LF1M Kara - need Key!

I don't normally comment on developments on the PTR (Lifebloom nerf aside) as you're never really sure if the content will ever make it live. I'm going to make an exception though, as the new PTR build has done away with the Kara Attunement, or at least made it so that only one person in the raid needs the key - like Shattered Halls. Eyonix says on the official forums*

It's not a matter of difficulty, really. We wanted to make it more alt friendly at this point. I've gotten my kara key on four characters, and have helped a dozen others. I'm really quite content with never having to work on the attunement quest for kara again. Also, you should note that at least one person in the raid will need the Master's Key, as the gate will function much like Arcatraz or Shattered Halls.

Is this a good idea, or not? For alts, it's great - at least they have already done the quest and have worked in groups in several instances. The thing that Blizzard seem to be forgetting, however, is that there are still a large number of people who even now are just getting to level 70. You can now conceivably never group until a 10-man Kara raid.

While I'm not too worried about the effect it will have on The Elders, I think that I will still insist that people new to the guild/first time 70s complete the attunement chain - in some ways it's as important as the gear levels.

* Reading the official forums can be very bad for your sanity. This is a fact.

Oi! Hands off the bark!

Leafy from Leafshine: Lust for Flower is starting a popular protest movement! Hands off our Lifebloom, we needs it! (I'm not a Tree, but I do heal very often!)

Guide and Gatekeeper

Just over a week ago we had a bit of a shake up in The Elders. One of the Officers, who was also a Karazhan raid leader, got a new job and is unable to commit to taking a raid group any more.

Cue a flurry of whispers and msn conversations, and Nalik is now an Officer and Raid Leader of one of our Karazhan groups! It’s a big responsibility, but it's working out quite well so far.

After discussions with Braegor, the RL of my old Kara group, we have decided on two distinct groups. She will take the 25-man raiders who still need badges or one or two drops, and I will take a new group, consisting of alts, new players to the guild, and newly attuned members. This actually works quite well for me, as I have a lot of patience and I enjoy teaching, or passing on knowledge. Braegor knows Kara better, particularly some of the later fights, and is better at pushing people – they’re now attempting full clears in one night.

What this does mean however, is I now have two distinct roles, above and beyond the basic ones of choosing a group based on balance, etc. I am both gatekeeper and guide (and terribly pretentious). I’m responsible for making sure that people are appropriately geared for Kara, understand what raiding is about, have at least half-way sensible specs and buy and use consumables, etc. This is probably the part of the role that I enjoy least – often it feels like lecturing people, and sometimes people don’t take advice very well, no matter how constructive or positive you are.

The second part is “guide”, which involves introducing people to their first raid – in some cases the first raid ever, in others, the first raid with the guild. This involves detailed strategies, hints and tips, and generally being more knowledgeable than I actually think I am.

The upshot of this is that I’m getting to know a lot more about classes, raid groups, and other things that should make me a better player. The downside is that I seem to spend more time thinking about Karazhan than my job! It’s all good fun, I guess.

Last week, with three new players to the guild (who were quite well geared, and had done some of Kara before) and three complete novice raiders (including both tanks) we managed Attumen, Moroes and Maiden in a little over three hours, with only 4 wipes. A very similar group this week, and we head in tonight. Hoping to at least do Opera, and maybe have a stab at Curator. Before long we’ll be doing two nights a week, and heading for some of the trickier bosses. Just because it’s a learning group, doesn’t mean I can’t be ambitious!

Saving Real Estate (Or Two Simple Macros)

I like my UI. It’s taken me a while to build, and I like the layout and the feel. The main problem is that I want to add more spells and abilities to my action bars, but they’re full, and I don’t want to create more. Cue some handy little macros. I wrote this one last night, because I realised I had 3 buttons on my consumables bar being taken up by Healthstones.

You can write a nice little macro that will allow you to have all three of them on one button. I tried it last night in Gruul, and it worked a treat! Almost like sweet green cookies!

#showtooltip Master Healthstone
/use item:22105
/use item:22104
/use item:22103

The trick is to notice that the different ranks of Master Healthstone have different item IDs. By using #showtooltip, it also displays the remaining cooldowns in the same way!

I have also combined Gift of the Wild and Mark of the Wild into one easy button too, which saves me another button.

#showtooltip Gift of the Wild
/cast [target=mouseover]Mark of the Wild;[modifier:ctrl,target=mouseover]Gift of the Wild;

So there you have it, two quick steps that free up three buttons, without losing any usability.

