Fire Nova sends a blast wave out from your current fire totem

Let’s lighten up a bit this Friday and think about something a bit more fun and lighthearted than raiding formats: Alts!

When I turned my Restoration Shaman into an Elemental Shaman I threw myself into it 100%. I stopped queuing as a Healer and suffered the longer wait times for the chance to play as Elemental and become familiar with the Elemental abilities in my spell book. I like to take the dungeon time on a new character as an opportunity (I can’t use the word “journey” without sounding like a contestant in yet another reality TV show) to experiment and really try and learn how to play well. The Emblems are a nice bonus, of course. /wink

I guess I had completely tuned out when 3.3 was released and they changed a Shaman’s Fire Nova Totem by turning it into a spell, instead of a totem long forgotten in our spell books. The new Fire Nova is an AoE spell that sends a blast wave of damage out from wherever you dropped your fire totem. It’s such a cool spell! I can’t believe I didn’t know about it, and use it, for weeks.

It’s a lucky thing I found out about it at all. I was reviewing an Elemental Shaman application and was a bit surprised to find that thinking (and theorycrafting) talents and glyphs for Elemental Shaman had changed a bit since I first activated Dual Specialisation. I was definitely behind the times. A few articles I read made mention of the change to Fire Totems in patch 3.3 but nobody seemed to come out and just say: “Wake up! There’s a new AoE spell for all Shaman!”.

Then I stumbled across a demonstration of Fire Nova:

[youtube TJYqlQUFkDc nolink]

How cool is that?

The new Fire Nova spell slots in nicely into whats-not-on-cooldown-right-now? rotation. But the strange thing about the Elemental Shaman, to me anyway, is that you don’t really have different cast rotations for different situations. Single target or multi-target you still end up casting pretty much the same sequence: Chain Lightning, Flame Shock + Lava Burst and Lightning Bolt.

What I mean is that both the Priest and the Mage feel like they have a definite toggle switch when they go into AoE mode. If it could be translated into a macro I think it would look something like this:

#showtooltip Mind Sear
/RW AoE Time!
/emote says no time for DoTs now!
/cast Mind Sear
/cast Mind Sear
/cast Mind Sear
/emote can’t believe there’s still one mob alive!
/cast Mind Flay

And, please, don’t actually make that macro. The Elemental Shaman kind of sits somewhere in the middle, treating all fights like there are 2-3 enemies present. And god forbid there are multiple mobs hanging around that you’re not meant to kill.

Combine Fire Nova into a cooldown based rotation with some slightly tricky situational requirements you actually end up with a pretty interesting spell to use. Before hitting your Fire Nova key you need to consider:

1. Do I have some kind of Fire totem down?
2. Where is my totem and are the mobs within range of it? If it is too far away is it worth dropping a totem closer, using a global cooldown to do so, in order to use Fire Nova?
3. Will 3 or more mobs be hit?

If you’re going for max DPS – in other words, standard operating procedure for Heroics – you can place down Magma Totem at the feet of your mobs, cast Chain Lightning, then hit Fire Nova while Chain Lightning is on cooldown. That’s three sources of AoE damage: Magma, Chain Lightning, Fire Nova.

All up, not quite as impressive as the damage from a Shadow Priest’s Mind Sear, but then again, who cares? It’s a hell of a lot more fun, and more of a challenge, to pull off!

There’s one little problem. Mobs like to stomp on my totems. If I place my 4 totems in advance, dropping Magma from the word “go”, often it’s already been killed when I go to hit my Fire Nova button. This is an even worse problem for me when soloing – presumably because my totem so easily out-threats me early on. I think what I need is a macro which will place a new Magma totem if I don’t have a current Fire totem. Any suggestions? Is that even possible?

The strange thing about Fire Nova, well when paired with Magma totem, is that your Magma totem kind of requires you to run into melee range before placing your totems. The range on Magma is only 8 yards, so there’s no point in standing safely at 36 yards, dropping it, then winding up a Chain Lightning. I mean, you might was well skip Magma and go straight for the “passive” spell power buff from Totem of Wrath which will cover everyone in 40 yards.

The speed of your average Heroic pushes me to play like a melee spell caster. I keep pace with the tank, stand right next to the Rogue and drop my four totems, including Magma, right on the mobs. Then, instead of wasting time running back out to the healer, I just stand still and start casting. So far, this hasn’t gotten me into any grief. There isn’t as many deadly, whirlwind-ing enemies as you might first think. I think the range limitations would annoy me in a raid, but in Heroics it’s quite fun to pretend to be neither melee or ranged… and be something strange in between.

Once I sort out some kind of Fire Nova macro which checks for an existing Fire totem I’ll be set. Any tips or tricks would be most appreciated. This Elemental Shaman still has a lot to learn.

ps. Spell travel time sucks.

Would you jump? My queues are quick, but they're not that quick!

In this modern age of Dungeon Finder, Dungeon Finder, Dungeon Finder I can tell you who holds all the power: Tanks.

