Iggy Pops and Burns

So, um yeah. That's li'l Iggy. With a Beer mug in one hand, and a dagger in the other. Thanks to fishing, ganking and a niggling for a change of pace, he's now pushing level 25. It's interesting, and a COMPLETELY different style of playing.

And I desperately needed help figuring stuff out.

Thanks to some great guidance from Gnomeageddon as well as a nearly verbatim following of Euripides/Critical QQ step by step fire mage guide, I am slowly making headway.

Part of my reason for getting a bit "Mage-y" for this post is actually inspired by the mis-information post that Larisa did over at Gnomeageddon's site. It was a moderately tongue in cheek list of "real" mage attributes, and among them was agility. While the "Agi" itemization stat is NOT important, player agility most certainly is:

OK, admittedly at Patchwerk you can just stand on one spot and spam one or two
nuke buttons. But apart from him and a couple of other exceptions, you actually
need to be pretty movable as a Mage. Somehow you’re supposed to manage to move
out of crap on the ground or evil things coming for you through the air, and
STILL make your several seconds-long spells go off, resulting in pretty yellow
numbers on the screen. A good Mage can nuke on the move. If you’re slow like me,
there’s nothing else to do but to place yourself in front of the dummies in
IF,running back and forward, until nuking on the fly is a second nature to you.

Agility. It’s a must-have for your mage.

When it comes to soloing/questing, I cannot emphasize strongly enough, how important mobility is.

It's kind of odd, actually when I think about it. After all, on Balth, I have to run hither & yon to get into melee range. With Iggy though, it's the opposite: I run hither & yon to stay OUT of melee range. Even with mana shield, a mage is one squishy little target, so mobility (and planning!) are crucial.

Take for example, the Tharil'zun's Head quest. It's listed as a level 25 group quest. Tharil'zun himself is a level 24 elite, with 3 or 4 mobs around him.

Getting there is pretty straight forward;

- 1 target a mob with pyroblast at max range.
- 2 do an immediate followup fireball
- 3 throw a fireblast and (usually) kill the mob, even before he gets to you.
- 4 if he's still not dead (and is likely running in fear to the next group) nail him with Arcane missile (you don't need to turn to keep him in front, AM does it automatically.

If it's a caster, tap counterspell between 1 & 2.

Just repeat this step 6-8 times, and you are nearly there. There's one mob you may get that pulls a second (often a caster) This one is a *little* different:

- 1 target first mob with Pyro
- 2 sheep the second mob (I save casters for last, since they melee like little girls,I can stand toe- to toe with them)
- 3 wait until the 1st mob gets close then Frost Nova
- 4 run (or blink if you're bored) away to give you some room
- 5 (& 6 & 7) Fireball/fireblast/missile the mob to death
- 8 pyroblast the second mob and continue as normal.

The only thing I didn't mention is make sure you have you buffs and protections up (arcane intellect, frost armor, dampen magic and mana shield. For the above trash, it isn't really necessary, but it helps.

AAAnyhow...

So, all the trash, up to Tharil'zun's group is gone. The big problem now is that there is usually a "guard" mob, right at the entrance to his little area, and to get him in Line of Sight (LoS), you have to get REALLY close.

So sheep him, and run out to a good distance, and target him with pyroblast, then fireball and (sound familiar?)

Do the normal pyro attack & kill the second mob in the area, which will leave you with Tharil'zun and another mob right next to him. As mentioned earlier, Tharil is a 24 elite, so you need to be able to focus on him without interruption, so take out the guard first:

- 1 Pyro the mob/guard
- 2 sheep Tharil
- 3 kill the mob/guard (fireball, etc)
- 4 RUN LIKE HELL! (just run far enough that you get out of combat and Tharil goes back to his hole, all alone)

Now, re-buff, mana and heal up, and head back in.

- 1 Pyro
- 2 fireball with a fireblast follow (maybe, depends on distance)
- 3 FROST NOVA
- 4 run to distance and fireball. (possibly fireblast as well, if mana looks ok)
- 5 when he gets close, BLINK
- 6 he should be low now, and if you have the mana, just arcane missile him to death
- 7 if he's still got a good amount of health, run & dodge until Frost Nova comes off CD, and just burn him down.

Fireblast and arcane missile are spells I like A LOT, but they cost a ton of mana, and depending on how often Tharil manages to clobber you (and your mana shield) mana may be an issue, so be careful.

What I *hope* comes across is that during this fight, you need to be running, dodging and using all your mobility (and your mobility reduction on him) to stay alive.

It's not that hard and I never died trying it, but I did have to run to safety a couple times before I figured it out.

Balthazario is... Starting Over

Or at least, an odd, Aussie-enshrined simulacrum of him is.

I've mentioned him a bit, and Gnomeaggedon has hinted about him as well, but yeah, Balth MkII is now officially levelling and running LFG.

As a Tank.

True, a level 18 DPS Pally & a level 18 Tank Pally are very very (very) similar, but in this instance, intent is everything. Did I roll a toon on Aman'Thul with the intent of levelling up? Nope. BUT, Kattastrophe suggested a while back, that an "easier" way to learn tanking would be to roll a new Pally and learn the "proper" way.


Level

by

Level.


And it's an interesting approach, and one that seems to be working for me. Why is that?


For starters, I play a Ret as my main. This means I've spent the last ~9 months learning to run and whack things in the deadliest way possible. All my spells, gear, and (mostly) all my experience is slanted in this way. (the only caveat here is that Katt & I *did* run as a duo for many many months, her doing the healy/DPS role and me doing the tanky/DPS role - which means I like to do LoS, kite, CC, etc)


What this means is that with the "real" Balth, even though I have a fully geared (at least at a basic level) and fully specced tank spec, I really can't play it all that well.


