http://www.twitch.tv/fountainx/b/459925976
I had just woken up and played like dog, and I was using a legendary meta-helm, which I forgot to swap out, but that's how to get gold. I even wiped once to something dumb, not saving trees for the Sha boss or something.
I managed to get to 36 today. Had a bad transition into the wave without setting up my eclipse properly and I just couldn't kill the mystics quick enough. I think proving grounds are a lot of fun and I enjoyed strategizing how to get this far. I'm looking forward to seeing how much further I can get.
I think the most important thing is to plan out and manage your eclipses properly. It was super important for me to have a fresh DoC-buffed eclipse going into each wave (and each sha burst phase). The second most important thing was to maximize my usage of the damage buff from the ambers.
For those interested, here are the talents I used:
Feline Swiftness - could see Wild Charge being more useful for a really skilled player, but I'm not very good with it
Mass Entangle - instant root essential for monkeys
Incarnation - found this to be better for sha burst than FoN
Mighty Bash - extra interrupt/monkey stun (in retrospect Disorienting Roar will probably be better - lower CD interrupt)
DoC - essentially a huge mastery bonus (25% mastery is ridiculous at 463!), way better damage than NV (especially at this ilvl) - and up for every eclipse!
And my glyphs:
Stampede - helpful for getting amber where it needs to be
Omens - a nice little bonus when you interrupt a mystic outside of eclipse
Healing Touch - marginally quicker NS CD
For gear I chose crit/spirit/haste stuff with the most sockets I could find. Went for 5100 hit and 5273 haste then put the rest into crit. For trinkets I went with Relic of Yu'lon (by far the strongest 463-scaled trinket) and Flashfrozen Resin Globule (has an on-use 4232 int proc that I macroed into CA).
Here's my basic strategy for each wave:
Prep
flask, food, pre-solar, plant shrooms, HT, solar
Wave 1
stay near middle, dot and ss weavers, shroom bloom on ambered virmen, finish weavers, hurricane virmen, pre-lunar, HT, starfall, lunar
Wave 2
dot everything, beam and kill mystic, easy clean up, don't reach solar!, pre-solar, shrooms, HT, solar
Wave 3
shroom bloom, mass entangle, hurricane until inside virmen are dead (won't break entangle on monkeys), sunfire outside virmen, dot and ss monkeys, dot and ss virmen, pre-lunar, HT, starfall, lunar
Wave 4
dot everything, hard cast and ss on ambered mogu, pre-eclipse, shrooms in mid, HT, eclipse
Wave 5
entangle monkey, kill mystic, monkey, banshee, bit of damage on sha in between, ideally be moving towards solar at this point, a few seconds before shield drops, HT, incarnation, starfall, shield drops, CA (macroed with flashfrozen trinket, shroom bloom, moonfire), nuke, when sha's almost dead cancel CA to start moving towards solar, pre-solar, shrooms, HT, solar, hero
Wave 6
shroom bloom, dot mystics, let them heal virmen, kill far mystic, damage and dot close mystic, beam mystic, hurricane virmen, redot and stun mystic, keep hurricaning virmen and finishing off mystic, pre-eclipse, HT, eclipse
Wave 7
entangle and amber monkey, dot everything, kill monkey first, careful positioning, don't waste ambers, all ss on ambered guys, clean up, ideally pre-lunar, HT, lunar
Wave 8
dot everything, kill mystic asap, banshees as they come up, pre-eclipse, HT, eclipse
Wave 9
entangle and amber monkey, dot everything, kill money first, don't waste ambers, try to amber banshee, pre-eclipse, shrooms, HT, eclipse
Wave 10
attack sha for the heck of it, a few seconds before shield drops, HT, incarnation, hero, starfall, shield drops, CA (plus flashfrozen, shroom bloom, moonfire), nuke like crazy!
Repeat
Things start to get crazier the further you go just because you have less time to set up your eclipse between waves, but this is the general idea that worked for me. If you can clear each of these with at least 15-20 seconds left on the clock (maybe 5-8 seconds for the sha waves) then you're on the right track for waves 11-30.
Well, that was much longer than I planned it to be, but hopefully someone finds it useful. Good luck in there everyone!
I played now till wave 15 in endless.