I know we talk about instant (insta) queues. I’ve seen tanks prostituting themselves and their skip-the-queue in Trade chat for the price of 50g. I’ve heard all about “Tank Roulette”: a game in which the tank stands at the edge of Krasus’s Landing, queues using the Dungeon Finder as a Tank, jumps off the edge and either:

• (a) ends up safely in a dungeon before they die a horrible death from falling.
• (b) or – there’s a small chance – that they might hit the ground before they are matched with a party.

I laughed when I heard about Tank Roulette. And I started waiting a good 20 seconds before accepting my invitation… *evil laugh*

But I figure tanking isn’t probably the most fun job in the game so, why not? Let the tanks get some kind of bonus for all the crap they have to deal with. Every time you’re waiting in a queue what you’re really waiting for is for a tank out there on your Battlegroup to say “ok, I’m ready to tank something now”. And that’s power.

Deciding Vote

When you set the pace, when you are the reason that the group is a functioning group at all, that can lead to all kinds of bad behaviour.

A tank chooses what bosses, if any, are killed or skipped. And the group has little say in the matter unless they wish to spend another 5-10 minutes at the “front” of the queue waiting for a new tank. Lathere and I queued quite a few heroics when she was gearing up her level 80 Mage, and I my level 80 Shaman using Emblems of Triumph. We didn’t want a super quick, 2 Emblems of Frost, run. We wanted Emblems from bosses.

However, whenever we entered Halls of Stone or Old Kingdom the tank would often open up with “Not doing optional bosses, ok?”. Well Lath and I soon learned that the question mark was only there out of politeness. If we spoke up and asked to do a full boss clear for Emblems the tank would just drop party. Before we’d even started. We stopped asking and just started hoping not to arrive in those dungeons after our 20 minute wait.

I’ve been on the other side of course. When I queue dungeons as Cassandri I’m thrilled when I get to come in half way, or sometimes, just for the last boss. 5 minutes later and I’m done! But if the tank decides to do a full clear, or decides to do an achievement, that I’d prefer to just skip, I just have to go along with it.

And most interestingly of all, if other members of the party are debating whether or not to do an optional boss, or an achievement, the debate will continue until the tank either says “yes” or “no”. Once they put forth their opinion, the debate is over.

Abuse of Power

Perhaps the worst abuse of “tank power” that I’ve experienced so far occurred late at the end of a raid night. As we left Icecrown Citadel for the night a few guild members spoke up on Vent “who still needs to do their daily heroic?”. Two and a half parties formed. One full group, including our Feral Druid tank, and the group I was in: Lathere was healing, and we had 3 Damage dealers (including myself) but no-one able to Tank. I mean, we didn’t even have a Plate wearer: Shadow Priest, Mage and Moonkin.

We waited patiently for a Tank to join our group while the other group started clearing out Heroic Forge of Souls. We stayed to chat on Vent. Eventually we were placed in Old Kingdom with a pugged tank. They immediately dropped the group.

I found this pretty disappointing. Lath is an excellent and geared healer. The rest of us DPS in the group know how to play defensive and smart. But we can’t take the kind of hit that someone with a bit of defense rating, armor and a shield can take. We just needed someone who could take a beating. We wouldn’t have bitched about gear, threat or skill. But the tank didn’t give us a go, and left. We waited for a second tank as the other group approached the first boss in Forge of Souls.

Eventually we were paired up with a new Tank. We greeted him and buffed up, keen to get started. He picked through the first couple mobs slowly. Then, after standing around after killing the first Spellflinger group for few minutes we realised the tank had either disconnected or had afked. He wasn’t moving. I checked over my chat screen and he hadn’t said anything about going AFK. VuhDo didn’t mark him as Disconnected, either.

We started gearing up for a clothy-style pull to fill the time. Full HoTs on our only Leather wearer, my cursor hovering over Dispersion, carefully edging back to give us room to maneuver. We did it, just. The tank still hadn’t moved, but he also hadn’t come up as Disconnected yet.

I typed “are you there?” followed by “maybe we should just kick him?” comment in party chat. To my surprise, he responded immediately afterwards “nah don’t do that” and proceeded to start clearing left towards the first boss. I guess he wasn’t AFK or disconnecting.

Then 2 pulls later, at the bottom of the stairs and half way to the first boss he stopped pulling. Again. Another unannounced, unexplained break?

By now the guild run has finished Forge of Souls and we’re starting to get pretty pissed off. Lath started dressing him down in Party chat. I think I made a comment to this effect:

You’re here to tank. We’re here to do our jobs and we can’t do them unless you start tanking.

I think his response was something like “jeez, whatever”. We decided to kick him over Vent when a guild tank offered to come in and replace him. Unfortunately we soon discovered that, even though we had lost our 15 minute Dungeon debuff, the tank still had 5 minutes still to go. At least he started tanking again. Slowly.

While all this had been going on the first group had queued a second Heroic, and after being placed in Old Kingdom too, had overtaken us.

