Status update on the blog

Hey all, been a while since I last posted!

I've been having a break for a while from writing this blog. Meanwhile the traffic on the blog has actually just been going up and the guides are being read a lot more than at the point when I stopped writing for a bit, so I felt I should probably post something here to those wondering why there's no new stuff up recently.

Basically speaking, there is nothing really major in 4.3 that I feel I haven't covered yet regarding mages, and that's what this blog mainly focuses on: mage stuff. As of recent I have reached level 90 on the MoP beta and I might post something from there in the near future but I'm not too keen on writing huge guides based on the beta since the stuff is bound to change before launch.

I will however aim to write similiar guides for mages pretty fast after the launch of 5.0 as I have written for 4.3. Basically I will just try to gather up all the useful information regarding mage PvE in one place as fast as I can.

If you feel like there's something I should still cover in this patch feel free to give me a poke and I'll see what I can do!

On a sidenote, I'd like to also inform that my guild, <Flare EU> (Jaedenar, world 62nd 25man HC guild), is still recruiting for MoP. For the most up to date view on what we're looking for etc. you can check http://www.wowprogress.com/guild/eu/jaedenar/Flare+EU. Currently (27/6) the recruitment status is as follows:

druid (balance)	high
mage	medium
paladin (holy)	high
paladin (retribution)	medium
warlock	high
warrior (dd)	high

- Räddi

Stream up!

 

Alright so this is just a small notifier here, I'm going to start streaming our raids and other stuff I happen to do on retail & beta, please visit http://www.twitch.tv/drraddi to get my stream going :). I will obviously still keep this blog up and running as usual, the idea is for both the blog & the stream to support eachother!

Interviewing the guild: Xinti

What's that on your face bro?

Ok, so something fresh! I'm going to start doing interviews from guildies and our warlock Xinti is the lucky one to start! Man this guy is good at walls of text, the most boring parts have the longest answers :(. Anyway, let's get started.


Name/Nick: My real name is Leroy, as for WoW I’m called Xinti. (I like to call him my DI. -the dr)

Age: 19

From: The Netherlands

3 words describing yourself: Lazy, humorous, ridiculouslygoodlooking

What do you do outside WoW?: School (business informatics), Work (Liquor store), Other games (LoL, Diablo, Starcraft and many more)

Weaknesses/Strengths as a player: I get annoyed by other people failing or not taking things as serious as I am, basically any pug I join because I’m bored will end up in frustration. When I play a new class ill want to know everything about it to the max (macro’s, stat priority, BIS items, rotations). same goes for let’s say new content raid bosses, getting to know everything about it, finding tricks etc.

How long have you been raiding/what guilds? I’ve started raiding during WotLK, was more of a casual player doing normal modes with friends. When Cata released my journey really began and together with some other guys from my current guild we did some hardcore leveling and gear grinding, shortly after we started organizing raid groups but after a few weeks we realized we wouldn’t get much progress in this group. We decided to join a other guild which after a few months or so we left as well to join the servers top 25man guild (Dark fusion from Lightbringer-EU at that time) they were 6/13HC at that time I believe while I had just done 3 or 4 heroic bosses. Close to the end of tier 11 me and a friend (Moonstrider) left DF while we were still 7/13HC, and joined Solar Wind the top 25man raiding guild on Dragonblight-EU and cleared 12/13HC  there and shortly after Council HC with a 10man, Went through Firelands with them (7/7hc) and joined Flare EU shortly after DS due to guild falling apart.

Best thing in life: Drunk gaming with friends

Food of choice: Warm Pie thing

Music of choice: Rockish/Techno

Who do you look up to? A light (wtf is this answer???? best regards, the dr.)

The guild

How long have you been in Flare? Eeeeh 5 months?

What do you like about Flare? Speed of progression, amount of alt raids and of course the people in it.

What would you change about Flare if you could? Huge list!, nah nothing major maybe have some other things apart from raiding organized a bit more like bg’s, achievement runs etc.

What's the best team in Flare; melee team, ranged team, healer team or perhaps the officer team? Ranged team we owns!

