Monday, May 30, 2011

The PwNaGe Archaeology Guide 4.1.0 Cataclysm

Cataclysm brings us the new and exciting (maybe not so much exciting) secondary profession of Archaeology. As someone who spent the time levelling it to 450 on Beta, I will be the first of many people to tell you that it is the longest profession grind WoW has ever put players through, with very little instant gratification. However, for some, it reaps amazing benefits.

(Before you do anything! Download Archy, the Archaeology Assistant addon. It makes your life skilling up this profession ten times easier. http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/archy.aspx)

If you're a lore nerd/buff/maniac/what have you like me, you'll definitely be interested in collecting all of the neat little trinkets and toys this new profession includes. Each of the major races of Azeroth has something to offer. The profession also offers a few amazing 359 epics, which come in handy with pre-raiding availability. I've included the list of these items here, at the bottom of the post.



But first, I'll cover the main topic; essentially, how to grind Archaeology. First, to make sure you don't go insane, get something else to do while you grind. Movie, TV show, other game, other productive activity, whatever. ~70% of the time you're levelling up Archaeology, you're actually travelling. This leaves a TON of time where you'd just be starting at your flying mount's ass, autoflying across continents.



Now that you're over the fact that you only spend ~30% of your time actually LEVELLING Archaeology, lets get to work. You'll need to go grab your tools from the Archaeology trainer first, one of them is in Garrosh's house. Once you have learned the tradeskill, bind the spell "Survey" (located in your profession tab of your spellbook) to something easily-accessible; if you'll be doing this for awhile, I'd just bind it to 1. This spell is how you actually find stuff. Also located in your profession tab, is the actual profession spell Archaeology. I'd place this on your bars in another easy-to-find location, as opening this gives you a lot of data. It shows your current artifact project and fragment count for each race, and also shows completed artifacts complete with cool lore info for each one.



In a nutshell, Archaeology is fairly simple. If you open your world map up, you'll see 4 digsites on the continent you are on. Starting off, you can only create artifacts from 4/10 of the races: Night Elves, Trolls, Dwarves, and Fossils. However, you can still dig up the fragments of all of the races. If you zoom into a zone map with a digsite, you'll see a highlighted area, basically the same as WoWs ingame questhelper. This area is where your digsite is. Once you're inside the area, use your "Survey" spell. Some surveying equipment will pop up, point towards the general direction of a fragmen find, and light up according to how close you are; green means you're within 40 yards, yellow means you're close, and red means you're far away. Keep surveying until you discover the find and you'll be rewarded with fragments of that race These act as a currency of sorts, applying to the current artifact project you are on. If you go over the artifact's amount of fragments, completing it will apply the spillover fragments to the next artifact, so you never actually waste fragments. Rarely, you'll also loot a Keystone for that race from the find, which is a BoE item that can be used when you are solving an artifact, and counts as 12 fragments towards that race's current artifact project. To use them, you either click the hexagon "gem-socket" in the archaeology book for that artifact, or drag and drop the Keystone into the socket. Each time you clear a digsite (three finds per digsite) another one is randomly opened on your continent. You get 3-6 fragments per find (9-18 per dig site).



Now for the more tricky/annoying stuff. Each of the races have a TON of common grey artifacts that really serve no other purpose than to give you a little lore info and be vendored. There are also "tiers" of artifacts, level ranges of Archaeology in which you are able to discover more artifacts. Many of the best artifacts can only be discovered at 300+. Every time you complete a project and start a new one, you're automatically given a random artifact from the race, the common ones obviously being more common than the rares or epics. Before any duplicate common artifacts are found, you must complete all of the artifacts currently available to you, which is probably the one GOOD thing about levelling this profession. Rares and epics are just that, rare. You have a small chance after completing any artifact to "proc" a rare or epic.

Before you begin levelling Archaeology, you want to ask yourself which races you eventually want to get rare or epic artifacts from. If you're a healer grinding solely for the epics, you'll obviously choose Night Elves. Caster DPS will want Dwarves, 2H DPS will want Trolls. If at all possible, you will want to save fragments from these races while levelling to 450. Quoted from Reitas, "If you end up with 450 archaeology and 500 troll fragments, you'll have a much better shot at getting 525 archaology and a zin'rokh than if you were 450 archaeology 5 hours sooner but a bunch of troll trash created and no fragments." This may make levelling slower, but if your end goal is an epic, this strategy will save you a ton of farming time overall.

As a note, don't start actually completing artifact projects until you reach level 100, or when actually digging up fragments stops giving you skillups. Common artifact completions give 5 skillups, no matter the race, artifact, or what level you're at. Rares SHOULD be giving 15 skillups as of December 21st hotfixes. This is the ONLY way to level Archaeology past 100. Once you get to 300 however, you can move onto the Outlands races. At 375, Northrend. The speed of leveling really doesn't matter on any continent; it really just matters what races you want to get the majority of your fragments from. If you're under (character) level 85, you gain experience for completing artifacts according to your level, not your level of archaeology or quality of artifact your complete. Once you hit 450, you're essentially done with the large grind for this profession, as all artifacts are now available to you. Now comes the "will I proc my epic artifact" lottery. If you've saved up a truckload of fragments from the race you wanted an epic from, here's where you start creating. And creating. And creating more...

...Unless you're grinding Tol'Vir. Which, I'm assuming, you will be eventually. Tol'Vir is the most annoying of the 10 races to grind, as their sites only pop up in Uldum, and only after 450 skill. This means that any time you finish a Tol'Vir dig, a random Kalimdor dig is chosen, and a vast majority of the time, it won't be another Tol'Vir dig. You essentially have to farm all of Kalimdor to farm Tol'Vir, and this is extremely tedious. But, you've already done most of the legwork with the profession. If you ever see Tol'Vir keystones on the AH, I would recommend buying them, as you can use 2 for each of their 45-fragment commons, which would greatly speed up the process of discovering the artifact you want.

List of epic (iLevel 359) artifacts (all cost 150 fragments to complete, may use up to 3 keystones, and can only be discovered after 450, with one noted exception):

[Ring of the Boy Emperor] (http://www.wowhead.com/item=64904) Tol'Vir

[Scimitar of the Sirocco] (http://www.wowhead.com/item=64885) Tol'Vir

[Staff of Ammunae] (http://www.wowhead.com/item=64880) Tol'Vir

[Staff of Sorcerer-Thane Thaurissan] (http://www.wowhead.com/item=64489) Dwarves

[Zin'rokh, Destroyer of Worlds] (http://www.wowhead.com/item=64377) Trolls

[Tyrande's Favorite Doll] (http://www.wowhead.com/item=64645) Night Elves


Thanks for reading, and happy digging.


[EDIT 1, 12/09/10]:

A few are reporting that the iLevel 359 epics are completely random when attempting to discover the specific artifact. Until official confirmation, we can assume this is true.


[EDIT 2, 12/10/10]:

Cleaned up the OP a little, edited relevant information.


[EDIT 3, 12/14/10]:

Overhauled a few sections which really needed it, added more relevant information.

Big list of edits found at post #229, by Reitas.


[EDIT 4, 12/21/10]:

Rares should now give 15 skillups.


[EDIT 5, 01/07/11]:

Yay sticky! Also, added a link for Archy, because its simply amazing.

Added link to Jinze's archaeology guide on MMO-Champ.


Sources and useful links:

http://www.wowpedia.org/Archaeology

http://www.wowpedia.org/Archaeology_rewards

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=26726035891&sid=2000&pageNo=1#0

Jinze's archaeology guide (very indepth and detailed!)
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/820841-Archaeology-And-all-it-s-dusty-little-secrets!

Taken from Draenna

How To Chose The Right Professions - Catacylsm 4.1.0

Welcome to my guide on how to choose the right profession for your character or multiple character(s) in World of Warcraft!

For many years I have been playing this game and I have seen multiple people ask the question "Which profession or professions should I take up to make gold easiest in the game?"

The answer to your question is pretty basic. Do you feel like a gathering profession where you can quickly sell items through the Auction House on your realm? Or do you prefer to craft items where you can make a lot of gold selling items to other players such as gear, weapons, or crafted gems, potions, elixir's, or other great stuff?

Now lets see which character you may have in the game and which class you are playing as.

For instance, if you are playing on a rogue, you'll want the professions skinning and leatherworking. The reason I recommend this is because rogues wear leather in-game, and the skins you skin off dead beasts can be used as you level up to make leather armor.

Additionally, with the leather that you don't use from creatures in-game, you can sell on the Auction House for easy gold.

Now if you were playing a mage or other cloth wearing character like a priest for instance, you may want to take up the skills enchanting and tailoring. I recommend these as you can make gear for yourself and then put enchants onto the items. This can prove to be very useful along the road as gold can be coming your way in greater numbers as you level up to the higher levels.

Now lets say you said "Oh, I want to mix up professions. One where I can create items and one that I can use to gather items." This itself is not a bad idea either. I myself have my professions mixed on my mage with me having tailoring and engineering.

I haven't seen many engineer's in-game that are mages, but the reason, I picked engineering to go with my tailoring was to create the mounts for myself to go towards my 100 mount achieve from the last expansion before Cataclysm came out.

Some may say this is a bad idea where others may agree with you doing this. Personally, I think doing this is quite awesome! Namely because I get some gold out of this weekly and I also get to create some pretty awesome items for other players on my realm!

Now, there is one thing you should always remember when you grab your professions, weather they are the secondary ones (Archaeology, Cooking, First Aid, Fishing), or the ones you picked on your character. Make sure to level up the professions in every zone you play in. Always do this because if you wait till you get to the very highest level in-game before leveling them up, it can be costly for you in the end.

If you have professions which are gathering ones, You'll want to remember that information I provided just now because you'll be gathering in many, many, zones as you level up, in-game! If you wait till the last level, you'll find yourself backtracking to older zones you played in to level those kind of professions up.

Same with professions you have for creating items, you'll want to remember this, because lots of the items you need for creating items do indeed drop of mobs in-game as you are leveling up.

Do also note that when you do level your professions to ensure you upgrade them at the trainer for your professions. You may do this in cities in the game. You can also learn new skills to create other goodies too while at the profession trainers.

Besides, If you were to just leave your professions maxed out, This woudn't be too good of an idea. Namely because you need them upgraded to create better items. Also, you want to have them at the highest level possible when you are at the highest level in the game.

This is also a great idea to have them maxed out at the highest level as you can learn epic recipes to create epic items. Epic items sell for a lot of gold and are used by many classes in the game!

It is all up to you, in the end which profession you wish to have! Weather you want to have gathering ones with another profession to create gear or other goods, or have two gathering ones or vice-versa, All professions in this game are good to have!

Here now is a list of all of the professions in-game, and if they are a gathering profession or a profession where you craft items!

Some professions can only be learned at specific levels. Those only being Archaeology (Level 20), and Riding that allows you to ride mounts (Level 20).

Crafting Professions:


Alchemy
Blacksmithing
Enchanting
Engineering
Inscription
Jewelcrafting
Leatherworking
Tailoring


Gathering Professions:


Herbalism
Mining
Skinning


Secondary Professions:


Archaeology
Cooking
First Aid
Fishing
Riding


Read on below to see class and profession combinations I feel are the best for each class. I put them based off of how they fit the character's needs as you level them up!

Here now is an excellent combination of professions you may want to choose from based on your class. I picked the most useful combination that would benefit your class you play mainly in-game! Hopefully this list I compiled is useful for everyone! =)

Important Note: I put more than 2 recommendations on some classes as some classes may want more than 2 recommended professions as they level up. This can vary from gear changing from leather to mail among other reasons.;)

I put a link under each profession recommended as the page linked provides information on the profession recommended. =)

Death Knights Professions Recommended:

Recommendation #1: Blacksmithing
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/profession/blacksmithing

Recommendation #2: Mining
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/profession/mining

Druids Professions Recommended:

Recommendation #1: Alchemy:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/profession/alchemy

Recommendation #2: Herbalism
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/profession/herbalism

Hunters Professions Recommended:

Recommendation #1: Blacksmithing
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/profession/blacksmithing

Recommendation #2: Leatherworking
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/profession/leatherworking

Recommendation #3: Skinning
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/profession/skinning

Mages Professions Recommended:

Recommendation #1: Enchanting
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/profession/enchanting

Recommendation #2: Tailoring
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/profession/tailoring

Paladin Professions Recommdended:

Recommendation #1: Blacksmithing
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/profession/blacksmithing

Recommendation #2: Enchanting
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/profession/enchanting

Priests Professions Recommended:

Recommendation #1: Enchanting
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/profession/enchanting

Recommendation #2: Tailoring
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/profession/tailoring

Shaman Professions Recommended:

Recommendation #1: Enchanting
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/profession/enchanting

Recommendation #2: Herbalism
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/profession/herbalism

Recommendation #3: Tailoring
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/profession/tailoring

Warriors Professions Recommended:

Recommendation #1: Blacksmithing
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/profession/blacksmithing

Recommendation #2: Mining
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/profession/mining

Warlocks Professions Recommended:

Recommendation #1: Enchanting
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/profession/enchanting

Recommendation #2: Herbalism
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/profession/herbalism

Recommendation #3: Tailoring
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/profession/tailoring

Here is an excellent list of webpages, I found on the web that contain further information regarding professions. They contain profession recipes, skills you can learn as you level up, and what you can possibly create!


http://www.wowhead.com
http://www.wowwiki.com
http://www.wowpedia.org


Those three sites I listed above, contain great useful information, plus many other World of Warcraft players utilize those sites above for information along with this community site!

