A New Outfit

Earlier this week, it was "hinted" that I should make sure to be at the Guild Meeting tonight. Not that I hadn't planned on going, but things come up and I have missed a guild meeting in my time. However, when the King tells you something "might" happen, you take special care to be there.

However...two weeks ago we had our dodgeball fight in Stormwind and I came sporting my two usual outfits - one a mix of Tuxedo+Brewfest, the other pure Tuxedo. So for tonight's Guild Meeting, I crafted a new outfit. While I wanted to go with an "oriental" theme to match my new Blade of Vaulted Secrets, I couldn't find any matching clothes and went with something a little more simple, but still fun.

It all starts with the Simple Kilt. From there, I needed a blue shirt and the Stylish Blue Shirt fit the bill perfectly. From there, I needed a nice pair of gloves. There weren't really any that fit the bill until I found the Hands of Darkness. They match the shirt perfectly. A pair of Simple Linen Boots cover my feet and I found an interesting hat on the auction house to top it all off - the Slavehandler Cap. There were some other hat options, but I found this one seemed to match the best (couldn't find any wide-brimmed blue hats).

For trinkets, I scoured my bank and came up with Thunderbrew's Boot Flask, fire-breathing for the win. And I will have my trusty Timbermaw Guardian by my side thanks to my Defender of the Timbermaw.

And for the icing on the cake, I'll be sporting Teresian's Stranglestaff. It was a hard choice to make between the staff and my King's Defender, but the staff won out in the end. All in all, a nice looking outfit. Probably not my best work, but it will be acceptable for tonight's guild meeting...

Raid Consumables

Over the past few raids, I've been watching the Big Brother consumables chart quite closely. It always pains me to see people with no flasks or potions while we're fighting a boss. Even worse, I often see people without food buffs even after being reminded to eat something before the fight.

Now I realize that not everyone is a master chef like I am, but it's just a part of being dedicated to the raid - and those that are unwilling to take the time to skill up in cooking or just don't want to buy food off the auction house are not team players in my opinion. Every raid I attend I have food in my bags. Often, food I can't even use (+Agility, +Strength). I try and hand them out when I see people are short on food - it happens to us all, but I have never run out of +Spell Damage food and I always have a few +Stamina/+MP5 fish sticks in my back pocket just in case. Yeah, it's annoying to carry all that food around, taking up bag slots, but it's something you just have to do when you're raiding Tier 5 content in my opinion. A +23 spell damage food buff is huge - that's 2 extra epic red gems in my case. You can't just ignore that boost. Add on top of that the spirit I receive to keep my mana in tip-top condition, and there's just no excuse to not be using food buffs.

Perhaps even more egregious is the ignorance of flasks and potions. A while ago I stopped using potions altogether due to the fact they don't persist through death. This last Tuesday night while we were taking down Magtheridon and Lurker, I had to pop two Flasks of Pure Death. Yeah, it's expensive, but it's +80 damage to ALL of my spells. Add that with a food buff, and that's +103 damage. Like Vetarra pointed out in raid chat a while ago, that's an extra piece of equipment. You wouldn't come into a raid without your gloves or boots. Why come in without flasks or food?

Ok, I realize that not everyone plays just one character like I do. I know that during the week you might not have time to do dailies, but the two flasks require me to outlay about 120g a week (usually just one flask if we go to Gruul and I can use a Blade's Edge Elixir) or even less if I get a Mark of the Illidari. But in a quick trip around the Outlands, I can easily do the Shattered Sun quests in Nagrand, Blade's Edge, Netherstorm, then head south to Hellfire Peninsula and then back to Shattrath to turn them in (sometimes with a stop to bomb in Skettis). All told, it takes maybe 1/2 an hour and nets me 100 or so gold. Pick up the fishing quest and cooking quest and you'll be in any zone required for those two quests while making your circle and they will also net you free food and fish along with even more gold. Excuses about not enough time to gather gold are worthless to me. You have time. You don't have to level that alt just now. If you're committed to the raid, you'll gather a few gold and pick up a couple flasks and if you're not a cook, buy some food.

