As we fumbled around with Al’ar for a day or so, we got our act together for another lead up to Kael’thas Sunstrider. We’re working on him now, and boy-o-boy is that phase 3 a tough one. Here’s a review of my battle with Al’ar.
Group:

• Warrior (protection)
• Druid (feral)
• Rogue
• Rogue
• Shaman

Totems:

• Windfury & Grace of Air Totems
• Mana Spring Totem
• Strength of Earth Totem

I also dropped Wrath of Air for the beginning of the fight so I could hurl better bolts of lightning at Al’ar. Before the Embers of Al’ar adds start coming, I just try to range damage the boss for a few moments before the melee hilarity begins. When the adds get to about 30% health, I run away from them and do more range lightning bolts so I don’t get punted from the death of the Embers by standing close to the adds.

This Al’ar battle I decided to use both Windfury & Grace of Air totems to show what happens when you twist totems. It’s easy and as long as you have plenty of mana regeneration (through Shamanistic Rage or Water Shield or both), it can be done during a long 10 minute fight. I do twist totems from time to time, but I wanted to record this fight and show you how it worked.

How to twist totems?

• Step 1: macro this and click it once at the beginning of the fight.

/castsequence reset=8 [combat] Windfury Totem, Grace of Air Totem

• Step 2: wait for a pulse so all the weapons of your party members get the weapon imbue (Windfury 5).
• Step 3: macro again to drop Grace of Air
• Step 4: count to 8 (repeat w/Step 1)

If you have Deadly Boss Mods addon, there is a nice timer to remind you to re-apply the Twist.

/castsequence reset=8 Windfury Totem, Grace of Air Totem
/dbm timer 00:08 Twist 

I managed to get 700 dps and ranked 8th in damage output. I need to find out what I can improve for next time.  So I read the stats report.

My summary of the fight stats below:

Post combat analysis key indicators:

• White damage: 39%
• White damage crit: 38%
• Windfury: 29%
• Windfury crit: 37%
• White Damage Miss rate: 22.7%

Overall, my output was mediocre and now I see that my miss rate was well above what I would normally like: 22.7% is a lot of misses. My +hit was a little over 100, so I can bump that up to +190 for the next round with Al’ar. Also, it seems my crit% is good, but I need more Attack Power. I hover around 2000 attack power, but I’ll need to gain more AP and less crit as we move into Mount Hyjal and Black Temple.

And thanks to Ashuna for this clarification on my Miss %. There were some parried attacks from Al’ar, mostly because the Flame Patches were just behind the big bird, so I could only melee from the front area near his beak.  I was forced to fight this way until either the Flame Patches subsided or the tank re-positioned Al’ar to move so melee could attack from behind the tail-feathers.

See this pic below for the Overall miss % | Block % | Parry % | Dodge % rates.

Overall miss: 22.7%
Miss: 12%
Block: 0 %
Parry: 4%
Dodge: 5%

Judgement of Wisdom helped me get mana back so I could keep twisting totems for Windfury and Grace of Air.   Ok.  Fair enough, JoW 814 mana ain’t all that much, but it’s better than nothing.  Shamanistic Rage gave back the most w/ 9,920 mana, Mana Spring Totem next with 4,380 mana.

Totem Twisting & Buffs Summary

Unfortunately, one rogue in my group died a bit early on (49% presence during fight). Warriors just love Windfury. See the warrior here got heaps of extra Windfury attacks: 29! The feral druid only gained additional Agility and Unleashed Rage, but nothing from Windfury Totem.

All group members details in pic below:

Next up: more Kael’thas attempts. We are working on perfecting each phase, so it may take another week or two to get it right.

So I was talking with some Draenei in Ironforge the other day about how the Guild was progressing and they laughed at me and said “it’s nawt dat hard, missy, jus dps-a-go-go”. I slinked back to the Outlands to see what was shaking out & low and behold… Tempest Keep tonight. Praise Farseer Nobundo!

Now that I’ve mentioned ‘Farseer’, that got me to thinking about the Hero Class in Wrath of the Lich King expansion. You know the Death Knight will not be the only Hero Class, Blizzard always tries to ‘balance’ things and only 1 or 2 hero classes will just not be equal to all the hardcore altaholics out there, so I wanted to write down my thoughts on Wrath of the Lich King especially focusing on Hero Classes. Since there will be some siege warfare in the next expansion, I’ve tried to give some mass units control to the Hero Classes. Here’s a list of possible Hero Classes derived from the base class (ordered by the most likely to I-really-can’t-decide).

My fear is that too many players will charge into Hero Classes and it will end up as a world wide DOTA.

Now back to raiding. The following week we are back in Tempest Keep, locking down the farmable stuff. Solarian wants to chat with us, but we only manage to excite the mage. I myself like this fight a lot, it’s not hard as long as the healers do their job, the Paladin tanks do theirs and people run away quickly when they get Wrath’d by the Astromancer. Piece of cake.

My party:

• Rogue
• Rogue
• Rogue
• Druid (feral)
• Shaman (me)

Totems:

• Windfury Totem
• Strength of Earth Totem
• Healing Stream Totem
• Fire Nova Totem (for Agents)
• Searing Totem
• Tremor Totem (for last stage of fight vs. Solarian the Voidwalker)
• Fire Elemental Totem (for Agents)

A very respectable #6 on total damage. My Dragonstrike is finally paying off.

Buffs gained in battle:

• Shamanistic Rage (Mana) 10,987
• Judgement of Wisdom (Mana) 7,770
• Water Shield (Mana) 610
• Drums of Restoration (Mana) 600
• Focused 35
• Flurry 25
• Elemental Strength 13
• Unleashed Rage 11
• Haste 6
• Lust for Battle 4
• Lightning Speed 4
• Leader of the Pack 4
• Drums of Battle 2
• Rejuvenation 1
• Lifebloom 1
• Heroism 1
• Greater Blessing of Salvation 1