Same as above but for classes: All our warlocks are defiantly the best, Mages always cry about their op class especially the guy that makes blog’s about it, Shadowpriests are being shadowy, Hunters are doing pretty good (carried by pets obviously) and lets not start talking about how totally crap our boomers and shamans are =)

Your character

Why do you play your class/spec? I started a Warlock because Demonform looked cool. Spec: Demo because my fellow warlocks quit on me after they got overwhelmed by my skill > fights without aoe are so fking booring with demo, I like affli and destroy more partly due to less dependent on a pet doing stuff for you.

Xinti's boomkin Hozu, aka Hanu. PS. Wheres your legendary brom8?

If you'd have to reroll, what class/spec would you like to play? Boomkin, or maybe Ele shaman.

Your top moment in the game so far? Clearing DS heroic pre nerfs.

How do you feel about the upcoming expansion, MoP? Looks great for Warlocks, though there is a lot of stuff still to be fixed, at least were getting changes hopefully fixing our spec’s and bringing some new shine to it. Zones look great just like the dungeons, sadly it probably won’t be close to as difficult as Cataclysm dungeons etc. but can’t wait to see the raids.

How long can you see yourself playing this game? Till the end

Why don't you play Star Wars instead? Did, Got boring. Played because friends started it and finished at 38.

Who is the...

Funniest in Flare: Spyros =D

Cutest screamer in Flare: Batman so cute <3

Most annoying in Flare: Mr. blogger (fakki yu. best regards, the dr.)

Best healer in Flare: Holy radiance users, Atis oh shit.., well Elv then.. damn.

Best dps in Flare: Rank 1  Xinti  27-01-12  Lord Rhyolith  25  Heroic, single target hellfire

Maddest in Flare: Batman, why u heff to be mad?

Baddest in Flare: The guy pressing button on Ultraxion, oh wait.

Best troll in Flare: Dr. Dread

Biggest idiot in Flare: My Idol, y u no pass trial?

Biggest dps whore in Flare: Raddibustion

Person who you'd like to see switching from WoW to Star Wars? Our DK’s, more bloods for me!

Person who you greatly admire and respect the most in Flare? Nicke, respect to that voice!

Opinions on...

Warriors: carried by bladestorm.

Africa: Sandy knie groeiers.

US Guilds: Their like EU guilds but worse.

BG: They speaky le English very gut si.

DPS whoring: True skill.

Spain's economy: As down as they are located in Europe.

10man vs 25man: Alt rofl stomp mode vs Dps whore race mode.

And to close it up...

Why u heff to be mad? Cuz I’m Archeology professor Xinti!

Any shoutouts? Life Binder's Handmaiden on 2 chars, u jelly and I know it! (nope, got it on both chars before you. best regards, the dr.)

 

Been raidin': Reset of 11/4 pt. 1

Yo yo yo!

It's been a good week for our guild: We actually managed to clear 8/8 HC in both our mainraid AND our 1st altraid on the Wednesday! Obviously less wipes means less fun stuff to write about and less people to mock but here we go anyway...

First off let's get going with the main raid. We started as usual, cleared trash fast and killed Morchok on first attempt. I had the sickest start ever on this boss but after that my crit RNG kept going worse and worse so couldn't rank there :(. Special thanks to my special friends Izuck & Dreadzone for standing right next to me with their Deathwing staffs equipped. Trust me, it means a lot to me.

After this I went to sitout to get Naowin in instead since he needs stuff. Went on to supposedly play beta for a bit while waiting for the raid to get to Ultraxion (of course I said I want back in for at least that) and then realized the realm keeps crashing all the time anyway and was like lolnvm. Either way, waited around a bit and got invited once the raid reached Ultraxion. Utter crap once again with my RNG and I was seriously thinking of quiting the game at this point: 2 bosses in a row with horrible RNG. Living Bomb doing more single target damage than Ignite iz cool. On we go to the ever so boring gunship, once again nothing happened here and we killed it smoooothly.

