Maces, Mongoose, and Mounts

I dinged 77 last night which of course means Cold Weather Flying finally. What a relief it is to be back on an epic flyer zooming around the continent. It also means that when flying out of Dalaran I don't have to take the long way around on the flight path--I can hop on my mount and directly head off in the right direction.

We also did The Champion of Anguish and I snagged myself a Crimson Cranium Crusher. Going from the sleekness of Vanir's to this honking mass of stone and steel is going to take some adjusting (mentally). Replacing my first epic was a bittersweet moment. It clearly out-powers, out-dpses, and out does Vanir's Right Fist of Brutality. I was sad to see the badge weapon that I worked so hard for, but was comforted by the fact that I had it the day that 2.4 went live and definitely got my money's worth. Of course this also meant that I had to level my mace skill from 92 to 385! I did manage to hit 382 by the end of the night. Those last few points are always the hardest (axes are next).

The real question though is Mongoose. It is still viable at level 80 or do the procs scale back like the did with Crusader from 60 to 70? I couldn't find anything on mmo-champion, wowhead, or Elitist Jerks that said the Agi and Hit boosts from Mongoose were lower or that the procs were less. Since I couldn't find anything contradictory I figured I'd have to test it myself. One of our warriors swore that the PPM was significantly reduced so I downloaded Procmeter and set it to look for Lightning Speed. Through the rest of the night in Grizzly Hills I got a consistent 6.5% chance to proc. I'll keep an eye on this as I continue to level and see if the proc rate goes down. Unfortuantely what I did not check was whether or not the Agi buff remained at 120 or if that is scaling downwards. I'll check that today and post findings in the comments.

EDIT 1:26 PM: CONFIRMED Mongoose still grants 120 Agi per proc above level 70. Mongoose is fully viable in WotLK.

Two Levels, Lava Lash, and Soloing Elites

I hit 72 last night and decided to take a look at my stats. I run Recount and did not reset it since hitting the shores of Northrend. Here are the results:


If you can't see the image:
39.1% - Swing
14.1% - WindFury
10.4% - Earth Shock
9.6% - Stormstrike
9.1% - Flametongue
7.3% - Lightning bolt
6.2% - Lava Lash
4.0% - Chain Lightning

Two things jump out at me right away. First, white damage output as a percent of overall damage hasn't changed since BC, it's still around 40%.

Second, Lava Lash even with the LL Glyph is weak. And I mean like Milhouse vs. Nelson weak. Wimpy. Lame. I'm really disappointed. I was hoping for a great showing from Lava Lash since I'm using the glyph and I moved it up in my rotation. Looks like LL is getting a demotion. I'll probably keep the glyph for now. Maybe if I go Static Shock at some point I'll swap it out for the LB glyph.

I'm loving leveling. I'm soloing 2 and 3 person quests, soloing 72 elites, and having a great time with the new content (and listening to the new music, too).

If you're not soloing elites or struggling with the 2-3 person quests here's what you do:

1. Make sure your health & mana is topped off and wait for your CD's come back up on Shammy Rage, Feral Spirit, and Heroism/Bloodlust.
2. Set up shop, i.e., get your totems down in a safe spot. I'm using WF, SoE, Mana Spring, and FT totems.
3. Pull with a LB and let the mob come to you where you can safely solo it without patrols.
4. Pop Heroism and Feral Spirit as soon as the elite is in range. The dogs will keep you healed as they do damage and will aliviate the need to continuosly heal yourself.
   
5. Save your MW procs for HWs. Don't worry about the instant LB's and don't bother with Lesser Healing Wave, go for the biggie and use it at 50% health or less. In this case use MW4 or MW5, don't worry about optimizing dps as you're soloing an elite, worry about staying alive!
6. If the wolves die before the mob is dead then pop Shammy Rage. Save that until the very end for the damage reduction.
7. Keep a health pot handy for close calls
   

Following those steps has kept me alive soloing elites. In fact, I actually had to kill Abdul the Insane not once, but twice. I must have left my totems up on the ship because as I was down below deck looting the thing I heard him yell some nonsense and then come below. I asked if I could buy him a beer and we'd be cool--seeing as how I had just embarrased him in front of his crew and all. But he wasn't in the drinking mood so I had to kick his ass again. But he is insane... so I guess you can't exepct too much from crazy people.

Pawn: an Enhance User Guide

I'm all about user guides. Here's a quick-and-easy guide for using Pawn addon.

Wondering if that level 72 neck is better than the SSO neck? Or if you should replace the Belt of the Black Eagle with a level 80 green? Pawn will help you make those calls in a snap. It allows you to assign values to all possible attributes, then integrates those values into tooltips for your gear.

Start by downloading the addon here. Once installed open your character window and you should see the Pawn icon in the lower right-hand corner like this:

Click that button and you'll see this screen:


My screen shows Enhancement values already input. But starting out new you want to

1. Click New Empty button to create a new scale
2. Name the scale
3. Start entering the values according to your EP

Pretty simple really. Just click a stat in the left-hand window and it will pop up in the middle. For example below I clicked on Agility:

And entered 1.88 which updated the window automatically.

Keep changing your pawn values all the way down until you have everything in, then click Close and mouseover your gear. You should see a blue line of text in your tooltip that indicates the Pawn value for that particular item.

You can create multiple rating scales and each one will appear on its own line in the tooltip. For example if you want to collect healing gear then you can have a resto version with different Pawn values.

"Yes yes Stoney, this is all well and good, but where do I get the damn values in the first place?!"

Good question, voice-in-my-head. Here's the answer: from me. Actually your best bet is to run EnhSim to create your own customized EP values. But short of that you can cheat and use some I came up with a few weeks ago:

AP	1.00
Crit Rating	1.87
Hit Rating	2.53
Expertise Rating	3.02
Haste Rating	1.49
Armor Pen. Rating	1.40
Spellpower	0.48
Strength	1.00
Agility	1.79
Intelligence	1.17
MH DPS	6.80
OH DPS	4.13

Those values were optimized for WF/WF and right now I'm going WF/FT so I imagine the values will be a bit different. But for leveling it's not going to make that much of a difference.

If you have EP values you've calculated for leveling or for other builds please share with the rest of us.

Happy leveling!

First Impressions of Wrath

I have to say that I'm loving Wrath. I started in Howling Fjord and already ran Utgarde Keep. It was a pretty easy instance. I'd have to say the first boss was the hardest of the three. It wasn't a hard instance by any means and I think if we knew the pulls we would be power-clearing it, especially because we went in with a group of our regular raiders (most of whom are in T6 or equivalent).

Anyway, as always when I pull aggro a MW5_HW saves the day, the only downside is that I'm usually still getting attacked and have to pop a pot. Thankfully I just need to last long enough for the tank to taunt--provided he wants to do so. Other than me pulling aggro a few times we had an easy run in Utgarde. At our gear level we'll be walking through the first round of instances.

I only had limited play time tonight. I worked late and had to get to bed for work tomorrow. However, I plan on a caffeine-fueled all-nighter tomorrow.

Anyone hit 72 yet? 73? 74!?!? Where did you start? HF or BT?