Seekers and Loremasters

As the realization dawned that I was finally going to get my violet protodrake this year (damn your sinister squashling!) I finally managed to set myself on the path to completing the Loremaster achievement. This I had wanted to do for a long time, for the following reason:

• I always loved the old quest chains (even though some just seem to send you everywhere for little reward)
• Some of the quest rewards are awesome (faerie drake pet, fun and useful)
• Loremaster is still actually pretty tough, because of the time investment required
• You get Seeker (and likely Explorer) while completing it
• You get the classic dungeon achievements done
• All of this will be changed or gone after Cataclysm, so I wanted to have it done before release

Now, as I am writing this, I have completed Loremaster of Kalimdor and Outland. I have about 20 quests in Northrend left, and less than 200 in Eastern Kingdoms (even though I hardly touched the place). These are some of my observations:

Questing is hard and slow

Even if you use WoWHead and have done all these quests before (on various toons) it is easy to miss quests or forget where to go and what to do. An easy fix is to install some form of Tourguide or Questhelper and simply skip the quests you already did. Don’t forget to turn on your tracking for low-level quests after every login, or you will be left wondering why you can’t seem to find any quests.

Also, it helps to turn on tracking for the Loremaster of Kalimdor and Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms (and perhaps Seeker), because it gives you a  visual total of what you’ve accomplished. I found it very rewarding to creep up a few quests, and later find out I broke another hundred quests done.

Make a plan

Many quests are miles apart; the easiest way to go about it is to start at a racial starting area, complete all quests in that and the adjacent zone, and follow the breadcrumbs until you get to level 30′ish zones (like Stranglethorn Vale, Desolace or Alterac Mountains. These areas are usually places where quests from different races merge together and they all join into one single questing super-highway. Once you hit that point, go to another starting area. That way, you basically sweep everything up that you see until you hit the “center”, and take it from there.

Don’t be picky

Get all PvP quests, dungeon quests and raid quests you find, since most count. Remember that for repeatable quests, only the first one counts (which can be hard at times as the old world did not turn repeatable quests into a blue exclamation mark by default). Many quests also start in dungeons, such as the unsent letter from VonCleef in Deadmines, or the Heart of Hakkar. Easy turnins for some rewards and another notch in your questing belt.

A lot of quests that were a pain in the ass before are now much easier, and you will need them to hit the magical 700 (especially in Kalimdor for Alliance).

Another great way of getting some quests done (especially for Seeker) is to do the holiday events when they arrive. Hunting for Elders during Midsummer is a truckload of quests to do for XP or profit, while the same is true for candy buckets during Hallow’s End.

Remember well that this achievement takes time; I spent an average of an hour per day (before raids for instance) doing classic quests and about 4-6 hours in the weekend for nearly four weeks. The last 200 or so quests will take me another 2 weeks easily. Take your time, don’t try to finish it all in a week.

In the end, you can look forward to the following:

• (Name) the Seeker
• Loremaster (Name)
• Completed many (if not all) classic dungeons and raids
• Exalted with all faction cities (and thus access to their mounts)
• Easy access to Exalted with Cenarion Circle, Argent Dawn and Timbermaw Hold
• Close to completing 25 Exalted reputations
• Close to (or at) completing What A Long, Strange Trip It’s Been
• Being a player with extensive knowledge on lore, dungeons and quests in WoW

Now, that does seem worth it, doesn’t it?

More Harharhar on the PTR

Things are heating up on the PTR as we are reaching the release of patch 3.3. And we, little Shades in the back, are actually standing to get quite a bit of improvement. If these things come true, we can expect to see ourselves right back towards the top of the DPS lists again. Here’s a summary:

• Shadowform will allow Devouring Plague, Shadow Word: Pain and Vampiric Touch to benefit from Haste – it will reduce the duration and the time between dot ticks by your haste %.
• Improved Devouring Plague will deal 10%/20%/30% of its total periodic damage instantly upon casting – doubled from 5%/10%/15%.
• Vampiric Embrace will be a 30-minute buff on ourselves instead of a debuff on opponents. It cannot be dispelled.
• Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain renamed to Glyph of Mind Flay.
• Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain will now restore 1% of your base mana per periodic damage tick.
• Glyph of Shadow will now grant 30% of your Spirit to spellpower instead of 10%.