The moment the tank’s debuff expired, we kicked him. Just because you’re a Tank doesn’t give you the right to waste the rest of your group’s time while you eat or Alt-tab out of the game. The same behavior in another party member – Healer or Damage – would get you kicked really fast. Don’t queue until you’re ready.

Corrupted

One night, bored out of my mind, I agreed to run a few heroics with a guildies’s fresh level 80 Ret Paladin. Not for the 2 Emblems of Frost – I’d already completed that daily chore. Just for kicks. And one of our guild main tanks was coming along. And since I was there for the kicks, I was queuing as Shadow (that is, Damage only).

Bam! Loading screen. Talk about instant queue.

I didn’t even have time to say my “not HoS today, please” prayer. I was already in Azjol Nerub.

We had a pug DPS (a Druid, I think) and a Holy Priest. I looked at that Holy Priest and had a slightly guilty sucks to be you thought and that could have been me immediately followed by a you never know, maybe he likes healing.

Now I’ve played with excellent tanks who are thorough. I’ve played with excellent tanks who like to lead and enforce a kill order. And I’ve played with tanks who like to go fast. Fast, as in, getting a good threat lead and then moving onto the next pull while the previous mobs trail behind screaming “hey, we’re not dead yet!”. Well that was the kind of fast run we were doing.

By the time we finished off the second boss the Holy Priest asked if they could DPS since they didn’t really need to heal and we both ended up completing the last boss in Shadowform.

Our tank announced that we were going to queue again and invited the two PuGed players to stick around. We were already killing the first group in Gundrak when I realised that the Druid has disappeared, a Shaman has joined the group and was back at the entrance (probably still waiting for buffs) and the Holy Priest was still in Shadowform.

I dropped Shadowform to heal off some of the poison and started to get a bit annoyed. That was his job. The Holy Priest was taking this “you don’t need heals” thing a bit far.

Then I scrolled back through my chat pane. Yep, the formerly Holy Priest had requeued as Damage only. The new Shaman in the party was our new, pugged, Healer. And it hit me: This Priest was as bad as me! He had queued as a Healer to get into a daily heroic. But the minute you pair us with a tank and our choice of role? With a guaranteed instant queue? We refuse to heal and switch to DPS.

And, oh my god, it’s so much more fun.

We treated our pugged Shaman healer terribly and barely gave him a chance to land one heal before we were off and running to the next pack. Half-empty health bars make for anxious healers, trust me, I know. We went off in different directions at one point. We asked him to switch to a DPS spec for the Less-Rabi boss and then didn’t give him a chance to switch back and drink. If I was that Shaman I’d have been pretty pissed off.

Meanwhile, I was having a great time. I didn’t need to worry about threat. Things were practically lying down in surrender as we approached. The formerly-Holy Priest challenged me to a DPS race (whatever that means) but I think we were both trying to dish out as much pain as possible, as quickly as possible.

Was I corrupted? Absolutely! If my Priest could tank, would I queue as a Tank? Absolutely.

Evil Trash pulls in Heroic Old Kingdom

Each time I get sent back to Old Kingdom (which happens much too frequently) I struggle to heal the trash pulls between the first boss, Elder Nadox, and second boss, Prince Taldaram. Especially as the Shaman. It’s messy – you’ll get knocked around, feared and, if unlucky, suffer back to back silences.

Each time I come out the other end alive with my party at 10-20% health or resurrecting those who died I can’t help but think: How the heck are you supposed to clear those pulls?

This is one place where the charge/AoE/brute force healing isn’t going to get you through on its own. So if you’re tired of struggling with these pulls and want a clean, controlled slaughter with minimal incoming damage here’s how to do it. Properly.

The Mobs

1. Eye of Taldaram – Eyes in the Dark leading to Dark Counterspell.
Shadowfury, on death.

Eye of Taldaram

Within about 5 seconds of the pull it will apply a Magic debuff to a caster called Eyes in the Dark. It almost always picks on the healer. The debuff doesn’t disappear quickly either – it will stick around for about 20 seconds. And if it wears off, it will be recast on the healer almost immediately.

It is essential that Eyes in the Dark be cleansed off your healer (and preferably your DPS). If not removed, the next time your healer goes to use a spell with a cast time (instants can’t be Counterspelled) they will take a nice chunk of damage and be unable to heal for the following 8 seconds. If, after that 8 second window has passed, the debuff remains on the healer, they will be interupted again. Dark Counterspell does not consume the Eyes in the Dark debuff.

Most pulls will include a couple of Eyes and when each one dies – if you AoE two will die at the same time – they deal about 7000 damage to each player standing within 10 yards and knock them right back. When everyone in your party takes 14k damage at the end of an 8 or 16 second healer lockout? That’s how you get deaths.