Below is a list of where you can safely get add-on's that can help you with your professions!


http://www.curse.com

http://www.wowinterface.com


If you require assistance with your add-on's be sure to check out the UI and Macro Forum listed below and the Installing and Troubleshooting" thread on that forum.

FAQ: Installing & Troubleshooting AddOns:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1536706542


UI and Macro Forum:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/1011693

Guide taken from Teloraelin on Garrosh

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Awesome Rogue's Leveling Guide 4.1.0

This FAQ is for new rogues. It is full of oversimplifications and generalizations.

What is the best spec for leveling a rogue?

- You can level fairly well as any spec now. Though Assassination probably pulls ahead because of early access to Deadly Momentum and the lack of a positional attack.

What is the best Combat spec?

- http://www.wowhead.com/talent#fbhZfGfcMf0RMo:okMzRVmcV

- This talent focuses on buffing your combo point builders and increasing survivability.

- This is up to level 80. Some talent changes will most likely be needed from 80-85 because of higher health pools.



What is the best Assassination spec?

- http://www.wowhead.com/talent#ffhfzsGzoGobZ0h:qVkRikmcV

- The point in Deadly Brew for pvp and kiting those particularly difficult enemies while recuperate ticks.

- From 80-85, I expect this spec to pull way ahead of the others.



What is the best Subtlety spec?

- http://www.wowhead.com/talent#fbZbZfhcfdu0RGo:zMmiRkmcV

- Nearly everything is subject to debate on this spec since it is so full of filler talents.

- You kill most things after the initial ambush.

- This is up to level 80. A spec change will be needed from 80-85 most likely because of higher health pools.



What stats should I be looking for?

- Agi > Expertise (to cap) > Hit (to cap) > Haste > Mastery (when you get it) > Crit >> Strength

- You will need to check the tooltip on hit and expertise to know what rating is need to not miss.

- This is different than stat priority for group play because you will be attacking from the front, making expertise more valuable. Maybe as valuable than agility from a dps perspective.



What weapons do I use?

- Combat - Slow Sword, Mace, Axe, or Fist in the mainhand and fast weapons in the offhand.

- Assassination - Slow dagger mainhand, fast dagger offhand.

- Subtlety - Slow Dagger manhand, anything offhand.

What poisons do I use?

- Combat - Wound/Wound

- Assassination - Instant/Deadly (Instant/Instant isn't a bad idea before you get Envenom.)

- Subtlety - Wound/Wound

- This is just for leveling. Things change at higher levels.



Does the Worgen racial work with sprint?

- Yes. But the ability is only a 40% speed buff now.

- http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b202/BlazeInferno/WoWScrnShot_112110_024825.jpg

- Credit AmorenKaire for the investigation.

Does the goblin jump work with rogues?

- Yes, and it is useable in stealth. (Expect this to get nerfed too.)

What is a good poison macro?

#showtooltip
/cast [mod:shift] Deadly Poison; [mod:ctrl] Wound Poison; [mod:alt] Crippling Poison; Instant Poison
/use [button:1] 16; [button :2] 17; [button:3] 18
/click StaticPopup1Button1

Use ctrl, shift, alt to apply different poisons to different slots based on which mouse button is clicked. Left mouse for mainhand, right offhand, and middle for ranged slot. The last line clicks the confirmation dialog for when you already have poisons applied. So be careful, since it will confirm other dialogs too, like dungeon finder and battlegrounds.

What is a good Tricks of the Trade macro?

#showtooltip
/cast [mod:shift, @targettarget] [@focus, exists] [] Tricks of the Trade

Casts tricks at your focus target, if you press shift it cast at your target's target. Great for tank switches in raids. If you run with regular tanks, or trade tricks with the same rogues all the time you can put in their names in the macro with @name. Works normally with no focus target.

You can also use the addon TrickorTreat, or you can setup Clique to trick whatever target you want by hovering over their unit window (I use grid).

Why do I do crappy damage in dungeons?

- Rogues do low damage on dungeons because they lack and Area of Effect (aoe) damage ability. At 80, you will get Fan of Knives, which throws your thrown weapon (and poison) in a 360 degree arc at 8 yards. It is awesome and something to look forward too.

- Combat also has Blade Flurry, with attacks the next nearest target also. Use with Adrenaline Rush for full effect.

- Don't worry to much about low level dungeons though, they are quick enough for most groups anyway. You should find that you single target damage is unbeatable though.

Note on Glyphs

- There are a lot of good choices for glyphs. I noted some good ones for each spec on the talent trees, but only a few glyph choices are ever cut and dried especially for leveling and for the major glyphs. With the exception of Eviscerate, all of the finished glyphs are very nice as you can often get your buffs/debuffs up on a target with few combo points for the duration of the fight. Slice and Dice helps keep the buff up between pulls.

What heirlooms should I buy?
Besides the agility leather. You can buy the sword or mace. A dagger would be optimal for leveling as assassination or subtlety. However, daggers will only be really useful for leveling a rogue. Considering the increased cost of heirlooms, from an economy standpoint, it would be a good idea to level as combat with a sword and/or mace to maximize reusability. I would buy one sword or mace and use drops for the offhand slot.

Assassination Guide

As you level, I recommend you buy the talents in order:

Deadly Momentum 2/2
Lethality 3/3
Quickening 2/2
Puncturing Wounds 3/3
Vile Poisons 3/3
Cold Blood 1/1
Deadly Brew 1/2
Seal Fate 2/2
Deadened Nerves 3/3
Master Poisoner 1/1
Overkill 1/1
Coupe de Grace 3/3
Cut to the Chase 3/3
Venomous Wounds 2/2
Vendetta 1/1
Improved Recuperate 2/2
Relentless Strikes 3/3

When you get envenom at level 54, that becomes your main finisher. Rupture and Garrote are used for energy regen, the damage is a bonus. If you are fighting two opponents and one if about to die, it might be a good idea to finish with rupture and let its damage and poisons kill it and start on the next opponent. That way you'll have the energy regen from rupture still ticking to power your mutilates on the next target. When an opponent dies with rupture still going, it will refund all the energy proportional to the energy use and the energy from venomous wounds. If you time it right, you can build your combo points and get the energy return to finish on your next target. Its a great mini-game to play.

Macros:

#showtooltip
/startattack
/cast Mutilate

Useful to start attacking even when you don't have enough energy to do so.

Notes:

You will mainly be finishing with Envenom when it becomes available or, when things are dying too quickly to stack Deadly Poison, use Eviscerate instead. In which case, it "might" be optimal to try Wound instead for the higher proc rate. In fact, judging by how quickly things are dying now at low levels, it will probably work better. Then again, most things are dying in 3 or 4 buttons presses anyway.

Combat Guide

Improved Recuperate 2/2
Improved Sinister Strike 3/3
Precision 3/3
Aggression 3/3
Lightning Reflexes 3/3
Reinforced Leather 2/2
Combat Potency 3/3
Improved Sprint 1/2
Adrenaline Rush 1/1
Savage Combat 2/2
Improved Sprint 2/2
Improve Slice and Dice 2/2
Improved Gouge 2/2
Killing Spree 1/1
Deadly Momentum 2/2
Lethality 3/3

Macros

#showtooltip
/startattack
/cast Sinister Strike

Useful to start attacking even when you don't have enough energy to do so.

Subtlety Guide

Relentless Strikes 3/3
Night Stalker 2/2
Improved Ambush 3/3
Opportunity 3/3
Hemorrhage 1/1
Find Weakness 2/2
Initiative 2/2
Premeditation 1/1
Honor Among Thieves 3/3
Energetic Recovery 3/3
Sanguinary Vein 2/2
Slaughter from the Shadows 3/3
Serrated Blades 2/2
Shadow Dance 1/1
Deadly Momentum 2/2
Improved Recuperate 2/2
Lethality 1/3

Notes:

Also note that the hemo glyph isn't that useful until you get serrated blades, as it is usualy more benficial to gouge, get some energy, and backstab a mob instead of spamming hemo-wet-noodle. Just something to think about.


Macros:

#showtooltip
/startattack
/cast Hemorrhage

Useful to start attacking even when you don't have enough energy to do so.

#showtooltip Ambush
/cast Premeditation
/cast Ambush

Uses Premeditation (extra 2 combo points) every time you ambush and premeditation is available. (It will still work even if premed is on cooldown.)

General Stategies

These spec aren't designed the same as end game specs, or even 80-85 specs, as I've noted here and there. At cap, and soloing for 80-85, mobs live much longer and you often finish multiple times during a fight including buffs. At lower levels, finishing is a rarity. A typical fight usually involves spamming a combo point builder until it dies. Use the leftover points to buff up SnD or Recuperate and move on.

Don't underestimate Slice and Dice it is a very strong buff, every spec does large amounts of physical damage. Your weakest finisher is a competition between expose armor and rupture because of the energy investment those finishers require versus the duration of the fight.

It is not as hard to level now as it once was, but try and practice your CC abilities. It possible to take on 3-4 opponents at once with most having been CC'd. I also encourage every rogue to try PvP. It really teaches you how to play your class more than any PvE encounter ever could.


Taken from http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1083749119

Rogue Subtlety Guide 4.1.0

Subtlety is considered the least viable pve spec due to its complex rotation which makes switching targets painful. In addition, if mechanics of an encounter make backstabbing impossible, the dps loss is significant. However, in an ideal fight (all time spent behind the boss and lots of crits) sub will likely be the best spec. Basically the max dps is amazing, but dps from fight-to-fight is inconsistent.

Non-obvious Terms:
SS = Shadowstep
BS = Backstab
ShD = Shadow Dance
SnD = Slice and Dice
EA = Expose Armor
HaT = Honor Among Thieves
MoS = Master of Subtlety
FW = Find Weakness
* = Found at post #3

Contents:
1. Talents/glyphs
2. Rotation
3. Stats
4. Reforging/Gems/Enchants (oh my!) (Also BiS sets)*
5. Credits/updates*
6. Patch changes*

Talents:

The best build for pure dps is:
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#fMhcZ0bZcGcsdu0RGo
There are no filler points, though the weakest talent is Initiative, followed by Elusiveness.


Glyphs:


Prime:
Glyph of Slice and Dice – Required
Glyph of Backstab – Required
Glyph of Eviscerate – Good, slightly better than ShD (* full ShD comparison below)
Glyph of Shadow Dance – Use if your using EA, have the 4 pc t11 bonus, or having rotation issues
Glyph of Hemorrhage – Useful for heroics to apply bleed

Major:
Glyph of Tricks of the Trade – Raid DPS increase
Glyph of Feint – Use if they make you AoE

Minor:
Your call



Rotation:

This is the hardest part of playing subtlety, and will make or break you depending on the fight or your skill. These abilities assume you are attacking a boss or otherwise high-HP mob.
Addons that track buff/debuff durations are extremely helpful*



If you have combo-points before the battle, use them on SnD.

Use Premeditation, SS-> Ambush (Assuming a bleed is up or will be shortly, otherwise garrote)

Build combo-points with Backstab, always let HaT proc the 5th to ensure you don’t waste any combo-points while waiting for energy/GCD. Keep up Hemo, and use that if not behind the enemy.

Finisher Priority:

SnD (Massive dps boost, can be refreshed before 5 CP) -> Rupture (Bleed, try to use this during the 10% bonus from MoS, the buff will continue as you refresh it) -> Recup (Refresh with under 3 secs left. Required for rotation but less dps than SnD and keeping a MoS'd rupture is better in the long run. If MoS isn't on rupture and a bleed is up, this takes priority over rupture.*) -> Eviscerate (5 CP only) -> EA (If there is not already an armor debuff, and if it will not hurt the rotation. If you include this, use the glyph and apply it during periods of excess CP.)

Vanish on-cooldown to refresh FW and MoS. Pool energy and use up CP before using for max benefit. (Personal note: This can be used for fast CP, so saving this or prep for this purpose may be best) Always wait for FW to be down before using this, as overlapping a FW buff is a major dps loss, unless it has almost no time left before the refresh. Waiting for SS is also optimal if you don't need it for the mobility. To maximize FW effectiveness you want to fit the most eviscerates as possible into the stage without hurting your rotation, so refresh accordingly.

ShD follows the same rules as vanish. Basically replace backstab with ambush, and only use SS after FW is up.

Use SS for general mobility, just don't be stupid with it. You can dodge tail-swipes, so use evasion to allow SS in your ShD phase.

Burn Phase/Preparation: Generally use this in a burn phase, during Lust/Heroism/fakeversions, follow all the rules laid out in the vanish part unless otherwise mentioned.
Use Vanish->SS->Ambush, then prep (to refresh SS CD, and vanish for later). After about 8 secs, use ShD. Try to time it so your first ambush is with FW up, and use SS with it. Once the ShD FW is about to expire, use vanish->ambush.




Stats

Here are the Elitist Jerks EP values, meaning how many points of Attack Power = 1 ___


Stat EP

Agi 3.6
Yellow Hit 1.4
Haste 1.35
Expertise 1.15
Crit 1.1
Spell Hit 1.05
Mastery 0.9
White Hit 0.8



These are close approximations with BiS gear, and change depending on current stat layout. These are also assuming a perfect fight, so the stats that will give you the best dps will likely be more rotation-oriented.

Specifically, while agi is amazing and still on top, I would place Expertise slightly above crit, since a dodged BS/evis can be detrimental to the rotation (though haste is still quite important). Expertise also gains significant value if you need to face the boss (using hemo), which makes the spec slightly more linear from fight-to-fight.

Due to the character cap in posts, *s redirect here.

Reforging/Gems/Enchants (oh my!)

Reforging:

In general, try to use creative reforging to meet your caps (especially expertise) as closely as possible. After that, reforge to haste, or crit if there are no other options.

