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View Full Version : Baby steps...



Gadzooks
09-28-2009, 04:42 AM
Just a clearing of the head, some mental notes I can come back and review...

Spent the weekend questing in Icecrown, and doing dailies - i have all my 80's doing all of the Icecrown dailies, and am following the dailies FAQ - I think I made about 5-6 grand yesterday and today - and spent it. :)

I'm stuck on Banshee's Revenge, but I think I have it figured out. A couple more tries, I should get it. I'm blasting through all of the other 5 man quests in Icecrown, they're easy, and good money at 22g per. The one just south of The Shadow Vault, where you have to get the 4 pieces from the chests, is drop dead easy, I can take him out in 30 seconds. I cleared him twice in a row - once for the quest, then the daily. During the second run, a lone mage came along, and since I could'nt group with him, I let him tag it, and burned him down. Easy. :)

I am now finishing up with crafted gear - I need a titansteel shanker for the rogue, 2 more rings, and then the Titanium necks - my JCer needs 9 more token, and I can get the patterns. I'm upgrading blue gems for epics, and upgrading enchants.

My group is doing well. I got tired of dailies, so I finished with a test run of Gundrak, normal and heroic.

Normal, I blasted through - wiped on the snake, so I need to sit down and get some macros for poison. The golem fight was interesting, because I did'nt know what to expect, and I took the Mammoth down fast.

Heroic...I just went in the south entrance as a test. Trash is fine, i just have to go slow, and the Mammoth boss I got down to 10% before wiping. So close...it's a healing issue, I need to work out some more macros, and add the Boomkin into the healing pool. I'm encouraged by how far I got, I just need to tighten things up and keep trying.

Numbers:
Prot Pally 39k health, 41-something defense. Low dps, but she survives a long time. She got some serious gear upgrades, next she needs her Hodir enchants and others. Pretty happy with her for now. Some mana issues, but I read up on it and am improving, I'm using Seal of Wisdom and Sanctuary to keep mana building, and I have innervate on the druid hotkeyed to the Pally.

Combat Rogue; doing serious damage, high survivability, if a boss/mob aoes I just kite with the pally away, and don't hit interact with target until it's clear. She rarely dies. Needs some more gear (shanker), but she's averaged 1600 dps in Gundrak.

Boomkin: She's the real star right now. I was thinking this morning she needed some serious gear upgrades, but she was averaging 2k dps in Gundrak, after she got her Titanium rings today. She needs some epic gems, and I might get her the Windripper pieces. Pretty pleased with her so far, and her mana pool is big enough to contribute healing, that's my next project.

Holy Priest: Working on gear and jewelry. She's surviving fine, but I'm learning to slow down the button mashing, or the latency means working through the keyboard buffer until I get to the heals. I need to pay more attention to her, but so far, solid.

Arcane Mage: AWESOME DPS still, she peaks at 2300dps, but the little so and so is still stealing aggro from the pally, and is always the first to die. Needs her titanium neck, and is done for now. I need to look at her macros and see if i can get rid of the peakiness of her dps and grab less aggro, but pretty happy with her. Plus, mana bisquits! I need to put together some alternate macros to throw some Ice spells in there for the slowing effects. She's next for dual spec, i want to play with an Ice build for running instances that will focus on crowd control and slowing.

Pretty good weekend. I overindulged because I have a lot of freelance work in the next two weeks, so I may only be able to get on for short periods, maybe some dailies. I know some of you might scoff, thinking "Gundrak? Normal? That's easy!" - but I'm pretty happy considering I'm running a mixed team, I've never tanked in the years of WoW I've played (Melee only), and I've never healed instances.

If anyone reads this, and you're new, let me share the most important thing I'm learning: learn to slow down on mashing your buttons! Slow and steady, i know it makes no sense, but my DPS goes way up when I keep the beat steady: 1.....2.....3.....4.....5 I freak out because I'm not used to tanking, I have to keep reminding myself that she'll be fine, and I can peek at other things going on, and if I spam the buttons, the lag monster hits and my keyboard buffer fills up, and then, it's a wipe. Keep the beat. Your macros should be set up to take advantage of a certain beat. It works!

Redbeard
09-28-2009, 09:45 AM
Great thoughts at the end, slowing down is hard haha. Especially if youre using a /click macro with commas and stuff... button mashing is not your friend.

Im glad things are going well for you! My main is 80, my 4 alts just got to 70 so im finally getting to work on some northrend content myself. Its nice because I've only done it once, right after WOTLK release on my main, so im not burnt out on the content and I can quest / instance at my leisure (though Red Faction Guerrilla just hijacked the last week of my free time, but I beat it last night so back to WoW =P).

Anyways,

Keep up the good work.

Multibocks
09-28-2009, 09:49 AM
oH hell no! I use a /click sequence designed for button mashing... MASH AWAY!


/mmm mashpotatoes

daviddoran
09-28-2009, 02:32 PM
One tip for Mage pulling aggro, use Mirror Image. It makes you not earn ANY threat while its up, and it boosts your DPS. Invisibility also is an aggro dump.

