Bobpally's World

I have really been neglecting my blog and alot of other things. Bobpally is now kinda my main guy. He's 80, has seen the inside of Naxx (a couple of fights from clearing it) and has quite a few nice little pieces of gear. His rep is on the way to exalted with a few factions and he's looking like the pally I always hoped he would be. Bobmage however isn't quite the mage he wants to be yet. He will be, but there's still alot or work to be done. He's 77 on his way to 78. With the new fire abilities it's become fun to kill stuff with him, just not as much fun as tanking with Bobpally. After I clear Naxx I'll make a nice long writeup on it, but for now I'll just leave you with this.....

Badge Gear

I'm starting to get to that 100 badge gear mark and it's time to make a decision about what I'm going to do. My pants are subpar blue item with two sockets and minimal spell damage. I was thinking I would replace them with the badge gear from Queldanas. My problem is there are two sets of pants from the badge vendor, one with a huge amount of crit and the other has spell hit rating. I've found in Kara I get resisted alot, but I never miss. I'm thinking I should go with the spell crit and gem for penetration so I can stop getting resisted and kick my spell crit up a little more. Right now my fire damage spells have a 30% crit chance. That's quite a bit, but it will be even more with the new pants. I've been researching spell hit, and it doesn't seem like I really need alot of it right this second, I'm sitting in the mid 80's for hit, but my penetration is very low. If you have any ideas about what I should do, please don't hesitate to leave me a comment....

A Mage's Guide to Instances and Raids

For those of you new to instances or raids I'm puting this together to give you an idea of what it is you should and shouldn't be trying to do in those dungeons.

First a bit of advice....Dungeons are for players that like the team concept and want to be a valued part of that team. Second, things will inevitably go bad at some point in your wow raiding career for your team, don't start blaming everyone around you. If you succeed in a raid or instance, your team succeeds, if you fail, your team fails. It's all or nothing. I personally never point the finger in a way that assigns blame to someone, instead I point out something they could do better and ask that they do the same. There's more than one way to let someone know they did something that was less than beneficial to the progress of the group.

Mage's are casters and high damage dealing killers with no survivability without the other members of their group. Their job first and foremost in a raid or instance is to deal the maximum amount of damage without getting the attention of the mob they're killing. A properly specced fire mage handing out the proper spell rotation will out dps just about any other similarly geared character in the game. I personally have a fire mage with just over 600 spell damage and in Kara I out dps both of the shadow priest in my raid group with well over 700 spell damage. Some of it might be that I understand very well how to play my mage, and some of it is that I'm supposed to out dps them.

When you're in a raid or instance, first recognize your cc assignment in any pull that's about to go down. Make sure you get that assignment done as soon as the pull is made so as not to effect any aoe that might take place. The further away the sheep is the better. Make sure throughout the pull you maintain that cc. A great addon for that is sheep watch. It broadcasts in chat the amount of time left on the cc, and gives you a bar at the top of your screen that lets you know how much time is left on the cc. After you've sheeped your target, switch to the first kill target. It's very important that you don't screw this up. If you start casting fireballs of fury at something no one else in your group is doing damage to you're going to die. If I was the tank in a group and someone hit a target out of order, I might taunt it once and ask them to please not do that again. If they did it twice, I'd let them figure out how to kill it. Something else you need to do as a mage is download a threat meter. Omen 2 is working pretty ok right now, as a mage you'll need it.

When you begin casting on the main target don't unleash your hardest hitting spell first. Throw something light, like a scorch and see what it does to the threat list. It's a quick spell and will give you a good idea of how far you can go on your next spell. I've played with tanks that just had a hard time building initial threat quickly. I don't blame anyone when this happens, I just scale back my attack for a little while. I hate people that pug a group and pull aggro every fight, then blame the tank out front because he can't "hold aggro". Don't be a jerk in group, you never know when you'll need someone in that group to help you out later. Also, you have to toe the line between pulling aggro and maxing out your damage. Pulling aggro is never a line you want to cross, but you also don't want to scale back your attack so far you're not doing enough damage. It's a fine line for a great mage between pulling aggro and doing enough damage.

Recognize the target and what he's vulnerable to. If you're getting resisted alot, change spells. One spell you have that almost never gets resisted is arcane missles. Yes it's a mana hog, but sometimes it's better to use them and do the damage, than cast a spell that gets resisted every other cast.

Another thing that's not only your job, but everyone else's in the group, is protecting your healers at all costs. If you see that your healer has pulled the aggro of whatever you're fighting, jump in there. You have immobilizing spells for a reason, use them. If you're a frost mage, slow the target down with frostbolts, and look for the MT to get that aggro back. If your MT is having a hard time getting back that aggro, frost nova will almost always stop them dead in their tracks and give your MT a chance to whack him a few times to get that aggro back. If that fails, you need to go all out on whatever it is that is going after your healer. Sacrificing yourself to save your healer is never a bad thing. If you save the wipe by giving your MT enough time to get the target back and kill the rest of the pull your healer can rez you and will be very greatful. You will also know that you did everything you could for the good of the group.

