Gunship Battle image taken from Wowwiki.com

This Gunship Event is fun battle, and a very nice break from the “Tank and Spank” boss system. This fight also serves as a “Raid Coordination” check, and can be a roadblock for some raids. Is refered to as the “Lootship Battle” by some guilds.

Boss Stats:

• Hit Points – ??? (10man), ??? (25man)
• Enemy Ship has more HP on Heroic Mode
• No Enrage Timer

Abilities:

• High Overlord Saurfang & Muradin Bronzebeard
  • Battle Fury: Increases all damage by 10%, stacking. Lasts 20 seconds, refreshed with each stack. Applied every time Saurfang or Muradin strike a target.
  • Cleave: Inflicts 110% weapon damage to up to 3 targets in front of Saurfang or Muradin.
• All Troops
  • Experienced: Increases damage by 30%, and attack and casting speed by 20%. Applied if a soldier has been alive for more than ~20 seconds.
  • Veteran: Increases damage by 60%, and attack and casting speed by 40%. Applied if a soldier has been alive for more than ~40 seconds.
  • Elite: Increases damage by 120%, and attack and casting speed by 80%. Applied if a soldier has been alive for more than 60 seconds.
  • Desperate Resolve: Increases armor and attack speed by 60%. Applied when a soldier’s health gets below 20%.
• Kor’kron Sergeant & Skybreaker Sergeant
  • Bladestorm: Inflicts weapon damage to up to 4 nearby targets every 1 second for 6 seconds.
  • Wounding Strike: Inflicts 200% weapon damage and reduces all healing done to the target by 25% for 10 seconds.
• Kor’kron Axethrower & Skybreaker Rifleman
  • Hurl Axe: Inflicts 3,800 to 4,200 Physical damage.
  • Shoot: Inflicts 3,800 to 4,200 Physical damage.
• Kor’kron Battle-mage & Skybreaker Sorcerer
  • Below Zero: Freezes the enemy gunship’s cannons, rendering them inactive. Channeled spell. Cannot be interrupted.
• Kor’kron Rocketeer & Skybreaker Mortar Soldier
  • Rocket Artillery: Targets an area on the players’ ship and launches a rocket there. The rocket travels for a few seconds, causing an Explosion when it lands, inflicting 6,300 to 7,700 Fire damage to players and Siege damage to the gunship.
  • Rocket Artillery will also have a 7 yard knockback in Heroic Mode.

Recommended Consumables:

• [Flask of the Frost Wyrm]
• Spell Damage food of your choice or Feast

Your role will be different depending on what you will be assigned for during this Gunship Battle Event.

Frost Mage Overview:

• Pet Friendly: Friendly
• Cooldowns: No need to save your Ice Blocks or Cold Snap for anything, so use them for any emergencies such as pulling aggro.

Your Water Elemental won’t be targeted by any mobs, but will be taking some raid damage. Since your pet will have a 80% AoE damage reduction so it won’t get killed easily. Put him on aggressive and let him go nuts.

Gunship Cannon

If you are assigned to be one of the Cannon Gunners, you will get to be doing direct damage to the enemy Gunship. You simply mount one of the Gunship Cannons and you will be given a new vehicle spellbar.

You will only have two options:

• Cannon Blast: Inflicts 1,000 Siege damage and generates 6-10 Heat.
• Incinerating Blast: Inflicts 1,000 Fire damage and additional Fire damage per point of Heat. Consumes all of the cannon’s heat.

You have to keep an eye on your Cannon’s Heat meter. Make sure it never goes to 100% or else your Cannon will Overheat and will be unable to fire for 3 seconds.

What I do is spam Cannon Blast (1 on your spellbar) until it reaches around 95% heat, then use Incinerating Blast (2 on your spellbar). It makes your Incinerating Blast do more damage, and also purges all the heat from the Cannon so it won’t overheat.

At some points during the fight, the opposing ship will summon a Mage out which will freeze your Cannon’s until they are killed. You will be ejected from the Cannon, and at this point you should help the Defending team kill any adds that are aboard your ship.

*Important* You probably won’t want to be on Cannon duty since it will render your Water Elemental useless every time you mount and dismount from the cannons. You will be forced to resummon your Water Elemental to fix the Pet action bars.

Defending the Gunship

If you are on defense or part of the “Home Team”, your job is to kill any enemies which boards your ship. There will be a portal in the middle of your ship, and mobs will spawn from it. The longer they stay alive, the more damage they do. So after your tank picks them up, kill them as soon as possible.

