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Thunderforged: Will it Breathe Life into 25 mans?
January 23, 2013 8 Comments

Thunderforged: Will it Breathe Life into 25 mans?

The new Thunderforged item concept adds another two levels of items into raids. Only available to items that are non-tier. Not sure how the slight stat allocation of Thunderforged compares to the set bonuses that tier provides, but that’s not the object of discussion here.

Much of the feedback Blizzard received was around 25 man raiding and how to proportionately reward those who eagerly go through the logistical challenges of organizing them (y’know, hopeless idiots like myself). 25 mans are gradually diminishing. Top guilds Vodka and Exodus merged resulting in the loss of another prominent 25 man guild.

Coming to the PTR in the near future will be a new designation of item type in Normal and Heroic raids for non-tier pieces. Each 5.2 raid boss will have a chance of dropping this new designation of a particular item that’s 6 item levels higher than their counterparts. These higher quality versions will be called “Thunderforged”. This means that there will be five variations of some items. You’ll now see a 5.2 raid item of LFR quality at item level 502, the same item in Normal quality at item level 522, the item in Normal Thunderforged quality at item level 528, the Heroic version of the item at level 535, and the Heroic Thunderforged version of the item at level 541.

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We’ve also received a lot of feedback regarding 25-player raids, and have been looking for ways to address some concerns. Ever since we changed 10-player raids to drop the same item level as 25′s, we’ve seen a steady decline in 25-player raiding. This isn’t surprising. A 25-player raid takes an extra level of logistical commitment for the officers of those groups. It’s unfortunately easy for a 25-player guild to collapse down into a 10-player guild, but very unlikely for the opposite to happen. However, we like 25-player raiding and don’t want to see it go away. Like many players, we love the epic feeling that comes with banding together more massive groups to battle powerful foes, we love that there’s opportunity for those groups to try out new players or unusual comps without causing a huge burden, and we want to support the larger raiding guilds. That said, we’re also concerned that over-rewarding the 25-player guilds-if, for example, we went back to a higher item level across the board for 25′s, as was the case for Icecrown Citadel-would feel like a slap in the face to the many 10-player raiders out there, who are the majority of our Normal and Heroic raiders.

To attempt to navigate this minefield, we’re going to try having Thunderforged items drop more frequently in 25-player raids. They’ll be somewhat rare in both cases compared to the standard versions that’ll drop, but they’ll be even rarer in 10′s. Overall, a 25-player group will be more likely to end up with a slightly higher item level after several weeks of raiding.

This isn’t going to have much effect on the guilds that already run 25 man raids. Conquest has survived some of the worst ordeals in it’s history. 10 man raiding has never been a long term solution in any fashion and it never will be as long as I continue to run it. The players and the leaders have no interest in it all and that resiliency has helped us.

Have to admit, reward incentive here with the Thunderforged is cool. It’s a neat compromise to the whole suggestion of adding a completely different level of gear between 25s and 10s (the Wrath style). I’ve seen cases of 25s dropping down to 10s but I have never seen a 10 man raid step up to a 25 man raid which continues to be active. If you happen to be the architect of such a move, give me a shout!

More importantly, is this going be enough to influence players to make the switch from 10 to 25? I don’t think so. My guess is no. The interactions I’ve had with the 10 man players is that they have no interest in the logistical maintenance that’s required at the 25 level. There’s a strong preference for the closer intimacy that’s offered.

This change seems to be targeting the players that like having the best stuff available. They raid a set amount of hours a week and they want to really maximize their return on their time investment.

What about the leaders? As I said, it’s a cool reward for the few that brave the logistical nightmares. But if you’re a 10 man raid leader, is it enough to consider to make that shift? I’m not sure about that. Seems to me that the players already comfortable where they are don’t want to take that leap. I gather there’s large number of players that aren’t raiding purely for the gear level (but I acknowledge that there are some who do).

During Wrath, 25s were the dominant raiding force. The challenges there offered undoubtedly better geared compared to the 10 man counterparts. With this in place, 25 man raiders have a better chance of securing better gear compared to the 10 man raiders. The 10 man players won’t be shut out. They’ll still have a chance at it but it won’t be as strong. We’ll have to wait and see what the frequency of the Thunderforge drops are going to be.

