Refine Your Skill And Hit 80 In Record Time

We’ve been hinting at this for weeks now. Gavin and Law have been testing out a new way of leveling from 1 to 80 and it has exceeded our expectations. There comes a time when you just have to admit that you have to really stay on the front end of the curve in order to keep dominating, and this time it wasn’t us.

The new dungeon finder system brings the power of instance leveling to anyone and everyone. And even without the RaF bonuses, it’s faster than leveling solo. Plus, as we mentioned yesterday in the article “How to NOT be a Nub”, you’ll end up being a far better player on your new level 80 toon if you level in instances than if you go the solo route.

Leveling solo can leave you with a lot of bad habits as a DPS; and for tanks and healers it’s even worse.

You will hardly ever see anyone leveling in a healing or tank spec, so you end up with a level 80 toon that you have no idea how to play as a tank or healer – having been DPS the whole time up to 80.  But that has changed and the days of the solo leveler have become obsolete, even if you don’t know it yet.

Oh yeah, you can scoff if you like. When the car was first invented, folks laughed too. But in just a few decades the horse drawn carriage went from being the primary form of transportation to something you do out of nostalgia. the dungeon finder system has made solo leveling something that is just far less efficient and it won’t be long before most players figure that out. You can get on the cutting edge now, or be left in the dust. And WoW changes and moves a whole lot faster than RL.

Besides just being faster, as well as letting you play your desired spec (such as prot or resto) instance leveling also gives you far better gear and a lot more gold as you level up. The rewards from instance quests are far better than those from solo quests. As a matter of fact the xp per quest is about double and you can do quite a few that have blue gear as rewards. Throw in the extra gold from those quests as well as the enhanced loot from mobs and bosses in instances and you’ll be richer and far better geared when you hit 80.

That means you won’t be the dude starting heroics in quest greens doing pathetic DPS or struggling to keep people alive or hold threat. Most of your items will be blue at a minimum and the whole term “quest greens” will be far below you. You will go right from leveling straight into heroics and be able to hold your own while you rack up the 232 level epics and beyond.

Now, if you’re going to do instance leveling, you still need to do it the right way. And it’s not enough just to queue up the random dungeon finder and hit it that way. The ONLY way to use instance leveling is to combine the randoms with the dungeon quests as well. That’s where the real speed comes in. The problem is that those instance quests are scattered out all over the world of Azeroth and you could reasonably spend hours looking them up and chasing them down. But that’s where our test comes in.

Our good friend Dugi has developed the first instance leveling guide. If you’ve used our horde leveling guide before you know how much easier it makes everything. People tell us all the time they miss the guide being there to tell them every little step once they hit 80, that they almost feel lonely without it. Dugi’s dungeon leveling guide uses a version of the mod we used for Gavin’s guide, with a few neat perks of his own.

Dugi’s mod is highly refined with a slick UI. It makes moving between guide segments really easy, it’s quite a step above all of the other guide mods on the market. But once you get past the ease of use, you get to the real meat of Dugis dungeon leveling guide.

The guide will lead you all the way from 1-80 doing only instances and their quests. And trying to do it without a guide like this would be mind-boggling to say the least. Most instances will have quests from several different zones, or even continents, and the quest givers are typically in out of the way places and give you prerequisite quests that are hard to chain without a lot of time spent on Wowhead. Forget that, I have better things to do with my time, like level fast, and Dugi’s guide does all the heavy lifting for you.

And if you do happen to go ahead and do a RaF account and use Heirloom items, you can just move forward into the next dungeon segment if you find yourself doing dungeons several levels below you. So this is the one guide on the market that will work for anyone, at any level – it leaves no one out in the cold to fend for themselves.

So that’s where we’ve been the last few weeks, testing Dugi’s awesome dungeon leveling guide. At first, we were both a little skeptical to say the least. We’ve been leveling toons for years and Gavin broke the world record using our horde leveling guide, and we’ve both fiddled with powerleveling in dungeons. While powerleveling works like a charm, it’s also kind of a pain – not to mention a bit of a bore.

But after just a few dungeons we knew Dugi had hit the nail on the head and made our solo guide virtually obsolete. He’s even got some special bonuses in store for those of you who want to upgrade from Gavin’s Horde guide (which will no longer be available) to the new dungeon leveling system. It takes a lot to impress Gavin, but once you try dungeon leveling with all the dungeon quests built into a guide – there is just no way you’ll ever go back to solo hacking your way to 80.

Maybe the best part is really getting to know your new toon. Playing all the way to 80 as a healer and a tank has been a nice change of pace. Sure, some groups are a little lamer than others, but that’s to be expected. Some solo quests suck more than others too. None of this would be possible, of course, without the random finder. Just last year this would have been silly to even try. Putting together a group for Maraudon? Forget it, it aint happening – but the random dungeon finder can set it up.

I almost forgot another bonus. One of the reasons people don’t mess with the old world dungeons much is because they never did them and don’t know their way around. Dugi went above and beyond on this one. Dugi’s dungeon leveling guide includes a map for every single dungeon in the entire game. Plus, each map has very clear markers for boss locations and quest item mobs and pickups.

The maps alone are worth the price of admission for me. WC is a pain in the fiddle faddle even if you’ve done it several (hundred) times like I have. Throw in all those instance quests all over the world and make it easy for me to pick all those up, now we’ve got a winner.

Now I know what some of you are thinking: “I’m not going to spend money on some guide!”

And I used to be the same way, I know exactly how you feel – at least I used to. But then WoW became a real hobby. I have other hobbies, like golf, that cost me a TON just to get started. Then there are green fees ($50), a new putter ($150), some sweet shoes ($125), but shooting in the 70’s? Priceless.

I can’t directly attribute a better golf score to the shoes, but it certainly seems to help. Most hobbies are like that, you spend a lot of money because whatever it is you are buying increases your enjoyment in some way. I know this dude who plays paintball and he’s always getting some new gun or gear, but I have no idea if it makes him a more [deadly?] paintball player.

A guide for WoW is no different – or is it? The very first money I ever spent on WoW that didn’t go to Blizz went to Dugi. I had long since gotten over being cheap about my hobbies. And I used Dugi’s original guides for quite a while until I met Gavin. And I can say from personal experience that the fastest way from Nub to Pro starts with good information.

Without Dugi’s guides it would have taken me much longer to become Lawbringer. We surpassed some of that original advice, but frankly I never level without a guide of some kind running – which is why we built gavin’s guide in the first place. Gavin and I both wanted an in-game interface that reminded us what to do next. Even Gavin is human and you can’t memorize the entire leveling process – a guide helps even the best levelers stay on the right track.

So, if you really enjoy WoW, Dugi’s dungeon leveling guide can actually make leveling a lot more fun. You’ll level faster, get better gear and never be stuck wondering where to go and what to do next. You’ll have more fun leveling your toons, which is never something I look forward to all that much unless I’m vegging out, and leveling while brain dead is awesome with a guide.

So when you’re ready to Dominate leveling – there is no better or faster way than instance leveling. And Dugi’s dungeon leveling guide is the only one of its kind. It’s slick, easy to use and will have you going from 1-80 faster than ever before. It’s not easy to impress Gavin when it comes to WoW, but after using Dugi’s guide we are firm believers that there is no other guide out there that even comes close, not even ours.

And to sweeten the pot we’re going to throw in a couple of bonuses of our own. For a limited time we’re going to throw in a copy of Gavin’s Horde leveling guide for those times when you feel like going solo, or if you’re DPS waiting on a dungeon queue. We won’t be selling Gavin’s guide alone any more, so this is your last chance to get it.

But the big bonus is Gavin’s Auction House Mastery guide. That’s right, while you are dominating the leveling scene, you can also learn how to completely pwn the auction house, making more gold in less time than ever before. Hundreds of other players have used Gavin’s Auction House Mastery guide to blow the roof off their earnings – and you can do the same.

Here’s what you are getting when you order Dugi’s Dungeon Leveling Guide right now:

• Dugi’s Dungeon leveling Guide 1-80

• Gavins Horde Leveling Guide ($20 Value)

• Gavin’s Auction House Mastery guide ($30 Value)

That’s three completely Dominating guides for the price of one. No other offer for your favorite hobby even comes close to this kind of value. You’ll have more fun, level faster and make more gold. And it’s all just a click away. Use the link below for the Gavin Garrett bonuses when you order Dugi’s Dungeon Leveling guide right now.

