Screenshots Finally

I finally got around to going through my last batch of screenshots and figured I would post a few. Most of them are from our Zul'Aman incursion last week where we downed two bosses within the specified time frame and also took Jan'Alai down. We started strong taking down Akil'zon then rushed over to Nalorakk. We then tried to get to Halazzi in time but didn't make it. After downing Halazzi, we went back and looted the first timed box and then the second one. The second box was guarded by a fearsome dwarf named Harkor. It just so happens we've been raiding with our beloved paladin healer, Harkor for a long time, so we took the time to take some pictures of the twins:



After looting the boxes, we quickly cleared over to Jan'Alai and with our practice the weeks before, we took him down! ((Click for larger view))



We then called it for the night as our run was quite successful and we shall be attempting Malacrass soon!

Coming later...my arena setup!

2.4 Epic Stones Make Me Happy

I found this over on MMO Champion and it looks like I'm going to need a lot more badges. I already plan on spending 210 badges when 2.4 comes out, but I could go for some gem upgrades too.


(Click the image to enlarge)

The thought of some Great Lionseyes, Veiled Pyrestones, and especially Runed Crimson Spinels make me giddy.

Zul'Aman Fun

Ahh, my favorite time of the week, Zul'Aman. After breezing through Karazhan on Tuesday and one-shotting every boss with an odd team make-up (no hunter, no warlock), in well under four hours, we continued rolling along and switched up our strategy in Zul'Aman a little.

We usually would go for Nalorakk first, but now that we have Akil'zon down, we went to him first, then quickly downed Nalorakk and bum-rushed Halazzi. Unfortunately, we needed about 5-7 more minutes than the timer allowed and we only unlocked two timed chests. But after quickly dispatching Halazzi, we moved on to Jan'Alai. After a few wipes - one close call - we tried a new strategy. After two tries with the new strategy, we downed Jan'Alai! We just barely pulled it off as we killed him five seconds after his enrage timer. I luckily got an invisibility off during his last fire bomb stage so I had no threat and as he went around and one-shotted our tanks, our DPS, our healing, it was just me, Legionaire and Harkor standing. Just enough DPS to get rid of him.

We are certain we can improve on the strategy next week now that we've gotten him down and I look forward to more practice and new bosses. From the second timed chest, Nefernetcher finally upgraded his staff from the Curator to the sweet Amani Divining Staff. Comador picked up a couple of new pieces (like he needed them) and we added seven more badges to our stashes.

However, I had to use those seven badges to buy a primal nether to make some Runic Spellthread. After making the thread, I headed over to the arena vendor to pick up a brand new pair of Vengeful Gladiator's Silk Trousers. However, when I tried to buy them, he told me I was short on points. What!? So I checked...1,874 points. Needed 1,875. ONE point short. Oh well. Next week they shall be mine (unless of course they announce the new arena season and set a date for the new patch).

Progress!

Jan'Alai DOWN!

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.

You Can Never Have Enough Mojo!

It dropped! Last night we went to Zul'Aman, downed both Nalorakk and Akil'Zon in the allotted time periods, and while we were on our way to Halazzi, with the one Amani Hex Stick I had in my inventory, I got my Mojo! I'm so happy and I never thought I'd see my wonderful Mojo. I now own 53 of the 78 pets available to me - see my full list.

With 5 of those 78 not available until patch 2.4, I am 20 pets short of a complete collection. I'll be working on my fishing again this week to get to 375 and find Mr. Pinchy. Plus, with the daily fishing quests, and four pets coming from those, I need to work on my fishing now more than ever.

Isn't he cute?

2.4 Badges

Today some of the pricing was announced on the new Badge of Justice loots in the next patch and while the number of badges needed seems a bit high, I think it makes sense for the quality of the items you will be getting.

