Holy Nova

MoP/DIII Cleanup

Mar 20, 2012 General Leave a comment

It’s been forver since I’ve posted anything, but that doesn’t mean I never come here.  I pretty much use this as a daily dashboard for any WoW-ing on the internet that I do.  So because I’ll be playing MoP and D3 concurrently (we’ll see how that works), it’s time to cleanup the links and get ready for the Blizzard of changes!

As I’ve never been a part of beta testing, I’m pretty stoked to get to see MoP changes before they’re actually live.

Also, as an avid PvP’r I’m sad to see that D3 won’t ship with PvP elements. I guess that’ll just give me more time to farm up and level up. Can’t wait!

Ragnaros Down (again)

Aug 9, 2011 General Leave a comment

I’ve got to say, this kill was a bit less epic than the last time I killed him (way back in vanilla).  I know that really can’t be helped, simply because there aren’t 40 of us running around.  The scale was just so much larger and grander back then, although admittedly, much more of a pain.  But because of the amount of pain it took to get a crew of 40 through Molten Core and kill Rag, it was just that much more satisfying.  The 25 man raids don’t offer quite the same scale, so here I am, in a 10 man raiding guild that’s now 7/7 in Firelands.  Onto heroics!

In other news, I’ve been slowly collecting mounts and pets recently becuase of my achievement motivation.  Here’s a couple of links for pet collecting and mount collecting..
Pets
Mounts

Alysrazor

Jul 25, 2011 General Leave a comment

Cripes, that stupid bird is dead.  Also domo.  Just sayin’.

Getting through 4.2

Jun 28, 2011 4.2, questing Leave a comment

For some strange reason, my willingness to do dailies and get achievements has been on (pardon the 4.2 reference) fire!  I can’t remember a time when I’ve fished so much, or rescued a pet boulder so many times in my WoW life. 

To keep that momentum going, I need to..

• Head to SW
• Pick up the quest from the Hero board
• Do the quest chains
• Complete the 3 Daily quests
• Try unsuccessfully to try to raid because instance servers are down

End day 1

Dragonwrath Progress

Jun 23, 2011 General Leave a comment

Well, I’m last in line for the staff, but hey – A guy can dream, right?  Anywho – here’s the list of things to do for the staff

-Kill a Molten Lord inside Firelands

1. A Legendary Engagement
2. A Wrinkle in Time
3. All-Seeing Eye – Collect 25 Eternal Ember / 3x Sands of Time (wait ’til guild perk Bartering)
4. On a Wing and a Prayer
5. Through a Glass, Darkly
6. Actionable Intelligence
7. Delegation - Get Branch of Nordrassil - Where? 
8. Nordrassil’s Bough
9. Emergency Extraction
10. At One
11. Time Grows Short – Collect 25 Seething Cinder from Firelands (Raid Bosses) 
12. Alignment - Becomes Runestaff of Nordrassil
13. Heart of Flame - Kill Ragnaros and loot Heart of Flame
14. The Stuff of Legends - Get Dragonwrath

Other Links
-WoWhead guide

Looking ahead to 4.2

Jun 13, 2011 General Leave a comment

Keeping an eye on 4.2

• New Daily Quests: The Regrowth and Molten Front
  • A large assortment of all-new daily quests and rewards are now available in Hyjal, where players can help the Guardians of Hyjal push back the allies of Ragnaros and establish a forward operating base in the Firelands! In order to partake in the Regrowth and Molten Front daily quests, players must have at least completed up to and including the quest Aessina’s Miracle. Once this quest has been completed, players should speak with Matoclaw in the Sanctuary of Malorne to take part in the Regrowth efforts.
• New Quest Chain: Elemental Bonds
  • A New quest line is now available to level-85 Horde and Alliance characters, bringing brave adventurers to Thrall’s aid. The Call of the World-Shaman, the quest which will point players toward Thrall and The Nordrassil Summit, can be obtained in Stormwind or Orgrimmar.
• New Raid: The Firelands
  • Located within the Elemental Plane, the Firelands is an all-new 10- and 25-player raid featuring normal and Heroic difficulties! Battle-hardened veterans of the Horde and Alliance now have an opportunity to strike at Ragnaros the Firelord and his loyal servants by venturing into their domain via Sulfuron Spire in Mount Hyjal.
• New Legendary Item: Dragonwrath, Tarecgosa’s Rest
  • Steadfast raiders have an opportunity to embark on a series of quests to create an all-new legendary caster staff. In order to begin the process of assembling the staff, players must first kill a Molten Lord in the Firelands. Once a Molten Lord is killed, players can accept the quest A Legendary Engagement from Ziradormi or Coridormi in Orgrimmar or Stormwind.
• New User Interface Feature: Dungeon Journal
  • A host of dungeon information is now built into the user interface via the all-new Dungeon Journal. This feature can be accessed with the “M” key while in a dungeon, or via a new button in the navigation tray from anywhere in the world. Boss background story, encounter details, abilities, and loot can be viewed with the Dungeon Journal for all bosses which have been integrated into the new system. Additional dungeons are planned to be incorporated into the Dungeon Journal in future updates.

