My Tips and Hints for the Molten Front and Firelands Dailies

Greetings! Manick here again. As reported in the latest TSZ podcast, the Molten Front and Firelands dailies are now available with the launch of patch 4.2. I have some of my tips and hints of the new daily quests, as a warrior.

1. I find myself doing a number of these in protection spec. One of the daily quests has you killing elites in the Sethria’s Roost area, with a group of NPCs at your beck and call. While this NPC group does help I still find myself getting low on health when I run this daily in Fury spec. I can usually take it if we’re in combat with a single elite, but if I aggro an add, it shorten’s my life considerably. BTW, I’ve noticed that if you’re doing the corpse run back to your body from the closest graveyard, you need to check your map to make sure you don’t cross over into one of the lower level zones next to Hyjal. If you do and you are in flight, you’ll lose your flying ghost mount and sometimes it’s a pain to find your way back to the zone border for the flying mount to reappear under you.

2. Remember, to get credit for a kill in these quests, you don’t have to solo the quest mobs. Blizzard changed the ‘tagging’ on these mobs, so that if you get at least one hit on a mob in combat, you’ll get credit for the kill. For instance, there’s a few two-part quests that are given by Mylune where you have a quest to do to open up a ‘mini-boss’ kill quest. You do the first quest no-problem, but then the second quest is a mini-boss. If someone else is doing that part of the quest, you just have to get one hit in and then stand back and wait for the other player or players to take down the boss. That’s great for all the squishy classes that can’t get up close and personal, or don’t want to nuke down the boss and get it all up in their face. This also works in the Molten Front area in Firelands proper. If you can get a mobs attention and bring it back up the ramp to Malfurion’s Breach, you can usually get the mobs to go down quickly due to the defender NPCs’ withering cross-fire.

3. Watch your AoE (area of effect) abilities when there are spawning mobs around. In the Molten Front, mobs are constantly spawning to go fight the Hyjal Defenders. Normally, if you don’t attack freshly spawned mobs that are heading to the ramp up to Malfurion’s Breach, they will not attack you. But, if you are going toe-to-toe with a mob and you start using AoE spells/abilites like Cleave/Thunder Clap/Shockwave while these mobs are moving by, you will aggro them. This can make a one-on-one fight easily turn into a 5-on-1 fight! If you are trying to take down a Behemoth away from the Breach area this can easily lead to your death, even in protection spec Defensive Stance.

These are just a few things that I’ve encountered while doing these dailies. While I haven’t progressed all that far (still working on 150 marks for the Shadow Wardens and Druids of the Talon) I still think these tips/techniques should help. If I run into some other tips that I think will help, I’ll make sure to post ‘em here.

How you can get ready for Cataclysm content

Last time, I gave my impressions on the lower level questing experience. This time, I wanted to give some feedback on how starting players can get ready for running the dungeons later on in Cataclysm. If you’ve been paying attention to the difficulties others are having running the new dungeons in Cataclysm, you know that crowd control and other utility abilities have become more important.

• Practice your CC. Learning to sheep (polymorph), banish, silence and otherwise slow down the mobs in dungeons will make your runs faster and better.
  
• DPS isn’t everything. Being tops on the DPS charts in earlier content is not as important as making sure you and your groups get through the dungeons with fewer wipes.
  
• Mob control is key. Being able to control mobs in the dungeons in the 1-60 range, as well as the Burning Crusade content will make you a better player when you get to the new Cataclysm normal and heroic dungeons.
  
• Do research. Check online at wowpedia.org (the new wowwiki location) for the instances you want to run, to see what and where your CC abilites can and should be used.
  

If you practice your control, research the dungeons and get ready for whatever you have to do in instances, whether it be CC or flat out DPS, you’ll become a better player.

Impressions of Cataclysm Leveling

Manick here, intrepid level 85 tauren warrior from the Ministry of Truth guild on Winterhoof. I just wanted to post my impressions of the new leveling in Cataclysm. I’ve been working on leveling my pally and I’ve got her up to level 51. I’ve also been leveling my bank alt, named Vaults, through Silverpine and Hillsbrad.