Since you are also a Ranged DPS, you can also attack the enemy Axe Throwers or Riflemen that are on the enemy ship. Be on the look out for Rocket Artillery. There will be a target circle on the ground where the rocket will land, so don’t stand near it.

Boarding Party

If you are selected to be the boarding party of the “Away Team”, you will get to have the joy of using your [Goblin Rocket Pack] to board the opposing Gunship. Just remember to equip the Rocket Pack to your shirt slot, and add it to your action bars for easy use.

When the opposing Gunship calls out for the Mage to freeze your Cannons, that is the queue for the “Away Team” to hop on over and kill that Mage. Make sure your tank jumps over first so that he can keep you safe from Saurfang or Bronzebeard.

After the Mage is dead, it is recommended that the “Away Team” return back to the ship before Saurfang or Bronzebeard builds up too many stacks of Battle Fury, which will pretty much allow them to kill your tank very easily. Make sure you return to your ship BEFORE your tank does. If he leaves before you, that will leave Saurfang or Bronzebeard to kill any stragglers.

While you are on your ship waiting for the enemy Mage to appear, you will be helping with any adds on your ship.

Strategy

Cannon Gunners attack enemy ship, “Away Team” kills Mages, “Home Team” kill adds. Rinse and repeat. Take down the enemy ship’s HP before they take down your ship. Collect your loot.

Mage Loots:

• [Midnight Sun] (10N)
• [Muradin's Spyglass] (10N)
• [Ring of Rapid Ascent] (25N)
• [Amulet of the Silent Eulogy] (25N)
• [Gunship Captain's Mittens] (25N)
• [Corp'rethar Ceremonial Crown] (25N)
• [Midnight Sun] Heroic (10H)
• [Muradin's Spyglass] Heroic (10H)
• [Ring of Rapid Ascent] Heroic (25H)
• [Amulet of the Silent Eulogy] Heroic (25H)
• [Gunship Captain's Mittens] Heroic (25H)
• [Corp'rethar Ceremonial Crown] Heroic (25H)

A lot of good drop for Mages from the “Lootship Battle”. The only item that is iffy, is the Midnight because of the mp5 on it. I personally have been passing them to any healers that needed them. If no healers needed it, only then I would grab it. There are plenty of weapon alternatives out there.

[General Strategy used was taken from WoWHead.com]

“Lord Marrogar is a unique creature created of skeletons. He is the first boss in the Icecrown Citadel.”

He has one of the coolest boss character models- he is a 4-headed winged skeleton torso, with a big ice ax! As the first boss of Icecrown Citadel, he’ll serve as a gear check for Guilds to see if they are “ready” to tackle this raid instance.

Boss Stats:

• Hit Points – 5,200,000 (10man), 23,740,000 (25man)
• No Enrage Timer

Abilities:

• Saber Lash: Inflicts 200% weapon damage split evenly between the target and its 2 nearest allies.
• Bone Spike Graveyard: Hurls a spike at a random player, impaling all players between the boss and the target on Bone Spikes, inflicting 9,000 direct Physical damage, and additional 10% health as damage every 1 second until the spike is destroyed.
• Coldflame: Inflicts 6,000 (9k on 25man) Frost damage every 1 second for 3 seconds to anyone caught by the moving line of frost.
• Bone Storm: Inflicts 6,000 (12k on 25man) Physical damage every 2 seconds to players caught in the storm.

Recommended Consumables:

• [Flask of the Frost Wyrm]
• Spell Damage food of your choice or Feast

This is a simple fight with a bit of target switching, and a lot of raid awareness. You would want any consumables which may help your DPS.

Frost Mage Overview:

• Pet Friendly: Friendly
• Cooldowns: You may want to save your Ice Blocks, and Cold Snap for when you get trapped in a Bone Storm.

Your Water Elemental won’t be targeted by Bone Spike and is immune to the Coldflame- but he can be damaged by the Bone Storm. You pet will have a 80% damage reduction to AoE damage so you don’t have to worry about moving him around. Just have him keep on attacking.

Coldflame

During the fight Lord Marrowgar will spawn blue flames on the ground that will move out towards the raid in a linear path. There will be 4 flames, and they shoot out in an “X” pattern. Pretty simple, don’t stand in the blue flames. They do Frost damage, so have Frost Ward up!

The flame doesn’t follow anyone, it shoots out in a straight line. If you see one going towards you, simply side-step and continue on DPSing. Easy enough, no reason why you should take damage from this.

