I’m going to be using our Karazhan run from Friday as an example. I’m also going to link the anonymous report so that people’s actual character names are not shown.

Step One - Logging

WWS collects its data from the combat log. You know, that log that is hidden behind your General chat window? Yep, that’s the one. WoW doesn’t record all that information normally, so you have to actually tell it to record it. You do that by either:

• downloading and running an addon like LoggerHead;

• typing: /combatlog

If you use LoggerHead, you get asked when you zone anywhere for the first time if you want to enable logging for that zone. Can be interesting if you are flying from one end of the continent to another.
For the non-addon users, you will see a default message that says: Combat logging is enabled to …\World of Warcraft\Logs\WoWCombatLog.txt

Step Two - Fight!

I trust you don’t need any explanation here. Just totally forget that you are recording everything that happens (and I mean everything).

Step Three - Run the Client

Go to the WWS website (www.wowwebstats.com) and click on the big link:

This will download and run a Java Applet. You might have to click on some security warnings, so double check that they look OK before running.
When you start it up, you will see something like this:

If you have run it previously, then your last Caption will be in there.
Click on ‘Add a Combat Log’ and it should take you straight to your WoW/Logs directory, where you can see what logs are what. But first …

Step Four - Truncate

What happens if you enable logging on a whole lot of fights? My current WoWCombatLog.txt file has about three months of data in it (roughly 120MB in size). We don’t want to upload all that data (and the WWS client has a 24-hour restriction on the log) so we need to truncate the data.

Open the file in Notepad (or your other favourite text editor):

Dont worry if the first few lines of your file are blank - this freaked me out at first, but if you scroll down like you see I have done, youw ill see the data appear.

We need to find where the combat that you want to upload starts. I was fortunate in that the run I wanted to upload was the only thing I had logged that day (29th August) so I did a search for ‘8/29′. If you copy from this point to the end of your file (or the end of where you wanted to upload, if this is the last thing you recorded before coming to upload, then go to the end of the file) you can paste the data into a new text file and call it something meaninful.

Save this file and go back to your WWS Client window.

Step Five - Upload

You might have to close the open file dialog and open it again to get the new file you created to show up (and if you saved it to another directory, you will have to navigate to it):

Click Open. You can enter a new comment or title for this file in this screen, as shown below:

Once you like what you are calling it, click Host Report.

It won’t take too long to upload (depending on the size of your log) and once it’s finished, your browser window will open at something like this:

Step Six - Review

[example link: http://wowwebstats.com/qursg5tivaejs]
You will be taken to your private report screen. In the [manage report] window, you can see a link to the public version, which gives anonymous names to group members.

As you can see, this page defaults to show the Damage Out from the raid, but there are tabs for Damage In and Heals. There is also a dropdown menu where you can select the boss (and even the boss attempt) that you want to look at. You can also click a players (actor, WWS calls it) name to go to their individual stats, like so:

That’s a whole lotta information! Basically, without going further into detail, you can see every point of damage that this player caused, what the spell/ability name was, how much it hit for as a min/max/average, etc. Some of those spells are unique Karazhan abilities (from the books you pick up).

You can also see a player’s ‘pets’. In the example above, you can see my Imp and also my Eye of Kilrogg. Clicking on their names will take to you their own stat page.

Deaths are listed there as well, at the times (Server Time) that they occurred.

The amount of information that this site provides is staggering, and I find it’s an awesome tool for refining your playstyle. For some reason, WWS shows my talent tree as 41/0/20, whereas I respecced prior to this fight to 40/0/21 (Mal/Ruin), but this may be due to Armory updates.

You don’t need to be in a you-beaut raid group to run this either, or need permission from your fellow members. Some people might take offence at seeing their names next to sub-par results, but thats what the Anonymous feature is for.

You can also do it while running around Elwynn Forest, if you so wish. The number of different people that appear in your combat log makes no impact to WWS: they will all be shown.

Good luck with your WWS reporting! Missed something? Am I wrong? Let me know below

Shas hasn’t done much this week. A few dailies here and there have been the highlights of her WoW-time as we get into baby delivery mode on the RL front. Last night, however …

Step through the CoT portal with me, back to January 2007 ………

The scene is Blackrock Depths. Shastarian has just completed a run of BRD (finishing all but one of her quests there) with her current guild, SoulJaz, and getting attuned to the green swirling portal that’s called Molten Core. She is around the 55-57 level mark, and very excited that she can, one day, walk through that portal into the world of raiding

….. aaaaaaand back out of the portal.

Present day: Shastarian hasn’t set foot in or near Molten Core since that day. Last night, her enchanter, Shasmo, reached the lofty peaks of 265 enchanting skill, which means both Fiery enchants and the awesome druid trinket: Smoking Heart of the Mountain. The only thing that is preventing Shasmo from making said Heart is: a Blood of the Mountain, which grows inside Molten Core and various Dark Iron Ore deposits.

Shastarian went looking for some deposits, but found nary a Heart. She was so close to BRD, and apparently there are some deposits inside …
Oh, hello! You’re the chick who stands there all the time, handing out the quests to get attuned to Molten Core. I remember you. Oh, whats this? You can TAKE me to Molten Core? Why not?

Oh, I need to be in a raid group? Hrm, lets see … <convert to raid> done! Lets go!

