2.4 Warlock Nerf

Warlocks are finally getting some attention, of the negative variety, in the 2.4 patch. Life Tap, a great lock skill that converts life to mana, is now doing this conversion as a percentage of your total instead of a point-for-point conversion as it is today. On the surface that doesn't seem so bad. That's probably how it should've always worked. Warlocks are casters after all. So why the change? Well, I haven't been following this closely, but I suspect it's because we see many (and with PVP epics flowing so freely I really do mean many) warlocks running around in 12k-13k life. I saw one buffed in AV a couple of weekens ago around 15k life. Yes, that's a cloth wearer sporting that much stamina. And this isn't tons of +stamina greeny gear. This is an epic'd out lock with over 1200 spell damage.

So why the nerf? Have you seen a warlock drain tank Van in AV? I have. On three separate occassions. One in particular was really scary. The guy just dotted him up, including siphon, and spammed drain life. You'd expect him to run out of mana, but his mana pool was around 9k with his 14k+ life. That's insane. But, even that has it's limits. But with Life Tap the way it is now and massive life pools like some of these locks have, they can literally go forever. They don't have massive burst damage in most cases, but their survivability is over the top. I have a 61 lock, and I have fought 4-6 mobs at one time without using fear. That seems too strong.

The problem I have with the nerf is that many of these locks have busted their butt to get this massive life pool to allow this. With the change they are making, currently Rank 3 does a 20% life to 20% mana conversion. That amazing warlock I saw drain tanking Van would convert 2800 life into 1800 mana. That's not bad, but it's not nearly as good of an exchange as it is today. So this makes it feel like a pretty harsh punishment to locks that have worked hard on their gear as they would be much better off focusing on much larger mana pools than life pools.

Kara Epics... Who is getting the bling?

Since I have time to kill, and I'm dpsing this time like there is no tomorrow - and really, is there a tomorrow? It's taking a freaking long time to get here if there is, but I digress, I decided we should tally up the loot from Kara. Who is getting stronger and who is feeling left out:

Somewhat to be expected, Enduron is the big winner so far in "upgrades." I put upgrades in quotes because some of these items, like the boots Comehither got, are more for potential use than actual use. But that's okay - I'd rather see that than unnecessary d/e.

Enduron: 5
Valcarrie: 4
Comehither: 3
Allbetter: 2
Deaderndead: 2
Left: 2
Temtress: 2
Veradas: 2
Alocar: 1
Siluzza: 1

d/e: 7
bank: 1

I was surprised to see Comehither with three takeaways, but I think only 1 was a true upgrade. I was equally stunned to see Siluzza only have 1. We just aren't seeing much plate drop in there.

Add-Ons

Inspired by my buddy and guild-mate Comehither, I decided to comment on a few add-ons that I find really useful.

XPerl. So, in talking with a co-worker that is a bit more raid-savvy than myself, I thought I was using XPerl until he mentioned some features I didn't have. Turns out I was running Perl Classic, which is also quite good, but XPerl is the shiznit. It replaces your unit frames and gives you a ton of options to get more information in less space than anything else I've seen. It takes a bit to customize, but it's worth the investment. It also made Quartz obsolete, which is tough to do.

Grid. If you heal, dispel or do anything in a raid that involves targeting outside your group, then this add-on is worth a look. As a main healer in a 10-man, this is my source of who has aggro, who needs heals, and who needs dispels. Couple this with Clique (see below), and you have a powerful tool.

Clique. Best configuration window of any add-on I've ever seen. It plugs into your spell book. How smart is that? It allows you to bind hot keys to pretty much any screen element you have, including Grid and XPerl frames. When shackling one of the extra mobs for Moroes, just set the mob as my focus and use shift-right click to re-shackle without taking my target from the tank.

RatingsBuster. If this is the first time you are hearing about this add-on, then shame on you. Never ask anyone "which piece of gear should I use?" when compare items. Let RatingsBuster show you the benefits of each in a side-by-side fashion to know what you gain/lose from the new item.

Bongos. Remove the built-in button bars and bring out the highly customizable Bongos bars. For my shammy, I've got all the totems in a small grid on the right. Nifty. For most of my toons, I keep a bar just for miscellaneous skills that I wouldn't use frequently in combat, such as the Skettis bombs, Booterang, Tempest Keep potions, etc. Another staple in my add-on library.

Lightheaded/Double-wide/TomTom. This trio is a must for those still leveling, and as an alt-aholic, I'm always leveling someone. Integrate quest info with Wowhead in a single wide window with clickable coordinates? Shut up!

nQuestLog. New one I'm trying and liking. Target a mob needed for a quest, it tells you the quest. Hover an item needed for a quest, it tells you what quest. I believe it only works on quests you have, so it doesn't have a massive database of quest info. That's good in my opinion as it would be a resource hog if it did. So far, it's a keeper.

