zeroinitiate - A World of WarCraft Rogue Blog

After playing around with all the talent trees, my DK finally settled on using Unholy as his DPS spec. I finally understood the rotation and, quite frankly, Glyph of Disease is simply a great glyph to have for people like me who have trouble maintaining diseases. I also switched my tanking spec to Blood since that’s going to be the spec of choice come Cataclysm. It’s working well so far.

I recently ran into this random heroic where I was tanking and our healer was a paladin. I died on the second pull, with the healer saying something like “OMG, you died so fast. I actually have to heal you.” Maybe he’s been running random groups with better geared tanks but that comment just pissed me off. Sure, my tanking gear isn’t great by any means but it’s good enough to run heroic 5-mans. There’s also the fact that he signed up as a healer. At the very least, he should be doing his job. He proved himself to be an ass by leaving the group after we pulled the first boss. Note that I’m saying after, meaning we haven’t wiped yet. Considering this was Utgarde Keep, you’d think he’d have the decency to stay and finish at least that. Anyway, end of rant.

TL;DR: Pally douchebag healer ruined heroic UK random run.

And by doing that, I just realized I’m on Reddit too often.

It sucks when everybody’s a Kingslayer and Sin’s not. Sometimes I wonder what I’m lacking that’s preventing me from killing the guy. It would be nice if I could score some heroic gear. Then again, when Ruby Sanctum hits the whole new loot table is going to come into play. I’m already wondering what the drops will be.

I have 3 alts that are above 60: a mage, a pally and a druid. I’ve been thinking about which one I should focus on and finally settled on the druid. The reason behind this is because it’s simply the class closest to being a rogue. I tried running a random with him and ended up really bad on trash pulls simply because I didn’t have an AOE attack. I managed to make up for it on the boss fights though so that’s a good thing. I’m just going to have to see if I can stick it out and actually get a third toon to 80.

That’s it for random musings. Raiding has plateaued for Sin so there really isn’t an update to post in that area. And lately I haven’t been the type to raid with more than one toon. The time constraints is really the killing factor.

Blood Queen Lana’thel is a straightforward fight. You have three debuffs to watch out for, two of which you’ve probably seen before.

The first debuff is called Essence of the Blood Queen, AKA the vampire bite. It usually goes to the second player in her threat table but I’ve seen it go to someone else so don’t quote me on that. The queen will bite someone in the raid and give him or her this debuff. Assuming it goes to you, you will have sixty seconds of pure DPS bliss: damage is increased by 100% and cause no threat for 60 seconds. Of course, it’s still a debuff, so here’s the catch: once that minute is over, you will receive Frenzied Bloodthirst. Your action bar will be replaced by a single button. Find another DPSer, target him or her, then hit the button. This will make you bite that person, dropping Frenzied Bloodthirst and bringing back Essence of the Blood Queen. Your bite target will also have Essence. You and your victims will eventually pass this to the rest of the raid. If you don’t bite someone, you’ll get MCed.

The second debuff is Pact of the Darkfallen. This one draws a red line that connects certain members of the raid, causing damage during its duration. Close the gap to get rid of it. The final debuff is Swarming Shadows. It’s like Jaraxxus’ fire debuff except it’s purple. You can use Cloak of Shadows to remove it even before it drops a trail. Otherwise, you’ll leave a trail of fire while it’s on you so run but try to keep your movement as tight as possible so you don’t end up making a mess in the room.

At some point during the fight she’ll go up in the air. You’ll get feared while she AOEs the raid. There’s little that you can do at this point except to hit Cloak of Shadows and hope you time it right. Once she lands, it’s back to her old cycle, minus the bite.

The gimmick of the fight, DPS-wise anyway, is managing the bite. If it doesn’t go to DPS, or to DPS ASAP, she’ll still be alive by the time everyone gets bitten.

Welcome to the Blood Prince fight. From left to right, we have Prince Keleseth, Valanar and Taldaram. The gimmick of the fight is that only one of them can be DPSed at any given time. When your raid pulls the bosses, the first target will always be Valanar.

Valanar will have Invocation of Blood. What this does is that it marks who is supposed to be the killable target. It also causes one ability to be Empowered. When you start the fight simply DPS the boss. DBM will call out Empowered Shock Vortex when Valanar starts casting it. This is your cue to turn around and run away from him and anyone close to you. It deals damage but also causes a knockback if anyone is nearby. On 10-man this isn’t much of a problem but on 25 it can be. Just stay away from fellow raid members as much as you can during this time. Once the ability is finished run back and continue to DPS.

Invocation will eventually jump to a different Blood Prince so be ready for it. If it goes to Taldaram, here’s what you should do: just DPS. The only thing that’s special about Taldaram is that he casts a huge fireball on a random ranged target. The fireballs takes a little time to form above him before it actually moves, so whoever it’s on has time to get some distance. The farther the fireball goes, the less damage it deals. Normally you wouldn’t have to worry about this since it always targets ranged, but there’s a slight chance it will if there’s some distance between you and the prince (for example, during the transition phase of going from one prince to the next), so just watch out for it. Otherwise, DPS away.

Prince Keleseth is also a tank-and-spank. There are two things that you should never do if he’s the active target: don’t hit the purple orbs. At all. Second, watch your threat. Whoever is tanking him will be busy gathering the said orbs and will rarely be hitting the boss. This means you can out-threat him easily. Throw out a Tricks on that tank to help him out.

There’s one more thing to watch out for throughout the fight: the normal, non-Empowered Shock Vortex. This appears as a swirling sphere of white light that phases in and out while it’s animating, making it difficult to see. When DBM calls out that there’s one near you, you have a few seconds to move out of where you are before it appears. If you happen to be near it, it will knock you back. If you find yourself knocked back for no apparent reason, don’t just run back to your former spot. There’s a good chance that a Shock Vortex spawned there. Recognize it, avoid it.

TL;DR: Watch out for normal and Empowered Shock Vortex. Only one prince can be DPSed at any given time. Don’t touch the purple orbs. Run away from huge fireballs heading your way.

Finally.

I’ve been dreading School of Hard Knocks for about a week now. When I saw the requirements, I knew I was going to be in for a fight not only because they involve PvP but also because they’re difficult to pull off. Returning a flag in WSG? Capping a flag in EotS? Seriously, good luck with that.

Fortunately, and this is likely not what Blizzard intended, most of the players from both sides were cooperative. A gnome in WSG was grabbing then dropping the Horde flag so that we could return it. Alliance players in AV were “defending” the towers so we could “assault” them. This went on until everybody had received the achievement or some idiot would come in and kill the Alliance players helping us. We’d tell them to stop, of course, but sometimes it would be too late.

So there it is. Nearly a year’s work of achievements, all thanks to the accident that was Midsummer.