14 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Hello, Gustava here, bringing you an important update straight from the PTR 3.3 test servers. In this patch, Blizzard is introducing their brand new Dungeon Finder System. It will revolutionize the way we PuG in World of Warcraft. Here is the breakdown of the new LFG in the coming patch.

(source)
New Dungeon Finder System In the upcoming content patch there are many new additions and improvements. Perhaps one of the largest changes is the introduction of the new dungeon finder system. This new system will be available for all dungeons. A “Dungeons” button will replace the Looking For Group feature currently available in-game, and provides additional benefits to those who use it.
Join as a Group or Solo
Much like the current Looking For Group system, players will be able to join the dungeon system and choose the role they would like to fill within groups: Healing, DPS, or Tank. In addition, once roles have been identified, they will be applied to all dungeons chosen. Players will now be able to choose multiple dungeons and will no longer be limited to three. The system has also improved group creation and matchmaking capabilities and will create more balanced groups when assessing the selected roles of players. The LFG channel has been disconnected from the dungeon tool and can be used by anyone in a major city,much like the trade channel currently available.
Cross Realm Instances
When joining the dungeon system as a solo player or with a partial group, additional random players can be found within the same Battlegroup via cross-realm instancing. While the new system offers the ability to group with player from other realms within your Battlegroup, you won’t be able to use this to manually invite specific players to groups.
Instance Teleporting
When you use the dungeon tool to find a dungeon, you’ll get ported to the inside of the dungeon, much like the current Battleground system. When you leave the instance, you will be returned to your previous location. If you need to leave temporarily, such asfor repairs or to purchase reagents, you can teleport back to the dungeon again. This feature can be used both by groups looking for other players and by premade groups of five who use the dungeon tool.
Smarter Group Matching
The new system will now work to match at least one experienced player for the assigned dungeon with less experienced players in the group. It will more carefully match class types, and will more consistently match players of equal levels for the dungeon chosen. The interface will also allow players to see how many players are looking for groups as well as the average wait time of groups that the tool has formed.
Daily Random Dungeons
Players or groups can choose specific dungeons or they can instead take their chances with a random Heroic or random normal dungeon. Picking randomly conveys some additional benefits. If you defeat the final boss in a dungeon, you receive 2 Emblems of Frost for Heroic dungeons and 2 Emblems of Triumph for normal dungeons. In addition, after players have received 2 Emblems of Frost for the first Heroic dungeon they do in a day, they will earn 2 Emblems of Triumph for each additional random Heroic
dungeons in that day. These random rewards replace the current daily dungeon and daily Heroic dungeon quests. The current NPCs who offer those quests will offer weekly repeatable raid quests instead. You can also earn level-appropriate rewards for running random pre-Wrath of the Lich King dungeons while you are leveling up.
Lovin’ the PUG
Players who take part in groups with one or more members who have been matched with them randomly from within the dungeon system will receive extra rewards, including the coveted Perky Pug non-combat pet. The more random players you group with, the faster you could get your new pet!
Vote Kick
Players who use the system to find additional random members for their party will be afforded a couple of extra conveniences to help them perform well. The loot option is fixed to the updated Need Before Greed option (and unalterable by any member) and players can vote to remove another party member from the group. It will take four votes in order to remove someone, however, so consider this newfound power carefully.
Looking for Raid
There will be a new option available to players that can be accessed via the raid information screen in the interface or by typing /lfr. Players will also be able to take part in raid-specific weekly quests and will be able to browse the system manually for any other players looking for a raid dungeon group.
Need Before Greed Updated
Need Before Greed will now recognize gear appropriate for a class in three ways: the class must be able to equip the item, pure melee will be unable to roll on spellpower items, and classes are limited to their dominant armor type (for example, plate for paladins). All items will still be available via greed rolls should no member be able to use the item as well as the new disenchant option will be available for all parties.

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This move is yet another great idea from Blizzard to update the LFG option.

To try this out, I leveled a toon to level 23 and I wanted to run Shadowfang Keep. Even today, if I wanted to find a group to do that, I would probably still be in the queue  for days. With this new system, I can queue a group for it. This system will pool all the players from your server’s whole battlegroup, much like the current BGs.This would theoretically allow you to find a group to do Occulus at 3 am … if you were so inclined for whatever reason. When your group is complete, you will be prompted to enter the instance, exactly the same way that BGs work now.

The Looking for Raid interface is just as Good as the LFG interface, only better for guilds who don’t have enough to run their  own full 10-man raid or need a few more to fill a 25 man raid. This is also good for people who run VoA, or OS, or Onyxia since most pug it anyway. It works almost the same as LFG works now but with a little more detail. And I am sure it will be a big help with many smaller guilds that don’t raid often at all.

If nothing else it will entice the newer player to actually experience end-game content. This can lead to other issues such as groups ending up with well-geared “n00bs” that don’t know the fights and cause wipes. This is inevitable and WILL occur, hopefully those who are motivated enough to get geared will also learn the fights.

Now, there will be no more daily heroic quests. I’ve seen many people forget to get the quest or loot the boss after we finsh the dungeon. When 3.3 goes live, if you kill the final boss you automatically get your two Frost Emblems and gold, no muss no fuss. I also like how the new Need Before Greed works so ninjas will not be able to loot-steal gear that’s not their armor type or spec type. Blizzard does it again taking a system no-one really uses now and making it better. I have tried it on the PTR and I am quite impressed by how well it works and I think you will too.

Bottom line: we will ALL be using this new and improved LFG/LFR a lot in the near future and we’ll all Dominate even more because of it.

12 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Mods We Love – Skada Vs. Recount And Omen

These days healers never worry much about threat.  As a matter of fact, besides the odd mage or lock aggro pig, it rarely comes into play.  But since I recently began playing a mage just to fiddle with, I began to have to pay more attention to aggro.  Remember, we never level alone, so I’m running the mage with an Arms warrior.  It’s a lot more fun to just stand back and nuke mobs til they glow, and without all the prot aggro abilities, a young mage has to watch themselves.

So as a result, I decided to go ahead and download Omen, since I was familiar with using it from back in the BC days.  Opened up Wowmatrix and typed in aggro to the search frame and there was no Omen in sight.  Apparently only Curse carries Omen. So, for one of the few times, however, I did no real research and decided to try out another mod in the list.  I’m just not a huge fan of curse, but that’s a personal thing.

The reason I chose the mod I did was because it claimed to replace both Omen and Recount.  I like consolidation, it cleans things up and keeps you from having to manage too many different things.  I run a lot of little mods for things like moving frames and gear comparisons and mailing tons of crud to bankers and other minor tasks – but when it comes to UI mods I stick with DBM, Bartender, Xperl and Recount.  I don’t want 500 things running in a big raid to kill my frame rates.  But a threat meter was in order, and so I thought I would give this new one a try.

And I love it.  The mod is Skada, and it was perhaps the best accidental mod find ever.  Like any mod interface and configuration, it takes a  little fiddling with and getting used to, but it does everything the other two do all in one package and you can configure it to suit yourself better than either Recount or Omen.

The one thing I really like is the ability to open multiple windows and name them for what they are tracking.  So now I keep three little windows up all the time.  There is one for DPS which shows overall damage plus DPS.  The next one shows healing, since I’m always interested in that sort of thing.  And the last – threat.

Now, when I’m healing, the threat window doesn’t help all that much, except to know who is messing up and nuking too hard at the start of a fight.  You actually can use it to tell who is about to get one-shot and maybe wind up a life saving heal.  Having DPS open let’s you know how you are doing against enrage timers and if you need to call out on vent for “MORE DOTS!”  And the healing window tells me who needs to step up their game or if we’re just fine and I can throw out a few dots myself during the fight just for grins.

Another nice thing about Skada is that the configuration is saved on the Interface level, so it spans across all accounts and realms.  Set it up once and you’re done.  You can have it do character specific windows as well, though – so whatever floats your boat it will do.  Fonts, window sizes, number of rows, number of fights to save – you can set it all with Skada and report any window to chat or whisper just like Recount.