2. Frostbringer – Frost Nova and Icy Winds and a movement slowing Frostbolt

Frostbringer

The Frostbringers might be a bit annoying, but they’re much less likely to cause your group to wipe or take a lot of damage. Frost Nova will freeze you in place and Frostbolt will slow you down. This can be a bit annoying when the tank is trying to gather all the casters together in one spot. But it’s mostly annoying, not painful.

Icy Winds is interesting. Applied to a caster – DPS or your healer – it can double their cast time, which doesn’t sound fun. But I don’t find that this happens to me very often. Or perhaps I don’t notice it.

3. Bonegrinder – Frightening Shout

Bonegrinder

You’ll need to kill a few patrolling Bonegrinders, one at a time, on your way to Prince Taladram. The only real ability which can cause problems is his fear – Frightening Shout – which can send a party member running into another pack.

Some Strategies and Tatics

1. Getting Rid of Eyes in the Dark

The most important thing you can do, if you really want to brute tank/heal/AoE your way through, is to get someone to remove Eyes in the Dark from your healer. It must be removed from a healer immediately. A Paladin can Cleanse it off, a Priest can Dispel Magic. Fortunately, the Dungeon Finder likes to pick a nice variety of classes when forming a group so I think your chances are very high that your party will include a member of one of these classes. So:

Paladin – Cleanse Eyes in the Dark immediately from the healer (or yourself)
Priest – Dispel Eyes in the Dark immediately from the healer (or yourself)

In addition, if you are the healer, watch your debuffs closely and as soon as you are afflicted with Eyes in the Dark swap to casting instant spells only. For Druids this shouldn’t be a huge problem and still leaves them with most of their healing spells. Priests should Dispel themselves, as should Paladins.

Shaman… are probably going to have the most problems here (I know I do) and you’re going to have to cut back to Riptide and one Nature’s Swiftness+Healing Wave cast.

Restoration Druids and Restoration Shaman – Switch to instant heal spells when you are afflicted with Eyes in the Dark. Ask for a Cleanse/Dispel.

If you have no Paladins or Priests in your 5 man group I strongly suggest you kill off the Eyes of Taladaram immediately (perhaps one at a time) and rely on your tanking cooldowns. For healers in this situation I would still recommend cutting back to instant spells for the 20 second duration of Eyes in the Dark – limited healing is better than no healing at all.

2. Avoiding the Knockback

If you play a ranged caster or Hunter you should be able to outdistance the knockback by standing a good distance back from the action for the first pull which happens on “ground” level.

When you reach the two “egg” upper platform groups it is going to be significantly more difficult to stand more than 10 yards away from the tank and still be in line of sight. The best thing you can do is to group up on the circular platform and walk back to make sure your back is to a “wall”. This way the knockback will be an interupt, but you won’t waste time running back up the platform to reposition.

If your healer isn’t afflicted by Eyes in the Dark they should be ready to heal through the knockback damage.

If you’re at low health when an Eye of Taladram is about to die, you might want to Disperse or use Cloak of Shadows, Barkskin or whatever temporary survivability spells you have. You’ll still get knocked back, but it will be less likely to kill you.

I can’t help but wonder, if you were to stun an Eye of Taladram right before it died, would it still be able to use it’s knockback + damage ability?

3. Avoiding Icy Winds and Frost Nova

These two abilities can be ignored.

But one comment I read suggested that a Mage in the party should Spellsteal a Frostbringer’s Icy Winds for some extra damage.

When I’m playing the Priest, I like to Mass Dispel Frost Nova, especially when you can see the mobs are a bit spread out and the tank is still trying to round them all up.

4. Avoiding the Fear (or Frightening Shout)

If you have a Shaman, you can counter Frightening Shout with a Tremor Totem.

Priests can use Fear Ward, however, if you Fear Ward yourself as a Priest you will not be able to then turn around and Mass Dispel your scattered party members because this fear isn’t Magic based, it’s Physical.

I believe most tanks and melee players try and keep the Bonegrinder stunned for the duration of the fight to lessen the opportunity for him to use this ability. Ideally your tank will choose an open space to fight the Bonegrinder, far away from any uncleared areas.

If you do get feared, you should be able to use Escape Artist or Every Man for Himself if you play a Gnome or Human to get out of it. I’ve yet to test this out, though.

One Rule

If this all seems too complicated you can really reduce it down to just 1 rule to prevent wipes:

Dispel/Cleanse Eyes in the Dark immediately from your healer.
If you are a healer, stick to instants spells until it is removed or remove it yourself.

Good luck! I hope your next trash pulls are a lot smoother.

First set of Furious Gladiator's gear bought out of... boredom?

The lead up to Christmas is a crazy, frantic and busy time of year. Just as the teenagers get released from school for the holidays and suddenly have heaps of free time, the 9-to-5ers squeeze in party after party at night time and try and fit shopping and family commitments in during the day.

Routine? What’s that?

At the time when my guild officers announced that we were taking a break from scheduled raiding over the holidays I was relieved. During the last week of scheduled raids (mid December) I think I only was able to make one of the four raiding nights that week. There was no way I was going to skip parties but I felt a bit guilty at how quickly I abandoned my raid commitments at a time when it’s particularly difficult to fill 25 raid spots.

