by Allison Robert
Lady Deathwhisper
General strategy: Wowwiki has a pretty decent one, as does TankSpot. Numerous comments both there and elsewhere have noted the fight’s resemblance to M’uru, which promises to be a jolly old time on heroic.
Apart from that:
Step one: Bind all keys to Remove Curse.
Step two: Roll face from left to right across the keyboard at a speed not exceeding 5 mm per second.
Step three: Mark your calendar for the 6th week in a row that she has failed to drop Ring of Maddening Whispers.
Step four: Wait while a squabble over some football team breaks out during loot distribution, with the raid leader ransoming gear until someone is forced to apologize for an insult made regarding the parentage of the quarterback.
Step five: Get on the elevator and ride up.
Step six: Get back on the elevator and ride down and resurrect whatever DPS fell off.
This accounts for most of the truly important features of the Deathwhisper encounter, but as always, there are some compelling minutiae:
Placement: You should stand in the middle of the room, or at least somewhere within decurse range of everyone in the raid (tanks are the most likely to duck in and out of range while grabbing adds).
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by Allison Robert
1. You can queue for dungeons as anything, but the process is a lot faster if you do so as a tank or healer.
If you’re geared to do whatever you like and simply want to enjoy LFG for its own sake, you’ll be fine queuing as anything. However, if your priority is amassing a huge pile of badges to get yourself equipped in full Tier 9 for your preferred spec/s, the most expedient means of doing this is to go as a tank or healer.
Of these, the barrier to entry for a tank is considerably higher, and the group much more likely to be a punishing experience if your fellow players outgear you. Of the two “I can’t even finish swigging my Pepsi before the queue pops” roles, it’s easiest to start off healing, not least because you don’t have any loot competition for a Need roll on leather +spellpower gear unless there’s another druid in the group.
Admittedly, the barrier to entry for a DPS player is lower than that of a healer, but on my battlegroup I see 3-second waits as a tank (no joke), 5 to 7-second waits as a healer (score!), and 4 to 17-minute waits as a DPS (consolation; you can finish your Pepsi).
2. Only queue as a tank or healer if you can tank or heal.
People have already noticed a rash of hybrid players popping into groups through the tank or healer option while not actually being specced or geared to do either. Don’t lie about your toon’s actual capabilities — despite the queue times, only go as DPS if that’s what you’re comfortable doing. Otherwise, you get situations like the one I had last night after wiping on a Drak’tharon Keep trash pull and then finally inspecting the tank:
Me: Um, I’m sorry to ask, but are you Prot full-time?
Paladin “tank”: No.
Me (eyeing his Mark of the War Prisoner and unenchanted, ungemmed “tanking gear”): I don’t think you’re defense-capped in your current gear.
Paladin: (silence)
Me: I’m pretty sure you need 535 +defense to tank this place.
Paladin: F**k no I don’t.
Me: (discovers she is out of schnapps)
Paladin: Hey, can we do Better Off Dred?
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by Allison Robert
If you’re not familiar with basic Freya strategy, try here. Multiple commenters have noted that the fight bears a passing resemblance to Sartharion, but I always felt like Solarian was an equally good, if not better, comparison. If you can survive her annoying adds, the fight turns into a tank and spank. If you can’t survive her adds…well, the view from the Ulduar graveyard is really quite lovely.
As an aside, the fight also looks and feels more frenetic than it actually is. Watch any Freya videos closely, and you’ll notice that a clean kill is basically controlled chaos.
BEARS: To be frank, this isn’t really a difficult tanking fight. If you’re tanking Freya, all you’ll be doing is keeping her occupied until the raid finishes the six waves of adds, so just make sure you’re not outranging your healers and that you keep an eye on healthy mushroom spawns once an Ancient Conservator is up. Threat is not a concern on Freya; feel free to use your a high mitigation set to reduce healing load.
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by Allison Robert @ wowinsider
As a number of people have observed, it’s tougher to get +hit-capped pre-raid in leather as opposed to cloth, so you’re going to find an awful lot of cloth on the list. I realize this represents a new and exciting development in the history of moonkin itemization. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. That’s French for “We’re screwed.”
Best overall: If there’s one piece that’s just better than anything else you can get, I’ll have it listed here. Most of these will cost you Emblems of Heroism or a truckload of gold, however.
Best drop/s: Self-explanatory, the best (typically heroic) 5-man drops you can get.
