Drakefire Amulet not required

3.2 landed last Wednesday and Onyxia took off. Is it pretty much the classic fight upgraded for level 80’s  with the addition of some dragonkin adds to give the melee something to do while the ranged are keeping her dotted in phase two.

I took the obligatory pre shot,  well I took a few but you get this one.  Each time I did a screen capture I felt something was ‘missing’ but couldn’t put my finger on it. Then I realised we’re missing fifteen people which makes the buffing area in front of her lair seem oddly empty.  I don’t miss forty man  raiding  it’s  hard enough to organise 25  people and even with the summer break over we’re still struggling to put together  four  balanced raids a week (This was done with 22 so its really 17 people short) but you did feel you were involved in something big and epic when you crowded together before a boss and that the boss was something to be taken seriously because you had to gather such a large group to even stand a chance. Sometimes now we just look ‘lost’ when we gather in a staging area.

Oh and for future reference(mine) the moonkin nearest Onyxia is me the one hanging back is not. You can clearly see my moonkin is much better geared.

Having lost all my screenshots to PC crashes over the years I thought I’d try to find one online for comparision and I hit paydirt. One of my old guildies has stored them on  photobucket,  Not the same shot but this is Argent Eve  gathering  in Stormwind to deliver the head after our first kill. Now that’s a crowd

I’m right there in the front of the shot (the one on the right) still riding a normal mount as I was too poor to afford the epic land mount (the mounts cost more then learning the skill back then).

And for a bit of added nostalgia one in Onyxia’s lair just as we killed her

I don’t think any healer misses 40 man’s, and the sheer amount of green bars that had to have up, though this was before grid came along and made life a bit more bearable I think.  Mine was just as bad because even if I was pew pewing most of the time it only took a couple of dead or Dc’d healers for me to have to role swap and start chucking out Healing Touch.

Oh and if you’re trying to ‘find’ me on the raid windows this is pre name change when I was Silverthorn

That was then

more about “Argent Eve and co. vs. The Soul Flayer“, posted with vodpod

The news about Onyxia made me go all nostalgic so I did a google search for “Argent Eve” the guild I started my raiding career with. It mainly threw up old recruitment threads of players who had once been in the guild, but I also found this gem of a video. The quality is pretty poor (don’t run it full screen it makes it worse) but it is definitely us.

I’m there in Cenarion leggings and my Animist  shoulder healing someone. Though you need to know its me to realise its me.  It was fairly early in my raiding career, not so much that it’s Hakkar we’re slaying (as Zul Gurub was one of our favourite  raids and we ran it forever) but the tabard I’m wearing is Shadow Sentinels the heavy RP guild I was in when I dinged 60. Argent Eve ran a raid group bringing in players from other guilds. I did eventually join them, just in time for them to rename themselves Fir Samhain for The Burning Crusade

I did also find this tribute to the priest tier sets done by Morthgael who transferred off Moonglade when Fir Samhain broke up ( or maybe slightly before). Good to see she’s still playing and still collecting  priest sets, and of course it brought back memories of helping her collect some of that gear.

Good times then and good times now.

Snapshot time

Another entry for the time capsule, a snapshot of gear  as we finally leave Naxx and enter Ulduar. Alright we’re two bosses in to Ulduar already but the screenshots are the gear I had when  3.1 hit the server.

First the look. Thats full tier 7 that is. I think its the first time I managed to wear and use a full tier set while it was still ‘top of the range’.

And just look at mah weapon I got  wraith strikethe first time it dropped for us. One happy boomkin, one not so happy elemental shaman.

There arn’t any spellpower fist weapons in 3.1 so I’ll have to give it up soon. We’ve already had the Guiding Star drop once and I’ll bid on it but  graphics wise its almost as bad as the pink lollipop, though more baby’s rattle.  I do care about my Moonkins street cred you know, and seriously we start off low enough running around as a big antlered owls, and with weapons being the only visible indication (well okay Wraith Strike doesn’t show up out of combat normally) I can get quite riled up about  lollipops or baby rattles rather than  impressive staves. Hmm looking at Wowhead I don’t seem to have much choice its the baby rattle or a minor  upgrade with a  dagger. There are some nice staves that have the same spellpower as the  baby’s rattle but then I lose the offhand frill.  Intensityis probably worth going after though as according to Wowhead the only caster leather gear with hit is three of our tier pieces (double that up for  normal & heroic) while there are 14  non tier pieces of cloth armour with hit to be had. Hits not the only stat obviously but it is kind of important.