In short, Haste will now provide scaling for us; but not quite linear. You see, it makes our DoTs tick faster and thus deal more damage. However, this also means a short DoT duration, more recasts and thus a lot more mana use. Especially Shades at around the 1K-1100 Haste (the Haste specialists) will find themselves drained quicker and may need to scale down on their Haste ratings. The change to the glyph of Shadow Word: Pain (mana restore per tick) seems to be a way to assist high-haste Shadowpriests a bit in this.

The changes to Devouring Plague and VE are PvP buffs, designed to let us live longer as well as provide more burst damage. Technically the VE change is a buff on us, and should provide healing from all damage done, regardless to what creature, but somehow I have the idea that there will be trouble in this department. It should give the same amount of healing, but in the change from debuff to buff I can see something going wrong. In any case it will save us global cooldowns, which means more DPS.

Things do look good, very good.

Natarumah’s DPS Redux

A while ago I commented on how I seemed to lack competitive DPS compared to the rest of my 25-man raid, and I couldn’t pinpoint what exactly was causing it. I wagered on the choice between stacking Crit or Haste, pondered the possibility of a large amount of partial resists, and believed my gear to be quite up to snuff.

At that time, I barely scratched at the 4K DPS, performing a machine-gun style of DPS which would make a cardiologist alarmed at my condition. As time went on, it also made me quite sad, because it made me question my spot in the raid and whether I brought in something valuable enough to warrant it.

Shadowpriests across the world wonder where their DPS is off to, and there was even an article at WoWinsider dedicated to it.

Now it’s a few months later; I had some upgrades, and I have been focusing mostly on Crit instead of Haste. I still carry 350-400 Haste rating, but I am now rocking about 900 Crit rating (I am hovering at the 30% mark self-buffed), but also a lot more Spellpower. During the raids I paid a lot of attention to absolutely not dropping my DoTs off the boss, even though that cannot be helped some times (thanks a lot, Faction Champions! Bastards).

On Onyxia, where the full force of Mind Sear can come into play, I am doing around 5.8K DPS, with 5.2K on fights with a moderate amount of adds (Gormok the Impaler as an example). On fights where there is a lot of confusion I am at around 4.2-4.4K which I still find moderately acceptable.

I have noticed a few things (about myself as well) which greatly influence my DPS, and which may help you as well:

• Relax before the raid; I take a short walk to clear my mind and breathe in some fresh air. It gets me less worried and cluttered so I can raid with full focus.
• Keep your trigger finger flexed; don’t hammer your keys to DPS – I noticed it caused me quite some discomfort over the course of a four-hour raid, making me slower. Relaxing and slowing down on the keys actually made my spells no slower, so why cramp myself up needlessly?
• Hit > Spellpower > Crit; I found that indeed a large amount of Crit not only made my DPS go up, it also allowed my DoTs to tick harder when moving, cushioning my DPS loss a bit. Also, my partial resists went from 3.5% average to only 1.5%-2%, which also means less damage loss.
• Barebones UI; I am using an extremely simple UI with basically buttons, Unitframes, Vuhdo, Skada and chat to keep my FPS at a tolerable level. When doing TotGC 25 I still have nasty fps drops, it has settled down to the point where I can raid in peace.
• All flesh must be eaten; in order to get my gear upgraded I did a lot of daily heroics, 10man Ulduar, 25man Ulduar, 10man Onyxia, 25man Onyxia, 10man TotC (and Heroic) and 25man TotC (and Heroic). I ate everything. I got my upgrades from everywhere. You can’t afford to just go for Best in Slot items, if it’s an upgrade I am eating it.
• Keep it cool; raiding for hours makes my laptop hot enough to bake an egg on. It will take some time to save up for a new PC with good cooling, but until then I set up a fan to blow fresh air past the back of the laptop. Now the weather’s cooling down again, my PC functions better and for a longer time.

