First, in regards to all of Ruby Sanctum: Don’t underestimate it. We’ve all gotten used to our nice, fat 25% buff in ICC and now it’s gone. We definitely saw some wipes on the trash and a lot more on the minibosses. A lot of this can be attributed to learning new encounters, but that doesn’t mean they have to hit softly either. We ended up using CC on the trash to make each pack easier, which I have to say I’d like to see more of in general.

After you defeat all the trash and the three minibosses, Halion will fly down to the center. Before you start the fight, make sure you split the raid into two even groups; you’ll need this for phase 3 (It was pretty even to just to melee/ranged for our groups). Once you engage him, he’ll create a ring of fire around him, so make sure you’re all ready to move in when the tank is pulling (not like one attempt where the tank ran in while we were all eating for our buffs). This is a dragon, so you have a cleave, flame breath and tail to watch out for. The flame breath is a good chunk of damage, but should be no problem for properly geared tanks and healers.

Phase one has two big sources of raid damage. The first is Fiery Combustion, which is a DoT that ticks for decent damage, but more importantly stacks a debuff called Mark of Combustion. When the DoT is cleansed, a void zone is left behind that both causes damage and knocks players back; this void zone’s size is determined by the size of the stack of Mark of Combustion. Basically, whichever raider gets this debuff will need to run out from the raid as soon as possible so it can be cleansed.

The second ability to watch for is Meteor Strike: this ability will mark an area under a raider where a meteor will land. Everyone should move away from this area, and stay on their toes, because the meteor will send out a snaky, “X” shaped path of fire from the center. It didn’t seem to do too much damage in the fire, but why stand in it?

Once Halion reaches 75% health, he’ll shift into the Twilight Realm and open a portal for you to follow him. This is phase two. Everybody, save for maybe one tank should go in (One tank can stay out to get an aggro lead when phase three comes). Also, make sure you let a tank get in before you enter, and move immediately as soon as you zone in. Our raids were running into the issue of non-tanks dying while entering the Twilight Realm. Partly, this was because of raiders entering before the tank, though it’s also very easy to be cleaved once you enter (from my logs, it looks like the cleave is what killed me every time). Since you do have to wait for the tank, it’s a good idea to prepare for a lapse in healing whichever tank is going in. For me, this meant Earth Shielding, putting up a Riptide and proccing an Ancestral Fortitude with a Lesser Healing Wave or two. From there I would enter the portal as soon as I saw that tank disappear and start healing quickly. The same dragon sort of things apply here: a breath, cleave and tail whip.

In this phase there are three raid damaging abilities. The first is a raid wide AoE of shadow damage from Dusk Shroud. If you’ve done Sindragosa, think of the constant damage there and you get a good picture of this encounter.

Secondly, there’s Soul Consumption, which is the compliment of Fiery Combustion. The ability is nearly the same except now the void zone on the floor will suck you in instead of knock you back.

The final ability is Twilight Cutter. Basically, there are two purple orbs (the same color as everything else) which will form a laser in between them that you cannot be hit by. Seriously, it will kill you. Since these orbs rotate (clockwise), you need to kite the boss so that everybody can avoid the beam.

If you get him down to 50%, he’ll finally enter phase three by opening portals back to the Physical Realm. This is where your raid will split up. Nothing changes for either realm, in terms of damaging abilities, but now your raid will have to stay alive and DPS Halion evenly. You’ll notice that there’s a percentage at the top of your interface that corresponds to Halion’s Corporeality, starting at 50%. If he takes more damage in the Physical Realm, then he will start to shift more to the Twilight Realm, where he will both cause and take more damage. This works vice versa, as well. Basically, if Corporeality is going lower than 50%, the Physical Realm needs to slow down, and if it goes above 50%, the Twilight Realm needs to slow down. Luckily, this will tend to even itself out, due to it causing him to take more damage in the realm where he was previously taking less, and as healers, we don’t really care about it. Still, it’s nice to know.

If you can survive this phase and DPS evenly, Halion will drop and you can scour him for your shiny loot!

Good luck!

The Math-y Portion

The Glyph of Water Mastery modifies your Water Shield to provide 30% more passive mana regeneration. At level 80, we have Rank 9 of Water Shield, which provides 100 mana per 5 seconds passively. This means that the glyph adds 30 MP5. To put this into context, there are many items dropped in heroics that provide around 20 to 30 MP5 on it (here is a quick wowhead search of mail items with MP5, limited to the original heroics that Wrath of the Lich King provided).

