The New UI in a Raid

Last night, as we quickly took out Gruul and fought our way through SSC, I had the chance to play with my new UI. On a whole, it performed very well. I love my new "Fire Bomb" button (Trinket+Combustion+Icy Veins) and I didn't have too many problems finding the buttons I was looking for. Buffing is still taking some time getting used to as I'm using Grid for my raid status rather than individual raid bars via Pitbull. Here's the Grid I had going last night (taken before a few tweaks I made later in the raid):


The way I've basically set it up is in the lower left hand corner of each grid box is either a blue or reddish/pink square. Blue indicates that they have Arcane Brilliance. Red indicates Arcane Intellect. So as long as all those boxes are full, I'm doing my job as the only mage. Each party is in its own row, so the top row is Group/Party 1 and so on with the pets on the bottom line. So far, I'm using it just for buffs and to get a quick look to see if we have a bunch of dead people in the raid so I need to make a few quick tweaks - I'd like the box to be a bright red if someone is dead so a quick glance makes the dead stand out more. Also, Grid does a lot, and if I can scale it back a little, it might use less memory and be a bit more efficient.

Other than that, the only minor problem I ran into was I had forgotten to whip up my quick /stopcasting /cast counterspell macro, but I quickly made that and was ready for the next Gronn Priest to try and heal. The only major problem I ran into was with Cryolosis. It has some issues with sheeping. Every time a sheep was broken, even though I had turned off notification of sheep breakings, I received a lua error. So I spent a lot of time in SSC clicking lua errors away. At the end of the raid, I downloaded a new addon as suggested in chat, but was unable to test it before people started getting lazy and wiping us on the Lurker Below (more on that later).

Here's a screenshot from last night as we were clearing to Gruul. Compared to my previous "action" shots, this one is just so much cleaner and has all the information I need. I do need to tweak the Pitbull spacing a bit later tonight or this weekend, but in all, everything worked quite well. And people seemed to enjoy the random messages Cryolosis outputs when I teleport, portal, or conjure a mage table.

Lurker Wrap-Up

So last night, as you might have seen, the Gold 25 Man Team took down the Lurker Below! We started the night on a good note quickly taking out Gruul, skipped Magtheridon and went straight to SSC. Trash was cleared quickly with quite a few purples dropping including a Leatherworking and Blacksmithing pattern (never seem to see a tailoring pattern though). We had a few new people in the group, so after a quick explanation, we got set up and took on the Lurker.

He managed to get us the first time through, but we quickly regrouped, and with everyone seeing the fight now, we took him out! My sheep was left alone the whole fight and never broke (yay! for me - boo I'm the only mage). The healing on the individual platforms was amazing as we lost our hunter on our platform on th second dive but we were able to DPS both naga down without any CC on the subsequent dives.

(More shots here and here)

It sure was fun being able to go all out on DPS without worrying about aggro. We completely destroyed the Lurker before his first dive getting him under 65% and I was able to sustain almost 1,100 DPS while sheeping and sitting around waiting for the lurker to emerge. It sure is fun doing over 10% of the total raid damage for a 25 man fight.

On a side note, now that I am a class leader (DPS Casters), I seem to have amassed more addons than I would care to have on the screen. Big Brother was added to monitor my sheeps, but being able to see all pally buffs, consumables, and raid buffs is nice as I can quickly call out if someone needs to be rebuffed or alert people that they don't have food buffs (more on this in another post). I also installed Pally Power to monitor Pally Buffs which is nice because it allows me to quickly whisper a pally if I need a rebuff (i.e. Salvation after clicking it off to tank Krosh). As I am an assist, I can also switch up Pally Buffs as needed (e.g. no Salvation during Lurker fight). I also have Ora2 which litters my screen with tanks and tank targets, cooldowns for locks and druids, and ready checks. Patch 2.4.2 seems to have broken one of my cooldown monitors, but usually that is up as well. Below is a screenshot of my Raid UI while tanking Krosh (and below it fighting Lurker).

(Another shot)

(More shots after he is down here and here)

After Lurker was defeated, we moved on and cleared trash to the next boss, but had no time to even attempt him. Overall, a very successful night as we have made progress and had a great time doing it. SSC is on notice!

Lurker Down!

Finally :)

Random Updates

A few quick random updates.

