A Quick Look at the Bangle of Endless Blessings

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I just wanted to let it be known that my Priest acquired the Bangle of Endless Blessings from Botanica. My trinkets will now be anchored with a Bangle and an Earring of Soulful Meditation.

With both trinkets activated, my MP5 rockets to a little over 1200 MP5 (without raid buffs).

Why is it awesome?

In short, the Bangle scales with your gear. As you accumulate more Spirit and Mana Regen on your armor, the proc effect of the Bangle becomes that much better.

Before

735 MP5 while not casting
279 MP5 while casting

After

799 MP5 while not casting
393 MP5 while casting

No raid buffs were involved here.

Look, I’m not going to try to lie to you. I’m not the most mathematically inclined blogger in existence. But those numbers look pretty ridiculous to me and they’re only going to get better. Take a real hard look especially at the MP5 while casting. That’s over a 100 point increase in that time frame. Granted, it’s not a constant. It’s also not an on use effect, but it’s a proc. I haven’t tested it extensively myself, but I’ve been told from multiple sources that it does have an internal 45 second cooldown timer within.

The process

Okay, let’s see if I can pull this off here without losing too many people. The proc effect reads as:

Chance to allow 15% of mana regen to continue while casting for 15 seconds

We know my mana regen is 735. We also know that there are 3 five second windows (if we want to convert the numbers into something MP5 friendly). Lets figure out the total mana return we get from this:

735 x 0.15 x 3

How did I derive this? I get 735 mana every 5 seconds when I’m not casting. I figure out what 15% of that number is. Lastly I multiply that number by 3 to figure out the total return of mana I would get when the trinket procs.

Answer: 331 mana returned (I rounded up)

Next, let’s figure out what 331 means in terms of MP5.

We know that 60 divided by 5 is 12. This means there are 12 five second windows in a minute.

Divide 331 by 12 to figure out what the actual MP5 return is.

Answer: 28 MP5

The bangle for me, when I’m not raid buffed, grants me 28 MP5 assuming once a minute procs.

Compared to other trinkets

Tome of Diabolic Remedy: 18 MP5
Vial of the Sunwell: 15 MP5

The two epic trinkets here are constants. Like I said earlier, the Bangle’s mana return will scale as your mana regeneration increases throughout your raiding career. It might suck at first if you’re an entry level Priest getting started in Karazhan. But over time, it’s use becomes that much better.

By the way, if I make an error on my math, logic, or calculation at some point, don’t worry about it.

Either Auz or Wyn will catch it and fix it for me.

Two Tanking Kalecgos

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kalecgos

The setting

It was going to be a boring Monday evening. I caught up with all the blogs and other good reads that I’ve missed during my short break isolated from the hive mind that is the Internet. I figured I’d finish up the Heroes 5 expansion Tribes of the East which I’ve been working on over the weekend.

My good friend Dave, the misguided Enhancement and Restoration Shaman that he is, pops into my vent channel and says to me in a voice that would have made any car salesman proud, “Hey Matt! Boy do I have a proposal for you!”

“No Dave,” I replied, “I’m not taking over your Gruul’s instance with those scrubs you wiped endlessly on.”

“Ah, but I’m talking about raiding Sunwell. We could use a few healers to help us out. Do you have any plans for the evening?”

I need to build up my tolerance. I can handle telemarketers and solicitors just fine. But a shot at Sunwell trash? My knees went weak at the thought of wiping in a raid instance that I’ve never done yet.

Odd, yes. I’m sure you’re used to it by now.

The setup

  • 2 Tanks
  • 8 Healers
  • 15 DPS

The strategy calls for 3 tanks. The Guild I did it with (thanks Artifice!) performed with only 2 tanks. I don’t want to explain the fight in too much detail. Suffice it to say, it’s a bit on the complicated side. But after a few wipes and attempts, you get a feel for it quite easily. Think of the encounter as Romulo and Julianne on Ecstasy. There’s an inner demon that Kalecgos is working on and he needs help. Tanks are needed for the big dragon himself in the real world and on the inner demon in Kalecgos’ inner brain. Every once in a while, someone in the raid gets portal’d into his head and a portal appears at random around the area. The raid is divided into four groups. When a player gets portal’d in, his group has to follow him in there and help him out and burn the inner demon.