Bone Spikes

Every so often, he will do the Bone Spike Graveyard, which will target a random person in the raid. That person AND every person between him and the boss will be impaled by a Bone Spike. This means: Spread out, and don’t have anyone standing in front of you, between you and the boss.

Bone Spikes take priority over DPSing the boss. If someone is impaled, free him/her as soon as possible. Faster they are freed, the less damage they take, and the faster that person can go back to DPS/healing. Have a macro set up for quick switching:

/target Bone Spike

If you get impaled, you CANNOT Ice Block out of it. Just hope your raid buddies will free you before you die.

Bone Storm

At some points during the fight, he will begin to spin his ax around in circles, and start whirlwinding randomly around the room. At this point, try to spread out, but stay close enough to one of your healers to stay alive. Run away from Lord Marrowgar if you see him headed your direction. You can DPS if you want, but staying alive is more important.

During the Bone Storm phase, he will also spawn the Coldflames too. So keep a look out for the flames spreading on the floor. If you happen to get trapped by a wall with Marrowgar going all Tasmanian Devil on you, feel free to Ice Block and keep yourself alive.

When he stops his Bone Storm, ALL AGGRO RESETS, so let the main tank pick him back up before you start DPSing again. So pay attention and stop DPS when you see that he is about to stop spinning.

Strategy

DPS boss, kill Bone Spikes as soon as they appear, then hop back onto the boss. This isn’t a DPS race, it is a “pay attention and survive” fight. Dodge flames, run when he whirlwinds, and repeat. Keep Ice Barrier up!

Use Blink to get in range to help kill Bone Spikes, or use it to avoid flames, or to get away from the spinning Marrowgar himself. Keep Frost Ward up during the whirlwind phase just in case you have to run through some flames.

Mage Loots:

• [Cord of the Patronizing Practitioner]
• [Frost Needle]
• [Bone Sentinel's Amulet] (25man)
• [Crushing Coldwraith Belt] (25man)
• [Frozen Bonespike] (25man)
• [Loop of the Endless Labyrinth] (25man)
• [Marrowgar's Frigid Eye] (25man)

A lot of good drop for Mages from the first boss of the instance. The only item that is iffy, is the Frigid Eye because of the mp5 on it. I personally think that ring is better than the Loop of the Endless Labyrinth if you are Hit Capped, but I don’t think I would roll against any healers that want it.

[Image and General Strategy used was taken from WoWHead.com]

Kologarn is considered sixth boss encounter in Ulduar, after you have defeated XT-002 Deconstructor, and gain access to the Antichamber. He is the only non-optional boss in the Antichamber because he guards the Shattered Walkway into central Ulduar where not only is he protecting the bridge, he is the bridge.

He is a huge Titan boss, but you only fight his body from the torso, and up. Each of his arms are separate targets, and have their own health. Kologarn is often misquoted to be Gandalf from the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. His quotes are actually from the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Boss Stats:

• Hit Points – 3,600,000 (normal), 15,340,000 (heroic)
• No Enrage Timer

Abilities:

• Focused Eyebeam: Shoots 2 beams from his eyes simultaneously, each inflicting 2,775 to 3,225 Nature damage, and follows their targets.
• Overhead Smash: Inflicts physical damage and applies stacking Crunch Armor, which reduces the target’s armor by 25% for 45 seconds.
• One-Armed Overhead Smash: Inflicts physical damage and applies stacking Crunch Armor, which reduces the target’s armor by 25% for 45 seconds. Cast when one arm is destroyed.
• Stone Shout: A raid-wide shout, which inflicts 1,084 to 1,216 Physical damage. Cast if both of the arms are dead.
• Petrifying Breathe: Inflicts 14,063 to 15,937 Nature damage every 1 second, and applies Brittle Skin, which increases damage taken by 20% for 8 seconds. Cast if there are no targets in melee range.
• Stone Grip: Grabs 1 target, incapacitating them and inflicting 3,700 to 4,300 Physical damage every 1 second, until they are freed. The Arm can sustain 100,000 damage before it releases its target. Used only by his Right Arm.
• Shockwave: Inflicts 8,788 to 10,212 Nature damage to the whole raid. Used only by his Left Arm.

Recommended Consumables:

• [Flask of the Frost Wyrm]
• Spell Damage food of your choice or Feast

This is a simple fight with a bit of target switching, and a bit of AoEing. You would want any consumables which may help your DPS.

