The Mage solo thread, because who needs a DK ?

[bowchikabow]

That is the same problem I am having.. with regard to protectors. I can do Elite normal, but I can't do the heroic protectors. I am currently 686iLvL with considerable leech.

[Polarthief]

(30k leech ticks yikes)

This is what makes me cry: I have not gotten a single piece of leech gear (or ANY tertiary for that matter) in BRF. It's way too fucking rare, I swear.

If they made Leech enchants for your gear, and it gave like 4x of the secondary stat, I would greatly consider it.

[Araitik]

That is the same problem I am having.. with regard to protectors. I can do Elite normal, but I can't do the heroic protectors. I am currently 686iLvL with considerable leech.

How far did you go ? The screenshot was taken with 698 ilvl, and I had considerable trouble just to get there

This is what makes me cry: I have not gotten a single piece of leech gear (or ANY tertiary for that matter) in BRF. It's way too fucking rare, I swear.

685 Bracers of the Darkened Skies : bought 75k
700 Choker of the Bloody Flame : bought 50k
685 Meatmonger's Gory Grips : bought 30k
I also have Inferno Breath Sandals and Eye-catching gilded Robe that I looted, first with bonus roll, second because nobody wanted it (obviously)

So 5 Leech items, 3 of them bought for a nice total of 155k gold, 0 being close to BiS (in Arcane gear, I have 60.5% Mastery unbuffed, with all of the above items equipped I have only 51.6% left), but offering me 9% Leech.

But only 5-6% Leech already allows you to solo many bosses impossible without (Horridon being the most recent, done with 6%)

According to AMR, if you somehow had all your gear with Leech, you could get :

Full BrF heroic : 20.4%
Full BrF Mythic : 29.56%
Full BiS : 31.3%

And it's only the first tier of the expansion, so Mage soloing is going to be better and better as time passes, assuming Leech is not capped.

Btw, I'm only talking about Leech here, but know that with full BiS, you can get 87.64% bonus Speed or Avoidance. Both of them allowing interesting solos.

If they made Leech enchants for your gear, and it gave like 4x of the secondary stat, I would greatly consider it.

Even though I know this is never going to happen, I can't help myself thinking about how great this would be.

[bowchikabow]

I don't know why, but I was always trying to kill Asani first. I have tried the others, but best I could do was Asani... 30%. I was helped by having a lot of lucky chain crits, resulting in successive HS procs. I am leeching about 15% HP each hit, but I start losing the battle as soon as lust wears off and I am running.

[Deleted]

I don't know why, but I was always trying to kill Asani first. I have tried the others, but best I could do was Asani... 30%. I was helped by having a lot of lucky chain crits, resulting in successive HS procs. I am leeching about 15% HP each hit, but I start losing the battle as soon as lust wears off and I am running.

Doesn't Asani have the least HP? You probably want Kaolan down first though as he's the hardest hitter of the bunch, even though he's the tankiest.

[Araitik]

Doesn't Asani have the least HP? You probably want Kaolan down first though as he's the hardest hitter of the bunch, even though he's the tankiest.

Asani and Regail both have the same HP, but Kaloan has as much health as the two of them combined. Killing Kaolan first is really difficult, you have to let Asani and Regail heal (steal only on Kaolan) and have a ton of crit luck to nuke Kaolan as much as possible.

[bowchikabow]

I actually had a pull where I popped images while dpsing Asani.. but the images started attacking Regail. This is one of those weird fights. I remember when I used to Solo 0-light yogg... at one point it was actually easier to solo 0 light at lvl 90 than lvl 100. I wonder if we just need to wait until we get mythic/heroic HFC gear?

[Deleted]

And it's only the first tier of the expansion, so Mage soloing is going to be better and better as time passes, assuming Leech is not capped.

I'm not sure Leech will actually survive that long. There are certain things you can do with it similar to the immortal shaman glitch, but harder to fix.

Some might consider such uses "unnatural".

[Khiyone]

I watched the Council video, looked at the Skada meter, and decided that it was about time to stop being lazy and actually gear up my mage.

So, not sure if this is really the right thread for this, but how much will the removal of the T17 2pc trick affect the potential size of Combustion? It just came to mind when watching that video >>

[Araitik]

So, not sure if this is really the right thread for this, but how much will the removal of the T17 2pc trick affect the potential size of Combustion? It just came to mind when watching that video >>

Given that with more gear comes more Mastery and bigger Ignites, the maximum size of Combution will probably increase a bit. But we will lose the possibility of doubling the Ignite, so the increase won't seem much compared to the gear difference.

PS : Norushen NM solo video soon

[Zelendria]

You've made me want to solo some of the harder content. Even found myself in the AH looking for leech gear.
Found and bought a Kyu Sy Doomcloak for a mere 5K with some leech on it. Granted it's pretty horrific to my M Kromog cloak but it's a start lol.

[Araitik]

You've made me want to solo some of the harder content. Even found myself in the AH looking for leech gear.
Found and bought a Kyu Sy Doomcloak for a mere 5K with some leech on it. Granted it's pretty horrific to my M Kromog cloak but it's a start lol.

A good place to start non-legacy content is Mogushan Vaults. Most bosses can be killed with 0 Leech, and Heroic is quite easy.

