Hello there! Sorry to anyone who was a loyal reader and noticed I abruptly stopped updating the site a few years back. My dad was sick, got much sicker, and then passed away, and during that time period I quit Warcraft and blogging. I still play games now, in August of 2020 that’s mostly Fortnite (with some Fall Guys). Players don’t seem too optimistic about Shadowlands. If it’s great I might come back to raiding.

About: What is this? I am writing just a few sentences outlining the things I thought were most important to focus on as a ranged DPS. My guild downed the first 6 bosses in week one of mythic, with me playing Balance Druid. We have also had some good progression on the 7th. This guide comes from that experience. This guide assumes you have completed the bosses in heroic and will not cover heroic mechanics.

Hey there. I’m still around, moderating /r/competitivewow and playing in my guild Storm. I just haven’t had anything I felt compelled to blog about. Blizzcon was great. There was a fun panel with Day9 and several Warcraft content creators about how to effectively be a content creator, and a top suggestion was having a consistent release schedule. I’ve thought about getting into something like that on the blog. Maybe consistently releasing something on Tuesdays.

I am heading to Blizzcon 2017! This will be my first Blizzcon- the first time I will visit Los Angeles/Anaheim as well. Aside from “go to Disneyland!” any tips for the visit? If you read this blog because we are online friends and you are going, be sure to reach out so we can say hi there. Comments: wrathsome - Oct 4, 2017What fun! When it comes to Los Angeles, it is all about time and money.

A few nights into progression on the last boss in Tomb of Sargeras, here are my thoughts. If you are progressing on it or about to start, these are the things I wish we had all been clearer on beforehand. Red Orbs: Change viewing settings to low particle density to dodge red orbs. Dodge red orbs, seriously; dps to boss during that time is not super important compared to making sure you don’t die.

Hey all. I’m still around, I’ve just been quite busy this summer and posting/making updates has been on the back-burner. I’ve gotten your comments & e-mails: I will try to get to updating the class guides & mythic+ pages, but no promises! As my guild works on Maiden of Vigilance, I have some quick thoughts on phase one of the boss that I explained in an imgur image. Maybe it will be of some use to you: https://imgur.

For learning the fights in Tomb of Sargeras, start with the in-game dungeon journal. Then head to some out-of-game Tomb of Sargeras specific resources. Here are some of the ones I used, in rough order from least to most-detailed: MMo-Champion Minimalist Guide 1-2 Minute Youtube Overviews “Hardcoded Asian Guide” - Google Doc Icy-Veins Written Guides PhoGuild - Written Forum Post Strategies Detailed video guides will likely become available in the next week.

If you don’t have all the legendaries for your main spec and want to do something about it, this post is for you. Bad luck protection exists: the more chances you have to get a legendary, the better chance you will have of getting one. Killing a raid boss is one of the highest chances as getting a legendary. You can get legendaries on a fairly consistent basis now (1-2 weeks) if you put the work in.

Managing the roster of raiders is one of the most difficult parts of running a mythic raiding guild in World of Warcraft. As long as a guild has enough happy raiders showing up to raid every week, the guild will live on and the group will, in all likelihood, defeat more and more bosses. If a raiding guild fails to sustain its roster, it will fade out of existence. This happens enough in Warcraft that it is colloquially referred to as a guild dying to “the roster boss.

I have been enjoying my Repurposed Fel Focuser, a reusable item that costs 7500 Nethershards and provides a buff equal to a bit less than half a flask. I was running several easy Mythic+ with guild-members the other day, and one asked why I wasn’t using better consumables. I could have been using the full flask (and using Potions of Prolonged Power on cooldown). I have over one million gold, so I could afford the 500 per hour for flask or 1000 gold per hour for potions of prolonged power - but why spend 1500 per hour when we are consistently 3-chesting the Mythic+ dungeons without me doing so?