Oh, what? You can’t do Molten Core on Heroic? Pfft, that’s just silly. OK, Normal mode selected, lets go!

-

Whoa. This looks sooooo cool (in a OMGEVERYTHINGISONFIRE kind of way). What the–? These giants are only level 62 elites? Pfft.

Um … just in case, let’s equip a Soulstone. You never know …..

(for the record: I can see that I read the tooltip wrong. These guys are level ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY TWO ELITES!!! My Goodness they hit hard.)

Now I can honestly say that I have been inside Molten Core. Now to find a couple of foolish 70s to come through it with me to farm these Hearts. I figure that I only need a decent tank, and my resident awesome Druid healer. One DPS should be enough, right? Right?

The very first time I go into Alterac Valley

My Hunter’s Ghost Cat takes the lookout!

My Rogue, LeGhost, finishes a questline from LBRS and comes face to face with a dragon who he though he was Honoured with …

My Dwarf Hunter makes use of his new Matrix Trap whilst taming.

I tried to get onto the side to get a better look, but was too stout :-(. You can see it on my minimap, though.

Now Shastarian can pretend to be a Rogue! Thanks, Gruul!

1. Broke again: after purchasing my epic mount and training, I then proceeded to trade Badges for nether Vortexes, and got a tailor to make Belt of Blasting for me, replacing an old Moroes drop.
2. Re-gemming so that I’m not abominably over the spell-hit cap has seen me reach 201 out of 202. GRRRRRRRRR
3. OMG Swift Blue Gryphons are so fast!
4. New Guild: Cellar Door. Nothing wrong with Void at all, it’s just they stopped recruiting for some reason, which meant that our chances of seeing BT/MH went to a divide-by-zero.
5. Nearly have enough Badges again for Soulcloth Pants. Just gotta decide if I should start gearing for spell crit or go for more damage (am at 1027 with Fel Armor on atm).
6. Haven’t had time yet to go DPS test these trinket setups. Hopefully this week.
7. While I respect those of you who can do it, I will not be making videos of myself for public consumption. I have too much respect for the meals you eat to run the risk of you bringing it up again

A Real Post ™ coming soon! I promise!

For awhile now, I my trinket line-up has been my Icon of the Silver Crescent and Quagmirran’s Eye. The Eye procs for me quite often, often enough to make a noticable difference to my DPS. But now …

… now …

… I have a new trinket. I may swap the Eye back in for certain situations, but I will need to do some major DPS testing to work out the best trinket to use for when.

What’s the new trinket? None other than …

Darkmoon Card:Crusade!!

YaY! Finally, after months of collecting, I found a cheap (circa 500G) Ace of Blessings card to complete my set. And, as luck would have it, the Faire was set up outside Shattrah City this month, so a quick hop, step and a jump over and I have it!

Bask in it’s glory! Revel in it’s awesomeness! Learn from its … learn-ed .. ness *sigh*

[Darkmoon Card: Crusade]

This weekend, between raids, I will be heading out to Dr Boom with my Eye and Card and see what my DPS is like when I swap one for another (my Icon is tied to my Shadowbolt Macro, so I don’t want to give that up yet). Another few hours of messing with WWS *sigh* should give me an indication of which I will want to use for what fights. Wish me luck!

All Drains

#showtooltip
/cast [modifier:ctrl,nochanneling:Drain Mana] Drain Mana;
/cast [modifier:alt,nochanneling:Drain Life] Drain Life;
/cast [nomodifier,nochanneling:Drain Soul(Rank 1)] Drain Soul(Rank 1);

Ah! This macro, while looking similar to previous macros that I’ve listed, introduces a new conditional operator: nochanneling:spellname. As you might be able to guess, this checks to see if we are currently channelling spellname, and, if we are, it doesn’t go any further. This has the benefit of saving mana in case you activate the macro in the middle of another cast of the same spell. Your mana efficiency goes waaaaay down if you keep casting Drain Life while it’s still channelling, and you get no additional benefit.
So, the macro lets us use Drain Mana if we are holding down the <ctrl> key, Drain Life if we hold down the <alt> key and Drain Soul (Rank 1) if we don’t hold down anything. (Drain Soul’s DPS is a pittance at high levels, and you should only use Rank 1 in all situations).

Minion Re-Summon

So, you’ve specced far enough into the Demonology tree to get Fel Domination, and it’s close relative Master Summoner. All your minions now take 4 seconds less to summon, bringing the total time to 6 seconds, but with Fel Dom, that gets slashed to only 0.5 sec. Not quite insta-cast, so you can’t do it on the run, but very helpful.
Raiding Warlocks know that when your pet dies, all the buffs that were on it are not there when it’s resummoned. This is a major PITA when you consider that the +stam/+int buff on your FelGuard was giving you extra spell damage. So, how can we help the situation?
This macro (build for Felguards, replace Felguard with appropriate minions name):

#showtooltip Summon Felguard
/run [pet=exists] PetAbandon();
/cast Fel Domination
/cast Summon Felguard

So, when we activate this macro, it checks to see if we have a pet. If we do, then it runs the PetAbandon function, which … abandons out pet (dismisses it). Not being Hunters and relying on our minions feelings to perform their duties, we don’t care about dismissing them.
Next, it casts Fel Domination, reducing the cast time of our minions by 5.5 seconds. If you took Master Summoner along with FD (and you should have), then the minion summoning spell will only take 0.5 seconds.
Then, it summons your minion (Felguard in the example.)
Note: I like to only use FD when I have a pet out, so I put this line above the /run … command:

/stopmacro [nopet]

and change the (now third) line to read:

/run PetAbandon();

Now, when you dismiss your minion, it keeps all the buffs that it had when it was dismissed. Also, when it’s resummoned, it comes back with full health and mana. Very useful if your pet is near death and you want to keep him around for longer.

