Inhospitable Hosts: A Grounding Totem Primer for Heroic Durumu

One of several abilities gained by Durumu the Forgotten on Heroic Mode is Dark Parasite, a debuff that is applied to random party members at various points throughout the fight. The debuff is of most concern to healers, but it is also of special interest to all Shaman, as Grounding Totem can be used to negate the mechanic!

“See, Vera? Dress yourself up, you get taken out somewhere fun.”

Avoiding Dark Parasite probably isn’t the most important thing you can do in this encounter. The mechanic certainly isn’t the most dangerous one in the fight. But in the spirit of every little bit helps, I’m here to tell you how you can save your raid a bunch of hassle, eliminate a source of potential fatality, and prove your awesomeness

Druid Spreadsheet finally 5.2-compliant

Just a quick maintenance note to let you all know that I’ve finally gotten around to updating my Druid spreadsheet for 5.2. It includes support for the t14 and t15 set bonuses and will let you enter your own character sheet statistics to see how your spells should be performing for you. You can find it on the last page of my Druid Changes section.

I have a few more post ideas (and of course 3 more classes to update for 5.2, which I will probably get done right as 5.3 comes out *sigh*) so hopefully there’ll be some more activity here soon

Twin Consorts: A Corrupted Healing Compendium

The Twin Consorts are the only female Mogu in existence.

Contents

Hybrid DPS

Tanks

Healers

Druid

Monk

Paladin

Priest (Disc)

Priest (Holy)

Shaman

Corrupted Healing is a mechanic that occurs in the eleventh encounter in the Throne of Thunder, Twin Consorts. During the initial Night phase of the fight, and again in the Night phase at the end of the encounter if you choose to kill Suen first, one tank will be marked with a debuff (Beast of Nightmares) that persists until that tank kills an add of the same name. During this time, healing received by the tank may bestow upon the healer a stack of Corrupted Healing, which deals periodic damage.

While the mechanic is not of huge concern in LFR or Normal modes – primarily because the tank with the Beast of Nightmares duty does not take a lot of damage, and doesn’t really need to be healed at all – it is kind of a big deal in Heroic mode. It’s not necessarily worth changing your spec for, but it is definitely worth changing your behaviour. With more and more guilds working on this fight each week, I thought it would be nice to publish a compendium of all the healing effects I have tested and confirmed, and give some tips and tricks for avoiding Corrupted Healing Stacks.

Thanks to Tiriel of Demise@Kel’Thuzad for starting the forum thread from which I got some of my information

Paladin Spreadsheet 5.2-Compliant

OMG, it’s a new post! But it’s not very exciting. I just wanted to let you all know that I’ve finally begun my “updating for 5.2″ project, and that the Paladin Changes pages, as well as the associated spreadsheet, are now fully 5.2-compliant.

By downloading the spreadsheet you can plug in your own character sheet statistics and find out exactly how much throughput you should be getting from your spells, evaluate your Holy Power usage, take a closer look at healing rotations and how to optimise your chosen Tier 75 Talent, and see the effect of the Tier 15 and Season 13 set bonuses on your healing spells.

I’m sorry this took me so long. Tier 15 is kind of kicking my butt, but I’ve recently regained some free time (thanks, Devs, for changing the Lesser Charms/Mogu Rune of Fate conversion rate!) so I should hopefully be back to updating this a little more frequently. Thanks for hanging in there!

The Throne of Thunder, Pinnacle of Storms

Contents

Last Stand of the Zandalari

Forgotten Depths

Halls of Flesh-Shaping

Pinnacle of Storms

Iron Qon

Twin Consorts

Lei Shen

Now that I’ve cleared tier 15 on normal mode and begun work on heroics, I’m ready to bring you the final installment of the Throne of Thunder encounter overviews!

Before I begin, though, I’d like to apologise for the poor quality of some of of the Iron Qon screenshots. I wasn’t able to test the fight much on the PTR, and I cannot record video during my main raid, so many of these screenshots were obtained from our private streams. As such, the quality is not great.

