Unbearably HoT

Let’s face it—not all bosses are created equally.

Although we arguably have different tanks best-suited for particular encounters (a paladin AOE tank for Felmyst, a bear mitigation tank for Brutallus or a warbot with a shield to take Illidan’s shears), you can get the most out of your toon by min/maxing different gear sets. “What!!!” you say, ready to sucker punch me and shake your lack-of-inventory in my face, “I already have a resto set, a cat set, a PVP set, a bear set, and a super awful boomkin set! Between all that, my potions, my tokens, and my pets, I don’t have room for anything else!”

While I’d firstly point you to this post, suck it up, get a mod like Outfitter to manage your accessories, and start planning—being prepared for any and all scenarios will make you a better bear. Since I just recently wrote about the importance of hit-rating and expertise rating for tanking, I’m leap-frogging into a discussion on how to incorporate gear pieces and accessories that lend themselves to more TPS (threat-per-second) generation into your standard tank set.

Nocturneus writes:

I am one of the few Bear tanks I know that actually went the route of Defense over Resilience. I like the fact that Defense gives you avoidance as well as makes you uncrittable (provided you hit the magic number.) Being able to get enough Defense at end-game Raid level was rather difficult, which is why most take the easier route of Resilience.

I am currently uncrittable, have just under 40k Armor, 42% dodge and 20k health. The problem I have is trying to squeeze Hit Rating in there somewhere. Any suggestions? Most of my gems are Agility and Stam, Agility or Stam, along with a few epic Defense gems in there from Heroics.

Firstly, the use of a program such as Rawr or a few Post-It Notes can help you keep track of how any major gear changes affect your overall mitigation stats. I can make recommendations, but it’s up to you to check up on your math. Secondly, since I don’t have any sort of armory link for Nocturneus, I’m making suggestions based on my own experience; not all items are easily attainable.

Fortunately, gearing up as a low-level druid is ridiculously easy, and there are plenty of other great bloggers out there who’ve outlined how to do that. The Heavy Clefthoof set takes care of nearly all your chance-to-be-crit issues, allowing you to socket almost anything you please, and the Earthwarden, a great entry-level tanking weapon, is the only druid weapon to date that has expertise rating on it.

Back to the question—I’m sure Nocturneus knows his numbers, but for the rest of us out there, here are some basics:

2.6% = The chance-to-crit reduction necessary to avoid being critically hit by boss mobs; you can achieve this with 415 DEF or 267.8 Resilence, assuming all points in Survival of the Fittest and base DEF of 350, or you can use a mixture of RES and DEF to reach it.
2.36 = The defense rating necessary to achieve 1 DEF skill.
39.4 = The amount of RES rating necessary to yield 1% RES.
35,880 = The amount of armor necessary to reach 75% mitigation; any more armor beyond this point does not offer substantial protection.

Quick Math:
~176 defense rating = 415 Defense Skill
~103 RES rating = 267.8 Resilence

As Nocturneus mentioned, stacking Resilence is easier, especially at high levels when DEF rating isn’t present on our regular armor pieces anymore. Generally speaking, druids tend to pick up the lion’s share of their DEF rating from accessories like necklaces, rings and trinkets or from enchantments. RES rating, however, is present on just about any piece of PVP gear you pick up—and can be fairly easy to get your paws on. Why use DEF then? Each point of DEF skill gives you 0.04% to be missed, to block, to dodge and to parry—but for the purpose of our furry selves, the Miss and Dodge are the important parts. Basically, you’ll probably have to end up using a little bit of both. Here’s why.

Because you need less RES rating than DEF rating to reach crit immunity, a little RES goes a long way and allows for a little more socket/enchant play. Nocturneus clearly has a classic mitigation tanking set—great for repelling enemy attacks and for all-around-mob-bashing, but (as he says), lacking in the hit/expertise department. More than likely, this means that even though his attacks hit for quite a bit, they’re getting dodged, parried or missed more often than they should, potentially wrecking a normal tank rotation and diminishing the amount of TPS he could be generating. Nocturneus doesn’t need to get rid of his sweet mitigation set—he just needs to build other pieces to switch in for maximum threat generation when he needs it.