One Button Emergency Heal

#showtooltip Master Healthstone
/use Master Healthstone
/use Super Health Potion
/use Bottled Nethergon Vapor

All three of these items restore health. All three are on seperate cooldowns. And you can mash this button if you like to use each item in sequence if you are in that state of “OMGINEEDHEALZNOWNOWNOWOMGOMG”.
Very easy to add in other items, too, but watch the 255 character limit! There is a nice variation of this macro at wowwiki.com that’s called BearPot. Designed for druids, this lets you use all different types of healing items, and by using the item number instead of the name, you can fit more in there.

If you have a macro that I haven’t written about yet and you feel like letting me know about it, go for it! Either comment or use the contact page, any way will do. If you think there’s a better way of writing one than how I have, tell me that, too

Shas out.

So I wont (except to say that this is my proposed WotLK level 80 spec (for the time being) :P)

I’ve been trying out the FelGuard, yet again (*sigh*) and have found him to be quite useful in getting my dailies done on the Isle (set him to aggressive on the Dawnchaser boats and let the SoC/Howl of Terror fly!) but I don’t think I want to raid with him again at the moment.

For one thing: I miss my DoT’s and de/buffs! It’s such a PITA to have to Life Tap (not to mention Health Funnel) when I’ve come to rely on Dark Pact to keep going and going like the Energizer Bunny. The extra stamina/int/spell damage is nice, but I haven’t seen a dramatic boost in DPS since respeccing. I ran a Heroic Underbog the other night with some friends, and was doing (self-buffed and with GotW) around the 500DPS mark on the bosses (thats including the FG damage) when I’d be rocking around the 600 mark or so as Aff. It might be the group makeup for that particular run, I don’t know, but I can’t see myself sticking with this for the long term. More power to those of you who can, though, and I may be missing something totally obvious in either my rotation (CoE/A, Corruption, Immolate and SB Spam) or the way I micromanage Haaghun. Either way, I realise that I am, still, an afflock to the core.

My significant other has a Mage that she has managed to get up to 53 without breaking too many¹ keyboards along the way. We were rockin’ it up in Un’Goro Crater the other day, killing Gorillas for fun, when I asked her if she wanted to have a go at a 70 character, specifically a level 70 Warlock. After a few simple instructions that I got in trouble for voicing, she was off, dot, dot, dot, dark pact, dot, dot, dotting and I was following on her mage. She got the hang of it quite quickly (she has watched me play for awhile now) and seemed to like it. I suggested we take Shastarian over to the Isle of QD, but she wasn’t keen on the idea of playign with mobs that could actually kill her. I’m hoping she’ll come around, though, because I want her to take Shastarian on a Karazhan raid one week. I am not sure if she will get to level 70 with the will to raid, but there’s no harm that I can see in letting her taste what it’s like (and our group meshes that well that she won’t be in (much) danger of wiping the raid).

¹ - 2 at last count.

Image courtesy of http://www.cyclonefanatic.com/forum/cf-archive-bin/5193-emus-kangaroos-cannot-walk-backwards.html/

Bonus points if you get the funny.

There’s nothing more annoying than running from one fight to another and having people demanding warlock summons because they are lost. We have asked everyone to go in after a full clear and get to know the place. Most of the running around that you do for the quests in there will have you finding out how to get to point B from point A, so I don’t understand why people still don’t know which way to turn once they get out from behind the bookcase that leads to Illhoof, or after Aran.

So we made our “Veterans” group, some of whom I hadn’t run with in awhile, but who’s skills and abilities I didn’t question one bit. First pull was on time (for once) at 7:30pm, and we were off!

No Paladins at all, so we didn’t have Blessing of Salvation at all. Bummer, must remember to watch the aggro carefully. As it turned out, that aspect wasn’t a problem at all, since our tanks are totally awesome and can build up enough threat to let us DPSers let loose.

Bam! Bam! Bam! Bosses fell left, right and center. We got Curator down totally before he finished his first Evocation, which we were all excited about. An accidental pull of Aran before we were all ready saw a wipe, but we regrouped and knocked that sucka down! And at 11:30pm, a mere 3 hours4 hours (thanks Moz) after our first pull, we saw Nightbane hit the dust and yield up his loot. All bosses down (we don’t count the animal bosses), spirits high!

If it wasn’t for the fact that we had a scheduled run of Zul Aman on Saturday night, we would have powered on through that. But it was all good. Someone suggested Heroic MgT, and when I confessed that I hadn’t finished that instance on Normal, we powered through that, too! We ran out of time to do it on Heroic, but no matter; I finally got that quest finished and attuned.

Saturday night, I had bought my flasks/consumables/etc and was ready to go, but was skipped over in favour of the organiser’s friends who wanted to come along. I was, to put it midly, pissed off. I ended up doing my dailies and them bumming around on my shaman and rogue while I calmed down.