Frost Mage Overview:

• Pet Friendly: Friendly
• Cooldowns: You may want to save your Ice Blocks, and Cold Snap for when you get targeted by the Eye Beams.

Your Water Elemental won’t be targeted by any of Kologarn’s attacks but can be attacked by the spawns. They will be picked up by a tank so you shouldn’t have to worry about that. Your pet’s Freeze ability will come in handy to freeze all the adds together once the tank grabs aggro on them.

Kologarn’s Eye Beam

During the fight Kologarn will target a random raid member and shoot two Eye Beams at you. You can tell who the target is by seeing where the two beams first land. If there is a beam to the left and one to the right of you, then start running, the target is you! It’s like Felmyst all over again.

As a Mage, you can simply Blink away, and have a head start at kiting the beams. The beams moves a little bit slower than running speed, so kiting them shouldn’t be hard. As a Frost Mage, you can position yourself anywhere in the room (like in a corner), and if you get targeted, instead of causing panic and kiting through other players, you can simply Ice Block the beam, and the beam will stay on you without doing any damage.

Kologarn’s Arms

Occasionally Kologarn’s Right Arm will grab a random raid member (3 on Heroic Mode), and in order to free that person, the raid will need to inflict a certain amount of damage to the arm. 100,000 damage on Normal Mode and 480,000 damage on Heroic Mode. You CANNOT Ice Block if you get grabbed.

The raid will be attacking the Right Arm everytime it is up anyways, so it won’t be a problem to free anyone who gets grabbed. Everytime the arm is killed, Kolgarn main body loses health equal to the arm’s health (550,000 health on Normal Mode and 2,300,000 health on Heroic Mode).

Kologarn’s Left Arm is usually ignored, and the damage it does can be healed through. The Raid Leader may at some point call DPS on the Left Arm if he sees that the health is low from incidental AoEing.

Elemental Adds

Whenever an arm is destroyed, Kologarn will spawn a set of around 5 adds. The adds have around 52,000 health on Normal Mode and 130,000 health on Heroic Mode each. After the tank grabs the adds, you can start AoEing the adds down.

As a Frost Mage with Improved Blizzard and Frostbite, you can easily AoE the adds early and safely. It should only take one Blizzard with the help of the rest of the raid members to kill all the adds.

Again, you can use your Water Elemental’s Freeze to freeze the adds down, or even run up and Frost Nova them yourself to help keep them together.

Strategy

Kill the Right Arm, kill the adds, attack his main body, then back onto his Right Arm when it respawns. Rinse and Repeat. Collect loot. Heroic Mode is pretty much the same as Normal Mode, except his attacks do more damage, and Kologarn has more health.

Mage Loots:

• [Pendant of Piercing Glare]
• [Emerald Signet Ring]
• [Spark of Hope]
• [Bracer of Unleashed Magic] (heroic)
• [Robes of Umbral Brute] (heroic)
• [Ironmender] (heroic)
• [Handwraps of Plentiful Recovery] (heroic)

As always, anything with Crit/Hit and Spell Power is up for grabs. The Gloves, though has Haste and Spell Power, I would grab if no healers wanted it. It has a… realy “Healy” name for the gloves, and it wouldn’t feel right if I took that over a Healer.

The Spirit Trinket, is something not for us Mages, but I kind of want to get one to see how much crit rating I can get with Molten Armor. The reduced Mana cost is nice to have too.

[Image and General Strategy used was taken from WoWHead.com]

Maybe because of his game design background, he is viewing this from a different angle from how I view things (have you ever watched a movie with a film major? not too fun). So I would like to give my view on how I see things, and have some counter points to some of his arguments.

“Think about that, and then ask yourself if it was really worth all the broken friendships, drama, anger, rage, arguments, etc. that it took to get to this point.”

I myself have not gone through any of this getting to this point. Maybe frustration on some bosses, but it never anything extreme. I know it has happened to quite a bit of players, but not all. You can’t just assume that all end game raiders go through all of this just to be successful with it. I am lucky enough to not have to go through all that.

There are a lot of people who put up with all of that, and still think it is worth all that trouble. I wouldn’t go through broken friendships myself, but drama, anger, rage, and arguments I can put up with to see all this end game content. Then there are players who don’t think it is worth it, and won’t pursue the end game content grind.