Now the character stats. You’ll notice that even though I own the valorous dreamwalker legs I’m not wearing them, the cloth ones, surprise surprise,  have hit on them

so new moonkin 80 was

Str 137

Agi 138

Sta 659

Int 738

Spr 384

Spellpower 1376

Hit 238

Crit 15.76%

Haste 148

If I lost STR and AGI it must be because those screenshots above lack MOTW. Really should have applied it for the moonkin shot as its a nice boost to spirit & int and therefore spellpower. 

Str 95

Agi 96

Sta 968

Int 1008

Spr 464

Spellpower 2055

Hit 276

Crit 24,79%

Haste 282

Just look at that spellpower increase and funny 2k isn’t even a ‘marker’ like 300 was in Classic and 1k was in TBC. I’m not even sure there is a boomkin marker for Wotlk, maybe because of the change to spellpower its not the stat we ’struggle’ to obtain anymore. My haste still sucks compared to some raiding moonkins but I’ve decided haste doesn’t work for me. To get the most out of haste you need to queue casts and I don’t seem to do that very well I’m either too quick with the mashing and get ’spell not ready’ or too slow so there’s no real queue.

I did drop a point from celestial focus so I only have 2% from the talent. I think the 20% haste buff from natures grace compensates if my crit stays high, though I await a final verdict I can understand from the theory casters on that. I also dropped intensity in 3.1. Going to see how I cope without it.

I picked up two points in brambles and saw thorns  jump from around 4% of the tanks damage to 9%.  Dependent on fights and tank class obviously. Now I just have to get back into the habit of casting it.

A moment in time

It’s been a week since Ari dinged 80. Having done a couple of heroics, earnt some rep and been in Naxx  she’s actually got some level 80 gear. Nothing amazingly special but this seems a better  time to take a ’snapshot’ of her 80 starter stats than last week when she was still in t6 equivalent.

The way they tweaked talents in WotlK her stats in Night Elf form arn’t her ‘working’ stats The Night Elf one is  so I can see how much certain talents scale as my gear improves and so I can see what the gear looks like. Moonkin looks the same at 80 as it did at 40. Below are the way they update in moonkin form

• Str 137
• Agi 138
• Sta 659
• Int 738
• Spr 384
• Spellpower 1376
• Hit 238
• Crit 15.76%
• Haste 148

Comparing that to her 70 stats

• Str 79—–137
• Agi 81—–138
• Sta 525—–659
• Int 478—–738
• Spr 233—–384
• Spellpower 1146—–1376
• Hit 153(12%)—–238(9%)
• Crit 23%—–15%
• Haste 8(2%)—–148(4.5%)

Obviously all the str & agi changes are just from leveling and imp MOTW I don’t have any on my gear.

Whats more worrying is the spirit,  both stamina and intellect get around 500 from gear,  spirit is lagging behind with only 174. No wonder I’m seeing such a ’small return on intensity and innervate.

My crit makes an old boomkin cry

Most of the gear seems to be haste and spellpower and with that low mana regen I can’t actually keep up with the haste I had which is why I specced out of Celestial Focus and into Dreamstate last night. Neither CF or Imp Moonkin show up on the character sheet so with both I had 6% before 6% I had on gear. (I switched out a cloak last night to get more hit which is why the current figure is 4.5%).  So I’ve dropped from 12% haste to 8%, which is still a lot more than the 2% I had at 70. Hopefully I can now maintain some nukage without going OOM.

The gear list for future reference

• Cowl of the Dire Troll
• Choker of Binding
• **Thunderheart Shoulderpads
• Dark Soldier Cape
• Robes of Mutation
• Storming Vortex Bracers
• Awakened Handguards
• **Starfire Waistband
• Leggings of the Winged Serpent
• **Naturewarden Treads
• Brunnhildar Runed Ring
• **Fused Nethergon Band
• Rune of Infinite Power
• Will of the Red Dragonflight
• **The Maelstroms Fury
• Telestra’s Journal
• **Ivory Idol of the Moongoddess

The “**” ones are TBC gear.

Echoes of Future Past

Its about as official as it gets 3.0.2 is coming Tuesday. So as promised in this post I’m archiving my level 70 stats so I can look back on them from the giddy heights of 80, not to mention on Wednesday when I respec.

First off my ‘naked’ stats. No buffs not even MOTW

and now the raid ready ones. Hmm that haste rating is pathetic, but then its not my haste gear. Well haste ‘gear’ may be a bit over optimistic as all I really have in the way of haste gear is the Belt of the crescent moon so even at my best that less than 3% haste

The gear I’m wearing

going behind a cut as it gets very long