10-Man Heroic Chimaeron Timings

I've poured over a recent log of our first 5 heroic Chimaeron pulls with an eye on getting a feel for the proper timing in terms of tank rotations. I'd read a few different ways that it could be done and wanted to see if I could work out exactly the order things happen on the fight to work out the pros and cons of each rotation along with how cooldowns could be lined up. It turns out everything happens in a very exact, precise order, so this should be very possible. In particular, the fight can be broken into 30 second chunks each of which follows this exact rotation (with one exception):

Melee Swing -> Melee Swing + Break Application -> Double Attack -> Caustic Slime x2 -> Melee Swing -> Caustic Slime x2 -> Melee Swing + Break Application -> Caustic Slime x2 -> Massacre -> (Feud, maybe)

The exception mentioned above is the very first 30 second chunk. The melee attacks are sped up at the start, likely because of a combination of two reasons. An attack speed debuff isn't applied before the pull, and they changed the encounter a little in a hotfix which forced Chimaeron to reset his swing timer after a massacre. As such, the first rotation has time for an extra melee swing before the massacre, and that swing will always be a double attack. Also, the first rotation can't end in a feud. The first rotation, therefore, is:

Melee Swing -> Melee Swing + Break Application -> Double Attack -> Melee Swing -> Caustic Slime x2 -> Melee Swing + Break Application -> Caustic Slime x2 -> Double Attack -> Caustic Slime x2 -> Massacre

Feud phases work the same way as a normal phase on heroic mode with the exact same rotation except there's no invincible bot up and you're guaranteed to not get back-to-back feuds. An interesting thing that I didn't realize until I looked at the log is Chimaeron actually continues to spew out two Caustic Slimes during the feud phase, so the healing needed is double what I thought it was. Also of note, there's only ever one double attack during the feud. (He does cast it a second time at the end which is certainly scary but it gets cut off by the ending massacre. You may need to maintain your attack speed debuff to make this be true but you better do that anyway.)

So, how do we tank this? When it comes right down to it there are 4 different levels of melee attacks in the fight and 5 different levels of the break debuff and the trick is managing which of the attacks gets eaten by who has which level of debuff. On normal this rotation is pretty trivial since there's only 2 levels of melee attacks:

• Normal auto-attack which can't kill anyone at more than 10k health. Anyone with a taunt and a healer can tank this regardless of break stacks.
• Double attack. From the logs it looks like I get hit for about 140k from a base swing, with some variance. (140k is the high end.) You need to remain above 10k from the first swing to live through the second one with the bot buff, so if I have 150k health I'm fine. With 1 stack of break I need 185k health. With 2 stacks I need 220k health which I hope can be seen as clearly right out. I can cool-down that if I need to, but by default I'm dead if I don't avoid one of the swings.

The solution, of course, is to have one 'tank' eat the auto-attacks (which means they get all the break stacks) and one actual tank taunt in and eat the double attacks. As long as they get healed to full before each double attack (you have about 14 seconds to heal up from the massacre) you can't lose a tank. (Well, assuming the 'tank' gets healed over 10k every 4.8 seconds anyway.)

On heroic things get a lot trickier. You have two new classes of attacks to look at:

• No-bot auto-attack. These hit for 140k, and there are 4 of them to eat. The second one applies a break debuff, so if you're planning on having one tank eat them all you'll be taking a couple of 175k swings as well.
• No-bot double attack. Even without a break stack you have 280k potential incoming damage so you need to use at least one cool-down here. If you have one break (likely since it was applied not 5 seconds earlier) you have 350k incoming. 2 stacks is 420k. Yikes!

Break lasts a full minute and you could get a feud phase 30 seconds after the last one. This means counting on the same person to accumulate breaks during a feud phase is sketchy to say the least. Doing so could mean eating a no-bot double attack with 3 breaks for a whopping 490k incoming damage. I understand some raids deal with this by rotating Ardent Defender and Guardian Spirit but we have neither a prot paladin nor a holy priest among our main specs. It is possible to heal two tanks up during feud and have one eat the breaks and the other eat the double attacks but this wastes a lot of healer mana if you get any avoids at all. One tank sucking up a break and popping a cooldown rates to save healer mana (the ending massacre wipes out any extra healing above and beyond what is needed).