I’ve got family staying with me for a few weeks so I tend to log in and play when I feel like it. And I usually feel like playing when the house isn’t too hot, when everyone is watching TV, when I need a break from planning menus or worrying about how much milk is in the fridge and when nobody is asking me to make tea or coffee… and the distractions and conditions in which it’s okay to play go on and on. So yeah, at odd times of day for shorter periods of time. Definitely nothing like my regular play time!

When I do log in I like to do the random Heroic on a couple of my characters, play the Auction House and gather herbs. I also decided to buy all the Furious Gladiator gear for Cassandri (I thought it was a new clothes design, not just Deadly Gladiator’s Armor recolored in khaki and red – ugh). And it’s just not cutting it for me.

By Christmas night, not 2 weeks into my raiding break, I was climbing the walls. I found myself hanging out in Dalaran, considering joining any raid that needed just 1 more… Ulduar, ToC, Naxx, you name it. I listed my name for every single raid, 10 or 25, Burning Crusade or Wrath of the Lich King in the new Raid Finder (which nobody appeared to be using except me). I just wanted to raid.

I did manage to join a Vault of Archavon 25 man PuG that night. I don’t actually need any gear from there so at best I figured that it might be a 0 wipe exercise. At worst a 20-30g repair bill. Raiding something, a 25 man at that, was better than nothing.

Two days later and I’ve managed to PuG Trial of the Crusader 10 and 25 man and I’ve won the final item on my ToC wish list. I’ve also done Obsidian Sanctum on 10 and 25 man. And Icecrown Citadel on 25 man. There are now tentative plans to do a guild run of ICC10 tomorrow evening for those not saved and it’s great to know that I can look forward to that… assuming that no social plans crop up in the meantime that take precedence.

If you took raiding out of the game, and I could only play like I have been the last couple weeks, running Heroics and working the professions and Aucion House, I don’t think I would keep playing at all. Suspend my subscription, please.

The good news is that I have experienced two absolutely fabulous cross-server heroics in the last week. The first one just had an absolutely amazing tank, like amazing! He was considerate in all the ways that counted (via actions) even though he said little. He was also just a very good tank and the one time that I pulled threat with Fade on cooldown he had taunted back the mob just as it raised its axe in the air to hit me. He also didn’t do silly or pushy things like run out of healer range or pull when I had no mana. I can’t quite remember the Paladin’s name… but I hope that if I somehow group up with that particular Paladin from Deth’ramar again I’ll remember.

The second absolutely fabulous cross-server heroic experience was for Heroic Halls of Stone and I queued with 2 friends. The Mage that joined immediately announced in party chat that he was just getting started in Heroics and apologised if his DPS wasn’t what it could be. Everyone was very nice during the run and when we finished the last boss the Mage asked “how did I do?” and when a damage meter was posted he made a comment about doing more “reading” and seemed a bit dissapointed that he hadn’t pulled higher numbers on the DPS charts. Unfortunately neither I or my friends in the group could offer any real advice on Mage-crafting but it was just so great to hear this attitude from a player anyway. Chances are there is always something you can learn, research, test or improve in your game play no matter how much you play or how experienced/inexperienced you are.

Is your guild taking a break from raiding? What are you doing to fill the time these holidays?

Yum. Epic Gems.

A friend of mine is in the process of gearing up a new level 80 character. So what does that mean? Yep. Lots and lots of heroics.

I don’t need gear from heroics for Cassandri. That doesn’t, however, mean that heroics are a complete waste of my time. I’m bringing in quite a bit of gold from looting, disenchanting mats, stacks of Frostweave Cloth and even the occasional Book of Glyph Mastery. It also helps that I quite enjoy running them.

I’m also accumulating a lot of Emblems of Conquest. I’m guessing approximately 6 per hour (I know it took us 25 minutes to do Heroic Trial of the Champion today because I had the oven timer on cooking my lunch before we started).

Assuming you don’t need gear purchasable with Emblems of Conquest, Valor or Heroism you have two options to turn those into gold:

• Buy epic gems
• Buy Runed Orbs

Runed Orbs can sell for about 150g. However, demand is incredibly low. Most players have skipped over the Ulduar crafted boots and belt items. Those that are interested in having these items crafted most likely will prefer to spend their gold purchasing the other components (harder to farm) than the Orbs.

If you can sell a Runed Orb you’re looking at 18 Emblems of Conquest for 150g. That’s 8g and change per Emblem.

You can also convert your Emblems of Conquest into epic gems. You’ll need to exchange your Emblems of Conquest for Emblems of Valor and then exchange those for Emblems of Heroism. The exchange rate is always 1:1 so if you have 100 Emblems of Conquest to spend, you actually have 100 Emblems of Heroism to spend.

1. Primary coloured (blue, red and yellow) epic gems cost 20 Emblems.
2. Secondary coloured (green, orange and purple) epic gems cost 10 Emblems.