As always, WowWiki has a great listing of flasks - find an Alchemist and have some made. I can usually get my Flask of Pure Death made for free if I provide the Fel Lotus and the Nightmare Vine (which I always have extras of to make Superior Wizard Oil with. So go do your dailies, level up your cooking, and show up to your raids prepared!

More on Zanza

So yesterday I mentioned about hitting honored with the Zandalar which then allowed me to turn in my four Arcanums of Rapidity for Savage Guards. The reason I had the arcanums in the first place was for Shen'dralar reputation, and now that I am honored with Zandalar, I can turn them in for more Zandalar reputation. They all start from Librams of Rapidity which I haven't seen on the auction house recently, so I might have to start looking into other libram turn-ins which require Frayed Abomination Stitchings instead of the Blood of Heroes that the libram of rapidity requires.

Anyways, here's a wonderful shot of me and Zanza, who by the way is a Loa, more powerful than elementals, but just a step below the gods. As you can see, I also took Toothy along and we got close, but didn't have to kill any of his crocolisk relatives within Zul'Gurub.


As a side note, the easy way to get to Zanza as a 70 mage is as such: Enter Zul'Gurub and jump in the water on your right. Follow the stream to the waterfall - but be careful not to fall down. Jump out of the waterfall to your left and drop down to the first bridge you see (watch out for the patrol). Cross the first bridge and second bridge and pop invisibility. Invisibility will almost take you all the way to Zanza's staircase (I will try to make it next time in one shot). But if you stay to the left against the wall as you head up to Zanza, when you come out of invisibility, you will see Zanza's staircase in front of you and some snakes guarding it. I waited here until invisibility was up again and then easily made it to the top of his pyramid.

I also got a nice picture of my new Blade of Vaulted Secrets with Potency on it. It's a very cool looking sword and I've been wielding it often (and subsequently finding out that my sword skills are quite low - though I did take some time to level them up in Stranglethorn Vale). I'm a little bit worried that th Potency enchant may be a bit too strong and obscure the beauty of the sword. Here's a picture:

Ahn'Qiraj Fun

Last Thursday, Flamehelix organized a guild run of AQ20 which was mainly put together to get him the blacksmithing patterns from the Lieutenant. Unfortunately, during a knockback, the boss took out the lieutenant, but we carried on. While inside, I was able to pick up a Blade of Vaulted Secrets which I threw Potency on for the glow.

I think we'll be going back to work on those blacksmithing patterns again and perhaps I can complete the Trappings set.

On an unrelated note, I have been buying bijous and coins off the auction house since I can't seem to get Zul'Gurub runs going and I have acheived honored status amongst the Zandalar tribe. And while this now allows me to turn in my Arcanums of Rapidity, it more importantly allows me to buy Pattern: Bloodvine Leggings and Formula: Brilliant Wizard Oil.

Finally!

Yesterday, I finally got the quest to go fish up a crocolisk in Stormwind. Upon returning to the cranky Old Man Barlo, he gave me the standard bag of fishing treasures, but this time, he finally decided I was ready to watch over my very own little crocolisk in a bucket: Toothy's Bucket!

I now have 66 pets and have moved up to #34 on the list of pet collectors. Here's my new updated list.

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 :)

Evoker's Silk Battlegear

With the breaking of Spellfire, I wanted to run the numbers of Evoker's Silk Amice and Evoker's Silk Raiment against Mantle of Nimble Thought and Spellfire Robe.

In the end, I lose 82 armor, 12 intellect, 3 critical strike, 40 damage, and 43 haste while I gain 26 stamina and 68 resilience.

It's an interesting trade off. Armor loss isn't huge. Intellect and crit loss are quite small as well. Gaining 260 health is nice as it pushes me to 10.2k health. And I also gain 68 resilience which is 1.72% less chance of me getting critically struck, -3.44% less critical strike damage and -1.72% DoT damage.

Worth a loss of 40 damage and 43 haste (2.7% casting time reduction)? Tough to say as I'm not on top of Resilience calculations since my main focus is on PvE.