Seriously thinking of respeccing to Felguard and not letting myself spec back to Aff for a few weeks. Everytime I give him a go, I get bored, he feels clunky, so I go back to Aff. Depending on what kind of mood I’m in this evening, I think I might end up bringing Haaghun out from retirement.

Funny note: I have made myself a Runecloth Robe, that suits my SSO Tabard really well. I saw out that my robe (minus Tabard) matches the Clerics in the Chess event exactly, and all I am missing to look just like them is a white chapeau. Any ideas on where I can pick on of those up? (The one from SM is red *cry*)
Edit: image below:

Warlock

* Aftermath (Destruction) - Now a 2-point talent, down from 5.
* All demon abilities and spells will automatically be learned as pets gain levels. Demon Master trainers will be removed.
* Blood Pact now works raid-wide (not just in party).
* Cataclysm (Destruction) - Now also increases your chance to hit with Destruction spells by 1% per point.
* Curse of Recklessness will no longer prevent Fear effects, only prevent NPCs from fleeing (e.g. at low health).[Shastarian: boo! No more Fear-kiting in Instances!]
* Dark Pact: Tooltip updated to be more consistent with other similar effects.
* Demon Armor - Now increases healing done by spells and effects by 20%, but no longer has in-combat health regeneration.
* Demon Skin, Demon Armor and Fel Armor are no longer Magic effects and cannot be dispelled.
* Fel Armor - Now increases your spell damage equal to 30% of your total Spirit, but no longer increases healing done by spells and effects by 20%.
* Fel Stamina (Demonology) has been merged with Fel Intellect into Fel Vitality.
* Howl of Terror now costs 15% of base mana.
* Improved Curse of Weakness (Affliction) is now “Frailty” - Increases the amount of attack power reduced by your Curse of Weakness spell by 10/20%, and increases the amount of armor reduced by your Curse of Recklessness by 10/20%.
* Improved Enslave Demon (Demonology) is now a Tier 5 talent, up from Tier 4.
* Improved Lash of Pain (Destruction) and Improved Firebolt (Destruction) have been merged into one talent, Demonic Power.
* Improved Shadow Bolt (Destruction) - Now increases damage by your next Shadow damage spells by 3/6/9/12/15%, down from 4/8/12/16/20%.
* Mana Feed: Tooltip updated to be more consistent with other similar effects.
* Master Demonologist – Felguard (Demonology) - Now increases all damage by 1/2/3/4/5%, and reduces all damage done to you by 1/2/3/4/5%.
* Master Demonologist – Imp (Demonology) - Now increases Fire damage by 1/2/3/4/5%, and critical hit chance with Fire spells by 1/2/3/4/5%.
* Master Demonologist – Succubus (Demonology) - Now increases Shadow damage by 1/2/3/4/5%, and critical hit chance with Shadow spells by 1/2/3/4/5%.
* Master Demonologist (Demonology) - Most effects have been altered.
* New Talent: Demonic Empowerment (Demonology) - Grants your Summoned Demon power for a short time.
* New Talent: Eradication (Affliction) - Your Corruption, Siphon Life and Curse of Agony ticks have a 5/10/15% chance to increase your spell haste by 20% for 8 sec. This effect has a 10 second cooldown.
* New Talent: Molten Core (Destruction) - Your Shadow spells and damage over time effects have a 5/10/15% chance to increase the damage of your Fire spells by 10% for 6 sec.
* Pyroclasm (Destruction) - Now also includes Conflagrate.
* Shadowfury (Destruction) - Can now be cast while moving. Stun duration increased to 3 seconds, up from 2.
* Soul Link (Demonology) is now an 11-point talent (used to be a 31-point talent), but the 5% bonus damage from this talent has been removed. In addition, the damage absorbed by Soul Link is now 15%, down from 20%.
* Soul Siphon (Affliction): Now also increases the damage of your Drain Soul.
* Suppression (Affliction) is now a 3-point talent, down from 5. Now increases your chance to hit with Affliction spells by 1/2/3%, down from 1/2/3/4/5%.
* Unstable Affliction (Affliction): Silence effect reduced to 3 seconds, down from 5.

And also:

The combat log now differentiates between a spell failure due to resistance and spell failure due to missing the target. Where once both events reported as a resist; a spell missing the target is now reported as a miss.

I really, really, REALLY want to get in on this beta!

(Using my WWS Report thats found here http://wowwebstats.com/qe1yqf4ls4zdk) as a working example.

Looking at the above image, we can see that my DPS time was 4 minutes and 45 seconds. This translates into 285 seconds.
All DoTs tick every 3 seconds, so we divide the number of seconds by 3 to see how many ticks we should have.

285 / 3 = 95

Now we look at the actual amount of DoT ticks I had, per DoT:

Corruption: 89 [93.6%]
Siphon Life: 92 [96.8%]
Unstable Affliction: 87 [91.5%]

In a perfect world, all these DoTs would have had 95 ticks, however, circumstances do change. Two Dots might finish at the same time, one might finish in the middle of a ShadowBolt cast, or during a GCD. I am happy enough with these results, even though I do understand that they are not a real world example. I will be recording all Boss Fights from here out, and will attempt to analyse them in the same way.