[isaac2314]

Araitik, do you think you'll try your hands at the MoP LFR or even put some up on videos? Pre-Orgrimmar LFR is fixed to 25 people, but SoO (and beyond) Raid Finders are actually flexible. I tried Malkorok the other day but was stuck on ~50%, but someone on your level might be able to full-clear SoO LFR right now?
At the least maybe you can add a LFR column on the google drive doc? LFR was a rather more legitimate difficulty back at Mists of Pandaria, after all.

[Araitik]

Araitik, do you think you'll try your hands at the MoP LFR or even put some up on videos? Pre-Orgrimmar LFR is fixed to 25 people, but SoO (and beyond) Raid Finders are actually flexible. I tried Malkorok the other day but was stuck on ~50%, but someone on your level might be able to full-clear SoO LFR right now?
At the least maybe you can add a LFR column on the google drive doc? LFR was a rather more legitimate difficulty back at Mists of Pandaria, after all.

I didn't even know you could access SoO LFR, good to know ! I'll give it a try

[Araitik]

Sha of Pride : 60% at best, then Prison. BRB reroll Hunter for 150k dps.

- - - Updated - - -

LFR Blackfuse down
LFR Paragons down
LFR Garrosh @ 14% (last phase) but MC comes too soon

Update : 7%, cmon crit !

- - - Updated - - -

Update 2 : I got bored and left. Garrosh is definitely doable, and so are probably all LFR bosses except Galakras due to tower mechanic.

However, I don't think we should count LFR kills as real solos, because of Determination (+50% damage, +50% health and +50% healing @ 10 stacks), reduced boss health and reduced boss damage. The gap between LFR and Normal is insane, I don't think we'll be able to kill Paragons before being fully HFC mythic geared.

[isaac2314]

Fair enough, though personally I'd say LFR, without using Determination stacks, is just another (numerically lower) difficulty, since most mechanics remained intact from the downgrade. Though the 20~50% nerf from normal to LFR is a bit big (I wondered how fast you killed each paragon? The only time I tried Raid Finder SoO post-BRF -and the inspiration for this solo LFR suggestion - was with a ret paladin, and we melted each one around 15 seconds.)

To be honest, I asked partly because I wondered when you can solo LFR for transmogs lol. Tier 14/15 LFR is still too painful to solo for me at this point, partly because they aren't flexible yet.

[Araitik]

Fair enough, though personally I'd say LFR, without using Determination stacks, is just another (numerically lower) difficulty, since most mechanics remained intact from the downgrade. Though the 20~50% nerf from normal to LFR is a bit big (I wondered how fast you killed each paragon? The only time I tried Raid Finder SoO post-BRF -and the inspiration for this solo LFR suggestion - was with a ret paladin, and we melted each one around 15 seconds.)

To be honest, I asked partly because I wondered when you can solo LFR for transmogs lol. Tier 14/15 LFR is still too painful to solo for me at this point, partly because they aren't flexible yet.

Problem is, you can't not use Determination stacks, because each wipe automatically grants one. So either you have to leave the LFR entirely and restart from the beginning of the wing next time (there are no raid IDs) or go on with it.
Also, for many kills you need 10 stacks, that means 10 wipes long enough to grant a stack (2 minutes).

LFR is still LFR after all, even when you're alone

As of Paragons, can't really remember but I don't think anyone lasted more than 30 seconds.

[isaac2314]

Ah, was the required time for a stack 2 minutes? I never really found out, since for me it's usually either a kill ~1:42 or undoable.
I was thinking that the segmented nature of LFR wings and the burst-based mage solo style would make this less of an issue, but on second thoughts I agree with you (since I can see now that on some bosses or some wings this would be a trouble.) I suppose re-starting the wing from scratch could work if you insist on the purity of the kill......but LFR kills. Nah.

Actually, tangentially related - it seems that for a fight you can either pop runes and turret as arcane or kite as fire, though kiting seems to result in much lower dps (or I suck too much as fire) How do you decide the way in which you'll approach each new fight? Some general principles or just try both?
From your videos it seemed that you favor going kiting except in cases where it doesn't help mitigating damage (i.e. Gara'jal and his shadow minions), but I don't like fire that much and wondered if kiting is the only way to go.

[Araitik]

Actually, tangentially related - it seems that for a fight you can either pop runes and turret as arcane or kite as fire, though kiting seems to result in much lower dps (or I suck too much as fire) How do you decide the way in which you'll approach each new fight? Some general principles or just try both?
From your videos it seemed that you favor going kiting except in cases where it doesn't help mitigating damage (i.e. Gara'jal and his shadow minions), but I don't like fire that much and wondered if kiting is the only way to go.

I usually try the turret first, because it yields quick results : either the boss dies or you do. Either way, you quickly know if you may be able to kill the boss this way or not.
Arcane currently being the top DPS Mage spec, so that's the one I try first, on single target fights obviously. On multiple target fights (council, protectors, stone guards, paragons, etc) I go straight to Fire.
And when turreting does not work (your Gara'jal example is great, he hits like a truck) I try kiting. Fire is a really good spec for this, the +30% MS from Scorch alone is godlike, only toned down by the laughable damage Scorch does since WoD.

[Saiyendra]

Why not just play Fire on everything at your ilevel?