Tag Archives: consumables

Ready to Raid Ding 90 Edition

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So, you’ve hit level 90 and you’ve been doing your daily quests…all the quests!  You’ve started acquiring gear and you’ve even ran a heroic or two!  Whether it’s for raid finder or regular raids, there’s a few things to do to be ready to start raiding.  Level cap and hitting the magical gear score are only a couple of steps along the way.

Daily Quests:

Yes, I know we just talked about how you’ve started doing those, however, you need to make sure you’re getting your Lesser Charm of Good Fortune tokens.  You can turn 90 of those into Elder Charms of Good Fortune which allows you to have a bonus roll at boss loot if you want.  This bonus roll is good in raid finder, regular and heroic versions of the raids.

Gems and Enchants:

You need to gem and enchant your gear with the best stuff you can afford, even if it’s gear you intend on replacing.  Now I’m not saying to go out and put the BEST weapon enchant on your weapon you got while questing.  But you can put on a viable enchant that isn’t best in slot.  Check out your character over on Ask Mr Robot and it’s going to show you what it calculates as the best in everything to go on your gear if you aren’t sure what to look for.  If you are like me and you aren’t going to spend 3k on a belt buckle for a green belt because your guild can’t make them yet, don’t sweat it.  But do put on what you can afford.  Gem quality should at least match the quality of the gear (though I don’t think epic gems are out yet!) if possible.  You can always check out your character on Wow Heroes too, as they will show different enchanting options when you click on the suggested one.

Food and Consumables:

You are going to need food.  The good news is, you can’t really buy any food (except maybe mage conjured food) that doesn’t have SOME sort of stat on it.   If you aren’t a cook, and can’t find someone to cook for you, go to the Pandaria vendors and you’ll find food with a lower level buff (please don’t always use that food, cooking is super easy now if you go to Halfhill and talk to the trainer there).  If you aren’t comfortable with your regen you’ve had in heroics, get the best spirit food you can buy, if you ARE comfortable with your spirit, intellect is likely going to be your best stat food.

I wouldn’t focus too much on elixirs, but grab some flasks, don’t skimp on these.  Get spirit or intellect depending on which one you need.  I usually recommend to my raiders to carry 2 per night of raiding since we raid about 2.5 hours a night.  These are likely going to be expensive, but are worth the price if you can’t make them yourself.  Potions are important too, I would look for both regular mana potions and the kind that put you into a sleep.  If you work with your fellow healers, you can usually find a few seconds to get the extra mana out of a concentration type potion.

Attitude

The last thing to remember to bring is a good attitude and an excellent sense of humor.  We are at the beginning of an expansion and in new content.  True some people can read a strategy and know what to do perfectly every time, not everyone can.  Mistakes are going to happen and wipes will happen.  Having a nasty attitude about it will only result in a bad time all around.  If you can’t keep the negativity to yourself, excuse yourself from the raid.

Now, go raid my little minions   And for Elune’s sake, don’t stand in the bad stuff.

 

Mists of Pandaria: An Early Look at Consumables – Alchemy

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It’s a given that Mists of Pandaria are still in Beta, but, I did promise more cheat sheets on my last post about cooking.  I’m not going to list every possible flask, potion or elixir here…what I will list are ones that pertain to the Healing aspect of wow.  I am not a theorycrafter at all, therefore if you are looking to find best in slot sort of information, this is not the blog you are looking for.

Flasks, Potions and Elixirs

When it comes to Flasks, you’re going to want to go with which stat you need the most.  If you’re having regen problems, go with Spirit! If you’re not go with Int!  With Elixirs you always want to use two at a time, one Guardian and one Battle.  The combo is really up to what you need stat-wise.  As for potions, I generally tend to use mana potions, but there are several other options!

Flasks:  

Flask of Falling Leaves - Increases Spirit by 1000 for 60 min.
Mats Needed: Crystal Vial, Green Tea Leaf (4), Golden Lotus

Flask of the Warm Sun - Increases Intellect by 1000 for 60 min.
Mats Needed: Crystal Vial, Silkweed (4), Golden Lotus

Elixirs:

Elixir of Peace - Increases Spirit by 750 for 60 min. Battle Elixir.
Solid choice I would choose this if I needed more mana regeneration or if a haste elixir would adversely affect my haste numbers.

Elixir of the Rapids - Increases haste rating by 750 for 60 min. Battle Elixir.
If I did not need the Spirit elixir, I would choose this one instead

Monk’s Elixir - Increases your mastery rating by 750 for 60 min. Battle Elixir
This is the battle elixir of my choice, as currently mastery > crit for most healers

Mad Hozen Elixir - Increases critical strike rating by 750 for 60 min. Battle Elixir (note:  most people don’t focus on crit for their healers, at the time of this writing, but I included it just in case)

Potions:

Master Mana Potion - Restores 28500 to 31500 mana
This is the mana pot most people will carry around for everyday use, stock up on these!

Master Healing Potion - Restores 60000 health
As a healer, I don’t generally keep health potions on me, I give these to my favorite rogue!

Potion of Focus - Puts the imbiber in an elevated state of focus where they can restore up to 45000 mana over 10 sec, but they are defenseless until their focus is broken
This is my absolute FAVORITE mana regen, I carry a stack of these to use when I have a moment to regen mana while my fellow healers heal.  Even if you only get to use half of it’s duration its larger than the regular mana potion!