Bought some epic gems with Badges. 2xRuned Crimson Spinel, 1xGreat Lionseye. Since I was 2 over the spell hit cap, I replaced a Great Dawnstone with the Lionseye and I was 4 over the cap. With that, I was able to replace a Veiled Noble Topaz with a Spinel. Also upgraded a Runed Living Ruby with a Spinel. So I'm perfectly on the spell hit cap and gained 10 spell damage.

Heading through Kara last week, I picked up the T4 glove token and purchased Gladiator's Silk Handguards. Threw a +20 damage on it and last night Mercreus and I went 5-6 in arenas. We're just barely staying above 1,500 rating at 1,520 right now.

Last week, the Gold 25 Man Team quickly took down Gruul and headed to Mag. We were short one of our regular clickers so we assigned another warlock to the cube. First time through, he tried clicking the wrong cube so no one was on his. Next time through he got disconnected. Third time through I clicked and we took Mag down. We then went and only had time to clear trash up to Lurker. As the only mage, I had fun sheeping and watching who broke my sheeps.

Tonight we once again go to Gruul, Mag and Lurker.

No new pets or recipes. Enchant Boots: Vitality was on auction for 2000g and didn't sell. Seller lowered it to 1600g. Still too pricey for me.

I logged out last night in my PvP gear which is odd for me, but I can see that I have almost 10k health and 201 resilience. With the new gloves I got, they break the Spellfire bonus, so I went out and purchased Evoker's Silk Raiment and Evoker's Silk Amice. I haven't run the numbers, but I will lose damage in the trade, but gain 68 resilience (or more depending on how I socket them). Once I run the numbers, I will post again.

SSC Week 3

On Sunday, the Ungawa group ventured back into Serpentshrine Cavern and took a few more shots at Hydross the Unstable. We are getting the transitions down and are having more success on the adds that spawn when he transitions. On our second attempt, we did approximately 3 million damage and brought him under 50%, but we got dangerously close to him enraging - though an errant shot by a DPSer on a transition spawned four additional adds and wiped us. On our third try, we managed to do 3.2 million damage and I can tell that progress is being made. We took a vote after that attempt and voted to go on to see Lurker (I really wanted more shots at Hydross at that point since I know progress is happening). After we cleared one platform, we jumped down to Lurker and were assaulted by fish. We then realized you have to clear all the platforms above and the fish will despawn. So we went back the start, cleared all the trash from the start to Hydross, then started clearing the platforms, and after three platforms were cleared, we had to call it due to time.

Though we were unable to drop any bosses, we did see some nice items. The following dropped for us: Serpentshrine Shuriken, Pattern: Boots of Natural Grace (congrats Llyr), and a Nether Vortex.

Looking at the full damage report on the night, I tried to help a couple of the mages out as they were obviously having problems in there. When I looked up their profiles on the Armory, I saw that they had good gear, but just hadn't put that much time into them. There were green gems, items without enchants, and the spell hit rating was quite poor. I advised both of them that all the damage and crit in the world won't help if you can't hit your target in the first place. So hopefully they will heed some of my advice and next time have a better hit rating and put out some more damage.

On a whole, it's quite tough to think that we can progress in Serpentshrine Cavern with the DPS that we have. As I said after our first foray into the Cavern, if we don't have people who genuinely will put the effort forward and buff themselves completely, buy/farm consumables, enchant their gear, socket their gear with rare gems at the very least, and just work to get ready, how are we to progress? I know that we are working with individuals to gear them up and I talked to both the mages in my group about their spell hit rating and also posted about gems and enchants on our forums. But I feel that there are people who really aren't taking this seriously and while we do want to have fun, we should be focused on our damage and/or healing output as well.

Following up our gains in SSC (but still, ultimately nothing died), we continued on to Gruul's on Monday. After a couple quick resets of Maulgar, he went down quite easily and we had three tries on Gruul. Unfortunately, we were once again unable to get him down, coming up about 15% short in two of our three tries (again, the same mage I am trying to help was lowest on DPS - many people discount spell hit rating, but it is the single most important stat for mages on PvE bosses). We're definitely getting closer to getting Gruul down, but again, there were people asking for food, some didn't have their flasks, and the laid back attitude is nice in vent, but when that laid back attitude transfers over to how characters are played, it just causes problems.

With the Gold Team now forming up a 25 man group, I will most likely be departing from Ungawa and I wish them the best of luck. But I really would love to see the 25 mans with my Karazhan/Zul'Aman team. We have fun while raiding and everyone always comes prepared. We have all spent countless hours working on our gear, enchants, sockets, and reading/watching strategies. We function well as a group and I have high hopes.