Here are my impressions:

• Variety of quests: The variety of types of quests to me is different. You have the usual “Get x number of y items”, but there’s also the “bombing run” type quests and other quest variations that make it interesting.
  
• Story: Since I am running through the Forsaken quests, I am finding the story and lore behind the quests very compelling. The whole Forsaken against Gilneas story is very cool. You actually get to walk side-by-side with Sylvanas as you become a valued member of the fight in Silverpine.
  
• Smaller quest hubs: The smaller quest hubs seem to make the questing quicker. You go from one hub to the next, doing smaller number of quests at a time. I seems to make the questing much quicker.
  
• Blue items: At the end of each group of quests, you get a cool epic quest to get through, usually against a boss, with help from NPCs or some sort of mechanic that allows you to weaken that boss. Result? A nice new shiny rare item with decent stats (blue=good).
  
  

The leveling process in Cataclysm has been revamped, and I think its for the better.

Iggy, Razor, and the three Iron Dudes

Hey there, it's Manick. On Tuesday we took down Razorscale and Iggy the Hot Pocket Man. We got each one down on our second attempts. We tried to do the Iron Council, but not having reviewed the fight before-hand, we didn't last long. It was a fun night, and I hope we can keep the momentum going tonight.

Busy Wow Weekend

Late night post, for a busy WoW weekend. We had some great fun this weekend.

On Saturday we one shotted the Twin Emporers and Cthun in AQ40. That was a blast after the last time we tried and died.

On Sunday we took had a 18-man DPS check on 25-man Patchwerk and although we underestimated one of the trash pulls and wiped, we took down the big pile of flesh.
Then, we flew through the majority of The Eye in Tempest Keep, and wiped on Kael'thas, the final boss.

Been up and down, but all in all a great time was had by all.

Manick

Ulduar Continued

Hey there, its Manick again.

Well, we went further into Ulduar last night. We took on Kologarn and Auriaya, otherwise known as the crazy cat lady, as well as Ignis the Furnace Master, for the weekly raid quest.

How did we do? Good question.

Well there's good news and bad news. (Don't ya just hate it when someone says that?) ;)

The good news is, we took down Kologarn and Auriaya. It took a few attempts on Kolo and a couple attempts on the cat lady. We had a great assist by our guild leader, Takaos, to explain the pull and the fight on Auriaya, so that helped very much.

Now the bad news. Ignis burned us to a crisp. Several times. This is a positioning fight that I'm still working on. I've watched the vids again today. I like the four point strat that Ciderhelm at Tankspot.com put forth. I think I should have reviewed it again before I started it last night. The first couple of attempts were not good. The last attempt before we called it, we got him down to 35%.

I kept freaking out when Ignis would go grab someone to put in the hot pocket. I lost aggro a few times, and that's really frustrating. I usually don't have problems with single-target aggro, but I think the combination of positioning and keeping up some sort of threat rotation at the same time was giving me fits. I guess its all part of learning to become a raid main tank. I think a little more communication on my part will help next time I try this one. If I call out where I'm taking him and where the rest of the raid should be for DPS and heals, I think we'll do a lot better. We'll see.

Until next time,
Manick

Dusting off the blog and Ulduar

Well, I figured I'd dust off the blog for a running commentary on the Ministry of Truth's second progression 10-man group's run through Ulduar.

We started out well, taking down Flame Leviathan without any problems. We then moved on to XT-002 Deconstructor.

Manick's the main tank. We started out well on the first attempt on XT, got past the first 25% and into the second phase. Well, then, I died. Repeatedly. It was a little frustrating I would say. Everytime, I'm blowing every cooldown when he starts to tantrum and I'm still getting downed.

On our last attempt however, I was downed again, but this time one of our DKs transferred me into a ghoul with his "Raise Ally" ability. I've got to say, that was a blast! There I was protecting the tank that took my spot and helping to keep the adds from getting to XT and our DPS. We were able to handle and get rid of all the adds. I even blew myself up to help down one add. But we did it! XT is down, and we'll see where we go next week. We're going to take on Razorscale and Ignis at some point, but it's nice to see us get down XT.

Until next week,
Manick