/Yawn – A World of Warcraft Blog

Currently posting from the less-exotic-than-it-sounds Guarulhos airport in Sao Paulo, Brasil during a short layover before my flight to Rio de Janeiro.  Killing time, I looked at our blog stats page and we hit 500 views for the month of July, the first time we’ve hit 500 since we created this blog.  It might not sound like much, but I am proud of us!  Keep reading and let us know if there’s anything you want to hear more (or less) about! 

WordPress has this nifty option to let its bloggers check what keywords people searched for when stumbling upon our website.  One of the searches that caught my attention was “The Story Behind Ulduar.”  I thought it would be fun to write an article about the lore of Ulduar, that way, next time someone searches wordpress for something like that, they’ll really find what they were looking for!

To fully understand what Ulduar is all about, a little bit of titan lore is needed:

Titans have always existed, and the thing they loved (and still love) to do most was travel the universe and spruce up planets in order for them to support life: both sentient and not so sentient.  They didn’t straight up terraform planets, but rather nurse those that have all the required elements into a better state so that life could exist more comfortably.  Azeroth was one of these target planets, but before the titans even got there, primordial gods waged war and claimed total control of the young planet.  When the titans arrived, they decided it was time for the Old Gods to go, but they couldn’t just kill them and get on with their plan.  Unfortunately for everyone, the fate of the Old Gods was tied directly to the fate of Azeroth itself: they die, the planet dies.  That was something the titans would totally not stand for.  So, the next best thing to do, obviously, was to lock all the Old Gods up inside the planet, never to escape again.  Ulduar was a containment facility for one such Old God.  This Old God was Yogg-Saron, the God of Death, and the Beast of a Thousand Maws.  This facility was guarded by four ‘watchers’.  These watchers were Hodir, Thorim, Freya, and Mimiron.  Above them in command was Thorim’s brother, Loken, who was declared the supreme designate for the Ulduar complex.  With the security set up and the planet nice and cozy, the titans split for another planet…..

Tens of thousands of years past since these events.  Sentient races such as the humans, night elves, dwarves and tauren sprang up all over the planet.  However, the Old Gods never forgot the power they once had, and tried to regain the planet back for themselves in any way they could.  Yogg-Saron was able to secretly influence key moments in Azeroth’s history:  The assassination of King Llane by the half-orc Garona and the forging of the Demon Soul and the utter destruction caused by it through the Black Dragon Aspect (now known as Deathwing).  Yogg-Saron was also able to corrupt the mind of Loken, the master guardsman of the Ulduar complex.  Through time, he was able to manipulate Loken to betray the titan leadership and work exclusively for the Old God.  With Loken in his pocket, Yogg-Saron was able to corrupt the other four watchers.

At the end of Halls of Lightning, adventurers such as yourself square off aganist Loken himself.  When he dies, he tells you that his death heralds the end of the world.  So what exactly does that mean?  Well….the titans knew Yogg-Saron was clever and may try to escape or kill his captors.  It was set up so that Loken’s death would send out an emergency distress call out to the titans.  Pretty much a ‘HEY!  THE HEAD OF YOUR SECURITY IS DEAD AND YOGG-SARON MAY BE ON THE LOOSE!’  The titan response to this message is a messenger named Algalon.  It is his duty to travel to Azeroth and perform a full biopsy of the situation and diagnose the planet’s situation.  He is cold and calculating.  If titan defenses have suffered enough damage and threat of Old God release is significant, he will tell the titans to ‘reoriginate’ the planet.  Read: kill everything and start over.  Well, you like being alive and have to stop algalon’s message at all costs.  Right? RIGHT!

Once you are able to whittle away Algalon’s life within sixty minutes, he will come to his senses and see that, like all cold and calculating characters must at some point, sometimes things that do not compute are worth saving!  He gives you, the advendurers, the Return Code: Alpha.  That is the signal back to the titans that basically says ‘Everything is cool here.  No need to blow up this cute little planet.’  You bring the message to Rhonin in Dalaran and shoot the message from a floating message gun in Dalaran.  Crisis offically averted.

Grats me!