First thing’s first—eliminate all DEF or RES gems. I know we often rely on that one Seaspray Emerald to throw us over the cap, but in my opinion, you’re better off modifying your gear with RES or DEF enchants. Why? You can’t enchant for melee +hit, but you can socket for it. Putting 12 DEF on your bracers, 15 RES on your chest or 12 DEF on your cloak can give you the edge you need while still allowing for a reasonable amount of STA and dodge.

Next, evaluate how much more DEF or RES you need to reach crit immunity, and bring in one or two pieces of PVP gear or a RES based cloak. The notion that you need to PVP to PVE may not be a palatable one, but it’ll help round out your armor sets. Think about it like this: even if you despise PVP, you can dick around in arena every week, take home some welfare points, and still find yourself able to pick up a T6 comparable chestpiece in a few weeks. What pieces of PVP gear will you get the most out of?

Nearly every piece of Vengeful Dragonhide armor (S3) has hit rating on it. The pieces with the highest resilience on them, however, are the legguards and chestpiece. As you can easily make the socket bonus on the chestpiece and add another +4 Critical Strike rating to your gear (nevermind enchanting the chestpiece), I consider that the best piece to incorporate into your arsenal. Previously, bracers were also an easy addition, but the new rating requirement (while still an easy grab at 1575) may be prohibitive to some players. Still, the RES rating on the bracers virtually eliminates the need for enchanting with DEF, and with another Glinting Pyrestone in the socket, you pick up the 4 RES socket bonus. I’ve offered up S3 comparisons here because they’re now cheap pick-ups free of rating requirements, but if you have the opportunity to pick up the Brutal Dragonhide Tunic (at 1600, also a fairly easy grab), go for it. Let’s quickly compare the Vengeful Gladiator’s Dragonhide Tunic and the Thunderheart Chestguard.

Ultimately, our biggest losses switching chestpieces are in the STR and AC categories—and we stand to gain an awful lot more: hit rating, armor ignore, and critical strike rating, all stats that will help increase your TPS against an enemy target. I chose Glinting Pyrestones for every socket, but I’ve also seen folks stack straight AGI, hit, or a mixture of both. Remember: the point of adding this piece of gear is to enhance your threat generation. While AGI does nothing for hit or expertise rating, it offers a buffer to your critical strike rating, your armor, and your dodge—nothing to sneeze at. With one piece of gear, you can pick up an extra 25 hit rating, the TPS stats previously mentioned, make up the AGI difference (36-31) in gems, and pick up 25 RES rating, all for the price of 23 STR and 252 AC.

Make sure you’re watching that 35,880 armor cap though, keeping in mind that raid buffs such as MotW will also affect your final tally. PVP gear can offer similar stats to tier gear but is often lower in armor and STR. If you’re someone like Nocturneus who is already above and beyond the armor cap, supplementing your gear set with one or two PVP pieces will not drop you below your cap (in Noc’s case, 40k-252 = 39,748, still way above cap) . If you do, remember that you can set up a potion macro and take Ironshield Potions whenever the cooldown comes up—when wearing my TPS gear on Brutallus, I used that particular strat.

Other useful hit rating items include:

Brooch of Deftness = 21 expertise rating, 22 hit rating; badge reward
Pendant of Titans = 20 hit rating; drops off the Reliquary of Souls
Thunderheart Waistguard = 23 hit rating and 1 red socket (potential for 5-10 hit rating); token drops off Brutallus

Now, expertise. As I mentioned in “I want you to Hit me as hard as you can,” the only expertise we druids gain from set pieces is on the Thunderheart Treads. If we want any more than that, we have to look toward items such as trinkets, necklaces, and cloaks. I pointedly exclude rings from that list, because rings are usually items that carry a significant portion of our armor and DEF rating—generally, substituting one of those puts us at a much bigger loss than substituting say, a trinket. The three most easily attainable items that can net you expertise rating for tanking (there are other leather expertise items that are suitable for DPS) are:

Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve = 18 expertise rating; SSO rep item
Brooch of Deftness = 21 expertise rating, 22 hit rating; badge reward
Shard of Contempt = 44 expertise rating; drops in heroic MgT

Slightly more difficult to obtain:

Collar of the Pit Lord = 29 expertise rating; drops off Brutallus
Thunderheart Treads = 20 expertise rating; token drop from Felmyst
Crimson Paragon’s Cover = 28 expertise rating; drop off the Eredar Twins

If you mouseover the tooltips for each of the necklaces (a gear slot where expertise seems to be stacked), there are reasonably clear trade-offs for each one: some have defense rating (a bonus to be sure), high STA, or dodge rating—I happen to have all four for different occasions, but I generally default to the Collar of the Pit Lord for the DEF rating, expertise and 68 STA. Additionally, the proc on the Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve is reportedly more useful (for tanking) if you’re a Scryer; an expertise capped warrior, for example, can apparently become “unparriable” for the buff’s duration.
Recap
To allow for getting the most out of your gear’s sockets while remaining crit immune, utilize PVE and PVP gear that combine DEF rating and RES rating—without gemming for it. The sockets you free up can be used for AGI/HIT gems, and the addition of one or two pieces of arena gear will net you itemized hit rating and a plethora of other TPS boosting equip stats. Finally, keeping a myriad array of accessories such as different necklaces, trinkets, rings, and cloaks can allow you to customize your gear on the fly and better equip yourself for different encounters. Keep track of all your new armor-sets using an equip mod such as Outfitter, and make sure you remain crit immune and at your armor cap with a good ol’ pen and paper or a program such as Rawr.

Before I start making any frenzied posts detailing why I worry about feral tanks in WotLK, let’s take a step back and address the now.

Just about any melee DPS class fully invested in damage will explain that +hit and expertise is invaluable—or at least important. Four thousand spell damage or eight million attack power can be rendered useless in a raiding environment unless you can actually connect with the mob you’re targeting. The same situation can apply to a PVP scenario as well: pesky cyclone or root resists can cost you an arena match. A simple armory search can pull up gear-listings for many high-end Restoration druids, and if you take a good look, many of them stack those lovely +10 spell-hit gems, along with Spell Penetration on their cloaks.

But +hit and expertise rating isn’t just for damage classes—the more you connect with the target(s) you’re tanking, the more TPS (threat-per-second) you’re generating. I might even add that it’s even more important for bears than our cat counterparts. I can sit around in front of Brutallus wearing every piece of my super don’t-die-gear, but I guarantee that I’ll miss maybe 2 out of every 3 mangles or have my Lacerates dodged or parried—you get the idea. If the specials with the highest threat multipliers aren’t landing, DPS will be perilously riding your ass.

Let’s clearly outline what we’re talking about here:

According to WoWWiki, “hit” can be defined as “the physical damage that occurs as a result of an attack made with a melee or ranged weapon. The chance to hit increases by 1% per 15.77 hit rating points at level 70.”

For druids (single-wielding, mind you), you need approximately 142 hit rating to increase your chance to hit a level 73 mob by 9%—this is your “hit cap”. When I reference a “cap”, it’s the generally accepted limit at which adding any more of a certain stat doesn’t actually help you. Exceeding 9% to hit won’t help counter dodges or parries (that’s expertise) or even misses; in my opinion, you’re actually better sitting just below the hit cap and chewing on some Spicy Talbuk Steak to bring you up to par rather than over-gearing or over-socketing (when you could be stacking more AGI or AP, etc.). Additionally, you can plan to take off a piece of gear with lots of hit on it and exchange it for a piece with more AGI if you know you’re going to have a Draenei in your party (passively increasing your chance to hit by 1%). While there never seem to be “absolutes” with Blizzard, a 9% chance to hit virtually guarantees zero misses against a target of level 73 or below.

Do you need 9% to hit for trash mobs? No. It rather goes without saying that you need less chance to hit when the level of the mob decreases and the gap between your weapon skill and its defense skill closes. Therefore, if you want to be a super dr00d (or rogue, or whatever), you can actually itemize two different DPS gear-sets: one hit-capped set (9%) for the boss, and one set (~5% for level 70s) that stacks more AGI for trash mobs.

What about expertise?