Per the 7.2 patch notes, the best Legion feast (Lavish Suramar Feast) grants 500 main stat (up from 200) in 7.2. This means that for most classes, feasts will be better than all other food options. Even the lesser feast (Hearty Feast) will grant 400 main stat. If you cook your own food and don’t have rank 3 of the feasts, you might want to head back to Nomi with some materials.

Now that my guild has cleared seven bosses in Mythic Nighthold, I have some perspective on what boss order you might want to pursue. What boss should you target now if you are just getting to 3/10 Mythic bosses down (with patch 7.2 right around the corner)? The options for what boss to do fourth are Spellblade Aluriel, High Botanist Tel’arn, Krosus, and Tichondrius. From easiest to hardest, I suggest Spellblade < Krosus = Botanist < Tichondrius.

Patch 7.2 is coming this week (worry not, the new raid is still months out). If you routinely do a 15 keystone each week, you may want to do an 18 this week. Why? Starting with 7.2, each level will get more difficult, and a 10+ generates the maximum reward (of a 905 in your weekly cache). More significantly to this post, for this week only, if you do an 18 you will get a 10 in your bags next week.

Maybe gearing for mastery in raids is not so crazy for Restoration Druids for challenging progression content. In progression, players are often at low health. With the Cultivation talent, a Rejuvenation on a party member at low health is already 2 out of 3 of the HOTs for Restoration Druid mastery. Add in a Wild Growth, Spring Blossoms, Cenarion Ward, or Lifebloom, and you are getting full mastery benefit. A few Restoration druids I have talked to are using a Mastery heavy build on at least some fights.

This past weekend, I updated the Legion class guides compilation, adding a few new class-specific sites I have heard about in the past few months and altering the recommended guide for a few specs based on community feedback. In the past month or so I have also updated the Mythic Plus Dungeons Guide and Withered Training Guide, and added some comments to past articles for a bit of clarification. If you found one of those valuable in the past, you might want to check them out again.

I’m posting this because it seems that a surprising number of people don’t know about it. In 7.1.5, Blizzard added a repeatable quest to turn Order Hall Resources in to Khadgar in Dalaran as tribute. The more times you turn them in, the greater his admiration for you as a hero grows, and the higher base ilvl gear rewards you can get from world quests. It works very similarly to Artifact Knowledge research in your order hall.

Krosus is the fourth boss attempted by many guilds raiding The Nighthold on Mythic difficulty. Getting a fourth boss down is the first major “wall” to progression in mythic; as of this writing, wowprogress indicated that around 2400 guilds have killed three bosses, while only around 700 have killed Krosus. One of the biggest difficulties on Krosus is soaking the Burning Pitch puddles to ensure that as few as possible adds spawn.

New today, you can now use wowtokens to exchange them for either gametime OR battlenet balance in certain regions. Prices are going up (track prices on wowtoken.info). See the official announcement for an explanatory video and more details.

If you play Balance Druid and have not heard of Flap, you are missing out. It is our version of Slow Fall, usable only in Moonkin Form (you can use it in other specs with Balance Affinity). You learn the spell from a Tome that you can pick up in Moonglade or the Dreamgrove. This makes traveling around the broken isles much more quick, and, dare I say, fun. You cannot change directions while flapping, but with good aim, you can run off a cliff on your mount, start flapping, and float gracefully (or not-so-gracefully depending on how you view fat chickens frantically flapping their arms) to your destination.

As a follow up to my sims at the end of 7.1, I updated Simcraft and am updating my simulations as of the start of Nighthold. I simulated using my current best gear. Single target used Starlord, Incarnation, Blessing of the Ancients, and Stellar Drift, and 3-target used Force of Nature, Soul of the Forest, Shooting Stars, and Stellar Drift. Trinkets The nerfs to AOE trinkets/buffs to stat-based trinkets going into Nighthold are remarkable.

Gebuz’s Guide, linked from the Class Guides Page, outlines several talent combinations for Nighthold. Many more combinations are possible after patch 7.1.5, as several talent options have been buffed to be more competitive. I tried out a few things the first week, and also looked at top logs. What follows are my plans for this week in Nighthold. Ideas My talents selections are in shorthand and refer to each talent’s position in the Nth row.

