Class Quests - Sunken Temple

One of my favorite instances is Sunken Temple actually, although it is huge and easy to get lost in if you don't know your way around. Few people also seem to know that each class (except Dk's of course) has a special quest for this instance. Most of the quests are quite alike and most of the quests also have some interesting rewards! All the rewards have gotten an overhaul (although that was some time ago too), so some of them are quite good nowadays. Here I thought I'd make an easy overview of each class' Sunken Temple quest and the rewards from it. Is it worth doing for your class or not (which depends somewhat on your current gear of course, always keep that in mind)? I'll do half the classes today, and the other half tomorrow!

Priest
Starts out with "Cenarion Aid" which you get from Ogtinc. After some prequests you get "Blood of Morphaz" which means you have to kill the dragon Morphaz. Easy enough, he's on the regular route to the last boss anyway. As rewards you get to choose between "Blessed Prayer Beads", "Woestave" and "Circle of Hope".
The Beads is a trinket which give 101 spellpower when used (20 sec dur, 2 min cd), and if you lack a trinket slot these could come in handy. If you're good enough to use it everytime it's off cooldown it has a decent use, which turns out to be slightly more than 15 spellpower overall. Nothing fancy, but if you already have a nice wand and rings, this isn't bad. You get a hit trinket in Hinterlands however which imo is better (Rune of the Guard Captain), because I love hit at low levels (eventhough it gives attackpower). In outlands you'll get a better spellpower trinket too (Vengeance of the Illidari), and at level 50 you're not far from Outlands.
The Woestave is a wand that gives some stamina (3) and spellpower (9). Overall better than the beads, considering how useful a good wand is to a priest. That is if you soloplay alot, if you mainly do instances a wand is less useful.
The Circle of Hope is a ring which gives some shadow resistance (meaningless stat at this level) and 14 crit rating, which at level 50 is more than 1% crit. At level 50 there are already plenty of other good rings out there though (like Golden Ring of Power), which means this isn't that good compared to its level.
Overall I'd probably recommend the wand.

Druid
Unlike the most of the other classes, druids get their Sunken Temple quest from Torwa Pathfinder at the entrance of Un'Goro. After some prequests you get "A Better Ingredient", which means you have to find a quest item from the guardian at the bottom of Sunken Temple. This is a little tricker than most other classes quests, because one doesn't usually do the basement part of Sunken Temple. It's alot of time for not so much reward. The guardian has to be summoned by activating stones in a special way which most puggers just can't be arsed to do. Unless you're very good at convincing people to do boring stuff, you'll probably have to ask a high leveled friend for help.
As rewards you get "Grizzled Pelt", "Forest's Embrace" or "Moonshadow Stave". It's clear that they've tried to do one reward for each spec, feral, boomkin and resto. Unless you're dressed in BoA gear, which has a better staff and chest already, these rewards are actually really great, all of them.
The Grizzled Pelt is awesomely itemized for a feral druid, whether you're tanking or dpsing.
The chest Forest's Embrace is really good for both resto and boomkin druids.
The staff Moonshadow Stave is quite nice too with all that crit (14 rating is slightly more than 1% crit at level 50). If you're horde there is a staff from a quest chain in Stranglethorn (starts with "Saving Yenniku" in Grom'gol) which is nearly as good, called Nimboya's Staff. That means you could have the chest and that staff together which would be the best option.
Overallt I'd say go for the chests.

Hunter
Starts out at Ogtinc with "the Hunter's Charm". After some prequests you get "The Green Drake" in which you need to kill the dragon Morphaz (just as priests).
As reward you'll get to choose between "Hunting Spear", "Devilsaur Eye" or "Devilsaur Tooth".
Hunting Spear is a weapon and as a hunter you'll mainly use the stats. It gives mp5 for some reason I don't understand, and a bunch of stamina (I am assuming this is for survival hunters). Because it is so strangely itemized I wouldn't recommend going with this weapon.
Devilsaur Eye is a trinket that gives 150 attackpower and 20 hit rating when used (20 sec dur, 2 min cd).
Devilsaur Tooth is another trinket which gives 5 agility permanently and increases your pets attack power by 200 when used (20 sec dur, 2 min cd).
Both the trinkets are quite good. As with priest you can get a good trinket from hinterlands which gives hit and attackpower permanently, which makes it better than any of these two trinkets. You'll also get a better trinket in Outlands (Bladefist's Breadth), so you can choose whichever of these trinkets you like more at the moment, you probably won't keep it for long.