What is a good number to aim for? I can’t really answer that, since I haven’t collected any actual boss-fight data, and I dont want to use just my Dr Boom test. Currently, I am going to be aiming for a 90% DoT Uptime, since that’s my bread and butter as Affliction. I won’t cancel a current SB cast to refresh a DoT, nor will I refresh a DoT that hasn’t expired yet. I was fortunate in this test in that I rarely got two DoTs finishing at the same time. I will see tonight before shutdown what happens when I introduce Immolate into the equation.

Something wrong with my math? Did I assume and make an ass of myself? Let me know!

Last night, I had nothing important to do after dailies, so I headed out to Dr. Boom and proceeded to wail away.

The parameters I had set for myself were:

1. Only curse with Curse of Shadows
2. Only Shadow spells to be used
3. Test will run for the duration of one (1) Curse of Shadows (5 minutes)
4. DS/SnF spec will be 0/21/40 - http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=IZbxszIbzZEx0tr0khhi
5. Afflock spec will be 41/2/18 - http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=IVMrcRctVtcokZxx0tM [Edit: fixed]

DS/SnF

This test was probably the least Real-World in my eyes, as I didn’t move from my safe spot in the entire 5 minutes. In theory, it would also be the most boring, too, but the reality was I was squeaking over Vent about my 5600 Shadowbolt crits, especially when I crit two or even three times in a row. With the DS/SnF spec, my crit got up to just over 14%, which is still waaaaay too low.
Link to WWS Report
The problem with this test is that WWS shows the fight going for 9 minutes. I had a false start and ended up waiting for a long time for an Orc Hunter to kill him off, but after a few minutes I realised that it wouldn’t make any difference if he was attacking the good Doctor at the same time.
DPS: 870
SB%: 100%
Crit%: 17%
Miss: 3.8%

Afflock

Normally, I include Immolate in my rotation, but for this test, I wanted only to use Shadow spells. Affliction has the additional bonus to the Curse of Shadows, making it 13% instead of the normal 10% increase to shadow damage. In my Affliction spec, I have Dark Pact (less healing from Life Taps required) and I still have Improved Shadow Bolt.
Link to WWS Report
I have had the most experience with this style of fighting. Most of my DoTs are Instant cast, meaning I can cast them on the run, if I need to be.
DPS: 823
SB%: 53%
Crit%: 15%
Miss: 0

Conclusion

For an increase of 47DPS, I make myself more vunerable to lost DPS in mobile fights, lose alot of raid buffs/debuffs. At my current gear level, I will be staying Afflock specced (and to be honest, if I can raid in Tier 5/6 raids as Affliction, I will). Although, I will be recording data from boss fights as much as I can from now on, so I may find that DS/SnF is better in the long term.

PS: An interesting thing to note is that as DS/SnF, my tooltip crit chance is 14.56%, and WWS showed me critting 17% of the time. Whereas as Affliction, my tooltip crit is 11.39% and WWS said I critted 15% of the time (granted, I cast less SBs as Aff than DS/SnF).

It’s been explained in alot of places, by lots of people. WowWiki has a good write up on it, found here. In essence, though, Warlocks are going to want to have a +Spell Hit Rating of 202 to reach the ‘cap’ (Against a level 73 raid boss, you have a 17% chance to miss. 202 HR gives you +16% chance to hit, leaving the unavaiodable 1% to miss). Affliction Warlocks can put 5/5 into Suppression, a Tier-1 Affliction talent, but this only affects Affliction spells (Curses, Corruption, Drains, etc). Now, you can go into Kara without having hit this cap, but you should gear for spell hit first and foremost, because it does most definately improve your DPS; whatever spec you may be.

I have been striving to hit the cap, gemming everything I have that has a socket with +8 Spell hit gems, and slowly obtaining gear that brings me up. On Friday night, I got the last piece of gear that brings me to the lofty peaks of Spell Hit Rating.

Moroes was kind enough to drop Brooch of Unquenchable Fury, which has a healthy +spell hit rating of 15. Combined with my gems and my Jewel of Infinite Possibilities, I now have 206 spell hit rating (slightly over the cap).

I am not going to be re-gemming my gear anytime soon, because until I get more gear that has +spell hit, if I take out a +8 spell hit gem, then I go below the cap again, and I am worse of than I am now. However, my main focus is now changed to be +spell crit and +spell damage (and maybe +spell haste). My low, low crit rating of 11.30% is shocking, so I won’t be able to try out the Shadow Mage spec just yet, but soon, with some ZA, TK and SSC runs, I could be in a position to start killing off my Succubus.

I did get pulled into a Magtheridon attempt on Friday night, and was one of only two warlocks there. Both of us kept getting yelled at for not taking care of the Infernals, even though we tried to explain that we can only Banish one at a time, and Fear one at a time, and that doing this eats into our DPS considerably. As this was a guild/pug group, due to us not having the numbers on the night, we kept having difficulty taking down the last two warlocks, and the main tank wasn’t grabbing aggro from Mags fast enough, so he always went for a healer as soon as he released. Not a fun time, really. Hopefully, we can get a few more guildies to come with next time, who understand each others skills and limitations.

I have been levelling my baby shaman up, with the intent of having her as a raid healer at 70. Currently, she is Elemental spec, but at level 40 I want to take her to Enhancement with Duel Wield. Once I have done my dailies (or all the dailies I can stand to do) on Shastarian, I generally log onto her for an hour or so until RL intervenes.