Potion of the Jade Serpent - Increases Intellect by 4000 for 25 sec
These can be pretty good for crunch time or to prepot at the start of the fight

There you go ladies and gents!  Granted, this is a list from the beta, so it could become incomplete or completely outdated very quickly.  I also did not include alchemy only items!

If you would like a more complete list of what’s going on in Mist of Pandaria for Alchemy, you should check out WoWhead’s Guide. It’s pretty darn awesome!

Mists of Pandaria Cooking: Healer buffs cheat sheet

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This is not an all inclusive post by any means, all of the information was gathered from other sites and brought to one place for ease of  reference particular to healers.  A link-back to the specific sites will be provided :-)

Previously I posted about the cooking specializations in Mists of Pandaria in regards to healers.  Today I’m going to make you a short and easy cheat sheet so to speak, of what fish are beneficial for leveling your cooking in both the Intellect specialization and Spirit specialization, so that you can know what to bank while leveling/farming.  As well as where you should go to get started on your specialization.  For the most part, you are going to want to read the guides I am linking from to fully understand what is going on, as many dishes require more than just meat.  The majority of this information is from El’s Anglin and WoWhead News and none of it is from my own work.  At the time of this publication, the MoP expansion is in beta, so it could very well become outdated information.  All disclaimers out of the way now, here we go!

For Spirit specialization:

Once you reach at least 530 Cooking, you are going to want to learn Way of the Steamer: Spirit. Taught by Yan Ironpaw. (see link for location)

You’re going to want to keep the following types of meat/fish for this specialization:

For Intellect Specialization:

Again, once you are at 530 or higher cooking, you’re going to want to train Way of the Pot: Intellect. Taught by Mei Mei Ironpaw

You’re going to want to keep the following types of meat/fish for this specialization:

Keep in mind, you can only level one specialization at a time.  I’m thinking most of us will level spirit first, as generally at the beginning of a new expansion that is the buff we need the most, you’ll need to max out your rep with Way of the Steamer before you can begin to max out Way of the Pot.  If you start with Intellect first, you’ll have to max it out to get to Spirit food.

Cooking is Serious Business!

While doing the quests on the beta myself, there was a daily quest to turn in stacks of vegetables to the cooking award vendor (they are turned into grocery packs via a basket bought by the basket vendor) which rewards you with a cooking award.  I do not know if this will make it into live, but I’d suggest holding on to all “used for cooking” materials until you are sure you can’t use them!

For more indepth information please visit the El’s Anglin guide to cooking as well as the wowhead guide mentioned above.  They also cover all specializations, as well as guides to leveling cooking and links to all the recipies and foods that are needed that have been datamined/verified on the beta servers.

Don’t worry, once MoP goes live, I’ll have a cheat sheet for your (healing) consumable needs!

 

 

Ready to Raid? Consumables and Enchants Edition

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Ready to raid can mean different things to different people.  In a progression minded raiding guild being ready to raid means more than having good gear and logging in at raid time.  Today we’re going to discuss things that you may not have considered when deciding that progression raiding is something you wanted to do.  (Keep in mind, that in more casual situations, they may require less effort, this is with progression raiding in mind)

Consumables
All raiders should be prepared with a stack of food, a couple of flasks (or a stack of two different kind of elixirs), a stack of potions (mana, dps boosting, or health depending on your spec!).  Hey, don’t get all defensive here, this is what progression raiding is!  Cauldrons are not going to be a part of Mists of Pandaria!  It doesn’t hurt to have a couple extra gems or enchants waiting if you know you’ll be upgrading gear mid raid if it drops for you.

Gems, Enchants, and Reforging
You should also have the best gems and enchants you can on your gear….the quality of the gem should match the quality of the item.  This can be expensive.  This can be very expensive if you replace an item more than once a week (hey it happens).  You should also utilize an add-on, site, or spreadsheet to help you with your reforging.  Ask Mr. Robot is a popular one currently, but feel free to use whatever source you are comfortable with.

Repairs
“But that’s what the guild bank is for”…no, the guild bank is there to keep the guild running.  Repairs are often offered as a perk, but aren’t always guaranteed or available.  In progression raiding, you can often spend 100 to 200 gold in a single raid night.  This means you will have to find ways to earn money in-game.   Many people find that doing the weekly random heroics help with this, but, you may need to do more if you are also buying your gems, enchants, reforging and consumables.  Daily quests are great for this.  Also if you have a character with a gathering profession you can  make plenty of money going out and farming mats to sell on the auction house.  There are plenty of ways to make money in the game!

Time
And the last thing needed is time.  In order to have the previous things, a raider needs to have time to actually be in-game when they aren’t raiding to prepare for raiding.  This is something many people don’t think about when committing to a progression raiding schedule.   One should really add about 4 to 5 hours a week to whatever their raid schedule is to just prepare for raiding, sometimes more.

Keep in mind, not all guilds require this much effort and time.  There are different levels of raiding, which ask different things of their people.  Most guilds require what I’ve listed here, from social to hardcore.  When deciding that you would like to join a raiding guild, you should find out the raiding times, along with what all they expect for you to bring along.  Read over the guild charter to make sure you understand what you are committing to before signing up and be ready to produce your own materials even if they offer a guild cauldron or food.  Then you will always be ready to raid!