Demonology Raiding Guide

My 5-part Demonology raiding guide has finally be posted over at my new(er) blog at Shadow Word: Blog. Sorry to the normal readers that have to see this info twice, but this is mainly for the people that just stop in to find something and leave.

If you’re interested in viewing the Demonology guide, you can find it here.

Just an FYI on the Destruction Raiding Guide.

I still get comment moderation emails almost every day for my previous guide covering Destruction Raiding in 3.1. With that in mind, I took a few minutes today to go through and update some of the information to be up to date for 3.2 since there really wasn’t much in the way of changes.

The new version of the guide can be found here.

My 5-part Demonology Raiding Guide is still in the works but it’ll be posted over at Shadow Word: Blog instead.

*taps mic* Is this thing on?

As of today it looks like Fear.Win is no longer blocked.. weird.

Soo I have the choice of either continuing Shadow Word: Blog or coming back here to keep on truckin’ with Fear.Win.

Any input?

Shadow Word: Blog – Updates from the other side.

I’m still receiving comments every day on posts that are months old which is amazing. I never thought that Fear.Win would attract this much attention and I wish I could just stay here and continue to post.. but I can’t.

Well.. I could.. but the updates would be much more infrequent as I don’t spend a lot of free time at home wandering around the intrawebz and only have a 15 minute lunch break.

I’ve been thinking of going back and copying my most read posts and re-posting them over at Shadow Word: Blog but I don’t really see a point in it right now.

Updates over there are coming pretty slow since I’ve began raiding again on my Shadow Priest instead of my Warlock and ANY Shadow Priest will tell you that new information on our class/spec is few and far between. Right now, there is NOTHING to post about. I’ve already posted a 3.1 Shadow Priest raiding guide here at Fear.Win and nothing has really changed.. nor has anything even been mentioned for us in 3.2.

Most of my readers know that I LOVE to write up guides and “how to” posts but lately there has been nothing of my class to even write up. I could do the L2P Ulduar guides for most of the bosses in there (which is in the works) but I enjoy talking about my class more than anything. GIVE ME SOMETHING TO WRITE ABOUT, BLIZZARD!!!1!

I could write about my tank or moonkin and steer away from anything shadow related but that’s not really what I’m about. I’m not just a Shadow Priest or a Warlock.. I play everything.. but a blog about EVERYTHING doesn’t really work. Jack of all trades, master of none is not something I want to be known for, if you catch my drift.

Anyway, I just wanted to keep everyone up to date that still only reads Fear.Win (you bastards!) and encourage you to update your feeders to my new blog over at Shadow Word: Blog.

Shadow Word: Blog Updates!

According to my statistics page, this blog is still getting an average of 500+ views per day while my new blog is a fraction of that. I had made a post with my new blog URL due to THIS blog being firewalled at my job (where I do a majority of my updates).

To keep everyone informed that still visits Fear.Win, here are links to my last few posts on Shadow Word: Blog.

3.1 Shadow Priest Best-in-slot Raid Gear List
A list of the best possible raiding gear available that does NOT include hard mode kills, Algalon or PVP rewards.

How Does the Upcoming JC Nerf Affect You?
Answering a question asked on the new(ish) WoW.com about the upcoming nerf to Jewelcrafting.

Pre-Heroic Prot Warrior Gear List
Yeah this one is a bit off-topic being non-Spriest related, but I had been playing my Warrior a bit more lately in my free time. Don’t expect any more Warrior gear/strategy related posts though. It was just a one-shot thing.

I still encourage my readers to flock to my new blog which remains a Shadow Priest oriented blog with a little Warlock flavor thrown in.

God dammit all!

The blog has been firewalled at work which means that I can either move to another blog domain or not update anymore.. and I have WAY too much shit to talk about.

http://kungaloosh.wordpress.com

That’ll be my new blog until this one gets un-firewalled (if that’s a word) so update your bookmarks, gents!

Heroic Sarth 2D & Emalon get Stallowned!

My first raid with the new guild was Sarth 3D but we couldn’t tweak it enough to get it to work but we managed to down Sarth 2D which was still awesome. Afterwards we hit up heroic VoA for some T8.5 but no Priest stuff dropped. Q.Q

Moving again?

I’d been a little hush-hush about this the last few days because I didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but the merger with the guild wasn’t really working out the way we had hoped. When we finally broke down and accepted the merger offer, as our guild leader I decided I would wait 2 or 3 weeks and then see if everyone was content.

Today was our 3rd week in the guild so a few days ago I started pulling the old Vae Victus members in to our old vent server (or party chat) one at a time, asking how the raid times were working out, how they felt about the new loot system and to see if any personal issues had come up since the merger.

A general consensus among the guild was that the raid times were not working out and that the loot system and raid sign-ups felt very unorganized. 1 or 2 were OK with the raid times but there were 6 or 7 that weren’t.

The guild/raid leader seemed pretty adamant about only wanting one 10-man raid ID for Ulduar and wanted to do it during the week which doesn’t work for a majority of our old guildmates, also raiding Naxx-25 on Thursday which also doesn’t really work for us. We came from a 10-man guild so a majority of our upgrades would have come from Naxx-25 and Ulduar-10 in order for us to help them progress through Ulduar 25 effectively.

We have friends in another raiding guild (Guild B) that offered the merge option to us around the same time the previous guild did (Guild A). We had been raiding 25’s with Guild A before the merger and really liked their work ethic and loot system, so based on previous experience we decided to go against the grain and merge in with Guild B rather than move in to a more familiar guild.

Upon our joining, they changed loot systems and I -think- raid days. Talking to an officer before the merger we were explained that a majority of their raids were Friday and Sunday which worked out fine but they were now Thursday and Saturday causing a majority of Vae Victus to only attend 1 raid per week, with some missing every raid every other week due to their work schedules.

