Jan 16, 2010

Gear Planning

I am having a lot of trouble these days planning my gear upgrades. I've been doing my dailies every day, so I can possibly get one crafted item with Primordial Saronite, however, by next Thursday I should be at (or close to) 95 Emblems of Frost, allowing me to get my 2nd piece of tier 10, the Bloodmage Hood (I believe this is the best possible upgrade at the current time. Using Rawr's Item Cost feature, it tells me the hood is the best next upgrade. So I switch out my head piece, do a quick optimization, and Rawr tells me to then swap out my Khadgar's Gauntlets of Triumph for Gloves of the Lifeless Touch (which have been sitting in my bag, ungemmed and unenchanted for ages). And also to swap my rods out (hit/haste swapping). So we'll go with that optimized setup for now...

Setting the optimizer to choose my next two emblem purchases, it quickly spits out that I should purchase the T10 Shoulders and Legs. However, it doesn't take into account that I should be able to purchase one crafted item with Primordial Saronite. If I optimize with the Leggings of Woven Death selected, it tells me to obviously get the Shoulders and Gloves. If I optimize with the Sandals of Consecration selected, it tells me to go with the T10 Shoulders and Legs. However, I don't think I can get both the crafted boots and legs, so if I have to pick one, which way do I go? I think it's the legs.

Optimized with legs, acquiring T10 Shoulders & Gloves = Rawr "Score" of 8949.536
Optimized with feet, acquiring T10 Shoulders & Legs = Rawr "Score" of 9014.053

So it's a 70 point gain I believe to get the legs crafted before the boots. However, the problem I run into is I can't accurately predict what other upgrades I might get along the way. What if I get the Plague Scientist's Boots this weekend from Festergut? Well then the Sandals are of no use. And if I get other upgrades as I work towards my 3rd piece of T10, then everything could change. I guess I'd just like to figure out what to shoot for next after acquiring the Bloodmage Hood. Rawr tells me my best next purchase is the Gloves of False Gestures, but that makes no sense with T10 gloves, so it then tells me to get the Circle of Ossus, which is a beautiful belt, but then it puts me in the position of waiting even longer for 4pcT10.


I'm still stuck, and here I thought I had it all figured out...

Jan 15, 2010

A New Title and More

I just added my latest title to my ever growing list of titles - Twilight Vanquisher Tiddlywinks. Last weekend, I saw someone looking for 5k+ DPS for a Sarth 3D 25 man attempt. I of course was intrigued, so decided I'd lend a hand. After multiple attempts, at the end of the hour (and on the last try I had before I was leaving for the night), we got him down. We did a classic zerg, but rather than having a druid kite the drake away, the tank held him, which, inevitably led to his demise. We had some people arguing about it, but in the end, we got him down - through a rogue evade tanking Sarth after the tank went down.

It was certainly a crazy fight and through the attempts, I was able to pull more than 8k DPS for the fight - of course, most of it was burst with the heroism at the start, so I was doing 9k+ for a good amount of time, which would then decline as the fight went on. Here's my log for his death (note: it will expire, sorry about that). I ended up doing a sustained 7.7k DPS for the fight.

And while, during the 6 attempts, I died once due to stupidity, there were many others there that I just could not understand how they could not grasp the fight. They'd get caught in flame walls repeatedly, get hit by a void zone, etc. I know it's easy to get caught up in your rotation and the fight does get pretty crazy at times, but there's only two mechanics you need to constantly look out for - flame walls and void zones - that's it! And yes, I died in a void zone once. I moved out of the way from a flame wall and got complacent in my positioning and was watching other things on the screen. But it only happened once...not each and every time like some others were failing on.

Lastly, I did not get the drake (or I would have posted much sooner!). A warlock who did weak DPS barely outrolled me for it. I was stoked when I got my 87, but I didn't think it'd hold up, and the lock ended up rolling a 95. But I got a couple new achievements and a new title, so I was happy.

Rotface Down

After a couple weeks of attempts, our 10 man team finally got Rotface down. A couple of quick observations:

- 2 heal it. We were always overwhelmed when we had three healers. The extra DPS is essential in this fight (especially in the last 30%) so you must find a way to 2-heal the fight if you can.

- Use Heroism within 35%. Again, even though it might be anecdotal evidence, every time we got under 35%, slimes started to spawn much quicker. Reading through all the posts around the net, people are still debating if the slimes get thrown out quicker by Rotface based on time elapsed or based on his HP. We believe it his HP that triggers faster slime generation. If this is the case, it is essential that heroism be saved until the end.

- Pally OTs - use Blessing of Freedom and cleanse the slime people. We had our pally tank who was on the large slime moving around the outer ring of the room - but whenever he would encounter a quadrant with ooze, he would detour close to the boss in the middle of the room. By using Blessing of Freedom, the ooze did not snare him and the damage it does in inconsequential. Similarly, since we were 2-healing the fight, the healers did not have time to cleanse the slimes off of people. The OT makes a perfect cleansing candidate. While he is kiting the large slime, he could easily cleanse us as we ran towards him. Alternatively, if you have a ret pally or shadow priest DPSing, they can cleanse too. Having the healers cleanse is a waste of a global cooldown that should be used for heals.

So there you have it...Festergut and Rotface down - Festergut is a push over once you figure out the extent of his damage once he has inhaled all the mist. Our healers now know what to expect and we one shot him this week. As for Professor Putricide, we still have a ways to go on him. We extended our scheduled raiding time last night to get 9 tries in on him and he's one tough SOB. We got him down to about 50% on our best try, but we lost the abomination at a critical time, so we are learning...and we might get lucky next week, but it'll probably be a couple weeks before we get the Professor down.