I think I may set something up for abolish/remove poison too, and maybe some of my channelled spells.

The future’s bright – the future’s macroed!

So, the Scryers like me, eh?

A little while ago, while blogging about Gruul, I decided I needed to up my hit rating. Nasirah (who seems to be referenced in most of my posts!) recommended getting the [Scryer's Bloodgem]. So, I did.

This very nice little trinket has upped my hit rating considerably - when I replace my [Mantle of the Mindflayer] with [Pauldrons of Tribal Fury] I should be just about hit-capped.

If you're of the Aldor persuasion, however, the closest you can get is the [Starkiller's Bauble], a quest reward. This may be the only time in history that Blood Elves are a good idea!

On (In?) Leather

Let’s face it, there’s a scarcity of epic leather spell damage items for us Moonkin types.

A quick manipulation of the WoWhead filters, like so:

http://www.wowhead.com/?items=4.2&filter=qu=4;minrl=70;cr=123:82:93;crs=1:2:2;crv=0:0:0

Shows 28 items (not including PvP leather) and that includes all of the tier drops! There will be more leather gear available in Patch 2.4, but that will all be at T5+ level.

If you’re not too worried about kitting yourself out in leather, and you have understanding mages in your guild, you can do very well for yourself in cloth – there are lots of spell damage cloth items. I personally don’t like wearing cloth – I’ll only roll on a cloth drop if no cloth wearer wants it. Leather gear may be difficult to find, but it is certainly available.

Nasirah has written a series of excellent posts on gear that’s available in early raid content, and I don’t intend to duplicate that. I wanted to mention the Tribal Leatherworking set which I currently wear.

[Windhawk Bracers]

[Windhawk Belt]

[Windhawk Hauberk]

The 3-piece Tribal Leatherworking set can easily be yours before you set foot in a Raid, and is equivalent to T4 or Badge of Justice rewards. It also has a very nice set bonus. 8mp5? Yes plx, kkthxbai!


Can you hear what I hear?

The other advantage that you get as a leatherworker is drums. The armour that you can make is very nice, but will eventually be replaced. Drums are incredibly useful consumables, and can be used in all druid forms. They are:

[Drums of Panic]
Not a set I use often, but AoE fear is always useful. I think I’ll find some use for these in the Arena, and they’re great for an emergency “Ouch, things be hitting me! Run away!” button.

[Drums of Speed]
Battleground Drums! Run, run as fast as you can, you can’t catch me I’m the Gingerbread man Druid with drums! Ok, so it doesn’t rhyme, but an AoE burst of speed that lasts for 30 seconds is very useful!

[Drums of Restoration]
Let’s see. 600 mana and 600 health for everyone in your party on a separate timer to potions and innervate? Yes please! These are a must for me in boss fights – incredibly useful.

[Drums of War]
Increases attack power by 60 and spell damage by 30 for all party members. We’re already in the raid because of our 5% crit increase, so increasing our – and everyone else in our group’s - damage is definitely a good thing. I like these drums for trash mobs.

[Drums of Battle]
With all of the changes planned for patch 2.4, I think spell haste is going to be much more important. I’ll take more mana or spell damage at the moment though!


So, to summarise – Leatherworking is worth it just for the Windhawk set, but drums really provide the icing on the cake. Each set takes about 4 [Heavy Knothide Leather] and 4 other reagents to make, which are very easily obtained by skinning. This then provides 50 charges. Not bad at all!


And, as a bonus:

Little Drummer Boy: Lyrics

Come they told me, pa rum pum pum pum
A new born King to see, pa rum pum pum pum
Our finest gifts we bring, pa rum pum pum pum
To lay before the King, pa rum pum pum pum,
rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum,

So to honor Him, pa rum pum pum pum,
When we come.

Little Baby, pa rum pum pum pum
I am a poor boy too, pa rum pum pum pum
I have no gift to bring, pa rum pum pum pum
That's fit to give the King, pa rum pum pum pum,
rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum,

Shall I play for you, pa rum pum pum pum,
On my drum?

Mary nodded, pa rum pum pum pum
The ox and lamb kept time, pa rum pum pum pum
I played my drum for Him, pa rum pum pum pum
I played my best for Him, pa rum pum pum pum,
rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum,

Then He smiled at me, pa rum pum pum pum
Me and my drum.

Yes, it’s not Christmas, but I couldn’t resist!

Right Click to Socket

Nalik is now in the world of PvP. I've forked out my 200g and have a 5v5 arena team - "Right Click to Socket." We thought the name encapsulated perfectly the level of seriousness we're hoping to bring to the arenas!

