January Blog Posts

Summary

• Showing that threat management tools are very disparate amongst classes
• Pointing out that Blizzard has said "threat management will be noticeably harder in Ulduar"
• Positing the question: is there a point to equal DPS, given the first two points?

Stealing from Lhivera, who did the analysis without cooldowns considered here:

(this does ignore soulshatter, a ~1.5 second cost, 35%-effective threat reduction and invisibility, a ~5 second cost, ~70%-effective threat reduction *if* you don't get hit by any damage in the first 3 seconds.)

Threat per point of damage, from best to worst:
0.60: Arcane
0.70: Demonology
0.79: Destruction
0.81: Frost
0.86: Affliction
0.90: Fire

The Problem with Threat

One problem is whenever you try to talk about it, you get lots of:

• l2p!
• lolz use md
• ur tanks suxxorz
  

But I truly think there are some threat management issues in the game right now, specifically enhanacement shaman, mages, and warlocks.

It's not that fights are undoable at all -- they're quite doable, and your tanks can just gear for more threat rather than mitigation.

But looking ahead to Ulduar, we've been told threat management will be a bigger part of the game. Looking at things as they are now, this raises a lot of concerns in my mind about how threat works for some classes in the game.

Enhancement Shaman

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Tonight was our second run at a 2-3 healer Naxxramas. The two WWS's are:

Sunday: 1/25: 2-3 Healer Naxx
Tuesday: 1/27: 2-3 Healer Naxx (Round II)

It was a lot of fun to let loose and relax, and actually far easier than we expected. I predict many more nights of healers and tanks respecing to DPS.

In response to the many questions I've been getting lately about how to play an Arcane mage, I put together a video and strategy page.

The strat page is: ArcaneMage, and it has an embedded YouTube video on it. But if you want to just take a glance, it's below:

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Arcane Missiles now again benefits from the +3% per AB stack benefit on the AB glyph.

Your optimal DPS cycles are still the same as before: ABx3, ABarr. Doing MBAM, ABarr on a 3-stack when MBarr procs.

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No official details yet but it seems that:

• The "arcane shatter combo" was fixed, you no longer can get the AB buff on AM and Abarr both
• The Arcane Blast glyph has been changed, perhaps to 0% (i.e. it may be useless)

The latest estimations from this nerf put pure arcane on par with FFB now, perhaps very slightly (~50 dps) ahead (but not providing scorch) if FFb has Rune of Razorice from a friendly DK.

If you do not have a DK with Razorice on raids, then Arcane will be further ahead of FFb.

UPDATE 8:44 PST: Kevan of Silvermoon Crusaders is estimating that perhaps the glyphed damage no longer affects AM, but just affects AB and ABarr. I only tested with AM (since it doesn't have a damage range), but he tested with all spells and it seems that the glyph may now be +3% per stack on AB and ABarr only.

UPDATE 2/27: Since it seems this page has gotten linked, I'll edit it: the AB glyph was hotfixed tonight to provide the +3% to on each stack to AM as well. This does not change the rotations linked below however.

UPDATE 2/27: I made a video and guide to playing the new arcane: ArcaneMage.

If so, then arcane > FFb, probably by a big enough margin to care, but with it still not providing scorch *and* with arcane/scorch no longer being a viable build, having to provide scorch will still involve a full respec and reglyphing (who said mages weren't hybrids?)

The ideal arcane mage rotation is now:

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It's a bit harder to update the movie, but the good news is you don't really need a new movie, since the tactics are the same.

The timing, however, is very different, and I've updated the written strategy to explain what to do and when.

Malygos in Six Minutes: The Strategy

I'll have a movie ready next week, although it probably won't be narrated, etc.

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Tonight we killed him in 5:49 for the "Malygos in 6 Minutes"/"You Don't Have An Eternity" achievement but our new members didn't get the achievement.

How? Because we forgot that the minute-longer timer meant we couldn't just re-engage after a P2 wipe. The achievement timer does not reset until it expires, so if you haven't waited a full 6 minutes from when you engaged the last time, you will fail the achievement.

We had some pretty disappointed guildmembers, hopefully this warning will help some other guilds!

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Slightly old news here but I hate to post things without personal experience:

Spore loser is definitely achievable now, and with far less effort than the convolutions most folks when through when trying to get the non-working version.

Simply ignore the spores and you will get the achievement. No need to kite them or ignore them when they're despawning.

The only "gotcha" is that you can't use any AE effects on Loetheb: no Living Bomb, no Consecration, no Blade Flurry, etc.

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...it's been fixed in 3.0.8, so has the tactic where you spend all of P1 on the platform in the center.

Source.

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As I suspected, this indeed was considered a bug.

You no longer can cheese Twilight Torment in 3.0.8 by turning on and off attack as the tank, thus avoiding the big breaths.

Back to cooldowns, druid HP gear, and lots of healing!

Everything else on the Sartharion 3D Tutorial and Video still is accurate, however.

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Update 17 February 2009:

Blizzard has finally posted Official Ulduar news!

Also, an opinion piece on the use of vehicles in raid design: I'm a mage not a motorcycle!

We got a leak tonight about the Ulduar raid dungeon design. It's unverified, and third-hand, so don't take this as gospel, but it definitely sounds good if it's true:

• Bosses: 12 + 1 optional hard encounter
  

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