Hi there

Just so you guys are aware, Blogger is currently not letting my account comment on my own posts (oh the irony), hence the radio silence. I'll see if I can get that fixed :)

PTR update

Right, the moment I have been waiting for has arrived. It UP, and let me tell you blizzard took their good sweet time, but it was SO worth the wait. Yes ladies and gents, we have a smattering of notes for mages on the PTR, and let me tell you something: fire mages got BUFFED. And when I say buffed, I mean like, buff to the point of being ripped.

• Pyroblast’s initial damage has been increased by approximately 26%, and its damage over time has been increased by approximately 100%.
• Fireball damage has been increased by approximately 17%.

Fire

• Living Bomb damage over time has been increased by approximately 10%, and explosion damage has been increased by approximately 120%.

17% buff to fireball, that puts fire mages right up there with the pack, and I’m loving it. A chunkier pyroblast dot and a 26% damage increase to its original hit, chiming in with the shorter cooldown from our 4pc means that combustion is going to hit a LOT harder. Oh, and they buffed LB, which is nice too J. Thank you blizz. More on this as it develops, and i’m still waiting for the nerf to our arcane tier bonuses. That’s going to make us ridiculously OP. The way it should be. In fact, that nerf can go screw itself, I LIKE the way our 4pc is shaping up.

EDIT: Just a quick point, stumbled across this earlier today while clicking around, sums it up perfectly : http://www.thedailyblink.com/ 
Gotta love a bit of daily blink.

Firelands Update: Majordomo Staghelm

Good news everyone! Where I am its wet and cold. It’s finally rainy and windy, and I must say I approve. I was sincerely distrustful of the whole ‘let’s start October by topping 29^oC’. I think I can now safely look forward to at least 5 months of proper cold weather. Good stuff. Anyway, let’s have a look at Majordomo Staghelm. Yes, I know, what about the T13 bonuses? I’m working on those, and I’ll chuck up some nice juicy numbers in the near future.

So, Majordomo. I’m not going to lie, ladies and gentlemen, this fight is JOKE now. My raid took the effort to read up on this one and it took all of ONE progression attempt to down him. ONE. I was so shocked I cried, I couldn’t even be happy that we downed him, because we had more people die on the fucking Ragnaros trash that followed it. So yeah, that’s that. It wasn’t a particularly complicated fight before the nerfs, given one more week we would have had it down before the bat hit, but that’s beside the point. The mechanics of the fight are fairly simple:

The boss has two stacking buffs, a damage buff (fury) and a regen (adrenalin) buff. One increases his damage by 5% per stack, the other his energy regen. When he reaches 100 energy, he casts a special and gains a stack of regen. When he shifts form, he loses all stacks of regen but gains a stack of damage. The tactic is simple, stay in each form for as long as you can, which is until he casts his special too fast for the raid to keep up, then switch form. The boss has 2 main forms, cat and scorpion. Scorpion is when the raid stacks up, cat is when its spread out. When in scorpion, he casts a cleave that is split between the raid, when in cat he leaves void zones on the position of a random character at range, and summons an add which the melee have to DPS down. Every third form, he also adds a third thing to contend with, you will probably deal with each one once. His second time in scorpion he will cast searing seeds, which is basically living bomb, but with random duration and not DOT. When its about to explode, run out of the raid. In his third cat form, he will cast burning orbs. These are like the shards on Baleroc, but without the vulnerability debuff, they last one minute, and two people have to alternate soaking them.

That’s basically it on tactics for the fight; all you need to be able to do is follow instructions on where to stand. That’s literally all this fight comes down to. Let’s have a look at this for mages specifically shall we?

The fight will start with the raid stacked up (apart from possibly a hunter, who will misdirect the boss to the tank) in the centre of the ring pattern on the floor. The boss will be pulled, and he will switch to scorpion. Most raids pop hero at this point, so go ahead and go absolutely nuts with your cooldowns. The idea for this first form is to stack adrenalin as high as possible, 8-10 stacks. This is going to be quite a stretch on your healers, so for those later cleaves use mage ward, mana shield and ice barrier if you have it. If you’re arcane, evocation can be fit in if you chuck it out just after the fourth or fifth slash without losing any mana, otherwise you’re going to have to run conservation at 35% until the cat form or you’ll loose a tick of mana. For cat form, there is one tactic that was particularly helpful for my raid. Before you start the fight, all the ranged and healers spread out evenly along the ring on the floor, with the healers in a triangle. This will then be the positions you take up for cat phase, to minimise how many people are under the void zones when the boss spawns them. For this phase you’re probably going to go to six stacks of adrenalin. It’s important then that right after the last void zone of the form is cast you IMMEDIATELY stack up, or the boss will have time to cast another special WHILE you’re stacking, which might cause problems if it’s too close to where the raid is stacked up. Before shifting into scorpion form, this time the boss will briefly stun the raid and shift into human form, casting searing seeds. This debuff can be ice-blocked off, so run straight out of the raid and do that, so you won’t have to worry about it again. It still damages everyone else, so make sure you’re OUT of the raid. Again, you’ll probably be stacking to 6 stacks of adrenalin, and them spread out again. This will be followed by a cat form and a scorpion form which follow the pattern of the first two. When he shifts out of his third scorpion form, he’ll shift into human form again, cast burning orbs, and then go into cat form. These orbs will spawn at random locations (2 in 10 man, 5 in 25 man). The most effective way of dealing with them at this point is just to have the two closest people rotate who is taking damage from the orb. Watch out for void zones and you’ll be fine.

As far as tips go, make sure to make ample use of your damage absorbs during the latter periods of scorpion form, and when you’re on the orbs. Blink is a lifesaver here, for getting out of void zones in cat form and for getting in and out of stacked position. Ice block should be saved for the searing seeds phase if possible. It’s an easy fight, as long as you have a competent raid leader who can tell people when to move you’ll be fine.

Let’s have a look at those shiny shiny loots shall we?

Mantle of the Fiery Vanquisher: Domo drops tier! Yay.

Flowform Choker: DPS caster neck with haste and mastery. Perfect combo for arcane, take of mastery for frost or fire

Wristwraps of Arrogant Doom: DPS bracers, take off crit for arcane, leave for frost or fire.

Stinger of the flaming scorpion: Crit mastery wand. It’s ok, but you’ll likely have the valour piece by now. Crit off for arcane, mastery off for fire or frost.

Bit meh, looking forward to heroic Shannox and Ragnaros normal this week, I’ll report back on how that goes tomorrow eveningJ. Grabbing my first staff stage then as well, it’s gonna be a busy night!