Note: All the Auction House prices are averages across all servers, from wowecon.com. Prices on different servers will vary so it’s a good idea to check out where the action is on your server.

Primary Colours

• Blue Majestic Zircon – 20 Emblems – AH 140g – 7g per Emblem
• Red Cardinal Ruby – 20 Emblems – AH 160g – 8g per Emblem
• Yellow King’s Amber – 20 Emblems – AH 145g – 7g per Emblem

Secondary Colours

• Green Eye of Zul – 10 Emblems – AH 125g – 12g per Emblem
• Orange Ametrine – 10 Emblems – AH 135g – 13g per Emblem
• Purple Dreadstone – 10 Emblems – AH 140g – 14g per Emblem

Unless you can sell a primary colour gem for double or more the going rate for the secondary gems, it’s generally better buying and selling Ametrine, Dreadstone or Eye of Zul stones. The exception is, of course, if you discover one particular cut gem that sells for double that of any cut orange/purple/green gem on your server.

Cut gems are about 15g-20g more expensive than the rough gem. This saves the buyer from finding a Jewelcrafter with the right design recipe and tipping them for their services. If you have a friend who is willing to cut gems for you in order to sell them then it’s definitely worth your while to buy a stack of gems and have them cut into some popular, or rare, gems prior to listing them on Auction House.

Lets look at some of the most popular gem cuts selling on Auction House. Each cut is listed with the volume sold (over 7 days, I think) across all servers and the average sell price.

The popular cut gems that return the most gold for your emblems are:

1. Glowing/Purified/Shifting Dreadstone – 200g for 10 Emblems – 20g per Emblem
2. Vivid Eye of Zul – 198g for 10 Emblems – 19g per Emblem
3. Reckless Ametrine – 190g for 10 Emblems – 19g per Emblem

However, I think any secondary colour gem is a good investment. Aside from Runed Cardinal Rubies (a bad Emblem investment) I use quite a lot of Potent Ametrines and Purified Dreadstones. These are the gems I like to convert my Emblems into. That way I can stockpile some in the bank in case I get a new item, and sell the overflow on AH.

Welcome to the Oculus. It's hell.

On Saturday the daily was Heroic Oculus. I picked up the quest and put myself in LFG and had an invitation before I had finished stocking up on candles. I was the last member (score!) and I was told to dps (omg!).

Now usually I only get to DPS when a tank+healer pair decide to pug 3 DPS. And I think I get those invites based on my guild tag and the groups usually end up as really fast runs where I shave 20 seconds off my Deadly Boss Mods speed records.

Well this wasn’t that kind of group. We lost our tank and healer early on in those whelp pulls to the first portal. I hate those whelps. The tank immediately blamed the healer. Which I think is a bit rough – I have trouble healing those first pulls and unless bears have somehow gained the ability to dodge Frostbolts…

The first boss goes okay, not great, but okay. The other Priest whispers me to say:

you pwned! when did you ding 80?

ummm November last year?

cool! I dinged 80 yesterday

I went on to assure him that that’s a big time difference. Then he proceeded to link back to me my Conqueror’s Sanctification and asked me where he can get those items. Before we reach the next boss the other two DPS whisper me to marvel at my gear and my DPS.

It was actually quite enlightening.

I look at my gear and see my weakest items – my boots from Naxx25 and my Emblem of Valor haste ring. Which I can’t seem to replace because I don’t want to be just under my hit or haste caps.

When you raid so many nights with the same group of people you start to measure your gear and DPS against your other raiders. Like living in a bubble. A glass house? I do okay, but if I make the top 5 damage done on a fight I’m pretty damn pleased with myself.

My gear and DPS are good enough to kill the bosses we’re killing. But they can’t be that good – because we’d have Steelbreaker by now if that was the case.

But in the eyes of this group, I’m doing pretty well. It made me take a step back and appreciate what I’ve achieved.

Then we spent over an hour wiping on Ley-Guardian Eregos. Hardest two Emblems of Triumph I’ve earned. I swore I would never PuG Oculus again.

Less than an hour later a guild group forms to do Heroic Oculus. They need 1 dps. And 15 minutes later they still need 1 dps. I hesitantly offer to come on my rogue.

Chriara is wearing Burning Crusade gear and Northrend sword models 1 and 2

My guildies had a good laugh at my 12k health pool when I joined the group. Did I tell you I hit 80… Wednesday last week? Did I mention that she was level 79 before Ulduar came out? Did I mention that she’s still wearing all her Burning Crusade raid gear?

Did I mention that she can just manage to break 1k DPS on a training dummy?

I got my first Emblem. I got a new sword. But I was too ashamed to be thrilled. She wasn’t meant to be doing Heroic Occulus. And she didn’t deserve to complete the hardest Heroic without doing any of the level 80 instances first.

I don’t have anything against this practice of carrying severely under-geared characters through Heroics. It even makes sense to me when you have a guild sponsoring one of their raiders to power level and power gear a class that they desperately need in their roster.

