Frost DK Gear: Pre Heroic & Pre-Raid

This list is available over on EJ, but after they took it off the primary thread and gave me a heart attack, I decided to copy it over her for safe keeping.  It is still on the old thread but it might be harder to find for everyone there. 

[DW Pre-Heroic]

Slot	Item	Gemming	Reforging	Source
Head	[Helm of Easeful Death]	1x Chaotic, 1x 40str	Haste to Hit	Justice Points
Neck	[Gift of Nadun]	None	Haste to Hit	Ramkahen Exalted
Shoulders	[Pauldrons of the High Requiem]	1x 40str	None	Justice Points
Back	[Skin of Stone]	None	Crit to Expertise	Stonecore BoE
Chest	[Breastplate of Raging Fury]	2x 40str	Crit to Expertise	Justice Points
Wrists	[Terborus’s Rotating Bands]	1x 40str	None	Terborus; Deepholm
Hands	[Reaping Gauntlets]	1x 20str/hit	Crit to Expertise	Justice Points
Waist	[Belt of the Ferocious Wolf]	1x 20str/hit	Crit to Expertise	Hyjal Exalted
Legs	[Greaves of Gallantry]	2x 40str	Haste to Expertise	Justice Points
Feet	[Waywatcher’s Boots]	1x 40str	Haste to Expertise	Hyjal Revered
Ring	[Gorsik’s Band of Shattering]	None	Haste to Expertise	Therazane Revered
Ring	[Galrond’s Band]	None	Crit to Expertise	Hyjal Honored
Trinket	[Darkmoon Card: Hurricane]	None	None	BoE Craftable
Trinket	[Impatience of Youth]	None	None	Baradin/Hellscream Exalted
Main Hand	[Dragonscorn Mace]	None	None	Twilight Highlands Quest
Off Hand	[Sun Strike]	None	None	Rajh; Halls
Relic	[Notched Jawbone]	1x 40str	Hit to Crit	Honor Points

Although you can get the pvp rep with the dailies, I remain rather leery of them.  I’ll try them soon and we’ll see how it goes on a pvp server.  If I can’t even do my Therazane dailies unmolested (srsly guys, I just want to save Pebble, leave me alone)…

If you want to know what the ‘pre-raid’ list looks like as well, here you go:

[DW Pre-Raid]

Slot	Item	Gemming	Reforging	Source
Head	[Anomuran Helm]	1x Chaotic, 1x 40str	Crit to Exp	Ghur’sha; H Throne
Neck	[Gift of Nadun]	None	Haste to Mastery	Ramkahen Exalted
Shoulders	[Pauldrons of the High Requiem]	1x 40str	Hit to Haste	Justice Points
Back	[Skin of Stone]	None	Crit to Expertise	H Stonecore BoE
Chest	[Elementium Deathplate]	None	Crit to Expertise	BoE Craftable
Wrists	[Alpha Bracers]	1x 40str	None	Anraphet; H Halls
Hands	[Reaping Gauntlets]	1x 20str/hit	Crit to Expertise	Justice Points
Waist	[Belt of the Ferocious Wolf]	1x 20str/hit	Crit to Expertise	Hyjal Exalted
Legs	[Alpheus Legguards]	2x 40str	Crit to Mastery	H Thrones BoE
Feet	[Greaves of Wu the Elder]	1x 40str	Hit to Mastery	Husam; H Lost City
Ring	[Nova Band]	None	Crit to Hit	Isiset; H Halls
Ring	[Skyshard Ring]	None	Crit to Mastery	Altarius; H Vortex
Trinket	[Darkmoon Card: Hurricane]	None	None	BoE Craftable
Trinket	[Impatience of Youth]	None	None	Baradin/Hellscream Exalted
Main Hand	[Cookie’s Tenderizer]	None	Hit to Expertise	Cookie; H Deadmines
Off Hand	[Cookie’s Tenderizer]	None	Hit to Expertise	Cookie; H Deadmines
Relic	[Conch of Thundering Waves]	1x 40str	Hit to Mastery	Ghur’sha; H Throne

I high reccomend the frost DPS thread over at EJ.  Even though it sometimes gets mathy, it’s answered pretty much all of my questions even for my pre-raiding needs.

Four Point Oh Noes: The BM Hunter

Updated 10/20/10

 

For now this guide is going to be primarily regurgitation.  I’ll update it with my own information and findings after I get in some testing time tonight (as I had to wait until it hit live because the PTR hated me).