Expertise is a combat rating that decreases the chance your attack will be parried or dodged. Because druids don’t have any special racial talents (human sword/mace specialization, for example) or class talents (i.e. rogues) that increases expertise (this is changing in the expansion, however), we can calculate the amount of expertise needed to negate dodge as follows:

Boss mob’s base dodge = 6.5%
1% Expertise = 15.77 Expertise Rating
6.5 * 15.77 = 102.505

So realistically, you’d want approximately 103 Expertise Rating to completely negate a boss mob’s ability to dodge your attacks. If you’re melee DPS, you should theoretically be standing behind a target anyway, which theoretically eliminates parries.

Capping hit and expertise sounds like it makes a lot of sense, right? Connecting with your target generates more damage and more threat. The problem is getting there. It’s hard to bitch about getting hit capped when a dual wielder like a rogue needs twice as much as we do, but Blizzard doesn’t itemize hit and expertise for druids. Not specifically, anyway. If you look at the entire Thunderheart Harness, Sunwell items included, we net 50 hit rating (3.17% to hit) and 20 expertise rating. For the record, that’s pretty miserable, especially since 23 of that hit rating is on the belt, which is arguably inferior for tanking to the Belt of Natural Power, a T5 crafted item. Thus, if I’m wearing my “TPS” set for tanking (which is, by the way, beneath the armor cap), I have approximately 4.5% chance to hit and 4.62% dodge/parry reduction.

Lycentia, in his tanking gear picked up from similar raid instances, has approximately 6.34% to hit and can reduce the boss’s chance to dodge or parry an attack by 15.75%. We have to remember that Lycentia is a human wielding a sword and is also receiving the human sword specialization bonus, but that’s considerably more chances to connect with the boss and thus generate more threat per second. Even though druid threat is largely generated by high damage, if you’re not able to cause that damage, you might have a problem. Add Windfury to that equation, and now you’re looking at a chance to proc an additional attack that will, more than likely, connect as well. I’m a little jealous, and I’m looking forward to receiving the bonus from Windfury Totems (so long as I don’t have to give up Gift of Air).

My point is that druid tanking itemization is currently flawed, and that it should be a little bit easier to maximize your chance to hit and chance to reduce parry and dodge without sacrificing our bread and butter stats of AGI and STA. It’s that important. The more damage you, as a tank, put out, the more damage your raid can produce without worrying about pulling aggro. By not pulling your own weight, you’re threat capping your raid’s DPS and severely limiting the speed at which you can destroy a boss. If you can afford to wear a Shard of Contempt and a necklace such as the Brooch of Deftness, Pendant of Titans, Shattered Sun Pendant of Resolve, or Collar of the Pit Lord, I recommend it. To remain above your DEF cap, you can supplement your armor with the S3 chestpiece and socket with the AGI/HIT gems. This will likely drop you below the 35,880 armor cap, but if you set up a clever potion macro, you can join the ranks of warbots and slam down Ironshields with the best of them.

But those are (mostly) set pieces. As a cat, you’re probably wearing two pieces of T4 at least, and if you’re lucky, two pieces of T6 as well. Since most of the DPS gear we pick up is rogueish in nature, climbing to 142 hit rating isn’t too difficult at all. This is important because a successful cat DPS rotation relies on heavy crit for combo points and bleed debuffs; if one doesn’t “stick” or “hit”, you’re essentially blowing your whole cycle. A simplified DPS rotation (assuming high crit and ignoring powershifting for the moment) might go as follows:

1. Mangle
2. Shred
3. Shred
4. Shred
5. Rip

Because Mangle amplifies Shred damage and bleed effects, you will not want to Shred or Rip unless your Mangle debuff is up on your target. If you miss your Mangle or your Mangle is dodged, you’re a step behind in your rotation. If you miss it twice, you’re two steps behind and now you’re just wasting energy.

In Cat Form, I’m hit capped but not expertise capped. Some of this is based on the item slots I’ve chosen to use for my two piece T4 and T6 bonuses, but it’s also not quite as easy to get without sacrificing a lot of high-end stats. Often, I only run with the Shard of Contempt, which reduces a mob’s chance to dodge my attacks by 2.79%—not too stellar, but nearly 3% is much better than 0. If you’re not quite as worried about set bonuses or exchanging a high level item without expertise for a lower level item with, here are some easy expertise grabs:

Shard of Contempt (Heroic MgT): 44 expertise rating
Shapeshifter’s Signet (Lower City Reputation): 20 expertise rating
Grips of Deftness (Karazhan Trash): 15 expertise rating
Total: 5.00% dodge reduction

Slightly more difficult to obtain:

Shoulderpads of the Stranger (Hydross): 10 expertise rating
Belt of One Hundred Deaths (Lady Vashj): 25 expertise rating
Gloves of the Searing Grip (A’lar): 18 expertise rating
Total: 3.36% dodge reduction

Total with the best items combined: 7.41% dodge reduction, effectively negating a boss mob’s chance to dodge (6.5%) your attacks. You could even take a piece or two off.