Mage
This quests also starts in Azshara, but from Archmage Xylem. He can be found along the northern mountain wall where you'll have to ask one of his disciples to teleport you up to his tower. It starts with "Magic Dust" and after some prequests you'll get "Destroy Morphaz" in which you need to kill the dragon Morphaz (hey, alot of people seem to have some sort of grudge against that poor dragon). As reward you'll get to choose between "Glacial Spike", "Arcane Crystal Pendant" or "Fire Ruby".
Glacial Spike is a dagger that gives a small amount of intellect (4) and an interesting (but not very good) proc equip. Your Frostbolt spells have a 6% chance to replenish 50 mana when cast. This means of course that this dagger would only be good for a frost mage.
Arcane Crystal Pendant is a neck that gives 6 intellect and 16 spellpower.
Fire Ruby is a trinket which restores 1 to 500 mana and gives your next fire spell 100 extra spellpower when used (1 min dur, 3 min cd). This means this trinket would be good mainly for fire mages. It does have a minute duration, but only works for one fire spell, so it isn't that good.
Now even if you happen to be a fire or frost mage I'd still say the neck is the best choice. One always tries to go for permanent stats over the "on use" or "on proc" stats, unless of course the on use and on proc stats simply are so good they're worth it (which is especially true for on proc stats). For trinkets I recommend the same ensemble as I recommended for priests a bit up (Rune of the Guard Captain and Vengeance of the Illidari). If you happen to be a fire mage, or just really like to have an extra pot every third minute, the Fire Ruby is a decent trinket though.

And that's it for this evening folks, I'll get to the other classes tomorrow!

Number Crunching Mongoose

As I wrote about Blade Ward the other day, the turn has come to Mongoose. I've chosen to compare these two specific enchants as they are similar, compared to Blood Draining which really has a whole nother mechanic. Blade Ward and Mongoose provide with a procable stat. Blade Warding gives parry rating and Mongoose gives agility (a third option I sometimes see tanks use is Exceptional Agility which gives 26 agility straight off). I concluded in my post about Blade Ward that the enchant gives about one extra parry per combat minute. Doesn't sound like much, but under the right circumstances it could be quite valuable. Now let's compare that to Mongoose.

So what does Mongoose do?
"Teaches you how to permanently enchant a melee weapon to occasionally increase Agility by 120 and attack speed slightly. Requires a level 35 or higher item."

First of all one has to find out exactly how often "occassionally" is, and then how useful 120 agi would be divided over that time. It doesn't say in the tooltip, but the duration is 15 seconds and the "slight attack speed" is by 2%.

120 agi is 240 armor (which reduces a neglible amount of physical damage, around 0,15% or so). According to wowwiki.com, a paladin needs about 60 agility for 1% dodge, druids 50 and warriors and DKs about 85. That means 120 agi is 2% dodge to a paladin, 2,4% dodge to a druid and 1,4% dodge to a DK/Warrior. It also gives about 2% crit (differs somewhat depending on class).

Now I have collected these data on a paladin, by doing five or six instances (can't recall if I did the last one on my warrior or paladin <.<). The instances were randomly chosen by the lfg-tool, but turned to be good for collecting data. They were Nexus, VH, HoL, HoS and OK (and maybe Gundrak). The only instance which might spoil the data somewhat is HoS, where the Brann event makes you stay in combat but not hit much mobs. I have also let my paladin autohit a dummy for 10 minutes for comparison data. Since paladins only actually have one attack which affects their weapon (Hammer of Justice), I thought this would simulate "real" combat enough. I used a level 80 dummy so that my non-capped hit wouldn't affect the data too much (I have 5,5% hit). I might've been affected by haste buffs while doing the instances, depending on what classes where in my group, but I had no such effect when fighting the dummy. Unlike when collecting the Blade Ward data, I could luckily enough use an addon to collect these data. I used Proculas, which I had to help me keep track on the Blade Ward procs. It does collect data for procs, uptime and ppm as well, but didn't for Blade Ward for some reason (which is why I had to do it manually instead). Therefore these numbers are based on what Proculas have told me, and I hope it isn't bugged or off somehow. Fortunately, the data didn't differ much between instancing and dummy fighting, but was within what you'd expect considering the difference in combat situations.