Specs
These specs are tuned for boss damage–at his point we’re still raiding, so soloing builds can wait until Cata proper.  My post on builds, including my spec, is here.

Other options: 31/5/0

Rotation
BM used to have a proper rotation, but now it’s joined the Priority Club.

Start off your shots with Hunter’s Mark and Sepent’s Sting.

Kill Command > Focus Fire (when pet has full Frenzy) > Serpent Sting > Arcane Shot (focus dump) > Steady Shot (to regen focus)

Make sure that Kill Command is available for Beastial Wrath (nothing new here, you should have been doing this all along).  BW is now for Arcane Shot spamming, apparently.

Remember that you never want to sit at 100 focus, because then you’re wasting your focus regen!

Note that BM hutners do not yet have our “signature shot”–Cobra Shot isn’t available until 81, so I’d hold final judgements on this spec until Cata proper.  We can’t fully judge how awesome we’re going to be when missing a key shot.  My understanding is that it will replace Steady Shot.

The Cata thread on EJ posted this, but it made my brain hurt just to look at it.  If you can make sense of it though, kudos to you.

if HM is not on target or running out in less than a set time and there´s no MfD on target and focus/cooldowns/target heath don´t allow for KS or KC
–> cast HM
if KS is off CD and target health is at or below 20%
–> cast KS
if KC is off CD and enough focus
–> cast KC
if SpS is not on target and enough focus
–> cast SpS
if focus over or at 75 (modified by Efficiency)
–> cast AS
none of the above
–> cast CoS

Glyphs
Prime:
Kill Shot, Arcane Shot, Steady Shot
Also an option: Kill Command, Serpent Sting
ETA: My personal testing has revealed that I actually have higher DPS replacing Serpent Sting with Steady Shot, so I have revised the post to reflect this. Serpent Sting topped out at about 4.7 on a dummy, where SS was usually at 4.8/4.9 with spikes of 5k.

Major:
Beastial Wrath
Also an option: Whatever the hell you feel like.  Frostheim lists disengage, but if you’re anything like me and trying to avoid disengaging off cliffs to your death, you might not want to go there.  Since I’m trying to afford re-glyphing eleventy billion alts right now in multiple specs, I’m acutally not rocking any Majors aside this one.

Minor:
Mend Pet, Feign Death, Revive Pet

Notes on Stats
We only need 248 hit.  Pet hit no longer rounds down.
Crit > Haste?  Haste > Crit?  What about Mastery?  I’d love to answer this question for you but I don’t fucking know.  Research to come.  Haste is said to contribute to focus regen, but how much?  EJ is still working on this one.  So far it seems to 1% haste =1% focus regen.  I’m currently experimenting with trying to get more haste to see if this helps my “omg not enough focus” issue, or if I only fuck my rotation up more.  Ha.

From EJ:

… It’s unclear at this time whether agil/crit or agil/haste is preferable for yellow sockets but this is most likely relative to how high your crit and haste are. Keep in mind that although the crit and haste caps are very high, pet melee crit will cap out at a much lower amount, and haste’s value has sweet spots based on how it allows your shots to flow and keeps your focus in balance. Mastery can only be obtained at the moment from reforging. The theorycrafting on it isn’t clear at this time on whether it will outperform haste and crit.

As for old set bonuses, eh.  T9, even the 4 piece, is no longer as appetizing as it was.  I’ve opted to ditch my t9 entirely (keep in mind I killed LK rocking 4 pc T9 still) and wear what was once my survival set.  The higher crit/haste numbers on the higher ilevel gear gives me more room for reforging stuff.

Gems
Nightmare tears are now silly for us as we only benefit from agi.
Red: +20 Agility (Delicate Cardinal Ruby)
Orange: +10 Agility +10 Haste (Deft Ametrine) |  +10 Agility +10 Crit. (Deadly Ametrine)
Blue: +20 Hit Rating (Rigid Majestic Zircon)
Purple: +10 Agility +10 Hit Rating (Glinting Dreadstone)

Pets, Pets, and More Pets!
Hunter pet was normalized with 4.0, so now it’s a matter of personal prefrence/buffs.  While browising the EJ MM 4.0 thread I stumbled across from handy graphics (originally from Petopia?) that I shall now share:

Pew pew moonfire kitty now heals?  What?