I realized I did not make a preparing for Nighthold post like my Preparing for the Emerald Nightmare post. The reason? I didn’t have to. I actually read that prior post and followed its advice in preparing for Nighthold. Many of the links now lead to Nighthold information, and the same principles for preparation that applied then apply now. And the preparation worked out pretty well - I did well both as Balance and offhealing (considering my gear and Artifact Power) as Restoration.

Unlike my Emerald Nightmare Balance Druid Spreadsheet, I did not make these two google docs. However, they are great baseline comparison tools for Balance Druid gear from the Nighthold: Trinket Comparison Spreadsheet; Gear Comparison Spreadhseet. Both were sticky posts in the Druid Discord channel. Check out your class and spec at the Useful Discord Channel List I compiled. More and more, the class Discord channels are becoming the go-to place for up-to-the-minute information about your class.

Whether it’s friends asking for tips on a spec, readers wondering if a guide is accurate, or people in trade chat wondering if Thunderfury is their best in slot legendary, people often reach out to me and ask how they can get better at raiding. There are many complicated methods of getting better. We can analyze logs. We can eek out small gains in Simcraft. We can acquire better gear. We can practice our rotation.

If you don’t love special events, the recent Diablo-themed Warcraft event may have caused your eyes to glaze over. You may have missed the limited-availability Tome of Town Portal. This toy is obtained easily by killing and looting 5 or so Treasure Goblins. They appear in various places - the easiest place to farm them is the Dalaran Underbelly, where they appear every few minutes. It shares a cooldown with and has the same functionality as a Hearthstone, but it is a toy so it doesn’t take up bag space.

Hey everyone. I am still around; I simply haven’t had much I wanted to post about. The game and my life have both kept me pretty busy. The Legion class guide compilation and Mythic+ Guide post are still pretty current. I plan to do a significant review of them once Nighthold comes out. In the next week or two, there are a few posts I could make: I joined a new 2-day guild (we are 2/3 Mythic ToV); I have thoughts on Restoration Druid M+ talents; I suspected Feral Affinity was great months ago, and now top Balance Druids are starting to use it in raids.

EDIT 2017-4-6: Mythic Plus has changed last week with Patch 7.2. This change includes 3 new dungeons, new affixes, and max gear reward at M+10. Aside from that, the below information is still mostly accurate. (Last Revised 2017-1-21, see Changelog below) This guide presents my thoughts and tips on Legion’s Mythic Plus dungeons. I cover general strategy, affixes, and dungeons. This is intended to be a living document, updated with suggestions or as Blizzard adds or changes content.

My guild opted to spend tonight progressing on Mythic Heart rather than entering Heroic Trial of Valor. I think this was a great decision. It was motivated in part by worth of mouth recounts, and in part by wowprogress results. Scroll to the bottom of the front page of wowprogress to see how many guilds have downed each boss in the current tier. On Tuesday, the first day Trials opened, less than 200 guilds had killed Heroic Odyn, the first boss of the instance.

Remember to keep Simcraft updated! I got better gear and my simulated damage went down. I made sure to use the Simulationcraft addon to import (apparently it can avoid glitches with importing from armory) and updated Simcraft. My simmed damage went up, which was as expected. Thanks to my Shammy buddy who suggested I try updating - it worked. Make sure to keep Simcraft up to date for accurate results.

There were a great deal of changes announced for 7.1.5 and 7.2 at Blizzcon this weekend. This Reddit post has a good summary. Blizzcon was great, but I am busy enjoying all the 7.1 changes! I haven’t been posting much because I haven’t wanted to take my free time away from playing to write guides in the detail that I have come to expect of myself. Druid Changes 7.1 seemed in part to be a love letter to druids.