I took a quick poll on Twitter to see what other people felt.

Here’s what you said:

Yup, I figured that was going to be the case for quite a few players. What else?

Also understandable. Doesn’t matter how good the rewards and incentives are. Sometimes there is no price that’s high enough. next?

So not exactly eager to look for a 25 but won’t resist if the current leadership decides to go that route. That’s fair. It does lower the barrier slightly. And this change does seem to go after the players that are either on the fence or virtually indifferent.

Oof, I hate hearing about situations like that. Players joining a guild expecting one kind of experience only for that to be abruptly changed soon after. It’s crappy.

That’s unexpected. So in the grand scheme of things, there is an extremely slight chance that it’s enough to split a 10  man (maybe not break it).

What are your thoughts on this addition? Is it enough to give you a reason to start looking around for 25s? Are you or your raid leaders suitably incentivized to give 25s a shot or look for a guild to merge with? Or does nothing change and the status quo is maintained?

Filed Under: All Stories, News and Opinion Tagged: , ,
Wind Lord down and Scholomance Gold
January 22, 2013 1 Comment

Wind Lord down and Scholomance Gold

This is the most mentally drained I’ve felt in such a long time. The fast resets on Wind Lord helped us pick up the fight fairly quickly. Once we got into the rhythm of the whole encounter between AoEing the ads and bursting Wind Lord, the rest of it just fell into place. I experienced an FPS lag spike just as a Wind Bomb was thrown at my feet triggering a detonation which plastered five people in the raid. But he was already at 6% left with his damage debuff still active.

It was actually really fun and not at all what I expected.

Right after the raid, the challenge mode team set their sights back on Scholomance. We came really close before but this time we put it away for good despite an early death on my part by standing in a ring of frost from that first boss.

Two sloppy mistakes. I can feel the pressure slowly getting to me and affecting my game. I don’t normally make errors like that. Maybe I need another week off in Vegas to recuperate.

Temple of the Jade Serpent is next on the challenge mode list while the raid team heads back into Mogushan for the first time in a week. Many Sha Touched weapons were picked up tonight so the need to farm for those won’t be as high.

Filed Under: All Stories
The 300 Stat Food Question
January 21, 2013 7 Comments

The 300 Stat Food Question

The Heroic version of Blade Lord fell to us on Thursday. The last few wipes were edge-of-your-seat attempts largely because we kept wiping with less than 5%. Players had a hard time making the run from one side to the other. We had some deaths early on and I ran out of battle res’s for them. Tornadoes were snatching up people out of the air. We hit the enrage timer multiple times. Eventually, we scored the kill with around 11 seconds left before the berserk.

After one of our close attempts, one of our officers made the comment that players should be busting out their own 300 stat food instead of the usual 275 stats.

Kudos for making a fair point.

We were a couple of million health short of finishing off the Blade Lord at the time and there are no arguments from me saying that if the players alive had those extra stats, it would have easily translated into a kill. The combined 600+ stats would’ve turned those low percentage wipes into a kill.

As the GM, I could “demand” the players make the necessary changes and effort. But deep down I know that’s no small feat. How am I supposed to enforce a directive like that? This is one of those things where I have to appeal to them. Your GM needs to make the case to you that this stuff is important and the time and energy to get this steroid food created is worth it.

Now if I go down this route, I’d have to ask players to valor cap as well.

I know for a fact that not everyone valor caps. People are sick of doing their dailies and their faction grinds. I get that and I had to bite my tongue for the longest time. Even though I personally just suck it up and do them to get my coin rolls and stuff, I find ways to deal with it. I’ll watch something on Netflix while mindlessly knocking them out. Not everyone has time to grind these out either because people have to work or they have family obligations or other things and don’t have the capability to commit that time to them.

Raise that bar too high and you run the risk of alienating (or worse, running out of) the players that you raid with. It’s a fine line to walk.

I’ll be completely frank.