Patch 2.4.3? I dunno, let’s see what the FINAL patch notes are. I will be holding off buying my shaman her mount, even if she hits 40 before the patch comes out, just for the chance of a reduction in mount training cost. That’s about all that interests me (I am unsure if the CoS/CoEl change will stay).

Thanks for sticking with me over this break. I promise you that I will try and do something interesting enough to write about in the future. Maybe even try my hand at some Pee Vee Pee!

Having been through Karazhan many times since then, and being able to confidently down every boss (save Nightbane) each week, I can still say that going to Kara is just as exciting as it was way back then.

Every gearing guide I have read says that the priority for stats for the raiding Warlock are something like the following (assuming Affliction spec):

Spell Hit > Spell Damage > Stamina > Intellect > Spell Haste > Spirit

Most gearing guides you find will say that you need to hit the “magic” spell hit cap of 202, which gives you a 99% chance to hit mobs 3 levels higher than you (level ?? mobs (raid bosses) are calculated as being 3 levels higher than you). Whenever I got a piece of gear that had sockets, I would gem it with Great Dawnstones (+8 spell hit rating), ignoring the socket bonus. Now, since then I have decided that I need some blue gems to reach both a socket bonus and a meta gem requirement, so I have socketed some epic gems that I won from heroics, but even then, I was focusing on spell hit.

That time … is over.

Karazhan last week (Queen’s Birthday long weekend for (most of) Australia) saw Netherspite offer up his Jewel of Infinite Possibilities trinket, in exchange for his life. After dragging my Mindblade across his neck, I was extremely excited to win the roll on this. It replaces my Orb of the Soul-Eater for boss fights, which means I lose a little bit of spell damage, but I gain stamina, intellect and … spell hit.

This combination of spell hit from gear, gems and enchants puts me at a total spell hit rating of … 199.

I am 3 +spell hit rating away from hitting the cap.

Currently, 199 spell hit gives me approximately 15.77% extra chance to hit, instead of the 16% that 202 spell hit rating gives. be.imba.hu shows me this table:

(as a result of seeing this, and totally forgetting I had those 3 points in Suppression, a respec is in the cards).

Now, I can start to focus more on +spell damage, as well as +spell haste gear.

One last thing. It’s strange, and from the be.imba.hu website. It’s, well, … I’ll put the image below, and see if you can work it out. Just remember, the only raid I have gotten gear from has been Karazhan.

For some reason, be.imba.hu thinks that I should skip Gruuls/Mag, and that I will do well in BT/Mt Hyjal.

LF24M, BT or MH, then GTG

Zul’Gurub is a level 60+, 25-man raid instance in Stranglethorn Vale. It’s much like Zul’Farrak, in that it’s Troll based, and an outdoor instance, so mounting is available. It also has ties, lore-wise, to Sunken Temple, but that’s neither here nor there. For strategies, lore and other information, go check out wowwiki.com/ZG

Most of the mobs are level 60-62, as is the norm with a raid instance set for level 60’s. I had no issues with hitting these guys (being level 64 and having enough +Hit raiting), although some of them were able to resist my poisons pretty well. We didn’t have any troubles with our DPS or healing, although the tank was finding it difficult to hold aggro. We didn’t down every single boss, and alot of the raid died to Hakkar (deciding to DPS him down quick instead of getting poisoned and doing it the normal way). In any event, a fun time was had by all.

We had a level 70 warlock with us who was carrying some gear that made me scratch my head. I didn’t want to talk to him about it, since I haven’t been with this guild for very long and don’t want to come across as a know-it-all, but maybe I should.

This warlock has a mixture of quest greens and blues for gear. Their mainhand weapon is a sword, which is fair enough. Shastarian Herself ran with the Greatsword from Murmur for awhile before getting her Mindblade.
This sword, however, was this: Edge of the Cosmos. With an Icy enchant.

About the only time I ever melee since level 10 or so is during Kara, with those annoying mobs after Curator who you can’t cast spells on. Sometimes I’ll whale on a banished mob, just to be funny, but I won’t go out of my way to gear for melee. I don’t know of any warlock who does. If we wanted to be melee casters, we would have rolled shaman.

Now, to be fair, I haven’t spoken with this warlock about it. He may have a very nice caster weapon that he uses for important stuff, and just pulls this Edge out for silly occasions. I myself am planning on roll on the Suneater from Heroic Mechanar if I am ever there with a group who doesnt need it (one of our tanks has ground his way to Exalted by running through there, waiting for it to drop, so if I can get it, I will tease him with it) but I certainly wont be trying to raid with it, or even do my dailies.

What would you do in a situation like this? It doesn’t directly affect me, since I don’t raid with this guild (yet) on my warlock, but I do feel a responsibility to help this warlock learn abit more about his class. Im confused. Any ideas?

With the exception of the previously-mentioned Quagmirran’s Eye trinket, I am now fully epic’d out. I only had a few pieces of gear to obtain for me to get to this position, and I collected them in various ways over the weekend.