Like R & J, both the dragon and the demon need to be burned down together as close as possible. Once either of them hit 10%, they both enrage. As their health drops, their enrage gets that much stronger.

Thankfully, both the demon and the dragon are tauntable. Our tanks alternated as much as possible inside and outside to hold aggro on both bosses. The inside guy needs to be distracted as much as possible since he will be tanked by the human Kalecgos. If he dies, it’s game over.

My role as a CoH Priest is an easy one: Maintain raid health as best as I can. The four groups our raid was divided into had two healers each. One of them was on the tank, the other was on the group itself.

Things you want to hear over vent

Here’s a few key phrases that I heard as we were going through the encounter:

  1. *tank name* taunting down low – A tank signaling that he’s in position inside and ready to open up on the demon.
  2. *tank name* taunting high – A tank signaling that he’s got aggro on Kalecgos and any healers on the surface need to keep an eye on him.
  3. Name, portal, group number – Indicates who has been portaled and what group number should be going in.
  4. Portal, location – Says where the portal is so that the group that needs to go in knows where to run to.
  5. Decurse – Person’s been cursed and needs it removed after a few ticks. The curse itself doesn’t actually fall off. It resets to 0 and jumps to another player.

Last points

If you’re having some problems, consider packing a Violet Badge. The boss does apply a random AoE debuff. Remember that this debuff is binary. Either you resist it or you don’t. There is no partial. I left mine in the bank but several DPS players had theirs equipped and I think it had a positive effect on healing.

We killed Kalecgos after 8 or so attempts. We were very close each time averaging around 9% or less before the raid buckled.

Two Bracers of the Forgotten Conqueror
One Bracer of the Forgotten Vanquisher
One Legplates of the Holy Juggernaut

Remember when you’re doing the daily bombing run on the island? Ever wondered who would win the fight between Brut and that blue guy in the sky?

Note: The following images may not be for the faint hearted.

brut-2

13 Things Every WoW Player Should Know How to Do

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Take and understand criticism – Accept the fact that there will always be players better than you. When you meet such a person, listen to what they are saying as objectively as possible. Be sound with your reasoning and logic. Sit from their perspective and figure out what reason they would have to criticize your performance. I rarely have problems with the people in my Guild, but if their WoW-playing is not up to par, the beast does get unleashed.

Recognize someone who is lying in game – There are many tools that we have at our disposal that helps paint a clear picture on the events leading to a wipe. The evidence does not lie. We know who breaks what sheep with what ability. We know who’s not healing certain players at certain times. We know people who aren’t respecting the capabilities of threat meters. The flip side of this, is, of course, to know better than to lie about something yourself.

Properly apply to a guild – There’s a certain art to applying for Guilds. They have their own methods and regulations that need to be respected in order to be properly considered. If there’s a template, be sure to follow that template. If you need to speak with a specific individual, make sure you do that, too.

Augment their gear – Priests don’t apply Agility enchants. Warriors don’t add +Spellpower enchants. Casters don’t apply Clefthoof patches. Know what stats are important for the role that you intend to fulfill.

Submit a ticket – There will be times in the game where you’ve accidentally sharded an important piece of gear or face a situation in which other players are powerless to help you. What you need to be able to do is submit a proper GM ticket. Ensure that your ticket has as much information as possible. Include important points like the approximate time of the incident, the names of all parties involved, what you perceived to have happened, etc. Make sure if there is a problem that you contact them fast.

Earn gold – There are multiple ways to earn gold. Dailies are now the most common, the next highest would be trade-related items being placed on the Auction House, and finally selling services via the Trade Channel. Know how to do some farming and place your goods for sale. Recognize good times to buy and good times to sell (Hint: When are most raiding guilds raiding? When do Arena points hit?)

Advertise in trade – Know how to properly advertise and how to ask for services. I commonly see people in trade chat ask for things very vaguely. It’s much more effective to add more detail. Specify what enchant you’re looking for so you can save time – “LF enchanter for Mongoose. Have Mats. Will Tip” will get a much better response than “LF High Lvl enchanter.”

Use the auction house – Understand how to utilize the auction house in such a way where you can recognize deals when you see them. When placing items for sale in the auction house, do not drastically undercut other players selling the same items. Understand the approximate value of what items are worth via supply and demand principles. There are a couple of mods out there that can help you with this – Auctioneer, BtmScanner, or Beancounter all have arbitrage features. Know how to work your server’s economy to your advantage.