The rotation we were working with last time and will probably keep going forward is to use a plate DPSer (ret paladin in our case) as the 'main tank'. He eats all the normal auto-attacks and therefore also eats all the non-feud breaks. 'Off-tank 1' (OT1) taunts in to eat all the normal double attacks until the first feud. These are all 0-break botted double attacks so there's no need to use any cooldowns of any kind. During the first feud he takes all 5 hits. This requires using at least a powerful cooldown for the double attack since it's 350k incoming damage and probably using a cooldown for the other hits too if possible. (As a blood Death Knight I can use bone armour for the entire phase for a 20% reduction and icebound fortitude for the double attack for an extra 50% reduction which actually lasts 18 seconds so will hit a couple normal swings too.) Then once the feud phase is over OT1 does nothing else since he has a 2-break. His job is completely replaced by a second tank filling the exact same role. This new tank (OT2) will taunt in for normal double attacks and will tank the second feud phase in its entirety. Note that even if the feud phases come as fast as they can OT2 will be filling the off-tank role for at least a minute and therefore OT1 will have dropped his break stack by the time the second feud has ended. This means he can easily step in and tank double attacks after the second feud phase, restarting the cycle.

The only potential problem here is OT1 may have to tank a feud phase 2 minutes after he last tanked one. Icebound fortitude has a 3 minute cooldown and therefore won't be up. I'll need to use vampiric blood, dancing rune weapon, and the hoping defense to survive. (Possibly get an external cooldown from someone else as well.) I should still have bones on the bone armor, so I should have 20% damage reduction and 15% more health. So I'll be at 222k max health and prevent 20% of the incoming 350k damage. So I'm dead by 58k. Oddly enough, if I got hit by the last melee attack I should have a large enough blood shield to live through this! Probably I should also pop my darkmoon faire trinket for an extra 10k health to make sure the blood shield is good enough...


You can also use the same rotation with a third tank instead of a plate DPSer but this doesn't seem to have a lot of merit. The main tank just screws around with a 4-break stack the whole fight so he's useless at stepping in and doing anything else. Possibly you could run it with no set main tank, and have the old feud tank become the new main tank. This would let you refresh the cooldowns on 3 different tanks for the feud phases which could be important, but would cost you a DPSer during the final burn phase. It does gain you a third speed bump in the burn phase, too, which may be worthwhile. I'll find out when we actually make it to phase 3.

I've also heard it done with 2 tanks. In this case you end up just holding on to the boss after a feud phase until the other tank's break stack drops, which often entails eating normal 3-break double attacks which is pretty sketchy. The guy who claimed to do it this way was the one with the Ardent Defender/Guardian Spirit rotation which makes me think it's doable with the right composition but that it's not worth looking into further for my purposes. We have a ret paladin and a DPS DK who can fill the 'main tank' role here without losing all that much damage in the process.

10-Man Heroic Raid Difficulty

We managed to take Nef down last night which opens up all hard modes. We also killed Halfus last week, but that still leaves 11 potential hard modes to try. Where to start? Loot-wise you probably want to hit the bosses with tier tokens, weapons, and trinkets first since those things tend to be in highest demand, or provide the biggest boost, or both. Tier tokens drop from Halfus, Magmaw, Meloriak, Cho'gall, Nefarian, and Al'Akir.

Weapons by use:
Caster dagger - Valiona
Caster dagger - Magmaw
Caster sword - Conclave of Wind
Caster mace - Cho'gall
Caster mace - Nef
Rogue dagger - Omnotron
Rogue sword - Valiona
Rogue dagger - Cho'gall
Rogue axe - Nef
Tanking 1-sword - Maloriak
Melee 1-sword - Conclave of Wind
Melee 1-sword - Magmaw
Melee 2-axe - Cho'gall
Melee 2-mace - Magmaw
Melee 2-sword - Nef
Feral staff - Halfus
Bow - Atramedes
Bow - Valiona

Trinkets:

Caster - Valiona
Caster - Atramedes
Caster - Cho'gall
Caster - Council
Healer - Maloriak
Melee - Chimaeron
Melee - Council
Hunter - Halfus
Hunter - Nef
Tanking - Magmaw
Tanking - Valiona

We can also look at the success or lack thereof from other guilds. I went to Guildox today and pulled out kill stats and average ilvl information for each boss. (Average ilvl is based on both 10 and 25 kills, so not the most useful information.)

Boss	10-man Guild Kills	25-man Guild Kills	Average ilvl
Halfus	2796	1636	352.5
Chimaeron	1364	1104	352.7
Maloriak	643	623	354.1
Atramedes	522	483	354.0
Conclave of Wind	189	429	354.5
Omnotron	133	266	355.5
Al'Akir	86	15	358.8
Magmaw	69	345	355.3
Ascendant Council	5	56	357.8
Nefarian	3	44	359.1
Valiona	1	121	358.1
Sinestra	0	26	358.0
Cho'gall	0	43	359.8

I guess the Sinestra number shouldn't be a surprise since no one has even killed Cho'gall yet. The boss with all the drops I want (weapon, trinket, and tier piece from one boss!) has only been killed by 69 10-man guilds which is a shame, though the average ilvl is much lower than the end bosses so he may be doable. It certainly seems like Chimaeron is the second most popular heroic to kill though he drops practically nothing in super demand by my arbitrary criteria.