Gems/Enchants:
Agility all the way. If there is a 20 agility bonus that can be attained by using a haste/agi gem, do that. For the meta, use Agile Shadowspirit Diamond. For enchants, use EP values, I find it unnecessary to use a run-speed enchant, as SS makes running somewhat rare.

For poisons, I use instant/deadly/deadly, but for fights where DP will fall off often, use Wound in MH.

BiS Gear

Mine (I did it on the shadowcraft spreadsheet but with going for expertise. A thrown wep would be used for AoE encounters.): Link just went to my current gear, BiS link/set in progress

Glyph of ShD vs. Evis (Kyrrion, my friends, my target dummy)
The glyphs are quite close, but both my tests and EJ's voodoo say Eviscerate has a slight edge (~1k dps in the gear I tested it on). However, use ShD if your job is to put up Expose Armor, or if you have the 4 pc t11 bonus. It is also worth mentioning that ShD scales worse with crit, so at lower gear levels they are likely closer. The gear I tested in was about lvl 350. ShD also has the benefit of offering more burst, so if the burn phase of an encounter is extra important (or there are periods of boss-weakness which ShD can be lined up with), ShD would likely be better. If you are prone to having rupture fall off and need direct reapplications, the value of glyph of eviscerate will drop significantly every time you reapply rupture.

Relevant PTR changes/speculation (NOTE: None of this is set in stone, and until numbers are done by others after the patch is released, you should take all of this with a grain of salt)

BiS Gear (with gems, enchants, and some sketchy reforging*)
http://goo.gl/f1JrT

*If you find a better way to reforge, please speak up. It was kind of rushed. And I was going for Expertise Cap on purpose.

Landslide x2 vs Landslide + Hurricane
Here's basically what I found. Landslide + Hurricane is better due to the fact that Hurricane can proc off spells (Recuperate). Landslide should go on the main hand because the spell proc'd Hurricane is independant and the other Hurricane can't compete alone.

Say you get about 8 procs over 5 min from your offhand (about 20% haste with a 50% Slice and Dice and both enchants proc at 1 PPM). Since a spell proc of Hurricane refreshes the melee stack if it exists at the moment, let's assume procs happen on average time. (300/8= every 37.5 seconds for melee procs + every 45 seconds due to an ICD for the spell proc).
# of seconds past for each proc
Melee: 37.5, 75, 112.5, 150, 187.5, 225, 262.5, 300
Spell: 45, 90, 135, 180, 225, 270

So the 1st and 7th melle Hurricane proc is refreshed by the spell, taking away 2 full spell procs. That is an additional 15 seconds on the melee proc though.

So now with the 8 procs and the additional 15 seconds of melee, we've got a 37% uptime (so an average of 166.5 haste for the 5 minutes) of melee Hurricane. Add in the 4 spells which have a 16% uptime (so about average 72 haste) and we've got about 238.5 haste from the offhand enchant. Now if Landslide were on the offhand instead, we'd have a 32% uptime on that (average of 320 attack power).

238.5 * 1.35 = 321.975 is the Hurricane's value in attack power (according to the stat weights) vs 320.

I'd say it really doesn't matter which you choose. Landslide could be more consistent dps overall since it's less RNG, but Hurricane definately has potential to do better (and is pretty cheap too).

Best Way to Open
This is only at the very beginning of any fight.

Open like normal (Shadowstep > Premeditation > Ambush) and go with the standard rotation until Shadowstep comes off CD. When it does come off CD, Vanish into Premed + Ambush but do NOT use Shadowstep with the Ambush! Use it after the Ambush hits and use Preparation after you hit Shadowstep. You now have the 10 second buff to your next Ambush, Shadowstep off cooldown, and Find Weakness on your target. Right before Find Weakness falls off, hit Shadowdance and procede as normal (saving the Shadowstep for the 2nd Ambush). This way an extra Shadowstepped Ambush under Find Weakness.

To simplify:
Vanish > Premed + Ambush > Shadowstep > Preparation > Shadowdance right before Find Weakness expires.


Taken from Haileaus@Azul_nerub

Assassination Rogues Guide 4.1.0

Actually it was in a locked compartment of his bunk inside his room at SI:7 headquarters, but I think we can agree it’s obvious he wanted me to save him the trouble of having it delivered. I’ll skip the parts about his mother and his ranting about getting even with VanCleef; and honestly, “READ THIS AND DIE” scralled on the cover was really just absolute overkill on so many levels.

This guide is intended for level 85 heroic- and raiding-geared assassination rogues. Much of the information will be useful for others as well, but the details may be slightly off. Practically all of this is straight from Elitist Jerks (of course), and I’ve supplied source links for important stuff. I’m clueless about combat, subtlety, and player-vs-player information, so please don’t ask.

Also, if this thread comes across as slightly overwhelming, I suggest you go here first:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2046965585

Table of Contents:

I. Recent and Upcoming Assassination Changes.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1658707015?page=1#2
II. Equivalence Points.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1658707015?page=1#3
III. Talent Builds and Glyphs.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1658707015?page=1#4
IV. Caps.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1658707015?page=1#5
V. Rotation.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1658707015?page=1#6
VI. Weapons and Poisons.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1658707015?page=1#7
VII. Gems.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1658707015?page=1#8
VIII. Enchants.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1658707015?page=1#9
IX. Reforging.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1658707015?page=1#10
X. Professions.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1658707015?page=1#12
XI. Consumables.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1658707015?page=1#13
XII. Tier and Trinkets.
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1658707015?page=1#14
XIII. Gear Lists (part I).
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1658707015?page=1#15
XIV. Gear Lists (Part II).
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1658707015?page=1#16

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Shaman FAQ for Cataclysm - 4.1.0 WoW

All information primarily pertains to PvE unless otherwise noted.

Which Weapon Imbues Should I Use?
- Enhancement: Slow mainhand with Windfury and a slow offhand with Flametongue. Fast offhands are not viable as Stormstrike and Lava Lash are instant non-normalized attacks.
- Elemental uses Flametongue and Restoration uses Earthliving.
- Rockbiter is highly situational and encounter-specific. Frostbrand is PvP-only.

Which Glyphs Should I Use?
Enhancement
Prime - Glyph of Lava Lash, Glyph of Stormstrike, and Glyph of Feral Spirit.
Major - Glyph of Healing Stream Totem and Glyph of Ghost Wolf are very useful. If AEing, use Glyph of Chain Lightning and Glyph of Fire Nova.

Elemental
Prime - Glyph of Lightning Bolt, Glyph of Lava Burst, and Glyph of Flame Shock.
Major - Glyph of Lightning Shield and Glyph of Thunder. The remaining one is at your discretion. Glyph of Chain Lightning is nice for quick AE and Glyph of Healing Stream Totem is always great to have.

Restoration
Prime - Glyph of Earth Shield, Glyph of Riptide, and Glyph of Water Shield. If you don't have mana issues, replace Glyph of Water Shield with Glyph of Earthliving Weapon.
Major - Glyph of Chain Heal for raiding, free if not. Glyph of Healing Stream Totem is a fine choice.

Gearing Enhancement
The proper way to determine stat weights is to run the simulator with your stats plugged in.

http://enhsim.codeplex.com/

1) First get 17% spell hit (1742 hit rating, 1639 for Draenei) and 26 expertise (540 expertise rating, as we get 8 expertise from Unleashed Rage).
2) Agility > Mastery > Crit > Haste > Hit (until hard DW melee cap at 21%) > Intellect
3) Gem Agility.

Note that hit has soft caps at 2% (for special melee attacks, including 6% melee hit from talents) and 17% (for spells) and a hard melee cap at 21% (covers everything, assuming 6% melee hit from Dual Wield).

Reforging Enhancement
1) Reforge to 17% spell hit and 26 expertise.
2) Reforge all your Hit (over 17% spell hit), Crit, and Haste to Mastery. In that order.
3) Reforge any remaining excess Hit and Haste to Crit.

Gearing Elemental
1) Spell hit to 17% (1742 hit rating, 1639 for Draenei). Remember that 1 point of Spirit = 1 spell hit rating. Spirit is better than hit rating as it also provides mana regeneration.
2) Intellect > Spellpower > Haste > Mastery >> Crit
3) Gem Intellect.

Reforging Elemental
1) Reforge to Spirit until you reach 17% spell hit.
2) Reforge all Hit/Spirit (over 17% spell hit), Crit and Mastery to Haste. In that order.
3) Reforge any remaining excess Hit/Spirit and Crit to Mastery.

Gearing Resto
If you often run out of mana, prioritize Spirit over everything but Intellect.

1) Int > Haste (below soft cap) > Mastery > Spirit > Crit > Haste (past cap)
2) Gem Intellect.

Reforging Resto
1) Reforge everything into haste until the soft cap.
2) If the item already has haste or you're at the soft cap, reforge to mastery.
3) If the item already has mastery, reforge to spirit.

The Resto Haste Soft Cap
Restoration has a soft cap at 916 Haste Rating for non-goblins and 788 for goblins. This is the point where all HoT spells get one additional tick. Past this point, haste value drops. The second tick comes at roughly 4000 haste rating, which is not currently possible.

How to AE
Elemental
Earthquake > Flame Shock > Fire Nova > Chain Lightning. You will have one empty GCD in this priority which could technically be filled with magma totem or thunderstorm if you're already in range and very low latency. Flame shock should be "multidotted" to multiple targets.

Enhance
MW5 Chain Lightning > Flame Shock > Fire Nova > Magma Totem. "Multidot" Flame Shock and continue your single-target priority between AE cooldowns. Remember that Unleash Flame works with Fire Nova.

Enhancement Simplified Priority
Enhancement uses a priority list since many spells have staggered cooldowns and Maelstrom Weapon stacks are random. Use the following abilities in order of priority to maximize sustained damage. Note that this priority is simplified to the point where humans can reliably execute it. You should also use your cooldowns (trinkets, wolves, fire elemental, etc) as often as possible.

1) Lightning Bolt - With a 5 stack of Maelstrom Weapon. Use Chain Lightning only if >1 target.
2) Lava Lash - Don't worry about searing stacks on your target, use this on cooldown.
3) Unleash Elements
4) Refresh Searing Totem, if necessary.
5) Flame Shock - Only use if the FS DoT is down.
6) Stormstrike
7) Earth Shock

Unleash Elements
This ability has different effects based upon your equipped weapon imbues. Dualwielding shamans get both. Note that Unleash Flame does not buff Lava Lash damage.

- Unleash Wind (Windfury): http://wowhead.com/spell=73681
- Unleash Flame (Flametongue): http://wowhead.com/spell=73683
- Unleash Life (Earthliving): http://wowhead.com/spell=73685
- Unleash Frost (Frostbrand): http://wowhead.com/spell=73682
- Unleash Earth (Rockbiter): http://wowhead.com/spell=73684

Windfury Weapon
- Scales with weapon DPS, attack power, haste, crit, and hit.
- Mitigated by armor and block, avoided by dodge, parry, and miss.
- Has a 5% special attack type melee miss chance.
- The best imbue for enhancement shamans on the main hand.
- The three extra attacks can proc Flurry and weapon on hit effects. They do not consume Flurry charges and don't glance.
- When used offhand, the three extra attacks are affected by the standard offhand 50% damage reduction. The WF proc's attack power bonus is not.

Windfury Totem
- The Windfury Totem now grants 10% melee and ranged attack speed. It stacks with the shaman-only weapon imbue.

The Windfury Cooldown
After WF procs it cannot proc again on either hand for 3 seconds. No 1H weapon in the entire game can proc WF twice in a row. This means that WF will proc less than the 20% promised on its tooltip.

- When only one weapon has WF, each hit outside of the cooldown has a 20% chance to proc. This leads to a 11-18% overall proc rate, depending on gear, weapon speed, spec, and luck. Slower is better.
- When both weapons have WF, each hit outside of the cooldown has a 36% chance to proc. This leads to a 11-14% procrate with weapons faster than 2.0s unhasted and a 14-18% procrate with weapons slower than 2.0s unhasted. Slower is better.

Flametongue Weapon and Totem
- The best mainhand imbue for elemental shamans and the best offhand for enhancement shamans.
- FT should never be used mainhand by enhance shamans.
- The glyph of Flametongue Weapon stacks when dualwielding, giving 4% spell crit.
- The FT totem gives a 6% total spell power buff. This stacks with the static buff on FT weapon but does not stack with 10% spell power buffs provided by elemental shamans and demonology warlocks.

Earthliving Weapon
- Earthliving (EL) is the weapon imbue for restoration shamans.
- The EL effect has a chance to proc on each "jump" of a chain heal.
- The Heal over Time (HoT) effect ticks every second and refreshes itself when it procs frequently. It does not stack.
- When dualwielded, the healing spell power effect and procrate are both doubled, but the HoT still does not stack.

Frostbrand Weapon
- Scales with spell power, attack power (with Mental Quickness), crit, hit, melee haste.
- Mitigated by spell resist, frost resist, avoided by dodge, parry, and miss.
- Has a normal spell miss chance of 17% against level+3 bosses.
- Crits at 100% damage with the elemental talent Elemental Fury.
- Benefits from 10% of your spell power per proc.
- Procs at 9 procs per minute.
- With Mental Quickness, FB scales with attack power, but it scales considerably worse then FT. FB should not be used for its damage. It is situationally useful in PvP only.
- Does not proc Elemental Focus on crits.
- Does not slow bosses. Frostbrand is a PvP-only ability.

