fights means 25 mans can't be as interesting with as many things going on at once), then I'm on board for making 10 and 25 man gear the same types of drops. However, if you're making it so I have to choose to raid with friends vs raid with a guild of great players that I get along with...don't expect me to just go level another alt (which I can't do because I already have max number of chars on the server)...expect me to play less, which will lead to less fun with the game, which will lead to a canceled subscription. On top of that, now we'd be limited to only ever trying one mode and one type, so expect progression guilds to drop to 10 man mode for one boss, go to 25 man for the next, etc...and the whole system is just going to piss people off.

Artwork/Graphics:
The concept art looks amazing in most aspects, and the screenshots look pretty good that have been shown so far. Here's hoping it'll look great, but not make everybody have to get a brand new computer to run it...that's always been one of the nice things about WoW is that you didn't have to have a hardcore gaming system to run it, even if you wanted to be mostly hardcore about playing it. Now, I doubt they can come out with something that won't run on one of my systems acceptably, but I know many people with systems just keeping up with acceptable play levels in WotLK...so let's hope they won't all just stop playing WoW since they have no reason to get a newer computer otherwise, not being hard core gamers.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Blogging is go!

Due to popular request from many druid friends for information, tips, and gear/rotation help, I will be starting a blog.

This seemed like a good place to get started with a placeholder, so here it is. If I don't end up using blogger, I'll link to the blog location here.

The focus of this blog will be WoW from a druid perspective. I raid hardmode content as a boomkin and a bear, and have a background as a kitty as well. That being said, I also have many casual players as friends, and there will be lots of advice on how best to play, how to work with the gear sets that are likely available to you, and discussions about which talents are best in various situations and why. If you like the concept of theorycrafting to be most effective, but hate all of the math, you'll probably like how I discuss things and offer suggestions.

I realize there are many blogs out there on the subject, as well as countless forum posts in several high profile boards such as elitist jerks. I do not intend to copy them, nor discredit them, and likely will be basing some of my information on what is said in them.

Look forward to an update within the next month or so for me to get started.