Mortal Strike in PvE

One of the people in our raid core this expansion is adamant that Blizzard designs 10-man fights to use at most 2 tanks and at most 3 healers. He gets really mad when we try to do things with 3 tanks or 4 healers because that's "not intended" and there has to be a normal way to get things done. I don't have any faith that Blizzard knows a thing about balancing 10-man raids (Sarth+3 anyone?) so especially right at the start of a new tier of content I think trying lots of things makes sense even if it's "not intended".

We pulled our first hard mode of the expansion last night and I made the comment that I didn't think 2 tanks was even remotely feasible due to the fight mechanics, which got another snippy comment about Blizzard's intentions. So, it's time to justify to myself with math why I don't think 2 tanks is feasible from a numbers point of view let alone a logistical point of view. The primary reason I feel this way is a healing taken debuff applied to one of the tanks, so we need to assess what this debuff essentially does.

If a tank isn't taking very much damage (Kurinaxx, 2nd boss in BM, or the dogs in ICC as examples) or the healers can trivially overheal them then a mortal strike debuff doesn't really do anything. It turns the abundance of overhealing into actual healing and reduces HPS numbers across the board without actually impacting how the fight works out. The healers just do their thing and everything is fine. The only real concern here is if the buff ever stacks to 100% healing reduction, because then the tank is just going to die.

If the damage is high enough that the tank is actually in danger of dying normally from spikes (Broodlord in BWL) or if healer mana or throughput is a real concern then things are different. In the spiking out case the tank's 'time to full' goes up which makes it more likely he gets exploded, but if you have enough extra healing you can just brute force this out.

In the mana or throughput case you can model the mortal strike debuff as proportionally increasing the tank's maximum health pool and incoming damage taken. (A lot like comparing a stamina stacking tank to a block stacking tank, actually.) For a while this doesn't hurt because the healers won't have any trouble keeping the tank alive, but eventually the amount of 'damage' they have to heal gets absurdly high.

The time for the tank to go from full to dead remains the same since both their maximum health and their incoming damage remain proportionally the same, but the amount of incoming damage just keeps going up and up until the healers either run out of mana or simply become unable to deal with the amount of damage. So if we know how much the healers can handle we can work out how high a mortal strike proportion we can live with. To know these things we have to know how much damage the fight is putting out and what the healers can deal with both short term and long term.

The fight I'm interested in is heroic Halfus in Bastion of Twilight. First let's look at the absurd case of a single tank and see where we become unsustainable, but to do that we need to take a look at how much damage is being done by each of the parts of the fight. I tanked each part of the fight that we released last night, so all numbers used here will be for me (a stamina tank, not a block tank).

Cauldron of Battle Issues

One of the big advancements in raider quality of life was supposed to be the new cauldron of battle item which spawns an item on the ground in your raid that people can click on to get flask buffs. Last expansion brought food feasts which allowed raiders to get lazy and not farm their own food and instead just eat from the feast that someone else put down. (Ostensibly everyone would have provided equal shares of feasts but we all know that wasn't the case.)

There are a plethora of issues with the cauldron of battle, though. Wrath feasts could be learned from a trainer after doing some cooking dailies. Cata feasts can be learned after your guild fishes up 10k fish from pools which will take some time but is certainly feasible within a month or two. Just learning how to make the cauldron of battle requires your guild to make 10k flasks. How feasible is this?

Well, my guild raids 3 times a week for 3 hours a night. Assuming full flasking through the night (mandatory once we get going) we're probably looking at using 28 flasks a night. (Alchemists use 2 per raid, the rest of us use 3.) 28 flasks a night is 84 flasks a week. We'll miss a few raids over the year for holidays and what not, so probably 50 weeks of raiding a year, so that's 4200 flasks a year. Which means we'll have consumed 10k flasks approximately 6 months into the next expansion which is well after the cauldron of battle will become obsolete.

If we want to make any use of this new quality of life improvement we'll need to have our alchemists mass producing flasks for sale to other people on the server. This only works if other guilds aren't working towards the same guild achievement or if pugging takes off on the server. Or, theoretically, we could try to form a coalition with other guilds. We could set it up so our alchemists make all the flasks for several guilds. Then once we unlock the recipe they send us one of their raiders for a week to rep up and buy the recipe. Then they have to go back to their old guild and rep back up with them. Certainly not something I'd be willing to be on the giving end of, that's for sure, but I could see being the flask making guild.

Moving along, there are more issues. The cauldron by default only makes 7 flasks and there are 10 people in a raid. Unless the guild is providing the cauldrons and the excess flasks (some don't take twilight jasmine to make) for some flat fee (possibly nothing) there's going to be drama about who is paying for the cauldrons and who gets to click on it, etc... Compounded with that issue is a relatively early guild perk makes cauldron flasks last an extra half hour, so one needs with 2 cauldron hits for a raid or 3 flasks. (Possibly we stiff the alchemists and make them drink 2 depending on how their profession perk interacts with the guild perk.)