Now, to the best part of this raid. I forgot to respec Arcane for Spine (honestly Tabs) so I went as fire. First off I thought I'll just play normally not really trying to spread DoTs and stuff just to avoid wiping. Everything went smoothly, clearing grips was a bit of a pain as fire but whatever. I was even doing nearly the same tendon dps as arcane. Then, we get to the last platform. I see all these bloods moving around and start thinking of what my brom8 mage Naowin has always been talking about, "I wish I could go as fire and just Combustion all those bloods". Obviously first off I thought that'd be just suicidal and abandoned the thought instantly. When the last tendon comes up the thought comes back to my mind and I realize that this is going to be a once in a lifetime situation and I should do it now just for the sake of trying it. So I decide to go for it... I get a crit on a blood, Combustion it and spread it to all the 50 bloods around it. I actually hoped the tendon would be dead by the time bloods start dying but nope. Bloods start dying rapidly and something unexpected happens: Amalgamation gets 9 stacks. I didn't think of this one! The exploding Amalgamation pretty much kills half of the raid but we barely manage to kill the boss anyway. Trust me my heart skipped a beat there since there was 15k involved for all raiders if we do a wipeless raid (and I just nearly fucked it up). Everyone on vent is like "lol what was that, never seen that happen before" until our smart blood tank Yosh points out how he saw my Combustion. Crap.

Great success!

If we had wiped there, the hate and screaming would've been unbearable. Although, it would've kind of been interesting to see what would've happened if we had wiped. Maybe next week ;;);););).

After Spine we killed Madness, oneshot aswell and that meant that everyone in the raid got 15k from the guild bank, yay. This week the mounts from Madness went to Lloth and Huskyboi, grats boys. Only a few people left now without them! Let's finish up the main raid section with this fine piece of art by Dela (the "knows best" guy):

Since the raid went so fast, we decided that we'll take a 10min break and then go do our main altrun aswell, or at least everything we can in two hours or so. Yes, we did end up killing everything. After the 10 min break was over we went for Morchok. This time I remembered to go and spec Deep Wounds for max dips on my sykk tank warrior Räddiyo. Every week I manage to go in with more and more dps gear! This time there were also rumors that I had Gur'thalak equipped for a while in the start but obviously I wouldn't do that because then I wouldn't be able to use Shield Slam & Devastate. Good ol' No'kaled <3.

Nothing special in this raid for Zon'ozz/Yor'sahj/Hagara/Ultraxion, killed the bosses fairly smoothly and nothing cool dropped.

Gunship, pretty standard. Oneshotted it and guess what, FINALLY the shield managed to drop. It's only been like 20 weeks or what without seeing it in this raid yo. Either way, as expected:

my face.

Spine, now with our Bulgarian Shaman it was easy and we oneshotted it. Nobody spreading Combustions in this raid so isokay. Once again, str trinket & str shoulders. Nobody needs those even for offspec anymore I believe, so cool loot yo. On we go to Madness.

Everything goes smoothly, kinda. First off I realize I've forgotten to equip my trinket but just tell our spriest to PW:S me before every Impale to compensate. Everything goes fine but on the next platform I realize I also forgot to go and spec Safeguard, after replacing it with Deep Wounds. Crap. I tell my British friend Oz to do a bit better blood shields and just deal with it. Obviously the next platform he dies and we wiped because of him. I decided to save the raid and go respec and after that we proceed to kill the boss on the next attempt. Someone remind me to respec Deep Wounds next week pls. More surprises for that night, just as to crown the night, Souldrinker drops and I get it. Cool, even though No'kaled still beats it dpswise ;/. Still waiting for the HC version of it! This week the mount from DW went to our mage Holyice, because his BG buttbuddy passed the mount to him. Gz! 3/10 done with the mount now.

As for the song...

 

Datz it for this part of this weeks Been raidin'. Still got our 2nd altrun to do this week, and hoping to also kill 8/8 hc there soon and end up with 3 chars with 8/8 hc! Stay tuuuuned.

-the dr

4.3.3 Fire Mage PvE Guide Part 6: Races & Professions

Since theres so much to tell about fire mages and I don't want to spend all my time and energy on a single post, this guide will be in multiple parts, going through the general stuff first and ending in some more advanced tips and tricks.