Recount does a nice little graph, but I don’t necessarily need more visuals, I can make my own pie charts in my head.  With Skada, all you have to do is mouseover a bar in the chart and it will tooltip all the stats for that particular player without a single click.  It’s the same information with instant access for your entire raid.

All of this might be most helpful to those of you who regularly lead raids or have at least a leadership role.  Or maybe you’re just interested in winning, and more information about what happened can get you much closer to what you want to happen.  If you don’t know what is happening you have no idea how to fix what is wrong.  You might just tweak something that is working and get worse if you are just guessing.

Skada makes it easy to have all the combat data right in front of you in whatever way makes sense to you.  You can get too many mods and end up suffering from information overload, but for the raid leader who is used to watching what is going on Skada is a great way to take your Domination to a whole new, and easier level.

6 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

There was a day when raids were not run with voice chat.  I don’t remember them – I’m not quite an old enough gamer to have participated in those days – but I know at least in the beginnings of WoW voice chat programs like Ventrilo and Teamspeak (not to mention the faux-voice chat Blizz has included in-game) were not nearly as prevalent as they are today.

On the surface, they’re absolutely perfect.  What better way to explain fights, give out directions (“more dots, more dots, many more dots!”), and in general have a great time then to be able to actually talk to your fellow raiders in real time?  Why deal with all that pesky typing when you can give out your directions and be able to keep your hands quite literally in the game at the same time?

I’ll tell you why: because voice chat can make your raids less successful.

I love Ventrilo.  It’s a great tool and can lead to faster, cleaner, and more cohesive raiding.  It also allows you to get to know your fellow raiders better, meaning (in most cases) you can have more fun.  But Vent and other voice chat programs can slowly become a crutch for raiding guilds and eventually make your raids less productive.  Here’s some reasons why:

1. The Little Guys
   Here’s an easy one: what about your two or three members who simply can’t use the chat program?  Some guilds cite Ventrilo or Teamspeak as a requirement for guild entry, but what happens if speakers or headsets break?  There will be times when people can’t use voice chat, and those times will be very frustrating for those raiders.  With everyone so dependent on voice chatting, questions and comments in /raid are quickly ignored.  It’s easy to forget that two other people need directions and details explained to them when they’re not talking to you.  Besides, what happens when you pull a boss and nobody knows two of your healers are in the bathroom?
2. Chatty Cathys
   It’s great to have fun when you’re raiding, and before and after the pwnage has occurred, it’s nice to have some friendly talk time.  But there are always a few members who insist on having those unrelated talks during the raid.  There are few things more distracting than someone raving about last night’s South Park while you’re trying to tank, heal, DPS or at the very least, just not die.  Voice chat programs are a breeding ground for interrupting WoW-unrelated discussions.
3. “Speak Easies”
   Basically, being on voice chat makes it easier to speak your mind.  While sometimes that can be a good thing (as in, “Look out, Pwntank, you’re standing in a void zone!”), it can also be a bad thing (as in “WTF PWNTANK YOU’RE !@#$ STANDING IN A !@#$ VOID ZONE!!!”).  If you don’t notice the difference yet, ask a friend.  Not that we don’t see people being mean to each other all the time in Trade chat, but Vent and other chatting programs make it easy.  Sometimes having to actually type things out puts up enough of a filter to calm the nerves and make someone rethink what they’re saying.  Push-to-talk isn’t always enough for self-censorship.  Snide and hurtful comments can affect a raid’s productivity whether it causes a person to leave or causes the Raid Leader to start having to field complaints.
4. Sheer Forgetfulness
   Simply because directions are going on in Vent does not mean that there aren’t important things going on in /raid as well.  Sometimes tanking and healing assignments are posted there, sometimes (as in point 1) someone who can’t be on voice might be making an important comment about the fight.  Using voice chat programs too often makes people forget that there are still things going on in /raid that they need to be paying attention to.
5. Encouraging Complacency
   This is probably the most dangerous problem of all.  After using a voice chatting program for so long, people forget how to function without it.  They forget to watch for the AOE being cast – they’re used to it being called on Ventrilo.  They don’t remember when to hold their DPS – they’re used to it being called on Teamspeak.  They stop looking for void zones and surroundings-related problems – it’s easier to let someone else tell them when they’re in danger.  Basically, the chatting program becomes complacency incarnate: raiders stop proactively thinking about the fight and just let information be fed to them.  Voice chat then stops being a mere crutch that raiders lean on and begins being a necessity.

This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t use Ventrilo or Teamspeak at all.  It’s merely to point out that, if used incorrectly, it can gimp your raid.  In the event your voice server goes down or a large portion of your raid can’t be on voice chat, it can completely ruin it.  I know nobody likes hearing that Vent or TS is destroying the raid; it makes things fun and easier.  But if you start running into attention problems or getting complaints from your two or three raiders who can’t get on voice chat, here’s a suggestion: try running one raid without it to see what it’s like.  If your raid can still operate smoothly with minimal hitches, voice chat probably isn’t a problem.  But if people are confused, slow and generally disorganized, you may want to consider what chatting programs are doing to degrade your raids.

13 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

When You Care Enough To Stab The Very Best

When it comes to being a DPS class in PvE and raiding, you want to squeeze out every ounce of damage you can.  As a rogue you’re not required to switch stances to tank (an occasional evasion-tank wipe aside) or toss out an occasional heal (unless your healers are doing something very very wrong); so single-mindedly doing as much DPS as possible to make that boss fall on his face is usually going to be your number one goal.

Only the very leetest of us can remember to poison our weapons, keep up Slice and Dice and Rupture and maintain a strong sense of situational awareness (recall that dying is the quickest way to ruin your damage) all at the same time and without any aid.   Sometimes dropping your cycle can make you lose several hundred DPS, so while using addons isn’t necessary for PvE rogue-ing, it can help you keep those cycles solid and squeeze out every bit of energy possible to get that monster down as quickly as you can.  If you are new to raiding a good mod is just the thing to help you tighten up that rotation until it becomes second nature.

What Mods are Right for You?

Before you start downloading addons willy-nilly or even start reading my comments on the ones below, I suggest you think about what type of addons are best for you.  Here’s a quick list of things to think about when deciding what WoW mods will help you do what you want to do (and not what I or anyone else think you want to do):

• Install’n’Go vs. Detailed Setup

Some addons you can toss into your Addons folder, log into your account, and boom, you’re ready to zone in.  Others take a few tweaks to make them suit you personally, and still others will require you to sit down and tinker with them for 30 minutes before you get them just right.  How much do you care about the personalization and perfection of your addons?

• Altaholic vs. One-Toon-Wonder

If you love playing with all 10 or your available toons on a server, you may want to consider using 2 or 3 addons that will work for all your classes rather than one geared specifically for each class you have on your list.

• Bars vs. Timers vs. Audio

How do you like getting your information?  Are you fine with a simple timer countdown, or do you like a flashing bar or icon to fill you in?  Do you like an auditory chime as a reminder?  These preferences will seriously determine which addons you like best.

• Computer Limitations

As always, what your computer can handle will limit which or how many addons you use.  If you find that an addon is bogging down your machine, try looking for a more light-weight version that does the same thing, or at least something similar.

Of course, nothing will beat actually downloading the addons and trying them out for yourself.

Bring on the Mods!

I have the addons broken down into 4 use-based groups.  Each group is applicable for use by Rogues and each addon will have a quick rundown of its features (such as: Setup Time, Class Usage, and Information Displayed), a basic description, and my personal opinion.

Ability Trackers

Keep those Cycles Strong!  Letting Slice and Dice drop from a target can be damaging to your DPS.

• ClassTimers

ClassTimers includes a set of 3 bars: Player, Target, and Focus.  These can keep track of all your buffs and debuffs with both a countdown bar and a timer.  You can also change their locations to any place on your screen, as well as determine what abilities you would like the bars to display.

This is a great low-key addon for your stabbing repertoire.  It’s basically install’n’go and gives you all the information you need for your cooldowns.  It’s also not class-specific, so will work the same way for all of your toons.  One of its downsides, though, is that it doesn’t track CC innately; if you want it to keep an eye on, say, your Sap target, you have to set the target to be your Focus first (/focus [TargetName]).