Instances 1,04 ppm - 22% uptime (40 total procs) 20 sec inner cd
Dummy 1,10ppm - 25% uptime (11 total procs) 20 sec inner cd

From this we can conclude that it seems to have a 20 sec inner cd and little over 1 ppm (slightly more than Blade Ward, but not by much). Proculas calculates it to have about 22-25% uptime. 25% is optimal combat situations (no stop to the attacking while in combat). I'll use that number since it's most true to "real" uptime, but in combat you don't always have the possibility to hit your opponent, so keep this in mind.

So, 120 agi and 2% attackspeed for 25% of the time, how much is that really? Well, overall that would be 30 agility and 0,5% extra attackspeed (60 overall armor and 0,5% overall crit). As we have seen, different tank classes have different gains from agi. This means Mongoose is the most useful to a druid, second most useful to a paladin and thirdmost to a DK/Warrior.
Druid gains: 0,6% dodge
Paladin gains: 0,5% dodge
Warrior/DK: 0,35% dodge

To conclude I'd definitely say that Mongoose is better than Blade Ward to a paladin and druid (well druids can't parry anyway! *chuckle*). For a warrior/dk the choice is between a small, but still decent amount, of dodge (and some other stats) as compared to 1 extra parry per minute (assuming my other data collection was about correct). Not a huge difference... but if I -had- to choose, I'd probably go with Mongoose, out of these two. That also means that Mongoose is definitely better than the third choice, exceptional agility which gives 26 agility.

Addon request

I realize that alot of addons don't exist simply because they're not possible to do. The information or functions they need to work aren't supplied by the game and so on. This is also the reason alot of nice addons have become useless, like the old Healbot (which if you ask me made things a little too easy though). This special addon I have in mind probably falls into one of these two categories.

Alot of people spend alot of time farming stuff in WoW. You basically just run around and check the minimap (or some other kind of map if you use an addon) for that yellow little dot that tells you you've found a vein/herb. Unfortunately this is a lousy way to spend your time playing. You don't actually do anything fun in the game (unless you happen to feel that finding yellow dots is hilarious) and you can't really do anything else either, since you have to watch that damn minimap for yellow dots the whole time. If you wish to read or watch a movie/series while doing this, you have to interrupt it every 4 seconds to check the minimap. Blizzard loves that you waste time like that, semi-playing. You pay just as much for that game time as any other game time of course. Just as with travel times and the like. They have removed alot of these time sink holes (in the old days you had to spend hours farming mats if you raided for example), but farming is still tedious and boring.

Therefore I would totally love it if there was an addon that simply played a little sound whenever a yellow dot appeared on your minimap. A little "bing!" or something, to notify me that there is something to herb/mine. That would make yet another of those boring parts of WoW a little less boring.

So, if you happen to know of an addon that does something like this, please tell me! Or, if you happen to be one of those cool guys who knows how to write addons (assuming this kind of addon would be possible at all, which I don't think), and write it, please tell me too!

Got any other ideas for addons that would be nice? Remember there's a difference between addon and bot though ;P

Fun with engineering

Most professions have some crafts that aren't very useful, but mostly for fun. With engineering this is rather the rule than the exception. Although there are plenty of very useful crafts as engineer, I still feel that most of them are tinkery fun stuff. Blizzard has really succeeded in making you feel like a crazy scientist when you're an engineer!

One thing that is just hilarious to do when you're an engineer is blasting lowbies with Decoys. Ok I realize I'm letting out my evil side here, but I just can't help it. It's really entertaining. I like it so much I'd even find it slightly ok if someone did it to my lowbie. It's an acceptable way to kill someone!

You need three things to make this work, and yes unfortunately, this trick only works for engineers.
1. The Decoy
2. The Trigger
3. The Lowbie

The first two are pretty easy. The decoy is called Explosive Decoy, and is a little bunny jumping around. It explodes when hit. Just placing it near lowbies might actually make them attack it and thus kill themselves, that is if they're stupid. This is of course the best way to use a decoy! Unfortunately, lowbies aren't as stupid as they look. So you've placed the decoy but the lowbie won't hit it? No fear! You can set it off yourself >:) By setting an EMP to your belt and pressing it the Decoy will go off instantly, dealing damage to any hostile target around.