To prove my point, let me show you some math on why this is such a lackluster benefit. First, let’s establish where MP5 is helpful to us: During boss fights. Outside of boss fights, it’s much easier to regenerate mana, since we can drink and tend to have more mana regen when not casting. During a boss fight, however, we can’t drink to regenerate mana and can only use one potion, as well as various talents and skills to gain mana. Further, MP5 is a ratio with units of time, so we can say that the longer a fight lasts, the more mana we will regenerate. Lets say a boss fight will last five minutes; a fairly average length for calculations. There are 300 seconds in 5 minutes, but we’re in units of 5 seconds, so we will get that 30 mana  60 times during that boss fight, adding up to 1800 mana (the math: 5minutes * 60seconds / 5seconds * 30mana = 1800).

On the other hand, a Runic Mana Potion would provide at least 4200 mana in that fight. Another consideration is that the Insightful Earthsiege Diamond—the meta gem recommended for Shamans to use—will be providing about 50MP5², adding up to about 3000 mana for the same fight.

But we can go further and even show how other glyphs can provide more mana than the Glyph of Water Mastery. How does this work, when no other glyph effects mana regeneration? Consider glyphed Lesser healing wave.

Lesser Healing Wave uses 659.4 mana at level 80 and heals for 1606 to 1834—or on average it heals for 1720. It’s spell power coefficient is 80.57% (90.57% with Tidal Waves), meaning 90.57% of your spell power will be added to the amount you heal with this spell. It would be reasonable to assume that even a fresh level 80 can have at least 1000 spell power, so my calculations will use that number. That means that your LHW should be healing for about:

1720 + (1000 * .9057) = 2625.7 hp

Now, we can look at the amount of mana used per health point, simply by dividing the 659.4 mana used to cast that by the 2625.7 hp that it provided, giving .251 mana per health point (the math: 659.4mana / 2625.7hp = .251mana/hp). Next, if we were to glyph LHW, it would be 20% more effective, yielding:

2625.7 hp * 1.2 = 3150.84 hp

Or, 525.14 health points more for the same amount of mana used (the math: 3150.84 – 2625.7 = 525.14). If we want to figure out how much that amount of hp is in terms of mana, we use our mana/hp ratio. Multiplying the ratio by hp will cancel out that unit, leaving only mana remaining. Here’s the math:

525.14 hp * .251 mana/hp = 131.81 mana

What does this mean? Every time you cast a glyphed Lesser Healing Wave (assuming no overheal), you are using about 132 mana less than the same spell without a glyph. Since you can cast LHW at least three times in a 5 second period, that could add up to over 396MP5.

Now of course all this math is theoretical and the results all depend on the fight and what you are doing during that fight, but the point is that the Glyph of Water Mastery is provably outpaced by many other things in terms of mana.

When is the Glyph of Water Mastery worth using?

Simply, when leveling. More mana regeneration means less stopping to regenerate mana, complicated by low level shamans having less tools for mana regen and gear providing less MP5 at lower levels.

1: I also called them out for their hunter column, which Rilgon at Stabilized Effort Scope does a much better job of. He may do so with more rage than I think is necessary, but he justifies himself with cold hard math; I definitely respect his opinion on hunters.

2: Experience provides MP5 values as shown in the table here for the IED meta gem. As a shamans haste goes up, so will the MP5 of the gem, but 50MP5 is by far a reasonable estimate, also used here.

The third of the characters I have at level 80 is Myrtrix, and he’s the reason I’m playing currently.

As I mentioned talking about my hunter, I quit playing WoW in 2006, after about a year of playing. It wasn’t until I had some free time in November of 2008 that I saw a promotion to reactivate my account and try out the new expansion. Though I had been more attracted to console games, I just wasn’t at home as much anymore, though I still had free time I wanted to play games during. Since I typically had my laptop and a WiFi connection while I was out, WoW fit well in that spot.

My hunter, though, was just too different. Not only was I fuzzy about how I played a Hunter in 2005, I had no idea how to play a Hunter in 2008. Feeling a little lost and remembering the year it took to get my Hunter to level 58, starting a new character at about the same level was very enticing. I was also feeling a little disengaged from only being useful at range, so I had no hesitation jumping at toe to toe gameplay.

Death Knight’s are a blast to play, too! The starting experience was so polished, and I was progressing so quickly, going from a fresh character to filling out a talent tree in no time flat. And to top it off, they gave me full rare-quality gear and an epic mount. In the year I played my Hunter, I didn’t achieve anything close to that.