Playing any hybrid class requires a veritable balancing act of trying to make the best of subpar itemization, but while you’re min/maxing for DPS and TPS, remember that you’re gimping yourself if you’re ignoring your hit and expertise ratings.

For a discussion about spell hit and spell damage for moonkin, visit Gray Matter.

First of all, I’d like to thank everyone who took interest in my “State of the Raid Address”—I didn’t quite realize just how pertinent the topic of burnout-rate was right about now. The traffic that came through Unbearably HoT last night and this morning more than quadrupled the average and generated more discourse in more places than I could have hoped for.


Secondly, I don’t write for Girls Don’t Game anymore. After an apparent series of miscommunications, stylistic differences and being ninja removed from the community without any explanation, it was made more than clear that I was neither welcome nor appreciated there. Your support was, as always, fabulous, and my general gaming articles will have a new home soon.


Thirdly, I received a question in my inbox last week that I haven’t yet had the time to address asking what sort of add-ons I use and why—most notably, wondering what the name of the add-on was that set up my raid frames as a bar graph on the left hand side of my screen in the Brutallus video. Since I haven’t yet made the obligatory “What mods do I use, lol!!!” post, I’ll give it a shot before I delve back into raid mechanics and Hit v. Expertise.


To be honest, I’ve always been a little behind the wagon when it comes to installing add-ons: when Phaelia saw a screenshot of my UI, I think she almost died. I don’t want anything that’s going to turn into a resource hog, make things more difficult, clutter my UI even more than it already is, require me to hunt around excessively in order to update it or perform one stupid function and nothing else (like Oneway’s infamous Clam Opening mod). Regardless, I’m willing to concede that there are some add-ons out there that make my job a lot easier, and I have thus divided them into three categories for your viewing pleasure: SUCKS BUT I TOLERATE IT, PRETTY NEAT and BONERS.
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Sathrovarr’s been vanquished. Kalecgos can fly off and inevitably get possessed again, as those pesky dragons tend to do, and there’s only two trash pulls between the raid and Brutallus. You toasted Illidan—you were prepared. This guy doesn’t have any adds, and he dual wields just like Illybeans. Shouldn’t be too hard, right? Wrong. Brutallus effectively makes Illidan look like a flame-spouting Girl Scout and brings back nostalgic memories of the gear test Patchwerk presented in Naxxxramas.

Regardless, you’re optimistic. The raid easily dispatches the token trash pulls and charges into the Den of Iniquity. Suddenly, you’re greeted by exceptionally bad voice acting and a panoramic view of the Dead Scar:

“Hold friends! There is information to be had before this devil meets his fate!”

Madrigosa, the chick blue dragon who you can see taunting Brutallus during “Distraction at the Dead Scar”, bids you sit quietly and wait while she tries to grill the enormous pit lord. The scenic vista seals up with a sheet of impenetrable ice* and you essentially get to watch a psionic death match that sounds like it’s dubbed over by the original American voice actors from DBZ. Despite some cool giant-beam-of-death shit, Madrigosa dies in a dramatic heap, and Brutallus turns his attention to the raid. With a cry of challenge, he tilts his head back and roars, shattering the ice and sending your raid flying. None of us were expecting it the first time, and it’s particularly awesome seeing a bear soaring through the air. The once dynamic Brutallus now sits dormant in the Dead Scar, patiently waiting for your raid to take thirty-five minutes to figure out how they’d like to set up.