Yes, you read right. One more part of the PvE guide that I "finished" a week ago or so. I forgot to issue these two things which I'll be going through in this part. Thanks to the guy who whispered me in-game one day asking for this since it was missing from the guide. So, this part of the PvE Guide will be going through different races & professions from a mage point of view.

Races

Racials and their benefits have always been one of the biggest questions in WoW since the race change was implemented in 3.2. I'll be going through every race, starting from the Horde races and explaining how/if the racials for the race benefit mages in PvE at all. Keep in mind that the difference between the worst and the best racial is around 800 DPS in BiS gear so if you're not really into minmaxing this part of the guide probably isn't for you. I'm going to be starting with Alliance races.

For Humans, the racial that could benefit mages in PvE is Every Man For Himself, and it is, to say the least, very situational. There isn't a single encounter in DS where you could use it. So generally Human is a pretty bad choice for PvE mage race.

For Dwarves, there's also only one even slightly beneficial PvE racial, which is Stoneform. In the bigger scheme 10% damage reduction won't do a lot and the rest of the effect is useless so once again, a pretty bad choice for PvE.

 Night Elves... Again, no good racials for PvE. Shadowmeld could maybe be useful (can't imagine any situation where though) but yeah, no.


Gnomes have one mildly beneficial racial for fire mages: Expansive Mind. However fire mages don't really have mana problems and don't benefit from a bigger mana pool so gnomes aren't a good choice either. For arcane mages Gnome is the best choice out of the alliance races though.

The draenei racial Heroic Presence is one of the best choices for Alliance mages, requiring you only to get 16% of hit from gear. The draenei racial is usually really good in the first tiers of an expansion due to lower amount of stats in gear. Also Gift of the Naaru can be a situationally useful self-heal.

The worgen racial Viciousness is generally speaking the best racial for PvE fire currently out of the alliance races. It beats the draenei racial with current BiS items due to the fact that you aren't really reforging any crit to hit anyway and crit happens to be the best stat for mages. So with draenei racial your benefit will be mostly some more mastery/haste but with the worgen racial you'll always gain 1% of your best secondary stat, crit. Also the sprint racial, Darkflight, can be useful but there's less situations where it's useful for mages due to blink & ability to dps pretty well while moving.

Conclusion for the Alliance races: Worgen > Draenei > Gnome > Human = Dwarf = Night Elf

Now onto the Horde races. Skipping tauren for obvious reasons :).

Orc is a fairly good choice for PvE with it's Blood Fury racial. At lvl 85 it grants you 1302 spell power for 15 seconds with a 2 minute cooldown. Because Combustion doesn't directly benefit from spell power this race is worse than some other choices though.

Undead racials are fairly useless for PvE. Will of the Forsaken could be useful in some situations but in the current tier of raiding no such situations exist. Generally considered the worst choice for a Horde PvE mage.

The Troll racial, Berserking, is currently the strongest choice for PvE Fire. Unlike the tooltip would let you understand, you gain the benefit as haste rating, not just as casting/attack speed, which means that with Berserking up you can reach extra ticks for DoTs, for example Combustion, which are a big increase in DPS. Also the racial Beast Slaying can be really insane on some bosses, examples of bosses like this in this expansion are Chimaeron in T11 & Beth'tilac in T12.

The only Blood Elf racial that can be beneficial in PvE is Arcane Torrent. However due to mages not really having any big mana problems as fire, the benefit from it is minimal in the current tier.

Goblins are also a pretty good choice for Horde PvE mages. Time is Money is generally speaking a pretty good racial, in BiS gear the difference between being a Troll or a Goblin is around 350 dps to the favor of being a Troll. Also the Rocket Jump racial can be useful at times but again Blink makes it a bit less useful for mages. Using Rocket Barrage is a dps loss and thus not beneficial at all.