As GM, I’d love it if every player did the following:

  • Valor capped on a weekly basis
  • Provided their own potions and flasks
  • Pushed their dailies enough to hit exalted with all the factions
  • Continue pushing dailies to sustain bonus rolls on a weekly basis
  • Did their own cooking with their personal supply of 275 and 300 stat food

But this is not a realistic expectation for a guild of this calibre as much as it pains me to admit it. We’re not the kind of organization with those level of demands. Based on that list, the average player does maybe 3 or 4 of those tops.

Hitting exalted with the Pandaria factions has a high value early in the expansion but it greatly diminishes as you gain gear from raiding. It’s just not as important in the late stage.

Further analysis of our raids and our logs showed that we can improve our performance in other areas with greater effect without exerting that much time and work. Using Phoenix Style, I discovered that while a large majority of our players were already pre-potting, there were still a small number that were not. That’s unfortunate because if they had been, it would’ve easily been enough to secure the kills earlier!

This is partially my fault to blame. Our raiding roster often has a turnover and sometimes you expect players to do already do things like pre-pot, but some people don’t because they don’t have access to the herbs or don’t know an alchemist who can make this stuff for them. Personally, I think potions and flasks are much more accessible nowadays than they were in the past. I don’t think there’s any reason or excuse at all to come to a raid without a supply of your own. I did not make that expectation that players are to utilize pre-pots but I set the record straight on that one shortly before Blade Lord dropped.

Where does this leave us with the steroid food?

My thought was that if we were consistently pushing bosses into the enrage timer with all players alive and executing near-flawless, that’s when the super food should be used. If we’re just learning a new boss or if players continue to die to simple things, then we shouldn’t use them just yet because we’re getting outskilled and need to tighten up our play.

Going back to that Blade Lord example, we were consistently getting better at not dying in the first 80%. But had we perfected our survivability on Blade Lord, then this discussion would not have come up.

Eventually, a compromise was reached. It just so happens a small group of players are chefs and just love cooking, farming, and fishing. They generously volunteered their time to stockpile the bank with a large supply under the conditions that these items should only be used in the event of an imminent kill. Of course, the raiders were asked to provide the necessary items like the Black Pepper and Rice Flour items which are only purchasable with Iron Paw tokens.

Our next step is Wind Lord. This guy seems easy — In theory.

By the way, thanks for the Blade Lord pointers, LedonLite! They helped!

Filed Under: All Stories, Policy
January 19, 2013 9 Comments

What Keeps a Guild Together?

This is my weekend question to you.

Doesn’t matter what the size or purpose of the guild is. But what factors do you think contributes to the longevity of an organization? I wish I had a sample size of GMs or Officers I could talk to. I’ve always wanted to know what that one key ingredient was.

Is it progression related? Or is it based on the people within? Does it have to do with the standards or policies set out by the leaders?

While it’s foolish to expect guilds to last forever, that doesn’t mean that you can’t at least study and find out how to weather your guild through tough ordeals. 

What do you think keeps a guild together?

Filed Under: All Stories
New absorb UI!
January 17, 2013 1 Comment

New absorb UI!

patch52-absorb

The default UI’s been updated in the latest patch 5.2 PTR build. We’ve clamored for the ability to view absorb information. That stuff was added into the combat log sometime ago. Now we can actually see how much our shields will absorb for in the various frames.

patch52-monkaoe

Monks get a new Level-60 talent called  Ring of Peace:

Ring of Peace forms a 8 yard sanctuary around the target for 8 seconds, causing all enemies in the area of effect to be silenced and disarmed.

What you don’t see in the above picture is that the ring gradually diminishes and grows smaller in size. You bet it’s a PvP talent! It’s great for any defensive or offensive work that needs to be done. If I manage to root a bunch of players, I hope a Monk drops this right on top.

patch52-insanity

Finally, here we see the reworked Shadow Word: Insanity.

For Shadow, this ability causes Mind Flay to gain the Insanity effect when it’s cast on a target with 3 Shadow damage-over-time spells on them. Insanity causes Mind Flay to deal double damage for the duration.

In essence, when your target has 3 DoTs active, Mind Flay does double damage. Now my question for the theorycrafters is this:

Since Mind Flay will always do double damage with 3 DoTs up, does this mean we should activate Devouring Plague with only 1 Shadow orb or continue to save and use Devouring Plague at 3? The only way to negate this question is if the Insanity effect were to somehow scale based upon the potency of Devouring Plague.