Maelstrom Weapon
- Maelstrom Weapon (MW) is a spec-defining talent. A 5-stack Lightning Bolt should always be a high priority for both sustained and burst DPS.
- MW ranks give 3/6/9 base procs per minute (PPM).
- Note that this is before dualwielding, windfury, instant attacks, and haste like flurry or WF totem. MW procs a lot more than 9 per minute. Due to instant attacks, slow weapons are better than fast.
- Unlike many PPM enchants, MW scales with haste. Haste provides additional MW procs.
- Spells cast with partial MW stacks do not reset the swing timer. They suspend it.
- Do not drop ranks of Maelstrom Weapon. Get all 3.

Unleashed Rage
- Unleashed rage is a mandatory talent even if your raid has a hunter, paladin, or DK to provide the AP buff.

The Elemental Focus Talent
- Elemental focus procs on every offensive spell crit, giving a buff reducing the cost of the next two spells by 40%.
- This buff also works on heals. It does not stack to greater than two. Instead it refreshes itself.
- Each Chain Lightning hit has one chance to proc elemental focus.
- Elemental Mastery gives one free spell and you gain the elemental focus buff.

Searing Totem
- Searing totem is mandatory for single-target damage. It should always be kept up due to its interaction with Searing Flames, Lava Lash, and Improved Lava Lash.

Deep Healing (Resto Mastery)
Deep Healing is a simple function that improves linearly as your target's health drops. It works with every shaman heal.

Point for point, mastery rating is better than haste rating if your target has under 53% health. Haste rating is thus superior to mastery in most situations.

Looking at crit rating, casting Chain Heal and Healing Rain, mastery rating wins if your target has under 83% health. On single-target heals, it beats crit rating if your target has under 68% health.

Deep Healing Multiplier (DHM) = This is the value on your mastery tooltip. It starts at 20% and each point of Mastery (179.28 Mastery Rating @ 85) adds 3%.

Total Healing = DHM * (Target's Missing Health as a Percentage / 100)

Lets say you have 500 Mastery Rating and your Healing Wave heals for 4000. Your first target is at 75% health.

20 + ((500 / 45.9) * 3) * (25 / 100) = 13.17% additional healing
4000 * 1.1317 = 4527 total

Your second target is about to die at 15% health.

20 + ((500 / 45.9) * 3) * (85 / 100) = 44.78% additional healing
4000 * 1.4478 = 5791 total

Glyph of Lightning Shield
- The tooltip is confusing. It should read "Your Lightning Shield can no longer drop below 3 charges."

Primal Strike
Primal Strike shares a cooldown with Stormstrike. Once you get Stormstrike at level 31, take Primal Strike off your bars.

Lava Lash
- LL is a standard non-normalized offhand attack that happens to do fire damage. It is affected by the 50% offhand damage penalty just like a normal offhand attack. It crits at 100%.
- It does not benefit from spell power, etc, and will proc everything a normal offhand attack will proc like flametongue, windfury, mongoose, flurry, etc.
- LL completely bypasses armor and is resisted like a fire spell, but uses melee hit. It also benefits from buffs to spell damage, like curse of the elements.
- LL is very high priority due to its flat damage buff and its interaction with Searing Totem's DoT.

Dude, Where's my Cleansing Totem?!
- It's gone!
- Sentry Totem is gone too, but you probably didn't miss it much.

Which Totems aren't raid-wide?
- Healing Stream and Grounding totems remain group-only.

Bloodlust/Heroism/Time Warp/Ancient Hysteria
- These spells drop the global cooldown to 1s. They stack with Windfury Totem and Improved Icy Touch.

How Haste Works
Haste is not a straight speed reduction. 30% haste from Flurry does not make your 2.0s weapon attack at 1.4s; it actually attacks at 1.54s. The same formulas work for melee and spell haste. They are:

Haste multiplier = 1 / ((100 + haste%) / 100)
Hasted weapon speed = unhasted weapon speed * haste multiplier
Flurry haste multiplier = 1 / 1.3 = 0.769

So for flurry, simply divide your unhasted speed by 1.3.

Earth Shield
- [BUG] Earth Shield is only affected by the Purification specialization when cast upon yourself. So you lose out on 10% effectiveness.
- [BUG] Mana cost not reduced by tidal focus.
- The spellpower coefficient is determined when you cast the spell, so you can blow your trinkets and cooldowns for a better earth shield proactively.

Spell Power Coefficients - Healing
Chain Heal - 99.1% (35.2 + 27.1% + 20.8% + 16.0% on each "jump")
Cleansing Waters - 28.2% (at 2 talent points)
Earth Shield - 109.4% (12.2% per charge)
Earthliving Weapon - 5.8% (per HoT tick)
Greater Healing Wave - 96.7%
Healing Rain - 8.3% (per tick)
Healing Stream Totem - 8.3% (per 2 second tick)
Healing Surge - 60.4%
Healing Wave - 30.2%
Riptide - 23.4% (direct) + 7.5% (per HoT tick)
Unleash Life (Earthliving) - 20.1%

Spell Power Coefficients - Damage
Chain Lightning - 150.4% total (57.1%, 40%, 20%, 19.6%, and 13.7% per jump respectively)
Earth Shock - 38.6%
Fire Nova - 14.3%
Flame Shock - 21.4% (DD) and 10.0% (per DoT tick)
Flametongue Weapon - Scales with weapon speed from 5% to 15%.
Frost Shock - 38.6%
Frostbrand Weapon - 10% per proc
Lava Burst - 62.8%
Lightning Bolt - 71.4%
Lightning Shield - 27.7% (per ball)
Magma Totem - 6.7% (per 2s pulse)
Searing Totem - 16.7% (per 1.65s shot)
Unleash Flame (Flametongue) - 42.9%
Unleash Frost (Frostbrand) - 38.6%

Stat Caps
Raiding Melee Hit (Specials) = 8% - 6% from Dual Wield = 2% = 240 Hit Rating (120 Draenei)
Raiding Melee Hit (Autoattack) = 27% - 6% from Dual Wield = 21% = 2522 Hit Rating (2402 Draenei)
Raiding Spell Hit = 17% = 1742 Hit Rating (1639 Draenei)
Raiding Expertise = 6.5% = 26 Expertise - 8 from Unleashed Rage = 18 Expertise = 540 Expertise Rating
Heroic Melee Hit (Specials) = 6% - 6% from Dual Wield = 0% = 0 Hit Rating
Heroic Melee Hit (Autoattack) = 25% - 6% from Dual Wield = 19% = 2282 Hit Rating (2162 Draenei)
Heroic Spell Hit = 6% = 615 Hit Rating (512 Draenei)
Heroic Expertise = 6% = 24 Expertise - 8 from Unleashed Rage = 16 Expertise = 481 Expertise Rating
Resto Haste Soft Cap = 916 Haste Rating (788 Goblin)

Skills, Stats, and Ratings at 85
Note that avoidance stats and resilience have diminishing returns, so the benefit per rating point drops as you stack them.

1 Strength = 1 Attack Power
1 Agility = 2 Attack Power
1 Expertise = 30.03 Expertise Rating = 0.25% less dodges/parries from your target
1 Mastery = 179.28 Mastery rating
1% Melee Hit = 120.11 Hit rating
1% Spell Hit = 102.45 Hit rating
1% Crit = 179.3 Critical strike rating = 324.9 Agility (melee) = 648.9 Intellect (spell)
1% Haste = 128.06 haste rating
1% Dodge = 176.7 Dodge rating = 304.0 agility
1% Parry = 176.7 Parry rating
1% Chance to block = 88.4 Block chance rating
1% Resilience = 276.12 Resilience rating = 1% less damage from players

Hope it answers questions pertaining to Shaman's FAQs.

Taken from SLANT

Shaman Resto Pro Guide 4.1.0 - Cataclysm

Welcome to the premium Resto Shaman guide in the World....of Warcraft. Sit back and enjoy, because if resto is your game, you'll walk away playing your class to the max.

This guide is aimed at the already raiding Resto Shaman. If you're fresh to the class and looking for where to start, then this will not be the guide for you. Secretgarden has a wonderful guide for the starter Resto Shaman, so go there for all your beginner needs to get your feet wet. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1577519250

If you're already raiding and looking at what it takes to push your class to the max, then you're in the right place. This will give you the info you need for whats best in raids to maximize your performance.

Also this guide will be written from a 4.1 perspective. The mastery changes are looking to go through in their current state, and the importance of that will effect our stat choices a fair bit. However things like Spirit link won't be written about until it's live due to needing to test it.

Table of Contents
Section 1 – Talent Builds
Section 2 – Glyphs
Section 3 – Stats
3.1 - Int
3.2 - Spirit
3.3 - Crit
3.4 - Haste
3.5 - Mastery
Section 4 – Roles and Optimal Stat Choices
Section 5 – Gemming
Section 6 – Enchants
Section 7 – MTT and your Mana
Section 8 – Spirit Link Totem
Section 9 – Healing Ideology
Section 10 – Healing Methodology


**** Section 1) Talent Builds ****
I've now accepted that TC is viable if you want it as your healing style. With gear scaling, you get very decent mana return. On the low end in hard modes 200mp5 can be expected, on the high end 2k mp5 can easily be reached. I've seen enough ranked parses from WOL to know that it can work and you can still do great healing with it. So here are your 3 best builds.

Cookie Cutter Max hps build
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#hhZbhMZfGbMsdcoGo
This is your do-it-all spec. It works with any role, and any stat priority. Assuming mana isn't a concern, it will be your best hps spec.

Non EP based TC resto build
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#hbZbhMZsGbMsdcRGo
Sacrifices a bit of hps from losing 1% crit in order to allow you the ability to regen mana using TC. The idea being during low damage downtime you weave LB's in between your heals giving you more mana overall to cast bigger heals when you need them. The catch is, this style of play is most viable if you are a haste/crit stat build shaman to maximize your TC return and minimize LB castime. In addition in a tank healing role or 10man role, downtime is harder to come by so you'll have less a chance to really use TC.

EP based TC resto build
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#hhb0bZbZfGbMsbcRGo
Same as above, but sacrifices even more throughput and mobility in order to give a greater amount of mana return. The idea being with the greater mana return, you then are able to spam your higher throughput spells more freely to compensate. So you're able to serve your raid in that role if required. Two core points with this build is that you'll need 2640 spirit to hitcap and you'll need a +runspeed boot enchant to compensate for loss of AS.

So which build should you play? Well first of all you have to ask yourself if you want to use TC for not. Some Shaman swear by it, some swear at it. It's a personal decision. In the end it comes down to your personal spell usage and healing style. There are ZERO encounters in this game that require you to have TC, so think of it only as a 'buffer' for your mana. Gear, gem and play properly, and you don't need it. But having TC allows you to recover mana in downtime to blow mana more freely during hectic times.

The best way I can relate is dig back to wrath raiding. Personally my mp5 was in the area of 90 or less throughout the entirety of the x-pack. Even in Ulduar when everyone was stacking int to overcome their mana problems, I blasted my way through content stacking haste because I was able to. And set dozens of ranked hps parses along the way. So ask yourself if you can relate to this or not. If your find you have mana problems due to whatever reason in your heal style, then TC will be worth a look for you. If you find that you're able to heal in a way that you don't need active mana regen mechanics and just blast out hps all day long non stop, then go for the max hps build.

Edited by Jynus on 4/12/11 10:39 AM (PDT) **** Section 2) Glyphs ****
Prime
Glyph of Riptide
Glyph of Earthliving Weapon
Glyph of Earth Shield

Major
Glyph of Healing Stream Totem
Glyph of Chain Heal
Glyph of Stoneclaw Totem

These choices are your cookie cutter glyphs. The only other glyph that you might want to take instead would be Glyph of Water Shield. You would use it in place of Riptide or ELW if you're finding you're having mana problems. If you're more a tank healer, use it in place of ELW. If you're more a raid healer, use it in place of Riptide.


**** Section 3) Stats ****
You will see a big change in the way of thinking here. It was a bit of a epiphany for me too. First of all, the way a lot of us (me included) have been looking at stats has been flawed. Mostly in how we look at crit. It's time we reevaluated. Crit is NOT a throughput stat. It's in fact a regen stat. It's function if you will is to replace spirit the more we gear. It's NOT to be used in place of haste or mastery if your goal is increasing your hps. Once this paradigm shift sinks in, your gearing strat becomes a lot clearer.

3.1 - Int
Int is your prime stat. You gem for it, you gear for it. You take the gear upgrade that has more Int, and reforge the stats if need be to suit yourself. When it comes to Int, gearscore, sadly, matters... The more Int the better. Int is the new haste. That is about all that needs to be said on the subject.

3.2 - Spirit
Spirit is your prime regen stat. Stack it hard and high to support your big heal spamming. How much is enough you ask? Well honestly there is no exact answer other than it's enough when you don't run oom. But I will give a value of 2640 fully raid buffed as a target. For a couple of reasons. Firstly Mana Tide Totem is a raidwide CD that benefits all healers including yourself. Having a solid base amount that gives consistent mana for everyone is a huge benefit. Second because it gives you the freedom to hitcap yourself if needed for any encounter. Now this isn't a hard set in stone cap value, if you find you need a lot more than this to do your job, stack it higher. If you and your raid team find that mana isn't a concern and you have no reason to ever spec EP, then feel free to go lower.

3.3 - Crit
Your secondary regen stat. At this point in the game, I can't call crit a throughput stat. It's way too weak compared to haste and mastery. There is nothing that crit brings to the table throughput wise that mastery and haste can't do better. So the old way of stacking crit past the haste breakpoint as a gearing strat is dead except for entry level gearing.

