Thursday 31 July 2008

I finally decide...

So the big debate from now until Mr Lich King is, what will I do?
I played a tank warrior for some guildies in 5 mans, and tbh that didn’t work out too well. But that’s a comparison to the paladin tank which I think is very unfair. If I had to toss two comparisons together and ask which of the 2 classes I would tank with, I would say paladin. Truth of it is, I hate the rage, I hate the taunt limited range and the lack of Crowd AE CC control. But that’s just something I take for granted. Maybe I thought it would be easier to gear being a warrior? Who knows. But hats off to those warriors who are tanks, and I can appriecate how difficult and challenging (and rewarding) it is. For me the paladin has a MASS of utility in tanking, and saved by the button skills. And that works well for me to plug gaps in group configs, CC and healing. The warrior is very focused, and my style is more jack of all trades, ...master of none, and i like that, that appeals to me.
My alt is and will remain my faithfull dancing Kahir. Which is my, "Remove brain and autoshoot and chat" character. As Nad is full 375 enchanting for the guilds benefit, im looking to Kahir as my gatherer, atm with herbalism, and Mining, I do wonder is Jewelcrafting wouldn’t be better? So I guess at the end of this story is, Nadiastorm will be my main original character for WOTLK.

Wednesday 30 July 2008

Raid UI



Theres still some more tweaking to do with the strata of bartender3 for the raid frames, as it stands over the top of any trade or social window that comes up. Bad when you want to check the raid setup, or ready checking..
The finer tweaks would be the casting text size (fishing) and mana bars (as I cant see them) but having the casting bars is good.
SCT and SCTD where added, im not 100% sure I like it, or whether its something I need to setup some more, healing spam is annyong me but I can set the minimum amount. And I'll probably set that for the damage also. Displaying damge above 3k would probably be good for raids, and heroics, so may aswell do the same for healing.

Friday 18 July 2008

Thursday 17 July 2008

Weekly update

Well, since the last blog, i have recently been playing a rogue from level 1.
Gearwise, i have everything but the kitchen sink. Just those things on my To Get List to the left which are Maiden and Shade, with a few badge rewards added in.
The guild has a good base of tanks, both young and well geared. And TDD has new life injected with enthusiastic glee, for the likes of Karazhan and so on. Great!
I have every faith the guild will continue to progress in Kara and gear where required. Hopefully Ragewind will get his gear back from Blizz after a recent hack on his account which left him with nothing.
Tonight is the joint raid with Realm, and i am playing Leni's character to tank the Mage. I have high hopes that we will kill Gruul tonight, and i am trying to be carefull and selective about the players going tonight to make sure we have ample dps to take him to 20% health in 10 grows. And with 2 well geared tanks. Torten and Micke.

My rogues name is Ceilidh, and i am quite enjoying the dps side of things, its a very pure class. And very different from a paladin. However i am still keeping an beedy eye on the WOTLK talents for the prot paladin as they have not yet been published or even hinted at, while other classes have either been leaked, or guessed.
Could this be the end of Nadiastorm for WOTLK?
Over 2 years of playing this game with one character. I dont know which is worse, ...knowing everything there is to know abou a prot paladin, or putting behind a sea of history of playing wow under that name. Anyone and everyone outside of the guild would effectively be cut off. Is that a good thing or bad, who knows. However TDD has always had a history of wandering rogues, leaving for other guilds etc, or asked to leave due to their personaility clashing with others. The GM being a rogue would help releive that, and always give the guild a raiding rogue along with Wega (Jinns brother).

Sunday 13 July 2008

Wednesday 9 July 2008

Rusty

ZA was a good test ground for the increase spell damage from the mace.
The swing is a bit slower than the crystal forge by 0.1 sec, but the aggro generated was very good to keep a hold of things.
The bear boss was ok, but for some reason I felt very rusty last night tanking. But I think I managed ok in the end.
The new gemmed items of avoidance and increased spell damaged over-all worked well and I am quite happy with it. Although I think I may need to adjust my spell rotation with a slower weapon to use Seal of Vengeance instead of Righteousness for boss fights. I had to hold back on using any abilities on the bear boss so I didn’t pull aggro off Jinn before the troll to bear change. But that is a good sign, knowing that with a few abilities I could jump aggro to take aggro back again, if needed, without using taunt.
It's been a while since we have been to ZA but downing the first boss was a good come back, and we had new faces for the eagle boss, and ZA in general. So I think over-all it was a good run to get us back in the ZA saddle.