As a married person, do you think it was really worth all the broken friendships, drama, anger, rage, arguments, etc. that it took to get to that point (marriage)? I know this isn’t the best comparison, but it still shows that different people find things that are or are not worth fighting for. Some people will think such a relationship is not worth all the trouble, some who believe it is worth all the ups and downs, and there are those who are lucky enough to be able to make it through without running into any sorts of troubles.

“An hour of killing trash for the “reward” of a 10 minute, scripted boss battle is like suffering through a root canal for the reward of a prostate exam. Oh, and if something goes wrong in that boss battle, you very well might be clearing that same hour of trash to take another shot at it.”

The ONLY “end game” boss encounters which make you clear “hours of trash” after a boss wipe is in Mount Hyjal, where you have to clear eight waves of trash before each boss fight (which takes about 10 minutes by the way), so I’m not sure which bosses you are referring to. All other instances allow about an hour and half of boss attempts before the trash respawns.

If clearing trash is such a horrible experience to go through, then why are there so many people going on “trash runs” or deliberately wiping on Mount Hyjal bosses for the soul reason to redo the trash waves? That is because trash mobs drop very good loot, and provide a lot of rep for many players. Many guilds don’t kill specific bosses in the Black Temple so that they could return later and kill all the trash mobs over again.

In fact, there is so little trash in Sunwell, that many people wish there were more trash to clear. There is only two pulls between Kalecgos and Brutallus. None between Brutallus and Felmyst. Only two total mobs between M’uru and Kil’jaeden.

“People that get massively sucked into raiding fulfill this need through raid success. As a result, they often have less of a drive to work on their family, friends, children, spouse, job, or school. So the actually important things in their real life suffer because this crucial need is being satisfied through MMO raiding.”

Yes there have been many stories of people who have been too absorbed into the game that it has affect other aspects of their lives. This isn’t just raiding, the entire game is addicting. Ultimately, it is the player who has to do something about this. It’s not Blizzard’s fault they designed a good game.

The player has to be the one to manage their own time and set their own priorities. Monique of Girls Don’t Game has written a very good article on this from her very own personal experience.

I personally raid 3 nights a week in a guild that has progressed steadily through Sunwell and is currently on the last boss of The Burning Crusade. There are many guilds out there who raid 4 to 5 days a week, even 7 days a week. That would be way to much for me. I know where my own limit is, and everyone should figure out their own limit.

“I play games to PLAY THE ACTUAL GAME. I don’t play games to load up a web site and read a step by step strategy for how to defeat a boss. Sure, you don’t have to use raid walkthroughs, but you have to be masochistic not to. Raid encounters are generally designed to require an extremely specific set of maneuvers in order to defeat them.”

These boss guides are there to help you and provide tips for you to take down specific bosses. They give you a heads up on what abilities the boss does, and offer suggestions on how to deal with them. Things you will learn after one or two attempts on a boss anyways, so it just to save you some time and attempts. Sure you don’t have to read boss strategy, but it helps.

Knowing how to beat a boss doesn’t mean the boss will automatically be beaten. If it were so, then every guild would have Kil’jaeden down by now. It still requires a lot of attempts and practice in order to kill the boss. Just because you read up and watched videos on how to ride a bike, or how to swim, doesn’t mean you can start cycling and swimming like you were Lance Armstrong or Micheal Phelps.

“I also hate the way raiding turns people into such a tiny fraction of what their character can and should be. Most characters end up using 2 or 3 abilities 90% of the time, and in the same exact order over and over again. That gets incredibly boring.”

This doesn’t just apply to raiding, this applies to all aspects of the game. If you are leveling, raiding, doing 5 man instances, or even PvPing, you will spam the same few abilities over and over again depending on class and spec. So if you find that incredibly boring, then you are playing the wrong game.

In fact, I use more of my Mage’s ability in raids than in any other aspect of the game. There are spells I use in raids that I have never used while farming, leveling, or PvPing. That is just the Mage class though. If you are looking at Healing classes, of course they can’t heal a mob to death while farming, but in PvP, they do the same thing they do in raids, keep other people alive.

“It was something like all of our mages and warlocks had the tier 4 (something), so we had to make sure if we did a certain boss we had a hunter along. Otherwise if that token dropped it would be wasted. Having your roster decisions affected in this way is just stupid design.”

If your raid roster decisions are being affected this way, maybe this is the reason why you aren’t having much success in raids. If you aren’t killing a boss because you don’t have the right roster, and you don’t have the right roster because you changed it based on loot, then this isn’t because of stupid design, it is because poor raid decisions.