• RoguePowerBars

RoguePowerBars are very similar to ClassTimers.  It only uses 2 bars, Buffs and Debuffs, and unlike ClassTimers does keep track of CC targets on its own.  It’s more modifiable than ClassTimers as well, allowing you to change its font, displayed text, bar size, and other physical items.

This is another fairly install’n’go addon.  It’s Rogue-only (which should be obvious by its name), which I find less attractive, but it does give you more personalization options, plus CC tracking.

• PowerAuras

PowerAuras are wicked cool because they give you an infinite supply of “auras” to put around your character that represent a certain ability.  They’re extremely customizable (almost dauntingly so), but that also makes them very useful.

I really like this addon because it gives you something different to look at when you’re killing things.  Rather than another set of bars on another section of your screen, you can look at differently colored auras around your character that give you the same information you could get from another boring bar and timer setup.  I found the extra customization time worth it.

For my PowerAuras setup, I used the outer yellow aura for Slice and Dice, the inner orange aura for Hunger for Blood and the red markings for Rupture.  I also chose to include timers for more precise timing

Energy/Combo Point Trackers

Count those Combos!  Take advantage of the combo points you gain from your finishing moves and don’t let your energy cap out.

• UIM:ComboPoints

Short and sweet: a simple row of dots that keep track of your combo points.  You can move their location to wherever you please and change a few other physical aspects.

Not much to say about this addon, other than it’s a little limited in its scope for my tastes.  I’d rather my addons be a little more functional, but it is nice to be able to keep track of your combo points wherever your eyes are most frequently.

• ComboPointsRedux

This addon gives you a little more flexibility than UIM:ComboPoints, plus it can also track your poison stacks.  It gives you 3 movable boxes: one for combo points, one for poison stacks, and one for the actual number (1-5) of how many combo points you have.  Allows for a fair amount of customization.  It also apparently works for vehicle combo points, like phase 3 Malygos.

I really like this addon; it does a little more than repeat what the WoW UI already gives you, plus it adds poison stack tracking as well.  There are also good options for customization without inundating the user with a complicated setup.

I chose to put my combo points in a vertical alignment with yellow circles and kept the poison stack tracker in horizontal green blocks.

• Rogue Focus Classic

A small and simple set of bars containing your combo points and energy, with the option to add your health bar as well.  Limited configurability, but easy to set up (basically install’n’go).

Easy and solid mod for keeping track of your energy and combo points.  Less modifiable than ComboPointsRedux, but does the job.  It’s a little small for my taste, but for some that will be optimal.

• PowerBars

A simple bar that tracks your energy and lists your number of combo points on the bar as well.  Another nifty piece of functionality it also gives you is the ability to add tick marks on the energy bar to mark ability costs so you can use your energy as quickly and efficiently as possible.  You can also change various physical aspects such as bar length, width, and font size of the combo point counter.

This addon was new to me and I like it a lot.  It centralizes your energy bar and combo points in a convenient location for your eyes, and the option to tick-mark your ability costs is really handy.  The only thing I don’t like is that it only gives you a combo point counter, not actual circles or markers.  That, however, is just personal preference

Above I have placed a tick mark on the bar to signify the Mutilate ability.

Stun/CC Timers

Stun that Stuff!  Just because you’re a DPSer doesn’t mean you can’t be utility, too.

• Stunwatch

Tracks your stuns with bars.  Does not include a timer and does not include other peoples’ stuns.  Is limitedly modifiable; you can change its location and a few other physical aspects.

This mod is more geared for soloing, I think, than a raiding situation.  It doesn’t appear to track refreshed Sapped targets and doesn’t signal when a stun has occurred or ended.  The lack of a timer also makes it a little less useful in a group setting.  Still, for a simple visual tracker of your own stuns, it works just fine.

Here I have one bar tracking a Sapped Unbound Seer and a second bar tracking another Cheap Shotted Unbound Seer.

• SapperEnhanced

This mod tracks your Sap and Blind abilities using both bars and a timer.  It also has the ability to announce the Sap, Sap refresh, and Sap break or end in say, party, or raid.  Bars are moveable, and few other bits of customization are also available.

While this addon only tracks Sap and Blind (and not other stun effects), it does it very well.  This mod is more suited for raiding as it has announcements as well as timers, better for calling out how much time is left on a CC’d target.

Here I have my Sap timer out to my character’s left and have the Sap being announced in /say.

Poison Reminders

Be forever deadly!  Dropped poisons can be detrimental to your DPS; never forget to poison your weapons again!

• Tyler is a Nub

Silly name, yes, but a simple addon that, when your raid leader performs a ready check, alerts your Rogue if your weapons have less than 5 minutes of poisons left on them.  Also works for Shamans.

I like this addon a lot because it gives you the information you need right when you need it.  It’s low-key and non-interruptive.  And it has a silly name.  Unfortunately, this addon is only useful for you if your raid leader uses ready checks before important pulls.

• CyanidePoisonReminder

A different type of poison reminder.  Flashes text on your screen telling you if your mainhand or offhand is still un-poisoned.  It also plays an audio file (which scared the bajesus out of me initially) a few minutes before your poisons wear off to remind you that your poisons are about to drop.  This time is adjustable.

I actually like this addon less than Tyler is a Nub, but that’s mostly because of my play style.  I don’t always use poisons when I’m soloing, and the text reminders can get a little spammy for my taste when I don’t have my daggers poisoned.

The above text is accompanied by a creepy Hydross saying “Arrrgh, the poison!”

Now, these are just some of my picks…there are always more out there that are variations of the same functionality.  Finding the addon that fits you best can seriously improve your DPS performance; make sure you take some time to practice with the ones you’ve chosen to get a good feel for them before embarking on a new adventure with your friends.

Go forth and stab!

8 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Abilities and How to rotate them in for maximum effectiveness.

Welcome back to the 5th article in this series dedicated to the tanking paladin. Today we’ll cover the rest of your abilities, how to use them as well as a more in-depth theory about rotation.

First, let’s go over some formalities: Seals, Judgments and Blessings. These abilities and combat mechanics define the Paladin class.

• Blessings: Kings, Might, Wisdom, Sanctuary: you’ve had them since early levels and should know by now what each class needs from you.  Obviously if you have more then one paladin you should share the work load. PallyPower is great for that. It allows the raid leader/assist to assign specific buffs to specific paladins. (Holy palys will end up using Wisdom, Ret palys will use Might and Prot palys can use Sanctuary)

1. Warrior: Might is overwritten by Battle shout so use: Kings
2. Hunter:  Kings or Might
3. Warlock: Kings to benefit from 10% to spirit
4. Priest: Usually Kings for DPS, Wisdom for Holy.
5. Shaman: Might for Enhance, Kings for Elemental and Wis for Resto
6. Death Knight: Kings or Might
7. Paladin: — You should be able to figure this one out by now —
8. Druid: Kings for Moonkin and Tree, Might for Kitty,  Kings for Bear
9. Rogue: Might
10. Mage: Kings or Wisdom

• Seals:  Seal of Vengeance/Corruption should be your only option while tanking anything serious. You can always get fancy and seal shift for special occasions, Wisdom to get mana back quick, Justice to stun non-boss type creatures, Light to get Health and untill 3.2 is released you can still use Blood for more DPS, assuming that your healers can keep up.
• Judgments: These are the most situational and really depend on a few things. We covered them in the last article but they are worth going over again. Always coordinate with the other palys in the group so ensure that at the very least, Wisdom and Light are being judged. Justice can be added in for good measure while tanking adds but I have never really used it

Rotation:

Depending what encounter you are about to enter and your function during that encounter, your rotation is subject to change. Let’s cover the standard rotation for a single target first.

Exorcism works really well but will not be worth much after 3.2 since it will have a cast time. So avenger’s shield is still your best pulling move, when you get in range you can then Judge whatever you want since it’s the next longest range ability (10 yds) and as soon as you’re in  melee range you want to really grab and hold aggro you need to get your Shield of Righteousness off as soon as possible. From that point on, just rotate your abilities: Hammer of the Righteous, Holy Shield , and Consecrate. Once that’s done ShoR, Judge  etc.

The basic concept is 96969.  9sec cd, 6sec cd, 9, 6, 9 etc.

