My previous post came out of playing a lot of PvP over the last few weeks, as you have heard about ad infinitum, ad nauseaum.

I started by identifying Shadow Priest upgrades, seeing what a big jump the merciless Gladiator’s Spellblade was over my crafted Eternium Runed Blade, and decided to go for it.

Along the way, I encouraged Cassieann to join me and go for her Merciless Gladiator’s swords, because I knew from talking with every other Rogue we game with that the PvP swords just kick the hell out of the other options we have. And Shadowpanther.net agrees.

But then I started wondering… is there anything worth getting for my Druid? I knew I had just about the best gear I could get otherwise… but shoulders have always been my weak point.

So I went and checked them out, did my comparisons, and left Champion’s Hall flabbergasted. The Merciless shoulders are HOW good?

Now, I browse the Merciless gear for both my favorite 70s, and I see that, for example, the PvP cloth Bracers are equivalent to the Runed Spell Cuffs, or better… and wouldn’t cost me hard-earned Badges. I could take the Badges I’d earn and spend them on something else, like the Icon of the Silver Cresent.

So… what are my thoughts on all this?

It’s complete bullshit.

(more…)

As Bear says in his post below, it was a crazy night.   We had tried to do a guild Kara run this weekend, but with Father’s Day and people being gone, it ended up getting canceled due to lack of sign-ups.  We talked about what we wanted to do and decided we should either try to PUG Kara or Mgt (we both still need it on normal and want pretty drops from there) as a goal this weekend.

So as Bear says, I logged in, saw someone advertising LFM Kara.  I started talking to the guy and he said it was a group of friends that try to do it occasionally and they were just starting to put the group together. Seemed ok, so I said Windburn and I would be happy to go.  This was at about 7:15.  We finally get the start of a decent size group and make our way to Karazhan.  A friend of the RL logs on and starts chatting in vent.  He reminds me of a former guildie who eventually left the guild (and everyone was pleased because he just was obnoxious in vent).  I’m wondering what I’ve gotten Bear and me into.  But then he announces he can’t stay, he’s just waiting for the RL to log back in (he’d had computer issues and was on the way to an internet cafe to play).  Again, what have we done?  Should we run now?  We decide to wait a bit longer, finally get a full and fairly nice mix of a group and in we go.

By the time the run actually got started it was 8:30.  Now I’ve heard the horror stories about PUGs, but because of Bear’s guildies in the past and now our current guild, I’ve um…never had to PUG anything along the way (ok, except two of the ogri’la prereqs that Bear and I pugged with a couple others).  But I’ve either got one of Bear’s 70s or his (and then our) guildies to help.  So this was a new experience for me (and after Dax’s wonderful Pugging Kara song, I was a bit fearful, not to mention the vent stuff a bit earlier).

However, overall, everyone was pretty good. Most had done it before (except the dragons) and knew pretty much what to do.  We had our wipes, but nothing too bad at all.  It was a really long marathon run and I can’t believe I stayed up til 3am on the computer (I’m way too old for that anymore).

It started out slow (Moroes refused to drop the edgewalker boots I’ve been wanting forever).  There was nothing else I could use until Curator (we got Big Bad Wolf for Opera - I only need one thing from R&J).  We down Curator and I see my tier 4 gloves sitting on him.  Yummy!  I’ve seen them drop 3 times before - twice they went to pallies and once to another rogue (who’s a good friend, but I was still jealous).  The RL asks people to roll.  I fearfully roll since whenever it’s important, I’ll roll like a 15.  But instead, I see a 95 come up.  Yes, they are mine.  Yipee!  At that point, I’m content with the run and figure I’ve gotten more than I could hope for from any Kara run (pug or not).

But we push onward.  We do Shade on the 2nd try and I see the Drape of the Dark Reavers. I’ve only seen this drop once before and it went to a rogue guildie who was the class lead and had been waiting like a year for it to drop.  This time, it’s mine with another great 90-something roll (although I don’t think anyone else actually rolled for it).  At this point, I’m ecstatic.  Now I can stop worrying about trying to gather badges to buy Dory’s Embrace someday, and it’s a massive upgrade from my Cloak of the Craft, which an old guildie had bought as a present when I hit 60 and he put the +12 agility enchant on for me and it’s been equipped ever since the moment I hit 66). I now have Tier 4 gloves (to go with the Tier 4 chestpiece I’d got from Mags with our old guild), and now the 4th best cloak in the game for rogues (according to shadowpanther).