Sources:
Warcraft Hunter’s Union (www.warcrafthuntersunion.com/2010/10/bm-hunter-patch-4-0-1-talents-rotation-and-glyphs/)
Elitist Jerks (http://elitistjerks.com/f74/t106028-mm_hunter_4_0_1_a/ & http://elitistjerks.com/f74/t97229-cataclysm_hunter_changes/)
MMO Champs: (http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/770793-4.0.1-Hunters)

Link to Awesome

Have you read this open letter at Shades of Grey?  If not, go on ahead.  It’ll be better than anything I can post here.

This Post Is Epic

Please go read this, and know everything you need to know about raiding.

It is full of win and Amber Approves.

‘Cause My Bubbles Are Better Than Yours

Straight from Shadow Weaving and QFT!:

I feel like a broken record in raids sometimes:  ”Please don’t shield the tanks.”  ”Please don’t shield the tanks.”  ”Please don’t shield the tanks.”  ”Please don’t shield the tanks.”  I’ve long struggled to get my fellow priests to cease-and-desist, but with the priests’ 4-piece bonus now offering +250 spellpower for 5 seconds after shielding, it’s even more of a battle.

Hey, Holy Priests:  if you raid with a Discipline Priest, don’t shield, ok?  Please?  If you have the 4-piece bonus and want to take advantage of the spellpower boost, shield yourself.  Your job as a Holy Priest is to heal, not to shield.  While the boost to your throughput is nice, I agree, the bonus wasn’t designed for you (I know.  Startling concept:  a poorly designed set bonus.)  PW:S hasn’t been part of your rotation, and this set bonus shouldn’t change things.  It’s not what you should be using your GCDs or mana (~900 mana for you, and I know you don’t have much to spare) to cast.

I had several shields last night absorb 10K damage; most of the time, they absorb at least 8K.  A Holy Priest’s shield absorbs less than half that.  

And that’s not remotely strong enough to absorb my fury when I see your Weakened Soul debuff on the tanks.

I’m put in mind of an Emalon pug I was in.  I was whispering the holy priest, asking them to not shield the tanks. 

“Would you mind not bubbling the tanks?  I’m disc.”
“But my shields also heal! :D :D :D :D”
“Yeah but I get greater be-oh, nevermind.”

This was, actually, the first time I’d run into the issue.  Most holy priests I run with seldom bubble anyone but themselves these days-but perhaps I’ve been very spoiled with very good holy priests.  Wait, no, who am I kidding?  The holy priests I ran with probably had their bubble bound to the same key as their cleanse, which they’d managed to somehow lose track of.

Anyway.  As the t8 bonus becomes more common, I’m afraid this will become more of an issue.

Don’t make me bust out my beating stick, guys.

And no, no, I didn’t have any writing ideas today, why do you ask?  I need to fix that.  Ohai, planning!

Post Patch Day Maddness

First off, for my fellow squishies who are thinking for going shadow for the first time (shut up: I know I am not the only one who leveled a healing spec, damn it), Binary colors posted a lovely, simple “How Not To Suck” guide. 

Does that mean I went shadow for my dual spec?  No.  Lyr has purchased dual specs but as of yet chosen nothing.  I want to go shadow.  Ron, however, went Holy…and I know he doesn’t really want to go Holy (though he’s not as enamoured of the idea of Shadow as I am), so I feel strongly compelled to join him in suffering.  For the good of the guild, of course.  In other words, I’m waffling, as always.

I lost spellpower on Lyr.  This makes me a sad panda.  :(

Ambrosyne is sitting there entirely unspecced until I work out what, exactly, would be A Good Holy Spec.  She won’t have dual-specs for awhile-I r broke.  There is a slight temptation to go prot.

The problem with mass-respecs is that I have a lot of alts.  Like…a lot.  I have no idea what I want to do with some of them.  Since instance servers were down I spent much of my night flopping from one toon to the next.  I respecced Vainglory, my DK on Azgalor, Unholy…same as she was before.  Ambrosine-DK went from Frost pre-patch to Unholy, at least for now.  The chances of me leveling her are relatively slim.

That leaves me with: 55 mage (previously fire), 48 druid (previously kitteh), 70 hunter (BM forevah), and 75 warrior (previously prot).  Might take the mage frost for future leveling, have no idea what to do with the druid, need a good BM spec for the hunter (fuck you, Survival), and might dual spec the warrior prot/fury.   Gaaaah, decisions.