Eventually with much later guild perks the cauldrons make 10 flasks each and the flasks last 2 hours. There are sites listing how much guild xp it takes to reach each perk, so when would get those buffs assuming we hit the cap every day?

Level	XP (M)	Days Needed	Earliest Date	Perk
2	16.57	3	12/8/2010	Fast Track (Rank 1)
3	34.8	6	12/11/2010	Mount Up
4	54.7	9	12/14/2010	Mr. Popularity (Rank 1)
5	76.25	13	12/18/2010	Cash Flow (Rank 1)
6	99.46	16	12/21/2010	Fast Track (Rank 2)
7	124.34	20	12/25/2010	Reinforce (Rank 1)
8	150.87	25	12/30/2010	Hasty Hearth
9	179.07	29	1/3/2011	Reinforce (Rank 2)
10	208.92	34	1/8/2011	Chug-A-Lug (Rank 1)
11	240.43	39	1/13/2011	Mobile Banking
12	273.6	44	1/18/2011	Mr. Popularity (Rank 2)
13	308.43	50	1/24/2011	Honorable Mention (Rank 1)
14	344.92	56	1/30/2011	Working Overtime
15	383.06	62	2/5/2011	The Quick and the Dead
16	422.86	68	2/11/2011	Cash Flow (Rank 2)
17	464.31	75	2/18/2011	Guild Mail
18	507.42	82	2/25/2011	For Great Justice
19	552.19	89	3/4/2011	Honorable Mention (Rank 2)
20	598.62	96	3/11/2011	Happy Hour
21	646.72	104	3/19/2011	Have Group, Will Travel
22	696.47	112	3/27/2011	Chug-A-Lug (Rank 2)
23	747.88	120	4/4/2011	Bountiful Bags
24	800.95	129	4/13/2011	Bartering
25	855.68	137	4/21/2011	Mass Resurrection

Well, that doesn't actually seem all that bad. In three months the cauldrons will make the full 10 flasks. I could be wrong but I simply can't conceive of us managing to craft 10k flasks by that point in time no matter what our long term strategy ends up being.

One important thing to point out is that the cauldrons themselves take 4 flasks to make (1 of each main type) and therefore we should actually have a big stack of flasks lying around to turn into cauldrons when we eventually hit 10k flasks made. How many should we have set aside?

Assuming we don't get this done until after March 11th (and that we always cap guild xp every day) we need 2 cauldrons per raid. This is 6 cauldrons per week. Assuming a year and a half of raiding after March 11th we're looking at needing 450 cauldrons total. with 4 flasks per cauldron we'd want to have at least 1800 flasks just set aside waiting to be turned into cauldrons. (Note the cauldrons are bop and therefore we'd want to spread them around amongst our alchemists.) This still means we'd need to drink/sell 8200 other flasks in the next 3 months which just blows the mind. Though I guess with a team-up effort a few similar guilds would each need 1800 flasks to make their cauldrons which would make things more feasible...

All in all, I doubt I'll ever be using a cauldron unless it turns out the alchemists in my guild are able to sell a lot of flasks. Unfortunate since it was promoted as such a cool idea. I'll have to content myself with fishing up over 9000 more fish to make feasts I won't even use...

Initial Tanking Rating Thoughts

Today we're going to be attempting our first raid of the new expansion and as such this marks the first time I've really thought about tanking stats in a few months. I should head out and reforge my gear, but I don't know what to reforge to! I intend to really model this stuff out in the future and getting data from an initial raid will certainly help that, but for now I want to just do some napkin math and get something started. So I need to get a rough idea of what the different stats do. I did a look at some random World of Logs recap and found a boss swinging for about 20k. I'm going to assume he swings every 2 seconds. I also assume I hit Death Strike every 8 seconds and maintain debuffs with free runes from Runic Empowerment. I also seem to not have threat issues at all on anything I pump Rune Strikes into, and it can't be dodged or parried. So...

• Expertise Rating - absolute garbage
• Hit Rating - helps keep debuffs up in a timely manner, helps Rune Strike hit, still pretty bad
• Haste Rating - lets me Death Strike more often I guess. I will do more math on it for sure, but my gut instinct is it's garbage
• Parry Rating - 1% parry negates 100 damage every second in the long term. It takes 177 parry rating to get 1% parry, before diminishing returns
• Dodge Rating - 1% dodge negates 100 damage every second in the long term. It takes 177 dodge rating to get 1% dodge, before diminishing returns
• Mastery Rating - 1 mastery makes Death Strike put up an extra shield for 6.25% of the amount it healed for. With 140k max health it will heal for a minimum of 14k, so 1 mastery prevents 109 damage per second in the long term. It takes 179 mastery rating to get 1 mastery with no diminishing returns

If the boss hits harder or faster then parry/dodge get better. As I get more health or as I get more parry/dodge then mastery gets better. If the boss does a lot of non-avoidable attacks like magic then parry/dodge get worse. If the boss hits hard enough for Death Strike to heal for more than 10% max hp then mastery gets better.