Filed Under: All Stories, News and Opinion, Patch Notes
5.2: Returning to Wrath level Shield spam?
January 15, 2013 5 Comments

5.2: Returning to Wrath level Shield spam?

Okay, that’s not actually going to happen. As much as I miss the days of 1 button Circle of Healing during Burning Crusade and non-stop shielding in Wrath, it was largely so I could keep watching my NHL games without having to compromise my performance too much.

In a recent thread about PTR class and set bonus issues, Ghostcrawler mentioned the following:

We are going to nerf Divine Aegis for Prayer of Healing, but also lower the cost of Power Word: Shield (for Disc only) and increase the healing and damage of Penance. In 25 raids, Disc is using Prayer of Healing almost exclusively and we don’t think the Spirit Shell change will be sufficient to change that. We actually want Disc to get back to using PW:Shield a little more, along with Penance. Disc’s throughput is overall too strong in PvE, not even counting the fact that absorbs are often more beneficial than heals.

The Divine Aegis aspect on Prayer of Healing gets tuned down but we get cheaper Power Word: Shields instead.

I don’t know what it’s like at the 10 man level, but at the 25 man level, Disc Priests are predominantly using Prayer of Healing. It’s just that effective! More tactical usage of Penance and PW: Shield needs to be done clearly. Right now, we have the ability to run two Priests in our composition. You’d think that 2 Disc priests would limit the amount of shields being thrown up because of the whole Weakened Soul debuff and the fact that shields cause a dent in mana.

But realistically at the 25 man level, two Disc priests sharing the burden isn’t going to shoot the raid in the foot. There’s lots of targets to go around. There’s damage coming from all over the place (in most cases). Those shields provide an extra buffer and can buy players an extra second or two. Bonus points for cheaper shields.

Remember when Discipline sucked back in the day?

I just hope it doesn’t go too far in the other direction and we find out massive quantities of shield spam are back in season. I don’t think it is because we learned how that was in Wrath and while it was strong, it wasn’t fun.

What other clarifications?

The Golden Apparition from the Healing 4pc heals the lowest % health friendly target within 40yd. Note that it has no visual yet, but will not work like Shadowy Apparitions. It is a simple missile, not a summoned unit.

Good to hear. I’m getting annoyed at my Shadow Apparitions sometime just sitting there. Glad to know my healing priests won’t have to suffer from that. Cant’ wait to see this bonus in action though. I hope the missile isn’t as slow as the Shadow Apparition. Wouldn’t it be embarrassing if, you know, by the time your holy guardian activated and healed your ally they were already at full health because your healers were already doing their job?

Angelic Bulwark and Spirit Shell can no longer be dispelled.

On the one hand, this sucks because I can’t offensively get rid of these buffs on people in PvP. On the other hand, this is awesome because now I won’t lose them during PvP.

We are going to redesign Shadow Word: Insanity.

Can’t wait to see this. There’s something about this ability that strikes me as off whenever I try using it. I’ve mainly stuck with From Darkness, Comes Light. Honestly, 4 seconds isn’t that small of a window to get Insanity off on a boss.

So then why do I feel so awkward using it?

Our current though on Solace is that it will provide damage and healing for both Disc and Holy. So Holy could use it for some Atonement-like healing, as could Disc, but Disc won’t double dip and shouldn’t feel like it’s mandatory. That could change (all of this could change) as we try it out and iterate more.

Took a look at this on the PTR. Holy Fire gets changed to Power Word: Solace so it’s one less button that takes up your spell book.

Neat! I think we’re approaching that point where we’re starting to have too much crap in our spellbook so I do like the fact that we’re condensing something. Unlike Holy Fire, Solace is instant, offers you 1% mana back, but has a 10 second cooldown.

The current version of Solace is a 1.5 second cast time which restores 0.7% maximum mana but has no cooldown.

Doesn’t the new version of Solace seem a little too low in the mana return area?