Regular readers may have noticed the dearth of posts the past few weeks. In that time, I searched for and found a new guild: Seppuku, a 3/7 M 2-night guild on US-Stormrage. As of this posting, the guild is looking for a few more ranged DPS, hoping to round out the roster to 24-25 raiders. Why find a new guild? If you are happy in your current guild, you should strongly consider staying there.

A post over at Coffee Cakes and Crits showed a creative way to incorporate toys and pets into your mount macro. Fun times. I also discovered recently that Blizzard has updated it’s “Favorite Mount” logic, so you will cast a mount with a ground animation when in non-flying zones and a mount that can fly in flying zones. It seems like they did this on a pretty smart per mount basis - Cenarion War Hippogryph has a goofy run animation with its wings so it casts only in flying zones, but Red Flying Cloud looks nifty on the ground and it casts in both.

Class Guides are great, but logs can be even better in some areas. Guides are a prediction of what will be best for each class, whereas logs tell you exactly what worked. I plan to write a few posts about using logs to improve your play. Today, we’ll look at selecting the right talents for your class and spec based on logs. Warcraftlogs has a great rankings feature that lets you examine at a glance what talents the highest ranking players in your class are using.

EDIT 2016-10-5: This has been patched out. If I had known for sure that it would be, I could have skipped writing this post. Each week, if you completed a Mythic+ dungeon the previous week, you will get a chest in your order hall containing a piece of gear corresponding to the highest Mythic+ dungeon you beat as well as a Mythic+ keystone 2 levels lower than your previous week’s keystone.

If you play a DPS class, before raid today, you might want to look into whether you are eating the right food. It could be Fishbrul Special. Back in Draenor, Blizzard introduced Felmouth Frenzy. This food did direct damage to your target rather than improving a stat. This type of food is back in Legion with several varieties. From least to most potent: Spiced Rib Roast, Drogbar Style Salmon, and Fishbrul Special.

In Legion, Innervate is back for Restoration and Balance Druids. Unlike previous versions, this one does not restore mana. It gives 10 seconds of no-mana-usage-casting to the healer it is cast upon. And yes, it is restricted to healers this time around. The Balance Druid version also gives increased haste to the healer it is cast on for the duration with the Rapid Innervation artifact trait. As a Balance Druid, I picked up that trait as my 24th trait, and many Balance Druids should be getting access to it in the near future.

Nomicakes: This addon will show you what Cooking recipes can be gained from which materials you give to Nomi in Dalaran. Simply give as many materials as you can for the recipe(s) you are targeting, and Nomi has a chance of teaching you those recipe(s). Aside from that, all we know is that it’s a grind and a low chance per batch of materials at this point. Best of luck to you, may Nomi’s odds be ever in your favor!

Are you an officer in your mythic raiding Warcraft guild? Do you have a hard time setting the 20-person roster for each encounter, figuring out who should come in if a replacement is needed, or making sure that each player gets their fair share of playing time? If so, you’ve come to the right place. In Tier 18, I designed a roster system based on this Google Sheet. It integrates with Discord and this Weakaura a friend made.

EDIT 2017-1-18: Check out the 7.1.5 Gear Spreadsheets for Nighthold. As I discussed in my prior post about Preparing for The Emerald Nightmare, it can be useful, after you have done all your other prep, to figure out what gear you should be targeting in the instance. For reference, here is my gear as of last night. I created a spreadsheet, outlining the possible upgrades in the Emerald Nightmare for my class and spec.

Here’s a basic overview of how I prepared for day one of heroic raiding in the Emerald Nightmare. Many of these steps are repeatable tasks you can do yourself, even if you are starting the day before the raid opens up. Strategies Knowing what is heading your way from the seven bosses of The Emerald Nightmare is probably the most important step you can take at this point. Here are some resources I used:

As I’ve noted before, the Discord channel for your class is a great place to get information about how to play your class and spec well. I recently checked the https://www.reddit.com/r/competitivewow Discord channel list, and wanted to post a list of class channels here as well for your reference. If you want to make sure that guide you read in prepatch is still up-to-date and search for more resources, the Discord channel for your spec is a great first stop.