So now, I’m thinking this is so cool.  It can’t get any better and I don’t even care (ok, hardly) that it’s like 1:30am or somewhere around there and that Alex usually gets up around 7am. 

We decide to go on to Prince and again, people are leaving, so we’re waiting for others to bring friends in or swap characters so we have a better mix.  We try Prince once and thanks to those bad infernal drops, we die when the tank ends up out of range (I was already dead at that point).  But on the second time, we do it.  I whisper Bear saying, “he’ll never drop my helm, but wouldn’t that be cool” (as I realize I’m the only rogue/pally/shaman left after our two shamans had left a few hours ago).  Grab my badges and there it is. My pretty helm!  After the RL too realizes I’m the only one says, “I’m guessing you’d like to have that” - I say my first words of the 6 hours on vent - “Yes I do” (very loudly) and after he drops it in my bags, I think I said “woot!” or maybe “yippee.” It’s a bit foggy to remember at this point.

We’re so exhausted at this point, but someone says let’s try Netherspite (we’ve given up on Nightbane after the one attempt and just not a strong enough group).  So we run off to Netherspite.  We wipe the first time due to beam issues, but the second time, we’ve got it.   More badges for all.

We’re really exhausted at this point. But someone says what about Illhoof?  We had tried earlier and weren’t quick enough on the demon chains and too many people died.  I can barely make my fingers work at this point and I swear the screen is swaying when I’m running, but we keep going.  We get to Illhoof and take him down the first time with absolutely no issues.  We grab our last badges of the evening. 

I had been closely watching my rep all night since when we started I needed about 6000 rep to hit exalted with The Violet Eye and get my massive ring upgrade.  I kept checking all night, telling Bear how much closer I was and thinking next time we do a guild run, even just the first couple bosses, I’ll hit exalted.  I check after Illhoof and I’m literally at 20,998 of 21,000 rep.  What the hell, 2 stinkin’ rep away?  I can’t take this!  I cautiously post in raid chat to ask if there’s a single mob somewhere that we skipped that we could kill without a lot of trouble so that I can ding.  I post my rep amount and there’s laughs on vent about how wrong it is to be that close.

Most of the raid leaves the group and hearths out. We look around and there’s Wind, me, and 2 others.  We’ve got 3 DPS (warrior tank/RL from the 2nd half of the evening, a warlock, me) and a shadow priest (Windburn) to heal.  We run back to the huge room that is filled with Arcane Protectors and Mana Worms right after Curator.  We find a group of 3 worms that we had bypassed and the warrior pulls them).  We easily take down the first one and I yell “yes” into vent as I ding.  We finish off the other two worms, heartily thank the other two for sticking around, and then the tank and I run out to get our rings (he had hit revered during the evening).  I grab my ring, hearth to shat and turn in my gloves and helm tokens, make a list of gems and enchants I need on the new items, and finally sign off in utter (but elated) exhaustion.

I KNOW this was not a typical PUG situation and that Bear and I lucked out and that the reality is usually closer to Dax’s song, but this time, the WoW gods were smiling down upon us and I’ll take it while saying a hearty thank you and looking at all my pretty (and powerful) new gear.

For the first time in a long time, the Big Bear Butt went to visit Prince in Karazhan last weekend.

Essence of Grandeur took Windburn the Shadow Priest along to finish up Karazhan, and I was looking forward to getting three more Badges from an easy fight.

If you had ever seen the Tanking Prince video I did (which I need to get put up again), then you know that I was used to tanking him at a location far on the other side of the wide open area he patrols.

It was a location with one notch that the casters could stand in, and another a little further along the wall the tank could stand in. Each was perfectly positioned so that Infernals would never affect you during the fight.

Well, this wasn’t my run, this was theirs. I was the guest, so I was determined to do things their way. I did ask a few questions, but mostly tried to put out ranged DPS, bring some mana regen to the party, and keep my mouth shut. No, really!

For the Prince fight, what they did was set up right at the entrance, near the post. The casters would stand there, almost right at the door, and the tank would be along the wall to the right. Between the tank and the casters is a notch in the wall, kind of a breech in the wall, that is perfect for melee DPS to duck into when they get Enfeebled.

The first run, the Warrior donned DPS gear, the Warlock put his Imp right at the tanks’ mark, phase shifted of course, and everyone got set.