I just don’t like it when I’m the one not contributing anything and taking all the loot.

As soon as we were finished I switched back to my Priest and gained a whole lot of dignity. Good thing I don’t much enjoy playing my Rogue anyway.

It was easy to follow the “correct” progression from Level 80 instances => Reputation items => Heroic instances => Naxxramas in November last year. That’s what everyone was doing. I didn’t mind logging in to do the Sons of Hodir dailies.

But now it’s very difficult to find a group willing to run Level 80 instances. By the time you earn Exalted with a faction chances are you don’t need that item from the Quartermaster anymore. Making that jump from Level 80 to heroics isn’t easy.

I think for most people, certainly for me, it’s much easier finding four friends to carry you over the gap.

“Xata we’re going for the On the Rocks achievement.”
“Sure”

We stand around for quite a long time before the first pull. Then the tank announces he’s going to pull the whole room and rushes in. I’m madly spamming Lesser Healing Wave, anxious that when my Earth Shield and Riptide wear out I’m going to have to use two cooldowns to reapply them – and stopping Lesser Healing Wave to do anything else at that time would equal a tank death. Now we probably would have made it if one of the DPS hadn’t pulled agro and died at the start of the pull. As it was, I just couldn’t keep the tank up. We wiped and all the mobs ran back into position with about 5% health left on each.

Nothing is said. We continue to pull each group in a normal fashion.

We get to the first boss and it’s hectic but I was expecting it. I blow through my mana trying to keep everyone alive, fend off skeletons (oh how I wish for Cassandri’s Fade!) and my Earth Elemental saves the day when the tank is entombed as the boss is about to die. Everyone is granted the achievement, nothing is said.

The tank continues to pull, sometimes chain pulling at a furious rate, at other times the group stands around for several minutes for no apparent reason. I start to wonder if perhaps the tank is playing their secondary talent spec.

The second boss is worse than the first. I watch the little >> << agro markers in Healbot jump around as the clothies in the party juggle agro. I lose at least one of them and almost my own life.

“You guys sure like to juggle aggro.” This is my way of saying L2P without yelling abuse at the mage.

Somebody responds with “Oh our tank is just trying out a new spec. Don’t mind us.”

And I think that’s when I knew for sure that everyone in this party was on Ventrillo except for me. I was the necessary 5th member required to get this party going.

The thing is, I know exactly how this spontaneous run of Utgarde Keep came about because I’ve been in their shoes many times. You’re standing around in the city just so you can talk to your friends on Vent. Somebody mentions that they want to try out their offspec and suddenly everyone is switching roles and heading off to the easiest heroic to experiment. But their healer wants to DPS for a change so they pick up a healer from LFG (that’s me).

Every death and mistake is a joke for these four to laugh about over Vent. The DPS push the envelope on purpose, just to give the tank some grief. They’re having fun chatting so it’s almost an afterthought when they do pull. Nobody is there for loot, nobody is there for Emblems.

They’ve probably even said something like “this Shaman must think we can’t play. LOL”

Not long afterwards (a few DPS deaths later) the Shadow Priest pipes up and says “look if you want to DPS I will heal”. And at that point I started to get irritated.

On the very next pull the Shadow Priest opens up with some AOE, before the tank has even pulled. I watch them die and back away. If they had been playing any other class I would have said nothing. But to make a mess of Shadow offends me – it’s what I play night after night.

“If you want to open with Mind Sear you might need to use Fade first.”

We finished the run with just 1 wipe (the first pull-the-whole-room wipe), many many DPS deaths and with two of the players logging out and swapping characters before the last boss. The run took over an hour. And I didn’t enjoy one minute of it.

I’d much prefer to be grouped with a bunch of players who make mistakes but are trying, concentrating and have the same buy-in as I in the success of the run.

I know that I’ll certainly think twice about how I treat the 5th member of any group I’m in when the rest of us are good friends and are chatting outside of party chat.

Mostly from my recent experiences as Xata (Restoration Shaman) here is how I rank the Wrath of the Lich King heroic dungeons from easiest (#1) to hardest (#11). I have also factored in how easy/hard other healers seem to cope in these heroics from what I’ve seen when I’m not healing.

Please note that The Oculus is not on the list because I haven’t yet found a group willing to do this in the last few weeks. Based on remembered experiences playing my priest, I’d put The Oculus around 9 after Gundrak and before Utgarde Pinnacle.

Lath, how would you rank them?

1. Utgarde Keep

Ingvar the Plunderer from Utgarde Keep

Easiest heroic by quite a long shot. The last boss is even easier if you play with Deadly Boss Mods which tells you when to stop casting. If you do it wrong, you could get silenced for a hell of a long time, but that’s easy to avoid, and your group will probably survive even if you get silenced.