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by Allison Robert @ wowinsider
As stated on our previous guides, this is how I’m organizing gear:
Best overall: If there’s one piece that’s just better than anything else you can get, I’ll have it listed here. Most of these will cost you Emblems of Heroism, a truckload of gold, or a hideous amount of honor, however.
Best drop/s: Self-explanatory, the best (typically heroic) 5-man drops you can get.
Best quest piece: Also self-explanatory, but fair warning — if you’re looking to get most of your pieces outside of 5-mans, many of the quests rewarding the best pieces are linked to dungeons or group quests.
Best faction piece: If a quartermaster offers a usable piece, it’ll be here. You’ll get convenience at the cost of having to deal with pieces that are usually a dog’s breakfast of stats, though.
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by ALLISON ROBERT
A quick word about the quartermasters; you won’t have early access to the Ebon Blade or Sons of Hodir quartermasters for the purpose of browsing the merchandise. The Sons will be hostile to you until after you’ve done a long (but very entertaining) quest chain to get them to neutral, and the Ebon Blade quartermaster will only be “phased” into existence after you complete a quest chain that gives the Knights control of the Shadow Vault. The Argent Crusade quartermaster is available if you can get to their base camp in Icecrown, but don’t bother rushing; the earliest you can use any of the gear they offer is level 78.
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by ALLISON ROBERT
Like most of you, I’m still running a lot of dungeons and getting acquainted with the array of drops available on both normal and heroic mode, and I’m not anywhere near as familiar with the Northrend 5-man drops as I am with Outland’s after tanking them all eleventy-billion times. For the moment, my ability to compare all of the reputation gear available from Wrath factions with potential dungeon drops is fairly small and mostly confined to feral equipment, so I apologize. What I cansay is that I’ve noticed a fairly clear trend favoring Balance if you’re planning on getting a lot of your gear at 80 from faction reputations (although if you go that route there’s a sizable pitfall in the form of a serious lack of +hit on most pieces). Feral is a little more hit-or-miss. Restoration seems to have the hardest time getting its best pre-raid or heroic pieces from rep grinds, and I’m not going to lie; get used to most of your best pieces being cloth.
With what are essentially four different specs to cover for all the new factions available in Wrath, this got a bit long. So this week we’ll discuss the rep grinds that become accessible a little earlier in the trek to 80 — namely, the Tuskarr, the Alliance Vanguard/Horde Expedition, Wyrmrest Accord, Kirin Tor, and Oracles/Frenzyheart. Next week we’ll cover the Knights of the Ebon Blade, the Argent Crusade, and Sons of Hodir, as you’re not likely to see these guys as early as you’ll see the others. Indeed, before a quest line that phases the lady into existence, you won’t see the Knights of the Ebon Blade quartermaster at all.
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Ah, the glyph section. This is where things start to get a little hairy, because the bulk of arguing about the right balance DPS rotation hinges a lot on the glyphs you’ve got equipped and the type of fight you’re doing. But first, some of what I think are going to be less important glyphs in the great scheme of things:
- Glyph of Entangling Roots: Great for solo work and some dungeon work (if a mob can be safely rooted somewhere without attracting attention from a patrol).
- Glyph of Hurricane: Eh. Not really all that impressive, and I’m kind of stumped as to where or even how this will be put to good use outside of battlegrounds (most obviously Alterac Valley) while defending against a rush.
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New talents available in the Balance tree:
- Genesis: This will affect three Balance spells (Insect Swarm, Moonfire, and Starfall), but it’s another prime candidate for a restokin, as most of a Restoration Druid’s healing power still lies in HoT’s. The vast majority of your firepower as a moonkin is still going to come from a rotation making heavy use of the direct-damage Starfire or Wrath. A flat 5% increase to the damage of Insect Swarm and Moonkin isn’t bad, with that said, Insect Swarm has typically been phased out of a high-DPS rotation as gear improves (the DPS loss from a global cooldown devoted to that rather than Starfire just isn’t worth it, unless your tank really needs the extra avoidance), and 5% isn’t really enough to devote 5 talent points to supplemental damage spells in an already-bloated tree. You will be getting 5/5 Starlight Wrath and that takes care of your first tier.
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The good news is that the balance spec is more viable than it’s ever been, with a better raid buff, better individual DPS, and significantly more group utility. Moonkin have literally never been better than they are right now, and that’s about the only thing that everyone can seem to agree on. The bad news is that Blizzard caught thatamazing Typhoon bug that basically allowed you to solo Tier 7 bosses and walk home with all the loot. C’est la vie.
Gray Matter also an excellent post here about stats you’ll want at 80 so you can plan ahead.
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