WoWhead Guide

Tier 11 Set Bonus

Jun 3, 2011 General Leave a comment

With several hard-modes and a couple of regular modes thrown in, last night was a good test of my 4 pc set bonus and wether it’s worth keeping.  Below is the percent of my total damage that Shadowy Apparitions account for.

Heroic Magmaw - (497014/9750193)*100 = 5.09% 
Omnotron Defense System - (251548/4836514)*100 = 5.20%
Heroic Maloriak - (422864/10747104)*100 = 3.93%
Heroic Atramedes - (347465/5413817)*100 = 6.42%
Heroic Chimaeron - (209766/6153956)*100 = 3.40%
Nefarian – (308671/7230416)*100 = 4.27%
Heroic Halfus - (699324/13522218)*100 = 5.17%

30% of the above bonuses gave me following percentages extra damage during the fight.  You’ll of course notice fights that involve more moving makes the 4pc set more worth while.
Heroic Magmaw – 1.57% 
Omnotron Defense System – 1.56%
Heroic Maloriak – 1.18%
Heroic Atramedes - 1.93%
Heroic Chimaeron - 1.02%
Nefarian - 1.28%
Heroic Halfus - 1.55%

The Magic Numbers

May 27, 2011 shadow Leave a comment

This is completely taken from WoW Insider, but I’d like to have it front and center for me to peruse whilst I’m internetting.

128.06 haste rating = 1% haste

General haste list -

• 6.3% (807) haste DP gains an extra tick
• 8.3% (1063) haste SW:P gains an extra tick
• 10% (1281) haste VT gains an extra tick
• 15.4% (1973) haste Heroism/Bloodlust pushes us over the soft cap
• 18.8% (2408) haste DP gains a second extra tick
• 25% (3202) haste SW:P gains a second extra tick
• 30% (3842) haste VT gains a second extra tick
• 31.3% (4009) haste DP gains a third extra tick
• 41.7% (5341) haste SW:P gains a third extra tick
• 43.8% (5610) haste DP gains a fourth extra tick
• 50% (6403) haste Haste soft cap; VT gains a third extra tick

Haste Buffs

• 5% (641) Haste from Mind Quickening
• 3% (385) Haste from Darkness
• 30% (3842) Haste from Heroism

DoT do this to me!

May 20, 2011 4.2, Patch Notes, shadow Leave a comment

Really?  I liked the idea of just running around and DoT-ing everything.  If we’re now going to have to stand in place and hard cast more, how am I supposed to spawn more apparitions?

• Devouring Plague damage done has been decreased by 12%.
• Mind Blast damage done has been increased by 12%.
• Shadow Word: Death damage done has been increased by 12%.
• Shadow Word: Pain damage done has been decreased by 12%.
• Mind Flay damage done has been increased by 12%.
• Vampiric Touch damage done has been decreased by 12%.

WoW insider does a decent job calming the panic, especially when you consider that warlocks got the same treatment a few patches ago.

DPS Comparison

May 17, 2011 raiding, shadow Leave a comment

Here’s a comparison of my dps on a Maloriak fight vs. one of the top ranked shadowpriests according to worldoflogs.  I’ll take away some pointers from the comparison, but shadowpriest-ing is not a set-in-stone rotation.  It’s fluid, and as such, means the same fight can be different every time.

Here’s the short version of the log for ‘Drahma’.  You’ll notice he has the warlock haste buff, and does great with his uptime of all his DoTs (VT, SW:P, DP).  He also does well with keeping Empowered Shadow up (Mind Blast w/Orbs up – 15 sec buff).

And here’s the comparison to my numbers for the same fight.
 

DoTs
Some things to start off with – He has 510 more Spellpower, 1054 more haste, and only 26 more crit than I do.  He raids with a warlock (which was recently nerfed).  He spent the money on the Power Torrent enchant (I will once I have a Chelly’s Staff or comparable).

I certainly have room for improvement on DoT uptime.  I haven’t shadowpriested since Wrath full-time, so I’ve still got the bad habit of sometimes refreshing DoTs right after they fall off. 

I’ve learned that DoTs will become shorter and shorter duration because of haste UNTIL they reach an extra tick.  THEN they will go back to their full duration, just adding in the extra damage.  At 1601 haste my Devouring Plague will have an extra tick of damage, but be back to the full spell length time.  This is great news becuase it makes getting more and more haste still manageable, instead of making it so that all you do is refresh your ultra-hasted DoTs.  Vampiric Touch’s first haste goal is 2588 (2140 w/Dark Intent).

SW:D
I’m pretty even with Shadow Word:Death spamming.  All shadowpriests should glyph and spam SW:D on CD in the last 25% of a bosses health.  Saving a Dark Archangel till the last 25% will give even more added boost to those numbers.

Empowered Shadow
Lastly, I need to try to keep empowered shadow up more consistanly.  It’s a crap-shoot as to when the shadoworbs are available, but 1 orb is better than waiting for 3 orbs if empowered shadow is about to drop off.  I’ll be casting MB every 15 secs more consistantly to make sure this buff is up.