We already have 5 victims volunteers, and we'll start our campaign of annihilation (ours, not the oppostion's) next week!

King Nalik!

It is over then. You have freed us from the shackles of our enslavement to the Sons of Gruul. You have given the Bloodmaul Clan a reprieve from certain extinction.

Words cannot describe the extent of the debt that ALL of the ogres of the Blade's Edge Mountains, Bloodmaul and Bladespire alike, owe you, Nalik.

Look down, even now the ogres gather to pay you tribute. Let Gruul and his puppet, the old king, Maulgar, cower within their lair. Go to the ogres below as our new king!

I finally got around to finishing my Ogri’La pre-quests on Monday, and I’ve now unlocked the dailies. I must say that dodging fell cannonballs is great fun, but a little tricky with only normal flight form! It’s a great source of income, but I’m still a long way from epic flight form.

Notable achievements since my last post (sorry it’s been a while):

• Unlocking Ogri’La Dailies
• Clearing out most of Zul’Gurub with 7 players (This was an absolute hoot – outdoor instances are incredible!)
• Our first proper pop at Magtheridon. We didn’t down him, but we made some good progress.
• Getting my little hunter alt to level 26. Go Aenyth!

Disclaimer

Unfortunately work is all a little crazy at the moment , and the combination of that and a hearty dose of RL activities mean it’s taken two days to even write this article, which is not nearly as detailed as I want it to be. I do still have lots of ideas though, so hopefully can get some more thoughts down over lunch today.

/afk

Away from WoW for a few days - going to visit family and watch some Rugby.

A few posts on UI, addons and stats generally are in development, but I've been spending too much time playing and not enough time writing.

Kara again last night - Moroes, Maiden, Opera (Big Bad Wolf), Curator and Aran in about 3 hours. Not too shoddy.

Sorry I don't have time for a better post today - back next week.

Live from Gruul

Here we are , rebuffing before our third attempt at Gruul, after two tries to get Maulgar down - it's not going so well tonight.

Oh, and I didn't have enough DKP for my shoulders from Maulgar. :-(

Another try, another wipe. Not going as well as last time. Oh well, you win some you lose some.

The only major dissappointment for me is my DPS. I need to socket more +hit gems, methinks.

Ok, 5th attempt - down to 3%. We're better than this, it's quite frustrating!

Number 6 - down he goes! Hooray /big cheer!

My dps was awful on that attempt too, but only because I had to run across the map to ressurect a healer.

No more updates, just Scryer grinding - thanks Nasirah.

Ok, it was actually the 7th attempt, but the first doesn't count, because River managed to ninja-pull Gruul. A magetastic piece of pulling that led to a wipe. Fantastic! (You know we love you really, River!)

Monday Night is Dragon Night!

We headed into Karazhan last night to clear up the few bosses that Braegor and co. left late last week (a raid I didn't attend, due to a mess-up with sign-ups). We only had Illhoof, Netherspite and Nightbane to do, so we didn't anticipate it taking long.

Braegor has recently asked me to be her Raid Assist, looking after the DPS, in particular the ranged DPS, and this was my first raid in this capacity - I was quite excited!

The raid was delayed slightly due to various people being stuck in work, and our Guild Leader's router blowing up, but eventually we headed off (after a brief spell of me off-healing while still in Moonkin spec). Fortunately a real healer arrived and I got back to spacking* faces!

So, Illhoof was one-shotted. I use a simple macro:

/target Demon Chains

Which helps me target and free the sacrifice victim quickly, but we were a little slow last night.

Netherspite is one of those fights that can go horribly wrong for no apparent reason. A bit of confusion with the beams meant that the first attempt was a wipe. I stupidly pulled aggro after the netherbreath phase and died on the second attempt, but everyone else stayed up and finished the job.

The raid was in a very good mood, there was a lot of happy banter. Trash was dropping like flies - our two tanks were working incredibly well together. Braegor now has all of the drops that she needs in Karazhan, so was leading the raid with her hunter. We had two warrior tanks and I must say, they were a pleasure to work with - a line up we'll hopefully see more of in the future.