Also, since it appears your tank is pretty well equipped now, you might find that you dont need much healing. I've started making my priest spam smite, just so she doesn't sit there. She does 1400 dps just by doing that (with holy fire thrown in) I start the fight by throwing PW:S, renew, and PoM on my pally, and for most pulls thats all i need. With your boomkin, you could probably make a "pre pull" macro, that uses the priest and boomkin to HoT up the pally, then go back to boomkin form. You do have to watch for healing aggro using this tactic, make sure consecrate is down, and have that taunt button ready.

Eggy
09-29-2009, 01:49 AM
Have to be faster on that counter spell with you're mage on the Moorabi :) You're kinda hurting not having a shaman in my opinion, especialy in Gundrak with all the poison and what not.

Anyway, it's a breeze with a shaman, only one i got trouble with is the Drakkari Colossus, the poison dance is just annoying :)

I'm guessing once you got used to your setup, and tweak it a bit you'll be able to breeze through heroics, especially with that tank of yours!

Gadzooks
09-29-2009, 02:24 AM
Have to be faster on that counter spell with you're mage on the Moorabi :) You're kinda hurting not having a shaman in my opinion, especialy in Gundrak with all the poison and what not.

Anyway, it's a breeze with a shaman, only one i got trouble with is the Drakkari Colossus, the poison dance is just annoying :)

I'm guessing once you got used to your setup, and tweak it a bit you'll be able to breeze through heroics, especially with that tank of yours!

I'm planning on leveling a shaman team once i hit the wall with the current team - I did'nt start with 5, so I was doing mixed classes with 3, then 4, now 5. I don't mind, I like the extra challenge and extra benefits of mixed classes. :)

Gadzooks
09-29-2009, 02:27 AM
One tip for Mage pulling aggro, use Mirror Image. It makes you not earn ANY threat while its up, and it boosts your DPS. Invisibility also is an aggro dump.

Also, since it appears your tank is pretty well equipped now, you might find that you dont need much healing. I've started making my priest spam smite, just so she doesn't sit there. She does 1400 dps just by doing that (with holy fire thrown in) I start the fight by throwing PW:S, renew, and PoM on my pally, and for most pulls thats all i need. With your boomkin, you could probably make a "pre pull" macro, that uses the priest and boomkin to HoT up the pally, then go back to boomkin form. You do have to watch for healing aggro using this tactic, make sure consecrate is down, and have that taunt button ready.

Good ideas! Thanks! I'm new to healing, so I have to learn how to do it - I'd do some pugs, but that's not an option these days. It does bother me that she just sits there, I want to see how her mana is before I start spending it on DPS.

Mirror image, forgot about that! I will macro that next run. I'm gonna try DTK next, see if I can get past those black discs on the floor. I want to run most of the 5 mans on normal to get a feel for them.

jimbobobb
09-29-2009, 03:10 AM
Don't poison dance on the collosus - it's an awful tactic. Put down a nature's resist totem. Spread your guys out against the wall/railing opposite the colossus so characters that get charged by the poison elemental don't get knocked al over. Pull. DPS. When he goes and spits poison clouds out, just chain heal. The poison does almost nothing as a matter of fact when you are spread out - like 400 a second or something trivial. Just chain heal (or even better aoe heal if you have a druid or priest) and dps. Don't move at all the whole fight.

Bollwerk
09-29-2009, 04:11 AM
A couple things -

41-something defense? That seems wierd. You need 535 Defense (to be uncrittable) for heroic bosses (540 for raid bosses). You said she survives fine, so I'm not sure what the deal is there. My pally only has like 33k health, but I rarely have to heal in heroics, which is one reason I love having elemental shamans. I can heal once in while, without suffering a loss of dps.

You mentioned some aggro issues, especially with the mage. I would recommend making sure you have the mage specced with 2/2 Arcane Subtlety. If you are already specced with that, then maybe you need to tweak your spell rotation with the pally. Personally, I have up Seal of Vengeance (and BoSanc / Righteous Fury of course) and cast a 9/6/9/6/9 rotation to keep AE aggro. I use Consecration / Shield of Rightousness / Holy Shield / Hammer of the Righteous / Judgement of Wisdom on a /castsequence reset=combat - Also, you may want to gain threat for a couple seconds with the tank before opening up dps.

I don't have any mana issues during fights, but I do often need to drink between battles. Between Jundgement of Wisdom / Blessing of Sanctuary and occasionally healing your tank, you should generate plenty of mana during fights, as long as you keep all mobs in front of you. (since BoSanc relies on dodge/parry/block to generate mana and you can't do that to mobs behind you)

As for respecing / dual specing the mage, I have my mage as Arcane spec now (with Fire as 2nd spec) and I'm finding that I really like the DPS output of Arcane. I use a simple macro of /castsequence reset=combat 3x Arcane Blast, Arcane Barrage - that's it - I don't bother with the missile barrage proc unless I'm playing her solo in a raid.

wowphreak
09-29-2009, 09:40 PM
try using


/castsequence Holy Shield,Hammer of the Righteous,Judgement of Light,shield of righteousness,Consecration,Hammer of the Righteous,Holy Shield,shield of righteousness,Judgement of Light,Hammer of the Righteous,Consecration,shield of righteousness


with yer pali there.
Unless yeh got some goofy spec or yer mage isn't targeting the same target as yer pali there shouldn't be any reason that he would be pulling aggro.

Assuming yeh didn't forget to buff righteous fury and a seal.