Build:
Feline Swiftness
Ysera's Gift
Typhoon
Incarnation
Mighty Bash
Dream of Cenarius
---
The main problem is AoE. At waves > 10 you have to use a cd to get the add packs down. Otherwise Hurrican will rock your own ass!
If you need help with gold i posted a video of it. Maybe it can help http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0YITCIMm8Y
It's not whether you get knocked down; it's whether you get back up.
For me it is not so much the eclipse concept itself, it's the downtime between eclipses. It makes everything outside of raid dpsing more awkward than it should be. Especially leveling, questing and soloing.
Ideally I'd like to always be in either eclipse, with my rotation changing depending on the eclipse and having slightly better single target in lunar and aoe in solar. It would be simplified, but at least not so god damn clunky.
You have to find Balance als Balance
If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars.
Yeah. None of the legendary procs or tier set bonuses work in there, so go with the Burning meta (or better yet Revitalizing if you can use it without going over hit cap) and crit/haste/spirit gear with as many sockets as you can get.
The benefits from optimizing all your gear are probably marginal, but it is definitely worth it to throw on an old helmet so that you have a functional meta gem.
Im actually reading a lot of smart stuff i should have done when i got my gold hahaha.
What I did was safe the damage boost you get earlier for the last two waves. With that and making sure you just hit an eclipse when he comes out of his shell, it was pretty doable. I was just in my raiding gear, no reforging, regemming etc. Talents I used were Hotw and force of nature.
Hardest part i found was nuking banshee down before exploding :P
Endless Wave 30! Woot!
I gave up just because I wanted the title. I'll go back to try to rank at a later time and update
If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars.
I managed Gold a week or so back. After 3 sittings of about 2 hours each. The only person in my guild who took longer was our mage who decided he was going to do it as Fire. (He, for the record, had hundreds of pulls as fire, then went frost and one-shot it). The way I did it was FoN/Roar/DoC, and I always made sure to start a wave having just entered Eclipse. I used CA as panic-cooldown on an earlier wave and still managed fine with one zerking chest per Sha, using it just as it dropped shield (and, once again, making sure i had just entered Eclipse when the shield dropped off). Also with FoN, use one per monkey to get into its little ring, then nuke the crap out of it.
I think the big problem isn't the Eclipse mechanic per se - since I managed to get it to work in my favor - but the gear scale back. There's a reason me and the fire mage struggled most. Our specs suffer horribly at 463 item level. I've never felt so starved for Starsurge, ever. And I'm never setting foot in PG again on my Druid.
I got gold fairly easily however the big Shas were an issue a couple of times. I can't get past wave 3 on endless because I don't see how it's possible at all, the area the virmen are in is way too spread out to hurricane them and even if I get lucky SS procs and get the Banana Throwers down almost instantly I don't have enough time to kill everything. I was using raid gear so I hadn't optimized anything with Engineering Helm, normal meta and reforging. Either way it looks like a pain to get wave 30 and I may as well just spec Feral and destroy it without trying.
Wave 3 is actually the easiest wave.
Make sure you have shrooms planted in the center ahead of time and you're one tick away from entering a solar eclipse. When the wave 2 has about 1 second left, astral communion to enter solar, then blow the shrooms right as everything spawns. Throw out a mass entanglement, then hurricane everything in the center (you should hit everything but the 6 outside guys). Keep hurricaning until everything in the center is dead except the monkeys, then just run around putting sunfire on everything.
Also use DoC if you aren't already.
I used my raiding spec, gear etc, and gold is still very manageable. The thing you have to do is postpone using the damage increase bufs you get. So you have two of them left for the last two waves, then pick them up a few sec before the shield of the sha runs off, pop everything and it is very doable.
Endless, now that is another story... :S
I have gotten to wave 27 now (edit)
useing
Displacer
Mass entangle
Fon
Vortex (usefull for monkeys )
and Doc
And for wave 3 endless Prep for wave Mass entangle so the monekys dont move hurricane everything down in the mid throw vortex down on the monkey pop shrooms and dot everything / fon on the Monkeys
Last edited by Cohesive; 2013-10-20 at 10:29 AM.
http://www.wowhead.com/item=89081/blossom-of-pure-snow
1 min on use crit, use just before dotting for the shooting star procs. Each beast lines up exactly 1 min apart so you can use it on all of them.
Last edited by fengosa; 2013-10-21 at 01:41 AM.