Friday Night - Karazhan

Friday night saw myself going through Kara yet again. We skipped Attumen and Maiden again, as some people tend to like the more fast-paced race-style on the Friday night, followed by the ‘cleanup’ over the rest of the weekend. Moroes went down clutching his heart (or the place where his heart should be), screaming that we weren’t expected, nothing was set out, he wasn’t even dressed! etc. Illhoof suffered the same fate, and managed to kill our holy priest twice in the chains during the one fight (2 X Soulstones FTW!).

We decided that we would go the all-out approach to Aran, instead of the more conservative approach of slow DPS until after the polymorph. The danger of this approach is that you might get the elementals during polymorph, and that can make things interesting. We had two warlocks for this run, so we thought that we should be able to fear/banish enough until they despawned or Aran died his second death.
Wipe #1 happened for reasons unknown, we got him down a fair way and yes, got elementals just before polymorph, but we were able to fear/banish beforehand, so they didn’t cause us problems. I think that we had just one or two that died and started a chain-reaction.
Second time around, we got the elementals during polymorph, but we were able to regroup successfully and take Aran down in record time. I am constantly surprised by the amount of DPS that we are able to pour out; a month ago we wouldn’t have dreamed of doing Aran this way.

We wiped on Prince. Four times. Gave up, lol.

The loot gods were nice to me that night. Big Bad Wolf decided that he would reward me after “hood”-ing me twice during the fight (I was the only one who got “hooded” that survived, everyone else took a hit and went down splat) by dropping Trial-Fire Trousers. I managed to win this roll, even though I rolled a 1 (:D). Yay! Curator was a pushover, and dropped some crap that was overshadowed by the Tier 4 glove token for Warlocks/Mage/Hunter. I lost the roll on this, though, but the mage who won was only new to our raids, and after some discussion with the Loot Master (unbeknowst to me), he decided to let me have them.

Here is where it gets icky.

After Chess, we all took a 5 minute break. I grabbed a port to Shatt City, to turn in this token and get my Tier 4 gloves (which, as it turned out, aren’t as good as my current gloves), and I thought, while I’m here, I might port to Ironforge and buy 3 Great Dawnstones for the pants. I didn’t recall then that the +8 spell hit gems were called Great Dawnstones, and ended up buying, and socketing, 3 x + Hit gems, for melee. I realised what had happened when I saw my +spell hit hadn’t gone up, and I screamed. Loudly. 160 Gold gone, just like that. I went back to the Auction House and there were no +spell hit gems, so I ended up getting some + spell haste gems for the meantime. I was down to 22 Silver, since I had to sell my vendor trash to get the money to buy the proper gems. I was fuming.

Saturday

Didn’t happen. Had RL things to do all day

Sunday

Ran some Heroics for badges, etc. Bought my new head piece, Mana-Binders Cowl, and chucked a +8 spell hit gem in there (yes, I found one).

During Heroic Underbog, the boss that is second-last (the one who tamed the druid :P) dropped a Lambent Chrysoprase gem, which no-one but me wanted. I stuck that into my shoulder piece, replacing a +8 spell hit gem, but getting the socket bonus of +3 spell hit, so that worked out better. Coming along to the end boss, she also dropped the exact same gem! Yay! This one went into my Chestpiece, for the exact same reasons/socket bonus.
Now I can look for a meta gem to fit my head piece. I am looking for one that requires only 2 blue gems and some yellow gems (since that is all I have at the moment, lol). Anyone got any ideas on which meta gem I should choose?

The end boss decided that he was going to drop his Eye, which gives the following stats:
Equip: Increases damage and healing done by magical spells and effects by up to 37
Equip: Your harmful spells have a chance to increase your spell haste rating by 320 for 6 seconds

The +spell damage is nice, and is the reason I rolled on this trinket, even though it’s only a rare. I haven’t had a whole lot to do with +spell haste until now …

I’m still hoping to get out to Dr Boom and do some tests with this trinket, test it’s proc rate for myself, etc, but here is the lowdown so far, based off running Heroic Underbog last night and Gruul’s on the weekend:
It procs off Shadowbolt hits, Dot hits (not ticks, as far as I can tell), anything that can be called a “harmful spell”. Lasting only 6 seconds, it changes my ShadowBolt cast time from 2.5 seconds to 2.06 seconds. Not a great deal, I hear you say, but that’s .44 seconds that can add up over time.
The proc rate is kinda low. When I get to have a go at Dr. Boom, I’ll have a better idea of it’s proc rate and DPS increases/decreases.

Looking in my bank now, I have 4 trinkets that are sitting there. I can’t bring myself to throw any of the them away, because some are situationally useful. There’s one that’s just an on-use +spell damage, one that increases my +spell crit rating and gives an on-crit-hit chance to increase spell damage by 225, and my Violet Eye Trinket, with +36 stam and +45 arcane resistance (made for Curator).

It’s all a juggling game, trying to work out what fights you might be facing, and which trinkets will help the most. I normally take the trinkets with me to every fight, just in case, but it’s eating into bag space.

Has anyone had any experience with Quag’s Eye? Is it worth holding onto, since I will be (eventually) getting some other +spell haste gear? Or shoudl I bench it until later on in the game/permanently?

When I was feeling better, I went to Stormwind to see what those old guys could teach me. One of them, when I asked him what he could teach me, made a really rude comment! I couldn’t believe it! I went to the Union and told them about it, and they laughed at me, and said “it’s the only way to get ahead in this game, sister”. Can you believe it! Not only is it rude and digusting, but a dirty, pervy dwarf calling me “sister”? Eww. Gross.