All told it looks like mastery is probably the best and is what I'm going to reforge into for now. We'll see how things stand after tonight, though!

Realm First! Working As A Team

All of the individual realm first achievements have come and gone. Several people in my guild were trying for one or another of them with varying degrees of success and we ended up walking away with none of the first to 85 achievements but with 5 of the max profession achievements. Sky got Jewelcrafting, Tmiv got Leatherworking, and I brought in Cooking, Blacksmithing, and (on an alt) Inscription. I didn't even try very hard for the last two, I just wanted to not be the person holding us back from the guild achievement so I put a small focus on maxing my professions and it seems no one else on my realm really cared a lot about blacksmithing or inscription. (They were 2 of the last 4 done, with Jewelcrafting forced to take 4 days by game mechanics and Archaeology taking forever because it takes forever.)

It turns out, however, that maxing your professions is actually not the concern with Working As A Team. That may seem a little odd since that's all the achievement says. Be the first guild on the realm to get max skill in every profession. Seems pretty straightforward, no? It turns out they didn't want people guild hopping to earn achievements (probably a decision made back when guild achievements did something relevant instead of doing nothing at all like they were hot-fixed to do) so in order to count towards this achievement you need honoured rep with the guild. Ok, sucks for me because my professions are split across two characters but I don't need to sleep. I can grind two reps before another guild can max all their professions. Nope, it's even worse. You can't just spend a day or two grinding because they put in a weekly cap on guild rep. So it takes three weeks worth of grinding to get up to honoured. Three weeks!

This achievement is no longer about what guild can work together to max their professions fastest. Pooling resources? Planning to make sure all professions are covered? Worthless. All that matters is getting your max profession people to log in and play a whole bunch on December 21st. On the plus side in the time it takes waiting to get the rep someone else in my guild will max inscription so I won't need to grind rep on the 21st on two characters to try for the achievement, just on one. And I need to hope the other people in my guild also feel like grinding out quests two weeks after they need the experience. It really makes me wonder why they bothered making this a realm first achievement...

Archaeology All Items

Of course, there are also achievements for Archaeology in World of Warcraft and a lot of them deal with getting specific grey artifacts. What races do you have to dig to get them? Here's a list of all artifacts by race.

Draenei

Anklet with Golden Bells - Junk
Arrival of the Naaru - Vanity
Baroque Sword Scabbard - Junk
Carved Harp of Exotic Wood - Junk
Dignified Portrait - Junk
Fine Crystal Candelabra - Junk
Plated Elekk Goad - Junk
Scepter of the Nathrezim - Junk
Strange Silver Paperweight - Junk
The Last Relic of Argus - Vanity

Dwarf

Belt Buckle with Anvilmar Crest - Junk
Bodacious Door Knocker - Junk
Bone Gaming Dice - Junk
Boot Heel with Scrollwork - Junk
Ceramic Funeral Urn - Junk
Chalice of the Mountain Kings - Vanity
Clockwork Gnome - Pet
Dented Shield of Horuz Killcrow - Junk
Dwarven Baby Socks - Junk
Golden Chamber Pot - Junk
Ironstar's Petrified Shield - Junk
Mithril Chain of Angerforge - Junk
Moltenfist's Jeweled Goblet - Junk
Notched Sword of Tunadil the Redeemer - Junk
Pewter Drinking Cup - Junk
Pipe of Franclorn Forgewright - Junk
Scepter of Bronzebeard - Junk
Scepter of Charlga Razorflank - Junk
Scorched Staff of Shadow Priest Anund - Junk
Silver Kris of Korl - Junk
Silver Neck Torc - Junk
Skull Staff of Shadowforge - Junk
Spiked Gauntlets of Anvilrage - Junk
Staff of Sorcerer-Thane Thaurissian - 85 Epic
Stone Gryphon - Junk
The Innkeeper's Daughter - Vanity
Warmaul of Burningeye - Junk
Winged Helm of the Corehammer - Junk
Wooden Whistle - Junk
Word of Empress Zoe - Junk
Worn Hunting Knife - Junk

