Tuesday (6 Oct) - On to Zul'Drak

Tuesday (6 Oct) - On to Zul'Drak

When Wild checked the guild calendar on Tuesday I wasn't that surprised that there was no sign up for Lady Hunter's group. I'm not sure what the status is, but I still believe we will get something going again and that sign ups will follow. Not that Wild wasn't a little disappointed to find that Wild and the rogue (alt of our melee shaman) were the only raiders in our group on. Another group has moved into the Tuesday spot, and Wild looked on with a bit of envy as they started in VoA and then headed over to ToC. Maybe Thursday.

Wild is also a little baffled about what is going on with the Wed/Fri guild raids. The change in raid schedules announced in game almost a week ago has not been posted on the guild website. Perhaps everyone interested in raiding already knows, but something from our guild leader or raid leaders would help, in my opinion. I did expect to see a raid sign up for the Wednesday raid, and that might still go up before the raid, but it's only a day away. Folks are busy, I'm sure, but if the ultimate intent is to get back to 25 man raiding, the first place we should start is to make sure there is somewhere for guildies to sign up.

JB had plenty to do so Wild, a bit reluctantly, passed the baton to her.

Zul'Drak is a smallish zone of concrete, ruins, and trolls. Lots and lots of trolls. While the area is the home of the Drakkari ice trolls, numerous other troll tribes have moved in as the Drakkari civilization fades, including the Zandalar and Winterfall tribes. The horde camps in Zul'Drak are more like open, armed bunkers. Even Light's Breach, the largest of several camps, has the look of hastily constructed, incomplete fortifications and insufficient troops.

It was a war zone, and JB flew into the middle of it, landing at Light's Breach and immediately handed multiple assignments by harried officers. The best that could be said of the area is that it was small, and the quests went quickly, even though the enemy had graduated to level 76 mobs.

If JB was frustrated with the slow pace of progress in Grizzly Hills, she was ecstatic about the speed of advancement at Zul'Drak. In what seemed like no time at all, JB DINGED! to level 78.

JB took a break to head for Orgrimmar, picking up upgrades to her talents and then taking a peek at the Auction House to see what was for sale. A slightly embarrassed JB walked out of there with a lot of bags of goodies under her arms. A new helm, belt, gloves, and bracers soon adorned JB. She'll be avoiding Silvermoon City and Happyface for a few days.

During JB's questing her DPS hovered around 1200; nothing special, but good enough to handle up to those level 75 elites. With a new level and new gear JB figured she should baseline her DPS on the target dummies to help track her progress as she closes in on level 80. One quick point to make about that is JB has not paid much attention to the +hit stat in order to push up her other stats for grinding and questing. But +hit is critical at level 80 if JB intends to get into Heroic dungeons, where all the bosses are level 80+ elites and require a lot of +hit to be able to hit them.

So, JB's testing was on the non-elite level 80 target dummy. For just pure DPS, there are really only three spells involved - Lightning Bolt, Flame Shock, and Lava Burst. The only buff used was Flametongue Weapon, which adds additional spell power. There is no specific spell rotation, but there are rules to go by to get the best DPS. (1) ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS have the DoT Flame Shock ticking on the target. (2) Lava Burst EVERY time it comes off cooldown - and make sure Flame Shock is on the target. (3) Lightning Bolt like crazy when Lava Burst is on cooldown. That's pretty much it, when not worrying about moving around, dropping totems, healing, using specials (purge, wind shear, etc) and all the other things that a player has to think about when in a group or a raid.

After a half dozen or so attempts on the dummy, firing on all cylinders until JB ran out of mana, JB posted a best of 1717 DPS. On average, though, she was closer to around 1600 DPS. JB doesn't know how that translates into DPS in a group/raid, but it gives her a baseline for comparison.

JB also watched a level 80 elemental shaman going through the same drill on the level 80 elite dummy, which even at level 78 was ?? to JB. The shammy did a good job of keeping up Flame Shock, and the only other spells he cast were Lava Burst and Lightning Bolt.

Elemental shaman will get one more DPS spell when patch 3.3 comes out. The Fire Nova totem is being changed from a totem to a castable spell. Shaman currently have no true AoE spell, having only Chain Lightning which can hit up to three targets. Fire Nova is a true AoE, with the only restriction being that the shaman must have a fire totem down when casting Fire Nova. JB can' wait.

JB's future plans are to of course get to level 80, but she's started to consider including the Argent Tournament dailies as part of her routine while she can still get xp credit. Reality for JB is that she may not see many dungeons, and the Argent Tournament does offer some nice stuff if JB is willing to put some effort into it.