Conclusion for the Horde races: Troll > Goblin > Orc > Blood Elf > Undead

Professions

For the professions, I'm just going to explain the few interesting ones due to something special with them and then list all the middle-ground professions with the same benefits. You should never have Herbalism/Mining/Skinning if you're minmaxing on your mage because those professions are miles behind the others in terms of dps increase.

 Blacksmithing is the strongest profession for mages since 4.3 and the addition of the 50 stat epic gems. Blacksmithing gives you two extra gem slots in which you can put two 50 intellect gems, thus giving you 100 extra Intellect. This is the biggest bonus you can currently get out of a profession.

Out of the current professions, tailoring is the second strongest choice. Tailoring gives you a special cloak enchant, Lightweave, which outweights most of the other professions.

Jewelcrafting has usually been the best profession alongside tailoring, giving you one more intellect than the other professions (81), but with the addition of Epic gems it is now the worst non-gathering profession available because Blizzard hasn't fixed the JC only gems to give more intellect. Jewelcrafting now provides you with only 51 extra intellect. I doubt they will fix this during Cataclysm which is a huge shame, but in MoP, with no epic gems, JC will most likely be the best profession again alongside tailoring. 

Although Engineering is arguably the most interesting and unique profession in the game, it's PvE benefits are generally bad for fire mages.



Alchemy/Inscription/Leatherworking/Enchanting all give you 80 extra intellect and are thus the best choices for PvE after Tailoring & Blacksmithing.

This should finally sum this whole Mage 4.3.3 PvE guide up, hopefully it was helpful to at least some and the usual stuff. If you haven't, be sure to check the previous parts! If you still feel there's something missing from my whole guide, please leave me a comment or poke me in-game on EU Jaedenar and I'll do my best to add it!

4.3.3: Fire Mage Tips & Tricks for Dragon Soul HC

Haven't made any guides for live in a bit and also kinda neglected mages for a bit so here we go: some tips & tricks for mages in DS!

I will go through stuff like when to preferably use Combustion, when to use your pot, when's the best time for TW from a mage PoV, how to position yourself and what kind of mechanics you can take advantage of.  I will go through every boss one at a time even though there isn't much to say about everything.

These tips are from a 25man perspective since that's what I raid on my mage but they can be used for 10man aswell for most of it. All things suggested in the guide aren't necessarily the best idea if you're progressing the boss and need to optimize everything for the raid, some of the tips are what some would call dps whoring :). For example the suggestions for timing your raids TW aren't necessarily the best choices for your whole raid.

• You can spread DoTs on both copies of Morchok when he splits to two by Impacting when the copy is in air. The boss splits at 90% HP and you should try to get a good Combustion and Impact up before this so you can spread Combustion on both of the bosses.
• Depending on how you tank the bosses you might be able to multidot both copies.
• After your first Combustion just use it on cooldown but still keeping an eye on procs etc. 
• TW is best used when the boss is below 35%. Use your second pot when you preferably have lust up and boss below 35%, a bit before Combustion is off CD to get a good ignite up for the Combustion.

• Black ooze is your best friend. Don't use Combustion in the start, instead, stack your tier bonus to max.
• If a black ooze spawns save your Combustion, if it doesn't you should use it on the boss now. The other option if there isn't a black ooze is to wait for blue ball to spawn, have it gripped to melee and then spread Combustion off the boss to the ball.
• If black ooze did spawn and hit the boss, start building a good Ignite on the boss and Combustion asap when all adds are in range. Try to do it as fast as possible though to let your Combustion tick fully; the more AoE your raid has the harder this gets.
• After this you can just use Combustion in every phase if you have the t13 bonus so keep doing it on CD but obviously timing it with the adds in black phases.
• Remember to leave LB + preferably Pyroblast DoT on boss before you switch to ooze, also keep multidotting the blue ball when it's up and there's nothing to AoE. You can get Pyromaniac up for oozes if you have DoTs rolling on both the boss & the blue ball when you switch to the ooze.
• Generally TW is used depending on the raids needs here, for you it'd be best to do it when the boss is below 35% and you have a black phase. Here's where you should pot aswell.