Big Bear Butt did a pretty interesting comparison between a Druid tank and a Pally tank, and what he describes as normal rotationis, well, rather complicated, as he says HERE. True, the class can tank VERY effectively, but trying to pick it up at max level, is a wee bit of a challenge. (for me at least)


The big reasons for this are...


- Basic tanking, at it's most fundamental level, is a completely different animal from DPS. The situational awareness, focus and style is completely different.

- Attack Rotation and abilities are dramatically different. There are a few cross overs, but they are more the exception than the rule.

So far, I am doing OK. There's hardly any spell rotation, and if you're doing things right, (and none else is being an absolute COMPLETE idiot) you should have no problems.

A couple things of note though:

- 1 - Even though you can join LFD at level 15, don't even THINK about Pally tanking at that level. I was cautious and just entered as DPS for our first LFG, and try as I might, I never once was able to even come close to pulling aggro off the level 15 warrior. Why? see #2.

- 2 -Righteous Fury (aggro/threat boost) and Hand of Reckoning (taunt) are learned at level 16. (you get Righteous Defense at 14, but without these other 2, it's just not possible to really tank) On a single target with any normal group composition, I doubt any toon could pull aggro off you. In fights with 3+ mobs (especially if they are ranged and not grouped) you can lose aggro pretty easily, BUT, with your 2 taunts, regaining it shouldn't be TOO hard.

- 3 - I miss Consecration. (and Divine Storm, but as Prot, I'll never have that) On generic trash, I don't have any AoE attack that can help me keep multiple mobs on me. I have to constantly cycle through the mobs. (I get this at level 20) Not horrible, but a pain.


Overall, tanking at this level is pretty darned easy. Since I only have 1 spell (Judgement) I don't have to try to maintain any rotation (and look at the keyboard) so I am able to keep a REALLY good eye on the group, and look for stray mobs. I can only hope that as I level, the 96969 rotation becomes easy enough that I don't NEED to eyeball the keyboard, so I can continue to watch things.

The biggest thing is just learning to keep situational awareness "active". It's a needed skill for DPS and healers, but if they DO lose it, it's rarely wipe inducing. If you zone out as a tank, get ready for a repair bill...

You Can’t Always Get What You Want, But You Often Get What You Greed

After Dinging 80 last week, I had some time to run around and try to run a couple raids and whatnot. Needless to say, it’s been a bit of an eye opening experience.

First was an attempt at ToC, 5 man heroic.

A really well geared guildie tried to help us out, but since this is a tough fight for even moderately geared 80’s and we had us two n00bs, and a couple “so-so" geared others, it was a lost cause. We went home with our tails between our legs.


We then did the herioc run though Nexus.

And here I emphasize RUN through. Our Tank & a DK DPS were both pretty well geared, and pretty familiar with the fight. We had Kattastrophe healing with her Shammy, and a Shadow Priest helping with DPS. (The Priest was the friend of a friend, the DK was a guildie, and the Tank was a PuG)

During the raid, Katt & the Priest were struggling to keep mana’d up between fights. As soon as one was completed, the Tank & DK were already pulling the next group.

This didn’t really hurt until we ran into Grand Magus Telestra. Me, Katt & the Priest got worked and had to run back. I’m still not sure if the DK & tank died or not (I think the DK survived to fight all by himself)

Needless to say, Katt was livid, since the semi-wipe would have been avoided if mana hadn’t been an issue.

The good news is that the rest of the run went off without a hitch. I didn’t get any gear worth remembering.


Then we went on to run 5 man ToC, normal.

We ran this in a PuG, and it went pretty well. I was killed once, I think, but we did OK. I got the Helm of the Violent Fray . A pretty good run, and some lootz! (I also ran it a second time some time later. No loot, but at least I'm learning the fight)


My next to last run was Heroic Violet Hold.

We did this with me, Kattastrophe, a tank we knew, a DPS warrior that Katt knew, and his wife, the Priest I mentioned above. I really enjoyed running with these guys!

We forgot to set it to heroic when we started so we had to exit and re-enter, but other than that it went really well. I even got the best piece of plate loot in the place! (a tank piece; Bolstered Legplates )

Some interesting DPS info, that I’ll discuss in a later post (I hope)


Last we ran Culling of Stratholme, heroic. (same group as last time)

This was neat on a BUNCH of levels. It was a longer one, and we got to meet Arthas! (and let him die a couple times muhahahah! Erm, booo…)

I’m not much into the lore of the game, mainly because so much of what happens is shown to us in small snippets here & there, completely disjoint and with no easy way to remember it. It doesn’t help that I barely ran any of the old world instances either. Here, however we got to see the events of the past in full recreating. VERY COOL!!!

We only had one issue; the tank DCed a few times and contributed to Arthas dieing a couple times. It wasn’t catastrophic, and he’s a really neat guy to play with, so no worries. :)

Oh, and I got one piece of loot: Legplates of Steel Implants. a decent piece of DPS plate.


=====================================

So, I’ve finally dipped my feet into the deeeep water that is raiding, even if it’s only a toe. The longer instances are better, except that they’re so long! (hard to fit them into the life schedule) I can see why folks get a bit annoyed with running the various ToC iterations, over & over & over again. But hey, badges is badges, loot is loot, and and above all, learning to raid/play is paramount.

The quest for lootz continues…