What is a frostfire spec?
A frostfire spec is usually a deep fire spec with some points also in frost (though deep frost specs also exist).  The frostfire spell benefits from buffs to both fire and frost (as the name suggests), which explains the lack of points in the arcane tree.  The spec I currently use to raid is 0/53/18, with the point break down as follows:
FIRE: 2/2 Improved Fire Blast, 3/3 Incineration, 5/5 Ignite, 3/3 World in Flames, 2/2 Flame Throwing, 1/1 Pyroblast, 2/2 Burning Soul, 3/3 Improved Scorch, 3/3 Master of Elements, 3/3 Playing With Fire, 5/5 Fire Power, 3/3 Pyromaniac, 1/1 Combustion, 2/2 Molten Fury, 3/3 Empowered Fire, 3/3 Hot Streak, 5/5 Burnout, 1/1 Living Bomb
FROST: 2/3 Frostbite, 3/3 Ice Floes, 3/3 Ice Shards, 3/3 Precision, 3/3 Piercing Ice, 1/1 Icy Veins, 3/3 Frost Channeling.
Or you can look at it all here.

In which PvE situations does frostfire do best?
Frostfire is a very strong single-target damage dealer for raid bosses, especially if the boss does not require a lot of movement.  Frostfire mages also deal some of the strongest AoE damage available in the game.

In which PvE situations does frostfire do worst?
Because the cast for frostfire bolt is so long, fights that involve a lot of moving around or canceling casts for any reason (example: decursing) can really cut a frostfire mage’s DPS.  Frostfire mages may also have trouble in fights where a boss/mob dumps threat periodically, because the damage from the frostfire spec can spike very quickly due to its proc-based nature.

Is frostfire spec viable in PvP?
Not really.  The main nuke (frostfire bolt) is too long.  Though it does slow the target like a frostbolt, it just gives other players too much time to silence/stun you while you’re casting for 3 seconds.  With some tweaking, the spec I described above can be changed into a more PvP-friendly spec (by adding Blastwave and Dragon’s Breath, and getting rid of Precision).  If you plan on being frostfire specced for PvE (but you still like to PvP), I would recommend purchasing dual spec.

What is a good rotation for frostfire PvE?
BOSSES: Living Bomb -> Stack Scorch (x5) -> Refresh Living Bomb -> Frostfire Bolt (x3-4, depending on your haste) -> Refresh Scorch (x1) -> Refresh Living Bomb.
One of the most important things for your DPS as a frostfire mage is to use Hot Streak whenever it procs.  Hot Streak is a talented move that gives you an instant pyroblast (but not free in mana terms) whenever you critically hit twice in a row with a fireball, fireblast, living bomb, scorch, or frostfire bolt.
SINGLE TARGET TRASH: Living Bomb -> Frostfire Bolt -> Refresh Living Bomb as needed.
If you have the glyph for improved scorch (which applies all 5 debuffs in one hit) you may consider scorching trash – I don’t play with this glyph, so I reserve scorch stacking for bosses.
AOE TRASH: Highest rank Living Bomb on one target -> Second highest rank Living Bomb on another -> Blizzard

Always try to put your living bomb on the mobs that have the most life in an AoE group, so that the mobs live long enough to explode.

Edit: I don’t actually apply two Living Bombs in my rotation because it generates too much threat, tanks can’t keep up, and I usually end up dead.  A friend has told me recently that this no longer works.  I will double check and update as needed,

**Spending time with your friendly neighborhood target dummy is a great way to get your rotation tight.**

How should I gear as a frostfire mage?
The most important thing for any DPS class is to be at (or very near) hit cap.  For the spec I described above, the hit cap is 368.  Some people may disagree with me on this, but I think that the strongest stat after hit cap for a frostfire mage is critical strike rating, because we receive mana back from crits and crits can proc Hot Streak.  Closely following critical strike rating is spell power, which will increase the base damage of all your spells.  After critical strike and spell power, you should be looking for gear that has spirit (will add more crit, but not as much as critical strike rating), haste (will decrease the pesky long cast time, but has no other real benefits), and intellect (who doesn’t want a bigger mana pool?).  In last place comes Mp5 – mana as a frostfire mage is controlled more by procs, consumables, and spells than by your mana ticking up.  Currently, my relevant stats self-buffed are as follows: 942 stamina, 1008 intellect, 646 spirit, 1773 bonus damage, 369 hit rating, 37.65% critical strike chance for fire spells, 25.68% critical strike chance for all other schools of magic, 206 haste rating, and 343 mana regen (171 in combat).  I am mostly Naxx 25 geared, with 4 or 5 pieces from Ulduar.  Fully buffed in a 25-man, I have around 50% fire spell crit and can pull around 5,000 DPS on a single-target stationary boss, such as Patchwerk.