I know a lot of guilds do this to get more people geared (even my guild does it), but only if it doesn’t affect the raid. That and we only switch out players for the same class. We’re not gonna potentially wipe on a boss for hours just because one piece of loot could potentially be destroyed.

“The reality is that each member of that 5 man group probably worked a lot harder, put in more effort, and used a lot more skill than a single member of that 25 man raid group. In that 4 hour raid, at least 20 of those 25 people probably only paid full attention for maybe 30-60 minutes of that entire 4 hours. In the 5 man group, all 5 had to pay attention for pretty much the whole time.”

I don’t believe this is true. I think it takes more skill and coordination in a raid than in a group. In 25 man raids, the mobs and bosses hit harder and more often. The players have to heal more often, and do more damage in raids than in 5 man groups. It is different for everyone, but for me, I’ve seen more “/afk” players in 5 man groups than in 25 man raids.

I don’t know how much experience you have in raiding (I know you have at least done Karazhan), but if you allowing 5 players in the raid to slack off for 3 hours in a 4 hour raid, then the fault is on the raid leader/officers. With many tools out there such as Recount or WWS, you can easily find out who isn’t doing their part in the raid, and can be easily be replaced by someone who can.

“Then one of our guild members switched his priest to a shadow priest, ran a few 5 mans to gear up, and we rolled over the Curator with ease. Adding this ONE class (aka mana battery) completely transformed everything. We had read that a shadow priest was virtually required to win, but had foolishly tried to do it without one (since we didn’t have one). The utter inflexibility of the boss encounter made it so you pretty much had to forget about success if you didn’t bring this one specific class. Lame.”

I agree that some bosses require certain types of classes in order to beat it, and it may seem unfair at times. Every raid encounter requires an X amount of Tanks, Y amount of Healers, and Z amount of DPS. They require a the right balance of classes, but rarely ever need a specific type of class. Some classes may have an advantage over other classes though. For example, bringing a Mage over a Druid for a decursing fight. Stopping DPS to decurse might not wipe a raid, but stopping heals to decurse might.

Your example isn’t a good one. The reason why you killed Curator easily with a Shadow Priest, isn’t because you brought a Shadow Priest. You replaced a healer with a DPS class, and that is the real reason why you were successful. Curator does NOT require a Shadow Priest at all. You could have brought in a Rogue instead, and have the same result.

“WoW raiding however has taken a horrible turn. It is the *only* form of end game content, it requires tons of preparatory farming, it requires *TONS* of trash killing, and the raid encounters themselves have far too much randomness/arbitrariness, too many random power immunities, etc.”

It depends on player’s definition of “end game content”. To some players, it may very well be raiding, and to others, it may be the Season 4 Gladiator title and flying mount. Many people play the game who likes raiding, many who likes to PvP. There are some who are completely content with just 5 man instances or just running Karazhan. Everyone is different.

First you bash raid encounter designs for having players go through specific actions in specific times, and how it takes no skills and players don’t have to react to anything. Then you say there are too many randomness in encounters. Which is it? The fact is that players in a raid do have to think fast, and make many split second decisions during raids.

Whatever it may be, of course it will require some sort of preparation. You wouldn’t go into a meeting or an exam totally unprepared would you? No, you would plan ahead, practice your speech for the meeting, or study your ass off for the exam.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I enjoy raiding, and have a lot of fun doing it, and I do get a sense of “achievement” when beating a boss. If you don’t, why are you even raiding? Whenever you see a video where a raid successfully down a difficult boss, you always here the “nerdgasms” at the end from everyone over vent. Yes there are many people who get a sense of satisfaction when defeating a boss, and that is good indication of good game design by Blizzard. As a game designer yourself, you would think this to be an important element in a good game wouldn’t you?

From what I’ve read from your comments, and articles, you have only Karazhan raiding experience (no 25 man raids), and are basing your arguments from only that. You can’t start bashing end game raiding if you haven’t experienced it yourself. Your views on end game raiding would be different if you were in a successful raiding guild.

Maybe you have had very bad experiences with raids, or maybe raiding just isn’t right for you. Everyone has their own likes and dislikes, and you are entitled to think anyway you want. You obviously have more MMO experiences than me, so you have other games to compare WoW’s raiding system with. My only other MMO experience is FFXI, which I really enjoyed, but thought it required way too much time in order to do anything (which is why I stopped).