By the time you’ve gone through your rotation once, the whole point is to always have an ability to use when your global cool down is up. Even though it may seem like a good idea at first to pop all your 9 sec abilities first to get them to come back faster after your second rotation, you’ll be looking for things to do while your longer ones come off cool down. 9 sec cd = 6 global cool downs while a 6 sec ability only requires 4 so you need to interlace them or your threat will get real skippy while you wait for abilities to become ready again or you will loose out on your potential maximum if they are ready and you’re not using them.

Generating threat should never be an issue for a paladin except early on when he’s under-geared, has no hit rating or expertise and is in a group with much better geared DPS that doesn’t look at their threat meters. It can also become an issue later on in Ulduar when the well-geared DPS can just sit there and prefect their rotation while the Paladin has to take time to move the mob/boss around or avoid bad/deadly things on the ground, but at that point the DPS should know what to do to prevent that.  All in all, on single target, threat is a non-issue if you know your rotation.

Essentially your rotation could look like this:

1. Judgment (9sec)
2. Shield of Righteousness (6sec)
3. Holy Shield (9sec)
4. Hammer of Righteousness(6sec)
5. Consecrate (9sec)

If you do the math and lay it out on paper you’ll see that the 6 sec CDs are up so you have to rotate them in differently on a first come first serve basis from that point on. After 18 seconds (12 Global Cool Downs) you will start all over from square 1.

Rotation: 1; 2; 3; 4; 5;    2, 1,    4, 3, 2,    5, 4; rinse and repeat

This may not seem obvious at first but I assure you there is a pattern if you look closely enough. Of course, you can, and should refresh your Sacred Shield every 30 or 60 seconds; pop Divine plea if it’s gone and taunt the mob that’s beating on your healer. The whole rotation is far from cast in stone and any tank should have enough awareness to see the big picture of the fight. Rotate your camera, zoom in, zoom out, do whatever it takes to keep an eye on your surroundings.

For multi-mob tanking, consider reversing your rotation so that your AoEs go off first, Avenger’s shield to pull them, Consecrate when they pull to you, Hammer of the Righteous when the first few are in range, Holy shield to boost the ones that hit you for the first time, then Judge and Shield of Righteousness whoever you have least threat on and tab target to build stacking Seal DoTs on every mob.

Now let’s go over your abilities and how to use them appropriately. If you’re new to the Paladin class these sound incredibly similar but I assure you that Holy Shield,  Divine Shield and  Divine Protection are not the same at all. In our last article we saw the “Bread and Butter” of threat generation along with DPS. Now you get the menu, the appetizer, all the trimmings as well as coffee and desert: Eat your heart out!

Before the pull:

Sacred Shield: Use this ability every single time – preferably BEFORE the pull since it will cost you 1 Global Cool Down (GCD) in your rotation. Having every hit reduced by 500 (600 with Divine Guardian Talent) makes this extremely useful and one of the reasons why paladins get Add Duty all the time. You can just sit there and chill with the mobs for a while before you need help or start taxing your healer’s mana pools. Not a bad idea to refresh between pull as well, just in case.

Seal of Vengeance/Corruption: This is your premiere tanking seal. It does less damage on a single target than Seal of the Martyr/Blood, but when you tab-target mobs to hold aggro, those stacks will build up and the DoT component will keep ticking. If you’re keeping more than one mob busy this is the seal for you and you should always change targets during your GCD, since most of your abilities affect more than one target anyway. After 3.2 this becomes your best seal.

Divine Plea: This is the very last ability you use before the pull. Put it on right after you do Sacred shield. It will generate quite a bit of your mana back and an OOM tank usually means a wipe. Since you’ve only got White melee swings that don’t require mana will not benefit from Righteous Fury, it makes them meaningless for threat generation.  Also note that unlike Warriors, paladins generate no threat from Dodge, Parry or Block (DP&B).

With those two abilities up you’re good to go.  Divine Plea is also the reason why paladins have this overwhelming urge to pull … pull now! It’s like a drug, and 45 seconds left on the cool down will feel like an eternity if it expires.

Defensive and Utility abilities include:

Hammer of Justice: This is your Primary Stun/Interrupt, this is the one that will work on Kel’Thuzad’s frost bolts and get you the Less-Rabi achievement. Although the stun component of this ability will not work on bosses the interrupt portion definitely will. You want to keep an eye out on the cast bar of those targets and interrupt whenever possible.

Hand of Salvation: Aggro reduction = 20%. Every tank should have Omen loaded and working all the time. As a tank it’s far more important than DPS meters like Recount because a tank is all about Threat. If you see someone catching up to you in threat you can ask them to use their threat reducing abilities first (Warlocks: SoulShatter, Hunters: Misdirection, Rogues: Tricks of the trade etc.) But when all else fails, this ability will greatly help out. Just remember, since it’s % based, it has more impact later on in the fight than it does early on.

Divine Sacrifice: Warn your healers before you pop this one and use at your own risk.  It may not save a healer caught in a void zone, but it just may allow some silly DPS to live through some of the more lethal AoE.

Righteous Defense: A last ditch effort to save your healer or some other silly DPS that pulled aggro, but can be useful in a bind.  Make sure to hit the mobs with something more sustainable like Hammer of Righteousness or Avenger’s shield for longer lasting threat.

Finally the Paladin also has this fine array of “Oh $H!T” buttons  that can/should be used if things go sideways and can really make the difference:

Oh $H1T buttons:

Lay on Hands: (15 minute CD with Glyph) Will restore you to full health. Every tank should keep an eye out on their health bar and be ready to pop this if they are losing health faster then the healers can bring it up.

Divine Protection: (2 min CD) Is the Paladin’s answer to a Warrior’s  Shield Wall. This ability should be used at the end of boss fights when they enrage Patchwork, Maexna or Razorscale to give the second tank more time to taunt him off when you can’t move to help your healers keep up. It can also be used as a starter on heavy pulls, like Grand Widow Faerelina with only 1 tank, achievement style or Emalon the storm watcher if you’re tanking the adds.

Divine Shield: (5 min CD) Commonly referred to as “The Bubble”, this is your final effort at staying alive. It’s an aggro wipe while it’s up, so people will die if you use this at the wrong time.  Just know that it can canceled by right clicking on it in your buff box. It gives you time for 2-3 Holy Light on yourself, a Healing Pot, and that’s about it.  It can come in quite handy in PvP.

Divine Intervention: (20 min CD) When everything else has failed, when it’s a wipe and you have at least one person still alive that can rez the group, this will kill you but save everyone a run back into the instance.

This covers the majority of what should be on your action bars or at least within easy reach should the situation call for it.  Remember, that as a tank, the life of the raid is (mostly) in your hands and the hands that heal you.  Keeping them happy and alive long enough to loot the bosses should be a priority for you.

This quick run down should give you a reasonable good idea of what you are capable of in a given circumstance. Now get out there and DOMINATE!

Articles in this thread:

Part 1 – The Basics

Part 2 – Combat Ratings

Part 3 – Armor: Mitigation vs. Avoidance

Part 4 – Hit Table and Threat Generation

Part 5  – Abilities and Rotation (You are here)

Part 6 – Professions and Upgrades

Part 7 – Buffs and Starter Gear

21 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Everything you need to know to FaceRoll your way to 10K threat

So far we’ve covered: The Basics, Combat Ratings and Gearing Philosophy. Today we’ll go over the hit tables and  how to generate threat … and keep it!

But before we go into threat, it may be a good idea to cover just how  Blizzard deals with the Hit Tables. When you read somewhere that you have an 18.54% chance to crit or that you have a 8% chance to miss how does that get factored in ?

Most people are under the impression that every one of those “rolls” is separate and sequential but that is false! In fact there is only one roll for every ability/spell/action that you do, it just gets divided up into %s. Say you have 5% chance to miss (not Hit capped), 5% chance to get Dodged, 5% chance to get parried, 5% chance to get Blocked and 15% chance to crit: the Roll would look something like this

• 01 -05 : Miss

• 06 – 10 : Parry

• 11 – 15 : Dodge

• 16 – 20 : Block

• 21 – 85 : Hit

• 86 – 100 : Crit

One /roll is done on your behalf (or the mob’s behalf) and the result is plugged into this matrix. In reality it’s much more like a /roll 10,000 to factor in the fractions 14.54% chance to crit but you are getting the picture, and the same thing goes on for the mobs.