Use the map and locations – Lots of navigation and travelling must be done in World of Warcraft for players to advance through the game. Understanding how to read the map properly and recognize coordinates is a huge thing that some players seem to have trouble doing. Know your compass directions. Try to have a general idea of how long it takes for you to travel to certain parts of the map.

Research and look up information – Other players are not walking libraries. Learn how to search up items, quests, and NPCs on the different search engine sites like Thottbot, WoW DB, and WoWhead. Being able to do this means you’re at least independent and sufficient enough to not have to rely on other people so constantly.

Use the /ignore function – Don’t waste time commenting in trade that someone is spamming, and don’t waste time talking to immature players who harass you for everything from run throughs to gold. Blizzard gave you the ability to never have to talk to these people again – know how to use it.

Control Aggro – If you constantly outthreat the tank and you fail to recognize this, you will pull aggro & die. Learn how to read addons like Omen and configure it in such a way that is of maximum benefit.

PvP – While this skill is not so common on PvE servers, it is nevertheless something to learn when you decide to dabble in a bit of PvP action. Learn what spells to use to escape, survive longer, and kill your opponents. Obviously the priorities here will vary by class. I know as a Priest I like to hold onto my Psychic Scream as long as possible. The point is that even if you don’t ever want to run through a Battle Ground or form an Arena team, you have to have some basic knowledge of how to defend yourself, because even on a PvE server, it will come up eventually.

Macros – The use of macros can help simplify actions in the game. They allow you to string numerous actions into a simple click or keystroke. If you’d like a quick primer on the use of macros, I strongly suggest checking out the introductory guide at Priestly Endeavors.

Matt vs Monique: Confessions from a Current ‘Core Raider

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A few days ago, Monique of Girls Don’t Game wrote a great piece detailing her illustrious history and experience in Death and Taxes. While there’s no way I’d be able to match up to her story, I do feel that I can share with you a few key points in my WoW career that shaped my path in a way that won’t come to an end like hers.

Casual times, hardcore philosophies

As a student that wants to succeed in school, I knew that I had to find myself a guild that raided often enough to get my money’s worth but didn’t raid enough so that I wouldn’t get left behind. A lot of guilds rate their ‘coreness’ by the amount of time they invest in raiding.

I didn’t want a Guild that would go from 6 PM – 12 AM. There’s no way I can sustain those kinds of hours. I wanted a Guild that had reasonable raid hours. I wanted one that wasn’t going to do more than 15 hours a week, tops.

At the same time, I wanted an organization didn’t slack off, that didn’t take a casual outlook on progression, and wanted to excel. I found such a Guild in Carnage. They share the same mindset. We all strive to be the best that we can possibly be.

If it weren’t for the fact that we raid such limited hours on a weekly basis, I have no doubt that we would be in Sunwell right now.

Lesson: The game can be addicting but only if you allow it. I was able to set limits on myself.

Blizzards Intervention

Monique’s story about the world dragons are something to be remembered. They could spawn at any time and players had to be ready to go at a moment’s notice. I’ve never been able to kill one. I’ve tried them several times but the group I was with at the time was never good enough. My group had to bow out to other Guilds that were capable of doing them. They respectfully gave us a few attempts. Quite courteous.

Blizzard seemed to say enough was enough. World bosses don’t appear to be a priority for them anymore since there are only two in the expansion: Doomwalker and Kazzak. I suspect we might not see any in Wrath at all.

Lesson: They smartened up here. It’s as if they don’t want players to overextend themselves too much and drop what they’re doing to go after these world bosses.

Monique’s story is an extreme one. I know if I tried and let myself go, I could easily turn into a player who sleeps when the world wakes up. I used to do that before during the summer months just participating in epic DoTA games. Sometimes I yearn to just go and do it. With 3 high level and well equipped healers, I’d have no problem getting into a progression Guild (especially with overpowered Resto Shamans in high demand). But I also recognize that doing so would conflict with my goals in the real world and it is not something I’m prepared to sacrifice just yet.

I love raiding! I love the thrill of killing bosses! It’s who I am and what I want to do. I may not be as hardcore as Monique once was, but I don’t fit in the average WoW player demographic. Because like Monique, I’m constantly pushing myself and constantly doing everything I can to become better within reason.