The other main change is that mana regeneration is being changed to be dependent on both intellect and spirit. From Elitist Jerks Forums:

Granted, but again, I'm more concerned with what happens with mages. Unfortunately, I checked my math again so that I can use an inequality. (I'd like to apologize if my math skills are not too honed for the company I'm in.)

s*√i*k

(s+1)*√i*k>s*√(i+1)*k

(s+1)*√i>s*√(i+1)

〖(s+1)〗^2*i>s^2*(i+1)

(s^2+2s+1)*i>s^2 i+s^2

(2s+1)*i>s^2

i>s^2/(2s+1)

This means that if your Int is greater than the given number (related to your spirit), adding Spirit will increase your mana regen better than Int. So, let's pick a number. Say, 400. That's your Spirit. This means that if you have greater than 199.75 Int, it is better to put one point of Spirit on than one point of Intellect, for purposes of mana regen.

Thus, this change does not really benefit Mages at all, but it might have implications for very high-Spirit casters. It seems the rule of thumb would be that if your Intellect is less than half your Spirit, increasing your Intellect to the point that it is half of your Spirit would yield better regeneration than simply stacking Spirit.

So with my spirit really low right now, the added spirit from the new 2.4 badge items will drastically increase my mana regen which will be quite helpful.

The one thing I'm looking at here is replacing my Spellfire set with the new Sunwell Badge items. The Shroud of the Lore'nial is 100 badges, Voodoo Woven Belt is 60 badges (2.3 haste loot) and the Enslaved Doomguard Soulgrips are purchaseable for an unknown number of badges (I'm thinking a mage pair of Gloves will appear shortly as these appear more suited for locks).

The difference between those three badge items and my Spellfire set is:

+119 Armor
+86 Stamina
+39 Intellect
+33 Spirit
+62 Hit Rating
-22 Crit Rating
-86 Damage

It's tough to justify losing 86 damage like that. But gaining 62 hit rating translates at almost 1:1 to damage or crit. So the total loss in Hit/Crit/Damage (all 1:1 relationships via different socketing) is -46.

So do you take the 46 point loss in Hit/Crit/Damage for 86 Stamina, 39 Intellect, and 33 Spirit? 39 Intellect = 585 more mana which is one to two extra fireballs per fight. It also is 0.5% extra crit rating (or 11 spell crit points). So the gain of Intellect offsets 11 points of that loss, so I'm losing 35 points (ignoring the 585 extra mana).

So to lose 35 Hit/Crit/Damage, I gain 86 stamina and 33 spirit. 860 hit points is nothing to just toss aside as meaningless, but it comes at a cost of damage. So the question is which is more important? Right now, with ice block and other damage avoidance options, it is rare when I die in a fight. However, how many times have I died by less than 860 hit points? I couldn't tell you. Add to that the 33 spirit. Doing some quick calculations, added 33 spirit and 39 intellect affords me an additional 45 mp/5 out of combat. With Mage Armor, that's an additional 13.5 mp/5 in battle. With an 8 minute fight, that's an additional 2,160 mana or an extra five firebals. With my fireballs averaging 2,400 damage or more, that's an extra 12,000 damage which would outweigh the 35 damage I lose. However, that assumes that I run out of mana after using all my gems, evocation, and potions, which I do not do (yet). And with more MP/5, I shouldn't in the future.

It's a tough call. I might wait for some more theorycraft numbers to come out and then rue the day I made my Boots of Blasting as the new Boots of Incantations look pretty nice...+12 stamina, +1 intellect, +23 spirit, -1 hit, -21 crit, +15 damage.

The Perfect Run

So nice. Just had the perfect run and got to max exalted with the Cenarion Expedition. With it, comes Enchant Cloak: Stealth and Ashyen's Gift. I probably won't use Ashyen's gift much, but it could be a boss ring I could switch out which gives me 21 points of hit rating to remove from my sockets. But since I forget to equip Scryer's Bloodgem enough as it is during fights, having to remember to equip a ring too might not be the best idea. But that now makes 19 exalted factions!

And my fishing is going well also. 318 right now. A ways to go to 375, but I'm making slow and steady progress.