Instead it's time to start looking at crit as a regen stat. Think of it as a replacement for spirit. It's a fancy form of spirit that sacrifices some mana return in order to increase throughput. How this works for you is individual. We may get to a point where spirit will be as dead as mp5 in wrath and just have crit rating to carry our mana with WS procs. Or spirit will just be too good and crit will just be reforged out of for everything as haste/mastery scale. Tough to say. But use crit only in the sense of it's a way to return mana without impacting your throughput a lot. Tank healing as an example. haste/crit type build with some base spirit will overall do better than a pure haste/spirit build. There are many way to make crit work, so do what you find works best for you.

One small mention of the damage reduction ability we have with AH. It's a moot point in this discussion as it's useless as a raid heal ability as vast majority of damage is magic and AH is physical only. And your natural levels of crit in addition to riptide constantly rolling will keep it up on tanks good enough that stacking crit isn't needed.


3.4 - Haste
Your pure throughput stat. Increases your healing done by reducing your cast speed. There are a couple of ways to use haste, to either just plainly stack it as high as you can go, or only stack it to a breakpoint and then stack something else. Which you choose will be largely dependent upon your healing style. I'll go into further detail with this later on in Section 4 as to what may benefit you most.

To explain breakpoints further, once you are past a breakpoint, a point of haste has little impact of increasing your hps on hot type spells. For example, if you have 700 haste or 2500 haste, your HR will heal for the same amount. Meaning other throughput increasing stats become better. In the area of 2-5x better per stat point. This is why haste is no longer our prime goto stat anymore for all situations. If you look at your healing breakdown in a parse, the % of spells that haste affects can vary widely based on a lot of factors of your raid setup.

Heals that haste will FULLY effect
Healing Wave, Greater Healing Wave, Healing Surge, Chain Heal

Heals that haste will MOSTLY effect
Riptide, Unleashed Elements

Heals that haste will NOT effect (unless breakpoint value is reached)
Healing Rain, Earth Shield, Earth Living Weapon

Haste Breakpoints for HOTS
All values are including Wrath of Air totem as it's assumed you'll be using it. The numbers are listed as
xxx = haste rating value needed for extra tick
[xxx] = haste rating needed assuming Goblin racial
(xxx) = haste rating needed assuming lock haste buff

Haste Rating Needed for GCD softcap: 5491 (4958)

Haste Rating Values Needed for Extra Hot Ticks:
Healing Rain AND Riptide(no glyph)
1 extra tick: 610, [475], (220)
2 extra tick: 3050, [2892], (2589)
3 extra tick: 5418, [5307], (4958)

Riptide (glyphed)
1 extra tick: 261, [130], (0)
2 extra tick: 2005, [1857], (1573)
3 extra tick: 3748, [3582], (3266)
4 extra tick: 5418, [5238], (4958)

Earth Living Weapon
1 extra tick: 916 , [780], (516)
2 extra tick: 3966, [3798], (3478)
3 extra tick: 7016, [6817], (6438)


3.5 - Mastery
Your other core throughput stat. Works by increasing the power of your heals the lower your targets hp value is. First of all, Mastery is not a bad stat, just bad shaman think it is. Here's the breakpoints where mastery is better than other stats. (note, the spell selection factors in 4.1 buff)

When target is < 100% hp: Mastery is better than haste for HR, ELW, ES
When target is < 84% hp: Mastery is better than crit for HR, CH, UE, ELW, ES, Riptide HOT
When target is < 67% hp: Mastery is better than crit for HW, GHW, HS and Riptide Direct Heal
When target is < 48% hp: Mastery is your strongest stat period

Considering in raids, a lot of healing is done on targets at the 67% level or lower, (a lot of the time, near death healing is common) and virtually all is done at lower than 84%, mastery is truly a good stat to have. In addition to this, it increases HPM, while haste does not.

Mastery also scales extremely well. Which makes sense when you consider it's a % of a % increase to throughput. Because of this, Mastery scales with increasing returns vs haste and crit. (assuming you're healing people who are lower than the hp breakpoint) This means comparing low stat values of mastery to haste and crit, it will have similar throughput value. But scale this to say 2000 points of mastery, and healing the same hp level target will have a much greater throughput increase. Here's is a simple graph explaining this concept: http://i1099.photobucket.com/albums/g392/rbollinger/MasteryScaling.jpg

When you look at that, it becomes obvious that mastery is better than crit. The only factor becomes how it compares to haste. For this there is no one answer. You have to look at your raid as a whole and look at your healing style and spell selection as a whole. I'll expand on this further in Section 4.

**** Section 5) Gemming ****
This is pretty easy to follow. Int is our core stat, but it's not so important that it's like wrath where we don't care about socket bonus'. The bonus' for cata are actually pretty decent so I recommend to follow gem colors.

Red Socket: Brilliant Inferno Ruby

Yellow Socket: Artful Ember Topaz or Reckless Ember Topaz

Blue Socket: Purified Demonseye

Meta Socket: Ember Shadowspirit Diamond


**** Section 6) Enchants ****
Does not include profession enchants. But obviously use your profession enchants in place of any of these if applicable.

Helm: Arcanum of Hyjal

Shoulders: Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone

Cloak: Enchant Cloak - Greater Intellect

Chest: Enchant Chest - Peerless Stats

Bracers: Enchant Bracer - Mighty Intellect

Gloves: Enchant Gloves - Greater Mastery or Enchant Gloves - Haste

Belt: Ebonsteel Belt Buckle

Legs: Powerful Ghostly Spellthread

Boots: Enchant Boots - Mastery or Enchant Boots - Haste
*(If not specced AS, use Scroll of Enchant Boots - Tuskarr's Vitality)

Shield/OH: Enchant Off-Hand - Superior Intellect

Weapon: Enchant Weapon - Power Torrent
Enchant Weapon - Heartsong for replaceable weapons is perfectly fine too.

Edited by Jynus on 4/12/11 11:56 AM (PDT) **** Section 7) MTT and your mana ****
Mana Tide Totem works by taking your spirit, and giving that value to the rest of the raiders in your raid x 4 for the duration of the totem. Meaning the more spirit you have, the more mana regen you and everyone else in your raid gets. While the temptation might be to stack your spirit to the moon in order to act as a “mana battery” so your other healers can flow in mana for more healing, overall it makes little sense. Nerfing your healing output just requires others in your raid to compensate for you, so the extra mana becomes a wash. And the heart of this guide is for maximizing your healing. If you want a guide for stacking spirit and doing gimp healing, look someplace else...

Now there are currently only a handful of trinkets that still work with manatide post 4.06 worth equipping.
Darkmoon Card: Tsunami
Mandala of Stirring Patterns
Jar of Ancient Remedies

DMC: Tsunami is your BIS trinket, so get it. It will last you a long time. In regards for your complimenting trinket, your other best choice would be Vibrant Alchemist Stone. However, that's an Alchemy only trinket. For us non Alchemy types, you are then left with choosing between the remaining 2 spirit trinkets, or going for a throughput trinket. This depends on your situation. The spirit trinkets will give more mana return from MTT overall. So if mana is a concern, then this would be the way to go.

If mana is not that much of a concern, then my recommendation would be to find another Int trinket and use that instead. Int is just too good to pass up for spirit if you don't need the regen.. In which case you have 3 choices in this order.
Tyrande's Favorite Doll
Fall of Mortality
Core of Ripeness

As for how to properly use MTT, first of all pop it early in fights when you drop to about 60-70% mana so you can get 1-2 more uses out of it. make a macro that /y to your other healers to stand near it when you pop it, handy for fights where you're spread out a lot to alert them to move nearby... For items like core, ideally it's macroed into something so it's used on CD to maximize your mana return. (most addons have this functionality built in) For MTT's CD, have a buff tracker that will alert you when it's off CD so you can pop it immediately again. (more on this in Section 10)

Another tip is Potion of Concentration. This by far should be your on use potion if you require one in raids. There is usually periods of downtime in a raid setting where losing 10 seconds isn't critical. And it stacks with Vibrant Alchemist Stone.


**** Section 8) Spirit Link Totem ****
This will be covered once live hits.

TLDR – When grouped and raidwide spike inc, drop this totem. Profit!

Edited by Jynus on 4/12/11 11:21 AM (PDT) **** Section 9) Healing Ideology ****
To be perfectly honest, I'll need your help here guys. Give me some tips from your raid experience as since I retired, I'm starting to feel the rust. So feel free to add to this, or if someone wants to take the initiative to write this entire section, feel free.

This is the only fuzzy part as I'm still somewhat crafting it out myself. From someone who has been a twitch healer for so long mostly just using Chain heal, the idea of a 'rotation' is still somewhat foreign to me. However I will say this, there is a lot more of a case to be made for maximizing your HPM CD's. In wrath, I was able to heal using a pure hps build, this isn't the case for cata.

Rather than a strict rotation, and a concrete way of 'this is the way you need to do things', here are some general Guidelines.

* We should be placed in the same group as the tanks. With Healing Stream Totem being affected by mastery (in 4.1) and MTT being raid wide, there is no reason for us to be in the 'Healer Group' anymore. A perma mastery boosted HOT on the tanks is valuable.

*Riptide and UE on CD as much as u can. (assuming someone needs healing, otherwise just sit there and regen) Not because it increases your HPS to use them, it doesn't. But the GCD's spent on them, and their proc effects, greatly increase your HPM. And in the long run, thats what you need to do.

* HR is your most efficient spell. Even moreso than HW. But only if it's used properly. If you have a situation where 5+ people will be hit at 60% hp or less, use HR on them. Drill it into the heads of every raider that they NEED to stand in our healing circles when the need healing, the aura heals are the best way to heal for like every raid healer. Alternately if you can teach them to run out when they are full hp, even better.

*Chain is situational, Ideally you cast it on a raid member with a riptide on them. But it's no longer our goto heal. But it's still always a good ideal to sprinkle them in if you can. It's more efficient than GHW and HS, and procs tidal waves. Try not to use it right after a riptide to make the most of your Tidal Waves procs

*HR + CH is your goto AOE heal dump. In any raid situation there will be periods where this will be your goto. Be ready to unload when the time is right.

*HW will still be used a fair bit, but it is usually way down the chart on my healing done. But in periods where you know damage will be light, and most raid bosses have this, stick to using HW even if raiders are somewhat low.. You'll regen mana and be ready for the next spike phase with your bigger spells that need the mana pool.

*UW is best followed with either CH or GHW, and then Riptide right after. The reason being is if Riptide is cast instantly as your CH or GHW lands, both heals can get the UW +% bonus.

Thats about all I can think of for now. I may add to this as time goes on. And do editing here and there... But if you have any comments or additions feel free to post them.


**** Section 10) Healing Methodology ****
This will include addon tips, and some helpful macro type things that I picked up here and there to max the way you place the class using your actual hands.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Tier 12 Armor Models Preview - 4.1.0 Cataclysm





New armor sets for teir 12 cataclysm

Discipline Healing Guide - 4.1.0 Cataclysm

Introduction

To start, I believe that in the current state that discipline priests in primarily i346 gear or higher who correctly prioritize their healing can, with some knowledge of predictable damage, heal equally or better than all other classes providing they use the proper spec and healing rotations. This varies by encounter, as discipline really shines in constant, raid wide AoE situations where Divine Aegis from PoH can be fully utilized, whereas Holy Paladins have cooldowns on AoE healing but are capable of much larger bursts. One caveat is that at lower gear levels, it is difficult to maintain healing for long periods of time due to our major regeneration talents scaling directly with our mana pool.

The below information is by no means exclusively of my own derivation, but rather has been taken from discussions with priests on my own server, on several forums (most importantly the forums at EJ), and testing done within the body of this thread (Special thanks to Khendra). The purpose of this thread is to provide a concise summary of helpful healing tips to those who are struggling to heal through heroic content and early raids. I'm not sure how Sticky Maintenance is dealt with, so please continue to "like" this thread if you find the information useful.

Ideal Spec:
http://wowtal.com/#k=veyUg6Jh.a8t.priest.-TYi8g
There are two extra points which I put into darkness, but some prefer to place in soul warding to reduce cooldown on PW:S. Those concerned about longevity could potentially place those points into Veiled Shadows.

How to Heal Efficiently:
There are three basic healing styles for discipline which depend on the type of incoming damage, and are as follows. If you cannot heal the encounter with these strategies, you cannot heal that encounter at your current gear level OR you have DPS taking unnecessary damage. These rotations are produced by examining the efficiency of each heal in your repertoire, and considering the types of raid damage.

Efficiency (highest -> lowest; no overheal):
Divine Hymn > Prayer of Mending > Prayer of Healing > Penance > Smite (i346+) > Greater heal = Heal = Binding Heal = Smite (i333) > Binding Heal > PW:S >

Smite scales very well with gear, and at raid quality gear outstrips Greater Heal and Heal.

heals which have very poor mana efficiency given the spec and glyphs listed include flash heal, renew, and holy nova. These can be used situationally, but there are often better choices.

1. Low, predictable damage:
Main heal: Smite (Atonement) + Penance + PW:S for Rapture ONLY. + PoM if sufficient AoE to benefit. At high gear levels, Smite will outstrip Heal in efficiency when combined with effective Evangelism management (see bottom of post)

2. High, single target damage (3 or fewer targets in raids):
Main heal: Greater heal (making use of Train of Thought for reduced Inner Focus) + Penance + PW:S for Rapture ONLY, + PoM

3. AoE Raid damage:
Main heal: Prayer of Healing (Inner Focus) + PW:S for Rapture ONLY + PoM. This is a good time to use Power Infusion.