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While the previous guides I wrote can be utilized by anyone, I rolled through the quests with relative ease. Then again, all I had to do was tag a group of mobs and swipe them all down. Using the exact same strategy on my paladin was tedious, and not just because I have a slow mount. Many of these mobs, especially those on the Isle of Quel’danas, aren’t so friendly to mana users (as is fitting for creatures feeding off magical powers). If you’re trying to farm all of these quests while Restoration specced, it’s not impossible—it’s just annoying. Phaelia already mentioned that the Unbound Ethereals in Blade’s Edge Mountains are immune to arcane damage (denying Boomkins and Restos the Moonfire and Starfire staples), but here are a couple things to look out for:

The Wretched 

Wretched Devourers have two “abilities” besides their unimpressive melee attacks: Mana Tap and Nether Shock. If you’ve ever played a Blood Elf you probably know what Mana Tap does, but for those who haven’t, it does exactly what it says: taps your mana and charges the caster with arcane power. Nether Shock instantly inflicts Shadow based damage, but does little else.

Wretched Fiends have two different abilities: Bitter Withdrawal and Sunder Armor. Bitter Withdrawal is a cleansable, channeled spell that drains health and mana from the target and transfers it to the caster. Obviously if you can interrupt this in some fashion or kill your Fiend before he casts it, all the better. Sunder Armor explains itself, and if you’re standing close enough to get more than one application as a caster, you’re doing it wrong.

Erratic Sentries 

The Erratic Sentries have four separate “specials” at their cybernetic fingertips: Crystal Strike, Electrical Overload, Stun and Suppression. Crystal Strike is an arcane based melee attack, and Electrical Overload, similarly, deals AOE damage in a confined radius around itself. I haven’t ever been stunned by one of these, but Suppression’s a pain in the ass on my holy paladin. Suppression is a three second silence effect that can be interrupted.

Because of all the aforementioned abilities, I gave up on farming in my holy gear and switched over to the ret set I’ve been collecting.  Despite the fact that I had even less mana, I picked up some STA and a weapon that could hit for more than 40 damage a swing. I haven’t tried to do any of these with a Resto build, but for the trees who might be a little undergeared, you might do better putting on some trash feral gear and wearing your mobs down.

Now that Doomhammer has an established portal from Shattrath to the Isle of Quel’danas, getting from Outland to the hub of Shattered Sun activity no longer requires any annoying ports to Ironforge and occasionally buggy flights up North.

Step 1: Pack for your Island Adventure

Unless you’ve already unlocked the Armory, chances are good that you won’t have any place to repair on the Isle of Quel’Danas. Additionally, if you’re not Honored with the Shattered Sun Offensive, you won’t be able to buy food, water, or reagents on the Isle either. So before you get going, make sure you stop, repair, and hit up an AV to ninja a few stacks of manna biscuits from an unsuspecting mage. Once that’s all taken care of, either take the portal to the Isle (if your realm has it up) or take the long way, from Ironforge.


Once there, head to the location marked with the “1″ below. Regardless of the progress your realm is making, these quests will always be there. Note that I’m skipping the quest that takes you through Magister’s Terrace since it’s not repeatable. Pick up the quests Further Conversions and Arm the Wards!, and head to the quest hub marked with a “2″. There, again depending on your realm’s progression, you’ll pick up: Distraction at the Dead Scar, The Battle for the Sun’s Reach Armory and Know your Ley Lines. From now on, please refer to the map I’ve created below for all quest locations.

Step 2: Robots and Freaks

Head Northwest to the coastline above Dawnstar Village and look for Wretched Fiends, Devourers and the like—basically any sort of emaciated blood elf who lurches into life when you proximity aggro the eight million respawns. These mobs will occasionally drop [Mana Remnants], which are necessary reagents for “Arm the Wards!” If the area just north of Dawnstar Village is totally camped out, try and head down the West Coast a little bit where the mobs are generally more plentiful—just check out the blue dots on the map.

Interspersed between the napping wretches, omnipresent rain and hordes (no pun intended) of players farming mobs, you’ll also find Erratic Sentries for “Further Conversions”. If you’re like me and have a metaphorical hard-on for Optimus Prime, you too might have read it as “erotic” the first time around. Regardless, these sentries remain neutral (think critters) until you attack them. All you need to do is kill five, loot the corpses, and use your [Attuned Crystal Cores] on their metallic remains. Here’s a pro-tip: if you manage to group with anyone to do these already simple quests, activating your [Attuned Crystal Cores] simultaneously will dual-shock the robots and give you credit for two rather than one.

