[Inspirational] I'll Carry You

....as long as you're trying.

-If you have crappy gear, don't be embarrassed. So you haven't gotten lucky on loot rolls, maybe you'll get lucky this run.

-If you can only put out 1.5k DPS, you won't hear me complain, I have enough DPS for all of us, it's cool.

-If your tank gear kinda sucks, that's cool, we're in heroics so you can get better gear, I'll make sure not to be so front-loaded for ya.

-If you're struggling keeping us all healed. I won't complain if you send that much-needed heal to the tank and I die. I won't bemoan repair costs, I won't call you trash. It happens.

-If you don't know the boss fights, I'm happy to explain, just ask. And I give good explanations too, completely without any snarkyness.

-If you're slow to get stuff figured out, I'll be patient with you. We were all new once.

-If you get lost in the maze that some of these instances are, I will happily come and get you, and lead you back to the rest of the group. No thanks needed, but always appreciated.

-If you need that item to make your toon better, don't feel bad clicking that need button.

However

-If you're going to bad-mouth random people in the group for simple things, GTFO.

-If you're doing to whine that you didn't get a particular drop, GTFO.

-If you're going to spam recount after every pull to flatter your ego, GTFO.

-If you're not really going to try and just spam FoK every pull or something, GTFO.

-If you're just going to be a miserable person to play with, GTFO.

Otherwise, I'm more than happy to carry you.

----

I found this on the Bluetracker, and decided to share it with all of you that have mains that do carrying, or alts that need to be carried.

[Discipline Priests] Minimum Requirements per Teir Content

Since there's a few of you out there, I thought i would share this. Now remember, the stats I'm listing below are an approximation of what you need to have to be effective in that tier's content.

Heroics

1200 spellpower

200mp5 in five second rule

500 spirit

800 intellect

12% crit

Tier 7

1400 spellpower

230mp5 in five second rule

600 spirit

900 int

14% crit

Tier 8

2000 spellpower

320 mp5 in five second rule

700 spirit

1150 int

20% crit

15% haste

Tier 9

2200 spellpower

350 mp5 in five second rule

800 spirit

1200 int

25% crit

15% haste

Tier 10

2600 spellpower

350 mp5 in five second rule

900 spirit

1300 int

28% crit

15% haste

[Shadow Priests] Haste

A guild mate asked me a question about haste. Now most information I've been able to glean via Google and other reputable sources (Elitist Jerks and shadowpriest.com) tend to have very little information on haste for Shadow Priests.

The original question he wanted was the coefficient for haste to DPS. Unfortunately, that information is nowhere to be found meaning that we have to run tests for figuring this out. 

I'm showing that most priests are stacking haste well into the mid 800s (Source here) though there seems to be a large amount of crying by the Shadow Priest community as a whole about how they did not get Shadow Word: Pain to be effected by haste as well.

Though most are not overly concerned about SW:P, but more about their overall DPS, and how reliant their rotations are on being exact to output the optimum DPS required for the current raiding environment we have today.

Right now, I'm even seeing people saying that whether or not one goes for haste over crit or vice versa is dependent on play style. 

I suppose that could potentially be true with any class, because as a discipline priest I tend to stray away more from stacking MP5 or Spirit, and more towards INT giving me more crit and a huge mana pool, while others are stacking MP5 for fear of running OOM.

Really, there's no right amount of haste currently that reflects a mechanic imposed cap, so I would say that you're probably best off with having your haste as high as it could be without sacrificing any other important stats.

[General]My Appologies

My appologies to those that follow me via Facebook. I installed the feed early this morning only to have it spam my page.

[General] Impressions of Patch 3.3, Icecrown Citadel, and the LFG tool.

So this week brought us a whole new world of things to do within the World of Warcraft, patch 3.3 dropped Tuesday morning, with very few issues.

Patch 3.3 brought us the release of Icecrown Citadel, three new instances, teir 10, and the new and improved Looking for Group tool. 

We started off Tuesday with some connectivity issues, and some instance related issues, but other than that the launch of 3.3 was pretty damn smooth.

I was able to get in one random heroic with Kittydoom before the servers went on the blink, and was able to get the rest of them done the next day.

I'm very impressed with the new LFG (Looking for Group) tool, not only does it pair you with other members that have similar gear, but it gives you the opportunity to play with others in your battlegroup. I've run into a few runs where I've encountered terrible players but I suppose that comes with the territory, mostly my tanks have been solid, and so have my healers, though depending on what toon I'm playing (since I currently play 3 different active and geared toons at this point), I've run into issues where either we've gotten a tank that isn't doing good, or a healer is not as strong as they could be, but I've also run into issues where we've had inconsiderate DPS.