The Pally tank ran forward to pull Prince… and he had to run very far forward, and he was out of range of heals, and he died about the same time he got back to his starting point. Oops.

The second time, okay, we’re on the ball now. We get set… and right at Prince hitting about 55%, a bad Infernal drop happens, between the casters and the tank, right on top of the melee DPS niche. Damn.

Third time, tank got to 50% exactly, another bad Infernal drop on top of us, and dead.

Now, at this point I am getting confused. Because the pally has lots of armor, health… he shouldn’t be dying that fast. So I suggest I could bring Windshadow to tank, so we could see whether that would make any difference.

So okay, that’s not what we were there to do, but it’s getting a bit late now, and folks are tired. So okay, let’s try that.

And we set up, and Windshadow pulls to the Imp, and we’re going along and BAM! Bad Infernal placement, and we wipe. Again. So much for a big bear butt making a difference.

So I’m like, okay, it’s seems clear to me it ain’t the tank, it’s that damn Infernal. So I suggest we move our starting point to where I was used to doing it with Legatum Ignavis. They say, sure, if we can let this misery end, go for it.

I lead them over to the far wall, jump at the notch I want them to stop at, run forward and pull Prince… and I swear to you, the very first Infernal drop lands ON TOP OF the casters.

Ummm… Blizzard hotfixed the safe spot. DAMNIT!

I whispered my pal Gerolan, and asked him if he had maybe noticed any… changes in the way the Prince fight works.

“Oh yeah”, he says to me, “You have to tank him near the entrance, now.”

DAGNABIT! grrr….

So okay, we went back to exactly the same way Essence of Grandeur had set up before, and we pulled… and this time, we got lucky and an Infernal didn’t drop right on top of the casters OR the tank.

So, I guess it’s a fight where you’re just supposed to wipe until you get lucky on Infernal drops, now? Is that it?

Jeez, that sounds fun.

My shadow priestie has been 70 for long enough that I’ve maxed out my gear except for raids, heroic Magisters’ Terrace, and Badge Rewards.

Everything is properly gemmed and enchanted, and I float around 1050 shadow damage unbuffed. I’m pretty darn happy with that.

The Sidhe Devils has our own Kara run scheduled for the morning of Saturday, May 31st, where two of our powerful Feral Druids will be tanking away, and neither of them will be moi.

Instead, I’m gonna play mana battery, ranged DPS, and Shackler.

Now, I’ve only ever soloed as a shadow priest before. You guys know me; that leaves me nervous about my ability to properly perform my role, and not let the rest of the raid down.

So, I’d been keeping my eye out for two weeks now for a Kara PUG in the makings, to join and go in and learn my place and practise rotations and thinking on my feet, and mainly seeing what things look like from the back of the pack for a change.

The funniest part is, with my current gear, there are all of three upgrades I could get from Kara, and they’re all from the first two bosses. I’d be looking mainly for badges, and for fun. How often would you expect tha from a Kara pug? Someone that wasn’t out to be a loot whore?

As a shadow priest, I knew that my Shackle would be welcome, but it might be hard to find a pug that felt secure enough to take a non-healer priest.

Well, last night I was giving Alex a bath, and Cassie calls out that someone in Trade chat was asking specifically for a shadow priest to fill the last slot in an all-guildie Kara run.

WTF? Are you kidding me?

I looked at Cassie with my beseeching kitty-cat “can I haz kara run?” eyes, and she not only said yes, but she even finished up Alex’s bath for me so I could scurry off and log in. Yay!

The guild was Essence of Grandeur on Kael’thas, and although they usually run two Kara groups, I got the impression the US Memorial Day weekend had left them short one for a badge run.

They welcomed me quite warmly, asked if I could join Vent, and once I ran off to get my raid mats and consumables, threw me a summons.

The run was completely unlike any Kara run I’ve ever done before.

We started with an untouched Kara, took down Attumen, and kept rolling without pause until we reached the large room at the top of the huge ramp past the library just after Curator. We didn’t STOP there for the night, I just had all I could take without a bio break. 

So a pause to put Alex and cats to bed, and a bit of bio regen, and it was back in business. We started back up and kept on until Chess was cleared.