By the time I leveled Myrtrix to level 80, it was clear to me that tanking was a role that was needed. Let me take time aside to explain how my personality works: I’m somewhat of a jack of all trades. I take pride in filling the role that no one else is filling, then doing my job well. In life, that means I play a handful of instruments, so anytime there’s no bassist, I’m your man, and next week I’ll be filling in for the keyboard. That’s why I was so attracted to tanking. Here’s a position that there aren’t many others in, and I’m capable of doing it— sign me up!

As time went on, I went from tanking dungeons on to tanking heroics, and then all the way up to raids. I had a blast tanking my way through Naxxramas and even started to build a capable DPS offset. By the time Ulduar came out, though, I wasn’t needed as a tank as much, meaning my DPS set was getting more use, and it was okay. I was starting to get burnt out on tanking anyways. At the same time, my guild started falling apart, and outside of raiding, I didn’t want to do much with the character, so I moved back to my old main, and left Myrtrix to gain dust.

Lately though, with the ease of the Dungeon Finder, I’ve dusted off my Death Knight and even pulled out my tank gear again. Getting back to my desire to fill any role I’m needed in, what could be cooler to me than having the “holy trinity” of MMO’s? I have a Tank, a pure DPS, and a Healer.

So, while I’m still not as sold on tanking as I used to be, Myrtrix is getting use now, and he’s certainly not dusty anymore.

Colors are a suggestion

As soon as I found out what belongs in those little colored slots, I went looking for gems to match the colors I had. I figured if there were colored slots, and there are colored gems, this must be a matching game; square peg in the square hole and round peg in the round hole, as it were. But, any color gem can be placed in any color slot. The color matching serves only to award the bonus. The other enticement to use certain colors comes in the meta gem on your helmet. In order for your meta gem to provide its bonus, you must use the gem colors and numbers it asks for.

For example, to get the bonus from my Insightful Earthsiege Diamond, I must use one red, one yellow and one blue gem. After that, it doesn’t matter which colors I use for the remaining slots.

Socket Bonuses are not always worth matching colors

Often times you are better off stacking a single stat and ignoring socket bonuses. Here it helps to know the relative value of stats on your gear, but keep in mind that this stat value is relative to your specific gear. There are all sorts of ways to find out your stat values; On my Hunter I use Zeherah’s spreadsheet, and Shamans can use shaman_hep.

Here’s an example: I know that on my Resto Shaman, haste is valued at around 1.8 and spell power is valued at 1 (I haven’t run my own stat values yet, but I based this off a similarly geared Shaman). I got a piece of gear with a red and a yellow slot. This gave me a choice of whether to place a yellow Quick King’s Amber for the higher stat value or a red Reckless Ametrine for the slot bonus of five extra spell power; In this case, I was deciding on 10 haste or 17 spell power.

Since the ratio of haste to spell power is 1.8 to 1, I can multiply the 10 haste by 1.8 and see that it is worth 18 spell power, meaning the haste was better for me than the slot bonus. Of course, this example is so close it’s more an example of extreme min/maxing than anything else, but the point stands.

How to choose which stat to gem

Finally, I want to touch on which stat you should choose to stack with your gems. As a DPS player, you should stack which ever stat has the highest relative stat value without hitting any cap. On my hunter, hit gives the most DPS at 2.241 per point, but I’ve already passed the cap beyond which it is useful, meaning it provides zero DPS per point. After that, agility gives me 1.244 DPS per point and armor penetration gives me .935 DPS per point. Based on this, I can see that it’s more beneficial to stack agility.

As a tank or healer, the choice is a little less clear. On my Shaman, I know that gemming for haste will give me the most healing output, but there’s other things to consider, such as mana regeneration, when healing. Deciding which stat you want to gem is going to be based on your experiences. I typically have enough MP5 between my gear and buffs that gemming for it isn’t necessary. Another reason I gem for haste over spell power is that beyond output, haste makes my heals faster from starting the cast to the heal actually hitting its target, which increases my reaction time.

A tank’s choice is whether more HP or mitigation is more worthwhile to them. Stacking stamina gems will allow you to take more attacks before you die, but stacking mitigation will prevent you from taking the attacks. You may also consider whether more expertise would be beneficial—All expertise until you reach 26 serves as both a threat boost and damage mitigation by stopping your parried attacks which doesn’t allow the boss to hasten their next attack.

I freely admit that I know the least about tanks at the point in the game, however, so figure out for yourself what is best for you. In fact, no matter what, whether you DPS or heal, still take the time to find out for yourself what is best for your character and its gear and why it’s that way. It’ll only make you a better player.