Khendra, we have no objection to using Prayer of Healing when you need to heal a bunch of people. That’s what it’s for. But when you’re using Prayer of Healing in preparation for future damage because DA and SS make your AE heal better at shielding than actual Power Word: Shield, then that even further reduces your options. (In 10s, Disc tends to use Atonement more, so they’re doing something more than just PoH spam. In 25s, we see some Atonement use, but it’s fit in when possible and healers in 25s are just always going to be able to specialize more.)

We might in the future add another AE heal for Disc (I think you can make a compelling argument that in this day and age, healers need a variety of interesting AE heals and maybe only a couple of ST heals, while healer design for years went in the opposite direction) but that’s not the sort of thing we want to drop on you in the middle of an expansion. In the meantime, if Disc uses Penance and PW:Shield some more (and Flash Heal in PvP) and doesn’t trounce all the other healers, we will be satisfied and hopefully so will priests.

Won’t be seeing that until 6.0 is my guess. We’ve got a ton of single target healing. Having Divine Star, Cascade, and Halo access were all great because we could customize our AoE healing based on the task at hand.

Another baseline AoE would be interesting though. You’d be hard pressed to find a method for AoE absorbs that isn’t already covered by what Spirit Shell can do.

Okay, I’m guessing it’s an AoE absorb. They think it’s a little excessive to chain cast Prayer of Healing in advance of a Bonestorm even though that’s the best method in countering incoming damage (even if every player’s at full health).

Can’t wait to see what they’re thinking about doing though though!

As for me, I’m still rolling around in Shadow. We’ll be challenging Blade Lord tonight. We’re getting picked apart by Wind Step and Unseen Strike combinations. Not quite sure how to counter that. It’s not like we’re losing half the raid. But each time an Unseen Strike hits, we always lose a player. I’m sure we can battle through it and add another heroic notch to our belt but if anyone has any pointers or suggestions, I’d be grateful.

Are these changes going to cause you Disc Priests to consider reverting back to Holy? Or no change at all? What do you think about the proposed Solace change?

Filed Under: All Stories, Mists of Pandaria, News and Opinion, Patch Notes, Priest Discussion Tagged: , , ,
Challenge Mode: Part 2 – Scholomance
January 9, 2013 7 Comments

Challenge Mode: Part 2 – Scholomance

Last night, we scored two hard mode kills back to back with Feng and Garajal. Once we got the mechanics down in place, it was easy and straight forward. Garajal had hard caps on both healing required and damage needed. We dropped down to four healers and managed to take out Garajal with under half a minute remaining on the enrage. Not a bad play. We’ll be gunning for Elegon and Blade Lord next.

Tonight’s challenge mode is Scholomance. I think this one will take a little long in “getting it” compared to Gate of the Setting Sun. This will be the first time I’ll be healing a challenge mode in some time since we agreed to try switching me over to healing instead of playing Shadow. Although nothing’s wrong with playing Shadow, our new composition will help us long term and help shave precious seconds off the timer as needed. Although for Lilian Voss, we’ll be running 4 DPS on it instead. The logic is if we can take down Lilian in the first phase, we avoid the entire second and third phase of that fight. I hope my Vampiric Embrace and other spells with Dark Binding will be enough to keep us alive long enough.

This is the first time I’ll be running Invisibility Potions. There’s this place called Fungal Rock down in Un’goro Crater that just has these sprouting all over like crazy. We’re expected to use those in order to bypass Professor Snape’s room (the one with all those yellow ads).

One of my guild mates mentioned an item called Restorative Amber. I’ll need to get myself some of this. I don’t think I’ll need it, but it’s nice to have it anyway just in case we’re off by a few seconds. The downside is that stuff is 10 gold each. I normally resort to Pearl Milk Tea to get my mana up but discovered quickly that it resulted in my awesome food buffs getting overwritten by Mastery. There’s an NPC at the shrines that sell something called Golden Carp Consomme and he helps in restoring mana without sacrificing the food buffs.

I’m excited though! Hope to add another gold!

Filed Under: All Stories Tagged: ,
Age Old Question: Farm or Progression?
January 8, 2013 3 Comments

Age Old Question: Farm or Progression?