In short, any or all of these things contributed to my DPS feeling more competitive, me more productive and saving my general sanity. Yes, my DPS is still 1K short of our top DPS (and sometimes a bit more) but I am less concerned with being the best as I am with not being the worst. I am Human too, and while my ego is not especially large, it shrinks when I am at the minimum level to be considered for Heroic modes.

Here’s to hoping we get some good scaling and awesome new abilities in Cataclysm!

Spell Focus: Mind Flay

Our filler spell for a long time, Mind Flay is one of the clunkiest spells in terms of game mechanics ever invented. It is a shame that it has such utility for us (keeping Shadow Word: Pain on the target) that it cannot really be done without. So what makes this spell nice to have, and what makes it an ass to use?

The Spell

Mind Flay is a channeled spell without cooldown, which ticks once every second. It has a comparitively short range, but has the added benefit of reducing the movement speed of the target by 50%. Of course, being channeled, this also means you cannot move while maintaining this spell and its speed debuff.

• 57,2% coefficient, meaning that 100 spellpower will increase the damage dealt by this spell by 57,2
• 3-second channel, no cooldown
• Procs Shadoweaving with each tick

Talents

Several talents give a bonus to the use of Mind Flay, most prominently:

• Mind Flay (Requires 10 points in Shadow): Gives you the use of Mind Flay, nuff said
• Shadow Reach (Requires 15 points in Shadow): Increases the range of Mind FLay by 10% per point (max 20%)
• Focused Mind (Requires 20 points in Shadow): Decreases the mana cost for Mind Flay by 5% per point (max 15%)
• Mind Melt (Requires 25 points in Shadow): Increases the critical strike chance of Mind Flay by 2% per point (max 4%)
• Shadow Power (Requires 30 points in Shadow): Increases the critical strike damage bonus on Mind Flay by 20% per point (max 100%) – this means that Mind Flay deals double damage on a crit instead of +50%
• Misery (Requires 35 points in Shadow): Casting Mind Flay on the target gives a +1% chance per point for spells to hit it (max 3%) and increases the benefit of spellpower on Mind Flay by 5% per point (max 15%) – this means that the coefficient of Mind Flay is effectively raised to 72%
• Pain and Suffering (Requires 40 points in Shadow): Casting Mind Flay has a 33%/66%/100% chance to refresh the duration of Shadow Word: Pain
• Twisted Faith (Requires 45 points in Shadow): The damage from Mind Flay is increased by 2% per level (max 10%) if the target has Shadow Word: Pain on it

General Use

DoTs on the target? Mind Blast on Cooldown? Flay away. With sufficient amounts of Haste (around 400 or so I believe, will check for the maths later) you will be able to squeeze 2 Mind Flays in between a Mind Blast cooldown, which makes for a very smooth DPS cycle.

Pay attention that the 3 ticks of Mind Flay seem to be inevenly distributed; a previous bug with the spell was that the 2nd tick was almost at the end, and the 3rd tick after the spell had ended channeling. It still seems today that the ticks are not evenly at every second (or part thereof, due to Haste), which is why “clipping Mind Flays” (only allowing MF to tick once or twice to even out our spell casting) is a tough art to master.

Note that when using Mind Flay to refresh Shadow Word: Pain, that this will have to be done before SW:P has reached its last second or so of duration; often the Mind Flay will hit, but no longer refresh SW:P. This results in a loss of DPS because you have to recast it, and it starts ticking after 3 seconds from then. This may or may not be related to the bug where the ticks of MF are not evenly distributed.

Also, when MF refreshes SW:P, non-numerical (so %-based) improvements to SW:P will remain active for as long as you can keep it up. As an example:

• SW:P is on the target, with 1000 spellpower, a +3% crit bonus and a special +50% damage bonus due to the encounter (Like Vezax’ black spots)
• Before SW:P is refreshed, your spellpower increases to 1200
• SW:P increases in power because of the 200 extra spellpower at the next tick
• When you refresh SW:P, the 3% crit bonus and the +50% damage bonus are retained
• You lose the 200 spellpower, and the next tick this causes SW:P to deal less damage
• The 3% crit and the 50% damage bonuses are still there
• You let SW:P drop off, and recast it on the target
• The 3% crit and 50% damage bonuses are gone, because you no longer have them active

Because of this, it is possible to gain a huge damage bonus on SW:P (Hodir’s buffs, Vezax Black Spots, Twin Valkyr’s buff) as long as you keep SW:P refreshed through Mind Flay. This does not work on flat numerical increases (such as +200 crit rating or +200 spellpower), only on percentage-based buffs.