If you  have a 5% chance to be missed,  20.25% chance to Parry, 22.50% chance to Dodge, 27.9% chance to Block (because you read the previous article and built a block set before the patch)  and have 540 Defense Rating, the mob’s hit table for attacking you might look something like this

• 0.01 – 5.0 : Miss

• 5.01 – 25.25 : Parry

• 25.26 – 47.75 : Dodge

• 47.76 – 75.65 : Block

• 75.66 – 100.00 : Hit  (0% crit)

Now these base values are obviously modified by talent Procs and abilities: If Holy Shield is active then your chance of getting hit for the full amount go down by 30% and you block goes up by 30%. If Redoubt procs at the same time (10% chance) then your chance to block goes up by another 30% and so on and so forth.

The important thing to note here is that every one of those 3 stats has a direct impact on your chance to get hit.  The more Dodge, Parry and Block you can get the less you’ll be getting hit. Obviously you can’t go below 0% chance to get hit, but you should be starting to get the picture.

Generating Threat

Now, let talk about Threat baby, let’s talk about you (the Mob) and Me (Paladin), let’s talk about all the things we love (Loot), Let’s talk about Threat!  (Ok,  that was a really bad Salt’n Pepa spoof, so let’s get on with the show)!

A paladin’s primary Threat generating ability is Righteous Fury(RF) and all Holy damage. All of the paladin’s abilities are Holy damage, except the “white” melee swings. As a matter of fact, a paladin can turn off RF after he’s done with his adds and just DPS the boss without pulling threat on the boss if the Main Tank(MT) has sufficient aggro. Without Righteous Fury the Prot Paladin is just another (weak) DPS in the raid.

I personally don’t do this since it’s not a bad idea to have someone take up the boss if the MT goes down. Taking the time to turn RF on may be the difference in completing the fight without any other casualties and wiping.  Every paladin tank has at some point wiped the group before realizing that RF wasn’t up – it’s n00b thing to do …  slap yourself and don’t do it again

Paladin: your only means of generating threat is damage done.

You should also bear in mind that you only have 3 ways to get mana back without having to resort to the 4 stacks of mana pot you have in your bags at all times. On a side note here: if bag space is at a premium, use Mana Inector Kits to make Runic Mana Injectors:

• You get mana back by Dodging, Blocking and Parrying.
• You get mana back from getting healed ,thanks to Spiritual Attunement.
• You can get mana back from Judgment of Wisdom if it’s being used.

Key threat generating abilities to include in our rotation:

These are you biggest assets while generating threat, everything else is fluff when it comes to Threat. That’s not to say that other abilities don’t have their uses in certain situations but when it comes to threat these are your bread and butter.

Avenger’s Shield: (30 Sec CD) One of your premiere pulling moves that hits and silences up to 3 targets. It does cost quite a bit of mana however and if you’re getting low you can skip it. It does have a silence and a stun component to it which makes it great for pulling caster-types but you’ll want to get in there pretty quickly afterward since the stun component won’t let them get very far. Remember to time yourself – even if it comes up again you should save it for the next pull since it has the longest CD of any of your abilities.

Judgment of Light / Wisdom: (8 sec CD with Talents)  By now I hope you’ve figured out how to use these, and if you’re running with another paladin you should each be using different judgments, since they stack. As a rule of thumb, Holy Pallys will judge Wisdom and Ret Pallys will judge Light. Just be aware and verify if you’re not sure: ” Hey _____ , you’re judging Light right?”

Shield of Righteousness: (6 sec CD)  This ability will represent 25% of your DPS and is your biggest asset. It can also be used to boost threat on a lone mob that you are trying to taunt off the healers or to solidify your threat in anticipation of  a DPS’ AoE burst.  It should always be used in your rotation and usually right after your Judgment if you are using the Libram of Obstruction (Purchased for a modest 15 Emblems of Heroism) . It’s the ability that hits the hardest (3-7K hits and 6-14K crits : ) and builds burst aggro. It’s the one ability you want to get off on “Skull” before you start building threat on the rest of the mobs. You should also remember that this ability scales directly with Block Value.

Hammer of Righteous:  (6 sec CD) This is another reason why Paladins are the premiere multi-mob tanking class. This is one of your abilities that will benefit the most from a better weapon and more Strength/AP

Holy Shield: (Lasts 10 sec with 8sec CD) This is a very situational ability but I include it in my rotation all the time to guarantee a 100% up time. If I was the OT and went back to hitting the boss after my adds are dead I would skip this to conserve mana.  On multi-mob pulls however, it’s essential to keeping aggro while your casters are going all out with AoE.

Consecrate: (8sec CD) Every inch of the ground that paladins are standing on should be Consecrated. This is yet another essential ability for multi-mob tanking.  It’s more free DPS … and DPS = Threat for Paladins.

Exorcism: (15 sec CD) A little free damage thrown in for good measure but this ability is receiving a significant change in patch 3.2 to where it will have a 1.5 sec cast time. Cast time makes this very undesirable since you can’t DP&B during that time and getting hit will increase your total cast time by 1sec (.5sec*2) 2.5 sec represents almost 2 entire GCDs, and your time could be better spent elsewhere. So, until 3.2 goes live include it whenever it’s up but be aware of the upcoming change.

Finally you have these two which are more situational in use:

Hammer of Wrath: (6 sec CD)This ability only becomes available once the target is below 20% health, and is a welcome addition to your rotation, again – a free, instant cast, single target DPS ability.

Hand of Reckoning: (8 sec CD) Currently only useful as a taunt, it generates initial aggro but if you don’t do some actual damage on the target before the taunt wears off you’ll lose it and it’ll go right back to smacking the healers. After 3.2 however, this ability will generate real DPS-based threat as well to any target that is not attacking you.

Our next article will feature a Rotation theory, go more in depth in the abilities you should be familiar with as well as list everything you should have on your task bars.

Now get out there and DOMINATE!

Articles in this thread:

Part 1 – The Basics

Part 2 – Combat Ratings

Part 3 – Armor: Mitigation vs. Avoidance

Part 4 – Hit Table and Threat Generation (You are here)

Part 5  – Abilities and Rotation

Part 6 – Professions and Upgrades

Part 7 – Buffs and Starter Gear

18 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Well, in Part 1, we talked a little about the ‘machinery’ of an Affliction Warlock covering spec, gear, and glyphs. Here in Part 2, we’ll talk about how to drive your newly specced toon to the nearest mob then watch them die horribly as you BWHAHAHA (doing your best Vincent Price imitation).

Affliction Locks do a large portion of their damage using Damage Over Time (DOT) spells. As a result, we’ll talk first about how DOTs work. Then we’ll cover a particular group of spells called Curses. Finally, we’ll cover a typical ‘rotation’ for Affliction and try to talk about when to cast what.

The Care and Feeding of DOTs

So how do DOTs work? When a DOT is applied, a time counter starts. The spell deals damage in time increments, called “ticks”. The duration of the time between ticks depends on the spell, but it is usually 1, 2, or 3 seconds. The duration between the ticks is also affected by the Haste on your gear. The more haste you have, the faster your DOTs tick and the more Damage per Second (DPS) you do.

There is a limit to how fast you can cast even with Haste and instant cast DOTs however. There is a Global cooldown (GCD) that nothing can take you below. For Locks it is generally 1.5 seconds, but the curse GCD can be lowered to 1 second with Amplify Curse. Haste can lower your Global cooldown as well to a minimum of 1 cast per second. In other words, I can, generally speaking, only cast once per second (and usually not that fast) regardless of how much Haste I stack.

Because of the way DOTs work, recasting a DOT before it completely runs out is rarely a good idea. For example, Corruption ticks every 3 seconds (ignoring Haste). That means that 3 seconds after I cast, the DOT ticks dealing its first damage. In total it will tick 6 times if not cast again (or the mob dying).