That was the longest single run I’ve done in Kara. Every Legatum run I’d been on, there was usually an acknowledged stopping boss about halfway through. And that was typically Curator. When we 7 manned Kara we went further, but we still bypassed Aran and Illhoof when we went on and cleared Chess.

This one, we went until we just got too tired, and in our case last night it mean we rolled on until 2 AM.

So, Attumen, Moroes, Maiden, Romulo and Juliette, Curator, Shade of Aran, Illhoof and Chess, dead.

That guild has a great sense of fun and playfulness on vent. Definitely a nice group of folks to play with.

Let me talk a bit about some of the things I learned as a shadow priest in Karazhan for the first time, when I thought I was completely prepared.

1) Bring twice as many sacred candles as you think you’ll need. You’ll probably run short anyway. I brought about 40, needed a fast trip to snag 20 more. Next time, I’m bringing 80.  Why? When someone dies, I found it easier to redo the whole group buff for the full duration rather than just a ghetto buff of 30 minutes on one person. So they got used a lot more than I expected.

2) Don’t freak out if you have the cookie-cutter priest spec, that gives you +102 Stamina from your Improved Fort buff, and when you buff people, it displays a tooltip saying they got a +79 stamina buff instead. It’s a known bug that I was previously unaware of. I did the math, and after I did the buff, the tooltip showed the +79, but I really got +113 (from the +102 Fort and +10% stats from Pally buff).

3) It is vital to use a shackle focus macro that allows you to continue to provide ranged DPS uninterrupted to your target while keeping a second one shackled. Allow me to show you mine;

#showtooltip Shackle Undead
/clearfocus [modifier:alt][target=focus,dead][target=focus,help][target=focus,noexists]
/focus [target=focus,noexists]
/cast [target=focus]Shackle Undead
/s Shackling %f

I did not create this. I am, despite all that Kirk could do with his series of posts on how to write macros, still macro-creating illiterate.

BUT, I now understand better what to look for IN a macro. So I went to the Shadow Priest forums and did some searching. 

In a thread about Moroes and Shackling Macros, way towards the end, a player named Acererak wrote that macro I listed above… and another player named MnilinM came by and helped explained what it did, an explanation even I could understand, so I will share it with you here.

MnlinM described the macro as doing the following;

Show the tooltip for Shackle, instead of just a random macro icon/name
then:
Clear the focus target IF I hold alt, OR my current focus is dead, OR my current focus is friendly, OR if my focus doesn’t exist anymore.
then:
Set my current target as my focus, only if I don’t have a focus target set
then:
Cast, using my focus as the target, Shackle Undead
then:
say “Shackling [target’s name]”

So… it’s a nice macro. Works great. Kinda does everything I can see that I would need in the heat of battle. In actual use, it kicks ass. I target the mob that has been marked for Shackle. At the pull, I hit that macro, and it makes my target my focus, and Shackles him. I then can target the Skull or X and begin blasting away, and I have a dot-timer mod that shows me Shackles’ duration even if I don’t have that mob targeted. And every ten seconds I just hit the macro button and it recasts Shackle on my focus, without changing my current DPS target.

So.. I macro-Shackle the purple diamond, retarget on Skull and mana dot death dot blast death flay mana dot blast reShackle death flay mana dot… you get the idea. As long as I keep my eye on the Shackle in case it breaks before the ten seconds I give myself to reShackle, I’m good.

Now, a few lessons learned from the run itself.

Essence of Grandeur seems to have always used a Paladin Tank as their main tank. As most of you are well aware, I am used to a warrior and feral druid, or mostly the two feral druid tanking combo.

I have only once ever played with a Paladin Tank, and that is when Gerolan the incredibly awesome tanked Steamvault and I was on my Hunter.

A paladin main tank in Kara was a very, very different experience.

I had heard before that a Paladin using Consecrate and AOE tanking, especially against undead, is an amazing sight.

That is an understatement.

Basically, if the healers could keep the pally alive, the team wins. No matter what else happens. It was shocking.

I made a mistake early on, body pulled a group on the run to Attumen while trying to back up to make some space/LOS to the fight we were on… I died right away as the three mobs came charging me… the Pally picked them up, and they kept right on trucking. No other deaths.

The group did have a warrior as well, for off-tanking, but the bulk of the fight was on the Paladin, and the first thing that surprised me was that he did not use pulls from the hunter’s misdirect to bring mobs to him, instead he charged in face to face to body pull.