The appearance of patch 5.2 on the PTR has placed a clock on our raids. In several weeks, the content we’re currently working on will soon be obselete because of the new Throne of Thunder raid. I find myself amazingly not tired of the current raid content just yet. There’s enough diversity and variety to still hold my interest. Raiding in Pandaria started in October and we’re about 3 months into this expansion.

I had grown weary of Cataclysm’s tier 11 raids after 3 months.

Firelands? Wanted out of it after 3 months.

Dragon Soul wasn’t as bad. That one took me a little longer than 3 months for me to get truly sick of it.

The team destroyed the Sha of Fear and banished it back to where it came from before Christmas. Now it’s time to do it all over again. We managed to get an early kill on heroic Stone Dogs a week before Heart of Fear released. Duplicating the kill again is no easy feat though due to the RNG that just comes with it.

At the moment, I find myself thinking long term and what’s the best strategic move for the raid team going into Throne of Thunder. I actually think the group we have right now is the strongest group we’ve had since our ICC heroic days (and that team scored heroic Sindragosa along with a full set of raid drakes).

Our biggest enemy right now is time.

My personal goals

  • Get every player a Sha-Touched weapon that is normal quality or higher
  • Complete as many tier sets as possible
  • Get as many hard mode kills as possible

Naturally, the first two goals are going to come in conflict with the last goal. Time spent farming for weapons and completing tier sets means time not attempting to get hard mode bosses. Luckily, we’re going to head into heroic Mogushan Vaults and attempt to get as much of that down as possible thereby freeing up Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Springs for possible farming and cleanup.

Suppose we manage to take down heroic Feng. The kill could either result in everyone mostly alive or the raid in an entertaining disarray of chaos with the tank and healer still alive a second after an enrage. Who knows?

When we get back to it next week, is it worthwhile to spend the time and try to kill it again? Or should we just knock it out on normal mode really fast and push into heroic Gara’jal instead? In the grand scheme of things, 9 hours a week of raiding just doesn’t seem like a lot of time for 16 bosses.

Once we learn a boss, it usually takes another week or two before we can consistently get it down fast enough. But continuing to go after them means potentially less time on future bosses.

From the other side, I know what a huge edge heroic gear gives us when going into the next tier of content. After we had gone 6/7 heroic in Firelands, we sliced through half of Dragon Soul in one night. Knocking out Trial of the Grand Crusader resulted in us running out of things to do the rest of the week because we killed Saurfang on day 1.

I also know that once the new Throne of Thunder raid is released, we’re not coming back here.

Our efforts will be 100% devoted to that raid instance and the only way people will come back is whenever the next expansion is out and they can either solo it or join a small raid group for achievements and stuff. I know the feeling of elation when a raid kills a boss at a level that’s relevant. I also know the feeling of emptiness and despair when a raid misses out on that. I’ve harboured so many regrets and lost opportunities on my shoulders over the past expansions at being unable to deliver to the team what I feel they deserve.

I can either invest in the future by farming our future hard mode kills or capitalize on the present moments and get as many first kills on the guild belt as possible.

Somehow, I don’t think either choice is going to be popular. Either way, we’ve got a lot of work to do! Heroic Feng is within reach right now. Just need to get the transitions and timings down pat.

Filed Under: All Stories, Guild Topics, Policy, Raiding
Gate of the Setting Sun: Gold!
January 6, 2013 1 Comment

Gate of the Setting Sun: Gold!

We got it!

Took us almost four hours but Gate of the Setting Sun isn’t the hardest of the Challenge Modes. It’s a good first instance to start with in getting your feet wet.

We found the biggest obstacle in our attempts was trying too hard to cut and shave off time. Ultimately, we were better off just taking it slightly slower but much more methodical. We did run into a few tough spots. The pull immediately after the gate in the little fortification is one of the hardest ones. Those Windshapers can really do a number on the tank. Our interrupts and stuns had to be spot on against them. I kept a Psychic Scream in reserve just in case (plus they’re great for interrupting incoming damage overall and giving some time to the healer to help them recover the group).

The actual bosses weren’t that much of a challenge themselves. Raigonn himself went by super fast after we destroyed the weak spot. I’m just happy my DPS was high enough to help secure that gold run.