• Use Combustion pretty much on CD. You can spread it from the boss to a big tentacle during black phases if you're not assigned to go far away from the boss.
• Keep LB rolling on 3 mobs in black phases for Pyromaniac. One of these should be the boss preferably if you're aiming for dips.
• You can bounce the orb alone with Cauterize. You can't Ice Block it though as that way the orb will just go through you. Cauterizing the orb can help a lot with both healing & damage.
• From a mage pov, TW is best used when the boss is below 35% HP. This is also where you should pot.

• Combustion is best used on the Ice Tombs on 25man. However there's a chance that you get tombed yourself or that the tombs die too fast. If you're not aiming for ranks etc. the safest bet is to Combustion during Feedback. Keep in mind that on 10man theres only 2 tombs compared to the 6 you have in 25man.
• Depending on which phase you get first (check the bosses weapons to see which one is coming first), how fast you do it & if you're planning to Combustion on the tombs or on the feedback you want to either use Combustion at pull or save it. The following "table" should give you a good idea on how to use the Combustion in start depending on what you get first and what you plan on doing but it is affected by how fast your group gets through the phases.

                                Comb. on                Feedback     /   Tombs
                              Lightning first              Save         /     Save
                             Frost first                      Save         /       Use

• Start casting a Pyroblast on the boss before lightning/frost phase ends so that it will hit the boss when she gets feedback.
• After the first Combustion just try to use every Combustion on tombs/feedback depending on which one you chose to do it on initially. Be careful with your t13 bonus stacks especially in lightning phase.
• If you're using the tactic with all ranged & healers stacking in middle in frost phase, be sure to keep LB rolling on as many of the 4 Crystals as possible (3 for Pyromaniac). Always be on the highest HP Crystal until one of them reaches 35%, at which point you switch to that one for Molten Fury.
• If you're running outside in frost phase you can blink through walls to get more standstill time and you can also just let them pass by yourself by just stepping slightly in the frost zone and going back out after the wall has passed.
• You can dispel yourself every 30 seconds by going inside the frost zone with Mage Ward on, but this will require you to put one talent point in Molten Shields.
• TW is best used after the last lightning/frost, when the boss is below 35% when she gets feedback.

• Use Combustion on CD, slightly weaving it around your procs/lust/pots etc. Do not wait around too long for using it though. Best idea is to see how long it takes for your raid to kill the boss and then count from that how long you can wait with using your Combustion to not lose a whole Combustion.
• Before the pull, pop Mirror Images at 3 seconds to engaging, Flame Orb at 1.5 seconds and prepot right after the GCD triggered by Flame Orb has ended.
• Try to weave in Scorches/Fire Blasts if you can't fit a full Fireball and can't do a LB/Flame Orb/HS when your Fading Light is ending or when Hour of Twilight is about to happen. 
• Because of the possible need for Fire Blast here, talenting Improved Fire Blast can be a single target dps increase and a good way to sometimes proc an extra HS.
• Always try to postpone going in for Fading/Hour as long as you can.
• It is better for mages if TW is used below 35% rather than in the start. You should use your 2nd pot here if this is what you do.
• Cauterize works on Hour of Twilight but not on Fading Light.

• You can solo soak small swirly thingies without much risk due to having Cauterize.
• In the start of the fight you can go and DoT up Goriona and both of the first drakes if you go to the left balcony and from there upstairs to the roof of the ship. Optionally you can also just DoT the drakes up and this way use your prepot a bit later having it still up for building your first Combustion.
• If your tank is tanking the melee adds next to one drake, you can keep spreading DoTs to them all.
• You should always try to spread Combustion to as many mobs as possible.
• Remember to DoT up drakes that fly over the Gunship.
• In p2, try to stand as close as possible without getting interrupted for minimal movement. If you're close enough, blinking is a dps loss and you should instead just move and use the stuff you usually use while moving, ie. LB/HS/Flame Orb/Scorch.
• In p2 keep spreading DoTs from Goriona to Blackhorn constantly.
• Best time for TW here is when both boss & the drake are down on the deck & your Combustion is going to be off CD during it. You should use your second pot for this also.
• Glyph of Living Bomb beats Glyph of Pyroblast here.