Once you’ve bent a few robots to your whims and rounded up four [Mana Remnants], mount up and head Southeast. First, make a stop at the orange dot just south of Dawnstar Village. Whip out your Astromancer’s Crystal and take a reading of the Blood Crystal there for “Know Your Ley Lines”. After that, you’ll be looking for the place corresponding to the red dot on my above map, and it’ll look like a big red crystal near Quest Hub 2. Use the four [Mana Remnants] in your bag on the Crystal Ward, complete “Arm the Wards!” and get ready to finish the last few quests.

Step 3: Sticking it to The Man

Or rather, The Emissary of Hate. If you continue to head Southeast from the Crystal Ward you just armed, you’ll immediately (and I mean right-the-fuck-away) happen upon a cornucopia of demons having a picnic in the park. The Battle for the Sun’s Reach Armory will have you kill any six you’d like and then slam your pole into the Emissary of Hate’s dead body. Don’t worry about killing him; I can count the times I’ve actually seen that guy alive and/or not instantly tagged by another player on one hand. So long as you can target his corpse, you can plant the banner and receive quest credit.

Before you head out of the omg-always-in-combat zone, take out your trusty Astromancer’s Crystal again and take a reading of the portal that the demons are flying out of. This is also where the second orange dot is on the quest map and gets your your second reading for “Know your Ley Lines”.

Step 4: Naga, please!

Mount up and prepare for a little excursion. To find the final site for your ley line measurement, you need to steer your toon to the East Coast of the Isle through swarming camps of naga (as shown by the third orange dot on the map). The best way to go is to take the road to Magister’s Terrace and then veer off to the right when there’s an opening pointing toward the Forbidding Sea. If you don’t feel like fighting through the naga, I recommend hugging the right wall. There isn’t always a path up there, but you can scoot your mount up with a little perseverance and follow it down the entire length of the coast without being dismounted.

The Naga Shrine is extremely hard to miss and brings to mind fond memories of similar altars visited during questing. If you’re especially lucky, some other dude has been through right before you and killed all of the Myrmidions patrolling the shrine. If not, they’re a fairly quick kill. Just use your crystal, mount back up, and head back to the questing hubs.

Step 5: Bombs over Bad Guys

I left the bombing run for last because there isn’t really a logical place for it to fit in with normal questing. After everything else is finished, make your way up to the docks, where the green dot is located. Most of you will remember this as the same place you arrived if you took a bird in. Instead of talking to the Flightmaster, however, check in with Aryen on the right. Make sure that you have the [Arcane Charges] you received earlier (check your bags; druids will recognize it as the tooltip for Starfire) hot-keyed. Yes, that’s right. If it means unbinding your auto-attack button at 1, do it. Successfully soloing this quest without taking a thousand infuriating attempts require that you click and spam your hot-keyed [Arcane Charges] on anything that moves in the Dead Scar.

First thing’s first: if you can get into a group for bombing (without being That Guy who spams general chat), it’ll make the quest go a lot quicker. If you’re flying without a wingman, exercise some common sense. Don’t mount up and fly off if you just saw an entire group go. They’ll kill the mobs before you have a chance to blink and you’ll be left with scraps—and an unfulfilled quest log. But when you’re relatively on your own, mount up and enjoy the view; the dragonhawk will take you on a Disney World-esque adventure flight around the island until you finally reach The Dead Scar, a barren strip of land ridden with demons and flame. The trick here is to essentially spam the living daylights out of your hotkey and target anything that moves. Most of the larger mobs, Pit Lords and Sorcerers, take three hits to kill. Wrath Enforcers are a lot easier and a lot more plentiful. Be prepared to take two and half swings through The Dead Scar before your dragonhawk gets sick of it and takes you back to Aryen. If you still have mobs left, mount back up and keep trying. I haven’t successfully gotten all the mobs (damn you, Eredar Sorcerer!) in one run, but I’ve definitely done it in two.

Toward the end of the run, you’ll even see the second boss in Sunwell, Brutallus (as pictured below).

That’s it. Turn everything in, reap your rewards (approximately 53 g 49 s) and teleport back to Shattrath using the scroll obtained from the “Know your Ley Lines” quest.