We are not hitting Ulduar tonight.  I advised against canceling our scheduled raid to better give us a shot and adjusting to class changes in a familiar enviornment.  Besides, some of us still need gear.  A more comprehensive report of how disc priests fare post-patch, and how two bubble-happy disc priests can co-exist in a raid shall fall upon your eyes tomorrow.

At least most of my mods were fine-Chatter was initially broken but was updated an hour or so later.  X-perl is functioning but…not entirely, as I can’t right click on any portraits to do anything.

“Amber, how did you leave the group?”
“…I logged.”

Didn’t get to test Grid but by all reports it continues to work.   Steve is bitching and moaning about how this was a terrible patch, but for those of us with longer memories, we know that this actually wasn’t too terrible.  Steve’s a nub.

So That’s What They Look Like

Feel free to wander over here to enjoy the far superior flowchart making skills of etherjammer.   All healers should appreciate it!

Friday Musings & Links

Link Highlights
I’d like to link to Banana Shoulder’s most awesome Holy Paladin guide here. 
I’ll also link to to the Duegalicious not once, but twice.  Here, where he tells Blizzard what I want to tell them only with fewer cuss words re: tier 8, and here, where he takes a slightly different slant on priest gearing.  I was looking at pre-Naxx, he was looking at pre-Heroics, which is a fine distinction.   And slightly holy slanted, because poor Dueg is disillusioned and refuses to acknowledged the full awesome that is disc. 
Also, even if you don’t tank, I think this post is hilarious.  <3 Tarsus.

Just Random
And re: this post on WI, all I have to say is: baby murloc noises.  Duh! 

Naxx25
We cleared three wings on Wednesday and our revised loot system consisted of less suck and fail.  I took some gear on Ambrosyne-after no one else rolled on it.  I now have a good set of shoulders that look exactly like the shoulders she had before, which looked exactly like the shoulders she had before that.   I am all for gear matching, Blizzard, but you could have changed the color slightly more.  I mean my boots already don’t match, so wtf.  I’m fairly certain that we can clear Naxx25 this week, so maaaaybe, when it’s not progression content, they’ll let me bring my priest.  >.>  <.<

Speaking of the Baby Priest
Our Maly25 raid was canceled last night (due to sign ups and also to reasons I can’t publicly announce), so it became a Run Heroics Night.  Of the four upgrades that could have dropped for me in AN, I saw none of them.  Josh, who has notoriously bad loot luck sometimes, did get several upgrades for his unholy DK, though.  Pffft.  I did get boots that were a smidge better and enough badges for my neck, putting me at a whopping 3 epix.  Woo!  I could technically enter Naxx now and do alright, but I feel compelled to put more effort in before loothoovering making the full main switch and bringing Lyr to raids, spending my hard earned DKP.  :P 

And A Final Public Service Announcement
Listen kiddos, don’t give your guild “Do X or I’ll quit” ultimatums.  Especially not if your guild just recruited a whole bunch more of Whatever Your Role Is and you are, technically, replaceable.

Just sayin’.  If they keep your sorry ass, you can be sure they’ve at least lost respect for you.

/cue ephiphany music

Go read this.

It is an eloquent post detailing a healer plight-and it also explains why I’ve been going nuts.

It would help, I think, if there weren’t those couple of fights still in Naxx 10 where we “need” 3 healers. Then we could just bring two, and not be bored, and get cranky when other healers step on our toes because they, too, are bored.

I will try to do a post of my own later, but I had to share that with you.

Spirit Vs Mp5

So I read this totally awesome thread on the PlusHeal forums about Spirit vs Mp5 for disc priests.

Shame I didn’t understand most of it. Threads like that or why I have this blog-I can’t be the only one who reads that stuff and gets a glazed over expression. Just tell me what to prioritize, people!

I managed to glean this:
It depends on how much time you actually spend spamming. If you tend to spam, as disc priests are wont to do, mp5 is better. If you do find yourself getting acquainted with the 5sr, then you get more benefit from spirit and might want to weight spirit a little more heavily.
And as I said here, after 1k int, int/spirit gems are more beneficial than int/mp5.

Here is a neat calculator if you want to play with math.

The same thread devolves into a Flash vs Greater Heal discussion, but after a certain amount of numbers my brain melted. I’ll touch that topic later. Maybe. If I recover.