Inner Fire vs. Inner Will
Because the above healing strategies utilize very few instant heals (PW:S every 12 seconds, PoM in AoE situations, and the very occasional renew) Inner Fire provides superior efficiency compared to inner will and should be used in almost all situations. Inner will can be situationally useful for the movement speed, and in fights with a large amount of movement, however.

Miscellaneous (but very important) Healing Points:
1. Use Power Infusion on yourself exclusively, typically to boost throughput during AoE phases and increase your efficiency when you know you will cast a series of high mana cost heals (PoH/Gheal).
2. Renew is a low-efficiency heal, however can be sparingly used to top up raid members when you must focus most of your attention on tanks.
3. Make use of Pain suppression. It is very useful to give yourself breathing room to top a tank back up OR can be used to "catch up" by allowing AoE healing of the raid when the tank is still taking substantial damage. PoH will keep a pain supressioned tank alive, where one would normally die.
4. with Train of Thought, at i346 greater heal has the same efficiency as heal. For this reason, there is no reason to ever use heal, as you can be doing similar healing with Smite while adding damage.
5. Fade is a wonderful skill which will set your agro to 0 for the duration of the spell. Whenever you have adds on you, Fade and stand in Concecrate/DnD/Tclap range. This will allow you to keep damage on the tank and not yourself, making use of the tanks higher avoidance values to minimize healing.
6. Power Word Barrier is an excellent ability that can be used to mitigate large amounts of raid/group damage and can also be used as a tank healing cooldown if placed around the tank.

Important Regeneration Mechanics:
1. Rapture (3/3): Returns 6% of your maximum mana when a shield is completely absorbed or dispelled. This cannot occur more than once every 12 seconds. This is discipline's most important regeneration mechanic and should be used on cooldown. However, becuase of PW:S's low efficiency, it is not prudent to cast PW:S when rapture is on internal cooldown. A mod to track this cooldown can be found at curse: http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/ingelasrapture.aspx
2. Archangel: Returns 5% of your maximum mana and increases healing by 15%. Use this to increase the efficiency of smite healing AND proc archangel before predictable AoE damage for substantially increased healing.
3. Hymn of Hope and Shadowfiend: Both should be utilized on cooldown, and must be utilized to maximize healing longevity. Hymn is substantially more difficult to use given that you must channel and therefore not heal, so save it for periods of low damage. If shadowfiend is used directly before hymning, more mana can be obtained due to your increased mana pool. Throwing Pain supression on the tank before Hymning can ensure that you have time for a full hymn without having to prematurely cancel to heal the tank. In addition, Hymn benefits from haste, and should be used following PW:S for borrowed time.

Important note for heroic healing: Mastery typically is less useful in heroics given that divine aegis procs on non-tanks will fall off unused. In this situation, Mastery > Crit > Haste

Mana Tide and Core of Ripeness
This is such an important synergy that it is worthy of it's own section. The combination of Mana Tide (increases spirit by 350%) and Core of Ripeness (+1920 on use spirit) allow for the regeneration of approximately 45-50% of your mana pool (spirit dependent) every 3 minutes. This is a game changing mechanic which eliminates mana dependence for priests above i346 gear level in raid environments. If you raid with a Restoration Shaman, this is a mandatory first item pick-up, and will remain best-in-slot until a time at which mana is a non-issue. If you do not raid with a Restoration Shaman, I would suggest finding one.

Important Macros
Inner Focus should be macrod into both Greater Heal and Prayer of Healing in order to fully maximize the effect of Train of Thought. This following macros will use Inner Will on cooldown. A current bug will prevent you from deriving benefit from Inner Focus when it comes off cooldown mid-cast, therefore spamming Gheal and PoH can reduce the effectiveness of IF. An alternative is to manually track IF using Power Auras. What is more efficient will depend on your playstyle and attention.

#gettooltip Greater heal
/cast Inner Focus
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear(); UIErrorsFrame:Show()
/cast Greater Heal

#gettooltip Prayer of Healing
/cast Inner Focus
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear(); UIErrorsFrame:Show()
/cast Prayer of Healing

Archangel Usage Strategies:
Use of Archangel is a difficult decision because you must trade 5 stacks of evangelism for the Archangel buff. As a rule of thumb, if you are smiting, you should keep your evangelism stack and put off using Archangel until you are going to swap to a different healing strategy that cannot benefit from the mana efficiency.

Evangelism: 5 stack of evangelism provides: 20% increased damage to Smite (and penance, but we don't use this for DPS), and a 30% mana cost reduction to both spells.

Archangel: 5% of maximum mana, and 15% increased healing.

Effective Utilization of Archangel:
1. You are about to switch from a low single target damage phase (smite/atonement) to a burst AoE healing phase (PoH/PoM) and no longer require the reduced mana cost of smite. Pop Archangel (and power word barrier, and Power Infusion) and begin Prayer of Healing spamming with 15% increased healing.
2. DPS burn phase with DPS modifiers (more for raiding content, but think Rahj's recharge in HoO) Pop Archangel for the DPS increase, and immediately reapply Evangelism with smites.
3. The tank is about to take a lot of damage. Pop Archangel and Power Infusion and start laying down your Gheal/Penance Rotation.

Stat Weights for gear decisions
Discipline Priests benefit most from Intellect, given that our regeneration mechanics scale off of total mana. Spirit is the next most important stat, followed distantly by all of the secondary stats. This means find trinkets with intellect on them, and make sure all items have spirit as a secondary stat.

The following stat weights are rough approximations given full Tier 11 359 gear without factoring in borrowed time, utilizing a single-target healing rotation. In addition, please keep in mind that stacking one secondary stat will raise the value of alternative stats due to synergy with the other secondaries

Burst:

Intellect 0.94
Spirit 0
SP 0.77
Critical 0.47
Haste 0.41
Mastery 0.24


Sustained:

Intellect 4.20
Spirit 3.36
Spell Power 0.80
Critical 0.48
Haste 0
Mastery 0.25


These weights suggest that reforging to critical strike is the correct choice for maximizing throughput and sustained healing. Haste is a very close second, followed distantly by Mastery. Keep in mind that the value of haste increases (in a complicated and non-linear fashion) with Multi-target healing as your mastery increases, as crit is not required to proc DA, however overall Crit is superior. Problematically, this makes switching between discipline and holy specs difficult as Holy has opposite stat weights.

Optional Healing Strategy: Mouseover Macros

Healing is a task which at times requires very quick reaction times in order to ensure that you keep you tank (or a bad dps) alive when they take damage unexpectedly. Traditionally, three actions must take place before you can heal a player taking unexpected damage. First, you must click on that player's unit frame. Second, you must press the keyboard or mouse button which you have heal bound to, and third, you must depress that button, as blizzard polls the release of the button as having ordered an action. Together, these actions take between 100 and 500ms. In order to reduce the amount of time spent targeting and ordering actions, and therefore increase your throughput, mouseover macros eliminate the need to click a specific action bar before you cast a heal. Instead, you must have your cursor hovering over the unit frame (or the player itself) who you wish to heal. The one caution is that this necessarily prevents you from 'clicking' your action bars. Rather, you must have all heals bound to keybinds.

The following macro will attempt to cast the spell attached to it on your mouseover target, and if that does not exist, will cast the spell on yourself:

#showtooltip
/cast [target=mouseover,exists] "Spell"; "Spell"

With no quotations around the spell's name, for example:

#showtooltip
/cast [target=mouseover,exists] Greater Heal; Greater Heal

Guide taken from Mnemo from Magtheridon

Friday, May 20, 2011

Mage PvE Guide - All Specs - 4.1.0

With the release of cataclysm, players new and experienced are hitting 85 and getting ready for their raiding career. This guide will hopefully be a comprehensive guide for everything a mage needs to know when it comes to raiding in Cataclsym. If you have any raiding questions, please post a reply and I will (attempt to) answer your question, hopefully helped by the rest of the mage community.

Table of Contents


General Information
■Rating Conversions - 1
■Addons - 1
■The Hit Cap - 2
■Enchants - 2
■Gems - 2
■Race - 2
■Professions - 3
■Threat Management - 3
■Glossary - 4
■What spec should I be? - 4
■Final thoughts - 4
The Raiding Specs
■Arcane - 5
■Fire- 7
■Frost- 9
■Frostfire - 12


Stat and Rating conversions


648.91 Intellect yields 1% crit.
102.446 Hit Rating yields 1% hit.
179.28 Crit Rating yields 1% crit.
128.06 Haste Rating yields 1% haste.
179.28 Mastery Rating yields 1 mastery.
Any other numbers wanted, such as all spell coefficients, can be found on the Elitist Jerks Mage Forum: http://elitistjerks.com/f75/


Addons


To optimize your rotation (or to even have one), knowledge of your procs and debuffs is crucial to successful play. There are now two Blizzard implemented UI options to help with this; in the interface options under the Combat tab check the checkbox labeled "Show Spell Alert" which lets you watch your procs very easily by activating large (awesome looking) icons in the middle of your screen for the duration of the proc; and in the Display tab activate the checkbox "Emphasize My Spell Effects" so that your debuffs show up first and larger than others peoples debuffs on any target.

While the Blizzard implemented UI elements solve the base issues, to truly optimize your character you need as much knowledge about how your character as possible, and that means addons.
Mage Fever - http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/mfever.aspx
This mod is preconfigured and very easy to use. Just put the warnings where you want them and go for it.
Mage Nuggets - http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/mage-nuggets.aspx.
This is an all in one mage addon. I've tried others and found this to be the easiest to use, has the most useful monitors and is preconfigured very well.
NeedToKnow - http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/need-to-know.aspx
TellMeWhen - http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/tellmewhen.aspx
These addons work together very well and with a little time you can have a very personalized way to check any and all debuffs/buffs/cooldown/etc. I personally use this addon because it's easy to use, is used on ALL on my characters and gets me the customizability I want without a lot of extra stuff.
Power Auras - http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/powerauras-classic.aspx
This is the most customizable mod I've found for checking conditions. It has so much customizability that it can be a little overwhelming. If you are someone who likes very nice looking UIs and is willing to take the time to configure everything, then this is probably the mod for you.

Once you have your rotation up and running, you next need to learn how to survive, I recommend Deadly Boss Mods ( http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/deadly-boss-mods.aspx ). This addon is a must have for any raiding mage as it has a module for each isntance with timers and warnings for every boss that can be crucial to performing correctly to not be kicked out of your guild, seriously. In the same "help you survive" attitude, you need a threat meter of some kind; the blizzard implemented one can work if you get used to it, but most people prefer Omen Threat Meter 10x to the default implementation.

Edited by Larcix on 4/30/11 4:19 PM (PDT) The hit cap


For all mage specs, Intellect is the most valuable stat you can have. However, when choosing gear, ratings are the main factor, and hit is by far every mages best DPS rating. Hit can not be stacked indefinitely however and is capped at an exact value, 102.446*17=1741.58 hit rating. If you are a Draenei, your racial improves your hit chance by 1%, so your hit cap is 102.446*17=1639.14 hit rating.

Reaching the hit cap should be the first thing on all new mages minds (yet never sacrifice Intellect for Hit). It is possible to have two sets of gear; one gear set has the above numbers which assume that you are attacking a "skull" level mob, aka level 88, aka raid boss; the second gear set is for trash pulls or heroics/questing where the highest mob you will see is level 87 that only requires 6% hit to be hit capped, which is only 102.446*6=614.68 hit rating. Not needing that last 1100 hit rating lets you gain a significant amount of crit/haste/mastery and improve your DPS substantially.


Enchants


While many things change between specs, enchants are not one of them. Each slot that can be enchanted has fairly obvious enchants.

Helm - Arcanum of Hyjal (60 Int, 35 Crit) - Rep (Guardians of Hyjal revered)
Shoulder - Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone (50 Int, 25 Haste) - Rep (Therazane exalted)
Back - Enchant Cloak - Greater Intellect (50 Int)
Chest - Enchant Chest - Peerless Stats (20 Stats)
Bracer - (Item not found) (50 Int; best and most expensive) Enchant Weapon - Landslide (50 Hit; for if you are cheap and need the hit)
Gloves - Enchant Gloves - Haste (50 Haste) or Enchant Gloves - Greater Mastery (65 Mastery)
Pants - Powerful Enchanted Spellthread (80 Stam, 95 Int)
Boots - Enchant Boots - Lavawalker (Minor Run Speed, 35 Mastery) - Under hit cap use Enchant Boots - Precision (50 Hit)
Ring - Intellect (40 Int)
Mainhand - Enchant Weapon - Power Torrent
Offhand - Enchant Off-Hand - Superior Intellect (40 Int)

Bracers have alternate enchants that are 65 crit or 65 haste. If you are at the hit cap, one of these two alternate enchants should be used in place of Precision before any other adjustment to hit is made elsewhere.


Gems


Gems are another example of something about the mage class that is quite straight forward to all specs. Which are the best gems to use depends a lot on the spec, and sometimes even more on the gear level. The following is a general guide on mage geming in PvE. Note that you can use the rare quality gem or the epic quality depending on your need.

META
Burning Shadowspirit Diamond (Int/cirt damage, rare and expensive; new to 4.0.6 world drop)
Chaotic Shadowspirit Diamond (The old BiS, only next to Burning; easier and cheaper to get.)

RED
Brilliant Inferno Ruby(40 Int)

YELLOW
Reckless Ember Topaz/Potent Ember Topaz/Artful Ember Topaz (20 Haste/Crit/Mastery, 20 Int)

BLUE
Veiled Demonseye (20 Int, 20 Hit). (If you are short on hit, expect to be)
Timeless Demonseye (20 Int, 20 Stam)

Notes on geming:
Exactly what gem to use is highly dependent on gear/spec and the general rules of thumb can break down, checking your gear with a simulation program can help you min/max your gems and enchants. While you can use a (half) stam gem for a blue slot if you are hit capped, I would say that you might as well just leave it int/hit and attempt to lose hit else where.