As we got on to the Master's Terrace, Braegor had to shout for quiet over Vent as there's so much babble she can't do tactics. Cue much general hilarity and mocking - we all think she's quite scary! A full run of the tactics later, we're all ready to go. No-one summons Nightbane. "All those who can summon Nightbane, speak up now!" Silence. Tumbleweed. Roars of laughter as we realise Brae forgot to check if anyone could summon before doing the sign ups! To be fair to Brae, she normally summons Nightbane herself, but she wasn't on her Paladin and so got confuzzled!**

Fortunately there was another Hunter online who had the urn, so Brae swapped out, and this little Moonkin was Raid Leader! *Gulp* Needless to say, we wiped. *Gulp some more* we tried again, with a change of healing assignments to cover for some lag spikes. We wiped, this time on the AoE rain of bones.

Back-seat driver Brae (who was watching over her partner's shoulder) piped up at this point and suggested that we let Kaeron use consecrate, the other healers could keep her upright, and then we could AoE the skeletons to death. Needless to say, it worked like a charm. I got a pretty drop for my Kitty offspec [Chestguard of the Conniver] which is quite handy - I use Kitty form to take down the Mana worms in the Karazhan library.

All in all, a good run - apparently I'm very calm when RL, and call out instructions with a minimum of fuss. I don't quite have Brae's experience yet, but I do think I'm turning into a proper raider!

*This is still a proper word. Honestly.
** This is also a real word! Who educated you people?!

It's all about the tea...

Well, yet another of The Elders has joined us on Blogspot. This time it's Braegor, our Raid Leader and Protection Paladin. Always fun to instance with, if slightly insane (I don't need CC, I like them hiiting me!), Brae is a bit of a theorycrafter and a hopeless tea addict.

Check out her blog: Tea is for Tanking

Maulgar's Council - A Moonkin's Perspective

High King Maulgar is the lord of the ogres of the Blade's Edge Mountains of Outland, ruling from within Gruul's Lair. His council consists of Kiggler the Crazed, Blindeye the Seer, Olm the Summoner and Krosh Firehand.

As a Moonkin, your job will be tanking Kiggler. Here's what he does:

• Hex. Polymorphs the person with the highest threat. As a Moonkin, you're immune to this, which is why you'll be tanking him - it frees up another DPS to take on the other bosses.
• Lightning bolt - c.3k Nature damage, single target.
• Arcane Blast - 2.5k AoE, a knockback that reduces threat
• Arcane Shock - another ranged attack that also has a DoT element
• He melees for about 6k on plate

Nature resistance is not important. As a tank, you will have a healer focussed on you, and his damage isn't so high that they won't be able to deal with it. In my opinion you're much better off focussing on +dmg and mp5. I did it with no nature resist, but I had more than 200mp5 and about 900 +dmg. If anything, my spell damage was a little low, but it wasn't a problem.

Tactics


The raid will arrive at the council chamber from the right hand side. At this point feel free to panic! Most of the raid will move along the south wall to point 1 on the map, yourself included. Your placement in the fight will be where the two circles are quite close together, and the idea is to keep Kiggler where he is. (The map I'm using was drawn with two Hunters tanking Kiggler in mind - fools!).

After a ready check, you should get a countdown from your RL. When he hits go, hit Moonfire, and build up some serious threat on that big ugly ogre!

Then, it's a simple case of keeping your aggro higher than that of the healers. I hit Wrath a few times, then coasted on Starfire rank 6. If you get hit by the AoE knockback, you will lose aggro. Don't be afraid to hit Moonfire a few times to get his attention back - that's actually the hardest part of the fight. You have to keep him from pounding the healers. Also, make sure you keep in LoS - his AoE attack is nasty to those not expecting it, so don't let him go wandering!

Before you know it, the ranged DPS will arrive and start nuking Kiggler, as he should be second on the kill list. He only has about 300k health, so this won't take too long at all. You need to keep your threat as high as you can (which is a nice change!) but remember that you will need to preserve some Mana for after he is dead - when he's down, follow the rest of the DPS and nuke down the other bosses - this time keeping below the tank on aggro!

A few tips:

1. Use Innervate early. I normally pop mine when I'm down about 2.5k - 3k Mana. This means that should a fight drag on, you can use it on yourself/your healer. This is useful on all boss fights.
2. Use potions early. Same reason - if you use them as soon as you'll get use out of them, there's more chance the cooldown will be over if you need them again.
3. Don't panic - it's actually not that difficult, it's just a lot of pressure.
   

Congratulations - Kiggler is down!

This fight is actually not that difficult, once your raid has the coordination and organisation. If everyone studies their tactics, it will be one-shot heaven!

Lots of information taken from the World of Warcraft Wiki: http://www.wowwiki.com/High_King_Maulgar
The map is taken from our Guild Forums. I don't know where it originated.