Caveat: This also goes for debuffs that reduce your damage done by 50% or your crit by 20% and the like…

The favored glyph for Shades, Glyph of Mind Flay, increases the range of Mind Flay by 10 yards, placing it on par with other spellcasters’ nukes. Previously it reduced the snare component of Mind Flay, but no longer.

Spell Focus: Vampiric Embrace

Vampiric Embrace in its current form is a slight trickle-heal for party members based on your damage done. While this premise is awesome, and it is quite handy, recent nerfs to its usefulness have made this spell a bit of a gimmick instead of a raid utility tool; and who could blame Blizzard? After all, at the higher levels of gear we would be healing as much as another healing priest!

The Spell

One of the spells best use to open up on a boss with while positioning, this spell does nothing for our DPS but can actually keep us alive pretty well. When our raid was testing our raid DPS on a boss dummy, VE allowed me to use a full Shadow Word: Death rotiation without dying. That’s class!

• 15% of the shadow damage done by you is converted into healing for you
• 3% of the shadow damage done by you is converted into healing for your group members
• Does not proc Shadow Weaving
• No cooldown, 5 minute duration

Talents

Vampiric Embrace itself is a talent, and only its improved version affects it meaningfully.

• Shadow Focus (requires 5 points in Shadow): Increases your chance to hit with Shadow spells by 1% per point (max +3%).
• Vampiric Embrace (requires 20 points in Shadow): Allows you to use VE as a spell.
• Shadow Reach (requires 15 points in Shadow): Increases the range of your offensive Shadow spells by 10% per point. (Max 20%)
• Improved Vampiric Embrace (requires 20 points in Shadow): Increases the healing gained from VE by 33%/66%.
• Mental Agility (requires 15 points in Discipline): Reduces the mana cost of your instant-cast spells by 2% per point. (Max 10%).

As an explanation, sometimes it is misread: This means that 15% for you and 3% for party is turned into 25% for you and 5% for your party. Some people are very happy when they think they can start healing themselves for 81% of their damage done, but the tooltip is simply a bit awkwardly written.

General Use

On Hard Modes in Ulduar and Colliseum, you will find that every little bit of healing helps. There’s a lot of AoE and raid-damage effects, and you still want to cover up for your occasional abuse of SW:D. It could lift a bit of load from your healers to put you in the tank group and have your tanks’ health filling up, but it’s not much.

This is one of my two gripes with how the spell is organized. First off, it’s such a small heal it’s normally not even taken into account. At about 5000 DPS, you will heal yourself for 1250 HP/s (which is awesome) and your party members for 250 HP/s. This means a combine 1000 HP/s for four additional group members total. This seems great, and adds truckloads to our survivability, but tanks laugh at such small numbers.

The second is that it is only within a party. Had it been raid-wide (as was once put forward as a possibility but never implemented), we heal that 250 HP/s across the raid, which helps a lot more in raid healing. This would give us a total of 6000 HP/s across the raid, which seems a lot, but it is divided among 24 people.

I personally would have preferred this spell to be either:

• A buff you place on a target; it will be healed for 25% of your Shadow damage, and you receive this healing as well.
• A debuff placed on the boss; it will heal the entire raid for 5% of your damage done.

Either way would give us more utility and make this ability less negligible.

But, fair’s fair, this is still an awesome self-healing spell for Shadowpriests; else we’d be popping out of Shadowform to heal constantly.

Tips and Tricks

When running in after the tank, make sure you cast this spell on the boss while moving to position; it causes no threat on its own, lasts 5 minutes, and saves a global cooldown later you can use for refreshing a dot. DPS saved and utility preserved.

When multi-dotting adds, put this spell on each add along with VT and SW:P. This together will get you a lot more healing than just the boss. And, considering an add’s lifespan, you only need it once. Good examples are Snobolds on Gormok the Impaler.