Status.. Status!

I haven’t really udpated you guys lately on Fallout’s (FO) progression in the past few weeks, but indeed a lot has happened since. While I can’t exactly remember the exact date, we downed Leotheras and Fathomlord on the same day, followed by Vashj attempts all within the same week, and the following week cleared SSC to Vashj in two days giving us ample time to practice the strategy.

We’re running into a few minor mistakes that, granted, do throw everything off. The fight itself requires perfect execution, and the fact that each night of attempts we had a different make-up of players probably didn’t help. On top of this minor stunt in our progression, a string of members have left due to some drama and misunderstandings. What more or less it amounted to was a group of members who had joined about a month ago leave at the same time. Big surprise. Regardless, I’m still pleased that on several attempts we have made it to all four cores down, but again not nearly enough people alive to execute phase three. It should only be a matter of time.

In other news, while farming today I finished up listening to The Instance Ep. 71:

“Blizzard’s Rob Pardo was one of the panelists at the Hollywood and Games Summit. There’s a lot of discussion of intellectual property and development, of course, but one tidbit was abundantly clear – Blizzard is working continuously with Legendary Pictures.”

I myself am 75% sure that whatever movie Blizzard is planning will be canceled, because quite frankly a movie involving purple elven people and standing cows just seems too corny. But ultimately WoW does have expansive lore on any given item within the game, so this project may turn out to surprise the best of us.

***

A new website opened the other day: WoW Jutsu. The website is more or less a listing of active raiding guilds descending in boss downings. The system basically scans the Armory and based on items guild members are using figures out which bosses have been downed. While obviously not perfect due to the simple fact that even new boss downings to any guild may not always yield items someone will use, the system gives a broad view of where your guild ranks against others.

Of Shadow Priests and Arena

Before the Burning Crusade, Shadow Priests were considered many times as the PvP spec. While rarely used in raiding encounters, Shadow Priests dominated battlegrounds and thus came about the phrase “Face Melting.” Through Vampric Embrace (a spell that restores health based on your damage to the target), the ability to heal yourself, and an AOE fear, SP’s had it easy.

With the release of the Burning Crusade Blizzard started to nerf fear. There were now a multitude of ways to counter the spell: the obvious trinkets and Will Of The Forsaken, but also now warriors could stance dance to become immune, and rogues could Cloak Of Shadows to avoid all spells casted against the rogue. BC also introduced an increase in damage in comparison to health — people would now drop faster, and while this scales for every class we need to take the caster class into consideration. Rogues and Warriors could throw their victim’s health bar even lower in their stuns. To compensate for this huge increase in damage — not only done by melee but also caster classes — Blizzard introduced resilience, which decreases your enemy’s chance of a critical strike.

So let’s explore the other caster classes in comparison to the Shadow Priest. The mage class can perform quite well in arenas due to their high burst damage. If their target’s resilience isn’t put to par, they can easily nuke their victim down in a matter of seconds. As an ice mage, which I consider to be the PvP spec of the class, Magi get to explore the luxuries of frost novaing their target, slowing their target, a bubble, and ice blocking if their health gets too low and to brush off all their dots. What’s more is that Magi have an AOE which can work against stealthed targets. That’s total of five defenses against melee classes.

The Warlock. Yes, they too had their fear nerfed, but nonetheless are still considered — as of patch 2.1.2 — over powered. Depending on spec, Warlocks have an AOE fear and a single target fear, along with death coil and pets that can stun, interupt, or sedduce. Their major defense ontop of all of these abilities would be their stamina, which can often hit upwards of 13-14k HP.

Let’s move on to the Shadow Priest. Assuming you’ve spec’d improved bubble, improved fort, and improved psychic scream, you now have +1000 health, a bubble much like the Mage’s, and a 26 second fear cool down. Shadow Priests also have the option to put talents into Blackout — a 3 second stun –, but sadly this ability at times can be completely random and I’ve only found it useful if the target was stunned at a distance. Overall, compared to the other classes, the Shadow Priest lacks a lot of CC from melee, and a serious lack of survivability against other caster classes. What I find myself mostly doing whenever a Warrior or Rogue is on me is popping bubble — which usually dies rather quickly — fear — which usually is broken within the first two seconds of the cast — and walk around hamstringed or crip poisoned tanking the damage. With arenas now out, and surviving being the name of the game, a Shadow Priest even in decent gear just can’t cut it in 3v3′s and 5v5′s. In fact, the only reason Shadow Priests are useful in 2v2′s is because they complement the Warlock class so much.

The Priest forums have been outraged over out current status in arenas. A few of the better suggestions I’ve found through the forums:

• Buff SW:D to have a chance on stun – Due to its recent nerf to double the CD because of it being spammed in raiding environments, the PvP aspect of this spell was hurt a lot. Therefore, a chance on stun that wouldn’t affect mobs in raids but in targets in PvP.
• Change Psychic Scream to a horror effect – Horrors aren’t as easily broken, and being PS is on a 26 second cool down it only seems right.