You see, my first character to reach 80 was Myrtrix, my Death Knight, and my personality leads me to filling the spot that needs the most filling; How could I not end up tanking? I geared up in heroics and started tanking Naxxramas with my guild, and had a generally great time. We made it into Ulduar—4 bosses in—before the guild fell apart for various issues outside of raiding. This was all well and good though, because I was getting tired of tanking, and that spot wasn’t in such need anymore either.

With the guild fallen apart and no raids scheduled, I took the time to level my Hunter, and eventually started PUGing raids without worrying about locking myself to a non-guild group. And so my DK sat unused.

Ulduar came with patch 3.1, which came out in April of 2009. That means that my DK sat virtually unused for eight months—You’d better believe the game has changed in that time. But with the usefulness of the Dungeon Finder system, combined with the speed of the queue time for tanks, I couldn’t resist dusting off my old tank and playing him.

I believe things have changed in that time— at least now I do.

Dungeons go as fast as a tank possibly can, aggro is fast and loose, and there’s new dungeons to top it off. But in the end, what I’ve found matters the most is your attitude. I’m certainly not a bad tank. I was farming the original WOTLK heroics with guild members, and so it was only a little time of practice before those came back. I admit I am pretty stupid when it comes to Pit of Saron though. I know that Forgemaster Garfrost needs to face away from the group, but not like I know that if I’m on the far right of Violet Hold, I should get more towards the middle so that I can catch the far left squad, should it spawn. At the same time, however, I’m willing to listen to criticism and learn from my mistakes. I readily admit my own faults and mistakes, and then work to remedy them, as well as let the group know all this.

And surprisingly, even the people pushing to move at breakneck pace are patient and understanding with me. It’s an exchange: If I choose not to be a wall for them to bash their head into, they give me their patience. At the same time, If the healer doesn’t keep me alive (reasonably) or the DPS pulls aggro off me and dies, I provide both my own constructive criticism, as well as patience for them.

So I offer to you all the secret to a good PUG: Give it your best and come with a humble and patient attitude. The rest will fall into place.

In terms of composition, we had 2 tanks, 6 DPS and 2 healers. We opted for 2 healers knowing the fight is a DPS race, so that we could burn him down quickly. The tanks were a Warrior and a Paladin, and we had a Hunter and Elemental Shaman assigned to kiting the adds. It was my Shaman and a Druid healing.

We wiped the first time just due to trying things like Thunderstorming the adds off the cliff or disarming the boss (neither works). The second and third time, the Druid got the mark or I got the mark and we just weren’t ready for it. We were going to let the first mark die, since we weren’t getting the mark till about 50% boss health and it would delay the second mark till near the end. Finally, we assigned healing so that I was on the boss and he was on the mark, with raid heals done by whoever got to it first.

The biggest problem I ran into was mana towards the end, though I’m pretty sure we didn’t have replenishment the final attempt. The first half of the fight—if not longer—is simple beyond belief. The tanks take manageable damage, and there’s hardly any raid damage, especially if you spread out correctly. Boiling Blood should be healed, but it’s only 5000 damage every 3 seconds. Because of this, I only used maybe 10% mana over the first 70% of his health. Once he “frenzies” though, with (in our case) one mark up and spacing getting messed up by adds, you start spamming heals like crazy. I found it was best to drop my Mana Tide Totem earlier than later, so that I might get a chance to use it again. I almost got to use it twice; the cooldown ended literally as he died. I would use it as early as you’re not going to cap your mana and waste it, though.

In terms of which spells to use, I tried to use Riptide as often as possible to get Tidal Waves to proc, then Healing Wave or Lesser Healing Wave as appropriate. I found that I was using Healing Wave about half the time on the tanks, though seldom on the raid, due to how little raid damage there is (other than the mark). Chain Heal isn’t so useful for this fight, since it jumps 10 yards and everyone should be 12 yards apart, though I wanted to use it some to proc my totem, so I found I could use it when the tanks switch and get my extra spell power (as an aside, I’d love to have the new totem for this fight).

I also tried to keep Earth Shield on whichever tank was taking the beating currently, though I’m not sure it was worth the mana that it cost. The damage to the tanks wasn’t so high that it wouldn’t have been manageable otherwise, so maybe next time I’ll throw it on the marked person and see what happens.