(Last updated 2017-1-12) This guide will outline some items to focus on in Suramar to maximize the Nightfallen reputation gains and overall success you have at Withered Army Training. This is not an all-inclusive guide, and will reference other resources on Withered Training that you should check out before starting the training. I wrote this guide because while there are a few great guides on how to clear the scenario, it was harder to find detailed information on how to prepare for the scenario or what to do your first few times.

These are two World of Warcraft tidbits I wanted to share. They will help you mount up and clear mythic dungeons each week. Mount Up EDIT 2016-10-11: Follow up post here. The following is my Mount Up macro. I assign the “favorite mounts” icon to it, and enjoy using it to get around in Legion. /dismount /castrandom [mod:alt]Azure Water Strider, Crimson Water Strider /cast [mod:shift]Grand Expedition Yak;[mod:ctrl]Mekgineer's Chopper /cast [flyable]X-53 Touring Rocket /cancelform [stance:1/2] /run C_MountJournal.

There is no more PvP gear in Legion. Players can get gear from PvE and they can get gear from PvP, and PvP gear can be used in PvE and vice versa. According to Blizzard, “in Legion, gear is gear, regardless of where you earned it, with no PvP-specific stats or fluctuating item levels, and the best players in both PvP and PvE content will be able to earn the best gear.

I’ve been very busy with invasions & World of Warcraft refer-a-friend leveling. Check this post on Reddit for a how-to guide and tips. You can do this by yourself - run two windows of Warcraft on your own computer for two different Warcraft subscriptions. Even if you start Friday evening, you can likely get a full server of characters on your main account to 90 over the weekend before invasions end when Legion launches.

Legion launches in just a few weeks. You may have pre-ordered the game digitally from Blizzard. If you have, you’re all set. If not, now is a great time to order the game (Amazon US store link). If you’re like me, and you want a physical copy, ordering from Amazon is an excellent choice. Shipping should be free, you should receive the game on launch day, and, if you have Amazon Prime, they currently offer a 20% discount on pre-orders and recently released games!

Here are some useful tips that will help you prepare for the launch of World of Warcraft: Legion. For even more resources you may not have encountered, check out the class guides or general raiding guides (both are also linked in the navigation bar). It has always been a dream of mine to write a useful List of N Things blog post with a catchy title. Enjoy! Swag Your Spellbook When Blizzard reworked the Glyph system with the 7.

Discord is the new voice program taking over many gaming communities with its crisp, free voice-chat and very useful text channels (EDIT: see this list of Discord channels for Legion). There are several community-run wow-related discord servers, including this one for WoW in general and these for each class. Check these channels if you want to stay tuned for the very latest theory-crafting. You can also make a free server for your guild.

Hello and welcome back to RaidAdvice. Who’s excited for the Legion prepatch (coming in a few days on July 19, 2016)? Guide availability for the prepatch is spotty right now, and several writers are waiting to release guides until the patch drops. Check back in a week or two for my first-draft list of prepatch class guides. Before Legion hits, there’s a few raid-oriented posts I intend to release, so be on the lookout for those as well!

This is a quick post on useful websites that do not easily fit into the “guides” pages. http://www.wowhead.com/: Wowhead maintains news, guides, and a searchable database of every item in the game. If you have a question about something in wow, this is a great first place to look. http://www.mmo-champion.com/: This site has periodic updates about wow, as well has having very well-trafficked forums. http://www.reddit.com/r/wow/: This reddit subreddit is an official wow community site and has good, active discussion about wow.

This site was started due to dissatisfaction with other guide compilations, which generally seek to host proprietary guides for all classes on one site. Some of these websites are good jumping off points, but, in general, they suffer from being out of date or inaccurate for at least some of the guides. That being said, the best are listed below. http://www.icy-veins.com/wow/class-guides - A very reasonable starting off point for people new to raiding.