What buffs, consumables, and glyphs should I be using?
BUFFS: Arcane Intellect and Molten Armor.
CONSUMABLES: Flask of the Frost Wyrm (flask, increases your spell power by 125 for 1 hour, persists through death), Spicy Blue Nettlefish (food, increases stamina and crit strike rating by 40), Mana Sapphire (conjured), Runic Mana/Health Potion (if needed, always good to have a few in your bags), Arcane Powder (reagent to summon mage tables and to buff the entire party with Arcane Brilliance), Rune of Teleportation/Portals (to port yourself and your friends to cities after a raid).
GLYPHS: Major Glyph of Frostfire (increases initial damage dealt by frostfire bolt by 2% and increases its crit chance by 2%), Major Glyph of Living Bomb (the tick damage can now critically hit), Major Glyph of Molten Armor (20% of your spirit is now translated to critical strike rating), and Lesser Glyph of Slow Fall (gets rid of the reagent requirement).

How should I set up my bars to play frostfire?
This is just my personal preference, but I thought I would include it in case anyone needs a jumping off point:
1 – Living Bomb
2 – Frostfire Bolt
3 – Cone of Cold
4 – Ice Lance
5 – Frost Nova
6 – Blink
7 – Mirror Image
8 – Blizzard
9 – Ice Block
10 – Arcane Explosion
- – Pyroblast
= – Scorch

What are some useful macros for frostfire mage?
It can be useful to macro your combustion, icy veins, and on-use trinkets to frostfire bolt, especially if you’re the type of person who forgets to use those things whenever they are up.  Don’t think of those spells/uses as “oh shit” buttons, but as another part of your DPS rotation that, when used well, can really increase your damage.

How do I deal with mana issues as a frostfire mage?
Frostfire is one of the least mana-intensive mage specs.  Just be aware of your mana gem cooldown – if you know you’re going to be fighting a boss for the next 10 minutes, make sure to use your first mana gem early on so that it is available for use again later in the fight.  Evocation is another option to regain a large amount of mana back, but it takes a toll on your damage due to its long channel and may by broken by periodic damage dealt by mobs/bosses.  If you are a blood elf, you can also use Arcane Torrent as a way to get mana back.  Runic Mana Potions are another option, but keep in mind that they can only be used once every fight.

How do I deal with threat issues as a frostfire mage?
As I said before, frostfire spec can deal some very big spikes in damage that can generate a large amount of threat in a short amount of time.  The best policy is to give your tank as much time as he/she needs to get threat.  When in doubt, count slowly to twenty before beginning to DPS.  Mages also have several moves they can use to manage threat:

MIRROR IMAGE: will make you “invisible” threat-wise to the boss for a period of time.  Once that period is over, threat will be re-established wherever you were before.  Always be aware of when this buff will end, because you may be ahead of the tank in threat and not realize it.

Example: You have 10 threat and the tank has 10 threat.  You activate Mirror Image and continue to DPS, and reach 25 threat by the end of the buff.  If the tank does not have more than 25 threat at this point, you will be highest on the aggro list and will be attacked.

ICE BLOCK: makes you immune to attacks and drops your threat.  Once the block wears off, threat is re-established.  Also removes most debuffs.

Example: You have 10 threat and the tank has 5 threat, so the mob is running toward you.  You use Ice Block and lose threat while blocked.  Once the buff wears off, the tank must have more than 10 threat in order for the mob not to attack you.

INVISIBILITY: makes you invisible, dropping all your threat permanently even after the buff wears off (similar to vanish or feign death).  This move can also strategically be used if your group is wiping – when timed correctly, you can be invisible when the boss resets and leave combat.

Example: You have 15 threat and the tank has 17, but you feel like you will quickly gain on them.  You activate Invisibility, and as soon as you are invisible, click it off.  You now have 0 threat and the tank has 17.

Example #2: The group is wiping, the tanks and healers are down and the boss is running loose killing all the DPS.  You Ice Block, dropping your threat momentarily.  Once the mob runs toward another group member that is far from you, you cancel Ice Block, blink away from the mob, and continue to run while activating Invisibility.  Hopefully you go invisible before the mob gets to you!  Note: It’s a good idea to let group members know you are doing this – if they live past your invisible buff, you may still be in combat and the mob will come and kill you.