The DPS was pretty good, so we killed him with only one mark up, thus getting I’ve Gone and Made a Mess. 2 healing it was definitely doable (especially since I’m in gear I either bought with emblems or got in the Icecrown Citadel heroics), and having the extra DPS save us a load of healing later. I think I’d rather see the fight go quickly than have another hand to help heal.

My newest character to reach 80 is my Shaman, Spacehoof, and is also currently my most played character day to day.

I started her on a separate server to play with girlfriend and her friend, who had his main there. She made a Ret Pally, and I made an Ele Shaman, linked with Recruit-A-Friend. We managed to get them to level 40 before we simply lost interest in that server (her friend never played with us, and we both had more characters on my home server). Eventually, when I was looking for another alt to level, I transferred her to Destromath and sent her some heirloom items. I originally planned on leveling her strictly in battlegrounds, but the XP was slow and I was feeling to cheap to buy gear as I leveled. So 40-47 were leveled in BGs and the rest by quests. With a combo of rest and heirloom XP bonuses, leveling went super quick. I dual specced her at some point but didn’t really use Resto until Northrend.

I’ll admit that I was nervous to heal dungeons, but it’s easier than you would think if you’ve never played a healer. Northrend leveling after that was essentially questing to fill time looking for a group to heal (this was before 3.3). I finally hit 80 on December 12th, but didn’t play much after that with the business of school finals and the holidays. In between all that, though, I managed to get about 3 marathon random heroic sessions in as well as a single heroic here and there, and really all my gear is from that. I can’t say enough how much patch 3.3 made gearing an alt easier. Not only is there the Dungeon Finder, but Tier 9 gear is easily purchasable, as well as heroic dungeons offering ilvl 232 gear, and rep enchants becoming BoA. I certainly can’t say enough how happy I am that I don’t have to gain reputation with Sons of Hodir again.

With that gear, though, I did manage to jump straight into higher level raids. I healed a VoA 25, a ToC 10, and Deathbringer Saurfang of ICC 10 in that order, which certainly seems crazy for a 2-week-old character to do, at least to me.

Anyways, that’s my healer Shaman, Spacehoof.

I started WoW with a Druid, and I got to level 20 before I started a new character on a new server to play with a friend in real life. Of course, that’s when he quit playing Wow; I was still playing though, and this Hunter I made was just too fun to leave. And so I played it, and leveled it all the way to 56 before I ran out of time for WoW myself and quit.

Fast forward to a year ago—that would be December 2008—and I was bored, and away from my Xbox, but I did have my computer. And I did see a trial to reactivate my account for a week. And I did immediately buy a subscription. And an expansion pack. And another. And all that again for my girlfriend…

Actually, what brought me back was the Death Knight class. My hunter seemed different; aimed shot wasn’t a cast and didn’t hit like a truck, and there was this weird Aspect of the Viper. But the DK was new and exciting, and came with great looking gear to boot. So I leveled this DK to 80, planning on trying tanking, simply because I hadn’t done it and I knew it would be a necessary role. I found a good guild and raided as a tank all the way through the first 3 bosses of Ulduar, before that guild fell apart. That’s when I lost interest in my DK and tanking as well. DPS on the DK was alright, but it was still the DK.

That’s when I looked back to my Hunter. My favorite people on my server had silently rerolled horde on another server, so with no more ties on my DK, he was easy to leave. The hunter leveled quick, and after spending so much time on my DK, the Hunter felt fresh too. I got my Hunter to 80, by which point my DK was neglected, so I started to switch mains. I leveled my fishing & cooking on this new toon, and started gearing up. (I did give up on going for as many achievements as I could though, and to this day, my DK still has more achievement points). I managed to gear up through PUG raids, and eventually got into a raiding guild and was loving it.

Though, I was eying that level 40 Shaman that I had and thinking, “wouldn’t it be nice if I had a tank, DPS, and a healer?” So while I wasn’t raiding on my hunter, I leveled my Shaman. At points where I had emblems I didn’t need, I sent BoA gear her way, and leveling went quick. (It helps that it was my 3rd time through the content).

As an aside, gearing up an alt in patch 3.3 is fast.

Eventually my raiding guild with my hunter self destructed, and my hunter and shaman have followed that guild leader to my current guild, where I have no idea who my main is. Sure, my hunter is better geared, but that lead is quickly falling. On top of that, with the queue times in the new Dungeon Finder for healers, I’m on my Shaman more, so by most criteria, I suppose my Shaman is my main—but I do still love my Hunter. I’ve even been playing my DK again, to try to re-gear him up as a tank.

So now I have no idea who my main is, and I think that’s okay.