Fossil

Ancient Shark Jaws - Junk
Beautiful Preserved Fern - Junk
Black Trilobite - Junk
Devilsaur Tooth - Junk
Feathered Raptor Arm - Junk
Fossilized Hatchling - Pet
Fossilized Raptor - Mount
Imprint of a Kraken Tentacle - Junk
Insect in Amber - Junk
Proto-Drake Skeleton - Junk
Shard of Petrified Wood - Junk
Strange Velvet Worm - Junk
Twisted Ammonite Shell - Junk
Vicious Ancient Fish - Junk

Nerubian

Blessing of the Old God - Vanity
Ewer of Jurmungar Blood - Junk
Gruesome Heart Box - Junk
Infested Ruby Ring - Junk
Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron - Vanity
Scepter of Nezar'Azret - Junk
Six-Clawed Cornice - Junk
Spidery Sundial - Junk
Vizier's Scrawled Streamer - Junk

Night Elf

Bones of Transformation - Vanity
Carcanet of the Hundred Magi - Junk
Chest of Tiny Glass Animals - Junk
Cloak Clasp with Antlers - Junk
Coin from Eldre'Thalas - Junk
Cracked Crystal Vial - Junk
Delicate Music Box - Junk
Druid and Priest Statue Set - Vanity
Green Dragon Ring - Junk
Hairpin of Silver and Malachite - Junk
Highborne Pyxis - Junk
Highborne Soul Mirror - Vanity
Inlaid Ivory Comb - Junk
Kaldorei Amphora - Junk
Kaldorei Wind Chimes - Vanity
Necklace with Elune Pendant - Junk
Queen Azshara's Dressing Gown - BoA Gear
Scandalous Silk Nightgown - Junk
Scepter of Xavius - Junk
Shattered Glaive - Junk
Silver Scroll Case - Junk
String of Small Pink Pearls - Junk
Tyrande's Favorite Doll - 85 Epic
Umbra Crescent - Junk
Wisp Amulet - Vanity

Orc

Fiendish Whip - Junk
Fierce Wolf Figurine - Junk
Gray Candle Stud - Junk
Headdress of the First Shaman - BoA Gear
Maul of Stone Guard Mur'og - Junk
Rusted Steak Knife - Junk
Scepter of Nekros Skullcrusher - Junk
Skull Drinking Cup - Junk
Tile of Glazed Clay - Junk
Tiny Bronze Scorpion - Junk

Tol'Vir

Canopic Jar - Junk
Castle of Sand - Junk
Cat Statue with Emerald Eyes - Junk
Crawling Crab - Pet
Engraved Scimitar Pommel - Junk
Pendant of the Scarab Storm - Vanity
Ring of the Boy Emperor - 85 Epic
Scepter of Azj'Aqir - Mount
Scimitar of the Sirocco - 85 Epic
Sketch of a Desert Palace - Junk
Soapstone Scarab Necklace - Junk
Staff of Ammunae - 85 Epic
Tiny Oasis Mosaic - Junk

Troll

Atal'ai Scepter - Junk
Bracelet of Jade and Coins - Junk
Cinnabar Bijou - Junk
Drakkari Sacrificial Knife - Junk
Eerie Hakkari Idol - Junk
Feathered Gold Earring - Junk
Fetish of Hir'eek - Junk
Fine Bloodscalp Dinnerware - Junk
Gahz'rilla Figurine - Junk
Jade Asp with Ruby Eyes - Junk
Lizard Foot Charm - Junk
Skull-Shaped Planter - Junk
Tooth with Gold Filling - Junk
Zandalari Voodoo Doll - Junk
Zin'rokh, Destroyer of Worlds - 85 Epic

Vrykul

Fanged Cloak Pin - Junk
Flint Striker - Junk
Intricate Treasure Chest Key - Junk
Nifflevar Bearded Axe - BoA Gear
Scramseax - Junk
Thorned Necklace - Junk

Archaeology Rare Items

I couldn't find any site listing the possible rewards from the new World of Warcraft profession, Archaeology with the information I wanted. So, I decided to build my own. Personally I'm looking for entry level raid gear (hello Zin'rokh!) and wanted to know if there was anything else I wanted and what races to focus on. Note for Zin'rokh (and I assume all the other 85 epics) you need at least 450 Archaeology skill to find them.

Level 85 Epics

Staff of Sorcerer-Thane Thaurissian - Dwarf
Tyrande's Favorite Doll - Night Elf
Ring of the Boy Emperor - Tol'Vir
Scimitar of the Sirocco - Tol'Vir
Staff of Ammunae - Tol'Vir
Zin'rokh, Destroyer of Worlds - Troll

Other Bind on Account Gear

Queen Azshara's Dressing Gown - Night Elf
Headdress of the First Shaman - Orc
Nifflevar Bearded Axe - Vrykul