What am I expected to do as a mage?
Buff the group with Arcane Brilliance, drop tables for food, ranged DPS, and occasionally crowd control using Polymorph.  You may also be expected to decurse group members during fights, kite, or silence using Counterspell.
**Always talk to other casters in the group to figure out who is doing what.  If there is more than one fire specced mage, agree on who will be stacking scorch.  If there is a warlock with improved shadowbolt, do not stack scorch, as it will get randomly consumed when the warlock move procs.**

What are some useful mods for frostfire mages?
DECURSIVE: makes decursing easier, ’nuff said.
PORTAL BOX: creates a screen for portals, so you don’t have them cluttering up your action bars.
OMEN: a more comprehensive way to look at threat than the built in Blizzard system.
DEADLY BOSS MODS: gives important information about what is going on during raid boss fights.
SCORCHIO: helps you keep track of debuffs on your target.

What should my damage meter look like?

Any questions?  Let me know!

**EDIT** Since a lot of people have asked me, yes, I did write this post myself.    If you’re going to use it on any other website, please credit me/this blog.  Also, feel free to link this to any friends you think might benefit from it.  Thanks!

So the summer has been in full swing and the blog posts have become few and far between.  Sorry!  Since the last post, I have gotten a new Windows PC (Vista [grumble], 8gig RAM, GeForce 9800 GTX x2 SLI’ed, intel quad core) and settled into my new apartment here in Tucson, AZ.  Things have been good in WoW as well…my Orc Shaman is now level 73 and going on strong to 74 tonight.

What this post really is about, however, is the lack of thought that goes into our game.  Take this as a prime example:  As I was questing in south-central Dragonblight, I noticed a strange thing…a big, battered, mostly destroyed Titan bridge.  It is the very southern tip of the Path of the Titans.  So why is this so strange?  I mean, it looks cool and all, but here is the problem:  The titans built all their shit over 10,000 years ago, before The Sundering, when the world had one big Pangea-like land mass.  At the end of the War of the Ancients, the Well of Eternity exploded and destroyed most of the central land mass of Azeroth.  What was left was 3 main land masses – Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor, and Northrend, with various other islands dotted about.

So…why is there a titan bridge extending south when, at the time the titans built their road, there was a land mass there and no need for a bridge?  Now okay, I can write it off as “I guess there was a big lake or something that was the very northern edge of The Sundering’s damage, and so, since there was a big lake, the titans built a bridge over it”….  C’mon Blizzard…you should think of your timelines when creating this stuff!  Surely someone had to have known about this in the creation of this titan bridge!

I had two screenshots all set up for this small development annoyance, but when I went to go find them, the SS’s were nowhere to be found.  After searching the internet for a few moments, I came to the answer.  Apparently, Windows Vista needs you to right click the WoW icon, and ‘run as administrator’ in order to take and save screenshots.  What the heck is that?  Are the screenshots going to implant the Conflicker virus into my system and eventually blow up my motherboard?  -=sigh=-  Windows Vista, you never cease to amaze me.

However, all of this can be overlooked due to the blinding red aura that has been seeping out of my fridge the past few hours.  Aganist all better judgement, I went and bought my first MTN DEW GAME FUEL today.  For the Horde flavor, as I bet you would suspect.  Here is a picture of its intoxicating presence:

I haven’t tried it yet, but if its unnatural color is any indication of its flavor, I suspect I am in for the time of my life!

That is all for now, go out and enjoy your lore!

Sick of giving Blizzard my money and wanting to show, once again, my deep love of all things troll, I created Caille (the troll hunter) on Burning Blade instead of transfering Arco (the blood elf hunter) from Eonar.  I know this is going to be a long-ish grind (or maybe it won’t…  it IS a hunter afterall), but I miss those big ugly blue feet damnit!

Posts obsessing over pets probably to follow shortly.

In other news, I continue to be impressed by my mage Eau and how few upgrades add so much DPS.  Looking back on the blog a few weeks ago, I was happy to be pulling 3k on bosses in Naxxramas.  Now that I have a mainhand, offhand, belt, and -something else I can’t remember- from 10-man Ulduar, I did almost 5k on Patchwerk the last time I ran 25-man Naxx!  (She also became Eau the Seeker recently…  still can’t decide if Loremaster Eau is a better title though…)  Plus I am super excited about the news that living bomb will be able to be applied to multiple targets with the next patch, so it’ll be a big boost to AoE DPS and function probably a little more like seed of corruption.  Speaking of the patch, when the hell is it going to come out?  I have heard rumors of early August, and I’m not sure that the druid I made can stand being level 1 much longer!

Anyway, I haven’t been playing much lately because I am currently in Hawaii for a family vacation!