TitanPanel. I still can't shake this one. I've had it for nearly 2 years now. I only used the money, bags, ammo, xp rate, and clock features. But it still provides all of that in a nicer format than anything else I've found.

TotemTimers. This add-on should be the king of shaman add-ons. I'm stubborn so I only get partial benefit from it. It provides an intuitive bar with your different elements and the totems you can drop from them, as well as shields and weapon buffs. You can do everything from this bar. So why don't I? I'm not sure. The delay in drop down on the totem bars bugs me. Having to get on the right element and then move down leaves room for me to goof and lose the drop down. I just use the Bongos bars I've setup for my totems instead. But I still use this guy to keep track of time remaining on my totems. If I had that another way, I would take it, but I haven't found another I like as well as this one.

Omen. If you ever are in a group, get this. No, shut up! Go get it. It helps measure your threat within the party on the current target.

Recount. Probably the worst add-on ever. Huh? You've got it/seen it? You like it? No, it's the debil! Mama said... This thing keeps great stats on dps/healing/whatever your party does. The down side is that you start using this as a measure of who is good and who isn't. Damage isn't everything.. but it sure gets to the loot faster. Used right, this a great tool. Used wrong, and it can cause problems. Don't ask how I'm using it... the vote is still out.

That's my initial list. As I think of others to add, I'll update.

A Month of Kara

It's been 4 weeks since we first made a stop in Kara. In that time we went from Attumen and Moroes to doing Attumen - Maiden in under 2 hours. Still slow by many people's standards, but we consistently 1-shot these now, even when things go badly. We have hopes of paying Curator a visit this week, but we'll see if schedules cooperate.

Our latest splash yielded a productive night yielding 4 upgrades:

Moroes:
Boots of Valiance - Valcariie
Emerald Ripper - d/e

Attumen:
Vambraces of Courage - Veradas
Spectral Band of Innervation - Enduron

Maiden:
Gloves of Centering - d/e
Bands of Nefarious Deeds - Enduron

Maiden and Oz

FPO continues to progress through Kara at a pretty good rate, all things considered. Last week we dropped all the bosses up to and including Opera.

Maiden stats and loot:
Boots of Foretelling - gratz Comehither
Gloves of Centering - sharded

Opera (Oz) stats and loot:
Blue Diamond Witchwand - gratz Allbetter (me)
Beastmaw Pauldrons - gratz Temtress

Edit: screenshot to remember the moment...

Kara

We assaulted Kara again last night. We single shot Attumen and Moroes before our group fell apart. Attumen was fairly smooth even with just 9 to do him. But Moroes felt very sloppy. Before I get into the analysis on that, here is the loot and WoW Web Stats for Attumen and Moroes.

Attumen:
Whirlwind Bracers - sharded; should have bee a nice upgrade for our pally but she already pulled Bands of Indwelling; shame she took the cloth. The mail wrists were a better fit with MP5 instead of spirit. Oh well, she still should have taken it, but I was afk when the loot was decided.
Spectral Band of Innervation - Comehither (1st Kara epic - gratz!)

Moroes:
Emerald Ripper - gratz Left
Shadow-Cloak of Dalaran - gratz Deaderndead

Trash:
Grasp of the Dead - gratz to Comehither... should he decide to try frost out

Kara

We made another stab at Kara tonight. Do to scheduling issues, this was our first shot in a while. We got Attumen and Moroes down in 1 shot. We had a very clean run.

The drops:
Gauntlets of Renewed Hope - sharded since pally already had these
Bracers of the White Stag - shareded since we have no boomkins

Signet of Unshakable Faith - priest upgrade!!! Yay me! First Kara upgrade
Belt of Gale Force - pally healer... Yay 4th Kara upgrade

So now our mage represents the only person not to get an upgrade in Kara.

Here are the stats of the run.

Kara Week 2

We went in for our 2nd Kara run after the reset on Tuesday. We've had remarkable attendance for our guild, and we've made great progress. On Tuesday night, we took down Attumen (2 attempts) and Moroes (2 attempts). Then on Wednesday night, we took down Maiden on our first try after repeated wipes last week. Amazing what a difference a week makes. Also, we were gifted this week with some amazing trash mob drops.

Lewtz:
Edgewalker Longboots - Left
Crimson Girdle of the Indomitable - Veradas
Gauntlets of Renewed Hope - Valcarrie
Inferno Waist Cord - Enduron
Vambraces of Courage - Siluzza
Ritssyn's Lost Pendant - Deaderndead
The Ancient Scepter of Sue-Min - Banked
Bands of Indwelling - Valcarrie
Gloves of Centering - sharded

WoW Web Stats:
Attumen (Failed)
Attumen (Win)
Moroes (Failed)
Moroes (Win)
Maiden (Win)