All that said and done, I highly doubt anything will be thrown at the Shadow Priest other than another nerf. We still bring a lot of utility to the raid, and we can still match other pure DPS classes in DPS ontop of health and mana return, so it’s likely that somewhere in the making of 2.2 someone will think of nerfing our damage somehow again.

(.. and that concludes my QQ post of the month.)

So Long Trials of the Naaru

After a lot of thought and deliberation, we’ve decided to remove the attunement requirements to enter Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep: The Eye. While many of our attunements in the Burning Crusade have been good progression checks, a few of the attunements have turned out to cause unnecessary stress on guilds either doing the content or attempting to do the content. With Black Temple and Battle for Mount Hyjal thriving, we want to encourage (rather than prevent) new guilds and raid groups to attempt Serpentshrine and TK. We are going to leave the current attunement quests in the game so that players can still engage in the challenge and the lore of those quests should they choose to. At a later point, we are considering adding a final reward step to those quests as well (that way those who have already completed them would not miss out on a *new* reward).We’re listening to feedback from you guys constantly and your opinions are important to us. We want this game to be the best possible MMO experience for our players.Enjoy Serpentshrine and Tempest Keep =)(Please note: This change will go live later today — it’s not yet active)

I’m going to take my own personal view on this decision, which is quite biased due to the fact I myself had to endure the TK and SSC attunements.

Blizzard stated quite awhile ago — around the release of patch 2.1 — that they had intended faster progression, and were unhappy with guilds still stuck in Karazhan. They came up with a small figure of guilds that would actually reach Black Temple and Hyjal before the next expansion, and thus in 2.1 with Karazhan bosses nerfed and countless items buffed, so that more guilds — particularly on the Black Dragonflight server — were now able to clear out of Karazhan with ease.

But this annoyed me to an extent. At this point in time my guild had Kara on farm, and we endured countless hours of boss fights that many guilds now to come would not. While I had to struggle getting epics slightly better than my blues, other guilds that need not work half as hard could now easily obtain epics far better.

Now, in 2.1.1, the Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep attunements have been abolished; sure, it wasn’t enough to nerf the heroics themselves, so the good hearty people at Blizzard decided to kill the attunements altogether, but consequently in the process a countless number of guilds’ hard time, work, and effort was now at a waste.

Understand the fact that I for one have never been for rep grinds. When I first caught glimpse of the attunement list laid before me, I was a bit discouraged and mad that the game devs enforced such things to progress. But the mere fact that Blizzard just laughs off something I spent too many nights stressing over aggravates the hell out of me. They knew that they were going to be releasing a new expansion every year, but still released content (BC) that clearly would take much longer, especially for casual gamers, leaving the more hardcore players fucked over Blizzard’s miscalculation.

With TK now attunement-less, Magtheridon now becomes a completely optional raiding boss, nub guilds now have t5 begging them to come steal them off of Void Reaver, and scrubs ont he raid forums are going to now bitch about how hard VR and Hydross are. Good job, Bliz.

Shadow Priest Farming

Today while carrying out my daily farming with the Air Elementals on Elemental Plat I decided to try a few new different rotations. What I ultimately came out with was a rotation where I never went out of mana. While the method I was using hurt the kill time on the mob, I was still able to down all mobs before another re-popping, and thus farming became a bit cheaper.

(Note that this guide assumes you are killing the Air Elementals on Elemental Plat)

Spec

First of all, I’m using the traditional PvE 14/0/47 talents with 5/5 Spirit Tap, improved 2/2 Vampric Embrace, Inner Focus, and of course Vampric Touch and Mind Flay. You can check out my talent tree here. A nice bonus would be to spec into wands if possible, but I currently am not due to raiding. The talents I’ve listed are required, and keeping up with the mob in terms of health and mana would be extremely hard without (and with some talents not plausible at all).

Damage & Gear

As of writing this guide, I am farming at 1104 Shadow Damage. I would say you need at least 1000+ spell damage to kill the Air Elementals efficiently, but nevertheless 1100+ is ideal. I’ve also 7.5k health with fort, and 7.3k mana. What’s also quite important is your wand’s damage. I myself am only using a green 105.6 damage per second wand, and most wands end game BC score higher, so this shouldn’t be a problem.

Execution

• Open up with Vampric Touch – This is a 1.5 second cast, and thus used first in farming. If we were to open with VE or SW:P we would have a 1.5 second gap of the target moving towards us, time which could be used to slow the target (MF) or wand.
• SW:P or VE – I myself like to SW:P first as this mob usually does before the dot is over, thus meaning if I cast SW:P after VT the mob will die faster.
• VE – Regaining health is extremely important as you will be “tanking” the mob at times where you wand.
• Wand or Mind Flay – Here is the factor that will decide whether you go out of mana or not.