•  Generally speaking you should be playing Arcane here.
• Bottled Wishes is an insane trinket for tendon DPS.
• Always time your burn phases for the Tendons.
• You can usually weave in at least one AP between tendon lifts, depending on how good your raids dps is.
• When tendon is coming up, be sure to have 4 stacks of AB debuff for it. Open with your PoM to keep the stacks up and after the PoM pop your AP.
• When the amalgamation is casting Nuclear Explosion, use Mage Ward on the first tick of it and Mana Shield on the 2nd tick of it. This way you'll get 4k+ spellpower for your first few ABs through Incanter's Absorption.
• Pop a Flame Orb before the tendon goes up. Try to aim it so that it will hit the tendon instead of the bloods.
• For the tendon just spam Arcane Blast. Keep an eye on the timer for how long it will be up though, and in the end if you know for sure that you can't fit a Blast in anymore, use Arcane Barrage with 4 stacks to get the last bits of damage on the tendon.
• Arcane mages are really good for breaking grips. Always try to precast one Arcane Blast with 4 stacks on the Corruption so that the Blast hits the Corruption just at the moment it starts casting the Fiery Grip.
• Pot & lust the first lift of the last tendon.

•  Depending on if you need TW for the 4th platforms first parasite, you could TW twice in this fight: First on pull and 2nd time in the last phase.
• If the raids AoE allows, the best way to use your Combustions is to use the first one on the Hemorrhages when they spawn and then spread it for spellweave cleaving on the big tentacle. After that you should always try to use it either during Cataclysm if it's back up in time or fast in the start of the next platform.
• Keep LB rolling on the Arm/Wing Tentacle alongside the Corruption when you're killing the Corruption. Always make sure the LB:s are up when a bolt or a Corrupting Parasite is coming up so that you'll have Pyromaniac up for them. 
• Parasite can be placed so that spreading DoTs from it will spread to the Corruption or the Arm/Wing.
• You will have mana problems on this fight. Make sure to use your evocates so that Cataclysm/Hemorrhages aren't up when you're doing it. Remember to wait for your DoTs to expire and then refresh them before Evocating to not lose uptime. Best place to Evocate is if you have agreed to stop dps at a certain point of the fight.
• Use Mana Gems alongside Evocation.
• In p2 you should try to Combustion on bloods or a big bunch of fragments. Spreading it will also spread it to Deathwing.
• Combustion doesn't double dip from Cataclysm but it is obviously easier to get a good ignite up with the damage increase and that's why Combustioning there is adviced when possible.
• Use your second pot according to your own judgement here. For your own dps the best time would be to use it on one of the first 3 Cataclysm's due to not having to switch for small tentacles during them, or for one of your Hemorrhage Combustions. However at these times there isn't really a need to do a lot of DPS so it might be better to use it somewhere where you need the dps for something (to beat Cataclysm, to beat 3rd impale, to get extra wave of bloods before fragments in p2 etc.).
• If you really want to minmax here you might be able to adjust your hastelevels according to the haste buff present on first 3 platforms. Generally speaking though going with the same reforges as normally would probably be your best bet. See the Stats & Optimization post in my mage guide for different haste breakpoints.
• Glyph of Living Bomb beats Glyph of Pyroblast here.

I hope this post helped some mages out there trying to maximize their DPS in DS HC. As always, I'm open to more suggestions/requests for guides! In fact, this guide was made because of a great suggestion. Keep 'em coming!


-drRäddi

Been' raidin: Reset of 4/4, pt. 2

I know, it's the next reset already so this is a bit late but last raid was yesterday and I'm a human (godlike though)! Also, been in a bit of a hurry anyway so couldn't put up anything yesterday, soz brom8s I still love you.

So; Let's begin with the main altrun, where I get to shine on my prot/arms warrior Räddiyo. First problem we had was our insayn resto shaman Shamanity missing, which as you might guess caused quite huge problems later on in the instance due to shamans being OP on Spine/Madness etcetc.

Instead of him we had to take Dreadzone's crappy hpala.. What could go wrong with 2 hpalas? Btw gz on Savior of Azeroth, well deserved! Pic related.