As for where to put yourself in progression, I’d say, once you have three or more bosses on farm in the instances, you can say that is where you are in your PvE Progression. For example, if you have the first boss in Hyjal on farm, and first two bosses in BT on farm, then consider yourself a Hyjal/BT raider. If that makes any sense New poll should be located somewhere in the right side bar.

Here are the results from the last poll:

The poll only accounted for the last 500 voters, so it might not be as accurate. The majority of the readers are here for WoW, with some readers who are here for everything but WoW, and some who are here for everything. About 70% of all my posts have been about WoW so that sounds about right. Doesn’t mean I forgot about the rest of the Anime/Games readers, I have more stuff coming up. I just got to get off my lazy butt first.

Incoming WoW Posts:

• Frost Mage Leveling Guide
• Frost Mage PvE Guide
• Frost Mage PvP Guide

Income Anime Posts:

• Upcoming Summer Anime
• Spring Anime Review
• More Soul Eater stuff

Here is a guide to everything you will need to know about your Water Elemental. I will break down the Water Elemental’s spells, attributes, and the impact the pet will make in PvE and PvP. If you have anything you would like to add to this little guide, please let me know and I will gladly add any extra helpful information. -Updated: April 16, 2008-

The Water Elemental is essentially a Frost Mage’s best friend. It will save your frosty behind plenty of times, whether it be for a distraction to keep an enemy occupied, extra dps to kill something fast, or an extra Freeze to help you escape (Hmm… I don’t like to refer to my pet as “it”, so from now on I will use “he or him”). You will learn to love your watery companion, and eventually, will not be able to play again without your pet.

What is the Water Elemental?

The Water Elemental is a Mage ability granted by a talent in the Frost Tree. It summons a combat Water Elemental to fight with the Mage for 45 seconds. The elemental functions similarly to the Warlock’s minions or the Hunter’s pets. A pet action bar appears for the Mage to command the elemental and control his spells for its entire duration. He has two spells that he can use: Waterbolt and Freeze.

The Elemental is summoned by the spell: Summon Water Elemental.
The mana cost of the spell is 16% of your base mana, and can be reduced by Elemental Precision and Frost Channeling Talents, both of which are also in the Frost Talent Tree.

The spell has a 3 minute cooldown which can be instantly refreshed by Cold Snap. This also means that the spell is inadvertently affected by Ice Floes, which reduces the cooldown of Cold Snap by 20% which will give you more chances to summon your pet.

Default Controls:

Control + 1: Attack
Control + 2: Follow
Control + 3: Stay
Control + 4: Waterbolt (toggle on/off)
Control + 5: Ranged frost nova
Control + 8: Aggressive
Control + 9: Defensive
Control + 0: Passive

Attributes:

Your Elemental’s stats will scale with the gear you have on. He will receive 30% of your Intellect and Stamina. Each point of Intellect will increase his mana by 5, and each point of Stamina will increase his health by 7.5.

The Water Elemental is also affected by your + Frost Damage. Your pet will receive 40% of your + Frost Damage.

Spells:

Waterbolt is the Elemental’s main attack. It has a 2.5 second cast and does Frost Damage. Its base damage is 256-328 and is affected by your + Frost Damage.

You pet will receive 40% of your + Frost Damage, but since the spell is a 2.5 second cast, Waterbolt only scales with 71.43% of the Water Elemental’s spell damage. What that means is that Waterbolt receives 28.57% of your + Frost Damage.

Unlike Frostbolt, it is not a binary spell, and can be partially resisted. When the spell crits, it does 150% damage. The spell is also affected by the Winter’s Chill debuff you apply to your target, which will increase the critical strike % of all Frost Spells by up to 10%.

Freeze is the Elemental’s secondary attack. It is essentially a 35 yard ranged Frost Nova with a 25 second cooldown. This means the elemental may only use this ability up to two times in his duration.

This ability can only be cast manually by the user. When activated, it will give you an area affect grid similar to Flamestrike in which you can place anywhere within the Elemental’s 35 yard range. When used, it will hit all enemies in an 8 yard radius for 74-86 Frost Damage, and freeze them in place for 8 seconds.

Vulnerabilities:

The Water Elemental is immuned to all Frost Damage and Poisons. The pet can however be banished.

Raiding with your Water Elemental:

The Water Elemental provides a great boost in DPS for a small cost of mana, with zero additional threat cause to you. Your Elemental will account for about 10% of your total damage output in a raid environment. To maximize this, you must be able to manage your cooldowns as efficiently as possible.

Also, don’t be afraid to use your pet on trash pulls. It only has a 3 minute cooldown, and will most likely be up by the time you reach the boss.