Mounts

Fossilized Raptor - Fossil
Scepter of Azj'Aqir - Tol'Vir

Pets

Clockwork Gnome - Dwarf
Fossilized Hatchling - Fossil
Crawling Crab - Tol'Vir

Miscellaneous Vanity Things

Arrival of the Naaru - Draenei
The Last Relic of Argus - Draenei
Chalice of the Mountain Kings - Dwarf
The Innkeeper's Daughter - Dwarf
Blessing of the Old God - Nerubian
Puzzle Box of Yogg-Saron - Nerubian
Bones of Transformation - Night Elf
Druid and Priest Statue Set - Night Elf
Highborne Soul Mirror - Night Elf
Kaldorei Wind Chimes - Night Elf
Wisp Amulet - Night Elf
Pendant of the Scarab Storm - Tol'Vir

Realm First! Illustrious Cooking

The log-in servers died so this was more a matter of getting lucky and being the first competitor to log in than it was skill, but I got it done anyway! Woo!

Profession Skill Up Chance

I've acquired 50+ of each of my chosen meats for the upcoming push for realm first: illustrious cooking. Do I need more? Do I want more? How safe am I, really?

Those are the questions I was asking today and turned to google to see if anyone actually knew the answer. I couldn't find any links to data from any actual studies but I did find in a few spots the same formula which makes some intuitive sense. If the formula is right then it also explains the weirdness in terms of when the different cooking recipes turned green according to tier.

Orange is always 100% to skill-up (other than skinning which Blizzard intentionally changed a long time ago). Each recipe now has two relevant numbers. The last skill level which is 100% to skill-up and the first skill level with is 0% to skill-up. Every level between those two has a chance of providing a skill-up which is linearly related to those two numbers. The formula is (grey skill - current skill) / (grey skill - yellow skill + 1). The green level is artificial and represents a less than 50% chance to skill-up, and hence lies halfway between the grey skill and the yellow skill. (This is why I can get 10 yellow ticks out of a tier 1 food and only 5 from a tier 3 food. They have a wider range before they go grey.)

Anyone who bothered to read my two part series on Markov chains should see where I'm headed here. Skilling up is strictly increasing and I now have quantified probabilities for advancing from state to state. How much food do I need? I can build a matrix and find out! (Well, I can build 3 matrices and find out since they all have different ranges between yellow and grey.) Each of the three tiers has 15 points in orange, so for each tier I need 15 meat plus 10 skill-ups.

Building up my matrix and running it on the online tool I found shows that for tier 1 I expect to need 12.941 meat to get those final 10 points, for a total of 28 meat. The 64 snake eyes I have should be more than sufficient. In fact, it's a practical guarantee. The odds of not getting 25 skill points with 64 meat is 0. Experimenting a bit, the 95% threshold is 32 pieces of meat.

For tier 2 we're looking at needing 16.5583 extra pieces of meat. The 95% threshold (including the orange 15) is 38. I have 57 blood shrimp which is 99.9988% likely to get me to 500.

For tier 3 we're looking at needing 32.2187 extra pieces of meat. The 95% threshold (again including the orange 15) is 71. I have 59 crocolisk tails which is 85.55% likely to get me to 525.

I'm happy with my practical guarantee to get through tier 1. Missing 1 of every 100000 tries at passing tier 2 is acceptable. But failing 1 in 7 at getting through tier 3 is not something I'm happy with. Fortunately for me I have an easy out. Vek has had enough double token days that I can afford to buy a 4th recipe. I was hoping I wouldn't need to but if I do then I have 114 combined tier 3 meats which would give me a 99.92% to make it. I was thinking I should save the tokens in case I needed to buy a tier 2 recipe but this shows me that's wrong. Even with 2 recipes I'm still more likely to fail at tier 3 than at tier 2. I should be good and I will absolutely make sure to have that bonus skill from a daily sitting around in case disaster strikes. (And beg for more food!)

On the plus side, I doubt other people are thinking they need to stock up hundreds of the tier 3 meat so if I need to make that run other people might have to as well. Better make sure to log out in frost spec for the extra mounted run speed!

Realm First! Illustrious Cooking

My all-time most viewed post is this one where I detailed possible plans for getting one of the realm first feats of strength for the upcoming World of Warcraft expansion. Some of those hits were from the same few people who read the rest of my posts, but some people actually got here from the outside world likely expecting help and instead were treated to a bunch of drivel about what I might want to do and not a lot about how I would do it.

Well, if any of those people end up back here I have a "treat" for them. I got tipped onto the fact that you can likely do cooking in less than an hour and decided to look into it further. I'll detail the steps needed here, but the window to get on board is steadily closing.

Why is that? Well, it turns out they actually enabled the Cataclysm cooking and fishing dailies in the shattering patch. The fishing dailies don't matter at all but the cooking ones sure do. The new dailies award new cooking tokens which are used to buy recipes or meat and can be stockpiled before the Cataclysm launch. (They also award one cooking skill so you can save one up in advance.) Most of the dailies award one token, but one of them gives two (currently the active one on Vek!)