2. Draktharon Keep

I actually have to think quite hard about this instance to remember the bosses because not one has given me grief – ever. The giant dinosaur boss (3rd) could be difficult if you don’t have Tremor Totem or Fear Ward and your tank gets smacked in the back while you’re on the other side of the courtyard, but I doubt it.

3. Culling of Stratholme

A little more tricky if you want to make the timer (but personally I think that’s more to do with the DPS) but still a fairly easy heroic. Keep up with your tank and take lots of water with you to drink whenever you can. Some of the early bosses like to silence/chain you as a healer so make sure you are using some kind of HoT to ease through that or alternatively be ready to spam some fast heals when you are free. Never really sure where to stand for the last boss Mal’Ganis (which has gotten me killed a few times) so if you’re unsure do like me and right before the pull ask your tank “where do you want me to stand?”.

4. Violet Hold

I know most consider Violet Hold much easier than I but hear me out. Firstly, the huge shadow void boss simply cannot be healed through if your DPS don’t do their job when they are phased (and no DPS seems able or willing to do this). And secondly, if you do wipe you have to start from scratch. And good luck finding a replacement with one or more bosses down if you lose a group member.

5. Old Kingdom

This heroic requires some level of healer competence all the way through. There is no part or boss that you can sit back and do nothing. The last few bosses in here are cool and each do something a bit unusual (*evil laugh* begins to cast Insanity). Hardest part to heal is the trash pulls just after the second boss – each pull is made up of casters and elementals. Worshipers, Acolytes you name it. Don’t try and conserve mana here. And don’t be afraid to ask for CC.

6. Halls of Lightning

I consider Halls of Lightning quite straightforward to heal, although you might not agree.

The last boss Loken can be killed using two strategies. The first is easier for everyone else and hard on the healer and I simply call it “Staying In”. My chain heal still isn’t strong enough to heal up Loken’s huge AOE hit before the next cast. This method can work if you have a hybrid DPS in the party willing to help you out (a Prayer of Healing from a shadow priest or Tranquility from a druid can make all the difference). The second strategy requires your party to be quick on their toes, spinning around and running away from Loken the moment he starts to cast his Lightning Nova. I call this “Running Out”. Done correctly, Running Out means the party takes almost no damage. Even when 1 person doesn’t run far enough in time, and takes a hit, this is still my preferred strategy for this fight.

7. The Nexus

Grand Magus Telestra

One reason: Grand Magus Telestra.

It doesn’t matter how geared your tank is, it doesn’t matter how high your party’s DPS, there’s something about this fight with its steady stream of stuns, polymorphs, interrupts and blizzard AOE that have me screaming obscenities at my computer. There is, quite simply, almost no time to cast. And when there is time I’m busy running out of her blizzard. Use whatever instants you can – Lifeblood and Gift of the Naaru if you have them.

I hate this fight. I hate this fight with a passion. I’ve got the War Mace of Unrequited Love and I’m never going back.

8. Halls of Stone

The bosses in Halls of Stone can catch an unprepared group off guard. The difficult part of Halls of Stone is the timed event most groups usually leave second last – The Tribunal of Ages. Your success (or failure) in this event has very little to do with your healing, and much more to do with the abilities of your tank. To help you succeed, watch out for the laser beam that kicks in towards the end, it’s a bright yellow fire. It will kill you if you don’t move away immediately. Pause your healing as new mobs rush into the room until you see your tank has caught them.

9. Gundrak

I’m ranking Gundrak as very hard to heal because I believe (like Utgarde Pinnacle) even the trash mobs require healer concentration and a lot of healing. Everything just seems to hit hard, and often. A cleansing totem can help here. My general advice would be to heal fast, and heal often and you should make it through Gundrak.

10. Utgarde Pinnacle

Like Gundrak everything in Utgarde Pinnacle just seems to hit hard – really hard. Don’t be afraid to ask for CC on any trash pulls with more than three mobs.

The hardest boss in here is the third boss Skadi the Ruthless. My three tips to succeed at this fight are: stay off the ice-y floor, don’t stand between your tank and the mob spawn point and when Skadi starts to whirlwind – don’t heal, run!

You also need to be a bit careful when pugging Utgarde Pinnacle because a lovely epic tanking sword drops from the last boss. I consider Utgarde Pinnacle to be the Mechanar of Wrath of the Lich King in that you’ll never find it difficult to get a tank. However, I’ve attempted UP with some tanks who, while eager, just aren’t ready for UP and get smacked down pretty fast. If you are unsure, it might be a good idea to check that your tank is defence-capped and has some decent mitigation.

11. Azjol Nerub

And here it is, the hardest heroic in Wrath of the Lich King to heal. Azjol Nerub is short – only 3 bosses and very little trash. And pretty much everything in here likes to do poison volleys and, as if that wasn’t difficult enough to heal, curses too! Don’t bother coming in here as a holy or discipline priest unless someone else can cleanse poisons. I feel this is particularly mean as the last boss drops both an epic cloth belt and a lovely epic wand. Haven’t tried this with a pally healer – how do you guys find it?