Race


I have some napkin math'ed numbers (with DPS factors given by simcraft, 359) about which race yields superior DPS for the hordeand alliance. I'm looking for some more accurate numbers if anybody has them. I don't trust the Belf number, I got the mana scale factor very oddly. An unlisted race means it's racials have zero affect.

The math is at the top of this page (3):
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1648728060?page=3

Fire:
Horde: Orc = 260.0, Troll = 247.3, Goblin = 178.8, Blood Elf = 425.6
Alliance: Worgen = 324.2, Draenei = 323.1, Gnome = 141.9

Frost:
Horde: Orc = 279.6, Troll = 194.6, Goblin = 147.2, Blood Elf = 493.2
Alliance: Worgen = 292.5, Draenei = 257.6, Gnome = 164.4

Edited by Larcix on 2/6/11 6:35 AM (PST) Professions


Each of the main professions gives your character 80 Intellect:

■Alchemy: +80 Int (Mixology with Flask of the Draconic Mind)
■Blacksmith: +80 Int (two extra gem sockets with Brilliant Inferno Ruby)
■Enchanting: +80 Int (two Intellect ring enchants)
■Engineering: +96 Int (the average Int received from Synapse Springs)
■Herbalism: +480 Haste and roughly a 3K heal to self on a 2 min CD (Lifeblood)
■Inscription: +80 Int (Felfire Inscription vs. Greater Inscription of Charged Lodestone)
■Jewelcrafting: +81 Int (3 Brilliant Chimera's Eye vs. Brilliant Inferno Ruby)
■Leatherworking: +130 Int; -50 Crit (Replacing Greater Crit with Embossment-Int)
■Mining: +120 Stam (Toughness)
■Skinning: +80 Crit (Master of Anatomy)
■Tailoring: +143 Int (average Int increase from Replacing Greater Int with Lightweave


A good profession set up is Tailoring and Enchanting. You get a nice straight bonus from enchanting and one of the best bonuses from tailoring plus you can craft a few raid quality epics for not too bad mats and get the best mage mount in the game, the flying carpet.


Threat Management


Like all DPS classes you should always be watchful of your threat vs any mob that you are attacking. For this purpose I highly recommend (read: must have) a threat meter, normally Omen ( http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/omen-threat-meter.aspx ). The in game threat meter works just as well, but has limited features and can be, from the few times I tried it, hard to see or use. You should normally be at ranged when fighting creatures so if you are watching Omen, you will pull agro at 130%, as it shows you. If you hop into melee for whatever reason you will suddenly only need to be at 110% threat to pull agro and if you were sitting between 110% and 130% he will happily turn, one shot you, and continue on his marry little way.

Threat Capping. Your tanks threat is an ever increasing number, but some tanks are better at generating threat then others. Blizzard has tuned the threat levels a little tighter in this expansion then you may have grown used to, so pay a little extra attention to the threat meter as you go through instances, all out all the time will not fly. If there are any adds in a fight you are single targeting, you can swap to that add for a while and then back to the boss to continue to dps but still lose relative threat on the boss. If there is no other mob to attack you can use Invisibility or Mirror Image.

Invisibly. Once this spell is used you lose 10% threat per second until after 3 seconds you instantly loose all threat on all mobs, where you should then use a spell or macro to drop out of the Invis effect. The line to cancel the Invisibility affect through a macro is "/cancelaura invisibility".

Mirror Image. With the demise of Tier 10 4 piece bonus, Mirro Image is back to being for threat dropping only. When MI is used, you lose 90,000,000 million threat (literally) on all mobs you have threat with. At the end of 30 seconds you gain back that 90 million threat you lost. I use this mainly for when I actually do pull agro I can pop it and the boss runs back to the tank, or sometimes one shotting some of the MI's before getting taunted. Or if you are threat capped you can pop MI, go balls out for 25 seconds and then pop Invis to lose any and all threat, nice combo. There are a couple ways to judge MI's duration. I use the following macro that only works if you have Deadly Boss Mods installed, linked in the Addons section.

Glossary


Mages, like all classes, use aconyms more than we don't, so here is a list of all mage, none-spec-related abilities and their acronyms.

■AoE - Area of Affect - An ability which does damage to all mobs within an area
■BL - Bloodlust/Time Warp
■CD - Cooldown
■FB - Fireball or Frostbolt - Depends on situation
■FFO - Frostfire Orb - Frost specs only
■FO - Flame Orb
■GCD - Global Cooldown
■ICD - Internal Cooldown
■Guardenteed I missed some, will update as more come to me


Which spec should I be?


At the moment, I see no definitive answer to that question. Each of the specs are fairly close to one another and individual skill and gear will make a much larger difference on DPS than your spec, if played properly.

Try each of the specs and see what your playstyle is. One may appeal to you more because you like DoTs, or you like procs or you like playing the mana game. You should just make a pvp and a pve spec for each element and get fluent with it before you move on to the next, and by doing this you will have a much fuller understanding of what the mage class has to offer and will be able to choose exactly what spec you want to play with certainty. Doing this also allows you to fall back into those specs playstyles fast if you ever need to be a certain spec for some reason.


Final Thoughts


Most of this information I learned from browsing these same forums. When possible I added my own experience, having played each of the specs a bit myself, and my own theories/thoughts that are mostly backed on my experience and that of others. If you disagree with something or want more information on a topic, whether it's in this guide or not, as long as it revolves around raiding, I will try and answer your questions and update my guide accordingly. This guide is not set in stone, and nothing that I've said is necessarily the gospel truth, much is open for debate and I'll try and show both sides of an issue if possible, letting you decide for yourself. I am just hoping that this information helps raiders new and old be the best they can be. I am always open to constructive criticisms. Enjoy :)


The rest of this guide goes into more detail about the four main raiding specs for a mage; Fire, Frost, Arcane and Frostfire.

Arcane spec. (31/3/3 +4)


Another great guide specifically for arcane can be found at: http://www.icy-veins.com/arcane-mage-pve-guide

The default/cookie cutter spec for Arcane: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#ohIMMRuorkRocZc:sV00Mzzmo

Variables of the spec: Improved Blink is amazing, Incanter's Absorption can be a good DPS boost on some fights, but there really isn't much of anything too important with those last 4 talent points; get what you want.

Random note: Arcane get's an extra buff to throw around, Focus Magic, which should be placed on whoever you believe will crit the most, either another mage, shadow priest or moonkin; in a pinch or when healing is of utmost important, placing FM on a healer is not a bad idea. If you have another Arcane mage in the raid you can swap FM's with each other.

Glossary. A list of arcane specific class abilities and their shorthand form:

■Abarr - Arcane Barrage
■Abl - Arcane Blast
■AE - Arcane Explosion
■AM - Arcane Missiles
■AP - Arcane Power
■FM - Focus Magic
■MN cycle - mana nuetral cycel, where your net mana usage is zero
■PoM - Presence of Mind

Arcane is a very interesting spec and played quite differently than Frost or Fire. You need to watch your mana and how the fight progresses and use your mana in the best way possible, making constant judgment calls in order to optimize your performance, not just following a simple priority list. I might go as far as saying that Arcane is the hardest of the mage specs to play to perfection, probably impossible without a computer implanted in your head.

Mana. Arcane is dominated by mana, but has no issues with mana. Arcane, at any time, can drop into a rotation that is mana positive or it can go Abl spam and lose your whole mana bar in 10 to 20 seconds, there really is no such thing as OOM in a situation like this.

Cooldowns. Even as arcane you still want to be casting Flame Orb every cooldown. Arcane still has three spec specific cooldowns. Arcane Power should be cast with Mana Gem during your burn cycle to make the most of the spell power/damage bonuses. For when the best time to use your burn phase, refer to the rotation section. Presence of Mind allows one cast time spell to be instant cast every minute and a half. This is most useful for keeping your Abl stacks stacked while moving, but if your mana gem runs out in a long fight, the mana gem should be recast with PoM (as the mana gem conjure is a longer cast than Arcane Blast, always).

Threat. Arcane is about the least interesting of the specs with regards to threat. In single target, none of your damage is front loaded like frost, so not much to worry about there, and in AoE, you are either going to deal no damage via Arcane's terrible AoE, or are going to be using a near threatless ability, Arcane Explosion.

Mobility. Many people see instant cast nuke and think mobility, but Arcane rarely, if ever, casts Abarr. Proper use of Blink and your instant cast abilities (PoM+Abl, Abarr, Fireblast, and rarely, ice lance) should allow you to be casting 100% of the time with proper planning and placement of self within the boss's room.

AoE. Arcane's AoE is pretty lackluster at the moment. The iconic Arcane AoE spell, Arcane Explosion, received a significant buff but is still quite limiting. With a talent, the GCD for AE is lowered significantly and the threat is brought to near zero, but you still need to be right in the heart of the pull to be able to use the skill, greatly increasing your chance to be killed. Because of this position requirement, many arcane mages might resort to the old fall backs, Flamestrike and Blizzard; however, Blizzard is terrible for arcane now and really shouldn't be used; Flamestrike is, if the dot is allowed to tick fully, about equal to AE in DPS; if you are looking for top DPS as arcane in an AoE situation though, AE is the way to go.


Gearing


Intellect has an even more significant affect on Arcane's DPS than any other spec, as arcane receives a boost in damage done not only from the spell power, but form the mana gained as well. When intellect is unavailable, hit rating is still king as with all mage specs, and should be stacked until the hit cap of 1742 hit rating. When more hit rating can not be found or you are hit capped, Mastery will be stat of choice. With the significant cast time reductions made in 4.1, haste has been devalued to below crit , generally; however, this is more of a rule of thumb, and definitely not set in stone. A quick sim can be run of your character to give you a much better understanding of your current gear's stat values, letting you make much more accurate assessments.

The Rotation


Arcane has a fairly straightforward, but all together different rotation from Frost or Fire, and focuses more on your mana pool more than on procs or debuffs.

The mechanic which is gives Arcane such an interesting "rotation" has to do with Arcane Blast, the new mastery and Mage Armor. When Abl is cast a debuff is placed on the player which can stack four times, the debuff increases Abl's damage substantially but increases it's mana cost even more (a lot more); the mastery increases your damage done relative to your current mana percent; Mage Armor simply helps you regen a lot of mana continuously. With their powers combined...

The possible rotation's and there ups and downs are as follows:
Abl spam: your "burn" cycle; just spam Abl at full stacks, consuming ungodly amounts of mana very fast but yielding your highest possible DPS.

Abl x(2 or 3) -> AM: your mana nuetral (MN) cycle, or 'normal' rotation; alternating between two or three stacks (in any amount necessary) to stay at a constant amount of mana, namely above 90%, where your mastery has the greatest effect.

Evocation has a cooldown of two minutes, and as such you basically get a free 60% mana every two minutes. About 10 to 20 (or more) seconds before evocation comes off CD you want to enter into your burn phase/cycle (using all available cooldowns) so as to reach 30-35% mana right as Evo comes off CD, where you can then Evo back to full mastery bonus and begin the mana neutral (MN) cycle once more.

From here on is my own thoughts and I hope for verification/discussion to come to an at least slightly definitive answer. At the beginning of the fight, you will start in a MN rotation because the tank doesn't have the threat for you to lay into the mob, but you will presumably want to go into Abl spam as soon as possible as it's your highest DPS rotation, where you then Evocate back up and use a MN rotation until the CD comes up once more. In other words you want to Abl spam as soon as possible and get the Evo CD running as quickly as you can (without wasting it). Having your evo and CD's up for Bloodlust is a huge DPS boost and should always be a top priority; however, burning phasing twice in a fight is better than one burn phase during Bloodlust (again, verification of this would be awesome).


Glyphs


The glyphs are quite straight forward: Glyph of Arcane Blast, Glyph of Mage Armor and Glyph of Arcane Missiles. Arcane Barrage is only used for movement purposes, and should never be glyphed.

Glyph of Arcane Power, Glyph of Evocation and Glyph of Blink are the major glyphs of choice, and as always, the minor glyphs are Glyph of Conjuring, Glyph of Armors and Glyph of Slow Fall.

Fire spec. (3/31/3 +4)


A very detailed and highly accurate inspection of the Fire spec is being undertaken at Elitistjerks, linked: http://elitistjerks.com/f75/t110326-cataclysm_fire_mage_compendium/
Frostedblaze's fire guide, sitckied with this guide, is linked here as well: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1577520163
My consolidated guide to fire is as follows:

The default/cookie cutter spec for Fire is: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#o0hZrshrkbRRscoc:zcozMszmo

Variables of the spec: max out Burning Soul or Improved Fireblast, or even removed Imp Fireblast entirely, you only need 3 points total in either to continue; Blazing Speed, useless, you should never really get melee'd enough for this to be useful; Molten Shields, mildly useful, will keep your Mage Wards impact to your DPS to a minimum; Pyromaniac, amazing on paper, but I think that other talents will prove more useful; 1/3 Arcane Concentration, will help with mana issues a little bit, smart playing can improve this talents usefulness.

Glossary. A list of fire specific class abilities and their shorthand form:

■BW - Blastwave
■FB - Fireball
■FS - Flamestrike
■LB - Living Bomb

Fire is all about burning things and blowing things up. You have a castable on three targets exploding dot, every crit leaves a dot, your big instant cast ball of fire leaves its own dot, and you get Combustion to rol all your dots into one super dot. Besides all the burning, with impact you can spread all your dots (including combustion) to all nearby mobs. Fire is also a master of explosions and AoE with talented Fire Orb, Blastwave, Dragons Breath and isntant cast Flamestrike.