 

Either way, we get going and get shit killed fairly fast. Morchok was cool and our healers felt confident enough to let me tank in my gearset which is rightfully named "sickdps".  For once our healers made me proud and healing me on Morchok was np. They even let me stay in for black phases!

sickdps

After that I went dps for Yor/Zon/Hag. Pretty standard stuff clearing it fast. Also prot legs managed to drop and I got them finally. Now just need a 2nd pair for 4p bonus in dps (fuck LFR).

At Ultraxion I realized why I was doing so low dps as a tank even when trying hard to do lots. I had unspecced Deep Wounds for Madness HC to keep my weak tanking colleague, Slightdanger (he's a massive emo) alive with Safeguard. I have been running without it for a few resets now :( Gotta fix it for the next reset!

Gunship, nothing special either I think. To everyone's surprise (jk) tanking shield/belt didn't still drop. Haven't seen them even once neither on normal or heroic. But np, I'm ok with my trusty old Shard of Torment :(

On we go to Spine..! As expected, a huge pain without a resto shaman. Took us more wipes than it has ever taken for a while to kill it but at least it died. Spine taking so long kinda fucked up our plans of clearing it all in one night.

We still tried Madness HC and actually nearly oneshotted it in the start. After a few attempts that ended in the last phase people started getting really tired & the fuckups started being more and more stupid Lölita, also known as "the agility priest", tried jumping to an imaginary platform from the last platform to the left and ended up in the Maelstrom. After a few stupid wipes and people getting tired we decided to just go again the next day.

On Sunday we got a few more less stupid wipes, and the main problem was people dying on the 4th plate. We decided that since we were lacking our resto shaman we could probs go with 1 more healer and still make the dps requirement. We had this Yoikie guy respec from shadow to his disc MS and pretty much killed the boss on the next attempt. Someone should've suggested that earlier!

And what do we get for all this pain? 2x Blade of the Unmaker (aka enchanting mats), one mount for Janfaygo. Now he's got the mount & legendaries on his alt rogue before his main one, great success!

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Now, to our second altrun. Now that we killed everything in the main alt run we decided to start raiding 2 days a week with this group. We had 5/8 HC on farm so far and killed them really quickly. I promised to mention our warlock Jailbait if he'd DI my rogue and I actually got the DI for a bit, so here you go. Hope you enjoyed your mention here, you're super cool etc. Here's a pic (Jailbait's armory) demonstrating how warlock armories look in my eyes:

Flare is always recruiting warlocks.

Even Hagara which has usually been a pain for this raid died on the 2nd or so attempt I think. Too lazy to check logs yo. After clearing 5/8 we decided to give Warmaster a shot and pretty much killed him on the second attempt with no problems whatsoever. 2 rogues blade flurrying ftw!

Having killed Gunship so fast left us with lots of time on Spine. We did like 6 or so attempts on Spine HC on Monday getting to the last platform with not much problems. We were supposed to come back on Tuesday like the same but then this one person (I was so mad at you yesterday) decided to not show up and we had to take a guest star, ex-raider Tunelis. Proved to not be a huge problem replacing him and through the night we managed to get to the last lift where we lost the forementioned guest start to a grip right before the plate went up. Shit happens, let's kill it next week broskis. We (once again) had some pretty epic and frustrating wipes here, including Joiksie running off the platform like a champ once & our protwarrior Diablox (shit name, wattafaaak) picking up over 9 bloods right before a roll god knows how many times. I never told to do that in my tanking guide for Spine 10HC!

 

Either way, starting to run out of time we had to clear the stuff on normal. It was Zinyu's sleep time (:((( ) already so had to take this fairly bad DK Deadthnigdtk (shit name) instead of him  and we boosted him on Spine & Madness. On Madness we also did the achievement for doing Nozdormu's plate as the first one. Easy as I don't know what, and we're one step closer to the meta mounts on these alts now! Either way...

hehehe

Hope you enjoyed it. More inc in the following days. Oh and the sick tune of this part... Behold!