Walkthrough

Wanding or Mind Flaying is the key factor in deciding whether you go out of mana (refered to as oom from now on) or not. Should you constantly mind flay after throwing up dots, you will be going oom. Thus why we will first be wanding the Air Elemental. In doing so, you should start taking hits, or “tanking”, the mob, but do not fret; VE should be healing you to a certain extent, and while ultimately when the mob is dead you will be at a loss of mana and more-so health, we will be able to restore it. Now, in the time lapse between the mob is killed and your opening of a new VT on another mob, you should actually be regaining — through Spirit Tap — more mana than you’ve lost through the mob (you lost about 1050 mana through VE, VT, and SW:P). Continue this process on the next few mobs until your health reaches aproximately 50%.

At this point we’re pretty low on health, and so we must effectively make use of our talent Vampric Embrace. To do so, however, requires a loss of mana. So open up with your regular rotation, but replace wanding with Mind Flaying. You might also want to fear the mob, or throw a shield up so your health isn’t affected or your Mind Flay channel isn’t disrupted. This process should only take about two to three mobs before regaining max health, and at this point your mana should be low. Now repeat the wand rotation.

This farming technique can be extremely fragile being it focuses purely on balance in rotation and abilities. But don’t forget that we can make use of various other talents to save us in times where we screw up!

Whenever you are extremely low on mana, don’t be afraid to throw up dots on the mob and pull your Shadow Fiend out. In times where your health is extremely low and requires extensive mana to cure, nuke the Air Elemental(s) (in this case having VE up before SW:P) with your regular dot rotation and MB and SW:D, hurting your mana pool. Also try to make use of Inner Focus coupled with a nuke in times of low mana and health.

And that’s more or less it. Again, the technique overall is much slower than a consistent dot-MF rotation, but you’re saved the time drinking (as well as the gold!), and the rotation (at least with my spell damage) produces enough damage to clear all Air Elementals on Elemental Plat without any re-pops. Hope you’ve learned something new, and the importance of spell rotation and efficiency.

Void Reaver Down

By some stroke by the hands of the World Of Warcraft Gods, we were able to actually have sit-outs on our first Void Reaver run. Having not even known what the trash does, and being there are some twenty pulls before VR, we spent quite awhile figuring out which mobs were CC’able, where to pull each pull, and which to kill first. Probably being the most annoying were the bird pulls right before Al’ar which knocked back the raid randomly, followed by the Mechanics right before VR who would hit ranged for 1.5-4k repeatedly so fast that I, having around 8.9k HP buffed, died within a matter of 3-4 seconds.

We downed him on our third attempt.

Click for full view

Also on the way to VR we stepped into Al’ar.

Morogrim Tidewalker Down

About five hours ago Fallout downed Tidewalker, making it the fourth kill on server, and securing our position as second Horde-side. We also had time to down Doomwalker, which yet again dropped Talon of the Tempest, and — surprise! — I didn’t get it. But overall it was a great raiding day with about 8 Nether Vortex, a thrown weapon, two boot patterns, and plate paladin boots dropping off trash alone. Trash cleared covered Hydros’ 2x, Tidewalker’s, and all of Lurker’s. Also being that we downed Tidewalker on the night’s first shot, we had time for two Lurker attempts before respawns, which we continued to clear before a rolling restart which ultimately created even more respawns and a call for the raid.

Oh yeah, with all the Nethers dropping, we also managed to supply every caster with Belt of Blasting. And while the belt off of Lurker is quite amazing, I wouldn’t pass up 50 spell damage despite its cost — roughly 300g, and 100g in Runed Living Rubies — on the off chance that the belt decided to drop.

Fallout’s planning on working on Hydros tomorrow, and possibly Magtheridon for Tempest Keep attunements. We’re also going to be doing Void Reaver on Monday if by some stroke of luck we get enough attuned. I for one still need Heroic Arcatraz and Shattered Halls, so I’m hoping I can scramble a group before then.

Purpose

put quite simply, is to document a character in one of the most fascinating games of all time, World Of Warcraft. My current character, an Undead (F) Shadow Priest, has gone through some 88+ days of game-time already, and should perhaps need an introduction.

This is Forsaqen: a full PvE 14/0/47 Shadow Priest. She currently has 1038 shadow damage, but with a few decent upgrades I can see this number hitting 1150 easily (the staff for starters; wouldn’t mind the Eye Of Mag or Icon of the Silver Crescent either). Runs everything, including Doomwalker and Kazzak, up to SSC (with Lurker down).  Even with all the nerfs in the past few patches, I cannot stress how much I am grateful that Shadow Priests are now wanted in raids, as healing through all of pre-BC (ZG-AQ40 ~ some 50 days of end game raiding) can really tie you down and suck the fun straight out of the game.

~Other information~ Server: Black Dragonflight; Guild: Fallout; Attunements: Karazhan, SSC, 1/3 The Eye.

That said, I will be posting boss downings/tips, farming locations, editorials, and whatever the hell has to with Warcraft and this character. Stay tuned.