Spell rotation is going to be what seperates you from every other mage. Know what spells do what and why. Learn how to effectively use those spells on every single pull. If you're a level 70 firemage with the 10/48/3 raid spec and you're opening with fireblast, you need to stop playing the game. In a boss fight, your spell rotation is crucial to how much damage you're going to be able to put out. For the fire raid spec scorch spells make your target more vulerable to fire damage and it stacks five times. So start with a scorch, then cast a fireball, then another scorch, then fireball, toss in a fireblast every now and then as well. The reason I say every now and then is if you use fireblast every time the cooldown is up you'll run oom before then end of the boss fight, I promise. After you've stacked five scorches, stick with the fireballs and a fireblast from time to time. Watch the 30 second timer for the scorch stack and when it's close to being up throw that scorch to refresh it, then it's back to fireballs and blasts. Make sure you pay close attention to the fight at hand, doing your job also means staying alive with as little help from the healers as possible. They have enough to worry about without having to save a mage that doesn't know where to stand for a fight. Don't get angry if you get assigned to adds, part of being able to do hella damage is downing adds quickly. Do your job! I don't get mad in Kara when I get assigned to the adds for curator, i don't say "hey jackass, I can out dps everyone here I should be on Curator!" No, I do my job and kill the hell out of those bastards. It's your job to do the same. Mage's are elite killers in dungeons and raids, they are feared because of the powerful spells they wield, but they also have a responsibility to the other members of their group to be beneficial in every way possible, you represent mages everywhere...so do your best to be a great mage...learn from your mistakes as you are definately going to be in that situation again I promise. If someone asks that you do something in your group....don't hesitate or refuse. If you have issue with it, try it their way to the best of your ability and if it doesn't work then suggest something else. I know you know your character better than the guy asking you to do whatever, but he doesn't understand that so just do as you are asked. Then in the back of your mind you can say "I told you so" when it doesn't work. Anyhow, if you have any questions I'd love to hear them...so ask away. Hopefully this will make you a slightly better mage in those groups and make you more sought after to fill out the raids.....

Too Much Wow

With the help of my wife, I've discovered that I've been playing too much world of warcraft. It's taken a toll on my life by taking away time from other things. I didn't really realize how much I've been playing until my wife bravely pointed it out to me yesterday. I've neglected far too many other things that I should be doing. I'm not going to completely stop playing, but I've designated certain times for playing. The rest of the week I need to be spending more time with my family and taking care of things that need to be taken care of. I got caught up in trying to do too much in the game, and started treating it like a job. The problem with wow is, there's no end to it. The accomplishments in the game are completely meaningless outside of the game. I was getting a little too caught up in trying to be the best Bobmage in the game. This game thrives on one ups, and being better than the guy next to you. I'm a very competetive person at everything I do, and had I kept it casual (playing only when it was really convenient) I couldn't be great. At first when she pointed it out, I got a little defensive, but after that passed I began to really look at how much of my life it was interfereing with. I've spent almost 456 hours playing this game. I have lots of friends that invest far more hours in a week than I do, and I wonder if I didn't have a family would I do the same thing? Would even more of my life be consumed with getting that next piece of epic gear, or that next progression kill, or higher pvp rankings? At the end of the day, all those accomplishments amount to exactly zero if they cost you too much in other areas of your life. My wife had held back a little about how much of a distaste for the time I spent doing it she really had. She tried to bend a little and point out only the times I neglected other things to play and negociate with me. The problem with that was, I didn't really see the problem. Other people spend just as much time watching TV, or maybe even more, but those same people will turn the TV off, or walk away from it if something else needs to be done. I, as a wow player was getting caught up in whatever task I was trying to undertake. If I was in a group for a dungeon run, I wouldn't log off until either 1) The run was complete, or 2) We got to a place that we couldn't get past and we gave up. I would shun everything else, including sleep. That's not healthy, and it's a bad thing. I took that same attitude with almost all the other accomplishments in the game. Prior to reaching lvl 70, I would set a level goal for a particular day, and I wouldn't stop until I got there. If I had dedicated that much time to anything else in my life, I would be great at it. My golf game has suffered tremendously. The time I would normally try to spend at the practice range took a back seat to whatever was going on in wow. Can you imagine how all of this looks to an outsider who's never created a wow account, or spent a second in the game? We try to justify their lack of understanding by saying "if they played it, they would understand". No, they wouldn't. Because they choose other things in their lives over a silly game. At the end of the day, that's all it is. It feels like more because of the false sense of accomplishment that comes with it, and the fact that it is indeed a "World" in which you can do things that make it feel more realistic than other games. When you get that first piece of epic gear, you get borderline ecstatic, feeling like you just conquered a big goal. The reality is, you're playing a game. The reason other games don't consume so much of our time is they have endings, there's a finality to them. If you play Halo 3, once you've completed every mission in the game, it ends with a cut scene and the story is over. With wow, the story is never over, the accomplishments are never ending. I must admit that it's alot of fun playing wow with friends, but there has to be a line. You have to decide in your own mind that it's just a game. You don't owe the people in your group the time you spend trying to clear a dungeon. If something comes up in real life, and you're clearing trash to the last boss of a heroic dungeon, you don't owe the people in the group more than you owe the people in your life. If real life is happening while your stuck in a game, you're playing way too much wow. I didn't truly understand this, until I was forced to. Addiction? I don't think so, as much as immersion. Addiction is defined as being powerless over something. I have the power to determine how much of my time I spend playing wow and my attitude towards playing it. I now take this quite a bit more seriously. If I find myself not satisfied with playing only two days a week, I'll quit all together. No game is worth more than my life outside of that game. If you find yourself in a similiar situation, give all that I've said here some serious thought. Why are you playing the game? Is it still fun? Do you get mad at other people in the game because they aren't "as good" as you are? That's a tell tale sign that you're playing too much, and taking it way too seriously.