I shifted into travel form and ran away, crying. Somehow, I ended up at the enchanter’s store, where some very nice people gave me a drink and calmed me down. One young man offered to go to Old Town and sort those perv’s out, but I said that’s OK. My mum always said “Lost business hurts more than a face-pounding”. We started talking about what they did (enchanting teachers) and why they liked it (playing with magic and destroying things, apparently it’s safer than Engineering), and so I dropped that dirty leatherworking and started my training as an Enchanter! I kept skinning, though, because I like to say my little goodbyes to the animals that I have to kill.

They told me that I would have to get some pretty good items and do whats called “disenchant” them (which basically means I get to break it apart with some magic and see what it’s made of), and I use whats left to enchant other good items. I didn’t have any good stuff in my bags that I could disenchant right away, and they said that a good place to go for starters is Deadmines. Being a fair way along my Pathway, I didn’t have any troubles at all, sneaking in past all the meanines, and taking out the bosses that drop the good stuff. Trix laughed when I told her what I was doing, and said that that is called “assassinating“, but I don’t think it is, that sounds like a meanie thing to do, and I’m not a meanie!

I kinda got bored going through Deadmines, so I headed up north to a place that I had heard about called ShadowFang Keep, which is a really gloomy place. On the way there, I reached my 40th level of my Path, which I was very excited about. Finally, I’m mature enough to learn how to ride a tiger! Yay! I went to Moonglade, and learned my new skills (the big one of which was learning how to upgrade my Bear form into a bigger bear, called Dire Bear), and then flew to Darnassus where I said Hi to Mum and Dad. We caught up on things, and they congratulated me on reaching 40, and we all went out to choose a Sabre for me. I ended up picked the cutest little Striped Frostsaber, he is so adorable! He’s actually faster than I am when I”m in travel form, even with me on his back!

I did make it to ShadowFang Keep, and yeah. When everyone said it was gloomy, they weren’y kidding. It’s filled with these weird wolf-men and dead people who aren’t really dead. I am able to sneak through there like I did at Deadmines, but sometimes I just get so annoyed with being there that I turn into a Dire Bear and take out the lot of them. I don’t think I’m a meanie for doing it, since they are evil and everything.

My big plan was to stay tanking until I was old enough to go to that new planet everyone is talking about, Outland, and then change to be a healer. But, after talking with an awesome druid called Sepai, and having a tanking experience in a mine called Uldaman (I did a totally awesome job, everyone said so, even though, well, see below for details), I have decided to stay tanking until I finish my Pathway, and see if I like it then.

So yea, we went to Uldaman. I was doing the best job at tanking, we didn’t die once or even get close to it, and everything was going smooth. We got to this big lady giant, called Ironaya, when all of a sudden, the Universe froze. Trix and I didn’t know what was going on, people were complaining about “Damn Patches” and “Rolling Restarts”, but I don’t understand any of that. I do know that when the Universe started again, it wasn’t normal enough to keep going, so we decided to come back another time.

I have a quest to do in Scarlet Monestary, but Trix won’t come with me. She says that last time she was there, some old monk grabbed her … you know, … her bum (*giggle*), and she had to cool him off with a Frostbolt or seven. I said to her “they can grab all the bear butt they want, I’ll Swipe ‘em!”.

I’ll be doing alot of travelling nowadays, having a mount and all, so Trix and I will get to see alot of the world. If you see us in our travels, don’t be shy! Say Hi!

(omg, Trix, I’m a poet!)

Bye!!

- Shasmo

I’ve been asked to pass on a message from Shasmo, who has been sick lately, and so hasn’t been playing at all. Here is it:

Hi! I’ve been quiet lately, as you may have noticed *giggle*, that’s because i’ve been sick, and can’t come out of the Inn that I’m at. I should be better soon, though, thanks for asking!

My bestest best friend, Trixiana, has learned how to ride one of those big, scary-loking elekks! She’s gotten to level 40 in her Pathway, and I don’t think she’s let that poor elekk rest since she bought him! I wanted to go for a ride on him, but I need to learn how first, and they won’t let me learn until I get to MY level 40. *pouts*

Thanks for all your cards (Shastarian, I’m looking at you, you cutey-pie!) and I’ll see ya round the countryside!!

Shastarian went through Heroic Mechanar last night again, to help out a guildie who has been trying for his Sun Eater for the past four weeks, and alas: it still didn’t drop for him. Nothing of note was looted, and all was sharded. I did an OK job on the enslaves this time, but I was on another PC and didn’t have my macros set up, so I was working double-time to get it working.

Why am I on another PC?

The video card in my computer (Ati Radeon 2600XT) has always had issues, and the night before last, I updated the drivers, and so it decided to not work at all. I can load up WoW, get into the game, but as soon as I attempt to move, the GPU craps itself.

So, for the next couple of days (read: weeks), I will be without a computer of my own to play WoW on. Couple that with an email from Blizzard saying my time is about to expire, and I think I’m going to miss our 25-man foray into Gruul’s Lair with Knights of Honour.

Hence, I might go silent for awhile, until I have something new to write about. It’s not you! It’s me!

(Oh, respecced last night to a 44/0/17 Raiding Support build, now all I need is a computer and a raid to test it out on :P)