Mutterings and Mumblings 2-3-09

If I join one more OS-25 PUG where there are several people who
a) don't know the fight,
b) don't know where the flippin' instance is, or
c) stare at the wall of fire coming at them instead of moving the f!#$ out of the way,
I might just take to the streets in a fit of rage.

There are too many melee DPS out there right now. Everytime I form a PUG, I get rogues, warriors, death knights, and ret paladins coming out of the woodwork to join. The worst part about that is all but the rogues want everything I want loot-wise. Titan's Grip and tons of death knights have flooded the two-hander market with buyers, so if I ever do run Naxx-25 in a PUG, I have no doubt that I will lose the roll for any weapon I want under an avalanche of fury warrior/death knight/other ret paladin rolls. I demand to know - where are all of these plate-wearers coming from, and why are they always in my raids rolling on my DPS loot?

I think I'm going to have to farm up some more gold and buy a Darkmoon Card: Greatness. Loatheb's Shadow is elusive and Fury of the Five Flights requires physical DPS to stop coming into the same OS-25 PUG's as me.

There aren't enough quality pick-up players on Malfurion. Every PUG I join either goes splat or wins in spite of itself. I want to start my own "regular" PUG group where I actually evaluate the players who come and establish a pool of public raiders that aren't morons, but my play-time is too erratic to do that. Ditto for joining another guild - play-time is too erratic to commit to a raid schedule.

Malygos doesn't drop anything of serious interest to me. I don't know why I bother with him.

My guildmates aren't online much outside of 25-man raid times - guild chat is a ghost town on off-nights. It's making my quest for a red proto-drake grind to a halt.

My death knight 2v2 partner disappeared 3-4 weeks ago. Anyone with information on his whereabouts, please contact me immediately.

On that note, I haven't PvP'ed much at all lately. The shine is starting to fade off Wintergrasp for me.

Under what circumstances can death knights dual-wield and actually be effective? Thus far, every death knight I've had tanking for me that opted for dual-wield, be them unholy or frost (haven't seen a blood DW DK), have been sorta low on the threat meter. I don't see the appeal of dual-wield on a DK, especially if low threat is the result.

I tried creating a favicon for E4AE, I couldn't get Blogger to recognize it. I don't know what I did wrong.

I've been fiddling with the formatting on the blog, I think I'm good for now. How's it look? I know I didn't change anything major - I like to tinker, small changes here and there. Probably one of the reasons Cathmor is an engineer, aside from the draw of Thorium Grenades back in the day.

That's all for now. Hope you have an easy maintenance day!

The New Hotness

I feel bad pre-empting Stoney on this, but I'm excited about it. In concert with Stoneybaby of Windfury Crits and Zaltu of One Rogue's Journey, I'm helping to launch a new website. Big Hit Box is a site that is dedicated to melee DPS discussion across all classes. I'll be cross-posting most if not all of my posts, especially the "how-to" posts, over to Big Hit Box. The thought is that putting all the melee classes in one place might encourage collaboration amongst the classes, and might even lead to a few new ideas.

Mosey on over and take a look. The site is fresh and content is still being developed, but since it's a Wordpress template and Stoney's handling the back-end, it looks a lot better than this ol' blog.

I just threw my latest rant about WI's ret guide onto BHB (which I'm going to call Big Hit Box from now on, I like giving things acronyms). More content will be coming soon!

Don't Read WoW Insider's Ret Guide

As much as I appreciate what Zach Yonzon is trying to do, it's riddled with mistakes.

First off, yes, hit and expertise are good stats, but the hit cap and expertise cap are completely unnecessary. Stocking up on strength at the expense of either of these stats is fine. Never gem for hit. Bold red, Inscribed orange, and Sovereign purple, nothing else (aside from your meta) is acceptable.

Second, when speaking about expertise rating, keep your terms uniform! The following:

You'll need 214 Hit Rating to be Expertise capped, so every little bit helps.

... is confusing! I know Zach meant "214 expertise rating," but anyone reading this that isn't, well, me or someone like me, might not know that he just mixed his terms. Hit rating is not expertise rating.

Third, I just got done explaining why Glyph of Seal of Blood is terrible, especially when you have the option of Glyph of Spiritual Attunement. Neither of them should be considered, but if you do, Glyph of Seal of Blood should not be chosen. Ever.

Fourth, you don't open with Judgement because of Heart of the Crusader. You open with Judgement because it's your biggest, juiciest, highest damage and highest DPS attack. And you keep it as your top priority because of that AND it returns mana.

Lastly, it is irresponsible to macro Avenging Wrath to Judgement. Avenging Wrath should be used early in the fight and as often as possible, but if it comes off cooldown just before Sapphiron takes to the air, or just before Malygos starts his Vortex, or just before Sartharion sends a position-unfriendly Flame Wall at you, or before Heigan teleports away to make you dance, you just wasted your cooldown.