After the run, we continued discussing our group and compositions. Ultimately, we decided that our resto shaman is better off switching to elemental and myself back to discipline. While I’m excited with the prospect of returning to healing again, a part of me is a little reluctant. It’s been a long time since I did any kind of demanding healing and I’m worried that I might not be at a level that’s good enough.

But screw it! I’ll figure this out.

Our team’s next target? Scholomance. They were able to snag silver a while ago. Let’s see if can go for the gold.

In other news, hockey’s back! Yay!

Filed Under: All Stories
January 4, 2013 Leave a Comment

Preparing your Shadow Priest for Challenge Modes

On Wednesday night, I was drafted for the guild’s challenge mode team. I was thinking to myself, “A Shadow Priest? Really? Our class DPS isn’t the best and I’m not sure if we’re considered optimal for this kind of stuff.”

As you can tell, I was hesitant. But I figured, why not? Priest challenge mode gear looks sexy (as evidenced by the video below).

Our composition’s going to be a little unorthodox. We plan to run a tanking Monk, Death Knight, Shadow Priest, Hunter, along with a Resto Shaman. The consensus is that the Shaman and myself should switch (with him Elemental and myself Disc). Seems as if we’re making things harder for ourselves, but we’re both interested in giving it a shot. If the times are that tight and we’re barely making it, we both have the skills and gear to make the changeup.

Going into challenge modes means I’d have to change out my glyphs, talents, and play style.

Talents

I took a hard look at my talents. Certain talents that were beneficial were raiding wouldn’t be as awesome in a 5 man Challenge mode environment.

Twist of Fate: With the amount of trash and stuff you’re killing in there, ToF will have a fairly high uptime. However, you’ll want to consider a respec to Power Infusion in any instances where you happen to have any available time leftover that allows for a respec.

Divine Star and Halo: I prefer Halo if the instance allows for it. Otherwise an instance like any of the Scarlet Monastary stuff means a poorly placed Halo will result in a ton of unwanted mobs pulled.

Desperate Prayer: Given the choice, the ability to control the heal of DP outweighs the automatic life saving capabilities of Angelic Bulwark.

From Darkness, Comes Light: I’ve considered switching to Mindbender. But I can’t seem to think of a situation where I’d want to use Mindbender over it just yet. Those of you who have gone into Challenge modes and have the experience, I’d greatly appreciate the insight.

Void Tendrils: For now, the AoE root gets the nod in case I need to freeze something in place. I’ve considered Psyfiend for selective CC (paired with the Psychic Scream Glyph. , but I’m not sure how much of that is going to be really needed since we plan to just blow stuff up.

Glyphs

Dark Binding is a big utility glyph. Anytime you’re on the run, you can shoot out a Renew or a Prayer of Mending and not have to expend the resources to switch back to Shadowform.

Offensively, I’ll use Glyph of Mindspike because it offers excellent synergy with From Darkness, Comes Light. Chance to cast it instantly without it wiping away your DoTs and making the next Mind Blast instant is just plain sexy. You’ll run into instances like Scarlet Monastary where more of your time is spent casting Mind Sear.

The Vampiric Embrace glyph is my last selection. The extra healing is awesome and can buy time for your healer to catch up in the event of a particularly bad pull.

Consumables

Nothing much changes here. I still plan on running the same set of consumables that I would in a raid.

Potion of the Jade Serpent

Flask of the Warm Sun

Standard feasts

Stacks of Invisibility Potion

Playing

Our target dungeon that night was Gate of the Setting Sun. We were easily able to medal a bronze on the first try. We suffered two wipes but the first run through offered valuable insight into how to get through certain pulls. The first six or so bugs (with the bombs) caught me off guard. Our approach was to just stack up and attempt to dodge the Bomberman explosions and ended up getting clipped a few times (which were practically lethal). The two pull prior to the elevator building has to be skipped. We CC’d and ran right by them before engaging the elevator and just beating down the boss.

Overall, there’s lots of improvements we can make. We’ll be heading back in there tomorrow and won’t be leaving without that gold!

Have you participated in challenge modes? Have any useful tips or tricks?

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