The new dungeons are worlds apart from what we've currently experienced with the initial instances that were put into Wrath of the Lich King, the fights actually require some strategy, they're not just a stand there and nuke the boss while the tank holds aggro, they require that you stop DPS or Healing during certain parts of the fight, they require movement or even CC. They require that you used skills that you may not have had to use previously, whether it be decursing, cleansing or even dropping a totem or aura that you've never used in a dungeon previously. 

The Halls of Reflection seem to be the instance that seems to cause the greatest issue in most of the parties I've been in since the release of the new patch. As a tank the entire fight isn't bad, as long as you're not a druid or a warrior. The initial part of the instance is similar in design to Violet Hold but more contained, you have 4 waves of mobs, followed by a fairly simple boss, and then 4 more waves followed by another boss. This fight requires that you have cleansers and decursers, as well as a solid kill order. I've done the dungeon a few times with much pain as a healer, as a DPS it's not half bad if the healer and the tank is solid. De-cursing is no issue on the paladin, as I can do it while waiting for cool-downs to refresh, and at that point I'm more interested in the party surviving than topping DPS meters. The second phase can be a bit tricky as it is very DPS dependent, because not only are you moving but you have a set time frame in which to kill the mobs that the Lich King is summoning, but you're being chased by him at the same time.

DPS in this dungeon does need to closely watch their aggro as the mobs are fairly spread out, as well as providing their own form of CC, and aoe based attacks, and some can hit for upwards of 22k on cloth.

Other than these few things, the instances are a refreshing change from what we've been seeing with previous patches under the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.

I had an opportunity to venture into Icecrown Citadel 10 this past Wednesday, our guild was able to down Lord Marrowgar in team 1, but team 2 ran into some issues as healer balance was not at our optimum. I had the opportunity to go in to heal and DPS for this boss. 

I'm enjoying the challenges that Icecrown has provided so far up to this point. Not only are we dealing with phase transitions, but we're dealing with ground damage akin to the Illidan fight of Black Temple, and immobilizing spikes, and a whirlwind phase. Lots of movement and quick thinking, as well as CC needed on trash pulls again.

Oh trash pulls! How I've missed you!

The last thing I wanted to really touch on was the new and improved LFG tool. It's amazing! I love it! Not only am I able to find a similarly geared group, but I have the flexibility to run with my friends. The daily heroic is a thing of the past, and now we have a daily random, which could be anything! Today's daily random was ToC 10 for the paladin, Forge of Souls for the priest, and for the druid was Halls of Lightning. So it breaks up the monotony of farming badges, and brings new people and new personalities into the same dull runs. 

[Video]Icecrown Preview

Vodka released an amazing video of Icecrown Citadel. I'm sharing it here today because like Ciderhelm from Tankspot.com's video of Glory of the Raider, this one is equally well done.

BE FOREWARNED BEFORE WATCHING THAT THIS VIDEO DOES CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR ICECROWN CITADEL!

[Reminiscing] Do you remember the good old days when......

I was in a Trial of the Champion this morning with a good friend of mine, and a few other random old-school raiders, and we got into the discussion of what was challenging, and then went from there to reminiscing when the game was actually kinda hard.

Trial of the Crusader is not hard. It's a bit of a range and positioning nightmare, but there's no real strategy to it. Most bosses can be zerged down with a group of heavy hitters. There's no positioning required except that you stay behind bosses, get out of fire etc.

I look back at the Gurtog Bloodboil fight in Black Temple, I remember running in and out of the pools of water when you had Bloodboil. I remember spell stealing buffs off of Reliquary of Souls, I remember needing special gear for High King Maulgar, tanks needing nature resist gear for SSC, and warlocks tanking Leotheras the Blind.

What happened to the days where the game required a little more work than sitting there mashing buttons? Where it could take Blizzard over a year to release content because no one had cleared the existing content yet, where healers actually had to balance mana regen and spellpower?

What about raids, 15 man and 40 man raids are a thing of the past, and with it the guilds that kept a decent number of players, and that unguilded people were hunting for the perfect guild to help them feed their need for raiding. Now we see such a large population of players being unguilded, and still rocking awesome gear, and wearing the titles that would've been previously reserved for people in organized raiding guilds.

I miss the epic quest chains for things like weapons, or titles. I remember working so hard on getting "Champion of the Naaru" and even working toward "Hand of A'dal" (I did not get Hand of A'dal since my guild wasn't that far ahead in progression at the time). I remember my first trip into Tempest Keep, and learning to dodge orbs on Lootreaver.

What happened to those days when downing a boss left a sense of accomplishment throughout the raid?