Friday 4 July 2008

First time tanking Gruul's

With Spell Damage at 330 and wearing a combination of T4 and stamina gear, my aviodance was pretty good. On 15 grows was where the problem became a pain on the healthbar. But this was also down to the amount of dead raiders in the group with all the party bouncing and cave in's on folk. DPS race it is indeed.
For the next attempt i will go for MT again, to begin with i didnt put myself forward to MT him, until later.
I have been reading up on Maintankadin on the fight, and seems that putting the MT's threat as high as possible so the DPS can go FULL out is part of the key to killing Gruul on around 12 grows, on average. So i think a little raid co-ordination and experience put together for the next run will have the cat in the bag so to speak.
It wasnt until 10-13 grows i noticed my health bar start to bounce to 50% and back so if i could maintain a lead until then to allow the DPS to really smash some dps on him, so that by the time he is at 20% health he should be at about 10 grows. Allowing the MT to live a little longer, and having the OT as backup incase the MT gets thumped!
Healthwise, i think my total health is ok to sacrifice some HP for agility & Def gems on my shoulders and gloves, more aviodance is less damage, and it becomes a balance of more HP for less aviodance and vise versa. 18K buffed is fine, 17.5K buffed is also fine.
Some buffs where missing from my regular raid setup, wizard oil and probably sorcerer flasks purely for threat, if i boost my spell damage to 35) or even 400 then that should give ample room for the DPS to go for it. Also in hindsight, some MD's would help too...

Thursday 3 July 2008

Agility Enchants

Enchant Boots - Dexterity +12 Raging Skeleton [Auchenai Crypts]
Enchant Weapon - Greater Agility +20
Exceptional Stats +6 all stats (+6Agility)
+4 stats on Rings (+4 Agility x2)
+12 Agility Leg Armour
Enchant Cloak Greater Agility +12
Enchant Gloves - Superior Agility +15

Never again….for the meantime

I finally managed to get the mace from Magisters Terrace, I have lost count on the amount of times I have gone to that place. But now that I have the mace I have no plans to ever return to that place unless anyone from TDD wants a tank to go there.
I managed to gem up the stoic chest piece with the 2 gems I was looking at, together with a Def and Stam gem for the yellow socket. I managed to play around with various plate and found I could stretch my dodge to over 28% but however my stamina comes down by 1k doing so. Im thinking about using the same gems for the T4 shoulders and the 2 socket belt rather than using the heroic drop belt & shoulders. Compromising slightly on the stamina, and also looking at switching the stam enchant on the boots to agility also. I think with some tweaking and carefull planning I could get my dodge to 30%, block for a paladin would benefit more with lots of strength to reduce the blocked damage but looking at the reduction of blocked damage I am better off with more armour and dodge, while keeping the uncrushability.
Mitigating (passively reducung damage) with armour over 16.9K is 61% reduction. Parry at 16% and dodge at 28% Miss 6.08% gives me 50% chance to aviod any melee hit. While without using the holy shield block 13% to block
And 53% to shield block and aviod crushing blows, reducing damage through armour and block value. And that’s where agility comes in. Agility does add to your armour, and currently adds 406 armour alone.

And that’s the only weak spot tanking wise for mitigating damage for a paladin that I can see, is the block damage & being hit without shield block (Holy Shield) up. Failing to block, your life depends on armour to reduce the damage taken by the hit, and or dodging, parrying, or being completely missed are the others.

Wednesday 2 July 2008

Gems for Chest Armour

Shifting Shadowsong Amethyst

Need 2 of these with the new chest piece. Also looking at yellow socket gems..
I finally managed to get my 75 badges for the stoic chest piece, im releived to be honest to get rid of the PVP gear finally, but the lamanar piece was a good filler until i managed to get something like the badge reward.
Next i guess is the Mace from H MgT. I have done 4 good run's there and still not seen it drop, so im guessing it going to be a little like the Shoulders from Sethek Halls. We had a good run of Karazhan last night, through Opera, Curator and Prince. And got finished around 11:30pm Uk time, which was pushing the time limit on raids a little but i think folk wanted the achievement for the night ..done. 2 wipes on prince down to bad luck, but got him fair and square in the end, with some well timed DI's.

Daily Night tonight, and i think i will pug a H MgT, for the faint hope of that damned mace.