Finding a proper lowbie might be a little more difficult. The Decoy does about 1600 damage, so you'll need someone with less hp than that, usually someone below level 40. Booty Bay, and sometimes Gadgetzan are good places to look.

But wait a sec, you'll probably say. Won't the guards shred me to bits if I start blasting lowbies? No! And that's the best part! Since you're not actually the one doing the damage, the decoy is, the guards couldn't care less! So off you go making BB or Gadgetzan unsafe, if you're lucky (and smart enough) to be an engineer!

Good things to know about Rapture

This will just be a small post about the discipline talent Rapture. It's an awesome talent, and if you know everything there is to know about it, you'll be even better at using it to the max! So I thought I'd mention two good to know things about this talent.

How much mana do I need to gain mana on my Rapture proc?
This is a question which is very good to know the answer of. Let's first check out what Rapture does before the explanation and answer.

"When your Power Word: Shield is completely absorbed or dispelled you are instantly energized with 2.5% of your total mana, and you have a 100% chance to energize your shielded target with 2% total mana, 8 rage, 16 energy or 32 runic power. This effect can only occur once every 12 sec."

The highlighted parts are the ones that you need to think extra carefully about. So getting back to my first question up there, what do I mean by it? Well, since your spell Power Word: Shield has a mana cost based on your base mana, which is fixed, it will always cost the same, no matter how much mana you have. That means that it becomes cheaper and cheaper (will use up less and less of your total mana) the more mana you have. When completely absorbed, it returns 2,5% of your total mana. Total mana is something you can affect, it's a number you can increase. That means that the more mana you have, the more mana you will get in return from Rapture procs.
This in turn means that there is a point where you will get more mana in return than the spell actually cost to cast! You'll gain mana from your Rapture, at least once every 12 seconds. So back to the question; How much mana do I need to gain mana on my Rapture.

To me a Power Word: Shield costs 888 mana. With the disc talent Soul Warding (which every disc priest -must- have, or they're simply not disc priests), you'll get the mana cost on PW:S lowered by 15% to 666 mana (it's a sign >;) ).

So we need 2,5% total mana to be more than 666 mana. Now remember that I suck at maths, but I'll use this formula;

666 / 2,5 = 266,4
266,4 * 100 = 26640

So with 26.640 mana you'll go even steven on casting a PW:S if your Rapture procs. Any amount above this will result in a gain. And if your shield costs another amount of mana than my 666, simply use the calculation above to get your numbers. So something like;

Your shields mana cost / 2,5 = Y
Y * 100 = Your mana needed to go even

Is there some way to fool the Rapture proc?
Yes, in fact there is, I read about it over at EJ so kudos to them. Rapture was quite bugged before. Although it has always said to proc only once every 12 seconds, I know it took them quite a while to get this working. Now it actually seems they have (boo), but there is still a way to get around this. If you have alot of Raptures proc exactly at the same time, you'll get all the procs at once (and not just one like it should)! To make this happen you must A: Make alot of shields be completely consumed at once and B: Make sure Rapture isn't on its 12 second cooldown already.
In raids there are often fights with some sort of big aoe blast mechanic. Defile on LK is one example. That means you'll be able to anticipate when the entire raid will take a big blast, and exactly how much damage it will do. By shielding everyone in the raid before this blast, you can have all the shields be absorbed at once and gain all the procs at once. There are some things you need to think about here though.
First if all, if you have too much spellpower (aww, aint it a hassle), your shields might not be absorbed by the damage! And thus you won't get any procs. The only way to get around this is to downrank your PW:S to a rank more suitable to the amount of damage the skill does. So if Defile does say 3000 damage to everyone in the raid, try to use a shield as close to this number as possible (but slightly under it of course).
Secondly, to avoid having your Rapture proc on cooldown, you must avoid shielding those that take continous damage. Mostly the tanks, and anyone else being hit while your setting up your shield armada for the big bang.

Now this might sound like alot of buck for very little bang, and I agree that it might not be worth doing this unless you have mana issues. On fights like LK mana might (and probably will) be a problem (and priests aren't known to be able to waste mana anyway), so knowing about this method is good in any case. To me, having about 35000 mana in a 10man raid setting, this would turn out to be nearly 8000 mana optimally (shielding everyone but the main tank). And even if I only could get something lame like three shields to proc simultaneously, it would be more than 2500 mana. Definitely not cat shit.

Got any more questions or tips about these kind of things? Let's hear em!