Raiding Tips:

Pop your Trinkets BEFORE summoning your Water Elemental. Your pet recieves 40% of your + Frost Damage when you summon him. Increasing your + Frost Damage right before summoning him will increase his DPS, which in turn will increase yours. Try to time your trinkets with the summoning of your pet as best as you can.

Use Cold Snap to summon your pet more often. In long boss fights in which you don’t need your Ice Block to remove any deadly debuffs, don’t be afraid to use Cold Snap. If the fight is going to last longer than 7 minutes, summon your pet towards the beginning of the fight and use Cold Snap right away. Once your first Elemental expires, summon him out again. Towards the end of the fight, your Cold Snap cooldown will be up for you to summon him another time.

Keep your pet alive. Dead DPS = Zero DPS. Void Reaver’s Arcane Orb headed in your direction? Make sure you put your pet on “follow” so he doesn’t get hit by the explosion. Gruul’s Cave In above your head? Do the same thing.

The Water Elemental is immuned to a lot of bosses abilites such as Gruul’s Shatter and Lurker’s Water Sprout. Research ahead of time to find out the best time to summon your pet for each boss fight.

Your pet’s mana pool usually last long enough for him to chain cast for 35-40 seconds, leaving him with about 10 seconds of just standing there. Having a Shadow Priest or a Mana Totem in your group will help increase his DPS a bit.

Speaking of group buffs, your pet will benefit from any raid or group buffs or auras as long as they can be applied to him after he is summoned.

Water Elemental isn’t affected by your spell haste rating, but he can benefit from Heroism as long as he is summoned BEFORE Heroism is popped. If he is summoned after Heroism is used, he will not recieve the buff.

PvPing with your Water Elemental:

The Water Elemental will give you the extra damage needed to take down your opponent. If left alone for the full duration, your Elemental will be able to do around ~10,000 damage at level 70.

Not only that, it will give you two ranged Frost Novas with his ability, Freeze. That will open up many opportunities to escape melee, and to get in more Shatter Combos.

PvPing Tips:

Don’t summon your pet on terrain which may affect his line of sight. Your opponent may use pillars and bridges to their advantage to avoid taking any damage from your Water Elemental.

Use your Freezes. It is the best spell your pet brings to the PvP table. More frozen targets equals more Shatter crits. It also makes keeping a distance from melee ten times easier.

Like I said before, if left alone, he can do about ~10k damage (that is if you are close to 800 spell damage). If your opponent is going to ignore your pet, kite him away from pet and Ice Block. If he won’t turn his attention to your pet, he will take a hefty amount of pain. If he does turn to your pet, cancel your Ice Block early and unleash your fury without being interrupted.

Catch the flag runner. If you are in combat and chasing after the flag runner but he is outside your Blink + Frost Nova range, you can summon your pet to catch him for you. The Elemental’s Freeze range is 35 yards. Use it wisely.

Don’t summon your pet too early. If you do this, before you engage your opponent, they may simply try to stay away from you until your pet expires. It is best to summon in the middle of the fight, or when you are sure to land a good Shatter Combo (eg. he is sheeped, sapped, stunned, or rooted).

Water Elemental Mods:

The mod I use is called Frosty, which keeps track of all Water Elemental cooldowns. There is a castbar for the Water Elemental’s Waterbolt, a cooldown bar for when you use Freeze so you know when it is back up, an expiration bar for the 45 seconds the pet is out, and a cooldown bar for when the cooldown is up for you to summon your Water Elemental again.

You can download the mod here: Frosty – Mage Water Elemental Addon

Pet Tricks:

You can sacrifice your pet’s life to save your own. Have you ever agro’d something by accident that you know you can’t solo? Say you agro’d one of those Giant Guardian guys at Netherwing Ledge while doing your herbing daily. Normally if you agro one of those guys you are pretty much dead. Not with your trusted sidekick! The Giant will club you for about a third of your health, you summon elemental and then Ice Block. Once he turns his attention to your pet, immediately cancel Ice Block, Blink away and hit Invisible. It will take the Giant two swings or more to take out your pet, giving you enough time for you fully invis out (5 seconds).

If you are farming certain mobs in an area with lots of competition, you may use your pet to tag mobs for you while you are busy fighting your current target. It may take some micromanagement, but it gets the job done.

Sources: Wowwiki.com, Wowhead.com, Wow.allakhazam.com, WoW>Mage Forums