There are some good things said in the article, but these glaring errors make me nervous that people will actually read and take some of these wrong pieces of information to heart.

EDIT: And another thing! When talking about specs, Zach says:

As far as the two discretionary points are concerned, it's a toss-up between Pursuit of Justice and Divine Purpose. Pursuit of Justice is extremely useful for mobility fights while Divine Purpose is useful to break stuns on bosses with stun abilities.

Let me make this crystal clear. Vindication should not be considered mandatory in a PvE raiding build. It does not affect bosses and is iffy on the trash. If you want to make a PvE build skeleton, it's 0/10/57 +4, with your 4 points having a choice of going into Improved Blessing of Might (which is not necessary if you coordinate your talent builds with other paladins in your raid), Divine Purpose, and Improved Retribution Aura. Pursuit of Justice should be the mandatory one - getting to your target quicker means you can start attacking quicker, and if you start earlier you get more swings in. More swings = more damage. Vindication is even less important to a raiding paladin than Divine Purpose, which has limited application in raids to begin with.

Boss Spotlight: Sapphiron

In a continuing effort to educate the community on how Retribution Paladins should approach fights that pose specific difficulties to the class, E4AE proudly presents another "Boss Spotlight!" In today's crosshairs: Sapphiron.

Sapphiron is frost wyrm guarding access to Kel'Thuzad's seat of power in Naxxramas. A blue dragon of considerable power in life, Sapphiron was killed and resurrected by Arthas to serve the Lich King. Sapphiron has all the usual abilities of a dragon with some powerful frost magic to boot.

Why are we talking about this boss?
Dragons are a run-of-the-mill encounter in MMO's, even World of Warcraft. The WoW versions of dragons do some or all of the following: a frontal cleave, a tail sweep, a breath ability, and may or may not take flight at some point in the encounter. Sapphiron is no different - he cleaves, he slaps people with his tail, and he will fly around frequently.

So what's different?

In addition to all his dragon-y abilities, our winged guest will also encase people in blocks of ice, blast the entire room with frosty instant-death, deal periodic frost damage to everyone in the room for the entire fight, and summon very powerful blizzards to wreak havoc with your positioning.

Right! So, what are you waiting for? Go poke him with the pointy end.

What to do when facing Sapphiron
First, determine your healers' competency. If they are questionable or relatively weak, you may want to switch to Seal of Command for this fight to make sure you don't kill yourself with kickback. Using your Judgement of Light instead of Judgement of Wisdom may also help out the melee's health, giving the healers a helping hand. Lastly, if it comes to it, make use of your Art of War procs to top yourself and others off. The periodic frost damage combined and the summoned blizzards are a pain to deal with. If your raid's healers are top-notch, continue on cutting yourself for extra damage with Seal of the Martyr / Seal of Blood and judging whatever you like.

Second, always be mindful of your surroundings and position. Sapphiron's cleave is far-reaching - if you are anywhere near his frontal cone, you will get cleaved and you will get one-shot. Likewise, if you're anywhere near his rear cone you will get tail-slapped and you will end up way out of range of the boss and your healers for a bit. Stay between his front and hind legs at all times.

The blizzards cause additional problems for positioning. They wander around the room and deal considerable damage coupled with a movement slowing effect. If a blizzard approaches your position, run through Sapphiron to his other flank. If you do so, you can continue DPS'ing uninterrupted. Watch your health while you're on the other side, you may be momentarily out of healing range. When the blizzard passes your original location, swap back and resume normal functioning. Don't stand in the blizzard, it's generally considered a Bad Thing. It's not quite the Super Bowl of not standing in things, as Gragnarth dubbed Illidari Council (thanks WoW Insider for reminding me of that wonderful forum post), but you definitely need to keep an eye on what's going on around you.

When Sapphiron takes to the air, move out of melee range. Anyone standing near his take-off point will be knocked back after a few seconds. When repositioning, do not stand too near to any of your fellow raiders. The wyrm will shoot two frostbolts at random raid members that will encase them in ice blocks for several seconds, and anyone standing near the targets will take additional frost damage. Once your friends are thoroughly frozen, position yourself behind the ice block, using the raider-cube to shield yourself from Sapphiron's line of sight. Sapphiron will "deep breath" and insta-kill anyone in the room that's not hiding behind or encased in ice. Again, watch your health, and if necessary, throw some heals around. When he's done trying to annihilate you from the air, he'll land in the middle of the room and resume thrashing your tank. Stay away from the head and tail and get back in there.

Rinse, and repeat.

A note on cooldowns - Sapphiron is on the ground for 45 seconds at a time, and less than that in the air. You will likely be able to use your Avenging Wrath every other ground phase. If you, like me, are an engineer and have Hyperspeed Accelerators on your gloves, you can use them every ground phase and still stack them with your wings.

Until next time, this has been another edition of E4AE Boss Spotlight, with your host, Josh!