We spoke to our friends in Guild A and told them that we liked Guild B but the raid times just didn’t fit with us and they responded by offering us a second change at the merger. I didn’t want to up and leave only 3 weeks in to Guild B but with 1 raid day already not working out for a majority of our members and the addition of Ulduar-10 ALSO during the week, it was hard to turn down the option from Guild A.

It was nothing personal against Guild B, their officers, their raiders, etc., it was just a matter of a raid schedule that just didn’t work. I left a sincere post on their forums thanking them for the opportunity to merge in and try to progress through the 25-man content on behalf of Vae Victus. I know that I’m going to be the one catching the lashings if there are any but I was our guild leader and if that’s how it ends up then so be it.

I didn’t want to burn any bridges and there were no raids scheduled for today or tomorrow so I wanted to give them a few days to explain why we left and have time to fill their raid spots that a few of us would have taken.

Moving to Guild A is going to be a change for me, mainly. They already have 2 amazing Warlocks but they really needed a Shadowpriest so I took Abigore over, giving Vae Victus to my Warlock. I was in the middle of the Hodir grind when I switched mains to Nevariah so I never got my shoulder enchants – this was the first thing I did last night when I found out about moving to Guild A. I only had about 6k rep to go so I did the 3 available dailies and had 100 Relics of Ulduar on Nevariah. Thaelis/Call had tons of Relics in his bank that he didn’t need so he gave me the rest of what I needed to hit honored and slap the enchant on my T7 shoulders.

So it looks like I’m back on the Shadow Priest saddle with Neva being on the backburner for a little bit. It’s a tad depressing because I was REALLY liking my Warlock and she has better gear but variety is a spice of life, I suppose. I still enjoy the Shadow Priest class, it was just an unexpected change. I’m sure I’ll still be pugging raids when I can with her when I can but Guild A’s raid schedule seems to be good so I should be pretty busy.

My only concern is gear at this point. I haven’t raided on Abigore since they changed Shadowform from a solid damage increase to a chance for DoTs to crit. Prior to this change, Haste and Crit were very close when it came to gear scaling so I normally just took the haste gear and let the Mages/Healers have the crit. Now Crit is rated higher than haste and I’m stuck with a haste set lol. Woot?

Anyway, sorry for the lengthy post!

Tales of a Lazy Blogger.

Work has been pretty hectic and I haven’t really been spending a lot of time on WoW lately. Sadly, I haven’t had much time to read any blogs or come up with anything interesting to post about so don’t be surprised if you guys/gals get a ton of comments from me this weekend or I get post-happy.

There may be some changes coming up in the next few days so I’ll keep everyone posted on those.

Lately I’ve been keeping myself occupied by playing my Hunter and Warrior alts. Telkire/Beltravi (Belkire?) has been using her 80 DK to run her Priest through some Outlands dungeons and she’s been letting me tag along on my Hunter for free XP and gear. So far I’ve gotten from 60 to almost 64 just from runthroughs and haven’t done more than 4 quests in Hellfire. Good times!

My Warrior is my break toon right now. If I want to log in and play but I don’t want to play for very long or farm (i.e. anything serious), he is my “go to guy”. With the recent changes to the heirloom shoulders, leveling hasn’t taken very long at all. In about 6 or 7 hours of total play time over the week I’ve gone from 32 to 37 counting the breaks I take to sit around and talk to guildies. I’m also having a lot of fun as Arms right now (Trauma, Improved Rend, Deep Wounds, Taste of Blood or w/e + Glyph of Overpower is pretty awesome).

I suppose Glyph of Overpower is a bit of an overkill considering I’ll get to use Overpower every time rend ticks anyway. Maybe I need to switch it out for something else?

Blargh. *Insert non-Warlock/Priest related post here*

Demonology Spotlight #5

Todays Topic: Decimation Weaving

Decimation – When your Shadowbolt or Incinerate spells damage a target at or below 35% health, the cast time of your next Soul Fire spell is reduced by 60%. Any Soul Fire spell cast under the Decimation effect will have its Soul Shard cost removed.

Decimation was introducted to the Demonology tree in patch 3.1 and has given deep Demonology builds a more competitive edge outside of Metamorphosis. Previously, deep Meta builds suffered from low DPS unless Meta was available to use but with the introduction of Decimation you will find your DPS to be very competitive with other builds below the 35% mark. Keep in mind that Decimation will be receiving a slight nerf shortly and will only proc at 30% or lower, rather than 35%.

“Decimation Weaving” is a term used once you are in the “Decimation Execute Phase“, or when your target is at or below 35% health. Since Decimation will not proc until your Shadowbolt or Incinerate spells HIT the target, it’s quite hard to manage a 1:1 rotation without casting from melee range (which Meta Warlocks should be used to by now).

There are 2 types of Decimation rotations – 1:1 and 2:1, where the first number is the amount of Incinerates or Shadowbolts cast to the amount of Soul Fires.

1:1 is the common rotation when you are free to cast from melee range, out of harm from Whirlwinds, Cleaves, Swipes, etc. Standing this close to the target allows your Shadowbolt or Incinerate to hit the target almost immediately, allowing you to use a Sbolt/Incin -> Soul Fire rotation.

2:1 is used during phases that aren’t very melee friendly and would otherwise require you to stay at a further distance or constantly run in and out of melee range, which isn’t what you need to be doing. Using a 2:1 would of course follow the Sbolt/Incin x2 -> Soul Fire rotation.

Overall, it’s just a matter of knowing the fights inside and out and knowing if you’ll be OK casting from melee range or not. Warlocks with a Meta build are use to casting from melee range to make use out of Immolation Aura but you hybrid specced Warlocks may be a little new to close quarter casting.. but now is a good time to familiarize yourself.