In hindsight, it’s obvious why, since if you don’t have a ranged pull or Linkin’s Boomerang, you must get into the habit of running up and saying “hi” all nice and personal every time.

But what that does is bring all the mobs automatically into the range of your Consecrate, making Shackle useless. Shackle/break, Shackle/break.

They used Crowd Control, don’t get me wrong. But it became clear they used it only on those fights where they had problems in the past with the ‘pally rush in’ technique.

I’m just used to always walking up to every fight wondering how to apply the crowd control we have on hand to the given fight to break it up into bite sized pieces…

So I was there in a cautious mindset looking for things to CC, and they were there in a ‘blast the doors down, matey’ mindset.

Their way is much more fun.

But there were not as many chances to Shackle as I was hoping for. I practised it a lot, damn it!

But yes, I have seen firsthand now, what people mean when they talk about Paladins being awesome tanks, especially in Karazhan. No question.

What came to my mind was to wonder, if a newer guild started out for their very first raids with only a paladin tank, would having that incredible threat generation holding a group of mobs cause the new raiders problems in higher-progression fights?

Some fights are very CC dependant in other raids. Do you think having players used to NOT being able to pull aggro easily would cause problems in the learning curve?

These guys didn’t have that kind of problem, Moroes is a CC issue and they had it locked down, the hunter chain trapped very well, and BRK would’ve been proud. but it did make me wonder, seeing as how I’m going into Karazhan in one week with a group of my own guild’s, many of whom haven’t been far inside… if the Tank is that good, does it prevent your other players from having to stretch and struggle to master their own abilities to get the job done? And can that hurt a guild in the future, if they are used to success, and then suddenly hit a brick wall in progression?

Oh, and as long as I’m talking about the Hunter… this is hilarious…

So, we down Illhoof last night. And we have a very strong boomkin in the group. She stayed locked onto number one on the DPS chart from minute one, just great DPS output. Very cool. In case anyone cared, the DPS chart looked like this;

1. Boomkin
2. Warlock
3. Me
4. Rogue
5. Hunter

Considering the Hunter was in a lot of blues and even some greens, it wasn’t his skill, it was just his gear. And he got some damn nice upgrades. That Steelspine Faceguard, for example.

But he had a green for a weapon… and a certain Staff dropped off of Illhoof…

And since the balance-specced Druid didn’t want it…. well…. that’s just awesome. Yes, yes he did. The Hunter won the roll on Terestrian’s Stranglestaff.

And he had a great time emoting ‘the tentacles brush up against xxx leg’ and similar for the rest of the fight… oh, it was priceless… the jokes about all the people that would be seeing him with that staff that would QQ in Ironforge were perfect.

If you live and play in Kael’thas and happen to see Essence of Grandeur around, give ‘em a /salute, they’re a damn fun, and mature, group to play with.

Which is why I ain’t been writing here today.

I don’t know what’s wrong with me, to be honest.

I come up with what I think will be a simple idea for a Shifting Perspectives article. I even avoid the topics I know are ten hour manifestos, saving them for later, like a Kitty Gear to Karazhan guide, and a Tanking threat generation part 3 guide, and just come up with something simple.

The next freaking thing I know I’ve got a 5000 word monstrosity, and 6 hours have passed.

If I’m lucky, it’s only 6 hours.

Cassie tells me I’m an idiot, and Dan at WoW Insider keeps telling me to break my articles up more into smaller chunks, but I see a subject, and I try to be as complete on that one subject as I can…

And therein lies my problem. I really need to learn where to break things up into manageable pieces.

Anyway, my feral druid friends, at about 3:00 PM Eastern time today, my newest Shifting Perspectives article will go live, and the topic is… consumables for bear tanks, updated for the win!

Wait, you may ask, didn’t I cover that once before?

Yes, but… I have applied an increased wisdom to the subject, for a more thorough and useful list. At least, I hope that you will find it useful.

EDIT: Thank you to Cassie for letting me know my original link to the article was going to Ferocious Bite instead. I had given her credit in my article for opening my eyes to powershifting months ago, and must have kept that link in my clipboard. Fixed! 

Of course, for the observant, this means that Mooire can now expect that a flood of WI readers will come invade her blog today… and chcek out her fishing updates. That’ll teach ya!

Mooire, you’ve got 1.5 hours to come up with a new post. Bonus bear points if you screw with their heads with accurate sounding but false bear info. Go!