Now, for the most part the new recipes fall into one of 3 categories for our purposes.

• They require skill 450, go yellow at 465, green at 477, and grey at 490. 
• They require skill 475, go yellow at 490, green at 497, and grey at 505. 
• They require skill 500, go yellow at 515, green at 520, and grey at 525. 

Finally, existing recipes from the Wrath era can take you all the way to 475 if you work at it, though they start green and require spices each so you'd have to have a real stockpile and spend a lot of time at it. Certainly good enough to beat anyone who isn't trying to twink it out but has no chance against someone going optimal speed. Fish feasts from Wrath go grey at 465 but actually stay orange until 455 so they're quite feasible for a few skill points.

Assuming you're going whole hog you need to buy 3 recipes, one from each category above. They each cost 3 tokens, and the tokens are soulbound, so you need to have 9 tokens on your main when Cataclysm launches. Counting today there are exactly 8 days left before Cataclysm launches, so you need just one doubler to get there. (If you're going the Wrath to 475 plan then you only need 6 tokens which will be good enough if no one else on your realm caught on in time.) Note this does include the day you log in (dailies reset at 4am, game comes up at 3am) but if your realm has a favourable timezone you may be able to get around this. I don't. As an aside, you want to save that last daily for after you've trained to go above 450 so you get the free skill point, and probably want to save it for skill #500 or #525.

You also need to have the cooking hat from the Dalaran dailies. Someone with the hat will beat someone without the hat guaranteed since it pretty much triples to quadruples your cooking time.

Ok, so we have our hat and our recipes and our free bonus skill... How are we getting the mats to get the rest of the skills? Well, for 2 of the new cooking awards you can also buy a box of meat. Each box of meat contains between 2 and 5 of a random Cataclysm meat. There are 9 such possible meats that can be pulled out of the box, of varying uses. Yes, I know, you need all your awards to buy the recipes. Your alts don't, though. Your guildies don't. People willing to make a quick buck certainly don't. The recipes are BoP, the tokens are BoP, but the meat can be traded. Anyone who is both level 10 and has at least 1 cooking skill can do the dailies, buy the boxes, and mail you the meat. What are the kinds of meat and what can they do?

• Basilisk "Liver" - min skill 500
• Blood Shrimp - min skill 450, min skill 475
• Giant Turtle Tongue - min skill 475
• Crocolisk Tail - min skill 500, min skill 500 (thanks Blizzard)
• Delicate Wing - worthless for our purposes
• Toughened Flesh - worthless for our purposes
• Dragon Flank - min skill 500
• Snake Eye - min skill 450
• Monstrous Claw - min skill 450

Personally I'm doing the daily on 7 alts (and may level 2 more characters to 10 in order to bump that number up). I expect to get about 12 tokens per character (I started 2 days ago before checking on the feasibility of the whole plan just in case) which is 42 boxes of meat. So I'm likely to end up with around 15 of each meat type which is clearly not enough since I need to get 25 skillups per recipe. I looked at the AH this morning and the meat was going for 200G a pop, which is a little extreme. Hopefully I'll get lucky on a couple types of meat and can borrow/buy/steal some from some friends to get to the needed amount...

But what is the needed amount? Well, to get from 450 to 465 is 15 and then I need another 10 skill from a yellow recipe. Probably that's only 12 or so, but to be safe I'd want at least 20, so I need 35 of the first tier meat.

To get from 475 to 490 is 15. Another 7 at yellow and another 3 at green is going to be in the 25 range to be safe I'd think, so 40 of the second tier meat.

To get from 500 to 515 is 15. Another 5 at yellow and 5 at green is even rougher, probably in the 30 range.

Plus, if you're going all out to get something you really want to safety the contract, so I'd really want to add on an extra 10 in each category. Nothing would suck more than to do all this prep and end up stuck at 499 skill desperately begging people for turtle tongues. You'd still be fine if you're the only one going for it, but if someone else planned better you're sunk. (Note this would be a good time to cash your saved up daily quest for +1 skill!)

So, ideally, I would want...

• 45 Blood Shrimp OR Snake Eye OR Monstrous Claw
• 50 Blood Shrimp OR Giant Turtle Tongue
• 55 Basilisk "Liver" OR Crocolisk Tail OR Dragon Flank

Remember you can get some early skill from the fish feasts (and the first 5 are guaranteed so no need not to use them) so really you only need 40 of the first tier meat. (Note since I can only afford one recipe per tier I have to get all 55 as Liver or as Tail, not a split.)

All told I think I can hit max cooking in about 5 minutes assuming I have the meat in my inventory in advance. This seems totally worth going for and like it won't really hurt going for realm first fishing either. Time to beg for meat I guess!