Now, if I let it tick 5 times then recast immediately after the 5th tick, I don’t really lose anything, right? Well, actually you do. If you had cast something else and left it alone you would have gotten the damage from that extra spell; in addition, you lose a ~1 second global cooldown casting something you didn’t really need to cast yet. Even worse, if you recast Corruption one second after the 5th tick, you will cause there to be 5 seconds between ticks, you will miss casting something else, and you initiate the global cooldown before your next cast. You get the idea. Its better to have the DOT fall off while your getting in an extra Shadow Bolt than to “clip the DOT” by re-casting before it runs out.

To some extent, channeled spells like Drain Life (DL) and Drain Soul (DS) work similar to a DOT, only unlike a DOT you have to interrupt the channeled spell to cast anything else, losing its damage until you begin to channel again. However, DL and DS still “tick” while being cast, causing damage every 1 or 3 seconds respectively before considering Haste.

Cursing for Fun and Profit

The disadvantage of Affliction is that it takes some time to get into the rotation and get all the DOTs working on the mob. Our DPS tends to start slowly, increasing until we get into the second rotation. It often then levels out. Simulations (Zakalwe at ElitistJerks.com) place the different builds for Warlocks at not terribly different DPS numbers.

Using best-in-slot Ulduar gear for example, Warlock DPS ranged from 7089-7931 for simulations on eight different builds. The magnitude, 842 DPS, is nothing to sneeze at. On the other hand, with ideal gear under ideal conditions it varies over a 10% range for the different common builds…not a ton.

The 10% difference isn’t enough that, in my opinion, you should fret about it if you’re a casual player or even semi-serious. You should play the spec you enjoy. However, if you’re interested, Deep Affliction (53/0/18) was the second highest DPS spec in the simulations behind Deep Destro (0/13/58) by 8 DPS, about 0.1% of the estimated damage. Deep Demonology brings up the rear in personal DPS but can buff the raid a great deal, e.g. Demonic Pact.

An advantage to Affliction is that the DOTs continue to do damage after we quit casting. I find that when I play a different class now I have to remind myself to keep attacking until the mob (or other player in PvP) is dead. In Affliction, I often put up my DOTs and move on to the next mob if their health bar is low. (They’re dead already; they just don’t know it yet!) This is an advantage in fights where the boss disappears or becomes difficult to hit for a while during the fight then returns, and there are a surprisingly large number of those like Noth, Heigan, Gothik, Razorscale, and others.

So what does an Affliction Lock rotation look like in a raid. Well, that can change a bit from raid to raid depending on make-up. The main change that can happen to your rotation is which curse you’ll use. Blizzard gives us only one “Curse” on any target at anytime. Casting another Curse by the same Warlock removes any previous curses. This group of spells isn’t hard to figure out; they’re all named “Curse of” something, e.g., Curse of Agony, Curse of Elements, and Curse of Weakness. So when do you use which?

Curse of Elements is a boss debuff. It or a similar spell should always be up in a group. Yes, if you’re the one who casts it your personal DPS will be lower than it might be otherwise. However, the main thing is to get bosses down and have fun. Wiping on bosses, well, its not that much fun. If you need to cast it, do it! Afterwards, feel free to /slap anyone who says your DPS isn’t what it usually is, because you’re probably improving the DPS of the annoying person you just had to /slap. DPS meters are a nice tool but don’t always tell the whole story about the utility of a player even for a pure DPS class.

If you have a Balance Druid, they should be applying Earth and Moon, which is a “debuff” cast on the boss to increase spell damage by 13% on the boss. This debuff is similar and in some ways better than the Warlock’s Curse of Elements (CoE), and it will knock off CoE if both are cast. In the end, it doesn’t hurt the Druid’s DPS to cast it. In fact, they don’t really cast it; it just gets applied when they use either Wrath or Starfire. It does hurt your DPS to cast CoE, so its better for the group if you to use CoA if there is a Boomkin (Giant Battle Chicken) with you.

The other debuff that might be useful for the group is Curse of Weakness, which reduces the boss’ melee attack power and armor by 5%. This is one that might be useful for melee bosses when you have a lot of melee DPS or in cases where the boss hits like a Mack truck. It can be increased with talents but not very many Locks put talent points there -  due to its situational use.

It does not stack with a Druid Bear’s Demoralizing Roar or with a Warrior’s Demoralizing Shout, which are both better/equivalent unless the lock specs into the Curse. Again, CoW being cast decreases the Lock’s output. On the other hand, Demoralizing Roar/Shout doesn’t decrease the ability of the tank to do its job, which generally speaking is to hold agro, position the boss, and survive the beating. So, the raid has to decide if the Lock casting CoW is the best thing for the group. Keep in mind, this only reduces “melee attack power” so using it on caster bosses like Kel’Thuzad would be seriously noob-tastic. Okay, you reduce their armor by 5% but still…noob.

Curse of Agony is the highest personal DPS curse, which is what should be used unless the situation calls for CoE or, on the rare occasion, CoW.

Affliction “Rotation”

The terminology is down. What do you do? Well, let’s talk about what to cast and when.

So what is a “rotation”? Well, to start with, it’s a misnomer. You probably won’t cast this list of spells again in the same order during the fight, so “rotation” is kind of a dumb name for it. In any event, this is a reasonable way to start the encounter:

(Life Tap) – Shadow Bolt – Haunt – Corruption – Curse of Agony – Unstable Affliction

After this you keep up all the DOTs without clipping them. You need to keep cast times in mind when casting, which depends somewhat on your Haste. SB whenever you don’t need to reapply a DOT.

Life Tap is a good way to start because of how Spirit plays into a Lock’s abilities. Spirit increases spell power through things like Glyph of Life Tap. Glyph of Life Tap converts 20% of your spirit into Spell Power for 20 seconds after casting Life Tap. This can increase, depending on your gear, your Spell Bonus Damage by over 100. This can be cast on the run. I generally Life Tap as the tank is running in to pull or right after the pull to give the tank a few seconds to get agro.

Then the damaging spells begin, and the rotation shown does a few things, like get two stacks of Shadow Embrace on the target. So why is Shadow Bolt (SB) at the beginning? Well, it’s a long cast relative to the others so I usually start with it because it gives the tank that extra bit of time to get agro before I whack the target. In addition, it puts up the first stack of Shadow Embrace. Haunt and SB apply Shadow Embrace, which has to be specced into. It increases periodic damage by 5% and reduces healing done to the target by 15%. It can stack up to 2 times, and 10% extra damage = 100% goodness.

This rotation also puts the most important DOT you have on the mob early in the fight. OK, it isn’t exactly a DOT; its Haunt. Haunt, after its initial whack to the target, which isn’t that big relatively speaking, causes your real DOTs (Corruption, CoA, and UA) to tick for 20% more damage, 23% more with Glyph of Haunt. As a consequence, you never ever want a DOT to tick while Haunt isn’t on the target if you can avoid it. Its just too much to give up.

After that apply the instant cast DOTs first followed by Unstable Affliction.

Life Tap could be cast every 20 seconds to regain the Spell Bonus Damage from the Glyph. However, Life Tapping this often is sometimes not a good idea. I generally will re-proc the Glyph whenever all of my DOTs are up, the Spell Power bonus from the previous Life Tap has fallen off, and I’m replacing nothing but part of a Shadow Bolt cast.

So that’s it while the boss has 100% to 25% of its life. Refresh DOTs when they fall off. Spam SB when you have nothing else to do with the occasional Life Tap.

Things change slightly, but for the better, when the boss reaches 25% of its life remaining. At 25% with the build given, SB is no longer the best filler spell. Instead, Drain Soul becomes much better. In fact, Aff Locks have their DPS jump at the end of a long fight because of Drain Soul. Drain Soul causes 4 times its normal damage when the target is below 25% health. I’ve seen, with my less than perfect gear, Drain Soul tick for about 15,000. That, plus the DOTs is a whole lot of damage.

Should you bother to keep up your DOTs during Drain Soul? Absolutely! Right after DS ticks refresh any DOTs including Haunt. Then restart DS. Never clip DS before it ticks…that’s a waste even if 2 DOTs fall off. Just refresh the DOTs after the next tick.