I won’t be focusing too much on the actual numbers – the amount of damage dealt by each ability, etc. – since this is variable for 10-player and 25-player modes and I’d prefer if these guides were useful for both raid sizes. Instead, I will be focusing on healer-specific mechanics of each fight and discussing ways of overcoming the obstacles the new raid presents us. I hope you will all find it helpful in preparing for your first forays into the Throne of Thunder!

Introducing the bosses of the Pinnacle of Storms:

The Throne of Thunder, Halls of Flesh-Shaping

Contents

Last Stand of the Zandalari

Forgotten Depths

Halls of Flesh-Shaping

Durumu the Forgotten

Primordius

Dark Animus

Pinnacle of Storms

This third installment of my 5.2 Preview series will focus on the third wing of the Throne of Thunder, known as the Halls of Flesh-Shaping. I want to apologise for the delay: I wasn’t able to test much of Dark Animus on the PTR, so I had to wait until we killed him on live servers to be able to provide you with screenshots of abilities

I won’t be focusing too much on the actual numbers – the amount of damage dealt by each ability, etc. – since this is all PTR information and is subject to significant re-tuning and change. The mechanics are probably pretty solid at this point, though, so I will be focusing on healer-specific mechanics of each fight and discussing ways of overcoming the obstacles the new raid will present us.

Please also note that I have only done very limited testing – my PTR install was corrupted for most of the 10-player Normal and Heroic mode testing sessions, and I missed out – and all of the testing I have done has been on LFR and Normal mode versions of the encounters, so this will be a fairly superficial overview. But I hope you will all find it helpful in preparing for your first forays into the Throne of Thunder!

Introducing the bosses of the Halls of Flesh-Shaping:

5.2: Mistweaver Monk Changes

With Patch 5.2 looming ominously over my shoulder, I’m frantically pounding on keyboards and poking at calculators and scribbling on notebooks and tearing my hair out over the new Mistweaver Monk changes, so I thought, why not share them with you guys?

I’ve fallen quite behind on my spreadsheet-updating schedule, thanks to the urgency of PTR raid testing and also finishing out tier 14 content, so it will be a few days before I can update my spreadsheets and the more comprehensive content on the Introducing the Monk page. Until then, I hope you’ll all be able to make do with this brief overview!

5.2: Shaman Changes

Next up, my beloved Shamans! Once again, there’s not too much to say here. Because we’re absolute perfection, or maybe because we’re too hard to balance vs PvP? You decide

I’ve fallen quite behind on my spreadsheet-updating schedule, thanks to the urgency of PTR raid testing and also finishing out tier 14 content, so it will be a few days before I can update my spreadsheets and the more comprehensive content on the Shaman Changes page. Until then, I hope you’ll all be able to make do with this brief overview!

5.2: Paladin Changes

We’re getting pretty close to crunch time here. But I haven’t forgotten about you, Holy Paladins!

I’ve fallen quite behind on my spreadsheet-updating schedule, thanks to the urgency of PTR raid testing and also finishing out tier 14 content, so it will be a few days before I can update my spreadsheets and the more comprehensive content on the Paladin Changes page. Until then, I hope you’ll all be able to make do with this brief overview!

It’s pretty brief because, well, there’s not a lot to say for Holy Paladins. This run-down will be short on pretty pictures and pretty short on words.

5.2: Druid Changes

Contents

Healing Spell Changes

Talent Changes

Utility Changes

Resources

Okay, I’m starting to get excited for Patch 5.2 now. It’s almost here, y’all! So it’s probably about time I share some of the important Druid changes with you, right? Right!

I’ve fallen quite behind on my spreadsheet-updating schedule, thanks to the urgency of PTR raid testing and also finishing out tier 14 content, so it will be a few days before I can update my spreadsheets and the more comprehensive content on the Druid Changes page. Until then, I hope you’ll all be able to make do with this brief overview!