Mana. Fire feels pretty good with mana at the moment after the fireball mana cost reduction. Yet, even with the mana usage buff, you can still get into mana troubles for various reasons; whenever that happens, a fire mage can actually gain mana with a pretty low (~10%) DPS loss by swapping to scorch spam instead of fireball. You want to have enough mana for sub 35% so that you can spam fireball during the entire Molten Fury range.

Cooldowns. Fire has one cooldown (ignoring Flame Orb, as you just pop that every time it's up...), Combustion. It's not a bad cooldown at all, regardless of what some less skillful mages might believe. I have my LB, pyro dot and ignite all watched by NeedToKnow (Although most mages seem to love CombustionHelper) and pretty much the first time pyro procs I try and line up a couple good crits (to get a good ignite) and then Combustion, and it can easily deal 50k damage. You only want to use Combustion when you have all three dots up. If you use FFB Glyph, that would be one more dot you can include. Combustion can be spread via impact, and spreading a 6k ticking (every second) combustion onto 5 mobs in an AoE situation will yield ungodly DPS, especially considering you still have LB and Flamestrike/BW going.

Threat. Nothing particularly interesting regarding threat and the fire spec besides that fire's AoE can be ridiculous and during those huge AoE moments you will definitely need to pay attention to threat. As always, make sure you watch Omen carefully at the beginning of a fight, especially if you get a crit or two.

Mobility. Living Bomb and Hot Streak are both instant casts, but even when those are down, a properly specced fire mage has free scorches that can be cast while moving. I absolutely love this and am always loving my scorch spam.

AoE. When AoEing you will always want to have three Living Bombs up. At first you can do this by tab targeting three mobs, but after that you will probably have impact, so LB one and impact it to the others. Impact+Combustion can give easily the best AoE dps numbers of any class in the game. The key is to build up the three main dots on a single mob, combustion and then impact all four dot to every single other mob, inc 30k+ DPS. Besides keeping LB up, you need to keep the ground dot rolling by Blastwave'ing every 15 seconds and using Flame Strike in between (the ground dot lasts 8 seconds). When all of those are good, single target something or blizzard large packs.

Gearing


Intellect will always be your main stat, surpassing even hit rating. Until the hit cap of 1742 hit rating, hit rating will be your number one rating. While hit has a hard cap, (after which you gain no benefit) haste has a soft cap of 12.5% where 3 of your 4 possible dots gain an extra tick of damage. After taking into consideration buffs and talents, you only need 516 haste for am extra tick, easily reachable, but it takes 3476 haste rating for a 2nd tick, completely impossible at the moment. This "haste soft cap" should be easily reached while wearing fresh 80 greens. After this haste soft cap, crit becomes your most significant rating, followed by mastery, and bringing up the rear (and being the thing you should always reforge etc) is post haste cap haste rating.


The Rotation


For this spec your rotation is less of a set order and more about watching procs and timers. Excluding the very beginning of the fight, you will simply spam fireball over and over, keeping Living Bomb up on all targets you want it up on, using Hot Streak procs as available and keeping Flame Orb on cooldown. Use the above addons to keep track of the scorch/LB duration and for when HS procs.

If LB is about to expire and Hot Streak procs, you want to choose which to cast first based on if you think your Hot Streak will be overridden during the Global Cooldown (GCD) used to cast LB. This can only happen if your previous ability crit and the last fireball or scorch you cast before casting LB crits as well, so if I see crits happening I will use the HS first otherwise if I feel I'm safe from losing a proc, I will cast LB first (to increase uptime).

If you start running low on mana, use scorch in-place of fireball and you will stop losing mana entirely, maybe even gain some. At the beginning of a boss or when you are switching to an add/different mob cast LB and then scorch (and then Flame Orb if off CD) to get into position and then follow the normal rotation. For trash, use the single target rotation, keeping LB up on at least three targets, or follow the AoE rotation if enough mobs are present.


Glyphs


There are five prime glyphs with merit; (Item not found), Glyph of Frostfire, Glyph of Living Bomb, Glyph of Pyroblast and Glyph of Molten Armor. At the moment we all lack crit and the three crit glyphs (Fireball, Molten Armor and Pyroblast) win out the DPS test. FFB is about equal to FB when either is properly glyphed, fireball is a little ahead though.

There are only two truly useful major and minor glyphs, Glyph of Blink, Glyph of Evocation, Glyph of Conjuring and Glyph of Slow Fall, the remaining two slots can be filled with whatever you want most, I chose Glyph of Blast Waveand Glyph of Armors.

Frost spec. (2/8/31)


Another worthy guide only for frost can be found at: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2522074557

The default/cookie cutter spec for Frost is: http://www.wowhead.com/talent#o0bZfcZffzzsGszro:MaoqMzzmo

Variables of the spec: Reactive Barrier can easily be dropped in lieu of other talents that you want, such as maybe maxing out Ice Shards or Piercing Chill; only 1/3 Enduring Water is necessary for a raiding build, but 2/3 is recommended; you could also move a point from Ignite to Netherwind Presence, although I believe the math dictates otherwise.

Glossary. A list of frost specific class abilities and their shorthand form:

■DF - Deep Freeze
■FoF - Fingers of Frost
■Freeze - The WE Pet nova
■FB - Frostbolt
■IB - Ice Block
■IV - Icy Veins
■FFB - Frostfire Bolt
■WE - Water Elemental

Frost is a very straight forward, it's all about watching what is happening with your character. When a lot of things come up at the same time it can be fairly hectic trying to get it all used, get the cooldowns running, not waste any procs, but it's also some of the most fun I've had on my mage this expansion.

Mana. Frost has mana problems right now, at least in heroics, and I assume the longer raid boss fights will only make it worse. Frost does fine on short fights, with use of gem and Evo, but even on a recent heroic boss I popped Time Warp and was OOM when the boss was at 50%, Evo'd, and was OOM by 15%. To avoid wanding, Mage Armor needs to be used. The longer the fight the more important use of Mage Armor becomes for a sustainable rotation.

Cooldowns. Frost has a few CD's; Frostfire Orb just needs to be used on CD, Deep Freeze requires a little more finesse and Icy Veins and Cold Snap have optimum times to use.

Deep Freeze can only be used on a target that is frozen, so if you want to use it on a boss you can only use it while you have Fingers of Frost active. The Water Elemental pet nova (Freeze) helps with this a lot, and I normally save Freeze for right as DF is coming off CD so it can be used immediately. If that won't be possible (because Freeze is on CD or what have you ) then I try and have one FoF charge saved for the CD; when about 10 seconds are left I will stop using FoF if I only have 1 charge, and will use it only when I have two charges so that no matter what I will have one charge for the instant DF comes off CD. While trying to save a proc, it's more possible that you will accidentally miss a proc (FoF procs twice at 1 charge, yet you only gain 1 proc, for two total) so extra attention needs to be paid.

Icy Veins is a very powerful cooldown, but it has a 'long' cooldown, so you want to maximize its use when you are able to use it, this means, for the most part, that you want to have IV up when Bloodlust is active. Most guilds should use BL nearer then end of a fight, so you can usually use IV once at the start of the pull and it will be up later on for BL. If you know you are going to be BL'ing in less than 2.4 minutes from the start of the pull, I would save my IV for BL.

Cold Snap is a little trickier, but at the same time easier. On a normal fight, you pretty much only want to use this ability during Bloodlust, the order of use is important; in a perfect scenario, Frostfire Orb and Deep Freeze will both be used by you right before Bloodlust goes off, when BL is hit, you want to use Icy Veins and THEN Cold Snap to remove the CD's on FFO, DF and IV. The first DF (right before the BL) will probably have used Freeze to do, so you will be able to use that second Freeze FoF charge for the newly Cold Snapped DF. FFO should be cast again, and IV should be cast again when it ends the first time, for a total of 100% IV uptime during BL, as well as two FFB orbs flying and three DF's. If the fight is long enough to use CS twice the fight will probably be long enough to use Bloodlust twice, and you should simply follow this same procedure during both BL phases. This is all given in paragraph form and may be confusing, if this paragraph needs to be rewritten please tell me and I'll change it up; I was also thinking of naming this section not Cold Snap, but Bloodlust, or maybe "How do I optimize Bloodlust?" thoughts?

Threat. Nothing particularly interesting regarding threat and the frost spec besides that a Deep Freeze (DF) crit on a fresh mob can easily pull agro. A little juggling game at the start of every pull or new mob is how soon you can lay down DF to get the CD rolling without critting for 60k and stealing agro, omen helps substantially.

Mobility. To optimize your damage you must not only always be casting something, even while moving, you must also be casting the right thing. If you can move while only casting FoF'ed IL, Brain Freeze or DF then you will have zero loss in DPS. Moving during your Freeze+DF+IL combo as well as all of the individual IL and Brain Freeze procs give you a lot of GCDs to slowly step by step (GCD by GCD) move to where you need to be for the next phase or boss ability.

AoE. The only AoE that Frost really has available to it is Blizzard, and while nice and all, does not compare to Fire's absolute AoE overload. Looking for more to say on this.


Gearing


Intellect will always be your main stat, surpassing even hit rating. Until the hit cap of 1742 hit rating, hit rating will be your number one rating. Crit and Haste are quite close to each other, and an equilibrium between the two can be found once rawr is fully functional. This means that through use of (mainly) reforging and (to a lesser extent) geming, a point can be reached where adding any crit rating lowers crit's DPS to below that of haste, and adding any haste will reduce haste to below crit's DPS. This means that if you want to add any more of either, you should be adding both, and if you get a nice upgrade giving you one but not the other, it would be in your best interest to change one of your other somethings to account for the jump. Crit's value drops pretty substantially at 23% self buffed crit due to crit capping (having 100% crit chance) during shatter moments; after 23% crit chance, haste or mastery will be a higher DPS gain. Mastery is generally the bottom stat for Frost, and is the stat that you will reforge away, etc.


The Rotation


Frost's "rotation" got a huge quality of life improvement in Cataclysm, and the optimum rotation is not a rotation, but rather a priority list.

The order, from most important to least is as follows: Deep Freeze, Frostfire Orb, Brain Freeze (with FoF), Ice Lance (with FoF), Frostbolt. You will want to cast Freeze right before DF to be able to DF as soon as possible, to optimize it's CD.This priority list will not change throughout the fight, but proper use of CD's and the randomness of the FoF and BF procs, as well as the assurance of a huge DF every 30 seconds makes this spec, personally, the most fun to play.

A slightly advanced form of play (because the room for error is cut significantly, and much closer attention is required) that will optimize BF procs and your FoF procs, is to bank one charge of FoF for the instant BF procs or right as DF comes off CD. This will not increase the amount you cast DF, because you were presumable using Freeze every time anyways, but instead will allow you to cast Freeze every 25 seconds (on CD) instead of every 30 seconds (DF's cooldown), increasing your overall # of procs from Freeze in a given fight. This also allows you to use BF instantly, removing the chance for a wasted proc while fishing for a FoF charge.

The only problem with banking a FoF charge is if you aren't paying attention closely enough, you can easily lose a charge. You will see that your first FB procced a second FoF charge mid cast on the your second FB; if you are quick, you'll be able to use the extra charge right after that second FB, and you'll have one remaining. If you aren't as fast or you're under a lot of haste, you will still be able to use your FoF before the 3rd FB lands, so that even if it procs a FoF charge, you will then be at 2.

Whether saving a proc is worth it to you is up for you to decide.


Glyphs


There are five prime glyphs with merit; Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt, Deep Freeze, Molten Armor and Ice Lance. One would think that FB and DF are obvious choices and that 5% more damage on your hard hitting IL would be great, I would also say that Molten Armor is amazing too, unfortunately that is all wrong. IL is actually terrible, and its DF and FFB that are the actually reliable choices. If a fight is going to be long, the best use of the last prime glyph slot is on Frostbolt, but if the fight is short enough to allow use of Molten Armor for most of the duration of the fight, the Molten Armor glyph actually overtakes Frostbolt in DPS given.

For the majors, only Ice Barrier is really useful; I grabbed blink and Evocation as well. Conjuring, Slow Fall and Armors are once again my glyphs of choice for the minors.

Edited by Larcix on 2/11/11 6:04 PM (PST) Frostfire Bolt spec.


Frostfire Bolt is odd in the fact that it can replace either Frostbolt or Fireball in their respective trees and be about equal. It's glyph increases it's damage substantially. When using FFB in place of Frostbolt or Fireball while using a normal Frost or Fire spec, respectively, the damage difference should be negligible (~1% loss for fire, unsure about frost). Most people agree that you can choose to use FFB simply because it "looks cooler."

For fire spec: rotation, spec, mobility, threat, mana, cooldowns, nothing changes when going from FB to FFB besides that Glyph of Frostfire Bolt must be used in place of Glyph of Fireball.

For frost spec: because FFB is now your main nuke and FFB can't proc BF, you won't be getting insta cast FFBs anymore; FFB costs 39% less than FB, so your mana will be easier to deal with; you also loose out of replenishment and the extra cleave damage FB gets from spreading it's chill with PC.


If this section gets recognition from the mage community, I can expand this to include more details but I don't have that information nor do I think it's needed right now, post any feedback you have however, and it will all be considered.

Rawr Guide

Before I integrate my Rawr guide here, I want to here from the rest of the mage community on it's current usefulness. From fiddling with it I noticed quite a few problems and I don't trust it's answers right now as much as I did in wrath.
 

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