One really important note about how Drain Soul works: DS checks the boss’ health once and that’s at the beginning of the cast. You only get the 4x multiplier if the boss is below 25% when you cast. If the boss goes below 25% while channeling you don’t get the extra damage. In other words, you’ll get 4 times less damage off of DS if you cast while the boss is at 25.1% than you would if you did one more shadow bolt or whatever and cast DS while the boss is at 24.9%.

So you’re saying, “Dude, it sounds hard. How do I know when the boss is definitely below 25%? How do I know when DS ticks so I can refresh my DOTs? Affliction is the most harder-est thing ever.” I’m so glad you asked, and its not hard when using an Add-on called Drain Soul Timer. This little Add-on makes a really annoying “QUAD-DAMAGE” sound when something you have selected is below 25% health, and it make a big electronic “tick” whenever DS…well ticks. As a result you know when to start DS, and you know the best time to refresh your DOTs, right after a DS tick. No Aff Lock should run without this one.

You’ll also want an Add-on to help time your casts. Buttontimers and Timerbuttons are two popular ones. I actually use the spell timer that comes with ForteXorcist by Xus.

A Couple of Additional Tips

Tick times are important. If you’re killing something without a lot of health, use spells with faster tick times like Drain Life and Curse of Agony. For the lesser trash of Naxx, like the skeletons in KT’s chamber, those may be all you need. For bigger trash (stuff with more health) you can use your full rotation. Dying trash is the best place to refill your shard bag as well. (BTW, find you friendly neighborhood tailor with the Abyssal Bag recipe and get it if you’re a neat freak like me about your bags. With 32 shards on hand at the beginning of a raid, I’ve never run out.)

If there are a lot of mobs, you have two Area of Effect choices. One is Rain of Fire (RoF), which…well rains stuff that looks like fire on them. The second is Seed of Corruption. If the mobs aren’t moving, RoF is fine, and it tends to generate less agro. Seed of Corruption (SoC) is in the same school as Corruption, and many of the talent point choices we made buff this spell. Basically SoC injects, in a really disturbing looking graphic, a small red seed into the victim that does damage over time then explodes doing damage to all the mobs around. As a result, the “Seed” moves along with the mobs. So if your tank is still moving around picking up bad guys, it travels with them. It can do a ton of damage when it explodes, but it is much more of an agro hog than RoF.

Well, the above will get you started kicking Demon buttocks (provided that particular demon has a buttock) and taking names (well loot). Casting with movement, especially in Ulduar, is the name of the game. Any instant cast spell like Life Tap, Corruption, and Curse of Agony, you can cast while running, being thrown in the air, etc. Other things you’ll have to cast then move to keep up on the target. Like most things, you’ll get better with practice. So dust off that Lock and go Dominate. I mean, who do you think the Lich King is going to be more afraid of, that Pally in her bright shiny “say-no-evil” T8 armor or this crazy SOB Lock?

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Something Wicked This Way Comes

Since podcast episode 12 we’ve been trying to get to this topic.  It took a little more research than we thought but better late than never.  So we’re going to give you a couple of absolutely awesome tools to use that will really boost your cat form DPS – even if you’ve never spent a single second in a feral form.

I actually decided to give cat deeps a whirl after healing for 6 months straight.  I heard of a fellow who used to be in the guild doing something weird like 5.5k DPS in somewhat regular-ish gear just by using a certain mod.  Well, since we had done so many runs in Naxx I had a fairly complete set of cat gear just sitting around collecting dust and the thought of doing a little melee sounded like fun.

So off I went to download Facemaul.  It puts a nifty little box on your screen that shows you the next two moves in advance and a larger icon for the button you should hit right now.  Now, if you’ve ever read theory-crafting for feral druids, such as the mega-thread from EJ you know that it can be thoroughly mind-boggling to try to come up with a way of balancing all the priorities in the potential rotation.  And that’s saying nothing of differences of opinion about what the rotation SHOULD be.

But Facemaul does it by the numbers.  It calculates you potential DPS on the fly based on some complex algorithm.  It will have you doing things in orders you never would have thought of, like saving Faerie Fire for after two or three moves sometimes.  You simply cannot get a better rotation manually.  Facemaul is a  must have.

The next thing I found has to be hands-down one of the best WoW tools I’ve ever seen.  Toskk’s DPS Gear Methodology page is a blend of number-crunching geek heaven, uber nerd theory-crafting and on the page spread-sheeting on steroids.

All you do is plug in a little information about your druid and it does hundreds of complex calculations instantly.  What it does is tell you exactly what kind of DPS you can expect, it suggests your build and even builds a pawn formula for your druid based on your current gear set.  It does this because based on your crit rate and blah blah blah you might actually be better off using a bit of gear with more strength OR a bit with more agility – without these calculations it’s almost impossible to know.

Which brings us to Pawn – one of my all-time favorites.  Pawn will give you a score for every single piece of gear you ever see based on a formula as complex as you want it to be.  The formula from the Tossk DPS page is as precise as it gets.  It gives you a formula to rank gear based on your current gear and even raid buffs you normally have in your groupings.  It doesn’t get any more specific than that.

So, armed with Facemaul and the knowledge from Toskk you can plug your formula into Pawn and you’re ready to go chew some mobs.  And Even though you can get the build directly from the Toskk page, here it is so you can go ahead and plug it in while you get over the information overload you’re going to run into.  Actually Toskk only lists the absolute bare essential 54 points, so we filled them in with raiding in mind.  You might want to move a few of them around if you ever double as a tank or for solo leveling use.

Feral Druid Cat Spec DPS Build For World of Warcraft Patch 3.1

Glyph Suggestions:

• Rip
• Savage Roar
• Shred

So go throw on that extra gear set, grab a couple of mods and go try out a litte hot claw action.  You’ll be glad you did if you’ve been in tree or chicken form for way too long.  With dual specs it makes for a refreshing change.  Plus it’s just another good reasons that druids completely Dominate.

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As a follow-up to our last post (thanks in part to Jurandr) we thought it was high time to introduce you to a very useful addon named Ackis.  You can download it here.

As Jurandr mentioned, I found Ackis when I was working on some of the cooking achievements.  It can be a real pain to try to look them all up one at a time on wowhead and then try to figure out how to go grab them all from the vendors without running all over Azeroth.  Ackis is a huge help for things like this.

What it does:

Ackis scans your profession recipes and then gives you a list of all the recipes you don’t have.  It also lists all the places you can find those missing formulae.  Honestly, it can be a little overwhelming.  It’s information overload to some degree, but since it’s not something you will use all the time we can live with it.

In the screenshot above you can see Ackis at work with ATSW (Advanced Trade Skill Windows).  The pop-out to the right of the regular trade skill window contains the list of all of the known recipes that you don’t have.  Clicking on those to open them will reveal all of the vendor or drop locations for each.

When you click on a vendor in the list, it will add a waypoint arrow to your map as a reference.  If you use Ackis in conjunction with TomTom it will give you a taxi arrow that will fly you to every single one of them in the most efficient manner possible, and also make sure you don’t miss one way the heck out in the middle of nowhere (such as Desolace) and then have to go back to get it.

Ackis is primarily useful in finding missing recipes for cooking achievements such as Sous Chef, which requires you to learn 100 cooking recipes.  In the next two shots you can see that we chose two recipes from the list that our intrepid adventurer doesn’t have yet: Scorpid Surprise and Roasted Kodo Meat.  All we have to do is CNTL+Shift click the vendor name and it puts both waypoints on our Kalimdor map along with the TomTom arrow pointing us to them.

Ackis can also remove unwanted things from the list such as recipes from reputation and almost any other sort you can imagine.  That’s where the information overload can come in.  But if you’re only looking for items that you can buy from vendors of your faction, that aren’t event specific (such as the holiday recipes), don’t want to see drop or BoP items and so forth – Ackis can do that for you.

Now, from time to time Ackis can be a little persnickety – especially when you use it with ATSW.  Plus, you’ll just have to fiddle with the settings yourself, since we don’t have time to do anything like a full tutorial for something you may use only once a month.  We actually recommend you keep Ackis turned off until you really need it.

In the end, Ackis is a fantastic tool to use along with ATSW, LilSparky’s and TomTom.  Those three things we always have running and highly recommend as well.  It may not be a mod that you use every day, but it can save you a mountain of time here and there when you’re looking for recipes.  And that makes it pretty Dominating in our book.

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